Support players have a few reasons to rejoice and keep playing Dota 2. Patch 7.09 has arrived with some changes that help their economy throughout the game.
The balance update, which is the first bi-weekly patch since lead developer IceFrog announced the move to such a schedule, shows some love to supports by drastically reducing the cost of the Courier from 200 gold to a mere 50. This means that the Courier now costs as much as one Town Portal Scroll—which is music to the ears for support players everywhere.
In addition, the first bounty rune spawns will now give 40 gold to all heroes on the side that picked it up, as opposed to 100 gold to the hero that picked it up alone. Apart from further incentivizing fighting for the initial bounty rune, this should help supports get off to a faster start in the very early minutes of the game.
Now, supports should have much more breathing room in terms of managing their economy. Saving 150 gold in the early game will make a huge impact on their item progression, and should also soften the blow of having to buy wards.
There is a slight catch, though: All heroes will now start with 600 gold as opposed to 625 before the patch. In the end, the changes are still a net buff to support heroes, so the reduction in starting gold shouldn’t be that big of a deal for them. The same can’t really be said for core heroes, but one last hit will close the gap anyway.
The patch also changes how stacking neutral creep camps in the jungle works, as stacked camps now give an additional 15 percent gold to heroes that successfully stack and kill them. This only works for the specific hero that stacked the camp, however. Once stacked, the creeps will have a buff applied to them that displays the stacking hero’s icon.
Knowing that supports are usually the ones tasked with stacking camps for cores like Shadow Fiend, Sven, Bristleback, and more, it’s obvious that IceFrog wants cores to start stacking for themselves now if they want to accelerate their farm. This does, however, mean that cores who do this will have to leave lane opponents to their own devices every now and then, which they can take advantage of by clearing lane waves and pushing towers.
Speaking of towers, both tier 1 mid lane towers have been moved slightly closer to the river. This makes controlling the opposing high ground more difficult, both for solo midlaners and rotating supports. Diving past the tower is also now far more risky, especially when going straight down the lane. Utility support players in particular will likely have to rethink their approach to the early game due to this change—something that two-time Major champion Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka doesn’t like.
You can view full list of balance changes and bugfixes on the official Dota 2 blog.
