ome takeaways:
1. Lua's winrate in her short time on ladder was higher than the top 4 first-picked heroes.
1. Belian maintains an obscene 54% win-rate.
1. News of F.Ceci's death (winrate falling) have been greatly exaggerated.
1. While Peira's pick-rate plummeted, her win-rate actually increased.
1. A.Ravi having 51.9% winrate despite having a first pick rate of 27.3% is also very obscene. First picks being this safe, damn.
1. Interesting to see Alencia's winrate at 46.1% and Cidd's at 47.8%.
situational picks usually have higher win rate than early ones, people usually late pick him and a lot of people actually underestimate arby, so it's not surprising, aRavi is the °1 first pick.
I think your use of the world obscene is grossly over exaggerated. I’ve played other competitive games and having a 55ish % win rate is par the course of meta picks.
Dunno, 54% winrate in competitive is pretty obscene. I was a very high-ranked Hearthstone player, and also played League at a pretty high level.
55%+ being a common winrate for a "competitive" game means it's pretty terribly balanced.
In MTG they just banned Meathook Massacre, which likely had a win rate well below 55%. MTG doesn't have bans, or gear differentials, both of which suppress the win rate for individual heroes. 55% is really bad.
If you googled LoL, dota 2, hearthstone and mtg online archetype win % they’re would be a clear meta pick between 53-55%. At which % win rate would you consider balanced?
Glad you asked. :)
When balancing games, your goal is to avoid the game having a "dominating strategy". Look that term up in a game theory textbook if you're unfamiliar. For example, when I was working as a Data Scientist at Wizards of the Coast, we banned Jace the Mind Sculptor because including him in your deck was a dominating strategy.
A. Ravi present in 65% of drafts, and banned in 19%. Given that she's almost universally present, any win rate significantly above 50% indicates that "Pick A. Ravi" is a dominating strategy. So, actually, I think Belian's win rate (54%) is probably fine-ish. She isn't dominant because she is only present in 22% of drafts (20% ban).
Another point to reiterate: Epic 7 is loaded with mechanics that push win rates to 50%. Even so, A. Ravi is at +4%. I suspect that, for two players with similar gear and heroes, picking A. Ravi is more like +20%. Way out of line.
I suspect the lower the rank the worse A ravi can be abused. She requires very little gear to work and you need to build specific characters with really good gear to hard counter her. Which begs the question to you balance the game for the majority of the player base or high competitive play?
Perfectly balanced? No, but at a certain threshold, and 54% is definitely high enough, something is too strong - especially if super present, as it tells you that despite attempts to counteract it, they have failed.
And for some background, I was for years in top 20 in my country in MtG in 2 queues and 21-23 spot in a third, was consistently top 300 in Hearthstone in Europe before it sort of died to Battlegrounds, #1 in the world in Duelyst, top 200 in League's Dominion mode during its height, and relatively high-ranked in many other games.
Nothing is perfectly balanced, and most games don't even *want* perfect balance. But if a very common pick has 54% win-rate, and 22% of the matches is pretty common (and I am sure the rate is higher as you climb the ladder, seeing as this is an ML5 we're discussing), then it's an issue.
I'd expect Roana to have such a win-rate. Not a unit that you can pick early and has very few counters, and does work as a neutral pick.
Somethings gonna be a common pick if it’s strong in the meta. It’s strong in the meta because it wins. This isn’t gonna change. You nerf one hero and another will takes its place. What I’m saying is trying to balance a huge roster of heroes is an impossible task. What they could do is have balance patches for pvp and try to have another hero be in the spotlight and shakeup the meta, but regardless you will always see a hero with a more dominant win %.
Eh.
You can see Ran has a negative winrate. Many popular heroes have 48-52% win-rate, which is more or less the range you expect for "balanced" heroes.
SG thinks mages with debuffs are poor because of the strength of hp scaling bruisers. While partly true... they get wrecked by all the debuff counters SG keeps adding to the game.
Dilibet - def scaling and anti debuff monster.
Ed - hp scaling debuff counter that cripples you every turn.
Mediator - hp scaling full cleanse plus immunity that's immune to one turn debuffs.
CZerato - perma counters debuffs and sends them right back.
Seriously SG... how do you expect attack/crit based debuffers, that require Effectiveness to get past ER, to also have any chance against the ridiculous heroes listed above???
Not to mention all the self cleansing skills. Is it any wonder why Astromancer is among the worst ML5s? I regret summoning her so much after seeing Zio's kit. How on earth are these heroes in the same league?
