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On February 12 2024 21:30 Glorfindelio wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 17:24 Poopi wrote:
Maru was godlike on Radhused and still could not win it, it's kinda indicative. Overall Clem played well but Maru played even better and it was not enough, despite playing visibly better than Serral on Radhuset. Doesn't really matter since it's Starcraft 2 twilight year(s) anyways though, things ain't gonna change now Maru played absolutely out of his mind on Radhuset--but this is exactly what I mean. No one else besides Serral would have been able to beat him at that stage of the game. Maru entered into the ghost, liberator stage of the game from a position of strength, and you can see the commentators talking about Serral's dire position as Maru sits comfortably on six bases after his most recent attack fails. But the moment Maru moves to take the gold, Serral gets the perfect fight to swing momentum for the next 10 minutes, where he basically accrues small victories in every engagement until taking a couple bad ones at the very end. And then he pulls off the perfect tech switch with the last of his resources and Maru doesn't have the money to match it. If Serral doesn't break Maru's attempt to grab the gold the first time, there's no way he wins. Hell, if he even trades slightly worse despite having enormous momentum for the last half of the game, he loses. People don't understand how tricky it is to engage into entrenched Terran with Lib/Ghost, never mind when it's Maru. How many times have you seen Reynor crash into an entrenched Maru and break? With respect, he struggles to best Spirit in games like that. Dark gets consistently mauled in late game vs Maru and it doesn't look close. Solar is very good at that stage, but loses more often than not. Serral is the only one that wins games like this. No one else touches Maru in late game TvZ (though Clem has gotten quite close), but no one plays like Serral. All of that being said, many of the games could have gone either way if even one engagement had gone differently, or if Maru had scouted those early attacks a bit sooner. Even that last game, if Maru plugs that mineral line gap so a group of banelings don't merc like 16 SCVs, his early tempo lead likely snowballs into a win, but he let runbys ravage his scvs time and time again. Serral was simply intractable and glacial in his dominance this tournament, and for me, the sheer skill of it was something to behold. Fight it, run from it, destiny still arrives as they say. And who knows, maybe Maru unleashes a similar run this summer--it's certainly possible.
Well put.
Every other Zerg loses in Serral’s position. And Most terrans would win in Marus position against any other Zergs except Serral
People like to over react and said Maru played godlike lol. He kid got caught with “5-6 game ending funguls” yet terran can still drag the game to almost a draw. Just shows how ridiculous op terran late game is
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Great post, AdrianHealeyy.
The facts are indeed overwhelming and indubitable. Serral is and has been the absolute best SC2 player for a while, years even, as well as a tier above everyone else, Maru included. He literally just 4-0ed Maru in the BO7 offline finals of a premier tournament, a former WC tournament. He also convincingly beat every other world-class zerg in the past weeks, making it clear his strength has nothing to do with balance issues. There is absolutely nothing in the whole situation which is ambiguous in any way.
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On February 12 2024 13:47 TheLordofAwesome wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 13:18 geokilla wrote:On February 12 2024 13:07 TentativePanda wrote:On February 12 2024 06:12 ZAWGURN wrote:On February 12 2024 06:08 goldensail wrote:
Maru/Clem have taken Terran to the limit but they never stood a chance against someone who can make full use of the current Zerg arsenal. For years the community has complained about race balance but people continue to dismiss it as 'whine". This is not how competitive gaming should work, and why SC2 is losing its fan base. Well if there’s only one person who CAN make full use of that arsenal I think he deserves to win. Cause it’s clear no one else is doing that. Correct The zerg imba people just can't cope that Serral is the best ever. Yes, the best player ever is going to make a race look imba. Even if that race had the lowest number of qualified players in the tourney In my opinion, part of the reason we've had so many Zerg champions (and Serral's dominance) is partially due to balance and maps getting larger and larger, making it more advantageous for Zerg. Games are also routinely going past 15 minutes meaning whoever mines more tends to win. Whereas before, games were decided by who takes a better fight and had the better strategy. It is a real time strategy game after all. If the best of 7 was played on maps including King Sejong Station, Daybreak, Cloud Kingdom, Ohana, and Whirlwind, I think the tournament results and race balance would be significantly different on the current patch. With that said, given the state of the game right now, Serral is easily the best player in SC2 as of this moment. We can say how imba Zerg is and how weak Protoss is all we want. But for him to drop only 1 map all tournament is not easy and he definitely deserves props. Congratulations to Serral. This is pretty much how I feel. I also think that the LotV minerals/gas changes and the 12 worker start, which were two huge changes at the start of Legacy, both fundamentally favor zerg. It pretty much always takes zerg a little while to figure out a patch or new expansion. That's the nature of defensive, reactive play. Therefore the extent to which the economic changes were a huge buff to zerg wasn't recognized at the start of Legacy, because zergs were getting slaughtered right and left by new cheeses and units they didn't know how to scout or properly react to. And then there was the queen AA range buff in 2016 or 2017 that still exists today, and still makes early games so incredibly boring. Honestly, the balance council should nerf queen range. I could write a whole article on the 12 worker start, and maybe I will, since I think it is so deeply underappreciated EDIT: Props to Serral, he would obviously be a truly amazing player no matter what race he played. I still wish he would switch to protoss or terran for a while, and try to win big championships with them. Would be amazing viewing, at least. EDIT 2: Map picks before vetoes is the dumbest thing ever. I hope no tournament ever does this again. The entire point of a veto is that you can get rid of the absolute bottom of the barrel, garbage tier, totally imbalanced map. Which means vetoes should always come first, as every sane tournament has always done.
While I agree vetoes should *always* come before picks, it's also worth mentioning the current map pool has 9 maps. In previous rotations, there were 7 maps, meaning that you still always had to play the bottom of the barrel maps. While I can absolutely agree that if there are vetoes at all, it's pointless to have them after the first pick rounds, I also think there should be something to be said about forcing games on maps people are uncomfortable with. Radhuset Station is pretty appalling, but I don't think the mappool overall is particularly zerg favored in ZvT. The previous mappool was far worse. This one has most games played on Goldenaura, Alcyone, Oceanborn, Hard Lead, Hecate and Site Delta, all of which are very close to 50/50 in TvZ. It's just in longer series that Solaris, Equilibrium and Radhuset come into play. In previous seasons even a Bo5 generally had at least one broken map in it.
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Great to see Serral get his third World Championship. I've been hesitant in the past but at this point i gotta give him the GOAT title.
