Graham, Chris and Marsh discuss Starseed Pilgrim, Monaco, and the impact of Dota 2 on our collective humanity. Plus the hot questions of the day: can you make a shooter without combat? What does Marsh dance to in the morning? Is Chris secretly an a**hole?

As I say at the beginning of the recording, there were some hardware problems with my microphone setup that cause intermittent issues later in the episode. The cable in question has been punished.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes,download the MP3 directly, or listen on YouTube. To ask us questions, follow the PC Gamer Twitter account - we'll put the call out prior to recording. You can also follow us as individuals:

Graham - @Gonnas
Chris - @CThursten
Marsh - @marshdavies
Show notes

A commencement speech given by author David Foster Wallce at Kenyon College, Ohio. Somehow we have decided that this is relevent to computer games where you make wizards push lanes.
Gamasutra report on Riot's League of Legends player behaviour experiments.
Cassandra Khaw's Monaco review.
Andy Kelly's Videogame Toilets tumblr.
'The Moon' from the Duck Tales soundtrack, the song that will play at Marsh's funeral.
'Betus Blues' from Super Meat Boy, or what it sounds like inside Chris' head when someone asks a question about MMOs.
Chipzel's Super Hexagon soundtrack and Souleye's VVVVVV score, Graham's preferred lullaby.
Smooth McGroove's acapella rendition of the Street Fighter II Guile Theme, or what it sounds like when PC Gamer UK conquer a deadline.
A forum thread with screenshots of the PCG vs. RPS Planetside 2 scrap, including that time I got my gunship stuck upside down.
To answer MaxUrsa's question about wireless headphones, Dave James scores Corsair's Vengeance 2000 set 88% in the upcoming PCG 253 Tech Supertest.
Alteraction's MASQ, the open-ended adventure soap opera that Graham recommends.
A horse dressed up as a lion: apropos of nothing, I just wanted to reward you for reading all these show notes.

Valve has announced the third annual The International tournament, the most prestigious competition in competitive Dota 2. The competition returns to Seattle's Benaroya Hall August 6-11, where the 16 top Dota 2 teams in the world will compete to be named world champions. A prize pool has not yet been formally announced, but considering both previous iterations of The International posted pots in excess of $1 million, we think it's safe to say that it won't be chump change.

The bracket will consist of 13 invited teams and three who make it through a preliminary qualifier. The only invited team announced so far is last year's champions, Invictus Gaming (iG) of China. There will be two qualifier events: East and West, taking place at the end of May. The winning team from each qualifier will be guaranteed a spot in The International 3. The runners up will compete against each other for a final, Wild Card spot on the eve of The International 3.

If you're looking for some Dota 2 e-sports to watch in the mean time, there are some exciting games going in in the Chinese G-1 Champions League Season 5, featuring both Western and Eastern teams, with a $40,000 top prize.

G-1, the Chinese Dota 2 league, has been suspended by organisers 17173, following a series of DDoS attacks that caused players to disconnect during their games. The attacks began on Sunday, affecting players from Team Dignitas, Evil Geniuses and Kaipi. 17173 say they are working to rectify the issues, and have sought technical advice from Valve.

"Over the past few days, matches on the DOTA2 European servers have been faced with a serious series of DDoS attacks from unknown sources, which has caused players to continuously disconnect and ultimately made it impossible to carry on the competition," writes a G-1 spokesperson on Reddit. "In light of the current situation, 17173 and 2P.com have decided to postpone the G-1 Western Qualifiers while waiting for advice on technical solutions from Valve.

"What next? We've shared a guide with all the teams in the G-1 Western Qualifiers yesterday on steps to take to prevent DDoS attacks. Additionally, communications are established with Valve, reporting what has happened in the past few days of G-1 Champions League, along with related details regarding what we know about the as-yet unidentified DDoS attacker(s)."

Sunday's attack forced a mass disconnect from members of Evil Geniuses, with admins ultimately declaring their opponents Absolute Legends the winners due to their in-game advantage at the time.

While the source of the attacks isn't known, one 4Chan poster claimed responsibility, saying it was to prevent him losing a $20,000 bet. This is 4Chan though, so pinch of salt and all.

