Some characters according to overbuff, a stats website for overwatch 2, have a much higher Pickrate. Mercy on console has the overall highest Pickrate with 7,35%. Ana on PC with 6,86%. The average Pickrate is 2,5% with 40 heroes in the game or 2,56% if you exclude venture. To put it into perspective: the lowest picked hero on console is mauga with 0,27%. Mercy is picked 27 times more often than mauga. Mercy is also picked as much as the 10 lowest picked heroes combined, meaning you will see as many mercy’s in the game as: mauga, ramattra, Sigma, wrecking ball, Junker queen, illari, lifeweaver, echo, kiriko and sojourn combined. This is not normal and should be considered when balancing. Before this turns into a mercy rant post. There are 14 characters with a higher pickrate than 3% and there are 20 characters with a lower pickrate than 2%. If you only look at it from a pickrate perspective, there are a total of 5 characters that are within 2% to 3% which is acceptable. I know Pickrate isn’t everything, but again: this is not normal.
They do use pick rate as one metric while balancing. But they completely ignore console numbers, as they should. They balance around high masters and GM PC play.
Do they actually ignore console? Not sure why that’s a good thing
NO. some heros have bad pickrate because they should be bad heros until they dont get any rework also some heros are very good but have bad pickrate beucase they have hardcounters
Yes. PC is the majority of the player base. And console has always had a completely different meta. Less aim dependent heroes are usually stronger on console.
Are there player numbers somewhere on this or are we guessing?
It doesn’t matter if you look at the PC or console stats. They look pretty similar. On PC you have 9 heroes within that 2% to 3% margin instead of 5.
There are no player numbers on overbuff, but it says console players or PC players. I also do not know if it is for a specific region only
They really don’t. Just based on what you said in your opening post Mercy on PC has a pick rate of 3.97%. She’s 3rd from the bottom on the support roster. So your premise about Mercy being good and having one of the highest pick rates isn’t even true whatsoever.
There used to be for OW1. I’m making an assumption that the ratio hasn’t substantially changed since the last time I saw anything about that. Console was dying. That’s why they combined the console pools awhile back.
I don’t know where you’re looking but from what I can see she has a 6,28% pickrate overall on PC.
Nope
Ok, you’re picking grandmaster and only support. I’m picking all heroes over the course of 3 months.
Then you’re doing it wrong. Only use GM. Only use the last month. And use PC. That’s the closest thing you’ll get to the data the devs are using. It’s still wrong, but it’s as close as you’ll get.
Honestly using anything older than the most recent patch is technically out of date. 3 months shouldn’t even be an option. And the devs favor top down balancing so you really should be focusing on GM and Masters.
So you’re just admitting to being wrong. Obviously you can’t look at metal ranks and make any cohesive conclusions from them when nobody there knows how to play the game well enough to make balance matter in any kind of form. Or you can but it’d be stupid
Yes, youre correct. I’m wrong. I’ll take my hat and leave. Sorry for bothering you guys. 
This is just GM.
That is less than 1% of the population. Come on now.
Yes. Top down balancing.
The % that actually plays the game well enough to make balance judgements. Balancing should be at least 80% based on this top level. It actually generally makes the game better for the people in lower ranks too. I say 80% because there will be outliers like Rein who is always going to be better in metal ranks or Kiriko that’s always going to be better in high ranks. But general rule of thumb, balance around high masters / low GM for best results.
Doesn’t matter. We are not looking at winrates but pickrates and looking at less than just 1% (especially when the top has its own bubble meta) doesn’t give it any justice.
It is like, lets say, ignoring orisa being in most matches just because is not played at top ranks.
It does because the top 1% actually picks what’s strongest more often than people in gold. Their perception of the game is better so watching their choices gives a better picture of the actual relative strength of heroes. Both pick rates and win rates are important, but unmirrored win rate is probably the most important stat.
Orisa was meta in GM. That’s why she was nerfed and nerfed hard.
Might be actually true now the keyboard/mouse cheating to benefit from aim assist is apparently being cracked down on.