Before 6.87: Some Of The Biggest Patch Changes In Dota’s History
Now that we have arbitrary awards for achievements such as “playing Dota since 2012” and “Alpha Tester,” players can boast about how back in the day Dota was so different, so much harder. Back in the day, everyone had Blink Daggers without three second cooldowns. Back in the day, you had to play in the dark and rely only on your map sense, because nobody bought wards. The cost was too high and observers and sentries took too much space. And don’t forget legacy keys, when now there’s the simplicity of standardizing your keybinds, an improvement that some Dota players curiously choose to opt out of.
Knowledge back then was acquired and hard-earned, like finding out the attack range of towers by feeding repeatedly. Secret ward spots was strictly insider knowledge, before the advent of replays. It was a different game then, and it will change again when patch 6.87 inevitably releases. But it will still be Dota, and looking back, it’s amazing to see how much the game has changed.
Blink Dagger: Everyone Is Puck
6.50
- Changed how Dagger of Escape works. It cannot be activated if you took damage in the last 3 seconds.
Blink Dagger, formerly Kelen’s Dagger Of Escape, did not have the three second cooldown upon taking damage. You could virtually escape and maneuver with impunity. No global ultimate or errant rocket flare could preemptively stop an initiator, like Sand King. Imagine every hero with the same kind of slipperiness as Puck. Patch 6.50 was a much needed change to a meta that was dominated by Blink Daggers. All ten heroes in the game would eventually buy one, and when an item gets to that point of necessity, it’s time for a change.
Despite how overpowered the item was, it still is essential today. Blink Dagger currently has a cooldown of 12 seconds, a far cry from the original 30 seconds when it was first introduced. And in patch 6.80, the mana cost was reduced from 75 to 0, opening up the item’s viability for mana strained, strength heroes, like Dragon Knight, Wraith King, and Sven.
No Cooldown Buyback
6.70
- Added a 4 minute cooldown to Buyback
Believe it or not, there was a time where you could pay to escape death. There was no cooldown on buyback, leading to valiant, long drawn base defenses, if you had the bankroll to keep throwing bodies at the opponent. Later, a version of this strategy was still persistent in Dota, where teams could buyback, defend with ten heroes instead of five, and all with little penalty. Buyback now has a cooldown of 7 minutes, severe gold costs that scales with hero level, and prohibitive restraints on gold gain (you can only 40% gold). A team may be able to defend with the help of buyback, but that now carries a consequence.
Tower Buffs And Push Nerfs
6.82
- Tower bounty decreased from 264/312/358/405 to 160/200/240/280 (denied is 50%)
- Tier 2 Tower's armor increased from 20 to 25
TI4’s grand finals, between VG and Newbee, has lived in infamy for being representative of the bland push meta that dominated the tournament. 6.82 marked the beginning of a series of changes that buffed towers and moved the focus away from making them the primary goal (later patches nerfed illusion damage to buildings and removed the towers’ experience bounty). Taking towers is a necessary means to an end, but the gold advantage they provided created a snowball effect for a pushing team. It wasn’t enough that the opponent drafted a lineup that could thrive late game, if the early game advantages were insurmountable.
Scroll Of Town Portal Rework
6.65- The casting time system for scroll teleports are now dynamic. Whenever a hero teleports to an area, it causes any other teleports to that area to be delayed with extra time based on the number of heroes that teleported or are teleporting there. Each teleport leaves has memory lasts about 20 seconds for that location.
Before this change, there was no increased delay for subsequent heroes using TP scroll to a tower. In theory, you could mass-TP your entire team to defend a tower in three seconds. There was no consequence for your team being out of position, when they could all be in position at any point. This rework increased the delay from 3 seconds constant to 3/5/6/7/8 (3/5/5.5/6/6.5 since 6.80).
Comeback Mechanics
6.84
- AoE Bonus Gold component based on Team Net Worth difference reduced by 25%
- Decrease in gold received from CS and jungle
The numbers have since been tweaked for balance, but patch 6.84 de-emphasized farming, by reducing CS bounty, and increased the bounty on hero kills. More importantly, the patch introduced comeback mechanics that rewarded teams who were losing, by giving them more gold based on how far they were behind. It also decreased bounty gold for teams that were ahead. In an extreme case, when the patch was first introduced, it was almost advantageous to be behind in gold, so you could rebound from the comeback gold. Today, the effect is not so pronounced, but has created a more dynamic game. A team who is winning will still have an advantage, but won’t always be the runaway leader.
