I think after this blizzcon, if it wasn't obvious before, it should be obvious now.
You just can't rank the top players. I mean you can, if you want, but it's not accurate.
There is no best player, or best protoss/zerg/terran. There's just a group of top players that can take games from each other at any moment.
sOs isn't the best player of the year, neither is SoulKey, or Jaedong, or INnoVation, or Dear. They're all top players well above most, but on the same level as the likes of Taeja, HerO, Bomber, Maru, Polt. And lots of players not mentioned here are also on their same level. Look at Jaedong's semi finals game where he "rises to the next level" and then gets crushed by sOs. Does that mean sOs is beyond that? Nope. They're clearly equals and sOs had some amazing new builds to bring the victory.
With that said, for fun, I voted for Dear, because his play has impressed me the most recently. But still, I think it should be pretty obvious that "best" doesn't actually exist in this game. Undecided on if that's a good thing or not.
And on top of that, who's the best terran? Terran seems to be in shambles right now, I suppose maru has to be the best but I have a hard time ever putting money on the guy.
I dont like when people simply chalk up sOs's wins to being something the other player isn't used to or that he's cheesy. While there is some of that, he hasn't used it or as a crutch or simply relied on braindead allins as so many other toss players have (though he mixes them in). His macro play is simply fantastic and his play is beautifully creative.
He might have the best anti drop defense of any toss I've seen. He was constantly saving bases that looked 100% dead and his reaction time was amazing. Without any prior vision he would instantly jump across the map from where his army was to immediately feedback/storm a medivac just barely boosting into his vision. It was unreal. In addition, his army positioning and composition is always spot on with constant, CONSTANT scouting and comes with some awesome reactionary play based on that scouting that no one else ever does.
On top of that, he constantly mixes up his play and mindgames the shit out of his opponent, making him one of the best series players so far.
I don't know if I can say he's 100% the best atm, but he's been doing some incredible, metagame advancing play, and people don't seem to realize it yet. I picked him to win blizzcon and my friend laughed at me...who's laughing now!? haha
Trap is definitely among the best players too. His high templar control in late game PvT is phenomenal. His use of warp prisms to micro high templars in the late game is outstanding and beautiful to watch. I expect to see a lot from him in the near future!
I think MC's PvZ is the most solid right now with it looking really strong. At least from how I feel with seeing other toss on pvz. So I think in this order for top PvZ is MC SoS ??? is how I feel.
For PvT: clearly we have to give this to Dear and Sos in a tie. They both give off the same aura that they are stable compare to the rest.
As for pvp, I have no clue everyone feels so close to each other.
In my opinion I really can't think we can lump all the toss to be the best in overall. It just doesn't seem that way to me at all at least from the past wcs event.
Protoss players have to change their playstyle very often which makes it hard to stay at the top for a long time so it's nice to see a lot of Protoss doing well lately.
I love Rain and sOs but i think right now Dear is the best.
On November 10 2013 16:31 slowbacontron wrote: imo, it's pretty indisputable that Hurricane is not only best toss, but best player, given that he holds the title of Unofficial World Champion
I think we need a Hurrican vs sOs bo101 showmatch to decide that
On November 10 2013 16:31 slowbacontron wrote: imo, it's pretty indisputable that Hurricane is not only best toss, but best player, given that he holds the title of Unofficial World Champion
I think we need a Hurrican vs sOs bo101 showmatch to decide that
hmm, Unofficial WC vs. Official WC. I guess the winner would be the Official Unofficial Official WC.
On November 10 2013 16:32 blade55555 wrote: To me Dear seems really good. I wasn't that impressed with sos where as dear just can play and look so dominating.
I don't think it's accurate to characterize Dear as a timing-based player, to me his strength is to always be able to be aware of the various advantages (tech, army, economy) in a long macro game and know exactly what he has to do in order to even it up or to win.