Pretty please don’t turn this thread into an argument about current stats
First things first, Overbuff is a site which walks over peoples public profiles, and gathers data from them, which it aggregates, and displays.
When forumers talk about overbuff, they USUALLY mean the heroes screen on it.
It is at Hero Statistics - Overbuff - Overwatch 2 Statistics
Useful points about the data it gets.
- It gets data from more than just the people who are signed up.
- It gets ENOUGH data, and you can see that because the data doesn’t bounce around a lot, which you would expect if the sample was too small.
- It can’t see private accounts, but, there is no reason to believe that private accounts are biased in a particular direction.
- It gets the same data you see on your own stats page, and is subject to the same limitations of the data on that page - if Blizzard messes up, then Overbuff will mess up. If Blizzard doesn’t show enough data, then Overbuff will just have to work with what they can get. (See Mei’s damage/g stat)
Overview
At the top of the dashboard, you can select over how long you want to aggregate the data. Which platform it is for, if it is QP or comp, and a role filter (which you should ignore as it very out of date)
Under that, there is which rank you are filtering for. All of them, or some particular rank.
Under it, is the tabs - which people tend to not notice. But there is 3 more tabs than overview - 2 of which is useful. (Medals isn’t)
Stats on the overview tab
Pick rate - It is what it says on the box, how much a hero is being picked.
- it is pick rate by slot, you need to multiply it by 6, to see the pick rate per side.
- 16.666… is the max pick rate possible (in theory, but like, sometimes it shows higher, no I don’t know why…). It means the hero is picked every game, on both teams.
- ISN’T weighted by number of heroes in a role. So, Tanks / Supports will have inflated pick rates compared to DPS, just because of less choices to be had there.
- Pick rates have to be seen in context!!! A hero may only be heavily picked because it is countering another heavily picked hero for instance. A particular stand out is Mercy mains have a history of being crazy about their hero, and will pick Mercy totally regardless of anything. (This is what killed hero bans, since, when Mercy was banned, they just didn’t play for the week) - You can thank them later for killing it.
- Context aside, it is a reasonable proxy for how strong a hero is. People pick what works at their rank, and “it is only because they are popular” heroes, tend to be not popular when they are weak. It is funny how that works.
Win rate - How likely a hero will win in a game, subject to a large number of caveats.
- Win rate is influenced by SR, because the games player base is set out on a bell curve, low ranked players TEND to play against people higher ranked than they are on average, and the reverse is true. So, you need to compare it to the base line of that rank.
- Even within a rank, that same bias comes into play to a less of a degree.
- Hero which are swapped to, to counter, have a lower win rate, JUST because they tend to be picked when you are already losing.
- Win rate is weighted by how long the hero was played in the match. This means heroes which are played on defensive more than attack, tend to have over inflated win rates. After all, if they do well, defense lasts a long time, and has a higher weighting. If an attacking hero does well, the attack phase is MUCH shorter, so they have the reverse effect, artificially pushing their win rate down.
- Heroes which have a lot of mirroring tend to push the hero towards the middle of the rank. Since for every win there is a loss. (but middle of the RANK, rather than towards 50%, because the win is still more likely to go to the higher SR person) (see Moth Mercy for a VERY good demo of this)
- Heroes which are one tricked a lot, ALSO get pushed towards rank average, the players are typically stable in their rank, so, run the rank average. This means the win rate is MOSTLY made up of people who don’t run the hero all the time. They will be winning on one hero, and losing on another.
The last point is a VERY interesting one, since, it means that their win rate is heavy biased towards “how easy is a hero to get value from for people who play more than one hero” - they are represented in the win rate WAY WAY more than the one tricks. The more someone one tricks, the less they are represented in the win rate.
An Example of biases in the data on this screen
McCree.
- He is highly picked as a counter, so, his high pick rate in ranks where Ball / Tracer are played shouldn’t be a surprise, since he counters them. So, his high pick rate doesn’t by itself mean he is Over Powered.
- He is highly picked as a counter, so, his low win rate shouldn’t be a surprise, since often he will be swapped to, it doesn’t mean he is Under Powered.
Sym
- She is typically played for a very short time on attack (tele to win, or swap), and for a long time on defense, so, her win rate is artificially high.
etc etc. - It is easy for a non Sym main to try the tele attack thing, so there is an easy way for a non main to get value, so her win rate would push up even more. It doesn’t mean the same person would do well, if they had to run her all the time.
Stats on the primary tab
This gives things like Elims per game, etc. objective kills, whatever.
- Mei’s stat damage/g stat is bugged - it is 10x out.
But like, the tab… just isn’t hugely useful. The Eliminations Tab what you are looking for.
Stats on the Eliminations tab
Ok, first things first, what is an Elim? If you do damage to a target, and they die within a few seconds after that, you are credited with an Elim.
- This means that small damage to a lot of people TEND to get credited with a lot of elims, even though it likely didn’t do much towards that person actually being killed.
- The reverse is also true, Heroes which are pretty heavily focused towards killing a single target TEND to have lower elims, because, hey, they have very little trash damage.
E:D - Mostly a measurement of spam - an abjectly AWFUL measure of power.
- Heroes which are very assassin based have awful E:D, since they don’t tend to have any kind of spam damage to push it up, unlike other heroes. See Widow and Doomfist for good examples of this.
- Heroes which don’t die much, or have good escapes tend to also have good E:D.
- Heroes which can get back to the fight QUICKLY tend to have bad E:D.
Like, don’t use this in any kind of argument, it is just a bad measurement of… well everything.
Elims / G similarly useless by it’s self- it measures spam more than anything. But, between this and E:D you can measure deaths per game, which is interesting.
Solo Kills - More useful than it first looks. Multiply it by Elims/G to get solo kills by game.
Final Blows - This is the king of stats on this page. It measures how deadly a hero is.
- Multiply it by Elims/G to get number of final blows.
- It is VERY good indicator of effective damage.
- It does get influenced by “clean up heroes” a little. Who clean up after the fight is over, so you have to remember that.
Ok, that should be a pretty good primer on overbuff.
It is a pretty good data source, has more than enough sample size (don’t make me have the sample size talk to you all again).
Just remember it’s limitations, and everyone should be all good.
Like, you can’t get over this, unless you get more than one hog on a team.