Along with Wisp and Luna dropping today in the latest Dota 2 update, Valve have added a couple of extra additions, aimed at making things a little more transparent for everyone. The first is the Heropedia, available online as well as within the dashboard of the game, and the second is an Item Browser, that lets you, well, browse items. And have a look at what they do. But these could be the start of something even more impressive.
There’s been a panel sitting on the dashboard that’s been pretty much useless since the beginning of the beta, and with more and more players coming into the game, having ‘Learn’ be all but greyed out and empty is getting to be an increasing problem. With these two additions to Dota 2, it looks like Valve might be gearing up for finally expanding their newbie-facing arm to make it so that you can jump into Dota 2 fresh and learn what you need to learn before heading into the game proper.
The Heropedia, specifically, gives a lot of information about how each hero works, even using the Dota Cinema videos for each ability on each hero to illustrate how they look and act on the battlefield. That kind of expansion, along with the Item Browser allowing youto pore over the details of each and every item and figure out exactly what kind of item build you want to go for. The next logical step is to let you amend and customise your recommended item build from the dashboard, rather than just inside the game.
The update is live now, so you can get Wisping and Luna-ing forthwith. Although preferably not at the same time, unless you’ve just come from Starcraft 2 and your micro is STRONG.