i have never disagreed with a pr as much as i do this month.
all you had to go on in placing stork in the second spot was his 3-0 in the osl group. sure, that's nice, but the opponents weren't who knows what, and 2nd place should mean a little more. people keep repeating how godly his pvt and pvp are, as if that would somehow make up for how much he sucks at pvz. two days ago, and i think that was before this edition of the pr came out, he failed to qualify even for survivor's, losing again to a zerg. this means we won't be seeing stork in the msl for quite a while; he's about as far from it as zeus. what this guy is doing in the no2 spot is a mystery to me.
Stork lost to consecutive 5pools. It sucks, but its not enough for me to drop him. Stork's PvT and PvP are without a doubt the best in the world right now, and that's more than enough reason to keep him at #2. Specific results aren't everything.
on to the next point, much continues to be overrated in the tl.net pr. i think this is the third month of that happening. i'm not saying he isn't good, but he's "good" in a way which people tend to call "solid", not "revolutionary". based on recent games, you could replace anytime, kal and much for one another in any ranking. even if you want to give him 4th, why would you pick him over kal?
Much has looked significantly better than Kal lately, with his games in the ProLeague playoff and his OSL group. Granted, his OSL group wasn't the strongest, but he obliterated everyone with style and grace. Much is incredibly powerful right now, and watching everyone's games tells me there's no one but the top 3 that are playing better.
last: bisu. this month he didn't lose more games to zerg, or in a worse fashion than stork did one month ago, and at that time stork got 3rd place, with protests from a lot of tl.netters that he didn't get bisu's spot. he managed to keep qualify for the next round of the osl, albeit only after giving heart attacks to a few of his hardcore fans.
The difference here is that PvZ is Bisu's premiere matchup. His PvT and PvP are nowhere near the level of Stork right now. His PvT isn't as good as Much's PvT, though we have yet to determine how they stack up against one another PvP.
Bisu's MSL group was a group he himself chose in order to give himself a straight path to the round of 16, and he got utterly buttfucked. Bisu is still looking pretty good, but he's showing more and more vulnerability lately, especially in PvZ, where he is supposed to be unmatched.
so, bisu is in ro8 in the osl, and qualified for the next survivor's. stork is in ro8 in the osl and about as far away from the msl as the general public. i guess we just have higher expections of bisu than just him winning. we want to see him crush his opponent into oblivion, otherwise he drops five ranks.
Again, specific results aren't everything. The number of wins a player gets has very little to do with where he sits on the Power Rank, the focus is rather on their performance relative to their peers in-game.
On February 07 2008 10:40 GeLaar wrote: <SOME SPOILERS THROUGH REFERENCES TO VERY RECENT GAMES>
i have never disagreed with a pr as much as i do this month.
all you had to go on in placing stork in the second spot was his 3-0 in the osl group. sure, that's nice, but the opponents weren't who knows what, and 2nd place should mean a little more. people keep repeating how godly his pvt and pvp are, as if that would somehow make up for how much he sucks at pvz. two days ago, and i think that was before this edition of the pr came out, he failed to qualify even for survivor's, losing again to a zerg. this means we won't be seeing stork in the msl for quite a while; he's about as far from it as zeus. what this guy is doing in the no2 spot is a mystery to me.
on to the next point, much continues to be overrated in the tl.net pr. i think this is the third month of that happening. i'm not saying he isn't good, but he's "good" in a way which people tend to call "solid", not "revolutionary". based on recent games, you could replace anytime, kal and much for one another in any ranking. even if you want to give him 4th, why would you pick him over kal?
last: bisu. this month he didn't lose more games to zerg, or in a worse fashion than stork did one month ago, and at that time stork got 3rd place, with protests from a lot of tl.netters that he didn't get bisu's spot. he managed to keep qualify for the next round of the osl, albeit only after giving heart attacks to a few of his hardcore fans.
so, bisu is in ro8 in the osl, and qualified for the next survivor's. stork is in ro8 in the osl and about as far away from the msl as the general public. i guess we just have higher expections of bisu than just him winning. we want to see him crush his opponent into oblivion, otherwise he drops five ranks.
