Better Life for Supports?
When the patch notes for 7.00 were released, many players thought life for supports was going to get significantly easier. Support heroes received interesting, new talents, some providing either a choice between extra Gold or XP.
Moreover, lower level requirements, as well as Tome of Knowledge changes have made getting to these crucial levels a much simpler task. In turn, it should have created a more balanced support/core environment—with cores still being item dependant and no significant changes to the gold gains for the majority of core heroes, this meant that the period of relevance, or even dominance, for supports has increased.
The reality, however, was not as definitive. Supports did not suddenly become more popular among the players and neither do they dominate the pubs. It certainly doesn’t mean that the role is less important, compared to cores, but the ability to reliably raise MMR with support heroes is still well within the domain of the selected few exceptional players.
That said, the economy of support players has definitely improved. Compared to 6.88, the spread of the average GPM has tightened across heroes—on average, the highest earning heroes now earn 3% less Gold, while the poorest earn almost 4% more. The same, to an even higher extent, can be said about the XPM.
The new flat GPM increase and XP gain talents are definitely helping with the support item and level progression, and in this case the stats definitely do not lie. But do these talents actually help the heroes win more games?
GPM and Respawn Time Reduction (RTR)
Looking at the table, it becomes almost obvious that in most cases the GPM talent loses to its counterpart. In fact, in almost 65% of all cases, taking GPM over the other benefit is a game-losing choice.
Furthermore, in the majority of cases where taking GPM is a better alternative, it might not be the impact of the GPM increase itself, but rather the extremely low or even negative utility of the alternative, with the biggest culprit being the RTR, which consistently results in a higher chance of a loss.
On paper, the RTR sounds pretty good—spending less time dead means the hero has more time providing utility for the team or farming. In practice, especially in pubs, it frequently means that the hero simply has more chances to feed extra gold to the enemy team.
In a typical game of Dota, the life expectancy of a support is rather low, especially if the hero respawns much earlier than the rest of his team after an unsuccessful fight and has no backup. Certain heroes with RTR might be able to delay the high ground push on their own, but once again, it puts their life at risk and you generally should not expect too much of a single support or utility hero in the later stages of the game.
The RTR talents might shine in the competitive scene, however—higher degree of coordination and lower propensity to feed should be extremely helpful in this regard.
Returning to GPM, the only cases when these talents are a game winning choice, which is not supported by the negative RTR utility, is when they come early enough to matter. Getting a smaller amount of extra gold early in the game is always better than a larger increase in the later stages, because the talent is actually doing something for your hero for longer.
However, the impact of these GPM talents is still rather small, with the highest comparative value of +1.2% for Ogre Magi, with the alternative being +100 Cast Range.
Overall, the data for the GPM talents was certainly surprising—most players expected them to be significantly more impactful. However, as it stands, taking extra health, cooldown reduction, extra XP gain and even raw damage seems to be working better for the majority of players on the majority of heroes.
XPM
Taking the extra experience gain talent means sacrificing an immediate gain in favor of a long-term benefit. Turns out—Dota really doesn’t work like that, with these talents showing even worse performance than the GPM ones. Only in 5 out of 24 cases is picking +XP gain justified and two of these cases are when the talent is compared to the RTR.
The game has definitely sped up since the introduction of the patch. Snowballing has also become more of a problem, and trying to counter it with a late game investment is not an option, at least for pub players.
In professional games, the “comeback Midas” was a concept that occasionally worked, and when you are losing, the +XP talents feel exactly like the “comeback Midas” pick-ups. Only in the competitive scene, the choice is generally made by a much more capable player and is often backed by a team composition, which can hold the high ground for the item to at least pay for itself.
When you are winning, it is generally a “win more” option—you are not going to win more games by making this choice, but you are going to win them harder. In Dota, it doesn’t matter how you win—the only thing that matters is the destruction of the enemy Ancient. When trying to play reliably, it is almost always better to get the immediate advantage, however small, over the illusory late game gains.
The lesser of two evils
Visage and Omniknight are unique, in a sense that they have mutually exclusive GPM and XPM talents. Interestingly, for Visage, taking the XPM is a better deal, whereas Omniknight benefits more from extra gold.
Seeing how the Visage gameplay has been developing this last week-and-a-half, it is understandable—more and more frequently the hero has been picked as a core, rather than a support, which allows him to get to his Aghanim’s Scepter in a timely manner, regardless of the talent selection.
Omniknight, on the other hand, really doesn’t need a lot of extra levels past level 10, since it allows the hero to have both of his defensive spells maxed out. The extra duration on the Guardian Angel does come into play, and levels are still important for the hero, but definitely not as important as getting a timely Mekansm, potential manapool increasing items and Aether Lens.
Closing Thoughts
Talent trees are a major addition to Dota. They improve gameplay, making it more complex, and level the playing field in the later stages of the game, by offering unique upgrades. While, naturally, there is a certain amount of imbalance still present, it is still an overall positive change.
Understanding which talents are a better fit for the current situation will probably take the same amount of practice, as was once required for learning all the items and their appropriate use. The aggregate data should certainly help facilitate the process of learning and highlight the definitive outliers, however, as with everything aggregate, some degree of caution is required with the evaluation.
