my take: Bdonski was a monster who just had the misfortune of playing in the froyo era, but was the best demo in na for about half of those seasons he played, and putting him top 10 is not crazy. if you care more about influence then sure TLR and enigma might be higher, but in terms of peak performance he's right up there.

I also think enigma deserves more credit than TLR, both in terms of influence and in terms of longevity. TLR fell off pretty hard, and for my money there were already more influential players on mixup by s12 (plat and ruwin in particular)

I wouldve maybe snuck arekk (or nursey) into the top 10 but I dont disagree with this order

my top 5 would personally be

5. blaze
4. clockwork
3. habib
2. platinum
1. b4nny

but I could be seeing plat with rose-colored goggles and really this is the correct top 5 no matter how you slice it

yeah but you also said jay should be in the top 5 lol

I agree, which is why for froyo players I sometimes ask the question: was this player ever the best-peforming member of froyo for an entire season/an entire LAN?

and I think arekk was at least once

my favorite were the truetf2 posts that were like "help I already have 200 hours in this game and I'm still losing in mge, what am I doing wrong?"

yeah, but on the flipside, arekk primarily played a role (flank scout) that will inherently have lower fragging stats.

to turn your example around, would anyone have like sandblast or caps over arekk? they prolly have comparable if not better fragging stats!

so the top 10 in no order is presumably:

b4nny
habib
clockwork
blaze
yomps
shade
platinum
seagull
bdonski
harbleu

I have my issues with some rankings, but I know that even if I were to make my own list people would complain about it.

like, realistically, I'd probably have ash like 17th or something, giving him a bit more credit for his high-end accomplishments and for coming back in a more mechanical era and still finding success. but top 10? there are a LOT of sick players, and I can't exactly put him above seagull, or yomps, or shade etc.

carnage makes top 20

victory for ooga boogas everywhere

staged thread

it's very simple- people don't wanna be wrong or look salty/uninformed, so everyone half-jokingly says people are cheating all the time; then if anyone finds proof, we all pile on and say "I KNEW IT, LOOK WHAT I SAID A YEAR AGO", and if the person goes to lan and pounds and nothing comes out we say "I was just kidding trololol"

ok that's going a LITTLE far

I think most people would underrate ruwin if they didn't see him at his absolute peak, as short as it was

as a tf2 shia, I believe that one day the occluded mahdi (Tony Swan) will return and defeat the forces of evil (b4nny) once and for all

I totally agree with this (in sports too, I love me some bill russell and slingin' sammy baugh), my issues with the list have more been in a) overvaluing lan wins vs other wins and b) overvaluing longevity vs peak

but re: boomers I think, for instance, that both Kalkin and artist belong on this list, because they both won a season of invite and beat b4nny in the process which is impressive; some might put Kalkin higher cuz he did it on lan, or artist higher cuz he did it in a higher skill era, but overall I don't see how you could have one without the other