The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Dominance is a key theme in StarCraft II’s 2018. WCS and GSL alike were swept by a single competitor each—Serral and Maru. They each faced different opponents in every grand final, but always came out victorious. That is unusual. So unusual, in fact, that many interesting story-lines flew largely under the radar. Zest’s is one of them.

There is mystery surrounding what, judging purely by results, was not a bad year for Zest, especially compared to the atrocity that was 2017. On paper, the narrative is simple and not at all uncommon; a championship player falls off after reaching his peak, but, through a combination of talent, hard work, experience, and motivation, overcomes the slump to become a tournament challenger again. In fact, we’ve written this very story about Zest before, when he returned to peak form in 2016 after experiencing a disappointing year in 2015—by his pre-set standards, that is. What’s so special about Zest repeating the feat and reaching another GSL final?

There is a perplexing contrast of results and gameplay. Zest’s success, whether it came in 2014 or 2016, was always based on the same foundations—rock solid decision-making, clean and intelligent adjustments in macro games and near perfect ‘big picture’ game management. Players like Maru or sOs outdid him in comparatively minor facets of the game—unit control or psychological warfare, for example—but Zest, at his peak, was simply better overall. He played ‘normal’ so well he set new standards for everyone else, and always appeared to know more than his opponents, even if his execution occasionally let him down—such as his infamous macro slips.

Looking at Zest’s play now, you would struggle to identify the same player. He seems erratic at times, stubborn in the strategies he chooses, and prone to error in decision-making. What we used to identify as weaknesses in an extremely competent player—small scale execution and unit control—appear to have become strengths. It appears as if the script has been flipped on its head. In 2018, we instead get scrappy fights, sometimes accompanied (and often caused) by mind-boggling decision-making… yet ultimately still very impressive results. Zest no longer passes the eye test, but his results show a very good player nonetheless.

Zest was always steady. Not in results, perhaps, but in his approach to the game. He stuck with what worked and crafted new strategies when the old ones no longer sufficed. Why is it, then, that, after years of success, a player like Zest would so drastically overhaul himself?

We can only speculate. However, Zest always appeared to profit massively from KT Rolster’s team environment. His play was always structured, his strategies tried and true. That is the result of the support of practice partners and coaches. Living in a house with Stats, Flash, TY, and others no doubt gave Zest the opportunity to play multiple games against opponents of different races and perfectly refine himself, find any and all possible adjustments and sound out his weaknesses. He would also experience what players around him had particular success or trouble with, and could work intelligently towards exploring or countering those strategies himself. But KT Rolster no longer fields a StarCraft II division. Zest, as almost everyone else in Korea, suddenly had to adjust to life outside of KeSPA. Zest was not the only player to fall off then. Many did, and not all have picked themselves up. However, those that did rediscovered their old styles of play after getting used to a new lifestyle. Think of INnoVation, soO, Stats or Dark—players who, after a period of finding their feet in the wild, came back and had success using the same abilities they had before. Some even talk about blossoming outside a very restrictive and rigorous atmosphere.

Not Zest. Instead, he has expressed difficulty at maintaining his practice, and succumbing to laziness at times. He took longer than most. No coaches to monitor his play and point out potential issues. No teammates to practice specific strategies with over and over again. Only Zest and the ladder, with online tournaments to earn money from and try his ladder-crafted strategies in tournament settings. Zest’s approach to the game remains similar—he sticks to what works for him. However, what that is has drastically changed. Instead of the elaborate macro game, brutal execution of powerful strategies is now what brings in the money for him. Zest’s playstyle has become more abusive, but also more chaotic when the plan fails as there is no longer a finely tailored backup plan thought out with practice partners. Thinking on his feet in unexplored situations was never Zest’s biggest strength, but he finds himself in them more often than he used to, and that’s when he looks poor.

Quietly and without much fanfare, Zest has risen from his grave and worked his way back into the limelight. Despite the mockery of your everyday LR poster, Zest was the only player next to Maru to reach the knockout stages of every GSL this year. On June 13, Zest qualified for the Grand Finals of Season 2, eliminating his former teammate TY in the semifinals. All the while he had never really looked like a championship contender. And even in this particular series, Zest never perfectly convinced the viewers. But it worked. Few moments better encapsulate the enigma of Zest.