It'll be interesting to see what measures and recommendations G-1's organisers implement to halt future attacks. Certainly this isn't the first time players have been hit by a DDoS. Ultimately, it seems teams and organisers are going to need to be more rigorous in their protection of players IP addresses - taking steps to make them less easily accessible.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Yesterday, we reported on a study published by DFC Intelligence, claiming that Dota 2 had overtaken League of Legends as the most played game in North America and Europe, and citing data from XFire and other unnamed sources. But the conclusions of the report seemed problematic - Riot had previously announced five million concurrent players worldwide, and while Dota 2 is undeniably growing in popularity, to surpass it in two key regions would have been a big deal.

As we reported at the time, with DFC's methodology unclear, it was impossible to confirm their findings. To find out more, I got in touch with David Cole, owner of DFC, for clarification. Additionally Riot, eager to retain their title, have provided some of their own statistics, which suggest that League of Legends is still the king.

In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, a Riot spokesperson said that League of Legends sees "over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West shard." Considering Dota 2's all-time concurrent player peak is 325,897 users worldwide, it would seem as though LoL is indeed ahead.

DFC's David Cole provided us with information on how they arrived at their conclusion. "We do have access to all Xfire data and they are a key source," he said. "However, we also do a lot of data mining of multiple sources to get a better sample. This includes forums etc.

"The thing with us is we are getting core gamers in North America and Europe only. LOL has a ton of users in markets we don’t track.

"I will say in the past people have thought our numbers for LOL were impossibly high. Diablo III had a short lived spike but nothing has come close. LOL has consistently showed usage an order of magnitude above other products just in the markets we tracked. You add in additional markets like China and it is clearly larger.

"Dota 2 is a new entity so we don’t know where things will be headed. Diablo III showed a leap but it went back down whereas LOL has been consistent. But to me the news wasn’t that LOL is declining, it is more about the success of Dota 2 in some of these core Western markets."

Cole also clarified that the report specifically measured hours played, and not number of users.

Riot countered this point, with a spokesperson telling us that, "back in October Riot reported 1+ billion hours played per month and 3 million concurrent players globally (then, last month reported 5 million concurrent... so you can extrapolate the growth in playtime and other stats from there)." Although, again, this covers worldwide play, not the specific NA and European regions of DFC's study.

"Riot is actually going to give us some actual numbers so we can compare," Cole continued. "LOL does have a lot more users and we may have underestimated LOL. Thing is, we have never seen anything like it, so have been pretty conservative. But Dota 2 is still big."

Which is true enough. From all of this, what remains clear is that both MOBAs are enjoying a huge amount of success. And, of course, it's worth keeping in mind that Dota 2 is still in beta. While invites are still available, it seems likely that even that small barrier would have an effect on the number of people playing the game. There are vast audiences for both games, and we won't know Dota's true effect until it's fully available, and free, on Steam.

As for the report, the problem is gaining accurate data at such a granular level. Using the publicly released figures, we can just about make comparisons over concurrent users at a purely worldwide level. And yes, here, it's clear that League of Legends is ahead of the curve. Finding a sure-fire, undeniable method for tracking hours played in two specific regions is much harder. Based on the information Riot have provided, it seems likely that LoL is at the top of that list too. But without a standardised and consistent method of comparing data between different companies, it's always going to be hard to establish an accurate figure.

Ultimately, I question how relevant the report's scope is to free-to-play games. Having an idea of what's popular and consistently played in North America and Europe is probably useful data if you're making games in the AAA space. But free-to-play's strength is in its ease of access worldwide; in regions like China where traditional publishing models have yet to, or even can't, take hold. Essentially, PC gaming is both leading the way for alternative funding schemes, and blurring the lines of how they relate back to the idea of "Western" gaming.

Original Story: Dota 2 has surpassed League of Legends as the most played "core" PC title in the West through the first quarter of 2013, according to a report by DFC Intelligence. If accurate, it's a big coup for Valve's MOBA, which is both "technically" unrealeased and "technically" not free. Of course, as those heavy ironic quote marks imply, neither of those facts mean much when Steam has become so flooded with invites that you could run out onto the street, shout "I NEED A DOTA," and be guaranteed that some passing stranger would hand you one. I'm serious. Try it.

