INnoVation wins GSL Code S, defeating sOs 4-3 - Page 7

On September 18 2017 01:10 Fango wrote:


To fair I understand were he's coming from. I cannot deny Inno is the best mechanical player ever, and also one of the best starcraft player of all time. But damn can he look boring doing it. The players I find impressive are the ones that can seemingly be put in any situation and know how to win, that can pull of clutch plays you didn't think were possible etc

Inno does the same stuff as everyone else for the most part, he just does it better. I find his on-the-spot tactics and decision making ingame to be ok, but nothing special. He always has the most optimal build and strategy prepared beforehand that either wins (most of the time), or doesn't. (this isn't meant to be a critism btw, I'm just talking about his playstyle)

To put it simply, Inno stands out to me as someone who wins a lot. With other players they stand out for being able to play like no one else can. Examples being guys like Life, who was ahead of everyone else when it came to being an aggressive zerg. Or Maru, who used positioning and micro to somehow dominate protoss during peak imbalance. Or Rain pioneering the perfect defensive toss. Now none of those guys won as much as Inno, but somehow I find their acheivments to be more impressive.

On September 18 2017 17:51 Ej_ wrote:
INnoVation actually performed better in TvZ than Mvp at the peak of brood lord/infestor in Korea (the RorO/Sniper GSLs). And he kept on winning insanely stacked premiers when Terran wasn't the strongest race. Pretty much the only 2 times when Bogus wasn't a top 3 Terran were 2014 blink (when there were 3 Terrans in Code S, imbalance gone much further than Mvp winning the bracket vs Squirtle that was actually Zergless) and early LotV when he played League of Legends.
You can't tell me that his IEM and GSL wins against soO, the IEM vs Stats or even this IEM were because of Terran dominance.
Terran dominance has been mostly INnoVation putting every Zerg and most Terrans in their place.
And yes, a strong player peaks when their race is strongest (just like Mvp/Life/Zest)

I don't want to argue who is "the GOAT", because frankly I think that's an idiotic debate, but saying that INnoVation performs only when Terran is strong is at the very least misleading.


edit: And 2 port banshee into double armory mech was made by Ryung, INnoVation just improved the build. But yes, he has made plenty of others.

On September 18 2017 18:31 AzAlexZ wrote:

this might be totally unrelated to your post

Zest played an ungodly 2014, just like neeb did the foreign scene and Innovation the korean scene this year
but most of his success came from PvP and PvZ, unlike Inno and Neeb who excelled in all 3 matchups
In Zest's royal road GSL run, he only played one PvT, against Maru, and he lost it; he played only PvP in KeSPa Cup
and the only final he lost in was against, no surprise, a Terran.
Just like People discredit Neeb's KeSPa Cup win for having 'easy' matchps, I could say the same for Zest.
I could but i won't cuz Zest is best and is still a god

On September 18 2017 19:33 Olli wrote:


And he destroyed especially the best Terrans in 2016, while also beating the second best Protoss (Dear), the second best Zerg (soO) in his GSL run.

Also Zest's PvT in 2014 was massively underrated. It was his weakest match-up, yes, but his other two were unrivaled by anyone. He was still a very good PvTer and only really lost to Maru consistently.

On September 18 2017 19:43 Elentos wrote:

He was 50% in offline PvT, that's not very good. And he had more trouble with Cure and TaeJa than with Maru.

On September 18 2017 19:47 Olli wrote:


Lots of that was Bo1s. And TaeJa was the among the best TvPers in the world for most of his career. As someone who played the game at a pretty high level at the time I can tell you that Zest was very good in PvT. But hey, skill apparently doesn't count when talking about skill. Only results.

On September 18 2017 23:03 Fango wrote:
Zest had the best PvZ back then, and his PvP record has never been topped (I think). His PvT was only decent, but it didn't really matter considering terrans were doing trash at the time anyway. When he won 2016 GSL he did all three matchups and went 22-3 in the whole tournament. Which is one of the best GSL runs of all time in terms of ez. Athough Dark and Stats could probably challange his PvZ/P, his PvT was probably the best of anyone's ever

Neeb's kespa cup run was a different matter, he was playing a meta that the koreans had less experience at (blink disruptor), and he could pretty much only win against protosses. It was the only time period, and only bracket setup, that he could win with. That's why it came accross as a fluke due to bracket luck, he's never been able to replicate the result. When Zest won kespa cup, it was coming of a year of domination over korean protoss and zerg

To disregard a player's result due to them avoiding a weak matchup is pointless. You know Innovation avoided terrans when he won IEM? Does that make his win not as good? And Neeb dominence of the foreign scene is nothing compared with Inno/Zest/MVPs on the korean scene. I don't care if he's good in all matchups he gets easy opponents (for him)

On September 18 2017 19:47 Olli wrote:


Lots of that was Bo1s. And TaeJa was the among the best TvPers in the world for most of his career. As someone who played the game at a pretty high level at the time I can tell you that Zest was very good in PvT. But hey, skill apparently doesn't count when talking about skill. Only results.

On September 18 2017 23:09 AzAlexZ wrote:

in his 2014 GSL he played only one PvT vs Maru and he lost it 2-1
Neeb also beat Rogue and Pet though, and stats is one of the strongest PvP players

On September 18 2017 23:32 The_Red_Viper wrote:



If "skill" (or whatever you perceive as skill, there really is no good definition in the first place) doesn't translate into good results then it's arguable that the skill isn't as high as you would imply here. Your "eye test" doesn't mean anything when at the end of the day player x still loses his games. And before you say "but context!", the context is given by the consistent competitive level in korean tournaments.
I agree that Zest wasn't as bad in PvT as people in general made it out to be, but implying that he was really good and t only looked bad because his other matchups were godly is kinda ridiculous.

On September 18 2017 23:32 The_Red_Viper wrote:


I agree that Zest wasn't as bad in PvT as people in general made it out to be, but implying that he was really good and t only looked bad because his other matchups were godly is kinda ridiculous.

On September 18 2017 23:39 Olli wrote:


And it's still how it was. He had an overall 56% winrate vs Terran in 2014, that's not horrible by any means. 8 of his 15 lost PvT series were against Maru, Cure and TaeJa - three of the best TvPers in 2014. So it really isn't ridiculous to claim that his PvT wasn't actually that bad, he just struggled against a very specific playstyle (the Maru mass MMMM drop style) and lost to Taeja like every other Protoss did.

On September 18 2017 23:57 The_Red_Viper wrote:


It isn't ridiculous to claim that his PvT "wasn't that bad" but i think you were trying to do a bit more here
He was 31-31 in offline PvT in 2014 with losses against MKP and Bbyong as well. People acted like he is the worst PvT player ever back then and that might have been a bit much but he surely wasn't that great at it and your "eye test" saying otherwise doesn't convince me when the sample size is good enough and he reaches 50% there. Even if it was against some of the best TvPers, you should still win sometimes if you are actually pretty good at the matchup