After Valve instituted a zero-monetization stance on custom games, we took Ability Arena down thinking we'd have no way to afford the upkeep of such a project. Luckily, Gaimin.GG has agreed to sponsor our esports scene, which in turn will allow us to continue the development of the game and competitive scene.

All Gods are free

PLUS has been made Free, as long as you connect your account to the Gaimin App. In addition to the old features, PLUS will now additionally add about half the Gods (25+) to use for free. The other half will be enabled for Free by default. In other words, you can now access all the Gods in the game for free.

Monthly Tournaments

As part of this partnership, Gaimin.GG are offering a $1,000 prizepool for monthly tournaments which will be streamed by us on Twitch. Details for signups will be announced soon. You will be required to have PLUS to participate in these tournaments.

For future updates please join our Discord.

Better late than never! With this update, you get a brand new Battlepass filled with goodies. There are 8 new Gods and 15 additional spells added to the pool. We've also done a ton of spell balancing. Be sure to check out the full changelog here: https://abilityarena.com/changelog

Here are a few of the featured items in the Season 6 Battlepass. Gods will be listed in the Gods section further down.

God Chest 3 (Level 5, 30, 36, 71 or in the Store)

Arcane Spawn FX (Level 23)

Tavern Arena (Level 55)

Nature Spawn FX (Level 60)

Chess Arena (Level 200)

After Level 80, every 5 levels will alternate between a War Chest and a Double Down.

Cat Click FX (Level 70)

Click FX can now be heard by everyone viewing area in which the clicks are happening.

Opera Sound Pack (Level 35)

Scottish Bastard Sound Pack (Level 61)

We've reworked the way Player Avatars work. Your player ranks will no longer show by default, as this was causing a lot of visual clutter. Instead it will be included in the hover.

The hover also includes God specific information when relevant (Ogre Magi Spell points, Alchemist Gold etc.). In addition to this, the panel will now show whether the player has purchased the Battlepass or PLUS, and will display the Battlepass level.

Lastly, there is now a mute function in the game. This will mute a player's Gaben Sounds and Click FX (which are now heard by all players). The mute function is only accessible with PLUS and will not carry over to the next game.

The G-Man (Level 41 Battlepass)

G-Man is my new favorite God. It's the first god to interact with items. You will be supplied with 2 crappy items throughout the game, which if you make it to late game means you will have an item on each hero. You're able to re-roll up to 3 items per round. Will you end up with 5 S-Tier items? Or will G-Man betray you? Only time will tell.

Undying (Level 80 Battlepass)

Undying can be a bit difficult to understand. Essentially the hero selected will become a Tombstone, which does a little damage in the area and lowers attack speed. When it comes to autoattacks, it will be treated the same as a hero. While inside the Tombstone, the hero can do absolutely nothing. When the Tombstone is destroyed or expires naturally, the hero will be released with a buff.

The buff depends entirely on when the hero is released. There are 2 buffs (one giving Strength percentage increase, and the second giving overall damage amplification). The strength buff will start maxed out and count down over time. The damage buff will start at 0 and count up over time. Essentially, the buffs are inversely connected.

So if you front line the Tombstone and it dies early, you hero will get more of the Strength percentage buff. If you leave it in the back and it expires late, you will get the damage buff.

This allows for multiple strategies and pivots throughout the game.

Axe (God Chest 3 Common)

Axe is our first tank spell casting God. The more you cast spells, the more armor you will receive. The more armor you have, whether it be from this buff or simple spells, the more damage your Battle Hungers will deal.

Keeper of the Light (God Chest 3 Common)

Keeper of the Light is a spell casting God that doesn't have to worry about mana all too much. Your spells will buff your other spells CDR, while giving you cheaper mana costs across the board.

Necrophos (God Chest 3 Common)

We've added another healing God to the mix. Keep in mind that Heartstopper works on ALL units, so you're incentivized to build tanky.

Spirit Breaker (God Chest 3 Rare)

One of our more simple designs. You simply gain the Charge ability, which will level up throughout the game. As you remember before we benched this spell, it has some major power spikes.

Arc Warden (God Chest 3 Very Rare)

Arc Warden will allow you to create a clone that will receive one spell from the hero you choose. The down-side is both you and the clone receive a 50% attack penalty.

This God will surely have some crazy combos. Looking forward to what you all come up with.

Invoker (God Chest 3 Extremely Rare)

You are supplied with Quas, Wex, Exort, all of which will scale in different ways. You are free to create 2 spells of choice and give them to unit(s). This introduces all of Invoker's spells into the game.

Most of the spells are the same as in Dota, but a couple had to be tweaked. The main one is Ghost Walk, which will be a much shorter duration but deal massive backstab damage after coming out of invisibility. If Exort is maxed then Sunstrike becomes Cataclysm.

As mentioned, the rest of the changelog can be found here: https://abilityarena.com/changelog

It includes a lot of balance changes that will be sure to spice things up. In addition we've increased the pool of spells from 175 to 190. Each game will still have 100 spells every time.

Welcome to our biggest update yet! If you want the full patch notes, visit here.

We've added a brand new mechanic that introduces items to the game. We hope you enjoy!

At the beginning of the game, 3 elements are randomly selected. On rounds 8, 16, and 24 a Pantheon Trial will occur. Every player will have a choice of 1 hero to send to the Pantheon where they will fight to the death. Players that have higher HP will spawn first. The elements will alter the game state in some way during these rounds, whether it be negative or positive effects for all units. If the round goes on too long, all units will take massive damage per second. Once the round ends, players will select an item that can be equipped to a hero. The order of selection is based on the results of the Pantheon round. The items available to pick are improved with each Trial. God abilities will NOT work during the Pantheon Trials. Gods will NOT take any damage from these trials.

Simply put, this is a way for us to not only introduce items to the game in a more organic way, but to also create a little bit of a comeback mechanic for those struggling. Of course, we didn't want to be like some other games where losing on purpose is incentivized. In general this is a very fine line to walk, but I'm not particuarly worried about that aspect at all.

You can rotate your items freely whenever you want as it does not cost any gold, but heroes can only equip 1 item at a time.

Overall, there are 13 unique Trials in the game (3 Tank, 3 DPS, 3 Spell Casting, and 4 Joker).

Tank Trials:

There are 3 of these types of trials and they are associated with the STR attribute icon. In these trials, all units will have -50% spell damage and -50% attack damage.

Fire Trial: Units take 10*(Hero Level) magic damage per second
Earth Trial: All units deal 6*(Hero Armor) DPS in Pure Damage in 600 AOE around them.
Nature Trial: Gain 10% your max HP in damage at the start of the trial. Passively gain 1 damage for every 5 you heal or regen throughout the round.

DPS Trials

There are 3 of these types of trials and they are associated with the AGI attribute icon. In these trials, all units will have -50% spell damage and -50% regen/healing (but lifesteal will work).

Storm Trial: +200 attack speed
Blood Trial: +50% lifesteal
Poison Trial: Your attack damage is doubled

Spell Casting Trials

There are 3 of these types of trials and they are associated with the INT attribute icon. In these trials, all units will have -50% attack damage and -50% regen/healing.

Ethereal Trial: 50% spell lifesteal
Arcane Trial: 50% spell amplification
Ice Trial: 50% cooldown reduction

Joker Trials

There are 4 of these types of trials and they are associated with the Joker icon. There is only a 20% chance for a Joker trial to be in a game and there can only be a maximum of 1 total. Joker trials are, in essence, a wildcard. They will do something completely crazy.

