It's been just over a year since the first article in my Greatest Players of All Time series was published, and since then I've had a lot of time to review my rankings as I absorbed new results.
2024 was a peculiar year in that it suffered from a long EPT/GSL hiatus since August, but also featured the most richly prized StarCraft II tournament ever in the Esports World Cup. That tournament really shook up the scene, giving us a new best player in the world while also impacting the legacies for a handful of all-time greats.
I don't intend to make the readers go through tens of thousands of words again, I'll keep this one short. Here are my brief reflections on 2024, and how the year affected my Greatest of All Time rankings.
Players with top-ten potential that couldn't improve their standing.
herO
Ranking change: #15 -> #15
Headed into 2024, herO's strong post-military career had already earned him a place in my top 15, giving him a chance to crack the top ten in the future if a few things broke his way. Unfortunately, 2024 was a bit of a lost opportunity for herO.
His results were very good, with the highlights being a Code S runner-up, a top four finish at the Esports World Cup, and a brace of runner-up finishes at Master's Coliseum 7 and StarsWar 11. He was easily the best Protoss player, and I had him as the fifth best player of the year behind Serral, Maru, Dark, and Clem. However, the fifth best results and no championship don't really move the needle when it comes to this range of the GOAT rankings, so herO remains on the outside looking in.
Reynor
Ranking change: #14 -> #14
In early 2024, I wrote that Reynor had the most potential for upward mobility among the players ranked 11-15. However, he had a subpar year in which he failed to reach the finals of a Liquipedia-premier event, let alone win one.
Still, Reynor showed his class a mere 18 months ago when he won his second World Championship caliber tournament at Gamers8 (it was his fourth WC finals overall). With that in mind, if there are more opportunities in the future, it wouldn’t be that surprising to see Reynor get his mojo back and win the tournament(s) needed to break into the top ten.
A Top Ten Trajectory, But is it Too Late?
Clem
Ranking change: Outside the top 30 -> Somewhere in the 20's
It’s now time to wax poetic about Clem. The French Terran has always shown tremendous potential, but it's been realized to a degree I never expected. I’m now of the opinion that he set a new peak for StarCraft II gameplay this past summer. It wasn’t just the fact that he won the Esports World Cup, it’s the manner in which he did it. Clem somehow made a pair of series victories against Serral (3-0 and 5-0) look like a walk in the park. In fact, the ease with which he toppled titans like Serral is very reminiscent of Serral’s own play during the second half of 2018, when he took down Dark, Rogue, and Stats consecutively at the WCS Global Finals.
The main difference is that while Serral built his legacy on staunch early defense that turned to later offense, Clem took the reins from the start. Clem’s harassment and attacks let him enter the mid-game way ahead of his opponents, not even allowing them a brief delusion of competitiveness. We've seen the death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach from other great Terrans in the past, but Clem's unparalleled speed combined with near-perfect decision-making took it to another level entirely. He accrued incremental advantages that rapidly snowballed into an inevitable victory. Throw in his impeccable combat micro, and he shut out even the possibility of a miracle comeback through one great fight from his opponent.
With a single world championship in hand, I now place Clem somewhere in the top 20 with players like ByuN and PartinG who have a single super-major tournament win as the cornerstone of their resume. Alas, I fear the supremely skilled Terran may end up resembling fellow one-time WC champ ByuN in another way, unable to add more meaningful results to his resume. While ByuN never reached his peak level of play again, Clem may simply not be given enough opportunities to compete in another world championship class tournament.
I haven't worked out the exact placements for the players in this range, but I'm inclined to place Clem ahead of similar peers in ByuN and PartinG. The apples-to-oranges comparison with players such as Cure, Trap, or Solar is more complicated. There's a sizable group of players who don't have world championship titles, but when it comes to other tournaments, they've all had more aggregate success than Clem throughout their long careers. Perhaps sorting out this cluster of players is a project for another day.
The Dark Before After the Rain
Dark
Ranking change: #11 -> #7
Yes, it's finally happening. The second biggest controversy of my original GOAT ranking is being resolved as Dark is moving into the top ten.
In 2024, Dark gave us an impressive reminder of his lasting power as a top-tier player by winning Code S Season 2 and reaching the round-of-four or better in four out of the five Liquipedia-premier events he participated in.
Despite being the consensus underdog against Maru in the Code S finals, Dark's signature Roach timings completely disoriented Maru and let him pull off an upset victory. Given Dark's history in major tournament finals, it wasn't even surprising anymore to see him force another opponent to fall for such 'obvious' tactics. With the Code S win, Dark got his single biggest GOAT list boost since he won DH Valencia in 2022, bringing him to four Korean Individual League titles (1 SSL Premier + 3 Code S), one World Championship (BlizzCon), and a slew of lesser titles and high finishes on top of that.
Even though he still lacks the kind of superlative 3-5 year peak of other players in the top ten, the strength of his cumulative career achievements allow him to pass soO and reach #7 on the GOAT list.
You could argue that Dark was unfortunate not to pad his resume even further in 2024, as his RO4 eliminations at EWC and IEM Katowice both came at the hands of Serral. Two more WC runner-ups may even have seen him contest Zest for the #6 spot.
The Elefantti in the Room
Maru
Ranking change: #1 -> #2
Maru, who you may have heard took #1 in my original GOAT list, had an extremely “Maru” year in 2024. That means he was spectacular: he reached the finals of five LP-premier events, including a championship run in Season 1 of Code S.
However, when it came to his so-called rivalry against Serral, Maru also performed to up expectations. The Korean Terran dropped a pair of finals to Serral (IEM Katowice and ESL Masters Spring), failing to win a game in either BO7 series.
While I don't compare head-to-head score when deciding the rankings of two players close to each other, these losses did have the result of boosting Serral's resume even further at the expense of Maru. As the gap between Maru and Serral was already paper thin to begin with, even a handful of extra tournaments where Serral outperformed Maru were going to make an impact.
After reviewing my original GOAT rankings and my methodology throughout 2024, I finally feel comfortable moving Maru to the number two spot and placing Serral as the greatest player of all time.
Serral
Ranking change: #2 -> #1
It’s time to discuss my new GOAT.
Over the past few years, Serral has come as close to perfect as anyone in StarCraft II history. That trend continued in 2024, as the Finnish Phenom won IEM Katowice, placed runner-up at the Esports World Cup, and added an EPT Seasonal championship at Dreamhack Dallas. Of course, he did all this while posting the absurd win rates we have come to expect from him, going 25-4 in offline matches (86.21% win-rate) and 68-20 in games (77.27%) during the calendar year. Era to era win-rate comparisons are tricky given the differences in player pool, but basically only previous versions of Serral and the absolute best versions of Maru can match those numbers historically.
Although Maru remains the greatest Korean player, Serral's sustained excellence since 2018—capped by a particularly dominant 2024—has pushed him over the top in my overall rankings.
What's mind-blowing is that Serral added these accomplishments while performing his mandatory military service. While he doesn't get any bonus 'GOAT points' for winning under adverse circumstances, this deserves a mention on its own merits. No, Finnish military service is not the career ender that Korean military often is, but it's still crazy that Serral maintained his level of play despite being essentially a part-time player. After showing that kind of resilience, you have to think that he'd find a way to up his game, and give Clem a real challenge should they face off in a future WC event.
With both Clem and Serral having reached such heights in 2024, they deserve another clash at the top of the scene in 2025.
Credits and acknowledgements
Written by: Mizenhauer Editor: Wax Statistics and records: Aligulac.com, Liquipedia Images and Photos: ESL (photography: Stephanie Lindgren)
Oooh nice! Dark not being in the top 10 was my biggest gripe with the first list. I kinda disagreed with Maru #1 and with MVP being so high, but I'm glad Dark is back in there, and I think #7 is quite fair at that.
Fair update, tho without Life in top 3, again this list can't be taken too seriously. That said maru, herO and a lot of koreans were not playing sc2 full time last and this year, so you are justified to bump Serral up but you can't use 2024 results to do so. Also, Serral played more sc2 during his few month "military service" than I did during a whole summer at home, it obviously can't be compared to 2 year cold turkey korean military service.
On January 21 2025 16:19 luxon wrote: Fair update, tho without Life in top 3, again this list can't be taken too seriously. That said maru, herO and a lot of koreans were not playing sc2 full time last and this year, so you are justified to bump Serral up but you can't use 2024 results to do so. Also, Serral played more sc2 during his few month "military service" than I did during a whole summer at home, it obviously can't be compared to 2 year cold turkey korean military service.
I have to agree personally with most of these updates. I really hope we get the opportunity to see these guys continue to duke it out at large scale events.
Short, simple little piece that I would venture to guess will have some big, fun ripples throughout the community. =D Love it.
I agree with the changes and final placments but find them inconsistent with each other at the same time.
After kato2024, Maru got 1 GSL win, 1 GSL second, 1 Starswar win, 1 ESL second and Serral got 1 ESL win and EWC second. Serral supassing Maru with these finishies seems to imply the value of GSL in 2024 is quite a bit lower than that of ESL in 2024.
Meanwhile, after kato2024, Dark only got a GSL win, which is enough to boost him from #11 to #7 for you. That seems to imply the value of a GSL in 2024 is very high.
Together, these would imply if rain won an ESL in 2024, he would have surpassed soo in your ranking. I find it hard to believe it would be the case given your methodology.
Hmm I disagree that a Code S win in 2024 should boost someone from 11 to 7. But 7 is way more appropriate for Dark anyway, so it works out. Seems like Miz realizing his mistake
On January 21 2025 16:19 luxon wrote: Fair update, tho without Life in top 3, again this list can't be taken too seriously. That said maru, herO and a lot of koreans were not playing sc2 full time last and this year, so you are justified to bump Serral up but you can't use 2024 results to do so. Also, Serral played more sc2 during his few month "military service" than I did during a whole summer at home, it obviously can't be compared to 2 year cold turkey korean military service.
Life is a chinese WC3 player who has literally won nothing in WC3 nor SC2, why tf would he be in the Top 3?
I was honestly convinced we broke Miz and he would never touch the subject again, glad I was wrong. Serral over Maru is more than fair after this year. It isn't even about head2head or championships, but the fact that Serral turned the most anticipated rivalry in SC2 history into an utter joke. I'm not aware of many Esports-examples in which the No. 1 was so much in the head of the No. 2 (or vice-versa). Just now I'm thinking back to the WTL finals, when Vitality had to decide their revive against Serral. Had real "so Maru, wanna add another loss?"-vibes.
Dark on #7 feels also more than fair. I think he mostly suffers from the fact that, besides his World Championship, he suffers from not having one of these *wow*-performances. Though I think he was the last korean to talk shit about foreigners and get away with it (during his WC), which is an achievement in itself I guess?
On January 21 2025 16:19 luxon wrote: Fair update, tho without Life in top 3, again this list can't be taken too seriously. That said maru, herO and a lot of koreans were not playing sc2 full time last and this year, so you are justified to bump Serral up but you can't use 2024 results to do so. Also, Serral played more sc2 during his few month "military service" than I did during a whole summer at home, it obviously can't be compared to 2 year cold turkey korean military service.
Life is a chinese WC3 player who has literally won nothing in WC3 nor SC2, why tf would he be in the Top 3?
I was honestly convinced we broke Miz and he would never touch the subject again, glad I was wrong. Serral over Maru is more than fair after this year. It isn't even about head2head or championships, but the fact that Serral turned the most anticipated rivalry in SC2 history into an utter joke. I'm not aware of many Esports-examples in which the No. 1 was so much in the head of the No. 2 (or vice-versa). Just now I'm thinking back to the WTL finals, when Vitality had to decide their revive against Serral. Had real "so Maru, wanna add another loss?"-vibes.
Dark on #7 feels also more than fair. I think he mostly suffers from the fact that, besides his World Championship, he suffers from not having one of these *wow*-performances. Though I think he was the last korean to talk shit about foreigners and get away with it (during his WC), which is an achievement in itself I guess?
Also even if Life were eligible in this list, he'd be no higher than the lower half of the top 10. 1 World championship, one world championship runner up, 2 GSLs, and a lot of other premiers is probably good enough for 10-7th place but no better.
