Patch 7.29: Casters, Analysts and Pro Players give their hopes and predictions

With the new patch 7.29 just a matter of hours now not days, I decided to reach out to friends and colleagues in the space for their hopes and predictions. The result was a mixed but glorious bag of wisdom, wit and nonsense. Only time will tell who is right but for now I'll let you explore all the possibilities:

"I'm hoping all the spirit heroes get nerfed & they introduce a ghost rune that spawns at the opposite side of the river that allows you to fill your bottle. In addition I hope they delete the bottle from the game so the ghost rune makes no sense.

I think the Spectre Arcana will come out with her riding a shadow mount in the shape of Gabe Newell. I believe the new hero will be Vanessa, which has been teased in some comics as well as the thriving digital card game Artifact Foundry. Pudge will get a major rework with the highlight being + 1 armor," said SUNSFans, esports commentator and one half of the dynamic "We Say Things" Podcast duo.

"I'm hoping the new hero will be some manly shit. You know? No squirrels, no disney animals, I WANT MUSCLE, BRAWL, I WANT STRONG SHIT. For patch 7.29 I just want new stuff, new broken stuff, enough with the old broken stuff. We need NEW, and BROKEN STUFF. Also, BUFF MEEPO. TY," said Lizzard, DPC analyst and the one true alpha.

"I would love to see some new map changes. I am rather bored with the ol radiant and dire tradeoffs we have all become accustomed to. For example, Radiant = strong rosh & Dire = stack a lot of camps. For the new hero I just hope its a melee support that can emulate the ganking of a spirit breaker but the annoyance in lane of some ogre or undying.

As a support player I just don't want a new hero to be some "AHAHAH LOTS OF DAMAGE I CAN MID IT OR PLAY IT CORE AHEUEUEUE". Basically I would love a true 5 support that can just be thrown in the mix and have a really interesting skill set to enable the laning phase. NERF IO. BUFF SPIRIT BREAKER," said TeaGuvnor, DPC analyst and former coach of Hellbears. The charismatic Brit asked that we fix the spelling but keep the capital letters and the spelling of AHEUEUEUE intact.

The meta has been camping high grounds for about three years now. Even with major patches, aghs shards, outposts, and so forth, the general strategy has always been take the OP new cool stuff and ... just camp high grounds with a ward on an eye spot.

So, because Icefrog isn't stupid and sees this I think a lot of the eye spots will be removed and there will probably be less high-grounds in the game. People say to remove outposts because they deleted split-pushing, but I actually think making camping one high ground less OP will make split pushing more viable again even without removal of outposts.

My solution to this is bridges -- I think it would be cool to be able to pass over low-ground terrain instead of just walking up hills, so that you have options for penetrating a held high ground instead of just death. But Icefrog's not an idiot, so he probably won't add bridges but he'll do something in a similar line of thinking to remove high grounds being so OP. That's my biggest prediction that I'm sure of, and will be surprised and disappointed if its not in the game. High grounds have been OP for too long and it makes the game feel 'figured out' and a bit boring, so I think he's going to do something to change that," said Jenkins, DPC Analyst and Esports.GG contributor.

"Jenkins is an idiot and bridges are a terrible idea. Clearly the better idea is usable flares. I also really hope we get both map changes as well as economy changes. The power runes have been a large complaint by many pro players for a while and I think it's about time to shake that concept up a bit more.

As far as the new hero, I'd love to see Kaden in patch 7.29, but I'm going to assume we're not going to get an anime hero right away," said Cap, DPC host, caster and analyst. Oh and part-time oracle and esports.GG contributor.

"I've seen more than enough fanart this past week to know that if Valve doesn't include Marci as the new hero this Friday, we are going to have a lot of heated and sweaty nerds on our hands.

Personally, I hope they add in the team bundles and do something about the runes. I'm tired of hearing about how rune rng can determine a whole laning phase," said KOTLGuy, DPC host and Creative Producer for BeyondTheSummit

"I hope the new heroes a carry (biased here) but been lacking carries since monkey King, maybe another team fighting carry could be nice to compete with the void/spectres/mks. Expecting Puck/Io/Phoenix/troll/MK nerfs and I'm hoping for a Clinkz buff. I expect power runes will be nerfed or changed in a meaningful way. Spirit heroes or spirit archetype heroes aka super high mobility + early runes hit too powerful power spikes too early I think.

The spirits + power runes create some really high variance in power levels especially early but even 10-30 minutes some void spirit gets an arcane rune and it seems like you can't fight. Maybe nerf arcane rune and delay the power rune spawn to 5/7 or 6/8 etc. DD at 4 and arcane runes for for spirits are the main ones I think," said  Samuel "Sammyboy" Anderson, carry player for DPC Division 1 team 4 Zoomers.

"I hope that the new hero spams a lot of skills and can be played in the mid lane. If there's any to be nerfed I think it should be IO. But I don't really want it to be nerfed because it is one of our best heroes.

With regards to buffs, I want them to bring back TINY. It was one of my best heroes and when they nerfed him I couldn't play him anymore. I'm not really sure of what I want to happen or expect in the next patch but I'm sure it will be very interesting," said Yopaj, mid-laner for Neon Esports, who placed top 6 at the Singapore Major.

"My predictions is its not actually going to be a huge patch in terms of changing the numbers of gold gain or experience etc. But instead we will have map changes. I think it's too close to TI to have big changes to how Dota is played regarding objectives etc. Instead changing the map let there be tactical changes without broader strategy changes," said caster Lyrical.

"I'm hoping Necrobook gets nerfed back into Warcraft Dota and I'm hoping salves are no longer sharable. I'm a simple man," said Brax, offlaner for 4 Zoomers.

Patch 7.29 will drop on April 9th, and with it comes a brand new hero and "balanced-focused gameplay updates". Special thanks to all the talent and players who were kind enough to share their predictions. Stay tuned for more Patch 7.29 updates!