This impossible question lies at the core of this list. While there is some common ground most StarCraft II fans can agree upon, over a decade of internet debate has made it clear that much of what defines greatness is inherently subjective. Thus, as I begin this series, I will try to explain my core values and criteria for greatness in StarCraft II, and how I tried to apply them consistently to all the players considered.
Before I go on and elaborate, I want to say what an honor it was to be able to write this series. I always wanted to do something of this nature at some point and, now that we are almost a decade removed from stuchiu’s seminal GOAT series, it seemed the perfect time to reflect on StarCraft II history and all the incredible players that made the game what it is.
I want to personally thank Lichter, Munch, Olli, CosmicSpiral, thehexhaven, TheOneAboveU and Soularion for making me feel at home when I signed on. I’d also like to thank my long-time editor Waxangel, as well as all the staff who have kept his place running all these years. I wouldn’t have a place to write without you. Lastly, I want to say thank you to those who have read my work over the past seven years. Being a part of this site and this community has been a life altering experience. With that said, I hope you will enjoy the next ten articles.
How to compare achievements & statistics from different eras
Any list such as this one will have to compare players who competed in vastly different eras. In order to mitigate the subjectivity that comes with making statistical 'conversions' between time periods, my starting point was to group players by time-period and compare them against their peers.
Here are the four main divisions:
2010 to 2012: Pre-KeSPA/WoL
2013-2015: "Peak" KeSPA/HotS
2016-2017: Early LotV
2018 and later: Post-KeSPA
Of course, cross-era comparisons were unavoidable when compiling the final ranking, but this was a better method than trying to directly compare the resumes of, say, Nestea and Reynor.
Key criteria: Major tournament finishes and win-rates
Tournament placements are a go-to measure of success in any sport, and they played a key part in player evaluations. It should be noted that I valued second place and top four finishes more highly than most fans (at least from what I've gathered from the StarCraft community over the years). My valuation was closer to the current EPT points distribution for major events (3 to 2 ratio for 1st vs 2nd place) than it was to the GSL points split (2 to 0.99 ratio).
I also put a heavy weight on win-rates in major tournament series (GSL, SSL, Proleague) during players' prime years. Tournament placements, while an identifier of success, may not accurately reflect a player's standing in the scene during a given period, or sufficiently differentiate between players with similar finishes. Over a large sample, win-rates in major events helped capture the level of dominance a player exerted.
Deciding the duration of a player's prime was somewhat arbitrary, but for the most part, I believe readers will not find the selected endpoints to be objectionable. Overall, the win-rates from the sampled time frames remained similar between players, and care was taken so no player received an 'unfair' boost from cherry-picked endpoints.
Great career vs great peaks
One of the core dilemmas in compiling this list was how to value a player's total career accomplishments—largely measured by cumulative tournament finishes, versus their peak ability—largely measured by major tournament win-rates during their prime.
Ultimately, I decided on around a 55:45 split, favoring the overall career slightly.
In the present situation where players have racked up long tournament resumes over 10+ years, I still tried to look at shorter careers (2-4 years) favorably as long as the player was clearly one of the best in the world while active. Players with significant periods of 'non-prime' years before and/or after their peaks still accumulated career credit for occasional deep tournament runs.
Presented without comment.
Weighing Tournaments
Not all tournaments are created equal, and the exact valuation of tournaments often lies at the core of GOAT debates in the community. Acknowledging that it's impossible to be perfectly consistent, I tried to stick with the following rubric for weighing events.
The gold standard - Code S/OSL/SSL aka "Korean Individual Leagues": The majority of the candidates for the GOAT list were primarily active in Korea during their careers, making tournament finishes and win-rates from these leagues a key measure of success for this series.
GSL Code S has undergone some changes over the years, but it has been, by far, the most stable tournament series in terms of format and level of competition. This made it an invaluable resource in comparing player results over a large number of games and tournaments.
SSL and OSL were considered to be equivalent to GSL Code S, and I collectively referred to them as "Korean Individual Leagues." Although OSL and SSL have become somewhat forgotten over time, they drew from identical player pools as the GSL and often offered similar prize money + world championship seeding incentives.
Exceptions: SSL 2017 and Code S 2023 had their values adjusted downward due to significant reductions in scale.
World championships (BlizzCon, IEM World Championship, WESG, Gamers8, etc): I rated world championship-tier tournaments to be equivalent or slightly more valuable than Korean Individual Leagues, depending on the specific tournament.
While I acknowledged the high level of prize money and prestige of these tournaments, the level of competition and rigorousness of the format were sometimes lacking compared to Korean Individual Leagues. For example, the 2014-15 IEM World Championships were held in a variance-heavy, 16-player single elimination format, while BlizzCon tournaments from 2016-2017 had an 8-player quota for WCS-region players in a period where Neeb was the only one who was competitive.
The emergence of Serral and Reynor made later world championship-tier events more valuable, as they featured rigorous formats, the highest prize money, and the most competitive player pools. For that reason, I viewed world championships from 2018 to the present day as more valuable than most world championship-tier events of the past.
For the sake of this ranking, the 2013 WCS Global Finals is the first event that has both the level of competition and amount of prize money required to be considered a 'true' world championship. Only IEM World Championships from 2014 and onwards are considered world championship-tier for the sake of player evaluation (also excluding IEM Katowice 2016 which was a region-locked WCS event).
Despite the weak player pools at the WESG tournaments in 2017-18, I considered them to be worth just slightly less than a season of Korean Individual Leagues or an average ESL/Blizzard world championship. This is due to the significant amount of prize money that would have made it a high priority for players at the time.
Going forward, if Gamers8 continues to hold events in the manner they did in 2023, I would consider those to be relatively similar to WCS and IEM World Championship from 2018 to the present.
KeSPA Proleague: For players who were active at the time, their records and win-rates from Proleague were valued similarly to that of Korean Individual Leagues.
Proleague was the engine fueling the Korean pro StarCraft I & II scenes for much of their existence, with corporate teams such as KT Rolster, Samsung Galaxy Khan, and SK Telecom paying large salaries to strong Proleague performers. While individual leagues hold more narrative sway, Proleague was at least equivalent to them in terms of practical importance.
The hybrid BW/SC2 half-season of Proleague in 2012 was not considered.
2020-2023 ESL Masters/DreamHack Season Finals: These events were valued similarly to Code S. The online versions of these tournaments played during the pandemic-era were not penalized, as they were still some of the most competitive and high-prize tournaments players were able to compete in at the time.
Super Tournaments, KeSPA Cups, and other miscellaneous Korean events: These tournaments were judged on a case-by-case basis, as the number of players, prize money, and rigorousness of format varied greatly. The majority of them fell into the so-called "tier 2" category, and were not valued highly.
However, some events, such as GSL Super Tournament 2011, were deemed to be similar or equivalent in stature to a Korean Individual League.
Miscellaneous Global Events: This contains an incredibly wide variety of tournaments with different formats, player pools, and prize money. While it would be necessary to parse the value of individual events to rank players #11 and below in the GOAT standings, it conveniently worked out so that these events were not particularly relevant to my top ten for the following reasons:
2013-2019 tournaments: Most of my top 10 GOAT players rarely competed in these events (if at all) due to their KeSPA affiliations. Also, most of the events during this period (IEM and DreamHack weekenders) were significantly less prestigious than Korean Individual Leagues, due to weaker player pools and lower prize money.
2010-2012: A handful of global tournaments during the Wings of Liberty period reached Code S quality in terms of prize money, player pools, and prestige. Examples of such events include MLG Providence 2011, IPL4, and IPL5. While the winners of these events received commensurate credit, it didn't end up having any bearing on the final GOAT top ten (Example: Leenock's IPL5 and MLG Providence wins were considered Code S-tier, but they weren't enough to push him into the top ten).
How much respect is due to the past?
Terminology
Premier event/Premier tournament: When the word "premier" is used describe a tournament throughout this series, it refers to a tournament with Premier designation according to Liquipedia
Korean Individual League: GSL Code S, OnGameNet Starleague (OSL), and StarCraft II Starleague (SSL).
Global Event: A tournament in which there was no region-lock or other significant geographical/nationality-based barrier to participation. This largely consists of so-called "Weekender" events such as old DreamHack Open Tournaments or IEM Circuit events.
I wanted to mention that I'll be creating a number of blog posts to highlight some of the more interesting stuff I encountered doing all this research. Keep an eye out for those if that's something that interests you.
GLGL to everyone and I hope you have a good time with this!
Valuing second places more highly than most... I see where this one is going
Jokes aside, I think it's quite interesting that EPT's idea of 'fair' points and prize money distribution by finish veers pretty far off from the standards most fans (yes, I'm generalizing) use when evaluating players' careers. Although, I guess that's not the necessarily a bad compartmentalization—fans give champions way more respect for the sake of narrative, but they want more even prize distributions for the health of the scene.
I wonder where INnoVation will lie in this list. If Maru didn’t exist he would probably be uncontested #1 in a balanced game, but instead his brother Gumayusi might have an even better career in LoL
There is also Rogue / Serral questions: not much results in the most competitive era and when Zerg wasn’t as strong
Maru is also a difficult one, utterly dominant domestically, but he didn’t win an « official » world championship
Interesting :D can’t wait to see all the articles + blog posts, thanks for starting this
On January 12 2024 07:30 FunkyGeezer wrote: This is quality content from TL here! Hope Liquid HerO made the list. He is certainly one of the greatest players of all time on my list! <3
Lol. I hate to squash your hopes and dreams but Liquid HerO did not make the list. Really liked HerO tho. <3
On January 12 2024 07:30 FunkyGeezer wrote: This is quality content from TL here! Hope Liquid HerO made the list. He is certainly one of the greatest players of all time on my list! <3
Lol. I hate to squash your hopes and dreams but Liquid HerO did not make the list. Really liked HerO tho. <3
With the criteria being what they are, I doubt even Taeja made the list! Unfortunate as I think with different criteria he might make the cut into top 10.
I'll speculate what I suspect:
1. Maru 2. MVP 3.Life (with a heavy disclaimer, similar to that article way back in the day about that BW Zerg, I forget who. I wanna say SavioR maybe?) 4. Rogue 5. Serral 6. SoO 7. Zest 8. MKP 9. Trap 10. MC
So far, I'm 0/1 Let's see if I can get on the board!
On January 12 2024 08:19 RogerChillingworth wrote:
On January 12 2024 07:30 FunkyGeezer wrote: This is quality content from TL here! Hope Liquid HerO made the list. He is certainly one of the greatest players of all time on my list! <3
Lol. I hate to squash your hopes and dreams but Liquid HerO did not make the list. Really liked HerO tho. <3
With the criteria being what they are, I doubt even Taeja made the list! Unfortunate as I think with different criteria he might make the cut into top 10.
I'll speculate what I suspect:
1. Maru 2. MVP 3.Life (with a heavy disclaimer, similar to that article way back in the day about that BW Zerg, I forget who. I wanna say SavioR maybe?) 4. Rogue 5. Serral 6. SoO 7. Zest 8. MKP 9. Trap 10. MC
So far, I'm 0/1 Let's see if I can get on the board!
I partially agree but Dark is definitley missing. Reynor?
On January 12 2024 08:19 RogerChillingworth wrote:
On January 12 2024 07:30 FunkyGeezer wrote: This is quality content from TL here! Hope Liquid HerO made the list. He is certainly one of the greatest players of all time on my list! <3
Lol. I hate to squash your hopes and dreams but Liquid HerO did not make the list. Really liked HerO tho. <3
With the criteria being what they are, I doubt even Taeja made the list! Unfortunate as I think with different criteria he might make the cut into top 10.
I'll speculate what I suspect:
1. Maru 2. MVP 3.Life (with a heavy disclaimer, similar to that article way back in the day about that BW Zerg, I forget who. I wanna say SavioR maybe?) 4. Rogue 5. Serral 6. SoO 7. Zest 8. MKP 9. Trap 10. MC
So far, I'm 0/1 Let's see if I can get on the board!
I partially agree but Dark is definitley missing. Reynor?
The List has to focus on the the golden age, when competition was open and Koreans werent drivin out just to push the foreigner
On January 12 2024 08:19 RogerChillingworth wrote:
On January 12 2024 07:30 FunkyGeezer wrote: This is quality content from TL here! Hope Liquid HerO made the list. He is certainly one of the greatest players of all time on my list! <3
Lol. I hate to squash your hopes and dreams but Liquid HerO did not make the list. Really liked HerO tho. <3
With the criteria being what they are, I doubt even Taeja made the list! Unfortunate as I think with different criteria he might make the cut into top 10.
I'll speculate what I suspect:
1. Maru 2. MVP 3.Life (with a heavy disclaimer, similar to that article way back in the day about that BW Zerg, I forget who. I wanna say SavioR maybe?) 4. Rogue 5. Serral 6. SoO 7. Zest 8. MKP 9. Trap 10. MC
So far, I'm 0/1 Let's see if I can get on the board!
I am one of the original MKP fans, but he is nowhere near top 20 in GOAT contention nowadays, let alone top 10
I still believe it’s possible he actually didn’t match fix vs ByuL, despite what most people thought back then: your performance can become pretty abysmal in sc2 depending on your mental health / stress / lack of sleep ; so it’s probably what happened. But even before these times, he was not very convincing during the kespa era
The players I wonder the most about: 1) is mvp even in the list anymore? 2) how far from top 1 will be Rogue? 3) could Serral even be in the list given the criteria
Really like having a methodology and explaining it! Makes for a justified list and worth discussing.
I agree with the weighting of a lot of things. Like GSL Super 2011 being about the same as a GSL, some World Championships being a little more than a Korean individual league, and others a bit less, etc. I like the idea of 1st place making a little less than 2x prize money that of 2nd place, but for a GOAT list I think I would weigh 2 GSL golds similar to 4 GSL 2nd places. It's 2x as hard to win 1st place than 2nd place. I wouldn't say that 3 2nd places is the same as 2 1st places, at least a little less.
And i generally like that overall career and non-1st places will be weighted a little more than gold medals and peaks than most other people.
I wonder with the increase in players, if a Top 15 list coulda been a better cutoff, but Top 10 will still be fun. Perhaps before the #1 reveal, there can be a few HMs for #11-15 or something.
In the end, I think what makes a "GOAT" is that their career was the hardest to replicate or match. So for me my list would be like this:
On January 12 2024 21:48 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Really like having a methodology and explaining it! Makes for a justified list and worth discussing.
I agree with the weighting of a lot of things. Like GSL Super 2011 being about the same as a GSL, some World Championships being a little more than a Korean individual league, and others a bit less, etc. I like the idea of 1st place making a little less than 2x prize money that of 2nd place, but for a GOAT list I think I would weigh 2 GSL golds similar to 4 GSL 2nd places. It's 2x as hard to win 1st place than 2nd place. I wouldn't say that 3 2nd places is the same as 2 1st places, at least a little less.
And i generally like that overall career and non-1st places will be weighted a little more than gold medals and peaks than most other people.
I wonder with the increase in players, if a Top 15 list coulda been a better cutoff, but Top 10 will still be fun. Perhaps before the #1 reveal, there can be a few HMs for #11-15 or something.
In the end, I think what makes a "GOAT" is that their career was the hardest to replicate or match. So for me my list would be like this:
1) Serral 2) Maru 3) Rogue
4) Innovation 5) Life
6/7) Dark/MVP 8/9) Stats/Zest
10) sOs 11) Taeja
Very based list. Aside from the exact placement of 4 to 10, this is very much what I'd say. And while it's not a complete measure, `hardness to replicate' the career is a nice phrasing of at least a big part of what I'd consider important for GOAT-ness.
As much as people like to hype Maru GSL’s. Let’s be honest, he didn’t win until the post Kespa and waited for his Korean competition to get older and not in their prime anymore. Outside of Korea, his accomplishment are pretty unimpressive compare to his peers
People may argue saying Rogue won his GSL the same way Maru did, however, rogue won multiple world championships. Probably the most feared BO7 opponent in the history of sc2
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think GSL as "gold standard" tournament is and always has been overrated. Yes,the Korean scene has always been the most competetive, yes, GSL has always had enormous prestige and rightfully so, but in terms of measuring greatness and / or consistency, I have always felt the system a GSL plays out, especially the group phases, had too much of a luck component involved, mostly due to the BO3 format, since, honestly, every player at the top 20 can beat any other player in a BO3 in my opinion. Yes, preparation for weeks in advance as well as hand picking groups can kind of balance that out, but we have still seen - time and time again - that GSL winners of last season dropped out in their first group round in the next one. Some say that's just proof of "how cutthroat" a challenge GSL is, thus deserving of its gold standard status for competitiveness - I personally think it adds an odd randomness to the tournament, making me rate weekenders with mostly BO5s and BO7s in a double KO format a lot higher, when it comes down to actually see who is the better player.
On January 13 2024 01:11 TossHeroes wrote: As much as people like to hype Maru GSL’s. Let’s be honest, he didn’t win until the post Kespa and waited for his Korean competition to get older and not in their prime anymore. Outside of Korea, his accomplishment are pretty unimpressive compare to his peers
Maru won OSL (2013) and SSL (2015) - which were GSLs in all but name. Same list of players, same prize money and prestige, just different monikers. And he was a beast in the Proleague. Also he didn't get his "the last terran standing" nickname for nothing.
During these years competition was at its fiercest in SC2.
On January 13 2024 01:50 JudeauTV wrote: I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I think GSL as "gold standard" tournament is and always has been overrated. Yes,the Korean scene has always been the most competetive, yes, GSL has always had enormous prestige and rightfully so, but in terms of measuring greatness and / or consistency, I have always felt the system a GSL plays out, especially the group phases, had too much of a luck component involved, mostly due to the BO3 format, since, honestly, every player at the top 20 can beat any other player in a BO3 in my opinion. Yes, preparation for weeks in advance as well as hand picking groups can kind of balance that out, but we have still seen - time and time again - that GSL winners of last season dropped out in their first group round in the next one. Some say that's just proof of "how cutthroat" a challenge GSL is, thus deserving of its gold standard status for competitiveness - I personally think it adds an odd randomness to the tournament, making me rate weekenders with mostly BO5s and BO7s in a double KO format a lot higher, when it comes down to actually see who is the better player.
One question: where do you think Taeja should rank?
On January 13 2024 01:50 JudeauTV wrote: I personally think it adds an odd randomness to the tournament, making me rate weekenders with mostly BO5s and BO7s in a double KO format a lot higher, when it comes down to actually see who is the better player.
For long time weekenders with double KO also shown which race is more reliant on - tricky builds (P) - being at peak concentration and mechanical ability (T) - stable reactionary play and "if you can't kill/criple me in the next 5 minutes you're royally screwed" (Z)
Top protoss would run out of builds, top terrans would get tired, top zerg would win championships one after another. It has somewhat changed in the last 1-1.5 years with both T and P finally being able to play late-game vs Z.
