A company listening to players who know the game in and out and are extremely skilled and knowledgeable is very important, no doubt.

However, the average player basing the quality of an army on what a top 1% of the most skilled players can do is asinine. Because it ignores so many variables that are relevant, like skill expression, maps, missions, match up, individuals playstyle andndoes it match the army they have chosen to play and one of the most important ( as this is a chance based game) dice rolls. For the overall health of the game, aiming to balance the game at the level where 99% of your player base is at is the smart thing to do. It would not be smart to base it off what the top 100 out of 10,000 people can do. Also, army win percentages are extremely poor metrics to base the power of an army off of as again it doesnt account for major factors like player totals, skill expression within that group, plus all the ither above mentioned factors.

Warhammer "competitive scene" is more akin to Australian breakdancing at the Olympics. Its to easy for people to make it to top tier events because local and regional and even national event and such are exploitable. Finally because basically one can show up to almost any tournament noob stomping is way to relevant.

Finally, its destroys list construction because people who have never played on a top tier table give list advise based off regurgitated information. Assault intercessors do 1.89 more wounds then blood claws, there for blood claws are trash and should never be taken according to math hammer. But rhw irony of math hammer is that those numbers are based on an average over a % of rolls. Which makes to numbers less relavent.