DOTA 2

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Just skimmed through the patchnotes and here's what I'm seeing off the top of my head

-Jakiro's liquid harass abilities now have a 20 mana cost, meaning less harrass in lane, removed with shard as shard is now innate.
-Veno's sepsis mechanic is gone. He is now focused on a new ability that launches a snake at someone that does damage, dmg over time, then the first set of damage every time the enemy attacks (100 at level 4). Ult was reworked so it doesn't aoe, but it transfers debuffs. Need to see this in action. Poison sting now the innate.
-Lifestealer got a lot of buffs related to damage, atk speed, and move speed. His atk speed is now his innate and feast is back to being a level up ability.
-Clockwerk innate is now chainmail eating lol.
-Tinker got reworked again, defense matrix is gone and now he places a turret.
-Rubick and Tidehunter both have infinitively stacking buffs now like pudge/slark/silencer
-Lich has sacrifice back (wtf, it was removed cause it won the late automatically)
-OD may steamroll for a while since he starts with his mana restore now.
-Razor barely got any changes and his own facet everyone went is now his shard. Will still likely be the best hero this patch.
-Sniper has to level into atk range again. Might go back to him maxing this out first instead of harrass.
-WW is going to be interesting as her innate gives her a book that lets her increase the max level of any of her basics by 1 level. Might be interesting on artic burn.
-Bane will now add a perma debuff to anyone killed while his debuffs are on him that makes his debuffs last 5% longer, 5 cap. Might be interesting.
-The returned some really good neutral items like the Tier 1 lifesteal on hit item and the mini radiance cloak.
-I don't think many of the new items look that good. Maybe I'm wrong. Thought I think we'll see the Specialists Array and Hydra's breath work out somehow.

Edit:
Played a game as lifestealer, he's broken af now and might be the stand out from the patch. Getting 4 points in feast at 7 and the +10 base damage at level 1 makes him hit light a freight train in lane.
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When facets were introduced, one of the things I didn't like about them was that in certain cases, some of a hero's old functionality was partitioned off while others received additional tools with no downsides. One of the examples of this at the time was CK's strong illusions being a facet itself which USED to be just part of his kit. It's interesting to see how once again, there are massive winners and losers based on who got (most or some of) their facet functionality re-integrated back into the hero and who received jack shit. Unevenly applied power creep.
 
Ogre Magi looks like he was a winner between the talent shuffle and facet removal.
 
Facets were interesting but it seemed most heroes eventually settled into a 'this is the good facet' default choice once the meta fleshed out around them.

There were some heroes with well designed and balanced facets that allowed more flexibility in different situations so it is disappointing to lose that, but I can see the rationale behind removal when this is a game Valve want to update a couple of times a year, rather than being constantly tweaking to achieve better facet balance as meta shifts.

Here are the biggest positive and negative winrate shifts for heroes in the first 24 hours of this patch before any nerfs come in, compared to their winrates one week ago (Tinker players you deserve this)

Screenshot_20260326_023517_Chrome.jpgScreenshot_20260326_023540_Chrome.jpg
 
KinderMoose said:
Facets were interesting but it seemed most heroes eventually settled into a 'this is the good facet' default choice once the meta fleshed out around them.

There were some heroes with well designed and balanced facets that allowed more flexibility in different situations so it is disappointing to lose that, but I can see the rationale behind removal when this is a game Valve want to update a couple of times a year, rather than being constantly tweaking to achieve better facet balance as meta shifts.

Here are the biggest positive and negative winrate shifts for heroes in the first 24 hours of this patch before any nerfs come in, compared to their winrates one week ago (Tinker players you deserve this)

View attachment 8757481View attachment 8757497
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Honestly fuck facets. They weren't interesting, made the game more complicated and yes, the absolute most of the heroes had one good facet and others that would grief your game if you misclicked or forgot to choose the good one.
ALSO
>SILENCER HAS POSITIVE WINRATE NOW
LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOO YES BABY WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK DUMPSTER 2 IS NOW OFFICIALLY DOTA 2 AGAIN LET'S GO MAN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY FAVOURITE HERO IS FUCKING BACK BITCH
 
MKB giving melee range, ranged Battle Fury, tanky Crystal Maiden, Lich Sacrifice returning, Invoker's new aghs, mid KOTL, carry Naga, Tinker turrets? SOUL OVERLOAD.
Removing OD's randomly named innate, flying characters no longer being immune to uphill accuracy penalties, removing Time Zone, LC can use spells in Duel? SOULLESS.

The random inexplicable scalings (movement speed into armor?) and Oracle's random card deck skill are very Deadlock-esque, I don't know how to feel about that.
PA dumpstered again, Drow needs a rework, the Pos 1 Naga agenda continues forth with small steady buffs, trust the process. Wind dumpstered so I can't farm her arcana style, sad.
This entire patch seems like a scaling back in power creep which is welcome.

Dark Willow got annihilated, so much of her power was in her facets and both are gone, and they instead gave nothingburger buffs to the worst goddamn innate in the game, why the FUCK would a low HP backliner need a regen buff when she's either bursted instantly with a disable or literally immune to being bursted otherwise.

I'll go play Drow with the Hydra item because ranged battle fury tickles my funny bone.
 
Why the fuck did they remove facets?

