r/Competitiveoverwatch • u/AgreeableLie8 • 21h ago
General Yes, our balance discussions are broken
/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/1x6qkhh/lukewarm_take_winrates_are_lowering_the_quality/?share_id=fTs4e6cJ2SwjGvMgs1aci&utm_content=share_button&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1I saw this post today and after I wrote a reply, I decided to just make it its own post because I think more people should hear it. I have a longer post I've been working on about these things, but for now I'm giving the short version of my manifesto on win rates, pick rates, and balance discussions by OW players, redditors, and content creator coaches.
- Because silver-GM players have 50% personal win rates, pick patterns are not just a bias on win rates, they are fundamental to their production. There is no such thing as an unbiased win rate.
- If every player were a one trick who never got banned, all heroes would have a 50% win rate outside of champ and bronze.
- If kiriko, cassidy, or sojourn were picked in the same way heroes like junk, pharah and sym are picked, their win rates would skyrocket. Yet we consider pharah and junk situationally strong, while the heroes who don't have hard counters are ironically considered weak precisely because their counters are soft so they don't trigger their player to swap.
- In most ranks, the strength of individual heroes is immaterial. You are all in the same rank. You are a diamond D.Mon, playing against a diamond Junker Queen. It doesn't matter that D.Mon is way stronger than JQ right now. You're both diamond. The game can, by definition, go either way. The important balance questions are whether it's fun/healthy for a hero to be in the meta and be seen in many games, and whether the value they get feels commensurate with the skill they take.
- Strength is contextual. Tracer seems to have shot up this season despite not getting any buffs. It's probably because doctrine and support sombra both synergize with her well. Other dps heroes naturally fell because they're getting crowded out by heroes who are stronger with sombra and doctrine. This is similar, but not exactly the same as those heroes getting weaker.
- The best information we can get from win rate and pick rate stats comes from differences. The differences between patches, the differences between ranks, and the differences between regions, for example. All of these ways of looking at these stats give us a lot more interesting and useful information than just their raw values.
- There are, of course, some cases where we can be confident raw wr/pr data says what it appears to. Doctrine, sombra, genji and tracer this season have very very high pick rates and win rates. Thus, they almost certainly don't have the pick patterns that tend to produce high win rates, yet they have extremely high win rates. These heroes are clearly stronger than the average other hero in their role right now. But tracer didn't get stronger on her own, sombra made her stronger, so we still have to look beyond just the stats to understand what's going on. One could say that definitely makes tracer strong, but in games where doctrine and sombra are banned what does her win rate become?
- Some heroes can be strong and be healthy for the game! Way too much of the balance discussion is about which heroes are stronger than average and which are weaker than average, and therefore they must get nerfs and buffs respectively because every hero must be equal. Personally, I'm of the opinion that Overwatch recently has been rather balanced. Strong new hero releases are hotfixed fairly quickly to parity and it's okay if they're strong for the half a season where they're new. The important balance discussions we need to have should be about which heroes belong in the meta or have been out of the meta for too long, or in it for too long, and other things of that nature.
- For example, I am someone who thinks Cassidy gets too much value compared to the skill he takes, particularly with flash. I think his value-ceiling exceeds what his skill-ceiling justifies. He is too well-rounded and being a counter against heroes that are typically more difficult/interesting/complex/fun makes him a fun-vampire. Even when not playing against the heroes he counters he's reliably strong anyway. Now, a reasonable person might take the counter position that he is a "necessary evil" to keep dive and high-mobility heroes from dominating the meta. Or they might argue that the simplicity of his kit makes him a very good onboarding hero for new players. I think that he can serve those functions without being quite this strong on all fronts. This is the kind of reasonable discussion we should be having. Instead, the discussion gets shut down from the jump by people who insist that cassidy is weak despite his strong consistent presence in the picks of top 500 and OWCS players.
- The argument explaining why Cassidy can be strong despite his win rate is mathematically sound, but it is involved and can be counterintuitive even for those who have a strong background in math or stats. Additionally, players' egos are wrapped up in their mains' strength. A weaker hero means they're personally more skilled and also more likely to get buffed in the future. Many many times I've made points that are just how the math works without any specific claims about a hero, and I still get a dozen downvotes because some players take the fact that raw win rates are not everything as an attack. So, now we're having a silly discussion about stats and math, often with people who are intent on misunderstanding, when the important discussion we should be having is about things like skill curves, fairness, and fun. And, as I'm saying, it's not actually essential that we answer the question, "is he stronger or weaker than the average dps?" I'm not really motivated by wanting him to be exactly as strong as every other hero. I'm motivated by my feeling that he is too strong for the skill he takes, and he is strong in ways that I feel are unfun. This is not a quantitative discussion for either person in the argument, but we're both pretending it is.
- The flip side is a hero like tracer. There have been seasons where she is too strong and seasons where she is too weak. But I think it's generally agreed that she should have a place in the meta. She is a high skill ceiling hero that is a lot of fun to play and losing to her doesn't usually feel like she got free value with little effort. Last season she had a high pick and win rate in GM+ and I think that's entirely appropriate for her, and Overwatch would be a lesser game if the hero in that spot were heroes like Widow or Roadhog.
- For example, I am someone who thinks Cassidy gets too much value compared to the skill he takes, particularly with flash. I think his value-ceiling exceeds what his skill-ceiling justifies. He is too well-rounded and being a counter against heroes that are typically more difficult/interesting/complex/fun makes him a fun-vampire. Even when not playing against the heroes he counters he's reliably strong anyway. Now, a reasonable person might take the counter position that he is a "necessary evil" to keep dive and high-mobility heroes from dominating the meta. Or they might argue that the simplicity of his kit makes him a very good onboarding hero for new players. I think that he can serve those functions without being quite this strong on all fronts. This is the kind of reasonable discussion we should be having. Instead, the discussion gets shut down from the jump by people who insist that cassidy is weak despite his strong consistent presence in the picks of top 500 and OWCS players.
Like I was saying, I have a larger manifesto I'm working on that gets into all the nitty gritty about how win rates are produced and all the stats stuff I do find genuinely interesting. But for the purpose of balance discussions, I just wanted to make this post saying that we've lost the plot when we argue under the premise that the best form Overwatch can take is one where every hero has equal pick rates and a 50% win rate. The important balance questions are about skill curves and fun. Win rate discussions very often bury those important questions.
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u/Sensanaty mcrree main btw — 19h ago
You’re padding what are really subjective feelings in stats-speak (“selection bias,” “pick patterns,” “context”) so win rate can be waved away whenever it disagrees with you. Then you swap it for takes that are far more subjective and far more reductionist than the numbers you’re dismissing. Win rate isn’t perfect, but “it’s biased, so ignore it” isn’t a proper analysis either.-
If kiriko, cassidy, or sojourn were picked in the same way heroes like junk, pharah and sym are picked, their win rates would skyrocket.
This is pure conjecture, and Junkrat does get picked very often regardless; he’s far from an “unpicked” hero sitting at a comfortable ~6% across ranks. It also cuts the other way. If a hero gets more popular, the extra picks come from players who are worse on them than their current pool, so their win rate usually drops with pick rate, not rises. Selection effects are real, but you can’t just assume they all point in the direction that rescues your argument.
The game can, by definition, go either way.
That’s a tautology and as useful as saying every outcome for literally anything is a clean 50/50, because either it happens or it doesn’t. A game can go either way, but that doesn’t mean each way is equally likely.
It doesn’t matter that D.Mon is way stronger than JQ right now. You’re both Diamond.
Yes, and if the stats show Diamond D.Mon at 60% and JQ at 40% (numbers for illustration), then the average Diamond D.Mon will most likely win that game. “You’re both Diamond” is exactly why the comparison is fair, since both heroes are being played by the same pool of players.
There are, of course, some cases where we can be confident raw wr/pr data says what it appears to.