The information discussed above was based on data from the first week of the patch—a relatively small sample size, especially for game like Dota. While the trends are likely to continue, some changes to the balance, even the ones not directly related to the talents in question, might have a significant impact on their utility.
Honestly. Supports are pretty damn op. Especially in my MMR (1.4k lul) I think i only lost 1 game playing as support this patch. and i played like 20 games. CM and Enigma are my go to supports. The bonus gold is actually rediculous. i've had higher networth than my carries at the end of the game while still buying support items and wards and dusts etc. you can be so much more versatile with the talentree and not get blown up instantly every time you show your face. +200 mmr in 2 days playing support. ;D
Supports still get lit up even when people do stupid things like try to play them as carries. The problem with Dota isn't that supports are easier. The problem is matchmaking is still a joke and MMR is still a con and this game will continue to slowly bleed out because Valve is incompetent at things like that.
Kys with those 1st 2nd comment bull
i am twelve by the way
the only times i consider the GPM is if im having one of those games where an invisible hero is raping the team. The GPM talent is amazing when you go ward bitch.
Great article.
Actually I love supporting this patch. Roaming is WAY more valuable and more practiced now in pubs because of the bounty runes, this also results in better warding and more frequent ganks and teamfights. I like it.
лучше бы вы дауны ебаные систему репортов фиксили никогда дота не будет иметь большой онлайн, это убоьгая игра, лол в 100 раз лучше, там до игроков есть уважения, тут тебе акбаер 0-10 с мида кинет репртотик потому что ты назвал его мусром и тебе дают 5 игр лп, конченая игра которая никогда не будет им еть даже 1 миллиион оннлайна
Seems to me like any of the gpm or xpm talents you get that aren't a level 10 version don't pay enough dividends to consider when you do the math. I'm surprised that the respawn timer ends up being statistically worse though. Good article
Shut the fuck up aerugH
дратути
Now I'm even more sad that Treant Protector had his level 25 Bash talent replaced with a crummy 50sec respawn time reduction. from like one the best, to the worst talents. Extra living armor charges is aight, at least.
Seriously this bullshit has to stop at some point.
Supports are super strong .
Once upon a time it took some skill to ward (now valve has camp indicators)
You spent like 2 hours in single player trying to figure out where to ward and how to avoid counterwarding.
Right now ?Every idiot can buy a set of wards and find yours.
Furthermore beefy sups can fucking solo carry these days even in midgame which is quite pathetic if you ask me.
Bounty runes GPM talents all those stuff are making support too easy these days.
I am not saying people will pick it in pubs
but in terms of more buffs: lots of cost effective items backpack in the early game does deprive you of warding/smoking slots .
@ 76561198052815711
I like your views on support. Funny considering you play core most of the time. Cant see many supports since the latest patch came out. A lot of the changes they have introduces (such as indicators) are great for new players but don't really help anyone who has been playing for a while. Support is not easy and they are certainly not super strong, if they were then I would guess you would be picking them every match! As of yet I have not seen any pro teams pick 5 supports in a match. In fact it seems to be heading the other way and you have 1 hard support, 3 carries and a roaming support into carry.
Anyway... I play support virtually all of the time and since 7 have noticed a few things. I agree with some of the comments above, one of the biggest problems is lots of old players coming back and insisting they play core. They are rusty and have no idea how to play the game in its current state. It is a lot easier for rusty support with a great core to win a came than the other way around. The support can do everything correct but if you don't have a hard hitting carry to finish out the game then you are stuffed.
I would say that the changes to XP and gold mean I get both items and levels much quicker than before which does make the game a little more fun. I seem to have got to l25 in a load of games whereas in the old patch it was very rare indeed. Because of this i virtully never go for the XP/Gold upgrades as I seem to always get enough. The respawn reduction I also find useful, not so I can feed but so I can continue to farm and maybe have a minute without having to give it to my cores.
The backpack is also nice as it means I can store wards without them taking up space, so a bracer can provide me with those stats for longer.
The bigger map and new jungle is not making my life any easier. There are simply not enough wards to get the coverage I want, and dewarding is so much easier (this goes both ways of course). I like to play a position 4 in the jungle and its not really an option now especially as the cores insist in getting the bounty runes.
Monkey king is a huge problem as he is in almost every game and even with great warding he is hard to counter unless you have a select few heroes. Add this to the fact he can solo kill most supports and he is just spoiling games at the moment. Even as a KOTL there is not much you can do. You either are way ahead and getting a scepter is nice but you have probably already won the game by then or by the time you get it the game is over. I think when they nurf Monkey King it will help a lot.
Matchmaking also seems to be off (probably because of the flood of new/returning players). Before 7 most of the time you would have a fairly balanced team with people of a similar level and usually more than one support. Now you tend to play with people of all skill levels and virtually never another support. Life is hard :)
I think a lot of this will be ironed out in time and as users fall off again we should start to see some balance and I can continue to support in peace.
I love this new patch as support life, i gained 1k mmr in 3 days,supports are deadlier than carry if they have significant amount of gold, they will only gonna toy ypur carry til they out of bkb
Jebaited
Наконец-то оптимизировали и сделали минимальный интерфейс игры!
Великое и лучшее обновление в Dota ЗА ВСЮ ЕЁ ИСТОРИЮ!
Браво!
Но где патчи 6.89? И 6.90-6.99?
Или я считать разучилась? (