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On March 17 2024 03:08 Antithesis wrote:First of all, since I have not yet said it: Major props to Miz for crafting this series! The amount of data that has been studied is amazing, and the writing is nothing short of superb. Reading the articles has been a joy. The series also has done the service of generating more discussion about SC2 on this site than anything else in the past years, haha. That said, I will also happily contribute to the many voices bringing out why, in my view, placing Maru above Serral is a misjudgment. This analogy is flawed even if you are the most blazing Korean elitist. The Champions League is literally the league where the best-performing teams from different regions play it out. So its counterpart in SC2 is not the GSL, but the World Championship cycle, embodied for example in BlizzCon or the Katowice events. And Serral has won three of them, Maru zero.
I agree the WC is more like the champions League literally, but obviously throughout the vast majority of sc2 winning blizzcon (and now katowice) was significantly easier than winning gsl because of how qualification worked.
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Poland3748 Posts
On March 17 2024 03:08 Antithesis wrote:First of all, since I have not yet said it: Major props to Miz for crafting this series! The amount of data that has been studied is amazing, and the writing is nothing short of superb. Reading the articles has been a joy. The series also has done the service of generating more discussion about SC2 on this site than anything else in the past years, haha. That said, I will also happily contribute to the many voices bringing out why, in my view, placing Maru above Serral is a misjudgment. This analogy is flawed even if you are the most blazing Korean elitist. The Champions League is literally the league where the best-performing teams from different regions play it out. So its counterpart in SC2 is not the GSL, but the World Championship cycle, embodied for example in BlizzCon or the Katowice events. And Serral has won three of them, Maru zero.
^that. The more reasonable analogy would be: can you be basketball goat without conquering NBA? Somewhat stretched analogy: can you be tennis goat without winning all 4 slams?
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Canada8988 Posts
By the way, since I've not said it yet, amazing job Miz. Thanks for embarking on this colossal endeavor.
I may put my thoughts together in a blog about the whole thing and how one ranks greatness, I find the difference (and the resemblance) between what my own personal top 10 would be fascinating while having a very different way to approach what makes a player great in my mind.
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Fwiw I think Maru is the most talented player to touch the game. As Miz outlined he went from cheeser/micro player to late game turtling. He has some of the best proleague stats ever, which I think people these days generally don't give as much credit to team leagues in general which is sad. That's where they got their salaries from and obviously the most important competition to their sponsors. Not to mention Maru and other good players are getting sniped and prepared for each week in Proleague.
To be as good as he is for so long just shows his dedication. When some of the current pros were either not playing or not playing at the top level he was winning tournaments. Being willing to practice for a decade plus is insane. Maru is going to likely play in the first and final GSL seasons.
Recency bias hurts Maru's case but over the course of sc2 I don't really think there is anyone else who could be goat. Royal roaded 2 star leagues, his GSL records and pro league career.
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![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/b/ba/HerO_IEM_Shanghai_2017.jpg)
The REAL GOAT: More Kespa Cups than Maru and Serral COMBINED.... hard to debate with that.
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On March 17 2024 03:28 nimdil wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 03:08 Antithesis wrote:First of all, since I have not yet said it: Major props to Miz for crafting this series! The amount of data that has been studied is amazing, and the writing is nothing short of superb. Reading the articles has been a joy. The series also has done the service of generating more discussion about SC2 on this site than anything else in the past years, haha. That said, I will also happily contribute to the many voices bringing out why, in my view, placing Maru above Serral is a misjudgment. On March 17 2024 02:09 StaNi wrote:
GSL is like Champions League of sc2 This analogy is flawed even if you are the most blazing Korean elitist. The Champions League is literally the league where the best-performing teams from different regions play it out. So its counterpart in SC2 is not the GSL, but the World Championship cycle, embodied for example in BlizzCon or the Katowice events. And Serral has won three of them, Maru zero. ^that. The more reasonable analogy would be: can you be basketball goat without conquering NBA? Somewhat stretched analogy: can you be tennis goat without winning all 4 slams?
