by The_Templar

The second match of the evening puts together two long-standing competitors from KT with radically different results. While one was a well-known veteran in Brood War who had a slow restart after the switch, the other had no attention in his moderately long Starcraft career until 2014, where he exploded into GSL and became one of the first royal roaders. Although the two have both been around for years, they currently find themselves at different points in their careers; the champion has fallen sharply since his stunning 2014 year, and it’s almost a surprise that he made it back into Starleague playoffs so quickly, while the longer-standing pro is finally getting long-overdue attention from recent accomplishments.

In the 2014 era of improving Protoss players, Stats, the seasoned pro from Brood War, was left behind. Dear and Zest led the race to their first GSLs since MC was in contention, and other players quickly did their best to follow their example. PartinG made the Grand Finals of the subsequent Global Championship, losing out only to fellow Protoss Zest. Internationally, herO and sOs conquered IEM, while lesser Protoss players made strong runs in WCS. Even Classic managed to surprise everyone with his GSL win the next season. By the time Stats finally came to make a mark on SC2 history, more than enough rising players had been recognized and he was constantly overlooked as a normal pro without a title despite his Proleague and BW accomplishments. The first sign that Stats was becoming a force to be reckoned with was his patient and well-played victory over Soulkey in a macro game to start off the Proleague finals, a promising set that was largely ignored in favor of KT’s eventual victory. It wasn’t until the end of the year that Stats finally drew attention to himself by reaching his first playoffs, where he lost to soO in the quarterfinals. This impressive performance could have easily been overlooked, but he took it a step further last season by reaching the round of 4. Although a title is unlikely, a repeat semifinals appearance, an accomplishment that few have ever mirrored, would earn him the recognition he deserves at last.

The other KT Protoss in this match, Zest, has maintained an extraordinarily different career. Instead of being left behind, he led the Protoss race and became the undisputed champion out of all of them for a year. His play, the embodiment of theoretical perfection, was an inspiration for other safe players when the blink era reached its bitter end. Even the staunchest anti-fan could hardly downplay his achievements over the year, either, as he took three Korean titles and nearly accomplished a fourth at IEM Toronto. While he remained the model of his race for longer than almost any man could have claimed to, he had to fall eventually. His descent came against Life at the WCS World Championship, and the end came quickly. Somehow, this one failure pervaded every part of his victories, and the best Protoss of the year disappeared for over three months after failing to qualify for either Starleague. His redemption came from an unlikely source. Even though his accomplishments had originated in Korea, it took an IEM seed to bring Zest back. Even there, Zest looked like some disfigured shadow of himself from last year as he made uncharacteristic, horrific mistakes, particularly against INnoVation, on his way to an unexpected title. Additionally, he has somehow crawled back from his loss to TANGTANG in the GSL qualifiers to defeat relatively decent players and make it here, Zest’s only other result since his downfall. A semifinals result here would suggest that the IEM championship wasn’t a surprise from a failing champion, but the beginning of a comeback.

Overall thoughts and predictions.

Zest is the dark horse left in this tournament. With the remaining players having a somewhat known form at the moment, he’s the only one left with conflicting results, and his play has been both poor and enough to win a championship recently. His PvP record, muddled with losses to herO, who was off form in PvP, and Creator, don’t help to clear these conflicting results up. As his teammate and opponent has cleared two PvP groups in the last two seasons of the S2SL, Zest clearly needs to be capable of playing a longer series against a rising player who likely knows him well. This is a factor which does not favor the former champion and his previously perfect, as well as exploitable, play.

Stats 3-1 Zest

Writers: Destructicon, The_Templar.
Graphics: shiroiusagi.
Editors: DarkLordOlli.
Stats: Aligulac