INnovation is crowned StarCraft 2 Greatest Player of All Time
Lee "INnoVation" Shin-hyung has emerged victorious of the Team Liquid Greatest of all time contest and has been chosen as Starcraft 2 greatest player.
The South Korea native has been an unavoidable and dominating force in Starcraft ever since he stepped into the scene during the transition of Kespa from Brood War to Starcraft 2. Since then he has amassed a staggering 8 individual trophy in Korea, 4 foreign trophies, won 9 teamleague and earn over 700 000$ in prize money. The machine terran also score the highest win rate in both map and series against koreans of any top player as well as the third highest overall in the history of Starcraft with a 67% in map and 72,3%. in series. He also possesses the highest offline win rate of any top terran in all 3 match-ups across his career and only lost 3 of the 15 offline final he has been a part of, shining his brightest when it matters the most.
This result is a confirmation of Innovation status in the Starcraft world, but it was still unclear if his lack of dominating results in the last year would have tarnish his image.
Coming out second was none other than the young terran prince Maru, snapping at the heel of the Machine. The 22 years old 6 times Korean Starleague winner was clearly Innovation most worthy rival, but the prophecy of the 13 years old genius that would once dominate the game has not yet come to pass, his lack of weekender results holding him back at the end. Nevertheless, with no sign of him slowing down he is poised to give Innovation a run for his money in the coming years.
The King of Wings and once undisputed greatest in the history if the game, Mvp, closes an all terran podium. The old king legacy was considered worthy enough to beat Kespa pretender sOs-Zest and soO and earned him a very respectable 3rd place. KT and STK rivals soO and Zest took the final two spots of the top 5, giving us the best performing zerg and protoss.
With an 18th place current world champion Serral was comfortably deemed the best foreigner, but defeats against Classic and Rain left him outside of top echelon of our history, as the TeamLiquid community favored long time constancy and greatness over burst of domination, a tendency that stayed true in all along the tournament.
Overall Koreans unsurprisingly dominate the ranking, scoring 28 of the top 32 spots as only 2 players Stephano and Serral won in head to head comparison versus Korean player, giving sc2 a domination worthy of his older brother.
Complete, 128 players, results can be found here
I would like to thanks all the people who have participate in the voting, discussion and banter and have stuck with me for this journey, I hope you all had as much fun as me!