(banner courtesy of /u/Somber99 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!Remember, only the heroes whose win rates are highlighted green/red with white text have exceeded their margin of error.Note that the error column assumes a 95% confidence interval. To put it simply, a 95% confidence interval is a numerical way to measure whether the win rate has changed in any significant way. If the change to a win rate exceeds the error, then we can assume that there is approximately a 95% chance that the win rate has changed.Win rates are shown as a bar indicating their relative distance from 50%. Green bars shown above the line are win rates that are above 50%, and red bars below the line show win rates that are below 50%. This gives a visual representation of how the win rate has changed each day. The final column splits the pick rate and ban rate into green and red sections, respectively, to show their overall influence on the popularity. The bar above is the original popularity, and the bar below represents the popularity after the designated period.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.He's received a 2% increase in total HP, which likely makes up the bulk of his performance increase. He also got a 4% increase in his Fire Stomp's healing, but this was fairly small to begin with, so it's likely to have very little real impact. As the base kit tuning was fairly minor, this suggests that his situation might not have looked as dire as it did with our limited data....or perhaps they were simply afraid of bringing him back into prominence as he used to be when he's already seeing some use in the HGC in his present form. The real question is whether or not the talent changes have given him the necessary push to diversify his builds, and so far the answer seems to be "yes", but with a few asterisks behind it. A Shadow Charge build is starting to rise up among his most popular builds, using the newly buffed Sacrificial Soul and the increased damage on Devastating Charge in place of the more mage-oriented Fire Stomp build. We'll unfortunately be unable to verify that build's strength for competitive play in the HGC until Phase 2 begins.Despite some of the doomsaying, only one of the affected tanks saw enough of a change to break the margin of error, and it's no real surprise which one: Johanna. She received some of the least compensation for her change over, dropping 25 Physical Armor in exchange for an 8% health buff. This may be caution on the devs' part, as they had buffed her health already in a previous patch and were afraid of taking it too far with a second straight buff, but this buff simply wasn't enough compensation. She's likely to need a bit more health to really bring her back up to the beefiness levels she used to have. However, most of the other tanks seem to be fairly unaffected, or at least we lack the evidence to say they were significantly changed, so at least the changes have had a likely minimal impact on the game environment.Okay, fine, it's probably got more to do with the extra bomb damage, but still, I enjoy the "no capes!" memes this has spawned. :) As ChaosOS discussed in his article , Zagara's scaling changes have resulted in significant buffs to multiple abilities in her kit. Most of her scaling now follows the standard 4% curve of many other heroes, effectively normalizing most of her damage sources. She's still a monster of a split push hero, but she now also works very well in the ranged damage department in general. Granted, these changes have clearly overtuned her strength, but the general idea behind the changes is a good one. The devs plan to remove the specialist role in the future, so Zagara was bound to need some changes to push her towards a more standard ranged damage role, and these changes do a good job in that regard. With some number tweaking to reduce her base damage figures, she'll be back to more reasonable levels of strength while still functioning well as a ranged damage dealer for her team. The buff to Maw is a welcome one which helps strengthen her team fight presence, as well, allowing her to be dangerous both as a split-pushing entity as well as providing good backline pressure.A quick note about my future release schedule. I am currently not planning on doing a 48 hour post for the Yrel patch, as that would be tomorrow....and that kinda feels needless for a single hero, plus it's too close to this one. Instead, I'll be doing a 7 day post for the Yrel patch, which will also include numbers for all of the above heroes! Essentially, this means I'll be extending my coverage on these heroes for another week. I figured that might be a fun little experiment.Also, I'd like your feedback on changes to future articles. I've had multiple requests to remove the "range" column, and I'd like to know what the rest of you think. Do you want it removed? Please let me know. I have always sought to make these posts provide as much information as possible, but I don't want you feeling overwhelmed, either. I'm also considering the removal of the green/red coloration in favor of switching to the color-adjusted versions for everything. Simply put, it's extra work making two versions every time, especially when they're this long, so I think it'd be easier to use just a single color format that everybody can read. Please let me know your thoughts on these topics, and on other changes you'd like to see made.Looking for more of my work? I just finished a large piece about Valeera. That article is located here. Feel free to let me know your thoughts to this article in the comments section below, or on Twitter at my handle @CriticKitten . I look forward to your replies!Hope to see you again next time!