The word 'best' has only been in the English language since the 12th century, but in spirit, I imagine we've been arguing about who's 'the best' in sports since time untold. We've gone from a time when the majority of professional sporting events weren't even broadcasted on television to an era in which we have more access to games and data than ever before.
Despite this wealth of information, we seem doomed to revert to our old definitions and axioms when deciding who's the best. Who won the biggest event of the season? Who recorded the highest win-rate over a set period? And, of course, what have you done for me lately?
As we head toward the end of the 2019 season, I felt like it was worth taking a step back, catching our breaths, and thinking about all the inconsistencies and arbitrary judgments that we employ when arguing about which player is 'the best.' Some of the ground I'm covering should feel awfully familiar, but I think it's worth a review anyway. And, perhaps, there's some new perspective I can provide as well.
Discussing the events of 2019 would make things a little too contentious—fortunately 2014 presents us with some great examples to consider with the benefit of hindsight (and I'll espouse a bit on 2019 toward the end).
What's the value of a non-first place finish?
We generally believe championships matter most when deciding who's 'best,' but we also seem to agree that other criteria have some varying amount of importance. The greatest and most famous example of this will always be soO’s championship-less 2014 season where he reached every single Code S final and lost in all of them. Until Maru's 2018 run, three straight Code S finals was an unprecedented, unthinkable accomplishment, and one could have argued that soO was an overall superior player compared to any of the one-time champions of 2014. In the course of reaching every single Code S final that year, soO notched a ridiculous 54 victories in Code S over the course of those three seasons, nine more than Season 1 Champion Zest (45) and approximately twice the number of wins logged by Season 2 Champion Classic (27) and Season 3 Champion INnoVation (28). There's our first complication in determining who the best player is: How do we measure the ability to place consistently high in tournaments compared to winning the tournament outright?
[ByuL’s three final appearances in GSL/SSL events in 2015 is another story in this vein, but we'll leave that for another day.]
The playing field isn't always even.
Another championship-less player from 2014 who deserves a second look at is Maru, who appeared in the quarterfinals and semifinals of Season 1 and 2 of Code S, respectively. These hardly seem like noteworthy results on paper, but it's different once you present some context: only three Terrans even qualified for Code S Season 1 to begin with, only two reached the Round of 16, and only Maru survived to play in the Round of 8. Things didn’t change much in the following Season 2 where Maru was one of four Terrans to qualify for Code S, one of only two Terrans to reach the Round of 16, and the only one to make it to the playoffs. That time, he even won a series on top of that, beating Soulkey to reach the Round of 4. Terrans won a mere 42 games during the first two seasons of Code S, with Maru responsible for over half of them at 23 (in terms of matches, he won nine out of Terran's sixteen).
[Proleague rosters do show that Terran was slightly under-represented in Korea compared to Zerg and Protoss, but not directly proportionate to their poor Code S showings].
History might mark INnoVation down as the only Terran to win a Code S championship in 2014 (Season 3), but Maru actually equaled his win count across all three Code S tournaments. That brings us to our second complication: How do we account for a player's success relative to their faction's strength at the time? Without going into a deep-dive on balance, we can at least say Terran was doing poorly in Code S for the first half of 2014, while Aligulac.com's balance report presents somewhat poor overall win-rates for Terran across all competitions. Does anyone really think Maru was worse than all the Protoss players who won some form of championship that year? (MC, herO, San, HerO, sOs, Classic, StarDust, Pigbaby, Zest). Some might even compare him favorably to fellow Terrans like Bomber, TaeJa (more on him in a second), Polt, or MMA who won championships in weaker competitions outside the GSL. Which brings us to the next point...
Not all championships are made equally.
We'll leave off on 2014 with one final example: TL.net's 'Best Korean Player' award (de facto best in the world—TL.net awarded foreigners a seperate, participation prize until 2018). TL.net writers ended up voting for Zest, who won three tournaments in Korea that year. TaeJa also won three tournaments that year, just not in Korea (HomeStory Cup 9, Dreamhack Summer and IEM Shenzhen). Perusing the comments, it seems that this decision was not especially contentious (by TL.net standards, anyway). It seemed fans agreed that TaeJa's three did not quite equal Zest's three. But somewhat paradoxically, part of the reason Zest won his Player of the Year award ahead of soO was precisely because three championships was greater than zero (to Zest's credit, he also placed high in tournaments he didn't win). Along the same lines, TL.net awarded TaeJa 'Best Korean Terran' for his three foreign title wins, ahead of INnoVation who had won just GSL Code S that year.
This presents us with the most familiar quandary of all—when players DO win championships, which ones are more valuable? Consciously or unconsciously, we all do this mental math: factoring an event’s prestige, prize pool, magnitude, the overall level of competition in the event, and the level of the competitors the winner actually faced, and trying to come up with a conclusion. There's no absolute truth or mathematical formula here—we do most of these determinations through pure feel and conjecture.
Statistics lie.
Let's bring this back to 2019. Back in August, Stats lifted the trophy at Assembly Summer, even defeating Serral along the way. Despite this, there didn't seem to be any rush to immediately crown Stats as 'the best' player in the world. Code S Season 2 champion Dark retained the top Korean spot on the TL.net Power Rank, despite the fact that he hadn't competed in in Finland, and despite the fact that his Code S title had come over a month prior.
Intrigued by this debate (or non-debate), I tried to make the arguments for either player's superiority. Subjectively, either one could have been judged to have the better tournament resume (Dark: top four in Code S Season 1, top four at IEM Katowice, and a championship in Code S Season 2. Stats: Round of 32 elimination in Code S Season 1, finals loss at IEM Katowice, and Round of 16 elimination in Code S Season 2, top eight HomeStory Cup, 1st place Assembly Summer).
But what about match records and statistics? Those should be less subjective, right? However, they proved to be just as malleable. Dark's win percentage during the period from IEM Katowice to Assembly was five percentage points higher than Stats (80% to 75%). However, one only needs to change the filter the results during the same period we just examined to exclude online matches we find that Stats’ win percentage jumps to nearly 83%. That seems to support the argument that Stats was actually slightly better than Dark in offline matches which ostensibly 'matter' more.
But if one filters the stats a second time to remove results against supposedly inferior non-Korean players (who both Dark and Stats faced a glut of at WESG and HSC, respectively) Dark comes out slightly ahead with a 77.27% win-rate to Stats' 74.07%. And if one filters the data yet again to re-add only matches against Serral (creating a 'versus Koreans+Serral' stat), Stats retakes the lead with a 75.86% (22-7) win-rate compared to Dark's 73.91% (17-6). The point is: Stats can be tricky, and I don't mean just the player.
Of course, I could have begun this all by pointing out how arbitrary this selected date range (IEM to Assembly) is to begin with, given that it has no inherent significance. Why didn't I just start it on February 2nd, the start of Code S Season 1? Or on January 25th, the date of the Code S qualifiers? Or on November 4th, the day after BlizzCon 2018?
At the end of the day, determining who 'the best' is might not even be all that important to anyone except the fans, considering how players like INnoVation seem to be more focused on things like making money. But the pursuit of determining who's 'the best' is, at worst, a pleasant distraction, something that keeps us attached to this game, and plain old fun.
To that end, I hope I've given you some more perspectives to consider the next time you're arguing on TL.net, help you understand that everyone is just collecting different pieces of an unsolvable puzzle, and maybe even convince you to use those Aligulac.com stats more honestly.
Credits and acknowledgements
Written by: Mizenhauer Editor: Wax Images: GomTV, Liqupedia, Blizzard Blanket credit for existing at all: Aligulac.com
Shouldn't the title be "Who is the best in Korea" but clearly it is reffering to koreans only. You can only see a mention of Serral when talking about stats beating him..
On September 20 2019 04:47 terribleplayer1 wrote: If you're going for an objective approach, with a proven metric, aligulac has a clear result right now.
It's not like Serral is 3200 Maru is 3180 and Stats is 3170, the difference is humongous.
All your other ideas are obviously flawed/inferior. Winrates don't take into consideration opposition level, not every KR players is the same level.
ByuN stayed in top 10 Aligulac forever way after being out of shape, I would take it with a grain of salt.
On September 20 2019 04:45 Ronin2011 wrote: Shouldn't the title be "Who is the best in Korea" but clearly it is reffering to koreans only. You can only see a mention of Serral when talking about stats beating him..
Agreed. Whether author thinks Serral is the best in the world or not, one just can't simply exclude him when considering who is the best SC2 player in the world now.
The word 'best' has only been in the English language since the 12th century, but in spirit, I imagine we've been arguing about who's 'the best' in sports since time untold."
I propose instead of the term GOAT "Greatest of All-Time" we use GOVRT "Greatest of Various Random Times"
No one can ever truly be called "the best" in StarCraft 2 because greatness in SC2 is merely a temporary existence. You could easily have 4-5 players tied at #1 in the Power Rankings and it would still make sense because the skill levels between them is minute and often arbitary.
On September 20 2019 05:52 Nakajin wrote: I see that after last night someone went back to that Stuciu article about Rogue beeing a Patchzerg and all the shit it got and thought to himself:
"Let me top that"
Edit: God damit I just read the piece, it's actually well thought out and methodical, still don't think it's gonna stop it from derailling.
On September 20 2019 05:52 Nakajin wrote: I see that after last night someone went back to that Stuciu article about Rogue beeing a Patchzerg and all the shit it got and thought to himself:
"Let me top that"
Edit: God damit I just read the piece, it's actually well thought out and methodical, still don't think it's gonna stop it from derailling.
On September 20 2019 05:52 Nakajin wrote: I see that after last night someone went back to that Stuciu article about Rogue beeing a Patchzerg and all the shit it got and thought to himself:
"Let me top that"
Edit: God damit I just read the piece, it's actually well thought out and methodical, still don't think it's gonna stop it from derailling.
Didn't know it was a stuchiu article)
Goes to show, all TL writers are the same
It wasn't from the "esport expert" himself!? It was a Mizen article too I imagine?
