Some time ago at Valve there was a meeting. All the heads of the Dota 2 team went into a room with ideas of what they wanted to change in their MOBA. Stan, let’s assume he’s called Stan, was responsible for okaying those ideas.* Stan was hungover.
He said yes to the first idea. And the second. And the third. He said yes to everything because he didn’t want to argue or discuss the ideas. He wanted the meeting over.
That’s how we’ve ended up with a patch that has 25 pages of notes.
Changes range from alterations to Dota’s inventory, interface, and workshop. Two new treasures – Treasure of Sinister Arcanery and Treasure of the Cosmic Abyss – to bucketloads of bug fixes.
On top of that there’s changes to most the heroes in the game. All of which will have an impact on how that hero plays. Brewmaster, for instance, now has an incentive to duck out of combat. “If you have not attacked for 10 seconds, your next attack will always activate a Drunken Brawler critical hit” and “if you have not been attacked for 10 seconds, Drunken Brawler will cause you to evade the next attack.”
And Earthshaker’s going to become great for delaying the creep wave: “Creeps no longer try to path around Fissure; they will wait for it to disappear.”
The number of changes are too big to adequately sum up in this post or simply to copy them in. You’ll have to look at the changelog over on Valve’s blog. I will pick out some of things that stand out to me, though.
Starting with the inventory. There’s a neat new feature that lets you alt-click items to tell your team when they’re ready or in cooldown. Anything that lets a player better know what their teammates are up to is a bonus.
Those two new treasures “contain brand new sets with a rare chance to grant a new courier or a new Clockwork set. However, unlike previous treasures, no seal or treasure drop is required.” They can be traded on the market place, too.
Among the bug fixes are a lot of nuggets of change. Valve have put a fair bit of work into making sure spells don’t ignore the fog of war. Which will mean players aren’t able to detect their enemies unfairly.
And, of course, the bug fix we’ve all been asking for: “Tinker’s Laser debuff is no longer partially disjointable.” (I don’t even…).
Finally, Roshan’s base armour’s been increased by one.
Yup, Stan’s hangover day was mighty productive.
Again, you can read the full 25 pages of patch notes over on Valve’s Blog.
*I really hope there’s no one on the Dota team called Stan. That would be awkward. Particularly if he likes the sauce.