Greatest Players of All Time: 2025 Update - Page 7

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PremoBeats

289 Posts

February 05 2025 13:19 GMT

#121

On January 23 2025 21:12 Salazarz wrote:

Show nested quote +

On January 23 2025 16:16 PremoBeats wrote:

On January 23 2025 08:31 Charoisaur 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."

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:

On January 23 2025 06:37 PremoBeats wrote:

On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:

+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:

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.

Personally, I think the whole goat debate around SC2 is rather pointless in general. To me, there's no real goat because nobody was dominant enough to really rise head and shoulders above the rest for a larger period of time than all of their peers when the game was actually thriving; and whomever is dominating the scene now is largely irrelevant because of how much the scene has shrunk. I'm not going to say that MVP or Innovation or Nestea or whatever would have ruled today's scene had they been around, and it's entirely possible that Serral could have been better than all of them had he been around back then -- but he wasn't, and declaring someone who has never faced the greats of the game in their prime as the bestest ever just seems, idk, almost offensive in a way. It's like if some dude started dominating the BW scene today and half a decade later folks go on to crown them as one true bonjwa and the greatest BW player to have ever lived, that'd be straight up silly no matter what sort of stats and tournament wins they rack up.

As far as Maru vs Serral goes, Maru at least has the proven ability to go toe to toe with the absolute best, in the most competitive period of SC2, and even if he wasn't actually the bestest at any given period of time, he has the unmatched longevity at or near the top going for him. Serral is basically the best of the rest. Not to throw shade on him or his accomplishments, it's just a matter of timing. I mean, is it really just a coincidence that non-Korean players only became competitive after all the Korean SC2 teams disbanded?

I don't know if we talked about this before or if it was someone else, but the arguments repeat themselves.
I think Serral faced enough of the Greats, when they were the same age that he is now battling (or being even older) against the next generation.
When INnoVation lost his first match to Serral in 2015, he was 22 and Serral 17. Serral surpassed him 5 years later when he took the match record by leading 9:8; they now stand at 16:8, meaning after Serral took the lead, INno who didn't have much worse overall and peer win rates, never again won a match. For comparison, Clem won his first game versus Serral in 2020 when he was 18 and Serral 22 - Serral still is ahead with 31:21, despite Clem having good periods against him. These cases are rather comparable. Serral kept fending off the new generation, because he was that good and INno didn't. That is simply what happened. And this kind of logic could be applied to all other participants. If post 2018 was so much simpler, why didn't herO, Dark, GumiHo, etc explode like Maru did? Because Maru simply was better than them.

Further, I don't think the statement, that Serral never faced the greatest in their prime is true tbh.
In 2018-2019 his win rates versus top Koreans are these (sorry for bad crop, simply copy pasted from excel):

Player Games Serral Wins
Zest 4 4 100,00
sOs 1 1 100,00
TY 2 2 100,00
Classic 3 2 66,67
INnoVation 9 6 66,67
Maru 3 2 66,67
soO 8 5 62,50
Trap 4 4 100,00
Creator 1 1 100,00
Solar 1 1 100,00
Dark 3 3 100,00
Stats 8 5 62,50

I compared these player's overall win rates versus Koreans and their win rates versus only their top peers to see if they got worse from 2013-2015 to 2018-2019.
For example:
Zest went from 66% overall to 68% and stayed the same at 53% versus peers. Serral won all four encounters in that period.
sOs had a 43% win rate in the first period and 66% in 2018, meaning he got much stronger versus top players; Serral won their only match in that period.
TY went from 62% to 64% overall and from 47 to 54% versus the top. Serral won both encounters.
I could go on with all the other names.

Serral also went 1-1 in matches versus Rain in 2015 already (yeah, I know, not many matches, but we have to work with what we got).

I also looked at tournaments from the prime era and found that by a large percentage, the higher ranked player advanced. Yes, there also were surprises like Oliveira's run in 2023, but they were surprises, cause they were rare. The tier 2 and tier 3 player bases were much more stacked, but overall the tier 1 players advanced in tournaments.

I will write a whole article about this era comparison once I find time but at the moment, I have too much work to do.

And just think about the reverse: Would you deny someone who hypothetically dominated the prime era the title cause this person never played in a pool with Serral, Reynor, Clem, MaxPax or potentially Mvp, some of which are mentioned as the all-time best of their respective race/GOAT contenders?

I think it is obvious that Serral faced the best of the best and dominated other GOAT contenders like INno, Maru, Rogue, sOs, Zest, soO, Stats and Dark at such extreme lengths by achieving much more in less time that his case is pretty solid.

And the disbanding-teamhouse-argument that is often brought up? Well, Serral never had one to begin with...

But you are essentially right: Serral never played in that era. To me, him bashing everyone around since going full SC2 after finishing school is enough reason to call him the greatest, as in my opinion, he demonstrated his ability to overcome the top of the top time and again sufficiently. Others view it differently.

On February 05 2025 03:29 WombaT wrote:

Show nested quote +

I’m not even sure if you completely zero Serral’s WCS winnings it alas up for that gap. It may, but I haven’t checked to be fair.

It strikes me as incredibly flawed in all sorts of ways.

Having spent hours on SC2 data I have the same feeling.

I still think my approach of using different metrics for tournaments with top Korean participation like match win rates, tournament-win-participation-ratios, average places achieved, Aligulac ranks and a Premier Tournament score that are adjusted for era is the most objective way of looking at this GOAT debate. After including team results and checking for my era-multiplier with a separate era comparison, it is fairly certain to me that one would need to twerk subjective weightings to ridiculous values to make Serral not come out on top.
Looking at these statistics gives you an impression of duration, consistency, efficiency, having the ability to push through as well as dominance. If anyone has other important metrics to offer that they think I missed, I am still open to discussion.