First of all, this is a ton of work, so thank you! I'm wondering if/how you thought about a few considerations. I don't know that I have strong feelings that these considerations should matter significantly, but I'm just curious how you think about them and whether they factor into your analysis:
-How a player performed relative to their overall race's performance. A case for why this should matter is that potentially in some eras or patches a particular race may be statistically over- or under-powered in a significant enough way that made it very hard for a race to make deep tournament runs or a bit easier. I know the way I'm framing this is in itself controversial, so if you consider this at all, I think you'd only want to consider stretches where it's widely acknowledged that a race had some advantage or disadvantage.
-Comparing across different eras. I know you discussed this but not sure I understood what you meant. I can see differential weighting of eras/expansions cutting both ways. A traditional analysis might suggest that as the game has stabilized and there are fewer unexplored builds and more players with vast accumulated experience and game knowledge, it's harder to sustain a period of dominance. That's a fancy way of saying there's a reason we consider the earliest SCII pro matches "bad", and for that same reason dominance in the more modern eras should be weighted higher. On the other hand, as a fan I do want to attribute greatness to SOS-style high-IQ, strategic playstyles that achieved results via creative builds and smarter adaptation to the volatile and frequent meta shifts of earlier eras.
-Tournament format, variance, and bracket "luck". One of the reasons that Magnus Carlsen--arguably the chess GOAT--abdicated the throne is that he felt the FIDE world championship tournament format was not great at deciding who was the best player and that you needed more games at shorter time controls to essentially smooth out variance and ensure a better test of skill. I know you attempt to weight tournaments, but I also feel that there's something to be said for thinking about tournament strength not just in terms of overall format and player and prize pools, but also the specific strength of the players that the GOAT candidate had to face to earn their championships and top placements. It's probably too time-consuming to do such an analysis for each tournament, and I'm not sure if there's a stable enough ELO system to even do it properly, but it's also true that not all tournament runs are created equal. Bracket "luck" is a significant factor in determining your odds of making a deep run for sure. For good reason, SCII has not historically used swiss or round robin formats other than in qualifiers or group stages, but those formats are much better at smoothing out variance. And because bracket matches are often Bo3 or Bo5, the variance jumps dramatically based on bracket luck in any specific tournament. Again, I don't know if or how to factor this in, but it feels significant.
-How to weight tournaments. As you note, it's always going to be subjective and controversial. And because you're already being accused of Korean elitism, I'm sure this is a no-go But I basically think the premier Korean individual leagues should be given more weight than the world championship-tier events through maybe 2020 (perhaps even later), when Clem began dominating, and several global champion-tier Korean players began going into military service or retiring (Soo, Innovation, TY, Zest, Classic, Rogue, Stats, Hero, SOS, PartinG, Byun, etc.). While it's true that by 2019, GSL did not include Reynor and Serral, the world championships often included players like Special, Elazer, Scarlett, Showtime, Heromarine, Nerchio, Kelazhur, etc. and excluded many of the above-named Korean champion-tier players. Remember that Rogue barely qualified for the 2017 global finals to win his first global championship, but he and many of the Korean players that didn't even qualify were clearly championship-tier players literally and figuratively in a different league than almost every foreign player. Special made top 4 at global finals that year...not sure how many GSL top 4s Special has in all his tries, but I'd be surprised if it's more than zero (not knocking Special, the point is that GSL is TOUGH).
-Peak versus Career, but what about Peak Longevity? I get where you are coming from on peak dominance, but I think there should be some special consideration given to players who have demonstrated dominance or peak performance over multiple eras that included a variety of expansions, metas, patches, and GOAT contenders. Even Flash had some slumps, but for him to be a legitimate championship contender--and actually win championships--for over a decade is a rare achievement that I think places him among the greatest players in the history of 1v1 competition. This is not just because it is incredibly hard to maintain your skill level and motivation for so long, but also because the game and its players specifically evolve in ways that are designed to exploit your weaknesses and challenge your dominance. There are also just conditions and variables that exist during certain periods that are hard to put your finger and seem to trip up even the best players seeking to maintain their dominance. This is in my view one reason why it's very hard to definitively call guys like Serral and Mvp the GOAT in the way that compares to a guy like Flash. Maybe they would have dominated in eras, leagues, and tournaments before or after their time, but truly we don't know.
The way I view it, it comes down to which player had the highest skill-who would straight up win in a 1v1. Given that how much SC2's skill level has been increasing continuously, The goat IMO is Serral. There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. Especially the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: The way I view it, it comes down to which player had the highest skill-who would straight up win in a 1v1. Given that how much SC2's skill level has been increasing continuously, The goat IMO is Serral. There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. Especially the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
Is a player who has a winning record against Flash more of a GOAT than Flash?
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way.
1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today.
There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better.
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: The way I view it, it comes down to which player had the highest skill-who would straight up win in a 1v1. Given that how much SC2's skill level has been increasing continuously, The goat IMO is Serral. There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. Especially the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
If I were to send a player in his prime, in an hypothetic figured out and perfectly balanced sc2 version, to defend humanity versus sc2 alien gods, I would send Maru without question
If I had to send a Protoss I would send Zest For a Zerg I would send offline finals Rogue, or a coin toss between Serral and Dark (Life would be paid by the aliens probably )
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way.
1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today.
There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better.
I think the best way to judge progression of skill is by looking at interactions that haven't changed much over time, with the best candidate being widow mine vs ling bane micro. Compared to HOTS, ling bane vs widow mine micro is MUCH better, and has been for a while. Considering that people have had longer to practice with these units this isn't surprising, and doesn't invalidate past achievements.
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him.
You probably meant something else, as Serral - just like any other player - was beaten countless times.
I definitely should word it better. Correct me if I'm mistaken-but I don't think the players that beat serral in his prime were able to sustain being #1. I think neeb and gumiho took games off him, but they clearly are not contestants for number one. I feel like this games skill level has really peaked over the last 4-5 years.
If there has indeed been someone that's beaten prime serral, somewhat consistently, BUT also also otherwise cemented themselves as a potential #1-then maybe my argument is wrong! Maybe Maru? I don't know enough about him. But from what I see at the moment, there isn't a player that could beat prime serral while also being good enough to beat others and maintain a GOAT position.
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way.
1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today.
There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better.
To start off....Scarlett is an active player and is 6.5k+ mmr, she literally beat maru last year. Your opening argument does not hold any water.
1. You cannot say this definitevly, and even if it is the case, APM is a rather arbitrary mechanic. There are people in plat league that play with more APM than clem.
2.
people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta.
Straight up no...a ridiculous assertion.
jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that.
And reynor and serral do 5000 other things better than jaedong ever could, and I guarantee you if Jaedong played any current 6k+ player he'd be missing more injects in the first five minutes than reynor/serral would in their ever career.
3
most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then.
Yes, because they were nowhere near their prime skill level. And we're talking about players in their prime...
This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable.
I think that the notion that if you took MVP in his prime and let him play now, and that he'd be a top contender, is laughable. But I guess we can agree to disagree. I cannot agree with anything you have written, at all. But I respect your arguments and respect you as a person. I appreciate your perspectives.
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way.
1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today.
There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better.
I think the best way to judge progression of skill is by looking at interactions that haven't changed much over time, with the best candidate being widow mine vs ling bane micro. Compared to HOTS, ling bane vs widow mine micro is MUCH better, and has been for a while. Considering that people have had longer to practice with these units this isn't surprising, and doesn't invalidate past achievements.
This is a very good point. The famed streamer and caster, Rotterdam, recently said something along the lines of (I'm paraphrasing) "Back in the WoL days, if somebody split their units against widow mines people were absolutely wowed an amazed. Nowadays it's expected by any random GM or even masters player. Goes to show how much skill level has increased since the early days".
I cannot for the life of me find this clip-maybe it was just on live stream and it never got clipped, maybe it was during HSC. Regardless, dysenterymd, this strengthens your argument, which I think is a great one. Pros over the last ~6 years do insane things that fly under the radar all the time that older pros were not able to do.
Well, if you think greatest of all time = best/most skilled all-time, and don't mind that it will often mean that current players are the greatest, then I guess that's certainly an opinion you could have.
But you should prolly have a bit more recognition that this is generally not how fans tend to treat 'greatness' in various other sports, and generally speaking past accomplishments are well-respected and contextualized in their own time. Then again, maybe you think other sports are also stupid, so whatever
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way.
1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today.
There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better.
I mean the idea that most current pro were getting ''trashed'' is objectively wrong. Let's just take the winner/finalist of the last year. Clem (didn't play), Dark (an SSL and a GSL-SSL cross-final), Serral (didn't play - he was 15 years, come on now), Maru (an OSL and a GSL), Solar (3x dreamhack, 1 MSI, 1 SSL), Gumiho (decent player in WOL-HOTS, surprise finalist in 2023), Cure (2 GSL semi + 1 RBBG, first rotation on JinAir in proleague), Reynor (didn't play), MaxPax (didn't play), Oliveira (didn't play- was 13-14). Ain't nobody in 2023 getting owned by Paralize and Departure.
Reynor made 350 k$ in the last two years, you better believe if it was so easy for Rain or Jaedong to jump back in and beat his ass they would do it.
"Something wasn't mechanically possible back then and now it is, so players do it because clearly they can't keep up" has to be one of the weirdest takes anyone has ever done on this... I also think Rapid fire was around in 2014. Probably just something some pros weren't used to
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way.
1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today.
There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better.
I mean the idea that most current pro were getting ''trashed'' is objectively wrong. Let's just take the winner/finalist of the last year. Clem (didn't play), Dark (an SSL and a GSL-SSL cross-final), Serral (didn't play - he was 15 years, come on now), Maru (an OSL and a GSL), Solar (3x dreamhack, 1 MSI, 1 SSL), Gumiho (decent player in WOL-HOTS, surprise finalist in 2023), Cure (2 GSL semi + 1 RBBG, first rotation on JinAir in proleague), Reynor (didn't play), MaxPax (didn't play), Oliveira (didn't play- was 13-14). Ain't nobody in 2023 getting owned by Paralize and Departure.
Reynor made 350 k$ in the last two years, you better believe if it was so easy for Rain or Jaedong to jump back in and beat his ass they would do it.
If the income numbers I've seen for BW streaming are even slightly accurate then it would never be worth it to to switch from BW to SC2 unless you can guarantee a world championship plus 3-4 other wins pear year which is a ridiculous expectation even if you think you'd be the best SC2 player. So basically no, any top BW player would never switch back to SC2 for money regardless of how they feel about their skill level vs current SC2 pros.
Players today vs players of the past is a tough thing to call. Logically you would think people get better over time but aging can decrease reaction speed and the speed to make certain decisions. Additionally I think players played way more during Kespa era and skill at something often corresponds more with how much you are currently doing it rather than your total lifetime hours. Personally if we're talking top 5-10 vs top 5-10 I'd probably bet on the current players. But if you increase that even to top 20-30 I think it's very debatable. Top 50 vs Top 50 and Kespa era stomps no question in my mind. Random GMs aren't as good as Kespa pros regardless of how many extra years they have.
1 Rogue 2 Serral 3 Maru 4 INnoVation 5 Dark 6 Zest 7 Stats 8 soO 9 TY 10 sOs
My top 10 is biased towards World Championships (BlizzCon, IEM World Championship, WESG, Gamers8) being worth more than Korean Individual leagues. It is also biased towards a heavy emphasis on top 1/2 results, as it is where most of the prize money is, and I think finalists of premier tournaments are what is most memorable in our collective mind. In my heart, Serral's the GOAT and he's got the highest peak level of skills of anyone, but Rogue's got the more impressive resume; nobody can touch his 3 World Championships, 4 Code S and 2 Super Tournament wins. Now if Serral wins/top 2 finishes at 2 more Katowice/Gamers8 events like I know he's capable of, he has the case for number 1.
Well, if you think greatest of all time = best/most skilled all-time, and don't mind that it will often mean that current players are the greatest, then I guess that's certainly an opinion you could have.
But you should prolly have a bit more recognition that this is generally not how fans tend to treat 'greatness' in various other sports, and generally speaking past accomplishments are well-respected and contextualized in their own time. Then again, maybe you think other sports are also stupid, so whatever
I think you are confused or maybe there is something going on with the way you worded your post. Perhaps I'm having a difficult time understanding you because english is not your first langauge. Regardless, I'm very familiar with the "GOAT" terminology, and no, I don't think "other sports are stupid".
On January 13 2024 10:08 Balnazza wrote: "Something wasn't mechanically possible back then and now it is, so players do it because clearly they can't keep up" has to be one of the weirdest takes anyone has ever done on this... I also think Rapid fire was around in 2014. Probably just something some pros weren't used to
People are not talking about rapid fire, they are talking about things like splitting (hence splitting line bane vs widow mines) which were possible from day one.
the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
This is the most common trope I hear from everyone, most recently Harstem ("I wish I could go back with today's knowledge and skill and win all the tournaments back then") and then proceed to get stomped 1-6 in a "WoL/HoTs patch" Bo7 vs Scarlett link, who hasnt played these patches in ten years. Here are some measurable metrics, all of which don't suggest today's pros are better in any way.
1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that. 3. most top pros today played back in the pre-LOTV eras and they got trashed by the pros back then. Serral got curbstomped by b-tier koreans in dreamhack group stages if you go back enough (sure he was a student, but Life was winning GSLs at 14....). This notion that if you took MVP at his prime and let him play the meta today he wouldnt be a top contender is laughable. And the way you know is because the KesPA pros who didnt retire are still at the top of the scene today. If you couldnt beat Maru or Rain back then, you sure as hell won't beat them today.
There's no data I can see that would suggest players today are better.
I mean the idea that most current pro were getting ''trashed'' is objectively wrong. Let's just take the winner/finalist of the last year. Clem (didn't play), Dark (an SSL and a GSL-SSL cross-final), Serral (didn't play - he was 15 years, come on now), Maru (an OSL and a GSL), Solar (3x dreamhack, 1 MSI, 1 SSL), Gumiho (decent player in WOL-HOTS, surprise finalist in 2023), Cure (2 GSL semi + 1 RBBG, first rotation on JinAir in proleague), Reynor (didn't play), MaxPax (didn't play), Oliveira (didn't play- was 13-14). Ain't nobody in 2023 getting owned by Paralize and Departure.
Reynor made 350 k$ in the last two years, you better believe if it was so easy for Rain or Jaedong to jump back in and beat his ass they would do it.
If the income numbers I've seen for BW streaming are even slightly accurate then it would never be worth it to to switch from BW to SC2 unless you can guarantee a world championship plus 3-4 other wins pear year which is a ridiculous expectation even if you think you'd be the best SC2 player. So basically no, any top BW player would never switch back to SC2 for money regardless of how they feel about their skill level vs current SC2 pros.
Players today vs players of the past is a tough thing to call. Logically you would think people get better over time but aging can decrease reaction speed and the speed to make certain decisions. Additionally I think players played way more during Kespa era and skill at something often corresponds more with how much you are currently doing it rather than your total lifetime hours. Personally if we're talking top 5-10 vs top 5-10 I'd probably bet on the current players. But if you increase that even to top 20-30 I think it's very debatable. Top 50 vs Top 50 and Kespa era stomps no question in my mind. Random GMs aren't as good as Kespa pros regardless of how many extra years they have.
It's a bit of side-conversation, but I've seen those numbers too and let's just say I have doubts. To me those are like 2011 MLG telling us 5 million people tuned into their tournament. I have trouble accepting that the 10 biggest BW streamers are collectively making like 6-7 million USD a year while at the same time, Affreeca cannot fill a 200-place studio for an ASL final. Very possible I'm just super out of touch with what's going on in the streaming world in Korea and it's all clean numbers, but it seems sketchy as hell to me.
But the point is, we can take players who didn't go back to BW like TaeJa or idk Roro. I may agree between top 50 vs top 50, the gap between a top 50 and a top 10 players is way bigger now than it was back in the day.
On January 13 2024 10:08 Balnazza wrote: "Something wasn't mechanically possible back then and now it is, so players do it because clearly they can't keep up" has to be one of the weirdest takes anyone has ever done on this... I also think Rapid fire was around in 2014. Probably just something some pros weren't used to
People are not talking about rapid fire, they are talking about things like splitting (hence splitting line bane vs widow mines) which were possible from day one.
I was referencing this:
On January 13 2024 04:51 luxon wrote: 1. inflation adjusted, players are not faster than those back then. apm is inflated due to rapidfire and other hardware mechanics that didnt exist back then (you can watch players like Rain and HerO manually click to warp in units). 2. meta and skill - the game was less stable but people played just about as optimally as they could have given the meta. no builds today would work back then, and even macro today is super inefficient (terrans float a bunch of gas in the midgame, zergs triple inject hatches now because they cant keep up, which wasnt allowed back then). jaedong (for his lackluster sc2 results) used to hit every inject MANUALLY and spread creep at the furthest hex allowed - neither Reynor nor Serral do that.
I can agree that for many GOAT and "the most skilled ever" are different things. As the latter is almost always someone now - because this is how sports are.
A modern female tennis player with just 1 Grand Slam is probably objective stronger than Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova were at their peaks, with their 18+ GS tourneys. Still those two are in top-5 or at least 100% in top-10 greatest players lists, and this modern player will be mostly forgotten after a few years and probably won't make even top-50 - if they won't win more, of course.
People still call Pele or Maradona GOATs even though modern players are much faster, stronger, better tactically, etc. Take peak Pele and he would not make into tier-1 team probably today, let alone Brazil national team. Football was a very, very different game back then.
With one difference though - footlball and tennis "scenes" didn't decline like video games scenes do. So their top-50 or top-100 get stronger every decade.
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: The way I view it, it comes down to which player had the highest skill-who would straight up win in a 1v1. Given that how much SC2's skill level has been increasing continuously, The goat IMO is Serral. There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. Especially the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
If I were to send a player in his prime, in an hypothetic figured out and perfectly balanced sc2 version, to defend humanity versus sc2 alien gods, I would send Maru without question
If I had to send a Protoss I would send Zest For a Zerg I would send offline finals Rogue, or a coin toss between Serral and Dark (Life would be paid by the aliens probably )
I would send Mvp. I don't think any player has ever been more clutch than him. Nobody else could have pulled off that Game 7 comeback vs Squirtle, or the famous comeback vs INnoVation.
Measuring goat by tournament wins (awarding super subjective points for each tournament) when one player has literally dominated the scene for 5 years in an unrivaled way is silly.
On January 13 2024 22:28 LostUsername100 wrote: Measuring goat by tournament wins (awarding super subjective points for each tournament) when one player has literally dominated the scene for 5 years in an unrivaled way is silly.
interesting, what metric are you using to measure this unnamed player's dominance ?
On January 12 2024 11:41 JJH777 wrote: Tajea has some of the most overrated results besides pre-2022 Serral.
He exists in a space where people only seem capable to either over or underrate him, probably more than any other SC2 player.