If Life had continued would he have won a lot more? Probably, though some players who were great in HOTS were never as good in legacy. Can't rate based on hypotheticals anyways.
On January 21 2025 16:19 luxon wrote: Fair update, tho without Life in top 3, again this list can't be taken too seriously. That said maru, herO and a lot of koreans were not playing sc2 full time last and this year, so you are justified to bump Serral up but you can't use 2024 results to do so. Also, Serral played more sc2 during his few month "military service" than I did during a whole summer at home, it obviously can't be compared to 2 year cold turkey korean military service.
Life is a chinese WC3 player who has literally won nothing in WC3 nor SC2, why tf would he be in the Top 3?
I was honestly convinced we broke Miz and he would never touch the subject again, glad I was wrong. Serral over Maru is more than fair after this year. It isn't even about head2head or championships, but the fact that Serral turned the most anticipated rivalry in SC2 history into an utter joke. I'm not aware of many Esports-examples in which the No. 1 was so much in the head of the No. 2 (or vice-versa). Just now I'm thinking back to the WTL finals, when Vitality had to decide their revive against Serral. Had real "so Maru, wanna add another loss?"-vibes.
Dark on #7 feels also more than fair. I think he mostly suffers from the fact that, besides his World Championship, he suffers from not having one of these *wow*-performances. Though I think he was the last korean to talk shit about foreigners and get away with it (during his WC), which is an achievement in itself I guess?
Also even if Life were eligible in this list, he'd be no higher than the lower half of the top 10. 1 World championship, one world championship runner up, 2 GSLs, and a lot of other premiers is probably good enough for 10-7th place but no better.
If Life had continued would he have won a lot more? Probably, though some players who were great in HOTS were never as good in legacy. Can't rate based on hypotheticals anyways.
Mvp is at 4th and him and Life were considered neck to neck in the Goat debate when Life got banned. Although I feel Mvp is also a bit high so both around 7-10 sounds about right
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?
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?
Because he won 4 GSLs in a row and is still winning tournaments 6 years later.
Nice update! Thanks for putting in the time. I mostly agree with the corrections - good job!
After kato2024, Maru got 1 GSL win, 1 GSL second, 1 Starswar win, 1 ESL second and Serral got 1 ESL win and EWC second. Serral supassing Maru with these finishies seems to imply the value of GSL in 2024 is quite a bit lower than that of ESL in 2024.
Maru had a pretty strong 2024, but the year was also Serral's strongest one. Serral won MC7, Katowice and ESL, placing 2nd in the only tournament he did not win... this is a 75% participation-win-ratio and an average place of 1,25 (Maru achieved a very respectable 28,57% and 2,86). Serral sported a 96,30% win rate versus the top Koreans in 2024... this is utterly ridiculous (Maru had 79,07%). He further only lost to one player - Clem - for nearly an entire year. That is absolutely insane and a feat not one player even remotely comes close to - and he did all that while having less time to train because he had his military service. His record shows 26 matches in a row versus Koreans, without losing a single one (he previously held the record with 19 and 18 matches respectively) and Serral defeated the whole Team Vitality (Maru, Solar, Ryung) in a King of the Hill format all by himself 7-0 in the Finals of WTL.
You also can't forget that the current GSL is played without the best players of the world most of the time (Serral, Clem, Reynor, Oliveira) and has a pretty compressed format compared to earlier years. In StarsWar many big names were missing too, thus I think it is fine that Miz put Serral above Maru, if the difference was paper-thin before IEM, the unofficial Worlds of 2024. In my GOAT list Maru only came close in the tournament score anyhow. By all other metrics like match win rates, participation-win-ratios, average placements or rank 1 occupation, Serral outperformed Maru by extreme margins objectively (only looking at non-region-locked tournaments).
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?
Because one bad match up for some time does not decide a GOAT title. By your logic, Serral must definitely be the GOAT, as he has the most stomps against all other top players. Or... no one can be the GOAT, as everyone suffered a stomp one way or another (Like Clem lost to Serral 3-0 at IEM). Clem not being in the top 10 makes absolutely sense as he does neither have the duration, win rates nor average placements. Doesn't mean that he at the moment has the edge over Serral for several potential reasons.
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.
For me personally, feels about right. I was always conflicted about not having Dark on the list--definitely doesn't feel like he had the absolute mega-peak that some others reached, but he's been so consistent for so long.
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 get the point, doesn't change that it is not particularly convincing...
Because he won 4 GSLs in a row and is still winning tournaments 6 years later.
And Serral has won a World Championship title, did it again, is still winning tournaments 7 years later...this is the entire debate all over again. With the difference, that in the last year Serral has only gathered more points towards his claim, while Maru did not (in comparison to Serral). Also doesn't help, though I don't think Miz factored that in very much, that Marus performance in MC8 was...lacking, to be careful. And he didn't particularly blow it out of the water at HSC either.
On January 21 2025 21:55 Charoisaur wrote: Hmm I disagree that a Code S win in 2024 should boost someone from 11 to 7. But 7 is way more appropriate for Dark anyway, so it works out. Seems like Miz realizing his mistake
I honestly had dark conmfortablly over soO even before 2024 Maybe it’s just me?
I'm probably in search of controversy (i.e. fun) for an update that is frankly not likely to be very controversial, but I do wonder--given the respective 2024s Maru and Dark had--how Dark could gain four slots while Maru could lose one. I mean, I don't really wonder, but I want people to wonder
A more interesting--and not totally unrelated--conceptual question is the one Miz kinda posed with his Clem analysis. At what point are the prior eras of competition so much more fierce than today's such that current results should matter very little or not at all? If the scene were literally just crowdfunded Clem v. MaxPax showmatches I think we'd all know we've arrived, but this is feeling like a bridge to you-know-where paved with good intentions. At some point maybe you just gotta call it?
I don't know how I feel about Rain getting bumped from this GOAT list. Like actually I don't know. But part of me doesn't really like it. I don't think I can accept an understanding in which Reynor, Clem, Trap, Zoun, etc. win so much in 2025, 2026, 2027, etc. that they start sniping GOATs on the heels of Aligulac inflation and recency bias. Part of me feels like if you didn't win in SC2's most competitive era, you can't be a GOAT. You can be a BOAT (Best of All Time), just not a GOAT.
I've gone through phases feeling like Serral, Maru, and Rogue are the GOAT, and I think I might be in a phase now where I feel like Mvp is the GOAT. But even when I'm not in that mood, I think we need some of us to remind us all of the days in which hundreds and even thousands of players competed for all the glory to be the best gamer in the world. Not a couple dozen competing for the biggest bag from the Saudis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What if since Serral bops Maru, Clem bops Serral (recently), and Gumiho bops Clem, we concluded Gumiho = Goat and all went home happy?
The only thing I didn't agree in the original ranking was the omission of Dark and Serral/Maru debate. Glad to see both things fixed.
Respect for Miz to update the ranking. I can imagine how hard it is to walk back on your position after defending it for a whole year. But it's for the best.
I wonder how often the Serral/Maru situation happens in any sports. Imagine Jordan and LeBron plays in the same era, both had the same decorated career but never meet in the finals, and when they finally meet MJ sweeps LeBron two years straight. That's basically what happens in SC2 in 2024.
This year was disappointing as a Maru fan. On one hand he had unbelievable consistency and won yet another GSL and Stars War and made 3 other finals. But the one sided beat down Serral put on him in so many consecutive maps over a bunch of events was crazy. Especially since TvZ has been pretty balanced last year. At least in 2022 when Serral beat him a few times it was obvious Zerg was the best race and their lifetime h2h wasn't that one sided yet.
I still think if Maru had won a Blizzcon or Kato at any point in his career he would be the goat despite the poor h2h vs Serral but unfortunately he just couldn't do it despite being the favorite many times.
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 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.
On January 22 2025 08:03 rwala wrote: I'm probably in search of controversy (i.e. fun) for an update that is frankly not likely to be very controversial, but I do wonder--given the respective 2024s Maru and Dark had--how Dark could gain four slots while Maru could lose one. I mean, I don't really wonder, but I want people to wonder
I thought the same, but took Miz' own word "reviewing" as perhaps re-calibrating his weightings. But we can only guess, as he never exactly showed the weightings (which perhaps was a good choice, looking at how people were arguing about weighing metrics, that wouldn't have made any difference in the end, differently when I published my list).
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 agree with your takes. Even if we look at rather subjective metrics, Maru for the most part of his career was never considered the best (probably mostly around 2018 when Serral's long lasting emergence wasn't clear yet).
And I totally agree with your last part... I very much hope that they will face at LiuLi and if Serral can't do it then, that we are able to witness another adaption of Serral at some other future tournament versus Clem.
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.
Focusing on a Top 10 bring exactly such issues with itself. My idea was to circumvent such discussions, by focusing on 4 contenders that checked certain metrics, after pre-analyzing around 16 players. But even then people were mad that some of the 16 didn't make it in the Top 4 :D
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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"
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 02:29 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
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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!
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...
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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 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 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.
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 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 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?
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:
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:
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?
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:
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:
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: [quote]
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?
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:
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:
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?
There is a flipside to that, which is that Koreans broadly couldn’t keep up with what Serral was bringing, who didn’t have the benefit of that team environment.
In 2025 I think it’s a little different, the problem is that existing titans have declined and the production line never replaced them.
But in 2018 you’ve still got a lot of those players, plenty of tournament winnings available and this new kid on the block, but folks largely didn’t consistently rise to the challenge.
Edit - Now I’ll say it’s still hard, nay impossible to compare across eras, especially eras where the game itself changed, tournaments and wider scenes changed etc.
Just I find there’s another side of the coin with many arguments. I find neglecting one tends to be done in order to make the case for one’s favourite, and factoring both in make it bloody difficult!
The collapse of Proleague and then subsequently all of those teams undoubtedly damaged Korean StarCraft, but on the other hand Serral never had the benefit of in-house training with absolutely elite players.
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:
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:
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: [quote] 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?
Very reasonable take.
Very unfun take.
True! I tried to bait people earlier but didn’t work. You’re the number #1 fun-ruiner tho in putting out such a uncontroversial update!
It's very hard to argue Serral as the GOAT from a gameplay standpoint. He's just been so dominant -- he came out showing the best defensive/reactive macro zerg play we've ever seen, and even adjusted over the years to add variety and timings to his game.
The way he thinks the game is next-level, really the best answer SC2 has to Brood War Flash, and he combines that with god-level mechanics and attention to detail -- things like never missing upgrades, getting his workers to the most recent expansion, just flawless transitions from early-game to mid-game to late-game. He's a problem-solver, and we saw that just recently in the adjustments he made to 4-1 MaxPax in their rematch.
However, there's an element of tragedy to Serral being the GOAT to me. I think the Starleague format is easily the best way for SC2 players to show their skill, and no "weekend" tournament can really compare to the demands of making it through two group stages, then having to make it through a Bo5/Bo7 bracket when both opponents have time to prep for each other. The team dynamics added another element to this, and the KeSPA era really was SC2 at its peak in so many ways.
Serral being the GOAT is a testament to his skill, hard work, and game understanding, and I don't want to take anything away from him -- never going over to Korea to participate in the Starleagues was a choice he made for a number of reasons, by the time he came around it was every bit as lucrative to dominate the European circuit and weekend global tournaments as it was to grind out GSLs (SSL and Korean Teamleagues were already gone). And he proved himself against the top Koreans over and over again.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Serral being the GOAT is just a bit sad for the fans -- the best comparison I can make is if Ohtani or someone else spent his career dominating NPB, then beating the best the US/MLB had to offer in World Baseball Classics. Doesn't make him any less great as a player, but boy it would have been great to see him consistently tested in the top SC2 leagues.
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:
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:
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 agree that results in 2025 shouldn't count for much because of the state of the scene, but when Serral had its initial breakthrough in 2018 the scene was still quite healthy and active Especially this statement
has never faced the greats of the game in their prime
isn't really true as Maru, Stats, Rogue and Dark are generally considered top 10 players of all time and had their peak around 2017-2019 where they competed with Serral. I admit it's not the same as playing in the Kespa era with teamhouses analyzing your weaknesses, but in the absense of a truly dominant player during that time, Serrals success in 2018/19 (and onwards) is enough for me to put him above any other player
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.
