Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
the chinese commentators are good for those who can understand, i'm referring to the live streaming that was a awhile back; but if this applies for any current events then i recommend these guys
Watching Tobi's stream is hilarious. They can never get a game started because people are abandoning the game, and searches take like 2 mins (just like in the good ol' days). Sadly it seems to be the same person all the time lol
Edit: If anyone remembers Merlini (arguably the best NA player, maybe even the world at the time) he has a Dota 2 stream going:
Hopefully there'll be more good players playing the beta now with that mass invite. We should schedule a private match or at least a full team to do some pubstomp in the future.
According to the blog the first batch of keys got sent out, I didn't get an email though :(
Blizzard DotA looks kinda interesting from the little bit I know about it, I'm mainly curious to see what kind of gameplay changes will be made though.
I don't even play, but you just need to paste this into your browser:
steam://takesurvey/1/ (obviously with steam running)
The survey will take your specs and then ask you to fill in a questionnaire about your experience with the original DotA, including favourite heroes and average kills and gold earned per match.
big changes all over the place. Most interesting (besides the new heroes) imo:
- couriers give a bigger gold bounty, but respawn and no longer drop items when killed; also no invulnerability shield on flying courier anymore
- Heroes respawn with full mana
- Gold over time from 0.875 intervals to 0.8
- Reincarnation cooldown decreased from 300/220/140 to 260/160/60
- Orchid Malevolence now requires 2 Oblivion Staffs and a 775 gold recipe, and loses 15 damage/75% mana regen in exchange for 5 intelligence and being 900 gold cheaper overall
- New item Abyssal Blade requires a Sacred Relic and a Basher, gives 100 damage / 10 str / a castable, 2 second melee range disable that goes through magic immunity (along with passive bash)
- New item Rod of Atos requires a Vit Booster and 2 Staffs of Wizardry, gives you a castable 4 second 50% slow
I just played a game with the Fire Spirit, so I thought I'd give you a bit more information:
His first skill is a really good AoE disable (though really bad if you have lots of creeps around). I assume the disable is similar to net or Frost bite, I know it's not a stun though because SA managed to blink while the disable was on him.
Second skill is basically an omni-slash, but far weaker (and after you use it, you return to the point where you casted it from, so you gotta choose carefully when to use it).
Third skill is a 45 damage aoe aura, that turns off when you get dealt specific amounts of magic damage.
His ultimate is alot like Storm Spirit's first skill and ultimate combined. You basically have 3 'charges', and when you use 1, it creates a remnant (much like Storm's), but do not do damage. You have to use a sub-skill that basically teleports you to where a selected remnant is, and it then deals damage.
It's a pretty fun hero, though it's kinda like Ursa in that he'd be way better/imba if he was a strength hero (like Ursa, he's an agility hero).