Hey, @Esoxnepa and I bet on you before this was posted, so you’ll have to split your winnings with us.
However, the individual troops all seem pretty close, except for the top 3-4, and this is only the top 30. If most of the other troops are relatively close to each other, then that’s pretty even usage across the game as a whole. Usage in certain level bands probably has a lot to do with how likely players in that band are to have particular troops, and the resources to level and trait them. So from this perspective, it looks pretty good. Broken down by level range, maybe not.
Some troops are simply going to be easier to build a team around, even if they’re not inherently more powerful than other troops, whether it’s because the potential synergies are more obvious, or because there are other good troops to synergize with! I think there are quite a few troops that have potential, and are just waiting for a good partner.
But overpowered troops are likely to be popular. Popularity alone isn’t incriminating, but it’s worth investigating. Yes, balancing based on popularity, rather than logic and fact, is annoying, and creates an unnecessarily fluid meta in which nothing you learn about the game is reliable from one patch to the next. And the more frequently things change, the more likely those changes will upset the existing balance, creating new problems.
In that light, it’s interesting that the offense and defense graphs are so similar. I’d have expected them to be different, with players using the more complex and powerful troops on offense, while leaving the simpler, more random troops on defense.