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United States33080 Posts
On March 21 2024 03:43 WombaT wrote:
I mean I don’t think it’s impossible Serral wouldn’t have won GSL if he’d been competing there for 6 years, but equally it’s not impossible that I’d woo and marry Sofia Vegata either.
It may be that his environment and work/life balance given his chosen path are just ideal for the guy, but there’s even the frankly terrifying possibility that a Serral forged in the fires of Korea is even stronger.
Firstly Serral has the best win rate versus Korean opposition ever, and by a decent enough margin. Secondly, he generally is only playing the GSL players towards the upper end, good enough to qualify for the big competitions. If he was regularly playing the lower tiers of Korean pros in GSL it’d be even higher.
Looking at his head-to-head match win rates solely against GSL winners/finalists in this span:
Maru - 77%
Trap - 82%
Dark - 65%
Cure - 90%
TY - 71%
Rogue - 53%
Zest - 73%
Classic - 80%
Stats - 69%
While I think people go crazy overboard and say ridiculous things like Serral would sweep it every season or w/e, it’s almost inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t take even one. Even Reynor who is way more streaky and IMO not quite on the same tier I think would probably pull it off at least once.
As a big fan of the game overall, novelty, a huge fan of the GSL and what it’s given over the years it’s absolutely one of my biggest disappointments that getting a few foreigners who could potentially actually win it is accompanied by those said same not playing it regularly.
I think there's a pretty good chance he wins 3-4 tournaments if he played every Code S from 2018-2023 (especially with the weakened pool in the ones after 2022 or so).
The thing is, people constantly forget how variance heavy SC2 is when they're trying to do predictions or map out these kinds of hypotheticals. Shit like Serral going 1-4 against DRG in a DHM Last chance group or losing to RagnaroK at IEM Katowice, Maru dropping out of Code S RO32 to Scarlett and Solar, Reynor dropping out of RO32 against whoever in Code S happens semi-frequently.
I think the fact that this discussion is taking place during one of Serral's strongest stretches of play is distorting people's view of things—if we had this talk one year before when we were in HIGHEST PARITY ERA EVER™ I feel like people would be making more conservative projections.
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On March 20 2024 23:35 Nasigil wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2024 23:18 allmotor1 wrote:On March 20 2024 23:06 Nasigil wrote:On March 20 2024 22:08 allmotor1 wrote:On March 19 2024 00:45 goldensail wrote:On March 18 2024 23:45 Charoisaur wrote:On March 18 2024 23:27 CerebrateHector wrote:
This is just BS lol. Serral just destroyed everyone at IEM, and has that unstoppable aura that no one else has. I mean, I can understand being upset that your favourite player is not on top, but this argument (I've heard it quite a bit now) is complete horseshit and shows you don't know what Goat stands for. I honestly don't understand this, you think Serral must be the Goat because he won the latest tournament and is currently the best player? I wouldn't even say Serral is the best player. He's currently the best Zerg and makes more effective use of OP Zerg units than anyone else - that's the magic of his dominance. But I don't think the ceiling of Zerg's full potential has been reached. When race advantage is removed (i.e. ZvZ), Serral has been more vulnerable. Dark and Reynor both have 4-0'ed him, Rogue made him look hopeless in TSL8 (not long before retirement), and more recently he's lost to Solar, even Ragnarok. Skill wise, I still consider Maru superior. Serral just brings a gun to knife fights in ZvT and ZvP. If one day a Zerg player gets on par with peak Maru's level of play, there's no hope left for anyone else. Serral is not far off, and Reynor has a slim chance to get there esp. if he learns to be humble. Great post. You can't be the GOAT when you lose tons of mirrors and some of them 0-4. Not a balance whine, but everybody knows Z has been OP since LOTV. Serral is GREAT, he's truly a phenom, but he's been thriving since LOTV in an era where not just him but tons of other zergs have just dominated. Hate to break it to you but Serral's ZvZ win rate is higher than Maru's TvT, and historically ZvZ has always been the far more volatile mirror matchup than TvT Only Dark has 4-0 Serral once, Rogue hasn't. Serral holds a winning h2h record against both Dark and Rogue. Serral earned all his World Champions titles by going through the other best Zerg peers at the time (3-0 Dark and 3-1 