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- 10+ years of being a champion, longer than anyone else
- The biggest outlier of any player within their race, and the best performing player during bad balance
- The best Proleague player
- The best Starleague player by a gargantuan margin
- More ro4+ finishes in World Championships than anyone else
Maru has as many Starleague trophies as 7 of the other 9 players on this list, Rain, TY, sOs, soO, Zest, INnoVation, and Serral, COMBINED.
Even for the only weak point in his legacy (no World Championship), he still has more ro4s at them than any other player. Which is an achievement in itself.
If you put recency bias aside, it was never really a question that Maru would be number 1. Serral is the best weekender player of all time, but of the 3 competitive formats (Starleague, Teamleague, Weekender) Maru was the best in two of them, and still has historic achievements in the 3rd. Serral has the best better career winrates, but Maru has equally untouchable stats in Proleague and Starleagues. Not to mention more volume overall. And Serral never had to fight the balance of the game, let alone beat it like Maru did.
Side note: he also probably has the longest highlight real of any player. You could make an entire playlist of games where he wouldn't have been judged for typing GG in the first 5 minutes but decided to win anyway.
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If you've been around a minute and understood tendencies on TL, especially from some of the most fervent posters, this placement was never in doubt. Not that I agree, but congrats to Maru, a supreme and transcendent player.
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Everyone and their dog knows that Serral is just straight up a better player, but this placement will generate much more clicks for the website, so it is a wise decision.
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Well deserved Greatest of All Time title for Maru. If PvT would have been in equal (im)balance state as PvZ during most of LotV, he'd have had even better results - which is ridiculous.
I'd put Serral as Best of All Time though. Noone has ever played SC2 like big-time Serral.
Thanks Mizenhauer for this wonderful series.
When will we have a GFOATES one? 
+ Show Spoiler +Greatest Foreigner Of All Time Excluding Serral
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what a clown joke list, lost all respect
even without winning katowice , serral was nr 1 since years, and its not even close
clear case of overrating gsl ( a local small tournament where you dont even have to face serral )
in this resume he almost only talks about gsl
all the other even bigger global tournaments where you actualy have to face all the players are of course worth significant less
marus performance globaly , his winrates on the international stage are pathetic compared to serral
if you ask 10 pro player 9/10 would say serral is the goat
if you do sports betting on sc2 tournaments there are a few sides , dont know if i am allowed to mention those here,
i cant remember any tournament since 2018 where you did get less money if you put your money on serral winning than on maru, those betting sides live to make money , they dont throw money away
serral alligulac elo rating , is so for ahead , he is in his own league its of the chart like if magnus carson would have even 100 more elo than the rest
maru has multiple clear leakes in his game , serral does not lambo and other have explained them multiple times
you could go on and on , but actualy since its not even close you dont have to
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I've been a big fan of Maru since 2012 or something, watching him lose in Code A all the time just building a bunch of marines, microing them perfectly, and then running out of steam in the mid-game. Seeing him evolve over time, adding amazing macro and defensive positioning to his play, and then go absolutely nuts in 2018 with the proxy meta is the defining story of my history with Starcraft II. Even though the results might seem boring in retrospect, each of his 4-straight GSL wins was fun in its own right, especially how he mixed up his style in between seasons, IIRC barely proxying at all in the 4th one. I think Maru's ability to thrive during eras when Terran was really, really struggling, earning the "fourth race" distinction and prompting the suggestion to "just play like Maru" is one of his most impressive attributes. Add the excitement level of his micro feats, plus his longevity, and it's easy to see why he's on the top of the list. But I can see the argument both ways, as Serral has definitely been the better player for the last several years. I don't think the debate will ever be resolved, but this list definitely provided an interesting perspective.
Thanks for all the articles! They've been great to read and a fun trip down memory lane through all 14 years of this game's history.
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United States33479 Posts
As they say, reasonable minds can disagree 
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lol, even a Maru fanboy like myself didnt see this coming. But somebody need to translate this and send this to Maru and he will win everything for the rest of 2024, maybe.
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Well deserved. Even though Serral's dominating Kato win made me question if Maru still deserves this title as that's gotten further away I still think it's him. Maru has 5 full more years as a top SC2 player than Serral. Maru has also very clearly exceeded in spite of his race at times. Zerg has never been underpowered since Serral became a top player. I'd argue that for the majority of time he was active prior to 2023 it was straight up the strongest race by a significant margin. Even in 2023 Zerg was still equal to Terran and far ahead of Toss. Their worst year was being equal to T and far ahead of P. Meanwhile Terran has had multiple periods where they were clearly the worst performing race and those were some of Maru's most impressive results.
