Global Qualifiers

Time for one final roll of the dice. With all four starleagues now complete, as well as the WCS Circuit for 2016, there are precious few opportunities left in the WCS Points race. Sure, there’s still the Cross Finals to come, but three of the four players in that event are already guaranteed slots through GSL / SSL (Dark, Solar, ByuN), and it’s only truly important for sOs. What that means is that this is the final showdown, whether for players desperate to prove themselves and make a success of 2016, or for those looking for one final push to get them over the line for BlizzCon.

Note: While non-Koreans are allowed to play in the Global Qualifiers as well, we’ll be putting out an NA / EU preview in the coming days to cover the players most affected by the points available at KeSPA Cup.

Players in danger of dropping out

#7 Dear (4800 Points)

While Dear’s pretty much guaranteed for BlizzCon already, he’ll still want to get the top 8 finish he needs to guarantee his spot in the final 8. There are two remote scenarios where he drops out; if Patience wins KeSPA Cup and Classic places 2nd, or if sOs and Patience both make the final, with sOs picking up the win at the Cross Finals as well. Both of those possibilities would require bracket luck and some sensational upsets, but if there’s one player who’s most aware of the risks and rewards of a last ditch sprint to BlizzCon, it’d be Dear.

However, it’s hard to tell exactly what shape the Samsung protoss is in. He was notably beaten in both the SSL and GSL recently by Solar (0-3) and ByuN (1-4) respectively, and while both losses were thoroughly comprehensive, the fact that both his conquerors are the newly crowned starleague champions probably means we should give him a bit of leeway. Wins over Maru and TY in his GSL run probably shows that his PvT is still reliable, and simultaneously displays ByuN’s true strength in the matchup. It’s the other two matchups which are more of a worry, in particular his inconsistent PvP. It’s been a long time since he held the title of ‘top tier PvPer’ at the start of the year, and he needs to add more finesse to his mechanical prowess should he be competitive at the top end once more.


#8 Classic (4100 Points)

As the current 8th seed, Classic is clearly the player with the most to lose following the KeSPA Cup announcement. Failure to qualify can lead to any number of players leapfrogging him—Patience in particular merely needs the 225 points for qualifying to pass him. More than that though, it’s been a slightly underwhelming year for the SKT protoss. Since his rise in 2014, he’s always been one of the top players in the game, from his GSL and SSL successes, to his IEM title in 2015, to his pair of BlizzCon top 4 finishes. 2016 though has been far more barren, with his late SSL top 4 finish the only bright spot on his record.

After Dark exposed his inability to cope with lurkers in the first half of the year, PvT has turned into his weakest matchup. Losses to GuMiho dumped him out of Code S, while losses to TY, GuMiho and Maru have come recently in Proleague. It should be noted that Classic was the one who knocked ByuN out of GSL—no mean feat given the latter’s recent hotstreak in the matchup—although given the cheesy nature of the win, it says little about his ability to cope with the terran late game.

Players needing points

#9 Patience (4000 Points)

Patience is the unfortunate player who’s sitting just outside the top 8 at the moment. Excellent SSL runs—top four finishes in both seasons—have been paired with GSL failure (Code A / Code S Ro.32 exits). It’s been strange to watch him this year, alternately impressive and innocuous, and it’s always been difficult to predict which Patience will turn up. One moment, he looks poor in PvP, losing to Stats, herO and Dear; the next, he’s beating Zest in a starleague quarterfinal. One moment, he looks too smart for Cure and TY; the next, INnoVation is peeling him like a potato.

Patience is currently 100 points off Classic in 8th, so like all the players below him in this list, he needs to qualify for KeSPA Cup to keep his BlizzCon dreams alive. That’s something that plays in his favour—he’s had decent success in KR qualifier brackets in the past, such as his IEM Katowice 2015 run over Cure, GuMiho, soO and Dark.


#10 MyuNgSiK (3200 Points)

From here on in, things get much, much trickier. MyuNgSiK needs to make the finals at the very least to overhaul Classic (potentially more if Classic and Patience score additional points here). While you’d probably have said that that was beyond him in the past, his GSL run this season was pretty impressive. The strange thing though is that his run has come wholly against protoss and terran, given the dearth of zergs in the GSL—he hasn’t played a single PvZ in the past four months. As ever, dirty play against terran is his speciality, and his dissections of jjakji, Maru and GuMiho have been particularly impressive. PvP less so, but maybe that’s just the fresh memories of sOs’ demolition clouding things slightly. Much like Patience, MyuNgSiK too has form in the online qualifier department, in particular when he shot to fame with his phoenix colossus style for IEM Shanghai 2013.


#11 Cure and herO (3000 Points)

Now we’re truly getting into the realm of the unlikely. Cure and herO both need to win the entire tournament to get enough points to stand a chance of qualifying for BlizzCon (and must thus rely on the other players in this list to perform sufficiently poorly as well). Neither player can be satisfied with their season 2 starleague performances; Cure’s double top 16s a disappointment after his GSL semifinal in Season 1, while herO’s a player who’s long gone past the stage where a mere pair of quarterfinals in a year is a sufficient achievement to be proud of.

With both locked together on the same points tally, herO and Cure have almost mirrored each other’s years. herO has been on fire in Proleague, single handedly dragging CJ Entus to the brink of the playoffs with an excellent 16-6 record over the past five months. Cure meanwhile has been quietly effective for Jin Air—10-6 for the year, including a crucial win over Trust in the Grand Finals. Where both have succeeded as part of the collective though, both too have fallen individually. Ugly losses to sOs and Dark in the GSL, and Reality and Patience in the SSL (1-8 cumulatively) made August a month to forget for Cure, while sOs’ humbling of herO (yet again) in the GSL won’t be forgotten in a hurry. Still, weekender success is what herO built his reputation on, while Cure’s frequently a heavy hitter in the KR qualifier death brackets, and both will see qualifying for the competition as a minimum requirement.


#13 sOs (2900 Points)

Finally, we come to Jin Air’s star protoss. Like the pair above, sOs has to win the event to have even a hope of leapfrogging Classic in 8th—a hope that’ll shatter should Classic reach the top 8 of the competition. Where sOs differs from the rest of the field here is that he’ll have a second event up his sleeve. Dark, Solar, and ByuN will have little bar pride to play for at the Cross Finals, but the 1000 WCS Points awarded to the winner would catapult him up the standings here, making a final play for a BlizzCon spot a much less stressful endeavour.


Writer: munch
Editor: munch
Graphics: shiroiusagi