On January 28 2022 02:04 Xain0n wrote: Zest's 2021 was great but there should be no doubt Trap was the best Protoss in 2021, overall; thus said, I agree with tigera6 about Zest's current form.
As for Maru, iirc he has never even reached the finals of an offline event outside of Asia(he won WESG in China and came second at IEM Taipei). It's clear that Maru could win Katowice(he reached the semifinals there twice before), it's also undeniable that he hasn't been as formidable playing abroad as when he plays in Korea(or not so far from Korea) throughout his whole career; maybe it's a coincidence but it's a ten year long coincidence.
I mean, for most of maru's career he barely played outside of korea. That's like one of the things he is known for. It would make sense that he wouldn't be as successful outside of korea then
Yeah, his 2019 IEM Katowice was a disaster but outside of that he did quite well in foreign tournaments, 2 times semifinals in Katowice, 1 time in Blizzcon. just unfortunate he didn't win one, in most of those finals he would've been favored if he made it there.
Well he did, but he never delivered. Which is the point. Maru is weaker outside of Asia(so people stop complaining about WESG where the hardest part for a Korean player was the Korean qualification). It's not that he's that bad, but imagine 2018/9 - he was about to win another Code S(or he just won his 4th) and yet he didn't deliver the WC crown. That's the whole point. He was the best player of 2018 and he gets smashed by sOs in the RO8 of Blizzcon.
Maru outside of Korea is much weaker. He delivers great games, no question about that, but not results. Case in point Maru v Dear Edit> Even the last IEM. Sure, he lost to the "future" winner Reynor, but what did Reynor do after that? Gone into hiding. What did Maru do? If Kato is offline Maru won't win it. Even in a great form he will run out of builds somewhere around the RO8/RO4. As is his standard.
He is not weak outside of Korea, you just can't win everything lmao. Especially Blizzcon 2018, TvP was very hard in macro games but it was hidden by Maru's proxies; problem was that sOs helped him with these proxies so he knew how to handle them, Maru crumbled. It's not like other terrans did better than Maru outside of Korea, except for IEM 2019 where TY got one round further iirc (just got out of group stages).
the point is he never. won. anything. That's the whole point. The exact same point applies for Trap v tier1 tournaments.
Edit> And this is not about "but other Terrans did the same or worse". Maru was the best Terran for years now. Maru won plenty of tournaments with the best players in them. Maru never won anything outside of Asia. I don't see how WESG which is basically identical time-zone(if not the same) applies to the fact Maru seems to have issues with travelling but whatever.
Maru is one of the best Terrans in the history of SC2. Yet he for some reason is weaker in the foreignerlands. TY won IEM. Byun won Blizzcon. Innovation is in the same boat
Edit 2> This is not shitting on Maru BTW. This is just stating why so many people think he won't win Katowice. Similarly many wouldn't consider Trap to win Katowice even if he was in a great form. Because the best he did in a "tier 1" tournament was 2nd. He's either cursed or otherwise blocked to win thes, unfortunately.
Yeah he hasn't won anything. However is it because he played worse in foreign events or because he got unfortunate? I think those results he had could have just as well also happened if the tournaments were played in korea. He wins more korean tournaments than anyone else but he isn't Flash and also loses a lot. At Katowice 2019 he clearly underperformed but I think at the other tournaments he didn't necessarily play worse than in korean tournaments.
He lost 2 times by 1 map to Rogue. Do you really think this couldn't have happened if the tournaments were played in korea?
Gamescom 2013, Blizzcon 2015, 2018, 2019, Kato 2015-19, there has been a good number of middly to bad performances from him at foreign event.
what are those, 8 tournaments? (Kato 16 was foreigner-only). Since his last GSL win, he has lost 8 Code S in a row. Yes it is statistically more than possible that this is just by chance and he doesn't perform worse than in korean tournaments, he isn't Flash, losing 8 tournaments in a row isn't out of the norm for him.