I’d say he was one of the most naturally talented players we’ve seen, won plenty of titles with elite fields, but maybe had flaws to his approach which saw him come unstuck in Starleagues. Clem reminds me a little of him, he’ll play a straight up macro game most times and just try to outplay you, but if he’s a little off against an equivalent opponent, or someone plans something bespoke he could come a bit unstuck.
Peak Inno or Maru just had that extra level mechanically, although they too IMO have a similar weakness, and between his peak and his wrist-induced issues Mvp was both the mechanical god of his time and subsequently the consummate match planner.
I can’t really think of anyone else with Taeja’s level of achievement to bump him out of at least a Terran top 4 all-time. Unsure just pondering where I’d put him considering the other two races though.
His general performance that weekend and actually coming close to double all-killing IM has to be up there as one of the all-time feats in the game, and certainly some of the most hype and exciting
I don't get why people subtract so many points from Taeja just cus he doesn't do well in korean leagues like GSL. There are players who are very strong at Korean tournies like GSL but then don't do as well outside of that, and there are players who are the opposite like Taeja. Like, it has to be looked at in a balanced way and not one extreme or the other; it's not easy to win 2-3 GSL but it's also not easy winning 10 foreign majors/premieres.
Looking at his tournament record, there was like 2 years where he won like 5-6 tournaments EACH YEAR. Imagine playing vs all these other top players and just winning each. and. every. tournament. Could Maru or Rogue achieve that? I'm really not sure, and I'd say no because the only other player who has shown such a similar feat in winning almost every tournament they enter, actually entering lots of tournaments so that you give others plenty of chances to beat you and sour your record, AND actually still racking up several wins each year despite that is Serral and to a lesser extent Life.
Serral is #1 though because his career is filled out in a way Taeja's is lacking a lot, Serral doesn't have wins at individual Korean leagues either, but he at least has a couple GSL vs the world wins, and a World Championship. (And he's been dominating for 4 years compared to Taeja's 2).
And Life is somewhere between Serral and Taeja cus while his achievements is similar to Taeja (entering lots of foreign tournies and winning a few each year), he also has 2 GSL wins and a 2nd place at a world championship.
On January 14 2024 04:52 kaby wrote: Alright, alright, give us your GOAT list with Taeja, Jaedong and Polt in the top-3
Jaedong is crazily underrated just because he wasn’t BW Jaedong, same with Flash. Their actual results were pretty damn good.
Polt was always a fascinating outlier in a game mostly dominated by mechanical monsters by consistently putting down results despite lacking a bit there. Even more impressive when he was doing it as effectively a part timer.
I wouldn’t stick any of them in the top 10 by any means but they were all excellent players and added a lot to the general fabric of the game.
On January 14 2024 05:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I don't get why people subtract so many points from Taeja just cus he doesn't do well in korean leagues like GSL.
Look at his tournament record, there was like 2 years where he won like 5-6 tournaments EACH YEAR. Imagine playing vs all these other top players and just winning each. and. every. tournament. Could Maru or Rogue achieve that? I'm really not sure, and I'd say no because the only other player who has shown such a similar feat in winning almost every tournament they enter, actually entering lots of tournaments so that you give others plenty of chances to beat you and sour your record, AND actually still racking up several wins each year despite that is Serral.
Taeja was also winning these tournaments against stacked fields featuring the very same players people will put above him in these kind of ranks, and often for decent money. So the argument that folks somehow weren’t really bothered doesn’t really track.
His inability to win a prep tournament does count against him when we’re talking absolute GOAT lists IMO, but prior to Serral going super Saiyan Taeja was probably the best show up at a weekender and consistently stomp all comers that we’d seen.
People who buff up the 2013-2015 era to downgrade Serral's performance use ilogical reasoning.
Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
Also, only now we have our Ronaldinhos, Federers, Messi's and Venus... the ones who grew up playing the same game they play professionally today. Now they have their 10+ years of practice.
That wasnt true in 2013-2015, where the peak performers used their BW experience to edge out.
The Clem/Reynor/Maru/Serral godlike high level play they pull today didnt exist at the time...
On January 14 2024 05:56 Locutus_ wrote: People who buff up the 2013-2015 era to downgrade Serral's performance use ilogical reasoning.
Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
Also, only now we have our Ronaldinhos, Federers, Messi's and Venus... the ones who grew up playing the same game they play professionally today. Now they have their 10+ years of practice.
That wasnt true in 2013-2015, where the peak performers used their BW experience to edge out.
The Clem/Reynor/Maru/Serral godlike high level play they pull today didnt exist at the time...
Now it does.
Even if players are better now, which for the very top I'd agree, it's harder to win tournaments when there are 200+ other fulltime competitors instead of 30.
On January 14 2024 05:56 Locutus_ wrote: People who buff up the 2013-2015 era to downgrade Serral's performance use ilogical reasoning.
Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
Also, only now we have our Ronaldinhos, Federers, Messi's and Venus... the ones who grew up playing the same game they play professionally today. Now they have their 10+ years of practice.
That wasnt true in 2013-2015, where the peak performers used their BW experience to edge out.
The Clem/Reynor/Maru/Serral godlike high level play they pull today didnt exist at the time...
Now it does.
Even if players are better now, which for the very top I'd agree, it's harder to win tournaments when there are 200+ other fulltime competitors instead of 30.
You actually have a point. Even if the level of today is higher, overall competitivity of the game has its importance, like winning a gsl today is way easier than in 2013-5 when even big players dropped before the ro32.
That said the only dude who remained competitive during all these years is Maru and even if I find terran fans annoying he has everything for him, won his first tourney in 2013, longevity, change of playstyle, meta defining player, good even when T was shit and one of the hightest peak in the game in 2018. My problem with Maru is its lack of wc and its failure against an easy opponent in the 2023 finals.
In opposition Dark or solar who are the today's earliest bloomer with premier tourney wins won in 2016, rogue in 2017, around 9 months before serral's win so I am always surprised to see Rogue's longevity argument used against serral. That said, he is for me a bit overrated alongside sOs, I always thought Dark was all around the better korean zerg.
On January 14 2024 05:56 Locutus_ wrote: People who buff up the 2013-2015 era to downgrade Serral's performance use ilogical reasoning.
Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
Also, only now we have our Ronaldinhos, Federers, Messi's and Venus... the ones who grew up playing the same game they play professionally today. Now they have their 10+ years of practice.
That wasnt true in 2013-2015, where the peak performers used their BW experience to edge out.
The Clem/Reynor/Maru/Serral godlike high level play they pull today didnt exist at the time...
Now it does.
Even if players are better now, which for the very top I'd agree, it's harder to win tournaments when there are 200+ other fulltime competitors instead of 30.
If those 200 had been playing for a decade. I would put a big weight on this premise.
I dont have the numbers...
But i guess if one would crunch the rate that a given top 16 player in one tournament, back at that time, of placing top 16 again in the subsequent tournament would be lower than today's - which reflects the more competitive professional pool at that time...
Buuut, and again im just speculating, i think that if you calculated the average rate that a top 5 - top 16 placer back then, was champion in the subsequent tournament, i dont think it would be lower than today's. Cus of the absurd skill level that the top 4 in the world got today (Serral, Clem, Maru, Reynor - the latter 2 could be replaced now and again by Solar or Dark).
This thinking is to show why i dont think that the 2013-2015 pool would matter like many people think it does... Cus of the skill gap
On January 13 2024 07:17 dysenterymd wrote: I think the best way to judge progression of skill is by looking at interactions that haven't changed much over time,
Sure let's take the most classic interaction across all 3 expansions - marine splitting v banes. if you look at clem/maru split marines it is literally the same as marineking/maru/innovation. anyone who says they can pass a blind test of identifying them is lying.
On January 13 2024 09:50 Nakajin wrote: Let's just take the winner/finalist of the last year...
You're supporting my argument... my whole point is 'players today are not better than past players' and you cite data that shows.... literally the dominant players of the previous eras are still dominant today. This is not so the other way around. By your stats, half of the dominant players today are only dominant today. Also once again, excusing Serral for being terrible at 15 while Life won GSLs at 14 (which at the time was world championship caliber or bigger) shows you how big the distinction is.
Reynor made 350 k$ in the last two years, you better believe if it was so easy for Rain or Jaedong to jump back in and beat his ass they would do it.
No, and I'm sure even you know this is kind of a disingenuous argument. Taking your numbers as true, Reynor made an avg annual of $175k. If you can guarantee yourself being a top 10 player in the world, even ignoring region lock and local competitions, your annual expected salary is $17.5k, half the minimum wage in CA. Also if the Saudi's didnt try to save sc2 with the largest (one time?) cash injection in history, Reynor wouldve made 100k/yr, which makes your expected salary <=10k. And that is ignoring perceived balance issues, the meta, regional competition, luck, etc etc so your true EV is much lower. No one would ever take that deal.
On January 13 2024 07:17 dysenterymd wrote: I think the best way to judge progression of skill is by looking at interactions that haven't changed much over time,
Sure let's take the most classic interaction across all 3 expansions - marine splitting v banes. if you look at clem/maru split marines it is literally the same as marineking/maru/innovation. anyone who says they can pass a blind test of identifying them is lying.
On January 13 2024 09:50 Nakajin wrote: Let's just take the winner/finalist of the last year...
You're supporting my argument... my whole point is 'players today are not better than past players' and you cite data that shows.... literally the dominant players of the previous eras are still dominant today. This is not so the other way around. By your stats, half of the dominant players today are only dominant today. Also once again, excusing Serral for being terrible at 15 while Life won GSLs at 14 (which at the time was world championship caliber or bigger) shows you how big the distinction is.
Reynor made 350 k$ in the last two years, you better believe if it was so easy for Rain or Jaedong to jump back in and beat his ass they would do it.
No, and I'm sure even you know this is kind of a disingenuous argument. Taking your numbers as true, Reynor made an avg annual of $175k. If you can guarantee yourself being a top 10 player in the world, even ignoring region lock and local competitions, your annual expected salary is $17.5k, half the minimum wage in CA. Also if the Saudi's didnt try to save sc2 with the largest (one time?) cash injection in history, Reynor wouldve made 100k/yr, which makes your expected salary <=10k. And that is ignoring perceived balance issues, the meta, regional competition, luck, etc etc so your true EV is much lower. No one would ever take that deal.
How are you getting $17.5k and $10k? Are you assuming that Top 10 players make $0 and that only Top 1 makes $175k?
Also sure even if marine splitting vs banelings is similar, how does that negate that players have gotten better at splitting vs WMs?
And have we seen Protoss pros of that time control 2 separate armies (both with complex compositions, such as sentries/HTs mixed in, not just like 2 balls of stalkers) the way Reynor had against Serral on Radhuset?
Also if you want 1 data point as evidence against players getting worse over time - then how about a player like sOs who won 3 world championships back then in the most competitive period, to winning 0 GSLs / 0 World championships in LotV (2017-2022)? Not all top players are still at the top today. Just as not all top players today were top players back then.
How about another one: Innovation IS a top player from that era who continued to play, and he used to be stronger than Maru but Maru eventually surpassed him.
There is enough counter evidence that it isn't a given that the good players simply quit.
On January 13 2024 07:17 dysenterymd wrote: I think the best way to judge progression of skill is by looking at interactions that haven't changed much over time,
Sure let's take the most classic interaction across all 3 expansions - marine splitting v banes. if you look at clem/maru split marines it is literally the same as marineking/maru/innovation. anyone who says they can pass a blind test of identifying them is lying.
On January 13 2024 09:50 Nakajin wrote: Let's just take the winner/finalist of the last year...
You're supporting my argument... my whole point is 'players today are not better than past players' and you cite data that shows.... literally the dominant players of the previous eras are still dominant today. This is not so the other way around. By your stats, half of the dominant players today are only dominant today. Also once again, excusing Serral for being terrible at 15 while Life won GSLs at 14 (which at the time was world championship caliber or bigger) shows you how big the distinction is.
Reynor made 350 k$ in the last two years, you better believe if it was so easy for Rain or Jaedong to jump back in and beat his ass they would do it.
No, and I'm sure even you know this is kind of a disingenuous argument. Taking your numbers as true, Reynor made an avg annual of $175k. If you can guarantee yourself being a top 10 player in the world, even ignoring region lock and local competitions, your annual expected salary is $17.5k, half the minimum wage in CA. Also if the Saudi's didnt try to save sc2 with the largest (one time?) cash injection in history, Reynor wouldve made 100k/yr, which makes your expected salary <=10k. And that is ignoring perceived balance issues, the meta, regional competition, luck, etc etc so your true EV is much lower. No one would ever take that deal.
Kind of comparing apples to oranges here--of course Korean players hit their peak/prime earlier back then compared to western players. BW was a phenomenon in Korea and literally the reason for an established ecosystem and legacy of e-gaming success with team houses, Kespa, huge salaries/prizes, etc leading into SC2. Flash/Jaedong were rockstars. In America/Europe you had a smattering of teams and a small handful of (barely) relevant players. Gaming as a profession was barely accepted there. So that path to success was always going to look different, as culture and environment matters. Michael Jordan didn't make varsity basketball his sophomore year--still think it turned out OK for him.
On January 14 2024 09:28 luxon wrote: Also once again, excusing Serral for being terrible at 15 while Life won GSLs at 14 (which at the time was world championship caliber or bigger) shows you how big the distinction is.
Another great argument from a korean elitist, truely remarkable. Same exact situation for both of them btw, clearly...
On January 14 2024 05:56 Locutus_ wrote: Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
All the best players of that era happening to be the ones playing 10 hours a day in Korean team houses was just a coincidence, got it.
If you stuck 10 of the Top 30 players of today in a team house and they practiced and theorised against each other for 10 hours a day every single day, it would only take a matter of months before they left the other twenty in the dust.
On January 14 2024 05:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I don't get why people subtract so many points from Taeja just cus he doesn't do well in korean leagues like GSL.
Look at his tournament record, there was like 2 years where he won like 5-6 tournaments EACH YEAR. Imagine playing vs all these other top players and just winning each. and. every. tournament. Could Maru or Rogue achieve that? I'm really not sure, and I'd say no because the only other player who has shown such a similar feat in winning almost every tournament they enter, actually entering lots of tournaments so that you give others plenty of chances to beat you and sour your record, AND actually still racking up several wins each year despite that is Serral.
Taeja was also winning these tournaments against stacked fields featuring the very same players people will put above him in these kind of ranks, and often for decent money. So the argument that folks somehow weren’t really bothered doesn’t really track.
His inability to win a prep tournament does count against him when we’re talking absolute GOAT lists IMO, but prior to Serral going super Saiyan Taeja was probably the best show up at a weekender and consistently stomp all comers that we’d seen.
This kind of comment is exactly why we need these kinds of articles (even though I disagree with Mizen on a LOT of things) to make sure we have a good perspective of history. TaeJa was extremely good when going by the eye-test, but his tournament paths were VERY soft.
Listing his final opponents for his championships:
On January 14 2024 05:56 Locutus_ wrote: People who buff up the 2013-2015 era to downgrade Serral's performance use ilogical reasoning.
Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
Also, only now we have our Ronaldinhos, Federers, Messi's and Venus... the ones who grew up playing the same game they play professionally today. Now they have their 10+ years of practice.
That wasnt true in 2013-2015, where the peak performers used their BW experience to edge out.
The Clem/Reynor/Maru/Serral godlike high level play they pull today didnt exist at the time...
Now it does.
Not that I'm talking to ppl on the streets of Brazil, but I'm a bit skeptical they're saying "Ronaldinho > Pele" in terms of greatness
On January 14 2024 05:56 Locutus_ wrote: Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
All the best players of that era happening to be the ones playing 10 hours a day in Korean team houses was just a coincidence, got it.
If you stuck 10 of the Top 30 players of today in a team house and they practiced and theorised against each other for 10 hours a day every single day, it would only take a matter of months before they left the other twenty in the dust.
For most players perhaps, it’s probably the regime that on average works best, although on a human level I have certain issues with it. And on a StarCraft machine shaping level I do think you hit a level of diminishing returns too.
It’s probably a good thing overall where somebody like Serral can independently grind and do their own thing and still be one of the more dominant players we’ve seen without the barrier to being a top level pro being living in a team house and living and breathing StarCraft
On January 14 2024 05:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I don't get why people subtract so many points from Taeja just cus he doesn't do well in korean leagues like GSL.
Look at his tournament record, there was like 2 years where he won like 5-6 tournaments EACH YEAR. Imagine playing vs all these other top players and just winning each. and. every. tournament. Could Maru or Rogue achieve that? I'm really not sure, and I'd say no because the only other player who has shown such a similar feat in winning almost every tournament they enter, actually entering lots of tournaments so that you give others plenty of chances to beat you and sour your record, AND actually still racking up several wins each year despite that is Serral.
Taeja was also winning these tournaments against stacked fields featuring the very same players people will put above him in these kind of ranks, and often for decent money. So the argument that folks somehow weren’t really bothered doesn’t really track.
His inability to win a prep tournament does count against him when we’re talking absolute GOAT lists IMO, but prior to Serral going super Saiyan Taeja was probably the best show up at a weekender and consistently stomp all comers that we’d seen.
This kind of comment is exactly why we need these kinds of articles (even though I disagree with Mizen on a LOT of things) to make sure we have a good perspective of history. TaeJa was extremely good when going by the eye-test, but his tournament paths were VERY soft.
Listing his final opponents for his championships:
To a degree although I think that list suffers a bit by being a decade ago
HerO is IMO one of the more underrated players around, Jaedong was top notch in his span, MC was still somewhat the ‘Boss Toss’ and guys like Symbol and Hyun were very good players, etc
Most you probably don’t place too highly in a GOAT table retrospectively, but at the time in question and before mostly Kespa players started dominating, and those dudes stuck around, there’s still some top tier players of that era there. Plus the manner of the victories, iirc one of those was done without dropping a map.
