The Statistically Best and Worst Single-Round Performances in OWL Season 1
Its always interesting to see who had the best ‘average’ performance over the course of the season, but we should also make sure to note stand out single round performances. In this article I examine some of the biggest outlier game performances, both good and bad. None of these stats are indicative of player dominance on a role, they are just meant to be fun and hopefully interesting.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Beezy Deviant Awards. The OWL has been putting out some cool statistics on which players had the best average performances on different heroes throughout the season — but why should we care about silly things like consistency when we can recognize single round performances instead! Before we begin, I want to make a few notes on the methodology I used. For any player-round performance to qualify for the awards, I first made sure that they played for at least 2 minutes on a hero (to prevent freak events from getting in). Next, I calculated the average Stat/10 mins and then the deviation for each hero and statistic*. I then found the round which was the min/max on that stat, and calculated the ‘number of standard deviations away from the mean’ or “SDs” that the statistic was. Using this indicator, I found the most deviant performances on a hero during the season. I recognize that there are a trillion little statistical issues with this methodology, but its for fun so just enjoy it. I’ll go first through the ‘best performances’ and then through the ‘worst performances’. Last thing I will say is that this entire thing is arbitrary so I might have picked out my favorite most deviant results, rather than the most most deviant results. k.
1st place — Standing tall at a whopping 11.1 SDs away from the league average is your boy Shaz with the ‘EXPERIENCE MY ORBS’ award. Shaz receives this award for his Zenyatta play during a King’s Row defense vs the Shock during Stage 2. Shaz played Zen for just over 3 minutes on this round and healed for a total of 9,760; or 31,831 healing per 10. This compares quite nicely to the league performance average of 6,806 Healing per 10 minutes. What makes this performance so incredibly impressive is that on the same round, Shaz also set league high records for Shots Fired, Ultimates Earned, Ultimates Used, Shots Hit, and All Damage Done on Zenyatta (all 10 SD or more above the league average).
2nd Place — Although technically this achievement is more deviant than Shaz’s, I am putting it in second place because Shaz had so many high deviation records on his King’s Row round. Anyway, at 11.5 SDs above the average is Zunba is awarded the ‘Screenshotted Proof of Aimbotting’ award for playing D.Va while attacking on Horizon Lunar Colony vs New York during Stage 4. In this round Zunba achieved a 34% critical hit accuracy during his four and a half minutes on D.Va, hitting 91 Critical hits out of 268 total shots hit. This is quite a number given the league average is 8.3%. However, this performance was overall not very standout as Zunba had 0 final blows, 1 elimination, and 3 deaths during his play as D.Va on this round.
3rd Place — In a very close third place finish, with 11.0 SDs above the average, its Janus with the ‘Goomba Stomp’ award, and let me tell you this is a weird one. Janus played Winston for 5 minutes on Lijiang: Night Market vs the Boston Uprising in Stage 4 and he dealt a total of 559 damage with his Leap while in Primal Rage, or 1,123 Damage per 10 minutes, compared to the league average performance of 112 damage per 10 minutes.
4th Place — Poko made a big name for himself with his famous Poko Bombs during stage one, and it looks like that reputation was justified due to this next award. For Self Destruct Damage dealt at 10.8 SDs above the league average, Poko receives the ‘affaiblir cela’ (Google translated ‘nerf this’ from English to French because I’m so cultured) award. Poko receives this award for a round on Oasis: University vs the Shock during stage one. Poko dealt a total of 2,728 damage with his self destruct in less than 4 minutes of play, or 7,066 Self Destruct Damage per 10 minutes (compared to league average of 700 self destruct damage per 10). For those curious, in this round poko set off two self destructs eliminating 6 players.
5th Place — Next up its league heartbreaker Shadowburn with ‘I’m Rubber and You’re Glue’ for his play as Genji Attacking on Junkertown vs Boston in Stage 1. During this round Shadowburn reflected a total of 4,452 damage during 3 minutes of play time — or 14,596 damage reflected per 10 minutes. Please note that this is different than Damage Dealt with Reflect, which was only 89 for this round. Regardless, an impressive feat.
That concludes the Top 5 most deviant performances in the league, but before we move on to the Worst 5 most deviant performances, I wanted to include some honorable mentions — displayed in the table below. However, not included in here is Neptuno’s Gibraltar defense vs Shanghai Dragons in which he set the single round record for Mercy on Damage Done, Assists, Critical Hits, Eliminations, and Damage Taken all in one go. Also, if you take the top 5 rounds for Mercy damage dealt, Neptuno has all but one of them — the lad loves his pistol.
Let’s now turn to our top 5 WORST deviant performances, which will highlight some of the statistically most horrible performances on a round of Overwatch played in the Overwatch League. Please remember these are not meant to be toxic to any players given that they have zero context or consistency.
1st Place — Zebbosai takes home the ‘I Need Healing’ award for his Mercy play on Nepal: Shrine vs Seoul in Stage 4. Zebbo healed his teammates for only 1,039 per 10 minutes in this round, compared to the league average of 10,805. For context, his performance was roughly 4 SDs worse than the league average.
2nd Place — Diya is awarded the ‘I CAN’T See You’ award for his Widowmaker performance on Oasis: City Center vs Boston in Stage 4. During this round, Diya achieved a scoped weapon accuracy of just 17%, which might be good on ladder but is pretty bad compared to the league average of 58% for that hero.
3rd Place — Last but certainly not least, Akm has earned the ‘Water Pistol’ award for his McCree play against Philadelphia in Stage 3 while attacking on Temple of Anubis. Akm played McCree here for just over 3 minutes and was only able to do 440 hero damage, or roughly 1,440 hero damage per 10 minutes. This is a bit low when compared to the league average performance of 9,295 hero damage per 10 minutes on McCree.
In conclusion — Overwatch is an incredibly complex team game in which statistics need to be given lots of context and a large sample size to mean anything. However, if you ignore that fact entirely, you can come up with some pretty fun ‘Best of and Worst of’ awards. Hope you all enjoyed reading, and I look forward to hearing from Reddit why this analysis proves nothing and makes me look like an idiot.
*Note — I calculated this average and std on a round by round basis, unweighted. Meaning that the averages will not equal the ‘league average’ perfectly — so take any time I mention the ‘league average’ with a grain of salt. I made this choice because I wanted to compare mean performances vs the mean statistic. Also for statistics such as weapon or crit accuracy I did not use the per 10 minutes since that would be absurd.
As a final aside, I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to read my articles this year. I made ‘Beezy Work’ originally as a way to just motivate myself to look into various items I found interesting — but I have been very pleasantly surprised by just how much viewership these articles have received. I wish that I could have found more time to write more consistently. Anyway, thank you to everyone who read these, commented, called me on bull shit, or left a like. Oh, also the name “Beezy Work” was supposed to be a play on “Busy Work”, but apparently according to most people I have talked to that was not very clear — oops.
xoxo, Gossip Girl