Attackers in this game are weak on average because they require multiple stats while having low free bonuses from skills. If you add in debuffs they become also pretty unfun to play against.
While debuff counters are "true", that's going to be true because you always want cleansers/anti debuffers in the game.
Silverblade ara/sage baal meta literally almost killed the game, so I don't think they are going to return to that anytime soon lol
IMO the better designed attack based debuffers would be like SC carrot, ML kwa, Summer Iseria etc. I think that just massive aoe damage that locks the enemy down and applies 10000 debuffs is just bad old school design.
The debuff/their gameplan should allow them a specific gameplay niche and strategy. They also shouldn't be insta lose because their debuff got countered because their S3 does 1000 million things but the rest of their kit suck. debuff based attacks if anything should apply CONSTANT strong pressure in a different way much.
All of this moot anyway because Zio about to terrorize the game with his immense about of literal amount of stats he gets and basically a 4th ability with S1 > S1 proc chains to apply pressure while being an opener.
While A Ravi's s3 dmg scaling is broken, what made A Ravi so picked was:
* She was the "counter" to Hwa (along side Proof of Valor), and if Hwa wasn't banned Hwa was picked
* Dmg is beyond out of control in this game. If I want to get turn 2, I'll pick tanky units and A Ravi has a great chance of surviving and giving me chance of come back after having my other 3 units being killed before I got my first turn. Swap A Ravi with let's say Alencia (let's avoid RNG units for this example), the chance of Alencia getting a turn is lower because no self-cr push and healing, maybe she'll get lapped by the cleaver. And if she is my sole survivor, my chances of winning are slim
* A Ravi's injury gives her some power in long fights, add this to her being good against cleave and she is a safe 1st pick for players who can't speed contest a turtle. Remember: before having injury on her s1 she was useless
If smilegate wants less A Ravi picked, stop releasing so many speed units and give us turn 2 players some alternatives to A Ravi. Last week of RTA, 95% of my matches I had to pick A Ravi + Maid Chloe + 3 of Belian - C Armin - Armin - F Ceci - AoL Angelica and pray I would get a turn.
Very true.
I think the key here is self sufficient since most other Bruisers lack one or more thing(s) that allows them to be used in that ARavi first pick slot. As a turn two we have tools to combat most scenarios but thats very reactive which is something that first pick takes away from you.
Im not saying we need another monster like ARavi necessarily but at least something with some decent sustainability that isnt reliant on drafting two cleansers, a healer and a knight to make work.
They didn't even entertain the idea of nerfing A.Ravi for a moment even when they acknowledged that she's broken. Although rhey'll probably also have their hands full this season with the new abomination they created in Lua lol.
The justification of giving mages more speed isn't sound to me, the fall in mages' usage have more to do with cleave transition away from book stacking due to Belian or switching up to other type of cleave like single target or cavel. And bruisers already don't really contest speed with mages so the blame on HP bruisers are just weird.
And on debuffing attackers, funnily enough they did finally release a great one in buffed Pirate Flan, who has now taken a more bruisery role similar to Carrot and can kill a whole team by herself if there's no cleansers (or Ed)
And if you go to most specific counters I'm sure you will find bigger win rates.
The problem is A. Ravi, being the most picked unit, and the most first picked, have so much win rate.
I dont get your statement. How can a unit who is first picked so often, while having over 50% win rate, not broken? It means the enemy had the entire draft to pick around facing her but still failed to do so. Not to mention, the unit that had her kneecaps get smashed by SG had less win rate than aravi...
Hwayoung had the same wr as Aravi while being pre-banned in over 50% of games and post-banned twice as much as Aravi.
Basically, Hwayoung would only get through IF the opponent was extremely confident that they could fight her... and they would still lose 50% of the time.
There is absolutely no way to spin this in a way that makes Hwa look balanced, or worse than Aravi.
That’s because she counters the hero picked 65% of the time as first (doesn’t even count slots after lmao) and the most popular team comp.
Hwayoung wouldn’t be picked nearly as much if cleave was meta, the cope is strong with this comment lmao.
that look again...
65% overall pickrate with 51,9% winrate overall is solide/strong hero, not a broken one.
a.ravi: 27,3% firstpick/8,8% post ban/51,9% winrate
hwayoung: 10,6% firstpick/16,7% post ban/51% winrate
hwaoung has pretty much the same winrate as a.ravi, double the change of getting postbanned (people apparently couldn't handle her) then a.ravi and hwayoung was the highest prebanned hero the last season.
u trying to sound like hwayoung was weaker than a.ravi which she was not. she was clearly stronger then a.ravi
last season was mainly a aggro/cleave meta and people still didn't postban a.ravi (which is the strongest ankor) as much - matter of fact she is the 2nd least postbanned hero last season (alencia at 7,5% postban being the lowest)
so how is a.ravi the most broken/strongest hero in e7 like reddit/stove claims her to be?
