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On March 19 2024 01:20 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2024 00:28 Nasigil wrote:
GSL is gold standard unless it's involved in discussion about Serral.
When the entire league of players have a negative (often lopsided) h2h record against this one player for years, he just doesn't need to compete in such league to prove himself anymore. Just like Maru doesn't need any WCS NA title to prove himself. sOs has as many World Championship titles as Serral and never won GSL. Rogue won every international tournament he entered for almost a year straight, and still took nearly 20 attempts to bag GSL. It's a different format of tournament, players skill peak is higher in Starleagues than weekend tournaments because they can practice one matchup and plan a series for a week in advance. Just because Serral wins international tournaments doesn't guarantee he would win GSL. And even if it did, he never actually did it. If Maru had never played in World Championships, you'd be saying he would have clearly won several...
That's why I didn't use Serral's world championships as an argument. I used his win rate against Korean players. With enough sample size, that becomes a compelling argument especially because the only Korean players Serral may run into are usually the best ones that's making far in big international tournaments. His landslide h2h record against every single one of Korean top player (unless you are counting DRG) just cannot be ignored.
You can't say that for sOs and Rogue, they are great tournament players but their h2h record against Korean peers are not that outstanding. There are always some players that has positive record against them. For example Innovation absolutely owns Rogue no matter which year they meet. Classic always has sOs' numbers. That means it's much more likely for them to get eliminated by the player that counters their style in a long tournament. There's simply no such player in Korea to counter Serral.
And the whole preparation thing is just not an excuse anymore, after Serral's 6 years of dominance run. Any top Koreans knows if they want to achieve anything on international stage they are likely gonna get over Serral first. You are kidding yourself if you think players like Maru, Dark and Rogue don't save their best builds for Serral before tournaments. And it worked to some extend, like Zest's glaive build that caught Serral off-guard in 2020. But it's never long before Serral figures out the counter.
Also you might be forgetting that Serral is also capable of preparing against his opponent. The Dark and Maru series from recent Katowice is easy example. They were totally caught off guard by Serral's map specific builds.
Am I saying all these to argue "Serral could win 10 GSL if he wants to"? No. I am only saying not participating in GSL is just not an good counter argument for Serral. He has shown the ability of consistently dominating all Korean players online, offline, on international events and on Korean soil, and it's been 6 years. Adding a few days between matches changes nothing at this point.
Even Mizenhauer knows not to use "Serral has no GSL" as an argument in his list. He merely said Maru's longevity at top level trumps everything else, which I don't entirely disagree by itself (I am more annoyed by the absence of Dark if he values longevity that much). But in the article he still admitted that after taking everything into account, Serral is the most successful tournament player ever.
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It is gold standard because maru got more gsl champions, lmao
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On March 19 2024 11:08 Nasigil wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2024 01:20 Fango wrote:On March 19 2024 00:28 Nasigil wrote:
GSL is gold standard unless it's involved in discussion about Serral.
When the entire league of players have a negative (often lopsided) h2h record against this one player for years, he just doesn't need to compete in such league to prove himself anymore. Just like Maru doesn't need any WCS NA title to prove himself. sOs has as many World Championship titles as Serral and never won GSL. Rogue won every international tournament he entered for almost a year straight, and still took nearly 20 attempts to bag GSL. It's a different format of tournament, players skill peak is higher in Starleagues than weekend tournaments because they can practice one matchup and plan a series for a week in advance. Just because Serral wins international tournaments doesn't guarantee he would win GSL. And even if it did, he never actually did it. If Maru had never played in World Championships, you'd be saying he would have clearly won several... That's why I didn't use Serral's world championships as an argument. I used his win rate against Korean players. With enough sample size, that becomes a compelling argument especially because the only Korean players Serral may run into are usually the best ones that's making far in big international tournaments. His landslide h2h record against every single one of Korean top player (unless you are counting DRG) just cannot be ignored. You can't say that for sOs and Rogue, they are great tournament players but their h2h record against Korean peers are not that outstanding. There are always some players that has positive record against them. For example Innovation absolutely owns Rogue no matter which year they meet. Classic always has sOs' numbers. That means it's much more likely for them to get eliminated by the player that counters their style in a long tournament. There's simply no such player in Korea to counter Serral. And the whole preparation thing is just not an excuse anymore, after Serral's 6 years of dominance run. Any top Koreans knows if they want to achieve anything on international stage they are likely gonna get over Serral first. You are kidding yourself if you think players like Maru, Dark and Rogue don't save their best builds for Serral before tournaments. And it worked to some extend, like Zest's glaive build that caught Serral off-guard in 2020. But it's never long before Serral figures out the counter. Also you might be forgetting that Serral is also capable of preparing against his opponent. The Dark and Maru series from recent Katowice is easy example. They were totally caught off guard by Serral's map specific builds. Am I saying all these to argue "Serral could win 10 GSL if he wants to"? No. I am only saying not participating in GSL is just not an good counter argument for Serral. He has shown the ability of consistently dominating all Korean players online, offline, on international events and on Korean soil, and it's been 6 years. Adding a few days between matches changes nothing at this point. Even Mizenhauer knows not to use "Serral has no GSL" as an argument in his list. He merely said Maru's longevity at top level trumps everything else, which I don't entirely disagree by itself (I am more annoyed by the absence of Dark if he values longevity that much). But in the article he still admitted that after taking everything into account, Serral is the most successful tournament player ever.
