The Road to BlizzCon

The year is 2017. The King breathes no more, God bless his memory, the victim of a failing body and a scene that brusquely marched forth as he fell behind. For years many candidates, old foes and newcomers alike, attempted to take his spot at the top of the StarCraft world. All of them met failure. Some were frauds, exposed when push came to shove. Others stubbornly kept their vestigial weaknesses instead of developing into players who could earn the spot. A few sabotaged themselves via foolish decisions and apathy. None replicated the sense of wonder and possibility Mvp invoked on the stage.

Nature abhors a vacuum and Lee Shin Hyung is poised to bring balance back to the universe. Five years after his first appearance in StarCraft II, INnoVation is now posing the ultimate question—is he the greatest player of all time? Already there is a strong notion among the community that he deserves the title. Who else can challenge the stunning amount of success InnoVation has enjoyed in 2017, or the level of transformation between his initial play and today? Previously, his clear foibles preempted any comparisons with Mvp or Life. He was the wrong man in the right place, critics sneered, a very limited player who could only dominate when the meta aligned perfectly with his strengths. Bit by bit, the former SKT ace has overcome his past weaknesses—the bullheaded insistence he could punch through any defense with superior mechanics, charges that he couldn’t live up to his moniker when it came to evaluating strategy, insecurity at the slightest deviation from his plans—to become the foremost champion of LotV. Certainly naysayers wouldn’t dispute his rank as the best Terran in the post-WoL era. One more victory could lay to rest any remaining doubt about his legitimacy.

Like many contemporaries fighting for the vacant seat INnoVation began his SC2 career with a strut and cheeky smile. Instead of enduring the harrowing struggles typical of an underdog, he skipped the formalities and sank his teeth into some meat. Some unimpressive appearances in the 2011-2012 Hybrid Proleague were mercifully erased by a series of increasingly spectacular GSL showings. He breezed through Code A stalwarts YugiOh, Bomber and Happy after qualifying for his first GSL; he immediately one-upped his formidable start with a semifinals run in Season 5. By the time he stood on the verge of ultimate victory in GSL 2013 Season 1, INnoVation had become a bona fide sensation. His meteoric rise was a beacon of hope during the gloomy days of Terran. Lovers of human beings and haters of BL/infestor took comfort in his temerity. Ardent KeSPA fans hyped him as the vanguard of an army of superior competitors (which turned out to be clairvoyant).

During this period INnoVation gained his most memorable and tenacious nickname: “The Machine”. It was an apt if prickly sobriquet. His ascent was characterized by precise execution of practiced strategies, so well tailored to his own strengths that they ended in inexorable victories. His TvZ prowess in 2013 especially showcased how effective this blueprint could be when externalities were moot. Zergs dreaded matches against him as if they were being goaded towards a descent into Hades. Letting him construct the proper infrastructure for the parade push was suicidal; getting the better of him in the early stages was infeasible; parrying his incessant waves of 4M until hive tech was playing Russian Roulette with a full cylinder. Only one player stood a chance in standard macro games—Soulkey.

When INnoVation and Soulkey met in the GSL Grand Finals, all of INnoVation's strengths were on display—but so were all his flaws. When push came to shove and INnoVation had to deliver, he failed spectacularly. Ahead 3-0, he allowed Soulkey to come back in the series and, tied at 3-3, made an uncharacteristic mistake that cost him the title.




The way INnoVation crumbled under pressure left us flabbergasted. We had never seen him fall apart so completely, so helplessly, especially in a matchup where his success seemed automatic. “Clutch factor” never came up in discussions of his TvZ: he usually bowled over the competition regardless of the purported uniqueness of his victim. Thanks to his relative greenhorn status we hadn’t become disillusioned with his potential either. At the time we associated fragile mentalities with the likes of ByuN and Liquid'HerO. And yet, after steamrolling Soulkey in the first half of what looked to be a forgettable grand finals, he froze up.

Soulkey’s simple but ingenious turn exploited INnoVation’s most prominent weakness, the ingrained tendency to treat StarCraft like Tetris instead of mahjong. Roach all-ins might have fooled an foe like TaeJa once before he consciously adjusted, but they befuddled someone who treated “reactionary play” like a leper. His original template proved quite beneficial at the beginning of his career. By focusing solely on the factors he could control and ignoring the rest, INnoVation mastered the execution necessary to punch holes in his opponent’s defenses. The standard parade pushes paid no heed to the intricacies of muta micro or the variety of ling/bane compositions; it was a timing push that punished the progression of the Zerg tech tree in general.