I think a better analogy is in NCAA Football. Playing for and setting records for an elite program is a better accomplishment than lighting it up for Hawaii or Western Kentucky.
It can't be argued that Maru has the league pedigree in his favor and people value that differently. I think a lot of that group doesn't counter-balance that with he extra resources and structure that helped Maru develop his talents so well... and well in this analogy, it is like Serral actually won the championship with Western Kentucky and that would be a GOAT accomplishment.
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On March 16 2024 22:02 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2024 19:46 Argonauta wrote:On March 16 2024 18:44 Snakestyle1 wrote:
I think its important to keep in mind that even though Maru has been playing since the very beginning (2010), his GSL wins are all in the last 5-6 years; way after the most competitive GSL eras. He never won when gsl was competitive. He won like 5 GSL in a row, but could never win a world championship or even struggle in most world events.
The weak point of your argument is that if GSL is weak, then the rest of tournaments are also weak, Korean decline is SC2 goes hand in hand with an overall decline in player depth and competitiveness in international tournaments. So weighting down Maru results in recent years comes with the price of weighting down Serral's entire carrer as well. The thing is: I hope we all don't rate GSL so high because "the koreans play there", but because "it was an incredibly staked tournament". I still wouldn't put GSL over any WCS titles, but I atleast can see the appeal. However, in recent years GSL falls behind the World Championship considerably because "the best players play there" just wasn't true anymore - it was missing Serral, Reynor and recently Clem. Still a staked tournament, but there should be a shift in priority for sure. Especially considering Miz at some point said something along the line of "maybe koreans performed worse in those international tournaments Serral won because of GSL"...if Maru and co. really lose big tournaments now because they focused on their regional tournament that maybe should be a Liquipedia-Major instead of a Premier by now considering how low the prizepool is...yikes.
You forgot that Reynor played at GSL. And yes, nobody is saying that Maru and co lose big tourneys now because they focus on regional ones, dont know why you make that point.
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Canada8988 Posts
On March 17 2024 03:35 ZAWGURN wrote:The REAL GOAT: More Kespa Cups than Maru and Serral COMBINED.... hard to debate with that.
Maru, Serral and herO are great, but did they walk the royal road beating a GSL semi-finalist, a WCS finalist, a WCS champion, a 2 time MLG + 1-time Dreamhack champion, the pvp skill-god, a WCG finalist, an 11-time premier champion, a 14-time IPL fight club champion and a Red Bull legend?
Of course not, only the goat did it.
+ Show Spoiler +
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while I think it wouldn't have been unfair for author to just put serral and maru at both #1 to avoid the shitfest right now on comment section, how come a lot of SC2 community isn't really taking BW-approach on these rankings where they discount results post-teamhouse era?
The same thing applies in BW; the general knowledge, meta and skill level rose a lot compared to Proleague era where game is nearly incomparable and everything is measured down to seconds nowadays, with meta evolving to counter the meta constantly every few weeks due to condensed progamer circle and sharing of knowledge
However, everyone recognizes that the amount of competition/cycle/dedicated coaching or sniping builds are incomparable compared to proleague era as of now, as amount of resources dedicated to each player and level of competition is just way less now, so results post-teamhouse era are counted with grain of salt even if the "now" player would wipe floor with "past" player; after all, the peak competition and mechanical skill was back in proleague era.
Flash mentioned that if "modern" player were timetravelled back into past, they would win most of the game vs past player due to just difference in knowledge/skill. But the past player would just adapt due to being used to the amount of competition and sheer mechanical skill during that era, so you cannot compare past achievements with current.
after proleague went down, a lot of SC2 Korean pro players are not under same amount of pressure/passion for game after and are really in no way in their peak. The amount of progamers lessened a lot, and there are a whole lot less expectations placed on them. It's not really fair to compare peak competition era to post 2017 era really just due to sheer difference in environment where SC2 doesn't really offer an attractive environment for Korean progamers to keep going.
