The omg version is finally here. Changelogs below, with my comments inserted. Discussion in the comment box below.

666 Changelogs (copied from http://www.playdota.com/changelogs/6.66)

Batrider
- Flaming Lasso cooldown decreased from 130/90/50 to 90/70/50

We say: Yes the buff is definitely welcome. We think that 130 sec for a level 1 ultimate that disables only 1 person without any damage is simply too poor a meal for bats.

Read the rest of this entry »

Check out the new section on the front page called “New Comments”. This section aggregates all the comments coming from the item, hero, item idea, hero idea and strategy databases. That way members can keep track of what’s happening in other parts of the site. For now, it displays the latest 5 comments. If you think this is too low (or too much) let me know.

Watch out for more features on DS. Also, work on LS (lolstrategy.com) will be starting soon.

Let’s start the New Year with a bang! I’d like to invite all members to try out our new Library Guide Builder. It is much like the Strategy Builder but this one has a wider scope and deals with other aspects of the game. You can see some very good samples in the Library Guide section. I really want to get this section active so the one thing that I ask you to do after you finish your guide is to shoot me a PM asap so we could it up immediately. You can find the link to the Library Guide Builder in your My Stuff page.

Thanks and may all of us have an outstanding New Year.

PS - Regular Members who come up with guides that get approved receive a special gift from me!!

2009 has been a very eventful year everywhere. From politics to environment, it’s all in the news. Change has been the only constant this year. We wonder, is it because of  Change We Can Believe In? For us, change has been massive for Dota as far as I’m concerned. Here’s a recap of what happened throughout the year.

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First, Dota underwent what we could say the most massive overhauls ever between versions in one year. We started off 2009 being at version 6.59, in which we hailed the likes of Undying and Enigma as powerhouses, before the world eventually recognised the atrocity of the RAL. In 6.60 the Tauren Chieftain and Batrider made their debut into Dota, and was for a while feared as the bombs. However buffs introduced to DPS-like heroes started to initiate the makings of a DPSgeddon phenomenon, though some will still disagree and put forth alternative explanations. And now barely 5 days ago, yet 2 more new heroes were introduced in the version of 6.65.

Between 6.59 and  6.65 - and the space of one year - no one could ever guess that Dota could be so different as to even be used on different WC3 versions. Due to the “collided map” issue maps from 6.62 upwards could only be played in 1.24. The last I heard from the grapevine, hacks for 6.64 existed. The everlasting battle between the do-gooders and the hackers, just like the virus-antivirus war, does not see any end in sight.

We could talk endlessly about the pages upon pages of changelogs courtesty of the frog, but the length will not permit it. Let’s move on to other things.

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This year also saw the emergence of League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth which concepts were based on Dota itself. The debate between Dota/HON/LOL still goes on, although in a more low-key manner. But one thing’s for sure, Dota will not ever be the same again because comparisons now exist. If Dota used to be the most awesome WC3 custom map ever, now Dota will have to fight to be the most awesome hero RPG ever. We can say for sure - Dota ain’t going anywhere for a long long time!

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DS itself also saw massive changes, no doubt because of the massive Dotavolution, but also because improvements were constantly being made to accommodate the increasing number of visitors. This blog itself went from a few hundred visits per blog post, to thousands per blog post, even to thousands per day, attesting to the great SEO popularity of the website. Our last post even went so far as to breach the 10 000-view record - a tribute to the thousands of members who browse here for whatever reason, be it advice, strategy or tips. In addition the blog also saw more writers, so that you do not have to keep listening to the s**t we peddle every time. :p Personally for us, everytime we write a blog post we spend hours of drafting, editing and fine-tuning to ensure that what we wrote could appeal and be relevant to you as much as it did.

We also had various new activities such as the Bard and Godzilla (lol) Challenges, Dotactics (we gave out real prizes!), Guides of the Month (plus the GOTM badge contest), Signature of the Week, etc. Not too long ago we had this new, very awesome layout that made it so much easier to navigate between subforums. WRT timelines, in May 2009 we celebrated 3 years of going strong (and even stronger) and welcomed new staff, VIPs, and our new mod Greater Bash.

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In short 2009 was the most happening year ever for DS. So many things happened in so short a time, and we were all kept busy by all these massiveness of change. The journey to perfection is far from over, but at least the DS blog can look forward to 2010 and say yes, change we believed in and happened.

