#18 | Bomber, I am the Law

Achievements
Tier 1:
MLG Fall 2012 - Top 4
IPL 5 - Top 4
OSL 2013 - Top 4
WCS Season 2 Finals - 1st
Blizzcon 2013 - Top 4
WCS NA 2014 S2 - 2nd
WCS NA 2014 S3 - 1st
IEM San Jose - Top 4

Tier 2:
Red Bull Austin - 2nd
Red Bull Washington - 1st

Tier 3:
DH Summer 2011 - Top 3
MLG Raleigh 2011 - 1st

Tier 4:
Red Bull Atlanta - 1st

Greatest Series Played:
Bomber vs Mvp - Code A Finals
Set 1 | Set 2 (English) | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6

Bomber vs Idra - MLG Orlando
(Can't find original vods, here's a community cast)
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Bomber vs Freaky - GSTL
Set 2

Bomber vs Scarlett - RB NY
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Bomber vs PigBaby - WCS NA Season 2 Finals
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6 | Set 7

Bomber vs Creator - IPL 5
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Bomber vs Polt - IPL 5
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Bomber vs DRG - IPL 5
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

Bomber vs Heart - WCS NA Season 2 Ro4
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4

Bomber vs Polt - WCS NA Season 3 Ro4
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

Bomber vs Goswser - MLG Winter 2013
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4

“Even though I have failed many times, it makes those victories I do have all the more meaningful.”- Bomber

Bomber’s career and story is one that has a strange parallel with both MMA and Nestea. It is one very much couched in struggle. After spending years in obscurity against all wisdom, Nestea bet it all for one last chance to make his dream of becoming a pro-gamer become true. For MMA it was a struggle against his old team, against the pressure of trying to force himself back to the top, against the oncoming wave of new players that were ushered in with the KeSPA switch.

Bomber’s own struggle was no less arduous. From past to present, Bomber has struggled against the expectations he has placed on himself and the expectations that his fans have for him. After all, starting in 2011, he was the new hottest terran on the block. He had defeated Mvp in one of the great TvT matches of that era in Code A. No one could touch his macro, and though his control was sometimes sloppy, he more than made up for it with the massive amounts of units he could produce at any one time. Many believed—and some still do today—that he was one of the most skilled players of that era. And very briefly he fulfilled that promise as he made a run to his first ever Code S appearance before falling to ByuN in what could only be described as a choke.

He then followed it up with a MLG Raleigh 2011 title, but after the initial haze of victory he was unable to make it happen again in Korea for the rest of the year. Despite his best efforts, he fell back into mediocrity.

It was then that Bomber’s Law was codified.

Bomber's Law: Bomber will always disappoint.

Corollary to Bomber's Law: If Bomber does not disappoint, it will be in order to set up a bigger disappointment later.

For the next 3 years after MLG Raleigh, Bomber’s career was forced into a Sisyphean hell. Every time he entered a tournament, he’d push the boulder up the hill just far enough to make you believe he could finally win a tournament. Then, reality would snap back in and kick the boulder back down. Every time he forced himself to face this immense pressure of being a failure and every time he got close to the finish line, he’d stumble and never make it across.

The tragic farce continued as his fate was exacerbated when the calendar turned to 2013. By that time many had written him off as a has-been. A relic of a bygone age. A good player once, but not someone people expected to be able to compete with the new wave of KeSPA players. Despite reaching the Ro8 in GSL S1 2013, Tastosis called him a “Third-Rate Terran.” A player good enough to get into Code S, but one that was essentially a free win for “better” players like INnoVation or Flash. Bomber in typical fashion crushed them both, and just as he was building momentum to make you think he could finally make a big Korean finals, he lost to Rain.

Expectations for him were tepid entering WCS Season 2 Finals. After all, players like INnoVation, Rain and Maru were in attendance. Yet it wouldn’t be the superstars of the OSL that would claim victory that day, but Bomber. On August 25th, three years since Bomber had won his last Premier, Bomber had finally done it. Against people’s expectations, against some of the best players in the world, against a law that had cruelly haunted him his entire career, Bomber fought the Law and won.