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Canada8988 Posts
On March 17 2024 04:39 jinjin5000 wrote:
while I think it wouldn't have been unfair for author to just put serral and maru at both #1 to avoid the shitfest right now on comment section, how come a lot of SC2 community isn't really taking BW-approach on these rankings where they discount results post-teamhouse era?
The same thing applies in BW; the general knowledge, meta and skill level rose a lot compared to Proleague era where game is nearly incomparable and everything is measured down to seconds nowadays, with meta evolving to counter the meta constantly every few weeks due to condensed progamer circle and sharing of knowledge
However, everyone recognizes that the amount of competition/cycle/dedicated coaching or sniping builds are incomparable compared to proleague era as of now, as amount of resources dedicated to each player and level of competition is just way less now, so results post-teamhouse era are counted with grain of salt even if the "now" player would wipe floor with "past" player; after all, the peak competition and mechanical skill was back in proleague era.
Flash mentioned that if "modern" player were timetravelled back into past, they would win most of the game vs past player due to just difference in knowledge/skill. But the past player would just adapt due to being used to the amount of competition and sheer mechanical skill during that era, so you cannot compare past achievements with current.
after proleague went down, a lot of SC2 Korean pro players are not under same amount of pressure/passion for game after and are really in no way in their peak. The amount of progamers lessened a lot, and there are a whole lot less expectations placed on them. It's not really fair to compare peak competition era to post 2017 era really just due to sheer difference in environment where SC2 doesn't really offer an attractive environment for Korean progamers to keep going.
The two aren't comparable. Sure teahouses and proleague stopped and a lot of progamer retired, there's no denying the field became a lot is tinner. But SC2 competition was (and arguably still is) very much alive.
Post 2017 is also when there was the most amount of money, to earn. Maru, Dark and Rogue became millionaires in their post-Kespa days, it's not BW where's there barely 100k$ a year up for grabs. We talk about retirement, but there is way less retirement post-2017 compared to the 2011-2016 period, on the contrary, we see players stick with SC2 all the way to military for the first time since it finally makes sense to have it as a long time commitment.
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On March 17 2024 04:54 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 04:39 jinjin5000 wrote:
while I think it wouldn't have been unfair for author to just put serral and maru at both #1 to avoid the shitfest right now on comment section, how come a lot of SC2 community isn't really taking BW-approach on these rankings where they discount results post-teamhouse era?
The same thing applies in BW; the general knowledge, meta and skill level rose a lot compared to Proleague era where game is nearly incomparable and everything is measured down to seconds nowadays, with meta evolving to counter the meta constantly every few weeks due to condensed progamer circle and sharing of knowledge
However, everyone recognizes that the amount of competition/cycle/dedicated coaching or sniping builds are incomparable compared to proleague era as of now, as amount of resources dedicated to each player and level of competition is just way less now, so results post-teamhouse era are counted with grain of salt even if the "now" player would wipe floor with "past" player; after all, the peak competition and mechanical skill was back in proleague era.
Flash mentioned that if "modern" player were timetravelled back into past, they would win most of the game vs past player due to just difference in knowledge/skill. But the past player would just adapt due to being used to the amount of competition and sheer mechanical skill during that era, so you cannot compare past achievements with current.
after proleague went down, a lot of SC2 Korean pro players are not under same amount of pressure/passion for game after and are really in no way in their peak. The amount of progamers lessened a lot, and there are a whole lot less expectations placed on them. It's not really fair to compare peak competition era to post 2017 era really just due to sheer difference in environment where SC2 doesn't really offer an attractive environment for Korean progamers to keep going. The two aren't comparable. Sure teahouses and proleague stopped and a lot of progamer retired, there's no denying the field became a lot is tinner. But SC2 competition was (and arguably still is) very much alive. Post 2017 is also when there was the most amount of money, to earn. Maru, Dark and Rogue became millionaires in their post-Kespa days, it's not BW where's there barely 100k$ a year up for grabs. We talk about retirement, but there is way less retirement post-2017 compared to the 2011-2016 period, on the contrary, we see players stick with SC2 all the way to military for the first time since it finally makes sense to have it as a long time commitment.
