On July 06 2019 07:57 AzAlexZ wrote: Excuse me but if Taeja who, has a) never won a Blizzcon, or b) never won an individual premier tournament in Korea can be argued for as GOAT then why can't Serral? If Taeja is praised for his prowess in weekender tourney results, why can't Serral be praised in the same way? If all of Taeja's results come from beating people in foreigner-land and sometimes Koreans why can't we say the same for Serral?
You can use the argument that Taeja has peak Terran mechanics.... but Serral (still) has peak Zerg mechanics
This is such extreme Bias! Serral has arguably better results in a shorter time period of pro-play then Taeja (Tell me one Taeja year that is comparable to 2018 Serral, I'm waiting) Serral was still a student in the HOTS expansion, so unlike Taeja, Serral wasn't fully committed to SC2 until he graduated in late 2016 or 2017. So in a shorter pro career Serral has done what Taeja hasn't done yet, win a tournament in Korea, and a Blizzcon.
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
On July 06 2019 07:57 AzAlexZ wrote: Excuse me but if Taeja who, has a) never won a Blizzcon, or b) never won an individual premier tournament in Korea can be argued for as GOAT then why can't Serral? If Taeja is praised for his prowess in weekender tourney results, why can't Serral be praised in the same way? If all of Taeja's results come from beating people in foreigner-land and sometimes Koreans why can't we say the same for Serral?
You can use the argument that Taeja has peak Terran mechanics.... but Serral (still) has peak Zerg mechanics
This is such extreme Bias! Serral has arguably better results in a shorter time period of pro-play then Taeja (Tell me one Taeja year that is comparable to 2018 Serral, I'm waiting) Serral was still a student in the HOTS expansion, so unlike Taeja, Serral wasn't fully committed to SC2 until he graduated in late 2016 or 2017. So in a shorter pro career Serral has done what Taeja hasn't done yet, win a tournament in Korea, and a Blizzcon.
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
A Scarlett or a Snute (or even a Major himself) could have been able to get a Blizzcon round of 4 in Hots if they had to 1 or two matches vs a top Koreans, it is the law of probability at some point foreigner today have more shot against top Korean and fewers matches against lower rank Koreans.
On July 06 2019 07:57 AzAlexZ wrote: Excuse me but if Taeja who, has a) never won a Blizzcon, or b) never won an individual premier tournament in Korea can be argued for as GOAT then why can't Serral? If Taeja is praised for his prowess in weekender tourney results, why can't Serral be praised in the same way? If all of Taeja's results come from beating people in foreigner-land and sometimes Koreans why can't we say the same for Serral?
You can use the argument that Taeja has peak Terran mechanics.... but Serral (still) has peak Zerg mechanics
This is such extreme Bias! Serral has arguably better results in a shorter time period of pro-play then Taeja (Tell me one Taeja year that is comparable to 2018 Serral, I'm waiting) Serral was still a student in the HOTS expansion, so unlike Taeja, Serral wasn't fully committed to SC2 until he graduated in late 2016 or 2017. So in a shorter pro career Serral has done what Taeja hasn't done yet, win a tournament in Korea, and a Blizzcon.
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
On July 06 2019 07:57 AzAlexZ wrote: Excuse me but if Taeja who, has a) never won a Blizzcon, or b) never won an individual premier tournament in Korea can be argued for as GOAT then why can't Serral? If Taeja is praised for his prowess in weekender tourney results, why can't Serral be praised in the same way? If all of Taeja's results come from beating people in foreigner-land and sometimes Koreans why can't we say the same for Serral?
You can use the argument that Taeja has peak Terran mechanics.... but Serral (still) has peak Zerg mechanics
This is such extreme Bias! Serral has arguably better results in a shorter time period of pro-play then Taeja (Tell me one Taeja year that is comparable to 2018 Serral, I'm waiting) Serral was still a student in the HOTS expansion, so unlike Taeja, Serral wasn't fully committed to SC2 until he graduated in late 2016 or 2017. So in a shorter pro career Serral has done what Taeja hasn't done yet, win a tournament in Korea, and a Blizzcon.
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
Aside Serral, I can definitely see tier-3 Korean like Alive, Cure beating any foreigner.
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
Aside Serral, I can definitely see tier-3 Korean like Alive, Cure beating any foreigner.
I think Neeb, Special and Reynor are definitely favored over that calibre Korean player. And probably even the next rank of foreigners like Scarlett, HeroMarine, Showtime, TIME, Harstem or Drogo as well.
