Dallas Fuel - Win Percentages By Player

It’s no secret that Dallas has struggled so far this season. They’ve switched up players, switched up hero compositions, and even switched up roles on the team - but have still yet to find any consistent measure of success.

Many theories have been given as to why exactly Dallas has been performing so inconsistently: a lack of team identity, deficient game-planning, ineffective communication, or even just poor individual performances.

Today, my goal is to explore the win percentages among each individual player on the Dallas Fuel, in an attempt to determine if any particular players give the team any notably increased chance of winning.

When discussing win percentage, it’s important that you consider the total maps played - since, in this case, it varies greatly.

Rascal, having played only 5 maps total, likely does not have a large enough sample size to draw meaningful conclusions from. Mickie, on the other hand, has played every map but one, and thus, you can be much more confident in his results.

This is something that will be important to keep in mind going forward.

Before we get to map winning percentage, let’s take a look at how each player performs in the biggest factor that leads to winning a map - winning team-fights.

Dallas’ newest member, Rascal, boasts a 50% fight win percentage, just ahead of Seagull at 48% and Custa at 46%.

Rascal and Seagull having the highest fight win percentage is interesting to me, as their roles on the team are also quite similar. In addition to both players having been some of Dallas’ primary Genji players, they are also known for their more specialized or niche picks (heroes like Junkrat, Sombra, Hanzo, etc) - and while we can clearly see that they’re having success, the question remains if they could keep it up if they played as consistently as others.

Now onto map win percentage. Seagull is the only player with an individual ratio greater than 50% - although having only played in 40% of the team’s games. Xqc has the lowest win percentage, but has only played in 30% of the team’s games.

Of the players who have played most frequently(at least 75% of Dallas’ maps) - Mickie (98%), Effect (84%), and Harryhook (79%) - Mickie and Harryhook have virtually identical win percentages (~38%), while Effect has a notably lower percentage (~33%), due to Dallas claiming two victories in his absence at the end of Stage 1 (vs the Dragons and Gladiators)- a feat they would repeat in the first week of Stage 2 with Effect in the line-up.

Which brings me to strength of schedule. Since Dallas’ has two wins against the Dragons and the Gladiators, both with and without Effect, it stands to reason that the level of opponent they’re facing is an important consideration when measuring an individual’s win percentage. Essentially, beating a team like the Dragons is not nearly as impressive as beating a team like the Excelsior - or vice versa if you lose.

Here you can see, based on each opponents’ win record, a weighted average for each player’s participation. Xqc has faced the toughest competition, with the majority of his playtime coming against the Dynasty and the Valiant. Meanwhile, Rascal, in his limited playtime, has faced the easiest schedule, with 40% of his games against the Gladiators, and then split evenly among the Dynasty, Shock, and Dragons.

Here are each players win percentages, adjusted based on the level of competition they’ve faced. Xqc’s stalwart competition still isn’t enough to bring him out of last place, while Seagull’s less-than-stellar competition is still enough to keep him just ahead of Custa.

There is, however, a great deal of alterations made to the middle-of-the-pack.

Here you can see how each player’s win percentage is adjusted - up or down - based on the level of opponents they have faced, and sorted by the average between the two.

Conclusion

My goal here, first and foremost, was to present information, rather than try to make any pronouncements. I encourage you all to make your own decisions about what this means - or whether or not anything of substance is even gained from this information. That said, I am left with some thoughts:

• Since Mickie has played on virtually every map, it’s hard to make any judgments based on his performance. Simply put, we don’t know how Dallas would perform without him.
• Rascal especially, but also Akm and Xqc likely have insufficient data to draw any meaningful conclusions. With that said, Akm and Rascal have shown some reason to be optimistic - Xqc, not as much.
• Seagull and Rascal are in a unique position of acting as the team’s wild cards. While Seagull has not played in Stage 2, and Rascal was not part of the team in Stage 1, it remains to be seen if they would truly boost the teams performance if given more playing time.
• Custa hasn’t played as often, but has had both greater fight and map winning percentages over Chipshajen - and doing so against similar levels of competition. While both players have been considered very mechanically sound, Custa has been known for his communication and in-game leadership, which could certainly be playing a role in finding more success.

Ultimately, I don’t have the cure to the Fuel’s woes. I think this goes deeper than individual player performance, and is more about the team finding consistency and an identity to call their own.

Since beginning on this, Dallas has announced the addition of main tank player, Oge, who will be joining the team in Stage 3, and will fill Dallas’ 12-man roster (barring any departures). Regardless of Oge’s skill level, I can’t help but feel that constantly adding new parts to this dysfunctional machine isn’t the solution - at least not if they’re hoping for any success in the inaugural season of the Overwatch League.

That’s all for today, and I’ll talk to you again in a few days!

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