If we looked at who Mvp toppled in his time you probably have the same effect but few would argue he’s not at least in the GOAT conversation
I don’t think it’s enough to push into the Terran top 3, or the top 10 overall but I think Taeja has a solid case to be a clear top 4 Terran and at least a top 20 overall with his record
Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficulf to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Reynor isn’t anywhere near outside of recency bias
Rogue spent years in the shadow of others, while still a top player and only really started racking up titles after the scene was less competitive, there’s no way he’s the GOAT
Maru was consistently a top player for a ridiculous span of time, I don’t really think there’s another candidate here. Although his lack of a World Champ is something
Serral is the most relentlessly consistent player out there, and the stats bear that out. He’s got the world champs and an absurd amount of other titles. The best record against Korean opposition of anyone, a winning head-to-head against almost everyone, the highest ladder MMR reached, the highest Aligulac rating
There is the angle of the level of competition maybe not quite being what it was but if Serral was doing this even a couple of years earlier there’s no even a debate on GOAT
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficulf to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Reynor isn’t anywhere near outside of recency bias
Rogue spent years in the shadow of others, while still a top player and only really started racking up titles after the scene was less competitive, there’s no way he’s the GOAT
Maru was consistently a top player for a ridiculous span of time, I don’t really think there’s another candidate here. Although his lack of a World Champ is something
Serral is the most relentlessly consistent player out there, and the stats bear that out. He’s got the world champs and an absurd amount of other titles. The best record against Korean opposition of anyone, a winning head-to-head against almost everyone, the highest ladder MMR reached, the highest Aligulac rating
There is the angle of the level of competition maybe not quite being what it was but if Serral was doing this even a couple of years earlier there’s no even a debate on GOAT
Serral also beats any player head to head (maps x maps, and series x series) from 2017 to today. That includes Maru, Rogue, Dark, Clem, Reynor, Stats, Trap, Classic, and so on. He is the only player to have that kind of statistics by his side
Someone said something about Dark and while I agree that he is in the top ten players (or better!l) of all time, there is unfortunately no argument for him to be made as the greatest of all time. It would be like naming Clem or Cure the GOAT. Some awesome recent results, but very few (comparatively) offline tournament wins and no sustained periods of complete dominance. I.e., Clem is obviously one of the best players to ever touch the game, but nobody would ever honestly put him in the running for greatest of all time.
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
I would argue that Rogue probably has the best career overall of any player, but isn't a Top 3 player ever.
He just had absolutely zero aura. There was nothing especially cool or unique about him. There was never a point where you are awed by him, where you could point to him and say "Nobody can beat that guy." All the other GOAT candidates have that aura of invincibility. Rogue to me, is kinda in the Stats category (but obviously has way better results) where he was just some guy who happened to win a lot. There wasn't much story or intrigue to his career, he was just good. The most boring possible kind of top player.
He had the Bo7 offline winstreak, but even then it felt more coincidental than anything, not him being some kind of god of planning and actually feeling undefeatable in that environment.
On January 14 2024 05:56 Locutus_ wrote: People who buff up the 2013-2015 era to downgrade Serral's performance use ilogical reasoning.
Those Kespa pros simply lost their edge with time. The inhouse training lost its use after the lan logistics died out to a globalized enviroment. The world caught up.
Also, only now we have our Ronaldinhos, Federers, Messi's and Venus... the ones who grew up playing the same game they play professionally today. Now they have their 10+ years of practice.
That wasnt true in 2013-2015, where the peak performers used their BW experience to edge out.
The Clem/Reynor/Maru/Serral godlike high level play they pull today didnt exist at the time...
Now it does.
Not that I'm talking to ppl on the streets of Brazil, but I'm a bit skeptical they're saying "Ronaldinho > Pele" in terms of greatness
I just chose Ronaldinho because there are images of him as a child playing ball, and also because his geniality has a greater chance of still being present in readers minds
But no, no one here thinks Ronaldinho was greater than Pele (maybe some nonsensical ppl)... But if you ask about the one true Ronaldo (the phenomenom) x Pele... there might be a few more in favor of the phenomenom hehehe
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficulf to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Reynor isn’t anywhere near outside of recency bias
Rogue spent years in the shadow of others, while still a top player and only really started racking up titles after the scene was less competitive, there’s no way he’s the GOAT
Maru was consistently a top player for a ridiculous span of time, I don’t really think there’s another candidate here. Although his lack of a World Champ is something
Serral is the most relentlessly consistent player out there, and the stats bear that out. He’s got the world champs and an absurd amount of other titles. The best record against Korean opposition of anyone, a winning head-to-head against almost everyone, the highest ladder MMR reached, the highest Aligulac rating
There is the angle of the level of competition maybe not quite being what it was but if Serral was doing this even a couple of years earlier there’s no even a debate on GOAT
Yeah this sums up my thoughts too. I don't think any of the 3 can be called the Goat because they all have flaws/asterisks in their resume which prevents them from being called the undisputably greatest.
To add to the Serral point he also never played in the GSL and his record in world championship events is good but not THAT great when considering his overall level of dominance and there are even 2 players with a better record in those kind of events. I think Serral won like 2 in 13 attempts which is alright but not enough to call him the Goat considering the other factors (not playing GSL, less competitive era).
On January 14 2024 19:54 Telephone wrote: Someone said something about Dark and while I agree that he is in the top ten players (or better!l) of all time, there is unfortunately no argument for him to be made as the greatest of all time. It would be like naming Clem or Cure the GOAT. Some awesome recent results, but very few (comparatively) offline tournament wins and no sustained periods of complete dominance. I.e., Clem is obviously one of the best players to ever touch the game, but nobody would ever honestly put him in the running for greatest of all time.
Dark is in that bracket where he’s been one of the best players around for an absurd amount of time, which merits a high placing, but he’s never really had a period where he’s been the top dog at any particular time.
Whereas peak Innovation, even if he maybe didn’t win enough in his first incarnation I think most considered him the outright best player in that period, or Mvp, or a Maru or a Serral have.
Being a perennial top contender is obviously still admirable and for me Dark is up there, but if you haven’t ever been the absolute top dog in any particular era, and others have I’d weigh the latter more heavily
No one seems to really care about Serral's GSL vs. the world back to back wins, but to me they are pretty special also ....
2018: 3-0 Kelazhur 3-0 Innovation 3-1 Dark (who I think at the time hadn't ever lost to a foreigner before?) 4-3 Stats in the finals
2019: 3-1 TY 3-1 Trap 3-1 Classic 4-2 Elazer (who beat Dark, Time and Neeb to get to finals)
30M Won for both victories so I'm sure everyone was trying ($25K USD).
I know they definitely aren't exactly GSLs, but the fact that they were in Korea against mostly Koreans should count for something! I never see them mentioned when talking about Serral's achievements.
On January 14 2024 09:28 luxon wrote: Also once again, excusing Serral for being terrible at 15 while Life won GSLs at 14 (which at the time was world championship caliber or bigger) shows you how big the distinction is.
Another great argument from a korean elitist, truely remarkable. Same exact situation for both of them btw, clearly...
Typical Korean elitist. Funny they don’t mention Maru was terrible at the same age. Didn’t win GSL until his peers were in their late 20’s
Actually all the Koreans were pretty trash at that age except for Life and our boy Creator
On January 14 2024 09:28 luxon wrote: Also once again, excusing Serral for being terrible at 15 while Life won GSLs at 14 (which at the time was world championship caliber or bigger) shows you how big the distinction is.
Another great argument from a korean elitist, truely remarkable. Same exact situation for both of them btw, clearly...
Typical Korean elitist. Funny they don’t mention Maru was terrible at the same age. Didn’t win GSL until his peers were in their late 20’s
Actually all the Koreans were pretty trash at that age except for Life and our boy Creator
Maru won OSL at 15/16 during the kespa era. Even before his 2018 utter domination in Korea, he had a pedigree comparable to INnoVation
Given the criterion of this list Maru has the best case at being #1 so I am hopeful, Rogue will probably not be locked at #1
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Maru started to win his GSL’s when the Koreans were in the decline. At that time it was already Serral era, Maru GSL would actually meant something if he won it during 2013-2016. The truth is Mary’s GSL was won during the weak Korean period, but the elitist will keep telling you it’s the “hardest” tournament in the world still lol
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Maru started to win his GSL’s when the Koreans were in the decline. At that time it was already Serral era, Maru GSL would actually meant something if he won it during 2013-2016. The truth is Mary’s GSL was won during the weak Korean period, but the elitist will keep telling you it’s the “hardest” tournament in the world still lol
Serral won 2 GSL. He went, conquered, and left
Maru won OSL (practically same as GSL) in 2013. You're straight up wrong.
The gsl point system seems perfect to me. If you only got second you have symbolically beaten half of the player pool. If you won the finals you've beaten everyone. So it should count double, and you can argue that luck can be a factor for 2nd place, but not for the first place finisher. So I like the 0.99 for second, then you also don't end up with players tied for points.
Players have gotten better in terms of execution, this is undebatable, at least for the top players. But it is also a different game now. With the minimal changeups to the game and favouring macro play so heavily, then it is of course mechanical skill that players will excel at. But you can also see that with the less deep player base, with how the game is less about mind games, figuring out the new thing and creating your own luck that players have lost the ability to plan out series well. Maru, Clem, Cure, Stats and many more actually suck at this. They couldn't go back in time and win HotS, just like a Nestea would be hilariously bad nowadays.
Staying objective while making this is the hardest part and factoring in player pools, skill at the time will almost always just make it more messy. What's to say that the skill of a certain player should factor more than say the balance at the time. It can only get messy. I can argue that Zest is the goat because he got the most with the hardest race, but I don't think people would be very agreeable to that notion. Favouring certain periods will also get messy. I think a more fair way to look at periods, is, where is the majority of the player pool. Nowadays. Gsl is like half of what is was back in the day, because half of the strong players are non-koreans and won't attend. And in the earlier stages there were also so many tournament that the strong players were very spread out. This is a case for the Kespa period, because finally they were all together fighting for who is king. Not because the era was stronger than nowadays, or even the beginning, but because of how stacked the tournaments were.
If you win a tournament, you didn't beat everyone, you didn't even necessarily have the best win record in the tournament, SC2 tournaments are a shitshow of luck with single elimination rounds.
Also giving more points for players being on "their prime" is absurd.
Just choose whoever you want to be whatever rank lmao.
This video is still probably the most objective attempt at answering who is the goat:
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Maru started to win his GSL’s when the Koreans were in the decline. At that time it was already Serral era, Maru GSL would actually meant something if he won it during 2013-2016. The truth is Mary’s GSL was won during the weak Korean period, but the elitist will keep telling you it’s the “hardest” tournament in the world still lol
Serral won 2 GSL. He went, conquered, and left
Wait, Maru's GSLs don't mean anything but Serral's GSL vs the Worlds do?
On January 15 2024 00:39 LostUsername100 wrote: If you win a tournament, you didn't beat everyone, you didn't even necessarily have the best win record in the tournament, SC2 tournaments are a shitshow of luck with single elimination rounds.
Also giving more points for players being on "their prime" is absurd.
Just choose whoever you want to be whatever rank lmao.
This video is still probably the most objective attempt at answering who is the goat:
On January 15 2024 01:20 ejozl wrote: There is a shit ton of luck, it's true.
Luck usually evens itself out in the long run. Unless you're Solar and probably could get at least top-4 in many tournaments but you get Maru early every time. Then you're just cursed.
It would be interesting with a list that awards all 3 installments with the same amount of points. And all three races in those installments with the same amount of points. Then through percentage, see which player acrued the most points.
Or a list where each player from the 3 races that got the furthest in each tournament is awarded the win. Surely Maru would be super high on this one.
Extra thought. Prize money is generally too easily disregarded. The problem is with invite tourneys and the region locks.
On January 15 2024 01:20 ejozl wrote: There is a shit ton of luck, it's true.
Luck usually evens itself out in the long run. Unless you're Solar and probably could get at least top-4 in many tournaments but you get Maru early every time. Then you're just cursed.
Luck evens out in the end if you have enough tournaments you consider "valid", it's not the case when global offline tournaments are almost yearly, and people put an insane emphasis on whatever they want .
On January 15 2024 00:39 LostUsername100 wrote: If you win a tournament, you didn't beat everyone, you didn't even necessarily have the best win record in the tournament, SC2 tournaments are a shitshow of luck with single elimination rounds.
Also giving more points for players being on "their prime" is absurd.
Just choose whoever you want to be whatever rank lmao.
This video is still probably the most objective attempt at answering who is the goat:
I would like to see the raw data he used for that video. What is each players career timespan, what is he counting as premier? It doesn't simply seem to be what is listed on liquipedia because some things seem odd to me like Maru only having exactly 1 premier win per year of his career on average. Serral having 58 top 4s in premiers also seems questionable. Though that might be possible since he has so many in events that banned Koreans. And the way he calculated winrates will naturally favor players who started more recently which he does point out but I think he's underestimating the degree.
Any list that doesn't at least somewhat weight premiers even non world championships differently from each other is also flawed imo. An IEM Shanghai is harder than IEM pyeongchan, a Dreamhack with Koreans is a lot harder than a region locked dreamhack.
Even though Aligulac has serious flaws I think the best way to create a tournament ranking and then goat ranking would be to look at each tournament and check Aligulac ranking history on the closest possible date and if the tournament has 32 players ask out of the top 32 on aligulac how many are in this event? Do that for all events and the tournaments with the highest percentage get weighted the highest and then calculate goat by awarding points for tournament results based on that list. That is an objective way to determine tournament difficulty I only wish we had a better ELO system to use.
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Maru started to win his GSL’s when the Koreans were in the decline. At that time it was already Serral era, Maru GSL would actually meant something if he won it during 2013-2016. The truth is Mary’s GSL was won during the weak Korean period, but the elitist will keep telling you it’s the “hardest” tournament in the world still lol
Serral won 2 GSL. He went, conquered, and left
Wait, Maru's GSLs don't mean anything but Serral's GSL vs the Worlds do?
I think his general point is that people often claim that Serral "only dominates after the peak of SC2-skill" and then suddenly propose Maru as GOAT because "he won 7 GSL". You can't have it both ways. If Serrals world championships don't count for anything, then neither do any of Marus GSLs. And then both of them look pretty underwhelming compared to idk Mvp or something.
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Maru started to win his GSL’s when the Koreans were in the decline. At that time it was already Serral era, Maru GSL would actually meant something if he won it during 2013-2016. The truth is Mary’s GSL was won during the weak Korean period, but the elitist will keep telling you it’s the “hardest” tournament in the world still lol
Serral won 2 GSL. He went, conquered, and left
Wait, Maru's GSLs don't mean anything but Serral's GSL vs the Worlds do?
I think his general point is that people often claim that Serral "only dominates after the peak of SC2-skill" and then suddenly propose Maru as GOAT because "he won 7 GSL". You can't have it both ways. If Serrals world championships don't count for anything, then neither do any of Marus GSLs. And then both of them look pretty underwhelming compared to idk Mvp or something.
Not everyone deals in absolutes. A more reasonable view would be that Serrals World Championships as well as Marus GSLs count for quite a bit but not as much as the equivalent tournaments in 2013-2016 would count. And in the end Maru has success in both eras while Serral does not.
On January 14 2024 19:26 Telephone wrote: Serral is doubtless the best player right now, but he is not the GOAT and that is obvious to anyone who seriously considers the question. The only real answer is Rogue, and that is only the case because I believe the GOAT should have been world champion at least once. If you're looking purely at accomplishments and not mandating "world champion" as a requirement, then Maru is the clear favorite (it's not close, quit coping). Maru won 7 GSLs, a premiere offline tournament with the most difficult competition in the world (the most difficult SC2 competition in the world) and he achieved second place in two GSLs. Maru got 2nd place in a world championship, and made top 4 in 3 other world championships.
Maru having the clear most impressive tournament record against the highest difficulty opponents, plus the undisputed best team league record of all time, makes him the real GOAT.
Rogue is clearly in the top 2 based on strength of opponents, but it's difficult to determine who is the best between him and Maru. Serral is the obvious 3rd and Reynor seems like a pretty clear 4th.
Maru started to win his GSL’s when the Koreans were in the decline. At that time it was already Serral era, Maru GSL would actually meant something if he won it during 2013-2016. The truth is Mary’s GSL was won during the weak Korean period, but the elitist will keep telling you it’s the “hardest” tournament in the world still lol
Serral won 2 GSL. He went, conquered, and left
Wait, Maru's GSLs don't mean anything but Serral's GSL vs the Worlds do?
I think his general point is that people often claim that Serral "only dominates after the peak of SC2-skill" and then suddenly propose Maru as GOAT because "he won 7 GSL". You can't have it both ways. If Serrals world championships don't count for anything, then neither do any of Marus GSLs. And then both of them look pretty underwhelming compared to idk Mvp or something.
Not everyone deals in absolutes. A more reasonable view would be that Serrals World Championships as well as Marus GSLs count for quite a bit but not as much as the equivalent tournaments in 2013-2016 would count. And in the end Maru has success in both eras while Serral does not.
It's also reasonable to assert that the various world championships serral attended became inherently more difficult than (insert word) of those that preceded them simply because serral was one of the players in the event.
On January 15 2024 00:39 LostUsername100 wrote: If you win a tournament, you didn't beat everyone, you didn't even necessarily have the best win record in the tournament, SC2 tournaments are a shitshow of luck with single elimination rounds.
Also giving more points for players being on "their prime" is absurd.
Just choose whoever you want to be whatever rank lmao.
This video is still probably the most objective attempt at answering who is the goat:
I would like to see the raw data he used for that video. What is each players career timespan, what is he counting as premier? It doesn't simply seem to be what is listed on liquipedia because some things seem odd to me like Maru only having exactly 1 premier win per year of his career on average. Serral having 58 top 4s in premiers also seems questionable. Though that might be possible since he has so many in events that banned Koreans. And the way he calculated winrates will naturally favor players who started more recently which he does point out but I think he's underestimating the degree.
Any list that doesn't at least somewhat weight premiers even non world championships differently from each other is also flawed imo. An IEM Shanghai is harder than IEM pyeongchan, a Dreamhack with Koreans is a lot harder than a region locked dreamhack.
Even though Aligulac has serious flaws I think the best way to create a tournament ranking and then goat ranking would be to look at each tournament and check Aligulac ranking history on the closest possible date and if the tournament has 32 players ask out of the top 32 on aligulac how many are in this event? Do that for all events and the tournaments with the highest percentage get weighted the highest and then calculate goat by awarding points for tournament results based on that list. That is an objective way to determine tournament difficulty I only wish we had a better ELO system to use.
Your last paragraph is a good idea but it's short sighted, a tournament with Serral & Clem and a bunch of scrubs is much harder to win than a tournanent with with every player from R3 to R29, also just "wins" is silly as well.
Aligulac has very little flaws, people just don't like the result it gives.
On January 15 2024 00:39 LostUsername100 wrote: If you win a tournament, you didn't beat everyone, you didn't even necessarily have the best win record in the tournament, SC2 tournaments are a shitshow of luck with single elimination rounds.
Also giving more points for players being on "their prime" is absurd.
Just choose whoever you want to be whatever rank lmao.
This video is still probably the most objective attempt at answering who is the goat:
I would like to see the raw data he used for that video. What is each players career timespan, what is he counting as premier? It doesn't simply seem to be what is listed on liquipedia because some things seem odd to me like Maru only having exactly 1 premier win per year of his career on average. Serral having 58 top 4s in premiers also seems questionable. Though that might be possible since he has so many in events that banned Koreans. And the way he calculated winrates will naturally favor players who started more recently which he does point out but I think he's underestimating the degree.
Any list that doesn't at least somewhat weight premiers even non world championships differently from each other is also flawed imo. An IEM Shanghai is harder than IEM pyeongchan, a Dreamhack with Koreans is a lot harder than a region locked dreamhack.