I can live with the argument that Serral never had big successes in 2013-2015 though. But then Maru, Rogue and Mvp all lack GOAT characteristics too and no real player stands out from the mentioned era. To me: It is either Serral or no one.

Charoisaur

Germany15900 Posts

February 05 2025 13:53 GMT

#122

I can live with the argument that Serral never had big successes in 2013-2015 though. But then Maru, Rogue and Mvp all lack GOAT characteristics too and no real player stands out from the mentioned era. To me: It is either Serral or no one.

I can agree with this sentiment

Serral kept fending off the new generation, because he was that good and INno didn't.

Serral is now a fulltime player for 7-8 years. When Serral rose Inno was already a fulltime player for about 10 years. This "new generation" Serral kept fending of rose 2-3 years after him. I don't think that's exactly a fair comparison

I compared these player's overall win rates versus Koreans and their win rates versus only their top peers to see if they got worse from 2013-2015 to 2018-2019.
For example:
Zest went from 66% overall to 68% and stayed the same at 53% versus peers. Serral won all four encounters in that period.
sOs had a 43% win rate in the first period and 66% in 2018, meaning he got much stronger versus top players; Serral won their only match in that period.
TY went from 62% to 64% overall and from 47 to 54% versus the top. Serral won both encounters.
I could go on with all the other names.

I think we had this discussion already once and back then I already told you how fundamentally flawed this analysis is.
Everyone in the korean scene is declining because everyone is in the same situation (age, military, motivation, injuries) so their winrates against each other obviously stay the same.
That's like if in football in a few years the saudi league exclusively consists of ex top-european league players and people say: look Ronaldo is still scoring as much goals as he did 10 years ago against many of the same opponents, obviously he's still just as good as he used to

PremoBeats

289 Posts

February 05 2025 14:40 GMT

#123

On February 05 2025 22:53 Charoisaur wrote:
Serral is now a fulltime player for 7-8 years. When Serral rose Inno was already a fulltime player for about 10 years. This "new generation" Serral kept fending of rose 2-3 years after him. I don't think that's exactly a fair comparison

I am not aware that INno ever had any injuries or other age related issues. So I don't see why that should matter when we have players like GumiHo, ByuN and herO still going at it, to be honest.
We could also compare INno's win rate versus other foreigners or Koreans... did he get worse there?

On February 05 2025 22:53 Charoisaur wrote:
I think we had this discussion already once and back then I already told you how fundamentally flawed this analysis is.
Everyone in the korean scene is declining because everyone is in the same situation (age, military, motivation, injuries) so their winrates against each other obviously stay the same.
That's like if in football in a few years the saudi league exclusively consists of ex top-european league players and people say: look Ronaldo is still scoring as much goals as he did 10 years ago against many of the same opponents, obviously he's still just as good as he used to

Yes, I know you brought that point up before, but I still disagree. I am not neither aware that everyone had injuries, nor that all players went to the military all of a sudden at the same time (Maru and Dark still haven't been and herO came back and still is top4).
I also don't see any metric that shows how the gameplay or skill ceiling deteriorated in that time frame.
I can totally agree that the competition declined because of retired players and many tier 2 and 3 players couldn't sustain themselves anymore, but a deterioration in game play in the Korean scene in my opinion is not provable through the data.
Players like Maru, who got stronger in that time frame, can also be compared against these players, and Serral outperformed them as well.
Or take other foreigners like Neeb or Scarlett (about the same argument as above)... did their win rates suddenly go up in 2018 against the "deteriorating" Korean scene or was only Serral able to perform absurdly at that level?
Further, look at last year... over 96% win rate versus the Korean scene (only 1 insignificant group stage loss versus Maru)... why is no Korean or other foreigner doing it? Are all players around Serral getting worse here too? Or does this absolutely insane number mean that Serral is that good? I think the latter is much more believable and reasonable.

Charoisaur

Germany15900 Posts

February 05 2025 15:12 GMT

#124

Well, not everyone was affected by all these factors but everyone by some of them. By now almost everyone lost ~2 years practice due to military (bar Maru, Dark, Solar, Cure and Creator I think). Out of those Maru is vocal about struggling with injuries, Dark about struggling with motivation and RL responsibilities, not sure about Cure, Solar and Creator, but tbf they've never been the absolute top.
And that it becomes more difficult to compete with increasing age in general is well documented, both in statistics about age of the most succesful players, as well as statements from many pros saying that younger players are just fresher, faster, have more stamina, improve at a higher rate etc.

but a deterioration in game play in the Korean scene in my opinion is not provable through the data.

Because there exists no data that could prove something as subjective as skill level in sc2. You can also not prove that the skill level is the same as it used to be. Comparitively to the foreign scene the korean skill level surely got worse, but you will ofc say it's because foreigners improved (which is true).

Further, look at last year... over 96% win rate versus the Korean scene (only 1 insignificant group stage loss versus Maru)... why is no Korean or other foreigner doing it? Are all players around Serral getting worse here too? Or does this absolutely insane number mean that Serral is that good?

