For one brief moment, the StarCraft II community was able to put its differences aside and unite under one cause: the celebration of soO's hard-earned IEM Katowice championship. Now, it's our solemn duty to sow discord and rancor, restoring the StarCraft II scene to its normal state of endless strife. Yup, it's time for the first power rank of 2019.
In a bit of minor housekeeping, we've updated our criteria a bit in 2019 to focus more on the big picture than just the past calendar month. Here are the Power Rank guidelines, as always:
The Power Rank is an aggregate, average ranking of separate lists submitted by individual members of the TeamLiquid.net writing staff.
Criteria considered include, but are not limited to: Tournament placements, overall record, quality of opponents faced, and quality of play.
Recent results are weighted more heavily, but players receive benefit of the doubt for consistent performance over time.
Close, But No Cigar
Ragnarok: After another disappointing early exit from Code S (including a 10 minute series loss against Scarlett), the writing appeared to be on the wall for RagnaroK as he traveled to Europe to take a shot at IEM Katowice's RO76. Yet, in an unexpected show of prowess, RagnaroK made a clean open bracket run through Snute, Dear and KeeN to reach the main event of IEM Katowice.
It was even more shocking when RagnaroK took it one step further and managed to beat GuMiho, INnoVation, and Solar—while playing close series against Serral and Rogue to boot—in the group stages. Though RagnaroK was swiftly eliminated in the RO12 by Neeb, the once-hyped Zerg from 2013 joined soO in proving that there's no such thing as a lost cause in StarCraft II.
Solar, Rogue, Neeb: There was surprising agreement among the panel members in who belonged in the top five, but #6 and below was a total bloodbath. Perhaps, if we had just a little more collective faith in how consistently good these three players can be at their best, they would have made it into the top ten. If they're higher in your personal rankings, we wouldn't begrudge you a bit.
Trap almost landed in the #9 spot on the Power Rank once more, but he'll have to settle for #10 this month before he inevitably reclaims his regular position.
We joke a lot about how consistent Trap is at finishing in the top 12, but the gags are based on a real phenomenon. Trap advanced to the round of 16 in GSL Code S for the umpteenth time in LotV with wins over TRUE and Losira, and then went on a respectable run IEM Katowice which saw him finish in the top 12. Trap’s IEM journey began in the open bracket, where he posted three consecutive 2-1 victories to move on to the round of 24. Having reached the main event, he finished second in one of the tournament’s more challenging groups, with wins over Maru, Neeb, and Leenock painting him as a real contender.
However, Trap was crushed 3-0 by herO in the round of 12, a series loss which further confirmed Trap’s near-permanent status as a 9th-12th place finisher, be it in Korea or abroad. Until he goes 0-2 in his Code S RO16 group or actually advances to the RO8 (Gasp!), we’ll keep Trap right around here. We really wish he'd place just a little higher, so we could avoid accusations that we're manipulating the ranking for the sole purpose of keeping him at #9.
GuMiho’s willingness to experiment and pull out innovative strategies has paid off in the past, most notably yielding a GSL championship in 2017. Though it was the only premier championship of his career, no one can say the achievement just fell into his lap. Competing since the very first year of pro StarCraft II, GuMiho's seen it all in his progaming career—whether it was all-killing teams in the GSTL or having Proleague booths collapse on his head mid-match.
It's a testament to the Towel Terran's tenacity that he made the top ten this month. It felt fitting that the only Terran to make it out of the IEM Katowice open bracket was one of the most constant fixtures of the Korean scene. He's basically part of the fiber of the GSL now, as much as Treat's "Roar" or Tasteless yelling "GG!" Though he missed out on the playoffs of IEM Katowice, he left us with one of the most impressive performances of the tournament by taking out by taking Global Champion Serral in a prolonged macro game, something which doesn't happen all too often.
It's too soon to say Dear is having a late-career renaissance, but the newly signed team Newbee player is posting some noteworthy results after staying rather inconspicuous for much of 2018.
Dear advanced out of his Code S RO32 group in second place, only narrowly losing to the fearsome Dark in the battle for first. More impressive (so far) was his showing at IEM Katowice. After surviving the RO76, he secured first place in his RO24 group, even beating eventual champion soO along the way. Unfortunately for him, he fell to herO’s mind-boggling PvP strategies in the quarterfinals, but a respectable prize purse of $10,800 USD and 900 WCS Points are nothing to scoff at. He’ll even have the opportunity to take revenge on both Dark and herO in the RO16 of Code S.
Yet, we should temper expectations about Dear. Around this time last year, he basically was in the same spot—top 8 at Katowice, and in the second group stage in GSL. But that was it—he couldn’t go further and fell back into obscurity. Still, credit is due when credit is due. For now, Dear looks to be firmly on the upswing, putting him solidly in eighth place in the power rank.
One by one, TY watched his Terran brothers fall victim to both Zerg and Protoss players at IEM Katowice, with a slow trickle of eliminations eventually turning into a massacre. TY could do nothing to help them—all he could do was try and dodge the same fate.
Though TY did make it out of his Ro24 group, it wasn’t as flawless a showing as in his GSL Code S RO32 performance where he didn’t even drop a single map. In Katowice, TY lost to both Dear and Bunny, while both soO and uThermal brought him to match point. Still, he made it through to the RO12 playoffs as the only Terran survivor, bearing the hopes of all Terran players and fans on his shoulders. All the ingredients for a miracle run were present, but unfortunately TY was not the man to cook it up. Solar had TY's number in their RO12 meeting and swept the last Terran convincingly (admittedly, in an entertaining series that was closer than the 0-3 scoreline might suggest).
As disappointing as TY’s exit from the tournament was for many fans, he still managed to be the last survivor of his race, ahead of other names such as Maru and INnoVation, who only briefly sparkled after already being eliminated. His flawless GSL run is still intact, and solid showings in OlimoLeague, which are always rare for TY, paint the picture of a very dangerous Terran, who has the intelligence to work around the problems befalling his race of choice in these dark times.
herO soars up the rankings from out of nowhere, landing in the sixth place spot after grabbing a surprise top four finish in his old stomping grounds of Intel Extreme Masters. The Protoss just barely survived the RO76 bracket and RO24 group stage portions of the tournament before going on a PvP rampage in the playoffs. Casters and audiences alike were bewildered at herO's unusual 3-0 sweeps against Trap and Dear before he was finally felled by then soon-to-be champion soO.
As impressive as herO's results were, we need to attach a few caveats. Though herO won these PvP series with convincing 3-0 scores on paper, the games were riddled with mistakes, tactically unsound decisions, and all-around scrappiness on both sides (the expression “clown fiesta” was used on stream to describe them quite aptly). Likewise, his advancement into the RO16 of GSL Code S didn’t exactly look flawless, with herO struggling heavily against Scarlett.
While there are still question marks regarding herO’s real strength, one cannot deny that he has that intangible quality of "knowing how to win." His victory in the OlimoLeague February Finals—where he was able to defeat the freshly crowned IEM World Champion soO as well as the Terran duo of INnoVation and TY—suggests that the steam he's building up could be for real.
After an unprecedented show of dominance on the Korean circuit in 2018, Maru was expected by many to carry on performing in similar fashion throughout 2019. A steady start to the season with a strong showing in the Round of 32 of the GSL only seemed to reinforce that very notion. However, having made it into the main event of IEM Katowice through the American server qualifier (and only losing to INnoVation in the process), the Jin Air Green Wings Terran quickly found himself in hot water during the group stage. With two losses against clear underdogs in Trap and Leenock, Maru faced elimination with Neeb standing in his way. The three-time GSL champ crumbled under pressure, falling to the American who he had beaten so easily in the past.
Despite a damp squib of a performance at IEM Katowice, Maru’s achievements in 2018 are so momentous that we can't justify dropping him too far down the rankings. A #5 spot in the Power Rank still seems quite fitting, all things considered. Given Maru’s competitive pedigree, one rough tourney isn’t cause for concern (let's not forget he ended up 4th place in his group with consolation wins against Lambo and Dark). Still in contention for yet another GSL title, and with the WESG finals coming up soon enough, the Marine Prince will have ample opportunities to redeem himself.
Were there a power rank for sheer entertainment value, the ever confident Dark and his antics surely would top the list in an instant. But for now, Korea’s bad boy will have to be content with a top four appearance. Dark crushed his adversaries both in his Code S Ro32 group and his IEM Katowice Ro24 group, only losing in an inconsequential series against an already eliminated Maru (who suddenly appeared to have found his 2018 form again). Dark went on to dispose of Solar in the quarterfinals in an action-packed ZvZ series—one of the sparse in-game highlights of the Katowice playoffs. He vowed afterwards to not only beat Stats in the semi-finals, but to absolutely destroy him—a reaction to Stats’ challenge during a post-game interview.
As is sometimes the case, Dark’s bold words couldn’t be exactly matched by his deeds, and Stats managed to eliminate his blustering foe. Dark lost his nerve during a base trade in game three, gifting his Protoss opponent the match point by foolishly attacking a superior force. Had he kept a cooler head at that point, who knows what might have happened? We'll never know, as Dark ended up with yet another top four finish.
With soO’s triumph in Poland, Dark is currently the chief heir to the Kong line. May his own quest for another gold not be as arduous as his former teammate’s—then again, not even the Kong curse might be able to shake Dark’s unwavering confidence. Dark looks like a favorite in any upcoming tournament, be it Code S or WESG, and strongly confirmed his membership in the club of the world’s top three Zerg players.
Despite being lauded with the accolade of most consistent Protoss, Stats stumbled out the gate in 2019. His quick elimination in GSL Code S left us scratching our heads and wondering what had happened, especially considering his losses came against MC and Cure—opponents we would consider far below Stats' caliber.
Despite this setback, however, Stats was extremely fast on recovery. Starting in the RO76 of IEM Katowice, he carved a path of destruction all the way to the finals. When Stats drew soO as his grand finals opponent, it seemed like he would win the championship with a spectacular 11-0 series record. Alas, Stats was the victim of an immense cosmic re-calibration as soO escaped the kong-line to win his first premiere championship. Though Stats started the series up 2-0 after brushing off soO's attacks, he lost the next four games in a row to concede the $150,000 1st place prize to soO.
Like many of the players on this list, Stats still commands a lot of respect, even if he had a high-profile mishap. While his elimination from the GSL was very unexpected, one bad GSL run doesn't magically strip him of his stature as the best Protoss of 2018 and BlizzCon runner-up. At the moment, Stats still has a strong case to be called the best Protoss player in the world.
With nothing much to do in the upcoming weeks, Stats will probably slide down this particular ranking in the following month. However, we can safely assume that he will be back to showcasing his impressive skills once the next GSL tournament comes around.
Serral's performance in 2018 will definitely go down in history as one of the most dominant and convincing performance of any foreigner in StarCraft II. He not only dominated the foreign scene, winning nearly all the WCS events, but he successfully defeated the Koreans time and again whenever they met, even on the grandest stage of all at BlizzCon.
Serral's performance left us with just one question: "Can he do it again?"
Initially it looked like the answer would be "yes." Serral started 2019 in dominating fashion, cruising through his WCS Winter groups to the RO8. But while Namshar, Rail and Harstem are credible opponents on the WCS Circuit, fans had long-since grown accustomed Serral dominating fellow foreigners. So, everyone waited with bated breath for IEM Katowice 2019: the first 'true' test for Serral with many Korean pros in attendance.
Serral's group looked promising for fans of top-tier StarCraft play, with a foundation of INnoVation and Rogue stacked even further by the addition of Solar, GuMiho and RagnaroK from the RO76. Serral emerged from the group victorious but bloodied. He dropped a map to almost all the players and was even defeated by INnoVation (who, up till that point, was having a pretty poor tournament). Still, he clinched the #1 spot in his group, earning him a comfortable quarterfinal seed.
soO emerged from the RO12 to challenge Serral, setting up a match between players who had near-opposite records in finals. What ensued was a battle for the ages, a clash between young and old ZvZ masters, a fight for the pride of the two great factions in StarCraft II. It was a fight that went down to the wire, and in the end, soO asserted his ZvZ authority by slaying Serral and handing him his most significant loss since last year's IEM Katowice.
By all regards Serral is still a brilliant player. He dominated his foreigner counterparts in WCS and defeated some of the strongest Koreans in the world at IEM. Serral's aura of dominance might have been diminished slightly in Katowice, but he's still an incredible player. Only now, he looks to be a lot more mortal.
It’s been a long time coming for one of StarCraft II’s greatest players, but come on down soO, you’re finally number one in the Team Liquid writers power rankings. soO claimed the first big championship of his career last week, winning IEM Katowice in what has to be one of the emotional highs in our beloved game’s history. He started off the group stage shaky, going 0-3 (2-6 in games) to open the main event, but from there he went 17-5, with wins over Zest (part of the Eo-kage—the Korean meme for soO's finals vanquishers—revenge tour), Serral, herO and Stats (Eo-kage revenge tour part two) on his way to finally lifting a major trophy (sorry, KeSPA Cup).
And, while it’s a historic victory, soO still has more to prove. A tough GSL group this coming weekend will give soO a chance to flex his muscle in ZvT, an arena in which he has traditionally struggled. Should he show improved form in that matchup, and elevate his play to the level of his ZvZ and ZvP, there’s no reason to believe soO can’t duplicate his success at Katowice and turn a once in a lifetime type victory into habit. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but for now soO should bask in the glory of his victory. He may not be the Unofficial World Champion, but he is the IEM Katowice champion, and, in our opinion, the best player in the world.
On March 08 2019 04:00 pvsnp wrote: Inb4 "Maru wasn't the best after he got knocked out in the Ro8, but Serral is still the best even though he got knocked out in the Ro8."
I for one would like to see how Maru fanboys would try to justify his loss against Leenock.
On March 08 2019 04:00 pvsnp wrote: Inb4 "Maru wasn't the best after he got knocked out in the Ro8, but Serral is still the best even though he got knocked out in the Ro8."
I for one would like to see how Maru fanboys would try to justify his loss against Leenock.
"ThE nEw nYduS Is jUSt bRoKEn" sounds about right doesn't it?
Hmm, this way Serral has never been #1 in a featured Power Ranking here on Team Liquid. I think he should still be regarded as the best player at the moment, he narrowly lost 2-3 against the eventual tournament winner. soO is having a shiny 2019 but comes from a very disappointing 2018, I wouldn't have personally made him enter the list at #1 directly.
Whereas it's true that IEM has been the single biggest tournament in 2019, maybe this Power Ranking is a little too influenced by its results; essentially a good one tho.
I'd personally rank Serral ahead of soO(I bet you aren't surprised), Maru still ahead of Dark and most likely Solar at #9 instead of Gumiho.
The honest, how good are these players really power ranking would have Serral at #1 and I have no idea where Soo would be. But Serral would definitely still be #1. Soo being #1 because he won a tournament is kind of silly.
Feels dishonest, actually. Not sure if these power ranks are supposed to be taken seriously or not.
On March 08 2019 04:23 travis wrote: The honest, how good are these players really power ranking would have Serral at #1 and I have no idea where Soo would be.
but is that what it is :O?
'dishonesty' seems like a harsh thing to claim if we don't even agree on the premise
what's actually 'dishonest' is to criticize something based on a false premise of what it is
perhaps you should just say you have different criteria for a power ranking (the common thread of most complaints about power rank) and leave it at that :o
On March 08 2019 04:23 travis wrote: The honest, how good are these players really power ranking would have Serral at #1 and I have no idea where Soo would be.
but is that what it is :O?
'dishonesty' seems like a harsh thing to claim if we don't even agree on the premise
what's actually 'dishonest' is to criticize something based on a false premise of what it is
perhaps you should just say you have different criteria for a power ranking (the common thread of most complaints about power rank) and leave it at that :o
but the top of the article even says what the criteria are, and that recent results are weighted more heavily - but players are given the benefit of the doubt for consistency over time.
Serral has one 2-3 loss in the quarterfinals to the eventual tournament winner, and somehow Soo now has the #1 spot when he wasn't even on the last power rank and the only thing he's done since then is this. Even if we discount everything since before the last power rank Serral has *still* done more than Soo since then.
To be clear, me saying it's dishonest isn't an attack on anyone's integrity. I am just saying that maybe people are getting caught up in the moment a little
Looks like a pretty good list overall, I really don't think I can make a better one. seeing TY at #7 after a somewhat shaky group stage into a pretty one sided 0-3 vs Solar stands out but then he looked good in GSL so idk, it seems like all the players that looked good in GSL looked bad at Katowice and vice versa
On March 08 2019 04:23 travis wrote: The honest, how good are these players really power ranking would have Serral at #1 and I have no idea where Soo would be.
but is that what it is :O?
'dishonesty' seems like a harsh thing to claim if we don't even agree on the premise
what's actually 'dishonest' is to criticize something based on a false premise of what it is
perhaps you should just say you have different criteria for a power ranking (the common thread of most complaints about power rank) and leave it at that :o
but the top of the article even says what the criteria are, and that recent results are weighted more heavily - but players are given the benefit of the doubt for consistency over time.
Serral has one 2-3 loss in the quarterfinals to the eventual tournament winner, and somehow Soo now has the #1 spot when he wasn't even on the last power rank and the only thing he's done since then is this. Even if we discount everything since before the last power rank Serral has *still* done more than Soo since then.
To be clear, me saying it's dishonest isn't an attack on anyone's integrity. I am just saying that maybe people are getting caught up in the moment a little
not to mention soO was very shaky in the groupstages and avoided his historically weakest matchup in the bracketstage. Judging by which player seems overall the strongest right now I just can't see soO being at the top despite his win.
But don't worry - Serral will get Player of The Year award at the end of year again anyway
On March 08 2019 04:41 Brutaxilos wrote: Hmm as happy as I am for soO winning IEM, I have to be honest, I still think Serral is better. Maybe you guys should move him to #2...?
soO has defeated the Kong curse no 2nd places anymore
On March 08 2019 04:23 travis wrote: The honest, how good are these players really power ranking would have Serral at #1 and I have no idea where Soo would be.
but is that what it is :O?
'dishonesty' seems like a harsh thing to claim if we don't even agree on the premise
what's actually 'dishonest' is to criticize something based on a false premise of what it is
perhaps you should just say you have different criteria for a power ranking (the common thread of most complaints about power rank) and leave it at that :o
but the top of the article even says what the criteria are, and that recent results are weighted more heavily - but players are given the benefit of the doubt for consistency over time.
Serral has one 2-3 loss in the quarterfinals to the eventual tournament winner, and somehow Soo now has the #1 spot when he wasn't even on the last power rank and the only thing he's done since then is this. Even if we discount everything since before the last power rank Serral has *still* done more than Soo since then.
To be clear, me saying it's dishonest isn't an attack on anyone's integrity. I am just saying that maybe people are getting caught up in the moment a little
not to mention soO was very shaky in the groupstages and avoided his historically weakest matchup in the bracketstage. Judging by which player seems overall the strongest right now I just can't see soO being at the top despite his win.
But don't worry - Serral will get Player of The Year award at the end of year again
On March 08 2019 04:41 Brutaxilos wrote: Hmm as happy as I am for soO winning IEM, I have to be honest, I still think Serral is better. Maybe you guys should move him to #2...?
soO has defeated the Kong curse no 2nd places anymore
Lol. Only if he will at least repeat the astonishing results he had in 2018, he's already behind.
By the way, in Serral's article, at the start, "one of" is definitely out of place. I think there are no doubts that his performance in 2018 was the best any foreigner ever had in one year, bar none.
On March 08 2019 04:00 pvsnp wrote: Inb4 "Maru wasn't the best after he got knocked out in the Ro8, but Serral is still the best even though he got knocked out in the Ro8."
I for one would like to see how Maru fanboys would try to justify his loss against Leenock.
"ThE nEw nYduS Is jUSt bRoKEn" sounds about right doesn't it?
I'm leaning towards the ever-reliable "Maru doesn't care if it's not GSL."
I think since Serral was very unimpressive in the group stage at Katowice and has only played like 10 matches this year, while soO probably not actually being the top dog leaves a void at #1 that should have just been filled by Mvp as a placeholder.
Like many above, I would have placed Serral in #1 place... and I think you should erase that "foreigner" in the first sentence: he has had one of the most dominant streaks ever, korean or not, and imho the best in LotV, since he didn't rely on one strat or one meta, he just played better than everybody no matter the situation.
Having said that, It is said pretty clear that this article reflects the opinion of a group of people, so I'm not gonna dish on anyone just for having a slightly different opinion.
I'm not sure why the writer team bothered with the preface: "we've updated our criteria a bit in 2019 to focus more on the big picture than just the past calendar month" when they're going to flat out contradict it by putting soO in first.
As impressive as soO's win in the finals was, his 2018 wasn't great, his group stage performance was very shaky, and he still hasn't shown the ability to win games where he has to build a hive. Serral, Stats, Dark, Maru are all still easily ahead of soO imo.
On March 08 2019 04:23 travis wrote: The honest, how good are these players really power ranking would have Serral at #1 and I have no idea where Soo would be.
but is that what it is :O?
'dishonesty' seems like a harsh thing to claim if we don't even agree on the premise
what's actually 'dishonest' is to criticize something based on a false premise of what it is
perhaps you should just say you have different criteria for a power ranking (the common thread of most complaints about power rank) and leave it at that :o
but the top of the article even says what the criteria are, and that recent results are weighted more heavily - but players are given the benefit of the doubt for consistency over time.
Serral has one 2-3 loss in the quarterfinals to the eventual tournament winner, and somehow Soo now has the #1 spot when he wasn't even on the last power rank and the only thing he's done since then is this. Even if we discount everything since before the last power rank Serral has *still* done more than Soo since then.
To be clear, me saying it's dishonest isn't an attack on anyone's integrity. I am just saying that maybe people are getting caught up in the moment a little
I understand your point. But what data have we to refer to any "consistency over time"? The last serious competition was 3 months and a major patch before IEM. We don't really know what the skill level of most players is. The only viable data is IEM and a few GSL and WCS Winter matches. So, what to we make out of this? Serral played great, yes. But he still lost twice (not only to soO but also to Innovation who bombed out of his group). He isn't only mortal but also actually loses matches which is a difference to the end of 2018. Still, Serral's consistency over time was valued. If it weren't, he wouldn't have been ranked as 2nd based on his tournament performance, considering that Dark and Stats performed better.
On March 08 2019 05:13 ZigguratOfUr wrote: I'm not sure why the writer team bothered with the preface: "we've updated our criteria a bit in 2019 to focus more on the big picture than just the past calendar month" when they're going to flat out contradict it by putting soO in first.
As impressive as soO's win in the finals was, his 2018 wasn't great, his group stage performance was very shaky, and he still hasn't shown the ability to win games where he has to build a hive. Serral, Stats, Dark, Maru are all still easily ahead of soO imo.
They looked at the past 2 calendar months, in which soO has now outperformed all the players you've mentioned in big tournaments. Checkmate
On March 08 2019 05:17 fronkschnonk wrote: The only viable data is IEM and a few GSL and WCS Winter matches. So, what to we make out of this? Serral played great, yes. But he still lost twice (not only to soO but also to Innovation who bombed out of his group).
Serral was already qualified when he lost to inno. Also, you are right that Serral lost twice at IEM - but as I wrote above, soO lost three matches (and none of those was a "showmatch" like serral vs inno).
On March 08 2019 05:17 fronkschnonk wrote: The only viable data is IEM and a few GSL and WCS Winter matches. So, what to we make out of this? Serral played great, yes. But he still lost twice (not only to soO but also to Innovation who bombed out of his group).
Serral was already qualified when he lost to inno. Also, you are right that Serral lost twice at IEM - but as I wrote above, soO lost three matches (and none of those was a "showmatch" like serral vs inno).
You could just as easily say that soO never lost when his tournament life was on the line, so clearly he took the serious matches seriously. Contrast Serral. Or that soO won more series at IEM than Serral. Or insert whatever metric that makes Player 1 look better than Player 2, and simultaneously ignore any metric that shows the opposite.
Every player has too many qualifications to be called #1 unambiguously.
I also feel like Bunny should get some recognition, at least in the Close but No Cigar category. The guy doesn't have the best results, but damn does he look scary when he's playing. If he can keep improving I'm sure he could make it pretty far this GSL.
Even I am not a crazy Serral fanboy, I still think he is the best player in the world right now. Heart goes with soO, but the brain and senses tell me what they saw and registered in Katowice - Serral still plays in top form, it's just impossible to win every time. Even Flash lost few times before he went to military. I just can't explain what happened with Stats after 2:0. He just gave the match so easily with some unbalanced timing attacks after he seemed so perfect at the start. So I guess soO wins with statistics for now and he deserves to be No1. It's just the way I saw how Serral played the other matches in IEM it was scary, really damn scary and perfect. In mirror matches anything could happen and usually the one who wins is not the more skilled (they have equal skill) but the more enduring one. I don't know about other e-sports in details, but in a long late macro game in Starcrat 1/2 we can easily see why this is the most competitive game!
SoO isnt the best SC2 player out there, but he deserves this month's nr 1 spot. All the other contenders dropped the ball, while he performed above expectations and won the biggest tournament of the first quarter, despite having a very rocky start. Congratz to him, hoping he can keep up his game after this confidence boost
Yeah I mean people will disagree over powerrank based on different criteria, and no shame in those who would put Serral or others at #1 for various reasons, but I have no problem with soO at number one. The man just won the second biggest tournament of the year and arguably the hardest one. Let him enjoy his ranking!
Lol winning BlizzCon does not send you from #2 to #1 but winning IEM catapults you from nowhere to #1. ... but it is ok for me because he is soO, he cannot be #2 this time.
