RICO

Who is RICO

RICO is a brawler of Super Rare rarity, class Damage Dealer. This article summarizes their performance in the current competitive meta: best map, hardest counters, and the weekly trend of their win rate. The numbers come from top-PRO battles over the last 90 days, Bayesian-smoothed so a brawler with a small sample doesn't show a misleading percentage.

Over the 30-day window, RICO has shown up in 2,313 battles with a global win rate of 67.2%. That window belongs to the figure itself and is shorter than the one feeding the rest of the page, because a win rate needs recent data so it doesn't drag along a meta that already moved on.

Across the full 90 days, RICO has a pick rate of 1.1%. That pick rate is the share of matches where a top-PRO player chose RICO out of every available brawler, so it works as a thermometer for how meta they are right now. It uses the long window on purpose, because a brawler's popularity shifts more slowly than their win rate.

The two figures for RICO tell different things. The observed win rate, 67.2%, measures how often it wins in the hands of a top 200 player from its country. The discounted strength, 41.1%, estimates how often it would win against a mid-level opponent once the mix of opponents it happened to face is discounted. The first one orders the lists across the site and the second sits beside it, as context.

By discounted strength, RICO takes rank 87 of 107, in the bottom third of the roster. Its observed win rate leans in part on the opponents it happened to face, so read it together with the specific map and mode.

RICO falls into the Super Rares, an intermediate band where the roster starts to specialize for real. The upgrade investment is a notch higher than lower rarities, but the kits usually carry a clear identity: defined draft roles, specific synergies with certain modes and a skill ceiling high enough for a PRO to put real distance between themselves and a new account piloting the same brawler.

As a Damage Dealer, the role is to apply lane pressure at medium range: clean shooting lines hold zone control and force the enemy to move. Opening fights up close is someone else's job. This is the brawler that punishes any positioning mistake from the opponent. In team play it sits behind the tank, covering flanks and finishing objectives once the fight has already developed.

Best maps for RICO

The best map for RICO is Choral Chambers in Bounty, with a Bayesian-adjusted win rate of 85.9% over 38 battles. That puts them above their class average in this mode, so it's worth picking RICO when that rotation is live. A strong run on Choral Chambers usually combines favorable geometry (short ranges or cover) and a mode whose objective plays into the brawler's kit.

RICO's performance is highly map-dependent: there are 26.9 percentage points between their best and worst map. That high variance means it pays to check the rotation before locking them in, because the same brawler swings from one of the best options to a clearly unfavorable pick depending on the map.

As a second map option, RICO also performs well on Arabesque (Brawl Hockey) with a 84.9% win rate, only 1.0 points off their best map. When the gap between the top two maps is this small, picking one over the other comes down to the enemy team more than the brawler itself.

Rounding out the podium, RICO holds a 82.7% win rate on Crystal Arcade (Gem Grab) over 31 battles. Having three competitive maps widens the rotation windows worth bringing them in for, not just their signature map.

Just above their worst result, RICO also struggles on Open Space, where their win rate sits at 59.1%. Keep this map on your radar as a second warning sign when deciding the pick.

On the opposite end, Gem Fort (Gem Grab) drops RICO's win rate to 59.0%. That's the bottom tail of a 26.9-point range between their best and worst map, so if that rotation comes up during a session, consider a different brawler to avoid throwing matches.

Counters and matchups

RICO clearly dominates the matchup against CROW: across the 82 recorded battles for that pairing, their win rate climbs to 82.5%. If you spot CROW on the enemy team in draft, that lane is an edge for RICO — seek the duel out rather than avoid it.

Their second-best matchup is against NITA, where RICO holds a 79.0% win rate over 44 battles. Two strong favorable counters like these give RICO real value as a targeted pick against comps that lean on those two brawlers.

Where RICO has a clear disadvantage is against AMBER: their win rate drops to 52.8% across the 202 battles recorded for that matchup. If AMBER shows up on the enemy team, consider not picking RICO or changing the game plan to avoid the shared lane, because AMBER wins that exchange.

Per-brawler matchups are the smallest-sample metric on the page: for RICO the samples range from 31 to 326 battles. Read them with the confidence that sample implies — a matchup at the low end says far less than one backed by the high one.

This section lists the matchups where RICO performs worst and best over the last 30 days, sampled from top PRO players and smoothed with Bayesian WR to avoid noise.

Read each row left to right: brawler, win rate vs RICO, and battle sample. The larger the sample, the more reliable the number.

Loses most against

Brawler	WR	Battles
AMBER	52.8%	202
GUS	53.7%	323
SHADE	54.9%	326
EL PRIMO	61.9%	187
PIPER	63.0%	112

Dominates

Brawler	WR	Battles
CROW	82.5%	82
NITA	79.0%	44
SHELLY	78.2%	60
KIT	77.9%	36
DARRYL	77.7%	31

Star Powers, Gadgets and Hypercharge

To get the most out of RICO in the current meta, prioritize upgrades by synergy with their kit, not by gem cost. Star powers, gadgets and hypercharge change tiers depending on the meta, so the upgrade priority is dynamic.

As a general rule, the first profitable upgrade for RICO is usually the star power with the highest pick rate in PRO tournaments, followed by the gadget that best fits their role (lane, support, or pick). Hypercharge, when it exists, comes last because it costs more Coins and Power Points and only triggers with a full super bar.

By game mode, RICO performs best in Brawl Ball, with a 65.4% win rate over 2,271 battles — the mode with the most recorded sample for this brawler. That makes Brawl Ball the context where their performance is most reliable and where investing in upgrades pays off most clearly.

Beyond the immediate meta, the upgrade path for RICO should prioritize what moves the win rate needle the most: power 11 before gears, first star power before second, primary gadget before any hypercharge. Hypercharges cost a lot of coins and power points and only activate with a full super bar, so their real priority drops toward the end of the checklist.

Weekly meta analysis

Over the last 7 days, RICO's win rate moved from 67.3% to 69.5%, a climb of +2.2 points versus the previous half of the window. Since each half clears the 3-battle minimum, that move isn't noise: it reflects the meta shifting in RICO's favor, usually from a rotation of maps or modes where they perform better.

Every percentage on the RICO page comes from real battles played by the world's top players, aggregated with statistical smoothing and recomputed every six hours. If you want to understand why one map performs better than another or how a rotation affects the win rate, the methodology page covers the technical detail step by step.