Hum, maybe foreigner are a bit better than they were, I still don't think it's a big margin in any case, most of the (real) B teamer korean have retired anyway so it's hard to tell.
In any case I think anyone would take a bracket with Reynor, Heromarine, Lambo and Showtime over one with HyuN, Bomber, San, MC and Jaedong which was the original point, the wcs circuit was way harder during TaeJa time than Serrral, so even if he didin't dominate has hard, I still think the number of victory he had is more impressive.
On July 08 2019 00:46 Nakajin wrote: Hum, maybe foreigner are a bit better than they were, I still don't think it's a big margin in any case, most of the (real) B teamer korean have retired anyway so it's hard to tell.
In any case I think anyone would take a bracket with Reynor, Heromarine, Lambo and Showtime over one with HyuN, Bomber, San, MC and Jaedong which was the original point, the wcs circuit was way harder during TaeJa time than Serrral, so even if he didin't dominate has hard, I still think the number of victory he had is more impressive.
The WCS Circuit was split in half, a similar bracket could be possible in Dreamhack events where there were scarier players than these ones, like Life or Inno. Back in 2013, how menacing were the players of WCS NA for a top tier korean? Maybe one could look at the average Aligulac points of both leagues and compare that to the average Aligulac points of WCS and Code S today; TaeJa in any of case never won WCS, he won tons of DH and HSC.
On July 06 2019 07:57 AzAlexZ wrote: Excuse me but if Taeja who, has a) never won a Blizzcon, or b) never won an individual premier tournament in Korea can be argued for as GOAT then why can't Serral? If Taeja is praised for his prowess in weekender tourney results, why can't Serral be praised in the same way? If all of Taeja's results come from beating people in foreigner-land and sometimes Koreans why can't we say the same for Serral?
You can use the argument that Taeja has peak Terran mechanics.... but Serral (still) has peak Zerg mechanics
This is such extreme Bias! Serral has arguably better results in a shorter time period of pro-play then Taeja (Tell me one Taeja year that is comparable to 2018 Serral, I'm waiting) Serral was still a student in the HOTS expansion, so unlike Taeja, Serral wasn't fully committed to SC2 until he graduated in late 2016 or 2017. So in a shorter pro career Serral has done what Taeja hasn't done yet, win a tournament in Korea, and a Blizzcon.
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
On July 08 2019 00:46 Nakajin wrote: Hum, maybe foreigner are a bit better than they were, I still don't think it's a big margin in any case, most of the (real) B teamer korean have retired anyway so it's hard to tell.
In any case I think anyone would take a bracket with Reynor, Heromarine, Lambo and Showtime over one with HyuN, Bomber, San, MC and Jaedong which was the original point, the wcs circuit was way harder during TaeJa time than Serrral, so even if he didin't dominate has hard, I still think the number of victory he had is more impressive.
The WCS Circuit was split in half, a similar bracket could be possible in Dreamhack events where there were scarier players than these ones, like Life or Inno. Back in 2013, how menacing were the players of WCS NA for a top tier korean? Maybe one could look at the average Aligulac points of both leagues and compare that to the average Aligulac points of WCS and Code S today; TaeJa in any of case never won WCS, he won tons of DH and HSC.
Well by "circuit" I meant all the foreign event outside of Blizzcon But as for WCS NA these guys were scary as hell, Bomber won WCS season 2 and got a Blizzcon, Jaedong reach the final of Blizzcon, ByuL was a solid code S player and reach 3 back to back korean final after his return to Korea, Polt reach the final of IEM Cologne + a Katowice semi and HerO won an IEM and was a code S player after his NA day.
And outside of NA you had MMA, blizzcon finalist + GSL semi-finalist, San who won Asus Rog over the GSL champ Dear and Life and reach top 4 at the GSL global challenge or First who was a HOTS code S player both before and after his european days.
And a slew or other player who could at least take a series of a top korean the way strong foreigner did (HyuN, MC, Heart, Stardust...)
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
Hurricane the Code S semifinalist? Yes, he might very well beat foreigners(not granted). Hurricane in 2018 would not have, for sure. Impact is good but he was Special's safe pick last Code S(ehm), and he would get a ton of ZvZ so not really. Cure at the moment is hard to beat for anyone in Korea, average Cure is not expected to win WCS. Neeb, Special and Scarlett on a good day can beat multiple top tier koreans and win relevant tournaments(well, Special just doesn't regardless of competition), not just compete like Snute, Naniwa and Stephano did in HoTS(WoL was very different).