Unless we’re talking about heroes with VERY low pick rates or tiny sample sizes, WR/PR stats are accurate. They’re an objective measure of how a hero performs across the playerbase and tell you whether a hero tends to win or lose, nothing more and nothing less. Kiri was not strong at 46% outside of pro, and she’s most definitely not strong now at 42%. She’s objectively in an extremely weak state regardless of pro pick rates, because the pro scene is irrelevant to 99.99% of the people who play this game. That’s not an exaggeration: GM+ is already 0.1% of the population, and pros are a tiny fraction of that.
And since matchmaking pulls everyone toward 50%, a hero sitting far below it has to be losing a lot more than the average hero. That’s a big signal, not noise.
Strength is contextual. Tracer seems to have shot up this season despite not getting any buffs.
Sure, but “she’s strong because of her context” is still just “she’s strong.” Win rate already measures a hero in the context she’s actually played in, which is the only context that matters for the live game. Whether Tracer is good because of her kit or because Sombra exists doesn’t change that she’s winning more games right now.
One could say that definitely makes tracer strong, but in games where doctrine and sombra are banned what does her win rate become?
That’s an argument for more win rate data, not less. Slicing win rate by context is still win rate. You can’t say the stat is meaningless and then ask for a more detailed version of it.
The best information we can get from win rate and pick rate stats comes from differences.
If raw values are as meaningless as you claim, then the differences between them are too, because they’re built from the exact same numbers. You can’t call the data garbage and then treat the change in garbage as insight. Comparing patches and ranks is useful, but only because the underlying stats mean something in the first place.
Way too much of the balance discussion is about which heroes are stronger than average and which are weaker than average
Because that’s literally what balance is. Heroes that win far below the rest of their role need help, and heroes that win far above it need to come down. “Is this hero in a healthy spot?” and “is this hero performing way worse than the others?” are not competing questions. A hero can be both unhealthy and weak, and if you only ever ask the first question you’ll leave heroes rotting at 42% because they’re “fun enough.”
I think his value-ceiling exceeds what his skill-ceiling justifies.
You’re free to think Cassidy is unfun, and that’s a perfectly valid opinion. The problem is when that gets dressed up as “he’s too strong” and the stats are brushed aside the moment they don’t back it up. Your own evidence is that he’s picked a lot in top 500 and OWCS, and that’s also a pick-rate stat with its own selection biases. You can’t wave away win rate for bias and then lean on pick rate, which has the same problem. If your argument is about feel, make it about feel, but don’t act surprised when people point at the numbers after you’ve said he’s overpowered.
The argument explaining why Cassidy can be strong despite his win rate is mathematically sound, but it is involved and can be counterintuitive
If it’s sound, show the math. “Trust me, it’s complicated” isn’t an argument, and it’s exactly what people say when the simple reading of the data doesn’t support them. “He’s strong despite a bad win rate” is a big claim that needs more than “it’s counterintuitive.”
players’ egos are wrapped up in their mains’ strength
Cuts both ways. Plenty of people’s egos are wrapped up in their hero being “secretly broken” or “actually fine, the stats just don’t show it.” Not everyone who disagrees with you is doing it out of ego, and some of us are downvoting because the argument doesn’t hold up rather than you secretly being right and we're just too egotistic to see it.
we’ve lost the plot when we argue under the premise that the best form Overwatch can take is one where every hero has equal pick rates and a 50% win rate.
Nobody is arguing that. Nobody expects perfect 50/50 across the board, but a hero sitting at 42% is not “slightly off,” it’s a hero that’s losing way more than it should. Fun and skill curves matter, but you can’t have that conversation while ignoring that a hero is performing badly. Win rate is the baseline, and everything else gets built on top of it. Similarly a 60% winrate like D.mon had is absolutely not OK under any circumstances, or as is happening a hero like Genji with a very high pickrate and top winrate across basically every single rank.
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u/TheReal9bob9 13h ago
They literally came in with the "I think dive counters shouldn't be good and dive characters are fun and high skill so they should always be meta" as if thats an actual thing people should listen to. Its just yet another dive player pretending they are a victim.
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u/Vikingstein 10h ago
The crazy thing to me is that dive players not realising no one enjoys playing against dive, especially non dive tanks. In a patch where cc is high, heroes like mei and junkrat can be on a team with a dive hero and not have the same inherent weaknesses that existed prior to the hitscan nerf and if you don't have a dive there will be an ana you just get walled off, slept, anti healed while your backline explodes to the super skillful very fun character with 250hp, extremely high mobility, 3 get out of jail free cards and a one shot combo
I've started to realise something though, a ton of these anti Cass/anti hitscan comments or posts come from console players, no offence to them, but they are not playing overwatch as it actually plays.
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u/AgreeableLie8 17h ago
I didn't want to make this post all about the specific nuances of the pick patterns that contribute to win rates but that's naturally the most controversial part I suppose.
If it’s sound, show the math. “Trust me, it’s complicated” isn’t an argument, and it’s exactly what people say when the simple reading of the data doesn’t support them.
Fine, alright. It's also what I say when it's involved and counterintuitive. First, let me link this blog post I link all the time. Blizzard describes how they collect the win rate data, specifically time-weighted unmirrored win rates. It's necessary to understand this post to understand why OW's win rates are particularly counterintuitive.
Many people assume, including myself until recently, that a hero's true, strength-equivalent, win rate would be the win rate that a one-trick gets. However, since silver-gm players approach a 50% win rate, one tricks approach a 50% long-term win rate, making a large personal contribution bringing their hero toward 50%. The hero's strength is reflected in the rank a one-trick ends up in and how quickly they climb over time, but it's not a significant factor in their win rate. At base, this is the only essential part I need to prove that win rates don't inherently reflect strength.
Pick patterns are a term I use to describe the ways in which players deviate from being a one-trick. Especially when those patterns are a common tendency across the population in a rank and region. The most fundamental pick pattern is the tendency not to swap when winning. This is basically universal. The hero you start on gets a chance at a full 1.0 win fraction if you're winning the whole time, even when carried. But when you start losing, you're much more likely to swap onto another hero. The hero you started on had a bias towards receiving a full win fraction and a bias against receiving a full loss fraction. The earlier the swap the more extremely the win rate is biased. The hero you swapped onto is likely to be dropped into a match where you've already lost fights, including games where your team is just entirely gapped regardless of your pick. The expected win rate from being swapped onto is negative because fights have already been lost. The second hero never had the same chance at a full win fraction and even a very strong performance that wins a previously 35% winnable game 45% of the time would contribute negatively to their win rate. Unless we assume that players are negatively accurate about assessing when they're losing, this will increase the first hero's win rate and decrease the win rate of the hero you swap onto, even when performing strongly. Note, this bias comes from the swap, not the hero's strength. If you stay on your first hero when winning and swap onto another when losing it's nearly impossible to produce anything but a positive win rate for the former and a negative win rate for the latter unless we think players can't recognize a steam roll either way. This pattern is also referenced in the Blizzard blog post. Thus, it's not strictly necessary to consider hero strength, matchup, map strength, or comp to create win rates.
This is what I mean when I say that if kiri cas and soj were picked like junk and pharah they'd have win rates like them. My understanding of the OW playerbase is that the former are heroes who are swapped onto more than others, and swapped off of less than others. This is only one example of many different kinds of pick patterns that create win rates.
The other most important point to understand is that pick patterns determine how 50% win rate players allocate their win and loss fractions amongst their hero pool. Positive contributions to a hero requires proportional negative contributions to another hero in your pool. The assumption many people have that pick patterns "bias" the win rates away from the true, normal, win rate is flawed because there is no such thing as a normal pick pattern. All heroes have tendencies to be picked in certain situations, and the accompanying tendencies to receive win or loss fractions from the players in that rank. These tendencies are necessary to make heroes deviate from the one-trick 50% win rate. The main impact that the strengths of the heroes in a player's pool have is the rank the player ends up in relation to the amount of skill they have.
