7.33 is out! And with it a plethora of changes. A plethora! Dota is fundamentally different in many aspects and a lot of people are curious about what this all means for the game. What's that? You are as well? Well, you came to the right place my friend! We will discuss every potent detail of this long and densely packed patch.

7.33 - aptly named New Frontiers - is arguably the biggest patch Dota 2 has ever received. And in my opinion, it couldn't have come at a better time. Dota's popularity has been dwindling, so what does Valve do? What they usually do - change the entire game. 😁

In this article, I will go over every little detail. These details are:

The absolute bonkers map changes; _{and there are a lot fo those}
The fundamental changes to the game's math;
Neutral item rework;*
The additional attribute type; 😱
Matchmaking reworks;
A highlight of the endless item and hero changes;
All the other miscellanies changes;

Only fitting that we watch the patch trailer before we get into the swing of things.

So strap yourself in, because this one will be a doozy.

🚵‍♀️ MAP CHANGES 🚵‍♀️

The Dota map is iconic, so much so that a genre spawned from it. now, yes, it has been changed countless times over the years, but nothing like this.

The new map is where the patch gets its name from - New Frontiers. For it really feels like we are traversing a new piece of undiscovered land.

The map has been changed every other patch, but this time around it has been expanded 40%. Changes like these are unprecedented and come at a cost. You will have players who have learned and got acclimated to the way things were, they will feel cheated and unappreciated. This is a dangerous game to play. 😬

So what did Valve (or the frog for that matter) do with this extra real estate? Let's explore every element thoroughly, shall we?

Roshan now has two pits on either side of the map. ☀️ He's in one, 🌙 he's in the other. He also no longer drops Aghanim's Shard, rather goes back to the old days of the Cheese pattern. 🧀 We will discuss why shortly.

Twin Gate are teleportation portals on the North-East and South-West sides of the map. After 3-second channeling they take you to the other. These gates are necessary with how much bigger the map is now. And a nightmare for the safe lane carry.

Lotus Pools spawn lotuses every 90 seconds. These are consumable items that grant you Hp and Mana. sort of like better mangos. They can however be combined into an even greater restoration item. You can visually see how many lotuses are available in the fountain.

Tormentors are near each team's base and are beastly. The fewer heroes that attack them the more reflected damage they deal. Once killed, they grant the hero with the lowest net worth a free Aghanim's Shard. Crucial now that Roshan doesn't drop any.

Watchers are like little wards that are spread out across the map. Once you claim them they grant you vision. And once the enemy takes back control of them they remain inactive for 3 minutes. When Roshan is slain you gain control of all Watchers on the map.

Defender's Gates are one-way gates near the enemy base that allows your team to walk through but not the enemy. If an enemy somehow manages to find themselves behind these gates they are literally trapped.

Wisdom runes replace tomes of knowledge by granting a flat XP amount when you pick them up. Each team has one and they each spawn every 7 minutes. No team is beholden to their rune, meaning you can steal/take the rune like any other.

Shield Runes are a new type of power rune. meaning they spawn in the river alongside all the other runes (double damage, haste, etc.). They grant the hero that picks them up a substantial shield, allowing them to dive towers or possibly survive a fatal encounter.

All in all, I am unsure of how these changes will affect the game. If anything it's fresh again. No one knows what's going on. The astute reader will notice that other MOBAS inspires a bunch of these mechanics (LoL, HotS, HoN) which is the way of things for this genre.

I personally have no problem with it. And think time will tell what this new map entails for DOTA. For now, it's new, it's fun, and people are freaking out. 😂

✖️ FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES ➗

This is some real nerd $#!@ so I won't bog you down with the actual math part of it all. We'll just cover the highlights of these changes.

Basically, the gold that you get from killing creeps exponentially gets lower as the game goes on (this goes for both lane and jungle creeps). However, the bounty on killing heroes is substantially increased. Especially as the game gets late, and especially for the losing team.

Changes to how Gold works are always scary!

