Dota 2 patch 6.86 released, first pro games happening right now

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Update 16th December, 2015: The patch is now live to download through Steam, after a day of bugfixing and other bits and bobs on the test server. I sure hope they fixed everything. Wouldn’t be like Valve to release content that hadn’t been tested properly now, would it?

Now would be a good time to play some nice Dota 2 custom games and forget your troubles.

If you’re interested in watching some pro games, esteemed PCGamesN contributor Chris Higgins points me at this arhiveof Virtus Pro vs. Team STARK, part of the MarsTV Dota 2 League, which was the first Dota game of 6.86 played. Mid-series, even. What a fun trainwreck it was.

Meanwhile the World Cyber Arena has started, a much-maligned but nevertheless massively-prize-pooled Chinese tournaments with some of the best teams in the world, including Secret and all the major Chinese teams. The streams are split across BeyondTheSummitand the pair of JoinDota streams, Red and Blue. It’s running until Monday, and will be the final tournament of the year as well as the first tournament on 6.86.

Update 15th December, 2015: The full patch notes are now available for The Balance of Power, as the patch is officially known. It adds a hero, Arc Warden, four new items, redesigns Riki, Doom, Death Prophet, Faceless Void, Lone Druid and Winter Wyrvern. Perhaps most terrifying of all, Earth Spirit (along with Oracle and Terrorblade) has been added to Captain’s Mode.

You can read the full patch notes on the official site.Here’s the highlights:

  • Added Arcane Rune, reduces cooldowns and mana costs.
  • Added a new neutral hard camp for each team, near their respective Secret Shops.
  • Iron Branch can now be used by targeting the ground, planting a happy little tree.
  • The usual billion and a half hero and item changes.

Original article:Dota 2’s next massive patch is just around the corner, but patch notes for 6.86 haven’t yet appeared. Instead there’s a teaser site, memes and anger. Just what the doctor ordered.

The teaser site has a nice big image of a team containing current-patch all star Doom and lesser friends Lone Druid (bear not pictured), Faceless Void, Rikimaru and Death Prophet. All the community’s digging and theorising and possibility considering has resulted in nothing of any possible worth being gleaned from that, but gosh have they tried:

Meanwhile the thread on Reddit linking to it so far has 5000+ upvotes in a little over an hour, which is impressive work for something that is, as the flair says, “literally nothing.”

We’ll keep this post updated with whatever comes to pass. In the mean time, here’s proof that the Dota 2 Test Client has been changed today, another sign the patch should be coming soon, were one needed. For now, the waiting game continues.