Hero Win Rate Win Rate Change Win Rate Error (95% CI) Popularity Popularity Change Hanzo 43.1% +1.3 p.p. ±1.01% 16.2% +8.3 p.p. Abathur 43.0% -1.0 p.p. ±1.56% 8.0% +0.7 p.p. Alarak 50.3% +0.1 p.p. ±1.23% 10.1% -1.6 p.p. Artanis 52.5% -0.1 p.p. ±0.81% 24.7% +1.3 p.p. Arthas 50.7% -1.0 p.p. ±0.81% 30.5% +0.9 p.p. Azmodan 51.1% +1.8 p.p. ±1.10% 14.6% 0.0 p.p. Chen 46.9% +0.4 p.p. ±2.59% 2.2% -0.6 p.p. Dehaka 48.0% 0.0 p.p. ±0.97% 40.4% +5.2 p.p. Gazlowe 53.7% -1.1 p.p. ±1.64% 5.7% -1.4 p.p. Leoric 50.9% -0.9 p.p. ±1.24% 9.8% -1.7 p.p. Malthael 51.1% -0.2 p.p. ±1.22% 14.0% -0.8 p.p. Medivh 41.6% -0.6 p.p. ±2.95% 1.8% -0.8 p.p. Muradin 47.7% 0.0 p.p. ±0.71% 32.1% -0.9 p.p. Murky 51.9% -1.3 p.p. ±2.22% 3.3% -0.9 p.p. Nazeebo 51.8% -2.2 p.p. ±0.73% 30.5% -5.5 p.p. Nova 56.7% +5.3 p.p. ±0.98% 17.9% +8.5 p.p. Probius 56.4% +0.4 p.p. ±3.57% 1.2% -0.6 p.p. Rexxar 52.2% +2.0 p.p. ±2.40% 2.8% 0.0 p.p. Samuro 50.0% -4.6 p.p. ±1.63% 7.1% -1.5 p.p. Sgt Hammer 50.4% +4.0 p.p. ±2.15% 3.8% -0.3 p.p. Sonya 53.3% -0.2 p.p. ±0.63% 51.8% +0.6 p.p. Sylvanas 53.4% +1.4 p.p. ±0.79% 35.1% +3.3 p.p. The Lost Vikings 51.4% +3.6 p.p. ±3.95% 1.3% 0.0 p.p. Thrall 48.2% -1.4 p.p. ±1.39% 7.6% -0.7 p.p. Tyrande 45.8% +1.5 p.p. ±1.51% 6.5% -2.9 p.p. Valeera 46.6% -0.7 p.p. ±1.40% 12.6% +6.4 p.p. Xul 50.8% +1.4 p.p. ±1.80% 5.0% -1.4 p.p. Zagara 51.1% +1.0 p.p. ±1.09% 16.2% +3.0 p.p. Zeratul 42.2% -5.0 p.p. ±1.55% 6.6% +1.8 p.p.

Talent Pick Rate for Last 7 Days Win Rate for Last 7 Days PR Difference from Next Highest Talent WR Difference from Next Highest Talent Advanced Artillery (Lvl 1) 48.6% 55.0% +17.8 p.p. +9.4 p.p. Regenerative Bio-Steel (Lvl 4) 74.9% 52.9% +62.0 p.p. +10.5 p.p. Graduating Range (Lvl 7) 66.8% 52.4% +39.2 p.p. +5.1 p.p. Hyper-Cooling Engines (Lvl 13) 49.9% 54.4% +15.6 p.p. +4.5 p.p. Giant Killer (Lvl 16) 70.0% 58.4% +54.1 p.p. +4.0 p.p.

Hello again! After each balance patch, I've taken it upon myself to track how the balance changes have affected the Nexus. It's become something of a habit for me, and I thought it might be fun to share my data with the community.In case you've forgotten what changed in the last patch, here's a link All data provided in this post was collected from Hotslogs , which is a database of player-submitted games. Data was collected between 3:30 PM and 4:30 PM EST each day, using the special filter "Last 7 Days (Current Build)" and focusing exclusively on Hero League data (with the exception of heroes like Cho'Gall, whose unique nature requires pulling data from Team League). As usual, keep in mind that my numbers may differ slightly from Hotslogs's "official" figures as the site regularly updates older information as more games are added. Therefore, our data may not match up perfectly, but it should give a generally accurate view of how the week progressed. Here is a link to the spreadsheet with the data I've collected. The spreadsheet contains all of my original data, split into two categories: "Composite" (which represents all data across the entire week) and "Daily" (which represents data from each individual day). It also contains a number of graphs showing how each hero is performing in both win rate and popularity. If you'd prefer a summarized report, read on!The seven-day analysis is below. Please note that while I try to cover all heroes, not all heroes are in need of in-depth analysis of their changes, so some heroes may have short summaries or may even be omitted entirely. Also, be aware that the contents of this section are primarily my own opinion of the changes, albeit backed with data. If you disagree, feel free to explain why in the comments below.This should not be taken to indicate that he is bad, of course. He has fairly good kit diversity and multiple useful builds. His Q build tends to have a larger degree of popularity, with most of the early-game talents However, there are still some issues. Dragonstrike (41.4% WR, 36.5% PR) is performing much worse than Dragon's Arrow (44.8% WR, 63.5% PR), and I personally feel that a large part of that is the fact that you have to be standing relatively far away just to ensure that you're hitting everyone you want to hit. Piercing Arrows (53.1% WR, 49.7% PR) also seems to be performing slightly better than its alternatives, despite being the most frequently picked talent of its tier, so it's possible we'll be seeing some adjustments to that as well. It's not blowing away the other talents, though, so it's also possible Blizzard will just buff the other two a bit, since that would probably be easier. I'm also of the opinion that his base kit needs an adjustment, namely his Natural Agility. It's currently strictly inferior to Cyber Agility (from Genji) in every way. And while the design intent seems to have been to shift most of his power into his abilities and away from his trait, it doesn't look like it was enough.Azmodan has experienced a slight climb due to his General of Hell, which makes the newly strengthened minions ever stronger still. Sylvanas already had a lot of inherent push strength from Black Arrow, and it's only gotten stronger with the new changes. Their ability to cull minions quickly allows them an edge in lane and makes it more likely