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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
On August 02 2025 05:23 ejozl wrote:
And this is really the crux of the issue, Serral has all of the accolades, there is not a lot more that he could do to prove that he's the best. The issue is era & balance.
Maru was the best terran in years: 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the 2nd best terran in years: 2015, 2020, 2024.
Serral was the best zerg in years: 2018, 2022, 2024, and the 2nd best zerg in years: 2020 and 2023.
I haven't 2025 downwritten, but they're both the best so it evens out.
So Maru dominance goes back to and including 2018, while serral dominance only goes back to and including 2020 and that is if you are charitable and say 2021 doesn't count because it's an "off year." So you could even argue Maru is more dominant in newer time, but he also has that 2nd place year in 2015, which would be the peak of the peak year, the year where it's most competitive while also high performance due to honing.
Bl/inf is brought up as the peak of imbalance, but it's only that because of the popularity of sc2 at that time, really 2018, 2019 was worse than that. In WoL the Infested didn't have rockets.. The patch by the end of 2017 was really awful bringing infested rocket launchers, doubling the damage of parasitic bomb and at the same time you go to a new system of Protoss surviving by shield batteries instead of Mothership Core, on the plus side they were given 100% Chrono Boost, but this was taken away as soon as Zest won that one HSC. This destroyed Protoss ability to win until battery overcharge was made up to give Protoss a chance.
The year 2019 is worse in terms of balance (using prize money) than both BL/Inf, Terran during the worst time in HotS when Maru was the 4th race and worse than GomTvT.
I'm wondering if Serral would edge out Neeb had the balance stayed the same considering his playstyle. In 2018 Serral wasn't the complete player, he was basically the Zerg version of Neeb and if he didn't automatically win the late game, I'm not sure this playstyle wins out, and with how close some of those late game Serral vs Maru matches have been, this goes for this matchup as well. If Maru knows that he wins late game, I'm not sure it would play out like it has. I will give that Serral has become much more complete now and doesn't necessarily have to win late game, but is Serral really the GOAT for you, if he only became the best by year 2022 and forward?, remember that he wasn't top 2 Zerg in 2019 and 2021, and in 2020 he was only 2nd, so his dominance would've only been 4 years and at a time where the decline in SC2 is real.
Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from?
You can directly compare Serral and Maru’s records, or how they ranked overall versus the field in any given year, rather than this awkward and extremely flawed method way of weighting them by how many years they were the top player of their race.
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United States1891 Posts
On August 02 2025 06:33 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 05:23 ejozl wrote:
And this is really the crux of the issue, Serral has all of the accolades, there is not a lot more that he could do to prove that he's the best. The issue is era & balance.
Maru was the best terran in years: 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the 2nd best terran in years: 2015, 2020, 2024.
Serral was the best zerg in years: 2018, 2022, 2024, and the 2nd best zerg in years: 2020 and 2023.
I haven't 2025 downwritten, but they're both the best so it evens out.
So Maru dominance goes back to and including 2018, while serral dominance only goes back to and including 2020 and that is if you are charitable and say 2021 doesn't count because it's an "off year." So you could even argue Maru is more dominant in newer time, but he also has that 2nd place year in 2015, which would be the peak of the peak year, the year where it's most competitive while also high performance due to honing.
Bl/inf is brought up as the peak of imbalance, but it's only that because of the popularity of sc2 at that time, really 2018, 2019 was worse than that. In WoL the Infested didn't have rockets.. The patch by the end of 2017 was really awful bringing infested rocket launchers, doubling the damage of parasitic bomb and at the same time you go to a new system of Protoss surviving by shield batteries instead of Mothership Core, on the plus side they were given 100% Chrono Boost, but this was taken away as soon as Zest won that one HSC. This destroyed Protoss ability to win until battery overcharge was made up to give Protoss a chance.
The year 2019 is worse in terms of balance (using prize money) than both BL/Inf, Terran during the worst time in HotS when Maru was the 4th race and worse than GomTvT.
I'm wondering if Serral would edge out Neeb had the balance stayed the same considering his playstyle. In 2018 Serral wasn't the complete player, he was basically the Zerg version of Neeb and if he didn't automatically win the late game, I'm not sure this playstyle wins out, and with how close some of those late game Serral vs Maru matches have been, this goes for this matchup as well. If Maru knows that he wins late game, I'm not sure it would play out like it has. I will give that Serral has become much more complete now and doesn't necessarily have to win late game, but is Serral really the GOAT for you, if he only became the best by year 2022 and forward?, remember that he wasn't top 2 Zerg in 2019 and 2021, and in 2020 he was only 2nd, so his dominance would've only been 4 years and at a time where the decline in SC2 is real. Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from? You can directly compare Serral and Maru’s records, or how they ranked overall versus the field in any given year, rather than this awkward and extremely flawed method way of weighting them by how many years they were the top player of their race.