Even though Aligulac has serious flaws I think the best way to create a tournament ranking and then goat ranking would be to look at each tournament and check Aligulac ranking history on the closest possible date and if the tournament has 32 players ask out of the top 32 on aligulac how many are in this event? Do that for all events and the tournaments with the highest percentage get weighted the highest and then calculate goat by awarding points for tournament results based on that list. That is an objective way to determine tournament difficulty I only wish we had a better ELO system to use.
Your last paragraph is a good idea but it's short sighted, a tournament with Serral & Clem and a bunch of scrubs is much harder to win than a tournanent with with every player from R3 to R29, also just "wins" is silly as well.
Aligulac has very little flaws, people just don't like the result it gives.
To add to my questioning of that video according to liquipedia Serral only has 45 top 4s in premier events. Considering that a bunch of those top 4s happened after that video was posted at well I think that video has to be completely discounted unless he explained his data elsewhere.
Serral and Clem are not harder to beat than the rest of the top 30 combined. Even thinking of it in a bracket context do you really think it's harder to beat those 2 back to back than a back to back run of something like: Solar/herO/Cure/Dark/Maru? That's a pretty absurd statement and ironically I think all you have to do is look at Clems own career to prove that false. He did very well in EU regionals but only just won his first global event after being a top player for years. It also doesn't holdup under historical context because the gap between the best has historically been much smaller than it is now.
Aligulac has a ton of flaws. Why does winning in one matchup give points to the others? Inactive players stay too high. Rating inflation is way too big compared to other ELO systems I think it's due to aligulac giving too many points for beating players who have significantly less points. SC2 pro scene has only existed for 13 years and player ratings have nearly tripled which makes no sense whatsoever and makes it almost impossible to use it to compare eras. This isn't aligulac specific but ELO also has issues comparing people from different player pools that don't interact much.
Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
That’s a big asterisk indeed. Rogue too, and Rogue was not particularly dominant until 2017+ (hydras got buffed that year as well), so I doubt Rogue will top this list even though his trophy count is the highest of all players
On January 15 2024 00:39 LostUsername100 wrote: If you win a tournament, you didn't beat everyone, you didn't even necessarily have the best win record in the tournament, SC2 tournaments are a shitshow of luck with single elimination rounds.
Also giving more points for players being on "their prime" is absurd.
Just choose whoever you want to be whatever rank lmao.
This video is still probably the most objective attempt at answering who is the goat:
I would like to see the raw data he used for that video. What is each players career timespan, what is he counting as premier? It doesn't simply seem to be what is listed on liquipedia because some things seem odd to me like Maru only having exactly 1 premier win per year of his career on average. Serral having 58 top 4s in premiers also seems questionable. Though that might be possible since he has so many in events that banned Koreans. And the way he calculated winrates will naturally favor players who started more recently which he does point out but I think he's underestimating the degree.
Any list that doesn't at least somewhat weight premiers even non world championships differently from each other is also flawed imo. An IEM Shanghai is harder than IEM pyeongchan, a Dreamhack with Koreans is a lot harder than a region locked dreamhack.
Even though Aligulac has serious flaws I think the best way to create a tournament ranking and then goat ranking would be to look at each tournament and check Aligulac ranking history on the closest possible date and if the tournament has 32 players ask out of the top 32 on aligulac how many are in this event? Do that for all events and the tournaments with the highest percentage get weighted the highest and then calculate goat by awarding points for tournament results based on that list. That is an objective way to determine tournament difficulty I only wish we had a better ELO system to use.
Your last paragraph is a good idea but it's short sighted, a tournament with Serral & Clem and a bunch of scrubs is much harder to win than a tournanent with with every player from R3 to R29, also just "wins" is silly as well.
Aligulac has very little flaws, people just don't like the result it gives.
To add to my questioning of that video according to liquipedia Serral only has 45 top 4s in premier events. Considering that a bunch of those top 4s happened after that video was posted at well I think that video has to be completely discounted unless he explained his data elsewhere.
Serral and Clem are not harder to beat than the rest of the top 30 combined. Even thinking of it in a bracket context do you really think it's harder to beat those 2 back to back than a back to back run of something like: Solar/herO/Cure/Dark/Maru? That's a pretty absurd statement and ironically I think all you have to do is look at Clems own career to prove that false. He did very well in EU regionals but only just won his first global event after being a top player for years. It also doesn't holdup under historical context because the gap between the best has historically been much smaller than it is now.
Aligulac has a ton of flaws. Why does winning in one matchup give points to the others? Inactive players stay too high. Rating inflation is way too big compared to other ELO systems I think it's due to aligulac giving too many points for beating players who have significantly less points. SC2 pro scene has only existed for 13 years and player ratings have nearly tripled which makes no sense whatsoever and makes it almost impossible to use it to compare eras. This isn't aligulac specific but ELO also has issues comparing people from different player pools that don't interact much.
"Even thinking of it in a bracket context do you really think it's harder to beat those 2 back to back than a back to back run of something like: Solar/herO/Cure/Dark/Maru?"
A bracket run is usually Ro8,Ro4,Ro2 so really you only need to beat 3 of those, the "swiss" tournament stages or group tournaments are a lot fairer and less luck prone.
Odds of cure beating serral & clem back to back in a bo5 is <3% per Aligulac.
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships.
He also never played in proleague, and never competed on a high level in WoL or HotS. It seems silly to hold that against him, but you also can't ignore it for INno and Maru who dominated in both proleague and HotS,
Serral beats everyone head to head, but the list is greatest of all time, not best of all time. Those guys have big achievements that Serral doesn't
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships.
He also never played in proleague, and never competed on a high level in WoL or HotS. It seems silly to hold that against him, but you also can't ignore it for INno and Maru who dominated in both proleague and HotS,
Serral beats everyone head to head, but the list is greatest of all time, not best of all time. Those guys have big achievements that Serral doesn't
"Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships. "
Yea this is a ridiculous criteria and favours people who live in Korea.
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships.
He also never played in proleague, and never competed on a high level in WoL or HotS. It seems silly to hold that against him, but you also can't ignore it for INno and Maru who dominated in both proleague and HotS,
Serral beats everyone head to head, but the list is greatest of all time, not best of all time. Those guys have big achievements that Serral doesn't
"Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships. "
Yea this is a ridiculous criteria and favours people who live in Korea.
So what would you recommend, just ignore them? Rank 14 years of the games history based on only events Serral played in?
Historically starleagues have been the most competitive tournaments with the greatest player pools. For a lot of SC2's history they were significantly more competitive than the world championships. Not to mention they test preparation skills that other tournaments don't. That's an entire meta and format that Serral never attempted (Neeb, Reynor, Scarlett and others still did).
I have no doubt Serral could win multiple GSLs, but he chose not to. When comparing his achievements to players who have won 3,4, or 7 starleagues, that's something they have over him.
Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
I didnt read the methodology but this needs to be the first thing in there otherwise any ranking is just nonsense. Affirmative action titles are just like affirmative action degrees: worthless.
Reading the rest of the comments, I'm 90% sure in 2030 when korean sc2 is all but a distant memory, there will be unironic arguments that clem or reynor is the goat since they won every major tournament in the last 5 years and "no one has ever had that level of dominance". people will argue "the game is even harder now than it was in 2021 because [insert some micro mechanic or build people didnt do back then]" even though the competition will be literally between 3 guys, well sort of like the EPT weekly now.
despite all the calls that i'm a (non-korean) korean shill (and i prob am one), I actually think Serral has the edge over anyone else. And the primary reason for that is actually military service. People don't realize how career ending that is, (out of those who tried, virtually not a single one could return to their previous level.) I dont think anyone who is "forcibly retired" can ever have the hardware to compete against someone who doesnt (and don't cite Serral's "summer camp" service coming up).
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
I didnt read the methodology but this needs to be the first thing in there otherwise any ranking is just nonsense. Affirmative action titles are just like affirmative action degrees: worthless.
Reading the rest of the comments, I'm 90% sure in 2030 when korean sc2 is all but a distant memory, there will be unironic arguments that clem or reynor is the goat since they won every major tournament in the last 5 years and "no one has ever had that level of dominance". people will argue "the game is even harder now than it was in 2021 because [insert some micro mechanic or build people didnt do back then]" even though the competition will be literally between 3 guys, well sort of like the EPT weekly now.
despite all the calls that i'm a (non-korean) korean shill (and i prob am one), I actually think Serral has the edge over anyone else. And the primary reason for that is actually military service. People don't realize how career ending that is, (out of those who tried, virtually not a single one could return to their previous level.) I dont think anyone who is "forcibly retired" can ever have the hardware to compete against someone who doesnt (and don't cite Serral's "summer camp" service coming up).
Yeah, no. WC3 is in that situation and I don't think many people really call Happy "the GOAT", even though his level of dominance in the game truely is unseen. But of course the competitiveness is so much down the toilet compared to even the last year before the release of SC2 that it is hard to compare him with the likes of Grubby, Sky or Moon at the height of the game.
You are correct, military service is career-shattering. But on the other hand, "being korean" is also a huge plus. Or more accurate: Being in the korean scene. You mentioned Life a few times and wanted to point out him winning with 14 while Serral with 15 was still "so bad" - that isn't a question of raw talent alone, but hugely impacted by the enviroment. Not only was Life already in a Proleague-teamhouse by that time (though granted, not for long), but that isn't even the big thing: I promise you, if Life was born in Finland, he wouldn't have won shit with 14. Not only (especially ten-ish years ago) would most european parents not allow their child to focus so much on gaming at that age, but the logistics alone to get to big tournaments is much higher compared to SK, where everything is neately focused in one studio. And honestly, maybe even child-labour laws might be a problem. Or simply the fact that some tournaments at that time might still have been age-locked (you needed to be 16 to compete in the german EPS for example).
It is not the players fault to be raised in a blessed (well, "blessed") gaming enviroment, but you should always have that in mind aswell, to maybe put some of the more extreme feats into perspective.
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
I didnt read the methodology but this needs to be the first thing in there otherwise any ranking is just nonsense. Affirmative action titles are just like affirmative action degrees: worthless.
Reading the rest of the comments, I'm 90% sure in 2030 when korean sc2 is all but a distant memory, there will be unironic arguments that clem or reynor is the goat since they won every major tournament in the last 5 years and "no one has ever had that level of dominance". people will argue "the game is even harder now than it was in 2021 because [insert some micro mechanic or build people didnt do back then]" even though the competition will be literally between 3 guys, well sort of like the EPT weekly now.
despite all the calls that i'm a (non-korean) korean shill (and i prob am one), I actually think Serral has the edge over anyone else. And the primary reason for that is actually military service. People don't realize how career ending that is, (out of those who tried, virtually not a single one could return to their previous level.) I dont think anyone who is "forcibly retired" can ever have the hardware to compete against someone who doesnt (and don't cite Serral's "summer camp" service coming up).
Yeah, no. WC3 is in that situation and I don't think many people really call Happy "the GOAT", even though his level of dominance in the game truely is unseen. But of course the competitiveness is so much down the toilet compared to even the last year before the release of SC2 that it is hard to compare him with the likes of Grubby, Sky or Moon at the height of the game.
You are correct, military service is career-shattering. But on the other hand, "being korean" is also a huge plus. Or more accurate: Being in the korean scene. You mentioned Life a few times and wanted to point out him winning with 14 while Serral with 15 was still "so bad" - that isn't a question of raw talent alone, but hugely impacted by the enviroment. Not only was Life already in a Proleague-teamhouse by that time (though granted, not for long), but that isn't even the big thing: I promise you, if Life was born in Finland, he wouldn't have won shit with 14. Not only (especially ten-ish years ago) would most european parents not allow their child to focus so much on gaming at that age, but the logistics alone to get to big tournaments is much higher compared to SK, where everything is neately focused in one studio. And honestly, maybe even child-labour laws might be a problem. Or simply the fact that some tournaments at that time might still have been age-locked (you needed to be 16 to compete in the german EPS for example).
It is not the players fault to be raised in a blessed (well, "blessed") gaming enviroment, but you should always have that in mind aswell, to maybe put some of the more extreme feats into perspective.
It would still be pretty crazy to call sky or grubby better than happy seeing how he has been dominant for 7 years in a row even if the competitiveness might be lower, he faced th000, Infi, Lyn, focus, none of them were out of shape and newcomers like 120 had nothing to envy to the big name of the past. Especially considering he was dominant while playing with 180-200 ping in a good chunk of tourney, happy's performance is truly goatesque.
On January 15 2024 20:58 Poopi wrote: Isn’t Moon the obvious GOAT of WC3?
I always thought so, since he reigned supreme in the competitive era when WC3 was the mainstream RTS
I would say he still is the greatest thanks to his influence and overall impact in the game and even esport scene as a whole. But happy is the best.
Yeah, best and greatest are cousins not twins. Sure they’re related but there’s a bit of distance.
Greatness is a much more emotional thing, being the best is more cold, more objective.
Mvp’s greatness is cemented more by him and Squirtle going down to the wire and that final game with everything on the line than if he’d coldly swept him:
Greatness is being outmatched, having serious wrist issues, changing your playstyle and still taking Life to the wire. Being the best is having a winning head to head against everyone, playing consistently incredibly and even though it’s low stakes being so absurdly good on ladder that even very, very good pros are only losing an amount of MMR you can count on one hand if they fail to topple you.
*Editor’s note* - I’m not saying either way if Serral is the ‘best’, just an illustrative example that came to mind.
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
That’s a big asterisk indeed. Rogue too, and Rogue was not particularly dominant until 2017+ (hydras got buffed that year as well), so I doubt Rogue will top this list even though his trophy count is the highest of all players
Wasnt Rogue called patchzerg in an article here in TL because his wins were based on that hydra patch that mega favored zerg but once it was Serral, finally a foreigner that could compite in equal terms with the koreans, the one winning everything suddenly zerg was fine? It was.a skill issue not a balance issue?
Narrative wise was quite blatant the bias that casters conveniently choose to forget because it was good for the game.
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
That’s a big asterisk indeed. Rogue too, and Rogue was not particularly dominant until 2017+ (hydras got buffed that year as well), so I doubt Rogue will top this list even though his trophy count is the highest of all players
Wasnt Rogue called patchzerg in an article here in TL because his wins were based on that hydra patch that mega favored zerg but once it was Serral, finally a foreigner that could compite in equal terms with the koreans, the one winning everything suddenly zerg was fine? It was.a skill issue not a balance issue?
Narrative wise was quite blatant the bias that casters conveniently choose to forget because it was good for the game.
Serral is a top player but he too benefited from zerg being strong / very strong. I am a bit flabbergasted that so many viewers in the european (and french) scene think that Serral is the "obvious" GOAT of Starcraft 2 despite all the history of the game. But for the majority of viewers, casters can push any narrative they want so it's not that surprising
edit: to add something about Rogue, iirc when Neeb was the first foreigner to win a tournament on KR soil, beating Rogue wasn't considered particularly impressive because Rogue wasn't a top player yet, however beating Zest & Stats (+ Trap but Trap wasn't considered a top protoss yet either afaik) and winning the whole thing was a big deal
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
I didnt read the methodology but this needs to be the first thing in there otherwise any ranking is just nonsense. Affirmative action titles are just like affirmative action degrees: worthless.
Reading the rest of the comments, I'm 90% sure in 2030 when korean sc2 is all but a distant memory, there will be unironic arguments that clem or reynor is the goat since they won every major tournament in the last 5 years and "no one has ever had that level of dominance". people will argue "the game is even harder now than it was in 2021 because [insert some micro mechanic or build people didnt do back then]" even though the competition will be literally between 3 guys, well sort of like the EPT weekly now.
despite all the calls that i'm a (non-korean) korean shill (and i prob am one), I actually think Serral has the edge over anyone else. And the primary reason for that is actually military service. People don't realize how career ending that is, (out of those who tried, virtually not a single one could return to their previous level.) I dont think anyone who is "forcibly retired" can ever have the hardware to compete against someone who doesnt (and don't cite Serral's "summer camp" service coming up).
Yeah, no. WC3 is in that situation and I don't think many people really call Happy "the GOAT", even though his level of dominance in the game truely is unseen. But of course the competitiveness is so much down the toilet compared to even the last year before the release of SC2 that it is hard to compare him with the likes of Grubby, Sky or Moon at the height of the game.
You are correct, military service is career-shattering. But on the other hand, "being korean" is also a huge plus. Or more accurate: Being in the korean scene. You mentioned Life a few times and wanted to point out him winning with 14 while Serral with 15 was still "so bad" - that isn't a question of raw talent alone, but hugely impacted by the enviroment. Not only was Life already in a Proleague-teamhouse by that time (though granted, not for long), but that isn't even the big thing: I promise you, if Life was born in Finland, he wouldn't have won shit with 14. Not only (especially ten-ish years ago) would most european parents not allow their child to focus so much on gaming at that age, but the logistics alone to get to big tournaments is much higher compared to SK, where everything is neately focused in one studio. And honestly, maybe even child-labour laws might be a problem. Or simply the fact that some tournaments at that time might still have been age-locked (you needed to be 16 to compete in the german EPS for example).
It is not the players fault to be raised in a blessed (well, "blessed") gaming enviroment, but you should always have that in mind aswell, to maybe put some of the more extreme feats into perspective.
It would still be pretty crazy to call sky or grubby better than happy seeing how he has been dominant for 7 years in a row even if the competitiveness might be lower, he faced th000, Infi, Lyn, focus, none of them were out of shape and newcomers like 120 had nothing to envy to the big name of the past. Especially considering he was dominant while playing with 180-200 ping in a good chunk of tourney, happy's performance is truly goatesque.
There was this news station in Canada that ran a story about the kid that reached the kill screen in Tetris, something that had never been accomplished in the history of the game. An absolutely insane feat, if you understand the skill/practice required. And then at the end of the segment, the news anchor told the kid to go outside. If people want to understand how gaming as a profession is viewed in the West by the mainstream, there you have it. A little different than coming of age in the Mecca of e-sports.
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
True, imagine if Serral wanted to go and compete in Korea. He probably swept and win everything while the rest of the Koreans are fighting over the crumbs
Fact of the matter was, Serral went to Korea and dominated two GSL’s. The Koreans tried to do the same on foreign land on the world stage but ran into a brick wall called Serral and Reynor
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships.
He also never played in proleague, and never competed on a high level in WoL or HotS. It seems silly to hold that against him, but you also can't ignore it for INno and Maru who dominated in both proleague and HotS,
Serral beats everyone head to head, but the list is greatest of all time, not best of all time. Those guys have big achievements that Serral doesn't
No one really cares about starleagur nor the post kespa GSL’s
That’s like us saying “Koreans should not be in GOAT conversation” cause they never won a WCS trophy
No one has ever been called the “last man standing” in any race beside the current Protoss state.
