Change is coming to the world of Dota 2. Winter has ended, giving way to the start of the New Bloom, the game's latest holiday event. The snow is long gone and flowers will soon cover the game's trees, but it isn't just aesthetics that are changing. This event brings with it two highly anticipated characters, as well as a crazy new game mode and a wealth of balance changes and new hero items.
The first new hero is Terrorblade, a demon marauder based off of Warcraft's Illidan. Two of his skills are based around creating illusions to attack and confuse your foes, but his health swap ultimate will certainly be his most interesting feature. The other newly announced hero is Phoenix, a fiery bird who sacrifices his health to attack enemies and aid allies, then uses his Supernova ultimate to burn up himself and his enemies. He then rises from the ashes with renewed strength.
But it isn't just new heroes to be excited about. Valve is also adding a new game mode called Random Ability Draft. In this mode (unlocked at level 11) every character is given a random hero, then every heroes abilities are taken away and placed in a pool. Players take turns picking out which abilities they want then play the game with whatever they got. I hope these random drafts lead to some crazy fun, but I worry about the possibility of ending up with a broken mess of a hero. The other new game mode addition is Replay Takeover, which lets you and your friends jump into any archived replay at any point and replay the game from that spot. It doesn't say how the AI will work, but this mode definitely has potential as a learning tool as well as a way to blow off some steam replaying your favorite moments.
The new heroes and modes are the biggest new additions, but there are a ton of other small changes being made to the game in this update which goes live tomorrow. Head on over to the Dota 2 blog to see everything.
Source: blog.dota2.com
