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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On February 27 2024 04:30 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 27 2024 03:58 Fango wrote:On February 27 2024 00:51 FFXthebest wrote:
Like Artosis has mention on many occasions
“A diamond player would win the GSL’s back in WOL”
Personally I would say a master player would win all the WOL GSLs Absolutely delusional. Through and through. I barely play SC2 anymore and maybe get back online for a few days each year. I still float from masters 1-2 when I do, the general level of skill really hasn't evolved much in the last 10 years. And I am absolutely nowhere near as good as any pro was in WoL. Pros, let alone the champions, have a bag of countless builds they can do in an instant. No one outside of high GM does. People have 1 or 2 builds per matchup. There are even GMs who canon rush and 2 rax every game and don't learn transitions. A 6K+ player who remembered the busted builds from WoL? Sure, they could win the first few GSL seasons. But they'd also win 100 games in a row against masters players. Ya I’ll take the words of pros and caster who does this for a living rather than some forum poster lol Skill haven’t evolved the last 10 years? Sure buddy keep telling yourself that. The skill was pure laughable back in the days. The games were laughably bad but highly entertaining. Basically a lower level of the AM server ladder clown fiesta
Please for the love of all that is holy, go watch a game from 2014-2016 say. That’s about 10 years ago at the tail end, and still as long ago as 8 years which is close enough.
Mizenhauer has even helpfully embedded many classic VoDs of classic matches that helped augment and cement the various GOAT pantheon’s cases for being there.
I hadn’t watched any of those in forever myself, I was expecting there to be more of a gap but really it’s very recognisably modern and high level play.
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On February 27 2024 00:30 Durnuu wrote:Show nested quote +On February 27 2024 00:22 ejozl wrote:On February 20 2024 07:28 Mizenhauer wrote:
Form is temporary, class is permanent. Yet MMA is not on the list! MVP is the only "GOAT" who doesn't have permanent class, shown in how he had to escape Korea when Kespa switched, and shown in that he didn't transfer his form between expansions. He won 2011 and that is basically it. All the other 9 players would've made him into their MKP punching bag. MC, MMA, TaeJa, Polt and Life are all GOATs with more longevity than him. Serral, Maru, Rogue, INnoVation, Dark, Life, TaeJa, MC > MVP and there are probably people that I am forgetting. He's probably top 10, but I am not even sure of it. You could almost have a point, but then you mention TaeJa and Polt 
Yes, Polt had good longevity.
TaeJa swings a lot in the GOAT conversation, depending on how much you value 10k$ tournaments. But it's not fair to look at the HSCs today and say that he just won HSCs, HSCs back then had qualifiers and so already this tournament should be weighed much higher, because every Korean player had the chance to participate if they so desired. Invitationals shouldn't be given much serious weight.
The same can be said of sOs, he will swing a lot depending on how much you value Blizzcons and the winner takes all Katowice.
The GOATs before LotV were definitely #1 Life, then you'd have MVP, MC, TaeJa, sOs in almost any order that you wish.
MMA, INnoVation were ever so slightly below.
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MVP was also not an old man, lol. He won 60% of his earnings while between the age of 19-20, if you wanna praise an old man then make Nestea the GOAT, he won his 60% of earnings while age 28 and above.
MC is the same age as MVP and won the recent oldschool player invitational and was relevant in both HotS and even LotV. I think it's easy to say that he's a more talented player. What makes MVP great is probably work ethic, a good mind and good preparation.
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As for the discussion about early GSL skill, I think it's way more fair to say, would those players be able to qualify for GSL today, or get to GM easily and to that the answer is yes. All these GSL players would wreck the average masters player, if they were in their prime and tried to adapt to the current meta. I even think that many of the Terrans would do well, because Terran is quite OP today.