Joker Trial 1: Your unit's spells are all replaced with 4 random abilities from your other heroes
Joker Trial 2: All abilities become Gaben
Joker Trial 3: +10000 cast range, +10000 attack range on all units
Joker Trial 4: Combines 2 other random trials (non Joker)

While playing, if you click on an enemy hero, their equipped item will show up on the bottom right portrait.

Punch Out! Bundle

This exclusive bundle comes with a brand new Boxing themed Click FX, Arena, + 2 War Chests.

Click FX are global
Click FX have been changed so everyone can see you clicking. We thought this would be a fun little change to a really cool cosmetic. Opponents will be able to see all your clicks (but not hear them). Feel free to use this as a taunt of sorts.

Darkness Spawn FX

This is a brand new type of cosmetic that we're hoping you enjoy. We've added a very basic default spawn animation for each of your units. Once you equip this, you will upgrade that animation to actually look and sound cool!

Frost Arrows

We think this is a nice spell as it provides some damage (keeping in mind we benched a lot of other physical damage spells) along with a very valuable mechanic in anti-heal, which is built into the base spell.

Guardian Angel

This will provide some relief against physical damage burst builds.

Living Armor

We wanted some more healing buffs in the game, so we thought we'd try this one out.

Overgrowth

Another much needed spell immune piercing ultimate that should do quite well against Rolling Thunder.

Pierce the Veil

We had to add a Muerta ability and we thought this one would be the most interesting. It is very powerful, but has the main limitation of only lasting 8 seconds, which does not improve with upgrades.

Primal Roar

Yet another BKB piercing ultimate, this one more single target focused. The damage has been buffed quite a bit vs the regular dota counterpart.

Rebound

With Charge of Darkness being benched, we needed another backline jump. Rebound provides that along with some interesting buffs, including another spell immune Super upgrade.

Shadow Wave

A low cooldown heal that can deal some damage on the side. If you upgrade this enough then you can make use of this spell in some kind of minus armor strategy.

Spirit Siphon

A heal that (at Super) will deal tons of damage to tanky targets.

Redesign
We've polished up the God screen and made things a bit more compact.

Searching
Much like in regular Dota, you can now just start typing on the God pick screen in order to filter for a specific God.

Bonus Rewards:
You are now given an incentive to pick different Gods. At the God pick screen, a select number of random Gods are chosen. It is more likely that a God you do not pick often is selected. There will be a small indicator on the God and when you select it, it will provide you more details. These are the 3 types of rewards:

Gold: You will receive 50% more gold at the end of the game
XP: You will receive 50% more XP at the end of the game
MMR: You will recieve 50% more MMR at the end of the game

We've also added an incentive to use the Random button. If you use the Random God button, you will get 1-free shop re-roll at the start of the game. This re-roll does not need to be used right away.

Most items that came with spell upgrades have been removed and replaced with something else. Since this was such a large change, we didn't want to go crazy on effects. As a result, a good amount of the spell upgrade replacements ended up being similar to their previous effect. We would like to give these spells some time before making drastic changes to their upgrades.

As there were quite a number of these changes, feel free to read them in full here.

Special thank you to Gabe Newell for lending us his voice for the beginning of the game and Pantheon Rounds!

Welcome to Ability Arena Season 5! This season's theme is TF2. If you'd like to read the changelog in full, visit here.

Galaxy God Chest 2 with Recycle feature (Battlepass Level 5, 36, 71 or 10,000 Gold in Store)
The new God chest will include some of the past Battlepass Gods as well as some new Rares. We've also added the functionality to be able to recycle the God Chest 2 for a God Chest 1. This recycle feature is permanent and NOT available for the original God Chest.

Arena Chest (Battlepass Level 8, 31, 50)
We've added some Arena Chests to this season's Battlepass. As you've noticed in past months, we've been creating new content to help fill the Battlepass in order for it to feel a lot more rewarding.

Finisher Chest (Battlepass Level 11, 40)
In addition to the Arena Chest is the Finishers, which is also only available in the Battlepass itself.

2Fort Arena (Battlepass Level 55)
Our TF2 themed Arena is none other than the most iconic TF2 map of all time, 2Fort.

Portal Arena (Battlepass Level 200)
The cake is a lie.

Gaben Arena (Battlepass Level 1000)
Gaben never looked so good.

Dirt Click FX (Battlepass Level 70)
This is an entirely new effect that we've added to the game, which we hope you'll enjoy spamming.

TF2 Win Streak (Battlepass Level 45)
That UberCharge medic pack is pretty hardcore looking!

TF2 Finisher (Battlepass Level 30)
The Demoman lives on.

Heavy Metal Sound Pack (Battlepass Level 35)
Thanks to SuperMattAttacks for jamming out with this season's Gaben Sound Pack! This is the same guy who made those epic Arkosh music videos.

Brewmaster God (Rare in God Chest 2)



Internally this God has become a meme because we've had to completely remake him 4 times over the course of the last year. The first 3 iterations just weren't fun and we weren't expecting to even try again. Luckily we came up with this version which we can happily say has been very well received. Who doesn't want to become a cute brewling?

Without going too in-depth, the Brewlings will each provide the abilities you would expect with some twists. The twists include attack damage for the Earth Brewling, Status resist with the Fire Brewling, Magic resistance with the Void Brewling, and 0 mana cost Storm Brewling abilities.

Counter-Terrorist God (Very Rare in God Chest 2)


This concept was originally submitted in a different form by Ladde. Over the course of the game you are choosing 3 of a possible 6 pieces of equipment. Equipment can be moved around, much like your heroes. This is a brand new mechanic we've added that we hope people will enjoy. The synergies between the equipment itself and with other spells should create a lot of cool new strategies.

Icefrog God (Extremely Rare in God Chest 2)



This was the winning submission by ubRtstcl for the God Cardsmith contest. This is probably my favorite God at the moment as the amount of strategies you can come up with when you have 5 skills to work with is immense. The fact that you also get to pick a spell who's spell pool only you share feels great.

Primal Beast God (Battlepass Level 10)


This was the 3rd place submission by october for the God Cardsmith contest. Thematically it fits Primal Beast quite well and is a fun and easier alternative to a lot of our other shop Gods.

Dr. Kleiner God (Battlepass Level 21)



This was the 2nd place submission by Pio_Romero for the God Cardsmith contest. The most unique aspect from Dr. Kleiner is that you cannot re-roll manually. Instead, everytime you buy a spell, it will automatically re-roll for you. In practice, this has actually felt incredibly satisfying and powerful. In addition, your team will gain intelligence from simply selling spells. This God is also the main reason we added the new hotkey for selling spells (Ctrl+Left Click).

Roshan God (Battlepass Level 63)






OK I'll be honest. This is our craziest God. Becoming Rosh is definitely cool, but the decisions you are making throughout the game are unlike any other God. You basically have to weigh the tradeoff of actually using spells on a hero, versus gaining the Rosh abilities. Remember, it is all dependent on how many spell points are in each particular spot, so as the game progresses you can re-arrange your spells in order to prioritize whatever Rosh spells you feel will be most impactful.

Medic God (Battlepass Level 80)



Medic is our first God that directly benefits from using healing spells. We think the builds you can come up with are pretty unique as you gain damage amplification just by healing allies. In addition, your team will gain short bursts of spell immunity in the process. Looking forward to potentially seeing a right-click carry with Hand of Gaben.

I'm happy to announce that Ability Arena now works in the Dota 2 Tooltips extension, which is the most used extension for games on Twitch. The functionality at the current point allows you to bring up a sidepanel which will show all abilities and Gods so you can read about them without having to ask your favorite streamers to hover over tooltips.