On September 20 2019 05:52 Nakajin wrote: I see that after last night someone went back to that Stuciu article about Rogue beeing a Patchzerg and all the shit it got and thought to himself:
"Let me top that"
Edit: God damit I just read the piece, it's actually well thought out and methodical, still don't think it's gonna stop it from derailling.
I can forgive you for missing it, but a month ago I actually proved conclusively that Fruitdealer was the best player in StarCraft 2 using nothing but hard facts and enviable reason:
On August 20 2019 06:55 Fanatic-Templar wrote: If you made a tournament today for modern players using the map pool of Steppes of War, Kulas Ravine, Desert Oasis, Blistering Sands, etc. no Zerg player could win it. Very likely no Zerg player could even win a single series. But Fruitdealer won one. And other Zerg players managed to take series. This objectively demonstrates that Zerg players in 2010 were capable of performing feats the much weaker Zerg players of today couldn't even hope to emulate.
Now you may be saying "that logic may be completely irrefutable, but it only proves that modern Zergs suck compared to their 2010 counterparts!" And that's correct, but consider this: modern Terrans and Protosses are so bad that they regularly lose to modern Zergs! This very tournament, which had many modern Terrans and Protosses in it, was capped by a mirror match-up between two modern Zergs! So we must rationally conclude that modern Terrans and Protosses suck too.
Quod erat demonstrandum!
EDIT: Didn't want to admit it, but I can't really find fault with this argument by Durnuu though:
On September 20 2019 05:20 Durnuu wrote: It's either this guy or that guy. I'm going with the latter since Terran obviously is the most skilled race.
If you listen to the community, the subjective greatest SC2 player of all time is INnoVation.
If you prefer cold, hard facts, Rogue is our current Unofficial World Champion based on objective results, beating the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy... who beat our first champion, Fruitdealer.
I don't really know what people are on about with these Maru and Serral guys.
On September 20 2019 08:40 Kitai wrote: If you listen to the community, the subjective greatest SC2 player of all time is INnoVation.
If you prefer cold, hard facts, Rogue is our current Unofficial World Champion based on objective results, beating the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy... who beat our first champion, Fruitdealer.
I don't really know what people are on about with these Maru and Serral guys.
On September 20 2019 08:40 Kitai wrote: If you listen to the community, the subjective greatest SC2 player of all time is INnoVation.
If you prefer cold, hard facts, Rogue is our current Unofficial World Champion based on objective results, beating the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy... who beat our first champion, Fruitdealer.
I don't really know what people are on about with these Maru and Serral guys.
I mean you say Unofficial world champion, I was always under the impression that was a totally official and recognised title, feel you’re underselling the prestige man
On September 20 2019 08:40 Kitai wrote: If you listen to the community, the subjective greatest SC2 player of all time is INnoVation.
If you prefer cold, hard facts, Rogue is our current Unofficial World Champion based on objective results, beating the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy... who beat our first champion, Fruitdealer.
I don't really know what people are on about with these Maru and Serral guys.
I mean you say Unofficial world champion, I was always under the impression that was a totally official and recognised title, feel you’re underselling the prestige man
On September 20 2019 08:40 Kitai wrote: If you listen to the community, the subjective greatest SC2 player of all time is INnoVation.
If you prefer cold, hard facts, Rogue is our current Unofficial World Champion based on objective results, beating the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy... who beat our first champion, Fruitdealer.
I don't really know what people are on about with these Maru and Serral guys.
I mean you say Unofficial world champion, I was always under the impression that was a totally official and recognised title, feel you’re underselling the prestige man
Apologies. Rogue is our Official Unofficial World Champion.
I thought we settled this debate long ago and went with the most EPS titles to determine the best player. Shocked that Miz didn't mention this. By this reputable criteria, Big Gabe is the best player of all time, with Socke a close second.
Even though Alligulac isn t perfect and a score difference worth a couple of points must not imply, that player x is better than y, looking at top 5 Zergs and top 4 Terrans, it s hard to argue, that the top of those respected races isn t one of them. It gets a bit harder with Protoss, as everyone between Stats and Trap is within 100 Points. But with that Alligulac gives quite a good starting point in my eyes. Top Zerg: Serral, Dark, Rogue, Solar, Reynor Top Terran: Maru, TY, Cure, Inno Top Protoss: Stats, Classic, Hero, Dear, Zest, Showtime, Neeb, Trap After that its pretty much up to debate. In my eyes it s Serral, than Maru, than nothing by a big margin..
Overal Tournament Winnings Longest Streak Top Elo Rating Longest Winning Streak Longest Streak without losing Highest Win% in different areas Highest MMR Rating ,,, and so on and so on
You can bring up countles Statistics but there has to be a way to measure importancy and Value from different Statistics and bring them all together to a final overall all time best list
If there realy would be such a perfect measure System i would not be shocked if the list would look something like this : that list is of course just a "maybe"
Overal Tournament Winnings Longest Streak Top Elo Rating Longest Winning Streak Longest Streak without losing Highest Win% in different areas Highest MMR Rating ,,, and so on and so on
You can bring up countles Statistics but there has to be a way to measure importancy and Value from different Statistics and bring them all together to a final overall all time best list
If there realy would be such a perfect measure System i would not be shocked if the list would lock something like this :
1 Serral 2 Maru 3 Innovation 4 Mvp
that list is of course just a "maybe"
I struggle to see how you can place Serral above Inno considering comparable prestige of the tournaments they have won though.
I just thought this don't understand why some Serral fans are in such a hurry to crown him as top 5 player or GOAT. He will probably get very close to that in another year or two as long as Blizzard keeps supporting SC2.
Overal Tournament Winnings Longest Streak Top Elo Rating Longest Winning Streak Longest Streak without losing Highest Win% in different areas Highest MMR Rating ,,, and so on and so on
You can bring up countles Statistics but there has to be a way to measure importancy and Value from different Statistics and bring them all together to a final overall all time best list
If there realy would be such a perfect measure System i would not be shocked if the list would look something like this : that list is of course just a "maybe"
On September 20 2019 08:40 Kitai wrote: If you listen to the community, the subjective greatest SC2 player of all time is INnoVation.
If you prefer cold, hard facts, Rogue is our current Unofficial World Champion based on objective results, beating the guy who beat the guy who beat the guy... who beat our first champion, Fruitdealer.
I don't really know what people are on about with these Maru and Serral guys.
I mean you say Unofficial world champion, I was always under the impression that was a totally official and recognised title, feel you’re underselling the prestige man
Apologies. Rogue is our Official Unofficial World Champion.
Overal Tournament Winnings Longest Streak Top Elo Rating Longest Winning Streak Longest Streak without losing Highest Win% in different areas Highest MMR Rating ,,, and so on and so on
You can bring up countles Statistics but there has to be a way to measure importancy and Value from different Statistics and bring them all together to a final overall all time best list
If there realy would be such a perfect measure System i would not be shocked if the list would look something like this : that list is of course just a "maybe"
1 Serral 2 Maru 3 Innovation 4 Mvp
I think Inno’s peak ELO is way too low, for whatever reason that might be.
I’d assume that with an entire new dataset of players in the Kespa transition, playing a lot of games in closed competitions such as Proleague, it took a while for ELO ratings to accurately reflect the quality of those players vs how they were ranked.
My best guess anyway, not really my area of expertise.
Even nowadays it’s difficult to have accurate ELO ratings for players in separate scenes of differing average skill. Serral is a bit different because he does just kind of beat everyone, but I think guys like Showtime and HeRoMaRinE are relatively inflated by WCS results.
Inno’s TvZ when he was rocking that 93% win rate or whatever and stomping everyone was IMO probably the strongest individual matchup for a period that any player has had, but he’s only vZ rank 5th all-time.
ELO rankings are useful of course, but they’re way more accurate when participants all play within the same kind of system.
Overal Tournament Winnings Longest Streak Top Elo Rating Longest Winning Streak Longest Streak without losing Highest Win% in different areas Highest MMR Rating ,,, and so on and so on
You can bring up countles Statistics but there has to be a way to measure importancy and Value from different Statistics and bring them all together to a final overall all time best list
If there realy would be such a perfect measure System i would not be shocked if the list would look something like this : that list is of course just a "maybe"
1 Serral 2 Maru 3 Innovation 4 Mvp
I think Inno’s peak ELO is way too low, for whatever reason that might be.
I’d assume that with an entire new dataset of players in the Kespa transition, playing a lot of games in closed competitions such as Proleague, it took a while for ELO ratings to accurately reflect the quality of those players vs how they were ranked.
My best guess anyway, not really my area of expertise.
Even nowadays it’s difficult to have accurate ELO ratings for players in separate scenes of differing average skill. Serral is a bit different because he does just kind of beat everyone, but I think guys like Showtime and HeRoMaRinE are relatively inflated by WCS results.
Inno’s TvZ when he was rocking that 93% win rate or whatever and stomping everyone was IMO probably the strongest individual matchup for a period that any player has had, but he’s only vZ rank 5th all-time.
ELO rankings are useful of course, but they’re way more accurate when participants all play within the same kind of system.
I think it's because his peak was in 2017 and he has never been on top after 2017 so he didn't benefit from rating inflation. The inflation does not look as bad now but if you look a couple years back, the best player elo was like low 2000s. Overall, I'd say aligulac elo is useful but should be considered within the context of it's time.
Overal Tournament Winnings Longest Streak Top Elo Rating Longest Winning Streak Longest Streak without losing Highest Win% in different areas Highest MMR Rating ,,, and so on and so on
You can bring up countles Statistics but there has to be a way to measure importancy and Value from different Statistics and bring them all together to a final overall all time best list
If there realy would be such a perfect measure System i would not be shocked if the list would look something like this : that list is of course just a "maybe"
1 Serral 2 Maru 3 Innovation 4 Mvp
I think Inno’s peak ELO is way too low, for whatever reason that might be.
