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United States1804 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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Canada8988 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 States1804 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 States1804 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 Ireland24396 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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Northern Ireland24396 Posts
On March 25 2024 04:51 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Absolutely up there, I wonder what other folks would stick up in terms of a single tournament achievement. Ofc if we’re talking a non-singular tournament run you’ve got Maru’s 4-peat and feats such as that.
Taeja almost solo carrying TL to IPL TAC has got to be up there for me, while he still ultimately failed.
Serral’s recent Katowice run was absolutely insane
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United States1804 Posts
On March 25 2024 07:02 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2024 04:51 Mizenhauer wrote: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. Absolutely up there, I wonder what other folks would stick up in terms of a single tournament achievement. Ofc if we’re talking a non-singular tournament run you’ve got Maru’s 4-peat and feats such as that. Taeja almost solo carrying TL to IPL TAC has got to be up there for me, while he still ultimately failed. Serral’s recent Katowice run was absolutely insane
There's an interesting trivia regarding Zest's 2016 Season 1 win. Zest went 19-3 in that season. If you look at the five seasons that preceded it, the champion lost (starting with 2014 Season 2) 11, 10, 11, 6 and 6 games respectively. If you look at the five that followed it the champion lost 7,11,6,13 and 10 games respectively. That season is often overlooked now that eight years have passed, but Zest's 3 loss campaign was a complete aberration.
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On March 25 2024 07:02 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2024 04:51 Mizenhauer wrote: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. Absolutely up there, I wonder what other folks would stick up in terms of a single tournament achievement. Ofc if we’re talking a non-singular tournament run you’ve got Maru’s 4-peat and feats such as that. Taeja almost solo carrying TL to IPL TAC has got to be up there for me, while he still ultimately failed. Serral’s recent Katowice run was absolutely insane
Speaking of Taeja, he's one of the only players winning a tournament (a dreamhack where he played in the finals vs Innovation iirc) without dropping a game, just like Nestea and code S.
I wonder how many players achieved that actually
E: ah nevermind, the dreamhack in question he was only undefeated in playoffs
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Compilation of "incredible tournament stretches in SC2 history" mentioned in the thread and a few others
Single tournament stretch:
Nestea's perfect Code S run in 2011 GSL July, map score 13-0
Taeja's rampage through IPL TAC 3 loser's bracket, singlehandedly carried TL through 3 best teams at the time in StarTale, MVP and IM, map score 16-1 (the players he defeated here could almost make up an entire Code S ro.16, absolutely wild)
Taeja's 2013 Dreamhack Bucharest perfect playoff run, map score 9-0
Zest's Code S title run in 2016 GSL S1, map score 19-3
Serral's 2022 IEM Katowice title run, map score 20-4
Serral's 2023 Master's Coliseum 7 playoff run, map score 15-1
Serral's 2024 IEM Katowice title run, map score 20-1
Longer stretch:
soO's 4 straight GSL Code S finals apperance
Maru's 4 straight GSL Code S title
Serral's 9 month invincible offline stretch (2018 June to 2019 March), winning 3 WCS 1 Blizzcon 1 Homestory on the way, 46-0 in matches score
Life won 5 straight premier titles in 5 months span (2012 October - 2013 March), including Code S, Blizzard Cup, Iron Squid II, and two MLGs
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Speaking of extremely impressive tournament runs, I am also interested to find out all the instances of "winning a premier tournament despite being the only player of the race in ro.8", this is actually quite rare and are great examples of player defying balance meta
DRG in 2012 GSL S1
Taeja in Homestory Cup 7
Taeja in 2014 Dreamhack Summer
Life in 2013 MLG Winter
Life in 2014 Blizzcon
Maru in 2018 GSL S1
Trap in 2021 Last Chance
Honorable mention to herO's 2022 GSL S2, it changed the format so there's no ro.8, but herO is the only Protoss in ro.6 playoffs
I am sure I missed some. I honestly expect more from Maru given his "the fourth race" nickname.
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On March 25 2024 08:42 Amoyu7 wrote:
Speaking of extremely impressive tournament runs, I am also interested to find out all the instances of "winning a premier tournament despite being the only player of the race in ro.8", this is actually quite rare and are great examples of player defying balance meta
DRG in 2012 GSL S1
Taeja in Homestory Cup 7
Taeja in 2014 Dreamhack Summer
Life in 2013 MLG Winter
Life in 2014 Blizzcon
Maru in 2018 GSL S1
Trap in 2021 Last Chance
Honorable mention to herO's 2022 GSL S2, it changed the format so there's no ro.8, but herO is the only Protoss in ro.6 playoffs
I am sure I missed some. I honestly expect more from Maru given his "the fourth race" nickname.
Because it's not just about tournament wins, it's also about placement
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On March 25 2024 02:54 Nakajin wrote:We broke Miz A bit disappointed in the community response tbh, hopefully we can all chill a little. Thanks for the work!
yup. its sad. an addendum shouldnt have even have had to be written but the community is too but hurt.
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Well, we all appreciate your effort Miz. We know that such a big work can't be done easily. We know that you spent much time collecting data and analysing. We know that you witnessed lots of empressing moments and hoped to share them with us through these articles.
But forgive us. It's difficult to keep smiling face when the meal tasted weird, especially after hearing that the meal would been the biggest meal I ever had.
Whatever, thanks for your work. Enjoy your vacation.
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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.
LOL, as If you hadnt had your fair share of flaming and passionately defending Maru in every turn left and right !
Btw, I do not hold that as a bad thing, and your posts have become much more reasonable nowadays compared to past.
Imo its just good that there are still lots of people that are genuinely interested and passionate about a game that the company has deserted years ago. I would be much more worried if there would be like 5 responses with "Ok, good list." or something. I agree that some of the flame/hate has gone overboard and prolly Miz is drowning in PM:s as well, which is of course not cool at all.
But all in all, what does one realistically expect from doing this list ? Its the most talked about (yeah, sadly) topic after each and one bigger tournament still after 14 years. The list is particularly interesting, because you can have different opinions about it while not being wrong. It has this narrative with once unbeatable Koreans against the always underdogs from outside Korea. Also it has a long history behind it, which many of us have followed from the start of SC2. In 9 days, the two last names of this list have gathered over 700 comments here on this site, propably many many more on Reddit, Youtube, Twitch and other platforms. That imo is pretty good for a "dead game".
And Miz, try to keep your holidays and do not open internet or at least TL.net for a while. Gl & Hf, you have deserved it 
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On March 25 2024 10:24 Starcloud 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. LOL, as If you hadnt had your fair share of flaming and passionately defending Maru in every turn left and right ! Btw, I do not hold that as a bad thing, and your posts have become much more reasonable nowadays compared to past. Imo its just good that there are still lots of people that are genuinely interested and passionate about a game that the company has deserted years ago. I would be much more worried if there would be like 5 responses with "Ok, good list." or something. I agree that some of the flame/hate has gone overboard and prolly Miz is drowning in PM:s as well, which is of course not cool at all. But all in all, what does one realistically expect from doing this list ? Its the most talked about (yeah, sadly) topic after each and one bigger tournament still after 14 years. The list is particularly interesting, because you can have different opinions about it while not being wrong. It has this narrative with once unbeatable Koreans against the always underdogs from outside Korea. Also it has a long history behind it, which many of us have followed from the start of SC2. In 9 days, the two last names of this list have gathered over 700 comments here on this site, propably many many more on Reddit, Youtube, Twitch and other platforms. That imo is pretty good for a "dead game". And Miz, try to keep your holidays and do not open internet or at least TL.net for a while. Gl & Hf, you have deserved it
The day when someone put out a GOAT list and the comments are all "cool list thanks for the effort" is the day when sc2 community truly died. This level of passionate debate and discussion is a good sign for engaging community. The toxicity here is nothing compared to soccer or basketball GOAT debates.
