I should also point out that it's not proper to end a sentence with I.... Fzero's sentence should read "5-10 years younger than me." ;) Why did everybody miss this! Uneducated knaves.

If you're looking for explanations don't really go any further than Harb's. I watched the STV rather closely (huge nerd) their fights and strats in engagements didn't really change to such an extent that you could say "what a game-changing tactic" things just started rolling for Flow and mix up couldn't get the train rolling again. I assume that's what most people will find if they do the same. You see this a lot in matches where the simple color switch mechanic can break a team's momentum and even if they're vastly superior (doesn't apply to this match) they'll cough up a few rounds just from that break.

Vhalin pointed out during the cast that it looked like Ruwin changed tactics a little bit on mid - and while Ruwin is a great scout, against a team like Mix Up I think it'd be rather insulting to Mix Up to suggest that that alone could cost them 5 rounds. Things just went flow's way 5 times in a row. (Also not saying Vhalin was insulting mix up)

@ VickM - I'm only a lowly open scrub so I'm sure somebody could correct me.

Warmfront's mid has the same tactical caveats as other maps - if the enemy team survives with several members + medic, you're basically screwed on your own last and will have a tough round ahead of you. The thing about Warmfront is that it's not very easy to know when you need to bail - and then to also execute the escape. This is because the mid-fights on this map happen *really* quickly. You can see it in Pyyyour's (I'm an avid stream watcher - but I just use his name as an example since most meds play this map the same way) play where he kinda has some areas where he chills out around so that he can get more passive as soon as the soldier exchanges occur - or stay in if they go well. Because if you lose mid it's absolutely vital that the med survive. Warmfront's mid more than any other is a death trap for most and it's really tough to not get spotted out, flanked, or chased down while things are happening so quickly.

Also... fuck MLA - Chicago style ftw.

is only game, why you heff to be mad

^ yeah what the hell just happened in the FLOW/Mix^ match thread?

I watched the demo 6 times to see what the FLOW players did differently over the course of 8 mids.
Remember, mixup won the first 4 mids and lost the last 4 mids.

One general trend was that mixup was right in their opponents' faces during the first mids, but as soon as they lost a round, they started getting less and less aggressive. Especially during the last 2 mids they just waited for FLOW to kill them.

So mix not recuperating from losing their aggression has probably as much to do with it as FLOW changing their tactic.

Now for the specific players:

Let's start with a player who didn't change anything, ww-.
Rayc didn't survive a single mid and he bombed the combo every time, with varying success. Interestingly, in the mids FLOW won emphatically, he got shut down bad, so him being a distraction is all they need from him.

The second player who didn't change much is shrugger, who played passive on their side of mid every time.
What changed, however, was that during the first mids, he tried finding something to shoot and got flanked every time. During the last mids, he waited for soldiers to jump and destroyed them.

Harbleu went very aggressive during the first mids, he basically played like a roamer, suicide bombing every time.
In round 4 he tried to pocket, but got mge'd by the enemy roamer.
During the four won mids, he did the same thing every time: a slow push through the right side.
That was generally very successful, since he could either flank their combo in main when ww jumped or he was right in their faces when mixup decided to go left for mid 6.
When mixup became more and more passive during the last mids, he was able to safely bomb them and do a lot of damage.

Pure's main problem during the first mids was that he didn't actually get to heal that much, because he got disconnected from his teammates a lot. He managed to escape twice and got killed twice.
That changed completely during the next 4 mids. He always had someone to pocket (soup and ruwin mostly) and stayed alive.

That leaves the two players who changed the most, starting with ruwin.
He actually had a couple of pretty good first rounds, he went aggressive (often a bit delayed) and killed their demo and medic a lot.
For the last 4 mids he changed it up, playing a more passive style close to point/left side (while shrugger was passive on the right side, although they swapped their position if needed).
He played as pocket for pure, took care of the enemy's scouts and at times followed up his soldiers' aggression.

Soup, during the first 4 mids, did not let go of the w key. He tried to walk to the enemy's side and got destroyed either by soldiers on the roof or by scouts running into him.
The biggest change of the whole game came with mid 5: he jumped to cliff like he did in every single round except the first one (where flow did a left push), but he backtracked and walked delayed through main, behind his medic who could immediately pocket him. Both stayed alive.
For the next mids, he did pretty much the same, jumping to cliff, but delaying and not trying to push to the other team's side by himself.

Genereally, during the last 4 mids, the jumping soldiers and aggressive scouts from mix did not have easy targets, like the demo, to pick off and got denied by scouts. That gave FLOW the upper hand for the last two mids, where mix didn't put up any real resistance.

The general FLOW lineup during their successful mids looked like this:

Seriously who gives two shits about grammar on a video game forum?? If you have the time to pick through posts and point something out you need to get a life.

GG to both teams, that was a crazy match to watch.

oh shit it's pedobear!

well done Mef

mustardoverlord wrote:

I noticed soup doing some really weird shit on mid the first half, in the second half he stopped and played more conventionally and it went better

idk

see? I wasn't just bullshitting :>

Awesome Mef, thanks.

Great analysis mef. Thanks!

Thanks for the break down mef really enjoyed it

Ya, very nice analysis Mef.

MEF

EWWV wrote:

most people dont browse natf2 with a top hat and monocle