AOS Metawatch 03/07-23/08

[Ragest]

We continue with the analysis of the metagame of AoS in 5 round physical events.

Dkhm rate is just a method to organize the data, with a relation between matches played and victories.

Arrows are related to the last table.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Ragest

[Magnus The Blue]

With the new Celestial Tomb, Sons are just going to get better!

[Doko]

I was reported for say in fyreslayers forum that we was nerfed too hard and done useless in 3.0....... data and time are as karma it seems

 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Doko

[LuminethMage]

Finally LRL achieving win-rates which fit with the level of complains : ) . Some of your friends who sold all their LRL might start to regret that 😜

Thanks for the effort collecting all the data! 

Edited August 24, 2021 by LuminethMage

[Chikout]

Honestly the top end isn't too bad with only DoK inching above 60%. 

It's the other end that needs urgent help, specifically Gloomspite, BoC and Slaanesh with winrates well below 40%. 

If they can give those armies an overhaul and bump up the points for Gotrek and Morathi, the meta will be in a decent place. 

[lare2]

Really appreciate you doing this. Enjoy looking at this. 

[Holy_Diver]

There are sites to see some lists of the latest tournaments? Aosshorts seems in vacation.

[JonnyTheKing]

7 hours ago, LuminethMage said:

Finally LRL achieving win-rates which fit with the level of complains : ) . Some of your friends who sold all their LRL might start to regret that 😜

Thanks for the effort collecting all the data! 

The complaints were more how boring and unfun they can be tbf

 

Hopefully once a few battletomes come out the meta will go in a nice direction, someone throw a rope for GG and Beasts plz

[Landohammer]

8 hours ago, Chikout said:

Honestly the top end isn't too bad with only DoK inching above 60%. 

It's the other end that needs urgent help, specifically Gloomspite, BoC and Slaanesh with winrates well below 40%. 

If they can give those armies an overhaul and bump up the points for Gotrek and Morathi, the meta will be in a decent place. 

I'm a bit rusty on win/loss rate analysis but if I remember correctly, the Ninth Age data analysts considered anything consistently below 45% or above 55% (with solid sampling data) to be problematic. Factions hitting  <40% or >60%  win rates consistently was unheard of. If it happened it could justify immediate intervention. 

However AOS data has some pretty severe issues. You have cross faction units like Archaon, Gotrek, and Mega Gargants that can can push entire factions up a tier. 

While I still consider our sampling data to be a bit too small, I def think there are some obvious outliers. SOB, LRL and DOK rose to the top pretty quickly and have stayed on top. While BOC, NH, and GG have been at the bottom all along.

 

[Skreech Verminking]

14 hours ago, LuminethMage said:

Finally LRL achieving win-rates which fit with the level of complains : ) . Some of your friends who sold all their LRL might start to regret that 😜

Thanks for the effort collecting all the data! 

I only know that my fellow elf-things player regretted calling the warpfire thrower weapon team a joke, after having his whole army being burnt by 2

[NinthMusketeer]

Remember that win rates at tournaments are massively skewed towards 50%. Winners fight winners, losers fight losers. To see the real win rates one would need to look at the results of round 1 games only, where matchups are fully randomized. 60% win rate indicates there is a huge problem.

The other issue with taking these rates at face value is, as always, they don't show the lists. What this data does not show is that top tourney lists are overwhelmingly built the same way; top-loaded with heroes and hero-monsters, only a third or so points spent on actual units. In that regard the meta is less diverse than it has ever been.

In simple terms, the devs overlooked that buffing heroes & buffing monsters was going to double-buff hero monsters.

[LuminethMage]

13 hours ago, JonnyTheKing said:

The complaints were more how boring and unfun they can be tbf

 

Hopefully once a few battletomes come out the meta will go in a nice direction, someone throw a rope for GG and Beasts plz

Nope, people are just choosing what they want to complain about. There were at least as much "they are so OP" posts as there are about the fun level. 