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The day when someone put out a GOAT list and the comments are all "cool list thanks for the effort" is the day when sc2 community truly died.
This is likely what is going to happen if Miz had put Serral at no.1, because most people are not here for healthy discussions and debates they just want to see their favorite player at the top.
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Northern Ireland24396 Posts
There’s been plenty of irritating fanboyism but I’d say that’s the minority, at least in terms of post volume it not number of posters. Have enjoyed plenty of the discussions with knowledgeable and passionate fans of the game
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Dude, your rankings are the best thing that has happened to SC2 for a long time. The internet will always be full of angry neckbeards, don't let it get to you.
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On March 25 2024 08:42 Amoyu7 wrote:
Speaking of extremely impressive tournament runs, I am also interested to find out all the instances of "winning a premier tournament despite being the only player of the race in ro.8", this is actually quite rare and are great examples of player defying balance meta
DRG in 2012 GSL S1
Taeja in Homestory Cup 7
Taeja in 2014 Dreamhack Summer
Life in 2013 MLG Winter
Life in 2014 Blizzcon
Maru in 2018 GSL S1
Trap in 2021 Last Chance
Honorable mention to herO's 2022 GSL S2, it changed the format so there's no ro.8, but herO is the only Protoss in ro.6 playoffs
I am sure I missed some. I honestly expect more from Maru given his "the fourth race" nickname.
you forgot Maru at WESG
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On March 25 2024 08:28 Amoyu7 wrote:
Serral's 9 month invincible offline stretch (2018 June to 2019 March), winning 3 WCS 1 Blizzcon 1 Homestory on the way, 46-0 in matches score
Holy shit, really??
Also, that's a lot of Taeja names I see
On March 25 2024 08:42 Amoyu7 wrote:
I am sure I missed some.
Yep, don't forget FRUITDEALER!!! The OG player to do it!
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I just want to say i thoroughly enjoyed reading your posts - it has greatly enhanced my daily experience over the last months! Please don't feel down, I understand the criticism is harsh and a lot, but hey, people are still passionate about sc2 at least! I think you'd still prefer this response to 1 or 2 pages of "nice post" kind of responses, in my imagination at least.
Again, thanks for your hard work and the nostalgia trip, well written!! now enjoy your vacation
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Thanks Miz for the list, at the very least, you got us remembering the past years of this amazing esports and revisiting cool moments of SC2 history. At the very best, you generated a ton of content and debate around our beloved game.
Ignore the trolls plz.
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Thanks for clarifying dark's position.
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On March 25 2024 07:24 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2024 07:02 WombaT wrote:On March 25 2024 04:51 Mizenhauer wrote: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. Absolutely up there, I wonder what other folks would stick up in terms of a single tournament achievement. Ofc if we’re talking a non-singular tournament run you’ve got Maru’s 4-peat and feats such as that. Taeja almost solo carrying TL to IPL TAC has got to be up there for me, while he still ultimately failed. Serral’s recent Katowice run was absolutely insane There's an interesting trivia regarding Zest's 2016 Season 1 win. Zest went 19-3 in that season. If you look at the five seasons that preceded it, the champion lost (starting with 2014 Season 2) 11, 10, 11, 6 and 6 games respectively. If you look at the five that followed it the champion lost 7,11,6,13 and 10 games respectively. That season is often overlooked now that eight years have passed, but Zest's 3 loss campaign was a complete aberration.
Including Code A, Zest went 22-1. And it's worth including Code A because he beat Maru who many said was the number 1 terran at the time
It's probably the worth bracket luck of all time for Maru. Facing the world's best player in Code A cost him what would have been a streak of 30+ Code S appearances in a row.
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On March 25 2024 08:42 Amoyu7 wrote:
Speaking of extremely impressive tournament runs, I am also interested to find out all the instances of "winning a premier tournament despite being the only player of the race in ro.8", this is actually quite rare and are great examples of player defying balance meta
DRG in 2012 GSL S1
Taeja in Homestory Cup 7
Taeja in 2014 Dreamhack Summer
Life in 2013 MLG Winter
Life in 2014 Blizzcon
Maru in 2018 GSL S1
Trap in 2021 Last Chance
Honorable mention to herO's 2022 GSL S2, it changed the format so there's no ro.8, but herO is the only Protoss in ro.6 playoffs
I am sure I missed some. I honestly expect more from Maru given his "the fourth race" nickname.
Maru won WESG as the only terran as well.
But he got the name "The Fourth Race" due to his performance in 2013 season 3, and 2014 seasons 1/2. He didn't quite win but he was making ro4s/ro8s when terran was otherwise extinct, and more importantly he did it off the back of TvP which was the reason terrans were losing immediately
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just when you thought it couldnt get any worse lol
User was warned for this post
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United States1804 Posts
On March 25 2024 18:21 Comedy wrote:
Thanks for clarifying dark's position.
There's a 5k word article in there that talks about Dark in greater detail. A project for the future, I suppose.
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Yeah, I'm sure it can be exhausting trying to read and respond to feedback and engage in debates where people are very invested--but that investment and debate are signs of engagement and success, imo. It's generally a good principle for authors/creators to not follow the feedback to their work online, as it becomes too triggering/crushing/stressful for most people, but I get that Miz is a fan too and is invested in the debates himself. I'm glad he's getting a break.
Overall, this series has really revived TL.net and imo has really benefited the SC2 scene overall, as it seems to have generated debate and interest across the Internet and brought a lot of past fans back into paying attention.
Personally, it's been very fun to follow the debates and discussions and see how the different lenses people apply to results and how they value different kinds of results and characteristics and even how they see the concepts of "greatest" or "highest skilled" or "most dominant" change what answers you come up with.
I could come up with a Top Ten list for fun, but that would be just based on my own favorites and likes and dislikes. I'm not very invested in who is "greatest" in a more objective sense. But as I've said, I've really enjoyed following those debates from a strictly rational/philosophical perspective, and I'm very grateful for Miz's hard work.
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i appreciate the effort and I read (most of) every single one of these articles. it sucks that people have to be so negative. like, it's cool if someone has a different opinion, but you don't gotta be an asshole to them over it.
I'd love like a "top X Terran/Zerg/Toss players", "top 10 non-Koreans" kinda lists but I understand if you're not really up for it after this
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Yep I'll echo what others have said. Big thanks to Miz for putting this together and giving the community something to discuss. Every time one of these retrospective articles comes back it really makes me realize how quickly time is passing.
Still nothing beats a high stakes team league to me though.
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United States1804 Posts
On March 25 2024 21:27 Schelim wrote:
i appreciate the effort and I read (most of) every single one of these articles. it sucks that people have to be so negative. like, it's cool if someone has a different opinion, but you don't gotta be an asshole to them over it.
I'd love like a "top X Terran/Zerg/Toss players", "top 10 non-Koreans" kinda lists but I understand if you're not really up for it after this
I'm not opposed to doing more stuff in this vein (with editor approval of course), but given my current schedule there was no way anything of real substance was getting done before my vacation. By the time I return, I have less than 2 months until I travel to Korea for three months and I'm more focused on lining up some projects to work on while I'm there since there will be more opportunities to do some interesting stuff I wouldn't be able to from home.
