EPTHow do we measure GOATs without Korean SC2?
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luxon
United States109 Posts
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
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Poopi
France12761 Posts
It’s Rogue or Maru depending on your criterion and what happens next is not really relevant given the recent news (+ KR scene has become really small anyways with the military services etc) | ||
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dysenterymd
1175 Posts
Barring something truly incredible the GOAT discussion is basically frozen once the Korean scene is dead though. If someone went on a truly dominant tear (suppose Serral/Reynor won every major tournament for 3 years in a row or something) maybe we could consider that, but even with a smaller scene I doubt we'll see that level of dominance by any one player. The other scenario where the GOAT discussion is reopened is if SC2, while remaining dead in Korea, enjoys a massive rennaissance in the rest of the world, but that's major hopium. | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1413 Posts
On February 24 2023 08:38 Poopi wrote: There is not enough of a scene for GOAT conversations anymore. It’s Rogue or Maru depending on your criterion and what happens next is not really relevant given the recent news (+ KR scene has become really small anyways with the military services etc) uh... hello? serral? | ||
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swarminfestor
Malaysia2429 Posts
Serral in not top 3 definitely, but in top 5 or top 10. It has been discussed before. | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On February 24 2023 15:58 swarminfestor wrote: Serral in not top 3 definitely, but in top 5 or top 10. It has been discussed before. Many times in the past but he has continued amassing achievements. After winning Katowice, Serral definitely has a shot at the GOAT title and definitely is not merely top 5 or even top 10. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6799 Posts
On February 24 2023 05:25 luxon wrote: With the forced retirement of korean players (pre-tax 1st place winnings wouldn't even cover rent until the next tournament/paycheck), I wonder how much titles and and winnings will count towards a player's legacy. HeroMarine famously said on stream that if Serral, Clem, Reynor didn't exist he would win every Dreamhack Europe. This is essentially doing that, but for the koreans. If you take the top 10 players of each race in sc2 history, probably 26-27 out of 30 of them would be korean. If sc2 goes on for another decade, all these championships will be picked up by foreigners who never have to face anywhere near the caliber players 2015-2022 did. Can we still weigh them the same if the scene is permanently changed? I don't get that "uhhh they are killing specifically the Korean scene on purpose" Sc2 is an old game which is slowly coming to an end. That's it. EVERYONE will be making less money off of Starcraft. And by the way, the price pools for the ESL Masters are available for the Koreans as well. They are GLOBAL tournaments. INCLUDING the Koreans. This is getting ridiculous... | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
That being said: Just look towards other games. WC3 still has an active scene, got even a bit bigger after Reforged (the one really good thing it did actually), but even though Happy is wildly considered as the best player for years by now, you wouldn't really put him into the GOAT discussion. Moon, Sky, Grubby or Lyn for sure, but Happy? Not really. Depending how this year goes, you could still take this year for full-value or not, but I'm sure the next years will see a transition. As a random example: If most koreans would retire and so would Serral and Reynor, which leads to Heromarine, Clem and MaxPax dominating the remaining scene for years, you still wouldn't consider either of them as a GOAT-candidate - even with Reynors impressive world championship resume so far. | ||
Waxangel
United States33166 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24266 Posts
On February 24 2023 21:30 Balnazza wrote: Serral or Rogue take the cake, Maru without a WC-title is still not even close. That being said: Just look towards other games. WC3 still has an active scene, got even a bit bigger after Reforged (the one really good thing it did actually), but even though Happy is wildly considered as the best player for years by now, you wouldn't really put him into the GOAT discussion. Moon, Sky, Grubby or Lyn for sure, but Happy? Not really. Depending how this year goes, you could still take this year for full-value or not, but I'm sure the next years will see a transition. As a random example: If most koreans would retire and so would Serral and Reynor, which leads to Heromarine, Clem and MaxPax dominating the remaining scene for years, you still wouldn't consider either of them as a GOAT-candidate - even with Reynors impressive world championship resume so far. I’d always said there’s so much variance between eras comparisons get super tricky, so it is with this. In the absence of a Flash level player, I guess you’re just aiming to be in the conversation. And now if some hypothetical Flash player emerged into this scene, would the depth be there for them to stake that claim? | ||
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Mutaller
United States1049 Posts
Greatest SC2 player of all time (includes wol to lotv, all tournaments early GSL to current), or Greatest Blizzard Era Player (WoL to LotV Blizzard funded SC2 high prize pool tournaments), Greatest LotV player of all time (LotV inception to current). Do you really want to say early WoL counts for GOAT, but 2023 tournaments don't when the current tournaments even with diminished prize pools and retirements are played at a higher level than then. | ||
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
Just a reminder that in 2022 there were 18 players that made minimum wage in prize money playing SC2. (Minimum wage where I live is 15$/h). There were 21 koreans players that made more 5000$ all year and 6 of them are now retired. This is not 2012 BW that had 150 full time progamer living in teamhouses. We are already in a scene half full of part time player and old timer that cruise on their skills developped a decade earlier. If we wanted to stop the goat conversation when the scene fell off then that moment was like half a decade ago. Next year a player will still have the opportunity to earn probably arround 200 k$ if they dominate the scene. Plenty of money to keep on practicing. I'm not saying the cut are not important but it will probably mean that instead of 18 players making minimum wage it's gonna be like 9 or 10 people. Or that there will probably only be like a dozen or less Korean making 5000$/year. But like, as a whole it's not like the overall logic of the scene will change that much. | ||
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phodacbiet
United States1739 Posts
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RogerChillingworth
2824 Posts
But it's Serral. | ||
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Cricketer12
United States13964 Posts
On March 01 2023 09:52 RogerChillingworth wrote: Solution: don't measure GOATs. Means nothing. Boom. But it's Serral. Serral isn't above maru rogue or Mvp | ||
BluemoonSC
SoCal8908 Posts
"Greatness" cares about context - it NEEDS context otherwise it wouldn't be a remotely interesting designation or discussion. If you're an above average player in an era of mediocre play, anyone that knows anything about the history of the game wouldn't even put them in the same room as a more mediocre player who was playing in an era of the utmost, highest skill level. So, I don't really see this being an issue if global competition changes or sucks - the skill ceiling is really obvious in a game like Starcraft. You'll notice that for that reason, players from early WOL aren't typically brought up in the GOAT conversation despite being crazy during their era (thinking of players like MVP, or MC). It may wind up being the same for players in this next era of the game's life depending on the level of competition we get. There is a reason that there is a debate around Lebron or Jordan being the GOAT. | ||
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TossHeroes
281 Posts
Everyone else is just battling for 2nd place | ||
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Shinokuki
United States859 Posts
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Blargh
United States2101 Posts
But I think Maru is the most appropriate "GOAT", given how he's basically been a top 5-10 player for over a decade, all the way from 2012. No other player has the same longevity and ranking to compete, even if Rogue and Serral were more dominant in their peaks. | ||
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Poopi
France12761 Posts
On March 01 2023 09:52 RogerChillingworth wrote: Solution: don't measure GOATs. Means nothing. Boom. But it's Serral. Can’t even win in Europe despite a very low number of top players, could not win a single ZvZ series at the World Championship. I am not sure if people are trolling when they say Serral is the goat or if they genuinely believe it | ||
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tlnetuser108
83 Posts
On February 24 2023 21:30 Balnazza wrote: Serral or Rogue take the cake, Maru without a WC-title is still not even close. That being said: Just look towards other games. WC3 still has an active scene, got even a bit bigger after Reforged (the one really good thing it did actually), but even though Happy is wildly considered as the best player for years by now, you wouldn't really put him into the GOAT discussion. Moon, Sky, Grubby or Lyn for sure, but Happy? Not really. Depending how this year goes, you could still take this year for full-value or not, but I'm sure the next years will see a transition. As a random example: If most koreans would retire and so would Serral and Reynor, which leads to Heromarine, Clem and MaxPax dominating the remaining scene for years, you still wouldn't consider either of them as a GOAT-candidate - even with Reynors impressive world championship resume so far. Hard disagree. The GSL is way more prestigious than any world championship. Preparation style tournaments are inherently more difficult and require infinitely more skill than weekenders like Katowice. This is why Reynor, despite winning less than Serral, is more of a contender for GOAT than Serral is. At least he tried. Beating GSL players outside of GSL is totally different than beating GSL players inside of GSL | ||
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Akio
Finland1838 Posts
On February 24 2023 08:38 Poopi wrote: There is not enough of a scene for GOAT conversations anymore. It’s Rogue or Maru depending on your criterion and what happens next is not really relevant given the recent news (+ KR scene has become really small anyways with the military services etc) I think this is the case. And what makes these conversations difficult is the fact that most of these guys have been around for a long time; what is the cutoff where we can say that "ok the scene is too small for a tournament win to count towards someone's GOAT status". Like no one would discredit Maru's tournament victories from 2018 onwards because we already KNEW he was great, it just seems he found his stride during that time. But if let's say Oliveira now went and won everything there is to win in an insane streak, there would be people who say that on a historical basis, becoming truly great in an era with only a handful of contenders would not mean as much as, say, Mvp's dominance in WoL where the scene was more active. There's also the weird relationship of recency bias and the undeniable fact that pros get better all the time. | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1413 Posts
On February 24 2023 08:38 Poopi wrote: There is not enough of a scene for GOAT conversations anymore. It’s Rogue or Maru depending on your criterion and what happens next is not really relevant given the recent news (+ KR scene has become really small anyways with the military services etc) Imo it's serral. Would have loved to see him play in a season of gsl though | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1413 Posts
On March 01 2023 16:11 Poopi wrote: Can’t even win in Europe despite a very low number of top players, could not win a single ZvZ series at the World Championship. I am not sure if people are trolling when they say Serral is the goat or if they genuinely believe it There is no guarantee Maru or rogue would win every time either. The competition in eu is legitimate. | ||
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lechatnoir
381 Posts
We're not at THAT timespan yet but it's like, was the Murderer's Row baseball team of the 1920s the best ever? Who was a better player, Beckenbauer or Pele or C. Ronaldo? From the, dunno, 10 players that are up for contention the goat is whoever you personally want it to be and the other guy is wrong.  | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 01 2023 14:15 TossHeroes wrote: Maru is already the cemented general consensus GOAT Everyone else is just battling for 2nd place Agreed | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 01 2023 17:50 CicadaSC wrote: There is no guarantee Maru or rogue would win every time either. The competition in eu is legitimate. Maru has a way better record against Clem and Reynor than Serral | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On March 01 2023 16:11 Poopi wrote: Can’t even win in Europe despite a very low number of top players, could not win a single ZvZ series at the World Championship. I am not sure if people are trolling when they say Serral is the goat or if they genuinely believe it Ridicolous take. GOAT is about the achievements in one career, how could you think the winningnest(even leaving out his WCS/DH titles which indeed do have a weight) player in Sc2's history, the one with the best peak, the highest earner, the one with the best career win ratio, the most consistent in placements can't be taken into consideration when speaking of the greatest of all time? You may say Serral can't be the GOAT because he has never played a Code S, I may counteract that never winning a World Championship in 13 years or winning big without any form of consistency also aren't signs of being the greatest. | ||
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dysenterymd
1175 Posts
On March 01 2023 16:11 Poopi wrote: Can’t even win in Europe despite a very low number of top players, could not win a single ZvZ series at the World Championship. I am not sure if people are trolling when they say Serral is the goat or if they genuinely believe it Online tournaments aren't an essential part of anyone's claim to GOATdom. And that second point is like saying Maru can't be the GOAT because he bombed out of IEM Katowice 2019 or Rogue can't be because the GOAT because he bombed out of a few GSLs, some bad results doesn't negate anyone's claim. Anyways, I think Rogue is pretty clearly the GOAT at this point, he has the most complete resume (except for longevity, where Maru has him beat.) If competitive SC2 continues at a high level for a while longer Serral and Maru both might catch him, but sadly it doesn't look like we have that many great years left. | ||
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Drahkn
186 Posts
If I recall correctly Maru won his first PREMIER Tournament in 2013.. Let that sink in for a moment.... now he has been a favorite to win any tournament he has been in ever since , rogue and serral don't even come REMOTELY close to achieving what Maru has achieved. Earning's don't meet anything, it's about results and difficulty of tournaments you play in that determine what a player has achieved. Earning's are just a indicator. Maru is to sc2 what Flash is to SC:BW | ||
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Gescom
Canada3320 Posts
Absolutely not. ;p Flash is unshakeable. He's like a combination of Maru AND Serral. | ||
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Drahkn
186 Posts
On March 01 2023 22:05 Gescom wrote: >Maru is to sc2 what Flash is to SC:BW Absolutely not. ;p Flash is unshakeable. He's like a combination of Maru AND Serral. SC2 is way more volatile then SC:BW you can't compare it that way, anyway it does not matter. The point is Maru is the GOAT of SC2 just like Flash is the GOAT of SC:BW , why would you compare Flash and Maru skill they play 2 different games , like logic hello? | ||
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Poopi
France12761 Posts
On March 01 2023 22:05 Gescom wrote: >Maru is to sc2 what Flash is to SC:BW Absolutely not. ;p Flash is unshakeable. He's like a combination of Maru AND Serral. Flash could not do much in starcraft 2, and I would argue that INno would have become greater than Flash if they kept playing BW instead of switching to sc2. | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1413 Posts
On March 01 2023 22:27 Poopi wrote: Flash could not do much in starcraft 2, and I would argue that INno would have become greater than Flash if they kept playing BW instead of switching to sc2. There's just no way to know that. Also inno is notorious for being lazy with his practice and just playing League. Unlikely. | ||
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Akio
Finland1838 Posts
On March 01 2023 18:49 lechatnoir wrote: GOAT conversations only exist to keep people like us busy during coffee breaks or this virtual pub that is a forum. ^^ We're not at THAT timespan yet but it's like, was the Murderer's Row baseball team of the 1920s the best ever? Who was a better player, Beckenbauer or Pele or C. Ronaldo? From the, dunno, 10 players that are up for contention the goat is whoever you personally want it to be and the other guy is wrong. The thing with baseball is, at least you have weighted stats that take the era of play into consideration. When looking at hitting, the 1927 Yankees IS definitively the best team with 126 wRC+, which in simpler terms means they had a roughly 26% better offensive statline compared to the average team in 1927. But with 1v1 games like StarCraft, it literally is all about winning or losing, because that's all that matters. In team sports you can measure individual success compared to team success, and average those individual numbers into a rough estimate of the team's expected performance. But with StarCraft it's like you can have the sickest micro in the world but if you lose that means you were lacking in some other department. The brutality is really charming, but then again it makes these, as you put it, coffee break conversations really frustrating because all you can really measure is the amount of winning they did in a vacuum. | ||
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Akio
Finland1838 Posts
On March 01 2023 21:50 Drahkn wrote: Maru is to sc2 what Flash is to SC:BW Can we stop these x is to SC2 what y is to BW points already? You can't even begin to compare performances of different players for these games because the other one gets balance patches. I'm the first one to admit I think Flash is incomparable with anyone in SC2 but the skillsets required are just so different in an ever-changing game vs a stable one. | ||
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Starcloud
137 Posts
On March 01 2023 16:11 Poopi wrote: Can’t even win in Europe despite a very low number of top players, could not win a single ZvZ series at the World Championship. I am not sure if people are trolling when they say Serral is the goat or if they genuinely believe it But Maru cant win anything outside of Korea, and people here actually consider him the goat ? Its pretty much a fight between Rogue and Serral, but since Rogues wins have been pretty sloppy and Serral has his number, its pretty obvious that the only right answer is ; Serral | ||
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Pandain
United States12985 Posts
On March 01 2023 16:11 Poopi wrote: Can’t even win in Europe despite a very low number of top players, could not win a single ZvZ series at the World Championship. I am not sure if people are trolling when they say Serral is the goat or if they genuinely believe it The case for Serral is that he looked absolutely untouchable from early 2018 to early 2019, and didn't lose a series for like 11 months?, two time world champion, and overall for probably 65% of LOTV has been the scariest player. Maru is great and he's my GOAT, but failing to win a single (!!!) offline international tournament is an absolutely massive failure for any GOAT candidate. That's not something you can just ignore, and makes it almost impossible to consider him a a clear, no arguments GOAT. Then there are obvious cases for Rogue and in my opinion even Innovation as the best player when competition was the fiercest. | ||
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Drahkn
186 Posts
On March 01 2023 22:57 Akio wrote: Can we stop these x is to SC2 what y is to BW points already? You can't even begin to compare performances of different players for these games because the other one gets balance patches. I'm the first one to admit I think Flash is incomparable with anyone in SC2 but the skillsets required are just so different in an ever-changing game vs a stable one. Why? It's a perfect example, both games will have 1 GOAT so why would you not use it as an example | ||
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Drahkn
186 Posts
On March 01 2023 23:51 Starcloud wrote: But Maru cant win anything outside of Korea, and people here actually consider him the goat ? Its pretty much a fight between Rogue and Serral, but since Rogues wins have been pretty sloppy and Serral has his number, its pretty obvious that the only right answer is ; Serral Serral never won a GSL, didnt even compete in one, Maru has many high finishes in world finals just never claimed 1st , with your logic Maru is the GOAT . | ||
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allmotor1
152 Posts
On March 01 2023 16:45 tlnetuser108 wrote: Hard disagree. The GSL is way more prestigious than any world championship. Preparation style tournaments are inherently more difficult and require infinitely more skill than weekenders like Katowice. This is why Reynor, despite winning less than Serral, is more of a contender for GOAT than Serral is. At least he tried. Beating GSL players outside of GSL is totally different than beating GSL players inside of GSL Could not agree more. Maru's GSL win's vs the caliber of competition trumps any of those other tournmanets. Also, Maru has been around the longest out of the rest of the GOAT contenders and he's been a force for 10+ years through multiple variations of the game. Guys like Serral / Rogue are great, however they have been dominant in clearly a zerg favored meta (since legacy of the void). | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 00:39 Pandain wrote: The case for Serral is that he looked absolutely untouchable from early 2018 to early 2019, and didn't lose a series for like 11 months?, two time world champion, and overall for probably 65% of LOTV has been the scariest player. Maru is great and he's my GOAT, but failing to win a single (!!!) offline international tournament is an absolutely massive failure for any GOAT candidate. That's not something you can just ignore, and makes it almost impossible to consider him a a clear, no arguments GOAT. Then there are obvious cases for Rogue and in my opinion even Innovation as the best player when competition was the fiercest. On the other hand Serral never won a GSL, mostly won when Zerg was the strongest race and during a relatively weak competitive era while Maru won 2 Starleagues during the Kespa era, was arguably the best proleague player and could win at times when no other terran was competitive. I concede that there's no obvious Goat as every player has like an asterisk to their achievements but imo Maru definitely has the best case | ||
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Cricketer12
United States13964 Posts
On March 01 2023 14:15 TossHeroes wrote: Serral is already the cemented general consensus GOAT Everyone else is just battling for 2nd place Cope User was warned for this post | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1413 Posts
how is that cope? | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
Rogue is closer but still slightly below Maru. I also consider proleague to count towards this (and it's the only team league that does) as in many ways that was the highest stakes tournament of all and had all top competition present. | ||
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Whatson
United States5356 Posts
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xsnac
Barbados1365 Posts
money. thats how you measure things in real life. the goat has the most money. I will let the list talk. https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/151-starcraft-ii | ||
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phodacbiet
United States1739 Posts
