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The Top 20 Oceanic Players of the Past Five Years : #5 - #1
posted in News
catfish
July 1, 2022

Breaking in the top five is Singaporean superstar AiShou. After subbing for several different rosters in previous seasons, AiShou’s first core season was with xeno in season 21. He remained with the team for a whole year, playing seasons 21, 22 and 23 and placing fourth, third and second respectively. After the dissolution of xeno, +AiShou took a few seasons off before returning with rat men for a third place finish in season 26. Prior to season 27, the team to beat in ozfortress, Coffee Clock, underwent some changes and AiShou joined the roster as their Combo Scout. He picked up his first season win in season 27 and another in season 28 before the team fell to soirée in the season 29 final and disbanded. After taking another multi season break, AiShou joined the #1 seed team for season 32 in soirée, this time as Flank Scout and claimed another trophy.

This may be one of the more contentious rankings in this list. AiShou is the least experienced player on this side of the list by a decent margin with only eight seasons played and just three season wins. It would not be unreasonable for someone to discount AiShou from the top half of the list based on lack of experience and wins, however I believe AiShou’s statistical dominance can’t be ignored. With an outstanding 66.5 gamescore and a 64.6 finals gamescore, AiShou leads both of these categories on the list by a comfortable margin. His numbers from season to season are incredibly consistent, with his debut season with xeno in season 21 netting him a very good 63.6 which is still AiShou’s lowest ever season rating. AiShou also seems to have no issues in the high pressure matches, as despite losing the season 23 final to a Jasmine Tea roster that was firing on all cylinders, he still tried to put his team on his back with a 71.5 across three maps, despite losing every one. The only thing really holding AiShou back from a top three or even better placement is his lower season count. AiShou’s achievements are even more impressive when you consider that he still plays in ozfortress competitions on 100 ms from Singapore and it makes you wonder what he could do if he was playing on a ping comparable to the rest of the competition. Despite his incredible numbers, I couldn’t put him higher than fifth as the next four players have had more longevity while still playing at a very high level. However, the fact that AiShou was able to reach fifth place in only eight seasons is truly a very impressive accomplishment.

Despite a history in past years as an established Demoman main, yewl made the jump to Pocket Soldier in season 18 and hasn’t looked back since. After a win in season 18 with no safeword and two second place finishes in season 19 and 20, yewl joined multi-region organisation SVIFT’s venture into the Oceanic scene with SVIFT.AU in season 21. After an uninspiring third place finish, yewl joined up with redcoatzygote in the already established Pencil Case, winning season 22 with a convincing run. After several seasons off, yewl once again joined redcoatzygote in Coffee Clock and remained their Pocket for their streak of five Premier wins in a row, from season 24 until 29 (by then known as happy feet). Since then, yewl has dabbled in Scout with a playoffs appearance with season 31’s Beastmode Dragon Brotherhood.

With 11 Pocket seasons, yewl is one of the most experienced Soldiers in the country. Pocket Soldier is one of the hardest classes to achieve a good gamescore on, and when you take that into consideration yewl’s numbers are consistently very good. A 61.1 seasonal average is great especially when considering yewl’s lowest ever season was still a 55.5 in season 26. On the other end, yewl has had two dominant 70+ seasons. An incredibly dominant season 18 performance with no safeword at 73.2 (this is likely skewed by the issues with season 18 however it’s still a very impressive performance) as well as a 70.7 with SVIFT.AU in season 21. Generally speaking, yewl puts out very good damage (he’s currently the 4th highest damage dealer on the all-time ozfstats leaderboards, the highest ranked Soldier on the list). His impact ratings are better than most of his Soldier counterparts and he has consistently delivered on that impact from season to season. One of the areas we see a dip in yewl’s stats are in his grand finals performances, and this is largely what separates him from some of the players above him on the list. While a 50.1 isn’t bad for a Pocket Soldier when considering that this is against the absolute best teams in the region, it’s a noticeable drop off when compared to yewl’s other numbers. Despite this, yewl should be considered along with yuki and Geoh as one of the best Pocket Soldiers that Australia has ever seen, and he certainly has the wins and accolades to prove it.

Taking third place on the list is Elmo., a player many will be familiar with from his time as the dedicated Flank Scout for various different Jasmine Tea rosters. In the beginning of the post-LAN era, Elmo. could usually be found on either Jasmine Tea or no safeword, depending on which decided to sign up that season. After Jasmine Tea stopped officially playing seriously, Elmo. was often part of the casual Jasmine teams from seasons 25 - 28, with a quick detour in season 27 to win another trophy with happy feet. Since then Elmo. has found a new home with up-and-comer ALT in various interactions of the ALT PUGS team.