Well tbf, for BW side, there's still incentive for them to keep up competition on streaming (even if it transitioned into personality streams) in forms of major proleague and 1v1 spons which make up sizable part of the income. You can say its bit comparative in that department where both games have forms of serious competition/playing for prize money which are very comparable to sc2 levels on those alone.
A lot of SC2 progamesr had to pick up online cups or side tournaments to keep going and had their own self-practice environment so i think its fairly comparable to BW situation really. They are no longer at their peak nor incentives.
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LONG time reader. Had to create an account because how ridiculous this is.
GSL hasn't had the best player in the world play in it since 2018........ it's 2024.
There have been 18 GSL's in that time. Maru won 7. Doesn't seem like the most prestigious wins if the best player in the world wasn't in the tournament.
There were two GSL vs the World in that time. I'm sure the guy who went 2 for 2 on those wouldn't have been able to win one or two of those 18 GSL's if he had decided he wanted to play in them.
Ask the pros who'd they'd rather play against in the final of the world championship for a few hundred thousand dollars? Good luck finding one that says they'd rather play serral.
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Correct me if I'm wrong. I remember that Miz said this ranking does not take Kato 2024 into account and its result would not affect the ranking even if it were taken into account. I take it that mentioning of Kato 2024 in both the Serral and Maru articles is just for the sake of completeness.
This means even if Serral wins Kato 2024 and Maru fails to come out of his group, Miz would still rank Maru above Serral. That is to say, one more world champion does not close the gap between the two (pre Kato 2024). Yet he said Maru only comes out on top on a very small margin.
Another glaring issue is the exclusion of Dark. In this very article, there is a graph showing that Dark is the best GSL player in terms of match win rates between 2019 and 2023 and another showing that Dark has won the second most code S matches with the third highest win rate. How does one look at these stats and leave Dark out of the top 10?
I'm fine with the placement of Serral and Maru either way but these inconsistencies make me question whether the methodology is applied consistently and fairly more than anything else.
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Btw, I always thought the fact that Byun has always been advocating for Serral's goat status is valuable evidence. He is a Korean Terran so unlikely bias to non-Korean or Zerg. He has been playing since the first GSL alongside Maru so he definitely knows about the competitiveness of tournaments across era. He has played both Serral, Maru and other top Zergs countless times so he has good knowledge of the skill level of his opponents. He is even a very close friend of Maru!
Yet, he has long been saying that Serral is the goat. I think this fact alone says a lot.
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On March 17 2024 05:02 ktll4c91 wrote:
I'm fine with the placement of Serral and Maru either way but these inconsistencies make me question whether the methodology is applied consistently and fairly more than anything else.
I agree, and several others have pointed out the same inconsistency.
In fact, Mizenhauer himself has stated that in order to place Maru above Serral, being the Greatest had to be valued at as low as 45%, while the Greatest Career had to be valued at as high as 55%:
On March 16 2024 07:43 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 16 2024 07:29 CicadaSC wrote:
Agree with this. Serral is good but you can't call him the goat if he refuses to play in Code S, the hardest tournament. Reynor, neeb and other foreigners who had success in weekend tournaments show how much of a different beast this is. Grats to Maru and well deserved #1. It's really close between the two. If my original split between Greatest and Greatest Career was more like 60/40 (it was 45/55 in favor of the latter) to the former then Serral gets first. Even then, I waffled between Maru and Serral a few times before settling on my final order.
However, if these weightings are applied consistently, then it is difficult to see how Dark can be left out of the Top 10, while, for example, MVP is #4.
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On March 17 2024 05:01 Cactus66 wrote:
LONG time reader. Had to create an account because how ridiculous this is.
GSL hasn't had the best player in the world play in it since 2018........ it's 2024.
There have been 18 GSL's in that time. Maru won 7. Doesn't seem like the most prestigious wins if the best player in the world wasn't in the tournament.
There were two GSL vs the World in that time. I'm sure the guy who went 2 for 2 on those wouldn't have been able to win one or two of those 18 GSL's if he had decided he wanted to play in them.