For Cass specifically, the primary pattern that I personally would identify as producing his win rate in master- is his tendency to be a counterpick, thus swapped onto after losing fights, even in games that can't be saved. I'd add that he's a hero who always feels valuable for the player even if he's not doing that much and he doesn't have hard counters, thus he's not swapped off when losing. And like you say:
If a hero gets more popular, the extra picks come from players who are worse on them than their current pool, so their win rate usually drops with pick rate, not rises.
I understand that being viewed as a simple hero who's easy to pick up makes him popular as a second pick for players who specialize/main other heroes, thus he gets the negative contribution that balances out their positive contributions on their main/specialists. His win rate is lower because of the success of specialists in their specialties. And I'll say it again, there is no normal win rate. Win rates can only deviate from 50% if there is an associated pattern that makes players tend to allocate their wins/losses on that hero.
This is also how we get to the idea that changes are informative. The static win rates require assumptions about what the player base's pick patterns look like to interpret them, but as you'll surely say, I can't actually know with certainty exactly what the pick patterns for a hero are, which is why we can't interpret win rate data with real certainty.
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I'll reply to this comment later to engage with the rest of what you're saying.
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u/AgreeableLie8 16h ago
Yes, and if the stats show Diamond D.Mon at 60% and JQ at 40% (numbers for illustration), then the average Diamond D.Mon will most likely win that game. “You’re both Diamond” is exactly why the comparison is fair, since both heroes are being played by the same pool of players.
This is a good catch. This is the point I'd thought about the least. You're right, it's poorly formed. It is possible that you load into a match where you are disadvantaged because their hero has the advantage in the matchup. It's not necessarily 50/50. But I still disagree that you can determine that from win rates! If a cassidy main and a pharah main are on opposing teams, for example, I don't think you can conclude that the pharah has advantage just because pharah has a higher win rate. Like I described in my previous comment, pharah's win rate is increased by her player's tendency to swap off her as soon as she stops working. It seems entirely reasonable that a pharah player runs into a cassidy player and she is disadvantaged because she gets forced off her main, allocating a small loss fraction to her main and allocating the majority of the loss fraction onto the 2nd hero in her pool. Pharah's win rate stays positive, but the pharah player was disadvantaged.
Because that’s literally what balance is. Heroes that win far below the rest of their role need help, and heroes that win far above it need to come down. “Is this hero in a healthy spot?” and “is this hero performing way worse than the others?” are not competing questions. A hero can be both unhealthy and weak, and if you only ever ask the first question you’ll leave heroes rotting at 42% because they’re “fun enough.”
This is our core disagreement. I considered only replying to this because this is the only point I wanted to elaborate on with this post. I do not think it's a problem if some heroes are weaker and require exceptional performances to do well on them. Particularly if those heroes are bad for the fun/competitiveness of the game. Counterplay, skill floor and ceiling, and fun are what matter in balance discussions. It is not an inherent good that all heroes have a 50% win rate, not just because win rates are a product of pick patterns, but also because some heroes are healthier for the game than others. Balance isn't when all heroes are equally playable and it shouldn't be. Good balance is a fun, competitive game that rewards skill and counterplay and some hero's kits don't contribute toward that as much as others. I have no issue with leaving unhealthy heroes in weak states to that end, or "removing" them entirely with reworks like they've done this season.
You’re free to think Cassidy is unfun, and that’s a perfectly valid opinion. The problem is when that gets dressed up as “he’s too strong” and the stats are brushed aside the moment they don’t back it up. Your own evidence is that he’s picked a lot in top 500 and OWCS, and that’s also a pick-rate stat with its own selection biases. You can’t wave away win rate for bias and then lean on pick rate, which has the same problem. If your argument is about feel, make it about feel, but don’t act surprised when people point at the numbers after you’ve said he’s overpowered.
I think the biases that pick patterns produce on win rates are much more severe than the biases in pick rates, particularly when we consider the top performing players, where we should expect the most meta pick decisions. GM+ stats are best understood as the data that comes from pick patterns that beat 99.9% of OW players rather than an outlier. It is part of what makes them GM+. I think with the understanding of how pick patterns produce win rates that largely doesn't require hero strength, it's clear why I see top pick rates as a much better indicator than win rates. I think he's too strong for the skill he takes.
Yes, as I said in the OP, my position isn't, at base, about his raw strength. It's about what I perceive as his value-skill curve. When I say that, people insist that he can't be strong because of his win rate, and that's where I think we've had important discussions short-circuited by win rates that require pick pattern assumptions to interpret. Ultimately, I'm arguing raw win rates alone are a flawed way to understand strength and they interrupt and they tend to cut short better discussions. I say "raw win rates" because there is a place for them in these discussions with their pick pattern context included, but we can't just look at the wr number alone. And like I said in OP, some wr/pick pattern combinations are clear, like D.Mon, Genji, Sombra, and Doctrine in my view. The latter two have very high win rates and the primary pick pattern blowing up their win rates seems to just be their ban rate (players win and climb on the new heroes and lose when banned, that leads to too many games being won in the ban phase. Not healthy). Together, these indicate extremely strong heroes, and I'd agree these are too strong and their fun/skill don't justify such extreme strength.
Cuts both ways. Plenty of people’s egos are wrapped up in their hero being “secretly broken” or “actually fine, the stats just don’t show it.” Not everyone who disagrees with you is doing it out of ego, and some of us are downvoting because the argument doesn’t hold up rather than you secretly being right and we're just too egotistic to see it.
I think it's much more common to be invested in the idea that your hero's weak than strong. But nonetheless, I have found that even posts where all I'm doing is describing things that are indisputable math of how win rates work, or repeating what Blizzard has explained about how win rates work, still end up controversial. And I've spoken with enough people who are intent on not understanding. I'm under no obligation to pretend that I can't recognize bad-faith when I see it, and I won't pretend it isn't a very common response. Of course, it's not everyone, I've had plenty of good discussions with people! But it is still common here to respond to trying to interpret win rate data with vitriol.
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u/WanTom123 6h ago
I’m very glad to see a post about this because I’ve been thinking about this for a while and it’s important to talk about. I do think maybe some points need a bit better layout though. There needs to be a few more assumptions made/stated though, like that the players have played a large enough number of games to reach approximately 50% winrate (rank may be uncalibrated with low games played) and that for something like your JQ vs DMon example the players are onetricks and queue into separate games (playing against a specific hero will have a non 50% winrate).
If the players are picking heroes based on different situations, then each hero they play will have a different winrate. Showing how onetricks that have played enough games to calibrate will inherently bring winrate towards 50% is interesting.
This is probably the main point to hit on to be honest, because the main thing that’s going to affect winrate is just the situations players decide to play heroes in. If you modeled a player as having specific picks in specific situations, they would have winrates that average out to 50% when weighted by playtime. This means that a player having a very good pick for a very good situation must bring down winrates for all their other heroes, e.g. if they’re a demon on ana for maps like gib, paraiso, route, but play kiriko everywhere else. Even if this is the optimal picking strategy for them to win each game, they will have a below 50% wr on kiriko.
I think also mentioning about swaps is important, as you have, because people don’t really consider the effect of switching to a hero while you’re losing.
I do also think its a bit of a trap to take this and say we can use winrates in context. It’s possible to invent so many narratives to post-rationalize a winrate. There’s so many factors that go into it so it feels dangerous to me.
Anyway thank you for making this because it really needs to happen imo. To be honest I’m not even convinced blizzard uses these numbers in a correct way. I’m very curious if they have any actual statisticians on the team, not just data analysts and engineers (nothing against them, just a different set of skills) working on matchmaking and the hero statistics. If they don’t I feel like thats a bit of a missed opportunity.
If I hear Spilo say winrates are an objective measure of hero strength one more time I will explode so please keep working on this.
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u/FullGuava1 20h ago edited 20h ago
Your point about every player having a 50% win rate is misguided.