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And as for the Leenock muta split:
youtu.be
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On February 27 2024 20:54 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On February 27 2024 00:30 Durnuu wrote:On February 27 2024 00:22 ejozl wrote:On February 20 2024 07:28 Mizenhauer wrote:
Form is temporary, class is permanent. Yet MMA is not on the list! MVP is the only "GOAT" who doesn't have permanent class, shown in how he had to escape Korea when Kespa switched, and shown in that he didn't transfer his form between expansions. He won 2011 and that is basically it. All the other 9 players would've made him into their MKP punching bag. MC, MMA, TaeJa, Polt and Life are all GOATs with more longevity than him. Serral, Maru, Rogue, INnoVation, Dark, Life, TaeJa, MC > MVP and there are probably people that I am forgetting. He's probably top 10, but I am not even sure of it. You could almost have a point, but then you mention TaeJa and Polt Yes Polt had good longevity. TaeJa swings a lot in the GOAT conversation, depending on how much you value 10k$ tournaments. But it's not fair to look at the HSC today and say that he just won HSC's, HSC's back then had qualifiers and so already this tournament should be weighed much higher, because every Korean player had the chance to participate if they so desired. Invitationals shouldn't be given much serious weight. The same can be said of sOs, he will swing a lot depending on how much you value Blizzcons and the winner takes all Katowice. The GOAT's before LotV were definitely #1 Life, then you'd have MVP, MC, TaeJa, sOs in almost any order that you wish. MMA, INnoVation were ever so slightly below. MVP was also not an old man, lol. He won 60% of his earnings while between the age of 19-20, if you wanna praise an old man then make Nestea the GOAT, he won his 60% of earnings while age 28 and above. MC is the same age as MVP and won the recent oldschool player invitational and was relevant in both HotS and even LotV. I think it's easy to say that he's a more talented player. What makes MVP great is probably work ethic, a good mind and good preparation. - As for the discussion about early GSL skill, I think it's way more fair to say, would that player be able to qualify for GSL today, or get to GM easily and to that the answer is yes. All these GSL players would wreck the average masters player, if they were in their prime and tried to adapt to the current meta. I think that even many of the Terrans would do well, because Terran is quite powerful today. - And as for the Leenock muta split: youtu.be
I wasn't discussing Polt's longevity, more so the fact that you value Mvp's escape to EU negatively (which I don't disagree with in itself), but then you mention Polt and Taeja as if they didn't do the exact same thing with NA.
I agree Taeja had decent runs in weekenders, but it's the same debate as with Serral and WCS EU - he beat 3 to 4 good players, more or less from the ro8 onwards, but the rest was a freebie.
And that's not mentioning the Dreamhack format which is very not Premier-like in my opinion (bo3 up until semis) but that is entirely subjective and not relevant here.
And i also won't discuss the fact that you put Taeja above INnoVation before LotV, which is VERY debatable
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Like I said, depends how you look at TaeJa and sOs.
How I view it:
#1 Life
#2 MVP, MC, TaeJa, sOs
#3 MVP, MC, TaeJa, sOs
#4 MVP, MC, TaeJa, sOs, INnoVation
#5 MVP, MC, TaeJa, sOs, INnoVation, MMA
#6 TaeJa, sOs, INnoVation, MMA
#7 TaeJa, sOs, MMA
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
As I’ve joked in the past, my life’s ambition is to be the first person to accurately rate Taeja, he seems to almost exclusively be grossly over or underrated!
Either folks just point out his number of premiers and rate him really highly while skirting over the quality of the fields for some of those runs, or they’ll dismiss them out of hand and his record against the top players of his day, including those who went on to frequent GOAT lists such as these.
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On February 27 2024 21:23 WombaT wrote:
As I’ve joked in the past, my life’s ambition is to be the first person to accurately rate Taeja, he seems to almost exclusively be grossly over or underrated!
Either folks just point out his number of premiers and rate him really highly while skirting over the quality of the fields for some of those runs, or they’ll dismiss them out of hand and his record against the top players of his day, including those who went on to frequent GOAT lists such as these.
I believe in you! It's my belief that to be safe in such cases, it's fair to rate someone between the 2 extremes / your rating system should account for such extremes and find a reasonable middleground.
