I think it's a new start for Dota.

You can't help heroes win their 1-on-1 lane. It's easier to get gold and experience for most heroes; every hero will get much faster levels now from the increased XP range as well as the change where ranged heroes get the same amount of experience from denies as melee heroes.

I think the whole metagame is going to change because all the fighting/push heroes got buffed while the splitpushing farmers got nerfed indirectly. The new 4 minute day/night rotation instead of 6 minute rotation is gonna ensure that Nightstalker will be seen a lot more, because his Ultimate also reduces the vision of the enemy by 25%. The fact that Pudge and Vengeful Spirit can use Blink Daggers now further hints towards this metagame shift. While splitpushing isn't impossible, it's gonna get a lot harder and riskier because of the new buyback change where you can't earn money from creep kills anymore when you buyback.

The only thing I really dislike is that Roshan respawns randomly between 8-11 minutes. It takes away the whole strategy aspect of Roshan because you have to guess when it's up; of course you can narrow it down to 3 minutes but that still isn't all that helpful.

All in all I think this is a very nice patch, with a lot of changes that have to be used to the team's advantage in order to make the most out of everything. I am excited to see how the East and the West adapt to this patch.

My thoughts on this patch are kind of muddled mainly because I think we won't know whats strong or not till maybe a month or two into practice. The Night/day cycle is probably the biggest change along with creeps spawning farther away from their respective towers on both Radiant and Dire safe lanes. I think that mid is going to have to play passive as hell as soon as first night time hits mainly because supports would rather get XP and gold off Kills than the pulls. I do think that radiant pulls are going to continue to be very strong however if you are able to pull them off because you can pull to all three camps.

Dire pull is kind of screwed even more now. Radiant mid is going to continue to be very strong for heroes like Shadow Fiend and Storm because their small camp is easier to kill at later levels and catch up or farm insanely fast. Radiant mid is also harder to gank when night time hits because the hill is smaller and supports can camp their hero mid while also pulling camps. I feel Dire advantage with Roshan is somewhat mitigated because you can't just snipe it as soon as it spawns anymore. So overall, Radiant got buffed quite hard in my mind mainly because Dire got nerfed due to pulls and Roshan.

Offlaning heroes like Clock and Dark seer and Timbersaw are going to continue to be really strong and probably be top picks(remain i guess) because of how annoying they are to deal with as offlaners that get experience. A level 3 clock can solo most trilanes to be honest with boots and so can dark seer. Even though timbersaw's Chakram got nerfed, he is really hard to deal with (Funn1k) in lane and he is a hero that can catch up quite well.

The change I dislike the most is that range heroes get the same denied XP as melee heroes. I dont see the reason why they did this because it took away from lane matchups mid. Crushing someone mid in levels is a lot harder now and denies will mainly be used to stop people from csing and keeping it on your hill over building a level advantage. I guess this change was to buff trilane vs trilane experience for ranged support heroes or offlaning ranged heroes that can soak exp like Windrunner.

As for the current imbalanced heroes like Bat, ET and Wisp, i think ET got the least nerfs and is going to continue being a first ban first pick. hero. The way I like to play him mid got nerfed quite heavily though because my Astral Spirit will not 1 shot the ranged creep anymore but I still think you can manage. The aura is what is broken about the hero, not the Spirit damage. The hero is actually as strong as he currently is late game.

I do think its a misconception that supports are getting heavily buffed. We have to wait and see but Supports are going to have a lot harder time getting XP off regular trilanes and maybe dual lanes will happen. But the late-game is going to come faster and carries and semi-carries will probably be even more important because of the gold increase. This may make people want to pick better late-game supports but how will they actually level up fast enough to make an impact early on? Anyways this is just my hypothesis off playing literally zero games and just reading patch notes. However, Dire can check Roshan easier so it is still easier for them to know what time it is. Let's wait and see.