If i recall, PvT was super busted in 2018 and that's what led to proxy meta.
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
On August 01 2025 22:08 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2025 14:10 PremoBeats wrote:On August 01 2025 04:44 MJG wrote:
Do you want to argue that BL/Infestor was balanced? Because that's the petard you're dangerously close to hoisting yourself with. As Balnazza already said: "It probably wasn't particularly balanced (and it clearly wasn't fun, which might actually be the bigger problem): Zerg still could have a winrate of ~50% with it and be "balanced". Those two are not mutually exclusive. Just means you had to kill the Zerg before it gets to BL/Infestor." So perhaps Toss/Terran had other imbalances in the early and mid game to counter it, which overall in hundreds of games made Zerg equaled out. So no, I am not dangerously close to anything, except presenting a statistic that you think is wrong because of a perceived and supposed imbalance. Have you had time to think about potential explanations? Balance does not mean that MJG or Poopi perceive every part aspect of the game as fair/balanced/enjoyable to watch. StarCraft 2 has always been a game of imbalances that balance each other out (sometimes better, sometimes worse). This is implemented by the design of three utterly mechanically different races. On August 01 2025 05:09 Poopi wrote:
He didn't answer the question, so my guess is that he didn't watch the games. He is just trying numbers for something he doesn't understand at all. If I watched SC2 in 2010, 2014, 2019 or now is completely irrelevant to the question at hand. You make it sound like the numbers would be different if I did or did not watch the game back then. But as I was asked the same question by johnny and did answer him in a thread that you also engage in, I thought you already knew: I watched SC2 upon release but never played it competitively. I even said that I had the same take on Zerg and 2019 too, before finishing the analysis. As for me not understanding the numbers: I explained my methodology and asked you already, where you think the approach is wrong. You didn't answer. If you can't that is fine, but as I said in my previous reply to you: Your approach in this is absolutely childish. Either correct my methodology or present a better way to check for balance. Simply saying "I am right, because it is obvious" doesn't cut it, as the numbers don't lie and contextual explanations are more than sufficient. On August 01 2025 05:27 LostUsername100 wrote:
I don't think overall winrates are a good metric for determining balance state for the top 20 players in the world. I agree. That is why I looked at only the map statistics of the top tournaments. This is a cohort of only the best of the world participating. I explained my methodology before: 1. I looked only at maps played at S-tier-tournaments (not perfect, but good enough) 2. I excluded region locked tournaments as there are times when one or two players (even of the same race) would heavily distort these tournaments and the best of the world did for years not participate 3. I excluded tournaments like GPC 2019 Season 1 as one good player versus several weaker players heavily distorts the results 4. I only accepted years with 500 played maps for a minimum sample size 5. I summed up all TvZs, ZvPs and PvTs and built an average for each race I already explained that one or two good players might be able to push an imbalance even further (let's say Toss is favored versus Terran 56:44 and Trap is even better than average with no Terran to compensate, we could get a final result of 57:43) or counter them, but these are minor draw backs, as the sample size of hundreds of games counters such outliers quite well. Overall, the methodology is fine from my point of view. And so far, no one actually pointed out any methodological flaws or made constructive feedback that undermines the analysis' value. Map win rates aren't perfect either, but they're the cleanest objective measure we have - unless someone can suggest a better metric (WombaT's approach sounds fine, but has drawbacks as well). Another interesting way to measure "balance" (at least in years where there was a team league) is seeing which map has the most mirror matches. ![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/exp.png) soO's favorite map, expedition lost, is his favorite because of how op it was for zergs. As you can see, expedition lost played host to a ton of ZvZ's because teams didn't want to blindly send a player of another race vs a zerg (which was a highly likely outcome).
Yeah it’s an interesting way to look at it, of course there’ll also be some element of bluff/double bluffing as well. Or I suppose series momentum and where to best deploy your strongest players versus getting favourable matches/matchups.
Part of what makes team leagues so rich and interesting
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On August 02 2025 05:23 ejozl wrote:
And this is really the crux of the issue, Serral has all of the accolades, there is not a lot more that he could do to prove that he's the best. The issue is era & balance.