Serral is extremely good but the circumstances also heavily favor him. You can see it pretty clearly in how his winrates changed from 2018-2020 to now which is a direct result of all (korean) players who could threaten him retiring or declining (e.g. he used to be about even against Maru and Dark and only pulled ahead when they declined).
And the players that are beating him now... are coincidentally the young ones that aren't in decline yet, despite them being nowhere near a top 10 all time list.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 05 2025 15:21 GMT

#125

On February 05 2025 17:42 Radioteddy wrote:

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While I rather agree with the overall narrative of the analysis, this statement sounds ridiculous to me. The only correct way to compare Serral and Rogue earnings at the moment of mid 2022, whe Rogue started his 2 year military service basically ending his career as a tier-s progamer. Saying that both players got their money during the same timespan is straight up bullsh*t, since 2022 Serral earned about 1/4 - 1/3 of his earnings. I don't remember exact numbers, but in mid 2022 it was something about 100k in favour of Serral, which is not that much...

By timespan I mean rough ‘era’, not the exact same years, but yeah good point.

Or essentially, as I said back a post or two. If you weight HoTS really high, then Inno or sOs featuring high I may not 100% agree with the weighting, but it’s pretty obvious and transparent.

All of Maru, Rogue and Serral earned most of their bank from 2017 and later. Rogue and Serral also play the same race.

If you’re going to do a GOAT list off prize money (I personally wouldn’t anyways), you have to do some serious fudging to get that ranking. Either Serral has to be bumped up, or alternatively Maru has to drop down, for example.

Maru has also earned around 20% of his earnings from 2023 onwards, it’s 27 for Serral IIRC. The gap between Rogue and Maru is a mere 4K if we wipe that from the record. Just as you mentioned it.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 05 2025 16:02 GMT

#126

On February 05 2025 22:53 Charoisaur wrote:

Show nested quote +

I can agree with this sentiment

Show nested quote +

When Serral first became a top tier player, most top players had fewer years as SC2 progamers in the tank than he does now. He’s just had another ridiculous year, actually one of his best.

Serral also didn’t have the benefit of the advantageous training environment Koreans developed in.

Injuries and military I’ll 100% grant. Age is less of a factor than I think many thought it would be as eSports developed. Back in the day I think players just burned out, or couldn’t keep up with a new, better generation, so the assumption was you were cooked by your early-20s.

There’s structural differences that are impactful sure, but BW is still largely dominated by old hands. WC3 as well.

Motivation I cannae grant. It’s is a huge component of greatness. As much as I love Ronaldinho and find Ronaldo irritating, Ronaldo doing it for basically 20 years, where Ronaldinho was exhilarating and amongst the world’s best for about 3 before he started dicking around, hey Dinho’s one of my all-time favourites but Ronaldo wins on greatness.

Part of the reason I don’t really buy it is that prize money didn’t fall off a cliff. Aside from maybe it dampening the glory, there’s few things more attractive to a competitive tournament player of any kind than less competition and similar money.

Nobody could really do it. There was a really conspicuous absence in this time of someone going mental and blasting Serral for a bit. At best folks had a marginally better year here or there, a losing head-to-head, and Serral wins out in just consistent performance in the medium thru long term.

If there were some counter-examples I’d be more open to this idea. Let’s say Inno said ‘look lads it’s fucking 2019, been too long since you saw the Machine’ and went and smacked everyone around, and dominated Serral in a series or two, then sure fine.

Or well, anyone.

I’m not expecting 5 years of further domination or anything, but you just don’t have players even keeping the motivation to do it for a year, which when we consider it’s basically nobody who even did that from an entire pool of players, the Occam’s Razor is that they couldnt do it.

It’s passé now, but it was a huge deal when Serral broke that Korean glass ceiling. And that mattered a lot to Korean pride given its StarCraft Mecca. Slapping down this foreign upstart and making some good money isn’t motivation enough?

Hey, maybe it’s a politeness thing, or I’ve missed it. I haven’t heard the Korean interviewee who’s said if their scene hadn’t been impacted, Serral wouldn’t be as ascendant.

I’ve heard plenty of Korea’s best just say Serral’s the guy to beat, the best, has basically no weaknesses etc.

The collapse of Kespa basically fucked the production of the next generation of Korean players, but it didn’t stop the existing ones maintaining their best level for a bit.

Charoisaur

Germany15900 Posts

February 05 2025 17:09 GMT

#127

On February 06 2025 01:02 WombaT wrote:

Show nested quote +

I don't think BW or WC3 being dominated by old hands proves anything considering there just aren't any younger players playing the game. Who would surpass them?

And am I supposed to believe that it's a mere coincidence that out of the maybe 30 fulltime players we have in sc2, the best ones just happen to be the youngest ones (Clem, Serral, Maru, Maxpax, Reynor)?

I absolutely agree that keeping motivation is part of what makes greatness but older players just have an objectively more difficult time to keep it due to reallife responsiblities. Dark for example has a kid, ofc he can't just practice all day like he used to.
Serral as of now has maintained his motivation for 7-8 years which is a shorter amount than Inno managed to before his decline.
So when comparing the two you can't really hold it against Inno that he lost his motivation because so far Serral hasn't shown he can keep it for longer.

