7.32b has been released! Hopefully the first of many balance patches

The first of the serious 7.32 patches dropped earlier today. The 7.32b patch features a bunch of small changes and bug fixes. Although there are some bigger changes than others, the patch is meant to adjust a lot of the stronger items and heroes of 7.32. So, lets break down the big item and hero changes of 7.32b!

Every strength Heroes' favorite mana item soul right got a recipe cost increase. The increase from 245 gold shot up to 400 gold brining the total cost to 855 gold. Although the components and bonus stats are still the same.

The cast range of the Urn of Shadows has decreased to 750 from 900 units in 7.32b. Subsequently, Spirit Vessel has also suffered the same small nerf. And like the Soul Ring nerf, none of the components or bonuses have changed.

7.32 brought back and introduced a bunch of new neutral items into the fray. But of course, with new items they aren't the most well balanced. So with 7.32b, the early game neutral items of Occult Bracelet, Specialist's Array and Ogre Seal Totem all got small nerfs. All 3 items got small reductions to the stat bonuses they provide:

Batrider got a pretty good buff to his sticky napalm ability in 7.32. So with his talents that affected sticky napalm at early levels have kind of gotten out of hand. So, alongside some decreased vision from Firefly and duration for Flaming Lasso, Bat's talents got changed too. Now, his talents have been basically switched around. Now at level 20, rather than sticky napalm damage increase its now more firefly duration (to 4.5 seconds) and level 25 has been changed to +10 Napalm damage.

Everyone's favorite companion in Dragon's Blood got destroyed in 7.32 with the nerfs to her abilities. Now, in 7.32b Valve in true fashion, is trying to bring her back to a playable state. All her abilities got buffed. The landing AoE of Rebound has increased to 275 (from 250), Sidekick's duration has increased to 7 seconds and the Unleash attack flurry has been reduced to 1.5 seconds.

After seeing what OG's ATF did with with Mars at ESL One Malaysia, the nerfs make total sense. The nerfs are relativley simple. The nerfs focus on the bonus damage to heroes of God's rebuke, Bulwark aghs and the Arena of Blood. God's Rebuke got a small damage nerf and Arena got a mana cost increase as well. The big change is that Bulwark aghs soldiers won't attack while Mars is stunned.

The last big change in 7.32b is to Phantom Assassin who has gained tons of popularity since the 7.32 patch. She's gotten nerfs to her strength and agility gain as well as a decrease to the phantom strike talent (to 0.5 seconds). PA is arguably the biggest winner of 7.32 and has been running rampant in pubs. So it makes complete sense that she's taken down a block.

This is most likely going to be the first of a bunch of smaller patches to balance out the big changes of 7.32. It seems though that 7.32b is relatively balanced before TI, or that nobody has discovered anything too broken. Yet.

Regardless, you can read the full notes here. And as always, stay tuned for more Dota 2 content and updates on the qualifiers!