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On February 12 2024 13:50 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 08:20 Antithesis wrote:On February 12 2024 06:08 Gescom wrote:On February 12 2024 06:04 ZAWGURN wrote:
If Serral only won because Zerg is OP, then wouldn't Dark and Reynor both be dominating Maru? But Maru beat Dark AND Reynor in this tournament. Serral is just built different. There's no point in even engaging. 'The break was too short', 'the veto system was bad'. People will find any reason to complain. The reality is, in the interview before the match Maru said he was afraid of Serral. And for good reason. Similarly, Maru lost a series to Cyan, and was pushed to the brink by ByuN. Serral went 20-1. Exactly. And it must be said that it was quite disconcerting how quickly a good number of commentators in this thread began to resort to balance whining and dismissive remarks. Everyone was hyping up the finals, until suddenly midway through the series, when it became clear that Maru is losing, some of those guys collectively decided that it is not anymore his own play but balance issues and a single map which prevent Maru from winning. With this dominant a tournament run, an overall score of 20-1, a 3-1 over the next best zerg in the world, and a 4-0 in the finals, over Maru out of all players, there is no reasonable argument left to question the deservedness of Serral's victory and status at large. I love his play, but as I’ve said before he has more excuses made for him than anyone in SC2 history. Which is a shame, there’s just no need to go so overboard sometimes. I will say though, regardless of how the rest of the series went, as and how Maru played incredibly well in that set, you should not be having vetoes come after first map picks. Especially at one of the top 2 tournaments of the whole year. Momentum is a real asset in these things and playing you’re heart out for 40 minutes on a borderline (if even) broken map, only to be 0-2 down against Serral of all people, that’s rough man. I still think Serral takes it in the shape he brought, but maybe we get that series for the ages instead of a sweep. It’s just bad practice. Hopefully they make that rather simple change, and while they’re at it maybe improve their group selections. But hey I can’t complain apart from that, a great feast of StarCraft, production, casting talent and a lack of downtime were absolutely on point. Bit of positivity after my moaning in this post (and my incessant moaning about World Cup qualification), feel it’s in order!
Once again, if you know you're going to have to play one of Radhuset Station or Equilibrium, and think a grueling macro game is basically unwinnable (and it is), then you should probably have some sneaky all-ins prepared for those maps, and if they fail, tap out. Serral clearly didn't want to play Maru's first map picks and had his roach pressure and then a roach all-in planned for both of those picks. They both worked (although the all-in was very very close to failing), but if they hadn't, he wouldn't have had to worry about a 40 minute game, as he'd just be dead, gg out, reset and move on to the next game.
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On February 12 2024 14:04 mayrain319 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 07:50 onPHYRE wrote:On February 12 2024 04:46 Solio wrote:On February 12 2024 04:43 Nasigil wrote:On February 12 2024 04:39 Vindicare605 wrote:
Maru has been the better player for this entire game, but it's just too big of a map advantage for Serral to overcome.
Maru got caught with like 10 supposedly "singlehandedly game ending" fungal but was still able to drag it all the way to the end. How does that make him a better player? Because burrowed infestors fungals = bullshit So much easier to get them than to catch them and defend against them, the fact that Maru was able to make the game close while playing on this difficult map and against this stupid unit clearly shows he is better, like every single engagement that serral won was because of that, without that it would not even be close Some quotes age like spoiled milk.. and then there is this. At what point do you take the blinders off and give Serral his props? He just 4-0 Maru at a grand final with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and no “latency” issues. 4-0 doesn’t happen because of the maps or the races. Just give him his due already, Jesus. The mental gymnastics are astounding. Maru played extremely well, he is a top tier player.. and he didn’t win a single map. Just stop. There is no debating what we just saw. Serral is the GOAT. On February 12 2024 04:42 yezzir88 wrote:On February 12 2024 04:39 Vindicare605 wrote:
Maru has been the better player for this entire game, but it's just too big of a map advantage for Serral to overcome.
Agreed. In an actual balanced game, Maru would've won easily. We saw a clear example of a better player losing to a worse player because the tournament organizer making a map to heavily favor the inferior player. Ah yes, and the other 3 maps? And what about the other players Serral destroyed? Maru was wrecking every Zerg he played up to that point. You are arguing that Maru is the better player?.. cmon. They are both at the very top, and one is just better than the other. In every way. sure, let's get other 2 race a similar invisible caster, even without damage and just slow let's see how it looks like. oh, now it could be casting it as soon as it is produced, an extremely over power massive control skill with damage.
You talking about ghosts with EMP? Not entirely sure what you're complaining about here. Burrowed infestors or ghosts...
E: nvm, I saw your follow-up QQ. You hate infestors. Okay, noted.
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Canada8989 Posts
On February 12 2024 18:03 Argonauta wrote:On the bright side, we will get a TL.net recap of IEM katowice, if Maru had won we would have got the radio silence that was the WTL finals. 
Exactly, I mean it's not like the TL writer that was suppose to do the WTL recap just didn't, wouldn't that be silly.
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On February 12 2024 18:03 Argonauta wrote:On the bright side, we will get a TL.net recap of IEM katowice, if Maru had won we would have got the radio silence that was the WTL finals.
