[Update #2]: Dota 2's Update 7.31 has added the Primal Beast hero, reworked Techies and rebalanced all jungle creeps.

[Update]: It's official, Patch 7.31 will be launching on February 23, 2022!

After an avalanche of requests from the community over the past few months, Valve has now finally unleashed the long-anticipated Winter 2021 Battle Pass. It brings with it an assortment of new cosmetics, including an Arcana for Drow Ranger and a Persona for Mirana, the return of the co-op focused Alchemist's Laboratory mode, as well as plenty of weekly quests and challenges to dive into.

While the accompanying free update has sadly not brought with it any balance changes, it did add one rather interesting and unexpected feature - experimental controller support! The way it works is that the left stick moves your hero around, while the right stick moves the camera. Then through a combination of face buttons and R1/L1 buttons as modifiers you can utilize all of your items and abilities. And yes, you can actually play Invoker like this!

I've tested it out myself, and it is indeed possible to 'properly' play Invoker by using only a controller. It's not the smoothest experience and it does require a fair bit of fiddling with the options menu, but it's actually possible. So while I wouldn't recommend using a controller as your main input device for Dota 2, I can definitely see this addition being quite handy for people with disabilities, so I'm more than happy to see Valve begin to work on it.

If you would like to give it a try for yourself, do be warned that the controller support system is currently in its infancy and as such requires a bit of experimentation to make it work well. You can read more about how to do that, as well as what Valve's plans for the whole system are, over at the Dota 2 website.

Have fun, and here's to hoping we'll see someone play Spirit Breaker with a steering wheel in the near future!