Willow

Who is Willow

Willow is a Mythic-rarity brawler of class Controller. 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 14 days, Bayesian-smoothed so a brawler with a small sample doesn't show a misleading percentage.

Over the 14-day window, Willow has shown up in 2,797 battles with a global win rate of 70.8% and a pick rate of 0.6%. That pick rate is the share of matches where a top-PRO player chose Willow out of every available brawler, so it works as a thermometer for how meta they are right now.

Willow belongs to the Mythics, the rarity where nearly every kit is built around a high skill ceiling. They aren't first-pick brawlers for new accounts because they usually demand map reading, cooldown management and matchup knowledge, but in PRO hands they make the difference between winning and losing a match. Their upgrade investment becomes a priority once you understand the meta.

As a Controller, the priority is dictating where the enemy team can and cannot stand. Through slows, knockbacks, persistent damage zones or supers that close routes, the brawler forces the rival to play on its team's terms. It isn't a brawler that stands out in kills, but in positioning and tempo: if it controls the key area of the map, the team wins without needing direct fights.

Best maps for Willow

The best map for Willow is Pinball Dreams in Brawl Ball, with a Bayesian-adjusted win rate of 74.6% over 198 battles. That puts them above their class average in this mode, so it's worth picking Willow when that rotation is live. A strong run on Pinball Dreams usually combines favorable geometry (short ranges or cover) and a mode whose objective plays into the brawler's kit.

Willow's performance is highly map-dependent: there are 29.1 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, Willow also performs well on Tip Toe (Brawl Hockey) with a 73.8% win rate, only 0.8 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, Willow holds a 72.3% win rate on Beach Ball (Brawl Ball) over 190 battles. Having three competitive maps widens the rotation windows worth bringing them in for, not just their signature map.

Just above their worst result, Willow also struggles on Reach for the Stars, where their win rate sits at 46.0%. Keep this map on your radar as a second warning sign when deciding the pick.

On the opposite end, Hideout (Bounty) drops Willow's win rate to 45.5%. That's the bottom tail of a 29.1-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

Willow clearly dominates the matchup against Shelly: across the 101 recorded battles for that pairing, their win rate climbs to 75.6%. If you spot Shelly on the enemy team in draft, that lane is an edge for Willow — seek the duel out rather than avoid it.

Their second-best matchup is against Rico, where Willow holds a 75.1% win rate over 259 battles. Two strong favorable counters like these give Willow real value as a targeted pick against comps that lean on those two brawlers.

Where Willow has a clear disadvantage is against Wendy: their win rate drops to 42.4% across the 36 battles recorded for that matchup. If Wendy shows up on the enemy team, consider not picking Willow or changing the game plan to avoid the shared lane, because Wendy wins that exchange.

Per-brawler matchups are the smallest-sample metric on the page: for Willow the samples range from 10 to 491 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 Willow performs worst and best over the last 90 days, sampled from top PRO players and smoothed with Bayesian WR to avoid noise.

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

Loses most against

Brawler	WR	Battles
Wendy	42.4%	36
Alli	45.0%	10
Gigi	46.8%	17
Nani	50.0%	10
Juju	50.9%	25

Dominates

Brawler	WR	Battles
Shelly	75.6%	101
Rico	75.1%	259
Edgar	74.1%	491
Tara	73.6%	57
Fang	73.3%	180

Star Powers, gadgets and hypercharge

To get the most out of Willow 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 Willow 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, Willow performs best in Brawl Ball, with a 72.8% win rate over 1,739 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 Willow 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, Willow's win rate dropped from 76.1% to 65.1%, a fall of −11.1 points versus the previous half of the window. With both halves above the sample minimum, that drop is a real signal: the meta is moving against Willow, usually from a rotation of maps or a rising counter.

Every percentage on the Willow 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.

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