Maru was the best terran in years: 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the 2nd best terran in years: 2015, 2020, 2024.
Serral was the best zerg in years: 2018, 2022, 2024, and the 2nd best zerg in years: 2020 and 2023.
I haven't 2025 downwritten, but they're both the best so it evens out.
So Maru dominance goes back to and including 2018, while serral dominance only goes back to and including 2020 and that is if you are charitable and say 2021 doesn't count because it's an "off year." So you could even argue Maru is more dominant in newer time, but he also has that 2nd place year in 2015, which would be the peak of the peak year, the year where it's most competitive while also high performance due to honing.
Bl/inf is brought up as the peak of imbalance, but it's only that because of the popularity of sc2 at that time, really 2018, 2019 was worse than that. In WoL the Infested didn't have rockets.. The patch by the end of 2017 was really awful bringing infested rocket launchers, doubling the damage of parasitic bomb and at the same time you go to a new system of Protoss surviving by shield batteries instead of Mothership Core, on the plus side they were given 100% Chrono Boost, but this was taken away as soon as Zest won that one HSC. This destroyed Protoss ability to win until battery overcharge was made up to give Protoss a chance.
The year 2019 is worse in terms of balance (using prize money) than both BL/Inf, Terran during the worst time in HotS when Maru was the 4th race and worse than GomTvT.
I'm wondering if Serral would edge out Neeb had the balance stayed the same considering his playstyle. In 2018 Serral wasn't the complete player, he was basically the Zerg version of Neeb and if he didn't automatically win the late game, I'm not sure this playstyle wins out, and with how close some of those late game Serral vs Maru matches have been, this goes for this matchup as well. If Maru knows that he wins late game, I'm not sure it would play out like it has. I will give that Serral has become much more complete now and doesn't necessarily have to win late game, but is Serral really the GOAT for you, if he only became the best by year 2022 and forward?, remember that he wasn't top 2 Zerg in 2019 and 2021, and in 2020 he was only 2nd, so his dominance would've only been 4 years and at a time where the decline in SC2 is real.
"You can directly compare Serral and Maru’s records, or how they ranked overall versus the field in any given year, rather than this awkward and extremely flawed method way of weighting them by how many years they were the top player of their race."
This.
I mean sure... we can try to counter Serral's claim with this extremely skewed idea that punishes a claim when there are other players from your own race but not others that outperform a player. But I think that this is more proof of a desperation to find any angle to attack Serral than anything else. Conveniently, ejozl's analysis misses out on Life, herO and arguably even Classic for 2015, when only looking at race instead of overall performance.
And which Zerg could possibly be above Serral in prize money or anything for that matter in 2023?
Not even talking about all the other years that can be argued about.
The many flaws of prize money as a metric and more importantly how extremely off the balance-multiplier is, have not been addressed either... but hey, at least we stay true to the quote:
"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything" - Ronald H. Coase.
But on a serious note: yeah, if you opened this thread to show that metrics and numbers need to be contextualized and can be misused either willingly or unwillingly all good. But it can't be taken seriously as a balance or GOAT indicator for all the things that were pointed out on the 10 pages of this thread.
WombaT wrote:Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from?
Probably because ejozl used prize money as a metric and didn't realize how it isn't a very good data set to check for balance or determine the GOAT.
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And which Zerg could possibly be above Serral in prize money or anything for that matter in 2023?
Not even talking about all the other years that can be argued about.
 Winnings/2023
Reynor was substantially ahead. But as I recall, 2023 had only one really big prize pool (Gamers8) and one fairly big (IEM Katowice). Since Serral underperformed in both, 2023 comes off as a bad year for him.
Serral being Serral, he still spent the entire year first or second on Aligulac. Usually first.
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On August 02 2025 18:15 Admiral Yang wrote:Show nested quote +
And which Zerg could possibly be above Serral in prize money or anything for that matter in 2023?
Not even talking about all the other years that can be argued about.
Winnings/2023Reynor was substantially ahead. But as I recall, 2023 had only one really big prize pool (Gamers8) and one fairly big (IEM Katowice). Since Serral underperformed in both, 2023 comes off as a bad year for him. Serral being Serral, he still spent the entire year first or second on Aligulac. Usually first.
That perfectly illustrates the inherent issue of prize money as a metric. Winning one event makes you come out on top of another player that had multiple better results than you.