On March 08 2019 06:35 Bagration wrote: If it were anyone but soO, I'd be unhappy about the #1 ranking, but after all the hell this guy has gone through, I'll allow it.
On March 08 2019 04:00 pvsnp wrote: Inb4 "Maru wasn't the best after he got knocked out in the Ro8, but Serral is still the best even though he got knocked out in the Ro8."
Would it help if I said most people feel that Serral and Maru should still be Numbers 1 and 2 (or vice versa)? Definitely feel like 1 rough tournament showing isn't enough to bump Maru down from 1/2 to 5, and 1 great tournament showing isn't enough to shoot soO up to 1st from arguably... 9th? 11th?
In the grand scheme of things, I agree with Travis and uthermal I think. Super happy for soO, but I think the cards just happened to fall his way, he didn't take control of the cards and bend the game to his will the same way Maru and Serral did last year.
Overall good power rank though, glad you guys did this one and hopefully you guys continue them after each major tournament, I think monthly would be too often unless you consulted my 100% foolproof opinion each time
EDIT: if this #1 ranking was done in order to reflect on soO not being number auto number 2 anymore, ill be less butthurt about a partisan power ranking that doesn't affect my life in the slightest.
Look, I love soo and I love that he won. I really think he’s incredibly improved and it’s awesome. But he narrowly beat Serral, and he did so with very unimaginative builds that I expect serral to be ready for if they had played more games. To be frank, I think serral may have even given soo too much credit and was unprepared for the extent to which soo played the early and mid game. To me, and I think a lot of other community members, serral is number 1.
On March 08 2019 05:34 Brutaxilos wrote: I also feel like Bunny should get some recognition, at least in the Close but No Cigar category. The guy doesn't have the best results, but damn does he look scary when he's playing. If he can keep improving I'm sure he could make it pretty far this GSL.
Yeah, Bunny's always kinda had that inside him, just wasn't consistent enough. Lately he's been awesome though, and only barely didn't qualify for the ro12, so I wonder if he would get a spot there had he qualified for playoffs.
Also only now I realized my boy doesn't have a fan club, that blows a bit
It's hard to do anything but laugh. I still remember around May last year you guys writing "If Serral keeps on winning eventually he will be number 1".
Guy didn't drop a single offline series from that point on in the year. 6 premier tournament wins back to back. Never power rank 1.
soO not even on the previous ranking - wins 1 tournament, instantly rank 1.
It is hard to introspectively question your own views and beliefs, but when confronted with the overwhelming evidence, at some point you should question your own bias. These power ranks are inconsistently ranked, and whether deliberate or innocently, Serral has been overlooked time and time again. It really stains your credibility.
Soo should not be on Nr.1 Spot just because he won the last big important tournament. In the last power Rank he was not even in top 10. A real Power Rank that determines the strenght of the players would be more like 1. Serral 2. Maru 3. Stats 4. Dark 5. Soo etc. This Power rank would take the tournament results from the last 8-9 month and also last 2 Gsl seasons world finals etc. but determining serrals strenght compared to the top 5 koreans is difficult, since there is only gsl vs the world (long ago), world finals and katowice so mb he doesnt deserve rank 1 but rank 3-4,
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: It's hard to do anything but laugh. I still remember around May last year you guys writing "If Serral keeps on winning eventually he will be number 1".
Guy didn't drop a single offline series from that point on in the year. 6 premier tournament wins back to back. Never power rank 1.
soO not even on the previous ranking - wins 1 tournament, instantly rank 1.
It is hard to introspectively question your own views and beliefs, but when confronted with the overwhelming evidence, at some point you should question your own bias. These power ranks are inconsistently ranked, and whether deliberate or innocently, Serral has been overlooked time and time again. It really stains your credibility.
Yeah, but the issue is that Maru was winning harder tournament back to back too, which kinda screwed Serral back then. And nowadays he didn't kept on winning, he lost to Innovation and soO. Sad story.
Serral is still clearly the scariest player and the favorite to win any tournament he enters now that Maru has been a huge disappointment a couple times, so perhaps the ranking should look something like this: 1. Serral 2. Stats 3. Soo 4. Maru 5. Dark 6-10...
SOO #1 on the power ranking hits me right in the feels
is this the first time??? awesome!!!!!!
EDIT: lol @ people getting upset over him being #1. he definitely showed vulnerability and weakness in the group stages, but its good for him to bask in his moment of victory. there is no liquid bias in this power rank. the true test will be how far he gets in this GSL
On March 08 2019 07:38 IshinShishi wrote: Serral is still clearly the scariest player and the favorite to win any tournament he enters now that Maru has been a huge disappointment a couple times, so perhaps the ranking should look something like this: 1. Serral 2. Stats 3. Soo 4. Maru 5. Dark 6-10...
If you want to go this way then you need to place Dark above Maru though. While Maru won, Dark topped the group while Maru was the bestest everest disappointment. I dare to say level 70 disappointment! And their Blizzcon(3 months away, or 4?) performance was similar, both ended at RO8 with a 3:0 loss. Decisions, decisions
the other thing to consider, which i was saying to the insufferable serral fanboys, is that serral's stats were inflated by region lock. guys like stephano, naniwa, even early GSL jinro fought with the worlds best and still won. serral is a good player, probably still best in the world, but his perfect record was because he didn't get tested by koreans except at GSL vs world, and blizzcon. would he still have the dominant streak he did if the koreans weren't banned from competing?
post blizzcon he was unquestionably best in the world, after the path of destruction he blazed. so if region lock were removed and he continued his win streak, there'd be no question as to his dominance.
On March 08 2019 07:23 dw.Justify wrote: Soo should not be on Nr.1 Spot just because he won the last big important tournament. In the last power Rank he was not even in top 10. A real Power Rank that determines the strenght of the players would be more like 1. Serral 2. Maru 3. Stats 4. Dark 5. Soo etc. This Power rank would take the tournament results from the last 8-9 month and also last 2 Gsl seasons world finals etc. but determining serrals strenght compared to the top 5 koreans is difficult, since there is only gsl vs the world (long ago), world finals and katowice so mb he doesnt deserve rank 1 but rank 3-4,
A 9 month power rank kind of deffy the purpose, players almost never keep the same skill on that long a time. And on that note. Maru has not won anything since september how is he suppose the strongest and second strongest player in the world. If he win WESG or GSL sure, but someone who has only two top 8 in his last 3 tournaments can't seriously be called the best in the world right now on the basis that he was dominant in that other tournament 6 months ago. He might win his next tournament but that will need him to play much better than what he showed us in the last half year.
I kind of want to disagree with soO at the top, but let's give the man his god damn no1.
I mean, the Serral fanboys have been annoying, but there's no denying he still deserves #1. Even with how heavily IEM seems to be weighted here, Serral only barely lost to soO and looked much more convincing throughout. soO stumbled his way through up until he met Serral. Not to mention Serral just came off an extraordinary 2018, while soO was mostly irrelevant.
I love Gumiho as well, but Trap deserves to be above him.
It might be time for another community pr now that the tl staff yet again disappointed with a highly inconsistent list, losing the trust of thousands if not millions of readers all around the globe. Journalistic integrity and ethics are on the line in this battle between factual decisions and complacent narratives. It might be time indeed...
On March 08 2019 07:56 FrostedMiniWheats wrote: I mean, the Serral fanboys have been annoying, but there's no denying he still deserves #1. Even with how heavily IEM seems to be weighted here, Serral only barely lost to soO and looked much more convincing throughout. soO stumbled his way through up until he met Serral. Not to mention Serral just came off an extraordinary 2018, while soO was mostly irrelevant.
I love Gumiho as well, but Trap deserves to be above him.
Yup, serral could easily have won that series. and he's already beaten stats twice, so he easily could've won IEM. all the more reason to remove region lock. let him keep showing his dominance over the best in the world. i want moar soo vs serral. zvz went from gglord winfestor broodlord vs broodlord roro vs curious, to intense back and forth roach ravager insanity. so beautiful
Not in agreement with this ranking as much as I usually am.
Gumiho: Agree with Uthermal, would probably shift him out of the top 10. The final 10th spot could be any number of people.
Trap: I'd have him at 8. Trap is consistently high on the ladder at 6800-7k MMR. He's a hella strong protoss but his PvP is very medium and it feels like he's consistently ending up in groups with multiple protoss. One of these days he's gonna get a lucky bracket and pull a high finish.
Dear: I think the novelty/nostalgia of seeing Dear being moderately relevant again is weighting him too highly. His GSL/IEM performance was roughly equivalent to Trap's but with less overall consistency in the last year. I'd probably have him at 9 or 10.
TY: My impulse was to say he should definitely be higher, but then I looked at everyone above him and thought that the power rank placement was about right. TY has been consistent as hell for the last year+ and has easily been the number 2 (and even number 1 sometimes) Terran. In light of that I would bump him a spot above herO.
herO: Hero reminds me of a drunk toddler on a tightrope with the way he plays sometimes. His play looked shakier than anyone's in the top 10 sometimes but the beauty and strength of hero's playstyle is that he forces his opponent to play way worse than usual by making games weird and scrappy. As much as I love seeing him play, I think his luck has been high recently in some of these wins and the fact that he's played mostly pvp which is his best matchup. His unit control and engagements are insanely good and his builds are creative and innovative but he makes bizarre strategic decisions sometimes that hold him back.
Maru: Agree with 5th. He's looked vulnerable since Blizzcon but teamkills are weird and I'm stilll surprised he fell this many spots considering previous dominance.
Dark: I would move to number 3. He's been consistent as all hell and has proved himself as the best zerg in Korea. He shows up in the semi-final of basically every tournament, he just can't seem to beat The other top zergs or Stats when it matters.
Stats: Oh how I love you Stats. Protoss perfection for games on end and then medium attacks that just don't quite get there. His series vs Dark was a thing of beauty and I thought it was going to continue with IEM looking like it was his tournament to win, alas. His defensive style is the way I aspire to play Protoss. It's a pursuit of "playing the game perfectly" with scouting, proper responses, macro, and great control.
Unfortunately that style always leaves you with vulnerabilities as nobody plays quite that well all the time. Protoss also seems to have some inherent inconsistent fragility as a race. This is why Stats is routinely 6500 on ladder, when Innovation is routinely 7k, and why "Online Stats" exists. I'd move him up to number 2.
Serral: Serral continues to play fin-nominally. Although he made some uncharacteristic mistakes at IEM. He should still be the clear number 1 for this power rank. He won his group, only dropping a magnificent series to Innovation, that either could have won. (Remember that Inno is a 7k player and consistently on top of the ladder and who sometimes still randomly shows games that makes him look like the Old Inno - who was arguably the best player of all time). The series he lost vs soO was the best series of the tournament. soO played out of his mind, and felt practically perfect with no mistakes and that still only made him equal to Serral who seemed sloppier than usual. Remember that Serral gave away a win by just move commanding his army into Soo's, lost a game to one of those "lose 25 zerglings to 1 baneling" and a 3rd game that came down to soO having like...2...roaches at the end.
Even in losing Serral looked strong, and if you are considering other recent results he should be a clear number 1.
Soo - he's definitely placed higher than he should be. It's understandable given the storybook ending for him, but it's definitely coloring his placement. I would have him at number 4. He was 2-3 in group. TWO and THREE. That got Maru bumped from number 1 to number 5. That's not the performance of a number 1. He then managed to avoid his worst matchup because Terrans all choked. He played an amazing series vs Serral and Stats (and punked on Zest and her0 - paragons of protoss consistency /s) 1 tournament is not enough to go from zero to hero. He has been in great form though and may be able to put up some more results with confidence restored. I'd place him at number 4, and even at number 5 depending on how much you weight Maru's non IEM/SoS performance.
On March 08 2019 07:58 The_Red_Viper wrote: It might be time for another community pr now that the tl staff yet again disappointed with a highly inconsistent list, losing the trust of thousands if not millions of readers all around the globe. Journalistic integrity and ethics are on the line in this battle between factual decisions and complacent narratives. It might be time indeed...
Breaking news : "TL writer Mizenhauer involve in a possible collusion scandals, many source link him to a profitable business of translating soO interview." Can he keep defending his integrity in the Power Rank after proposing his service as the middle man to trusting TL poster to get a soO stream translated? How does think link with the mystery of the missing Magic blog?
More on this at 9, but right now: "An Inconvenient Lie" a shocking documentary on the involvement of the zerg cartel in Royda ban.
It feels weird just seeing innovation mentioned here as a punching bag, but i agree with keeping him out of top 10. f The ZvZ matches with serral and soO were so scrappy and edge of the seat exciting I loved every minute of it! I am excited to see what Maru's form will look like in RO16 GSL, he seems to have a better time in the extended duration tournaments with longer time in between matches to practice. I also wonder how public opinion of soO would change if he doesnt make it out of RO16, i expect him to
I would still have put Serral on #1 and soO at #2 (for tradition), but hey, if you are the reigning champion of IEM Katowice, then you at least deserve that #1 spot for the time being! soO Jjang Nim fighting!
On March 08 2019 07:23 dw.Justify wrote: Soo should not be on Nr.1 Spot just because he won the last big important tournament. In the last power Rank he was not even in top 10. A real Power Rank that determines the strenght of the players would be more like 1. Serral 2. Maru 3. Stats 4. Dark 5. Soo etc. This Power rank would take the tournament results from the last 8-9 month and also last 2 Gsl seasons world finals etc. but determining serrals strenght compared to the top 5 koreans is difficult, since there is only gsl vs the world (long ago), world finals and katowice so mb he doesnt deserve rank 1 but rank 3-4,
A 9 month power rank kind of deffy the purpose, players almost never keep the same skill on that long a time. And on that note. Maru has not won anything since september how is he suppose the strongest and second strongest player in the world. If he win WESG or GSL sure, but someone who has only two top 8 in his last 3 tournaments can't seriously be called the best in the world right now on the basis that he was dominant in that other tournament 6 months ago. He might win his next tournament but that will need him to play much better than what he showed us in the last half year.
I kind of want to disagree with soO at the top, but let's give the man his god damn no1.
There are not that many major tournaments. if you only want the last 2-3 month for the ranking you only have mb 1 tournament. I mean than the ranking is only IEM kattowice, even world finals is now 4 month ago.
So you should atleast take the last 4 major tournaments were all the koreans and possible most foreigners played.
Also the skill of a player that is reached doesnt decline if someone stays active, there is just the possibility thatz someone has some bad month, unlucky tournaments but still even the Top 3 sc2 players cant win all tournaments or make it alwways to the RO4. The best 20 players of the world are all around 7000 mmr, means if they face each other chances per game are close to 50 %. The way to beat someone in a bo3,bo5 is than beeing a slightly bit better what wwould mean mb 200-300 mmr in the ladders so you get mb a 55-60 % chance win per game, combine this with a good tournament mindset, good strategic prepreation, and mb some luck and you can have a 75 % wining chance in a bo3, when you take for example Maru vs Clasic or so. But still a tournaments has like 5-6 rounds so you can easly be elimanted in Round 1 or 2 in a tourney even if you are serral or maru when u face the top 20. So 1 -2 tournemantes for a power rank is just stupid.
On March 08 2019 07:23 dw.Justify wrote: Soo should not be on Nr.1 Spot just because he won the last big important tournament. In the last power Rank he was not even in top 10. A real Power Rank that determines the strenght of the players would be more like 1. Serral 2. Maru 3. Stats 4. Dark 5. Soo etc. This Power rank would take the tournament results from the last 8-9 month and also last 2 Gsl seasons world finals etc. but determining serrals strenght compared to the top 5 koreans is difficult, since there is only gsl vs the world (long ago), world finals and katowice so mb he doesnt deserve rank 1 but rank 3-4,
A 9 month power rank kind of deffy the purpose, players almost never keep the same skill on that long a time. And on that note. Maru has not won anything since september how is he suppose the strongest and second strongest player in the world. If he win WESG or GSL sure, but someone who has only two top 8 in his last 3 tournaments can't seriously be called the best in the world right now on the basis that he was dominant in that other tournament 6 months ago. He might win his next tournament but that will need him to play much better than what he showed us in the last half year.
I kind of want to disagree with soO at the top, but let's give the man his god damn no1.
Also the skill of a player that is reached doesnt decline if someone stays active,
then what happened to Rogue after Katowice? To Inno after 2017? To Dear after 2013? To Creator after 2012? The list goes on and on...
Y’all know that a power ranking isn’t about skill, it’s about momentum, right? It’s also about expectations - not necessarily results. I’m not about to argue Astrea as a world a world top 10 player, but he’s definitely on my power ranking.
9-10. Trap and Dear. They’re both really solid, in good form, and dangerous opponents, but they apparently can’t beat herO in PvP. Look for one of these two in GSL Ro. 4. Solar is in the same boat with expectations but he bombed out of GSL. 8: Leenock bombed out of GSL, but came back with a great showing at Katowice, first out of the most dangerous part of the open bracket with Cure, Fantasy, and sOs, with Namshar and Mana in there as well. Beats Maru in the group stage and was one baneling away from 2-0ing Dark which would have made him advance. 7. Maru. Three-time reigning GSL champ, still looks dominant in that environment, still a favorite for WESG as the reigning champion. Terrible Katowice. 6. RagnaroK, no one thought he’d get out of the open bracket at Katowice (especially after witnessing his GSL Ro. 32) and is all of sudden in the round of 12 through the group of death. 5. Neeb. Doing excellent at WCS Winter, a Ro. 8 at Katowice, after winning the EU qualifier, Neeb is in good shape. Nothing specifically all that impressive, but Neeb is super tough to beat right now. 4. Astrea. Didn’t expect to see him make it through his round of 32 group. Beats JonSnow. Didn’t expect him to beat TIME or Kelazhur. 4-0’s his group. Dropped one map so far in NA Apprentice Season 2 after winning season 1. We’ve got another excellent North American protoss on our hands, it seems. 3. Serral. He’s been dominating in WCS Winter. He’s shown some weakness against terran recently, but he’ll likely still win WCS Winter, brought the champion to an ace game at IEM, and is a favorite for WESG. 2. herO. Scarlett is a dogged, tough opponent that people thought could beat a slumping herO. Nope, he beats her twice in GSL and rides his excellent PvP to a semifinals at Katowice. 1. soO, you start to dismiss him and he wins IEM. Damn, what a guy.
On March 08 2019 07:23 dw.Justify wrote: Soo should not be on Nr.1 Spot just because he won the last big important tournament. In the last power Rank he was not even in top 10. A real Power Rank that determines the strenght of the players would be more like 1. Serral 2. Maru 3. Stats 4. Dark 5. Soo etc. This Power rank would take the tournament results from the last 8-9 month and also last 2 Gsl seasons world finals etc. but determining serrals strenght compared to the top 5 koreans is difficult, since there is only gsl vs the world (long ago), world finals and katowice so mb he doesnt deserve rank 1 but rank 3-4,
A 9 month power rank kind of deffy the purpose, players almost never keep the same skill on that long a time. And on that note. Maru has not won anything since september how is he suppose the strongest and second strongest player in the world. If he win WESG or GSL sure, but someone who has only two top 8 in his last 3 tournaments can't seriously be called the best in the world right now on the basis that he was dominant in that other tournament 6 months ago. He might win his next tournament but that will need him to play much better than what he showed us in the last half year.
I kind of want to disagree with soO at the top, but let's give the man his god damn no1.
There are not that many major tournaments. if you only want the last 2-3 month for the ranking you only have mb 1 tournament. I mean than the ranking is only IEM kattowice, even world finals is now 4 month ago.
So you should atleast take the last 4 major tournaments were all the koreans and possible most foreigners played.
Also the skill of a player that is reached doesnt decline if someone stays active, there is just the possibility thatz someone has some bad month, unlucky tournaments but still even the Top 3 sc2 players cant win all tournaments or make it alwways to the RO4. The best 20 players of the world are all around 7000 mmr, means if they face each other chances per game are close to 50 %. The way to beat someone in a bo3,bo5 is than beeing a slightly bit better what wwould mean mb 200-300 mmr in the ladders so you get mb a 55-60 % chance win per game, combine this with a good tournament mindset, good strategic prepreation, and mb some luck and you can have a 75 % wining chance in a bo3, when you take for example Maru vs Clasic or so. But still a tournaments has like 5-6 rounds so you can easly be elimanted in Round 1 or 2 in a tourney even if you are serral or maru when u face the top 20. So 1 -2 tournemantes for a power rank is just stupid.
Of course you get worst, (or at least other get better if you want to say it in Artosis term) staying active, Meta change, the game get patch, style get's figure out ect... Neeb won Kespa cup off his pvp and now he can't win one to save his life.
And at some point you need to win some of the time to be the best in the world, saying Maru is the best in the world right now would be like saying soO was a favorite for GSL season 2 on the back of his Blizzcon run even tho he was mediocre in the months prior. And one loss is understandable, but saying that the best in the world can't come out of a groupe with Leenock-Neeb-Lambo and Trap is hard to swallow, sure if it was one time like let's say Classic getting kick out of GSL in 2014 or Stat's this year sure, but for the last months it has happen more often then not.
Not saying that you should not take into consideration his pass results at all, it at least prove that he has the potential to do great thing, and I think he has in place at least in the top 10, but not in first, not when guys like Serral, Stats and even Dark have pretty much the same average results or better since GSL season 2 and got better results closer to the actual power rank.
Also you have soO at 5 and before Katowice he has done jack shit since GSL season 2, he doesn't have a single round of 8 appearance and was pretty bad online all year long, if you rank every tournament the same no way he get higher then Classic, TY or even like Zest.
On March 08 2019 11:08 bela.mervado wrote: typo/repeated word at "He’ll even have the opportunity for revenge to take revenge on both Dark and herO in the RO16 of Code S." ?
On March 08 2019 08:10 Russano wrote: Not in agreement with this ranking as much as I usually am.
Gumiho: Agree with Uthermal, would probably shift him out of the top 10. The final 10th spot could be any number of people.
Trap: I'd have him at 8. Trap is consistently high on the ladder at 6800-7k MMR. He's a hella strong protoss but his PvP is very medium and it feels like he's consistently ending up in groups with multiple protoss. One of these days he's gonna get a lucky bracket and pull a high finish.
Dear: I think the novelty/nostalgia of seeing Dear being moderately relevant again is weighting him too highly. His GSL/IEM performance was roughly equivalent to Trap's but with less overall consistency in the last year. I'd probably have him at 9 or 10.
TY: My impulse was to say he should definitely be higher, but then I looked at everyone above him and thought that the power rank placement was about right. TY has been consistent as hell for the last year+ and has easily been the number 2 (and even number 1 sometimes) Terran. In light of that I would bump him a spot above herO.
herO: Hero reminds me of a drunk toddler on a tightrope with the way he plays sometimes. His play looked shakier than anyone's in the top 10 sometimes but the beauty and strength of hero's playstyle is that he forces his opponent to play way worse than usual by making games weird and scrappy. As much as I love seeing him play, I think his luck has been high recently in some of these wins and the fact that he's played mostly pvp which is his best matchup. His unit control and engagements are insanely good and his builds are creative and innovative but he makes bizarre strategic decisions sometimes that hold him back.
Maru: Agree with 5th. He's looked vulnerable since Blizzcon but teamkills are weird and I'm stilll surprised he fell this many spots considering previous dominance.
Dark: I would move to number 3. He's been consistent as all hell and has proved himself as the best zerg in Korea. He shows up in the semi-final of basically every tournament, he just can't seem to beat The other top zergs or Stats when it matters.
Stats: Oh how I love you Stats. Protoss perfection for games on end and then medium attacks that just don't quite get there. His series vs Dark was a thing of beauty and I thought it was going to continue with IEM looking like it was his tournament to win, alas. His defensive style is the way I aspire to play Protoss. It's a pursuit of "playing the game perfectly" with scouting, proper responses, macro, and great control.
Unfortunately that style always leaves you with vulnerabilities as nobody plays quite that well all the time. Protoss also seems to have some inherent inconsistent fragility as a race. This is why Stats is routinely 6500 on ladder, when Innovation is routinely 7k, and why "Online Stats" exists. I'd move him up to number 2.
Serral: Serral continues to play fin-nominally. Although he made some uncharacteristic mistakes at IEM. He should still be the clear number 1 for this power rank. He won his group, only dropping a magnificent series to Innovation, that either could have won. (Remember that Inno is a 7k player and consistently on top of the ladder and who sometimes still randomly shows games that makes him look like the Old Inno - who was arguably the best player of all time). The series he lost vs soO was the best series of the tournament. soO played out of his mind, and felt practically perfect with no mistakes and that still only made him equal to Serral who seemed sloppier than usual. Remember that Serral gave away a win by just move commanding his army into Soo's, lost a game to one of those "lose 25 zerglings to 1 baneling" and a 3rd game that came down to soO having like...2...roaches at the end.
Even in losing Serral looked strong, and if you are considering other recent results he should be a clear number 1.
Soo - he's definitely placed higher than he should be. It's understandable given the storybook ending for him, but it's definitely coloring his placement. I would have him at number 4. He was 2-3 in group. TWO and THREE. That got Maru bumped from number 1 to number 5. That's not the performance of a number 1. He then managed to avoid his worst matchup because Terrans all choked. He played an amazing series vs Serral and Stats (and punked on Zest and her0 - paragons of protoss consistency /s) 1 tournament is not enough to go from zero to hero. He has been in great form though and may be able to put up some more results with confidence restored. I'd place him at number 4, and even at number 5 depending on how much you weight Maru's non IEM/SoS performance.
This is 100% what I feel too. Good review. Cant understand how Serral still isnt nr. 1 with these results.
