Oooooooh, I just noticed there were actually 2 drops on Jump Assault population.

1) Jump unit Nerf, EHP Pen Revamp. ~23 Feb
2) Jump Assault Health buff. ( Powerfist attack speed and clang nerf. ) ~4 Mar

lul.

Cool data to look at and thanks for the way it was presented, very easy to read.

I hope the teams that use this data consider making changes to support more aesymmetry. Based on what you have provided all the factions are playing the same class structures.

Personally I'd like to see "melee" centric factions have 40% be ground + air assaults, cough orks/chaos. Improving Ork melee animations and their mid tier weapon options would be a good start!

Go Go Aspiring Sorcerers, keep aspiring to.. to uuhm.. uhh.. ya know just.. maybe just sit down over there for a bit looking a bit punch drunk

@vulpeslagopus - gotta re-up that K/D chart, would love to see it

Tactical's fill a required role. Without them you can't win. This creates scenarios where good players who would rather play other classes will choose to play a Tactical role to make sure the job gets done. This alone is enough to skew the stats in favour of Tactical.

Tacticals are also the most flexible class in the game, they are good at attack and defense, decent at long range, and close quarters. Most people who play tactical will probably find themselves in very few situations where they feel weak or less useful - which is a scenario Jetpack, and Support Classes find themselves in (for different reasons).

I am not surprised Tactical are played so much, and I don't think it is unwarranted that they be the most popular class role; in fact I dare say it is by design that they are the most populous class on the field.

Comparing Sorcerers to Warlocks is interesting. It pretty much shows that while both classes seem similar on paper; Warlocks are more popular because their role is greatly supported via defensive and utility powers. While Sorcerer powers are relatively bellow average or have special requirements which weaken the class overall (cough Mark of Tzeentch).

Warlocks have more freedom in choosing their loadouts (even if some are sub-optimal), while Sorcerers are required to double down with a single deity (often for a single power since the offensive powers are pretty meh) or rough it out with default powers.

I honestly haven't touched Sorcerer much since 1.3 and I played it a fair bit prior. It definitely feels like they have very few good choices for support powers and none (except maybe force) for offensive that are worth the cost.

Hi, stats guy!

I'm a big fan of math, facts and numbers, so I love your field!

However, one issue I've always had with your presentations like these are that they are very much geared toward being presentations that experts would find useful.

The numbers seem important, but because I don't really understand game balance too well, it comes across as a lot of information that I don't know how to interpret.

If I may use an example, you are likely familiar with the XKCD comic. One of the biggest appeals of that comic is that the creator finds ways to explain the significance of the graphs and statistics presented in the comic, in ways that don't feel patronizing at all. It is truly a skilled and possibly unequaled approach to explaining science to the public, and I will not fault you if you are unable to accomplish what I am about to ask, because frankly, I could not do it myself and few people could.

Would it be possible to summarize the conclusion for us, specifically what these relative values indicate to you about game balance?

Now, to answer your question,

"Question for you: what do you think is the best team composition in terms of heavies, support classes, dudes that can capture points, etc...?"

Personally, I do not worry about what my teammates choose to play. I assume that they are fully capable of making their own decision about what they should play at any given moment, and I do not pretend that I know better than they, what would be best for them to play.

So I will speak only to my own preferences.

I strongly prefer to play healers in shooter games. And I think the reason why I prefer to do that is worth explaining.

A short summary is that I am bad at aiming and prefer roles where I can be useful without needing to aim, but there is a lot behind that reality that most people disregard as unimportant because they consider circumstances and motivations to be irrelevant.

I am bad at aiming because of a problem with my reflexes. A medication I take impairs them so severely that I find it difficult to get my crosshairs on a moving target. It even affects my ability to move my mouse properly - I move the mouse too far, constantly, because my reflexes delay the response time between my decision to stop moving the mouse, and the time my hand stops moving. With a moving target, this makes it frustratingly impossible to hit them. It causes unusually high amounts of friendly fire because I can't stop myself from pushing/holding LMB in time to avoid hitting friendlies.

It increases to an unmanageable degree with weapons with very, very low rates of fire. Sniper weapons, typically. Semi-auto weapons are almost as bad, because they require multiple LMB clicks, and my reflexes delay those too. It's less of an issue with full-auto weapons, because with those I can hold LMB down (holding it down takes reflexes out of the equation) and do my best to walk the crosshairs onto the target.

In my statistics in other games, this creates seemingly-impossible things, like a 13% accuracy rate with a sniper character, but a 44% accuracy rate with a healer characters full-auto pistol. I can get a higher percentage of rounds on target with a minigun than a sniper rifle.

Back to the point, because of the high amount of friendly fire and the reduced effectiveness at killing, I feel very useless with shooting characters. I feel like a detriment to my team, and I get very, very discouraged.

But... healer characters almost never require good aim. They have very forgiving targeting mechanics, because they are essentially allowed to automatically connect because of the abstract concept that no one would avoid being healed, so just don't require good aim.

Healers tend to be in short supply as well in shooter games. Rarer still are healers who prefer to heal and do their best to be good at it. Rarer still are healers who do not get upset when their teammates fail to protect them. Rarer still are players who go for the objective above all else. Rarer still are players who don't consider their statistics to be important enough to affect their gameplay. Rarer still are healers who do not allow personal disagreements to affect triage decisions.

