Stats show the best Overwatch heroes in every role
Blizzard EntertainmentAn Overwatch player has identified the most successful heroes of the role queue era so far in Season 18.
Role queue first arrived with a competitive beta season on August 13, but the start of Season 18 on September 3 marked the beginning of the first full competitive season under the new system.
With such a drastic shift in how Overwatch is played, naturally a new balance of power between heroes has begun to emerge, and Overwatch YouTuber OverwatchLimbo has put together a look at which are excelling, using data from Overbuff to identify the top three heroes by win rate in each role so far in Season 18 on PC.
Perhaps a little surprisingly, the same heroes largely dominate all ranks in all three roles, suggesting that the success rate of the heroes in question isn’t particularly reliant on the skill or coordination of the players in a match.
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The Tank role has the most distinct hierarchy, with Sigma, Zarya, and Orisa holding the top three spots at almost every rank, varying only by the order in which they appear. Only in Silver is there a single outlier, with Wrecking Ball replacing Orisa in third.
Role queue lets players search for a specific role, and locks them into it for the full game.The DPS position, meanwhile, has the most variance, although even here the same few faces largely dominate. Symmetra is the clear top pick, in first at every rank except for Master, where she sits behind Doomfist.
Doomfist himself appears at several other ranks, while Reaper is ever-present beneath Master rank. Mei, Widowmaker, and Hanzo also make appearances in the top three at certain ranks.
Much like the Tank role, Support has three clear top picks in Lúcio, Zenyatta, and Moira, who monopolize the top three of all ranks except Grandmaster. Interestingly, there it’s Mercy who breaks through in place of Zenyatta, in spite of the historic perception that Mercy is one of the lower-skilled Support heroes, while Zenyatta has one of the highest ceilings.
As OWLimbo notes, the next major update for the game is expected to bring with it nerfs for Symmetra, Sigma, and Zarya, perhaps the three most successful heroes in the game right now, so the current standings could change. Exactly when that patch will go live remains to be seen, but it’s been in testing on the PTR since August 22.
Assuming the update remains unchanged from its PTR form, the only other hero balance adjustment will be to Bastion, which is unlikely to influence the top three in the DPS category.
As a result, the other strong picks are likely to remain in their position of superiority, unless the meta evolves in a way that shifts the balance of power without more direct balance changes.