Patch 7.40 is one of those Dota 2 updates that quietly touches almost every part of the game at once. A new support–disabler hero arrives, key progression systems shift, long‑standing item interactions are broken up, and several heroes get near‑reworks. Matches will feel different even before anyone picks Largo.
New hero Largo (support, disabler, durable)
Largo is a melee support with a bard theme and a kit built around positioning, tempo control, and mana efficiency.
Catchy Lick is a short‑range tongue pull. It drags the target a small distance toward Largo, applies a basic dispel, and deals damage if the target is an enemy. Whenever Catchy Lick dispels something, Largo gains a brief health regeneration buff, which rewards using it to strip debuffs rather than only for displacement.
Frogstomp throws a cluster of froglings into a target area. Every second they slam the ground, dealing damage, applying ministuns, and slowing movement. Left uncontested, the stomps create a persistent zone where channeling and precise spellcasting become unreliable.
Croak of Genius is a single‑target support tool. Largo plays a short tune on an ally, reducing the mana cost of that hero’s items and abilities. A percentage of the damage they deal then “reverberates” over five seconds. Each time the buffed hero spends mana, the remaining duration is shaved down, so spamming spells frontloads the benefit instead of stretching it out.
Amphibian Rhapsody, Largo’s ultimate, temporarily replaces his ability bar with three song abilities and disarms him. Each song has a distinct teamfight effect, but only works if you hit the rhythm prompts. Every successful strum gives a stack of Groovin’, which adds armor and reduces the mana cost of the songs. Missing a beat removes a stack, and stacks linger briefly after the performance ends, letting Largo carry some extra durability out of the channel.
For full numerical details and talent values, Largo’s hero page is available in the in‑game client and on the Dota 2 website.
Core system changes (talents, assists, couriers, illusions)
Patch 7.40 changes how heroes scale and how team fights pay out, without touching core stats directly.
Talent points decoupled from skill points. Talents no longer consume regular ability points. Instead, each talent tier uses its own point granted at levels 10, 15, 20, 25, and then again at 27–30. All heroes that rely on the +2 All Attributes “filler” talent now end up with every +2 attribute node by level 22, and facets that had been reduced to six bonuses go back up to seven.
Assist gold rework. The assist formula now includes a flat component per hero so low‑net‑worth lineups get more reliable returns from participating in kills. The new formula is:
Assist gold = 15 + (50 + VictimNetworth × 0.037) ÷ number of heroesThat base 50 inside the bracket increases the floor of assist rewards while still scaling with the victim’s net worth and the number of contributors.
Lane creeps and Flagbearers scale more. Melee creep bounty now climbs by 1 gold every lane upgrade (every 7:30). Flagbearers gain the same incremental gold bump, their AoE bounty radius grows from 1200 to 1500, and killing one with any controlled unit always sends the bonus directly to the owning hero, even if they are far away. The bonus is now classified as creep gold instead of ability gold, which matters for some tracking and amplification effects.
Flagbearer Inspiration is refocused on creeps. The aura no longer affects heroes at all, and instead grants creeps magic resistance that ramps from 0% by 4% every lane upgrade, capping after 15 upgrades.
Couriers are less punishing to lose. Courier respawn time drops to 45s + 5s × hero level, and couriers are no longer slowed while carrying basic consumables like Clarity, Enchanted Mango, Faerie Fire, Healing Salve, or Tango. Flying couriers that are told to “Go to Secret Shop” pick a more tucked‑away spot within range instead of stopping in obvious choke points.
Illusion vision normalized. All illusions now share the same vision: 800 units during the day and 400 at night. This limits outlier abuses from specific illusion sources and makes their scouting potential more predictable.
Map objectives and rune changes
Objective control is slightly less forgiving for lifesteal‑heavy lineups, while informational tools around Tormentors catch up to Roshan.
Roshan lifesteal reduction. Roshan is no longer treated as a hero for lifesteal. Any physical lifesteal against him is reduced by 40%, and spell lifesteal by 80%. This directly hits solo Rosh attempts that leaned on high sustain, such as Mask of Madness or lifesteal talents, without changing his base stats.
His newer abilities are sharpened as well. Roar of Retribution now applies a disarm that cannot be dispelled, and Slam trades its former doubled duration against creeps for doubled damage to creeps instead.