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hey miz, just letting you know you've mixed up the posts and put the #2 player as #1
other than that, great work
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On March 16 2024 08:33 Itsxjoeyy wrote:
This whole list just became invalidated.
I'm sure everyone that's outraged also spent hundreds of hours researching and writing to prove that this list is indeed heresy!
And that their list wouldn't get discarded by people who base their opinion on what a few personalities have been saying for the past couple years! No sir!
VERY FEW have the passion to spend that much time on something many will dismiss at a glance.
How often do we get in-depth sc2 history content these days? Agree or disagree, have some respect.
And if you're not gonna read because you don't like the placing, keep your petty comments to yourselves.
Least you can do.
But anyway Dark should be in there, like OBVIOUSLY
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On March 16 2024 09:48 Waxangel wrote:As they say, reasonable minds can disagree
This. I'm kinda screaming false dichotomy at this point. Maru can be GCOAT (greatest career of all time) with Serral GOAT.
Well done to both of you for a great series with such a high standard of writing, and well done to Maru, Serral, and the others for being in our hearts and weaving our dreams for so long.
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I'll say this once more, and probably again forever.
If you ignore every tournament in SC2s 14 year history where Serral didn't play, then Serral is the GOAT.
If you include every tournament and take SC2 at it's highest level and most competitive (Starleagues, Proleague, World Championships), then Maru outshines everyone else.
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I'd like to point out what might be an inconsistency: if longevity is so important as to determine #1 vs #2, then surely Dark (who has had 9 contender-level years performing at an above 62.5% vKor winrate level, second only to Maru's 11) and is also a world champion, should be somewhere ?
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Well deserved for maru being #1, but more importantly well researched and presented arguments. Regardless of disagreements, there aren't many people who have taken the time and effort to research and present such gigantic amount of information in a digestible manner
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First and foremost. Thanks for all the hard work, Miz !! It has been a very fun ride reading all of these, and prolly will be coming back to these later on as well. Very well done !
Although I strongly disagree about Dark:s absence from the list AND obviously the numbers 1 and 2 should be other way around, cant be too mad about it. Maru is an outstanding player and has been on top for a long time.
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On March 16 2024 09:43 weyoun wrote:
what a clown joke list, lost all respect
even without winning katowice , serral was nr 1 since years, and its not even close
clear case of overrating gsl ( a local small tournament where you dont even have to face serral )
in this resume he almost only talks about gsl
all the other even bigger global tournaments where you actualy have to face all the players are of course worth significant less
marus performance globaly , his winrates on the international stage are pathetic compared to serral
if you ask 10 pro player 9/10 would say serral is the goat
if you do sports betting on sc2 tournaments there are a few sides , dont know if i am allowed to mention those here,
i cant remember any tournament since 2018 where you did get less money if you put your money on serral winning than on maru, those betting sides live to make money , they dont throw money away
serral alligulac elo rating , is so for ahead , he is in his own league its of the chart like if magnus carson would have even 100 more elo than the rest
maru has multiple clear leakes in his game , serral does not lambo and other have explained them multiple times
you could go on and on , but actualy since its not even close you dont have to
These are some good heuristics, Serral is just the better player, he just doesn't play on KR, or the domination would be even worse.
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On March 16 2024 09:38 Xamo wrote:Well deserved Greatest of All Time title for Maru. If PvT would have been in equal (im)balance state as PvZ during most of LotV, he'd have had even better results - which is ridiculous. I'd put Serral as Best of All Time though. Noone has ever played SC2 like big-time Serral. Thanks Mizenhauer for this wonderful series. When will we have a GFOATES one? + Show Spoiler +Greatest Foreigner Of All Time Excluding Serral
GFOATES at this point is easily Reynor without contest. Actually has one World Champion and two runner ups, plus many other premier titles. That's miles ahead of anything Stephano, Neeb and Clem has achieved.
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Canada17 Posts
This list was extremely well researched and I'm very impressed with the amount of work that went into it. And I want to make it clear that I have absolutely nothing against Mizenhauer, but over the few weeks it may come off that way, because I am going to have passionate responses to this list. And once again, this does not mean that I have anything against Mizenhauer as a person or that I don't respect the work that went into this. I'm just posting this here for the record
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EPT
