Everyone’s knee deep in roster drama, so I’m here to wade through the wall of text that was the spring cleaning update. Inspired by this thread, here are some notable balance changes I noticed that basically made this patch 6.86g.

Heroes

Hero

Bristleback

  • Fixed Warpath not being disabled by Break

Silver Edge was already a good item for killing Bristle, now it’s even better.

Hero

Broodmother

  • Spiderlings and Spiderites can now be set to two different control groups

Very pleasant quality of life change for Brood.

Hero

Dazzle

  • Assists now get counted whenever you place debuff on an enemy hero that dies
  • Assists now get counted whenever you place a buff on a hero that kills an enemy hero

Buff to Dazzle KDA stats. Though I’ll reiterate again for the thousandth time that the scoreboard has no reflection on assist gold earned. It’s just a number.

Hero

Death Prophet

  • Fixed recasting Exorcism not causing existing ghosts to return to you and heal

No, you can’t cast it on demand to return your ghosts, this is just an interaction with Refresher Orb. Yes, technically this is a DP buff, but the context in which you would need to immediately return Exorcism for the burst heal means you’re probably near death. Would you really want to risk re-casting a refreshed Exorcism if you’re near death? Probably not.

Hero

Enchantress

  • Fixed Untouchable lingering when attempting to attack units other than Enchantress

Yea that was annoying.

Hero

Huskar

  • Fixed Life Break Immunity not lasting long enough

It used to work that if Huskar Life Broke you and you Blinked or created a gap, Huskar would lose his immunity halfway through the jump. Now he keeps it the whole way until he connects.

Hero

Invoker

  • Fixed Ice Wall debuff lingering on heroes that become Spell Immune

Quite a nerf. Ice Wall used to be sticky for 2 seconds after a unit would go Spell Immune. 2 seconds is an eternity in the late game.

Hero

Juggernaut

  • Fixed Omnislash being affected by Damage Block

Crimson Guard isn’t as nice of an early pickup against Jugg.

Hero

Lycan

  • Fixed Lycan's ult wolf changing into a headless Lycan model on death

rip tf2 soldier death

Hero

Medusa

  • Fixed Mystic Snake ending if it hits an invisible unit

I don’t play much Dusa, but supposedly this is a nice buff.

Hero

Ogre Magi

  • Fixed Multicast Ignite's interaction with Linken's Sphere
  • Fixed Multicast Ignite affecting units in FoW
  • Fixed Bloodlust not being castable on Invulnerable allies/buildings

Ogre can’t take stacks as easily or randomly detect enemies and disable their Blink Daggers for no reason when units are in the fog. Also, Linken’s used to pop even if you were a Multicasted Ignite target, now it’ll only pop if you’re the primary target.

Hero

Phoenix

  • Attack Speed changes during an attack now causes the animation and attack timings to update dynamically

This isn’t specifically a nerf to Phoenix, but this definitely affects Phoenix. Spamming Fire Spirits and then going into Supernova is pretty much a staple of the hero. If enemies can now recover their AS halfway through an attack without having to cancel it, that could be the difference between 1 or 2 more attacks on the egg.

Hero

Phantom Assassin

  • Fixed various attack animation prediction exploits (such as Coup de Grace)

lel

Hero

Pugna

  • Fixed Nether Ward damage not disabling Blink

DUDE. I was also so incredibly confused when a LC would Press her attack, get flared, and still blink and Duel my ass. Buff against Centaur, LC, Sand King, Tide, basically any hero that likes using a spell or mana-costing item before jumping into a fight. Like LC. Screw you LC.

Hero

Rubick

  • Fixed stolen Ignite not getting Multicast bonuses

Noice.

Hero

Sand King

  • Fixed Sandstorm being canceled by purge

A very rare interaction, but there have been multiple times that I used Brewmaster’s Storm Panda to get SK out of Sandstorm.

Hero

Slark

  • Fixed Shadow Dance not granting passive bonuses if affected by vision spells like Amplify Damage

This is only a fix for when Slark actually activates Shadow Dance. He still can’t passively heal if in Thirst range by a Bloodseeker, or under Track/Amp Damage.

Hero

Sniper

  • Fixed Headshot damage going through Spell Immunity
  • Attack Speed changes during an attack now causes the animation and attack timings to update dynamically

According to the wiki, on average, Headshot increases Sniper’s damage output by 6/16/26/36. Small nerf. Also the AS speed change that I mentioned under Phoenix affects Headshot as well.

Hero

Spirit Breaker

  • Fixed Charge of Darkness not destroying trees at the end of the charge

Hooray, no more getting stuck in trees after canceled Charges.