Tormentor visibility. A Tormentor timer now sits near the minimap, mirroring the Roshan timer. Pinging the Tormentor icon or the actual Tormentor location uses a unified ping that shows its state to the team. The minimap reduces duplicate icons to one marker that tracks whichever Tormentor is up or will spawn next. The passive damage aura “The Shining” only starts damaging nearby enemies after Tormentor is attacked, rather than pulsing constantly.
Rune adjustments. Bounty Runes now pay out based on when they spawned, not when someone picks them up, which rewards early contest rather than hoarding. Haste Rune duration is locked at 22 seconds, no longer extending every rune cycle. Invisibility Runes lose their damage reduction bonus, so they only provide invisibility and move speed rather than a defensive buff.
Terrain, gates, watchers, and Twin Gates
Several terrain tweaks aim to clarify pathing around bases, shrines, and river crossings while trimming extreme mobility tricks.
Streams now physically extend into both bases, with new Defender’s Gates placed on the outer edge of each safelane where the streams exit. Trees near the new gates have been cleared to smooth access. The hard camp previously tucked near each Tier 3 tower at the old stream origin is downgraded to a medium camp, and the nearby medium amphibian camp is nudged closer to base along the waterway.
Wisdom Shrines and their Watchers are moved down to low ground, slightly closer to their respective Tier 1 towers, and the pockets around them are filled with water connected back to lane rivers. The Watchers near these shrines now gain vision over them at night. Hard camps by the shrines are pulled slightly toward base to reduce awkward pulls and contest angles. The “bridges” in the river have been rebuilt as fully modeled bridges with slightly widened approaches near Lotus Pools.
In both triangles, the primary hard camp inside the triangle is now a medium camp, slowing early high‑value stack farming. The Radiant offlane creep path and Tier 2 offlane tower position are adjusted so lane creeps consistently path to one side instead of sometimes splitting. Radiant’s Secret Shop trigger area shifts slightly toward the Radiant Tier 1 and is centered more tightly on the shopkeeper.
Twin Gates become cheaper to use, with mana cost down from 75 to 30. If a Twin Gates teleport channel is interrupted, the mana cost is fully refunded.
Watchers and flying‑path abuses. Watcher night vision drops from 800 to 450 while capture time falls from 1.5 to 1 second, making them easier and faster to flip but weaker as passive night wards. Watchers closest to mid and the small water camps near each mid Tier 1 are removed. The primary jungle Watchers move from stair edges near small camps to cliffs above Bounty Runes, emphasizing rune‑centric control.
Extra invisible blockers are added around map edges and behind Tormentors, cutting off some previously unintended flying hero paths such as Batrider reaching back cliffs during Firefly.
Defender’s Gates now see more and communicate it better. Vision radius increases from 525 to 700, and holding Alt reveals a visual radius ring similar to wards and Watchers.
Targeting rules for invulnerable and Cycloned units
Spells and items that could interact with invulnerable or Cycloned units are standardized. Most now either cannot target those units at all or only affect them via area‑based effects.
On the item side, Nullifier can no longer be cast on invulnerable targets. For neutral creeps, the Satyr Banisher’s Purge likewise cannot be cast on invulnerable units.
Several hero abilities lose direct interaction with invulnerable targets:
- Dark Seer’s Vacuum no longer moves invulnerable units.
- Naga Siren’s Ensnare cannot target invulnerable enemies unless that invulnerability came from her own Song of the Siren.
- Ogre Magi’s Bloodlust stops targeting invulnerable units, but can still buff invulnerable buildings like protected Tier 2–4 towers.
- Oracle’s Fortune’s End, Shadow Demon’s Demonic Purge and Demonic Cleanse, Sniper’s Assassinate, Sven’s Aghanim’s Scepter–enhanced Storm Hammer, and Vengeful Spirit’s Nether Swap can no longer target invulnerable units.
Area logic remains for some: Oracle’s Fortune’s End and Sven’s Storm Hammer with Aghanim’s still affect invulnerable units caught in their radius if cast on a valid target.
Because Cyclone states also grant invulnerability, the same restrictions apply. Three spells now have explicit Cyclone interactions:
- Nullify immediately dispels Cyclone if the target was already Nullified when Cyclone was applied, or if the Nullifier projectile or channel completes before the Cyclone lands.