ESL Masters Winter: Serral 3rd/4th, Reynor 17th-24th
ESL Masters Winter Europe: Serral 1st, Reynor 3rd
MC6: Serral 1st, Reynor 9th-12th
ESL Masters Summer: Serral 1st, Reynor 3rd-4th
ESL Masters Summer Europe: Serral 1st, Reynor 5th-8th
Kato: Both 5th to 8th
Gamers 8: Serral 5th-8th, Reynor 1st
Meaning Riyad is the only tournament where Reynor performed better than Serral.
Tournament win percentage of these events: Serral 57,14%, Reynor 14,29%.
Average place: Serral 2,93, Reynor 7,36
It's absurd to let 1 big prize pool decide the better player, as I said multiple times already.
But it doesn't stop here... going forward from this absurdity, it is rationalized that Serral wasn't the best Zerg player in 2023 (which he obviously was; he even had the best performance across all races), which of course shows that he can't be the GOAT if we repeat this perfectly sound process only often enough... I mean... really :D
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
I think one can make the argument Reynor had the greater year, in the way that winning a golf major or a tennis grand slam are the biggest prizes in not just money, but prestige, but he definitely had the worse season overall.
Let’s assume Serral is a golf or a tennis player and think of what that looks like over the span from 2018 outwards
1. He’d have been world number 1 for almost all of that period.
2. He’d have won the most regular tournaments going (or equal, can’t 100% remember.
3. He’d have many statistical records, and ‘best regular seasons’ ever recorded.
4. He’d also have had dominant years, or years he did win majors.
If a player had that profile, I think the discussion wouldn’t be about if they were the era’s best, it would shift into ‘they’re so good they should have won more slams/majors’ territory. Of course it’s a little different because those games have a century+ of history in terms of GOAT chat and legacy, but it’s something said about a Rory McIlroy (although he’s not quite a Serral)
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On August 02 2025 14:24 PremoBeats wrote:. Show nested quote +WombaT wrote:Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from?
Probably because ejozl used prize money as a metric and didn't realize how it isn't a very good data set to check for balance or determine the GOAT.
Taking prize money as single indicator to determine balance is just as senseless as taking winrate as single indicator
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On August 02 2025 21:20 WombaT wrote:
I think one can make the argument Reynor had the greater year, in the way that winning a golf major or a tennis grand slam are the biggest prizes in not just money, but prestige, but he definitely had the worse season overall.
Let’s assume Serral is a golf or a tennis player and think of what that looks like over the span from 2018 outwards
1. He’d have been world number 1 for almost all of that period.
2. He’d have won the most regular tournaments going (or equal, can’t 100% remember.
3. He’d have many statistical records, and ‘best regular seasons’ ever recorded.
4. He’d also have had dominant years, or years he did win majors.
If a player had that profile, I think the discussion wouldn’t be about if they were the era’s best, it would shift into ‘they’re so good they should have won more slams/majors’ territory. Of course it’s a little different because those games have a century+ of history in terms of GOAT chat and legacy, but it’s something said about a Rory McIlroy (although he’s not quite a Serral)
But G8 didn't have any legacy in SC2. Prize money was there.. prestige in the sense of legacy not so much, I'd say.
On August 02 2025 21:30 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 14:24 PremoBeats wrote:. WombaT wrote:Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from?
Probably because ejozl used prize money as a metric and didn't realize how it isn't a very good data set to check for balance or determine the GOAT. Taking prize money as single indicator to determine balance is just as senseless as taking winrate as single indicator
Not nearly as senseless as prize money, as my example from a couple of pages ago has shown.
But what exactly is wrong with taking map wins rates from around 1000k games/year from the top tournaments, on which the 3 races duked it out? And how would you make it better?
Or which better metric do you have at hand to scan for balance?
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On August 02 2025 06:33 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 05:23 ejozl wrote:
And this is really the crux of the issue, Serral has all of the accolades, there is not a lot more that he could do to prove that he's the best. The issue is era & balance.
Maru was the best terran in years: 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the 2nd best terran in years: 2015, 2020, 2024.
Serral was the best zerg in years: 2018, 2022, 2024, and the 2nd best zerg in years: 2020 and 2023.
I haven't 2025 downwritten, but they're both the best so it evens out.
So Maru dominance goes back to and including 2018, while serral dominance only goes back to and including 2020 and that is if you are charitable and say 2021 doesn't count because it's an "off year." So you could even argue Maru is more dominant in newer time, but he also has that 2nd place year in 2015, which would be the peak of the peak year, the year where it's most competitive while also high performance due to honing.
