As of today, nocries is the most talked about player in Counter Strike. While reaching the highest FACEIT Elo in North America and going 39-6 in one of the most watched POV demos ever, he has garnered many cheating accusations. Shortly after his name became known worldwide, he took a three day break from 9/16 to 9/18. Upon his return, people immediately noticed that his performance had taken a hit compared to his pre-blowup self.
Then FACEIT invited him to their headquarters in New York, he played some games there (including two in FPL) and that is where we stand today.
To some people, his change in play after 9/15 when compared to before set off alarm bells that he was likely cheating. In the 29 matches before his blowup he averaged 1.17 KPR and 116 ADR. Meanwhile, from 9/19 to 9/25 he instead averaged 0.93 KPR and 96.4 ADR. This is still pretty good but it’s a far cry from his pre-blowup averages.
Not only was his performance noticeably worse on average, many people were saying that his aim looked less sharp. But is that actually the case? Because instead of simply relying on watching a few demos from before and after, Leetify actually collects aim data for players in a match. (If you would like to learn more about the data Leetify collects either go to their website or check out this article I wrote in February of last year: Article)
I collected the aim data from his 29 most recent matches (that is to say, all matches played after his break) and his 29 matches before his break, which include his infamous 39-6 performance. So what does the data say? Here is the aim data from these time spans graphed next to each other.
The length of the bars is what his percentile would rank in the stats based on the aim data I collected from over 400 professional and semi-professional riflers for the 2024 calendar year (HLTV matches only).
As you can see, there are some differences. His Headshot Accuracy, Enemy Spotted Accuracy, Total Accuracy, and Spray Accuracy all decreased after his blowup, meanwhile his Counter Strafing, Crosshair Placement, and Time to damage increased after his blowup.
Are these changes significant? To figure that out, we can use a pooled t-test to determine to 95% certainty that these averages are different to a degree that isn’t just normal fluctuation in performance. The result of that t-test is that the averages in Enemy Spotted Accuracy, Total Accuracy, and Spray Accuracy are different between the two samples, while the fluctuations in Headshot Accuracy, Counter Strafing, Crosshair Placement, and Time to Damage are perfectly in line with his pre-blowup statistics.
But realistically, Enemy Spotted Accuracy and Total Accuracy are both numbers influenced by what his Headshot Accuracy and Spray Accuracy are. These accuracies decreasing directly affect the Enemy Spotted and Total Accuracy decreasing. To put it simply, his Spray Accuracy going down significantly is likely what also caused his general accuracy to also go down significantly.
Now we can’t say for certain *why* his spray accuracy decreased, but I do think it’s important to note there was an update in the time his break occurred. Shortly after he returned from his break, he tweeted this:
This was also just after having his worst spray accuracy in a match across both samples (18%).
Another note to clarify, the 29 matches he played post-blowup were played across a span of eight days, while the 29 matches before his blowup were across the span of four days.
Finally, none of this data is conclusive of anything. I am not saying definitively whether he is or is not cheating, all that this I am presenting is the fact that his spray accuracy before and after his blowup are different to a statistically relevant degree. Whatever conclusion you come to is up to how you interpret this data.
Thank you for reading, have a good day.
There are a couple things I wanted to say that didn’t really fit into the general premise of this mini-article so I’m just gonna put them here at the end:
Here is his aim data comparing his time at FACEIT Headquarters and his time before then but also after his blowup:
For the most part, his aim either improved at FACEIT HQ or was basically the same, so that’s why I combined them to compare to his pre-blowup numbers. People referenced his headshot kill% going down, but Leetify’s headshot accuracy doesn’t include AWPing and you can see that they are basically identical between those two samples.
You might’ve noticed on the bar chart earlier, that his headshot accuracy was greater than 100%, and you might be wondering why. Well, both 35% (pre-blowup average) and 32% (post-blowup average) would have been the highest headshot accuracy for any rifler among the 400+ players I collected from 2024. Granted, things probably changed since last year and comparing Faceit Premium to Professional CS is comparing apples to oranges, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
The same thing can be said for his time to damage. The reason it’s so low isn’t because he’s actually slow to react, it’s because the competition he’s playing against is lower and they don’t punish his slower reactions like they would at the pro level, at least that’s how I interpret the stat. If he played professionally his time to damage would definitely be faster.
If you want to see the full data for all the matches, here’s a link to my spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQTjWOWjzgoehVGY0E34ePj31xzedlWCp8BR5duKPCXX5yi4nBCMk2rMQ_o3Wp0LWdf8lpXBqB1D-JS/pubhtml?gid=669369565&single=true
My next article was supposed to be a lot more comprehensive, but I wrote this because I was seeing some baseless claims online and I wondered if his aim was actually statistically different. As well, it was just an easy article to write while I’ve got school to worry about. This took about two days in total which is much shorter compared to my average. With that being said, it also went under much less editing scrutiny, so I probably messed up somewhere and will have to fix it later!
Final note, if you’re into stats and stuff and you’re also into CS consider subscribing to me on substack and following me on Twitter. Any support is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, always feel free to reach out. Take care.
Good read.
Did you read sd0000's thread on this btw?
https://www.hltv.org/forums/threads/3060768/nocries-aim-analysis