Hydra and maybe Hyun are the only ones who could be called mid tier koreans in your list(but I really wouldn't), at worst some of them were past their primes in HoTS; I am instead speaking of Duckdeok, Pigbaby, Revival, Sacsri, YoDa... Stats, soO and TY are mid tier koreans too? I'll remember that.
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
Aside Serral, I can definitely see tier-3 Korean like Alive, Cure beating any foreigner.
I think Neeb, Special and Reynor are definitely favored over that calibre Korean player. And probably even the next rank of foreigners like Scarlett, HeroMarine, Showtime, TIME, Harstem or Drogo as well.
No way. Scarlett just lost to Cure, Showtime can't beat korean terrans, Heromarine lost to Keen in IEM qualis (who's even below aLive/Cure). Harstem and Drogo? Lol
Volume and a bit of TL bias in favor of Taeja - he didn't peak as anywhere as high as Serral, but he did it for a long time. Serral already has a Korean premier (GSL vs. the World) and Blizzcon over Taeja - if he can sustain this performance for just a little bit longer (maybe even less than a year), he should eclipse Taeja definitively
I don't think DH Bucharest or Winter were noticiably easier than a global lan event, of course the pristege isn't the same and it has to factor in too.
But TaeJa win were overall harder with the inclusion of Korean and he dominated foreigner as hard or even harder than Serral never losing a tournament to them. He also had multiple compleatly untoutchable run (altought Serral also does)
Plus he dosen't have a longer progammer carreer, he has a equivalent carreer if not shorter, TaeJa semi-retired at the end of 2014 just as he hit 21 years old and he started playing at the start of the game in 2010, winning his first tournament 2 years after at age 19. In comparaison Serral played his first tournament in 2012 and won his first tournament 6 years after, at age 20.
TaeJa had a shorter career at least during his full go, and made his way to the top way faster.
Not true. Serral may have started in 2012, but he was still a student when he started, so he was a semi-pro at best, explaining his lack of results. Serral only became a full-time SC2 pro player after he graduated from school in 2016/2017, and in ONE YEAR, he managed to rise to the top of the scene.
TaeJa was in school too in 2010, unless I'm crazy. Plus playing semi-pro for 4-5 years is still a lot of practice, or rather it's a normal amount of time to get to the top. He was still one of the player with the most games on the ladder for a long time playing part time, and a good number of players did very well while in school, Leenock was still in school when he won his first MLG, Nerchio was in school until 2015 and it didn't stop him winning event. There's been plenty of college student on top of the ladder (Polt, Stephano, Snute back in school...)
It's not the norm of course but starting full time in your early 20 after a few years part time and peaking around your second-third year is the standard path.
TaeJa did the foreign circuit like Serral did and crush it just as hard, just look at those HSC or Dreamhack where it was just foreigner and non gsl Koreans. The circuit was harder and he seemed just as dominant but he won more event overall and more even with top Koreans.
Of course the Blizzcon is missing but I still think TaeJa is well ahead of Serral.
Not sure if the circuit was harder, actually; career wise, I think too TaeJa is ahead of Serral(ironically, a BlizzCon would have relevantly strenghtened his GOAT claim).
After 2017, Serral played just as many offline series he had played since his "start" in 2012; not considering the immensely increased quality of results against much stronger opponents, he just was twice as active.
Of course the circuit was harder it was every foreigner + some Koreans against only foreigners.
I'm not to keen on the whole "foreigner got better" hype train to be honest. (Outside of Serral obviously, and maybe Neeb) I think it's both under estimating the success of 2012-2015 foreigner and over estimating the success of non-Serral foreigner now.
I really don't see how Reynor, Elazer or Special are getting any better results than Snute, Scarlett, Jim, Naniwa or Stephano. Foreigners success now are inflated because of the amount of chances they get, for exemple Blizzcon and GSLvsTW are 8-8 so it's not that surprising to get a foreigner in the semi or quarters. Same for GSL, Naniwa was already qualifying for it when the bracket were full give Snute or Jim half a dozen try and they could have very well made a couple of round of 16.
We should leave 2012 out, it was quite a successful year for the foreigners and it was still WoL.