- Fortune’s End cannot be aimed at Cycloned units, but will dispel Cyclone on units hit in its AoE.
- Aghanim’s Storm Hammer behaves the same way, dispelling Cyclone within its radius even when the direct target is not Cycloned.
Consumables, wards, and early item economy
The laning economy shifts slightly upward while consumable sharing loses some of its efficiency spikes.
Clarity, Tango, Salve. Clarity stock in the shop goes from 4 to 5, at a higher price of 60 gold (up from 50). Tango stock rises from 8 to 10. Shared Tangos now heal at half the health per second of a self‑used Tango instead of being a full‑strength transfer of regen. Healing Salve stock also increases from 4 to 5, and casting Salve on an ally no longer halves its duration; instead, the heal rate on allies is halved, which makes it less explosive as an emergency top‑off while preserving uptime.
Iron Branch and small items. Iron Branch now costs 55 gold rather than 50. That small increase reverberates into items that build from a Branch, nudging their total cost upward by 10 gold in cases like Magic Wand.
Observer and Sentry Wards. Both ward types gain an anti‑overlap rule and lose interactions with cast range bonuses. An Observer or Sentry cannot be placed within 300 units of a same‑team ward of the same type if the previous ward was planted less than one second ago. This prevents instant double‑stacking in the same spot, both from accidents and from griefing. Wards also ignore increased cast range for placement, so heroes with long range talents or items can no longer safely ward faraway cliffs from fountain or low ground.
Smoke of Deceit quality of life. Smoke can now be used directly from the backpack. Moving it from backpack into main inventory no longer applies an internal cooldown; once it’s in an active slot, it is immediately ready, which smooths last‑second Smoke calls.
Major item balance changes
Several widely picked items change core behavior, while others have quiet cost or stat shifts.
Diffusal Blade and Disperser. The biggest systemic nerf for illusion lineups is that Manabreak no longer applies from illusions on both Diffusal Blade and Disperser. Illusions still deal their physical damage but no longer burn mana. Disperser’s Suppress active now applies a basic dispel to any target rather than only certain states.
Ethereal Blade. Ethereal Blade’s build shifts from Aether Lens to Ultimate Orb. It trades +300 mana, +3 mana regen, and +250 cast range for a substantial +24 All Attributes. Ether Blast’s vulnerability component drops from 40% extra magic damage taken to 30%, and the nuke’s scaling changes from 1.5× the target’s primary attribute to 1× the sum of the caster’s attributes, further tying the item to stat‑heavy builds.
Guardian Greaves. Greaves become cheaper and more self‑focused. The Buckler requirement is removed, recipe cost falls sharply, and overall item price drops from 5050 to 4300. Flat armor goes up from +4 to +5, but the Guardian Aura no longer supplies armor to allies, nor does it ramp extra armor and mana regen to low‑health teammates. When the wearer is under 25% HP, they still gain bonus health regen from the aura, but the panic aura for the team is gone.
Hand of Midas. Midas now exclusively converts gold. The Transmute active no longer applies any experience multiplier to the target creep; it only grants the gold bonus. To compensate, charge cooldown is reduced from 110 to 90 seconds, encouraging more frequent uses but removing the snowballing XP curve that made greedy cores spike in levels.
Heart of Tarrasque. Heart’s base cost nudges down from 5200 to 5100 because Ring of Tarrasque itself is cheaper. Its maximum health regeneration drops from 1.4% to 1% of max health, but Heart gains a new passive, Behemoth’s Blood, which increases health regeneration by 1.5% of missing health. This makes Heart much stronger at stabilizing low‑HP cores while toning down the ambient sustain of already‑healthy targets. Multiple Hearts do not stack this new passive.
Helm of the Dominator. The value a team gets from killing a dominated creep halves. The Dominate bonus gold and experience bounty for the opponent goes from 100% of the creep’s base to 50%, reducing how punishing it is to lose a high‑value neutral to a pickoff while still giving an incentive to kill it.
Heaven’s Halberd. Halberd’s disarm now behaves more like a hard control. Only strong dispels can remove it, and melee/ranged targets share the same 3‑second disarm duration. Cooldown increases slightly from 18 to 20 seconds.