We do? Last time Serral won there was no recap 
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Dominican Republic625 Posts
On February 13 2024 00:10 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 21:30 Glorfindelio wrote:On February 12 2024 17:24 Poopi wrote:
Maru was godlike on Radhused and still could not win it, it's kinda indicative. Overall Clem played well but Maru played even better and it was not enough, despite playing visibly better than Serral on Radhuset. Doesn't really matter since it's Starcraft 2 twilight year(s) anyways though, things ain't gonna change now Maru played absolutely out of his mind on Radhuset--but this is exactly what I mean. No one else besides Serral would have been able to beat him at that stage of the game. Maru entered into the ghost, liberator stage of the game from a position of strength, and you can see the commentators talking about Serral's dire position as Maru sits comfortably on six bases after his most recent attack fails. But the moment Maru moves to take the gold, Serral gets the perfect fight to swing momentum for the next 10 minutes, where he basically accrues small victories in every engagement until taking a couple bad ones at the very end. And then he pulls off the perfect tech switch with the last of his resources and Maru doesn't have the money to match it. If Serral doesn't break Maru's attempt to grab the gold the first time, there's no way he wins. Hell, if he even trades slightly worse despite having enormous momentum for the last half of the game, he loses. People don't understand how tricky it is to engage into entrenched Terran with Lib/Ghost, never mind when it's Maru. How many times have you seen Reynor crash into an entrenched Maru and break? With respect, he struggles to best Spirit in games like that. Dark gets consistently mauled in late game vs Maru and it doesn't look close. Solar is very good at that stage, but loses more often than not. Serral is the only one that wins games like this. No one else touches Maru in late game TvZ (though Clem has gotten quite close), but no one plays like Serral. All of that being said, many of the games could have gone either way if even one engagement had gone differently, or if Maru had scouted those early attacks a bit sooner. Even that last game, if Maru plugs that mineral line gap so a group of banelings don't merc like 16 SCVs, his early tempo lead likely snowballs into a win, but he let runbys ravage his scvs time and time again. Serral was simply intractable and glacial in his dominance this tournament, and for me, the sheer skill of it was something to behold. Fight it, run from it, destiny still arrives as they say. And who knows, maybe Maru unleashes a similar run this summer--it's certainly possible. Well put. Every other Zerg loses in Serral’s position. And Most terrans would win in Marus position against any other Zergs except Serral People like to over react and said Maru played godlike lol. He kid got caught with “5-6 game ending funguls” yet terran can still drag the game to almost a draw. Just shows how ridiculous op terran late game is
is not that ez to avoid being fungaled, lets give High Templar invincibility and let see what happens...
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Dominican Republic625 Posts
On February 13 2024 01:02 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 14:04 mayrain319 wrote:On February 12 2024 07:50 onPHYRE wrote:On February 12 2024 04:46 Solio wrote:On February 12 2024 04:43 Nasigil wrote:On February 12 2024 04:39 Vindicare605 wrote:
Maru has been the better player for this entire game, but it's just too big of a map advantage for Serral to overcome.
Maru got caught with like 10 supposedly "singlehandedly game ending" fungal but was still able to drag it all the way to the end. How does that make him a better player? Because burrowed infestors fungals = bullshit So much easier to get them than to catch them and defend against them, the fact that Maru was able to make the game close while playing on this difficult map and against this stupid unit clearly shows he is better, like every single engagement that serral won was because of that, without that it would not even be close Some quotes age like spoiled milk.. and then there is this. At what point do you take the blinders off and give Serral his props? He just 4-0 Maru at a grand final with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line and no “latency” issues. 4-0 doesn’t happen because of the maps or the races. Just give him his due already, Jesus. The mental gymnastics are astounding. Maru played extremely well, he is a top tier player.. and he didn’t win a single map. Just stop. There is no debating what we just saw. Serral is the GOAT. On February 12 2024 04:42 yezzir88 wrote:On February 12 2024 04:39 Vindicare605 wrote:
Maru has been the better player for this entire game, but it's just too big of a map advantage for Serral to overcome.
Agreed. In an actual balanced game, Maru would've won easily. We saw a clear example of a better player losing to a worse player because the tournament organizer making a map to heavily favor the inferior player. Ah yes, and the other 3 maps? And what about the other players Serral destroyed? Maru was wrecking every Zerg he played up to that point. You are arguing that Maru is the better player?.. cmon. They are both at the very top, and one is just better than the other. In every way. sure, let's get other 2 race a similar invisible caster, even without damage and just slow let's see how it looks like. oh, now it could be casting it as soon as it is produced, an extremely over power massive control skill with damage. You talking about ghosts with EMP? Not entirely sure what you're complaining about here. Burrowed infestors or ghosts... E: nvm, I saw your follow-up QQ. You hate infestors. Okay, noted.
lets give High Templar invincibility shall we?
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On February 12 2024 23:35 AdrianHealeyy wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I don't want to go into debate on racial or mapbalance. There are some good points made in that regard. What I genuinely don't understand, is that people reduce the achievements of Serral to those (maybe even legitimate) balance complaints. I thought there was a consensus that the most recent patch (with, among other things, the big cyclone change) was generally a Zerg-nerf, no? And yet, Serral dominance stays.
If it was _purely_ a race and map thing, then that doesn't explain that Serral not only beats other races, but also other zergs in a equally dominant manner a lot of the times.
Here is Serral's rapport since the start of Master's Colloseum:
Serral-Reynor: 2-0 (mirror match up)
Serral-Maru: 0-2 (ZvT, loss from Serral)
Serral-Solar: 2-1 (mirror match up)
Serral-Cure: 2-0 (ZvT)
Serral-Solar: 3-0 (mirror match up)
Serral-Maru: 3-0 (ZvT)
Serral-Reynor: 4-0 (mirror match up)
Serral-Hero: 5-1 (ZvP)
During that same master's colloseum: Hero beat Reynor (zvp), Dark (zvp), Solar (4-0). Maru beat Dark 2-0, but also lost to Dark 4-3.
Like: if it was 'just' the racial balance, the differences wouldn't be that consistent. Dark, Reynor, Maru, Solar, Hero, etc. all have pretty equal chances towards each other, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose.
Let's add Katowice
Groupfase:
Serral-Kelazhur: 2-0
Serral-Byun: 2-0
Serral-Skillous: 2-0
Serral-Astrea: 2-0
Serral-Firefly: 2-0
Oke, that was the easy group, relatively speaking, fair enough.
Serral-Clem: 3-0. This comes after Clem beat Solar: 3-2. (Serral beat Solar in Master's Colloseum: 2-1.)
Serral-Dark: 3-1 (mirror match up.) Dark lost to Reynor: 2-1 AND lost to Maru: 2-0.
Serral: 4-0. Maru beat Cure, Byun, Reynor, Hero, Showtime and Dark. (And miraculously lost to Cyan.)
Like: if we would reduce to purely racial balance, this consistency just wouldn't be there. He bearts the other zerfs fairly consistent as well. Those other zergs - like Solar and Dark - have been around for a long time and are still competing for the very top but simply are not as dominant.
Denying that Serral has had an absolute top-tier consistency for an entire period, even despite (minor) nerfs (like the baneling nerf) is just weird.
Serral doesn't have accidents like 'loosing to Cyan'. The last time this happened... is probably Serral vs Shin (Ragnarok) in last year's Katowice. And Shin, although no Dark or Reynor, is also no slouch at the game. (Shin is by far a better player than Cyan, right?)
In a BO5 according to Aligulac, here are the chances of Serral winning against these other top 12 players in a BO5.
Maru: 84%
Maxpax: 80%
Dark: 79%
Hero: 76%
Clem: 80%
Reynor: 80
Byun: 88%
Solar: 80%
Cure: 96% (!!!)
