The biggest changes in Dota 2 Patch 7.40

The Christmas miracle to end all Christmas miracles is here, thanks to Valve blessing us with Patch 7.40 today. As expected of a game update more than 200 days removed from the last major one, 7.40 brings with it a ton of meaningful changes, not least of which is a brand new hero to bring in the holiday cheer.

And of course it happens right in the middle of DreamLeague Season 27, as if Valve has forever penciled this specific event into their release calendar every year. Never fails to amuse. Anyway, here are the biggest changes that you need to know about Patch 7.40!

Guitar Hero Dota

Yes, you’re reading that right: it isn’t just Fortnite Festival making a comeback when it comes to rhythm games. The newest Dota hero Largo has a whole ass rhythm game built into his ultimate ability Amphibian Rhapsody (R), whereby one is required to time their button presses to the beat of the music that accompanies it in order to derive maximum effectiveness.

Introducing Largo & Dota Gameplay 7.40 Update. https://t.co/UlxxHEss8Q pic.twitter.com/HkaGriZxae

— Wykrhm Reddy (@wykrhm) December 16, 2025

Done correctly, staying “in the pocket” as we call it in the world of musicianship, grants Largo a stacking armor buff and reduces the mana cost of each of his songs for a short duration. Based on my initial testing in demo mode, the hit window for the beat itself is quite generous, which is great for those that have never really played rhythm games before.

Ever more talented

Talents used to cost skill points in order to obtain at levels 10, 15, 20, and 25 — but no more! They will now be obtainable with talent points, which are given by the game at the aforementioned levels, along with levels 27, 28, 29, and 30. This also means that the additional stats given by the universal +2 All Attributes talent will be maxed out automatically by level 22.

I really like this change, because I always hated how you had to sacrifice some ability levels in order to get highly impactful talents. Now, you just get any such talent for free, no questions asked.

Couriers no longer handicapped

Thank God they reverted this change. Couriers will no longer suffer a 15% movement speed penalty while carrying restorative items like Clarity, Healing Salve, Enchanted Mango, and the like. I understand why they did this in the past when most restoratives didn’t have a limited stock in the base shop, but now that the relevant ones do, I personally think that this penalty had long overstayed its welcome.

No longer will I have to feel like my courier is taking forever to bring me my precious regen while my lane opponents are beating me to a pulp. For my money, this is the best Christmas gift Valve could have given me as a core player.

No one and nothing is safe from inflation

If you’ve been around Hotspawn for a while now, you’ll probably know that I’ve been playing Dota since it was a WarCraft III custom game. Iron Branches have always costed 50 gold, even back in the DotA Allstars days, but now they cost 55 gold each.

This doesn’t seem like a lot on paper, but when you realize that Iron Branches have long been considered the most cost-effective item in the entire game, the perspective shifts entirely. The amount of gold that each player starts the game with has not been changed, either, so this affects a lot of starting item builds that require every last bit of gold in order to work.

If I’m being honest, I’m not sure this change will last. If there is to be a 7.40b in the near future, I expect that Valve will be reverting this cost increase, because there are just some traditions you don’t mess with.

Chen and his mount found dead in a ditch

It took longer than it should have, but Chen’s ability to just burn a hero’s mana over and over again in the laning is now much weaker — thanks to the Satyr Mindstealer’s Mana Burn (Q) spell’s intelligence multiplier going down from 2/2.5/3/4x to 1/1.5/2/2.5x at each respective level.

Andrei “skem” Ong and Andrey “Dukalis” Kuropatkin (what is it with this first name and being really good at Chen?) have both been terrorizing lanes with the hero for a while now, so this should cap their mana burning shenanigans for the foreseeable future. And just in time, too, because Chen’s power and hold over the drafting phase in pro matches was starting to get out of hand.

Diffusal Blade nerfed, for some reason

I don’t really understand why, but Patch 7.40 has made it so that Diffusal Blade’s Manabreak attack modifier no longer propagates to illusions. This means that heroes like Phantom Lancer and Naga Siren will no longer benefit from it unless it’s the main hero doing the attacking, which is a massive nerf to their viability as carries.

Not that Naga has been a particularly good carry in Dota patch 7.39, but somehow, Phantom Lancer has been made even more irrelevant by this change. Sure, PL also got a few changes here and there to his kit in order to compensate, but none of them seem like they’ll be impactful enough to bring him back.

At this point, I think the hero is well overdue for a comprehensive rework. When he is strong, he’s annoying as hell — but when he’s not, he’s just completely unplayable. There has to be some middle ground that Valve can find here. As an aside, Medusa is probably laughing maniacally right now seeing this change.

Lone Druid, Slark and Treant Protector reworked

‘Tis the season of giving, and Valve has given us Dota fans three separate hero reworks to try out. Lone Druid, Slark, and Treant Protector have received huge changes to their kits, with Lone Druid in particular seeing his Spirit Bear become a fully fledged melee hero. Summon Spirit Bear (Q) is now Lone Druid’s innate ability, while the bear’s Entangle passive is now a point targeted ability attached to Lone Druid himself.

Slark, meanwhile, no longer has Essence Shift in his main kit, with the ability also becoming his innate. In replacement, he gets Saltwater Shiv (E), which works just like Essence Shift in that it’s also an attack modifier, but steals movement speed, passive health regeneration, and overall health restoration with each stack.

As for Treant Protector, his Leech Seed (W) ability is no longer a targetable spell, but rather an auto-cast enabled attack modifier. His Eyes in the Forest (D) sub-ability is now also granted by Aghanim’s Shard, which honestly sounds terrifying to me. Imagine getting scouted by the trees as soon as Aghanim’s Shard is available. Could be insane. We’ll have to see how these reworks affect the game at DreamLeague Season 27, if these three heroes are even picked at the tournament.

You can check out the full Patch 7.40 changelog over on the official Dota 2 website.