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Poland3768 Posts
On March 17 2024 19:02 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 18:40 nimdil wrote:On March 17 2024 08:54 Charoisaur wrote:On March 17 2024 08:47 InfCereal wrote:On March 17 2024 08:46 Charoisaur wrote:On March 17 2024 05:01 Cactus66 wrote:
LONG time reader. Had to create an account because how ridiculous this is.
GSL hasn't had the best player in the world play in it since 2018........ it's 2024.
There have been 18 GSL's in that time. Maru won 7. Doesn't seem like the most prestigious wins if the best player in the world wasn't in the tournament.
There were two GSL vs the World in that time. I'm sure the guy who went 2 for 2 on those wouldn't have been able to win one or two of those 18 GSL's if he had decided he wanted to play in them.
Ask the pros who'd they'd rather play against in the final of the world championship for a few hundred thousand dollars? Good luck finding one that says they'd rather play serral. So you're saying the reason Maru can't the Goat is because he isn't the best right now? I swear people don't know what Goat stands for Maru's never been better than serral's current form. Which means he's not the greatest of all time, no? I'm eager to hear how you compare player skill across different eras One way would be to look at aligulac rating and difference margin when at #1 to #2and rest. That's a factor used in chess. Fischer exploded with greatest margin ever, Kasparov maintained significant margin across long period of time. Carlson margin is relatively small at times but it was disrupted by introduction of superhuman computers analysis. Sc2 is still in disrupted. Many flaws with this approach, aligulac is a questionable rating system with many flaws and it also doesn't consider the strength of the era. A scene with 150 fulltime pros and 15 championship contenders is way easier to dominate than a scene with 30 fulltime pros and 5 championship contenders
Still there are other players trying to dominate so the margin to number 2, 3 etc can be useful. You obviously don't compare absolute numbers between eras. And aligulac was the only model that tried to rebalance rating to take into account the overrating of foreigners and did it pretty well. ELO used in tlpd failed completely.
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On March 17 2024 04:39 jinjin5000 wrote:
while I think it wouldn't have been unfair for author to just put serral and maru at both #1 to avoid the shitfest right now on comment section, how come a lot of SC2 community isn't really taking BW-approach on these rankings where they discount results post-teamhouse era?
The same thing applies in BW; the general knowledge, meta and skill level rose a lot compared to Proleague era where game is nearly incomparable and everything is measured down to seconds nowadays, with meta evolving to counter the meta constantly every few weeks due to condensed progamer circle and sharing of knowledge
However, everyone recognizes that the amount of competition/cycle/dedicated coaching or sniping builds are incomparable compared to proleague era as of now, as amount of resources dedicated to each player and level of competition is just way less now, so results post-teamhouse era are counted with grain of salt even if the "now" player would wipe floor with "past" player; after all, the peak competition and mechanical skill was back in proleague era.
Flash mentioned that if "modern" player were timetravelled back into past, they would win most of the game vs past player due to just difference in knowledge/skill. But the past player would just adapt due to being used to the amount of competition and sheer mechanical skill during that era, so you cannot compare past achievements with current.
after proleague went down, a lot of SC2 Korean pro players are not under same amount of pressure/passion for game after and are really in no way in their peak. The amount of progamers lessened a lot, and there are a whole lot less expectations placed on them. It's not really fair to compare peak competition era to post 2017 era really just due to sheer difference in environment where SC2 doesn't really offer an attractive environment for Korean progamers to keep going.
Because most SC2 foreigners didn't care about watching Proleague, biasing their view?
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On March 17 2024 04:54 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 04:39 jinjin5000 wrote:
while I think it wouldn't have been unfair for author to just put serral and maru at both #1 to avoid the shitfest right now on comment section, how come a lot of SC2 community isn't really taking BW-approach on these rankings where they discount results post-teamhouse era?
