VERY Early Patch Results: Not Much ...

No way SL is still sucking that bad. Maybe these matches were started and mostly played out before the patch hit?

Once shaolin gets 2x taoist 1x monk 1x poisoner 1x shadow they can be very annoying (atleast for teams that lack range stomp). But if you even remove one of these parts they start to struggle badly S:

For example if they dont have a posioner on the board they do 0dmg

brb checking the league stats to see the played setups :)

OMG COUNCIL IS OP!
 
But seriously -- way too early. :)

So ehm... when will the next balance patch come?

I still havent really noticed anything (havent faced 2.0 wraith yet tho ^^)

Hey writch if u wanna shoot me a couple matches til u get the shaolin map feel free... 

Heh... not a bad idea: Shaolin Roulette
 
I'll start our top search when I get back home and to one of my unfirewalled HA installed points. I'm sure we'll get there in less than 92 tries.

I would like to make the case that the recent balance adjustments and resulting league stats are evidence that the players playing the respective teams have a greater influence on team performance in league statistics than we have hitherto credited.
 
Evidence: TF2 got the most nerfs and, as of now, its stats have improved. DE was buffed and its stats have declined.
 
My theory: Because of the TF2 nerf, poor players of TF2 left TF2, leaving more good players of TF2. Because of the DE buff, more poor DE players are playing as DE and losing up a storm, (me included).
 

Corollary: It's not the team, it's you.

 
Anyone have explanations for these phenomena? As of this moment, council and dwarves are basically even over-all. Which is an improvement for CL and a decline for DW. Shaolin is still crap, even though they were by far most buffed. Tribe is 2nd only to TF2.

Well, those numbers are from 10 days ago. I don't think it's too early anymore. I don't want the middle of march to show up before Robot says the changes weren't enough. It'll then be a month of testing then 2 weeks for apple to do their thing. It's been 2 weeks post patch, I think everyone has an idea of where the teams are. 
 
I'd like to see the data. I like data. 

Poisoners are too good and everything else too weak.

I still have league games running today that started in the previous patch, so we don't even have an uncontaminated sample yet. Soooo.... still too early.

Alright, so we've had some time to feel out the patch. What do you guys think? 
 
I've cross-posted my blog post here, just so there's a record of what happened on my blog and discussion on the forums. =)
 
Right, so RE dropped the last patch on February 6th, and it's been 3 weeks or so since the patch hit. Just as a reminder, here's what got patched.
Dark Elf:
Wraith Starting HP increased by 150 and soul charges reduced by 50 HP

Dwarves:
Paladin HP decreased to 900

Shaolin:
Monk moment increased to 3
Poisoner debuffed increased to 50%

Team Fortress 2:
Sniper Crouch bonus reduced to 250
Heavy HP Reduced to 1100

I'll take them in turn:
Dark Elf:
Wraith Starting HP increased by 150 and soul charges reduced by 50 HP.
 
This was supposed to be a "meaningless" type buff, raising the bottom end while having the top end remain as it was. But we all forgot that equipment raises HP by 10% of base health! So, instead of a helm and soul gem giving +65 hp, they now give +80 hp each.
 
This means that a L1 Wraith (a wraith with 1 nom under his belt) with just a smidge of bonus HP (gem, helm, soul bomb or pot) will have enough HP to take 3 300 damage hits. At the top end, a L3 +2 wraith will have 1100 + 160 = 1260 HP, just 90 HP short of 1350 (the magic number at which a wraith can survive a scrolled 450 physical damage hit). Just a single pot and soulbomb will tip that wraith over the edge, whereas before, you needed at least 2 soul bombs.
 
As a result, I'm finding that just a L1 +1 or +2 wraith is pretty darn hardy now, and needs a lot less babying. Great! Except that Tribe never had trouble taking down high HP units, Shaolin combos and poisoner still tear any single unit a new one, and dwarves still have that annie+drill combo. Ah well. Still, this buff really boosts the wraith now, and it's actually a valid decision to deploy and equip a wraith, rather than just keeping him in reserve for a remote stomp. If you're thinking of spending a soul bomb, and you have a wraith in hand, consider deploying him first so that he'll get that HP buff and be ready for action late game!
 
 
Dwarves:
Paladin HP decreased to 900
 
This warrants a solid "meh" from me. Seriously? Before the patch, everyone agreed that Dwarves needed to be taken down a peg - at the late game, the dwarven fortress could be literally unkillable, with their 1200HP 30/30 resist paladins, bubbles, beer, aura, all that defensive goodness. So we all expected the dwarves to get hit with the nerfbat. But this? taking 100HP off the pally? This was their grand scheme to balance things, a HP nerf that doesn't actually reduce any AP to kill? Bah.
 
Innately, pallys have 10% defence. This means that whether at 1000 HP or 900, a 300 damage unit will take 4 hits to kill, and that doesn't change with the nerf. Dwarves are still as strong as ever! Practically the only race this nerf affects is tribe, who can now 3 shot a naked pally with an axethrower. That's... not all that impressive.
 
I don't see how this changes the game against dwarves, to be honest, but I'm still open to suggestions. League data seems to indicate that this has increased the win rate against dwarves, but I really, really don't get why.
 

