Valve's Dota 2 has been in beta testing for a quite a while now, steadily adding more players and gaining popularity on Steam. There's still no release date or pricing structure, so while we wait, here's a look at Earthshaker, a strength hero.

While Earthshaker is big, he's not exactly a hero that can absorb a lot of damage. Instead, he relies on spells to impact a fight. The first ability you'll want to learn is Fissure, which blasts out a wall of rock that stuns and damages enemies. Not only that, but the rock wall sticks around for a while, serving as a physical barrier. You can use it to block off parts of the map, cutting off an opponent's escape so you and a teammate can score a kill, or saving a teammate by stopping their pursuers. Just be careful that you don't accidentally trap a friendly hero in a bad spot, because then you're probably going to get yelled and / or laughed at.

By itself, Earthshaker's second ability, Enchant Totem, isn't very exciting, adding extra damage onto the next attack. But combined with the passive ability Aftershock, which adds stun time and damage when his abilities are used, Earthshaker becomes much more formidable, capable of stacking stun times, great for team fights where your allies can move in and mop up the dazed opposition.

As a match continues, you'll want to pick up a Blink Dagger so Earthshaker can effectively use his ultimate, called Echo Slam. This ability does area of effect damage around Earthshaker, but has the added bonuses of inflicting ricochet damage as it hits targets. Use it in a large group, and damage rebounds all over, causing significant harm. If you're able to start a fight by blinking into the middle of an enemy group, using Echo Slam to deal damage and then following up with stuns, you can do a lot of good in softening up your foes so allies can walk in and take care of the stragglers. Of course jumping right into the middle of an enemy pack is really risky, so if you're not particularly skilled yet at pulling off a blink, echo slam, stun combo, expect to get killed pretty quickly.