Serral, the PatchZerg: An Uncomfortable Truth

by Wax

Three months into 2019, one thing has become undeniably clear: Serral is a PatchZerg.

Serral has never been the undisputed #1 player in the world, contrary to what you may have been led to believe. Casters and Blizzard referred to Serral as the best in the world, simply because he was a foreigner who managed to crack the top ten.

In 2018, Serral was good enough to do well at a couple weekenders, but he refused to participate in the major leagues (GSL). Of course, if he wants to play in the minor leagues (WCS) and rack up wins and money, that's totally fine. But saying he's the best player in the world wasn't something an objective observer could say. His dominance isn't unprecedented, because Serral barely played against top players. INnoVation and Life both had stronger periods of dominance in their prime, even if they didn't win 40+ series in a row by some contrived metric (online, offline, whatever). And this isn't even taking Maru's 2018 into account, where he won three Code S tournaments in a row.

Serral's losses at IEM and WESG were huge blows against his legacy because he barely plays any matches against Koreans. He won't play an important tournament with Koreans in it until GSL. vs The World in August, and then BlizzCon after that. It's even worse when you consider that Serral lost in these very two tournaments last year. While Serral fans would have you believe their twisted version of reality, WESG and IEM are the two most prestigious international tournaments, not GSL vs. The World and BlizzCon. GSL vs The World is a vacation time for Koreans, and BlizzCon's format makes it a less challenging tournament than IEM or even Super Tournament (let alone Code S). HomeCtory Cup was an underrated great win for Serral, but it's not enough to vindicate him as a truly great player.

It might be that Serral simply exploited 2018 Zerg to its fullest. In 2018, Serral played super defensively and just tried to outlast his opponent. Zerg can win like that because they were given the strongest late-game with the many changes implemented throughout 2018. Maru actually had his invincible Raven-style taken away early in the year, and even after that he continued to dominate GSL by pivoting to very active and aggressive play. Terran has just been directly/indirectly nerfed in the lategame too many times.

One final note: It's funny that people think we 'Korean Elitists' hate Serral, because we definitely do not. It seems that if you don't agree that Serral is the best player ever, then that implies that you hate Serral. Therefore you are shamed into praising Serral—even if you have a more moderate point of view—unless you are willing to accept endless harassment and provocation.

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