The same thing applies in BW; the general knowledge, meta and skill level rose a lot compared to Proleague era where game is nearly incomparable and everything is measured down to seconds nowadays, with meta evolving to counter the meta constantly every few weeks due to condensed progamer circle and sharing of knowledge
However, everyone recognizes that the amount of competition/cycle/dedicated coaching or sniping builds are incomparable compared to proleague era as of now, as amount of resources dedicated to each player and level of competition is just way less now, so results post-teamhouse era are counted with grain of salt even if the "now" player would wipe floor with "past" player; after all, the peak competition and mechanical skill was back in proleague era.
Flash mentioned that if "modern" player were timetravelled back into past, they would win most of the game vs past player due to just difference in knowledge/skill. But the past player would just adapt due to being used to the amount of competition and sheer mechanical skill during that era, so you cannot compare past achievements with current.
after proleague went down, a lot of SC2 Korean pro players are not under same amount of pressure/passion for game after and are really in no way in their peak. The amount of progamers lessened a lot, and there are a whole lot less expectations placed on them. It's not really fair to compare peak competition era to post 2017 era really just due to sheer difference in environment where SC2 doesn't really offer an attractive environment for Korean progamers to keep going. The two aren't comparable. Sure teahouses and proleague stopped and a lot of progamer retired, there's no denying the field became a lot is tinner. But SC2 competition was (and arguably still is) very much alive. Post 2017 is also when there was the most amount of money, to earn. Maru, Dark and Rogue became millionaires in their post-Kespa days, it's not BW where's there barely 100k$ a year up for grabs. We talk about retirement, but there is way less retirement post-2017 compared to the 2011-2016 period, on the contrary, we see players stick with SC2 all the way to military for the first time since it finally makes sense to have it as a long time commitment.
There's a lot of money in BW modern Proleague earnings which isn't reflected in a glance at Liquipedia. Significantly more than ASL.
http://eloboard.com/men/bbs/board.php?bo_table=pro_win
For instance Mini (#1 Proleague earner so far in 2024) has earned KRW 53 805 000 so far in 2024 from Proleague wins alone - 40K USD for one player alone from 3 and a half months of competing. As jinjin said in his post, plenty of players earn more yearly than the entire BW prizepool mentioned in Liquipedia for said year.
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On March 17 2024 03:08 Antithesis wrote:First of all, since I have not yet said it: Major props to Miz for crafting this series! The amount of data that has been studied is amazing, and the writing is nothing short of superb. Reading the articles has been a joy. The series also has done the service of generating more discussion about SC2 on this site than anything else in the past years, haha. That said, I will also happily contribute to the many voices bringing out why, in my view, placing Maru above Serral is a misjudgment. This analogy is flawed even if you are the most blazing Korean elitist. The Champions League is literally the league where the best-performing teams from different regions play it out. So its counterpart in SC2 is not the GSL, but the World Championship cycle, embodied for example in BlizzCon or the Katowice events. And Serral has won three of them, Maru zero.
This is incorrect. Champions League features teams from the European region, not every region, and clubs within the European region are the strongest, so the most apt analogy is GSL. Blizzcon and other “world championship” events are much more like football’s equivalent of the World Cup, which similarly features regional quotas irrespective of how strong those regions are. The reason the analogy is not great is that in football, it is basically the case that all of the greatest teams are European club teams (because all the best players in the world go to Europe to play), whereas in SCII post-2018 at least 1 but arguably 3 top players (Serral, Clem, and Reynor) were not regularly competing in GSL. This makes GSL kinda like the Champions League if it somehow excluded like Real Madrid, Liverpool, and Bayern Munich or something (pick your 3 fav top European clubs). There are a bunch of other reasons the analogy isn’t super clean and I’m not sure it’s even that useful, but when you have non-top players players regularly top four’ing “world championships” and top players regularly not qualifying due to region lock, there’s a question for sure.
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On March 17 2024 13:03 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 11:58 Cactus66 wrote:
Can anyone provide another example of an individual sport/activity/skill/etc. that someone is considered the greatest ever to perform BLANK and has never won a world championship in BLANK? Donald Bradman
What does an American know about cricket? C'mon cuzzy. He said individual, not team. Cricket is 11 v 11. And there wasn't a WC event during Bradman's era (I'm fairly certain). Apart from that, i like the answer
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On March 17 2024 11:58 Cactus66 wrote:
Can anyone provide another example of an individual sport/activity/skill/etc. that someone is considered the greatest ever to perform BLANK and has never won a world championship in BLANK?