ill have to disagree with you on some points in your statement.
to start things off, stork as number 2. you tend to disagree on the fact that he sucks at p v z. he did fail for survivor but he lost to two 5-pool rushes. it doesnt really show how bad his p v z is when he gets cheesed like that. but even with the fact that he will not be in the msl, can you deny that he is the current god of pvt and pvp? power rank was never meant to be purely on stats and results, you have kespa for that. it is about how strong the players are playing relatively to each other. watch the game between flash and stork and tell me stork isnt playing beautifully. i dont know the osl groups for the ro8, but as long as he doesnt meet jaedong and a BIG MAYBE on lux, he will be fine advancing to the ro4 at least..
tell me how is much overrated? he has been showing consistent results and winning. if your argument for stork being lower about how his results dont correlate with his skill, than this should be a no brainer for you. i forget which game much played against a zerg with the most amazing storms we have seen in a while. and as much of an anytime fan i am, i would not place him on equal of much in recent form they are in. hell, the predicitions for this month i didnt even place him in the top 10 due to his utter failure in the msl against nada -_-; much has been showing very consistent results and his only recent losses include best and luxury. best is a freaking sniper taking down many top protoss gamers like pusan, much(lol), anytime, lately.
also when was the last time u actually saw a "revolutionary" player? i can think of only a few: savior, boxer, nada, bisu, nal_ra, gorush, yellow, iloveoov are only a handful. these are the players who freaking changed how the game was played, and not many ppl do that in the way these ppl influenced starcraft.
bisu didnt lose in such a fashion as stork against zerg opponents, but comon, we are talking about bisu here. his BEST MATCHUP is P v Z. there is no doubt about this. his games vs terran have been relatively shaking excluding his games on katrina where he goes 2base carrier. (i havent seen the game between xellos and bisu in tiebreaker, but who cares, xellos aint top tier terran nemore). his p v p, we saw how much stork dominates him in this matchup in ever OSL last season. he has not performed anywhere near the expectations we have had of him. when he picked his msl group of all zergs, everyone was thinking, "easy path to get into ro16 for bisu" all zergs, noone doubted his ability to take on zerg opponents in the late game. but then he fell from msl, he nearly fell out from osl but xellos beat july with an all in when july played standard(oh the irony).
just to sumrise really quick for those who dont want to read my wall of text 1. stork is still playing up to his level, his level of play has not dropped. still the godly p v p and p v t master, no doubt about it.
2. much aint overrated. if you try to place anytime or kal inplace of this man, it is blasphemy. he is consistent and shown flashes of brilliance throughout this month (mainly his storm use)
3. bisu has dropped in the potential he can play at. his form is nowhere near as good as during the gomtv seasons where he took gold. i mean, just look at his msl group... he was up against 3 zergs... and he didnt pass through it. 3 months ago, who would have believed that was possible?
we are all fanboys but give steve the credit he deserves. HELL HE EVEN DROPPED SEA FROM POWER RANK. PROPS TO YOU MAN~~ (then again my love for anytime is probably why i am loving this power rank.) GJ STEVE
On February 07 2008 10:50 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote: Again, specific results aren't everything. The number of wins a player gets has very little to do with where he sits on the Power Rank, the focus is rather on their performance relative to their peers in-game.
that's just the point. even the strength the players show in indivdual games is counted differently. first of all, it's not 5-pools that eliminate stork. in the larger picture of things he lost because he can't play a decent pvz against anyone. it doesn't take jaedong or savior to knock him out of a league (although it helps); appearently just about _any_ zerg will do. a player who gets eliminated from any league as soon as he faces a zerg in a best-of-anything got second place in pr. and yet, his pvz failures are _still_ being attributed to rushes.
also, i find it a bit unfair to interpret the way bisu picked his msl group as a sign of taking an easy way out. first of all, picking jaedong for his group strikes me as having been rather risky. it looked more like fan service (giving us what everyone had wanted for an osl final). there would have been less skilled zergs to pick from, had he wanted to make it easy for himself (as mind did). also, he's generally not known to do this: in gomtv msl s2 he picked an all terran group for himself, when pvt was the last match-up he had to prove himself in.
i think it's precisely the way you interpreted the value of individual games that justifies what i said: appearently more is expected of bisu than stork.