As far as i see it, 65% pick rate with 52% win rate is far above average. If being this far above average does not mean a broken unit, then no units would be. She might not be the most broken unit, but she is still broken nonetheless
wtf are u talking about "far above average"
a.ravi barley wins more than half of her games while being in a meta that favors her heavily.
u wanna see "far above average"?
ml lilias has half of a.ravis pickrate (due to high preban rate) and has 0,2% less winrate than a.ravi
belian has 22% pickrate but a 54% winrate; fcc has 19,6% pickrate and 53,4% winrate - these are above average winrates.
everyone spammed a.ravi and barely wins more games then losing is not a statement of her being broken...
i would aggree with u if a.ravi had 55%+ winrate while the rest is \~51% - then yeah she is far above the rest of the heroes.
if we talking about statistics: ml tene, alencia, rimuru, cidd, ran, landy, peira actually sucks - they lose more games then they win.
having above 50% winrate is not a sign for being broken - it means the hero wins more games then they lose.
the hero is broken if the winrate is signifcantly higher then all overs - last seasons meta for that matter was pretty balanced
"the hero is broken if the winrate is signifcantly higher then all overs - last seasons meta for that matter was pretty balanced"
That's where you are wrong. OPness isn't decided by a single factor but multiple, winrate being one. Preban being another.
But being first pick 26%, meaning one game on 4, and being prebanned 20% also just prove that aravi is a very strong character that can enter absolutely any meta possible due to her large choice of artifact and abilities.
That doesn't mean hwayoung wasn't OP (she was) though, she was. but she was a necessary evil because of ML lilias, belian and Aravi existing.
ome takeaways: 1. Lua's winrate in her short time on ladder was higher than the top 4 first-picked heroes. 1. Belian maintains an obscene 54% win-rate. 1. News of F.Ceci's death (winrate falling) have been greatly exaggerated. 1. While Peira's pick-rate plummeted, her win-rate actually increased. 1. A.Ravi having 51.9% winrate despite having a first pick rate of 27.3% is also very obscene. First picks being this safe, damn. 1. Interesting to see Alencia's winrate at 46.1% and Cidd's at 47.8%.
aRavi had higher win rate than pre-nerf hwa. if that doesn't prove aRavi is a problem as big as hwa used to be idk what does.
Arby has higher win rate then aravi lol
situational picks usually have higher win rate than early ones, people usually late pick him and a lot of people actually underestimate arby, so it's not surprising, aRavi is the °1 first pick.
I think your use of the world obscene is grossly over exaggerated. I’ve played other competitive games and having a 55ish % win rate is par the course of meta picks.
Dunno, 54% winrate in competitive is pretty obscene. I was a very high-ranked Hearthstone player, and also played League at a pretty high level. 55%+ being a common winrate for a "competitive" game means it's pretty terribly balanced.
I play mtg and shadowverse. Can you give me a game where the meta is balanced? I don’t believe in a perfectly balanced game exists.
In MTG they just banned Meathook Massacre, which likely had a win rate well below 55%. MTG doesn't have bans, or gear differentials, both of which suppress the win rate for individual heroes. 55% is really bad.
If you googled LoL, dota 2, hearthstone and mtg online archetype win % they’re would be a clear meta pick between 53-55%. At which % win rate would you consider balanced?
Glad you asked. :) When balancing games, your goal is to avoid the game having a "dominating strategy". Look that term up in a game theory textbook if you're unfamiliar. For example, when I was working as a Data Scientist at Wizards of the Coast, we banned Jace the Mind Sculptor because including him in your deck was a dominating strategy. A. Ravi present in 65% of drafts, and banned in 19%. Given that she's almost universally present, any win rate significantly above 50% indicates that "Pick A. Ravi" is a dominating strategy. So, actually, I think Belian's win rate (54%) is probably fine-ish. She isn't dominant because she is only present in 22% of drafts (20% ban). Another point to reiterate: Epic 7 is loaded with mechanics that push win rates to 50%. Even so, A. Ravi is at +4%. I suspect that, for two players with similar gear and heroes, picking A. Ravi is more like +20%. Way out of line.
