Eclipsed No More

Out of all the players who evoke pity upon hearing their pseudonym, Stats ranks near the bottom of the list. If you want to shed tears upon reading his oeuvre, best reserve them for boredom...or envy. The GSL and SSL champion enjoys a privileged career that would even make his peers turn green. Stats is physically unmarred by injury and bereft of misfortune. Unlike a few unmentionable pariahs his achievements are scandal-free; the former ChinToss has successfully dodged hubris and appears committed to staying on bad terms with it into the future. With the exception of his sluggish entrance into SC2, he never succumbed to inertia like certain promising Protosses we’ll refrain from naming (starter Pokemon included). Stats’ placid countenance masks his refusal to let the metagame—or any other outside force—determine his fate. Whenever PvZ devolved into agonizing wars of attrition or PvT was rebranded as Russian roulette, proxy version, he doggedly pushed forward while his contemporaries stumbled. Bad performances, such as IEM Katowice this year, run off him like rain on a windshield.

Even in 2018, an unambiguous downturn from 2017, Stats coasted to a comfortable third place finish in the Korean WCS standings. Maru's historic rampage throughout the year created a power vacuum where any high placements were worth their weight in gold. Between 2 second place finishes and winning the first Super Tournament, Stats was only bested by Classic (riding off a last-minute win of GSL Super Tournament 2) at the end of the year.

His nascent steps were anything but smooth though. At the beginning of the year, Stats hardly looked like a powerhouse. Nothing in his gameplay indicated discernible flaws, but almost all his wins were born from craftiness rather than consistently superior decision-making. In particular he struggled to come out of the gate strong in BO5+ series. His journey throughout GSL Season 1 was as tenuous and nail biting as skinny dipping in the Amazon river. Both playoff affairs against Classic and soO went down to the wire, requiring monumental comebacks from the brink of elimination. When it came time to battle Maru in the finals, Stats had exhausted his bag of tricks. His foe controlled the rhythm of the series from beginning to end. Some feckless attempts at proxy play only highlighted how flummoxed he was in the face of Maru’s aggression.

Déjà vu almost struck again at the Super Tournament finals. After discarding ByuN, Solar, and herO, Stats found himself disconcertingly outmaneuvered versus Dark. The Zerg mastermind took a page from Maru’s book with his emphasis on early-game timings, punishing listless scouting with proxy hatchery and baneling bust shenanigans. Once again Stats found himself at a 3-1 deficit with little recourse other than seasoned nerves and an indefatigable will. This time those traits proved to be sufficient...with a little help from Dark’s stubborn lack of tech transitions. Stats claimed the trophy by the skin of his teeth—hardly a comforting win, but reassurance he still belonged at the top.

At first GSL vs. The World was a welcome relief from the stress that characterized the first half of the year. Providence gifted him an easy road to the semifinals. Stats bowled over Cyan in the most egregious mismatch of the RO16, winning each team fight in foul or fair conditions. SpeCial offered slightly more resistance. He managed to force a base trade in the second game that eventually petered out thanks to Stats’ superior economy. Sadly that was the acme of his performance.

After running through some flimsy fences, Stats confronted the Great Wall himself at full speed. Maru, who had claimed two consecutive Code S titles and his opponent’s head earlier this year, looked in top form against ShoWTimE in the last round. Commentators and analysts anticipated a reiteration of the dynamic that played out in the GSL Season 1 finals. Maru would ruthlessly seek to exploit the smallest cracks in Stats’ early game while Stats gamely deflected all pressure until the midgame.

The question of clashing playstyles turned out to be moot. Far from resigning himself to being the defender in every game, Stats flipped the script and bullied Maru around in the midgame with surprising vigor. With the exception of a brutal medivac timing on the second map, Stats executed the same formula in every win: he bided his time for a specific confluence of events—3 colossi, Thermal Lance, and +2 attack—then blitzed Maru’s fourth before he could amass a critical number of liberators. It didn’t matter if Maru backstabbed him during the move out (Acid Plant) or if he managed to wipe out the core of the intruding force (Catalyst). It was a clinical dissection that made the GSL champion look shockingly impotent.

