The world of eSports is fluid. All competitive games, like Dota 2, receive regular updates, which allow them to perfect their balance and create the most suitable tournament conditions. Recently, three industry giants, Dota 2, League of Legends, and CS: 2, received massive patches, which have significantly altered the eSports competitive landscape.
League of Legends
The latest League of Legends patch, 25.10, promises to heavily rebalance the presence of AP-reliant champions. It derives from changing AP items, increasing their ability power scaling, and decreasing their health benefits. Now, mages become squishier, which brings them closer to their primary character concepts.
Meanwhile, many AP items receive straight-up buffs. Thus, Rabadon’s Deathcap, Nashor’s Tooth, and Morellonomicon now cost 100 gold less. It means that characters that rely on these items, like Katarina, Kog’Maw, Varus, and countless control and assassin mages, can hit their power spikes earlier to cast fear upon the map.
The 25.10 LoL patch strongly suggests that eSports teams who build their strategies around AP champions will prevail, which is good news for bettors. You can see how the patch impacts the odds at https://getesports.net/en/esports-betting/ by comparing online bookmakers that offer LoL bets.
Another update to factor in before your wagering is character changes. While the majority of them remain insignificant, some, like Vi’s, heavily impact the way a champion is played. She has got a damage reduction on her Q and R on higher levels, indicating that Vi won’t deal as much damage in mid/late-game as she did before the patch.
Changes have also touched Smolder, who has been ignored in pro play since the previous patch. Now, his E and Q deal more instant and burning damage per stack, giving the champion a better scaling potential.
Counter-Strike 2
The most famous first-person shooter in the world has also changed recently. Since the patch of April 1st, the game has lightly reshaped its Inferno and Train maps.
Speaking about the first, Valve has made the appearance of the “Pit” less obscure, which makes it easier for an attacking team to enter A. At the same time, developers have changed the explicit and implicit textures to impact the players’ encounters with grenades, reducing their overall strength.
Train received some other minor changes. The most significant was shortening the beam above A site, which makes it easier for players to throw grenades precisely. A similar change was applied to the B plant, where Valve changed the textures of the overhead arch to remove grenade collisions.
Dota 2
Of the three, Dota 2 received the most significant updates in its recent 7.39 patch. They touched on many game aspects, including changes to the shop, courier, Aghanim abilities, and character balance.
If you look at Dota 2 through an eSports prism, you should be interested only in the former. They start with a reworked Spirit Breaker Aghanim ability, Planar Pocket. Now, it allows the blue beast to target this skill at his teammates or opponents, redirecting buffs and debuffs they receive onto himself.
This change drastically improves the effectiveness of Spirit Breaker in mid/late-game team fights. Barathrum will especially shine playing against buff-centered characters, like Dazzle or Oracle, preventing them from saving their mates.
Speaking about Dazzle, he also got a novelty. If you know this character’s playstyle, you’re aware that he doesn’t level up Grave until level 10–11. More so, the early level Grave has a low range, which makes it useless. From now on, Dazzle receives a 900 range on his Grave, becoming a much more impactful character and being able to get this skill from early levels.
Another character who got buffed in this patch is Nature’s Prophet. He got a new talent that enables the character to grow trees whenever an enemy dies within a 700-unit radius of him. The tree scatters 4 gold bags around it for 2 seconds. By picking a single bag, you receive gold equal to 1.5 times the killed hero’s level.
With this new aspect, Nature’s Prophet now gains new supportive capabilities. He can babysit specific lanes or characters to provide them with an extra early game boost, pushing them to reach their power spikes.