DOTA 2 Patch 7.34b Review, Analysis And Impression

10 months ago By AI Smith

Witch Doctor, who had spiked in both pick rate and win rate, has borne the brunt of these newly-shipped Dota 2 changes. Death Ward’s attack range has been reduced and its cool down in the early game has been nearly doubled, meaning we’ll see fewer Rampages out of the over-buffed hero at the beginning of the match.

Coupled with Nerfs to Death Ward’s talents meaning less range and damage as the game wears on, plus some base damage and stat drops, Witch Doctor should hopefully be brought back in line with the median.

Review

After playing a bunch and watching pro games, we think this patch has been a net negative to the game. DOTA 2 Patch 7.32 was approaching perfection after years of refinement and tweaks. We do not understand why they introduced so many changes at the same time and ruined what was close to a perfect game. We feel like instead of being confident in their ideas and data they overreacted to community complaints (a lot of it was most likely insincere/trolling in nature).

The game is way too stumpy. It is very hard to stage a comeback. In the old patch, the last 5-10 minutes often felt like a waste of time because you knew it was over. This patch feels like the last 15-20 minutes are a waste of time.

Here’s what’s new in the Dota 2 patch 7.33c.

Around a week or two after the arrival of 7.32c, Valve decided to release another small update that addressed some of the issues from the previous patch. 7.34c arrived just a few hours ago, and it is pretty interesting. Most of us aren’t surprised that we got two quick updates following 7.33 because the patch changed everything about our favourite game.

The Dota 2 patch 7.34c includes some general changes, item changes, and a few heroes’ nerfs and buffs. Although it is not as big as the original patch, there are a few things that have to be addressed, so let’s take a look at them.

Also Read: DOTA 2: Best Riki Build-Up In The Patch 7.34

General Changes

The Dota 2 patch 7.34c has a few crucial general changes that will impact the game. The first one is related to the wisdom rune because when you pick it, it will also grant experience to the lowest-level hero in the team. If this person picks the same rune, the experience will go to the second-lowest, which is good because support will be able to keep up with the rest.

Another interesting change is related to camp stacking. The person that stacks the camp will get 30% experience when someone else kills the creeps.

Analysis

Less than four weeks after the latest patch, 7.33e, Ice Frog decided to surprise us with Dota 2 patch 7.34. And this patch is quite significant, despite being much smaller than 7.33.

Dozens of heroes were changed. As usual, some got nerfed while others got buffed, based on how successful they were in the previous patch and how they were abused by players. In some cases, the changes make perfect sense. In other cases, they make no sense at all.

Just look for example at Legion Commander, a hero that had the highest win rate in Dota 2 patch 7.33e and a pick rate of 24%. Everyone was expecting LC to get big Nerfs. Instead, her base strength was decreased by 2 and her movement speed is now “just” 325 instead of 330. In other words, she’s still ridiculously strong

On the list of popular heroes that got destroyed by Dota 2 patch 7.34, Specter has to be the most important one. Her base strength was reduced by 2, Reality now has a 3s cool down, and Haunt was removed. What used to be the essence of this hero is now granted only if you buy Aghanim’s Scepter.

The ability that used to be granted by purchasing Aghanim’s Scepter (Shadow Step) is now Specter’s ultimate. This is a massive nerfs that will almost certainly convince people to switch to other options for the carry role.

Another hero that received massive nerfs is Undying. His base damage was decreased by 4 and the cooldown of his Decay is now 13 seconds at level 1. This makes the hero far less viable in the landing phase.

Impression

The translated patch notes are finally here and we finally get to analyze the biggest changes introduced in 7.34. Instead of going through all the heroes, for our First Impressions post, we are going to reference our ideas and grievances about the previous patch and see whether they were addressed or not.

Brood’s mother was nerfed a couple of times in letter patches before 7.34. She was still very viable and quite strong, being a Universal hero, so we are happy to see that the hero was weakened further. Her landing stage can now be quite weak, as long as you play around Insatiable Hunger. It is no longer that strong of a sustain in lane, as it used to be if you don’t actively trade with it.

Several other heroes didn’t make the blog post but are now in a much worse spot. Most notably Meepo and Arc Warden are now in a much weaker state. This is good news to everyone, but the Meepo and Arc Warden spammers, and honestly, we don’t feel a whole lot of sympathy towards it.

Also Read: DOTA 2 vs Rocket League: Head To Head Stats, Rankings, Views, Top Characters And More

One out of three problems was addressed in 7.34. Nullifier can no longer go through spell immunity, allowing heroes like Ursa and Bloodseeker to have a late game. This is a very welcome change that should shake up the carry meta a little bit, allowing for the return of self-buff-type heroes.

Linken’s Sphere was nerfed further, though, which is a bit surprising. We saw an interesting trend in the last couple of big tournaments, where teams would create multiple layers of Linken on a single hero so that they couldn’t be initiated. The change solves this, but we honestly don’t feel like Linken’s was problematic as an item — it is just too good on Universal heroes.

Universal heroes who were largely untouched in the patch. Sure, there are some smaller changes to individual heroes, but the concept as a whole is still going to dominate the meta, at least in our opinion.