According to test notes published on the Dota 2 forums by Icefrog, THREE heroes are warming up for combat, which means we can soon look forward to picking vengeful, nuke-tastic zealot scarab Nyx Assassin, man-on-horse who's basically Gandalf, Keeper of the Light and flaming blue gargoyle monster, Visage. They'll likely be added to the main client in this week's Thursday update, but they're rampaging all over the test client right now blinding, spiking and mana-burning all manner of foes.
That's a nice, varied mix of heroes. Nyx is an insectoid gank artist with a passion for spikes and invisibility. Keeper of the Light is a righteous pusher who can blast lanes with waves of glowing horses and Visage is a minion-summoning support specialist. The weekly updates are doing a great job of keeping Dota 2 fresh. It's currently the most played game on Steam , and that popularity is only going to grow as the next International tournament draws close, and Dota 2 creeps towards a proper release.
Here are those update notes from the Dota 2 forums .
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Added Nyx Assassin, Keeper of the Light, and Visage and enabled in Captain's Mode!
- Added a cooldown to being able to find a match when a player declines or abandons a game.
GAMEPLAY:
- Beastmaster: Fixed Wild Axes working with Refresher.
- Beastmaster: Wild Axes no longer provide vision when they aren't flying.
- Naga Siren: Fixed Dust of Appearance not working against units slept by Song of the Siren.
- Naga Siren: Fixed Ice Blast debuff not getting added to units slept by Song of the Siren.
- Naga Siren: Fixed Weave not affecting units slept by Song of the Siren.
- Phantom Lancer: Fixed Doppelwalk illusions not correctly replicating their inventory item slots.
- Rubick: Fixed Wild Axes being left around when another ability is stolen.
- Sand King: Neutrals can now be damaged by Sandstorm.
- Templar Assassin: Fixed Meld initial attack doing too much damage.
- Slardar: Fixed Bash working while doomed.
- Neutrals damaged by an invisible enemy will now try to run away.
SPECTATING:
- Multiple tweaks to director events and framing.
- Fixed particle effects sometimes not drawing while in Player Perspective mode.
UI:
- Added notification for when a Tournament has a live game currently running.
- The kill card now shows a randomly selected item that the killer is wearing. Also reduced its size.
- Fixed equipping an item in the backpack not jumping to the correct hero in the loadout
- Added Buyback to the spectating stats dropdown.
- Added a cooldown for being able to find a match when a player declines or abandons a game.
VISUALS:
- Fixed Rubick retaining incorrect skins from stolen abilities when returning to his normal model.
- Meld damage display is now only shown for successful hits.
BOTS:
- Significant revision of how bots determine their strategic desires.
- Roshan desire has been significantly reworked. It's now based on how quickly Roshan can be killed given the available heroes and how quickly enemies can show up.
- Evasion desire is now more granular. Things like Blade Fury now cause a range of evasion desire based on the bot's current health.
- Fixed case where bots were trying to path to an invalid location when defending their base.
- Made bots more aggressive about attacking when defending a lane.
- Cleaned up inferred human modes for pushing and defending lanes.
- Made bots less concerned about distance when considering an attack on a pinged target.
- Fixed bug that made pinged towers less likely to attract allied bots that were doing other high-priority stuff.
- Tuned retreat desire values when hurt and close to the fountain.
- Made bots somewhat more likely to buy a flying courier.
WORKSHOP:
- Added a new Import Wearable option to the Publish New Item section of the in-game workshop UI. It will compile, validate, and preview your model before you submit it. When submitting, it also packs the files into a format that makes it much easier for us to bring it into the game.