As a streamer, if you have the extension installed from before, you don't have to do anything. If you haven't installed it before, visit here and make sure to follow the instructions.

Hi there. Welcome back to the devblog for Season 4.5 of Ability Arena. For full patch notes, visit here.

As we talked about in our 4.0 update, seasons are now 2 months long, where the second month will focus on spells.

This season we also wanted to take the time to make sure our localization was up to date for both Chinese and Russian players. In addition to that, we are introducing our Year of the Rabbit bundle, which includes a Chinese Gaben Sound pack, Year of the Rabbit Arena, and 2 War Chests for 30k gold.

If you've been keeping track of our updates, you'll know we've been playing around with the total amount of spells before bans. When we first released, we had 150 and more recently we've had 174. We really like where the game is right now, so we've decided that 175 will be our number going forward. Of course this changes nothing in terms of spells after bans, which has always been 100.

14 SPELLS BENCHED

There are various reasons for benching some of these spells, but I will try to sum it up as best I can.

Shake Things Up

• Global Silence
• Magnetic Field
• Sleight of Fist

Spells like Global Silence and Sleight of Fist were benched to shake things up. Sometimes spells just become too much of an auto-buy, which I think in small doses can be healthy for a game. It's possible we will see these spells again in the future, but thought it would make for a nice change of pace in the short-term. Magnetic Field, on the other hand, was benched because the winner of the latest AA tournament (ninjaninjaninja) requested it. For some reason Jenkins thought it was a good idea to have the winner bench a spell for the following season. Luckily for us he didn't choose anything too weird, as Magnetic Field is a mainstay in the Immortal bracket and notoriously very hard to counter.

Very Annoying

• Arctic Burn
• Impetus
• Mana Shield
• Mist Coil
• Press the Attack

These spells were annoying in one way or another. Mana Shield was just about the worst spell we've ever introduced into the game. Arctic Burn was more annoying from a coding sense where players kept running into issues with leaving the boundaries of the arena. Press the Attack had some AI issues that we'll address some other time, while Mist Coil could just one shot people late in games. And of course Impetus will be missed by only one single person on earth named Vic.

Just Didn't Make the Cut

• Corrosive Haze
• Feral Impulse
• Finger of Death
• Poison Attack
• Sunder
• Wave of Terror

This is more of a general category. Some of these spells underperformed, while others are being replaced by something more interesting.

15 SPELLS ADDED

Arcane Bolt
We felt another spammable magic spell was needed in the game. This one scales with intelligence which will hopefully open up some new builds.


Battery Assault
Battery Assault is a great spell for any melee hero. This is another spell that we're hoping will make melee heroes even more viable.


Berserkers Rage
We thought the uniqueness of this spell was enough to add it into the pool. Being able to switch a melee to range and vice versa is really cool. The Super and Gaben definitely cater towards the melee side, but only time will tell how this spell will be used.


Burning Spear
We got rid of a couple attack modifiers which this will replace. We're hoping some tanky/healing builds will incentivize the use of this spell.


Crippling Fear
Global silence was the big subtraction from this season and this is a pseudo replacement. Similar to gust, this requires good positioning to pull off. Unlike Gust, however, this has zero cast time and incentivizes a melee unit to pull it off.


Cursed Crown
We thought a delayed stun would add some extra spice to how people layer their spells. The Gaben on this one is awesome.


Doom
A bkb-piercing long duration silence that can eventually break can obviously be quite powerful. We've had to tone down the duration to make this more balanced in our mode.


Earth Splitter
Another spell with a delayed effect that we think will have some cool combos in the game.


God's Strength
A damage related ultimate that will finally rival Grow and Flesh Golem.


Ice Path
A super value spell where the AI happens to have great aim.


Rolling Thunder
Probably the most fun spell we added. We expect this one to be super contested. Of course we've lowered the duration compared to the regular dota spell.


Snowball
A spell that can help bring allies to the backline, while also being able to potentially waste enemy spell usage. Can also grief your team.


Spirit Link
This is the replacement for Feral Impulse. Even though Lycan's spell was good, you didn't always feel the impact. With the right build you will definitely feel the impact of Spirit Link.


Starbreaker
Another melee hero enabler, which can deal devastating damage and crowd control with the right spell combinations. The lack of an actual animation on any hero other than Dawnbreaker makes it look kind of hilarious, but it is effective nonetheless.


Swashbuckle
I'm very interested in how people will use this spell.

As per norm, this won't be a complete list of changes.

SPELLS

Quality of Life

• Reaper's Scythe AI changed to cast when unit is below 40% HP

This will hopefully fix the issue where the units will just refuse to use the spell because our previous AI ruleset was a bit too convoluted.

Was too Strong

• Eye of the Storm Super and Gaben have been swapped
• Flesh Golem damage amp from 10/15/20 to 5/10/15
• Flesh Golem Super damage amp from 10 to 15%
• Flesh Golem Strength percentage increase from 30/40/50 to 20/30/40%
• Flesh Golem Super Strength percentage increase from 10% to 20%
• Grow damage from 50/100/150 to 33/66/99
• Grow Super now additionally grants 51 damage
• Infernal Blade break duration from 4 to 2 seconds (does not affect the duration of the spell itself)

Flesh Golem and Grow were hotly contested spells and they will probably remain that way. We thought some slight nerfs to the base spells would bring them a bit back down to earth while still maintaining their strength if they are upgraded to Super. Infernal Blade on the other hand was a little bit too easy of a counterplay to passives. We hope that the lower duration will allow passives to shine a bit more again.

Really sucked before

• Battle Trance Gaben Rampage now grants both 70 attack speed and 25% status resistance to everyone, regardless of melee or ranged.
• Chakram damage per second from 50/100/150 to 70/140/210
• Chakram Super is now: grants Second Chakram, grants Flamethrower.
• Chakram Gaben is now: when Chakram lands, spawns 10 additional Chakrams that shoot out in all directions
• Enchant Totem Super no longer becomes a passive ability
• Enchant Totem Super additionally costs 0 mana, and has 0 cast point.
• Enchant Totem damage from 75/150/300 to 100/200/400%
• Fiends Grip Super additionally allows you to cast other spells while channeling
• Fiends Grip Gaben replaced with: -50s CD, for every 1s you spend channeling Fiends Grip the cooldown is reduced by 10s.
• Ice Blast min radius from 275 to 375
• Ice Blast Gaben replaced with: Grants Second Ice Age: casts Cold Feet on entire enemy team upon cast of Ice Blast

Chakram is fucking crazy. I don't know what we were thinking with that one. Enchant Totem changes were needed to make it work as a spammable build for things like Fiery Soul. Before it felt awful to use because of the cast time, which the Super now eliminates. And as you know we love our stupid Lore here at Double Edge Studios, which is why we came out with the sequel to the Frost Bite Gaben Ice Age. We hope Ice Age 2 is as loved as the original.

GODS

Prellex
She got a ton of changes that I won't list here since it is quite long. But essentially we nerfed the damage that comes from the creep itself. Instead of gaining a ton by upgrading, you gain a little more each round. In addition to that, we have rebalanced a lot of the abilities. Some were shuffled a bit with tiers, while others were nerfed/buffed to make more sense with the tier they were in. The one thing we want to be careful of is over nerfing Prellex, since we think she is super fun to play.

Vacation Aghanim

• Boosted spells cost from 5 to 4

The idea of this God is to build things you don't normally go for. We hope that the extra gold discount will make him stronger as a whole. Keep in mind that the spell also sells for 4 gold, so there is no risk in picking it up.

The two Coming Soon™ rewards in the Battlepass have now been added.