On March 02 2023 02:28 xsnac wrote: there is one simple metric that people who are under 30 will never understand. money. thats how you measure things in real life. the goat has the most money. I will let the list talk. https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/151-starcraft-ii The issue with this list though is it doesn't account for inflation. People like MVP only won ~400k, but 400k in 2014 (when he last won it), is a lot more than 400k now. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 02 2023 02:28 xsnac wrote: there is one simple metric that people who are under 30 will never understand. money. thats how you measure things in real life. the goat has the most money. I will let the list talk. https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/151-starcraft-ii If Koreans weren't excluded from all of WCS besides Blizzcon for several straight years Maru and Rogue would both have a lot more earnings. That also doesn't account for salary which definitely closes that gap at least for Maru. I'd be pretty confident Maru has made the most money on SC2 when taking into account all income. Maru's salary when he was proleague's best player was likely one of the highest in SC2. | ||
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Cricketer12
United States13964 Posts
In what world is Serral cemented as the GOAT? I wouldn't even put him in the top 3 | ||
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Cricketer12
United States13964 Posts
On March 02 2023 02:28 xsnac wrote: there is one simple metric that people who are under 30 will never understand. money. thats how you measure things in real life. the goat has the most money. I will let the list talk. https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/151-starcraft-ii World Championships are not nearly as prestigious as GSL. Plus Proleague salaries aren't accounted for here. | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
On March 02 2023 03:29 JJH777 wrote: If Koreans weren't excluded from all of WCS besides Blizzcon for several straight years Maru and Rogue would both have a lot more earnings. That also doesn't account for salary which definitely closes that gap at least for Maru. I'd be pretty confident Maru has made the most money on SC2 when taking into account all income. Maru's salary when he was proleague's best player was likely one of the highest in SC2. just like the whole goat discussion. only "if" "would" "imo" "likely" etc. and no facts | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 02 2023 03:40 BelethielQT wrote: just like the whole goat discussion. only "if" "would" "imo" "likely" etc. and no facts Money is just a dumb criteria for goat because we don't know anything about proleague salaries and because the majority of top pros were outright excluded from a ton of events simply because they were too good for the majority of SC2's life. High stakes tournament wins with the majority of top pros present doesn't require speculation to say Maru has the best claim. | ||
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argonautdice
Canada2704 Posts
How do we measure GOATs without Korean SC2? With a ruler and a scale. | ||
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xsnac
Barbados1365 Posts
On March 02 2023 03:42 JJH777 wrote: Money is just a dumb criteria for goat because we don't know anything about proleague salaries and because the majority of top pros were outright excluded from a ton of events simply because they were too good for the majority of SC2's life. High stakes tournament wins with the majority of top pros present doesn't require speculation to say Maru has the best claim. yeah, just that Maru has not won the most money from tournaments, and at this point is futile to say anything. everything is relative until tournament money talks, and there Serral is the goat, all Koreans can only dream. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 02 2023 03:45 xsnac wrote: yeah, just that Maru has not won the most money from tournaments, and at this point is futile to say anything. everything is relative until tournament money talks, and there Serral is the goat, all Koreans can only dream. He hasn't won the most when looking at tournaments Koreans were actually allowed to compete in though lol. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 03:45 xsnac wrote: yeah, just that Maru has not won the most money from tournaments, and at this point is futile to say anything. everything is relative until tournament money talks, and there Serral is the goat, all Koreans can only dream. Why is money made from tournaments more important than salary money? Seems weirdly specific to me. Also funny how tournament winnings are suddenly supposed to be such a relevant criteria but back when MC was topping this list nobody thought it had much meaning regarding who the Goat is | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
Serral without any doubt won the relative majority of tournaments where he faced the koreans after he became a championship contender; Rogue and Maru stepped it up not much before him so we could say that every korean event played after that missed the strongest player in the world. Since 2018, Serral also won two World Championships. During Serral's period of invincibility, the other Zerg players didn't accomplish anything relevant and did not even reach a final in Korea; when Zerg became overpowered the next year, Serral definitely wasn't the one taking advantage of that and the idea that he was carried by his race is frankly embarassing. Prize earnings alone can't tell the truth, both Katowice and BlizzCon rewarded a different amount in different years so if anything the comparison with pros of previous eras would be inaccurate; salary on the other hand is a totally arbitrary criteria. Numbers and statistics are all in Serral's favor, win rate and head to head against koreans included(especially if you don't take into consideration online events) and there should be no doubt that he is one of the greatest players ever touching Sc2. Never having played a Code S is what makes his GOAT call dubious, as it is Maru's lack of world championships titles or Rogue's absolute lack of consistency. | ||
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On March 02 2023 03:38 Cricketer12 wrote: World Championships are not nearly as prestigious as GSL. Plus Proleague salaries aren't accounted for here. On what account can we say that the World championship are less prestigious? Do they give out more money? Yes Do they have a bigger viewership? Yes Do they have a bigger production value? Yes Do they have better players? Arguably, in the recent year they did for sure, in the Blizzcon days it's debatable. Are they more rare than GSL? Yes Appart from saying everything everything is better cause it's in Korea I don't see any reason why GSL would be "more prestigious" than a freaking world championship. Go ask Seed if he would trade place with sOs. | ||
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
I just tried it. Got hit in the face by a hoof, I blame you. | ||
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luxon
United States109 Posts
Also GOATs can be argued on different metrics, but I think everyone (over the age of say 24) can agree the most *dominant* player of all time was Life. He can't get any longevity titles because he was banned, but I can't remember another player besides BW Flash in which we couldn't have a balance discussion until he played it. He was untouchable at his best, and he was insanely young too. | ||
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TossHeroes
281 Posts
It’s okay. Lets the haters hate they are the minorities. They can keep trying to throw Maru name in the conversation to keep him relevant but Rogue is still the best Korean sc2 player Serral has already been the general consensus GOAT when he won the world championship again last year. | ||
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allmotor1
152 Posts
On March 02 2023 02:28 xsnac wrote: there is one simple metric that people who are under 30 will never understand. money. thats how you measure things in real life. the goat has the most money. I will let the list talk. https://www.esportsearnings.com/games/151-starcraft-ii this is such a stupid take lol. I'm over 30 and well off. Money doesn't measure everything. Especially in tournament winnings when there are multiple factors, like region lock and a much harder region (the Koreans competing in). | ||
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Cricketer12
United States13964 Posts
On March 02 2023 08:48 TossHeroes wrote: It’s okay. Lets the haters hate they are the minorities. They can keep trying to throw Maru name in the conversation to keep him relevant but Rogue is still the best Korean sc2 player Serral has already been the general consensus GOAT when he won the world championship again last year. Serious question, when did you start following sc2 pro scene? | ||
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[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
Though I don't think you can claim there is a GOAT. Imo, you can claim the following: Best player in WoL: Mvp Best player in HotS: Best player in Lotv from 2015 to 2016 (kespa fall) This one is tricky, but maybe Maru/Rain/Innovation Best player in Lotv post 2016-2021, The "zerg era". This era is tainted by the destruction of the korean scene. Make no mistake. It is nocoincidence that foreigner players weren't able to truly be competitive (except stephano sometimes) with koreans until KeSPA died, and anyone saying otherwise is either cluelessly biased or malicious in their argument. In this Period Serral has a case of being the best player, but Maru also has a case as well, and Rogue, which isn't a fan favorite but boy is he good. As for overall best player, it's impossible to say. It's definitely not serral, that's for sure. He only got there when Korean scene exploded and Zerg became OP (and yes, it is also not a coincidence that the only foreigners to ever truly compete vs Koreans are zerg). If I had to say someone it would have to be Maru for being consistently good since 2010. No other player comes close. | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
On March 02 2023 11:11 [Phantom] wrote: I think we can't say for sure until we see how many korean pros keep playing. Though I don't think you can claim there is a GOAT. Imo, you can claim the following: Best player in WoL: Mvp Best player in HotS: Best player in Lotv from 2015 to 2016 (kespa fall) This one is tricky, but maybe Maru/Rain/Innovation Best player in Lotv post 2016-2021, The "zerg era". This era is tainted by the destruction of the korean scene. Make no mistake. It is nocoincidence that foreigner players weren't able to truly be competitive (except stephano sometimes) with koreans until KeSPA died, and anyone saying otherwise is either cluelessly biased or malicious in their argument. In this Period Serral has a case of being the best player, but Maru also has a case as well, and Rogue, which isn't a fan favorite but boy is he good. As for overall best player, it's impossible to say. It's definitely not serral, that's for sure. He only got there when Korean scene exploded and Zerg became OP (and yes, it is also not a coincidence that the only foreigners to ever truly compete vs Koreans are zerg). If I had to say someone it would have to be Maru for being consistently good since 2010. No other player comes close. This guy is such a troll | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 08:21 luxon wrote: Man this thread has really turned into a GOAT debate, when I just wanted to know if people would consider sc2 from here on out part of the sc2 history/all time discussion or not. Basically when do we as a community move it from a pro sport to an amateur one? If not now then when? That has been discussed on the first pages. The answer is no, future titles aren't really relevant for determining the Goat | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 08:48 TossHeroes wrote: It’s okay. Lets the haters hate they are the minorities. They can keep trying to throw Maru name in the conversation to keep him relevant but Rogue is still the best Korean sc2 player Serral has already been the general consensus GOAT when he won the world championship again last year. Consensus by whom? You and the 5 other Serral fanboys here? I don't think you understand the meaning of the word consensus, this thread alone shows there is no consensus | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
Are you talking about Phantom? His picks are all super reasonable, and the same ones I would say. Personally I don't understand people saying Serral is the GOAT. Based on titles, most of his wins are EU tournaments with little to no KR talent there. Sure he's won like a GSL vs the World, and an IEM Katowice, but there are many other players who have also won a world championship (Katowice or Blizzcon/WCS), and that alone doesn't make them the best. Do I think that he was the GOAT in skill at a certain point of time? Yeah, I do think he was the best player when he won Katowice. But he didn't maintain that dominance or consistency after 2018. He was still good in 2019-2020, but it fell off a bit already as he was losing titles to Reynor, and didn't win another world championship or GSL event. In order to stand out as the GOAT of all SC2 from 2010-2022, I think you need to be dominant in more than just 1 year. If he was as dominant as he was at his peak in 2018-2019, in like at least 1 other year, then I think he'd have a more solid argument. For me, the list goes like this (players are ordered within tiers by commas) S: Maru/Rogue S-: Innovation/Life A+: MVP/Dark, sOs/Stats, Taeja A: Serral/MC, Classic/MMA, Zest, Polt, soO, Nestea, Rain | ||
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Glorfindelio
192 Posts
But really the most honest answer, in fact, is that there isn't a clear GOAT in SC2. And I can say that as a huge fan of Maru and Serral (and to a lesser extent, Rogue). It''s any one of those three--take it from someone who isn't a blatant fanboy of a certain player unlike other posters here. I've watched SC2 professionally since the first GSL, and that's the honest, unbiased truth. It would have been Maru, clearly, if he had simply won Katowice. How is that fair, you might ask? Didn't Time/Oliveira play out of his mind? Maybe, but Maru also choked multiple games away with very questionable decision-making and a weird casualness to his play. Maru finally, FINALLY, had an easy path to the finals, and he blew it. The most dominant, historically great TvT player, top 1-2 on most people's list of GOAT, got roasted by someone who won their first Premier tournament at his expense. A 4-1 loss in the grand finals of the World Championship with everything lined-up for his crowning victory, at last. In ANY other real sport, losing a championship like that would be a crushing defeat and huge, irrevocable stain on someone's legacy. Crumbling like that has to matter, and it basically switched my answer forever to this question. You could argue that Maru's excellence or bracket luck shouldn't be held against him--but sorry, that's not how sports work. | ||
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swarminfestor
Malaysia2429 Posts
On March 02 2023 18:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Are you talking about Phantom? His picks are all super reasonable, and the same ones I would say. Personally I don't understand people saying Serral is the GOAT. Based on titles, most of his wins are EU tournaments with little to no KR talent there. Sure he's won like a GSL vs the World, and an IEM Katowice, but there are many other players who have also won a world championship (Katowice or Blizzcon/WCS), and that alone doesn't make them the best. Do I think that he was the GOAT in skill at a certain point of time? Yeah, I do think he was the best player when he won Katowice. But he didn't maintain that dominance or consistency after 2018. He was still good in 2019-2020, but it fell off a bit already as he was losing titles to Reynor, and didn't win another world championship or GSL event. In order to stand out as the GOAT of all SC2 from 2010-2022, I think you need to be dominant in more than just 1 year. If he was as dominant as he was at his peak in 2018-2019, in like at least 1 other year, then I think he'd have a more solid argument. For me, the list goes like this (players are ordered within tiers by commas) S: Maru/Rogue S-: Innovation/Life A+: MVP/Dark, sOs/Stats, Taeja A: Serral/MC, Classic/MMA, Zest, Polt, soO, Nestea, Rain Partially agreed with your list. I will add Serral on A+ list, but definitely he can't be higher than S- list. Only bloody fool followers won't agree, insistently putting Serral on everyone else. | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
On March 02 2023 20:54 swarminfestor wrote: Partially agreed with your list. I will add Serral on A+ list, but definitely he can't be higher than S- list. Only bloody fool followers won't agree, insistently putting Serral on everyone else. nah u guys are so delusional | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On March 02 2023 18:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Are you talking about Phantom? His picks are all super reasonable, and the same ones I would say. Personally I don't understand people saying Serral is the GOAT. Based on titles, most of his wins are EU tournaments with little to no KR talent there. Sure he's won like a GSL vs the World, and an IEM Katowice, but there are many other players who have also won a world championship (Katowice or Blizzcon/WCS), and that alone doesn't make them the best. Do I think that he was the GOAT in skill at a certain point of time? Yeah, I do think he was the best player when he won Katowice. But he didn't maintain that dominance or consistency after 2018. He was still good in 2019-2020, but it fell off a bit already as he was losing titles to Reynor, and didn't win another world championship or GSL event. In order to stand out as the GOAT of all SC2 from 2010-2022, I think you need to be dominant in more than just 1 year. If he was as dominant as he was at his peak in 2018-2019, in like at least 1 other year, then I think he'd have a more solid argument. For me, the list goes like this (players are ordered within tiers by commas) S: Maru/Rogue S-: Innovation/Life A+: MVP/Dark, sOs/Stats, Taeja A: Serral/MC, Classic/MMA, Zest, Polt, soO, Nestea, Rain Phantom's picks are almost reasonable even if there's no way Maru could have been the best in HoTS or pre KeSpa fall LoTV. What is not reasonable is his borderline racist idea for which essentially koreans are superior and only the super op Zerg can make foreigners win, an idea we can laugh at after a chinese won a World Championship by defeating said Maru in his best mu, Terran vs Terran... I think you might have missed that, out of his 19 "Premier" tournaments Serral won only that were 2 EU locked and 7 overall without korean representation. You are also missing that he won BlizzCon(a world championship) way before Katowice(he also won 2 GSL vs the World). Serral also never lost consistency, out of 46 Premier tounaments from 2018 to 2023 he had a result worse than ro8 only 3 times while winning more than any other player had in the history of Sc2. As I previously said, it's fine if you don't consider Serral to be the GOAT but he is a contender and there is no way he can be placed as low as you and others do. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6799 Posts
There you have it. To the topic: Have any Koreans officially called it quits yet? If there is no huge wave, I would consider this coming year at the same level as last and therefore count it the same way as last year. | ||
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On March 02 2023 18:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Are you talking about Phantom? His picks are all super reasonable, and the same ones I would say. Personally I don't understand people saying Serral is the GOAT. Based on titles, most of his wins are EU tournaments with little to no KR talent there. Sure he's won like a GSL vs the World, and an IEM Katowice, but there are many other players who have also won a world championship (Katowice or Blizzcon/WCS), and that alone doesn't make them the best. Do I think that he was the GOAT in skill at a certain point of time? Yeah, I do think he was the best player when he won Katowice. But he didn't maintain that dominance or consistency after 2018. He was still good in 2019-2020, but it fell off a bit already as he was losing titles to Reynor, and didn't win another world championship or GSL event. In order to stand out as the GOAT of all SC2 from 2010-2022, I think you need to be dominant in more than just 1 year. If he was as dominant as he was at his peak in 2018-2019, in like at least 1 other year, then I think he'd have a more solid argument. For me, the list goes like this (players are ordered within tiers by commas) S: Maru/Rogue S-: Innovation/Life A+: MVP/Dark, sOs/Stats, Taeja A: Serral/MC, Classic/MMA, Zest, Polt, soO, Nestea, Rain Find me one year of Innovation's career that was better than any Serral year between 2019 and 2021 | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 21:15 Xain0n wrote: Phantom's picks are almost reasonable even if there's no way Maru could have been the best in HoTS or pre KeSpa fall LoTV. What is not reasonable is his borderline racist idea for which essentially koreans are superior and only the super op Zerg can make foreigners win, an idea we can laugh at after a chinese won a World Championship by defeating said Maru in his best mu, Terran vs Terran... I mean, it's a fact that foreigners were completely irrelevant when Kespa were still active. While I agree that Serral (and also Reynor) are incredible talents and would've been able to win tournaments in any era, it can't be denied that it would've been way harder for them to win in the Kespa era and also that they had a slightly easier time winning tournaments than the players of the other races. That HAS to be factored in. I think you might have missed that, out of his 19 "Premier" tournaments Serral won only that were 2 EU locked and 7 overall without korean representation. You are also missing that he won BlizzCon(a world championship) way before Katowice(he also won 2 GSL vs the World). Serral also never lost consistency, out of 46 Premier tounaments from 2018 to 2023 he had a result worse than ro8 only 3 times while winning more than any other player had in the history of Sc2. As I previously said, it's fine if you don't consider Serral to be the GOAT but he is a contender and there is no way he can be placed as low as you and others do. Considering the nature of the tournaments he plays in he's almost guaranteed to be consistent though. He mostly plays tournaments with either only foreigners or tournaments where the groupstage has 1 other weak foreigner in it. Anyway, I disagree with the list of the previous poster, given his list of accomplishments you can't really argue Serral is not a top 4 player all time at this point. Where I disagree is that he's above Maru or Rogue | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 21:41 Harris1st wrote: The GOAT is either Serroguaru, Marralogue or Rogmarral There you have it. To the topic: Have any Koreans officially called it quits yet? If there is no huge wave, I would consider this coming year at the same level as last and therefore count it the same way as last year. No but apparently they have stopped practicing as of now | ||
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On March 02 2023 22:01 Nakajin wrote: Find me one year of Innovation's career that was better than any Serral year between 2019 and 2021 On March 02 2023 18:13 Charoisaur wrote: Consensus by whom? You and the 5 other Serral fanboys here? I don't think you understand the meaning of the word consensus, this thread alone shows there is no consensus While consensus is maybe a bit strong, there is no doubt the general oppinion outside of this website is that Serral is the GOAT. (Just erase your history and google "Greatest Starcraft 2 players of all time"). Now it dosen't mean they are right, the outside world also try to convince me Heromarine is a superior player to Cure, but its definitly the case. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 22:22 Nakajin wrote: While consensus is maybe a bit strong, there is no doubt the general oppinion outside of this website is that Serral is the GOAT. (Just erase your history and google "Greatest Starcraft 2 players of all time"). Now it dosen't mean they are right, the outside world also try to convince me Heromarine is a superior player to Cure, but its definitly the case. Did that, the first 5 links that appear have respectively Rogue, Rogue, Life, Serral, Mvp at the top of their lists | ||
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TossHeroes
281 Posts