Another ranking that I didn’t predict, Elmo. has placed much higher than I initially thought he would when I was drafting this list. Don’t get me wrong, if you were to make a list of the greatest Oceanic players of all time Elmo. would be guaranteed a top ten placing, likely even a top five due to his extremely high peaks from seasons 13 - 17. However, if you speak to Elmo. he’ll be the first to tell you that he’s now washed and his glory days are behind him. When looking at the numbers however, Elmo.’s stats over the past five years are still very, very good and there are two main reasons for this. The first is that in the early days of the post-LAN era, Elmo. was still very much still in peak form and was easily the best Flank Scout in the region. His average from season 18 to 22 was an incredible 68.4, and in line with Elmo.’s reputation of taking very few heals while still putting up the numbers of a heal-heavy Scout, his efficiency percentages from this time are all 70%+, some of the highest you can find. Logic would dictate that when Elmo. started playing with the Jasmine ‘meme teams’, we would likely see a significant drop off his numbers, and while there is a decline Elmo. is still able to consistently put up decent stats (none of his seasons are below a 50 gamescore despite two Soldier seasons thrown in the mix). Even in Elmo.’s most recent Premier win in season 31, at 66.7 he was the best player on his team and one of the best players of the season, showing he’s still able to compete at the very highest level.

Grand finals are another strong suit of Elmo.’s. He has one of the highest overall grand finals playoffs gamescores with some very high peaks. Some readers many remember from Geoh’s entry at #13 that his season 21 finals performance was the fourth best of the last five years. The best performance? Elmo. in the very same final with a truly unreal 79.9 over three maps.

If you ever watch a match Elmo.’s playing in, you can see the impact he has. He still passes the eye test and will often salvage situations for his team by getting a Medic pick that seems impossible in the moment. He’s also not a bad Sniper. It is truly a tragedy that Elmo. could never attend LAN with Jasmine Tea as for many players and pundits alike, he is considered the best Flank Scout the region has ever seen, even better than the legendary sheep, and could compete with some of the best in the world for the title of greatest Flank Scout of all time.

In second place is consistent Demoman powerhouse enrith. enrith has been a staple of the top of Premier for some time now and began the post-LAN era already an established top player. After playing with no safeword and Mad Men in the first several seasons (either winning the season or losing to Jasmine Tea if they decided to play), enrith took Paulsen’s Demoman spot in a new iteration of Jasmine Tea as the latter moved over to Pocket Soldier. After they won season 21 in a convincing fashion, enrith subbed for two more seasons with Jasmine Tea before returning with big chungus for season 24. After a string of seasons with rosters that either finished in second place (big chungus, MMGP and Head Cavers) or failed to live up to the hype (barrel of apes and No Older Gamers), season 29 saw soirée form and enrith has been one of the biggest factors in their success, having won every season he’s played with them.

enrith has maintained an extremely high level of play over the course of this five year period. Of the 12 seasons he’s played, 11 of them have gamescores over 60 with the only outlier being the ill-fated barrel of apes team in season 25. enrith’s average of 64.6 is second highest on the list behind only AiShou, and his playoffs and finals numbers are also among the highest on the list. Unfortunately for enrith, his season 28 finals performance was his worst by a significant margin at 36.8. When you consider that his team was having to play with Paulsen as a last minute replacement due to the ban of captain HERTZ, however, it’s hardly a surprise (they lost very convincingly to a happy feet team at their peak). Outside of this, enrith shows no significant signs of dropoff when playing in finals and has consistently been able to deliver when it matters. enrith leads several statistics in ozfortress Premier. He’s the number one all time damage dealer of the last eight years, and hand in hand with this he has the second highest average DPM of the last eight years at 351 over more than 250 maps played (only termo has a higher DPM and that’s based of a far smaller sample size of 35 maps from 2014 - 2015). Another record enrith owns is the best overall season performance. In his season 32 run with soirée he ended the season with an incredibly dominant average gamescore of 73.8 taking the record that yewl had previously held with his season 18 Pocket performance. It’s very sad that the BTS TF2 event crumbled in 2020 and the XIAO roster featuring enrith, AiShou and teejay was never able to play as seeing all three players on LAN would have been a treat.

With redcoatzygote only infrequently playing Demoman seasons currently in addition to taking time off from the game, enrith is once again the standout Demoman in the region much like he was in seasons 18 - 24. It’s clear to see the impact enrith has from soirée’s most recent season, where he was noticeably absent from their roster. Despite soirée getting over the finish line in a very narrow final against freakshow, the close result is a stark difference from soirée’s previously dominant finals record. enrith’s replacement matttt proved that he is a top tier Demoman and played very well to get his first Premier trophy, however the reality is that enrith is an irreplaceable player and the consistent impact he has on the game is virtually unparalleled within the scene.