The AK-47 Finisher is unlockable at Level 20

The CS Win Streak is unlockable at Level 30.

The Dota 2 Tooltips extension will have support for Ability Arena very soon! We're expecting that it will be out within the next week!

For those that aren't aware, bukka and I created the Dota 2 Tooltips extension for Twitch, which is the #1 most used extension for games on the platform. It's also 100% free for streamers. Here is a rundown of the extension.

Once it is enabled, it will start working automatically, so there is no need to update anything. Keep in mind that unlike the regular extension, you will not be able to hover over spells as that is not easily supported for custom games. Instead, you will be able to bring up the Gods/Spells to conveniently see what they all do. Hopefully you enjoy!

Here is a sneak peak of what it will look like:

That's all for 4.5. Thanks for reading and see you next time!

Welcome to Season 4 of Ability Arena. Based on general feedback, we're going to be making some big changes to the way Seasons work. For a full list of changes for 4.0, visit the changelog.

In our continued quest to try and make the game feel better, we noticed a lot of feedback regarding the season length. A lot of casual players felt the seasons were too short, while those that played a ton felt like the Battlepass would run out of cool stuff pretty fast. We obviously get tons of constant feedback from community members, many of who's ideas contradict. Trying to find a balance between the two sides has probably been the hardest thing for us to accomplish.

Keeping that in mind, we've decided to change Seasons to be 2 months instead of 1. This allows the more casual crowd the ability to actually level up their Battlepasses to higher levels. In addition, we've made it a lot easier to level up the Battlepasses in general (2 times faster to be exact). Also, we've effectively doubled the amount of levels there are to begin with.

Old Battlepass: Effectively 40 levels (Total XP required to get there = 18,000). After level 40, players would get a War Chest and Gold chest every 10 levels.

NEW Battlepass: Effectively 80 levels (Total XP required to get there = 18,000). After level 80, players will get a War Chest and Gold chest every 10 levels. They will also get a God chest at level 86 and every 10 levels after.

As you can see, it is a far more forgiving system in general. The Battlepass will also now include our new Gods for the Season.

We also think we've been changing too many things in a short amount of time. Sometimes we would buff/nerf a God, but also do the same for a lot of spells, while rotating more in and out simultaneously. Sometimes this would lead to unintended balance shifts that we hadn't originally anticipated.

As a result of this, we're looking to change things so that the beginning of a Season will be more centered on Gods (adding new ones/balancing/reworking). The .5 patches will now occur in the following month, which will focus more on adding/rotating spells, as well as redesigning Supers/Gabens. This doesn't mean we'll ignore balance changes for Gods during this time or for spells during the beginning of the season, but the focus will be a little more targeted.

In terms of ranks, we will continue doing a soft reset (2 badges) every Season. Because of the longer seasons, casual players shouldn't feel as bad as they will have quite a bit of time to rise the ranks. In addition, we have made it easier to obtain the first few ranks, while making it very hard to drop back out.

We will also be implementing a Funday Sunday event, where every Sunday, players will get double xp and double gold for playing the game.

We've redesigned our damage formula and shortened timers in the hope that games go late more often while still keeping the same overall time played.

Damage Formula:

Old: Round number + (number of remaining heroes * shop level)

New: 3 + (Round Number / 4) + (Number of Heroes * Round Number / 4)

We estimate that games will last about 13% longer in terms of total rounds played. Early game will matter a little bit more, while late game will be less punishing.

Round timers have been lowered to make up for this. The shop will also stop closing automatically every time. This will hopefully make it feel less stressful if you are not able to purchase spells in time for the round start.

Overall we feel you will enjoy these changes as that extra couple rounds per game will allow for more cool late-game Gaben moments.

Sideshop Man (unlocks for FREE at Battlepass Level 5)

There will be no more Chaos Gods in the future, but we're happy that people liked the last one. Welcome Sideshop Man back to the Dota Universe. Thanks to our friend Purge for voicing him.

Vacation Aghanim (unlocks at Battlepass Level 11)

Will the Aghanim forms ever end?! This one is extremely simple, but we think people will enjoy it as it will incentivize you to go for spells you don't usually prioritize.

Prellex (unlocks for FREE at Battlepass Level 15)

Kanna's mother has arrived in order to compete in the world of the summons. This one is essentially a build-a-bear concept where you'll create a new monstrosity every game. Thanks to our amazing beta testers for helping make this concept!

Faceless Void (unlocks for FREE at Battlepass Level 60)

Void is a shop related God that creates some interesting decisions throughout the game. In a way, locking a spell will be making your shop smaller, but it also inherently cause you to roll more, knowing you can buy your spells for cheaper.

Terrorist (unlocks for FREE at Battlepass Level 80)

Finally a God from the world of Counter-Strike! This one creates some interesting decision making in that you are not necessarily incentivized to level your shop up all the way. It all depends on the game state and what kind of a build you are going. If you build tanky enough, the early levels could be devastating.

We made some mistakes with balance around Aghanim. He was definitely overpowered originally, but people found him to be really fun. We started nerfing him to be more in line with some of the other Gods. I think we finally realized that if people are having THIS much fun with a God, perhaps we should be buffing everyone else to his level. Of course, this is a very slippery-slope so I wouldn't want to make a habit out of this, as power creeping the game can get out of hand fast. Regardless, making an exception for the most played God felt needed.

Aghanim buff

• Aghanim rescaled from 20/30/40/50/60 to 40/45/50/55/60%

GLaDOS reworked
We took a God that no one liked playing (sorry Jenkins) and gave her something unique, spell lifesteal. We think this will make her a little bit more interesting. Gaben knows she'll have less bugs than before.

Notable Buffs

• Boneless Aghanim has +1 shop slot for all levels
• Centaur HP per from 60 to 70
• Centaur return damage from 25% to 35%
• Legion points required per level from 0/10/30/50/70/100 to 0/15/30/45/60/75
• Legion damage from 3/6/9/12/15/20 to 4/7/10/13/16/19
• Muerta crit base from 100% to 150%
• Ogre points required per level from 0/20/40/ 60/80 to 0/20/40/60/80/100
• Ogre chance to multicast from 25/35/45/55/65 to 35/45/55/65/75/100
• PA movement to crit from 15 to 10
• Rubick points required per level from 0/10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80 to 0/5/15/25/35/45/55/65/75
• Techies Sticky Bomb from level 2 to level 4
• Techies Proximity Mine damage reduction from 50% to 25%
• Tower God minimum range from 750 to 850

Added Earthshock

This is a fun spell that adds some interesting things to the game. Of course we had to add the following to the "Differences from Dota" to make it feel that way:

Differences to Dota - Cooldown: 10/8/4. Damage: 75/150/300. Leap distance: 400. Also slows attack speed by 20/40/80

Overall this gives something for melee heroes to psuedo-initiate with, while providing minus attack speed which can be helpful when jumping the backline. It also happens to have the most hilarious Gaben in the game.

Readded Elder Dragon Form
We wanted to bring back Dragon Form, but we felt players were too content with leaving it at 3. Hopefully these changes will help incentivize upgrading.

• Elder Dragon Form splash AOE from 0/350/350 to 0/250/250
• Elder Dragon Form Super ADDITIONALLY grants +15% splash damage
• Elder Dragon Form Super ADDITIONALLY grants +100 splash radius

Spell was bad

This spell was changed in Dota a while back, so it automatically changed for our game. We have decided to basically revert it to our original version so it can be used in the same breath as Chakra Magic and Essence Flux.

