This week's Dota 2 update is a chunky one in spite of the addition of just the one hero. Templar Assassin's long range traps and invisibility powers will give gankers an intriguing new skillset to work with, but this week's winners are fans of Dota 2's round blue king of camp, Storm Spirit. His new announcer pack brings a bit of bonus melodrama to Dota's lane battles. Those with a bit more money to burn can make use of a new breed of special chests full of exclusive items. They can be opened with keys bought in the Dota 2 store.
That's not all, though. Bug fixes, better bot behaviour and new items all get a mention in the latest Dota 2 update. Let's get stuck in.
Lanaya the Templar Assassin
Stealthy Agility Carry/Ganker
It wasn't until she was fired from her day job for non-attendance that the ever-punctual Lanaya realised that she had a tendency to turn invisible when sitting still. She retreated to a nearby park bench to contemplate her future, but could find no answers until she stood up to leave and surprised a pigeon to death. That was the moment she realised her true ganking potential. Inspired, she perfected the art of turning aside damage, throwing cones of psi energy and laying traps, and headed to the lanes of Dota to turn her skills to more murderous matters.
Lanaya's most interesting quirk is the way her effective range changes over the course of a fight. Her Psi-blades attack can be passively upgraded to deal damage at longer distances with increased damage and her ultimate lets her throw down numerous traps all over the battlefield, setting up assists and, at a pinch, hindering escaping enemies. Her refraction ability immunises her to precisely six hits, which can be used to great advantage in the middle of a melee, but the micro needed to time these abilities effectively make her a challenging hero to learn.
Here's another one of Dota Cinema's ever-useful hero overviews, showing off Templar Assassin's abilities.
New treasure chest
The patch notes mentions the arrival of a new type of treasure chest. The poster below from the Dota 2 blog provides more details. The chest has a turtle-like appearance, and the key used to unlock seems to have a tiny turtle impaled on the end of it. I sure hope the items within are worth the death of that poor tiny turtle.
The new chests have only just arrived, so it's hard to know what sort of items they'll contain, but details are sure to appear soon on the chest summary on the Dota 2 wiki .
Storm Spirit Announcer Pack
£5 in the Dota 2 store. I'll just leave this here.
Patch notes
And here are the latest patch notes, via Steam :
PATCH HIGHLIGHTS
- Added Templar Assassin!
- Enabled Templar Assassin, Disruptor and Undying in Captain's Mode.
GAMEPLAY
- Bounty Hunter: Fixed Jinada proccing on Tombstone.
- Broodmother: Fixed Spiderling passive proccing on magic immune units (like zombies) and spawning mass spiderlings.
- Disruptor: Fixed Kinetic Field sometimes causing heroes to fail to attack a hero who is being trapped in the field.
- Earthshaker: Fixed Echo Slam inital damage not hitting units through magic immunity.
- Leshrac: Fixed Pulse Nova procing Essence Aura.
- Lone Druid: Fixed Spirit Bear not aggroing creeps when it attacks a hero
- Luna: Fixed Moon Glaive bouncing on ward type units
- Luna: Fixed Moon Glaive bounce order.
- Lycan: Fixed wolves having max speed for their duration after Shapeshift ends if summoned during Shapeshift.
- Necrolyte: Fixed Death Pulse not healing allied magic immune units
- Puck: Fixed Phase Shift proccing Essence Aura.
- Rubick: Fixed being able to steal spells from their being toggled off.
- Rubick: Fixed getting stuck in Flesh Golem form when respawning with the buff.
- Rubick: Fixed some abilities being broken when re-stealing them, now re-stealing an ability will have no effect on your currently stolen ability.
- Shadow Shaman: Fixed Ether Shock ignoring Linken's Sphere.
- Spiritbreaker: Fixed Greaterbash affecting Magic Immune units when procced via other abilities
- Undying: Fixed Tombstone interaction with Refresher Orb.
- Undying: Fixed Deathlust sometimes not working properly.
- Undying: Fixed a bug where Deathlust would sometimes not go away.
- Undying: Decay now makes the target lose exactly 76 health when cast and heal exactly 76 when it ends. Before the health scaling was causing the target not to lose then gain the correct amount of health.
- Wisp: Fixed Spirits exploding on illusions.
- Wisp: Fixed Relocate to not teleport Wisp while dead
- Improved AFK detection.
- Fixed Smoke of Deceit dodging incoming projectiles if there are nearby enemy heroes.
- Fixed Ethereal Blade and Black King Bar interaction.
- Fixed completely-avoided damage from triggering blink dagger's cooldown.
UI
- Rich Presence now shows if you're casting a game.
- If you buy an Aghanim's Scepter on a hero with no upgrade, this is now shown in the ability.
- Battle point rate and any equipped bonuses are now shown in the inspect panel.
- Numerical battle points earned (split into base and bonus) are now shown on the game end screen.
- The play panel now shows matchmaking game modes and regions from the party when finding a match.
- Improved unpause countdown, added UI sound.
- Fixed case where we weren't properly crediting damage from summoned units/wards to their hero in the combatlog.
- Added an interface setting to prevent the camera from moving upon respawn
- Neutrals now have yellow healthbars when spectating.
- Roshan's healthbar is now slightly bigger.
- We now hide all match details until you reveal the winner.
- Team names and logos are now shown on match details panel.
- Fixed a handful of issues with the message and chat system when watching replays.
- The killcam card now flips over to show the full body portrait.
DOTA 2 BOTS
- Improved how bots manage their movement while doing evasive maneuvers -- they will now consider a range of escape directions and select the best one based on other nearby avoidance zones.
- Added avoidance to Disruptor's Kinetic Field (while it's forming) and Static Storm.
- Improved how bots request items from the stash via the courier. The courier will now only deliver items the hero has room for, and bots will take into account projected item combines.
VISUALS
- Added overhead messages when items or abilities cause unnatural mana gain or loss (such as Arcane Boots).
ECONOMY
- A new chest with exclusive items has been spotted.
- Announcers, couriers and several rare items on sale.
- Added Storm Spirit announcer.
- Added over 50 new community created items.