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United States1804 Posts
On March 26 2024 00:08 Moonerz wrote:
Yep I'll echo what others have said. Big thanks to Miz for putting this together and giving the community something to discuss. Every time one of these retrospective articles comes back it really makes me realize how quickly time is passing.
Still nothing beats a high stakes team league to me though.
https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/561920-2015-the-renaissance-and-golden-age-of-korean-sc2
Everyone who was around then feels the same way.
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fair point but i'd bump dark to a zest and innovation tier, but not sure since he wasnt that dominant at any time, just a stable performing player
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This article aged like fine wine
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Im missing Idra and HuKs top 3 control on those lists...
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Many many thanks Miz for this amazing content, your passion and (absurd) work ethic.
This series of articles will be remembered for years.
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On March 25 2024 04:47 ktll4c91 wrote:
''[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.
Exactly this. Perhaps if Miz had consistently applied his own criteria, his list would have been better received. Even if you do sign on to Korean Exceptionalism, there really is no reason to put Maru above Rogue in a list like this
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Never commented on here before but I really enjoyed this series, great writing! I’m maybe one of the only people that still considers Mvp to be the goat so I was very pleased to see you had him rated so highly. A lot of people seem to be forgetting that this is one man’s opinion who did his absolute best to be objective. Whether you agree or disagree on the rankings, the important thing to remember is that Miz put an awful amount of time in constructing his rankings and arguments, and that should be at the very least respected. The reasoning and logic is sound imo. The hate I’ve seen in the comments for these rankings is something else. Thanks for all the great work again Miz!
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I do not feel the community response has been disappointing or particularly negative. This is such a loaded topic, obviously it creates controversy. One could argue that the creation of such a list in itself has the purpose to create controversy. How could it be any other way? The discussion has also been pretty civil from my point of view.
I would view anything related to this creation as a success for TL.
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On March 26 2024 09:14 Bennito_bh wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2024 04:47 ktll4c91 wrote:
''[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. Exactly this. Perhaps if Miz had consistently applied his own criteria, his list would have been better received. Even if you do sign on to Korean Exceptionalism, there really is no reason to put Maru above Rogue in a list like this
Despite Miz literally saying that Serral / Maru / Rogue are all the same tier.........
You have quite a lot of attitude for someone who is overwhelmingly convinced Rogue > Maru. They're obviously comparable, but I'd say Maru has a clear edge over Rogue for being definitively better in earlier years (2013-2015), particularly in the era where Terrans were getting destroyed.
But I do agree Dark was slept on, and I think Dark should be 7-8.
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On March 25 2024 20:12 Mizenhauer wrote:There's a 5k word article in there that talks about Dark in greater detail. A project for the future, I suppose.
Moar Dark content please! - rabid fan
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United States1804 Posts
On March 26 2024 13:41 Malinor wrote:
I do not feel the community response has been disappointing or particularly negative. This is such a loaded topic, obviously it creates controversy. One could argue that the creation of such a list in itself has the purpose to create controversy. How could it be any other way? The discussion has also been pretty civil from my point of view.
I would view anything related to this creation as a success for TL.
I agree, it was a huge success. I could have worded things better about the negativity. That's something I got over pretty quickly. However, a number of non sc2 related factors, plus reaching the realization that it was going to be difficult to create the articles I wanted for 15-11 (aka discussing their greatness rather than defending my decision to place them where they were) made finishing the project impossible atm.
Part of why the series was a huge success was Wax being involved. His standards are absurdly high and getting the articles to a point where he was satisfied was the most challenging part of the process. It was going to take a lot of time that I didn't have to get there.
Luckily, all the information I created isn't going anywhere. So, we'll see what the future brings.
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I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me.
Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people.
Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams.
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On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams.
If his claim was BW pros could do well on SC2, he'd be completely right, yes.
But that wasn't it.
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Your work on this is super appreciated! I know you’re not looking for sympathy, but it was a lot of work, and arguably itself one of the more impactful things within the community over the last couple of years. Lots to be proud of.
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On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams.
Too bad none of the top two are former Brood War pros and all the other 8 were all basically B-teamers in Brood War. Intrigue was especially throwing shade on Mvp for being a mediocre BW player who decided to switch to SC2 for money because he wasn't good enough to make money in BW.
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On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams.
Is this why Flash and Jaedong are top 2 SC2 GOATs?
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On March 27 2024 08:41 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams. Is this why Flash and Jaedong are top 2 SC2 GOATs?
Adding to this:
Intrigue was saying that if there were other successful A-team players like MVP transitioning, that they would likely be stronger than the ones who transitioned to SC2 who were mediocre or bad at BW. Not just any BW pros.
Many SC2 GOATs were mediocre or nothing special at BW.
So he wasn't really right at all. We didn't suddenly have a scene full of MVP tier players. Just like how Boxer, Nada, and July were good at SC2 but not MVP level.
Also, correlation is not causation. A lot of the GOATs were good enough to be fielded in Proleague, meaning they'd get extra support (practice, coaching, financial, etc.). This kind of support could have helped them get to the next level, whereas others would fall further behind and slowly quit.
Of course, in a new game, it is more likely that those unsuccessful at another esport may be more incentivized to switch and play the new game. I'm sure this is an effect, and I'm sure those players would have a lower potential than picking from a pool of pros who were able to be successful at a similar esport. But many great BW players like Stork and Fantasy as well didn't do great in SC2.
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Northern Ireland24396 Posts
On March 27 2024 12:42 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2024 08:41 Acrofales wrote:On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams. Is this why Flash and Jaedong are top 2 SC2 GOATs? Adding to this: Intrigue was saying that if there were other successful A-team players like MVP transitioning, that they would likely be stronger than the ones who transitioned to SC2 who were mediocre or bad at BW. Not just any BW pros. Many SC2 GOATs were mediocre or nothing special at BW. So he wasn't really right at all. We didn't suddenly have a scene full of MVP tier players. Just like how Boxer, Nada, and July were good at SC2 but not MVP level. Also, correlation is not causation. A lot of the GOATs were good enough to be fielded in Proleague, meaning they'd get extra support (practice, coaching, financial, etc.). This kind of support could have helped them get to the next level, whereas others would fall further behind and slowly quit. Of course, in a new game, it is more likely that those unsuccessful at another esport may be more incentivized to switch and play the new game. I'm sure this is an effect, and I'm sure those players would have a lower potential than picking from a pool of pros who were able to be successful at a similar esport. But many great BW players like Stork and Fantasy as well didn't do great in SC2.
I don’t think it’s coincidence that quite a large proportion of that Kespa contingent were not a Flash or a Jaedong looking to climb atop another mountain, nor nobodies. They were pretty solid A-teamers without a breakout individual league performance, or players largely considered amongst the next big things who didn’t get to show it before BW’s Kespa
Pretty much an ideal combination of mechanical and other RTS skills with that hunger to make their mark.
Hell they didn’t come to dominate SC2 but Flash and Jaedong were pretty bloody good, think people sleep on that a little but I guess they were always going to struggle to live up to the hype their previous exploits generated.
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On March 26 2024 18:11 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2024 13:41 Malinor wrote:
I do not feel the community response has been disappointing or particularly negative. This is such a loaded topic, obviously it creates controversy. One could argue that the creation of such a list in itself has the purpose to create controversy. How could it be any other way? The discussion has also been pretty civil from my point of view.
