Valve Officially Teases Upcoming Patch With a List of Vague Changes

The upcoming patch has been highly anticipated by both Dota 2 fans and players, with many professional players sharing what they would like to see changed in the game. Previously, the exact date of the patch was not confirmed and was only based on rumors to be on the 20th of April, a few days before the start of the Berlin Major, and during Dreamleague Season 19. However, Valve recently released a new teaser that had additional information about the new patch and what players and fans can expect from it. There were several obvious ‘riddles’ in the post by Valve, ranging from confirming the date of the patch’s release to a few changes that will be seen relating to heroes, items, unit types, and others. 

Patch release date, units, heroes, and items among others in Valve’s teaser. 

In the teaser, Valve says that the next big Dota 2 patch rhymes with the words “Smaypril Twemmieth” and will drop between the 19th to 21st of April, which obviously translates to the 20th of April. This was just one of their teasers, which they highlighted as being an ‘advanced level’ hint.

The teaser then went on to address more specific changes that would be seen in the patch relating to units, heroes, items, and other aspects of the game. While these hints are relatively vague, here’s what we think each of them is: 

“[UNIT] is now controllable by the player that dug it up”

The first change here could be referring to the Kobold neutral creep that players had a chance to dig up while using the Tier 1 Neutral Item, Trusty Shovel. This is one of the more obvious ones as there is no other unit that can currently be ‘dug up’. Perhaps this creep can then be used for stacking neutrals, denying runes, or blocking camps amongst other utility.

“[HERO]: Always has 0 Intelligence. Always.”

Having 0 intelligence on a hero would be a very new addition to the game, as it would mean that the hero would have a very low mana pool and their skills would either have no mana costs or very low mana costs. A likely scenario here would be that a hero gets reworked to have no mana cost for their skills, and a likely candidate would be someone like Huskar, with most of his skills not requiring mana. 

“[ITEM]: Now has an initial and max stock of 4 and a restock time of 120s”

While some may speculate that this change is referring to Smoke of Deceit, a more likely item to have this change would be sentry wards. It would essentially be a nerf to sentry wards as it would be in short supply and players would have to use them sparingly. If Valve decides to take a bolder step, they could even limit regen items like Healing Salve, buffing the strength of lane harass.

“After this effect the soul is forcefully returned to the body”

One of the tougher changes to decipher, this one may be related to a new skill or rework on a hero. It may also relate to Terrorblade’s ultimate, Sunder. This would be because it is one of the skills that are related to ‘swapping’ life forces between two units, which could be interpreted as ‘souls’. In this case, there may be a rework to the hero’s ultimate, where there would be an after-effect after using the skill. Another possibility is relating this change to Meurta, which may come in the form of her new Aghanim’s Scepter or Shard upgrade. 

“[HERO]: Base armor increased by 1”

Almost any hero in the game would benifit from 1 Armor. Doom seems to receive armor buffs for no reason, in recent patches. So perhaps he is a good shout for this.. 

“[UNIT TYPE] now gain 15 movement speed during the night.”

While it is not apparent what exactly ‘unit type’ refers to in this change, a likely candidate for this change would be Helm of the Dominator creeps or Lycan’s wolves gaining extra movement speed during nighttime or just lane-creeps receiving a movement speed buff at night. 

“Mana cost reduction effects only apply to mana cost”

Currently, mana cost reduction from items such as Arcane Blink, Fairy’s Trinket and Arcane Rune reduce mana lost from a hero as well, such as reducing the amount of mana lost when heroes such as Nyx Assasin or Lion drain your mana. This change could mean that the mana cost reduction effects from items, runes, and neutral items will only reduce the cost of mana from spells or items, rather than from mana-draining abilities from enemies as well. 

“[ITEM]: Requires Echo Sabre (2500), Diadem (1000), Recipe (1000). Total cost: 4500”

This change features two aspects, with the first being that Echo Saber gets an upgrade into a new item, which may be buff for many heroes, and the addition of a new item, Diadem. The item that is created with this recipe could also very well be a new item.

“Any player can use a [NOUN] to [VERB] to the other one after channeling for 3 seconds.”

This could mean many things in the new patch, however, fans and players have theorized that players may be  able to Teleport from one outpost to another after channeling for 3 seconds, if a team controls both of them on the map. Players have been asking for more utility for these outposts and this could be a clever way of adding it.

These hints from the full patch notes are already very interesting at the very least, with fans speculating about what these changes potentially mean. The full patch is expected to be several times larger than the small excerpts provided here and may include map changes as well.