2024 GSL Code S Season 1

RO8 Group A Preview: Maru, Classic, ByuN, herO

Thursday, Mar 28 9:30am GMT (GMT+00:00)

by Wax

The Code S RO8 has been hit with an unusual twist, with the new 5.0.13 balance patch and map pool being deployed less than two days before the matches begin. With this season's RO8 being heavy on Protoss and Terran, we'll get a first hand look at whether or not the balance council achieved its goals at bringing the controversial PvT match-up back in order.



Every Maru preview in the GSL is a toss-up between "talk about how historically great he is and why his victory is inevitable" and "try and find some strands of doubt to turn into a story." Last season, I opted for the former route, and had to share some embarrassment with Maru as he went out of the RO16 with losses to Scarlett and Solar. So this time, let's try going in the opposite direction.

The current circumstances are similar to those surrounding Maru's shock RO16 elimination last season, when he played just two weeks after the 5.0.12 patch was released. Maru showed multiple dubious wall-offs on the new maps, one of which led directly to his defeat against Solar's early attack. While Maru's overall poor play was the main culprit for his early ouster, this still revealed an ironic lack of preparation from the player who's had the most success in the 'preparation format' of the GSL. There's even more reason for Maru fans to be concerned this time around. Last season, Maru at least had two weeks to prepare—this time, he'll have less than two days.

Not only that, but Maru hardly gave a convincing comeback performance in this season's RO16. Sure, he did advance from his group in first place, but he struggled to take a 2-1 victory against soO (his hand-picked 'easy' opponent from the group selections), and barely stole a 2-1 against SHIN (Maru's personal punching bag with a 1-27 head-to-head record) due to a series of late-game throws from his opponent. Even though Maru won in the end, these games had the same kind of aura-depleting effect as his loss to Classic at DreamHack Atlanta or Cyan in the group stages of IEM Katowice 2024.

Does this all add up to a reasonable case against Maru advancing? Well… …I can't quite get there. First off, a bigger picture look at Maru's performances around new balance patches doesn't reveal any sort of pattern, so last season was probably just a one off outlier—similar to the RO32 elimination that brought his first 4x GSL winning streak to a screeching halt in 2019. Apparently, the only way Maru knows how to slow down is by crashing into a brick wall.

Regarding Maru's overall level of play in the last six months or so, it's definitely fallen off from his second Code S three-peat in 2022-2023 where it seemed like he was on a totally different tier from the other GSL players. Now, it feels more like he's the 'best of the rest' in the tier behind Serral (aside from his late-game, which is still transcendent). However, even if other players have narrowed the gap, Maru still proved he's the #2 player in the world by making a strong run to the grand finals at IEM Katowice. While I can't make Maru a no-brainer pick to advance as in previous seasons, I still see him as the moderate favorite to take first place.

Classic is another player who comes with an obvious storyline that can't be ignored: he's an inconsistent player who's capable of hitting tremendous highs and lows within the same series. His RO16 decider match against Dark was one such example, where he started off by getting utterly ripped apart by his opponent's multitasking in the late-game. However, he tied the series in game two by capitalizing on Dark's overcommitment to Mutas, finding the perfect window to counterattack. Then, in game three, he pulled off a simple but successful mind-game, catching Dark flat-footed with a Blink-Stalker timing to secure his RO8 spot.

While there's no PvZ to play in this group, I still think that series is somewhat instructive as to how Classic's games will play out, win or lose. His speed/multi-tasking is clearly his biggest liability in his post-military career, and if his physical condition is bad on the night of the games, Maru and ByuN will absolutely rip him apart with drops without letting him put up any sort of fight. However, on the days when Classic's hands are humming on defense, he can get the Protoss macro snowball rolling as quickly as anyone in the world. At least from my anecdotal experience of watching Classic games, I feel like I've seen the worst-case scenario play out very often when he plays top-tier players, but there have been some very notable exceptions. While I fear for the worst here, I'll still be hoping for the best.

Physical ability aside, I'd like to see Classic lean harder on mind-games and all-ins—especially since the new patch should theoretically open up more early-game options for Protoss, and also because there should be some fresh proxy locations on the new map pool. Classic has always been a strong all-in player when he has chosen to be, but he has a strong preference for predictable macro that I believe hampers him in some situations. Maybe he believes it's the better long-term plan to suffer through some losses as he tries to bring his fundamentals back up to a championship level, but in a difficult group like this, I don't think there's anything dishonorable about playing as cheesily as possible.