And in typical Bomber fashion he then subsequently bombed out of every tournament before showing up again for another strong run at Blizzcon. Yet there is a lesson to be learned here. Bomber’s Law was not just a law about Bomber, but a law about all players. Everyone must inevitably face disappointment, face failure, face a time that makes one feel as though no matter what one does or what one tries, the very universe feels like its conspiring against him.

And yet stuck in this never-ending hell, Bomber got back up, again and again and again to challenge his fate for three years. Bomber had defeated the law. And in defeating it he had rewritten it. Look at the law again.

Bomber's Law: Bomber will always disappoint.

Corollary to Bomber's Law: If Bomber does not disappoint, it will be in order to set up a bigger disappointment later.

Before 2013, it was a statement of derision, a statement of failure, a statement of disappointment. Yet afterwards it became a statement of triumph. An encapsulation of all the struggles he had faced and the day he had finally defeated them.

Playstyle:

In terms of playstyle, Bomber is a very interesting player. Like Mvp, Bomber started off as one of the great macro players in 2011. For all of WoL, Bomber tried to make it work as he moved from meta to meta without flinching, using standard (albeit very greedy) styles of play no matter what. Beyond that, Bomber was never particularly impactful on the meta as his personal builds and tactics were often weird, unique and greedy.

As time went on however, Bomber came to realize the limits of playing a style so heavily dependent on mechanics. Since the beginning of 2013, Bomber has started to deviate from the way he has been known to play. While for the most part he still sticks to the standard, he now incorporates random strategies or builds from his countless years of experience, often leaving his opponents shocked and confused as they get run over. The best example of this was his finals against Jaedong, where he pulled out early mass marine stim timings, surprise combat shield marines attacks, anachronistic marine tank, and a triple bunker rush.

When watching a Bomber series now, you can basically expect anything he’s ever done from 2011 until now.

Difference between Bomber and Soulkey

This is fairly straight forward. Bomber just has more total runs of equal or greater competitive merit over a longer period of time in multiple metas and expansions. In terms of consistency it is extremely hard to measure. Soulkey’s consistency lasted for about 1.5 years as a top 5 zerg (1 year of which he was the top zerg). Bomber on the other hand is all over the place. For most of 2011 he was in or around Top 5 terrans and after that he was extremely sporadic. In 2012 he showed up for exactly 2 months as a Top 5 terran before falling down the ladder. In 2013, that peak went up to 3 months (OSL/Season 2 Finals and then an appearance at Blizzcon). 2014 was his most consistent year (though to be fair it was also the year he spent in WCS NA). Depending on how you look at it his total peak time was about 1.5 years, just a bit higher than Soulkey’s. Overall the amount of work Bomber has put in over the years is enough to push him over Soulkey’s consistency for that one year. Coupled with the longer resume sheet in tournaments, Bomber is the clear favorite over Soulkey.

What it takes to break into Top 15:

Bomber is on the cusp of breaking into the Top 15. All he'd need is a 1st place at a Tier 2 event or a Top 4 at a tier 1 event to break through.

#17 | Parting, The Soul Train

Achievements:
Tier 1:
WCS Korea 2012 - 3rd
Blizz Cup 2011 - 2nd
GSL 2015 S1 - 2nd
GSL 2012 S2 - Top 4
GSL Global Championship - 2nd
IEM Taipei - Top 4
WCG KR 2012 - 3rd
WCG KR 2013 - 1st

Tier 2:
HSC X - 1st
WCS 2012 Finals - 1st
WCS Asia Finals - 2nd

Tier 3:
IEM Katowice 2013 - Top 4
MSI Beatit - Top 4
RB NY - 1st

Tier 4:
WCG 2012 - 1st
WCG 2013 - 3rd

Greatest Series Played:
PartinG vs Jjakji - Code S Season 1 2012
Set 1 | Set 2

PartinG vs MarineKing - GSTL Finals IPL
Set 4 | Set 4 re-game


PartinG vs MarineKing - MLG Winter 2012
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