Very few people actually play only one hero. I could have a stable 50% win rate at Gold by winning 60% of my games on DMon and 40% of my games on Mauga.
Additionally, like you said, hero power fluctuates every season even without heroes being changed directly. So even in the ideal scenario where everybody is one tricking exclusively, win rates would show who the biggest winners and losers of the patch are.
It's very silly to think that a hero being way above or way below 50% win rate isn't reflective of their strength.
On the topic of Sojourn and Kiriko vs Junkrat and Sym, it's not possible for the former's win rates to hit the highs of the latter's, because Sojourn and Kiriko are generalist heroes with no particularly strong comps or maps. Where exactly would you play them so that their win rate hits 55%? Compare that to Junk and Sym, who have very clear strengths and weaknesses, and are played accordingly.
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u/DJBaphomet_ 20h ago
To tack on to the final point: Another specific thing about those more niche heroes is that when a hero is niche, the people dedicated to them are dedicated. Even if the hero is in a middling state, they naturally end up with a higher rate because a majority of the players are people who know the hero and their matchups, and I imagine it skews the data by a decent chunk
Kiri/Soj are consistently viable, but are picked by a wider range of players, and I'd wager have less dedicated one-trick types of players. Obviously, it's impossible to tell the stats in that way since we just don't have them (and I'd imagine it's rather difficult to track accurately what % of a hero's playerbase is made up of one-tricks/dedicated players), but these niche heroes are just as often picked situationally as they're chosen in a dedicated fashion, which I think also goes against OP's point that seems to suggest "If Kiri/Soj/Cass were picked in ideal situational scenarios like Pharah/Junk/Sym, they'd be visibly doing much better"
Like, I'm sure if heroes were only picked when it was ideal, then yes, their winrates would skyrocket. But it's a weird point to make when the niche heroes are primarily played by dedicated players anyways, and are less frequently picked as ideal situational picks (who's swapping to Junkrat that isn't already someone that plays him?)
They may still have a point, but I think it's a lot weaker than suggested (Especially since Cass/Kiri at the very least ARE often swapped to when the situation is ideal for them)
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u/LucioMercy 19h ago
The other difference between Junk/Sym and Kiri/Souj is the former two have a lower skill floor.
It’s easier to consistently execute a double mine or teleport play than it is to land headshots on moving targets at range, even at the highest level of play.
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u/AgreeableLie8 20h ago
Your first paragraph is the common misunderstanding I'm trying to address. That effect is balanced out by the fact that they settle in their appropriate rank. Being good on a hero is not enough to increase that hero's win rate since silver-gm players have 50% long-term win rates. They can only contribute positively to their specialist in direct proportion to how much they negatively contribute to other heroes in their pool, maintaining their 50% long-term win rate. The core point that win rates don't isolate hero strength or even a hero's player base's strength on that hero without a corresponding pick pattern that allocates their corresponding losses onto another hero in their pool. The more they play other heroes and lose on them, the more they contribute positively to their specialist pick.
This is also part of what contributes to cas and kiri win rates. They are also understood by the player base to be easier to play. In the same way that specialists' positive contributions are in direct proportion to their negative contributions on the rest of their pool. That means that hero's that are often players' 2nd pick in their pool, as I'd argue cas and kiri tend to be because they are effective as generalists, get negative contributions in proportion to how much those players contribute positively on their specialist heroes. I don't think this is the primary factor for cas and kiri, but it does contribute.
This is all not really meant to be what I'm discussing here. It's an involved discussion. The core point I want to get across here is that balance discussions should center on skill curves and fun, and the stats don't sufficiently access those things.
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u/FullGuava1 19h ago
I 100% agree with you that fun is the most important thing in a video game, but nobody brings up WR% to discuss fun or healthy design. WR% matters when trying to judge a character's power level.
Power level only matters because an OP hero is inherently unfun for the enemy team, and an underpowered hero is inherently unfun for the player and their team. That's why we discuss win rates.
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u/AgreeableLie8 20h ago edited 20h ago
I'm fully aware of the D.Mon, Mauga example you give. It's even in my eventual longer post. That player tending to win their games on D.Mon and lose on Mauga is an example of a pick patterns that produces win rates. They contribute positively to D.Mon's win rate in direct proportion to how much they contribute negatively to Mauga's win rate. A common way for this to happen is for a player to start on D.Mon until they start losing and then swap to Mauga. If they did this every game, it is mathematical certainty that their win rate on D.Mon will be positive and their win rate on Mauga will be negative. If the exact same player played Mauga first, swapping to D.Mon when they start losing, it'd produce the exact opposite: positive win rate on Mauga and negative win rate on D.Mon. This effect is described by blizzard in this blog post, along with a full explanation of how they get win rates.
E: forgot to reply to the rest. Win rates between seasons are informative for sure. But patches also affect how players view and pick heroes, which, since pick patterns are fundamental to how win rates are produced, can reduce or increase the change in stats.
Cassidy last season is a good example for the low win rate hero that I think is clearly strong and a good case where I think we don't sufficiently understand the stats. Cassidy is a hero with a very strong tendency to be picked to counter an enemy who's doing well, and he's a hero who always feels valuable even when he's underperforming, these mean he tends to be played in a context of losing games. This is in fact necessary for his win rate to get so low. Last season, look at how Cassidy's win rate develops from bronze to GM+. Look at how he shoots up in both pick and win rate in GM+, more than any other dps hero does in win rate. He is the hero who has the most distinctly different pick patterns between GM+ players and the rest of the player base. GM+ players are the most likely to play him in the situations where he's better. They are more likely to pick him when he's the best hero to counter the enemy, a decision they made frequently as evidenced by his pick rate. And they are the most likely to swap off him when other heroes are better even though he feels valuable to most players even when doing little.
The win rates produced post-patch by an all one-trick population would quickly approach 50% as people settle in their ranks, but yes, I agree, post-patch spikes aren't outliers like people say, they're evidence of mains climbing and falling! I think when we look at win rate stats post-patch we find spikes that settle after about a week. https://owherostats.com/ has time graphs for win rates that I think corroborate this.
You're of the opinion that the harder pill to swallow is a strong hero could have a low win rate. I'm of the opinion that the harder pill to swallow is that a hero whose rank-wr/pr graph looks like that, and who saw very consistent play in t500 and OWCS is actually weak just because he's treated as a solution character in most ranks. I have not seen an explanation that squares this circle better than incorporating his pick patterns into how we interpret his stats. He's the premier example of the way that pick patterns can dramatically affect a hero's win rate.
On sojourn and kiriko, having distinct specialties is one part of the pick patterns that produce junk and symmetra's win rates, but so is the willingness to swap off them as soon as things don't look good. The decision to swap off a hero when losing increases the first hero's win rate and decreases the second's, regardless of how meta the swap is. This is one of the most counterintuitive parts of pick patterns and win rates that people miss. The first hero had a biased chance at a full win fraction, and the second hero gets a biased chance at a loss fraction by being dropped into a losing game.
Sojourn and kiri also do have particularly strong matchups! Sojourn really benefits from having an enemy tank that lets her consistently farm rail and kiri benefits when the enemy team has cds/ults that are most effectively countered by suzu. But they feel playable even outside of these situations, and they are at least playable, so they don't get swapped off like junk or sym does. If they were only played in their strongest matchups, and swapped off as soon as the game looked losable, they could absolutely achieve crazy win rates. That's the counterintuitive part of unmirrored weighted win rates.
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u/FullGuava1 20h ago
Except that people are more likely to swap to OP heroes like DMon, Doctrine, or Sombra when they start losing, but those heroes are actually strong enough to turn those games around.
Besides, if I'm swapping to a hero, that's because I'm in a situation where that hero is supposed to be optimal, like swapping to Kiriko when they have an Ana, or to an Ana when they have a Hog. Wouldn't that be a positive bias to their win rates?
