The upcoming balance patch 6.84 will hit the clients after the LAN finals of StarLadder XII, according to an announcement made by Icefrog on the development forums. The balance changes will most likely be accompanied by a rather large client update.
It may have taken quite a while, but we finally have an ETA for the next big DotA2 version 6.84, which will arrive after the conclusion of StarLadder XII on April 26th. The information was made public by Icefrog himself, through a post earlier today in this thread of the forums. Considering that the last balance patch arrived over two months ago, the upcoming update is expected to be rather large in size.
The current meta-game has been a subject of discussion amongst amateur and professional players alike, due to the newly introduced kill bounties and seemingly overpowered heroes like Sniper and Troll Warlord. While the teams have started relying on creative picks to deal with these factors (resulting in many entertaining matches), the community is mostly negative towards the current game state, and drastic changes are bound to come.
The more confident members of the community also believe that the big update will bring Valve's new graphics engine Source 2 to DotA2, as announced last year by the company. If the transition does take place, the client will receive a solid optical and acoustic upgrade, most likely after a couple of weeks of initial instability.
Source : Dev Forums
Headline image source
More content on GosuGamers
