If you haven't played Dota 2 in a while, you might want to come back and check out the newly released Update 7.20. As is tradition with all of the major Dota 2 patches, this one has brought in a veritable treasure trove of changes to both the core gameplay mechanics and the heroes themselves.
There are far too many balance tweaks for me to cover in brief, so if you're interested in losing around 30 minutes while frequently muttering "well, now that's interesting," you should head on over to the official website. What I will share, however, is a couple of highlights from the more general changes. It's not going to give you the whole picture, but it'll at least give you an idea of just how vast this update is. Have a gander:
Map Changes
• Map has been reworked
Deny Mechanics
• Denies no longer give the denier 25% XP
• Creep denies now give the denier 20% of the gold bounty [?]
Teleporting
• Added a new dedicated inventory slot to hold Town Portal Scrolls [?]
• Boots of Travel: No longer shares cooldown with Town Portal Scrolls. Upon teleporting, +10 seconds are now added to your Town Portal Scroll cooldown
Hero Selection
• Removed Daily Bonus Hero concept
• Random once again picks from the entire hero pool, but now ignores your 25 least played heroes [?]
• Random can now only be used for the first two hero picks on your team
Hero Kill Bounty XP
• Killing Sprees now give an XP bonus ranging from 200 to 1250
• Reworked and simplified XP hero kill bounty system. No longer includes a team XP component
Mana and HP Regen
• Reworked Mana and HP regen from attributes. They are no longer multipliers of your regeneration values
Spell Immunity and Dispels
• Numerous abilities now no longer pierce spell immunity: Curse of Avernus, Acid Spray, Bloodrage, Thirst, Elder Dragon Form, Lycan Wolf Cripple, Epicenter, Entangling Claws, etc.
Misc Changes
• Day/Night cycle increased from 4 minutes to 5 minutes
• Scan no longer ignores units in the Roshan pit
• Removed movement speed modifiers from spawned creeps (most important for the early game creeps on side lanes)
• Lifesteal amount is no longer limited by the current HP of the target and uses the full damage you are dealing instead
Item Changes
• Phase Boots: Item Reworked
- Reworked to no longer have an active. Now passively gives you movement speed bonus, collision phasing and turn rate anytime you issue an attack to a target. Buff dispels whenever you move elsewhere and cancel your attack. Maximum range of 900 for attack orders. [?] This has no cooldown. Buff lingers for 0.5 seconds
• Ring of Aquila:
- Removed Ring of Aquila from the game
As you can see just from this small batch of changes alone, this is a pretty darn massive update, and one that is going to shake up the entire metagame. So if you feel like giving Dota 2 another try, or just starting for the very first time, this would be an excellent time to do so as everyone is still adjusting to all of the new changes and their effects.
You can learn more about Update 7.20, as well as Dota 2 itself, by visiting the official website. Have fun, and don't be afraid to experiment with new combinations!