Hero Builds

What does a hero truly need? Now you can find out with Hero Builds.

Dota 2 has a vast number of heroes to choose from, and we’re adding more all the time. Player-written guides are a great way to learn more about these heroes, but that’s a lot of information to keep in your head in the heat of battle. That’s why we’re introducing Hero Builds: integrated guides that allow you to see which items to buy and which abilities to level (and when), all within Dota 2.

You can create builds for yourself, or you can publish them to the Steam Community to share them with others. Hero Builds can also be embedded into the great guides that players have already been writing on the Steam Community, meaning you’ll always have invaluable advice at your fingertips no matter which hero you’ve chosen.

To find and use Hero Builds while playing, open the “Hero Build Panel” from inside a game.

It has been two weeks since we released Team Matchmaking and one of the most requested features people have been asking for is the ability for players to be in multiple teams at the same time. There would be no point in mentioning that unless we just added that feature in, so there ya go. Starting today player’s will able to join up to 10 different teams, so feel free to make a team for when you want to be serious and another team when you just want to play 5 carries.

Changelog is here!

Who calls the Dragon Knight?

This week’s update includes the first piece of a large set of features aimed at introducing new players to Dota 2. Dota’s a deep game, and there’s a lot of things to learn, but we felt it was important that the learning was entertaining in itself, so we’ve tried to avoid building a dry tutorial. Did we succeed? That’s where you come in.

If you’re a new player, you’ll be automatically guided towards the first tutorial adventure, where you play Davion, The Dragon Knight. If you’ve already been playing Dota, you’ll find it under the Quests tab of the Play screen. Once you’ve completed it, please drop by the New Player Experience forum and tell us what you think.

We’re sure that you’ll think of a million things that we’re not teaching new players yet, and you’ll be right. This is just the first step, and we felt it was important to ship it so that you could help us figure out the right next step. Bringing new players into Dota is something we’ll be doing in collaboration with you, combining single player tutorial adventures with features like the recently released Hero Guides.

This week update also allow players to preview the content of all chests before unlocking them. You can also preview the contents in full 3D!

We’ve also added the ability to specify a custom status on your Rich Presence area. You can find this in your Career Profile panel.

See you next week!

Dota 2 Update - March 14th, 2013

- Added region for South Africa.

GAMEPLAY
- Clinkz: Fixed Death Pact healing Clinkz under Ice Blast debuff.
- Gyrocopter: Fixed Flak Cannon killing couriers
- Sniper: Fixed Headshot not working on units like Spirit Bear, Warlock's Golem, etc.
- Sniper: Fixed Shrapnel doing slightly less damage than intended to towers.
- Sniper: Fixed Headshot's physical damage bonus being blocked by Magic Immunity.
- Spectre: Added a short grace period to walking off the Spectral Dagger path before collision is restored
- Spiritbreaker: Fixed Magic Immune units being ignored by the AOE greater bash procs from Charge of Darkness and Scepter Nether Strike.
- Tusk: Fixed some cases where Ice Shards could get units stuck
- Wisp: Fixed Tether sometimes ending prematurely if Relocate was cast before Tether.
- Wisp: Fixed Relocating units sometimes walking away to do a previous behavior.
- Fixed Roshan's aoe Slam damage type being physical rather than magical (and thus hurting Familiars).
- Fixed creeps and neutrals sometimes not responding to long range spells.
- Fixed Blink Dagger self-cast to work consistently.
- Visage: Fixed a number of incorrect spell interactions with Familiars.
- Fixed Cheese not having a cooldown
- Fixed Cheese not stacking in inventory
- Enabled Timbersaw in Captain's Mode in Latest Version (Tournament Version next week)
- Local games are no longer automatically unpaused.

AUDIO
- Added sound effects to the Dashboard.
- Added sound effects for various Tiny deaths.
- Updated Mjollnir sound effect.
- Updated Maelstrom sound effect.

UI
- Items held by the courier are now included in a player's Net Worth.
- Fixed the sorting of Teams List under the Community tab.
- Fixed courier and ward previewing in the backpack.
- Fixed the scrollbar being hidden when a schedule had a full page of tournaments in a single month.
- Live games list now displays the game mode.
- Fiery Soul of the Slayer's custom minimap icon only draws for the player that owns the item.
- Re-positioned end game survey to not block the chat.
- Teams that haven't played a team matchmaking game in the last 7 days will now show up as being "inactive" in WebAPI calls.
- Improved performance of chat channels in the Dashboard.

