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After a scheduled two week holiday in Hawaii, Valve have finally returned to work and have introduced a new hero to Dota 2's roster. The new hero, known as Skywrath Mage, is a ranged intelligence nuker who specializes in dealing large amounts of damage to enemy players using abilities such as his late game scaling Arcane Bolt and his potentially devastating ultimate. His ultimate, Mystic Flare, allows Skywrath Mage to deal a massive 1200 damage nuke in a small 170 unit area of effect over a period of two seconds. The ultimate is particularly useful as it scales relative to the number of enemy heroes caught in the blast by evenly distributing the total damage, thus allowing Skywrath to deal 1200 damage to a single target, 600 damage to two targets, and so on.
As with other recent updates, improving the game's visual quality was at the forefront of this patch. The Smoke of Deceit received an in-game floor model while the Gem Of True Sight has been modified to include bright particle effects to help make the item more distinguishable after it has been dropped during a hectic team fight. Everyone's favourite cloaked assassin Riki received a major update which has dramatically improved the quality of the character's model and textures. Other visual improvements include the arrival of Bill and Ben, a new pair of shopkeepers, and brand new animations for Razor, Riki and Sniper. In an update post on the Dota 2 blog, Valve mentioned that they were overhauling the player report system in order to streamline bans and generally improve the player experience. This overhauled system includes the merging of the "Voice" and "Text" abuse categories and the limiting of bans to 4 per week, which has been dropped from the previous limit of 6.
An extremely wide selection of unreleased cosmetic items were also present in the update including items for Dazzle, Doom, Huskar, Faceless Void, Enchantress, Outworld Devourer, Omniknight, Necrolyte, Warlock and several others. In related news, unreleased heroes Elder Titan, Abaddon and Legion Commander all received major updates to their in-game files in the form of new textures, particle effects, portrait images, sounds and strings, so be sure to keep an eye out for their inclusion to the game in the near future. Finally, the upcoming second tutorial map also received a variety of currently unused assets including sets of models for a cave environment and unique animations for Sniper and Tidehunter. To learn more about this particular patch, head on over to the official changelog over on the Dota 2 blog or check out Cyborgmatt's full analysis over on his website.
As with other recent updates, improving the game's visual quality was at the forefront of this patch. The Smoke of Deceit received an in-game floor model while the Gem Of True Sight has been modified to include bright particle effects to help make the item more distinguishable after it has been dropped during a hectic team fight. Everyone's favourite cloaked assassin Riki received a major update which has dramatically improved the quality of the character's model and textures. Other visual improvements include the arrival of Bill and Ben, a new pair of shopkeepers, and brand new animations for Razor, Riki and Sniper. In an update post on the Dota 2 blog, Valve mentioned that they were overhauling the player report system in order to streamline bans and generally improve the player experience. This overhauled system includes the merging of the "Voice" and "Text" abuse categories and the limiting of bans to 4 per week, which has been dropped from the previous limit of 6.
An extremely wide selection of unreleased cosmetic items were also present in the update including items for Dazzle, Doom, Huskar, Faceless Void, Enchantress, Outworld Devourer, Omniknight, Necrolyte, Warlock and several others. In related news, unreleased heroes Elder Titan, Abaddon and Legion Commander all received major updates to their in-game files in the form of new textures, particle effects, portrait images, sounds and strings, so be sure to keep an eye out for their inclusion to the game in the near future. Finally, the upcoming second tutorial map also received a variety of currently unused assets including sets of models for a cave environment and unique animations for Sniper and Tidehunter. To learn more about this particular patch, head on over to the official changelog over on the Dota 2 blog or check out Cyborgmatt's full analysis over on his website.