The first two games set the tone for the series. A proxy oracle build did some damage, TY's hellions did even more as Zest was caught unprepared, only for Zest to decisively swing back at TY and take him out with a gateway push. It was scrappy, workers died all over the place, but ultimately Zest won.

Never would Zest have played this game in 2014 or 2016. Instead, TY's initial strategy would have done barely any damage, but Zest would have chosen to go the macro route afterwards and expand, advance his tech, shore up his defenses and secure the safer victory. In 2018, Zest lost 13 probes to four hellions, then lost two stalkers as he walked through two widow mines without detection, and then he killed TY.

He then held off a hellion/marine drop opening easily in game two, added a few cute micro insults to TY's injury, defended all desperate midgame aggression perfectly... and lost his warp prism with four high templars inside it to widow mines still planted after a fight. A moment of entirely avoidable badness prolonged the game by a substantial amount. Zest suddenly found himself having to think on the fly. Instead of simply winning the game with a counterattack, as was the plan, Zest took the fight to TY with a much weaker army while warping units into TY's main base. The fights on both fronts were scrappy and poorly controlled, with too few stalkers blinking into liberators, phoenixes randomly rallying into the fight after it had already been lost, and zealots in the main base fighting in liberation zones. Zest ultimately came out victorious even despite losing his entire army—as TY had lost over 40 SCVs to zealots and stalkers in his base.

Just when we thought Zest was playing like himself again, executing defense and game management near-perfectly, a silly mistake was enough to throw him off and turn the game into a complete mess that honestly made both players look bad. Zest looked stupid for attacking TY, who was a base down and set up well defensively, and TY's defensive reaction looked equally off. Bottom line: Zest won.

The final game was the least telling of the series. Zest walked into TY's third base unspotted, killed the command center, went home and defended TY's all in. It was TY's mistake to let him take position on the expansion without any resistance, and it was that mistake that ultimately won Zest the game and the series. After a full Best of 7, and a near-complete run through Code S, we still had no idea whether Zest was good and just looked bad, or whether he had played poor opposition. We only knew he was in the finals. Of course, what happened there did little to aid Zest's quest for a better image.

As the curtain closes on 2018, only two players have eliminated him from the GSL—Dark, in Zest’s notoriously weak PvZ match-up, and Maru, who has equally dominated everyone in Korea this year. Bracket luck was held against Zest, but he made his way past players like TY, Stats and INnoVation to achieve these results. And yet, when Zest came up against the very top tier of competition, he looked out of his depth. Maru made a fool of him in two Best of 7 series and seemingly confirmed the opinion of many that, while Zest keeps delivering results, he really does lack the substance. After a year of watching Zest in every GSL, in countless online tournaments, and on his stream, we are still no closer to solving the puzzle of Zest. His play looks rugged and, quite frankly, worse than a lot of the top players’. But he also outperformed most of them this year. Maru and Serral, though, look clean in everything they do and are more successful.

BlizzCon is unique as a tournament. The entire year does not matter. When sOs won it in 2013, none of his matches leading up to the semifinals were streamed on the main stream, because he was not deemed important enough. The action followed Jaedong and Dear, two big names heading into the tournament, certain to meet and decide the winner among them. sOs won the tournament. One of Zest, soO, and INnoVation was sure to win in 2014. Instead, Life, a perennial tournament winner when he wasn't losing on purpose, upset Zest in the first round and won the tournament. sOs would not even have been at BlizzCon in 2015 had Zest not forfeited his spot at MSI. sOs replaced him and scraped over the BlizzCon line—and then he won it. Strong form late in the year saw ByuN and
Rogue claim BlizzCon titles.

Counting Zest out would be foolish. He has the same tournament-winning credentials and experience of sOs and Life, and form is often easily acquired. If he is to impress at BlizzCon, Zest will inevitably have to face the best of the best. Serral, whose winning streak continued even on Korean soil, lurks in his group, and the road to victory will ultimately lead through either him or Maru, maybe even both. Such an encounter may truly reveal to us who Zest has become, and whether he still has it in him to win. Perhaps we will finally be able to shed some light on the Zest of 2018. Looks can be deceiving, but they can also be very telling. Has Zest been lucky, or has he been underrated? Has he just looked bad, or has he been bad? Perhaps there is a bit of truth to both extremes. In that sense, everything is possible for Zest at BlizzCon. He could drop out in the group stages, but he could also go all the way. That is what makes him truly fascinating. We have no idea what to expect.