The report, as covered by GamesIndustry.biz, measures players from North America and Europe using a variety of sources, including real-time stats from the 23 million registered Xfire users. DFC found that both MOBAs far surpassed the third most popular PC game, World of Warcraft.

"Usage of League of Legends has been steady the past year and surprisingly the huge success of Dota 2 did not seem to cut into its popularity as much as would be expected," said DFC analyst Jeremy Miller.

There was growth shown in PC gaming as a whole, too, with DFC reporting a combined usage rise for the Top 20 PC games: 22% over the first quarter of 2012, and 8% over the last quarter. DFC analyst David Cole pointed to some of the games that have caused this bump: "The past year has seen numerous blockbuster PC games that have really helped drive usage. This includes among others Diablo III, Guild Wars 2, Battlefield 3, Minecraft, World of Tanks and Valve's Counter-Strike series."

Okay, caveat time: Firstly, the DFC are only interested in "core" titles, not casual and browser games. That means Facebook's litany of horrors - including Zynga's crumbling empire - isn't being analysed. More pressingly, we don't have access to the exact methodology the DFC used for its conclusion. For instance, while a snapshot is next to meaningless compared to the overall trend, XFire is currently reporting League of Legends as being way ahead of Dota 2, at 21,075 players to 2,330.

Essentially, unless the stats are coming directly (and accurately) from the developers, it's hard to see how there wouldn't be at least some sample bias. While the DFC's report is likely a good representation of general trends, it's hard to know if it represents the full story. Certainly Steam are currently reporting 197,507 concurrent Dota 2 players - but even then, their publicly available statistics aren't granular enough to separate out the Western regions.

If there are two statements we can be sure of with some certainty, they would be 1) Bloody hell, MOBAs are popular, and 2) Hooray for PC games!

Update: Riot have questioned DFC's findings, telling Games Industry that League of Legends sees "over 500,000 peak concurrent players every day on just the EU West shard." Note that Dota 2's highest ever concurrent player count, according to SteamGraph, is 325,897 users worldwide.

We contacted DFC's David Cole for more info. He pointed out that their findings were based on hours played rather than concurrent users, stating that "LOL does have a lot more users and we may have underestimated LOL. Thing is we have never seen anything like it so have been pretty conservative. But Dota 2 is still big." The press release announcing DFC's report has since been removed.

Dota 2 has been updated with its first new hero in six weeks. Rigwarl the Bristleback is the phlegm chucking pig-hedgehog thing in question. He's kind of what I imagine a dark, gritty reboot of Sonic the Hedgehog would look like. Except yellow. An initiator, Bristleback can slow enemies with a stacked attack, has a 360 degree spike attack, and location-based damage resistance.

Here's what Bristleback's hiding under his spiny sleeves.

Viscous Nasal Goo: A mucal discharge attack that lowers armour and reduces movement speed. Gross.
Quill Spray: 360 degree projectile attack which gets a damage bonus if you repeat within 10 seconds. Ignores damage blocking items and abilities.
Bristeback: This eponymous ability reduces damage from the side and back, and auto Quill Sprays for every 250 damage he takes from the back.
Warpath: A passive buff to movement speed and damage that stacks with every spell cast.

And you can see him in action, courtesy of this DotaCinema video:



Also! Vengeful Spirit gets a new model, Wisp gets renamed Io, and Beastmaster has some voice work done. Full patch notes here.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

We love games like Dota 2, League of Legends, and Smite, but the huge number of skills needed to master their complex gameplay can scare new players away. That’s why, twice a month, we pick a key skill and teach you how to master it, using a character that particularly excels at or relies on it.

This week, we're taking a look at how to effectively control a pet and use it to its full potential in Dota 2. It's not just fanboy rage fueling Dota 2 players who insist their game be labeled as an ARTS instead of a MOBA—there are some very distinct RTS elements that have evolved with the game since it's early days as an RTS mod, including how pet handling functions. Let's break down the mechanics and see how we can use them to our advantage.

The skill — Control A Pet
 
There are plenty of creatures on the Dota 2 map that you can't control (without using Chen, Enchantress, or Helm of the Dominator), but occasionally the game entrusts your hero with the life of another creature/totem/ghoul that you must protect and use to decapitate your enemies. Pets are a bit wild by nature, and it'll take some fast thinking and deft keyboard work to keep both your hero and its pets performing at their full potential.

