Dota 2 Patch 7.33 introduced a ton of new features and a bigger map to the game on April 20. But as is commonplace with new patches, with new features come new bugs, and this one is a game-breaking one. One of the new objectives introduced, the Tormentor, was relocated from its spawn location into the enemy base, completely obliterating their fountain.
Reddit user u/spextre_off was part of a public game on April 26 where the exploit was on full display. Using a certain team composition, in this case, Io + Primal Beast, the Dire team players were able to bring the Tormentor away from their spawn location into the Radiant base.
To make this possible, Io channeled its Relocate into the enemy fountain, Primal Beast used his Pulverize on the Tormentor. This caused the duo to bring the Tormentor with them into the enemy Radiant base fountain area during the animation of Primal Beast’s Pulverize.
Tormentors have a barrier that absorbs and reflects the damage taken onto targets around them. As a result, Io and Primal Beast died from the fountain damage and then the building turned its attention to the Tormentor. In an unexpected twist of fate, the Tormentor’s damage reflection barrier turned on the fountain, completely destroying it in the process.
Radiant’s side was left completely confused for the time being, not knowing what happened to their fountain and instead finding a Tormentor in its place. Upon destroying the Tormentor, they realized their fountain was missing since they weren’t able to regenerate anymore. The rest of the game was pretty uneventful, although Radiant still ended up winning despite having their fountain destroyed. This was a true example of the Dota 2 spirit of never giving up until it’s all over.
This bug is just one of many that Patch 7.33 has brought us. With a new 7.33b patch on April 25 mostly fixing these exploits and some broken heroes, it seems like new ones will inevitably pop up as a result. Whether there are other bugs being discovered as we speak is still unclear, but the timing of these bugs could not be worse, especially since we have a tournament going on right now.
With the Berlin Major currently ongoing, it is hard to say if certain teams may or may not exploit this bug in their games. History tells us that Dota players have always been opportunistic, we know how long NAVI exploited the Chen-Pudge fountain hook combo until it was fixed.
Players can and will use these “features” until they get patched out, so we hope that Icefrog is watching and will address this bug before we see it happen in the Berlin Major.