I’d assume that with an entire new dataset of players in the Kespa transition, playing a lot of games in closed competitions such as Proleague, it took a while for ELO ratings to accurately reflect the quality of those players vs how they were ranked.
My best guess anyway, not really my area of expertise.
Even nowadays it’s difficult to have accurate ELO ratings for players in separate scenes of differing average skill. Serral is a bit different because he does just kind of beat everyone, but I think guys like Showtime and HeRoMaRinE are relatively inflated by WCS results.
Inno’s TvZ when he was rocking that 93% win rate or whatever and stomping everyone was IMO probably the strongest individual matchup for a period that any player has had, but he’s only vZ rank 5th all-time.
ELO rankings are useful of course, but they’re way more accurate when participants all play within the same kind of system.
I think it's because his peak was in 2017 and he has never been on top after 2017 so he didn't benefit from rating inflation. The inflation does not look as bad now but if you look a couple years back, the best player elo was like low 2000s. Overall, I'd say aligulac elo is useful but should be considered within the context of it's time.
I think his actual peak at least in vZ, relative to the players in the scene was in 2013 if anything
Which as you alluded to will be even more deflated than later ratings:
Elo (and especially peak Elo) is a ludicrous metric for GOAT discussions because it's explicitly not designed for that kind of comparison- it's designed for 'at the time' comparisons because it's a system prone to inflation.
e.g. I find it highly unlikely that anybody would claim that Mamedyarov, Liren, and Radjabov are greater all time Chess players than Fischer or Karpov.
Anyone using aligulac peaks to prove Serral is the best ever is a clown and shouldn't be taken seriously. The inflation is ridiculous. Lambo has a higher ELO peak than Life. Clem has a higher peak than Taeja. Showtime has a higher peak than Zest....
Although I see Serral becoming one of the best if not the best. Let's also not forget that he's playing in a highly zerg favoured meta at the moment. Life on the other hand wasn't but well life is gone now. The way I see it, 1.(Life if he is to be included) or Maru 2.Serral
If Serral were to win wcs this year, he would take the top place.
On September 21 2019 00:00 GalacticFox wrote: Although I see Serral becoming one of the best if not the best. Let's also not forget that he's playing in a highly zerg favoured meta at the moment. Life on the other hand wasn't but well life is gone now. The way I see it, 1.(Life if he is to be included) or Maru 2.Serral
If Serral were to win wcs this year, he would take the top place.
All Life-Maru and Serral in front of INno is crazy
Overal Tournament Winnings Longest Streak Top Elo Rating Longest Winning Streak Longest Streak without losing Highest Win% in different areas Highest MMR Rating ,,, and so on and so on
You can bring up countles Statistics but there has to be a way to measure importancy and Value from different Statistics and bring them all together to a final overall all time best list
If there realy would be such a perfect measure System i would not be shocked if the list would lock something like this :
1 Serral 2 Maru 3 Innovation 4 Mvp
that list is of course just a "maybe"
I struggle to see how you can place Serral above Inno considering comparable prestige of the tournaments they have won though.
Blizzcon is the most prestige and has the highest honor. The one trophy all pros want and gunning for.
Serral is on this mission to came back to back Blizzcon as the undisputed GOAT.
On September 21 2019 00:00 GalacticFox wrote: Although I see Serral becoming one of the best if not the best. Let's also not forget that he's playing in a highly zerg favoured meta at the moment. Life on the other hand wasn't but well life is gone now. The way I see it, 1.(Life if he is to be included) or Maru 2.Serral
If Serral were to win wcs this year, he would take the top place.
All Life-Maru and Serral in front of INno is crazy
I put Life ahead of Inno because Life was more dominant in his prime. Inno has won 4-5 major tournaments in the past 2 years so he's been racking up trophies for quite some time now. Serral should also be ahead since he's last year's world champion, which is the most prestigious title any starcraft 2 player can receive.
On September 21 2019 00:00 GalacticFox wrote: Although I see Serral becoming one of the best if not the best. Let's also not forget that he's playing in a highly zerg favoured meta at the moment. Life on the other hand wasn't but well life is gone now. The way I see it, 1.(Life if he is to be included) or Maru 2.Serral
If Serral were to win wcs this year, he would take the top place.
All Life-Maru and Serral in front of INno is crazy
I put Life ahead of Inno because Life was more dominant in his prime. Inno has won 4-5 major tournaments in the past 2 years so he's been racking up trophies for quite some time now. Serral should also be ahead since he's last year's world champion, which is the most prestigious title any starcraft 2 player can receive.
I think INno was/is way more dominant than Life when he is in his on point. The big critizism you can make at INno is that he's less clutch than Life was, but he had multiple year when his matchup win rate push the 80% mark (or even 90% if you take match winrate).
Also that Serral argument make no sense at all? I mean I could get behind a Serral goat argument (well actually no but at least there's a strong argument to be made) but "because he's the world champ" make no sense. sOs has 2 Blizzcon, MMA technically has a Blizzcon trophy even if it was a GSL one as well as a silver + a Blizzard cup witch was the actual world championship that year, Life of course has a trophy and a silver (+ a Blizzard cup) even fucking ByuN was a Blizzcon champ at some point.
On September 20 2019 05:31 Chris_Havoc wrote: I propose instead of the term GOAT "Greatest of All-Time" we use GOVRT "Greatest of Various Random Times"
No one can ever truly be called "the best" in StarCraft 2 because greatness in SC2 is merely a temporary existence. You could easily have 4-5 players tied at #1 in the Power Rankings and it would still make sense because the skill levels between them is minute and often arbitary.
Do you mean in regards to like, how in Wings, at any one time, the best player in the world could have equally been MC/MVP/Nestea, but the players that followed them, like Inno/Classic/Stats to pick a random 3 are the best in THEIR ERA?
It sounds like the old Bonjwa system, what you're proposing
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
Haven't Tastosis compared Wings champions to Platinum players nowadays?
On September 21 2019 00:00 GalacticFox wrote: Although I see Serral becoming one of the best if not the best. Let's also not forget that he's playing in a highly zerg favoured meta at the moment. Life on the other hand wasn't but well life is gone now. The way I see it, 1.(Life if he is to be included) or Maru 2.Serral
If Serral were to win wcs this year, he would take the top place.
All Life-Maru and Serral in front of INno is crazy
I put Life ahead of Inno because Life was more dominant in his prime. Inno has won 4-5 major tournaments in the past 2 years so he's been racking up trophies for quite some time now. Serral should also be ahead since he's last year's world champion, which is the most prestigious title any starcraft 2 player can receive.
I think INno was/is way more dominant than Life when he is in his on point. The big critizism you can make at INno is that he's less clutch than Life was, but he had multiple year when his matchup win rate push the 80% mark (or even 90% if you take match winrate).
The big criticism of INno is that only won when terran was (to some extent) imba. He's the perfect patch terran.
I don't think INno was ever the sole terran in a ro8 until this year (?) and he has never won a tournament where terran was underperforming (as far as I remember).
And in terms of absolute peak it's not even close. Life's run of winning blizzcon, GSL, IEM, while making ro4 of SSL, and finals of dreamhack is much better than INno's one tournament a year for like 5 years.
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
Haven't Tastosis compared Wings champions to Platinum players nowadays?
People compare early WoL champions to gold league players.
Honestly I'd say the early champs were at least (modern) masters in terms of mechanics. Obviously not in terms of strategy.
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
Bearing mind it was the beginning of the KESPA era of SC2 but in the first few seasons of 2013 Mvp was extremely competitive, particularly in a narrow loss to INno in the WCS Season 1 finals. IM also won a team league the same year. Overall, he had a solid 2.5-3 years.
It was the beginning of the end though; he had some pretty ignominius results in 2014 with losses to a strong uThermal and MorroW.
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
Haven't Tastosis compared Wings champions to Platinum players nowadays?
People compare early WoL champions to gold league players.
Honestly I'd say the early champs were at least (modern) masters in terms of mechanics. Obviously not in terms of strategy.
From early 2010 and early 2011 I am inclined to agree (gold league comment). In late 2011 I think there were major improvements in both Koreans and foreigners.
You also have to take into account things like how meh the map lists were, no worker counts shown, no auto mining, siege mode research, slow medivacs/no boost, slow and non healing reapers - plus more (sorry for the Terran bias). It took a while for SC2 to grow into it's own entity from how it was released. Such is my opinion .
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
Haven't Tastosis compared Wings champions to Platinum players nowadays?
People compare early WoL champions to gold league players.
Honestly I'd say the early champs were at least (modern) masters in terms of mechanics. Obviously not in terms of strategy.
Stuff just wasn’t figured out as you say. Part of MVP’s strong GOAT claim to me is also how much of modern Terran standards he implemented or perfected. So in that sense I do quite like the Boxer comparison.
9 years of a scene’s RTS knowledge is an insane amount. It really cannot be overstated, hell some stuff is still new to foreign players in BW after the information and translations we started getting in the streaming era.
Mechanics and macro definitely overlap, they are different things to me anyway. The former is how efficiently you use your mouse and keyboard to input things, macro you still need some knowledge, optimal workers, expansion timings and when is safe what compositions are good, upgrade timings, how much production to add and when to do it etc, then your macro/multitask cycles themselves and how well you do it.
That was still being figured out to even something vaguely resembling modern play for quite some time.
On a purely mechanical level the average ladder player is a lot better now for sure, I still think they’d lag far far behind an Mvp or an MC of that era, or folks who’d played Brood War to any serious degree. Some players of that era might be comparable to today’s masters player though for sure
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
Bearing mind it was the beginning of the KESPA era of SC2 but in the first few seasons of 2013 Mvp was extremely competitive, particularly in a narrow loss to INno in the WCS Season 1 finals. IM also won a team league the same year. Overall, he had a solid 2.5-3 years.
It was the beginning of the end though; he had some pretty ignominius results in 2014 with losses to a strong uThermal and MorroW.
On September 20 2019 06:36 Locutos wrote: Why do we even bother to ask whos the GOAT?
