Discussing balance in AoS

[NinthMusketeer]

1 hour ago, Battlefury said:

@NinthMusketeerI didn't get it completely what you do there. But when it helps, I want to try it too.

Could you tell me what you do there in detail?

Happy to help! Can you give me a run-down of your local community? That way I can put it in relative terms. Also which country/state would help.

[LuminethMage]

11 hours ago, Battlefury said:

We know for a fact, that AoS isn't balanced like this and never was. But there where time, where it was better. And to call that out, we discuss here.

Is that based on "fact"? Or just conjecture, personal perception? As you seem to base most of your assumptions on your local meta and experience with Khorne, which might have been more balanced in the past for you, but doesn't tell us much about the game as such. It might just have been that the armies/lists you played at that time performed better in your local meta and therefore your perceived it to be more balanced. 

What you wrote about LRL seems to sum it up to me:  My friends and I just had a few games against LRL, none in a tournament setting, but we all agree that LRL will be No. 1. 

How can you base a neutral discussion about balance on arguments like that? It might be even true in the end because the LRL player is the only one who brings a competitive list, is the best player or both, but as such is pretty meaningless as a wider discussion about balance. 

Here is how CanCon/LVO looked in 2020, over two years ago. Two of the largest events in AoS: 

 

That doesn't look better (although this is only a snapshot in time, it's difficult to get more broad data from that time, at least for me). But if you played Khorne it might have felt better, because almost all the armies on top were melee heavy armies, where you might have felt that you have a better shot at winning, even if you didn't. And your battletome was newer two years ago. 

It's really difficult to talk about balance if you mostly base it on personal perception and experience. I'm sure Khorne does feel and play outdated right now compared to some of the newer armies - because that's the case, it's three years old. Hopefully they'll get some rule adjustments during BR. But that doesn't have to mean overall balance is worse now than it was in the past. 

[AaronWilson]

I think one of the hardest things around balance is also different things to different people, so people are arguing a biased argument about a subjective topic. 

I think with how complex a book for example like Seraphon is, 2 subfactions, 4 more futher subfaction splits, say 40 warscrolls, everything can interact with everything, there is just NO way you can properly playtest it all, let alone then test again all the other interactions out there. 

I would certainly like all battletomes closer in power level but I do truly want everything to have a 50% win rate to the point where warscrolls are all nearly a template of each other? No. I like having underdogs, it makes for a great story when a weaker book is rising up through a event, I love having boogeymen we can all joke about, but I would just like the relative power levels of all battletomes to be a bit closer. 

[pnkdth]

1 hour ago, AaronWilson said:

I think one of the hardest things around balance is also different things to different people, so people are arguing a biased argument about a subjective topic. 

I think with how complex a book for example like Seraphon is, 2 subfactions, 4 more futher subfaction splits, say 40 warscrolls, everything can interact with everything, there is just NO way you can properly playtest it all, let alone then test again all the other interactions out there. 

I would certainly like all battletomes closer in power level but I do truly want everything to have a 50% win rate to the point where warscrolls are all nearly a template of each other? No. I like having underdogs, it makes for a great story when a weaker book is rising up through a event, I love having boogeymen we can all joke about, but I would just like the relative power levels of all battletomes to be a bit closer. 

You got a point there. Most of the time when an army is having a great time in the meta it is due often a single build or a few problem units, not the entire army. If we can count on one thing is that the tournament scene WILL find that broken combo and crank it up to eleven. 

I personally like the underdog armies, coming up with new army lists, and making "sub-optimal" units work. It just comes a point where some armies needs a proper look at. I like what they're doing with BR at the moment even if it is more stuff to buy and I hope we'll see some boosts to Sylvaneth, BoC and BoK in particular. 

[Battlefury]

10 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Happy to help! Can you give me a run-down of your local community? That way I can put it in relative terms. Also which country/state would help.

Thank you

We are 42 people, about 25 of them playing actively in local tournaments.
I live in Germany, state of Saxonia in a big city of 500.000 citizen.

The Armies, that are played in genral ( not taking tournaments into account ) are absically all, except Beasts of Chaos and Sons of Behemat. So the diversity is really strong here, when it comes to just casual gaming. Most players will have a good variaty of models in their collection.

Wich further information do you need?
 

[whispersofblood]

19 hours ago, stratigo said:

I mean, yes you can. It just takes longer. The game isn't unsolvable. A lot of it is just learning probabilities and some geometry and how to apply that on a table.

