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United States1850 Posts
Since this entire experience has been less than enjoyable, this barebones post is all I feel comfortable putting together ahead of a very busy week and a much needed vacation. Regardless, I hope that those who have been following along in good faith appreciate the effort.
The best of the rest. Players 15-11
15: herO
Great in Proleague, 2 KIL titles and a bunch of other notable wins. He has quite a bit of upward mobility and could easily surpass some of the players ahead of him if he returns to his 2022 form in the near future.
14: Reynor
The player with the most upward mobility. He has struggled with inconsistency but, like Rogue, he can shed that reputation with a few more WC/Global Event victories and jump into the top 10.
13: NesTea
76% percent win percentage across his approximately 1 year peak. Set numerous records including…
First player to win three seasons of Code S/Open Season .
First person to win back to back seasons of Code S (a record that stood until 2018 when Maru won Seasons 1 and 2 on his way to four straight wins).
First player to reach consecutive finals (a record that stood until 2014 when soO reached his second straight final in Season 1 of 2014).
NesTea’s relatively short peak held him back, however, which is why I have him at 13.
12: Stats
One of the best 3 year peaks in history, with three Korean Individual League finals (winning two) and three World Championship finals. He was undoubtedly the most consistent player on a year by year basis from 2016-2018, but he ended up behind Dark despite outperforming him in Heart of the Swarm as Dark posted superior results from 2019 onwards.
11: Dark
As far as accumulated career achievements, Dark comes in fourth behind Maru, Serral and Rogue. Personally, I believe he didn’t win/make deep runs enough considering he has been active without interruption since 2012. Dark’s only peer in that respect is Maru, who outperformed him by a fair amount. Again, incredible player with one of the best resumes, but there are plenty of all time greats that didn’t finish in the top 10 and Dark just happened to be the first victim.
A Note on Tiers aka As High As or As Low As
The process of preparing to write this series took over a year, during which more and more information was compiled—both from past events and ones that occurred in the 2022-2024 time period. As such, players were occasionally reordered in line with the additional information, but they remained in what I refer to as distinct tiers. Exploring this concept in full would require quite a bit of text, but the easiest way to think of it is that every player had a lowest ranking at which they were considered and a highest. The placing I settled on was a decision which I stand behind, but it is worth going through the first few tiers to see how players were ultimately grouped when it came time to assemble a final ranking.
Tier One: A high as first and as low as third
Maru, Serral and Rogue
None of the players here were considered any lower than three and all could be ranked as highly as first depending on how the data was interpreted
Tier Two: Fourth
Mvp
I never had Mvp higher or lower than fourth. He flirted with the third spot ever so briefly and I tried to find reasons to place INnOVation and or Zest ahead of him, but failed to do so. Ultimately, the gap between him and the first three players was simply too large, but the degree to which Mvp dominated separated him from below him.
Tier Three: As high as fifth and as low as sixth
INnovation and Zest
Mvp‘s results were too good for either Zest or INnoVation to surpass him (despite their longer careers), just as the group that follows at no point surpassed either Zest or INnOVation (for reasons such as not winning enough (soO), too short of a peak (Stats, TY, Rain) or not enough stretches of similarly dominant performances (Dark).
Tier Four: As high as seventh and as low as 12
soO, sOs, TY, Rain, Dark, Stats
This represents the largest cluster of players who received serious consideration for a top 10 spot. None of them were ranked higher than Zest or INnoVation. But, they also represent a clear line of demarcation between them and the tier that follows and, as such, were never ranked lower than 12th.
Tier Five: As high as 13 and as low as 14
Reynor, Nestea
This was my final distinct tier of players I heavily considered and put a large amount of research into (it has to be noted that other players were considered early on but, after initial tabulation, were found to be lacking the bonafides to be a serious contender for the top 14.
The Best of the Rest: As high as 15, but no higher
After NesTea, Reynor and herO comes players like MC, Classic, Soulkey, Cure, PartinG, ByuN, ByuL, Solar, MMA, Clem, TaeJa, Polt, GuMiho, Trap (in no particular order) and, eventually, any player with a single Korean Individual League/World Championship title to their name.
That’s it from me on this series. Enjoy the rest of Code S. I'll be back writing afterwards.
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Canada8989 Posts
We broke Miz 
A bit disappointed in the community response tbh, hopefully we can all chill a little.
