Dota 2 Bloom Festival to introduce new hero, Terrorblade

Dota 2's latest seasonal event, Bloom Festival, kicks off in a couple of days to tie in with Lunar New Year. Valve has released a stack of new details regarding the MOBA's latest update, including a new hero and a massive stack of balancing changes.

As detailed on the update page, Terrorblade is a demon so badass even other denizens of hell fear him. He's been locked up in Foulfell, which is basically hell for things that already live there, but even this prison couldn't tame him; he used its powers of soul exposure to master his inner self. And send it out to cut people.

Terrorblade has the following abilities:

• Reflection - Create a double of your foe, which then attacks its original as it slows their movement.
• Conjure Image - Summon forth an illusion of yourself to aid you in battle.Metamorphosis - Embrace the darkness within, trading your melee attack for a ranged strike while granting additional damage.
• Sunder - Sever the soul of an ally or enemy, exchanging your health for theirs.

The Bloom Festival update also brings a new item - the Fractal Shard of Inner Abysm. If you pick it up during the event, you'll get an exalted quality version. It adds the following upgrades to Terrorblade:

• Several new animations
• Altered voice
• New base skin & model with special ambient effects
• New Hero icon, portrait, loadout pose & minimap icon
• New spell effects and icons
• Socketed with a gem that tints the coloring of Terrorblade and all of his abilities
• Custom death effect for Terrorblade's victims

As of February 6, the update will also unlock a random ability draft after level 11, assigning each character a random hero and pooling abilities for players to choose from.

You should visit the update page linked above to see all the balancing changes coming when the event begins, but there are a couple of general, universal changes worth noting. You'll now lose one gold per second if you haven't picked a hero after the selection timer runs out in All Pick, and the timer has been increased to 75 seconds. App Pick pre-creep time has ben cut to 75 seconds, and there have been several changes to Roshan including a 20% increase in upgrade rate.

Thanks, Destructoid.