Your Overwatch did a survey on which role people think is the strongest for solo queue play. The survey had over 42k responders and I would say most their viewers come from avg ranked players or “platchat players”. These were the results as of writing this:
Tank: 53%
Dps: 25%
Supp: 22%
If we assume strength of a hero determines higher pickrates then we would not have quick queue times for tank, medium queue times for supp and high queue times for dps, but we do. Even if we assume all the tank playtimes right now are hog zarya (the most picked and meta rn). It still doesnt explain why the queue times are skewed in the way I mentioned above.
And I would say this also extends into individual heroes, heres why:
The playstyle for hog zarya this meta is pretty much play them like dps. It’s been known that dps players already do go into tank queues to get faster queue times and play a dps-y tank. This proves that flexible and flex dps players have willingness to queue up for tank.
If we assume that strength determines pickrates then queue times for tank would have been a lot longer than dps, but it isnt. This means that the population of people mainingand one tricking heroes is big enough to be able to stop queue times from changes a lot.
This means that pickrates for CERTAIN heroes dont change much in relation to their powerlevel and we observe this with heroes such as reinhardt, genji and mercy. These heroes have historically only dropped and increased by 1-4 ish spots in OVERALL ranking over the years. I dont know about other heroes, but these 3 that I’ve observed for a while never drop as hard as someone like sym during and after nerf in 2 shield.
Conclusion:
Citing pickrates for popular heroes is a pretty worthless or you have to know how much exactly the popularity of a hero impacts the pickrates before you can use it for arguments.
Furthermore it is hard to say for unpopular heroes like sym which could spike up to high pickrate during their meta while dropping hard when they are not how much their lack of popularity affects the way in which you interpret their pickrate. I think further observation is needed.
Some roles are more fun to play than others?
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Read more pls:
And anyway I think that proves my point more. Some heroes are more fun for the playerbase than others and this leads to really skewed pickrates.
You never seem to explain this. Also pickrate is a pretty good indicator of a heroes strength. It’s why Genji had like a zillion% pickrate with his super buffs. It’s why when brig got her massive nerfs recently she went from the #1 support in Gm to the last in a couple weeks and then had her pickrate double in like a week after getting a measly 25Hp back.
Idk how you can claim pickrate doesn’t give us some idea of how strong a hero is.
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He has the same pickrate as he did when he was strong. Why? because as I mentioned he is popular.
Brig on the other hand is not a popular hero to main and therefore drops as hard as rocks like sym.
You only seem to be proving my points further.
Edit: to clarify genji has the same pickrates as he did in diamond and masters while overall has only dropped 2 spots since he was strong. I have mentioned above theres a 1-4 spot movement overall for popular heroes but never more than that.
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He has nowhere near the pickrate he did back when they buffed him like crazy. his pickrate was something like 17% in gm for a dps which we’ve never seen before.
Yeah why did she drop lol. Because she became worse. So this proves that her power level is connected with her pickrate because she only dropped after they nerfed her.
I’m dying rn 
He wasnt 17 percent in all roles combined. Maybe in just dps tab which doesnt even take into account defense heroes. Overbuff hasnt conbined the 2 roles yet. Also genji is sitting at 15 percent in dps tab which further proves my point it doesnt move much
Because she wasnt popular and therefore no one left to play her when she wasnt good. Unlike some heroes such as rein mercy and genji.
Btw the highest pickrate you can get in overall tab is 16.67 which means 17 percent is most likely you only checking dps tab as I suspected.
I can’t explain it any easier than I already did. Idk if you’re trolling or what but I had a good laugh. Good night buddy
The site it kinda bugged. You can get over the theoretical 100% in the overall If you add everything up. Ana did it a few times and I think Genji did it too.
Ok let me dumb it down for you.
16.67 percent max pickable in all heroes tab
Genji now has 15 percent in dps tab and soldier has 20 percent in dps tab. Highest ever btw.
Why 16.67? Because only 2/12 people in the same lobby can pick the same hero duh…
Yes but it corrects after like a day or 2
I know lol. I’m just pointing out how funny it is that some heroes can be so broken that they mess up the site for a little bit.
https://i.imgur.com/QRRceQx.png
Anyway even if I am a somewhat wrong I think that popularity still has a impact on pickrate for some heroes. Even if its not to the extent I thought of. I think some stats should still be interpreted better.
ok last question. If you think popularity has an impact on pickrate (which I agree it does), then why don’t you think it has an affect on what role people select?
If I look at the stats then I think it’s because most heroes are in the dps role and also because most people find more of the heroes in dps fun. It’s no secret genji has one of the most fanbase if not the most. A lot of those most popular heroes can be found in dps.
But annecdotally I’d say the job of the role itself which is mostly killing stuff is more fun than the jobs of other roles to the general playerbase.