We all know the answer... it begins with SER, and ends with RAL.
Weird way to spell Mvp
Mvp kinda is like Boxer. He dominated in the early years of his game. With SC2 being changed A LOT during its existence, it's also really hard to compare games of 2019 with those of 2011.
Serral, Maru and Stats are the best players of their races right now, but what's the point in choosing one over another. It's like Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
Haven't Tastosis compared Wings champions to Platinum players nowadays?
People compare early WoL champions to gold league players.
Honestly I'd say the early champs were at least (modern) masters in terms of mechanics. Obviously not in terms of strategy.
From early 2010 and early 2011 I am inclined to agree (gold league comment). In late 2011 I think there were major improvements in both Koreans and foreigners.
You also have to take into account things like how meh the map lists were, no worker counts shown, no auto mining, siege mode research, slow medivacs/no boost, slow and non healing reapers - plus more (sorry for the Terran bias). It took a while for SC2 to grow into it's own entity from how it was released. Such is my opinion .
You mean you didn't like Scrap Station and Lost Temple?
We already know who the best player is and that is the 3 Dark Lords of Starcraft 2 Sniper , Roro and JohnnyRecco no other player have ever topped those three players in peak skill during their prime like those three players!
On September 21 2019 03:00 Waxangel wrote: Was this post just a honeypot to ban posters who post before reading? Find out, next
I read it but saddly I didn't find any tips on how to win Internet point so I went back to the tride and true method of writing long ass post about Maru, Serral and INno to answer other long ass post I didn't read.
On September 21 2019 00:00 GalacticFox wrote: Although I see Serral becoming one of the best if not the best. Let's also not forget that he's playing in a highly zerg favoured meta at the moment. Life on the other hand wasn't but well life is gone now. The way I see it, 1.(Life if he is to be included) or Maru 2.Serral
If Serral were to win wcs this year, he would take the top place.
All Life-Maru and Serral in front of INno is crazy
I put Life ahead of Inno because Life was more dominant in his prime. Inno has won 4-5 major tournaments in the past 2 years so he's been racking up trophies for quite some time now. Serral should also be ahead since he's last year's world champion, which is the most prestigious title any starcraft 2 player can receive.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
IMO, Dark is a bit to high, Polt is probably the last on that list, herO at 10 feel super high too, Rain and Classic fell kind of high for both, but maybe not. I would pull TaeJa and Serral a few nutch higher, probably Parting too. I would say Serral around 12-8 same for TaeJa, it's mostly a battle between them the three toss and soO.
I think we are not getting the point of the article but whatever
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
I can't argue with a lot of your placements but I am awaiting Xain0n's response to this lol. I just think that Life and Mvp should be swapped with Zest and sOs) and Rain is a bit too high. I would personally put Serral above Polt, Rain and Rogue (but that may change if Rogue wins GSL and Serral doesn't do too well in Blizzcon) but I have hard time saying he is better than the other players you've mentioned.
Edit: Yeah I agree that Classic and herO are a bit high (I'd replace them with Taeja and the WoL greats listed below them). Also, I think someone before mentioned that herO didn't actually have very difficult (relatively speaking) IEMs so I might see Serral being above him too but probably not Classic (although I think they are pretty close at this point).
I'd put him somewhere between like 12th-15th place.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
IMO, Dark is a bit to high, Polt is probably the last on that list, herO at 10 feel super high too, Rain and Classic fell kind of high for both, but maybe not. I would pull TaeJa and Serral a few nutch higher, probably Parting too. I would say Serral around 12-8 same for TaeJa, it's mostly a battle between them the three toss and soO.
Serral has, even aside from WCS inflation a basically unbeaten year, highest vKorean winrate ever, about two years of winning every tournament or losing to the eventual winner.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
IMO, Dark is a bit to high, Polt is probably the last on that list, herO at 10 feel super high too, Rain and Classic fell kind of high for both, but maybe not. I would pull TaeJa and Serral a few nutch higher, probably Parting too. I would say Serral around 12-8 same for TaeJa, it's mostly a battle between them the three toss and soO.
Serral has, even aside from WCS inflation a basically unbeaten year, highest vKorean winrate ever, about two years of winning every tournament or losing to the eventual winner.
18th is silly, come on.
I just said I looked only at plain achievements without factoring in dominance or consistency or something like this. If you do that the list becomes extremely subjective (who says dominance is more impressive than consistency ?) so it would be stupid to factor that in.
It also always surprises me in those debates how underrated herO is - just look at his Liquipedia page! He has 6 premier tournament victories, 4 second places and is arguably a top 3 Proleague player. Classic is also underrated but that doesn't surprise me anymore.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
IMO, Dark is a bit to high, Polt is probably the last on that list, herO at 10 feel super high too, Rain and Classic fell kind of high for both, but maybe not. I would pull TaeJa and Serral a few nutch higher, probably Parting too. I would say Serral around 12-8 same for TaeJa, it's mostly a battle between them the three toss and soO.
Serral has, even aside from WCS inflation a basically unbeaten year, highest vKorean winrate ever, about two years of winning every tournament or losing to the eventual winner.
18th is silly, come on.
I just said I looked only at plain achievements without factoring in dominance or consistency or something like this. If you do that the list becomes extremely subjective (who says dominance is more impressive than consistency ?) so it would be stupid to factor that in.
It also always surprises me in those debates how underrated herO is - just look at his Liquipedia page! He has 6 premier tournament victories, 4 second places and is arguably a top 3 Proleague player. Classic is also underrated but that doesn't surprise me anymore.
Ok you only look at achievements but Serral is somehow 18th, seems legit.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
IMO, Dark is a bit to high, Polt is probably the last on that list, herO at 10 feel super high too, Rain and Classic fell kind of high for both, but maybe not. I would pull TaeJa and Serral a few nutch higher, probably Parting too. I would say Serral around 12-8 same for TaeJa, it's mostly a battle between them the three toss and soO.
Serral has, even aside from WCS inflation a basically unbeaten year, highest vKorean winrate ever, about two years of winning every tournament or losing to the eventual winner.
18th is silly, come on.
I just said I looked only at plain achievements without factoring in dominance or consistency or something like this. If you do that the list becomes extremely subjective (who says dominance is more impressive than consistency ?) so it would be stupid to factor that in.
It also always surprises me in those debates how underrated herO is - just look at his Liquipedia page! He has 6 premier tournament victories, 4 second places and is arguably a top 3 Proleague player. Classic is also underrated but that doesn't surprise me anymore.
Ok you only look at achievements but Serral is somehow 18th, seems legit.
Oh you're right I placed him too low. Here's the new list: 1. Serral 2. Serral 3. Serral 4. Serral 5. Serral 6. Serral 7. Serral 8. Serral 9. Serral 10. Serral
I have also a few different lists with different criteria like dominance at their peak, consistency, best micro, best macro, best decisionmaking, handsomeness and biggest dick but those lists all look the same so I wrote it only once.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
IMO, Dark is a bit to high, Polt is probably the last on that list, herO at 10 feel super high too, Rain and Classic fell kind of high for both, but maybe not. I would pull TaeJa and Serral a few nutch higher, probably Parting too. I would say Serral around 12-8 same for TaeJa, it's mostly a battle between them the three toss and soO.
Serral has, even aside from WCS inflation a basically unbeaten year, highest vKorean winrate ever, about two years of winning every tournament or losing to the eventual winner.
18th is silly, come on.
I just said I looked only at plain achievements without factoring in dominance or consistency or something like this. If you do that the list becomes extremely subjective (who says dominance is more impressive than consistency ?) so it would be stupid to factor that in.
It also always surprises me in those debates how underrated herO is - just look at his Liquipedia page! He has 6 premier tournament victories, 4 second places and is arguably a top 3 Proleague player. Classic is also underrated but that doesn't surprise me anymore.
herO overall results are way to low to be top 10 for me, weekender trophy are good and all but he as 2 good results in Starleague (1 SSL win of course and a GSL semi) and only 1 good results in big weekender (The IEM Katowice final + maybe the semi a few months ago) Other than that he has results between pretty good and ok.
herO compare somewhat to Solar for me, strong results in a good number of tournament and a surprisingly large trophy collection but at the end of the day never the best player in the world, or even of their race really. Edit: Not saying he's not in front of Solar, just the same kind of player
And chill out a bit or stop responding to every comment about Serral all of the time
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
IMO, Dark is a bit to high, Polt is probably the last on that list, herO at 10 feel super high too, Rain and Classic fell kind of high for both, but maybe not. I would pull TaeJa and Serral a few nutch higher, probably Parting too. I would say Serral around 12-8 same for TaeJa, it's mostly a battle between them the three toss and soO.
Serral has, even aside from WCS inflation a basically unbeaten year, highest vKorean winrate ever, about two years of winning every tournament or losing to the eventual winner.
18th is silly, come on.
What does "basically unbeaten" mean? He was beaten multiple times within any timespan of a year that you could pick.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
I can't argue with a lot of your placements but I am awaiting Xain0n's response to this lol. I just think that Life and Mvp should be swapped with Zest and sOs) and Rain is a bit too high. I would personally put Serral above Polt, Rain and Rogue (but that may change if Rogue wins GSL and Serral doesn't do too well in Blizzcon) but I have hard time saying he is better than the other players you've mentioned.
Edit: Yeah I agree that Classic and herO are a bit high (I'd replace them with Taeja and the WoL greats listed below them). Also, I think someone before mentioned that herO didn't actually have very difficult (relatively speaking) IEMs so I might see Serral being above him too but probably not Classic (although I think they are pretty close at this point).
I'd put him somewhere between like 12th-15th place.
Nakajin's GOAT contest voters ranked Serral 18th before he won two WCS, lost one in the finals, got another one GSL vs the World title and reached ro4 at Asus Rog; that was a pretty low placement already, there is no way Serral can be considered #18 in a GOAT list at the moment.