The other, more intense level of pet control is controlling multiple heroes at the same time. If someone leaves a match you're in (which can happen quite a bit against AI bots), Dota 2 summons its RTS roots to let you overcome teammate treachery by taking control of the abandoned hero in addition to your own.

Organized teams can also choose to allow allies to control their hero or pet units while they're still online and playing too. You won't see this often, but it's a good way to get help controlling pets like Nature's Prophets' Treants or a Meepo if they're sent to a different lane.

Controlling more than one hero unit is extremely challenging, fairly crazy, and only mildly effective. But with the right moves, you can turn a guaranteed loss into a hard-fought win. And the bragging rights earned from a win where you controlled multiple heroes is legendary.

The hero — Lone Druid
 
Lone Druid relies on his pet more than any other hero in Dota 2. It's not uncommon for his giant bear companion to be more useful to the team than the druid, Sylla. And let me be clear: this is a bear who is dangerously close to achieving a mohawk, so he absolutely deserves your respect.

Lone Druid is an Agility hero that can be played as melee or ranged, and can excel at pushing, jungling, and carrying. His Spirit Bear is meant to be active at all times, which can easily be achieved if you don't casually send it to its death. It's useful to think of Sylla and his bear as two separate heroes you're in charge of. A common strategy is to outfit the Spirit Bear as melee DPS (with some light tank for jungling) and aura buffer/debuffer, while Sylla hangs back in ranged form to support and DPS.

This is the template we'll follow while we learn to manage pets, but don't be afraid to experiment with Sylla's melee bear form as well. Learning when to use each form is key to mastering Lone Druid, but will not be covered in this guide, which is focused on controlling pets.

Objective
 
Our goals this week are to master the mechanics of controlling your pet, look at some best habits at a big-picture level, and try to come up with clever ways to use pets to our advantage that might not be readily apparent to new players. All these skills should help you make the best of a bad situation when forced to control heroes abandoned by teammates. And of course the clarity of mind and concentration that we'll refine while mastering pet control in the heat of battle will come in handy even when you're on your own out there.

Builds and items
 
Lone Druid's fancy Spirit Bear likes to wear fancy clothes, and you're going to buy them for him. It's the only pet in Dota 2 that can equip items just like a hero can (Meepo's clones are technically naked above the feet...creepy). This gives Lone Druid massive scaling potential late-game with a total of 16 available item slots, but it also means that you're going to have to balance your item purchases between Sylla and Spirit Bear early on. And can we talk about something for a second? Frankly, I think it's a bit hypocritical to call yourself the Lone Druid and then constantly hang out with the most powerful pet in the game.

Secret evolution upgrade unlocked: Bipedal bears!

Start off the game with a Stout Shield for your Spirit Bear to help it last out in the jungle longer. Its ideal outfit will usually include Phase Boots, Orb of Venom, Vladmir's Offering, Radiance/Mjollnir/Assault Cuiriass, and Skull Basher. Hand of Midas is another good early item, just make sure you swap it to Lone Druid if you're going to use the active ability so that he can earn the XP from it.

That old guy following your ursa around will need some loot as well. At the start, Grab Sylla three Iron Branches, a Healing Salve, and some Tangos. The Healing Salves and Tangos can be used on him or Spirit Bear, whichever one needs them most. Over time, aim to pick up Tranquil Boots and build towards Cloak, Pipe of Insight, and situational items as the match warrants, like Ghost Scepter or Gem of True Sight. You can also trade in those boots for Boots of Travel late game, if you want more mobility (don't forget that you can teleport to Spirit Bear!). There are other ways to build Lone Druid, but for this guide, build Spirit Bear to catch and hurt enemies while Sylla stays alive and supports from range.

For abilities, max out your Summon Spirit Bear (Q) first, True Form (R) whenever it's available, then Synergy (E), and Rabid (W) last.

The basics
 
My very first Dota 2 match didn't go so well. I started with the mode least likely to incur rage: fighting bots with four strangers, which quickly became three strangers when our carry left the match before the first wave of creeps. Ten minutes later, another one bailed; and by the twenty minute marker, I found myself completely alone on the battlefield facing an entire army.