PartinG vs Soulkey - GSL Season 1 2013
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

PartinG vs Soulkey - IEM Katowice Qualifiers
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

PartinG vs Zest - GSL Global Championship Finals
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6 | Set 7

PartinG vs RorO - GSL Season 1 2013
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4

PartinG vs Flash - GSL Ro16 Season 1 2013
Set 1 | Set 2

PartinG vs Flash - HSC X Finals
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6 | Set 7

PartinG vs Rain - GSL Season 2 Ro16 2014
(Assuming you mean Season 1 for the PvPvPvP)
Set 1 | Set 2

PartinG vs Classic - GSL Season 2 Ro16 2014
Set 1 | Set 2

PartinG vs Life - GSL Season 1 Finals 2015
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5 | Set 6 | Set 7

PartinG vs Classic - IEM Taipei 2015
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

PartinG vs Soulkey - Kespa Cup 2015 Season 1
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s a God Damn Soul Train.



In one of the most memorable moments in the history of SC2, PartinG called out Life to join him in the his group during the GSL S1 2013 Ro16 group nominations calling Life, “An easy player.” In a game of egotistical chicken, each player continued to choose the hardest player possible until we ended with a group of PartinG, Life, Flash and INnoVation. At that time they were 4 of the 5 strongest players on earth. When asked about his group afterwards, PartinG commented, “I kinda expected this result when I picked Life. I am not surprised and I will make it out of the group anyway.”

PartinG would then go on to eliminate Flash and Life and move on to the Ro8.

There is no other player in the entirety of SC2 who has married their out of game antics with their in-game play style. PartinG is the most charismatic player in SC2 today. It was PartinG’s antics and ceremonies that brought popularity and life to Proleague as he galvanized his peers in a long game of ceremony-one-upmanship that lasted from the day he shot Flash with a ruler until the day Flash kicked PartinG’s name off a floating stadium. No one else today has had as many ceremonies or quips or interviews that are nearly as entertaining as his.

Perhaps the most telling interview from PartinG was after he had left SKT T1 to go find a foreign team. In that interview he likened KeSPA-trained players to domesticated zoo animals, while saying he himself was an untamed eSF animal, born to fight in the wilderness. With his departure from KeSPA, it was a marked change in PartinG.

While many agree that the KeSPA training regimen is the best in the world, there are some players who find that independent practice just suits them better. Players like Taeja and Polt come to mind, and PartinG was another. After leaving the house and joining YoeFW, Parting’s skill seemed to sky rocket. He was always a Top 5 protoss before the change, but now, in 2015, he is running clear as the best protoss player on earth and easily one of the Top 3 players of the year so far (the other two being Life and Maru).

PartinG is a man who has everything. He is well respected and loved by his peers. His fans adore him as one of the best personalities outside the game. He is one of the most successful players to have ever played the game; one of the richest and one of the most skilled.



Yet even with all of that—the love, the respect, the money—PartinG wants more. He still has that hunger of a wild animal. But what he hungers for isn’t food or money, but respect. What PartinG is searching for is recognition, not just to be included in a list of All Time Greats, but to be the The Greatest Protoss of All Time.

Playstyle:

Here is a piece of history that illuminates the very core of PartinG’s strength that allows him to do what he does. In WoL, PartinG had a build known as the Soul Train. It was a very fast 2 base immortal sentry all-in designed to kill the zerg before they ever got to BL/infestor. He used this strategy for all of 2012. Only 3 players were able to stop it: Life, Sniper, and Suppy (4 if you count Curious pre-empting the build with 10 pool). Sniper lost the rematch. Suppy took 2 maps, but lost the series. Life was the best player on the planet. I write this to make you understand that though the Soul Train was a very common build, PartinG was by far the best at it because he had the best force fields of any player bar none.

