Mercy wasn't actually nerfed

Ryu-13994 · September 30, 2018, 6:07pm

That wouldnt solve her actual problems, her problems are her healing output and the value of valkyrie

GM mercy with 600 hours

QuizzyBunny-2512 · September 30, 2018, 6:08pm

Reads OP and first posts

Genji icon says Mercy is weak.

Mercy icon says Mercy is balanced.

Bunny scratches ears in confusion.

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:11pm

Apparently you’re still adamant on citing weekly and daily statistics even though that can be skewed by fluctuations. Also, when was our last conversation? You said it’s increasing. Look at the graph right now. It literally proves my argument that it’s just fluctuations which is normal for statistics. As of now, the data is following a downwards trend.

Nope. I actually said you need a 54% winrate to climb in those ranks.

You’re acting like you know what you’re talking about. Let’s calm ourselves.

Catwoman-11236 · September 30, 2018, 6:11pm

She is 6th most picked overall, while her average winrate is low (48.46%) that doesn’t necessarily suggest “ridiculously underpowered” as I feel that this was a result of the change and people having a hard time adapting. It’s still not good, of course, but doesn’t scream “underpwered”, especially given the fact that she still averages 10k healing per match while Ana averages 9k, Lucio averages 9k, Zen averages 7k and Brigitte averages 7k. The only healer doing better heals on average is Moira with 11k.

Basically what I’m seeing is that she isn’t “ridiculously underpowered” but rather less strong that Moira and less strong that what she was. I wouldn’t even use the word underpowered at all, given these stats. If I never knew what she was before the most recent nerf I’d think she was still a great character.

I thought I heard recently around these parts that Overbuff isn’t as accurate anymore due to the private profile thing? Is that true? Idk, I rarely used these statistic sites myself, usually just see caps posted here.

HealingSlave-2583 · September 30, 2018, 6:15pm

You don’t just do 12 000 of healing in 6 minutes by playing Mercy. It would total to 20 000 healing every 10 minutes which is twice what even the best Mercy players can achieve.

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:18pm

Decreasing as we speak and it’s been a month.

Lol. Hope this is a joke. She’s the only hero in GM with a negative winrate and in the low ranks, where she’s supposed to be good, she has similar winrates to Ana.

It’s been more than a month. Please stop with this toxic garbage that Mercy mains can’t adapt.
This claim is dubious at best. For this claim to be true, you would see a increase in winrates as her pickrate decreased. This isn’t the case however. The hero that you’re describing is Zenyatta.

Seriously? I hope you know that the average amount of heals you get is entirely situational…

Then clearly you don’t know much about statistics. She is definitely underpowered. I won’t say “ridiculously” because I will admit that it does sound a bit hyperbolic. That being said, you claiming that she’s just less strong is the biggest understatement I’ve ever heard on these forums.

On Mercy and data

I’ve seen a lot of people claim that Overbuff’s numbers are meaningless due to private profiles (or due to the fact that even before private profiles Overbuff only received statistics from a subset of the player base). This claim is false. You absolutely can make very good claims about a large data set by sampling a large piece of it at random.

Here’s an example. A very big bag is full of blue tokens and red tokens. The bag is shaken thoroughly to mix up the tokens. Then you spill 100,000 token on the floor. Of these, 60,000 are blue and 40,000 are red. The remaining tokens stay in the bag (in the Overwatch context, these are the “private” tokens). What percent of the tokens in the bag are blue?

You can’t know for sure without looking at every single token. What you can do is make claims, and then give probabilities that they’re true. The bag should contain about 60% blue tokens and 40% red tokens. If you claim that the bag has exactly 60% blue tokens, then you are probably wrong. If you claim that the bag has somewhere between 59%-61% blue tokens then you are almost surely right (with a probability that can be calculated and shown to be very very close to 100%). The more tokens you draw from the bag, the closer the percentage should be to the actual percentage in the whole bag. In math, we call this the law of large numbers.

You end up replacing a certain claim (exactly 60%) with a more nuanced one, together with a measure of how sure you are about it. This shouldn’t worry you. Your entire life is lived like this. For instance, your brain processes information from your eyes at a certain frame rate, and your eyes themselves have many missing pixels (so there are “private” pixels and “private” moments in time). Everything you see at all times is based off of probability. That’s the way almost all of human experience works.

The situation in Overwatch is almost identical, except we’re not sampling entirely at random. For instance, we’re only sampling people with public profiles. The good news is that there’s excellent reason (supported by data analysis) to believe that private profiles aren’t correlated with, say, skill at playing Roadhog. So the conclusions still hold.

So, now on to the main question that I wanted to discuss. How much should you trust Overbuff data? Like in the bag of tokens example, it really depends on how many games Overbuff records. If you drew 2 tokens out of the bag, your conclusions would be off. If you drew a trillion, they would be really good. So, how many games does Overbuff record?