Now, let's imagine an alternate reality in which WCS doesn't exist: Serral's placement seems reasonable at once. There would still be extreme anti-WoL and pro-KeSPa(Maru excluded) bias in Chairosaur's list, I would never agree with it, but Serral's being ranked 18th would not be a point in contention.
Too bad that only in the world of Charoisaur(and of few other elects), WCS is worth nothing; six titles put Serral in a tier with Zest, Stats, MC, MMA, maybe Classic and Rain. And I'm not even considering the extra features that Wombat mentioned and that would easily place Serral at the top of this tier.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
I can't argue with a lot of your placements but I am awaiting Xain0n's response to this lol. I just think that Life and Mvp should be swapped with Zest and sOs) and Rain is a bit too high. I would personally put Serral above Polt, Rain and Rogue (but that may change if Rogue wins GSL and Serral doesn't do too well in Blizzcon) but I have hard time saying he is better than the other players you've mentioned.
Edit: Yeah I agree that Classic and herO are a bit high (I'd replace them with Taeja and the WoL greats listed below them). Also, I think someone before mentioned that herO didn't actually have very difficult (relatively speaking) IEMs so I might see Serral being above him too but probably not Classic (although I think they are pretty close at this point).
I'd put him somewhere between like 12th-15th place.
Nakajin's GOAT contest voters ranked Serral 18th before he won two WCS, lost one in the finals, got another one GSL vs the World title and reached ro4 at Asus Rog; that was a pretty low placement already, there is no way Serral can be considered #18 in a GOAT list at the moment.
Now, let's imagine an alternate reality in which WCS doesn't exist: Serral's placement seems reasonable at once. There would still be extreme anti-WoL and pro-KeSPa(Maru excluded) bias in Chairosaur's list, I would never agree with it, but Serral's being ranked 18th would not be a point in contention.
Too bad that only in the world of Charoisaur(and of few other elects), WCS is worth nothing; six titles put Serral in a tier with Zest, Stats, MC, MMA, maybe Classic and Rain; and I'm not even considering the extra features that Wombat mentioned and that would easily place Serral at the top of this tier.
In an ideal world you and charoisaur could develop a grudging respect for each other, but I guess we're doomed to civil iceyness instead
On September 20 2019 04:47 terribleplayer1 wrote: If you're going for an objective approach, with a proven metric, aligulac has a clear result right now.
It's not like Serral is 3200 Maru is 3180 and Stats is 3170, the difference is humongous.
All your other ideas are obviously flawed/inferior. Winrates don't take into consideration opposition level, not every KR players is the same level.
That list has no protoss in the top 9, has had protoss as lagging race for many many months. Yesterday there was only 1 protoss in top 13 MMR on rankedFTW.
It seems inocrrect to assume there is no one from ~33% of the player base in the top 9. Trap, Classic & Stats seem good enough to believably be in the top 9.
When has anyone ever been as dominant as Serral or Maru recently have been while playing protoss? MVP, Inno, SoO have also had more success than any protoss.
Aliguliac is measuring likelyhood to win, not skill. The leading and lagging race stats go with it on the same site to show that the average of a top 5 zerg is expected to win a decent majority of the time vs a top 5 protoss. So if Rogue were to barely beat Trap it should still be fair to say Trap might be a better player who would win if the races had equal sucsess at the top.
*Edited immediately as I hit post accidentally halfway through.
On September 20 2019 04:47 terribleplayer1 wrote: If you're going for an objective approach, with a proven metric, aligulac has a clear result right now.
It's not like Serral is 3200 Maru is 3180 and Stats is 3170, the difference is humongous.
All your other ideas are obviously flawed/inferior. Winrates don't take into consideration opposition level, not every KR players is the same level.
That list has no protoss in the top 9, has had protoss as lagging race for many many months. Yesterday there was only 1 protoss in top 13 MMR on rankedFTW.
It seems inocrrect to assume there is no one from ~33% of the player base in the top 9. Trap, Classic & Stats seem good enough to believably be in the top 9.
When has anyone ever been as dominant as Serral or Maru recently have been while playing protoss? MVP, Inno, SoO have also had more success than any protoss.
Aliguliac is measuring likelyhood to win, not skill. The leading and lagging race stats go with it on the same site to show that the average of a top 5 zerg is expected to win a decent majority of the time vs a top 5 protoss. So if Rogue were to barely beat Trap it should still be fair to say Trap might be a better player who would win if the races had equal sucsess at the top.
*Edited immediately as I hit post accidentally halfway through.
It does seem off, not sure why that is. Granted Cure is in the top 10 like, playing a lot of games boosts your rating to more accurately reflect your level, playing online cups etc helps in that regard.
Any semi-knowledgable SC2 fan knows of Classic’s chops in preparing builds for GSL and that he’s a monster there, whereas Aligulac has no way to factor in those externalities, likewise a player like Cure who perpetually chokes or at least doesn’t play his best live.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
sOs third ? Is it a joke ? X) Zest before Life, MC and MMA before Taeja, sure it is. No need to point serral's ridiculous ranking (at least he comes ahead of nestea) to see the absurdity of this.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
I can't argue with a lot of your placements but I am awaiting Xain0n's response to this lol. I just think that Life and Mvp should be swapped with Zest and sOs) and Rain is a bit too high. I would personally put Serral above Polt, Rain and Rogue (but that may change if Rogue wins GSL and Serral doesn't do too well in Blizzcon) but I have hard time saying he is better than the other players you've mentioned.
Edit: Yeah I agree that Classic and herO are a bit high (I'd replace them with Taeja and the WoL greats listed below them). Also, I think someone before mentioned that herO didn't actually have very difficult (relatively speaking) IEMs so I might see Serral being above him too but probably not Classic (although I think they are pretty close at this point).
I'd put him somewhere between like 12th-15th place.
Nakajin's GOAT contest voters ranked Serral 18th before he won two WCS, lost one in the finals, got another one GSL vs the World title and reached ro4 at Asus Rog; that was a pretty low placement already, there is no way Serral can be considered #18 in a GOAT list at the moment.
Now, let's imagine an alternate reality in which WCS doesn't exist: Serral's placement seems reasonable at once. There would still be extreme anti-WoL and pro-KeSPa(Maru excluded) bias in Chairosaur's list, I would never agree with it, but Serral's being ranked 18th would not be a point in contention.
Too bad that only in the world of Charoisaur(and of few other elects), WCS is worth nothing; six titles put Serral in a tier with Zest, Stats, MC, MMA, maybe Classic and Rain. And I'm not even considering the extra features that Wombat mentioned and that would easily place Serral at the top of this tier.
I mean, I personally rate WCS win as a GSL semi (if it were worth almost nothing I would have put him around 18-20). But having 6 GSL semi + WESG final + Blizzcon + 2 GSL vs World + 2 HSC is probably enough to put him above Rogue, Polt and maybe Rain and herO but I don't think it puts him ahead of other players.
i know you think the WCS are more important but I wonder what you think WCS is worth and why. I am assuming you value it like an ASUS ROG ot GSL final or Super Tournament win, etc.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
I can't argue with a lot of your placements but I am awaiting Xain0n's response to this lol. I just think that Life and Mvp should be swapped with Zest and sOs) and Rain is a bit too high. I would personally put Serral above Polt, Rain and Rogue (but that may change if Rogue wins GSL and Serral doesn't do too well in Blizzcon) but I have hard time saying he is better than the other players you've mentioned.
Edit: Yeah I agree that Classic and herO are a bit high (I'd replace them with Taeja and the WoL greats listed below them). Also, I think someone before mentioned that herO didn't actually have very difficult (relatively speaking) IEMs so I might see Serral being above him too but probably not Classic (although I think they are pretty close at this point).
I'd put him somewhere between like 12th-15th place.
Nakajin's GOAT contest voters ranked Serral 18th before he won two WCS, lost one in the finals, got another one GSL vs the World title and reached ro4 at Asus Rog; that was a pretty low placement already, there is no way Serral can be considered #18 in a GOAT list at the moment.
Now, let's imagine an alternate reality in which WCS doesn't exist: Serral's placement seems reasonable at once. There would still be extreme anti-WoL and pro-KeSPa(Maru excluded) bias in Chairosaur's list, I would never agree with it, but Serral's being ranked 18th would not be a point in contention.
Too bad that only in the world of Charoisaur(and of few other elects), WCS is worth nothing; six titles put Serral in a tier with Zest, Stats, MC, MMA, maybe Classic and Rain. And I'm not even considering the extra features that Wombat mentioned and that would easily place Serral at the top of this tier.
I mean, I personally rate WCS win as a GSL semi (if it were worth almost nothing I would have put him around 18-20). But having 6 GSL semi + WESG final + Blizzcon + 2 GSL vs World + 2 HSC is probably enough to put him above Rogue, Polt and maybe Rain and herO but I don't think it puts him ahead of other players.
i know you think the WCS are more important but I wonder what you think WCS is worth and why. I am assuming you value it like an ASUS ROG ot GSL final or Super Tournament win, etc.
I agree, if WCS were worth nothing it would be reasonable to rank Serral being at #18-20; and, to someone, WCS really is worth nothing. I can understand your point of view and I think your ranking is consistent with your ideas.
I think both ASUS Rog and Super Tournament are more valuable than WCS, which is roughly equivalent to a Code S final to me(absimally better in my opinion, but I would value them the same).
While a second place is a very good result and, sometimes, extremely good money, winning a title is the big deal. I can't justify losing being more valuable than winning when we compare tournaments belonging to the same tier(granted, not all the tournaments that share a tier are equal, but they should be close enough); for a second place to be more valuable than a title, the level of competition where the final is reached must be much higher(and I would question the fact that those two tournaments belong to the same tier).
There were times in HoTS in which this would have been true, if WCS were a tournament devoid of top tier koreans; in 2018-2019, WCS players have improved consistently and I feel that the distance between GSL and WCS is getting thinner and thinner(for example, Reynor vs Serral is a better ZvZ matchup than Dark vs Rogue, and it could very well have happened at a superior level than a Code S semifinal), definitely not enough to think that a second place in Code S is better than a WCS title in my opinion.
