Overwatch 2's director says that most players don't choose characters based on win rates
A good lesson to be learned here.
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It turns out that the meta in Overwatch 2 isn't all that important after all, as players prefer playing as their favourite character over who's meant to be the best.
In pretty much all competitive games, no matter how much you like a particular character, they might not actually be the best when it comes to said competitive aspect. Overwatch 2, being a competitive shooter, obviously falls under that bracket, but in a new blog post on the game from game director Aaron Keller, you might be surprised to hear that players aren't picking heroes solely based on them having the highest kill rates (thanks, PC Gamer).
One of the big things that players have observed was confirmed in the blog, which is that Brigitte is basically one of the best characters in the game right now in terms of support characters. "Brigitte has really popped this season and has the highest win rate for nearly all skill tiers except for Top 500, where Zen takes the lead, with both averaging out to a nearly 55% win rate," writer Keller. "On the other end of the spectrum are Kiriko and Moira at around 45%."
Interestingly though, Brigitte being such a strong character doesn't seem to affect which characters players are picking. "When we look at who is actually being played, the top supports are Ana, Kiriko, and Mercy," Keller continued to explain, noting that this is for all skill tiers "until Silver and Bronze, where Moira becomes picked quite a bit."
Keller himself pointed out how it's "counterintuitive" that Kiriko has a high pick rate amongst top players, but overall has quite a low win rate.
Ultimately, though, players are often drawn to characters they like the feel of, and also quite simply the characters' personalities. Picking a character in anything can be daunting, so people normally go with who looks the coolest, and then change based on how they feel later on. Unless you're literally playing in tournaments, mostly what this shows is that it's ok to play as who you like, which is a pretty good lesson all in.