Serral would obviously have been great anyway, but there's no way he could've reached those 90+ % winrates in a more competitive era. I mean it's just statistics, he struggles against Clem, he used to struggle against Reynor, Dark and Rogue. If he was playing in a more competitive era having the same relative skill level as he has now, it's fair to assume he would struggle similarly vs some of the top players, but there would be way more of them.

ejozl

Denmark3341 Posts

February 05 2025 18:27 GMT

#128

I would say mechanics peaked around 2018-2019, soo even before lotv was such an absolute machine, and dark blizzcon vods are incredible as well. Everyone tuned into byun stream to watch the highest lvl of micro, where before the highest we saw was from players like parting, hero, maru and life in hots. I would say we still see higher lvl micro today, but it's a very small sample of players.
I think sc2 is so much more than that though, it's honestly so trivial to be a pro gamer today with how few players you need to look out for, and everyone obv. Knows each others styles. In 2015 it was different, you needed a different skill set, I rly don't believe serral's style would've worked pre-lotv, though he'd obviously be able to win tournaments.
And we saw not even that long ago a player like taeja cming back and playing to serral's lvl in some games. Gumiho did the same, I am very confident in saying that if all the hots guys were active today as they were then, serral wouldn't win a 1/3 of what he is winning now, which is why I gave 2024 0.25 factor.
I don't know if neeb, Scarlett and serral would've been able to go to korea and win, it's possible, but unlikely.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 05 2025 19:02 GMT

#129

On February 06 2025 02:09 Charoisaur wrote:

Show nested quote +

I’d argue Inno didn’t. We gotta factor in his BW time too of course. He was a relevant progamer for longer than Serral, but for how much of that span was he 95-100% peak Innovation?

And man I love Inno. For my money he was the only player to gap the field and be actually dominant in level for any time in the Kespa era. Not in a sense of titles, in that ‘this guy is better than everyone’ way.

People caught up to his initial advantage sure, but really if Inno had kept up his motivation and best form, we’re probably not debating other GOAT candidates.

Not necessarily because he’s better than Serral or Maru or whoever, but you’d have that player who was clearly streets ahead at the peak of SC2’s competitive depth. Aside from Voldemort, I don’t think you had another player who could have done that.

But he didn’t, so we’re not.

I think there was a timeframe where look, there’s money on the table. One hasn’t forgot how to play StarCraft, it’s not that long since Kespa was a thing, indeed JAGW sorta continued for a bit.

In that timespan, if I’m a Korean progamer I mean, the long term writing is on the wall, but there’s no better time to knuckle down, sweep up those sweet tournament winnings, and hell, retire after a year or two rather than staying in active decline for 5+ years.

I’d argue Maru, Rogue, Dark, TY and Trap somewhat did find the motivational fire or whatever the special sauce is. But to sit at the top table, they didn’t supplant Serral as the top dog.

Now, come 2025 yes I think it has been too long, you’re seeing the lack of a talent factory outside of a few players, retirements, military etc all just cumulatively hitting that bit too hard.

But say, 2017/18? It’s ballpark the halfway point of SC2. It’s not that long after Kespa. Byun’s not that long ago done his disappearing act into weekly tournament grindset and won a GSL and a WC with a very different regime

Serral had already stuck up a 90% match win rate year in 2018

He lost to Classic in the Katowice Ro4, Maru in the WESG Ro4, two to soO in Nationwars. Of non-Koreans he lost to Scarlett in the IEM Pyeongchang she won. Waiting for more? No that’s it. Those are the only official tournament matches he lost in a year.

His numbers are too bonkers, too early for me to entirely go with the decline hypothesis. I do think it’s part of it, and I do think it’s why I wouldn’t take his also ridiculous 2024 and put it on quite the same pedestal as some earlier ones.

If there’s a world where, even if he’s roughly winning the same in tournaments, but he’s dropping matches, rather than sweeping group stages. If his win rates are that bit lower, and let’s say there’s a few players who have his number in a H2H, a few things like that.

The numbers are just too high, the proximity to peak era too close. For me anyway! One’s mileage may vary.

If he’s already smacking Kespa’s best around pretty regularly a few years after it disbanded in SC2, I’m not sure his results would be hugely different if you time travelled him back to peak Kespa. I don’t think he’s sticking up 90% winrates either. But the lad has no particular matchup weakness, he’s basically mentally as bulletproof as we’ve seen, so he’d probably do pretty well.

He’s also largely seen off his foreign rivals as well. Clem’s a monster, huge peaks but he’s never really had Serral’s just relentless consistency. It looks like he might be developing it, but the game may just decline as a big competitive eSport before he gets to show that. Reynor looked at one point to be a huge threat to Serral’s status, and has had a great career but he couldn’t keep it up.

Plenty of Korea’s finest also have good records against those players. Maru’s got the edge on both Clem and Reynor. herO’s got the edge on Reynor. Clem’s never beaten Cure offline in 4 attempts, and has an overall losing record factoring in online too. Just going off memory, I’m sure there’s a lot more there.

Serral stands basically alone in this regard. He has a winning record against his foreign rivals and effectively every other player in the entire scene outside of a few from his very early days.

It took Clem a long time to break his international tournament duck. Reynor grabbed some huge prizes, but never fully dominated the scene. This is largely in part that, talented as they are, Koreans could reliably beat them on the big stage with a certain regularity.

Ok he’s obviously not actually invincible, but this was never really the case with Serral from when he made his breakthrough. Top Koreans were able to keep up with the other foreign hopes, but not Serral by and large.

IDK, I just don’t think they could really. The alternative is that Koreans were just motivated enough to stop the likes of Reynor and Clem dominating, or other foreigners having statement results, but not quite motivated enough to slow Serral down much.

Oliveira’s miracle run aside, it’s not like the rest of foreign land are killing it. If Korea had fallen off as much as some claim, I think you’d be seeing more deep runs from that next tier down.