It wasn't the greatest welcoming committee for the community, but it did allow me to suddenly feel like a Dota god when I realized that I could control all of the heroes my allies had abandoned. I grabbed 'em all in one big mouse drag and tried to push mid-lane while shifting between five heroes I'd never seen before and spamming their abilities. I'll spare you the gory details, and just tell you that it didn't end well.

Gaining control

But that 25-abilities-at-my-fingertips adrenaline rush got me looking for pets in Dota 2. Many heroes have objects that do little more than follow you around, like Juggernaut's Healing Ward, which will get killed in one hit if you let it venture into danger, and some have pets that you have no real control of, like Undying's Tombstone zombies. Lone Druid's Spirit Bear requires more hands-on attention. The lazy bum is perfect content to sit back at your spawn point for the entire match if you don't actively tell it to move out with you.

Let's take a quick look at how the pet targeting AI works in Dota 2, so you know what you're getting into. Pets will auto-attack the nearest enemy that gets within a reasonable range of them. When that target dies, it will automatically swap to a new one if something's in range (if you leave auto-attack turned on in the settings). Outside of those rules, they're pretty darn dumb. If you start attacking a hero with Lone Druid, Spirit Bear's gonna keep doing his thing to creeps in the lane unless you specifically tell Spirit Bear that you want it to join in the assault.

Except for when the Spirit Bear detects its most delicious prey: Robots. Then it charges in blindly.

And, by default, you tell it the old-fashioned way: select it and order it like an RTS unit. Dota 2's default settings don't use modifier keys to let you issue pet commands while controlling your hero. Like a true RTS, you need to select any unit you want to control. But you can turn it on in the settings ("Unified Unit Orders"), and use Ctrl as the modifier key to issue pet commands. The usual RTS tools are also here to help you manage: you can drag-select units on screen and assign them a hotkey number on your keyboard to quick-select them later. You can also tap Tab while either your hero or its pet is selected to cycle between them.

Everyone will have their preferred method, but I like to assign Sylla to hotkey 1, my Spirit Bear to hotkey 3 and both selected on hotkey 2. Use whatever numbering order is most comfortable for you, though, because you'll be constantly swapping during battle.

As a sidenote for players dabbling in similar games, you can hold Alt while right-clicking to issue movement commands to your pet in League of Legends. There's no need to directly select your pet in LoL because none of the pets have activated abilities like Spirit Bear. Smite keeps it totally minimalistic by simply not having any pets you can control—if they spawn, they handle themselves.

Bear distracts 'em while you slash em!

Start simple

Fighting for last hits can get hectic, so let's start your first attempt at bear-wrangling in a nice, controlled environment. Go to the jungle, where following a few simple rules can keep you alive. Send in Spirit Bear first so it gets aggro and keep Sylla at range so he doesn't get hit. After the first few camps, Spirit Bear is going to be pretty low health. Don't let it die; the bear's death triggers a heavy damage hit onto Sylla. Instead, re-summon it with Sylla's Summon Spirit Bear to restore it to full health. Of course, only do this when the alternative is Spirit Bear dying—you're putting Summon Spirit Bear back on cooldown, which makes you vulnerable.

Jungling with Sylla in bear form, courtesy of his True Form ability, can be a little trickier as he's more likely to pull aggro from Spirit Bear in melee range, but you can easily manage it with a little positioning. Go ahead and practice with it to learn how melee hero targeting works with pets. Once you're comfortable, dive into the more advanced tactics on the next page.

Next page: Jumping into the lane, and taking advantage of the sometimes complex perks of pet ownership.



Advanced Tactics
 
Once you feel comfortable with the basic mechanics of swapping between multiple units, give it a try in lane. Having a pet with you lets you overcome the age-old problem of "two creeps are dying at the exact same moment, which one do I hit?" by simply hitting them both with your two separate auto-attacks. It's addictive, but the real trick is being able to recognize when it's too dangerous to have both Sylla and Spirit Bear up front racking up denies and busting open gold piñatas.

Spirit Bear doesn't care about your silly crystal walls—he'll maul you wherever you please.

