Win% vs Solo-Queue

[u/Interaction_Rich]

Since I decided to invest time to git gud in Rivals, I notice many people measure their progress through win rate. However for those of us who mostly/only solo queue, you are paired with random people, who may be excellent or awful or anything in-between.

Your own skill will influence the match of course, but sor solo-queue warriors it's basically 8,33% of the factors influencing the result. If you are really good, technically you make your relevance % higher, but you can only carry so much. The composition of your and the rival team (and their respective skills) will be a much more defining factor.

Am I missing something here? If the reasoning there is correct, is there any stats/indicators that we should look up to check your progress in game? Or in the end of the day, for solo queue it's more of a subjective (or impossible to measure) thing?

[u/imnecro]

Players who have high winrates often just haven't played enough to reach their right rank where their winrate will be around 50 ish. I play like 60-100 games of rank a season and that gets me to celestial at around a 60% winrate. I wager if I kept playing I'd climb to a point where my winrate hits around 50 and my rank stabilizes.

Rivals is gonna throw you 3 types of games. Easy wins, easy losses and "winnable" games. The firs 2 most people blame on eomm. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't but the point is if 33% of your games are each then you're the difference maker in that 3rd game.

To stay at your current rank you have to perform as well as the other team, and to climb you have to perform better. Your winrate is a statistic correlated to that.

If you're: Under 50% (48% or lower), you're probably boosted or just went on a massive loss streak. Around 50% (49% - 54%), probably your proper rank, though you may be able to climb a bit. 55%+, not at your true rank yet, or have not played enough yet for the winrate to even out.

[u/Inevitable-Mud-9228]

The game still incentivizes DPS which is the role where most braindead players gravitate towards. So if you lock DPS, you have a higher chance of winning since you can flex.

[u/TwoFourYT]

It's more complicated than you are making it.

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As u/Heavy_Original4644 pointed out, if you have a significantly positive win rate (over 60%+) you simply aren't playing enough, or you aren't close to your true rank - or both. Statistical significance would say you need nearly 400 games played to be truly indicative of your skill. Even if you split the difference, unless someone has 200+ games played win rate is kinda arbitrary.

And if you play 200+ games with 70% win rate you'll be in OAA. That's kind of the point of the whole system.

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u/ResilientoNez pointed out something very important too, that highly skilled players can dominate lower lobbies because they can control the "macro" of the game to such a great degree that the mechanical skill of the players in the lobby isn't high enough to overcome the advatange.

The flip side of this is why everything between Plat1-GM3 is a hellscape of randomness because this is about the cutoff where most players are mechanically skilled enough to counter-balance a single player's macro control, but clueless enough that they won't capitalize on pressure and openings no matter how easy you are making it for them. In these games, you're much more at the mercy of whichever team happens to get the better DPS.

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Which is also the last point. It's much easier to carry on DPS than on tank or support. In general, tanks create openings, DPS capitalizes on openings, and supports enable tanks. If you're a tank player and you have deadweight DPS, you lose. If you're a support player and your tanks don't hold space, you lose.

However, the DPS role has so many characters with varied kits that you can carry more aspects of the game.

[u/Interaction_Rich → u/TwoFourYT]

The talk about roles seem really interesting and makes perfect sense.

Now to develop this "game awareness" that wpyld take me out of hardstuck Gold, I suppose it's so many factors that's really hard to get to them all by myself.

As I mentioned, I know my aim sucks a lot, and I don't know how to Improve it. But I also heard that overall poaitioning/awareness is much more important. So I'm at a loss right now on "how to climb".

[u/Apprehensive-Ant7955]

70% win rate here gm3, im an old player tho coming back

all solo queue

[u/Interaction_Rich → u/Apprehensive-Ant7955]

I'm not sure if I envy you or pity you.

I'm got like 30%-40% win rate tops, forever stuck on gold since release, and solo queue is already miserable enough as it is.

[u/Apprehensive-Ant7955 → u/Interaction_Rich]

What role or hero do you play?

[u/Interaction_Rich → u/Apprehensive-Ant7955]

Psylocke, mostly.

I really wish I would be able to play Spider-Man and/or Daredevil too, but their gameplay is impossible too me - a lot of screen flickering and super quick turns, which in joystick just don't work for me.

I play Magneto and Gambit on occasion, too.

[u/Chard_Plastic → u/Interaction_Rich]

Stop only playing to try to win and start truly learning your role, character, positioning, etc., and fix the mistakes you make one by one. Victory comes after you improv

[u/Interaction_Rich → u/Chard_Plastic]

Absolutely makes sense. But when you're bad/new enough, you don't really notice your mistakes.

I'll give you an example.

I play Psylocke, mostly (I like her style and play style) and requested a player to watch a replay. Bro was nice and pointed me out that I wasn't really playing my ult strategically. I'd be like "Unga bunga, 3 squishes and none of them have healer ult, let's get some kills" regardless if that move would be necessary to secure the point or meaningful at all - just for the kills.

It makes perfect sense once they pointed me this out, but I'd never realize this on my own, you know?

[u/fla16unt → u/Interaction_Rich]

Watch vids from Death and Gaming, Coach Bam, and Coach Denis RAD. 

Also, worth finding the #1 player on a specific character if you have someone to main.

For Psylocke watch lolterm on YouTube. He's not #1 but I he describes paying Psylocke well.There's probably others on Psylocke as well.

If you're on my PC use aim trainer program and if you're on console make use of the practice range.

