Beastmaster in 7.41f: what’s left of the old jungler and how he looks now

Hi. Beastmaster is back in the spotlight thanks to the 7.41 wave of tweaks: the hero didn’t get one huge overhaul in a single patch, but over a few updates he was carefully adjusted in almost all of his key spots. And this is exactly the kind of case where I’m more interested not in “buff or nerf,” but in where they’re actually pushing him now.

Role and abilities

Beastmaster is a melee universal hero with a difficulty rating of 2 out of 3. In terms of roles, he sits somewhere between Nuker, Disabler, Durable and Initiator, which means he’s not about one single scenario, but about a set of tools. His intended design is obvious enough: he summons beasts, tears through the jungle, catches enemies from range, and starts fights with a loud Primal Roar.

From the feel of his kit, he really does play around space control and pressure through summoned units. He has:

• Wild Axes — axes fly out and back, cut through trees, and hit enemies along the way; they also increase the damage the target takes from the hero himself and his units.
• Summon Razorback — a boar companion whose poison attacks slow the target’s movement and attack speed.
• Summon Raptors — hawks whose attack frequency scales with attack speed; Aghanim’s Shard grants a second hawk.
• Inner Beast — an innate passive that increases the attack speed of the hero and his controlled units.
• Drums of Slom — an Aghanim’s Scepter ability that triggers near attacks from the hero or his units, damages around them, and heals the owner and controlled units for a portion of the damage dealt.
• Primal Roar — a stun that knocks enemies along a line toward the target and deals damage to those hit.

I like that everything on Beastmaster is tied to tempo and positioning: he doesn’t just jump in, he marks out the fight in advance with axes, beasts, and a roar. In good hands, it’s a pretty unpleasant thing to deal with, especially if the opponent isn’t allowed to execute the fight cleanly.

Recent patch changes

The most recent change the hero got was a targeted tweak in 7.41e, and it seems to have trimmed the top end rather than changed his identity.

• 7.41e: the level 20 bonus to the attack damage of the hero and his units was reduced from 30 to 25.
• 7.41e: the level 25 cooldown reduction on Primal Roar was weakened from 25 to 20 seconds.

Earlier, in 7.41c, the hero was slowed down a bit in terms of base stats and spell economy, but not broken.

• 7.41c: base Strength reduced from 25 to 24.
• 7.41c: first-level damage reduced from 50–54 to 49–53.
• 7.41c: mana cost of Wild Axes increased from 50/55/60/65 to 65.
• 7.41c: attack damage of Summon Razorback reduced from 30/45/60/75 to 24/41/58/75.
• 7.41c: radius of Drums of Slom reduced from 600 to 525.
• 7.41c: damage per hit from Drums of Slom reduced from 80 to 70.

Before that, in 7.41b, the hero was nudged a bit through base stats and talents.

• 7.41b: base attack speed reduced from 100 to 90.
• 7.41b: Wild Axes duration changed from 12 to 10/11/12/13 seconds.
• 7.41b: level 10 armor talent reduced from 5 to 4.
• 7.41b: level 10 talent for bonus damage per Wild Axes stack reduced from 2% to 1.5%.

But the main block of changes came in 7.41. There, the hero wasn’t just adjusted — he was noticeably reworked.

