Economy patches in Dota 2 are rarely exciting. For the majority of players small changes to the gold values rarely have a visible impact, however the changes introduced in 7.15 are hard to ignore. After all, they pretty much added four new objectives to the map.

New Objectives

Bounty Runes now spawn every 5 minutes

Bounty Runes now grants gold to each player (40 + 3/min)

New bounty runes is probably the most impactful change of the patch. With the changes introduced in 7.15 map control and bounty runes became extremely important, since the team gold they provide is easily comparable to the tower bounties, especially after tower bounty reductions in the last couple of patches.

Bounty rune 20 minutes into the game gives the same amount of gold as destroying a Tier 1 tower. Past 45 minutes, they are pretty much unparalleled in terms of gold they provide, outclassing even taking melee barracks.

Because of these changes, early map control and good vision are incredibly important: securing three out of four runes at 20 minutes will swing the gold graph by a thousand. Given their importance, runes are now essentially an extra objective and a point of interest on the map and should be treated as such.

When ahead, controlling runes between fights and pushes is advised. Choking the enemy in their base was a prefered strategy for most consistent teams in the last couple of years and it became even more rewarding.

When behind, use the runes to your advantage: addition of a point of interest to the map increases the chances you will find a target for your smoke gank. Even if you don’t, you will still gain control of two out of four runes, salvaging the economic deficit.

Playing proactively and being able to contest the map early is a good starting point for many drafts: turtling in your own base can be very punishing. Being able to respond to enemy aggression and defend your own towers is highly advised, as is having heroes who are good at pushing out waves.

Shove in the creep wave into the enemy every 5 minutes on all lanes and at the very least you will make the enemy decide between getting farm from lane, or going for the bounty.

New Economy

Melee Creeps base gold bounty reduced by 2

Range Creeps base gold bounty reduced by 1

This change decreases the overall gold in lane by 14 per minute, which shouldn’t have a major influence on the gameplay for most heroes, but can be quite significant for Battlefury carriers. 15 minutes in they will get 210 less gold, given perfect last hit and coupled with the addition of a 300 gold recipe to the item, the Battlefury timings should shift once again, making it a riskier pickup.

We’ve already seen many professional carry players experimenting with different builds on the typical BF carries of the past year: first position Voids almost exclusively go for Mask of Madness into Shadow Blade, while Juggernauts sometimes get Yasha as their starting item, to have higher kill potential in teamfights.

This gold deficit is somewhat made up for with the changes to bounty runes. The overall effect should also lead to a tighter spread of gold between the team, at least in the earlier stages, making the life of supports a little more meaningful.

Tower denies now remove all gold instead of just half

Denying the enemy team 500/600 gold for Tier 1/Tier 2 towers is massive. Pushes should require a decent amount of commitment from the enemy team and it is possible to nullify their effort with a well-timed auto-attack, while your own team is farming. Because of it, defending your structures is even more important and lane-pushing supports are a good fit for the meta: they delay the structural damage, forcing the enemy to commit more heroes for the push, potentially increasing the overall gains for their team.

Ground Courier bounty reduced from 175 to 125

Killing couriers is still as impactful as it was previously, denying the enemy extra regeneration and starting items, but at least it will less likely lead to a strong snowballing effect, when the whole enemy team suddenly has boots 5 minutes into the game.

Neutral camp stack bounty increased from 20% to 25%

At this point it is hard to ignore the bonus gold from stacks. If previously we’ve mostly seen it as a way to psychologically reward support players, now it is an actual source of income and can net 80+ gold from triple stacked ancient camp. It is essentially a free ward or a free smoke, that doesn’t interfere with support item progression. These things add up and can result in significant changes to item timings. Stacks should also be cleared as soon as possible and sometimes it is a good idea to let your support take lane XP and gold, if your hero can take on the neutral armies.

Closing Thoughts

This patch made the Dota 2 map even more interesting: ever since the introduction of shrines and secondary jungle map control was becoming more important, with more points of interest. Realistically it should lead to higher intensity of the games: there are more things on the map worth fighting over.

It should also make the game of Dota a little bit more formulaic: there are hard-coded timings on when certain actions are going to be beneficial and in-game meta can develop from it. Do you push the waves in 30 seconds before the bounty runes or do you smoke a minute prior to catch the enemy? How does the enemy respond if they don’t see anyone on the map? Is it better to have vision over the enemy jungle or is it more worth it to have deep wards behind enemy towers to potentially catch the defenders? So many interesting questions with potentially unique and interesting answers.