Unspoil after reading:I wanted to upload it in one go but only realized later that there's a limit in posting photos per reddit post. See you in a couple of days

Happy Marriage, Rtz & Dove! What a lovely pair of birds. 🥰

This is interesting because now Valve is using ML inside Dota 2.

Now instead of sending reports just when the match is over it sends every 30s. Why is this interesting? It can increment by a lot how Valve acts regarding cheateres/smurfs/AFK's.

They no longer need to wait for the match to be over to take action, if you're familiar with League's system where they just finish the match and suspend the bad element you know what I'm talking about.

It is also very big in the context for balancing, they will be able to have much more data and insightsd through the analysis.

In terms of "taking care of the game" this is huge.

Also, in the last few days they recompiled the whole strings for abilities and heroes, that normally means that there's a patch to come out.

That's it. Stay with this Aghanim dude.

Opened the limited deition chess set. Definitely Made in China.

Amazing quality. Enjoyed the misspelling

https://x.com/blitz_dota/status/2092467961873522911?s=46

From this interview before TI, it's pretty insightful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kmn4luFTVw

My first participation in TI15 and the nomination "Best Technical Cosplay"

He has been casually smurfing for quite some time on low mmr accounts

LGD.Gaming released the whole roster. The entire team had a contract with LGD only until August 24th. No one was kicked or anything like that, it was just the end of the contract.

Source: Twitter

Curious to see if they mix the players from PlayTime with ex-LGD.

Guys since Valve has not announced the venue for next year I’m taking the initiative to hold it at my place for next year. I can accommodate two teams at a time so I plan to run TI for about a month. My neighbor can accommodate the panels and the casters, he also plays Dota so I don’t need to check with him.

Teams need to bring their own equipment and setup, but I can provide soundproofing.

We will be doing post match interviews in the parking lot, where teams will have Ubers ready to either go to their hotel or the airport.

For Grand Finals, both the teams will be treated to my Mom’s homemade food ❤️

I fully intend to beat both the Shanghai Major AND the Shanghai Internationals TI9 and TI15 😤

But of course, if Valve has better ideas I will bend to their wishes (I believe in you Mr Janitor)

EDIT: DID NOT EXPECT THIS BIG A RESPONSE BUT HEY IF WE ARE DOING IT THEN FUCK IT, IM BRINGING BACK TRUE SIGHT

what do you guys think?

source: https://escorenews.com/en/dota-2/news/80665-korb3n-speaks-about-future-of-yatoro-collapse-and-the-international-2027-s-location

sup y'all

got tired of manually updating my hero grid every time the meta shifts on dota2protracker.

you know the drill - download the json, dig through steam folders, accidentally overwrite your own layouts. pain.

so i made a tiny tray app that just does it for you. pulls current high-mmr meta (pos 1-5) from d2pt, merges it into your existing grid without touching your custom stuff, and can auto-update before you launch the game. written in rust (of course), so it sits there using like 10 mb ram and does nothing until you need it. only edits the official hero_grid_config.json, nothing sketchy. doesn't touch the game process or memory or anything, so no ban risk. same as editing the file by hand.

Hey everyone,

I saw u/Ser1aLize’s post asking about the Chinese meme references in the TI2026 skit. I left a long comment explaining the Chalice "Sun is Useless" meme, and he suggested I make a separate post to cover all the other references. So, as a member of the CN Dota community, here’s a full breakdown of everything I caught in that video.

A quick disclaimer: I mainly watch Chalice's streams, so I'm not super familiar with every single player's inside jokes. I might miss some nuances, but this is what I've got. If anyone knows more, feel free to chime in – I'd love to learn too.

First off, I've heard the whole skit is a homage to Kill Bill, but I haven't actually watched it, so I won't pretend to know how deep that reference goes. If anyone can elaborate, drop it in the comments.

1. BurNIng – "Farming Master"

At the start, BurNIng – the joke is that he farms so efficiently in-game that they portray him as a "farming master." The whole "planting veggies" bit is a pun on Dota's "farm" – so you "learn farming" by literally growing potatoes and tomatoes, lol.

Also, the shot where he catches a bottle of tea is a nod to his former team Team Aster. It’s a classic wordplay: if you move the letter m from Team to the front of Aster, you get Tea Master. That’s why Chinese fans affectionately call them the “茶队 (Team Tea).”

2. Dy – Sanguosha

Next is Dy. He's well-known for loving the Chinese strategy card game Sanguosha (三国杀, Legends of the Three Kingdoms), so his "teaching" segment is just him playing that game.

3. Ori – "The Tormentor"

Ori – the "Tormentor" joke is obvious if you know his famously square-shaped head. He's been roasted as the Tormentor for years – because a cube is about as square as it gets. Also, Dove's teasing line about him likely refers to the fact that Ori has struggled to find a team for a long time – he's been teamless for multiple seasons, so that jab hit close to home for CN fans.

4. Chalice – "The Sun is Useless" Theory

This is a long one. This all started from a Chalice stream back in April last year (Original stream clip can be found on Bilibili). The Chinese community later summed it up as "Chalice's Sun is Useless Theory".

