Gentleman Jon — The dead ringers have rung their last, the crit-a-colas have all gone flat, and the ullapool cabers have shot their loads leaving a trail of sticky red gibs behind them. ETF2L Highlander Season 5 is over, and Kill Switch have been crowned the new kings. In a season that signalled a changing of the guard unpredictable results heralded the decline of former superpowers and the arrival of a new highlander elite.
In this review I’ll be looking at which players excelled in their respective roles, who roster rode their way to glory and who dragged their otherwise stellar teams into the gutter. The players will be the regulars on their positions who put in a lot of time, but one hit wonders will get a special mention for extraordinary performances, and totally abject cameos will not be allowed to fly under the radar.
In the interest of parity the Parrot Gapers logs have not been used.
Enough of the small talk, let’s get into the meat of it
Demomen
For the benefit of any neophytes in the audience the basic class graphs consist of damage per minute, which I take (debatably) as a sign of aggression, kill/death ratio, which I take as signifying killing efficiency and a simple (but statistically justified) rating which is largely only useful for deciding an order to show the players when they may have varying proportions of DPM and KD. High DPM and low KD could be considered excessive aggression, and high KD and low DPM excessive timidity.
Obviously this is a blunt tool and doesn’t take into account the refined aspects of every player’s contribution but I’ll be supplementing particular class’s stats with additional information that hopefully illuminates their contribution.
After a somewhat lacklustre final in which Kill Switch swept to victory against a strangely listless Highpander Hildreth’s total stats have declined slightly but he’s still clearly the most productive demoman of the season racking up massive damage but (most importantly for his rating) by far the best KD alongside that damage.
After Hildreth the running is a bit closer, with Emilio Estevez and JoeNUFC posting similar damage numbers but losing out to Hildreth in KD. Kaidus splits to two posting a better KD but not having as much raw damage output. Of course he introduces his aggressive positional play, getting into people’s faces, seizing territory and forcing his opponents into confusing atypical positions but there’s no current statistical method to measure the (almost certainly positive) effects of this.
JoeNUFC and Niak both put in enough time for IAG to appear on this list, with slightly contrasting styles. Joe is more damage heavy while Niak takes slightly better care of his KD but ultimately there’s very little between them statistically.
Bringing up the rear Thy seemed to be the demoman most often in the revolving door policy that Legolas had at the demoman position.
Weapon choices amongst the demomen is nothing spectacular with the defaults proving by far the most popular. Exon lead the caber kills racking up 4 successful assassinations while Hildreth only made one successful first hit kill but racked up a couple more hand to hand frags. The Loch N Load and Loose Cannon were largely ignored.
Despite all this there is only one true test of Demo skill – killing scouts with direct pipe hits.
The stats speak for themselves, atomic is the man. Get on his level, scrubs.
Permzilla’s one game for SNSD would have had him snapping at Hildreth’s heels for top spot but that pales into comparison compared to irfx who laid down brutal punishment on Legolas for Sookie Doin Work in the best 10 minutes of Demo work all season. His stats are why a reasonable threshold for playing time has to be set.
The disastrous cameos all seemed to come from Legolas for whom Thy was the best demo, with Kratos and MightyMe suffering damage to their reputations while Smzi’s appearance on the sticky launcher can only have been an emergency measure.
Soldiers
In contrast to his 6v6 comrade the Highlander soldier is a relatively peripheral figure, denied the attention of the medic while the Heavy and Demo are buffed and the Pyro takes up bodyguard duties. As a result the average soldier’s stats are somewhat depressed in comparison and they’re expected to throw their lives away far more often casting themselves repeatedly against the medic’s defences, although the extent of this varies by player.
T-Mac comes out on top of the raw kill/damage equation just edging both Klar and zoob who are effectively tied. The French soldier posted a good showing in the 6v6 review so it’s no surprise he does well here.
Klar’s stats are based on quite a small sample but they were set against DA and Kill Switch so have plenty of validity. He played in a similar way to T-Mac judging by these figures. Tied with Klar, zoob has an interesting variation in style posting a much more efficient KD but clearly at the expense of his damage output. Ond Kaja also did this but to a lesser extent.
Muuki posted relatively mediocre general stats but excelled in other areas as we’ll shortly see. Linus had a tough season as SNSD wilted, and probably struggled with his team leading role as well as the soldier play as a result.
