In the lab: XSE Pro League Guangzhou

Good news, everyone: our Stats Lab has been updated!

Data for XSE Pro League Guangzhou has now been added, meaning we have information on the new FaZe, PARIVISION, and more. So, in this pilot for a new series on our website, I shall be using the data LuzRaposa provides us to run my own “experiments” and see what we can learn from XPL now that we have it.

All conclusions drawn from the data in this article are my own; feel free to disagree and do your own digging. This is why we provide data to everyone.

Best Performers

Here we have the classic Duel/Round swing graph. If you’re unsure about these metrics, we have an article that goes in depth on them, so we won’t go into them here.

What we do want to go into is Magnojez, who keeps posting donk-like numbers for this team. Ignore his role for now; we’ll go into that later, and internalize the fragging numbers we saw from him at this event. It’s a shame he couldn’t keep this up in playoffs, but this guy is obviously the next big rifler coming out of Russia.

frozen played a great event; he’s easily the second-best performer on the graph, but Magnojez still more than doubled his round swing.

We’ll be moving on to specific teams, so here are other players worth pointing out that won't be discussed further in this article:

• Insani has kept up his superstar level, even if his team is clearly not good enough.
• JW has found a way to be equally good at swinging rounds as frozen, and equally bad at winning duels as most IGLs.
• If kisserek plays like this at future events, his career won't last long.
• Sdaim is very talented and should be considered for a jump-up.

BetBoom - An identity crisis

We told you we’d come back to Magnojez.

We already told you he did a great job at this event, yet BetBoom got absolutely slammed by FaZe in the playoffs. That made us, and maybe you, wonder how that can happen, especially when they were so good at Cologne. So we dug into the stats, and what they showed us is… worrying.

Remember how Magnojez’s role was Hard Support? Here’s why that happened:

For some reason, at XSE Pro League, Magnojez took on more of the IGL's duties as a support. You can see here that he’s throwing a smoke almost every round. If you look at the graph on the right, you’ll see that’s almost the exact same rate Boombl4 was throwing smokes at during the IEM Cologne Major. For some reason, BB turned their best player into an IGL at this event, and it sort of worked.

Until the playoffs, Magnojez’s personal stats were still pretty exceptional.

That’s why we kept looking; why did BetBoom decide to change things up? Well, one more thing has changed since the Major, and that’s s1ren’s return over FL4MUS. That change seems to really have messed with BetBoom’s structure, which is odd given that this used to be their lineup.

But the graphs don’t lie.

Here we see how long each player on BetBoom spends on-site and off-site on CT. If you spend most of your time on site, odds are you’re a hard anchor; if you spend most of your time off site, odds are you’re a rotational player.

Yet FL4MUS, who, by all accounts, is an anchor, is off site a lot during Cologne; why’s that?

Well, that’s because his roles are extremely proactive; FL4MUS spends his time pushing long and finding info. s1ren, on the other hand, plays site like he’s d1ledez, which pushes the latter into slightly different positions and creates the shift you see on the right graphic. The team has become less proactive and cohesive because you have two anchors who’d rather stay on-site. That’d be fine if s1ren was good, but he was categorically BB’s worst player at XSE.

Now, these CT-side stats could be construed as map-dependent, so let’s take a look at the T-side.

This graph shows who enters the bombsite first and how high quality their deaths are. On the left, you see BetBoom at IEM Cologne. It’s nice, clean, and structured: a pack of 3 players taking up space together, with the star and AWPer cleaning up. On the right is BB at XPL, and it should become immediately clear how different it looks. Instead of the structure we saw at Cologne, it’s a bit messy; the pack is now farther apart, and Magnojez and Boombl4 have switched spots again, except Boombl4 dies a lot more.

The same pattern has emerged here, where the team’s structure seems messy and uncertain.

Part of me wonders if this was Magnojez trial running IGLing for an event, or if he’s the IGL on specific maps.

When I spoke to Magnojez at IEM Cologne, he mentioned that the tactical side is handled by him, Boombl4, and their coach, Fierce. Maybe he did more than we realized and has taken over part of that on the server. If so, please stop it.