VISUALS
- Revised overhead Soul Assumption indicator.
- Fixed Smoke of Deceit AOE visual effect showing for enemies if the caster is hidden
- Added in-game models for when the following items are dropped from inventory into the world: Divine Rapier, Healing Salve, Clarity, Dust of Appearance, Bottle, and Bootes of Speed

BOTS
- Added Lion bot.
- Added Omniknight bot.
- Made a number of adjustments to loadouts and builds based on community feedback.
- Bots now know how to use Rod of Atos, Tranquil Boots, Abyssal Blade, Heaven's Halberd, and Veil of Dischord.
- Bots will no longer go to the Side Shop with a full inventory if they aren't willing to sell anything.
- Generic summoned units (Necro units, Illusions, etc) now have basic bot AIs, so they can act independently from their owner.
- Fixed bots interrupting their teleports.
- Bots will be less aggressive when they have stacks of Sticky Napalm on them.
- Bots will now only use Refresher Orb if they want to cast big ticket abilities.
- Fixed Witch Doctor bot spam-toggling Voodoo Restoration when he simply wanted to activate it.
- Witch Doctor is less likely to use Death Ward on units that are about to die anyways.
- Bots now establish their lanes at 0:15 (changed from 0:30), which makes jungling the initial creep spawn eaiser without confusing them about what lane you're in.
- Bots will no longer go for runes that may or may not be there if it's been a while since their spawn time.
- When there are no wards up, bots are now smarter about only warding the closer rune location.

WORKSHOP
- Added general support for importing any Ability/Spell related model. Currently just supporting Beastmaster Boars.
- Reworked the "View My Submissions" page to better handle a large number of submissions (sorting/pagination/bug fixes)
- Fixed submission preview images not being set correctly.
- Fixed a bug where updating an existing submission could set incorrect tags on the submission.
- Disabled the Workshop in the Test client to prevent confusion. 

Dota 2 Update - March 7th, 2013

GAMEPLAY
- Gyrocopter: Fixed Rocket Barrage firing while under effects like Disruption/Chronosphere/Doom/Hex.
- Gyrocopter: Fixed Flak Cannon hurting nightmared units without waking them up.
- Naga Siren: Fixed being able to purge Song of the Siren aura off of Naga Siren.
- Nyx: Fixed Spiked Carapace affecting Juggernaut during Omnislash.
- Outworld Devourer: Fixed Astral Imprisonment not draining enough mana from enemy heroes.
- Timbersaw: Fixed Whirling Death not doing enough damage against strength heroes.
- Fixed Maelstrom and Mjollnir being unable to proc if the initial target is Magic Immune.
- Tweaked Neutral Creep chase timings for the two small camps.
- Fixed a number of bugs in Mechanics I, including all known showstoppers.

UI
- Fixed holding alt causing smoked hero names to be shown on minimap when near truesight.
- Fixed your status showing as playing a local bot game if you were spectating a game
- Hero performance page is now sorted by total number of games played.
- Fixed Dire wins in the Team Game History tab showing up as losses.
- Fixed bug where Team Game History wasn't refreshing properly.
- The Teams List under Community now displays Teams in order of their most recently played match.
- There's now a dialog asking the player to rate their currently-used hero build (if it's not yet been rated).

AUDIO
- Music now plays in spectator and replay modes.

ITEMS
- Added Fiery Soul of the Slayer item for Lina. 

Dota 2 Update - February 28th, 2013

- Added Mechanics I for new players!
- Added 7 new item sets to the Dota store.
- Immortal and Tournament items can now be traded on the Steam Community Market.

GAMEPLAY
- Clockwerk: Fixed Power Cogs pulling more than just heroes inside the cogs.
- Huskar: Fixed Berserker's Blood not stacking at the proper health thresholds.
- Keeper of the Light: Fixed Mana Leak accumulating mana loss during magic immunity.
- Phantom Lancer: Fixed an issue where illusions made by a player on the other team would create uncontrollable Juxtapose illusions.
- Tusk: Fixed a case where heroes with very small collision size could escape Ice Shards.
- Tusk: Fixed a rare bug where teleporting could cause Walrus Punched units to end up in odd positions.
- Fixed various aspects of Spectral Dagger logic being dispellable.
- Fixed sometimes being revealed if your projectile hits the target after you become invisible with Shadow Blade.
- Improved TP interaction with FoW
- Fixed being able to get units stuck with Telekinesis and Vacuum around the rune area

