Taking a look at player map win percentages
I’ve added individual map win percentages for every player who participated in the 2018 Overwatch League on the individual team pages. Let’s clear up one obvious thing first: this isn’t a perfect measure of a player’s skill, since how much you win is highly dependent on your teammates. If Jjonak and Freefeel had been traded and inserted into the Shanghai and New York starting lineups respectively, I guarantee that Jjonak’s win percentage would have gone down while Freefeel’s would have shot up.
But I think examining individual player map win rates can provide some interesting insights as to how well a player performed compared to the other players on his team, especially those with the same roles. Think of them as like a pitcher’s or quarterback’s win-loss record: imperfect and heavily dependent on teammates, but still having at least some value in comparing individual performances.
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I’ve decided that, to qualify for rankings, players must have participated in 1.5 maps per game played in a season. For the first season of the Overwatch League, that will be 60 maps. For next season, the qualifying floor will be 1.5 * 28, or 42 maps. A total of 130 players participated in the league least season, and 90 reached the 60-map threshhold.
The top seven map win percentages all belonged to members of the New York Excelsior, with the last spots in the top 10 going to Space (.661), Eqo (.649), and Kariv (.644). The bottom 10 were … well, all 10 members of the Shanghai Dragons that met the 60-map requirement. Ouch.
Let’s take a look at the best and worst regular-season map win percentages for each team (among qualifiers), along with a note or two about each:
Best: Note, 87-55-2, .611
Worst: Gamsu, 91-67-3, .575
None of Boston’s qualifying players had much of a spread in their win rates, as you can see by the small variance between Note and Gamsu. Dreamkazper’s .578 map winning percentage was only a shade below the man who replaced him in the starting lineup, Mistakes, who won at a .591 clip.
Best: Seagull, 44-50-2, .469
Worst: Chipshajen, 21-52-4, .299
Seagull easily turned in the best record for the Fuel. Only two other players – Unkoe (.420) and Oge, (.402) – could even win at a 40% clip. As good as Mickie (.378) was, especially in Stage 4, maybe Seagull should get more credit for his team’s late-season turnaround. He only played in 24 maps prior to game 19, but was 13-10-1 in those maps.
Best: Manneten, 42-111-5, .282
Worst: Cwoosh, 25-74-2, .257
As bad as Florida’s regulars were, they’ve got two more players who didn’t qualify who rated even worse than Cwoosh. Sayaplayer had just a .235 winning percentage of his 51 maps, while Zappis won on just a single map of the 10 he played on (.100).
Best: Bani, 68-46-2, .595
Worst: Coolmatt, 84-73-2, .535
While Rawkus played 172 of Houston’s 173 maps (with a .552 winning percentage), the other support role was usually filled by Bani (.595) or – for some reason – Boink, who managed just a .448 winning percentage on 58 maps.
Best: Nus, 69-41-2, .625
Worst: Closer, 34-28-1, .548
Like Houston, London loved to rotate its support players, but through four players, and two were clearly better than the others, with Nus (.625, 112 maps) and Bdosin (.604, 139) coming out a good deal ahead of Closer (.548, 63) and Hagopeun (.557, 35).
Best: Fissure, 73-45-3, .616
Worst: Asher, 38-40-1, .487
You don’t need to know much about Overwatch to know why Fissure was so important to the Gladiators – just look at the numbers. The man he replaced in the lineup (who then replaced him in the playoffs), Iremiix, had just a .460 winning percentage on 50 maps.
Best: Custa, 56-27-3, .669
Worst: Envy, 44-37-4, .541
Remember when I said Space had the eighth-best winning percentage overall? That’s true, but Custa was actually slightly better – if you only take his 86 maps as a member of the Valiant into account. He was 17-30-2 with Dallas, dropping his overall win rate to .559.
Best: Ark, 90-25-3, .775
Worst: Janus, 47-22-2, .676
New York’s tank rotation was Mano (.766, 111), Meko (.740, 173), and Janus (.676, 71), which might explain the last is no longer on the team. Also, while he didn’t qualify for the league lead, playing in just 56 maps, Pine won maps at a staggering .830 (46-9-1) clip!
Best: Eqo, 56-30-1, .649
Worst: Shadowburn, 25-40-1, .386
Once Eqo started playing for Philadelphia, Shadowburn rarely saw action. You can see why.
Best: Super, 41-35-2, .538
Worst: Dhak, 25-38-3, .402
San Francisco was basically two different teams. The same lineup was used for the first 16 games, and every one of those players had a winning percentage under .479. Of the other five players who saw action (discounting Iddqd’s one-map cameo), the lowest winning percentage was .523.
Best: Tobi, 65-49-2, .569
Worst: Miro, 52-48-3, .519
Seoul’s main lineup had win percentages bracketed by Tobi and Miro, while their subs ranged from the good (Bunny, .607/28 maps, Kuki, .580/50) to the bad (Gambler, .462/52, Gido, .439/41).
Best: Geguri, 13-66-1, .169
Worst: Mg, 4-60-1, .069
Considering all their lineup changes, it’s not surprising that Shanghai had a whole 10 players play at least 60 maps and, as previously mentioned, they took up all of the bottom 10 map win rates among qualifiers (#11-#17 were Florida players). Seriously, though, that Mg record…