Ask the pros who'd they'd rather play against in the final of the world championship for a few hundred thousand dollars? Good luck finding one that says they'd rather play serral.
Serral has not been the continuous best since 2018. There have definitely been times where Maru, Dark, Rogue, Reynor, and Trap surpassed him and outperformed him for multiple tournaments in a row.
Ragnarok and Solar would definitely choose Serral. Ragnarok has not won a series against Maru and Solar beats him sometimes but never when it really matters. Clem has a higher winrate against Serral than Maru but in their current forms he would still probably choose Maru. I'm sure there are a handful of others as well. Regardless its not purely about current skill but alltime skill. Sure most would choose Maru now but from 2010-mid 2018 it's not even a question that they would choose Serral. Even since 2018 there have been a few periods where Serral would be chosen as well. Throughout the games life Maru would be the harder one to beat in around 10/14 years.
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Canada8988 Posts
On March 17 2024 04:58 jinjin5000 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 04:54 Nakajin wrote:On March 17 2024 04:39 jinjin5000 wrote:
while I think it wouldn't have been unfair for author to just put serral and maru at both #1 to avoid the shitfest right now on comment section, how come a lot of SC2 community isn't really taking BW-approach on these rankings where they discount results post-teamhouse era?
The same thing applies in BW; the general knowledge, meta and skill level rose a lot compared to Proleague era where game is nearly incomparable and everything is measured down to seconds nowadays, with meta evolving to counter the meta constantly every few weeks due to condensed progamer circle and sharing of knowledge
However, everyone recognizes that the amount of competition/cycle/dedicated coaching or sniping builds are incomparable compared to proleague era as of now, as amount of resources dedicated to each player and level of competition is just way less now, so results post-teamhouse era are counted with grain of salt even if the "now" player would wipe floor with "past" player; after all, the peak competition and mechanical skill was back in proleague era.
Flash mentioned that if "modern" player were timetravelled back into past, they would win most of the game vs past player due to just difference in knowledge/skill. But the past player would just adapt due to being used to the amount of competition and sheer mechanical skill during that era, so you cannot compare past achievements with current.
after proleague went down, a lot of SC2 Korean pro players are not under same amount of pressure/passion for game after and are really in no way in their peak. The amount of progamers lessened a lot, and there are a whole lot less expectations placed on them. It's not really fair to compare peak competition era to post 2017 era really just due to sheer difference in environment where SC2 doesn't really offer an attractive environment for Korean progamers to keep going. The two aren't comparable. Sure teahouses and proleague stopped and a lot of progamer retired, there's no denying the field became a lot is tinner. But SC2 competition was (and arguably still is) very much alive. Post 2017 is also when there was the most amount of money, to earn. Maru, Dark and Rogue became millionaires in their post-Kespa days, it's not BW where's there barely 100k$ a year up for grabs. We talk about retirement, but there is way less retirement post-2017 compared to the 2011-2016 period, on the contrary, we see players stick with SC2 all the way to military for the first time since it finally makes sense to have it as a long time commitment. Well tbf, for BW side, there's still incentive for them to keep up competition on streaming (even if it transitioned into personality streams) in forms of major proleague and 1v1 spons which make up sizable part of the income. You can say its bit comparative in that department where both games have forms of serious competition/playing for prize money.
I can't say I'm very versed into the streamer-proleague world of BW, but my understanding is that it's more players and streamers playing showmatches so that everyone make money after after a couple weeks/months, am I far off?
I think from the outside looking in, it can be easy to think SC2 players don't practice since it's way less visible than before, but I'd be curious to know if practice time truly fell off by that much. For example, just a couple of years back in 2021, Zest played almost 900 professional matches on top of a shit-ton of ladder, that's some Kespa-level workload if I've ever seen one.
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On March 17 2024 05:10 JJH777 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 05:01 Cactus66 wrote:
LONG time reader. Had to create an account because how ridiculous this is.
GSL hasn't had the best player in the world play in it since 2018........ it's 2024.