Rogue in 2018, 3-0 Rogue and 4-3 Reynor in 2022, 3-1 Dark in 2024). Meanwhile Maru lost 1-4 to fucking Oliveira in the finals The excuses you guys came up with to prop up Maru and discredit Serral is getting lamer and lamer each day. Not an excuse at all. Maru has never been known to be weaker in TVT through his career since 2011? Serral's weakest matchup by far is definitely mirror. There have been stretches as I recall where Serral would lose mirror after mirror, I think it was Reynor for quite a stretch. See, this is the danger of relying on impression instead of statistics for these kind of discussion. Your brain will always remember the parts where it fits your narrative better than others. Do you know that both Innovation and TY holds a winning h2h record against Maru in their career? Do you remember for the span of three years from 2017 to 2019, TY and Inno had a combined 10-1 series record against Maru? Obviously you don't. Meanwhile, Reynor's best year against Serral was in 2020, where he 6-4 Serral in series. Every other year he lost to Serral overall and he only has a 35% h2h career record against Serral. The reason you will remember Serral's ZvZ as some kind of "weakness" is because he's almost invincible in ZvT and ZvP, therefore making his 78% mirror match win rate somehow feels like a weakness in comparison. But it's still better than any other Zerg's ZvZ other than perhaps soO in his prime.
I'm sorry I don't have the statistics of win rates for every player by year vs each player.
You're missing the point of my post. Maru may have lost vs his Terran peers through the years, but the overall theme was his TVT was never his weak point.
Serral's ZVZ has definitely been his weakest matchup or at least his most vulnerable.
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On March 21 2024 03:51 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 03:43 WombaT wrote:
I mean I don’t think it’s impossible Serral wouldn’t have won GSL if he’d been competing there for 6 years, but equally it’s not impossible that I’d woo and marry Sofia Vegata either.
It may be that his environment and work/life balance given his chosen path are just ideal for the guy, but there’s even the frankly terrifying possibility that a Serral forged in the fires of Korea is even stronger.
Firstly Serral has the best win rate versus Korean opposition ever, and by a decent enough margin. Secondly, he generally is only playing the GSL players towards the upper end, good enough to qualify for the big competitions. If he was regularly playing the lower tiers of Korean pros in GSL it’d be even higher.
Looking at his head-to-head match win rates solely against GSL winners/finalists in this span:
Maru - 77%
Trap - 82%
Dark - 65%
Cure - 90%
TY - 71%
Rogue - 53%
Zest - 73%
Classic - 80%
Stats - 69%
While I think people go crazy overboard and say ridiculous things like Serral would sweep it every season or w/e, it’s almost inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t take even one. Even Reynor who is way more streaky and IMO not quite on the same tier I think would probably pull it off at least once.
As a big fan of the game overall, novelty, a huge fan of the GSL and what it’s given over the years it’s absolutely one of my biggest disappointments that getting a few foreigners who could potentially actually win it is accompanied by those said same not playing it regularly.
I think there's a pretty good chance he wins 3-4 tournaments if he played every Code S from 2018-2023 (especially with the weakened pool in the ones after 2022 or so). The thing is, people constantly forget how variance heavy SC2 is when they're trying to do predictions or map out these kinds of hypotheticals. Shit like Serral going 1-4 against DRG in a DHM Last chance group or losing to RagnaroK at IEM Katowice, Maru dropping out of Code S RO32 to Scarlett and Solar, Reynor dropping out of RO32 against whoever in Code S happens semi-frequently. I think the fact that this discussion is taking place during one of Serral's strongest stretches of play is distorting people's view of things—if we had this talk one year before when we were in HIGHEST PARITY ERA EVER™ I feel like people would be making more conservative projections.
It's high variance because you're looking at noise (aka who wins the last big tournament - which can go south with 1 bad BO5), Serral has been #1 in Aligulac very consistently, some times with huge leads, he's also always the favourite to every tournament he enters.
If Serral was on GSL I'd expect him to win it more than Maru, as he has been the stronger player from 2018 to 2024, and I'd expect Maru to win more tournaments than Rogue/Dark, because he is the stronger player and so on....
