DOTA 2 Announces New Hero: ‘Mars’ Coming This Winter

The official trailer unveiled at Ti8 by valve showed off two new heroes. One of those heroes was Grimstroke, who has seen his implementation into the game and already undergone the cycle of buffs and nerfs with changing patches. Alongside Grimstroke, Valve also teased Mars. But unlike the latter hero, Mars’ abilities are completely up for speculation.

Datamining late in January of 2018 revealed that there were files present about the hero already in the game. A thread on GameFAQs revealed that the hero will use a spear as his weapon, this was later confirmed by the trailer. Two ability names were also revealed being “Spear Wall” as well as “Phalanx”.

We can speculate from the red theme surrounding the hero that he will be a strength-based tank or carry with either lots of crowd control or the ability to summon warriors from the ground as shown in the trailer too.

The name Mars is of Roman descent; in Roman lore Mars is the god of war. Further speculation of him being a carry can be inferred from the release of previous heroes. Monkey King was released as a carry but has been adjusted to be an all-rounder. Pangolier is a very strong off-laner while Grimstroke and Dark Willow are damage heavy supports. This opens the slot up for a hard-carry and considering the nomenclature, he may indeed be one.

Lastly, the abilities. The Monkey King trailer showed off his ability “Wukong’s Command” in the trailer. If we follow the same train of thought, we can assume that Mars’ ultimate ability will also have to do with the summoning of troops to fight for him. The argument about them being controllable or not is still up for debate. His shield may hint at a damage reducing passive or active damage block ability. Perhaps he may even draw inspiration from the League of Legends champion Azir. One thing is for sure though, we will be getting our answers soon.