Written by stuchiu
Photos by leimmia


“While being a pro-gamer my goal is to win 10 individual league titles. I’m not joking, really 10 wins.”


Dark is facing the hardest question of his professional career. Since the release of Legacy of the Void (LotV) two years ago, he has consistently been in the conversation for best player in the world. His play has few flaws. While he doesn’t have the mechanical might of players like Life or soO in their primes, he has proved he doesn't need it. Instead, Dark relies on a dichotomy of strengths. On the one hand, Dark executes the most deadly all-ins of any Zerg player. On the other hand, he has the best late-game Zerg play in the world. An argument can be made that newly crowned WCS champion Rogue has eclipsed Dark in the late-game, but Dark has been far more consistent over the course of the last two years.

Despite all of these accolades, though, Dark has failed when judged by his own ambitions. He is only among the best players in the world—he does not stand alone. For all the respect he commands, he has but one major championship to his name. It's one of the great conundrums of modern StarCraft II that a player with no obvious flaws has not accomplished more. How can Dark ascend from being one of the best players in StarCraft II, to become THE best player?



To understand where the problem lies, we need to go back to the origins of Dark. Dark was the last ever recruit of the once-great SlayerS, a team founded by legendary Brood War progamer Lim "BoxeR" Yo Hwan. In the early years of StarCraft II, SlayerS had a knack for recruiting young talent and refining them into solid pros. One of the things that separated this team from the others was BoxeR’s presence. Nicknamed the Emperor of Terran, BoxeR was the superstar player that allowed esports to establish itself as a legitimate competition in South Korea. To have success under BoxeR was to become part of the direct lineage of Korean esports royalty. Famously, MMA's first nickname was the Son of Boxer before he had a falling out with the team.

Dark was different. He wanted more than to become another heir to the Emperor—he wanted to establish a dynasty of his own. Dark was largely anonymous on SlayerS, but perhaps BoxeR recognized the drive and talent inside of him. When SlayerS disbanded in late 2012, Boxer rejoined his old team SKT as a coach. A few months later, Dark joined SKT as the sole remnant of SlayerS. For the next three years, Dark grinded his way up the SKT ranks until he finally had a breakout season in 2015. That year, he reached the top four at IEM Katowice and earned two second-place finishes in KeSPA Cup Season 1 and Season 2.

In those tournaments he showed all of the strengths he has today: Strong fundamentals, good decision-making, and small, personal twists on how to play each matchup. He was willing to cheese, but also had a solid grasp of the late-game. He had a Life-like instinct for how to use counterattacks. His quirks seemed to befuddle opponents—notably, his preference for using corruptors in place of mutalisks in Zerg vs Terran. But he also had weaknesses, some which also persist to this day. He looked strong in the mid-game if he had the initiative going in, but could collapse if he ceded Protoss or Terran the mid-game advantage.

Most importantly, Dark was unable to translate his form into a strong GSL or SSL run in 2015, and he dropped out of the group stages of all six tournaments that year. He was at his best in the late-game, but the top players were consistently outplaying him in that area (whether it was Terran Mech or the Protoss deathball). Against top caliber opponents, minor problems with positioning or patience would cost Dark important games. He didn't make humongous throws like INnoVation did against Soulkey, but he appeared to lack killer instinct in high pressure matches. After all, it says something that the only final that soO ever won was against Dark.

2016 was when Dark truly hit his stride. He enjoyed the best year of his competitive career, as he won SSL Season 1, took second place in SSL Season 2, and second place again at BlizzCon. He applied his strong work ethic to learning Legacy of the Void, and acquired a superior understanding of the new expansion than his peers. He knew how to use the ravager better than any other Zerg, and developed a ling/bane into broodlord style against Protoss that won him the SSL championship. Furthermore, he tightened up his late-game in terms of army composition, economy, and patience. LotV may have given Zerg some tools to make it easier to play in the late-game, but Dark's base level of decision-making were improved from the previous year.

In 2017, Dark solidified himself as the best late-game Zerg player with his excellent decision-making and spellcaster usage. He was significantly better than other Zergs at using multiple Zerg spellcasters in the late-game, which in turn gave him better engagements, better positioning, and more leeway to execute his gameplan. However, he was unable to overcome a crucial weakness.