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France12758 Posts
On March 21 2024 03:18 Comedy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 03:15 Poopi wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me  - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. I mean if we are talking hypothetical, in a perfectly balanced game with Serral going to the GSL, Maru would beat him almost every time except when unhealthy  Money wise, those from LATAM / NA, and zergs, were quite lucky these last few years. another balance whiner. Pathetic truly.
Balance matters in those GOAT discussions though.
What would have happened if protoss was as strong in LotV as it seemed to be in HotS? (I didn’t follow HotS as closely as WoL or LotV but afaik protoss was kinda good and then OP during blink era)
Maybe Zest would be even higher, or depending on the necessary skill set, someone like herO could have won more, or in a differently designed LotV sOs could have kept on shining…
Similarly, I firmly believe that Serral isn’t as creative as Rogue, and maybe even Dark, in coming up with clever plays that might not be optimal on paper but could still work out in your favor. He is extremely good at playing textbook, which makes you win a lot when your race is at worst even, and at best OP. Funnily though, he didn’t win BlizzCon during the worst year of Zerg being OP, 2019.
There is also the match fixing (+ other issues) that accelerated the death of proleague, and the lack of new blood in sc2 due to the game not being as successful as new esport titles.
Either way, there is no consensus GOAT in StarCraft 2. There are three clear contenders (Serral, Rogue, Maru) though, but the fact that the foreign sphere on Reddit and Twitter are this upset and think that Serral is an obvious #1, means that the narrative has been very very foreign biased.
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United States1798 Posts
On March 21 2024 04:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 03:51 Waxangel wrote:On March 21 2024 03:43 WombaT wrote:
I mean I don’t think it’s impossible Serral wouldn’t have won GSL if he’d been competing there for 6 years, but equally it’s not impossible that I’d woo and marry Sofia Vegata either.
It may be that his environment and work/life balance given his chosen path are just ideal for the guy, but there’s even the frankly terrifying possibility that a Serral forged in the fires of Korea is even stronger.
Firstly Serral has the best win rate versus Korean opposition ever, and by a decent enough margin. Secondly, he generally is only playing the GSL players towards the upper end, good enough to qualify for the big competitions. If he was regularly playing the lower tiers of Korean pros in GSL it’d be even higher.
Looking at his head-to-head match win rates solely against GSL winners/finalists in this span:
Maru - 77%
Trap - 82%
Dark - 65%
Cure - 90%
TY - 71%
Rogue - 53%
Zest - 73%
Classic - 80%
Stats - 69%
While I think people go crazy overboard and say ridiculous things like Serral would sweep it every season or w/e, it’s almost inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t take even one. Even Reynor who is way more streaky and IMO not quite on the same tier I think would probably pull it off at least once.
As a big fan of the game overall, novelty, a huge fan of the GSL and what it’s given over the years it’s absolutely one of my biggest disappointments that getting a few foreigners who could potentially actually win it is accompanied by those said same not playing it regularly.
I think there's a pretty good chance he wins 3-4 tournaments if he played every Code S from 2018-2023 (especially with the weakened pool in the ones after 2022 or so). The thing is, people constantly forget how variance heavy SC2 is when they're trying to do predictions or map out these kinds of hypotheticals. Shit like Serral going 1-4 against DRG in a DHM Last chance group or losing to RagnaroK at IEM Katowice, Maru dropping out of Code S RO32 to Scarlett and Solar, Reynor dropping out of RO32 against whoever in Code S happens semi-frequently. I think the fact that this discussion is taking place during one of Serral's strongest stretches of play is distorting people's view of things—if we had this talk one year before when we were in HIGHEST PARITY ERA EVER™ I feel like people would be making more conservative projections. It's high variance because you're looking at noise (aka who wins the last big tournament - which can go south with 1 bad BO5), Serral has been #1 in Aligulac very consistently, some times with huge leads, he's also always the favourite to every tournament he enters. If Serral was on GSL I'd expect him to win it more than Maru, as he has been the stronger player from 2018 to 2024, and I'd expect Maru to win more tournaments than Rogue/Dark, because he is the stronger player and so on....
