A new Dota 2 patch, and a new hero: Treant Protector. You can find the Dota Cinema video of him here. There is also a recent thread on reddit covering this hero.

Cyborg Matt's content analysis for this patch are also up. It looking like the hero cards are also coming along this game...



Update Notes - May 16, 2012

GAMEPLAY
- Added Treant Protector!
- Ancient Apparition: Fixed Ethereal and Guardian Angel blocking Ice Blast's shatter.
- Batrider: Fixed bug with refreshing old stacks of Napalm after upgrading the ability.
- Beastmaster: Fixed Inner Beast not affecting siege units.
- Chen: Fixed Holy Persuasion working on Spirit Bear.
- Dazzle: Fixed Shadow Wave not doing its damage around the aoe of the last target.
- Doom: Fixed Sphere working under Doom (Sphere will still block Doom).
- Drow: Fixed Trueshot Aura not affecting siege units.
- Lich: Fixed timing on Chain Frost ministun.
- Lone Druid: Fixed Entangle affecting wards.
- Lone Druid: Fixed Battle Cry not affecting other units he owns.
- Outworld Destroyer: Fixed Arcane Orb against wards.
- Puck: Fixed being able to cast Phase Shift while rooted.
- Pudge: Fixed Meat Hook interrupting channeling spells if the target is magic immune.
- Riki: Fixed being unable to cast for a brief moment after using Blink Strike.
- Spirit Breaker: Fixed Charge of Darkness not getting interrupted by ensnares.
- Fixed all heroes having 1 armor more than inteded.
- Fixed Medallion of Courage interaction with Magic Immune units.
- Fixed denying an allied Necronomicon unit causing Last Will to hurt you.
- Fixed dying to Neutrals ending your kill streak counter.

UI
- You can now ping runes to let your teammates know which type it is.
- Tranquil boots now update movement speed and armor on the HUD when broken.
- You can now click on player names in the waiting for players dialog to go to their Steam or Dota 2 profiles.
- For units with lifetime (wards, illusions), the XP bar is now used to show lifetime remaining.

VISUALS
- Added a new player-only aegis post-death effect.
- Fixed some spells not obeying the "no screen shake" setting.
- Added healing overhead messages for Mekansm, Chen, Lifestealer, Necrolyte, and Witch Doctor.
- Added bonus damage overhead message for Lifestealer's Feast.
- Gave Death Prophet's spirits a unique attack effect when hitting buildings.

SOUND
- Added additional dialog for Earthshaker, Pudge, Storm Spirit, Shadow Fiend, and Doombringer.

BOTS
- Bots on medium difficulty or below will no longer try to interrupt channels.
- When doing Rosh, bots will no longer wait for their optimal tank. Now they'll start attacking when more than one hero has arrived, and will use the best tank of the heroes present.
- Bots will no longer consider damage from passives as an indication that a human is intending to attack-to-kill.
- Fixed bug where bots wouldn't use the courier if all their stash was empty (even if they had items on the courier).
- Bots will be slightly more aggressive about using couriers that are carrying their items.

Last edited by ChrisC; Yesterday at 10:50 PM.

I dont like treant without his invisible birds. For those that didnt play dota1. his second spell instead of the leech allowed you to place several invisible birds that you could micro into attacking other heroes. lots of fun while in lane.

Yeah - several of the reddit threads mentioned that he had undergone a major rework.

TP as-is however, looks like a fucking beast of a support. I'm really looking forward to playing him.

There is also the added bonus of the Maokai flashbacks.

Yeah, he looks pretty nasty. Its like a Tide that you can't see.

I've played as, with, and against Treant Protector quite a bit last night. I have some initial thoughts:

TP is first and foremost a support with an incredibly effective harass mechanic due to his Leech Seed. As more people learn how to play him - he's going to be incredibly annoying in lane to deal with. His guise also will be deadly due to it's gank potential once more TP players become good with it.

Right now however - the average TP I've played against tries to split-push all game long, effectively turning the game into a 4v5 as they can't really clear waves all that well or effectively.

Having him in lane when playing a carry is fantastic. I was playing Razor with a TP as support, and we were able to grab such easy kills early on due to constant harass and his heal making it so I didn't really have to leave lane. It was pretty great.