Radiance. Radiance shifts away from raw anti‑illusion pressure to evasion. Its evasion bonus rises from 15% to 25%, while the Burn aura no longer causes enemies to miss attacks and no longer deals extra damage to illusions. Illusion cores are less vulnerable to being passively shredded by one Radiance carrier, but the carrier itself becomes harder to bring down with right‑clicks.
Refresher Orb. Refresher’s build drops Cornucopia and replaces its cheap recipe with a much more expensive one while keeping the total price at 5000 gold. Flat bonus damage is removed and both health and mana regeneration from the item are trimmed. Its role is defined more strictly as a cooldown reset rather than a stat stick.
Other notable but smaller adjustments include:
- Ghost Scepter: magic damage vulnerability in Ghost Form reduced from 40% to 30%.
- Boots of Bearing: now includes Ring of Tarrasque, with higher health regeneration but unchanged total cost.
- Crimson Guard: the Guard buff can no longer be dispelled at all.
- Octarine Core: gains a small recipe cost bump, can no longer be disassembled, and costs slightly more total gold.
- Perseverance: now disassemblable, which increases flexibility in building or backing out of certain items.
- Phylactery: rebuilt around Perseverance instead of Point Booster; it loses flat health and mana, but now grants significant health and mana regeneration.
Neutral items: new artifacts, rotations, and tier shifts
The neutral item pool rotates several entries out and introduces new artifacts that emphasize positioning, damage windows, and defensive spikes.
Three early Tier 1 neutrals—Ripper’s Lash, Sister’s Shroud, and Spark of Courage—are removed. In their place:
- Ash Legion Shield (Tier 1): Active Shield Wall slows the wearer’s movement by 12, but grants a 140‑damage physical barrier to all allied player‑controlled units within 800 radius for 6 seconds. Wards are excluded.
- Duelist Gloves (Tier 1, returning): Passive Boldness adds 20 attack speed when any enemy hero is within 1200 units.
- Weighted Dice (Tier 1): Passive Loaded rolls base attack damage and creep bounty twice for last hits and keeps the higher result. The average gain is modest but can matter over many waves.
In the mid tiers, Brigand’s Blade and Gale Guard rotate out, while Defiant Shell returns as a Tier 2 artifact. Its Reciprocity passive triggers a counter‑attack for 80% of the wearer’s normal attack damage every time they are attacked, on a 5‑second cooldown, but cannot proc attack modifiers. Searing Signet’s Burn Through damage increases overall but now deals 50% less to non‑hero units. Jidi Pollen Bag’s Pollinate duration and max health damage drop, but its cooldown halves to 25 seconds, keeping its feel as a more frequent, lighter poke.
Unrelenting Eye moves down from Tier 5 to Tier 3. Its Relentless aura no longer gives status resistance to nearby enemies, and its slow resistance values and per‑hero ramp shrink, with its search radius now tied to the hero’s attack range. Magnifying Monocle, Outworld Staff, and Pyrrhic Cloak leave the pool.
At Tier 4, several new offensive and mobility options appear:
- Flayer’s Bota: Active Bloodthirst increases base damage by 15% and attack speed by 30 for 6 seconds, with no mana cost. Passive Bloodrush fully resets the active’s cooldown whenever an enemy hero dies within 1200 units.
- Idol of Scree'Auk: Active False Flight grants phased movement, 50% slow resistance, and 25% evasion for 5 seconds.
- Metamorphic Mandible: Active Pupate transforms the wearer into an insect form for 4 seconds: +35% magic resistance and +15% movement speed, but −20% model size and −45% armor. The buff is dispellable and cannot be cast while channeling.
- Rattlecage (returning): Reverberate fires up to two damaging projectiles at nearby enemies after the wearer takes 180 damage from any source, prioritizing heroes and applying a brief 100% movement and attack slow.
Helm of the Undying leaves the pool, notably removing one of the more polarizing late‑game safety nets.
At Tier 5, Dezun Bloodrite moves up from Tier 4 with a stronger area‑of‑effect bonus for its Blood Invocation effect, and a brand‑new top‑tier artifact appears:
- Riftshadow Prism (Tier 5): Active Refract spends 10% of the wearer’s current health to summon a full‑health illusion for 20 seconds. The illusion deals 50% outgoing damage and takes 240% incoming damage. It costs no mana and has a 30‑second cooldown.