So, basically the exact thing that has actually happened if you just removed the names of the tournaments?
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On March 21 2024 04:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 03:51 Waxangel wrote:On March 21 2024 03:43 WombaT wrote:
I mean I don’t think it’s impossible Serral wouldn’t have won GSL if he’d been competing there for 6 years, but equally it’s not impossible that I’d woo and marry Sofia Vegata either.
It may be that his environment and work/life balance given his chosen path are just ideal for the guy, but there’s even the frankly terrifying possibility that a Serral forged in the fires of Korea is even stronger.
Firstly Serral has the best win rate versus Korean opposition ever, and by a decent enough margin. Secondly, he generally is only playing the GSL players towards the upper end, good enough to qualify for the big competitions. If he was regularly playing the lower tiers of Korean pros in GSL it’d be even higher.
Looking at his head-to-head match win rates solely against GSL winners/finalists in this span:
Maru - 77%
Trap - 82%
Dark - 65%
Cure - 90%
TY - 71%
Rogue - 53%
Zest - 73%
Classic - 80%
Stats - 69%
While I think people go crazy overboard and say ridiculous things like Serral would sweep it every season or w/e, it’s almost inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t take even one. Even Reynor who is way more streaky and IMO not quite on the same tier I think would probably pull it off at least once.
As a big fan of the game overall, novelty, a huge fan of the GSL and what it’s given over the years it’s absolutely one of my biggest disappointments that getting a few foreigners who could potentially actually win it is accompanied by those said same not playing it regularly.
I think there's a pretty good chance he wins 3-4 tournaments if he played every Code S from 2018-2023 (especially with the weakened pool in the ones after 2022 or so). The thing is, people constantly forget how variance heavy SC2 is when they're trying to do predictions or map out these kinds of hypotheticals. Shit like Serral going 1-4 against DRG in a DHM Last chance group or losing to RagnaroK at IEM Katowice, Maru dropping out of Code S RO32 to Scarlett and Solar, Reynor dropping out of RO32 against whoever in Code S happens semi-frequently. I think the fact that this discussion is taking place during one of Serral's strongest stretches of play is distorting people's view of things—if we had this talk one year before when we were in HIGHEST PARITY ERA EVER™ I feel like people would be making more conservative projections. It's high variance because you're looking at noise (aka who wins the last big tournament - which can go south with 1 bad BO5), Serral has been #1 in Aligulac very consistently, some times with huge leads, he's also always the favourite to every tournament he enters. If Serral was on GSL I'd expect him to win it more than Maru, as he has been the stronger player from 2018 to 2024, and I'd expect Maru to win more tournaments than Rogue/Dark, because he is the stronger player and so on....
Aligulac is not very good at telling who the best player in the world is consistently. According to aligulac Polt had that title for quite a while due to beating up on NA players and he was never the best. Serral got it for beating up on EU players. Aligulacs system over rewards beating players who are way worse than you. Serral was already number 1 back in mid 2017 when he had a ~45% winrate vs Koreans during the same time period. If Serral played in Korea regularly he would have spent way less time as number 1. Probably still the most of any player mid 2018 forward but no where near his current streaks.
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On March 21 2024 01:27 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:
To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance.
My favorite posts are the factually incorrect ones.
I think it's pretty obvious they're referring to Blizzard world championships. I've seen some people value those more over IEM Katowice world championships, which I think is a totally valid view. I would feel more glory winning a Blizzard WC than a IEM WC or any other world circuit not directly hosted by Blizzard.
In the context of the post, giving sOs a very generous evaluation by weighing his 2 Blizz WCs over other WCs makes sense, because the post is saying that even that isn't enough to make him #1.
Either way, he's saying sOs isn't #1 because his record isn't good enough.
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On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro.
I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru?
And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement.
It is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve.
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France12758 Posts
On March 21 2024 04:35 goldensail wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro. I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru? And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement. It is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve.
It’s kinda unfair to compare him to peak Maru though, as Maru has pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times, that’s why he was called the fourth race.
I am pretty sure that Zest would be higher in the list if balance went other way in LotV, he is the perfect Protoss
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On March 21 2024 04:41 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 04:35 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro. I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru? And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement. It is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve. It’s kinda unfair to compare him to peak Maru though, as Maru has pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times, that’s why he was called the fourth race.