Heromarine: 95%
Not only that, if we look at the ratings from IEM Katowice, Serral received a 99 (!!!) in 3 categories. If I am not mistaken (but please, don't flame me if I am wrong?): these ratings were given by other players, right? That means that other top players rank Serral as well as being the absolute very top of their peers. All other players consistently tell everyone that Serral is a monster. Which he is and his record reflects that.
Serral's overall aligulac ranking is currently 3825. The second place is for Maxpax, with 3487. This is almost 400 points less. The third place? Clem, who is 53 (!) points behind. Maru, Dark and Hero are also within the 34XX range.
This is the entire set of losses of Serral were against:
Maru (Master's Coliseum)
Clem (WTL 2023 Winter)
Clem (ESL Pro-Tour Winter main event)
Solar (SCBoy WTL)
Clem (Master's Coliseum 6 Main Event)
Solar (WTL 2023 Summer)
Solar and Classic (Gamers 8)
Reynor (Homestory Cup XXIII)
Maxpax (Kung Fu Cup)
Clem (PiG Sty Festival)
And then we have Shin in Katowice 2023.
I count 5 losses vs terran, 2 losses vs protoss and 4 losses vs zerg. If it was all balance and serral is 'just' his race, most of his losses would come from zvz match ups, which isn't the case. (Assuming a reasonable equal-ish distribution of skill.) But that just isn't the case.
Serral is the best Z-Z player in the world, he is the best Z-T player in the world and the best Z-P in the world, according to aligulac.
Every single datapoint, wether it's subjective (other people's estimates), objective (aligulac and win-rate data), for the last years consistently point towards Serral as the absolute best player, together with Maru. Yes, the game needs to be balanced. Yes, the maps need to be balanced. Yes, there is probably an argument to be made that this is a zerg-favored map pool, etc.
If we look at the 'periods of domination', Serral is ranked as the absolute number 1 with more points (but a slower length) than Maru and Dark. This looks (but I could be wrong on this) like it's mainly explained because Serral has had less times at the top than either of the other 2. (Could be wrong on this.)
Serral has the highest rating ever achieve on Aligulac, the highest rating in the v P match up and the Vs T match up. (4 players: Clem, Maru, Hero and Maxpax have had higher ratings in the vZ match up.)
I just don't know what else could convince people that Serral truly is the best SC2 player for a while now. This is independent from Goat-status. But people complaining about Serral just being 'good' don't really understand how good he is and has been for a consistent while. He isn't 4-0 Maru all the time. But he is _never_ 2-0 loss to Cyan. And that, in itself, is an amazing feat.
To be clear: I am not arguing for Goat-status, I am not arguing that Maru isn't also the absolute top tier. But according to the data: Serral is just a higher tier above everyone else. Even if he sometimes looses.
those are very fair points, I wholeheartedly agree. Serral's recent form is extremely impressive.
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Northern Ireland25599 Posts
On February 13 2024 01:53 BonitiilloO wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 00:10 FFXthebest wrote:On February 12 2024 21:30 Glorfindelio wrote:On February 12 2024 17:24 Poopi wrote:
Maru was godlike on Radhused and still could not win it, it's kinda indicative. Overall Clem played well but Maru played even better and it was not enough, despite playing visibly better than Serral on Radhuset. Doesn't really matter since it's Starcraft 2 twilight year(s) anyways though, things ain't gonna change now Maru played absolutely out of his mind on Radhuset--but this is exactly what I mean. No one else besides Serral would have been able to beat him at that stage of the game. Maru entered into the ghost, liberator stage of the game from a position of strength, and you can see the commentators talking about Serral's dire position as Maru sits comfortably on six bases after his most recent attack fails. But the moment Maru moves to take the gold, Serral gets the perfect fight to swing momentum for the next 10 minutes, where he basically accrues small victories in every engagement until taking a couple bad ones at the very end. And then he pulls off the perfect tech switch with the last of his resources and Maru doesn't have the money to match it. If Serral doesn't break Maru's attempt to grab the gold the first time, there's no way he wins. Hell, if he even trades slightly worse despite having enormous momentum for the last half of the game, he loses. People don't understand how tricky it is to engage into entrenched Terran with Lib/Ghost, never mind when it's Maru. How many times have you seen Reynor crash into an entrenched Maru and break? With respect, he struggles to best Spirit in games like that. Dark gets consistently mauled in late game vs Maru and it doesn't look close. Solar is very good at that stage, but loses more often than not. Serral is the only one that wins games like this. No one else touches Maru in late game TvZ (though Clem has gotten quite close), but no one plays like Serral. All of that being said, many of the games could have gone either way if even one engagement had gone differently, or if Maru had scouted those early attacks a bit sooner. Even that last game, if Maru plugs that mineral line gap so a group of banelings don't merc like 16 SCVs, his early tempo lead likely snowballs into a win, but he let runbys ravage his scvs time and time again. Serral was simply intractable and glacial in his dominance this tournament, and for me, the sheer skill of it was something to behold. Fight it, run from it, destiny still arrives as they say. And who knows, maybe Maru unleashes a similar run this summer--it's certainly possible. Well put. Every other Zerg loses in Serral’s position. And Most terrans would win in Marus position against any other Zergs except Serral People like to over react and said Maru played godlike lol. He kid got caught with “5-6 game ending funguls” yet terran can still drag the game to almost a draw. Just shows how ridiculous op terran late game is is not that ez to avoid being fungaled, lets give High Templar invincibility and let see what happens...
It’s not that easy to rotate multiple infestors around and have them in good positions to nail fungals, and have your army in a good spot to pounce, while doing everything else Serral was doing.
If it becomes a huge issue in the top level meta, a slight delay to cast after an unburrow probably does the trick. If I was a betting man I’d say we won’t see it as a huge issue because it’s not all that easy to set up, and you can just haemorrhage gas if you keep getting investors caught. It’s not like others haven’t tried that 1-2 punch frequently, Serral just had a really high hit rate this series.
At this juncture I actually like the Infestor, don’t particularly like the Ghost. It’s a genuine support caster with good synergy with other Zerg units. Ghosts have two of the most potent spells in the game, aren’t terrible in regular combat albeit not great, can cloak in addition and are massable.
