Power Rank 08/01/2010 - Page 43

On September 01 2010 23:43 raga4ka wrote:


So what else is new ?

On September 02 2010 00:39 Mooncat wrote:


Uhm... Stork was one cannon away from winning the series? His wins in that series were way more impressive than Jaedong's too? Maybe that's what he was trying to say.

The series actually felt, to me at the very least, as if some random decent Zerg was playing against Stork and not Jaedong. 1 build order instant win 1 win through sunken spam + major mistake on Stork's part + another ling win because Stork stubbornly refused to build a 2nd cannon. In the 2 games that Stork won he clearly outplayed Jaedong, with JD looking slightly out of it in both games. Of course this is very simplified, but you get my drift.

Jaedong won fair and square, but the way he did it wasn't Jaedong-esque at all. Don't even try to compare that to Flash vs Fantasy plz.

On September 01 2010 02:41 TwoToneTerran wrote:
These changes aren't as exactly massive as the Bonjwas -- mostly because the playstyles are "standardized," or, to be less patronizing, less volatile than the Bonjwas, in retrospect, were.


anyhow, Flash doesn't need multiple eras to purport his dominance as greater than the Bonjwas. He's already shown more dominance and similar innovation over this past year, which is an increasingly similar timeframe to the others. Jaedong is a type of player that honestly is hard to compare to the bonjwas. He had stretches where he won multiple titles in a row, but never "dominated" the scene like a bonjwa. He's got the title and accomplishment count that dwarfs anyone but Nada, but not even the same aura as savior apparently. He seems like some amalgamation of July and Nada to me -- massively successful ala Nada but less recognized than the Bonjwas ala July.

On September 02 2010 05:34 darkmetal505 wrote:


SuperArc is just pointing out that both Fantasy/Light "[have] the skill required to take down Flash/JD, but choked when it mattered the most." Both series went 3-2 also, if you didn't notice.

How do you qualify more impressive? I'm guess you have this preset notion that Jaedong must play "Jaedong-esque" to be considered impressive. In which case, I'll say again, what obligation does Jaedong have to you for him to play "Jaedong-esque" every game? So Jaedong has to go out into mid/late game for him to be considered impressive? If Jaedong really did play like "some random decent Zerg" AND beat Stork, what does it say about Stork?

Like you pointed out, all of Jaedong's wins did come from Stork's shortcomings in the games. If the opponent messes up why would not grab the opportunity to win? In Game 1, would you have had JD just waltz his lings outside the natural until Stork got his cannons up? In Game 4, JD should have not built so many sunkens to stall Stork till mutas came and let the timing attack work, right? Similarly, you can say that Stork's win in Game 2 was not "impressive" because all he did was rush zealots into JD's third similar to lings breaking down the front. That was because JD got greedy and didn't build more sunks.

I hate all this ignorant accusing of X player of being "cheap" or "cheesy" because YOU want them to play otherwise. The thing is I know exactly where this hate comes from: it's because you're an anti-fan of a certain player or you want the other guy to win, not because you truly think the style is gay. For instance, if Hoejja somehow beat Stork in a similar fashion in a Bo5, we would have exponentially less KT fans complaining about zergling aggressiveness. I've been guilty about it also. I hate it when Flash turtles and builds a massive army for the win, but it's not because I think it's a lame strategy, it's because I don't want Flash to win. If it was Iris or Skyhigh doing the same thing, I wouldn't complain about it at all.

In the end, the player does what he has to in order to win. If a strategy works, why not use it? If they other guy doesn't anticipate it, it's his problem.

edit

Stork is my favorite Protoss and he played some amazing games. In the end, his inattentiveness to the amount of zerglings cost him the game. I would've also liked a long, drawn-out brawl between them, but JD won in the end, so I'm happy.

On September 02 2010 05:42 Mortality wrote:


I cut the post down to this because we keep producing walls of text, which probably is not fair to people only interested in the Power Rank discussion.

The changes, as you say right here, are "less volatile" than the changes the bonjwas made. Yes, that's exactly the point!

Because the changes were so "volatile" as you say, it was much more difficult to adapt. Which is why so many legends who pioneered ridiculous amounts of Starcraft might have only had 2-3 seasons where they even qualified for a Starleague. And some players who pioneered a lot and were famous in there day didn't even play in a Starleague! (Some of them, of course, simply did not go to Korea.) An example of this would be [GG69]NTT.



What I'm saying, regarding bonjwas, is that in past eras, I do not think Flash's level of dominance was even possible. There were too many different things a player would have to account for. Of course if Flash went back in time from today, his win rate would be nearly 100% (although maybe not during 1.07 patch where spawning pool was only 150 minerals and playing against Zerg was fucking impossible unless you were Giyom!... which is only a slight exaggeration, unfortunately).

So to say that his higher win rates and back-to-back possibly -to-back dual finals appearances automatically puts him ahead of the bonjwas is wrong.

Something you will notice if you take a trip back through time is that the each bonjwa has successively been "greater" in peak form force/dominance than the one before. (And yes, I'd argue that Savior was ahead of Oov -- lower overall win-rate, yes, but less favorable maps and ZvZ was only starting to become "less coin-flippy" towards the end of Savior's reign and is still today more of a coin-flip than TvT.) So does that mean Boxer < NaDa < Oov < Savior (at peak ability)? Not at all. The rules of the game had changed. And they've changed since.