I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
On March 08 2019 13:45 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
Sorry but you argument does not prove the conclusion you are trying to make.
"I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results."
soO went 2-3 in groups stages barely advancing to the main stage on map score. If you think that's a "good result" I would rethink what you are trying to say. Bunny and Dear should have been players he could beat if he is truly "the best" player right now, even TY.
soO's other recent accomplishments include:
- going 0-4 in his gsl season 3 ro32 group, losing to Special and Keen. - a 3-4 placement in gsl season 1. (at the start of 2018, but that doesn't really count as recent does it?). - not making it to blizzcon
writers are just soO fanboys it seems, I don't see the hype. shame on them.
On March 08 2019 13:45 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
Sorry but you argument does not prove the conclusion you are trying to make.
"I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results."
soO went 2-3 in groups stages barely advancing to the main stage on map score. If you think that's a "good result" I would rethink what you are trying to say. Bunny and Dear should have been players he could beat if he is truly "the best" player right now, even TY.
soO's other recent accomplishments include:
- going 0-4 in his gsl season 3 group, losing to Special and Keen. - a 3-4 placement in gsl season 1. (at the start of 2018). - not making it to blizzcon
writer is just a soO fanboy it seems, I don't see the hype.
I think we have different definition of what recent means evidently, since you are pulling results from a year ago. By recent, I was thinking of the current month or the past month (since Power ranks are often made on irregular monthly basis). By that metric, it's hard to argue soO isn't number one since he won the only "recent" tournament and his form is top 3 for sure. That said, you can say Serral deserves to be #1 since there hasn't been a PR in months so Blizzcon results should be accounted. Although I disagree with this point, it is a fair one. I guess what I'm trying to get to is that people should complain about the PR criteria instead of claiming some sort of fanboying/bias on the part of the writers.
Also, I didn't say that soO was the strongest player. I said you could make the argument that he was. I agree he didn't look convincing in group stages but beating Stats and Serral (the other two best players) convincingly should be good arguments in his favor. Especially since Serral had like an 11-8 map score while soO had 25-13 map score and Stats had 24-8 map score. Really, if we're going off map score alone, Stats was clearly the scariest player in the tournament out of the three and Serral clearly had the weakest performance out of the 3. It's interesting to me that no one considered Stats as being the best player at the moment.
On March 08 2019 13:45 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
Sorry but you argument does not prove the conclusion you are trying to make.
"I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results."
soO went 2-3 in groups stages barely advancing to the main stage on map score. If you think that's a "good result" I would rethink what you are trying to say. Bunny and Dear should have been players he could beat if he is truly "the best" player right now, even TY.
soO's other recent accomplishments include:
- going 0-4 in his gsl season 3 group, losing to Special and Keen. - a 3-4 placement in gsl season 1. (at the start of 2018). - not making it to blizzcon
writer is just a soO fanboy it seems, I don't see the hype.
I think we have different definition of what recent means evidently, since you are pulling results from a year ago. By recent, I was thinking of the current month or the past month (since Power ranks are often made on irregular monthly basis). By that metric, it's hard to argue soO isn't number one since he won the only "recent" tournament and his form is top 3 for sure. That said, you can say Serral deserves to be #1 since there hasn't been a PR in months so Blizzcon results should be accounted. Although I disagree with this point, it is a fair one. I guess what I'm trying to get to is that people should complain about the PR criteria instead of claiming some sort of fanboying/bias on the part of the writers.
Also, I didn't say that soO was the strongest player. I said you could make the argument that he was. I agree he didn't look convincing in group stages but beating Stats and Serral (the other two best players) convincingly should be good arguments in his favor. Especially since Serral had like an 11-8 map score while soO had 25-13 map score and Stats had 24-8 map score. Really, if we're going off map score alone, Stats was clearly the scariest player in the tournament out of the three and Serral clearly had the weakest performance out of the 3. It's interesting to me that no one considered Stats as being the best player at the moment.
The article says at the top,
we've updated our criteria a bit in 2019 to focus more on the big picture than just the past calendar month
obviously not, then Stats or Serral would be number 1.
On March 08 2019 13:45 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
Sorry but you argument does not prove the conclusion you are trying to make.
"I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results."
soO went 2-3 in groups stages barely advancing to the main stage on map score. If you think that's a "good result" I would rethink what you are trying to say. Bunny and Dear should have been players he could beat if he is truly "the best" player right now, even TY.
soO's other recent accomplishments include:
- going 0-4 in his gsl season 3 group, losing to Special and Keen. - a 3-4 placement in gsl season 1. (at the start of 2018). - not making it to blizzcon
writer is just a soO fanboy it seems, I don't see the hype.
I think we have different definition of what recent means evidently, since you are pulling results from a year ago. By recent, I was thinking of the current month or the past month (since Power ranks are often made on irregular monthly basis). By that metric, it's hard to argue soO isn't number one since he won the only "recent" tournament and his form is top 3 for sure. That said, you can say Serral deserves to be #1 since there hasn't been a PR in months so Blizzcon results should be accounted. Although I disagree with this point, it is a fair one. I guess what I'm trying to get to is that people should complain about the PR criteria instead of claiming some sort of fanboying/bias on the part of the writers.
Also, I didn't say that soO was the strongest player. I said you could make the argument that he was. I agree he didn't look convincing in group stages but beating Stats and Serral (the other two best players) convincingly should be good arguments in his favor. Especially since Serral had like an 11-8 map score while soO had 25-13 map score and Stats had 24-8 map score. Really, if we're going off map score alone, Stats was clearly the scariest player in the tournament out of the three and Serral clearly had the weakest performance out of the 3. It's interesting to me that no one considered Stats as being the best player at the moment.
On March 08 2019 13:45 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
Sorry but you argument does not prove the conclusion you are trying to make.
"I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results."
soO went 2-3 in groups stages barely advancing to the main stage on map score. If you think that's a "good result" I would rethink what you are trying to say. Bunny and Dear should have been players he could beat if he is truly "the best" player right now, even TY.
soO's other recent accomplishments include:
- going 0-4 in his gsl season 3 group, losing to Special and Keen. - a 3-4 placement in gsl season 1. (at the start of 2018). - not making it to blizzcon
writer is just a soO fanboy it seems, I don't see the hype.
I think we have different definition of what recent means evidently, since you are pulling results from a year ago. By recent, I was thinking of the current month or the past month (since Power ranks are often made on irregular monthly basis). By that metric, it's hard to argue soO isn't number one since he won the only "recent" tournament and his form is top 3 for sure. That said, you can say Serral deserves to be #1 since there hasn't been a PR in months so Blizzcon results should be accounted. Although I disagree with this point, it is a fair one. I guess what I'm trying to get to is that people should complain about the PR criteria instead of claiming some sort of fanboying/bias on the part of the writers.
Also, I didn't say that soO was the strongest player. I said you could make the argument that he was. I agree he didn't look convincing in group stages but beating Stats and Serral (the other two best players) convincingly should be good arguments in his favor. Especially since Serral had like an 11-8 map score while soO had 25-13 map score and Stats had 24-8 map score. Really, if we're going off map score alone, Stats was clearly the scariest player in the tournament out of the three and Serral clearly had the weakest performance out of the 3. It's interesting to me that no one considered Stats as being the best player at the moment.
The article says at the top,
we've updated our criteria a bit in 2019 to focus more on the big picture than just the past calendar month
obviously not, then Stats or Serral would be number 1.
True. Read too quickly to notice that. Assuming they're going as far back as Blizzcon, I agree Stats and Serral should be top 2.
yeah. it's not worth getting that mad about but it's fun to laugh at and discuss the silliness of it.
On March 08 2019 13:45 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
Sorry but you argument does not prove the conclusion you are trying to make.
"I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results."
soO went 2-3 in groups stages barely advancing to the main stage on map score. If you think that's a "good result" I would rethink what you are trying to say. Bunny and Dear should have been players he could beat if he is truly "the best" player right now, even TY.
soO's other recent accomplishments include:
- going 0-4 in his gsl season 3 group, losing to Special and Keen. - a 3-4 placement in gsl season 1. (at the start of 2018). - not making it to blizzcon
writer is just a soO fanboy it seems, I don't see the hype.
I think we have different definition of what recent means evidently, since you are pulling results from a year ago. By recent, I was thinking of the current month or the past month (since Power ranks are often made on irregular monthly basis). By that metric, it's hard to argue soO isn't number one since he won the only "recent" tournament and his form is top 3 for sure. That said, you can say Serral deserves to be #1 since there hasn't been a PR in months so Blizzcon results should be accounted. Although I disagree with this point, it is a fair one. I guess what I'm trying to get to is that people should complain about the PR criteria instead of claiming some sort of fanboying/bias on the part of the writers.
Also, I didn't say that soO was the strongest player. I said you could make the argument that he was. I agree he didn't look convincing in group stages but beating Stats and Serral (the other two best players) convincingly should be good arguments in his favor. Especially since Serral had like an 11-8 map score while soO had 25-13 map score and Stats had 24-8 map score. Really, if we're going off map score alone, Stats was clearly the scariest player in the tournament out of the three and Serral clearly had the weakest performance out of the 3. It's interesting to me that no one considered Stats as being the best player at the moment.
we've updated our criteria a bit in 2019 to focus more on the big picture than just the past calendar month
obviously not, then Stats or Serral would be number 1.
its worth keeping in mind that this ranking is the average of a couple different staff, so it is entirely possible that some of them put Serral as #1 or whatever. Just like whenever we do a community power rank no one agrees entirely with the list as it an average
On March 08 2019 04:00 pvsnp wrote: Inb4 "Maru wasn't the best after he got knocked out in the Ro8, but Serral is still the best even though he got knocked out in the Ro8."
On March 08 2019 13:45 Anc13nt wrote: I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results.That is why in BW they ranked EffOrt as number 1 after he defeated Flash. If we were just going off raw skill, the Power rankings would be too repetitive to be interesting. That doesn't mean it's wrong to always say Flash is the best, or similarly, Serral is still the best but I just think that Power rankings would be a lot less interesting if the only criteria was raw skill.
Also, I know there are good arguments for why Serral is the strongest but I think there are also good arguments for soO being the strongest player since he beat (convincingly too) Serral and Stats, who are the other two best players. If we can say that Serral was the best primarily based on his ZvZ and ZvP, then I think we should be allowed to say the same for soO (admittedly Serral had very few opportunities for ZvT but I think we can agree that Serral mainly fought Korean protoss/zerg in 2018).
I do agree that it feels regrettable, perhaps even unjust, that Serral was not number one in any power ranking but I think everyone knows he was clearly the best player in the world near the end of 2018 so there's some consolation in that.
Edit: I also agree with Maru's low placement. He hasn't impressed in the past few months. Lost to INnoVation in IEM qualifiers and after this IEM performance, I feel like putting him at 2nd or 3rd would be over-valuing his past results.
Sorry but you argument does not prove the conclusion you are trying to make.
"I agree with soO being #1 since I think Power Rank should be based mainly on a combination of present form and tournament results."
soO went 2-3 in groups stages barely advancing to the main stage on map score. If you think that's a "good result" I would rethink what you are trying to say. Bunny and Dear should have been players he could beat if he is truly "the best" player right now, even TY.
soO's other recent accomplishments include:
- going 0-4 in his gsl season 3 group, losing to Special and Keen. - a 3-4 placement in gsl season 1. (at the start of 2018). - not making it to blizzcon
writer is just a soO fanboy it seems, I don't see the hype.
I think we have different definition of what recent means evidently, since you are pulling results from a year ago. By recent, I was thinking of the current month or the past month (since Power ranks are often made on irregular monthly basis). By that metric, it's hard to argue soO isn't number one since he won the only "recent" tournament and his form is top 3 for sure. That said, you can say Serral deserves to be #1 since there hasn't been a PR in months so Blizzcon results should be accounted. Although I disagree with this point, it is a fair one. I guess what I'm trying to get to is that people should complain about the PR criteria instead of claiming some sort of fanboying/bias on the part of the writers.
Also, I didn't say that soO was the strongest player. I said you could make the argument that he was. I agree he didn't look convincing in group stages but beating Stats and Serral (the other two best players) convincingly should be good arguments in his favor. Especially since Serral had like an 11-8 map score while soO had 25-13 map score and Stats had 24-8 map score. Really, if we're going off map score alone, Stats was clearly the scariest player in the tournament out of the three and Serral clearly had the weakest performance out of the 3. It's interesting to me that no one considered Stats as being the best player at the moment.
remember when stats was destroying proleague and no one noticed him ?
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
On March 08 2019 08:59 Mahanaim wrote: I would still have put Serral on #1 and soO at #2 (for tradition), but hey, if you are the reigning champion of IEM Katowice, then you at least deserve that #1 spot for the time being! soO Jjang Nim fighting!
I guess, that s what the writers were thinking, it would have been blasphemy to place SoO second after all this, so it was either 3rd or 1st, and decided to go with first. I understand people who say he should be 3rd or even lower, because his run started with pretty bad losses, and then Serral and Stats kinda played sloppily as opposed to SoO pulling out some next level meta-shaping way to play SC2.
But as I said, im fine with him at first. If you would put Serral, people would lose their collective minds as he lost to SoO heads up. Cant put Stats because he s out of GSL and ultimately was beaten by SoO, despite his clean run till that point. Dark looks hot, but hasnt won anything, Maru looked bad.
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
1. Lmao you really think Serral knows (or cares) about the TL power rank?
2. In the unlikely event of 1, he can cry himself to sleep while hugging his Blizzcon trophy
On March 08 2019 08:59 Mahanaim wrote: I would still have put Serral on #1 and soO at #2 (for tradition), but hey, if you are the reigning champion of IEM Katowice, then you at least deserve that #1 spot for the time being! soO Jjang Nim fighting!
I guess, that s what the writers were thinking, it would have been blasphemy to place SoO second after all this, so it was either 3rd or 1st, and decided to go with first. I understand people who say he should be 3rd or even lower, because his run started with pretty bad losses, and then Serral and Stats kinda played sloppily as opposed to SoO pulling out some next level meta-shaping way to play SC2.
But as I said, im fine with him at first. If you would put Serral, people would lose their collective minds as he lost to SoO heads up. Cant put Stats because he s out of GSL and ultimately was beaten by SoO, despite his clean run till that point. Dark looks hot, but hasnt won anything, Maru looked bad.
So yeah, SoO first makes sense.
Those are some terrible reasons to place soO first. First of all this is supposed to be a power rank, if soO deserves to be second he's second--no blasphemy involved. And if head to head is that important to you, why is soO ahead of herO, TY, Dear or Bunny?
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
The fuck, dude? He got THE BEST PLAYER OF THE YEAR. Have you missed it or what? The last power rank for 2018(which I found) is the October one and Serral didn't anything as impressive as 3 consecutive Code S titles back then. Then there's the conclusion where Serral gets the best player.
He got player of the year, then there wasn't anything for 3 months, then he lost in the group to Innovation of all players and to top that off he lost in the RO8. At this moment spot #2 is just because he looked strong, but his momentum isn't the greatest, is it?
Currently soO is the reigning champion of IEM while the last Serral's success is the Blizzcon win 3 months ago. soO managed to beat Serral. soO managed to beat Innovation in the code S group while Serral lost to Innovation in his IEM group.
There's no clear indication that Serral at this moment is better than IEM champion. What kind of indication you want to use, 3 months old result from the previous season and previous balance patch? If we use Code S and IEM than soO IS better than Serral at this moment.
On March 08 2019 07:56 FrostedMiniWheats wrote: I mean, the Serral fanboys have been annoying, but there's no denying he still deserves #1. Even with how heavily IEM seems to be weighted here, Serral only barely lost to soO and looked much more convincing throughout. soO stumbled his way through up until he met Serral. Not to mention Serral just came off an extraordinary 2018, while soO was mostly irrelevant.
I love Gumiho as well, but Trap deserves to be above him.
Yup, serral could easily have won that series. and he's already beaten stats twice, so he easily could've won IEM. all the more reason to remove region lock. let him keep showing his dominance over the best in the world. i want moar soo vs serral. zvz went from gglord winfestor broodlord vs broodlord roro vs curious, to intense back and forth roach ravager insanity. so beautiful
It was so easy he easily ended the IEM with 2 losses and RO8 finish for the Finish. Sad story, really. So easy. Why he didn't do it if it's so easy?
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
We bullied Serral so much that he personally sat down with us at HSC to give us an exclusive interview. When does the cruelty stop? :O
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
We bullied Serral so much that he personally sat down with us at HSC to give us an exclusive interview. When does the cruelty stop? :O
I'd like to see Serral's face when he's told that those meanie TL writers are bullying him.
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
We bullied Serral so much that he personally sat down with us at HSC to give us an exclusive interview. When does the cruelty stop? :O
I'd like to see Serral's face when he's told that those meanie TL writers are bullying him.
I want to be bullied with the best player of the year too. Please, TL, make it happen. I can wait for December 2019, no worries, just remember
To my understanding, this is a ranking of current form, not class. Soo would be a lot lower in the list, if the latter was the case. As it stands, the list seems accurate.
On March 08 2019 08:59 Mahanaim wrote: I would still have put Serral on #1 and soO at #2 (for tradition), but hey, if you are the reigning champion of IEM Katowice, then you at least deserve that #1 spot for the time being! soO Jjang Nim fighting!
I guess, that s what the writers were thinking, it would have been blasphemy to place SoO second after all this, so it was either 3rd or 1st, and decided to go with first. I understand people who say he should be 3rd or even lower, because his run started with pretty bad losses, and then Serral and Stats kinda played sloppily as opposed to SoO pulling out some next level meta-shaping way to play SC2.
But as I said, im fine with him at first. If you would put Serral, people would lose their collective minds as he lost to SoO heads up. Cant put Stats because he s out of GSL and ultimately was beaten by SoO, despite his clean run till that point. Dark looks hot, but hasnt won anything, Maru looked bad.
So yeah, SoO first makes sense.
Those are some terrible reasons to place soO first. First of all this is supposed to be a power rank, if soO deserves to be second he's second--no blasphemy involved. And if head to head is that important to you, why is soO ahead of herO, TY, Dear or Bunny?
Well, you've been along for long enough, I should think, Power Ranks are always somewhat subjective and each writer has his own ideas how to weigh the results and performances.
I for one am glad that it's multiple writers doing the PR and coming to a consensus, and not just the whims of a designated person (like, remember Fakesteve's PR?). It's impossible to please everyone or to be 100% objective with so few tournaments going on.
"It's a testament to the Towel Terran's tenacity that he made the top ten this month." This should be: "'Tis a true testament to the Towel Terran's tenacity that he took to the top ten this time."
SoO on #1 is absurd. His group stage performance was quite mediocre, while Serral's was strong. When they played, he narrowly beat him. Take into account the massive strength and consistency of Serral in 2018 and this placement just doesn't work out. I get it why you did it though, kong story and all. Though it would have also been funny if he was #2 on the only ranking that matters anyways, lol.
On March 08 2019 17:38 SnowAngel wrote: To my understanding, this is a ranking of current form, not class. Soo would be a lot lower in the list, if the latter was the case. As it stands, the list seems accurate.
If it was about class nobody would be debating soO as number 1.
I think putting soO on the first place is rather extreme, going from not being listed in former rankings, to instantly #1, based on a single tournament. Of course IEM is an incredible tournament, but Serral and Stats have been way more conistent over a long amount of time. soO still has to prove, how strong he really is, in the rest of the year.
On March 08 2019 23:24 DevilDriver wrote: I think putting soO on the first place is rather extreme, going from not being listed in former rankings, to instantly #1, based on a single tournament. Of course IEM is an incredible tournament, but Serral and Stats have been way more conistent over a long amount of time. soO still has to prove, how strong he really is, in the rest of the year.
We had Code S groups and IEM. And that's all. There has to be a start and you can't look 3 or even more months back when you're discussing players current form. It's a start of the year, it has to be extreme in some way.
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
We bullied Serral so much that he personally sat down with us at HSC to give us an exclusive interview. When does the cruelty stop? :O
I'd like to see Serral's face when he's told that those meanie TL writers are bullying him.
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
We bullied Serral so much that he personally sat down with us at HSC to give us an exclusive interview. When does the cruelty stop? :O
I'd like to see Serral's face when he's told that those meanie TL writers are bullying him.
Serral bullies me every time we interview :'(
Serral is almost as much a bully to interviewer than 2013 Scarlett
I feel like people are over-hyping how soO was bad during the group stage. His overall score was 25-13 which is a lot better than Serral's score (11-8). The big picture was that soO looked really strong during the tournament.
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
The fuck, dude? He got THE BEST PLAYER OF THE YEAR. Have you missed it or what? The last power rank for 2018(which I found) is the October one and Serral didn't anything as impressive as 3 consecutive Code S titles back then. Then there's the conclusion where Serral gets the best player.
He got player of the year, then there wasn't anything for 3 months, then he lost in the group to Innovation of all players and to top that off he lost in the RO8. At this moment spot #2 is just because he looked strong, but his momentum isn't the greatest, is it?
Currently soO is the reigning champion of IEM while the last Serral's success is the Blizzcon win 3 months ago. soO managed to beat Serral. soO managed to beat Innovation in the code S group while Serral lost to Innovation in his IEM group.
There's no clear indication that Serral at this moment is better than IEM champion. What kind of indication you want to use, 3 months old result from the previous season and previous balance patch? If we use Code S and IEM than soO IS better than Serral at this moment.
On March 08 2019 07:56 FrostedMiniWheats wrote: I mean, the Serral fanboys have been annoying, but there's no denying he still deserves #1. Even with how heavily IEM seems to be weighted here, Serral only barely lost to soO and looked much more convincing throughout. soO stumbled his way through up until he met Serral. Not to mention Serral just came off an extraordinary 2018, while soO was mostly irrelevant.
I love Gumiho as well, but Trap deserves to be above him.
Yup, serral could easily have won that series. and he's already beaten stats twice, so he easily could've won IEM. all the more reason to remove region lock. let him keep showing his dominance over the best in the world. i want moar soo vs serral. zvz went from gglord winfestor broodlord vs broodlord roro vs curious, to intense back and forth roach ravager insanity. so beautiful
It was so easy he easily ended the IEM with 2 losses and RO8 finish for the Finish. Sad story, really. So easy. Why he didn't do it if it's so easy?
its easy in that it was a close match, it could easily have gone either way. So close that game 3 came down to a few handful of roaches and drones. that's why it was an amazing series. if serral had won, he would have easily 3-1 hero as well, and stats was already his punching bag
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
The fuck, dude? He got THE BEST PLAYER OF THE YEAR. Have you missed it or what? The last power rank for 2018(which I found) is the October one and Serral didn't anything as impressive as 3 consecutive Code S titles back then. Then there's the conclusion where Serral gets the best player.
He got player of the year, then there wasn't anything for 3 months, then he lost in the group to Innovation of all players and to top that off he lost in the RO8. At this moment spot #2 is just because he looked strong, but his momentum isn't the greatest, is it?
Currently soO is the reigning champion of IEM while the last Serral's success is the Blizzcon win 3 months ago. soO managed to beat Serral. soO managed to beat Innovation in the code S group while Serral lost to Innovation in his IEM group.
There's no clear indication that Serral at this moment is better than IEM champion. What kind of indication you want to use, 3 months old result from the previous season and previous balance patch? If we use Code S and IEM than soO IS better than Serral at this moment.
On March 08 2019 08:01 fishjie wrote:
On March 08 2019 07:56 FrostedMiniWheats wrote: I mean, the Serral fanboys have been annoying, but there's no denying he still deserves #1. Even with how heavily IEM seems to be weighted here, Serral only barely lost to soO and looked much more convincing throughout. soO stumbled his way through up until he met Serral. Not to mention Serral just came off an extraordinary 2018, while soO was mostly irrelevant.
I love Gumiho as well, but Trap deserves to be above him.
Yup, serral could easily have won that series. and he's already beaten stats twice, so he easily could've won IEM. all the more reason to remove region lock. let him keep showing his dominance over the best in the world. i want moar soo vs serral. zvz went from gglord winfestor broodlord vs broodlord roro vs curious, to intense back and forth roach ravager insanity. so beautiful
It was so easy he easily ended the IEM with 2 losses and RO8 finish for the Finish. Sad story, really. So easy. Why he didn't do it if it's so easy?
its easy in that it was a close match, it could easily have gone either way. So close that game 3 came down to a few handful of roaches and drones. that's why it was an amazing series. if serral had won, he would have easily 3-1 hero as well, and stats was already his punching bag
I always love when people talk about something that did not happened, even though it did not. So you cant really talk like it was a sure fire thing
Most important factor: recent results: The only recent results from serious competition are a couple GSL and WCS Winter matches from the lower stages and IEM. Those are the main criteria from which a ranking should be built at first.
Then, afterwards, the ranking can be shifted due to lesser factors. Due to the consistency factor Serral still got ranked 2nd and Maru still 5th. One could've argued for Stats being 2nd due to his almost flawless tournament run up to the finals. If Maru's phenomenal feat of last year wouldn't have been a factor here, then herO would've been ranked 5th instead. Also TY being 7th is only to his results of 2018 considering his mediocre performance at IEM (barely getting out of his group, getting stomped by Solar). If one wants to diminish soOs IEM achievement as a sufficient factor for being ranked first here, because of consistency and match record at the tournament: then Stats should be ranked first based on the same criteria. This was his 5th finals appearance in a premier tournament since early 2018 and he had the best map record at IEM.