Our third player ByuN has recently been freed from his TL.net narrative shackles, playing through several major events and big matches without his infamous wrist problems flaring up. Indeed, his RO16 performance almost felt like a micro exhibition against some practice dummies—such was the comprehensiveness with which he 2-0'd Creator and GuMiho. The Korean commentators offered up some of their usual flattery in the post-match interview by saying that ByuN looked like the 2016 version of himself, but I think it was well warranted in this case.

That said, GuMiho and Creator aren't exactly known for their response time on defense, so can ByuN replicate that performance in a higher round? I'd say most definitely against Classic, who has some defensive foibles as mentioned above. But even against herO and Maru, I think ByuN has a very solid chance against either of them with his aggressive, multi-tasking intensive style. His recent BO5 series against Maru at IEM Katowice was extremely close in the early/mid-game phases, and ByuN got the better of Maru a number of times with his incessant backdooring. The only situation where Maru looked clearly better was in their one late-game clash, and that made the difference in his 3-2 victory. Putting his opponents on a soft-timer is definitely an advantage for Maru, as it forces many players to try and close games out before games drag out too long. However, ByuN looked more than capable of deciding things in early/mid-game combat, and I think he's only a small underdog against Maru in a BO3 series.

As for herO, I think this is the match-up where the exact ramifications of the patch matter the most. Despite his complaints about the Cyclone giving Terran 6:4 advantage in the early game, he's continued to be a top two PvT player in the world (alongside MaxPax) throughout the entire Cyclone-buff patch. In fact, Aligulac sees him as having a 60:40 advantage against ByuN at the time of writing, without a single game played with the nerfed Cyclone. If we were to take herO at his word, wouldn't he be a massive favorite to beat ByuN with a 'fair' early-game?

Speaking of herO, let's close out this group by telling his story as well. While ByuN may have escaped the "chokes offline" stereotype, it seems like he's done so by moving the curse along to herO (let me know if you've seen him visiting any shamans or voodoo practitioners in 2023). Despite herO maintaining an Aligulac rating that painted him as a top one or two Protoss in the world throughout 2023, his year was most memorable for the awful live tournament slump he went through after IEM Katowice 2023. It's hard to pick out a single lowlight—was it the open bracket elimination DreamHack Summer? The two Code S RO16 eliminations? The RO16 elimination at Gamers8? It was just an all-around disaster.

We haven't really gotten a satisfactory explanation for this slump yet, and perhaps we'll never have one. As I'm fond of saying, there's a lot more variance in competitive StarCraft II than people like to think, and the best explanation for herO's 2023 downturn might be "s*** happens."

In any case, considering his performances in the RO16 and previously at IEM Katowice 2024, I'm willing to say herO is close to being fully recovered from his slump and playing at his correct level again. His RO12 finish at Katowice wasn't that impressive on paper, but he did survive the group of death in the RO24 and just narrowly lost 2-3 to Cure in the playoffs. Similarly, his RO16 performance in this season of Code S wasn't the most reassuring, as he advanced in second place from his group with a 4-3 map score. However, looking under the hood, I'd give more credit to his opponents than blame herO himself—Cure crafted two dastardly cheeses that both hit the mark, while Ryung simply played some fantastic StarCraft that night (even beating Solar).

One of the long-standing trends of the ESL Open Cups era is that great online play eventually translates to offline results—hell, herO already proved this to us during his initial post-military surge in 2022. Sooner or later, he's going to play championship-caliber StarCraft II in Code S again, and given the advent of the new balance patch, I'm going to say it's sooner.

Predictions

Aligulac.com projects Maru and herO as the strong favorites to advance from the group, and I will not be declaring a Butlerian Jihad declared today. As vulnerable as our two favorites have looked at times, I'm still picking them to prevail after some tough matches against their very capable challengers.

Maru 2 - 0 Classic
herO 2 - 1 ByuN
Maru 2 - 1 herO
ByuN 2 - 1 Classic
herO 2 - 1 ByuN

Maru and herO to advance.

---