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On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:
Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player.
How is Maru "the best performing Starleague player" in HotS? He didn't reach the finals of GSL once in HotS (Innovation did it thrice, winning two) and "only" won SSL and OSL once each of course, but at best that puts him besides Innovation and definetly doesn't "outperform his race" with that.
He even missed out on two of the three WCS Finals that took place in HotS, showing that he didn't accumulate enough points - Innovation qualified for all three.
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On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 10:03 RPR_Tempest wrote:
Yeah TaeJa was definitely considered above Maru in HotS. People were considering TaeJa to be the greatest international tournament player ever. People scoffed at how high he was on that initial TL list, but it's not like he was way off.
Maru was acknowledged as a tremendous player, but at the time TaeJa was definitely the more popular/one considered better. I don't think anyone would argue that Maru was a better player in Korea, but they had different specialties, and TaeJa happened to be much, much better at his particular specialty than Maru was at his. Taeja was more popular because he played in international events. Maru almost never did, he would make like 1 international appearance a year. The bias was huge, if you ever went back and watched the Maru vs Life IEM finals, the casters genuinely speak about Maru as if he's some new kid just breaking out, despite him being the best terran in Korea for the last 2 years. Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player. Taeja was, in retrospect, overrated. At least if we're being HotS specific. Most of his wins were Dreamhacks and a couple Homestory Cups, nothing close to Starleagues. He never played in Proleague, didn't do much for the entire year of 2015 (and 2016), and he would bomb in the GSLs that he competed in. He was a tremendous player in international events, but everyone remembers his highlight games against INno or Zest, while ignoring that they performed several times better, for longer, in the more cutthroat region. Taeja's speciality was smaller weekend events, but those really weren't the priority for anyone playing in Kespa. It was Proleague first, and then individual leagues. International fans never seemed to grasp that. It's not like Taeja was winning the World Championship events either like sOs did, he was mostly a menace in B tier tournaments.
Starleagues/Proleague definitely were the most famed traditionally (other than WC), but even if Taeja's weekender tournaments are smaller each, he still won so many of them that he made more money from those weekend tournaments than Innovation did his Starleague tournaments in HotS, and Taeja made more than 2x the amount as Maru made in Starleague tournaments in HotS. I think that has to be considered because prize money is a big metric. Who is the winner, the one who won more money or the one who won more fame according to traditional KR standards? It's definitely a preference thing, but I think it's probably roughly equivalent if we're asking what players care most about.
(Players like MC wanting to compete in EU, Life wanting to compete more internationally like Taeja, Polt wanting to compete in AM. The scene was all over the place, and while traditional SC fans value KR starleagues the most, there were definitely a lot of global fans who didn't care and didn't value their region's tournaments as less).
Also stuff like Slayers preparing a secret build (BFH drop TvZ) for MLG Anaheim, a T2 event with much less prize pool than GSL at the time, evidences that KRs still took international weekender events serious enough to prepare and reveal secret builds for, instead of saving them for KR tournaments.
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On February 19 2024 13:10 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:
Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player.
How is Maru "the best performing Starleague player" in HotS? He didn't reach the finals of GSL once in HotS (Innovation did it thrice, winning two) and "only" won SSL and OSL once each of course, but at best that puts him besides Innovation and definetly doesn't "outperform his race" with that. He even missed out on two of the three WCS Finals that took place in HotS, showing that he didn't accumulate enough points - Innovation qualified for all three.
In terms of wins, Maru, INno, and Classic all won 2 Starleagues.
And if you go season by season, Maru was much more consistent, he did better than of both of them in more seasons than they did to him by like a 2:1 ratio. So yeah, it's completely reasonable to say he was the best Starleague player. At the very worst, he was on par with INno/soO/Rain/anyone else you want to throw in there.
As for outperforming his race, why do you think he got nicknamed "The Fourth Race" back in 2014? No one in SC2 history stood up to rough balance the way Maru did. Not only was he making back-to-back GSL playoffs as the only terran, but some of those seasons only 2 others would even make ro32. He almost won a GSL when terran was dead, if not for Classic's surprise phoenix shenanigans.
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Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do.
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Charoisaur, thanks for going into detail; that is what I thought we were talking about but I just really wanted someone to be explicit about it.
On February 18 2024 21:40 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 10:25 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 09:34 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 09:14 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 08:02 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 07:06 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 07:00 CerebrateHector wrote:There can’t be a consensus GOAT in sc2 Because people cant be objective, but he is the GOAT, period. Objective how? The scene isn’t as strong as it was at its peak, hasn’t been for a long time.In BW it’s pretty easy, they had roughly the same structure for fucking forever and Flash outdid everyone, he’s a pretty clear GOAT SC2 doesn’t really have that. What do you mean when you say this? People say this often enough that it's essentially a truism but I don't know what anyone means when they say it beyond "some of the top players are the same people, they are older than they were, and their mechanics are worse to some degree due to aging and less practice," but that can't be the only thing we're talking about. Speaking of Flash, I recall reading or hearing (it may have been mentioned during ASL commentary, but I don't recall) that he'd claimed that if he knew then that he knows now he would have won everything. It's harder to make that kind of claim in SC2, of course, because SC2 changes so much more. But I know a similar discussion about a decline in mechanical ability has taken place in the post-KeSPA era of BW. It's just harder to take that long term perspective in SC2 because if you say "Flash in 2018 knew so much more about BW than he did in 2011" it's comparing his knowledge of the same thing at two different points in time, whereas if you said "Maru in 2023 was more knowledgeable about LotV than he was about HotS in 2015", that might be true but it's still not comparing like to like. I meant what I said. Flash was so fucking good at BW be made a Ro4 playing random The issue isn’t pure skill level, it’s competition. What do you mean by competition? That there were more real contenders for winning top tournaments? That the top tier of players had more players within that tier? Or something different? Flash is the (bar insanity) BW Goat because he hit levels nobody else did, in a game whose broad structure didn’t change appreciably You can compare say, Boxer to him quite easily. They played the same tournaments, literally no non-Korean was even top 50 in the world. Strareagues and Proleagues were where it’s at. How do you compare Serral’s achievements to peak HoTS? I mean I don’t think you can. I think Serral still might be the GOAT nonetheless, but the scene has shifted so much there’s no really some easy comparable baseline BW basically had the same structure and depth throughout, it’s a lot easier to compare. Were Boxer and Nada and oov GOAT candidate monsters? Sure. Did Flash outdo them in basically every metric point with a similar tourney structure? Yeah. I know all that; I'm actually much more familiar with BW circa 2003–2012 than I am with SC2, where I'm basically a total dilettante. But I get the point you are making: because the structure remained consistent throughout its lifetime it's easier to make comparisons of players throughout the history of the game's competitive life. Makes perfect sense, I agree, and I made a related point earlier (in addition to the same tournaments it was also the exact same game). So yeah I get why Flash being the consensus goat there makes sense and is a straightforward and easy question. And I agree that there isn't an easy comparable baseline for Serral's performance today. I still don't know what you mean specifically in the context of SC2 when you say "the scene isn't as strong." You said the question here was "competition" rather than "pure skill", but I still don't know how you are defining that. It feels like you think it is self-evident ("I meant what I said") but it's not to me, or else I wouldn't be asking about it. I'm not doing it be annoying. On February 18 2024 10:04 UnLarva wrote:
There are several things that truly make [insert lovehate word here] comparisons like comparing apples to oranges, even I can see through to the problem's nature. However, it also seems to me that when these apples-to-orange comparisons are made anyway, apple-side tend to go blind at the end of apple-era, not seeing or wanting to see that there was and still is an orange that dominated those apple-era lovehate apples of the Appleland. They are same apples of apple-era that are now routinely decimated by that orange, that one who also demonstrated to other oranges from a orange county that it is indeed possible to hang with the apples in a same basket and even lay on a top them most of the time.