Isn't this just just a WarCraft 3 reference? People give their favorite players all kinds of ridiculous titles.
Still haven't heard a one that's better than Spoon Terran. If we're going by appellations, Thorzain undisputed GOAT.
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France12758 Posts
On March 21 2024 05:12 Fanatic-Templar wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 04:41 Poopi wrote:On March 21 2024 04:35 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro. I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru? And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement. It is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve. It’s kinda unfair to compare him to peak Maru though, as Maru has pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times, that’s why he was called the fourth race. Isn't this just just a WarCraft 3 reference? People give their favorite players all kinds of ridiculous titles. Still haven't heard a one that's better than Spoon Terran. If we're going by appellations, Thorzain undisputed GOAT.
Yeah Moon was called the fifth race, because how dominant he was.
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Northern Ireland23765 Posts
On March 21 2024 05:12 Fanatic-Templar wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 04:41 Poopi wrote:On March 21 2024 04:35 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro. I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru? And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement. It is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve. It’s kinda unfair to compare him to peak Maru though, as Maru has pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times, that’s why he was called the fourth race. Isn't this just just a WarCraft 3 reference? People give their favorite players all kinds of ridiculous titles. Still haven't heard a one that's better than Spoon Terran. If we're going by appellations, Thorzain undisputed GOAT.
I’m still impressed that a player who’d long had the nickname of Thorzain had his peak moment coming up with a strategy involving Thors
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It’s kinda unfair to compare him to peak Maru though, as Maru has pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times, that’s why he was called the fourth race.
I am pretty sure that Zest would be higher in the list if balance went other way in LotV, he is the perfect Protoss
I remember watching some of Maru's Proleague and GSL games thinking "whaaaaat! that's not possible!" multiple times so yeah I know exactly what you mean. Young viewers see Maru play more defensively so they might not even know he was called the fourth race or why. Clem reminds me of young Maru sometimes, albeit less well-rounded at the moment.
My memory of Zest is tainted by his humiliating losses to Maru in 2018 GSLs. Considering Classic, Stats, Hero, and Parting didn't make Top 10, I'd say #6 is not a bad place for Zest, but yeah clearly balance had an impact on results e.g. I remember Classic being a big trouble maker for Maru at one point.
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On March 21 2024 04:27 JJH777 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 04:09 LostUsername100 wrote:On March 21 2024 03:51 Waxangel wrote:On March 21 2024 03:43 WombaT wrote:
I mean I don’t think it’s impossible Serral wouldn’t have won GSL if he’d been competing there for 6 years, but equally it’s not impossible that I’d woo and marry Sofia Vegata either.
It may be that his environment and work/life balance given his chosen path are just ideal for the guy, but there’s even the frankly terrifying possibility that a Serral forged in the fires of Korea is even stronger.
Firstly Serral has the best win rate versus Korean opposition ever, and by a decent enough margin. Secondly, he generally is only playing the GSL players towards the upper end, good enough to qualify for the big competitions. If he was regularly playing the lower tiers of Korean pros in GSL it’d be even higher.
Looking at his head-to-head match win rates solely against GSL winners/finalists in this span:
Maru - 77%
Trap - 82%
Dark - 65%
Cure - 90%
TY - 71%
Rogue - 53%
Zest - 73%
Classic - 80%
Stats - 69%
While I think people go crazy overboard and say ridiculous things like Serral would sweep it every season or w/e, it’s almost inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t take even one. Even Reynor who is way more streaky and IMO not quite on the same tier I think would probably pull it off at least once.
As a big fan of the game overall, novelty, a huge fan of the GSL and what it’s given over the years it’s absolutely one of my biggest disappointments that getting a few foreigners who could potentially actually win it is accompanied by those said same not playing it regularly.
