Gentleman Jon — The first fallers of the playoff race are Dotter, edged out by a head in a closely contested tie by Awsomniac. The Frenchies had impressive performances all round with most team members buffing their season stats so far, but they’ll need to find even more in the tank going up against the KnOxXx inspired TLR in the semi-final this week.
TLR have had a chaotic season, Hys’s pre season injury resulted in the surprise recruitment and equally ruthless sacking of Gubbins, and the Mais La Moule meltdown coincided with Rising’s injury allowing them to snap up TF2 mastermind KnOxXx. Team leader Hys may reflect on the sequence of events that have led the team to apparently become even stronger as a blessing in disguise, but even so he might want to consider an alternative to the brutal limb-snapping team training regime for next season.
In a final twist this will be Kiler’s last game this season win or lose, so should they make the final the identity of their last scout will remain a mystery and of course will be subject to MIG’s sportsmanship.
But that’s for the future (if they make it), of immediate concern is how the two teams match up. During the regular season TLR won convincingly with a big margin on Granary but only narrowly on Snakewater 3-2. Despite having a talented and experienced soldier pair Awsomniac (in their various guises) have long struggled on Granary and this season was no exception also losing the map to Ayo Gurl.
Awsomniac’s record this season doesn’t promote a huge amount of confidence in any map choice, although their cleanest wins against Dotter (the best team they’ve beaten) were on Viaduct and Badlands most of their other victories were against clearly weaker opposition which don’t tell us a great deal.
By comparison TLR now seem to have no significant weak points. From a disorganised rabble in the early weeks back to mid table solidity under Hys to imperious crushing of the league favourites on Viaduct with KnOxXx calling the shots, their transformation has been extraordinary. Their recent track record makes lamentable reading for anyone searching for a weak point, the only straws to clutch at being narrow victories 4-3 over MIG on Process and 3-2 over Awsomniac on Snakewater.
It seems that Awsomniac’s best chance may lie in Snakewater and Badlands while TLR need fear no battle ground.
Demomen
The graph shows damage per minute in blue, K/D ratio in red and the player rating in yellow. The K/D is measured against the top axis while DPM and rating against the bottom axis.
As you’d expect with Hys playing a more classic pocket style the stats for the two players vary by some degree. Hys hits over 50 dpm more than Exon and also enjoys a clear advantage in KD. Exon of course creates more space, goes after high value targets and allows Tek to assume his dominating position. Generally speaking Exon is more likely to kill a Medic.
This illustrates the relationship between damage and kills for the individual players. The yellow bar is the average damage they get for every landed shot and is measured against the bottom axis. The blue bar is the amount of damage they had to cause to register a kill or assist and is also measured against the bottom axis. The red bar is the number of kills achieved per minute, which is measured by the top axis.
In the quarter final Exon’s in your face style produced a clear advantage in damage per landed shot over Ryb but not here, Hys is just as capable of hitting high damage shots despite playing in a less risky way. Interestingly their kills per minute is dead drawn, Hys’s superior K/D not necessarily buying him many more kills but leaving him alive to take territory, do damage and cap points.
Hys records more damage per kill/assist which reflects his more standard supporting role softening up targets while Exon more frequently finds himself in a do or die position focusing damage for the frag.
I wouldn’t say the clash in styles in as strong a contrast as it was with Ryb as Hys isn’t afraid to get up close and personal but no one else really plays like Exon so there’s bound to be statistical differences there. The question really is the extent to which the rest of the team can make use of their demo’s abilities.
Soldiers
There are very few soldiers in the game who can put Tek in the shade statistically, but then again there are very few who gets even more heals, and KnOxXx scores on both counts. The TLR soldier puts out about 25 DPM more than his counterpart but his biggest advantage is in K/D where he has a clear 0.4 more kills per death. Also KnOxXx’s rating is way, way higher because he’s far more likely to get a high value target like a demo or medic.
Comparing the roaming soldiers it should be said Kalho gets a bit more healing than T-Mac, but even so his KD is a lot better, showing a similar advantage to KnOxXx over Tek. The damage output is very similar, and although his KD is worse T-Mac is twice as likely to get a medic pick. It seems T-Mac trades survivability for pursuing the harder target, a responsibility that KnOxXx takes up for TLR.
KnOxXx is the leader on kills per minute, but also does the least damage per kills or assist and the least damage per landed shot. Clearly there’s a lot of focus there, choosing his targets and finishing them off. The lower damage per hit could be down to increased use of the shotgun.
Tek on the other hand spreads out a lot of damage amongst targets but doesn’t necessarily get the kill or assist with the same efficiency, and has a lower kill rate as well. Greater team play and less personal glory or chaotic calling, absent demo man and less focus fire?
The two roamers stripped of the shotgun and trying their best to land on people’s heads of course have better damage per landed shot, and there’s genuinely very little to choose between them here, with T-Mac showing the slightly less efficient play by a narrow margin.
