DreamLeague Season 23 playoffs stage has a huge chance of being played on a new patch.
Earlier today Valve teased the arrival of a new patch. The Dota 2 community has been anxiously waiting for a new numbered patch to be deployed for a few months now. It’s been more than five months since the 7.35 gameplay update was released, and although the lore and cavern-crawl-like mini game in the client has kept the players somewhat busy, the need for a new gameplay update is deeply felt in both public matchmaking and professional games.
Act II of the Crownfall event is announced to be launched this week. Today, Valve unlocked a vendor location in Act I, which gives a few hints at what players should expect next. It’s the first time when a new patch is teased in an in-game event, and considering that Act II will be released in the coming days, the community hopes that 7.36 will come with it.
Valve’s teaser came on the eve of the last day in the group stage of DreamLeague Season 23 and, historically speaking, ESL One tournaments have been blessed to witness some big gameplay changes more than a few times.
Looking only at the past two years, four major updates were released during or just ahead of a big ESL One tournament.
DreamLeeague Season 18/DPC Tour 3
Back in July 2022, DreamLeague was still a part of the Dota Pro circuit. It hosted Division I, Tour 3 of the Western European league and had four slots to offer to the Arlington Major. During week 1 of the 3-week event, Valve released the 7.31d patch, which added Marci to the Captains Mode and brought a lot of quality of life updates, including the Dota Plus seasonal Battle Report.
ESL One Malaysia 2022
The jump from 7.31 to 7.32 was also made during an ESL event in August 2022 at ESL One Malaysia. The new gameplay update was released during the night after the first day of group stage matches and it brought Primal Beast to the Captains Mode along with a drastic change of the experience formula, a change in passive gold income and the way Glyph of Fortification functions. OG ended up winning that tournament.
ESL One Berlin Major 2023
Just 4 nights before ESL One Berlin Major, in April 2023, the biggest Dota 2 patch we had in years was deployed. The New Frontier Update (patch 7.33) hit the servers with a lot of map changes. The Twin Gates, the two Roshan pits, the Lotus Pools, Tormentors, Watchers, and new outposts, all came at once in the New Frontier Patch making ESL One Berlin Major one of the most exciting tournaments to watch. Gaimin Gladiators were the fastest to adapt to all the changes and took home what would become their second major trophy of that year.
ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023
December 14, 2023, was the day off between the group stage and playoffs at ESL One Kuala Lumpur and the day when the current 7.35 patch was deployed. A ton of items got reworked and about a dozen new items, including neutral items too, were added to the game. Heroes item builds completely changed after that night, and while the players at ESL KL were quite unhappy about the timing of the new patch, Azure Ray emerged victorious.
ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 was the first LAN tournament of the first season of ESL Pro Tour and it counted towards a direct qualification to the upcoming Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia.
The currently ongoing DreamLeague Season 23 is the last event on the first season of the ESL Pro Tour and the last chance for the teams to secure a direct invite to the 5 million dollar Riyadh Masters Dota 2 World Cup event.
Will this tournament also be blessed by Valve with a huge gameplay update? Make sure you stay tuned to find out!
