First off, we'd like to apologize for the long hiatus. With the tournaments coming in almost non-stop during the autumn months, we fell into the trap of constantly thinking "wait, let's see how this next tournament turns out before we finish the rankings."
Alright, let's move on to the December Power Rank! As usual, here's our ever important criteria, with a few minor tweaks.
Results: Obviously, the primary basis of the Power Rank. Given that this edition of the Power Rank is late and needs to encompass a three month period or so, we're giving additional credit for past results.
Difficulty of opponents: Let's put it this way: if the PR existed last year, we definitely would not have given PartinG the #1 spot for his rather soft WCS championship run.
Quality of play: How impressed were we with this player's performance? Not all wins (or losses) are created equal. By nature, this is the most subjective factor.
A review, not a predictor:The PR is a rating based on previous results, not a scouting report on who will do well in the future.
Special Mentions
Alliance.NaNiwa and Acer.Scarlett: Scarlett and NaNiwa did their best to keep foreigner hope alive, taking out formidable Korean opponents like MC, Bomber, Curious, Leenock and HyuN. However, they haven't actually won anything yet like the ten players who made it into the Power Rank proper (or at least come in second place five times).
Close But No Cigar
Acer.MMA: The final WCS Europe champion of 2013 is looking the best he has in years. How far can he go in 2014?
ST_Bomber: The mileage we're getting on Bomber's law is virtually limitless. After looking to be in peak condition in WCS Season 2, Bomber has gone back to his old ways. He's looked spectacular in spurts, but hasn't been able to put together deep runs.
CMStorm_Polt: Polt has been incredible in WCS America, taking two titles back to back. However, he hasn't been able to perform as well outside his adopted country.
SKT_soO: I mean, he was the runner-up in the toughest WCS region...
In the number ten spot is IEM Singapore champion herO. HerO raised eyebrows when he ripped through players like Maru and Symbol in the qualifiers, and he proved to be even better once he arrived play in the main event. He went an incredible 14-3 in maps (5-0 in series) as he defeated Dream, Bomber, Mvp, DongRaeGu and San to claim the championship.
HerO proved himself to be a complete player, capable of both going completely all-in as well as playing for the late game. Mainly in a PvP specialist in the previous Proleague, herO showed great ability in every match-up that should have him in MVP contention if he can keep up this form in the 2013-2014 season.
It may have been just one tournament, but herO has convinced us that he's the real deal.
"Parting is back!" declared the Soul Train conductor after taking out Scarlett, Bomber, MC, and sOs to lift the trophy at Red Bull Battle Grounds NYC. Unfortunately, his performance didn't match his bravado when he got to WCG, and he was forced into a third place finish by fellow Korean Sora. Well at least he's BACK! ...in the Power Rank.
In addition to his performance at the live Red Bull event itself, PartinG also destroyed the opposition in the TLMC qualifiers for the tournament, suggesting that the best approach to playing maps you don't know is to all-in the hell out of your opponents. To cap it off, he also crushed Liquid`HerO 4 - 0 in the finals of StarsWar Season 3, a Chinese tournament that ended up being more or less an excuse to give PartinG $10,000 as he went 15-0 in maps en route to the title.
At the very least, PartinG has returned to his position as one of esport's top prize money hunters, and he may soon return to being one of its best players as well.
There are few other players who have consistently played at a high level like INnoVation. Ever since the start of HotS, INnoVation has always been a top championship contender in any tournament he entered, and he is rated by many of his peers as the top Terran in the world. If we were talking best Terrans of 2013, there's no question that he's in the top two at the very least.
For the immense amount of credit we have to give INnoVation for his past successes and reliably excellent play, we have to acknowledge that he hasn't won a championship since the WCS Season 1 Finals back in June. His days of complete and utter dominance are gone, largely in part due to the calamitous collapse of his TvT. While he's shown signs of improving his TvT—especially a clutch 2-0 against SuperNoVa to clinch the GSTL title for Axiom-Acer—it remained the liability that held him back at DreamHack Winter. Also, surprise eliminations from WCS tournaments at the hands of duckdeok and soO can only hurt his case.
Even so, it's not like INnoVation hasn't gotten results in recent months. He came in second place at DreamHack Bucharest and placed top four at DreamHack Winter, stopped only by TaeJa and Life. He even had an excellent shot at playing at Red Bull NYC after storming through his qualifier, only to forfeit to lead his team to the GSTL championship instead. For a player with such an impressive body of work in HotS, that's enough to secure him eighth place.
The diminutive Marine Prince hasn't received as much attention as fellow stone-faced Terrans INnoVation and TaeJa, but he's definitely not wanting for skill in comparison. Maru's great mechanics and ability to brute force his way through situations on the back of his stellar bio micro are eerily reminiscent of MarineKing at his prime, with the difference being that Maru has already won a major Korean title.
A trio of top four finishes in Code S, the WCS Season 3 Finals, and the WCS Global Finals sees Maru fall into the number seven spot. Twice he was stopped by Dear who was playing out of his mind, but he managed to play some seriously impressive and insanely high level PvTs even in defeat. At BlizzCon he was stopped by Jaedong who was on his run of almost-destiny; not a loss you can fault him too much for.
We feel that if Prime offered better opportunities for foreign travel, Maru would be tearing it up overseas as well. But alas, we've been limited to seeing him in official WCS tournaments. Look out for him in the Hot6ix Cup!
Zerg fans will be pleased to see that Life is playing like Life again. His zergling micro makes it seem like they are an extension of his body, responding directly to his brainwaves. Also, he's rediscovered that psychic ability to make opponents constantly leave their backdoor open against him, despite the fact that they know that's the one thing you never want to do against Life. Even his ZvZ is looking a lot better after a long period where it was a serious hole in his game.
The Zerg mirror still caused Life a few hiccups at IEM New York, but once he entered the bracket stage he made winning a championship look almost easy as he crushed HerO, Curious, and NaNiwa in succession. Similarly, Life looked great at DreamHack Winter, making short work of all his opponents. Well, as long as they weren't named TaeJa... Who knows? If not for TaeJa, perhaps Life would have gone on to take the titles at both DreamHack Bucharest and Winter.
Life's a top Zerg again, no doubt. Whatever it was that made him get his rear in gear again, let's hope it keeps him motivated him throughout 2014. It would be a crime if such talent went to waste again.
In StarCraft 2 we tend to talk about consistency a lot, if only because it's such a scarce and desirable quality. Well, meet the paragon of consistency. Soulkey has placed in the top eight of SIX consecutive Code S/OSL tournaments, an incredible feat that may never be matched by another player. Like his rival INnoVation, Soulkey has never fallen out of title contention in HotS, and has always been considered either the #1 or #2 Zerg in the world.
He recently relieved concerns about his lack of titles after WCS Season 1 by winning the gold medal for StarCraft 2 at WCG 2013, padding his stats against foreigners in the group stage before taking out Sen, Jim, and Sora to claim the championship in the bracket stage. Additionally, he placed second place at the WCS Season 3 Finals, looking strong for most of the tournament before getting stomped by a spectacular Dear.
While Soulkey is a formidable player, it's hard to shake off the feeling that he's constantly the victim of someone else's date with destiny, playing the role of the scary dragon the protagonist has to slay on his quest for glory. Sora, soO, Dear, and Bomber have all benefited from big wins over Soulkey at critical junctures.
Soulkey was the star at WCG 2013, and perhaps in 2014, he'll be the hero of more stories.
It was hard to pick between Jaedong and Soulkey for the #4 spot, but we decided to give Jaedong to edge here. Jaedong's form from game to game, series to series, and tournament to tournament varies a ton. But when you look at the very big picture, what can you call FIVE second place finishes in the span of six months if not consistent? Being a kong is something we might mock in other contexts, but for the sake of the Power Rank it's proof of Jaedong's ability.
As with some other players, we're giving Jaedong a lot of credit for his past results in placing him this high. He had a fantastic run to second place at BlizzCon with wins over Mvp, Dear, and Maru, but outside that he hasn't actually done all that well in the last three months or so. Ro16 DH: Bucharest, Ro16 Season 3 finals, and Ro12 DH: Winter: hardly worth noting. He did manage to place top four in the final season of WCS America, but his path wasn't the hardest.
But at the end of the day, it's undenniable that the Tyrant is back in championship form, and he will eventually have his due.
As much fun as we've had mocking the notion that the WCS 2013 champion magically becomes the best player in the world, we did have to give sOs a significant bonus for lifting the trophy at BlizzCon. Even if the format of BlizzCon itself was highly volatile, no other tournament had such a long chain of events leading up to it, as rigorous process for qualification, or anywhere near as much money on the line. Simply put, if you ask any progamer "what tournament do you want to win the most?" 99.99% of them would answer with the WCS Global Finals. That matters.
Not only did sOs win BlizzCon, but he won it with relatively ease. No opponent took more than a map off of him, and he went 13-4 combined to defeat HerO, Polt, Bomber and Jaedong.
Unfortunately, sOs hasn't been doing so great outside of BlizzCon. TaeJa knocked him out of Ro8 of DH: Bucharest, Curious knocked him out of IEM New York, and the upstart Patience eliminated him from DH: Winter in the Ro12.
We have a soft spot for sOs and his stylish way of playing, but he's going to need keep getting good results if he wants to keep this spot.
BlizzCon may have been the single most important tournament of the year, but the most impressive achievement of the year was Dear's back to back wins in WCS Korea and the WCS Season 3 Finals. In this era of parity where there's no one single player who clearly outshines all the others, Dear's play over the course of a few weeks harkened back to the dominant days of players like Mvp in 2011 or Life in 2012. He didn't just beat his opponents during his dual championship runs, he crushed them (his 4-0 against Soulkey will make Zerg players shudder).
If we had to complain about Dear, it's that he hasn't been able to compete in any non-WCS foreign tournaments. On top of that, his performances in the GSTL have been disappointingly mediocre - shouldn't a double champion be able to at least save his team from a last place finish?
Even so, watching Dear at his best was a really awe inspiring experience, making us certain that the Year of Dear was ahead of us. Even if his WCS quest was ended in a close 2-3 defeat to Jaedong, he has all the skills needed to make 2014 his year yet.
But for now, it's all about the Year of TaeJa. Liquid's Terran ace may have been disappointing in WCS 2013, but the international tournament scene has been his personal checking account. He has won an incredible five major championships this year, a feat only surpassed by Mvp and Life when they were in their primes.
Along the way he has defeated plenty of formidable Korean opposition. His run at DH: Bucharest included sOs, Life, and INnoVation, while he had to take on Alicia, San and HyuN to win ASUS ROG Summer. At HSC8, HerO, Symbol, Scarlett (not a Korean but whatever) and HyuN stood in his path. The only marks against him were that the money in these tournaments was on the "low" side at $10,000, and that the foreigner packed HSC7 was a tad bit weak.
TaeJa took care of all those concerns at DreamHack Winter where he had one of the greatest tournament runs of all time. He went 8-0 in series (18-7 in maps), defeating some of the best players at the tournament like INnoVation, sOs, HerO, MMA, and Life in the process. On top of that, TaeJa broke his $10,000 first place prize jinx to boot, claiming approximately $30,000 for first place. Hopefully, that will convince TaeJa that he should stay in progaming for the long haul.
With an amazing body of work this year and one of the toughest championship runs of the year to his name, TaeJa is our #1.
This Power Rank brings both happiness and sadness. For one, YES POWER RANK AGAIN Another, depressed Rain isn't on it He better rip stuff up in 2014. Best Protoss ever gogo? Edit: Besides Bisu. Nobody is better than Bisu
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
Can't tell if serious
Also, in Innovation's explanation it says: "He came in second place at DreamHack Bucharest and placed top four at DreamHack Winter, stopped only by TaeJa at both tournaments." Hmm, Innovation lost against Taeja, ForGG, Life and Patience at Dreamhack Winter, so it feels silly to say that he was only stopped by Taeja.
Dear won WCS Korea and Season Finals, that is basically much harder and more prestigious than the total of everything Taeja has achieved ( I like Taeja but this is my honest opinion). Plus Dear 3-1 Taeja ezmod in blizzcon. If we are discounting Dear for playing imbatoss then Hero shouldn't be in the list.
On December 04 2013 06:30 YuiHirasawa wrote: I wonder what this "Power Rank" would look like if it was posted on EG's or Acer's website. Probably more accurate to reality imo.
Yeah, how can anyone take this Power Rank seriously when it's missing players like Machine and DarkHydra.
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
This is either a troll post or you don't follow the sc2 scene closely. Taeja has won more than one tourney.
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
On December 04 2013 06:30 YuiHirasawa wrote: I wonder what this "Power Rank" would look like if it was posted on EG's or Acer's website. Probably more accurate to reality imo.
Yeah, Demuslim is top ten right? Bet you would put Stephano (who's retired) as number 1 because he showed up at homestory cup.
Also, would you write "SOs" if his name start a new sentence? So please, don't write HerO instead of herO, shouldn't a name always be written the same?
On December 04 2013 06:30 YuiHirasawa wrote: I wonder what this "Power Rank" would look like if it was posted on EG's or Acer's website. Probably more accurate to reality imo.
Yeah, Demuslim is top ten right? Bet you would put Stephano (who's retired) as number 1 because he showed up at homestory cup.
I didn't say that. I am just implying that Taeja being #01 is a little weird that's all. My "objective" top would be Dear Taeja sOs and Jaedong, but maybe I don't understand this game well enough so I can't appreciate Taeja's godlike gameplay..
On December 04 2013 06:30 YuiHirasawa wrote: I wonder what this "Power Rank" would look like if it was posted on EG's or Acer's website. Probably more accurate to reality imo.
Yeah, Demuslim is top ten right? Bet you would put Stephano (who's retired) as number 1 because he showed up at homestory cup.
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Hell, it's about time! Pretty good power rank. I find it quite funny that Bomber was last PR rank 1 and now he didn't even make in top 10, dat ST_Bummer :S.
I was little surprised for Life and Maru's position but I guess Life has done really good lately and can't really tell if Maru should be higher than those 3 zergs so I guess it is ok. The top 3 is what I supposed to it look like from the start.
On December 04 2013 06:42 Shellshock wrote: I think it's pretty reasonable to have TaeJa #1 considering he keeps winning. That's basically what power rank is all about right?
For fairness there should be no Liquid players in TL Power Ranks since they're obviously only in them because they play on TL
Over the past three months taeja won HSC and DH winter, but bombs out of what should be considered the main tournament circuit and still makes no1? Any number one pick is obviously controversial and there's a lot of ways you can go with it, but this is not the way I would have gone with it.
(Also, the comparison to MVP/Life is pretty damn unfair. Both of them got wins in KR, Taeja never has)
On December 04 2013 06:42 Shellshock wrote: I think it's pretty reasonable to have TaeJa #1 considering he keeps winning. That's basically what power rank is all about right?
I think people should also be on the lookout for San. He's inching closer and closer to being able to put a great run together and finish it well
On December 04 2013 06:42 Shellshock wrote: I think it's pretty reasonable to have TaeJa #1 considering he keeps winning. That's basically what power rank is all about right?
For fairness there should be no Liquid players in TL Power Ranks since they're obviously only in them because they play on TL
The only tragedy is that elfi isn't #1 because he owns TaeJa
On December 04 2013 06:42 Shellshock wrote: I think it's pretty reasonable to have TaeJa #1 considering he keeps winning. That's basically what power rank is all about right?
For fairness there should be no Liquid players in TL Power Ranks since they're obviously only in them because they play on TL
The only tragedy is that elfi isn't #1 because he owns TaeJa
Amount of probe pulls players on this power rank have won with: 0 Amount of probe pulls elfi has won with: 1 gg no re.
i sort of find power ranks a bit useless.i mean they are good in a disorganized system with no central ranking like it was before wcs points.but now blizzard sort of unifies everything under one complete ranking system who generally gives the most objective look of player performance.as far as i am concerned soulkey and jaedong and sos and dear are at the top since they performed the best in the most important tournaments of the year.taeja in 1 place is way off.the guy basicly won 2 homestory cups and 2 dremahcks most of which were avoided by the top wcs kr koreans.also if you take it in terms of quality of opposition top 10 should be only those koreans in wcs korea since that is way harder than anything else.every stage in wcs korea is filled with people that given a chance could advance at least to a dreamhack semifinal.thew difference between them and taeja and hero and jaedong is that they do not have a team to send them to all tournaments.
TaeJa broke the all time aligulac record! How can you argue about his dominance? By the way, as Shellshock said, watch out for San! (Though he seems to choke a bit too much)
On December 04 2013 06:53 Nightwishone wrote: TaeJa broke the all time aligulac record! How can you argue about his dominance? By the way, as Shellshock said, watch out for San! (Though he seems to choke a bit too much)
To be fair, with the inflation in ratings naturally occuring (just look at chess) it becomes hard to compare ratings over long periods of time. Not saying that TaeJa isn't dominating, just that you can't necessarily say that 2013 TaeJa is better than 2011-someone
This is so hilariously biassed. Not by putting Taeja on number one, but for some reason power rank pops up right at the time when Taeja is number 1. What a funny coincidence.
On December 04 2013 06:58 Lunareste wrote: LOL Dear should be #1
Results:
Dear won WCS KR and WCS Season Finals, Taeja won 2 Dreamhacks and Homestory. In terms of prize money, advantage Dear.