• Arcane Aura self bonus factor from 4 to 2
• Arcane Aura ally bonus factor from 2 to 1
• Arcane Aura now ADDITIONALLY grants caster and team + 20/40/80 mana per spell cast
• Arcane Aura Super REPLACED with bonus +80 mana per cast

Was just too OP, plain and simple

• Blink damage from 175 to 40/80/160
• Blink Silence duration from 1.75s to 0.4/0.8/1.6
• Dark Pact now deals 30% self damage
• Dark Pact Gaben: Allies only cast the base ability at 50% damage (no super benefits)
• Fissure Gaben Aftershock stun reduced from 0.75 to 0.4
• Gust duration from 3/4/6 to 2/3/5
• Gust Super CDR from -4 to -3s
• Mana Shield damage absorb from 70% to 40/50/70%
• Mana Shield drain per mana from 0.5/1/1.5/2 to 0.8/1.2/2
• Mana Shield bonus mana from 120/180/300 to 50/100/200
• Meat Hook Super - remove -4s CDR & remove +120 dmg
• Meat Hook Super and Gaben swapped
• Vampiric Spirit skeleton damage from 32 ‒ 37 to 22 - 27

Quality of Life

• Focus Fire cast range is now equal to your attack range
• Fortunes End back to instant cast time
• Fortunes End AOE now scales 150/200/300
• Ghost Ship Super Tidal Wave spawns wave at boat location, pushing units hit by Boat towards your side

Lots of bug fixes

• Boundless Strike fixed to not stun through magic immunity
• Essence Shift no longer double procs with attack modifiers
• Essence Shift Super fixed to not given Gaben effect
• Essence Shift fixed to no longer gain stacks from killing creeps/illusions
• Flame Guard now properly absorbs magic damage
• Purification Super fixed to not be purgable
• Tricks of the Trade will no longer cast during Sleight of Fist
• Tricks of the Trade Gaben fixed to actually give extra attack count

Unfortunately our CS related Finisher and Win Streak were not done in time for the start of Season 4, but we will be releasing them as soon as possible. However, we did complete our best arena yet, made by the incredibly talented invalidnick.

Behold, Dust 2 (unlocked for free via Level 55).

We've also added some prior Battlepass related Arenas and Finishers to the store, so be sure to check them out!

The God Cardsmith contest has concluded! We received a TON of submissions, many of which we're excited to talk about on a future stream.

We even had a few submissions that were almost identical to concepts we made months ago. Unfortunately we had to say no to these, but it definitely reaffirms how great minds thing alike!

We will be picking the winners live on stream, date TBD.

Thanks for reading all! Please give us feedback on our discord: https://discord.gg/NRDjuTPNvS

See you all for Season 4.5 starting in February!

Welcome to Season 3 of Ability Arena. You can find the entire changelog here.

Season 3 brings a lot of new Gods, as well as a better way to unlock them! Without further ado, lets dig in.

We listened to the community feedback and we've improved the way you unlock Gods. Firstly, we deleted the old God Chest completely. In its place we've added the Galaxy God Chest 1.

This chest, which is purchased with the same amount of Gold (10,000), will not drop any duplicate Gods unless you own all of the non rares. Much like treasures you open in Dota, this chest has 3 Rares with escalating odds.

Of course, if you choose to continue to open chests to find the rares, any duplicate Gods you receive will still give 5 points towards the Golden version.

Going forward, we currently plan on releasing a new God chest every couple months that will be considerably smaller in terms of God quantity.

To celebrate the new Chest, we went a little ham and made 8 new Gods.

Santa Greevil

Santa Greevil is our Season 3 Battlepass God which unlocks for free at level 40. He is heavily inspired from one of our favorite games, Hades. The tooltip can be overwhelming, but it's relatively simple. Santa Greevil players will automatically get a Good or Bad gift depending on if they win or lose a round. Your opponents have a few seconds to accept a gift just as the battle starts. If they accept, then the same rules will apply to them.

Good and Bad gifts are usually team buff/nerfs that will last the entire game. We've sprinkled in some rare choices that I won't spoil right now.

GLaDOS

GLaDOS is our first God from the Portal universe. She can be unlocked via a chest and is also available with PLUS this month. As a God she will create two portals that allows 2 units to share HP and mana. An example would be a frontliner who is receiving HP because the backline DPS is lifestealing. She creates a lot of interesting interactions that we hope you will discover.

Boneless Aghanim

This God can be unlocked via a chest, but he will actually replace the old Lifestealer. So if you ever unlocked Lifestealer in the past, you will now have Aghanim's latest form. This is a relatively simple God that will allow players to utilize the very popular "Level 2 shop strategy", without actually having to stay at level 2 shop.

Lifestealer

With the old Lifestealer gone, we've decided to create a brand new one that is Free to all players. This one is sure to be more fun (at least it has been in internal testing). I'm really curious what type of units players will build to synergize the best with Infest.

Chaos God S3

A new Battlepass brings a new Chaos God which will unlock at level 20. This means the old one has been removed, as will this one upon season's completion. As you can read, this version of Chaos God is completely different and instead focused on the shopping mechanic.

Cave Johnson

This God is a Rare in the new Galaxy God Chest. He brings an obvious drawback of no healing, but with some crazy benefits based on what attribute your hero bodies are. This God has been a real breath of fresh air as you can play him in many different ways. You are also forced to either ignore or not prioritize certain spells that have felt like a necessity in previous metas.

Bathtime Aghanim

Yet another Aghanim graces us with his presence. This version is the Very Rare in the new Galaxy God Chest. You can only have 3 spells upgraded at max level (1 to Standard, 1 to Super, and 1 to Gaben) and they only last for one round. But it forces you to make decisions that you normally wouldn't have to. For instance, how many total spells should I be getting? Perhaps getting less spells so you know what is getting upgraded is the better choice. This God takes elements from the original Aghanim and amplifies them into some really cool late game scenarios.

Techies

And last but not least is Techies, who is the Ultra Rare in the Galaxy God Chest. He is separated into 3 skills which are tied to the individuals Squee, Spleen, and Spoon. When you upgrade to shop level 2/4/5, a random one becomes available. If you unlocked the Sticky Bomb, what kind of spell damage hero will you create in order to maximize your buff? If the Taser is unlocked, will you place it on a tank or will you use it to protect your fragile heroes from backline jumpers? If you get the Proximity Mine, what kind of carry will work the best with your lineup? And of course you can put these skills all on the same hero if you want.

New Spells

Between these spell additions/subtractions and our balance changes, the goal was to lower the physical damage build potency by a bit, while still allowing them to stay relevant.

Blast Off

A new silence enters the pool, but it comes at the cost of cast animation. The fact that you are also putting yourself in harm's way makes this a spell that forces you to think of new ways to potentially initiate or counter-initiate.

Chakram

This adds more pure damage to the game, this time on a spell caster that doesn't care about auto attacking.

Essence Shift

I am intrigued to see if this spell becomes popular. It gives attack speed, but kind of requires attack speed to get ramped up (Focus Fire anyone?). It also can give damage if you are an agility hero, but it is difficult to get stacks up considering it follows suit with a lot of our other spells in that mechanic only being unlocked at Super.

Mana Shield

Another spell being added that allows new things to occur. Now a tank can make use of mana replenishment spells. This also allows int melee heroes to shine a bit more potentially.

Sun Ray

Percentage based damage at a cost of both HP and channel time. We also get to introduce Holy Locket to the game which is awesome. This also happens to be one of my favorite Gabens in the game.

War Cry

Now you have a way to defend yourselves against physical DPS.

Benched Spells

Elder Dragon Form

This was one of the most picked up spells, regardless of what type of strategy you were working with. We'd like to see what the game looks like without it for a while.

