Hero Win Rate Win Rate Change Win Rate Error (95% CI) Popularity Popularity Change Maiev 52.9% -1.4 p.p. ±1.40% 77.8% -5.0 p.p. Malthael 50.5% -5.3 p.p. ±1.25% 19.4% -3.5 p.p. Sonya 49.2% -3.1 p.p. ±1.02% 25.3% -2.6 p.p. Thrall 54.2% +3.1 p.p. ±1.16% 15.4% +4.2 p.p. Tyrande 46.1% -0.4 p.p. ±1.90% 5.8% +0.1 p.p. Xul 53.2% +5.9 p.p. ±1.84% 6.3% +2.0 p.p. Zeratul 46.6% +0.2 p.p. ±2.08% 5.1% +1.3 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.Maiev's ban rate remained fairly high throughout the week, and understandably so. Her survivability is down about 4% in HP (a hair shy of the 5% I recommended), on top of a slight increase on Vault of the Warden's cooldown. Overall, she is in a slightly better spot now, but her design is still considered frustrating to many folks, so she continues to receive the early ban for that reason (much as Garrosh did before her). I remain convinced that the biggest problem is the reset on Fan of Knives, which allows her to spam her damage for no resource cost investment. She only needs to hit two targets to receive this reset, making it extremely easy to achieve. She is thus very strong in choke points (which she can force with Warden's Cage), where it's nearly impossible to avoid grouping. I think that a much better approach for Fan of Knives is to remove the reset entirely, give it a shorter cooldown, and then have it deal increased damage for each hero it hits. This would mean each individual cast of Fan of Knives would be stronger and more frequent (allowing for improved wave clear), but she would then have to struggle with resource management. It would also have the side effect of reducing the emphasis on her FoK talents, which are currently her strongest overall choices in terms of win rate.However, his heroics remain unbalanced, with "Tormented Souls" (20.8% PR, 48.4% WR) having swapped places with "Last Rites" (79.2% PR, 51.3% WR) as the "undesired" ult choice. If Blizzard is trying to avoid giving it back some armor, then it needs some other effect to get it back in contention, as right now it provides very little benefit that you don't already get from his Death Shroud in terms of ranged area application of Reaper's Mark.While her win rate seems healthy for now, there's no telling where she'll end up after her rework, so these changes pretty much have no real impact, except in the very short term and for the Clash.It seems that all Blizzard managed to do with Xul is make him stronger overall. His win rate is now nearing the point at which he may actually need to be nerfed back down, defying previous assumptions that he would end up in a worse spot overall. Despite nerfs to "Trag'Oul's Essence", it retained a win rate roughly on par with his other talents in that tier (52.9% WR, -1.0 p.p. in WR vs next highest talent) and remains the most popular pick in its tier (51.4% PR, +9.8 p.p. in PR vs next highest talent). There is no sign of significant reductions in WR for any of his other skeleton talents, either. Thrall has been subjected to a couple of small buffs over the course of several months , probably with the intent to bring him back into favor among the pros. While he hasn't reached that point quite yet, this change seems to have been far more influential than people expected, giving him an incredible amount of extra poke range that can be tough to face off against. It would not entirely surprise me to see it reverted or reduced in a future patch, depending on how his performance looks at higher levels of play.It seems that Khaldor's prediction wasn't quite on the mark, as Abathur and most other specialists saw very little change in their win rate over the last seven days for the majority of players. In fact, virtually none of their win rates changed enough to break the margin of error, suggesting very little has actually changed. Only two heroes saw any significant changes in win rate in the last seven days that broke this barrier, and they were not the changes you might expect: Sgt Hammer saw a 3.1 p.p. increase in win rate against a ±2.45% margin of error, and Medivh actually dropped 3.2 p.p. in WR against a ±3.11% margin of error. The latter is certainly not too concerning right now since he is getting a rework soon, but the former is perhaps a bit surprising. It seems that Voice Chat could be leading to much better team coordination around Hammer, meaning a more coordinated draft and better playing around her strengths for higher aggression. It remains to be seen if this will continue through the future, or if it is merely an early failure to adjust to her poke, but it's something to keep an eye on.Also, one closing note for today: You may not have noticed, but today actually marks the one-year anniversary of my very first stats post on Reddit . When I realized this, I got so excited, because it really shows how much things have changed over the last year. I went from being just some scrub of a player with poor mechanical skills....to being a content creator for Reddit with a small following....to being a trusted writer for an esports organization, standing alongside a collection of insanely talented people. How cool is that? I mean, I'm still a total scrub of a player, but all that other stuff is pretty awesome! :)Every day, I am so utterly humbled by the outpouring of support that you all have given me. This has been a very difficult year for me for a number of reasons (which I won't bog you down with), and there has been more than one occasion where I have considered giving up on everything. But the HotS community has kept me going through even the toughest times. And for that, I owe you all an enormous thank you. I would never have reached this point if not for you, and I am so thankful for it. I am hard at work on a new format for my HGC content at the start of the Clash, and I hope that you'll take a look when it comes out!Now and always, I hope to see you again next time!