I think there's a pretty good chance he wins 3-4 tournaments if he played every Code S from 2018-2023 (especially with the weakened pool in the ones after 2022 or so). The thing is, people constantly forget how variance heavy SC2 is when they're trying to do predictions or map out these kinds of hypotheticals. Shit like Serral going 1-4 against DRG in a DHM Last chance group or losing to RagnaroK at IEM Katowice, Maru dropping out of Code S RO32 to Scarlett and Solar, Reynor dropping out of RO32 against whoever in Code S happens semi-frequently. I think the fact that this discussion is taking place during one of Serral's strongest stretches of play is distorting people's view of things—if we had this talk one year before when we were in HIGHEST PARITY ERA EVER™ I feel like people would be making more conservative projections. It's high variance because you're looking at noise (aka who wins the last big tournament - which can go south with 1 bad BO5), Serral has been #1 in Aligulac very consistently, some times with huge leads, he's also always the favourite to every tournament he enters. If Serral was on GSL I'd expect him to win it more than Maru, as he has been the stronger player from 2018 to 2024, and I'd expect Maru to win more tournaments than Rogue/Dark, because he is the stronger player and so on.... Aligulac is not very good at telling who the best player in the world is consistently. According to aligulac Polt had that title for quite a while due to beating up on NA players and he was never the best. Serral got it for beating up on EU players. Aligulacs system over rewards beating players who are way worse than you. Serral was already number 1 back in mid 2017 when he had a ~45% winrate vs Koreans during the same time period. If Serral played in Korea regularly he would have spent way less time as number 1. Probably still the most of any player mid 2018 forward but no where near his current streaks.
Serral is #1 because he farmed Koreans and Foreigners alike, yes he started his reign of terror on Aligulac by farming Europeans, but from 2018+ you're on pure copium if you think he wasnt #1, nearly every top Korean player has a god awful record vs Serral.
"If Serral played in Korea regularly he would have spent way less time as number 1."
Why? Korea doesn't seem to be getting better vs Serral, they have been getting consistently dunked on, I think it's the exact opposite Serral would adapt to the players and win at the same rate or higher.
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Maru pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times? Says who? What is the human threshold? On the other hand, Cure at last year's DH Summer literally said Serral is beyond the human limit.
This talk of how Maru's skill is on a whole other level compared to Serral is ridiculous. I don't care if you think Maru is better in terms of skills but they definitely belong to the same tier at the very least.
Also Serral's creativity and innovations are underappreciated. Nobody else plays ZvP the same way as he does. His late game understanding and knowledge cannot be simply summarized or shown through build order wins. Maru is the only other player on par with him in this department. I would say the rest of the pro players have no idea what they are doing in the late game.
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United States1798 Posts
On March 21 2024 05:41 ktll4c91 wrote:
Maru pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times? Says who? What is the human threshold? On the other hand, Cure at last year's DH Summer literally said Serral is beyond the human limit.
This talk of how Maru's skill is on a whole other level compared to Serral is ridiculous. I don't care if you think Maru is better in terms of skills but they definitely belong to the same tier at the very least.
Also Serral's creativity and innovations are underappreciated. Nobody else plays ZvP the same way as he does. His late game understanding and knowledge cannot be simply summarized or shown through build order wins. Maru is the only other player on par with him in this department. I would say the rest of the pro players have no idea what they are doing in the late game.
You have to look at it on a continuum. Mvp was one of the first players who separated himself from his peers. Dear, Maru and INnoVation did the same a few years later. Zest blew everyone away in early 2016, just like Rogue did in the second half of 2017. Serral raised the bar again in 2018 (that blizzcon run was mindblowing) etc etc. The problem that comes up when people say, "players now are better than before." is that it ignores all the times we saw someone elevate the game to never before seen heights.
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On March 21 2024 04:41 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 04:35 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro. I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru? And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement. It is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve. It’s kinda unfair to compare him to peak Maru though, as Maru has pushed the skill ceiling above the human threshold multiple times, that’s why he was called the fourth race. I am pretty sure that Zest would be higher in the list if balance went other way in LotV, he is the perfect Protoss
I am sorry, but nicknames are not valid argument for these kind of discussion. Achievements and statistics are.
Chirs Paul is called Point God but no one will put him as greatest point guard over Magic and Curry. Nicknames are just nicknames.
Maru didn't "push the skill ceiling above human threshold multiple times", he performed better than other Terrans, that's it, just like Serral performs better than other Zergs.
