So, as it turns out, Dota 2 lead developer and balance master IceFrog hasn’t forgotten about us Dota fans — for Patch 7.38, entitled Wandering Waters, is finally upon us. After 203 agonizing days stuck on 7.37, IceFrog and the rest of the Dota 2 dev team have given us the reprieve we needed, and right in the middle of DreamLeague Season 25.
In typical Dota 2 fashion, the patch is absolutely massive in scope, covering everything from map layout changes, buffs and nerfs to individual heroes, and wholesale adjustments to entire systems like neutral items. If your head is spinning from reading the patch notes, you’re not alone. But I’ve got the most significant changes that you need to know right off the bat here in this article, so don’t worry if you don’t have the time to be reading every last character in the changelog.
River ridin’
The biggest change to the map in particular, and the very basis of the update’s title, has to be the expanded river areas. These new streams of water give heroes traversing them a movement speed bonus, so long as they’re moving in line with the current. Moving against the current does not apply a slow, so heroes can safely go the opposite direction without worry.
The current does show in the form of a visible animation on the water itself, so it’s easy enough to see which direction is the more optimal one. These new river areas are interspersed between the different sections of each side’s jungle, allowing for both faster neutral creep farming and travel towards the lanes.
And yes, I know what you’re thinking: does it stack with Slardar’s puddles? Yes. Yes it does.
Neutral items are now your own creations
Next on the list is the change to the neutral items system, which makes it so that neutral items no longer drop at random from neutral creep camps. Instead, fully clearing a jungle camp now grants your hero Madstone, a material used to craft neutral items from a predetermined pool. Camps cleared as normal will drop three pieces of Madstone, two of which go to your hero and one to a random ally on the map.
In line with this, neutral items are now composed of two distinct components: Artifacts, which are basically the same neutral items that we already know today, and Enchantments, which add stats to Artifacts when combined. For example, crafting Occult Bracelet and combining it with the Brawny Enchantment grants the holder additional health and health regeneration, on top of the benefits already given by Occult Bracelet.
The tiering system will carry over from how neutral items were before, but with a twist: you now have to craft a neutral from a lower tier before doing the same with a higher tier one. Overall I think this new system is fantastic, and should unlock even more skill and playstyle expression so long as Valve balances things out properly.
Glean wisdom from shrines, not runes
Wisdom Runes have been contentious since their arrival in Dota 2, but Patch 7.38 changes things up a bit to keep things fresh on their end. Wisdom Runes are now gone, replaced by Shrines of Wisdom — placed off to the side in between each team’s offlane tier 1 and tier 2 towers. In order to grab the bonus experience from these Shrines, players must stand within their effective radius of 300 units for three seconds.
There’s a catch, though: enemy heroes standing within the same radius will prevent the Shrine from giving out its XP bounty. Therefore, players must kill or otherwise remove these heroes from the area first.
Wisdom Runes were already hotbeds of hero-versus-hero activity before, so this change puts even more emphasis on that aspect. Incidentally, Lotus Pools now also work the same way. Expect more action in the laning phase in your pubs.
Oh my god this patch is actually huge
Of course, that’s not all. There’s plenty more in the actual patch notes as I mentioned. Aside from the three major changes I picked out, there’s the new Roshan pits, the fact that only one Tormentor will be active at any given time, evolving neutral creeps, and a bunch of other things that could have only come from IceFrog’s most vivid fever dreams.
If I had to pick one small change that I really like in particular, it’d have to be the removal of the Cluster Cluck facet from Shadow Shaman’s kit. Thank f*** that absolute annoyance is gone for good. But anyway, make sure to read the full changelog on the official Dota 2 website, because there’s simply too much to even cover in a single news article.
And if Jonáš “SabeRLight-” Volek’s opinion on mid-tournament patches is anything to go by, DreamLeague Season 25 is about to get crazy.