Thanks for the work!
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Nice list! And I appreciate MC clearly coming in 16th 
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Just dropping by to say thank you for your work Miz, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Too bad the discussion got super focused on 1/2 goat ranking instead of celebrating the game's finest players. Kind of a cold shower to end the series with.
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On March 25 2024 02:54 Nakajin wrote:We broke Miz A bit disappointed in the community response to the work tbh, hopefully we can all chill a little. Thanks for the work!
Yeah, honestly a bit baffled why people react so emotional about it, it's just a list about players being good at a videogame.
On one hand it's great I guess that people are still this passionate/invested, on the other hand it brought really the worst out of this community.
Like imaging flaming /attacking someone because he ranks player x above player y in a videogame, it's honestly hard to understand what's going on in the brain of someone who does this.
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you forgot to mention that NesTea is the only player to win a GSL with a perfect record
and he was the first to win the "NesTea Award", playing in 10 Code S seasons in a row (back when this was difficult)
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Mexico2170 Posts
For what is worth, I never really commented but I liked all your posts.
Even if some people would rank someone different, I think you might verry valid points and in a game like sc2, its pretty much impossible for all to agree on a list like this. It depends on how much weight you give to certain thingS. "Tthe looking glass"
I figure there are others like me, so don't feel too bad people disagreed with you. Many did like it. And EVERYONE looked forward to this
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Love the Nestea respect! Also makes it easier to accept MVP at #4.
Dark/Stats being next to each other makes a lot of sense to me, I feel their careers are comparable in a lot of ways and I also put them next to each other on my list, a bit higher but in the same Tier of players.
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''[Dark] didn’t win/make deep runs enough considering he has been active without interruption since 2012''
If by deep runs you mean RO4 at least, I counted Dark has 12 deep runs at Code S including 3 wins.
In contrast TY has 6 (2 wins). Soo has 7 (0 win). Inno has 7 (3 wins). Rogue has 5 (4 wins).
On top of it all Dark has 1 WCS chamption and 1 runner-up. Even if you are factoring in the length of his uninterrupted career, I don't see how this is now enough deep runs.
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United States1850 Posts
On March 25 2024 03:52 Die4Ever wrote:
you forgot to mention that NesTea is the only player to win a GSL with a perfect record
and he was the first to win the "NesTea Award", playing in 10 Code S seasons in a row (back when this was difficult)
This got cut from the longer article, but you are correct. Winning Code S without a single loss is one of the most impressive achievements in StarCraft history.
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On March 25 2024 03:48 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2024 02:54 Nakajin wrote:We broke Miz A bit disappointed in the community response to the work tbh, hopefully we can all chill a little. Thanks for the work! Yeah, honestly a bit baffled why people react so emotional about it, it's just a list about players being good at a videogame. On one hand it's great I guess that people are still this passionate/invested, on the other hand it brought really the worst out of this community. Like imaging flaming /attacking someone because he ranks player x above player y in a videogame, it's honestly hard to understand what's going on in the brain of someone who does this.
But it has been the trend since social midia caught up. We all expected this to happen, no matter what Miz wrote.
I think the post was completely positive. People just cant be pollite in internet. And if one is prepared for that, no need to take the "mass emotional responses" seriously.
Any social media manager knows how to use it. Just take the engagement, dont pay attention to the content of the responses.
If Miz is reading this msg, i hope you realize that the post series was a huge success. It clearly entertained a lot of people in SCII community. I criticized a lot, and still had a lof of fun reading it and discussing it. Made me feel like the community is alive. Now im just sorry that in my critics i wasnt clear that, when disagreeing, i was still enjoying a lot to have such a nice reseaarch to disagree with hahahah
S2, Miz
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11: Dark
As far as accumulated career achievements, Dark comes in fourth behind Maru, Serral and Rogue.Personally, I believe he didn’t win/make deep runs enough considering he has been active without interruption since 2012. Dark’s only peer in that respect is Maru, who outperformed him by a fair amount. Again, incredible player with one of the best resumes, but there are plenty of all time greats that didn’t finish in the top 10 and Dark just happened to be the first victim.
I get the same feeling about Dark.
Hes had great peaks. But very punctuated and with less impact in the game, against the likes of Zest, sOs and Rain.
They all could be interchangeble in top 10 list for me.