 

Agreed with the rest though, hopefully we get some good updates for the battletomes that are not doing well right now, soon : )

[LuminethMage]

6 hours ago, Skreech Verminking said:

I only know that my fellow elf-things player regretted calling the warpfire thrower weapon team a joke, after having his whole army being burnt by 2

Did the teams at least have the decency to properly self-destruct afterwards? #rollmore1s

I sadly haven't had a chance to play against Skaven yet, but hopefully soon : ) 

[Skreech Verminking]

2 hours ago, LuminethMage said:

Did the teams at least have the decency to properly self-destruct afterwards? #rollmore1s

I sadly haven't had a chance to play against Skaven yet, but hopefully soon : ) 

Well they didn’t😋

(Although I did loose them all, including my three rattling gun, in my third game against a dok player, in turn one through my own rolling)

Edited August 25, 2021 by Skreech Verminking

[LuminethMage]

1 minute ago, Skreech Verminking said:

Well they didn’t, in this l game at least😋

(I lost them all including my three rattling gun, in my third game against a dok player, in turn one through my own rolling)

DoK favoritism! : ) - Sounds like you had a proper good Skaven time there 👍

[Skreech Verminking]

Just now, LuminethMage said:

DoK favoritism! : ) - Sounds like you had a proper good Skaven time there 👍

I did, although loosing all my weapon teams,

I was able to destroy basically everything,

with the exception of one hero and a unit of snakes (the not bow variant).

Morathi was thankfully not part of his army.

in a 1000points tournament game she would have just destroyed everyone

[Orkmann]

Great collection of data! But could you please add the "a" and "!" to the Waaagh! Waagh just looks like a less angry and less loud version of the real deal, no wonder the winrate has dropped that much 😁

[AaronWilson]

What does the DKHM rating mean at the end of the list there?

[Magnus The Blue]

8 hours ago, AaronWilson said:

What does the DKHM rating mean at the end of the list there?

Looks like it's just Win Rate multiplied by the meta %.  

[NinthMusketeer]

15 hours ago, LuminethMage said:

Nope, people are just choosing what they want to complain about. There were at least as much "they are so OP" posts as there are about the fun level. 

 

Agreed with the rest though, hopefully we get some good updates for the battletomes that are not doing well right now, soon : )

See though, not being upper tier at tournaments doesn't mean something isn't overpowered and it certainly doesn't mean it isn't OP on the casual level. There are plenty of things that tournament regulars can deal with which are oppressive to normal players. Tourney builds show up with the expectation of encountering, countering, and exploiting cheese. But that isn't something that applies to the whole game, nor should it.

Lumineth may not have a strong streak of winning tournaments but they have certainly been doing well. So sure, they aren't the most OP thing out there but that is an EXTREMELY high bar to measure against. If anything, feeling a need to measure against that in the first place is a sign that something is too strong.

We should never forget that ONLY overpowered builds do well at tournaments. Sure there will be some statistical outliers here and there but broadly speaking even skilled players with average armies do not perform better than bad players showing up with netlists. Players who do well in tourney play are both running OP armies and are good at exploiting them. The point being that for Lumineth there is something present to exploit.

Something you (by my impression) want is to push back against the 'LRL OP' narrative. Despite what I said above that is something I entirely agree with; the nega-hype around the army exceeds the extent to which it is OP. But I think fighting that directly is trying to swim upstream; people exaggerate into hyperbole based on no evidence at all let alone when there actually is some! A better approach, IMO, would be to try and steer the attitude in the correct direction:

Sunmetal weapons. That one rule is the source of people's frustrations. There is a lot which goes into a Lumineth cheese build but without that keystone it falls apart. It's brainless to use and there is little to no counterplay available. It takes the entire concept of LRL as a skilled high-finesse army and chucks it out in favor of blunt, reliable MW output.

[Ragest]

Lumineth has 2 problems right now.

First of all is the design of Teclis. We have an army that lacks of CAs to use, because their buff system is tied to spells. Most of the important spells are placed in low cast values (even ridiculous low like lambent or speed) but those are spells after all, so it has counterplays around, not like "I use this and do that and you can't contest that). With that in mind, there is no reason to not play Teclis. He gives you what you want, the moment you want and in the safer way, or you are forced to get your dudes trapped on the subfaction that gives you +1 to cast and pray that your plan is not ****** by a misscast or a 3 in the rolls. You can add aswell that the base design is made to die like flyes against mortals, and what Teclis do? Protection agains spells and a bubble of 5++ ward. 

