The Dota 2 Spring Forward update is here, as Valve's second-largest free Steam game gets a fresh look courtesy of a major gameplay overhaul, hero reworks, new cosmetics, and a large chunk of quality-of-life improvements. While long-time MOBA heads will immediately be drawn to all the balance changes in the Dota 2 7.39 patch notes, there's also some great news for people who've always wanted to try the game, but have been wary of its notorious complexity.
Before we dig into the nitty gritty of hero and map changes, let's start with Valve's broader menu redesigns. Getting into any of the free Steam game.
Firstly comes a list of changes to take the tedium and confusion out of areas such as shopping and item management when you're actually out on the Lord's Pitch. A new 'team items' screen shows what your allies have already bought, and what they're planning to buy next, to help mitigate instances of accidental double-ups. The setup screen allows you to see your team role, while the pre-game item grid has been overhauled to make finding the most useful starting gear much simpler without having to sort through a long list.
Items in the shop can now be marked for auto-purchase and delivery as soon as you have the gold for them, or you can set a safety net to ensure you always have enough gold saved for a respawn buyback. There's a new context-sensitive item menu available for options such as adding to your quickbuy list or suggesting to your teammates, and you can customize your courier's behavior to tell it to automatically bring you anything you buy, or stop off at the secret shop on its way to you.
There's much more clarity across the interface, too, starting with a reworked ping system that boasts new visual effects and sounds. Additionally, telling an ally that you're on the way to them will display an estimated travel route on the minimap. New status labels clearly show when characters are impacted by effects such as Ethereal, Doomed, Untargetable, Teleporting, or Channeling, and players who pick up key items from the ground (such as the Aegis of the Immortal or Refresher Shard after defeating Roshan) will show an icon over their head briefly to make it obvious who grabbed it.
Outside of games, Valve has done even more work. "Any option you could dream of has probably been in the game for years, hidden in a submenu of a submenu," it says. "Not anymore." The settings menus have been reorganized, with a new layout designed for much better clarity. There's a search bar to quickly navigate to the options you're seeking, new settings are clearly marked to make them obvious, and you can manage what types of notifications appear in your chat box.
Rounding out the broad-strokes adjustments are a wealth of other, smaller changes. A performance bump means faster load times and higher fps in game. New spectator and post-match graphs include new damage meters, clearer tooltips, and highlighted key moments. Vector-targeted abilities such as Marci's Rebound now snap more reliably to cut back on misclicks at key moments. You can queue for games while spectating. The visual glitch on dead neutral creeps, a bane for thirteen years, has finally been fixed. Those are the biggest hits, but the list goes on.
The Ability Draft mode has been given a new twist; you'll now also have to pick up the base hero that you'll use along with the skills you want. You can take your character at any point during the drafting phase, so it's up to you if you want to lock down potent moves first or grab someone with a strong base and innate talent. You'll then be able to select your preferred hero facet based on the build you've put together.
Of course, this is all great news, but what truly matters is the game at hand. On this side, gameplay update 7.39 is a big one. There are a wealth of adjustments to facets, inmates, and the effects provided by Aghanim's Scepters and Shards. Of note is Monkey King's new facet Changing of the Guard, which allows him to swap places with any of his soldiers during Wukong's Command, becoming temporarily invulnerable and indistinguishable from the others.
Clockwork's new facet, Chainmeal, lets him eat Chainmail items to gain a permanent +4 bonus to armor, a trick he can repeat as many times as he wants (and can afford). Nature's Prophet gets the cutely named Nature's Profit facet, which grows money trees in the spots where enemy heroes die that drop bags of gold. These are automatically picked up by any hero that gets near enough, providing a payout equivalent to 1.5x of the dead hero's level.
Valve has made "A number of small but meaningful adjustments to the playable map, each aimed at improving flow, balance, and clarity." Some of these are slight tweaks to trees and sightlines, but others are more significant, introducing stair sets on previous cliff faces to open them up for anyone to traverse freely. Veterans will certainly want to keep close watch and not rely on established game sense, while newcomers should be on slightly more even footing for now as a result.
Finally, Valve has rotated the pool of neutral artifacts, taking out some of the less-popular options in favor of eight new and four returning items. That's the big-picture stuff, but everything I've spoken about here naturally pales in comparison to the individual hero and item balance changes, which comprise roughly the other 80% of the full patch notes. Of particular note is the replacement of Lifesteal Amplification and Spell Lifesteal Amplification with an umbrella stat called Health Restoration that affects all sources of gaining life.
Dota 2 patch 7.39 and the Spring Forward update are out now. You can play for free on Steam. Take a look through the full patch notes courtesy of Valve to see exactly what's changed for your favorite (and most-hated) heroes, along with a glimpse of the 16 new cosmetic hero sets.
Not sure who to pick in this bold new world? We've rounded up the best multiplayer games on PC right now.
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