Muuki was by far the most prodigious medic assassin to the extent that it must almost have been the sole focus of his play. Unsurprisingly he was also most likely to cause an uber drop.
Although differences amongst the others look small by comparison Zoob and T-Mac form a little pair clear of the rest. Klar is the notable soldier with a good general rating who doesn’t get a lot done against the enemy medic. Perhaps staying away from this hotspot helped him post better numbers.
Weapon use amongst soldiers was generally quite orthodox with the Quake launcher reskin the most common alternative selection to the rocket launcher. Zoob and Muuki made some use of the Blackbox while Ond Kaja preferred the direct hit as an alternative and also managed to get one kill with the Beggar’s Bazooka. T-Mac made most use of the shotgun along with KLar. The Escape Plan was by far the most favoured melee weapon although the Disciplinary Action also got a look in every now and then.
There’s no log entries for the banners but the virtually mandatory gunboats probably renders them almost irrelevant.
Caps’s performance for Kill Switch against Highpander in week 2 would have put him top of the ratings, but by contrast Tom’s game for Kill Switch against SNSD on Steel will be one he’ll want to forget.
Scouts
Unsurprisingly Lazybear is the top rated scout on his general stats coming is a little ahead of furbo who posts much lower damage (do the 6v6 scouts even use Crit a Cola?) but far higher KD.
The 3rd and 4th placed scouts are almost tied and once again have contrasting stats albeit not to such an extreme extent, with Droso posting a better KD which just gets him in ahead of Dennia. SDW ran musical chairs at scout but from the raw stats it appears that Issun was a better option on Scout for them than atomic (the same atomic who appeared on Demo). It may be a big unfair to list atomic here, but he put in the time so here he is.
Scout is another class that can sometimes be used to seek out the medic. Although no one in this list is as dedicated to the task as Muuki, some of the others bear some comparison to the soldiers. Droso, who can frequently be heard calling “I’m behind them”, tops this chart with Dennia in close attendance.
Lazybear by comparison gets a fair share of medic kills, but is clearly getting a larger proportion of his top ranking damage away from the combo. This trend makes even more sense with furbo who had by far the best KD, but got even fewer medic kills.
Weapon use for scouts was hugely orthodox although the secondary weapon saw more variation. Use of Crit-a-Cola is never logged although we all know it was in widespread use but we can see Dennia and Plapla made some use of Mad Milk. When it comes to melee it’s almost all Boston Basher or it’s reskin although furbo got an Atomizer kill.
Sheepy had an epic fixture for Highpander against Kill Switch which would have seen him top by some considerable distance although this did include the scout friendly Viaduct. Kissakala wasn’t quite so dominant when he also played for Highpander on Steel. On the other hand demsii struggled the most going through the SDW scout revolving door.
Snipers
Flippy is, judging by simple DPM and KD, the most destructive sniper. However his pure kill rate is a little behind Tvique who also has the highest headshot rate over Phromelo for extra purist points.
Jude is the most confusing player, finishing poorly on the DPM/KD chart but having a very high kill rate. Presumably spamming shots racking up the damage is not Jude’s game, and the low KD despite a very high kill rate would indicate risky positioning.
Nesh and Phromelo manage mid table consistency across all considerations while Stark has good DPM/KD, but mediocre kill rate and poor headshot rate. Not quite the mirror image of Jude, but presumably he’s fairly careful about staying alive and hits a larger number of low damage non-lethal shots.
Interestingly the top 3 snipers who are rated best on overall damage output and KD have the lowest damage per hit. This could have something to do with use of the SMG as Stark and Flippy don’t seem to use it, but Tvique is also down there and he does. Presumably there’s more willingness to take a higher quantity of shots that are non lethal to get the damage done.
Jude (as expected) and kcot both get amongst the best average damage per hit but took two of the bottom 3 slots for DPM, the damage over time measurement. From this analysis it looks like Phromelo is the ultimate classic sniper, having very high damage per hit, hitting a very high proportion of headshots but despite obviously being very careful he manages mediocre damage rate over time as well.
These differences make an interesting insight into which snipers are feared but might not match this reputation with their general statistics.
Weapon use for snipers is concentrated around the basic sniper rifle or the Awp re-skin, Fanny made some use of the Machina and Flippy dabbled briefly with the Bazaar Bargain. Melee weapons of choice was generally the Bushwacka with the Conscientious Objector also being used. Stark was the only sniper with an SMG kill but with Flippy’s lack of Jarate use he must have been using either that or an alternate secondary.
