14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Valve is announcing that a new big update is now going live for DOTA 2 and is designed to introduce some big changes to the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena title while also preparing the game for the coming major event in Shanghai.
The workshop now features the following new heroes: Arc Warden, Shadow Fiend, Winter Wyvern, Zeus and Undying.
The hero files for Broodmother and Spiderling, Lina, Omniknight, Pugna and Nether Ward and Sniper have been upgraded to Source 2, and new ability items are also included.
When it comes to the core DOTA 2 experience players should notice that the game is now using less overall memory and that the pathfinder system has been improved in order to reduce backtracking, with a look at all the tweaks made in the new update available to those who click on the button at the end of this article.
Valve is also delivering new Workshop tools for gamers to use and a hotfix has already been launched to make the new Naga Siren use just one infuser, refunding one to those who had to previously use two.
The final set of Winter Treasure associated with the recent Battle Pass is also going live for all those who bought it, and the company explains in the official announcement that gamers get "item sets for Magnus, Broodmother, Brewmaster, Naga Siren, Luna, and a rare Legion Commander set. Also included is the Ultra Rare Darkclaw Emissary item set for Dazzle—as before, each of these treasures you open increases your chances of receiving the Ultra Rare set."
DOTA 2 is getting ready for the big first major of the year
The group stage of the Shanghai tournament will take place between February 25 and 28 and gamers will also be able to experience the finals between March 2 and 6, featuring the biggest teams in the world.
Gamers who have picked up the Compendium associated with the DOTA 2 event will be able to now get more information on players and can now make predictions about the results of the coming matches to get access to more Battle Points if they guess correctly.
The coming Shanghai event will be played using the 6.86 meta that was recently introduced for the MOBA and some analysts believe that the tweaks that Valve has made will allow Chinese teams to dominate once again the title.
Fans are also evaluating the new teams that will take the stage and are already predicting their chances of winning The International later in the year.
The development team will also use the coming action in order to see how DOTA 2 can evolve during 2016 and might deliver another big balancing and mechanics update once the tournament is done.
The Valve-created MOBA needs to keep evolving in order to keep up in its long-term competition with League of Legends from Riot Games, which remains the most popular title in the genre, and the newly arrived Heroes of the Storm from Blizzard.