Developer Comment: The change to Heroic Strike is a mild buff to both Taunt and Colossus Smash Varians, which we’d like to see more often.
^ I cant remember the last time I saw twin blades, I see taunt basically 90% of all games
Git gud dev’s
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I imagine they were refereing to ranked. In QM, poor varian is kinda forced to take taunt.
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Looking at HP because we dont have any other refrence
Taunt 74% pickrate
coloss 11%
twins 13%
On higher ranks
twins 10% pickrate
Quickmatch
19% popularity
Devs are blind
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Colossus smash sucks .
frog in the well here.
Just because we have a limited perspective does not mean the broadwr view, a different context, is incorrect.
Sure, there are occassions where a blue has stated a third-party site has some information that is close to information they’re using, but it does not mean it has parity, nor that your observation now trumps because you found the “only reference” you were willing to use
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Becasue Twinblade is a niche build that only works 20% of the time lol.
Kind of begs the question of why Blizz never just opened it up and let us see the real stats in-game. The ones they provide are of limited use.
I believe a lot of us gamers are nerds that would geek out at having the kind of stats in-game that we seek out in other sites, which would get people more hooked into the game.
Why hide it from us?
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Same reason why they hide your real mmr and hide premades from sight on loading screen so people get a fake feeling about having a chance.
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Because if they show “official” winrates, a lot of ranked players (probably even a majority) will gravitate to the heroes with a couple % points higher WR, stop to try if that hero wasn’t banned, completely ingore the heroes with lower WR, and generally make the meta incredibly stale.
Or that’s why I would hide it, at least 
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Except it doesn’t. Read the whole description.
It’s kind of a moot point though; is it true we lack a broader viewpoint? Absolutely.
Is it also true that the developers are not offering data (last I checked) that can be scrutinized? Also true.
The reason why an appeal to authority is a logical fallacy is because it’s used in place of the data the authority uses to make decisions.
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Same tbh. I don’t think I’ve had a Varian Twinblades in my games for months now.
Does this mean that heroes profile can be THAT different? 
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Well that’s kind of what happens when Varian is matched up against tanks and going twin blades is now seen as being a troll.
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But even if you search on HP for ranked only, Taunt is being taken 50% of the time. We see twin blades being taken about 5 to 10% more than csmash both in QM and ranked, but them saying they’d like to see taunt more often is very very weird…
In QM, whenever I play Varian, It’s either taunt or smash as 99% of the time, I am matched with a tank or a bruiser.
But in saying that, ironically, whenever I see a varian and they pick TB, most likely we’ll lose cause the other team has a tank and we have no tank or bruiser. Cause QM varians like TB for some reason.
Here in AU/NZ anyways
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One of the first rules of statistics is that a random or well distributed sample of data is representative of the whole data set. In my country of 10 million, about 1500 people are used to predict election results, rather adequately.
Curiously, Hots Logs shows a bit different numbers.
Still, something like 80% or 10% is decided, even with confidence interval.
As for the arguments, devs might follow the regular complaints and the perceived meta. “Teammate took TB as tank” - apparently must make Taunt more lucrative.
Arguments aside, I found Varian to be a bit lacking with self sustain outside Parry, so the change is welcome.
I didn’t notice before but the Blades niche is gone from QM these months. Virtually every match has Zagara, Azmodan, Nazeebo, or several of those, and in case it doesn’t, you likely have 2-3 mages so one of them gets to roleplay solo laner.
I found Colossus lacking, however seen / been in several teams where Taunt was used alongside a tank. Slightly lower damage, but a lot more lockdown (…) and to top it off, Varian doesn’t blow up all the time he tries to engage.
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Well it’s quite obvious the lower the rank, the more it will be underrepresented and underuploaded. So yeah, if you look at global average, it will be heavily skewed toward top-end on HP. Blizzard does have true global data.
If you look at lowest ranks, tb and taunt does have about even pickrate (so still no TB domination). I guess in that light that statement would just mean: “we want tb to be a more niche build in all ranks, it’s overplayed”.
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As an attempted ‘e-sport’, it is a waste to not have dived into stat reporting as stats are part of the fuel that drives sports commentary and speculation.
As for why things are hidden, well I can speculate on two bits: 1) “no one” likes backseat driving (so to speak) and 2) stats aren’t the have-all, be-all.
In previous years, blues have indicated some of the metrics they use for making adjustments to perceived hero power and popularity, and that typically falls into a % range. From that little kernel of information, some players clamor around hotslogs/profile to demand changes be made because a particular filter was thus near the range. When changes do mesh with the priority people expect, then they assume a defect of the devs to not see/understand and make the immediate change.
So if ‘official’ stats were posted, it might fuel back-seat dev demands where players see the ‘real numbers’ (or however they’re filtered) as a driving point to ‘prove’ the devs are bad, hero is op, or that those are the heroes they should use/avoid, and fuel the cycle. When I’m at work, I don’t tell everyone ‘all’ the rules upfront as some things inspire people to do the very thing you don’t want them to do, so omitting information to deter unwanted behavior makes some sense to me.
People are bad at stats; there’s all sorts of presumption and tl;dr that most aren’t willing to find in trends and instead go for hardline conclusions.
Stats aren’t the only aspect to game balance, as has also been conveyed by devs, they have (had?) a desire to have a particular ‘fantasy’ to the hero, to playing as them. If people aren’t boxed-in by stats, then they may be more particular to conveying other details rather than going off of, or being ‘disproven’ by declarations around stats.
“I think ‘x’ is off with the hero”
“stats say they have 50% winrate, so they’re fine, stop crying for changes”
Just because a particular margin is hit does not mean something can’t be improved by some other means, but once people have “stats” that tends to occupy a large part of the dialogue. The usual shift at that is to go to mmr instead (another stat) to ‘quality’ or ‘refute’ an expression some players have. While we do dismiss a lot of ‘feedback’ with “l2p” some changes to game balance do try to better support a “fantasy” of the experience that can be difficult to convey with numbers.
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I feel like even though Varian “should” go taunt in quick match they end up going twin blade, I see twin blades a lot more in quick match.
Usually see taunt in ranked and feel hes a decent tank.
The problem with smash and twin blade I think is they are too easy to play around and smash is too squishy.
You hear the BLAAARRRGGGHHH! Then you and your team pump all of your CC and abilities into him.
Whenever someone hovers Varian in ranked they go “varian tank?” so often. I don’t know why he’s considered a tank to so many people. He’s a bruiser who can tank but at best he’s an off tank, not a main tank. He can’t matchup well against Johanna, ETC, Anub, Diablo and such. He’s not meant to be.
The norm for Varian has changed. Its almost like taboo seeing twin blades Varians or Smash Varians because of how many people are told taunt is the best.