Then we have the foxes. If you ask me, just Sev should go away in shooting phase to prevent exploiting the mechanic but I think they just didn't know what to do with the second wave to compete with the first (a thing that they couldn't do) without being seraphon levels of broken so they added some random abilities to some warscrolls.

The way to fix this could be spreading what teclis and vanaris do into some useless warscrolls (protection against magic coming from bannerblade, protection of teclis on the twins affecting just Lumineth units, Shearing light on Calligrave, taking off the no LoS from sentinels to place it on Ballistas or the scenery giving +1 cast to the wizard inside) and taking off the stupid way to make battlelines, with vanari just being line in illiatha and the rest in their subfacion + if your general belongs to the same temple.

Oh, and just rework Eltharion, that mini is not going to see table never. 

Edited August 25, 2021 by Ragest

[woolf]

Always fun to look at some meta data! would be interesting to see how archaon lists are doing if that's possible to break out?

[LuminethMage]

8 hours ago, NinthMusketeer said:

See though, not being upper tier at tournaments doesn't mean something isn't overpowered and it certainly doesn't mean it isn't OP on the casual level. There are plenty of things that tournament regulars can deal with which are oppressive to normal players. Tourney builds show up with the expectation of encountering, countering, and exploiting cheese. But that isn't something that applies to the whole game, nor should it.

Lumineth may not have a strong streak of winning tournaments but they have certainly been doing well. So sure, they aren't the most OP thing out there but that is an EXTREMELY high bar to measure against. If anything, feeling a need to measure against that in the first place is a sign that something is too strong.

We should never forget that ONLY overpowered builds do well at tournaments. Sure there will be some statistical outliers here and there but broadly speaking even skilled players with average armies do not perform better than bad players showing up with netlists. Players who do well in tourney play are both running OP armies and are good at exploiting them. The point being that for Lumineth there is something present to exploit.

Something you (by my impression) want is to push back against the 'LRL OP' narrative. Despite what I said above that is something I entirely agree with; the nega-hype around the army exceeds the extent to which it is OP. But I think fighting that directly is trying to swim upstream; people exaggerate into hyperbole based on no evidence at all let alone when there actually is some! A better approach, IMO, would be to try and steer the attitude in the correct direction:

Sunmetal weapons. That one rule is the source of people's frustrations. There is a lot which goes into a Lumineth cheese build but without that keystone it falls apart. It's brainless to use and there is little to no counterplay available. It takes the entire concept of LRL as a skilled high-finesse army and chucks it out in favor of blunt, reliable MW output.

My first reply to the OP was more of a joke, not meant totally serious, but yes I think LRL weren't OP in 2nd Ed (might have changed in 3rd, if they stay at a 60+% win rate for a prolonged time, then they might actually be and GW should do something about it ).

I understand where you and several others who make similar points (tournaments aren't casual play, something can be not OP in aggregated data, but still be a problem in casual games) are coming from. I think it can be true, I can't wholly agree though. If you do not have real data - and complains on internet forums or personal experience at a local level aren't - you can't really balance around it. There is too much subjectivity to these things. Tournament data has to become better though. It's still often not granular enough (does a faction have a 50% win-rate because of many 3:2 and 2:3 games or many 5:0 and 0:5 games, subsections specific etc.)

For example, I'm pretty involved in LRL forums, discords, reddit etc., and you can see really everything: From LRL players who lose almost all their games and ask what's wrong with the faction, to others who think LRL are too strong and feel bad about winning so much against their friends, to people who bought the army and can't find someone to play against even though no one has played one game against LRL in their group, to people like myself who don't have that problem at all.

