On July 13 2020 05:16 BerserkSword wrote:
Reynor was rumbling with Koreans in the code S when he was like 15.

He was a Blizzcon finalist at the age of what? 17 or 18

He’s beaten the best Koreans and serral in offline premier tournaments several times.

He’s a monster. It’s why I lol when people say Clem, who don’t get me wrong is a great player, is on his level Reynor is a savant considering his age and he seems to just be getting better.

Reynor just seems to be delivering more consistently now. I think most seasoned Starcraft watchers all see his potential ceiling level, just he doesn’t always hit those crazy levels. Recently he seems to be doing so, consistently, which was really what separated him from Serral.

Clem is also a great player. Incredible mechanically, I still favour Special if strategic prep is possible but Clem looks fundamentally stronger than all foreign Ts, and most Korean Ts bar the very best.

i think reynor has always been very close to serral in terms of talent. reynor, though he has always been competitively very mature for his age, has been accelerating his progress in the past year. i think the two will go back and forth as king of europe for as long as they stay competitive. this is probably very NA of me but i kind of see clem and uthermal similarly. they have very high skill ceilings but don't always show it in their matches. both are still always top 10 eu but can definitely be top 1-3 eu at peak performance.

i think this all begs the question.. what brings out peak performance? i think if there were an answer pros would already have it for us. even though i watched years and years of sc2 i was still only like 55-60% on liquibet. players are humans. and humans are flawed.

That is indeed a question for the ages, be it in traditional sports or now eSports the training ground/practice house/ladder monsters who never are able to deliver would be something a sports psychologist would earn vast riches for solving:

As for the EU scene and the two aforementioned Zergs, plus increasingly now Clem, I think their styles and strengths as players are a big piece of their success. As to how they obtained them while others don’t, who knows but namely they’re all really, really damn strong mechanically. They can execute all the builds their competitors employ, but they also can employ styles and moves that only they can really execute to the required level.

There’s a really strong, solid, fundamentally tactically and mechanically sound tier of players but they hit that wall.

Clem can only pull off some of his pushes because of Clem splits for a really crude example, or at least he consistently gains value.

As a Starcraft player ideally you want to play with the highest ceiling possible, provided you can execute it. Then comes delivering that in tournaments. It’ll open strategic options that might otherwise not be open, plus another huge advantage is your opponents won’t get as much good practice against seriously mechanical/multitask heavy play as you will in practicing it.

yes it is indeed a question for the ages. i like that you brought up traditional sports. why are baseball gods, who hit 95-100 mph fast balls thrown from 60 feet away for a living (euro: 153-161 kmph from 18 meters away) with reaction times around .2 seconds able to sustain .300+ batting averages for 15+ years? even though every pitcher has studied them they still can't get them out reliabily. and yet sometimes these gods of baseball slump and hit .100 for 100's of atbats. i don't think we will ever know what fosters peak performance because every athlete is different. and perhaps 'peak performance' or 'skill ceiling' doesn't even exist. that's why handicapping starcraft games... and baseball games.. is so damn. hard. you can study every statistic derived from a player's performance but you never know who is going to show up that day. like i said, humans are flawed.

While I may be no sports god, I know that some days I work better than others. Sometimes these bad days appear with no apparent reason. Others it's very clear: slept too late, in the wrong position or got woken up by the rubbish lorry. Or maybe I ate something that is making my stomach slightly uncomfortable. Or I didn't drink enough coffee. Or I drank too much coffee. Or I had an argument with my wife. Or someone near to me got sick/injured. Etc. etc. etc. Some of these things can be solved with discipline. Others with focus. Others just.. well.. not. Sometimes your training and talent are enough to make you perform sufficiently despite being off your game. And sometimes you make stupid mistakes that mean the next day you have to do it all again (or in the case of Maru, lose to Meomaika)

Alejandrisha

United States6565 Posts

July 14 2020 00:38 GMT

#1622

On July 14 2020 05:22 Acrofales wrote:

Show nested quote +

On July 14 2020 01:36 Alejandrisha wrote:

On July 14 2020 01:11 Wombat_NI wrote:

On July 14 2020 00:34 Alejandrisha wrote:

On July 13 2020 09:41 Wombat_NI wrote:

as a pitcher, some days you just don't have it. doesn't come from any extraneous sources. some days you're untouchable, others you are hanging curves like you're trying to throw a game. we'll never understand how these doods operate. that's why it's so fun to vote and speculate