Peripheral maker and perennial esports supporter Razer has formed a partnership with one of the world’s top Dota 2 teams, Team Zenith as they prepare for the Valve 2 International tournament in August.

The Singapore-based Team Zenith has been part of the gaming tournament scene since 2006 when they were known as Scythe. Teaming up with Razer has allowed the team to access a training ground to practice all hours of the day, apparently strengthening their presence as they compete for a frankly ludicrous million US dollars of prize money.

Valve's second sponsored Dota 2 Tournament - portentously titled 'The International' - begins August 31st at gaming show PAX Prime, taking place in Seattle. It runs until September 2nd, and will see some of the biggest and best MOBA teams in the world compete: Evil Geniuses, Orange eSports, Counter Logic Gaming and LGD.

Robert “RazerGuy” Krakoff, President of Razer USA expressed his excitement to be working with Team Zenith stating, “Team Zenith have proved to be one of the most outstanding Dota 2 teams in the world and it’s a pleasure for us to work with them and support them on their way to one of the biggest tournaments of their lives." More importantly for PC gamers, it's another vote of confidence for Valve's game as it enters a crowded market.

Dota 2's expansion gathers pace with the arrival of this week's second update. This one introduces the heropedia, which presents a breakdown of every character's stats, lore background and skills, with short videos of every ability. You can browse it now on the Dota 2 site, or access it via the "Learn" tab in the Dota 2 client.

The grand roster of heroes has also been expanded with two new characters, Luna the Moonrider, who's much more dangerous than she sounds, and Wisp, a glowing ball of light with some unusual abilities. Find out more about them, and absorb the latest patch notes below.

Luna The Moonrider - Moontastic Agility Carry

As titles go, "Luna the Moonrider" isn't likely to instil much fear, until you actually see her and notice that she's riding a giant panther. Then you'll notice that the giant panther is wearing a hat, but while you're busy noticing that, you'll be taking a hit to the face from a rebounding magical chakram. Then as you're trying to pull your senses together she'll be activating her ultimate ability, which turns day to night and starts zapping you with bolts of searing moon energy. "What the hell, moon!?" you'll probably cry.

The ability videos in the updated heropedia were done by Dota cinema, who have also done a couple of overview videos for the new heroes. Here's one for Luna.



Wisp - Utility Glowing Hero Ball Thing

No Warcraft 3 sprite was left unused in the formation of Defence of the Ancients. Even glowing balls of light can become characters, as Guardian Wisp demonstrates. According to his bio, "Wisp occupies all planes at once, the merest fraction of its being crossing into physical existence at any one moment," which sounds grandiose, but it's best thought of as a sentient glowing ball who just wants to help. It does this by tethering itself to heroes, increasing their movement speed and stunning anyone who touches the strand. For its ultimate trick, it can teleport to any point on the map for 12 seconds, taking any tethered hero along for the ride.

See these abilities in action in the Dota Cinema overview of Wisp.



And here are the latest patch notes:

HIGHLIGHTS:

Added Luna
Added Guardian Wisp
Dota 2 now uses the CELT codec for increased voice communication quality.
Added a testing tool to the Workshop tab that allows contributors to see their models on a hero before submitting.
Added Heropedia to the Learn tab.

 

GAMEPLAY

Bloodseeker: Fixed a bug where he could get healed by friendly heroes dying in the area around him that he didn't deny.
Pudge: Fixed a bug that was sometimes causing Pudge's Dismember to do an extra tick of damage
Pudge: Fixed a bug that allowed Pudge to deal damage without hurting himself by quickly toggling Rot.
Rubick: Fixed a rare case where Rubick could get permanently stuck with Telekinesis Land.
Rubick: Fixed a bug where Rubick would gain permanent Spectral Dagger buffs until he died.
Rubick: Fixed a bug with Poison Release that would cause you to steal the wrong ability from Shadow Demon.
Tiny: Fixed Aghanim's Scepter siege damage vs backdoor armor
Fixed being able to use a different player's items in your combine, if that item was in your stash at the time

 
VISUALS

More Rubick spell animations
Various Rubick visual effect improvements and fixes
Haste animation added for Bloodseeker
Adjusted Ogre Magi's sidearm attack animation
Logos removed from waterfall and mid river areas to safeguard gameplay
Tweaked dire banner position left of fountain shop
Roshan timer appear only after 10 seconds have passed from death
Reduced Gyro's model scale a little
Removed ambient effects on Razor and Morphling when hexed

 
UI

Fixed some cases where icons could get stuck on the screen
Fixed new heroes not showing up in the hero picker if you had custom view set (They'll now appear in the top left of the grid view, for you to then place as you like)
Tournament Panel: Fixed game list not refreshing unless you opened a different tournament and then back.
Tournament Panel: Increased the size of the live games and recent games.
Tournament Panel: Fixed details button not working properly for the last few games.
Fixed Spectator label cutting off number of spectators.
Fixed Live games not displaying correctly after opening a Tournament.
Fixed a recent bug with the shop not closing when a unit is selected
Fixed some bugs with losing commentator perspecting when pausing and unpausing
Added backpack preview to couriers
Back button in the loadout takes you back to the backpack if you arrived via a backpack right click
Fixed some slots on the backpack not being right-clickable if they were not on page 1
Fixed the first equip from the backpack sometimes not working properly
Added inspect button near the hero panel for heroes that have custom items
Updated the replay skill filter to have more usefull categories.
Fixed dragging an item onto itself not turning its icon back on.
Cheat commands are now echoed to chat
Added a testing tool to the Workshop tab that allows contributors to see their models on a hero before submitting.
Fixed Mute button on the scoreboard not working.

 
AUDIO:

Dota 2 now uses the CELT codec for increased voice communication quality.