There was a post on Reddit that ran some stats of tournament wins since LotV, Maru has won 42% of Terran's premier championships, while Serral won 39% of Zergs. You could argue that Maru is a slightly bigger outlier for Terran than Serral is for Zerg, but that's about it, they are both huge outliers. 3% is really not a substantial difference that could tip the entire balance between the two.
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On March 21 2024 04:35 goldensail wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro. I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru? And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement. I t is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve.
I feel similarly.
Also Maru being a beast in TvT vs Serral having ZvZ as his worst match-up does not help. Why is Serral not so good when balance is not an issue? The answer is subjective...
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On March 21 2024 03:51 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 03:43 WombaT wrote:
I mean I don’t think it’s impossible Serral wouldn’t have won GSL if he’d been competing there for 6 years, but equally it’s not impossible that I’d woo and marry Sofia Vegata either.
It may be that his environment and work/life balance given his chosen path are just ideal for the guy, but there’s even the frankly terrifying possibility that a Serral forged in the fires of Korea is even stronger.
Firstly Serral has the best win rate versus Korean opposition ever, and by a decent enough margin. Secondly, he generally is only playing the GSL players towards the upper end, good enough to qualify for the big competitions. If he was regularly playing the lower tiers of Korean pros in GSL it’d be even higher.
Looking at his head-to-head match win rates solely against GSL winners/finalists in this span:
Maru - 77%
Trap - 82%
Dark - 65%
Cure - 90%
TY - 71%
Rogue - 53%
Zest - 73%
Classic - 80%
Stats - 69%
While I think people go crazy overboard and say ridiculous things like Serral would sweep it every season or w/e, it’s almost inconceivable to me that he wouldn’t take even one. Even Reynor who is way more streaky and IMO not quite on the same tier I think would probably pull it off at least once.
As a big fan of the game overall, novelty, a huge fan of the GSL and what it’s given over the years it’s absolutely one of my biggest disappointments that getting a few foreigners who could potentially actually win it is accompanied by those said same not playing it regularly.
I think there's a pretty good chance he wins 3-4 tournaments if he played every Code S from 2018-2023 (especially with the weakened pool in the ones after 2022 or so). The thing is, people constantly forget how variance heavy SC2 is when they're trying to do predictions or map out these kinds of hypotheticals. Shit like Serral going 1-4 against DRG in a DHM Last chance group or losing to RagnaroK at IEM Katowice, Maru dropping out of Code S RO32 to Scarlett and Solar, Reynor dropping out of RO32 against whoever in Code S happens semi-frequently. I think the fact that this discussion is taking place during one of Serral's strongest stretches of play is distorting people's view of things—if we had this talk one year before when we were in HIGHEST PARITY ERA EVER™ I feel like people would be making more conservative projections.
Indeed there's a ton of variance. You can perform variance reduction by doing comparables, and regressing to other players over extended periods of time.
If you adjust his winrate down to Maru's differential with the HIGHEST PARITY ERA EVER (tm, thereafter HPEE) - an idea given to me by Wombat - you still find hypothetical Serral to be a bit above prime Innovation. Regress his number of premier wins to Inno's and others, and you'd find he would have won another 15 premiers during the HPEE. Inno himself acts as a lower bound with 12 premiers so that is plausible. Also Inno had 3 GSLs in that period so again that seems a plausible lower bound.
So hypothetically that Serral would be on 30 premier wins if he'd started in 2013 and exhibited similar levels of strength (I'm only counting his current 18 by removing all region-locked ones, which is harsh, but has the Korean factor. Maru is on 21).
I have other calcs around, would need to find time to put graphs into Seaborn if you guys are interested.
