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On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there.
Yeah as a Maru fan I sadly have to agree that mentality, build order planning and clutchness are definitely not his strong suits - compared to Serral who doesn't really seem to have any weaknesses.
Still a huge testament to his pure skill that he has won as much as he has despite his shortcomings
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On January 22 2025 14:35 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 13:52 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Any list without TaeJa is bunk. So don't waste time on this. He said, wasting time on this. But in all honesty: These kind of comments always remind me of a meme-list I once saw. It was about "ten mild inconveniences that are the worst", with No. 10 being "your mild inconvenience that is the worst not being on this list, making this list a mild inconvenience that is just the worst"
On January 22 2025 15:56 onPHYRE wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 14:35 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 13:52 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Any list without TaeJa is bunk. So don't waste time on this. He said, wasting time on this. But in all honesty: These kind of comments always remind me of a meme-list I once saw. It was about "ten mild inconveniences that are the worst", with No. 10 being "your mild inconvenience that is the worst not being on this list, making this list a mild inconvenience that is just the worst" TaeJa is nowhere near the GOAT discussion. You can debate if he is #9/10 or whatever.. but to invalidate a list just because you like someone that peaked for barely 2 years.. to each their own I guess.
Oh I don't care about it at all. TL doesn't have a sarcasm font (guess I could quoted italics?) but that was sarcasm.
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If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race.
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France12888 Posts
On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race.
Kinda true but balance wasn't taken into account in this goat list, so it's fair to have the zergs ranked as high.
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On January 23 2025 02:36 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. Kinda true but balance wasn't taken into account in this goat list, so it's fair to have the zergs ranked as high.
Did the writer mention somewhere that the balance wasn't taken into account? If so then I guess it does "make sense"
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On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race.
Being consistent, but never pushing through internationally. Trying, but failing.
On January 23 2025 02:36 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. Kinda true but balance wasn't taken into account in this goat list, so it's fair to have the zergs ranked as high.
Lambo's new video dropped perfectly for this comment, I guess 
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On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race.
This guy's logic: "Oh Maru kept getting crushed by Serral since 2018? I'd just imagine Maru beat him every time in 2010-2017. oh I feel so much better as a Maru fan now. "
It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I can do that too:
"if Serral was born earlier and got out of school sooner to play Maru in 2010-2017 he would beat Maru every single time and ended up having a longer and more successful career than Maru, because Serral doesn't shrink in international offline tournaments."
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France12888 Posts
On January 23 2025 03:12 dedede wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 02:36 Poopi wrote:On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. Kinda true but balance wasn't taken into account in this goat list, so it's fair to have the zergs ranked as high. Did the writer mention somewhere that the balance wasn't taken into account? If so then I guess it does "make sense"
I am not sure if he wrote it directly in the articles, but he mentioned it in comments afterwards for sure.
It is a reasonable take even taking balance into account though, Serral is a monster in his own right.
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On January 22 2025 10:26 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 08:49 rwala wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I'm curious if you would feel this way if you felt Maru was underperforming due to either being injured or past his prime (no pun intended)...or both. I feel a bit about this like I feel about watching Kobe compete against MJ or Djokovic compete against Federer in the later years. Interesting but in the end not very illustrative. 37 year old Djokovic beat Carlos Alcaraz in the Australian open like yesterday to make the Ro4. I’m a giant Federer fanboy but I have to concede Djokovic is the GOAT, the ultimate competitor. Got battered in the Wimbledon final but won the Olympics against the same opponent. Transplant that to SC2 and it’s basically the same. Perhaps Maru can’t do it every time, but do it sometime you know? Djokovic isn’t dominating the ATP tour anymore, but he’s still got a Grand Slam run in him. If injuries were the issue, and I know they are an issue fair enough but it doesn’t really fit Maru’s performance profile for the last few years. He’s still putting in basically incredible results against everyone not called Serral. They’re a factor, but IMO they’re not the issue really, least there. Mvp dropped off from jetting all over the place and winning, to those results dropping off and him having a GSL run playing a totally different style. Taeja’s results just declined and declined.