Quality of Opponents:
Dear beat Maru (twice), soO, Soulkey, and, oh yeah, Taeja. He really only lost to Jaedong, but it was 2-3. What's Taeja's record against Jaedong? 1-7 Out of the top 8 players in WCS KR Season 3, Taeja has yet to play 6 of them in Heart of the Swarm. Clear, clear advantage to Dear.
Quality of Play:
Dear is the only Protoss winning with macro play and not all-ins. Taeja is doing the same bio builds as every other Terran.
A review, not a predictor:
Dear has had equal to better results than Taeja against much harder opponents. Against common opponents, Dear performs better. In a head-to-head, Dear won.
On December 04 2013 07:05 Assirra wrote: This is so hilariously biassed. Not by putting Taeja on number one, but for some reason power rank pops up right at the time when Taeja is number 1. What a funny coincidence.
...it's early december, come on. If in a month Taeja is #1 and Life or someone becomes obviously #1 and then the power rank came out people would claim bias
Agree with most of it. Inno and Soulkey should both be higher though. Smashing Code B Koreans inflates your ELO. Taeja's DH winter was insanely impressive but I won't be 100% sold unless he goes back to WCS KR and gets that $65k first place.
Dear put on a phenomenal run and only lost 2-3 to Jaedong. And we know how scary Jaedong can be, at times when he's in the groove, he's in his absolute best.
And I'm not just saying A>B therefore A is unquestionably better. I just think that the tournaments Dear kept winning, and the quality of his opponents, are actually still higher then what Taeja did.
On December 04 2013 07:10 Pandain wrote: Didn't Dear 3-0 Taeja?
Dear put on a phenomenal run and only lost 2-3 to Jaedong. And we know how scary Jaedong can be, at times when he's in the groove, he's in his absolute best.
And I'm not just saying A>B therefore A is unquestionably better. I just think that the tournaments Dear kept winning, and the quality of his opponents, are actually still higher then what Taeja did.
3-1, was a pretty good series. TaeJa didn't look bad at all, considering Dear is probably the best PvT in the world.
I'd say the top 5 could all be switched around in some kind of order and it would make sense, that's just how volatile the top spots are right now. TaeJa has been most consistent but like other people have said, he's not facing the tippy-top Koreans on a consistent basis like the WCS Korea players are, and his results in the most prestigious events have been pretty disappointing IMO. You could make a case for Dear just because of his dominance in the top tier events. Although a lot of the people claiming bias or saying this is a travesty must not have read the disclaimer about the criteria before the ranking, and it's really hard to rank based on months and months of past results and present results. Recency-bias is always a factor when comparing past and present wins/losses. But I'd say it's a well put together PR, we shall see how this all plays out in the near future
On December 04 2013 07:05 Assirra wrote: This is so hilariously biassed. Not by putting Taeja on number one, but for some reason power rank pops up right at the time when Taeja is number 1. What a funny coincidence.
im sort of surprised none of the first 5 players in wcs points are not in the poll
I just made it based off what most people were complaining about. Other is there if you think someone else should get it. I think it would just get too complicated if I just put a whole bunch of names in the poll. Other keeps it simpler.
On December 04 2013 07:19 Cheren wrote: Care to remake that poll with the winner of the Hot6ix cup vs Taeja after the tournament is over?
People just vote for what's freshest in their memory.
S class of Taeja, Dear, sOs, Jaedong, Soulkey is very hard to distinguish imo. I think it goes something like that <-- but I'm not sure where the clear lines are as I feel I can switch everyone around in there.
I think the list is fine if you don't take the order too seriously. I don't think you can really set the players on specific places, that's why i don't understand people who argue against specific places, just look at the 10 players and ask yourself if you can agree on them. I am really happy that herO is on the list, i really like him (he seems so happy all the time) and his play is pretty solid too, i hope he owns proleague.
On December 04 2013 06:58 Lunareste wrote: LOL Dear should be #1
Results:
Dear won WCS KR and WCS Season Finals, Taeja won 2 Dreamhacks and Homestory. In terms of prize money, advantage Dear.
Quality of Opponents:
Dear beat Maru (twice), soO, Soulkey, and, oh yeah, Taeja. He really only lost to Jaedong, but it was 2-3. What's Taeja's record against Jaedong? 1-7 Out of the top 8 players in WCS KR Season 3, Taeja has yet to play 6 of them in Heart of the Swarm. Clear, clear advantage to Dear.
Quality of Play:
Dear is the only Protoss winning with macro play and not all-ins. Taeja is doing the same bio builds as every other Terran.
A review, not a predictor:
Dear has had equal to better results than Taeja against much harder opponents. Against common opponents, Dear performs better. In a head-to-head, Dear won.
Lol I love how they always try to qualify the PR by saying that it is not a scouting report on who will do well in the future...that's exactly what it is. Any ranking by its very nature is a prediction of who would do well in the future. Obviously no ranking is perfect, but its still a list of who is the best at this very moment, which in turn is a forecast of who would win if things stayed as they were at this time. Take the college football rankings for example, they are a prediction of who is the best team, even if they are never correct and often have much room for debate. It just rubs me the wrong way to qualify it as anything but a prediction for some reason. If you just want to list the previous results of players, there is no need to do a ranking system at all. Just list all the tournaments chronologically and say who took the top 3 or something. But a ranking is a ranking is a ranking.
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
One tourney?
One in the last seven days. Can't be #1 until he gets 2 in 1 wweek pffft
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
There is absolutely NO arguing that TaeJa is the best player in the world right now. The way he has crushed his opponents throughout the last months is starting to get to a ridiculous point.
The only thing I'm pretty baffled about is herO's placement. Maybe that's just because I can't stand him because of his nick. There is only one HerO - just like there's just one Ronaldo.
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
There is absolutely NO arguing that TaeJa is the best player in the world right now. The way he has crushed his opponents throughout the last months is starting to get to a ridiculous point.
The only thing I'm pretty baffled about is herO's placement. Maybe that's just because I can't stand him because of his nick. There is only one HerO - just like there's just one Ronaldo.
then why is taeja number 11 on wcs point rankings?
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
Not horrible players, but not a single player from that tournament made top 8 in WCS Korea Season 3.
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
There is absolutely NO arguing that TaeJa is the best player in the world right now. The way he has crushed his opponents throughout the last months is starting to get to a ridiculous point.
The only thing I'm pretty baffled about is herO's placement. Maybe that's just because I can't stand him because of his nick. There is only one HerO - just like there's just one Ronaldo.
Here's the thing, there are good players and then there are top players. Taeja rarely even plays against the top players. When he does, he loses. End of story.
Ask someone like Life if they're happy about the level they're at right now. He's been an elite player. He's been at the top and he is trying to make his way back there. Wins over players like these that are struggling to recover their form, or fairly strong but inconsistent players like sOs or San, make the case for Taeja being a high-level player, but they do not make any case whatsoever for #1 player in the world, no matter how many times he repeats the performance.
they said at the Dreamhack stream that the reason Life has not been doing that well lately is because he was getting a girlfriend. Hope he's done with that nonsense, Dedicate your Life to the Swarm!!
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
There is absolutely NO arguing that TaeJa is the best player in the world right now. The way he has crushed his opponents throughout the last months is starting to get to a ridiculous point.
The only thing I'm pretty baffled about is herO's placement. Maybe that's just because I can't stand him because of his nick. There is only one HerO - just like there's just one Ronaldo.
Here's the thing, there are good players and then there are top players. Taeja rarely even plays against the top players. When he does, he loses. End of story.
Ask someone like Life if they're happy about the level they're at right now. He's been an elite player. He's been at the top and he is trying to make his way back there. Wins over players like these that are struggling to recover their form, or fairly strong but inconsistent players like sOs or San, make the case for Taeja being a high-level player, but they do not make any case whatsoever for #1 player in the world, no matter how many times he repeats the performance.
Since June 1st he's lost to Jaedong (0-2), Dear (1-3), Polt (2-3) & Bomber (2-3) in series. On the other hand, he beat Life, sOs, Innovation, MMA, HyuN and Rain convincingly. So who are the top players he can beat to prove his worth? Bomber & Polt were close series while Dear & Jaedong were on fire. I'm really curious how he would do in a rematch against Dear and Maru, but as we don't know we have to give credit where credit is due - he played really well the last few months and he deserves his #1 spot. He probably wouldn't have gotten this a month ago, but his performance at Dreamhack Winter was great.
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
There is absolutely NO arguing that TaeJa is the best player in the world right now. The way he has crushed his opponents throughout the last months is starting to get to a ridiculous point.
The only thing I'm pretty baffled about is herO's placement. Maybe that's just because I can't stand him because of his nick. There is only one HerO - just like there's just one Ronaldo.
Taeja rarely even plays against the top players. When he does, he loses. End of story.
"Taeja rarely plays against good players" - That i can agree, being in WCS AM, attending foreign tournaments, limited opportunity sometimes. "When he does, he loses. End of story" - From what i've been watching over last 3 months, he's been terrorizing over Innovation every chance he got and has beaten many top Code S players very convincingly. I dont understand how you get this idea.
How can you rate some one number one if they don't do well in THE PREMIER TOURNAMENT. Not in season 3 or in the global finals. He couldn't hack it in Korea and so went to America where the competition is easier. Sure he maybe great at foreign tournaments, but so was Stephano. Stephano won lone star clash, NASL 3, and WCS Europe over 4 months, but was never #1. The two dream hacks were very impressive, but I just don't think that the level of competition was all that high in HomeStory Cup roster was that impressive. No one can be crowned rank 1 in the world unless they have been competing in Korea's most prestigious tournaments, GSL, WCS, or OSL. (Or beats the korean champion at WCS finals, but even then...)
Edit:
This be like ranking Boise State (Taeja) # 1 after Alabama (Dear) wins the SEC and the national championship. After a team/player wins the super bowl/wcs finals shouldn't they automatically be ranked #1?
Nice to see PR back! It's just a TL tradition, that needs to be kept up.
So, now to the rage: Life for me is #3. #6 is way too low for him. Also JD should rather be around 5-8. Also Innovation more like #10 or totally out... apart from some nice games in DH winter he showed nearly nothing in the last months!
Cant beleieve that people actually are arguing about Taeja in the #1 spot, wow. Those people doesn't watch Starcraft I presume? Allthough I think Innovation is way to high on that list, he should be about 9-10 maybe, if even in it. He has been performing very poor.
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
There is absolutely NO arguing that TaeJa is the best player in the world right now. The way he has crushed his opponents throughout the last months is starting to get to a ridiculous point.
The only thing I'm pretty baffled about is herO's placement. Maybe that's just because I can't stand him because of his nick. There is only one HerO - just like there's just one Ronaldo.
Here's the thing, there are good players and then there are top players. Taeja rarely even plays against the top players. When he does, he loses. End of story.
Ask someone like Life if they're happy about the level they're at right now. He's been an elite player. He's been at the top and he is trying to make his way back there. Wins over players like these that are struggling to recover their form, or fairly strong but inconsistent players like sOs or San, make the case for Taeja being a high-level player, but they do not make any case whatsoever for #1 player in the world, no matter how many times he repeats the performance.
So who are the top players he can beat to prove his worth?
From left to right in order of significance:
Dear, Soulkey, Jaedong, Maru.
It's hard to tell who else belongs with them, but these are the four that stand out right now.
On December 04 2013 08:13 Supert0fu wrote: How can you rate some one number one if they don't do well in THE PREMIER TOURNAMENT. Not in season 3 or in the global finals. He couldn't hack it in Korea and so went to America where the competition is easier. Sure he maybe great at foreign tournaments, but so was Stephano. Stephano won lone star clash, NASL 3, and WCS Europe over 4 months, but was never #1. The two dream hacks were very impressive, but I just don't think that the level of competition was all that high in HomeStory Cup roster was that impressive. No one can be crowned rank 1 in the world unless they have been competing in Korea's most prestigious tournaments, GSL, WCS, or OSL. (Or beats the korean champion at WCS finals, but even then...)
Edit:
This be like ranking Boise State (Taeja) # 1 after Alabama (Dear) wins the SEC and the national championship. After a team/player wins the super bowl/wcs finals shouldn't they automatically be ranked #1?
totally agree. How the fuck can Taeja be Nr. 1, when he only really shines in beating 2nd tier competition. He beat sOs 2-1, which is nice, but sOs played very very bad in that series and lost to very simple moves. He finished top4 in WCS season 2 finals, which is nice. But Bomber won this tournament above him and even got top4 at Blizzcon and isn´t even in the top10. Besides WCS season 2 finals, Taeja has no results in any tournament with stacked Code S level competition. Maru on the other hand won WCS korea season 2 and got top4 in WCS Korea season 3, season 3 finals and blizzcon. 4 of the hardest 5 tournaments in the last months. Dear won WCS Korea season 3 and season 3 finals. Taeja is a good player and he uses his skills to earn as many prize money as he can get. But Nr.1?? TL bias is strong here.
On December 04 2013 08:21 opterown wrote: hrmmm i honestly think maru is 1-2 ranks too low
Has Maru had better results than Life or SK since the last PR?
yeah, 3 top4s in some of the most stacked tournaments is more impressive than either life or soulkey. heck i'd almost say it's more impressive than jaedong. certainly more consistent than sOs too.
That's a pretty good power rank.Maybe i would place Maru a bit higher.
Some people are complaining about Taeja being #1.I guess that's because he didn't win any WCS events but i think he totally deserves it.Very solid play for a long time now and just take a look at the opponents he beat.
On December 04 2013 08:13 Supert0fu wrote: How can you rate some one number one if they don't do well in THE PREMIER TOURNAMENT. Not in season 3 or in the global finals. He couldn't hack it in Korea and so went to America where the competition is easier. Sure he maybe great at foreign tournaments, but so was Stephano. Stephano won lone star clash, NASL 3, and WCS Europe over 4 months, but was never #1. The two dream hacks were very impressive, but I just don't think that the level of competition was all that high in HomeStory Cup roster was that impressive. No one can be crowned rank 1 in the world unless they have been competing in Korea's most prestigious tournaments, GSL, WCS, or OSL. (Or beats the korean champion at WCS finals, but even then...)
Edit:
This be like ranking Boise State (Taeja) # 1 after Alabama (Dear) wins the SEC and the national championship. After a team/player wins the super bowl/wcs finals shouldn't they automatically be ranked #1?
totally agree. How the fuck can Taeja be Nr. 1, when he only really shines in beating 2nd tier competition. He beat sOs 2-1, which is nice, but sOs played very very bad in that series and lost to very simple moves. He finished top4 in WCS season 2 finals, which is nice. But Bomber won this tournament above him and even got top4 at Blizzcon and isn´t even in the top10. Besides WCS season 2 finals, Taeja has no results in any tournament with stacked Code S level competition. Maru on the other hand won WCS korea season 2 and got top4 in WCS Korea season 3, season 3 finals and blizzcon. 4 of the hardest 5 tournaments in the last months. Dear won WCS Korea season 3 and season 3 finals. Taeja is a good player and he uses his skills to earn as many prize money as he can get. But Nr.1?? TL bias is strong here.
i think the exact same thing.besides sos taeja beat only koreans who ran from korea in the first place or the ones who are in a slump.i seriously doubt that waxangel believes taeja is number 1.either that or too many people have stopped watching sc2 in korea.which is a bit weird cause teamliquid is usually a bastion for korea lovers.
If in a power rank we measure results (in tournament placings), players beaten and how convincing the victories were, there is no way to argue against Taeja being #1.
On December 04 2013 06:36 rpddropshot wrote: I don't feel TaeJa has won big enough tournaments to be #1, but then I look at his consistency over the entire year and I can't really argue...
Not sure if serious
Taeja hasn't been succesfull against players I see as elite players, like Maru, Bomber, Soulkey and Dear. I don't think Taeja is capable of winning a tournament against the absolute best players, so I think Taeja is definitely placed too high in the power rank.
Oh yeah, I forgot that DreamHack Bucharest was filled with horrible players...
There is absolutely NO arguing that TaeJa is the best player in the world right now. The way he has crushed his opponents throughout the last months is starting to get to a ridiculous point.
The only thing I'm pretty baffled about is herO's placement. Maybe that's just because I can't stand him because of his nick. There is only one HerO - just like there's just one Ronaldo.
Here's the thing, there are good players and then there are top players. Taeja rarely even plays against the top players. When he does, he loses. End of story.
Ask someone like Life if they're happy about the level they're at right now. He's been an elite player. He's been at the top and he is trying to make his way back there. Wins over players like these that are struggling to recover their form, or fairly strong but inconsistent players like sOs or San, make the case for Taeja being a high-level player, but they do not make any case whatsoever for #1 player in the world, no matter how many times he repeats the performance.
So who are the top players he can beat to prove his worth?
From left to right in order of significance:
Dear, Soulkey, Jaedong, Maru.
It's hard to tell who else belongs with them, but these are the four that stand out right now.
Yea. I do understand why Taeja is ranked first in this powerrank (his run in Dreamhack was incredible) but imo, it's a bit unfair to rank him above Dear, Soulkey and Maru when none of them played in the tournaments won by Taeja. To make it more fair, it might be a good idea to create 2 powerranks: one for korean tournaments only (including WCS korea, GSTL, PL...) and one for international tournaments since a lot of korean players only play in korea.
I don't understand how anybody who actually pays a lot of attention to the scene can honestly believe Taeja is the best player in the world right now.
