Dota Plus summer update adds a plethora of new features

The first major update to Dota Plus, the subscription-based service that provides Dota 2 players with advanced stats and metrics, has arrived on the in-game client.

The patch itself went out several hours ago, with a number of new features, enhancements, and bug fixes for the monthly service. First and foremost, Valve has improved the quality of Dota Plus’ in-game guides, which presumably involved tweaking the machine-learning algorithm to help the guides suggest better builds and laning setups.

Dota Plus now also has a hero trends page accessible through the client, which shows the pick rates of every hero in the game compared against their win rates over the last two weeks.

This is similar to the trends page found on third-party statistics website Dotabuff, but with the advantage of having data on hero bans—something that Valve doesn’t allow third-party sites to access through the Steam API.

In addition to the metrics and strategy side of Dota Plus, Valve included more achievements and cosmetic items for players to chase after. The update features the Summer Terrain skin, which alters the look of the map itself in order to give off a summery vibe—complete with chirping birds and lavender flowers scattered throughout the battlefield.

Dota Plus now also supports Turbo Mode, the custom game mode that reduces experience requirements for leveling up and increases the rate at which heroes gain gold. As a result of its quickened pace compared to regular games of Dota 2, Turbo Mode has its own metagame—which Dota Plus’ machine learning will start taking into account.

For those who like watching their friends play, Dota Plus will now allow players to spectate their friends’ games while bypassing the two-minute broadcast delay that’s normally applied to the spectator mode. Spectating in this manner is restricted to perspective of the player being watched, however, in order to prevent spectators from simply relaying information about the enemy team’s position in real time.

You can check out the rest of the changes and additions to Dota Plus through the patch notes here.