It's not a hype train, results clearly show foreigners have been way better in LoTV than they were in HoTS; what success are you speaking of, really? Koreans of mid tier class or past their primes were dominating WCS EU where the vast majority of players were non koreans; if you placed eight foreigners at BlizzCon in 2013-2015 not a single one would have gone past ro16, it wasn't a question of opportunities, they just could not beat koreans(two Premier victories in three years of HoTS) to a point that Naniwa and Lilbow qualifying for the event was seen as a huge success, let alone winning series...
When LoTV came, the same foreigners in the Circuit started beating the koreans left, more often than not; Elazer and Special went that far by beating top koreans in their groupstages, not washed up ones. Scarlett won IEM by beating sOs, and foreigners enjoyed a decent success in Code S too; that would have been unthinkable during HoTS, Snute's ZvP only was korean level and he didn't win anything notable out of it.
A more appropriate question would be if foreigners were more successful in WoL or in LoTV(excluding Serral, of course); also, weak foreigners and mid tier koreans still seems worse than more competitive foreigners(including Code S ro16 and above material like Neeb, Special, Reynor, Scarlett) plus Serral, to me.
Scarlett eliminated the OSL champ at WCS season 2 in 2013, reach a WCS semi by 3-0 aLive, beat Bomber who was the reigning WCS season 2 champ at RedBull and 3-0 Life at Northcon + almost beating both the 2013 Blizzcon finalist. Naniwa eliminated INno at WCS season 2 2013 and reach the final of an IEM over Hyun a code S player at the time. Jim beat Life and TaeJa in Shenzen, Snute beat Rain and Classic at Shenzen 2015 ect....
The point is that a good number of foreigner were able to beat the best of the GSL once in a while and it does not seemed to have change. 2016 was a bit better for foreigner but first year of expansion always are and then it is pretty much the same. If we take a look at the HSC, IEM Katowice or GSLvsTW bracket it is still pretty much only korean winning with a foreigner sometime winning one or two matches something they always were able to do.
And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments, they arguably were Code S material; the first year of HOTS was terrible for foreigners.
IEM World Championship has traditionally been a bad tournament for foreigners(unlike BlizzCon, where foreigners have been beating top koreans in bo3 on regular basis in LoTV whereas, and I doubt it could happen, the best foreigners in HoTS would have needed a lucky path with few koreans and favourable matchups to play in order to reach one single ro4); GSL vs The World has been played twice and koreans effectively dominated it(if not for Serral, obviously); HSC, on the other hand, has been decent for foreigners in 2018(Lambo reached the WB final in the first one, Rogue and soO were eliminated in the groupstages with Reynor beating the eventual finals Inno etc) while the 2019 edition greatly missed the trio of top NA players(not to mention Reynor beat the koreans he faced and was eliminated by Snute and Heromarine). Scarlett winning IEM and Neeb reaching the ro4 in Code S can't be ignored; Eu ZvZ is a thing as much as it is a meme(Namshar casually beating soO yesterday is just the latest of many cases).
Koreans are still favored against non koreans, but I fail to see how you could think a significant improvement has not happened; in HoTS, players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner, would you say it's like this now?
"players of the caliber of nowadays TRUE, aLive and Trust would have been expected to beat any foreigner"
These players were much better back then, so its unfair to compare them to the current foreigner player batch. If Impact, Cure and Hurricane started WCS now, they would be expected to beat every foreigner except Serral, and maybe Neeb. So its exactly the same as it was back then. The only difference is, Korea lost depth, WCS gained depth a tiny bit and got Serral. Neeb, Scarlett and Special are still not consistent enough to claim they could compete with Koreans regularly, but on a good day, they can. Same as Snute, Naniwa and Stephano could.
"And they were never capable of reaching a single final while mid/low tier koreans won tournaments"
MMA, MC, Polt, Innovation, Hydra, Hyun, Mvp, Taeja. Some of these mid tier koreans would still beat the crap out of most foreigners today, and except Inno they are either retired, or long past their prime I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is
The only argument that can be taken seriously is ZvZ. Thanks to regularly practicing with and against Serral, foreigners are on another level. But a big part is also that koreans play a dumb meta, they just dont have many good Zergs anymore and didnt adjust well enough to the post Serral ZvZ era. Its like they still think that building a bunch of roaches or 15 pool would work, as they did before...
