Random VS Pseudo Random PROC or Why Does Axe's Win Rate Dropped in 6.81 Patch (Dota 2)

Introduction

Here is an interesting post about 6.81 patch influence on heroes win rate in Dota 2. One point caught my attention: a drastic change in Axe win rate: from 52% to 48%; see image below.

Axe's win rate before and after 6.81 patch (29-th of April)

The only change Axe get in this patch was implementation of the preudo random approach for the determination of Counter Helix skill triggering instead of random. As was guessed in the article:  

"...where you manage to Berserker's Call several enemies, you only have 3.2 seconds of being unconditionally hit by the enemy. In this time frame, the amount of successful Counter Helixes that use PRD is probably lower than with a true random. Hence the decrease in damage output and Win Rate." 

 Ok, nice guess! Lets test it!

Create a simulation to test the hypothesis

Import needed modules

import random
import numpy
from tabulate import tabulate
import collections

Lets create functions to calculate number of Counter Helix PROCs for given number of hits using random and pseudo random approaches. First one will be using random approach (notice that random.randrange() actually generates pseudo random set of values)

def randHelixProc(hits):
  '''
  checks if Counter Helix PROCs (chance = 17%) using random approach
  @param hits: number of times Axe was hit
  @return procs: number of times Counter Helix PROCs
  '''
  procs = 0

  for i in xrange(hits):
    chance = random.randrange(1, 101)
    if chance < 18:
      procs += 1
    else:
      continue

  return procs

I don't know how exactly pseudo random PROCs are designed for Axe or for Dota 2 in general, but they say that the probability of the pseudo random event in Dota 2 in it initial state has lower chance to proc than the stated probability for the event and each time the event is not triggered when it could the chance for this event to occur is increased. Lets say some event triggers with the 50% chance. Suggested pseudo random approach can be realised with 3 consecutive checks that have different chances: 0%, 50% and 100% (average is 50%). When event finally triggers it reset chance for the event to initial value (0% in this case) and it all starts over again.

def pseudoRandHelixProc(hits):
  '''
  checks if Counter Helix PROCs (chance = 17%) using pseudo random approach
  @param hits: number of times Axe was hit
  @return procs: number of times Counter Helix PROCs
  '''
  treshold = 0
  prob_list = [2, 5, 9, 14, 23, 47] # ~17% on average
  procs = 0
  for i in xrange(hits):
    chance = random.randrange(1, 101)
    try:
      success = prob_list[treshold]
    except:
      success = prob_list[5]
    if chance >= success:
      treshold += 1
    else:
      procs += 1
      treshold = 0
  return procs

Check if the chances for PROCs are the same for the both functions. We should have 1700 procs of Counter Helix for 10000 attacs on Axe. Launch 100 simulations of 10000 hits for each function and compute average procs for random and pseudo random approaches.

rhelix_list = []
for i in xrange(100):
  value = randHelixProc(10000)
  rhelix_list.append(value)
numpy.mean(rhelix_list)

>>>1702.79

p_rhelix_list = []
for i in xrange(100):
  value = pseudoRandHelixProc(10000)
  p_rhelix_list.append(value)
numpy.mean(p_rhelix_list)

>>>1702.3

Output difference is negligible for random and pseudo random implementations.
Now its time to create a simulation function.

def simulation(times, hits):
  '''
  Computes average number of PROCs for given hits for random and pseudo random
  approaches and difference between them.

  @param times: number of times simulation will run
  @param hits: number of hits to simulate
  @return: average difference in pocs between random and pseudo random approaches;
           table of simul results
  '''
  # create lists of results
  diff_list = []
  rand_mean_list = []
  p_rand_mean_list = []

  # run simulation
  for hit in xrange(1, hits + 1):

    rand_list = []
    pseudo_rand_list = []

    for t in xrange(times):
      rand = randHelixProc(hit)
      p_rand = pseudoRandHelixProc(hit)
      rand_list.append(rand)
      pseudo_rand_list.append(p_rand)

    # compute statistics and populate lists of results
    rand_mean = numpy.mean(rand_list)
    rand_mean_list.append(rand_mean)
    p_rand_mean = numpy.mean(pseudo_rand_list)
    p_rand_mean_list.append(p_rand_mean)
    diff = rand_mean - p_rand_mean
    diff = round(diff, 2)
    diff_list.append(diff)

