Joshua “Elbion” Tuffs was recently announced as the newest member of the British Hurricane’s coaching staff. After winning season one, including the Atlantic Showdown, Hurricane had a long fall from grace over the course of season two. At the bottom of the ravine, they now find themselves having to earn their spot in the final season of the year by competing in Trials. When a team finds themselves in a drastic change of performance, they must look inward and make changes of their own volition. Hurricane’s proposed solution was to bring Elbion on board. It’s time to hear about his history, his time across the Atlantic and what lies in store for the Hurricane.

I first became aware of Elbion via his work as an analyst on the North American Contenders roster, Envision. But to catalogue his journey from my initial starting point would do a disservice to someone who’s career stretches across multiple titles and teams.

Prior to his foray into Overwatch, like many members of the community, Elbion was enamoured by League of Legends. In a tactic he would later use in Overwatch, Elbion started generating analytical and narrative content for a community driven publication, GoldPer10. Using the website initially as conduit for his thoughts on the game, Josh intentionally or otherwise transitioned this into a resume of sorts. Prime examples of people who followed this path: San Francisco Shock Coaching Staff, Harsha, and Overwatch League analyst, Sideshow. This path of progression is not alien to esports, nor is it to Overwatch. With a portfolio of his analytical workings, Josh could approach teams with demonstrable proof of his abilities. First to take him up on the offer, North American League of Legends team, Team 8.

The team never finished in the top half of the NALCS, the premier North American League of Legends tournament. The opportunity itself, from the outside could seem mundane, but taught Elbion one his first lessons in his role.

I was never actually allowed to watch scrims on that team. Basically all I did was scout pick/ban, level one strategies from enemy teams and help them prepare their own pick/ban and level one strategies. […]



[…] It was a good time because I learned a lot of core lessons I’ve taken with me throughout my esports “career”. Stuff like, It doesn’t matter how much data you have, if you can’t give the players something to do with that data. If I have a bunch of numbers or statistics that I give to a player and go “here, that’s it”, it doesn’t mean anything to the players. I need to be able to turn that number and say: “they do this 80% of the time, so that means we need to change what we’re doing because we have to be ready for that most likely outcome.”. It’s that crucial second step that a lot of people are missing when they first start out.”

Chiefs Esports — OPL Season 1 Winners

The backroom staff eventually reshuffled, allowing many of their staff to move on and seek other opportunities. Oceanic team, Chiefs Esports became his new home. During his time on the team, Chiefs went onto win their region’s league not once, but twice. Having become an effective two-time OPL winner, the sacrifices Elbion made for his career started to creep up on him, and force a change.

I stepped back from League of Legends, not because I wasn’t in love with the game at the time, but because I dedicated so much time to League of Legends that my studies were failing. In effort to save my college career[…] […]I had to step back and put more time into my studies.

Stepping back for a year allowed Josh to get back on track with his studies, the assumption would be that all is going well as he’s currently in his sixth year of college. Thankfully, a new understanding of time management coincided with the release of Overwatch. A confidence to return to analytical work was present, as Josh’s next step entered the market. Low and behold, he would retread old ground and begin the generation of analytical content. Instinct was to return to the old stomping ground, GoldPer10. In his absence, the once community operated site had too grown in its function. First acquired by ‘Gamerz’, then to its more notable final destination, DotEsports. With Overwatch being a new property, and analytical content creators in short supply, Josh was invited to join DotEsport’s content team. Transitioning a now more refined analytical lens to a newer title, he got back on the bike and started to pump out content at record pace.

With them, over the course of 15 months, I wrote some 200 feature pieces for them, about Overwatch. I was the only feature writer they had for Overwatch, so any topic I wanted, no one contested it. So I just ended up writing a tonne for them. Then, I did some youtube analysis videos, because that was more popular. People don’t like reading.

Elbion’s Youtube Channel

The decision to turn to a more visual medium opened doors to join competitive organisations. Starting with Envision. While the online sources state the addition of Elbion to be early 2018, he had actually been working with the roster since November 2017. The reason for the delay in announcement was to chalked up to Envision’s roster and backroom staff shakeups, airing on the side of caution prior to official announcement.

Shortly prior to Elbion’s acquisition, Envision had invitations to APAC as well as finishing in the top four of Overwatch Contenders. This feat carries more grandeur in the days prior to OWL as this was perceived to be the highest level of competition prior available to the western scene. When asked about any possible intimidation towards joining a relatively successful organisation, Josh was keen to point out that any semblance of that feeling was snubbed out by a friendly welcome.

I know for a fact that as I got to know the players and the coaching staff, it was just so easy to get along with them and talk with them. Especially the core who I started out with. Chu, the assistant coach. McGravy, who was moving from hitscan to offtank. Fire, main support and Jaru, the flex DPS. Those four as a core group of people were incredibly friendly, they were super open to me. It was just really easy to come in and fit in with them. So any kind of intimidation I had at joining an organisation that had been successful, quickly disappeared.