I am all of those things and more.

In Overwatch PvP, I almost exclusively play healers. And frankly, my teammates love me. The amounts of praise and adoration showered on me after matches is very welcoming, considering how I am ordinarily treated by strangers on the Internet. I feel that when I play a healer, I am a very viable asset to each and every team I find myself on.

Now, here's the difficult part.

That medication I take? It's Risperdal. The side effects from it have caused me to become permanently disabled. I'll spare you the sad story of my life, but the relevant part is that I honestly do prefer to play in a pick-up group put together by a random matchmaker, and barely speak to any of my teammates, than in an organized group that coordinates effectively over voice communications.

It's not that I don't value working as a team, or that I have a disregard for the value of coordination.

It's that it's hard to have fun in a video game when I am physically shaking from an amount of anxiety ordinarily seen in scenes in Hollywood movies where someone is about to die and is terrified enough that they piss themselves (see: Gladiator).

I'll describe the combination of factors that organized teamplay has on me that made organized raiding in WoW with a friendly guild that was perfect for me, the worst anxiety-producing thing I have ever lived through.

1. Because I am part of an organized group of individuals, there are expectations of me. These are expectations I easily fulfill, but simply being subject to those expectations is sufficient to provoke anxiety. We are not talking about reality, we are talking about an irrational thing my brain does that makes no sense to me but which I cannot stop it from doing.

2. Voice communications. This is the worst form of communication imaginable for me. It is real-time with verbal speech, so I cannot carefully consider my words, but it is without seeing the person I am talking to, so I have no idea what they are doing, and thus I lack any capability to pick up on body language or social cues. I have an identical problem with telephones.

(Text communication, such as that used extensively on the Internet, is massively comforting for my anxiety problems. It provides a delay, so I can consider what I say, and what others say. I can re-read things. I can go back and check things. I can look things up before replying. That delay is immensely important for me. The ability to simply leave is sometimes useful, but it's not a thing where I can just shut off the computer to avoid harassment, because it is my only link to other people, and shutting it off means I am alone for a while. This is why there is a disproportionately high number of people on the Internet who have significant social anxiety problems, and also, it would be helpful if the general public stopped trying to make it worse for us, thanks, because we don't have anywhere else to go.)

I hope this information helps your statistical analysis in some way. I'm sorry if it was a little bit detailed and in-depth, and I'm especially sorry that it will probably create a flame war regarding social anxiety. If you have further questions, just send me a PM.

So basically they have designed tacticals to be played at 40-45% of the entire playerbase?

And then they continually increase utility to the class with items such as auspex grenades, grav guns, +20 penetration to boltguns and new attachments, and then nerf supports and JPAs to the ground?

So, let's see here - they have the most versatility, the most utility, and capture keys, and they need more utility and more tools why when they are already being played at a ratio of greater than 40% relative to all other classes?

It certainly is by design that they are the most populous class on the field. Why even bother with anything else. A reasonable person would infer that that is a design problem.

I'm still puzzling over why only specific classes can capture objectives.

I mean, yeah, that's how it works in the TTG, but... that's the TTG.

I don't agree with all the choices the developers make, for instance I think the new Auspex Grenade was probably something better suited to the Apothecary (as a support item for a support class, similar to support powers Warlocks have). Somehow though I don't think many Apothecary players would give up their support healing beacon's for Auspex Grenades. I don't understand the inclusion of the Gravity gun in Eternal Crusade. It was never a major part of the TT when I played, and if it existed at all was probably a relic quality weapon reserved only for special characters.

I do agree that Melee weapons should have a greater variety in attachments, to help players customise their play style better. That doesn't mean I think the ranged attachments are over the top. Not a single heavy weapon apart from the Gravity Cannon (I think) has weapon attachments, when they get them I expect those weapons to be re-balanced and the costs to be adjusted with the expectations that weapon mods will be taken.

The Bolter pen change was part of a universal change to all weapons, everything that had 80 pen now has 100. It was part of a decision to normalize pen values into two categories; Normal (100) and Powerful (120). You will note that some weapons which had 140 pen now have 120. Eldar had their base toughness brought up to 100 as part of the normalization and to keep their "fragility" in line they had their health and armour reduced. The net result of this change was that all factions now take slightly more damage from all sources, and high pen weapons directly the toughness gained through upgraded armour. Any weapon with over 120 pen is basically designed to be used in an anti-vehicle role. This change also applied to all 80 pen Melee weapons (like I said it was a universal change).

• Why even bother with anything else. A reasonable person would infer that that is a design problem

I'll tell you, and it might not be obvious right now because the game's balance is in a state of flux but the answer should be simple; because there are circumstances where certain classes put into the right situations outperform Tactical classes. Line up a bunch of Devastators on the walls of a Fortress, or have JPA's storm a point from the second floor when the first floor entrances are being spammed with heavy weapons.

I, uh...

Can you tell me how you feel about that being the reason for Tactical classes ( :: vomits with rage at that phrase :: ) continuing to receive seemingly unending power increases?