The Ultimate, extreme Orange had almost nothing of those benefits most of Apples had in their baskets during the apple-era, and still that Orange managed to bounce in and dominate. Maybe it is so that the basketfull of apples have been slowly rotting and diminishing in their numbers, but it is still counter-intuitive why they cannot contain the process and resist more strongly the domination of The Ultimate Orange and his orange pals.
That must count for something too in these apples-to-oranges comparisons. That is also reason why many lovehate'd the Ultimate Orange. Superior to both the Ultimate Orange and Apple is the superior Sumo Citrus, the greatest citrus fruit of all time. (GCFOAT) Char summed it up pretty well. For me I don’t really count it against Serral as some might, it is just a case of genuinely struggling to make a comparison. I do think, unlike some that peak Serral and a few other folks have played even better Starcraft than we’d ever seen before. The peak is higher, the depth overall and especially at the ‘S/A’ tier has dropped from Korean retirements/slumps. The foreign scene is definitely stronger, would be my read on it
This is how I think of it¹. And it definitely makes the argument more complicated. You could emphasize the fact that less depth does mean that a person might get a pass on their off days by facing someone who can't beat you anyway; you could also emphasize the fact that a higher peak means that actually beating, say, ranks 2–5 consistently is more of a feat than ever.
I tend to emphasize the difficulty at the top in the way I think about it. At a certain level of dominance—say, Flash in BW in 2009–11— he's got like an 80-90+% win rate over a lot of people with just a smattering of people where he's at low-50 (maybe high-40s, I can't remember without checking. I thought maybe skyhigh but that was 3-3 at the end) to low-60s win-rate that drag the average down to low-70s). Even with all that competitive depth the only people who were actually relevant to his chances of winning in single leagues were a handful of players. Everyone else was essentially fodder; the depth didn't actually matter for him that way it absolutely mattered for someone trying to qualify for their first OSL.
I don't think Serral is at that level of dominance, but it feels (and this is just a feeling, maybe it's baseless) that he's reaching a similar point where most of the field is similarly irrelevant to his chances and only a handful of people really matter. The real question is if you think that would still be true if he were facing as competitive field, and how you answer that question says a lot about what you think of his current run.
¹ Of course, if the people who insist that players are worse than they were before are correct, then the whole argument is moot. But I don't see it that way
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Northern Ireland26541 Posts
On February 19 2024 13:14 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:On February 19 2024 10:03 RPR_Tempest wrote:
Yeah TaeJa was definitely considered above Maru in HotS. People were considering TaeJa to be the greatest international tournament player ever. People scoffed at how high he was on that initial TL list, but it's not like he was way off.
Maru was acknowledged as a tremendous player, but at the time TaeJa was definitely the more popular/one considered better. I don't think anyone would argue that Maru was a better player in Korea, but they had different specialties, and TaeJa happened to be much, much better at his particular specialty than Maru was at his. Taeja was more popular because he played in international events. Maru almost never did, he would make like 1 international appearance a year. The bias was huge, if you ever went back and watched the Maru vs Life IEM finals, the casters genuinely speak about Maru as if he's some new kid just breaking out, despite him being the best terran in Korea for the last 2 years. Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player. Taeja was, in retrospect, overrated. At least if we're being HotS specific. Most of his wins were Dreamhacks and a couple Homestory Cups, nothing close to Starleagues. He never played in Proleague, didn't do much for the entire year of 2015 (and 2016), and he would bomb in the GSLs that he competed in. He was a tremendous player in international events, but everyone remembers his highlight games against INno or Zest, while ignoring that they performed several times better, for longer, in the more cutthroat region. Taeja's speciality was smaller weekend events, but those really weren't the priority for anyone playing in Kespa. It was Proleague first, and then individual leagues. International fans never seemed to grasp that. It's not like Taeja was winning the World Championship events either like sOs did, he was mostly a menace in B tier tournaments. Starleagues/Proleague definitely were the most famed traditionally (other than WC), but even if Taeja's weekender tournaments are smaller each, he still won so many of them that he made more money from those weekend tournaments than Innovation did his Starleague tournaments in HotS, and Taeja made more than 2x the amount as Maru made in Starleague tournaments in HotS. I think that has to be considered because prize money is a big metric. Who is the winner, the one who won more money or the one who won more fame according to traditional KR standards? It's definitely a preference thing, but I think it's probably roughly equivalent if we're asking what players care most about. (Players like MC wanting to compete in EU, Life wanting to compete more internationally like Taeja, Polt wanting to compete in AM. The scene was all over the place, and while traditional SC fans value KR starleagues the most, there were definitely a lot of global fans who didn't care and didn't value their region's tournaments as less). Also stuff like Slayers preparing a secret build (BFH drop TvZ) for MLG Anaheim, a T2 event with much less prize pool than GSL at the time, evidences that KRs still took international weekender events serious enough to prepare and reveal secret builds for, instead of saving them for KR tournaments.