That early fondness of McGravy persevered through their time on Envision together. I got a sense of admiration from Elbion when discussing his former team. McGravy, a driven individual who was also receptive to feedback and criticism. iShiny received the most profound praise.

For anyone who doesn’t know, iShiny is this insane, multitasking, amazing god of a man.

Envision would eventually exit Overwatch as an organisation, their owner publicly stating that it was not viable for an endemic org to sustain and grow within the title. Prior to their departure, Envision secured themselves a place in the Season 1 playoffs. A chance to surpass a benchmark previously set, as well as an opportunity to clash with transatlantic rivals and future employers.

Envision at Season 1 playoffs (Poland)

Spending a season working a North American Contenders team, it was inefficient to dedicate time to viewing European play. Of course, the meme at the time for European play was that we just play Quad Tank. In the days prior to the start of the playoffs, myself and the broadcast talent got the opportunity to sit down and talk with teams from both sides of the Atlantic. This was my first encounter with Elbion. Like all of his North American counterparts, when the topic of Quad Tank was discussed, like clockwork a single line response was given. “Junkrat exists”. I gave Josh an opportunity to redeem himself with the benefit of hindsight.

I actually wrote a piece on medium about this, where I reflected on the experience in Poland and the difference between Europe and North America. The TL;DR of that piece was: ‘I don’t think I underestimated Quad Tank as a comp, I think I underestimated what Quad Tank can do for the co-ordination of a team’. It forces you to play in much tighter windows against stuff like Junkrat, you have to cycle all of your defensive cooldowns properly to minimise the amount of damage you take.

Expanding further upon this, Josh stated that Quad Tank as a composition forced a level of co-ordination that sometimes surpassed that of North American teams. Some of the weaknesses of the composition forced teams to take creative pathing, Hurricane being one of those teams.

It forced Europe to be more creative with pathing. The example that sticks out to me was Hurricane. We played the Hurricane in scrims and they did the rotation on Horizon where they ran all of their tanks out through space. It’s an area of the map, in North America, where I literally forgot it existed. Nobody touched it. It’s such a weird area of the map, it didn’t feel like an area of the map that was worth exploring strategically. It just seemed so obvious once the Hurricane used it on us. We got rolled by it. We’re like: ‘Oh, that makes so much sense when you think about it.’ We ended up using it in the official match against Toronto, because that rotation is so simple, it’s makes so much sense and it cut down the time that Junkrat could spam against you. […] […] Stuff like that made me understand why Europe played stuff like this, it might in theory be worse comp. When you put the same amount of time into ironing out the issues, it’s just as good.

When it came to moving over this his current team, Hurricane approached Elbion for the position. The announcement of his involvement with the team had been delayed, in a similar manner to Envision. His first time viewing the scrims of the British Hurricane was July 8th, an entire month prior to his official announcement. Which would mean that Elbion was working with the team and fellow back room staff for most of Season 2 of Contenders.

The first week I worked with them, was the week they played Bazooka Puppiez. Week two. So that week I watched singular scrim and I enjoyed the scrim with them and wrote up a scouting report for Bazooka Puppiez, and that was my entire involvement. Week three, four and five, I watched, I’m pretty sure, every single scrim with them and I prepared with the team as if I was a member of the team. I wrote reports after scrims, recorded vods, I did scouting reports. I was a member of that team for three weeks. Actually, for week three, I wasn’t. The week they played 6nakes, because I wasn’t with the team and the season had already started, I planned a vacation with my girlfriend. […] So I wasn’t there for the week with 6nakes, but I sent them all the same documents.

Elbion believes that the team turned things around in the final two weeks of the group stage. Unfortunately for them, their final two weeks were against their fiercest competition in the group, Angry Titans and Orgless and Hungry. Josh shares the sentiment that his involvement was too little, too late, and is confident for the future having ample time to prepare for Season 3.

Both of those series were one or two little mistakes away from being a win for us. Still, if you pop into comms during a Hurricane scrim and you just go: ‘Lucio touching point on Kings’, everyone just screams. Because that Lucio getting to point against us in the Angry Titans match on Kings, to start the overtime, causing us to draw King’s Row, still just triggers people. Because it’s a mistake they will never forget.

Scheduling could’ve been a factor working against Hurricane in their season. As mentioned above, their final matches were against the eventual first and second seed from their group. But earlier on in the season, Josh pointed out the difference in the calibre of their opponents. Bazooka Puppiez, had a significantly stronger roster in their match against Hurricane. Moving later into the group stage, the roster arguably weakened with the departure of Tonic, KSP, Mirror and Mete over the course of the group stage. It does raise an important topic of the scoring equality of the contenders season. With only a single round robin in competition, combined with the volatility of some rosters. A topic to potentially explore in the future: Are teams receiving unfair wins later in the season as opposing rosters in their groups change for better or worse?