The Price Of Supporting
Observer Wards
6.86
- *Increased experience bounty from 50 to 100.
- Added a custom AoE targeting cursor for placing observer wards.*
6.84
- Reduced gold cost from 150 to 75.
- Reduced number of charges from 2 to 1.
- Increased initial/max stock count from 1/2 to 2/4.
- Reduced restock time from 360 to 180.
- Now have a 50 experience bounty.
- Attacking an Observer Ward can no longer miss.
Courier
6.86
- Reduced gold cost from 120 to 100.
The courier cost from 120-100 isn’t significant, but it’s indicative of where the changes have trended. In patch 6.44, the cost of a courier was 225 gold, and the recipe to upgrade to a flying courier also included a Boots of Speed (total cost = 925). Overall, a series of incremental changes to the cost of wards, couriers, and how they functioned, increased the quality of life for supports. Gone were the days of mid players rage quitting because there were no couriers or no wards.
Aside from the increasing the morale of the team, the changes diffused the burden that support players carried. Supports could split the cost of wards. Offlaners could buy their own ward. The experience and gold bounty gave incentive for players to deward, while placing strategic ones. The changes, though small at first, steered the basic pub game to start thinking about vision and map sense on a level more associated with higher skill brackets and competitive play.
Dota's Future
Unlike other sports, whose rules are defined in eras of years and decades--chess hasn't had a significant patch change in a thousand years--Dota is unrecognizable from the game it was even months ago. Heroes have rotated in and out of the meta, Roshan relocated his home, and the landscape of the map, from jungle camps to juke spots, has shifted drastically. Patch changes put the community in a constant state of learning, the rhythm of which seems to hit its peak at a Major or The International tournament. Dota does seem like it eventually reaches a level of staleness, or perhaps mastery, due to the competition at LANs and the sheer number of games played in pubs. At that point, it makes sense for Dota to evolve, for better or worse.
First.
Giff 6.87
When is 6.87? not gonna play dota until it comes out.....
Giff 6.87 please
Sometimes you can see four supports in your team,after these *sup fix* =))
meow:3
PLS VOLVO ADD ABYSSAL UNDERLORD !!!
EleGiggle
Thought this was a speculation article on the likely changes in 6.87... Alas, it is a trip down mid lane.
What do you think will change in 6.87? Will we see the pitlord emerge finally? What new items are coming? Who gets the bat hardest? Who will be the next meta first pick hero???
Though that would be more interesting... Looking back at how we got here has its benefits as well.
Doubt Pitlord will come. The focus should be to get the most heroes into CD for TI, and adding a new hero now is just too late for that. It'll come afterwards I'd assume.
I don't even think it'll be a really major patch. With the majors and all I feel like it'd make the most sense to have the biggest patches between TI and the fall major. I suppose that didn't quite happen last year, although I think they kinda wanted to do it, but well... it didn't work out or whatever.
Wonder how many people are playing since 2004 or earlier.
Veno and ET needs some rework! Theyre too outshined by overpowered heroes, terrible support capabilities, high manacost spells, almost negligible in teamfights, and they need drafts that fits them which is not the case in the recent and previous patches.
Just nerf od back to what it was and I'll be happy
I think PitLord will come at TI6 like techies did.....
Apparently I've been playing Dota since 1975 but thx for free AP
I honestly wanna see AM, morphling, luna come back into the meta. They have been sleeping for far too long..
Back in the day, heroes level cap was 10, there were no item recipes, Crystal Maiden was Frost Maiden, Luna looked like Mirana (Tyrande, actually), there was a starcraft Tank into the game (no, it was not HotS, it was DotA), riki was a real ninja and had WD's death ward as ultimate... oh 3.6d dota, how I liked you...
Maybe Soure 2 ?
Just nerf OD and buff SF,lesh,lina and other midlaners a little,I'm tired of seeing these od invo dp od invo dp od invo dp every single game
I think 6.49 was the blink dagger change
Veno is an excellent counter to low hp lineups from mid to late game.
the queen piece was buffed too hard and the bishop is OP bullshit now; nothing but fucking king's pawn opening spammers
6.84 did NOT introduce comback mechanics! It nerfed them and made it easier to snowball with good team play without just farming all game
path 6.87 rampage for wyvern please
Giff 6.87 please
If only we got new patches at least every 4th month, the meta wouldn't be as stiff...
And we have no idea when 6.87 is coming out, which actually hurts a little.