Claiming the title of the best player of the last five years is none other than lams aka susurrus aka cooki. After taking the first three seasons of the era off, cooki joined KILLA BEEZ for season 21 and stayed with them for their transition to Pencil Case, taking the season 22 title. After Pencil Case disbanded, cooki joined the dominant Jasmine Tea superteam for season 23 and claimed another dominant win. From season 24 to 26 cooki was part of Coffee Clock and won all three seasons they played before he left to join silvo and enrith in No Older Gamers for season 27, finishing in third place after losing to happy feet in the semi-final. After a season to unwind and berate Pauslen in Jasmine Beef, cooki took his revenge on happy feet in season 29 with soirée, toppling them in a convincing final. Since then cooki has remained a core player in all of soirée’s season wins as well as a second place Demoman season in season 31.

Much like enrith, cooki’s high peaks and consistency across the past five years are very impressive. Despite having two seasons of relatively mediocre numbers (his season 21 second place with KILLA BEEZ and his season 31 Demoman season at 52.9 and 45.8 respectively) cooki still maintains a high 62.9 gamescore. This is largely due to his very high peaks in most of his seasons. cooki has a whopping six seasons with a 65+ gamescore, the only player on the list to achieve this, including a 72.7 in season 23, the third highest rated season on record. As you’d expect from a player placing this highly, cooki has no issues in high pressure finals with a playoffs gamescore of 59.3 and a finals gamescore of 59 across 12 playoffs appearances and ten finals played. cooki leads the trophy count with eight seasons won, beating out the four players tied with seven wins each (riot, redcoat, lau and yewl). cooki also tied with AiShou for the second highest impact rating on the list (behind Geoh) at 66%, although he does take slightly more heals than other Combo Scouts on average. He’s also somewhat of a trendsetter, his very unique choice of the Force-a-Nature has been polarising amongst the community however that didn’t stop every Combo Scout in the country from attempting to use it in their next scrim, only to quickly realise that they aren’t as good as cooki.

The contest for the #1 placing was actually very close, and both cooki and enrith took turns in pole position in different iterations of the list before I settled on cooki in the top spot. Despite enrith being arguably the slightly more consistent player (he doesn’t have the statistical low points that cooki’s Demoman season gave him for example), there are a few reasons why I leant towards cooki in the end. On top of his previously mentioned record six seasons of a 65+ gamescore, cooki has the rare distinction of being the only player in the post-LAN era who has been part of the four most significant rosters at some point. From Pencil Case to Jasmine Tea to Coffee Clock to soirée, cooki has played and won season with them all, something no other player has achieved (the only missing roster is happy feet, however happy feet and Coffee Clock were the same core team with four of the same play between them as they only changed two players when they swapped names). cooki also has an extremely impressive finals win rate on Scout, with an 89% win rate (8/9 finals won) which is one of the highest of anyone on the list. At the end of the day, cooki has been part of some of the strongest iterations of the very best teams of the generation and has always been able to deliver regardless of the players around him. His high consistency and even higher impact are what make him the best Oceanic player of the past five years.

Afterword

Thank you for reading this far, I hope you enjoyed it. If I had an ulterior motive for this list it would be to inspire or motivate any Oceanic players to try and compete overseas. Obviously it’s easy for me to sit on my PC and tell them that they should as I’m not the one having to sort funding, travel and accommodation among other things but I do firmly believe that a Oceanic ‘dream team’ could easily compete with and potentially beat other top NA and EU teams. Outside of that however, I hope any international readers feel more familiar with the OCE scene now and enjoyed coming along for the ride.

Shoutouts

Tery_ - Huge props to Tery_ for creating the NA Invite top 100 and inspiring me to write this in turn. I've never seen TFTV as active and found myself looking forward to every entry. I also have a renewed appreciation for how much work it must have been now that I’ve finished.

Sean - Massive thanks to Sean not only from myself but also from the ozfortress community for creating ozfstats, It was invaluable when writing this project and I likely wouldn’t have attempted this at all had it not existed.

skaz - Shoutout to skaz for creating the graphics and art to go with the project to make it look nice (I would have used MS paint had he not volunteered).

Thanks as well to all proofreaders I sent excerpts to as well as Premier players who answered any random questions I had as well.

1
#1
0 Frags +

No bubsdoge? list is invalid already

No bubsdoge? list is invalid already
2
#2
14 Frags +

where's dave?

where's dave?
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