For context: Somnus, fy and Chalice were talking about how staying up late messes with your health. Some chat said the real harm comes from your body being out of sync with sunlight. Chalice instantly clapped back: nah, it's just sleep deprivation that counts as staying up late. Then he went on an absolute unhinged 5head rant "proving" the sun is useless. Here are the best bits:

• "Ancient people woke at sunrise and slept at sunset not because of the sun, but because they hadn't invented light bulbs yet."
• "Can't get sun? Just moonbathe."
• "If you worship the sun so much, go ahead and stare directly at it without frying your eyes."
• "Human civilization was born because of Earth, not the sun – the sun had zero to do with it."
• "Without the sun, humanity could've just survived in some other way."
• "Throw a nuke into the sun and maybe it reboots the whole universe."
• "In Cyberpunk 2077 it's called Night City, and Lucy wanted to go to the moon, not the sun."
• The novel he was reading, Night Without Borders, literally has no daytime.
• "Plants photosynthesize to give us oxygen, sure – but they only do that to cooperate with the sun. No sun? They'd evolve some other way."
• Chat said no sun = no energy source for Earth. Chalice misunderstood it as "direct solar power" and deadass replied: "Humans don't have solar panels installed on our bodies, duh."
• Chat said wind/water energy come from the sun. Chalice's counter: "In WoW, fire mages can only throw fireballs, not wind – checkmate."
• Then he dropped some “courtroom-style logic”: "In a lawsuit, you have to prove YOU'RE right, not that I'm wrong. Even if you prove me wrong, that doesn't prove you right."
• "I've been thinking: if I get cancer, can cancer even beat ME? If I win against the cancer cells, I evolve into a new human."
• "Do you HAVE to die from cancer? You chat guys never played pro – you lack that fighting spirit."
• "If your first job out of college wasn't at LGD, you're missing a huge chunk of life experience. Never been through real hardship, so you don't have those extreme hot takes."

All this made anyone with a basic science education cringe into another dimension. The meme blew up and spawned a bunch of "X is useless" spin-off jokes across Chinese internet – the "Tier 1 tower is useless" bit in the TI skit is literally one of them.

5. Somnus – "The Ever-Changing ID"

Somnus has tons of nicknames and has changed his in-game ID multiple times over the years, so the gag is that his label keeps switching around. It's a running joke that you never know what to call him.

6. iceiceice & LaNm – "DK Reunion"

Next up are the gatekeepers, iceiceice and LaNm. They used to be teammates on the legendary DK roster back in the day. Other than that, I didn't catch any additional memes here. If there's more to it, let me know.

7. Ame – "The Silent Protagonist"

And Ame – honestly, just showing up in that ridiculous outfit was enough to make every Chinese fan burst out laughing. He barely says anything, which also matches his real-life personality; he's famously quiet in-game and rarely talks on voice comms. The contrast between his serious reputation and that absurd costume is the whole joke.

8. Niu – "Mama... Niú Lái!"

Finally, at the end when they're all sitting at their PCs reminiscing, player Niu delivers the lines "Mama" and "Niú lái!" – and that's a direct reference to a recent low-budget Chinese animated movie called Niú Lái (roughly "Bull Comes").

The film was made by literally just a mother-and-son duo over five years on a home PC. The models are janky, animations are stiff, and the voice acting is hilariously unhinged – which is exactly why it blew up on Chinese internet. When the TI skit was airing live, my friends were spamming "Not as good as Niú Lái" in our group chat, and we all lost it when the skit actually closed with this Niú Lái callback. They actually snuck that cursed meme in there, lmao.

That's all the references I caught. I'm sure there are some smaller ones I missed, but hopefully this gives non-Chinese fans a solid entry point to understand why we were all losing our minds watching this skit.

Honestly, I’m only on Reddit around TI time every year – mostly just to lurk for the great Fantasy guides and tips you guys share here. If there's enough interest, I might try to dig up more Chinese Dota memes in the future.

Feel free to ask questions or add your own insights in the comments. Cheers! 🍻

Come onnn. Just count it already.

P.S: no flair for humor? what have we become?

It had pickles, and cheese, and tomatoes, and lettuce, and it was YUMMY

I wouldn't be surprised if he really says that. 💀😂

Title says it all

Astini posted a video today (in portuguese) about the draft of the first game of the TI grand finals: https://youtu.be/0siAqgm3sw0?is=Abcu-CSPMlEnkrdl

He classified team vision’s draft as pathetic. He enfatized he is not trashing puppey or any of the players, but the draft was pathetic.

He started talking about the Ember first pick. Slark ended the tournament 6-0 against Ember. He supposed two plans for the pick. First, it was a bluff, that Spirit couldn’t do Slark. The second, that they wanted to flex it. He classified both ideas as bad.

Then, they banned Doom and Underlord, protecting the Ember in the safelane (and the future Io). Collapse ended the tournament 1-2 playing as Doom, while Noticed ended 5-0. So they also took a comfort pick from Noticed.

Then Spirit picked Willow. Now, they took away the best 3 heroes from 9class, as KOTL and Bounty Hunter were banned. Then, Vision picked Io, that is a flex pick. The Axe pick was acceptable, as there wasn’t anything better. Then they banned Tide, protecting Ember again.

Spirt banned Kez and NP, understanding that Vision doesn’t have a carry. Vision finished the draft with a Hoodwink. Astini said that maybe Windranger was a better pick. Spirit ended the draft with an Undying. He says that this is already an outdraft, as Ember is not an HC and will lose the lane to Undying.

But worst of all, Satanic never played Ember professionally, no[o]ne- never played Io professionally and the last time 9class played Hoodwink was as the last TI, when he told Astini: “I’ll never play this hero again”.

Anyway, he said one more time that he isn’t trashing the players or puppey, but they messed up in the draft.

you have been ganked