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u/AgreeableLie8 19h ago
To the 2nd part, yes. Picking a hero into their best matchup is a pick pattern that tends to increase their win rate, but the counter effect is that this is usually done after losing a fight or two. If you were winning even with a bad matchup, most players would stick with what's working, naturally. Suppose losing 2 fights in a row leads to winning 40% of the time. I'd think that's a conservative estimate. Swapping to a hero that counters the enemy team and winning 45% of the time is a strong outcome. Winning 50% of the time is an extremely strong outcome. A well-known tendency to be picked in those situations means that we have to understand their win rate as "ability to come back from losing" which is a much greater claim than just plain strength.
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u/FullGuava1 19h ago
I agree with your point to some extent, but people are not exclusively playing Kiriko and Cass as counterswaps. I'd wager that at least half of the time that they are picked without being mirrored, the player has actually started on them, and this is especially true of Sojourn.
If Cass for example has a 50% win rate under "normal" circumstances, and a 45% win rate when he's swapped after a lost fight, we'd expect him to settle around 47-48% win rate in his balanced state. When he dips to 45% overall WR or lower, this would signify that he's relatively weak, not OP by any means.
In fairness, it's impossible to have a productive conversation about this since we're just feelscrafting. Would be cool if Blizzard gave stats regarding how often people swap off/onto a hero though.
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u/AgreeableLie8 19h ago
It doesn't have to be true that kiri and cas are exclusively counterswaps. All that has to be true is a tendency to be so greater than the average other hero. I think that this is true of those two is well-known. But yes, the proportion of their play time that they're in these situations is up for debate. Other pick patterns are also certainly at work. I suspect that it's common for cassidy, and kiri to be the 2nd hero for players who specialize in niche heroes. Thus, those players who tend to get their wins on their specialists, will tend to allocate their losses onto cassidy and kiri.
No matter when a hero is picked, there is some analysis to be done on how it affects winrates. Swapped onto, swapped off of, played as a one trick, main, counterpick, or a specialist, accurately or inaccurately assessing matchups, map, current value. All of these things aren't ancillary to win rates, they are necessary for the production of win rates. That's why the point about one tricks having 50% win rates is so important. There are no "normal" circumstances. A hero's strength determines where a one trick with 100 hours on the hero ends up in the ranked ladder, but it doesn't directly create a win rate without a corresponding pick pattern that tends to allocate win fractions onto that hero.
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u/Ichmag11 20h ago
The thing is if someone is in Gold, plays their hero, ranks up to plat, goes 50/50 there, they have contributed to a positive WR in Gold which will never go down again
WRs are definitely not the end-all-be-all, but it is the one biggest objective statistic we have. If we see a character with a WR of 49%, eh. I dont think that automatically means that character is bad.
But if we have a character like Kiriko at the bottom of a WR of almost 40%, then I think that says a lot about that heroes performance - and also a bit of the kits strength.
Same with high WR heroes. You made the example of Doctrine and Sombra. You dont seem to have reservations about calling them good, because your opinion of the kit matches the objective statistics we have. But what if you thought Doctrine was bad? Would you then still say the stats make sense, or find issue with it them somehow?
If we have heroes that are consistently winning more than others, and are closer to 55% than 50%, then I also think thats a big deal.
Of course, youre right. For the actual player playing the game, this doesnt mean anything. People lose because of the mistakes they make. WRs dont matter because its not like you can play all heroes at the same skill level.
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u/soul_punisher 19h ago
It's just the Kiriko Mind Virus. OP points out that Doc and Sombra are overtuned, citing their winrates as evidence. Then, in regards to Kiriko having a terrible winrate, claims that the data isn't reliable.
"Our Balance Discussions are Broken" has the same energy as getting mad that someone disagreed with you about a movie and responding by posting a thread called "The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism"
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u/FullGuava1 19h ago
>The thing is if someone is in Gold, plays their hero, ranks up to plat, goes 50/50 there, they have contributed to a positive WR in Gold which will never go down again
Very good point.
>Of course, youre right. For the actual player playing the game, this doesnt mean anything. People lose because of the mistakes they make. WRs dont matter because its not like you can play all heroes at the same skill level.
A minor point of disagreement here. There are some fundamental Overwatch skills that are shared between (almost) every hero, like awareness, aim, ult tracking, reading fights, and the like. This is why a GM DPS can very quickly reach GM level on unfamiliar DPS, because the core Overwatch skills don't change.
OP heroes reward those same skills disproportionately just because they have better numbers, and underpowered heroes require more of those skills to perform as well as the player's current rank on average heroes.
Once you've reached a hero's skill floor, which shouldn't take more than a few days of playing, you will almost always perform better by picking the high win rate heroes on their good maps.
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u/Winter-Regret2224 14m ago
kiriko was broken at launch!!! she can't be bad even if she gets nerfed for years!!!!
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u/Severe_Effect99 17h ago
A hero can have 49% WR overall but for some people they play that hero at a 60% wr and others might play the hero at 40% wr. I think if we put that into perspective for kiriko, good players might only get 50% wr on her in GM and bad players below 40%. Since she has I think 44% right now.
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u/Extreme_Lychee8299 20h ago edited 20h ago
Lmao i cant believe you wrote a dime store manifesto with your peak analysis being "i subjectively believe a hero is strong due to my biases despite low win rate and this when win rates dont matter"
99.99% of the time we have broken chars like vendetta they have win rates of 60% in bronze and gm if that isnt meaningful what isnt
Peak redditing
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u/Royal-Ad-2900 18h ago
I don't understand how overwatch is the only game where people cope so much about statistics like this guy, maybe because they came out late in games lifespan?
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u/Extreme_Lychee8299 18h ago
Because they get shit on by a mediocre character with a bad win rate at all ranks and cope by saying the character is fact op despite all evidence the contrary
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u/Agent007077 Jeff was perfect and would never allow this — 15h ago
I think it's a combination of factors, they came out late in the games lifespan and prior to that, all ideas of what was strong came from pro play and streamers. Those same sources still have their own biases and tendency to not change what they are doing so if anything conflicts with that, instead of realising they were wrong, they just double down and come up with more and more elaborate excuses
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u/Winter-Regret2224 17h ago
nice that you're not like them and can notice. they're cranking confirmation bias up.
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u/Kinster- 19h ago
Actually they specified that winrates and pickrates are often influenced by outside factors not relating to the character -> winrate / pickrate statistics lack context. Genji's winrate and pickrate isnt suddenly higher because he's been buffed, ffs hes got a slight increase in neutral and his blade was adjusted for it. Genji himself is barely any stronger than he was last season, but the addition of sombra and doctrine who function REALLY well with him have skyrocketed his winrate.
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u/Extreme_Lychee8299 18h ago edited 18h ago
? Tf u talking about he got 10 damage added to his dash which changes his breakpoints and he swings his blade faster lmao
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u/Winter-Regret2224 16h ago
you try to sound smart but miss the math. 110x vs 1001.15x it's dps increase. they buffed dash dmg to keep slash dash combo dmg equal but he does the same dmg faster now. it means supports have even shorter time to heal or send projectiles to save teammates. that's why it's a big buff. everything is connected in this game you're just a sophist.
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u/Frenzyquirt 15h ago
Genji's WR went up by 1% since last season. That's not due to the supports no matter how much you want to cope.
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u/TheUltimate721 Hardstuck Diamond — 20h ago
It's the classic GOATS comp debate: The comp was absolutely a problem because it was basically undefeatable at the high end, but majority of players were not good enough to run it well so it's actual winrate (not that we had those stats) was likely far lower.
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u/Winter-Regret2224 11m ago
that's how meta works. best way to win in a given environment. goats is meta (for tournaments) ✅ goats is trash (for solo queue) ✅
considering pros don't have time to talk in reddit always assume (for solo queue)
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u/Sleepy_Witch_Maple 19h ago
Tracer seems to have shot up this season despite not getting any buffs.
