m0NESY's aggression, pistol rounds in MR12, and other stats from Sydney so far

We have our first dataset of CS2 on LAN — so what has changed?

Weapon diversity

CS2's weapons have the same statistics as in GO, but enough has changed in-game that its meta is still shifting significantly.

The P2000 has crept up by 1.5%, being used by most of Monte and Cloud9 and IGLs Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer, Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen, Christopher "⁠dexter⁠" Nong, and Kamil "⁠siuhy⁠" Szkaradek.

The AUG and Krieg are also back in vogue, especially for ENCE who all pick up the scoped weapons on occasion. Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković, who has a 1.16 rating on CT side, is the chief culprit and has four-times as many AUG kills as with the M4A4 and M4A1-S.

When scoped, these weapons are easy to spray and might negate some of the peeker's advantage present in CS2.

The Krieg is less popular, but has increased from a 0.03% share of total kills at CS:GO's last three big LANs to 0.75% of the count at Sydney.

Most of this usage, outside of ENCE and Aleksandr "⁠KaiR0N-⁠" Anashkin, comes from AWPers and this brings us to the decreased usage of certain weapons including the Big Green.

Logically, the M4A4 has decreased by about the same amount as the AUG has increased. The AK-47 has decreased too, but this is likely linked to a 1.5% increase in Galil usage as the T side exploits their economic advantage with frequent force buys.

The big story, however, is the AWP. 4.5% less kills are being dealt with the big green compared to in GO, falling to just 7.3% of total kills.

Part of this is due to MR12; such an expensive weapon is seen more often in the back end of halves as banks are built up. There is also the peeker's advantage. Passive AWPing is a staple of LAN play, but it is harder to make work in a meta where you always want to be the player peeking.

The innovative solution of Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov to this problem was to embrace aggression, going from a decently aggressive 21.4% opening kill attempts in 2023 pre-Sydney to 24.3% on CS2, the highest on G2.

Opening kill attempts are not a 1:1 for aggression — shown by Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants, who is rarely involved in openers but has also adopted a 'peek first' mentality to AWPing — but this still shows us just how much m0NESY is taking the initiative.

The contrast with Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov, who remained quite passive, is staggering. Cloud9's posterboy for efficient and by-the-numbers sniping had his first event below a 1.00 rating since DreamHack Open Sevilla in 2019, while m0NESY's 1.44 rating is his highest provisional big event rating of all time.

Not everyone has m0NESY's skillset, however, and in online games before Sydney, AWPers' ratings generally aligned on CS2 with GO and the same is roughly true here. More data is needed before we can truly assess the impact CS2 (and peeker's advantage) has had on the game's most prestigious role.

Pistol rounds

The other big talking point for CS2 is MR12, and how much pistol rounds affect the outcome of games. The data tells a clear story: Winning both pistols pushes you to a solid 60% chance of winning in regulation, but if you convert both for a 2-0 lead in both halves that number hits 78%.

The economy is under a particularly strong spotlight in the shorter format, and we have seen the full effect of T side force buys as teams try to avoid trailing 0-3 as much as they can.

The perceived randomness behind pistol rounds is always difficult to pin down, but it is perhaps telling that all five teams that won and converted both pistols in matches that went to overtime lost.

Only 46.8% of pistol rounds were won by the T side, but they had the economic advantage — either by converting those wins, or breaking the CT side in round two — in 60.6% of halves. This shows the strength of the GALIL force buys that have been prevalent ever since the 2019 economy update.

BetBoom were even forgoing armor and utility on some T pistol rounds, saving the $800 start money to turn the already deadly second-round force buys up a notch. When you see this data, you can see why: Allowing your opposition to earn four free rounds in MR12 is a near death sentence.

Map balance

Balance has also shifted by map. The removal of the skybox has allowed teams like FaZe to innovate and dominate Inferno on CT side, turning it from the second most T-sided map at Cologne to the most CT-sided thus far in Sydney.

Overpass and Nuke remain CT sided, and Vertigo is still predominately a T-favoured battleground.

But, Anubis has drifted towards a 50-50 balance after being the most T-sided map in GO. Mirage and Ancient were the 50-50 maps in GO, but have turned ever slightly towards the offense in 2.

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