On March 02 2023 18:13 Charoisaur wrote: Consensus by whom? You and the 5 other Serral fanboys here? I don't think you understand the meaning of the word consensus, this thread alone shows there is no consensus Ah the usual Maru fanboy is here right on schedule. I know this is a hard concept for you kids to understand. The general consensus has already been proven multiple times. On every poll during some tournaments, online, etc, Serral has won the GOAT poll by a landslide. I’ll take the opinion of the majority fanbase over 5 Maru fanboys on TL posters Only Maru fanboys on TL are still salty Serral already surpassed Maru since 2019. Once Maru wins one world champion then he will close the gap a bit. Which should be easier now since the scene is sinking more and more. Just like how Maru finally won his GSLs, had to wait for his competition to go to the army or got older | ||
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TossHeroes
281 Posts
Most of his post are troll posts but it’s quite entertaining. It’s his gimmick | ||
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Xain0n
Italy3963 Posts
On March 02 2023 22:17 Charoisaur wrote: I mean, it's a fact that foreigners were completely irrelevant when Kespa were still active. While I agree that Serral (and also Reynor) are incredible talents and would've been able to win tournaments in any era, it can't be denied that it would've been way harder for them to win in the Kespa era and also that they had a slightly easier time winning tournaments than the players of the other races. That HAS to be factored in. Considering the nature of the tournaments he plays in he's almost guaranteed to be consistent though. He mostly plays tournaments with either only foreigners or tournaments where the groupstage has 1 other weak foreigner in it. Anyway, I disagree with the list of the previous poster, given his list of accomplishments you can't really argue Serral is not a top 4 player all time at this point. Where I disagree is that he's above Maru or Rogue Serral would still be the most consistent player if we only were to consider international events(no korean ones and no region locked ones) from 2018 to 2023. KeSpa and HoTS were the nail in the coffin of foreign sc2 which was indeed irrelevant at the time and one could wonder if Serral and Reynor would have developed into the players they are now under those circumstances, had the region lock never taken place. Once completely bloomed, tho, their skill couldn't have possibly be denied, no matter how competitively crowded the scene would have been. While it's true that Serral would have probably won less against a greater number of top koreans, the question you aren't asking yourself is if Maru would have won five GSL with KeSpa still around or even worse if Rogue would have won four considering he started doing so at the end of 2019 after never going past the ro8 for years. To my eyes, Maru's claim for GOAT only has the(major) flaw of never winning a global final(let alone winning offline tournaments outside of Asia) whereas Rogue's has many more. The clutchest(and one of the most abusive) player ever, I can't deny that Rogue is undoubtly a top as far as skill and a mindgames go, especially during his best periods towards the end of 2017 and 2021 respectively. However, do you think his sparkling 7-0 record in bo7 offline finals would have been intact if Code S were as competitive as it was during the KeSPa era? Don't you think that Rogue could have taken advantage of Zerg being very strong in the last years of LoTV while surpassing his limits in Code S? Moreover, when Rogue didn't outright win(and his victories do indeed possess the highest average quality as far as prestige goes), his placements were meager when compared to Maru's or Serral's; a player with such achievements deserves to be ranked highly in a GOAT list but could never be the one, imho. | ||
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Curufinwe Feanor
Brazil91 Posts
In between 2018 and 2022, Serral was above Maru and Rogue, or at least same level. Not one player had advantage over Serral in 1v1 statistics. Lots of Code S players had Serral as their nemesis in Aligulac. Serral is currently Maru's top 1 Nemesis in 1v1. Serrals nemesis are all from Wol era. Serral stayed this whole period in top of Aligulac's rating, and became the highest earning players in SCII. Also, he had the most Top 4 finishes, alongside Rogue and Maru, and...simply...2 World titles. What more do you need to be GOAT contender? It doesnt make sense to consider Maru and Rogue as GOAT contenders, when Serral wiped the floor with the entire world at the same time the previous two were on top form. Its also doesnt make sense to consider MvP and not Serral, when MvP had a lot of his accomplishments in a time where the meta was beta, at best. | ||
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Nakajin
Canada8988 Posts
On March 02 2023 22:28 Charoisaur wrote: Did that, the first 5 links that appear have respectively Rogue, Rogue, Life, Serral, Mvp at the top of their lists Huh, the algorithm work in misterious way then, first hit google gave me was Serral. | ||
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Moonerz
United States442 Posts
So while Serral Reynor etc are good players they are better able to compete because the entire environment is different. I personally dont really consider Serral one of the possible goats. Imo it has to be either Rogue/Inno/Maru | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 03 2023 00:30 Curufinwe Feanor wrote: In between 2018 and 2022, Serral was above Maru and Rogue, or at least same level. Not one player had advantage over Serral in 1v1 statistics. Lots of Code S players had Serral as their nemesis in Aligulac. Serral is currently Maru's top 1 Nemesis in 1v1. Serrals nemesis are all from Wol era. Serral stayed this whole period in top of Aligulac's rating, and became the highest earning players in SCII. Also, he had the most Top 4 finishes, alongside Rogue and Maru, and...simply...2 World titles. What more do you need to be GOAT contender? It doesnt make sense to consider Maru and Rogue as GOAT contenders, when Serral wiped the floor with the entire world at the same time the previous two were on top form. Its also doesnt make sense to consider MvP and not Serral, when MvP had a lot of his accomplishments in a time where the meta was beta, at best. He could win more tournaments that have the majority of competitors present like Maru and Rogue have done. Aligulac could be used for or against Serral. I guarantee if you look at the average aligulac ranking of all players in each event Serral has won vs the same for the tournaments Maru and Rogue have won the Maru/Rogue tournaments will have a far higher average level of player per aligulac. Winning an event where 80% of the top 20 is present is way harder than winning one where only 50% of the top 20 is present. Basically all of Maru/Rogues events are the former while Serral is basically all the latter besides his world championships. All you have to do is remove region locked events and Serral is already below Maru in premiers won. If you remove HSC and region locked he's way below both of them. That's before even getting into Maru's proleague results, intra-race performance, and longevity. | ||
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Yonnua
United Kingdom2331 Posts
On March 02 2023 22:01 Nakajin wrote: Find me one year of Innovation's career that was better than any Serral year between 2019 and 2021 In my opinion, any year where he placed round of 8 or higher in GSL. | ||
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THERIDDLER
Canada116 Posts
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swarminfestor
Malaysia2429 Posts
On March 03 2023 03:58 THERIDDLER wrote: The amount of people in this thread that thinks maru has never won a world championship is halarious It is just pure hate from the adherents of church of Serral. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 03 2023 03:58 THERIDDLER wrote: The amount of people in this thread that thinks maru has never won a world championship is halarious I mean I consider Maru the goat but WESG isn't the same as Katowice/Blizzcon. It is underrated though. It's harder (especially for Koreans due to their qualifiers player pool) than anything Serral has won besides his Katowice/Blizzcon. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 02 2023 23:26 TossHeroes wrote: Ah the usual Maru fanboy is here right on schedule. I know this is a hard concept for you kids to understand. The general consensus has already been proven multiple times. On every poll during some tournaments, online, etc, Serral has won the GOAT poll by a landslide. I’ll take the opinion of the majority fanbase over 5 Maru fanboys on TL posters Only Maru fanboys on TL are still salty Serral already surpassed Maru since 2019. Once Maru wins one world champion then he will close the gap a bit. Which should be easier now since the scene is sinking more and more. Just like how Maru finally won his GSLs, had to wait for his competition to go to the army or got older Link or are you talking out of your ass? I say the general consensus is that Maru is the Goat and Serral fanboys are salty, what now? | ||
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[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
On March 02 2023 21:15 Xain0n wrote: Phantom's picks are almost reasonable even if there's no way Maru could have been the best in HoTS or pre KeSpa fall LoTV. What is not reasonable is his borderline racist idea for which essentially koreans are superior and only the super op Zerg can make foreigners win, an idea we can laugh at after a chinese won a World Championship by defeating said Maru in his best mu, Terran vs Terran... It's not racist, but it's about infrastructure. The ammount of money spent on Korean esports was massive. Korea had incredibly big sponsors. There were team houses, where not only players practiced together, they had dedicated coaches. Often times they even had multiple coaches. This means players didn't only practice for hours a day, but they had people guiding them in how to improve. Look at Maru now. In the world finals he called Ryung as his coach to support him and Ryung said he had never helped maru prepare for the tournament or seen his builds. Don't you think an actual professional coach would have helped Maru prepare better? Or focus better during the finals? And it is a well known fact that pros practice less hours now than before, as team houses were very strict with schedules. So, less practice hours plus lack of dedicated team houses and coaches, and less money, means less practice, less skill. Saying players are better now than they were before is not something I agree with. Not because you keep doing something you get better. that's actually false. You can plateu, or even get worse. Just see actual athletes or gym trainers. They aren't always consistent, not even the best ones. They can get worse, specially if they lose a trainer, or switch teams. They obviously mantain a very high level, but they don't necessarily improve. See in the olympics how athletes now are better than athletes in the past? One of the reasons they run faster, jump higher, swim faster, are better at gymnastics, etc is because of all the new training equipment and regimes that have been developed and discovered over the years. What if suddenly you take that away, what happens to the atheletes? They might remember some of they things they did, but not all, and they no longer have access to all the faicilities, equipment, staff etc. Their skill will without a doubt go slightly down. they will still be top tier, but it will not be the same. That's what happened in korea. In any case, even if they were better now than before the main diferentiator is gone. Without team houses, big salaries and stric training regimes, they are the same as foreigners. That is what allowed the rest of the world to catch up. It'sjust a fact. Now, training regimens are similar across the world and the playing field is even. Serral is without a doubt a prodigy. You can see that Korean pro players respect him, and he has the potential to be even better than he is now, if he had access to what KeSPA had. But that is also true for Koreans. Because of that it's impossible to compare starcraft 2 success after the fall of KeSPA. So Serral success came after the Korean scene had imploded, and in a period where, Zerg became very strong. Serral is without a doubt one of the best players in the game since 2018, but other players have done very well in that time too, and many, like Maru, did well before that time period too, when competition was at it's fiercest. For me it's hard to say Maru is the goat. But it's easy for me to say Serral isn't. He had too much in his favor, and for a short period of time. I have zero doubts Life would have done better than him if he had kept playing, for example. And reynor and rogue are also great players during this time. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 03 2023 00:18 Xain0n wrote: Serral would still be the most consistent player if we only were to consider international events(no korean ones and no region locked ones) from 2018 to 2023. KeSpa and HoTS were the nail in the coffin of foreign sc2 which was indeed irrelevant at the time and one could wonder if Serral and Reynor would have developed into the players they are now under those circumstances, had the region lock never taken place. Once completely bloomed, tho, their skill couldn't have possibly be denied, no matter how competitively crowded the scene would have been. While it's true that Serral would have probably won less against a greater number of top koreans, the question you aren't asking yourself is if Maru would have won five GSL with KeSpa still around or even worse if Rogue would have won four considering he started doing so at the end of 2019 after never going past the ro8 for years. To my eyes, Maru's claim for GOAT only has the(major) flaw of never winning a global final(let alone winning offline tournaments outside of Asia) whereas Rogue's has many more. The clutchest(and one of the most abusive) player ever, I can't deny that Rogue is undoubtly a top as far as skill and a mindgames go, especially during his best periods towards the end of 2017 and 2021 respectively. However, do you think his sparkling 7-0 record in bo7 offline finals would have been intact if Code S were as competitive as it was during the KeSPa era? Don't you think that Rogue could have taken advantage of Zerg being very strong in the last years of LoTV while surpassing his limits in Code S? Moreover, when Rogue didn't outright win(and his victories do indeed possess the highest average quality as far as prestige goes), his placements were meager when compared to Maru's or Serral's; a player with such achievements deserves to be ranked highly in a GOAT list but could never be the one, imho. Yeah, for Rogue goes the same as for Serral that he didn't win during the Kespa era and mostly when Zerg was strong, that's why he's not the Goat imo despite having the most impressive resumee. Maru probably wouldn't have won 4 GSLs in a row if the scene was still just as competitive but he's the only one out of the 3 Goat contenders who actually won tournaments when all players were practicing 24/7 in teamhouses, which is the biggest argument in his favor. | ||
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Glorfindelio
192 Posts
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 02 2023 20:54 swarminfestor wrote: Partially agreed with your list. I will add Serral on A+ list, but definitely he can't be higher than S- list. Only bloody fool followers won't agree, insistently putting Serral on everyone else. On March 02 2023 21:15 Xain0n wrote: I think you might have missed that, out of his 19 "Premier" tournaments Serral won only that were 2 EU locked and 7 overall without korean representation. You are also missing that he won BlizzCon(a world championship) way before Katowice(he also won 2 GSL vs the World). Serral also never lost consistency, out of 46 Premier tounaments from 2018 to 2023 he had a result worse than ro8 only 3 times while winning more than any other player had in the history of Sc2. Oops, thanks for pointing that out guys. I actually missed his IEM Katowice and recent wins. Didn't realize 1.5 years already passed since I updated him on my list. So, i missed some of his DH and TSL/HSC wins too. I personally count GSL vs the World as around a Super tourny, a bit below a normal GSL. And a World Championship a bit above a GSL. But yes looking at his streak from 2018-2023, he's been very consistent, has a lot of good wins, and it looks muuch more convincing than back then just looking mainly at 2018-2019, where he then fell into a mini slump (relatively). Now i get why people keep saying Serral is the GOAT lol, he's definitely a contender depending how much you weigh the EU tournies, especially the WCS ones he won in 2018-2019. The DH ones had lots of Koreans, but the 2018-2019 WCS ones were just EU players. He's been very dominant for 5 years though which is a substantial duration of the game's lifespan, and he's been very consistent too. (Life only was dominant for 3 years in comparison). I think I would update my list like this: S: Maru/Rogue, Serral S-: Innovation/Life A+: MVP/Dark, sOs/Stats, Taeja A: MC, Classic/MMA, Zest, Polt, soO, Nestea, Rain I weigh the WCS EU tourny wins less than TSL/HSC/IEMs where KR players participate, but if you weigh them as premieres since they do have a good prize pool and the gap between KR players and non players is pretty small, then he definitely has an argument for being #1. Even if you think the competition isn't as high, it is very impressive to win that many. To me, Maru/Rogue are still ahead by 1-2 more premiere tournament wins, but Serral still has a valid argument for #1 whereas Innovation and Life to me don't, hence I would Serral in the top tier now. On March 02 2023 22:01 Nakajin wrote: Find me one year of Innovation's career that was better than any Serral year between 2019 and 2021 Personally I don't really look at the peak year for the sake of it, just what their dominance was like in general | ||
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Kristina
1 Post
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SHODAN
United Kingdom1060 Posts
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 03 2023 09:46 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah, for Rogue goes the same as for Serral that he didn't win during the Kespa era and mostly when Zerg was strong, that's why he's not the Goat imo despite having the most impressive resumee. Maru probably wouldn't have won 4 GSLs in a row if the scene was still just as competitive but he's the only one out of the 3 Goat contenders who actually won tournaments when all players were practicing 24/7 in teamhouses, which is the biggest argument in his favor. Maybe I overlooked something, but Maru won two Premier Tournaments before 2017 (a year he btw completly vanished and didn't even qualify for BlizzCon). So because he won two regional tournaments he is the Goat over people who won multiple world championships? When Rogue won WCS 2017 he nearly only beat koreans to do it, when Serral won 2018 he only crushed koreans, dropping three maps in total or something like that. Maru is for sure the best GSL player of all time, but GOAT? To maybe make a slightly obscure comparison: THW Kiel is without a doubt the best Handball club in the german Bundesliga of all time, a League that is generally considered to be the hardest one to win. But the record champion in Europe and probably still considered best of club in the world is still FC Barcelona, even though their home league is a joke. It is all about the international titles and there Maru just falls flat, wouldn't probably even be considered Top 10. | ||
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KalWarkov
Germany4126 Posts
On February 24 2023 15:58 swarminfestor wrote: Serral in not top 3 definitely, but in top 5 or top 10. It has been discussed before. if you don't have serral at least on 3 you are simply delusional and bias. his price money doesn't come out of nowhere. he went to korea once and won. | ||
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KalWarkov
Germany4126 Posts
On March 04 2023 02:00 SHODAN wrote: Serral never won a GSL and Maru never won a Blizzcon. I guess one of those needed to happen during the most competitive era of SC2 in order to bring the GOAT debate to a conclusion. Maru, Rogue and Serral will go on being more or less equal rivals and all have a strong claim to being the greatest SC2 player. I personally give it to Maru because he achieved his success with terran, during patches that were unfavorable, whereas Rogue and Serral never really had to worry about balance. I also think his proleague performances, the prestige of the G5L trophy, and the sheer longevity of Maru in SC2 counts for a lot. there is a huge difference. Maru TRIED to win blizzcon/WC every - single - year. Serral never TRIED to win GSL. he went to GSL vs the world once and WON in his first try beating every top korean player. if serral went to korea in 2018 and played gsl, there is no way he wouldn't have won at least 1, if not 2. Maru's longeviety is overrated. he didn't win a whole lot before 2017. he was always considered a great talent, but he didn't really win a lot and consistantly. GSL happens 3 times a year, the status of a GSL win is absolutely overrated. it's nowhere near as hard to win a gsl compared to an international Lan event. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
KR Starleagues before 2018 and were harder than global events because 90% of the top 50 was in Korea back then. Maru had several high profile second places and top 4s before 2018 as well. Maru was already top 3-4 Terran all time before his 2018 run and all his wins since then. What Serral may or may not have won if he played in GSL is irrelevant. For the record he would have been far from guaranteed to win a GSL even if he played in all 3 during 2018. If nothing else he 100% would have not won the first 2 because they were both over not long after Maru bopped him at WESG in a series that was not close at all. | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
On March 04 2023 03:07 JJH777 wrote: 2 starleagues between 2013 and 2016 puts him on a very small elite player list. Multiple starleagues champions were uncommon back then. The scene was way more volatile. He's also the SC2 proleague GOAT which was the most important tournament for Koreans during that era. He and all the other proleague players gave up potential appearances in many international events to be there for proleague every week. KR Starleagues before 2018 and were harder than global events because 90% of the top 50 was in Korea back then. Maru had several high profile second places and top 4s before 2018 as well. Maru was already top 3-4 Terran all time before his 2018 run and all his wins since then. What Serral may or may not have won if he played in GSL is irrelevant. For the record he would have been far from guaranteed to win a GSL even if he played in all 3 during 2018. If nothing else he 100% would have not won the first 2 because they were both over not long after Maru bopped him at WESG in a series that was not close at all. How can someone be this wrong | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
Everything in that post is right much of it is just fact. Sorry the truth upsets you. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
I think JJH777 did a fairly good job characterizing the scene before proleague ended, another tournament people always seem to completely neglect for no reason whatsoever, doing it a huge injustice. Though i have to say that the claim that serral wouldn't have won the first two seasons in 2018 for sure is silly, it doesn't work like that  What people don't really talk about much anymore is that serral's raise to fame came after sc2's peak, the scene simply wasn't the same anymore and that has to matter somewhat (it also has to for maru's gsl wins btw, for any result after the exodus), you can only beat what is in front of you, your peers, but from a historic perspective one cannot just neglect what happened after kespa was over, it's silly to do so. It's seemingly only so popular because casters and other prominent figures had to sell that the scene was better than ever, every new champion was better than the last, every tournament more bombastic and important, and people gobble that up for the hype's sake. The truth is quite different, the talent pool was shrinking year after year, the infrastructure of teamhouses and coaching vanished, everything became less professional and less competitive. Sc2 has been shrinking ever since, almost no new 'talent' coming in to challenge anyone established, the contrary, people left the scene and moved on. This isn't just a 2023 thing now after the news of prize pools evaporating (though we only speculate at this point as there have been no retirements yet i think), this is a reality since forever, with the most obvious impact directly after proleague was gone. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 04 2023 03:48 The_Red_Viper wrote: Though i have to say that the claim that serral wouldn't have won the first two seasons in 2018 for sure is silly, it doesn't work like that Did you watch the Maru vs Serral series at WESG on March 17, 2018? The games and series were not close at all. GSL season 2 took place from April to June that year. Expecting him to turn that result around in a month or two in an environment where Maru has always performed better than he does at international events is what's silly. GSL season 2 was over before he won anything with Koreans. He lost to Classic and soo during that timeframe as well. It would be extremely unlikely. | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
