Y5S2.3 Designer’s Notes

In this latest edition of Designer’s Notes, we’ll go into more detail about the balancing changes that’ll come with the 2.3 patch and give you an insight into the reasons behind these changes. We’ll also take a look back at the previous changes detailed in the Y5S2 Designer’s Notes and the impact they had on several of the operators.

BALANCING MATRIX AND TOP OPERATOR BANS

WIN DELTA VS. PRESENCE

Please note that we are using presence to gauge the popularity of an operator. This notion had to be introduced to reflect the implementation of the pick & ban.

Presence definition: pick rate of an Operator when not banned.
Win Delta: The Win Delta is aggregated from Operator’s Win Deltas per Bomb Site.

OPERATOR BAN RATE

OPERATOR BALANCING

Fuze

• Increased total number of Cluster Charges to 4 (from 3).

Population targeted by this change: Casual and Top Ranked.

We are investigating several ways to look into increasing Fuze’s presence and usefulness. After looking into his overall performance, we noticed that the number of uses of his charges is fairly low. (Below 2 charges per round on average).

We suppose that Fuze mains are trying to optimize their charges and may sometimes be reluctant to deploy them. By increasing the number of Cluster Charges, we would like players to use those resources more aggressively.

Fuze can be quite efficient at destroying bulletproof gadgets deployed on Bomb Sites, given the number of pellets in each charge, he is often able to effectively destroy Defender gadgets, even with the presence of Wamai or Jäger.

Gridlock

• Increased general Trax Stingers deployment speed (from 13s to 9s).
• Decreased individual Caltrops deployment time (from 0.7s to 0.45s).
• Added small delay before Trax Stingers start deploying. (from 0s to 0.45s).

Population targeted by this change: Casual and Top Ranked.

By increasing the deployment speed of Gridlock’s gadget, we hope to make this gadget a bit more comfortable to use. We do not expect this change to have a significant impact on her Presence or Win Delta.

We were initially thinking about making the deployment even faster. The feedback we gathered pushed us to find a more reasonable middle ground, as it could become quite hard for Defenders to effectively counter the gadget deployment.

We are going to monitor the effect of this change and see if it influences her overall playstyle.

Oryx

• Using the Remah Dash through a soft wall does not deplete dashing charges.
• Increased Dash charge refill to 12s (from 8s).
• Unified recovery time after dashing set to 0.5s (from 1s after dashing through soft walls and 0.7s after colliding with an enemy).

Population targeted by this change: Casual and Top Ranked.

Oryx’s Presence is lower than expected. Our goal is to increase his mobility to make him more popular and fun to play, while increasing his survivability.

Our goal is to make Oryx a better Roamer and we are exploring ways to make his ability more efficient in that regard.

Unifying the Remah Dash recovery times should also help understanding and streamline the ability.

BALANCING RETROSPECTIVE

The changes detailed in the Y5S2 Designer’s Notes had some significant impact on several of the Operators.

Thanks to our data analysts, we are now able to share this information, as well as some of the key learnings from the Y5S2 patch.

Some statistics may have evolved following the Y5S2.1 patch, but this should still provide an overview of the impact of the previous changes.

Amaru

This Season’s changes brought to Amaru have led to some significant improvements, both in terms of Presence and Win Delta.

At both Top and Regular levels of play, Amaru’s K/D following a use of her Garra Hook has significantly improved, from 0.45 to 0.90 for Top Ranked players, and from 0.45 to 0.96 for casual players. The Garra Hook is now used on Barricaded Windows the majority of the time (from 38% to 60% at both Top and Casual levels of play).

This has been a very solid improvement for Amaru. For Top players, her Pick Rate has increased from 4% to 10%, which makes her a Top 15 defender in terms of Pick Rate. Her Win Delta went from 0.2% to 1.5%. For Casual players, her Pick Rate has increased from 5% to 11% and her Win Delta went from 0.8% to 1.7%.

Y5S2.1 Update: Amaru has stabilized at a 10% Pick Rate at the Top level of play with a positive Win Delta of 0.7%.

The Graph above is an analysis of the use of the Garra Hook. “Fight%” represents situations when in the 5 seconds following the use of the gadget Amaru entered a fight against a Defender.

Oryx

The addition of the Angled Grip has provided Oryx players with a stronger option – although it seems this has not been fully accepted amongst the community: The Vertical Grip is still picked 59% of the time. In the current season, Oryx has a slightly higher Win%, 7% higher kills per round, and a better K/D ratio that exceeds 1.0!

It looks like players have responded well to the Remah Dash Damage reduction. At both levels we see significant increases to the number of wall dashes per round (+16% for Top Ranked, and +26% for Casual). We have also seen a nice reduction in rounds during which the Remah Dash is not used. In both Top Ranked and Casual – Regular players did not dash during 22.5% of rounds in Y5S1.2 (down to 17.2% in Y5S2.0).

Oryx has seen solid increases to his Win Delta as a result of these changes, but he still needs more help from -2.3% to -2.0% for Casual players, and from -3.8% to -3.0% for Top Ranked after the changes. His Pick Rate remains low at both levels with 4%.

Y5S2.1 Update: Oryx has an improved Win Delta, moving from -3.0% to -0.2% at the Top level of play but we are still monitoring this – the size of data we have on him this season is relatively low.

Echo

As a result of the disorientation effect changes, Echo players at both the Top Ranked and Casual level have seen a reduction in the percentage of kills they score on disoriented targets. For Top Ranked players, the percentage of kills under the effect of the Yokai Drone went from 0.478% to 0.400%, and for Casual players from 0.464% to 0.401%.

Echo players at the Top level have experienced a solid Win Delta increase from (from 0.4% to 0.9%), while his pick rate and win delta for the Casual population haven’t moved. Echo is banned much less at Top Ranked (from 68% to 38%) and Casual (from 59% to 37%) levels. The addition of Melusi probably had a direct effect on Echo’s ban rate.

Y5S2.1 Update: Echo has a lowered Win Delta, moving from 0.9% to -0.2% at the Top level of play and a slightly reduced presence compared to Y5S2.

Kali

Changes brought to Kali’s Lance has led to 13% reduction in Lances Destroyed per round at Top Ranked level and a 10% reduction for Casual levels of play. It seems that the fuse time reduction is making it a bit harder for defenders to counter-play, but not overwhelmingly so.

We have noticed a ~10% increase to Gadgets Destroyed per round at both levels due to more Lances detonating successfully. Lances are also used a bit more often than during the previous patch with a 7% increase at both levels of play.

The CSRX 300 recoil reduction is likely a small positive change (although follow-up shots by Kali are much weaker than a first shot).

The number of kills per round with the CSRX is on the decrease, because of the addition of the SPSMG9.

In Y5S1.2 35% of Kali’s kills at the Top level came from her C75 Auto (the remaining 65% coming from the CSRX 300). In Y5S2.0, we see the SPSMG9 accounting for 49% of Kali’s kills (for both levels of play). As a result of these changes, Kali is seeing small but noted Pick Rate increases at both Top Ranked (from 3% to 7%) and Casual (from 8% to 11%) levels.

Her Win Delta saw a small increase for Top players (from -2.0% to -1.6%) but no change for Regular players, holding steady at -1.9%

Y5S2.1 Update: Kali has experienced an increase in her Win Delta since Y5S2 – moving from -1.6% to -0.6% with a similar presence (8%).

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