If you’d said to me after watching Liquid HerO die for the umpteenth time to BL/Infestor back in the day that I’d one day quite like the Infestor I would have laughed! How times change
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Northern Ireland25599 Posts
On February 13 2024 00:59 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 13:50 WombaT wrote:On February 12 2024 08:20 Antithesis wrote:On February 12 2024 06:08 Gescom wrote:On February 12 2024 06:04 ZAWGURN wrote:
If Serral only won because Zerg is OP, then wouldn't Dark and Reynor both be dominating Maru? But Maru beat Dark AND Reynor in this tournament. Serral is just built different. There's no point in even engaging. 'The break was too short', 'the veto system was bad'. People will find any reason to complain. The reality is, in the interview before the match Maru said he was afraid of Serral. And for good reason. Similarly, Maru lost a series to Cyan, and was pushed to the brink by ByuN. Serral went 20-1. Exactly. And it must be said that it was quite disconcerting how quickly a good number of commentators in this thread began to resort to balance whining and dismissive remarks. Everyone was hyping up the finals, until suddenly midway through the series, when it became clear that Maru is losing, some of those guys collectively decided that it is not anymore his own play but balance issues and a single map which prevent Maru from winning. With this dominant a tournament run, an overall score of 20-1, a 3-1 over the next best zerg in the world, and a 4-0 in the finals, over Maru out of all players, there is no reasonable argument left to question the deservedness of Serral's victory and status at large. I love his play, but as I’ve said before he has more excuses made for him than anyone in SC2 history. Which is a shame, there’s just no need to go so overboard sometimes. I will say though, regardless of how the rest of the series went, as and how Maru played incredibly well in that set, you should not be having vetoes come after first map picks. Especially at one of the top 2 tournaments of the whole year. Momentum is a real asset in these things and playing you’re heart out for 40 minutes on a borderline (if even) broken map, only to be 0-2 down against Serral of all people, that’s rough man. I still think Serral takes it in the shape he brought, but maybe we get that series for the ages instead of a sweep. It’s just bad practice. Hopefully they make that rather simple change, and while they’re at it maybe improve their group selections. But hey I can’t complain apart from that, a great feast of StarCraft, production, casting talent and a lack of downtime were absolutely on point. Bit of positivity after my moaning in this post (and my incessant moaning about World Cup qualification), feel it’s in order! Once again, if you know you're going to have to play one of Radhuset Station or Equilibrium, and think a grueling macro game is basically unwinnable (and it is), then you should probably have some sneaky all-ins prepared for those maps, and if they fail, tap out. Serral clearly didn't want to play Maru's first map picks and had his roach pressure and then a roach all-in planned for both of those picks. They both worked (although the all-in was very very close to failing), but if they hadn't, he wouldn't have had to worry about a 40 minute game, as he'd just be dead, gg out, reset and move on to the next game.
Yeah, I mean sometimes it can pay to do the counter-intuitive thing if your opponent is expecting the percentage play. Sometimes, and I’d wager slightly more often, if a map suits your macro game, or you’re in a disadvantage there and aggression is probably your best shot, the intuitive way is the way.
Thin margins in this game really. If Maru had played blindly extra safe and picked Serral’s gameplan he’s grand. It’s still painful quite some time later, but if Maru, having just smacked Reynor in a lategame masterclass and rolled an even better map up next, had his all-in gambit pay off he would have been praised for the strategic mindgame.
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On February 13 2024 02:09 [PkF] Wire wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 23:35 AdrianHealeyy wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I don't want to go into debate on racial or mapbalance. There are some good points made in that regard. What I genuinely don't understand, is that people reduce the achievements of Serral to those (maybe even legitimate) balance complaints. I thought there was a consensus that the most recent patch (with, among other things, the big cyclone change) was generally a Zerg-nerf, no? And yet, Serral dominance stays.
If it was _purely_ a race and map thing, then that doesn't explain that Serral not only beats other races, but also other zergs in a equally dominant manner a lot of the times.
Here is Serral's rapport since the start of Master's Colloseum:
Serral-Reynor: 2-0 (mirror match up)
Serral-Maru: 0-2 (ZvT, loss from Serral)
Serral-Solar: 2-1 (mirror match up)
Serral-Cure: 2-0 (ZvT)
Serral-Solar: 3-0 (mirror match up)
Serral-Maru: 3-0 (ZvT)
Serral-Reynor: 4-0 (mirror match up)
Serral-Hero: 5-1 (ZvP)
During that same master's colloseum: Hero beat Reynor (zvp), Dark (zvp), Solar (4-0). Maru beat Dark 2-0, but also lost to Dark 4-3.
Like: if it was 'just' the racial balance, the differences wouldn't be that consistent. Dark, Reynor, Maru, Solar, Hero, etc. all have pretty equal chances towards each other, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose.
Let's add Katowice
Groupfase:
Serral-Kelazhur: 2-0
Serral-Byun: 2-0
Serral-Skillous: 2-0
Serral-Astrea: 2-0
Serral-Firefly: 2-0
Oke, that was the easy group, relatively speaking, fair enough.
Serral-Clem: 3-0. This comes after Clem beat Solar: 3-2. (Serral beat Solar in Master's Colloseum: 2-1.)
Serral-Dark: 3-1 (mirror match up.) Dark lost to Reynor: 2-1 AND lost to Maru: 2-0.
Serral: 4-0. Maru beat Cure, Byun, Reynor, Hero, Showtime and Dark. (And miraculously lost to Cyan.)
Like: if we would reduce to purely racial balance, this consistency just wouldn't be there. He bearts the other zerfs fairly consistent as well. Those other zergs - like Solar and Dark - have been around for a long time and are still competing for the very top but simply are not as dominant.
Denying that Serral has had an absolute top-tier consistency for an entire period, even despite (minor) nerfs (like the baneling nerf) is just weird.
Serral doesn't have accidents like 'loosing to Cyan'. The last time this happened... is probably Serral vs Shin (Ragnarok) in last year's Katowice. And Shin, although no Dark or Reynor, is also no slouch at the game. (Shin is by far a better player than Cyan, right?)
In a BO5 according to Aligulac, here are the chances of Serral winning against these other top 12 players in a BO5.
Maru: 84%
Maxpax: 80%
Dark: 79%
Hero: 76%
Clem: 80%
Reynor: 80
Byun: 88%
Solar: 80%
Cure: 96% (!!!)
Heromarine: 95%
Not only that, if we look at the ratings from IEM Katowice, Serral received a 99 (!!!) in 3 categories. If I am not mistaken (but please, don't flame me if I am wrong?): these ratings were given by other players, right? That means that other top players rank Serral as well as being the absolute very top of their peers. All other players consistently tell everyone that Serral is a monster. Which he is and his record reflects that.
