A tank death costs about twice what a DPS or support death costs. But a team has two DPS and two supports, and each pair weighs about as much as the one tank.
- -9.3 pts One extra tank death per 10 minutes costs 9.3 points of win chance. Both DPS dying once more each cost 9.6, both supports 10.6.
- 89.1% The team with fewer deaths won 89.1% of matches. That part players already know.
- 50.7% The team that blocked more damage won 50.7% of matches, a coin flip. Healing did only a little better.
- 57.9% When both teams died exactly as often, the team whose tank died less won 57.9%. Whose DPS died less, 44.9%.
In his Director's Take on future formats, Aaron Keller wrote that players have told Blizzard the tank decides too many matches.
"the Tank role often plays too big of a factor in determining the outcome of a standard 5v5 match."
Aaron Keller, Director's Take: future formats
Across 250,000+ Overwatch 5v5 matches, that is true of the tank as a player and not of tank as a role. The matches are ranked and unranked, played between September 6 and October 4, with the full scoreboard for all ten players.
Stat by stat
Share of matches won by the team with more of each stat. Source: 258,440 Overwatch 5v5 matches, ranked and unranked, Sep 6 to Oct 4 2026, all ten scoreboards.
The top of that chart won't surprise anyone who reads r/OverwatchUniversity, where "Deaths are the most important stat on the scoreboard" had 604 upvotes on October 14. The bottom is the part worth a second look. Mitigation is a coin flip, and healing does only a little better.
Healing and mitigation mostly record pressure. A support heals more when the team is getting hit, and a tank blocks more when it is being shot at. One support put it this way: "the better that you're playing the smaller my healing numbers should be."
Why damage looks better than it is
Most of damage's 75% is damage that turned into kills. A model that knows each team's eliminations, deaths and assists picks the winner 89.3% of the time. Adding damage, healing and mitigation on top moves it to:
89.5% of winners picked once damage, healing and mitigation join eliminations, deaths and assists (up from 89.3%)
Eliminations are mostly a team stat. Overwatch credits an elimination to everyone who damaged the target shortly before it died, so each death shows up as about 2.3 eliminations on the other team's scoreboard. That is why "more eliminations" and "fewer deaths" sit side by side in the chart. For one player they come apart: once you know how often each of the ten players died, your own eliminations and assists add almost nothing to who won. Your deaths are the part of the stat line that is actually yours.
Who dies matters
Holding the other nine players' deaths constant, one extra death per 10 minutes costs a tank about twice what it costs anyone else. Count the whole role and the gap closes.
Win chance lost, percentage points, holding the other nine players' deaths constant. Source: Model over 258,440 Overwatch 5v5 matches, ranked and unranked, Sep 6 to Oct 4 2026, all ten scoreboards; 6v6: 29,992 matches.
You can see the same thing without a model. Some matches end with both teams on exactly the same number of deaths. In those, it matters whose deaths they were:
Share won by the team whose tank, supports or DPS died less, in matches with equal team deaths. Source: 4,570 of 258,440 Overwatch 5v5 matches that ended with equal team deaths, Sep 6 to Oct 4 2026.
With the total fixed, deaths moved off the tank and onto the DPS were the better deal.
Stomps don't explain it. In matches where the two teams' deaths were within three of each other, a tank death still costs 9.5 points and a DPS death 5.2. In 6v6, two tanks share the job and each tank death costs 6.7 points: still more than a support (4.9) or DPS (4.3) death, but less than a 5v5 tank.
By rank
Win chance lost per extra death per 10 minutes, percentage points, by lobby rank. Source: Ranked 5v5 lobbies by average rank, from 258,440 Overwatch 5v5 matches, ranked and unranked, Sep 6 to Oct 4 2026, all ten scoreboards.
Every death gets more expensive as rank goes up, and DPS and support deaths close part of the gap to the tank. That fits the usual line that higher up the DPS have to hit their shots.
Heroes that break the pattern
For players who stayed on one hero all match, this compares the hero's top third on each stat with its bottom third: how many more points of win rate the top third won.
Win rate, top third minus bottom third, in points (one-hero matches, heroes with 4,000+)
| Hero | Role | Eliminations | Fewer deaths | Assists | Healing | Mitigation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sombra | Damage | 63 | 47 | 46 | 0 | 0 |
| Tracer | Damage | 68 | 49 | 0 | -6 | -6 |
| Ana | Support | 51 | 58 | 59 | 8 | -7 |
| Kiriko | Support | 50 | 62 | 66 | 8 | 0 |
| Mercy | Support | 18 | 60 | 74 | 7 | -1 |
| Domina | Tank | 71 | 78 | 41 | 1 | -1 |
| Orisa | Tank | 72 | 77 | 43 | 0 | -5 |
| Winston | Tank | 64 | 61 | 41 | 3 | -5 |
| Wrecking Ball | Tank | 71 | 55 | 52 | 4 | -12 |
Mercy is the outlier: her eliminations barely separate winners, while her assists separate them more than anyone's in this table. Anchor tanks pay most for dying, Domina and Orisa at 78 and 77 points, against 61 for Winston and 55 for Wrecking Ball. And healing barely separates winners on any support: 8 points on Ana against 58 for her deaths.
What this can't tell you
You die less because you're winning the fight. A team that wins a fight stops dying, so part of every number here is the result showing up in the stat line. Holding the rest of the lobby constant and the equal-deaths test take a lot of that out, not all of it.
Not every death is a mistake. A death that trades for the enemy tank, or buys the ult that wins the fight, counts the same as feeding. The scoreboard can't tell those apart.
Whose matches these are. Every match has a Counterwatch user in it, who is one of the ten players; the other nine are whoever matchmaking put there. Without the largest uploader, or on either random half of uploaders, the tank number stays at 9.3.
Impact reads the same three stats
Counterwatch's Impact rating is built on this. It reads eliminations, deaths and assists against the typical player on the same hero at the same rank, and leaves damage, healing and mitigation out.
How this was measured
- 258,440 Overwatch 5v5 matches and 29,992 6v6
- Sep 6 to Oct 4, 2026 (Season 4)
- ranked and unranked
- full lobbies, 4 to 40 minutes, each match counted once
- 6,596 uploaders, the largest 0.27% of matches
Analysis generated from Counterwatch match data: 258,440 Overwatch 5v5 matches and 29,992 6v6, ranked and unranked, Sep 6 to Oct 4, 2026 (Season 4). Charts and the full article: counterwatch.gg