Sometimes you have to use your pet to safely last-hit creeps while Sylla hangs as far back as possible. Spirit Bear will auto-attack enemy creeps (if you leave auto-attack enabled in the settings), but it won't deny unless you directly order it to do so, just like heroes.

Trying to rack up the absolute maximum amount of gold and XP in the lane is good, but keeping both Sylla and Spirit Bear alive is even better. You're vulnerable without Spirit Bear, and its summon cooldown is several minutes, so play it safe if you accidentally let it die. And don't feel bad when you try to frantically tell Sylla to retreat and realize you had your Spirit Bear selected instead, sending the poor Lone Druid into the time out box for a spell. It's happened to all of us.

If Spirit Bear does get in trouble, use its Return ability to teleport it back to Sylla (keep in mind that the ability can only be activated if you haven't taken damage from an enemy hero or hero-controlled unit in the last three seconds). The timing on this is something you'll want to master. Among many things, it allows you to tower dive onto an enemy hero, using Spirit Bear to root them in place with it's passive ability that gives every hit a chance to snare his target. It's perfect for setting up an ally alley-oop without having to suffer the consequences of overextending.

When you're too slow on that escape and the bear gets hit too hard, you can send it back to base to heal up on its own. Sylla can stay in lane and soak up XP and gold during the bear's trek.

And killing the enemy hero with a pet adds insult to the fatal injury.

This is the second phase of your advanced training: learning to use Spirit Bear away from Sylla. Spirit Bear can't attack when it's more than a moderate distance away from his partner in tree-hugging. If you want to see the exact distance, open up your console (~ key) and type in dota_range_display 1100. This will put a green circle around your character that shows the maximum range Spirit Bear can be from Lone Druid and still attack. To remove the circle later, just type in dota_range_display 0.

But there's still plenty of uses for sending Spirit Bear out on its own. First, it can function as a courier, buying and bringing items to Sylla on the front lines.

When it's not buying, rooting, or fighting, Spirit Bear is best sent spying. After you clear a jungle camp, send Sylla towards the next one and Spirit Bear towards the most likely route an invading enemy would take towards that next camp. You'll either see them early and be able to retreat safely, or have peace of mind when clearing the camp safely. Teleport Spirit Bear back to Sylla with its Return ability when you're ready to fight. This same scouting strategy can be used to check nearby jungle areas while in a lane, as well.

These are just some of the main uses of a combatless bear, but there are plenty more out there. Start looking for opportunities where having someone soak up damage would be helpful. Creep wave headed towards an undefended tower? Send Spirit Bear to absorb the hits instead of the building, or, even better, lead them into jungle creeps who will fight them for you.

Advanced training complete. You're now authorized to utilize the fabled Double Bear Full Mohawk strategy.

Master tweaks
 
If you can lane effectively with a pet, that's great, but remember that laning is pretty much square one for most heroes and there are a lot of tricks we've yet to master with Lone Druid.

For example, you can use Spirit Bear to block single-target skill-shot abilities from enemy heroes, like Pudge's Meat Hook. Doing so will require knowledge of your opponents' abilities, crazy quick reflexes to move your hero and your pet into the perfect positions, and getting a feel for your individual opponents' playstyle and timing. But when you pull it off, it feels great. Of course, most of Dota 2's skill shots affect areas rather than the first target it hits, so you're mostly just hoping to bait the ability casts by pressuring them with Spirit Bear. Every ability cast at him instead of an actual hero on your team (I hope Spirit Bear doesn't maul me for saying that), is a small victory.

And, of course, it works both ways. You can also use Spirit Bear to leap-frog friendly abilities forward, like Dazzle's Shadow Wave to deal extra damage to the enemy heroes from distance or Lich's Ice Armor to slow enemy attackers if they try to hit Spirit Bear.

When you hit a tough spot, just look back at this awesome art and be inspired to push on.

Start to experiment with Sylla's Bear Form in lane as well, and learn when its extra defenses and melee boost outweigh the cons of losing ranged attacks and moving slower. It's impossible to give blanket rules for when to shift forms, but you'll get the feel of it as you play and size up your opponents in each match.

Some general guidelines to get you started: True Form (Bear Form) is usually the best choice outside of laning. It makes Lone Druid more tanky and increases his damage output, if he can afford to get into melee range.

