The best of 2016 - SC2

ByuN

http://www.pcgamesn.com/sites/default/files/byun-wins-wcs-2016.png

ByuN was promising online towards the end of HotS, but his virtual non-existence in the real world set the question whether he was actually a living person, let alone a top tier player. LotV answered that question with his offline performances.
His year opened rather poorly: his performance in the first season of Terran-desolated SSL set up promising, but he quickly bombed out of GSL with a 2-3 loss to Curious in Code A. In season 2, he barely scraped through ro32 of GSL and was eliminated in ro16 of SSL. However, his future GSL performance more than made up for it. In ro16 he defeated Dark, supposedly the strongest ZvT player in the world and advanced first with a clean 2-0 win vs sOs. He then went to win entire tournament, being the first Terran GSL winner not named INnoVation since Wings of Liberty.
ByuN later confirmed this was not a fluke by winning Blizzcon, winning vs TY, Stats and Dark, arguably the strongest players of their race to claim the championship.
ByuN's performance in the latter part of the year was enough to warrant him the title of the best Terran.

Honorable mention: TY

Stats

http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/snowdrift//2010_2011_PLR1/chintoss.jpg

The choice between the 2 kt players was a hard one. They both played at the highest level entire year, they both were eliminated in GSL circumstances they shouldn't have (Zest placing dead last in the ro16 group with retired Taeja and Stats melting and bombing out in Code A in season 1 and Ro32 of Code S in season 2). Hell, they even both lost in HSC playoffs to Patience.
While Zest's GSL win and his ridiculous 19-3 record in the tournament are definitely more impressive, Stats more than made up for it with winning season 1 cross finals, placing 2nd at IEM Gyeongi (where Zest again dropped out early) and being the best proleague player of the season, with a 75% across 31 games, including an all-kill of SKT.
That, in my opinion, places him as the best Protoss of the year.

Honorable mention: Zest

Dark

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/commons/images/thumb/0/06/Dark_IEM_WC_2015.jpg/562px-Dark_IEM_WC_2015.jpg

Before patch 3.8 hit, there were only 2 Zergs that were contenders for starleague trophies: Dark and Solar. While they both hold one SSL trophy each, Dark appeared in 2 finals. And then won cross finals over Solar. This put together with his 2nd place at Blizzcon and a semifinal at IEM, puts him signifcantly ahead of Solar in terms of sheer tournament performance.
Dark didn't have a bad period in all of 2016. His worst performances? Barely missing GSL ro8 twice and a mediocre PL result (although 13-12 score still puts him as the 2nd best Zerg).
He showed everyone how to play Zerg properly, on every patch. He set the golden standard for both roach and ling based styles in ZvT and pioneered ling/bane into brood lords vs Protoss, effectively switching up the metagame completely.
Dark was the Zerg in 2016.


Honorable mention: Solar

ByuN

http://sm.ign.com/ign_gr/screenshot/default/i-1_xruf.jpg
To put it into perspective: this is the first time a WCS final was won by someone who won a Korean tournament the same year. In 2013 it was a question of "Can sOs be really the best with no results in Korea?". In 2014 "Is Blizzcon win better than 4 GSL finals?". In 2015 "Eh, sOs out of the blue again?". In 2016, the Blizzcon winner wasn't a surprise. ByuN has been amongst top 2 Terrans in the world entire year and his Blizzcon win over Dark cemented his superiority over the latter.
ByuN confirmed his GSL win was no fluke and that he indeed was the best the world had to offer.