Back in the 2016 SSL Season 2, Dark lost 3-4 to Solar in the finals. It reflected Dark's overall ability in the Zerg mirror: he had always been very good, but never exceptional like soO since HotS, or Nestea in a bygone age. Dark played in twelve major tournaments during the 2017 season and placed top four or higher in five of them. However, in the seven tournaments where he was eliminated before the semifinals, ZvZ was the culprit on five occasions (five and a half, if you count his 0-2 ZvZ record in the SSL round robin).

When it comes to ZvZ or PvP, progamers must have a strong understanding of their opponent, the map, build-orders, and the risk-reward relationship of every strategic choice. These tenets are important in the other match-ups, but to a lesser degree. In mirrors, these key concepts can separate the best players from the ‘merely’ great. Dark falls into the latter category, which is one of his biggest weaknesses as a top tier player.

ZvZ aside, Dark found himself falling just barely short when he reached the higher rounds of tournaments in 2017. The best example of this was his 3-4 semifinals loss against INnoVation in GSL Season 3 2017. All of the long macro games went INnoVation’s way, while Dark won the games that began with an all-in from either side. The series revealed Dark's inability—or perhaps refusal—to recognize his relative strengths compared to his opponent. Dark was the best late-game Zerg player, but INnoVation was an even better late-game Terran player during that period. Theoretically, Dark had two advantages he could use: his early game all-ins or his late-game mastery. INnoVation was better in both the mid-game and late-game, so the plan should have been to attack INnoVation before he got off the ground. Instead, Dark tried to play for the late-game in every game of the series, except when INnoVation was the one pushing the issue early.

Albeit, these are conclusions we reach with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, it would have been reasonable for Dark to believe that he could beat INnoVation in the late-game. One does not become a top progamer without confidence, and confidence comes with a degree of obstinance. Still, we can fault Dark for being inflexible within the micro-meta of the series. Even if he believed that he could beat INnoVation in the late-game, after so many tries, he should have realized that it was the wrong approach and adapted his overarching strategy.

Dark's 3-4 SSL finals loss against Stats was another example of this weakness. Dark’s strengths are his all-ins and his late-game, but in this series he defaulted to all-ins too much. This is especially puzzling, as Dark demonstrated his late-game superiority as early as the second game of the series. Stats himself adapted in that series as he made sure to put on pressure in the mid-game, making sure he would not have to face late-game Dark.



Dark will be remembered as one of the greatest Zergs in the post KeSPA era. He is also likely to be one of the best players in the world for the foreseeable future. But long ago, before he even won his first championship, Dark already set his ambitions higher than that. He doesn’t want to be among the best, he wants to be THE best. But in order to reach that goal, he must find where he has fallen short, and find the solution to push him to the next level.

It's theoretically possible for Dark to learn to read the minds of his opponents at the level of Mvp. It's theoretically possible for him to hone his mid-game mechanics to the level of soO. Progamers have shown that they are capable of incredible change, and it would be unfair to rule out that kind of improvement from Dark. But a far more feasible answer would be for him to look back to another great from the past. Dark should do what Rain did from 2012-2014. Rain is the best late-game player that Protoss ever had. But the key distinction between Rain and Dark is that Rain made sure he could get to the late-game every time. He took an explicitly defensive stance, he let himself fall behind in the early and mid-game, but in exchange he got to the late-game where he was nigh unbeatable.

In essence, Dark must push himself further down the path of his own style. He has one of the most complete tool kits any player can have, but he has no true specialty when compared to the legends of StarCraft. He may be the best late-game player in the world, but he cannot force everyone to play him in that style. And even then, he can be beaten in the late-game by a player in the right form, backed by the right meta. Dark must push further to the point where no one can challenge him in the late-game, like Rain or TaeJa. That is the path to achieving his dreams.

Nearly every one of the greatest SC2 players of all time had a specialty, a playstyle, a way impose their very character and will upon the game. "This is how I play and this is how I win." How many times did we see Mvp pull out insane series after insane series win off of his intelligence, grit, and decisiveness? How many times have we seen Life’s lings find a way, a path to victory? How many players did TaeJa wear down with his indomitable decision-making in marathon games? If the goal is to be the greatest there ever was, these are the kind of expectations we must set for Dark. He must force StarCraft II to bend to his will, instead of the other way around.

Dark has won one major title, but he is still looking for a way to win nine more. He must ask himself "Can I go be more than great? Can I be the greatest?" The rest of his career will be his answer.