I do not think, from then to now, even with the years of extra practice and the transfer of the KeSPA players, that anyone has ever truly mastered the art of force fields the way Parting has. It is the very core of his play style and is one of the reasons he has never fallen out of the Top 5 protoss since the beginning of 2012. It allows him to do a huge plethora of builds, builds like:

Soul Train
Genius' Soul Plane
Seed Max out
Inca Special
Huk YOLO
Triple Double
Anypro Anytime
Choya Gate
Stardust Bust
Naniwa's Double Dare
The Warp Prism Delivery
herO’s Nightmare
Swag Train
San Gate
The Hongun Prayer
Arthur's GIlded Gates
Gold Train
Oracles of Delphi
Spirit Bomb
The MVP 3 gate
Classic’s Infinite Cannons

Many of those were strong all-ins or timing attacks, yet if you played too defensively and sacrificed your economy, you ended up playing PartinG in a macro game where he was equally skilled. He is incredibly flexible, has very fast thinking speed and has some of the best max army engagements of any protoss ever.

In addition to all of that, PartinG still has the best micro of any player out there today. He's been the best protoss micro player since the blink stalker changes in 2014. The blink stalker changes were instituted because blink all-ins were too strong on the maps at the time. These changes consisted of increasing research time, lowering MSC vision and making the maps much less blink friendly. After that change, many protoss found it hard to put on the amount of pressure they could before. In PartinG’s case, it seemed like he was putting on even more pressure. In a harsher patch, his micro shined even more as he dismantled player after player after player, especially in PvT (where in the last 5 months he has only dropped 1 set to Maru in offline PvT matches). Even just in terms of units, the only player that can claim to have better unit micro on any one unit is Trap for Oracles.

When you combine all of these aspects together—the force fields, the micro, the variety of builds, the late game decision making—you come to realize PartinG is the complete package. And more than that, he is the single best comeback player protoss has ever had. The only one that even comes close to him is MC. The reason for that is simple: PartinG can squeeze more out of his units than any other protoss alive. He knows exactly how much he can get away with, down to the last hit, and how to maximize his chances of victory.

Finally we come to his innovation. PartinG played arguably the single most important PvT in the meta in his series against Jjakji in GSL Season 1 2012. In that series, he unveiled his 2 base templar build. Storm tech, up to that point had been a dead tech ever since San got Khaydarin amulet removed. Many protoss players around the world had claimed it was just completely nonviable to open with storm and stay safe. PartinG proved them wrong, and his 2 base templar build became the cornerstone from which all options of PvT were opened and it has stayed that way up until the widow mine buff.

Difference between Parting and Bomber:

This one is much more complicated than Bomber and Soulkey. Essentially, when measuring up their paths, competitions and achievements, the two are relatively even. Bomber has bigger wins in the WCS Season 2 Finals and the WCS NA title and runner-up, but Parting has a larger resume to even out the prestige.

In the end the two biggest factors that determine why PartinG is ahead of Bomber is consistency and innovation. Bomber’s time at the top can usually be measured in months per year (except for his one year in 2011). PartinG on the other hand reached Top 5 protoss status at the beginning of 2012 and has been there up until today, leaving him with 3 years of consistency as a Top 5 protoss. In those 3 years, he spent the latter half of 2012 as a Top 3 protoss and all of 2015 so far as Top 1 protoss. In that aspect, PartinG leapfrogs ahead of Bomber. In addition, PartinG has helped innovate his race to a large degree and is one of the great protoss minds of SC2 (the others being MC, Squirtle, Creator, Rain, sOs and Zest).

What it takes to break into the Top 15:

PartinG is extremely close. He'd probably just need to take a Top 4 at a Tier 2 event to break into the top 15. Maybe a 1st at a Tier 3 event if he ran into a few strong players.