I doubt it, but this is what happens when you try to do these things primarily off of statistics/numbers. You lose out on these narratively powerful points.
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On March 17 2024 18:40 nimdil wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 08:54 Charoisaur wrote:On March 17 2024 08:47 InfCereal wrote:On March 17 2024 08:46 Charoisaur wrote:On March 17 2024 05:01 Cactus66 wrote:
LONG time reader. Had to create an account because how ridiculous this is.
GSL hasn't had the best player in the world play in it since 2018........ it's 2024.
There have been 18 GSL's in that time. Maru won 7. Doesn't seem like the most prestigious wins if the best player in the world wasn't in the tournament.
There were two GSL vs the World in that time. I'm sure the guy who went 2 for 2 on those wouldn't have been able to win one or two of those 18 GSL's if he had decided he wanted to play in them.
Ask the pros who'd they'd rather play against in the final of the world championship for a few hundred thousand dollars? Good luck finding one that says they'd rather play serral. So you're saying the reason Maru can't the Goat is because he isn't the best right now? I swear people don't know what Goat stands for Maru's never been better than serral's current form. Which means he's not the greatest of all time, no? I'm eager to hear how you compare player skill across different eras One way would be to look at aligulac rating and difference margin when at #1 to #2and rest. That's a factor used in chess. Fischer exploded with greatest margin ever, Kasparov maintained significant margin across long period of time. Carlson margin is relatively small at times but it was disrupted by introduction of superhuman computers analysis. Sc2 is still in disrupted.
This would be more useful if there were a stable ELO system in SCII. But it’s an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. There are a bunch of things about the analogy to chess that are interesting beyond the fact that they are both 1v1 competitive strategy games, to include that both haven’t always had “world championships” that necessarily reflect the greatest competition or best players.
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On March 16 2024 15:53 AxiomB wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2024 12:26 Maestro85 wrote:On March 16 2024 11:38 AxiomB wrote:
I liken Maru to Federer and Serral to Djokovic. Yes Serral more than often not beats Maru, just as Djokovic more than often not beat Federer, but Maru has won almost as much as Serral and many in an era when the competition and game itself was at an all time high. There is also the 'Zerg Caveat' (Zerg being the race with the most broken units; banelings + cracklings). Maru just like Federer however has had the longest time at number 1 also. I can see arguments for either being number 1. GREAT write ups! Much appreciated! This is an excellent analogy and i agree with the sentiment (as well as Z having advantages that T and P do not) however Djokovic has spent more time than anyone as world No.1. And it is significantly more than Fed who has spent the 2nd longest time as No.1. Federer and Nadal would be a better comparison but that would have to ignore the existence of Djokovic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_career_achievements_by_Roger_FedererForgive me, Djoko has more weeks at number 1, but not consecutive, Fed is number 1 for 237 consecutive weeks as world No. 1 I think the comparison is still holds though right?? Serral is Djoko and Maru is Federer <3
True, true. However, I do think that the Serral/Maru debate is much closer than the Djokovic/Federer one. This might be the only meaningful record that Federer will hold over Djokovic when all is said and done. That's why I thought Federer/Nadal was the better comparison as there are more advantages/disadvantages shared. I'm a Nadal fanboy but at this point I think Djokovic holds the GOAT status unquestionably. Hoping my boy overcomes his injuries and wins a couple more French Opens before he succumbs to age
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let's be real serral holds the goat title unquestionably also. Mizenhauser is just one person and the vast majority of people that follow the game would pick serral. There's no doubt in my mind about that.
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The fact that Miz didnt put any statistics showing comparisons between Maru and Serrals says A LOT.
Cus if you put them face to face, you just cant sustain that Maru surpasses Serral. You just cant.
