Two new heroes announced at TI8

The Dota 2 roster is growing even larger with the announcement of two new heroes at The International.

Following the Evil Geniuses vs. Team Liquid series, a trailer for two new heroes was shown. Details regarding the first hero, Mars, are scarce. All that was shown was a brief teaser trailer and a tentative release date of “this winter.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3450S8MfemE

Shockingly, second hero Grimstroke is already live. Classified in-game as an intelligence-based support hero, he doesn’t introduce any new mechanics but does have an interesting set of spells.

His Q, Stroke of Fate, is a magical nuke that functions similarly to Windranger’s Power Shot, though it deals more damage as it travels through additional units. Beyond that, Grimstroke has three different disable options.

Phantom’s Embrace, his W, is a single-unit targeted spell that sends a ghost to latch onto an enemy unit. While the ghost is attached, the afflicted unit is silenced. After a certain length of time the ghost explodes and deals damage. The ghost can be attacked and destroyed after a few hits to end the effect.

Ink Swell may be his most potent spell. Applied to a targeted ally unit, it deals AOE damage around the hero for three seconds. From there, a burst applies a stun to all nearby enemy units and more damage that increases based on how long the unit has been in the spell’s AOE.

Finally, his Soulbind ultimate targets a single enemy unit and latches them to a nearby enemy hero. While the two are linked, they are both slowed and cannot move away from one another, and negative effects applied to one unit may also apply to the other.

Grimstroke is available to play now.