On March 04 2023 03:21 JJH777 wrote: Everything in that post is right much of it is just fact. Sorry the truth upsets you. Imagine calling opinions facts | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
I said much of it is facts. There are like 2 sentences that are my opinion based on the facts. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 04 2023 02:54 KalWarkov wrote: there is a huge difference. Maru TRIED to win blizzcon/WC every - single - year. Serral never TRIED to win GSL. he went to GSL vs the world once and WON in his first try beating every top korean player. if serral went to korea in 2018 and played gsl, there is no way he wouldn't have won at least 1, if not 2. Maru's longeviety is overrated. he didn't win a whole lot before 2017. he was always considered a great talent, but he didn't really win a lot and consistantly. GSL happens 3 times a year, the status of a GSL win is absolutely overrated. it's nowhere near as hard to win a gsl compared to an international Lan event. Good points, when determining "greatest" and not "most achieved", it shouldn't just be about the # of 1st places you win, but also how many tries it takes you, and to a lesser extent your head 2 head performance vs other players (kind of like the whole "how was your bracket luck" thing). That's why I have Dark as high as MVP on my list, because despite a little less 1st places, he has a TON of 2nd/3rd/4th places. I think in certain situations, 2 2nd places can be looked at as near equivalent to a 1st place + top 8 finish. It's less achievements but about the same prize money, so are we just going to fully excuse the other player finishing only Top 8 that one tourny? Maru had a lot more years to rack up his titles, whereas Serral has won multiple regionals a year for the past 5 years, and also won 2 world championships. And many of those regionals were DH/TSL/HSC where Koreans were present, and they had prize pools pretty equivalent to a GSL or GSL Super. And ofc the 2 GSL vs the Worlds he won, showing he has a very high success rate of winning GSL titles. Even if he wouldn't do as well at normal GSL, he at least does very well at weekend tournaments. In Maru's defense, I personally also factor in a bit how many 2nd places and 3-4ths you get, etc. Maru has gotten 2nd place at 2 world championships which is still very impressive, even if he didn't take it all the way home at one of those two, he was only 1 match away. And he's gotten a ton of 2nd place and 3-4th places in all kinds of tournies. Also, he got a WESG win - which is pretty hard to weigh accurately. It's a shit ton of money, the won he won gave him $200k for first place, so it's equivalent to a real World Championship. Its prestige is more questionable, because the tournament has a shorter history and maybe other factors, but it does have regional qualifiers, and there are a few KR players there (Maru Dark Classic, so the top 3 basically), as well as top foreigner players. But I think the WESG win should count for something significant still because of the money, having qualifiers, and having a good spread of top players from different regions. I would count it at around a GSL, definitely less than a WCS/IEM world championship. If I look at the WESG win, and his performance at WCS/IEM world championships, he got 2 2nd places, and 4 top 4 places at WCS/IEM world championships since 2013. So I think having 6 really good placements at world championships over 10 years still helps buff his portfolio up. But it does pale in comparison if you view it as him only getting 6 good placements across ~18 world championships over the last 10 years, which is a good case going for why Rogue or Serral are better/greater than Maru. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On March 04 2023 04:12 JJH777 wrote: Did you watch the Maru vs Serral series at WESG on March 17, 2018? The games and series were not close at all. GSL season 2 took place from April to June that year. Expecting him to turn that result around in a month or two in an environment where Maru has always performed better than he does at international events is what's silly. GSL season 2 was over before he won anything with Koreans. He lost to Classic and soo during that timeframe as well. It would be extremely unlikely. It might be unlikely, but any particular series is just one data point and the 'worse' player wins series regularly, that's just how it is. I just take issue with your 100% statement there. It's unnecessary for the broader picture anyway. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 04 2023 02:54 KalWarkov wrote: there is a huge difference. Maru TRIED to win blizzcon/WC every - single - year. Serral never TRIED to win GSL. he went to GSL vs the world once and WON in his first try beating every top korean player. if serral went to korea in 2018 and played gsl, there is no way he wouldn't have won at least 1, if not 2. Maru's longeviety is overrated. he didn't win a whole lot before 2017. he was always considered a great talent, but he didn't really win a lot and consistantly. GSL happens 3 times a year, the status of a GSL win is absolutely overrated. it's nowhere near as hard to win a gsl compared to an international Lan event. In what universe should not even trying to participate in a tournament be rated higher than trying and "failing" (failing in this case means reaching the ro4 4 times and the finals 1 time)? You say there is no way Serral wouldn't have won at least 1 GSL if he tried, however we'd say the same about Maru if he never tried playing in World Championships. Hypothetical "he might have maybe won one" titles don't count when measuring Goat | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 04 2023 02:16 Balnazza wrote: Maybe I overlooked something, but Maru won two Premier Tournaments before 2017 (a year he btw completly vanished and didn't even qualify for BlizzCon). So because he won two regional tournaments he is the Goat over people who won multiple world championships? When Rogue won WCS 2017 he nearly only beat koreans to do it, when Serral won 2018 he only crushed koreans, dropping three maps in total or something like that. Maru is for sure the best GSL player of all time, but GOAT? To maybe make a slightly obscure comparison: THW Kiel is without a doubt the best Handball club in the german Bundesliga of all time, a League that is generally considered to be the hardest one to win. But the record champion in Europe and probably still considered best of club in the world is still FC Barcelona, even though their home league is a joke. It is all about the international titles and there Maru just falls flat, wouldn't probably even be considered Top 10. Yeah that noob Maru was only able to win regional tournaments in HotS, such a shame. Those wins don't count as much because he didn't face the foreign gods at that time like Lilbow and LiquidBunny. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 04 2023 05:33 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah that noob Maru was only able to win regional tournaments in HotS, such a shame. Those wins don't count as much because he didn't face the foreign gods at that time like Lilbow and LiquidBunny. Not what I said at all, but sure. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
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[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
On March 04 2023 02:54 KalWarkov wrote: there is a huge difference. Maru TRIED to win blizzcon/WC every - single - year. Serral never TRIED to win GSL. he went to GSL vs the world once and WON in his first try beating every top korean player. if serral went to korea in 2018 and played gsl, there is no way he wouldn't have won at least 1, if not 2. Maru's longeviety is overrated. he didn't win a whole lot before 2017. he was always considered a great talent, but he didn't really win a lot and consistantly. GSL happens 3 times a year, the status of a GSL win is absolutely overrated. it's nowhere near as hard to win a gsl compared to an international Lan event. If its not as hard to win a GSL why did reynor end up last in his group? Hell, he literally had the worst map score that season of GSL I think, so literal last place. When has Reynor or any player of that caliber ended last in the first round of an international tournament? Never. That never happens and never will, because those tournaments are easier If GSL is so easy why is there only 3 players, in 13 years, that have more than 3 titles? | ||
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SHODAN
United Kingdom1060 Posts
On March 04 2023 02:54 KalWarkov wrote: there is a huge difference. Maru TRIED to win blizzcon/WC every - single - year. Serral never TRIED to win GSL. he went to GSL vs the world once and WON in his first try beating every top korean player. if serral went to korea in 2018 and played gsl, there is no way he wouldn't have won at least 1, if not 2. Maru's longeviety is overrated. he didn't win a whole lot before 2017. he was always considered a great talent, but he didn't really win a lot and consistantly. GSL happens 3 times a year, the status of a GSL win is absolutely overrated. it's nowhere near as hard to win a gsl compared to an international Lan event. Maru's longeviety is highly rated and justified. it's not merely a question of how many years he's been around. what matters to me is that he's been a TOP TALENT for almost all that time. Maru has been the most exciting micro user since WoL. the only player who could rival his micro in early SC2 was Life. he's been an exceptional talent in pretty much every era of SC2 except for early WoL (2010-2011). Maru's micro was quite simply mind-blowing in 2012. nobody had ever seen skills like that insane hold vs Effort on Entombed Valley. I dunno if you watched streams back in 2012, but every KR terran dreaded him on ladder. I watched GSL terrans breath a weary sigh when they got matched against Maru because they knew they were gonna get absolutely destroyed. I watched him beat GuMiho on stream 7 games in a row using the same build: gas first 1-1-1 marine / hellion drop. I think it was called the Slayers build back then. anyway, point is, Maru was exceptional long before Serral. his micro mechanics were on a level of mastery shared only by Life. I honestly couldn't care less how much Maru won before 2017. I don't have memories of Serral's 1st place finishes because Serral is boring to watch. if I remember Serral, it's usually because his opponent put on a good show (e.g. TY vs Serral at HSC XIX). Maru, on other hand, is the THRILLER. he took his 1st places with panache. this is what matters to me as an enjoyer of pro sc2. Serral was too boring to go to Korea and destroy esports’ oldest dynasty. that is something I would have loved to watch, but Serral was simply too boring. can you imagine Serral holding a can of HOTSIX? no, because Serral is more of tomato juice kind of guy. no vodka... just lukewarm tomato juice, no ice. Serral didn't even try to win GSL... and you think that adds more weight to your claim that he is the GOAT? ... how? "oh, if Serral went to Korea in 2018, he would have won this, he would have won that!" but he didn't go to Korea, did he? so it really means fuck all what he might have done in GSL, doesn't it? Maru actually went to international events, showed awesome games and earned good results. | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
On March 04 2023 06:46 [Phantom] wrote: If its not as hard to win a GSL why did reynor end up last in his group? Hell, he literally had the worst map score that season of GSL I think, so literal last place. When has Reynor or any player of that caliber ended last in the first round of an international tournament? Never. That never happens and never will, because those tournaments are easier If GSL is so easy why is there only 3 players, in 13 years, that have more than 3 titles? Rogue and innovation did lose in group stages in ur easier tournaments | ||
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Amoyu7
20 Posts
Three biggest candidates would be Maru, Serral and Rogue. You can make your argument for any of them and we can agree to disagree. There seems to be some controversies around Serral, but I do think his last 5 years run from 2018-2023 was legendary and could rival any other player's prime years. You can argue that Serral never played in GSL, but I will counter that Serral have met plenty of top Korean players in international tournaments and he maintains a winning record against almost every single one of them in last 5 years. Since 2018, Serral has a head to head record of: 8-3 Maru, 11-3 Innovation, 7-5 ByuN, 6-0 TY, 7-3 Stats, 3-1 herO, 9-3 Zest, 5-1 Classic, 13-3 Trap, 2-1 Ragnarok, 5-3 Dark, 6-6 Rogue, 6-1 soO, 7-2 Solar The list goes on, that's include all races so you can't use balance as an excuse. His dominance against peers is almost unprecedented. I don't think you can make the same list for any other player in the history. Also just by eye test, I do think that Serral displays the highest level of Zerg play on almost every front that I've ever seem, and I've been watching from WoL, and have seen the entire career of other great Zerg players like Nestea, DRG, Life, Soulkey, soO, Rogue, etc. Every time I watch Serral play it still blows my mind and makes me think "man he's just better than any other Zergs in history". It's okay that you have Maru or Rogue ahead of him in GOAT debate, honestly even after the glowing praise I just gave to Serral I might still give the edge to Maru in this discussion, but putting Serral anywhere lower than top 3 is hilarious and wrong. | ||
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MockHamill
Sweden1798 Posts
Most of the SC2 pros will probably retire this year, including Serral, so there can be no new GOAT. But if Serral decides to play Stormgate I think he will be the GOAT there as well. | ||
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Blargh
United States2101 Posts
I don't think there's any denying that Serral is the most dominant player of this current era (last 5 years), but his complete absence from the rest of SC history makes it hard to call him GOAT. He can be a SC2 bonjwa though! No one cared about GOAT titles anyway, it was always about bonjwas. And Maru, Serral, Rogue would all be SC2 bonjwas! Looking back on results historically, we clearly all have a lot of recency bias, because even Rogues dominant streak was after 2016, which is about when I'd put StarCraft 2s decline. Players like sOs, Stats, Innovation really stand out when looking at 2012-2015. | ||
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SHODAN
United Kingdom1060 Posts
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 05 2023 00:12 Amoyu7 wrote: It's okay that you have Maru or Rogue ahead of him in GOAT debate, honestly even after the glowing praise I just gave to Serral I might still give the edge to Maru in this discussion, but putting Serral anywhere lower than top 3 is hilarious and wrong. Why is it so unreasonable exactly? It really only takes 2 beliefs that were commonly held before Serral's rise to place Serral outside of top 3. Those are: Region locked tournaments with no Koreans are near worthless in terms of SC2 achievement. Homestory Cup is worth a lot less than any other premier win besides the aforementioned events without Koreans. Neither of those were controversial statements before the rise of Serral and those beliefs are all it takes for players like Innovation or Life to be ahead of him in terms of number of premiers won. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 05 2023 01:41 Blargh wrote: I still don't see how you all care about the 5 least relevant years of Sc2 more than the 7 before that. I almost wouldn't even include Serral in the discussions for "greatest of all time" when he only played in the worst era of SC2. He has zero relevance to WoL or HotS. Whereas a number of Korean players, such as Innovation, sOs, Maru especially, have been highly relevant from the beginning of their career all the way to present day. That's 5-7 years more time! And the competition was absolutely the highest when Kespa merged. I'd say that a Top 4 or Top 2 finish then has more weight than a 1st place today. I don't think there's any denying that Serral is the most dominant player of this current era (last 5 years), but his complete absence from the rest of SC history makes it hard to call him GOAT. He can be a SC2 bonjwa though! No one cared about GOAT titles anyway, it was always about bonjwas. And Maru, Serral, Rogue would all be SC2 bonjwas! Looking back on results historically, we clearly all have a lot of recency bias, because even Rogues dominant streak was after 2016, which is about when I'd put StarCraft 2s decline. Players like sOs, Stats, Innovation really stand out when looking at 2012-2015. That's a weird way to measure "greatest of all time" tbh. With that logic, no one that was present at the start of a game can ever rise to that title. Or in the case of real sports, no one can hold this title at all. Messi can't be the GOAT in football, because he wasn't around in the '54 WM! And just to give you some perspective: Maru didn't win much pre-LotV either. He didn't win anything in WoL and got two titles in HotS and another Top 2 finish (in Premier events). Before LotV even Jaedong or HyuN have better records than Maru, to pick two random players. So Maru was "around", but he wasn't really a factor. Rogue? Didn't win anything pre-LotV at all, like Serral and Reynor. Oh and sOs? He won nothing in WoL and LotV, and not that much Premier events in HotS either. Do you know which player has won the most Premier events pre-LotV? TaeJa. Don't hear his name much in terms of being the GOAT... Don't get me wrong, the LotV players definetly have a few statistical advantages. Yes, the scene is shrinking, though I wouldn't say the level of play has necessarily dropped by that. And of course, LotV is the longest running addon (as in...it runs forever) because it is the last one, so LotV-players like Serral, Reynor and Maru can ramp up much more titles than anyone before. They peaked in the right time I guess. | ||
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necrosexy
451 Posts
On March 05 2023 07:48 Balnazza wrote: That's a weird way to measure "greatest of all time" tbh. With that logic, no one that was present at the start of a game can ever rise to that title. Or in the case of real sports, no one can hold this title at all. Messi can't be the GOAT in football, because he wasn't around in the '54 WM! the competition got better over time in football, so it doesn't apply to sc2. that was the OP's point | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 05 2023 07:48 Balnazza wrote: That's a weird way to measure "greatest of all time" tbh. With that logic, no one that was present at the start of a game can ever rise to that title. Or in the case of real sports, no one can hold this title at all. Messi can't be the GOAT in football, because he wasn't around in the '54 WM! And just to give you some perspective: Maru didn't win much pre-LotV either. He didn't win anything in WoL and got two titles in HotS and another Top 2 finish (in Premier events). Before LotV even Jaedong or HyuN have better records than Maru, to pick two random players. So Maru was "around", but he wasn't really a factor. Rogue? Didn't win anything pre-LotV at all, like Serral and Reynor. Oh and sOs? He won nothing in WoL and LotV, and not that much Premier events in HotS either. Do you know which player has won the most Premier events pre-LotV? TaeJa. Don't hear his name much in terms of being the GOAT... Don't get me wrong, the LotV players definetly have a few statistical advantages. Yes, the scene is shrinking, though I wouldn't say the level of play has necessarily dropped by that. And of course, LotV is the longest running addon (as in...it runs forever) because it is the last one, so LotV-players like Serral, Reynor and Maru can ramp up much more titles than anyone before. They peaked in the right time I guess. Funny you bring up Taeja when the exact reason he's not discussed as goat is because of the same reason Serral shouldn't be. He won a lot of premiers but they are mostly stuff with a low amount of KR participation. If all his premiers wins included some amount of starleagues he would've been a top goat candidate until recently. And ever time you downplay Maru's hots results it just shows that you don't understand the KR scene during hots at all. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 05 2023 07:50 necrosexy wrote: the competition got better over time in football, so it doesn't apply to sc2. that was the OP's point Yeah the better comparison would be that Pele can't be considered the Goat because he played in an era when football was way less professional and competitive. And that's a sentiment that is often mentioned in the football Goat debate even though some people still regard him as the Goat. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 05 2023 07:48 Balnazza wrote: That's a weird way to measure "greatest of all time" tbh. With that logic, no one that was present at the start of a game can ever rise to that title. Or in the case of real sports, no one can hold this title at all. Messi can't be the GOAT in football, because he wasn't around in the '54 WM! And just to give you some perspective: Maru didn't win much pre-LotV either. He didn't win anything in WoL and got two titles in HotS and another Top 2 finish (in Premier events). Before LotV even Jaedong or HyuN have better records than Maru, to pick two random players. So Maru was "around", but he wasn't really a factor. Rogue? Didn't win anything pre-LotV at all, like Serral and Reynor. Oh and sOs? He won nothing in WoL and LotV, and not that much Premier events in HotS either. Do you know which player has won the most Premier events pre-LotV? TaeJa. Don't hear his name much in terms of being the GOAT... Don't get me wrong, the LotV players definetly have a few statistical advantages. Yes, the scene is shrinking, though I wouldn't say the level of play has necessarily dropped by that. And of course, LotV is the longest running addon (as in...it runs forever) because it is the last one, so LotV-players like Serral, Reynor and Maru can ramp up much more titles than anyone before. They peaked in the right time I guess. You weren't around pre-LotV were you? Maru was already generally considered a top 10 player all time before he won any of his GSLs. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 05 2023 00:12 Amoyu7 wrote: The reality is SC2 doesn't have a consensus GOAT like Flash in SC1 did. It's okay, not every sport has one. Three biggest candidates would be Maru, Serral and Rogue. You can make your argument for any of them and we can agree to disagree. There seems to be some controversies around Serral, but I do think his last 5 years run from 2018-2023 was legendary and could rival any other player's prime years. You can argue that Serral never played in GSL, but I will counter that Serral have met plenty of top Korean players in international tournaments and he maintains a winning record against almost every single one of them in last 5 years. Since 2018, Serral has a head to head record of: 8-3 Maru, 11-3 Innovation, 7-5 ByuN, 6-0 TY, 7-3 Stats, 3-1 herO, 9-3 Zest, 5-1 Classic, 13-3 Trap, 2-1 Ragnarok, 5-3 Dark, 6-6 Rogue, 6-1 soO, 7-2 Solar The list goes on, that's include all races so you can't use balance as an excuse. His dominance against peers is almost unprecedented. I don't think you can make the same list for any other player in the history. Also just by eye test, I do think that Serral displays the highest level of Zerg play on almost every front that I've ever seem, and I've been watching from WoL, and have seen the entire career of other great Zerg players like Nestea, DRG, Life, Soulkey, soO, Rogue, etc. Every time I watch Serral play it still blows my mind and makes me think "man he's just better than any other Zergs in history". It's okay that you have Maru or Rogue ahead of him in GOAT debate, honestly even after the glowing praise I just gave to Serral I might still give the edge to Maru in this discussion, but putting Serral anywhere lower than top 3 is hilarious and wrong. Thanks for sharing the H2Hs, i think it's something that's overlooked when it comes to skill and the "greatest" player. I'm curious what Rogue and Maru's H2Hs are against other top players. Serral's dominant H2H makes sense because he really did win a ton of tournaments in 5 years, including international premieres like Dreamhack, TSL, HSC, GSL vs the World, and ofc 2 world championships. I think in terms of skill, Serral and Rogue (if looking at his skill before he retired) feel a little higher than Maru. Serral and Rogue's achievements are more condensed from 2018-2022 which makes sense, whereas a couple of Maru's titles are more spread out in earlier years. Ofc, his GSL dominance was in 2018-2019 which is recent as well, but Rogue has slightly more concentration in 2017-2022 with getting 3 world championships as well as a few GSLs/Supers in that time. Serral's achievements are slightly more concentrated than Rogue, with them being in 2018-2022, and Serral is still going strong. At first I thought he was going to peak at 2018-2019, but in 2021-2022 he's won several more international tournies that had KRs attend, like HSC/DH/TSL, and it shows that he may still not have reached his peak. If the scene remains decently competitive in 2023 and Serral continues to pull ahead of Maru, it will solidify that Serral may still be on an uptrend whereas Maru has stagnated and fallen a bit from his 2018-2019 GSL peak. For Rogue, it seemed like he was on a little uphill trend as he was catching up to Maru's case of being #1 GOAT, but in the final months before retirement he wavered a bit so it brings some doubt if he would have continued uphill, he seemed moreso stagnant due to the lackluster final months. For Serral to solidify a case of #1, he would just have to maintain his performance, and he should keep pulling ahead of Maru. If Serral continues with a slight uphill trend, it'll give him a pretty strong case for GOAT. Either way, I'm happy to think that there are 3 incredible players with incredible records and achievements, and have different arguments for being the best. If only 1 of the Zergs were a Protoss, it would give a much cooler story to SC2. Also i personally don't get why people would put MVP at #1, he really hasn't won many tournaments at all. He won 3 GSLs, a GSL vs the World invitational (16 players chosen for skill+popularity, rather than actual qualifiers, remember that Tester got invited just cus he was popular in the beta, and half of the 16 were weak foreigners), an MLG, a WCS EU, and not much else really. Compare that to Rogue for example who has won 3 world championships, 4 GSLs, 2 GSL Supers, and a couple other international premieres. Rogue has double the achievements and of much higher caliber, and he ended his career on a strong note whereas MVP was falling off significantly after the first couple years. Him winning the WCS EU was like, not even an expected result because he was no longer strong or consistent in his final year. I know he had wrist issues, but unfortunately we can't give him too much benefit of the doubt when it comes to GOAT discussion. His downhill career shows a lack of ability to adapt and stay competitive, or a lack of effort/will to try harder and win more. The only reason I see I guess is if you consider the WoL period to have been that more competitive and for it to have been more impressive to win those titles in MVP's time than Rogue to win his. But that would imply that people aren't trying really really hard to win a world championship offering ~$150-250k for 1st place, compared to the old GSLs offering ~$30-50k for 1st place. On March 05 2023 08:45 Charoisaur wrote: You weren't around pre-LotV were you? Maru was already generally considered a top 10 player all time before he won any of his GSLs. I never knew this was a thing?? Since the big tournaments are seeing significant contraction, can we have a new thread like that and create a new community ranking for top 10 GOAT? | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 05 2023 08:45 Charoisaur wrote: You weren't around pre-LotV were you? Maru was already generally considered a top 10 player all time before he won any of his GSLs. You do understand, as the one who did that post back then, that this is just a popularity vote, right? It isn't backed up by...well, anything. If 200 people back then would have thought it would be funny, that vote would have shown Has or Harstem as the best player of all time. Why would you even include Maru in a pre-2018 Top 10 and leave out actual GSL winners like herO, Soulkey, GanZi or countless others? Probably the only reason Maru was even included by some people back then was because it was days after his WESG win. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 05 2023 13:08 Balnazza wrote: You do understand, as the one who did that post back then, that this is just a popularity vote, right? It isn't backed up by...well, anything. If 200 people back then would have thought it would be funny, that vote would have shown Has or Harstem as the best player of all time. Why would you even include Maru in a pre-2018 Top 10 and leave out actual GSL winners like herO, Soulkey, GanZi or countless others? Probably the only reason Maru was even included by some people back then was because it was days after his WESG win. OSL and SSL were both equivalent to GSL so no reason to choose a 1 time starleague champion over him. As has been pointed out many times in this thread he was the proleague GOAT which was the most important tournament in Korea while it was going. Countless last Terran standing performances in GSL and other tournaments while Terran was weak during certain parts of hots. 2nd places in WESG and IEM. People voting for him there had almost nothing to do with his WESG win. Also it's funny to see you bashing this for being a popularity poll when a few pages ago you were saying that Serral is the goat because most people think he is (if they even do). Aka using his popularity to say he's goat. | ||
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Poopi
France12761 Posts
On March 05 2023 13:08 Balnazza wrote: You do understand, as the one who did that post back then, that this is just a popularity vote, right? It isn't backed up by...well, anything. If 200 people back then would have thought it would be funny, that vote would have shown Has or Harstem as the best player of all time. Why would you even include Maru in a pre-2018 Top 10 and leave out actual GSL winners like herO, Soulkey, GanZi or countless others? Probably the only reason Maru was even included by some people back then was because it was days after his WESG win. Didn’t GanZi win code A and not code S? It’s not considered a « GSL win » | ||
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Glorfindelio
192 Posts
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Monochromatic
United States991 Posts
On March 05 2023 10:51 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Also i personally don't get why people would put MVP at #1, he really hasn't won many tournaments at all. He won 3 GSLs, a GSL vs the World invitational (16 players chosen for skill+popularity, rather than actual qualifiers, remember that Tester got invited just cus he was popular in the beta, and half of the 16 were weak foreigners), an MLG, a WCS EU, and not much else really. Compare that to Rogue for example who has won 3 world championships, 4 GSLs, 2 GSL Supers, and a couple other international premieres. Rogue has double the achievements and of much higher caliber, and he ended his career on a strong note whereas MVP was falling off significantly after the first couple years. Him winning the WCS EU was like, not even an expected result because he was no longer strong or consistent in his final year. I know he had wrist issues, but unfortunately we can't give him too much benefit of the doubt when it comes to GOAT discussion. His downhill career shows a lack of ability to adapt and stay competitive, or a lack of effort/will to try harder and win more. Early SC2 was a different beast. Strategies came and went incredibly quickly, and with them certain players. It was not uncommon for someone to dominate and then suddenly vanish as the meta evolved. Inca made the GSL finals with dark templars, a blue flame hellion opening just straight up won a tournament, and patches changed things incredibly quickly. During this time it was incredibly rare to be consistent. MVP was the only exception. There was a GomTvT era, and MVP's rise came after it. In fact, during his period of domination, Terran would be nerfed regularly. He was significantly ahead of other top Terrans, like MMA or Bomber. His greatest strength is his ability to innovate and execute: he always found a way to victory. This is something that is incredibly overlooked in the current game, since everything is figured out. MVP basically invented Terran. He used everything and anything and somehow he was able to win. If you combined SoS and Rogue, MVP would be the result. I will always remember his GSL final against Squirtle as one of the best Starcraft matches. He built battlecruisers in g5 and was going to win with them until an archon toilet turned the tides. At that time battlecruisers were an awful unit - TotalBiscuit had a series going where he would try to win them because they were so terribly bad. I think the modern equivalent would be using HTs normal attack to try to kill someone - it's such a dumb idea that you wouldn't even try. But MVP not only made it work, he used a never before seen build in a GSL final. His career was cut short due to a wrist injury. Saying he had a lack of effort or will is just ignorant. He won WCS EU despite this injury - by completely remaking his playstyle to be less micro intensive. He also greatly reduced his practice schedule, meaning that for MVP playing below standard was still enough to win a premier tournament during a period where competition was at its peak. MVP is underrated in the GOAT discussion. GOAT isn't a question of most tournament wins or the most prize money. It's rather a question of who's greatest. MVP is undisputedly the king of wings, while no one else is considered the king of their era. His star may have shined briefly, but it was brighter than any other. | ||
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StasisField
United States1086 Posts
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xsnac
Barbados1365 Posts
On March 05 2023 15:39 StasisField wrote: I'm gonna be honest, I don't really value WoL all that much. The level of play back then was really, really bad. I have fond memories of many players and events from back then, but I'd be lying to myself if I said I thought the era of SC2 where nobody knew how to play the game was worth much in the GOAT discussion. this is an interesting pov. also I remember when Naniwa won an mlg just by 4 gating everybody. moreover, I would extend this line of reason to hots too, since it was just broodlord infestor "fest". no wonder stephano was at times the goat back then. also to the ppl above saying "you can't factor in tournament money and not team contracts", well I have some bad news for you, contracts take a % of your tournament wins. so in the best case, you break even. All in all Serral is the GOAT by money ranking. period | ||
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Monochromatic
United States991 Posts
On March 05 2023 16:08 xsnac wrote: this is an interesting pov. also I remember when Naniwa won an mlg just by 4 gating everybody. moreover, I would extend this line of reason to hots too, since it was just broodlord infestor "fest". no wonder stephano was at times the goat back then. I find it hard to consider LotV results as being as prestigious because there's a massive lack of competition. We've had the same players go against each other for years now. I don't think you can discard results for being a lower standard of play. You have to compare them to their era. | ||
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xsnac
Barbados1365 Posts
On March 05 2023 16:21 Monochromatic wrote: I find it hard to consider LotV results as being as prestigious because there's a massive lack of competition. We've had the same players go against each other for years now. I don't think you can discard results for being a lower standard of play. You have to compare them to their era. Yes, you can discard achievements. When some1 wins a premier tournament using 4 gates we can safely say the scene was bad. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 05 2023 13:08 Balnazza wrote: You do understand, as the one who did that post back then, that this is just a popularity vote, right? It isn't backed up by...well, anything. If 200 people back then would have thought it would be funny, that vote would have shown Has or Harstem as the best player of all time. Why would you even include Maru in a pre-2018 Top 10 and leave out actual GSL winners like herO, Soulkey, GanZi or countless others? Probably the only reason Maru was even included by some people back then was because it was days after his WESG win. So people's opinion about who's the Goat is irrelevant because it's just based on popularity? Based on that assumption every Goat debate is completely pointless so why are you even here? Your takes about the scene back then are so wrong, just admit you weren't around and have no idea what you're talking about. Maru was one out of 4 people who won 2 Starleagues during the Kespa era (along with Zest, Inno and Classic) and as already mentioned arguably the best Proleague player which was the most important tournament for koreans back then. That already puts him in the top 5 of players in the most competitive era of sc2 (2013-2016). | ||
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Poopi
France12761 Posts
On March 05 2023 16:08 xsnac wrote: this is an interesting pov. also I remember when Naniwa won an mlg just by 4 gating everybody. moreover, I would extend this line of reason to hots too, since it was just broodlord infestor "fest". no wonder stephano was at times the goat back then. also to the ppl above saying "you can't factor in tournament money and not team contracts", well I have some bad news for you, contracts take a % of your tournament wins. so in the best case, you break even. All in all Serral is the GOAT by money ranking. period Broodlord infestor being imba was late WoL, it was nerfed in HotS. Early HotS was horrible because of swarm host and one hour games though. | ||
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BelethielQT
90 Posts
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 05 2023 15:19 Monochromatic wrote: Early SC2 was a different beast. Strategies came and went incredibly quickly, and with them certain players. It was not uncommon for someone to dominate and then suddenly vanish as the meta evolved. Inca made the GSL finals with dark templars, a blue flame hellion opening just straight up won a tournament, and patches changed things incredibly quickly. During this time it was incredibly rare to be consistent. MVP was the only exception. There was a GomTvT era, and MVP's rise came after it. In fact, during his period of domination, Terran would be nerfed regularly. He was significantly ahead of other top Terrans, like MMA or Bomber. His greatest strength is his ability to innovate and execute: he always found a way to victory. This is something that is incredibly overlooked in the current game, since everything is figured out. MVP basically invented Terran. He used everything and anything and somehow he was able to win. If you combined SoS and Rogue, MVP would be the result. I will always remember his GSL final against Squirtle as one of the best Starcraft matches. He built battlecruisers in g5 and was going to win with them until an archon toilet turned the tides. At that time battlecruisers were an awful unit - TotalBiscuit had a series going where he would try to win them because they were so terribly bad. I think the modern equivalent would be using HTs normal attack to try to kill someone - it's such a dumb idea that you wouldn't even try. But MVP not only made it work, he used a never before seen build in a GSL final. His career was cut short due to a wrist injury. Saying he had a lack of effort or will is just ignorant. He won WCS EU despite this injury - by completely remaking his playstyle to be less micro intensive. He also greatly reduced his practice schedule, meaning that for MVP playing below standard was still enough to win a premier tournament during a period where competition was at its peak. MVP is underrated in the GOAT discussion. GOAT isn't a question of most tournament wins or the most prize money. It's rather a question of who's greatest. MVP is undisputedly the king of wings, while no one else is considered the king of their era. His star may have shined briefly, but it was brighter than any other. That's definitely true that it was a very different era, and if you're measuring GOAT in terms of what is impressive, then MVP does show brilliance relative to the competition in his era. But I disagree with a few things. BCs were never bad, and it's not like TotalBiscuit was ever seen as someone good at the game or having a good understanding of it. BCs were the strongest army you can make in the game if you were able to mass them. If you have enough BCs you can A click and destroy everything and they can't keep kiting you forever. Also, a few supporting Ravens with PDD, and they have no chance. It's true that Terran got some nerfs, but I also think they were still the strongest in the game even despite the BL/Infestor strength towards the end of WoL. Keep in mind that players didn't realize that Raven/PDD was OP until like the 2nd half of HotS, where it then started getting nerfed and nerfed and then Seeker Missile was finally completely removed and replaced with an even weaker missile that still gave a tiny bit of AOE damage, but that was still OP and nerfed and then removed, and then they finally removed PDD too because a PDD lasting 20 seconds was still OP, and even all the way to LotV 2022 apparently Raven is too strong when massed and still getting nerfed. But the Raven had PDD all the way since the beginning of WoL, they had the version of PDD that lasted like 2 minutes, auto turrets that lasted minutes, etc. They had BC+Raven+Viking for all of WoL, the strongest composition in the game. EMP your stacked BCs once and Protoss has no answer. Spread out your units vs Infestors and Zerg has no answer vs PDD. You could always float a building into the corner of the map and at worst, force a draw. There is no way for a Protoss or Zerg air army to beat Terran air because PDD + Yamato was stupid as hell and maps had so much air space. So even if MVP had to change from a micro intensive to less APM intensive style, I don't think that means he was handicapping himself. He was playing mech which was simply actually just better than bio in TvZ and TvT in WoL. You had Xel'Naga Towers at the center of maps, and maps were super easily walled off at the middle with just 4-5 PFs sometimes. Mech was actually OP as hell. MVP going mass BCs on Metalopolis - one of the most OP maps for Terran Mech because of the Watch Towers and 2 narrow routes that you can wall off with 4 PFs total - is not really innovative or creative. The mains were also close by air, and there was a huge amount of dead air space around bases, making mass BC/air even more broken on that map. If anything, MVP throwing that game as hard as he did when all he had to do was split slightly and A click is pretty questionable GOAT-wise. I do remember WoL being very exciting to watch at the time; there were big plays, games could swing back and forth, and often there was action all over - especially on big maps like Tal'Darim where you could spread many bases out. But looking back, a lot of these games people just really didn't know how to play the game very well. A lot of those big plays were possible because players weren't good enough to prepare, anticipate, or react to them properly. I remember TvT was really exciting at the time when players like MKP, and all the Slayers Terrans like MMA, Ryung, and heck even Ganzi, were able to put up close games with or win matches vs MVP. And sometimes big plays basically were just doing a big doom drop and the other player not having any vision or awareness of it happening, and then they lose a base trade. All that said, yeah it is still impressive that MVP showed dominance where his competitors couldn't. And yeah, there were more players at the time, so I guess winning a few titles is harder than a scene with less players. But since he only really was dominant in 2011 and 2012 and went down a notch in 2013, I don't count it as much as being dominant for 5-6 years like Maru/Rogue/Serral. MVP appeared especially dominant because the game was so young, so when he was strong for 2 years it seemed like such a long time. As for me not giving him much benefit of the doubt when it comes to wrist issues - I don't see how that's ignorant at all. If a player gets an injury and stops being able to compete, I can't just assume that they would have kept playing well for another year or two even if they tried. They have to try and get results. Maybe MVP could have played better or continued to do as well as he did in 2013 if he didn't have a wrist injury and kept playing, but who knows. Also, it's not like MVP is the only pro who is dealing with wrist issues. Ultimately wrist issues and your health and how you adjust your mechanics and playstyle in a way that's best for you, are a player's responsibility. If you overexert yourself, maybe you can get a short term advantage but you'll have problems longterm. I just can't give much points to MVP even if we assume that MVP would have performed better if he stuck with a higher micro style, and that he had to put extra effort to switch playstyles to keep up with competition. Effort doesn't mean much, results and achievements do. Ultimately, i never actually felt that MVP was that much more dominant than his peers in WoL. Nestea matched his 3 GSL titles, and MC won 2 GSLs, an IEM World Championship, and a WCS EU. MVP got 3 GSL titles, a WCS EU, and an MLG Anaheim (gosh that tourny had so many memorable moments). I'm not counting MVP's GSL vs the World win since it was a 16 man invitational where half were foreigners, and the 8 KRs that were picked were not even picked purely based on skill/results but who they wanted to see play. I feel like MVP was only seen as dominant if you agree that he was a "4 time GSL winner" as he was often called, and you are of the opinion that the 16 man GSL invitational should be valued as anything close to a normal GSL and you see him as having 4 GSLs. To me, MVP is only a 3 time GSL winner like Nestea, and I think that Terran was the strongest race throughout WoL, especially thanks to maps. But hey, maybe that's just me being a Nestea fanboy. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 05 2023 17:03 Charoisaur wrote: So people's opinion about who's the Goat is irrelevant because it's just based on popularity? Based on that assumption every Goat debate is completely pointless so why are you even here? Your takes about the scene back then are so wrong, just admit you weren't around and have no idea what you're talking about. Maru was one out of 4 people who won 2 Starleagues during the Kespa era (along with Zest, Inno and Classic) and as already mentioned arguably the best Proleague player which was the most important tournament for koreans back then. That already puts him in the top 5 of players in the most competitive era of sc2 (2013-2016). "Maru is arguebly the best Proleague player"...he is ninth place. He is neither the best Ace player, nor has he the highest winrate, most games or most wins. So whoever argues that is purely going on "Maru is my favorite player", nothing more. You know what though? I apologize for the Top 10 thing. Kinda forgot about the WCS Season 2 that wasn't a GSL but clearly was, so Maru pre-2018 being in the Top 10 still feels wrong to me, but I can see the argument for it. But again: He wasn't the most dominant in the "most competitive era", nor was he the most dominant afterwards. And he still hasn't won the World Championship. So he is three-times not the best and that in your and JJs eyes makes him the best ever? What is he, the Kinda Greatest of All Time? KGOAT really has a nice ring to it... Ah, but since you (and JJ...again) really are that interested: I started following SC2 a bit later, like...one year after release I think? But I was never really that interested in the korean scene except Proleague. Just didn't care much for it and probably will never be a fan of this weird korean-elitism. I dropped out after Snute retired, but came back as a casual viewer through Serrals world championship, so I missed like...2018? Feel free to use any of that as ammunition to not argue the point if you want *shrug* | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