Bl/inf is brought up as the peak of imbalance, but it's only that because of the popularity of sc2 at that time, really 2018, 2019 was worse than that. In WoL the Infested didn't have rockets.. The patch by the end of 2017 was really awful bringing infested rocket launchers, doubling the damage of parasitic bomb and at the same time you go to a new system of Protoss surviving by shield batteries instead of Mothership Core, on the plus side they were given 100% Chrono Boost, but this was taken away as soon as Zest won that one HSC. This destroyed Protoss ability to win until battery overcharge was made up to give Protoss a chance.
The year 2019 is worse in terms of balance (using prize money) than both BL/Inf, Terran during the worst time in HotS when Maru was the 4th race and worse than GomTvT.
I'm wondering if Serral would edge out Neeb had the balance stayed the same considering his playstyle. In 2018 Serral wasn't the complete player, he was basically the Zerg version of Neeb and if he didn't automatically win the late game, I'm not sure this playstyle wins out, and with how close some of those late game Serral vs Maru matches have been, this goes for this matchup as well. If Maru knows that he wins late game, I'm not sure it would play out like it has. I will give that Serral has become much more complete now and doesn't necessarily have to win late game, but is Serral really the GOAT for you, if he only became the best by year 2022 and forward?, remember that he wasn't top 2 Zerg in 2019 and 2021, and in 2020 he was only 2nd, so his dominance would've only been 4 years and at a time where the decline in SC2 is real. Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from? You can directly compare Serral and Maru’s records, or how they ranked overall versus the field in any given year, rather than this awkward and extremely flawed method way of weighting them by how many years they were the top player of their race.
I was there to experience it, and though I was on the Serral bandwagon at the time I can now say in hindsight there was definitely an issue.
According to the prize money those years that I use for my balance mulitipliers. it's not that Toss was bad, it was worse for Terran, but Zerg had more winnings at this time than any other time.
---
I now took each pro's top 2 years and everything between according to my point system as their peak performance, using the top 30 GOATs here are the years of their peak performances:
+ Show Spoiler +
2010 +
2011 ++++++++
2012 +++++++++++
2013 +++++++++++
2014 +++++++++++++
2015 +++++++++
2016 +++++++++
2017 ++++++++++++
2018 ++++++++++++
2019 +++++++++++
2020 ++++++++
2021 +++++
2022 ++++
2023 ++++
2024 ++
Nestea was the sole GOAT in peak performance at 2010, and Clem/Serral were at peak performance during 2024.
2014 was the most competitive year in terms of number of GOATs being at the height of their game.
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On August 02 2025 22:10 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 06:33 WombaT wrote:On August 02 2025 05:23 ejozl wrote:
And this is really the crux of the issue, Serral has all of the accolades, there is not a lot more that he could do to prove that he's the best. The issue is era & balance.
Maru was the best terran in years: 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and the 2nd best terran in years: 2015, 2020, 2024.
Serral was the best zerg in years: 2018, 2022, 2024, and the 2nd best zerg in years: 2020 and 2023.
I haven't 2025 downwritten, but they're both the best so it evens out.
So Maru dominance goes back to and including 2018, while serral dominance only goes back to and including 2020 and that is if you are charitable and say 2021 doesn't count because it's an "off year." So you could even argue Maru is more dominant in newer time, but he also has that 2nd place year in 2015, which would be the peak of the peak year, the year where it's most competitive while also high performance due to honing.
Bl/inf is brought up as the peak of imbalance, but it's only that because of the popularity of sc2 at that time, really 2018, 2019 was worse than that. In WoL the Infested didn't have rockets.. The patch by the end of 2017 was really awful bringing infested rocket launchers, doubling the damage of parasitic bomb and at the same time you go to a new system of Protoss surviving by shield batteries instead of Mothership Core, on the plus side they were given 100% Chrono Boost, but this was taken away as soon as Zest won that one HSC. This destroyed Protoss ability to win until battery overcharge was made up to give Protoss a chance.
The year 2019 is worse in terms of balance (using prize money) than both BL/Inf, Terran during the worst time in HotS when Maru was the 4th race and worse than GomTvT.