As the clock is now ticking towards 12 am, Jan 1, 2010 in New Zealand time (GMT + 12), we at DS wish you the most ownage, pwning and happening New Year. Keep up the double kills, killing sprees, dominations, the triple kills, mega kills, ultra kills, monster kills, rampages, godlikeness, holy s**ts. Above all thank you to the man behind the name Icefrog for doing a very tough and difficult job of finding the “perfect balance” and may your creation last for a very very long time because we all will need it.

Happy New Year! Bonne Annee! 新年快乐！Prost Neujahr! 新年おめでとうございます！Feliz año nuevo! 새해 복 많이 받으세요!  Selamat Tahun Baru!  С НОВЫМ ГОДОМ! Manigong bagong taon! สวัสดีปีใหม่! नये साल की हार्दिक शुभकामनायें! Heri za Mwaka Mpya!

Was in a holidaying mood yesterday and was quite (pleasantly) surprised to find out about the frog’s Christmas gift. Who wouldn’t find it cool to see chickens, raccoons, penguins, vultures, Pudges, the Techies, the giant Rosh et al wearing Santa hats?

But beyond the Christmas spirit, here are some of our initial thoughts about the new map. Mind you this is initial - it isn’t meant to be conclusive. We can’t say anything definitive until later, most probably after the New Year, when we can make enough sense of all these Christmas goodies. For now:

Read the rest of this entry »

…has been released, you can download it here.

A full changelog can be found here

Info + Discussion on the 2 new heroes can be found here

and please discuss the map and changes in general here

New Heroes in the DB!

Kaldr the Ancient Apparition

Slark the Murloc Nightcrawler

New Item in the DB!

Urn of Shadows

Discuss!

The whole DotaStrategy community wishes everyone Merry Christmas!

Yes, It’s Christmas ! Time to enjoy, wait for Santa Icefrog and get loads of gifts heroes maps updates surprises! So play dota with all your friends, enemies & unknowns and show them Who’s their Daddy?

For those who don’t know, Icefrog has planned to surprise us with Christmas Dota gifts! The wait is almost over as he gave his statement yesterday,

All set now, thanks for everyone’s input

The gift unwrapping has already begun with the teasers that have started to show up on getdota.com. Everyone presumed there would one new hero in 6.65 but it turns out there are two of them! Read the rest of this entry »

SMM and Asians, in particular, have been a huge waking-up to the Dota community about two weeks ago, and by now I believe you know one of the reasons: Visage the Necro’lic.

The reasons behind Visage’s recent success is not within the purview of this blog post (just refer to the below links if you missed the action), but behind the more obvious proposal by the frog to remake Visage and the discussion threads surrounding the issue, we need to remember that the frog remade Visage in 6.49 before, because he was perceived to be too hard to use by leaguers. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello dotaters, I’m Phoenix, your new DS Blogger. I was given the blogging rights today and thought, what better way to tell the world and celebrate than by writing a post.

About SGNFDT’09

SGNFDT’09 stands for Sendi Mutiara Multimedia Grand National Final Dota Tournament 2009 held in Malaysia from 27th-29th November. It was the biggest offline Dota Tournament ever with a total prize money of US $26,000 (approx). I’ll address the tournament as SMM in the rest of my post.

What happened before SMM?

The Tournament was highly hyped due to the gigantic prize pool and a number of top Dota teams participating in the tournament. The tournament was also labeled “Asian vs European Dota” due to the participation of European rank 1 rank 1 European team MYM. Here is the list of most known International teams that participated in the event. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I launched the new design that I’ve been working on for months. I wanted to focus the change on simplicity and better navigation while enhancing the user experience. The launch wasn’t as smooth as I planned. There were sections that weren’t supposed to be seen (cough) and some errors and dead links came up as I tested it. Those problems have been addressed quickly. If you haven’t noticed there is a search bar below your page if you surf the forum pages. I hope that addresses the never ending issue of members refusing to do a search before posting. I’m not saying don’t post at all, but it helps to search first and see if a topic already exists. More likely than not, an existing post with several replies will prove more helpful than starting a new thread.

Also, in this launch I’m releasing the new Library, which contains guides that touch on different aspects of DotA. These guides are technically also strategies but don’t focus on a specific hero or item. We have a some excellent guides in the Library forum that I expect to port into the new system soon. That way our Library Guides will have their own place on DS for everyone to digest, plus a rating and comment system. The builder, for now, is available to Mods and Vip’s. You will get to use it once all the bugs have been sniffed out. Lastly, our blog obviously does not incorporate the new interface. That will become a reality within the week. So, here’s hoping you’ll enjoy the new DS. Please share your comments and suggestions below if you have any.