Oh I definitely agree Djokovic is the GOAT but it’s because his results are more impressive not because he dominated Federer in heads up matches when the latter was starting to decline. A lot of people point to that but it’s just the same narrow thinking you’re seeing here. And certainly if and when other ascendant talent start smacking him around it will not impact my view of his GOATness anymore than MJ’s excellent but not very GOATy final years with the Wizards did.
In my view there’s no question that Maru is past his prime due to injuries, slowing down, or both, but like Mvp he’s that good that he can still win tourneys. This isn’t my personal opinion. It’s something Crank and others have talked about. But definitely reflects my view of his play having watched him for a long time. Serral to me feels to be still in his prime and Clem is maybe just now starting to step into his prime, which is sad because Clem reminds me of like 2016 Byun it would be awesome to see what he could do in big time competition.
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
On January 22 2025 23:29 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there. Yeah as a Maru fan I sadly have to agree that mentality, build order planning and clutchness are definitely not his strong suits - compared to Serral who doesn't really seem to have any weaknesses. Still a huge testament to his pure skill that he has won as much as he has despite his shortcomings
Perhaps better for the game overall, a Maru without those flaws probably has periods of dominance so pronounced it makes things boring
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On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. This guy's logic: "Oh Maru kept getting crushed by Serral since 2018? I'd just imagine Maru beat him every time in 2010-2017. oh I feel so much better as a Maru fan now. " It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I can do that too: "if Serral was born earlier and got out of school sooner to play Maru in 2010-2017 he would beat Maru every single time and ended up having a longer and more successful career than Maru, because Serral doesn't shrink in international offline tournaments."
+1
These hypotheticals are so tiring.
We simply know Maru wasn't the GOAT pre-2018. And in 2018 came the emergence of the most dominant player StarCraft 2 has ever seen.
Don't get me wrong: Seeing the little kid who at the time was the youngest player to ever win a Premier Tournament in 2013 grow into the monster he became in 2018 and stay at the top so long is incredible... but Serral simply came, saw and conquered after finishing school in an unprecedented manner no one ever thought possible.
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On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. This guy's logic: "Oh Maru kept getting crushed by Serral since 2018? I'd just imagine Maru beat him every time in 2010-2017. oh I feel so much better as a Maru fan now. " It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I can do that too: "if Serral was born earlier and got out of school sooner to play Maru in 2010-2017 he would beat Maru every single time and ended up having a longer and more successful career than Maru, because Serral doesn't shrink in international offline tournaments."
I can do it too - Serral has a negative record against Jaedong?
Yeah but if Jaedong sticked with sc2 Serral surely would've beaten him over and over. It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up.
I don't think the "what if Maru and Serral frequently played each other before 2018" hypothetical is stupid at all, it shows the problem with using all time H2H records as a metric. H2H between players who peaked at different times just doesn't mean anything, and then it just comes down to luck who happened to be closer to their peak when they played
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On January 23 2025 06:37 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. This guy's logic: "Oh Maru kept getting crushed by Serral since 2018? I'd just imagine Maru beat him every time in 2010-2017. oh I feel so much better as a Maru fan now. " It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I can do that too: "if Serral was born earlier and got out of school sooner to play Maru in 2010-2017 he would beat Maru every single time and ended up having a longer and more successful career than Maru, because Serral doesn't shrink in international offline tournaments." +1 These hypotheticals are so tiring. We simply know Maru wasn't the GOAT pre-2018. And in 2018 came the emergence of the most dominant player StarCraft 2 has ever seen. Don't get me wrong: Seeing the little kid who at the time was the youngest player to ever win a Premier Tournament in 2013 grow into the monster he became in 2018 and stay at the top so long is incredible... but Serral simply came, saw and conquered after finishing school in an unprecedented manner no one ever thought possible.
I didn't think doing what Mvp did was possible but Serral's record in tournaments that were probably 10X easier to win in a scene about 1/10th the size is also incredibly impressive. I know it sounds like I'm trolling, but the early days of this e-sport were just so insanely competitive that I genuinely mean it when I say Serral is balling real hard even in a scene that's a shadow of what it was.
