Dota 2 7.31: Should you be buying Boots of Bearing?
Dota 2's huge 7.31 update brought some big changes to the game, including three new items: Boots of Bearing, Wraith Pact, and Revenant's Broach.
These three new items are upgraded from pre-existing items, and thus give players more options to fill out their inventory at the later stages of games.
In this piece, we will be looking at the Boots of Bearing's strengths and weaknesses as an item as well as the best heroes to purchase it for.
Boots of Bearing
Total cost: 4,125 gold
Recipe: Tranquil Boots (925 gold) + Drum of Endurance (1,700 gold) + Boots of Bearing recipe (1,500 gold)
Why you should buy Boots of Bearing
It upgrades from two useful items
Out of the three new items in the game, Boots of Bearing is by far the most popular.
A big part of the item’s popularity is due to the fact that it upgrades from two useful midgame items in Tranquil Boots and Drum of Endurance.
Tranquil Boots is a common item for support heroes, particularly roaming and mana efficient supports. It fits the current metagame perfectly, allowing the user to always be at full health and ready to engage the enemy.
On the other hand, Drum of Endurance provides 7 strength and intelligence — useful stats on all heroes. It also has Endurance charges that can be used to provide allies with a boost in movement and attack speed.
Both these items provide fantastic benefits in midgame skirmishes. Later on, however, Tranquil Boots’ regeneration becomes less useful when teamfights become more spread apart, while the Drum also loses a lot of value once it runs out of Endurance charges.
Not only does upgrading to Boots of Bearing replenish Endurance charges, it also combines two useful midgame items into one to free up a slot for other late game items.
Boots of Bearing provides an Area of Effect Surge
Besides refreshing all the Endurance charges, Boots of Bearing also upgrades its effect.
Endurance now provides all affected heroes with 1.5 seconds of immunity to slows, similar to Dark Seer’s Surge.
The ability to completely ignore slows can be incredibly powerful against certain enemies. Invoker used Ice Wall? We can just use Endurance to run through it. Gyrocopter’s Ultimate slowing everyone down? Not with Boots of Bearing around.
The upgrade is definitely situational, but in most games, enemies will have at least one form of slow that Endurance can counter.
The Boots of Bearing is unbreakable
One of the weaknesses of Tranquil Boots is that the item loses 14 health regeneration and 25 movement speed whenever its user receives damage or attacks a hero. Both bonuses are returned if the user is able to evade being attacked for the next 13 seconds.
During the laning stage, this isn’t a big issue, as players can retreat to their tower and wait 13 seconds for the boots to come back online.
However, as the game progresses, players don’t have the luxury of retreating for an extended amount of time and waiting for the bonus regeneration to kick in.
Boots of Bearing don’t have that weakness and always provide the user with 15 health regeneration and 65 movement speed. The extra health regeneration can be a big factor later in the game, when fights last for 15 to 20 seconds, allowing its owner to recover a significant amount of health.
The new Boots have several things going for them, but they aren’t perfect and have a couple of glaring flaws that prevent them from being purchased in every game.
Why you should not buy Boots of Bearing
The recipe cost is expensive
The recipe cost for Boots of Bearing is a whopping 1,500 gold.
That is a big investment for support players, who can be prone to dying and thus have trouble buying items with expensive components.
While 1,500 gold isn’t the most expensive item in Dota 2, it’s still a big headache for supports to farm.
Boots of Bearing doesn’t quite fit the current meta
Boots of Bearing is a late game item that is exclusively bought on support heroes. In most situations, supports will want to buy a Force Staff or Glimmer Cape or a combination of both to support their team.
While combining Drum and Tranquil Boots into one slot is useful, in most cases support heroes aren’t starved for item slots.
Supports will often devote one slot to Wards in every game and might hold Dust of Appearance in another slot when facing invisible enemies.
That leaves four or five slots for items, and it’s rare for Position 5 supports to be able to fill each slot with something useful.
It costs exactly 7,225 gold to purchase a Magic Wand, Glimmer Cape, Force Staff, Tranquil Boots, and Drum of Endurance.
Position 5 supports in particular will be hard-pressed to farm that much gold in a standard 35-minute game while supplying their team with Wards, Smokes, and Dusts.
The best heroes to buy Boots of Bearing
We’ve established that the new Boots are exclusively a support item.
Therefore, the best supports to purchase the item are roaming-focused Position 4 supports like Tusk, Clockwork, Bounty Hunter, and Spirit Breaker.
Roaming supports will often move from lane to lane to secure kills for the team. During these kill attempts, the roaming support will often sustain heavy damage. This makes Tranquil Boots perfect for roamers as it keeps them active on the map for as long as their mana pool can sustain them.
Drum of Endurance is also great for roaming supports. Usually bought during the midgame, it provides great stats for the user and a useful buff to allies, providing a solid advantage in these skirmishes.
A lot of these roaming supports are melee and will also enjoy the extra strength provided by Boots of Bearing. They also tend to have mana issues, which are alleviated by the intelligence the Boots give. The 15 health regeneration is also a huge boon to their survivability during team fights.
Roaming supports tend to forgo standard support items in favor of better scaling into the late game.
They also tend to have more farm than Position 5 supports and can make full use of the item slot that Boots of Bearing frees up, making them the role that benefits most from this new Dota 2 item.
Otomo is a long-time gaming enthusiast and caster. He has been playing games since he was 10 and is the biggest Dota 2 fan.
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