Of the many changes brought by Dota 2 patch 7.33, sources of experience gain changed a lot. The biggest impact of this change will be felt by supports.
When Dota 2 patch 7.33 arrived, the thought that went through everyone’s mind was how the hell are we supposed to keep up with the plethora of changes?! But like every major patch, when you play a couple of games, things start coming into perspective and you start making sense of the changes.
Of all the changes, one of the big changes in patch 7.33 was to the sources of experience. Outpost XP was removed and Tome of Knowledge was removed from the game. In place of those, the Wisdom Rune was introduced. GosuGamers already took a look at where the Wisdom Runes are and what makes them important. But the change is so meta defining in many ways that it warrants a deeper view, which is exactly what we will do here.
Outpost and Tome XP has been extremely important for supports. For the last few patches, Outposts provided and XP bump at the start of every minute, and Tome of Knowledge was available at every 10 minutes (starting from minute 10).
Outpost XP = Time x 2
Tome of Knowledge XP = 700 for first two Tomes, with XP increasing by 135 for every Tome after the second one
Now with Wisdom Runes added to the XP equation, it is a good idea to compare the XP they provide with the previous sources. The first Wisdom Rune is available at 7 minutes and they keep spawning on either sides of the map every 7 minutes.
Wisdom Rune XP = 280 for the first Rune, with XP increase by 280 for every subsequent one
Here’s a look at the XP provided by Tome of Knowledge and Wisdom Rune based on the game time. Outposts have been kept out of this comparison as they were passive XP. The big takeaway from this graph is that as the game goes on, Wisdom Runes provide significantly more XP than Tomes. However – and this is a big one – the first two Wisdom Runes are lower than the first two Tomes. Why is that important? Because Tomes were what one of the two supports relied on to get to level 6 at a decent time in the early game. A lot of supports get a huge power spike at level 6, and that is now bound to come in later in the game.+
What about the cumulative XP granted by all three sources? That has been shown below in the graph below. As the game goes on, the cumulative XP granted by Wisdom Runes is far higher than Tome and Outposts combined. However, that inversion takes place somewhere around the 40th minute. Before that, the two XP sources in the pre 7.33 era provided more experience.
There’s a lot to unpack here. The first thing is that even though the cumulative Outpost XP is lower than the other two sources, it was a passive XP source which affected the entire team. There were no fights between teammates about who would get that slice of experience, and it was guaranteed at least until a tier two tower was lost. It kept the experience bar ticking, which might not be that big of a deal for cores, but for supports, it matters a lot.
So no more Outposts and no more high experience in the early game from Tomes. This means supports are bound to have a more difficult time in the early game. But that is not the end of it. Because Wisdom Runes are out on the map and not available in the shop, supports need to be near it to take advantage of the XP. If a core is near the rune (at least in pubs), there’s a high chance the rune does not get left for the support.
“I am only level 4!”
“But I have an empty bottle”.
What are you gonna do?
That’s not the only issue. In case you’re having a bad game and the enemy has map control, they can steal the XP from the Wisdom Rune! That was something which wasn’t possible with Outposts or Tomes. Of course, you could deny Outpost XP, but never gain double by controlling both Outposts. Now in the late game with high XP values coming from Wisdom Runes, it could lead to massive XP swings. A team getting both Wisdom Runes at the 35th minute is a 2800 XP swing in an instant.
To summarize the experience scenario, XP is going to be hard to come by in the early game for supports. Supports will get their ultimates slightly later in the game, and if a support isn’t given the Wisdom runes, both supports on a team could end up being under leveled. But hey, this kind of change is exactly what stirs up the pot in a new meta and makes things interesting!
