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People love to day that armies like Eldar and Tau are 'cheesy', 'broken' or 'OP' but according to Torrent of Fire Eldar's WR is 55.1% and Tau's is 52.8%.



So here's my question; how is a 50% win rate bad? Surely winning 50% of your games is very balanced so maybe the problem lies with the underperforming armies instead.

50% of games against ALL other races. Yes, people say Tau and Eldar are OP. Although to be fair, Tau have been toned down by the new edition and the Tau hate is a remnant of then.

The reason these are so OP is usually only down to a few core units of special rules, without these they could be considered balanced.

**For the Record** I'm interested in those Dark Eldar results. I know it's a small sample group, but it's still rather cool that they are doing so well and i'd love to see their lists.

Maybe because combined that means they have a 97.9% win rate?!*










*I know that's not how maths really works, this is a joke.

If eldar play against each other and one wins and one loses for example, that will count as a 50% win rate. If there are more eldar players than other races on average (which there are), that means those eldar vs eldar games will skew the result closer to the 50% line as there will be more battles where there is a 50% outcome so brings the average closer to 50%. What also exacerbates this fact is that the game will be counted as 2 games for the purpose of the stats equalling 50%.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If there were an equal amount of games per army, the stats would be more reliable.

That graph is a bit limited in data, it's better to refer to their summary of seventh, which you can find on the right of the website (at least top 4) and more if you pay (lol feth you ToF I'm not paying for that).

One very important thing about such statistics is to remember that they cover competitive tournaments in the USA, a meta that has allowed IK and dataslates / formations / etc. for a while now.

That means that it may not be accurate for other metas (probably rather accurate though) and mostly that the players represented are competitive and even likely to be playing FOTM - as evidenced by the number of players in Eldar, Tau, Tyranids which haven't always been that high, and surely aren't outside of the ToF statistics.

Also inquisition is at 16.7%, despite having some of the cheesiest options in the game, so it shows how reliable that is.

What is the mediana of wins. looking at avarge wins can be skewed.

If you have one dude that wins 3 games at 2 other that win 0 games, the avarge is still ~1 win.

Poly Ranger wrote:
If eldar play against each other and one wins and one loses for example, that will count as a 50% win rate. If there are more eldar players than other races on average (which there are)

Will you just read the graph before posting things like that ?

Because on that graph, there's 49 Eldar Victories TOTAL. (it's the beginning of 2015) and 82 Tyranid Victories.

http://www.torrentoffire.com/6499/the-meta-meets-2015

Here's the link to the article.

Part of it is less about the stats and more about the codex itself. At a tourney level, where everyone takes the absolute best from their codex as many times as possible, things seem to balance out a little. Either through crutch units, unforseen combinations or simply a high-powered book, the playing field is rather level. There are a few exceptions, on both ends, but on the whole, the 'upper limit' of what most books can do isn't radically different.

However, some books have units that stand out as being so good, you don't need to really apply any thought beyond googling 'best X list'. For example, the 'best' Eldar list revolves around Serpents, Wraithknights and maybe Seer Councils, all of whom are somewhat 'point and click' units. To build a SM list on par with that, you need to build a specific combo of imabalanced units (GravCents, Tigurius, maybe some allied ICs), which requires far more thought, tactical thinking and luck than the aforementioned spam Eldar list.

Taking it down to a non-competitive level, where you aren't looking to exploit imbalance to the best of your ability, and the issue goes away somewhat, but for a tournament list, the fact some codexes are far easier to build/play at that level is pretty clear indicator that the imbalance is pretty severe. Eldar may only win just over 50% of their games, but I would hazard a guess those wins were far easier to achieve than those of the opponents that beat them the rest of the time, in terms of building the list and playing it.

morgoth wrote:

Poly Ranger wrote:
If eldar play against each other and one wins and one loses for example, that will count as a 50% win rate. If there are more eldar players than other races on average (which there are)

Will you just read the graph before posting things like that ?

Because on that graph, there's 49 Eldar Victories TOTAL. (it's the beginning of 2015) and 82 Tyranid Victories.

I did. Can you read what I posted before you post that?

I'll repeat:
If there are more eldar players than other races ON AVERAGE. I could have used tyranids for my example, I could have used Tau. I didn't. I used Eldar. What's the problem with that? Worried I'm going to mention serpents by any chance?

The problem is eldar have a 60%+ win rate against everything except tau, IK and eldar. The prevalence of those 3 armies keeps any of them from going way above a 55% win rate. ToF has a chart somewhere showing win rate of each race against every other race. Eldar are 50/50 against eldar, tau, necrons and IK. They are 60/40 or better against everyone else.

The complaint is not that they win 50%, but that they play in a way that the opponent doesn't like. That is the real issue.

I have similar issues with Necrons being not-fun to play against.

 Toofast wrote:
The problem is eldar have a 60%+ win rate against everything except tau, IK and eldar. The prevalence of those 3 armies keeps any of them from going way above a 55% win rate. ToF has a chart somewhere showing win rate of each race against every other race. Eldar are 50/50 against eldar, tau, necrons and IK. They are 60/40 or better against everyone else.

I was going to bring this up. But I got ninjaed.

I know in League of Legends (bear with me) when a player has +50% win rate, they move up in rank cause they're good. When a Champion has an overall winrate above 50% (like 52-59%), they usually get nerfed. Any higher and the player is either leagues ahead playing against lowbies, or the champ has a crazy game winning bug. 50% is just about where an army should be, above that i'd say it's a pretty strong army.

 Paradigm wrote:
Part of it is less about the stats and more about the codex itself. At a tourney level, where everyone takes the absolute best from their codex as many times as possible, things seem to balance out a little. Either through crutch units, unforseen combinations or simply a high-powered book, the playing field is rather level. There are a few exceptions, on both ends, but on the whole, the 'upper limit' of what most books can do isn't radically different.