Sometimes I think people don't realize that you had to qualify for a tournament that you had to win to then get into a tournament that you had to win to then qualify for a tournament that featured two or three group stages and a bracket composed of the 64 best players in the world out of a pool of 1,000+ gamers that were playing this game pretty much 24/7. It's true that it relatively quickly winnowed down to the few hundred that were serious and good enough to compete professionally but being at the top of a game with 500+ active pros is a different thing than being at the top of a game with 50+ active pros.
Anyways, we've had these convos before. I know some people in this forum think Proleague didn't matter and that Blizzcon was the most competitive tournament. Just gonna have to agree to disagree!
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On January 23 2025 08:45 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 06:37 PremoBeats wrote:On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. This guy's logic: "Oh Maru kept getting crushed by Serral since 2018? I'd just imagine Maru beat him every time in 2010-2017. oh I feel so much better as a Maru fan now. " It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I can do that too: "if Serral was born earlier and got out of school sooner to play Maru in 2010-2017 he would beat Maru every single time and ended up having a longer and more successful career than Maru, because Serral doesn't shrink in international offline tournaments." +1 These hypotheticals are so tiring. We simply know Maru wasn't the GOAT pre-2018. And in 2018 came the emergence of the most dominant player StarCraft 2 has ever seen. Don't get me wrong: Seeing the little kid who at the time was the youngest player to ever win a Premier Tournament in 2013 grow into the monster he became in 2018 and stay at the top so long is incredible... but Serral simply came, saw and conquered after finishing school in an unprecedented manner no one ever thought possible. I didn't think doing what Mvp did was possible but Serral's record in tournaments that were probably 10X easier to win in a scene about 1/10th the size is also incredibly impressive. I know it sounds like I'm trolling, but the early days of this e-sport were just so insanely competitive that I genuinely mean it when I say Serral is balling real hard even in a scene that's a shadow of what it was. Sometimes I think people don't realize that you had to qualify for a tournament that you had to win to then get into a tournament that you had to win to then qualify for a tournament that featured two or three group stages and a bracket composed of the 64 best players in the world out of a pool of 1,000+ gamers that were playing this game pretty much 24/7. It's true that it relatively quickly winnowed down to the few hundred that were serious and good enough to compete professionally but being at the top of a game with 500+ active pros is a different thing than being at the top of a game with 50+ active pros. Anyways, we've had these convos before. I know some people in this forum think Proleague didn't matter and that Blizzcon was the most competitive tournament. Just gonna have to agree to disagree!
Any GOAT-debate aside: I think it is really cool to remember the roots of our scene and hobby. How insanely stupid these kind of things used to be. Like ESWC back in the day. Tournament for like 100 players, playing through multiple Bo1 Group Stages to end in a Bo3 Bracket Stage that awarded prizemoney to like the Top 3 players equivalent of what you get today for barely showing up at a Masters event.
Not even mentioning that you most likely never actually got that prizemoney or received it with a two-year delay...
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On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Maru’s claim is also hugely predicated on his longevity and what he’s accumulated from it. Which yeah 100% you have to give credit for. But what if Inno didn’t lose motivation, or what if other of Maru’s peers didn’t have to go to military? I’m not judging him on the head to head itself as I think I said, but if not I’ll make it more clear. It’s that it exposes the weaknesses he has that have seen him unable to take a WC. Oliveira was a crazy run, and an underdog and Maru was nigh-on impregnable in TvT at the time. He’s had Reynor on the ropes and thrown it away. In GSL we’ve seen Rogue a fair while ago, or Dark more recently come up with game plans to snipe a Maru who’s been consistently better than them at those times. Players have upset the odds, came up with gameplans to counter Maru in the last few years. But Maru has singularly failed to do so on the rare case where he’s the underdog versus Serral. It’s not about that head to head really to me, it’s that it showcases his inability to replicate the kind of snipes he sometimes suffers from, against someone else. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there.
Maru longevity is overrated. Prior to his success in 2018 his accomplishment was nothing worthy. I know his fans like to claim he won SSL and that the field was super competitive. But if we take a closer look his run. His opponents were not impressive
You can even make a strong claim that the only reason Maru had success after 2018 was because the Korean pros were getting old / out of their prime or going to military.