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.
That is literally Rain and MVP though.
NesTea's peak only lasted eight months, but it was enough to make him a top 15 player in my book. You're on the right track.
Serral is not the goat lmao, he has become relevant ever since the competitiveness of starcraft 2 has decreased, the more it decreased the stronger serral became, it's easy to be the best when there is literraly nobody playing, everyone has either retired, went back to broodwar or went to the military, one proof of that ? Just look at the size of the gsl, the last few ones in comparison to gsl in 2017, 2016, 2015
there is not even enough players to make a full tournament, it's sad, gsl now :
Competitive starcraft has been dead for a few years, if you want to name a starcraft 2 greatest of all times, it should probably be someone like innovation, maybe maru could be in the discussion but it's hard, he won is first gsl in 2018, 2018 !! but he had some starleagues so he is definetely up there but not serral
And don't confuse skill with competitiveness, some users on this website always confuse those 2 things, the level of skill of players increases with time but the level of competitiveness (the number of talent around, in the scene) has severly decreased, GOAT is not a title you give to someone at the dying stage of a game when there is nobody left playing and this guy is the best, GOAT is the guy who has dominated and has been the most accomplished at the peak of competitiveness of the game.
And yes Serral has beaten innovation, when he stopped caring about the game and was a shadow of himself not when he was a champion. (even in 2019 innovation beat him at wesg when he was washed up lol)
And i see posts above me talking about the fact that Serral has been dominant in 2018 for instance when the scene was still pretty healthy and thats true but he was not as dominant as you think, he dominated 2018 but dark was the world champion in 2019, reynor was the world champion after that and serral lost many times during that period in 2020-2021 to rogue, dark, reynor, clem etc basically his dominance from 2018 to 2022 is good but not enough to claim GOAT status and AFTER THAT thats where the scene started really decreasing, gsl in 2022 looked like that :
https://ibb.co/X2006j4 so granting him goat status because he wins over a scene thats looks like that ?
Also BTW, Serral is not even the greatest skill of all times, thats Clem
Your goat list and the discussion brought about around it, had me rethink the debate. Before I had serral as a clear no. 1, but now I have maru, you have to take balance into account to hold this position though, imo. So for the second time I disagree with you on no. 1 and 2
The best part about the update is Rain out of top 10, it feels a bit like the cheeky pick, but now that you've shown your fanboyism of rain and soo, you can switch it up and have a real list, but I might be reading too much into it.
it's easy to be the best when there is literraly nobody playing, everyone has either retired, went back to broodwar or went to the military
If it's so easy then why has no other player come close to being as dominant as Serral? Listen I agree with a lot of what you're saying but you can't just completely disregard Serrals achievements like that. Even in 2018 he probably showed the best / most consistent macro Zerg play we've ever seen, and while yes, he lost way more matches/games than today he was still the overall best player in the period from 2018-2022. And from then on by far the best player.
He will probably never be a completely undisputed Goat like Flash due to the arguments you mentioned but he's just by far the most reasonable pick. Can you really call Innovation the Goat who was barely ahead of his competitors at the time (if at all due to Life, Zest and 3x world champion sOs around). Maru who consistently choked at the biggest stage?
GOAT is the guy who has dominated and has been the most accomplished at the peak of competitiveness of the game.
it's easy to be the best when there is literraly nobody playing, everyone has either retired, went back to broodwar or went to the military
If it's so easy then why has no other player come close to being as dominant as Serral? Listen I agree with a lot of what you're saying but you can't just completely disregard Serrals achievements like that. Even in 2018 he probably showed the best / most consistent macro Zerg play we've ever seen, and while yes, he lost way more matches/games than today he was still the overall best player in the period from 2018-2022. And from then on by far the best player.
He will probably never be a completely undisputed Goat like Flash due to the arguments you mentioned but he's just by far the most reasonable pick. Can you really call Innovation the Goat who was barely ahead of his competitors at the time (if at all due to Life, Zest and 3x world champion sOs around). Maru who consistently choked at the biggest stage?
GOAT is the guy who has dominated and has been the most accomplished at the peak of competitiveness of the game.
Agreed but there is no such guy
Indeed aye, I don’t think one can dispute the competitive depth was deeper in previous epochs.
But it’s not like the prize pools collapsed. ‘Man there’s less competition now, and sure hey this new Serral kid is pretty good, but yanno what I am going to grind my ass off, win a bunch of titles and money and retire after a year or two.’
Motivation is a curious thing, burnout is real etc etc. Fully get that and sympathise with it, but it does stand to reason that this is an attractive proposition for any great player, or even nearly great player in a similarishly lucrative tournament circuit if the level has notably dropped. If it’s for the glory and you’ve a Starleague or especially World Championship-shaped hole in your resume, it’s a great time to fill it.
But folks largely didn’t do it, and greatness is about doing things ultimately. ‘It so was motivated…’. Well I mean, they weren’t, so they aren’t, as we say in my neck of the woods ‘And if my aunt had balls she’d be my uncle.’
Inno is one of my all-time favourites but even at his peak he was streaky and inconsistent season to season. Add in his latter years, he probably has more mediocre seasons than great ones.
In a hypothetical world where SC2 limped along, all these staples and legends of the scene retired, and Serral popped along in a few years and started hoovering up all these titles and showing those numbers. Sure I think yeah 100% it’s almost impossible to compare him with other GOAT candidates. But there’s significant overlap, he’s played those same players.
Hey it’s not unanimous by any means but a fair few of Korea’s finest consider Serral the guy, and they’re the ones who have to play him and have a pro player’s insight into his strengths.
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
On January 23 2025 08:45 rwala wrote:
On January 23 2025 06:37 PremoBeats wrote:
On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:
On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
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.
[/u] [/QUOTE] [/QUOTE]
...I mean, is it really just a coincidence that non-Korean players only became competitive after all the Korean SC2 teams disbanded?[/QUOTE]
There's no coincidence. It's just the time that the non korean scene took to develop a competitive scene of its own. Before SCII, competitive play was mostly lan based, offline. So Korean scene had an enormous advantage from the SCII getgo.
So, by 2010, if you were already mature (or almost) and you were in Korea, you obviously had a great advantage, because it meant you spent your developing years in that more competitive scene.
But people started practicing worldwide, which meant that if you were YOUNG enough, you would mature whilst practicing online (from AM/EU), having way more of a shot to play against the best at that time than as of 8-10 years earlier, in BW.
SCII knowledge simply became more democratic in SCII. So the prodigies had true opportunities to develop (which takes time). By 2017-2019 they were maturing and flourishing. That also means that Korean gaming houses started to not impact as much as they did before, which is one of the causes for their disbandment.
Also worth noting: Maru and Serral did peak at the same time. From 2018 on. And he clearly was toppled by Serral from that same moment on.
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
On January 23 2025 08:45 rwala wrote:
On January 23 2025 06:37 PremoBeats wrote:
On January 23 2025 05:13 Nasigil1 wrote:
On January 23 2025 02:29 dedede wrote:
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.
[/u] [/QUOTE]
...I mean, is it really just a coincidence that non-Korean players only became competitive after all the Korean SC2 teams disbanded?
Also worth noting: Maru and Serral did peak at the same time. From 2018 on. And he clearly was toppled by Serral from that same moment on.
Disagree with that statement though. Yeah Maru had his best year in 2018 where Serral had his breakthrough year, but Maru at that point was already a full-time player for 8 years while Serral just started, so logically Maru started to decline earlier + could practice less due to injuries. Which is visible in their results as Serral only really distanced himself from Maru from 2022 on, in 2018-2021 it was quite even between the two (in H2H as well as achievements)
New GOAT article. GOAT sequel It's been 1 year since the GOAT series?! We'll get to open up discussions about GOAT again after the last threads got closed EWC SC2 confirmed SC2 alive Serral #1, Dark in top 10 Serral vs Clem 2025 in ALIEV GAME SC2???
Edit: Nvm no EWC SC2 news yet but if it's happening then this article is a great way to reboot SC2 hype
Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level
On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote: Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level
I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory.
I'm curious exactly what that length of domination refers to.
Because up to 2017, Maru wasn't a GOAT contender. It was Innovation or MVP, excluding Life or Taeja during their peaks, and the brief sOs hype if he were to have beaten Innovation in GSL and denied his 3rd GSL and gotten his own, leaving Innovation without a clear argument to be above MVP and sOs. And maybe the brief mentions of Rain and Maru at the very end of HotS.
On January 31 2025 00:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I'm curious exactly what that length of domination refers to.
Because up to 2017, Maru wasn't a GOAT contender. It was Innovation or MVP, excluding Life or Taeja during their peaks, and the brief sOs hype if he were to have beaten Innovation in GSL and denied his 3rd GSL and gotten his own, leaving Innovation without a clear argument to be above MVP and sOs. And maybe the brief mentions of Rain and Maru at the very end of HotS.
Prior to 2017. The goat contenders the goat contenders were innovation / mvp / life / sOs
Each had something lacking in their resume. Innovation was missing world championships, life had the scandal, sOs was lacking GSL’s, and mvp dominance was during a “weak” period
After 2017, Maru only dominated the Korea scene and couldn’t do that on the international scene ( thanks for Serral), but also he has some chokejob losing to players when he was the heavy favourite.
Maru rise in Korea was due to other Koreans leaving for military or simply just aging out
On January 31 2025 00:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I'm curious exactly what that length of domination refers to.
Because up to 2017, Maru wasn't a GOAT contender. It was Innovation or MVP, excluding Life or Taeja during their peaks, and the brief sOs hype if he were to have beaten Innovation in GSL and denied his 3rd GSL and gotten his own, leaving Innovation without a clear argument to be above MVP and sOs. And maybe the brief mentions of Rain and Maru at the very end of HotS.
Maru rise in Korea was due to other Koreans leaving for military or simply just aging out
You realize that holding that opinion also discredits Serrals achievements because he benefits just as much from the same factors?
2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
Now for sure they dont practice anymore.. But at 2018? When some big names had left, but theres was still big prizes. And by the way, since big salaries went away, it means that prize pool became more important, so winning tournaments became more crucial. I think Maru, Rogue, Stats, etc gave their best (injuries aside). And they were the best, which is why they remained
On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote: Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level
I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory.
While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters.
I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
Foreigners absolutely could join Proleague teams if they wanted to like Special and State proved. Most foreigners simply weren't good enough back then.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
Foreigners absolutely could join Proleague teams if they wanted to like Special and State proved. Most foreigners simply weren't good enough back then.
Neither State nor Special joined Proleague because they were that amazing (no offense). It wasn't exactly like Jin Air said "we NEED that MajOr guy!". Both of them more or less just enjoyed living in Korea, but I highly doubt they got the same amount and level of training than the other players.
On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote: Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level
I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory.
While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters.
I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday.
On the flipside of that, SC2 isn’t BW. It’s got a very different ecosystem, a different fan base and a different (often shifting) annual structure.
Some fans who came from following BW put a huge amount of value in the parts that transferred over from pro BW, but don’t necessarily contextualise it within its new environment. Team leagues were hugely second fiddle to individual titles pre and post-Kespa, and I think for most fans this was also the case during Kespa as well.
StarCraft 2 was always a more open, international game, Kespa tried to return it to a closed, purely Korean-based state of affairs. I don’t think it worked and I don’t think it was a sensible aim to begin with.
Boxing ain’t what it once was, for a whole ton of reasons. Especially in the heavyweight division compared to the days of legends like Ali, Sonny Liston and Foreman etc.
Having 4 title belts, and interminable delays in some of the big fights that still have a huge demand has been a problem. There’s some similarities to eras of SC2 there. MMA has grown to eat into the boxing market as well.
But other divisions are pretty healthy and suffer less from this for whatever reason.