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The final meme compilation. Congrats on even making the Finnish tabloid news with a list so statistically random, it's labeled as an opinion piece.
herO below Nestea, even tho Nestea played in the WoL "i don't really know how to play this game yet" era and faded away.
Dark WCS winner, GSL winner - "just not deep enough runs, bro".
Stats - Consistent for 3years, GSL winner, GSL ST winner - "nah, bro, Rain"
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United States1850 Posts
On March 25 2024 05:09 Locutos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2024 03:48 Charoisaur wrote:On March 25 2024 02:54 Nakajin wrote:We broke Miz A bit disappointed in the community response to the work tbh, hopefully we can all chill a little. Thanks for the work! Yeah, honestly a bit baffled why people react so emotional about it, it's just a list about players being good at a videogame. On one hand it's great I guess that people are still this passionate/invested, on the other hand it brought really the worst out of this community. Like imaging flaming /attacking someone because he ranks player x above player y in a videogame, it's honestly hard to understand what's going on in the brain of someone who does this. But it has been the trend since social midia caught up. We all expected this to happen, no matter what Miz wrote. I think the post was completely positive. People just cant be pollite in internet. And if one is prepared for that, no need to take the "mass emotional responses" seriously. Any social media manager knows how to use it. Just take the engagement, dont pay attention to the content of the responses. If Miz is reading this msg, i hope you realize that the post series was a huge success. It clearly entertained a lot of people in SCII community. I criticized a lot, and still had a lof of fun reading it and discussing it. Made me feel like the community is alive. Now im just sorry that in my critics i wasnt clear that, when disagreeing, i was still enjoying a lot to have such a nice reseaarch to disagree with hahahah S2, Miz
Thanks for the kind words. Overall, the reception was great and I'm glad I did the series. I'm not looking for sympathy. It's just that this particular article became increasingly complicated to execute and I didn't have the spirit to get it done. I'll be back for Season 2 of Code S and, since I'll be in Korea for some/all of it, I'll do my best to conduct some interviews and work on some projects that I normally wouldn't be able to do from NA.
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I appreciate your list and agree with most of your ranking except not having Dark and Life in the top 10. I also think Maru ranks #1 above Serral looking at the entirety of SC2 even though Serral has been the stronger player since 2018.
Also I think tempers flared because people view this as TL's definitive GOAT list (akin to Roger Ebert's ranking of top movies), so the toxicity in a way highlights the significance of this list.
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I read your top 10 series. It was well thought out and whether people agree or disagree, there was no reason to be assholes about it. I really appreciate your dedication.
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It definitely revived Tl.net for the time being.
I think the timing was unfortunate, but if the purpose was to have Maru #1, then this was probably the last call before Serral takes the #1 spot.
Nestea's achievements are pretty godlike, I'm not gonna lie.
For me the #4 MVP comes out of nowhere, he is the only old school player on the 1-10 list, if say MC, or Polt had been #10, you could've seen it coming.
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Personally, I believe [Dark] didn’t win/make deep runs enough considering he has been active without interruption since 2012.
IDK MIZ. Winning a global finals, getting second in a global finals, winning SSL, winning two GSL, winning GSL-SSL Cross-finals is pretty deep! He also has dozens of 2nd - 4th placements in premiere tournaments. I can understand removing some of the weight of the later year wins (2020+), but I honestly think it's completely ridiculous to have placed him below TY, or Rain, or even soO and Zest depending on how much more weight you give their results in Peak Era.
And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't value wins today at all...
I think the only way to make it up to Dark is to personally deliver a basket of flowers and fruits, begging for his forgiveness!
AND DESPITE THE ABSENCE OF DARK... I still thought it was a very enjoyable and well written series. I wouldn't disagree with too much of it, except probably Dark, and I'd have probably put Mvp a bit lower since he became washed up too quickly. Thanks a lot for doing it Miz! It's good to keep this dusty forum lively 
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Northern Ireland25090 Posts
Enjoy the vacation Miz! Shame so much negative shite accompanied a set of enjoyable articles. 16-20 when you’re back aye? :p
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On March 25 2024 06:57 WombaT wrote:
Enjoy the vacation Miz! Shame so much negative shite accompanied a set of enjoyable articles. 16-20 when you’re back aye? :p
He knew exactly what he was getting into when he agreed to write that list lol.
Props to standing up to the Serral fans though, I know first hand how exhausting that can be.
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EPT