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On January 23 2025 10:03 Blitzball04 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Maru’s claim is also hugely predicated on his longevity and what he’s accumulated from it. Which yeah 100% you have to give credit for. But what if Inno didn’t lose motivation, or what if other of Maru’s peers didn’t have to go to military? I’m not judging him on the head to head itself as I think I said, but if not I’ll make it more clear. It’s that it exposes the weaknesses he has that have seen him unable to take a WC. Oliveira was a crazy run, and an underdog and Maru was nigh-on impregnable in TvT at the time. He’s had Reynor on the ropes and thrown it away. In GSL we’ve seen Rogue a fair while ago, or Dark more recently come up with game plans to snipe a Maru who’s been consistently better than them at those times. Players have upset the odds, came up with gameplans to counter Maru in the last few years. But Maru has singularly failed to do so on the rare case where he’s the underdog versus Serral. It’s not about that head to head really to me, it’s that it showcases his inability to replicate the kind of snipes he sometimes suffers from, against someone else. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there. Maru longevity is overrated. Prior to his success in 2018 his accomplishment was nothing worthy. I know his fans like to claim he won SSL and that the field was super competitive. But if we take a closer look his run. His opponents were not impressive You can even make a strong claim that the only reason Maru had success after 2018 was because the Korean pros were getting old / out of their prime or going to military.
Ah yes his opponents were not impressive. Group Maru, Dream, Dark and TY. Playoffs leenock, stats and dream. Seems like a decent enough run there I would say
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On January 23 2025 10:03 Blitzball04 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Maru’s claim is also hugely predicated on his longevity and what he’s accumulated from it. Which yeah 100% you have to give credit for. But what if Inno didn’t lose motivation, or what if other of Maru’s peers didn’t have to go to military? I’m not judging him on the head to head itself as I think I said, but if not I’ll make it more clear. It’s that it exposes the weaknesses he has that have seen him unable to take a WC. Oliveira was a crazy run, and an underdog and Maru was nigh-on impregnable in TvT at the time. He’s had Reynor on the ropes and thrown it away. In GSL we’ve seen Rogue a fair while ago, or Dark more recently come up with game plans to snipe a Maru who’s been consistently better than them at those times. Players have upset the odds, came up with gameplans to counter Maru in the last few years. But Maru has singularly failed to do so on the rare case where he’s the underdog versus Serral. It’s not about that head to head really to me, it’s that it showcases his inability to replicate the kind of snipes he sometimes suffers from, against someone else. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there. Maru longevity is overrated. Prior to his success in 2018 his accomplishment was nothing worthy. I know his fans like to claim he won SSL and that the field was super competitive. But if we take a closer look his run. His opponents were not impressive You can even make a strong claim that the only reason Maru had success after 2018 was because the Korean pros were getting old / out of their prime or going to military.
It's the Schrödinger's GOAT -- results achieved after 2018 don't matter because the scene became weaker, yet simultaneously are sufficient to make one the GOAT.
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On January 23 2025 10:03 Blitzball04 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Maru’s claim is also hugely predicated on his longevity and what he’s accumulated from it. Which yeah 100% you have to give credit for. But what if Inno didn’t lose motivation, or what if other of Maru’s peers didn’t have to go to military? I’m not judging him on the head to head itself as I think I said, but if not I’ll make it more clear. It’s that it exposes the weaknesses he has that have seen him unable to take a WC. Oliveira was a crazy run, and an underdog and Maru was nigh-on impregnable in TvT at the time. He’s had Reynor on the ropes and thrown it away. In GSL we’ve seen Rogue a fair while ago, or Dark more recently come up with game plans to snipe a Maru who’s been consistently better than them at those times. Players have upset the odds, came up with gameplans to counter Maru in the last few years. But Maru has singularly failed to do so on the rare case where he’s the underdog versus Serral. It’s not about that head to head really to me, it’s that it showcases his inability to replicate the kind of snipes he sometimes suffers from, against someone else. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there. Maru longevity is overrated. Prior to his success in 2018 his accomplishment was nothing worthy. I know his fans like to claim he won SSL and that the field was super competitive. But if we take a closer look his run. His opponents were not impressive You can even make a strong claim that the only reason Maru had success after 2018 was because the Korean pros were getting old / out of their prime or going to military.
