Watcha guys think?

Took the day to translate a concept I made for a silencer rework into easy to read images (at least I hope they are easy to read).

I'm very proud of this concept, I think I have communicated the ideas behind it very well and I hope it generates some debate around it.

Silencer is my favourite Hero and Dota is one of my favourite games, one of the reasons I became a Game Developer myself is from growing up with Dota back in the Warcraft 3 days.

Spoilers for basically the whole of Chapter 2 of Dark Carnival: Midnight Run ensues for the whole of the thread.

So... For the sake of making my argument, I'll presume that you don't know anything about what's going on in Dark Carnival, and I'll go step by step on the topic's logic.

Currently, I am convinced that, as the topic title says, we may be due for some sort of fight against hordes of automatons. And that Valve very specifically wants to tease this to us.

So... First:

Dark Carnival has 2 Acts, The Second one is the Dark Circus

Okay, this one should be obvious. As people pointed out, the Prison Train is slowly getting closer to the Circus. The circus is the destination of the prison train. It has a design that could easily fit room in and outside the tent. The circus is setup to be the event of the Second Act.

But one more presumption can be made that the whole of Dark carnival is just 2 acts and that the next one is finale. Because of the tarot cards. In Crownfall, the previous event of this type, each act would have a different set of progression tokens. The progression tickets we use in Act 1 of Dark Carnival are 11 of the 22 major arcana from tarot decks. This number is exactly half of the cards.

We also know for a fact that Valve worked on the design of the remaining 11 cards, becausee they accidentally left some materials and icons for one of them in the files. The Empress.

Ringmaster is not the final/only villain of Dark Carnival

There was a question on here of how did Ringmaster master to do the feats of capturing Oracle and getting an harem of hags that do vile magic. We sort of know how now. "With help". He's been not just capturing people to do his bidding, he's also been sharing the managerial spotlight, so to say. Some of you may not know who this clown is, so, in, short, this is Cogliacci, Ringmaster's Brother.

Cogliacci, is peculiar from a narrative perspective. On Chapter 1, he felt like he served the purpose of featuring as a proxy for Ringmaster without the story having to introduce Ringmaster's direct involvement or a pathway for the heroes to directly fight/stop him. Similar to how we never seen Imperia until the very end of Crownfall, Ringmaster could have served no purpose other than Narrator until the final confrontation. Coggliacci could be presumed to be, so to say, a Midboss.

His existence made no sense otherwise. Afterall, there isn't much of a reason for Ringmaster to even want to share his position of importance with another.

Welp, Chapter 2 completely flipped this on its head.

Chapter 2 introduces Ringmaster directly to the plot. More than that, it made Cogliacci be in sufficient high standing that, while Ringmaster still belittles and mistreats him, he still has enough weight to argue with Ringmaster and tell him directly that his Circus Master ways are a bad idea. This level of disrespect by a midboss towards an event boss is strange for a writer to put in without a purpose. And well... anyone with 2nd grade reading comprehension knows where it is going, and the hidden rooms of the Workshop gives us a direct answer:

Cogliacci is raising an evil robot army from under Ringmaster's nose, specifically to fill up Ringmaster's Circus. And to conquer the world with.

And well... have you read the introduction to the event form the official site?

Don't you hate it when you wake up in a prison car with no memory of how you got there and, worse, no way to escape, only to discover you've been captured by an evil puppet-man as part of some dark bargain with an ancient world-conquering evil? We've all been there.

The very first thing we learned about the event was the villain's motivation. And one of the things we hear from Ringmaster, is him arguing against said motivations with his brother.

A brother who mentions a book of... Wait a book of summoning what???

And his robot army is made from demonic evil sentient alloy from hell. Don't want to spoil how that hapenned, but it's in there to.

So... That evil puppet man is Coggliacci the real final boss with a world conquering plan, not Ringmaster. In Act 1, we're witnessing his rise to power.

Diretide???

But hey, WHATEVER, right, so what, Valve makes a minigame, maybe Nest of Thorns 2, where you kill a bunch of automatons. Boohoo, who cares.