  # print average difference in PROCs
  total_diff = sum(diff_list)
  l = len(diff_list)
  print 'average difference:', total_diff/l
  print '#######################################################################################################'

  # create table output for simulation results
  out_dict = {}
  out_dict['(1) cumulative hits'] = range(1, l + 1)
  out_dict['(2) random mean PROCs'] = rand_mean_list
  out_dict['(3) pseudo random mean PROCs'] = p_rand_mean_list
  out_dict['(4) difference'] = diff_list
  out_dict = collections.OrderedDict(sorted(out_dict.items()))
  print tabulate(out_dict, headers = 'keys', tablefmt="orgtbl")

Lets run 100 simulations of 100 consecutive hits. Of course it is possible to run 10000 hits but it is unnecessary since every time the Counter Helix is triggered we jump back to the first row from the table below (result of the simulation). As was already mentioned:

"[if] ...you manage to Berserker's Call several enemies, you only have 3.2 seconds of being unconditionally hit by the enemy"

If Axe was able to catch 3 enemies, together they will hit him about 9-12 times. This means that with the pseudo random approach he will spin 0.3-0.4 times less than with random approach. It will cause him to deal ~(205*0.35)*3 = 215,25 (or 71.75 per hero) less damage in engagement.

So the hypothesis was true - pseudo random approach caused the decrease in damage output on the short time interval even if total number of PROCs during the game stayed the same.

