Hero Win Rate is 100% Meaningless for DPS

General Discussion
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The worst part about this fact is that the current “Balance Team” bases every single decision around this completely meaningless statistic. The game is basically being balanced around literal air.

Heroes that have higher win rates or lower win rates in no way, alone, portray the actual strength of that hero. Especially for the DPS role.

Tank and Support hero pools are only 2/3 the size of the DPS hero pool. And although the heroes in those roles are very different, they have many more similarities than the drastic differences across the DPS role in terms of how kits are utilized, how they play on different maps, when certain heroes are used and for what reasons, the sheer variety of mobility, etc.

Sombra’s WR is never “high”, but she is also the most common choice for DPS players that are on a losing team and decide to panic and try something “different” when it’s already too late.

I see this happen with Genji as well, even though his WR isn’t considered low… I think it’d be higher if it weren’t for this particular factor, but I’m just speculating, of course. And things are different at different ranks as well.

Ashe has a typically “higher” WR, but I play just about more Ashe than literally anyone, and trust me, I only face an opposing Ashe when it’s on a nice, easy, perfect Ashe map. People play Ashe when it’s easy to play Ashe. They don’t even bother thinking about it on over half of the maps, or against over half of the typical opposing comps. So yeah, her WR is “higher” but that’s because people only play her when she’s already in a perfect setting to pull off a win.

The niche factor of different hero kits has a drastic effect on that hero’s WR. And some heroes are so much more well-rounded (in terms of having a kit with sufficient damage, mobility, & survival), that they aren’t niche at all… So comparing the WR of a niche hero to a non-niche hero is literally as meaningless as it gets. And this isn’t a concept people are unfamiliar with. Sym and Torb have always had a higher WR and everyone knows it’s for this very reason.

But what I’m saying is that this isn’t a Sym/Torb thing. It’s a DPS thing. WR shouldn’t even be considered at all when it comes to hero balance for the DPS role. Especially when the variances in WR are really very, very small. A few percentage points across a pool of mixed niche and non-niche heroes is totally meaningless.

And that’s a problem. Because as I stated earlier, the balance team seems to focus all of their attention on this particular statistic. It’s a poor stat that creates poor decisions. This isn’t Hearthstone. The people balancing the game need to be a TEAM of players/staff that have EXTENSIVE and CONTINUOUS experience playing EVERY HERO at a VARIETY of ranks. Not someone that plays Sombra and Hog for an hour a day and then looks at WR spreadsheets.

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They don’t play the game man. They just balance on numbers and data. Aaron Keller and Alec Dawson are useless. Please fire these hacks Microsoft

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I agree with practically everything you’ve said, except for the part where you use Ashe as an example.

She’s incredibly top heavy in damage, so regardless of how long the cooldown is for coach gun, she’s able to survive from the few seconds of mobility it provides as long as she lands her shots.

She’s also almost exclusively only playing in her teams backline, something that can be found on any map. I can’t think of a single map where you wouldn’t be able to play Ashe. This is also heavily alleviated by the fact that range is almost never an issue for her.

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It really depends on rank… Higher ranks means backlines that support the other players in the backline. As a Reaper main, assuming you are, I get why you say that. As an Ashe main, Reaper’s I face tend to have a slow enough ability cycle for me to get away with only having Coach every 10s. But 10s is a stretch, and really, that 10s is solely what makes Ashe feel less well-rounded that she should be to me.

That 10s just doesn’t cut it against a lot of the other close-range ability cycles in the game. Somrba, Tracer, Genji, Doom, Dva, it goes on and on. Yeah, if you can keep them from getting to you, as Ashe, sure, but that’s where the map comes into play. Because once they get to you, it’s not like Reaper where I can Coach gun him away and then aim at his HUGE head (unfairly huge imo btw, I hate how the devs give some heroes giant heads, it’s not fair… Ashe’s is huge too).

With Ashe though, I notice that opposing Ashe’s are always playing Ashe on the easy Ashe maps… But don’t get me wrong, it’s also always against the easy Ashe comps as well. Ashe is niche (not super-niche, but just toward the niche side of the sliding scale) just as much because of how many counters there are to her, as much as how many maps she’s easier to play on. And that really just boils down to the 10s Coach CD factor imo.

But another thing worth noting, just certain game modes make Ashe more difficult strictly because of the distance from spawn back to point. Heroes that fly across the map back to point can afford to die if the distance is long… Ashe really can’t afford to die in many situations like that. Mei, Bastion, Sym, Ashe, all crawl across the map. Coach Gun is like a 9m knockback IF you reverse at a 45 degree angle, but by the time you do that and land, you are maybe 3m ahead of where you would have been if you just walked. It’s useless for standard travel speed.

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I feel like these characters can be dealt with relatively easily with either one-taps (for Tracer) or coach gun + dynamite (Genji, Sombra). Coach gun gives you at least 3-4 shots if you use it to propel yourself backwards into the air, which short-range heroes like Sombra and Genji can’t really deal with.

