What changed in 7.07?

The community is getting excited with the 2 new heroes as well as the revised talents in 7.07, but few are paying attention to the potentially important things in the change log this time around.

Tragedy of safelane carry

Over the past several months, playing safelane carry has never been easy. Offlane then breathes easier and if you have difficulty, you can run into the jungle with Iron Talon. You still get a lot of XP even if creeps are denied. But the most annoying thing is that any beefy offlane hero will buy Poor Man’s Shield and become extremely difficult to harass.

All of the above has been changed in this update, along with a few new features that make offlane much more difficult. And safelane carry is additionally buffed:

• Creeps now encounter each other closer to the safelane turret (ie at the top, creeps will meet closer to the Dire turret)
• Enemy: XP gained from denied creeps reduced from 70% to 25%.
• Self: XP gained by successfully denying creeps reduced from 30% to 25%.
• Creeps killed by a player in the jungle will count as being killed by enemy creeps – it’s not a deny, and you’ll get full XP.
• Total XP per creep (4 creeps) increased from 210 to 240
• Melee Creep XP increased from 40 to 57
• Range Creeps XP reduced from 90 to 69 (sum of both to 240)

Creeps now encounter each other closer to the safelane side turret which is one of the biggest things that many people often overlook. The further away you are from your offlane tower, the more likely you are to be killed or harassed by a support getting behind you.

The second change is that there is no longer Poor Man’s Shield. Obviously, agility generals will be weakened because they can’t buy ‘poor man’s shield’ anymore, Legion Commanders playing offlane will definitely be disadvantaged

The last change is the XP received from Creep. If you play in the offlane, you will only get 25% experience when the creeps are denied, compared to 70% in the past. Conversely, XP gain from someone denying creeps is similarly reduced, and junglers killing lane creeps won’t take away your XP if they’re in range – they can only be denied by heroes.

Experience range increased from 150 to 1300 obviously causing a big change. With the elimination of Iron Talon and the “poor man’s shield”, you are forced to sit in your offlane. If you don’t get the last hit, your level will definitely be far behind.

New level system

Speaking of levels, Valve changed the amount of XP you need to go from level 1 to 3. Now it only takes 200XP to get to level 2, and 400 to get to level 3. A wave of creeps has 240 XP (3 melees, 57 each, and 1 range worth 69 XP). If you get all XP from all creeps denied in the first wave, you will get 72 XP. If all creeps are denied on every creep wave, it would take 3 creep waves to get to level 2. The above example is the worst case scenario. On the first creep wave, you’ll be level 2 in the offlane; if only 1 melee creep is denied, you will get 200 XP total. If you deny 1 range but last hit all the melees, you will lose 10 XP. That said, early creeps are much more important now, and can determine how your lane plays out.

So how does this system affect the way Dota is played?

If you used to only play the offlane position, now you will have a lot of trouble. Traditional offlane champions or bulls are likely to return. The number of offlane heroes greatly increased when the shrine as well as the offlane jungle were added, including Night Stalker, Earthshaker, Sand King, and similar champions. Players will probably return to beefy heroes like Centaur, Tidehunter and Clockwerk.

Having sight to see when creeps get pulled and trying to prevent this as much as possible should be a priority in the offlane. However, with the jungle being nerfed and Iron Talon eliminated, it wouldn’t be surprising to see another support, and there’s a good chance he’ll go to the offlane to deal with these changes and help the offlaner farm.

How does this system affect pro Dota?

There are several possibilities that pro will respond to this patch. The lane XP isn’t the only thing that’s changed: the XP gained on kills has been greatly reduced

• Jungle creep spawn time changed from 30 seconds to 1 hp.
• Hero kill bonus XP (not counting assists) for levels 1-5 reduced from 100/120/140/160/180 to 30/60/90/120/150 (You still get extra XP from hero kills according to assist formula )

You can see that 70 XP is reduced if you kill a level 1 hero, 60 at level 2, 50 at level 3, etc. This is not a big number – 100 XP is 41% of XP level 2 in the old system, and now Now it’s only 15%. The following table is the assist formula.

Hero support	Experience received
1 hero	(20 × Death Hero Level) + (0.138 × Dead Hero XP x XP Difference)
2 heroes	(15 × Dead Hero’s Level) + (0.138 × Dead Hero’s XP x XP Difference)
3 heroes	(10 × Dead Hero’s Level) + (0.12 × Dead Hero’s XP x XP Difference)
4 heroes	(7 × Dead Hero’s Level) + (0.09 × Dead Hero’s XP x XP Difference)
5 heroes	(5 × Dead Hero’s Level) + (0.072 × Dead Hero’s XP x XP Difference)

XP Difference is calculated as follows (enemy team XP – teammate XP) / (enemy team XP + teammate XP) and the lowest stat is 0. Source: https://dota2.gamepedia.com/Experience

Of course, you will be rewarded with more XP if your level is lower than your opponent. If you are higher or the same level, you will receive less XP.

For example, let’s say your team has a total of 3000 XP (equivalent to all level 3 heroes), and the other team has 3200 XP. You are a support ganking mid. That side’s mid champion is level 3, and you’re level 2. If you kill, the mid player and you will receive a total of 90XP. According to the Dota wiki page, this 90XP will be split between you and mid. Then you (support), will get 45 + with what the experience formula gives you). In this example, let’s say the other side’s mid champion has an extra 100XP on level 3, which is 700 total:

(15 x 3) + (0.138 x 700) x 0.0322) = 48

That kill gives you 48 + 45 (45 is the original XP gained on the kill), which will total 93 XP. In the old system, you will get 118 XP cheats. According to this example, you only get 78% of what you got before. If you kill mid level 2, and put in the recipe, you will get 68% XP compared to the old system: 64.5 XP (new) vs. 94.5 (old).

Now compare it with the amount of XP you get if you’re in lane. For example, you missed 2 waves of creeps when moving from your lane to mid. Each wave of creeps is 240XP, that’s 480XP total. If it’s just you and the carry in lane, chances are you’ll get 200 XP (assuming you’ll miss a few creeps while pulling). You can either walk to mid to gank, if the gank succeeds, you get 93 XP – or you can stay in the lane, protect the carry farm and get double the amount of XP above.

Of course, there must be benefits to ganking in other lanes. The fact that my mid is much more profitable than the opponent’s mid has a huge impact on Dota: we’ve seen ‘dual’, sometimes ‘trilane’ in mid in the professional environment. With the XP change coupled with the midlane losing a few creeps will encourage 1v1 in the mid more, compared to the dual mids we used to see in Dota before.

The new changes encourage supports to stay in their lane. It is likely that we will see two directions of development. One is the return of dual lane: with strong buffs for good supports like Bane and Dazzle. The second option could be that ‘aggro trilane’ (3 active heroes 1 lane) will become popular, for the same reason. Pull camps are now closer to the offlane making harassment easier, and also help you win bounty runes from safelane support.

It’s unlikely that trilane will become dominant because: the exp system becomes less and killing offlane heroes won’t be as worthwhile as the XP system changes and you’ll get less XP than before. Either way, the Dota PIT is over and we’ll see how the teams will adapt.

Source: cybersport