One hypothesis as to the decline of the specifically American heavyweight is simply that potential boxers in that weight class have got the physical profile to excel in things like NFL and basketball, which are now bigger sports relatively than they were half a century+ ago. Whereas you don’t lose as much potential talent in lower divisions, because those people are too small to really excel in many of the US’ national sports. I’m 5’9, not overweight but I’m much, much bigger than Carl Frampton, a boxer from here who held world titles at two weights. He’d definitely beat me up though. Other countries this may be reversed somewhat. Someone like Tyson Fury is too tall and naturally heavy-set to become say, a football (soccer) star, or at least not easily.
There’s also some interesting writing on boxing being something of a refuge and pathway to expression of pride for minority/persecuted communities. In the early 20th century in the States, Jewish boxers featured very prominently for example, which was something I recently learned. Then it was Italian or Irish Americans featuring very prominently, and subsequently African Americans. In the UK we have Tyson Fury who comes from an Irish Traveller background who are massively discriminated against here. Some have argued that as various groups became more enfranchised, this thus lessened the pull of boxing in that way.
It’s also a massively working class pursuit in terms of its recruitment pool, it’s certainly the case here too. Our top boxers come from pretty deprived areas, usually in Belfast. Boxing is seen as having a dual benefit of instilling some discipline, but also giving potentially (or actual) wayward youths an outlet for adolescent aggression. Gentrification starts to eat into that however. If gyms that have been around for decades start closing because they can’t afford to keep running with the creep of gentrification, you start to lose the talent production factories.
Boxing I think also suffers nowadays in that we’re in an era of just constant content. If you’re a football, NFL or NBA fan etc there’s important matches every week, sometimes more. With boxing, it’s very feast or famine unless you’re a massive hardcore fan, most dip in and out for the real big fights but don’t follow it regularly. Myself like I’ll properly watch the Premier League and Serie A, European competition, and podcasts will keep me up to date on goings-on in La Liga, Ligue Une and other notable stories.
This was way less of an issue back in the day, because the competing sports also weren’t all televised. Indeed I’ve heard it said that baseball’s heyday as ‘America’s game’ was as much down to great sportswriters as the game itself. Pick up a newspaper and the good writers could weave a real compelling yarn. But actually watching baseball versus the alternatives? Well it started to drop off just through changes in how people consumed sport.
TLDR after reading a bunch of boxing books and listening to podcasts where boxing brains discussed its current state, the general consensus is roughly that boxing has dropped down the pecking order, but is still big enough to not totally invalidate the current epoch. Floyd Mayweather is a gigantic cunt of a man, but boxing writers still consider him an all-time great, or Manny Pacquiao, or Canelo etc.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
Foreigners absolutely could join Proleague teams if they wanted to like Special and State proved. Most foreigners simply weren't good enough back then.
Neither State nor Special joined Proleague because they were that amazing (no offense). It wasn't exactly like Jin Air said "we NEED that MajOr guy!". Both of them more or less just enjoyed living in Korea, but I highly doubt they got the same amount and level of training than the other players.
It’s also worth noting that most of the Korean based foreigners never really were or became the best foreign players.
Jinro for a short period, Idra and Huk did get some benefits but couldn’t stay ahead of the competition for that long.
Special and Scarlett were out there for ages, but were they much better than Stephano or Snute?
Perhaps linguistic barriers prevented them from fully making the most of it, but most of the best foreigners we’ve ever seen didn’t spend a huge amount of time in Korea. Folks did occasionally pop over for a bit sure but they weren’t spending cumulatively years there.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
Aye, it’s one of the theoretical strengths of eSports, especially a primarily 1v1 game that people shouldn’t need to relocate to be competitive if other structures are working. Cuts overheads considerably, and theoretically lets talent flourish and develop wherever it sprouts.
It was considered a big deal when Byun grinded it teamless to win his GSL/WC, or even Rain being the first to win a Starleague while on a foreign team. And I think rightly so.
But that’s Serral’s entire career, basically. Reynor and Clem have had team support but not of the team house kind.
Maru also had a period where Jin Air were basically the last Korean team standing, and he made some hay in that period, which I think is oft-neglected in such discussions. For me he’s still absolutely up there as a GOAT but I think the gap between his GSL performances and his continual WC fumbles is partly down to having/not having the JAGW collective in the former and not really the time to leverage it in the latter. And he’s dropped notable series in team-kill scenarios, sOs in a WC, Rogue in a GSL final, which I think is further circumstantial evidence there. Without actually being privy to the specifics it’s absolutely speculative of course! From an outside perspective him excelling in the Starleague format, choking numerous WCs, and getting sniped by teammates in big tournies somewhat points that way.
Serral became the highest earning player in tournament winnings of all-time in the post-Kespa era, with the most Premiers. Even if we entirely minus out WCS/EU regionals he’s still hoovered up a lot of cash in other tournaments.
If the competition has dropped massively, and I’m a progamer it’s a super attractive time to just grind it out and make a bunch of cash. But nobody really did it to the degree Serral did.
Although in fairness to Maru, he’s been consistently excellent for years now, most seasons if we’re looking at who had the best year he’s at a minimum 4th and often higher.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
Yes I do not believe south Koreans were the best at sc bw and sc2 because of some genetic ability. They were the best because the infrastructure and financial incentives were there. It is entirely possible that Serral is the most naturally talented player, it is also possible that he isn't.
For example Stephano (another foreigner known to be extremely talented and lacking in discipline at that time) probably has much better results if he peaked and played during the recent years. That doesn't make him any better or worse of a player.
I think you nailed it in your last paragraph "once the playing field was leveled", you're admitting what we all know is true the team house environment generally created the best sc2 players. There are some exceptions at times like byun but that is the exception not the rule. It's ok to admit that we're not seeing the best possible sc we could be.
And if you don't believe that then region locking never would have been needed right?
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
If the competition has dropped massively, and I’m a progamer it’s a super attractive time to just grind it out and make a bunch of cash. But nobody really did it to the degree Serral did.
While that's true, it's just massively easier to improve when you're younger (not my words, but the ones of many pros) and many koreans also had to make up for lost time due to military, the circumstances just massively favor Serral here.
I mean, we don't even need to make up hypotheticals, we can see in Serral's results over the years how the competitiveness of the scene affected his performance. From 2018-2021 he was still a phenomenal player but he still was far from the invincible player he is today as he could lose 3-0, 3-0 and 4-2 to Maru, lost in finals 4-0 and 4-1 to Rogue and Dark, lost to Cure 3-0 and 4-1 and lost many more series to the likes of Byun, Zest, soO, Inno, Stats, Trap, Bunny, TY, Zoun etc. Then the players who were able to beat him one after another retired or declined and suddenly the only players that can beat him are the young ones, that aren't in decline yet (Clem and Maxpax).
On the other hand, as I previously said there was some overlap between his reign and the peak of some of the korean greats as from 2018-2021 he competed with the peak versions of Stats, Rogue, Dark and Maru who are generally considered amongst the greatest players of all time. So my guess would be if Serral had competed in the Kespa era his winrates against the top players would be similar as his winrates against Rogue/Dark/Stats/Maru from 2018-2021, with the only difference that there would probably be 10-12 players who could achieve those winrates against him.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
If the competition has dropped massively, and I’m a progamer it’s a super attractive time to just grind it out and make a bunch of cash. But nobody really did it to the degree Serral did.
While that's true, it's just massively easier to improve when you're younger (not my words, but the ones of many pros) and many koreans also had to make up for lost time due to military, the circumstances just massively favor Serral here.
I mean, we don't even need to make up hypotheticals, we can see in Serral's results over the years how the competitiveness of the scene affected his performance. From 2018-2021 he was still a phenomenal player but he still was far from the invincible player he is today as he could lose 3-0, 3-0 and 4-2 to Maru, lost in finals 4-0 and 4-1 to Rogue and Dark, lost to Cure 3-0 and 4-1 and lost many more series to the likes of Byun, Zest, soO, Inno, Stats, Trap, Bunny, TY, Zoun etc.
On the other hand, as I previously said there was some overlap between his reign and the peak of some of the korean greats as from 2018-2021 he competed with the peak versions of Stats, Rogue, Dark and Maru who are generally considered amongst the greatest players of all time. So my guess would be if Serral had competed in the Kespa era his winrates against the top players would be similar as his winrates against Rogue/Dark/Stats/Maru from 2018-2021, with the only difference that there would probably be 10-12 players who could achieve those winrates against him.
According to Aligulac his offline numbers from the start of 2018 thru the end of 2021: Under these filters, Serral is 383–126 (75.25%) in games and 141–18 (88.68%) in matches
From the very end of 2021 to today: Under these filters, Serral is 234–81 (74.29%) in games and 88–16 (84.62%) in matches.
Those numbers are insane, nobody is remotely putting in those numbers.
Interestingly there’s a slight drop between the first period and the second, which I’d attribute slightly to Reynor and Clem rising up perhaps. Serral may have hoovered up more tournaments in the second era, but he was actually less dominant overall.
Offline results from the 1st Jan of 2017: - Under these filters, Maru is 725–400 (64.44%) in games and 261–107 (70.92%) in matches. - Under these filters, Dark is 656–378 (63.44%) in games and 242–103 (70.14%) in matches. - Under these filters, Rogue is 448–264 (62.92%) in games and 170–75 (69.39%) in matches. - Under these filters, Reynor is 413–256 (61.73%) in games and 155–71 (68.58%) in matches. - Under these filters, TY is 403–250 (61.72%) in games and 151–72 (67.71%) in matches. - Under these filters, Stats is 482–325 (59.73%) in games and 186–94 (66.43%) in matches. - Under these filters, Clem is 406–252 (61.70%) in games and 161–82 (66.26%) in matches. - Under these filters, herO is 504–349 (59.09%) in games and 194–111 (63.61%) in matches. - Under these filters, Zest is 471–353 (57.16%) in games and 182–114 (61.49%) in matches.
Nobody’s close. Maru of the next best in match win rate is closer to 7th, 8th and beyond than he is to Serral.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
Yes I do not believe south Koreans were the best at sc bw and sc2 because of some genetic ability. They were the best because the infrastructure and financial incentives were there. It is entirely possible that Serral is the most naturally talented player, it is also possible that he isn't.
For example Stephano (another foreigner known to be extremely talented and lacking in discipline at that time) probably has much better results if he peaked and played during the recent years. That doesn't make him any better or worse of a player.
I think you nailed it in your last paragraph "once the playing field was leveled", you're admitting what we all know is true the team house environment generally created the best sc2 players. There are some exceptions at times like byun but that is the exception not the rule. It's ok to admit that we're not seeing the best possible sc we could be.
And if you don't believe that then region locking never would have been needed right?
It doesn't necessarily have to be about teamhouses, just in general a professional coaching enviroment will naturally create the best players, yes. Though the region lock you mentioned is kind of a point against that. Koreans dominated outside of Korea and teamhouses, because they could still rely on the huge gap that enviroment created. So I always feel it is hard to believe that all top Koreans somehow dropped massively in skill in the two years between Proleague shutting down and Serral winning his first World Championship. And as was said before: Serral still had to win against almost all of the greatest players of all time, except maybe for Mvp. If their entire greatness was based on playing in teamhouses, that feels more like a counter-argument against them than against Serral tbh.
It it just sad that we never got either a true global Proleague or atleast a western equivalent to it, because in the end: Teamleagues are great. And I think for example LoL has quite shown that your first sentence is more than correct, it isn't like Koreans have a genetic advantage (atleast I'm not aware of that). In the beginning, the korean LoL-Teams clearly benefited from the experience from Proleague, having the best teamhouses and coaching staffs. But slowly but surely and over the years, Europe and especially China closed the gap. Now the best korean Teams are still the best in the world, but no one would say that the lower ranked teams would also wipe the floor with the global competition. A statement that would have been hilarious in Proleague in ~2014
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
If the competition has dropped massively, and I’m a progamer it’s a super attractive time to just grind it out and make a bunch of cash. But nobody really did it to the degree Serral did.
While that's true, it's just massively easier to improve when you're younger (not my words, but the ones of many pros) and many koreans also had to make up for lost time due to military, the circumstances just massively favor Serral here.