It's definitely very difficult to juxtapose the old top Koreans from the good ol' days of SC2 onto how they'd fair during LotV. Back in the glory days of WoL and HotS, there were a few flashes of occasional foreigner brilliance and a few memorable runs, but after Stephano and Naniwa (undoubtedly the two best foreigners of the era) left when a lot of the big Korean teams and names left the scene, everything changed and I don't know if there's a way to really measure the 2016/17/18/19 scene and skill level and top players against the old guard that has long since moved on.
I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
On July 08 2019 09:06 Shuffleblade wrote: I feel its obvious the foreign scene has improved compared to the korean scene in general. Its hard to tell if foreigners got better, korea declined or a bit of both. However I feel the best foreigners (excluding Serral for obvious reasons) can be directly compared to the old foreign stars. Stephano won tournaments packed with koreans just like Neeb and Scarlett has done in lotv, when it comes to actual results it feels a bit hard to argue for how the top foreigners have gotten stronger. Foreigners seems to regularly get decently far in GSL recently but thats about it.
But if you look past SpeCial, Scarlett, Neeb and maybe even Elazer then all of a sudden the rest of the foreigners chances against RO16 GSL class opponents seem pretty low.
The amount of foreigners that can really be called equal to the RO16 GSL players, the top of korea is at most 3-4 players not counting Serral.
I don't even think that number would go up that much if we look at RO32 in GSL. Maybe 8-10 foreigners could rumble with those koreans on equal terms but no more. Thats why the depth is so different and also why I value WCS so low, there's basically only 1-3 hard matches for Serral and then he wins the tournament. GSL is many times harder because of how many players there are that are very high class.
Edit: If you really believe the foreigners have caught up, look at the recent tournaments and count the korea vs foreignerland score excludning Serral. Let me tell you, that looks really grim if you look at HSC.
You should not forget Reynor! I kind of agree on your view regarding RO16(I think it's more like 5 plus Serral). When it comes to Ro32, however, I strongly disagree; I am convinced a larger number of foreigners could at least qualify to Code S and that's precisely why you shouldn't discount WCS so easily.
There is no one who realistically thinks foreigners have caught up, but they drastically improved just as you say; at HSC Reynor lost to foreigners and the american trio was missing. I think the distance between the average korean and non korean progamer was maybe at its lowest in 2016 but in 2018 we saw Scarlett winning, Serral dominating and a decent amount of good runs.
In this discussion, we were not comparing top foreigners of LotV to WoL's since Stephano and the others could very well beat koreans in Premier finals but the situation we have nowadays against the complete disaster for non koreans that was HoTS competitive scene.
soO had the most consistent GSL streak up until Maru, and has been a top Zerg for years. The Katowice championship is just the cherry on top, i think he is long past his prime and yet he won the hardest tournament in the world. Nestea's is a player who should not be in this top 8 in my opinion, he won 3 GSLs back when they were a monthly tournament but unlike MC or Mvp he could not stay relevant for long, by the end of 2011 he was struggling with Naniwa and IdrA, broodlord infestor did nothing to help him. He was just another Fruitdealer, just with a longer streak. If you look at the legends who had their breakthrough in 2010 and 2011: MC, Mvp, Polt, MMA and Nestea, all of them managed to stay close to the top for years, except Nestea, whose highlight of 2012 was beating foreigners in Paris.
On July 08 2019 13:12 Morbidius wrote: soO, no contest.
soO had the most consistent GSL streak up until Maru, and has been a top Zerg for years. The Katowice championship is just the cherry on top, i think he is long past his prime and yet he won the hardest tournament in the world. Nestea's is a player who should not be in this top 8 in my opinion, he won 3 GSLs back when they were a monthly tournament but unlike MC or Mvp he could not stay relevant for long, by the end of 2011 he was struggling with Naniwa and IdrA, broodlord infestor did nothing to help him. He was just another Fruitdealer, just with a longer streak. If you look at the legends who had their breakthrough in 2010 and 2011: MC, Mvp, Polt, MMA and Nestea, all of them managed to stay close to the top for years, except Nestea, whose highlight of 2012 was beating foreigners in Paris.