Moon Glaives

This one sounded good in theory, but in practice was a buggy mess. It had many interactions we were not originally intending and they are not easy to fix.

Omnislash

A very boring spell that no one seemed to favor, outside of some fringe physical lineups.

As usual, lets divide this into sections.

Gods

We are taking a slightly new approach to balance where we buff Gods to be at the same level as our top performers. In other words, we are raising the bar for how well a God should perform on average.

• Aghanim: upgrade chance from 25/30/35/40/45 to 20/30/40/50/60%
• Alchemist gold required from 11/10/9/8/7 to 10/9/8/7/6
• Bloodseeker attack speed per stack from 30 to 40
• Centaur HP per round from 50 to 60
• Centaur retaliate damage from 20% to 25%
• Jmuy cooldown reduction from 10/20/30/40/50 to 30/35/40/45/50
• Ogre Magi spell point requirement from 0/25/50/75/100 to 0/20/40/60/80
• Phantom Assassin critical strike chance from 15% to 20%
• Rubick spell points required from 0/11/22/33/44/55/66/77/88 to 0/10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80
• Tower God fortification duration from 1.5 to 1.75

Spells

Quality of Life
These are changes that will make these spells feel better to use.

• Blink now has the silence/damage from Super by default
• Brain Sap Super additionally adds +Health to the unit equivalent to the amount sapped
• Corrosive Haze Super replaced with: now allows Corrosive Haze to stack on the unit. Remove the healing reduction
• Culling Blade cast range from 175 to 225
• Double edge cast range increased +100
• Jingu Gaben soldiers now have +400 attack range
• Purification cast range increased from 550 to 800
• Sunder Super additionally grants +400 cast range

Underperformers
These spells either weren't picked up very often, or weren't upgraded often enough to our liking.

• Burrowstrike Super additionally increases cast range to 1300, grants 2s cooldown reduction, and +0.3 second stun duration
• Life Break Super additionally adds: every unit hit in the path of the Life Break takes 100% of caster's self-damage as magical
• Resonant Pulse Super additionally: grants 1s of Magic Immunity for every unit hit
• Static Link Gaben replaced with steals attack speed as well, and duration still lasts the entire round
• Warpath Super and Gaben swapped

Cause it's cool
These were created because they are badass.

• Eye of the Storm Super additionally grants Lightning Rod: caster also gets hit by Eye of the Storm, gaining the opposite effects (healing and +armor) for half value.
• Leech Seed additional Super: Leech Seed becomes a puddle that leech seeds from every unit standing in it
• Purification Super additionally grants Gaben's Blessing: casts 2 more Purifications on the same unit, seperated by 3s intervals
• Reality Rift Super additionally casts level 2 Chaos Bolt on target
• Reality Rift Gaben Chaos Bolt additionally summons a Phantasm Illusion on target hit

What the Hell were we thinking?
::horse::

• Duel cast ranged reduced by 500 (to regular Dota numbers)

AI changes
As always, we're looking to improve AI across the board. In many cases we are picking between two interactions, both of which will get complaints. But we think these changes will feel way better than the previous iteration.

• Black Hole AI changed to cast on closest unit instead of searching for multi-target
• Reality Rift AI fixed to cast on farthest target in range
• Wild Axes AI fixed to target units farther away
• Windrun should now cast off cooldown (was previously casting after taking damage for the first time)

Win Streaks

We've added win streaks to the game. Currently there are 3 (Fire (unlocked on Store), Santa Greevil (unlocked on Battlepass), and Galaxy (unlocked via leaderboard/tournament placement). They have 3 levels of intensity, triggering at 3/6/9 round wins in a row. We'll be adding a new Win Streak for each future Battlepass.

Store redesign

The Store has been redesigned to look a lot cleaner, which aside from looking a lot better will also allow us to add more things to the store in the future. We've also rearranged the quick access bar, which now includes the free daily PLUS coins button and promo code section.

Battlepass

Here are the featured items in this month's Battlepass

• Level 10: Santa Greevil Emote Pack #1
• Level 14: Santa Greevil Emote Pack #2
• Level 19: Santa Greevil Finisher
• Level 20: Chaos God
• Level 23: Epic Sound Pack
• Level 28: Santa Greevil Winstreak
• Level 30: Santa Greevil Arena
  
• Level 34: Santa Greevil Emote Pack #3
• Level 35: Galaxy God Chest 1
• Level 39: Santa Greevil God Avatar
• Level 40: Santa Greevil God Unlock
• Level 100: Diamond Santa Greevil Avatar

War Chests

War Chests got some love. You can now roll multiple items per chest (up to 5). We've also removed Temporary PLUS and God chests from dropping. This means that there is now a higher chance to get the coveted Finishers and Terrains.

In a future update we will add Temporary PLUS drops as part of the quest system.

Thanks a lot for reading! Work has already begun for the 3.5 update in mid-season and 4.0 in January. We hope to add a new mechanic to the game by Season 4 as well as tweak the damage formula. These things require a lot of testing and we don't want to rush it out.

And lastly, we plan to hold a God creation contest some time in December. So stay tuned for details on that!

Welcome to Season 2.0 of Ability Arena. As always, if you want to see the full changelog click here. Now that Season 1 is over, your ranks have been "soft" reset. This means that grinding back to your last rank will not take too much time.

The Season 2 launch has been particularly stressful as both Jenkins and I were covering TI in totally different countries. But with the launch comes a ton of new features, including a brand new Battle Pass. If you didn't have time to claim things from the first Battle Pass, fret not as they have been auto-claimed for you. With that said, I will now do my best to cover a few of the changes in addition to the reasons behind them.

The most common feedback we got from Season 1 was that you all felt pretty bad opening God chests, because it would dilute the pool in which your Gods were chosen. Our original template for the game is based on other games of the same genre, so we wanted to think outside of the box and see if we could come up with a better system overall.

With the new pick screen you will be able to select 1/3 of your owned Gods (rounding up).

This allows it to scale no matter how many Gods you end up owning. In addition, there is a "shuffle" button that allows you to essentially try again. One note regarding this: You will still be able to get the same Gods again on the second try. Think of this as shuffling your deck. If you have PLUS, you will be able to discard a God on the first screen, which prevents it from showing up in your shuffle.

We hope this system feels a lot better to our players. As per norm, please continue to supply us with your feedback.

Many people don't know that we have exactly 0% control over the matchmaking in the Dota client. This means that any rank can queue into any other rank. This is bad because 1) Immortal players will likely stomp lower level players; and 2) Immortal players will lose a ridiculous amount of MMR if they do not get 1st against lower level players.

As a result of this, we figured it would be beneficial to create a third party solution. We are now officially beta testing our website matchmaking system. For now, this is intended only for Immortal players. Once we're happy with the system we will open it up to more ranks.

You can find more info about the matchmaking here.

In addition to this, we've made it easier to rank up in our normal in-client matchmaking for the lower ranks.

Rune God

Rune God is our Season 2 Battlepass God. You can unlock him for free at level 40. Rune God buffs a single target with a variety of random runes. The type of rune you get is tied to your shop level, meaning this is a God that is incentivized to upgrade at a quicker pace.

Rubick

Rubick is available with PLUS this season and will also drop from chests. He provides a couple of new things that are sure to spice up the game. Firstly, he technically adds a new spell to the game, Spell Steal. You are able to upgrade the level of the spell based on how many total spell points you have. The second thing he introduces is a 5 skill hero. Of course you can get more than 4 spells if you find the right upgrades, but Spell Steal will add that 5th spell right off the bat, which means you can have 2 ultimates as well without having to play Donkey Aghanim!

