It's unlikely that the interface design is final. Keep in mind that they haven't even started the beta.

From what I could tell he sounds like every other melee character ever. One gap closer, one skill that modifies your next attack, and one aoe spell that deals some damage and maybe slows or something.

It's nice to have a slightly different Wukong when I don't feel like playing Wukong, I guess.

Well, I clicked the shiny button. I hope that'll be enough for me to get into this beta thing.

That could be true, I guess.

I know that's the reason we haven't seen a lot of Nevermore, at least. Never is the kind of hero you can do really good or really terrible with - he's got lots of damage and offensive skills, but no real way to save himself if you mess up.

Leshrac is okay, but even with the bloodstone, even with even more health items on top, if the opposing team builds a pipe or buys the magic resist item you build into the pipe, or even buys black king bar you are totally fucked. Welcome to your diabolic edict + ultimate doing absolutely jack.

I don't think that's very fair to say. Firstly, you can't say that Hood counters only Leshrac. It counters all heroes that rely on magical damage, and for example I'd say that it counters Lina harder than it counters Leshrac.

Secondly, Hood is 30% resistance, so you're still going to deal damage even if they do buy it. And if they're getting Hood, they're getting that instead of other items - many heroes can't afford to get Hood because other items are more important to them.

Finally, contrary to what you might expect, Leshrac does not only deal magical damage. Most of his damage is magical, sure - but Diabolic Edict is a mixed damage type, so it can still deal damage to enemies you can't damage with magic (and it can damage structures, making it an incredibly useful pushing spell).

Well, I saw Chen and Prophet being picked together in quite a few games this tournament. They're really good at pushing towers quickly with their creeps and treants, and early towers will give your team a significant gold advantage.

Also, Leshrac is only squish if you're not building him correctly. His ultimate is designed to be used in the middle of fights, and it's really powerful if you have a big health item like a Bloodstone or a Heart. Necrolyte is a lot like that too - they're designed for long fights, so you build health on them.

I think that most of us are just not used to the new models yet. In general, people tend to resist change and prefer the old versions of things. I thought most of them were ugly at first, but now I'm really starting to like Venomancer, Tidehunter, Windrunner and Anti-Mage.

If "new Tide" and "old Tide" were reversed, and you found out that the DotA 2 model looked like this, I think you would be horrified by the ugliness (not just because of the low polygon count).

The only new model that I really don't like is Storm Spirit. Not sure what they were thinking with that one.

Venomancer's model looks totally sick. Especially his wards. I hope this one will play better than the last guy. 

MYM just got slaughtered. Holy jesus.

Edit: It looks like they did much better in their second game, but that one didn't get streamed on the website. Oh well... 

I must say I'm enjoying the picks right now. The games have all been pretty unique because of the different picks on the teams. In the current game we're seeing Drow, Wind, and Crystal among others that we didn't see before.

Wow, iG stomped Mineski pretty hard. Their Anti-Mage was level 22 and had 11/1 in K/D when the other team were all below level 16.

They've got some good commentators talking too, but most of the time you can't really hear what they're saying because of all the lagging.

There's a new game going on. I'm hearing some commentary too.

I kind of like the new models myself. The new Tidehunter looks a lot better in my opinion.

There are a lot of technical issues with the stream, the game is lagging a lot (you can see the teams typing "lag" in the chat pretty often) which I imagine is part of the reason the teams are playing defensively.

Also holy crap the iG vs. EHOME game is still going after 88 minutes.

I was wondering about the commentary thing. It looks like they do have commentary since there are options under the video where you can select a commentary language, but I've selected English and I'm not hearing anything.

The teams were given plenty of time to prepare themselves. They don't have years of Dota2 experience, obviously, but they didn't just go to the tournament without knowing anything about the game. And since it's so similar to the original DotA, much of what they already know can be adapted to the new environment.

This issue here is that DotA is outdated and large chunks of its mechanics aren't actually part of DotA, but are in fact artifacts of the WC3 engine.

Reconnect functionality. Leaver protection. Tutorials. Voice chat. Custom hotkeys. New animations, models and sound sets.

Those are the things I'm looking for in DotA 2. Not things that are part of the core gameplay, but things that just make the game more friendly and more fun to play. You say that certain DotA mechanics are "artifacts", but I'm interested in hearing specifically what you are talking about.

I want DotA 2 to be DotA. If they change nothing of the core gameplay, I'm going to be satisfied.

The issue here is that DotA is chained to the Warcraft 3 engine, which is ridiculously outdated by today's standards and lacks many features we have come to expect from modern games. DotA 2 will be its own game, so Valve can make it work exactly the way they want it to work instead of trying to make it fit in someone else's engine.

The communities of DOTA, HoN, and LoL are notorious, even among gamer communities, for being noxious hellholes.  It’s rare that I actually run afoul of these beasts; usually, they’re content to shiver and gasp in their rotting stumps.  Every now and then, though, they do emerge, and I remember: oh, yes.  You senseless things.  Again!

Obviously you have a lot of larvae just learning to be human beings, and I can recognize their wretched, sightless writhings.  But it’s simply a fact that this game is more stressful than other games.  Part of it is almost certainly because the stakes are higher.  On average, a round of League of Legends might be five or six times longer than a round of CoD.  You can only waste a stranger’s time so long before they begin to resent it, and in an environment where there’s little to no repercussions to transgressive behavior there is a high likelihood that you will be transgressed at some point.  I’m not saying it’s an awesome thing to do, just that it is done, and to gird yourself accordingly.

(Tycho, P.A.)

He has the greatest nose I've ever seen!

"What does a hero truly need...? That is for you to decide!"

This is incredible. Also, I can't say I expected the item merchant to be the star of the DotA 2 trailer.

Today I learned that bots will be fooled by clones like Wukong's Decoy one hundred percent of the time. It's pretty hilarious to create a decoy and watch Annie Bot cast all her spells plus ignite on it.