Dota 2: But change the map in patch 7.20

Patch 7.20 Dota 2 reworked the map while the heroes continued to be changed and balanced. A week has passed, and professional teams have had the opportunity to test the new map in the professional arena. This is the best time to understand the effects of the new map on wards, pulls, and placement of heroes.

WARDING

The current map has been divided into several areas for each side. A lot of people think it’s less natural, more hardware, and this is partly true – we now have a “farm triangle” on each side, a highground for each Tier 2 tower and a less safe area at the top. below the same jungle camps in each main jungle.

We can clearly see the highground areas, which means picking the best ward placements, but dewarding has also become much more difficult. There are many places to place wards, creating good visibility, so your ward search ability must be extremely good.

As usual, you can place wards in obvious places to get the most out of areas, but if the enemy is good at dewarding, or you want to place wards in less visible locations, here are a few: ward placement – ​​not ideal but still gives you good vision and lasts for the full duration of the ward:

An interesting ward is located in the highground forest on Dire’s side. This position between the trees will always give you a view of the two paths leading to the highground, and depending on what you want from it, this ward can see each additional jungle creep field or shrine.

A similar ward in Radiant’s highground forest. You won’t be able to see the shrine, unless you cut down the trees in the middle, but it does give you a sense of direction to the highground and turrets.

This location has grown in popularity now, but it’s still good. Note that this ward is highly likely to be debuffed at least once in a match.

Another way to place wards in the Radiant’s sub-jungle gives you vision for both the Shrine and the enemy behind the Tier 1 turret.

These are just a few examples of non-default wards. With so many highground areas, warding can be more creative or easy to spot. Either way, you’ll get good vision for a fair amount of time.

PULL CREEP

Pulling creeps and stacking creeps is pretty much a part of the game, with the vast majority of camps stacking at X:54-X:55 intervals. There are a few exceptions on the dire side – the two triangle areas closest to the river should be stacked a bit earlier, as the terrain here forces the creeps to turn around when leaving camp. Especially when stacking ancient, as Thunderhide usually likes to cast frenzy before starting to move.

If you are not interested in stacking multiple yards and only stacking when passing, it is best to stack at X:54-X:55 for most camps and at X:53-X:54 for Ancient and small camps .

Speaking of pulls, both small camps are easy to pull at X:15 or X:45, while offlane pulls (below Dire and above Radiant) are doable when pulling at X:18 or X:48 . While the safelane pull (above Dire and below Radiant) should happen a second earlier, at X:17 or X:47.

You can cut the tree to make the pull more stable. With Dire, if you want to pull close or pull through, you can cut the tree in the upper left corner of the bounty rune. This is not strictly necessary, but should be done – otherwise the pull will become unstable and you need to follow the creeps to keep their sight. As always, the pull should start when the jungle creeps have about 400 total health left for good results.

On the Radiant side, cutting the tree behind the medium camp allows you to pull directly into the lane (instead of facing the river), which is a huge advantage, as this pull is very difficult to disrupt. Try to aim for X:16-X:17 if cutting trees and try to make sure that the jungle creeps or lane creeps won’t notice and return to your lane.

USE THE HIGHGROUND OF TIER 2

The Highground of Tier 2 or the Highground of the Shrine area is probably one of the most important areas of the map – controlling them means controlling the teamfights in the area. At first, many thought it would help teams protect their Tier 2 turrets, have an extra safe area thanks to better visibility, not be missed, and be able to use Shrines.

Whoever controls the Shrine Highground will control Tier 2 in the lane – simple as that. If your team doesn’t get into a ready position before starting to push, it becomes more difficult to defend your team’s goals – the opponent has more angle of attack and better vision.

When you know the enemy is in position, but still want to keep the Tier 2 turret or at least try to defend it and swap some lives, the best method is to smoke rotate multiple team members from mid to the Shrine from all over the place. Highground (green arrows on the map above).

This has the highest success rate, as it creates a lot of space between you and the enemy hero (usually the carry), even when exposed to smoke and attacked by the opponent before going high. This decision needs to be quick and the team should coordinate well enough to be effective: this is the best way to recapture the area.

In addition, you can always teleport the carry directly to the shrine to ‘take out’: the carry does not need to be with the team in the first place and can continue to farm while the team is fighting.

EPILOGUE

The new map creates a feeling of a rigid formula – the natural paths and jungle directions are gone. Instead, we have 5 highround jungle paths in the shrine area, 6 main highground jungle paths with shrines, two low ground camps on each side and bounty runes below, excluding the Dire Top side bounty. .

This change somewhat takes away the “quality” of the map as well as the beauty of the game, but it brings major changes in the balance between Dire/Radiant when playing. Once the pro dota starts to work, we will definitely come back to this topic in the future.