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On March 21 2024 06:06 Xamo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2024 04:35 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 03:02 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 21 2024 02:57 goldensail wrote:On March 21 2024 01:58 Comedy wrote:On March 21 2024 01:15 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On March 21 2024 01:07 PremoBeats wrote:I seriously wonder how much ratios had to be distorted to come up with this conclusion. While I was lying sick in bed, I was bored and took my time to analyze StarCraft2 data. I made some excel sheets, typed in the numbers and what I saw was absolutely insane at times. So here I share the statistics I found and hope you enjoy this little summary I wrote, after the GOAT debate was settled - at least for me - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved (MVP being the other). - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023) - by far the most dominant. - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best other players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent for the aforementioned reasons. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world when they won the Champions League, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. This argument makes no sense at all. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Serral is also probably the best player to prepare for his opponents as Katowice 2024 has shown yet again. Does anybody in their right mind think that such a format would be worse for Serral? Plus, one has to keep in mind that Serral did all this without TeamHouses or the Korean infrastructure which was way beyond anything that is even present nowadays in Europe. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree "Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean?" To the KR prep elitists, yes. Also, great post but i think i read this somewhere by another TL user. Did you steal their post or something? Also, looking at the poll someone started a few pages ago, seems like the votes are in favor of Serral 2:1 so maybe the majority of TL actually agrees with Serral as #1 but it just looks more disputed going by the comments It seems unfathomable to be of the opinion that serral would not have won gsl if he entered the tournament. He'd have been the #1 favorite to win GSL for any GSL after he rose to prominence, if he had just participated. What the other poster said, someone like maru should actually consider himself lucky that serral did not come to korea to take his lunch money. When Serral "rose to prominence" in 2018, he lost to Maru 0:3 in WESG semi-finals. So no, he wouldn't have been the #1 favorite back when Maru had the 4-peat. Nowadays he would be, with the best Koreans aging, injured or retired, and when Zerg's potential is being further exploited. I quote Rogue from 2019 after winning GSL: "once I amass infestors, there's nothing Protoss can do...I barely practiced but still won so looks like Zerg is OP, map pool is also good for Zerg". Link below (use translator): www.dailyesports.comThe infestor problem persisted and the recent abominations just made it painfully obvious. Why did the balance council not fix them? It has been obvious to me as a mere enthusiast for years and looks like Rogue agrees. When Zerg has an obvious balance advantage does Serral's performance record count at face value? So no, I'm not convinced Serral is a better SC2 player than everyone else. He's a very good player who picked the strongest race. You can disagree, but at least you know where I'm coming from in terms of why Serral's win stats don't convince me, and I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks this way. I'm happy to agree to disagree. I've talked to about half a dozen pros who are of the opinion that Serral translates just fine to the other races. He's one of the fastest players, one of the best multitaskers, one of the best at gathering information and one of the best at decision making. The idea that Serral gets knocked for being Zerg is pretty comical, especially since he has out performed every Zerg (who have the same advantages he has) since becoming a full-time pro. I don't deny Serral is "one of the best" at all these things, I'm merely questioning whether he would be dominant had he not had balance in his favor. For example, is he as fast/as good in multi-tasking as peak Maru? And it's debatable whether he has "out performed every Zerg since becoming full time" - certainly not the case in 2021 vs. Rogue head-to-head (1W5L), and Rogue was older/close to retirement. If Washington Wizards' MJ takes out Kobe one-on-one that would be saying something. I know I'm cherry picking the time period but merely debating the statement. I t is not my intention to push down Serral unfairly. What I do wish, is that there had been better game balance so we could truly see players bring out their best on a level playing field (or hypothetically, if players were required to play random, it would be difficult to argue against results). There would've been less bitterness in these discussions and more celebration, which I imagine is what this series is meant to achieve. I feel similarly. Also Maru being a beast in TvT vs Serral having ZvZ as his worst match-up does not help. Why is Serral not so good when balance is not an issue? The answer is subjective...
Well, I think an easy way to answer that is just that ZvZ is known to be the most volatile MU in SC2. So naturally for someone who is overall very consistent, they are going to have the toughest time being consistent at a volatile MU.
Even so, Serral stands above the other top Zergs in ZvZs, and Maru stands above the other Terrans in TvT. Even if Serral's ZvZ winrate might be lower than Maru's TvT, they are different races and different MUs, so you can't compare them 1:1 comparatively, only relatively. In the end, Serral wins the most premieres on the biggest stages, so regardless of his individual race winrates, he's outperforming the other Zergs who play the same race, and all Zergs benefit from Zerg being OP if Zerg is OP.
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