Hi all,

If you haven't seen my previous forum post, I created and introduced two new ways of looking at player efficiency and team strength through RAR (Rounds Above Efficiency, similar to WAR in baseball) and Team ELO (Team Strength comparable across Regions) and wanted to recap this most recent tournament through them. If you're interested in the methodology and calculations of these stats they can be found in my previous forum post.

This tournament saw the underdog story of Wolves, a master's trophy finally secured for PRX, and some unexpected faces atop the leaderboards.

Using TOTAL RAR these were the top 5 players who generated the most and least wins above a replacement level pro:

Top 5:

1. Alfajer -> 138 Rounds won Above Replacement
2. Spring -> 129 Rounds won Above Replacement
3. Chronicle -> 122 Rounds won Above Replacement
4. f0rsakeN -> 108 Rounds won Above Replacement
5. Jinggg -> 101 Rounds won Above Replacement

Bottom 5:

1. artzin -> -23 Rounds won Above Replacement
2. aspas -> -22 Rounds won Above Replacement
3. Midi -> -19 Rounds won Above Replacement
4. coconut -> -14 Rounds won Above Replacement
5. Viva -> -13 Rounds won Above Replacement

Top 5 Teams Post Tournament through my ELO model (where 1500 is average):

1. Paper Rex (1662)
2. FNATIC (1655)
3. G2 Esports (1646)
4. EDward Gaming (1641)
5. Sentinels (1627)

Some of the greatest delta changes in ELO this tournament:

• Paper Rex (~ +79)
• Team Heretics (~ -51)
• Xi Lai Gaming (~ -48)
• MIBR (~ -46)
• Wolves (~ +37)

Hi all,

I've been working on a couple of stat projects this past week that I think could bring some added depth to how we understand performance on VLR at the player and team level, and I wanted to share them here and see what people think!

1. RAR - Rounds Above Replacement

RAR (Inspired by Baseball's WAR stat) is built directly on top of VLR's existing R² metric. It estimates how many total rounds a player contributes above a replacement-level pro in a given event/match, where "replacement" is defined as the 20th percentile of R² performers in that event who meet the minimum rounds played threshold (min 20% rounds played). You can think of RAR as "how many more rounds did this player help win compared to a replacement-level pro?"

The formulas:
Per RAR = R² – Replacement_R² -> Per-round efficiency above replacement (In a given round how much did this player contribute above a replacement level pro to winning)
Total RAR = (R² – Replacement_R² x Rounds Played) -> Total impact above replacement (In a given match and/or event how many rounds did this player contribute above a replacement level pro to winning)
Most events have a replacement R² around ~0.85

So:

• Per RAR tells you how much better a player performs per round than a replacement
• Total RAR shows how much value they added overall across the rounds they played

Together, they evaluate and reward both efficiency and availability. RAR complements R² by capturing cumulative impact, not just quality per round, and I think it’d make a great addition as a sortable column next to R² on player stat tables.

Quick snapshot from Masters Toronto (before today's Grand Final):

• *Top Total RAR: Spring (126), Alfajer (112), Chronicle (101)
• *Top Per RAR: t3xture (0.38), Spring (0.36), Verno (0.33)

2. Cross-Regional ELO Team Rankings

Right now, VLR team rankings are evaluated intra-regionally with it being difficult to compare teams across different regions in real time, even outside of LANs.

So, taking inspiration from Chess.com and Nate Silver's methodologies I built a global ELO-based system that tracks team performances across all of the 2025 season, enabling direct comparisons between regions throughout the season - not just at international events.

Here's how it works:
1) Teams begin the season with a starting ELO (with 1500 being considered "Average")

• Teams who qualified for Valorant Champions 2024 are seeded based on their LAN performance
• Other Tier 1 teams who did not qualify are seeded using their implied betting odds from their first couple matches

2. Match-by-Match ELO Updates
Each match updates team ratings based on:

• Win/loss outcome factoring in the Margin of Win
• Expected result (based on pre-match ELOs)
• Match importance (with event specific K-factors being used to differentiate the importance of a match in Kickoffs v. Masters)

3. Time Decay, Regional Adjustments, Bayesian Smoothing
To adjust for a variety of factors outside of matches, the model applies:

• Time decays to teams who haven't played in a while to account for teams who don't qualify for international events or meta changes that can occur between events
• Regional Bias multipliers calculated from how regions performed relative to expectation after every international event and applied to the next regional event to enable real-time cross-region comparisons and account for difference in regional strengths
• Short-term Bayesian pull to smooth ratings from their implied 2025 initial ELOs to their current ELOs to stabilize extreme fluctuations

The result is a dynamic, constant up-to-date global leaderboard that reflects team form and allows for teams across regions to properly be compared against each other.

If people are interested, I can post a top 10 snapshot (I was personally surprised to find that 2 of the top 4 did not qualify for Toronto) or share auto-generated graphs on how your favorite team's ELO has changed throughout the season.

Would love thoughts or feedback on either of these ideas!

Edit 1: Updated the Masters Toronto Top Total RAR players using correct numbers