Some of those early weekenders were absolutely huge hype trains. When foreign fans got to see these Korean legends show up, and Korean players got to meet said fans and play in new locales.
I really think it was a mistake even then, and certainly in retrospect when Kespa came along especially that the scene didn’t have a better coordinated calendar. Transplanting Proleague over from a one nation scene where you’re the only gig in town pro gaming wise, without adjustments to it really, to a scene where it’s international and indeed this particular iteration of SC2 was bigger internationally than in Korea, which was an inversion.
When push comes to shove, Proleague was the prestige gig where players earned their salaries. If there’s a big match coming up, well you’re practicing for that rather than a GSL match, and forget travelling to an international tourney if there’s a clash.
Not being critical of Kespa in particular, but across the board. I mean SC2 I think thrived most because there was an openness to the whole thing, an intermingling of scenes. We had foreign participants and English casters from the off in GSL, eSF/GSL sending the crème de la creme of their talent to MLGs, the mighty Mvp, the notorious Nestea and a certain Toss who was most certainly Boss. You had new innovations like streaming and people getting to interact with their fans while showing their dazzling chops.
I think all the formats have their place. The preparation and genuine team play and planning of Proleague, and the chance to root for an actual team in direct competition with one another, versus merely being the jersey your favourite players where. The longer, drawn out unfurling of that season’s GSL narratives, and a weekender where 50 stories are born and die as we all argue on LR threads.
But come this time, that openness was less of a thing, the scene was getting more fragmented. I enjoyed Proleague but it was a very closed shop structurally. Nothing wrong with that inherently, but it started having a knock-on effect to the wider calendar by its existence and it being prioritised. Again, this is a wider failing of various orgs not coordinating, not Kespa in particularly.
You end up with Koreans splitting into native and ‘foreign’ Koreans, the fields at theoretically equivalent weekenders vary wildly, it starts to become a bit of a mess.
Partisanship and truly fanatic fanboys aside, I think all people really want is for all this to be in better sync, with a smattering of different, top-level tournaments, the big boys going it at it at international weekenders more often, and possibly some meaningful regional competition too. Did I enjoy seeing Maru play in Proleague and Starleagues, I mean sure most fans should, but would have been cool to see him rock up at a Dreamhack type event too.
While I obviously think SC2 would have seen some decline at some stage, the collective really did keep messing up the calendar for a year and it really didn’t help.
A Starleague, ideally 2 for Korea. Proleague, and the top dogs are free for internationals. Your classic weekenders and some form of a foreigner circuit for that scene to build (I think they nailed it recently in that regard). Plus your WC type events.
Hindsight is of course 20/20, but plenty of that was obviously an issue at the time
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France12911 Posts
On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do.
I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV
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Northern Ireland26541 Posts
On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV
Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already.
It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ
Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
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On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
Yeah I think there's some truth to this, I especially remember Maru struggling vs Mech in mid-late 2015 as he refused to play it himself and often ran against a wall against the likes of Inno or Flash
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On February 19 2024 15:41 Mumei wrote:Charoisaur, thanks for going into detail; that is what I thought we were talking about but I just really wanted someone to be explicit about it. Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 21:40 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 10:25 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 09:34 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 09:14 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 08:02 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 07:06 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 07:00 CerebrateHector wrote:There can’t be a consensus GOAT in sc2 Because people cant be objective, but he is the GOAT, period. Objective how? The scene isn’t as strong as it was at its peak, hasn’t been for a long time.In BW it’s pretty easy, they had roughly the same structure for fucking forever and Flash outdid everyone, he’s a pretty clear GOAT SC2 doesn’t really have that. What do you mean when you say this? People say this often enough that it's essentially a truism but I don't know what anyone means when they say it beyond "some of the top players are the same people, they are older than they were, and their mechanics are worse to some degree due to aging and less practice," but that can't be the only thing we're talking about. Speaking of Flash, I recall reading or hearing (it may have been mentioned during ASL commentary, but I don't recall) that he'd claimed that if he knew then that he knows now he would have won everything. It's harder to make that kind of claim in SC2, of course, because SC2 changes so much more. But I know a similar discussion about a decline in mechanical ability has taken place in the post-KeSPA era of BW. It's just harder to take that long term perspective in SC2 because if you say "Flash in 2018 knew so much more about BW than he did in 2011" it's comparing his knowledge of the same thing at two different points in time, whereas if you said "Maru in 2023 was more knowledgeable about LotV than he was about HotS in 2015", that might be true but it's still not comparing like to like. I meant what I said. Flash was so fucking good at BW be made a Ro4 playing random The issue isn’t pure skill level, it’s competition. What do you mean by competition? That there were more real contenders for winning top tournaments? That the top tier of players had more players within that tier? Or something different? Flash is the (bar insanity) BW Goat because he hit levels nobody else did, in a game whose broad structure didn’t change appreciably You can compare say, Boxer to him quite easily. They played the same tournaments, literally no non-Korean was even top 50 in the world. Strareagues and Proleagues were where it’s at. How do you compare Serral’s achievements to peak HoTS? I mean I don’t think you can. I think Serral still might be the GOAT nonetheless, but the scene has shifted so much there’s no really some easy comparable baseline BW basically had the same structure and depth throughout, it’s a lot easier to compare. Were Boxer and Nada and oov GOAT candidate monsters? Sure. Did Flash outdo them in basically every metric point with a similar tourney structure? Yeah. I know all that; I'm actually much more familiar with BW circa 2003–2012 than I am with SC2, where I'm basically a total dilettante. But I get the point you are making: because the structure remained consistent throughout its lifetime it's easier to make comparisons of players throughout the history of the game's competitive life. Makes perfect sense, I agree, and I made a related point earlier (in addition to the same tournaments it was also the exact same game). So yeah I get why Flash being the consensus goat there makes sense and is a straightforward and easy question. And I agree that there isn't an easy comparable baseline for Serral's performance today. I still don't know what you mean specifically in the context of SC2 when you say "the scene isn't as strong." You said the question here was "competition" rather than "pure skill", but I still don't know how you are defining that. It feels like you think it is self-evident ("I meant what I said") but it's not to me, or else I wouldn't be asking about it. I'm not doing it be annoying. On February 18 2024 10:04 UnLarva wrote:
There are several things that truly make [insert lovehate word here] comparisons like comparing apples to oranges, even I can see through to the problem's nature. However, it also seems to me that when these apples-to-orange comparisons are made anyway, apple-side tend to go blind at the end of apple-era, not seeing or wanting to see that there was and still is an orange that dominated those apple-era lovehate apples of the Appleland. They are same apples of apple-era that are now routinely decimated by that orange, that one who also demonstrated to other oranges from a orange county that it is indeed possible to hang with the apples in a same basket and even lay on a top them most of the time.
