Hero Win Rate Win Rate Change Win Rate Error (95% CI) Popularity Popularity Change Alexstrasza 47.8% -2.8 p.p. ±1.20% 19.1% -0.6 p.p. Artanis 51.5% -1.1 p.p. ±0.91% 25.7% +1.0 p.p. Brightwing 50.5% +1.1 p.p. ±0.92% 32.4% +0.5 p.p. D.Va 52.9% +5.8 p.p. ±1.67% 7.2% +2.6 p.p. Garrosh 45.2% -3.4 p.p. ±1.55% 37.4% -53.3 p.p. Hanzo 46.6% +3.2 p.p. ±1.07% 19.6% +2.4 p.p. Li Li 52.5% +1.3 p.p. ±0.95% 24.3% +4.1 p.p. Lucio 49.5% -1.1 p.p. ±0.90% 34.7% -2.3 p.p. Nazeebo 51.5% -0.3 p.p. ±0.85% 29.3% -1.0 p.p. Nova 54.1% -2.7 p.p. ±1.07% 23.9% +4.4 p.p. Stukov 50.5% +0.2 p.p. ±1.06% 23.4% -0.3 p.p. Thrall 50.1% +2.0 p.p. ±1.32% 10.9% +3.3 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.Life-Binder remains the worse choice in terms of win rate (42.9% WR, 5.8 p.p. lower than Cleansing Flame), and retains a pick rate below 10%. Her overall win rate dropped due to the worsened damage and cooldown of Cleansing Flame (11% longer CD and 10% damage nerf). It's clear that simply nerfing Cleansing Flame will not be sufficient to bring Life-Binder up. Part of the problem is that it's exceedingly easy to counter Life-Binder: simply attack the higher HP target and bring their health down below your original target in the two seconds you have available to do so, and you've effectively negated its healing. My belief is that the heroic would perform much better and would serve as a much more practical choice if it provided a limited amount of healing on top of its health re-balancing effect. For example, if using the ability healed for 10% of total HP instantly and *then* re-balanced health after 2 seconds, it would be more practical and a lot tougher to burst both targets down enough to negate the effect altogether. Burning the higher health target would still severely hamper its total healing, of course, but it would help make this heroic more than just a weaker version of Ancestral Healing. They could then repeat this effect for the Lvl 20 upgrade if need be, healing a limited amount of health between each re-balancing.While his overall win rate came down, this is primarily because people switched to using the newly buffed talents, which are still fairly underperforming. "Chrono Surge" (12.8% PR, 47.7% WR) is more popular but only marginally more successful than it was before (+0.9 p.p. vs last week's WR). The same can be said of "Templar's Zeal" (6.2% PR, 46.9% WR) and "Phase Bulwark" (15.4% PR, 51.4% WR), which are both around the same spots they were last week in win rate while being slightly more popular.Being able to cast Polymorph roughly 20% more often (10s CD means 6 casts in a minute, vs 12s CD or 5 times in a minute) had led to her providing a bit more counter play against heroes who depend on abilities as part of their dives and escapes, which makes her a slightly stronger counter to heroes like Tracer or Genji (who depend heavily on abilities for mobility).The extra damage has allowed her to be much better at harassment in mech form. Surprisingly, her win rate hasn't spiked to oppressive levels (although she's getting close), so she might actually get to keep this buff so long as she doesn't continue to trend upwards. If she does, however, it's possible we'll see her dropped down to 22 or 23 damage per hit instead.We all knew this was coming eventually, and I'm afraid I don't have any good news to report here. His ban rate dropped off by around 50 p.p., yet his pick rate is also down (-1.16 p.p.), indicating that nobody is rushing to take advantage of the ability to actually play him now....rather, it seems the few who were originally playing him despite the high ban rate are no longer as interested in doing so. While it is good that his ban rate is now settling to more reasonable levels, the changes have also sent his win rate spiraling downwards, for obvious reasons. Groundbreaker now lacks the advantage of the pull effect, but it still retains the now-unnecessary delay before activation, as well as generally inferior damage. But this change goes beyond merely weakening the ability, it's actually weakened Garrosh overall as a hero. His kit was designed to bring his enemies to him and isolate them from the enemy team, due to his general inability to close the gap on his own and force a fight that way. Without the pull effect of Groundbreaker, he now lacks a reliable means of forcing a fight and can't really close the gap against his opponents easily. The stun on Groundbreaker doesn't quite give him enough time to gap-close on his own and engage a throw, either. Furthermore, the changes severely impact his synergy with both of his