One of the problems the broadcast team highlighted with the roster itself was the absence of one of their star players, Hafficool. With two additional DPS coming into the roster, and with triple DPS compositions being viable, sometimes Hafficool was left on the bench. This drew ire of myself in particular and I wanted press Josh for an explanation on the decision.

Hafficool — Flex for British Hurricane

The only map where we ran three DPS was Eichenwalde. We only did it because, we came to the conclusion for first point that Widow, Tracer, Pharah was the comp to play. That decision was made before I was there. As Haffi frustratingly knows, I never advocate for DVa-less compositions as DVa’s OP. That was a decision that was made before I was there, later in the season we actually swapped back to playing Haffi on Eichenwalde. I don’t think in the last weeks we played Eichenwalde in an official map, we didn’t, we played King’s both times. Haffi is a very assertive figure, that assertiveness isn’t only in game, it’s out. He’s a good caller for us, and missing that calling definitely affected our ability to play Eichenwalde. So with him back in, and he plays Pharah, and it’s sorta fine. When we do need someone to play DVa, we don’t have to go: “I guess Nesh plays DVa, I guess Kyb plays DVa”. We just go, “our DVa player, plays DVa”.

In Contenders, whether justified or not, we look at academy teams as the model of what organisations should be. Having worked for both endemic and academy teams, I felt it important to gauge the difference in working for the two.

One of the things that’s been absolutely amazing, specifically coming into Hurricane and the greater Cloud9 family. Is that when we’re having comm issues and when we’re having attitude issues, I don’t have to try to explain to the player myself what’s wrong and try to convince him I’m right. I can literally send them to a sports psychologist. They just disappear for thirty minutes and they come back and just go: ‘ok yeah, I need to work on …’. It’s stuff like that, that did not happen on Envision. […] […] It’s been a world of difference, having that support from the org. Not game related support, if that makes sense. Just outside performance training for the players. For me as a personal, selfish individual. I did start in League of Legends and I started in North America. When I was working there, Cloud 9 was this incredibly dominant team for a couple of year. Joining Cloud 9 and having Jack welcome me to the org, and having the Cloud 9 twitter account follow me. There’s something amazing about that, that’s hard to explain. It’s almost fulfilling a childish desire in myself. It’s really cool and having BDosin follow me on twitter is kind of cool as well. There’s some not so important reasons, but there’s also some very important reasons.

Having that extra level of support has allowed Josh to focus more exclusively on his role. Generating data, relaying a practical application to his players. In the past, as a whole, analysts and coaches have taken on a therapeutic role at times for their players. As friends and colleagues, this can be done and works. As the industry has grown, more organisations with greater resources have pulled in sports psychologists who are professionally trained for this role. You can see how that one example difference makes the experience more focused for an analyst.

Having worked with Hurricane for the majority of Season two, Elbion has an insight into this roster. This additional time could show greater dividends moving into the off-season. I wanted to know what the focus in preparation for Season 3 would be. Josh provided three:

We need to work on how we comm, making sure we go into teamfights with clear plans. During fights, everyones calls are able to be heard so we’re working as a team, not as six individuals who are screaming at each other. The second one, we need a mental reset, in terms of mentality. It’s not something that just the Hurricane are struggling with, it’s something a lot of pro players are struggling with. The desire to play the game and the drive to play the game. Because comp is less than a perfect experience. So outside of scrims, there’s a little bit of struggle for that drive. We need to work on getting a reset for the players and making them enjoy the game again, so they can get back and keep grinding. The third one, we have to have to have to have a better grasp of the meta coming into next season. When I came into the team halfway through the season, I was being asked what I wanted them to play. To me, this was a huge shocker. I’m coming in halfway through the season, and you guys have been playing this patch for a while. I wasn’t with the team at the time, so I haven’t been in scrims. I had a vague idea of the meta, by watching tournament games, but it’s vastly different in scrims. When they come and ask me what to play, it’s clear they had no idea what to do. Moving forward, I’m gonna work on those first two points. The third, that’s just my job. Making sure we have a direction for the meta and we know what comps we’re gonna play. If we can get those three things locked down… The third one is locked down to be fair. If we get all three locked down at the same time, it’s going to be a completely different team.

Clearly Elbion has a plan, and the pedigree to help turn this roster around. He can provide a direction, provide all the data to his team. The earnest is on all of them to level up in the off-season. The real grind comes after their respective World Cup runs conclude. Season 3 trials will be wild if the Hurricane fail to get back into Contenders, and it would come as no surprise to outsiders if Spitfire release the team in that eventuality. Obviously, I wish Elbion and the Hurricane the best of luck and look forward to seeing how this roster develops over the next few months.