Wow... I must say... Great fucking job with this months power rank. So hard to call so many spots, but I'm inclined to agree with you on virtually everything.
Whats more, Savior has NEVER not been on the power rank. He has been ranked highly in every single one, aside from January and now this.
To the bisu fans out there: As Steve said, stork's PvT and PvP are shit hot. Bisu's are not, and his saving grace of PvZ seems to have gone out the window with loses to July, Jaedong, Fake Yellow and Luxury.
On February 07 2008 10:40 GeLaar wrote: <SOME SPOILERS THROUGH REFERENCES TO VERY RECENT GAMES>
i have never disagreed with a pr as much as i do this month.
all you had to go on in placing stork in the second spot was his 3-0 in the osl group. sure, that's nice, but the opponents weren't who knows what, and 2nd place should mean a little more. people keep repeating how godly his pvt and pvp are, as if that would somehow make up for how much he sucks at pvz. two days ago, and i think that was before this edition of the pr came out, he failed to qualify even for survivor's, losing again to a zerg. this means we won't be seeing stork in the msl for quite a while; he's about as far from it as zeus. what this guy is doing in the no2 spot is a mystery to me.
Stork lost to consecutive 5pools. It sucks, but its not enough for me to drop him. Stork's PvT and PvP are without a doubt the best in the world right now, and that's more than enough reason to keep him at #2. Specific results aren't everything.
Where is everyone getting this "Stork losing to consecutive 5-pool" business? As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm totally wrong), he actually defended the 5-pool successfully (2nd game), but lost the 3rd game in his series against some no-name Zerg (Bright) in the MSL qualifiers to a hydra push. He went 2 stargate sair and STILL FAILED to scout for hydras and just assumed it was all mutas after his zealot saw the spire. The hydras were actually massing outside of Stork's base for several minutes and he was still clueless about it. Maybe it was just overconfidence, but IMO it's just a sign of pretty shitty PvZ awareness to me, in the deciding game before the MST.
On February 07 2008 10:50 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote: Again, specific results aren't everything. The number of wins a player gets has very little to do with where he sits on the Power Rank, the focus is rather on their performance relative to their peers in-game.
that's just the point. even the strength the players show in indivdual games is counted differently. first of all, it's not 5-pools that eliminate stork. in the larger picture of things he lost because he can't play a decent pvz against anyone. it doesn't take jaedong or savior to knock him out of a league (although it helps); appearently just about _any_ zerg will do. a player who gets eliminated from any league as soon as he faces a zerg in a best-of-anything got second place in pr. and yet, his pvz failures are _still_ being attributed to rushes.
also, i find it a bit unfair to interpret the way bisu picked his msl group as a sign of taking an easy way out. first of all, picking jaedong for his group strikes me as having been rather risky. it looked more like fan service (giving us what everyone had wanted for an osl final). there would have been less skilled zergs to pick from, had he wanted to make it easy for himself (as mind did). also, he's generally not known to do this: in gomtv msl s2 he picked an all terran group for himself, when pvt was the last match-up he had to prove himself in.
i think it's precisely the way you interpreted the value of individual games that justifies what i said: appearently more is expected of bisu than stork.
I've said many many times that Stork is terrible against Zerg. I'm perhaps more of an advocate of that than anyone else at this site. I don't even LIKE Stork, I much prefer Bisu as a player.
Now that that's out of the way, the fact is that Stork is the best in the world at two matchups, and his current form is really good.
Bisu gets punished more for losing to zergs because his PvT and PvP are nowhere near as good as Stork's.
On February 07 2008 10:50 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote: ok here we go!
On February 07 2008 10:40 GeLaar wrote:
i have never disagreed with a pr as much as i do this month.
all you had to go on in placing stork in the second spot was his 3-0 in the osl group. sure, that's nice, but the opponents weren't who knows what, and 2nd place should mean a little more. people keep repeating how godly his pvt and pvp are, as if that would somehow make up for how much he sucks at pvz. two days ago, and i think that was before this edition of the pr came out, he failed to qualify even for survivor's, losing again to a zerg. this means we won't be seeing stork in the msl for quite a while; he's about as far from it as zeus. what this guy is doing in the no2 spot is a mystery to me.