Time will tell if these changes stick, and most likely this new formula will get reworked in the coming patches. And trust me, with the size of this update there will be a lot of numbered patches. When Gold formulas have been reworked in the past, it has always been a $#!@ show.

M personally? Not sure if I like or dislike this. As I mentioned: time will tell.

💫 NEUTRAL ITEMS 💫

The Neutral Items received a change which I believe should've been in the game with their inception. Heroes no longer get a random neutral item when they kill a neutral creep. Rather they receive a token that they can swap for the neutral item out of a select pool of 5. This goes for every hero on the team.

This means no more griefing - **or rather, less griefing. Griefing is a way of life in DOTA. 😂 Players have no incentive to hold on to an item because they will get to pick and choose their ideal choice.

Let's go over all the new Neutral Items:

DUELIST GLOVES

An early-game item that grants damage, and attack speed ifr there are heroes nearby.

SPARK OF COURAGE

Provides damage when the hero is above 50%, and armor if not.

GOSSAMER CAPE

Flat movement speed buff. Passively dodges a physical attack.

DEFIANT SHELL

Grants armor and attributes. When the wearer is attacked, it automatically counter-attacks.

VINDICATOR'S AXE

Provides damage if the wearer is silenced, and armor if stunned.

DANDELION AMULET

Every twelve seconds passively blocks magic damage; grants mana and move speed.

MARTYR'S PLATE

Redirects a portion of damage from your allies to you.

I'm sure you will all concur that these designs feel fresh and inspired. Very situational-based, which is nice. Makes you think about what to choose which is a sign of good design.

❗❗ NEW ATTRIBUTE TYPE ❗❗

DOTA has always had 3 attributes: Streangfth, Agility, Intelligence. Each hero falls into any of these. Well, not anymore bucko!

Now we have Universal Heroes. 🤔 This fourth attribute type grants damage regardless of which stat you level up. Meaning, if you get an item that has both Strength and Intelligence you will get 0.6 damage from each stat.

The base damage for all the heroes now in Universal has been drastically reduced. however, these same heroes get a lot more from their stat gain than their non-universal counterparts.

When I first heard of this change I thought it would be something else - like swag or something. This feels a tad underwhelming if I'm honest. 😅 But still, changes the very structure of the game from its core. If nothing else, this is interesting and will require a lot of balancing to get right.

🛠️ MATCHMAKING REWORKS 🛠️

Matchmaking has always been a sore spot for most players. How do you make sure that the skill level is equal between players? An impossible task if you ask me and I'm glad I'm not one of the coders set to solve it.

MMR is what we all want and need! And now it is no longer on a fixed rate. You get a different increase/decrease depending on your teammates, the enemy team, and your own personal performance. In addition, a short recalibration period is set whenever you get back in the game to calibrate you properly to this new system. 👍

Even more interesting is the Immortal Rank queue. Immortal players (the highest tier players) have always acted pretentious and mighty. With good reason, DOTA is a hard game. Well now their games are totally different! Once you find a match as an Immortal Player, you get placed into a pool where two captains get to pick and choose which players they want.

So basically, you select a role, and the captain gets to draft their team based on the players and roles they have.

This is sort of like when you were in the playground and got divided and picked. So yes, odds are you will get picked last here as well.

I really like this system. 😁

⭐ ITEMS AND HEROES 🤖

There were no new heroes with this patch (thank Christ, Lord knows what would happen if there were 😅). But there were plenty of items! Let's go through them:

BLOOD GRENADE

65 gold

A throwable grenade that deals damage and damage over time in a small area of effect. Short cooldown/HP cost instead of mana.

DIADEM

1000 gold

Grants a flat attribute boost to all attributes.

CORNUCOPIA

1200 gold

Grants HP regen, Mana regen, and damage.

PAVISE

1400 gold

Similar to a Hood of Defiance but for armor. Can be cast on allies as well. Passivly grants armor, HP regen, and Health.

PHYLACTERY

2400 gold

Grants Health and Mana. The next targeted spell you cast deals extra damage and slows.