Heromarine had a Ro4 at a Katowice in 2022, but I’m struggling to think of too many deep performances from foreigners outside of the usual suspects. Scarlett got that IEM win and Elazer got a silver in a GSL versus the World.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 05 2025 19:20 GMT

#130

On February 06 2025 03:27 ejozl wrote:
I would say mechanics peaked around 2018-2019, soo even before lotv was such an absolute machine, and dark blizzcon vods are incredible as well. Everyone tuned into byun stream to watch the highest lvl of micro, where before the highest we saw was from players like parting, hero, maru and life in hots. I would say we still see higher lvl micro today, but it's a very small sample of players.
I think sc2 is so much more than that though, it's honestly so trivial to be a pro gamer today with how few players you need to look out for, and everyone obv. Knows each others styles. In 2015 it was different, you needed a different skill set, I rly don't believe serral's style would've worked pre-lotv, though he'd obviously be able to win tournaments.
And we saw not even that long ago a player like taeja cming back and playing to serral's lvl in some games. Gumiho did the same, I am very confident in saying that if all the hots guys were active today as they were then, serral wouldn't win a 1/3 of what he is winning now, which is why I gave 2024 0.25 factor.
I don't know if neeb, Scarlett and serral would've been able to go to korea and win, it's possible, but unlikely.

Neeb did go to Korea and win…

Taeja did not come back and remotely show Serral’s level. He came back and showed some flashes of his talent. I recall a particularly good GSL series against Dark. As a giant Taeja fanboy I was enthused and rooting for the lad, but close to Serral’s level he was not.

Mechanics probably peaked in 2024 when Clem was peaking for EWC. I don’t think anyone has ever been as mechanically clean or fast as him. Yeah we’ve all got fond memories of other players in monster mode, but I don’t think they’re matching that. Watch a wee FPVoD of recent Clem and I don’t think you can find others that are as consistently as good.

Maru when he brings it, or Serral who’s just consistently bulletproof but maybe not quite at Clem’s absolute peak are still bringing a level you didn’t see 10 years ago. I still maintain Maru versus Serral on Radhuset at Katowice was one of the highest skill sets I’ve ever watched

You may have a point re Legacy. I maintain that sOs really suffered from those changes, as they squashed the mid-game which was always where he worked his magic. So I think given Serral’s skillset and style, Legacy fits like a glove and probably did help him a bit.

You seem to be studiously avoiding my queries re your ranking methodology incidentally :p

Balnazza

Germany1115 Posts

February 05 2025 20:11 GMT

#131

Serral went over to Korea twice and both times won. No, I'm not saying GSL vs. the World is the pinnacle of importance, but he won against the likes of Innovation, TY, Trap and Classic. But more importantly, he crushed the koreans every time he crowned himself World Champion, including the very first time.
It is also really non-sensical to say "his style wouldn't have worked before"...no shit? Pretty sure Rogue would have a really tough time playing Swarmhost-Style in WotL either...or, if we want to take you literal for it: So all the koreans dominating in HotS aren't really good, their styles just happened to work that addon? And they couldn't switch their styles to a new addon? So we shouldn't overrate them, is that your point? Hope not...
Also, as a side-note: Neither TaeJa nor GuMiho ever reached the same level as Serral. herO is the only korean who came back and made a solid return to the S-Tier, but even he was for years outclassed by Serral specifically.

But all of this aside: You can have this opinion. Just say it is your opinion and be done with it. But what you did is to create a "statistic" that specifically gets affected by factors which fit your opinion. You essentially did this: You made a statistic if people prefer chocolate or vanilla icecream and asked 100 people. But you think that vanilla is the best and also that only people in your age-range have a defined taste for icecream, so you doubled the points for everyone in your age-range and then quadrupled the points for everyone saying vanilla.
Tada, you have statistically proven that vanilla is the best!

You wanted to prove your opinion by statistics defined by your opinion. That is what is so infuriating about your rating, because it pretends to follow scientific methods, but is just an elaborate way of saying "nuh-uh, Serral overrated!"

So, considering that your ranking probably constituted a fair amount of work - just stick with "nuh-uh, Serral overrated!" in the future and save yourself the work. And I do mean that most sincere.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 05 2025 20:58 GMT

#132

On February 06 2025 05:11 Balnazza wrote:

Show nested quote +

Basically this. I’m still waiting the working that puts Rogue above Serral, or Maru 7 places up.

GSLvTW I think is a bit underrated these days. Come on, were the Koreans really not motivated by the best of the rest coming to their turf, in one of their pseudo national pastimes? Well Serral did pop over and just smash nerds regardless.

I think some look at such things, or indeed Neeb’s Kespa Cup through the modern lens, where the Korean glass ceiling was shattered a while ago. Back then, this was titanic shit. Hell. even the name is a giveaway. Kespa and all that. It’s not like foreigners started doing well half a decade after the dissolution of Kespa.

Hell, Dark took great pride in having never lost to a foreigner, he spoke about it in interviews, he was the foreigner slayer, amongst other accolades. Until Serral showed up ofc.

Byun managed to win a Starleague and a WC basically by doing his own thing and grinding, in the Kespa era. People rightly gave a lot of plaudits for him doing so.

Fast forward a year or two and according to some apparently Kespa players just forgot how to play or couldn’t be arsed.

Charoisaur

Germany15900 Posts

February 05 2025 21:34 GMT

#133

On February 06 2025 04:02 WombaT wrote:

Show nested quote +

On February 06 2025 02:09 Charoisaur wrote:

On February 06 2025 01:02 WombaT wrote:

On February 05 2025 22:53 Charoisaur wrote:

I can agree with this sentiment

Serral kept fending off the new generation, because he was that good and INno didn't.