I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
That’s some good reading right there, cheers for putting that together.
Interesting how Classic’s peak WR still probably doesn’t correspond with his absolute peak as a player, really attests to how well he’s been in set planning for GSL this year. Ofc precious eras there’s another StarLeague plus Proleague, so it’s that little bit easier to focus on build prep nowadays.
Rain’s remarkably consistent through his relatively short span, not a huge amount of deviation.
On September 21 2019 22:20 Wombat_NI wrote: That’s some good reading right there, cheers for putting that together.
Interesting how Classic’s peak WR still probably doesn’t correspond with his absolute peak as a player, really attests to how well he’s been in set planning for GSL this year. Ofc precious eras there’s another StarLeague plus Proleague, so it’s that little bit easier to focus on build prep nowadays.
Rain’s remarkably consistent through his relatively short span, not a huge amount of deviation.
Well, my eye got instead caught by Byun having his best win ratio in 2015 and Maru, Gumiho having theirs in 2016.
On September 21 2019 22:20 Wombat_NI wrote: That’s some good reading right there, cheers for putting that together.
Interesting how Classic’s peak WR still probably doesn’t correspond with his absolute peak as a player, really attests to how well he’s been in set planning for GSL this year. Ofc precious eras there’s another StarLeague plus Proleague, so it’s that little bit easier to focus on build prep nowadays.
Rain’s remarkably consistent through his relatively short span, not a huge amount of deviation.
Well, my eye got instead caught by Byun having his best win ratio in 2015 and Maru, Gumiho having theirs in 2016.
For Byun his 2015 was almost only online stuff in Lotv beta/first weeks so it's a bit missleading
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
It's also important to make note of the quality of opponents. 65% vs lower rated players, for example, may not be as impressive as 60% vs top10 players. If you compare the match history of Serral vs Koreans and Dark vs Koreans, all of Serral's opponents are in the top10 ranking, whereas Dark and Rogue faced mostly Koreans below the 10th rank and many below even the 20th.
There should be a statistical category with the label: median rating of opponents.
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
It's also important to make note of the quality of opponents. 65% vs lower rated players, for example, may not be as impression as 60% vs top10 players. If you compare the match history of Serral vs Koreans and Dark vs Koreans, all of Serral's opponents are in the top10 ranking, whereas Dark and Rogue faced mostly Koreans below the 10th rank and many below even the 20th.
There should be a statistical category with the label: median rating of opponents.
yeah that's a good idea. If anyone is willing to find that, that would be appreciated
I could believe Cure being in the lower end of the top 10 at the moment. I would put him as 3rd best terran at the moment behind Maru and TY, pretty much equal with Inno.
Top 3 within your race should generally mean top 10 or close to it.
Cure has really good macro and was one of the few terrans punishing Protosses for all the corners protoss cut to get as much probes out before being ready for stim timing, with decent sucsess. He might have the best TvP despite having worse micro than Maru, at least I prefer his approach to the matchup.
I have seen people argue being active in online cups negetively effects a player rating too, I think Cure does well in the likes of Olimo. I haven't really looked into it.
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
Great work, thanks for doing that. If you could find some way to represent the sample sizes it would be even better. Having a 65% win rate in 100 matches is, after all, a lot more impressive than having it in 25 matches.
Oh yeah, and thanks to Mizen for a great article. Here's hoping that the eternal polemicists of goat discussions will go read it once in a while for a sobering perspective.
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
Great work, thanks for doing that. If you could find some way to represent the sample sizes it would be even better. Having a 65% win rate in 100 matches is, after all, a lot more impressive than having it in 25 matches.
Oh yeah, and thanks to Mizen for a great article. Here's hoping that the eternal polemicists of goat discussions will go read it once in a while for a sobering perspective.
If out of those 100 players, 80 (edit: 50/100 is actually much more realistic) of them are no stronger than the average top foreigner, is it really so impressive?
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
Great work, thanks for doing that. If you could find some way to represent the sample sizes it would be even better. Having a 65% win rate in 100 matches is, after all, a lot more impressive than having it in 25 matches.
Oh yeah, and thanks to Mizen for a great article. Here's hoping that the eternal polemicists of goat discussions will go read it once in a while for a sobering perspective.
If out of those 100 players, 80 of them are no stronger than the average top foreigner, is it really so impressive?
Both of you make good points - finite sample corrections and stratified sampling both belong, as second order corrections. One is trivial to code and the other not, and it's sunny outside , so I'll do both together later. On balance, they are likely to mostly even out.
As per total numbers of games, they do vary, but not more than in a 1 to 2.5 ratio generally for active players. Remember those are games versus Koreans only, and confidence interval width can be tricky.
Once these are taken into account, the issue of valuing 1. consistency and 2. clutch factor remains, and those are both strongly subjective factors.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
I can't argue with a lot of your placements but I am awaiting Xain0n's response to this lol. I just think that Life and Mvp should be swapped with Zest and sOs) and Rain is a bit too high. I would personally put Serral above Polt, Rain and Rogue (but that may change if Rogue wins GSL and Serral doesn't do too well in Blizzcon) but I have hard time saying he is better than the other players you've mentioned.
Edit: Yeah I agree that Classic and herO are a bit high (I'd replace them with Taeja and the WoL greats listed below them). Also, I think someone before mentioned that herO didn't actually have very difficult (relatively speaking) IEMs so I might see Serral being above him too but probably not Classic (although I think they are pretty close at this point).
I'd put him somewhere between like 12th-15th place.
Nakajin's GOAT contest voters ranked Serral 18th before he won two WCS, lost one in the finals, got another one GSL vs the World title and reached ro4 at Asus Rog; that was a pretty low placement already, there is no way Serral can be considered #18 in a GOAT list at the moment.
Now, let's imagine an alternate reality in which WCS doesn't exist: Serral's placement seems reasonable at once. There would still be extreme anti-WoL and pro-KeSPa(Maru excluded) bias in Chairosaur's list, I would never agree with it, but Serral's being ranked 18th would not be a point in contention.
Too bad that only in the world of Charoisaur(and of few other elects), WCS is worth nothing; six titles put Serral in a tier with Zest, Stats, MC, MMA, maybe Classic and Rain. And I'm not even considering the extra features that Wombat mentioned and that would easily place Serral at the top of this tier.
I mean, I personally rate WCS win as a GSL semi (if it were worth almost nothing I would have put him around 18-20). But having 6 GSL semi + WESG final + Blizzcon + 2 GSL vs World + 2 HSC is probably enough to put him above Rogue, Polt and maybe Rain and herO but I don't think it puts him ahead of other players.
i know you think the WCS are more important but I wonder what you think WCS is worth and why. I am assuming you value it like an ASUS ROG ot GSL final or Super Tournament win, etc.
I agree, if WCS were worth nothing it would be reasonable to rank Serral being at #18-20; and, to someone, WCS really is worth nothing. I can understand your point of view and I think your ranking is consistent with your ideas.
I think both ASUS Rog and Super Tournament are more valuable than WCS, which is roughly equivalent to a Code S final to me(absimally better in my opinion, but I would value them the same).
While a second place is a very good result and, sometimes, extremely good money, winning a title is the big deal. I can't justify losing being more valuable than winning when we compare tournaments belonging to the same tier(granted, not all the tournaments that share a tier are equal, but they should be close enough); for a second place to be more valuable than a title, the level of competition where the final is reached must be much higher(and I would question the fact that those two tournaments belong to the same tier).
There were times in HoTS in which this would have been true, if WCS were a tournament devoid of top tier koreans; in 2018-2019, WCS players have improved consistently and I feel that the distance between GSL and WCS is getting thinner and thinner(for example, Reynor vs Serral is a better ZvZ matchup than Dark vs Rogue, and it could very well have happened at a superior level than a Code S semifinal), definitely not enough to think that a second place in Code S is better than a WCS title in my opinion.
On a relative side note, I think the 2013-14 Hots WCS is severely underrated, the NA version at least was I think stronger than a "Serral-less" modern WCS. WCS players were in at least the semi-final of pretty much every single global event in Hots, with the only exception I can think off beeing WCS season 3 final in 2013 and Kespa cup 2014 (altought they were of course over represented in most of them). I would take TaeJa, Polt, HerO, JD, Heart, Bomber, Hyun.... over Reynor, Heromarine, Elazer, Neeb... any day. Plus altought the NA player were mostly shit (outside of Scarlett-Huk), the chinese player were surprisingly decent.
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
Great work, thanks for doing that. If you could find some way to represent the sample sizes it would be even better. Having a 65% win rate in 100 matches is, after all, a lot more impressive than having it in 25 matches.
Oh yeah, and thanks to Mizen for a great article. Here's hoping that the eternal polemicists of goat discussions will go read it once in a while for a sobering perspective.
If out of those 100 players, 80 of them are no stronger than the average top foreigner, is it really so impressive?
Both of you make good points - finite sample corrections and stratified sampling both belong, as second order corrections. One is trivial to code and the other not, and it's sunny outside , so I'll do both together later. On balance, they are likely to mostly even out.
As per total numbers of games, they do vary, but not more than in a 1 to 2.5 ratio generally for active players. Remember those are games versus Koreans only, and confidence interval width can be tricky.
Once these are taken into account, the issue of valuing 1. consistency and 2. clutch factor remains, and those are both strongly subjective factors.
Consistency isn't too complicated. It's just the statistical variance of a player's rating sampled over a period of time, which is a simple function. Interval of confidence is interesting, but I think when people bet on who will win a match against whom, the interval probably isn't too relevant. Given two players with equal MU ratings, you're not likely to bet on a player with a 49% vs a player with 50% just because the 49% guy has played twice as many relevant games, unless you have some additional information about him (recent practice or tournament results, for example).