UI
- Added the ability to examine chests.
- Added a Game History tab to the Team Profile.
- Added checkbox for filtering Live Games to just Team games.
- You can now click on Team names in Live or Recent games to view their team profiles.
- Added a post-game Match Quality survey panel.
- Added an icon to backpack slots if that item is currently equipped.
- Fixed the courier delivery icon popping when the courier collected stash items.
- Fixed courier delivery being delayed by 0.5 seconds if there were no items to get from the stash.
- Fixed courier move orders not clearing the transfer items buff icon.
- Players can now set a custom rich presence status that can be displayed on the UI.
- Fixed Lina's Fiery Soul buff not showing the correct cooldown if it was refreshed with 3 stacks.

BOTS
- When a push is happening into a base, global desire to farm is significantly decreased.
- Fixed a case where bots far from the lane front could thrash into and out of Push Lane mode.
- Single-player bot games now run locally on the user's machine.
- Increased reaction time by about 50% in all modes.

AUDIO/VISUAL 
- Updated Arc Lightning's visual effects and sound
- Updated Shadow Shaman's attack sound
- Updated Ether Shock's visual effects and sound
- Updated Mjollnir and Maelstrom visual effects 

Dota 2 Update - February 21st, 2013

- Added In-game Guides and Hero Builds!
- Players can now be a member of multiple teams.

GAMEPLAY
- Fixed backswing behavior on some of Invoker's skills
- Fixed Last Word being dispelled by Purge/Cyclone/etc
- Fixed Last Word interrupting channeling spells if the initial duration ends during the channel
- Enabled Medusa in Captain's Mode tournament version
- Fixed Healing Ward not preserving its hotkey when leveled up.
UI
- Added right click menu to the combat log with "Copy to clipboard" option.
- Added option to render the Co-Broadcaster's camera. Use dota_minimap_draw_cocaster_camera 0 to disable.
- Added new right click option to backpack items to equip the entire set the item belongs to.

MISC
- Added a large number of items to the random loot drop lists.

BOTS
- Adjusted hero roles of Windrunner (fewer last hits) and Meepo (more last hits).
- Made Death Prophet bot more likely to use Crypt Swarm in teamfights.
- Made Necrolyte bot a bit more hesitant about using Death Pulse when laning.
- Fixed bots dropping thousands of TP scrolls at the side shops.
- Practice with Bots difficulty and team settings are now saved. 

Dota 2 Update - February 14th, 2013

- Added Tusk!

GAMEPLAY
- Lina: Fixed Dragon Slave hitting units behind you.
- Mirana: Fixed some backswing behaviors with her spells
- Templar Assassin: Fixed Meld not removing collision.
- Troll Warlord: Fixed a case where ranged Troll Warlord can bash when attacking while transforming.
- Troll Warlord: Added a "fast" attack animation that will only trigger when his attack speed is above 210
- Fixed Orchid disabling Dagger at the end of its duration even if it was doing no damage.
- Fixed a recent bug with Poor Man's Shield that could infrequently cause it to not block hero damage
- Fixed some wave speed issues with Crypt Swarm, Dual Breath, Breathe Fire, Dragon Slave, Illuminate, Sonic Wave and Shockwave.
- Enabled Silencer in Tournament lobbies.
- Team Matchmaking now uses the Tournament lobby rules.
- Two-player Mid Only games now automatically spawn a courier.
- Enabled Medusa in Captain's Mode for Latest Version (will be enabled in Tournament Version the following week).

UI
- Updated look of the combat log and added language localization.
- Fixed bug where players who'd set themselves as Offline in Steam would still report their Rich Presence status.
- Players no longer display what hero they're playing in their Rich Presnce if they're in a private no-spectating game.
- Added a "Add Self to Roster" button that shows up for Team Admins that aren't part of their Team's Roster.
- The Game End panel now shows team names for games with teams.

VISUALS
- If Keeper of the Light dies with Recall active, the visual effect is now removed.

BOTS
- Fixed PL not being considered a Hard Carry for lane-selection and last-hit-deferring purposes.
- Fixed VS bot not having a large enough item build list.
- Bots will no longer dust Doppelwalk because it's sneaky.
- Bots will no longer buy invisibility detection for an enemy's item until they see that item in an enemy's inventory.
- Made Zeus bot slightly more likely to use Wrath of the Thundergod.
- When a player connects, we now only disable/make invulnerable heroes on the opposing teams (not units with bots like the Warlock Golem).