Shortly after the current Beyond Epic tournament concluded Valve has released the next major balance patch for Dota 2. Patch 7.27 brings major adjustments to many items, the drafting phase and jungle camps along other changes.
Developer Valve has released the first of two major patches announced a couple of weeks ago. Patch 7.27 will mainly address items before the second part will handle heroes.
The 7.27 Gameplay Update has been released https://t.co/EnwCpjcat2
— DOTA 2 (@DOTA2) June 29, 2020
General changes
Although the item adjustments are the main focus of patch 7.27 IceFrog has also revised other aspects of gameplay in Dota 2. A prominent example are the changes to outposts. Until opponents take down your tier two towers they can no longer contest your outpost. Kill bounties and experience rewards have also seen an increase to encourage fighting in the current meta. Along other changes the ones that stick out the most are the revision to the current drafting process.
All Pick game mode will now feature more picks per round to a 2/2/1 process instead of 1/1/1/1/1. For the competitive Captain’s Mode bans have been adjusted as well. Instead of the current 4/1/1 bans the phases have been changed to 2/3/2.
Another change that many players will welcome is a modifier to the fountain. Each attack of the fountain will now have a fury swipe style modifier that increases its damage by 3 for each hit.
Item changes – goodbye to the “Zoo meta”
Main focus of the patch were adjustments to the items. As expected the core components of the current “Zoo strategy” were heavily hit by nerfs. Sage’s Mask providing early mana regen has also been nerfed. Most of the existing items were at least slightly reworked but Valve has also introduced two new base items: Blitz Knuckles and Voodoo Mask.
Blitz Knuckles provides 35 attack speed and will cost 1000 gold. Voodoo Mask costs 900 gold and gives 12% Spell Lifesteal.
Some of the item changes were not exactly thought out. Especially Blademail was broken for a couple of hours as the new passive damage reflect stacked with each other. This resulted in scenarios like the following happening in pubs all aroud:
Valve quickly stepped in to prevent that from happening and removed the stacking portion of Blademail again.
You can read the full patch notes on the official website: Dota Patch 7.27
The upcoming finals for the BTS Pro Series America will be played on the new patch and might offer us the first glimpse of competitive play in 7.27 on June 29 on 20:00 CEST.
With the amount of changes just to items there will be lots of changes to look forward to in the next patch concerning heroes.
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