most of the HOTS playerbase is silver (below average) and gold (average). Platinum is considered above average and Diamond is considered great. balancing for people who are average or straight up bad is a terrible practice. For a bell curve, you’d be mostly balancing for people that are just barely in the middle and to the left, leaving skilled players out to dry.
It’s actually not. Balancing for higher skilled players encourages the people to grow and get better. this is how pretty much any competitive thing works.
Fun is subjective. Hence why you should be balancing primarily around skill. things need to feel good of course. However if something doesn’t feel good exclusively because a player stinks, that isn’t a problem of game design.
Nova nerfs, chromie nerf, Initial diablo rework (which nerfed him hard), valeera nerf, Murky getting nerfed after his rework made him decent, a large portion of nerfs in every balance patch, etc are ALL due to balancing in favor of bad players.