 

As I type this, Dota 2 is the most popular game on Steam and is being played by 52,219 people. This is a game that's sort-of kind-of not-really in closed beta, one that has numerous holes waiting to be filled by proposed features, and which is still being updated all the time.

But given that it's easy to get in to the Dota 2 beta (you can even buy your way in), and given that you can pay for items in the Dota 2 store now, should PC Gamer review the game? We'd like to hear what you think.

This is a mounting problem in PC land. We experienced the same thing with both Tribes: Ascend and Minecraft: games that people could buy, but which were clearly unfinished. Dota 2 is now in a similar state. Valve have promised that the finished game will have a tutorial to teach new players how to play, and a system that rewards veterans for training the less experienced. Those systems don't exist yet. There are also still dozens of balancing tweaks and UI changes being made almost every week.

But if you can pay for the game and its in-game items, shouldn't we be providing advice on whether its worth your money? Especially when it's not exactly small amounts: this Courier Pack costs £45.

And if you think we should review it now, do you think we should re-review - with a whole new score - when the game gets significant updates?

Or should we just wait until it's closer to completion? Let us know in the comments. For context, here are the patch notes from the June 20th update:

GAMEPLAY
- Added Rubick!
- Bane: Fixed Fiend's Grip not ending if Kraken Shell dispels it.
- Chaos Knight: Reality Rift now puts the Chaos Knight behind his target.
- Clockerk: Fixed Hookshot stunning dead units.
- Gyrocopter: Fixed Homing Missle not giving any bounty.
- Invoker: Fixed Alacrity interaction with Magic Immunity
- Kunkka: Fixed Ghost Ship allied debuff dealing all the damage immediately when then rum wears off, rather than over the following 8 seconds.
- Mirana: Reduced size of Arrow 20%.
- Outworld Destroyer: Aadded visual indicator for Astral Imprisonment Length.
- Riki: Fixed sometimes not attacking his Blink Strike target immediately.
- Spirit Breaker: Fixed a bug allowing charging Razor without moving.
- Fixed Batrider and Outworld Destroyer having 1 too little armor.
- Fixed Chaos Knight having 2 extra armor.
- Fixed Lone Druid having 1.3 too little armor.

UI
- Added support for tournament spectating passes.
- Select All Other Units feature no longer selects any unit that is lacking attack capability (like Beastmaster's Hawk).
- Added a buff to indicate the duration of Death Prophet's Exorcism.
- Updated Aghanim's Scepter tooltips for Beastmaster, Necrolyte, Queen of Pain, Warlock, and Windrunner.
- Updated the Aghanim's Scepter store preview.
- Fixed bug where large replays were unable to download.
- Replay downloading is now paralleled to improve download speeds.
- Fixed item purchase message crediting the wrong player if the purchased item stacked with someone else's item.

VISUALS
- Added a custom particle effect for Skadi.

COSMETICS
- Added announcers and new couriers to the Dota Store.
- Added new items for Witch Doctor.
- Fixed a bug that caused new users not to earn random drops. Affected users will receive the drops they should have gotten when they finish their next match.
- Increased the number of backpack slots displayed on a single page of the backpack to 64.
- Increased the base number of backpack slots from 50 to 64.
- Increased the number of backpack slots that store users have from 500 to 640.
- Fixed a bug that caused the last slot in the backpack to not respond to drag n’ drop.
- Fixed bugs with dragging and dropping items between pages of the backpack.

BOTS
- Co-op bot matches will now randomly assign the human players to Radiant or Dire.
- In co-op bot matches, if a human disconnects before picking a hero, the bots will now correctly balance the teams.
- Fixed bots not selecting heroes into non-AP games.
- Fixed bots not deploying their couriers on Passive difficulty.

Graham, Tom, Rich and Chris discuss FTL, The Witcher 2, Indie Game: The Movie, the Steam charts and answer your questions from Twitter. Also featuring exclusive information on the breakfast preferences of the PC Gamer team. Graham likes sausages.

We also talk about the overcrowded MMO market, Hitman: Absolution, the future of competitive Dota, and whether or not you should build your next gaming rig yourself.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.

A gentleman named Lambent Stew has put together a webpage that gathers some of your Steam data and arranges it like little quantitative ducks in a row. How nice.

There are a number of homemade utilities that reconstitute Steam information, like a Steam sales tracker, and a Steam account value calculator. What's unique to this one is it outputs some useful aggregate data, like total hours played, and what percentage of games you've bought you haven't opened, you jerk. Good lord, I haven't played 1,006 games. Tonight, Nancy Drew: Ransom of the Seven Ships, it's you and me.

Valve have revealed their plans to support full tournaments within the Dota 2 client. In a post on the Dota 2 blog, the team describe how players will be able to pay for access to live matches and replays that run in-engine. The money raised will be split between Valve and the tournament organiser in a similar manner to the Steam Workshop. This functionality is due to launch later in the week.

The Defence tournament will be the first to use the system, which Valve say is just the beginning of the game's support for competitive play. "This won’t be the end of our features for tournaments, or players, but we think it’s the right first step – helping tournaments become more financially stable helps all the players participating in them."

Valve aren't trying to force out traditional stream-based casting, stating that " continue to do the best we can to support them. Some customers will always prefer to use their web browser to watch matches." They're paying particular attention to the needs of tournament sponsors, who need a way to declare their support and display advertising.

The other major new feature will be Teams, which allows a group of players to declare their affiliation formally within the game. Dota 2 will detect when two teams are playing and make appropriate changes, such as displaying team logos and banners. Ultimately, this will be expanded to include Team vs. Team matchmaking.

Earlier in the week we rounded up a number of the Workshop items that we'd like to see added to Dota 2. Do you think Valve's support for in-game tournaments and player-made add-ons has what it takes to give Dota 2 the advantage?