[Update #2]: Dota 2's final Summer update has enhanced the visuals and massively improved the report system.

[Update]: Dota 2 is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a bunch of thematic (and free) cosmetic items.

In order to shake up the metagame for the upcoming tournament qualifiers, Dota 2 launched Patch 7.34 a couple of days ago. The update brought with it a massive assortment of changes to everything from items to gameplay mechanics and pretty much all heroes. Unsurprisingly, given the sheer scale of the tweaks, not all of them have ended up working out as planned.

So in order to fix the various balance problems introduced with Patch 7.34, Valve has now unleashed the much smaller though still quite impactful Patch 7.34b. The one big general change is that Spirit Vessel has been made weaker and cheaper - it now provides +6 to all attributes instead of +12, gives an additional +125 health, and costs 200 less. It's still going to be a great item, though no longer an auto-include for any Universal core.

As for the balance changes, it should come as little surprise to hear that heroes like Invoker, Witch Doctor and Sand King have received a couple of nerfs in order to push them back down to reality. Invoker and Witch Doctor are going to fare just fine, but I must admit I'm quite worried about Sand King since his tweaks are absolutely brutal.

On the positive side, a bunch of heroes have gained some nifty little buffs as well. It's nothing too major but Monkey King can now move extremely quickly under the effect of Mischeif, Lina's Dragon Slave does even more damage, and Magnus has gotten his traditional pre-TI buffs so you'll likely be seeing quite a lot of him in the coming months.

You can check out all of the changes and the exact numbers behind them over at the Dota 2 website.

Enjoy, and I'll make sure to let you know once the next big update arrives.