The Ultimate, extreme Orange had almost nothing of those benefits most of Apples had in their baskets during the apple-era, and still that Orange managed to bounce in and dominate. Maybe it is so that the basketfull of apples have been slowly rotting and diminishing in their numbers, but it is still counter-intuitive why they cannot contain the process and resist more strongly the domination of The Ultimate Orange and his orange pals.
That must count for something too in these apples-to-oranges comparisons. That is also reason why many lovehate'd the Ultimate Orange. Superior to both the Ultimate Orange and Apple is the superior Sumo Citrus, the greatest citrus fruit of all time. (GCFOAT) Char summed it up pretty well. For me I don’t really count it against Serral as some might, it is just a case of genuinely struggling to make a comparison. I do think, unlike some that peak Serral and a few other folks have played even better Starcraft than we’d ever seen before. The peak is higher, the depth overall and especially at the ‘S/A’ tier has dropped from Korean retirements/slumps. The foreign scene is definitely stronger, would be my read on it This is how I think of it¹. And it definitely makes the argument more complicated. You could emphasize the fact that less depth does mean that a person might get a pass on their off days by facing someone who can't beat you anyway; you could also emphasize the fact that a higher peak means that actually beating, say, ranks 2–5 consistently is more of a feat than ever. I tend to emphasize the difficulty at the top in the way I think about it. At a certain level of dominance—say, Flash in BW in 2009–11— he's got like an 80-90+% win rate over a lot of people with just a smattering of people where he's at low-50 (maybe high-40s, I can't remember without checking. I thought maybe skyhigh but that was 3-3 at the end) to low-60s win-rate that drag the average down to low-70s). Even with all that competitive depth the only people who were actually relevant to his chances of winning in single leagues were a handful of players. Everyone else was essentially fodder; the depth didn't actually matter for him that way it absolutely mattered for someone trying to qualify for their first OSL. I don't think Serral is at that level of dominance, but it feels (and this is just a feeling, maybe it's baseless) that he's reaching a similar point where most of the field is similarly irrelevant to his chances and only a handful of people really matter. The real question is if you think that would still be true if he were facing as competitive field, and how you answer that question says a lot about what you think of his current run. ¹ Of course, if the people who insist that players are worse than they were before are correct, then the whole argument is moot. But I don't see it that way
The "handful" number of top tier players that could threaten him has also decreased though. We didn't only lose mid-tier players but also real championship contenders like Rogue, Inno, Stats, TY.
How many real championship contenders are left now, maybe 5?
5 years ago as well as in Flash's bw era the number of fellow championship contenders was much higher
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United States1919 Posts
On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable.
The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5.
More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively.
So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc).
But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid.
So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history.
So that's my case, but now some meandering notions...
The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then.
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On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
INno being untouchable when terran was good and Maru being transcendent when terran was bad is a weird thing to try and explain
Was Maru really just vulnerable in TvT? Similarly, Serral surprisingly didn't dominate 2019 when zerg was imba because he kept losing in the mirror (he lost Katowice, Blizzcon, and two WCS events to ZvZ). Maybe mirrors are just more figured out than the other matchups, such that the best players can't always distinguish themselves.
But I think in Maru's case it was also down to playstyle. INno played the absolute standard meta, whatever build had the highest % to win he could play it to perfection, and would hence win the highest % of games. But when terran sucked, that meant playing the meta build was probably not gonna work out.
On the other hand, Maru marched to the beat of his own drum, he played so different to everyone else that it didn't matter if the race was generally behind in the meta. He embodied "The Fourth Race".
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Northern Ireland26541 Posts
On February 20 2024 03:25 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 15:41 Mumei wrote:Charoisaur, thanks for going into detail; that is what I thought we were talking about but I just really wanted someone to be explicit about it. On February 18 2024 21:40 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 10:25 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 09:34 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 09:14 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 08:02 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 07:06 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 07:00 CerebrateHector wrote:
[quote]
Because people cant be objective, but he is the GOAT, period. Objective how? The scene isn’t as strong as it was at its peak, hasn’t been for a long time.In BW it’s pretty easy, they had roughly the same structure for fucking forever and Flash outdid everyone, he’s a pretty clear GOAT SC2 doesn’t really have that. What do you mean when you say this? People say this often enough that it's essentially a truism but I don't know what anyone means when they say it beyond "some of the top players are the same people, they are older than they were, and their mechanics are worse to some degree due to aging and less practice," but that can't be the only thing we're talking about. Speaking of Flash, I recall reading or hearing (it may have been mentioned during ASL commentary, but I don't recall) that he'd claimed that if he knew then that he knows now he would have won everything. It's harder to make that kind of claim in SC2, of course, because SC2 changes so much more. But I know a similar discussion about a decline in mechanical ability has taken place in the post-KeSPA era of BW. It's just harder to take that long term perspective in SC2 because if you say "Flash in 2018 knew so much more about BW than he did in 2011" it's comparing his knowledge of the same thing at two different points in time, whereas if you said "Maru in 2023 was more knowledgeable about LotV than he was about HotS in 2015", that might be true but it's still not comparing like to like. I meant what I said. Flash was so fucking good at BW be made a Ro4 playing random The issue isn’t pure skill level, it’s competition. What do you mean by competition? That there were more real contenders for winning top tournaments? That the top tier of players had more players within that tier? Or something different? Flash is the (bar insanity) BW Goat because he hit levels nobody else did, in a game whose broad structure didn’t change appreciably You can compare say, Boxer to him quite easily. They played the same tournaments, literally no non-Korean was even top 50 in the world. Strareagues and Proleagues were where it’s at. How do you compare Serral’s achievements to peak HoTS? I mean I don’t think you can. I think Serral still might be the GOAT nonetheless, but the scene has shifted so much there’s no really some easy comparable baseline BW basically had the same structure and depth throughout, it’s a lot easier to compare. Were Boxer and Nada and oov GOAT candidate monsters? Sure. Did Flash outdo them in basically every metric point with a similar tourney structure? Yeah. I know all that; I'm actually much more familiar with BW circa 2003–2012 than I am with SC2, where I'm basically a total dilettante. But I get the point you are making: because the structure remained consistent throughout its lifetime it's easier to make comparisons of players throughout the history of the game's competitive life. Makes perfect sense, I agree, and I made a related point earlier (in addition to the same tournaments it was also the exact same game). So yeah I get why Flash being the consensus goat there makes sense and is a straightforward and easy question. And I agree that there isn't an easy comparable baseline for Serral's performance today. I still don't know what you mean specifically in the context of SC2 when you say "the scene isn't as strong." You said the question here was "competition" rather than "pure skill", but I still don't know how you are defining that. It feels like you think it is self-evident ("I meant what I said") but it's not to me, or else I wouldn't be asking about it. I'm not doing it be annoying. On February 18 2024 10:04 UnLarva wrote:
There are several things that truly make [insert lovehate word here] comparisons like comparing apples to oranges, even I can see through to the problem's nature. However, it also seems to me that when these apples-to-orange comparisons are made anyway, apple-side tend to go blind at the end of apple-era, not seeing or wanting to see that there was and still is an orange that dominated those apple-era lovehate apples of the Appleland. They are same apples of apple-era that are now routinely decimated by that orange, that one who also demonstrated to other oranges from a orange county that it is indeed possible to hang with the apples in a same basket and even lay on a top them most of the time.