Finally, Stats demonstrated he could rise heads and shoulders above the field when occasion demanded it. His lambasting of Maru certainly raised his stock for the finals. Against Serral, the ne plus ultra of Western Zerg, Stats commenced the finals with alarming celerity. An archon-zealot all-in followed by a cannon rush ensured a quick 2-0 in his favor. But once Serral regained his bearings, he made the macro games look lopsided in his favor; twice he caught Stats flatfooted with devastating tech switches to spire. This back and forth exchange of strategies led to the standout game of the night. 16-Bit showcased Stats’ famous defense against Serral’s excellent macro and on-the-fly thinking. Unlike the last two games he rebuffed the roach-hydra pokes, parried the muta transition, and fended off the late lurker offensive to eke out victory. One game away from the trophy he switched back on standard play on Lost and Found. Perhaps the adrenaline-fueled win lulled him into a sense of false security, for Serral overwhelmed him with a powerful ling-bane midgame. Soon after the Finnish Zerg delivered the finishing blow with a roach-queen all-in on Dreamcatcher.

GSL vs. The World encapsulated everything that makes Stats great. He is adept at synthesizing various builds from other players’ repertoires into his bank; he knows how to exploit his reputation as a passive player to turn high risk, high reward tactics into guaranteed wins. A poor result in a previous tournament is an absolutely meaningless indicator—the tireless Stats is bound to show up prime form again.

And yet Stats evinces an apprehension and doubt befitting a declining star instead of one at his zenith. Whenever he matches against the cream of the crop, he is treated as the underdog. Discussion is laced with equivocation and pussyfooting of the highest order. Here's the sum of every cliché spoken of Stats on an analysis desk, internet forum, or Twitch chat: “He's is a respectable opponent, so he’ll make this a tough series”. Why is the Protoss with the most finals appearances in LotV a horse experts only begrudgingly bet on? MC, Rain, and PartinG all stoked more enthusiasm and confidence in their abilities when they occupied the limelight.

The reasoning is instinctive and deplorably accurate. For all the platitudes deservedly heaped upon him over the years, Stats has never established a period of dominance around his tournament victories. His career is one of scattered triumphs, sharp peaks briefly jutting out of a plateau. All his championships are interspersed between 6-7 month intervals without accompanying wins at foreign events or smaller local tournaments. Every memorable champion, from Mvp to PartinG to INnoVation to Maru this year, used their initial victory as a springboard to propel them to additional ones. However protracted the length of said period, they were unequivocally considered the best in the world. Meanwhile Stats’ moments of triumph evaporate as soon as they materialize.

All of these have been hard-fought wins that invite suspicion. Out of his four championships, three of them were earned at the expense of Dark, who is now widely expected to collapse at the finish line. The sole exception to this dance was soO, the most notorious Kong to ever climb the GSL tower. During both his 2017 championship runs Stats was never heralded as the absolute best player. Classic ran neck and neck with him during the SSL group stage and despite accruing the best overall record, he was still considered the runner-up to Dark among the desk. Stats looked quite mortal on the road to his GSL trophy as well. He scraped by INnoVation after an ugly 0-2 start only to face Ryung, instead of Maru, in the semis. To echo Tacitus’ wry observation of Galba, he seemed worthy of the throne of emperor—until he was forced to actually hold it.

In the never-ending struggle to carve out a legacy, Stats is still waiting for that tournament win. Five years of sweat and toil has not prevented the moment of genius from eluding him again and again. As the culmination of the WCS circuit, BlizzCon is the ideal catalyst to push Stats past his invisible ceiling. Only the best of the best will be in attendance, guaranteeing his road will be respectable. There will be plenty of opportunity to demolish old adversaries who have hindered him in the past. Most importantly, Stats can secure a decisive triumph that will change his reputation once and for all. No longer will he be pigeonholed as the Shield of Aiur, the connoisseur of close calls. BlizzCon is where Stats will attempt to be more than Rain's epigone. A player of Stats’ caliber will strive to be his better.