I feel it's important to note that she has shot up... from the most picked dps to most picked by a larger margin(in gm) with a more positive winrate. I didn't really keep track of stats last season before midseason, but after midseason she was doing incredibly well already.
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u/gymleader_michael 20h ago
A lot of words just to defend Tracer.
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u/ExplorersX 20h ago
Do you have any actual commentary on why tracer should not be a strong pick for effort to reward scaling?
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u/gymleader_michael 19h ago
Because she's a troublesome design in this game. Her spam mobility is nearly an outlier and it's not fun to play against with limited hard cc. And if you don't burst Tracer down, you're actually dealing with far more than just 175 HP.
Like I pointed out in another post, I don't even think she's been touched much since they added stuff like perks and passives.
Add now that she has a synergistic support in Sombra, it's probably best for the health of the game to look at tuning her down a bit.
If 40-something win rate is reflective of a high skill requirement champion being popular, like Sojourn and Cassidy, Tracer being like 52% and even more popular than them at Master+ level should also mean something, no?
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u/ExplorersX 19h ago
Ok, so now that we know what your frustration with vs tracer is, how would you balance her?
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u/gymleader_michael 19h ago
Personally, I wouldn't mind if they moved her to 225 Hp and started messing with her cooldowns and maybe weapon spread if she needs to be more effective at a distance. Or, make the Blink cooldown a lot higher, but have Recall refund them. So you have this reset juggling playstyle maybe.
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u/hanyou007 None — 18h ago edited 18h ago
So you just want to take the games most iconic hero that the devs on numerous occasions literally have designed the whole game around and just make her shion without a bike?
Yeah, hell nah.
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u/gymleader_michael 18h ago
How you guys are getting Shion from the ability to dash 6 times in a row if you want, is beyond me. I guess Soldier is Shion too.
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u/ExplorersX 19h ago
So moving her towards something like a more mobile but lower powered shion vs the current tickle mosquito that you aren't allowed to ignore lest you die?
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u/gymleader_michael 18h ago
Tracer's initial dps is higher than Shion's, but if you want to describe it that way, I mean, go ahead.
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u/ExplorersX 18h ago
Ignoring burst dps abilities, spread, assuming no armor on the opponent, & within effective range to hit entirety of spread yes tracer has higher raw DPS by far.
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u/AgreeableLie8 20h ago
Yes, I'm defending tracer on the basis that it's okay and healthy for Overwatch for her pick rate and win rate to be high. But that's mainly an example of how I think these arguments should look. I think it's fine if you think Overwatch is a better game when she's weaker or not in the meta, and it's fine to argue that.
I just think that pointing at her wr/pr stats is not sufficient. Some heroes make the game more fun and skillful, and some less so. I'm of the opinion tracer is one of the former, and I'm open to an argument she's not. But I want you to make that argument based on how skillful she is and how fun she is to play as, with, or against. Presumably, that's where your feelings about her actually come from, and not from just looking at the stats.
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u/gymleader_michael 20h ago
Somewhere, somehow, Tracer mag-dumping with spam mobility got placed on a skill pedastal. And sure, it's one thing to say the tracking, target prioritization, orientation tracking, etc. make Tracer a character that needs skill, but in this same argument, you're putting down Cassidy, saying his value exceeds what his skill justifies.
Tracer gets mobility on a level high enough to bait out other abilities and constantly divide the enemy team's attention. She has one of the highest dps in the game, so if you ignore her and she decides to go on you, she has a big advantage. And then, even if you know where she is, you can't really chase her with many other heroes. She can simply win the cooldown trades. She can decide who, or at least when she fights on maps with a lot of angles.
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u/johnsmith937546 19h ago
Cassidy is one of the lowest skill dps characters in the game. He is on the same level as reaper. It is simply easier to make small corrections in aim than large, and mobility is the largest mechanism for skill expression in the game. It also, coincidentally, forces large aim corrections to maintain character accuracy.
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u/gymleader_michael 19h ago
Mobility also covers for mistakes, especially when it's on a low cooldown, and makes positioning less of a factor.
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19h ago
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u/Sensanaty mcrree main btw — 19h ago
Okay, now post you playing Cass in a GM game, surely him having no mobility to correct for positional mistakes shouldn't prevent you from dominating, right?
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u/johnsmith937546 16h ago
What do you think tracer players did when she was complete dogshit a few seasons ago?
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u/gymleader_michael 19h ago
Movement abilities do also help cover for mistakes. Tracer has 3 blinks with only 3-second cooldown and Recall. Like, her whole ult is about running in and sticking someone and getting out lol. My lack of skill (not just with Tracer) does not make these statements false.
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19h ago
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u/gymleader_michael 18h ago
Except you claim tracer is an easy hero man.
You're more focused on being angry and insulting.
I said, because the comment is right there,
Somewhere, somehow, Tracer mag-dumping with spam mobility got placed on a skill pedastal. And sure, it's one thing to say the tracking, target prioritization, orientation tracking, etc. make Tracer a character that needs skill, but in this same argument, you're putting down Cassidy, saying his value exceeds what his skill justifies.
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u/Kinster- 18h ago
I dont mind that but tracers not an easy hero, nor does her kit let her just "dodge" mistakes and get away scott free. Also cassidy does often get more value than he has to put in
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u/theymanwereducking 13h ago
Any hitscan’s viability gets decided by their mobility + sustain, ie their ability to correct positional mistakes and stay alive. Emre was broken when the pistol was broken for this reason, Freya was broken because of the combination of dmg + movement.
Cassidy doesn’t have this to his benefit, you need very good positioning because you don’t have a get out of jail free at any decent level of play to get value. This is why like 90% of the player base sucks at him and he has a shit win rate.
Meanwhile Genji can double jump, deflect, wall climb you name it. The level of potential for staying alive (the biggest form of value in the game) is infinitely more.
This conversation is like Doom mains trying to cry about how many broken cooldowns nerf his ability to not just be a 500+ hp tracer with a one shot combo lmfao.
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u/johnsmith937546 17h ago
It doesn't cover for mistakes, it expands the definition of correct positioning. Same with engagement range, shields, etc.
It is still a resource that is accounted for in the kit. It still needs to be used correctly to justify using the character. Cassidy, on the other hand, is a point click character who is an unengageable mess. Flash doesnt even have to be used to drain resources due to its threat. Roll is the only inoffensive part of his kit. If he isnt feeding, a coordinated dive is the only thing killing him. 0 risk for that much reward is not something I would define as skillful.
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u/theymanwereducking 13h ago
Flash is so powerful (1st perk should be nerfed yes) because he has nothing for sustain in the rest of his kit. It is that simple. Every other hitscan has a way to get to high ground instantly. Every other flex DPS has that + some form of deflect/health boost/invulnerability/huge positional advantage (flying). Cass has none of that. If flash sucks, he just dies to literally anything.
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u/johnsmith937546 13h ago
I never said otherwise. But they can shift power around and away from cheap shit. Silver bullet was a failed attempt at removing fan. Maybe rolling into a wall scales him upwards? I dont know. Turn him into budget wrecking ball, anything but this.
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u/theymanwereducking 13h ago
Sadly aiming + positioning with everything else going on in OW is one of the hardest skills in the game. People always down play hitscans because of the perception of them in this game, but at all ranks, projectile and melee characters get infinitely more value than almost all hitscans.
It’s really easy to say Cassidy is just shoot and that’s it, but it’s not that simple when nuance exists. It is objectively way more impactful to play Genji or Vendetta this season and require 80% less of aiming to get infinitely more value.
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u/Ichmag11 20h ago
"skillful" is such a weird, broad term, lol. Whats it matter? If I play against someone, what do I care how "skillful" they are? What matters are the results, no?
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u/GreedyKangaroo88f2 18h ago
Really? I'm of the opinion that the better or "more skilled" player should win/come out on top more often than not when it comes to W/L, 1v1s, and more holistic interactions like resource trades. The outcomes should preferrably reflect that.
