It’s time to forget everything you ever knew about Dota 2, because patch 7.33 for the game that defined a whole new genre is now out and has made some truly massive changes to the title. The New Frontiers update has expanded the Dota 2 map’s size by about 40% and introduced a series of additional neutral buildings such as the Twin Gates, which allow players to teleport from one edge of the map to the other, and the Lotus Pools, which periodically provide fruits that heal HP and Mana.
Ever since it was a WarCraft 3 custom game, Dota featured three hero attributes: the classic Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence trio. New Frontiers added a fourth attribute, the Universal stat, and moved over 30 heroes into this class.
Neutral creep camps and their item drops, disables, the kill formula – Valve left no stones unturned in New Frontiers, so here is an overview of the most important changes to Dota 2 in the 7.33 patch notes.
Roshan, the mightiest of creeps, has finally killed enough heroes to afford a second dwelling place. Instead of remaining at his pit near the center of the map, the powerful creature now has two homes and rotates between them.
You can now find him in the North Pit or the South Pit, which will influence what kind of loot he will drop as well. In the northern spawn location Roshan will drop a Refresher Shard, in the southern one a Scepter. He’ll also drop Cheese on his second death now and won’t give players Aghanim’s Shards any longer.
The following new buildings have been added to the Dota 2 map:
Universal is the long-awaited fourth attribute for heroes. They gain 0.6 damage from each point in any attribute, making them, well, quite universal when it comes to item builds, as they won’t have a primary attribute.
Here are all Universal heroes in Dota 2:
There are now a dozen more Creep Camps around the map and the jungle creatures now also scale over time, which means they’ll grow more powerful over the course of the game. That’s great news for any hero being able to control these neutrals, because they make for better allies now.
Valve has reworked the way Neutral Item Drops work as well. Instead of dropping an item that goes into the entire team’s pool, these creeps will drop a Token, which lets you choose from five available neutral items. Teams can give these Tokens to any member to use, but once an item has been selected, it can’t be shared anymore.
Black King Bar, better known as BKB, now applies a basic dispel, grants 50% Magic resistance, and Debuff immunity. While it’s active, negative effects from debuffs don't affect you. Plus, you’ll have immunity from Pure and Reflected Damage (that might come in handy against those creeps from the Tormentor).
If BKB expires before the duration of any of the debuffs, their effect will be applied for whatever duration is left. Effects that pierce magic immunity now also pierce debuff immunity.
Disables have had their duration reduced through the board, so you should spend less time being stunned and sitting around without anything to do.
Valve wants to make kills in the early game more impactful to provide better motivation to gank other lanes. Sitting on your lane to farm will be much less effective as well now, as the Gold scaling for lane creeps has been reduced. Eliminating other players is going to be a lot more profitable, so it seems clear that the developers want to see less farming and a lot more fights.
It’s probably been a while since anyone thought “man, Dota 2 really doesn’t have enough items” – Valve added some more anyways, just in case.
Here are the new items found in the shop:
Here are the new neutral items you can get from Tokens:
For the changes to matchmaking and the countless numerical balance adjustments to heroes and items, please check out the official website.
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