The NA Invite Top 100 is a project merging history and shenanigans with the purpose of highlighting some of the best players in North American TF2 history. Access the hub post here to view outlines, honorable mentions, and previous reveals. Tune in every Monday and Friday for the next release!
delpo has a mere three full seasons of Invite played - all on Demoman, despite starting out as a Soldier main. For reference, in his three incomplete seasons he played a total of 14 matches. Anyways the three teams he played for were S22 EVL Gaming (4th), S26 SVIFT NA (2nd), and S31 cafe monster RB (4th). In S22 and S26 he was top 10 in frags, a mighty impressive feat with all those annoying Scouts infesting the place. If you trim the competition to just other Demos, delpo was always top 3 in both frags and DPM. He kept up with the likes of Bdonski and habib every season he played and that is no small feat. In the previous two drafts of the list delpo was someone that fluctuated a lot for whatever reason, going from #85 at first to #59, and now settling in the middle. Again not a big deal considering bottom 50 are so close and practically interchangeable. It's honestly a damn crime he never played a full season on Soldier though,
that shit was magical.
RGL's leading caster man Jarrett is up next. Prior to his position change, he was quite active in the Invite fields. His arc lines up precisely with the Dark Age, playing his first season in S19 and his last in S31, active in all but three seasons during this stretch. The majority of that time was spent with Velocity eSports, contributing to five winning seasons (out of six total) and five playoff appearances (though he did not play in the S29 postseason). His S27 campaign was his best statistically, #1 in frags for Demomen and #3 in FPH trailing only ether and habib. On the ESEA career leaderboards, he's actually a single frag shy of being #50. But hey maybe if the player above him collected more postround kills (yes, those counted unfortunately) then Jarrett's truly in the top 50. Here though, he's a little further back.
I suppose it comes with the territory of playing so many seasons in a game as volatile as TF2, but ninjanick has bounced around a plethora of teams during his tenure. Outside of his three seasons with Street Hoops eSports, he has been one-and-done with every other team. The long list includes squads like Vector Gaming, Top Guns, Classic Mixup, and froyotech. With the first, he had a hand in one of the greatest
regular season upsets in Invite history. With the last, he got an Invite title. Regardless, with that much activity it's no surprise to hear that ninjanick is 3rd among all ESEA Medics with nearly 3,500 ubers. The difference in volume between him and #4 bear is substantial, as ninjanick has 455 more ubers in 12 more hours of playtime. bear would have to average 38 UPH to keep pace, and I don't think you need me to tell you that would have been extremely unlikely. ninjanick is also the proud owner of four perfect games in ESEA, which is tied for 3rd most for any Medic. He acquired three of them in a single season (S19) and is the only person in league history to accomplish such a feat.
Now that we're 2/3rds the way home, the next froyotech member steps up to the plate. skeez was a member of the froyo family for the previous four seasons, taking home three championships during his stay. Prior to that, he spent time with the late ESEA era variations of Ascent. skeez' debut season (S23 Circa eSports) was very impressive statistically, having popped the 2nd most ubers alongside the highest ubers per hour in the division, even better than that of fellow playoff Medics shade and cookiejake. He's only missed the postseason twice in his career. That would be ESEA S24 with mario party 4 and RGL S2 with highfive demoman, both times placing 5th and only missing out on playoffs by one or two wins. If those teams had been able to sneak in, skeez would've punched his ticket into a prestigious club: 100% playoffs rate in a quarter of NATF2's lifetime.
After just a season of ESEA Open and Intermediate each, Shamoo made his Invite debut with strolling astronomers in S21 and would be a permanent resident of the division from then on. Not unlike the killer whale, Shamoo had a keen eye for frags whenever he was on the field. Shamoo is one of five players in ESEA Invite history to lead the division in frags for consecutive seasons, doing so in S28 and S29 when he played for Velocity eSports, with two playoff appearances to boot. During Season 28 he did so while still sporting 47.5 FPH which was good for 3rd best between anyone else in the top ten. Shamoo has also appeared at the two Rewind LANs, placing 5th both times (first with Meat Market, then with Velocity). Shamoo has since been a fixture in RGL Invite, spotted performing on teams such as Rat Jail, The Microwave, and Rebirth Esports.
yaug is the only Soldier we're going to meet today, and easily the most unknown to current day players based on when he was active. yaug placed 4th in the inaugural ESEA season, 10th in frags with a whopping 53.1 FPH which was among the highest values in the entire division. Unfortunately with it being the first season, there was no class-specific data available. The technology didn't exist yet. The next season he teamed with the likes of cyzer, DESTRO, and caseey on Evil Geniuses en route to a 2nd place finish. During S3, yaug was in a class of his own on Soldier. He was one of three players to amass over 300 frags in the regular season, leading them all with 379 total while his 48.9 FPH was only outdone by Seagull's 53.3 FPH. No other Invite players let alone Soldiers were in their stratosphere. Between him and Seagull, they set the standard for top tier Soldier play in 2009.
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Man, it's been quite some time since seeing that spammed in Twitch chat. kbk only played for five seasons and grabbed three 2nd place finishes on three different teams. In S11 he started out on Pinball Wizards before Classic Mixup shuffled their roster and he was brought on board alongside lansky. kbk had the most frags of any Medic that season, showing that he wasn't afraid to protect himself when needed. He performed admirably at his first LAN for his first silver medal. The other noteworthy seasons were S14 with tri hards and S18 with eLevate. As one may infer from his name and associated copypasta, kbk was one of the first Invite Medics to run Crusader's Crossbow - yes, there was a time when it was a choice and not mandatory - so he earns bonus legacy points there.
Fan favorite Freestate first floated around mid-Invite in his beginning stages. But then along came b4nny and a froyotech offer and from there, he took off. As is usually the case for new(er) players rising to the tippy top of Invite, the scenery change was night and day. Freestate went from a perfectly balanced 24-24 in three seasons pre-froyotech to 59-5 in four seasons post-froyotech. Turns out being on the most dominant team in TF2 history will do that for you, who'd have thought. In S23 he recorded a FPH stat of 57.7, tied with slemnish and second only to his teammate b4nny. He even ended his story on top with the perfect season, along with the previously mentioned grueling S24 grand finals set against EVL Gaming.
The fun part about this project is that you discover trivia you'd have never known. Case in point: mesr's first two Invite seasons were on Scout. Well technically he joined Blight-fanom halfway through ESEA S6 but I digress. Two Invite playoff seasons for his Scout was not something I expected to find while digging through his history. But some of you TF2 boomers may remember him for the Medic class. Three seasons after joining an Invite squad midseason, he would do the exact same thing - this time playing for Classic Mixup after Blackymonster dipped. Along with appearances for srsly br0 and Spacewhales, mesr carved out a second mini career playing Medic at the top Invite level. mesr has playoffs consistency in the short period time he was active, a championship to his name, and in my biased opinion was one of the most exciting Medics to watch back in those days.
xalox quietly debuted in ESEA Season 14 with Solace Esports, going 6-10 with teammates like chimpfeet and Bdonski. Nothing really of note during this run, oh except for that
one time against Classic Mixup where he went 69-27 and averaged 530 DPM in a Viaduct loss. That performance gives xalox the #3 spot in ESEA for most frags ever in a single match, and #1 for any Demoman players. Not bad for a rookie showing. The following season he would play for iT, going 16-0 in the regular season and getting 2nd. He would join Platinum and the rest of Mixup in S17 in their final season, placing 3rd. Lastly, xalox was part of TeamSoloUber during their S20 run to 2nd place and as such is one of twelve players in history to eliminate froyotech in league play.
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