[2020] I dont like how %pen has been handled

This decision was made to specifically nerf penetration, and it statistically has. What we are currently trying to figure out is how to connect the perception vs reality.

In Reality:

• A single item used to provide 60% Penetration against tanks - now its capped at 40%, requires more items, and only rarer conditions can go over 40%. It is factually harder to achieve a full penetration build than it was before.

• Warriors and Guardians are both dying statistically less now than they did Pre-S7 Mid Season (when running stat querys for "average deaths per god by class for 7.6 vs 7.7 conquest")

• Mages did noticeably less damage after 7.1 than they did before (when running stat querys for "total player damage dealt by god for 6.12 vs 7.1 conquest")

• Hunters are doing more damage than they did before mid-season, which is why we implemented the recent hunter nerfs to Atalanta's and Silverbranch. However, we have only seen a small increase in the damage output of the class overall - and when looking at the gods individually, almost all hunters went down except for those that we specifically buffed in mid season (22 gods were buffed, 5 of those were hunters and were pretty significant increases)

Now the common player perceptions seem to be:

• Penetration is now "everywhere" on many different items, so that must mean that everyone has more total pen on their builds. - Unlikely, but in reality they have a more smooth curve of pen that gradually ramps up over time, instead of just one item that covers it all (but was usually built late game)

• Damn your stats, Ajax, It feels bad to tank! - I cannot deny player feelings, and a lot of our processes here are designed to accept player feelings as facts, even when our data might show otherwise. We are actively looking into this topic here, and willing to make adjustments (see recent hunter item nerfs)

• The meta is too bursty. - In all my stats im seeing less total deaths and damage than before these changes, but similar notes as the "feels" in the previous point are being considered.

So, was it worth it?

• Yes, we as a design team are still quite happy with the changes to magical and physical penetration. We decreased flat pen, reducing earlygame snowball, and we created more build diversity by forcing players to consider how their build adds up into total pen, as opposed to picking up one item to catch-all in the late game.

• Why is pen on this or that random item? We specifically tried to identify each sub-archetype of magical or physical items, and get pen on 1 of each - Ex: Mages have - pure power, health/power, lifesteal, or utility items - so we made sure to get % pen on 1 of each of those archetypes.

• We knew that player perception would trend toward the opposite of reality in both of these cases, but we felt the benefits were real enough to still go through with it. We also thought pros would especially appreciate it (which it seems they have) - and that players would learn eventually (it seems we arent quite there yet)

• We are going to continue looking at balance between each role/class to make sure every single role/class FEELS impactful. We arent content to just point at numbers and try to prove players wrong - we want to make positive adjustments that bring the stats and the sentiment closer together.

Its clear that the community is still quite split on this topic, our huge playerbase doesnt all think as one, theres lots of dissention between different regions, roles, modes, and skill levels.

We wanted to treat %pen like any other stat, probably the closest comparison is CDR.

In order to have a good variety of build choices to meet the 40% cap, you need a significant number of options at 10% and a rare few at 20%. This requires more items to have the stat, more than we were planning to add as new items.

We also chose the items to gain percent pen quite carefully, looking for underwhelming options or ones that needed shifts.

As for executioner, we felt it was necessary to keep its current identity even in the new pen world. Reducing enemy prots is NOT the same thing as pen, because the 2 can stack, and exe can provide more damage to other physical gods on your team, not just yourself. We felt that putting more %pen as a stat on exe would make it even more of a must have catch-all item than it was before, which is pretty insane because it was already a 99% bought item.

So: putting pen on exe would do the exact opposite of our goals: which were to increase build diversity and restrict access to high %pen in single items.

VVGR - VER

Silverbranch should be for Stim hunters really. When the power was lower, even those hunters werent picking it up. Crit was still considered very strong until recently, and seems like a reasonable option on many other hunters. If we see a scenario where "only hunters who can abuse silverbranch are playable" we will look more into it, but as this time we dont think thats going to be strictly the case.

Qins being core is likelyt because of more health-heavy builds on guardians and warriors. We dont want to nerf it because it was a "victim" of the other meta changes - Qins was considered weak for a long time, and its stats diddnt directly change. Generally, we get a lot of negative feedback from players when we nerf items that were indirectly brought into the meta. We are likely to adjust the bow tree more in the future before we consider making changes to Qins.