Welcome to Dota 3: Highlights from the 7.23 Update

Sick of your supports stealing your courier? Or your carries taking your dewards? Annoyed endlessly by those pesky side shop clutch blink buys and not enough space for your mango hoard? Fear not, the Outlander's Update has arrived just in time to soothe all your woes! It just might give you an entirely new set of things to worry about...

Two New Heroes: Void Spirit and Snapfire

Void Spirit

void spirit

A melee carry, Void Spirit (not to be confused with our other purple void) stays in character with his other spirits with high mobility and remnant abilities. We may not see a third Portal out of Valve, but you might have to start thinking of them to play this spirit. His mobility comes from moving through another plane with the use of portals. His ultimate slices forward and detonates for a significant nuke while his remnants act like a creepy venus fly trap, ready to draw in anyone who looks at it wrong.

Snapfire

snapfire

The cookie grandma (sorry Valve, no one is calling this duo Snapfire anytime soon) will step into the 'support' role. The nuking nature of her spells and what looks like mildly challenging to land disables probably tosses her into the 'four' role. Mortimer (her mount) might waddle in an nonthreatening manner, but feed him a cookie and he will hop around with joy, stomping your enemy to oblivion. Plus, for Snapfire's ultimate, he'll spit fire in affectionate kisses. The enemy team will definitely appreciate it.

Free Everything for Everyone!

You get a courier, and you get a courier, and... everyone gets a courier! Better keep yours alive, it looks like passive GPM is now tied to your own personal courier. But hey, once you and your courier hit level 25, you can give it a dagon and terrorize the map! Just be careful the enemy doesn't get the same idea... Continuing in the free vein, heroes start with THREE teleport scrolls and observer wards are completely free. Plus whoever buys the detection gets the de-ward gold, no matter who gets the last hit. Is it time for the supports to do their happy dance?

Maybe not quite... sentry wards replenish even slower, and only three are in stock at the beginning of the game now. Melee heroes get free damage block (rest in peace stout shield), the secret shop has gone all exclusive on us, and side shops are gone - better plan ahead for those teleport scrolls. But hey, the fountain does more damage and has 20% accuracy, so at least it's mildly harder for PA to fountain dive and murder you instead of killing the ancient?

Outposts

Reminiscent of less successful MOBA mods in Warcraft 3, (why reinvent the wheel when you can just copy something else, right?) - the side shops have been turned into outposts. After 10 minutes into the game, you can convert an outpost to your side. This adds an XP bonus to your team and adds another place you can teleport to. But seriously - don't forget to buy TPs. We never realized how great side shops were until now. It's too late, we will have to accept the consequences.

So... You Wanted New Items? How about 59 of them.

Welcome to five tiers of items that drop from jungle neutrals, with 62 different drops available. Neutrals start to drop items at the 5 minute mark, and the tier of item increases every 10 minutes. The drop chance for the first item is 10%, and with each item that drops (to anyone on your team), that rate is cut in half. (The chance of a second item is 5% and then the third is 2.5% etc). The chance is pseudo random, so the more creeps you kill, the better your chances get.

Have fun learning all the items! Hey, at least you know three of them already! Aquila, Poor Man's Shield, and Iron Talon make their triumphant return! Maybe. Depends on your luck.

JUNGLE ITEM ASSISTANT UNDER CONSTRUCTION. PLEASE COME BACK LATER

Forget what you know, in 7.23, nothing is what it seems

The watch word of the patch is 'rework' - with item recipes, significant hero changes, and aghanims updates rampant throughout the notes. Now that heroes unlock their entire talent tree at level 30, there were and understandable amount of talent changes, mostly nerfs. They probably won't be enough, but hey - now Dota has all kinds of extra end game content!

Tough luck for the big boys (and girls) of 7.22

First up: Morph and Earthshaker. Morph lost his free hp, now when he shifts between himself and another hero, the percentage hp stays the same. Earthshaker's hang time on his aghs jump has leveled up. While this might be great for his basketball career, it gives his enemies more time to disable him while jumping. Roots and stuns will now interrupt his escape, similar to Timbersaw's timber chain. Pudge and Abaddon both lost their ability to deny themselves, and Aba's curse is half the slow at level one that it used to be. Chaos Knight took quite a hit in the agi gain, and rift both has a longer cooldown and no longer slows. Void has a long, long, looooooong chrono cooldown now. Aghs applies a time lock after time walk, no more one minute cooldown for you Void! I guess we know who the favorite Void is now, huh?

Enchantress can't endlessly pew pew you with aghs now either - instead she cast sproink and shove herself backwards. She'll get the extra range for one hit, but you'll have to get close enough for her to throw a second attack. In case you missed it - yes, she has an ability called sproink now. You're welcome. Drow takes a hit on starting agi while her damage remains the same. Nerf to starting attack speed from her level one marksmanship? Nope. Marksmanship has gone the way of the stout shield, deleted from the game. Instead, Drow now charges up a volley of frost arrows that travel twice the distance of her attack range. Probably. That seems like something dragon lance, grove bow, and ballista might mess with.

Icefrog isn't as cold as his name sounds

It wasn't all cruel nerfs - some heroes saw some much needed love. Disruptor gains a 0.1s 100% MS/AS speed buff to his thunder strike while Venge aghs gives her swap a 2 second fear (so maybe she can survive after selflessly saving a teammate). Dazzle aghs gives his heal a dispel and Doom gets a better break to make up for his devour nerfs. Anyone with a BKB piercing ability now also gets the magic damage applied despite the BKB too! That means that Culling Blade, Dismember, Fiend's Grip, and Midnight Pulse are all going to hurt, magic immunity or not. Plus blademail does not pierce BKB anymore. Windranger spammers around the world are collectively sighing in relief.

OD, Lone Druid, Razor, and Riki all received significant reworks while Nightstalker, Lion, and Nyx had slight tweaks. You'll have to slog through the rest of the patch notes for all the nitty gritty details.

Welcome to Dota 3.