Time To Build, Hero
Come and slide across your new builds timeline!
Pick the right hero, build the best items, select the optimal abilities, and win the game…if only it were so easy.
Dota requires more than just good decision-making to win, but knowing how to build your hero is a great way to get yourself on the progressive side of the MMR hammer. However, context is key, and tracking the build decisions of all 10 players in a match can be a daunting task.
Today, we take a step forward in conquering that challenge with the release of your new Match Builds Timeline page! Let’s take a look at what’s new…
…Filters galore! While your new Builds Timeline shows a ton of information on first load, there’s actually a way to show even more! You see, since there are tons of item purchases that occur in each match, we default to only rendering what we refer to as “Significant Items”. The first [left-most] filter is just a toggle, and it allows you to show every item purchase for every player in the match, if you’d like to see everything at once.
You can get a quick overview of your build, including Significant Items, on your [also newly updated!] Builds Summary page.
Here’s a look at the difference between looking at an item row with and without insignificant items displayed.
Significant items are still prioritized to be displayed first in each item group, but we display as many items as possible with the “Show All Items” filter active. Hovering over any item or item group will reveal any hidden content, along with their time of purchase.
Tip: Insignificant item purchases are displayed as dots on the items timeline — hovering over them is a quick way to reveal what they are!
Your second new filter is also a toggle, and it allows you to hide the level labels which sit above each ability selection on the timeline. This can be helpful if you’d like to reduce amount of content on the screen, and aren’t interested in the what level each ability want selected at.
Your third filter allows you to choose to display either only Items or Abilities for each hero. Activating this filter will help you to hone in on the spread of information from either type of build, and make it easier to visually compare their timeline placement between heroes.
Fourth, you can now choose to show only specific heroes, which is perfect if your analysis doesn’t involve all the heroes in the match. This filter is sorted by position, making the spread of hero rows instantly familair. For instance, you can compare offlane heroes item timings, or look at the ward purchase timings for both teams’ supports. Which leads us to your final new filter…
…Items! The items filter is special in that it’s sorted by total purchase count for each item, and only includes items that were purchased during your match. This makes it easy to find important items that were bought by multiple heroes so that you can compare their timing. You can also filter by related item combinations like Dagon and Lotus Orb, to see how players have reacted to one anothers’ purchase patterns.
KB has brought up the idea of being able to add a player build from a different match to compare with yours; let us know if you‘d like to be able to do this by reaching out on Discord!
Let’s take a look at just how dramatically different your timeline can be with the use of different filters:
There’s one more special filter on this page that experienced STRATZ users will recognize, and it has a neat new trick — the sticky Slider!
You might have caught this one in the graphic at the top of this Supdate, but if not, look closely at the center of the Slider above. Do you see it? ✋
Beginning today, Sliders across the site that contain two anchor points can now be grabbed and slid back on forth, maintaining a fixed interval! This means that, for your new Build Timeline, you can zoom in to see just a small portion of time in your match, and then slide across the page to see the builds progress! This is perfect if you want to keep a lot of content rendering on the timeline, but either want to zoom in to see a certain segment, or want to slide across the match within a fixed interval to get a more intimate look at all the juicy build action!
Of course, you can still adjust the anchor points to anywhere you’d like, but now you can grab the interval itself, and have your page content update live!
We hope you love your new timeline, and that your builds are forever better prepared and understood!
To finish out your Match Builds section, we also polished your Builds Summary page, making some fixes and bringing the design up to our latest standards.
Additionally, there were several other fixes that went live this week, some in response reports from the STRATZ community. We very recently added a better organized way for users to report bugs and request features on our Discord, making use of its new forum channels. This is just the beginning of a sweeping set of community-oriented updates that are just around the corner — but that’s for another Supdate!
Enjoy keeping up with what’s happening at STRATZ? Follow us on Medium, Twitter, or Facebook to get notifications of our latest Supdates! If you want to get more involved, join us on Discord!
Did you miss our last Supdate? Check out your new Objectives page!
Thanks for reading!
