All phase 2 dopplers are mostly a mix of purple and pink, and this mix is determined by the pattern index. Pink is the most desirable colour on phase 2s.

The patterns with the strongest pink out of all 1000 patterns are called Max Pink, or Pink Galaxy phase 2s. Although the effect in CS2 is arguably less strong than it was in CS:GO, these patterns can still be worth quite a lot of overpay.

Here are two buff screenshots of a Tier 1 pattern (239) compared to a market pattern (874)



The 874 is a messy mix of purple and pink, while the 239 holds strong pink throughout the blade. This shows that the pink max patterns aren't defined by the strongest pinks, but instead by the consistency of the pink.

There are some more in-game screenshots later in the guide.

Previously, these patterns were ranked by someone looking at all 1000 patterns, and roughly picking the 'best' by hand. This takes a lot of time, and gives very inaccurate results.

The results shown here were found using a new method - comparing the RGB values of every pixel on each pattern, and ranking them by highest average red value. This gives an objective measurement, and now we know every pattern in order based on data.

For example, the 2nd best pattern (748), was not even mentioned in older guides. As far as I know, it's essentially undiscovered until now.

This guide acts solely to provide objective data on the color values. It doesn't factor in the position of the pink, so you might prefer 'worse' patterns because it has pink in the right places.

There's more information about the method at the end of the guide.

350, 748, 623, 239, 495, 682, 987, 565

These patterns have an average red value of 152 or higher.

474, 938, 19, 501, 505, 56, 101, 192, 214, 707, 877, 585, 635, 986

These patterns have an average red value of 151.5 or higher.

15, 159, 261, 603, 644, 833, 35, 200, 258, 355, 581, 620, 671, 927, 964, 973, 439, 618, 741, 199, 343, 629, 870, 967, 144

These patterns have an average red value of 151 or higher.

25, 317, 889, 349, 443, 616, 13, 410, 451, 750, 174, 207, 434, 479, 544, 625, 847, 301, 617, 676, 947, 65, 641, 36, 219, 306, 371, 512, 225, 549, 562, 716, 245, 920, 970, 346, 379, 503, 532, 654, 945, 264, 330, 394, 760, 814, 86, 134, 367, 738, 843, 305, 316, 492, 504, 560, 757, 45, 55, 118, 148, 185, 415, 584, 634, 645, 713, 903

These patterns have an average red value of 149.5 or higher.

Note: I've added a lot just for the sake of sharing data. I would only consider Tier 1/2/3 to be pink maxes.

Here are some more in-game photos comparing a below average pattern (858) to the best pattern (350)





Personally I think the screenshots don't do it justice, but the difference is still clear. You can see the normal pattern is mix of pink/purple, and the p350 is almost fully pink.

I generated a screenshot for every pattern using swap gg's screenshot tool. Each screenshot was cropped identically to only include pixels that are part of the blade, and I tried to remove most of the wear.

Some patterns have more light reflection, so all pixels with a blue value > 200 were also removed. This isn't shown in the pictures.

I tried a few different methods, first counting number of pixels with a red value past a threshold, which is good to measure consistency of colour but it didn't give a good representation of the whole blade.

Then I tried measuring the average red value across every pixel, this seemed to give a very good measurement of the desirable pink.

I also tried the average ratio of red:blue, thinking it would eliminate the factor of light, but this was just inaccurate and bad, so I stuck with average red value as the best measurement.

Now here are the screenshots that I actually analysed, comparing the best pattern 350 (top) to one of the worst 858 (bottom).




You can see significantly less pink, and overall a much more dull blade on the 858. This is also reflected in the graph showing distribution of red/blue values.

This graph is a frequency distribution, if you see more activity on the far left hand side, it means the blade has more purple, and vice versa for the right side / pink. The 350 has far less pixels on the left hand side (purple), because it has much less dull purple in the blade.


Here are the pictures from above with graphs included.






Feel free to reach out with any questions to my twitter @cs2_coco or discord cs2coco. Watch for impersonators.

Big shoutout to s1rkus (https://twitter.com/Siirkus) for helping write the guide