A Dota 2 bug is playing havoc with the new Dota 2 Razor arcana, giving the crackling carry hero a distinct advantage in certain matchups when wearing the fancy new skin in Valve’s MOBA game, causing players to call it a “pay to win” item. As consistently one of the most played games on Steam, reaching over one million concurrent Dota 2 players again in November, any notable Dota 2 bugs are likely to completely mess with the meta and see the hero banned or abused, so hopefully Valve will patch this issue quickly.
The new Dota 2 arcana is part of the second part of the Dota 2 battle pass released alongside the Diretide seasonal event. It gives Razor a new purple look that opens up his armour slightly more to reveal a whirling tornado within. Crucially, it also turns his lightning whip into a segmented sword, which appears to be causing the issue. While you might think Razor’s autoattacks look like melee, they’re actually considered projectiles, making him a ranged hero.
As such, he cannot usually attack heroes through the arena walls of the Arena of Blood summoned by the Mars ultimate ability. The fiery brawler creates a circle of undead warriors that lock heroes inside for several seconds, but ranged heroes cannot attack through the walls of the circle. Melee units can, however, if their attack range is great enough. While Razor is a ranged hero, it appears that his arcana sword’s unique attack animation clips far enough through the arena that the projectile can catch enemies on the other side.
While this only affects autoattacks, Razor is a carry hero – meaning that many of his builds revolve around building into the strength and speed of the autoattack. This is further exacerbated by his signature ability, Static Link, which allows him to drain huge amounts of attack damage from enemy heroes and add it to his own, making him a particularly vicious hard-hitter. As the video below demonstrates, a Queen of Pain arcana can also bypass the barrier, but with far less consistency than Voidstorm Asylum Razor.
A Reddit thread highlights this issue, calling the arcana a “pay to win item” – though, contrary to their claim, it’s far from the first premium item to cause an unintended advantage such as this. Previous such examples are the Immortal Gardens terrain from TI6, which gave players easier to navigate juke spots thanks to its unique tree designs, and a Techies arcana that gave the hero a placeable sign, which was later added as an ability for all instances of Techies after players complained that it allowed arcana users to play mind games on their opponents.
Valve traditionally hops on such game-breaking bugs fairly quickly, even when they’re relatively niche. Hopefully it will be addressed, but in the meantime keep an eye out if dealing with the Razor and Mars combination. Check out the best Dota 2 heroes to play as if you’re unsure who else to pick. In addition, we recommend that you give our favourite Dota 2 custom games a whirl if you’ve had your fill of Diretide.