On March 09 2019 01:20 Anc13nt wrote: I feel like people are over-hyping how soO was bad during the group stage. His overall score was 25-13 which is a lot better than Serral's score (11-8). The big picture was that soO looked really strong during the tournament.
the vast majority of SC2 fans talking about "form" and whether players "look bad" in a game have no clue what they're even saying and wouldn't be able to distinguish top pros from B tier pros with names off
On March 09 2019 01:02 youngjiddle wrote: Can't wait to watch soO lose his group tonight in GSL, it will be real funny great job writers
It wouldn't affect soO - Serral relation in this I believe as Serral lost and soO won the head to head and they had similar results in groups while soO was in a code S group.
On March 09 2019 01:02 youngjiddle wrote: Can't wait to watch soO lose his group tonight in GSL, it will be real funny great job writers
It wouldn't affect soO - Serral relation in this I believe as Serral lost and soO won the head to head and they had similar results in groups while soO was in a code S group.
Well soO can't really be number one if he lose tonight, you probably have to assume his IEM was more an anomaly than anything else and pull him back a bit. I get that Serral isn't in code S but if soO isn't the number 1 someone gotta be it. Anyway dosen't really matter no point talking about another power rank until the end of this season (WCSW-GSL-WESG)
On March 09 2019 01:20 Anc13nt wrote: I feel like people are over-hyping how soO was bad during the group stage. His overall score was 25-13 which is a lot better than Serral's score (11-8). The big picture was that soO looked really strong during the tournament.
the vast majority of SC2 fans talking about "form" and whether players "look bad" in a game have no clue what they're even saying and wouldn't be able to distinguish top pros from B tier pros with names off
I'm probably one of those people lol. I mainly play BW and have not played SC2 very much.
writers now defensive they bring up their Serral interview they did as some kind of defense that they give everyone their attention and have not historically been Korean biased (and still are).
"Serral wouldn't care where TL rates him"
It's not really about Serral or people who think Serral should be #1. It's more about being dishonest and sharing misinformation for those who aren't hardcore fans. They see this and think soO is the best player in the world right now, which probably isn't the truth.
On March 09 2019 01:20 Anc13nt wrote: I feel like people are over-hyping how soO was bad during the group stage. His overall score was 25-13 which is a lot better than Serral's score (11-8). The big picture was that soO looked really strong during the tournament.
the vast majority of SC2 fans talking about "form" and whether players "look bad" in a game have no clue what they're even saying and wouldn't be able to distinguish top pros from B tier pros with names off
To be honest, I think almost no one can except for maybe pros; If you would have a test, where some random top 50gm played each other, and the usual casters would have to decide if they are TOP 10 or TOP 50 I guess that you would have quiet a high failure rate.
On March 09 2019 01:20 Anc13nt wrote: I feel like people are over-hyping how soO was bad during the group stage. His overall score was 25-13 which is a lot better than Serral's score (11-8). The big picture was that soO looked really strong during the tournament.
the vast majority of SC2 fans talking about "form" and whether players "look bad" in a game have no clue what they're even saying and wouldn't be able to distinguish top pros from B tier pros with names off
To be honest, I think almost no one can except for maybe pros; If you would have a test, where some random top 50gm played each other, and the usual casters would have to decide if they are TOP 10 or TOP 50 I guess that you would have quiet a high failure rate.
Yeah I agree. Most of the time I can't tell if they're playing above/below average unless they are playing extremely well or unsually bad.
On March 09 2019 13:03 youngjiddle wrote: writers now defensive they bring up their Serral interview they did as some kind of defense that they give everyone their attention and have not historically been Korean biased (and still are).
"Serral wouldn't care where TL rates him"
It's not really about Serral or people who think Serral should be #1. It's more about being dishonest and sharing misinformation for those who aren't hardcore fans. They see this and think soO is the best player in the world right now, which probably isn't the truth.
At this point, I have to ask: is this your first time looking at a TL power rank? If so, hi and welcome! It's great that you care about the game and your favourite players, but it would be nice if you could recognise that you simply have an opinion that differs from the TL writers and they're probably not murdering your family with their opinions, so you can relax on that front.
If not: Hey, shape up! You should know the drill by now. Be cool. Your post comes across as flamey, and I think it totally sucks.
On March 09 2019 13:03 youngjiddle wrote: writers now defensive they bring up their Serral interview they did as some kind of defense that they give everyone their attention and have not historically been Korean biased (and still are).
"Serral wouldn't care where TL rates him"
It's not really about Serral or people who think Serral should be #1. It's more about being dishonest and sharing misinformation for those who aren't hardcore fans. They see this and think soO is the best player in the world right now, which probably isn't the truth.
Bringing up the interview was not defensive, it simply served to disregard the delusional comment about us "bullying" Serral. As if he cares about what rank he is on the PR and felt bullied by that.
I'll leave it at that - obviously since we're so biased it has no use to discuss anything anyways.
Stats could have been ahead of Serral imo considering his performance in late zvt was awful, but putting soO first is ridiculous. And he got eliminated from his group as expected... TL writing quality is pretty poor nowadays, too bad it's the main community site for sc2 :/
On March 09 2019 13:03 youngjiddle wrote: writers now defensive they bring up their Serral interview they did as some kind of defense that they give everyone their attention and have not historically been Korean biased (and still are).
"Serral wouldn't care where TL rates him"
It's not really about Serral or people who think Serral should be #1. It's more about being dishonest and sharing misinformation for those who aren't hardcore fans. They see this and think soO is the best player in the world right now, which probably isn't the truth.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the writers were all trolls hired by the Korean government to upset the increasingly powerful western SC2 community. The misinformation being spread in this opinion piece is absurd. We, as a community, must take action. Why are we giving these writers any attention?
On March 08 2019 07:22 Dave4 wrote: [Blah blah blah blah]
If it's of any solace to you, we gave Serral the extremely prestigious player of the year award
1. Please don't edit my text in an attempt to insult me, I'm pretty sure that's not consistent with the high standards of TL communication. 2. It's not about me, it's about the way TL writers appear to bully Serral via underpaying and mocking his achievements in this way.
We bullied Serral so much that he personally sat down with us at HSC to give us an exclusive interview. When does the cruelty stop? :O
I'd like to see Serral's face when he's told that those meanie TL writers are bullying him.
What you didn't see in the interview is the gun pointed at him from behind the camera. "Act like you've got emotions" we told him. "We ranked you second in our PR all year, behind a guy who only wins with proxies. How's that taste?" That's how you get them talking. That and the gun, of course.
On March 09 2019 19:54 stilt wrote: Stats could have been ahead of Serral imo considering his performance in late zvt was awful, but putting soO first is ridiculous. And he got eliminated from his group as expected... TL writing quality is pretty poor nowadays, too bad it's the main community site for sc2 :/
They didn't do anything wrong, except they could have waited just a few days until Group A and D is over...
Everyone's complaining but honestly who else was supposed to be #1? Stats went out in the GSL ro32, soO did better than him in both GSL and IEM. Serral's only real event this year was katowice and soO did much better than him there. Maru is in a similar position to Serral. There isn't really a case for Dark either.
Really whoever won Katowice was probably gonna get #1. There's not really any other way of doing it until more events go on.
My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right, here.
1 - serral 2 - stats 3 - maru 4 - soo 5 - dark 6 - TY
1 tournament win in which you barely edge out the #1 and #3 head to head in a big 1 time run doesn't make you the new number 1. Not even close imo. To me, a power ranking indicates who is the currently biggest favorite if blizzcon would happen now. You really think it's soO? Serral and Stats are the guys to beat. I can see soo being #3.
€: did this list before seeing GSL group results of today. just proves my point.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
I am not saying TL made a humorous PR for HSC in order to avoid putting Serral as first; it just happened, right when Serral would have been #1 without any doubt. As for why people are upset, it would be another recognition of Serral's status of best player in the world, it doesn't feel right to always see him at #2.
On March 09 2019 22:23 BlazingGlory wrote: Ok if we put soO in first just cause nothing else actually happened last three months, why not arrange the list the same as IEM? Stats 2nd, etc etc.
Because the PR does consider consitency and map score as a valuable factor. But just not as much as the "Serral for 1rst"-fraction wants to.
On March 09 2019 22:10 Xain0n wrote: the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know)
Even TL can be wrong. Maru had a longer time of domination than Serral (6 months vs 4 months) facing tougher competition more often.
On March 09 2019 22:32 Xain0n wrote: People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it
Serral did not totally deserve being figured #1 at the times the serious PRs were made. Before Blizzcon Maru's feat of 3 GSLs in a row was just too big to not rank him first. Now Serral's great sucess of last year is too long ago to give it enough impact for this PR. Bad luck.
On March 09 2019 22:23 BlazingGlory wrote: Ok if we put soO in first just cause nothing else actually happened last three months, why not arrange the list the same as IEM? Stats 2nd, etc etc.
Because the PR does consider consitency and map score as a valuable factor. But just not as much as the "Serral for 1rst"-fraction wants to.
On March 09 2019 22:32 Xain0n wrote: People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it
Serral did not totally deserve being figured #1 at the times the serious PRs were made. Before Blizzcon Maru's feat of 3 GSLs in a row was just too big to not rank him first. Now Serral's great sucess of last year is too long ago to give it enough impact for this PR. Bad luck.
My 2 cents is that if someone other than soO who was not part of the previous top 10 would have won(let's say Solar or Bunny), he would not be listed as #1 here; soO's breaking his Kong curse had a huge impact, bigger than the "merely" impressive IEM victory.
I said very clearly that HSC's PR was the one that had to feature Serral as #1.
As for Serral being crowned best player in 2018, my opinion is well known: he had a better year than Maru by a slight yet noticeable margin and TL rightgeously recognized that was the case. Maru, despite facing harder competition on average(the key here is how harder it was, that's where an objective approach dissipates), lost too often at the weekenders and too hard in the biggest tournament of the year to retain the throne.
Isn't the problem really that the rank was released immediately after a big tournament with all the best players there? If it is a rank of current strength of the players, how can you not put the champion first?
TL should release their ranks before big tournaments/finals instead of after. Ofc they will still find a way to screw it up tho
On March 10 2019 00:23 terribleplayer1 wrote: You people do realize that Serral did considerably better vs BETTER Koreans than Maru did last year right? In terms of win%.
This powerrank was ridiculous, if soO dominated the tournament maybe you put him as #1, but he played risky, lost a bunch, and happened to win.
You do realize Maru playing in Korea resulted in him playing them more often thus Serrals numbers may be just an accident because low number of games? Statistics need large pool of games. And somehow people disregard THE WHOLE year, e.g. the epic WESG where Serral lost to Maru
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
On March 10 2019 00:23 terribleplayer1 wrote: You people do realize that Serral did considerably better vs BETTER Koreans than Maru did last year right? In terms of win%.
This powerrank was ridiculous, if soO dominated the tournament maybe you put him as #1, but he played risky, lost a bunch, and happened to win.
You do realize Maru playing in Korea resulted in him playing them more often thus Serrals numbers may be just an accident because low number of games? Statistics need large pool of games. And somehow people disregard THE WHOLE year, e.g. the epic WESG where Serral lost to Maru
Edit> Wrong tourney
Statistics would need way more games than the amount Maru played, as well; beating so many top koreans can't be an accident, no one could do it without having enough skill.
The whole year is weighted, Serral still placed third in that tounrament.
On March 10 2019 00:26 sneakyfox wrote: Isn't the problem really that the rank was released immediately after a big tournament with all the best players there? If it is a rank of current strength of the players, how can you not put the champion first?
TL should release their ranks before big tournaments/finals instead of after. Ofc they will still find a way to screw it up tho
If they made it before the event, the PR would've been almost pure speculation. The PR served it's purpose very well: to stir up discussion
On March 10 2019 00:23 terribleplayer1 wrote: You people do realize that Serral did considerably better vs BETTER Koreans than Maru did last year right? In terms of win%.
That's just plainly wrong. Maru had more matches vs top Koreans in 2018. In his period of dominance he only lost two matches. Serral lost no match at all in his period of dominance but played fewer matches vs top Koreans. So Serral had no considerably but a slightly better matchscore than Maru. And he did not face more better Koreans.
On March 09 2019 23:50 Xain0n wrote:[Maru] lost too often at the weekenders and too hard in the biggest tournament of the year to retain the throne.
Yes, he could not retain the throne of being the current best player in the world which clearly was Serral since his Blizzcon win. But Maru - in his period of dominance - only lost twice at weekenders. The "biggest tournament of the year" (which was not the hardest - just one of the hardest) wasn't in Maru's period of dominance anymore. Just like Serral's defeats in early 2018 weren't in his period of dominance already (which began at GSL vs the World).
On March 09 2019 23:50 Xain0n wrote: My 2 cents is that if someone other than soO who was not part of the previous top 10 would have won(let's say Solar or Bunny), he would not be listed as #1 here; soO's breaking his Kong curse had a huge impact, bigger than the "merely" impressive IEM victory.
That's probably a factor. But Bunny did not achieve anything in 2018 (no GSL Ro16), Solar is another story of course (which is why I think Solar could've been ranked first, too, if he won IEM). But there are other factors: 1) soO did win vs Serral, which would have elevated almost everyone quite a bit higher. 2) soO wasn't irrelevant in 2018 (he made it to GSL Ro8 and Ro16 and took Maru to the 5th game in GSL vs the World) in the sense of that he never was totally counted out as a serious contender. 3) soO being known for his long time consistency over many years now can be given the benefit of the doubt on the question, if he is really good right now or if his victory was just a fluke. It was like that with Maru and also with Life back then: they were considered the best when they won a premier tournament after a long time without winning anything because they were known to not just fall down in form immediately after. So yes: if a player has a legacy, he is more likely to get ranked even higher when he wins something big again.
No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
That statistic is bound to be favorable for Serral. He hardly competed against Koreans, a total of 28 matches. Maru has more than double the matches and competed in a wider variety of tournaments. Maru basically played all of the Koreans Serral played, more times than Serral did, but his average gained nothing from it because he also played a lot of other people.
Not to mention that the rating you're referring to is based on Aligulac ranking. Playing against Maru boosts Serral's rating because Maru's the highest ranking Korean, but it does nothing for Maru, who also can't play against himself. And having that whole stat based around Aligulac rankings makes it questionable at best to begin with, because those rankings suffer from some long standing accuracy issues (most notably Stats can't make it into Aligulac's top 10 no matter how many semifinals he reaches).
>That statistic is bound to be favorable for Serral.
No, not really. The only valid point is Maru can't play himself, but that's minor, the difference in winrate was pretty big
Maru is the clear underdog vs a couple of players (stats,sOs,Innovation), Serral is the underdog vs hmm soO?
During 2018 maru's play was a lot more risky, you can argue it's because he plays Terran and I'd actually agree with you, anyhow this isn't about Serral vs Maru, it's just about how good Serral's 2018 was.
But apparently, this power rank was about 2019 only, which makes this data irrelevant.
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
Ok, let me specify: Marus winrate vs top Koreans in offline matches wasn't considerably worse. Nor did Serral face better Koreans more often than Maru.
Ok, to be transparent, here are my criteria:
1) Only offline matches which are part of real competition are taken into account. Online matches always have the flaw of not being pretigeous (and therefore not being taken as serious) and players hiding their best strats. Showmatches also aren't taken as serious quite often. This is why I'll exclude Serral's Bo1-win vs Maru in the GSL vs The World team showmatch. Also offline qualifiers which aren't streamed are to be excluded. They often take place in unfavorable times, vs unknown opponents and the only goal is to qualify, not to show your best starcraft.
2) To compare Serral's and Maru's dominance in 2018, we'll first have to determine their respective period of dominance: Maru: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL Season 1 (march 10th). It ended with his 3rd consecutive GSL championship win vs TY (september 15th) (his streak could also include his win vs Rogue at GSL Supertournament 2, but sinc he lost vs sOs in the same tournament two days later, it's fair to exclude this win). This period of domincance lasted over 6 months in which Maru only lost 2 offline matches.
Serral: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL vs The World (August 4th). It ended with his victory at Homestory Cup vs Innovation (November 25th). (One could argue, if it is fair that Serrals period of dominance was artificially ended by the end of competition in the end of 2018. But we only can deal with data we have, not with data that might have been if things had been different. Serral's performance at IEM showed that he - while still being a top player - is not as dominant anymore). This period of dominance lasted over 4 months in which Serral incredibly lost no offline match at all.
3) Now we have to count the top players they won against, in order to value their win streaks: Maru: GSL S1 Ro8: sOs, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players WESG: Nerchio, Scarlett, Showtime, Reynor, Serral, Dark -> 2 (?) top players GSL Super Tournament 1: soO -> 1 top player GSL S2: Zanster, Dear, Patience, Solar, Rogue, Classic, Zest -> 5 top players GSL vs The World: soO, Showtime -> 1 top player GSL S3: Forte, Leenock, Neeb, Reynor, Gumiho, Zest, TY -> 4 top players ----> This equals 15 top players
Serral: GSL Super Tournament 1: Innovation, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players Blizzcon: sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue, Stats -> 5 top players Homestory Cup XVIII: Bly, soO, Trap, Bunny, Hellraiser, souL, Taeja, uThermal, Bunny, Innovation -> 2 top players ----> This equals 10 top players
One probably could argue about, which opponents should be counted as "top players", but this goes for both Maru and Serral. So if you include top WCS players and some more Koreans, then the winrates would rise for both.
So I conclude again: In 2018 Maru was dominant for a longer period of time in which he faced tougher competition more often than Serral did in his shorter period of dominance.
On March 10 2019 04:52 terribleplayer1 wrote: TrashPanda, Lillekanin avg korean opponent is 304, Serral's is 19, Maru's is 22 so obviously no.
Thats why I said, following his logic. I just ignored the stat which I didn't care for (opponent rank, as opposed to his min number of games). Statistics get more accurate the bigger their database is, so what do you guess would happen to Serral if we up the min number of matches to, let's say 50, and then compare him to Maru?
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
Ok, let me specify: Marus winrate vs top Koreans in offline matches wasn't considerably worse. Nor did Serral face better Koreans more often than Maru.
Ok, to be transparent, here are my criteria:
1) Only offline matches which are part of real competition are taken into account. Online matches always have the flaw of not being pretigeous (and therefore not being taken as serious) and players hiding their best strats. Showmatches also aren't taken as serious quite often. This is why I'll exclude Serral's Bo1-win vs Maru in the GSL vs The World team showmatch. Also offline qualifiers which aren't streamed are to be excluded. They often take place in unfavorable times, vs unknown opponents and the only goal is to qualify, not to show your best starcraft.
2) To compare Serral's and Maru's dominance in 2018, we'll first have to determine their respective period of dominance: Maru: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL Season 1 (march 10th). It ended with his 3rd consecutive GSL championship win vs TY (september 15th) (his streak could also include his win vs Rogue at GSL Supertournament 2, but sinc he lost vs sOs in the same tournament two days later, it's fair to exclude this win). This period of domincance lasted over 6 months in which Maru only lost 2 offline matches.
Serral: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL vs The World (August 4th). It ended with his victory at Homestory Cup vs Innovation (November 25th). (One could argue, if it is fair that Serrals period of dominance was artificially ended by the end of competition in the end of 2018. But we only can deal with data we have, not with data that might have been if things had been different. Serral's performance at IEM showed that he - while still being a top player - is not as dominant anymore). This period of dominance lasted over 4 months in which Serral incredibly lost no offline match at all.
3) Now we have to count the top players they won against, in order to value their win streaks: Maru: GSL S1 Ro8: sOs, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players WESG: Nerchio, Scarlett, Showtime, Reynor, Serral, Dark -> 2 (?) top players GSL Super Tournament 1: soO -> 1 top player GSL S2: Zanster, Dear, Patience, Solar, Rogue, Classic, Zest -> 5 top players GSL vs The World: soO, Showtime -> 1 top player GSL S3: Forte, Leenock, Neeb, Reynor, Gumiho, Zest, TY -> 4 top players ----> This equals 15 top players
Serral: GSL Super Tournament 1: Innovation, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players Blizzcon: sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue, Stats -> 5 top players Homestory Cup XVIII: Bly, soO, Trap, Bunny, Hellraiser, souL, Taeja, uThermal, Bunny, Innovation -> 2 top players ----> This equals 10 top players
One probably could argue about, which opponents should be counted as "top players", but this goes for both Maru and Serral. So if you include top WCS players and some more Koreans, then the winrates would rise for both.
So I conclude again: In 2018 Maru was dominant for a longer period of time in which he faced tougher competition more often than Serral did in his shorter period of dominance.
Completely ignoring WCS terribly warps the point of view. I find confusing that Maru's period of dominance doesn't end when Serral's begins; if we speak of regional dominance, Serral's started in January.
I'd like to point out Serral won all of the tournaments with top koreans he entered during his period of dominance whereas Maru lost two during his.
Moreover, Serral's dominance ended in 2018 with the year itself. By your own method we can't be still sure that his dominance has ended in 2019; Maru's losses didn't put an end to his, why Serral's would? WESG next week will tell us more, at the moment it's safe to say Serral's domination might have have ended last Saturday.
Rogue that is not in the top 10 beating rank1, 2 times. Was clear that this ranking does not represent the POWER = the strenght of the players if you make your ranking 80 % bases on the last tournament, exactly like the BW powerrank where flash is not rank 1.
There is just an easy way to make an accurate power rank, Start again an elo database. Another way would be taking the WCS points ranking from the last 1 year, giving the GSL 1, and 2 season and GSl vs the world a 50 % weighting, and GSL 3,World finals and kattowice 100 %. Heres the WCS points ranking. Give Serral 10 k points since we know that hes better than classic 1. Maru 14250 2. Serral 10 000 Classic 7675 Stats 6825 Zest 6275 Rogue 6150 Dark 5475 sOs 4325
the new adjusted ranking with GSL vs the world, World finals and kattowice would look like.
1. Serral (1 Championship GSL vs the world, World final champions Ro8 Kattowice) 2. Maru ( Ro4, Ro8 and Ro24 outisde GSL) 3. Stats (3 Times Runner up outside GSL) 4. Dark (Ro4 kattowice, Ro8 World finals) 5. Rogue (Ro4 Worldfinals) 6. Zest (Ro4 Kattowicie) 7. Soo (Moves from 12 to 7 for winning 1 championshipt, spot 4-7 are all close) 8. TY 9. SOS 10. Classic
On March 09 2019 01:02 youngjiddle wrote: Can't wait to watch soO lose his group tonight in GSL, it will be real funny great job writers
quoting my pre GSL comment.
On March 10 2019 08:41 BisuDagger wrote: If Gumiho won IEM would that have put him at #1. If the answer from the writers is no, then soO has definitely been misranked.
On March 10 2019 04:52 terribleplayer1 wrote: TrashPanda, Lillekanin avg korean opponent is 304, Serral's is 19, Maru's is 22 so obviously no.
Thats why I said, following his logic. I just ignored the stat which I didn't care for (opponent rank, as opposed to his min number of games). Statistics get more accurate the bigger their database is, so what do you guess would happen to Serral if we up the min number of matches to, let's say 50, and then compare him to Maru?
Yes, maybe Serral's winrate goes above 90%.
This would make a bit of sense if Serral had 3 matches, not 28 matches, these are matches not maps as well, your argument is basically "Serral got lucky" which is ridiculous.
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
Ok, let me specify: Marus winrate vs top Koreans in offline matches wasn't considerably worse. Nor did Serral face better Koreans more often than Maru.
Ok, to be transparent, here are my criteria:
1) Only offline matches which are part of real competition are taken into account. Online matches always have the flaw of not being pretigeous (and therefore not being taken as serious) and players hiding their best strats. Showmatches also aren't taken as serious quite often. This is why I'll exclude Serral's Bo1-win vs Maru in the GSL vs The World team showmatch. Also offline qualifiers which aren't streamed are to be excluded. They often take place in unfavorable times, vs unknown opponents and the only goal is to qualify, not to show your best starcraft.
2) To compare Serral's and Maru's dominance in 2018, we'll first have to determine their respective period of dominance: Maru: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL Season 1 (march 10th). It ended with his 3rd consecutive GSL championship win vs TY (september 15th) (his streak could also include his win vs Rogue at GSL Supertournament 2, but sinc he lost vs sOs in the same tournament two days later, it's fair to exclude this win). This period of domincance lasted over 6 months in which Maru only lost 2 offline matches.
Serral: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL vs The World (August 4th). It ended with his victory at Homestory Cup vs Innovation (November 25th). (One could argue, if it is fair that Serrals period of dominance was artificially ended by the end of competition in the end of 2018. But we only can deal with data we have, not with data that might have been if things had been different. Serral's performance at IEM showed that he - while still being a top player - is not as dominant anymore). This period of dominance lasted over 4 months in which Serral incredibly lost no offline match at all.
3) Now we have to count the top players they won against, in order to value their win streaks: Maru: GSL S1 Ro8: sOs, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players WESG: Nerchio, Scarlett, Showtime, Reynor, Serral, Dark -> 2 (?) top players GSL Super Tournament 1: soO -> 1 top player GSL S2: Zanster, Dear, Patience, Solar, Rogue, Classic, Zest -> 5 top players GSL vs The World: soO, Showtime -> 1 top player GSL S3: Forte, Leenock, Neeb, Reynor, Gumiho, Zest, TY -> 4 top players ----> This equals 15 top players
Serral: GSL Super Tournament 1: Innovation, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players Blizzcon: sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue, Stats -> 5 top players Homestory Cup XVIII: Bly, soO, Trap, Bunny, Hellraiser, souL, Taeja, uThermal, Bunny, Innovation -> 2 top players ----> This equals 10 top players
One probably could argue about, which opponents should be counted as "top players", but this goes for both Maru and Serral. So if you include top WCS players and some more Koreans, then the winrates would rise for both.
