Patch History: Patch 6.87 Gameplay Changes
A Look at Changes to the Game in Patch 6.87
Patch 6.87 hit live servers on April 26 of this year and brought big changes to Dota 2. The patch included shiny new items and exciting changes to hero balance, but it also included a number of changes to the overall gameplay of Dota. Here is a look at the biggest changes that weren’t tied to specific heroes or items:
Ranked All Pick Bans
This was a change long requested by players at all levels. Before picking begins, each player may now nominate a hero to ban. After 15 seconds, half of the nominated heroes are banned, at random. No two players can nominate the same hero.
Scan Introduced
Patch 6.87 introduced a new team-wide ability, similar to Fortify. Scan targets an 800 AoE for eight seconds, revealing whether enemy heroes are present (but not granting vision or telling you which heroes are there). This ability is on a long four-and-a-half minute cooldown, but is a powerful tool to scout enemy map movement, and works against Smoke of Deceit.
Hero-Wide Stat Changes
All heroes now start with a base HP of 200 before taking Strength into account (up from 180), and a base mana pool of 50 (up from 0). Strength now gives 20 HP per stat point, which is a nice round number as opposed to the previous 19, while Intelligence now provides 12 mana per point, down from 13. Intelligence now grants bonus damage to spells at a rate of 1% per 16 Intelligence, which is a big change gameplay philosophy-wise if not numerically. All melee heroes have their attack range increased from 128 to 150, so next time you’re juuuust out of range for that killing blow, things might work out for you!
Creeps, Neutrals, and Roshan, Oh My!
Lane creeps had their bounties shuffled around, giving less gold early and shifting more experience onto the ranged creep (making the battle for ranged creep denial extra spicy!) The jungle centaur camp had the smaller “Courser” cleaved in twain, weakening the pink guy but giving him a twin. Armor types were changed for a number of neutral creeps, slightly simplifying an over complicated legacy Dota mechanic. The long and short of this change is that Beastmaster Boars and Veno Wards now deal tremendous amounts of extra damage to neutrals, making both heroes far more effective jungle farmers. Roshan is less resistant to magic, but now has more HP overall throughout the game. Roshan also gives less experience before the 50 minute mark (way, way less early in the game), making early Rosh kills less valuable.