Same thing for remedies: Like your example with Sunmetal Weapons. Lumineth don't do a whole lot of damage outside of their MW. They do not have many damaging spells, nor a lot of other MW output. Nor do they have units which you can buff up to do great damage. Your unbuffed Sunmetal weapon does a MW on a 6 to hit. This isn't something totally outstanding in AoS. You can use a spell (and spell casting is fickle in most cases) to buff this to a 5+, which then becomes pretty outstanding, but that's really the main way how LRL do damage. But it's still not an incomparable MW output in comparison to many other armies. Other armies can achieve similar numbers (just often not as consistent over a game) in most cases, that's one of the strengths of LRL. And I think the more battletomes are updated the more you'll see this (increase in MW output). I think what you meant - and what is probably the most common complaint about LRL is Sunmetal Weapons on Sentinels which ignore line-of-sight. These are part of the scalpel though - as long as you do not have a huge number of them, and can cast Lambent Light on your target - the damage output isn't great, but you can focus it very well. It does sucks for people because it's almost unavoidable. I 100% understand that. And maybe it was a bad idea to make such a unit. But right now, it seems LRL are pretty much balanced around it sadly. It's really difficult to play without Sentinels against almost all opponents (especially in 3rd). Maybe they can make them even more expensive to avoid spamming them or do away with the "ignore LOS" aspect in the a future Battletome. I'd be ok with that.

But from my experience, this wouldn't reduce the complains about LRL much or at all. It would just move the goal post again towards the next thing: For example Wind Spirts, or Teclis (which also a lot of people complain about), or their spells in general. There are just a lot of people who do not like LRL. Part of it seems to be "elves", part might be the timing when they came out at the start of Covid where not everyone was in a good shape (and crucially couldn't play), part is because they are more of a tricky control army. I don't think there is a magic button which would change things, as a LRL player all you can hope is that GW doesn't just remove most of the things which made the army interesting in the next update. That's what I'm mainly concerned about. It's a fun army to play, with many options and good internal balance. And often when GW updates books that were deemed to be or really too strong, or not liked, they just turn out to be bad (as in not fun).

Case in point: It's also not fun to play against 30 horrors, or SoB just walking on objective T1 and that's the whole game, or playing against Beastclaw Raiders when you do not know how they function (have a look at how many BCR 2nd ed battlereports were over at top of T1 because some poor guy did a mistake with their set-up), or Blood Stalkers, or KO where you might not have more than one or two real combats over the whole game, or a multitude of other units which have a similar MW output, but do not come up as a problem all the time. Or what was the biggest issue here on the forum when the rules for 3rd were announced, but no one had a single game played? Sentinels using Unleash Hell. And while that certainly is strong, if you look at the competitive scene (and likely also not in causal games, I don't think Archaon is easy to handle for your average gamer) - it's not what's actually the main problem - it's 3+ save monster heroes, which almost no one was talking about at that time. There are just a lot of people predisposed to not liking LRL. Some people might change their mind of course, but I think it's better if GW generally tries to balance the game around tournament data, than what people might think based on their own experience or internet talk. 

That said, I also agree partly with you (and many others): LRL are strong in casual games, especially against people who have no experience playing against them. They don't play like most other armies, and their basic stats are good across the board (it's hard to build a bad list for casual games). I definitely felt that when I played against my CoS and SBL friends. I think though, that that has been reduced somewhat in 3rd ed, and part of it is just the paper/stone/scissors nature of AoS, and again not different from many other armies, where this topic just doesn't come up that often. 

Sorry about the sermon. 

 

[NinthMusketeer]

It doesn't help that LRL are noob-crushers, both for opponents and the player. They have a learning curve just to play, and they have tactics like wimdy bois that new players cannot be expected to know how to counterplay.

Unfortunately the narrative lacks nuance--LRL are OP but only a fraction of that sentiment gets into why. Generally this leads to GW just nerfing the whole faction without paying attention to most of it working perfectly well. Were I a LRL player that would be my fear, but trying to counter the whole narrative is a fruitless endeavor. Better to try and steer it in the right direction before it's too late and the incoming nerfs hit everything be it innocent or guilty. 

Sidenote: If something hits 60% win rate at tournaments, it's a problem. Period. Anything that gets that high for even a month is going to DESTROY the casual field, because that is a win rate against everyone else's top cheese and heavily skewed towards 50% to boot.

Edited August 26, 2021 by NinthMusketeer

[Ragest]

11 hours ago, woolf said:

Always fun to look at some meta data! would be interesting to see how archaon lists are doing if that's possible to break out?

Hm If i remember it right kairos Archaon lists are with taker tribe, khelt nar and hag narr in the +60% winrate. Archaon in std was around 55% and in khorne around 50%.

I meed to look for that table

Edited August 26, 2021 by Ragest