Chaos God

This God is available for free via a level 20 Battlepass and he is extremely unique in the fact that he is temporary. This means that after this season, he will be deleted from everyone's armory. Next season (assuming people like this idea), we will come out with a new version of Chaos God. This gives us a way to test mechanics for future Gods as well as provide more free Gods for people to play around with.

We've added a ton of new spells! Not only that, but we're experimenting by not removing any spells this time around. We now have a total of 170 spells in the game, which will (still) be reduced to 100 every game. We hope this will add a little bit more variety in the games. This is another area we are hoping to get some feedback. At the current state, I don't think it would be good to add many more spells than this, but that is more of a gut feeling than anything. Once we find a good number to settle on, we will go back to our original plan, which is to bench/replace spells on a semi-regular basis.

With that, lets go over a select few of these new spells you'll get a chance to play with.

Fortune's End - we felt like buff abilities like Frost Armor and Heavenly Grace were too good, but also agreed that they feel fun to use. So instead of nerfing them into oblivion, we decided to instead add some counters like this ability.

Ice Blast - we felt that this ability would be a nice addition to deal with the passive-stacking tanks without requiring Break.

Spear of Mars - another way of dealing with passive tanks, but instead of killing them, you can use this ability to disrupt your opponents formation.

Pulverize - we just wanted to add this ability because its awesome.

Inner Fire - we felt like this spell provides quite a few things that the game is lacking: a disarm, a tank spell (that's not a passive), and healing/lifesteal reduction.

Here's the rest of the spells we added, in no particular order:

• Lucent Beam
• Dragons Blood
• Boundless Strike
• Death Ward
• Shadow Dance
• Reality Rift
• Spear of Mars
• Lil Shredder
• Enchant Totem
• Press the Attack
• Sidekick
• Summon Familiars
• Burning Barrage
• Moon Glaives
• Fiends Grip
• Epicenter
• Frostbite

With a new patch comes a lot of balance changes. As usual, lets try and categorize them.

Too Powerful!

• Arc Lightning Gaben: replaced with Grants Timeless Relic
• Kraken Shell Gaben: Removed Mirror Shield
• Lucent Beam: Gaben: Bounces from 3 to 4 and bounces deal 15% less damage per bounce
• Nethertoxin max damage from 25/50/75/100 to 15/30/45/60
• Nethertoxin super max damage from 70 to 130.
• Wild Axes Super bonus damage from 40 to 30.
• Frost Shield duration from 5/6/7/8 to 4/5/6/7
• Frost Shield Super duration from +2s duration to +1s
• Chemical Rage BAT on Melee units from 1.1/1.0/0.9 to 1.2/1.1/1.0

These spells were a little too powerful, but we didnt want to mess with them to the point that they become weak. We're pretty confident they are all still worth upgrading. Kraken Shell loses Mirror Shield, but Blademail is ridiculously powerful in our mode. I was never a fan of concept behind Arc Lightning Gaben and it was performing too well. Lucent Beam was similar in that it was a game winner, but different in the fact that it was really cool. We decided to nerf the damage a bit, but add an extra beam for that glorious dopamine injection.

Quality of Life

• Black Hole Gaben Refresher Orb now costs 0 mana
• Chakra Magic Gaben: changed to Grants Blinding Light
• Empower Gaben: replaced with casts on everyone at the start of the round (undispellable, infinite duration)
• Focus Fire: Super changed to have no damage reduction and Gaben changed to not bounce anymore, but has 0 mana cost
• Sharpshooter has 25% faster charge time by default
• Sunder Super also grants -0.2s cast point
• Firesnap Cookie cast range from 700 to 800.

Some of these spells felt really bad to upgrade in certain situations. Empower Gaben would turn into a passive instead of casting it at all, meaning if the holder died no one would have it anymore. In many situations it was just worse than the Super. Chakra was another weird one where the person you are typically casting on would never be close to enemies. I think its important for us to go back to the basics with some of these upgrades.

Underperforming

• Counter Helix: Super give Vanguard & Gaben upgrades it to a Crimson Guard (in addition to old effects)
• Corrosive Haze Super now also makes it undispellable and permanent.
• Ink Swell Gaben replaced with 2 charges
• Overload damage from 30/50/70/90 to 25/50/75/100
• Trample Gaben now also grants Sange and Kaya
• QOP Blink Super CDR on first spell after Blink from 50% to 80%

Ink swell Gaben was weird because your frontliner would just be ignored, which you usually don't want to occur. Giving 2 charges is simple, but still incredibly powerful. Counter Helix needed a little love, so why not add some classic Axe items?

We overnerfed these

• Impetus damage from 3.5/7/10.5/14% to 4/8/12/16%
• Impetus Super now also grants Specialist Array
• Impetus Super damage from +11.5% to +6%
• Pulse Nova damage from 50/100/150 to 60/120/180
• Pulse Nova Super now also Grants Bloodstone
• Pulse Nova Super damage from +120 to 0

Not only did we overnerf Impetus and Pulse Nova, but the Supers were incredibly boring (just number buffs), so we added some items to them to make them cooler (and able to combo with more stuff).

Valve nerfed this

• Static Link Super buff duration +7s (100% uptime)

Boring Supers and Gabens made cool

• Boundless Strike Super now also adds a perpendicular Boundless Strike at the end of the first strike
• Boundless Strike Gaben changed to: applies Bloodthorn effect to every unit hit
• Dark Pact Super now also causes Dark Pact to dispel enemies
• Dark Pact Gaben replaced with: Every time the main unit casts Dark Pact, the entire team will also cast it for 50% damage
• Life Break Gaben now also grants Heaven's Halberd.
• Split Earth Super replaced with casts level 2 Lightning Storm on every unit hit by Split Earth (can bounce)
• Uproar Gaben moved to Super
• Uproar Gaben replaced with Primal Beast's Aghs
• Vampiric Spirit Gaben also grants: when Skeletons respawn, they cast level 2 Wraithfire Blast on a random enemy (global range)

Not sure what to say other than LOL

God Changes

• Alchemist interest gained per gold from 1 per 10 to 1 per 11/10/9/8/7 (depends on shop level)
• Bloodseeker lifesteal per hero death from 15% to 17.5%
• Jmuy cooldown reduction from 0/10/20/30/40% to 10/20/30/40/50%
• Jmuy cooldowns no longer tick down just before combat starts
• Selemene spell amp from 0.4% to 0.3%.
• Selemene buff is now SHARED team-wide and benefits from every unit losing mana (this is a buff)
• Dazzle Shallow Grave from 0.75/1.5/2.25/3/3.75 to 0.8/1.6/2.4/3.2/4
• Aghanim upgrade chance from 45/50/55/60/65% to 30/35/40/45/50%
• Donkey Aghanim from 25% extra shop cost to 20%

XP: Originally we were worried that people were leveling too fast, but after much consideration, we decided to keep the XP levels the same for Season 2 and will continue to monitor how fast people level up.

Arenas: We've added 2 new arenas to the game. The Rune God Arena is tied to the Battlepass, while the Phantom Assassin Arena is available in the store for coins.

We'd love to add more coin purchasable content in the future.

Finishers: As with every season, the Battlepass God gets their own Finisher. This one is a rainbow and it's cool :)

Battlepass changes: As time goes on we plan to add new things to each Battlepass to make them feel more unique and less copy/pasted. For this season we've added Chaos God (as we talked about earlier). We've also added the Posh British Announcer Pack.

