GentlemanJon — During the regular season these 2 teams were separated by 4 points and KillSwitch won the head to head with a decisive 2-0 on Gravel Pit. Itasallgood squeezed past DA in the 1st round of the playoffs showing total superiority on Badwater, total inferiority on the 6v6 favourite Gulllywash and a healthy dash of do or die spirit on Lakeside which could theoretically have been closer, but not by much.
Now they face another specialist highlander team in KillSwitch so the advantages they enjoyed on Badwater and Lakeside over DA won’t be apparent here.
The regular season record
Kill Switch managed at least a draw in every match in the season but dropped a lot of points in golden cap games. They lost a golden cap on Gullywash to DA and only overcame SNSD on Steel and SDW on Badwater in a similar fashion. Their worst result of the season was on Process where they were cleanly beaten by Highpander, but still managed to split the points by taking Viaduct in the same week. Decisive wins were taken over itsallgood and the team with Leg in it’s name a lot on Upward.
IAG were on the wrong end of a golden cap against DA on Steel and split their Week 6 game with Highpander by taking Lakeside but being crushed on Gullywash, as well as losing clearly to KillSwitch on Gravel Pit as mentioned above. They sent SDW packing over Viaduct and Process (although Process was an agonising 2-0 grind), brushed aside a demoralised SNSD on Barnblitz and of course handily beat the Leg team on Badwater.
In terms of map picks Badwater is a map both teams should feel confident on, but after their dismissal of DA, IAG may well be favourites for it. Despite losing Gullywash to DA on golden cap in the regular season KillSwitch must consider it as a strong potential map choice because of IAG’s perceived weakness, but they may want to repeat the Gravel Pit thrashing. Both teams may fancy their chances on a koth map having beaten Highpander but KillSwitch crushed DA in the regular season on Lakeside whereas IAG only edged the same opponent by seconds.
Player matchups
In the following comparison the DPM (damage per minute) stats are an indicator of aggression and influence and the KD (kill/death) stats an indicator of killing efficiency. The balance broadly reflects the player’s temperament and style, high DPM with low KD indicates excessive aggression, and low DPM with high KD indicates passive play. This isn’t particularly relevant to some classes.
Managing to combine high DPM and KD is the hallmark of a good player. Slap your wrist if you make accusations of stat padding spam.
Disclaimer: due to server configuration not even logging spawns in the last round I’ve had to resort to a less accurate form of time tracking that has the effect of slightly depressing some figures. No one would have noticed but it would make it look like everyone on IAG had a bit of a shit game against DA which isn’t the case, except the medics now look even less drop prone as well.
Another Disclaimer: I’m making some assumptions about who will play that may be quite wrong.
Heavy
Last round IAG faced a horrible heavy disadvantage, and although there’s no other Heavy as effective as Tek it doesn’t get a whole lot better facing KillSwitch.
Jamal ranks as the 2nd rated regular Heavy in Highlander this season and although the gap isn’t quite so big as against Tek it’s still a decisive advantage to KillSwitch.
Demoman
Last round there was a lot of uncertainty about the ranking as I only had one or two logs of JoeNUFC playing. Having played 3 maps in the last round we can have a bit more confidence about the level of his game.
Joe slightly out damages the mercurial Emilio Estevez (on a personal note I’d just like to say how much I admired his work in Repo Man) but loses out a little in KD. The rating slightly favour Emilio, but in reality they’re very evenly matched. In terms of style Joe gets sticky kills in about a 4-1 ratio to grenades while Emilio favours stickies by about 3-1. Of the two only Joe has registered a melee kill.
There’s no advantage to either team between the demomen.
Soldier
For IAG in the last round this was a marginal negative against the highly experienced T-Mac, but Muuki was able to take full advantage of Ombrack’s slightly headless backup medicing to rack up the medic kills.
It’s an interesting clash of styles here, Muuki is clearly the more aggressive soldier but Ond kaja looks after himself a little better. This pushes the rating slightly in Ond kaja’s favour but if Muuki can pick high value targets more often these high level stats maybe misleading.
The stats don’t indicate an advantage to either player but it’ll be interesting to see how their different styles play out during the match.
Scout
Last time out Lazybear had a vast advantage over Plapla and although the highest rated scout in Highlander isn’t going to be put in the shade by anyone Dennia should be more competitive for KillSwitch.