I think the neutrals changes will lead to to teams picking more supports that don't rely so much on levels. The patch increases the chances of more early level aggression, as jungling is less rewarding. Furthermore offlaners will have a better time now, as it is easier to get more levels with the possibility of increasing the game tempo as well.

All the nerfs and buffs I feel are great , and I have played dota for a long time. There will always be times of massive change.

I love the changes to Invoker and Meepo. There might be light at the end of the tunnel for these 2 heroes in competitive play, after all! Linken's buff is great too. It increases another aspect of the item without making it too strong.

The biggest change in this patch is the creeps meeting in the middle rather than closer to your safelane tower. This opens up a large variety of heroes that can pull off the offlane and not depend on jungling. Combined with neutrals exp sharing with
opponent's hero, it openly welcomes offensive trilanes into competitve scene. This patch also encourages early aggression with day/night cycle being reduced to 4 minutes resulting in less vision and the buff on smoke not being detected by truesight. Heroes that require pooling to have the necessary advantage early (ex. null talisman+tango salve pooled) now need to be reconsidered before picking. I think we will see more Lich, Nightstalker, and Enigma.

I am not sure what I think about the patch as a whole. I really like some changes but I also dislike some. On the one hand I really like that supports can get more items, because the pooling got removed and also you get rewarded when you don't die, since you get more gold every second than before.

I dont think the switch between the small and medium pull camp is too important, since supports have more gold overall and may just gang more, if not they can still chain the pulls to other camps. What I find more important is that junglers like Bat (who got nerfed already) really depend on not having golems in the jungle now. If you get 2 camps of golems in the beginning you have to stack one of them which STILL doesnt give you level 2, so your overall jungling will get slowed down by A LOT. That also counts for Dark Seer. However junglers like Nature's Prophet or Lone Druid are unaffected and may even get more since golems (although the nerf) still give a lot of gold and experience.

There are also some clowny changes like Brood having no pathing in webs or the Bloodseeker no-movespeed limit. It will be interesting to see if these heroes will be useful in the future.

Let’s start out with my favorite change of the patch, how there will be no crow until the 3 minute mark that means more gold for me!!!!!

The biggest dislike for me would be how they nerfed the jungle experience and how enemy heroes can split the experience with you just by standing in the experience range. My least favorite hero change is how Slark cannot be revealed at all with true sight, that hero is going to be the next Huskar and ruin my public games. My favorite hero changes would definitely be how Pudge and Venge are allowed to buy Blink Daggers and the Aghanim’s Scepter on Rubick allowing you to have a 5 second cool down on your ulti.

With this patch being released I feel Dota is going to be a much faster pace game which will be good for the spectators because who doesn't like a game where there are 30 kills in 14 minutes. Adaptation is going to be key to be a top team with this new patch, we will work hard and experiment with a bunch of new heroes to see what we think works best with all of these changes.

I feel that the changes on patch 6.79 are massive, and it changes all of the previous strategies. The nerf of the neutral camps' experience will encourage more laning heroes in the early phase. Item pooling being disabled and being unable to buy flying courier until 3 minutes will make solo mid a lot more difficult than it was previously.

Offlane will not be that hard anymore because creeps meet closer to your tower, and non-ancient neutrals now split experience with all the heroes in the area. Buybacks preventing you from gaining unreliable gold and adding 25% of the death timer to your next death means that they will require much more thought. I believe that Bloodseeker, Pudge, Vengeful Spirit, Slark and Broodmother [if added] will be top picks in the new patch.

The new version seems interesting. The huge buff to offlaners is a direct nerf to safelane supports. Especially Bounty hunter seems interesting now, leeching xp from jungle and sniping chickens pre 3mins . Dual lanes ? It's likely but I have yet to experiment with the new jungle . Lich, NS and Viper are my personal favorite spotlights . Necro 3 will be great ! I love it already.

I'm sure everyone else is going to talk about the broader map changes because they're by far the biggest change of the patch. But I'm going to buck the trend and focus on hero balance, and specifically pub balance.