The terrans always had the “4 horseman” Zerg had the Big 4 Protoss had “we just want one toss to represent us in the top8)
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
That’s a big asterisk indeed. Rogue too, and Rogue was not particularly dominant until 2017+ (hydras got buffed that year as well), so I doubt Rogue will top this list even though his trophy count is the highest of all players
Wasnt Rogue called patchzerg in an article here in TL because his wins were based on that hydra patch that mega favored zerg but once it was Serral, finally a foreigner that could compite in equal terms with the koreans, the one winning everything suddenly zerg was fine? It was.a skill issue not a balance issue?
Narrative wise was quite blatant the bias that casters conveniently choose to forget because it was good for the game.
Serral is a top player but he too benefited from zerg being strong / very strong. I am a bit flabbergasted that so many viewers in the european (and french) scene think that Serral is the "obvious" GOAT of Starcraft 2 despite all the history of the game. But for the majority of viewers, casters can push any narrative they want so it's not that surprising
Not much about 2018s results in Premier events screams "Zerg OP". In fact, not one Zerg managed to reach a GSL final that year (Maru won against three Protoss...so I guess he got lucky?). Serral also won three of his four WCS outside of ZvZ. Sure, Rogue won Katowice that year and Scarlett scooped a smaller IEM win (with some noticable participants, but not many). I don't think the results of that year favor any race in such an extreme way that it is fair to add that as an asterisk to Serrals achievements. And you really have to be extremly out of touch with reality to claim that Maru won three GSLs with the "weakest race" that year. No way in hell is the skillgap betweem him and the korean zergs that big.
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
Then GSL post 2018 is out of the question. Because Serral has been clearly the best player from that year, and cant compete in it without moving to Korea, which is a form of region lock.
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
True, imagine if Serral wanted to go and compete in Korea. He probably swept and win everything while the rest of the Koreans are fighting over the crumbs
Fact of the matter was, Serral went to Korea and dominated two GSL’s. The Koreans tried to do the same on foreign land on the world stage but ran into a brick wall called Serral and Reynor
For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
On January 13 2024 03:42 sidasf wrote: The way I view it, it comes down to which player had the highest skill-who would straight up win in a 1v1. Given that how much SC2's skill level has been increasing continuously, The goat IMO is Serral. There simply isn't any other player, who, at peak, could sit down and 1v1 Serral and beat him. Especially the people from ~2010-2016-they'd just get curb stomped.
If I were to send a player in his prime, in an hypothetic figured out and perfectly balanced sc2 version, to defend humanity versus sc2 alien gods, I would send Maru without question
If I had to send a Protoss I would send Zest For a Zerg I would send offline finals Rogue, or a coin toss between Serral and Dark (Life would be paid by the aliens probably )
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships.
He also never played in proleague, and never competed on a high level in WoL or HotS. It seems silly to hold that against him, but you also can't ignore it for INno and Maru who dominated in both proleague and HotS,
Serral beats everyone head to head, but the list is greatest of all time, not best of all time. Those guys have big achievements that Serral doesn't
No one really cares about starleagur nor the post kespa GSL’s
That’s like us saying “Koreans should not be in GOAT conversation” cause they never won a WCS trophy
No one has ever been called the “last man standing” in any race beside the current Protoss state.
The terrans always had the “4 horseman” Zerg had the Big 4 Protoss had “we just want one toss to represent us in the top8)
Is this a troll or just someone who's only been around since 2018?
The "Big 4" zergs have only been a thing the last 4-5 years. Maru was literally nicknamed The Fourth Race back in 2014 due to his success, especially in TvP, when terran was otherwise extinct. Everything you say is false.
"No one cares about post-kespa GSLs". Alright, what about all those starleagues during kespa? Of which Maru, Zest, INno, Mvp, Rain, and Classic won multiple. I bet you still count GSL vs The World though.
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
True, imagine if Serral wanted to go and compete in Korea. He probably swept and win everything while the rest of the Koreans are fighting over the crumbs
Fact of the matter was, Serral went to Korea and dominated two GSL’s. The Koreans tried to do the same on foreign land on the world stage but ran into a brick wall called Serral and Reynor
Wait this guy praises GSL vs The World then says follows it up with "no one cares about Code S or SSL post 2016"? When I said should we exclude all 14 years of tournaments if they didn't include Serral, I was joking.
And Rogue won 3 World Championships that Serral participated in? Dark, soO, and TY also won 1 each.
On January 15 2024 16:56 Telephone wrote: Region locked tournaments are pretty worthless for the GOAT conversation when the majority of the best players in the world aren't allowed to compete in them.
True, imagine if Serral wanted to go and compete in Korea. He probably swept and win everything while the rest of the Koreans are fighting over the crumbs
Fact of the matter was, Serral went to Korea and dominated two GSL’s. The Koreans tried to do the same on foreign land on the world stage but ran into a brick wall called Serral and Reynor
Wait this guy praises GSL vs The World then says follows it up with "no one cares about Code S or SSL post 2016"? When I said should we exclude all 14 years of tournaments if they didn't include Serral, I was joking.
And Rogue won 3 World Championships that Serral participated in? Dark, soO, and TY also won 1 each.
Well those world championships obviously don't count. Only tournaments won by Serral count. And the canadian football league championship is the same level of competition as the Super Bowl.
On January 15 2024 06:37 ZeroByte13 wrote: Serral's achievements have one asterisk though - a lot of them were from zerg-dominated 2019-2021 era.
Remember that time before Rogue retirement (and Dark somewhat slumping) where 4 top zerg players would win 80% of big tournaments, and if you remove Serral - it would still most probably be a zerg champion?
Serral was never called "the last zerg standing", his peak overlapped with zerg race peak balance-wise.
Serral also doesn't have any starleague titles, which this criteria is considering as equivalent or near-equivalent to world championships.
He also never played in proleague, and never competed on a high level in WoL or HotS. It seems silly to hold that against him, but you also can't ignore it for INno and Maru who dominated in both proleague and HotS,
Serral beats everyone head to head, but the list is greatest of all time, not best of all time. Those guys have big achievements that Serral doesn't
No one really cares about starleagur nor the post kespa GSL’s
That’s like us saying “Koreans should not be in GOAT conversation” cause they never won a WCS trophy
No one has ever been called the “last man standing” in any race beside the current Protoss state.
The terrans always had the “4 horseman” Zerg had the Big 4 Protoss had “we just want one toss to represent us in the top8)
Is this a troll or just someone who's only been around since 2018?
The "Big 4" zergs have only been a thing the last 4-5 years. Maru was literally nicknamed The Fourth Race back in 2014 due to his success, especially in TvP, when terran was otherwise extinct. Everything you say is false.
"No one cares about post-kespa GSLs". Alright, what about all those starleagues during kespa? Of which Maru, Zest, INno, Mvp, Rain, and Classic won multiple. I bet you still count GSL vs The World though.
he's an idiot. He has something against Koreans its so obvious.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
There is a flip side to every weighting.
Maru has longevity on his side, but also the other side of the coin is he’s been around so long of course he’s going to have some decent weekender results.
As I said in my post it’s less that he doesn’t had good results, more how he frequently flubbed his lines by doing stupid things that’s the tick in the minus column.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Maru has longevity on his side, but also the other side of the coin is he’s been around so long of course he’s going to have some decent weekender results.
You said this as if its a given, as if constantly hitting top8 in many tournaments for more than a decade is a choice everyone could had make and not an incredible merit than no one else has done
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Maru has longevity on his side, but also the other side of the coin is he’s been around so long of course he’s going to have some decent weekender results.
You said this as if its a given, as if constantly hitting top8 in many tournaments for more than a decade is a choice everyone could had make and not an incredible merit than no one else has done
Completely agree It's expected nowadays because the player pool is so reducted, but back in 2013 Soulkey's and Innovation's consistency at hitting ro8 GSL was very rare and definitely worthy of note, back then. Innovation in particular I believe made a streak of ro4 (2012 s5), ro8 (2013 s1, last WoL GSL), finalist in first gsl of HotS and then ro4 in OSL (which was a gsl season 2 in everything but name and format, famously defeated by Maru's first starleague).
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
How easily everyone forgets that Maru also lost to TY in the finals of WESG (which had the same payout as a world championship).
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
How easily everyone forgets that Maru also lost to TY in the finals of WESG (which had the same payout as a world championship).
Yes, Maru placed second in the first edition of WESG in 2017, becoming champion the following year and third place in 2019, being the only sc2 player to be part of the top4 in all 3 editions of WESG.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
How easily everyone forgets that Maru also lost to TY in the finals of WESG (which had the same payout as a world championship).
Yes, Maru placed second in the first edition of WESG in 2017, becoming champion the following year and third place in 2019, being the only sc2 player to be part of the top4 in all 3 editions of WESG.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
By "on track to win", I don't mean he was dominant or the favourite of the tournament. I mean he had chances to win and then made massive uncharacteristic blunders.
2018 Katowice, he was up 2-0 in the ro4 and lost because he didn't wall off his natural properly... 2020 Katowice, he was up 2-1 in the ro4 playing bog standard then lost gambling on hellbat allins.... 2021 Katowice, he was up 2-0 in the ro4 playing bog standard and lost gambling on double starport BC.... 2023 Katowice, well biggest upset in SC2 history speaks for itself... 2018 Blizzcon, he said himself he believes he would have won if not for playing like a clown in the ro8...
Granted those are mostly throws in the ro4, but he would have been a huge favourite in all of those finals bar 2018 Katowice (Classic's PvT looked unbeatable, although Maru still swept him in GSL the following season).
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
The sOs loss was simply PvT being P favored in macro games, but most Protoss got dismantled by Maru’s cyclone proxies since sOs helped him prepare the different variations and Maru’s execution was good enough to win with the « OP » cyclones builds (or straight up destroy Neeb with only widow mines iirc)
Obviously it wouldn’t gonna work vs sOs. After that his mental probably got shattered so he started making even more stupid mistakes like g3 (the map which had a nice tank spot in TvZ, not sure if it was the last game) but it didn’t really matter, the series was lost before hands
The big what if of viewers was « why didn’t Maru try to play a standard game vs sOs he is better than him in the macro games »; but I firmly believe he didn’t think TvP was a good MU at the time in regular macro game
Other than this « choke », most of Maru’s losses were pretty normal during World Championships. He had losses versus Zerg when Z was super strong (vs Dark afaik, and Serral in 2022). His 2023 loss to Oliveira isn’t that weird either given the momentum Oliveira had that day, I was there in person and the crowd was pushing hard for him, only a maniac like Rogue might have been able to stop Oliveira with his offline bo7 anticlimactic magic?
It's because maru is cocky and for good reason. This and his planning was never great, well that is, he defensively plans. He was strongest with his proxy 2 raxes. He is really ashamed to lose to a player like Time, that and the momentum became too great.
Serral solved sc2 it's that simple. The difference is there was always some changeup when players solved some parts of the game. But now sc2 is solved and it's better to be an uber defensive boring zerg now than everything else. That is unless terran keeps getting buffed.
Serral is the undisputed goat. Sc2 was at its peak level at the last blizzcon that serral won. He made it this peak, him and the guys who could challenge him. But now we have an unbalanced game and it is fair to discredit modern serral. Not because he's worse, but because the level around him fell.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
The sOs loss was simply PvT being P favored in macro games, but most Protoss got dismantled by Maru’s cyclone proxies since sOs helped him prepare the different variations and Maru’s execution was good enough to win with the « OP » cyclones builds (or straight up destroy Neeb with only widow mines iirc)
Obviously it wouldn’t gonna work vs sOs. After that his mental probably got shattered so he started making even more stupid mistakes like g3 (the map which had a nice tank spot in TvZ, not sure if it was the last game) but it didn’t really matter, the series was lost before hands
The big what if of viewers was « why didn’t Maru try to play a standard game vs sOs he is better than him in the macro games »; but I firmly believe he didn’t think TvP was a good MU at the time in regular macro game
Other than this « choke », most of Maru’s losses were pretty normal during World Championships. He had losses versus Zerg when Z was super strong (vs Dark afaik, and Serral in 2022). His 2023 loss to Oliveira isn’t that weird either given the momentum Oliveira had that day, I was there in person and the crowd was pushing hard for him, only a maniac like Rogue might have been able to stop Oliveira with his offline bo7 anticlimactic magic?
So basically Maru loses when the balance is off or he is unlucky? Well, that makes the debate truely easy ._.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
The sOs loss was simply PvT being P favored in macro games, but most Protoss got dismantled by Maru’s cyclone proxies since sOs helped him prepare the different variations and Maru’s execution was good enough to win with the « OP » cyclones builds (or straight up destroy Neeb with only widow mines iirc)
Obviously it wouldn’t gonna work vs sOs. After that his mental probably got shattered so he started making even more stupid mistakes like g3 (the map which had a nice tank spot in TvZ, not sure if it was the last game) but it didn’t really matter, the series was lost before hands
The big what if of viewers was « why didn’t Maru try to play a standard game vs sOs he is better than him in the macro games »; but I firmly believe he didn’t think TvP was a good MU at the time in regular macro game
Other than this « choke », most of Maru’s losses were pretty normal during World Championships. He had losses versus Zerg when Z was super strong (vs Dark afaik, and Serral in 2022). His 2023 loss to Oliveira isn’t that weird either given the momentum Oliveira had that day, I was there in person and the crowd was pushing hard for him, only a maniac like Rogue might have been able to stop Oliveira with his offline bo7 anticlimactic magic?
So basically Maru loses when the balance is off or he is unlucky? Well, that makes the debate truely easy ._.
Or when he’s jet lagged, or when Jupiter is out of alignment with Mars
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
The sOs loss was simply PvT being P favored in macro games, but most Protoss got dismantled by Maru’s cyclone proxies since sOs helped him prepare the different variations and Maru’s execution was good enough to win with the « OP » cyclones builds (or straight up destroy Neeb with only widow mines iirc)
Obviously it wouldn’t gonna work vs sOs. After that his mental probably got shattered so he started making even more stupid mistakes like g3 (the map which had a nice tank spot in TvZ, not sure if it was the last game) but it didn’t really matter, the series was lost before hands
The big what if of viewers was « why didn’t Maru try to play a standard game vs sOs he is better than him in the macro games »; but I firmly believe he didn’t think TvP was a good MU at the time in regular macro game
Other than this « choke », most of Maru’s losses were pretty normal during World Championships. He had losses versus Zerg when Z was super strong (vs Dark afaik, and Serral in 2022). His 2023 loss to Oliveira isn’t that weird either given the momentum Oliveira had that day, I was there in person and the crowd was pushing hard for him, only a maniac like Rogue might have been able to stop Oliveira with his offline bo7 anticlimactic magic?
Plenty of people won against a hostile crowd (if we could even say it was one). sOs stomped Jaedong in Blizzcon, Serral beat Showtime in Leipzig, Hydra beat Neeb in goddamn Texas.
I like Maru with all my heart, but that Katowice trophy felt on his lap, Solar into Ragnarok into Oliveira that's pretty much the best bracket he could have hoped for.
And obviously, it was a great run from Oliveira, but he got quite a sweet bracket himself, HM was the best draw he could have had, and then in the semi hero was also a nice match-up for him at this point of the tournament. Reynor was a very hard match, but that was the only truly surprising win from him.
I mean it's Oliveira for god sake, we've seen him play for almost a decade, we know who he is. Yeah, he can play some great Starcraft, do you know who else can play some great Starcraft? Fuc*ing Maru. How about he did it?
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
Other than this « choke », most of Maru’s losses were pretty normal during World Championships. He had losses versus Zerg when Z was super strong (vs Dark afaik, and Serral in 2022).
Have to disagree here. I still have Maru as number 1 all-time, but he's fumbled multiple world championships by specifically not playing normal games.
Too many ro4s at World Championships that ended with him throwing away 2-0 or 2-1 leads by doing builds that made every fan watching scream "Why Maru, why". There's no defence for the double factory hellbat allin vs Rogue, or the double port BC for vs Reynor (both times he was on match point playing his normal game)
Maybe it's the Prime terran inside him requiring a donation of 1 map per series doing something stupid.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
Other than this « choke », most of Maru’s losses were pretty normal during World Championships. He had losses versus Zerg when Z was super strong (vs Dark afaik, and Serral in 2022).
Have to disagree here. I still have Maru as number 1 all-time, but he's fumbled multiple world championships by specifically not playing normal games.
Too many ro4s at World Championships that ended with him throwing away 2-0 or 2-1 leads by doing builds that made every fan watching scream "Why Maru, why". There's no defence for the double factory hellbat allin vs Rogue, or the double port BC for vs Reynor (both times he was on match point playing his normal game)
Maybe it's the Prime terran inside him requiring a donation of 1 map per series doing something stupid.
Yeah, and this isn’t an argument of Serral > Maru or w/e but I really don’t much recall the former ever dropping out of a tournament and my reaction being ‘the fuck were you thinking man?!’
Can’t remember off hand exactly which Kato but there was a particularly infuriating example where Maru went full unbreakable Maru and choked Reynor out masterfully, then the next set on the best map in the pool to do that again he threw out one of his ‘reverse pocket’ builds.
Everyone makes mistakes or feels the pressure, or just isn’t 100% on it in a cutthroat game where even a little off your best you get punished. I can’t think of a really top, elite player who’s quite dropped the ball on taking a world title in quite that fashion as Maru has.
It’s frustrating because I mean he’s fucking Maru, the 4th race, whose highlight reel of pure feats of micro and multitasking is so bloody impressive and has brought joy (and pain) to many of us fans!
In my mind, Maru has the highest ceiling of executing ANY Terran build to the most optimal outcome, be it cheese, rush, aggressive or turtling, he can do it all and do it better than 99% of Terran out there. The sad thing is that when hes picking the wrong build/strategy and forced to play behind into a loss, he tends to do the same bad build again in the next game, or trying something very gambling unneccessarily.
Its was fucking frustrating to watch when he did the same Medivac Tankdrop against Oliveira 3 times in a row and lost all 3 games. Like if you know something is good, keep abusing it, or if something not working, change it. Just because hes good at eveything doesnt mean he has to prove that he can win with anything, pick the right build, damn it.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
2018 Blizzcon, he said himself he believes he would have won if not for playing like a clown in the ro8...
Granted those are mostly throws in the ro4, but he would have been a huge favourite in all of those finals bar 2018 Katowice (Classic's PvT looked unbeatable, although Maru still swept him in GSL the following season).
Forgetting his SECOND SUPPLY DEPOT against sOs was one of the moments that convinced me there's an obvious big stage clutchness factor that's more meaningful than 23094839 data points from past results.
On January 17 2024 08:05 ejozl wrote: Serral is the undisputed goat. Sc2 was at its peak level at the last blizzcon that serral won. He made it this peak, him and the guys who could challenge him. But now we have an unbalanced game and it is fair to discredit modern serral. Not because he's worse, but because the level around him fell.
I think you will find this thread as evidence that it is indeed disputed whether Serral is the goat. He won 2 world championships and a couple ESLs, which is impressive to be sure, but I think he's more like #3 on the list if I'm being generous to his accomplishments.