I was curious and decided to look at Taeja's 3 Premiere wins in 2014 and 2013, to see if I'm remembering wrong or if maybe there was decent justification for people putting him in the Top ~3 before LotV:
2014 IEM Shenzen
Group stage: Beat Life and MMA, and lost to Jim (who got #1 and also beat Life), advancing 2-1 while 2 GOATs failed to qualify.
Playoffs: Beat Zest, Jaedong, Solar.
2014 Dreamhack Summer
Group stage: Beat Harstem and Oz. Nothing impressive.
Playoffs: Beat Sjaak, Patience, Jaedong, HerO (not great but he did beat MC 2-0).
2014 HSC #9
Group stage: Beat roof, Patience, lost to Scarlett who advanced #1. Nothing impressive.
Playoffs: Beat Jaedong, Scarlett, MC (4-0).
2013 Dreamhack Winter, $30k first place
Group stage: Beat Innovation, sOs, ForGG, SjoW, advanced 4-0 over 2 other GOATS.
Playoffs: Beat HerO, MMA, Life in the finals, Life again in the grand finals.
2013 HSC #8
Group stage: Beat Scarlett and MoMaN, advancing 2-0. Nothing impressive.
Playoffs: Beat HerO, Symbol, Hyun. Ok nothing special.
2013 Dreamhack Bucharest
Group stage #2: Beat SjoW, Welmu, Basterd. Whatever.
Group stage #3: Beat Avenge, Symbol, Grubby. Nothing impressive.
Playoffs: Beat YugiOh, sOs, Life, Innovation.
Seems like a lot of wins vs players like Innovation, MMA, MC, sOs, Jaedong, and especially Life.
Just looking at this, I'm not seeing the narrative of "Taeja mainly only had to beat B tier KRs and not top Code S players".
You can maybe excuse players like Innovation sOs and say that they cared more about KR events. But Life? Hmmmm.
Looking back at WCS 2014, he beat soO, Innovation, and lost to Life 2-3. Really too sad, if only he got that WCS win over that matchfixing bastard, he probably would have beaten MMA.
Taeja had the winrate and H2H to do so over a larger sample size. I feel a similar argument tends to be used for Rain: he didn't rack up a ton ton of results, but you could tell he was great and could have won more.
But him beating Innovation even at an event as big as the WCS finals as well as many weekender events, I think makes it pretty reasonable if someone feels Taeja is above Innovation. Same with being over MC, sOs, Zest, MMA. I wonder how much more Life would have won if Taeja wasn't there to stop him sometimes.
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On February 27 2024 21:23 WombaT wrote:
As I’ve joked in the past, my life’s ambition is to be the first person to accurately rate Taeja, he seems to almost exclusively be grossly over or underrated!
Either folks just point out his number of premiers and rate him really highly while skirting over the quality of the fields for some of those runs, or they’ll dismiss them out of hand and his record against the top players of his day, including those who went on to frequent GOAT lists such as these.
Unapologetic TaeJa stan here and I've said it before, but TaeJa has always occupied the number 1 spot in my heart's power ranking. Nobody before or since has ever made me as excited to watch SC2. He was like the Terran version of Life in terms of excitement of play, which is fitting since they had such a rivalry. His games were often frantic since he wasn't very good at scouting drops/prisms and keeping defending units at home, leading to lots of crazy base trade situations. But my jaw was always hitting the floor when he would micro himself out of impossible situations. He was the first pro I ever witnessed to consistently medivac juggle marauders and tanks to dodge stalker shots, and he was easily the best in his day at target firing speed banes, and all those sorts of flashy plays that gave me the nerd chills. Like you said, he had excellent records against the top KR players of his time and did do well in several GSLs, but my biggest disappointment was that he never took one down to shut all the haters up. Alas, preparation style tournaments were not his forte.
But since he won so many weekenders, we always got to see his goofy smile, awkward applause for himself, and watch his worst matchup of all, TvC (TaeJa vs Champagne Bottle). Happy days.
But yeah, as far as where to put him on an actual GOAT list by the time he retired I have no idea. I just know that I would have rated him higher than a lot of other players that had won GSLs by that point.
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MVP! Awesome strategic play with a great story. That MVP vs Squirtle series is one of the greatest of all time.
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EPT
