Hero Win Rate Win Rate Change Win Rate Error (95% CI) Popularity Popularity Change Blaze 45.7% +5.2 p.p. ±0.93% 31.9% +2.3 p.p. Abathur 44.8% +2.1 p.p. ±2.04% 6.5% -1.2 p.p. Azmodan 50.6% +0.8 p.p. ±1.33% 14.8% -0.9 p.p. Garrosh 48.3% +0.2 p.p. ±1.74% 12.1% -2.2 p.p. Gazlowe 54.3% +1.4 p.p. ±1.73% 7.3% +0.5 p.p. Hanzo 49.9% +3.3 p.p. ±0.94% 37.1% +14.6 p.p. Johanna 50.5% +0.9 p.p. ±1.02% 24.1% -1.2 p.p. Malfurion 46.7% -4.6 p.p. ±0.84% 40.0% +0.6 p.p. Murky 53.1% +3.6 p.p. ±2.72% 3.1% -0.7 p.p. Nazeebo 53.1% +2.1 p.p. ±0.87% 29.9% +2.7 p.p. Nova 52.9% -1.6 p.p. ±1.42% 13.0% -6.6 p.p. Samuro 52.3% +0.6 p.p. ±2.12% 5.5% -0.5 p.p. Sylvanas 53.0% +0.4 p.p. ±0.95% 48.1% -0.1 p.p. The Lost Vikings 51.1% +5.0 p.p. ±5.09% 1.0% -0.3 p.p. Valeera 42.7% -6.5 p.p. ±2.06% 8.9% -10.1 p.p. Xul 50.3% -0.5 p.p. ±1.90% 6.2% +0.3 p.p. Zagara 52.0% +1.0 p.p. ±1.39% 15.4% -4.3 p.p. Zeratul 45.3% +1.5 p.p. ±1.99% 5.6% +0.7 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 hero is surprisingly more intricate than he seems, and it's honestly a credit to the design team that he's got such incredible kit synergy between his abilities. That said, he still seems to be underperforming despite an incredible amount of damage for a tank, and I think this is in part due to the variety of ways that his kit can be used. For example, there seems to be a significant number of players (at least in my own experience) who don't make full use of their oil slicks as a means of restricting enemy movement, and simply light them on fire right away for the damage. This is an important zoning tool for Blaze as a tank and provides a good chunk of his "peel", so it needs to be used wisely. All indications suggest that Blaze's win rate is on the rise (as it has gone up throughout the week) so perhaps we will see him continue to climb over time.Of course, there are some areas where it seems that his kit needs additional tweaking, namely his talents. While they are incredible diverse and provide a range of play styles and tactical uses, there is a lot of disparity between their pick and win rates which suggests there will be need for further adjustments. "Neural Stimpack" at Lvl 1 is currently the top performing talent in its tier (48.4% WR and 30.6% PR, +2.6 p.p. and +0.9 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively) and will likely need to be nerfed a bit. Similarly, "Adhesive Petroleum" at Lvl 4 is dominating its talent tier (48.1% WR and 54.5% PR, +4.4 p.p. and +33.3 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively), but given how badly the other talents in this tier are performing, it's possible that we'll see them buffed instead. "Incinerator Gauntlets" at Lvl 7 is underperforming (42.7% WR and 18.1% PR, -3.5 p.p. and +3.3 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively) since its effects are relatively minor and provide no additional damage. "Fuel Leak" at Lvl 13 is blowing away the other choices (48.1% WR and 71.9% PR, +3.8 p.p. and +55.5 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively), but given that its effect is rather difficult to "nerf" (as it only creates extra oil slicks), it is far more likely we'll see buffs to the other two talent choices. We're also likely to see buffs to "Juggernaut Plating" at Lvl 16 (47.5% WR and 16.0% PR, -3.0 p.p. and -46.3 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively). Finally, "Bunker Drop" is both the less-picked and less-successful heroic of his two choices for rather obvious reasons. It looks like a +5 HP buff isn't going to be enough this time, but at least it'll keep the tradition alive!With Malfurion's new kit, he is expected to keep placing Regrowth on multiple members of his team and use his Moonfire for "burst" healing. This can be somewhat confusing for players who are used to his Regrowth providing fairly solid initial healing on top of its regenerative effects, so unless you are playing somewhat aggressively and landing those Moonfires consistently, your healing output has likely dropped somewhat. It also doesn't help that his roots were nerfed to no longer catch non-heroic targets without any compensatory buff, so that resulted in a net loss of power. Malfurion's new kit doesn't lend itself to an "Easy" tag any more, that much is certain.On the talent front, he's not as bad off as Blaze. "Strangling Vines" at Lvl 4 is still the most poorly performing talent (42.4% WR and 15.8% PR, -3.1 p.p. and -16.5 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively), so it'll need to be buffed to bring it up to par. "Wild Growth" at Lvl 7 is beating both of its alternatives (48.2% WR and 59.8% PR, +8.0 p.p. and +38.4 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively) and might end up seeing nerfs. And we might see further tweaks to "Revitalize" at Lvl 13 (51.1% WR and 31.7% PR, +4.0 p.p. and -11.1 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively) and "Ysera's Gift" at Lvl 16 (48.3% WR and 27.9% PR, -3.7 p.p. and +5.0X p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively). But overall, it seems like Malfurion might just need a little bit more power in his base kit, perhaps with his roots (which received a net nerf for unclear reasons).Yes, I know, I've beaten this drum so many times lately, and I apologize for those who are tired of my rant on this topic. But Garrosh's entire kit relies on his ability to force a fight, and without his pull on Groundbreaker, he can no longer do that. Yes, it's now possible to reverse his old combo now, as players like Bambam have shown, which consists of using Wrecking Ball to throw a target behind you first, then immediately drop Groundbreaker behind you to stun them and (hopefully) secure a kill. But that merely replaces his original one-trick combo with a new, less effective one-trick combo, which doesn't solve the problem at all. And outside of that combo, he now has to walk into melee range to have any effect on combat, and he is considerably less effective for that style of play than Arthas. Ergo, I will once again suggest that the best solution to Garrosh is to return his pull on Groundbreaker, and swap Decimate into the E slot as a basic attack, making Wrecking Ball his second heroic on a much longer cooldown. This means reworking some of his talent tree, meaning this would require a full rework, but I maintain that it is the best way