heroics, Warlord's Challenge and Decimate, as both rely on a target being in close proximity to him in order to work.This is not to say that the changes cannot be worked into a positive net effect overall, of course, and I'm certain that with future buffs, his win rate will grow accordingly. But I feel that his kit, in its current form, will push him out of effective usage at the competitive level, and render him a very niche selection in Hero League. Even if his win rate comes back up, that won't necessarily make him "better", and his kit synergy will still be very limited. I hope that, in the future, Blizzard revisits Garrosh for a full rework and considers reverting the change to Groundbreaker in favor of switching Decimate and Wrecking Ball, as I have advocated in the past. Giving him Decimate as a baseline ability would fix some of his damage problems and give him more team utility instead of keeping him as a one-trick pull-and-throw pony. He could then use Groundbreaker as a pull tool to force fights, and Decimate as a means of inflicting slows and damage to hinder a retreat, providing better kit synergy. Bumping Wrecking Ball to the heroic slot would then force a tough decision between having supreme isolation of a single target vs the powerful AoE taunting effect of Warlord's Challenge, which would once again synergize with Groundbreaker for a pull-and-stun combo. This would require a lot more work than what Blizzard did, of course, because it would mean changing his talents and such accordingly. But I feel it would make Garrosh's kit work together much better than it does right now. And while this may not be the popular opinion, I feel it's more important to retain some cohesion in his kit than to nerf him purely out of spite for his originally oppressive nature.This isn't a big surprise, as buffing the damage of the heroic does not fix some of the significant problems it has, such as the positioning requirements or the wind-up time. It remains a decent choice for zoning, but Dragon's Arrow is likely to remain more popular and successful unless some of the other issues are addressed. However, given how close their win rates are, there's no guarantee that Dragonstrike will receive any further adjustments in the immediate future.Both "Wind Serpent" (8.4% PR, 47.2% WR) and "Serpent Sidekick" (20.2% PR, 51.6% WR) have increased in win rate (+4.1 p.p. and +2.3 p.p. vs last week, respectively) and popularity (+2.4 p.p. and +2.6 p.p. vs last week, respectively), although "Wind Serpent" is still performing weaker than other talents at Lvl 1 (-3.8 p.p. in WR vs next lowest talent), so it may see further buffs. "Let's Go!" (16.4% PR, 49.6% WR) has benefited greatly from a range increase, increasing to a much more competitive win rate (+3.0 p.p. vs last week, -1.5 p.p. in WR vs next lowest talent). The two talents that remain the least affected are "Safety Sprint" (7.5% PR, 46.3% WR) and "Gale Force" (21.4% PR, 55.4% WR), which both saw the least improvements in WR overall (+1.3 p.p. and +0.7 p.p. vs next lowest talent, respectively). Expect to see further tweaks to these in the future if Blizzard decides that these changes weren't enough.Her win rate dropped by 2.7 p.p. vs last week's figures, an indication that the types of changes made were somewhat helpful in reducing her overall effectiveness. However, they did not go far enough, likely due to a fear of sending her back into a downward spiral (as they did the last time they made significant changes to her). I think they need to abandon this fear and take these changes even further. As I mentioned before, they could stand to lose more health from her (I'd like to see her health reduced below Valla's) to force even more dependency on her decoys, and "Lethal Decoy" could be dropped to as low as 25% (instead of 40% as it is now) to prevent it from becoming a massive late-game burst tool. The one change that doesn't seem to have helped, however, is the damage reduction to Snipe, which further weakened the strength of her Snipe-oriented talents such as "Perfect Shot" (11.0% PR, 41.9% WR) and "Explosive Round" (8.0% PR, 48.6% WR). Once her win rate is less oppressive, further tweaks should try to correct these underperforming talents.It's unclear if that will be enough to bump him back into meta play, however, as his popularity now just barely hovers in double digits. "Spirit Shield" (13.6% PR, 50.6% WR) has also become a more competitive talent in its tier, only 1.2 p.p. less in WR than the next lowest talent.As a last mention, 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!