HARPOON

4500 gold

An alternative build-up for the Echo Saber. This item hooks a targeted enemy toward you. Sort of like Pudge but with much lower range.

DISPERSER

5700 gold

Sort of like a better purge when cast on enemies, and a strong dispel when cast on allies. Also applies mana break.

A bunch of other item reworks which I won't go over here since I don't want to write a 5k+ article. 😅 Let's just say that some staples have been removed while other forgotten items have been buffed. Another thing of note, is that there is a stock of healing items now. meaning you can't just spam buy consumables. This is done to incentives using the Lotus Fountain.

Now, for the heroes. If you've read DOTA patch notes before, you will know that these are the biggest and most substantial part of the patch notes. We won't be going over all changes here, rather I will only highlight a select few heroes that have been majorly revamped:

OGRE MAGI

Ogre no longer has Intelligence. No, I mean really. The hero is now a Strength hero and gains mana from Strength.

The more Strength he has the higher the chance of getting a multicast off.

This is all a part of a new Innate Ability called Dumb Luck.

Honestly, Ogre was always dumb, and I find these changes hilarious.

MEDUSA

Similar to how Ogre has no Intelligence, Medusa has no Strength. Yes, this means that her starting HP pool is pitiful, but she makes up for it.

Her mana shield starts pre-leveled and can be leveled up to level 5, unlike the other abilities which are capped at level 4. The shield is stronger and Dusa's survivability is critically linked which how much she has mana.

It was always like this, but now they've given her a more streamlined identity.

ALCHEMIST

Greevil's Greed is now an innate ability. We will talk about these more in a bit.

In its place, Alchemist now has an ability called Corrosive Weaponry. This skill applies a debuff depending on how often Alchemist hits their target.

This in all makes Alchemist the brawler he was always meant to be. And not focus on needles Greevil's Greed levels.

A much-needed rework.

As I mentioned there are a lot of heroes changed, and I cannot possibly try to highlight more than I already have. But let's talk a little about these Innate Abilities.

Innate Abilities are abilities that the hero starts off with. They cannot be leveled or interacted with.

This is a very League of Legends/Heroes of the Storm type of change and I'm all for it! This change alone would have made the patch humongous, it gives the heroes more of an identity. making each even more distinct than the last. A much welcome change and I hope they expand it even more in future patches.

👽 MISCELLANEOUS 👽

These are changes that are substantial but I couldn't find a place to put them.

Barries -

now show above the hero's health bar as shown in the image.

This will clearly show how much of each shield remains.

A much-needed quality-of-life change that should've been implemented ages ago.

In addition, it looks pretty slick.

Some things -

Don't have traditional health bars, but actually require a specific number of attacks to destroy.

The UI now aptly shows this with health pips that indicate how many normal attacks are required.

Another slick UI change.

Health Cost -

With this update, there are additional abilities and items that drain health instead of mana.

Now this is accurately displayed as red numbers in the ability/item icon.

The UI is cleaned up a lot, i must say.

Best place to mention that I love how Roshan teleports between his pits. The big oaf has always been a character in of himself, and now he's even more so.

This patch has a lot to investigate, a lot to love, a lot to hate. A polarizing release if there ever was one. And a gutsy one at that. I really wonder if this will end up working for Valve at the end.

BW twirl. png

Thank you for reading, you rock! (and maybe roll) 👏👏👏

Shout-out to the 🍕PIZZA🍕 gang, 🤙 gang. 🤙

I never say this, ever, but this took a bit to research and set up, so if you could reblog and/or comment I will greatly appreciate it. 🙇‍♂️

What was your favorite/least favorite change of this patch? Do you think Valve overdid it? And what would you like changed further?

If nothing else I applaud the ambition of the DOTA team, this is something no other MOBA team has ever implemented. And to release it before a major tournament? Chaos is the name of the game with DOTA and this patch is pure chaos.

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Hope everyone is having a fantastic day! And if you aren't, no worries! Tomorrow will be better! 🙌

📢 FIRST LOOK ~ Introducing Dota 2's Biggest Update Yet!