However, some books have units that stand out as being so good, you don't need to really apply any thought beyond googling 'best X list'. For example, the 'best' Eldar list revolves around Serpents, Wraithknights and maybe Seer Councils, all of whom are somewhat 'point and click' units. To build a SM list on par with that, you need to build a specific combo of imabalanced units (GravCents, Tigurius, maybe some allied ICs), which requires far more thought, tactical thinking and luck than the aforementioned spam Eldar list.

Taking it down to a non-competitive level, where you aren't looking to exploit imbalance to the best of your ability, and the issue goes away somewhat, but for a tournament list, the fact some codexes are far easier to build/play at that level is pretty clear indicator that the imbalance is pretty severe. Eldar may only win just over 50% of their games, but I would hazard a guess those wins were far easier to achieve than those of the opponents that beat them the rest of the time, in terms of building the list and playing it.

The load of bull...

First of all, WS Spam is a lot harder to handle than CenturionStar.

Second, nobody plays a Seer Council in v7 because it's garbage.

Third, your vision of the good player playing SM and the bad one playing Eldar is just ridiculous.


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 Toofast wrote:
The problem is eldar have a 60%+ win rate against everything except tau, IK and eldar. The prevalence of those 3 armies keeps any of them from going way above a 55% win rate. ToF has a chart somewhere showing win rate of each race against every other race. Eldar are 50/50 against eldar, tau, necrons and IK. They are 60/40 or better against everyone else.

You are referring to v6, when Eldar had the BeastStar and the SeerStar for all of eleven months.

In other words, you are not well informed.


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 Deafbeats wrote:
I know in League of Legends (bear with me) when a player has +50% win rate, they move up in rank cause they're good. When a Champion has an overall winrate above 50% (like 52-59%), they usually get nerfed. Any higher and the player is either leagues ahead playing against lowbies, or the champ has a crazy game winning bug. 50% is just about where an army should be, above that i'd say it's a pretty strong army.

Then maybe LoL is not a good reference.

Starcraft Brood War would be a much better reference, and in SC:BW, many players had a lot more than 50% win rate.

Because that's how competition is, unless you want to go ahead and call for a nerf on Michael Phelps maybe ?

This is going to be another morgoth rant where he holds his fingers in his ears and sings lalala isn't it? See you in 10 pages guys after we have got the thread back on track after the usual 'serpents are completely balanced' 9 page hijack.

But eldar seem to have a 50% according to this graph only, because they have to face other eldar armies or counters. That doesn't fix the eldar match up for non eldar player in any way.

Poly Ranger wrote:
This is going to be another morgoth rant where he holds his fingers in his ears and sings lalala isn't it? See you in 10 pages guys after we have got the thread back on track after the usual 'serpents are completely balanced' 9 page hijack.

If this is going to be another Wave Serpent debacle, feth it, I'm out.

I think it's clear that Morgoth can't debate this topic in good faith at all. Just don't let him jack the thread.

Haha yeah well if you're winning more than you're losing you're good, if you're even then you're average, and if you lose more than you win, then you'd have some learning to do. I mean that's just a general philosophy I apply to games in general.

Didn't Seer Council win a big tourny a couple of months ago?

 Quickjager wrote:
Didn't Seer Council win a big tourny a couple of months ago?

Oooh i'd like to see that list, I just played it and failed miserably.

 Quickjager wrote:
Didn't Seer Council win a big tourny a couple of months ago?

Anything's possible but it's really unlikely.

It would require quite a lot of luck to pull that off.


Similar things have happened though, like Thomas Donslund losing with his Iyanden BeastStar against a weaker Eldar list at the NOVA Open.

 Deafbeats wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
Didn't Seer Council win a big tourny a couple of months ago?

Oooh i'd like to see that list, I just played it and failed miserably.

Nvm was an old article.

 Quickjager wrote:

 Deafbeats wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
Didn't Seer Council win a big tourny a couple of months ago?

Oooh i'd like to see that list, I just played it and failed miserably.

Nvm was an old article.

Well, back in those days, it was so powerful that Eldar players would pick it over the BeastStar or Wraith Knights or more Wave Serpents.

When v7 dropped, the Psychic Phase Nerf pretty much made BeastStar the only competitive star, and when the new DE dex dropped, no more stars for the space elves anymore.

Dang, very sad about that. While I didn't play Eldar with the 5th Ed. Codex, I tried the star with last weekend and tied the game by the skin of my teeth.

 Deafbeats wrote:
Dang, very sad about that. While I didn't play Eldar with the 5th Ed. Codex, I tried the star with last weekend and tied the game by the skin of my teeth.

Yeah if you play it those days you have to master it. And it's a tricky one, being an Assault Deathstar that doesn't have Hit&Run. For a *playable* v7 version, you might wanna try two jetseers + Baharroth. Still nowhere as good as the old one but at least you get grenades, hit&run, ...

morgoth wrote:

 Deafbeats wrote:
Dang, very sad about that. While I didn't play Eldar with the 5th Ed. Codex, I tried the star with last weekend and tied the game by the skin of my teeth.

Yeah if you play it those days you have to master it. And it's a tricky one, being an Assault Deathstar that doesn't have Hit&Run. For a *playable* v7 version, you might wanna try two jetseers + Baharroth. Still nowhere as good as the old one but at least you get grenades, hit&run, ...

OooOOoh I never thought about Baharroth, I might have to try that this week, thanks!

I have to seriously question the validity of the data used in this graph.

Imperial Knights have a 70% win ratio? Daemons, Knights, and Dark Eldar being the top 3?