So I conclude again: In 2018 Maru was dominant for a longer period of time in which he faced tougher competition more often than Serral did in his shorter period of dominance.
You conveniently left out how Serral won over Rogue, Impact, Neeb, Zest and Trap before he lost vs Classic at IEM, yet you were quick to note how Maru gloriously defeated the likes of Solar and soO (who accomplished nothing in 2018)
And sure if WCS doesnt count then one can argue all sorts of thing. But it does count. The very least you would need to take into considerations his win against foreigners who made it into GSL ro16 or above. So if you add the IEM wins and the WCS wins over GSL participants, Serral passed Maru by your own absurd and subjective criteria. Serral went undefeated for a very long time, while Maru's 3 GSL and one LAN win came with interruptions when he was knocked out in the big LAN's including Blizzcon.
If you just cherry-pick the data, then sure you can make all kind of stats, and prove all kinds of points. Here let me show you: Serral won 7 out of the 8 big tournaments he entered in 2018, that's 87,5%, and it does include the World champion-ship Maru won 4 of the 7 big tournaments he entered, that's 57% and does not include the World champion-ship
Serral's performance is 20+% better
OR Serral won 6 big tournaments in a row. Maru won 2 in a row. Serral's performance is 200% better
The way I see it, Serral haters have 2 main arguments: 1. he didnt participate in normal GSL seasons, cuz surely he couldnt have won there. Which I find to be a lame ass argument, cuz it cannot be proved/ disproved, and other, less accomplished foreigners could do well in GSL. 2. He didnt win at IEM at the start of the year. Which i again find a lame ass argument, since nobody was calling him best player of the world in february, and it was a good showing even there, and straight up wins for the rest of the year.
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
Ok, let me specify: Marus winrate vs top Koreans in offline matches wasn't considerably worse. Nor did Serral face better Koreans more often than Maru.
Ok, to be transparent, here are my criteria:
1) Only offline matches which are part of real competition are taken into account. Online matches always have the flaw of not being pretigeous (and therefore not being taken as serious) and players hiding their best strats. Showmatches also aren't taken as serious quite often. This is why I'll exclude Serral's Bo1-win vs Maru in the GSL vs The World team showmatch. Also offline qualifiers which aren't streamed are to be excluded. They often take place in unfavorable times, vs unknown opponents and the only goal is to qualify, not to show your best starcraft.
2) To compare Serral's and Maru's dominance in 2018, we'll first have to determine their respective period of dominance: Maru: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL Season 1 (march 10th). It ended with his 3rd consecutive GSL championship win vs TY (september 15th) (his streak could also include his win vs Rogue at GSL Supertournament 2, but sinc he lost vs sOs in the same tournament two days later, it's fair to exclude this win). This period of domincance lasted over 6 months in which Maru only lost 2 offline matches.
Serral: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL vs The World (August 4th). It ended with his victory at Homestory Cup vs Innovation (November 25th). (One could argue, if it is fair that Serrals period of dominance was artificially ended by the end of competition in the end of 2018. But we only can deal with data we have, not with data that might have been if things had been different. Serral's performance at IEM showed that he - while still being a top player - is not as dominant anymore). This period of dominance lasted over 4 months in which Serral incredibly lost no offline match at all.
3) Now we have to count the top players they won against, in order to value their win streaks: Maru: GSL S1 Ro8: sOs, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players WESG: Nerchio, Scarlett, Showtime, Reynor, Serral, Dark -> 2 (?) top players GSL Super Tournament 1: soO -> 1 top player GSL S2: Zanster, Dear, Patience, Solar, Rogue, Classic, Zest -> 5 top players GSL vs The World: soO, Showtime -> 1 top player GSL S3: Forte, Leenock, Neeb, Reynor, Gumiho, Zest, TY -> 4 top players ----> This equals 15 top players
Serral: GSL Super Tournament 1: Innovation, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players Blizzcon: sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue, Stats -> 5 top players Homestory Cup XVIII: Bly, soO, Trap, Bunny, Hellraiser, souL, Taeja, uThermal, Bunny, Innovation -> 2 top players ----> This equals 10 top players
One probably could argue about, which opponents should be counted as "top players", but this goes for both Maru and Serral. So if you include top WCS players and some more Koreans, then the winrates would rise for both.
So I conclude again: In 2018 Maru was dominant for a longer period of time in which he faced tougher competition more often than Serral did in his shorter period of dominance.
Completely ignoring WCS terribly warps the point of view. I find confusing that Maru's period of dominance doesn't end when Serral's begins; if we speak of regional dominance, Serral's started in January.
I'd like to point out Serral won all of the tournaments with top koreans he entered during his period of dominance whereas Maru lost two during his.
Moreover, Serral's dominance ended in 2018 with the year itself. By your own method we can't be still sure that his dominance has ended in 2019; Maru's losses didn't put an end to his, why Serral's would? WESG next week will tell us more, at the moment it's safe to say Serral's domination might have have ended last Saturday.
I'm not completely ignoring WCS, but I can see, that this impression can arise. As I said, one could include Serral's wins vs top Foreigners in this equation, but then one would've to include Maru's wins vs lesser Koreans and top Foreigners, too. That WCS isn't nearly as tough as GSL should be proven now with Blizzcon, Homestory Cup XVIII and IEM demonstrating the utter dominance of the Korean scene with some rare exceptions from the foreign scene.
Also I still think one can only rightfully speak of the beginning of Serral's dominance with GSL vs The World. This was the first time we undoubtedly knew that Serral was on the very top even vs toughest competition. So there would only be WCS Montreal to be included in his period of dominance.
That we can't be sure that Serral's period of dominance has clearly ended is true. But this doesn't tell very much about 2018. So, we can credit Serral with an additional month (december) of dominance, because he was the undisputed best when the last competition in november took place. Then his period of dominance in 2018 still will be shorter than Maru's without adding any wins vs top competition. If Serral goes on to win WCS and WESG, his overall period of dominance will have to be seen as greater than Maru's, of course.
What is also a (minor) factor: Serral skill is still in "only" tested in weekender tournaments so far (with blizzcon being something weird in between). He wasn't challenged with high preparation matches of a league that goes over multiple weeks. With that I'm not saying that weekenders are less valuable. But while Maru has competed in both formats, excelling in the league format an being great to solid in weekenders, Serral only has competed in weekenders. So we have a less comprehensive impression of Serral's skill. This really is a minor factor. But as close as the race for "the best in 2018" is between Serral and Maru, it adds an additional (small) point in favor of Maru.
That Maru didn't win two of the tournaments with top Koreans in it is true. But Maru also played two more than Serral. The extension of observed time for Serral with IEM now shows us that he isn't winning everything either.
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
Ok, let me specify: Marus winrate vs top Koreans in offline matches wasn't considerably worse. Nor did Serral face better Koreans more often than Maru.
Ok, to be transparent, here are my criteria:
1) Only offline matches which are part of real competition are taken into account. Online matches always have the flaw of not being pretigeous (and therefore not being taken as serious) and players hiding their best strats. Showmatches also aren't taken as serious quite often. This is why I'll exclude Serral's Bo1-win vs Maru in the GSL vs The World team showmatch. Also offline qualifiers which aren't streamed are to be excluded. They often take place in unfavorable times, vs unknown opponents and the only goal is to qualify, not to show your best starcraft.
2) To compare Serral's and Maru's dominance in 2018, we'll first have to determine their respective period of dominance: Maru: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL Season 1 (march 10th). It ended with his 3rd consecutive GSL championship win vs TY (september 15th) (his streak could also include his win vs Rogue at GSL Supertournament 2, but sinc he lost vs sOs in the same tournament two days later, it's fair to exclude this win). This period of domincance lasted over 6 months in which Maru only lost 2 offline matches.
Serral: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL vs The World (August 4th). It ended with his victory at Homestory Cup vs Innovation (November 25th). (One could argue, if it is fair that Serrals period of dominance was artificially ended by the end of competition in the end of 2018. But we only can deal with data we have, not with data that might have been if things had been different. Serral's performance at IEM showed that he - while still being a top player - is not as dominant anymore). This period of dominance lasted over 4 months in which Serral incredibly lost no offline match at all.
3) Now we have to count the top players they won against, in order to value their win streaks: Maru: GSL S1 Ro8: sOs, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players WESG: Nerchio, Scarlett, Showtime, Reynor, Serral, Dark -> 2 (?) top players GSL Super Tournament 1: soO -> 1 top player GSL S2: Zanster, Dear, Patience, Solar, Rogue, Classic, Zest -> 5 top players GSL vs The World: soO, Showtime -> 1 top player GSL S3: Forte, Leenock, Neeb, Reynor, Gumiho, Zest, TY -> 4 top players ----> This equals 15 top players
Serral: GSL Super Tournament 1: Innovation, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players Blizzcon: sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue, Stats -> 5 top players Homestory Cup XVIII: Bly, soO, Trap, Bunny, Hellraiser, souL, Taeja, uThermal, Bunny, Innovation -> 2 top players ----> This equals 10 top players
One probably could argue about, which opponents should be counted as "top players", but this goes for both Maru and Serral. So if you include top WCS players and some more Koreans, then the winrates would rise for both.
So I conclude again: In 2018 Maru was dominant for a longer period of time in which he faced tougher competition more often than Serral did in his shorter period of dominance.
You conveniently left out how Serral won over Rogue, Impact, Neeb, Zest and Trap before he lost vs Classic at IEM, yet you were quick to note how Maru gloriously defeated the likes of Solar and soO (who accomplished nothing in 2018)
And sure if WCS doesnt count then one can argue all sorts of thing. But it does count. The very least you would need to take into considerations his win against foreigners who made it into GSL ro16 or above. So if you add the IEM wins and the WCS wins over GSL participants, Serral passed Maru by your own absurd and subjective criteria. Serral went undefeated for a very long time, while Maru's 3 GSL and one LAN win came with interruptions when he was knocked out in the big LAN's including Blizzcon.
If you just cherry-pick the data, then sure you can make all kind of stats, and prove all kinds of points. Here let me show you: Serral won 7 out of the 8 big tournaments he entered in 2018, that's 87,5%, and it does include the World champion-ship Maru won 4 of the 7 big tournaments he entered, that's 57% and does not include the World champion-ship
Serral's performance is 20+% better
OR Serral won 6 big tournaments in a row. Maru won 2 in a row. Serral's performance is 200% better
The way I see it, Serral haters have 2 main arguments: 1. he didnt participate in normal GSL seasons, cuz surely he couldnt have won there. Which I find to be a lame ass argument, cuz it cannot be proved/ disproved, and other, less accomplished foreigners could do well in GSL. 2. He didnt win at IEM at the start of the year. Which i again find a lame ass argument, since nobody was calling him best player of the world in february, and it was a good showing even there, and straight up wins for the rest of the year.
Wow - chill man. I'm not hating anyone. Serral is great and seems to be a cool guy and is a blessing for SC2.
I didn't "left out" anything. I clearly defined periods of times in which Serral and Maru were undisputedly dominant. At WESG and IEM Serral performed well but still didn't reach that state of dominance he achieved later. And if I were to include wins vs Impact and Trap, I easily could inflate Maru's winrate, too. I counted soO for Serral, too. And saying that soO did accomplish nothing in 2018 while he made it to the finals of HSC XVII and had a Ro8 appearance in GSL, is just insane. Same goes for Solar, who made it to 4th place at GSL Super Tournament 2 and at HSC XVII and was extremely close to making it to Blizzcon. What did Trap achieve in comparison? And while I love Impact he really doesn't have an impact on this discussion at all.
Serral won 7 out of 9 (not 8) tournaments he entered in 2018. 4 of those tournaments weren't vs the toughest competition. 5 of those tournaments happened before he proved that he can dominate vs the toughest competition. He won 3 out of 5 tournaments vs the toughest competition. Maru won 4 out of 8 tournamens he entered in 2018. All of those were vs the toughest competition.
edit: I think it is the best to compare Maru's and Serrals periods of dominance in which they won (almost for Maru) everything. The rest of their year gives us the same impression: they were really strong players.
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
Ok, let me specify: Marus winrate vs top Koreans in offline matches wasn't considerably worse. Nor did Serral face better Koreans more often than Maru.
Ok, to be transparent, here are my criteria:
1) Only offline matches which are part of real competition are taken into account. Online matches always have the flaw of not being pretigeous (and therefore not being taken as serious) and players hiding their best strats. Showmatches also aren't taken as serious quite often. This is why I'll exclude Serral's Bo1-win vs Maru in the GSL vs The World team showmatch. Also offline qualifiers which aren't streamed are to be excluded. They often take place in unfavorable times, vs unknown opponents and the only goal is to qualify, not to show your best starcraft.
2) To compare Serral's and Maru's dominance in 2018, we'll first have to determine their respective period of dominance: Maru: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL Season 1 (march 10th). It ended with his 3rd consecutive GSL championship win vs TY (september 15th) (his streak could also include his win vs Rogue at GSL Supertournament 2, but sinc he lost vs sOs in the same tournament two days later, it's fair to exclude this win). This period of domincance lasted over 6 months in which Maru only lost 2 offline matches.
Serral: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL vs The World (August 4th). It ended with his victory at Homestory Cup vs Innovation (November 25th). (One could argue, if it is fair that Serrals period of dominance was artificially ended by the end of competition in the end of 2018. But we only can deal with data we have, not with data that might have been if things had been different. Serral's performance at IEM showed that he - while still being a top player - is not as dominant anymore). This period of dominance lasted over 4 months in which Serral incredibly lost no offline match at all.
3) Now we have to count the top players they won against, in order to value their win streaks: Maru: GSL S1 Ro8: sOs, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players WESG: Nerchio, Scarlett, Showtime, Reynor, Serral, Dark -> 2 (?) top players GSL Super Tournament 1: soO -> 1 top player GSL S2: Zanster, Dear, Patience, Solar, Rogue, Classic, Zest -> 5 top players GSL vs The World: soO, Showtime -> 1 top player GSL S3: Forte, Leenock, Neeb, Reynor, Gumiho, Zest, TY -> 4 top players ----> This equals 15 top players
Serral: GSL Super Tournament 1: Innovation, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players Blizzcon: sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue, Stats -> 5 top players Homestory Cup XVIII: Bly, soO, Trap, Bunny, Hellraiser, souL, Taeja, uThermal, Bunny, Innovation -> 2 top players ----> This equals 10 top players
One probably could argue about, which opponents should be counted as "top players", but this goes for both Maru and Serral. So if you include top WCS players and some more Koreans, then the winrates would rise for both.
So I conclude again: In 2018 Maru was dominant for a longer period of time in which he faced tougher competition more often than Serral did in his shorter period of dominance.
You conveniently left out how Serral won over Rogue, Impact, Neeb, Zest and Trap before he lost vs Classic at IEM, yet you were quick to note how Maru gloriously defeated the likes of Solar and soO (who accomplished nothing in 2018)
And sure if WCS doesnt count then one can argue all sorts of thing. But it does count. The very least you would need to take into considerations his win against foreigners who made it into GSL ro16 or above. So if you add the IEM wins and the WCS wins over GSL participants, Serral passed Maru by your own absurd and subjective criteria. Serral went undefeated for a very long time, while Maru's 3 GSL and one LAN win came with interruptions when he was knocked out in the big LAN's including Blizzcon.
If you just cherry-pick the data, then sure you can make all kind of stats, and prove all kinds of points. Here let me show you: Serral won 7 out of the 8 big tournaments he entered in 2018, that's 87,5%, and it does include the World champion-ship Maru won 4 of the 7 big tournaments he entered, that's 57% and does not include the World champion-ship
Serral's performance is 20+% better
OR Serral won 6 big tournaments in a row. Maru won 2 in a row. Serral's performance is 200% better
The way I see it, Serral haters have 2 main arguments: 1. he didnt participate in normal GSL seasons, cuz surely he couldnt have won there. Which I find to be a lame ass argument, cuz it cannot be proved/ disproved, and other, less accomplished foreigners could do well in GSL. 2. He didnt win at IEM at the start of the year. Which i again find a lame ass argument, since nobody was calling him best player of the world in february, and it was a good showing even there, and straight up wins for the rest of the year.
Wow - chill man. I'm not hating anyone. Serral is great and seems to be a cool guy and is a blessing for SC2.
I didn't "left out" anything. I clearly defined periods of times in which Serral and Maru were undisputedly dominant. At WESG and IEM Serral performed well but still didn't reach that state of dominance he achieved later. And if I were to include wins vs Impact and Trap, I easily could inflate Maru's winrate, too. I counted soO for Serral, too. And saying that soO did accomplish nothing in 2018 while he made it to the finals of HSC XVII and had a Ro8 appearance in GSL, is just insane. Same goes for Solar, who made it to 4th place at GSL Super Tournament 2 and at HSC XVII and was extremely close to making it to Blizzcon. What did Trap achieve in comparison? And while I love Impact he really doesn't have an impact on this discussion at all.
Serral won 7 out of 9 (not 8) tournaments he entered in 2018. 4 of those tournaments weren't vs the toughest competition. 5 of those tournaments happened before he proved that he can dominate vs the toughest competition. He won 3 out of 5 tournaments vs the toughest competition. Maru won 4 out of 8 tournamens he entered in 2018. All of those were vs the toughest competition.
edit: I think it is the best to compare Maru's and Serrals periods of dominance in which they won (almost for Maru) everything. The rest of their year gives us the same impression: they were really strong players.
As i said, you can crunch the data any way you want and end up concluding the presupposition you started out with.
You make some premises, that are not fact based or objective, than you use them to prove your point. You use one of your opinions to prove that your other opinion is factually correct.
You decided which periods are relevant for the 2 players, then decided which opponents matter. That s all fine and good, and if that's how you see it and how you feel about it, that s your business, but please dispense with the idea that it's anything more than highly subjective, personal opinion.
One last note, not sure which TLer started this "weekend tournament" misnomer, but it's really annoying how it stuck.
WCS isnt a weekend tournament, nor is IEM, WESG and definitely not Blizzcon. The only "weekend" tournament there were are the GSL super-tournaments which indeed are a straight up single elim-bracket, games being played out one after another, it's over in less than 2 days. The rest are tournaments that have main event that last a week, with different qualifier leading up to it. Most of the times the pros know their groups or at least part of their groups in advance, way before the event starts, they can prepare specific builds for specific players and maps, if they feel like it. Than at the main event they usually have a day or two, but the very least a few hours to prepare for the new opponents, to be sure it's not enough to come up with a new build and test it in optimal condition 50-100 times, but it's not like you're going in blind and being hit by opponents one after another.
The idea that a week long tournament (not taking into consideration qualifiers) which features a mix of opponents that you're aware in advance, and others that you arent, is somehow clearly inferior format to the GSL normal seasons, cuz there you have a week to prepare for the match, and the winner can handpick his group for next season... it s just silly and dishonest.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
Serral got the best player of the year award for 2018. That;s exactly what you ask for.
Edit> Sorry not sorry. I don't know how to tell you, foreign/serral fanboys, that Serral technically won the last 2018 power rank. But hey, let's just ignore it and argue about March, where he lost to Inno and soO but he deserves the #1 because emotions.
On March 10 2019 04:07 terribleplayer1 wrote: No fronk, you're wrong, he did face better koreans, and he did have a considerably better winrate, the only thing you're right that I never disagreed is that Maru played more koreans.
Ok, let me specify: Marus winrate vs top Koreans in offline matches wasn't considerably worse. Nor did Serral face better Koreans more often than Maru.
Ok, to be transparent, here are my criteria:
1) Only offline matches which are part of real competition are taken into account. Online matches always have the flaw of not being pretigeous (and therefore not being taken as serious) and players hiding their best strats. Showmatches also aren't taken as serious quite often. This is why I'll exclude Serral's Bo1-win vs Maru in the GSL vs The World team showmatch. Also offline qualifiers which aren't streamed are to be excluded. They often take place in unfavorable times, vs unknown opponents and the only goal is to qualify, not to show your best starcraft.
2) To compare Serral's and Maru's dominance in 2018, we'll first have to determine their respective period of dominance: Maru: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL Season 1 (march 10th). It ended with his 3rd consecutive GSL championship win vs TY (september 15th) (his streak could also include his win vs Rogue at GSL Supertournament 2, but sinc he lost vs sOs in the same tournament two days later, it's fair to exclude this win). This period of domincance lasted over 6 months in which Maru only lost 2 offline matches.
Serral: His dominance began with the Ro8 of GSL vs The World (August 4th). It ended with his victory at Homestory Cup vs Innovation (November 25th). (One could argue, if it is fair that Serrals period of dominance was artificially ended by the end of competition in the end of 2018. But we only can deal with data we have, not with data that might have been if things had been different. Serral's performance at IEM showed that he - while still being a top player - is not as dominant anymore). This period of dominance lasted over 4 months in which Serral incredibly lost no offline match at all.
3) Now we have to count the top players they won against, in order to value their win streaks: Maru: GSL S1 Ro8: sOs, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players WESG: Nerchio, Scarlett, Showtime, Reynor, Serral, Dark -> 2 (?) top players GSL Super Tournament 1: soO -> 1 top player GSL S2: Zanster, Dear, Patience, Solar, Rogue, Classic, Zest -> 5 top players GSL vs The World: soO, Showtime -> 1 top player GSL S3: Forte, Leenock, Neeb, Reynor, Gumiho, Zest, TY -> 4 top players ----> This equals 15 top players
Serral: GSL Super Tournament 1: Innovation, Dark, Stats -> 3 top players Blizzcon: sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue, Stats -> 5 top players Homestory Cup XVIII: Bly, soO, Trap, Bunny, Hellraiser, souL, Taeja, uThermal, Bunny, Innovation -> 2 top players ----> This equals 10 top players
One probably could argue about, which opponents should be counted as "top players", but this goes for both Maru and Serral. So if you include top WCS players and some more Koreans, then the winrates would rise for both.
So I conclude again: In 2018 Maru was dominant for a longer period of time in which he faced tougher competition more often than Serral did in his shorter period of dominance.
You conveniently left out how Serral won over Rogue, Impact, Neeb, Zest and Trap before he lost vs Classic at IEM, yet you were quick to note how Maru gloriously defeated the likes of Solar and soO (who accomplished nothing in 2018)
And sure if WCS doesnt count then one can argue all sorts of thing. But it does count. The very least you would need to take into considerations his win against foreigners who made it into GSL ro16 or above. So if you add the IEM wins and the WCS wins over GSL participants, Serral passed Maru by your own absurd and subjective criteria. Serral went undefeated for a very long time, while Maru's 3 GSL and one LAN win came with interruptions when he was knocked out in the big LAN's including Blizzcon.
If you just cherry-pick the data, then sure you can make all kind of stats, and prove all kinds of points. Here let me show you: Serral won 7 out of the 8 big tournaments he entered in 2018, that's 87,5%, and it does include the World champion-ship Maru won 4 of the 7 big tournaments he entered, that's 57% and does not include the World champion-ship
Serral's performance is 20+% better
OR Serral won 6 big tournaments in a row. Maru won 2 in a row. Serral's performance is 200% better
The way I see it, Serral haters have 2 main arguments: 1. he didnt participate in normal GSL seasons, cuz surely he couldnt have won there. Which I find to be a lame ass argument, cuz it cannot be proved/ disproved, and other, less accomplished foreigners could do well in GSL. 2. He didnt win at IEM at the start of the year. Which i again find a lame ass argument, since nobody was calling him best player of the world in february, and it was a good showing even there, and straight up wins for the rest of the year.
Wow - chill man. I'm not hating anyone. Serral is great and seems to be a cool guy and is a blessing for SC2.
I didn't "left out" anything. I clearly defined periods of times in which Serral and Maru were undisputedly dominant. At WESG and IEM Serral performed well but still didn't reach that state of dominance he achieved later. And if I were to include wins vs Impact and Trap, I easily could inflate Maru's winrate, too. I counted soO for Serral, too. And saying that soO did accomplish nothing in 2018 while he made it to the finals of HSC XVII and had a Ro8 appearance in GSL, is just insane. Same goes for Solar, who made it to 4th place at GSL Super Tournament 2 and at HSC XVII and was extremely close to making it to Blizzcon. What did Trap achieve in comparison? And while I love Impact he really doesn't have an impact on this discussion at all.
Serral won 7 out of 9 (not 8) tournaments he entered in 2018. 4 of those tournaments weren't vs the toughest competition. 5 of those tournaments happened before he proved that he can dominate vs the toughest competition. He won 3 out of 5 tournaments vs the toughest competition. Maru won 4 out of 8 tournamens he entered in 2018. All of those were vs the toughest competition.
edit: I think it is the best to compare Maru's and Serrals periods of dominance in which they won (almost for Maru) everything. The rest of their year gives us the same impression: they were really strong players.
As i said, you can crunch the data any way you want and end up concluding the presupposition you started out with.
You make some premises, that are not fact based or objective, than you use them to prove your point. You use one of your opinions to prove that your other opinion is factually correct.
You decided which periods are relevant for the 2 players, then decided which opponents matter. That s all fine and good, and if that's how you see it and how you feel about it, that s your business, but please dispense with the idea that it's anything more than highly subjective, personal opinion.
One last note, not sure which TLer started this "weekend tournament" misnomer, but it's really annoying how it stuck.
