Valve drops new Dota patch following TI8

A new Dota 2 patch has been released following the biggest and richest esports tournament of the year.

The Dota community was in a bit of a lull after all of the hype of The International. As fans wait for the next Major event, Valve announced some notable changes to the game as bigger changes are expected to come in the anticipated 7.20 patch.

New hero Grimstorke is continuously being tweaked after its release in patch 7.19. Ink Swell max damage was reduced from 220/280/340/400 to 160/240/320/400 and its movement speed bonus was also reduced from 18/22/26/30% to a flat 18%. Phantom Embrace’s latch was made constant at a 5 second duration, while its damage per second was rescaled to 6/14/22/30.

Also in this patch, Riki received several nerfs to his abilities. The slow effect caused by Smoke Screen as well as its accompanying miss chance were both reduced. Tricks of the Trade’s area of effect was scaled back from 500 to 450 and its duration was rescaled from 4/5/6 to 4/4.5/5.

Terrorblade also saw some nerfs to its abilities. Conjure Image’s mana cost was increased from a flat 70 to a scaling 70/75/80/85, while Reflection’s slow was reduced from 25% to 20%. Reaching level three on Terrorblade’s ultimate ability will still require some minimal amount of mana to cast Sunder. The ability’s max level mana cost was increased from 0 to 50.

A small change was also made to Zeus that may greatly affect his laning phase. Most Zeus players depend on spamming Arc Lightning, but now that its mana cost is 80 instead of the former scaling range of 65/70/75/80, use of the skill must be more carefully considered.

The full patch notes can be found here.