There are a lot of nerfs in this patch to the dominant heroes of TI3 (Batrider, Chen, Io, Naga Siren, Nature's Prophet, and Weaver just to name a few), but there's also a couple nerfs handed out solely for pub game balance. Spiritbreaker finally broke into competitive games in 6.78, but has only managed a disappointing 43.1% win rate. Meanwhile in public play, Spiritbreaker had the highest observed win rate in VH games at 61.69% and was the second most played hero overall in 6.78 behind only Pudge. Space cow will likely have to put his competitive aspirations on hold because 6.79 hit his base attack time hard and gave his ultimate a significant cast time.

Huskar is an even better example of a purely driven pub nerf because he wasn't even available in Captain's Mode as a result of his 6.78 rework. Pub games did their job exposing Huskar's design issues before unleashing him on the competitive scene as Huskar had the third highest observed win rate in VH at 57%. 6.79 took away his ability to use Burning Spear in conjunction with Ghost Scepter and hit him hard in both base agility and agility growth. These changes will keep him vulnerable to autoattack damage while still maintaining the extreme magic resistance he gained in 6.78. They'll also make playing against a knowledgeable Huskar player quite a bit more tolerable without actively counterpicking.

But who I really want to focus on is Warlock. Warlock is one of those heroes that just can't break into competitive play despite spending the entire year with a nearly 60% public win rate. That win rate is likely coming to the end since 6.79 will entirely remove the 100 impact damage on his ultimate, Chaotic Offering. To give you a point of comparison, in 6.78 Magnus lost 100 damage off all levels of his ultimate and his public win rate has plummeted four percentage points to his current win rate of 44.84%.

Looking at Warlock's patch notes I'm reminded of last year's Ursa. A year ago Ursa was easily a top 3 hero in terms of public win rate, but in 6.75 Overpower was given a cast time and within a patch period his win rate dropped seven percentage points to 51%. What a lot of people missed at the time is that 6.75 also buffed Earthshock by reducing its cast time from .5 to .3, making Ursa a more well-rounded character while simultaneously raising his skill cap. As a result, we've actually seen him as a competitive pick this year. A niche pick to be sure, but a relatively successful one at a 63.3% win rate in 60 games in 6.78.

Warlock's 6.79 changes strike me as another sidegrade attempt. Warlock loses the damage off the most braindead portion of his kit, but in exchange Upheaval receives a huge cast range buff. What we will (hopefully) end up with is a character that no longer dominates pubs but might eventually creep into competitive drafts. It's a good example of how Dota's patch balance isn't always about straight-up buffs or nerfs. Sometimes the goal is to shift a character's strengths around so that they're stronger overall but in a way that makes you work for it.

More detailed analysis at dotametrics.

This patch changes up how every single lane operates in small ways, so I can't wait to see how things play out in the next couple weeks.

On a pub level alone, I'm really excited to try out more offlane heroes, and see how it affects hero compositions.

Mostly though, with the creep equilibrium being even on all the lanes now, and passive jungling being nerfed, it should allow more skilled(or better drafted) teams to win through out-laning and ganking, which I look forward to watching.

With 6.79 coming in the thing that I am looking forward to most is the way the early game will change. A lot of the changes have an impact on this stage of the game. Heroes can no longer be pooled and no flying courier before the three minute mark means that the mid lane will be a lot more skill dependent. The jungle changes mean that perhaps safe tri-lanes aren’t as interesting anymore, and I am curious to see how teams will deal with this. Will we go back to 2-1-2 lanes being the norm?

Another change I am looking forward to is the day/ night change. An earlier night has a big impact on gank timing and mid lane, and with the first nighttime coming 30 seconds before the second set of observers is possible to be bought, the position of the first two observer wards will be very important.

The hero change I am most excited for is Pudge and Venge possibility to carry and use blink daggers. I dread to face a Pudge with blink in pubs but perhaps this will make us see him more in competitive. Both these heroes are great playmakers and I hope to see them making some amazing plays.