Yeah that time he 4-0'd the best Terran in the world and then beat the best Protoss in the world to royal road the most competitive tournament in the world at the age of like 13 was definitely not impressive. This comment was great bait though!
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On January 23 2025 10:41 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 10:03 Blitzball04 wrote:On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Maru’s claim is also hugely predicated on his longevity and what he’s accumulated from it. Which yeah 100% you have to give credit for. But what if Inno didn’t lose motivation, or what if other of Maru’s peers didn’t have to go to military? I’m not judging him on the head to head itself as I think I said, but if not I’ll make it more clear. It’s that it exposes the weaknesses he has that have seen him unable to take a WC. Oliveira was a crazy run, and an underdog and Maru was nigh-on impregnable in TvT at the time. He’s had Reynor on the ropes and thrown it away. In GSL we’ve seen Rogue a fair while ago, or Dark more recently come up with game plans to snipe a Maru who’s been consistently better than them at those times. Players have upset the odds, came up with gameplans to counter Maru in the last few years. But Maru has singularly failed to do so on the rare case where he’s the underdog versus Serral. It’s not about that head to head really to me, it’s that it showcases his inability to replicate the kind of snipes he sometimes suffers from, against someone else. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there. Maru longevity is overrated. Prior to his success in 2018 his accomplishment was nothing worthy. I know his fans like to claim he won SSL and that the field was super competitive. But if we take a closer look his run. His opponents were not impressive You can even make a strong claim that the only reason Maru had success after 2018 was because the Korean pros were getting old / out of their prime or going to military. It's the Schrödinger's GOAT -- results achieved after 2018 don't matter because the scene became weaker, yet simultaneously are sufficient to make one the GOAT.
Right?!?! Truly impressive mental gymnastics.
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On January 23 2025 08:31 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. This guy's logic: "Oh Maru kept getting crushed by Serral since 2018? I'd just imagine Maru beat him every time in 2010-2017. oh I feel so much better as a Maru fan now. " It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I can do that too: "if Serral was born earlier and got out of school sooner to play Maru in 2010-2017 he would beat Maru every single time and ended up having a longer and more successful career than Maru, because Serral doesn't shrink in international offline tournaments." I can do it too - Serral has a negative record against Jaedong? Yeah but if Jaedong sticked with sc2 Serral surely would've beaten him over and over. It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I don't think the "what if Maru and Serral frequently played each other before 2018" hypothetical is stupid at all, it shows the problem with using all time H2H records as a metric. H2H between players who peaked at different times just doesn't mean anything, and then it just comes down to luck who happened to be closer to their peak when they played
But are there truly serious users who have a somewhat deep understanding of SC2 and argue around a H2H in the GOAT debate when it comes to Maru versus Serral? Not die hard fanboys, but people who try to look at this discussion as unbiased as possible (which still leaves a lot of bias)? I don't think so to be honest...
In H2H the only thing I think is worthy of being mentioned is the fact that Serral doesn't have a negative win rate against anyone he played regularly as that is a testament to his dominance. Everyone else has 1 or 2 players that got the better of them at one period or another, mostly due to what you mentioned: Different peak timings. But I think the only one who seems to be able to par his record with Serral seems to be Clem, as they stand at 31:20 at the moment with hopefully more games to come.