They're dumbing the game down for zoomers, I'm sure
 
NoCockatrice said:
They're dumbing the game down for zoomers
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What the fuck are you talking about, facets were barely a two year old feature.
Regardless, they were an experiment that never really worked insofar as providing build variety for heroes and were a nightmare to balance, most facets worked like this
  • The obviously good one and the meme one that never gets picked
  • Removing a core hero ability and putting it as a facet meaning they don't gain anything from the feature
  • The two that are so similar and have identical builds so you might as well flip a coin
  • The two that have identical builds but you change facet only to counterpick an enemy
  • The "totally viable core facet on support trust me bro it scales" that griefs your team
 
Fae Supremacist said:
What the fuck are you talking about, facets were barely a two year old feature.
Regardless, they were an experiment that never really worked insofar as providing build variety for heroes and were a nightmare to balance, most facets worked like this
  • The obviously good one and the meme one that never gets picked
  • Removing a core hero ability and putting it as a facet meaning they don't gain anything from the feature
  • The two that are so similar and have identical builds so you might as well flip a coin
  • The two that have identical builds but you change facet only to counterpick an enemy
  • The "totally viable core facet on support trust me bro it scales" that griefs your team
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Oh. I'm new and was under the impression these existed for a long time.

Regardless, it's really frustrating trying to learn the game and suddenly experience such a big gameplay change.

And also I just personally liked that feature a lot. So I'm big mad rn.
 
NoCockatrice said:
Oh. I'm new and was under the impression these existed for a long time.
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This is genuinely fascinating, I wouldn't have thought new people pick up this game, it's all 30+ jaded doomers.
Since you weren't there, facets had a lukewarm reception at the best of times, and were just seen as mechanical bloat. Valve have been dabbling in mechanical bloat as a source of "complexity" in updates for a while now, it isn't always the case that stacking more mechanics means better gameplay.
Innates are also a "new" feature that they introduced along with facets but it seems it's going to stay for now. But it's due for a cleaning because it's still inconsistent with some inmates able to be broken.
NoCockatrice said:
Regardless, it's really frustrating trying to learn the game and suddenly experience such a big gameplay change.
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Dota changes a lot in major patches, so strap in.
Considering you didn't play the game before facets, you probably only know of the current map, and don't know it was massively expanded just a few years ago after never changing in size for more than a decade. The extra rivers on each side are also relatively new.
NoCockatrice said:
And also I just personally liked that feature a lot.
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I didn't care for it much mechanically because none of my mains really utilized them, but I liked them for flavor tidbits. Floe is a lovely word and CM no longer has Blueheart Floe as an innate.
 
Fae Supremacist said:
This is genuinely fascinating, I wouldn't have thought new people pick up this game,
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Really? I've been playing only for a couple of months.

I actually see quite a lot of rookies.

Surly, I still have a lot to learn. Haven't even played all the characters yet.
 
NoCockatrice said:
Really? I've been playing only for a couple of months.

I actually see quite a lot of rookies.
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Dota famously has one of the most insular game communities, at least in English. It perpetually sits near the top of Steam but the average "online gamer" spaces never talk about it, its characters aren't well known icons at all, barely any fanart, it has very little cultural impact, basically a game with zero secondaries.

I believe there was also a study that measured different gaming communities and showed Dota was the most isolated bubble, Dota players play and watch a lot of Dota but barely anything else, and every other gamer doesn't touch it at all casually. CS is sort of in the same boat, but the gamba lootboxes let it break into mainstream discourse more often, Dota only had that when Valve did record breaking battlepasses for TI.

The Russian side of the community is more lively since it's an unofficial national sport but you have to speak slavrunes for that.
 
MAAAD said:
and others that would grief your game if you misclicked or forgot to choose the good one
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I honestly still have no idea what Faceless Void square ult facet was supposed to accomplish. I played with it once, and it had less utility that Disruptor's Kinetic Field.
 
There is the other angle with removing the facets, not to be vale dick rider
But the sheer balance overhead of having every hero have >2 versions must have sucked. On top of as people have mentioned; most heroes had a pretty clear winner

Its a little sad that they are gone, but maybe they'll fix the game in quicker increments (And buff Enigma, pls and thank you)
 
The Purple Ghost said:
There is the other angle with removing the facets, not to be vale dick rider
But the sheer balance overhead of having every hero have >2 versions must have sucked. On top of as people have mentioned; most heroes had a pretty clear winner
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The patch might've solved the "multiple versions of a hero" issue in a roundabout way. Invoker's multiple mutually exclusive scepter/shard effects are I think a novel way of doing exactly that... even if expanding on that came at the expense of Invoker's special snowflake status.
 
I played four games today and I remember why I stopped playing. The game is fundamentally not respectful of your time. At low tiers, winning teams will just meander aimlessly looking for fights they will win repeatedly until eventually the sheer force of nature will destroy the ancient. The only way out of this is just to go super tryhard and rank up so that both teams are goal-oriented, but then you're can't "enjoy a game of dota" because you're "desperately trying to win a game of dota".

Like people say the average game of dota is 20-30 minutes but that's only true at high tiers where people are pushing whenever they can. An actual game is a mandatory 45 minutes. If it's close, it's 60+ minutes. I just can't justify a game that lasts 45 minutes each time.

It sucks to realize that this thing I sank so much time into and have so many fond memories with is just a total write-off and I'll never get to really enjoy it again but when the timer is 30 minutes and the score is 40-20 and the enemy team is just wandering around looking for kills instead of wrapping up I'm just bored and I don't care anymore. At 50 minutes I don't even care if I win, I just want the game to end.
 
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