But say, 2017/18? It’s ballpark the halfway point of SC2. It’s not that long after Kespa. Byun’s not that long ago done his disappearing act into weekly tournament grindset and won a GSL and a WC with a very different regime

Serral had already stuck up a 90% match win rate year in 2018

He lost to Classic in the Katowice Ro4, Maru in the WESG Ro4, two to soO in Nationwars. Of non-Koreans he lost to Scarlett in the IEM Pyeongchang she won. Waiting for more? No that’s it. Those are the only official tournament matches he lost in a year.

His numbers are too bonkers, too early for me to entirely go with the decline hypothesis. I do think it’s part of it, and I do think it’s why I wouldn’t take his also ridiculous 2024 and put it on quite the same pedestal as some earlier ones.

Just for context: Serral in 2018 had 70% winrate against koreans in maps and 85% in series.
In 2024 he had 88% in maps and 96% in series with roughly the same amount of series played vs koreans.

But I think we agree already. The overlap with the peak korean era is large enough that Serral obviously isn't a fraud and would have had success in any era, and at the same time the ridicolous dominance he shows right now is largely a product of the state of the scene and many players that could threaten him retiring/declining

FataLe

New Zealand4492 Posts

February 06 2025 00:10 GMT

#134

Can we get a greatest plays of all time?

PremoBeats

289 Posts

February 06 2025 07:44 GMT

#135

On February 06 2025 03:27 ejozl wrote:
And we saw not even that long ago a player like taeja cming back and playing to serral's lvl in some games. Gumiho did the same, I am very confident in saying that if all the hots guys were active today as they were then, serral wouldn't win a 1/3 of what he is winning now, which is why I gave 2024 0.25 factor.
I don't know if neeb, Scarlett and serral would've been able to go to korea and win, it's possible, but unlikely.

Similar to WombaT, with whom I agree mostly on this issue, I have to inquire into your statistics.

So you are saying that Serral, if all the HotS guys were still around at their peak power, would only win 33% (rounded) of his current match win rate? Roughly 80% * 0,33?
Am I correct in assuming that by HotS guys you mean players like sOs, Life, INnoVation, ByuL, Solar, herO, Classic, PartinG, soO, Rain, Hydra, Polt, Zest, Maru, ForGG, MMA, Cure, Flash, YoDa, Jaedong, TaeJa, Trap and Zest?

Against sOs he won all 3 matches. He won his one encounter with ByuL, he won over 66% against Solar, over 70% versus herO, 80% versus Classic, 100% versus PartinG starting in 2015, over 66% versus soO, 50% versus Rain in 2015, 100% in 2015 versus Hydra, never played Polt, over 68% versus Zest, do I need to mention Maru?, lost 3 to ForGG from 2013-2015, never played MMA, won over 85% versus Cure, never played Flash, lost 1 to YoDa in 2014, lost 3 to Jaedong in 2013, lost 2 to TaeJa in 2014 and won 1 in 2018 (33% overall), has over 80% versus Trap and over 69% versus Zest.

Are you suggesting that Serral, who mainly lost to a couple, not all, of these guys around 2015, when he wasn't a full pro yet would lose against all of them - including the ones he already beat at 70 - 100% win rates back then - in such a way, that he would only reach a roughly 25/26% (80%*0,33) win rate? That is your reasoning? This isn't even true, if we only look at Serral's win rates versus these guys from 2013-2017, much less does it make sense if we place a 100% skill, post-school, full pro Serral against them.
Sorry, but that take is absolutely bonkers.

I repeat myself, but people seriously underestimate, how some of these players mainly got PT titles because of so many events happening around the same times. The quantity of trophies to win were 6 times higher in certain years than in 2024 or 2023.
Further, Serral's win rates are deflated against Koreans, as he only played the best of the best. He didn't beat any minor tier Koreans like all the other Koreans when he reached 85% win rates. A factor of 0.25 is completely ridiculous and from my estamitation can in no way be substantiated.

On February 06 2025 05:11 Balnazza wrote:
You wanted to prove your opinion by statistics defined by your opinion. That is what is so infuriating about your rating, because it pretends to follow scientific methods, but is just an elaborate way of saying "nuh-uh, Serral overrated!"

So, considering that your ranking probably constituted a fair amount of work - just stick with "nuh-uh, Serral overrated!" in the future and save yourself the work. And I do mean that most sincere.

I get the same feeling and can't wait to see a sound reasoning/methodology.

ejozl

Denmark3341 Posts

February 06 2025 12:14 GMT

#136

It rly didn't take a lot of work, I've said when I talked about my ranking the first time that this was the lazy approach, I don't actually believe prize money is the end all be all determiner. But like artosis I believe that the goat should be the most successful player, basically. So I also don't see the impressive serral stats as smth that makes him the goat. I do however agree that it's absolutely crazy what he's done and is unlike smth I've ever seen in any rts. In that way he could be considered the goat alone, that's just not how I would determine it.

I can talk about my rankings, since you wish to know, but it wasn't the reason I brought it up, I used this ranking to compare the year 2024 between my ranking and article ranking.

The point about winning on korean soil, what I meant to say was, had the Korean scene kept going hard, or had the scene peaked at that moment, like it did in hots, I do not find it likely that any of the foreigners(proper use of the word) would've been likely to win. Serral might still've been the favourite, but favorite would mean 25% or below, not the guaranteed victor that it felt like he was, when he actually went and did it.

The taeja, gumiho point is just that these players made it harder for serral to advance in some hsc's, had they been motivated like their old selves, players such as these would've continued to pose a threat to serral.