I'm wondering if Serral would edge out Neeb had the balance stayed the same considering his playstyle. In 2018 Serral wasn't the complete player, he was basically the Zerg version of Neeb and if he didn't automatically win the late game, I'm not sure this playstyle wins out, and with how close some of those late game Serral vs Maru matches have been, this goes for this matchup as well. If Maru knows that he wins late game, I'm not sure it would play out like it has. I will give that Serral has become much more complete now and doesn't necessarily have to win late game, but is Serral really the GOAT for you, if he only became the best by year 2022 and forward?, remember that he wasn't top 2 Zerg in 2019 and 2021, and in 2020 he was only 2nd, so his dominance would've only been 4 years and at a time where the decline in SC2 is real. Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from? You can directly compare Serral and Maru’s records, or how they ranked overall versus the field in any given year, rather than this awkward and extremely flawed method way of weighting them by how many years they were the top player of their race. I was there to experience it, and though I was on the Serral bandwagon at the time I can now say in hindsight there was definitely an issue. According to the prize money those years that I use for my balance mulitipliers. it's not that Toss was bad, it was worse for Terran, but Zerg had more winnings at this time than any other time. --- I now took each pro's top 2 years and everything between according to my point system as their peak performance, using the top 30 GOATs here are the years of their peak performances: + Show Spoiler +
2010 +
2011 ++++++++
2012 +++++++++++
2013 +++++++++++
2014 +++++++++++++
2015 +++++++++
2016 +++++++++
2017 ++++++++++++
2018 ++++++++++++
2019 +++++++++++
2020 ++++++++
2021 +++++
2022 ++++
2023 ++++
2024 ++
Nestea was the sole GOAT in peak performance at 2010, and Clem/Serral were at peak performance during 2024. 2014 was the most competitive year in terms of number of GOATs being at the height of their game.
In all seriousness... do you think you established a good balance correction, despite this observation:
A simple comparison: For 2018 I arrive at a multiplier for Terran of 0,4832, yours should be at 0,2618 (949k/ 3.625k). As explained before: For our cohort of best players, this also includes completely skewed results form non S-tier tournaments and you already are off about 22 percentage points.
But not even that.. as explained above, the total amount spent was at a third of what it has been post 2019. If you didn't somehow correct for that fact, it is a big oversight in the methodology.
22% percentage points, not percent... this is completely ridiculous.
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
On August 02 2025 21:44 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 21:20 WombaT wrote:
I think one can make the argument Reynor had the greater year, in the way that winning a golf major or a tennis grand slam are the biggest prizes in not just money, but prestige, but he definitely had the worse season overall.
Let’s assume Serral is a golf or a tennis player and think of what that looks like over the span from 2018 outwards
1. He’d have been world number 1 for almost all of that period.
2. He’d have won the most regular tournaments going (or equal, can’t 100% remember.
3. He’d have many statistical records, and ‘best regular seasons’ ever recorded.
4. He’d also have had dominant years, or years he did win majors.
If a player had that profile, I think the discussion wouldn’t be about if they were the era’s best, it would shift into ‘they’re so good they should have won more slams/majors’ territory. Of course it’s a little different because those games have a century+ of history in terms of GOAT chat and legacy, but it’s something said about a Rory McIlroy (although he’s not quite a Serral) But G8 didn't have any legacy in SC2. Prize money was there.. prestige in the sense of legacy not so much, I'd say. Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 21:30 Charoisaur wrote:On August 02 2025 14:24 PremoBeats wrote:. WombaT wrote:Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from?
Probably because ejozl used prize money as a metric and didn't realize how it isn't a very good data set to check for balance or determine the GOAT. Taking prize money as single indicator to determine balance is just as senseless as taking winrate as single indicator What exactly is wrong with taking map wins rates from around 1000k games/year from the top tournaments, on which the 3 races duked it out? And how would you make it better? Or which better metric do you have at hand to scan for balance?
I think it has almost automatic prestige given how much the players themselves sought to peak for it, prize pool helps there, also the field was extremely strong. WESG had the former, but less of the latter. The Kr qualifier was harder than the tournament proper.
I don’t think there’s a single metric to assess competitive balance in and around the very top of the game, you likely have to chain a bunch together. I’ve mentioned fluctuations in performance of factional cohorts maybe being an avenue of investigation, Miz made some interesting ones on map picks, just to take two.
It a game has an imbalanced period, in theory it’ll elevate worse players up to a level they generally don’t compete at normally. So win rates are useful, but they’ll almost naturally stabilise to some degree if we’re talking minor imbalance versus the game being broken.
There’s also asymmetric imbalance. Which works in both directions. 1 facet is x thing becomes easier, so lesser players can benefit. WoL BL/Infestor is probably the most obvious one. Top players couldn’t be incredible at BL/Infestor versus lower players to the degree they could with something like ling/bling/muta. I’d argue that this epoch made it way easier for ‘lesser’ Zergs to beat good players, but the existing elite couldn’t make as much of the advantage.