No matter what Sylla's doing, Spirit Bear can set up some easy kills for your team. But learning when to push him onto enemy heroes is more art more than science. You need to be willing to send it into danger, but don't want to offer it up as a free sacrifice. Its passive abilities give it a chance to root its target (and the Orb of Venom you hopefully bought for it adds a slowing effect), and it can sprint in crazy fast with the right items.

Learn to recognize when a teamfight is about to engage, and send the Spirit Bear in after a squishy that your team is ready to pounce on, or to block a path that they might try to use as an escape. Outside of team fights, use Spirit Bear to check treelines or trap enemy heroes trying to pester your team from the jungle.

And of course, your magnum opus will be when you find yourself in an abandoned co-op game vs. bots and you take control of all five heroes and manage to micromanage them to victory singe-handedly. Once you've done that, you will be declared an official pet master. Fair warning: that's going to be at least 10-15 different abilities to manage, so if you get overwhelmed easily you might want to just focus on making two of them efficient, and just let the others auto-attack between ults.

Technically, this is still a solo Roshan kill.

Your homework
 
Happy pet taming this week, Dota 2 all-stars. As always, you can download Dota 2 on Steam. You'll need a beta invite if you aren’t already in, but Valve has been giving them out like stale Halloween candy, so it shouldn't be hard to find one. If you need one, ask in the comments below and a PCG reader will likely help you out. Once you’re in the beta, all of the heroes, including Lone Druid, are 100% free, so you can practice with him right away.

Five goals to aim for as you learn to control pets with Lone Druid:

1. Root an enemy hero with your Spirit Bear when it matters most, and your team gets the kill.
2. Let Spirit Bear revel in the victory of getting a last-hit on an enemy hero.
3. Teleport your Spirit Bear out of battle with Return when it has less than 20 health left.
4. Clear the entire jungle without dying.
5. Fill all 16 available item slots in a single game.

This week in eSports: MLG Winter is finally here! Heart of the Swarm has launched, and now is as good a time as ever to start eSportsing. Plus, competitive gaming has earned itself a spot at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference. Have a look at all of this and more inside. gl hf!

eSports featured at MIT's Sloan Sports Analytics Conference



Here's some further ammo to fire at anyone who doubts the legitimacy of eSports: MIT's big sports conference this year featured a panel with Sundance DiGiovanni (MLG), Mike Morhaime (Blizzard), Kevin Lin (Twitch), and Daryl Morey (GM of the Houston Rockets, representing "regular sports"). The panel was moderated by Rod "Slasher" Breslau—who asked to "DM" me on Twitter the other day, forcing me to look up what that meant and realize how out of touch I am with Internet acronyms. Luckily, it wasn't some kind of hardcore eSports knowledge roast, as my worst fears suggested at the time.

StarCraft II



The biggest tournament of 2013 so far is kicking off tonight in Dallas, Texas. MLG's Winter Championships will pit 32 of the world's best Heart of the Swarm players against each other in a classic, single-elimination playoff for $75,000 in prizes. Players to watch include Flash, "The God of Brood War;" PartinG, winner of 2012's Battle.net World Championship; MC, a GSL and IEM champion widely considered one of the best Protoss players of all time; Polt, winner of Day's King of the Beta tournament; Life, an MLG and GSL Code S champion; Life, a previous IPL and MLG champion; Stephano, the French zerg player who is arguably the most successful non-Korean in the game's history; and HuK, a Canadian, 2-time MLG champion.

All matches will be broadcast for free, with HD stream upgrades available for $10. The action begins at 3 p.m. PDT.

If you're looking to watch the finals at a venue, and you live in the Bay Area, I'm planning to make an appearance at the Berkeley BarCraft on Sunday. If you're not sure who to look for, check out the interviews I did at the Heart of the Swarm launch event, featuring an interview with Robert Clotworthy (the voice of Jim Raynor.)

Watch it: Major League Gaming

The 2013 GSL Season 1, and the last GSL to take place in Wings of Liberty, has wrapped, with dark horse RorO claiming his spot among the Code S champions. Season 2, which will be running Heart of the Swarm, officially started last week, and will run until May 11. The Code S champion this season will claim over $45,000 in prizes. After the Up/Down matches, FanTaSy, Crazy, Shine, Flying, Maru, and Soo have advanced from Code A to Code S. Sniper, Ryung, Keen, and, most notably, NesTea have dropped into Code A.