average difference: 0.34
#######################################################################################################
|   (1) cumulative hits |   (2) random mean PROCs |   (3) pseudo random mean PROCs |   (4) difference |
|-----------------------+-------------------------+--------------------------------+------------------|
|                     1 |                    0.17 |                           0    |             0.17 |
|                     2 |                    0.45 |                           0.09 |             0.36 |
|                     3 |                    0.56 |                           0.12 |             0.44 |
|                     4 |                    0.71 |                           0.26 |             0.45 |
|                     5 |                    0.81 |                           0.36 |             0.45 |
|                     6 |                    1.06 |                           0.75 |             0.31 |
|                     7 |                    1.37 |                           0.88 |             0.49 |
|                     8 |                    1.35 |                           0.97 |             0.38 |
|                     9 |                    1.47 |                           1.22 |             0.25 |
|                    10 |                    1.64 |                           1.33 |             0.31 |
|                    11 |                    1.95 |                           1.65 |             0.3  |
|                    12 |                    2.1  |                           1.68 |             0.42 |
|                    13 |                    2.36 |                           1.79 |             0.57 |
|                    14 |                    2.56 |                           2.16 |             0.4  |
|                    15 |                    2.61 |                           2.26 |             0.35 |
|                    16 |                    2.61 |                           2.37 |             0.24 |
|                    17 |                    2.87 |                           2.43 |             0.44 |
|                    18 |                    2.77 |                           2.83 |            -0.06 |
|                    19 |                    3.22 |                           2.84 |             0.38 |
|                    20 |                    3.03 |                           2.84 |             0.19 |
|                    21 |                    3.6  |                           3.22 |             0.38 |
|                    22 |                    3.71 |                           3.32 |             0.39 |
|                    23 |                    3.68 |                           3.68 |             0    |
|                    24 |                    3.93 |                           3.72 |             0.21 |
|                    25 |                    4.54 |                           3.92 |             0.62 |
|                    26 |                    4.65 |                           4.04 |             0.61 |
|                    27 |                    4.47 |                           4.27 |             0.2  |
|                    28 |                    4.83 |                           4.39 |             0.44 |
|                    29 |                    4.78 |                           4.48 |             0.3  |
|                    30 |                    4.93 |                           4.8  |             0.13 |
|                    31 |                    5.3  |                           4.92 |             0.38 |
|                    32 |                    5.1  |                           5.04 |             0.06 |
|                    33 |                    5.79 |                           5.34 |             0.45 |
|                    34 |                    5.82 |                           5.54 |             0.28 |
|                    35 |                    6.04 |                           5.52 |             0.52 |
|                    36 |                    5.67 |                           5.7  |            -0.03 |
|                    37 |                    6.64 |                           5.98 |             0.66 |
|                    38 |                    6.4  |                           6.03 |             0.37 |
|                    39 |                    6.72 |                           6.41 |             0.31 |
|                    40 |                    7.07 |                           6.46 |             0.61 |
|                    41 |                    7.04 |                           6.59 |             0.45 |
|                    42 |                    7.18 |                           6.81 |             0.37 |
|                    43 |                    7.08 |                           6.9  |             0.18 |
|                    44 |                    7.61 |                           7.09 |             0.52 |
|                    45 |                    7.72 |                           7.21 |             0.51 |
|                    46 |                    7.73 |                           7.66 |             0.07 |
|                    47 |                    8    |                           7.68 |             0.32 |
|                    48 |                    8.41 |                           7.7  |             0.71 |
|                    49 |                    8.57 |                           7.93 |             0.64 |
|                    50 |                    8.54 |                           8.11 |             0.43 |
|                    51 |                    8.16 |                           8.31 |            -0.15 |
|                    52 |                    9    |                           8.4  |             0.6  |
|                    53 |                    9.01 |                           8.79 |             0.22 |
|                    54 |                    8.98 |                           8.88 |             0.1  |
|                    55 |                    9.54 |                           8.99 |             0.55 |
|                    56 |                    9.4  |                           9.13 |             0.27 |
|                    57 |                    9.75 |                           9.08 |             0.67 |
|                    58 |                   10.1  |                           9.42 |             0.68 |
|                    59 |                    9.71 |                           9.64 |             0.07 |
|                    60 |                   10.31 |                           9.87 |             0.44 |
|                    61 |                   10.19 |                          10.31 |            -0.12 |
|                    62 |                   10.29 |                          10.21 |             0.08 |
|                    63 |                   10.76 |                          10.55 |             0.21 |
|                    64 |                   10.82 |                          10.48 |             0.34 |
|                    65 |                   10.7  |                          10.77 |            -0.07 |
|                    66 |                   11.27 |                          10.94 |             0.33 |
|                    67 |                   11.81 |                          11.06 |             0.75 |
|                    68 |                   11.54 |                          11.34 |             0.2  |
|                    69 |                   11.98 |                          11.26 |             0.72 |
|                    70 |                   12.26 |                          11.66 |             0.6  |
|                    71 |                   11.35 |                          12.01 |            -0.66 |
|                    72 |                   12.03 |                          11.64 |             0.39 |
|                    73 |                   12.37 |                          11.94 |             0.43 |
|                    74 |                   12.74 |                          12.16 |             0.58 |
|                    75 |                   13.16 |                          12.66 |             0.5  |
|                    76 |                   12.77 |                          12.59 |             0.18 |
|                    77 |                   13.1  |                          12.65 |             0.45 |
|                    78 |                   13.2  |                          12.95 |             0.25 |
|                    79 |                   13.59 |                          13.06 |             0.53 |
|                    80 |                   13.32 |                          13.27 |             0.05 |
|                    81 |                   13.74 |                          13.25 |             0.49 |
|                    82 |                   13.98 |                          13.47 |             0.51 |
|                    83 |                   14.86 |                          13.74 |             1.12 |
|                    84 |                   14.53 |                          13.8  |             0.73 |
|                    85 |                   14.54 |                          14.29 |             0.25 |
|                    86 |                   14.49 |                          14.22 |             0.27 |
|                    87 |                   15.03 |                          14.46 |             0.57 |
|                    88 |                   15.49 |                          14.55 |             0.94 |
|                    89 |                   15.51 |                          14.8  |             0.71 |
|                    90 |                   15.58 |                          15    |             0.58 |
|                    91 |                   16.17 |                          15.01 |             1.16 |
|                    92 |                   14.89 |                          15.43 |            -0.54 |
|                    93 |                   15.73 |                          15.4  |             0.33 |
|                    94 |                   16.16 |                          15.67 |             0.49 |
|                    95 |                   16.11 |                          16.17 |            -0.06 |
|                    96 |                   16.03 |                          16.17 |            -0.14 |
|                    97 |                   16.41 |                          16.07 |             0.34 |
|                    98 |                   17.26 |                          16.27 |             0.99 |
|                    99 |                   15.65 |                          16.7  |            -1.05 |
|                   100 |                   16.15 |                          16.96 |            -0.81 |

Analysis of the Time Aspect of the Matches at The International 3 (Dota 2 Tournament)

It's been a while since I analysed something with R. I decided to pick into Dota 2 statistics. This game is the real eSport now with players fighting for respectable prise pools. And the main Dota 2 event is The International where best teams compete each other in astonishing battles.