This can be equipped to change the sound of your Gaben sounds. This means when you get a Gaben, that sound will play for everyone. We think this type of cosmetics is sorely missed in Dota, which only plays client side.

In addition to this, we've added some random emote drops to the Battlepass since there feels like a lack of hats in the game.

And we've created emote packs themed around Rune God.

Thank you all for the support! As I've said before, this is only the beginning. We have so many crazy ideas that we're extremely excited to show you. As always, I hope you enjoy our update as well as this blog post. Stay tuned as we'll be having a streamer tournament on November 5th @ 3PM EST (20 CET).

Hey all, SUNSfan here. I'm gonna try to release these dev blogs with each big update we make to the game. If you enjoy stuff like this, please let us know! The full changelog for the 1.5 update can be found here. I'm going to break some of it down and talk more in-depth behind the decisions being made.

2 New Free Gods!

We removed Pudge because everyone hated him. That one is kind of self-explanatory.

Boomer
Boomer is all about tanking up. We think he offers some interesting gameplay decisions, including things like general lineup compositions as well as formations. Building more than 1 or 2 tanks should be viable. Also creating a blink-sacrifice hero is something we hope people will explore.

Bloodseeker
Based on the Gods we initially released, spell casting was a very popular focus for players. Even though right-clicking was still very viable, we felt adding another God that catered to a physical carry would be well received. You want your unit to die last, but you still need to protect them from any backline jumpers.

New Spells!

Flesh Heap
Before you get too excited, you do not gain strength until the Super. Either way, the damage block alone will be a huge addition to any tank lineup. And if you're able to get the Super, you can have your own mini-Centaur God in a pinch.

Bloodrage
We felt the game was lacking attack speed and we thought this spell would be a fun addition. It has some similar functions to Overcharge (which was buffed), but will give a little more attack speed at the cost of HP.

Astral Spirit
This is a very cool spell. After a bit of a delay, your unit will gain a massive amount of damage. Raw damage is hard to come by in our mode, so we hope people will enjoy this one. It has been nerfed compared to it's Dota counterpart, but it should still be quite strong, especially against Kanna pickers :)

General

Ready Button
We heard you! The first round can be very long if you've played the game a bunch of times. With this, you'll be able to skip the wait (assuming the rest of the lobby also confirms). We will be continuing to collect feedback regarding the round timers as we go forward. Keep in mind we hear plenty of feedback from both sides (newer players wanting longer rounds & veterans wanting the opposite). It's important to us to find solutions that will fit both sides.

AI fixes
We've fixed a lot of AI issues this patch and we still have a lot more work to do. There were a lot of spells that had this rule: "Cast on a random enemy". Seems simple enough, but sometimes the units would walk across the entire map trying to do so. This rule has been replaced with: "Cast on a random enemy in range". Keep in mind, these rules only apply to certain spells, but two of the worst offenders included Chaotic Offering and Spirit Lance. Also note that these AI rules will not affect buff spells, which we've created our own set of rules to over-rule the base. Also, Focus Fire AI has been fixed to not start attacking another enemy nearby unless they have this debuff on them.

New damage (and healing) bars
Our Damage UI finally got some polish! With it you will also be able to view the damage received and total healing. We still have a few small things to tweak with the UI going forward, but we hope you enjoy the new functionality and overall look.

Balance

Let's go over a few of the balance changes. I think it's best to group them.

Specific Mechanics Missing

• Searing Arrows damage from 24/36/60 to 20/40/80
• Searing Arrows Super damage bonus from 50 to 0
• Searing Arrows Super now grants MKB
• Sleight of Fist Super replaced with "Now grants Desolator"
• Sleight of Fist Super now grants Truestrike

True Strike did not exist outside of the Gaben for Boundless Strike. That has now been addressed via these two skills.

Way too strong

• Eye of the Storm radius from 800 to 500
• Eye of the Storm Super no longer grants +1 strike target. Now grants -0.2s strike interval
• Eye of the Storm Gaben no longer grants -0.1s strike interval
• Pulse Nova damage from 70/140/210 to 50/100/150
• Pulse Nova Super damage from 60 to 120
• Rolling Boulder Super from +2s stun to +1s stun
• Rolling Boulder Super: from 200% extra STR as damage to 100%

These spells were simply just too strong. Some of these spells were not strong initially in the internal beta and we clearly over buffed them.

Quality of Life

• Battle Trance Gaben replaced and changed to grant Rampage, which is now cast off cooldown
• Focus Fire - Fixed AI to try and always attack the unit you cast it on
• Focus Fire Super also Grants Maelstrom
• Impetus manacost from 75 to 60
• Impetus cooldown 0 at all levels
• Phantom Strike cast range from 1000 to 1500

These spells kind of felt bad in certain situations and we hope these changes have remedied that.

An actual reason to upgrade

• Blink Super now also "Makes next ability cast after Blink have a 50% CDR"
• Burrowstrike Super changed give Sand King shard

• Chronosphere duration from 4/4.5/5 to 3/4/5
• Chronosphere Super attack speed from 120 to 200

• Demonic Purge Super is now: Grants 3 charges
• Demonic Purge Gaben is now: grants Demonic Cleanse (3 charges)

We generally don't like spells to be one point wonders. We also thought this would be a good time to bolster some of the less sought after Supers in the game.

More consistent with Dota

• Flesh Golem now makes units become melee for its duration
• Heavenly Grace Strength from 8/18/28/38 to 8/16/24/32
• Reactive Armor Super from +6 stack limit to +12 stack limit

We love Flesh Golem, but it wasn't being used in the way we originally intended. Now it works more consistently with what you'd expect in regular Dota.

Trying cool stuff

• Life Break Super now deals 100% of damage to self to enemies
• Overload charges now stack, and all charges are released on the first auto attack
• Overload damage from 30/60/120 to 30/50/90
• Overload AOE from 350 to 300
• Sharpshooter Gaben replaced and changed to "Decreases cooldown of Sharpshooter by 20s for every unit that dies under the debuff"

These are some of the crazy ideas we had. We're looking forward to all the cool combos you all will come up with. Overload felt underwhemling before because the AI wouldn't know that they should attack after each spell (similar to what Storm wants to do). As a result, we just have the damage stack and then release whenever the auto attack does land.

Monetization

Gold per game
As I've stated publicly before, we miscalculated how much gold and XP you should be getting per game. The XP being given is too high, while the gold is too low. We won't change the XP system until next season, but the Gold has already been changed. We've doubled it for everyone and doubled it again for PLUS subscribers. So if you win you will gain 100 gold (200 with PLUS). This, in combination with quests, should make it easier to unlock chests regularly.

We of course will continue to monitor how these changes are being received and will make more changes in the coming season if necessary.

How to obtain Golden Gods

The recycle system before was pretty basic. If you opened a duplicate God in a chest, you received 25% of the gold and you increase the tally of your collection by one. Once you got 10 duplicates of the same God, you would unlock a Golden version forever.

This system had some issues, including but not limited to the fact that you could literally never get a Golden card for a Free God, since they never drop from chests.

Instead of collecting 10 points, we are changing it so you need 100. Getting a duplicate version of the God will give you 5 points. Getting a top 4 finish with the God will give you 1 point. We hope this will feel more like you are working towards something. For all existing duplicates, we will transfer your points automatically into the new version (example: If you have 5/10 before, you will have 50/100 now).

Future

We are investigating a new god pick system that will make unlocking new Gods feel better. We haven't finalized anything yet but we will have something done by Season 2 in November.

Speaking of Season 2, there's a lot more cool stuff coming that we can't wait for you to see. With each season we will have more Gods, spells, and cosmetics.