Hmm I think the "Serral has no GSL" argument is linked to "Serral rose to prominence after sc2 had already declined." Right now GSL really isn't worth that much anymore and there's no point for Serral to compete in there. But that wasn't the case from 2010-2019/20 where GSL was right after world championships the most prestigious tournament and especially between 2013-2016 they were more stacked than any tournament Serral has ever entered.
In that context I think it's a legitimate gap in his resumee, especially compared to Maru who won Starleagues during the Kespa era.
I know it's not his fault that sc2 declined, however it's also not Maru's fault that Serral started to compete later, so disregarding Maru's Starleague wins in the comparison would be unfair.
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At some point you just have to look at consistency, win rates vs players and winning tournaments... I guess some people want to use obscure ways to decide their goat and that is up to them :-) As people are mentioning here, Thorin is trying to farm clicks and reactions which most people should see through. Someone mentioned that Serral started winning during the decline of sc2... Well, when did Maru win most of his GSLs?
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On March 19 2024 19:33 Noa Greenini wrote:
At some point you just have to look at consistency, win rates vs players and winning tournaments... I guess some people want to use obscure ways to decide their goat and that is up to them :-) As people are mentioning here, Thorin is trying to farm clicks and reactions which most people should see through. Someone mentioned that Serral started winning during the decline of sc2... Well, when did Maru win most of his GSLs?
In 2018 when the majority of the Goat contenders were still playing, in fact 8 out of the 10 on this list (you may also exclude Serral because he didn't play GSL, but most people agree that Dark should be above Rain so it stays at 8).
Nowadays there are only 2 left, Serral and Maru (3 with Dark). And out of them one struggles with increasing shoulder issues and the other self-admittedly is past his prime and playing worse than he used to.
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On March 19 2024 04:59 TaKeTV wrote:
It WAS the gold standard. It isnt now IMO and hasnt been for several years
LotV isn't gold standard SC2 so it balances out.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On March 19 2024 10:09 StarcraftHistorian wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2024 06:55 WombaT wrote:
I mean discussion is focusing on that throwaway Serral/gold standard line but got round to having the full listen.
Not that Thorin needs a huge amount of prompting to be good value but you did certainly did contribute to making this yet another fine listen <3 Appreciate this!
Appreciate the fine content! Hopefully others are giving you the clicks rather than using the thread merely as a springboard to argue on the headline claim!
I definitely agree with Thorin on a lot in here, especially on the importance of narrative, characters, rises and falls and comeback trails. Or a foreigner trying to break decades of Korean dominance, that kind of thing.
Building off that point, WTL has been something that’s never gripped me, and to a degree Proleague too. Although I do like and appreciate both, more than many.
WTL just because there’s too much flux, players move around a lot. It’s difficult to get attached to a team because of this so harder to emotionally invest.
Proleague I think the problem was what it came alongside, and what had came before. SC2 was different from BW, and not just because it was bigger outside of Korea than in. We’d moved to a more open ecosystem, the scenes intermingled more. The bread and butter for most fans was those big weekender tournaments, be they in Europe, the US or occasionally elsewhere. Folks got excited by an Mvp turning up, or endeared to MC for his swagger and memorable lines from him trying to engage in English.
Kespa showed up and just tried to implement what they’d done in BW, which effectively split the scene back into two again, and kind of went against the organic direction of travel and what had largely worked before in SC2.
You had a scene that liked the access, that was very driven by a fandom of players rather than teams, and injected something that was quite cloistered and put a team competition above individual leagues.