I'm voting soO because he is obviously better but this is very unfair to Nestea. Nestea spent the entirety of 2011 getting eliminated by Mvp in a ton of different events. Off the top of my head there are 3 GSLs and Blizzcon where Mvp eliminated him but I'm pretty sure there was more. If it wasn't for bad brackets he would have had tons of 2nd places in addition to his 3 GSL wins. As it is he still placed highly with lots of ro4/ro8 in GSL. Back then just staying in GSL was hard. All the players you mentioned failed to qualify for at least one GSL code S season in 2011. Hence the Nestea award being called what it is. He also had IPL4 in mid 2012 where he took 3rd. That was an incredibly stacked event with pretty much every top player in the world and the 2 players who placed above him he had beaten earlier in the tournament. If that tournament hadn't had such insane pacing I feel like Nestea could have won it. He was definitely the favorite after he got through his group undefeated and then beat Squirtle and Stephano. He got a ro8 in GSL in 2012 as well which at that time was still a very impressive feat. Also something worth considering is player reputation and for most of 2012 Nestea was still a very feared player. Just see how DRG reacted during the group selections when Nestea picked him in groups. DRG would go on to win that series with some clever builds but his reaction at the time suggested he thought he had no chance. While Nestea is worse than soO he definitely deserves to be right around this placement in a GOAT list. I'd say a little bit lower but not so much lower that he never should make it here and he definitely deserved the wins over the players he faced.
On July 08 2019 13:12 Morbidius wrote: soO, no contest.
soO had the most consistent GSL streak up until Maru, and has been a top Zerg for years. The Katowice championship is just the cherry on top, i think he is long past his prime and yet he won the hardest tournament in the world. Nestea's is a player who should not be in this top 8 in my opinion, he won 3 GSLs back when they were a monthly tournament but unlike MC or Mvp he could not stay relevant for long, by the end of 2011 he was struggling with Naniwa and IdrA, broodlord infestor did nothing to help him. He was just another Fruitdealer, just with a longer streak. If you look at the legends who had their breakthrough in 2010 and 2011: MC, Mvp, Polt, MMA and Nestea, all of them managed to stay close to the top for years, except Nestea, whose highlight of 2012 was beating foreigners in Paris.
I'm voting soO because he is obviously better but this is very unfair to Nestea. Nestea spent the entirety of 2011 getting eliminated by Mvp in a ton of different events. Off the top of my head there are 3 GSLs and Blizzcon where Mvp eliminated him but I'm pretty sure there was more. If it wasn't for bad brackets he would have had tons of 2nd places in addition to his 3 GSL wins. As it is he still placed highly with lots of ro4/ro8 in GSL. Back then just staying in GSL was hard. All the players you mentioned failed to qualify for at least one GSL code S season in 2011. Hence the Nestea award being called what it is. He also had IPL4 in mid 2012 where he took 3rd. That was an incredibly stacked event with pretty much every top player in the world and the 2 players who placed above him he had beaten earlier in the tournament. If that tournament hadn't had such insane pacing I feel like Nestea could have won it. He was definitely the favorite after he got through his group undefeated and then beat Squirtle and Stephano. He got a ro8 in GSL in 2012 as well which at that time was still a very impressive feat. Also something worth considering is player reputation and for most of 2012 Nestea was still a very feared player. Just see how DRG reacted during the group selections when Nestea picked him in groups. DRG would go on to win that series with some clever builds but his reaction at the time suggested he thought he had no chance. While Nestea is worse than soO he definitely deserves to be right around this placement in a GOAT list. I'd say a little bit lower but not so much lower that he never should make it here and he definitely deserved the wins over the players he faced.
You do list some good results but in the end this is the 'Greatest of All Time'' list,staying in code S and some RO8's is not really what makes them great. Needing to search these results as an argument for Nestea's relevance is in itself proof of how irrelevant he was. For every other 2011 star i can point to multiple championships in the following years, even after the Kespa switch. Its not that i'm being unfair to Nestea here, its just that he's being compared to the best of the best. As for the placements there's an elephant in the room when it comes to Zerg players. We all know neither Nestea nor soO are in the top 4 by any reasonable metric.
EPT
I dont understand how a sane person could really think that WCS is stronger now than it was when Koreans were allowed. I dont like using HSC as an argument, but look at the latest HSC results. Koreans dominated yet again, in spite of the fact that they were represented by only 1 player (arguably 2) from the current top 10 in Korea. Occasional victories like Bunny losing a couple of matches, or Zest losing 1 PvP, they also happened before. Again, if you discount Serral, there is no real improvement. In the knockouts, your "mid-tier" Koreans totally butchered every foreigner not named Serral except 1 ZvZ. If that is not an astronomical gap, I dont know what is 