But I was never really that interested in the korean scene except Proleague. Yeah I can tell that. But why do you act knowledgeable about a subject you know nothing about? You just look up some random statistic on liquipedia and judge from that without any idea about the context of it | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 05 2023 22:03 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah I can tell that. But why do you act knowledgeable about a subject you know nothing about? You just look up some random statistic on liquipedia and judge from that without any idea about the context of it Okay, since apparently your feelings are stronger than statistics: sOs Proleague stats: 92W - 47L, 66% Winrate, 2-5 Aces herO Proleague stats: 91W - 59L, 61% Winrate, 13-11 Aces Rain PL stats: 71W - 41L, 63% Winrate, 14-8 Aces Maru PL stats: 57W - 35L, 62% Winrate, 7-5 Aces These are the Top 2, the 5th best player and Marus as 9th. Please explain to me how he can be, just compared to the other three, be "the best Proleague player" when he is equal or worse in two categories to each of them? If you want to decide the GOAT by who is your favorite player, that is fine. But please don't give me that "I was around"-crap if you can't back it up with anything. Otherwise I seriously will throw in Snute. And you still haven't helped me with the problem, how someone who was never on top in any era can be the best of all time. That is not how GOATing works. Can you perhaps focus on that instead of trying to work around stats and statistics? | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 05 2023 23:06 Balnazza wrote: Okay, since apparently your feelings are stronger than statistics: sOs Proleague stats: 92W - 47L, 66% Winrate, 2-5 Aces herO Proleague stats: 91W - 59L, 61% Winrate, 13-11 Aces Rain PL stats: 71W - 41L, 63% Winrate, 14-8 Aces Maru PL stats: 57W - 35L, 62% Winrate, 7-5 Aces These are the Top 2, the 5th best player and Marus as 9th. Please explain to me how he can be, just compared to the other three, be "the best Proleague player" when he is equal or worse in two categories to each of them? If you want to decide the GOAT by who is your favorite player, that is fine. But please don't give me that "I was around"-crap if you can't back it up with anything. Otherwise I seriously will throw in Snute. And you still haven't helped me with the problem, how someone who was never on top in any era can be the best of all time. That is not how GOATing works. Can you perhaps focus on that instead of trying to work around stats and statistics? That's what I mean by looking up some random statistic. If you were around you'd know that the statistics you posted are flawed because the liquipedia site for some reason only considered regular season matches and not playoff matches and Maru always performed extremely well in playoffs. Further, total number of wins isn't a meaningful statistic because it just lets the players who played in all proleague season be at the top regardless of their winrate (Maru has fewer matches played because he was at Prime in 2013 who weren't playing in Proleague back then). I don't have the complete Proleague statistics, however Maru would surely be competing for best winrate if you would include playoffs. However, his biggest claim for the title of best Proleague player is that he had by far the best single Proleague season out of all players with a Flash-like 22-4 record in 2016 carrying Jin Air to the title. This is all knowledge you would have if you actually followed the scene back then but for some reason you are convinced that by looking up one liquipedia statistic (which turned out to be a flawed one) you have more knowledge than anyone who was actually around back then and telling you how it is. Also, no Maru wasn't the best during the Kespa era, but he was surely top 5. And he surely was on top when he won 4 GSLs in a row or when he won 4 tournaments at the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022. If that doesn't count as "being on top" Serral and Rogue have never been on top either. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 05 2023 23:06 Balnazza wrote: Okay, since apparently your feelings are stronger than statistics: sOs Proleague stats: 92W - 47L, 66% Winrate, 2-5 Aces herO Proleague stats: 91W - 59L, 61% Winrate, 13-11 Aces Rain PL stats: 71W - 41L, 63% Winrate, 14-8 Aces Maru PL stats: 57W - 35L, 62% Winrate, 7-5 Aces These are the Top 2, the 5th best player and Marus as 9th. Please explain to me how he can be, just compared to the other three, be "the best Proleague player" when he is equal or worse in two categories to each of them? If you want to decide the GOAT by who is your favorite player, that is fine. But please don't give me that "I was around"-crap if you can't back it up with anything. Otherwise I seriously will throw in Snute. And you still haven't helped me with the problem, how someone who was never on top in any era can be the best of all time. That is not how GOATing works. Can you perhaps focus on that instead of trying to work around stats and statistics? Maybe when judging someone it would be helpful to actually get correct stats? No idea where you got those numbers but Maru was 79-40 throughout all of proleague. Way different than what you listed here. I'm not going to go through every player but for comparison to your lists top player sOs was 66-41 through the 2014-2015-2016 seasons. As you can see not particularly close at all for the seasons they both played in. Including 2012-2013 doesn't change Maru's number since he didn't play in it and increases sOs to 98-56. Maru has less total wins which makes sense considering he missed an entire season due to being esf at the time but still has a higher winrate. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 05 2023 23:49 Charoisaur wrote: Also, no Maru wasn't the best during the Kespa era, but he was surely top 5. And he surely was on top when he won 4 GSLs in a row or when he won 4 tournaments at the end of 2021 / beginning of 2022. If that doesn't count as "being on top" Serral and Rogue have never been on top either. I said Maru was never on top of an era. And no, he wasn't even on top of 2018, which clearly belongs to Serral. A World Championships, beating only koreans, just wins out against three GSLs. And yes, my stats are a bit flawed, since Liquipedias overview for PL apparently doesn't include the last season. Yet...Maru not on top. So of course to a weaker extend, but the point still stands. It really is just...easy? Big players win big titles and the biggest player wins the biggest title - which Maru has failed to do. He also never dominated the scene convincingly. He is also not the best performing player in the most important Teamleague. So I really don't see what exactly would put Maru on top above everybody else. | ||
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Blargh
United States2101 Posts
On March 05 2023 23:06 Balnazza wrote: Okay, since apparently your feelings are stronger than statistics: sOs Proleague stats: 92W - 47L, 66% Winrate, 2-5 Aces herO Proleague stats: 91W - 59L, 61% Winrate, 13-11 Aces Rain PL stats: 71W - 41L, 63% Winrate, 14-8 Aces Maru PL stats: 57W - 35L, 62% Winrate, 7-5 Aces These are the Top 2, the 5th best player and Marus as 9th. Please explain to me how he can be, just compared to the other three, be "the best Proleague player" when he is equal or worse in two categories to each of them? If you want to decide the GOAT by who is your favorite player, that is fine. But please don't give me that "I was around"-crap if you can't back it up with anything. Otherwise I seriously will throw in Snute. And you still haven't helped me with the problem, how someone who was never on top in any era can be the best of all time. That is not how GOATing works. Can you perhaps focus on that instead of trying to work around stats and statistics? I'd weigh longevity over peaks personally, but we still need to weigh competitive eras. 2012-16 was probably the most competitive era, as compared to... 2018-Present. It is a bit unfair that we had/have a pandemic, but the scene already felt in decline before that. It's worth noting that Serral DID play before 2015. I distinctly remember him playing against some of the "foreigner koreans". He just wasn't very good back then. So do we weigh how POORLY someone was in an era? Does that get taken into account? Regardless, I think people need to consider that the 2012-16 era was by far the most competitive, and so even just placing top 16 in a GSL was better than any WCS EU/AM 1st. I think one year in 2014 or 2015, the WCS finals was actually all koreans, because Koreans went to EU and AM WCS on foreign teams and dominated. It's not really fair to say, "Well there weren't any players who were crushing all the competition all the time in 2012-2016, so clearly no GOAT from that era". The closest person would probably be sOs or If you asked me, the most important WCS/Annual finals were 2012-2016's, and sOs happens to have two from that era, which just seems way better than Serral's WCS & IEM. Note, sOs also won the "IEM world championship" in 2014. That was the nutty 100k winner-takes-all tournament! Or instead, you can say that Rogue has won 1 WCS finals, and 2 IEM world champs, and thus is better than Serral! I think part of this dumb debate comes down to what you care about most. Do you care how dominant they are, despite the competition being less relevant? Do you care about total prize money? Do you care about longevity? Ultimately, it's a pointless debate, especially since everyone disagrees on what is most valuable (do you remember all the debates about GSL vs weekend tournaments??). | ||
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necrosexy
451 Posts
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 06 2023 02:07 Balnazza wrote: I said Maru was never on top of an era. And no, he wasn't even on top of 2018, which clearly belongs to Serral. A World Championships, beating only koreans, just wins out against three GSLs. And yes, my stats are a bit flawed, since Liquipedias overview for PL apparently doesn't include the last season. Yet...Maru not on top. So of course to a weaker extend, but the point still stands. It really is just...easy? Big players win big titles and the biggest player wins the biggest title - which Maru has failed to do. He also never dominated the scene convincingly. He is also not the best performing player in the most important Teamleague. So I really don't see what exactly would put Maru on top above everybody else. Maru had both the best record in an individual season and the highest overall percentage winrate when all seasons are added up... How is that not the top player? GSL/OSL/SSL are all historically just as hard or harder than world championships. Lately that's changed but his 2013 OSL was 100% a harder path than the 2013 world championship. 2/3 of the consensus goat candidates before 2018 did not have a modern world championship win. | ||
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Poopi
France12761 Posts
On March 06 2023 02:07 Balnazza wrote: I said Maru was never on top of an era. And no, he wasn't even on top of 2018, which clearly belongs to Serral. A World Championships, beating only koreans, just wins out against three GSLs. And yes, my stats are a bit flawed, since Liquipedias overview for PL apparently doesn't include the last season. Yet...Maru not on top. So of course to a weaker extend, but the point still stands. It really is just...easy? Big players win big titles and the biggest player wins the biggest title - which Maru has failed to do. He also never dominated the scene convincingly. He is also not the best performing player in the most important Teamleague. So I really don't see what exactly would put Maru on top above everybody else. Winning 3 Code S in a row in 2018 (and then a fourth one in 2019) is the best achievement that ever happened in Starcraft 2 lol. Winning a BlizzCon is nice and cool, but plenty of people could and did that. Winning that many GSLs in a row, at a time that was still competitive (2022 is a bit less competitive but the world champion Reynor still got last in his group, which shows how incredibly cutthroat GSL can be), is the most dominant feat any player has ever done. If you add on top of that his great OSL/SSL/proleague record from before, you could see how he was the obvious GOAT until Rogue amassed several GSL wins as well as his World Championship titles, albeit in a very very zerg favored era. I mean it is kind of obvious that Rogue and Maru are #1a and #1b GOAT of Starcraft 2, depending how much weight you put on balance and importance of being dominant in kespa era (weak points of Rogue). It is not surprising after almost a decade of foreigners being dominated by KR players that the EU / foreign scene wants Serral, the first one to be truly competitive with KR players, to be the GOAT though. Does not mean it is the truth, but it's probably what the casters think, which influence their casual audience who did not follow GSL/sc2 properly for all these years. Also, if you wanna check how World Championship are worth compared to GSL, just look at sOs career. He won 2 World Championships, yet since he could not win a single GSL (afaik, his best result was his loss to INno in 2017), nobody even considers him the GOAT of protoss compared to Zest or Stats. Another great examples of this would be TY and ByuN, who respectively won IEM Katowice and BlizzCon, and even have Code S titles to their name. Yet, nobody in their right mind would put them ahead of Maru or INnoVation as terrans, despite the lack of WC. After seeing this, why would Serral with 1 BlizzCon and 1 Katowice during super zerg favored and a bit less competitive era (for 2022), with a bunch of EU titles from back when Has or MaNa made it to the finals and Clem / Reynor were too young to compete, as well as some HSC or else titles, would be a contender? The fact that Maru did not win a World Championship yet, is more about him vs Rogue. I can't say: "yes it is obvious Maru is the GOAT compared to Rogue", it really depends on how you view things. Neither could I say "it is obvious Rogue is GOAT compared to Maru". But Serral is not even in the discussion for top 3, that is INno spot; he is probably in the top 5 though. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 06 2023 02:07 Balnazza wrote: I said Maru was never on top of an era. And no, he wasn't even on top of 2018, which clearly belongs to Serral. A World Championships, beating only koreans, just wins out against three GSLs. And yes, my stats are a bit flawed, since Liquipedias overview for PL apparently doesn't include the last season. Yet...Maru not on top. So of course to a weaker extend, but the point still stands. It really is just...easy? Big players win big titles and the biggest player wins the biggest title - which Maru has failed to do. He also never dominated the scene convincingly. He is also not the best performing player in the most important Teamleague. So I really don't see what exactly would put Maru on top above everybody else. The arguments have been presented many times, I won't repeat it again. At the end of the day it's obvious there's no clear Goat as each of the contenders have massive asterisks to their achievements. If you think someone can't be the Goat if he hasn't won a world championship that's fair, but it's just as fair to think someone can't be the Goat if he never won a GSL or only started winning once teamhouses disbanded and the scene became way less professional and competitive. The only blatantly untrue statement in this thread was that there is a "consensus" one player is the Goat when there's clearly not. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 06 2023 02:50 Charoisaur wrote: The only blatantly untrue statement in this thread was that there is a "consensus" one player is the Goat when there's clearly not. I definetly can agree on that. Though I guess most people have "their" clear GOAT, but that is of course fine. @Poopi: Yeah...no. Winning GSL is of course hard, but again, the biggest players win the biggest titles. And the biggest thing to win is the WCS/Blizzcon/EPT Tour Championship. I honestly can't see how you would not consider the one player that won not only the most Premier tournaments by far, but is now also the best performing at the World Championships (though by a margin that is really ignorable) atleast in the Top 3 for the discussion. That is jus blatant korean bias tbh | ||
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Pandain
United States12985 Posts
You can debate the ratios (e.g. two GSLs vs one world championship) but anyone who tries to make a one to one comparison or even GSL more important is just plain out wrong. No player would think that. Last point: everyone loves Mvp but he was never as dominant as people who came after (2013 inno, 2018 maru/serral, etc.). I'm not even really sure he was ever "dominant" - he was just the best player but not in a overpowering way. Also he played in a time when we literally had 9-10 GSLs a year. If that had kept up Maru would have like 20 GSLs by now, if not more. And in those days there were weekend tournaments literally every week. You can't just abstractly point to his tournament wins without that huge caveat. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
That is also why proleague gets a lot of focus from some posters here, because it was the tournament where the best of the best players competed weekly against each other with teams putting a lot of focus on the performance in it. | ||
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Pandain
United States12985 Posts
On March 06 2023 05:12 The_Red_Viper wrote: It doesn't matter what players think. They more than anything care about making a living, and yeah a world championship pays out more than a gsl and always has (i think). The argument is about the competitive level of the tournaments, and for that during starcraft 2's peak it make sense to think that a starleague (so gsl, osl, ssl) was oftentimes if not always more difficult to win than a world championship because it featured the stronger playerbase. That isn't really true anymore per se, but it most likely was during the height of kespa. That is also why proleague gets a lot of focus from some posters here, because it was the tournament where the best of the best players competed weekly against each other with teams putting a lot of focus on the performance in it. The latter actually supports my point. Everyone cared immensely about proleague. Teams prioritized it above anything else and players oftentimes (usually?) did too, even above individual league success. The problem is that no one actually think pure difficulty is the metric for tournament importance. There are plenty of smaller premier tournaments where the winners went through absolutely insane juggernaughts to win (think Dark's TSL6 win or Maru's king of battle win where he slayed all the top zergs) but I'm pretty sure you and 95% of individuals would think that any GSL would be more important, even if it had easier competition. We could even take it to an extreme and make a point I've made in previous threads on this topic: plenty of korean qualifiers for tournaments from 2013-2016 were absolutely brutal. Nobody cared/cares beyond a footnote of potential if you made it through a stacked qualifier only to bomb out in the Ro32 of the offline tournament. It would be ludicrous for anyone now in talking about GOAT debates to go "well he made it through X KR qualifier and Y KR qualifier" etc., even if objectively it was more *impressive* to get through the qualifier than various tournament results. Here's the bottom line: world championship is/was the biggest tournament of the year. Everyone acknowledged/s it, players or fans. You have to play a lot of mindgames to still treat it as less important than any other tournament. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
My point in regards to "it doesn't matter what players think" is simply that they have their own biases, and obviously i'd rather win 100k first place than 40k. You don't really have to play any mindgames per se, it just depends on what you think a goat debate should be about. Should it be about the easy narratives, then go to your world championship and think that messi needed that world cup win to even be in the contention for goat, if you care more about competitive levels, the skill being shown, etc, then the easy narrative alone isn't all that convincing any longer. Just to be clear, i think the world championship matters a ton, the player pool is really strong (though there is something to be said about qualifying for it early in the season and then potentially dropping off heavily, which isn't really a thing in tournaments which are more immediate), but yeah i think a starleague win during kespa's height was indeed 'worth more' than winning the world championship during that time. Now a starleague win is not nearly as impressive anymore, the relative strength of the korean scene compared to the others diminished heavily (though the overall scene did too, so any tournament win now isn't as impressive as it was in 2015). The thing is, people will never agree on what matters and how much it does, there are many different elements and people value things rather differently. I argued about this over the years with many different people, back when taeja was more popular similar conversations happened all the time. Things don't really change, do they. | ||
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Pandain
United States12985 Posts
On March 02 2023 08:21 luxon wrote: Man this thread has really turned into a GOAT debate, when I just wanted to know if people would consider sc2 from here on out part of the sc2 history/all time discussion or not. This is hilarious | ||
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Pandain
United States12985 Posts