 

But the argument you are making, at least as it appears to me, is that player skill is so important that list building and what is and is not OP doesn't matter that much and we should stop worrying about balance because player skill can't be. I argue that list building (which, as ninthmusketeer pointed out, is a skill itself) is the primary importance and player skill only matters in that everyone can easily copy the work of the players that solve the list building phase and thus take the same types of lists against each other, thus balancing the tools that go into building is actually very important for the game. Particularly for those players who aren't looking to chase competition but still want to have a fun and not one sided game with their friends.

 

 

What's your response to WHW and Listbot? Basically they've demonstrated that 90% of games are determined by who is statistically the better player (the player most likely to win the game). Yes, Faction matters but not the way people want it to matter, they've also shown meta chasing doesn't produce results. 

As a feather in my own cap, I'd just like to point out the data confirms my perspective that the Zilfin build is a low skill build. So maybe I'm bias towards believing their results.

I think they missed when discussing the "fat middle" of players that even there faction is only between 40-50%, that still means player skill is between 60-50% determinate in the outcome of games in that segment. Meaning overall the way to improve your results is to be better at the game.

This starts at list building as I've said before, grinding out your own list. My LRL list is nothing like anything I've seen anywhere else, to the point I struggle to understand the underlying logic of a lot of builds I come across. Lastly I'm very frustrated by the lack of attention paid to quality of win, and the continued trend of players not finishing games. The final score is important when discussing how to improve lagging factions. 

Edited April 22, 2021 by whispersofblood

[wayniac]

There was a Warhammer Weekly episode yesterday that discussed this.  But what it semeed to show is that if there is a skill gap between players, the faction choice does not matter as much.  That is, a better player with a worse faction can beat a worse player with a better faction.  Which I agree with, and think we all knew.  What I am curious about though is how many top players are playing a C-tier faction against other top tier players and what the actual stats would be then, because it seems to me that with top player with a C-tier faction versus another top tier player with an S-tier faction, the faction choice will come into play as both players are good.

What was telling is the "fat middle" because if the top percentile do not see faction mattering as much, they are incapable of seeing the middle where faction DOES matter a lot.  Which tells me they are the wrong people to decide what is/isn't balanced since they don't see where it has the most effect.

Edited April 22, 2021 by wayniac

[NinthMusketeer]

10 minutes ago, wayniac said:

There was a Warhammer Weekly episode yesterday that discussed this.  But what it semeed to show is that if there is a skill gap between players, the faction choice does not matter as much.  That is, a better player with a worse faction can beat a worse player with a better faction.  Which I agree with, and think we all knew.  What I am curious about though is how many top players are playing a C-tier faction against other top tier players and what the actual stats would be then, because it seems to me that with top player with a C-tier faction versus another top tier player with an S-tier faction, the faction choice will come into play as both players are good.

What was telling is the "fat middle" because if the top percentile do not see faction mattering as much, they are incapable of seeing the middle where faction DOES matter a lot.  Which tells me they are the wrong people to decide what is/isn't balanced since they don't see where it has the most effect.

This is a BIG problem I have seen with top-end tourney players; they just don't get how things are different for the vast majority of players who aren't as invested in the game. It is also a problem I have never really understood. At risk of sounding arrogant I am at that level of skill but never had issue understanding when others aren't. But then I have friends who are the same way. Maybe it's just the most oblivious who are the most outspoken?

[wayniac]

 

6 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

This is a BIG problem I have seen with top-end tourney players; they just don't get how things are different for the vast majority of players who aren't as invested in the game. It is also a problem I have never really understood. At risk of sounding arrogant I am at that level of skill but never had issue understanding when others aren't. But then I have friends who are the same way. Maybe it's just the most oblivious who are the most outspoken?

I honestly think sometimes it's to keep the narrative going that everything is fine and its only the "scrubs" (Sirlin's definition) who are complaining, to avoid discussing the issues.  I see that in tons of games, the higher end don't see/know/care about the average people because it doesn't affect them at all so they just see people complaining about stuff.  They are so far above the average curve that they can't see what is being said so, rather than try to understand it they just assume it's unfounded.

If anything it shows the danger of looking at the higher end for data and listening to what they say.  They are out of touch with the "plight of the masses" so anything they say is only in their little bubble.  I mean, if they don't see there's a massive faction imbalance in the middle and GW asks them for feedback/playtesting why would they say it's a problem?  They wouldn't, because they don't see the problem, so nothing will get fixed.

