Miperton was a pioneer on how much weed he could smoke before scrims.

Before EU gimmicks there was Greg spots.
Jukebox and Mackey was the first roamers i remember to be the main offclasser for a team.
Mirelin was the first medic i saw who would be able to play way to risky and get out too often.
Don't remember if Byte was early in EU to swap to xbow, or Mirelin and F2 was slow.
Salamancer for paying most of the money for 2 NA teams to go to i46.

yea yea ok but WHO PIONEERED IRON BOMBER?

isn't it actually lansky who really started shift to the double gunboats meta? b4nny pocket scout was so heal heavy that lansky had to switch to using gunboats. His DPM kinda skyrocketed, so more people started doing it...
I know there's lots of people who tried it, so froyo wasn't literally the first, but my memory from being a spectator back then is literally "every top invite pocket running shotgun, lansky switched, then almost everyone started doing double gunboats."

karnax

wonder

I remember tri doing it for a couple seasons before lansky did it on froyo. Don't remember fully who else was on that team though

first time i saw it run full time was tri on tri-hards, he would stream his scrims vs b4nny and the whole chat would type "if he had a shotgun there maybe he gets that kill"
edit: might've been chess club

Ruwin invented pocket scout, Tri coined gunboats, and Seagull was the first soldier to really grind his rocket jumps. But honestly I would say it has to be B4nny. Not just because of Froyo, but because of the way he shaped the meta with holding space. Trading when down players to hold a point wasn't a thing before. He was the one who really hammered in playing around advantages as well. He also imo is the one who picked up where Ruwin left off and mastered combo scout. On demo, he was the guy who really coined the playstyle of always being alive and always having a trap up. So much of the way the game plays is because of that dude.

(This almost slipped my mind) I believe grape (old) was one the first to run pyro to break the product forward hold which became a common strat.

or atlest I think he did. If im wrong someone please correct me, but he ran pyro on last quite a bit back then and I don't recall other teams doing the same all those years ago...

I believe Bdonski was the first one to run it in NA. I died to him one night on Gully and life has never been the same.

Arie from serveme.tf

I think some of the examples in this thread are definitely reductive in focusing on a single person rather than a more general trend

I suppose that's the point though, and I'm guilty of it too

metagame evolution is general is interesting because the idea of using a certain weapon for instance is nothing new and in any troll game/unserious half of tf2 youll see people use direct hit, force a nature, quickies, etc. but eventually something like that actually gets seriously considered for its merits, usually by someone who just has fun playing with it, and their success or playstyle or whatever gets noticed by actual competitors who then use it for no reason other than getting a competitive advantage
not only is it a more communal shift but its hard to pin down whats just some guy trolling and whats the actual seed of a serious metagame reconsideration

ggglygy for high quality shitposting

pajaro.

spies in highlander before pajaro didn't know to focus the teleporter at spawn with a pajaro patented 'Sap n Shoot'. His playstyle and efficient comms forced other spies in the league to rise to his level or risk falling behind.