I mean, we don't even need to make up hypotheticals, we can see in Serral's results over the years how the competitiveness of the scene affected his performance. From 2018-2021 he was still a phenomenal player but he still was far from the invincible player he is today as he could lose 3-0, 3-0 and 4-2 to Maru, lost in finals 4-0 and 4-1 to Rogue and Dark, lost to Cure 3-0 and 4-1 and lost many more series to the likes of Byun, Zest, soO, Inno, Stats, Trap, Bunny, TY, Zoun etc.
On the other hand, as I previously said there was some overlap between his reign and the peak of some of the korean greats as from 2018-2021 he competed with the peak versions of Stats, Rogue, Dark and Maru who are generally considered amongst the greatest players of all time. So my guess would be if Serral had competed in the Kespa era his winrates against the top players would be similar as his winrates against Rogue/Dark/Stats/Maru from 2018-2021, with the only difference that there would probably be 10-12 players who could achieve those winrates against him.
According to Aligulac his offline numbers from the start of 2018 thru the end of 2021: Under these filters, Serral is 383–126 (75.25%) in games and 141–18 (88.68%) in matches
From the very end of 2021 to today: Under these filters, Serral is 234–81 (74.29%) in games and 88–16 (84.62%) in matches.
Those numbers are insane, nobody is remotely putting in those numbers.
Interestingly there’s a slight drop between the first period and the second, which I’d attribute slightly to Reynor and Clem rising up perhaps. Serral may have hoovered up more tournaments in the second era, but he was actually less dominant overall.
Offline results from the 1st Jan of 2017: - Under these filters, Maru is 725–400 (64.44%) in games and 261–107 (70.92%) in matches. - Under these filters, Dark is 656–378 (63.44%) in games and 242–103 (70.14%) in matches. - Under these filters, Rogue is 448–264 (62.92%) in games and 170–75 (69.39%) in matches. - Under these filters, Reynor is 413–256 (61.73%) in games and 155–71 (68.58%) in matches. - Under these filters, TY is 403–250 (61.72%) in games and 151–72 (67.71%) in matches. - Under these filters, Stats is 482–325 (59.73%) in games and 186–94 (66.43%) in matches. - Under these filters, Clem is 406–252 (61.70%) in games and 161–82 (66.26%) in matches. - Under these filters, herO is 504–349 (59.09%) in games and 194–111 (63.61%) in matches. - Under these filters, Zest is 471–353 (57.16%) in games and 182–114 (61.49%) in matches.
Nobody’s close. Maru of the next best in match win rate is closer to 7th, 8th and beyond than he is to Serral.
That's interesting, but also a good example of why winrates aren't equal to results or dominance. From 2022 I have him as a considerable favorite in every tournament he enters and the best player at the world at pretty much all times (maybe Clem now has overtaken him). While from 2018-2021, there were significant periods were Maru, Dark, Rogue or Reynor were considered the best player or at least equal to Serral, and Serral had multiple bad losses as demonstrated in my previous post.
edit: actually I noticed you only looked at offline results which is imo extremely misleading as there were hardly any offline events from 2019-2021 so you basically measured his winrate in 2018. If you look at both online and offline his winrate from 2018-2021 is: 1176–400 (74.62%) in games and 474–79 (85.71%) in matches.
and from 2022-now: 725–213 (77.29%) in games and 292–43 (87.16%) in matches.
This is more in line with what I was expecting. If you limit it to vs korean only the gap becomes even wider with 2018-2021 being: 359–173 (67.48%) in games and 134–37 (78,36%)
and 2022-now: 253–89 (73.98%) in games and 96–19 (83.48%) in matches
On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote: Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level
I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory.
While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters.
I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday.
But theres a great difference from Boxing and SCII. SCII at 2013-2017 (which is the orgasmic era for some) had players who had played the game for 7 years, top.
And not just that, but a game that suffered 2 expansions in between that time. That matters.
I am absolutely sure that the level of play that Serral, Maru, Clem - and Rogue and Reynor at some points - has never been played until they did it. (Protoss is a bit hard to gauge that for me. sOs had some absurd peaks, herO and Trap a little less. But contrary to my main argument, Rain stands out as the most superb toss player ever for me)
On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote: Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level
I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory.
While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters.
I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday.
But theres a great difference from Boxing and SCII. SCII at 2013-2017 (which is the orgasmic era for some) had players who had played the game for 7 years, top.
And not just that, but a game that suffered 2 expansions in between that time. That matters.
I am absolutely sure that the level of play that Serral, Maru, Clem - and Rogue and Reynor at some points - has never been played until they did it. (Protoss is a bit hard to gauge that for me. sOs had some absurd peaks, herO and Trap a little less. But contrary to my main argument, Rain stands out as the most superb toss player ever for me)
Not sure why that matters, considering all the competitors have played the game for the same amount of time?
I don't think it's more impressive to beat someone that has played the game for 15 years while you have played for 15 years yourself, compared to beating someone who has played the game for 7 years while you have played 7 years yourself
On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote: Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level
I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory.
While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters.
I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday.
But theres a great difference from Boxing and SCII. SCII at 2013-2017 (which is the orgasmic era for some) had players who had played the game for 7 years, top.
And not just that, but a game that suffered 2 expansions in between that time. That matters.
I am absolutely sure that the level of play that Serral, Maru, Clem - and Rogue and Reynor at some points - has never been played until they did it. (Protoss is a bit hard to gauge that for me. sOs had some absurd peaks, herO and Trap a little less. But contrary to my main argument, Rain stands out as the most superb toss player ever for me)
Not sure why that matters, considering all the competitors have played the game for the same amount of time?
I don't think it's more impressive to beat someone that has played the game for 15 years while you have played for 15 years yourself, compared to beating someone who has played the game for 7 years while you have played 7 years yourself
Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024.
This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment):
#1 MARU #2 INNO #3 SOS #4 LIFE #5 DARK #6 ROGUE #7 ZEST #8 SERRAL #9 TY #10:STATS #11:BYUN #12:HERO #13:CLASSIC #14ARTING #15:SOO
I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru.
On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote: 2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment
Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well.
Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore
This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral?
What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter).
If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so.
And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember.
Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT.
If the competition has dropped massively, and I’m a progamer it’s a super attractive time to just grind it out and make a bunch of cash. But nobody really did it to the degree Serral did.
While that's true, it's just massively easier to improve when you're younger (not my words, but the ones of many pros) and many koreans also had to make up for lost time due to military, the circumstances just massively favor Serral here.
I mean, we don't even need to make up hypotheticals, we can see in Serral's results over the years how the competitiveness of the scene affected his performance. From 2018-2021 he was still a phenomenal player but he still was far from the invincible player he is today as he could lose 3-0, 3-0 and 4-2 to Maru, lost in finals 4-0 and 4-1 to Rogue and Dark, lost to Cure 3-0 and 4-1 and lost many more series to the likes of Byun, Zest, soO, Inno, Stats, Trap, Bunny, TY, Zoun etc.
On the other hand, as I previously said there was some overlap between his reign and the peak of some of the korean greats as from 2018-2021 he competed with the peak versions of Stats, Rogue, Dark and Maru who are generally considered amongst the greatest players of all time. So my guess would be if Serral had competed in the Kespa era his winrates against the top players would be similar as his winrates against Rogue/Dark/Stats/Maru from 2018-2021, with the only difference that there would probably be 10-12 players who could achieve those winrates against him.
According to Aligulac his offline numbers from the start of 2018 thru the end of 2021: Under these filters, Serral is 383–126 (75.25%) in games and 141–18 (88.68%) in matches
From the very end of 2021 to today: Under these filters, Serral is 234–81 (74.29%) in games and 88–16 (84.62%) in matches.
Those numbers are insane, nobody is remotely putting in those numbers.
Interestingly there’s a slight drop between the first period and the second, which I’d attribute slightly to Reynor and Clem rising up perhaps. Serral may have hoovered up more tournaments in the second era, but he was actually less dominant overall.
Offline results from the 1st Jan of 2017: - Under these filters, Maru is 725–400 (64.44%) in games and 261–107 (70.92%) in matches. - Under these filters, Dark is 656–378 (63.44%) in games and 242–103 (70.14%) in matches. - Under these filters, Rogue is 448–264 (62.92%) in games and 170–75 (69.39%) in matches. - Under these filters, Reynor is 413–256 (61.73%) in games and 155–71 (68.58%) in matches. - Under these filters, TY is 403–250 (61.72%) in games and 151–72 (67.71%) in matches. - Under these filters, Stats is 482–325 (59.73%) in games and 186–94 (66.43%) in matches. - Under these filters, Clem is 406–252 (61.70%) in games and 161–82 (66.26%) in matches. - Under these filters, herO is 504–349 (59.09%) in games and 194–111 (63.61%) in matches. - Under these filters, Zest is 471–353 (57.16%) in games and 182–114 (61.49%) in matches.
Nobody’s close. Maru of the next best in match win rate is closer to 7th, 8th and beyond than he is to Serral.
That's interesting, but also a good example of why winrates aren't equal to results or dominance. From 2022 I have him as a considerable favorite in every tournament he enters and the best player at the world at pretty much all times (maybe Clem now has overtaken him). While from 2018-2021, there were significant periods were Maru, Dark, Rogue or Reynor were considered the best player or at least equal to Serral, and Serral had multiple bad losses as demonstrated in my previous post.
edit: actually I noticed you only looked at offline results which is imo extremely misleading as there were hardly any offline events from 2019-2021 so you basically measured his winrate in 2018. If you look at both online and offline his winrate from 2018-2021 is: 1176–400 (74.62%) in games and 474–79 (85.71%) in matches.
and from 2022-now: 725–213 (77.29%) in games and 292–43 (87.16%) in matches.
This is more in line with what I was expecting. If you limit it to vs korean only the gap becomes even wider with 2018-2021 being: 359–173 (67.48%) in games and 134–37 (78,36%)
and 2022-now: 253–89 (73.98%) in games and 96–19 (83.48%) in matches
Aligulac suffers from a lack of a ‘Premier’ filter IMO, it’s less of an issue with Serral to be fair, but it’s a pain with someone like Clem who plays a shitload of weeklies.
It should also filter out EU regionals that are played online on the flipside.
Anyway, over such a span it’s pretty remarkably consistent, nobody can really touch it. There have been periods where others were ‘the guy’ but Serral’s never really dropped off being top 4 in the world at worst, and frequently he’s been the guy.
Reynor to pick one example had a very strong spell and he took the fight to Serral, but that was such a relative novelty in the foreign scene that it colours perceptions. People think it’s a huge neck and neck rivalry Serral is 116–79 (59.49%) in games and 33–16 (67.35%) in matches against Reynor in all matches. Serral is 44–27 (61.97%) in games and 13–4 (76.47%) in matches against Reynor offline
Outside of the head to head, Reynor’s slumped pretty hardcore versus the field. Serral hasn’t, he’s kept it up for his entire career.
I’m not picking on Reynor, indeed I think his trajectory is largely typical of other great players that aren’t basically Serral or Maru who can keep on delivering very frequently over long periods.
As I frequently say, and I think people forget these days, there was a pretty long time where people thought SC2 was simply too volatile to be that consistent. People said you’d never see a Flash type because the skill floor was that little bit lower, you can always have a misread or two in a Bo3 etc.
To even dominate at a lower level was rare enough to be notable. Even when Stephano was at his pomp, and capable of winning big tournaments against stacked fields, he never dominated his fellow foreigners to this degree. Neeb was the first guy to really do that, and Serral took that ball and ran with it.
This doesn’t just go for Serral btw, I think people sleep on how good Maru was in the Covid era for one, or indeed since then!
We’ve all got our particular biases, I’m quite impressed by consistency so I do weight things in that direction. If you’ve got two very consistent players then peaking on the big occasions is an important tiebreaker of sorts and Serral’s done that. Almost any other player in the scene would take Maru’s WC record, but he’s competing with other GOAT candidates and that’s a gap in his resume.
On February 03 2025 02:27 ejozl wrote: Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024.