I’m not talking about the player migration, just the structural change. You had that period where it was pretty obvious that a weekender was lacking some of the best players around because they were prioritising Proleague. Or tales that players in deep GSL runs were limited practice due to an important Proleague match taking precedence.
Not that these were insurmountable issues but you ended up with folks pulling in different directions. The existing Korean based SC2 teams and leagues, now this new Korean structure and the traditional foreign orgs who ran tournaments. Plus Blizzard too!
Just some thoughts building on some of what you guys discussed!
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On March 19 2024 04:35 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2024 03:44 WombaT wrote:Aligulac has them listed, here, it tends to be more reliable than Liquipedia these days. Rogue’s got a pretty decent record there overall. If you filter just for offline Serral stomps him, but this isn’t super fair on Rogue as it removes meaningful games from the Covid-induced online era Counting 15 on aligulac vs the 13 on liquipedia. Is it the team league matches the two matches that liquipedia missed? E: ty for the link btw
Rogue vs. Serral was pretty much a coin toss. Bear in mind Rogue retired in 2022 - he's several years older than Serral, and wasn't practising as hard that year as military service approached.
Just saw an Artosis video and his view is Rogue at #1 - I like this quote: "there is no undisputed GOAT no matter how hard the fanboys want there to be an undisputed GOAT".
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On March 20 2024 03:40 goldensail wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2024 04:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 19 2024 03:44 WombaT wrote:Aligulac has them listed, here, it tends to be more reliable than Liquipedia these days. Rogue’s got a pretty decent record there overall. If you filter just for offline Serral stomps him, but this isn’t super fair on Rogue as it removes meaningful games from the Covid-induced online era Counting 15 on aligulac vs the 13 on liquipedia. Is it the team league matches the two matches that liquipedia missed? E: ty for the link btw Rogue vs. Serral was pretty much a coin toss. Bear in mind Rogue retired in 2022 - he's several years older than Serral, and wasn't practising as hard that year as military service approached. Just saw an Artosis video and his view is Rogue at #1 - I like this quote: "there is no undisputed GOAT no matter how hard the fanboys want there to be an undisputed GOAT".
In an alternate timeline where Serral decided to not attend high school in 2014 like the top Korean pros he could've been undisputed GOAT if he starts dominating like 3 years earlier.
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Isn't Thorin a racist / misogynist?
And I think GSL was the gold standard, and I still believe that 2010->2016 GSLs are as meaningful as the world championship finals, but nowadays the most competitive tournament is one that has both Serral, Clem, Reynor and the koreans. GSL's in the last few years count for very little I feel.
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On March 20 2024 03:51 argonautdice wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2024 03:40 goldensail wrote:On March 19 2024 04:35 lokol4890 wrote:On March 19 2024 03:44 WombaT wrote:Aligulac has them listed, here, it tends to be more reliable than Liquipedia these days. Rogue’s got a pretty decent record there overall. If you filter just for offline Serral stomps him, but this isn’t super fair on Rogue as it removes meaningful games from the Covid-induced online era Counting 15 on aligulac vs the 13 on liquipedia. Is it the team league matches the two matches that liquipedia missed? E: ty for the link btw Rogue vs. Serral was pretty much a coin toss. Bear in mind Rogue retired in 2022 - he's several years older than Serral, and wasn't practising as hard that year as military service approached. Just saw an Artosis video and his view is Rogue at #1 - I like this quote: "there is no undisputed GOAT no matter how hard the fanboys want there to be an undisputed GOAT". In an alternate timeline where Serral decided to not attend high school in 2014 like the top Korean pros he could've been undisputed GOAT if he starts dominating like 3 years earlier.
Or it would be like with Rogue, that he doesn't win anything until the competition gets a lot thinner.
Hypotheticals are irrelevant
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EPT
Special:RunQuery/Match history?title=Special%3ARunQuery%2FMatch history&Head to head query=player%3DSerral&pfRunQueryFormName=Match+history&Head+to+head+query%5Bplayer%5D=Serral&Head+to+head+query%5Bopponent%5D=Rogue&Head+to+head+query%5Bopponentcountry%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bgame%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bltier%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bsdate%5D%5Bday%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bsdate%5D%5Bmonth%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bsdate%5D%5Byear%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bedate%5D%5Bday%5D=18&Head+to+head+query%5Bedate%5D%5Bmonth%5D=03&Head+to+head+query%5Bedate%5D%5Byear%5D=2024&Head+to+head+query%5Bwalkover%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bmatchups%5D=&Head+to+head+query%5Bmaps%5D=&wpRunQuery=&pf free text=