I would view anything related to this creation as a success for TL.
I agree, it was a huge success. I could have worded things better about the negativity. That's something I got over pretty quickly. However, a number of non sc2 related factors, plus reaching the realization that it was going to be difficult to create the articles I wanted for 15-11 (aka discussing their greatness rather than defending my decision to place them where they were) made finishing the project impossible atm. Part of why the series was a huge success was Wax being involved. His standards are absurdly high and getting the articles to a point where he was satisfied was the most challenging part of the process. It was going to take a lot of time that I didn't have to get there. Luckily, all the information I created isn't going anywhere. So, we'll see what the future brings.
Just out of curiosity, if it turned out to be a great success and you thought it was well-received, what made the experience "less than enjoyable" for you? Did it just turn out to be a bigger undertaking than you initially intended?
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United States1804 Posts
On March 28 2024 11:22 Kitai wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2024 18:11 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 26 2024 13:41 Malinor wrote:
I do not feel the community response has been disappointing or particularly negative. This is such a loaded topic, obviously it creates controversy. One could argue that the creation of such a list in itself has the purpose to create controversy. How could it be any other way? The discussion has also been pretty civil from my point of view.
I would view anything related to this creation as a success for TL.
I agree, it was a huge success. I could have worded things better about the negativity. That's something I got over pretty quickly. However, a number of non sc2 related factors, plus reaching the realization that it was going to be difficult to create the articles I wanted for 15-11 (aka discussing their greatness rather than defending my decision to place them where they were) made finishing the project impossible atm. Part of why the series was a huge success was Wax being involved. His standards are absurdly high and getting the articles to a point where he was satisfied was the most challenging part of the process. It was going to take a lot of time that I didn't have to get there. Luckily, all the information I created isn't going anywhere. So, we'll see what the future brings. Just out of curiosity, if it turned out to be a great success and you thought it was well-received, what made the experience "less than enjoyable" for you? Did it just turn out to be a bigger undertaking than you initially intended?
My work was basically finished by the time the first article came out. At that point, my responsibilities shifted to doing whatever random task was needed of me to polish them off. So, no, the workload was fine. The process of writing them was great. The fact that it started so much discussion was great. The fact that the quality of the articles was so high was great. It just took up a lot of mental energy, so to speak. Those who know me know how much I care about my work and the toll that took on me was more than expected. That's not to say I wouldn't do this all over again. I was incredible lucky to be given the opportunity. Having gone through it once, I think I'd be be far more prepared than I was this time I around.
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On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams.
Yes and No. BW and SC2 has a lot of thing in common while BW is much more mechanically demanding, so naturally BW pros will be transition decently smooth into SC2, at least better than those ex WC3 pros. But both games are still not 100% the same, so the absolute top of BW players (Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, Stork, Fantasy, Jangbi etc) did not become the greatest SC2 players, instead it's the B-teamers ended up having the most success. And the greatest two players of all time in SC2 ended up being two guys that just played SC2 all their life.
The only player that had achieved top success in both games is probably Rain, he was the best Protoss during those highly competitive KeSPA years in SC2, and then changed back to BW and got a ASL and KSL title and multiple finals appearance, has a solid claim to be the best Protoss in BW for a couple years as well.
Other than that, Flash was great in SC2 proleague for one year but didn't have much success in individual tournaments, Jaedong was arguably the best sc2 Zerg in international tournaments for a few months, that's about it.
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On March 28 2024 23:31 Nasigil1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams. Yes and No. BW and SC2 has a lot of thing in common while BW is much more mechanically demanding, so naturally BW pros will be transition decently smooth into SC2, at least better than those ex WC3 pros. But both games are still not 100% the same, so the absolute top of BW players (Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, Stork, Fantasy, Jangbi etc) did not become the greatest SC2 players, instead it's the B-teamers ended up having the most success. And the greatest two players of all time in SC2 ended up being two guys that just played SC2 all their life. The only player that had achieved top success in both games is probably Rain, he was the best Protoss during those highly competitive KeSPA years in SC2, and then changed back to BW and got a ASL and KSL title and multiple finals appearance, has a solid claim to be the best Protoss in BW for a couple years as well. Other than that, Flash was great in SC2 proleague for one year but didn't have much success in individual tournaments, Jaedong was arguably the best sc2 Zerg in international tournaments for a few months, that's about it.
There's the theory that the players who turned out to be great at sc2 would've been the next generation of top players in BW anyway and surpass the great old time BW players you mentioned anyway, no matter if in BW or SC2.
Not that far-fetched imo because most of them were promising up and coming players in BW like Soulkey, Rain, Inno or TY, and the timespan for players staying at the top was rather short.
So yes, the article turned out to be mostly right, the only thing where he was wrong was that he for some reason assumed the BW players who were at the top then would keep winning forever.
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On March 29 2024 01:48 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2024 23:31 Nasigil1 wrote:On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams. Yes and No. BW and SC2 has a lot of thing in common while BW is much more mechanically demanding, so naturally BW pros will be transition decently smooth into SC2, at least better than those ex WC3 pros. But both games are still not 100% the same, so the absolute top of BW players (Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, Stork, Fantasy, Jangbi etc) did not become the greatest SC2 players, instead it's the B-teamers ended up having the most success. And the greatest two players of all time in SC2 ended up being two guys that just played SC2 all their life. The only player that had achieved top success in both games is probably Rain, he was the best Protoss during those highly competitive KeSPA years in SC2, and then changed back to BW and got a ASL and KSL title and multiple finals appearance, has a solid claim to be the best Protoss in BW for a couple years as well. Other than that, Flash was great in SC2 proleague for one year but didn't have much success in individual tournaments, Jaedong was arguably the best sc2 Zerg in international tournaments for a few months, that's about it. There's the theory that the players who turned out to be great at sc2 would've been the next generation of top players in BW anyway and surpass the great old time BW players you mentioned anyway, no matter if in BW or SC2. Not that far-fetched imo because most of them were promising up and coming players in BW like Soulkey, Rain, Inno or TY, and the timespan for players staying at the top was rather short. So yes, the article turned out to be mostly right, the only thing where he was wrong was that he for some reason assumed the BW players who were at the top then would keep winning forever.
Eh, maybe only partially. Like when Flash returned to BW, he remained dominant unlike his stint in SC2. Soulkey and Rain are like the rare exceptions who were successful in both SC2 and BW. Inno and TY are not competitive in BW while most of the successful BW players today who played SC2 were not competitive at all in SC2.
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The main thing is age. If you're older at the transition period like stork, jangbi etc I don't think they would have remained the top players if BW had continued as normal in an alternate universe anyways, much less transitioning to a new game.
Younger players who probably weren't at their peak yet during BW would fare the best in the long run. Like even Zest/Flash/Stats are all older for pros at this point but are a few years younger than some of the top BW players at the time.