This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment):
#1 MARU #2 INNO #3 SOS #4 LIFE #5 DARK #6 ROGUE #7 ZEST #8 SERRAL #9 TY #10:STATS #11:BYUN #12:HERO #13:CLASSIC #14ARTING #15:SOO
I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru.
Can you actually explain your working here? What are the specifics of your methodology that ‘takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment)’?
I have quibbles with a lot of your ordering, but I suppose the obvious one is the player with the most money earned, most tournaments won, multiple World Champs, highest win rate overall and highest win rate versus Korean players being at 8th on this list.
It just reads like ‘I’ll order by prize money won, except for foreigners and Life’. Which is fine, it’s a free country and all that.
Just stick up a list and say it’s your subjective opinion, there’s no crime there. There’s incidentally also no crime in claiming it’s down to some dubious metrics of your own devising, but it sure as fuck isn’t objective.
Inno’s third on mine. Is it objectively couched? Nah not really. He’s got some trophies, less than he should have, but it’s because after a few years of religiously following this beautiful game this bloke showed up and within a short period was just annihilating fools and for a brief period was on another level. Mvp is fourth basically solely because of his last miracle GSL run against the odds, and his occasional statement series into the Kespa era. Without that he’s an MC or a Nestea, a great in the nascent phases of the game. But he beat players who would shape the game to come while half-crippled, Parting, Rain and push Life to the absolute limit.
Nout wrong with subjectivity in these things, or objectivity. The problem comes when one claims to be objective but indulges in seemingly entirely arbitrary rationales.
If only you were a TL writer at the time of the initial list, Miz would have got a lot less shit if you were lightning rod for nerd anger
On February 03 2025 02:27 ejozl wrote: Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024.
This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment):
#1 MARU #2 INNO #3 SOS #4 LIFE #5 DARK #6 ROGUE #7 ZEST #8 SERRAL #9 TY #10:STATS #11:BYUN #12:HERO #13:CLASSIC #14ARTING #15:SOO
I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru.
Can you actually explain your working here? What are the specifics of your methodology that ‘takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment)’?
I have quibbles with a lot of your ordering, but I suppose the obvious one is the player with the most money earned, most tournaments won, multiple World Champs, highest win rate overall and highest win rate versus Korean players being at 8th on this list.
It just reads like ‘I’ll order by prize money won, except for Life or foreigners’
If only you were a TL writer at the time of the initial list, Miz would have got a lot less shit if you were lightning rod for nerd anger
I assume he is talking about this ranking of his. If I recall correctly, he later on adjusted the points given, but to summarize it: The "Kespa era" gets an inflated amount of points, the ranking is "adjusted" for balance (usually meaning Zerg gets a lot less, Terran a lot more points) and non-korean tournaments give a lot less points than korean tournaments.
Considering all that, it is almost terrifying that Serral is still rank #8. But I do wonder: Why is this ranking, that takes prizemony earned as the most important value and then tries to adjust towards certain criteria, not accounting for "career-length"? Particularly, if you talk prizemoney only, it should generally be considered to be a negative. What is more impressive? Winning 100K in three years or in ten?
On February 03 2025 02:27 ejozl wrote: Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024.
This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment):
#1 MARU #2 INNO #3 SOS #4 LIFE #5 DARK #6 ROGUE #7 ZEST #8 SERRAL #9 TY #10:STATS #11:BYUN #12:HERO #13:CLASSIC #14ARTING #15:SOO
I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru.
Can you actually explain your working here? What are the specifics of your methodology that ‘takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment)’?
I have quibbles with a lot of your ordering, but I suppose the obvious one is the player with the most money earned, most tournaments won, multiple World Champs, highest win rate overall and highest win rate versus Korean players being at 8th on this list.
It just reads like ‘I’ll order by prize money won, except for Life or foreigners’
If only you were a TL writer at the time of the initial list, Miz would have got a lot less shit if you were lightning rod for nerd anger
I assume he is talking about this ranking of his. If I recall correctly, he later on adjusted the points given, but to summarize it: The "Kespa era" gets an inflated amount of points, the ranking is "adjusted" for balance (usually meaning Zerg gets a lot less, Terran a lot more points) and non-korean tournaments give a lot less points than korean tournaments.
Considering all that, it is almost terrifying that Serral is still rank #8. But I do wonder: Why is this ranking, that takes prizemony earned as the most important value and then tries to adjust towards certain criteria, not accounting for "career-length"? Particularly, if you talk prizemoney only, it should generally be considered to be a negative. What is more impressive? Winning 100K in three years or in ten?
Good point.
The adjustments are strange and make no real sense anyway.
Maru and especially Rogue earned a blooming ton of their prize money in roughly the same era as Serral. So even if we’re going off an arbitrary ‘era’ qualifier, what? Dark evolved from a perennial contender to a consistent champion in the same rough span.
If we’re going off race balance, Rogue won a higher proportion of his titles when Zerg was very strong than Serral has.
Not dissing Rogue as a patchzerg or anything, someone already did that! No I kid, he’s a great player. But some of his strongest periods of result came when Zerg was very strong in performances. When you had the ‘Big 4’ all rolling high, and even guys like DRG and Armani having deep GSL runs.
It’s a complete nonsense list. Miz when he outlined his methodology I felt it was an imperfect, (and I don’t have a perfect method) but pretty damn robust attempt.
My list is only objective in the sense that everyone gets the same treatment, the only caveat bring Serral which should be taken with a grain of salt. The welfare adjustment takes serral down from sitting together with life.
Rogue actually isn't the patch zerg in my list, soo followed by serral and solar have "benefited" meaning, gets punished in my list. Life is high because he won during the toughest period and zerg was only tied for best.
The methodology is using earnings pr. Year, comparing the player's earning to the race's earning, so how big a slice of the pie did you get. And ranking years in terms of when it was the most competitive(subjective opinion), hots is highest followed by lotv blizzcon era, then wol and then post blizzcon. But it's done by individual year not era, for instance, I chose to do 2024 ever so slightly higher than 2023, because ewc was announced and thus we've seen the pros up their game.
Rogue earned $1,078,288.60 in his career to date. 92.72% of his prize money coming between 2017 and 2022 inclusive. 51.18% coming in 2017 and 2018 alone.
Maru $1,356,151.22 total. 27.29% of his career total came in his 2018 miracle year. Only 23.91% of his overall career earnings came before then, of which 9.36% in 2017, 4.7% in 2015 and 5.08% in 2015 were the only real impactful years.
Dark is sitting at a current earnings of $1,194,115.22. He’s the only one on the list who has a big double digit years in earnings come before 2017, with 15.89% coming in 2016. His biggest year came in 2019 with a 24.75% of his overall, and his next biggest come in 2018 and 2024 with 12.60% and 12.83%
Serral earned $1,663,925.57 in total, of which the vast majority also came from 2017 and onwards. His biggest year also being shared with Maru with his 2018 with 28.76%. Next with 2024 at 20.89%, with a big 2019 and 2022 sitting at 12.95% and 13.41% respectively.
If the gap between Serral and Rogue was a player they’d have earned $585,637.97 and would be sitting just above Classic and MC in the all-time earnings list.
Rogue’s best years fall in the same timeframe as Serral’s strong years. He plays the same race as Serral. But he’s clawing back a 600 grand earning deficit to place ahead of him.
Players like Inno or Life jumping up make sense with a methodology that weights that era very heavily, even if I don’t necessarily agree with those weightings perhaps. But there’s players who are above Serral here based on results in the same timeframe that aren’t as good as his.
I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even. Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants... But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote: I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even. Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants... But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
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.
On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote: I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even. Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants... But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
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.
If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished."
On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote: I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even. Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants... But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
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.
If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished."
I feel like I’m one of those folks trying to reverse engineer source code that was lost trying to make sense of this! What are the algorithms dagnabbit!
I have minused out Serral’s WCS results. I also minused a 10k payday for the Euro qualifier for a WESG. Pff, weighting is for pussies, those European players suck so I’m going all out and saying zero, zilch, nada!
Rogue has clawed back $230,250 of his initial unmodified prize money deficit of $585,637 to Serral, which now sits at a mere $355,387
If the current gap in prize money was a player, it would now be sitting at 34th, just below Heromarine and pushing Gumigod into 35th place.
I now await finding out how Rogue makes up this new gap, while playing the same race and having almost all of his big results in the same era as Serral.
Facetiousness aside it was quite fun to dig around the prize money for a bit.
Obviously other players are in the same ballpark, but Serral has earned approximately 1/25th of all the prize money ever paid out in SC2, that’s a fun stat! Albeit a wrong one because I know for a fact our Northern Irish/Irish LANs with their giant prize pools aren’t listed on various prize money sites.
On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote: I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even. Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants... But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
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.
If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished."
I feel like I’m one of those folks trying to reverse engineer source code that was lost trying to make sense of this! What are the algorithms dagnabbit!
I have minused out Serral’s WCS results. I also minused a 10k payday for the Euro qualifier for a WESG. Pff, weighting is for pussies, those European players suck so I’m going all out and saying zero, zilch, nada!
Rogue has clawed back $230,250 of his initial unmodified prize money deficit of $585,637 to Serral, which now sits at a mere $355,387
If the current gap in prize money was a player, it would now be sitting at 34th, just below Heromarine and pushing Gumigod into 35th place.
I now await finding out how Rogue makes up this new gap, while playing the same race and having almost all of his big results in the same era as Serral.
Facetiousness aside it was quite fun to dig around the prize money for a bit.
Obviously other players are in the same ballpark, but Serral has earned approximately 1/25th of all the prize money ever paid out in SC2, that’s a fun stat! Albeit a wrong one because I know for a fact our Northern Irish/Irish LANs with their giant prize pools aren’t listed on various prize money sites.
You probably forgot to include the "era-weighting" he also has going. In short: 2013-2015 prizemoney gets doubled, 2010-12 and 2017-18 is normally counted and every beyond that is halved, meaning 2013-2015 gets quadruple the points a tournament win in 2019 would give you. It also means that basically every "Kespa-era"-GSL Winner has essentially gotten the "points" as he would have won a World Championship. Rogue reaching the Top 4 at Blizzcon in 2015 has to be counted as 30K, not 15K and so on.
So this basically means: You take something frickle like prizemoney, which already isn't the best indicator for greatness (though atleast it technically is a complete neutral, objective value) and then put in three big biases in "balance", "era" and "korean supremacy", while not subtracting longevity to get...this one :|
Btw, if you just go by Premier Event wins, this is how the Top 10 would look:
1. Serral 2. Maru 3. TaeJa 4. Rogue 5. Reynor 6. INnoVation 7. MMA 8. Mvp 9. Dark 10. herO (with Polt and Neeb following right behind)
Doesn't feel like a fitting Top 10 for GOATness either, but atleast you don't have to apply a million biased factors?
On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote: I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even. Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants... But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
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.
If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished."
I feel like I’m one of those folks trying to reverse engineer source code that was lost trying to make sense of this! What are the algorithms dagnabbit!
I have minused out Serral’s WCS results. I also minused a 10k payday for the Euro qualifier for a WESG. Pff, weighting is for pussies, those European players suck so I’m going all out and saying zero, zilch, nada!
Rogue has clawed back $230,250 of his initial unmodified prize money deficit of $585,637 to Serral, which now sits at a mere $355,387
If the current gap in prize money was a player, it would now be sitting at 34th, just below Heromarine and pushing Gumigod into 35th place.
I now await finding out how Rogue makes up this new gap, while playing the same race and having almost all of his big results in the same era as Serral.
Facetiousness aside it was quite fun to dig around the prize money for a bit.
Obviously other players are in the same ballpark, but Serral has earned approximately 1/25th of all the prize money ever paid out in SC2, that’s a fun stat! Albeit a wrong one because I know for a fact our Northern Irish/Irish LANs with their giant prize pools aren’t listed on various prize money sites.