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On March 17 2024 21:54 Comedy wrote:
let's be real serral holds the goat title unquestionably also. Mizenhauser is just one person and the vast majority of people that follow the game would pick serral. There's no doubt in my mind about that.
There is a reason why appeals to popularity is a fallacy
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On March 17 2024 21:54 Comedy wrote:
let's be real serral holds the goat title unquestionably also. Mizenhauser is just one person and the vast majority of people that follow the game would pick serral. There's no doubt in my mind about that.
Just because a majority of people say something doesn't make it right.
The majority, as you say, has a triple bias of 1) recency, 2) liking macro games over anything else, which Serral is indeed the best at and had a favourable meta for it throughout his career, 3) foreign bias.
As for the thread and this general ranking, I have no horse in this race and don't care either way, but I do find amusing how the value of Blizzcon and IEM Katowice skyrocketed in the eyes of fans once foreigners started winning them. No one was calling sOs the GOAT at the end of HotS despite winning 2 Blizzcons and an IEM, and in fact I doubt "the majority of people" would have had him in the top 10.
One last point I'll make: let's create an imaginary Broodwar player, who happened to win every single ASL in the last 6 years.
Yes, I'm exaggerating on purpose. But surely no one in their right mind would call them the GOAT, with most Broodwar players having retired, some being part-time, etc. Unless that imaginary player was white, perhaps?... 
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Obviously correct that Maru is number 1, 90% of all pro sc2 players had already retired in 2016-2017 so the competition was nonexistent after that point
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France12980 Posts
On March 17 2024 21:54 Comedy wrote:
let's be real serral holds the goat title unquestionably also. Mizenhauser is just one person and the vast majority of people that follow the game would pick serral. There's no doubt in my mind about that.
Only the foreign + recency biased people think Serral is the obvious goat to be frank. If you truly followed StarCraft 2 from the beginnings, and aren’t just mindlessly watching the StarCraft YouTubers that are super foreign biased, seeing Maru at #1 instead of Serral isn’t particularly weird. Sure, Maru isn’t the obvious #1 for everyone (for me it is, because I consider Rogue and Serral to have benefited from Zerg being super strong), but he is one of the contenders for this spot (alongside Serral and Rogue).
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I built a very quick basic model with just two variables:
1. average ranking based on yearly winrate for the years a player was active and winning;
2. simple longevity penalty based on number of active winning years (out of 13).
Maru and Serral top this ranking, being #1 and #2 flipped depending on how much you weigh #2 (somewhere around 0.6 weight for the longevity penalty factor is where the flip occurs). This is pretty much exactly what Miz was alluding to, saying that the order flips based on importance of longevity.
This is a quick back-of-the-envelope model that has its problems as in it doesn't account for clutch tournament wins (cough Rogue cough) but makes a lot of sense for top 2.
The elephant in the room of course is it ranks Dark as highly as #4 or #5.
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On March 17 2024 22:09 Durnuu wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 21:54 Comedy wrote:
let's be real serral holds the goat title unquestionably also. Mizenhauser is just one person and the vast majority of people that follow the game would pick serral. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Just because a majority of people say something doesn't make it right. The majority, as you say, has a triple bias of 1) recency, 2) liking macro games over anything else, which Serral is indeed the best at and had a favourable meta for it throughout his career, 3) foreign bias. As for the thread and this general ranking, I have no horse in this race and don't care either way, but I do find amusing how the value of Blizzcon and IEM Katowice skyrocketed in the eyes of fans once foreigners started winning them. No one was calling sOs the GOAT at the end of HotS despite winning 2 Blizzcons and an IEM, and in fact I doubt "the majority of people" would have had him in the top 10. One last point I'll make: let's create an imaginary Broodwar player, who happened to win every single ASL in the last 6 years. Yes, I'm exaggerating on purpose. But surely no one in their right mind would call them the GOAT, with most Broodwar players having retired, some being part-time, etc. Unless that imaginary player was white, perhaps?...
the fact you bring up sos just shows that all you people do is look at results and don't look at the games.
you could see with your own eyes how sos won those tournaments. by coming up with clever cheeses and beating people better than him at micro/macro/multitask with specially crafted cheeses.