Dark vs ByuN, game 5 of Blizzcon finals

starts at 1:00:44

It was only fitting that the best game of the year was played between the 2 best players, on one of the best maps of all time.
Before patch 3.8, LotV ZvT was considered to be a binary match up: Terran either managed to cripple Zerg enough before ultralisks were out to win or didn't and Zerg won with the unbeatable hive tech army.
In game 5 of the Blizzcon final, the opening looked grim for ByuN, as his 2-1-1 was perfectly fended off by the Zerg who was comfortably droning and teching up. For most of the Terrans, it would have been a death sentence vs Dark, but ByuN was unfazed. As he kept pressuring the Zerg, he was also securing all of his own bases and the simultanous attacks on the 4th and the 5th base of the Zerg allowed him to constantly trade, clear creep and kite the slow ultras off creep, making the so dreaded hive tech army many times less effective than it should be.
As Dark managed to drone to 70, secure his 6 bases and amass an ultra/crackling/corruptor army, he moved out. In an attack that looked impossible to defend, he decimated ByuN's workers, but kiting the ultralisks off creep, ByuN found himself with double the army supply, 2 upgrades ahead and with 1 base still mining.
And it was time to attack and make a Zerg on 70 drones so starved for army units that they couldn't afford 3/3.
The game on King Sejong Station was the definitive highlight of the series, Blizzcon, and LotV ZvT and that is why I chose it the game of year.

Jin Air Green Wings

https://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/lol.gamepedia.com/6/63/JinAirLogo.png?version=4447eacfbbf1ad40cdbd00b346d865b8

With Proleague remaining the only offline team tournament in 2016, it was only natural that the Proleague winners became the best team. While Jin Air's players struggled to find success in individual leagues, their PL performance was outstanding. Maru was crowned the best bo1 player in the world, Rogue was the only Zerg amongst the 10 best Proleague players, and on top of winning the league, the team also were runner ups in Round 1 playoffs and won Round 2 and Round 3.
On top of that, JAGW was the only Kespa team not to drop the SC2 division and they continue to support their players going into 2017.
JAGW outdid all other teams both in terms of results and organisation.

New Gettysburg

http://wiki.teamliquid.net/commons/images/thumb/1/18/New_Gettysburg.jpg/400px-New_Gettysburg.jpg

2016 was an absolutely terrible year for map making. LotV opened its first competitive season with awful, imbalanced or unpleasant to play maps in every match up and then it continuted the abysmall quality with gems such as Frozen Temple.

The non-Blizzard LotV maps that made it to ladder and tournament play alike were:
Korhal Carnage Knockout
Dasan Station
Invader
Galactic Process
Apotheosis
New Gettysburg

New Gettysburg was the only of the 6 that didn't exceed 60% winrate in any matchup on TLPD and it also promoted different strategies (mech TvZ, skytoss PvZ and PvP) that also lead to some wonky memorable games (ByuL vs Dear or Nerchio vs TY come to mind)
New Gettysburg stood the test of time and proved it rightfuly won TLMC.

ling/bane into brood lords vs Protoss


After Protoss players started skipping stargate in PvZ and opening with 3gate twilight adept pressure, the matchup suddenly became way less comfortable for Zerg. No roach, hydralisk or lurkers armies could trade cost efficiently enough with a Protoss who now started attacking earlier and teched faster while macroing comofortably.
Dark's new strategy, which involved skipping ranged units completely in favor of a ZvT-esque ling/bane defense vs archon/chargelot/immortal armies, paired with baneling drops to constantly dwindle Protoss economy and test their multitasking proved to be effective enough to stall out Protoss up until brood lords, detrimental to an army without real anti air came out.
The style made ZvP into a playable, if not Zerg favored, match up and eventually evolved into ling/bane/ravager which gave Zerg a big metagame advantage at a time and is now the staple of Zerg vs Protoss.

Honorable mentions: DT drop vs Terran, 3rax reaper

Proleague finals

jesus christ

The end of Proleague was something that the community as a whole might have expected, but the news was still grievous. The tournament that was one of the pillars of Korean SC2 was coming to an end. It also made the grand finals of 2016 season that more important. The winners not only became the champions for the rest of time, the finals also served as a farewell to Proleague, the summary of the oldest still running Starcraft league.
For the match between kt rolster and Jing Air Green Wings, people had high expectations. That was it. The end of Proleague. The last ever match between the 2 best teams. The last memory of the best team league ever run.

Jin Air won 4-0 and all games were awful.
Don't watch them.

Honorable mention: Korean Zergs