The Ultimate, extreme Orange had almost nothing of those benefits most of Apples had in their baskets during the apple-era, and still that Orange managed to bounce in and dominate. Maybe it is so that the basketfull of apples have been slowly rotting and diminishing in their numbers, but it is still counter-intuitive why they cannot contain the process and resist more strongly the domination of The Ultimate Orange and his orange pals.
That must count for something too in these apples-to-oranges comparisons. That is also reason why many lovehate'd the Ultimate Orange. Superior to both the Ultimate Orange and Apple is the superior Sumo Citrus, the greatest citrus fruit of all time. (GCFOAT) Char summed it up pretty well. For me I don’t really count it against Serral as some might, it is just a case of genuinely struggling to make a comparison. I do think, unlike some that peak Serral and a few other folks have played even better Starcraft than we’d ever seen before. The peak is higher, the depth overall and especially at the ‘S/A’ tier has dropped from Korean retirements/slumps. The foreign scene is definitely stronger, would be my read on it This is how I think of it¹. And it definitely makes the argument more complicated. You could emphasize the fact that less depth does mean that a person might get a pass on their off days by facing someone who can't beat you anyway; you could also emphasize the fact that a higher peak means that actually beating, say, ranks 2–5 consistently is more of a feat than ever. I tend to emphasize the difficulty at the top in the way I think about it. At a certain level of dominance—say, Flash in BW in 2009–11— he's got like an 80-90+% win rate over a lot of people with just a smattering of people where he's at low-50 (maybe high-40s, I can't remember without checking. I thought maybe skyhigh but that was 3-3 at the end) to low-60s win-rate that drag the average down to low-70s). Even with all that competitive depth the only people who were actually relevant to his chances of winning in single leagues were a handful of players. Everyone else was essentially fodder; the depth didn't actually matter for him that way it absolutely mattered for someone trying to qualify for their first OSL. I don't think Serral is at that level of dominance, but it feels (and this is just a feeling, maybe it's baseless) that he's reaching a similar point where most of the field is similarly irrelevant to his chances and only a handful of people really matter. The real question is if you think that would still be true if he were facing as competitive field, and how you answer that question says a lot about what you think of his current run. ¹ Of course, if the people who insist that players are worse than they were before are correct, then the whole argument is moot. But I don't see it that way The "handful" number of top tier players that could threaten him has also decreased though. We didn't only lose mid-tier players but also real championship contenders like Rogue, Inno, Stats, TY. How many real championship contenders are left now, maybe 5? 5 years ago as well as in Flash's bw era the number of fellow championship contenders was much higher
I can’t think of many better examples from other sports than Andy Murray. He still won Olympic medals, multiple Grand Slams, tons of regular tournaments and his raw numbers are up there. And he still managed to get to world number one.
In any other era he’s winning 10+ Grand Slams and is in GOAT conversations, but Federer/Nadal/Djokovic are there. Plus it’s not a 100% lock he’s beating everyone else, although he usually would at his peak.
Serral’s got the same issue, just in reverse. He clearly passes the eye test and skill test, and I think he’d be extremely competitive whenever he was to be playing, but he’s something of the beneficiary of a less cutthroat era, whereas Murray’s timing was a bit unfortunate for him.
But ultimately you can’t choose your era, you just gotta hope people are fair when appraising you.
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United States1919 Posts
On February 20 2024 04:24 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. INno being untouchable when terran was good and Maru being transcendent when terran was bad is a weird thing to try and explain Was Maru really just vulnerable in TvT? Similarly, Serral surprisingly didn't dominate 2019 when zerg was imba because he kept losing in the mirror (he lost Katowice, Blizzcon, and two WCS events to ZvZ). Maybe mirrors are just more figured out than the other matchups, such that the best players can't always distinguish themselves. But I think in Maru's case it was also down to playstyle. INno played the absolute standard meta, whatever build had the highest % to win he could play it to perfection, and would hence win the highest % of games. But when terran sucked, that meant playing the meta build was probably not gonna work out. On the other hand, Maru marched to the beat of his own drum, he played so different to everyone else that it didn't matter if the race was generally behind in the meta. He embodied "The Fourth Race".
![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/maru_the_last_terran.jpg)
spotv always had the best promo material
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Northern Ireland26541 Posts
On February 20 2024 04:16 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable. The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5. More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively. So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc). But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid. So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history. So that's my case, but now some meandering notions... The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then.
Hey it’s a pretty compelling case! Indeed I shall concede that actually I am wrong, and why to follow…
For a real elite player, above average in a matchup is enough for it to be perceived as an Achilles Heel. It’s probably worth me being more clear there in future.
