Introduction
Today I will be analyzing statistics between players at VALORANT Champions Tour Stage 1: Masters Reykjavík to determining who I believe the best overall player is at the tournament. So my question is: statistically, who is the best player at the tournament? I chose this topic because I think it is something I find interesting and that I am generally invested in. I feel like this is the first time that I can use data scrapping to do research on something I am truly interested in, that I could see myself doing in my free time. I plan to answer this question using mostly visualizations on multiple variables that would determine a player as “good”. Some context to this tournament: This is the first international VALORANT event of 2022. This tournament includes 1-3 of the best teams from multiple regions including North America, Europe, Korea, Asian Pacific, and Brazil.
Observation 1: Which player has the highest Average Combat Score (ACS)?
ACS is a statistic calculated by the game to determine how well a player has performed during the game, but it does lack some context, which is why I wanted to do this.
| Player | ACS |
|---|---|
| aspas |
LLL | 264.8||ScreaM
TL | 260.5||Jinggg
PRX | 258.1||f0rsakeN
PRX | 251.6||Sayaplayer
TGRD | 251.0||Sacy
LLL | 248.0||yay
OPTC | 247.2||MaKo
DRX | 245.0||hoody
G2 | 242.8||xand
NIP | 241.7|This table shows the top 10 players by average combat score along with their team name (it is included in Player).
Observation 2: Which player has the highest KAST?
KAST is a statistic that takes into account many variables about winning a round. Sometimes statistics like ACS favor players who play specific characters that help them have better leaderboard numbers, while support players usually have worse stats in the game. This stat helps determine a players impact towards the round. KAST stands for Kill, Assist, Trade, Survive %. It is the percentage that a player on a team either gets a kill, assist, a kill that follows directly after a teammates death, or if they stay alive within the round.
| Player | KAST |
|---|---|
| MaKo |
DRX | 0.79||f0rsakeN
PRX | 0.76||Sacy
LLL | 0.76||SugarZ3ro
ZETA | 0.76||valyn
TGRD | 0.76||L1NK
TL | 0.76|Observation 3: Which player has the highest K/D?
K/D is a simple statistic that stands for kill to death ratio, the higher it is the more kills per death a player is getting
| Player | K.D |
|---|---|
| Sacy |
LLL | 1.41||aspas
LLL | 1.37||yay
OPTC | 1.30||MaKo
DRX | 1.30||Sayaplayer
TGRD | 1.27|Observation 4: Which player has the best first kill to first death difference?
The first elimination of a round is one of the most impactful eliminations of a round. It can create alot of space and statistically gives a team a heavy probability to win a round.
| Player | First Kill to First Death Differential |
|---|---|
| ScreaM |
TL | 19||MaKo
DRX | 18||Nivera
TL | 14||Laz
ZETA | 12||yay
OPTC | 9|Observation 5: Which player has the highest assists per death ratio?
The statistic is for the support players mainly, but can also be for the aggressive players as well. An assist can count as many things: doing half a player’s health that ends in a kill, using utility that ends in a kill on a player (e.g. blinding a player and your teammate killing him), etc. There is a K/D ratio, but there is no A/D ratio, so I wanted to make one
| Player | Assist to Death Ratio |
|---|---|
| Sacy |
LLL | 0.6349206||MaKo
DRX | 0.6184971||sScary
XIA | 0.5877193||Marved
OPTC | 0.5524862||valyn
TGRD | 0.5512821|Observation 6: Which player has the highest clutch percentage (CL.)?
A clutch is when a player is in a 1vX scenario (a situation where you are the last player alive and there is 1 or more enemies alive on the opposing team). Clutching in VALORANT is the cold-blooded trait a player might need to be able to close out rounds for a team. Think of it similar to hitting a late fourth quarter or game winning shot in basketball, even if a player isnt necessarily playing well, the big shot matters.
| Player | CL. |
|---|---|
| Crws |
XIA | 0.31||bnj
NIP | 0.29||f0rsakeN
PRX | 0.27||AvovA
G2 | 0.27||Nivera
TL | 0.25||Zest
DRX | 0.25||Rb
DRX | 0.25|Observation 7: Which player has the highest headshot percentage (HS.)?
This statistic doesn’t matter much to who is necessarily the best player, I just wanted to do it to see who has the best aim :)
| Player | HS. |
|---|---|
| L1NK |
TL | 0.42||pancada
LLL | 0.40||stax
DRX | 0.35||neT
TGRD | 0.34||ScreaM
TL | 0.33||Mistic
FNC | 0.33|Conclusion
I do wish there was a little more I could have done with this dataset, but I’m hoping that the obscure source I scraped from along with the passion I had to try to do this assingment with this data instead of something easier could earn me a couple brownie points at least.
The Three players that I have chosen as the best performers at this tournament are Sacy from LOUD (LLL, Brazillian team), MaKo from DRX (Korean team), and ScreaM from Team Liquid (TL, European Team) In the top 10 of ACS, all of these players are included: Scream at #2, Sacy at #6, and MaKo at #8. It is safe to say that all these players are putting up good damage stats on the leaderboard. In KAST, MaKo is at #1 and Sacy is at #3. In K/D, Sacy is #1 and MaKo is #4, In First Kill to First Death Difference, ScreaM is at #1 and MaKo is at #2. In Assists per Death Ratio, Sacy is at #1 and MaKo is at #2. Funnily enough, none of my selected top 3 players are in the top 5 of clutch percentage. Lastly, ScreaM is #4 in headshot percentage.
Taking some context into the tournament, Team Liquid got eliminated earlier than LLL or DRX, so I would probably take out ScreaM and leave the discussion between Sacy and MaKo. If I had to choose the best player in this tournament so far, I think I would ultimately choose Sacy. It is a hard choice, but Sacy is the only player on one of the last 4 remaining teams in this tournament as of April 21, 2022. Honarable mention would be aspas, as he is an insane duelist player, and you can see him toping some of these charts like ACS.
One analytical method I think I could have used to progress this further is to take into account what characters the players are playing. Different characters usually trend statistically in different ways, with the agressive (Duelist) players usually getting higher stats, while the supportive players have lower ones. Unfortunately, I could not incorporate that into this assignment. So if I was to do it with more time and depth, I would try to take into account the average of all these statistics depending on the characters, and try to contrast them to the players and how much better they are doing on their characters than average. I also really wish I could have used some graphs, but I was having troubles with slice_max and top_n. Hopefully I can get that sorted for the next assignment, but at least tables do a decent job.