Becoming IGL-y, if that’s even a word, is usually reserved for people with massive egos and washed uncs. Magnojez might have an ego, but he’s not washed, and that transition never goes the way you want.

The alternative, which is less of an alternative and more of an explanation, is that BetBoom are simply undergoing an identity crisis. They know they need changes to become a better team, but FL4MUS, who fits perfectly, is simply unaffordable. That leaves them in a situation where they know their roster is worse than it could be, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Time will tell if BB figures it out throughout the season. Boombl4 is a very clever guy, but it’s going to be an uphill battle for them. Not making moves could spell the end of their run as a plucky underdog and send them back into tier 2 purgatory.

If you stand still, everyone else flies by. No one knows that better than our next team.

FaZe Clan - A tidy debut

A good FaZe Clan event; it’s been a while since we could say that.

This one will be a lot shorter, but I think it’s fair to say most of the scene was very curious to see what FaZe would look like without broky, especially after it became clear a relatively unknown academy AWPer would take his spot. Now that we’ve seen it play out, it went about as well as you could hope for. Except for winning the event, of course.

Looking at the FaZe players highlighted on our earlier performance graph should give you a good idea of how dangerous this roster can be.

JBOEN is already nearing superstar territory in his first event, with a lot of room to grow. Combine that with frozen being himself and Twistzz and Neityu doing very, very well in support roles, and suddenly you have a top 10 contender. Well, if not for the polar bear in Arlington, Texas, jcobbb.

He’s played a decent event by his standards and still ended up slightly below neutral. With the second star roles he’s playing at the moment, that’s just not good enough. The good news is that at least FaZe have structure now, like a real team.

Twistzz is being a real IGL; to quote LuzRaposa, “he isn't blameF-ing it or something.” Which is a great sign, because if FaZe end up with a secondary star that can shoot back, having an IGL with that level of aim is amazing. Especially because Twistzz is doing proper entry work, leaving Neityu to do the occasional solo site take. That means they have someone who can hit one-taps like it’s easy, walk into bombsites, and set up frozen/JBOEN/a potential jcobbb replacement while calling.

FaZe fans, you can breathe again. You’ll be good this season.

Just don’t expect event wins yet, unless there’s an off-season move we don’t see coming.

You know who else shouldn’t expect event wins?

PARIVISION - Live by the sword, die by the sword

Or, well, less sword and more AWP-IGL, but that’s less catchy.

The real takeaway from this event for PARIVISION is that right now, they’re basically the same team they already were.

We already knew what xiELO and zweih were like, so their performances aren't that surprising. slaxejezzz did a perfectly serviceable job, but he’s obviously still got a ways to go at this level, and HObbit is probably a downgrade from BELCHONOKK at this point. He’s looked really poor at times, despite the “motivation” he has to compete.

HObbit needs to be doing a whole lot of veteran leadership to compensate for his lack of aim at the moment.

Still, I think their biggest problem became apparent in the finals: Jame.

Jame is clearly an incredible IGL, but it’s becoming very apparent to me that PARIVISION are only as good as Jame’s AWPing. Look at their series against FaZe:

• Map one: Jame performs poorly; they lose
• Map two: Jame has the highest rating; they win
• Map three: Jame has the highest rating; they win

Then look at the finals:

• Map one: Jame performs poorly; they lose
• Map two: Jame performs poorly; they lose
• Map three: Jame performs poorly; You guessed it, they lose

Obviously, I am being a bit tongue-in-cheek; correlation does not always equal causation, but when your team is built around an in-game-leader who will do anything to ensure he has the most expensive gun in the game at all times, drawing conclusions is less reading tea leaves and more 1+1=2.

PARIVISION needs slaxejezzz to become a star capable of turning games on his own to fix this issue, because replacing Jame will fundamentally alter the whole team. Yet, it seems like that’s the only way to become a competitive squad. It’s a catch-22, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Who knows what the future for PARIVISION will hold, eh? Well, other than a lot of saves.