to keep his internal kit synergy while also fixing the problem of making him a one-trick pull-and-throw pony. For the moment, however, it may be time to look at Body Check again, as it seems to have re-emerged as his strongest build.While his win rate is not exactly "oppressive", his popularity has grown by leaps and bounds, which often helps to conceal stronger performance. The primary offender seems to be "Sharpened Arrowheads" at Lvl 7 (53.0% WR and 40.8% PR, +4.4 p.p. and -0.5 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively), which has singlehandedly helped to increase the success rate of the "basic attack build". I think it is a good thing to have the "basic attack build" grow in strength, as it was previously his worst performing build, but this change has pushed it a bit too far in the other direction. I believe that the best approach is to reduce the cap on this talent from 25 down to at least 20, with the possibility of dropping to 15 at a later date if 20 does not work out. This should significantly help reduce the frustration behind this talent. EDIT: /u/ChaosOS pointed out that I've misinterpreted the tooltip on this one, so I've made some corrections.Nova's win rate seems to have declined enough to where the general consensus is that she's less of a problem than she was before, but there remain some small problems with her talents at present. "Lethal Decoy" at Lvl 16 is still the top talent in win rate (61.9% WR), but its popularity has plunged, so it may not need any further tweaking after all. Her Snipe talents have also fallen even further from grace with the additional damage nerf, with "Perfect Shot" at Lvl 7 being the worst offender (47.0% WR and 16.4% PR, -6.8 p.p. and -4.8 p.p. vs the next highest talent respectively) and will very likely require buffs at a future date.This is a bit unusual considering the number of buffs he was given, but his overall win rate doesn't breach the margin of error, and he didn't see any spike in popularity to help explain this away. Nor did his league-specific win rates seem to vary by any significant margins when I looked into those. So, given all of that....it's not possible to draw any conclusions from the statistics given. I apologize for those of you who expected more, but as I've said before, I try not to editorialize my own opinions on a change if the data isn't conclusive.I'm sure this brings great joy to some, but it's honestly rather unfortunate, as she provided a kit that was perhaps the best anti-dive / anti-mobility available in the game to date. This is not to say that Garrote didn't need a nerf. I think the evidence that it did is rather overwhelming. Rather, I'm suggesting that people didn't realize how precarious Valeera's success really was....and how much it depended on her Garrote build. With that weakened, she's now got very little to stand on, and it's unfortunate that any hero would go from being a viable niche pick to being rendered a liability in the draft. As to the topic of "fixing" Valeera....that's honestly a very tough call, because I think that her kit has some problems that you can't fully correct with just number tweaks. My core problem with her kit remains her energy mechanic, which makes it virtually impossible to "spam" on her and makes it hard for her to finish off targets early on, typically at high risk to her own person. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because it forces her to work with her team more to coordinate targets, but it can be problematic at times on a hero designed to punish out-of-position squishy targets if she can't finish those targets on her own merits. But I admit that it's honestly rather challenging to truly "fix" the problems that drag her down without making her feel "oppressive" as she did in the past.It is possible that it's increased, but with the margin for error so close, it's hard to say for certain. He is much like Samuro in this respect: there's not a lot of statistical evidence to show a shift, even if he might have experienced one. He didn't receive changes as vast as Samuro, however, so it's not as much of a surprise in this case. As Blizzard themselves said, Zeratul tends to have a lower performance rating that increases as players become more skilled with him, and his rework has certainly not changed that fact, so I wouldn't suggest writing him off. He's very much still a useful hero in the proper hands, though he will take more practice to really get the most out of him.Most of the specialists fell within the margin of error one way or the other, so it's not possible to be conclusive with them. However, two unlikely winners emerged from the changes with positive win rate changes: Murky and Nazeebo. Neither hero saw any direct changes in the patch, which means their growth is likely due to the changes made to the laning phase. Worth noting is that neither of these heroes tends to do well at bullying a lane 1v1, like Xul or Zagara. Rather, they both tend to rely on being left to their own devices to build their strength and create difficulties later in the game trying to manage them. Ergo, the most likely conclusion is that these heroes benefited the most because their design encourages a late-game focus, and the changes to laning in this patch were designed to re-extend the length of the game after the December changes unintentionally shortened game length. Also, to the user last week who asked me to take a look at Lava Wave on Ragnaros, bad news: the popularity and win rate of Lava Wave didn't really have any significant shift between then and now. Its win rate is down by less than a percent, which isn't really enough for me to conclusively say that it's doing any better or worse.Finally, as a completely shameless plug for myself and my fellow writers, don't forget that HGC 2018 starts this Friday! Be sure to follow all of us here on HeroesHearth for lots of in-depth analysis and coverage of the season! Or if you'd prefer a little more personalized discussion, the HeroesHearth Discord channel has received some serious upgrades in the last few days, and I highly recommend checking it out! We very much appreciate your continued support and hope that you will turn to HeroesHearth for constant thorough coverage of the HGC!Hope to see you again next time (which, thanks to Blizzard's patch today, is very soon)!