To point out the mistake of the article:
6.83 was the one with comeback mechanics being introduced. The era of Ho-Ho Ha-Ha. You think this patch is one of greed? 6.83 meant you picked 2-3 hard carries, and support Zeus and crap was a thing because you had to get as much lategame as possible. Towers didn't die quickly (being super buffed to get rid of the TI4 push strat) and the game would turn around completely if you won a teamfight from behind, so most teamfights were insignificant - all that mattered was that you hit one big one in the lategame by hitting your 50 minute timing or whatever and then BOOM, with all systems online you finally break the enemy base.
6.84 was the patch of TI5 and it nerfed the gold comeback mechanics of the previous patch, but not the XP (so XP swings are still huge). It also made towers less crazy tough again so that push strats would become more viable.
.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................JUst came here for Pyre Lord..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................MEh.
Rework ww"s ulti pls
Buff Shadow demon please.
Missed the really early days when you could buy an aegis.
Renew The Abandon System please.
if DC in mmr "game no longer scored".. for playing 4 v 5 or 3 v 5... for the sake of mmr and fairness....
Fixed Legacy Keys on allied disconnected heroes FINALLY
ppl that are begging for Pitlord are actually those who are crying of OD now they will regret this attitude when pitlord release and they wish that they'd never asked for him ...
Hey Ice Frog, buff Elder Titan please, nerf hard carrys as am,spectre, Naga, medusa etc those guys ruin our fuckin 2k games hardly, acc buyers, acc boosters f*** you cun** 😃
cant wait for icefrog and Volvo to nerf f*cking OD and spectre =))
God damn it guys, OD isn't even that bad. I do agree that rescaling his Q to like 1/2/3/4 is fine but otherwise he is somewhat fine. I played with several OD's recently and if the player is inexperienced he/she will suck. Can you just counterpick ffs. Anyway back to the updates. The blink dagger seemed pretty broke but the CD sort of compensated that.
>chess hasn't had a significant patch change in a thousand years
Chess had many significant changes over the last thousand years, and even had differing rules until FIDE began the international standardization in 1929. Most significant changes were made before the 1900s, though. eg.
- Pawn double move and en-passant
- Queen and bishop changing movement
- Allowing promotion to pieces not already captured and/or other pieces than queen.
And many technical rules related to tournaments; time limits, touching of pieces etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_chess#History
so i guess the heroes who will get murdered in the new patch are OD , INVOKER, Spectre and maybe others will receive small nerfs.... I like playing OD and spectre a lot. but whenever a hero takes the scene by storm they murder it.. same will happen to OD and spec..I am not an Invoker player however..so i don't care what happens to him...... probably Ember Spirit's popularity will go down even more... however would love to see some changes regarding Terrorblade. That hero has been out of the Dota 2 scene for long enough
Envy what are you talking about? They nerfed invoker so badly in last mini patches. 300 mana for weaker blast? Now ppl can use ults during this blast. They should buff his EMP dmg
PITLORD IN 6.87
Balance SEA SERVER
Comeback mechanics came with 6.82... Not 6.84... They were nerfed constantly from 6.82 to now...
You didn't include "The Great Buff of Offlane Patch" (offlane creeps move slower and safelane creeps move faster resulting in a different point of 'meeting' of both creep waves) which drastically changes the offlane gameplay from only Funn1k's Windranger sitting behind T1 radiant top tower shooting power shots into whatever we see today.
"Unlike other sports, whose rules are defined in eras of years and decades--chess hasn't had a significant patch change in a thousand years--Dota is unrecognizable from the game it was even months ago."
and this is why LoL/dota sux and its not esport at all
they change the meta for no reason and keep making problems, there is no reason to change meta u only need to make it once
the game is very boring when they make these useless patches
the reason why i left LoL in 2013 was the constant changes every month and added stupid champions
dota will be just like lol, a cashgrab game nothing else, valve knows they failed with dota, they want to milk money now
put allpick in ranked match.. i lost many games because of fucking retards captain. in cm ranked match
I feel u bro. The captians are retards most of the time.
Fix low prio system.. 5 wins is toi hard with morons
ummm guys.... I have a question about Hurricane Pike of the new patch.
According to the note I've read it says "both heroes are pushed away from each other, 450 each, and you can attack the target regardless of the distance". Is this statement wrong? I dont know since i havent had time to read the patch notes. But from the sound of it i see that Enchantress can use it on an enemy and Blink or TP to increase the distance and easily kill the target within the remaining seconds.
This almost gave me goosebumps... I hope I'm wrong. Please comment saying that I am wrong TT_TT lol