You’ve mastered Dota 2? The Rekindling Soul update says “Think again”

You want change? Then change you will get. Maybe this is what IceFrog was thinking while putting together the Dota 2 6.82 patch, the Rekindling Soul update. We once said that 6.79 was crazy, but if you check out the 6.82 patch notes, the Rekindling Soul update takes the crazy cake right now. Check out some of the major changes that you need to know:

(See: If Dota 2 was a major in college, here’s what it would look like)

Roshan pit and map terrain changes

Remember how Dire has the advantage over Roshan because of how the map was designed? That’s going to be a thing of the past now, as Roshan’s pit has been moved so that the opening is at a different angle. A lot of different pathways have been opened in the map as well as an increase in juke spots. If you know the map like the back of your hand, well, time to relearn it. Here’s what the new map looks like:

Deathball nerf and tower buff

In a nutshell, the idea of a deathball strategy is to get an early advantage, snowball, push, team fight to hold ground, and never let go. Vici Gaming (VG) made this strategy recently popular during The International 2014 (TI4). The rolling of the deathball may slow down if not come to a halt with the following changes:

• Glyph of Fortification cooldown is now refreshed whenever you lose a Tier 1 tower
• Tier 2 Tower’s armor increased from 20 to 25
• Tower bounty gold for destroying Tier 1/2/3/4 reduced from 264/312/358/405 to 160/200/240/280 (denied is 50%)

There’s also a significant change in how teammates gain extra experience when sharing a kill. It involves math, which may or may not prompt you to just skip this, but in general, what this means is that shared experience for kills is now reliant on the experience of your team and your opponent’s instead of just on the victim’s level. If you’re the type that isn’t deterred by math then take a look at the formula:

Old:

VictimLevel = Level of the Victim

1 Hero: XP = 120 + 20 * VictimLevel
2 Heroes: XP = 90 + 15 * VictimLevel
3 Heroes: XP = 30 + 7 * VictimLevel
4 Heroes: XP = 20 + 5 * VictimLevel
5 Heroes: XP = 15 + 4 * VictimLevel

New:

VictimLevel = Level of the Victim
VictimXP = Total XP of the Victim
EnemyTeamXP = Enemy team’s total XP
AlliedTeamXP = Your team’s total XP
XPDifference = ( EnemyTeamXP – AlliedTeamXP )/ ( EnemyTeamXP + AlliedTeamXP )(minimum 0)
XPFactor = XPDifference * VictimXP