Today we're excited to announce Dotabuff Betting: an exciting micro fantasy betting service.

Some of the recent patch changes have benefited the economy of the most underrated role in Dota—supports. Lowering the price of most vision and support items, as well as minor tweaks like tango sharing, has increased the disposable income of supports by a decent margin, more often than not allowing them to get to their items faster. The final game-changer was the introduction of AoE kill bounty gold based off the difference in Net Worth. All of this has greatly increased the amount of utility that supports can provide in the mid- and late-game, not only making the role more fun to play, but also allowing it to shine brighter in the hands of expert players.

Another Major, another roster shuffle. Following the Shanghai Major, roster changes were bound to happen. This was the last chance for teams to reform before not only the Manila Major but also TI6 and be considered for invites. Especially the Chinese teams were expected to shuffle a lot, given their poor performances in Shanghai. They certainly met these expectations, but the Western and CIS shuffle was bigger than expected.

For the longest time in all of Dota, Ursa has been considered a pub hero through and through. His ability to be self sustainable and dominate a game is to be feared across multiple skill brackets. Yet, the hero has never really taken off in the pro meta and stayed a very, very niche pick for the longest time until recently. In the current meta, Ursa has found a place in the pro scene and has become very situational and we break down the hero, its viability and why you don’t want to mess with “Fuzzy Wuzzy” right now.

Knowledge back then was acquired and hard-earned, like finding out the attack range of towers by feeding repeatedly. Secret ward spots was strictly insider knowledge, before the advent of replays. It was a different game then, and it will change again when patch 6.87 inevitably releases. But it will still be Dota, and looking back, it’s amazing to see how much the game has changed.

The viability of Clinkz in the professional scene and high-level pub games has been heavily debated ever since 6.82. The removal of UAM properties on Searing Arrows has opened up a great deal of possibilities, while small incremental buffs have put the hero on the radar for both casual and professional players. It is not until slightly before TI5, however, that we got to see the hero played competitively on a regular basis and now he fills a rather specific niche and can be considered one of the best picks in very specific scenarios.