Serral's overall aligulac ranking is currently 3825. The second place is for Maxpax, with 3487. This is almost 400 points less. The third place? Clem, who is 53 (!) points behind. Maru, Dark and Hero are also within the 34XX range.
This is the entire set of losses of Serral were against:
Maru (Master's Coliseum)
Clem (WTL 2023 Winter)
Clem (ESL Pro-Tour Winter main event)
Solar (SCBoy WTL)
Clem (Master's Coliseum 6 Main Event)
Solar (WTL 2023 Summer)
Solar and Classic (Gamers 8)
Reynor (Homestory Cup XXIII)
Maxpax (Kung Fu Cup)
Clem (PiG Sty Festival)
And then we have Shin in Katowice 2023.
I count 5 losses vs terran, 2 losses vs protoss and 4 losses vs zerg. If it was all balance and serral is 'just' his race, most of his losses would come from zvz match ups, which isn't the case. (Assuming a reasonable equal-ish distribution of skill.) But that just isn't the case.
Serral is the best Z-Z player in the world, he is the best Z-T player in the world and the best Z-P in the world, according to aligulac.
Every single datapoint, wether it's subjective (other people's estimates), objective (aligulac and win-rate data), for the last years consistently point towards Serral as the absolute best player, together with Maru. Yes, the game needs to be balanced. Yes, the maps need to be balanced. Yes, there is probably an argument to be made that this is a zerg-favored map pool, etc.
If we look at the 'periods of domination', Serral is ranked as the absolute number 1 with more points (but a slower length) than Maru and Dark. This looks (but I could be wrong on this) like it's mainly explained because Serral has had less times at the top than either of the other 2. (Could be wrong on this.)
Serral has the highest rating ever achieve on Aligulac, the highest rating in the v P match up and the Vs T match up. (4 players: Clem, Maru, Hero and Maxpax have had higher ratings in the vZ match up.)
I just don't know what else could convince people that Serral truly is the best SC2 player for a while now. This is independent from Goat-status. But people complaining about Serral just being 'good' don't really understand how good he is and has been for a consistent while. He isn't 4-0 Maru all the time. But he is _never_ 2-0 loss to Cyan. And that, in itself, is an amazing feat.
To be clear: I am not arguing for Goat-status, I am not arguing that Maru isn't also the absolute top tier. But according to the data: Serral is just a higher tier above everyone else. Even if he sometimes looses. those are very fair points, I wholeheartedly agree. Serral's recent form is extremely impressive.
Indeed. Very good and comprehensive comment, and analysis. Also the main reason why so many (me included) has taken 'hard line' against BS often associated with Serral and his wins. Hell, Serral has been statistically so dominant in aligulac ratings for so long now that he must achieve near perfect map record in everything to even get more rating points. Statistics combined with simple eye test and evaluations by his closest peers is in perfect line with his stats. If taken as a whole, Serral's prolonged dominance indicate everything else than alleged 'Zerg OP' -narrative. We don't see anything similar with other Zergs, while Serral's expected winning percentages vs other Zergs are itself absolutely ridiculous.
People get often angry when others claim total BS in a case where objective reality and most relevant peer experiences points to the facts that cannot be just ignored or hand-wawed out with narratives based on small statistical sample sets (such as a games of a span of one tournament). And certainly any race balance argument won't hold water either as a reason of Serral's prolonged success, just because we don't see that as a normal pattern among other Zerg players, or with any other player for the matter.
He has been statistical outlier for long now. Consistently. Last year's trend make it even more ridiculous as he has been able continuously and consistently head toward becoming even more extreme outlier, he has used to be.
Dang! The GOAT gets currently over 500 pts twice in a month to his Aligulac Hall-of-Fame sum, and has been accumulating hundreds of points per list already, what?!, 5 or 6 years in row.
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If I can add one more thing to my wall of text.
The game Serral played against Dark on Equilibrium, where he went for a quick expand on the gold (like Dark did). But Serral followed it up with a meticulously designed build to counter a dominant (theoretical) meta and won. Like: he prepared a build order, a building placement (with 2 evolution chambers, a roach warren, and a queen) on his expansion, and a wall (of 2 sets of roaches) in his main to be safe (safe?) against ling-baneling aggression that he was expecting (and got).
Like: this isn't luck, right? This is a mirror match-up. This isn't luck. This isn't some funky stuff. This is a prepared build and executed to perfection. I believe it was Firefly who had specifically prepared builds against Serral... and still lost like he was at best a master's player (it seemed). I am sure Firefly isn't the only one who prepares things specifically vs Serral and Serral beats all of them and has his specific builds worked out on specific maps to counter specific things.
I am choosing this specific one because it was a wild thing, that nobody had seen before and because it was in a mirror-match-up. Anyone could have come up with this. Anyone could have perfected this. But it was Serral who did. (Maybe or maybe not together with Lambo or other Zergs, as speculated by some.)
That skill can't be explained by 'racial imbalance' because, again, he did it in a mirror match-up. Unless you think Serral is 'only' doing this in mirrors (which would be a weird assumption), you can't explain his dominance across matchups by referring to racial imbalance.
If we had a Katowice final with 8 zergs and it was basically a toss-up, or if since the recent patch people like Rattata suddenly started beating Maru or Hero consistently (with all due respect for Rattata, a far better player than I am), then we can talk the impact of major racial imbalances. But that just isn't the case.
People refer to Serral's infestors. Yes: Serral makes infestors look overpowered. What other Zerg has used infestors to that extend, that effectively? How many times during Dark vs Serral was Dark so very close to beating Serral and did Serral manage to win anyway, because of resilience and gameplay?
Again: yes, there are issues of balance that consistently need addressing. (I am genuine of the opinion that probably Protoss is slightly underpowered at the highest level, simply because the skill ceiling seems lower than that of terran and zerg.)
But like: come on: the broader data supports it, the specifics in every game support it: Serral is just... (currently) better and if you look at it over a wide time period, very, very dominant.