If you only care whether you win or lose is neither my nor Joe Schome's business. Though that sounds like a miserable way to approach the game. Surely there's value in enjoying the gameplay, and fair and skillful interactions are a big part of what makes tha possible.
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u/Ichmag11 18h ago
If you get the win, aren't you more "skillful"? Like, I'm sure it takes more skill to try and win on Tracer without using you're recall than using it, but if you lose, you still lose, no?
In a competitive game with an elo system, the ones that lack skill will just not climb to the top. Even "skillless heroes" need to be better than people that also play "skillless" heroes.
In a way, it may be harder to win and climb with heroes like Cass or Bastion because they are that simple and you need to get creative in order to outplay the DPS on the other team that also wants to win just like you.
While on Genji or something, if you play the character well, you can create so much value by just playing.
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u/BeardedsChurch 20h ago
obviously i would react better if i got killed by good tracking on Tracer than a random Junk nade which wasn't even aimed for me
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u/Ichmag11 18h ago
I would react different. One is "man, that Tracer is good" the other one is "man, Im bad". But I think both are completely fair
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u/BeardedsChurch 18h ago
when one is done with intent and another is born out of randomness there is a clear difference in what a player would perceive as "fair"
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u/Ichmag11 18h ago
I get that, maybe? But I dont relate to that, personally. I think if its in the game, its fair. Hacks are outside the game and can definitely be called "unfair"
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u/BeardedsChurch 17h ago
ok cheats are objectively unfair, but I'm saying that if you're VOD reviewing yourself and you see yourself dying randomly from something which you couldn't have foresaw and you'd probably have a hard time recreating you shouldn't spent the effort trying to "improve" in it.
"Nothing I could've done about that just go next fight"
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u/Ichmag11 17h ago
But dying to that goated Tracer and the random Junk is the same. You just have to play better and not die.
If anything, its easier to not die to a random Junk nade than it is to die to a goated Tracer
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u/BeardedsChurch 17h ago
Both of those things will still happen eventually though and "play better and not die" is very broad, when you try to get into specifics on how you could've prevented your death, its way easier to explain how you could've won a 1v1 with a tracer than something unexpected out of your control.
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u/UrsaSanctus 20h ago
Why? A random junk nade is on you for not having the awareness to dodge the incredibly slow glowing red ball. A gm/champ tracer is going to be running the lobby with little counterplay
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u/BeardedsChurch 19h ago
If a hero is gaining value from shooting a random choke without actually knowing if there is anybody there or peeking there, why would I spend time learning another hero's mechanics and engagement if I could get the same/better value with less effort?
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u/UrsaSanctus 18h ago edited 18h ago
Because spamming chokes as Junk is generally terrible value past like maybe plat? You are only getting weak space denial from spamming chokes at any level where people realize to not walk into the very slow red glowing balls.
Junk needs to be getting dh’s to be useful at any level of play where people realize not to walk into obvious danger. Junk is a mid-close range hero who should be diving or holding small rooms not a range spammer in 2026
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u/BeardedsChurch 17h ago
Thats my point, that low ceiling heroes like that should never be buffed into meta status in high tier just because of low winrates,
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u/ingmarnl 18h ago
Yeah so fun to get 1 clipped at the moment of a tracers choosing. And if she fails? Guess what, full HP and out of a bad position for a 12s cd. Such skill, fun, wow. /s
The problem has always been that tracers skill level is lower because you arent forced to commit AND you decide who and when the fight happens. Yet the defending character is usually all in or die to ward her off.
The only redemption tracer has is low HP to compensate for an otherwise hyper OP kit.
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u/TheReal9bob9 13h ago
You say cassidy is too easy and not fun but tracer is really hard and a lot of fun. You are clearly being biased just by bringing "fun" into the equation. "I want the character I find fun to be considered hard to play and to always have a place in the meta" isnt an actual reason to keep someone meta. In an ideal world every character should at least be playable. High pickrate+High winrate means a character is not high skill in their current state and the skill required to play a character changes a lot due to balancing.
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u/Battlefront528 20h ago
It's a bitter pill to swallow for many but certain heroes should never be "meta" due to the friction they cause. I think the reworks of Sombra and roadhog have been enormously successful for exactly that reason - they removed or altered the abilities that would generate value vastly disproportional to the skill required to use them.
That's not to say these heroes shouldn't exist as they serve a purpose as good entry level picks or useful counter swaps but if they get too strong they tend to bring the enjoyment of the game down for everyone except for themselves.
I just think back to the launch of ow2 and the hog orisa meta and how miserable it was to play. The game is in a much healthier state these days
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u/Winter-Regret2224 15h ago edited 19m ago
how to say im a tracer main without skill so i want my counters to be removed from the game so i can farm win rates and boast about my skill post. you just use game design terms to hide what you're actually saying and complain you're getting downvoted lmao
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u/Shadowkarpet 10h ago edited 10h ago
You're speaking across a variety of different topics:
(1) Ranked MM - "In most ranks, the strength of individual heroes is immaterial. You are all in the same rank. You are a diamond D.Mon, playing against a diamond Junker Queen."
Yes, MM is independent of hero strength. But what WILL happen is a lower skilled player carried by a strong hero will be matched against much higher skilled players, lowering match quality. The enemy is frustrated that the design of the hero outweighs skill, and the exploiting player gets frustrated and can't adapt once their opponents are high skill enough to shut them down anyways. I think Genji players are the best long-term example of this.
The fact that it stops "correcting" once it reaches a 50/50 WR is exactly stopping at the exact point where both the enemy and the player are routinely frustrated...
(2) MM in general - "If every player were a one trick who never got banned, all heroes would have a 50% win rate outside of champ and bronze."
Not exactly, but the concept is true, eventually the MM would move players around until its a 50/50 chance to win. What you would see though is a concentration of the stronger heroes in the higher ranks before they settle back into a 50/50 WR, which is exactly why they have a higher WR today, same effect happening.
(3) "Strength is contextual. Tracer seems to have shot up this season despite not getting any buffs. It's probably because doctrine and support sombra both synergize with her well."
True, it is. But that factors into their overall strength and WR automatically. Everyone else beside you getting nerfed is still a net buff, for example. The fact that WRs immediately respond to this is exactly why it is a useful measurement tool.
(4) "Some heroes can be strong and be healthy for the game!... [e.g.] Cassidy unhealthy.... Tracer healthy"
No, generally strong heroes are never healthy for the game. Heroes like Tracer in theory are healthy bc they are only strong AFTER you build up your skills to use them well. This used to require high rank skills. Tbh Tracer has become a lot easier and more accessible over the years, and she is borderline too strong frequently.
If heroes are strong EVERYWHERE it ALWAYS hurts the game.
And Cassidy actually IS decently strong imo. I believe the main reason he has a low WR is that he is supposed to counter OP dive heroes like Doom and Genji or flying heroes like Pharah, but he's just insufficient for both, so he loses all those even though that's the only thing his kit is made to be decent at.
(?) One thing I didn't actual see addressed was actual hero strength.
WRs are different for a reason. That reason is strength compared to other heroes. Over hundreds and thousands of players (above a certain pick rate), the "skills" of players playing each hero are the same on average.
WR is low, the hero loses games. There is no way around that. Why it happens directly reflects their strength. Sometimes they just suck in general and don't do much to impact the match (Kiri at the moment). Sometimes they decent abilities, but their kit is advertised to force something that doesn't really work in game (Cass vs dive), or maybe they're just a "hit or miss" hero that either dominates or gets dominated, little in between, and happens to fail much more than they succeed (Bastion)
But there is ALWAYS a reason for the number. And no, its not "those players just suck". Any one is a good basis for a buff or rework, unless those players enjoy how the hero is.