Then at the other level of asymmetric imbalance you’ve things that are super strong in the hands of an elite god, but aren’t really a factor anywhere else. Both Maru with his ravens and Serral with his sharkfestor play, or Byun with his reapers. Even if only one player can reliably do it, and even Maru couldn’t quite replicate Byun’s reaper micro, if other elite players can’t really counter it is that balanced?
Not to further my general Serral love-in, he is also one of the handful of players to single-handedly get something patched. I’m probably missing someone but aside for the aforementioned I can only recall Mvp and snipe
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Northern Ireland25771 Posts
It’s also worth noting the numbers of S tier players is really quite small, it’s obviously going to skew things considerably.
Trap set the record for consecutive GSL Ro8s, made two finals and won a bunch of other tournaments. Then he has to fuck off for a bit. Zest would occasionally just show up with some new build and wreck people with it.
Protoss would have overall been in way better shape if Trap’s rich vein of form and herO’s great post-military comeback had overlapped for a while.
Classic has obviously been motivated to get back to top shape, what if Stats still had that fire?
Toss have been relying on 1 or 2 players who are legit S tier for like, at least 5 years now. Of course their chances are going to be worse.
Trap had been consistently excellent for ages, his most disappointing effort was his last Katowice, which sucked as both as a Trap and Toss fan because the realistic chance of Toss doing anything at that tournament is hugely reduced.
Zerg could lose two of the ‘big 4 early’ and still have a great shot, and they’d also have Solar as well who could make deep runs and win things
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I see people went down the route of asserting that BL/Infestor was fine because the winrate statistics looked okay.
A demoralising outcome, but entirely expected.
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On August 02 2025 22:20 WombaT wrote:
I don’t think there’s a single metric to assess competitive balance in and around the very top of the game, you likely have to chain a bunch together. I’ve mentioned fluctuations in performance of factional cohorts maybe being an avenue of investigation, Miz made some interesting ones on map picks, just to take two.
The question imo should be: Which metric or data point covers most of the aspects we need to evaluate considering balance, while at the same time having the least drawbacks and at best being very easy to gather.
Balance means that all three races have - in a perfect world - 50% win rates against each other, when players of equal skill level play against each other. Intuitively, win rates should have a pretty high priority, so I'll start from there.
What are the draw backs?
- Win rates can be different at different levels of play. Meaning win rates at silver or pro level are most of the distinguishable. Can we counter that issue for out GOAT discussion? Yep, as we can only look at top tournaments.
- Win rates can be influenced by very good players. Meaning if we have 10 Terran, 10 Zerg and 10 Protoss pros, but one is in skill a lot above the others, he would most likely tilt the win rate of that race above a fictional "perfect 50:50 rate".
Can we counter that? Hmm. One could look for certain win rates in the match ups and check for outliers like sOs, INnoVation, Maru or Serral. But if we have a big enough sample size to counter the effect of singular players, I don't think the time invested is used productively as the proximity to the perfect 50:50 is close enough.
I think map win rate analysis has these two drawbacks, of which one can be negated perfectly and the other one to good enough proximity.
Your analysis might compliment it, but there are several drawbacks that would need to be countered, so why go through the trouble?
We would need to assess player's peaks... look if these peaks are truly because of imbalance or simply because they practiced more or a mix of both. Plus, looking at only a couple of players would mean a smaller sample size, which means more room for relative errors.
I think looking at map statistics is fine. Map picks, like Miz suggested, are even part of my analysis too. Lost Expedition was part of the tournaments that I went through, so no issues there. That is already included.
On the overall idea that certain maps favored certain races: That might very well be true, the same as it is true that certain races have certain strengths or imbalanced advantages in different stages of the game. But if all of these small imbalances equal out in a big enough sample size of win rates, we should be fine to say that balance was fine, no?
The same is true for 55%+ win rates like we have it for Zerg in 2021. There, we probably can say with a certain amount of certainty, that Zerg was favorably imbalanced at pro level.
On August 03 2025 01:41 MJG wrote:I see people went down the route of asserting that BL/Infestor was fine because the winrate statistics looked okay. A demoralising outcome, but entirely expected.
I add some context that you might have missed: It was established that the other races probably had strengths to not let Zerg get to that part of the game. Imbalances cancel each other out like that... you know, like SC2 was supposed to be designed like from the beginning.