Don't get me wrong, him not having a WC title is a significant hole in his resumee but I just can't agree that he performs significantly worse in overseas tournaments. His play there looks as strong as always(except at Kato 19), it just hasn't quite worked out with the title yet.
Maru loves to play a game style which is playing on a knives edge. Which - when played properly - looks fabulous. When something fails randomly, because shit happens, it doesn't look good. To me it always looked like Maru either didn't have his day and did something wrong, or just ran out of builds and did some standard nonsense which isn't his cup which resulted in doing more wrong things.
On January 28 2022 04:24 Fanatic-Templar wrote: HELL YEAH! NEW PROTOSS CHAMPION FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2019!
And some of the games were exciting, too!
Absolutely ecstatic in this corner, I know it's Super Tournament and those don't correlate to Protoss performance in anything else, but I really feel optimistic right now. Good times are coming. Let's go!!!!
Wait what? Zest and new? Did you miss Trap the last year? I'm confused :D
On January 28 2022 15:29 JJH777 wrote: Calling it a decent crown is slandering a tournament that pays $200k to first place. There is 0 reason besides bias to rate WESG below or even equal to anything besides Katowice, Blizzcon, and Code S. It is very far above anything else. And it's also closer to Blizzcon than most think. If you look at who a champion beat to win each Blizzcon vs each WESG it's not going to be that different most of the time. It's only below Code S/Katowice due to their superior formats.
There's like a million reasons to rate WESG below many other tournaments. Why would people be biased? People love Maru.
There were exactly three Koreans at WESG. And this is at a time before foreigners were regularly putting up extremely competitive matches against Koreans.
To make the point even more: Look at WESG 2016. Do you really think that is a mammoth achievement for TY to beat, let's see, Maru,, and uh Neeb and Stephano? Comparable to a Blizzcon or Code S?
The reason there is 3 koreans is because.... they all play a qualifier to determine those 3. That qualifier is tougher than the tournament and is actually one of the tougher tournaments period because everyone wants to go to WESG for the 200k. Obviously this has declined a bit in the post Kespa era with the depth of the scene not being as insane as it once was.
Blizzcon and these season finals usually have quite a few players that aren't really competitive as well.
On January 28 2022 04:24 Fanatic-Templar wrote: HELL YEAH! NEW PROTOSS CHAMPION FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2019!
And some of the games were exciting, too!
Absolutely ecstatic in this corner, I know it's Super Tournament and those don't correlate to Protoss performance in anything else, but I really feel optimistic right now. Good times are coming. Let's go!!!!
Wait what? Zest and new? Did you miss Trap the last year? I'm confused :D
No. Trap was the old champion, now we have a new one. So this is the first time we get a Protoss champion that isn't Trap since 2019. What's confusing?
On January 28 2022 15:29 JJH777 wrote: Calling it a decent crown is slandering a tournament that pays $200k to first place. There is 0 reason besides bias to rate WESG below or even equal to anything besides Katowice, Blizzcon, and Code S. It is very far above anything else. And it's also closer to Blizzcon than most think. If you look at who a champion beat to win each Blizzcon vs each WESG it's not going to be that different most of the time. It's only below Code S/Katowice due to their superior formats.
There's like a million reasons to rate WESG below many other tournaments. Why would people be biased? People love Maru.
There were exactly three Koreans at WESG. And this is at a time before foreigners were regularly putting up extremely competitive matches against Koreans.
To make the point even more: Look at WESG 2016. Do you really think that is a mammoth achievement for TY to beat, let's see, Maru,, and uh Neeb and Stephano? Comparable to a Blizzcon or Code S?
The reason there is 3 koreans is because.... they all play a qualifier to determine those 3. That qualifier is tougher than the tournament and is actually one of the tougher tournaments period because everyone wants to go to WESG for the 200k. Obviously this has declined a bit in the post Kespa era with the depth of the scene not being as insane as it once was.
Blizzcon and these season finals usually have quite a few players that aren't really competitive as well.
There's plenty of tournaments (more so historically probably pre-2018, at least pre-covid) that always had extremely stacked korean qualifiers (at least for free spots in group stages etc.).