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u/Aggravating_Bus655 19h ago edited 19h ago
Yeah, "Strong but Healthy" for the game is the kind of shit I start hearing when dive is grossly overtuned lol.
And shit, it's been almost a year since the last dive meta ended, the least we can do is come up with new talking points.
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u/thekingofallalts 17h ago edited 11h ago
win rate is not 100% infallible, but it is the best metric we have for measuring a hero’s power level, FAR more accurate than really the only other alternative, community consensus. your point about how “some heroes can be strong and be healthy for the game” is exactly what i’m talking about. just because the vocal part of the community glazes certain hero designs doesn’t mean people actually like playing against them.
for example, it’s actually really annoying to me how dominant tracer has been, and she is infuriating to play against. the fact that she takes skill to play as doesn’t change the experience of playing against her. she still is an obnoxious rat who a large portion of the cast basically just have no hopes of interacting with because of the massive mobility gap. and there’s no statistics ever proving that she has actually had a “weak” season, she has always been consistently played in high ranks and >=50% win rate afaik (correct me if i’m wrong). it seems to me at least that tracer players just complain when she is not objectively the strongest dive dps by a wide margin for any small amount of time.
that’s just my opinion, i’m not saying i’m objectively right or anyone has to agree with me, but i’m betting there’s a lot more people who agree with me on that than you think. same thing applies to widow: she objectively takes skill to play, she can’t really just spam and hope for lucky shots because she’s hitscan, and she has the smallest projectile size which means you need extremely precise mechanics to get value out of her, on top of how vulnerable she is to dive. doesn’t change the fact that being one-shot in a game designed around high TTK is extremely frustrating.
win rate discussion is good because ideally, it forces people to cast their personal bias aside. i don’t like cass, but if his win rate is low, it’s only fair for him to receive some sort of buff. maybe they can think better about how to buff him so it doesn’t lean into the most annoying parts of his kit, but actual balance takes precedence over subjective feelings about a hero. nobody is going to agree on which heroes or which abilities are annoying anyways. but when it comes to community consensus, it essentially just means that unpopular heroes get scapegoated, which creates a snowball effect. nobody plays against them when they’re weak, so when they get buffed to relevancy, they feel oppressive because people aren’t used to having to play against them.
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u/WanTom123 5h ago
I don’t think you can just say win rate is the best metric we have without justifying it. There’s a ridiculous number of effects that go into it. Once a player has calibrated to their appropriate rank, they will be set for a 50% winrate going forward, and any deviations come from the situations in which they pick heroes. If a player only plays ana on gib, paraiso, route etc and performs very well on those maps, inherently the other heroes in their pool will have their winrates reduced no matter their hero strength. If a player switches from moira to kiriko while losing because their tank bullies them into it, kiriko’s winrate is reduced.
I could keep going with these effects but unless you can demonstrate how hero strength directly contributes to winrate in a significant manner, how can you justify saying its the best metric we have?
I’ve heard people saying kiriko is an objectively weak hero in gm and champ despite a 40% pickrate in the past, just based on a 46% wr. This seems dangerous to me.
(I am biased against kiriko but this just shows how you can construct narratives that logically follow the win rates you see, and justify a previous notion of strength no matter what the winrate is)
(I am also annoyed by tracer if it helps)
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u/TracerHater_Com3 18h ago
Had me till "some hero can be strong and "healthy" for game".
Yeah so I declare symm healthy and tracer cancer for the game
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u/Ranulf13 14h ago
In most ranks, the strength of individual heroes is immaterial. You are all in the same rank. You are a diamond D.Mon, playing against a diamond Junker Queen. It doesn't matter that D.Mon is way stronger than JQ right now. You're both diamond. The game can, by definition, go either way. The important balance questions are whether it's fun/healthy for a hero to be in the meta and be seen in many games, and whether the value they get feels commensurate with the skill they take.
Strength is contextual. Tracer seems to have shot up this season despite not getting any buffs. It's probably because doctrine and support sombra both synergize with her well. Other dps heroes naturally fell because they're getting crowded out by heroes who are stronger with sombra and doctrine. This is similar, but not exactly the same as those heroes getting weaker.
Those two points I think are contradictory.
There are heroes that are clearly SO much better than others, specially in lower ranks, and this is better seen in the dps role. It feels way less so on tank and support because the rift between the worst and best of those roles is nowhere near as large as within the DPS role.
But... there is effectively no reason to ever play Symmetra when Soldier or Bastion exist. Her beam is simply not strong enough, her sentries are worthless in this meta full of random aoe damage even in silver, and her pokeflanker orb playstyle depends on her team actually picking up on said soft value.
Symmetra is painfully inferior and overnerfed as a dps hero, the math shows it, and most of her value is hyperdependent on her team in ways that are not viable below GM.
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u/theymanwereducking 13h ago
Yes but the point OP is making is that it literally doesn’t matter because you aren’t going to see your win rate 1:1 with an actual global win rate just by playing the character. In the context of a game setting, you are both diamond players.
If what you’re saying is true, then theoretically everyone who plays characters with a higher win rate would see their relative rank increase, but it doesn’t. There is obviously infinitely more nuance to choosing a character, that nuance is defined by things external to the character - ie the player playing them, not the character.
A diamond Dmon will still be a Diamond player and perform average their rank against a diamond JQ, even if the character is ‘objectively’ better.
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u/Ranulf13 13h ago
Yes but the point OP is making is that it literally doesn’t matter because you aren’t going to see your win rate 1:1 with an actual global win rate just by playing the character. In the context of a game setting, you are both diamond players.
Absolutely, the winrate aggregate from the site is not representative of everyone's winrate. Its a soup of cherrypicked averages.
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u/throwedaway19284 5h ago
But... there is effectively no reason to ever play Symmetra when Soldier or Bastion exist.
??????
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u/hrad_h 16h ago
It's just because all the stats we can access to are just win rate, pick rate, and ban rate.
Overwatch is a very complex game that has multiple factors like game types, map and team/enemy comp to account for, not just a single skill being so powerful.
Without having proper assumptions before discussing, this discussion gets kinda pointless.
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u/CookieDingo2 3h ago
Can someone actually help me understand this bit, it’s always confused me and I feel I’m missing something.
So this argument that the environment people pick characters like Cass and Kiri is what tanks their winrate, hasn’t that always been the case? Like people have always swapped to Kiri as their default “don’t know what to do” pick, even when her winrate was good/better, no?
Assuming a significant part of her winrate decline is due to this is saying that even more people are defaulting to her but her pick rate has been decreasing. Or that her worse state is causing these swaps to have a more negative effect but that’s admitting that she is weak anyway.
I don’t really understand it. People have always seen characters like this as fallbacks, the only thing that’s changed since their winrate declined is balance changes. It’s why I can’t buy into this “character is actually good, their winrate lies” argument because surely their winrate would always been bad and the fact it’s decline pairs with multiple nerfs is just… coincidence?
I’m not a stats guy and I might be missing something here or being silly.
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u/bullxbull 14h ago
it's okay if they're strong for the half a season where they're new.
I would agree in the past, but with all the heroes being released this has become an issue. It was an annoying necessity for 1 hero every other patch, but right now new heroes are making a mess of things.
Cassidy gets too much value
Cassidy is a necessary evil, he is the fun police for heroes that might be fun to play but are often not fun to play into. He is the 'if I can't have fun then neither should you' swap.
He feels frustrating because he is an approachable counter to some heroes that often feel unapproachable when played well. We need to make the interactions of other heroes more meaningful before we remove the hero that forces interactions with his massive aoe stun.
I have a larger manifesto
You are going in the right direction, talking about this stuff is important, slowly more people start repeating things you have said. However I find long posts are not the best way to do this. It is better to be short and direct and leave room for misunderstanding because if you try and explain everything no one reads it, or is even able to read and follow along.
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u/Darkcat9000 20h ago
If the stats back up my claims then trust them
If not then win rates simply don't prove everything