Until he can prove his worth in a tourney stacked with Code S players, it's silly to claim he's #1 because of his foreign tourney wins that were quite light on true competition.
Really nice to have power rank back! I've missed it a lot
Nice to see Life back again, really look forward to (hopefully) see him rise to the top again. Also I hope that soon Naniwa will be able to get in the top 10.
Congrats to Taeja, really well deserved #1 spot. Taeja and Life were obviously on another level than the other guys (and they were by no means bad!) at DH, and well look at the results.. Taeja was the stronger one. Such a beast.
On December 04 2013 08:13 Supert0fu wrote: How can you rate some one number one if they don't do well in THE PREMIER TOURNAMENT. Not in season 3 or in the global finals. He couldn't hack it in Korea and so went to America where the competition is easier. Sure he maybe great at foreign tournaments, but so was Stephano. Stephano won lone star clash, NASL 3, and WCS Europe over 4 months, but was never #1. The two dream hacks were very impressive, but I just don't think that the level of competition was all that high in HomeStory Cup roster was that impressive. No one can be crowned rank 1 in the world unless they have been competing in Korea's most prestigious tournaments, GSL, WCS, or OSL. (Or beats the korean champion at WCS finals, but even then...)
Edit:
This be like ranking Boise State (Taeja) # 1 after Alabama (Dear) wins the SEC and the national championship. After a team/player wins the super bowl/wcs finals shouldn't they automatically be ranked #1?
totally agree. How the fuck can Taeja be Nr. 1, when he only really shines in beating 2nd tier competition. He beat sOs 2-1, which is nice, but sOs played very very bad in that series and lost to very simple moves. He finished top4 in WCS season 2 finals, which is nice. But Bomber won this tournament above him and even got top4 at Blizzcon and isn´t even in the top10. Besides WCS season 2 finals, Taeja has no results in any tournament with stacked Code S level competition. Maru on the other hand won WCS korea season 2 and got top4 in WCS Korea season 3, season 3 finals and blizzcon. 4 of the hardest 5 tournaments in the last months. Dear won WCS Korea season 3 and season 3 finals. Taeja is a good player and he uses his skills to earn as many prize money as he can get. But Nr.1?? TL bias is strong here.
i think the exact same thing.besides sos taeja beat only koreans who ran from korea in the first place or the ones who are in a slump.i seriously doubt that waxangel believes taeja is number 1.either that or too many people have stopped watching sc2 in korea.which is a bit weird cause teamliquid is usually a bastion for korea lovers.
All those arguments can be applied to ANY player whatsoever. Absolutely no player except maybe Soulkey has any actual consistency to speak of using the strict criteria that some people here want applied. Put any of the top 25 players into a tournament and there is no way you will be able to predict the results of that tournament with any reasonable accuracy. At least you won't statistically do better than ranking systems like Aligulac. So basically what people using those arguments are trying to say that there is no way to determine number 1, and thus no ranking can be done.
But that would be giving too much credit. I think people are just trying to vent their own biases. If Taeja is TL bias, for every proposed number 1 I can claim as strong a bias of the proponent. The only exception being machine/point created rankings, wait, Taeja is number 1 in many of those.
Pretty good PR! I have some quibbles with some of the spots, but I agree with it in general!
Regardless of whether Taeja deserves the top spot or not, I find it a little strange that so many people use the fact that Taeja hasn't played much in Korea purely as a strike against him. In many ways, I find it more impressive that his results aren't just on his home turf. Yes, playing in global tournaments means he runs into a higher percentage of soft players than players who only enter GSL/WCS KR, but to me it is extraordinary that Taeja can play so consistently across such inconsistent conditions. Online, offline, in America, in Europe, well-rested, jet lagged, on a big stage, inside of Take's apartment... the type of resilience it takes to win and win often under these varied conditions is pretty remarkable.
I know it's more difficult to quantify than something like "Dear beat X, and Taeja beat Y, and X is better than Y", but it's still something that I feel shouldn't be undervalued.
On December 04 2013 08:37 skipdog172 wrote: I don't understand how anybody who actually pays a lot of attention to the scene can honestly believe Taeja is the best player in the world right now.
Until he can prove his worth in a tourney stacked with Code S players, it's silly to claim he's #1 because of his foreign tourney wins that were quite light on true competition.
I think many people agreeing with the rank would disagree with the statement "Taeja is the best player in the world". There is so much volatility in SC2 that any such claim is completely arbitrary and meaningless. Rank #1 in some ranking is not the same as claiming that the player is the best player in the world with all the associated semantic baggage.
On December 04 2013 08:37 skipdog172 wrote: I don't understand how anybody who actually pays a lot of attention to the scene can honestly believe Taeja is the best player in the world right now.
Until he can prove his worth in a tourney stacked with Code S players, it's silly to claim he's #1 because of his foreign tourney wins that were quite light on true competition.
i think a lot of people downplay the korean tournaments and the level of oppsition it is there.every single opponent you meet from code a to the code s finals is a potential champion who might be unknown simply because they did not have a foreign team to send them to all the foreign events.in the korean scene right now it is all about who can get to a foreign team that sends them to tournaments.just look what the foreign scene did for duckdeok,hyun,taeja,hero,jaedong.in korean sc2 tournaments they were sort of playing the b side to major stars.since they got abroad all of a sudden they started winning tournaments.if people think dremhack bucharest is harder than code a they got another thing coming...
@mcc
taeja is actually 11 in wcs rankings which are actually the rankings that send you to the global finals.and there are players who are consistent but very underrated.dear and soulkey come to mind.btw soulkey is number 1 in the wcs rankings.
On December 04 2013 08:37 skipdog172 wrote: I don't understand how anybody who actually pays a lot of attention to the scene can honestly believe Taeja is the best player in the world right now.
Until he can prove his worth in a tourney stacked with Code S players, it's silly to claim he's #1 because of his foreign tourney wins that were quite light on true competition.
I think many people agreeing with the rank would disagree with the statement "Taeja is the best player in the world". There is so much volatility in SC2 that any such claim is completely arbitrary and meaningless. Rank #1 in some ranking is not the same as claiming that the player is the best player in the world with all the associated semantic baggage.
OK if being #1 on the power ranks is not the same as being the 'best player in the world', then what a stupid pointless fucking list!
In my opinion it's pretty funny how upset people can get of course of this power rank. It's just a list, based on the opinion of the writers. Of course you can critisize and disagree, but it is really needed to get that offensive??
On December 04 2013 08:37 skipdog172 wrote: I don't understand how anybody who actually pays a lot of attention to the scene can honestly believe Taeja is the best player in the world right now.
Until he can prove his worth in a tourney stacked with Code S players, it's silly to claim he's #1 because of his foreign tourney wins that were quite light on true competition.
i think a lot of people downplay the korean tournaments and the level of oppsition it is there.every single opponent you meet from code a to the code s finals is a potential champion who might be unknown simply because they did not have a foreign team to send them to all the foreign events.in the korean scene right now it is all about who can get to a foreign team that sends them to tournaments.just look what the foreign scene did for duckdeok,hyun,taeja,hero,jaedong.in korean sc2 tournaments they were sort of playing the b side to major stars.since they got abroad all of a sudden they started winning tournaments.if people think dremhack bucharest is harder than code a they got another thing coming...
@mcc
taeja is actually 11 in wcs rankings which are actually the rankings that send you to the global finals.and there are players who are consistent but very underrated.dear and soulkey come to mind.btw soulkey is number 1 in the wcs rankings.
I know, but he is no.1 in other rankings that do not limit themselves to small subset of tournaments. Plus the WCS point system is nonsensical as good ranking of someones ability, just look at free points you could get in many parts of the WCS system and disproportionate valuing of first places. Of course TLPD and Aligulac have their issues, but are much better tools for that purpose.
On December 04 2013 09:04 Darkhoarse wrote: TL tactically waiting until there is literally no argument against Taeja being number 1 before releasing the power rank.
Well played.
same as how they added all the iccup/esv tournmanets to TLPD and made them count for Elo when they added taeja to the team, haha
On December 04 2013 09:04 Darkhoarse wrote: TL tactically waiting until there is literally no argument against Taeja being number 1 before releasing the power rank.
Well played.
same as how they added all the iccup/esv tournmanets to TLPD and made them count for Elo when they added taeja to the team, haha
On December 04 2013 08:37 skipdog172 wrote: I don't understand how anybody who actually pays a lot of attention to the scene can honestly believe Taeja is the best player in the world right now.
Until he can prove his worth in a tourney stacked with Code S players, it's silly to claim he's #1 because of his foreign tourney wins that were quite light on true competition.
I think many people agreeing with the rank would disagree with the statement "Taeja is the best player in the world". There is so much volatility in SC2 that any such claim is completely arbitrary and meaningless. Rank #1 in some ranking is not the same as claiming that the player is the best player in the world with all the associated semantic baggage.
OK if being #1 on the power ranks is not the same as being the 'best player in the world', then what a stupid pointless fucking list!
As nearly all lists based on personal opinions and nobody forces you to read it. Its pointlessness is your subjective opinion, some people see point to it, be it entertainment or attempt to measure results (which is not the same as being best player).
On December 04 2013 09:04 Darkhoarse wrote: TL tactically waiting until there is literally no argument against Taeja being number 1 before releasing the power rank.
Well played.
same as how they added all the iccup/esv tournmanets to TLPD and made them count for Elo when they added taeja to the team, haha
In all fairness I bitched my ass off to get them in there. Didn't they put it in before Liquid?
On December 04 2013 08:37 skipdog172 wrote: I don't understand how anybody who actually pays a lot of attention to the scene can honestly believe Taeja is the best player in the world right now.
Until he can prove his worth in a tourney stacked with Code S players, it's silly to claim he's #1 because of his foreign tourney wins that were quite light on true competition.
I think many people agreeing with the rank would disagree with the statement "Taeja is the best player in the world". There is so much volatility in SC2 that any such claim is completely arbitrary and meaningless. Rank #1 in some ranking is not the same as claiming that the player is the best player in the world with all the associated semantic baggage.
OK if being #1 on the power ranks is not the same as being the 'best player in the world', then what a stupid pointless fucking list!
As nearly all lists based on personal opinions and nobody forces you to read it. Its pointlessness is your subjective opinion, some people see point to it, be it entertainment or attempt to measure results (which is not the same as being best player).
Technically, when you read the words on this screen, their meaning is not directly communicated from anyone, and is determined by your own perspective. Just putting the letters and spaces together to give rise to meaning is an act that you yourself perform each time you read. You presume that your understanding of how language works is accurate, based on your previous experience. Subjectively you read, subjectively you respond, subjectively you think. Technically, I find your "matter-of-fact" opinion that opinions are irrelevant and all that matters are technicalities rather nonsensical.
On December 04 2013 09:17 opterown wrote: it was like literally the same day or something like that. they were in there before, just never counted to Elo iirc
I don't see why people are complaining though. They argue that the quantity of wins doesn't make up for the lack of quality, but everyone knows that a power rank can't be based off such a vague and subjective feeling. (and also the competition in DH was without a doubt code S level.)
On December 04 2013 09:39 Elitios wrote: Great read!
I don't see why people are complaining though. They argue that the quantity of wins doesn't make up for the lack of quality, but everyone knows that a power rank can't be based off such a vague and subjective feeling. (and also the competition in DH was without a doubt code S level.)
This ranking is very accurate imo.
At DH, the terran lineup was kinda code S (lacking Bomber, Maru, Jakji), zerg lineup was code A, protoss lineup was code B. No foreign tournament will ever be half as stacked as code S.
On December 04 2013 09:39 Elitios wrote: Great read!
I don't see why people are complaining though. They argue that the quantity of wins doesn't make up for the lack of quality, but everyone knows that a power rank can't be based off such a vague and subjective feeling. (and also the competition in DH was without a doubt code S level.)
This ranking is very accurate imo.
At DH, the terran lineup was kinda code S (lacking Bomber, Maru, Jakji), zerg lineup was code A, protoss lineup was code B. No foreign tournament will ever be half as stacked as code S.
On December 04 2013 09:46 shadymmj wrote: talk about biased, #1 was practically a no-show in the WCS finals, which is really the tournament that matters.
So sOs should be rank 1 even though he is in Code A, just lost the Red Bull Battlegrounds, and also placed 9-12 at DH Winter?
Yay, i missed power rank. After this Proleague will be sure to dominate a large portion of the spotlight( which im ok with).
Also this is so sad but true "While Soulkey is a formidable player, it's hard to shake off the feeling that he's constantly the victim of someone else's date with destiny," A real spot on quote. Nonetheless, Soulkey fighting!
On December 04 2013 09:39 Elitios wrote: Great read!
I don't see why people are complaining though. They argue that the quantity of wins doesn't make up for the lack of quality, but everyone knows that a power rank can't be based off such a vague and subjective feeling. (and also the competition in DH was without a doubt code S level.)
This ranking is very accurate imo.
At DH, the terran lineup was kinda code S (lacking Bomber, Maru, Jakji), zerg lineup was code A, protoss lineup was code B. No foreign tournament will ever be half as stacked as code S.
ipl5 was the closest I think
Actually IPL4 had 19/32 Code S players (at that time) in the tournament. Would've been 20 had Mvp not cancelled. IPL5 only had 15/32 of that season's code S players participating.
So basically IPL4 hardest foreign tournament confirmed. Who won that again?
lol i just love how people mock jaedong and taeja because they are not supposedly "top players" .. since they did not have tournament runs that is stacked with code s players .. thinking that a couple of tournament wins and 2nd places wont matter since its not "stacked" and a couple of high level pros along the way wont matter as if its not that hard.. and everyone still dismisses innovation who always places high in code s and is still considered by people not a "top player" since he doesnt place in anything and gets murdered horribly by Taeja all the time .. or as how people tell that sOs is better than Dear just because he won Blizzcon even though the gap skill is clear between them..
so what does people consider to be top if it is not based upon difficulty and consistency ? i just dont understand people here from TL
On December 04 2013 09:46 shadymmj wrote: talk about biased, #1 was practically a no-show in the WCS finals, which is really the tournament that matters.
So sOs should be rank 1 even though he is in Code A, just lost the Red Bull Battlegrounds, and also placed 9-12 at DH Winter?
There should have been one in october or november tough With the WCS season finals and BLizzcon yet for some mysterious reason it aint there and the one before that Taeja just happened to climbed 4 spots. hmm.
On December 04 2013 09:46 shadymmj wrote: talk about biased, #1 was practically a no-show in the WCS finals, which is really the tournament that matters.
So sOs should be rank 1 even though he is in Code A, just lost the Red Bull Battlegrounds, and also placed 9-12 at DH Winter?
There should have been one in october or november tough With the WCS season finals and BLizzcon yet for some mysterious reason it aint there and the one before that Taeja just happened to climbed 4 spots. hmm.
What the hell is the point in doing a power rank right after a world finals? Everyone would just expect you to put the players in order of their finish in the most recent tournament.
On December 04 2013 09:46 shadymmj wrote: talk about biased, #1 was practically a no-show in the WCS finals, which is really the tournament that matters.
So sOs should be rank 1 even though he is in Code A, just lost the Red Bull Battlegrounds, and also placed 9-12 at DH Winter?
There should have been one in october or november tough With the WCS season finals and BLizzcon yet for some mysterious reason it aint there and the one before that Taeja just happened to climbed 4 spots. hmm.
What the hell is the point in doing a power rank right after a world finals? Everyone would just expect you to put the players in order of their finish in the most recent tournament.
You argument had been valid, if they didn't do the same after every season final (minus the third)
On December 04 2013 09:46 shadymmj wrote: talk about biased, #1 was practically a no-show in the WCS finals, which is really the tournament that matters.
So sOs should be rank 1 even though he is in Code A, just lost the Red Bull Battlegrounds, and also placed 9-12 at DH Winter?
There should have been one in october or november tough With the WCS season finals and BLizzcon yet for some mysterious reason it aint there and the one before that Taeja just happened to climbed 4 spots. hmm.
What the hell is the point in doing a power rank right after a world finals? Everyone would just expect you to put the players in order of their finish in the most recent tournament.
You argument had been valid, if they didn't do the same after every season final (minus the third)
Maybe they decided that was redundant and that's why they decided to not do it a third time Or maybe Waxangel was just busy or something and couldn't do the ones in November/October. Who knows?
On December 04 2013 09:39 Elitios wrote: Great read!
I don't see why people are complaining though. They argue that the quantity of wins doesn't make up for the lack of quality, but everyone knows that a power rank can't be based off such a vague and subjective feeling. (and also the competition in DH was without a doubt code S level.)
This ranking is very accurate imo.
At DH, the terran lineup was kinda code S (lacking Bomber, Maru, Jakji), zerg lineup was code A, protoss lineup was code B. No foreign tournament will ever be half as stacked as code S.
ipl5 was the closest I think
Actually IPL4 had 19/32 Code S players (at that time) in the tournament. Would've been 20 had Mvp not cancelled. IPL5 only had 15/32 of that season's code S players participating.
So basically IPL4 hardest foreign tournament confirmed. Who won that again?
ipl4 was a side event to the greatest gstl finals of all time, and you know it
On December 04 2013 09:39 Elitios wrote: Great read!
I don't see why people are complaining though. They argue that the quantity of wins doesn't make up for the lack of quality, but everyone knows that a power rank can't be based off such a vague and subjective feeling. (and also the competition in DH was without a doubt code S level.)
This ranking is very accurate imo.
At DH, the terran lineup was kinda code S (lacking Bomber, Maru, Jakji), zerg lineup was code A, protoss lineup was code B. No foreign tournament will ever be half as stacked as code S.
ipl5 was the closest I think
Actually IPL4 had 19/32 Code S players (at that time) in the tournament. Would've been 20 had Mvp not cancelled. IPL5 only had 15/32 of that season's code S players participating.
So basically IPL4 hardest foreign tournament confirmed. Who won that again?
ipl4 was a side event to the greatest gstl finals of all time, and you know it
I have to think that sOs or Dear would take out Taeja in a Bo5 or Bo7 series. Somehow he always looks overwhelmed taking on the very top Protoss players.
On December 04 2013 09:46 shadymmj wrote: talk about biased, #1 was practically a no-show in the WCS finals, which is really the tournament that matters.
So sOs should be rank 1 even though he is in Code A, just lost the Red Bull Battlegrounds, and also placed 9-12 at DH Winter?
There should have been one in october or november tough With the WCS season finals and BLizzcon yet for some mysterious reason it aint there and the one before that Taeja just happened to climbed 4 spots. hmm.
What the hell is the point in doing a power rank right after a world finals? Everyone would just expect you to put the players in order of their finish in the most recent tournament.
Taking the DH championship finals as the benchmark is much better instead.
Life doesn't deserve top 5 in any way based on his play over the last year, JD should gtfo until he wins something, taeja should try to compete in a KR tournament. Can we just copy the top 8 from WCS KR into powerrank please?
(At least polt is out of the power rank now, I'll try to console myself with that)
On December 04 2013 07:05 Assirra wrote: This is so hilariously biassed. Not by putting Taeja on number one, but for some reason power rank pops up right at the time when Taeja is number 1. What a funny coincidence.
Agreed. It's not even getting close to the end of the year and none of the major tournaments have finished for the year.
On December 04 2013 07:05 Assirra wrote: This is so hilariously biassed. Not by putting Taeja on number one, but for some reason power rank pops up right at the time when Taeja is number 1. What a funny coincidence.
Agreed. It's not even getting close to the end of the year and none of the major tournaments have finished for the year.
On December 04 2013 07:05 Assirra wrote: This is so hilariously biassed. Not by putting Taeja on number one, but for some reason power rank pops up right at the time when Taeja is number 1. What a funny coincidence.
Agreed. It's not even getting close to the end of the year and none of the major tournaments have finished for the year.
On December 04 2013 09:39 Elitios wrote: Great read!
I don't see why people are complaining though. They argue that the quantity of wins doesn't make up for the lack of quality, but everyone knows that a power rank can't be based off such a vague and subjective feeling. (and also the competition in DH was without a doubt code S level.)
This ranking is very accurate imo.
At DH, the terran lineup was kinda code S (lacking Bomber, Maru, Jakji), zerg lineup was code A, protoss lineup was code B. No foreign tournament will ever be half as stacked as code S.
And none of that actually matters because out of his 9 games, Taeja only faced one of those Code A opponents, SjoW. Code A players accidentally get into Code S all the time, see Swagger, PigBaby, Shine, the list goes on. Nothing new there.
The rest of his competition was Code S level, and he played 9 matches to the Code S equivalent of 7. The other 10 players in the tournament might as well not have existed so far as we're concerned.
The powerrank is overall pretty good imo, but I do agree that the players that only played in korean tournaments are for the most a bit too low on the PR, since they have shown incredible skill in the most prestigious, stacked and thus the hardest tournaments in the world (WCS KR, GSL, OSL). Taeja is not the only player to have been consistent as of lately, Dear, Soulkey and Maru have been showing consistent results in Korean tournaments, which Taeja has been avoiding. Therefore I think that Taeja should not be No 1, even though I can understand it due to his regularity (aligulac regularity record).
I have to disagree at some points. Innovation has been beaten by Supernova and Crank at DH Bucharest, and not only beaten, but stomped by Taeja. At GSL by DRG, Jjakji and soO, he lost to duckdeock at Blizzcon (!) in the first round and at DH Winter not only to Taeja, but also to Patience, ForGG and Life. He showed good results in teamleagues but only against average korean players while losing to some Foreigners. Despite Bombers lack of appearances lately and his repeated fall to Scarlett I value his Blizzcon performance higher than anything that Innovation has done since the last powerrank - also Bomber only lost to top10-contenders since GSL. So, I'd rather kick innovation out of the top10 and give Bomber (or someone else) 10th place.
Also I think, Jaedong got pretty lucky in Grids and is way overrated. Apart from his Blizzcon performance he didn't have impressive runs since september - it's enough for the top10 but only for the bottom of them. His results since the last powerrank: IEM NY: failed to qualify (out after losses against zest and first) DH Bucharest: Ro16 (out against sOs) WCS AM: Semifinal (out against Byul) WCS Season 3 Finals: last in his group after losing to MMA and Genius with a 1-4 record Red Bull NY: failed to qualify (1st try: out against apocalypse; 2nd try:out against Suhosin; 3rd try: out against Gamja...who?) WCS global finals: impressive winning streak against MVP, Dear and Maru but stomped 1-4 by sOs in the finals (like he got stomped in almost every finals he took part this year) Dreamhack Winter: topping his relatively weak group and then no win in the Playoffs (losses against Innovation an JYP)
As I said: Without his run at Blizzcon he couldn't be considered top10 material.
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
This is either a troll post or you don't follow the sc2 scene closely. Taeja has won more than one tourney.
And what so much has Taeja won the last month? GSL? WCS? WCG? Something else competing among the Koreans in top shape?... not just fighting silly foreigners and exhausted koreans who had won more money in one tournament than what Taeja had won over his entire carrier? Get real.
For me the best player right now with his current results is Dear, followed by the amazing play of JaeDong. And after that you can place maru, soulkey, parting, taeja, sos and the rest.
I agree with Taeja being 1st, not sure about sOs being 3rd though. Yes he won Blizzcon but he got destroyed by Parting in Red Bull 4-1 (and RB was not really that stacked) and he had a bad run at DH Winter where he lost to every Korean except ForGG who has bad TvP. JD was in five finals this year and in all those tournaments he dominated right until the finals.
I mean, we had Inno as #1 even when Soulkey beat him in the finals, so I think JD deserves to be #3 and sOs #4.
I can't tell if TL is biased or if they're just trolling with this PowerRanking....
Taeja is great, he won stuff but he hasn't won a single WCS tournament this year, Dear won back to back WCS tournaments and at the same time was a royal roader, how is he not #1 ?
Besides you can discount DH bucharest and HSC as "tournaments" since they do not have NEARLY the same representation of skill as a WCS Korea.
I give up on this PowerRanking.... I had my hopes up but this is just silly !!!
On December 04 2013 06:53 Nightwishone wrote: TaeJa broke the all time aligulac record! How can you argue about his dominance? By the way, as Shellshock said, watch out for San! (Though he seems to choke a bit too much)
To be fair, with the inflation in ratings naturally occuring (just look at chess) it becomes hard to compare ratings over long periods of time. Not saying that TaeJa isn't dominating, just that you can't necessarily say that 2013 TaeJa is better than 2011-someone
I agree with you, but at the present moment we're not comparing him to MVP's peak or MMA's days of glory. It would be interesting to have an accurate rating for these things though.
On December 04 2013 17:30 Rascandrius wrote: I can't tell if TL is biased or if they're just trolling with this PowerRanking....
Taeja is great, he won stuff but he hasn't won a single WCS tournament this year, Dear won back to back WCS tournaments and at the same time was a royal roader, how is he not #1 ?
Besides you can discount DH bucharest and HSC as "tournaments" since they do not have NEARLY the same representation of skill as a WCS Korea.
I give up on this PowerRanking.... I had my hopes up but this is just silly !!!
DH Bucharest was called one of the most stacked tournaments ever at the time. I didn't think it was accurate, but still, you can't discount it as a secondary tournament. Also, WCS Korea lacked TaeJa, Jaedong, HerO, Polt, MVP, and duckdeok (he's not the best but still good enough to beat Innovation).
I don't understand how people discount TaeJa's tournaments. The Dreamhacks were stacked as hell. He beat Koreans of Code S level and players who are in this very powerrank over and over. His actual level of play and record against Koreans is pretty staggering, just look at his Elo and Aligulac ranking. He isn't farming foreigners, he's farming Koreans and it's a bit erroneous to say that he hasn't performed well in WCS as he has performed decently, though he had a couple of early exits in the last two. But he has his dual semi-final run in S2, where he barely lost both series, to make up for it.
I give up on this PowerRanking.... I had my hopes up but this is just silly !!!
I don't understand this kind of attitude- the power rank is written with lots of effort by TL writers as a means of showing how they would rank Sc2 players, not as some sort of community magazine piece meant to appease readers. In short, it's not here to please you and satisfy and fanboyism/anti-fanboyism you may have. It's just a rough approximation of who is the best at the given moment. If you don't like it you are free to write your own monthly power ranks and post them in the blogs section.
I think the #1 and #2 spots can be interchanged but otherwise good power rank.
Teaja is good but he basically never won anything in Korea. I would argue that winning foreign weekend events doesn't make you best player in the world.
I feel, the irritation about taeja being #1 in this rank comes from his weak performance at WCS. But WCS events weren't that meaningful apart from the season and global finals. In the season finals he didn't take part due to his short "slump" in octobre. And at Blizzcon he couldn't show anything after losing to the absolute favourite in the first round: Dear (who would've won Blizzcon imo if Jaedong weren't so hysterically pushed by the audience).
Taeja clearly wasn't in best state in octobre as we could see from his emotionless win of HSC, his depressing interview and his timid statements at Dreamhack Winter. But with the win of HSC he seems to have gotten fresh motivation which lead into very much skill at Dreamhack.
To call the Dreamhack Bucharest and Winter not comparable to high korean competition can be read as an insult to following players who were beaten by Taeja: Avenge, Symbol, sOs(x2), Life(x3), Innovation(x2), HerO and MMA
One can imagine Dear or perhaps soulkey being in first place of the power rank instead of Taeja but Taeja is clearly a contender for this honour. But I can't understand why someone would see them so insistent in that place before Taeja. Soulkey stomped Naniwa before getting stomped by Bomber at Blizzcon and ripped only through foreigners at WCG but he was impressive at WCS Season 3 Finals and did pretty ok at WCS Korea (for his standards). Dear dominated WCS Korea and the Season Final but where beaten by a still struggeling Jaedong. Apart from that we didn't see anything of dear but his disappointing performance in GSTL.
Also we should blame Blizzard for the single elimination Bracket at Blizzcon
On December 04 2013 09:46 shadymmj wrote: talk about biased, #1 was practically a no-show in the WCS finals, which is really the tournament that matters.
So sOs should be rank 1 even though he is in Code A, just lost the Red Bull Battlegrounds, and also placed 9-12 at DH Winter?
Yes because Blizzcon is fucking Blizzcon.
It doesn't mean shit than Zidane could never be arsed to play away games against Osasuna or Real Sociedad because he was the best player in the world by miles in world and european finals.
TaeJa being #1 is ridiculous imo. He has yet to win anything with the other top players in it (dear soulkey ect) i mean he has only beaten sOs and Life recently that can be considered top players and has lost to all the others. How is losing 3-1 pretty recently in an extremely important knockout match at the biggest tourny of the year not given big weight in the #1 vs #2? Not to mention Dear having consistent wins over all top players with only one lose in a very close series to Jaedong recently.
Yes, as usual, I feel foreign tournament and the "few" Korean who attend to them are somehow overated, wheras Korean player staying in Korea, mostly Kespa, are less "visible" therefor underrated...
10 - CJ_herO (agree) 9 - Acer_INnoVation (disagree with you) 8 - MaruPrime (disagree with you) 7 - SKT_PartinG (disagree with you) 6 - ST_Life (agree) 5 - Woongjin_sOs (disagree with you) 4 - Woongjin_Soulkey (disagree with you) 3 - EG_Jaedong (disagree with you) 2 - SouL_Dear (agree) 1 - Liquid_TaeJa (agree)
I think PartinG is stronger than he is in there, while INnoVation is slightly worse than you state. Also I think Soulkey is stronger than sOs, Life is fine on the 6... SouL_Dear and Liquid_Taeja are fine, even if I think you can switch my Dear and my Jaedong atm!!!
I too believe Dear to be stronger than Taeja atm, but it's obviously very close. The fact that we haven't seen Taeja do great in WCS is what puts him slightly below Dear.
This is why I love these power rankings, it brings out some discussion! Keep in mind that if Dear was #1 then we would have a lot of people here arguing for Taeja to be better.
Can't wait until the player of the year discussions! Quite a few potential picks I'd say!
When I was scrolling down, not seeing him anywhere, I was becoming more and more concerned that you really did it... While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment. The whole achievement of Taeja winning "five major tournaments" is purely enabled by the very relaxed definition of a "major tournament".
But that's not the only thing wrong with this "power rank" and they all boil down to the same problem: the people that are putting this together don't like the WCS system. Not including the two time WCS NA champion (in favor of a cool guy who won one random IEM tourney, a popular old-school player who hasn't won anything of substance at all and the best player of the first half of the year who is nevertheless mainly irrelevant since then) is just purposefully showing your attitude towards the WCS. If Taeja is so #1, how come he can't ever get results in such an easy and irrelevant tournament as the WCS NA?
If you consider WCS NA irrelevant, you should really take the same stance towards all the "major" tournaments, including HSC, IEMs and Dreamhacks. You can't at the same time complain about having too many Koreans in WCS NA and then justify basing the ranking on these "major" tournaments because there were Koreans to beat, it just doesn't make sense. If you really want to consider the "quality of competition", you just have to put more (or basically all) weight on the GSL, Season finals and Blizzcon. But then you would have to include soO, Bomber and most importantly, Trap (how does Trap not get even a honorary mention is miles beyond my comprehension).
On December 04 2013 22:14 opisska wrote: When I was scrolling down, not seeing him anywhere, I was becoming more and more concerned that you really did it... While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment. The whole achievement of Taeja winning "five major tournaments" is purely enabled by the very relaxed definition of a "major tournament".
But that's not the only thing wrong with this "power rank" and they all boil down to the same problem: the people that are putting this together don't like the WCS system. Not including the two time WCS NA champion (in favor of a cool guy who won one random IEM tourney, a popular old-school player who hasn't won anything of substance at all and the best player of the first half of the year who is nevertheless mainly irrelevant since then) is just purposefully showing your attitude towards the WCS. If Taeja is so #1, how come he can't ever get results in such an easy and irrelevant tournament as the WCS NA?
If you consider WCS NA irrelevant, you should really take the same stance towards all the "major" tournaments, including HSC, IEMs and Dreamhacks. You can't at the same time complain about having too many Koreans in WCS NA and then justify basing the ranking on these "major" tournaments because there were Koreans to beat, it just doesn't make sense. If you really want to consider the "quality of competition", you just have to put more (or basically all) weight on the GSL, Season finals and Blizzcon. But then you would have to include soO, Bomber and most importantly, Trap (how does Trap not get even a honorary mention is miles beyond my comprehension).
Wow, hard to point out things any better. This post sums it up perfectly!
I think Soulkey is my pick. While he doesn't have as many medals as Jaedong/Taeja, or been as dominating as Innovation during the first half of 2013, he did win a GSL (and WCG!!). He also was the imo best zerg during all of 2013, and a consistent top 5 player.
Innovation is my clear second place, then it's very close between Jaedong/Taeja/Maru/Dear/Life.
Another way to pick is to go to SC2 Earnings and just grab sOs, being over $30k ahead of forever #2, Jaedong.
On December 04 2013 21:28 Aeroplaneoverthesea wrote: SoS should be 1st imo. Winning Blizzcon is way more important than all the other tournaments this month combined.
Your opinion on his placement in the power rank doesn't count until you properly capitalize his name.
I can understand him not being in the top10 but I would of liked a honorary mention for Sora !! His constant phoenix illusion scouting and plays look so good and he's had an impressive run in WCG Korea.
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
On December 04 2013 22:14 opisska wrote: When I was scrolling down, not seeing him anywhere, I was becoming more and more concerned that you really did it... While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment. The whole achievement of Taeja winning "five major tournaments" is purely enabled by the very relaxed definition of a "major tournament".
But that's not the only thing wrong with this "power rank" and they all boil down to the same problem: the people that are putting this together don't like the WCS system. Not including the two time WCS NA champion (in favor of a cool guy who won one random IEM tourney, a popular old-school player who hasn't won anything of substance at all and the best player of the first half of the year who is nevertheless mainly irrelevant since then) is just purposefully showing your attitude towards the WCS. If Taeja is so #1, how come he can't ever get results in such an easy and irrelevant tournament as the WCS NA?
If you consider WCS NA irrelevant, you should really take the same stance towards all the "major" tournaments, including HSC, IEMs and Dreamhacks. You can't at the same time complain about having too many Koreans in WCS NA and then justify basing the ranking on these "major" tournaments because there were Koreans to beat, it just doesn't make sense. If you really want to consider the "quality of competition", you just have to put more (or basically all) weight on the GSL, Season finals and Blizzcon. But then you would have to include soO, Bomber and most importantly, Trap (how does Trap not get even a honorary mention is miles beyond my comprehension).
Very good post (+1 on Trap... he shall at least got a honory mention).
It's funny how the Wax complain about Dear not being able to compete in foreigner tournaments to justify is 2nd place but doesn't say anything about Taeja not being able to compete in WCS Korea and not doing well in WCS America/Blizzcon (do people forgot how he got raped by Dear?)...
The power rank is a little about visibility guys. Taeja won 2 tournaments within the last month and we got to see tons of him. Players like Dear/sOs either haven't been seen much (Dear) or have had a slide rather quickly (sOs).
I know a lot of you guys want to see the top 8 from WCS KR season 3 just copy pasted into this, and maybe that's what we would have gotten had a power rank come out right after that season was over. But it has been 2 months since then and Taeja has shown the most VISIBLE dominance over the time since Blizzcon.
On December 04 2013 21:36 Eyx wrote: TaeJa being #1 is ridiculous imo. He has yet to win anything with the other top players in it (dear soulkey ect) i mean he has only beaten sOs and Life recently that can be considered top players and has lost to all the others. How is losing 3-1 pretty recently in an extremely important knockout match at the biggest tourny of the year not given big weight in the #1 vs #2? Not to mention Dear having consistent wins over all top players with only one lose in a very close series to Jaedong recently.
Taeja can't really help it if Dear/Soulkey never play outside of Korea, but I do see him taking a series against Soulkey if they play. Taeja also beat Innovation, MMA, HyuN & Symbol who are all pretty good. The only player that beat him more than once in a series in the last couple of months is Jaedong, who Dear lost to as well. Besides that Taeja also clearly dominated a lot of players. All-killing Quantic and generally winning a lot of games everywhere, even if they are against weaker opposition, is a lot better than generally not playing at all or being quite lackluster in the GSTL.
You also talk about Taeja not winning anything with all top players in there. Dear beat Maru, Soulkey, MC, Hero, DRG, Trap, Soo (and Taeja himself before losing to JD) to win his both titles. Certainly an impressive list, but this also means he didn't beat sOs, Jaedong, Life, Innovation, Parting, herO, MMA, Bomber or Polt yet.
So in important tournaments they had a similar hitlist, both lost to Jaedong at some point, but then Taeja has a WAY more impressive online result, playing really well in team leagues and online matches in general while Dear didn't really play at all.
On December 04 2013 22:14 opisska wrote: When I was scrolling down, not seeing him anywhere, I was becoming more and more concerned that you really did it... While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment. The whole achievement of Taeja winning "five major tournaments" is purely enabled by the very relaxed definition of a "major tournament".
But that's not the only thing wrong with this "power rank" and they all boil down to the same problem: the people that are putting this together don't like the WCS system. Not including the two time WCS NA champion (in favor of a cool guy who won one random IEM tourney, a popular old-school player who hasn't won anything of substance at all and the best player of the first half of the year who is nevertheless mainly irrelevant since then) is just purposefully showing your attitude towards the WCS. If Taeja is so #1, how come he can't ever get results in such an easy and irrelevant tournament as the WCS NA?
If you consider WCS NA irrelevant, you should really take the same stance towards all the "major" tournaments, including HSC, IEMs and Dreamhacks. You can't at the same time complain about having too many Koreans in WCS NA and then justify basing the ranking on these "major" tournaments because there were Koreans to beat, it just doesn't make sense. If you really want to consider the "quality of competition", you just have to put more (or basically all) weight on the GSL, Season finals and Blizzcon. But then you would have to include soO, Bomber and most importantly, Trap (how does Trap not get even a honorary mention is miles beyond my comprehension).
Except for the fact that, using actual metrics of aligulac and TLPD, he is actually way ahead? You literally could not be more wrong...
On December 04 2013 22:14 opisska wrote: When I was scrolling down, not seeing him anywhere, I was becoming more and more concerned that you really did it... While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment. The whole achievement of Taeja winning "five major tournaments" is purely enabled by the very relaxed definition of a "major tournament".
But that's not the only thing wrong with this "power rank" and they all boil down to the same problem: the people that are putting this together don't like the WCS system. Not including the two time WCS NA champion (in favor of a cool guy who won one random IEM tourney, a popular old-school player who hasn't won anything of substance at all and the best player of the first half of the year who is nevertheless mainly irrelevant since then) is just purposefully showing your attitude towards the WCS. If Taeja is so #1, how come he can't ever get results in such an easy and irrelevant tournament as the WCS NA?
If you consider WCS NA irrelevant, you should really take the same stance towards all the "major" tournaments, including HSC, IEMs and Dreamhacks. You can't at the same time complain about having too many Koreans in WCS NA and then justify basing the ranking on these "major" tournaments because there were Koreans to beat, it just doesn't make sense. If you really want to consider the "quality of competition", you just have to put more (or basically all) weight on the GSL, Season finals and Blizzcon. But then you would have to include soO, Bomber and most importantly, Trap (how does Trap not get even a honorary mention is miles beyond my comprehension).
Except for the fact that, using actual metrics of aligulac and TLPD, he is actually way ahead? You literally could not be more wrong...
What opterown said. Also, just look at the TLPD ladder to the right. Do you really think that Vortix should #9 in the ranking (or PartinG #5 for that matter)? This is also the problem with some of the arguments used in the ranking itself - there is a group of relatively good "export" Koreans who get to play each other a lot at all these tournaments around the world, getting credit by beating each other in kind of a circular logic (X is good because he beat other good people, which are good because at some point they beat X).
The biggest issue I have with the power ranking is that Wax couldn't seem to decide whether the power rank should only include last month or all the months since the last power rank. The last power rank was in September for results that were in August. So this power rank should either be for performance in November only or for performance in September-November.
Looking at the rankings, last weekend's results were given too much credit and plenty of players got docked in the rankings for not playing last weekend. The write-up stated early on that this power rank was supposed to encompass three months worth, but the rankings did not give enough credit to September and October's results. The only people who got full credit for their September and October victories were the players who also performed well last weekend. Otherwise, the results were curved and players were only given partial credit for results prior to last weekend.
This is based on the last 3 month period so its kind of hard to argue against Taeja being n1 atm. He showed how good he is in TvT, TvZ and TvP. He looked really good in all matchups and beat some top level players. Maru should definitely be ahead of Life though.
On December 05 2013 01:27 TheSubtleArt wrote: Haven't being paying attention to the sc2 scene for a long time, whatever happened to Flash???
He did well in pro league, but never got the big results in individual leagues. After second place at MLG this spring, he never advanced passed Ro16 in WCS Korea, lost some very disappointing games at DH Bucharest and got third in his group at IEM New York.
At the moment he is probably considered on the same level as a standard korean player. Will win vs most foreigners (except DIMAGA!) and lose vs most high level koreans.
Due to him not doing well in WCS KR, we haven't seen him for the last ~2 months. Hope he is practicing hard and does well next year!
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
This is either a troll post or you don't follow the sc2 scene closely. Taeja has won more than one tourney.
Power Rank isn't about the whole year, its about the last month (in this case, couple months).
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
This is either a troll post or you don't follow the sc2 scene closely. Taeja has won more than one tourney.
Power Rank isn't about the whole year, its about the last month (in this case, couple months).
Taeja won Asus Rog/ 2 × Dreamhack and Homestorx Cup since August. He also placed ro4 in WCS AM Season 2 and Season 2 finals. That is way more than any other player did during that time. If you only take the last 3 months he still won HSC and DH ( dont rememmber if DH Bucharest was in the last 3 month). That is really amazing.
The only person who could be number 1 instead of Taeja is Dear, because winning GSL and Season 3 finals back-to-back is nothing but god damn impressive. I dont know who i would give the edge, but overall i'd prefer Taeja ( again, im looking at tue last 5 or 6 month and not strictly at the last 3). I can only laugh at the stupidity of all the people who claim Taeja "only" won 1 tournament and is only number 1 because this power rank is done on TL. He has a strong claim on number 1 spot.
Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I guess he would place JD on position 1-10, because he has won so many tournaments.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
Dear first, then maybe Taeja yeah, but being first for november while goint out at the first round of the biggest tournament of the year .... Or sOs second because winning blizzcon is a big deal, more than dreamhack all kill quantic and hsc imo
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
Dear first, then maybe Taeja yeah, but being first for november while goint out at the first round of the biggest tournament of the year .... Or sOs second because winning blizzcon is a big deal, more than dreamhack all kill quantic and hsc imo
But if your power rank position is decided by when you went out at Blizzcon, shouldn't Dear not be up there given he was knocked out in the very next round by Jaedong?
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
Dear first, then maybe Taeja yeah, but being first for november while goint out at the first round of the biggest tournament of the year .... Or sOs second because winning blizzcon is a big deal, more than dreamhack all kill quantic and hsc imo
But if your power rank position is decided by when you went out at Blizzcon, shouldn't Dear not be up there given he was knocked out in the very next round by Jaedong?
I never said Blizzcon should be the only criteria. But for me, WCS in general has been the most important series of tournament in 2013. And what I really dislike about this power rank is that it's really not logical. If you look at Taeja, there is a long explanation about the fact that it the YEAR OF TAEJA. So, ok, is it a power rank for 2013 ? In that case, why is herO in that ranking and not Bomber or Polt ? And if not, why are we talking about all the results of this year for Taeja ?
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
Dear first, then maybe Taeja yeah, but being first for november while goint out at the first round of the biggest tournament of the year .... Or sOs second because winning blizzcon is a big deal, more than dreamhack all kill quantic and hsc imo
But if your power rank position is decided by when you went out at Blizzcon, shouldn't Dear not be up there given he was knocked out in the very next round by Jaedong?
I never said Blizzcon should be the only criteria. But for me, WCS in general has been the most important series of tournament in 2013. And what I really dislike about this power rank is that it's really not logical. If you look at Taeja, there is a long explanation about the fact that it the YEAR OF TAEJA. So, ok, is it a power rank for 2013 ? In that case, why is herO in that ranking and not Bomber or Polt ? And if not, why are we talking about all the results of this year for Taeja ?
First off, the point about Bomber and Polt and the yearlong thing is a red herring that distracts from your original argument, which is that Taeja does not deserve to be rank 1. If I had to guess about Bomber and Polt not being in this power rank I would say most likely has something to do with their recent performances at Red Bull/IEM/DH etc.
Back to the original topic of conversation, the YEAR OF TAEJA thing I think is just a brief anecdote to show how much he has dominated international tournaments this year. I don't think they used all of that to actually judge his placement in the power rank. So now you say that it shouldn't be about the whole year, but then you say:
But for me, WCS in general has been the most important series of tournament in 2013.
which makes it seem like you think it should be judged by the whole year of WCS? I dunno.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
But if your power rank position is decided by when you went out at Blizzcon, shouldn't Dear not be up there given he was knocked out in the very next round by Jaedong?
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
Dear first, then maybe Taeja yeah, but being first for november while goint out at the first round of the biggest tournament of the year .... Or sOs second because winning blizzcon is a big deal, more than dreamhack all kill quantic and hsc imo
But if your power rank position is decided by when you went out at Blizzcon, shouldn't Dear not be up there given he was knocked out in the very next round by Jaedong?
I never said Blizzcon should be the only criteria. But for me, WCS in general has been the most important series of tournament in 2013. And what I really dislike about this power rank is that it's really not logical. If you look at Taeja, there is a long explanation about the fact that it the YEAR OF TAEJA. So, ok, is it a power rank for 2013 ? In that case, why is herO in that ranking and not Bomber or Polt ? And if not, why are we talking about all the results of this year for Taeja ?
First off, the point about Bomber and Polt and the yearlong thing is a red herring that distracts from your original argument, which is that Taeja does not deserve to be rank 1. If I had to guess about Bomber and Polt not being in this power rank I would say most likely has something to do with their recent performances at Red Bull/IEM/DH etc.
Back to the original topic of conversation, the YEAR OF TAEJA thing I think is just a brief anecdote to show how much he has dominated international tournaments this year. I don't think they used all of that to actually judge his placement in the power rank. So now you say that it shouldn't be about the whole year, but then you say:
But for me, WCS in general has been the most important series of tournament in 2013.
which makes it seem like you think it should be judged by the whole year of WCS? I dunno.
Nope, not everything must be judged by WCS or the whole year, that's not what i said. But if you wanna make a ranking about these few past months, which seems to be the case here even if it's not clear, you need to take a good look at WCS seasons in three regions in season 3, wcs finals season 3 and blizzcon, and also other tournaments but WCS is the most important. Taeja didn't pass the RO16 in wcs america season 3 and got eliminated in first round of blizzcon, while Dear won WCS korea (hardest region) and WCS season finals.. That's why I argue that Dear deserve more the #1 place
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
That is a terrible argument if I ever saw one. Not only does it have nothing to do with the fact that we were talking specifically about Blizzcon, but those two have not played within the timespan of this power rank.
Results: Obviously, the primary basis of the Power Rank. Given that this edition of the Power Rank is late and needs to encompass a three month period or so, we're giving additional credit for past results. Difficulty of opponents: Let's put it this way: if the PR existed last year, we definitely would not have given PartinG the #1 spot for his rather soft WCS championship run. Quality of play: How impressed were we with this player's performance? Not all wins (or losses) are created equal. By nature, this is the most subjective factor. A review, not a predictor: The PR is a rating based on previous results, not a scouting report on who will do well in the future. Short attention span: Did I see this player the past week? Does he play on a team that actually advertises to me?
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Good God man. I don't think I should respond to this because it's wayyyyy out of left field, but I would just go ahead and define exposure as, "recent tournament games against good players".
Saying "Oh player X is definitly better than player Y, he has a winning record against him" is the dumbest way to make a point, bcause there is nothing true at all in it. Some players just have certain players number. Just look at MMA>MVP>Polt>MMA
Yes, TaeJa lost to Dear at Blizzcon. Then Dear lost to Jaedong, who then lost to sOs, who then lost to TaeJa in Dreamhack. And that's why the power rank is less about X beating Y, and more about players playing very well for an extended period of time.
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
On December 05 2013 04:49 Kitai wrote: Yes, TaeJa lost to Dear at Blizzcon. Then Dear lost to Jaedong, who then lost to sOs, who then lost to TaeJa in Dreamhack. And that's why the power rank is less about X beating Y, and more about players playing very well for an extended period of time.
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
Disclaimer: This is an approximation, not an exact formula. Furthermore, for the sake of simplicity the random variances in playing skill are omitted for this formula.
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
It says that skill is important, but meaningless if you're stuck in a Korean teamhouse and never travelling to tournaments
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
Prize money? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Quality of tournaments? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Number of tournaments? Ah there we go.
On December 05 2013 03:46 shid0x wrote: Monthly cringes : Maru above innovation JD above soulkey
Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel.
On December 05 2013 03:09 SkullZ9 wrote: Lol Taeja is so overrated. Can't wait till he wins a wcs finals or blizzcon, to prove he's really the best. Oh wait it will never happen.
That is a weird prediction.
Ok I will argue a bit more : if this power rank is based on the results from november, it should grant more importance to WCS global finals and not dreamhack, even if Taeja did a good run. I know that this forum is teamliquid, but you should try to not be too biased towards your own player because if you want to be THE sc2 forum, you need to be more objective. Taeja got destroyed in the first round of global finals, yet he is first in the power rank of the month ? Let me laugh
First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
Prize money is however a semi-decent indicator for how much we should value a tournament win, together with a few other factors (open/closed amount of spots for example, strength of competition).
Had Taeja won a hypothetical DH and HSC during GSL Open season 1, we would have still called Fruitdealer the best in the world at the time.
On December 05 2013 04:08 Darkhoarse wrote: [quote] Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel. [quote] That is a weird prediction. [quote] First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
Prize money? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Quality of tournaments? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Number of tournaments? Ah there we go.
I give.
PM Waxangel and inform him of your indignation. I'm sure he'll be swayed by your concerns and you will be the first guy he talks to for the next power rank.
On December 05 2013 04:08 Darkhoarse wrote: [quote] Innovation lost to Duckdeok, Maru won. EZPZ ranking for Waxangel. [quote] That is a weird prediction. [quote] First, "Destroyed" is a strong word for what happened in Taeja vs. Dear. Second, although importance must be placed on Blizzcon (see- sOs is in the ranking at all I mean what else has he been up to) there is something to be said for amount of exposure and games a player has recently. I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you? Taeja has won a Homestory Cup, all killed Quantic, and then won Dreamhack's yearly championship. None as impressive as Blizzcon, but overall an impressive resume. Just curious, what would your power rank look like? Because I'm sure that wouldn't include ANY bias or questionable placements.
I haven't seen Dear since Blizzcon, have you?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
Prize money is however a semi-decent indicator for how much we should value a tournament win, together with a few other factors (open/closed amount of spots for example, strength of competition).
Had Taeja won a hypothetical DH and HSC during GSL Open season 1, we would have still called Fruitdealer the best in the world at the time.
So is Blizzcon the GSL? Because that would mean you think sOs should be #1?
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
Prize money? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Quality of tournaments? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Number of tournaments? Ah there we go.
I give.
PM Waxangel and inform him of your indignation. I'm sure he'll be swayed by your concerns and you will be the first guy he talks to for the next power rank.
I don't think someone who looks back more than a few weeks at results would be appreciated.
On December 05 2013 04:43 Darkhoarse wrote: [quote] If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
Prize money? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Quality of tournaments? Not a good benchmark because then Dear would be above Taeja. Number of tournaments? Ah there we go.
I give.
PM Waxangel and inform him of your indignation. I'm sure he'll be swayed by your concerns and you will be the first guy he talks to for the next power rank.
I don't think someone who looks back more than a few weeks at results would be appreciated.
Holy shit if you think that has anything to do with Taeja being better than Dear you're clueless. Taeja's on a sponsored and foreign team, Dear is not, so Taeja gets to go to more foreign tournaments. Has nothing to do with skill.
If you bothered to read the preceding sentence, you would realize I had just said that part of being ranked on the power rank is exposure and recent games, which Taeja has and Dear does not. I never mentioned that had anything to do with skill. But please, continue to throw a hissy fit and explain to me the difference between a Kespa team and a foreign team.
Exposure? Destiny streamed for 600k viewer hours in November, where is he on the power rank?
Exposure in tournaments. Even if I did think Dear is better, TaeJa has a lot more opportunities to show it. You are grasping for straws/arguing semantics, which doesn't help your argument.
Basically Dear's skills got him to number 2, but TL's money got Taeja to #1. And I don't mean paying the PR writers.
The Formula for Results Results = Skill x Opportunity
If Skill = 0, then naturally results will be 0 as well. But at the same time, if Opportunity = 0 (IE the player never gets to compete in tournaments), then results will also be 0, even if the player is the most skilled in the world.
So if one player had better results (more prize money) than another player since the last power rank despite less opportunity, what does that say about skill?
Prize money is the only possible benchmark for how good you are. That's why Fruitdealer has had a more successful Starcraft 2 career than Innovation, Maru, Jjakji, Symbol, this could go on, you get the point, prize money isn't a good benchmark.
Prize money is however a semi-decent indicator for how much we should value a tournament win, together with a few other factors (open/closed amount of spots for example, strength of competition).
Had Taeja won a hypothetical DH and HSC during GSL Open season 1, we would have still called Fruitdealer the best in the world at the time.
So is Blizzcon the GSL? Because that would mean you think sOs should be #1?
No it means that I think that not all tournaments wins are equal and that 1 HSC win plus a DH Winter win should maybe not count for more than a blizzcon win or a WCS KR win. The 'hardest' tournaments are the ones the most top players are participating in, so the hardest tournament is WCS KR, and by extension blizzcon and the WCS finals events.
I think Dear is the undisputed no 1 over the last couple of months. Won the hardest competition in the world, won a big weekend tournament, did okish at global finals where he beat Taeja in a match both had plenty of time to prepare for. He has shown to be comfortable with both prepared play and weekend tourneys, Taeja has only shown his skill in playing weekend tournaments. Dear is the more complete player over the last three months.
That said its all subjective anyway and everyone is allowed their own opinion. If there was an objective metric for who the best player is at any given time in any sport it would be terribly boring.
I get the arguments behind Dear's claim to 1st place, but for those who think that TaeJa is undeserving of the spot, take a look at his record vs. Korean opponents since BlizzCon:
Results for TaeJa between 2013-11-08 and 2013-12-04.
On December 04 2013 06:35 Yhamm wrote: Also, would you write "SOs" if his name start a new sentence? So please, don't write HerO instead of herO, shouldn't a name always be written the same?
On December 05 2013 07:14 LockeTazeline wrote: I get the arguments behind Dear's claim to 1st place, but for those who think that TaeJa is undeserving of the spot, take a look at his record vs. Korean opponents since BlizzCon:
Results for TaeJa between 2013-11-08 and 2013-12-04.
Dear record since Blizzcon: 6–1 (85.71%) in games and 4–0 (100%) in matches. It's even better :D
If we take a look a their records since 2013-09-01 (since this powerrank take into account the last 3 month): Taeja: 61–32 (65.59%) in games and 32–11 (74.42%) in matches. Dear: 46–22 (67.65%) in games and 20–8 (71.43%) in matches.
I usually don't agree with the power rankings. This month is no different. Talking about Bomber being inconsistent... still? He's SO consistently good. TaeJa is 1st? Wtf. Still talking about INnoVatioN being one of the best? He's been not-amazing since the hellbat nerf. PartinG is back in 9th?
Before I start, I realise that power ranking is an opinion and at that imperfect and can be subjective. Usually I more or less agree, however this month I'm on the side that doesn't.
I can't comment on how the games played out in the last 3 months as I don't have time to watch, but just observe the results so here's my take:
In the past it seemed like quality of opponents was a huge component in regards to how players were power-ranked, meaning GSL/Code S had more weight than anything as it is the best of the best in regards to play level. However I feel like this month that was not the case.
Overall, I feel like Life is undeserving of his spot, as other than terrorizing foreign tournaments, he is still stuck in code A. I would put everyone in the top ten before him, as this is based on results and not potential (hes been very quiet since hots in general).
Maru isn't given enough credit, he has done very well in code S and season finals, being stopped by dear twice is understandable. I feel he should be above taeja at least.
sOs is wierd. He is almost like bomber in how brilliant he can look one day, and how not so much the next. Because its been 3 months, i'd have to put soulkey/jaedong ahead for being more consistent overall, however i feel the 3 are inter-changable.
As for #1, Dear is undisputed imo. After losing to flying in season 2 code A, and being throw into up and downs, he lost a single series on his way to back to back championships. Among the best competition SC2 has to offer, I don't really say how you can top that. And he wasn't playing low caliber opponents either. The only losses in the power rank have been narrow (sOs in the R32 Code s, jaedong by a hair at global finals). The others he has crushed.
For Taeja, he dropped out of the round of R16 in seaon 3, failing to make it to season finals, and lost in season 2 to polt R4 (both occured in timeline). To be #1 with those loses, he would have to have some monumental wins. And he hasn't, he won 2 dreamshacks and HSC. He didn't beat anybody notable there (life isn't top 10 atm, and inno is known and even mentioned for his lack of TvT skills). sOs he did beat, but as can be seen he is very inconsistent. Taeja has dodged every top player or been beaten when he meets them (bomber, dear, Jaedong ect.)
Don't get me wrong, he is on an incredible tare of wins which is hard to match, but its against second teir players, which shouldn't stand for #1. He has losses to others in the power rank (recent) and losses to alot outside of it, where as Dear doesn't have that (losses to sOs and Jaedong are it).
I would rank Dear 1, jaedong/soulkey/ interchangable as 2/3 and then taeja at the most as 4. Until he beats top, top tier competition or takes a premier league, I wouldn't say hes #1.
Also wtf is polt not on here for? He has better results than life recently imo (beat the "#1" player twice, back to back premier league wins ect)
PS I like taeja, I've been impressed with im since slayers (he had sick marine splits), its a shame he has wrist issues or i believe he could've been a contender for one of the best.
On December 05 2013 07:14 LockeTazeline wrote: I get the arguments behind Dear's claim to 1st place, but for those who think that TaeJa is undeserving of the spot, take a look at his record vs. Korean opponents since BlizzCon:
Results for TaeJa between 2013-11-08 and 2013-12-04.
On December 05 2013 10:22 Mistakes wrote: I usually don't agree with the power rankings. This month is no different. Talking about Bomber being inconsistent... still? He's SO consistently good. TaeJa is 1st? Wtf. Still talking about INnoVatioN being one of the best? He's been not-amazing since the hellbat nerf. PartinG is back in 9th?
PartinG is 9th basically from winning Redbull LAN Innovation is no longer dominating like he did earlier in HotS, but he's still had impressive performances. He really did well in the GSTL in particular, and did alright (not great, but decent) in the last few Dreamhacks. I think if Dear can make the finals of the Hot6 Cup or outright win it, then Dear is the #1. Taeja is definitely way up there, but not sure about the #1 ranking for someone who really underperformed in WCS.
Overall, I feel like Life is undeserving of his spot, as other than terrorizing foreign tournaments, he is still stuck in code A. I would put everyone in the top ten before him, as this is based on results and not potential (hes been very quiet since hots in general).
It's not just results according to their criteria. They factor in quality of play and difficulty of opponents. Which is what Life mainly has going for him atm. Although, even on the results side of things he did win his ro24 code A match (which would mean he IS code S under normal circumstances) and won an IEM not too long ago, so there's that. With all that alone I'd put him over at least CJ herO.
I noticed you said you don't watch much recently and only look at results. So as a reminder, do you remember what the old Life looked like? You know the guy who seemingly can do whatever the fuck he wants and dominate. The guy who just seems to always find a way to get lings into your base, while meanwhile he's painting the map in creep and whoring drones at home behind the distraction? Yeah he looks like that again.
One more thing, when you talked about MVP and Life's runs vs taeja, they did it with a championship in Code S.
(not hating on taeja, just feel like people are dissillusioned by the TL tag attached to his name)
I have this feeling that people forget very easily that Taeja has x2 ro4's under his name, stopped by the champion both times. To be honest, that plus his level of GSL consistency during 2012 already made me had him like Top 3 Terran.
Also, someone said that he was practically a no-show for WCS. Getting to Blizzcon is already an achievment, specially since his points didn't come from just one championship but from his regular excellent showings.
Dear didn't have a good GSTL season, and Taeja absolutely rocked his team league.
Just some food for thought, I liked this power ranking!
One more thing, when you talked about MVP and Life's runs vs taeja, they did it with a championship in Code S.
(not hating on taeja, just feel like people are dissillusioned by the TL tag attached to his name)
I have this feeling that people forget very easily that Taeja has x2 ro4's under his name, stopped by the champion both times. To be honest, that plus his level of GSL consistency during 2012 already made me had him like Top 3 Terran.
Also, someone said that he was practically a no-show for WCS. Getting to Blizzcon is already an achievment, specially since his points didn't come from just one championship but from his regular excellent showings.
Dear didn't have a good GSTL season, and Taeja absolutely rocked his team league.
Just some food for thought, I liked this power ranking!
Dear tied for the 2nd most wins in GSTL after Innovation. That's pretty good considering that Soul didn't have any games in the playoffs.
Dear and Taeja have about the same overall winrate for the GSTL and the ATC (67% vs 68%), but Dear is playing in an offline setting against harder opponents.
On December 04 2013 06:23 BlueStar wrote: taeja... are you kidding me? lol This boy won one tourney and now #1 - this is ridiculous. You had to set herO as 2nd...
I think you meant to say 5 premier tournaments since July, 2 of them within the last month...
Taeja only won 1 major tournament the whole year (20k and above purse) and power rank comes out right after that >_>. Dear won 2 majors and sos won the majorest of majors and only got 2nd and 3rd.
On December 05 2013 15:17 Kheve wrote: Taeja only won 1 major tournament the whole year (20k and above purse) and power rank comes out right after that >_>. Dear won 2 majors and sos won the majorest of majors and only got 2nd and 3rd.
Bias overwhelming.
Taeja has been consistently amazing all year long with the infamous summer of Taeja lasting longer than ever. He has looked unstoppable in all three matchups as of late, recently beating a plethora of players ranked beneath him in the top ten. One could argue that some early GGs resulting from a lack of confidence are the only reason he even lost to Dear at Blizzcon. As such I believe Dear to be the only other player in the top 10 with a valid claim for a better spot...No liquid player has been ranked number one all year and rightfully so, but it's not their fault if one of their own is currently on a tear
At this point I can't even decide which 10 players would make my personal power rankings let alone rank them. Seems like there's been quite a few winners and some top level players like Rain didn't even make honourable mentions. I'm quite happy SC2 have become quite competitive at the top albeit somewhat volatile, it's been fun watching so many different champions. Wish Blizzard will just forget about the notion of "WCS champion best player" and just scrap it. I want to see more tournaments, more evenly spread prizepool!
On December 05 2013 15:17 Kheve wrote: Taeja only won 1 major tournament the whole year (20k and above purse) and power rank comes out right after that >_>. Dear won 2 majors and sos won the majorest of majors and only got 2nd and 3rd.
Bias overwhelming.
I like that you invented your own definition of major tournament haha.
I like the power ranking though perhaps i could argue Dear on number one and JD higher up the list, in the end it's all opinion based, so who cares. Taeja's on a foreign tournament winning streak that is putting tears into MC's eyes.
I still don't understand why CJ_herO is ranked within the top10 of the world's best players according to tl writers. As well as parting. Those simply do not belong in there. You should've given Bomber a cigar, since a WCS win and various top placements (you said you're taking those events back in time in consideration since this is not a real "december" power rank) speak for themselves. You did argument that way for parting though he didn't have the real competition, or did he.
so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
On December 04 2013 22:14 opisska wrote: When I was scrolling down, not seeing him anywhere, I was becoming more and more concerned that you really did it... While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment. The whole achievement of Taeja winning "five major tournaments" is purely enabled by the very relaxed definition of a "major tournament".
But that's not the only thing wrong with this "power rank" and they all boil down to the same problem: the people that are putting this together don't like the WCS system. Not including the two time WCS NA champion (in favor of a cool guy who won one random IEM tourney, a popular old-school player who hasn't won anything of substance at all and the best player of the first half of the year who is nevertheless mainly irrelevant since then) is just purposefully showing your attitude towards the WCS. If Taeja is so #1, how come he can't ever get results in such an easy and irrelevant tournament as the WCS NA?
If you consider WCS NA irrelevant, you should really take the same stance towards all the "major" tournaments, including HSC, IEMs and Dreamhacks. You can't at the same time complain about having too many Koreans in WCS NA and then justify basing the ranking on these "major" tournaments because there were Koreans to beat, it just doesn't make sense. If you really want to consider the "quality of competition", you just have to put more (or basically all) weight on the GSL, Season finals and Blizzcon. But then you would have to include soO, Bomber and most importantly, Trap (how does Trap not get even a honorary mention is miles beyond my comprehension).
Very good post. I, too, feel that this power rank wasn't up to par with the previous ones. Taeja has been wrecking face, but he isn't being held up to the same strict criteria as a few others in here.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
i'm sure BW ranks had as much controversy as sc2 ones. the scene was easier to rank then too, there were only 2-3 tournaments that mattered and almost everyone played in all of them.
Overall, I feel like Life is undeserving of his spot, as other than terrorizing foreign tournaments, he is still stuck in code A. I would put everyone in the top ten before him, as this is based on results and not potential (hes been very quiet since hots in general).
It's not just results according to their criteria. They factor in quality of play and difficulty of opponents. Which is what Life mainly has going for him atm. Although, even on the results side of things he did win his ro24 code A match (which would mean he IS code S under normal circumstances) and won an IEM not too long ago, so there's that. With all that alone I'd put him over at least CJ herO.
I noticed you said you don't watch much recently and only look at results. So as a reminder, do you remember what the old Life looked like? You know the guy who seemingly can do whatever the fuck he wants and dominate. The guy who just seems to always find a way to get lings into your base, while meanwhile he's painting the map in creep and whoring drones at home behind the distraction? Yeah he looks like that again.
Thats awesome. I'd love to see life back in form. However, he still hasn't put up notable results, there are people more deserving of that spot. Most of the top 10 can look amazing vs tier 2 players, that doesn't mean they deserve to be there for crushing them.
On December 05 2013 15:17 Kheve wrote: Taeja only won 1 major tournament the whole year (20k and above purse) and power rank comes out right after that >_>. Dear won 2 majors and sos won the majorest of majors and only got 2nd and 3rd.
Bias overwhelming.
Taeja has been consistently amazing all year long with the infamous summer of Taeja lasting longer than ever. He has looked unstoppable in all three matchups as of late, recently beating a plethora of players ranked beneath him in the top ten. One could argue that some early GGs resulting from a lack of confidence are the only reason he even lost to Dear at Blizzcon. As such I believe Dear to be the only other player in the top 10 with a valid claim for a better spot...No liquid player has been ranked number one all year and rightfully so, but it's not their fault if one of their own is currently on a tear
The infamous summer is mostly hype. Last year he did much better in code S than this year (it was more real last year), but this year he's more of a weekend warrior, taking DH's and HSC but nothing thats an on going individual league. And he doesn't look unstoppable, he has failed to beat jaedong, bomber, dear, and also lost to heart in wcs.... That's not what i define as unstoppable.
Maru to me is more impressive after thinking about it, he has been doing amazing in code S and doing it consistently (being stopped by dear twice in back to back semi's is still and impressive feat). He's been beating higher quality opponents in a preparation setting. That to me is worth more than weekend tournies.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
i'm sure BW ranks had as much controversy as sc2 ones. the scene was easier to rank then too, there were only 2-3 tournaments that mattered and almost everyone played in all of them.
I agree, its just hard to ignore than in a BW rank you'd never see someone who dropped twice (R16, R4) out of an individual league as number 1. Its just odd they didn't even mention that he lost in that league. Its like it was a non-factor. Thats why people are mentioning bias. If you look at what they have won in Taeja vs Dear, you might argue its comparable. But if you compare what they lost, Dear is a clear winner to me (semi's of blizzcon vs quarter blizzcon, R4 wcs s2, and R16 wcs 3,)
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
I guess people are not really getting what power rank is all about. First nobody cares that much about i.e. being double WCS AM champion because that's way in the past and after that Polt really wasn't able to confirm his high level skill. He is not power.
But at this point I'd like to quote Power Rank as of 07/06/2008 when suddenly Sea was ranked #1 in PR:
Sometimes, the definition of "Power" changes so drastically that weird things happen.
Weird indeed, that Sea[Shield] is at the top of the Power Rank without a title to his name. Friends, Power can means a lot of things. A Powerful build order can win you a StarLeague. A Powerful mind can keep your career long and properous. A Powerful heart can endear you to the masses, and create a wave of fanatics frothing at the mouth just for a chance to cheer you on.
Yum BoSung has the most Powerful heart of any progamer on the scene. For the last several days, Sea has graciously spent time between practice with his adoring english-speaking fans, playing all manner of games. That includes a brutal 2-0 of your hero, sMi.FakeSteve, that consisted of utterly flawless (and I do mean flawless) control over the growth and prowess of his armed forces. Sea's TvT is perfection wielded as a weapon of unimaginable power, something I have never been on the receiving end of before.
Sea's TvZ is a sinister love affair between Casy's aggressiveness and iloveoov's macromanagement. You think you've seen TvZ? Watch Sea vs Hyuk on Othello, a game that transcends build order and mechanics and settles promptly down to raw, unrelenting will to win.
You think you're familiar with TvP timings? Sea frequently screams out of his base with a massive amalgamation of units and delivers his Protoss foe into the eager hands of the Devil himself. Sea is the reckoning and judgment itself for the hapless children who choose the race that carrier rushes.
Yum BoSung has captivated the entirety of TeamLiquid.net with but a few days of generous (by his schedule) interaction. A fresh crop of fans have seen the light, have snapped out of a dreamy sleep of ignorance during which they cheer for... *scoff*... other players. Sea is the single greatest StarCraft player to ever walk the earth, for reasons that go above and beyond the game itself, and certainly beyond the call of duty for a ProGamer.
Sea[Shield] is #1 on the Power Rank this month, and #1 in our hearts, this day and forevermore.
Power Rank always was about more than just win-ratio, list of titles, earned $$ and prominence of list of beaten opponents.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
i'm sure BW ranks had as much controversy as sc2 ones. the scene was easier to rank then too, there were only 2-3 tournaments that mattered and almost everyone played in all of them.
every power rank will be controversial for any game.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
i'm sure BW ranks had as much controversy as sc2 ones. the scene was easier to rank then too, there were only 2-3 tournaments that mattered and almost everyone played in all of them.
it was impossible that someone who won WCG and dropped at ro16 ro8 osl/msl would ever be no1... we have more tournaments now, of course, and we had in 3 months wcs3 finals and blizzcon.. but winners are ignored... so, there wasn't so much controversy because it wasn't possible something ridiculous as this PR would ever happen
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
i'm sure BW ranks had as much controversy as sc2 ones. the scene was easier to rank then too, there were only 2-3 tournaments that mattered and almost everyone played in all of them.
it was impossible that someone who won WCG and dropped at ro16 ro8 osl/msl would ever be no1... we have more tournaments now, of course, and we had in 3 months wcs3 finals and blizzcon.. but winners are ignored... so, there wasn't so much controversy because it wasn't possible something ridiculous as this PR would ever happen
I can understand your fury and indignation about this, because of the far reaching consequences the rankings in this list will have.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
Random T1 player making it into a PR for showing a few good games was a very real thing in BW Power Ranks. (see ones made by JWD as example)
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
i'm sure BW ranks had as much controversy as sc2 ones. the scene was easier to rank then too, there were only 2-3 tournaments that mattered and almost everyone played in all of them.
it was impossible that someone who won WCG and dropped at ro16 ro8 osl/msl would ever be no1... we have more tournaments now, of course, and we had in 3 months wcs3 finals and blizzcon.. but winners are ignored... so, there wasn't so much controversy because it wasn't possible something ridiculous as this PR would ever happen
I think you are taking this stuff a bit too seriously.as a guy coming form boxing where p4p aka power rankings are actually needed since there are 4 major belts and good fighters may not end up meeting,i can guarantee you than any power ranking is made just for fun and with a high dose of subjectivity.anyone that makes a power ranking in boxing will tell you that they just do it for fun and it is their own personal oppinion.this power ranking is nothing more nothing less than waxangels personal opinion of who the top players in the world are right now.its the mans' oppinion thats all.do not take it as a sort of universally imposed truth.do not take this stuff so seriously.And in general any ranking is subjective since some people consider some criteria more important than others.you probably think korean tournaments are the most import.which is fine it is your oppinion(mine too).waxangel ha shis own oppinion and criteria.and in general in the sc2 scene where usually the best guy who manages to buy plane tickets usually wins while other equally talented but less financially fortunate players remain unknown in a crowded korean teamhouse,having a 100% objective ranking is impossible.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
What the hell is this post?????
no1 without any big tournament win... LMAO. Didn't he JUST win Dreamhack where he beat umm....Innovation, sOs, ForGG, Sjow, Hero, MMA, and Life twice??
Or Homestory cup where he beat Titan, Symbol, Hero, Symbol again, and then went 4-0 against Hyun... and lost 3 maps in the process.
Or Dreamhack Bucharest where he beat Yugioh, sOs, Life and Innovation without dropping a map.
I would have gone with Dear 1 as he did beat Taeja 1on1. However, I can acknowledge its a close call. I think, however Soulkey is pretty overrated. Yes he has consistent results against the sub-top players, but in headsup games against other top10 players he has a very poor record. I believe, Maru should have gotton the top 5 spot instead.
While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment.
How do you make something like that up? Its actually super easy to "invent" such a metric. Aliuguac for instance has Taeja as the clear number 1 in overall rankings by using objective measures.
On December 04 2013 22:14 opisska wrote: When I was scrolling down, not seeing him anywhere, I was becoming more and more concerned that you really did it... While I like Taeja a lot, there is no way you can invent any metrics that makes him #1 in anything at the moment. The whole achievement of Taeja winning "five major tournaments" is purely enabled by the very relaxed definition of a "major tournament".
But that's not the only thing wrong with this "power rank" and they all boil down to the same problem: the people that are putting this together don't like the WCS system. Not including the two time WCS NA champion (in favor of a cool guy who won one random IEM tourney, a popular old-school player who hasn't won anything of substance at all and the best player of the first half of the year who is nevertheless mainly irrelevant since then) is just purposefully showing your attitude towards the WCS. If Taeja is so #1, how come he can't ever get results in such an easy and irrelevant tournament as the WCS NA?
If you consider WCS NA irrelevant, you should really take the same stance towards all the "major" tournaments, including HSC, IEMs and Dreamhacks. You can't at the same time complain about having too many Koreans in WCS NA and then justify basing the ranking on these "major" tournaments because there were Koreans to beat, it just doesn't make sense. If you really want to consider the "quality of competition", you just have to put more (or basically all) weight on the GSL, Season finals and Blizzcon. But then you would have to include soO, Bomber and most importantly, Trap (how does Trap not get even a honorary mention is miles beyond my comprehension).
Very good post. I, too, feel that this power rank wasn't up to par with the previous ones. Taeja has been wrecking face, but he isn't being held up to the same strict criteria as a few others in here.
I feel the same way when people talk about majors and it`s lost it`s meaning. That`s why you see me using the term Events and Special Events much more when it comes to my criteria anyway, which I feel is more reflective of what`s going on. In reality all the current formats aren`t up to snuff and should be re-thought at the end of the day including what I`d define as majors. This isn`t your standard face-lift we`re talking about.
On December 06 2013 02:12 FatCat_13 wrote: Sorry, but JD must be at #2
[insert Kong joke here] All jokes aside, I think he should be happy that at least a few people think he should be a spot ahead of SoulKey when SK did better than him in the last three months. After all, this is a monthly power rank. I find it funny. ;o
On December 05 2013 11:28 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
Overall, I feel like Life is undeserving of his spot, as other than terrorizing foreign tournaments, he is still stuck in code A. I would put everyone in the top ten before him, as this is based on results and not potential (hes been very quiet since hots in general).
It's not just results according to their criteria. They factor in quality of play and difficulty of opponents. Which is what Life mainly has going for him atm. Although, even on the results side of things he did win his ro24 code A match (which would mean he IS code S under normal circumstances) and won an IEM not too long ago, so there's that. With all that alone I'd put him over at least CJ herO.
I noticed you said you don't watch much recently and only look at results. So as a reminder, do you remember what the old Life looked like? You know the guy who seemingly can do whatever the fuck he wants and dominate. The guy who just seems to always find a way to get lings into your base, while meanwhile he's painting the map in creep and whoring drones at home behind the distraction? Yeah he looks like that again.
Thats awesome. I'd love to see life back in form. However, he still hasn't put up notable results, there are people more deserving of that spot. Most of the top 10 can look amazing vs tier 2 players, that doesn't mean they deserve to be there for crushing them.
On December 05 2013 15:17 Kheve wrote: Taeja only won 1 major tournament the whole year (20k and above purse) and power rank comes out right after that >_>. Dear won 2 majors and sos won the majorest of majors and only got 2nd and 3rd.
Bias overwhelming.
Taeja has been consistently amazing all year long with the infamous summer of Taeja lasting longer than ever. He has looked unstoppable in all three matchups as of late, recently beating a plethora of players ranked beneath him in the top ten. One could argue that some early GGs resulting from a lack of confidence are the only reason he even lost to Dear at Blizzcon. As such I believe Dear to be the only other player in the top 10 with a valid claim for a better spot...No liquid player has been ranked number one all year and rightfully so, but it's not their fault if one of their own is currently on a tear
The infamous summer is mostly hype. Last year he did much better in code S than this year (it was more real last year), but this year he's more of a weekend warrior, taking DH's and HSC but nothing thats an on going individual league. And he doesn't look unstoppable, he has failed to beat jaedong, bomber, dear, and also lost to heart in wcs.... That's not what i define as unstoppable.
Maru to me is more impressive after thinking about it, he has been doing amazing in code S and doing it consistently (being stopped by dear twice in back to back semi's is still and impressive feat). He's been beating higher quality opponents in a preparation setting. That to me is worth more than weekend tournies.
Ahh the infamous "He didn't win every match he played in the year of 2013, he can't be ranked number one in the December power rank" argument. Are you honestly insinuating that Jaedong and Bomber (I'm a huge fan of both btw) are more deserving of the top spot because they beat him in matches earlier this year? As I said with a recent victory over Taeja at Blizzcon and his WCS results Dear is the only player I would rank above Taeja. The summer of Taeja is not "just hype" He has won multiple DH, ASUS ROG, and MLG tournaments in the summer months and this year his dominance in offline play has extended to cover half the year. As for Maru, he just failed to beat Dear twice and Jaedong...so I'm not sure why that statistic is condemning for Taeja but uplifting for Maru. While his regular season WCS performances were not up to par with his true skill, his current level of play and amazing games against top players at season finals deserves serious recognition.
Taeja has a valid claim to be #1 at the moment. I didn't expect people to question the ranking, it's the timing that is more debatable. If this had been done right after Blizzcon, which was a very natural thing to do, the ranking would have been much different (Dear would have been at the top in all likelihood). Instead what we got was a vague article about there being no best player. Not that there aren't valid reasons why the power rank just came out now, but the timing certainly mattered a lot.
On December 06 2013 02:52 calh wrote: Taeja has a valid claim to be #1 at the moment. I didn't expect people to question the ranking, it's the timing that is more debatable. If this had been done right after Blizzcon, which was a very natural thing to do, the ranking would have been much different (Dear would have been at the top in all likelihood). Instead what we got was a vague article about there being no best player. Not that there aren't valid reasons why the power rank just came out now, but the timing certainly mattered a lot.
Are you new to the Power Rank because even in BW people always questioned the Power Rank. It's nothing new really and back then we had so few tournaments and PL to use as our criteria. Anytime this does come up you should expect shit fests like this.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
What the hell is this post?????
no1 without any big tournament win... LMAO. Didn't he JUST win Dreamhack where he beat umm....Innovation, sOs, ForGG, Sjow, Hero, MMA, and Life twice??
Or Homestory cup where he beat Titan, Symbol, Hero, Symbol again, and then went 4-0 against Hyun... and lost 3 maps in the process.
Or Dreamhack Bucharest where he beat Yugioh, sOs, Life and Innovation without dropping a map.
Some people, man...
there wasn't PR for three months so you should acknowledge that fact... DH is not a big tournament compared to wcs NA/KR/EU, wcs finals of blizzcon...
is taeja no1 in that period? apsolutly not. period.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
What the hell is this post?????
no1 without any big tournament win... LMAO. Didn't he JUST win Dreamhack where he beat umm....Innovation, sOs, ForGG, Sjow, Hero, MMA, and Life twice??
Or Homestory cup where he beat Titan, Symbol, Hero, Symbol again, and then went 4-0 against Hyun... and lost 3 maps in the process.
Or Dreamhack Bucharest where he beat Yugioh, sOs, Life and Innovation without dropping a map.
Some people, man...
there wasn't PR for three months so you should acknowledge that fact... DH is not a big tournament compared to wcs NA/KR/EU, wcs finals of blizzcon...
is taeja no1 in that period? apsolutly not. period.
Dreamhack Winter, in terms of viewership and players present, was almost as big as Blizzcon.. Who should be number 1 then? Dear? he's number 2.
Other players have won the WCS events, but nobody has looked as dominant as Taeja during his last few big tournament runs. Dear won games. sOs won games. But people made mistakes against them. Jaedong threw that game on Akilon SO HARD. Meanwhile, Taeja's wins have made his opponents look like platinum level scrubs in comparison. After Life mauled everyone to get back into the finals Tajea made him look like a nobody.
To go undefeated in a Dreamhack (Bucharest) is ridiculous. And to Dominate top Korean players the way he did at Dreamhack Winter is also ridiculous. Certainly deserves #1 in my book.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
What the hell is this post?????
no1 without any big tournament win... LMAO. Didn't he JUST win Dreamhack where he beat umm....Innovation, sOs, ForGG, Sjow, Hero, MMA, and Life twice??
Or Homestory cup where he beat Titan, Symbol, Hero, Symbol again, and then went 4-0 against Hyun... and lost 3 maps in the process.
Or Dreamhack Bucharest where he beat Yugioh, sOs, Life and Innovation without dropping a map.
Some people, man...
there wasn't PR for three months so you should acknowledge that fact... DH is not a big tournament compared to wcs NA/KR/EU, wcs finals of blizzcon...
is taeja no1 in that period? apsolutly not. period.
To be fair, DH Winter had more talent than WCS NA/EU
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
What the hell is this post?????
no1 without any big tournament win... LMAO. Didn't he JUST win Dreamhack where he beat umm....Innovation, sOs, ForGG, Sjow, Hero, MMA, and Life twice??
Or Homestory cup where he beat Titan, Symbol, Hero, Symbol again, and then went 4-0 against Hyun... and lost 3 maps in the process.
Or Dreamhack Bucharest where he beat Yugioh, sOs, Life and Innovation without dropping a map.
Some people, man...
there wasn't PR for three months so you should acknowledge that fact... DH is not a big tournament compared to wcs NA/KR/EU, wcs finals of blizzcon...
is taeja no1 in that period? apsolutly not. period.
Dreamhack Winter, in terms of viewership and players present, was almost as big as Blizzcon.. Who should be number 1 then? Dear? he's number 2.
Other players have won the WCS events, but nobody has looked as dominant as Taeja during his last few big tournament runs. Dear won games. sOs won games. But people made mistakes against them. Jaedong threw that game on Akilon SO HARD. Meanwhile, Taeja's wins have made his opponents look like platinum level scrubs in comparison. After Life mauled everyone to get back into the finals Tajea made him look like a nobody.
To go undefeated in a Dreamhack (Bucharest) is ridiculous. And to Dominate top Korean players the way he did at Dreamhack Winter is also ridiculous. Certainly deserves #1 in my book.
he was dominant at those tournaments, i admit it, i would be stupid to ignore that. But i'm saying again, this is three months period. You are talking about two tournaments but we had three bigger, where taeja wasn't so good (wasn't there). Yes, dear and sos should be before him. He went down in ro16 and failed to qualify for s3 finals. That can't be ignored, this is three months period. Dear won in strongest region, after that he won in s3 finals and after that he barely lost to JD, who was crushed against sos.
Dear, sOs, soulkey, JD, taeja (but i wouldn't say anything if he would be no3)
Well TLPR isn't a TLPR if it's not controversial. Same old from BW days.
I don't disagree with Taeja being #1, but I wouldn't either if it were Dear or sOs. It's really hard to say who's the best at the moment. Frankly, they're at the same level.
But...but Dear beat Taeja at Blizzcon!!!!!!!!111111111111!!!!! That's what the unofficial world champion is for. Imagine if that game was a Bo1 where it was the game Taeja won. Taeja > Dear? Can't really say. one Bo5, Taeja didn't look bad, who knows. Soulkey beat Innovation in a reverse sweep in a Bo7. Hard to tell from just one series.
On December 06 2013 09:48 glzElectromaster wrote: Well TLPR isnt a TLPR if it's not controversial. Same old from BW days.
I don't disagree with Taeja being #1, but I wouldn't either if it were Dear or sOs. It's really hard to say who's the best at the moment. Frankly, they're at the same level.
But...but Dear beat Taeja at Blitzzcon!!!!!!!!111111111111!!!!! That's what the unofficial world champion is for. Imagine if that game was a Bo1 where it was the game Taeja won. Taeja > Dear? Can't really say. one Bo5, Taeja didn't look bad, who knows. Soulkey beat Innovation in a reverse sweep in a Bo7. Hard to tell from just one series.
GTFO League fan we don't want you opinion!!!! How do I know those people in your banner are league players uhhh...jkjk but yeah I completely agree. I think Dear would be a viable number one pick, maybe not sOs simply because of his recent losses at Red Bull and DH. In essence you can't expect the few people who make the power ranking to satisfy everybody.