Fanny was by far the most eager sniper to share his bodily fluids. Although Tvique made some use of it there seems to be a trend against players with a 6v6 pedigree using the unlock.
Sniper vs Sniper
As you can see several sniper pairs didn’t face each other so it’s a bit difficult to crown a king of the sniper vs sniper duel. Kcot does remarkably well only losing out to Flippy and Stark. Stark only gets positives, but he only faced two other snipers (the length of those games qualifying him for inclusion in the general stats). Tvique faced most snipers and only lost out to kcot so if there’s someone deserving the top spot it’s him.
No stand-in snipers did well, in fact there weren’t many replacement performances at all which tends to indicate that it’s a tough job to step into and quite a specialised class despite apparently being so simple. Either that or snipers just don’t miss games, presumably being found still patiently scoped in where the team last left them.
Heavies
As the spearhead of the vast majority of Highlander pushes the heavy, perhaps more than any other class, relies almost entirely for his effectiveness on his ability to deal damage and get kills. Tek ends the season as the undisputed king of Heavy, posting both the best DPM and KD of any other player. Jamal takes a clear 2nd spot from Nijoonen after a dominating display in the final (although the logs were incomplete). Piddox puts up impressive damage but gets himself killed too much for it.
Zebbosai was solidly mid table summing up some of SNSD’s struggles this season. Wolve and kKaltUu bring up the rear, but whereas Wolve’s team reflected his struggle IAG were able to get results without the raw fragging output.
Weapon use by Heavies was almost completely orthodox, with the Minigun or its Iron Curtain re-skin the universal primary choice, the GRU on melee and the Sandvich, although Tek did register a shotgun kill.
Demsii had a mighty performance against IAG across Process and Viaduct, but not quite enough to put him ahead of Tek. No one did particularly badly, but there were a handful of mediocre cameos.
Spies
There’s more to Spy than just these raw stats but even so they are strongly indicative. As previously established Inso reigns supreme, and it’s mostly down to his KD, his ability to evade discovery and come back to fight again. Snow ended up closest to Inso and his play style somewhat reflects Inso’s although less effective.
At the other end of the scale it’s a little sad to see Hurri struggling for form. There’s more to his game than taking out players but it’s still a disappointing showing.
This graph is a bit complicated, but there’s so many things to look at for spy this was the only way to get them in. DRPM is dead ringer activations per minute and HSKPM is headshot kills per minute.
Isil is the top backstabber narrowly followed by Sookie and Inso, Snow and Bighomer are the slowest backstabbers. Particularly bad for Bighomer is triggering the deadringer more often than he got a kill. Snow makes up for the slow backstabbing by being the fastest headshot killer, but Inso is just behind him on this combining top backstabbing with the use of his Ambassador.
Inso is by far the strongest user of the Deadringer. Isil also combines a reasonably high Dead Ringer usage with a high backstab rate.
Inso is also the top Medic killer with Sookie a little behind. Inso not only has the best Spy stats, he got them against the most dangerous target to attack.
Weapon use generally revolved around a few equipment sets. Generally the Ambassador or Revolver was used in the Primary slot although the Letranger is not an effective combat weapon so gets fewer kills than its usage indicates – every Spy used it at least sometimes but by the same token probably spent a lot more time cloaked. The Spycicle was the only knife alternative that got much use.
Amidst all the assassination let’s not forget the Spy’s other traditional role: sabotage. Here we see a significant departure from a lot of the rankings that have gone before, which should go some small way to restoring the balance.
Sookie does indeed do work in this area, deploying by far the largest number of sappers of any top Spy and generally making the enemy engineer’s life hell. As a result he took down the most sentries. Fearboy, Eliman and Hurri were all very active too, although Eliman focused more on the teleporters than the sentries denying the opponents fast reinforcements.
Inso for once looks below average in a stat, focusing slightly more on teleporters than sentries himself but definitely focusing more on players than machinery. Snow, who came the closest to Inso’s killing output, made a miserable saboteur, barely touching a sentry and leaving the teleporters untouched.
Generally speaking it’s unsurprising that dispensers were the least targeted object. This additional data illustrates some interesting traits between the spies and their targeting choices. Inso is clearly the most effective in combat by a big margin, but Sookie’s high focus on disrupting the engineer as well as key targets like the medic reveal an alternative but possibly equally effective way of playing.