There have been 18 GSL's in that time. Maru won 7. Doesn't seem like the most prestigious wins if the best player in the world wasn't in the tournament.
There were two GSL vs the World in that time. I'm sure the guy who went 2 for 2 on those wouldn't have been able to win one or two of those 18 GSL's if he had decided he wanted to play in them.
Ask the pros who'd they'd rather play against in the final of the world championship for a few hundred thousand dollars? Good luck finding one that says they'd rather play serral. Serral has not been the continuous best since 2018. There have definitely been times where Maru, Dark, Rogue, Reynor, and Trap surpassed him and outperformed him for multiple tournaments in a row. Ragnarok and Solar would definitely choose Serral. Ragnarok has not won a series against Maru and Solar beats him sometimes but never when it really matters. Clem has a higher winrate against Serral than Maru but in their current forms he would still probably choose Maru. I'm sure there are a handful of others as well. Regardless its not purely about current skill but alltime skill. Sure most would choose Maru now but from 2010-mid 2018 it's not even a question that they would choose Serral. Even since 2018 there have been a few periods where Serral would be chosen as well. Throughout the games life Maru would be the harder one to beat in around 10/14 years.
Serral has absolutely been the best player since 2018. If you went back in time and inserted a premier tournament at any point in time from 2018-2024 he would be the betting favourite to win the tournament. Did he win every tournament and series? Of course not.
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On March 17 2024 05:15 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 04:58 jinjin5000 wrote:On March 17 2024 04:54 Nakajin wrote:On March 17 2024 04:39 jinjin5000 wrote:
while I think it wouldn't have been unfair for author to just put serral and maru at both #1 to avoid the shitfest right now on comment section, how come a lot of SC2 community isn't really taking BW-approach on these rankings where they discount results post-teamhouse era?
The same thing applies in BW; the general knowledge, meta and skill level rose a lot compared to Proleague era where game is nearly incomparable and everything is measured down to seconds nowadays, with meta evolving to counter the meta constantly every few weeks due to condensed progamer circle and sharing of knowledge
However, everyone recognizes that the amount of competition/cycle/dedicated coaching or sniping builds are incomparable compared to proleague era as of now, as amount of resources dedicated to each player and level of competition is just way less now, so results post-teamhouse era are counted with grain of salt even if the "now" player would wipe floor with "past" player; after all, the peak competition and mechanical skill was back in proleague era.
Flash mentioned that if "modern" player were timetravelled back into past, they would win most of the game vs past player due to just difference in knowledge/skill. But the past player would just adapt due to being used to the amount of competition and sheer mechanical skill during that era, so you cannot compare past achievements with current.
after proleague went down, a lot of SC2 Korean pro players are not under same amount of pressure/passion for game after and are really in no way in their peak. The amount of progamers lessened a lot, and there are a whole lot less expectations placed on them. It's not really fair to compare peak competition era to post 2017 era really just due to sheer difference in environment where SC2 doesn't really offer an attractive environment for Korean progamers to keep going. The two aren't comparable. Sure teahouses and proleague stopped and a lot of progamer retired, there's no denying the field became a lot is tinner. But SC2 competition was (and arguably still is) very much alive. Post 2017 is also when there was the most amount of money, to earn. Maru, Dark and Rogue became millionaires in their post-Kespa days, it's not BW where's there barely 100k$ a year up for grabs. We talk about retirement, but there is way less retirement post-2017 compared to the 2011-2016 period, on the contrary, we see players stick with SC2 all the way to military for the first time since it finally makes sense to have it as a long time commitment. Well tbf, for BW side, there's still incentive for them to keep up competition on streaming (even if it transitioned into personality streams) in forms of major proleague and 1v1 spons which make up sizable part of the income. You can say its bit comparative in that department where both games have forms of serious competition/playing for prize money. I can't say I'm very versed into the streamer-proleague world of BW, but my understanding is that it's more players and streamers playing showmatches so that everyone make money after after a couple weeks/months, am I far off? I think from the outside looking in, it can be easy to think SC2 players don't practice since it's way less visible than before, but I'd be curious to know if practice time truly fell off by that much. For example, just a couple of years back in 2021, Zest played almost 900 professional matches on top of a shit-ton of ladder, that's some Kespa-level workload if I've ever seen one.
