In a hyper aggressive Call of Duty cycle that emphasizes fast twitch reactions and movement mastery, the scene has seen the emergence of one elite player and the reaffirmation of one of the game’s stalwarts. As Advanced Warfare moves into its final event, it is appropriate to attempt to come to a conclusion as to who had the greatest year. I have charted the two’s performance in various categories at a range of LAN events over the year. All graphs are based off data collected by COD Stats and are chronological along the x-axis.
My preferred starting point for comparing the two players is with kills per respawn, a statistic indicative of a player’s ability to dominate a map. I prefer K/R to K/D because the former does not penalize players for having an aggressive play-style in respawn gametypes. A quick note; both players’ K/R were among the highest in nearly each event. A K/R of 33 is a good threshold for an ‘elite’ score. Scump never had his K/R dip below 30 on LAN and lit up the score with an event leading K/R in multiple events. Zooma’s K/R shows a dramatic hike in his performance following X Games, a time frame that matches up with FaZe’s addition of Attach and Clayster. The graph shows a tale of two Zoomas; Zooma averaged 30.5 K/R before UMG Dallas and 34.1 after. Scump shows incredible consistency in this metric while Zooma’s K/R had an average start and later improved to top tier.
The next metric we will be using is Search and Destroy K/D. While K/D fails to reflect a player’s performance in respawn, K/D has actual meaning. SnD K/D reflects a player’s ability to stay alive and get kills; both equally important to Search and Destroy. Scump’s mean AW SnD K/D is 1.185 while Zooma sits at 1.274. Scump held higher SnD K/Ds through the first half of the season with the exception of Columbus but falls behind Zooma after the post X-Games roster change. From there, Zooma took off and created quite the gap between his SnD K/D and that of Scump. This category proves to be much closer than K/R and shows Zooma’s considerable worth in the second half of the cycle in SnD.
Many community commentators hold the most accurate statistic to be a player’s placing track record on LAN. The above graph shows just that; the two players’ placings throughout Advanced Warfare. A lower point represents a better placing. This graph follows the findings of the previous statistics, Zooma’s performance did not peak until the post X-Games roster change. Scump’s Optic Gaming dominated the first three events, fell short at CoD Champs, and took firsts through UMG Dallas. At Dallas, Zooma’s FaZe roster took over and won back to back events. A disappointing and bizarre finish at UMG DC allowed Optic to gain another first placing. FaZe took over at Season 3 Playoffs and won the most recent event. It is worth noting Scump outplaced Zooma at every event of the first half of the cycle.
The two players’ comparison tells two stories. Scump’s journey through Advanced Warfare has cemented him as one of the greatest players to pick up a controller. His success was consistent and showed greatness in both individual performance and team placing. Zooma’s cycle is marked by remarkable highs but tarnished by some lows. The first half of Advanced Warfare saw Zooma bouncing between sub par teams. His skill was superb, but he was unable to take full advantage of his abilities until the current Faze roster was created. The second half of Advanced Warfare allowed Zooma to excel in a role he was built for.
Overall, my analysis finds Scump to be the more consistent player and asserts him as the greatest player of this game.