You probably forgot to include the "era-weighting" he also has going. In short: 2013-2015 prizemoney gets doubled, 2010-12 and 2017-18 is normally counted and every beyond that is halved, meaning 2013-2015 gets quadruple the points a tournament win in 2019 would give you. It also means that basically every "Kespa-era"-GSL Winner has essentially gotten the "points" as he would have won a World Championship. Rogue reaching the Top 4 at Blizzcon in 2015 has to be counted as 30K, not 15K and so on.
So this basically means: You take something frickle like prizemoney, which already isn't the best indicator for greatness (though atleast it technically is a complete neutral, objective value) and then put in three big biases in "balance", "era" and "korean supremacy", while not subtracting longevity to get...this one :|
Btw, if you just go by Premier Event wins, this is how the Top 10 would look:
1. Serral 2. Maru 3. TaeJa 4. Rogue 5. Reynor 6. INnoVation 7. MMA 8. Mvp 9. Dark 10. herO (with Polt and Neeb following right behind)
Doesn't feel like a fitting Top 10 for GOATness either, but atleast you don't have to apply a million biased factors?
I didn’t forget. From my previous post with Rogue 92.72% of his prize money coming between 2017 and 2022 inclusive. Or with Maru 27.29% of his career total came in his 2018 miracle year. Only 23.91% of his overall career earnings came before then, of which 9.36% in 2017, 4.7% in 2015 and 5.08% in 2015 were the only real impactful years
My issue with this ranking is thus: sOs and Inno for example did most of their work in HoTS and early Legacy. I may somewhat disagree with how high you weight it, but if the weighting is heavy, it at least makes sense.
Inno is 3 incidentally on my list, which is subjective as fuck and makes no pretenses otherwise
I’d love to see the algorithm that has Rogue above Serral if you’re using prize money as a metric. And I’ve already shown there’s still a 300K+ gap even if you give foreign tournaments a zero.
Other stated factors (though the working isn’t shown) are race balance and era. Both Serral and Rogue made almost all of their bank in the same timespan, and played the same race.
So with that being vaguely equivalent, Rogue is ahead of Serral how? Like show your working there.
How is Life at number 4 and Mvp isn’t even top 15 incidentally?
Rogue’s best years fall in the same timeframe as Serral’s strong years. He plays the same race as Serral. But he’s clawing back a 600 grand earning deficit to place ahead of him.
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...
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:
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:
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 02:46 Balnazza wrote: I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even. Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants... But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
Rogue’s best years fall in the same timeframe as Serral’s strong years. He plays the same race as Serral. But he’s clawing back a 600 grand earning deficit to place ahead of him.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
That was the moment I was envisaging when i wrote that post. Nerd chills Tasteless.
On February 07 2025 03:13 WombaT wrote: 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.
You are probably right about the tournament title notion in regards to the 33% argument. And you raise valid points. I might add the following as to why I think that this “Prime Era”-argument against Serral’s GOAT claim for me doesn’t really kick it. Although it is a valid notion to some extent, I believe the importance is often overstated.
Even if we assume that the number of pro players in a tournament has significantly decreased, the practical impact on Serral’s dominance wouldn’t be that high. For example: Adding more herO-like players, as you called it, to - for example - IEM 2024 would add a couple of groups and perhaps 1 more knockout stage to the tournament. Given Serral’s 85% win rate, it’s unlikely that harder groups and this extra round would drastically alter his overall trophy count. While there would certainly be tournaments where he might have not made the group stage and dropped a series or two earlier due to the increased competition, the probability of this happening frequently enough to prevent him from being the most decorated player remains low, especially if we acknowledge the fact that we’d have to adjust the prime player’s trophy counts as well, as they would have to play against Serral, Clem, Reynor, MaxPax, etc.
Just to showcase his absurd win rates: Serral in 2018 was roughly 18% points higher than his fellow GOAT contenders in match win rates. In 2019 17% higher than Rogue and 13% higher than Maru. Except for Serral’s weakest year in 2021 where he “only” achieved 70,31% and Maru finished 6% higher, there is no single, relevant statistic where Serral is placed 2nd (match win rates, tournament-participation-win-rate and average placement) in any of his post-school years. Most pros never even reached more than 65% in their whole career once.
Another key aspect that often gets overlooked in the “weaker era” argument is which part of the player base actually declined. While it’s true that the overall number of Korean professionals has decreased, the biggest drop-off has been among Tier 2 and Tier 3 (or even lesser) Korean players - those who were skilled but typically didn’t make deep tournament runs.. Yes, there were rare moments when lower-tier Korean players eliminated top-tier ones, but these were upsets, not the norm. The fact that such upsets were surprising in the first place suggests that these lower-tier players were not consistently competitive with the best. Their absence in later years meant fewer total competitors, but it didn’t fundamentally change the difficulty of winning a premier event, given how the better players mostly advanced and that you wouldn’t have to win that many more matches to actually win a tournament.
Another crucial factor is that Serral’s win rates are likely deflated compared to top Koreans. Unlike Maru, Rogue, or INnoVation, who had the opportunity to boost their career win percentages by facing lower-tier Korean opponents in domestic qualifiers and smaller Korean events, Serral only played the best Koreans on the biggest international stages. This means that while his recorded win rate, average placement and tournament-participation-win-rate might actually drop a little, this effect could be partly compensated by this Korean inflation, especially in later years when non-Koreans like Serral, Reynor, Clem and MaxPax reversed the roles and now many players have worse win rates versus all players than versus Koreans.
Another important factor when comparing different competitive eras is how tournament structures impact average placement statistics. In larger tournaments with extra rounds, a player may have to face strong opponents earlier than they would in a smaller event. For example, if a player like Serral faced Clem in the first round of a Ro64 and lost, and Clem went on to win the entire tournament, the overall result of the event (or the tournament-participation-win-rate) would not change - the best player at that event still won, whether Serral was defeated in the Ro 64 or Ro8. The only difference is that Serral would have a lower average placement (and potentially less points in a score that factors in 3rd, 4th and less places) due to when he lost, not who he lost to. This is also why metrics like average placement need to be interpreted carefully. In the prime era (2013-2015), tournaments had more rounds, including larger round-of-64 and round-of-32 brackets or even Code A and S formats. This means that players were statistically more likely to finish lower on average simply because there were more rounds to be eliminated in/face tough opponents earlier. In contrast, modern tournaments often start at the round of 24 or 16, meaning that players today will naturally have higher average placements, even if their overall performance is the same. For this metric, a stronger era-multiplier would be reasonable. Other metrics, like tournament-participation-win-ratios wouldn’t be affected as much, as there being one or two more rounds of a more competitive environment do not suddenly half your chances, if you are indeed the best player. This also means that the 0.25 that was brought up is utterly exaggerated.
And the last theoretical point I can think of is tournament frequency. In 2023 and 2024 we had 8 and 10 individual PTs respectively. In 2013, 2014 there were over 30, in 2015 22. These years were stacked so much with tournaments, that they or their qualifiers even overlapped, which dispersed the higher player pool. Nowadays, people always need to play the best of the best in every tournament.
But we can also look at actual numbers and not only engage in theoretical thinking. Data shows that Koreans’ win rates among themselves did not really change much from the prime era 2013-2015 until modern times, neither overall nor versus their peers. The argument was brought up, that as everyone got “equally worse” of course their win rates did not change. But what about foreigners playing against them? I looked at MaNa, Scarlett, Nerchio and Stephano. Arguably not the biggest sample size, but there aren’tmany foreigners that qualify for such an investigation. We would either need to see a boost in their win rates because of “Korean deterioration” and/or them becoming better is correlating with Serral’s top years. Scarlett had her strongest years versus Koreans in 2012 (55%), 2013 (55%), 2014 (48%) and 2015 (48%). 2018 and 2019, when Serral rose to power were already weaker (47 and 44%) and her win rates, except for 2021 (another strong 48% - ironically, Serral’s worst year) even dropped down to 32%. Stephano’s strongest year by far: 2012 (62%). In 2014 he had 33% and in 2017 and 2018, 33 and 37% respectively. At Serral’s rise, he stayed consistent to his prime era results with 33% in 2017 and 37% in 2018. Nerchio had a strong year in 2013 (58%) and peaked in 2017 (68%) and 2018 (67%) before dropping down to 33% in 2020. MaNa had his strongest year in 2016 (51%) and his weakest in 2018 (18%). To put it bluntly: Looking at these 4 players, there is absolutely no implication for any kind of supposed skill deterioration in Korean players. Some of these foreign players even had their best year in the prime era, which goes completely against the idea. Even less is there any visible correlation between Serral’s rise and these player’s results. Thus, the skill deterioration argument, from my point of view, is shakier than ever.
So to sum up. If we want to compare the prime era with the modern era, we need to: - Adjust the modern era negatively by incorporating more players, which leads to more groups and some more knockout stages (influence: low for the GOAT contenders) - Adjust the modern era negatively by incorporating a higher relation of skilled players among that broader player base (influence: mid, because linked to the first adjustment, meaning you won’t have to play all of them to win a singular event) - Adjust the prime era negatively because of more tournaments, dispersing players (influence: low, but giving the impression that some prime era players were better than they seem) - Adjust the prime era negatively by incorporating modern players (influence: low)
If we further apply a similar method to Serral, we need to: - Adjust his Korean opponents to their win rates versus Serral (in nearly all cases negatively) if the database includes Koreans only (influence: low) - Adjust Serral’s statistics positively as he played a lot less tier 2 and tier 3 Koreans in relation to the Koreans, which in turn will boost his win rate (influence: low to mid) - Adjust Serral’s win rate negatively because he is put against GOAT contenders in their prime, instead of them being 1-3 years older (influence: very low, as comparisons between Koreans themselves and foreigners indicate) - The biggest hit Serral would take are his easier region-lock wins, where he would probably not have nearly as many if prime players at their peak and modern Koreans would have participated (influence: high) - For a fair comparison we would also need to factor in Serral and the other non-Koreans in the 3 GSLs that have taken place once a year. Serral and Maru both have 17 wins in Premier Tournaments with top Korean participation. If we now add Serral, Clem, etc. into these, it is extremely likely that the Koreans including Maru wouldn’t have as many Premier Tournament wins, as the non-Koreans would at least take home 2 or 3 wins each over the years (influence: low in prime era, high after 2020)
Taking all these thoughts and statistics into account 66% less trophies for Serral is incredibly absurd in my opinion. That number might be true for the region lock events, but then again he could have scored in the GSLs over the years. It is safe to say that he would have less trophies, but I don’t see him having less than anyone else, if we equal out all factors.
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.
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
I wouldn't put INno into the slump candidate category to be honest. He still had a 68% match win rate versus Koreans until mid 2020 afer all. There aren't many pros that even reached such high win rates in their entire career.
On February 07 2025 03:13 WombaT wrote: 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)...
I think this is an interesting representation of the culture in a specific sport (Cricket), but it doesn't necessarily mean those standards apply (or should apply) to other disciplines.
The obvious counterexample off the top of my head is Wilt Chamberlain, who doesn't really crack people's top five lists (or even top ten lists, in some cases) despite having some of the most ludicrous per-game records in the NBA. He averaged 50 points per game during the 1961-62 season of the NBA, has the three next highest PPG seasons after that, with next highest player after that being Michael Jordan with 37 PPG in 1986-87.
However, NBA GOAT culture has become established in a way that values championships and aura/narrative very highly, and Wilt can't overcome his lack of championships and the negative reputation he garnered from fans/media as being a 'loser.'
I'm not here to say what approach is right or wrong, or what's the correct ratio of factors should go into making a player legacy judgment. I'm just pointing out that none of this stuff is self-evident or obvious, and just because it's accepted as normal in another sport doesn't mean they're necessarily doing it 'right.'
Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
Taking Serral as baseline is probably as good as it gets. Then somehow factor in that most Korean starplayers are preoccupied by their "own" accord which is responsible for quite a large margin. Injury Betting scandals Military Fatherhood League of Legends
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
If injuries are determinant to GOAT evaluation, then Van Basten is light years away a better player than CR7. And Ronaldo phenom would be godlike among those 2.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Exatly!
Its hard to gauge the effect of having less pros competing.
But i dont think it would be like: There was a third (idk the true proportion) of pro players competing by 2018, then Serral would have a third of trophies... I think Serral would remain closer to his actual trophies number rather than not.