Edited April 22, 2021 by wayniac

[NinthMusketeer]

5 hours ago, Battlefury said:

Thank you

We are 42 people, about 25 of them playing actively in local tournaments.
I live in Germany, state of Saxonia in a big city of 500.000 citizen.

The Armies, that are played in genral ( not taking tournaments into account ) are absically all, except Beasts of Chaos and Sons of Behemat. So the diversity is really strong here, when it comes to just casual gaming. Most players will have a good variaty of models in their collection.

Wich further information do you need?
 

I am thinking that there are some concepts that need to be recognized about types of game:

-At a tournament, the goal is to win. Short of cheating/bad sportsmanship all of the overpowered models you can fit into a list are totally OK. It is a competition, that is what everyone signed up for. To achieve success one must win.

-If a match is practicing for a tournament then again, both players should be bringing the strongest thing they have. Because the goal is to improve skill for the purpose of winning.

-This is the point where things become an issue: in a casual game the goal is not to win. It is to have fun. If player A brings a super powered list and crushes player B they may have won, but they also failed in the goal. In this instance they are a failure, because they made the game unfun for the other player. Victory or defeat is irrelevant. This is a very difficult concept for some people to grasp but the more people that do the better off your community will be.

[NinthMusketeer]

6 minutes ago, wayniac said:

 

I honestly think sometimes it's to keep the narrative going that everything is fine and its only the "scrubs" (Sirlin's definition) who are complaining, to avoid discussing the issues.  I see that in tons of games, the higher end don't see/know/care about the average people because it doesn't affect them at all so they just see people complaining about stuff.  They are so far above the average curve that they can't see what is being said so, rather than try to understand it they just assume it's unfounded.

If anything it shows the danger of looking at the higher end for data and listening to what they say.  They are out of touch with the "plight of the masses" so anything they say is only in their little bubble.  I mean, if they don't see there's a massive faction imbalance in the middle and GW asks them for feedback/playtesting why would they say it's a problem?  They wouldn't, because they don't see the problem, so nothing will get fixed.

Hggg I hate how right you are. Humans are just so shockingly bad at humaning.

[wayniac]

9 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

Hggg I hate how right you are. Humans are just so shockingly bad at humaning.

It's funny bc I am having a similar talk in a World of Warcraft discord and the same thing came up about a fan-made rating system; the people who aren't affected as much just see whining and ignore everyone else's complaints, and those are the ones often asked for their thoughts/opinions.  So it's self-defeating for the huge amount of normal people.

[whispersofblood]

3 hours ago, wayniac said:

There was a Warhammer Weekly episode yesterday that discussed this.  But what it semeed to show is that if there is a skill gap between players, the faction choice does not matter as much.  That is, a better player with a worse faction can beat a worse player with a better faction.  Which I agree with, and think we all knew.  What I am curious about though is how many top players are playing a C-tier faction against other top tier players and what the actual stats would be then, because it seems to me that with top player with a C-tier faction versus another top tier player with an S-tier faction, the faction choice will come into play as both players are good.

What was telling is the "fat middle" because if the top percentile do not see faction mattering as much, they are incapable of seeing the middle where faction DOES matter a lot.  Which tells me they are the wrong people to decide what is/isn't balanced since they don't see where it has the most effect.

That isn't exactly accurate. It still matters less than difference in player skill. It was between 50-40% in the "average" gamer range, so on average its still less impactful than player skill, meaning the better player is still winning more often than not. It does imply that the middle is vulnerable to RNG results, which better factions are naturally resistant to, to some degree or another. 

Further who is to say these players actually know what is wrong? For example one of the things that came out of this was player power. The factions we should be looking at are the ones where players are doing worse than you would expect, a lot of those fat middle books seem to make player's results better than you would expect.

I think one of the critical findings was that when the difference in player skill is obvious (more than 15%, which is debatably the difference between someone who usually goes 3-2 and someone who usually goes 2-3) the worse player with the better faction is winning 10% of the time, thats 1 in 10 games, that isn't even a 1 match at a 2 day event, and likely not even relevant at a single day of action. So when people say better balance will be better. I don't disagree some specific abilities are way out of bounds. But, the stats are not suggesting that the actual outcomes of games are being affected by our current level of balance. That is massive! 

The more data that comes out, the more it seems that the cries of imbalance are an expectation problem, and not a mechanical problem. So yes if you lose to the same 4 people every week, then the problem is probably you, not the game, not your faction. The good news is if you really are bothered you can fix that, the bad news is it will take effort.

