- Valve released a spring patch adding many quality-of-life improvements
- They include better tooltips and a better system for muting and reporting players
- Dota 2 also has multiple small gameplay changes
In what has become a customary tradition for Valve, the company has released the newest “spring cleaning” patch for Dota 2.
Time for Spring Cleaning
Dota 2’s “spring cleaning” patch is put out every year by Valve with the aims of fixing bugs and adding small quality of life improvements. The company recently released this year’s patch, and fans should rejoice as it is a big one. Aghanim's tooltips, Muting Controls, Shop Searches, and Demo Hero mode all received minor but important improvements.
Aghanim’s Tooltips Changes
Starting with Aghanim’s tooltips, they now include more detailed information about the exact numbers that change when equipped. Modified abilities also include this information in a dedicated section. “The inner workings of Aghanim's mind (and monologue) are undoubtedly beyond mortal comprehension, but with today's update the battlefield impact of his magnificent Scepters and Shards has been revealed like never before,” wrote Valve in a blog post dedicated to the patch.
Muting and Reporting Players
Other quality-of-life improvements are revamped muting options. “Dota players are a boisterous bunch,” as Valve themselves put it, so they’ve added the option to mute voice, text, and report a player with one click. If you want to just mute a player without reporting them, you can do this with right-clicking. Additionally, there’s the option to mute an entire enemy team using the new Team Mute buttons. Valve also explained that they are revamping how they handle communication reports.
Shop Search Upgrades
Looking for items to buy in the shop can be bothersome sometimes, so Valve has improved support for keywords. This includes a display that highlights searched-for attributes. You can now just search for “Armor”, “Strength”, etc. to highlight the stats you're interested in.
Demo Hero Improvements
For players who want to test out new meta strategies or create their own, the Hero Demo has been updated with a rework that includes a host of new functionalities like:
- an expanded Demo Map to provide more flat area for testing
- controls to easily spawn Allied heroes, in addition to enemies
- a control to reset a hero back to level 1.
- a control to remove a hero once you're done testing
and many others.
These are just a fraction of the changes Valve is bringing to this year’s Dota 2 “Spring Cleaning” patch, with others including expanded item tooltips, ability damage colors, buffs to heroes, and other interface and cosmetics changes. You can read them in detail at Valve’s official summary here.