About the style of hots vs. lotv, it's simply easier to dominate now through sheer mechanics, whereas clem would've been dumpstered in hots, I honestly feel like. And on the flip side, if you're a zerg and your mechanics are simply a bit worse, you will become an absolute no-name, whereas in hots you would've been still able to participate.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 06 2025 13:03 GMT

#137

On February 06 2025 16:44 PremoBeats wrote:

Show nested quote +

I get the same feeling and can't wait to see a sound reasoning/methodology.

I think he means Serral would win a third, or whatever in terms of actual tournament titles, not win rates matchup wise.

Protoss sorta have this problem now/in recent times somewhat illustrated. herO is capable of winning a tournament, but he needs a great run, and perhaps some bracket luck. He’s capable of beating basically anyone, but he’s favoured against some contenders and unfavoured against others. If you cloned herO once or twice, Toss would have way better chances in these tournaments, with zero changes to the game.

I think herO’s quite a good barometer for what a ‘regular’ Premier contender looks like. Strong enough to reliably, but not always beat the lower tier players. Good enough to beat anyone on his day. Win rates in the 60s generally outside of a strong purple patch.

That’s broadly what you got in the Kespa era, for sake of argument. You had a whole bunch of players with a similar kinda profile and range.

If you throw say, 10-15 players from that time, all of whom are pretty capable and have similar general win-rates into a tournament, there isn’t an overwhelming favourite. If you throw them into 10, maybe one guy picks up a couple and 7 grab one each.

Ergo, we got a very competitive, cutthroat era, and what a fun time it was!

To get close to something like that again, well you can’t have a guy floating around with 80+ winrates and winning head-to-heads against everyone.

You either need to beat that bloke and drag his winrate down, or have a handful of players raise theirs a bunch.

Going back to my ‘…Good enough to beat anyone on his day. Win rates in the 60s generally outside of a strong purple patch.’ kinda conception of what a Premier tournament contender looks like, which I somewhat pulled out of my ass I went to see how on-the-money I was.

So here’s a bunch of players, offline match win rate, pre 2017 and post-2017:

Cure - 52.40% and 56.76%
Dark - 62.84% and 70.14%
herO - 65.23% and 63.61%
Innovation - 68.10% and 67.01%
Maru - 64.33% and 70.92%
Parting - 67.73% and 59.32%
Rogue - 55.00% and 69.39%
Solar - 60.63% and 63.66%
Stats - 65.37% and 66.43%
Trap - 58.30% and 63.23%
TY - 59.38% and 67.71%
Zest - 63.17% and 61.49%

They’re pretty stable overall. Some have risen reasonably appreciably, but some have dropped. Broadly I think just looking at the players some are obvious slump candidates, and you’ve a few that found form and had really strong patches. I ran out of patience so I’ve definitely missed some important names, but I think it’s a decent enough sample.

What you’re not really seeing is a big winrate inflation across the board. Which I’d expect to see more in the less competitive, easy era or whatever.

Maru’s pre-2017 is probably slightly deflated because I was lazy. Ideally I wouldn’t have included his results when he was still in nappies, so his jump is probably less than shown, albeit not by that much I imagine.

Nonetheless, those who’ve played out of their minds in recent years and held the best winrates, it’s low 70s in Korea.

Of the main foreign rivals we’ve Reynor 68.58% and Clem with 66.58%

Anyway, I could look at more. I think it’s fair to say there’s maybe been a slight jump from your top tier, contender class in win rates. It’s got a bit more common to see high 60s pushing low 70s, where low-mid was generally where people topped out. It’s only a handful of folks, but it is slightly more common.

However, that still doesn’t really explain how the fuck Serral has an 85% winrate, it’s 15% higher than his nearest rival.

Let’s say that Serral was still rocking an 80-85%, but behind him you’ve a handful of players in the 75-80 bracket, then a tier below that rocking a 70-75. For one obviously the gap is closer, but I think more importantly if that were the case it’s pretty indicative that things are getting less competitive if some players are jumping up in WR.

Curiously the only player who improved their win rate by that magic 15% number from the Kespa days into post-Kespa was Rogue.

Personally I think some folks just find their groove at different times, and that’s when Rogue found his. But if one is gonna weight era against Serral like you absolutely have to do the same with Rogue.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 06 2025 13:05 GMT

#138

On February 06 2025 09:10 FataLe wrote:
Can we get a greatest plays of all time?

Squirtle’s Archon toilet against Mvp has gotta be up there.

Also not sure if intentionally amazing observing or fortuitous, but the fact the camera wasn’t following the Mommaship and it effectively appeared from nowhere at the edge of the screen really added to the hype.

WombaT

Northern Ireland24682 Posts

February 06 2025 18:13 GMT

#139

Ok, it’s not quite the same, and my tongue is somewhat in cheek here.

One of my big loves is cricket, for those not familiar it’s somewhat similar to baseball (kinda). Anyway you got 11 a side, you try to hit a ball and score runs. The opposing side tries to get you out when bowling, which is basically throwing the ball but it has to bounce at some stage. You’ve 2 batsman ‘at the crease’ at any one time, but one ‘on strike’ i.e. directly facing a bowler. You can score a run by hitting the ball and running to the other end where your partner is, and they have to make the same ‘run’. You can absolute smack the ball to the boundary of the ground, you get 4 runs if it does so while touching the ground, 6 if you clean smack it over. Your primary task to avoid getting out is defending your ‘wicket’ of 3 stumps, but you can also be out if a bowler hits a delivery that you hit in the air, and someone catches it without it touching the ground. You can also be out ‘LBW’ (leg before wicket), in the case where a ball would have hit your stumps, but you blocked it with your leg rather than bat. Finally you can be run-out, so if you’re running between the wickets and the fielding team hits your wicket with a ball while you’re in the middle you’re also out. In a ‘Test match’ which can last 5 days, each team has 2 innings batting.