Yet when forced into defensive situations with little information—committed all-ins, strange build orders, backstabs—INnoVation fumbled the ball over and over again. It was always an amalgamation of minor flaws that led to his demise. Greed, a lack of proper scouting, a lack of long-term planning over a series and the simple inability to discern the correct response. Over the next few years, many of INnoVation's tournament exits followed a similar pattern. Look no further than duckdeok's huge upset elimination of INnoVation at BlizzCon 2013, or HerO's 3-0 victory over him at IEM Cologne.



INnoVation often proved rigid and stubborn in his approach. Rather than negating his opponent’s strengths via meticulous observation and planning, he attempted to stick to his guns. That tendency was commonly exploited by players comfortable with uncertainty and risk-taking. duckdeok was famous for the exact type of play INnoVation was caught off guard by. INnoVation had the necessary time to prepare for the match, but he did not attempt to force duckdeok to play another way. Compared to legends like Mvp and NesTea, who mapped out series down to the tiniest details, INnoVation seemed myopic and brutish.

That deficiency was impossible to ignore in the weekend tournaments INnoVation attended. When STX Soul disbanded in 2013 and INnoVation, undoubtedly the best player in the world at that point, was signed by Acer, most expected him to conquer the international scene next. Such high hopes were quickly dashed. Naturally series planning is almost impossible to enact when you only know your matchup a few hours beforehand; on-the-fly adaptation, composure, and endurance are the keys to victory in that arena. He was faced with players who had vastly larger experience in that format, and it was no coincidence that the same challengers continuously eliminated him. TaeJa, Life, HerO, Jaedong and Solar were comfortable with uncertainty and risk-taking, so they thrived in the setting that harshly exposed INnoVation's flaws. It took him until 2015 to win his first foreign tournament.

These shortcomings Soulkey first discovered bedeviled INnoVation for years. After the disappointment of his first GSL finals, he entered the chiaroscuro stage of his career. Brilliant peaks in 2013 and 2015 were marred by long phases of mediocrity. The enthusiasm that colored his rise faded to a more hard-bitten assessment of his capabilities. “Patch terran” emerged as the rallying cry under which his critics gathered. They were almost proven right when INnoVation fell of the map entirely in 2016. It was an abysmal year, the worst of his career by far, which ended with a last place finish in SSL Season 1 as his best placement.

But then came 2017 and somehow, whether through introspection or infernal magic, all his flaws were washed away. A week before Christmas 2016 INnoVation won IEM Gyeonggi, capping it with a 4-0 over Stats. He proceeded to take SSL Season 1, GSL Season 3, and GSL vs the World. Two weekend tournaments and two Korean starleagues stretched across nine months. A remarkable record when you take into account the Balkanization of the international scene. In the SSL Finals he was comprehensively prepared for Solar and easily ran away with the series. In the GSL Finals, he staged a comeback when sOs was on match point.

All his problems of the past are now that—unpleasant memories receding into the background. No longer is INnoVation the perpetual punching bag for all-ins. No longer does he fail to plan a series or collapse in the most stressful moments. No longer does he feel uncomfortable in certain tournament formats. The erratic rises and dips in form have been replaced by prolonged, entrenched stability.

The year is 2017. INnoVation has bested all opposition and wrestled control over every tournament format. Well, almost every format. The Global Finals remains the sole treasure outside of his reach, the green light across the bay beckoning to him. The great opponents of the past are no more threat. TaeJa is gone, Life is gone, and the INnoVation that once wished to avoid them in the bracket is gone. All his demons have been exorcised. INnoVation's Road to BlizzCon has been arduous, but the five years of frustration and bulldog persistence had a purpose. In a sense his first paradigm of StarCraft was correct—success was the byproduct of self-mastery. The difference between shedding flaws and indulging in them was an enigma back then, and it took him half a decade to fully dedicate himself to the former. Now he is more complete than he ever was—perhaps a more complete player than anyone ever was.

When INnoVation finally steps onto the BlizzCon stage, he will play for a different title than anyone else at the tournament. After years of self-improvement he has every reason to demand being called the greatest player in StarCraft II history. If he wins BlizzCon, the only tournament he has not conquered, none can deny it.