Unlike the incredibly slow development speed on Artifact, work on Dota Underlords has been proceeding at a genuinely impressive pace so far. Every few weeks Valve has come out with a major feature, some sort of rework, massive balance changes, and naturally, a wide variety of quality of life improvements to top it all off.

This week is no different as Valve has once again brought in a whole bunch of new and exciting changes. The ranked mode has been reworked and somewhat simplified, numerous three-star heroes have received visual enhancements, while the balance changes themselves have affected everything from the core gameplay to the items and heroes.

The most interesting of these new tweaks, at least as far as the amount of viable strategies is concerned, is the elimination of round damage for rounds 4-9. Similarly, whenever a player loses a round against another player, they will gain a free reroll the next round.

While this might sound incredibly simple and just as boring, these are actually gigantic changes as they will open up a lot more avenues for players to explore. I fully expect people will still find the most optimal builds despite these changes, but if Valve continues to crack down on them as soon as they appear, we might just end up in a situation where any approach is perfectly viable... as long as you have the right heroes to make it work.

Whatever the case may be, you can read more about these changes over at Steam. Have fun figuring out the new meta!