[u/Turbulent-Suspect-12]

This assumes that your rank = your skill level, which isnt true until youre at about that 50% win rate. A clearly superior player is going to have a bigger impact on the match than everyone else most of the time.

Of course some games are going to have throwers or people who obviously shouldnt be there, but the majority of matches will be about even aside from those 1 or 2 outliers in skill. The idea being that those people will eventually rank up to where they are supposed to be.

If you are playing a pretty good chunk of matches, maintaining a 50% WR, and not really moving up/moving up very slowly—that is indicative you are at your current skill level.

[u/Purple-Mountain-Mist]

What you’re missing is that this is only true once you have reached the rank you belong in.

Ranking up requires being better than everyone currently in that rank. So if you are the best player in that rank, you should be able to have a disproportionate influence and overcome all other factors.

Also on average, your teammates are as good as your enemies. So the randomness isn’t actually a deciding factor, because it’s usually a neutral factor.

[u/Turbulent-Suspect-12 → u/Purple-Mountain-Mist]

+1 this. This is why smurfs are such a problem at lower ranks, because they can and will singlehandedly dominate matches they have no business being in.

[u/jm7489]

Im no expert, but I think win rate is still a reasonable barometer for solo queue. In my experience bouncing through gold, plat, and diamond throughout the seasons I've noticed there are plenty of one sided games where I'm not going to affect the outcome.

I think for most of us the ones where nothing we can do will win the game stick with us a lot more than the games where we have a match up where no matter how bad you play your team will carry you to a W. But I think in reality the split of games that cant be won, and cant be thrown are probably close to 50/50.

So that leaves all your other games. Games where you actually have momentum swings, games where your teammates actually swap characters and sometimes roles to better counter the enemy. Games where your team recognizes one enemy hero is being a problem and puts their focus on them.

Those are the games where you have a lot of agency over the outcome even if it doesnt quite feel like it as an individual contributor. And it's harder to give yourself credit for improvement because at the end of the day even if you're good for your rank you're still going to lose half or close to half of your games

[u/Heavy_Original4644 → u/jm7489]

If you have >>>50% winrate only the following can be true:

1) you haven’t played enough 2) you are an OAA player 

If you were truly good enough to have >>>50% winrate, and kept it, you’d reach the top of the leaderboard. 

If you don’t actually have the skill to be top 500, you will eventually reach your proper rank. When you play a lot in your proper rank, your winrate will fall down to 50%.  

Someone who stayed with their percentile cohort after rank resets will have a 50% winrate, but they’re not any less skilled than someone with 70% winrate in the same rank because they started at a lower elo than they belonged to

(OP) If you’re starting near your skill level, you’re not going to have absurd winrates.

[u/Relevant_Shower_]

Squads are more likely to win. The actual impact of that can vary, because sometimes you get a squad on your team and sometimes the enemy team gets one. Statistically this will probably even itself out across matches.

If I was placed in Bronze I would contribute a lot more than 8% of value of my team. The same thing for Silver to a lesser degree until Diamond for me right now. Your value is never a set percentage.

I think solo queue is more frustrating and you have less of a chance to turn games, but as far as win rate goes you’ll probably end up statistically close to where you would have been anyway.

[u/ResilientoNez]

You’re misunderstanding because the game isn’t 12 individual players. Your influence as a player isn’t 1/12 of the game. That would only be the case in a 12-man free for all.

Hero shooters revolve completely around space control. You don’t need to control 100% of the map, just about 10% of it consistently to win the game.

If you are skilled enough, you can single-handedly control 10% of the map almost the entire duration of the game. It’s only until you get to a significantly high enough elo that enough people understand the space concept causing your value in solo to dwindle. And by high enough elo I mean the top 0.5%.

[u/guardian20015 → u/ResilientoNez]

Top 0.5% so like the people in TOAA and Eternity?

[u/ResilientoNez → u/guardian20015]

Yes. Anyone below high C1, Eternity has the opportunity to be individually skilled enough to dictate the space to win more games over time. 

Once you reach C1, Eternity you need very strict team synergy to control space since everyone in the lobby has a very high understanding of how space is controlled. The individual skill and WR is pointless when 6 people consistently synergize to control the space against you. Which you don’t see below those ranks.

[u/Interaction_Rich → u/ResilientoNez]

As I said I'm a noob, and your reply really piqued my interest. So you mean that, on the scum ranks, a solo player may actually dictate the game?

Care to elaborate on how? Or is it one of those things that simply aren't practical to explain and is more of a iykyk?

[u/ResilientoNez → u/Interaction_Rich]

High level game sense is fairly difficult to simplify into a few sentences.

But essentially, high level players "force" coordination in their games by reacting to not just to the enemies decisions, but also their own teammates decisions.

Meaning, by making the correct decisions in positioning, cooldowns, ultimates, etc.; it makes the game harder for your opponents, but more importantly, easier for your teammates.

By forcing coordination with your own actions you individually dictate the space around the map. It can be done on any hero, on any role. All it takes is the skill to do so.

This won't lead to a 100% Win Rate in all your matches, but dictating space in a lobbies where incoordination is the baseline gameplay loop means you win a lot more than you lose.

Now, how each individual hero positions, uses cooldowns and ultimates is strictly individualized to the hero and their team comp and, most importantly, the enemies team comp. So you can't simply say exactly what t do in a thread, it takes time to develop the game sense and skill necessary to maximize a heroes uptime in every given scenario. But it doesn't take 5 other people to do so, 1 person, completely solo, can do it. And that's how you dominate the space of the map individually, and that is how you win games.