The 7.27 patch has brought something unique. This update is the first big patch that didn’t feature any hero changes.
There are many general changes to hero experience, gold income, and bounties for kills. However, in this article, we don’t care about those. We are just going to talk about the most significant item changes, especially when compared to the previous patch.
There was lots of complaining about how the 7.26 patch was the “zookeeper patch” and that heroes and items focused around summoning units were the meta.
Most people would see the team picks, and if it were the “zookeeper strategy,” they’d bet on dota2-bets on that team with the summons, and they would usually get an excellent return on their money as those teams had a really high win rate.
For that reason alone, it doesn’t come as a surprise that the Necronomicon book is the first item on the list that got changes.
Major Item Changes
The Necronomicon book got some serious nerfs, the Archer Aura was removed, damage reduced, additionally mana regen was reduced, and the Last Will now doesn’t pierce spell immunity.
People like Sébastien “Ceb” Debs were very vocal about these necessary changes, and he will be quite happy when reading the patch notes.
A new basic item was added into the game with the name Blitz Knuckles. For 1000 gold, you can buy this item, which will give you a +35 attack speed. It’s also an item that replaces the Quarterstaff when building the Black King Bar.
Another new addition is the Voodoo Mask. For 900 gold, you get +12% spell life steal. Just like Blitz Knuckles, it’s used as a build-up item for a more significant item. In this case, it is Octarine Core.
Supports will love reading that the price of Smokes is now only 50 gold, and the Tome of Knowledge is now only 75 gold!
The replenish cooldown for sentry wards has been lowered as well. That’s a change that was asked for many times. The shop restocks one sentry every 85 seconds now, down from 90 from the previous patch.
The Blade Mail now has a passive component that returns 20 + 20% of the damage received, while the active one is reduced from 100% to 80%.
The Bracer, Wraith Band, and Null Talisman all got their stats reduced from 6/3/3 to 5/2/2. Their passive bonuses got changed, as well.
An exciting change happened to Holy Locket. The active can target allied heroes to heal them.
Neutral items got some changes as well. The most interesting one is probably Tier 5: Pirate hat.
You can now dig a bounty rune with it every 40 seconds, which gives significant gold at that stage of the game.
Additionally, if a consumable item from the same tier was already dropped, another consumable won’t drop.
The full list of changes is quite long, but you should definitely check it out on the official Dota 2 website.
