On April 22 2021 02:34 Musicus wrote: Nice work and very interesting post, thanks!
Personally I still consider Sjow vs Life one of the biggest upsets ever, considering it was DH offline main stage match in the ro8.
Life was probably hungover or something, but still :D.
Sjow was still a way more established player than Hyperion or Meomaika and the hellbats were freaking op while Life was entering a phase of relative slump.
Rewatching this game, Sjows macro is straight to master3/diamond 1. His micro could still perhaps GM today although I think there are so many more nuances to micro in todays meta than what was displayed in that series..
This patch wasnt Hellbats being OP though. Hellbats being op was when you could have 4 of them in a medivac. This was more the meta where zergs just hadnt learned to play properly against MMMM yet in terms of when to drone (and not to build roaches). A couple of months later the matchup stabilized (and then mines got nerfed and it got zerg favored, then mines got unnerfed 6 months later and the MU was fine for rest of HOTS).
I think Sjow beating Life in terms of upsets potential would be like if uThermal beat Dark today.
Life was ranked #3 on Aligulac while Sjow was around #250; Dark is currently ranked #9, uThermal is #28.
Sjow was like a top 7 foreign terran at the time? and it was a meta where terran generally did better than zergs. Don't think the #250 is accurate. Maybe the rankings were still slow too adapt from end of HOTS period.
Life was probably hungover or something, but still :D.
Sjow was still a way more established player than Hyperion or Meomaika and the hellbats were freaking op while Life was entering a phase of relative slump.
Rewatching this game, Sjows macro is straight to master3/diamond 1. His micro could still perhaps GM today although I think there are so many more nuances to micro in todays meta than what was displayed in that series..
This patch wasnt Hellbats being OP though. Hellbats being op was when you could have 4 of them in a medivac. This was more the meta where zergs just hadnt learned to play properly against MMMM yet in terms of when to drone (and not to build roaches). A couple of months later the matchup stabilized (and then mines got nerfed and it got zerg favored, then mines got unnerfed 6 months later and the MU was fine for rest of HOTS).
I think Sjow beating Life in terms of upsets potential would be like if uThermal beat Dark today.
Life was ranked #3 on Aligulac while Sjow was around #250; Dark is currently ranked #9, uThermal is #28.
Sjow was like a top 7 foreign terran at the time? and it was a meta where terran generally did better than zergs. Don't think the #250 is accurate. Maybe the rankings were still slow too adapt from end of HOTS period.
Was this when the Kespa era was getting properly going or just before that talent base came through?
Either way even with just the esf boys there were absolutely tons of Koreans better than all but the most elite foreigners at that time. Plus I think the gaps within the foreign scene between the top tiers and going down have shrunk a bit too.
Plus Europe has always been choc a bloc with loads of solid if unspectacular Zerg players all the way up to the region’s best and Protoss tended to put in more consistent results too. Top 7 Terran doesn’t necessarily equal top 7 Zerg or Protoss.
Meta does factor in for sure, although favourable Terran metas outside of arguably broken ones tended to not make a massive difference in the foreign scene as compared to what the Koreans could eke out of the race. Favourable Zerg metas and styles seemed to be something that foreigners could take advantage of more readily.
Why the current era is quite exciting. Even in foreign land Terrans tended to underperform vs their counterparts, but now that gap isn’t as big a factor and they’ve begun to close the gap to top Korean Terrans too.
250 may be a tad low but wasn’t Sjow not particularly active/bouncing between part time and full time play around here? Could contribute to him being underrated by ranking systems perhaps.
Could very conceivably be outside of a top 100 though. Which isn’t to dunk on Sjowtime at all
Life was probably hungover or something, but still :D.
Sjow was still a way more established player than Hyperion or Meomaika and the hellbats were freaking op while Life was entering a phase of relative slump.
Rewatching this game, Sjows macro is straight to master3/diamond 1. His micro could still perhaps GM today although I think there are so many more nuances to micro in todays meta than what was displayed in that series..
This patch wasnt Hellbats being OP though. Hellbats being op was when you could have 4 of them in a medivac. This was more the meta where zergs just hadnt learned to play properly against MMMM yet in terms of when to drone (and not to build roaches). A couple of months later the matchup stabilized (and then mines got nerfed and it got zerg favored, then mines got unnerfed 6 months later and the MU was fine for rest of HOTS).
I think Sjow beating Life in terms of upsets potential would be like if uThermal beat Dark today.
Life was ranked #3 on Aligulac while Sjow was around #250; Dark is currently ranked #9, uThermal is #28.