Watch it: GomTV

League of Legends



All eight teams in the North American LCS are primed to begin Week 5 (after a nice, long break) at MLG in Dallas tonight. Can Dignitas hang onto their lead? Can compLexity catch a freaking break? Who will come out ahead in the 3rd place deadlock between TSM Snapdragon and CLG? There's one way to find out...

Watch it: Major League Gaming

The EU LCS is headed to France next weekend, where Fnatic will be looking to regain the lead they lost to Gambit BenQ. Copenhagen Wolves, currently ranked last, may be making a comeback, however, with the return of Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, who was absent for a number of the matches they lost.

Still no word on whether "Dragonborns" have chosen to correct their name on my suggestion. (The plural of "Dragonborn" is "Dragonborn". Source: I'm one of those weird guys who memorizes video game lore.)

Watch it: League Championship Series EU

Other Stuff
Riot shoutcaster Leigh "Deman" Smith did an AMA on Reddit this week. Check it out to hear his take on which teams are the most fun to cover, and whether pants and/or breathing are optional for eSports casters.

Dota 2



In The Defense 3, Team Liquid has fallen. Two matches remain before an overall winner is decided: Dignitas will face Fnatic on the 20th in the Lower Bracket Final, and the winner will go on to the Overall Final against the dominant Virtus.pro on the 30th. There's not a lot left to say about The Defense, which has been a staple of this column since its inception, except that we'll be sad to see it go.

Watch it: The Defense

The online DreamHack invitational has begun! the group stage play kicked off yesterday, and will run up until the end of the month. The top spot of the eight participating teams will claim $2,500 and, more importantly, a spot at the in-person DreamHack Winter.

Watch it: DreamHack TV

The long-standing Chinese G-League tournament was woefully omitted from last week's column. Both my all-seeing flaming eye set atop a dark tower and my two immortal ravens failed me utterly, and have been punished in accordance with their crimes. On the bright side, the final match of the tournament is available for posterity on joinDOTA, with Invictus Gaming triumphing over LGD International for the insane, $32,000 top prize.

That's it for this week, eSports faithful. Let us know in the comments what you think of this week's stories, if there's anything we missed, and what eSports events you're most looking forward to in the coming weeks. gg!

When Valve invited Dota 2 caster Kevin 'Purge' Godec to their studio last week, they made a crucial rookie mistake: feeding him. That gave him all the power he needed to surge past their defence towers and snap pics of some upcoming hero concept art. Or possibly they gave him their blessing to share their plans with the community at large. There's just no way of knowing.

Purge says only Bristlebog (not pictured) and Skywrath Mage were playable on Valve's servers at the time, with Skywrath Mage in the process of being tweaked before being included in the game proper.

Abaddon

Abyssal Underlord

Elder Titan

Legion Commander

Magnataur

Skywrath Mage

Techies

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Valve boss Gabe Newell stepped up to the stage during last week's BAFTA awards to receive the prestigious Academy Fellowship for his contributions to gaming. Presumably momentarily distracted by accepting a trophy modeled after a smirking face, a bewhiskered Newell fielded some interview questions over the normally airtight subject of Valve's business performance that hinted at the monumental scale of the studio's prosperity.

Newell chalked up Valve's successes largely to user-generated content on open platforms such as Steam Workshop before sharing some jaw-dropping numbers. "There's sort of an insatiable demand for gaming right now," Newell said. "I think our business has grown by about 50 percent on the back of opportunities created by having these open platforms.

"And just so people understand how big this sort of scale is getting, we were generating 3.5 terabits per second during the last Dota 2 update," he added. "That's about 2 percent of all the mobile- and land-based Internet activity."

Wait, what? We're not exactly sure what Newell meant when he dropped that bombshell of data info, apart from maybe claiming responsibility for all those times my connection speeds chugged while browsing these past few months. Still, it seems entirely plausible—Dota 2 has a lot of players, and the MOBA recently took the crown for the highest concurrent user amount of any Steam game ever. If any Steam game can feasibly take a bite out of the entire Internet, Dota 2 holds the best chance.