After this patch there will be so many changes to work with for the teams and so many things to look out for that I can’t wait for the patch to be here.

I know there's a lot of mixed opinion out there, but I love this patch. It would be really easy for a person in IceFrog's shoes to keep the gameplay basically as is and just focus on hero balance, but his willingness to turn things on their head is part of why the game has lasted as long as it has and constantly feels fresh.

I think the Tranquil Boots change is my personal favorite as it fixed what I would call a bit of a miss-step in how they were balanced in 6.78. Now they're actually best on supports while not giving much of a benefit to carries, which I believe has been the intent for quite a while.

I don't think the Elder Titan nerf goes far enough though, he's now shares the throne with Io as the most successful competitive Dota 2 heroes and is first pick/ban in every scene right now. I think it may take reducing the buff he gains for the spirit before he's actually balanced.

The most interesting thing for me is that IceFrog chose to nerf Spirit Breaker. The community laments about how strong Spirit Breaker is but the truth is he hasn't really been terribly successful in competitive (In fact he has the 9th lowest winrate of any hero) so the only realm he's really dominant in is pubs. The problem is, if IceFrog is truly nerfing for the common man, Warlock should actually be the first to go as he has had the highest pub winrate for the past several months. Instead, Warlock was buffed pretty significantly (most likely to increase his relevance at the competitive level). With the new buffs I could see Warlock's pub winrate reach 60%.

Patch 6.79 represents everything that sets Dota apart from every other game in the industry, and what makes the enigmatic IceFrog a figure so revered by our passionate community: the courage to push the limits of game development into unknown territory, aggressively tackle game balance issues on both a large and small scale, and trust the community to adapt and provide feedback in order to polish an already pristine diamond until it's a little closer to flawless.

The changes to game and hero mechanics are too numerous to name, but everyone recognizes at once that this patch will be a huge leap forward and the next major demarcation point in the development of Dota, especially as the world's most electrifying esport. The changes are both subtle and drastic at once, especially regarding changing the way the game functions at its highest levels. Everyone – from professional commentators and players to viewers all around the world – is anxiously waiting to see the chaos this patch will bring about in the professional scene in particular, as the changes to Rosh (among many others) are going to give us a more volatile game in which teams have more openings to capitalize on high risk/high reward situations, and even more chances to give us the comebacks and late game turnarounds we all love to see.

Some heroes are getting subtle tweaks, while others are being practically remade; the jungle is being totally rebuilt, and as a result the entire laning phase is likely to look very different; and even mechanics of the game as simple as helping your carry munch on trees for a little regen are getting a total rebuilding. Make no mistake, post 6.79 Dota is going to be something different... and it's going to be something special. No one quite knows what to make of it yet, and that'll likely be the case for weeks and months to come. And it's that renewed sense of discovery and possibility, the intrigue of the unknown, that makes it so damned exciting.

Support Players Rejoice

As a support player myself, I like to zone in at the various buffs that the 4 and 5 role received in 6.79. With increased passive gold income, the ability to earn gold by killing enemy Observers, the inability to upgrade courier until 3 minute, and finally the nerf of pooling teammates, Support players will have a lot more gold to play with. We will most likely see a trend of bigger and better Support items, which can heavily affect the rest of the hero pool.

For example, the easier accessibility of Force Staff will definitely weaken the impact of melee carries such as Troll or utility heroes such as Clockwerk or Elder Titan. Personally, I believe we will see more of greedier 4 Role, ala Liquid`Fluff or [A]EGM, in which one of the support aids the team in some heavy utility or damage items. In public games, Supports can almost always get at least 1 big item, ranging from Mek, Blink to Euls or Scythe of Vyse. Items that Support heroes get generally have a huge impact in teamfights, and I am looking forward to how 6.79 will shape up in this aspect.

PS. Support Linkens Sphere anyone?
PSS. Sounds dubious