Headline hero reworks and notable adjustments
A long list of hero tweaks ships with 7.40, but a few stand out for how much they alter play patterns.
Slark. Slark gains Essence Shift as an innate ability that scales automatically with his level, rather than consuming skill points. Its duration is now a flat 15 seconds plus 2.5 seconds per hero level. Pounce applies additional Essence Shift stacks when it successfully leashes a hero, helping him ramp faster in single engagements. A new basic attack modifier, Saltwater Shiv, steals movement speed, health regeneration, and a percentage of Health Restoration from targets every time Slark hits them with the modifier toggled, stacking without limit for the debuff’s duration. His ultimate, Shadow Dance, now also passively grants substantial movement speed and health regeneration whenever Slark is unseen, incorporating the previous Barracuda facet behavior into his core kit.
Lone Druid and Spirit Bear. Lone Druid’s relationship with his Spirit Bear changes significantly. Summon Spirit Bear becomes an innate ability in his fourth slot with a flat cooldown, and the Bear is treated much more like a hero for spell interactions, damage against structures and wards, and neutral item usage. The Bear now levels its own pseudo‑attributes, has its own talent tree, and can be affected by major single‑target spells such as Duel, Reaper’s Scythe, or Atrophy Aura, while no longer feeding certain permanent stat gains on death.
Lone Druid himself gains a point‑target Entangle ability that applies stacking counters in an area and then roots and damages enemies once they reach five stacks. His former shared armor mechanics move off Spirit Link, which now instead provides movement speed bonuses to both Lone Druid and the Bear and ensures Lone Druid’s attacks heal the Bear. True Form is tightened into a shorter, more frequent transformation with higher bonus damage and armor but no longer grants Entangling Claws or Demolish to Sylla directly.
Treant Protector. Treant is pushed toward an in‑your‑face bruiser rather than a global armor battery. His Leech Seed is reworked into a passive auto‑cast attack modifier that binds targets briefly, adds magic damage, and sends out two healing pulses to nearby allies, scaling with the damage Treant’s attack dealt. Living Armor drops its flat armor bonus and instead becomes a damage‑block shield that starts at 100 against player‑controlled sources and decays by fixed amounts each time it blocks, while also providing higher health regeneration but ending early if the block is exhausted. Overgrowth gains a major Aghanim’s Scepter upgrade letting Treant grow massive for 16 seconds, doubling his Strength and adding splash attacks with fixed move speed and debuff immunity for the buff. Eyes in the Forest shifts to his Aghanim’s Shard, with short‑lived enchanted trees that function more like specialized wards and no longer automatically spread Overgrowth.
Spectre. Spectre moves back into a pure agility identity and regains Haunt as her ultimate. Desolate becomes an innate that scales its bonus damage with each level up. A new basic Shadow Step sends a temporary illusion to a target with partial damage that Spectre can later Reality into, while Reality itself now always destroys the chosen illusion and includes a short travel time where both Spectre and the illusion are invulnerable. Haunt illusions deal lower default outgoing damage but can gain a strong fear effect around the first Reality target when Spectre has Aghanim’s Scepter.
Quality‑of‑life changes and Dota Plus updates
Beyond raw balance, 7.40 includes a few structural and tooling changes.
Multiplayer Demo Hero mode. Demo Hero is opened up to groups. Instead of a solo lab, players can now load into Demo with friends to test interactions together. The mode includes Roshan and a Tormentor on the map and adds menus to spawn neutrals, alter time, and adjust global toggles without leaving the demo session.
Dota Plus Buffs tab. Dota Plus subscribers gain a new post‑game view that tracks the number and total duration of buffs and debuffs applied to allies and enemies. That makes it easier to quantify how much value long‑duration effects like Bloodlust, Living Armor, or Spirit Vessel provided in a match.
Patch 7.40 simultaneously tightens a number of long‑standing edge cases—invulnerability targeting, illusion manaburn, Roshan lifesteal—while opening up new lines of play through Largo, revised neutrals, and reimagined heroes like Slark, Lone Druid, and Treant Protector. Expect the first waves of experimentation to revolve around which lineups can best exploit the new economic tuning and which supports can make the most of the updated warding and objective tools.