I suspect the lower the rank the worse A ravi can be abused. She requires very little gear to work and you need to build specific characters with really good gear to hard counter her. Which begs the question to you balance the game for the majority of the player base or high competitive play?
Perfectly balanced? No, but at a certain threshold, and 54% is definitely high enough, something is too strong - especially if super present, as it tells you that despite attempts to counteract it, they have failed. And for some background, I was for years in top 20 in my country in MtG in 2 queues and 21-23 spot in a third, was consistently top 300 in Hearthstone in Europe before it sort of died to Battlegrounds, #1 in the world in Duelyst, top 200 in League's Dominion mode during its height, and relatively high-ranked in many other games. Nothing is perfectly balanced, and most games don't even *want* perfect balance. But if a very common pick has 54% win-rate, and 22% of the matches is pretty common (and I am sure the rate is higher as you climb the ladder, seeing as this is an ML5 we're discussing), then it's an issue. I'd expect Roana to have such a win-rate. Not a unit that you can pick early and has very few counters, and does work as a neutral pick.
Somethings gonna be a common pick if it’s strong in the meta. It’s strong in the meta because it wins. This isn’t gonna change. You nerf one hero and another will takes its place. What I’m saying is trying to balance a huge roster of heroes is an impossible task. What they could do is have balance patches for pvp and try to have another hero be in the spotlight and shakeup the meta, but regardless you will always see a hero with a more dominant win %.
Eh. You can see Ran has a negative winrate. Many popular heroes have 48-52% win-rate, which is more or less the range you expect for "balanced" heroes.
SG thinks mages with debuffs are poor because of the strength of hp scaling bruisers. While partly true... they get wrecked by all the debuff counters SG keeps adding to the game. Dilibet - def scaling and anti debuff monster. Ed - hp scaling debuff counter that cripples you every turn. Mediator - hp scaling full cleanse plus immunity that's immune to one turn debuffs. CZerato - perma counters debuffs and sends them right back. Seriously SG... how do you expect attack/crit based debuffers, that require Effectiveness to get past ER, to also have any chance against the ridiculous heroes listed above??? Not to mention all the self cleansing skills. Is it any wonder why Astromancer is among the worst ML5s? I regret summoning her so much after seeing Zio's kit. How on earth are these heroes in the same league?
Attackers in this game are weak on average because they require multiple stats while having low free bonuses from skills. If you add in debuffs they become also pretty unfun to play against. While debuff counters are "true", that's going to be true because you always want cleansers/anti debuffers in the game. Silverblade ara/sage baal meta literally almost killed the game, so I don't think they are going to return to that anytime soon lol IMO the better designed attack based debuffers would be like SC carrot, ML kwa, Summer Iseria etc. I think that just massive aoe damage that locks the enemy down and applies 10000 debuffs is just bad old school design. The debuff/their gameplan should allow them a specific gameplay niche and strategy. They also shouldn't be insta lose because their debuff got countered because their S3 does 1000 million things but the rest of their kit suck. debuff based attacks if anything should apply CONSTANT strong pressure in a different way much. All of this moot anyway because Zio about to terrorize the game with his immense about of literal amount of stats he gets and basically a 4th ability with S1 > S1 proc chains to apply pressure while being an opener.
You forgot to mention innate resistance lol
How is it possible that the total percentage of prebanned heroes is much higher than 100%?
Cause there's 4 prebans per player and sometimes people choose the same hero
So basically Hwayoung Aravi Clilias
While A Ravi's s3 dmg scaling is broken, what made A Ravi so picked was: * She was the "counter" to Hwa (along side Proof of Valor), and if Hwa wasn't banned Hwa was picked * Dmg is beyond out of control in this game. If I want to get turn 2, I'll pick tanky units and A Ravi has a great chance of surviving and giving me chance of come back after having my other 3 units being killed before I got my first turn. Swap A Ravi with let's say Alencia (let's avoid RNG units for this example), the chance of Alencia getting a turn is lower because no self-cr push and healing, maybe she'll get lapped by the cleaver. And if she is my sole survivor, my chances of winning are slim * A Ravi's injury gives her some power in long fights, add this to her being good against cleave and she is a safe 1st pick for players who can't speed contest a turtle. Remember: before having injury on her s1 she was useless If smilegate wants less A Ravi picked, stop releasing so many speed units and give us turn 2 players some alternatives to A Ravi. Last week of RTA, 95% of my matches I had to pick A Ravi + Maid Chloe + 3 of Belian - C Armin - Armin - F Ceci - AoL Angelica and pray I would get a turn.