WCS isnt a weekend tournament, nor is IEM, WESG and definitely not Blizzcon. The only "weekend" tournament there were are the GSL super-tournaments which indeed are a straight up single elim-bracket, games being played out one after another, it's over in less than 2 days. The rest are tournaments that have main event that last a week, with different qualifier leading up to it. Most of the times the pros know their groups or at least part of their groups in advance, way before the event starts, they can prepare specific builds for specific players and maps, if they feel like it. Than at the main event they usually have a day or two, but the very least a few hours to prepare for the new opponents, to be sure it's not enough to come up with a new build and test it in optimal condition 50-100 times, but it's not like you're going in blind and being hit by opponents one after another.
The idea that a week long tournament (not taking into consideration qualifiers) which features a mix of opponents that you're aware in advance, and others that you arent, is somehow clearly inferior format to the GSL normal seasons, cuz there you have a week to prepare for the match, and the winner can handpick his group for next season... it s just silly and dishonest.
You're making quite some assumptions about my approach, which are speculation or plainly wrong.
So I make premises. Of course I do. If I want to say anything I have to set some premises beforehand in order to be able to know wether something is the case or not. You can't just say "It's cold outside" without having a definition of what is "outside" and at what degree and under what circumstances something is to be called "cold".
The question is: do my premises make sense? I think so, but that is open to discussion. I never said that what you're implying: that my premises are objective. They're not, of course, but perhaps they can be the fundament of a consense in this discussion. In order to get to a consense, you'd have to weigh my premises and perhaps adjust them but all you're saying is, that my premises aren't objective. This isn't exactly helpful and it isn't a viable objection either, because premises in such a field are bound to be subjective to some degree. So, you're invited to discuss my premises, but please, show me some arguments at least.
Regarding the "weekender" topic. You're right. "weekender" isn't exact and a kind of lazy term that derives from old Dreamhack times. What it is meant to say: A tournament that takes place in a short amount of time (mostly a week or shorter) where there isn't much or no time at all for specific preparation for a specific opponent. Contrary a league format tournament is a tournament lasting for multiple weeks where players most of the time have a week or more to prepare for very few or only one opponent(s).
I explicitly said that the so called "weekender" format (if you have a better name, I'll gladly adopt it) is not anyhow inferior to a league format (thus I still think that Taeja is one of the GOATs of SC2). I just said that both formats favor different sets of skill and Maru got tested in both, but Serral only got tested in one. At the same time I said that I think, that this is a minor factor.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
Serral got the best player of the year award for 2018. That;s exactly what you ask for.
Edit> Sorry not sorry. I don't know how to tell you, foreign/serral fanboys, that Serral technically won the last 2018 power rank. But hey, let's just ignore it and argue about March, where he lost to Inno and soO but he deserves the #1 because emotions.
The player of the year award is not a power rank(even if it is much better).
The loss to Inno had no meaning other than breaking Serral's streak and soO went to become the eventual champion; you are making it look like Serral clearly isn't #1 anymore whereas the case for him to still be the best player in the world is very strong, especially because no one is apparently dominant in 2019.
If power ranks would be meant to take into consideration 2019 results only soO could be seen as #1; however, as Bisudagger brilliantly pointed out, would be Gumiho, who had the same Code S path as soO(and a similar lack of results in 2018) before IEM, ranked #1 in list if he won the event?
Not to mention soO went out of code S shortly after this power ranking whose timing was most likely not appropriate given the amount of important tournaments coming this March: publishing it either before IEM or after Code S's second groupstage would have been a better decision.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
Serral got the best player of the year award for 2018. That;s exactly what you ask for.
Edit> Sorry not sorry. I don't know how to tell you, foreign/serral fanboys, that Serral technically won the last 2018 power rank. But hey, let's just ignore it and argue about March, where he lost to Inno and soO but he deserves the #1 because emotions.
The player of the year award is not a power rank(even if it is much better).
The loss to Inno had no meaning other than breaking Serral's streak and soO went to become the eventual champion; you are making it look like Serral clearly isn't #1 anymore whereas the case for him to still be the best player in the world is very strong, especially because no one is apparently dominant in 2019.
If power ranks would be meant to take into consideration 2019 results only soO could be seen as #1; however, as Bisudagger brilliantly pointed out, would be Gumiho, who had the same Code S path as soO(and a similar lack of results in 2018) before IEM, ranked #1 in list if he won the event?
Not to mention soO went out of code S shortly after this power ranking whose timing was most likely not appropriate given the amount of important tournaments coming this March: publishing it either before IEM or after Code S's second groupstage would have been a better decision.
At the time of writing the article he wasn't the best player of the moment. That was soO. Power ranks are about the current form mostly and that wasn't Serral, it was the champion who defeated Serral
I explicitly said that the so called "weekender" format (if you have a better name, I'll gladly adopt it) is not anyhow inferior to a league format (thus I still think that Taeja is one of the GOATs of SC2). I just said that both formats favor different sets of skill and Maru got tested in both, but Serral only got tested in one. At the same time I said that I think, that this is a minor factor.
I should specify that although i was replying to you, with that part of the comment I wasnt saying you're doing that, it was more of a general observation I had in mind, but never gotten around to post is.
It's a somewhat popular opinion on this site that GSL code S is clearly superior format for whatever reason, or rather it became a popular opinion after a foreigner started to win the LANs
On March 10 2019 22:11 Xain0n wrote: If power ranks would be meant to take into consideration 2019 results only soO could be seen as #1; however, as Bisudagger brilliantly pointed out, would be Gumiho, who had the same Code S path as soO(and a similar lack of results in 2018) before IEM, ranked #1 in list if he won the event?
This is just conjecture, but considering that GuMiho already made it to the top 10 without doing anything to validate such a position in the ranking, he probably would have been #1 if he won Katowice.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
Serral got the best player of the year award for 2018. That;s exactly what you ask for.
Edit> Sorry not sorry. I don't know how to tell you, foreign/serral fanboys, that Serral technically won the last 2018 power rank. But hey, let's just ignore it and argue about March, where he lost to Inno and soO but he deserves the #1 because emotions.
The player of the year award is not a power rank(even if it is much better).
If power ranks would be meant to take into consideration 2019 results only soO could be seen as #1; however, as Bisudagger brilliantly pointed out, would be Gumiho, who had the same Code S path as soO(and a similar lack of results in 2018) before IEM, ranked #1 in list if he won the event?
If GumiHo defeated Serral on the road to the title I believe he would have been #1.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
Serral got the best player of the year award for 2018. That;s exactly what you ask for.
Edit> Sorry not sorry. I don't know how to tell you, foreign/serral fanboys, that Serral technically won the last 2018 power rank. But hey, let's just ignore it and argue about March, where he lost to Inno and soO but he deserves the #1 because emotions.
The player of the year award is not a power rank(even if it is much better).
The loss to Inno had no meaning other than breaking Serral's streak and soO went to become the eventual champion; you are making it look like Serral clearly isn't #1 anymore whereas the case for him to still be the best player in the world is very strong, especially because no one is apparently dominant in 2019.
If power ranks would be meant to take into consideration 2019 results only soO could be seen as #1; however, as Bisudagger brilliantly pointed out, would be Gumiho, who had the same Code S path as soO(and a similar lack of results in 2018) before IEM, ranked #1 in list if he won the event?
Not to mention soO went out of code S shortly after this power ranking whose timing was most likely not appropriate given the amount of important tournaments coming this March: publishing it either before IEM or after Code S's second groupstage would have been a better decision.
At the time of writing the article he wasn't the best player of the moment. That was soO. Power ranks are about the current form mostly and that wasn't Serral, it was the champion who defeated Serral
"Current" form as you are describing it changes daily, you can only say for sure soO was the best player during IEM's playoffs. This is very narrow scope, in stark contrast to the "updated criteria to focus more on the big picture than the calendar month" for this and the next power rankings in 2019.
On March 09 2019 21:43 MarianoSC2 wrote: My only issue with this list is that Gumi is in it. Should have been Rogue. And TY is too low. Otherwise based on the circumstances and the number of relevant events so far its a good ranking don't understand so many people bashing it. I guess Serral fan boys want to keep they reputation of the most deluded group of people ever. GJ in that regard
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
Serral got the best player of the year award for 2018. That;s exactly what you ask for.
Edit> Sorry not sorry. I don't know how to tell you, foreign/serral fanboys, that Serral technically won the last 2018 power rank. But hey, let's just ignore it and argue about March, where he lost to Inno and soO but he deserves the #1 because emotions.
The player of the year award is not a power rank(even if it is much better).
The loss to Inno had no meaning other than breaking Serral's streak and soO went to become the eventual champion; you are making it look like Serral clearly isn't #1 anymore whereas the case for him to still be the best player in the world is very strong, especially because no one is apparently dominant in 2019.
If power ranks would be meant to take into consideration 2019 results only soO could be seen as #1; however, as Bisudagger brilliantly pointed out, would be Gumiho, who had the same Code S path as soO(and a similar lack of results in 2018) before IEM, ranked #1 in list if he won the event?
Not to mention soO went out of code S shortly after this power ranking whose timing was most likely not appropriate given the amount of important tournaments coming this March: publishing it either before IEM or after Code S's second groupstage would have been a better decision.
At the time of writing the article he wasn't the best player of the moment. That was soO. Power ranks are about the current form mostly and that wasn't Serral, it was the champion who defeated Serral
"Current" form as you are describing it changes daily, you can only say for sure soO was the best player during IEM's playoffs. This is very narrow scope, in stark contrast to the "updated criteria to focus more on the big picture than the calendar month" for this and the next power rankings in 2019.
When you're saying this it sounds like the "big picture"/consistency has to outdo the most recent results according to the updated criteria. But that's not the case. The new criteria means that consistency is weighed more heavily than before. They probably did that because of the long off-season. But they explicitly said that most recent results are the most important factors. Still, because of the more heavily weighed consistency, Maru was ranked 5th and Serral 2nd allthough their placement at IEM alone wouldn't implicate that.
Have you looked at the results of that astonishing pool, "Who's most deluded: Serral fanboys or Korean Elitists?" ?
You may not support the opinion that Serral should be at #1 this power ranking but you should at least understand there is a strong case for it, casually insisting on this "delusion" regarding the most successful player in 2018(according to TL, you know) and the best foreigner in history is frankly out of place.
There is a strong case for it but saying "Serral must be first and every other opinion is just dishonest and disrespecting him" is just bullshit. Personally Serral still seems like the best player to me but given his lack of recent results (Blizzcon was 3 months ago) I think it's completely reasonable to put the player that has won the only big tournament this year at the top. Not sure what's there to get upset about...
I am personally not upset as you might notice, I think Serral should figure as first in this list but soO is understandable. People overreacting are probably frustrated by the fact Serral never figured as #1 in a power ranking despite totally deserving it(it would have been unanimous for HSC, but TL's writers decided to make a humurous one instead). You are basically right here.
Yeah TL writers totally made a humorous PR for HSC to avoid putting Serral in first. I don't understand what's the big deal about him never being #1 in a PR. That's of course only because there wasn't one in the off-season.
Because it'd be nice to read one where foreigner is the best sc2 player in the world. That's all.
Serral got the best player of the year award for 2018. That;s exactly what you ask for.
Edit> Sorry not sorry. I don't know how to tell you, foreign/serral fanboys, that Serral technically won the last 2018 power rank. But hey, let's just ignore it and argue about March, where he lost to Inno and soO but he deserves the #1 because emotions.
The player of the year award is not a power rank(even if it is much better).
The loss to Inno had no meaning other than breaking Serral's streak and soO went to become the eventual champion; you are making it look like Serral clearly isn't #1 anymore whereas the case for him to still be the best player in the world is very strong, especially because no one is apparently dominant in 2019.
If power ranks would be meant to take into consideration 2019 results only soO could be seen as #1; however, as Bisudagger brilliantly pointed out, would be Gumiho, who had the same Code S path as soO(and a similar lack of results in 2018) before IEM, ranked #1 in list if he won the event?
Not to mention soO went out of code S shortly after this power ranking whose timing was most likely not appropriate given the amount of important tournaments coming this March: publishing it either before IEM or after Code S's second groupstage would have been a better decision.
At the time of writing the article he wasn't the best player of the moment. That was soO. Power ranks are about the current form mostly and that wasn't Serral, it was the champion who defeated Serral
"Current" form as you are describing it changes daily, you can only say for sure soO was the best player during IEM's playoffs. This is very narrow scope, in stark contrast to the "updated criteria to focus more on the big picture than the calendar month" for this and the next power rankings in 2019.
When you're saying this it sounds like the "big picture"/consistency has to outdo the most recent results according to the updated criteria. But that's not the case. The new criteria means that consistency is weighed more heavily than before. They probably did that because of the long off-season. But they explicitly said that most recent results are the most important factors. Still, because of the more heavily weighed consistency, Maru was ranked 5th and Serral 2nd allthough their placement at IEM alone wouldn't implicate that.
A power ranking would be senseless if it mirrored the results of a single tournament, don't you think?
I am saying here "big picture" results here are not taken into consideration more than it happened in 2018's lists, I see no sensible changes despite TL Writers saying previous feats and consistency would have a bigger impact.
I already stated this is not a bad list in my opinion, but that it is far from a flawless one.
There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
To people laughing about soO losing in GSL after getting #1 in the PR - it's really convenient when the player you want to see at #1 doesn't compete in GSL and thus doesn't have an opportunity to fail isn't it? soO dropping out definitely shouldn't count in favor of Serral when he doesn't even compete in the GSL.
This is again like arguing he was the best player in 2018 because he lost the least matches...
I love the interview on soO done by hajisun & ToD. He jokingly said that Serral was the Deepmind, so if he beat Serral then he technically beat Deepmind.
Then, the story about Bunny as the next player should bear the curse of Kong. Bunny was dreaming of having final matchup with Soo, so that he could win easily. This was made before Soo hold the IEM trophy. He also trash talked Stats some kind like underperformed soccer player, and Rogue as someone couldn't be able to hold the IEM trophy like he did.
Other thing was his relationship with Innovation seemed like special thing since he praised him a lot during the interview. I guess it was a platonic bromance-kind relationship, maybe.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: but I would end Maru's [global dominance] after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
uhm... why? He won vs a great looking soO and a Zest-smashing Showtime before losing to Stats. He then went on to win GSL by beating Gumiho, Zest and TY one month later. One slip up isn't the end of dominance. To argue for Maru not being as dominant as before anymore because of that single loss is totally contradicting your argument for consistency you're vehemently applying for Serral in this thread.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
You make it sound like "international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other" are actually harder than GSL (I'm sorry if I'm reading too much into this). That's just not the case based on individual skill of players who are competing in those tournaments. IEM is the only exception now. But GSL vs The World and Blizzcon do have the flaw of inflating the player pool of not super great players by letting qualify 8 foreigners. All international tournaments since the beginning of 2018 proved that no matter how high the amount of great foreigners - Koreans will still dominate the upper rounds of any tournament with very rare exceptions. Serral was the only exception who was able to make this feat a regular thing. I still think that GSLs (and IEMs like we had right now) are theoretically the toughest tournaments there are, but the amount of great players at Blizzcon/GSL vs The World and the likes is still high enough that I'm valuing them as equal because in most cases the individual tournament path of any player doesn't differ very much in difficulty - especially in higher rounds.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
GSL still was an international event theoretically in 2018. There were foreigners competing in it - Neeb was quite impressive in doing so. So it's not that their was any restriction from competing in GSL. I don't say it's Serrals fault to not compete in GSL but you're now kind of doing what you're accusing me of: dismissing Maru's GSL victories because they weren't inernational events (which isn't the case). Blizzcon is not the biggest event in terms of toughness, nor is winning international tournaments more valuable than winning GSLs.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
I don't doubt Serral would have last year but my personal opinion, nothing more than pure speculation; in fact, as you say, we cannot state anything about Serral's hypothetical performance in Code S just as you cannot imagine a top korean would have won every WCS like Serral did; you have to judge Serral on the tournament he actually plays(WCS Winter) or that he has played.
As for this power ranking, timing is what bothers me the most, I already said that; soO may or may not have deserved to be ahead of Serral according to how large it was the period of time this list was based upon. Publishing it right after IEM ended was a bad decision as it was too late to depict the situation that existed before the first big championship in 2019 was played but too early to grasp the actual current balance of power considering WESG, Code S ro16 and WCS Winter final groupstage all had to be played.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
Well leaving Serral out of the discussion, to rank Soo as number 1 after a single tournament result is kinda silly. Specially considered that it was far from a flawless win. If Uthermal would have won against Dear in the groupstage, Soo would have been knocked out, and then he would not even have made the list.
I think the truth is that it is unclear how is the best Korean player at the moment. To me it seems to stand between Stats, TY, Maru and Rogue. Think you could make an argument for anyone of them but reality is that there is no clear nr1 player in Korea as off now.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: but I would end Maru's [global dominance] after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
uhm... why? He won vs a great looking soO and a Zest-smashing Showtime before losing to Stats. He then went on to win GSL by beating Gumiho, Zest and TY one month later. One slip up isn't the end of dominance. To argue for Maru not being as dominant as before anymore because of that single loss is totally contradicting your argument for consistency you're vehemently applying for Serral in this thread.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
You make it sound like "international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other" are actually harder than GSL (I'm sorry if I'm reading too much into this). That's just not the case based on individual skill of players who are competing in those tournaments. IEM is the only exception now. But GSL vs The World and Blizzcon do have the flaw of inflating the player pool of not super great players by letting qualify 8 foreigners. All international tournaments since the beginning of 2018 proved that no matter how high the amount of great foreigners - Koreans will still dominate the upper rounds of any tournament with very rare exceptions. Serral was the only exception who was able to make this feat a regular thing. I still think that GSLs (and IEMs like we had right now) are theoretically the toughest tournaments there are, but the amount of great players at Blizzcon/GSL vs The World and the likes is still high enough that I'm valuing them as equal because in most cases the individual tournament path of any player doesn't differ very much in difficulty - especially in higher rounds.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
GSL still was an international event theoretically in 2018. There were foreigners competing in it - Neeb was quite impressive in doing so. So it's not that their was any restriction from competing in GSL. I don't say it's Serrals fault to not compete in GSL but you're now kind of doing what you're accusing me of: dismissing Maru's GSL victories because they weren't inernational events (which isn't the case). Blizzcon is not the biggest event in terms of toughness, nor is winning international tournaments more valuable than winning GSLs.
"In retrospective" is the key here, had it happened last week I'd have said we couldn't assume Maru's domination was ended or about to end. Now that 2018 is over, we know Maru wouldn't have won another international tournament starting from GSL vs the World, so I find it unfitting to think he was still globally dominant after that; he went on to win his third Code S so we can surely consider him to be still be dominant in Korea.
I am not saying international tournaments are harder than Code S, even if you have to ask yourself if top foreigners are indeed worse than ro32 koreans; it heavily depends on the format of the said tournaments tho, some of those are arguably more prestigious and surely have much bigger prizes which may result in a sharper motivation.
I am surely not disregarding Maru's achievements, I am just not convinced Code S was so much ahead of WCS in 2018 as you guys think to the point that Serral's 4 WCS wins actually had a weight, leading Serral to be more successful than Maru throughout the whole year.
Code S is not a locked tournament but since it takes place in Korea during the span of three months there are factual limitations for foreigners; some of them may want to live in Korea for a while but you cannot expect everyone to do so.
On March 11 2019 02:25 Charoisaur wrote: To people laughing about soO losing in GSL after getting #1 in the PR - it's really convenient when the player you want to see at #1 doesn't compete in GSL and thus doesn't have an opportunity to fail isn't it? soO dropping out definitely shouldn't count in favor of Serral when he doesn't even compete in the GSL.
This is again like arguing he was the best player in 2018 because he lost the least matches...
So here's my question. Would you have said soO was the best player in his GSL group prior to the group being played? Because if he wasn't the best in his group of 3 opponents how can he be power ranked as number 1 above all players, not just those three?
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament. You just can't say "See, Serral should've been first" because we don't know if he would've done better than soO.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: but I would end Maru's [global dominance] after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
uhm... why? He won vs a great looking soO and a Zest-smashing Showtime before losing to Stats. He then went on to win GSL by beating Gumiho, Zest and TY one month later. One slip up isn't the end of dominance. To argue for Maru not being as dominant as before anymore because of that single loss is totally contradicting your argument for consistency you're vehemently applying for Serral in this thread.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
You make it sound like "international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other" are actually harder than GSL (I'm sorry if I'm reading too much into this). That's just not the case based on individual skill of players who are competing in those tournaments. IEM is the only exception now. But GSL vs The World and Blizzcon do have the flaw of inflating the player pool of not super great players by letting qualify 8 foreigners. All international tournaments since the beginning of 2018 proved that no matter how high the amount of great foreigners - Koreans will still dominate the upper rounds of any tournament with very rare exceptions. Serral was the only exception who was able to make this feat a regular thing. I still think that GSLs (and IEMs like we had right now) are theoretically the toughest tournaments there are, but the amount of great players at Blizzcon/GSL vs The World and the likes is still high enough that I'm valuing them as equal because in most cases the individual tournament path of any player doesn't differ very much in difficulty - especially in higher rounds.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
GSL still was an international event theoretically in 2018. There were foreigners competing in it - Neeb was quite impressive in doing so. So it's not that their was any restriction from competing in GSL. I don't say it's Serrals fault to not compete in GSL but you're now kind of doing what you're accusing me of: dismissing Maru's GSL victories because they weren't inernational events (which isn't the case). Blizzcon is not the biggest event in terms of toughness, nor is winning international tournaments more valuable than winning GSLs.
"In retrospective" is the key here, had it happened last week I'd have said we couldn't assume Maru's domination was ended or about to end. Now that 2018 is over, we know Maru wouldn't have won another international tournament starting from GSL vs the World, so I find it unfitting to think he was still globally dominant after that; he went on to win his third Code S so we can surely consider him to be still be dominant in Korea.
I am not saying international tournaments are harder than Code S, even if you have to ask yourself if top foreigners are indeed worse than ro32 koreans; it heavily depends on the format of the said tournaments tho, some of those are arguably more prestigious and surely have much bigger prizes which may result in a sharper motivation.
I am surely not disregarding Maru's achievements, I am just not convinced Code S was so much ahead of WCS in 2018 as you guys think to the point that Serral's 4 WCS wins actually had a weight, leading Serral to be more successful than Maru throughout the whole year.
Code S is not a locked tournament but since it takes place in Korea during the span of three months there are factual limitations for foreigners; some of them may want to live in Korea for a while but you cannot expect everyone to do so.
Also in retrospective, I don't see your point. Winning a tournament vs the toughest player pool (= all of the top Koreans) after having done so 2 times in a row before can't be called not being globally dominant just because he lost one match in between.
With that I'm not saying that Serral was worse than Maru at that point in time. We obviously don't know. I'm saying that we had two players in 2018 who had equally dominant periods of time which were overlapping with Maru's beginning earlier and Serral's ending later.
For the question wether Code S or other international events were "so much ahead of WCS in 2018": Let's look at the tournaments were both foreigners and Korean participated with the same chances of qualifying for those events:
IEM Katowice in 2018: - Top 12 only one foreigner. - Top foreigners like Showtime, Special, Neeb, Elazer, uThermal didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVII - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Lambo made it there on the back of winning vs foreigners (Heromarine and a ZvZ vs Stephano); he didn't win a match vs a Korean in the playoffs
GSL vs The World - Top 8 only 3 foreigners. - Special made it to the Ro8 by beating Has.
Blizzcon - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Top foreigners like Showtime and Neeb didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVIII - Top 8 only 3 foreigners
IEM Katowice in 2019: - Top 12 only 2 foreigners
The more top Koreans participate in an event the more unlikely it is for an foreigner to make it to the higher rounds. In fact: except Serral barely any foreigner made it past Ro8 (At Homestory Cup only by winning vs foreigners; Showtime being the only one except Serral at GSL vs The World). Thus we normally only have 2 players at WCS tournaments that are capable of being Ro8-material at Tournaments with top Koreans. That being said, Blizzcon and GSL vs The World are probably not accurate representations because the player field is limited. Also HSCs are quite random so they usually don't have all the best Koreans participating. The best picture is shown by the IEMs because there isn't any locked regional qualifier or invite stuff involved.
Conclusion: Any WCS tournament lacks a minimum of 6 players (and a maximum of 10 players, if one only referred to IEMs) who would be serious contenders for making it to the finals while GSL potentially lacks 2 players who would be serious contenders for making it to the Ro8, and one of them perhaps making it to Ro4 (Neeb did it once) or even to the finals (2018 Serral of course).
So yeah, this means that winning a WCS tournament basically puts you in a Ro8 of GSL (from there anything can happen of course).
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: but I would end Maru's [global dominance] after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
uhm... why? He won vs a great looking soO and a Zest-smashing Showtime before losing to Stats. He then went on to win GSL by beating Gumiho, Zest and TY one month later. One slip up isn't the end of dominance. To argue for Maru not being as dominant as before anymore because of that single loss is totally contradicting your argument for consistency you're vehemently applying for Serral in this thread.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
You make it sound like "international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other" are actually harder than GSL (I'm sorry if I'm reading too much into this). That's just not the case based on individual skill of players who are competing in those tournaments. IEM is the only exception now. But GSL vs The World and Blizzcon do have the flaw of inflating the player pool of not super great players by letting qualify 8 foreigners. All international tournaments since the beginning of 2018 proved that no matter how high the amount of great foreigners - Koreans will still dominate the upper rounds of any tournament with very rare exceptions. Serral was the only exception who was able to make this feat a regular thing. I still think that GSLs (and IEMs like we had right now) are theoretically the toughest tournaments there are, but the amount of great players at Blizzcon/GSL vs The World and the likes is still high enough that I'm valuing them as equal because in most cases the individual tournament path of any player doesn't differ very much in difficulty - especially in higher rounds.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
GSL still was an international event theoretically in 2018. There were foreigners competing in it - Neeb was quite impressive in doing so. So it's not that their was any restriction from competing in GSL. I don't say it's Serrals fault to not compete in GSL but you're now kind of doing what you're accusing me of: dismissing Maru's GSL victories because they weren't inernational events (which isn't the case). Blizzcon is not the biggest event in terms of toughness, nor is winning international tournaments more valuable than winning GSLs.
