Dota 2 Patch 7.34 notes: Draft changes, Big nerfs, and more

Valve has just released the patch notes for Dota 2 update 7.34, which includes big changes to a lot of heroes and items. The major change was a complete rework to how drafting works in Captain’s Mode, which is used in pro matches. 

What’s in Dota 2 Patch 7.34?

In previous patches, each team used to ban two heroes each, followed by two picks, three bans, two picks, two bans, and one pick. Now in Captain’s Mode drafting there are different amounts of bans at each ban phase depending on if you were the first or second pick, with second pick getting an extra ban early on and first pick getting their ban back in the middle ban phase. 

In pro matches, this will probably be a huge change, but for most players, it won’t change anything as it does not apply to All Pick matches.

At the moment there are only two Blood grenades available at the beginning of the game and they take longer to restock. However, Smoke has a really excellent change where any ally coming within 300 range of the player who smoked while they are hidden will smoke as well. Therefore, now players can just run past the player who refused to smoke with them. 

The patch also made changes to 38 items and 26 neutral items. Midas was one of the most notable changes. Transmute now has two charges. It starts off with a single charge, but after that, it gains a charge every 100 seconds with a maximum of two.

In total, nearly 110 heroes have also been transformed in this update. The changes touched everything, from abilities and cooldowns to stats and talents. 

For instance, Beastmaster, who has been a top pick for the pros, has had his Hawk reworked, Bristleback has had his Aghs reworked so his ability can now be cast to send Quill Sprays in a direction and Viper has an absurd level 25 talent that lets him become a Universal hero. 

Apparently lots of heroes who didn’t feature much since the last update have been buffed. For example, Grimstroke has been given a good amount of buffs which might see him return to the meta, and enemies are taken damage now by OD’s ultimate when they cast a spell after being hit by it. Plus, Invoker has plenty of changes, and most importantly is now Universal, Warlock’s Fatal Bonds will summon imps so it is not completely useless, and Zeus’ ult now does percentage-based damage. 

There is a lot to get through. but there seems to be enough here to shake up the meta in time for the TI qualifiers. You can take a look at the patch notes on the official website of Dota 2 and see for yourself. 

The patch notes were released a few hours ago, but they were in the form of emojis. While it may seem like Valve decided to tease the community, it is nice to see some kind of activities around the patch, instead of just releasing the notes with no any announcement or something like this.