I imagine that they have some rules of thumb, but generally just use intution.
You can see the general guidelines pretty clearly. A standard profile is something like hovering around MOV 5/6, ATK 6, DEF 2, ARM 1/2. Around 11 or 12 vitality points. A maxed out damage tree adds up to about 11 damage points.
Then different models have different tricks. How exactly these tricks can be valued in terms of balance is a question of interpretation, as in most games.
Hermes is an interesting example I guess. He both has ATK 7, which is very rare, and a unique ability where it costs opponents favour points to attack him. On paper, he seems very strong to me, as his only downside that I can see is that he only has 9 damage points in his damage tree.
Is he fair? I haven't used him yet, so I don't know. But I haven't seen anyone complain about him.
Reversely, someone on facebook was saying that Noxius seemed quite weak to him, because he only has ATK 5 and a rule that forbids him from spending favor points. But to make up for these downsides, he has an extremely mighty damage tree, doing 14 damage points in only four results. So I can definitely see the point in taking him.
I guess I kinda get the feeling that the design of the game works in such a way that it doesn't matter that much how exactly the different models compare to each other in terms of stats and abilities. The models are all similar enough that they can all compete, regardless of specific differences.
Iocasta might be an interesting example too. She has a pretty standard Morituri stat line, and two awesome abilities - one "armour piercing" where she ignores armour, and one "sirocco" where she can split her attack over two models. No particular downsides that I see. Compared to Hermes, Iocasta is stronger offensively I think, but she doesn't have the strong defensive ability he has. So they seem similar.
We also have the two guys with tridents and nets. They both share the "entangle" ability, due to the net, but otherwise they have ups and downs compared to each other. Marcus has MOV 6, ATK 5 and DEF 3, Mago has MOV 5 and ATK 6 and DEF 2. In addition to entangle, they both have a different secondary ability. Is one of them better than the other? I dunno.
So for design, I guess the template is to take a "standard" gladiator, and tweak it a little in terms of stat variations and interesting abilities. As long as you don't go overboard in either "too strong" or "too weak", it will mesh with the rest of the game pretty well quite easily.
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