While numbers may vary somewhat, you tend to have maybe 7 specialist batsman at most, and 4 bowlers. All-rounders exist, who can bat and bowl very well, but broadly it’s a 7-4 balance, perhaps 6-5 at times.

Ok cricket primer being done.

It’s one of the oldest international sports going, so there’s records back a hell of a while. As opposed to something like football (soccer), it’s also very amenable to straight stats (like something like baseball)

A good test batsman, their average runs per innings in a test match, if it’s in the 40s to mid 40s, that’s very decent. An elite test player averages mid 50s. Some have averaged in the 60s, but from a handful of matches.

Regardless of era, that’s somewhat vaguely consistent, in the ballpark. Brian Lara 52, Sachin Tendulkur 53, Ricky Ponting at 51 for titans whose peak was in the 90s through 2000s. Steve Smith is rocking a 56 and Joe Root a 50.8 of some notable players of the 2010s through now vintage. Viv Richard’s rocked a 50.2 in the 70s thru 90s. (Sir) Garfield Sobers a 57 between 1954 and 1974.

I could keep going, also for the record these are like absolute all-timers, feature on GOAT lists, best of their time batsmen.

Donald Bradman averages 99.94 between 1928 and 1948.

It’s so, preposterously high that most cricket fans have their GOAT debate on who is number 2. The best of his contemporaries were in the 50s, as is consistent with over a century of ‘great Test batsmen do that, that’s the number’. Which has broadly been true over a century of cricket.

Nobody else in the history of the game has a career average even in the 60s, with a handful of players who didn’t play that many games admittedly. Who weren’t mainstays over a long period. Outside of the South African Graeme Pollock who has a 60.97 average.

The point of this post is, cricket’s been a thing for a long time. Era arguments exist there as well. People will argue about x 1990s player versus x 2010 player versus x 1970s player for days, because yeah their numbers are pretty similar, so the era does make a difference.

People don’t really do this with Don Bradman. He’s averaging over 40 more than everyone else, that number is too big. If the gap between Bradman and everyone else was a Test player, they’d be a solid international class batsman, a genuinely good player in their own right.

To bring it back to Starcraft, I think Serral’s numbers start to approach this. Not as extreme, sure. But they’re just so much higher that they start to transcend the ability to neuter them through other metrics.

Where the Don averaged 40 higher than basically every other cricketer ever, so Serral has a winrate like 15% higher than anyone else.

As I believe it was Stalin said, sometimes quantity has a quality all of its own.

If say, in an alternative universe Bradman averaged almost 100, but a bunch of his peers were in the 80s thru 90s, people would consider it differently.

But Bradman stands alone in over a century and, while not to the same degree so does Serral.

Nobody’s even close. It’s not 85% Serral’s best year, it’s 85% his average across 7/8 years.

It’s also almost bang on 85% online and offline. Like almost exactly 85 in both domains.

The numbers are silly. Say, herO’s a great player but if you take Serral’s gap over #2, over 7 years and minus it from herO’s winrate he’s losing more than he’s winning. That’s the degree of the gap.

Mvp, great player. On BW skill basically by far the best player to switch in WoL. Clearly the King of Wings. Won a lot. Didn’t even remotely approach that kind of win rate. Kespa era ok more competitive, hard to find that big edge but nobody got close then either. Post-Kespa, Serral is further beyond the other leading competitors than they are to those behind them, and not insignificantly so either.

When’s the last time Serral bombed out properly early in a tournament? He’s so good that people still remember Rag beat him 3-2 in a Ro8 World Championship game, and that’s a bad result. He lost to Clem or Reynor in either EU Ro4s or finals and losing are bad results.

Charoisaur

Germany15900 Posts

February 06 2025 20:03 GMT

#140

On February 06 2025 22:03 WombaT wrote:

Show nested quote +

On February 06 2025 16:44 PremoBeats wrote:

I get the same feeling and can't wait to see a sound reasoning/methodology.

So here’s a bunch of players, offline match win rate, pre 2017 and post-2017:

Cure - 52.40% and 56.76%
Dark - 62.84% and 70.14%
herO - 65.23% and 63.61%
Innovation - 68.10% and 67.01%
Maru - 64.33% and 70.92%
Parting - 67.73% and 59.32%
Rogue - 55.00% and 69.39%
Solar - 60.63% and 63.66%
Stats - 65.37% and 66.43%
Trap - 58.30% and 63.23%
TY - 59.38% and 67.71%
Zest - 63.17% and 61.49%

They’re pretty stable overall. Some have risen reasonably appreciably, but some have dropped. Broadly I think just looking at the players some are obvious slump candidates, and you’ve a few that found form and had really strong patches. I ran out of patience so I’ve definitely missed some important names, but I think it’s a decent enough sample.

What you’re not really seeing is a big winrate inflation across the board. Which I’d expect to see more in the less competitive, easy era or whatever.

I think what you're missing is the level of players they play offline. In GSL for example pre-2017 offline matches started in Code A, while for large parts of LotV they started in the ro16. So nowadays when players play offline it's mostly vs one of the other top 16 players, while back then they could also play lots of offline matches vs players barely in the top 50. Also despite that, as I see it most players have still increased their winrate bar the obvious post-Kespa slump candidates like Inno, PartinG and Zest

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