• Starting gold is reduced from 625 to 600
• Tangos now come with three charges and cost 90 gold
• Courier cost reduced from 200 to 50

The starting gold nerf can hardly be felt due to the Tangos being 60 gold cheaper each set. The change from 150 gold for five charges to 90 gold for three charges doesn’t make Tangos actually cheaper, they are still 30 gold each, but sets of three make acquiring Tangos a less costly investment.

In exchange for having less Tangos, heroes can get more items at the start of the game. Starting a game with Ring of Basilius and Tangos is now possible, and so is starting with Gloves of Haste and Tangos for greedy builds.

Hard supports are the ones that benefit the most from the gold balancing. Courier and five Tangos were 350 gold in total, now Courier and three Tangos are 140 gold. Even if you want to give two Tangos to your mid player, Courier and six Tangos are only 230 gold.

This gives us an interesting question: why not make Courier free? There is no good reason to dislike free Courier? Having to pay for Courier doesn’t make the game more entertaining or more strategic in any skill level. Not having to pay for Courier eliminates the possibility of playing games without a Courier.

Making Couriers free will also stimulate the Courier skin market. Players who don’t play support will have a reason to buy Courier skins and players who only play support will be able to see Courier skins owned by other players much more often. Unusual Couriers with Prismatic Gems and Ethereal Gems have high value and there are people who buy a lot of chests to get them.

Other key changes

* Killing a neutral camp stack now gives a bonus 15% gold bounty to the hero that stacked it.

No bonus is given if the stack is cleared by an enemy or the hero that stacked it. (New audio is now played once a stack is successful. Stacked neutrals have a buff with the stacker’s hero icon on it)

Supports’ decision-making on when to stack camps and when to do other stuff won’t be affected much in higher skill level and professional games due to the need to prioritize cores, but this might make some lower skill level players learn to stack camps and get used to it. 15% gold bounty isn’t much, but it is much more than 0 gold and support players in lower skill level games can be greedy for gold.

* Tier 1 mid lane towers are now a bit closer to the river

This makes the midlane more dependent to the technical capability of the midplayers. Ganking midlane is harder due to the towers being closer to the midlane heroes so it should happen less often.

1v1 midlane had been one of the ways Dota 2 fans relied on to determine which professional players they would like to worship. Changes in 7.07 made the midlane much more crowded and less interesting for fans who want to see some solo outplays instead of constant ganks.

* Initial bounty rune now gives +40 gold to all heroes instead of 100 to the hero that picks it up (those bounty runes look slightly different)

Now it doesn’t matter which hero picks the initial bounty rune. However, with double the bounty gold, securing the initial bounty runes is more important than before. Just because 2 heroes can pick two runes doesn’t mean that it is always good for the other 3 heroes to block creeps. Attempts to get more than 2 will be more common.

This unfortunately created more demand for supports to buy additional Sentry Wards to secure runes if the opposing team had invisible heroes. Since one rune gives as much gold as the cost for two Sentry Wards, securing initial bounty runes against invisible heroes can be one reason a hard support can still be very poor at the start of the game.

The post Dota 2 patch 7.09 analysis: Better life for pub supports appeared first on Esport Bet.

Since then, other games have followed Dota 2’s path and many new games have emerged, with games like CS:GO, StarCraft and many others now firmly in the headlines.

Fast forward to 2018 and Dota 2 still conducts the biggest esports events with the biggest prizepools. The International 2017, Dota 2’s biggest event, had over USD $20 million in prizes up for grabs.

However, the game is losing non-professional players. In January 2018, the average number of players in Dota 2 was 486,861. In January 2017 the number was 580,281.

Esports is definitely getting bigger every year, but Dota 2 may not be in the same boat.

February will be the true guide with it traditionally a strong month for Dota 2 with generally large increases as people return back to normal routines and recover from the festive season.

Whether it’s the increased competition coming from like games or players growing weary of the game we are not sure. But it’s unlikely to be an anomaly.

Positive changes might come in the latter half of February. Chinese New Year was last week and roster lock was the week before. This week have a major, ESL One Katowice 2018, and another major, The Bucharest Major, two weeks after which generally spikes interest in the games.

Speaking of which there has been some serious player movements, which has created a bit of a buzz about the upcoming majors.

Roster changes are massive. NaVi acquired one of the world’s top players, Lil. Old names from China including ChuaN, BurNing, Ferrari 430 and xiao8 are reappearing. Even more western players moved to play in SEA region.

But it is still alarming the number of non professionals dropping out of the game. Hopefully the latest patch will make a difference.

Those who don’t follow the professional scene will be excited to know patch 7.09 makes it easier to play support in Public Games.

With a Dota 2 patch every other week for six months, there are bound to be other changes that make the game even more exciting for players in all skill levels.

I’m still waiting for the free Couriers.

The post Will the popularity of Dota 2 rise again? appeared first on Esport Bet.

Naga Siren has gained a lot of popularity in a short time, especially since becoming one of Dota Pro Circuit power Newbee’s key heroes.

Naga Siren’s main skill allows her teammates to nail huge wombo combos and has led to her becoming one of the most feared heroes in the right hands and one many hope to be rediscovered.

Naga Siren was picked by several teams in ESL One Genting 2018, but Newbee was the team that really brought the hero to the main stage. The TI7 runner-up defeated the TI7 winner Team Liquid by pairing Naga Siren with Disruptor in two out of five games.

In the other 3 games, Naga Siren was banned in the first phase twice and picked once by Team Liquid.

Song of the Siren is by far the skill that stood out the most out of all her skills and is the primary cause of her popularity.

