Dota 2 weekly round up: Rubick, competitive features added!

Another week, another Dota 2 patch. This week, fans of the Intelligence support hero, Rubick, will be pleased to hear that he has made the transition to Dota 2.

But the most notable announcement this week are the competitive features that Valve is adding to the Dota 2 client.

The first key addition, Tournament View, has already been implemented. Within the Dota 2 client, you will be able to find current and past tournament games, and choose the ones you think are worth paying to watch.

Valve stated that their goal isn’t to replace web-based streams, but rather provide a more in-depth experience for the viewer, promising a “higher fidelity, richer experience” that users “will have more control over”. In addition, Valve says they will share the money paid to watch the games with the organisers of the tournament, ensuring everyone benefits from this arrangement.

The second feature, which is being tested at The Defence tournament, is better in-game support for competitive teams with the new team system.

The team system allows players to declare themselves a competitive team, and will store statistics about the performance of the team, detect matches between competitive teams and allow a team to find public matches against other organised teams. The ability to place the team’s logo in-game at the Dire’s and Radiant’s starting points will also be added — a nice cosmetic touch.

I can see how these additions really gears Dota 2 up for the esports scene. Besides helping finance and support tournaments via Tournament Pass, the new Team system does seems to make it easier for competitive teams to find opponents of a similar level to improve themselves. There really is no joy in beating public players over and over again if you want a challenge.

Full changelog below:

GAMEPLAY

• Added Rubick!
• Bane
  • Fixed Fiend’s Grip not ending if Kraken Shell dispels it.
• Chaos Knight
  • Reality Rift now puts the Chaos Knight behind his target.
• Clockwerk
  • Fixed Hookshot stunning dead units.
• Gyrocopter
  • Fixed Homing Missile not giving any bounty.
• Invoker
  • Fixed Alacrity interaction with Magic Immunity
• Kunkka
  • Fixed Ghost Ship allied debuff dealing all the damage immediately when then rum wears off, rather than over the following 8 seconds.
• Mirana
  • Reduced size of Arrow 20%.
• Outworld Destroyer
  • Added visual indicator for Astral Imprisonment Length.
• Riki
  • Fixed sometimes not attacking his Blink Strike target immediately.
• Spirit Breaker
  • Fixed a bug allowing charging Razor without moving.
• Fixed Batrider and Outworld Destroyer having 1 too little armor.
• Fixed Chaos Knight having 2 extra armor.
• Fixed Lone Druid having 1.3 too little armor.

UI

• Added support for tournament spectating passes.
• Select All Other Units feature no longer selects any unit that is lacking attack capability (like Beastmaster’s Hawk).
• Added a buff to indicate the duration of Death Prophet’s Exorcism.
• Updated Aghanim’s Scepter tooltips for Beastmaster, Necrolyte, Queen of Pain, Warlock, and Windrunner.
• Updated the Aghanim’s Scepter store preview.
• Fixed bug where large replays were unable to download.
• Replay downloading is now paralleled to improve download speeds.
• Fixed item purchase message crediting the wrong player if the purchased item stacked with someone else’s item.

VISUALS

• Added a custom particle effect for Skadi.

COSMETICS

• Added announcers and new couriers to the Dota Store.

• Added new items for Witch Doctor.

• Fixed a bug that caused new users not to earn random drops. Affected users will receive the drops they should have gotten when they finish their next match.

• Increased the number of backpack slots displayed on a single page of the backpack to 64.

• Increased the base number of backpack slots from 50 to 64.

• Increased the number of backpack slots that store users have from 500 to 640.

• Fixed a bug that caused the last slot in the backpack to not respond to drag n’ drop.

BOTS

• Co-op bot matches will now randomly assign the human players to Radiant or Dire.
• In co-op bot matches, if a human disconnects before picking a hero, the bots will now correctly balance the teams.
• Fixed bots not selecting heroes into non-AP games.
• Fixed bots not deploying their couriers on Passive difficulty.

UNDOCUMENTED

• Added support for changing Voice Packs that can be purchased from the store.
• Added the following animations for Alchemist:
  • Haste Rune Run
  • Injured Run
  • Victory
  • Spawn
  • Teleport (Start and End)
• Added the following animations for Ancient Apparition:
  • Injured Idle (and alternate animation)
  • Victory
  • Haste Rune Run
  • Injured Run
  • Spawn
  • Teleport (Start and End)
• Added the following animations for Anti-Mage:
  • Teleport (Start and End)
• Added some new animations for Axe‘s Blood Chaser
• Added the Treasure of the Red Mist

 

(via Dota 2 and Dota 2 Wiki)