(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 blue/orange 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%. Blue bars shown above the line are win rates that are above 50%, and orange 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 blue and orange 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.Yrel's design requires a greater level of finesse and practice to get good with. It takes some practice to gain a good understanding of how to use her trait for maximum effect in each scenario she's involved in (rather than only using it for max power on W). However, it is clear that she isn't going to reach a balanced state on her own, either. I've practiced with her extensively and I think there's a few factors in her design that can be improved upon. I feel that her general balance isn't all that awful, but certain aspects of her kit require tweaks to make them work better for her.First, I think that her core damage is too low. The devs expressed that she was aimed as a tank or off-lane role, but she lacks reliable damage to provide that off-lane pressure. And because of the time it takes to charge to full, Vindication should be more reliable as a form of damage for Yrel. I think a good way to bring her into prominence in that off-lane role would be to have Vindication provide increased baseline damage vs non-hero targets. This would help her clear and off-lane sustain, allowing her to perform much better in a solo lane scenario.Second, it is my opinion that Avenging Wrath is rather weak overall. The leap's animation is locked to a static 0.625 seconds in duration regardless of how far she jumps, meaning that it takes over 2 seconds to execute a full-distance leap, much longer than it takes other tanks to move. That leaves you very vulnerable to roots and stuns at any point during this large window. Its maximum distance is equal to Muradin (8) but takes twice as long to execute the full animation, and other tanks have greater reach (Anub is over 12, Blaze is 9, etc) while also still being faster than Avenging Wrath's windup and animation combined. The comparison gets worse when you consider that both Anub and Blaze also get stuns on their mobility skills, and Yrel only gets slows. Put together, it makes Avenging Wrath feel like a much weaker mobility tool than other tanks have available to them. I can understand why this is, given the increasing distaste for high-mobility heroes (including my own article on the subject), but if she's going to have a mobility skill in her base kit, then it needs to provide a clear benefit. And as most of her skills reduce her speed, this is essentially her one tool for getting into fights "quickly", so it needs to be reliable in that regard. I feel that the animation on her leap is the biggest problem, and should be reworked to be shorter when executing short leaps. I also believe that her leap may need greater reach to help make up for its otherwise slow windup, or perhaps other adjustments.Third, Yrel's talents need some further tweaking. Obviously, the big standout is Aegis of Light, which only provides a benefit if your leap lands in the middle of your team. This is clunky for a tank who is trying to act as the initiator, and if the current win rates are anything to go by, it's underperforming because of this odd design. I feel this talent should adjusted to provide its armor to allied heroes in both the starting and landing zones, with perhaps a nerf to its overall strength to compensate (if necessary). But I feel that her talent issues go beyond that, in that some of her talents seemingly contradict her core design philosophy. In discussions about the hero, the devs have suggested that the design intent was to encourage players to use some finesse with the channels, not always channeling to full but instead popping them early as needed to achieve more immediate effects or to stop a potential interrupt. And yet many of her talents will only provide their benefits at maximum charge, making these talents essentially "useless" most of the time unless you risk constant interrupts to trigger their effects. There are two talents like this at Lvl 7, and two at Lvl 13. These talents should be rebalanced to provide scaling benefits based on charge time, just like the base abilities themselves, so that they are always providing at least some benefit at any given time.There may be further adjustments needed beyond this, but I personally would prefer to see these changes done first. They address many of the core issues that I feel make her feel "clunky" and less functional as a tank and off-lane bruiser, and would make her perform better in both roles.In my June 6th article, Arthas had a 1.7 p.p. drop, which did not exceed the margin of error at that time. For this article, however, Arthas did exceed the margin of error....but he went in the opposite direction, climbing 3.1 p.p. from last week. Because of this, his total shift in the last two weeks was +1.4 p.p., which doesn't exceed the margin of error for the three-week period (±1.72%), it seems very likely that this week is merely a recovery from last week rather than anything worth note. This also helps drive home a point I've made before, namely that most of the "radical" shifts in hero win rates tend to occur during actual patches, rather than just happening naturally on their own.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!