It appears that the TLR soldier pair are a step up in quality from the challenge Dotter posed last week, with Kalho looking like a strong if slightly conservative roamer and KnOxXx able to form the team around him to his strengths. It appears there’s an advantage to TLR here, AWS will have to be on their game to match them.
Scouts
Kiler’s KD to DPM profile matches the classic assassinating scout, getting in, doing the job without any fuss and clearing out. However examining his class kills shows he’s the least likely to take on a medic or demo kill, so his rating is barely above Flippy who, although posting inferior basic KD, poses a greater danger to key classes.
Following close behind and actually doing the most damage of the scouts is Rake, of all the scouts the most committed to the medic kill, which is reflected in his survivability.
Dmoule is starting to look like the poor cousin with regard to the other scouts, it’s more likely that one of his kills will be on a medic or demo than Kiler’s but it doesn’t justify his KD that slips below 1.
Kiler and Dmoule share low damage per landed shot values, but their other stats diverge radically. With Kiler it makes sense that perhaps he’s using the pistol to push up the kill rate and concentrating on retreating targets he wants to finish off. Dmoule on the other hand may be struggling to get the initial damage in at all.
Flippy once again matches the TLR scouts with his ability to get kills although not quite as efficiently as Kiler, although once again this may be down to his selection of harder targets.
Sniping
When it comes to AWS games Flippy sniping is a certainty at some point, but as these stats show there’s really very little in it between him and Rake. As established in the Highlander season 5 review while he’s a prodigious sniper in general Flippy’s sniper vs sniper performance didn’t match his general ability to click heads, so when there are two snipers on the field it’s far from a foregone conclusion.
Medics
In this graph the blue bar shows the kills and assists per death and is measured against the bottom axis, the red shows healing per minute and is measured against the top axis and the yellow shows assists per minute also measured against the top axis.
As always medic stats are really the sum of the team’s parts as much as down to the skill of the medic themselves. In this case it’s clear that Mirelin can position himself aggressively and reap the benefits. His assists per minute is similar to 2nuts in the last round, but his survivability is way above both Bulle and 2nuts level able to get much better KAD. As a result his team benefit from greater healing all round.
And this is the tradeoff, Bulle’s drop rate (although drop rates are very low per minute) is a far smaller fraction than Mirelin’s. This doesn’t tell the whole story, Awsomniacs may still have to suffer more bad ubers due to forces, etc, but it’s still better than a drop. In terms of ubers achieved Bulle has a slight edge here as well.
The question is whether a very small advantage in the rate of ubers is worth a clear disadvantage in healing most of the rest of the time. Mirelin has a reputation for getting out of trouble and for being top of the tree when it comes to the Medic’s mechanics so Awsomniac’s players will have to make sure of each medic kill to turn this into an advantage.
Team Assists
This table shows the assisted kills between players within the team for the season.
Not all the Awsomniac players have played in all the games but we can get a sense of the internal working of the team regardless. Obviously Bulle and Tek form the backbone of the team, but the scout pair of Flippy and dmoule rack up equal kills/assists as a pair. Both Flippy and dmoule mix it more frequently with Tek than T-Mac at roughly the same proportion. Exon acts in combination a little more with dmoule than Flippy.
T-Mac is pretty much everyone’s least favourite fragging partner, with the exception of Bulle whose support is swallowed by Tek. Bulle favours Flippy from the two scouts but Exon is his second favourite when denied his pocket.
Obviously KnOxXx is late to the team so I’ve only selected logs from their recent games which include the whole team to give us the best picture of how they’re playing now.
One of the striking things is that Kiler and KnOxXx get more frags as a tandem than the pocket and his Medic which is unusual. KnOxXx is Mirelin’s favourite target though predictably with Hys as a second. Rake seems to be the scout tasked with bodyguard duty more often and Kalho and Kiler largely seem to be left to their own devices by their medic in combat.
Kiler also has a very strong relationship with Rake and Kalho, he really does form an important fulcrum for the team’s fragging structure connecting flank and combo players.
Typically for a demoman Hys finds himself assisting many players but Rake tends to be the scout cleaning up his damage most actively.
A Prediction
The stats don’t make comforting reading for the Frenchies. They’ll need to step up their performance significantly to find a way to beat TLR with KnOxXx revelling in a team eager to exploit his knowledge, understanding and feel for the game.
TLR seem to have decisive advantages from the pocket soldier and second scout, while Hys seems to be able to match almost anything the logs turn up for Exon and do more damage at the same time.
I think it’s clear that AWS will need to play their best game, but as Exon showed on Gullywash against Dotter (without which individual performance they might not be in this game) it’s not out of the realms of possibility for them to step up. Still, based on the stats TLR are clear favourites if not overwhelmingly so and it would be a surprise if they weren’t facing off against MIG in the final.
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2014-04-01 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.