Stork lost to consecutive 5pools. It sucks, but its not enough for me to drop him. Stork's PvT and PvP are without a doubt the best in the world right now, and that's more than enough reason to keep him at #2. Specific results aren't everything.
Where is everyone getting this "Stork losing to consecutive 5-pool" business? As far as I'm aware (correct me if I'm totally wrong), he actually defended the 5-pool successfully (2nd game), but lost the 3rd game in his series against some no-name Zerg (Bright) in the MSL qualifiers to a hydra push. He went 2 stargate sair and STILL FAILED to scout for hydras and just assumed it was all mutas after his zealot saw the spire. The hydras were actually massing outside of Stork's base for several minutes and he was still clueless about it. Maybe it was just overconfidence, but IMO it's just a sign of pretty shitty PvZ awareness to me, in the deciding game before the MST.
i read your entire post, the reason i'm not writing my reply in a point-for-point form is just for readability. also, my previous post addresses some of the things you said.
On February 07 2008 11:19 koryano321 wrote: 1. stork is still playing up to his level, his level of play has not dropped. still the godly p v p and p v t master, no doubt about it.
yes, he's definitely godly in two match-ups. but since he's incompetent in pvz, that makes him a "two-race specialist" (i just invented the concept). one-race specialists have generally been criticized and got little respect, so i'll tell you what i see as being the proper attitude towards stork: i think he should get only half the criticism and disrespect one-race specialists get.
as we both said in our posts, unless he meets jaedong or luxury (the two zergs currently in the osl), he's going to do fine. that's stork in a nutshell for you: "no-one can stop him!.. as long as he doesn't have to face <insert random zerg player's name here>".
2. much aint overrated. if you try to place anytime or kal inplace of this man, it is blasphemy. he is consistent and shown flashes of brilliance throughout this month (mainly his storm use)
ok, admitted, i was still a little upset because about two months ago much was re-added to the pr, while anytime was added with something like "close but no cigar, try beating something other than no-names for a change". during that time much was praised for all the ace matches he won in proleague. anytime was doing precisely the same thing, in the end with more success (for his team). so, my anytime comment comes about a month late.
i stand by my point about much and kal, though. the "godly storms" you're referring to, albeit nice, were in a game the zerg lost by sending all his lings in straight lines into battle, without even ordering them to attack. kal is now qualified for an msl semi-final. among other things, he's beaten the much-hyped kwanro to get there.
3. bisu has dropped in the potential he can play at. his form is nowhere near as good as during the gomtv seasons where he took gold. i mean, just look at his msl group... he was up against 3 zergs... and he didnt pass through it. 3 months ago, who would have believed that was possible?
yes, you're also making the same point i was trying to make: we just expect more of bisu. i know he started losing, but i also see how tough people are on him compared to other players. even during his period of dominance, we talked about his "pvt weakness", by which we meant that he could still lose games in that match-up. (notice the contrast to stork's "pvz weakness", by which we mean that he stands about the same chance against savior as i do.) it's just different standards used to evaluate the players, that's all i'm saying.
On February 07 2008 11:31 Alethios wrote: To the bisu fans out there: As Steve said, stork's PvT and PvP are shit hot. Bisu's are not, and his saving grace of PvZ seems to have gone out the window with loses to July, Jaedong, Fake Yellow and Luxury.
People are reading way too much into those losses. I don't disagree that Bisu should have tumbled somewhat on the PR this month because of them (though I think you could still make a case for him being as high as #3, I wouldn't personally argue for that), but he's far from washed up either. Luxury beat him with cheese, plain and simple. Definitely creative, map specific cheese, but 5 pooling is cheese no matter how you slice it. July's hydra all-in was arguably cheese as well. Very well executed with the ling speed to prevent scouting it, but still a cheesy all-in. You'll also note that in his next game against July in the tiebreaks Bisu adjusted his style a bit to compensate. Everyone is losing to Jaedong currently, so that doesn't mean a whole lot, and the Yarnc loss was a one time micro error by Bisu. None of this indicates Bisu's PvZ is gone.