So I grabbed some stats on The International 3 from here and started to think what can I do with it... The one major aspect of the game that was actively discussed prior the Tournament was the Dire side has an advantage over the Radiant via having Roshan Pit in their possession. Many people still think that Dire side is preferable in competitive games (they say that Roshan is killed by the Dire in 70% of cases). In fact The Alliance (TI3 winner) played like 90% of their games on the Dire side at the tournament. But is it a valid proof of the Dire side advantage? - I doubt. I think that in contrary - the Radiant side has an advantage over Dire, but I will add my arguments after I prove I'm right.

Ok, here is my hypothesis. There is no time limitation for the game. The match in Dota 2 lasts until the main building of the one of the sides is destroyed (or one of the team will give up). So if one of the sides (all the other things being equal) has an advantage it will cause the median time that was used to win the game for this side to be lower than to win for the other (and vice versa for time to loose). So lets take a look at the boxplot below:

Dire Vs Radiant winning time comparisson

Code:

library(ggplot2)

TI3 <- read.csv("~/R/Dota2_Stats/The_International-3")

# create winning time per side plot
p <- ggplot(TI3, aes(TI3[,5], TI3[,8])) +
  geom_boxplot(aes(fill = TI3[,5]))+
  labs(title = 'Winning time per side at TI-3',
       x = 'Side',
       y = 'Time, min.',
       fill = 'Side')
  
print(p)

Clearly, the Radiant side generally wins slightly quickly then Dire (and have higher number of wins: 82 against 76). This means that not the Dire, but the Radiant team has an advantage in game. But why? (You may skip the rest of the paragraph if you never played Dota). There are several reasons. Radiant advantages are: easier rune control, ability to deny creeps at the hard lane, camera angle (it is not parallel to the terrain surface and facing north towards the Dire side). Camera angle was never discussed as the advantage/disadvantage because most people just got used to it, but Radiant has slight, but sure vision advantage. Seems Roshan accessibility and a safer ancient camp does not help that much to the Dire. 

What else can we do with time analysis? We can compare win and loss times for all the teams that competed at TI3:

Teams winning and loosing time comparison

Code:

# get the list of teams
Teams <- unique(TI3[,3])

# create dataset to store data about winning/loosing times
A_time <- data.frame('Team'= character(),
                     'Result' = character(),
                     'Time' = numeric(),
                     stringsAsFactors = FALSE)

# extract time data and write it to the A_time data frame
for (team in Teams) {
  A <- subset(TI3, TI3[,3] == team | TI3[,4] == team)
    
  for (i in 1:nrow(A)) {
    winner <- A[i,][5]
    dire <- A[i,][4]
    radiant <- A[i,][3]
    time <- A[i,][8]
    if ( (winner == 'DIRE' & dire == team) | (winner == 'RADIANT' & radiant == team) ) {
     result <- paste(team, 'WIN')
    }
    else {
     result <- paste(team, 'LOSS') 
    }
    A_time[(nrow(A_time)+1),] <- c(team,result, time)
  }
}

# create plot for winning time per team
p <- ggplot(A_time, aes(A_time[,2], A_time[,3])) +
     geom_boxplot(aes(fill = A_time[,1]))+
     theme(axis.text.x = element_text(angle=90, hjust = 0),
          axis.title = element_text(face = 'bold', size = 14),
          title = element_text(face = 'bold', size = 16),
          legend.position = 'right'
          ) +
     labs(title = 'Win and loss times at The International 3',
          x = 'Results',
          y = 'Time, min.',
          fill = 'Teams')
  
print(p)

Generally my assumption was correct: better teams wins quicker. Alliance and NaVi  (1-st and 2-nd places) is a nice conformation to it (DK and IG (TI-2 champion) have the similar pattern as well despite shared 5-th place). But Orange and TongFu (3-rd and 4-th place) tends to loose quicker than win. This could be explained by the general playstile of this two Asian teams which often aims at the late game. This infamous style with prolonged no action farming stage is often referred as 'Chinese Dota'. But DK and IG are Chinese teams too.   Seems that both TongFu and Orange were able overcame the odds and jumped over their heads in the given tournament. They took places that DK and IG should have get (DK and IG were more favourable teams than Orange and TongFu before the tournament).