Most of the difference between the two is in aggression with Dennia playing more passively to preserve his KD. Is this down to Lazybear having more freedom on payload with Dennia being glued to the cart? I can’t honestly say I’ve noticed.
Moderate advantage to IAG.
Sniper
Having faced the horror of Flippy IAG will be happier facing kcot and however the match turns out IAG should find themselves slightly more able to keep their heads.
Kcot is more effective as sniper but isn’t a lot more aggressive, and although he does cause more damage he’s certainly more of a headshot purist.
The KD advantage is a bit misleading in this case as Sniper has a very long range and physical presence is a lot less important. Overall this is a clear but moderate advantage to KillSwitch, but of course they all add up.
Spy
According to what we can glean from IAG team comms Inso isn’t just making a play for James Bond’s spying pedigree, he also leaves a trail of broken hearts behind him. Truly a master walks among us. When it comes to this spy competition Inso remains Inso and the rest remain also rans.
There’s not much else to say, the main style differences are that Eliman eschews the Ambassador and Dead Ringer. Considering this his stats are pretty good but the classic spy style has its limits.
Pyro
Last round IAG enjoyed an even contribution from the pyros but this should be a slightly stiffer test. Candle is no Steve but he’s one of the better Pyros this season.
Candle isn’t any more aggressive than Rudey but he takes better care of his KD and that makes his contribution more consistent. However he’ll have to be on his guard to protect his medic from Muuki’s bombing and Inso. Facing IAG is one of the more thankless tasks for a pyro.
Engineer
On show for KillSwitch should be the best ranked engineer currently playing, it’s Mint.
Although it’s Mint has a clear advantage in KD and a slight one in DPM it’s clear that any advantage here isn’t going to be game breaking unless it’s engie versus engie in a last second koth cap for the win. I, for one, would welcome that if it can be arranged.
Medic
After last week’s shock stats seemed to show that Bulow wasn’t bad, can Hegee expose him for the fraud of the medical profession he is?
Hegee’s KAD benefits from having Jamal’s backside to lovingly lap with his sticky red heal beam, and he’s slightly more likely to get an uber than Bulow (possibly being down to a preference for Kritz/Quick Fix), but once again Bulow doesn’t seem to be any more likely to drop.
Medic Assassins
So who should the medics fear and which one is more likely to find their stats (as well as their hopes and dreams) crushed?
This shows which players kill medics the most often in blue, and the red bits show how often they manage to get an uber drop. I’ve chosen per hour as the timescale because the numbers for minute are miserably tiny fractions and this relates a bit more clearly to the length of the game.
Bad news for Hegee, not only is Muuki the most prodigious medic killer in all of prem, Inso is number 2, and while Muuki specialises in raw quantity of medic kills Inso focuses a bit more on uber drops. JoeNUFC looks like a threat as well, although a lot of his stats were played against Ombrack. Amongst the snipers it looks like Fanny Filth is more of a threat to the enemy medic too.
But it’s not all good news for IAG, Bulow will need to take extra care checking for stickies as Emilio Estevez is the leading uber dropper.
Strategically speaking there’s obviously a strong bias in IAG’s approach to preventing ubers and supressing healing on the enemy team.
Conclusions
Although KillSwitch don’t have some of the top quality individuals boasted by DA they do have a general marginal statistical superiority in more areas. The most pronounced ones are Heavy and Sniper although Fanny’s focus on medics may prove to be more effective if it wins the long term uber battle, and IAG overcame these last time out as well.
IAG’s trumps are restricted to the incomparable Inso and their monster scout Lazybear, but JoeNUFC should be able to match Emilio’s performance which should count for a lot.
This should once again be a close contest but in contrast to IAG vs DA both teams are pure bred Highlander and will share some of the same strengths, which means an edge to one team may win it over two maps. Kill Switch also appear to have a stronger pedigree on 5cp maps despite mixed regular season results against teams that are very strong in that format.
Clear leadership and organisation could be the difference maker and thanks to their decisive regular season win Kill Switch must go into this one as favourite. IAG will need big plays from their playmakers to keep them in the game, they look for the high value target and they’ll need to find them regularly to win.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2014-01-15 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.