Sjow was like a top 7 foreign terran at the time? and it was a meta where terran generally did better than zergs. Don't think the #250 is accurate. Maybe the rankings were still slow too adapt from end of HOTS period.
also worth noting that the player pool back then was way bigger. Being #250 now would be impossible for a pro player and a player of the caliber of uthermal would be much lower ranked in 2013. Still think Sjow beating Life was a bigger upset but not by that big of a margin as the ranking difference would suggest
If soul beat Dark today I think it would be comparable
Life was probably hungover or something, but still :D.
Sjow was still a way more established player than Hyperion or Meomaika and the hellbats were freaking op while Life was entering a phase of relative slump.
Rewatching this game, Sjows macro is straight to master3/diamond 1. His micro could still perhaps GM today although I think there are so many more nuances to micro in todays meta than what was displayed in that series..
This patch wasnt Hellbats being OP though. Hellbats being op was when you could have 4 of them in a medivac. This was more the meta where zergs just hadnt learned to play properly against MMMM yet in terms of when to drone (and not to build roaches). A couple of months later the matchup stabilized (and then mines got nerfed and it got zerg favored, then mines got unnerfed 6 months later and the MU was fine for rest of HOTS).
I think Sjow beating Life in terms of upsets potential would be like if uThermal beat Dark today.
Life was ranked #3 on Aligulac while Sjow was around #250; Dark is currently ranked #9, uThermal is #28.
Sjow was like a top 7 foreign terran at the time? and it was a meta where terran generally did better than zergs. Don't think the #250 is accurate. Maybe the rankings were still slow too adapt from end of HOTS period.
also worth noting that the player pool back then was way bigger. Being #250 now would be impossible for a pro player and a player of the caliber of uthermal would be much lower ranked in 2013. Still think Sjow beating Life was a bigger upset but not by that big of a margin as the ranking difference would suggest
If soul beat Dark today I think it would be comparable
The pool of pro players was bigger in 2013, it's true; there were many more koreans around, KeSpa had opened the gate s already. However, a player as skilled as uThermal is now would have most likely ranked not much lower than top 50. Sjow was effectively kind of an outlier at the time of the upset, since he stopped playing in 2012(he was ranked #211 in October) and came back in 2013 breaking the top 100 right after; he didn't go much further, in any of case.
Your example is still unfit, souL is approximately as strong as uThermal and a top 3 foreign Terran outside of Clem; even considering Dark's level then same as Life at the time of the upset, you would need BattleB or Aqueron to beat Dark in one official tournament to come close.
Life was probably hungover or something, but still :D.
Sjow was still a way more established player than Hyperion or Meomaika and the hellbats were freaking op while Life was entering a phase of relative slump.
Rewatching this game, Sjows macro is straight to master3/diamond 1. His micro could still perhaps GM today although I think there are so many more nuances to micro in todays meta than what was displayed in that series..
This patch wasnt Hellbats being OP though. Hellbats being op was when you could have 4 of them in a medivac. This was more the meta where zergs just hadnt learned to play properly against MMMM yet in terms of when to drone (and not to build roaches). A couple of months later the matchup stabilized (and then mines got nerfed and it got zerg favored, then mines got unnerfed 6 months later and the MU was fine for rest of HOTS).
I think Sjow beating Life in terms of upsets potential would be like if uThermal beat Dark today.
Life was ranked #3 on Aligulac while Sjow was around #250; Dark is currently ranked #9, uThermal is #28.
Sjow was like a top 7 foreign terran at the time? and it was a meta where terran generally did better than zergs. Don't think the #250 is accurate. Maybe the rankings were still slow too adapt from end of HOTS period.
also worth noting that the player pool back then was way bigger. Being #250 now would be impossible for a pro player and a player of the caliber of uthermal would be much lower ranked in 2013. Still think Sjow beating Life was a bigger upset but not by that big of a margin as the ranking difference would suggest
If soul beat Dark today I think it would be comparable
The pool of pro players was bigger in 2013, it's true; there were many more koreans around, KeSpa had opened the gate s already. However, a player as skilled as uThermal is now would have most likely ranked not much lower than top 50. Sjow was effectively kind of an outlier at the time of the upset, since he stopped playing in 2012(he was ranked #211 in October) and came back in 2013 breaking the top 100 right after; he didn't go much further, in any of case.
Your example is still unfit, souL is approximately as strong as uThermal and a top 3 foreign Terran outside of Clem; even considering Dark's level then same as Life at the time of the upset, you would need BattleB or Aqueron to beat Dark in one official tournament to come close.
I think there is a pretty large gap down from uthermal/soul to 5th best terran (excl special i guess). But I guess if you got a 6.5K MMR terran on EU server to beat Dark in a bo3 that might be a better example.
Did someone broke down the races played by the players who were able to pull off the upsets. At first glance it looks like it's primarily zerg players.
EPT
