Balance in 10th

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**The Pig-Faced Orc**

ccs wrote:

Spoiler:

Klickor wrote:
Win % also says a lot less than you would think when it is tournament data.

Better armies will win most of their early matches and pair up against the other better armies and start losing and will get something like a 55% win rate on average.

Worse armies will lose the first few matches and then face other weak armies and start to win games and end with a 45% win rate on average.

But what if you didn't use a random swiss system for pairings and had it be round robbin or pure random? The better armies would have even higher winrates and the worse armies even lower win rates.

Early 9th at some point BA had an overall winrate at something like 40% which didn't look that bad. But if you instead looked at individual faction win rates for Blood Angels you saw that it was a garbage army at the time. Against those 55% win rate armies that only had 15% better winrate some people might think the BA player at least should have a decent 30-45% chance to win, right? Nope, it was about a 10% chance to win against those armies. Only reason BA managed to get a 40% win rate was that they only had a chance to face those good armies in the first round or two at a 5-6 round event and then had 3-5 games against armies that were also poor. So like 75% or more of the games were against other bad armies and they could then get a close to 50% chance to win against them but they had almost a 0% chance to actually win an event.

Top players also more often than not playing top armies or just specific subfactions that can skew this even more. Space Marines could have all but 1 subfaction be terrible and that subfaction only having 1 very weird build relying on expensive FW dreadnoughts that are out of stock to compete so 95% of all casual SM armies would be garbage. But in tournament data the faction could look strong since the competitive players would use 3d prints or recasts to get those out of stock needed resin models while the casuals would suffer while only using the supplied GW plastic.

Unless you understand the game and the stats be careful drawing conclusions of tournament win rates.

Secondaries can also mess with how "enjoyable" a factions win rate is. Some factions might be really bad at the table but have some really good secondaries so even though they get wiped off the table often they can still win some games just due to some special scoring rules that requires very little interaction. Most people enjoy a good game over just winning a game so if they get wiped off the table while dealing very little damage to the opponent and yet manage to win that win could feel very hollow. It is only a win on paper to them.

TLR
Win rates aren't a good representation of actual chances to win for one army against another army. This is the winrates during swiss pairings, not when random armies meet other random armies. Win rates that only looked at the first round of any event would reflect better what people think win rates represent. A 55% army against a 45% army is in reality more an 80/20 skew if lucky and could be as bad as 90/10 or worse when you look at the individual stats. Game is less balanced than you think!

And don't forget, those win %? They don't represent you. Or those you'll be playing against.

That's irrelevant.

Now I take Klickor's point. But without any other data to off we've got nothing. And mutliple times in this thread people claimed certain armies were "always lost / lost 90% of the time / were impossible to win with", etc. which is clearly not the case.

But "how skillful I or my opposition are at the game" is irrelevant to measuring the potential of any faction.

**Tyel**

The Pig-Faced Orc wrote:
But "how skillful I or my opposition are at the game" is irrelevant to measuring the potential of any faction.

As a conceptual point yes. But if you aren't in the top few percent of tournament players, player skill is typically a bigger determiner of results than faction imbalance.
This is especially the case when imbalance is in movement and scoring abilities rather than raw point and click mathhammer.

As an example, the pro-scene has said DG are at best mid-tier, usually lower, for most of this edition.
Is this because they lose every game? No. Its because (a few units aside) they are slow. They therefore typically lack the ability to exploit unexpected successes - or patch up unexpected failures. You can play around them (either absolutely, or by forcing very unlikely charges) in a way that isn't possible with say fast factions - who will always be able to engage on their terms (either with your models, or the objectives).

Basically as DG, if things don't go your way, there aren't really any clever tricks you can pull out to get back in.

Whereas say while Harlequins have been stomped on (4++ to 5++ is a major mathhammer nerf) they can still win games - and good players consistently place with them in tournaments - because their soft stats (i.e. incredible speed) make them great at the objective game.

Put another way, will you perform better with Iron Hands than Imperial Fists? Sure. But if you are losing every game as Imperial Fists, its probably because you are making bad decisions rather than the fact their mathhammer is a bit worse. Its unlikely you'll suddenly jump from losing every game to a 60% win rate by making the swap.

**Spoletta**

I'm sorry but "Player skill matters more than faction" is the typical definition of a balanced game.

Yeah, this kind of breaks at very high levels, but no one cares.

**The Pig-Faced Orc**

Tyel wrote:
The Pig-Faced Orc wrote:
But "how skillful I or my opposition are at the game" is irrelevant to measuring the potential of any faction.

As a conceptual point yes. But if you aren't in the top few percent of tournament players, player skill is typically a bigger determiner of results than faction imbalance.
This is especially the case when imbalance is in movement and scoring abilities rather than raw point and click mathhammer.

As an example, the pro-scene has said DG are at best mid-tier, usually lower, for most of this edition.
Is this because they lose every game? No. Its because (a few units aside) they are slow. They therefore typically lack the ability to exploit unexpected successes - or patch up unexpected failures. You can play around them (either absolutely, or by forcing very unlikely charges) in a way that isn't possible with say fast factions - who will always be able to engage on their terms (either with your models, or the objectives).

Basically as DG, if things don't go your way, there aren't really any clever tricks you can pull out to get back in.

Whereas say while Harlequins have been stomped on (4++ to 5++ is a major mathhammer nerf) they can still win games - and good players consistently place with them in tournaments - because their soft stats (i.e. incredible speed) make them great at the objective game.

Put another way, will you perform better with Iron Hands than Imperial Fists? Sure. But if you are losing every game as Imperial Fists, its probably because you are making bad decisions rather than the fact their mathhammer is a bit worse. Its unlikely you'll suddenly jump from losing every game to a 60% win rate by making the swap.

That's all very interesting ... but you seem to be agreeing with me ... ? I'm confused.