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On February 12 2024 13:50 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 08:20 Antithesis wrote:On February 12 2024 06:08 Gescom wrote:On February 12 2024 06:04 ZAWGURN wrote:
If Serral only won because Zerg is OP, then wouldn't Dark and Reynor both be dominating Maru? But Maru beat Dark AND Reynor in this tournament. Serral is just built different. There's no point in even engaging. 'The break was too short', 'the veto system was bad'. People will find any reason to complain. The reality is, in the interview before the match Maru said he was afraid of Serral. And for good reason. Similarly, Maru lost a series to Cyan, and was pushed to the brink by ByuN. Serral went 20-1. Exactly. And it must be said that it was quite disconcerting how quickly a good number of commentators in this thread began to resort to balance whining and dismissive remarks. Everyone was hyping up the finals, until suddenly midway through the series, when it became clear that Maru is losing, some of those guys collectively decided that it is not anymore his own play but balance issues and a single map which prevent Maru from winning. With this dominant a tournament run, an overall score of 20-1, a 3-1 over the next best zerg in the world, and a 4-0 in the finals, over Maru out of all players, there is no reasonable argument left to question the deservedness of Serral's victory and status at large. I love his play, but as I’ve said before he has more excuses made for him than anyone in SC2 history. Which is a shame, there’s just no need to go so overboard sometimes. I will say though, regardless of how the rest of the series went, as and how Maru played incredibly well in that set, you should not be having vetoes come after first map picks. Especially at one of the top 2 tournaments of the whole year. Momentum is a real asset in these things and playing you’re heart out for 40 minutes on a borderline (if even) broken map, only to be 0-2 down against Serral of all people, that’s rough man. I still think Serral takes it in the shape he brought, but maybe we get that series for the ages instead of a sweep. It’s just bad practice. Hopefully they make that rather simple change, and while they’re at it maybe improve their group selections. But hey I can’t complain apart from that, a great feast of StarCraft, production, casting talent and a lack of downtime were absolutely on point. Bit of positivity after my moaning in this post (and my incessant moaning about World Cup qualification), feel it’s in order!
why did this tournament do picks before bans anyways? has that ever been done before? why try it with this tournament final of all the matches to test it with? has it ever resulted in a better match? (non-mirror match of course)
idk why you would want to play with the 2 worst maps in the pool but then veto the 3rd and 4th worst maps lol
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Breath of fresh air @AdrianHealeyy ! 
Somebody will soon come to argue with standard narrative of 'Aligulac rating bubbles, rating inflation, and Serral's farming'. Just wanting to add pre-emptively that all of above arguments are valid, but they cannot be used against Serral.
- New players bring more points to the system (reason for rating inflation).
- There is (and have been) partial rating bubbles in the game. For example GSL-Bubble, Euro-Bubble etc. due region locks and for geographical realities of the world and varying possibilities of player x or y to take a part to a this or that tournament.
- Generally and historically Koreans have been farming Foreigners, and then re-share those points in GSL-Bubble in their internal competition for the Bonjwa -status.
- Top foreigners have been doing something similar among themselves.
- Then came Serral who started to farm GSL-Bubble thru international tournaments, increasing amount of points within Euro-Bubble, and thus helping other Top-Euro-foreigners accumulate more points (and generally level the playing field while doing so in adjunction of decaying Korean scene).
- Serral's bubble and insane rate of rating points accumulation comes from the fact that within his own Goat-Bubble most of opponents are other absolute top players of SC2, and the fact that he has been able to dominate for so long in his own bubble.
- Serral's bubble is also somewhat more contained because of his incredible success: often he gets directly to later parts of playoffs, while his success also place him in bracket positions where it is relatively easy to farm lower tier pros. Rating points in the system flow toward the top and Serral at the apex collect relatively more of it. That would not be possible without Serral being capable to be so dominant against the absolute top of the whole field for so long. Wherever he plays, he tend to farm for more points.
- Aligulac's HOF page feels almost as it would be broken, by Serral, but it is actually direct result of his insane consistency to perform at high level at very top for so long. Currently the situation is utterly ridiculous with his rating, but it reflects pretty beautifully his real, match-historical curriculum.
- Aligulac's sample set is enough wide to make relevant conclusions about Serral: by all metrics he is The Goat: The first and only player ever to achieve winning stats over whole damn field, while playing against the best the field can offer.
And that's not even particularly close. For Serral the whole SC2-scene seems to be his own personal farming bubble.
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Northern Ireland25599 Posts
On February 13 2024 04:53 Die4Ever wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2024 13:50 WombaT wrote:On February 12 2024 08:20 Antithesis wrote:On February 12 2024 06:08 Gescom wrote:On February 12 2024 06:04 ZAWGURN wrote:
If Serral only won because Zerg is OP, then wouldn't Dark and Reynor both be dominating Maru? But Maru beat Dark AND Reynor in this tournament. Serral is just built different. There's no point in even engaging. 'The break was too short', 'the veto system was bad'. People will find any reason to complain. The reality is, in the interview before the match Maru said he was afraid of Serral. And for good reason. Similarly, Maru lost a series to Cyan, and was pushed to the brink by ByuN. Serral went 20-1. Exactly. And it must be said that it was quite disconcerting how quickly a good number of commentators in this thread began to resort to balance whining and dismissive remarks. Everyone was hyping up the finals, until suddenly midway through the series, when it became clear that Maru is losing, some of those guys collectively decided that it is not anymore his own play but balance issues and a single map which prevent Maru from winning. With this dominant a tournament run, an overall score of 20-1, a 3-1 over the next best zerg in the world, and a 4-0 in the finals, over Maru out of all players, there is no reasonable argument left to question the deservedness of Serral's victory and status at large. I love his play, but as I’ve said before he has more excuses made for him than anyone in SC2 history. Which is a shame, there’s just no need to go so overboard sometimes. I will say though, regardless of how the rest of the series went, as and how Maru played incredibly well in that set, you should not be having vetoes come after first map picks. Especially at one of the top 2 tournaments of the whole year. Momentum is a real asset in these things and playing you’re heart out for 40 minutes on a borderline (if even) broken map, only to be 0-2 down against Serral of all people, that’s rough man. I still think Serral takes it in the shape he brought, but maybe we get that series for the ages instead of a sweep. It’s just bad practice. Hopefully they make that rather simple change, and while they’re at it maybe improve their group selections. But hey I can’t complain apart from that, a great feast of StarCraft, production, casting talent and a lack of downtime were absolutely on point. Bit of positivity after my moaning in this post (and my incessant moaning about World Cup qualification), feel it’s in order! why did this tournament do picks before bans anyways? has that ever been done before? why try it with this tournament final of all the matches to test it with? has it ever resulted in a better match? (non-mirror match of course) idk why you would want to play with the 2 worst maps in the pool but then veto the 3rd and 4th worst maps lol
I have no idea. The only scenario it makes sense in is if there’s a non-standard but balanced map or two in the pool that don’t get much play, and it encourages a player to have prepped something and pick it.
