4Game

TL;DR When looking at all the changes in 7.33 as a whole, the map is functionally smaller and easier to traverse.

Patch 7.33 gave us "the map is 40% bigger", and so many people thought this would lead to slower games where people avoid each other and just farm. But DreamLeague and the Berlin Major is showing this isn't really true, with lots of brawling.

If you think about all the changes in the patch as a whole, you can understand why 7.33 actually shrunk the map, not made it bigger.

1. The map expanded on the edges, not by stretching out the middle portions.

   This means all the distances between lanes*, or the distance to run down middle to throne are all the same. The only difference in travel time is if you either start at an expanded edge, or need to get there.

2. You get +30 ms at night.

   For most heroes, this is a ~3-5% ms buff when averaged across an entire game.

   Combined with point 1, this means that you can roam between lanes even quicker.

3. Twin Gates exist.

   I said before that the distances between lanes are the same*. But if you factor in the Twin Gates, now top and bottom lane are actually extremely close to each other. If you are laning in one, you are only ever ~10-15 seconds away from getting to the other.

   This is actually even quicker than going between mid and the side lanes (~15-20 seconds).

4. Two additional outposts exist.

   These outposts are right next to the Roshan pits, which means until they get captured, either team is only ever 6-13.5 seconds away from contesting Roshan.

The only circumstance where the map is actually bigger is if you need to walk from the center of one edge to the center of another edge, and even that might be a wash due to the night ms changes. For everything else, its either shorter with smart usage of the Twin Gates, or the same.