The Greatest Players of All Time

One Year Update

By: Mizenhauer

It's been just over a year since the first article in my Greatest Players of All Time series was published, and since then I've had a lot of time to review my rankings as I absorbed new results.

2024 was a peculiar year in that it suffered from a long EPT/GSL hiatus since August, but also featured the most richly prized StarCraft II tournament ever in the Esports World Cup. That tournament really shook up the scene, giving us a new best player in the world while also impacting the legacies for a handful of all-time greats.

I don't intend to make the readers go through tens of thousands of words again, I'll keep this one short. Here are my brief reflections on 2024, and how the year affected my Greatest of All Time rankings.

Players with top-ten potential that couldn't improve their standing.

herO

Ranking change: #15 -> #15

Headed into 2024, herO's strong post-military career had already earned him a place in my top 15, giving him a chance to crack the top ten in the future if a few things broke his way. Unfortunately, 2024 was a bit of a lost opportunity for herO.

His results were very good, with the highlights being a Code S runner-up, a top four finish at the Esports World Cup, and a brace of runner-up finishes at Master's Coliseum 7 and StarsWar 11. He was easily the best Protoss player, and I had him as the fifth best player of the year behind Serral, Maru, Dark, and Clem. However, the fifth best results and no championship don't really move the needle when it comes to this range of the GOAT rankings, so herO remains on the outside looking in.

Reynor

Ranking change: #14 -> #14

In early 2024, I wrote that Reynor had the most potential for upward mobility among the players ranked 11-15. However, he had a subpar year in which he failed to reach the finals of a Liquipedia-premier event, let alone win one.

Still, Reynor showed his class a mere 18 months ago when he won his second World Championship caliber tournament at Gamers8 (it was his fourth WC finals overall). With that in mind, if there are more opportunities in the future, it wouldn’t be that surprising to see Reynor get his mojo back and win the tournament(s) needed to break into the top ten.

A Top Ten Trajectory, But is it Too Late?

Clem

Ranking change: Outside the top 30 -> Somewhere in the 20's

It’s now time to wax poetic about Clem. The French Terran has always shown tremendous potential, but it's been realized to a degree I never expected. I’m now of the opinion that he set a new peak for StarCraft II gameplay this past summer. It wasn’t just the fact that he won the Esports World Cup, it’s the manner in which he did it. Clem somehow made a pair of series victories against Serral (3-0 and 5-0) look like a walk in the park. In fact, the ease with which he toppled titans like Serral is very reminiscent of Serral’s own play during the second half of 2018, when he took down Dark, Rogue, and Stats consecutively at the WCS Global Finals.

The main difference is that while Serral built his legacy on staunch early defense that turned to later offense, Clem took the reins from the start. Clem’s harassment and attacks let him enter the mid-game way ahead of his opponents, not even allowing them a brief delusion of competitiveness. We've seen the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach from other great Terrans in the past, but Clem's unparalleled speed combined with near-perfect decision-making took it to another level entirely. He accrued incremental advantages that rapidly snowballed into an inevitable victory. Throw in his impeccable combat micro, and he shut out even the possibility of a miracle comeback through one great fight from his opponent.

With a single world championship in hand, I now place Clem somewhere in the top 20 with players like ByuN and PartinG who have a single super-major tournament win as the cornerstone of their resume. Alas, I fear the supremely skilled Terran may end up resembling fellow one-time WC champ ByuN in another way, unable to add more meaningful results to his resume. While ByuN never reached his peak level of play again, Clem may simply not be given enough opportunities to compete in another world championship class tournament.

I haven't worked out the exact placements for the players in this range, but I'm inclined to place Clem ahead of similar peers in ByuN and PartinG. The apples-to-oranges comparison with players such as Cure, Trap, or Solar is more complicated. There's a sizable group of players who don't have world championship titles, but when it comes to other tournaments, they've all had more aggregate success than Clem throughout their long careers. Perhaps sorting out this cluster of players is a project for another day.

The Dark Before After the Rain

Dark

Ranking change: #11 -> #7

Yes, it's finally happening. The second biggest controversy of my original GOAT ranking is being resolved as Dark is moving into the top ten.

In 2024, Dark gave us an impressive reminder of his lasting power as a top-tier player by winning Code S Season 2 and reaching the round-of-four or better in four out of the five Liquipedia-premier events he participated in.

Despite being the consensus underdog against Maru in the Code S finals, Dark's signature Roach timings completely disoriented Maru and let him pull off an upset victory. Given Dark's history in major tournament finals, it wasn't even surprising anymore to see him force another opponent to fall for such 'obvious' tactics. With the Code S win, Dark got his single biggest GOAT list boost since he won DH Valencia in 2022, bringing him to four Korean Individual League titles (1 SSL Premier + 3 Code S), one World Championship (BlizzCon), and a slew of lesser titles and high finishes on top of that.

Even though he still lacks the kind of superlative 3-5 year peak of other players in the top ten, the strength of his cumulative career achievements allow him to pass soO and reach #7 on the GOAT list.

You could argue that Dark was unfortunate not to pad his resume even further in 2024, as his RO4 eliminations at EWC and IEM Katowice both came at the hands of Serral. Two more WC runner-ups may even have seen him contest Zest for the #6 spot.

The Elefantti in the Room

Maru

Ranking change: #1 -> #2

Maru, who you may have heard took #1 in my original GOAT list, had an extremely “Maru” year in 2024. That means he was spectacular: he reached the finals of five LP-premier events, including a championship run in Season 1 of Code S.

However, when it came to his so-called rivalry against Serral, Maru also performed to up expectations. The Korean Terran dropped a pair of finals to Serral (IEM Katowice and ESL Masters Spring), failing to win a game in either BO7 series.

While I don't compare head-to-head score when deciding the rankings of two players close to each other, these losses did have the result of boosting Serral's resume even further at the expense of Maru. As the gap between Maru and Serral was already paper thin to begin with, even a handful of extra tournaments where Serral outperformed Maru were going to make an impact.

After reviewing my original GOAT rankings and my methodology throughout 2024, I finally feel comfortable moving Maru to the number two spot and placing Serral as the greatest player of all time.

Serral

Ranking change: #2 -> #1

It’s time to discuss my new GOAT.

Over the past few years, Serral has come as close to perfect as anyone in StarCraft II history. That trend continued in 2024, as the Finnish Phenom won IEM Katowice, placed runner-up at the Esports World Cup, and added an EPT Seasonal championship at Dreamhack Dallas. Of course, he did all this while posting the absurd win rates we have come to expect from him, going 25-4 in offline matches (86.21% win-rate) and 68-20 in games (77.27%) during the calendar year. Era to era win-rate comparisons are tricky given the differences in player pool, but basically only previous versions of Serral and the absolute best versions of Maru can match those numbers historically.

Although Maru remains the greatest Korean player, Serral's sustained excellence since 2018—capped by a particularly dominant 2024—has pushed him over the top in my overall rankings.

What's mind-blowing is that Serral added these accomplishments while performing his mandatory military service. While he doesn't get any bonus 'GOAT points' for winning under adverse circumstances, this deserves a mention on its own merits. No, Finnish military service is not the career ender that Korean military often is, but it's still crazy that Serral maintained his level of play despite being essentially a part-time player. After showing that kind of resilience, you have to think that he'd find a way to up his game, and give Clem a real challenge should they face off in a future WC event.

With both Clem and Serral having reached such heights in 2024, they deserve another clash at the top of the scene in 2025.

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