ASL20 Pre-season Tier List ranking!

On August 11 2025 12:11 zutt0 wrote:
I ran the stats on how people have been performing over the last 9 months based on Eloboard. Here is my list and I'll talk through some of the big discrepancies and also some of the big changes from my evaluations in previous seasons.

S: Soulkey, Snow
A: Light, Queen, Rush, Mini, Best, Sharp
B: Hero, Soma, Bisu, Jaedong
C: Effort, Barracks, Speed, Royal
D: Stork, JyJ, sSak, Mong
E: Larva, BTS, Calm ,TY
F: Ample, Paralyze, Hyun, Saber

I look at head-to-heads and victory rates against the top players of each race. I define the top players as follows:
Z: Soulkey, hero, Action, Queen, Jaedong, Effort, Soma
T: Flash, Light, Rush, Sharp, Royal, JyJ, Barracks, Speed, Ssak
P: Snow, Best, Mini, Bisu, Rain, Stork

Discrepancies:
I think Snow and Soulkey are actually about even and are clearly the best two players. Both are basically untouchable against Terran and they're about equally good against Protoss. Soulkey is slightly better in the head-to-head, which is important, but I'd actually trust Snow more against top Zergs. Snow has a 53.6% win rate while SK has a 48% win rate. I'd still favor Soulkey, because he's so clutch and so good in tournament player, but unlike last season, where I'd favor Soulkey over the field, I think they're pretty close this time.

I understand the hype about Soma, but I'm not quite ready to get on the train. He's sitting at a 43% win rate against top Ts. Part of that is that he's played Flash a lot, who seems to be the best TvZ player by far, but he is also struggling against Rush (1 win, 7 losses). He's also struggling against Mini (5 wins, 10 losses). He's doing very well against Bisu (12 wins, 7 losses) and Best (7 wins, 1 loss). He's clearly a very good player, but I don't have enough evidence to conclude whether he's as good as, say, Rush or Mini. I do have enough evidence to conclude he's probably not as good as Soulkey and Snow. They have dominating records against basically everyone. I also think he's pretty clearly behind Light.

I like Royal as a player, but I don't think Royal can be in the same conversation as Sharp or Mini. I don't think he's even as good as Jaedong. He's 45% against top Zs; for reference, Light is 59%, Sharp is 54%, Rush is 57%, and Barracks is 48%. His TvT also lags behind top Terrans at about 40%, with losing records against Sharp, Barracks, Speed, and a pretty sad 7 wins, 14 losses against Rush. His TvP is a more respectable 39%, about even with Rush, Sharp, and Speed but well behind Light (Barracks is also much better, but Barracks cheats a little because he plays Stork a lot more than the other guys).

There are some question marks around Effort due to small sample size, but from what I can see, he's not great. He's 0 and 5 against Rush and has an abysmal 4 wins and 20 losses against Barracks, although he's whooping on sSak and Royal. He's also getting walloped by Mini: 3 wins and 13 losses. Worst of all, he's struggling against Mong, who is not a top Terrans but whose stats I have because he's in the tournament. 5 wins, 11 losses against Mong.

Larva, as best I can tell, is not any good. 4 and 14 against Sharp. 5 and 30 against Rush. 8 and 22 against Barracks. His only win against a top Protoss is a lone win against Stork.

Ample has too small of a sample for me to gauge reliably. He has some encouraging signs. He's 2-0 against Best and 3-2 against Rush, so he's defintely capable of getting some big wins. But it's hard for me to favor over TY, who has some good wins with larger sample sizes: 7-5 against Soma, 6-7 against Jaedong, 4-2 against Barracks.

Changes:
I agree that Hero has slipped a lot. His ZvZ continues to be a weakpoint. He's at an appalling 36% against top Zs. What's new is that he's also struggling against Ts: 45%, which is Jaedong-level. He's getting smashed by Sharp, Rush, Light, and Flash, and going about even with Royal and Barracks. He's still about tied with Soulkey for best ZvPer, so I'm not quite as low on him as you are, but it looks like it's not what he once was.

I'm even lower on JyJ than you are. His TvP has long been an issue, and it's at 27% right now. The difference is he used to be great at TvZ, but now he's at 38% - the very lowest among top Terrans. He'd be lucky to make it to the Ro16.

Jaedong is actually doing extremely well. He seems to be the third best ZvZer after Queen and Soma. He struggles against Light and Rush but does very well against the rest of the Ts. He's losing to Snow but is even or better against all of the other Ps, similar to Queen. I would not be surprised if Jaedong made Round of 8 again.

I'm high on Mong for this season. He has a much better TvZ matchup spread than I would expect. 4-5 against hero, 4-5 against Action, 11-5 against Effort (although a bad 3-9 against Jaedong). I don't have enough TvT or TvP for him to say anything especially confidently there, but he's historically been solid at those matchups.. Getting stuck with Rush and Jaedong in his group is a bad pull for him, but in terms of skill, I think he's a lot better than he has been in recent seasons.

On August 11 2025 16:34 prosatan wrote:
God damn , i cannot upload the image

I'll write them!! :

S: Light , Queen , Sk , Snow , Mini

A: Bisu , Best , hero , Rush , Soma

B: JD, Royal , Sharp , Speed , Rax

C: Jyj , Stork , TY , sSak, Larva , effort

D:Ample , BTS, Mong

E: Calm , Hyun

F: Saber , Paralyze

On August 11 2025 08:36 RJBTVYOUTUBE wrote:
As is tradition, a tier list to rank the players based on their perceived power levels going into the Round of 24 of ASL20!

Link: Click here

My list based on their current performances
+ Show Spoiler +

On August 11 2025 19:39 TMNT wrote:

Light has been offline for almost a month. How can you rate him at A? Or he is always A by default regardless of inactivity?

On August 11 2025 19:39 TMNT wrote:

Light has been offline for almost a month. How can you rate him at A? Or he is always A by default regardless of inactivity?

On August 11 2025 23:30 pseudosignal wrote:
Bisu has underperformed for like 12 straight ASLs and people still rate him so highly :/

On August 11 2025 23:30 pseudosignal wrote:
Bisu has underperformed for like 12 straight ASLs and people still rate him so highly :/

On August 11 2025 23:30 pseudosignal wrote:
Bisu has underperformed for like 12 straight ASLs and people still rate him so highly :/