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Dark:
2024-02-11 3rd - 4th Premier IEM Katowice 2024 IEM Katowice 2024
2023-11-02 3rd - 4th Premier 2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S 2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2023-07-27 2nd Premier 2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S 2023 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2022-12-08 2nd Premier 2022 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 2 2022 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 2
2022-07-21 3rd - 4th Premier 2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S 2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2022-07-03 1st Premier DH SC2 Masters 2022 Valencia DH SC2 Masters 2022 Valencia
2022-04-28 3rd - 4th Premier 2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S 2022 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2022-01-27 2nd Premier 2022 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1 2022 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2021-07-29 1st Premier 2021 Global StarCraft II League Season 2 2021 Global StarCraft II League Season 2
2020-03-28 2nd Premier 2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1 2020 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2019-11-01 1st Premier 2019 WCS Global Finals 2019 WCS Global Finals
2019-10-06 1st Premier 2019 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 2 2019 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 2
2019-09-18 3rd - 4th Premier 2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S 2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2019-06-22 1st Premier 2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S 2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 2: Code S
2019-04-03 3rd - 4th Premier 2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S 2019 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2019-03-03 3rd - 4th Premier IEM Season XIII - Katowice IEM Season XIII - Katowice
2018-09-30 3rd - 4th Premier 2018 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 2 2018 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 2
2018-08-04 3rd - 4th Premier 2018 GSL vs the World 2018 GSL vs the World
2018-04-08 2nd Premier 2018 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1 2018 AfreecaTV GSL Super Tournament 1
2018-03-24 3rd - 4th Premier 2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S 2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1: Code S
2017-09-09 3rd - 4th Premier 2017 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S 2017 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2017-03-05 3rd - 4th Premier IEM Season XI - World Championship IEM Season XI - World Championship
"didn’t win/make deep runs"
Maru's non GSL achievements:
2024-02-11 2nd Premier IEM Katowice 2024 IEM Katowice 2024
2023-02-12 2nd Premier IEM Katowice 2023 IEM Katowice 2023
2022-11-20 3rd - 4th Premier DH SC2 Masters 2022 Atlanta DH SC2 Masters 2022 Atlanta
2022-07-03 2nd Premier DH SC2 Masters 2022 Valencia DH SC2 Masters 2022 Valencia
2022-01-16 1st Premier DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022 DH SC2 Masters 2021: Last Chance 2022
2021-11-14 1st Premier DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals DH SC2 Masters 2021 Winter: Season Finals
2021-02-28 3rd - 4th Premier IEM Katowice 2021 IEM Katowice 2021
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd.
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I really liked these stats as they account for opportunity and conversion rate:
We can see that Dark actually hits ro4's more than Rogue, but wins less of them.
I think Maru is solidly #2, Serral is #1, and Dark is a lot higher than #11.
IMO it's more reasonable to place Dark over Rogue than Dark at 11th, but I tend to favor consistency rather than winning stuff occasionally, just too much luck on SC2 tournaments as a whole.
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On March 27 2024 08:14 argonautdice wrote:Too bad none of the top two are former Brood War pros and all the other 8 were all basically B-teamers in Brood War. Intrigue was especially throwing shade on Mvp for being a mediocre BW player who decided to switch to SC2 for money because he wasn't good enough to make money in BW.
Realistically, had Kespa not switched, is it not very possible that soO, INno, Rain, Soulkey, sOs, Zest etc would have been the next generation of BW A-listers? They were all up and coming before the switch.
The idea that Mvp dominated mostly bad BW players who switched for money still stands. None of the other WoL greats could keep up after the switch except PartinG and *that* zerg.
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Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure.
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On March 29 2024 02:04 argonautdice wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 01:48 Charoisaur wrote:On March 28 2024 23:31 Nasigil1 wrote:On March 26 2024 21:24 DropBear wrote:I haven't followed sc2 since about 2011 so had no perspective on who was the best. Greatly enjoyed reading through each of the articles and the justifications for each position seemed very reasonable to me. Thank you Mizenhauer for your considerable effort in compiling these and don't let the obnoxious tantrums of the fanboys discourage you too much, people would have been upset no matter who you picked as number 1 or how you ordered people. Also Intrigue ended up being completely right despite the considerable backlash he received at the time. 8 of the top 10 were former Brood War pros on kespa teams. Yes and No. BW and SC2 has a lot of thing in common while BW is much more mechanically demanding, so naturally BW pros will be transition decently smooth into SC2, at least better than those ex WC3 pros. But both games are still not 100% the same, so the absolute top of BW players (Flash, Jaedong, Bisu, Stork, Fantasy, Jangbi etc) did not become the greatest SC2 players, instead it's the B-teamers ended up having the most success. And the greatest two players of all time in SC2 ended up being two guys that just played SC2 all their life. The only player that had achieved top success in both games is probably Rain, he was the best Protoss during those highly competitive KeSPA years in SC2, and then changed back to BW and got a ASL and KSL title and multiple finals appearance, has a solid claim to be the best Protoss in BW for a couple years as well. Other than that, Flash was great in SC2 proleague for one year but didn't have much success in individual tournaments, Jaedong was arguably the best sc2 Zerg in international tournaments for a few months, that's about it. There's the theory that the players who turned out to be great at sc2 would've been the next generation of top players in BW anyway and surpass the great old time BW players you mentioned anyway, no matter if in BW or SC2. Not that far-fetched imo because most of them were promising up and coming players in BW like Soulkey, Rain, Inno or TY, and the timespan for players staying at the top was rather short. So yes, the article turned out to be mostly right, the only thing where he was wrong was that he for some reason assumed the BW players who were at the top then would keep winning forever. Eh, maybe only partially. Like when Flash returned to BW, he remained dominant unlike his stint in SC2. Soulkey and Rain are like the rare exceptions who were successful in both SC2 and BW. Inno and TY are not competitive in BW while most of the successful BW players today who played SC2 were not competitive at all in SC2.
Inno and TY were very promising up and coming players. Especially with them the probability that they would've become proper S-tier players had they sticked with bw is imo extremely high. Even now TY qualified for ASL after practicing a couple month after military
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United States1804 Posts
On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure.
The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers).
You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders.
On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd.
And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all.
On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken.
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A bit disappointed in the community response tbh
Dude, to be honest, you cannot put anything but Serral at first period. Specially after winning Katowize like he did, and 4-0 ing Maru ....
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
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On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken.
While everything you say is true, aren't you kinda cherrypicking time periods that make Dark look worse?
He was the best player (or at least had a very good case for being the best player) in 2016 and 2019, so if you would look at individual years instead of the 3-4 year periods you chose he had more years in which he was the best player than many of the players above him in the ranking.
Is it really a negative that he had 2 shorter periods of dominance instead of 1 longer one?
I don't know, I think the criticism here is that it can't really be backed up with data that Dark ranks below TY, soO or Rain and comes down more to "vibes"
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On March 29 2024 07:03 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. While everything you say is true, aren't you kinda cherrypicking time periods that make Dark look worse? He was the best player (or at least had a very good case for being the best player) in 2016 and 2019, so if you would look at individual years instead of the 3-4 year periods you chose he had more years in which he was the best player than many of the players above him in the ranking. Is it really a negative that he had 2 shorter periods of dominance instead of 1 longer one? I don't know, I think the criticism here is that it can't really be backed up with data that Dark ranks below TY, soO or Rain and comes down more to "vibes"
Yeah, one could use "longevity is a double edged sword" when argue for something like Mvp over Dark, and I can respect that opinion, but argonautdice made a very convincing comparison showing that both in terms of peak and longevity, TY has a very similar or slightly worse career than Dark before 2021, then TY retires but Dark remained a top Zerg for three more years until today, so I really struggle to think of a good reason to place TY at #8 and Dark out of top 10.
Also it's not like Dark just rakes up a good overall resume by staying around the top for a long time but never considered the best (aka Solar), he had a pretty solid argument to be the best player in the world in 2016 and 2019, so dude had really good peaks, it's just not a long as those actual GOAT candidates. Ant to think how many heart breaking premier finals that he lost by 3:4 (eight times, unbelievable), Dark is a lot closer to be an actual GOAT candidate than you think.