"In retrospective" is the key here, had it happened last week I'd have said we couldn't assume Maru's domination was ended or about to end. Now that 2018 is over, we know Maru wouldn't have won another international tournament starting from GSL vs the World, so I find it unfitting to think he was still globally dominant after that; he went on to win his third Code S so we can surely consider him to be still be dominant in Korea.
I am not saying international tournaments are harder than Code S, even if you have to ask yourself if top foreigners are indeed worse than ro32 koreans; it heavily depends on the format of the said tournaments tho, some of those are arguably more prestigious and surely have much bigger prizes which may result in a sharper motivation.
I am surely not disregarding Maru's achievements, I am just not convinced Code S was so much ahead of WCS in 2018 as you guys think to the point that Serral's 4 WCS wins actually had a weight, leading Serral to be more successful than Maru throughout the whole year.
Code S is not a locked tournament but since it takes place in Korea during the span of three months there are factual limitations for foreigners; some of them may want to live in Korea for a while but you cannot expect everyone to do so.
Also in retrospective, I don't see your point. Winning a tournament vs the toughest player pool (= all of the top Koreans) after having done so 2 times in a row before can't be called not being globally dominant just because he lost one match in between.
With that I'm not saying that Serral was worse than Maru at that point in time. We obviously don't know. I'm saying that we had two players in 2018 who had equally dominant periods of time which were overlapping with Maru's beginning earlier and Serral's ending later.
For the question wether Code S or other international events were "so much ahead of WCS in 2018": Let's look at the tournaments were both foreigners and Korean participated with the same chances of qualifying for those events:
IEM Katowice in 2018: - Top 12 only one foreigner. - Top foreigners like Showtime, Special, Neeb, Elazer, uThermal didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVII - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Lambo made it there on the back of winning vs foreigners (Heromarine and a ZvZ vs Stephano); he didn't win a match vs a Korean in the playoffs
GSL vs The World - Top 8 only 3 foreigners. - Special made it to the Ro8 by beating Has.
Blizzcon - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Top foreigners like Showtime and Neeb didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVIII - Top 8 only 3 foreigners
IEM Katowice in 2019: - Top 12 only 2 foreigners
The more top Koreans participate in an event the more unlikely it is for an foreigner to make it to the higher rounds. In fact: except Serral barely any foreigner made it past Ro8 (At Homestory Cup only by winning vs foreigners; Showtime being the only one except Serral at GSL vs The World). Thus we normally only have 2 players at WCS tournaments that are capable of being Ro8-material at Tournaments with top Koreans. That being said, Blizzcon and GSL vs The World are probably not accurate representations because the player field is limited. Also HSCs are quite random so they usually don't have all the best Koreans participating. The best picture is shown by the IEMs because there isn't any locked regional qualifier or invite stuff involved.
Conclusion: Any WCS tournament lacks a minimum of 6 players (and a maximum of 10 players, if one only referred to IEMs) who would be serious contenders for making it to the finals while GSL potentially lacks 2 players who would be serious contenders for making it to the Ro8, and one of them perhaps making it to Ro4 (Neeb did it once) or even to the finals (2018 Serral of course).
So yeah, this means that winning a WCS tournament basically puts you in a Ro8 of GSL (from there anything can happen of course).
The point is there can be either one or no players(in the case there is no one who is evidently way ahead of his competitors) globally dominating, whereas there can be two players dominating regionally(one in Korea, one in WCS); GSL, despite being open to everyone and having some foreigners trying to qualify , is essentially a korean tournament, while you are treating it as international. The existence of Serral also implies there is a strong contender not competing for the Code S title, unlike what happened in the past when the best 16 players in the world were all korean.
By your estimates, one WCS would be roughly worth 1/4 of Code S? That's almost reasonable and way more than the majority of "korean elitists" are ready to admit(see Charoisaur above not believing Serral would have made ro8 on a regular basis).
Even equating a WCS winner to a Code S ro8 player does not mean every top 8 korean would have won four consecutive WCS, just that there is a chanche they might have done it; such a feat takes a huge consistency as they were played in the span of ten months during different patches.
Serral never played a preparation tournament(WCS Winter is probably the closest format) while Maru was godly at them during 2018; on the other hand, Serral's performance during "weekenders" was outstanding while Maru's was someway poor as he only won one out of six.
It's quite hard to properly compare Serral and Maru as they don't play in the same circuit and never faced in official matches while they both were at their apex; however, numbers like earnings, win percentage, average placement in lost tournaments, streak and Premier victories are all on Serral's side and I don't believe the higher average quality of Maru's victory can make up for them, especially considering he lost more tournaments than he won and ended the year crashing out of BlizzCon early and brutally.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
And how does the loss of this #1 player Serral to a foreigner named Neeb? The bestest everest, 3 losses in a row. I don't know Kev
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
And how does the loss of this #1 player Serral to a foreigner named Neeb? The bestest everest, 3 losses in a row. I don't know Kev
the same way "this #1 player" Maru lost to a foreigner named Neeb in IEM 2019
Neeb is a Kespa cup winner and the first foreigner to win a premier tournament on Korean soil....not your typical foreigner
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
Which korean should be placed above soO though? Stats dropped out in the ro32 and no other korean has really looked exceptionally strong.
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
And how does the loss of this #1 player Serral to a foreigner named Neeb? The bestest everest, 3 losses in a row. I don't know Kev
the same way "this #1 player" Maru lost to a foreigner named Neeb in IEM 2019
Neeb is a Kespa cup winner and the first foreigner to win a premier tournament on Korean soil....not your typical foreigner
Why do you get Maru in this? Nobody is saying Maru should be #1, but there's plenty of people who claim this PR is wrong and Serral should be #1... so, yeah
On March 11 2019 01:41 fronkschnonk wrote: There is a big difference to 2018's lists: none of these lists had to deal with such a big timeframe without tournaments to refer to. To justify that the results of more than 3 months ago are still that impactful they had to give the consistency-factor more relevance. You're applying for giving consistency even more credit. That's ok. But I think it's unfair to accuse the writers of not living up to their criteria.
Interestingly the consistency issue could be a main point in the serral/maru-dicussion, too. I'd rather not take Serral's two WCS wins before GSL vs The World in account for his period of dominance, beause those victories are no proof of him being able to dominate on highest level. You'd rather extend Serral's period of dominance to those victories because you think that the consistency shown by Serral makes it probable, that he already was as good when he won WCS Valencia and WCS Austin. Is that correct or am I misinterpretating?
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
Which korean should be placed above soO though? Stats dropped out in the ro32 and no other korean has really looked exceptionally strong.
No one, most likely Serral whose position towards the fields remained strong; still, it would have been a guess just as much as placing soO as first.
I'll say once more that it would have been better to make a power ranking either before IEM(no doubts Serral would have been #1) or at the end of March when we will have a much clearer idea of who are the current best players.
Had they not written anything about updating their criteria, it would have been fine but since they did I feel they did not entirely achieved this new goal by giving a IEM too much weight.
You surely aren't misinterpretating, I suspect Serral was already good when he won those WCS titles but the truth is that we will never know; personally, I wouldn't extend Serral's global dominance to these titles(I'd include December, tho) but I would end Maru's after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
And how does the loss of this #1 player Serral to a foreigner named Neeb? The bestest everest, 3 losses in a row. I don't know Kev
the same way "this #1 player" Maru lost to a foreigner named Neeb in IEM 2019
Neeb is a Kespa cup winner and the first foreigner to win a premier tournament on Korean soil....not your typical foreigner
Why do you get Maru in this? Nobody is saying Maru should be #1, but there's plenty of people who claim this PR is wrong and Serral should be #1... so, yeah
youre right that nobody is arguing that Maru should be #1 in this specific power rankings. But, when Neeb beat Maru, people were arguing that Maru was, at that time, the best player on the planet (similar to how people are saying serral is currently the best player on the planet)
All I'm saying is that losing to Neeb isnt some death sentence to being deemed #1. Neeb is inconsistent and his PvP is weak as hell, but if neeb is playing well he can beat literally anyone and losing to him in a group stage isnt that damning imo.
On March 11 2019 04:49 deacon.frost wrote: [quote] When you say "dont use GSL against Serral" then say - don't use GSL against any other top Korean. Because, and let's face it, the more you play other top Koreans, the bigger chance to lose. It's really unfair to use GSL against soO while Serral haven't done anything particulary amazing this year. soO had a group of death, he lost, boohoo. Serral didn't even qualify.
If you wanna use Code S against soO we will use Code S against Serral, that's the game.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
And how does the loss of this #1 player Serral to a foreigner named Neeb? The bestest everest, 3 losses in a row. I don't know Kev
the same way "this #1 player" Maru lost to a foreigner named Neeb in IEM 2019
Neeb is a Kespa cup winner and the first foreigner to win a premier tournament on Korean soil....not your typical foreigner
Why do you get Maru in this? Nobody is saying Maru should be #1, but there's plenty of people who claim this PR is wrong and Serral should be #1... so, yeah
youre right that nobody is arguing that Maru should be #1 in this specific power rankings. But, when Neeb beat Maru, people were arguing that Maru was, at that time, the best player on the planet (similar to how people are saying serral is currently the best player on the planet)
All I'm saying is that losing to Neeb isnt some death sentence to being deemed #1. Neeb is inconsistent and his PvP is weak as hell, but if neeb is playing well he can beat literally anyone and losing to him in a group stage isnt that damning imo.
So Serral losing to soO, Innovation and Neeb is fine(Serral just lost in every matchup, so it's not like he had some weakness) and he should be #1 while because soO lost in group of Death means the PR is wrong? Do I get this correctly? I just want to be sure you know what I am writing about...
BTW you wrote Maru losing to Neeb 2019... which wasn't when Maru was the best player of the world for sure.
No, that's nonsense; you could use code S against Serral if he was korean or playing in Korea. He plays in WCS as his nationality would suggest; the reasoning for which not playing in a tournament you are not expected to is worse than not doing well when playing it seems terribly flawed, to me.
soO's placement in this power ranking was acceptable but his loss in his ro16 group seems to strenghten the claim that considering him the best of the world at the moment was a it someway rushed decision, maybe dictated by the sensation generated by him breaking the Kong's curse.
so because he doesn't compete in GSL we just act like he'd win every game if he'd play in the GSL? We have no idea how Serral would do in the GSL, maybe he'd drop out in the ro16 as well. By saying soO doesn't deserve to be ranked before Serral because he lost in the ro16 you basically say that Serral would get to the ro8 by default if he'd play in the GSL which is nonsense.
By the way, didn't you say Serral was probably still the best player in the world after IEM? Now you are firmly convinced soO is?
I still think Serral is probably the best player in the world with soO also being a reasonable choice for first. I just don't think the GSL group changed anything about the soO-Serral relationship because Serral doesn't play in the tournament.
That's actually not much different from what I originally posted in this thread.
soO's early exit has obviously nothing to do with Serral but this one is not a list involving two people, it's a global power ranking; such a loss weakens soO's position considering the whole field. Again, I don't think it was a wrong decision to place soO as #1, just a rushed one in the wake of his sensational victory.
And how does the loss of this #1 player Serral to a foreigner named Neeb? The bestest everest, 3 losses in a row. I don't know Kev
the same way "this #1 player" Maru lost to a foreigner named Neeb in IEM 2019
Neeb is a Kespa cup winner and the first foreigner to win a premier tournament on Korean soil....not your typical foreigner
Why do you get Maru in this? Nobody is saying Maru should be #1, but there's plenty of people who claim this PR is wrong and Serral should be #1... so, yeah
youre right that nobody is arguing that Maru should be #1 in this specific power rankings. But, when Neeb beat Maru, people were arguing that Maru was, at that time, the best player on the planet (similar to how people are saying serral is currently the best player on the planet)
All I'm saying is that losing to Neeb isnt some death sentence to being deemed #1. Neeb is inconsistent and his PvP is weak as hell, but if neeb is playing well he can beat literally anyone and losing to him in a group stage isnt that damning imo.
So Serral losing to soO, Innovation and Neeb is fine(Serral just lost in every matchup, so it's not like he had some weakness) and he should be #1 while because soO lost in group of Death means the PR is wrong? Do I get this correctly? I just want to be sure you know what I am writing about...
BTW you wrote Maru losing to Neeb 2019... which wasn't when Maru was the best player of the world for sure.
If you want to play that game, you could say that soO lost to Bunny, Dear, and TY, who make up a weaker group than soO, Innovation, and Neeb, ie, soO lost to weaker players than Serral did
I didnt say the PR is "wrong" - it's a highly subjective matter in the first place.
My point is that saying Serral has no case for #1 because he lost to Neeb makes zero sense. A #1 can lose to Neeb, just like soO lost to bunny
I honestly dont think soO is better than Serral. soO outplayed serral that series, but overall Serral is better imo.
Here's a solution for the Serral fanboys: if you really deperately need a PR where Serral is #1, make one with region lock, like WCS. And then silence everyone that says that Neeb is on a winning streak against Serral...
I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
On March 12 2019 03:49 Xlancer wrote: I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
a Power Rank isn't about who performed the best over the last 12 months though. It's about who seems to be the best right now
Based on your own criteria and past tendencies in picking, placing the dude who happened to win the most recent tournament over Serral seems like nonsense. Regardless if it's actually the case or not, It makes it feel like you're prioritizing being provocative. And well.... I'm not going to tell you how to write your own thingermajig- it's yours. But my personal feedback is that I no longer feel like I can relate to the methodology in these rankings. I'm not mad. I'm just not interested anymore.
On March 12 2019 09:49 SetStndbySmn wrote: Based on your own criteria and past tendencies in picking, placing the dude who happened to win the most recent tournament over Serral seems like nonsense. Regardless if it's actually the case or not, It makes it feel like you're prioritizing being provocative. And well.... I'm not going to tell you how to write your own thingermajig- it's yours. But my personal feedback is that I no longer feel like I can relate to the methodology in these rankings. I'm not mad. I'm just not interested anymore.
The first PR is always much more heavily about recent results than about consistency.
That's because, well, I don't know, we don't have the data for anything else? I mean, let's check it, what have ANYONE done this year? We have IEM and that's it.
But if we ignore everything and we set a blank start from this year then the PR should be exactly what WCS winter, GSL ro32 and IEM reflect and nothing else. And dont think that was the case.
On March 12 2019 19:14 Argonauta wrote: But if we ignore everything and we set a blank start from this year then the PR should be exactly what WCS winter, GSL ro32 and IEM reflect and nothing else. And dont think that was the case.
The discussion becomes circular. The PR valued IEM the most but also stressed consistency more than usual. Therefore Maru and Serral got ranked higher than their results in IEM alone would have indicated.
On March 12 2019 03:49 Xlancer wrote: I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
a Power Rank isn't about who performed the best over the last 12 months though. It's about who seems to be the best right now
Even right now Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru and Serral are doing way better than Soo. Soo's performance at EIM was hardly convincing. He just barely got out of his group and just barely beat Serral. His 0-4 loss vs Rogue pretty much prove this... Just read the opening paragraphs on this Power Rank post, it seems pretty obvious that they were having fun trolling Serral fanboys
On March 12 2019 03:49 Xlancer wrote: I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
a Power Rank isn't about who performed the best over the last 12 months though. It's about who seems to be the best right now
Even right now Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru and Serral are doing way better than Soo.
On March 12 2019 03:49 Xlancer wrote: I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
a Power Rank isn't about who performed the best over the last 12 months though. It's about who seems to be the best right now
Even right now Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru and Serral are doing way better than Soo. Soo's performance at EIM was hardly convincing. He just barely got out of his group and just barely beat Serral. His 0-4 loss vs Rogue pretty much prove this... Just read the opening paragraphs on this Power Rank post, it seems pretty obvious that they were having fun trolling Serral fanboys
Yeah, not convincing at all. He just beat the Blizzcon champion and Stats, probably the most consistent Korean player of the last year. But suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure, soO wasn't convincing at all.
On March 12 2019 03:49 Xlancer wrote: I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
a Power Rank isn't about who performed the best over the last 12 months though. It's about who seems to be the best right now
Even right now Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru and Serral are doing way better than Soo. Soo's performance at EIM was hardly convincing. He just barely got out of his group and just barely beat Serral. His 0-4 loss vs Rogue pretty much prove this... Just read the opening paragraphs on this Power Rank post, it seems pretty obvious that they were having fun trolling Serral fanboys
Yeah, not convincing at all. He just beat the Blizzcon champion and Stats, probably the most consistent Korean player of the last year. But suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure, soO wasn't convincing at all.
Soo fanboys are worse than Serral fanboys imo. He has one good day after barely getting out of his group with a losing match score... and now he's #1 in the world??? LMFAO That's like saying Effort is better than Flash after one good day... Never mind that Effort can't beat Flash in a show-match to save his life...
On March 12 2019 03:49 Xlancer wrote: I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
a Power Rank isn't about who performed the best over the last 12 months though. It's about who seems to be the best right now
Even right now Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru and Serral are doing way better than Soo. Soo's performance at EIM was hardly convincing. He just barely got out of his group and just barely beat Serral. His 0-4 loss vs Rogue pretty much prove this... Just read the opening paragraphs on this Power Rank post, it seems pretty obvious that they were having fun trolling Serral fanboys
Yeah, not convincing at all. He just beat the Blizzcon champion and Stats, probably the most consistent Korean player of the last year. But suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure, soO wasn't convincing at all.
Soo fanboys are worse than Serral fanboys imo. He has one good day after barely getting out of his group with a losing match score... and now he's #1 in the world??? LMFAO That's like saying Effort is better than Flash after one good day... Never mind that Effort can't beat Flash in a show-match to save his life...
The issue is soO won and it wasn't some BO won, he won in straight fair games against the best Zerg and the best Protoss. No bullshit included. I find that pretty convincing. And I am more of Terran fanboy myself
INnoVation should be no.1 or at least higher than Serral for the next list of ranking. He defeated Serral twice. No other argument should be made against this. And, he managed to retain his unofficial World Champion title.
But, after all we will have to wait the Code S results this week. Hopefully there will be much more entertaining engagements between him and the Protoss players. .
On March 12 2019 03:49 Xlancer wrote: I think the mistake is failing to realize that TL.net is just trolling all of the Serral fanboys. Does anyone actually think that Soo performed better over the last 12 months than Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru or Serral??? No, of course not! lmfao!!! so stop being so sensitive about it and just laugh at one of the best troll posts in awhile like the rest of us
a Power Rank isn't about who performed the best over the last 12 months though. It's about who seems to be the best right now
Even right now Zest, Dark, Rogue, TY, Maru and Serral are doing way better than Soo. Soo's performance at EIM was hardly convincing. He just barely got out of his group and just barely beat Serral. His 0-4 loss vs Rogue pretty much prove this... Just read the opening paragraphs on this Power Rank post, it seems pretty obvious that they were having fun trolling Serral fanboys
Yeah, not convincing at all. He just beat the Blizzcon champion and Stats, probably the most consistent Korean player of the last year. But suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure, soO wasn't convincing at all.
Soo fanboys are worse than Serral fanboys imo. He has one good day after barely getting out of his group with a losing match score... and now he's #1 in the world??? LMFAO That's like saying Effort is better than Flash after one good day... Never mind that Effort can't beat Flash in a show-match to save his life...
Next time you should consider checking your damn facts before you fuking talk stupid shit about two players who have absolutely nothing to do with soO and Serral, let alone an entirely different game.
Effort 3-2'd Flash in the finals of ASL Season 6. Before you go saying things like the finals was the only good day Effort had, just don't. Effort played brilliantly throughout the whole tournament.
On March 17 2019 21:00 Mun_Su wrote: INno wasn't even on the powerank (which was justified), yet he delivered.
TL writers no clue again. Guy is better than Serral and Maru which anyone who understands the game knew beforehand but TL writers live in their own world where he's not top 10.
This list's main flaw is his awful timing. What if Inno drops out of his GSL group? We should wait for more results in 2019 before we can proclaim anyone the best, Serral had to be given the benefit of doubt and I'm still convinced he may still be the most well rounded player at the moment.
yeah let's not do this thing where we go to the latest PR and shit on it after the latest tournament. these are opinion pieces that are time-sensitive so take with large doses of salt you salty bois
On March 17 2019 21:58 Alejandrisha wrote: yeah let's not do this thing where we go to the latest PR and shit on it after the latest tournament. these are opinion pieces that are time-sensitive so take with large doses of salt you salty bois
On March 17 2019 21:00 Mun_Su wrote: INno wasn't even on the powerank (which was justified), yet he delivered.
TL writers no clue again. Guy is better than Serral and Maru which anyone who understands the game knew beforehand but TL writers live in their own world where he's not top 10.
/s
I hate it when idiots say PR writers have bad write-ups. They're not smart enough to realize that the writers are just human AND SO THEY CANNOT PREDICT THE FUKING FUTURE. Seriously, just fuck off you haters.
I want to be blunt and nice with my words, I really do, but you guys don't deserve it. These writers put so much time and effort into these write-ups and instead of any gratitude, or respect for their opinion, you take these comments and shove it up their faces. For the 1000th time, they are doing a PR based on PAST tournament results, NOT FOR FUTURE TOURNAMENT RESULTS, if you aren't smart enough to realize that, then maybe you need to stop embarrassing yourselves on the internet
On March 17 2019 21:58 Alejandrisha wrote: yeah let's not do this thing where we go to the latest PR and shit on it after the latest tournament. these are opinion pieces that are time-sensitive so take with large doses of salt you salty bois
On March 17 2019 21:00 Mun_Su wrote: INno wasn't even on the powerank (which was justified), yet he delivered.
TL writers no clue again. Guy is better than Serral and Maru which anyone who understands the game knew beforehand but TL writers live in their own world where he's not top 10.
/s
I hate it when idiots say PR writers have bad write-ups. They're not smart enough to realize that the writers are just human AND SO THEY CANNOT PREDICT THE FUKING FUTURE. Seriously, just fuck off you haters.
I want to be blunt and nice with my words, I really do, but you guys don't deserve it. These writers put so much time and effort into these write-ups and instead of any gratitude, or respect for their opinion, you take these comments and shove it up their faces. For the 1000th time, they are doing a PR based on PAST tournament results, NOT FOR FUTURE TOURNAMENT RESULTS, if you aren't smart enough to realize that, then maybe you need to stop embarrassing yourselves on the internet
haha you really took my post and ran with it :D even in BW now, a scene where established pros generally had reliable outcomes, we have upsets in every single round. how can anyone predict mini will beat effort, etc. i don't want to hear these arguments about pvz win ratios. most zergs aren't effort. the same way most terrans aren't flash. at some point you have to throw out all the statistics and admit it is hard to know something. and the writers on this site are willing to provide you content on the supposed top 10 because they love this game so much (AND SO DO YOU) and you just poop on their heads. anyways, i understand people not liking that the rankings seem to mirror the most recent tournament but you are given lots of caveats as to why that is: the plethora or dearth of spon matches for a certain player, for instance.
do the people complaining even know what monthly power rankings are?
they are a short term thing, not a long term thing
soO won the premier tournament of that month and put on a masterclass of ZvZ and ZvP against the best Zerg and Protoss players of last year. Putting him at No. 1 isnt unreasonable at all depending on the criteria being used. that's all there is to it
On March 18 2019 08:48 BerserkSword wrote: do the people complaining even know what monthly power rankings are?
they are a short term thing, not a long term thing
soO won the premier tournament of that month and put on a masterclass of ZvZ and ZvP against the best Zerg and Protoss players of last year. Putting him at No. 1 isnt unreasonable at all depending on the criteria being used. that's all there is to it
I would call the ZvZ a masterclass. I really don't think his ZvP was very good. That finals was just 6 games of fairly bad timings. People are also complaining because they started this ranking saying current results would matter a little less than recent form. Then they stick soO as number one on the back of literally only Katowice
On March 18 2019 08:48 BerserkSword wrote: do the people complaining even know what monthly power rankings are?
they are a short term thing, not a long term thing
soO won the premier tournament of that month and put on a masterclass of ZvZ and ZvP against the best Zerg and Protoss players of last year. Putting him at No. 1 isnt unreasonable at all depending on the criteria being used. that's all there is to it
I would call the ZvZ a masterclass. I really don't think his ZvP was very good. That finals was just 6 games of fairly bad timings. People are also complaining because they started this ranking saying current results would matter a little less than recent form. Then they stick soO as number one on the back of literally only Katowice
so going 10-3 against three S-class Protoss players in Stats, Zest and Her en route to the the championship is not very good ZvP?
Here is my opinion on the recent form vs IEM results - soO's form was phenomenal throughout that whole IEM katowice playoffs. he was on absolute fire.