Bisu's PvP and PvT always seem to get trashed by his detractors, but they're really quite solid. Stork's are better but Bisu isn't that far behind. See the wins over Stork in Gom S2 and Hwasin in S3, for example.
Stork is playing somewhat better than Bisu at this particular moment, but Bisu still shows plenty of signs that he may have a championship or two left in him, while Stork still looks like a Finals choker with inconsistent at best ZvP.
All things considered, I could see Bisu losing in an all Zerg group on those maps 3 months ago. Just as Stork really seems to struggle against strong Zerg players when he needs to put on a good show, Bisu is not having a good time on Blue Storm. That doesn't excuse either players' weaknesses, merely noting they appear to be sticking points for the two Protoss players.
On the topic of expectations, I do believe there's a disparity of expectations between players such as Bisu/Savior and those who keep falling at near-final hurdles (Stork lulz :'(), but that is to be expected and that's all fair. I would have possibly put Bisu higher, but Steve's logic is fair. Bisu (For whatever reason, although his sickness at that time does probably have something to do with it) let his PvP/PvT slip, and got the wrong end of PvZ for a while. The question will be how he returns, because he has the skills to return those matchups to their prominence, and his PvZ display yesterday showed (to me at least) he's still quite comfortable with his best MU.
Plus there wasn't any double expanding on Katrina. The less Bisu loses to early aggression so that he can play the lategame in any MU, the better he'll be.
Much on the other hand is an enigma to me. I remember Manablue referring to Stork as the little Protoss that could, although I have to wonder if this label could now apply to Much. He's slowly building a pretty good reputation as all rounded and solid player (back from his "good pvt/pvp oh lawd horrible :< pvz). He's certainly capable of going far and I feel people underrate his chances against Flash and Jaedong, should he defeat Bisu.
If he got past Jaedong (or crushed Flash) I'd go so far as to say he'd be the favourite to win in the finale, given Stork no likey finals :p
On February 07 2008 08:31 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote: FUCK YOU, JANGBI. YOU SUCK. ... ... ... ... facing SHITTY-ASS TERRIBLE JERK Jangbi,
QFT
i'm depressed. light and jangbi got through the MSL, but savior and sea didn't.
wtf.
i'm too sad to think deeply into the pr. in my current mindset, i think it's ok.
I saw Jangbi before it was cool to hate on him, before he was know outside of me screaming to my brothers that he was the next big thing PvT. And I still agree with this. Stop hating on new blood just because its new blood, and your fanboy wants Savior and Sea
I wouldn't say Stork's PvP and PvT are much better than Bisu's. Maybe at the moment, and maybe in terms of consistency, but when Bisu is on his game I'd take him over Stork in a heartbeat.
Now obviously he hasn't been on his game as of late. I think Bisu has just lost some of his confidence. If I were the MBC coach, I'd play him a good bit in the beginning of the season to help him regain it (I think that's actually what he was trying to do near the end of last proleague). But eh, that's just me.
sorry if this question doesent fit here but i dont want to open a topic just for one question. What happened to naL_ra? is he eliminated from msl and Osl? there are no more important leagues he can play? Id wanted to know that since i am a fan of him and im sad he has no shape atm (but playin some awesome matches). Thx ppl. Btw the power rank feb is fair, that kid jaedong is just too good and i cheer bisu slump since im ra's fan hehe .
I dont think anytime should be 9, he should be 10 or out. His loss against Nada was absolutely awful. The only reason why he should be on is because of his proleague performance. Personally, i think that UpMagic should be in the pr and anytime should be out.
I think flash should be ranked higher than much because of his insane run in both leagues. He is on fire in the msl, and his osl performance, although not as strong as much, can be explained. I mean, he crushed in the tiebreakers, and his losses were to stork (best pvt out there) and rock (pvt is his only decent mu). That to me seems a lot better than much's 3-0 of yarnc, backho, and frozean.
Even though i hate the rankings this month, the rest of the placements seem solid. Stupid savior T_T
EPT
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