You Can Turn Into a What?!: Dota 7.30 update Introduces New Neutral Items

Tonight, at approximately 9:30, the long awaited 7.30 patch has arrived. With have come numerous nerfs and buffs. Now, I won’t be covering those here, but my fellow writers will be covering changes to heroes and items. For I’m going to be talking about the new neutral items that were introduced.

The new patch removed a bunch of previous established neutrals, including Faded Broach, Minotaur Horn, and Ballista. It also added a 5^th neutral drop for each tier of neutral items, rather than the usual 4. But these new neutral items have some new and improved wacky effects destined to shake up your next game of Dota.

Pig Pole is a new tier 1 item that gives you +6 to all stats. But that’s not the fun part, its active ability turns you into a pig for 4 seconds and gives you a 10% movespeed buff. The ability costs 40 mana and has a 25 second cooldown. Now I’m not entirely sure how useful it is other than perhaps as an escape tool or gap close. However, it does sound hilarious to run at you opponents as a pig.

Another new tier 1 item, Tumbler’s Toy grants you 200 mana and a new active called Vault. Vault essentially acts like a mini force staff, propelling your character forward 300 units when you activate it. Like Blink Dagger, it also goes on a 3 second cooldown when you take player-based damage. I honestly think that this has the potential to become sort of broken. I mean a 30s cooldown mini force staff that costs no mana could potentially change the survivability of early game team fights. Granted the damage taking cooldown may pose a bit of a problem so we’ll see how it pans out.

This new tier 2 neutral item gives you 10 damage and attack speed. But that’s not all! It’s passive, Dark Mercy lets you deal +7 damage per 10% health an enemy is missing. This could be very effective on high attack speed and damage carries. The more you hit the enemy, the more damage they take.

This tier 2 gives you 20+ to your movement speed. But that’s the boring part. The fun part is the mini–Bounty Hunter ultimate it’s active gives you. Called Shadow Brand, the ability “Throws a Bomb to an enemy within 900 range dealing your attack damage and applying a debuff that provides vision of the unit and deals 20dps for 7 seconds.” And it’s on a 20s cooldown for practically no mana. I mean there’s some great neutral items at this tier, but this just seems so sick. I think it could potentially be super useful against invis heroes and items that allow you to disappear.

Blast Rig is a new tier 3 neutral. It gives you 8 armor and a new passive called Hairtrigger. When you are attacked by a hero within 300 range, it explodes dealing 300 damage to any enemy within 300 units and applying a 100% blind for 2.5 seconds. I think this item could be potentially good on heroes that tend to get gone on, or that try to initiate. Perhaps even good on your squishy supports to deter pick offs.

I thought we were cracking down on the status resistance? This new tier 4 neutral item gives you 300 health and 1 mana and also 50% status resist for 3 seconds when a debuff would be applied to you. A 30s cooldown helps to balance this a bit but I think this item is super strong. I feel like almost every status resistance item we’ve seen has just been a staple of item builds or broken since the concept was introduced.

The last new tier 4 neutral item is Witchbane. Passively it allows you to do more magic damage equal to 4% of it’s max mana. It’s active is a massive AoE dispel that affects everyone within a 300 radius, with a cast range of 500. This item is particularly good for dealing with Intelligence heroes and the active makes you have potentially very help dispel. Definitely some potential for griefing there.

And last but not least, we have the new tier 5 neutral item. This item gives you 5 armor and 20% Magic Resistance, but not just to yourself, also to allies in a 900 radius. The active ability, Mega Shield gives allied unites within 900 a 35% damage reflect aura for 5 seconds. It’s basically like a blade mail on crack. Not exactly flashy, but it seems super cool.

And these are all of our new neutral items for the patch. Which items are broken, and which are useless? Tell us on our socials and stay tuned for more 7.30 patch news at esports.gg!