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On March 29 2024 03:59 LostUsername100 wrote:I really liked these stats as they account for opportunity and conversion rate: We can see that Dark actually hits ro4's more than Rogue, but wins less of them. I think Maru is solidly #2, Serral is #1, and Dark is a lot higher than #11. IMO it's more reasonable to place Dark over Rogue than Dark at 11th, but I tend to favor consistency rather than winning stuff occasionally, just too much luck on SC2 tournaments as a whole.
Thank you! I always wanted to see a graph like this.
A lot of clueless people like to say Serral only has good numbers because he "farms regionlock tournaments", but this stats shows that even if you simply discount Serral's EU stuff and only focus on his international results, he still has the most successful and dominant career compared to anyone. Highest tournament conversion rate in terms of wins, finals and semifinals appearance, and highest win rate against top players. And the difference is quite staggering especially compared to Maru and Rogue.
If you think Mvp's one and half year peak is so impressive that it still lands him in #4 after all these years, think about it, Serral has been consistently doing better than that for 6 straight years.
The only argument against him is that he was born too late and didn't compete in the KeSPA era. That's fine. But anyone still using "but he has no GSL" as an argument just really don't know what they are talking about.
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On March 28 2024 18:35 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2024 11:22 Kitai wrote:On March 26 2024 18:11 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 26 2024 13:41 Malinor wrote:
I do not feel the community response has been disappointing or particularly negative. This is such a loaded topic, obviously it creates controversy. One could argue that the creation of such a list in itself has the purpose to create controversy. How could it be any other way? The discussion has also been pretty civil from my point of view.
I would view anything related to this creation as a success for TL.
I agree, it was a huge success. I could have worded things better about the negativity. That's something I got over pretty quickly. However, a number of non sc2 related factors, plus reaching the realization that it was going to be difficult to create the articles I wanted for 15-11 (aka discussing their greatness rather than defending my decision to place them where they were) made finishing the project impossible atm. Part of why the series was a huge success was Wax being involved. His standards are absurdly high and getting the articles to a point where he was satisfied was the most challenging part of the process. It was going to take a lot of time that I didn't have to get there. Luckily, all the information I created isn't going anywhere. So, we'll see what the future brings. Just out of curiosity, if it turned out to be a great success and you thought it was well-received, what made the experience "less than enjoyable" for you? Did it just turn out to be a bigger undertaking than you initially intended? My work was basically finished by the time the first article came out. At that point, my responsibilities shifted to doing whatever random task was needed of me to polish them off. So, no, the workload was fine. The process of writing them was great. The fact that it started so much discussion was great. The fact that the quality of the articles was so high was great. It just took up a lot of mental energy, so to speak. Those who know me know how much I care about my work and the toll that took on me was more than expected. That's not to say I wouldn't do this all over again. I was incredible lucky to be given the opportunity. Having gone through it once, I think I'd be be far more prepared than I was this time I around.
Got it, thanks for the insight! Selfishly hoping you can recharge your batteries and put out those related blogs you were working on
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On March 29 2024 08:32 Nasigil1 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 03:59 LostUsername100 wrote:I really liked these stats as they account for opportunity and conversion rate: We can see that Dark actually hits ro4's more than Rogue, but wins less of them. I think Maru is solidly #2, Serral is #1, and Dark is a lot higher than #11. IMO it's more reasonable to place Dark over Rogue than Dark at 11th, but I tend to favor consistency rather than winning stuff occasionally, just too much luck on SC2 tournaments as a whole. Thank you! I always wanted to see a graph like this. A lot of clueless people like to say Serral only has good numbers because he "farms regionlock tournaments", but this stats shows that even if you simply discount Serral's EU stuff and only focus on his international results, he still has the most successful and dominant career compared to anyone. Highest tournament conversion rate in terms of wins, finals and semifinals appearance, and highest win rate against top players. And the difference is quite staggering especially compared to Maru and Rogue. If you think Mvp's one and half year peak is so impressive that it still lands him in #4 after all these years, think about it, Serral has been consistently doing better than that for 6 straight years. The only argument against him is that he was born too late and didn't compete in the KeSPA era. That's fine. But anyone still using "but he has no GSL" as an argument just really don't know what they are talking about.
I think the arguments "he was born too late" and "he doesn't have a GSL" go pretty much hand in hand.
I think when people say he doesn't have a GSL they don't mean the "weak" GSLs in 2024 but the hyper-competitive GSLs from back in the past (not only Kespa era but WoL era and then later until like 2019/20 it was still very competitive).
So yeah in 2018/19 he technically had the chance to compete in a still very competitive GSL but after that the opportunity was gone.
And that's definitely a flaw in his resumee compared to the koreans who won those hyper competitive GSLs
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I enjoyed the series. Thanks for writing it.
I also think that the rankings of Dark and Mvp are egregiously wrong and that straight up swapping the two would be a lot closer to reality.
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Good job Mvp and Nestea! You only play 3 years to be 4th and only one year to be 13rd best sc2 player of all time.
based on time, this is an excellent trade off.
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I'd respect the list more if we were more honest about sc history. As PiG alludes, theres no metric in which you can measure (wins, championships, head-to-head) that Life isnt top 5 all time. You can prevent him from competing in the future, but you cant pretend history didnt happen just becuase you don't like someone. He won all those championships fair - no hacks or cheats or anything, and he did it at like 14. If we let him keep playing he would be the unquestionable GOAT, but even if we hadnt you need to evaluate players fairly based on results, not just if you like them as a person.
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On March 30 2024 07:55 luxon wrote:
I'd respect the list more if we were more honest about sc history. As PiG alludes, theres no metric in which you can measure (wins, championships, head-to-head) that Life isnt top 5 all time. You can prevent him from competing in the future, but you cant pretend history didnt happen just becuase you don't like someone. He won all those championships fair - no hacks or cheats or anything, and he did it at like 14. If we let him keep playing he would be the unquestionable GOAT, but even if we hadnt you need to evaluate players fairly based on results, not just if you like them as a person.
Even if Life would be included he would not be in the top 5 lmao.
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On March 30 2024 08:23 Luolis wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 07:55 luxon wrote:
I'd respect the list more if we were more honest about sc history. As PiG alludes, theres no metric in which you can measure (wins, championships, head-to-head) that Life isnt top 5 all time. You can prevent him from competing in the future, but you cant pretend history didnt happen just becuase you don't like someone. He won all those championships fair - no hacks or cheats or anything, and he did it at like 14. If we let him keep playing he would be the unquestionable GOAT, but even if we hadnt you need to evaluate players fairly based on results, not just if you like them as a person. Even if Life would be included he would not be in the top 5 lmao.
Yeah I think Life is around #7/8 between soO and sOs, but then again I don't know how Mvp is rated #4 over Inno and Zest.
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Life would be just behind Mvp, right before the match-fixing scandal people were starting to seriously debate if he had surpassed him. It was generally agreed that if Life were to say, win another GSL or World Championship or something, that'd make it official that he was the #1 undisputed GOAT.
But either way, he doesn't deserve to be on the list. I could see him being on the list without a write-up as a decent compromise, but none of his achievements or accomplishments should be glorified whatsoever.
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On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2.
[...]
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure.
Great post, enjoyed reading this ! I agree, I can't see Dark being below soO.
Also, I didn't realize that he lost SO many 3:4 series, godamn. Also most of the times he's losing them to Maru, Serral, or Rogue. Only the other top tier GOATs.