Everyone can also see with their own eyes how serral plays. He wins tournaments by being better at every aspect of the game than his opponent. Scouting/Macro/Micro/Multitask/Builds.
It's easy for anyone who actually plays and watches the game to tell he is the goat, that's why picking maru is so controversial to begin with and you see all actual progamers and casters on twitter expressing themselves in disagreement with this list Lol.
If a brood war player won the last 6 ASL's and was dominant in daily proleague and spoon matches with a 80% winrate he would seriously open up the goat conversation if he looked like he was more dominant than flash. Brood war players are getting better still, just like SC2 players. The fact that Serral didn't dominate during the kespa era is only because he was a teenager that was in highschool. If he had reached his 2018 level just a few years prior (if he was born earlier), he would dominate that era too.
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United States1939 Posts
accidently clicked post 
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On March 17 2024 23:40 Comedy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 22:09 Durnuu wrote:On March 17 2024 21:54 Comedy wrote:
let's be real serral holds the goat title unquestionably also. Mizenhauser is just one person and the vast majority of people that follow the game would pick serral. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Just because a majority of people say something doesn't make it right. The majority, as you say, has a triple bias of 1) recency, 2) liking macro games over anything else, which Serral is indeed the best at and had a favourable meta for it throughout his career, 3) foreign bias. As for the thread and this general ranking, I have no horse in this race and don't care either way, but I do find amusing how the value of Blizzcon and IEM Katowice skyrocketed in the eyes of fans once foreigners started winning them. No one was calling sOs the GOAT at the end of HotS despite winning 2 Blizzcons and an IEM, and in fact I doubt "the majority of people" would have had him in the top 10. One last point I'll make: let's create an imaginary Broodwar player, who happened to win every single ASL in the last 6 years. Yes, I'm exaggerating on purpose. But surely no one in their right mind would call them the GOAT, with most Broodwar players having retired, some being part-time, etc. Unless that imaginary player was white, perhaps?... the fact you bring up sos just shows that all you people do is look at results and don't look at the games. you could see with your own eyes how sos won those tournaments. by coming up with clever cheeses and beating people better than him at micro/macro/multitask with specially crafted cheeses. Everyone can also see with their own eyes how serral plays. He wins tournaments by being better at every aspect of the game than his opponent. Scouting/Macro/Micro/Multitask/Builds. It's easy for anyone who actually plays and watches the game to tell he is the goat, that's why picking maru is so controversial to begin with and you see all actual progamers and casters on twitter expressing themselves in disagreement with this list Lol. If a brood war player won the last 6 ASL's and was dominant in daily proleague and spoon matches with a 80% winrate he would seriously open up the goat conversation if he looked like he was more dominant than flash. Brood war players are getting better still, just like SC2 players. The fact that Serral didn't dominate during the kespa era is only because he was a pre-teen that was in highschool. If he had reached his 2018 level just a few years prior (if he was born earlier), he would dominate that era too.
Telling me I only looks at wins is laughable. I picked him only to demonstrate the odd rise in value of these championships in people's eyes, nothing else, since some people are saying Maru isn't the GOAT solely because he hasn't won one.
But you illustrated my point perfectly. You value Serral's playstyle and say this is what makes him the GOAT, because he is the best mechanical player. I can argue just as easily that Maru is the GOAT because he was a top player in almost every era, with different metas, unlike Serral who has been riding the huge maps, massive economy since 2017.
You say SC2 players are getting better, and I would bet the underlying reason is because games are longer and more multitask heavy. But thinking this is solely on players getting better and not because of 12 worker start and massive maps a fallacy.
And I, on the other hand, will argue that SC2 has only gotten worse, because the strategic aspect of the game has pretty much entirely disappeared (which is part of the reason for sOs' decline). Even proxy 2 rax has entirely disqppeared.
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On March 17 2024 23:33 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
I built a very quick basic model with just two variables:
1. average ranking based on yearly winrate for the years a player was active and winning;
2. simple longevity penalty based on number of active winning years (out of 13).
