As promised by the Frog, the biweekly update rolled out yesterday in the form of 7.09, bringing a few significant gameplay changes along with it.
A few weeks ago, a rare phenomena occurred as IceFrog himself tweeted an announcement regarding the future of updates in Dota. The idea was that instead of game-changing patches every few months, Valve will now release a small gameplay update every two weeks and plans on experimenting this recipe for the next six months.
A new update rolled in yesterday, in the form of 7.09. While fixing quite a few bugs, the gameplay changes brought by the update are nothing less than a support player's dream come true. Perhaps the most significant change is the reduction in cost of the Courier, the most important starting item bought by a support (along with wards, of course!). With its cost increased from 100 to a massive 200 in the 7.07 update, the new change minimizes support expenses by bringing down the gold cost to a mere 50, giving support heroes a chance to buy some of their own items as well (such as a casual Wind Lace or Boots of Speed).
What's more, the change has also reduced the starting gold available to every hero from the standard 625 to a flat 600. Another essential starting item, the Tango, has also been hit by the change with its cost being reduced to 90 and its charges being reduced from 5 to 3. Moreover, the bounty runes picked up by each team at the start of the game now grant a gold bonus of 40 to every hero in the team, rather than just 100 gold to the hero who picked it. Stacking has also been buffed, with stacks now granting the hero who stacked the camp a 15% gold bounty, granted that the stack is cleared by an allied hero.
The full changelog can be found here.