On January 17 2024 08:05 ejozl wrote: Serral is the undisputed goat. Sc2 was at its peak level at the last blizzcon that serral won. He made it this peak, him and the guys who could challenge him. But now we have an unbalanced game and it is fair to discredit modern serral. Not because he's worse, but because the level around him fell.
I think you will find this thread as evidence that it is indeed disputed whether Serral is the goat. He won 2 world championships and a couple ESLs, which is impressive to be sure, but I think he's more like #3 on the list if I'm being generous to his accomplishments.
Depends if one factors in him being a foreigner and breaking that glass ceiling.
Which because it’s semi-normalised that folks are competing at that level I think almost goes a bit under the radar now, although at the time went massively over the radar (which I know isn’t a phrase).
It’s not a 100% direct equivalence, as (IMO for the good) the establishment of our current regional setup gave a solid transitional stage for talent to go and push on, that exists less in Korea.
But what Serral has achieved has (mostly) been against people playing in the most competitive region in the world, in very high quality training environments where you’re spending a lot of face time with other top players.
If a teamless Korean had done what Serral did I’d give them a few extra points too.
I know some make the case for Rogue but I think Serral’s higher consistency, the aforementioned and Rogue having a longer career by a decent span but (reasonably) similar accomplishments give him the edge for me.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
For me it’s less that he failed to win, but how he lost some of those in frustrating manners, if you go back and read those LR threads it’s Maru fans who are Picard facepalming more than anti-fans gloating. It’s the manner of how he lost some of these tournaments, not a ‘well the bracket opened up how didn’t he win?’
soO got something of a ‘Kong’ rep for choking which I never felt was overly fair, or a Trap to a lesser degree. Sometimes you just lose to the better opponent on the day, and Maru has plenty of those. I can’t think of too many Maru chokes, but the big standout ‘what if?’ moments of his career almost all fit a pattern of ‘why is Maru choosing to do this build when his regular style is so good’, to a baffling degree.
Again it’s splitting hairs for someone with such an illustrious career!
For me he’s a standout GOAT in a prep format, and merely one of the greats in stock weekenders and big WCs. Which overall may still have him as an overall GOAT, but there is still something of a divide. On the flip side, while not overall as good Taeja was clearly a way better weekend player than a prep one.
My personal theory, and also something I think is underlooked and underdiscussed is that prep formats are a team endeavour too. So if you have deficiencies these can be covered by your boys’ strengths. Be it grinding for that week’s Proleague, or your team helping you plan and practice for a Starleague opponent. I think part of why sOs famously dismantled him one Blizzcon was that he was better at coming up with a gameplan tailored to Maru than the reverse.
Some musicians are incredible improvisers, some have to rigidly compose everything, but they can still both be excellent
Other than this « choke », most of Maru’s losses were pretty normal during World Championships. He had losses versus Zerg when Z was super strong (vs Dark afaik, and Serral in 2022).
Have to disagree here. I still have Maru as number 1 all-time, but he's fumbled multiple world championships by specifically not playing normal games.
Too many ro4s at World Championships that ended with him throwing away 2-0 or 2-1 leads by doing builds that made every fan watching scream "Why Maru, why". There's no defence for the double factory hellbat allin vs Rogue, or the double port BC for vs Reynor (both times he was on match point playing his normal game)
Maybe it's the Prime terran inside him requiring a donation of 1 map per series doing something stupid.
Yeah, and this isn’t an argument of Serral > Maru or w/e but I really don’t much recall the former ever dropping out of a tournament and my reaction being ‘the fuck were you thinking man?!’
Can’t remember off hand exactly which Kato but there was a particularly infuriating example where Maru went full unbreakable Maru and choked Reynor out masterfully, then the next set on the best map in the pool to do that again he threw out one of his ‘reverse pocket’ builds.
Everyone makes mistakes or feels the pressure, or just isn’t 100% on it in a cutthroat game where even a little off your best you get punished. I can’t think of a really top, elite player who’s quite dropped the ball on taking a world title in quite that fashion as Maru has.
It’s frustrating because I mean he’s fucking Maru, the 4th race, whose highlight reel of pure feats of micro and multitasking is so bloody impressive and has brought joy (and pain) to many of us fans!
Idk, Serral loss at last Katowice to RagnaroK doesn't feel much better than several Maru's losses. Especially the early gg timing in g5 is reminiscent of Maru vs sOs.
And Maru vs Oliveira is supposed to be close, TIME/Oliveira can play at the same level as Clem/Maru/Cure in every match-up, but he just usually had small slip-ups / lack of consistency Him being on fire at Katowice is enough to beat every other top player
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
2018 Blizzcon, he said himself he believes he would have won if not for playing like a clown in the ro8...
Granted those are mostly throws in the ro4, but he would have been a huge favourite in all of those finals bar 2018 Katowice (Classic's PvT looked unbeatable, although Maru still swept him in GSL the following season).
Forgetting his SECOND SUPPLY DEPOT against sOs was one of the moments that convinced me there's an obvious big stage clutchness factor that's more meaningful than 23094839 data points from past results.
That game may be the very worst in the Maru catalogue. Guy didn't do one thing right all game and actually did the worst possible thing in most situations.
On January 17 2024 08:05 ejozl wrote: Serral is the undisputed goat. Sc2 was at its peak level at the last blizzcon that serral won. He made it this peak, him and the guys who could challenge him. But now we have an unbalanced game and it is fair to discredit modern serral. Not because he's worse, but because the level around him fell.
I think you will find this thread as evidence that it is indeed disputed whether Serral is the goat. He won 2 world championships and a couple ESLs, which is impressive to be sure, but I think he's more like #3 on the list if I'm being generous to his accomplishments.
But what Serral has achieved has (mostly) been against people playing in the most competitive region in the world, in very high quality training environments where you’re spending a lot of face time with other top players.
When Serral had his breakthrough, Kespa houses had disbanded long ago (except Jin Air) and koreans were just practicing from home like everyone else, so I don't see a disadvantage in the training environment for Serral here.
On January 17 2024 08:05 ejozl wrote: Serral is the undisputed goat. Sc2 was at its peak level at the last blizzcon that serral won. He made it this peak, him and the guys who could challenge him. But now we have an unbalanced game and it is fair to discredit modern serral. Not because he's worse, but because the level around him fell.
I think you will find this thread as evidence that it is indeed disputed whether Serral is the goat. He won 2 world championships and a couple ESLs, which is impressive to be sure, but I think he's more like #3 on the list if I'm being generous to his accomplishments.
But what Serral has achieved has (mostly) been against people playing in the most competitive region in the world, in very high quality training environments where you’re spending a lot of face time with other top players.
When Serral had his breakthrough, Kespa houses had disbanded long ago (except Jin Air) and koreans were just practicing from home like everyone else, so I don't see a disadvantage in the training environment for Serral here.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
2018 Blizzcon, he said himself he believes he would have won if not for playing like a clown in the ro8...
Granted those are mostly throws in the ro4, but he would have been a huge favourite in all of those finals bar 2018 Katowice (Classic's PvT looked unbeatable, although Maru still swept him in GSL the following season).
Forgetting his SECOND SUPPLY DEPOT against sOs was one of the moments that convinced me there's an obvious big stage clutchness factor that's more meaningful than 23094839 data points from past results.
Totally. There are also a lot of other examples of this with Maru, and I think it has to be factored in to any greatness analysis. To me when it comes to players that have that "X" factor, somehow Rogue felt like the most clutch player ever. I know he'd occasionally drop off, lose motivation, stop practicing, etc. but somehow when the guy got into a premier tourney finals, he almost never lost.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
2018 Blizzcon, he said himself he believes he would have won if not for playing like a clown in the ro8...
Granted those are mostly throws in the ro4, but he would have been a huge favourite in all of those finals bar 2018 Katowice (Classic's PvT looked unbeatable, although Maru still swept him in GSL the following season).
Forgetting his SECOND SUPPLY DEPOT against sOs was one of the moments that convinced me there's an obvious big stage clutchness factor that's more meaningful than 23094839 data points from past results.
Totally. There are also a lot of other examples of this with Maru, and I think it has to be factored in to any greatness analysis. To me when it comes to players that have that "X" factor, somehow Rogue felt like the most clutch player ever. I know he'd occasionally drop off, lose motivation, stop practicing, etc. but somehow when the guy got into a premier tourney finals, he almost never lost.
That is a very bad take, so you think that players playing awful series all around has less negative weight than players playing very good but having slip ups?
Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
On January 17 2024 08:05 ejozl wrote: Serral is the undisputed goat. Sc2 was at its peak level at the last blizzcon that serral won. He made it this peak, him and the guys who could challenge him. But now we have an unbalanced game and it is fair to discredit modern serral. Not because he's worse, but because the level around him fell.
I think you will find this thread as evidence that it is indeed disputed whether Serral is the goat. He won 2 world championships and a couple ESLs, which is impressive to be sure, but I think he's more like #3 on the list if I'm being generous to his accomplishments.
But what Serral has achieved has (mostly) been against people playing in the most competitive region in the world, in very high quality training environments where you’re spending a lot of face time with other top players.
When Serral had his breakthrough, Kespa houses had disbanded long ago (except Jin Air) and koreans were just practicing from home like everyone else, so I don't see a disadvantage in the training environment for Serral here.
Has no one ever told you that narrative > facts?
While that regime, and overall competitiveness have dropped, neither did the skills (and connections) imparted by those houses completely dissipate either.
It’s still a less difficult breakthrough than if they were active, absolutely but I wouldn’t say it’s something to be entirely dismissed.
Nobody’s been able to do it in Brood War at all, even now, and very few, and no Koreans have dethroned the eSF/Kespa trained in this particular era.
On January 16 2024 09:09 WombaT wrote: For me the Starleague argument has nothing to do with level of opposition, and is purely a format thing. Serral’s playing the same top Koreans at internationals at the end of the day.
But it would be interesting to see how people would adjust to the slightly different demands of a prep tournament.
The flip side of this is that a weekend gauntlet is also a format, and while he’s still got some damn good results Maru has continually flubbed in brainless manner at times in said format.
There’s a flip side to arguments against certain players and their claims that has to be considered depending on what we weight.
Its funny to me that this is the mantra we apply to Maru that we dont apply to any other player, Maru has won quite a few weekenders, WESG, supertournaments and King of battles. Its just that we expect him to win soo many more that the ones he has won feel like not enough.
Without the 9 starleagues and arguably GOAT proleague record, Maru's weekender results would make for a legendary career on their own. But still a disappointing one.
At least 5 world championships he was on track to win and threw or flubbed out of nowhere (Katowice 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023, and Blizzcon 2018). No one else has been that close to perfection and fumbled it (well soO has).
Your definition of being "on track to win" is a bit generous, isn't it? 2018 and 2023 are the only two I would truely account for that. '18 because of his GSL titles and 2023 because he was in the finals against Oliveira. But every other tournament you mentioned it wasn't like he dominated hard or was seen as the only favorite to win it. At some point, if your level is as high as Marus, people automatically expect you to win a tournament, but that doesn't mean you are the only one who should.
You can see the same with Serral: It always feels so dissappointing when he drops out in the Ro4/8, because that is just the level of respect people have. It is curious though that it feels like people never had that level of expectations for Rogue, so he never really "dissappointed"?
2018 Blizzcon, he said himself he believes he would have won if not for playing like a clown in the ro8...
Granted those are mostly throws in the ro4, but he would have been a huge favourite in all of those finals bar 2018 Katowice (Classic's PvT looked unbeatable, although Maru still swept him in GSL the following season).
Forgetting his SECOND SUPPLY DEPOT against sOs was one of the moments that convinced me there's an obvious big stage clutchness factor that's more meaningful than 23094839 data points from past results.
Totally. There are also a lot of other examples of this with Maru, and I think it has to be factored in to any greatness analysis. To me when it comes to players that have that "X" factor, somehow Rogue felt like the most clutch player ever. I know he'd occasionally drop off, lose motivation, stop practicing, etc. but somehow when the guy got into a premier tourney finals, he almost never lost.
That is a very bad take, so you think that players playing awful series all around has less negative weight than players playing very good but having slip ups?
I think the guy with the best premier tournament finals record in SC2 history, 3 world championships, and 4 GSL titles is clutch AF, yes. I did not claim that Rogue coming in clutch produced particularly inspiring StarCraft. This is not a very good or bad take, it’s so obvious I’m not sure it counts as a take at all.
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Yeah Inno’s ‘The Machine’ nickname fit him well, but fits Serral even better.
I do actually really like the lad to be fair but he reminds me a little of Novak Djokovic. Lad just wins in a brutally efficient manner, but lacks that elegant effortlessness of a Federer in his pomp.
Inno at his peak years reminds me a little of Tiger Woods in his pomp, in that he was just crushing people for a bit and that in itself was more awe-inspiring than merely winning everything. Obviously the golf crowd eventually reeled Tiger in, in the same way SC2’s top dogs closed the gap Inno’s insane mechanics initially gave him.
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
Yeah that's true, but I also think the race he plays has a big part in that. I think Zerg is the only race which can get away with just playing defensive macro every game and winning by reading the opponent correctly and shutting it down. Terran and Protoss need to mix it up and surprise the opponent, go for timings they don't expect etc. (Exception when Maru had that turtle style but that got figured out). So Serral is amazing but I don't think his playstyle which enables his incredible consistency would be possible with another race which has to be factored in.
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
I imagine the feeling of matching Happy on WC3 ladder is similar to that Sisyphus gets when he sees his boulder
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
Yeah that's true, but I also think the race he plays has a big part in that. I think Zerg is the only race which can get away with just playing defensive macro every game and winning by reading the opponent correctly and shutting it down. Terran and Protoss need to mix it up and surprise the opponent, go for timings they don't expect etc. (Exception when Maru had that turtle style but that got figured out). So Serral is amazing but I don't think his playstyle which enables his incredible consistency would be possible with another race which has to be factored in.
No, it does not need to be "factored in", because every great player in Starcraft (and Warcraft for that matter) do the great thing they do with their race. Feels like a cheap-shot to point it out for one singular player.
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
Yeah that's true, but I also think the race he plays has a big part in that. I think Zerg is the only race which can get away with just playing defensive macro every game and winning by reading the opponent correctly and shutting it down. Terran and Protoss need to mix it up and surprise the opponent, go for timings they don't expect etc. (Exception when Maru had that turtle style but that got figured out). So Serral is amazing but I don't think his playstyle which enables his incredible consistency would be possible with another race which has to be factored in.
No, it does not need to be "factored in", because every great player in Starcraft (and Warcraft for that matter) do the great thing they do with their race. Feels like a cheap-shot to point it out for one singular player.
It has to be factored in when one says "Serral is the Goat because his play feels more dominant than Marus". It doesn't devalue his achievements though ofc
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
Yeah that's true, but I also think the race he plays has a big part in that. I think Zerg is the only race which can get away with just playing defensive macro every game and winning by reading the opponent correctly and shutting it down. Terran and Protoss need to mix it up and surprise the opponent, go for timings they don't expect etc. (Exception when Maru had that turtle style but that got figured out). So Serral is amazing but I don't think his playstyle which enables his incredible consistency would be possible with another race which has to be factored in.
To a degree yeah, although I guess this extends to other races too. You can’t really brainlessly bludgeon opponents with a combination of stellar mechanics and crazy unit control with any other race other than Terran.
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
Yeah that's true, but I also think the race he plays has a big part in that. I think Zerg is the only race which can get away with just playing defensive macro every game and winning by reading the opponent correctly and shutting it down. Terran and Protoss need to mix it up and surprise the opponent, go for timings they don't expect etc. (Exception when Maru had that turtle style but that got figured out). So Serral is amazing but I don't think his playstyle which enables his incredible consistency would be possible with another race which has to be factored in.
No, it does not need to be "factored in", because every great player in Starcraft (and Warcraft for that matter) do the great thing they do with their race. Feels like a cheap-shot to point it out for one singular player.
It has to be factored in when one says "Serral is the Goat because his play feels more dominant than Marus". It doesn't devalue his achievements though ofc
It feels more dominant because he doesn’t make all too many big mistakes like, ever. It’s just relentless.
Even Dark and Rogue, Reynor have quite a lot of losses on their resumé from bad reads, bad build choices or atrocious engagements while also playing Zerg.
Serral obviously also does do such things, but they’re pretty rare, comparatively speaking.
It’s like playing a tennis player who just gets the ball back every time, or a golfer who always hits the fairways and green. Others may hit the odd more flashy shot, and they can win but beating the dude who just hits every regulation shot is pretty daunting.
I don’t know if greatest but I’d have Serral as a lock at #1 in any ‘most consistent player of all time’ list. Well, consistently good anyway!
If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
That worked for a while but then Zergs realized that they can just take the entire map and swarm with Hydra Ling Bane, so Maru went back to being aggressive. And in TvP you obviously can't play defensive
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
If I want a general to be a safe pair of hands in a theatre of war I’m going for Serral above everyone.
If I want someone to lead a borderline suicide mission with some crazy plan I’m going Maru every time.
There’s a reason you’ll read about the former only in history books and Hollywood makes films about the latter.
In the parallel universe where Serral played T he just wouldn’t do things like somehow beating big, technical Toss armies with pure MMM because doing so puts you on an absolute knife edge of execution and I mean isn’t the optimal percentage play.
And he’d be right too, but as a fan of the game it’s absolutely glorious. Like watching Byun in those games where he just pushes and drops MMM for 20 minutes and pulls it off. Is it strategically sensible to play a style where a few, sometimes only one botched engagement destroys the enter tempo-based style? I mean it really isn’t, unless you’re really deficient in other areas of the game and are a robot with insane mechanics
Why I’m a big fan of clown fiestas, I find it interesting to see a game that isn’t mapped out and optimal, and how players navigate weird atypical scenarios.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
It seems fair to me. For a while only Maru pulled off that defensive rock style at the elite level, and subsequently I’ve seen players sorta emulate it without quite his mastery, but it was a very off-meta TvZ style he perfected for a while.
Dark is probably alone with Gumiho as the most idiosyncratic player within their race’s standards who’s won big titles. Especially for the last few years where basically every Zerg plays the same way and Dark has got even more Dark. Nobody else plays roach/ravager/infestor for like 20 minutes straight, never mind actually pulling it off like Dark, who I feel is a (tad) underrated
Those players can do both aggressive games, cheese and top tier macro games, absolutely.
But Serral has (largely) played the same style for his entire span as a pro player with little deviation.
I understand today is "peak skill" in terms of raw gameplay as it should be. Players get better over time and the meta gets more and more figured out. But I don't think that makes accomplishments more valuable now.
What gets lost is that players who have played for a long time get discredited for getting ro8s/ro4s or even ro16s, because there actually were a ton of top level players. These days there are barely 32 world class players across all the regions.