Hero

Sven

  • Fixed Stormhammer behavior when the primary target is hidden upon impact

Storm Hammer now stuns the AoE if the primary target is banished/hidden (Astral Imprisonment, Disruption, Snowball, Phase Shift, Doppelganger). If the spell is disjointed, it still does nothing on landing.

Hero

Templar Assassin

  • Fixed Psi Blades triggering when attacks land on dead units

Ouch. This is a fairly notable nerf to TA’s laning stage. The attack will still spill if you get the deny hit, but if you’re too late, no more spill. A lot of TA’s free harass came from these attacks, especially when enemy mids were trying to last hit under their tower.

Hero

Tidehunter

  • Equipped taunts will now automatically play in-game under a variety of rare circumstances

Game breaking.

Hero

Visage

  • Fixed Stone Form stunning and damaging units if the Familiar died while landing
  • Familiars are now properly affected by movement speed changes and disables such as stuns or roots

Two Visage nerfs. The second one isn’t as bad as I thought when I first read it. Familiars are still immune to magic, but now they’ll get CC’d by spell-immune piercing stuns/roots (Primal Roar, Black Hole, Overgrowth, Naga’s Ensnare, etc.)


That’s about all I considered to be significant for heroes. There are plenty of other changes, but either I don’t play the hero enough to know how notable a change is, or it’s an interaction that occurs rarely to begin with. If you see anything worth mentioning that I missed, let me know @tsunami643.

Items

  • Added range indicator for items on hover

Uhhh, supposedly this was added, but I see nothing in the Test client when I hover over items. If it ever works, this would be a cool buff to Blink Dagger initiators to get 1200 range perfectly every time.

  • Added support (Ctrl-Shift click) for appending to the quickbuy panel to add individual items

This is super useful and I recommend people get used to using this. For supports that want quick info on cooldown’d items (wards, gem, smoke, Flying Courier) while still having access to other items or for carries building expensive items who might need to buy out something cheaper if they’re getting ganked (AM going for Battle Fury, but finishes Treads if he knows he’s about to die).

  • Fixed Boots of Travel canceling when upgrading to Level 2

How on earth was this happening so frequently that I saw like 5 threads on /r/dota2 about this interaction. I mean, I know it’s silly that it was broken, but why the hell were you buying level 2 BoTs if you weren’t even trying to TP onto an ally hero to begin with.

  • Fixed courier travelling deeper into the fountain than necessary in order to interact with the stash

Buff to mids.

  • Fixed a rare bug that could cause Item icons to be stuck on your cursor

Somehow I’m skeptical.

Misc

  • Fixed Roshan to update his health immediately on the upgrade timer, rather than the next time he spawns

This is a nerf to early Rosh takers that aren’t Ursa. Ursa doesn’t really care because a bit more health here and there is a matter of 3-4 auto attacks when he has a billion Fury Swipe stacks. Lycan, TA, Meepo, Troll, and other heroes that like taking an early Rosh will get hurt. Rosh gets 500 HP every 4 minutes. Seeing as how most early Rosh attempts occur at ~12+ minutes, that’s a new 1500 HP that you’ll have to burn through.

Wishlist

  • Fixed Bloodlust not being castable on Invulnerable allies/buildings

I’m a fan. But why not Ice Armor and Living Armor as well? Ice Armor, mainly.

  • Added a UI setting for disabling camera zoom

It would be nice if this would be segregated between spectating and playing. I hate accidentally zooming when I’m playing, but I love zooming out when I’m spectating.

  • Effigies and Barracks now name the player that killed them in the chat log

This should be a thing with Rosh as well. Few players pay attention to this, but Rosh provides a bounty from 150-400g to the player that last hits him in addition to the 200g team bounty.

  • Added range indicator for items on hover

Why are mana costs on items still not shown like spells. The biggest thing I hated about Reborn killing -enableaddons was that I couldn’t use this mod anymore. There’s really no reason why items shouldn’t show mana costs on their icons. Valve is touching far more sacred territory with this whole tower aggro and neutral camp spawn box info on demand. GIVE ME MANA COSTS.

  • The chat cheat -item no longer requires the full item name, it will instead match to a substring to create the item
  • Added a chat cheat -lvlmax that levels your hero to the max and skills all your abilities

Oh, hey, neat. As long as we’re messing with cheats, could I also get -toggledaynight for

dota_daynightcycle_toggle

-pausedaynight for

dota_daynightcycle_pause 1

-roshan for

dota_respawn_roshan

And a command to remove all the trees on the map would be sweet. -trees respawns all of them, but a command that does the opposite would be convenient.

Cool, thanks.