(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!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, and lies somewhere within the range given in the right-most column.In the last column of this table, you can see a small bar chart indicating how much the popularity is estimated to have changed by. For any row in which the popularity went up, the original popularity is shown in black, and the increase is shown in green (blue for the color-adjusted table). For any row in which the popularity went down, the current popularity is shown in black, and the decrease is shown in red (orange for the color-adjusted table). This is to provide a visual representation of how much a hero's popularity has shifted. Keep in mind that the general trend for popularity is that a hero who declines in popularity will often increase in win rate, and vice versa, though there are always exceptions to this rule.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 is potentially problematic, as the last few times that we've seen heroes end up like this, it frequently led to some more significant changes than just numbers drops. It remains to be seen if this is just a reaction to the fact that he's still one of the top performing Hero League choices, or if players genuinely feel that he's still this much of a threat. For my own part, I've noticed that he still feels quite strong, with a Q build using Advanced Targeting remaining my personal preference even despite the significant curtailing of its damage. He may need further reductions in damage to Plasma Cutter to help tone him down a bit more and bring this build in line with the others.In recent months, he's seen decreasing amounts of focus due to the dive meta and how easily targeted he can be by heroes like Tracer or Genji. However, the normalization and nerfing of Tracer in tandem with some small Falstad buffs have given him a bit of new life, enabling the sort of global presence that he provides. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues for Falstad after Genji's normalization changes are made live.This is likely good news to those who were getting frustrated with her increased presence in Hero League and her continual persistence in the HGC. While it remains to be seen how this will change her use in the pro scene, it seems to have led to a minor decline in use for Hero League players, dropping her to a pick or ban in only 22% of games. It's worth noting that the slight reduction in Malfurion's Moonfire healing could also have an impact on their duo-queue success, so this is another factor to watch out for.Malfurion lost about 5% of his Regrowth healing and 4% of his Moonfire healing, leading to a decent healing reduction all around. This is a largely positive change, as it allows other still-strong healers like Uther or Kharazim to have a better shot at competing for the solo healer position than they did before. We may yet see changes to Stukov's healing as well if the devs intend to keep trying to round out the healer position to have several pro-favored options, but right now the meta seems to be trending that way on its own, so it may be advisable to hold off on further tweaks until we've seen how this one changes the landscape.Colossus Smash (23.7% PR, 48.1% WR) is still lagging behind the other two heroic choices even at higher tiers of play, which implies that future changes should probably address this disparity. In particular, I think the drop in health might need to be removed or at least adjusted, as it really doesn't make much sense for this to be the only heroic that remains which actually weakens your health pool. Varian's not necessarily sitting on a lot of health to begin with these days, so this might be a good adjustment to increase the viability of Smash against the alternatives.Neither Aether Walker (3.7% PR, 43.8% WR) nor Dominance (47% PR, 46.8% WR) has jumped in win rate or popularity too significantly from where they once stood. Yet her win rate has increased. It's possible that she's simply experiencing a brief spike in success that will quickly fade away, or perhaps the change to Dominance is subtle enough to not visibly affect her win rate but is still a key factor in her newfound success.The nearly 8 p.p. drop in popularity lowers her to just over a 15% pick/ban, as players abandoned the Banshee Queen. It seems the increased risk of only being able to use Black Arrows on attacks has pushed more people to seek their siege damage elsewhere. However, I feel this is a healthy change for her, as it allows the devs to invest more of her power in other aspects of her kit (such as the vision-granting Dagger she's getting on the PTR).Looking for more of my work? I just released a huge new article detailing mobility creep and my thoughts about how to combat it! That article is located here. Hope to see you again next time!