Shaolin:
Monk moment increased to 3
Poisoner debuffed increased to 50%
 
In one of my earlier posts, I showed that the poisoner and the monk were not BFF - they tend to get in each other's way a lot, due to their movement range and attack range, and even with that, a poisoner couldn't 2 shot a vanilla unit with another unit to combo with. Now, all of that changes with the new monk and poisoner buff.
 
The monk can now run in from directly behind the poisoner, or more likely from the side, to combo. And this combo now does 200 + (400 * 1.5) = 800 damage! Which means that a poisoner and any other unit will be able to 2 shot a vanilla unit. Not only that, but a sworded shadow and a sworded poisoner can now do 300 + (350 * 1.5) = 825 damage, which is enought to kill a vanilla unit! And the shadow is right there to convert the KOed unit. Dragons now do 600 * 1.5 = 900 damage against a pre-poisoned unit, or 810 against a 10% resist unit (like the medic or the shaman - that's a one-shot kill right there against most non-equipped healers), and with the bamboo bug being fixed, you can ranged stomp right there too. Sniping medics has never been easier, unlike before the patch, where you had to get 45 damage from somewhere else.
 
People who want to see big combo numbers will be disappointed, as the usefulness of this buff tapers off as the combo count increases (I mean, really, is an extra 10% of 600+ damage going to make or break anything), but 2 hit combos have become vastly more powerful.
 
That said, league data still shows that the Shaolin still apparently suck. Meh. These 2 buffs, while great, didn't succeed in making the Shaolin more offensively capable, it seems - the strength of the Shaolin still remain in their crazy high damage turtle.
 
 
Team Fortress 2:
Sniper Crouch bonus reduced to 250
Heavy HP Reduced to 1100
 
These 2 nerfs don't seem to have much in common, so I'll take them separately.
 
The sniper nerf now means that an upgraded sniper (crouched damage 430) and an upgraded soldier/pyro (390 damage) can no longer 2 shot a vanilla unit (820 total damage). This... had never seemed like a major issue to me, to be honest, and now with the crouched shot doing 350 and 380 with ammo upgrade, snipers seem even more irrelevant. Most healers will be able to heal that crouched shot damage with 1 AP, making using a sniper a net zero AP. Also, I used to use 4AP to take out vanilla units (430+130+130+130=820) and stomp with some other unit, such as a scout, but that's out with the new nerf as well (380+130+130+130=770).
 
Now, the sniper is solely for harassment and denial of a row in conjunction with a jar (which means that that row is denied to high value targets, as no TF2 player is going to spend a jar on a vanilla unit or non-essential unit). Still, that's 1 less AP for your opponent, which could mean the difference between a stomp and no stomp, or a kill and no kill, and games are often won or lost on those margins.
 
As for the heavy, again, the reduction from 1200 to 1100 seems odd - no AP savings for 200, 300 or 450 damage units, which are the main numbers when you're talking about damage. There are AP savings when talking about 390 damage units (which implies a TF2 mirror match, which is by definition balanced), but that's about it.
 
 
The net effect of these buffs/nerfs, I think, are that TF will come down in the rankings by a bit, the dwarves will barely be affected. Neither of their bad matchups (mostly against each other) changed, and they both still will steamroll shaolin, as nothing changed about the shaolin's vulnerabity to lobbed AOE damage. Shaolin will probably go up by a quite bit against DE, CL and TR, but I'm not sure if they'll be competitve at the end of the day. DE will go up by a bit against CL, DW and TF due to the wraith buff (CL because CL got nuffin, TF because DE can now force a jar against a wraith, and DW because DW has trouble getting rid of corpses.
 
Those are my predictions, but the league data seems to say that DW dropped more than I expected - I, of course, did not expect that. =p I can't think of any reason why that would be the case, but I assume that the reason was all the DW players flocking to the other races to try the new buffs out, while nobody wants to play the boring old DW all the time.

Looking over the League data export, one important stat that stood out to me is that the average Shaolin player ranking is much lower than any other faction -- top players are much less willing to risk their records on an unproven team. Over the long-term, this won't stop the Shaolin faction ratings from evening out at a correct level, but it will make this process potentially take longer, and will really skew their W-L record. Even now, small changes are best, since there will almost surely be a BIG jump in their overall performance if/when a critical mass of top players decide to switch over.

 
Right -- I'm certainly not arguing that they aren't still lacking a certain something -- I'm just pointing out that changes should continue to be incremental, rather than sweeping. SL has some pretty nasty combos, and if they could ever get consistency down (i.e. offensive balance, AOE resilience, reliable crystal threats...), they could very easily turn into a steamroller. As always, I'd rather see slow, steady moves in the right direction than massive overhauls.
 
Performance ratings won't come up at all if SL doesn't win, and SL hasn't been winning. This is at least partially explained by having the very worst ELO differential of any faction (the relative ELO between SL and non-SL opponents is the lowest, and it's not close), and although the ratings will eventually normalize, this will be a much slower process than if SL-use was more widespread to begin with. It's somewhat a "chicken/egg" thing, but I'm just saying that the tipping point, if and when it comes, will not necessarily arrive immediately after a patch.