Welcome to our annual Road to BlizzCon series! As we have done in years prior, we will be releasing 16 articles previewing the WCS Global Finals—one article for each player. Below are the sixteen players who, through their performances across the whole year, have qualified for the biggest StarCraft II tournament of the year.
In some of the past years, we decided to release these articles under certain themes. Tarot in 2014, a fictional storyline in 2015. This year, we decided on another little twist that will hopefully keep you interested in our pieces as they are released. We will be publishing our articles in the overarching form of a Power Rank. That means Kelazhur, whose article is released today, ranks at #16 in the BlizzCon Power Rank, the card next to him will reveal the player ranked at #15, and so on. When all individual articles are released, the Power Rank will be revealed.
This post will serve as a portal for all our 2017 Road to BlizzCon articles. The cards at the bottom will spin if you hover your mouse over them, and will reveal a player—but only if that player's article has been released. Clicking that image will send you directly to the corresponding article. That way you can easily keep up with the Power Rank as it is released, and can easily catch up on any articles you may have missed.
We hope you'll enjoy our coverage of this year's Global Finals!
I dont understand why you even cover the non kr players. They are of no relevance to this tournament. The actual tournament Starts in the ro8 with 8 koreans.
16. Kelazhur 15. SpeCial 14. TRUE 13. Snute 12. Nerchio 11. Elazer 10. GuMiho 9. Serral 8. Neeb 7. soO 6. TY 5. herO 4. Stats 3. Dark 2. Rogue 1. INnoVation
I'd love to see Major rank higher but his performance at Montreal was just abysmal. Meanwhile TRUE hasn't had a lot of opportunity to show what he has but his ZvZ at least still looks to be top level. I only place Snute / Nerchio / Elazer above him because I believe they are more well rounded, better vT and vP but worse vZ. Serral edges out GuMiHo as a nod to his Rank 1 Korea status, if any of the foreigners will take a game off a korean t or p I think it will be Serral and GuMiHo is the best target he could hope for. It's a toss up between soO, Neeb and TY, with Neeb having strong recent results but against lesser competition while soO and TY have been slumping. At the end of the day I put even a slumping TY or soO over Neeb. I feel like the top 5 are pretty much confirmed here, and I think the reasoning for herO = Stats < Dark < INnoVation = Rogue is relatively self explanatory; these guys have been dominating all the recent tournaments they play in. herO vs Stats and iNnoVation vs Rogue were hard picks, but I ended up choosing the more consistent players over the ones with more recent successes.
On October 11 2017 00:04 evolsiefil wrote: I dont understand why you even cover the non kr players. They are of no relevance to this tournament. The actual tournament Starts in the ro8 with 8 koreans.
realistically speaking probably the best blizzc9n bet for foreigners. serral and neeb all can go head to head with all but the very best (rogue, inno, dark), and nerchio snute elazer and maybe even special could pull off upsets and make it to ro8.
but as a veteran sc2 watcher i will believe foreigner success when i see it, and not get my hopes up before.
Hundreds of tournaments have happened where promising foreigners were put up against top koreans and they get wrecked.
On October 11 2017 00:04 evolsiefil wrote: I dont understand why you even cover the non kr players. They are of no relevance to this tournament. The actual tournament Starts in the ro8 with 8 koreans.
I'm a KR elitist and i think Serral and Neeb are at least on par with soO and Gumiho.
He has actually become a solid player this year. I'd like to see him triumph over the Koreans.
15. True
True is a player I enjoy watching, because he sees the game in his own way. And he keeps upsetting my top favorites.
14. Nerchio
He often either plays too safe or too greedy, as if he was simply unlucky at times. Perhaps he can do some magic in this tournament.
13. SpeCial
The guy looks nearly unstoppable at his best, but sometimes loses to people that are supposed to be much worse than him. We will see which side of him attends the tournament.
12. Snute
Snute is terrifyingly clever in super-late-game scenarios. I'd like to see him get there, and beat the Koreans in style.
11. Serral
Serral has a low variety of very solid play-styles, that are hard to break with anything less than stellar play or strategies that abuse his generic style. The guy doesn't allow any mistakes from his opponents. Being a Finn, I'm automatically rooting for him.
10. herO
His agressive strategies are as entertaining as his defense is stellar. One of the best at the top of his game.
9. Elazer
I have no idea how he suddenly became the monster that he is right now. But the results in minor tournaments speak that his form is excellent. Struggles sometimes vs terran.
8. Neeb
While a bit generic in style, his execution is most often so tenderly crisp I'd love him as a bacon. Makes protoss look like a piece of art when you watch his POV in twitch. The machanics, my gosh.
I don't have time for in depth follow-up of this ranking, but here goes my last spots:
EPT
