Is Primal Beast from Aghanim’s Labyrinth the next Dota 2 hero?

There is reason to believe that Dota 2’s next hero could be Primal Beast from Aghanim’s Labyrinth.

The final boss of Aghanim’s Labyrinth has become synonymous with Dota 2’s roguelike game mode. Primal Beast can dish out an insane amount of punishment between his rock toss, charge tackle, and ground fissure abilities. If you survive, your reward is getting pounded into the dirt while your teammates dodge the shockwaves. Between his polished model and fleshed-out attacks, many fans are speculating that Primal Beast may join the official Dota 2 roster as a playable hero.

The first piece of evidence is the file for every hero’s minimap icon. All the hero faces are pulled from a single image that contains variants for arcanas and personas. This same file leaked the Drow Ranger arcana and Mirana persona earlier this year. Primal Beast has its own minimap icon that looks remarkably similar to those used by most existing heroes. Most non-hero Aghanim’s Labyrinth enemies don’t have an icon at all and show up as dots like creeps.

Primal Beast’s high-quality model is another reason why it could become the next hero. In Aghanim’s Labyrinth, the model is super-sized to emphasize its role as the final boss. Its back is highly detailed, and its face has a wide variety of expressions that change depending on which move it’s using. Look at any of the other new Aghanim’s Labyrinth characters, such as the penguin captors, to see how Valve usually treats these special models. Primal Beast is different.

We won’t know for sure if Primal Beast is the new Dota 2 hero until Aghanim’s Labyrinth ends. If it is, expect to see an announcement at the first Dota Pro Circuit major of 2022.

Primal Beast hero spells and abilities

When and if Primal Beast is added as a playable Dota 2 hero, there will be major changes to its abilities.

The charging tackle is the easiest to change. Just speeding up the cast time and lowering the damage would make it a balanced ability. It could be used as an initiation tool and could knock foes away or even stun them on hit. The rock throw ability could also work fine and would give him some ranged presence. This would allow Primal Beast to affect the enemy backline and would fit the identity of a beastly brawler.

That leaves room for three more abilities, assuming the ability to spawn stone golems is a boss battle exclusive. Primal Beast’s ultimate is a tossup between cracking the ground, stomping in a circle, or slamming an enemy hero. The ground crack would be more useful as a regular ability for farming and pushing lanes. The stomp could make an interesting ultimate if the effect was strong enough, but it could become too similar to Pangolier’s Rolling Thunder.

That leaves the ground slam. The idea of snatching an enemy hero and using it to start an earthquake sounds fun for everyone but the victim. The resulting rings of damage would probably be swapped out for a more consistent area-of-effect.