Dota 2 News

Today's patch brings a few features to Dota Plus in the wake of the Battle Pass season, as well as the addition of all-new item sets for Lion, Slardar, and Crystal Maiden to the Dota Plus Rewards section.

Plus subscribers can now use the Avoid Player feature to exclude unwanted players from their matchmaking pool, get precise stacking info with the Creep Pull Timers, ward more effectively with the Ward Suggestions, and see your total incoming damage breakdown by type.

This update also replaces the old machine learning hero suggestions with the Friends and Foes feature from the Battle Pass, transfers some new Chat Wheel Sounds into your Dota Plus reward options, and adds the ability to customize your Chat Wheel phrases with emoticons.

To top it off, we've also introduced the Season 4 Matchmaking Quests and some new hero quests to add some more ways to bump up the number of shards in your stash, and players who queue into the Hard Support role in Ranked Matchmaking can even earn bonus shards.

Lastly, this year's Trove Carafe will only be available for two more weeks, so players still interested in purchasing should make sure to snag some treasure before it's gone.

* Fixed Night Stalker's scepter hitting invisible units and units in FoW
* Fixed Heavenly Grace removing some debuffs it shouldn't

* Reduced the TI Battle Pass Shovel cooldown from 60 to 20 seconds

Over the next few weeks we'll be experimenting with toggling strict solo queue on and off, to see the impact it can have on match quality and matchmaking times. The primary reason we initially added this feature was because there was a much larger discrepancy in motivation between players competing for solo MMR and players competing for party MMR, resulting in a poor experience overall. This discrepancy is not as pronounced now as before, and each option that does a hard split of the matchmaking pools has to be considered carefully as it has a direct influence on the matchmaker's ability to find the best matches available.

Today's update rolls out the exclusive 'Majesty of the Colossus' prestige item set for Tiny at Battle Level 255—along with the 'Reptilian Refuge' custom Radiant and Dire creeps at level 182—to fill out the Battle Pass rewards line as we approach The International.

Featuring completely new models for each of his Grow states, plus custom animations and effects for Avalanche and Tree Grab, the 'Majesty of the Colossus' can only be earned by increasing your Battle Level to 255 before the conclusion of The International 2019 Battle Pass. Players who've already grown to level 255 can claim this item set from the rewards line and roll into the lanes in splendor and style.

To accommodate the release of this new item set, Tiny's item slots have also been updated and simplified to correspond to his four levels of Grow, and his materials have been optimized to allow for more robust content creation. This means he will soon become available on the workshop, and that artists will only need to focus on making items to fit four base slots and one weapon slot on any future Tiny designs.

The International Group Stage

The first Group Stage action of The International kicks off at 9:00 am on Thursday, August 15 in Shanghai. With seeding in the Main Event at stake right from the start, make sure to tune in to the main stream to see the first stage of the tournament unfold.