I Was Wrong About Maru

Written by Mizenhauer
@Mizenhauer


I became a fan of Maru in early 2015.

I had just got back in StarCraft II after losing interest toward the end of WoL. Maru was everything I wanted from a player. Reserved and humble during interviews, he asserted himself with an ‘I don’t give a s@$t’ attitude once the game began. His play-style was electric, frenetic, and dynamic. He was at once full of both force and grace. The excitement I felt watching his games was one of the main reasons I found competitive StarCraft II to be so compelling. I woke up at 5:00 AM to watch him in individual leagues, and I cheered for Jin Air in Proleague. I wasn't writing back then, and I didn't have anyone to talk to about StarCraft. So I waxed poetic to my dad—who had never watched a game of StarCraft in his life—about how great Maru was.

Then, I stopped believing.


Maru first became the best Terran in the world in 2013. He walked the Royal Road by upsetting Rain in the Auction OnGameNet Starleague and challenged Dear during a brief period of utter dominance for the STX Protoss. Two years later in 2015, when Maru won the inaugural StarCraft II Starleague, he wasn’t just the best Terran in Korea, he was the best player in the world (others might dispute this, but they're wrong).

That version of Maru—who battled Rain in a 36 minute classic that should have been game of the year, who showed INnoVation that the engagement you take can be more important than the army you make, and who dismantled Zest with relentless aggression and colossus snipes—was a finished product. How could someone improve further when they already possessed such flawless macro, micro and multitasking? Win or lose, that was how you were supposed to play StarCraft. That was what made Maru special. He represented how we wanted to play the game, even as we all knew we’d never be able to.

When you’re at the top, the only direction to go is down. Losing the mantle of best Terran to Dream was understandable, given the SKT Terran's remarkable uptick in form. When Dream faded, INnoVation deservedly took the Terran crown with his own, superlative play. BlizzCon 2015 was where reality hit home. The way Rogue demolished Maru in the quarterfinals was a shot to the gut. Most declines feel like the natural progression of a career—this was inexplicable and abrupt. I grasped for straws, eventually deciding only injuries could have caused his form to crater so fast. But it was just an excuse. Maru wasn’t the superstar he once was.


As HotS gave way to the new expansion, I clung to the faith. I believed he would turn things around. Yet, even as Maru's performances throughout 2016 Proleague validated my trust, his inability to translate an MVP-worthy season (finishing with a ludicrous 22-4 record) into individual results led to no end of frustration. Maru still had all the tools to dominate. However, he seemed... ...scattered. For some reason, he couldn't focus his abilities when his personal glory was on the line. Instead, he was found lacking in series after crucial series in individual leagues. 'How do you lose to ****ing MyungSiK? Didn't you already end his career a year ago?'

From 2016-2017, Maru's aura of invincibility faded, alongside my hope. Maru never deteriorated enough to be considered bad, but I expected more than a brief stay in the quarterfinals. The vintage Maru who powered over inferior competition was replaced by someone who lacked his former ruthlessness, focus, and consistency. TvP became a thorn in his side from the moment LotV hit; Maru went from the best TvP’er of HotS to completely hapless in a matter of months. LotV had cruelly sucked away his magic and given it to the likes of Dark and INnoVation.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing Maru could ever win again. GSL is an odyssey which stretches over months, and is replete with all sorts of hazards (balance patches, hidden builds, group ceremonies, etc). Maru lacked the resiliency to survive such an ordeal. On the other hand, winning a weekender tournament requires you to be nearly perfect for a few days. Maru wasn't fit for that either.

As time went on, there was less to grasp onto. There were the innumerable losses: to Dear, Ryung, and GuMiho in GSL, the unsatisfying interlude of WESG 2016, and other confounding disappointments.



Maru fell even further as 2017 came to a close, unable to adapt to the new design patch. It was conclusive evidence that his best days were behind him. I was convinced that it was INnoVation, not Maru, who held the keys to Terran’s salvation. I badly wanted it to be Maru, but how could I believe anymore? Maru was still capable of brilliance, but not enough combined brilliance to light his way to a championship.

Yet, when INnoVation floundered, it was the diminutive Terran who effortlessly bore his race aloft. Maru was the one who persevered through the WESG 2017 bracket to become its recent champion, the last man standing in the grueling GSL gauntlet that claimed all his compatriots. In the finals, Maru left no confusion as to who the better player was. Even in game five on Odyssey, where Stats managed to salvage some of his pride, the reckless the abandon with which Maru played that game reminded me of why I became a fan of his in the first place. Win or lose, he was dictating the terms of the game. He had found his old magic.


I was wrong to believe Maru would never win another tournament.

Not wrong in my logic, of course. After all, I had watched hundreds of games and thousands of hours of StarCraft II, and I knew how things worked. There was only one reasonable conclusion to reach from watching Maru's brief flashes of greatness and subsequent crashes back into mediocrity: he was a fading star.

There's a smug satisfaction in being correct. You might not be pleased with the answer, but at least you knew best. A part of me wilted with every loss, but there was also a smirk on my face that was growing even wider. I felt like I should have been sad. The act of recognizing my indifference upset me more than the actual emptiness itself. Maru had been my favorite player for so long. How could I feel so little when he played? I still watched Maru's old HotS VODs from time to time. I wanted him to win again. I wanted to feel just a sliver of that exhilaration from the past. He wasn’t going to, though, and nothing is worse than false hope.

Watching Maru win the GSL finals and kiss the trophy warmed my soul in a way all my cold calculations could not. He had done what I thought was impossible. His consistency, his creativity, his sheer bravado—everything was back the way it should have been. It was incomprehensible. It flew in the face of reason. Everything had been going so wrong for so long.

According to Rogue, the answer was simple: Maru started practicing. It wasn’t a failure to understand the meta, a loss of his mechanics, or anything that meant a lasting decline in form. He had simply gotten complacent. Maybe it’s just the writer in me looking for a profound narrative, but I couldn't accept it. Everyone in the Korean scene is practicing their hearts out; if you don’t, you fall behind. Nothing in StarCraft is so simple that it can be answered by a throwaway line in a halftime interview. Or can it?

Unlike three years ago, I have this platform now, so I can talk about Maru to people other than my dad. That's good, because he wouldn't give me nearly as much s*** as I deserve. I was wrong about Maru. I wrote him off when I really shouldn’t have. I may never find a satisfactory reason as to how Maru turned everything around and became the best version of himself, but that's not too important. Turns out, I don’t know everything. I don't have to know everything. This time, it feels right to be wrong.

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