#16 | sOs, The Sadist

Achievements:
Tier 1
GSL 2013 S1 - Top 4
WCS Season 1 Finals - 2nd
Blizzcon 2013 - 1st
IEM WC 2014 - 1st
Hot6ix Cup - 1st

Tier 3:
RB NY - 2nd

Greatest Series Played:
sOs vs Jaedong - Blizzcon Finals
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

sOs vs Jjakji - IEM WC 2014
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

sOs vs MarineKing - Hot6ix Finals
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

sOs vs Zest - Kespa Cup 2014 ro8
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

sOs vs Soulkey - GSL Season 2 ro32
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3

sOs vs Trap - RB DC
Set 1 | Set 2

sOs vs herO - IEM WC Finals
Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3 | Set 4 | Set 5

sOs vs herO - PL 2015
Set 1

Losses come in all shapes and sizes. Some losses are easily forgotten; some make you feel bad for awhile before you forget about it; others make you rage; sometimes a loss can break you forever (Mvp vs TOP, Seed vs Byun). Those are normal losses. And then there are losses to sOs.

Losses to sOs are in a completely different hemisphere. The only protoss that even comes close to inflicting this amount of pain is Has. Back when he was first coming up, sOs’ nickname among Koreans was the Bastterjwa. Because when he played games, it looked like he was taking a baseball bat and brutally beating his opponents senseless.



And the epitome of this was his pair of finals against Jaedong and herO. In those finals, sOs became Cobb and he incepted the minds of Jaedong and herO. He opened their skulls and peaked into their brains, read their builds, thoughts, hopes and dreams. And then he mercilessly crushed them in the palm of his hand.

And that is very much the story of sOs. When is on form, when is running hot, he is the scariest player on Earth. Not because of any kind of transcendent skill difference he has over any other player, but because he has the perfect mind games. Coupled with his insanely wild style and unpredictable builds, he often beats opponents so badly that the audience is left openly feeling pity for his victims.

Playstyle:

sOs is the wildest protoss on any planet. NaNiwa describes him as both a genius and someone with incredible open mindedness towards the race. sOs has used unconventional compositions and build,s from mass void ray/DT, void ray chargelot archon, phoenix mass cannon zealot, double proxy assimilator steals, and proxy third bases in PvP, to mass phoenix carrier in PvT.

Perhaps his most important contribution was finding the multiple pathways of the gate first openers in PvZ and using those strange timings to constantly attack and throw zerg players off balance. In terms of both refinement and innovation, sOs is easily one of the best and has been one of the most influential protoss players post-HotS era.

Difference between sOs and PartinG

In many ways this was the most interesting comparison on the list as it very much speaks to the degrees of consistency, peak strength and prestige of the tournaments. It was a ranking made up of degrees of what they did. In terms of how close this ranking was, it was the second hardest comparison after MMA-Polt. In terms of innovation and refinement, both received maximum points. Both are instrumental in pushing their race forward and both are masters of the styles they play.

In terms of consistency PartinG has the edge as he’s had an additional year at the top while sOs didn’t reach that point until the beginning of 2013. In terms of peak, they had close to the same amount of time as #1 Protoss (sOs from the end of Blizzcon to the Ro8 GSL Season 1 2014, PartinG for all of 2015).

Then it came down to results. This was where the ranking became particularly complicated. In terms of sheer amount of players defeated, PartinG comes out ahead of sOs (though not by a huge amount like Taeja did over MC). In terms of prestigious wins, sOs is far ahead of PartinG. What it comes down to is the fact that PartinG's degree of consistency is not strong enough to overtake sOs' peak and prestige wins. Unlike Maru and soO, he wasn’t constantly reaching Top 4s or finals in GSL. He did not have the huge amount of results that Taeja did to eventually landslide MC. It was an incredibly close thing, but in the end sOs’ three big wins (Blizzcon, IEM WC and Hot6ix) were more impressive than Parting’s moderately larger resume and additional year of consistency, but just barely.

What it takes to break into the Top 15:

Probably just a Top 4 at a tier 3 event or higher so long as he played 1-2 Top 10 players along the way.