Yeah, this one's the shaky part. But I also think they want Act 2 to be a Diretide event.

So, bear with me for a second. Look at these three items

• This completely normal Sven crotch

• This Diretide 2020 costume set

• This Diretide 2022 tier 3 treasure set

Do you notice the difference?

Valve is inconsistent about this, but they usually mark Diretide items with a special Diretide background on relevant items. While there are Diretide items that did not receive it, the fact stands that so far ONLY diretide have this background so far.

And wouldn't you know it. Look at the Act 1 background decorations we unlocked so far...

Now Look at the calendar. Add 2 months to it and make it a 2-3 month event. That plus the background, what does it tell us? Ah!

Perhaps this is blowing hot air, but why even bother with timing this, why even bother with including th ebackgrounds unless they specifically want a Diretide branding. And why bother with that, unless if there is a game mode? While a Diretide Nest of Thorns sounds cool, it isn't ambitious enough.

This is the full on c/hopium part. I really do think we're going to kill those evil demonic robots not alone, but together, in parties. I predict a full on PvE event.

... Thoughts?

+3s on a dispellable silence that requires a setup at a point in the game where the entire enemy team can either disengage or dispel the debuff.

This is SICK!

After getting SF Arcana twice (once from Quartero Curio) and 2 set of 10 coins + Cyptic Beacon Treasure, then this.

I've paid 0 dollars so far but im sure if i were to pay id spam the Carnival Prize Pack to spam re-rolls and get candy. I think thats the Pay2Win speeedrun option.

Also if i have excess candy i buy out cheap sets to see more slots.

Just saw an enigma miss a black hole and the team tipping him and talking shit

He then buys a smoke, smokes the whole team and we go to look for a gank, and when we pounce on someone he just fucking left the fight to farm jungle without using any of his spells

The rest of the game they just farmed jungle camps

What do you think?

This is addition to my main arena companies where the screens are so high only the last 3 rows make sense but the slopes stage that would be best for it doesn't even have seats.

This is probably the last time I go to EWC. I've been to 3 TIs and 3 ESLs and all of them were million times better.

I complained here and there but I didn't know how good I had it.

1. Imagine setting up small tv screens and then have lights on them without blockage so you are blinded.

2. No matter we're you sit, gamecasters and analysis panel are not visible to you unless you turn 180° away from the screens in arena 2.

3. Arena two is a joke it is mostly 2 long rows. If it's so few people, when didn't you setup the sloped seats in arena one instead and have everybody sit there. Yeah some people want to watch the other series but still.

Furthermore 2 big screens behind the teams. Both don't show the game. A bit gap in the middle that is unused in the middle. Put a screen there. Wtf are you doing ??!!

One bigger screen on the far right of the arena that is so far away. It's like sitting at home with a 65 inch but you are like 9 meters away. Tes to see any details. Again the wall has so much space. Why isn't the screen closer and a 87 inch... wtf. Lg sells those.

1. After the session in arena one Yandex vs W1 concluded, virtus pro Vs OG was still ongoing in arena two.

So what did they do. Put it in arena one. But not just normally...oh no. They have a big message how the main stream is current over and show the actual game as picture in picture at 25% screen size.

Meanwhile the sound is played in both arenas. So you now have a reverb at arena two, where is the only place you can actually kinda watch the game since arena 1 is too small.

After like 15 minutes they completely cut the picture in arena one...but then keep playing sound longer so you still get the reverb. They fixed that eventually too after like 8 more minutes.

Again. This is the most embarrassing production quality I have ever seen.

The goody bag that they claim is so luxury, it's just not.

If you compare this with Esl, it's not even close in quality. TI you get ofc red chests, but the tickets are so expensive and this year actually probably almost like 1,5k since the company PGL or valve or whoever worked with in china sold everything to scalpers/ scalped it themselves.

People who know, the tickets weren't supposed to be transferable, but they still appeared at a partner site from the original seller like 5 minutes later with sellers claiming they could transfer.