On March 30 2024 03:22 Dingodile wrote:
Good job Mvp and Nestea! You only play 3 years to be 4th and only one year to be 13rd best sc2 player of all time.
based on time, this is an excellent trade off.
Damn lol this is how I felt too. It feels like they got a great bargain.
Compared to Dark who worked so hard for so long, but is much below MVP.
If I were a kid and had to pick whose career I'd dream to have when I grow up, it would be Dark's. Being a progamer and top contender for a decade? Or having a high concentrated peak for 1-1.5 years and then falling off by the 3rd year? I'd pick Dark's. Look at how rich he's gotten off SC2 too! (Though I'd understand people picking the higher peak).
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On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken.
He's not insulting you, he's destroying your list. We're respecting the effort put in, but I would say that the top 10 from the site Esportsearnings is a better list than this.
On March 29 2024 07:03 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. While everything you say is true, aren't you kinda cherrypicking time periods that make Dark look worse? He was the best player (or at least had a very good case for being the best player) in 2016 and 2019, so if you would look at individual years instead of the 3-4 year periods you chose he had more years in which he was the best player than many of the players above him in the ranking. Is it really a negative that he had 2 shorter periods of dominance instead of 1 longer one? I don't know, I think the criticism here is that it can't really be backed up with data that Dark ranks below TY, soO or Rain and comes down more to "vibes"
Right, and this argument should also consistently be put on Maru. Despite Maru being on JAGW after the disbandment of the other team houses, he really fell off at the start of LotV being outclassed by ByuN and TY.
On March 30 2024 08:23 Luolis wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 07:55 luxon wrote:
I'd respect the list more if we were more honest about sc history. As PiG alludes, theres no metric in which you can measure (wins, championships, head-to-head) that Life isnt top 5 all time. You can prevent him from competing in the future, but you cant pretend history didnt happen just becuase you don't like someone. He won all those championships fair - no hacks or cheats or anything, and he did it at like 14. If we let him keep playing he would be the unquestionable GOAT, but even if we hadnt you need to evaluate players fairly based on results, not just if you like them as a person. Even if Life would be included he would not be in the top 5 lmao.
He should be above MVP, so he could be top 5, that or they could both be way lower.
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Northern Ireland24396 Posts
On March 30 2024 21:03 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. He's not insulting you, he's destroying your list. We're respecting the effort put in, but I would say that the top 10 from the site Esportsearnings is a better list than this. Show nested quote +On March 29 2024 07:03 Charoisaur wrote:On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. While everything you say is true, aren't you kinda cherrypicking time periods that make Dark look worse? He was the best player (or at least had a very good case for being the best player) in 2016 and 2019, so if you would look at individual years instead of the 3-4 year periods you chose he had more years in which he was the best player than many of the players above him in the ranking. Is it really a negative that he had 2 shorter periods of dominance instead of 1 longer one? I don't know, I think the criticism here is that it can't really be backed up with data that Dark ranks below TY, soO or Rain and comes down more to "vibes" Right, and this argument should also consistently be put on Maru. Despite Maru being on JAGW after the disbandment of the other team houses, he really fell off at the start of LotV being outclassed by ByuN and TY. Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 08:23 Luolis wrote:On March 30 2024 07:55 luxon wrote:
I'd respect the list more if we were more honest about sc history. As PiG alludes, theres no metric in which you can measure (wins, championships, head-to-head) that Life isnt top 5 all time. You can prevent him from competing in the future, but you cant pretend history didnt happen just becuase you don't like someone. He won all those championships fair - no hacks or cheats or anything, and he did it at like 14. If we let him keep playing he would be the unquestionable GOAT, but even if we hadnt you need to evaluate players fairly based on results, not just if you like them as a person. Even if Life would be included he would not be in the top 5 lmao. He should be above MVP, so he could be top 5, that or they could both be way lower.
Nah, the top 10 of earnings isn’t too bad as a ranking, although Reynor is a bit high.
Lower down it gets a bit wonky, Neeb above herO and Classic or Oliveira above a Cure or MMA?
Between region locked tournaments and fluctuations in prize pools for the same prizes just looking at prize earnings has plenty of flaws
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United States1804 Posts
On March 30 2024 21:19 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 21:03 ejozl wrote:On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. He's not insulting you, he's destroying your list. We're respecting the effort put in, but I would say that the top 10 from the site Esportsearnings is a better list than this. On March 29 2024 07:03 Charoisaur wrote:On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. While everything you say is true, aren't you kinda cherrypicking time periods that make Dark look worse? He was the best player (or at least had a very good case for being the best player) in 2016 and 2019, so if you would look at individual years instead of the 3-4 year periods you chose he had more years in which he was the best player than many of the players above him in the ranking. Is it really a negative that he had 2 shorter periods of dominance instead of 1 longer one? I don't know, I think the criticism here is that it can't really be backed up with data that Dark ranks below TY, soO or Rain and comes down more to "vibes" Right, and this argument should also consistently be put on Maru. Despite Maru being on JAGW after the disbandment of the other team houses, he really fell off at the start of LotV being outclassed by ByuN and TY. On March 30 2024 08:23 Luolis wrote:On March 30 2024 07:55 luxon wrote:
I'd respect the list more if we were more honest about sc history. As PiG alludes, theres no metric in which you can measure (wins, championships, head-to-head) that Life isnt top 5 all time. You can prevent him from competing in the future, but you cant pretend history didnt happen just becuase you don't like someone. He won all those championships fair - no hacks or cheats or anything, and he did it at like 14. If we let him keep playing he would be the unquestionable GOAT, but even if we hadnt you need to evaluate players fairly based on results, not just if you like them as a person. Even if Life would be included he would not be in the top 5 lmao. He should be above MVP, so he could be top 5, that or they could both be way lower. Nah, the top 10 of earnings isn’t too bad as a ranking, although Reynor is a bit high. Lower down it gets a bit wonky, Neeb above herO and Classic or Oliveira above a Cure or MMA? Between region locked tournaments and fluctuations in prize pools for the same prizes just looking at prize earnings has plenty of flaws
But...but...since everything was Zerg favored when Serral won it would make sense to only count 80% of the prize towards his total.
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Northern Ireland24396 Posts
On March 30 2024 22:29 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2024 21:19 WombaT wrote:On March 30 2024 21:03 ejozl wrote:On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. He's not insulting you, he's destroying your list. We're respecting the effort put in, but I would say that the top 10 from the site Esportsearnings is a better list than this. On March 29 2024 07:03 Charoisaur wrote:On March 29 2024 06:09 Mizenhauer wrote:On March 29 2024 05:44 argonautdice wrote:
Dark is the true Kong of SC2. Despite only winning a SSL before his peak in 2019 in the more competitive era, he got silver in 7 Premier tournaments, 2 SSL's, 2 Kespa Cups, 1 Blizzcon, 1 WESG, and 1 Super Tournament, and 5 of these he was literally 1 game away from gold losing 3:4. After a career peak in 2019 where he won a Code S, Blizzcon, and a Super Tournament within 6 months, he won another GSL, TSL6, and DH Valencia, but got 5 more second places in 3 Super tournies, a Code S, and ESL Winter, 3 of which he again lost 3:4. So basically Dark was 8 games away from having 15 Premier championships (5 Super tournies, 3 SSL's, 2 Code S, 1 Blizzcon/WESG/Kespa Cup/DH/TSL). He's also the only one aside from Rogue and Maru to win at least 3 GSL/SSL combined during LotV. And this is not counting the countless Top 4's Dark reached. Dark has basically been a threat to win it all in every tournament since 2015.