Being the best player in the world when there are team houses filled with players aspiring to be the best is a bigger accomplishment and tougher feat.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
It seems fair to me. For a while only Maru pulled off that defensive rock style at the elite level, and subsequently I’ve seen players sorta emulate it without quite his mastery, but it was a very off-meta TvZ style he perfected for a while.
Dark is probably alone with Gumiho as the most idiosyncratic player within their race’s standards who’s won big titles. Especially for the last few years where basically every Zerg plays the same way and Dark has got even more Dark. Nobody else plays roach/ravager/infestor for like 20 minutes straight, never mind actually pulling it off like Dark, who I feel is a (tad) underrated
Those players can do both aggressive games, cheese and top tier macro games, absolutely.
But Serral has (largely) played the same style for his entire span as a pro player with little deviation.
I interviewed a bunch of EU pros back in 2019 for a now defunct website. Each and every one of them said a similar thing about Serral. The common thread was they all thought Serral was faster than anyone in EU (this might have changed since then, but remember at the time Serral was coming off winning Blizzcon and was dominating WCS events) and it wouldn't matter what strategies he used or what race he played. As long as he didn't somehow lose all his talent, he'd be able to leverage his scouting, micro and multitasking against anyone regardless of race.
On January 18 2024 03:40 ScrappyRabbit wrote: Serral is infuriating. He's never entered the signature SC2 tournament and his play doesn't inspire the goosebumps of someone like Maru or Inno, but he just...doesn't...lose. We've been waiting for him to get "exposed" for a half-decade but he just...keeps...beating...everybody.
Guess we're watching different games. You can take just about any one of serral's games that aren't of him just curbstomping some poor soul, and just see every moment that another player would have failed in his place over and over again.
Reynor's interview awhile back summed it up pretty nicely. When you play against him you feel just feel it. I've played against a lot of people and nothing rivals that feeling of hopelessness except for maybe matching Happy in wc3.
Also when you watch him he makes it seem effortless, and errors are very infrequent and harder to spot. On the other hand someone like Maru makes many obvious errors along with some bad/questionable decisions but he's able to overcome that with raw ability.
Yeah that's true, but I also think the race he plays has a big part in that. I think Zerg is the only race which can get away with just playing defensive macro every game and winning by reading the opponent correctly and shutting it down. Terran and Protoss need to mix it up and surprise the opponent, go for timings they don't expect etc. (Exception when Maru had that turtle style but that got figured out). So Serral is amazing but I don't think his playstyle which enables his incredible consistency would be possible with another race which has to be factored in.
No, it does not need to be "factored in", because every great player in Starcraft (and Warcraft for that matter) do the great thing they do with their race. Feels like a cheap-shot to point it out for one singular player.
It has to be factored in when one says "Serral is the Goat because his play feels more dominant than Marus". It doesn't devalue his achievements though ofc
It feels more dominant because he doesn’t make all too many big mistakes like, ever. It’s just relentless.
Even Dark and Rogue, Reynor have quite a lot of losses on their resumé from bad reads, bad build choices or atrocious engagements while also playing Zerg.
Serral obviously also does do such things, but they’re pretty rare, comparatively speaking.
It’s like playing a tennis player who just gets the ball back every time, or a golfer who always hits the fairways and green. Others may hit the odd more flashy shot, and they can win but beating the dude who just hits every regulation shot is pretty daunting.
I don’t know if greatest but I’d have Serral as a lock at #1 in any ‘most consistent player of all time’ list. Well, consistently good anyway!
I understand why people feel this way, and I kind of do too based on the feeling I get watching Serral play. But isn't Serral maybe the only GOAT contender to get 4-0'ed in grand finals multiple times? (That's a genuine question because there probably are others, I just can't think of them off the top.) There's other weird patches of streaky play too like losing to bottom seed Ragnarok in IEM Katowice and dropping out of double-elimination bracket in Euro finals that should otherwise be a lock for him. His struggle with ZvZ in my view are almost exclusively due to an over-reliance on scouting rather than "game sense", and therefore an inability to consistently read the game state properly if he isn't able to scout. That's more of a ZvZ thing than a Serral thing in my opinion, but then again he always has the option of playing PvZ instead like Reynor does sometimes I don't think any of these things take away from Serral's incredible accomplishments, nor do they mean that he's not the GOAT. And obviously all the other SC2 GOAT contenders have these kinds of weird off days and stretches of streaky play too (remember when Maru fell out of the IEM Katowice group stages??). But at least in terms of results, it's not nearly the level of consistency we saw out of, let's say, Flash, during his decade of dominance in BW. That's probably a very unfair standard to hold any SC2 player to, but at the same time, it's a standard that we know is achievable. It's possible that Serral is the most consistent player to ever play the game...like I said it kind of feels like it to me. I'd just be interested in actually seeing some data or evidence to support the claim.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
It seems fair to me. For a while only Maru pulled off that defensive rock style at the elite level, and subsequently I’ve seen players sorta emulate it without quite his mastery, but it was a very off-meta TvZ style he perfected for a while.
Dark is probably alone with Gumiho as the most idiosyncratic player within their race’s standards who’s won big titles. Especially for the last few years where basically every Zerg plays the same way and Dark has got even more Dark. Nobody else plays roach/ravager/infestor for like 20 minutes straight, never mind actually pulling it off like Dark, who I feel is a (tad) underrated
Those players can do both aggressive games, cheese and top tier macro games, absolutely.
But Serral has (largely) played the same style for his entire span as a pro player with little deviation.
I interviewed a bunch of EU pros back in 2019 for a now defunct website. Each and every one of them said a similar thing about Serral. The common thread was they all thought Serral was faster than anyone in EU (this might have changed since then, but remember at the time Serral was coming off winning Blizzcon and was dominating WCS events) and it wouldn't matter what strategies he used or what race he played. As long as he didn't somehow lose all his talent, he'd be able to leverage his scouting, micro and multitasking against anyone regardless of race.
Funnily in 2019 the meta was super zerg favored, but the finalists at BlizzCon ended up being Dark and Reynor
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
If I want a general to be a safe pair of hands in a theatre of war I’m going for Serral above everyone.
If I want someone to lead a borderline suicide mission with some crazy plan I’m going Maru every time.
There’s a reason you’ll read about the former only in history books and Hollywood makes films about the latter.
In the parallel universe where Serral played T he just wouldn’t do things like somehow beating big, technical Toss armies with pure MMM because doing so puts you on an absolute knife edge of execution and I mean isn’t the optimal percentage play.
And he’d be right too, but as a fan of the game it’s absolutely glorious. Like watching Byun in those games where he just pushes and drops MMM for 20 minutes and pulls it off. Is it strategically sensible to play a style where a few, sometimes only one botched engagement destroys the enter tempo-based style? I mean it really isn’t, unless you’re really deficient in other areas of the game and are a robot with insane mechanics
Why I’m a big fan of clown fiestas, I find it interesting to see a game that isn’t mapped out and optimal, and how players navigate weird atypical scenarios.
Yeah I remember those old days when Maru refused to build vikings and would just stim into colossus and was beating guys like rain and zest when they were the best Ps in the world. I don't even remember when that was, like 2014? It was kind of incredible to see at the time.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
It seems fair to me. For a while only Maru pulled off that defensive rock style at the elite level, and subsequently I’ve seen players sorta emulate it without quite his mastery, but it was a very off-meta TvZ style he perfected for a while.
Dark is probably alone with Gumiho as the most idiosyncratic player within their race’s standards who’s won big titles. Especially for the last few years where basically every Zerg plays the same way and Dark has got even more Dark. Nobody else plays roach/ravager/infestor for like 20 minutes straight, never mind actually pulling it off like Dark, who I feel is a (tad) underrated
Those players can do both aggressive games, cheese and top tier macro games, absolutely.
But Serral has (largely) played the same style for his entire span as a pro player with little deviation.
I interviewed a bunch of EU pros back in 2019 for a now defunct website. Each and every one of them said a similar thing about Serral. The common thread was they all thought Serral was faster than anyone in EU (this might have changed since then, but remember at the time Serral was coming off winning Blizzcon and was dominating WCS events) and it wouldn't matter what strategies he used or what race he played. As long as he didn't somehow lose all his talent, he'd be able to leverage his scouting, micro and multitasking against anyone regardless of race.
I could see him doing it with Terran, Protoss a bit less so. He’d still be bloody good but I just don’t think the race aligns with his skill set that well. Zest is probably the best example but they benefit from premeditation and less so from reactive play. The latter which I think is probably Serral’s best ability, and that he’s better at than anyone
But yeah, various Korean luminaries have also waxed lyrical about his abilities as well, and I imagine they have some insight.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
It seems fair to me. For a while only Maru pulled off that defensive rock style at the elite level, and subsequently I’ve seen players sorta emulate it without quite his mastery, but it was a very off-meta TvZ style he perfected for a while.
Dark is probably alone with Gumiho as the most idiosyncratic player within their race’s standards who’s won big titles. Especially for the last few years where basically every Zerg plays the same way and Dark has got even more Dark. Nobody else plays roach/ravager/infestor for like 20 minutes straight, never mind actually pulling it off like Dark, who I feel is a (tad) underrated
Those players can do both aggressive games, cheese and top tier macro games, absolutely.
But Serral has (largely) played the same style for his entire span as a pro player with little deviation.
I interviewed a bunch of EU pros back in 2019 for a now defunct website. Each and every one of them said a similar thing about Serral. The common thread was they all thought Serral was faster than anyone in EU (this might have changed since then, but remember at the time Serral was coming off winning Blizzcon and was dominating WCS events) and it wouldn't matter what strategies he used or what race he played. As long as he didn't somehow lose all his talent, he'd be able to leverage his scouting, micro and multitasking against anyone regardless of race.
Well it's probably expected to to talk highly about someone who beats all of you every tournament
In terms of having the best mechanics, he could easily dominate with P or T. But not to the extent he has with zerg.
The only way to win seemingly every game you play is to scout everything and play reactively. If your race is built around timings and catching people off-guard, you might win a lot of games, but you can't win them all. Artosis would say that's why protoss is great on ladder and bad at winning tournaments.
Serral figured out the perfect way to play, maybe he could do the same for P/T. But he'd end up more like INnoVation, who wins constantly if his race is even slightly favoured.
On January 19 2024 02:23 Fango wrote: If you take Starcraft as a game of who can make the fewest mistake, Serral is number 1. He dominates by scouting and reacting to everything perfectly and rarely ever makes bad decisions.
It's true that you can't play like that as zerg or terran, but that doesn't really matter, he figured out the best way to play his race. The only reason his play doesn't "inspire goosebumps" is because he plays reactively where Maru or Dark mostly win by aggression and play off-meta.
What is this cooked Take? While Maru won alot of Aggression at Times where He didnt See a good way to win the lategames, He shines in ultra Long macro Games Just as Well when He is playing for it. Dark is the Same as in He Has shown that He can do both very Well.
It seems fair to me. For a while only Maru pulled off that defensive rock style at the elite level, and subsequently I’ve seen players sorta emulate it without quite his mastery, but it was a very off-meta TvZ style he perfected for a while.
Dark is probably alone with Gumiho as the most idiosyncratic player within their race’s standards who’s won big titles. Especially for the last few years where basically every Zerg plays the same way and Dark has got even more Dark. Nobody else plays roach/ravager/infestor for like 20 minutes straight, never mind actually pulling it off like Dark, who I feel is a (tad) underrated
Those players can do both aggressive games, cheese and top tier macro games, absolutely.
But Serral has (largely) played the same style for his entire span as a pro player with little deviation.
I interviewed a bunch of EU pros back in 2019 for a now defunct website. Each and every one of them said a similar thing about Serral. The common thread was they all thought Serral was faster than anyone in EU (this might have changed since then, but remember at the time Serral was coming off winning Blizzcon and was dominating WCS events) and it wouldn't matter what strategies he used or what race he played. As long as he didn't somehow lose all his talent, he'd be able to leverage his scouting, micro and multitasking against anyone regardless of race.
Well it's probably expected to to talk highly about someone who beats all of you every tournament
In terms of having the best mechanics, he could easily dominate with P or T. But not to the extent he has with zerg.
The only way to win seemingly every game you play is to scout everything and play reactively. If your race is built around timings and catching people off-guard, you might win a lot of games, but you can't win them all. Artosis would say that's why protoss is great on ladder and bad at winning tournaments.
Serral figured out the perfect way to play, maybe he could do the same for P/T. But he'd end up more like INnoVation, who wins constantly if his race is even slightly favoured.
My fiance and I met up with soO for lunch when I was in Korea and we talked about this project. I'll reveal his thoughts on the greatest players at the end.
I'm actually really interested to see if SoO makes this list--kind of crazy to think that a handful of games flipped the other way could have elevated him to the top.
As Char mentioned, I don't think SC2 truly has a clear-cut GOAT so it often distills down to preference. I do think it's pretty clear that Maru, Serral and Rogue are a level above the rest, and they all had chances to clinch a stronger hold on the claim. Serral losing to SoO at Katowice or Inno at WESG, Maru to Oliveria, etc. Rogue is easily the best tournament player/strategist and might have the grandest accomplishments of anyone, but his play never inspired me the way that Serral's or Dark's does. So like I said, preference.
On January 19 2024 06:53 Glorfindelio wrote: I'm actually really interested to see if SoO makes this list--kind of crazy to think that a handful of games flipped the other way could have elevated him to the top.
As Char mentioned, I don't think SC2 truly has a clear-cut GOAT so it often distills down to preference. I do think it's pretty clear that Maru, Serral and Rogue are a level above the rest, and they all had chances to clinch a stronger hold on the claim. Serral losing to SoO at Katowice or Inno at WESG, Maru to Oliveria, etc. Rogue is easily the best tournament player/strategist and might have the grandest accomplishments of anyone, but his play never inspired me the way that Serral's or Dark's does. So like I said, preference.
Given the criteria, I am pretty sure he makes the list
On January 19 2024 06:53 Glorfindelio wrote: I'm actually really interested to see if SoO makes this list--kind of crazy to think that a handful of games flipped the other way could have elevated him to the top.
As Char mentioned, I don't think SC2 truly has a clear-cut GOAT so it often distills down to preference. I do think it's pretty clear that Maru, Serral and Rogue are a level above the rest, and they all had chances to clinch a stronger hold on the claim. Serral losing to SoO at Katowice or Inno at WESG, Maru to Oliveria, etc. Rogue is easily the best tournament player/strategist and might have the grandest accomplishments of anyone, but his play never inspired me the way that Serral's or Dark's does. So like I said, preference.
Given the criteria, I am pretty sure he makes the list
One interesting thing about the criteria is that Rain ended up in the same slot on stuchiu's 2015 list as Miz's 2024 list (#10). On the one hand, that's not all that surprising because their criteria don't seem dramatically different. On the other hand, given that a few additional GOATs have emerged since the original list was constructed, I'm curious which of the other 2015 list top 10 GOATs will make it on here since there's not room for all of them. For those who don't make it, it would be interesting to hear why, and more generally an explanation of what it is that is different in the criteria if that's a factor in excluding some of the 2015 GOATs. FWIW, I believe the 2015 list was constructed before Rain's best 2015 results came in, which begs the question of where stichiu would have put him if those results had been factored in (and also demonstrates the limits of doing these lists when players are still crushing).
On January 19 2024 06:53 Glorfindelio wrote: I'm actually really interested to see if SoO makes this list--kind of crazy to think that a handful of games flipped the other way could have elevated him to the top.
As Char mentioned, I don't think SC2 truly has a clear-cut GOAT so it often distills down to preference. I do think it's pretty clear that Maru, Serral and Rogue are a level above the rest, and they all had chances to clinch a stronger hold on the claim. Serral losing to SoO at Katowice or Inno at WESG, Maru to Oliveria, etc. Rogue is easily the best tournament player/strategist and might have the grandest accomplishments of anyone, but his play never inspired me the way that Serral's or Dark's does. So like I said, preference.
Given the criteria, I am pretty sure he makes the list
One interesting thing about the criteria is that Rain ended up in the same slot on stuchiu's 2015 list as Miz's 2024 list (#10). On the one hand, that's not all that surprising because their criteria don't seem dramatically different. On the other hand, given that a few additional GOATs have emerged since the original list was constructed, I'm curious which of the other 2015 list top 10 GOATs will make it on here since there's not room for all of them. For those who don't make it, it would be interesting to hear why, and more generally an explanation of what it is that is different in the criteria if that's a factor in excluding some of the 2015 GOATs. FWIW, I believe the 2015 list was constructed before Rain's best 2015 results came in, which begs the question of where stichiu would have put him if those results had been factored in (and also demonstrates the limits of doing these lists when players are still crushing).
My reasons for having Rain at 10 are very different than Stuchiu's. He focused more on Rain's influence on PvP and his tournament runs (which are strong points!), but I wanted to avoid grading tournaments like he did and opted to use other statistics. I have Rain 10 because his numbers hold against anyone who was active in hots both in tournament finishes and overall win rate (Stuchiu did not prioritize win rate like I did).
It is, however, very amusing that Rain somehow ended up 10 both times as I completely had forgotten Stuchui ranked him there.
Btw saying the general public overvalues first place finishes, because it's all they remember doesn't make much sense, if you at the same time try to put value by the prestige of a tournament. It should either be cold facts: how open was the tournament for every pro to try and qualify, how high is the prize pool, how expansive was the tournament and maybe other factors. And then you value the statistics of the players and so fourth. But if you go by, this tournament is well remembered, it has a long history, it was called a world championship, then you should also go by that the finals is what counts, it's the culmination and the winning player should reap most of the tournaments worth.
Shouldn't WCS Korean Nationals from 2012 be part of StarLeague category? It was not weekly tournament - less then a month though and arguably not on par with contemporary GSL in terms of prize pool but it was still significant and top players took it seriously (because it gave a ticket to trash foreigners at WCS World Championship) so in my mind it should count.
EPT![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/GOAT2024/kespamlg1.jpg)
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/GOAT2024/mlgforeigners.jpg)
But I basically think the premier Korean individual leagues should be given more weight than the world championship-tier events through maybe 2020 (perhaps even later), when Clem began dominating, and several global champion-tier Korean players began going into military service or retiring (Soo, Innovation, TY, Zest, Classic, Rogue, Stats, Hero, SOS, PartinG, Byun, etc.). While it's true that by 2019, GSL did not include Reynor and Serral, the world championships often included players like Special, Elazer, Scarlett, Showtime, Heromarine, Nerchio, Kelazhur, etc. and excluded many of the above-named Korean champion-tier players. Remember that Rogue barely qualified for the 2017 global finals to win his first global championship, but he and many of the Korean players that didn't even qualify were clearly championship-tier players literally and figuratively in a different league than almost every foreign player. Special made top 4 at global finals that year...not sure how many GSL top 4s Special has in all his tries, but I'd be surprised if it's more than zero (not knocking Special, the point is that GSL is TOUGH). 
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2016 KeSPA Cup