But as that’s not the case and (as with basically any map pool) there’s one or two maps that are just genuinely not particularly balanced in certain matchups, it’s giving a big advantage to someone. And not an equivalent one either, it’s not like there’s a map quite as skewed in T’s favour that Maru could pick.
And as you say, if the first 2 maps of the series are, with this system likely to be the perceived most imbalanced maps in the pool it hardly gets the series off to a flying start.
It makes no sense to me. Hopefully they go back to the tried and tested veto first method moving forwards.
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Northern Ireland25599 Posts
On February 13 2024 04:17 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
If I can add one more thing to my wall of text.
The game Serral played against Dark on Equilibrium, where he went for a quick expand on the gold (like Dark did). But Serral followed it up with a meticulously designed build to counter a dominant (theoretical) meta and won. Like: he prepared a build order, a building placement (with 2 evolution chambers, a roach warren, and a queen) on his expansion, and a wall (of 2 sets of roaches) in his main to be safe (safe?) against ling-baneling aggression that he was expecting (and got).
Like: this isn't luck, right? This is a mirror match-up. This isn't luck. This isn't some funky stuff. This is a prepared build and executed to perfection. I believe it was Firefly who had specifically prepared builds against Serral... and still lost like he was at best a master's player (it seemed). I am sure Firefly isn't the only one who prepares things specifically vs Serral and Serral beats all of them and has his specific builds worked out on specific maps to counter specific things.
I am choosing this specific one because it was a wild thing, that nobody had seen before and because it was in a mirror-match-up. Anyone could have come up with this. Anyone could have perfected this. But it was Serral who did. (Maybe or maybe not together with Lambo or other Zergs, as speculated by some.)
That skill can't be explained by 'racial imbalance' because, again, he did it in a mirror match-up. Unless you think Serral is 'only' doing this in mirrors (which would be a weird assumption), you can't explain his dominance across matchups by referring to racial imbalance.
If we had a Katowice final with 8 zergs and it was basically a toss-up, or if since the recent patch people like Rattata suddenly started beating Maru or Hero consistently (with all due respect for Rattata, a far better player than I am), then we can talk the impact of major racial imbalances. But that just isn't the case.
People refer to Serral's infestors. Yes: Serral makes infestors look overpowered. What other Zerg has used infestors to that extend, that effectively? How many times during Dark vs Serral was Dark so very close to beating Serral and did Serral manage to win anyway, because of resilience and gameplay?
Again: yes, there are issues of balance that consistently need addressing. (I am genuine of the opinion that probably Protoss is slightly underpowered at the highest level, simply because the skill ceiling seems lower than that of terran and zerg.)
But like: come on: the broader data supports it, the specifics in every game support it: Serral is just... (currently) better and if you look at it over a wide time period, very, very dominant.
Lambo lurks in the background of these European Zerg World Championship victories, they’ll be fucked if he qualifies for one! Still feels a bit weird to me to not have the likes of him, Elazer or Special at this tournament, grew accustomed.
Based on stream stuff in the relatively recent past, this was 100% definitely something the Europeans were working on. Whose idea it initially was, and who was involved in refining, or testing as a practice partner is unclear.
I’d love to have a bit of a budget and properly interview a bunch of folks on who actually developed various strategies and the process of refining them in SC2’s history, I’m sure it’d be fascinating. I wonder how many innovations we saw debuted by a premier player in Starleagues, Proleagues or some weekender initially had their genesis in the inspiration of a B-teamer.
Who came up with the Slayers blue flame build for example?
But yeah that was beautiful Starcraft, a prepped build with a solid logic behind it, with many potential holes figured out, and just executed to perfection.
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On February 13 2024 04:17 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
If I can add one more thing to my wall of text.
The game Serral played against Dark on Equilibrium, where he went for a quick expand on the gold (like Dark did). But Serral followed it up with a meticulously designed build to counter a dominant (theoretical) meta and won. Like: he prepared a build order, a building placement (with 2 evolution chambers, a roach warren, and a queen) on his expansion, and a wall (of 2 sets of roaches) in his main to be safe (safe?) against ling-baneling aggression that he was expecting (and got).
Like: this isn't luck, right? This is a mirror match-up. This isn't luck. This isn't some funky stuff. This is a prepared build and executed to perfection. I believe it was Firefly who had specifically prepared builds against Serral... and still lost like he was at best a master's player (it seemed). I am sure Firefly isn't the only one who prepares things specifically vs Serral and Serral beats all of them and has his specific builds worked out on specific maps to counter specific things.
I am choosing this specific one because it was a wild thing, that nobody had seen before and because it was in a mirror-match-up. Anyone could have come up with this. Anyone could have perfected this. But it was Serral who did. (Maybe or maybe not together with Lambo or other Zergs, as speculated by some.)
That skill can't be explained by 'racial imbalance' because, again, he did it in a mirror match-up. Unless you think Serral is 'only' doing this in mirrors (which would be a weird assumption), you can't explain his dominance across matchups by referring to racial imbalance.
If we had a Katowice final with 8 zergs and it was basically a toss-up, or if since the recent patch people like Rattata suddenly started beating Maru or Hero consistently (with all due respect for Rattata, a far better player than I am), then we can talk the impact of major racial imbalances. But that just isn't the case.
People refer to Serral's infestors. Yes: Serral makes infestors look overpowered. What other Zerg has used infestors to that extend, that effectively? How many times during Dark vs Serral was Dark so very close to beating Serral and did Serral manage to win anyway, because of resilience and gameplay?
Again: yes, there are issues of balance that consistently need addressing. (I am genuine of the opinion that probably Protoss is slightly underpowered at the highest level, simply because the skill ceiling seems lower than that of terran and zerg.)
But like: come on: the broader data supports it, the specifics in every game support it: Serral is just... (currently) better and if you look at it over a wide time period, very, very dominant.
That was beautiful stracraft build indeed, but lets not pretend that kind of stuff is unique of Serral. Also about the infestor, ibrought up the raven before (albeit the wrong year) to make the same point, to my knowledge no one used (abused?) the raven as good as maru and certainly didnt look broken but in Maru's hands (yes other people used ravens, but its not like Dark or Reynor do not use infestors to great success) yet it got nerfed af because it was inherently abusive.
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EPT
