TL;DR
- Patch 7.37 introduces 12 new facets and reworks 21 innate abilities across 30 heroes
- Key strategic changes include enhanced jungle control, improved defensive mechanisms, and new initiation tools
- Hero roles are shifting with new support capabilities and carry adjustments
- Several heroes received complete ability reworks changing their core gameplay patterns
- The update emphasizes positioning and resource management with new conditional effects
Games and Esports Articles Dota 2
Valve Corporation’s July 31st Dota 2 update, patch 7.37, represents one of the most significant balance adjustments in recent memory. The developers explicitly stated their goal was “getting the playing field leveled again,” which they’ve accomplished through comprehensive reworks of facet and innate ability systems. This analysis examines how these changes will reshape hero dynamics and strategic approaches across all skill levels.
Understanding these modifications is crucial for competitive players, as they fundamentally alter hero power spikes, itemization priorities, and teamfight execution. The patch introduces new strategic dimensions while removing some established mechanics that have defined the meta for months.
Strategic Removal: Font of Avernus, which previously provided accelerated respawn timing with a 0.9 factor, has been eliminated from Abaddon’s kit. This change significantly impacts his late-game sustainability and reduces his ability to repeatedly engage in extended teamfights.
New Combat Mechanic: Withering Mist introduces a powerful anti-sustain tool that activates when damaging enemies below 40% health threshold. The debuff persists for 5 seconds, reducing all forms of health recovery by 35%, making Abaddon particularly effective against heroes reliant on healing and regeneration mechanics.
Advanced Tip: Time your shield explosions and curse applications when enemies approach critical health levels to maximize the healing reduction effect during crucial teamfight moments.
Mana Break transitions from innate status to a standard ability, replaced by Persecutor – a conditional slow mechanic that scales with target mana deficiency. The slow ranges from 12.5/15/17.5/20% minimum at 50% mana to 25/30/35/40% maximum when enemies are completely drained.
Mechanics Insight: Persecutor’s scaling directly correlates with Mana Void progression, creating powerful synergy between your disable and ultimate execution potential.
Common Mistake: Players often underestimate the slow’s effectiveness against intelligence heroes with large mana pools. Even at 50% mana, the slow remains impactful for securing kills during chase scenarios.
Inner Beast departs from innate classification, making way for Rugged – a specialized defensive passive. This enhancement boosts Beastmaster’s damage block probability from 50% to perfect 100% immunity against non-hero units, significantly improving his jungle clearing efficiency and lane sustainability.
Optimization Strategy: Leverage the complete damage block against creeps to maintain higher health during farming phases, enabling more aggressive positioning in lane contests.
Drunken Brawler exits the innate roster, replaced by Belligerent – a resurrection-based damage amplification system. Brewmaster gains 20% attack damage for 30 seconds after respawning or 15 seconds following Primal Split conclusion.
Strategic Application: Coordinate your team’s engagement timing with your respawn cycles to maximize the damage window during critical objective fights.
Advanced Technique: Time your Primal Split usage to conclude just as teamfights reach their peak, ensuring maximum damage output during the most decisive moments.

New Tactical Option: Seeing Red facet introduces an activatable Warpath variant that trades peripheral vision for substantial power spikes. The 90-degree cone limitation creates high-risk, high-reward engagement scenarios requiring precise positioning awareness.
Warpath transitions from innate to Prickly passive, providing 10% damage and debuff duration amplification against enemies positioned behind Bristleback.
Positioning Critical: The vision restriction makes this facet particularly dangerous against mobile heroes who can flank from unexpected angles.
Pro Tip: Activate Seeing Red when committing to all-in engagements where the directional limitation won’t be exploited by enemy repositioning abilities.
Defensive Enhancement: Mourning Ritual facet introduces damage staggering mechanics, delaying 20/30/40/50% of incoming damage over 5-second intervals. This creates windows for healing and shield regeneration between damage ticks.
Mechanical Advantage: The delayed damage pattern synergizes exceptionally well with Exorcism, allowing Death Prophet to maintain her ultimate form longer during sustained combat situations.
Scaling Ultimate: Impending Doom facet progressively increases Doom’s duration by 0.66 seconds every 6.66 minutes, though at the cost of reduced damage per second from 30/50/70 to 30/45/60, emphasizing lockdown over burst damage.
Turbo Mode Consideration: The duration increase doubles in Turbo matches, making Doom an exceptionally potent pick in accelerated game modes.
Strategic Insight: This change transforms Doom from an early-game nuke into a scaling disable that becomes increasingly threatening as matches progress.
Team Utility: Ready to Roll facet enhances Earth Spirit’s mobility support capabilities. Rolling over allies with Rolling Boulder grants them 15/20/25/30% bonus movement speed for 4 seconds while improving his own engagement parameters.
Enhanced Parameters: The ability now travels at 1900 speed with 2.5x distance multiplier and additional stun duration scaling from 0.3 to 0.9 seconds based on ability level.
Coordination Required: This facet demands precise positioning and timing to maximize both the initiation potential and allied escape capabilities.
Aftershock exits innate status, replaced by Spirit Cairn – a post-death terrain control mechanism. Upon death, Earthshaker creates a 75-radius fissure that blocks movement, provides vision, and enables experience gain in the surrounding area.
Strategic Application: The death-triggered fissure creates persistent area denial even after elimination, potentially turning teamfight losses into objective security.
Astral Spirit transitions from innate classification to Tip the Scales – a structure enhancement passive. Allied creeps and buildings affected by Glyph of Fortification or Roshan’s Banner deal 100% increased damage, significantly enhancing defensive capabilities during high-ground defenses and Roshan contests.