This 1000/1200/1400 range sleep doesn’t let her teammates damage their enemies, but the duration is usually more than enough for her teammates to prepare wombo combos to unleash when the enemies wake up. Newbee used the voice as the set-up to get several enemies trapped by Disruptor’s Static Storm.

One week later, StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 4 was up and Naga Siren could be seen setting-up for Black Hole and Meteor Hammer as well. We didn’t get to see Naga Siren in action often, but that was because she got banned frequently.

Skill: Catch Spell Immune Enemies

Her other skills are also very valuable in the right situations. An enemy with an active Black King Bar isn’t always bad news for a microphone-holding Naga Siren. Although Song of the Siren doesn’t affect them, Ensnare does. A well-timed Song of the Siren can put all enemies except one to sleep and that one remaining can be hit like usual. Even if that one is trying to run away, Naga Siren can catch them with Ensnare. Ways to catch spell immune enemies outside are rare in Dota 2 and there are no items that can do that outside melee range. This makes Ensnare a very powerful skill by itself, and its synergy with Song of the Siren can seem too powerful in some situations.

Skill: Why Naga Siren’s Riptide is better than Gush

Naga Siren’s Riptide deals damage and reduces armor at the same time and while Tidehunter’s Gush does the same, Riptide is an AoE skill while Gush is not.

Of course that doesn’t mean Riptide is superior to Gush in every way. Gush also slows down the enemy, and with Aghanim’s Scepter Gush knocks enemies back as well. Riptide isn’t that neat, but if you remember Ensnare, Naga Siren does have a neat combo.

Another weakness of Riptide compared to Gush is its short range. Using Mirror Image does solve that, but it is often not worth taking Mirror Image early. It increases the mana needed for the hero to perform her combo, in early levels it is less likely for big wars to happen so it is not too dangerous for Naga Siren to come up close.

Mirror Image + Riptide combo shines in the later phase of the game. With good micro skills, the nuke can hit many heroes at once.

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Viability in All 5 Positions

Naga Siren was a hard carry and there was no big change or rework that made her no longer viable. There might be reasons why professional players prefer other heroes as their core, but seeing a core Naga Siren is becoming more common.

Picking multiple role heroes early is a drafting strategy that is used in the professional scene. There must be one day when a supposedly support Naga Siren got changed to a core Naga Siren in the drafting phase just to counter the enemy pick.

Offlane is the position that we generally don’t expect Naga Siren to be in. However, we are in an era that allows occasional offlane Pugna, Zeus, and Razor. Welcome to 2018.

Offlaning those heroes was already a thing in 2017. It can’t be impossible for Naga Siren to be played in the offlane. This hero has the potential to solo the offlane.

If one Spirit Bear can pull enemy creeps from behind their safelane tower to its offlane tower, three Mirror Images should be able to do it too. Image duration is 30 seconds, that is enough time to pull. Initiators are often offlaners so having Song of the Siren justifies Naga Siren in the offlane.

Besides that, Song of the Siren is basically enough to justify that hero being picked for any position due to how useful the skill can be.

Unfortunately, the strength and potential of the Grande Mermaid leaves us one question: will she get nerfed?

If we see more teams pick Naga Siren and nail unavoidable wombo combos or if we really see Naga Siren picked in other positions as well, it is likely for the hero to be nerfed.

It will be tricky to nerf Song of the Siren. The skill concept itself is already powerful and there aren’t many numbers in the skill that can be nerfed.

Cooldown and manacost have numbers that can be nerfed, but nerfing those numbers will lead to less skill usage and as a Dota 2 viewer, I will prefer if Naga Siren is nerfed in other ways because I don’t want less of those wombo combos.

I do hope that other skills or the hero’s stats get nerfed instead. If Song of the Siren does get nerfed, I hope only the spell duration is impacted, or maybe just nerf it in a unique way just like how Batrider was nerfed. Batrider initiation used to be so strong that nerfing Flaming Lasso itself wasn’t enough, you also had to nerf the hero’s vision as well.

The post Dota 2: Naga Siren from singing Villain to Newbee Hero appeared first on Esport Bet.

The victory was important for eSports powerhouse Team Liquid as it was still smarting from a loss to Newbee in the final of the ESL One Genting.

Team Liquid was too strong for LGD Gaming, who are a China squad, with a 3-1 victory which saw them drop just one map for the entire match.

They earned USD $135k and each player got 150 Qualifying Points, bringing them closer to the leaders, Team Secret.

Team Liquid winning the event was probably expected by a lot of fans due to how well they had been doing since the addition of gh to the roster.

What was unexpected was LGD Gaming making the final, beating Newbee on the way.

The return of fy in position four and the addition of Chalice and Malaysian player xNova in the last couple of months could have given LGD Gaming teamwork issues, but they showed they have combined just fine and it points to a positive future.

It can be said there are four teams in the top: Team Liquid, Newbee, Team Secret and Virtus.pro.

Even after recent results, it is hard to say that LGD Gaming is now a top team although the sharp improvement shows they may be on the rise.

Every once in a while, other teams defeat a top team, but no teams can show dominance consecutively in multiple events like those four.

The big question is whether LGD Gaming can get to the top of the scene and turn the top into a big 4 or big 5; or is LGD Gaming another one-event scene-stealer like Mineski with their triumph in PGL Open Bucharest?

Right now, LGD Gaming is ranked 11th in the Dota Pro Circuit team standings, but there are 12 events that teams can still get qualifying points from.

Do you think LGD Gaming is in the same level with Team Liquid, Newbee and Team Secret? Will they keep this roster or change players after TI8? Give us your opinions below!

The post Can LGD Gaming challenge the top four in Dota Pro Circuit? appeared first on Esport Bet.