And by your logic Blizzcon should be the absolute peak of all tournaments because not only did Koreans need to *qualify* to enter, they needed to continually show they were the top ~8 over a period of a whole year.
I see your logic and it may be arbitrary, but winning a qualifier is not what we care about, no matter how impressive it was what you did. Pervical could absolutely wreck a qualifier beating Dark, Maru, and you name it, and then lose in the Ro24. The community would simply not view it as meaningful as if he made it to even just the round of 8 of a major international tournament.
On January 28 2022 04:24 Fanatic-Templar wrote: HELL YEAH! NEW PROTOSS CHAMPION FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2019!
And some of the games were exciting, too!
Absolutely ecstatic in this corner, I know it's Super Tournament and those don't correlate to Protoss performance in anything else, but I really feel optimistic right now. Good times are coming. Let's go!!!!
Wait what? Zest and new? Did you miss Trap the last year? I'm confused :D
No. Trap was the old champion, now we have a new one. So this is the first time we get a Protoss champion that isn't Trap since 2019. What's confusing?
if you worded it like that initially it wouldn't be confusing. I also had no idea what you meant to say
On January 28 2022 04:24 Fanatic-Templar wrote: HELL YEAH! NEW PROTOSS CHAMPION FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2019!
And some of the games were exciting, too!
Absolutely ecstatic in this corner, I know it's Super Tournament and those don't correlate to Protoss performance in anything else, but I really feel optimistic right now. Good times are coming. Let's go!!!!
Wait what? Zest and new? Did you miss Trap the last year? I'm confused :D
No. Trap was the old champion, now we have a new one. So this is the first time we get a Protoss champion that isn't Trap since 2019. What's confusing?
if you worded it like that initially it wouldn't be confusing. I also had no idea what you meant to say
Maybe a native speaker thing, I instantly took it to mean there is a Protoss champion other than Trap for the first time since 2019
On January 28 2022 04:24 Fanatic-Templar wrote: HELL YEAH! NEW PROTOSS CHAMPION FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2019!
And some of the games were exciting, too!
Absolutely ecstatic in this corner, I know it's Super Tournament and those don't correlate to Protoss performance in anything else, but I really feel optimistic right now. Good times are coming. Let's go!!!!
Wait what? Zest and new? Did you miss Trap the last year? I'm confused :D
No. Trap was the old champion, now we have a new one. So this is the first time we get a Protoss champion that isn't Trap since 2019. What's confusing?
if you worded it like that initially it wouldn't be confusing. I also had no idea what you meant to say
Maybe a native speaker thing, I instantly took it to mean there is a Protoss champion other than Trap for the first time since 2019
Most probably. I am just glad I wasn't the only one confused
On January 28 2022 04:24 Fanatic-Templar wrote: HELL YEAH! NEW PROTOSS CHAMPION FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2019!
And some of the games were exciting, too!
Absolutely ecstatic in this corner, I know it's Super Tournament and those don't correlate to Protoss performance in anything else, but I really feel optimistic right now. Good times are coming. Let's go!!!!
Wait what? Zest and new? Did you miss Trap the last year? I'm confused :D
No. Trap was the old champion, now we have a new one. So this is the first time we get a Protoss champion that isn't Trap since 2019. What's confusing?
if you worded it like that initially it wouldn't be confusing. I also had no idea what you meant to say
Maybe a native speaker thing, I instantly took it to mean there is a Protoss champion other than Trap for the first time since 2019
Most probably. I am just glad I wasn't the only one confused
Oh, I think I get it. It might be because normally that statement would have been dated from the last time we got a new Protoss champion - that is, "New Protoss champion for the first time since December 2020", but because I included the 2019-2020 period of no Protoss champions at all, it made it less clear that I was referring to Zest as succeeding Trap. Could that be it?
EPT
If Kato is offline Maru won't win it. Even in a great form he will run out of builds somewhere around the RO8/RO4. As is his standard.