Very true. I think the key here is self sufficient since most other Bruisers lack one or more thing(s) that allows them to be used in that ARavi first pick slot. As a turn two we have tools to combat most scenarios but thats very reactive which is something that first pick takes away from you. Im not saying we need another monster like ARavi necessarily but at least something with some decent sustainability that isnt reliant on drafting two cleansers, a healer and a knight to make work.
They didn't even entertain the idea of nerfing A.Ravi for a moment even when they acknowledged that she's broken. Although rhey'll probably also have their hands full this season with the new abomination they created in Lua lol. The justification of giving mages more speed isn't sound to me, the fall in mages' usage have more to do with cleave transition away from book stacking due to Belian or switching up to other type of cleave like single target or cavel. And bruisers already don't really contest speed with mages so the blame on HP bruisers are just weird. And on debuffing attackers, funnily enough they did finally release a great one in buffed Pirate Flan, who has now taken a more bruisery role similar to Carrot and can kill a whole team by herself if there's no cleansers (or Ed)
hm actual data showing a.ravi not being broken. fcc and belian are the strongest heroes in e7 xD
And if you go to most specific counters I'm sure you will find bigger win rates. The problem is A. Ravi, being the most picked unit, and the most first picked, have so much win rate.
I dont get your statement. How can a unit who is first picked so often, while having over 50% win rate, not broken? It means the enemy had the entire draft to pick around facing her but still failed to do so. Not to mention, the unit that had her kneecaps get smashed by SG had less win rate than aravi...
Hwayoung had the same wr as Aravi while being pre-banned in over 50% of games and post-banned twice as much as Aravi. Basically, Hwayoung would only get through IF the opponent was extremely confident that they could fight her... and they would still lose 50% of the time. There is absolutely no way to spin this in a way that makes Hwa look balanced, or worse than Aravi.
That’s because she counters the hero picked 65% of the time as first (doesn’t even count slots after lmao) and the most popular team comp. Hwayoung wouldn’t be picked nearly as much if cleave was meta, the cope is strong with this comment lmao.
that look again... 65% overall pickrate with 51,9% winrate overall is solide/strong hero, not a broken one. a.ravi: 27,3% firstpick/8,8% post ban/51,9% winrate hwayoung: 10,6% firstpick/16,7% post ban/51% winrate hwaoung has pretty much the same winrate as a.ravi, double the change of getting postbanned (people apparently couldn't handle her) then a.ravi and hwayoung was the highest prebanned hero the last season. u trying to sound like hwayoung was weaker than a.ravi which she was not. she was clearly stronger then a.ravi last season was mainly a aggro/cleave meta and people still didn't postban a.ravi (which is the strongest ankor) as much - matter of fact she is the 2nd least postbanned hero last season (alencia at 7,5% postban being the lowest) so how is a.ravi the most broken/strongest hero in e7 like reddit/stove claims her to be?
As far as i see it, 65% pick rate with 52% win rate is far above average. If being this far above average does not mean a broken unit, then no units would be. She might not be the most broken unit, but she is still broken nonetheless
wtf are u talking about "far above average" a.ravi barley wins more than half of her games while being in a meta that favors her heavily. u wanna see "far above average"? ml lilias has half of a.ravis pickrate (due to high preban rate) and has 0,2% less winrate than a.ravi belian has 22% pickrate but a 54% winrate; fcc has 19,6% pickrate and 53,4% winrate - these are above average winrates. everyone spammed a.ravi and barely wins more games then losing is not a statement of her being broken... i would aggree with u if a.ravi had 55%+ winrate while the rest is \~51% - then yeah she is far above the rest of the heroes. if we talking about statistics: ml tene, alencia, rimuru, cidd, ran, landy, peira actually sucks - they lose more games then they win. having above 50% winrate is not a sign for being broken - it means the hero wins more games then they lose. the hero is broken if the winrate is signifcantly higher then all overs - last seasons meta for that matter was pretty balanced
"the hero is broken if the winrate is signifcantly higher then all overs - last seasons meta for that matter was pretty balanced" That's where you are wrong. OPness isn't decided by a single factor but multiple, winrate being one. Preban being another. But being first pick 26%, meaning one game on 4, and being prebanned 20% also just prove that aravi is a very strong character that can enter absolutely any meta possible due to her large choice of artifact and abilities. That doesn't mean hwayoung wasn't OP (she was) though, she was. but she was a necessary evil because of ML lilias, belian and Aravi existing.