We can’t know exactly without someone from Overbuff chiming in, but we can get a very good estimate. The thing that comes into play here, and will be important for the discussion later on, is a beautiful theorem called the central limit theorem. I won’t state the theorem itself, since it’s a bit too technical for a forum post, but it deals exactly with the kind of situation we have here - repeating a random event over and over again and trying to understand its averages. The central limit theorem is the source of the bell curves that you might have seen pop up in all kinds of aspects of your life.

Suppose you record N games in which Mercy was played (I told you there would be a little bit of Mercy here). Suppose that Mercy is balanced such that she should win about b% of the time (and b% is pretty close to 50% so the standard deviation for one Mercy game is close to 1/2), but that in those games she won about a%. How far apart can we reasonably expect a% and b% to be? One thing that the central limit theorem (and its companion, the Berry-Esseen theorem) says is that you should expect about 66% percent chance for a% and b% to be within about 100/2 sqrt(N)% of each other (i.e within one standard deviation).

So I looked at the time period between late June (when private profiles were introduced) and early August (when the support balance patch came in) and found several characters whose pick rates were stable (Mercy was one of them). For each day, I found out how far the win rates for that day were from the average win rate during that time period. Then I found the percentage that 66% of the results were smaller than and solved for N.

Now, this is only an estimation but the upshot of it is that Overbuff
records around 80,000 games a day. Using Blizzard’s statistics about player distribution (yes, I know that player distribution isn’t the same as the distribution of the number of games per day, but they’re close) we get about: 6,400 games in Bronze, 16,800 in silver, 25,600 in gold, 20,000 in platinum, 8,000 in diamond, 2,400 in masters, and 800 in gm every day.

Now back to the central limit theorem. Say we are trying to understand Mercy’s win rates in all ranks. Mercy’s pick rate in all ranks is currently 7.32% so she appears in 7.32% * 6 * 80,000 = 35,136 games. The central limit theorem tells us that we have about a 66% confidence that her average is within one standard deviation of the actual average. This means that we have a 66% level of confidence that the average in overbuff is at most 0.26% away from the actual average. It also gives about a 90% confidence that the average is at most 0.52% away. That’s about the level of trust we should have for a daily win rate in all ranks in Overbuff.

In diamond for instance with a pick rate of about 4%, we get a 66% chance that her daily averages are within 1.14% of the correct average and a 90% confidence that they’re within 2.28%. That’s not amazing. But, we can improve it by quite a bit. The first thing we can do is to limit the direction - we have a 84% confidence that the correct average is not MORE than 1.14% above the overbuff average for that day (in this case I don’t really care about it being less) and a 98% chance that the correct average is not more than 2.28% from the Overwatch average.

Better, but still not great. So, what do we do? We take more games. We calculate the average win rate over a whole week (if you want to be accurate, you should weight each day by the pick rate). This ends up being 7 times as many games so the accuracy improves. When you do this, you get a 84% confidence that the actual average is not more than about 0.43% from the Overbuff weekly average in diamond, and a 98% confidence that it’s not more than 0.86% more than it. And if this accuracy isn’t enough, you can average over a whole month. This will give you an 84% confidence that you’re not more than 0.2% too low, and a 98% confidence that you’re not more than 0.4% too low. Not bad. In all ranks, the monthly average has about a 84% chance of not being more than 0.048% too low, and a 98% of not being more than 0.096% too low.

In Masters and gm, you really shouldn’t be paying attention at all to daily numbers - only to weekly and monthly averages. Especially for characters with low pick rates. Mercy’s pick rate in gm is about 2%. That means it only measures about 96 Mercy games a day. That means that you only have a 66% confidence to be within 5.1% of the correct number (or a 84% chance to not be more than 5.1% too low). That’s really bad. However, if you average over a week then you are 84% confidence you’re not more than 1.9% too low, and if you average over a month then you’re 84% confident you’re not more than 0.93% too low. Similarly, in Masters if you average over a month you’re 84% confident that you’re not more than 0.53% too low. Note: you have to be careful when averaging over a month. The days with higher pick rates should count more than the days with lower pick rates because they represent more games. And if this level of confidence isn’t enough? Wait another month and average. This will divide your 84% and 98% confidence numbers by about 2.

The numbers given here are just guidelines. They’re based off of estimates and approximations. But the math behind them is very real. They’re good estimates and guidelines. There are other places to go from here that can increase the confidence levels even further. For instance, if the character you’re interested in spends more day below a certain number than above it, that increases your confidence that the number is low. Or, If the character you’re interested in spends most of their days very close to a certain number, that increases the likelihood that this number is close to the correct average.

I hope this helps people interpret data in future discussions (and not only Mercy based ones).