 

Edited April 22, 2021 by whispersofblood

[Skreech Verminking]

So instead of calling it the balance thread, should we maybe rename it to “what is the most toxic list/army to play against currently”?

[NinthMusketeer]

2 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

But, the stats are not suggesting that the actual outcomes of games are being affected by our current level of balance. That is massive!

It is indeed a massive lie.

[Battlefury]

3 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

The more data that comes out, the more it seems that the cries of imbalance are an expectation problem, and not a mechanical problem. So yes if you lose to the same 4 people every week, then the problem is probably you, not the game, not your faction.

At one event I organised, one of my top players wanted to play BoK, since he suspected the same. He told, that it isn't due to the army for sure, so he created a list on his own and I gave him all the models to play, that he wanted.

He went to place 8 of 10 and told, that the amr yindeed is bad.

How would I explain this then?

[wayniac]

3 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

The more data that comes out, the more it seems that the cries of imbalance are an expectation problem, and not a mechanical problem. So yes if you lose to the same 4 people every week, then the problem is probably you, not the game, not your faction. The good news is if you really are bothered you can fix that, the bad news is it will take effort.

Most things seem to indicate the opposite.  I highly doubt even the most skilled player could take a low tier army to an event with other equally skilled players and do well, if those other players were playing high tier armies. 

If anything it seems like the cries of imbalance are being downplayed and reduced in how problematic they are to make it seem like less of a problem. 

Edited April 22, 2021 by wayniac

[Eldarain]

Maybe I need to rewatch the WW video but my takeaway was army imbalance is fine if you're amongst the most elite players in the world and it's awful where most players exist skill wise.

That doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement of a ruleset if your argument is just get as proficient as the best players in the world.

[Golub87]

48 minutes ago, NinthMusketeer said:

It is indeed a massive lie.

Thank you for calling out that condescending wall of text.

3 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

snip...

 

Yes, the data demonstrated that the game is quite broken for the fat middle of average players who do not care about "giitin gud" because we have better things to do with our time. Playing this game should not feel like a chore but it really really feels like a chore.

The data clearly demonstrated that if two average player at similar skill levels play each other the outcome of the game will be significantly impacted by the broken balance.

The data clearly demonstrated that this is not a "kitchen table, beer and pretzels, Sunday afternoon" game.

WHW had an amazing show where they clearly showed the problem with looking at the top players only and where they even said that the problem seems to be with GW not listening to the plurality of players that are having a bad experience.

And no, I do not want to "git gud", I want to have fun with the models that costed me a significant chunk of change. And I want to have fun with them at my current level of engagement and effort. And that means that playing with people of similar levels of engagement and effort I get different interesting outcomes depending on our choices during the game and not just the same predetermined rock-paper-siccors game where everyone knows what they are bringing to table with occasional ademantium drill thrown into the mix if someone gets lucky with the army they like.

And we also happen to be the plurality of the game that is not working for us. If the plurality of players are experiencing the problem, it means that you need to change the game and not the players.

[Sharklone]

1 hour ago, Golub87 said:

Thank you for calling out that condescending wall of text.

Yes, the data demonstrated that the game is quite broken for the fat middle of average players who do not care about "giitin gud" because we have better things to do with our time. Playing this game should not feel like a chore but it really really feels like a chore.

The data clearly demonstrated that if two average player at similar skill levels play each other the outcome of the game will be significantly impacted by the broken balance.

The data clearly demonstrated that this is not a "kitchen table, beer and pretzels, Sunday afternoon" game.

 

You just summed up what I've been trying to explain to my mates by saying it feels like a chore. I couldn't quite think of how to phrase it.

There's a couple of armies that feel like a chore to play against or play with. I am yet to have a fun game against certain armies I won't call out here because I don't want to start faction wars. Going into games knowing I've lost before I roll a single dice is not good balance. Whatever way you try to spin it.

[stratigo]

12 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

What's your response to WHW and Listbot? Basically they've demonstrated that 90% of games are determined by who is statistically the better player (the player most likely to win the game). Yes, Faction matters but not the way people want it to matter, they've also shown meta chasing doesn't produce results. 

As a feather in my own cap, I'd just like to point out the data confirms my perspective that the Zilfin build is a low skill build. So maybe I'm bias towards believing their results.