Thalash put up some nice stats as Spy standing in for Hurri on Gravel Pit against SDW, although not quite to Inso’s level. At the other end of the spectrum Grenjabob stood in for the irreplaceable Sookie and put in a combat performance only marginally better than Hurri’s season averages.
Pyros
The Pyro has a complex job, largely concerned with protecting the combo although some are allowed more or less of a roaming role depending on how their team is set up. I’ll be looking at a few different stats to throw some light on the different play styles.
Steve is the undisputed king of Pyro deathmatch, only Quell approaches his DPM and only gf18 gets close to his KD, with (where’s the Croatian flag?) Candle also just squeezing over break even KD as well. In terms of raw offensive damage output Steve is in a class of his own and the others are pretty close together.
This graph looks at the proportion (as a fraction of 1 which would represent all of a player’s kills) of a Pyro kills take place against classes usually associated with medic kills. This doesn’t show how many kills, just how much of their time the Pyro spends killing these particular classes. Spies and Soldiers are well known for their medic picking tactics but demomen are also amongst the most likely killers. Scouts sometimes, but they also occupy the flank, cap points and push carts so any roaming Pyro would bump into them there as well, so I’ve left them out of this analysis.
Quell has a very high aggression metric in his DPM but a poor KD which would indicate excessive aggression, and from this it appears he gives little attention to spy hunting in comparison to his Pyro colleagues. Buttnose is the most dedicated Spy hunter, with the other Pyros all spending less time picking up the Spy kills.
Gf18 leads the air defence stats racking up the soldier kills, with Degun and Candle spending roughly the same amount of time on it. Steve has a mediocre shares of his kills against soldiers and the others decline gently from there on down, with Rudey particularly unlikely to look up.
Despite Demomen frequently coming into close contact with Medics and therefore Pyros there’s a very mixed bag of results here. Gf18 leads the pack on Demo kills as well, but other Pyros who have ranked quite high on Medic defence such as Candle and Degun don’t get as involved in the Demo frags.
From this we can see that gf18 is probably the most medic focused Pyro in general terms, with Buttnose heavily focused on Spy hunting with less emphasis on soldiers and demomen. Steve’s medic defending is roughly mediocre, so he certainly gets some work done in that regard. He doesn’t seem to roam the most though, Quell and Rudey seem to have comparatively more freedom for example.
The Steve Conundrum: Is mediocre medic protection worth twice the offensive output of any other Pyro? If your team has Steve then by the end of a 30 minute map it amounts to roughly an extra 2500 damage. All other things being equal that’s enough to win a map. Dropped ubers in 6v6 are roughly equivalent to 500 points of damage but given the number of players in a highlander game they might be worth a bit more with so many more bodies to hit and a fat 450 HP Heavy to shoot. Even so it’s unlikely that the lack of Steve’s attention would amount to 4 or 5 extra drops particularly as he clearly tries to find the best times to be aggressive.
Weapon choice amongst Pyros revolved mostly around the Flare Gun as the primary killing weapon for everyone. Steve made particularly good use of the Axtinguisher, followed by Degun and Candle while Buttnose preferred the shotgun. Rudey and Degun made the most use of the Reserve Shooter. Degun tended to be a bit more experimental also getting kills with the Backburner and Detonator. The Powerjack got a few kills for several players but obviously its main use is additional mobility.
The Ultimate Test
Despite all this noodling there is obviously only one test of skill that counts for a pyro – reflect kills.
Steve can unquestionably consider himself the top Pyro without fear of contradiction… by a margin of a reflected rocket. Candle pips Degun by having the better Grenade reflect performance. The rest should hang their heads in shame, and Buttnose might want to consider amputating his mouse hand.
If anyone is looking for a Pyro to put Steve in his place Permzilla is a leading candidate. He’ll need to work on his reflect kill total of zero though. At the other end of the scale Killari’s emergency Pyro cameos should be avoided at all costs in future.
Engineers
The Engineers were marginally the least deadly class in Season 5 regardless of the presence of an aimbot aided sentry gun, with their stats roughly analogous to the Spy performances in terms of damage and kills impact.
It’s Mint is a clear leader in terms of doing damage and getting frags.