Hige-1101 · September 30, 2018, 6:19pm

Yes private profiles have skewed Overbuff’s statistics and clinging to them is a big mistake, though when someone cites them you can’t do much but actually use the site to disprove them

Of course, “fluctuations” seems to be an acceptable argument but player adapting to changes is not, there goes to show you how biased some people can be

Tsene-21123 · September 30, 2018, 6:22pm

Mercy isn’t fine because she can’t soloheal and work in all comps anymore

For real a lot people need to adjust into this fact over crying so much.

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:22pm

Because for that claim to be true, you’d see an increase in her winrate as her pickrate decreased. As of now, that has yet to happen and the daily data you keep clinging to, these increases always decrease.

Hige-1101 · September 30, 2018, 6:22pm

I’m not using daily data, only weekly

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:23pm

My point still stands.

Hige-1101 · September 30, 2018, 6:23pm

let’s wait a few more weeks and see then

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:24pm

It really isn’t neccessary, but cool. I’ll still be using statistics in my arguments though.

Let’s say, the deadline is 2 weeks after the Halloween event starts.

Catwoman-11236 · September 30, 2018, 6:24pm

Oh, well if we are only looking at GM stats I can see your point, however basing the worth of a character by a selective grouping of stats, however good those players are, seems unfair as a whole.

I am a Mercy main and I never intended to be toxic. I myself had a really hard time adapting to this new change. I was high platinum and then then nerf hit and I’m now low gold. I’m not saying it isn’t rough out there but it took me some time and now I feel like I can play her well. That’s simply my experience and I would never suggest that I am the bar and everyone else is bad or something, I’m sorry that you are taking what I am saying to be so toxic but I don’t mean it that way at all.

I’m well aware, however if we are looking at statistics to determine whether or not a character is “ridiculously underpowered” then it’s important to look at averages compared with other characters in their role. It would be silly to ignore that, on average, she gets more healing done per match than all but one other healer. Of course it’s situational, but she is obviously capable of doing some great healing, even if it isn’t how it used to be.

Hige-1101 · September 30, 2018, 6:24pm

hey I rather this than the “feel” thing so, kudos to you

I think that’s around the time when the nerfs hit a few months old so I agree, let’s measure the data on the second month and the first month as well as the weekly trend

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:31pm

Did you even read the rest of my reply?

Again, it is ridiculous for any hero to have a 54% winrate in GM. That would mean Mercy is a troll pick in those ranks. This, for most normal people, is enough.

Again, personal experiences amount to nothing in debates.

Again, you can’t be bringing up average heals as a way to prove she’s not underpowered because:

the whole data is entirely situational.
She is played predominantly in low ranks because of how easy she is. With that in mind, the low tier players are going to skew the data since it’s mind-bogglingly easy to get high heals in those ranks.

I’m definitely not going to take someone, who only uses healing averages as an argument to prove that she isn’t underpowered and ignores everything else that suggests the opposite, seriously. This discussion is over if that really is the best you can do to prove she isn’t underpowered:

personal experiences
healing averages

Catwoman-11236 · September 30, 2018, 6:37pm

Look, I’ve said what I needed to say and it’s clear to me that you’d rather be rude than have an actual debate, which is what I was trying to do. I didn’t comment here with the intent of being belittled over how I view statistics just because you don’t consider the statistics I am seeing as worthwhile.

I know Mercy is a very sensitive subject and I admire how much you obviously care about her. I care about her a lot too. I hope that things change, I really do, but right now it’s very unclear. I hope you have a great day, cheers.

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:40pm

You shouldn’t expect to have a debate after ignoring most of the points I made. Maybe act like you want to have a debate and I’ll deliver accordingly.

Not just me. Any person who looks at statistics on the daily would say the same thing. What’s funny is that you even acknowledged that healing averages are skewed because it is in entirely situational but then proceed to try and defend it as if it isn’t skewed. You contradicted yourself there.

I guess ignoring points is something you do often. It was nice chat and I’m just going to continue saying that she’s underpowered. Also, read this:

Catwoman-11236 · September 30, 2018, 6:47pm

I do want to clarify what I meant here before I take off. Individual healing per match is entirely situational, yes. However statistical averages are not as they gather the data from all sources to come to an average rather that show case by case healing stats. I know I didn’t clarify that earlier so I understand why you see this as a flawed thought process on my part.

Anyways, I see you’re still being demeaning, so again I take my leave. Peace.

Arceus-2238 · September 30, 2018, 6:53pm

You do know that this still doesn’t change the fact that average heals are still skewed because of how situation the amount of heals you get are? Besides, it doesn’t even help your argument because that would mean Zen, Lúcio and Brigitte are all underpowered. Also, would mean that Ana is less powerful than Mercy in GM right now. That is objectively false.

What a joke. And you’re the same person wondering why I’m being “demeaning”. Here’s a hint: it’s because you ignored most of my argument and only replied to the ones you thought you can refute. That isn’t helpful or constructive for anyone.

Also, might I add that you’re leaving a thread you decided to make. Maybe don’t make threads in the first place if you’re just going to leave after getting refuted.