See - Serral’s weak ZvZ. Which objectively isn’t weak at all, but put next to a ZvP which may be the strongest individual matchup we’ve ever seen, and a ZvT good enough to sweep Clem/Maru in a bracket, two undisputed best ZvTers right now, it probably is relatively speaking. Hell he even dropped a set to Dark! One of the most even 3-1s I’ve seen in a while that one, such tiny margins.
Proleague is an interesting one for balance perceptions, useful data ofc. But a prepped Bo1 format too, in a scene where longer series and limited prep have been something of the norm. To the degree that Protoss is still pretty bad right now, but even now I think would thrive in that particular format. It’s an aside, I like Proleague as I always make sure to add! Precisely because it’s such a different format and doesn’t necessarily map to the wider tournament scene all that neatly.
Maru’s TvT did improve also, massively so relative to the field. But the field ain’t quite what it used to be. For me he’s just been a great all-round player for forever, and having good TvT naturally comes with that territory. If I was to think of real TvT titans I’d still give Mvp and TY that edge, even if Maru does eclipse their numbers eventually. In the same sense that most elite Toss have good PvP, but ask me for an elite PvPer and it’s Zest.
I think to be a great mirror player, you either have to have an extra gear in that matchup specifically, or be an all-rounder that’s so dominant in mirror you gap the field. It perhaps skirts too close to feels and intuitions (AKA the prism I’m usually trapped in), but that’s my kind of metric here. It’s crippled old man Mvp playing a set for the ages against an Innovation who’d long since outstripped him as the scene’s resdident terror.
Anyway as per your one some digging myself:- I set an arbitrary cutoff of Jan 2019, although I did look at some numbers post that date too. I felt military departures and players returning and taking a while to get in shape distorted things, or some of the names I had in mind really started to slump.
- Filtered for both Proleague and individual offline events
- Trust my rough summation of the numbers because it’s a pain in the arse to write this all up with just my phone ^_^
Here’s my vague findings:
- Maru is resolutely dancing around 50% in both sets and match-score with various TvT titans of the time, using various filters.
- That’s not a dissimilar theme to his non-mirrors against other top players, he’ll bounce further into the 40s versus some, 60s versus others so there’s a bit more fluctuation.
- I started Aligulacing like crazy with various combinations and outside of the rare time someone just has a bunny (hey some cricket slang for fellow fans), most head-to-heads between the top players of this era don’t deviate much from flipping a coin.
- Not only does this somewhat demolish my intuitive feelings, it’s also a real stark illustration of quite how ruthlessly competitive top level SC2 was in this period. From quite early in a bracket you’re likely going to be having to run a gauntlet where you’re going up against guys where best case you might have a 55-60% historical advantage over.
- I’d wager that if we relatively segmented the scene, and did a similar relative comparison from 2019 thru to the current day, you’re going to see that gap start to widen by a non-negligible amount. A few initial hits, not even Serral involved seem to initially bear that out. Perhaps one for the more mathematically inclined, or at least not one trying to do it all on a phone screen.
My central premise was effectively that TY (I had him most in mind stylistically, although not exclusively) was a bad matchup for Maru. Ergo a period where Maru could beat any Protoss at a time where TY couldn’t even if the fate of the planet depended on it, would probably be beneficial to Maru in terms of bracket. The numbers don’t really bear that out at all.
I wonder if there’s a certain unintentional bias at work, makes certain things stick in the mind, especially with Maru. You’re used to Maru bringing his considerable assets to bear to take out anyone, when he wins it’s just Maru doing Maru things. When he loses it’s usually because of his (relative) weaknesses compared to another’s strengths. I still remember, angrily him doing stupid builds against Reynor one WC, way more than I maybe remember him having some clever set plans in that same tournament.
So you end up with this perception that galaxy brain TY compensates for his lesser speed with tactical brilliance and has Maru’s number in TvT, that he has the edge in this clash of styles and skillsets. When in reality it’s essentially a coin flip matchup historically.
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United States1919 Posts
On February 20 2024 06:19 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 04:16 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable. The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5. More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively. So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc). But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid. So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history. So that's my case, but now some meandering notions... The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then. Hey it’s a pretty compelling case! Indeed I shall concede that actually I am wrong, and why to follow… For a real elite player, above average in a matchup is enough for it to be perceived as an Achilles Heel. It’s probably worth me being more clear there in future. See - Serral’s weak ZvZ. Which objectively isn’t weak at all, but put next to a ZvP which may be the strongest individual matchup we’ve ever seen, and a ZvT good enough to sweep Clem/Maru in a bracket, two undisputed best ZvTers right now, it probably is relatively speaking. Hell he even dropped a set to Dark! One of the most even 3-1s I’ve seen in a while that one, such tiny margins. Proleague is an interesting one for balance perceptions, useful data ofc. But a prepped Bo1 format too, in a scene where longer series and limited prep have been something of the norm. To the degree that Protoss is still pretty bad right now, but even now I think would thrive in that particular format. It’s an aside, I like Proleague as I always make sure to add! Precisely because it’s such a different format and doesn’t necessarily map to the wider tournament scene all that neatly. Maru’s TvT did improve also, massively so relative to the field. But the field ain’t quite what it used to be. For me he’s just been a great all-round player for forever, and having good TvT naturally comes with that territory. If I was to think of real TvT titans I’d still give Mvp and TY that edge, even if Maru does eclipse their numbers eventually. In the same sense that most elite Toss have good PvP, but ask me for an elite PvPer and it’s Zest. I think to be a great mirror player, you either have to have an extra gear in that matchup specifically, or be an all-rounder that’s so dominant in mirror you gap the field. It perhaps skirts too close to feels and intuitions (AKA the prism I’m usually trapped in), but that’s my kind of metric here. It’s crippled old man Mvp playing a set for the ages against an Innovation who’d long since outstripped him as the scene’s resdident terror. Anyway as per your one some digging myself: - I set an arbitrary cutoff of Jan 2019, although I did look at some numbers post that date too. I felt military departures and players returning and taking a while to get in shape distorted things, or some of the names I had in mind really started to slump.
- Filtered for both Proleague and individual offline events
- Trust my rough summation of the numbers because it’s a pain in the arse to write this all up with just my phone ^_^
Here’s my vague findings: - Maru is resolutely dancing around 50% in both sets and match-score with various TvT titans of the time, using various filters.