As you said, Flash epitomizes the modern gamer. But each of the bonjwas before him epitomized "the modern gamer" when back when they were modern.

And this takes us to "Greatest of All Time." This title can only be earned, in my opinion and the opinions of many others, by one who has proven that they can cross generational boundaries and stand out as a rivaling the top player of that era (for NaDa, this means dual finals YATGK/IOPS during the Oov era: something even Oov did not do; Shinhan-2/Shinhan-3 back-to-back OSL finals then winning OSL Masters over Savior).

On September 02 2010 01:03 SubtleArt wrote:



Man I hate it when people say this. the forge FE is NOT the bisu build, its been around longer and was considered standard longer than he's been around.

The bisu build is forge FE --> mass sairs + DTs.

On September 02 2010 00:06 SuperArc wrote:


Yeah and fantasy has the skills to beat Flash and Light to beat JD. Both choked.

What do you want to say with your post?

On September 02 2010 07:14 Holgerius wrote:

I want to say that Stork is fucking good and by no means someone who will go 0-3 vs JD (which some people thought he would). If only he had the mental strenght of JD or Flash...

On September 01 2010 20:27 Plexa wrote:
Mmmm I wasn't suppose to be writing PR this month but some things came up and my replacement will have to start next month. I'll wait until OSL semis are over then I'll release a PR - hope that's okay with everyone!

On September 02 2010 05:44 TwoToneTerran wrote:


Just because he won, and well deserved the win, does not make the wins impressive or indicative of his dominant ZvP.



I don't really buy the idea that the Bonjwas couldn't be as dominant as Flash. Flash is, this season, defined by his winrate, accomplishments, and innovations. Innovation wise the bonjwas are all obviously on par or further ahead than Flash, but every bonjwa had the opportunity to win like Flash, to dominate as hard in their fewer games as Flash does over his many. And more importantly than that, every bonjwa has had the same opportunities as Flash to do so well in the leagues. There was no excuse for Savior, the man you purport as the most dominant bonjwa yet, to fail out of qualifiers. Qualifiers have and always will be a crapshoot, but 3 times in a row? Flash has only BEEN to 3 qualifiers. That aside, Flash has made every finals (barring a loss to Free) in 2010 and has a good shot at doing what only Nada could pull off -- double title wins against the best zerg around (Nada to Chojja, Flash to Jaedong).

I honestly think you're looking way too hard through the rose tint if you think that the bonjwas were totally more dominant despite all but one only being able to be successful in one league at a time (I suppose Savior also defies this by making the OSL and MSL in the same season, but that peak was also his downfall, losing one title and winning one title didn't finish Flash). In the time of Flash's bonjwa-like run he hasn't JUST been good in the MSL 3 times, then the OSL. He didn't dominate when he JUST had one league to prepare for, he's done it to both leagues for three seasons, on top of being the beastliest proleague player ever. People don't say Federer isn't the most dominant/amazing player Tennis has seen because Bill Tilden used to be the greatest and he had a "different climate," and because Nadal exists. It's disingenuous to just shove him below his predecessors entirely because they were his predecessors and the game wasn't exactly the same.

On September 02 2010 12:27 Lightwip wrote:
In all honesty, I wouldn't mind it if both Jaedong and Flash went into a slump for 2 months or so so that some other players win SL's.

On September 02 2010 12:41 TwoToneTerran wrote:
The Bonjwas lost plenty of games, too, to lesser players who just played better that game. It's not like Oov lost to Reach on Mercury just because he "faltered," as you like to put it, Reach just played better than Oov by elevating his play that game.

As a matter of fact, this is indicative of why I said Flash's win rate is so relevant to the discussion. Even with less games, the bonjwas lost more often to players who obviously weren't bonjwas -- the same way Flash and Jaedong still might lose to players who are not Flash and Jaedong. That doesn't strip oov, nada, boxer and savior of their bonjwadom and it's a false dichotomy you assert by bringing up that list of solid players. For all three terran bonjwas you could basically run down the list of KT players to see who could, on any given day, beat them by playing better than before.



THIS. THAT sentiment right there, that is what it means to think of someone as a bonjwa. When you just wish they'd stop being around for awhile so other players could rise to the summit. I wasn't around, but this HAD to be how everyone felt about Nada and Chojja stealing all the individual league glory (most people only remember Nada, though, poor cowboy zerg D: ). Jaedong and Flash exist as a duality for that right now, I suppose, but IF, and it totally is a big IF, Flash beats Jaedong, he'll have come into an almost identical scenario as Nada and Chojja. I guess it'd be the same if Chojja had been around before Nada and won some titles before Nada became awesome.

On September 02 2010 12:47 Lightwip wrote:

Not talking about being bonjwa, just about the starleague. At first I didn't really mind JD vs Flash, but I'm seriously sick of it now. Something about it just doesn't deliver what it should.

On September 02 2010 12:49 TwoToneTerran wrote: what else is there to merit bonjwadom?