Updated Overwatch 2 ranked distribution finally shows whether you’re actually any good

The time has come.

Mei looks on in horror.
Screengrab via Blizzard Entertainment

For years, Overwatch 2 players have played the game not truly knowing where they truly stand amongst other players. While the game’s rating system gives players a label, the absence of a rank distribution has made it impossible to tell what percentile a player might fall in—until now.

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In a post to their official website today, Blizzard gave a competitive play update, and with it, players can finally look at a graph to see exactly where they land in the grand scheme of the Overwatch 2 rank distribution

The graphic’s skewed bell curve doesn’t have figures attached to it, but it’s fairly reasonable to make some inferences about percentages based on how everything relates to the Grandmaster rank, which Blizzard has previously stated accounts for somewhere close to one percent of the player base.

Related: These DPS heroes are dominating the top of Overwatch 2’s ranked ladder

Assuming that the chart isn’t truncated in any way, which it would be tough to do considering how low of a percentage of the playerbase GM accounts for, someone in the higher ranks of Gold would be around the 50th percentile. That mark is likely somewhere in the Gold 3 or Gold 2 range. So if you happen to be hovering around that mid-Gold area, congratulations on being firmly entrenched in mediocrity.

A chart that shows the competitive rank distribution of Overwatch 2's PC players. The top of the bell curve is the Gold rank.
The chart seems to show that a majority of the game’s players are in either Gold or Platinum. Image via Blizzard Entertainment

Without being able to precisely indicate percentages, here is a rough estimate of what percentage of players fall under each rank. These figures aren’t perfect, but they should be accurate within one percent for each rank. 

  • Bronze 10.2 percent
  • Silver 19.2 percent
  • Gold 26.8 percent
  • Plat 26.2 percent
  • Diamond 12.2 percent
  • Master 3.8 percent
  • GM 1.5 percent

This loosely fits the mold of what former Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan disclosed to players in February 2018 when he posted the rank population distribution to the game’s forums. Blizzard noted on Wednesday that it has aimed at reducing the number of Bronze players, in part because it’s inflated by an “unintended side effect of adding MMR decay for inactive players.”

As a result, the devs have tried to implement ways for players to more easily climb out of the rank that previously only accounted for 8 percent of the player base five years ago.

Author
Image of Max Miceli
Max Miceli
Senior Staff Writer. Max graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a journalism and political science degree in 2015. He previously worked for The Esports Observer covering the streaming industry before joining Dot where he now helps with Overwatch 2 coverage.