On January 23 2025 08:45 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 06:37 PremoBeats wrote:On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
If Serral was even good enough to play maru in 2010 - 2017 Maru would beat him every single time; Meanwhile if maru was bad enough to not be able to play in finals in 2024 he won't have losing records to serral. Being a consistently top-tier player hurts Maru's resume? If we talk about greatest of ALL TIME it's Maru. Let alone how Maru saved terran race multiple times as the last terran and the 4th race. This guy's logic: "Oh Maru kept getting crushed by Serral since 2018? I'd just imagine Maru beat him every time in 2010-2017. oh I feel so much better as a Maru fan now. " It's so easy to win in the imaginary scenarios with no evidence backing it up. I can do that too: "if Serral was born earlier and got out of school sooner to play Maru in 2010-2017 he would beat Maru every single time and ended up having a longer and more successful career than Maru, because Serral doesn't shrink in international offline tournaments." +1 These hypotheticals are so tiring. We simply know Maru wasn't the GOAT pre-2018. And in 2018 came the emergence of the most dominant player StarCraft 2 has ever seen. Don't get me wrong: Seeing the little kid who at the time was the youngest player to ever win a Premier Tournament in 2013 grow into the monster he became in 2018 and stay at the top so long is incredible... but Serral simply came, saw and conquered after finishing school in an unprecedented manner no one ever thought possible. I didn't think doing what Mvp did was possible but Serral's record in tournaments that were probably 10X easier to win in a scene about 1/10th the size is also incredibly impressive. I know it sounds like I'm trolling, but the early days of this e-sport were just so insanely competitive that I genuinely mean it when I say Serral is balling real hard even in a scene that's a shadow of what it was. Sometimes I think people don't realize that you had to qualify for a tournament that you had to win to then get into a tournament that you had to win to then qualify for a tournament that featured two or three group stages and a bracket composed of the 64 best players in the world out of a pool of 1,000+ gamers that were playing this game pretty much 24/7. It's true that it relatively quickly winnowed down to the few hundred that were serious and good enough to compete professionally but being at the top of a game with 500+ active pros is a different thing than being at the top of a game with 50+ active pros. Anyways, we've had these convos before. I know some people in this forum think Proleague didn't matter and that Blizzcon was the most competitive tournament. Just gonna have to agree to disagree!
True about Mvp.
I agree that the prime era of 2013-2015 was much, much harder, but having compiled and looked at various data sets, I still think that the metric I used in my article (double the amount in points) was slightly too big of a multiplier for this era.
With pretty high probability, the better player won. Yes, there were upsets, but they were upsets, because they made for a surprise. Data showed that there were 1 or 2 players you didn't think could do it, would end up having a deep run, or 1 occasional favorite would drop to Code A, but overall it actually was pretty reasonable in terms of predictability and average ranks in the Ro16 and Ro8.
Plus, you had much more tournaments. Some of them colliding with dates or packed so closely that people couldn't attend both because of time zones or qualifiers. This means that your chances compared to now were worse because of more players, but better because of more tournaments that spread this bigger player base (yes, I know not in a 1:1 ratio, but remember that usually the best players advanced).
I took your critique about Proleague to heart and included it in my update. I also never thought it didn't matter, I simply found it hard to factor it in because of the points I mentioned. But I figured out a way to circumvent the influence of other players, players being carried by their team or not participating much in the season to account for that.
On January 23 2025 10:41 Salazarz wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2025 10:03 Blitzball04 wrote:On January 22 2025 10:14 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 09:02 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 08:23 WombaT wrote:On January 22 2025 05:40 Charoisaur wrote:On January 22 2025 04:25 Balnazza wrote:On January 22 2025 04:18 Telephone wrote:
But how can he be the GOAT if he gets stomped in the finals of the biggest tournament of the season by someone not even on the GOAT list? How can Maru be the GOAT if he constantly gets stomped by someone who got stomped in one tournament by someone who is not even on the GOAT list? I mean... that's the point of his comment as I understood it. The argument that Maru can't be the Goat because he loses vs Serral is as reasonable as the argument Serral can't be the Goat because he lost 5-0 to Clem. I’m not a big fan of head-to-heads, generally it’s how you do versus the overall field that’s more important by far. But I think it can become meaningful, even if it’s a tie-breaker. Player A with very similar achievements to B otherwise wins off H2H as a tiebreaker. I don’t think Serral’s winning H2H necessarily is that tiebreaker, but I do think it’s indicative of why he’s the greater player, for me. If you can’t be the all-conquering, dominant player, well another path to greatness is peaking when it counts, it’s those underdog wins, it’s you set planning to conquer the superior foe on paper. Maru’s overall performance I think is better