Maru and Serral top this ranking, being #1 and #2 flipped depending on how much you weigh #2 (somewhere around 0.6 weight for the longevity penalty factor is where the flip occurs). This is pretty much exactly what Miz was alluding to, saying that the order flips based on importance of longevity.
[...]
The elephant in the room of course is it ranks Dark as highly as #4 or #5.
Yes, I also think that this is the most interesting open question.
As noted earlier, Mizenhauer himself has stated that in order to place Maru above Serral, being the Greatest had to be valued at as low as 45%, while the Greatest Career had to be valued at as high as 55%:
On March 16 2024 07:43 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2024 07:29 CicadaSC wrote:
Agree with this. Serral is good but you can't call him the goat if he refuses to play in Code S, the hardest tournament. Reynor, neeb and other foreigners who had success in weekend tournaments show how much of a different beast this is. Grats to Maru and well deserved #1. It's really close between the two. If my original split between Greatest and Greatest Career was more like 60/40 (it was 45/55 in favor of the latter) to the former then Serral gets first. Even then, I waffled between Maru and Serral a few times before settling on my final order.
Personally, I do not agree with these weightings, but these are Mizenhauer's personal preferences and therefore not up to debate.
But what is up to debate is that if these weightings are applied consistently, then it is difficult to see how Dark can be left out of the Top 10, while, for example, MVP is #4. MVP has been dominant only during the earliest era of the game, but apparently this has been valued so highly that, even when weighted only at 45%, it still puts him on #4.
Dark, in contrast, has had a far longer and richer career, but somehow this career, even when weighted at 55%, is still not enough to even put him in the Top 10.
I am really curious about the reasoning behind this.
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On March 17 2024 23:40 Comedy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 22:09 Durnuu wrote:On March 17 2024 21:54 Comedy wrote:
let's be real serral holds the goat title unquestionably also. Mizenhauser is just one person and the vast majority of people that follow the game would pick serral. There's no doubt in my mind about that. Just because a majority of people say something doesn't make it right. The majority, as you say, has a triple bias of 1) recency, 2) liking macro games over anything else, which Serral is indeed the best at and had a favourable meta for it throughout his career, 3) foreign bias. As for the thread and this general ranking, I have no horse in this race and don't care either way, but I do find amusing how the value of Blizzcon and IEM Katowice skyrocketed in the eyes of fans once foreigners started winning them. No one was calling sOs the GOAT at the end of HotS despite winning 2 Blizzcons and an IEM, and in fact I doubt "the majority of people" would have had him in the top 10. One last point I'll make: let's create an imaginary Broodwar player, who happened to win every single ASL in the last 6 years. Yes, I'm exaggerating on purpose. But surely no one in their right mind would call them the GOAT, with most Broodwar players having retired, some being part-time, etc. Unless that imaginary player was white, perhaps?... the fact you bring up sos just shows that all you people do is look at results and don't look at the games. you could see with your own eyes how sos won those tournaments. by coming up with clever cheeses and beating people better than him at micro/macro/multitask with specially crafted cheeses. Everyone can also see with their own eyes how serral plays. He wins tournaments by being better at every aspect of the game than his opponent. Scouting/Macro/Micro/Multitask/Builds. It's easy for anyone who actually plays and watches the game to tell he is the goat, that's why picking maru is so controversial to begin with and you see all actual progamers and casters on twitter expressing themselves in disagreement with this list Lol. If a brood war player won the last 6 ASL's and was dominant in daily proleague and spoon matches with a 80% winrate he would seriously open up the goat conversation if he looked like he was more dominant than flash. Brood war players are getting better still, just like SC2 players. The fact that Serral didn't dominate during the kespa era is only because he was a teenager that was in highschool. If he had reached his 2018 level just a few years prior (if he was born earlier), he would dominate that era too.
Nah it's easy for anyone watching and playing the game to tell that Maru is the Goat, foreign progamers and casters just want to back their favorite player because he's a foreigner, they were calling Serral the Goat in 2019 when he wasn't even top 10 which proves their extreme bias.
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EPT