- That’s not a dissimilar theme to his non-mirrors against other top players, he’ll bounce further into the 40s versus some, 60s versus others so there’s a bit more fluctuation.
- I started Aligulacing like crazy with various combinations and outside of the rare time someone just has a bunny (hey some cricket slang for fellow fans), most head-to-heads between the top players of this era don’t deviate much from flipping a coin.
- Not only does this somewhat demolish my intuitive feelings, it’s also a real stark illustration of quite how ruthlessly competitive top level SC2 was in this period. From quite early in a bracket you’re likely going to be having to run a gauntlet where you’re going up against guys where best case you might have a 55-60% historical advantage over.
- I’d wager that if we relatively segmented the scene, and did a similar relative comparison from 2019 thru to the current day, you’re going to see that gap start to widen by a non-negligible amount. A few initial hits, not even Serral involved seem to initially bear that out. Perhaps one for the more mathematically inclined, or at least not one trying to do it all on a phone screen.
My central premise was effectively that TY (I had him most in mind stylistically, although not exclusively) was a bad matchup for Maru. Ergo a period where Maru could beat any Protoss at a time where TY couldn’t even if the fate of the planet depended on it, would probably be beneficial to Maru in terms of bracket. The numbers don’t really bear that out at all. I wonder if there’s a certain unintentional bias at work, makes certain things stick in the mind, especially with Maru. You’re used to Maru bringing his considerable assets to bear to take out anyone, when he wins it’s just Maru doing Maru things. When he loses it’s usually because of his (relative) weaknesses compared to another’s strengths. I still remember, angrily him doing stupid builds against Reynor one WC, way more than I maybe remember him having some clever set plans in that same tournament. So you end up with this perception that galaxy brain TY compensates for his lesser speed with tactical brilliance and has Maru’s number in TvT, that he has the edge in this clash of styles and skillsets. When in reality it’s essentially a coin flip matchup historically.
That was a wonderful and thoughtful response. I agree that I would place TY and Mvp above Maru when it comes to TvT prowess As you said, Maru's numbers start to creep up a lot, but he's right around there regardless.
My honest theory for all of this is that a lot of us are in our thirties (or older) and 2014 was a long time ago. 2018 forever changed how we looked at Maru and his achievements since then have made the 2018-present "Maru" the primary persona we naturally think of off the top of our head. He was a really good player before then (inarguably top 5 in the world at certain points), but this is all seen through the lens where the players with the strongest cases for "best hots" player won no more than two OSL/SSL/GSL during the expansion.
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On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do.
I don't know...feels like Maru was neither the most succesful nor the most consistent Starleague player, with each of these titles going to Innovation and soO respectively. But I will admit, he performed much better than I remembered - and I also have to correct myself, he managed to get to two WCS Finals, not just one. So it is definetly closer than I originally thought.
Also...why would anyone call Maru "the fourth race" (which is just a cheap copy of Moons nickname btw) in 2014 when Innovation won a GSL that year, while Maru didn't win anything?
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On February 20 2024 07:15 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I don't know...feels like Maru was neither the most succesful nor the most consistent Starleague player, with each of these titles going to Innovation and soO respectively. But I will admit, he performed much better than I remembered - and I also have to correct myself, he managed to get to two WCS Finals, not just one. So it is definetly closer than I originally thought. Also...why would anyone call Maru "the fourth race" (which is just a cheap copy of Moons nickname btw) in 2014 when Innovation won a GSL that year, while Maru didn't win anything?
Inno won GSL in S3 after terran was buffed and was performing well again. In S1 and S2 Inno was non-existent as the rest of the terran race except Maru who made back-to-back playoffs
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On February 20 2024 07:15 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I don't know...feels like Maru was neither the most succesful nor the most consistent Starleague player, with each of these titles going to Innovation and soO respectively. But I will admit, he performed much better than I remembered - and I also have to correct myself, he managed to get to two WCS Finals, not just one. So it is definetly closer than I originally thought. Also...why would anyone call Maru "the fourth race" (which is just a cheap copy of Moons nickname btw) in 2014 when Innovation won a GSL that year, while Maru didn't win anything?
Huh, do those numbers not show him to be more successful than INno?
They're equal in championships, but Maru has a higher win% (albeit slightly), made more playoffs, more ro4s, and over the 9 seasons of HoTS he outperformed INno in 6 of them.
I don't see any case for INno to be the best Starleague player of HotS. You could say the two are equally successful but then Maru is twice as consistent. It's either soO or Maru.
As for being the "Fourth Race". Maru's performance in late 2013 and the first half of 2014 didn't yield any championships, but making multiple ro4s and having a winning Proleague record when his race was barely competitive is probably a greater highlight of his career than many of his actual Championships.
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Northern Ireland26541 Posts
On February 20 2024 07:01 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 06:19 WombaT wrote:On February 20 2024 04:16 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable. The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5. More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively. So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc). But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid. So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history. So that's my case, but now some meandering notions... The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then. Hey it’s a pretty compelling case! Indeed I shall concede that actually I am wrong, and why to follow… For a real elite player, above average in a matchup is enough for it to be perceived as an Achilles Heel. It’s probably worth me being more clear there in future. See - Serral’s weak ZvZ. Which objectively isn’t weak at all, but put next to a ZvP which may be the strongest individual matchup we’ve ever seen, and a ZvT good enough to sweep Clem/Maru in a bracket, two undisputed best ZvTers right now, it probably is relatively speaking. Hell he even dropped a set to Dark! One of the most even 3-1s I’ve seen in a while that one, such tiny margins. Proleague is an interesting one for balance perceptions, useful data ofc. But a prepped Bo1 format too, in a scene where longer series and limited prep have been something of the norm. To the degree that Protoss is still pretty bad right now, but even now I think would thrive in that particular format. It’s an aside, I like Proleague as I always make sure to add! Precisely because it’s such a different format and doesn’t necessarily map to the wider tournament scene all that neatly. Maru’s TvT did improve also, massively so relative to the field. But the field ain’t quite what it used to be. For me he’s just been a great all-round player for forever, and having good TvT naturally comes with that territory. If I was to think of real TvT titans I’d still give Mvp and TY that edge, even if Maru does eclipse their numbers eventually. In the same sense that most elite Toss have good PvP, but ask me for an elite PvPer and it’s Zest. I think to be a great mirror player, you either have to have an extra gear in that matchup specifically, or be an all-rounder that’s so dominant in mirror you gap the field. It perhaps skirts too close to feels and intuitions (AKA the prism I’m usually trapped in), but that’s my kind of metric here. It’s crippled old man Mvp playing a set for the ages against an Innovation who’d long since outstripped him as the scene’s resdident terror. Anyway as per your one some digging myself: - I set an arbitrary cutoff of Jan 2019, although I did look at some numbers post that date too. I felt military departures and players returning and taking a while to get in shape distorted things, or some of the names I had in mind really started to slump.