If we compare Dark's resume to TY's,
Pre-2015: no notable individual results from either players.
2015: Dark - 2 Kespa Cup silvers, top 4 at IEM World Championship; TY - top 4 at SSL and IEM Shenzhen. Dark wins here
2016: Dark - 1 SSL gold, 1 SSL silver, 1 Blizzcon silver, top 4 at IEM Gyeonggi; TY - 1 code S silver, top 4 at Kespa Cup. Dark wins by a lot here.
2017: Dark - 1 SSL silver, top 4 at IEM world, Code S, super tourney; TY - 1 IEM world gold, 1 WESG gold, 2nd at GSL vs world, top 4 at IEM Shanghai and Blizzcon. TY wins by a lot here.
So for 2015-2017 pre-Maru/Serral hyper-competitive era: Dark barely edges out TY.
2018: Dark - silver in WESG and super tourney, top 4 in GSL vs world and Code S; TY - a silver and a top 4 in Code S. They're about even here.
2019: Dark - gold in GSL, Super tourney, and Blizzcon, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and IEM world; TY - silver in Super tourney. Dark wins by a lot here.
2020: Dark - gold in TSL6, silver in Super tourney; TY - 2 golds in GSL, top 4 in another GSL, Super tourney, and King of Battles. TY wins by a lot here.
Thus for 2018-2020: Dark and TY are about even.
2021-Present: TY basically went to the military and only got a top 4 at DH last chance beforehand and didn't place high anywhere since his return, while Dark won another Code S in 2021, and placed at least top 4 a ton since then, though it's not really a fair comparison, but I still give the slight edge to Dark for winning a Code S in 2021.
And since we seem to value Proleague record as well for the GOAT list,
2012-2013: Dark 0-1, TY 26-26. TY wins.
2014: Dark 6-3, TY 17-12. TY wins.
2015: Dark 17-12, TY 10-11. Dark wins.
2016: Dark 13-12, TY 14-13. Basically tie, though Dark's ace match record is 3-1 while TY is 1-1. and Dark's playoff record is 3-1 while TY is 2-1 (interestingly TY did beat Dark in the ace match here).
Dark was also a strong threat in every season of the WTL series while TY's record was pretty poor, though he only played in 1 season right before military.
So they're about even in team league except the first season of SC2 proleague, but 26-26 is a pretty mediocre record and I can't fault Dark for still getting good at the game just like I can't penalize TY for going to the military.
In conclusion, I think Dark barely edges out TY by the quantity of his high placements, and at best you can say they're tied, and if TY is #8 on the GOAT list, Dark should be top 10 for sure. The phrase "longevity is a double edged sword" was central to my thinking for the entire series. Dark has had an incredible career in which he has piled up accolade after accolade, but he was mediocre in hots, had a lower three year peak than Stats from 2016-2018 (its also fair to say that between WESG and 3 Code S wins Maru exceeded Dark's achievements during those three years in far less time). After that Dark is a top 5 player, but clearly behind Maru, Serral, Rogue and it's a toss up with Reynor. Dark experienced an uptick in results once TY and Rogue retired, whereas the other players mentioned pretty much kept up their pace. People can disagree, but there's enough nuance in this discussion to say that he ranks fourth when it comes to cumulative achievements and could rank as highly as seven given my methodology, but the length of time it took him to achieve all he did was a negative in my eyes that did more to harm his case than players like soO/Inno/sOs (players that were also held back by their performances at the end of their careers). You're onto something with your explanation, but one thing has to be corrected. Dark was not a threat to win any events in 2015. He made it to the finals of two KeSPA Cups (losing to soO of all people in the second one), but he didn't even reach the Round of 8 of a Korean Individual League until 2016. He was just an average Proleague player who went 3-1 in two weekenders. On March 29 2024 02:58 Odoakar wrote:
People are upset because your rankings are objectively bad. Dark should be in TOP10. Maru shouldn't be rank 1. Serral and Rogue are 1-2, Maru is 3rd. And, this is the downside to the series. Because every time I go to this site I had to see people who speak in absolutes, frequently only use tournament results to communicate their points and resort to insults for no reason at all. On March 29 2024 06:15 CerebrateHector wrote:
Also, can we stop with this crap about Serral needing to play on Code S?, why does a FINNISH player needs to play on KOREA ? And its not even the most premier tournament
I never said that. In fact, I think anyone who holds this opinion is mistaken. While everything you say is true, aren't you kinda cherrypicking time periods that make Dark look worse? He was the best player (or at least had a very good case for being the best player) in 2016 and 2019, so if you would look at individual years instead of the 3-4 year periods you chose he had more years in which he was the best player than many of the players above him in the ranking. Is it really a negative that he had 2 shorter periods of dominance instead of 1 longer one? I don't know, I think the criticism here is that it can't really be backed up with data that Dark ranks below TY, soO or Rain and comes down more to "vibes" Right, and this argument should also consistently be put on Maru. Despite Maru being on JAGW after the disbandment of the other team houses, he really fell off at the start of LotV being outclassed by ByuN and TY. On March 30 2024 08:23 Luolis wrote:On March 30 2024 07:55 luxon wrote:
I'd respect the list more if we were more honest about sc history. As PiG alludes, theres no metric in which you can measure (wins, championships, head-to-head) that Life isnt top 5 all time. You can prevent him from competing in the future, but you cant pretend history didnt happen just becuase you don't like someone. He won all those championships fair - no hacks or cheats or anything, and he did it at like 14. If we let him keep playing he would be the unquestionable GOAT, but even if we hadnt you need to evaluate players fairly based on results, not just if you like them as a person. Even if Life would be included he would not be in the top 5 lmao. He should be above MVP, so he could be top 5, that or they could both be way lower. Nah, the top 10 of earnings isn’t too bad as a ranking, although Reynor is a bit high. Lower down it gets a bit wonky, Neeb above herO and Classic or Oliveira above a Cure or MMA? Between region locked tournaments and fluctuations in prize pools for the same prizes just looking at prize earnings has plenty of flaws But...but...since everything was Zerg favored when Serral won it would make sense to only count 80% of the prize towards his total.
Haha aye the game has been super imbalanced for 6/7 years!
I think if one was to use prize money as a metric you’d have to weight it versus the pools of eligible tournaments, and even then region locked weaker tournaments like EU but especially NA/China skew things a bit much.
Even then you have wonky scenarios such as herO getting a silver in a WC equivalent event but getting 0 prize money because they were experimenting with a winner-takes-all format.
Then additional wonkiness in the Proleague era where actually it was very important to Kespa teams and salaries reflected performance in there. Hey x may have not earned a huge amount in prize money for a particular year, but they were stomping it in Proleague and had a 40-50k salary that reflected those priorities. Or whatever it was, I’ve no real idea what top, top Proleague performers were pulling in salary wise, I assume you with your connections have a better idea!
Enjoy the holiday and enjoy Korea sir! Very much enjoyed this labour of love. As you said it’s relatively easy to get say a top 15, but actually sitting down and ordering them is considerably more difficult. Based on chats emanating from this list I ended up trying to merely rank the top 3 Terrans, only in HoTS and even that was very hard
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I do think sOs's win matters even more and that herO's 2nd place matters less, for this one event, because money does have a say. Though, I wouldn't go as far as to say that 2nd and 3rd/4th place should then be counted equally.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/3SwLqAT.png)
