Lil on Spring Cleaning

Lil about 7.08!

The developers of Dota 2 released a spring update of the game client. We talked with Ilya "Lil" Ilyuk and learned his opinion about the key innovations of the patch 7.08. More information about all the changes you can find in our .

-Hi! Recently IceFrog announced that Valve want to implement a new system of game updates. Instead of big patches, there will be small regular updates. Do you think this is the right approach?

-Hi! It’s hard to tell whether or not this is the right way. In my opinion Valve is simply pursuing different goals. Before, when the new big patch would come out, it felt as if you’re playing a totally different game. There was its own charm in that, if you will. Of course, there were some drawbacks. It felt like waiting for half a year to try a new product. Meanwhile now, you’d be playing a game that would change, even if a little bit, each 2 weeks. I think this will kindle the interest, so the news are actually pretty good.

-How important is the patch “wow-effect” for the pro players in general, and you in particular?

-I can’t say I’ve got some special preferences, or that it matters a lot to me because for pro players Dota 2 is a job. We have to manage to do it and learn, adapt to any patch. Also, the game is so multifaceted and diverse - it could sometimes take more than a year to go through a particular patch.

For example, let’s take the patch of The International 2017. It did not change drastically, overall. Yet some heroes fall out of meta, then come back with a different playstyle, while something not as good falls back. The change is gradual.

-From now on the updates may hit even during the tournaments or the qualifiers. Will it bother the teams a lot?

-That’s an old news, to be fair. Not the first time this happened. Also, I think, a truly strong team can and should win regardless of the circumstances - new update, bad mood, unfavorable weather and the like. If you can win a tournament, you will win it, and it is irrelevant whether or not the update will happen.

Obviously, the training process becomes harder in a certain sense. Now you, alongside everything else, have to be able to improvise. Let’s say, you prepare certain strategies with certain heroes, arrive at the tournament, and at some point everything changes. It is then that you have to improvise, there’s no other way - the skill comes in handy, it is a good one to have.

-Last Thursday Valve rolled out “Spring Cleaning” update. Would you share your first thoughts about it?

-I did not feel like anything has drastically changed. All things considered, they’ve tweaked the talents, but the reduced damage of Enchantress or a bit more armor for towers… It doesn’t change the game. So nothing stood out.

-How influential are the changes, related to gold from the Bounty rune? How will it it impact heroes of various positions?

-Usually support heroes are the ones to pick up the runes before minute 10, after that cores become a priority for the runes. The conclusion is simple: the supports will have a bit more money, even minutes will now be more important. Getting the rune will be a higher-priority task than pulling or showing up in a lane, but I wouldn’t call that a huge change.

-What are the notable item changes for you?

-Definitely, Meteor Hammer - the cooldown has almost been halved. It is actually a really strong item, both cheap and useful. It is surely possible to put it to good use. I am playing a lot of pub games and notice that it’s getting picked up by various players of all positions.

-How important are the cooldown changes for Black King Bar, Hurricane Pike and Blink Dagger? In your opinion, will those artifacts drop in popularity or the opposite?

-70 second BKB cooldown is unusual, but cool. Now there’s a better way to estimate the time frame when your ally or the opponent has BKB - you can plan according to the information, not intuition.

I don’t think the update will influence the popularity of other items. For example, the changes of Blink Dagger and Hurricane Pike won’t be affecting them so much.

-Let’s pay attention to some hero changes. Could you someone was heavily nerfed? Are there any heroes that could become more appealing after the Spring Cleaning?

-Heroes… I didn’t see any significant changes in the patch notes. Tusk is unable to Snowball out of Root? So? Shadow Shaman’s Shackle damage got nerfed, but that’s not the main point of the hero. He can come to a lane and deny creeps just fine.

-Another novelty is 6-months ban. Do you like it? Maybe a bit too harsh?

-I think this is a correct decision. Hope I won’t get banned. :) To be precise, I hope all the bans will be tracked and regulated. For example, if a team spam-reported a player and he got banned for half a year. This shouldn’t be happening. I want to believe people at Valve will watch the replays, evaluate and make the decision. Then the system will work as intended.

-How do you like the new player profile?

-So far it’s inconvenient, profile look always changes, but then you get used to it. The changing background is cool, though.

-What do you think about the last hit trainer, changelog notifications, neutral creeps difficulty display? Is Dota 2 becoming more newbie-friendly? Is it good?

-Maybe it’s actually good for the newcomers. They are getting interested, get a chance to learn something. But as a pro player, I don’t really need that.

-What would you advise the developers to pay attention to for the next patches?

-Matchmaking system. That’s it. Party matchmaking and solo matchmaking. Team matchmaking should actually make sense. Regarding solo, it needs some balancing: pro player can be matched with those who just started playing.