Introducing Skill Rating Filters for Hero Statistics

We love data. Chances are that if you’re using our site, you love data, too. Overwatch has been out for almost a year, and our Heroes page over that year, we’ve been collecting game data our users have shared with us to give you insights into how individual heroes have been performing, merging all of the available data to show Win Rate, Popularity, and a few other stats.

Up until now, the tool has only been able to give a broad analysis of what’s going on, but what if we could show you something different? How about a little more detail regarding the big, overall picture?

Now on our Heroes page, you’re able to filter Win Rate, Pick Rate, Tie Rate, and On Fire not only by platform and mode (Quick Play or Competitive), but also by rank! This ability to separate the data shows some interesting information we weren’t able to see before. Let’s take a look at Ana’s Win Rate %.

Setting the filter to the last 3 months in Competitive mode for Support classes in the Grandmaster ranking, we see that Ana’s Win Rate % is pretty close to the other healers at 52.25% of games. Nothing too exciting there, but by switching the filters up with the same parameters except showing Bronze, it tells a very different story! Ana’s Win Rate is by far the lowest at 40.59%, much lower than the average for Bronze healers. What’s going on here? Poor aim? Lack of communication? Not healing at all? Whatever it is, there’s a good chance that the lower your ranking, the more helpful a healer other than Ana will be.

If you’re a lower tier player, don’t take this information and harass any Anas on your team! For every datapoint, there are a multitude of reasons she may be a weaker choice that aren’t based solely on the skill of the person playing her.

The new filter alone isn’t the only new tool to try out! Clicking on any hero will bring you to a page with their histogram charts and rankings as it did before, but now also includes trend data for that hero’s Win Rate, Pick Rate, and Meta Trends per ranking from the past week. Click MORE to examine this data to an even finer detail!

From this screen, you’re able to see the same trends on the that hero over the same time period as the revamped Hero page, but instead with a graph that plots the data points.

For some additional insights, the beginning of each season has a demarcation line which allows you to see changes in the global meta from season to season. What’s interesting to see is that you can pinpoint when a patch was released that buffs or makes considerable changes to a hero.

In this example, you can see that Lucio’s pick rate hasn’t changed all that much over the past few months. If anything, it’s slowly been on the decline. That is, until we see a sharp spike when the Lucio patch rolled out in mid-April.

Mercy had a change on February 28, right at the beginning of season 4, where she becomes invulnerable when using her ultimate. From that moment and on into the rest of the season, her pick rate has been climbing and climbing!

With all of these new insights, it’s important to remember that what works for one rank doesn’t necessarily work for another and what works for professional players may not work for the rest of us. A low pick rate may not mean a hero is bad, and a higher win percentage doesn’t guarantee a win. With 24 heroes and more coming, there will always be some at the top and some at the bottom.

We’re excited about this new tool and think you will be, too! Check out our new Heroes page today and see interesting points such as: