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On November 11 2014 07:30 Zealously wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2014 07:11 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 07:02 Zealously wrote:On November 11 2014 06:44 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 05:48 jayy5 wrote:On November 11 2014 03:57 Tanzklaue wrote:On November 11 2014 03:51 jayy5 wrote:On November 10 2014 23:58 Pegas wrote:
Props to Life for not Swarmhosting the finals.
That being said yes I think MMA and Taeja had the superior mechanics but Life had the best response and fastest decision making. MMA's superior mechanics???? WHAT THE HELL? Stupidest thing I've read on this thread. Life vs MMA is proof that the top bracket of the tournament was the weakest shit known to man. Life beat Zest, San (who cares) and Taeja, before completely wiping the floor with MMA. The guy had no chance at all whatsoever in the least. It was watching 2 different caliber of players. I can't believe 3 of the 5 announcers picked MMA to win. It's clear if you watched any of the games in the finals that the only reason he's in Blizzcon is because he's not playing in Korea. Don't put Taeja and MMA in the same level ever please and thank you. MMA crushed bomber and classic (also stardust who is no slouch) to reach the finals. classic and bomber were 2 of the favourites to win the whole thing. So MMA has better mechanics than Life?? Does anyone agree with this? Life only beat MMA through trickery and non-standard play? Everything looked standard to me. MMA beat Bomber using 3-Viking build that Bomber couldn't adjust for. Following Proleague and GSL, the only legitimate contenders at the beginning of the tournament were Zest, Taeja, Innovation and soO - no one from the top bracket. Maybe herO...but that's a big maybe for anyone following the Korean scene. Bomber is in the category of "could beat any of the KR region pros...but would be an underdog" MMA is in the "if he wins against any KR code S player I'll be shocked" - I was shocked he beat Classic. But after rewatching R32 season 3 GSL...classic is serious code A material at this point. Top bracket was pretty trash - Polt is a heart favorite but he's not top tier. Stardust!? MC?! Jaedong?! Classic?! MMA?! None of these players had any sort of shot. herO and Bomber were LONG odds. Basically what I'm saying is San > Stardust, Zest >>>>>> Classic, Taeja > Bomber during Blizzcon...Life came through the hard way, and it showed in the finals - 4-1 and wasn't close. LoL, Bomber is same level as Taeja or even better.(in TvT definitely), and I cant believe how many people seeing MMA as so bad player. MMA is capable to beat any code S player. Like I said before he had surely no practice on his TvZ matchup, otherwise he would've won vs Life. Why do you think a player who proved himself off in his knowledge of TvZ timings and so inept at defending the most rudimentary of aggression would be able to beat a player that just took out Taeja (whose kill list includes soO, Solar, Life, and every other Zerg in the universe) with an additional day of practice? LoL? MMA's best matchup was TvZ, but recently almost in every tournaments he hadn't to play any Zergs, almost only vs P or T. With that 1 day, he beated Classic easily, and MMA is well know for his good preparations vs his current opponnents. If he knew, he was playing vs Life, i am 100% sure, the finals were 4-3 to either side, not so one sided as it was. Seems people who only follow Koreans scene and think Code S players are much better than the NA or EU koreans, have no idea how good MMA, Bomber are. I think only Taeja is accepted as good player, if i read the comments. Sadly MMA is so underrated, I am pretty sure, if he had harder bracket and lost in the final, he would still be for most people a bad player who has no chance vs Code S player. If you watched Life's games against Zest and San (and even to some extent Taeja), you would find that the same kind of preparation you think MMA is so impressive in is something Life also masters. I get that you think we're criminally underrating MMA, but he really showed nothing in the finals to imply that he was (is) anywhere near Taeja's level in the matchup.
Like i said, Life DESERVED to win, It was really ONE SIDED, and MMA disappointed many people, but the point is MMA had literally no TvZ preparation, you could see that during the games, he did so many mistakes, and his face told everything, he didnt know what to do, was trying to do desperately 2 base all ins. If he had dat 1 day preparation it would've been different story, and Taeja had enough Zerg opponnents, to practice, which MMA hadn't. WCS EU finals he only played vs Golden. DH Moscow, only good Zerg player was Snute and like he said there, he STUDIED Snute and made that twice that 11/11 proxy raxes. If he studied Life aswell, for a player like him, 1 day is enough to prepare many BOs. So Life owned him because of MMA's lack of preparation.
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Life is and has always been to me the best player in the world skill-wise. Even when he wasn't winning as much as he did before, I've alwais considered him slightly ahead of everyone else.
My favourite players have always been the players that were open to the community by speaking english (Polt, MC) or because I felt close to them (either because they were on Millenium, french players, foreign hopes or for complete random reasons). There are only two players that I've been willing to support only because of their skill and that's Life and TaeJa.
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On November 11 2014 08:04 Neemi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2014 07:11 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 07:02 Zealously wrote:On November 11 2014 06:44 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 05:48 jayy5 wrote:On November 11 2014 03:57 Tanzklaue wrote:On November 11 2014 03:51 jayy5 wrote:On November 10 2014 23:58 Pegas wrote:
Props to Life for not Swarmhosting the finals.
That being said yes I think MMA and Taeja had the superior mechanics but Life had the best response and fastest decision making. MMA's superior mechanics???? WHAT THE HELL? Stupidest thing I've read on this thread. Life vs MMA is proof that the top bracket of the tournament was the weakest shit known to man. Life beat Zest, San (who cares) and Taeja, before completely wiping the floor with MMA. The guy had no chance at all whatsoever in the least. It was watching 2 different caliber of players. I can't believe 3 of the 5 announcers picked MMA to win. It's clear if you watched any of the games in the finals that the only reason he's in Blizzcon is because he's not playing in Korea. Don't put Taeja and MMA in the same level ever please and thank you. MMA crushed bomber and classic (also stardust who is no slouch) to reach the finals. classic and bomber were 2 of the favourites to win the whole thing. So MMA has better mechanics than Life?? Does anyone agree with this? Life only beat MMA through trickery and non-standard play? Everything looked standard to me. MMA beat Bomber using 3-Viking build that Bomber couldn't adjust for. Following Proleague and GSL, the only legitimate contenders at the beginning of the tournament were Zest, Taeja, Innovation and soO - no one from the top bracket. Maybe herO...but that's a big maybe for anyone following the Korean scene. Bomber is in the category of "could beat any of the KR region pros...but would be an underdog" MMA is in the "if he wins against any KR code S player I'll be shocked" - I was shocked he beat Classic. But after rewatching R32 season 3 GSL...classic is serious code A material at this point. Top bracket was pretty trash - Polt is a heart favorite but he's not top tier. Stardust!? MC?! Jaedong?! Classic?! MMA?! None of these players had any sort of shot. herO and Bomber were LONG odds. Basically what I'm saying is San > Stardust, Zest >>>>>> Classic, Taeja > Bomber during Blizzcon...Life came through the hard way, and it showed in the finals - 4-1 and wasn't close. LoL, Bomber is same level as Taeja or even better.(in TvT definitely), and I cant believe how many people seeing MMA as so bad player. MMA is capable to beat any code S player. Like I said before he had surely no practice on his TvZ matchup, otherwise he would've won vs Life. Why do you think a player who proved himself off in his knowledge of TvZ timings and so inept at defending the most rudimentary of aggression would be able to beat a player that just took out Taeja (whose kill list includes soO, Solar, Life, and every other Zerg in the universe) with an additional day of practice? LoL? MMA's best matchup was TvZ, but recently almost in every tournaments he hadn't to play any Zergs, almost only vs P or T. With that 1 day, he beated Classic easily, and MMA is well know for his good preparations vs his current opponnents. If he knew, he was playing vs Life, i am 100% sure, the finals were 4-3 to either side, not so one sided as it was. Seems people who only follow Koreans scene and think Code S players are much better than the NA or EU koreans, have no idea how good MMA, Bomber are. I think only Taeja is accepted as good player, if i read the comments. Sadly MMA is so underrated, I am pretty sure, if he had harder bracket and lost in the final, he would still be for most people a bad player who has no chance vs Code S player. You only seem to think MMA benefits from an extra day of practice, yet Life would have played better TvZ in that case as well. I feel his win against Zest and how he beat San proves this. Zest was preparing in general, while Life was preparing for Zest, and you could just tell that Life was countering what Zest was doing while Zest just tried to play standard. The fact it even got to game 5 was, to me, proof of how dominating Zest's PvZ is in general, that he can win 2 out of 5 games against a Zerg like Life, even when being countered. MMA played great, but he beat Stardust (also EU), then beat Bomber who apparently told people he had a bad day beforehand (this is not me trying to take away credit from MMA who played great that match, but on the highest level this does make a difference), then Classic who is definitely no slouch, but it doesn't compare to beating Zest/San in ZvP followed by Taeja in ZvT, which are 3 of the players with the best vZ on the planet. But even beforehand, people were saying that the lower bracket was tougher, and the games proved it. The key difference is not in the numbers of how many maps they won/lost, but how amazing the games in the lower bracket were. Zest vs. Life, Taeja vs. soO, Taeja vs. Innovation, Taeja vs. Life, were, in some order, the top 4 series of Blizzcon to me. The way Innovation/Life straight up killed Hyun/San while the latter just killed jjakji showed the difference in class pretty well. To me Taeja & Life were the two best players at this tournament. The way they beat their opponents to the semi-finals, showed how incredible these guys are when they have the right motivation. I feel this all culminated into game 2 of their series, where they both showed amazing class, but in the end Life won that. I have no doubt in my mind that if Taeja won that series, he would go on to beat MMA too. It might have been closer, but Taeja has been proving since 2012 he can beat (almost) anyone when he's on point, and he was in this tournament. I don't even know why you think it's so controversial how amazing Life played in this tournament. We know the guy had probably the most dominating run ever at the end of WoL. Not even MMA at the end of 2011 seemed as dominating, though he was close. At Blizzcon, he showed how he went on that insane 19-0 offline bo5+ streak. You don't just get there with superior mechanics, as Innovation's 0-4 to Maru & 3-4 to Soulkey showed when he was "the best player in the world". I don't get the sense any of Life's map wins were flukes, and with how close the games were, I'm pretty sure that if we repeat the entire tournament we'd end up with two different finalists. But we may never know. What we do know is that Life, like sOs last year, played a series of amazing games over the course of last week and to me it felt like he was playing like a "best player in the world" should.
How will Life prepare more to a player who had recently almost no TvZ games? He had enough preparation to his ZvT, while MMA had none. Thats why it saw so one sided, if both had 1 day, it wouldn't have been so one sided as it was. Bomber has better score vs Taeja in TvT and Taeja already said in IEM Toronto his TvT is worst matchup, while MMA had so many TvTs recently come on He beat Yoda, jjakji, ForGG(considered as best TvT player), and now Bomber, who has crazy TvT, beating Polt so many times in so short time(Red Bull, WCS NA...)and beating GSL semifinalist Cure with 4-0. If Taeja got to the final, MMA had better chance to win than vs Life.
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On November 11 2014 08:15 TsogiMaster wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2014 08:04 Neemi wrote:On November 11 2014 07:11 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 07:02 Zealously wrote:On November 11 2014 06:44 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 05:48 jayy5 wrote:On November 11 2014 03:57 Tanzklaue wrote:On November 11 2014 03:51 jayy5 wrote:On November 10 2014 23:58 Pegas wrote:
Props to Life for not Swarmhosting the finals.
That being said yes I think MMA and Taeja had the superior mechanics but Life had the best response and fastest decision making. MMA's superior mechanics???? WHAT THE HELL? Stupidest thing I've read on this thread. Life vs MMA is proof that the top bracket of the tournament was the weakest shit known to man. Life beat Zest, San (who cares) and Taeja, before completely wiping the floor with MMA. The guy had no chance at all whatsoever in the least. It was watching 2 different caliber of players. I can't believe 3 of the 5 announcers picked MMA to win. It's clear if you watched any of the games in the finals that the only reason he's in Blizzcon is because he's not playing in Korea. Don't put Taeja and MMA in the same level ever please and thank you. MMA crushed bomber and classic (also stardust who is no slouch) to reach the finals. classic and bomber were 2 of the favourites to win the whole thing. So MMA has better mechanics than Life?? Does anyone agree with this? Life only beat MMA through trickery and non-standard play? Everything looked standard to me. MMA beat Bomber using 3-Viking build that Bomber couldn't adjust for. Following Proleague and GSL, the only legitimate contenders at the beginning of the tournament were Zest, Taeja, Innovation and soO - no one from the top bracket. Maybe herO...but that's a big maybe for anyone following the Korean scene. Bomber is in the category of "could beat any of the KR region pros...but would be an underdog" MMA is in the "if he wins against any KR code S player I'll be shocked" - I was shocked he beat Classic. But after rewatching R32 season 3 GSL...classic is serious code A material at this point. Top bracket was pretty trash - Polt is a heart favorite but he's not top tier. Stardust!? MC?! Jaedong?! Classic?! MMA?! None of these players had any sort of shot. herO and Bomber were LONG odds. Basically what I'm saying is San > Stardust, Zest >>>>>> Classic, Taeja > Bomber during Blizzcon...Life came through the hard way, and it showed in the finals - 4-1 and wasn't close. LoL, Bomber is same level as Taeja or even better.(in TvT definitely), and I cant believe how many people seeing MMA as so bad player. MMA is capable to beat any code S player. Like I said before he had surely no practice on his TvZ matchup, otherwise he would've won vs Life. Why do you think a player who proved himself off in his knowledge of TvZ timings and so inept at defending the most rudimentary of aggression would be able to beat a player that just took out Taeja (whose kill list includes soO, Solar, Life, and every other Zerg in the universe) with an additional day of practice? LoL? MMA's best matchup was TvZ, but recently almost in every tournaments he hadn't to play any Zergs, almost only vs P or T. With that 1 day, he beated Classic easily, and MMA is well know for his good preparations vs his current opponnents. If he knew, he was playing vs Life, i am 100% sure, the finals were 4-3 to either side, not so one sided as it was. Seems people who only follow Koreans scene and think Code S players are much better than the NA or EU koreans, have no idea how good MMA, Bomber are. I think only Taeja is accepted as good player, if i read the comments. Sadly MMA is so underrated, I am pretty sure, if he had harder bracket and lost in the final, he would still be for most people a bad player who has no chance vs Code S player. You only seem to think MMA benefits from an extra day of practice, yet Life would have played better TvZ in that case as well. I feel his win against Zest and how he beat San proves this. Zest was preparing in general, while Life was preparing for Zest, and you could just tell that Life was countering what Zest was doing while Zest just tried to play standard. The fact it even got to game 5 was, to me, proof of how dominating Zest's PvZ is in general, that he can win 2 out of 5 games against a Zerg like Life, even when being countered. MMA played great, but he beat Stardust (also EU), then beat Bomber who apparently told people he had a bad day beforehand (this is not me trying to take away credit from MMA who played great that match, but on the highest level this does make a difference), then Classic who is definitely no slouch, but it doesn't compare to beating Zest/San in ZvP followed by Taeja in ZvT, which are 3 of the players with the best vZ on the planet. But even beforehand, people were saying that the lower bracket was tougher, and the games proved it. The key difference is not in the numbers of how many maps they won/lost, but how amazing the games in the lower bracket were. Zest vs. Life, Taeja vs. soO, Taeja vs. Innovation, Taeja vs. Life, were, in some order, the top 4 series of Blizzcon to me. The way Innovation/Life straight up killed Hyun/San while the latter just killed jjakji showed the difference in class pretty well. To me Taeja & Life were the two best players at this tournament. The way they beat their opponents to the semi-finals, showed how incredible these guys are when they have the right motivation. I feel this all culminated into game 2 of their series, where they both showed amazing class, but in the end Life won that. I have no doubt in my mind that if Taeja won that series, he would go on to beat MMA too. It might have been closer, but Taeja has been proving since 2012 he can beat (almost) anyone when he's on point, and he was in this tournament. I don't even know why you think it's so controversial how amazing Life played in this tournament. We know the guy had probably the most dominating run ever at the end of WoL. Not even MMA at the end of 2011 seemed as dominating, though he was close. At Blizzcon, he showed how he went on that insane 19-0 offline bo5+ streak. You don't just get there with superior mechanics, as Innovation's 0-4 to Maru & 3-4 to Soulkey showed when he was "the best player in the world". I don't get the sense any of Life's map wins were flukes, and with how close the games were, I'm pretty sure that if we repeat the entire tournament we'd end up with two different finalists. But we may never know. What we do know is that Life, like sOs last year, played a series of amazing games over the course of last week and to me it felt like he was playing like a "best player in the world" should. How will Life prepare more to a player who had recently almost no TvZ games? He had enough preparation to his ZvT, while MMA had none. Thats why it saw so one sided, if both had 1 day, it wouldn't have been so one sided as it was. Bomber has better score vs Taeja in TvT and Taeja already said in IEM Toronto his TvT is worst matchup, while MMA had so many TvTs recently come on He beat Yoda, jjakji, ForGG(considered as best TvT player), and now Bomber, who has crazy TvT, beating Polt so many times in so short time(Red Bull, WCS NA...)and beating GSL semifinalist Cure with 4-0. If Taeja got to the final, MMA had better chance to win than vs Life.
No question MMA had no vZ prep (a very underrated aspect that I'm surprised the commentators did not mention). He probably thought his chances of facing a Z were 1000:1. Also MMA is not the strongest player mentally, which clearly showed in his games vs Life. Playing against Life in the finals is nerve-racking enough; playing against him with no Z prep has to be really tough (unless you're as mentally tough as Life, who isn't phased by anything apparently =P)
Still, let's not kid ourselves - Taeja > MMA, and if Life could beat Taeja, he could likely beat MMA, even if MMA had all the prep time in the world.
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Funny how we are all debating about skill in a tournament entirely made of the elite of players.
I'm a Taeja fan and I was sure as hell he would have won, but Life managed to outsmart him and deserves all the credit for that.
Seriously, the only game I've seen where raw skill was somehow out of context was the one where Classic 2gated herO... without his opponent scouting (which is alctually a good game since it proves once again that knowing your opponent already wins you half of the battle).
Life played smart, Life played incredibly well.
Winning against Zest, against San (lol to whoever lol'd to San, btw - the Man's PvZ is sick and this match only proved that Life has finally solved San's approach to the matchup, a sick feat), against Taeja and MMA is a testament to his ability.
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I think it's insane for people trying to make the point that Life is not one of the top skilled players. The guy's record of huge tournament wins speaks for itself really. Just because he hasn't been on a dominant run right before this tournament doesn't mean he isn't a top player skill wise. Every top player, even really dominant ones like MVP or MC, have had bad runs or dropped out of relevance at times.
The way Life played at Blizzcon makes me think he'd be a pretty awesome poker player too, he'd probably be good at reading his opponents and knowing when to bluff or call the bluffs of others.
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I wish people would stop arguing. Can't we all agree that Life is the best player in the world, and MMA is the 2nd best? 
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The way Life played at Blizzcon makes me think he'd be a pretty awesome poker player too, he'd probably be good at reading his opponents and knowing when to bluff or call the bluffs of others.
His mind games were what impressed me the most. He really got under his opponents' skin and forced them into uncharacteristic mistakes.
After getting sick of watching Taeja win so many tournaments and nearly losing hope in starcraft as an entertaining "e-sport", it was beautiful to watch Life vanquish him, especially towards the end of such a riveting Game 2 where Life displayed such razor precision controlling his mutalisks. This moment really demonstrated the kid's ability to remain calm under pressure where any other Zerg player would have fallen.
And on the biggest stage -- battling for a trophy that's worth more than all of Taeja's tournaments wins this year combined.
I suppose this proves the game is balanced -- yet Zerg is such a fragile race and really only potent in the hands of a genius like Life.
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On November 11 2014 08:15 TsogiMaster wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2014 08:04 Neemi wrote:On November 11 2014 07:11 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 07:02 Zealously wrote:On November 11 2014 06:44 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 05:48 jayy5 wrote:On November 11 2014 03:57 Tanzklaue wrote:On November 11 2014 03:51 jayy5 wrote:On November 10 2014 23:58 Pegas wrote:
Props to Life for not Swarmhosting the finals.
That being said yes I think MMA and Taeja had the superior mechanics but Life had the best response and fastest decision making. MMA's superior mechanics???? WHAT THE HELL? Stupidest thing I've read on this thread. Life vs MMA is proof that the top bracket of the tournament was the weakest shit known to man. Life beat Zest, San (who cares) and Taeja, before completely wiping the floor with MMA. The guy had no chance at all whatsoever in the least. It was watching 2 different caliber of players. I can't believe 3 of the 5 announcers picked MMA to win. It's clear if you watched any of the games in the finals that the only reason he's in Blizzcon is because he's not playing in Korea. Don't put Taeja and MMA in the same level ever please and thank you. MMA crushed bomber and classic (also stardust who is no slouch) to reach the finals. classic and bomber were 2 of the favourites to win the whole thing. So MMA has better mechanics than Life?? Does anyone agree with this? Life only beat MMA through trickery and non-standard play? Everything looked standard to me. MMA beat Bomber using 3-Viking build that Bomber couldn't adjust for. Following Proleague and GSL, the only legitimate contenders at the beginning of the tournament were Zest, Taeja, Innovation and soO - no one from the top bracket. Maybe herO...but that's a big maybe for anyone following the Korean scene. Bomber is in the category of "could beat any of the KR region pros...but would be an underdog" MMA is in the "if he wins against any KR code S player I'll be shocked" - I was shocked he beat Classic. But after rewatching R32 season 3 GSL...classic is serious code A material at this point. Top bracket was pretty trash - Polt is a heart favorite but he's not top tier. Stardust!? MC?! Jaedong?! Classic?! MMA?! None of these players had any sort of shot. herO and Bomber were LONG odds. Basically what I'm saying is San > Stardust, Zest >>>>>> Classic, Taeja > Bomber during Blizzcon...Life came through the hard way, and it showed in the finals - 4-1 and wasn't close. LoL, Bomber is same level as Taeja or even better.(in TvT definitely), and I cant believe how many people seeing MMA as so bad player. MMA is capable to beat any code S player. Like I said before he had surely no practice on his TvZ matchup, otherwise he would've won vs Life. Why do you think a player who proved himself off in his knowledge of TvZ timings and so inept at defending the most rudimentary of aggression would be able to beat a player that just took out Taeja (whose kill list includes soO, Solar, Life, and every other Zerg in the universe) with an additional day of practice? LoL? MMA's best matchup was TvZ, but recently almost in every tournaments he hadn't to play any Zergs, almost only vs P or T. With that 1 day, he beated Classic easily, and MMA is well know for his good preparations vs his current opponnents. If he knew, he was playing vs Life, i am 100% sure, the finals were 4-3 to either side, not so one sided as it was. Seems people who only follow Koreans scene and think Code S players are much better than the NA or EU koreans, have no idea how good MMA, Bomber are. I think only Taeja is accepted as good player, if i read the comments. Sadly MMA is so underrated, I am pretty sure, if he had harder bracket and lost in the final, he would still be for most people a bad player who has no chance vs Code S player. You only seem to think MMA benefits from an extra day of practice, yet Life would have played better TvZ in that case as well. I feel his win against Zest and how he beat San proves this. Zest was preparing in general, while Life was preparing for Zest, and you could just tell that Life was countering what Zest was doing while Zest just tried to play standard. The fact it even got to game 5 was, to me, proof of how dominating Zest's PvZ is in general, that he can win 2 out of 5 games against a Zerg like Life, even when being countered. MMA played great, but he beat Stardust (also EU), then beat Bomber who apparently told people he had a bad day beforehand (this is not me trying to take away credit from MMA who played great that match, but on the highest level this does make a difference), then Classic who is definitely no slouch, but it doesn't compare to beating Zest/San in ZvP followed by Taeja in ZvT, which are 3 of the players with the best vZ on the planet. But even beforehand, people were saying that the lower bracket was tougher, and the games proved it. The key difference is not in the numbers of how many maps they won/lost, but how amazing the games in the lower bracket were. Zest vs. Life, Taeja vs. soO, Taeja vs. Innovation, Taeja vs. Life, were, in some order, the top 4 series of Blizzcon to me. The way Innovation/Life straight up killed Hyun/San while the latter just killed jjakji showed the difference in class pretty well. To me Taeja & Life were the two best players at this tournament. The way they beat their opponents to the semi-finals, showed how incredible these guys are when they have the right motivation. I feel this all culminated into game 2 of their series, where they both showed amazing class, but in the end Life won that. I have no doubt in my mind that if Taeja won that series, he would go on to beat MMA too. It might have been closer, but Taeja has been proving since 2012 he can beat (almost) anyone when he's on point, and he was in this tournament. I don't even know why you think it's so controversial how amazing Life played in this tournament. We know the guy had probably the most dominating run ever at the end of WoL. Not even MMA at the end of 2011 seemed as dominating, though he was close. At Blizzcon, he showed how he went on that insane 19-0 offline bo5+ streak. You don't just get there with superior mechanics, as Innovation's 0-4 to Maru & 3-4 to Soulkey showed when he was "the best player in the world". I don't get the sense any of Life's map wins were flukes, and with how close the games were, I'm pretty sure that if we repeat the entire tournament we'd end up with two different finalists. But we may never know. What we do know is that Life, like sOs last year, played a series of amazing games over the course of last week and to me it felt like he was playing like a "best player in the world" should. How will Life prepare more to a player who had recently almost no TvZ games? He had enough preparation to his ZvT, while MMA had none. Thats why it saw so one sided, if both had 1 day, it wouldn't have been so one sided as it was. Bomber has better score vs Taeja in TvT and Taeja already said in IEM Toronto his TvT is worst matchup, while MMA had so many TvTs recently come on He beat Yoda, jjakji, ForGG(considered as best TvT player), and now Bomber, who has crazy TvT, beating Polt so many times in so short time(Red Bull, WCS NA...)and beating GSL semifinalist Cure with 4-0. If Taeja got to the final, MMA had better chance to win than vs Life.
Tsogi, I don't know where you were in 2013 but here are just a few of Jaedong's tournament results:
Dreamhack Summer
ro8
vs T (Lucifron) win
semis
vs T (Taeja) win
finals
vs P (Stardust) loss
Dreamhack Valencia
ro8
vs P (JYP) win
semis
vs P (Stardust) win <- he handily beat Stardust this time
finals
vs Z (Hyun) loss
WCS AM
ro8
vs P (Jim) win
semis
vs Z (Scarlett) win
finals
vs T (Polt) loss
WCS Season 2 Grand Finals
Group A
vs P (Rain) win
vs P (MC) win
ro8
vs P (Naniwa) win
semis
vs P (First) win
finals
vs T (Bomber) loss
See the pattern? This kind of thing has been going on FOREVER. It's just the way things are. It's part of Starcraft (3 races makes this happen often). I was a little salty about some of these too especially because in most of these cases Jaedong played the 2nd semifinal meaning he had 0 preparation time at all going into the final, but do you really expect tournaments to run a whole extra day just for a grand finals? MMA actually had time to watch Life vs Taeja and plan his own strategies but all we saw from him were some weak timing attacks and even weaker standard play while Life played a strong standard game and went for busts when he knew they would work. One could also argue that San, being a PvZ specialist, should have easily beat Life in game 3. It was the exact same map and strategy that Life used against Zest and lost just a week beforehand. Despite an entire week of preparation San still lost. There's no guarantee that MMA would have played any better even with more time to prepare and it would be silly to dedicate a whole extra day to a grand finals. Again this is just the way things are, get over it and move on.
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On November 11 2014 05:40 LongShot27 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2014 04:28 OtherWorld wrote:On November 11 2014 04:21 Tanzklaue wrote:On November 11 2014 04:17 OtherWorld wrote:On November 11 2014 03:43 Tanzklaue wrote:
life isn't nearly good enough to beat taeja in straight up games.
he knew that.
which is why he countered taeja's play with creativity and brainsmarts. which was the right thing to do honestly. i mean, you can try beating a bear in a fist fight, but nobody will remember you as a hero or smart.
what i want to say with that is, life deserved the win. it wasn't pretty, but taeja failed to paly it safe against life, who literally played cheesy aggression 4 out of 5 games. i mean, you could try to adapt to that. You could also say that TaeJa isn't nearly good enough to beat Life in non-straight up games then. The fact that a player doesn't play accordingly to what your standards of "straight-up" or "macro" are doesn't mean he's bad and saying that he is is total bullshit. Starcraft II is a strategy game, not a button-clicking game. Life won with both his strategic mind and his mechanics. Implying he's not on the level of the best players of this game in one of those dimensions is what I'd call... controversial did you even read the rest of my post where i said that life deserved to win because he was the smarter man and taeja refused to adapt, thus making life superior to taeja? I did, but your first sentence make it sound like TaeJa is a better player than Life overall. Which I deny, because except in case of obvious racial imbalance, the better player is the one who wins. Sorry if my post sounded harsh or rude though, I'm just a bit angry seeing all the posts saying Life doesn't deserve his victory, so I may have overreacted when responding to yours. If the better player always won, cheese wouldn't exist
Sorry to be a bit late, but cheese is a legit part of the game, you know. Or, to loosely quote Nazgul (I can't find the original post, sorry), cheese is a word used by people unable to adapt to strategic variance
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On November 11 2014 14:29 vRadiatioNv wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2014 08:15 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 08:04 Neemi wrote:On November 11 2014 07:11 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 07:02 Zealously wrote:On November 11 2014 06:44 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 05:48 jayy5 wrote:On November 11 2014 03:57 Tanzklaue wrote:On November 11 2014 03:51 jayy5 wrote:On November 10 2014 23:58 Pegas wrote:
Props to Life for not Swarmhosting the finals.
That being said yes I think MMA and Taeja had the superior mechanics but Life had the best response and fastest decision making. MMA's superior mechanics???? WHAT THE HELL? Stupidest thing I've read on this thread. Life vs MMA is proof that the top bracket of the tournament was the weakest shit known to man. Life beat Zest, San (who cares) and Taeja, before completely wiping the floor with MMA. The guy had no chance at all whatsoever in the least. It was watching 2 different caliber of players. I can't believe 3 of the 5 announcers picked MMA to win. It's clear if you watched any of the games in the finals that the only reason he's in Blizzcon is because he's not playing in Korea. Don't put Taeja and MMA in the same level ever please and thank you. MMA crushed bomber and classic (also stardust who is no slouch) to reach the finals. classic and bomber were 2 of the favourites to win the whole thing. So MMA has better mechanics than Life?? Does anyone agree with this? Life only beat MMA through trickery and non-standard play? Everything looked standard to me. MMA beat Bomber using 3-Viking build that Bomber couldn't adjust for. Following Proleague and GSL, the only legitimate contenders at the beginning of the tournament were Zest, Taeja, Innovation and soO - no one from the top bracket. Maybe herO...but that's a big maybe for anyone following the Korean scene. Bomber is in the category of "could beat any of the KR region pros...but would be an underdog" MMA is in the "if he wins against any KR code S player I'll be shocked" - I was shocked he beat Classic. But after rewatching R32 season 3 GSL...classic is serious code A material at this point. Top bracket was pretty trash - Polt is a heart favorite but he's not top tier. Stardust!? MC?! Jaedong?! Classic?! MMA?! None of these players had any sort of shot. herO and Bomber were LONG odds. Basically what I'm saying is San > Stardust, Zest >>>>>> Classic, Taeja > Bomber during Blizzcon...Life came through the hard way, and it showed in the finals - 4-1 and wasn't close. LoL, Bomber is same level as Taeja or even better.(in TvT definitely), and I cant believe how many people seeing MMA as so bad player. MMA is capable to beat any code S player. Like I said before he had surely no practice on his TvZ matchup, otherwise he would've won vs Life. Why do you think a player who proved himself off in his knowledge of TvZ timings and so inept at defending the most rudimentary of aggression would be able to beat a player that just took out Taeja (whose kill list includes soO, Solar, Life, and every other Zerg in the universe) with an additional day of practice? LoL? MMA's best matchup was TvZ, but recently almost in every tournaments he hadn't to play any Zergs, almost only vs P or T. With that 1 day, he beated Classic easily, and MMA is well know for his good preparations vs his current opponnents. If he knew, he was playing vs Life, i am 100% sure, the finals were 4-3 to either side, not so one sided as it was. Seems people who only follow Koreans scene and think Code S players are much better than the NA or EU koreans, have no idea how good MMA, Bomber are. I think only Taeja is accepted as good player, if i read the comments. Sadly MMA is so underrated, I am pretty sure, if he had harder bracket and lost in the final, he would still be for most people a bad player who has no chance vs Code S player. You only seem to think MMA benefits from an extra day of practice, yet Life would have played better TvZ in that case as well. I feel his win against Zest and how he beat San proves this. Zest was preparing in general, while Life was preparing for Zest, and you could just tell that Life was countering what Zest was doing while Zest just tried to play standard. The fact it even got to game 5 was, to me, proof of how dominating Zest's PvZ is in general, that he can win 2 out of 5 games against a Zerg like Life, even when being countered. MMA played great, but he beat Stardust (also EU), then beat Bomber who apparently told people he had a bad day beforehand (this is not me trying to take away credit from MMA who played great that match, but on the highest level this does make a difference), then Classic who is definitely no slouch, but it doesn't compare to beating Zest/San in ZvP followed by Taeja in ZvT, which are 3 of the players with the best vZ on the planet. But even beforehand, people were saying that the lower bracket was tougher, and the games proved it. The key difference is not in the numbers of how many maps they won/lost, but how amazing the games in the lower bracket were. Zest vs. Life, Taeja vs. soO, Taeja vs. Innovation, Taeja vs. Life, were, in some order, the top 4 series of Blizzcon to me. The way Innovation/Life straight up killed Hyun/San while the latter just killed jjakji showed the difference in class pretty well. To me Taeja & Life were the two best players at this tournament. The way they beat their opponents to the semi-finals, showed how incredible these guys are when they have the right motivation. I feel this all culminated into game 2 of their series, where they both showed amazing class, but in the end Life won that. I have no doubt in my mind that if Taeja won that series, he would go on to beat MMA too. It might have been closer, but Taeja has been proving since 2012 he can beat (almost) anyone when he's on point, and he was in this tournament. I don't even know why you think it's so controversial how amazing Life played in this tournament. We know the guy had probably the most dominating run ever at the end of WoL. Not even MMA at the end of 2011 seemed as dominating, though he was close. At Blizzcon, he showed how he went on that insane 19-0 offline bo5+ streak. You don't just get there with superior mechanics, as Innovation's 0-4 to Maru & 3-4 to Soulkey showed when he was "the best player in the world". I don't get the sense any of Life's map wins were flukes, and with how close the games were, I'm pretty sure that if we repeat the entire tournament we'd end up with two different finalists. But we may never know. What we do know is that Life, like sOs last year, played a series of amazing games over the course of last week and to me it felt like he was playing like a "best player in the world" should. How will Life prepare more to a player who had recently almost no TvZ games? He had enough preparation to his ZvT, while MMA had none. Thats why it saw so one sided, if both had 1 day, it wouldn't have been so one sided as it was. Bomber has better score vs Taeja in TvT and Taeja already said in IEM Toronto his TvT is worst matchup, while MMA had so many TvTs recently come on He beat Yoda, jjakji, ForGG(considered as best TvT player), and now Bomber, who has crazy TvT, beating Polt so many times in so short time(Red Bull, WCS NA...)and beating GSL semifinalist Cure with 4-0. If Taeja got to the final, MMA had better chance to win than vs Life. Tsogi, I don't know where you were in 2013 but here are just a few of Jaedong's tournament results: Dreamhack Summer ro8 vs T (Lucifron) win semis vs T (Taeja) win finals vs P (Stardust) loss Dreamhack Valencia ro8 vs P (JYP) win semis vs P (Stardust) win <- he handily beat Stardust this time finals vs Z (Hyun) loss WCS AM ro8 vs P (Jim) win semis vs Z (Scarlett) win finals vs T (Polt) loss WCS Season 2 Grand Finals Group A vs P (Rain) win vs P (MC) win ro8 vs P (Naniwa) win semis vs P (First) win finals vs T (Bomber) loss See the pattern? This kind of thing has been going on FOREVER. It's just the way things are. It's part of Starcraft (3 races makes this happen often). I was a little salty about some of these too especially because in most of these cases Jaedong played the 2nd semifinal meaning he had 0 preparation time at all going into the final, but do you really expect tournaments to run a whole extra day just for a grand finals? MMA actually had time to watch Life vs Taeja and plan his own strategies but all we saw from him were some weak timing attacks and even weaker standard play while Life played a strong standard game and went for busts when he knew they would work. One could also argue that San, being a PvZ specialist, should have easily beat Life in game 3. It was the exact same map and strategy that Life used against Zest and lost just a week beforehand. Despite an entire week of preparation San still lost. There's no guarantee that MMA would have played any better even with more time to prepare and it would be silly to dedicate a whole extra day to a grand finals. Again this is just the way things are, get over it and move on.
Dreamhack, IEM are different story, JD had group stages, where he had to prepare for 3 all races. And you guys really understand how much 1 day can make, at this high level, right? MMA would ve been mentally and in case TvZ playstyle in different level, and i am writing almost in every posts here, that Life deserved the win, cant understand why people thinking I am underrating Life, but well like I said that 1 day would ve changed MMAs mindset completely, and thinking MMA seeing Life vs Taeja would help him is wrong, yes he is seeing Lifes playstyle, but not playing TvZ matches recently, it wont help much. Gsl, Kespa Cups havent that only final day not just so, it is made, so the players could prepare for their oponnents.
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On November 11 2014 16:48 TsogiMaster wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2014 14:29 vRadiatioNv wrote:On November 11 2014 08:15 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 08:04 Neemi wrote:On November 11 2014 07:11 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 07:02 Zealously wrote:On November 11 2014 06:44 TsogiMaster wrote:On November 11 2014 05:48 jayy5 wrote:On November 11 2014 03:57 Tanzklaue wrote:On November 11 2014 03:51 jayy5 wrote:
[quote]
MMA's superior mechanics???? WHAT THE HELL?
Stupidest thing I've read on this thread.
Life vs MMA is proof that the top bracket of the tournament was the weakest shit known to man.
Life beat Zest, San (who cares) and Taeja, before completely wiping the floor with MMA. The guy had no chance at all whatsoever in the least. It was watching 2 different caliber of players. I can't believe 3 of the 5 announcers picked MMA to win. It's clear if you watched any of the games in the finals that the only reason he's in Blizzcon is because he's not playing in Korea.
Don't put Taeja and MMA in the same level ever please and thank you. MMA crushed bomber and classic (also stardust who is no slouch) to reach the finals. classic and bomber were 2 of the favourites to win the whole thing. So MMA has better mechanics than Life?? Does anyone agree with this? Life only beat MMA through trickery and non-standard play? Everything looked standard to me. MMA beat Bomber using 3-Viking build that Bomber couldn't adjust for. Following Proleague and GSL, the only legitimate contenders at the beginning of the tournament were Zest, Taeja, Innovation and soO - no one from the top bracket. Maybe herO...but that's a big maybe for anyone following the Korean scene. Bomber is in the category of "could beat any of the KR region pros...but would be an underdog" MMA is in the "if he wins against any KR code S player I'll be shocked" - I was shocked he beat Classic. But after rewatching R32 season 3 GSL...classic is serious code A material at this point. Top bracket was pretty trash - Polt is a heart favorite but he's not top tier. Stardust!? MC?! Jaedong?! Classic?! MMA?! None of these players had any sort of shot. herO and Bomber were LONG odds. Basically what I'm saying is San > Stardust, Zest >>>>>> Classic, Taeja > Bomber during Blizzcon...Life came through the hard way, and it showed in the finals - 4-1 and wasn't close. LoL, Bomber is same level as Taeja or even better.(in TvT definitely), and I cant believe how many people seeing MMA as so bad player. MMA is capable to beat any code S player. Like I said before he had surely no practice on his TvZ matchup, otherwise he would've won vs Life. Why do you think a player who proved himself off in his knowledge of TvZ timings and so inept at defending the most rudimentary of aggression would be able to beat a player that just took out Taeja (whose kill list includes soO, Solar, Life, and every other Zerg in the universe) with an additional day of practice? LoL? MMA's best matchup was TvZ, but recently almost in every tournaments he hadn't to play any Zergs, almost only vs P or T. With that 1 day, he beated Classic easily, and MMA is well know for his good preparations vs his current opponnents. If he knew, he was playing vs Life, i am 100% sure, the finals were 4-3 to either side, not so one sided as it was. Seems people who only follow Koreans scene and think Code S players are much better than the NA or EU koreans, have no idea how good MMA, Bomber are. I think only Taeja is accepted as good player, if i read the comments. Sadly MMA is so underrated, I am pretty sure, if he had harder bracket and lost in the final, he would still be for most people a bad player who has no chance vs Code S player. You only seem to think MMA benefits from an extra day of practice, yet Life would have played better TvZ in that case as well. I feel his win against Zest and how he beat San proves this. Zest was preparing in general, while Life was preparing for Zest, and you could just tell that Life was countering what Zest was doing while Zest just tried to play standard. The fact it even got to game 5 was, to me, proof of how dominating Zest's PvZ is in general, that he can win 2 out of 5 games against a Zerg like Life, even when being countered. MMA played great, but he beat Stardust (also EU), then beat Bomber who apparently told people he had a bad day beforehand (this is not me trying to take away credit from MMA who played great that match, but on the highest level this does make a difference), then Classic who is definitely no slouch, but it doesn't compare to beating Zest/San in ZvP followed by Taeja in ZvT, which are 3 of the players with the best vZ on the planet. But even beforehand, people were saying that the lower bracket was tougher, and the games proved it. The key difference is not in the numbers of how many maps they won/lost, but how amazing the games in the lower bracket were. Zest vs. Life, Taeja vs. soO, Taeja vs. Innovation, Taeja vs. Life, were, in some order, the top 4 series of Blizzcon to me. The way Innovation/Life straight up killed Hyun/San while the latter just killed jjakji showed the difference in class pretty well. To me Taeja & Life were the two best players at this tournament. The way they beat their opponents to the semi-finals, showed how incredible these guys are when they have the right motivation. I feel this all culminated into game 2 of their series, where they both showed amazing class, but in the end Life won that. I have no doubt in my mind that if Taeja won that series, he would go on to beat MMA too. It might have been closer, but Taeja has been proving since 2012 he can beat (almost) anyone when he's on point, and he was in this tournament. I don't even know why you think it's so controversial how amazing Life played in this tournament. We know the guy had probably the most dominating run ever at the end of WoL. Not even MMA at the end of 2011 seemed as dominating, though he was close. At Blizzcon, he showed how he went on that insane 19-0 offline bo5+ streak. You don't just get there with superior mechanics, as Innovation's 0-4 to Maru & 3-4 to Soulkey showed when he was "the best player in the world". I don't get the sense any of Life's map wins were flukes, and with how close the games were, I'm pretty sure that if we repeat the entire tournament we'd end up with two different finalists. But we may never know. What we do know is that Life, like sOs last year, played a series of amazing games over the course of last week and to me it felt like he was playing like a "best player in the world" should. How will Life prepare more to a player who had recently almost no TvZ games? He had enough preparation to his ZvT, while MMA had none. Thats why it saw so one sided, if both had 1 day, it wouldn't have been so one sided as it was. Bomber has better score vs Taeja in TvT and Taeja already said in IEM Toronto his TvT is worst matchup, while MMA had so many TvTs recently come on He beat Yoda, jjakji, ForGG(considered as best TvT player), and now Bomber, who has crazy TvT, beating Polt so many times in so short time(Red Bull, WCS NA...)and beating GSL semifinalist Cure with 4-0. If Taeja got to the final, MMA had better chance to win than vs Life. Tsogi, I don't know where you were in 2013 but here are just a few of Jaedong's tournament results: Dreamhack Summer ro8 vs T (Lucifron) win semis vs T (Taeja) win finals vs P (Stardust) loss Dreamhack Valencia ro8 vs P (JYP) win semis vs P (Stardust) win <- he handily beat Stardust this time finals vs Z (Hyun) loss WCS AM ro8 vs P (Jim) win semis vs Z (Scarlett) win finals vs T (Polt) loss WCS Season 2 Grand Finals Group A vs P (Rain) win vs P (MC) win ro8 vs P (Naniwa) win semis vs P (First) win finals vs T (Bomber) loss See the pattern? This kind of thing has been going on FOREVER. It's just the way things are. It's part of Starcraft (3 races makes this happen often). I was a little salty about some of these too especially because in most of these cases Jaedong played the 2nd semifinal meaning he had 0 preparation time at all going into the final, but do you really expect tournaments to run a whole extra day just for a grand finals? MMA actually had time to watch Life vs Taeja and plan his own strategies but all we saw from him were some weak timing attacks and even weaker standard play while Life played a strong standard game and went for busts when he knew they would work. One could also argue that San, being a PvZ specialist, should have easily beat Life in game 3. It was the exact same map and strategy that Life used against Zest and lost just a week beforehand. Despite an entire week of preparation San still lost. There's no guarantee that MMA would have played any better even with more time to prepare and it would be silly to dedicate a whole extra day to a grand finals. Again this is just the way things are, get over it and move on. Dreamhack, IEM are different story, JD had group stages, where he had to prepare for 3 all races. And you guys really understand how much 1 day can make, at this high level, right? MMA would ve been mentally and in case TvZ playstyle in different level, and i am writing almost in every posts here, that Life deserved the win, cant understand why people thinking I am underrating Life, but well like I said that 1 day would ve changed MMAs mindset completely, and thinking MMA seeing Life vs Taeja would help him is wrong, yes he is seeing Lifes playstyle, but not playing TvZ matches recently, it wont help much. Gsl, Kespa Cups havent that only final day not just so, it is made, so the players could prepare for their oponnents.
MMA didn't prepare himself for TvZ which is only his underrating of Zs. Well, almost everyone was expecting all TvZs would be won by T, well, Taeja didn't deliver, so we can blame Taeja, right? 
If his TvZ was the least played, he should play it more, no? There were some really good zergs in the lower bracket, I mean soO... the one who was aiming for silver. Oh, I get it now!!! MMA was thinking that soO wins the lower bracket and chokes in the finals, so why to prepare TvZ. HOW CLEVER! He saved time preparing for soO and then Life happens... :D
This discussion is pointless. Life found the way, as he does
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I've always considered Life and Taeja to be the Terran and Zerg version of each other.
Both young prodigies and absolutely packed with skill and micro precision, with amazing decision making skills.
I'm glad the Semi Finals showed that, and we had a stellar series between the two.
I wanted Taeja to win it all, but Life has been my favourite Zerg since his initial GSL run, despite knocking off Mvp in the finals.
Such a great finals :D
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expected a weird TvT Finals, but when Life won against Taeja I thought the Finals would look like this. If you are alone with your Race, thats usually an advantage especially in the Finals. And Life was not only the only Zerg in the Ro8 he also has his special playstyle.
But thats part of asymmetrical balanced games. And Life came madly prepared to punish anyone that didn't have him on the radar as an opponent.
Need a 3 days Blizzcon next year. But then the Ro16 should rather be on the first day heh.
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Am I the only one bothered by the fact that everyone referes to MMA as having won at blizzcon? Did everyone forget that on that year, it was Mvp that won the blizzcon against nestea and what MMA actually won was the GSL at blizzcon.
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I think its safe to say the top three players for each race are:
Zest, Taeja and soO
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What everybody seems to forget is that Life winning gives: SjoW > Zest/San/Taeja/MMA. Give the kid a GSL trophy already.
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How did kespa player get rekt this hard?! Aren't they supposed to win everything against non kespa players?
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On November 12 2014 04:51 vitruvia wrote:
How did kespa player get rekt this hard?! Aren't they supposed to win everything against non kespa players?
KeSPA players succeed in their ability to prepare for a matchup or a player. HUGE props to Life for out-preparing for Zest and San.
I feel like when you factor in weekend tournaments, travel, jet-lag, unpredictability you start to see which players really emerge from the fire. Players like TaeJa and Life can stand under the pressure of long tournaments and matchups they didn't prepare for as well.
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EPT
