- Please find the raw data here, incl. a full list of the decks including nicknames, if you want to find a player who plays a certain unit or deck.
- Average deck level was constant at 13.5
- 2.1 infantry (+0.2), 1.9 vehicles (-0.1), 1.3 air (+0.3) and 0.7 (-0.1) tech units make up the average deck (changes to last month in brackets)
- "Frequency" is the share of Decks that run this unit or commander. First, the frequency in % over last 4 months is shown. Then, a bar chart visualizes the June frequency. Third, there is a small line chart that shows the trend over the last 4 months.
- "Δ vs average winrate" is how the winrate decks utilizing this unit/commander deviates from the average (e.g. Sniper decks had a 7 percentage point higher winrate than the average deck)
- "Δ vs average levels" is how the levels of decks utilizing this unit/commander deviate from average (e.g. decks utilizing the Shatterer are -0.9 levels under the average)
Observations:
- Winners
- Orca usage went up from 14% to 25% and Mohawk from 14% to 23%. This means that now nearly every second deck contains one of them. If you add Orca Bomber's 17%, most GDI decks now contain a bomber.
- Talon usage jumped from 24% to 34%. It's versatility means it appears in a range of different decks as both secondary anti-infantry and anti-air option.
- Rifle usage (52% to 60%) recovered from lat month's dip, and Snipers went from 16% to 24%
- Grenadier usage grew from 14% to 21% despite 13lade putting it just into C-tier
- APCs made a comeback, growing from 14% to 21%
- Liang's spot as the #1 commander choice solidified (42% to 51%), as it's hugely versatile not just as a healer, but also as a pad stealer (Strongarm being basically only used with APC decks is interesting, and illustrates the versatility and strrength of Liang)
- Losers
- Shock Troopers all but disappeared (16% to 8%), which makes sense as it's hard to see when you'd not either prefer Rifle for the cost or Sniper for the ability to dominate infantry. (Yes, Snipers can also be weaker in some spots.)
- Jackson went down, as Liang is an alternative for typical Jackson decks (Predator, Tech units)
- Pitbull went further down from 60% to 53%, driven by both increased Slingshot usage and decreased Factory usage (13 decks with no vehicles at all)
- Nerf victims from the last patch went down: Zone Troopers, MSV and Shatterer
- Jumpjet troopers went down from 22% to 15%, but still seem useful in Borca decks and some other high-micro decks
Balance & Diversity
I believe balance and deck diversity are in a decent spot. There's a number of very different deck archetypes in the Top 50:
- 12 Mammoth decks, 8 of them with Mammoth as the only Tech unit. Most, but not all of them with Infantry + Air for the phase before Mammoths
- 9 Orca Bomber decks, often with MG.
- 8 classic APC decks in some variants for the air units (Drones vs Talon, Orca vs Mohawk). Plus two APC/MLRS decks.
- 11 decks with predators, of which it seems to play a main role in most of them
- 6 MLRS decks seems like a number that illustrates fair balance
- A number of different "high micro" decks are used by players with low level decks, as examples I'd give:
- heroic farmer with Strongarm - JJ, Sniper - Dogs, Slingshot - Talon, Mohawk has a 71% winrate with a L12 deck
- VictorBansemer with an unorthodox Solomon Rifle, Missile, JJ - Slingshot - Talon, Orca deck , 69% winrate at L11.8
- Slingshot being used in all of these deck archetypes, but nearly none of these use only the Slingshot. Good sign that Slignshot is an option, but neither a must have nor useless.
- Highly microable units like Jumpjets and Snipers being useful, but not dominant.
- Grenadiers seeing good usage despite being seen as weak by a number of top players
- All air units being in a relatively narrow usage range from 13% (Hammerhead) to 34% (Talon)
- There's decks with 0-3 of all unit types, and even some decks with 4 infantry, 4 vehicles and 4 air units. And except for Infantry, it really seems pretty viable to skip any particular of the buildings (which inversely means there's no must-have unit)
So my recommendation to the devs would be to make no significant balance changes but if/where needed, play with small tweaks.
For example, play with nerf areas that create micro potential such as the Turn Rate.
- Mammoths don't seem statistically that overpowered at top end play, albeit it's noticeable that there's some relatively low-level dekcs with high winrates (i.e. it seems that the average winrate of all Mammoth players is driven partly by weaker players liking Mammoth, and some strong players achieving top winrates with it). I can understand if people feel they dominate and have too little comeback mechanics against them, so a turn rate nerf could make it a bit more viable to use tanks against it with good control (baiting shots with e.g. wheels while the turret turns, and hitting it with tanks in the meantime who move a bit away from the turning turret)
- Slingshot are in a statistically decent place. But if devs feel they are too oppressive against certain unit types, maybe turn rate could help here as well, making it slightly easier to 2v1 or flank the Slingshot.
Beyond that, I'd rather go with small buffs to long-time underused units such as the Rhino. I'd probably go with 3 vision (to make it an at least theoretically viable opener) as a small step. Would not increase Rhino usage much, but make it a bit fairer for the guys who use it.
Which share of decks has 0, 1, 2 .. from a certain unit type?
Another new data point I looked at is the average cost of decks, including commanders. The average is pretty stable (last 6 months: 48, 48, 47, 49, 51, 52). The decline to May was explained by the growing popularity of the very cheap anti-infantry options (Rifle, Militant, Wheel), and the growth in the last months by higher viability of tech and growth in "mid-range decks", i.e. decks that use e.g. Snipers over Rifles.
If you find the APC comeback strange, as the main Suzaku APC variant had been nerfed (Drones, Orca, Pitbull all got tangible nerfs); I can recommend this video to you:
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