In this graph the healing is on the left axis and all the other stuff is on the right axis.
Foxy put out by far the most healing of any engineer with Mista the only other engineer whose team felt the need to hang around the dispenser. Mista build sentries at the fastest rate although NCM was almost at the same level. It’s Mint, Foxy and Dr. Kaka6ka we on the 2nd tier of sentry building volume.
Kos was particularly averse to using mini sentries, and Fenrir and Foxy were the other 2 engies that got faster kill rates with level 3s that mini sentries, Foxy being particularly prodigious with his fully upgraded sentries. All other engies got more done with the minis (particularly NCM), but there could be a strong map bias in this. Fenrir also got quite a bit of trade out of his level 2s. Despite building a lot of sentries Mista didn’t get a particularly high rate of kills.
Weapon use was heavily biased to default shotgun and the mini sentry overall (It’s Mint led in both), with other forms of sentry led by the level 3 after. Wrangler kills weren’t that common, with most engies getting plenty more kills through other means ahead of them. The Rescue Ranger was in regular user but as it’s not particularly good as a combat weapon it’s kill stats (the only way to show that it’s in use) don’t show it’s true popularity. NCM made some use of the frontier justice, and It’s Mint was the solo practitioner of the robot arm kill.
I got nothin’
Medics
So this magnum opus ends (nearly) with the medics. Be nice to Ombrack, he was just filling in.
For medics we’re looking at KAD, ubers popped and ubers dropped. It would be nice to look at heal stats, but uneven use of stats plugins makes this unreliable.
The KAD stats are pretty much indicative of the strength of the Heavy and Demo a Medic attaches himself to, and given that Zebbosai was mediocre on Heavy and Kaidus often in absentia Hat clearly healed in combat a lot, and this exposure to danger and death may be a reason for his mediocre uber building rate. That and having to rely on Droso to build.
In terms of dropping Ritalin and Ombrack lead the way with k3 just behind. However k3 generated by far the most ubers so his high drop rate makes sense. Ritalin and Ombrack didn’t have anywhere near as many ubers to drop.
Skeej and Bulow dropped at similar rates but Skeej got significantly more ubers – considering he was in Legolas this is no mean feat; in fact Bulow got the 2nd lowest rate of uber charging ahead of Muffinz. These variations may be partly down to medigun choice but stats for those are as always unavailable.
Hegee had the lowest rate of drops to ubers charged whilst maintaining a respectable rate of charging.
Cross referencing the medic stats with the Pyro data earlier, quell provided the least medic protection and this might go some way to explaining Muffinz shell shocked state. Steve also roamed and Ritalin has a high drop rate, and Rudey didn’t keep much of an eye on the sky while Bulow also dropped at a decent rate. Not particularly scientific, but we could be on to something.
Weapon use for medics isn’t particularly relevant, but Hegee got the most medic kills with the crossbow, while Hat, Ritalin and Bulow were rockin’ the needles. Bulow also recorded possibly the only Solemn Vow kill I’ve seen in any context.
FYI I Am A Spy Awards
Stand up Muffinz, Wolve and Ombrack to collect your awards for assisting a spy in killing yourselves. So which spies got them? Inso, Inso and…. Inso mercing for Legolas. Other spies, go and stand in the corner.
All Rounder Award
Permzilla’s performance on Demo and Pyro was almost brought low by his mediocre Scout game but the fact he made it into 2 one round wonders in a positive light puts him above the other reserves scrabbling for a starting berth. Free Perm! Atomic also featured heavily on two classes but didn’t excel on either.
Team of the Season
So that just about wraps it up, it only remains for me to name my ill informed team of the season (personal hatred, emnities and general dislikes between players not withstanding).
On Demo I’ve got to back the stats and go with Hildreth. The only question is whether he’s hungry enough/can wake up. On Soldier I’ll go with T-Mac. Muuki would be the alternative choice but I get to select Inso later to get after the medic. On Scout Lazybear is the obvious candidate. On Sniper I think I would go with Tvique over Flippy for his superior sniper vs sniper play. On Heavy I think Tek is a no brainer, as is Inso on spy. On Pyro I think I’d be tempted to go with gf18 for the total medic protection solution, because picking Hat on Medic for his bravery means he’s going to need it.
This article could of course have been much longer, but there’s only so much time one man can spend searching out TF2 statistics. Until the next time.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2014-01-29 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.