Finding the median of a player's opponents' ratings is a level of complexity only the admin of Aligulac can resolve, since it requires reading through the entire database, to see each player's rating immediately prior to each match, which is something even Aligulac doesn't show (it only updates a player's rating after every 14 days, and doesn't show the change immediately after a match). This stat, combined with the win% stat would provide a more clear picture of how a player's rating is justified. EDIT: Nevermind—I guess inputting the rating value of each 14-day update can still yield a close enough approximation of the median.
Win% alone isn't enough, and we all know how frustrating it is when people misrepresent or misinterpret incomplete statistics (not saying you're doing this). Half-truths are just as bad as, if not worse than, lies.
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
Great work, thanks for doing that. If you could find some way to represent the sample sizes it would be even better. Having a 65% win rate in 100 matches is, after all, a lot more impressive than having it in 25 matches.
Oh yeah, and thanks to Mizen for a great article. Here's hoping that the eternal polemicists of goat discussions will go read it once in a while for a sobering perspective.
If out of those 100 players, 80 of them are no stronger than the average top foreigner, is it really so impressive?
Both of you make good points - finite sample corrections and stratified sampling both belong, as second order corrections. One is trivial to code and the other not, and it's sunny outside , so I'll do both together later. On balance, they are likely to mostly even out.
As per total numbers of games, they do vary, but not more than in a 1 to 2.5 ratio generally for active players. Remember those are games versus Koreans only, and confidence interval width can be tricky.
Once these are taken into account, the issue of valuing 1. consistency and 2. clutch factor remains, and those are both strongly subjective factors.
Great work. Already we see that ByuN's peak 2015 was based on only 21 games.
On September 21 2019 22:04 MyLovelyLurker wrote: I was a bit surprised by this article's conclusion. Of course all models/stats are wrong but some are useful. Saying they depend on start date and timeframe is right, but doesn't exonerate from looking deeper into these. You can average/bootstrap over start dates or pick a sensible one (the first of Jan springs to mind). Similarly, timeframe is very important too - but 6 months or six years are equally inane, so I went ahead and picked a full year, safe in the knowledge you can average those to get 2 or 3 year estimates.
But of course Aligulac's rampant ratings inflation issue makes comparing players across eras apples-to-oranges. So in order to objectively quantify domination, I've taken an hour that would otherwise have been spent posting, and coded up the pulling out of 1 year rolling, January-starting, offline winrates versus Koreans only, for twenty fantastic SC2 players. (Some players in the lists above don't show rates much above 55% and are therefore not good candidates for inclusion; in consequence I just cut them off the discussion, but I might have forgotten some, do let me know).
First, the winrate in series, as it's more discriminative :
Second, the winrate in games :
Hopefully those should be legible via browser zooming. These # include this morning's Maru vs Trap series. I deliberately am not presenting my own interpretation of such Stats (hmm) for now, so that you can draw your own conclusions; but note for instance that 2/3 in series seems to be the 'magic' threshold above which players are able to win major tournaments repeatedly. I'll update these numbers after Blizzcon of course, and hope to do a writeup time allowing. I thought TL writers would do this
Great work, thanks for doing that. If you could find some way to represent the sample sizes it would be even better. Having a 65% win rate in 100 matches is, after all, a lot more impressive than having it in 25 matches.
Oh yeah, and thanks to Mizen for a great article. Here's hoping that the eternal polemicists of goat discussions will go read it once in a while for a sobering perspective.
If out of those 100 players, 80 of them are no stronger than the average top foreigner, is it really so impressive?
Both of you make good points - finite sample corrections and stratified sampling both belong, as second order corrections. One is trivial to code and the other not, and it's sunny outside , so I'll do both together later. On balance, they are likely to mostly even out.
As per total numbers of games, they do vary, but not more than in a 1 to 2.5 ratio generally for active players. Remember those are games versus Koreans only, and confidence interval width can be tricky.
Once these are taken into account, the issue of valuing 1. consistency and 2. clutch factor remains, and those are both strongly subjective factors.
Great work. Already we see that ByuN's peak 2015 was based on only 21 games.
His peak in 2015 was from farming B-teamers and non-Proleague players in Olimoleague and such.
Well, is all about the definition of being the goat. It is a subjective opinion, because for different people different achievements matters. One can say, "ok- best win % = goat", another one would argue " nah! Only premier tournaments wins", and so on. Without making the definition of GOAT, the whole discussion doesn't make sense.
Regardless if it, it seems like we have 5 canditates : Mvp, Life, Inno, Maru, Serral. Every of these players has different "achievements" on his belt.
Mvp = First emperor and master of the game. Ability to play without wrists. Life = Brilliance, artist of the game. He "always found a way" to win vs stronger opponents. Inno = Rock solid, mechanically-perfect machine. Smashing opponents like roadroller. Maru = Micro machine, Superior strength. Being among elite players for so many years. Extremally high peak. Serral = Consistency, mentall-power, robot.
As i said, it is subjective, but for me Life deserved to be called Goat, because of his ability to win, when he was not favourite. Let's recall year 2015. After dominant wins at the beginning, he was garbage for over half of the year. Then suddenly he has to play Innovation in WC, who had just won code S, and was said to win the whole event. Mech was the way to go as a terran those days, and nobody could beat inno while he played mech. Life with his brilliant tactics, forced inno to go bio (He scared him with his early aggresion) in the series, and after neck and neck battles he menaged to win. He reached the final, just bearly loosing to SoS, being in a horrible form. Just one game, and he would have been back-to-back world champion.
Im very sad he is out of the game. If he was with us, im pretty sure he would have like around 15-18 premier tournaments wins right now, or even more.
On September 23 2019 21:11 Lgnarrow wrote: Well, is all about the definition of being the goat. It is a subjective opinion, because for different people different achievements matters. One can say, "ok- best win % = goat", another one would argue " nah! Only premier tournaments wins", and so on. Without making the definition of GOAT, the whole discussion doesn't make sense.
Regardless if it, it seems like we have 5 canditates : Mvp, Life, Inno, Maru, Serral. Every of these players has different "achievements" on his belt.
Mvp = First emperor and master of the game. Ability to play without wrists. Life = Brilliance, artist of the game. He "always found a way" to win vs stronger opponents. Inno = Rock solid, mechanically-perfect machine. Smashing opponents like roadroller. Maru = Micro machine, Superior strength. Being among elite players for so many years. Extremally high peak. Serral = Consistency, mentall-power, robot.
As i said, it is subjective, but for me Life deserved to be called Goat, because of his ability to win, when he was not favourite. Let's recall year 2015. After dominant wins at the beginning, he was garbage for over half of the year. Then suddenly he has to play Innovation in WC, who had just won code S, and was said to win the whole event. Mech was the way to go as a terran those days, and nobody could beat inno while he played mech. Life with his brilliant tactics, forced inno to go bio (He scared him with his early aggresion) in the series, and after neck and neck battles he menaged to win. He reached the final, just bearly loosing to SoS, being in a horrible form. Just one game, and he would have been back-to-back world champion.
Im very sad he is out of the game. If he was with us, im pretty sure he would have like around 15-18 premier tournaments wins right now, or even more.
I agree its subjective to a very high degree but I strongly disagree with your explanation as to why Life was great. His ability to win when he was not favored is roughly translated to being very inconsistent, which is a negative thing, not a positive.
Being one of the best in the world and then falling from grace so hard that he was garbage and then improving again to be able to be one of the best of the world is being inconsistent. The opposite of Serral and Maru.
For Innovation his wildly shifting form is considered a negative, not a plus, Life should be the same.
On September 23 2019 21:11 Lgnarrow wrote: As i said, it is subjective, but for me Life deserved to be called Goat, because of his ability to win, when he was not favourite.
That is best anti GOAT statement I have ever heard. He was not the favorite. How can he ever be anything close to GOAT then
Maru and Serral are the favorites for any competition they enter
On September 24 2019 00:38 Alejandrisha wrote: life might have been royal roader but we also have no idea whether or not he would have just fallen off given meta ie Sniper
It’s a very competitive, anti-social game to play at the levels needed, these players are humans and not robots after all. Apart from Innovation which makes his troughs completely mystifying to me.
On September 24 2019 00:38 Alejandrisha wrote: life might have been royal roader but we also have no idea whether or not he would have just fallen off given meta ie Sniper
It’s a very competitive, anti-social game to play at the levels needed, these players are humans and not robots after all. Apart from Innovation which makes his troughs completely mystifying to me.
what is doing an inno? i do remember he was the most robotic dominant tvz in one meta in hots and then kind of fell off.. and by fell off i mean still one of the top players in the world but not the BEST. the BEST is obviously thebestfou's banshee. i love that the op uses his picture :D :D rain switched but it was just to win a few rings then just peaced. hard to imagine life was capable of this feat. he had a few good runs but his career was too short and it's impossible to project what people would have done
what ever happened to sniper anyway? did he win a chip and just quit? or did he try to play after bl infestor
On September 24 2019 00:38 Alejandrisha wrote: life might have been royal roader but we also have no idea whether or not he would have just fallen off given meta ie Sniper
It’s a very competitive, anti-social game to play at the levels needed, these players are humans and not robots after all. Apart from Innovation which makes his troughs completely mystifying to me.
what is doing an inno? i do remember he was the most robotic dominant tvz in one meta in hots and then kind of fell off.. and by fell off i mean still one of the top players in the world but not the BEST. the BEST is obviously thebestfou's banshee. i love that the op uses his picture :D :D rain switched but it was just to win a few rings then just peaced. hard to imagine life was capable of this feat. he had a few good runs but his career was too short and it's impossible to project what people would have done
what ever happened to sniper anyway? did he win a chip and just quit? or did he try to play after bl infestor
Sniper had mediocre results in HotS so he switched to the other HotS and went to eliminate the fan favorites and the best team in the world in KR Blizzcon qualifier, only to lose the Blizzcon itself to NA.
