Power Rank 04/14/2012 - Page 5

On May 23 2012 07:34 Mortality wrote:
I think it stops being about knowledge at a certain point and more about what you value. Boxer is still often considered the greatest ever even among elite progamers such as Jaedong, but his accomplishments have been long since surpassed by his immediate successor, NaDa. Trying to talk intelligently about why Boxer was so different is actually kind of hard to do when you're talking to people who only have a modern perspective on BW. At a glance, he's responsible for many "tricks," but real metagaming and the precursors to standard modern build orders and strategies mostly came later, e.g. NaDa's harassment into 3 base 200/200 push became the standard strategy for TvP and the Fake Double which became such an integral part of the TvP doctrine can be credited to Midas. But there's no question in my mind that Boxer is the most influential gamer ever, because at the core of things, the way we USE units, the scouting patterns we take, etc., was so heavily influenced by him that it's not even funny. To understand his immediate impact on the game, you have to take a look at what SC was like before Boxer and then compare it to after Boxer. Furthermore, Boxer's status as the leading SC icon is indisputable, and it's hard to imagine how this game would have developed -- or if progaming would even exist at all -- without him.

But on the flip side, it's pretty safe to assume that if progaming did continue and did thrive in a world without Boxer, then everything Boxer figured out would have been figured out by somebody sooner or later. So how do you compare Boxer to NaDa, who not only had greater tournament success at the height of his reign, but came back to be a dominant force during Oov's reign (going gold/silver in the same season following Oov's 4th SL win) and then again during Savior's reign (going gold/silver consecutively in OSL and then being the FIRST Terran to BEAT Savior in Bo5 in OGN Masters -- admittedly with favorable map conditions, but this was still a landmark victory).

And still, how do you compare that to the paradigm shift of Oov's macro? How do you compare that to breaking the back of Terran dominance as Savior did? How do you compare that to Flash making 6 finals in the same year?

I've actually thought about blogging on my takes on who the best ever are among each race and among each match-up, but it's kind of hard to do when you consider that there's more to understanding Starcraft than just trophy cases and win percentages. This game has changed sooooooooooooo much that you have to take into account the impact on changing the game that each player had and you have to make choices about what you value most.

Anyone who thinks that you can form a list without properly understanding each era and the circumstances is one dumb, dumb, dumb, DUMB fuck.

On July 04 2012 21:23 arbiter_md wrote:
It will happen, when Chinese OSL will start

On July 09 2012 06:14 Zera wrote:


Better do then foreigner ranking based on ISL, gambit's and other leagues.

On July 02 2012 07:07 Mortality wrote:
Because PR is finished.