that they'll get both globes in a given lane. Interestingly enough, Nazeebo is the only specialist to have a rather steep drop in win rate. This is most likely due to his high dependence on reaching the late-game to maximize his value, which means that it's now a lot more valuable to counter-draft him with another specialist and beat the lanes in early.Most of the "solo lane" heroes that were selected to be covered saw very little overall change in win rate. There are, of course, a few exceptions. Arthas seems to have dropped slightly in win rate following the changes. This may be in part because his lack of mobility makes it harder for him to get the globes before his opponent can steal them away, and it may be that he's simply not as good at bullying out a lane now that minions are stronger, but it's hard to pin down a particular cause for this shift. Rexxar is the only other hero who saw a reasonably decent shift in win rate, and his climb is very likely due to having the extra body in lane that helps him bully enemies out of his way and retrieve globes from relative safety.Before you tear my head off and down-vote me to oblivion, hear me out. I am not saying they are perfectly balanced right now. Far from it. Nova is very clearly overpowered, having jumped over 55% in WR and jumped +8.5 p.p. in terms of overall popularity, and she's become the top hero in Quick Match. And yes, while Valeera's win rate hasn't really fluctuated that much, her popularity increase of +6.4 p.p. indicates that she's likely a lot stronger than the win rate shuffle would suggest. The most likely cause is Garrote's newly buffed duration, which works well with a Garrote-focused build. Zeratul also seems to have dropped off tremendously, though this is in part due to a spike in popularity and a variety of new abilities and talents to re-learn (as Zeratul's win rate has continued to increase in the days following his change). Samuro is perhaps the only one not to see a terribly dramatic shift, since his drop only pushed him closer to a balanced win rate when he was previously starting to reach rather questionable heights.But overall, I feel that the changes have the potential to be positive. We always knew that the balance wasn't going to be perfect when they're changing four heroes so radically all at once. But the general changes to most of their kits seem to be pretty good ideas that can provide a good baseline to balance from. My own suggestions: Valeera's Garrote needs a lower duration (for obvious reasons). Rather than nerfing Ghost Protocol, I'd like to see the devs lower Nova's health by a small amount first and see how that goes. With all of the changes made to her kit, she's got a lot more options for survivability and "tricking" the enemy with her decoys, so it only makes sense to me to make her even more dependent on those tricks, rather than nerfing the tricks back down to a point where they no longer work. Zeratul's a bit tougher to judge since his win rate keeps increasing over time, so I'd like the devs to only make small changes to Zeratul's talents for the time being and see how much he recovers on his own. His newest talents are the ones that seem to need buffing the most, so they're probably the best choices for changes. Samuro might be better off left in his current state until we know more.Also, as a side note, I included a few other heroes who grant stealth to others: Medivh and Tyrande. Neither had enough of a fluctuation in win rate to say that they changed very much. I also kept watch on a few heroes who have self-stealth, namely Tassadar, Dehaka, and Greymane....but all three saw very little change overall. The only one who saw any significant shift is Dehaka, whose Lurker Strain dropped off about 3.9 p.p. in win rate from its previous state last week.Typically when a talent is the highest in pick rate, it should also have one of the lowest win rates, and vice versa. This reflects a relatively healthy state for a hero's talent selections, with niche talents being very good in their niche and popular talents having less overall success due to more games played. Hammer's talents look absolutely nothing like this. Her talent balance is atrocious. Her top picked talent is also her highest win rate talent at every single talent tier outside of Lvls 10 and 20. Here's the highlights:As you can see, while some of her popular talents aren't in the lead by a lot, the fact remains that virtually every tier of play has a "preferred" talent with a very high pick rate. This is not a healthy place for a hero to be in, as it essentially encourages her towards a single build. Worse, it suggests that her win rate is largely propped up by those talents, and that she's probably not as well off as the overall win rate suggests. I hope to see a lot of changes in her talent kit over the coming weeks.In closing, I'd like to suggest that you take a look at my recent article about the Performance-Based MMR system. I've discussed the flaws in the current system and provided what I feel are some good improvements to the system. Please feel free to take a look at the article and give me some feedback on the subject!Hope to see you again next time!