I think they missed when discussing the "fat middle" of players that even there faction is only between 40-50%, that still means player skill is between 60-50% determinate in the outcome of games in that segment. Meaning overall the way to improve your results is to be better at the game.

This starts at list building as I've said before, grinding out your own list. My LRL list is nothing like anything I've seen anywhere else, to the point I struggle to understand the underlying logic of a lot of builds I come across. Lastly I'm very frustrated by the lack of attention paid to quality of win, and the continued trend of players not finishing games. The final score is important when discussing how to improve lagging factions. 

that they are all largely playing the best lists and so have controlled for the imbalance in army selection? Also I am skeptical of how WHW measures skill. Skill is sort of ephemeral, it can't be measured except with results. The most skilled players win the most. But they take the best lists the most too. So, skill does matter, but so does lists. How do you say that table skill (As opposed to list building, which is a skill, but one based on recognizing balance issues) is the primary factor over list building?

 

The best players in the world really aren't as effected by balance because they are all highly motivated and have the funds to collect the best army anyways. Though I can tell you a bunch of them get mighty fatigued about bad balance even when they take advantage of it. Not all of them, there are players who cares only about winning and the rest of the game is sort of secondary.

8 hours ago, wayniac said:

There was a Warhammer Weekly episode yesterday that discussed this.  But what it semeed to show is that if there is a skill gap between players, the faction choice does not matter as much.  That is, a better player with a worse faction can beat a worse player with a better faction.  Which I agree with, and think we all knew.  What I am curious about though is how many top players are playing a C-tier faction against other top tier players and what the actual stats would be then, because it seems to me that with top player with a C-tier faction versus another top tier player with an S-tier faction, the faction choice will come into play as both players are good.

What was telling is the "fat middle" because if the top percentile do not see faction mattering as much, they are incapable of seeing the middle where faction DOES matter a lot.  Which tells me they are the wrong people to decide what is/isn't balanced since they don't see where it has the most effect.

I think there's a limit to even this. That a worse player with seraphon can beat a significantly better player with, say, BoC.

 

8 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

I am thinking that there are some concepts that need to be recognized about types of game:

-At a tournament, the goal is to win. Short of cheating/bad sportsmanship all of the overpowered models you can fit into a list are totally OK. It is a competition, that is what everyone signed up for. To achieve success one must win.

-If a match is practicing for a tournament then again, both players should be bringing the strongest thing they have. Because the goal is to improve skill for the purpose of winning.

-This is the point where things become an issue: in a casual game the goal is not to win. It is to have fun. If player A brings a super powered list and crushes player B they may have won, but they also failed in the goal. In this instance they are a failure, because they made the game unfun for the other player. Victory or defeat is irrelevant. This is a very difficult concept for some people to grasp but the more people that do the better off your community will be.

I think a good junk of even the best players (Like yourself perhaps?) would like better balance to feel challenged in putting together less obvious lists then what we have now. If there are more tools capable of winning, list building and subsequently gameplay is more fun. At least in my opinion. I love approaching a list like a puzzle and thinking it through and then seeing how it falls together on the table (I just know I'm not good enough at list building to put together a tourney winning list without referencing existing ones).

 

 

[Golub87]

1 hour ago, Sharklone said:

You just summed up what I've been trying to explain to my mates by saying it feels like a chore. I couldn't quite think of how to phrase it.

There's a couple of armies that feel like a chore to play against or play with. I am yet to have a fun game against certain armies I won't call out here because I don't want to start faction wars. Going into games knowing I've lost before I roll a single dice is not good balance. Whatever way you try to spin it.

Right?

I found that the best way to play AoS is, if a buddy hits me up for a game, I ask them what is their list and then I just tell them if I won or lost.

Even setting up TTS feels like too much effort for this game.

[zilberfrid]

19 hours ago, whispersofblood said:

 Lastly I'm very frustrated ... the continued trend of players not finishing games.

Does a that trend coincide with the release of the Lumineth battletome?

Because I would concede quite quickly, or simply walk away as it's just not a fun army to play against.

[whispersofblood]

6 hours ago, stratigo said:

1. that they are all largely playing the best lists and so have controlled for the imbalance in army selection? Also I am skeptical of how WHW measures skill. Skill is sort of ephemeral, it can't be measured except with results. The most skilled players win the most. But they take the best lists the most too. So, skill does matter, but so does lists. How do you say that table skill (As opposed to list building, which is a skill, but one based on recognizing balance issues) is the primary factor over list building?

