Have you ever wondered what Dota was like back in the days? The days of exquisite loading screens and “host rdy”. It was a time where people huddled together in Battle.net, waiting for an empty room to join. Those were the days of Dota 1 – or as it was called back then, DotA Allstars. Today we take a nostalgic trip down memory lane as we turn our attention to some of the older things that used to exist in Dota.

Here we go!

1. Keeper of the LIght’s Ultimate used to be Ignis Fatuus

Before good ol’ Ezalor had the Ability to transform into his Spirit Form, he had an unusual spell that would summon Ignis Fatuus. Ignis Fatuus is essentially a wisp that resurrects dead creeps into Liberated Souls (essentially more creeps). These souls essentially mean that both yours and your opponent’s creeps have an extra life, making tower-pushing a piece of cake.

Ignis Fatuus itself could teleport anywhere on the map, and had the ability to heal and become invulnerable. This turned Keeper of the Light into both a potent counter-pusher and strong defender.

2. Silencer used to have Warlock’s Ultimate as a normal spell.

Warlock still remains as one of the more popular support heroes. This can be attributed to his powerful Ultimate ability, which spawns an Infernal that deals damage and stuns on impact. The Infernals are also great pushers and damage dealers.

What if I told you that Silencer used to have that a very similar skill? Except it was not his ultimate.

The mechanics for Silencer’s Rain of Chaos differed slightly from Warlock’s. While his spell had a targetable AOE, his Golems spawned randomly within that AOE. And the Golems would only stun enemies that were in the immediate radius of its spawn point, not within the AOE of the spell.

His spell also allowed him to cast 3 Golems when upgraded to Level 4, meaning that he could be an insane pusher at a very early stage.

It is beyond imagination how different Silencer is from then till now, considering how this spell has nothing related to silencing. At that point in time, Silencer was a very different hero, filling a different role in his team. With his Golems, he was a much better pusher and his team could enjoy strong and reliable early-game pushes.

3. And Rikimaru used to have Witch Doctor’s Ultimate

Can you imagine the Stealth Assassin with the ability to cast Death Ward? Unlike Silencer, this Death Ward was his Ultimate ability. Dealing 65 damage per attack, Riki was an extremely potent hero killer. At the late game, the wards would hit two targets. With each ward dealing 180 damage per hit, these Death Wards definitely meant business.

Worst still, the Death Ward was not channeling. This means that Riki could cast the Ward on the ground and carry on farming. If he was stunned, the Ward would not be interrupted. This is unbelievable. One reason why Witch Doctors build Black King Bars or Glimmer Capes is to avoid getting their Death Ward interrupted. Not needing to channel Death Ward made Riki just an absolute pain to deal with.

4. Battlefury on certain heroes used to change their attack animation to reflect the cleave damage they were dealing

Heroes that would receive an attack animation change with Battlefury equipped:

• Tidehunter
• Earthshaker
• Juggernaut
• Shapeshifted Lycanthrope
• Doombringer
• Pit Lord
• Tauren Chieftain
• Axe
• Phantom Lancer
• Zeus (Yeah ikr LOL)

This was purely a cosmetic addition, but it was neat nonetheless. Especially in DotA when there wasn’t an MMR, players were more casual about games. Item builds were less strict so people sometimes would build Battlefury just for the cool animation.

5. N’aix was a much simpler hero to play with only one active skill – his Ultimate.

The old N’aix had the following abilities:

• Feast (Passive) – Lifesteals 10%/20%/30%/40% of his own damage.
• Poison Sting (Passive) – Adds a poison-based damage that grants damage per second and movement speed slow of 2/4/7/10 and 10%/20%/30%/40% respectively.
• Anabolic Frenzy (Passive) – Increases attack and movement speed of N’aix by 3%/5%/7%/9% and 10/20/30/40 respectively.
• Rage [Ultimate] (Active/Self) – Gains Magic Immunity and Attack Bonus for 10/15/20 seconds.

This was probably one of the more straightforward heroes available. There was nothing much to do for the majority of the game except to farm. You were pretty useless in early game ganks and pushes. What could you do? All his abilities were passive buffs to himself.

Once the mid-late game portion of the game arrived though, that was N’aix’s time to shine. By then, your N’aix would be farmed with your Hearts and your Bashers. You and your right-click were going to carry the team. Yeah he was a pretty easy to learn to play – but only good players could play him well.

Of course, version 6.49 changed things for N’aix, turning him into an Alien-esque monster, hiding within the bodies of his allies.

6. Weaver’s first skill used to allow you to summon Watchers.

This ability was extremely underrated. Weaver’s ability to summon Watchers made him into a pseudo map-hack. He could make the Watchers patrol a set area, which gave his team vision of the corresponding space. With a maximum of 8 Watchers that could be summoned, Weaver could potentially give his whole team vision of the map.

What made this extremely dangerous was his ability to synergize the Watchers with heroes such as Dark Seer and Omniknight. This turned Weaver into an extremely dangerous hero to face in all stages of the game.

Fortunately, that ability was replaced with another, known as Urna Swarm – The Swarm’s precursor. This turned Weaver into a rather versatile hero with the ability to silence, deal AOE damage, and act as a pseudo ward.

7. Aegis was purchasable

Goodness! Aegis has transformed so much since its inception into Dota.

Originally, it did not even provide any reincarnation. It was just your good ol’ boring shield that was an all-in-one stats bonus item. Eventually, it was given Reincarnation. Heroes equipped with the Aegis could therefore be Reincarnated, with a 360 second cooldown. Goodness. This item had NO charges with a 6 minute cooldown – all for a cost of 5875 gold.

Of course, the development team realised that this was a bit too overpowered, and so the item went through several nerfs, and respective buffs. The most stable version of Aegis was the one which had 3 charges of Reincarnation and also had Damage Block – all for a cost of 4850 gold.

It was only in version 6.42 that Aegis was moved away from the shop to Roshan. This probably changed the tangent of the game, as Aegis became an exclusive one-hero only item.

This concludes our list of things that used to exist in Dota! Do you miss them? Are there others which we missed?

Tell us in the comments below!

Source for Images: Wikipedia, Youtube, wallpaper7

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