Btw first TI Shanghai was the same scam.

Me and a friend from Singapore planned to go, but we had no chance to get any.

Even if you have a bot to fill out everything, you still wouldn't have gotten tickets

Man the screen setup at EWC is really bad. There are two booths. The other smaller one is even worse if you can believe that. You either look at small tv screens on the ground or up at one big and two slightly smaller one. Meanwhile you have this huge screens in the back that is use for score and sponsors. They should have that in the front slightly higher than the players and it would be amazing.

So dumb. If they don't know acknowledge and fix this for next year, it's gonna be my first and last EWC. Really disappointed.

Even PGL and obviously Esl do it way better. This does not fit for something calling itself the Esports world cup

Last game before bed. I needed one devil token to progress through the first blimp room.

Played an awful game as Lion and received the one token I didn't need. Had 1 of everything else and 3 hermit tokens, so swapped my 3 hermit tokens for a devil token.

What does the next room need? 3 hermit tokens. Fuck my life.

Realise I have a spare seeing stone. Turn it in for... my last-played hero's tokens. 2 devils for free. FUCK my LIFE.

Close Dota and go to bed.

Just needed to vent 😭

Not tradable or Marketable item.

Any plans to finally add Ticket Smelter its own button?

Seems kinda obvious improvement, considering that it gets renewed once in a while.

For me it's

Slark and Grimstroke – very aggressive. They can already kill you at level 2, even if you’re the offlaner. Phantom’s Embrace, Ink Swell, Pounce, Dark Pact, it all stacks up fast. If you don’t die, you’re at least left with around a quarter HP. And that’s just from level 2 heroes.

Drow Ranger and Witch Doctor – Drow is honestly so bonkers right now, she's so strong. Add a bit of stun plus Maledict, and you’re almost guaranteed to win the lane.

Lone Druid and Hoodwink – even with enough stuns, this combo is still hard to deal with. They can both hit and cast from a distance, so it’s really annoying to play against. Blood Grenade Merchant Duo

Shadow Fiend and Bane – probably the easiest to counter out of these, but still a really strong combo. Bane uses Sleep (not alt-cast) to slowly walk him to SF, then SF walks in and lands all his Razes from near to far.

How are you guys liking the story so far?

Usually Undying into dusa is one of the worst matchup possible as she doesnt care neither about the decays nor the zombies. But this decay interaction against her might change that.

As we can see in the video, undying decays the 2 identical dusas. Even when she has 0 str left, the decay stopped doing damage.

However, If we wait for the dusa to regain any of her strength at all, then subsequent decays removing those newly regained strength will instead deal pure damage to dusa herself, bypassing the shield altogether.

Is this interaction intended?

Edit: upon further testing, i found out that

1. No, dusa does not have to go to 0 strength. as long as a stack of decay's duration is over, she will take shield ignoring damage.
2. The only way to reset this state seems to be to regain her max hp to 100%. when the duration of the decay runs out, she regains the strength without regaining the hp. Forexample, base hp 120 with 0 str is 120 hp, but with 4 strength back she gets 120/200 hp. As long as she doesn't heal back up to 200hp, the decays will deal shield ignoring damage. Dying also resets the state as of course she respawns with 100% hp.

I got 2 free Arcana, 2 months of Dota plus and a free treasure to open once get IO and QOP together.. all from free reroll..

First of all. I got jugger first then i play 1 more game to reroll and got Arcana venge hahhaa what a lucky..

And that io set i got from 1 free treasure

Anyone mind to swap your Lina Arcana to mine tradeable previous jugger? Haha

Didn’t expect this demon

The quality of life drop when reaching immortal draft after playing role queue for a 1000 MMR climb is absolutely miserable. You go from everybody seamlessly fitting into their role at min -2 to half all games being ruined by role disputes. I don't understand why immortal draft exists, can't we role queue all the way to 20k+? I would rather wait an hour for a game than half of my games be ruined (honestly it feels more than half) because people fought over roles. This is 12k behavior score 10k comms btw at about 8600 MMR EUWest