P.S. OMG Liquid player number one in LIQUID power rank. First time this has happened chill also the point has been made 5t24985743829542 times.
On December 05 2013 11:28 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
Overall, I feel like Life is undeserving of his spot, as other than terrorizing foreign tournaments, he is still stuck in code A. I would put everyone in the top ten before him, as this is based on results and not potential (hes been very quiet since hots in general).
It's not just results according to their criteria. They factor in quality of play and difficulty of opponents. Which is what Life mainly has going for him atm. Although, even on the results side of things he did win his ro24 code A match (which would mean he IS code S under normal circumstances) and won an IEM not too long ago, so there's that. With all that alone I'd put him over at least CJ herO.
I noticed you said you don't watch much recently and only look at results. So as a reminder, do you remember what the old Life looked like? You know the guy who seemingly can do whatever the fuck he wants and dominate. The guy who just seems to always find a way to get lings into your base, while meanwhile he's painting the map in creep and whoring drones at home behind the distraction? Yeah he looks like that again.
Thats awesome. I'd love to see life back in form. However, he still hasn't put up notable results, there are people more deserving of that spot. Most of the top 10 can look amazing vs tier 2 players, that doesn't mean they deserve to be there for crushing them.
On December 05 2013 15:24 Yorkie wrote:
On December 05 2013 15:17 Kheve wrote: Taeja only won 1 major tournament the whole year (20k and above purse) and power rank comes out right after that >_>. Dear won 2 majors and sos won the majorest of majors and only got 2nd and 3rd.
Bias overwhelming.
Taeja has been consistently amazing all year long with the infamous summer of Taeja lasting longer than ever. He has looked unstoppable in all three matchups as of late, recently beating a plethora of players ranked beneath him in the top ten. One could argue that some early GGs resulting from a lack of confidence are the only reason he even lost to Dear at Blizzcon. As such I believe Dear to be the only other player in the top 10 with a valid claim for a better spot...No liquid player has been ranked number one all year and rightfully so, but it's not their fault if one of their own is currently on a tear
The infamous summer is mostly hype. Last year he did much better in code S than this year (it was more real last year), but this year he's more of a weekend warrior, taking DH's and HSC but nothing thats an on going individual league. And he doesn't look unstoppable, he has failed to beat jaedong, bomber, dear, and also lost to heart in wcs.... That's not what i define as unstoppable.
Maru to me is more impressive after thinking about it, he has been doing amazing in code S and doing it consistently (being stopped by dear twice in back to back semi's is still and impressive feat). He's been beating higher quality opponents in a preparation setting. That to me is worth more than weekend tournies.
Ahh the infamous "He didn't win every match he played in the year of 2013, he can't be ranked number one in the December power rank" argument. Are you honestly insinuating that Jaedong and Bomber (I'm a huge fan of both btw) are more deserving of the top spot because they beat him in matches earlier this year? As I said with a recent victory over Taeja at Blizzcon and his WCS results Dear is the only player I would rank above Taeja. The summer of Taeja is not "just hype" He has won multiple DH, ASUS ROG, and MLG tournaments in the summer months and this year his dominance in offline play has extended to cover half the year. As for Maru, he just failed to beat Dear twice and Jaedong...so I'm not sure why that statistic is condemning for Taeja but uplifting for Maru. While his regular season WCS performances were not up to par with his true skill, his current level of play and amazing games against top players at season finals deserves serious recognition.
Other than inno and sos, he hasn't been able to crack anyone in the top ten, and some that were close to it (polt, bomber). I agree he is playing amazing, but #1 can't be justified with those results imo...
His bo3 losses come at the hands of jaedong, oz, byong and hydra. All of which i'd rate better than all but the top 2 foreigners.
And his wins include: Soulkey, Maru (x2), soo, Taeja(!), DRG, MC, Trap. Much more impressive list than Taeja's recent "top" korean opponents.
And Dear did it in a setting that has been proven time and time again to be the most difficult (arguably the 3 most difficult tournies in the 3 month period), where preparing for opponents is nessesary. Taeja's came at weekend tournies, with him dropping out of what should be an easy win (or at least get out of the R16) for the #1 player.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh on saying I'd put those people above taeja, but imo SK, JD, taeja and maru are all about equal for #2-5, but Dear is a clear #1.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
What the hell is this post?????
no1 without any big tournament win... LMAO. Didn't he JUST win Dreamhack where he beat umm....Innovation, sOs, ForGG, Sjow, Hero, MMA, and Life twice??
Or Homestory cup where he beat Titan, Symbol, Hero, Symbol again, and then went 4-0 against Hyun... and lost 3 maps in the process.
Or Dreamhack Bucharest where he beat Yugioh, sOs, Life and Innovation without dropping a map.
Some people, man...
there wasn't PR for three months so you should acknowledge that fact... DH is not a big tournament compared to wcs NA/KR/EU, wcs finals of blizzcon...
is taeja no1 in that period? apsolutly not. period.
Dreamhack Winter, in terms of viewership and players present, was almost as big as Blizzcon.. Who should be number 1 then? Dear? he's number 2.
Other players have won the WCS events, but nobody has looked as dominant as Taeja during his last few big tournament runs. Dear won games. sOs won games. But people made mistakes against them. Jaedong threw that game on Akilon SO HARD. Meanwhile, Taeja's wins have made his opponents look like platinum level scrubs in comparison. After Life mauled everyone to get back into the finals Tajea made him look like a nobody.
To go undefeated in a Dreamhack (Bucharest) is ridiculous. And to Dominate top Korean players the way he did at Dreamhack Winter is also ridiculous. Certainly deserves #1 in my book.
What top korean players did he dominate again? Life who is in code A, and Inno who hasn't won anything since Season 1?
To say that their opponents threw the games while taeja out played and made his look like scrubs is ridiculous. I suppose then that Taeja threw against dear and Jaedong to make them feel better or something? How do explain Taeja's [I]losses[/] To top koreans who only win when their opponent throws?
I would glady eat my words if Taeja beat more people in the top 10 (would love to see him play vs SK and maru, those would be series to watch), but he never makes it far enough in tournaments they attend to play agains them -_-
Dear lost to Rain! Now everyone that was jumping and screaming that Dear should be #1 have to edit their posts so that Rain should be #1! That's how power ranks work! If you lose to a player, that player passes you in the ranking.
On December 06 2013 02:47 StarStruck wrote: Guys, keep in mind we're talking about a monthly power rank here.
As you might have been able to read, it's not only about december. And it's not really a monthly PR at the time.
sure they missed a few months and it's all about their recent results gumshoe. You'd probably figure that one out if you read my posts in the thread, derp. See mention to SK -.^
Dear lost to Rain! Now everyone that was jumping and screaming that Dear should be #1 have to edit their posts so that Rain should be #1! That's how power ranks work! If you lose to a player, that player passes you in the ranking.
How about that good ol' fashion SK McLuvin too? hue. PR's truly are a Fool's Errand. You just cannot win.
I think people look at this way too much as a "who's the most skilled" ranking, when it's pretty clear it's just about results. There are probably a bunch of kespa players at TaeJa's skill level who weren't even considered for this list (i.e. Rain).
I agree, this really was the summer of Taeja once again, even DH Winter which is quite impressing. Let's see how this turns out. I don't really agree with Maru's rank though.
On December 05 2013 11:28 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:
Overall, I feel like Life is undeserving of his spot, as other than terrorizing foreign tournaments, he is still stuck in code A. I would put everyone in the top ten before him, as this is based on results and not potential (hes been very quiet since hots in general).
It's not just results according to their criteria. They factor in quality of play and difficulty of opponents. Which is what Life mainly has going for him atm. Although, even on the results side of things he did win his ro24 code A match (which would mean he IS code S under normal circumstances) and won an IEM not too long ago, so there's that. With all that alone I'd put him over at least CJ herO.
I noticed you said you don't watch much recently and only look at results. So as a reminder, do you remember what the old Life looked like? You know the guy who seemingly can do whatever the fuck he wants and dominate. The guy who just seems to always find a way to get lings into your base, while meanwhile he's painting the map in creep and whoring drones at home behind the distraction? Yeah he looks like that again.
Thats awesome. I'd love to see life back in form. However, he still hasn't put up notable results, there are people more deserving of that spot. Most of the top 10 can look amazing vs tier 2 players, that doesn't mean they deserve to be there for crushing them.
On December 05 2013 15:24 Yorkie wrote:
On December 05 2013 15:17 Kheve wrote: Taeja only won 1 major tournament the whole year (20k and above purse) and power rank comes out right after that >_>. Dear won 2 majors and sos won the majorest of majors and only got 2nd and 3rd.
Bias overwhelming.
Taeja has been consistently amazing all year long with the infamous summer of Taeja lasting longer than ever. He has looked unstoppable in all three matchups as of late, recently beating a plethora of players ranked beneath him in the top ten. One could argue that some early GGs resulting from a lack of confidence are the only reason he even lost to Dear at Blizzcon. As such I believe Dear to be the only other player in the top 10 with a valid claim for a better spot...No liquid player has been ranked number one all year and rightfully so, but it's not their fault if one of their own is currently on a tear
The infamous summer is mostly hype. Last year he did much better in code S than this year (it was more real last year), but this year he's more of a weekend warrior, taking DH's and HSC but nothing thats an on going individual league. And he doesn't look unstoppable, he has failed to beat jaedong, bomber, dear, and also lost to heart in wcs.... That's not what i define as unstoppable.
Maru to me is more impressive after thinking about it, he has been doing amazing in code S and doing it consistently (being stopped by dear twice in back to back semi's is still and impressive feat). He's been beating higher quality opponents in a preparation setting. That to me is worth more than weekend tournies.
Ahh the infamous "He didn't win every match he played in the year of 2013, he can't be ranked number one in the December power rank" argument. Are you honestly insinuating that Jaedong and Bomber (I'm a huge fan of both btw) are more deserving of the top spot because they beat him in matches earlier this year? As I said with a recent victory over Taeja at Blizzcon and his WCS results Dear is the only player I would rank above Taeja. The summer of Taeja is not "just hype" He has won multiple DH, ASUS ROG, and MLG tournaments in the summer months and this year his dominance in offline play has extended to cover half the year. As for Maru, he just failed to beat Dear twice and Jaedong...so I'm not sure why that statistic is condemning for Taeja but uplifting for Maru. While his regular season WCS performances were not up to par with his true skill, his current level of play and amazing games against top players at season finals deserves serious recognition.
Other than inno and sos, he hasn't been able to crack anyone in the top ten, and some that were close to it (polt, bomber). I agree he is playing amazing, but #1 can't be justified with those results imo...
His bo3 losses come at the hands of jaedong, oz, byong and hydra. All of which i'd rate better than all but the top 2 foreigners.
And his wins include: Soulkey, Maru (x2), soo, Taeja(!), DRG, MC, Trap. Much more impressive list than Taeja's recent "top" korean opponents.
And Dear did it in a setting that has been proven time and time again to be the most difficult (arguably the 3 most difficult tournies in the 3 month period), where preparing for opponents is nessesary. Taeja's came at weekend tournies, with him dropping out of what should be an easy win (or at least get out of the R16) for the #1 player.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh on saying I'd put those people above taeja, but imo SK, JD, taeja and maru are all about equal for #2-5, but Dear is a clear #1.
On December 05 2013 19:57 purgerinho wrote: so, being in liquid makes big bust, right? there is no way taeja is no1.. why did i waste my time to read this.. last time he was no2 without any reason, now he is no1 without any big tournament win... it would be funny if it is not sad :/
where is professionalism from BW power ranks, where results were more important than the team player is in?
be ashamed, be very ashamed!!!!
What the hell is this post?????
no1 without any big tournament win... LMAO. Didn't he JUST win Dreamhack where he beat umm....Innovation, sOs, ForGG, Sjow, Hero, MMA, and Life twice??
Or Homestory cup where he beat Titan, Symbol, Hero, Symbol again, and then went 4-0 against Hyun... and lost 3 maps in the process.
Or Dreamhack Bucharest where he beat Yugioh, sOs, Life and Innovation without dropping a map.
Some people, man...
there wasn't PR for three months so you should acknowledge that fact... DH is not a big tournament compared to wcs NA/KR/EU, wcs finals of blizzcon...
is taeja no1 in that period? apsolutly not. period.
Dreamhack Winter, in terms of viewership and players present, was almost as big as Blizzcon.. Who should be number 1 then? Dear? he's number 2.
Other players have won the WCS events, but nobody has looked as dominant as Taeja during his last few big tournament runs. Dear won games. sOs won games. But people made mistakes against them. Jaedong threw that game on Akilon SO HARD. Meanwhile, Taeja's wins have made his opponents look like platinum level scrubs in comparison. After Life mauled everyone to get back into the finals Tajea made him look like a nobody.
To go undefeated in a Dreamhack (Bucharest) is ridiculous. And to Dominate top Korean players the way he did at Dreamhack Winter is also ridiculous. Certainly deserves #1 in my book.
What top korean players did he dominate again? Life who is in code A, and Inno who hasn't won anything since Season 1?
To say that their opponents threw the games while taeja out played and made his look like scrubs is ridiculous. I suppose then that Taeja threw against dear and Jaedong to make them feel better or something? How do explain Taeja's [I]losses[/] To top koreans who only win when their opponent throws?
I would glady eat my words if Taeja beat more people in the top 10 (would love to see him play vs SK and maru, those would be series to watch), but he never makes it far enough in tournaments they attend to play agains them -_-
Plz use the nice postable feature :D
Results for TaeJa between 2013-09-01 and 2013-12-05.
On December 07 2013 08:18 Crackpot wrote: Hard to make powerranks but I would sign it, only sOs is way overrated. I promise you guys sOs will not win any other tournament ever.
On December 05 2013 10:58 Niteblade_ wrote: Overall, I feel like Life is undeserving of his spot, as other than terrorizing foreign tournaments, he is still stuck in code A. I would put everyone in the top ten before him, as this is based on results and not potential (hes been very quiet since hots in general). )
Was surprised to see Life so high on the list (i guess reputation has to count for something), but happy herO is on it.
gogo herO you climb list good ok!
in a world where you can't put everyone up against eachother in multiple Bo7s for days on end to determine the true #1, Taeja is certainly worthy. It is what it is. Life though, lol.
On December 07 2013 08:18 Crackpot wrote: Hard to make powerranks but I would sign it, only sOs is way overrated. I promise you guys sOs will not win any other tournament ever.
On December 07 2013 08:18 Crackpot wrote: Hard to make powerranks but I would sign it, only sOs is way overrated. I promise you guys sOs will not win any other tournament ever.
This was one of the easiest months of the year to guess the number 1 player for me. Imo it's not just about comparing who they beat or how much money they made but when Taeja plays his best he outclasses ALL other players, no matter the match up and even if his opponent is playing the games of his life.
This may sound cliche but it has never been more true in sc2 history, the only person that can beat Taeja, is Taeja.
Maybe I'm a little bit of a fanboy but whatever, it's still true.
On December 12 2013 00:43 Krogan wrote: This was one of the easiest months of the year to guess the number 1 player for me. Imo it's not just about comparing who they beat or how much money they made but when Taeja plays his best he outclasses ALL other players, no matter the match up and even if his opponent is playing the games of his life.
This may sound cliche but it has never been more true in sc2 history, the only person that can beat Taeja, is Taeja.
Maybe I'm a little bit of a fanboy but whatever, it's still true.
Meh plenty of players have beaten Taeja at peaks in his career. I like taeja but I think your statement is in correct imo
MMA gets left out of the top ten. Proceeds to dominate the Acer Team Story Cup, beating Taeja three times, twice in a single Team Liquid All-Kill. Oh, and he finished the tournament with the highest win percentage at 17-3.
On December 16 2013 13:34 Swiftocino wrote: MMA gets left out of the top ten. Proceeds to dominate the Acer Team Story Cup, beating Taeja three times, twice in a single Team Liquid All-Kill. Oh, and he finished the tournament with the highest win percentage at 17-3.
On December 16 2013 13:34 Swiftocino wrote: MMA gets left out of the top ten. Proceeds to dominate the Acer Team Story Cup, beating Taeja three times, twice in a single Team Liquid All-Kill. Oh, and he finished the tournament with the highest win percentage at 17-3.
A review, not a predictor:The PR is a rating based on previous results, not a scouting report on who will do well in the future.
On December 12 2013 00:43 Krogan wrote: This was one of the easiest months of the year to guess the number 1 player for me. Imo it's not just about comparing who they beat or how much money they made but when Taeja plays his best he outclasses ALL other players, no matter the match up and even if his opponent is playing the games of his life.
This may sound cliche but it has never been more true in sc2 history, the only person that can beat Taeja, is Taeja.
Maybe I'm a little bit of a fanboy but whatever, it's still true.
Mvp beats Taeja handily in that aspect. He won nearly every single tournament he played in. Remember Blizzard cup 2011 and how many spots that were taken by Mvp?
On December 16 2013 13:34 Swiftocino wrote: MMA gets left out of the top ten. Proceeds to dominate the Acer Team Story Cup, beating Taeja three times, twice in a single Team Liquid All-Kill. Oh, and he finished the tournament with the highest win percentage at 17-3.
Come back when MMA does it against the top esf/kespa teams with a score of 23-3 and not a couple top players and the rest are foreigners.