Tanks though, those are just unkillable. I don’t think a single DPS in the game can solo a tank anymore (other than maybe Hanzo).

Real

Fair enough.

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Tracer is no longer a one-tap, which is lowkey one of the biggest changes for Ashe since the new HP buffs of Season 9. I can headshot a Tracer 20 times in a single match and only kill her like 5 times, and those used to all be kills.

Sombra’s translocate just cleanses dynamite, it’s so annoying.

Genji though, yeah, dynamite is so key against him.

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You are right about this. Slipped my mind that she’s no longer 150. One-tap still forces a recall, but that’s not really worth much when she can come back in a second and you’re left at half hp while she’s full hp.

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I’d like to think Blizz has the means to know whether a hero was played for 10% of a losing match

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Yeah balancing off single metrics is a terrible idea.

Example with sombra cus she’s the hot topic now. Her win-rate is low not because she is a weak hero. Its because most sombras dont coordinate with their team. So most of their value is wasted making her a far less useful choice.

She’s an assassin/harasser/distracter. Which can be absolutely powerful and game changing. BUT if sombras team can’t capitalize on that because their unaware or busy themselves its kinda pointless. Timing is huge.

A sombra can appear to be doing well, be like 20 elims 2 deaths, respectable damage, ect. but if its not coordinated with the team its mostly useless and leaves the team at 4v5 during teamfights where they tend to lose. (the sombra will escape after taking 20 damage though so preserve their k/d lol)

So think about like Lucio in a poke comp. Speed boost is an incredibly powerful tool, but if you’re playing poke its kinda pointless since no one is using it. Same with sombra, if no one is taking advantage of her distractions and harassment then its not really useful.

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At the very least, we know they normalize the rates based on proportion of time the hero was used in a match.

So being played for a losing 10% of a match only counts as 0.1 games and 0.1 losses. Which, to state the obvious, means a game spent fully playing Sombra would be worth 10x as much in her metrics.

(In the case of Sombra, putting aside how the most recent patch might have changed her win rate, I would guess the issue tends to be that as much as she can oppress a player during a match and drive them nuts, it doesn’t translate to enough consistent value through the match compared to other DPS, resulting in lower than community expectations for win rate).

We also know they see metrics on a per map/side basis as well; I would not be surprised if they have access to a lot more detail than they usually discuss.

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The balance team analyzes tons of factors when balancing. I promise they’re not just zeroing in on one thing. Win rate is mostly brought up by the community because we don’t have very many stats to analyze.

There have been a few dev blog posts about how they analyze stats. It’s their job, and it’s weird how much of the community thinks they know better without analyzing anything themselves.

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It’s not meaningless if the data is normalized. For example looking at unmirrowed wr or weight wr by map not play time.

They have explained they do this and there are examples of them doing this. (Flash point door speed boost was add because lucio became a must pick in thay game.

A ton of other factors you mention they have talked about and can be normalized out of the data like niche picks.

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You made that up.

Why would you promise something so blatantly false

And its the only thing the devs use.

How naive of you to think that people cant be bad at their jobs. Blizz had to hire the worst of the worst to quickly fill up the vacancies after all the devs quit.

And the awful blog posts just highlight their incompetence.

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Just tell me you didn’t read the blog posts. That was a long way to say that.

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Just tell me you dont understand their blogs.

The devs have struggled since OW2 launched, how can you still believe in them? Just L after L every patch.

But they write words in blogs!

Sad.

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Nah, even we have to run away since the crit reduction passive. If it can rush us down it can kill us way faster than we can kill them. Not that we don’t have the potential to solo a tank, but it is very ill-advised to even try. Once we have used Storm Arrows, we’re all but sitting ducks to any DPS or even Support who has 250+ HP.

Please give this guy his +5 damage so he can OHK 250…

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Idk. Chunkin away with 169 damage feels pretty nice to me. I might die in the process, but I definitely put them on their backfoot for my team when I do it.

I think a few more heroes going down to 225 would help balance Hanzo out more than giving him more damage.

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There has to be several for it to be worth it lol.

Ashe
Bap
Genji
Junkrat
Soldier
Sojourn
Venture
Illari

Basically every 250 HP except Ana, Zen, Brig. May as well bring them all down at that point. And Cass doesn’t need to be as tanky as he is. Revert his damage fall-off nerf and bring him down to 250.

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You don’t realize how win rate is calculated which is fine but you created an imaginary scenario and argued against it.

If I pick Sombra for 1 full game and win and then for half a game and lose my win rate is 66%. These swaps to fix it for 1/4 of a match have a much smaller impact on overall win rate than the players just sticking to something for 100% of a match.

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Those seem reasonable to me. Maybe not Illari so much because a damage nerf to her is more suitable, but the rest seem fine to me.

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