Valve Finally Nerfs Glimmer Cape in Dota 2 Patch 7.38b

OMFG—and by that, I mean: oh my god, finally, Glimmer Cape is nerfed, because Dota 2 publisher and developer Valve Corporation has finally seen enough of the item and has hit it with the nerf bat in Patch 7.38b. Valve dropped the minor balance update in the morning of March 5th, some time after Team Spirit beat Tundra Esports in the DreamLeague Season 25 grand finals.

“So how?” I hear you ask. Well, apart from cutting the bonus movement speed of the invisibility active in half—down from 40 to 20—the mana cost of applying the invisibility in the first place has been bumped up significantly as well. Going from 90 mana on activation to a whole 125 mana is huge, particularly for agility carries that actually used to buy the item for themselves.

Agility carries tend to not have large mana pools or good base mana regeneration, after all, so this change is highly likely going to discourage such heroes from buying the item in the first place. Glimmer Cape is now back to being a support-only item, which is much healthier for the game anyway.

Other Important Adjustments

Of course, that’s not all the patch features in terms of buffs and nerfs. Jakiro has seen a nerf to his Ice Path (W), which was one of the most powerful abilities to come out of Patch 7.38 thanks to the Ice Breaker facet. Now, the path itself lasts one second less, for a total of five seconds. In addition, the cooldown has been increased from nine seconds at level 4 to 11 seconds at the same level.

Then there’s Lifestealer, who has come out of the woodwork as one of the best carries of the patch thus far. Infest (R) will no longer disarm the target enemy hero (if used on an enemy hero) with the Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade, which is a significant nerf when playing against “harder” right click carries like Phantom Assassin. Coupled with a four-point decrease to his base agility, it’s possible we’ll see a bit less of N’aix over the coming weeks.

When it comes to Muerta, one of the best support picks at DreamLeague, I’m actually shocked that Deadshot (Q) didn’t get touched at all. The ability itself was ridiculously strong, and served as the linchpin of her success at the tournament. Instead, Valve opted to remove the attack speed slow component from The Calling (W), which I guess is a nerf no matter how you slice it.

Still, I don’t think this nerf alone is going to be nearly enough to dissuade teams from picking her. I fully expect Deadshot to receive adjustments in Patch 7.38c, whenever it comes. There’s only three days until PGL Wallachia Season 3, though, so any such nerfs to Muerta will probably have to wait until afterwards.

Lastly, there’s Tiny, who’s had a whole nine points of armor lopped off of level 3 Grow (R). Tiny showed all of us at DreamLeague that he did absurd amounts of damage despite being as tanky as he was late game, so this nerf makes total sense. He’s still going to get picked just for his damage output alone, but at least he won’t be unkillable in late game situations anymore.