ADR IS NOT AN AVERAGE
While that's not fully true, it's kind of true? ADR is an average, however the average you're looking at depends entirely on who did the math.
I've been building my own Valorant analytics platform for the past few months, and stuff like this is the kind of thing you only notice when you're doing the math yourself.
Average Damage per Round (ADR). Total damage divided by rounds played. That is the entire stat. However "rounds played" is doing significantly more work in that sentence than most people give it credit for.
Let's take an anchor on Lotus for example. You're holding C, the whole round goes by, no one comes to your site, and the round ends with your whole team dead on A because they got opened on. You dealt 0 damage and took 0 damage and end up saving.
Should that round count?
One method says yes, obviously it counts. You were in the round, you get a 0 for DMG In/Out, and it pulls your average down. The other method says you never saw a single person, therefore there is nothing to measure, so the round gets thrown out of the equation.
Same player, same map, two different numbers. The second one will ALWAYS cause a higher average.
However, that second number is not Average Damage per Round anymore. It is Average Damage per "Interaction". It answers the question "how threatening is this player when they are actually involved," which in hindsight is a nice metric to have. The first number answers "what did the player actually contribute through all of the rounds they played."
Neither of them are wrong, the part where it becomes wrong is that by definition ADR is a flat average of all damage/total rounds. I personally think sites like VLR and RIB should carry both. ADR as the raw stat, and ADI for the interaction version. Because I think even though the rounds where players aren't engaging punish hard, it brings in the engagement stat factor and allows people to see how involved a player ACTUALLY was throughout a game.
If you have any feedback or questions please do not be afraid to comment.
#VALORANTChampions
LFT Analyst for 2027
Currently on contract w/ FlyQuest RED till end of 2026, but looking into the new year
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