Gentleman Jon — Now that the dust has settled on the greatest international tournament in TF2 history, and as an interested observer, I thought I would add a little bit of depth by analysing the data from the logs (made easy by comp.tf collating all the links, thanks Kaneco & co) by looking at the performances of the 8 seeded teams in more detail using a custom log parser and collating all their data together. I apologise to EV, but as we shall see not every member of the team should hang their head in shame, just most of them.
The logs analysed are from the invite group stage and the knockout rounds. As each team played a varied number of maps I’ve usually looked at per-minute stats as the fairest way to present data.
In this article I’m mostly looking at damage and healing, so without further ado….
i49 Demoman Damage Per-Minute
Yes, king of the Demomen (and possibly invalidating the entire exercise before it really starts) is War. Despite his team getting a pasting at every turn War pumped out massive damage with a surprisingly low level of heals (more on that later), no doubt helped by this game http://logs.tf/81197.
Brego also stands out as a player carrying his team almost matching Numlocked’s output, and even if Team Infused struggled Kaidus put in a solid performance. B4nny didn’t do anything special with his damage output and also iM’s bulk put up mediocre numbers. Both players probably suffered from their team’s methodical low scoring styles.
War’s exclusion from VTF2’s best Demoman vote was clearly an outrage.
i49 Soldier Damage Per-Minute
Team Immunity’s soldiers occupy opposite ends of the spectrum showing their powerful combo play but also revealing their flank weakness. CaptainHax deserves credit for matching the elite pocket soldiers and Tek is the best of the roamers here, the French soldiers were a real strength.
Taggerung’s numbers as the slowest damaging soldier in the tournament back up criticism of his play as generally ineffective, and Infused’s soldiers were the worst performers from the elite group who had hopes of winning with the pocket being a particular disappointment.
As with Numlocked’s performance Epsilon’s soldiers are right at the top table without either of them being the overall best, with TCM’s soldier pair following closely.
i49 Scout Damage Per-Minute
Another Team Immunity player takes the top spot here with Sheep’s DPM numbers supplemented by his headshot sprees. Once again Antwa’s numbers don’t match his partners, the lack of damage from the flank stood between Team Immunity and the title.
Most teams had one outstanding performer and one weaker, smzi and shrugger notably falling behind Tviq and the (unfairly) maligned Cyzer. The exception were the Epsilon pair who both put up elite damage numbers, helped no doubt by KnOxXx’s skills on the medigun.
Flippy also deserves special mention, it’s easy to see how the Frenchies were able to cause iMmunity so much trouble.
i49 Medics
Heals Per-Minute
KnOxXx’s performance here is head and shoulders above the other medics and it’s not all down to avoiding the spawn queue. Over a 30 minute map his advantage over the other medics provides his team with at least 600 extra health per map and the TF2 logs don’t record overheal so it could be even more.
K3 and 2nuts matched their lionised counterparts Mirelin and Shade. Bonobo shows poorly here although this might be because the logs hide the extent to which he spent his time buffing Yuki’s overheal. Even so the relatively ineffective flank could have done with some love.
Deaths Per-Map
Once again KnOxXx leads the way this time with Shade and bonobo matching him. Bonobo’s survival matched with a relatively low heal rate is indicative of Team Immunity’s conservative style. 2nuts doesn’t quite match the top medics in survivability here, but TCM got to the final with Mirelin hitting the spawn queue 3 extra times per map than KnOxXx so death doesn’t mean defeat.
Ubers Per-Map
In this vital stat Mirelin has eked out a narrow lead over KnOxXx although his willingness to use Kritz is probably the reason for this considering how much more often he was dead. Given the importance of maintaining uber and how rare it is for a team to win a round having fewer ubers than their opponent it’s not surprising to find most medics so evenly matched.
Also apologies to Ace for this whole section.
i49 Heals Received
Extending the medic section a bit more we can look at who received heals and reassess player performance based on this.
Heals Received Per-Minute
Huge graph incoming
Beautifully colour coded by class, we can see the pocket soldiers dominating heal priority with Lansky sucking up every last bit of the heal beam he can. Surprisingly Zebbosai received even more heals than Yuki, although if we had overheal stats that trend might be reversed given Mirelin’s high risk style and TCM’s overall aggro tendencies. In contrast to some comments on the subject Mike did receive a lot of heals from KnOxXx although he’s not as dependent as many of his soldier rivals.
Amongst the demomen Numlocked and Brego were the most clearly pocketed, whilst ryb and bulk got a lot less of the total heals. The least healed demo was b4nny, which given his importance to HRG seems like it might have been a fundamental strategic mistake.
Earlier we noted Tek’s excellent performance as roamer and here we can see he got the most heals of any roamer. Gear is next and also performed well, but is clearly behind Tek in healing received. Taggerung is barely touched by Shade which contributed to his failure to put up the best damage numbers.
Of course some players may have low healing received rates because their medic spent a lot of time dead.
Heal Adjusted Damage Per-Minute
These figures give us the opportunity to cross reference healing received against damage output to see who has done the best with the support they’ve been given. The methodology is crude and doesn’t product balanced results, but it allows us to see another side of the story.
With the adjustment for heal rates the picture changes. Mike is tied for 1st with Yuki, with Zebbosai, CaptainHax and Lansky rising above the mediocre. Lansksy isn’t justifying his absolute heal priority here though.
Amongst the Demos War once again rises above the rest. Amongst the mere mortals Numlocked edges out Brego, and B4nny looks like a contender for the first time. If HRG had healed him more who knows how things might have turned out. Kaidus disappoints, a previously solid looking tournament looks a bit worse considering the medic support he received.
Taggerung goes from the dregs of the ratings to one of the best seeing as he barely saw his medic. Aporia also benefits from this analysis, although he’s still behind Jukebox whose sniping exploits don’t seem to have hurt his numbers.
Speaking of sniping, Sheep comes out massively ahead of the other scouts, although after that it’s a mixed picture. Epsilon’s scout pair disappear into mediocrity thanks to KnOxXx’s prowes with the medigun as does Gear.
The presence of e-thug and Stark as top performers along with the downgrading of Bash and Stefan goes some way to invalidating this is as a key analytical metric, considerations such as time spent in the spawn queue due to inferior DM should be taken into account, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
Conclusions
War = best demo EU
Epsilon didn’t always have the absolute top performer but there are no weak links in that team and every player commands a place at the top table. TCM are the only other team that can even try to make that claim, but at every turn their players are slightly behind their Epsilon counterparts and sometimes slip into mediocrity.
The pocket centric strategies of Immunity and HRG didn’t pay off, with their flanks failing to put out the damage needed to compete at the very top of the tree, and Immunity couldn’t get Bulk into a position to put out the massive levels of damage most other Demos managed. Yuki was every bit as good as advertised even adjusting for the healing he received.
Infused’s players were generally mediocre amongst the invite group with ipz- particularly disappointing in a pocket role. There was always bound to be one Euro team that fell by the wayside, and Ipz will have to bring his analytical skills to bear to improve the team for next time.
For the future KnOxXx’s retirement will seriously hurt Epsilon unless Raymon can come in and perform at a very high level, not only his medic skills but his calling will be sorely missed. However if Numlocked also retires there’s a ready-made upgrade available in War.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2013-08-30 by diemasher.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.