On March 06 2023 06:15 The_Red_Viper wrote: It is true that difficulty alone isn't key, but a starleague had enough monetary motivation plus historical prestige (something the world championship didn't really have per se) to make players care about it, then you add the playerbase to it and you arguably get the environment one should care about a lot in a theoretical evaluation of importance. My point in regards to "it doesn't matter what players think" is simply that they have their own biases, and obviously i'd rather win 100k first place than 40k. You don't really have to play any mindgames per se, it just depends on what you think a goat debate should be about. Should it be about the easy narratives, then go to your world championship and think that messi needed that world cup win to even be in the contention for goat, if you care more about competitive levels, the skill being shown, etc, then the easy narrative alone isn't all that convincing any longer. Just to be clear, i think the world championship matters a ton, the player pool is really strong (though there is something to be said about qualifying for it early in the season and then potentially dropping off heavily, which isn't really a thing in tournaments which are more immediate), but yeah i think a starleague win during kespa's height was indeed 'worth more' than winning the world championship during that time. Now a starleague win is not nearly as impressive anymore, the relative strength of the korean scene compared to the others diminished heavily (though the overall scene did too, so any tournament win now isn't as impressive as it was in 2015). The thing is, people will never agree on what matters and how much it does, there are many different elements and people value things rather differently. I argued about this over the years with many different people, back when taeja was more popular similar conversations happened all the time. Things don't really change, do they. Yeah it's true. To be clear I highly respect your reasoning even if I strongly disagree with it; people just have different takes on what's important. No one's right, it's just a matter of perspective. Hence these conversations can go on for days, or in your case, years I guess to be clear I don't really consider the world championships so important because of their prize money (though its obviously relevant). It's just my understanding is that people care about it the most, even forget prize money, if nothing else but that intangible quality of being the world champion or performing well in front of the biggest audience of the year. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 06 2023 04:47 Pandain wrote: People who think GSLs are more important than world championships are making completely losing arguments. When we talk about Byun do we talk about his 2016 GSL win (during kespa!!) or his world championship win? Obviously the latter. And any single player would gladly trade a GSL win for a world championship win. You can debate the ratios (e.g. two GSLs vs one world championship) but anyone who tries to make a one to one comparison or even GSL more important is just plain out wrong. No player would think that. Last point: everyone loves Mvp but he was never as dominant as people who came after (2013 inno, 2018 maru/serral, etc.). I'm not even really sure he was ever "dominant" - he was just the best player but not in a overpowering way. Also he played in a time when we literally had 9-10 GSLs a year. If that had kept up Maru would have like 20 GSLs by now, if not more. And in those days there were weekend tournaments literally every week. You can't just abstractly point to his tournament wins without that huge caveat. That's true - often people say that the scene had more players back then, so it was harder to win. But there were also way more GSLs and tournaments going on, with players spread out. So, it might roughly balance out. I'm really curious, since you guys are bringing up a lot of great arguments and interesting perspectives. If World Championship is worth more than a GSL, then is sOs above MVP? They won almost the same # of tournies, MVP slightly more, but sOs has 3 World Champs compared to 3 GSLs, and sOs also has many 2nd places at GSL/Supers. Even if sOs did not win any GSL/Super, he did win a GSL Hot6ix cup, and his many 2nd places at GSL/Supers may support that he IS a top GSL player, and that World Championships are still harder than GSL. MVP has won 3 GSLs, a WCS EU, an IEM Cologne, an MLG Anaheim, and the weakest GSL vs the World ever. The MLG tourny was especially memorable because of things like Idra vs Slayers, the Slayers BFH drop build dominatnig, mech and hellions dominating TvT, all of the great TvT matches between MVP and all the rising Slayers Terrans, etc. I think you could say that tourny was highly competitive from a "feeling" as a spectator, though the prize pool was tiny, $5000 compared to the DH's that Serral are winning $20k at. sOs has won 2 IEM World Championships, a WCS World championship. He won an IEM Taipei. He also won a 2014 Hot6ix Cup, which is less than a GSL, but maybe around a GSL Super as it did have a $18k prize for 1st place. He also got a few 2nd places at GSL/Super/WCS, and a few 3rd/4th places at GSL/Super. Even if he did not win those, people value soO for being able to get many 2nd places, so I think all those 4-5 2nd places do count for something for sOs. I would say sOs's 3 World Championships are at least equal or more valuable than MVP's 3 GSL wins. sOs's IEM Taipei is about equal to MVP's IEM Cologne, and sOs's GSL Hot6ix cup win is equal to maybe MVP's WCS EU win or the GSL vs the World. However, I had put MVP 1 spot higher on my own list, because I felt most people also valued those early GSLs more than those World Championships. However, now I'm not sure if I feel that way anymore, since I do think that sOs's wins in 2012-2017 was more competitive and "legit" than WoL in 2011-2012. It makes me think, because if am to put Serral above Innovation/Life due to his World Championships weighing more than a GSL, then maybe I should also be putting sOs above MVP to be consistent. However, if you guys think MVP should be above sOs because of the strength of a GSL win, then maybe I would put Serral on the same tier as Innovation/Life, because even if Serral did win many international premieres like DH/HSC/TSL where there were Koreans and pretty good $10-20k 1st place prizes, maybe those tournament wins just weren't as "great" as Innovation winning 1 Starleague, 3 GSL, 1 GSL vs the World, 1 WCS season, 2 IEM regionals, a WESG, etc. I count Starleague and WCS season to be pretty much like GSLs, so that's as if he won 5 GSLs, a GSL vs the World, a weak World Championship (WESG), and a few other international premieres. However, due to the sheer number of tournies Serral has won - 2 World Championships, 2 GSL vs the Worlds, several DH/HSC/TSLs with KRs attending, and a bunch of WCS EU regionals even if the competition is weak, I would put him slightly above, but now I'm rethinking if I'd bump Serral down to Innovation/Life tier than Maru/Rogue tier. Maybe Innovation's 1 WCS season win for example is equivalent to as many as 3 of Serral's DH/HSC/TSL wins. But also, it is interesting that the value between GSL and World Championships has changed over time. At first, I'm sure most would agree GSL is worth more than those very early and small World Championships. In 2012-2017, maybe they're roughly equivalent, though most would probably say a World Championship is worth more. But in 2018-2022? Since the foreigner scene has caught up with Koreans and are very competitive, perhaps a World Championship is cleanly above a GSL's value, in which case I would put Serral above Innovation, and up there with Maru/Rogue. Also, Serral did win 2 more recent GSL vs the Worlds, and perhaps you could say the gap in value between a GSL vs the World and a regular GSL is closer than back then, with foreigners being stronger. | ||
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[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
sOs is great but IDK if I would put him above Mvp. Though sOs is definitely underated, and disrespected due to his weird strategies, but I have no doubt the guy is a strategic genius. I was looking at old TL.net powerrankings, They had this to say about Maru in 2016 In terms of sustained peak consistency, there is no one else on this list that can match Maru. From the day he won OSL in 2013 to now, he has always been a Top 3 player in his race (and at points top 1). This is not something you can say for any other player on this list (Even INnoVation had a drop off in the early half of 2014). If I had to describe Maru, he most reminds me of Life. He doesn’t have the crazy peaks of domination where he kills everyone, but he has an incredible consistency, one that has lasted three years with Maru just wailing on his opponents with constant aggression. Among the Terrans, he is probably the best there ever was at taking initiative in a game and snowballing that into a victory. Do, IMO that is proof of how great maru is, there is no other player in the history of the game as consistent as him. But, again I don't think you can say there is a GOAT in sc2. Maybe if maru had won the world championship this year but he didn't. I still think MVP is the best in WoL Life the best in host. Maru-serral-rogue in lotv. Funnily enough I found a post here in TL where there was a powerank of the best HotS player, and the player they had in #2 after Life was.... Taeja. Which, yikes, rofl | ||
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necrosexy
451 Posts
On March 06 2023 04:47 Pandain wrote: People who think GSLs are more important than world championships are making completely losing arguments. When we talk about Byun do we talk about his 2016 GSL win (during kespa!!) or his world championship win? Obviously the latter. And any single player would gladly trade a GSL win for a world championship win. You can debate the ratios (e.g. two GSLs vs one world championship) but anyone who tries to make a one to one comparison or even GSL more important is just plain out wrong. No player would think that. Last point: everyone loves Mvp but he was never as dominant as people who came after (2013 inno, 2018 maru/serral, etc.). I'm not even really sure he was ever "dominant" - he was just the best player but not in a overpowering way. Also he played in a time when we literally had 9-10 GSLs a year. If that had kept up Maru would have like 20 GSLs by now, if not more. And in those days there were weekend tournaments literally every week. You can't just abstractly point to his tournament wins without that huge caveat. MVP was dominant in WoL. his only glaring loss was to Bomber in Code A it was only until Life's emergence that would end his GSL run at the end of WoL | ||
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Glorfindelio
192 Posts
On March 07 2023 02:33 [Phantom] wrote: Mvp also won a blizzcon and a WCG world finals. sOs is great but IDK if I would put him above Mvp. Though sOs is definitely underated, and disrespected due to his weird strategies, but I have no doubt the guy is a strategic genius. I was looking at old TL.net powerrankings, They had this to say about Maru in 2016 Do, IMO that is proof of how great maru is, there is no other player in the history of the game as consistent as him. But, again I don't think you can say there is a GOAT in sc2. Maybe if maru had won the world championship this year but he didn't. I still think MVP is the best in WoL Life the best in host. Maru-serral-rogue in lotv. Funnily enough I found a post here in TL where there was a powerank of the best HotS player, and the player they had in #2 after Life was.... Taeja. Which, yikes, rofl I'm pretty sure Life is the most talented player I ever watched in SC2. Still blows my mind he did what he did--even worse than Savior, to me. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 07 2023 03:44 Glorfindelio wrote: I'm pretty sure Life is the most talented player I ever watched in SC2. Still blows my mind he did what he did--even worse than Savior, to me. Yeah if Life didn't matchfix I'm 100% sure this thread wouldn't exist. He had won 10 premier tournaments at the age of 18. Serral at the same age was a nobody | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 07 2023 05:25 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah if Life didn't matchfix I'm 100% sure this thread wouldn't exist. He had won 10 premier tournaments at the age of 18. Serral at the same age was a nobody I think he already was in a bit of a slumb before the scandal (though that might just have been the pressure?) and I think he never really got to show himself in LotV, so I wouldn't go for 100%. But if he had kept himself clean and on a somewhat comparable level as before...you are probably right, he would have been the GOAT | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 07 2023 02:33 [Phantom] wrote: Mvp also won a blizzcon and a WCG world finals. sOs is great but IDK if I would put him above Mvp. Though sOs is definitely underated, and disrespected due to his weird strategies, but I have no doubt the guy is a strategic genius. I was looking at old TL.net powerrankings, They had this to say about Maru in 2016 Do, IMO that is proof of how great maru is, there is no other player in the history of the game as consistent as him. But, again I don't think you can say there is a GOAT in sc2. Maybe if maru had won the world championship this year but he didn't. I still think MVP is the best in WoL Life the best in host. Maru-serral-rogue in lotv. Funnily enough I found a post here in TL where there was a powerank of the best HotS player, and the player they had in #2 after Life was.... Taeja. Which, yikes, rofl True, though I guess I didn't really count Blizzcon and WCG for anything much. It only had 2 players from KR, so it was either going to be MVP or Nestea's win. At the time KRs were the only really competitive players, with foreigners like Naniwa and Sen having a chance to beat mid level KR players, but not MVP/Nestea tier, and in the end Naniwa and Sen faced each other to advance. And the maps/rules were not fair or competitive, it was Bo3 and they had maps like Shattered Temple despite them having been rotated out of the competitive map pool already. So, the maps were extremely Terran favored. I remember how painful it was watching Nestea play MVP on that map pool, because he definitely could have won otherwise. I love WCG in BW, but in SC2 it seems to mean almost nothing. MVP won 1st place and Xigua was 2nd, MKP and Supernova were the only other 2 KRs there, and Supernova was only a low Code S player who surprisingly qualified over other GSL players that year. I guess you do have to count them for something though, maybe close-ish to a IEM premiere or MLG premiere just cus of the prizepool, but I count them as much less just because they aren't as competitive from a rules + participants stand point. I feel like that Blizzcon was more of a fun showmatch than any serious tourny, which is why they went with Shattered Temple because Lost Temple is a classic that people are familiar with. Regarding Taeja, I do think people have forgotten him, he's still at ~#12 on my list, his major weakpoint is that he hasn't done well in any GSL events, but he did really well at weekend events. That said, I remember there was an article that actually gave Taeja the #1 GOAT position above life, and I do remember disagreeing with it pretty strongly, feeling like it had a bit of TL bias in it, though article aren't all serious business and nothing wrong with giving a bit of home team love, so I didn't mind it too much. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 07 2023 07:53 Balnazza wrote: I think he already was in a bit of a slumb before the scandal (though that might just have been the pressure?) and I think he never really got to show himself in LotV, so I wouldn't go for 100%. But if he had kept himself clean and on a somewhat comparable level as before...you are probably right, he would have been the GOAT The last premier tournament he played was Blizzcon 2015 where he reached the finals | ||
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lorestarcraft
United States1049 Posts
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 07 2023 21:54 lorestarcraft wrote: The real GOAT would have to be a Korean that played before Europeans started winning international events, because European players didn't suddenly get better, Koreans got worse. So FruitDealer as the first GSL champ is the GOAT, because no one ever got better, he got only worse. Got it! On March 07 2023 20:14 Charoisaur wrote: The last premier tournament he played was Blizzcon 2015 where he reached the finals Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't the scandal become public right after he transfered back from KT to ST/SBENU and he had a really poor Proleague Stage before that? You are right, it wasn't a major slumb, but I feel like remembering people where like "huh, maybe he gets his groove back at his old team" or something like that. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 07 2023 22:04 Balnazza wrote: So FruitDealer as the first GSL champ is the GOAT, because no one ever got better, he got only worse. Got it! Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't the scandal become public right after he transfered back from KT to ST/SBENU and he had a really poor Proleague Stage before that? You are right, it wasn't a major slumb, but I feel like remembering people where like "huh, maybe he gets his groove back at his old team" or something like that. Life was generally a poor Proleague player compared to his performance in individual tournaments | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 07 2023 23:20 Charoisaur wrote: Life was generally a poor Proleague player compared to his performance in individual tournaments True...though I was curious and looked it up: The last matches he played he failed to qualify for SSL S1, maybe that's the slumb I remembered | ||
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Moonerz
United States442 Posts
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lorestarcraft
United States1049 Posts
On March 07 2023 22:04 Balnazza wrote: So FruitDealer as the first GSL champ is the GOAT, because no one ever got better, he got only worse. Got it! Maybe I'm misremembering, but didn't the scandal become public right after he transfered back from KT to ST/SBENU and he had a really poor Proleague Stage before that? You are right, it wasn't a major slumb, but I feel like remembering people where like "huh, maybe he gets his groove back at his old team" or something like that. That's an extreme take, I'm just suggesting that the era after Kespa guys came over until the Korean scene started to decline due to several retirements and general decline in the game's popularity. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
On March 08 2023 05:16 lorestarcraft wrote: That's an extreme take, I'm just suggesting that the era after Kespa guys came over until the Korean scene started to decline due to several retirements and general decline in the game's popularity. This is an age-old debate that I already had to endure in WC3: When exactly was the peak of the game? For SC2, it is rather simple for me: The peak was probably between 2016-19. Ironically also the time we finally got a great eco-system, giving foreigners the breathing room they needed to catch up to Korea. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 08 2023 07:22 Balnazza wrote: This is an age-old debate that I already had to endure in WC3: When exactly was the peak of the game? For SC2, it is rather simple for me: The peak was probably between 2016-19. Ironically also the time we finally got a great eco-system, giving foreigners the breathing room they needed to catch up to Korea. By what metric was that the peak of the game? 2013-2016 had more pro players, more top level pro players and a more professional training environment (coaches etc.). I don't the 2 high level foreigners we got in 2016-2019 make up for that. | ||
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Blargh
United States2101 Posts
On March 08 2023 07:22 Balnazza wrote: This is an age-old debate that I already had to endure in WC3: When exactly was the peak of the game? For SC2, it is rather simple for me: The peak was probably between 2016-19. Ironically also the time we finally got a great eco-system, giving foreigners the breathing room they needed to catch up to Korea. That might have been peak LotV, but I definitely think the SC2 scene was richest in that merged Kespa era, early HotS. It may seem like it sucked for foreigners, but Blizz gave them tons of opportunities, and eventually even fully region-locked it for them. I wouldn't say the scene was bad because of that though. It was so exciting watching Proleague, OSL, SSL, GSL, etc. I'm not even sure if there were any team leagues of relevance in LotV until these Chinese WTL one started in 2020, a bit of a shame. | ||
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LSN
Germany696 Posts
Comparing MVP with Serral in whole SC2 is like comparing Fruitdealer with MVP in WOL. | ||
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[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
So even though the game has evolved, it is easier to compare across eras. In SC2, not only did the last expansióon came out like 6 years later, but the game changed so much with Lotv with the faster game and changes to the economy, that is literally impossible to conpare with WoL. And thats without taking into account all the patches in between (queen buffs, infestor rework, mothership core, etc). So honestly. LotV might as well be a completely different game than Sc2 WoL (and no, the level of skill wasnt lower then). | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 09 2023 07:59 [Phantom] wrote: I do think that many dont consider that in sc1 all the professional scene was playyed in BW. And that BW was literally released the same year as the base game. So even though the game has evolved, it is easier to compare across eras. In SC2, not only did the last expansióon came out like 6 years later, but the game changed so much with Lotv with the faster game and changes to the economy, that is literally impossible to conpare with WoL. And thats without taking into account all the patches in between (queen buffs, infestor rework, mothership core, etc). So honestly. LotV might as well be a completely different game than Sc2 WoL (and no, the level of skill wasnt lower then). Watch MVP vs Nestea G2 on Shakuras Plateau at Blizzcon. And how hard Nestea fumbles all his tactics/harass at the end, eventually doing a terrible yolo play, and A move with his army not attacking together. You don't think the level of skill was lower then? | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 09 2023 15:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Watch MVP vs Nestea G2 on Shakuras Plateau at Blizzcon. And how hard Nestea fumbles all his tactics/harass at the end, eventually doing a terrible yolo play, and A move with his army not attacking together. You don't think the level of skill was lower then? Watch Maru fly his first Medivac drop straight over the opponents natural where it dies to a Cyclone players today also make huge blunders sometimes | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 09 2023 18:49 Charoisaur wrote: Watch Maru fly his first Medivac drop straight over the opponents natural where it dies to a Cyclone players today also make huge blunders sometimes That's true, but the rate they make them at is much lower, and to a much smaller degree. Army control and micro for example is at a whole new level now than back then, especially with things like WP micro, and Parting's blink micro that kills players off just a 4 gate blink opener. Players actually split units up, poke ahead, prespread, etc. For example splitting a few marauders ahead of your army to pressure a base, to mitigate the strength of Storm or banelings. Back then they thought just clumping and A moving was the best way to engage. Nestea just didn't know what to do in that game, he needed to have concluded that the map is not winnable lategame if Terran splits it up, and either keep throwing waves of units at him to wittle him down and try to mine more bases, or play the efficiency game lategame if he feels he can do that. Instead he tried to do some drops and harass, they fail, he's actually still doing totally fine at this point since he has 2 more bases than MVP, but then he falls completely apart and does a random attack with everything, and even though he wasn't in a rush he couldn't even spend a few seconds making sure he got his army together before engaging. It was a whole nother level of mess. Another thing to consider is that over time, players got better at defending and shutting down most harass early game. And patches had to keep buffing harass more and more to try to maintain some level of viable harass. I think that's a very concrete example of player skill improving comparatively overtime. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 09 2023 19:43 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: That's true, but the rate they make them at is much lower, and to a much smaller degree. Army control and micro for example is at a whole new level now than back then, especially with things like WP micro, and Parting's blink micro that kills players off just a 4 gate blink opener. Players actually split units up, poke ahead, prespread, etc. For example splitting a few marauders ahead of your army to pressure a base, to mitigate the strength of Storm or banelings. Back then they thought just clumping and A moving was the best way to engage. Nestea just didn't know what to do in that game, he needed to have concluded that the map is not winnable lategame if Terran splits it up, and either keep throwing waves of units at him to wittle him down and try to mine more bases, or play the efficiency game lategame if he feels he can do that. Instead he tried to do some drops and harass, they fail, he's actually still doing totally fine at this point since he has 2 more bases than MVP, but then he falls completely apart and does a random attack with everything, and even though he wasn't in a rush he couldn't even spend a few seconds making sure he got his army together before engaging. It was a whole nother level of mess. Another thing to consider is that over time, players got better at defending and shutting down most harass early game. And patches had to keep buffing harass more and more to try to maintain some level of viable harass. I think that's a very concrete example of player skill improving comparatively overtime. I definitely agree that players have gotten better since 2011. However, it has to be noted that the changes to the game also made the things you mention easier to do. Warpprism Micro is easier with pickup range, drop multitasking is easier with medivac boost, splitting your army up is easier with remove army from controlgroup hotkey, managing your economy is easier with visible worker counts, you can stack injects, less minerals per base means you have to expand faster which gives the opponent more openings to do damage etc. In WoL the players were definitely worse as the players were just figuring out how to play the game, but the question whether players are better now vs in 2014 for example is not as easy to answer. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 09 2023 21:10 Charoisaur wrote: I definitely agree that players have gotten better since 2011. However, it has to be noted that the changes to the game also made the things you mention easier to do. Warpprism Micro is easier with pickup range, drop multitasking is easier with medivac boost, splitting your army up is easier with remove army from controlgroup hotkey, managing your economy is easier with visible worker counts, you can stack injects, less minerals per base means you have to expand faster which gives the opponent more openings to do damage etc. In WoL the players were definitely worse as the players were just figuring out how to play the game, but the question whether players are better now vs in 2014 for example is not as easy to answer. That's true, there were a lot of QoL and balance changes to make it easier to play the game and control things. Yeah, when there were still teams and coaches, 2014-2016 is harder for me to say if I think they're worse than players in 2017-2022. I think they've still gotten better, but while i see many things i think are done better, there are also harder things to see that are probably done worse (things like game sense, mentality, build choices, etc.). When I see players like Serral dominating in 2018-2019, or Rogue at his peak, or Creator in GSL 2022 S1, that felt like it's better than back then. I felt like Creator was doing so many ambitious things and little things that other Protoss don't. But clearly he also still had a lot of areas lacking, like herO's defense and game sense was still overall better. Admittedly I also didn't watch a ton of SC2 during 2014-2016. I guess they are probably roughly about the same, since im sure there are things done both worse and better. | ||