• 7.41: the innate ability Rugged was removed.
• 7.41: Inner Beast became an innate ability.
• 7.41: the bonus attack speed from Inner Beast changed from 10/30/50/70 to 7 + 3 per level.
• 7.41: Wild Axes damage increased from 30/65/100/135 to 40/80/120/160.
• 7.41: bonus damage per Wild Axes stack reduced from 6/9/11/13% to 5/6/7/8%.
• 7.41: Wild Axes got an Aghanim’s Shard upgrade.
• 7.41: attacks on enemy heroes also apply the current-level Wild Axes effect.
• 7.41: the owner’s illusions cannot apply these effects.
• 7.41: Call of the Wild (boar) was renamed to Summon Razorback.
• 7.41: the boar’s base armor increased by 1.
• 7.41: the boar’s attack damage increased from 25/40/55/70 to 30/45/60/75.
• 7.41: Call of the Wild (hawk) was renamed to Summon Raptors.
• 7.41: Summon Raptors now has its own separate level.
• 7.41: hawk armor increased by 1.
• 7.41: cooldown of Summon Raptors reduced from 45/40/35/30 to 30 seconds.
• 7.41: hawk damage increased from 50/80/110/140 to 60/95/130/165.
• 7.41: stun duration increased from 0.25/0.5/0.75/1 to 0.4/0.6/0.8/1 seconds.
• 7.41: hawks now become invisible together with the owner and do not attack while in this state.
• 7.41: now two hawks are summoned with a 0.75-second delay.
• 7.41: when selecting a target, hawks prioritize the unit their owner is attacking.
• 7.41: the Aghanim’s Shard upgrade for Summon Raptors was removed.
• 7.41: the level 10 talent with “–5 sec cooldown on Call of the Wild” was replaced with “+5 armor”.
• 7.41: the level 15 talent with “+15 attack speed from Inner Beast” was replaced with “+200 cast range for Primal Roar”.

In short, the hero became more reliant on base tempo and spell-based control, while some of the old bonuses disappeared. In my opinion, that makes him a bit fairer and a bit less “everything at once,” which is actually a pretty decent outcome for Dota, all things considered.

Statistics

According to OpenDota data from the last 7 days, Beastmaster played 89,306 public games, with a win rate of 46.1%. Out of 127 heroes, that’s 113th in win rate and 116th in games played. These numbers, to put it mildly, don’t paint him as an obvious comfort pick for pubs.

The picture by rank is also fairly even, but with a small spread:

• Herald — 47.5%
• Guardian — 45.7%
• Crusader — 45.3%
• Archon — 44.9%
• Legend — 45.4%
• Ancient — 46.3%
• Divine — 48.7%

What stands out to me here isn’t so much the low win rate itself, but that he looks noticeably better at higher ranks. Not by a huge margin, but the hint is there: the hero probably shines more where players understand timing and tempo trades better.

In professional matches, according to OpenDota data from the latest period, Beastmaster was picked 4 times, won none of those games, and was banned 7 times. That’s a very small sample size, so I wouldn’t draw any loud conclusions from it — it’s far too easy to get false confidence from a slice this small.

Items and matchups

OpenDota pro-match data shows that the hero usually builds items that support tempo, survivability, and pressure through summoned units. A pretty clear pattern emerges from the commonly seen items:

• starting items: Iron Branch, Sage’s Mask, Tango, Magic Stick, Circlet, Quelling Blade
• early game: Helm of Iron Will, Boots of Speed, Helm of the Dominator, Arcane Boots, Null Talisman, Bottle
• mid game: Ogre Axe, Ultimate Orb, Helm of the Overlord, Blink Dagger, Mithril Hammer, Black King Bar
• late game: Black King Bar, Assault Cuirass, Hyperstone, Blink Dagger, Sacred Relic, Nullifier

The matchup chart is also pretty readable. Beastmaster looks best against heroes he can force into fights on his own terms very quickly:

• against Outworld Destroyer — 35 games, 77.1% win rate
• against Vengeful Spirit — 47 games, 63.8% win rate
• against Phantom Assassin — 40 games, 62.5% win rate

But against heroes who either like to drag fights out themselves or make control hard to execute, the results are worse:

• against Juggernaut — 57 games, 35.1% win rate
• against Lone Druid — 34 games, 35.3% win rate
• against Slark — 48 games, 35.4% win rate

Conclusion

After this string of changes, Beastmaster looks like a hero that’s been cleaned up and brought back down to earth: his strengths are still there, but some of the free power has been removed, and some of his strength has been shifted into more measured play around units and timings. By the numbers in pubs, he doesn’t look especially easy or obviously strong right now, but in more organized games and with a solid grasp of split pressure, he can still do pretty nasty things. I’d expect not a sudden hype spike, but a slow and fairly stubborn presence in the meta — definitely possible.

Source: official Dota 2 and OpenDota data.

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