4Game

I haven't seen it talked about too much on this website, but the coaching update that came out on March 24, 2021 crippled so many facets vital to properly coaching and relaying information to your team that have been around for years. My friends regularly have more than 5 playing so one person is usually delegated to coaching for a game, and so many things have been removed making it impossible to non verbally communicate crucial in-game information to them.

Here's a list of things in game you can no longer alt-click displaying a nice convenient pop up for the team to see.

• The time (Can no longer mark roshan)
• Hero Portraits (Can no longer ping when enemies are missing, pretty important when the mid is ganking)
• Enemy death timers (Pretty important when the enemy carry is respawning)
• Levels
• Talents
• Health and Mana values
• Items (That enemy slark just got a fresh 9 second bkb? Enemy morphling is the one with the aegis? Shame you can no longer ping it)
• Abilities (Pinging >Beware Black Hole! pretty important when you notice your team grouping up)
• Neutral items (either to warn your team of a nasty one an enemy just got or to alert your team to a better one available in the shop)
• Items in the shop
• Scan (cooldown and next available)
• Fortify (cooldown and do not use)
• Buybacks

You can also no longer use your chat wheel to positively motivate your team when they make great plays, as it has been disabled. Saying >Nice and >Well Played is impossible, and the suggest hero button in the pick screen stopped working since the update as well, so why is it even there?

The only part of the official Dota 2 blog post that references this is where it states: "Coaches are limited to interacting with specific players, so coaches can text chat, voice chat, ping, and draw for students all without disturbing others in the game."

How was being able to ping the roshan timer disturbing to others? I also think its insanely important to differentiate coaching strangers using the official in-game coach queue and a coach in a pre-made 6 stack in turbo.

Maybe valve didn't want people to be able to be toxic and spam ping their own teams unused bkb's after a failed teamfight or something, but I also don't think its a good idea to pull all of your cats teeth out because it might bite you every once in a while.