I dont get what the problem with putting so much weight on the Katowice playoffs is. His opponents were huge....Zest, Hero, Serral, Stats and he eclipsed them all with a Premier tournament trophy as well as its huge paycheck on the line
Just my opinion, but I would love having more long-term rankings like in BW version. March is soO nr.1, next month it's gonna be Inno unless he fails to qualify tomorrow
On March 18 2019 08:48 BerserkSword wrote: do the people complaining even know what monthly power rankings are?
they are a short term thing, not a long term thing
soO won the premier tournament of that month and put on a masterclass of ZvZ and ZvP against the best Zerg and Protoss players of last year. Putting him at No. 1 isnt unreasonable at all depending on the criteria being used. that's all there is to it
"Masterclass zvp" the games were quite unimpressives imo. And he barely got out of his group, it's strange for the best player of the month. Finally, all these concerns have been confirmed, this TL ranking has no purpose other than buzz.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: but I would end Maru's [global dominance] after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
uhm... why? He won vs a great looking soO and a Zest-smashing Showtime before losing to Stats. He then went on to win GSL by beating Gumiho, Zest and TY one month later. One slip up isn't the end of dominance. To argue for Maru not being as dominant as before anymore because of that single loss is totally contradicting your argument for consistency you're vehemently applying for Serral in this thread.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
You make it sound like "international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other" are actually harder than GSL (I'm sorry if I'm reading too much into this). That's just not the case based on individual skill of players who are competing in those tournaments. IEM is the only exception now. But GSL vs The World and Blizzcon do have the flaw of inflating the player pool of not super great players by letting qualify 8 foreigners. All international tournaments since the beginning of 2018 proved that no matter how high the amount of great foreigners - Koreans will still dominate the upper rounds of any tournament with very rare exceptions. Serral was the only exception who was able to make this feat a regular thing. I still think that GSLs (and IEMs like we had right now) are theoretically the toughest tournaments there are, but the amount of great players at Blizzcon/GSL vs The World and the likes is still high enough that I'm valuing them as equal because in most cases the individual tournament path of any player doesn't differ very much in difficulty - especially in higher rounds.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
GSL still was an international event theoretically in 2018. There were foreigners competing in it - Neeb was quite impressive in doing so. So it's not that their was any restriction from competing in GSL. I don't say it's Serrals fault to not compete in GSL but you're now kind of doing what you're accusing me of: dismissing Maru's GSL victories because they weren't inernational events (which isn't the case). Blizzcon is not the biggest event in terms of toughness, nor is winning international tournaments more valuable than winning GSLs.
"In retrospective" is the key here, had it happened last week I'd have said we couldn't assume Maru's domination was ended or about to end. Now that 2018 is over, we know Maru wouldn't have won another international tournament starting from GSL vs the World, so I find it unfitting to think he was still globally dominant after that; he went on to win his third Code S so we can surely consider him to be still be dominant in Korea.
I am not saying international tournaments are harder than Code S, even if you have to ask yourself if top foreigners are indeed worse than ro32 koreans; it heavily depends on the format of the said tournaments tho, some of those are arguably more prestigious and surely have much bigger prizes which may result in a sharper motivation.
I am surely not disregarding Maru's achievements, I am just not convinced Code S was so much ahead of WCS in 2018 as you guys think to the point that Serral's 4 WCS wins actually had a weight, leading Serral to be more successful than Maru throughout the whole year.
Code S is not a locked tournament but since it takes place in Korea during the span of three months there are factual limitations for foreigners; some of them may want to live in Korea for a while but you cannot expect everyone to do so.
Also in retrospective, I don't see your point. Winning a tournament vs the toughest player pool (= all of the top Koreans) after having done so 2 times in a row before can't be called not being globally dominant just because he lost one match in between.
With that I'm not saying that Serral was worse than Maru at that point in time. We obviously don't know. I'm saying that we had two players in 2018 who had equally dominant periods of time which were overlapping with Maru's beginning earlier and Serral's ending later.
For the question wether Code S or other international events were "so much ahead of WCS in 2018": Let's look at the tournaments were both foreigners and Korean participated with the same chances of qualifying for those events:
IEM Katowice in 2018: - Top 12 only one foreigner. - Top foreigners like Showtime, Special, Neeb, Elazer, uThermal didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVII - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Lambo made it there on the back of winning vs foreigners (Heromarine and a ZvZ vs Stephano); he didn't win a match vs a Korean in the playoffs
GSL vs The World - Top 8 only 3 foreigners. - Special made it to the Ro8 by beating Has.
Blizzcon - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Top foreigners like Showtime and Neeb didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVIII - Top 8 only 3 foreigners
IEM Katowice in 2019: - Top 12 only 2 foreigners
The more top Koreans participate in an event the more unlikely it is for an foreigner to make it to the higher rounds. In fact: except Serral barely any foreigner made it past Ro8 (At Homestory Cup only by winning vs foreigners; Showtime being the only one except Serral at GSL vs The World). Thus we normally only have 2 players at WCS tournaments that are capable of being Ro8-material at Tournaments with top Koreans. That being said, Blizzcon and GSL vs The World are probably not accurate representations because the player field is limited. Also HSCs are quite random so they usually don't have all the best Koreans participating. The best picture is shown by the IEMs because there isn't any locked regional qualifier or invite stuff involved.
Conclusion: Any WCS tournament lacks a minimum of 6 players (and a maximum of 10 players, if one only referred to IEMs) who would be serious contenders for making it to the finals while GSL potentially lacks 2 players who would be serious contenders for making it to the Ro8, and one of them perhaps making it to Ro4 (Neeb did it once) or even to the finals (2018 Serral of course).
So yeah, this means that winning a WCS tournament basically puts you in a Ro8 of GSL (from there anything can happen of course).
The point is there can be either one or no players(in the case there is no one who is evidently way ahead of his competitors) globally dominating, whereas there can be two players dominating regionally(one in Korea, one in WCS); GSL, despite being open to everyone and having some foreigners trying to qualify , is essentially a korean tournament, while you are treating it as international. The existence of Serral also implies there is a strong contender not competing for the Code S title, unlike what happened in the past when the best 16 players in the world were all korean.
Oh, I actually do think that two players can be globally dominating at the same time. Sometimes it just happens that two players are ahead of anybody else and thus are both dominating. Sometimes it also can happen that the results of both those players don't give a clear indication who of them is the actual best. GSL might be an essentially korean tournament (which is debatable, considering that we always had 2 to 4 top foreigners trying to qualify or actually participating in 2018 - it's not that we have many more) but it is equal in toughness to any international event because the difficulty of opponents from Ro8 on is similarly hard. Most of the time it is already harder from in the earlier rounds. The existence of Serral is the one exception. And since he does not compete in GSL it is just guesswork how he would perform in such a format while almost every top Korean proved to be capable of doing great in "weekenders", too.
On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote: By your estimates, one WCS would be roughly worth 1/4 of Code S? That's almost reasonable and way more than the majority of "korean elitists" are ready to admit(see Charoisaur above not believing Serral would have made ro8 on a regular basis).
No, as I elaborated, I see the IEMs as more representative skillwise, so it would be more like 1/6. In order to get to GSL Ro8 Serral probably would've had to beat more players of a certain level than he needed to reach a WCS final. He proved that he was capable of doing so - twice (with HSC being somewhat in between considering his tournament path which wasn't the hardest up to the finals).
On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote: Even equating a WCS winner to a Code S ro8 player does not mean every top 8 korean would have won four consecutive WCS, just that there is a chanche they might have done it; such a feat takes a huge consistency as they were played in the span of ten months during different patches.
Consistency is nice and all but winning multiple tournaments in a row with a difficulty level of x only makes you consistently good at the level of x. It doesn't say anything about your abilities above the level of x. This is why I only can count Serral's victory at GSL vs The World as clear starting point of his dominance in 2018.
On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote: It's quite hard to properly compare Serral and Maru as they don't play in the same circuit and never faced in official matches while they both were at their apex; however, numbers like earnings, win percentage, average placement in lost tournaments, streak and Premier victories are all on Serral's side and I don't believe the higher average quality of Maru's victory can make up for them, especially considering he lost more tournaments than he won and ended the year crashing out of BlizzCon early and brutally.
At some level earnings don't say much if anything about the level of a player. Yes, you have to be incredibly good to earn as much as Seral or Maru did in 2018. But with some tournaments having a much higher prize pool than others without being actually harder distorts this factor quite a lot. Also winning very high prize money by beating easier competition. Win percentage differs only slightly in the relevant phases of their years - especially if you only take top opponents into consideration plus the factor that Maru played vs more of those opponents in his dominant phase. Average placement in lost tournaments is a more valid point. But also this factor can be distorted by the number of actually played tournaments of a certain difficulty level (which Maru played more of), by the difficulty of the tournaments a player lost in (for example Serral lost in WESG in a very high round but didn't face a comparable difficult opponents in earlier rounds wich would've been different in other tournaments) and by the difficulty of the opponents a player lost to. One can lose in a kind of early round by being beaten by an eventual finalist or even tournament winner. Streak is barely on Serral's side with said distorting factors. Serral did not have more premier victories of the same quality. WCS tournaments being called premier is a mere reference to their prizepool and doesn't say a thing about the difficulty of those tournaments. HSCs, which are called "major" are harder than WCS tournaments while not being as hard as toughest competition (GSL, Blizzcon etc.)
On March 18 2019 08:54 Parrek wrote: People are also complaining because they started this ranking saying current results would matter a little less than recent form. Then they stick soO as number one on the back of literally only Katowice
That's just a lie - or bad reading comprehension. The PR was introduced with the criteria that recent form is the most important factor but that consistency will be valued higher than in other PRs before.
On March 17 2019 21:43 Xain0n wrote: This list's main flaw is his awful timing. What if Inno drops out of his GSL group? We should wait for more results in 2019 before we can proclaim anyone the best, Serral had to be given the benefit of doubt and I'm still convinced he may still be the most well rounded player at the moment.
Serral was given the benefit of doubt which is why he was ranked higher than IEM results would have implied with soO, Stats and Dark performing better than him.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: but I would end Maru's [global dominance] after GSL vs the World in retrospective.
uhm... why? He won vs a great looking soO and a Zest-smashing Showtime before losing to Stats. He then went on to win GSL by beating Gumiho, Zest and TY one month later. One slip up isn't the end of dominance. To argue for Maru not being as dominant as before anymore because of that single loss is totally contradicting your argument for consistency you're vehemently applying for Serral in this thread.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: The fact that Serral doesn't live in Korea and is not korean means that he is not implied to play in Code S; he plays in WCS as you would expect a finnish player to do. Not playing in Code S doesn't magically make you inferior to every GSL player like many seem to think, it is NOT a prerequisite for a certain threshold of skill or for being the best player in the world. Sure, Code S is the hardest and most prestigious regional tournament in sc2; fortunately there are international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other.
You make it sound like "international tournaments where the players from every region can face each other" are actually harder than GSL (I'm sorry if I'm reading too much into this). That's just not the case based on individual skill of players who are competing in those tournaments. IEM is the only exception now. But GSL vs The World and Blizzcon do have the flaw of inflating the player pool of not super great players by letting qualify 8 foreigners. All international tournaments since the beginning of 2018 proved that no matter how high the amount of great foreigners - Koreans will still dominate the upper rounds of any tournament with very rare exceptions. Serral was the only exception who was able to make this feat a regular thing. I still think that GSLs (and IEMs like we had right now) are theoretically the toughest tournaments there are, but the amount of great players at Blizzcon/GSL vs The World and the likes is still high enough that I'm valuing them as equal because in most cases the individual tournament path of any player doesn't differ very much in difficulty - especially in higher rounds.
On March 11 2019 03:19 Xain0n wrote: Serral was the best player in 2018 because he added the best overall results in international tournaments including winning the biggest and historically more relevant one(BlizzCon) to the utter domination of his own region.
GSL still was an international event theoretically in 2018. There were foreigners competing in it - Neeb was quite impressive in doing so. So it's not that their was any restriction from competing in GSL. I don't say it's Serrals fault to not compete in GSL but you're now kind of doing what you're accusing me of: dismissing Maru's GSL victories because they weren't inernational events (which isn't the case). Blizzcon is not the biggest event in terms of toughness, nor is winning international tournaments more valuable than winning GSLs.
"In retrospective" is the key here, had it happened last week I'd have said we couldn't assume Maru's domination was ended or about to end. Now that 2018 is over, we know Maru wouldn't have won another international tournament starting from GSL vs the World, so I find it unfitting to think he was still globally dominant after that; he went on to win his third Code S so we can surely consider him to be still be dominant in Korea.
I am not saying international tournaments are harder than Code S, even if you have to ask yourself if top foreigners are indeed worse than ro32 koreans; it heavily depends on the format of the said tournaments tho, some of those are arguably more prestigious and surely have much bigger prizes which may result in a sharper motivation.
I am surely not disregarding Maru's achievements, I am just not convinced Code S was so much ahead of WCS in 2018 as you guys think to the point that Serral's 4 WCS wins actually had a weight, leading Serral to be more successful than Maru throughout the whole year.
Code S is not a locked tournament but since it takes place in Korea during the span of three months there are factual limitations for foreigners; some of them may want to live in Korea for a while but you cannot expect everyone to do so.
Also in retrospective, I don't see your point. Winning a tournament vs the toughest player pool (= all of the top Koreans) after having done so 2 times in a row before can't be called not being globally dominant just because he lost one match in between.
With that I'm not saying that Serral was worse than Maru at that point in time. We obviously don't know. I'm saying that we had two players in 2018 who had equally dominant periods of time which were overlapping with Maru's beginning earlier and Serral's ending later.
For the question wether Code S or other international events were "so much ahead of WCS in 2018": Let's look at the tournaments were both foreigners and Korean participated with the same chances of qualifying for those events:
IEM Katowice in 2018: - Top 12 only one foreigner. - Top foreigners like Showtime, Special, Neeb, Elazer, uThermal didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVII - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Lambo made it there on the back of winning vs foreigners (Heromarine and a ZvZ vs Stephano); he didn't win a match vs a Korean in the playoffs
GSL vs The World - Top 8 only 3 foreigners. - Special made it to the Ro8 by beating Has.
Blizzcon - Top 8 only 2 foreigners - Top foreigners like Showtime and Neeb didn't make it past the group stage.
Homestory Cup XVIII - Top 8 only 3 foreigners
IEM Katowice in 2019: - Top 12 only 2 foreigners
The more top Koreans participate in an event the more unlikely it is for an foreigner to make it to the higher rounds. In fact: except Serral barely any foreigner made it past Ro8 (At Homestory Cup only by winning vs foreigners; Showtime being the only one except Serral at GSL vs The World). Thus we normally only have 2 players at WCS tournaments that are capable of being Ro8-material at Tournaments with top Koreans. That being said, Blizzcon and GSL vs The World are probably not accurate representations because the player field is limited. Also HSCs are quite random so they usually don't have all the best Koreans participating. The best picture is shown by the IEMs because there isn't any locked regional qualifier or invite stuff involved.
Conclusion: Any WCS tournament lacks a minimum of 6 players (and a maximum of 10 players, if one only referred to IEMs) who would be serious contenders for making it to the finals while GSL potentially lacks 2 players who would be serious contenders for making it to the Ro8, and one of them perhaps making it to Ro4 (Neeb did it once) or even to the finals (2018 Serral of course).
So yeah, this means that winning a WCS tournament basically puts you in a Ro8 of GSL (from there anything can happen of course).
The point is there can be either one or no players(in the case there is no one who is evidently way ahead of his competitors) globally dominating, whereas there can be two players dominating regionally(one in Korea, one in WCS); GSL, despite being open to everyone and having some foreigners trying to qualify , is essentially a korean tournament, while you are treating it as international. The existence of Serral also implies there is a strong contender not competing for the Code S title, unlike what happened in the past when the best 16 players in the world were all korean.
Oh, I actually do think that two players can be globally dominating at the same time. Sometimes it just happens that two players are ahead of anybody else and thus are both dominating. Sometimes it also can happen that the results of both those players don't give a clear indication who of them is the actual best. GSL might be an essentially korean tournament (which is debatable, considering that we always had 2 to 4 top foreigners trying to qualify or actually participating in 2018 - it's not that we have many more) but it is equal in toughness to any international event because the difficulty of opponents from Ro8 on is similarly hard. Most of the time it is already harder from in the earlier rounds. The existence of Serral is the one exception. And since he does not compete in GSL it is just guesswork how he would perform in such a format while almost every top Korean proved to be capable of doing great in "weekenders", too.
On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote: By your estimates, one WCS would be roughly worth 1/4 of Code S? That's almost reasonable and way more than the majority of "korean elitists" are ready to admit(see Charoisaur above not believing Serral would have made ro8 on a regular basis).
No, as I elaborated, I see the IEMs as more representative skillwise, so it would be more like 1/6. In order to get to GSL Ro8 Serral probably would've had to beat more players of a certain level than he needed to reach a WCS final. He proved that he was capable of doing so - twice (with HSC being somewhat in between considering his tournament path which wasn't the hardest up to the finals).
On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote: Even equating a WCS winner to a Code S ro8 player does not mean every top 8 korean would have won four consecutive WCS, just that there is a chanche they might have done it; such a feat takes a huge consistency as they were played in the span of ten months during different patches.
Consistency is nice and all but winning multiple tournaments in a row with a difficulty level of x only makes you consistently good at the level of x. It doesn't say anything about your abilities above the level of x. This is why I only can count Serral's victory at GSL vs The World as clear starting point of his dominance in 2018.
On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote: It's quite hard to properly compare Serral and Maru as they don't play in the same circuit and never faced in official matches while they both were at their apex; however, numbers like earnings, win percentage, average placement in lost tournaments, streak and Premier victories are all on Serral's side and I don't believe the higher average quality of Maru's victory can make up for them, especially considering he lost more tournaments than he won and ended the year crashing out of BlizzCon early and brutally.
At some level earnings don't say much if anything about the level of a player. Yes, you have to be incredibly good to earn as much as Seral or Maru did in 2018. But with some tournaments having a much higher prize pool than others without being actually harder distorts this factor quite a lot. Also winning very high prize money by beating easier competition. Win percentage differs only slightly in the relevant phases of their years - especially if you only take top opponents into consideration plus the factor that Maru played vs more of those opponents in his dominant phase. Average placement in lost tournaments is a more valid point. But also this factor can be distorted by the number of actually played tournaments of a certain difficulty level (which Maru played more of), by the difficulty of the tournaments a player lost in (for example Serral lost in WESG in a very high round but didn't face a comparable difficult opponents in earlier rounds wich would've been different in other tournaments) and by the difficulty of the opponents a player lost to. One can lose in a kind of early round by being beaten by an eventual finalist or even tournament winner. Streak is barely on Serral's side with said distorting factors. Serral did not have more premier victories of the same quality. WCS tournaments being called premier is a mere reference to their prizepool and doesn't say a thing about the difficulty of those tournaments. HSCs, which are called "major" are harder than WCS tournaments while not being as hard as toughest competition (GSL, Blizzcon etc.)
On March 18 2019 08:54 Parrek wrote: People are also complaining because they started this ranking saying current results would matter a little less than recent form. Then they stick soO as number one on the back of literally only Katowice
That's just a lie - or bad reading comprehension. The PR was introduced with the criteria that recent form is the most important factor but that consistency will be valued higher than in other PRs before.
On March 17 2019 21:43 Xain0n wrote: This list's main flaw is his awful timing. What if Inno drops out of his GSL group? We should wait for more results in 2019 before we can proclaim anyone the best, Serral had to be given the benefit of doubt and I'm still convinced he may still be the most well rounded player at the moment.
Serral was given the benefit of doubt which is why he was ranked higher than IEM results would have implied with soO, Stats and Dark performing better than him.
Replying in sparse order.
I said before that I feel like the consistency wasn't weighted enough considering making it count more was one of the goal of this last power ranking, but that "given the benefit of doubt" was referred to the hypothetical power ranking that TL would have written(with a better timing than the real one) before IEM even started.
I agree Serral's global dominance officially started with GSL vs the World; Code S is a korean tournament as it takes place in Korea over the span of three months, even 4 foreigner players are a minimal, even if notable, presence out of 32 spots.
Even if we do not take WCS into consideration, Serral is still ahead as of earnings; the supposedly "easy" money have no relevance here.
The tournaments Serral lost(Pyeonchang, IEM, WESG) were of high quality(he ended up third at WESG by beating Classic so I would not doubt his path there); Maru played in two of these, winning one. The tournaments Maru lost(IEM, Super Tournament I, GSL vs the World, Super Tournament II, BlizzCon) weren't of especially noticeable higher quality; Serral played in three of these, winning two.
Maru's victories had indeed higher quality on average and you may find reasonable counterarguments to many of the points I brought; however, when you consider all of numbers Serral has as a whole, I think they are more solid and weight more than Maru's higher quality.
On March 18 2019 08:48 BerserkSword wrote: do the people complaining even know what monthly power rankings are?
they are a short term thing, not a long term thing
soO won the premier tournament of that month and put on a masterclass of ZvZ and ZvP against the best Zerg and Protoss players of last year. Putting him at No. 1 isnt unreasonable at all depending on the criteria being used. that's all there is to it
"Masterclass zvp" the games were quite unimpressives imo. And he barely got out of his group, it's strange for the best player of the month. Finally, all these concerns have been confirmed, this TL ranking has no purpose other than buzz.
These poweranks should consider longer term performance than just one tournament. Serral is probably still the best player in the world. He rolled over his group at IEM and only lost to the eventual champion Soo, in a close series. And then Serral barely lost at WESG.
Even with the IEM win, Soo is not a top 3 player. He barely got out of his group at IEM. Also, his performance over the last 8 months doesn't justify it, except for his IEM win.
If power rankings are done this way, whoever wins the latest premier tournament can become #1, the power ranking loses its credibility. There should be a more objective system such as point allocation which takes into consideration a player's performance over the last X months, with perhaps more weight given to recent performances. But one single performance (i.e. IEM) shouldn't vault a player to the #1 spot.
On March 19 2019 11:47 xelnaga_empire wrote: These poweranks should consider longer term performance than just one tournament. Serral is probably still the best player in the world. He rolled over his group at IEM and only lost to the eventual champion Soo, in a close series. And then Serral barely lost at WESG.
Even with the IEM win, Soo is not a top 3 player. He barely got out of his group at IEM. Also, his performance over the last 8 months doesn't justify it, except for his IEM win.
If power rankings are done this way, whoever wins the latest premier tournament can become #1, the power ranking loses its credibility. There should be a more objective system such as point allocation which takes into consideration a player's performance over the last X months, with perhaps more weight given to recent performances. But one single performance (i.e. IEM) shouldn't vault a player to the #1 spot.
That's exactly what they do but because IEM was the only tournament in 3 months it was higher valued than usually. They still valued previous performances which is why Maru and Serral were higher ranked than their performance at IEM would warrant.
Everyone on this thread is such an expert on what would be the "proper" way to do a PR but I bet, no matter who of you would do it - people would bitch just as much about it.
On March 18 2019 08:48 BerserkSword wrote: do the people complaining even know what monthly power rankings are?
they are a short term thing, not a long term thing
soO won the premier tournament of that month and put on a masterclass of ZvZ and ZvP against the best Zerg and Protoss players of last year. Putting him at No. 1 isnt unreasonable at all depending on the criteria being used. that's all there is to it
"Masterclass zvp" the games were quite unimpressives imo. And he barely got out of his group, it's strange for the best player of the month. Finally, all these concerns have been confirmed, this TL ranking has no purpose other than buzz.
Name me the player who looked more impressive
I think Serral and Stats deserved it by a good margin. I even consider Mary will be a more serious contender too despite his chokes. soO's play was not impressive, he managed to win after a scrappy group stage and super close games in ro8, good for him but if that's enough to go jump from >top 10 to 1 it feels inconsistant and only good for some buzz. Stats in this tournament looked like a superior player overall. (Ok he lost the finals in a rather stupid manner considering soO playstyle but until this, he was really dominating)
As for zvp, well, dear defensive play crushed him and while I am just a random internet dude so that's more my opinion, I am not convinced by the efficacity of the lair tech pushs performed by soO in the long run, I am quite surprised Stats lost to it and I am inclined to think he didn't play his best considering his other perf in pvz.
On March 19 2019 11:47 xelnaga_empire wrote: These poweranks should consider longer term performance than just one tournament. Serral is probably still the best player in the world. He rolled over his group at IEM and only lost to the eventual champion Soo, in a close series. And then Serral barely lost at WESG.
Even with the IEM win, Soo is not a top 3 player. He barely got out of his group at IEM. Also, his performance over the last 8 months doesn't justify it, except for his IEM win.
If power rankings are done this way, whoever wins the latest premier tournament can become #1, the power ranking loses its credibility. There should be a more objective system such as point allocation which takes into consideration a player's performance over the last X months, with perhaps more weight given to recent performances. But one single performance (i.e. IEM) shouldn't vault a player to the #1 spot.
That's exactly what they do but because IEM was the only tournament in 3 months it was higher valued than usually. They still valued previous performances which is why Maru and Serral were higher ranked than their performance at IEM would warrant.
Everyone on this thread is such an expert on what would be the "proper" way to do a PR but I bet, no matter who of you would do it - people would bitch just as much about it.
I agree with this, it really makes sense.
I must confess that when I saw this PR I strongly disagreed with it. soO in top? Felt weird one result was enough to put soO at first but even though Stats was 2nd he got ranked below Serral. However considering as Charoisaur writes that IEM was the only tournament to really judge form by and how stats got knocked out of GSL earlier this PR seems on the money to me. At least top 5.
EPT
Ragnarok: After another disappointing early exit from Code S (including a 10 minute series loss against Scarlett), the writing appeared to be on the wall for RagnaroK as he traveled to Europe to take a shot at IEM Katowice's RO76. Yet, in an unexpected show of prowess, RagnaroK made a clean open bracket run through Snute, Dear and KeeN to reach the main event of IEM Katowice.![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/618.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/2106.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/958.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/575.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/682.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/1850.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/4729.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/611.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/4567.jpg)
![[image loading]](/tlpd/images/players/634.jpg)