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Xamo
Spain876 Posts
Now it is Maru or Serral or Rogue forever and ever. Answering OP's question, there is no way any new (downscaled) tournament win closes this discussion. | ||
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Phredxor
New Zealand15076 Posts
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BluemoonSC
SoCal8908 Posts
On March 09 2023 18:49 Charoisaur wrote: Watch Maru fly his first Medivac drop straight over the opponents natural where it dies to a Cyclone players today also make huge blunders sometimes i think that it's a misnomer that "# of mistakes" = "overall skill" when we're referring to the skill level of starcraft eras. what should be measured is skill floor and skill ceiling. the skill ceiling in current day sc2 is much higher than season 1&2 of the GSL where Steppes of War was in the map pool and played in a grand final. hell, we were still learning how to use all of the units. burrowed banelings were still catching people off guard. inCa was winning with just void rays. broodlord infestor was the peak endgame. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 15 2023 07:22 BluemoonSC wrote: i think that it's a misnomer that "# of mistakes" = "overall skill" when we're referring to the skill level of starcraft eras. what should be measured is skill floor and skill ceiling. the skill ceiling in current day sc2 is much higher than season 1&2 of the GSL where Steppes of War was in the map pool and played in a grand final. hell, we were still learning how to use all of the units. burrowed banelings were still catching people off guard. inCa was winning with just void rays. broodlord infestor was the peak endgame. Yep and it wasn't until the 2nd half of HotS that people realized that mass raven (with bio or mech support) was OP in TvZ. And this is considering that in HotS, Raven already got nerfed a few times, and they already had Viper Abduct to at least pick off Ravens here and there. BL Infestor wouldn't have stood a chance against a fleet of Raven/Viking with some ground support. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On March 15 2023 08:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Yep and it wasn't until the 2nd half of HotS that people realized that mass raven (with bio or mech support) was OP in TvZ. And this is considering that in HotS, Raven already got nerfed a few times, and they already had Viper Abduct to at least pick off Ravens here and there. BL Infestor wouldn't have stood a chance against a fleet of Raven/Viking with some ground support. Raven sucked in WoL because seeker missile required 125 energy (in HotS 75 which is why they started to get used) | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
On March 15 2023 08:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Yep and it wasn't until the 2nd half of HotS that people realized that mass raven (with bio or mech support) was OP in TvZ. And this is considering that in HotS, Raven already got nerfed a few times, and they already had Viper Abduct to at least pick off Ravens here and there. BL Infestor wouldn't have stood a chance against a fleet of Raven/Viking with some ground support. Zerg apologists now not just defending the current era but also 2012/2013 Bl/Infestor? Crazy | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10305 Posts
On March 15 2023 09:38 JJH777 wrote: Zerg apologists now not just defending the current era but also 2012/2013 Bl/Infestor? Crazy I'm anything but a zerg apologist, I'm just saying that people in WoL were bad and were still learning a lot of basic things. And that just cus people thought BL/Infestor was the strongest unit comp in WoL doesn't mean it was true, cus mass raven comps were definitely stronger, especially when PDD used to last 3 mins, 4 mins if upgraded, and zerg didn't have vipers. | ||
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kajtarp
Hungary463 Posts
On March 12 2023 23:53 Xamo wrote: The funny thing for me is that this year there was a true opportunity to close the GOAT discussion at IEM. Had Maru won those finals, the answer would have been clear, at least for non-fanboys. But our SC2 gods (or deamons) did not want that to happen, and blessed Oliveira instead. Now it is Maru or Serral or Rogue forever and ever. Answering OP's question, there is no way any new (downscaled) tournament win closes this discussion. As a neutral, i think its clear that Rogue is the "goat". Maru won his 5th GSL in the absence of Rogue, he lacks the Blizzcon/IEM win. In fact not only lacks, but he had very disappointing blizzcon runs again and again and again. Getting eliminated in matches we expected him to win. Rogue also has more weekend type tournament titles. Yes, Serral has won 2 world championships, but he hasn't won anything in Korea. Had he won at least one GSL, it would have been a different discussion, be he hasn't. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24266 Posts
On March 05 2023 15:19 Monochromatic wrote: Early SC2 was a different beast. Strategies came and went incredibly quickly, and with them certain players. It was not uncommon for someone to dominate and then suddenly vanish as the meta evolved. Inca made the GSL finals with dark templars, a blue flame hellion opening just straight up won a tournament, and patches changed things incredibly quickly. During this time it was incredibly rare to be consistent. MVP was the only exception. There was a GomTvT era, and MVP's rise came after it. In fact, during his period of domination, Terran would be nerfed regularly. He was significantly ahead of other top Terrans, like MMA or Bomber. His greatest strength is his ability to innovate and execute: he always found a way to victory. This is something that is incredibly overlooked in the current game, since everything is figured out. MVP basically invented Terran. He used everything and anything and somehow he was able to win. If you combined SoS and Rogue, MVP would be the result. I will always remember his GSL final against Squirtle as one of the best Starcraft matches. He built battlecruisers in g5 and was going to win with them until an archon toilet turned the tides. At that time battlecruisers were an awful unit - TotalBiscuit had a series going where he would try to win them because they were so terribly bad. I think the modern equivalent would be using HTs normal attack to try to kill someone - it's such a dumb idea that you wouldn't even try. But MVP not only made it work, he used a never before seen build in a GSL final. His career was cut short due to a wrist injury. Saying he had a lack of effort or will is just ignorant. He won WCS EU despite this injury - by completely remaking his playstyle to be less micro intensive. He also greatly reduced his practice schedule, meaning that for MVP playing below standard was still enough to win a premier tournament during a period where competition was at its peak. MVP is underrated in the GOAT discussion. GOAT isn't a question of most tournament wins or the most prize money. It's rather a question of who's greatest. MVP is undisputedly the king of wings, while no one else is considered the king of their era. His star may have shined briefly, but it was brighter than any other. Well said, and a neat encapsulation of why I consider ‘greatest’ and ‘the best’ to be two very different things | ||
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Comedy
453 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24266 Posts
On May 20 2023 07:36 Comedy wrote: you can't exclude the 'eye test'. Serral has titles, sure, but considering how good he is, you would expect him to have more. He is the best. Talking at their absolute peaks. Serral is excellent at almost everything, rarely gets flustered into mistakes, rarely makes anything but the right strategic or tactical call. He’s rarely had a weak matchup either, probably his worst period (after he’d hit his current form) was a time where he maybe struggled in ZvZ against Reynor and a few other top ZvZers. Maru has more holes in his game, he does make mistakes and bad decisions more frequently. Purely relatively speaking of course! On the flipside he’s bulletproof mechanically and he can basically pull stuff off that nobody else can. He can make holds and pushes work he has no right to. Plus while he may make more mistakes, allied to his mechanical chops he has a great eye for making the kind of moves an opponent has discounted as a possibility. ‘Damn why did I give up that position, he shouldn’t have that much stuff, and moved it into a great position after I cleaned up that attack he just did’. Plus his legendary super lategame They’re both definitely up there in my eye test, for slightly different reasons. Serral is just a relentless winning machine at his best, unflappable and he’ll play a game straight out the textbook more often than not. Maru in full flight can be a thing of beauty, a watch full of ‘holy shit what did I just see?’ exclamations Privilege to watch these two and some of the other great players we’ve seen over the years | ||
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tigera6
3219 Posts
Maru is fully capable of doing the exact same thing, but he just doesnt want to, and rather to stick to stuff that Byun-like every once in a while, or proxying thats rewarding if it works but punishing if it doesnt. If he put his mind into doing just the basic stuff and let his mechanical skill carry him, he would be a much more consistent player, but also less interesting to watch. They are like 2 sides a coin in term of style, but both are extremely strong mechanically, has great vision and excel in pretty much any stage of the game. | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
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Charoisaur
Germany15878 Posts
On May 20 2023 12:27 tigera6 wrote: What Serral does better than Maru is that, he ALWAYS stick to his standard build, especially against lower level opponent. He will just do what he does carefully and just slowly win the game like its just another day at the work. Outside of ZvZ, that has been Serral best feature, is that he doesnt lose because hes making poor decision, you have to beat him down. Maru is fully capable of doing the exact same thing, but he just doesnt want to, and rather to stick to stuff that Byun-like every once in a while, or proxying thats rewarding if it works but punishing if it doesnt. If he put his mind into doing just the basic stuff and let his mechanical skill carry him, he would be a much more consistent player, but also less interesting to watch. They are like 2 sides a coin in term of style, but both are extremely strong mechanically, has great vision and excel in pretty much any stage of the game. Not sure this is a strength of Serral seeing as multiple players have abused this predictability like Zest at IEM Katowice. And yeah, the reactive style isn't as solid for the other races, for example Clem who's mechanically as good as Serral but also very predictable gets this predictability abused over and over by Dark, Rogue etc. which is why he's never won an international title | ||
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dysenterymd
1175 Posts
A T/P can't play as reactively as a Zerg, but I also think there's a difference between normal build rotation/aggressive plays and builds that are downright reckless. Playing aggressively/decisively against a player worse than you is fine, but if you're the top dog you should still avoid builds that your opponent can shut down simply if scouted. Maru is at times guilty of this. | ||
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Itsxjoeyy
30 Posts
He’s def above them. Serral vs maru and rogue head to head is all you need to see | ||
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Itsxjoeyy
30 Posts
On March 01 2023 16:45 tlnetuser108 wrote: Hard disagree. The GSL is way more prestigious than any world championship. Preparation style tournaments are inherently more difficult and require infinitely more skill than weekenders like Katowice. This is why Reynor, despite winning less than Serral, is more of a contender for GOAT than Serral is. At least he tried. Beating GSL players outside of GSL is totally different than beating GSL players inside of GSL Stop it what’s the difference between beating a player in gsl or the same player outside gsl when we’re talking about the goat you either get it done or you don’t no excuses and serral has beaten everyone more than they’ve beaten him period. Serral is the goat anyone saying otherwise is kididng themselves | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1098 Posts
Chess doesn't need any mechanical skills, that is why the emphasize on preparation is awesome. But in SC2? I would say a fast-pace weekender says much more about your skill and your ability to adapt then "can I figure out my opponent better than he can figure out me in a week(s)-long preparation?" Which again underlines: World Championship > GSL in that regard | ||
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tigera6
3219 Posts
On May 21 2023 10:00 Itsxjoeyy wrote: He’s def above them. Serral vs maru and rogue head to head is all you need to see Rogue actually has winning record in games and split equally with Serral in Bo3+ 1v1 match. I guess you just never bother to fact check whatever you saying? | ||
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Akio
Finland1838 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24266 Posts
On May 21 2023 19:43 Balnazza wrote: Isn't chess like the only somewhat relevant sport that uses a "you can prepare for one specific opponent"-kind of thing and they only do it for the World Champion match, nowhere else? In any other sport or esport, it is always a bracket, always very fast pace rounds. The best Esports otherwise has to offer is maybe LoL where you have days or even a week between the playoff rounds, but anywhere else? Chess doesn't need any mechanical skills, that is why the emphasize on preparation is awesome. But in SC2? I would say a fast-pace weekender says much more about your skill and your ability to adapt then "can I figure out my opponent better than he can figure out me in a week(s)-long preparation?" Which again underlines: World Championship > GSL in that regard They both have their merits. More thinking on your feet in a weekender in general, but more generic strats. More funky stuff in a prep tournament and one may have to adapt to a build you’ve never seen before or will see again. Being able to adapt if your plan A you’ve been working on for a good week+ isn’t viable, there’s on-the-fly adaptation there too. I dig them both personally as formats and they benefit from slightly different skill sets, albeit I think it’s more interesting in BW again as its maps are more varied. There is the element of having a team or a set of practice partners in doing that prep though. Better partners, hey that cool build you brought to the table maybe wasn’t even your build, which I think people do neglect to mention a bit. I’d have the WC as above a single Code S just because it’s the WC, more rare and more money, not because of the format though | ||
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
GSL just gives players the opportunity to play at their theoretical peak. Whereas in weekend tournaments players do the best they can given the circumstances but it will never be the their peak play. I'm far more interested in peak vs peak than what players offer in weekend tournaments. For prestige I'd still give the edge to world championships in the modern era. Too many top players are missing from GSL now and the prize money decrease hurts. Before we actually got some good non Koreans though Korean leagues were definitely way harder to win than world championships. There were basically 8 charity slots at every world championship back then. Even 2018 was 7 charity slots. 2019 forward is where I'd say world championships overtook starleagues in terms of difficulty. | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On May 21 2023 21:07 Akio wrote: Jesus Christ can we stop with these GOAT conversations already? It's dumb in every sport, it's dumb in StarCraft. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's necessarily incorrect to say that e.g. Flash is the greatest BW player ever (although I'm not saying that a statement like that is true by default), but when you need to have these extended comparisons of titles (i.e. when the margins are noticeably more slim), you're just in for a never-ending circlejerk of fans of said players all making separate cases for their own favorite to be the most worthy. I mean for crying out loud, you can't even measure normal athletes from different eras properly and they play in the same teams, tournaments and formats year after year, decade after decade. But somehow StarCraft 2, a game with a 13 year history with 3 different expansions and countless balance patches, tournament structure, amount as well as format changes are supposed to make me believe that you can compare these top players of the game with each other in any comprehensive way. Totally agreed, but really maru is obviously the goat. | ||
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uselless
89 Posts
On May 21 2023 10:00 Itsxjoeyy wrote: He’s def above them. Serral vs maru and rogue head to head is all you need to see This logic is so flawed; I don't agree with MVP at the very least, but if we are using h2h, then you might as well check his stats against Happy or Vortix | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1413 Posts
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Itsxjoeyy
30 Posts
On May 22 2023 05:50 uselless wrote: This logic is so flawed; I don't agree with MVP at the very least, but if we are using h2h, then you might as well check his stats against Happy or Vortix But are happy and vortix in the goat convo? No | ||
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Curufinwe Feanor
Brazil91 Posts
On March 01 2023 14:55 Blargh wrote: I would actually say starting about now is when you could determine the definitive SC2 GOAT because everything here onward carries so little weight that even if someone was super dominant for the next 5 years, it'd never compare to the last 10 years. But I think Maru is the most appropriate "GOAT", given how he's basically been a top 5-10 player for over a decade, all the way from 2012. No other player has the same longevity and ranking to compete, even if Rogue and Serral were more dominant in their peaks. Youve got a point. But Serral has been top Zerg since 2018. Quite some time now. Though Maru's early Premier wins, regularity and specially dominance in GSL... I think Maru takes the GOAT title. Maru and Serral Top 2 for sure, with Kelazhur trailing just after | ||
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Curufinwe Feanor
Brazil91 Posts
On May 22 2023 05:50 uselless wrote: This logic is so flawed; I don't agree with MVP at the very least, but if we are using h2h, then you might as well check his stats against Happy or Vortix Serral was a baby back then. Serral vs Maru, and Serral vs Rogue reflects their peak h2h | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland24266 Posts
On May 22 2023 10:03 Itsxjoeyy wrote: But are happy and vortix in the goat convo? No Happy is at least in that ballpark with WC3, which does have some tangential relevance to this discussion. In a game that’s past its eSports peak, and has been pretty stable for quite some time, he’s achieved some preposterous feats by just executing a (relatively) figured out game like a monster. He may be the best player in pure skill terms, but how do we judge that in terms of that more intangible ‘greatness’ against the innovators, or players that were taking home the big titles when WC3 was at its competitive peak? Some parallels with SC2 given it’s had 2 expansions, a pre-Kespa era, a Kespa era and a post-Kespa era. Plus numerous shakeups of the overall global calendar, and latterly some stronger foreign players. It’s bloomin difficult so it is! I think Serral (in a less pronounced way) has shown some of the best Starcraft we’ve seen, like Happy in WC3, but the Korean scene isn’t/wasn’t at the level of peak Kespa years. Maru’s won plenty of stuff and shown excellent Starcraft, but he’s played the entirety of the game and military didn’t intervene. Rogue brought home some big bacon, but he only started consistently taking home Code S titles in that weaker period. Mvp helped to invent modern Terran staples and was the best player of his era, but even if his wrists held up could he have kept up mechanically when Innovation and the Kespa players transitioned and figured out the game? What could a healthy Taeja or Rain have pulled off, or a scandal free Voldemort have done? I mean I could go on, I do enjoy debating the finer points of the careers of all of these top players and it brings back a lot of good memories, good luck getting a definitive answer though | ||
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tigera6
3219 Posts
On May 22 2023 10:32 Curufinwe Feanor wrote: Serral was a baby back then. Serral vs Maru, and Serral vs Rogue reflects their peak h2h But people trying to argue that Maru has done a lot when he was literally a baby, against grown man, in a super competitive environment. And he keeps it going for a 10-year+ career which is very impressive. Both Serral and Rogue start winning a lot around 2017 when there is a meta shift into the BLord Infestor. That doesnt de-value their achievement but some people like longevity excellence over peak dominance. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6799 Posts
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
On May 22 2023 20:38 Harris1st wrote: I think the only way to end this is a best of 99 match between Maru and Serral with a lot of money on the line and throughout the year and a couple of patches Make it a bo99 for each matchup, with every player playing both sides of it. Give them a year to practice all the races. Someone produce this, i'll give away this spectacular idea for free. | ||
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Slydie
1913 Posts
On May 21 2023 21:07 Akio wrote: Jesus Christ can we stop with these GOAT conversations already? It's dumb in every sport, it's dumb in StarCraft. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's necessarily incorrect to say that e.g. Flash is the greatest BW player ever (although I'm not saying that a statement like that is true by default), but when you need to have these extended comparisons of titles (i.e. when the margins are noticeably more slim), you're just in for a never-ending circlejerk of fans of said players all making separate cases for their own favorite to be the most worthy. I mean for crying out loud, you can't even measure normal athletes from different eras properly and they play in the same teams, tournaments and formats year after year, decade after decade. But somehow StarCraft 2, a game with a 13 year history with 3 different expansions and countless balance patches, tournament structure, amount as well as format changes are supposed to make me believe that you can compare these top players of the game with each other in any comprehensive way. I agree, but arguing about non-sensical rankings in sports is a much appreciated hobby for a LOT of people. | ||
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Glorfindelio
192 Posts
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JJH777
United States4378 Posts
To go to a more extreme example. If there was a hypothetical player who won 20 high prestige premiers with all the best players from 2010 to 2017 but then became terrible and lost to Serral everytime they played him for 5 years straight and didn't take a single map that player would still easily be the goat over Serral until Serral wins 20 premiers with all the best players present. Current skill or skill against a single player is irrelevant. | ||
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tigera6
3219 Posts
On May 23 2023 07:01 Glorfindelio wrote: It's actually pretty cool that Serral and Maru are still crushing as SC2 nears its proverbial endgame. I'm sure others will argue for their respective merits against endlessly, but I'm 100% convinced that they both represent peak SC2 even all these years later, both in skill and consistency, judging by their recent runs. Like I said, the world is a better place when Maru running GSL and Serral running the WCS/ESL circuit. Then we will have them missing each other and both get eliminated at some point during the global tournament :D | ||
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