On September 24 2019 00:38 Alejandrisha wrote: life might have been royal roader but we also have no idea whether or not he would have just fallen off given meta ie Sniper
It’s a very competitive, anti-social game to play at the levels needed, these players are humans and not robots after all. Apart from Innovation which makes his troughs completely mystifying to me.
what is doing an inno? i do remember he was the most robotic dominant tvz in one meta in hots and then kind of fell off.. and by fell off i mean still one of the top players in the world but not the BEST. the BEST is obviously thebestfou's banshee. i love that the op uses his picture :D :D rain switched but it was just to win a few rings then just peaced. hard to imagine life was capable of this feat. he had a few good runs but his career was too short and it's impossible to project what people would have done
what ever happened to sniper anyway? did he win a chip and just quit? or did he try to play after bl infestor
Sniper had mediocre results in HotS so he switched to the other HotS and went to eliminate the fan favorites and the best team in the world in KR Blizzcon qualifier, only to lose the Blizzcon itself to NA.
lol no bias :D in the op i was upset that the only time serral was mentioned was in the context of some one beating him. give the kid some credit he's kind of good at starcraft..
sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is Korean
sOs has three World Championships and doesn't bring much more to the table(in a GOAT discussions, his are surely outstanding achievements); he has no Starleague despite playing them since 2013 as well and no notable period of domination as well as a very limited time spent as clear #1 in the world. He wouldn't be called GOAT if he were non korean, be sure of that.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
I agreed with this list. No way can Serral top them all. It is because of some excessive narratives that make him overly stated.
It’s always going to be difficult to compare across eras, so much chopping and changing of how the tournament cycle works added to it.
I’d put him higher, personally but who to swap out and what are we looking for? Polt for sure, although a great player and one of my all-time favourite players.
Winning stuff over a long period is generally how we tend to rank players, with other factors of course. Serral has a relatively short span of being a top player, but in that span he’s put up ridiculous results and has been very consistent and considered by most to be if not the best player in the world, then in that conversation.
I don’t think there are any wrong answers here as long as people establish their criteria for greatness and stick to it somewhat consistently.
For me you can’t really be in a GOAT conversation if you weren’t the consensus best player in the world for a period of time, which is a box I think Serral does tick.
Cumulative achievements definitely help in determining how high up a ranking I’d put people, but I’d exclude any player from GOAT discussions if they were never the top dog of any particular era.
Folks mentioned $o$ and I’d have him higher than many, but his niche to me was more as a top tier player who was extremely clutch in a few huge tournaments. Definitely a great champion and no slouch in StarLeagues and Proleague.
If Serral had a decent 2018 and a miracle Blizzcon run that’s still impressive, but it’s doing it amongst the backdrop of all those other wins that really elevated it for me anyway.
If Serral does win it again this year with all the other results he’s accumulated I find it difficult to argue against bumping him up a list. I’ve already got him high up anyway, but for others who don’t I’m not sure how you’d argue against the combined weight of his 2018 and hypothetical 2019
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
I really don’t think that’s entirely the case, prior to Serral coming along/Neeb to a degree it was a moot point as foreigners didn’t win those things.
Long, long before that was a factor those achievements were consistently downplayed by many vs the achievements of his Korean peers.
I think it’s definitely partly down to his playstyle, I definitely recall quite a lot of salt where people got annoyed that he took down more ‘deserving’ players, if you swap him with a Rain or Stats winning those tournaments I imagine they’d get more credit in some corners than he did.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
I think the best way to make sOs/Serral discussion continue is to ask this: "Rank the 10 best non-SSL/GSL winning players"
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
I think the best way to make sOs/Serral discussion continue is to ask this: "Rank the 10 best non-SSL/GSL winning players"
Oh hard one, I would go.
1- soO 2- sOs 3- TaeJa 4- Serral 5- Would be Rogue but he's gonna be champ in a week 5- Parting 6- TY 7- Bomber 8- Polt 9- HerO 10- MKP or JD
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
I think the best way to make sOs/Serral discussion continue is to ask this: "Rank the 10 best non-SSL/GSL winning players"
Oh hard one, I would go.
1- soO 2- sOs 3- TaeJa 4- Serral 5- Would be Rogue but he's gonna be champ in a week 5- Parting 6- TY 7- Bomber 8- Polt 9- HerO 10- MKP or JD
edit: forgot Polt
Well the first super tournament Polt won was even more stacked than a regular GSL Code S so he is kind of a GSL winner.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
I think the best way to make sOs/Serral discussion continue is to ask this: "Rank the 10 best non-SSL/GSL winning players"
Oh hard one, I would go.
1- soO 2- sOs 3- TaeJa 4- Serral 5- Would be Rogue but he's gonna be champ in a week 5- Parting 6- TY 7- Bomber 8- Polt 9- HerO 10- MKP or JD
edit: forgot Polt
Well the first super tournament Polt won was even more stacked than a regular GSL Code S so he is kind of a GSL winner.
Felt more like a Kespa Cup to me, also it feel weird to leave ByuL out of this list, but Idk where to put him
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
I think the best way to make sOs/Serral discussion continue is to ask this: "Rank the 10 best non-SSL/GSL winning players"
Oh hard one, I would go.
1- soO 2- sOs 3- TaeJa 4- Serral 5- Would be Rogue but he's gonna be champ in a week 5- Parting 6- TY 7- Bomber 8- Polt 9- HerO 10- MKP or JD
edit: forgot Polt
Well the first super tournament Polt won was even more stacked than a regular GSL Code S so he is kind of a GSL winner.
Felt more like a Kespa Cup to me, also it feel weird to leave ByuL out of this list, but Idk where to put him
A kespa cup with 93k$ for the winner and 64 participants?
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
I think the best way to make sOs/Serral discussion continue is to ask this: "Rank the 10 best non-SSL/GSL winning players"
Oh hard one, I would go.
1- soO 2- sOs 3- TaeJa 4- Serral 5- Would be Rogue but he's gonna be champ in a week 5- Parting 6- TY 7- Bomber 8- Polt 9- HerO 10- MKP or JD
edit: forgot Polt
What's nice about this list is it gives Serral more visibility amongst an extremely talented group of players.
Regarding JD, I dont think he reached the level of scary we saw out of peal MKP. I think MKP can sit alone here.
On September 26 2019 11:10 jalstar wrote: sOs really doesn't get a lot of credit for winning Blizzcon twice, considering that Serral's Blizzcon win is a major piece of the argument for Serral being GOAT.
sOs is korean and so has to achieve twice as much to get the same credit. Probably more tbh.
If Serral, Stephano, or Neeb had won two blizzcons, katowice, and multiple korean weekenders, and had a top 3 all-time proleague record, they would be praised as the GOAT without a doubt. People did it to Serral when he had a single blizzcon and korean weekender.
sOs was so good, his 10 straight pvz games vs Rogue and Life to top Blizzcon were some of the most incredible Starcraft ever, such a wide array of oppening. It's a shame he never got that GSL trophy.
Also he gave us that Kespa Cup final against MarineKing.
I think the best way to make sOs/Serral discussion continue is to ask this: "Rank the 10 best non-SSL/GSL winning players"
Oh hard one, I would go.
1- soO 2- sOs 3- TaeJa 4- Serral 5- Would be Rogue but he's gonna be champ in a week 5- Parting 6- TY 7- Bomber 8- Polt 9- HerO 10- MKP or JD
edit: forgot Polt
Well the first super tournament Polt won was even more stacked than a regular GSL Code S so he is kind of a GSL winner.
Felt more like a Kespa Cup to me, also it feel weird to leave ByuL out of this list, but Idk where to put him
A kespa cup with 93k$ for the winner and 64 participants?
A tournament where over half the player are a certain race after the first round does sound a lot like a KC/ super tournament Actually I didn't remember there was that many player and that much money, let say a Blizzcon/Blizzard cup.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
The difference between players like MC, MMA, Polt and Serral, is that in all periods of their careers MMA, MC and Polt were championship contenders. so yes they are ahead of Serral
Since GOAT means Greatest of ALL TIME, not just the last two years, there is no argument that can justify Serral as ever being even close to GOAT, first of all cuz he was a nobody in WOL and HOTS (a nobody in 2012-2016, he only 'got good' after KeSPA dissolved), which means the AT (ALL TIME) part of GOAT is already denied from him. Now he could definitely be in contention for the Greatest of LOTV, but not All time.
On September 21 2019 08:19 Charoisaur wrote: 1. INnoVation 2. Maru 3. sOs 4. Zest 5. Life 6. Mvp 7. Stats 8. soO 9. Classic 10. herO 11. Rain 12. Dark 13. MMA 14. MC 15. TaeJa 16. Polt 17. Rogue 18. Serral 19. NesTea 20. PartinG
Serral at 18 cant see this having any kind of blowback
The only one I can see Serral being ahead of is Rogue (even though I disagree) but there's no way he's above any of the others. TaeJa, Polt, MC and MMA have won around the same amount of tournaments as Serral who were on average harder to win so there's no argument there. Putting him above any of the top 10 is ridicolous.
At least when we go by pure achievements without giving extra points for dominance which the Serral fans desperately want to do to justify him as the GOAT.
Polt, MC and MMA had great periods for sure, are they ahead of the guy?
What has Dark done to be ahead of Serral, especially given their head to head?
18th?
The difference between players like MC, MMA, Polt and Serral, is that in all periods of their careers MMA, MC and Polt were championship contenders. so yes they are ahead of Serral
Since GOAT means Greatest of ALL TIME, not just the last two years, there is no argument that can justify Serral as ever being even close to GOAT, first of all cuz he was a nobody in WOL and HOTS (a nobody in 2012-2016, he only 'got good' after KeSPA dissolved), which means the AT (ALL TIME) part of GOAT is already denied from him. Now he could definitely be in contention for the Greatest of LOTV, but not All time.
Well not really my point, was Polt ever the best player in the world at any point in his span? He’s had a great career no doubt, but does anyone think that?
Why does Kespa breaking up count against Serral? If anything it’s a plus point that a guy from outside of that background can hit the pinnacle of the game.