Dota 2 patch 7.33e has been released, and it brings down the nerf hammer on all dominant heroes of the Bali Major. There is also news about Dota 2 patch 7.34!
A few days ago, GosuGamers looked at the meta based on the games of the Bali Major, and what it showed was that very few heroes dominated the drafts. The diversity of picks at the Bali Major was the lowest seen in many professional tournaments, and changes were necessary before the Riyadh Masters.
The changes have arrived, and they are all in the form of nerfs. Dota 2 patch 7.33e was released, and the patch is basically nerfs to the following 11 heroes:
· Broodmother
· Doom
· Ember Spirit
· Enchantress
· Medusa
· Morphling
· Pugna
· Storm Spirit
· Techies
· Timbersaw
· Undying
It’s not like they don’t deserve the nerfs, but a few buffs here and there to promote the neglected heroes would have been nice. The entire set of nerfs can be found here. We will look at some of the major ones which are bound to affect drafts at the Riyadh Masters.
Broodmother
Both changes affect Brood in the laning stage. Insatiable Hunger is how she sustains herself in the lane, and even while farming neutral creeps. Brood is a hero that snowballs from winning the lane, and a hit to the laning stage is a massive blow to the hero.
Players always invested one point in Silken Bola because the start value was so high (25%), but now with level 1 being just a 10% slow, it might not be worth rethinking.
Medusa
Lesser mana, lesser outgoing damage, lesser mana steal. Will this take Medusa completely out of the meta? No. But all those fights at the Bali Major where Medusa survived on a sliver of HP, just throwing out a Mystic Snake at the last minute to get some mana – those fights will now go the other way. In professional games, the smallest of margins will affect the outcome massively, and these nerfs will be catalyst to making those fifty-fifty scenarios go the other way.
Morphling
Weirdly enough, not the highest win rate at the Bali Major (just a modest 50.77%), but Morphling did have a contest rate of 97.5%. It was getting tiring seeing him contested in every game, and the nerfs to Scepter were much warranted. After getting an Aghanim’s Scepter, Morph could just take a hero out of the game by stealing the hero’s stats, especially if the hero was Universal. Now, Aghs might not be an every game item. Or maybe it still will be, who knows? Even if it is, it won’t be so broken that it will make the opposition Agility carry go for a third or fourth item Moon Shard.
Pugna
The nerf to Pugna’s mana replenishing abilities is an additional indirect nerf to Medusa and Storm Spirit. The two heroes need mana plenty in team fights, and Pugna would just keep supplying it to them. The medic part of Pugna’s ability is good (HP restoration), but the mana replenishment does go a bit overboard. Even with it being nerfed by half, he still provides 150 mana per second, which is in no way insignificant. But at least it is a bit of a check on a hero that did well at the Bali Major.
Undying
Grab Ally seemed like a meme when it was first released, but it turns out, it was a great way to save allies stuck in murky situations, including Black Hole and Chronosphere. Now that it can only be cast on allies to save them, it reduces the potency as the cast range of Tomb Stone is much smaller than what Grab Ally had.
While it would have been nice to see some buffs mixed in with patch 7.33e, we know that they are being worked on for The International 2023 (TI12). Along with the release of patch 7.33e, an announcement was also made that patch 7.34 will be released in early August before the TI12 qualifiers. The qualifiers begin on the 17th of August, so it will be at least a few days before that.
A $15 million tournament, followed by a substantial patch, with the qualifiers for TI12 starting right after – there’s a lot to look forward to in Dota 2 in the next few weeks!
