Once in a while, IceFrog channels his inner Archimedes and does some crazy math changes with the gold and experience formulas, which is exactly what he has done with Dota 2 patch (gold only). Initially, looking at the formulas in the changelog has us confused, but graphing them out and comparing them to the older formulas tends to help in understanding the gold mechanics, which is just what we are going to do there. Let’s take a look at how the new changes to gold will affect games.
Factors in gold earned
Before we dive into the formulas, let’s look at the two factors that are included in calculating the gold a hero gets when an enemy hero is killed.
Gold earned = Kill gold + Assist gold
As you may have already guessed, the kill gold portion goes to the hero that gets the kill (which is why you give the kill to the cores, like the old Virtus Pro did) and the assist gold portion goes to all allied heroes in a 1300 radius. The heroes don’t necessarily have to take part in the kill, just being present is enough to get the gold. In patch 7.25, both these factors or terms underwent changes. Let’s look at them separately.
Kill gold change
The kill gold, as specified earlier, is gold only the hero that gets the kill on the enemy hero receives. It is calculated as:
Kill gold = 110 + (hero level killed x 8) + kill streak
So the kill gold depends on two things – the level of the enemy killed and whether or not that hero was on a kill streak. The part that has undergone a change in patch 7.25 is the kill streak.
- Hero kill sprees gold bounty increased from 60->480 to 200->690
- Hero kill sprees xp bounty increased from 400->1800 to 500->2040
Let’s take a look at this graphically.
A killing streak of three is ‘Killing Spree’, four is ‘Dominating’ and so on till ‘Beyond Godlike’ for a streak of ten. Looking at the streak gold that patch 7.25 has brought in, you can see that it’s higher for ending any killing streak as compared to before. For ending a ‘Killing Spree’, you get 200 more gold than before and for ending a ‘Beyond Godlike’ streak, you get 270 more gold than before! Nice, eh? This change will have a big effect when taking down heroes that are doing well in the game in terms of kills, more so in the early game when a hero is able to go on a killing spree in lane but then ends up being taken down. The comeback factor might have been removed from the assist gold (which we will see in the next section), but the kill gold is now higher for ending streaks. So remember, do not be the greedy Lion player who uses Finger of Death when the opposition hero has 20 HP remaining. Let your core get that kill streak so he/she can get to their next item quickly.
Assist gold change
Assist gold is the gold that all the heroes in the vicinity of the killed enemy hero get (including the hero that gets the kill). With Dota 2 patch 7.25, the team based rubber band mechanic for hero kills has been removed. Let’s look at the change in the assist gold formula.
Old formula:
Assist gold if one hero got the kill = NWPoorFactor* NWRankingFactor * ( 126 + 4.5 * VictimLevel + ComebackFactor * ( VictimNetWorth * 0.026 + 70) / 1 ) )
Assist gold if five heroes got the kill: NWPoorFactor* NWRankingFactor * ( 18 + 0.9 * VictimLevel + ComebackFactor * ( VictimNetWorth * 0.026 + 70) / 5 ) )
New formula:
Assist gold = ( 50 + VictimNetWorth*0.03 ) / #Heroes
The differences are evident.
- The old formula had five different equations depending on how many allied heroes were part of the gank (or rather, how many allied heroes were present in the required AoE). The new formula has the same equation and it is just divides the total by the number of allied heroes in the required AoE.
- The old formula had a comeback factor, which applied only for teams that had a networth defecit of at least a 1000 gold as compared to the opposition. So the poorer of the two teams would get more gold on kills and even in that, there were net worth ranking and net worth poor factors, which ensured low net worth heroes (supports) would get more assist gold than high net worth heroes in the team (cores). The new formula has nothing to make that differenciation! So not only does the team with the lower net worth not get any extra gold, the weaker team supports don’t get more gold either. Equality has been brought in so that every team hero, irrespective of their net worth rank in the team, gets the same amount of assist gold. The formula has been simplified, but support heroes have received the short end of the stick.
- The first part of the old formula depended on hero level, while the new formula does not depend on hero level at all. The new formula only depends on net worth. Earlier, when a high level, low net worth hero was killed (usually supports in the late game), it gave a lot of assist gold. Now that number will be very low. So the assist gold from killing a support, especially a position 5 support, is going to be quite low.
Let us dissect all these further by looking at a few more graphs.
When the top NW (net worth) hero from the lower NW team kills the opposite top NW hero
The blue lines on the graph below show the assist gold earned before patch 7.25 while the red lines represent assist gold earned after 7.25 (the different markers are for different enemy hero net worths). What the graph shows is, for lower enemy net worths (early on in the game), the old formula was better, that is, it gave more gold. For higher net worths (later on in the game), the new formula gives the killing hero more gold. As this depends on net worth alone, killing an a fast farming hero like Alchemist after he starts ramping up is bound to earn a lot of gold with the new gold mechanics.
When the low NW team ganks as five and kills the top NW enemy hero – difference in assist gold earned by position 1 and position 5
The graph below shows a comparison of the assist gold the richest hero on the team would have earned (blue line) and poorest hero on the team would have earned (black line) before patch 7.25 after a five man gank on the top NW enemy hero. The red line is the assist gold both will get after patch 7.25. It can be clearly seen that supports earned a lot of gold in the previous patches just by being a part of the gank. Now, both supports and cores earn the same gold. Gold earned by cores has gone up while that earned by supports has gone down.
Conclusions
- Ending killing streaks is a lot more valueable now than as compared to before Dota 2 patch 7.25.
- There is no rubber band effect. Even when the team with the lower net worth gets kills, the heroes won’t get any extra gold.
- The new assist formula yields less gold in one on one situations for low net worths but more gold as the net worth of the hero being killed increases.
- Killing supports is a lot less valuable now in terms of gold.
- The assist gold is equal for all heroes in a team, irrespective of their net worth ranks. Support heroes will end up earning lesser gold from assists while postion 1 and postion 2 heroes will end up earning more gold.
It is clear that the patch is a rough one for supports. Not only have support items been nerfed and cost of teleport scroll been increased, but also the gold earned by them has gone down substantially. For the last couple of patches, supports were feeling good, but patch 7.25 is going to bring them down a notch. It seems position 6 heroes may return! In general, even though the comeback factor has been removed, increasing the streak gold and making the assist formula solely net worth dependant is slightly beneficial for the losing team. The winning team is bound to have higher net worths and getting one big kill can potentially tip the scales, depending on the net worth of the hero being killed. So to reiterate: Supports, let your cores have those kill streaks and cores, don’t be too harsh on supports if they snatch a kill here and there. Their economy has been hit hard by Dota 2 patch 7.25.
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