 

2. The best players in the world really aren't as effected by balance because they are all highly motivated and have the funds to collect the best army anyways. Though I can tell you a bunch of them get mighty fatigued about bad balance even when they take advantage of it. Not all of them, there are players who cares only about winning and the rest of the game is sort of secondary.

3. I think there's a limit to even this. That a worse player with seraphon can beat a significantly better player with, say, BoC.

 

4. I think a good junk of even the best players (Like yourself perhaps?) would like better balance to feel challenged in putting together less obvious lists then what we have now. If there are more tools capable of winning, list building and subsequently gameplay is more fun. At least in my opinion. I love approaching a list like a puzzle and thinking it through and then seeing how it falls together on the table (I just know I'm not good enough at list building to put together a tourney winning list without referencing existing ones).

 

 

1. Listbot has been pretty good at assessing list strength. I'd also push back against the best players pick the strongest list. The vast majority of tournament players even regulars are playing factions they like and want to play. Seraphon and DoT make up like 7% of the meta, so unless your inference that number is the totality of skilled players I think you'll need to back away from this argument.

Skill is largely defined in the data set apparently as likelihood to achieve a particular result. In this case 5-0. Because we have some data with players playing multiple factions we can distill the expected result of the player and the faction and therefore disti what they player impact is on results. It's basically the same form of statistical analysis used in any skill sport. Including profession analysis of football players, chess, etc. So I don't think it's a particularly strong argument that it's not identifiable, just because the underlying specifics are identifiable. The data shows Ronaldo and Messi score 60% of the time where the average player scores 20% of the time, on the same spot of the football pitch. Whatever they are doing individually is making them standout, that is defined as skill.

2. I can only speak for myself and my gaming group or the players I've met in the UK or at events like Adepticon but none of us are solely motivated by winning. More than a few members of my gaming group are regularly up for best painted, and enjoy a diverse range of factions some of which aren't very good. And they will still win 4/5 matches. I think we are quick to identify good players as hyper competitive, when the reality is the bulk of them just give more effort at the hobby. That isn't to effort shame anyone but effort produces results, and a lack produces a lack. I say this for myself as well, I don't play enough games to go 5-0, I'm lacking the sharpness and mental durability to win when I'm tired. So I often don't win one of my 3rd or 5th games at a 5 game event, that's the nature of competition.

3. This question is explicitly answered in the data. This happens 10% of the time in recorded results, with a difference in player skill of at least 15%. Which given that most of the data is about 5 game events is an expected result of less than one game different. I believe this is a lot of people's game 3 experience, where the difference in player skill isn't obvious but still having some effect and the stronger faction just RNGs its way to victory.

4. It's important when looking at data to have a question rather than coming to data for an explaination for what you feel. An appropriate question for this thread is: Are games being decided by what we can call mechanical imbalance? The data emphatically says the vast majority of games are won by the better player. But, that the strength of the opposing faction is more determinative the closer an individual player is to the average person. Which passes the sanity check, they have less ability to see there way out of mechanical challenges. But, the data does not show that the faction strength effect dominates the average players results. Most people's (like 80%+) games are determined by their level of skill against their opponent's, but yes some percentage of gamers are losing games more regularly because of imbalance. 

I want to be clear I've not made the argument that imbalance doesn't effect people's outcomes. The point I've been trying to make is that it is not as determinate as people would like it to be. @Battlefury for example Blades of Khorne have been out preforming LRL since Dec, and Big Waagh which people generally have a perception of as "good" has fallen far down the winrate table (personally I think this has a lot to do with its match up with Archaon but I'm not sure that is the case because they are losing other games as well. Something has changed).

As to why your friend lost with Khorne well there could be a few reasons. A) you biased his list construction B) He plays a faction which boosts his apparent results C) He didn't really give it much effort D) He played against people relatively close to his own level and Khorne has a negative impact on player skill in the data a small one mind you. Him playing Khorne is only part of the equation. You made me curious about Khorne and I wrote a list I thought would be a good skeleton while on the tube yesterday. When I looked at the Khorne thread no one was even on a similar tangent so Khorne's problem may just be group think. Which is a death spiral even for objectively good factions. 

[whispersofblood]

45 minutes ago, zilberfrid said:

Does a that trend coincide with the release of the Lumineth battletome?

Because I would concede quite quickly, or simply walk away as it's just not a fun army to play against.

How can you concede games you aren't playing? Paradoxical.