Dota 2 Patch 7.34e arrives and it’s a small one

The long awaited Dota 2 7.34e patch has dropped, and while the post-International 12 patch was expected to be full of heavy nerfs to hero pool, this wasn't the case, as Valve decided to take a different route. The 7.34e patch finely tunes various TI12 dominant items and heroes rather than the classic strategy of burning it all to the ground. So, without further ado, let's break down patch 7.34e:

It's no surprise that the Blademail and Heart combination would be changed somehow in the new patch. The community expected some tweaks to the first half of the combination, Blademail. However, in reality, Valve or Icefrog, merely increased the total cost by 100 gold and decreased the strength gain. So now, Heart of Tarrasque costs 5200 gold and provides 35 strength rather than 40, on top of its pre-existing regenerative abilities.

On top of that, Midas was the only other item to get nerfed, getting the charge restore time increased by another 10 seconds. On the other hand, there have been other several slight item buffs. Eternal Shroud's magic resistance got increased by five percent, Pavise's cooldown was decreased and Vladamir's Offering's aura armor was increased by one, and thus affecting the Helm of the Overlord.

And now, we get into the real meat of the 7.34e patch. Despite the majority of the focus being set on the "broken TI heroes" a good variety of heroes saw nerfs while few received buffs. So, heroes like Bristleback, Spirit Breaker, Dark Willow, Kunkka and Chaos Knight all got nerfs. While forgotten heroes like Juggernaut, Enigma, and Timbersaw all got buffs. However, the patch does lean more towards nerfs than buffs, and a full list of all the nerfed and buffed heroes is below:

Bristleback got some of the most changes in 7.34e Quill Spray's max damage was decreased, so was the level 20 talent which increased the max damage. While the cast range and cooldown of his Aghanim's shard upgrade were nerfed. On top of that, one of Bristleback's best features, his bristled back was nerfed as well. The damage threshold of the passive ability was increased at all levels.

Chaos Knight was also a victim of the nerfs of the 7.34e patch. Although the changes seem minor, they change one of his best features, his early laning. With a base damage reduction and a significantly increased lifesteal penalty to creeps (from 40% to 70%), Chaos Knight isn't the hyper sustainable lanner he once was. On top of that, his Ultimate, Phantasm's mana cost got significantly increased at all levels.

Continuing, Earth Spirit got one line of text that knocked him down a couple pegs. Now, in 7.34e, Rolling Boulder's cooldown begins after the current roll is completed. This change decreases Earth Spirit's ability to lock enemies down with constant Rolling Boulder Spam. As the cooldown starts not at the end of the roll rather than the start. Which can allow heroes those couple extra moments they need to escape.

Kunkka, the Ol' reliable mid of TI12 also got nerfed in patch 7.34e. The update nerfed Kunkka's ultimate and ahganim upgrades. Ghostship's rum damage delay has been decreased by 10% as well as the damage of Tidal wave has also decreased. The final nail in the coffin, or boat in this case, is that Torrent Storm's cooldown and duration were hit. Now with a five second longer cooldown (to 75s) and a four second uptime (was 5s), Kunkka may be going down with his ship.

Now there weren't too many big or significant buffs in patch 7.34e. The patch was mainly focused around nerfing the TI dominant heroes. However, some heroes made it out with a little more pip in their step. The first of which is Gryocopter with a damage increase to Rocket Barrage. The damage was increased by 2 on each level, which results in rocket barrage doing a total of 560 damage.

In a similar vein, Juggernaut also got the slightest damage increase to one of his abilities. Now, Omnislash's bonus damage was increased at early levels. Although the total damage at max level hasn't changed, the additional 40 damage at level one can help Jugg secure those early kills a lot easier.

Lycan is another hero that flew pretty under the radar at TI12. However, the 7.34e patch is trying to mend that. With additional base agility and agility gain increased, Lycan, the universal hero, gets significantly scarier. Which is pretty fitting given he's supposed to be the big bad wolf of Dota 2. His base agility is now at 18, which is on par with Pangolier and his agility gain is at 1.8 which is on par with Dawnbreaker.

It will be quite interesting to see if this new path that Valve is taking will be healthy for the game. We'll just need to sit, watch and find out. You can check out the full patch here.

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