Valve drops Dota 2 patch 7.07b to level out the playing field

Change never stops in Dota 2, especially not with a patch as big as 7.07, which was released Tuesday, six days ago. In this case, more change has arrived with 7.07b, a relatively-small balancing patch that has some pretty big impact on the game.

Anti-Mage, the current pub-game menace, was front and center in this patch’s changes. His winrate went from just under 50 percent in patch 7.06f to nearly 55 percent in the new patch, and players who had to deal with a winning AM noticed. In response, Icefrog brought sweeping nerfs to the hero, bringing down a few of his stats and talents.

Meanwhile, the two new heroes, Panoglier and Dark Willow, were seen as respectively too weak and too strong, so each received some changes that would bring them up to a respectable level.

Pangolier, who was seen as underwhelming for his skillset, had many of his abilities and effects changed around. The activation time for the ult Rolling Thunder isn’t a channel anymore, but instead a cast time, meaning the spell can be interrupted with no cost to the Pangolier player. He also got some damage buffs, including a Swashbuckle rework.

Meanwhile, Dark Willow, while she has fewer tweaks, specifically had her Bramble targeted in this alphabetical patch. The cooldown got pretty nerfed, and the damage was slightly reduced, especially in early levels.

A hero with some positive changes was given even more, as Tiny got plenty of buffs. Basically, not a single one of his changes is a net loss in the greater scale of the game; he also received more base Strength and plenty of damage increases.

Plenty of other heroes got tweaked as well, including Medusa, Morphling and Kunkka (who has one Ghost Fleet ship taken away). Want to check out all the changes? Valve posted them to their official site.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this article stated the wrong patch version.]