I think its quite similar in sense that both sides are playing competitive games but w/o teamhouse infrastructure supporting them and both scenes don't have new blood coming in, lessening the overall competition/pressure. Both games have very limited pro-player pool exacerbating to this issue.
SC2, you have online tournaments and foreign tournaments, but you no longer have the benefit of teamhouse support with dedicated coaching team and competition level as well as facing opponents who prepared specifically vs them with teamhouse support behind them.
BW, you have progamers splitting between competitive 1v1, proleague format and streaming/non-competitive content. They also no longer have dedicated team behind them keeping their shape up, but is compensated by faster revolving meta due to sharing knowledge and all, but its quite clear that they are not at their peak mechanically wise.
Even with number of games, it's quite comparable with someone like light in BW roughly playing 1527 competitive spon games last 1 year with 580 games of it being major proleague, not counting their practice games.
I think both scenes have quite comparable levels of competitive games going on, with BW having bit less since they also split time to focusing on streaming content and SC2 progamers not streaming much at all, but self-employment/motivation thing applies to both imo, as well as limited competitiveness in scene and player pool.
nowadays both SC2 and SC1 progamers use customs using their own connections/friends to practice their own preparation for tournaments when they are preparing seriously off-stream, and both sides use ladder as filler in-between which isn't the best practice environment compared to dedicated customs/teamhouse environment where there were dedicated b/c teamers as well as A-teamers to grind customs with at pro-level skill. It's only natural the skill level won't keep up with your own effort from peak.
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On March 17 2024 05:20 Cactus66 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 17 2024 05:10 JJH777 wrote:On March 17 2024 05:01 Cactus66 wrote:
LONG time reader. Had to create an account because how ridiculous this is.
GSL hasn't had the best player in the world play in it since 2018........ it's 2024.
There have been 18 GSL's in that time. Maru won 7. Doesn't seem like the most prestigious wins if the best player in the world wasn't in the tournament.
There were two GSL vs the World in that time. I'm sure the guy who went 2 for 2 on those wouldn't have been able to win one or two of those 18 GSL's if he had decided he wanted to play in them.
Ask the pros who'd they'd rather play against in the final of the world championship for a few hundred thousand dollars? Good luck finding one that says they'd rather play serral. Serral has not been the continuous best since 2018. There have definitely been times where Maru, Dark, Rogue, Reynor, and Trap surpassed him and outperformed him for multiple tournaments in a row. Ragnarok and Solar would definitely choose Serral. Ragnarok has not won a series against Maru and Solar beats him sometimes but never when it really matters. Clem has a higher winrate against Serral than Maru but in their current forms he would still probably choose Maru. I'm sure there are a handful of others as well. Regardless its not purely about current skill but alltime skill. Sure most would choose Maru now but from 2010-mid 2018 it's not even a question that they would choose Serral. Even since 2018 there have been a few periods where Serral would be chosen as well. Throughout the games life Maru would be the harder one to beat in around 10/14 years. Serral has absolutely been the best player since 2018. If you went back in time and inserted a premier tournament at any point in time from 2018-2024 he would be the betting favourite to win the tournament. Did he win every tournament and series? Of course not.
Maru out placed him in something like 6 tournaments in a row during late 2021 and won 2 head to head matches. Trap had a similar run during late 2020 early 2021 once again including beating him head to head a couple times and out placing him several events in a row. Reynor also did the same in early to mid 2021. Rogue is a streaky player so he didn't have any sustained success over him for multiple events in a row but did have peaks where he looked clearly better.
Serral was on average the best from 2018 to now. That's a true statement. Saying he was the best without any exceptions from 2018 to now is just blind bias.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://liquipedia.net/commons/images/0/03/Pigbaby_2014_WCS_AM_S2.jpg)
