Innovation in the game of Dota 2 is either made by the player or the developers themselves. In the moments when player creativity shines, metas are made. Make no mistake, though, it is the developers that have solid control over what is meta or not.
With Dota 2 patch 7.33 released a few days ago, players are now back to the drawing board with their strategies. This patch is crazy, and the amount of new things is confusing and ridiculous, to say the least.
One of the things that changed is Beastmaster’s Drums of Slom, his Aghanim’s Scepter new ability. Added back in 7.32, it had a clunky design and was unpopular in pubs and professional games. That doesn’t mean that it went unused, as Tundra offlaner “33” used it sometimes in pro play. But the new Drums of Slom elevates him to a possible midlaner with its new mechanics.
With that said, what is this new Drums of Slom, and how can you use it to go up in MMR?
Drums of Slom Reworked
Okay, let’s start by looking at the old Drums of Slom, which was allegedly inspired by his taunt. It was an active ability that causes him to start banging a drum. This drum beat would deal damage to nearby enemies, and heal Beastmaster for a percentage of the damage.
There is a counter to it, however, and it is if Beastmaster gets stunned or silenced, it doesn’t heal him. The New Frontiers patch made it so that it’s much smoother in fights and harder to counter. The new Drums of Slom is now a passive ability that depends on his auto-attacks and Primal Roar.
Each attack increases the stack by 1 and Roar increases it by 10/15/20. It retains the same healing mechanics, while the stack amount determines the drum interval. Compensating for this rapid stack gain, the damage got scaled lower, but the healing is the same. With this information, we can deduce the possible item build and possible lanes he can play from.
Midlane Beastmaster!? 😱
On day one of the new patch, Team Secret drafted their midlaner “Armel” with a Beastmaster. In that game, he went 10-0-10 and went on to win the series, promoting Secret to Div 1. Armel’s build focused on the new Drums of Slom and its snowball potential. One thing we forgot to tell you is that his creeps are capable of adding stacks themselves. A whole zoo of creatures attacking from a distance and Beastmaster drumming it up is a recipe for a perfect storm.
If you can imagine it, Phantom Lancer and other illusion-based heroes are unable to stand up to the drums. In a slugfest, Beastmaster can output Zeus-amounts of magical damage, and healing at the same time. Of course, the counter to his is anti-heal, but we know that low-skill pubs don’t build anti-heal a lot. Another counter would be to kite the Beastmaster, which is easier to do. Once a drumming Beastmaster can’t heal back his health, it’s over for him!
