[Client] - Client crash upon entering a match after 6.8 patching

The game patched as normal a few hours ago, and was functioning as expected thereafter while I chatted with a few of my friends on it. Then, I queued, joined a lobby, and was waiting for the game client to finish loading me in — until the logo disappeared abruptly over the black screen, with an alert telling me that it could not establish a network connection. I repeatedly tried to reopen the game client, having evidence that my connection was in fact fully intact, to no avail. I next closed the game itself in the hopes that a relaunch may fix it — only for it to then attempt to patch the game again. I knew by this point that there was no way I was going to get back into the match I'd joined, in a reasonable timeframe, and opted to just let the game do whatever it was doing and patch again so that I may at least be able to join before the 20 minute mark.

15 minutes with the patcher frozen at 47% later, I closed it, and reopened. This brings us to the present: the client is stuck in a perpetual "calculating differences" state, which means it will mind-numbingly scan through all the tens of thousands of files in the game for no reason, which will easily take 3 hours or longer; and despite having been sociable in the pre-game chat, I've no doubt that my teammates assumed I was an intentional AFK, and that I have a lovely LeaverBuster pop-up coming my way.

This isn't the first time this has happened after a patch, and with every repetition, it gets more and more irritating.

I'm on Windows 7.