than some give him credit for, for me he’s comfortably been the second best player in the world overall for the past half-decadish. But it’s been a long time since he pulled out the latter from his locker. It would be one thing if the match H2H was as it is now, but it’s full of all-time great series that could have gone either way. Mostly he’s just been battered over a long period of time, playing much the same way. Hey old man Mvp ultimately lost to Life, but his greatness rep was still enhanced for even getting there, testing Life to his limits despite injury really hampering his game. Lower stakes tournament sure, but Serral in recent times lost his first ZvP in forever in a patch Zergs aren’t enjoying the matchup on to out it mildly. Then another one immediately. Then come Masters Colosseum a few days later he loses to MaxPax. A day to sleep on it and make a few tweaks and he comes back and batters both him and herO to win the thing. I think it’s quite illustrative of their relative strengths and weaknesses I will add the caveat that I’m judging Maru incredibly harshly only because it’s the top end of the GOAT ranking, he’s an incredibly talented player and a pleasure to watch. But is he clutch? Can he grind it out to get over the line on the rare occasions he isn’t more skilled than an opponent? Sure, sometimes. But I’ve long thought JAGW papered over the very few cracks in his game and in this era you’re seeing them. Cracks Serral just doesn’t have. It is also worth noting that Serral still has a winning record against Clem overall, from quite a few encounters. It’s a shame the scene is as it is now because for me the two most intriguing storylines are, ‘can Clem maintain that level?’ and ‘can Serral figure out a way to live with that Clem?’ and we may never get an answer to that which is a crying shame. I see where you're coming from but Maru is now already in his 16th year as a fulltime pro and I don't think it's fair to judge his career by his losses to Serral at this stage of his career, he may just lack the drive now to overcome the problem after such a long time in the business. The much better argument against him imo is the lack of a world championship, which he could win at no stage in his career. Had Maru won at least one I'd still back him as the Goat, but with Serrals continous success I agree that he finally has surpassed Maru due to the latters failure to succeed in this particular domain. Maru’s claim is also hugely predicated on his longevity and what he’s accumulated from it. Which yeah 100% you have to give credit for. But what if Inno didn’t lose motivation, or what if other of Maru’s peers didn’t have to go to military? I’m not judging him on the head to head itself as I think I said, but if not I’ll make it more clear. It’s that it exposes the weaknesses he has that have seen him unable to take a WC. Oliveira was a crazy run, and an underdog and Maru was nigh-on impregnable in TvT at the time. He’s had Reynor on the ropes and thrown it away. In GSL we’ve seen Rogue a fair while ago, or Dark more recently come up with game plans to snipe a Maru who’s been consistently better than them at those times. Players have upset the odds, came up with gameplans to counter Maru in the last few years. But Maru has singularly failed to do so on the rare case where he’s the underdog versus Serral. It’s not about that head to head really to me, it’s that it showcases his inability to replicate the kind of snipes he sometimes suffers from, against someone else. Hey he’s still a lock for the upper GOAT echelons, but I think most of his honours come from his sheer talent and skill and being better than opponents at that time. When he doesn’t have that buffer I think you see some of the results come from there. Maru longevity is overrated. Prior to his success in 2018 his accomplishment was nothing worthy. I know his fans like to claim he won SSL and that the field was super competitive. But if we take a closer look his run. His opponents were not impressive You can even make a strong claim that the only reason Maru had success after 2018 was because the Korean pros were getting old / out of their prime or going to military. It's the Schrödinger's GOAT -- results achieved after 2018 don't matter because the scene became weaker, yet simultaneously are sufficient to make one the GOAT.
To me, the argument always went like this: A player who was not considered the best pre-2018 could not become the GOAT when he wasn't considered the best in the period post-2018 either. Being the 2nd or 3rd or whatever best in two time spans to me would not suffice to lift you up to the Greatest of All Time overall.
There was a time, when Serral's dominance was not clear yet and Maru had a good take. But that was also when people still thought that he would push through internationally to claim Worlds, which eventually never happened.
Serral achieved an equal amount of Premier Tournament wins with Top Korean participation in much less time when their occurrence was less frequent (hence his insane tournament participation win ratios). Plus Maru could "farm" Premier Tournaments in the form of GSL, often without the top of the world interfering as Serral, Max, Reynor and Clem were simply not there.
No questions asked, most people would see Maru as the GOAT had Serral never existed, even though most of his achievements were in the same period that Serral made his, namely non-prime-SC2. Thus, the question who else would be your GOAT seems legit. Either you pick someone from 2013-2015 (most likely INnoVation) or it is Serral, in my opinion, as the same arguments that discredit Serral's take, also for the most part discredit Maru's.
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