Or do you have another explanation why the map win rates look alright, despite the BL/Inf imbalance? That would be more helpful than cynical, unconstructive comments.
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On August 03 2025 01:41 MJG wrote:I see people went down the route of asserting that BL/Infestor was fine because the winrate statistics looked okay. A demoralising outcome, but entirely expected.
Game-design and balance are not the same thing. I think Medivacs are fucking stupid, doesn't make them imbalanced per se...
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France12903 Posts
On August 03 2025 02:13 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2025 01:41 MJG wrote:I see people went down the route of asserting that BL/Infestor was fine because the winrate statistics looked okay. A demoralising outcome, but entirely expected. Game-design and balance are not the same thing. I think Medivacs are fucking stupid, doesn't make them imbalanced per se...
BL/infestor was completely broken level of imbalance.
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On August 03 2025 02:33 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2025 02:13 Balnazza wrote:On August 03 2025 01:41 MJG wrote:I see people went down the route of asserting that BL/Infestor was fine because the winrate statistics looked okay. A demoralising outcome, but entirely expected. Game-design and balance are not the same thing. I think Medivacs are fucking stupid, doesn't make them imbalanced per se... BL/infestor was completely broken level of imbalance.
Yet, the other races probably had ways to counter it to arrive at approximately 50/50 win rates... Gosh, this is so frustrating.
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France12903 Posts
On August 03 2025 02:35 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2025 02:33 Poopi wrote:On August 03 2025 02:13 Balnazza wrote:On August 03 2025 01:41 MJG wrote:I see people went down the route of asserting that BL/Infestor was fine because the winrate statistics looked okay. A demoralising outcome, but entirely expected. Game-design and balance are not the same thing. I think Medivacs are fucking stupid, doesn't make them imbalanced per se... BL/infestor was completely broken level of imbalance. Yet, the other races probably had ways to counter it to arrive at approximately 50/50 win rates... Gosh, this is so frustrating.
Not really, we just had to wait for HotS to patch the game out. Blizzard was relatively active back then
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On August 02 2025 21:44 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 21:20 WombaT wrote:
I think one can make the argument Reynor had the greater year, in the way that winning a golf major or a tennis grand slam are the biggest prizes in not just money, but prestige, but he definitely had the worse season overall.
Let’s assume Serral is a golf or a tennis player and think of what that looks like over the span from 2018 outwards
1. He’d have been world number 1 for almost all of that period.
2. He’d have won the most regular tournaments going (or equal, can’t 100% remember.
3. He’d have many statistical records, and ‘best regular seasons’ ever recorded.
4. He’d also have had dominant years, or years he did win majors.
If a player had that profile, I think the discussion wouldn’t be about if they were the era’s best, it would shift into ‘they’re so good they should have won more slams/majors’ territory. Of course it’s a little different because those games have a century+ of history in terms of GOAT chat and legacy, but it’s something said about a Rory McIlroy (although he’s not quite a Serral) But G8 didn't have any legacy in SC2. Prize money was there.. prestige in the sense of legacy not so much, I'd say. Show nested quote +On August 02 2025 21:30 Charoisaur wrote:On August 02 2025 14:24 PremoBeats wrote:. WombaT wrote:Where are you getting the idea that Protoss was particularly bad in 2018 from?
Probably because ejozl used prize money as a metric and didn't realize how it isn't a very good data set to check for balance or determine the GOAT. Taking prize money as single indicator to determine balance is just as senseless as taking winrate as single indicator Not nearly as senseless as prize money, as my example from a couple of pages ago has shown. But what exactly is wrong with taking map wins rates from around 1000k games/year from the top tournaments, on which the 3 races duked it out? And how would you make it better? Or which better metric do you have at hand to scan for balance?
WombaT already explained a few of the reasons why pure winrate isn't a good metric.
To the question what would be a good metric... well I don't think there is any one that the community would agree on, that's why we always have those heated debates.
Some people look at tournaments won, some at ro32 representation, some at GM representation, some at winrate, some at prize money... usually aligning with what would make their race look underpowered and the others overpowered.
Personally, I think the best we have is representation at later rounds of tournaments. It's not perfect either because it's possible the players of one race are just better than of the other races, but with multiple players that start overperforming after a certain patch, I think it becomes rather unlikely that it's only because of skill.
Additionally, that measure only considers the very highest level of skill, which means the practical human ceiling for each race. I really don't think a match between Mixu and JuggernautJason is relevant for the question whether Serral or Maru have an easier time winning tournaments.
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