- Filtered for both Proleague and individual offline events
- Trust my rough summation of the numbers because it’s a pain in the arse to write this all up with just my phone ^_^
Here’s my vague findings: - Maru is resolutely dancing around 50% in both sets and match-score with various TvT titans of the time, using various filters.
- That’s not a dissimilar theme to his non-mirrors against other top players, he’ll bounce further into the 40s versus some, 60s versus others so there’s a bit more fluctuation.
- I started Aligulacing like crazy with various combinations and outside of the rare time someone just has a bunny (hey some cricket slang for fellow fans), most head-to-heads between the top players of this era don’t deviate much from flipping a coin.
- Not only does this somewhat demolish my intuitive feelings, it’s also a real stark illustration of quite how ruthlessly competitive top level SC2 was in this period. From quite early in a bracket you’re likely going to be having to run a gauntlet where you’re going up against guys where best case you might have a 55-60% historical advantage over.
- I’d wager that if we relatively segmented the scene, and did a similar relative comparison from 2019 thru to the current day, you’re going to see that gap start to widen by a non-negligible amount. A few initial hits, not even Serral involved seem to initially bear that out. Perhaps one for the more mathematically inclined, or at least not one trying to do it all on a phone screen.
My central premise was effectively that TY (I had him most in mind stylistically, although not exclusively) was a bad matchup for Maru. Ergo a period where Maru could beat any Protoss at a time where TY couldn’t even if the fate of the planet depended on it, would probably be beneficial to Maru in terms of bracket. The numbers don’t really bear that out at all. I wonder if there’s a certain unintentional bias at work, makes certain things stick in the mind, especially with Maru. You’re used to Maru bringing his considerable assets to bear to take out anyone, when he wins it’s just Maru doing Maru things. When he loses it’s usually because of his (relative) weaknesses compared to another’s strengths. I still remember, angrily him doing stupid builds against Reynor one WC, way more than I maybe remember him having some clever set plans in that same tournament. So you end up with this perception that galaxy brain TY compensates for his lesser speed with tactical brilliance and has Maru’s number in TvT, that he has the edge in this clash of styles and skillsets. When in reality it’s essentially a coin flip matchup historically. That was a wonderful and thoughtful response. I agree that I would place TY and Mvp above Maru when it comes to TvT prowess As you said, Maru's numbers start to creep up a lot, but he's right around there regardless. My honest theory for all of this is that a lot of us are in our thirties (or older) and 2014 was a long time ago. 2018 forever changed how we looked at Maru and his achievements since then have made the 2018-present "Maru" the primary persona we naturally think of off the top of our head. He was a really good player before then (inarguably top 5 in the world at certain points), but this is all seen through the lens where the players with the strongest cases for "best hots" player won no more than two OSL/SSL/GSL during the expansion.
Yeah I’ve alluded to just this myself. It’s super difficult to put oneself back into an era and ringfence it without having what happened subsequently bleed through. And you maybe end up underrating players because they fell off after, rather than more accurately appreciating their actual level at the time relative to the scene.
It’s quite interesting looking back, it wasn’t just Blizzcon where the Kespa crew were pushed hard, but in those WCS finals too.
As an aside I think there’s a case to be made where those almost fall through the cracks a little. They’re not quite a Starleague, so people who focus very much on those kind of don’t mention them, they’re not those traditional open weekender gauntlets so folks who tend to focus on those also slip over them too.
Amazing the things you forget before a good old Liquipedia dive, such as this
Inno and Maru out in groups, Bomber winning?! Seems odd now, I felt he’d fallen off a bit earlier than he actually did, and he placed top 4 in OSL. Hell he made a WC top 4 too, which again is one of those little tidbits I’d totally forgotten.
It’s too hard man, I don’t envy your GOAT list task. I’ve been pondering solely the best Terran in HoTS from my shortlist of 3 and even that is quite bloody hard, never mind the best overall.
Maru’s record is very good generally and he has his Starleagues, but there’s not much in that weekender format and he’d started to make deep runs in WC tier events, a trend he continues to this day without taking a medal.
Taeja farmer a few weekenders, but we have to remember like nobody else was hoovering up tournaments so consistently. Also on the higher stages, or in weekenders where the field was that bit deeper he still had some excellent results against the top dogs of the day.
Inno has his Starleagues too and I still consider vibes wise some of his peak form at this time was amongst the scariest ever. Some decent weekender scalps here too so he was no slouch there, but he never made that deep run in a WC, a gap in his resumé he never filled subsequently either.
It’s a tricky one, and I’m pretty open about being a vibes guy who tries to be objective, rather than a purely objective fellow. Or perhaps, more charitably I have certain subjective criteria that I try to apply objectively.
1. Innovation
2. Taeja
3. Maru
Inno’s aura was just that little bit more, for me. Taeja is the only one that has medals from international weekenders, a Starleague and a WC tier event. Maru brought it pretty hard in multiple domains, but weekend gauntlets have just been such an important cornerstone of the SC2 scene and its following for forever that it just feels too big a thing to have missing.
I do rate Proleague in my consideration, but I find it very difficult to figure how to do that given it’s such a vastly different format to everything else. Bo1s when everything else is Bo3+, very team focused when most of the rest is more individual etc. In ways it is the pinnacle of the game too, clearly it’s a great competition but it sticks out a bit from the rest of the scene, whereas in BW it fit very neatly into a relatively static structure that lasted for years.
In golf I mean the world match play has a big prize pool, of course folks want to win it, or the Ryder Cup with its team element and a mix of formats. But they rarely come up when considering GOATs when every other event is individual strokeplay.
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