Objective Focus: This ability significantly impacts how teams approach building pushes and ancient defenses, creating new strategic considerations for late-game decision making.
Flame Guard departs innate status, replaced by Immolation – a persistent area damage effect scaling with Fire Remnant progression.
Aghanim’s Integration: The Shard upgrade enhances damage by 10, radius by 175, and grants Fire Remnants the current Immolation level, creating powerful synergy between his mobility and damage output capabilities.
Resource Adjustment: Forest Freebie innate ability removal eliminates the additional Neutral Item token generation mechanic, fundamentally changing her economic progression patterns.
New Jungle Dynamics: Rabble-Rouser innate introduces neutral camp damage amplification against enemy heroes, scaling from 10% base plus 3% per Enchantress level.
Strategic Implication: This change transforms Enchantress from a resource accelerator into a jungle control specialist with defensive utility against enemy invasions.
Health-Based Damage: Incendiary facet modifies Burning Spears mechanics to inflict 1% maximum health damage per second while changing the cost structure from current to maximum health percentage.
Risk Management: The health cost adjustment creates different risk calculations during engagements, particularly when Huskar operates at low health thresholds where the percentage-based cost becomes more manageable.
Tidebringer transitions from innate classification to Admiral’s Rum – an automatic defensive trigger mechanism. The ability activates when damage would reduce Kunkka below 65% health threshold, providing movement speed and damage delay mechanics.
Survival Mechanism: This passive provides 10% bonus movement speed while delaying 20% of incoming damage over 10 seconds, with the delayed damage distributed evenly once the buff concludes.

Moment of Courage exits innate status, replaced by Outfight them! – a level-based sustain enhancement. Attacking higher-level enemy heroes increases Legion Commander’s health regeneration, lifesteal, and healing reception by 50% for 4 seconds, with automatic application against max-level opponents.
Matchup Dependency: This change makes Legion Commander particularly effective against snowballing carries who maintain level advantages throughout the mid-game phase.
Fiery Soul transitions from innate classification to Combustion – a damage-triggered area effect scaling with Laguna Blade progression.
Teamfight Impact: Every 150 damage dealt to enemy heroes triggers overheating that damages nearby allies in 400 radius, creating powerful area denial and teamfight control capabilities.
Summon Spirit Bear departs innate status, replaced by Giftbearer – a neutral item reroll passive allowing one reroll per tier, providing enhanced itemization flexibility throughout the game progression.
Inventory Optimization: Bear Necessities facet restricts Lone Druid to 3 inventory slots but provides 50/60/70/80% bonus passive stats scaling with True Form progression.
Stat Bonuses: The enhanced passive statistics apply to strength, agility, intelligence, health, mana, evasion, attack speed, bonus damage, and health/mana regeneration.
Vision System Rework: Selemene’s Favor innate removal eliminates the 20% bonus cast range during nighttime conditions.
Global Night Presence: Lunar Blessing becomes the new innate ability, providing 1 attack damage per level to Luna and allies, with Luna receiving double the bonuses plus 400 base night vision scaling by 20 per level.
Ability Restructuring: Lunar Orbit, previously available through Aghanim’s Shard, now replaces Lunar Blessing as Luna’s standard ability, creating new skill build considerations.
Wolf Enhancement: Alpha Wolves facet increases Summon Wolves maximum level by 2 while reducing Howl and Feral Impulse maximum levels by 1.
Advanced Summon Mechanics: Wolves gain Hamstring at level 5 (0.5s root + 50 physical damage on next 4 attacks) and Hightail at level 6 (hasted/phased movement + 100% evasion + 20 attack speed for 8s).
Shard Integration: Wolves summoned through Aghanim’s Shard receive improvements when Summon Wolves exceeds level 4 threshold.
Mana System Adjustment: Mana Pact facet removal eliminates the toggle component from Mana Shield while restructuring the innate ability’s progression system.
New Attack Pattern: Venomous Volley facet introduces a poison application every fifth attack, slowing movement by 35%, attack speed by 80, and cast speed by 50% for 1.5 seconds, with the poisoned attack functioning as an attack modifier for Split Shot purposes.
Medusa gets slightly reworked in Dota 2. It is partly inspired by a Heroes of Newerth hero that Icefrog may have had a hand in creating
Early Game Impact: The removal of several innate abilities significantly alters laning phase dynamics. Heroes like Anti-Mage and Kunkka now require different approach to resource management and trading patterns during the crucial first 10 minutes.
Jungle Control Revolution: Enchantress’s transformation from economic accelerator to defensive specialist creates new jungle invasion strategies and counter-play options.
Mid Game Adjustments: The new facet system introduces additional decision points during teamfight engagements, requiring players to consider when to activate conditional abilities for maximum impact.
Late Game Considerations: Several heroes now scale differently into the late game, with some gaining enhanced objective control while others receive improved teamfight presence.
Common Strategic Errors: Many players will initially underestimate the vision limitations of Bristleback’s Seeing Red facet, leading to poorly timed engagements and unnecessary deaths during high-stakes teamfights.
Action Checklist
- Review all removed innate abilities and understand how they affect your preferred heroes’ power curves
- Practice new facet activation timing in demo mode, particularly Bristleback’s vision-limited mode
- Adjust item builds for heroes with inventory restrictions or stat modifications
- Test new jungle control mechanics with Enchantress and other affected heroes
- Develop new engagement patterns for heroes with post-death effects like Earthshaker
No reproduction without permission:Game Guides » All new and deleted facets and innates of patch 7.37 in Dota 2. Biggest balance changes in new update 7.37 Complete guide to Dota 2's 7.37 patch with new facets, innate abilities, and strategic insights