And why do I think that? Because it seems that the rate of top 5/10 players decreased slower than the rest of pro players, simply because those who were real contenders had more incentive to remain. I think 2013-2015 was still a time trial, the euphoria time.
Is it hard to win amongst 100 pros than to win amongst 30? For sure.
But it is also harder to win in a figured out esport in which the true prodigies (Maru/Rogue/Clem/Reynor/Serral/MaxPax) have achieved their final form (true outlier class) then to win in a game no so figured out.
Where new metas are always arising, you can come up with a new build, win a couple of premier in a 2 month span, and then get that build figured out to never again have the same success. Or have it when you figure something on another oportunity.
The truth is that Starcraft II never had the amount of popularity to sustain the number of pros from 2011-2016 era.
But the pros at the time thought it did, simply because we were all figuring out the game and the scene.
Like in all thing, Time, and Time only, had the answer to who would be the really best of SCII.
On February 07 2025 03:13 WombaT wrote: 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)...
I think this is an interesting representation of the culture in a specific sport (Cricket), but it doesn't necessarily mean those standards apply (or should apply) to other disciplines.
The obvious counterexample off the top of my head is Wilt Chamberlain, who doesn't really crack people's top five lists (or even top ten lists, in some cases) despite having some of the most ludicrous per-game records in the NBA. He averaged 50 points per game during the 1961-62 season of the NBA, has the three next highest PPG seasons after that, with next highest player after that being Michael Jordan with 37 PPG in 1986-87.
However, NBA GOAT culture has become established in a way that values championships and aura/narrative very highly, and Wilt can't overcome his lack of championships and the negative reputation he garnered from fans/media as being a 'loser.'
I'm not here to say what approach is right or wrong, or what's the correct ratio of factors should go into making a player legacy judgment. I'm just pointing out that none of this stuff is self-evident or obvious, and just because it's accepted as normal in another sport doesn't mean they're necessarily doing it 'right.'
Oh cricket still has those other debates, but it’s for everyone else, not the Don.
I imagine it’s similar in ice hockey. There’ll be passionate arguments about all sorts, but Gretzky is just the GOAT and folks don’t tend to argue that.
Cricket is a very numbers-friendly game by its nature. It’s a hybrid between a team game and an individual duel. What the fielders do is anlso very important, but the key duel is a 1 on 1 between batsman and bowler.
So you can have somebody like Andy Flower in a pretty terrible Zimbabwe team, but he can still be one of the best of his era anyway. He’s still facing the best bowling attacks, and he’s personally averaging 50+
Basketball and football are much more fluid team games and it gets harder to quantify what one player’s contribution is versus the overall unit.
You could stick an elite test player in the worst test playing nation in the world and individually they’ll largely perform the same. Whereas Lionel Messi probably doesn’t look as good playing in a shit side that can’t collectively pass the ball.
I think I broadly disagree with the US sports culture’s move to super valuing titles and auras so highly, because such a big part of that is being in a great team as well. Aura, clutchness are very important as well, but I think there’s an inordinate focus on trophies.
Just my focus, others may have their preferred weightings!
Some Europeans are shifting that direction as well, although more broadly I think they judge based on shown ability. You won’t have too many arguments that Ronaldo of the Brazilian variety should not feature on GOAT lists, but there’s plenty who won more:
Going back to Starcraft, it has its complexities too, but it’s a 1v1 game where winning games js ultimately what counts. Certain raw numbers become easier to parse in that context, versus ‘ok this dude is scoring x goals or points per game in a great team, how does that stack versus the dude slightly worse in those metrics playing in a terrible team.’
The point of invoking the Don was to look at another activity where fans went ‘OK we can have era/opposition arguments, but this guy’s numbers specifically are just too ridiculous’.
Regardless of one’s preferred sport, imagine a guy who’s almost doubling the numbers of the rest. Not the average player, but of the rest of top 10 GOATs. What that would actually look like? Just insanity right? I don’t imagine TL to be a hotbed of cricket fans, but take the GOATs from whatever your sport is and basically double the metric you’re looking at and consider how preposterous that player would be.
It’s so insane that cricket fans just say look there’s no point debating that one. He’s GOAT, let’s nitpick everyone else.
I will note I’ll stop short of definitively calling it, but Serral having an 85% match winrate and 15% gap to #2 is starting to approach that territory, where the number is just too big.
Not just at the top level either. Even when foreign land was notably weaker than Korea, you didn’t have a foreigner destroying other foreigners to close to that degree.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Serral wasn't even at his best in 2018, but he managed to beat sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue and Stats (all of whom either won or made the finals of a KIL in 2017/18). His win rates would almost certainly drop if he was randomly inserted into the peak of the KeSPA era (hypotheticals don't enter in my rankings, but I'll entertain it for this discussion (no one wants to be a party pooper)).
One has to remember that the definition of "dominance" is not universal and the parameters change given the situation. Rain was arguably the best KIL performer in HotS because he won two KIL and made the finals of another. This might not seem "dominant" when you compare it to what Serral achieved in recent years or how Mvp lapped the field in WoL, but he achieved something no one else managed during that three year stretch. Serral would have had a lot of competition, but there's no reason to believe that Serral couldn't have been as successful as players like Rain, Maru, Classic and INnoVation—all of whom won two KIL between 2013 and 2015.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Serral wasn't even at his best in 2018, but he managed to beat sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue and Stats (all of whom either won or made the finals of a KIL in 2017/18). His win rates would almost certainly drop if he was randomly inserted into the peak of the KeSPA era (hypotheticals don't enter in my rankings, but I'll entertain it for this discussion (no one wants to be a party pooper)).
One has to remember that the definition of "dominance" is not universal and the parameters change given the situation. Rain was arguably the best KIL performer in HotS because he won two KIL and made the finals of another. This might not seem "dominant" when you compare it to what Serral achieved in recent years or how Mvp lapped the field in WoL, but he achieved something no one else managed during that three year stretch. Serral would have had a lot of competition, but there's no reason to believe that Serral couldn't have been as successful as players like Rain, Maru, Classic and INnoVation—all of whom won two KIL between 2013 and 2015.
From memory, I assume it was you that mentioned it as you’ve chatted soO a bit. Am I correct that soO was saying the Koreans were already pretty aware of Serral being a fearsome player when he was a mere ladder monster and hadn’t quite broke through?
Not especially relevant but I am curious as to my recollection, and it may be faulty!
For me what separates Serral from the pack is his consistency. I know some don’t rate it as highly as me versus peaking on the championship games, but I do value it very highly.
I think a hypothetical Serral transplanted into the Kespa peak era, probably isn’t dominant in a sense he’s winning all the time.
I think he might have an equal number of titles to X top other player, but what I think you would see is overall he’s doing better than everyone. Maybe not to an extreme degree, but a notable one.
Even Maru, who has been resolutely consistent for years in this rough epoch (and I think his level can be underrated by some) still has the odd bombing out in a group stage, or otherwise quite early.
Serral is perhaps unique in this regard. He basically never loses until a point that on paper you think ‘ok this is a spicy matchup’.
He’s so resolutely consistent in dispatching people he’s expected to beat, that people still recall him losing to a player as good as Rag, in a Ro8 match, in a 3-2 scoreline.
There probably is, but I can’t recall an equivalent of Life losing to Sjow, or Maru losing to Meiomika on his resume. Was looking through Mvp’s results earlier on and even pre-injury problems there’s the odd ‘he lost to who? result that stands out.
So my best guess is maybe Serral doesn’t gap the competition in terms of titles. But he’s probably the guy who’s making most playoff rounds, or the guy who doesn’t have that season he drops out of Code S entirely.
I think that’s Serral’s special sauce, perhaps even beyond his ability to hang with elite players. If you’re basically always able to navigate those early rounds you set yourself up to just naturally be more likely to take titles.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Serral wasn't even at his best in 2018, but he managed to beat sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue and Stats (all of whom either won or made the finals of a KIL in 2017/18). His win rates would almost certainly drop if he was randomly inserted into the peak of the KeSPA era (hypotheticals don't enter in my rankings, but I'll entertain it for this discussion (no one wants to be a party pooper)).
One has to remember that the definition of "dominance" is not universal and the parameters change given the situation. Rain was arguably the best KIL performer in HotS because he won two KIL and made the finals of another. This might not seem "dominant" when you compare it to what Serral achieved in recent years or how Mvp lapped the field in WoL, but he achieved something no one else managed during that three year stretch. Serral would have had a lot of competition, but there's no reason to believe that Serral couldn't have been as successful as players like Rain, Maru, Classic and INnoVation—all of whom won two KIL between 2013 and 2015.
I agree with you but what makes you say Serral wasn't at his best in 2018? He had his best winrates in that year after 2024 but due to the relative competitiveness I'd say 2018 was the more impressive year out of the two
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Then we can agree
Looking at your example though, I think you'd have to set at least a 60% win base line. In the time frame you mentioned, Serral's match win rate versus these 4 guys is 61% in total. And it includes a period where you have to add a 45% win rate versus Rogue in a pool of only 4 players. As Rogue is the only player that could match Serral overall (Serral by 2022, which I would still count as Rogue's prime, wins slightly with 8:7 - 53%), I'd take that sample size and time frame, where a 45% win rate versus Rogue is incorporated in a pool of 4 players with a grain of salt. Especially when prime players like INno, sOs, Zest and Solar all had over 65% against the top Koreans from 2013-2015. I don't see, Serral performing worse than them.
On February 08 2025 00:51 WombaT wrote:
I will note I’ll stop short of definitively calling it, but Serral having an 85% match winrate and 15% gap to #2 is starting to approach that territory, where the number is just too big.
Don't forget that the number #2 also distanced #3 by quite large margins on top of that. There were years when Serral distanced Maru by 15%, who distanced INno by another 7%, meaning #1 and #3 were 22% apart. And again: The Korean numbers in comparison to Serral are slightly inflated, as Serral hardly played lower tier-Koreans to achieve his win rates.
On February 08 2025 09:49 Mizenhauer wrote: His win rates would almost certainly drop if he was randomly inserted into the peak of the KeSPA era (hypotheticals don't enter in my rankings, but I'll entertain it for this discussion (no one wants to be a party pooper)).
One has to remember that the definition of "dominance" is not universal and the parameters change given the situation. Rain was arguably the best KIL performer in HotS because he won two KIL and made the finals of another. This might not seem "dominant" when you compare it to what Serral achieved in recent years or how Mvp lapped the field in WoL, but he achieved something no one else managed during that three year stretch. Serral would have had a lot of competition, but there's no reason to believe that Serral couldn't have been as successful as players like Rain, Maru, Classic and INnoVation—all of whom won two KIL between 2013 and 2015.
Agreed.
On February 08 2025 10:30 WombaT wrote:
From memory, I assume it was you that mentioned it as you’ve chatted soO a bit. Am I correct that soO was saying the Koreans were already pretty aware of Serral being a fearsome player when he was a mere ladder monster and hadn’t quite broke through?
Not especially relevant but I am curious as to my recollection, and it may be faulty!
For me what separates Serral from the pack is his consistency. I know some don’t rate it as highly as me versus peaking on the championship games, but I do value it very highly.
I think a hypothetical Serral transplanted into the Kespa peak era, probably isn’t dominant in a sense he’s winning all the time.
I think he might have an equal number of titles to X top other player, but what I think you would see is overall he’s doing better than everyone. Maybe not to an extreme degree, but a notable one.
Even Maru, who has been resolutely consistent for years in this rough epoch (and I think his level can be underrated by some) still has the odd bombing out in a group stage, or otherwise quite early.
Serral is perhaps unique in this regard. He basically never loses until a point that on paper you think ‘ok this is a spicy matchup’.
He’s so resolutely consistent in dispatching people he’s expected to beat, that people still recall him losing to a player as good as Rag, in a Ro8 match, in a 3-2 scoreline.
There probably is, but I can’t recall an equivalent of Life losing to Sjow, or Maru losing to Meiomika on his resume. Was looking through Mvp’s results earlier on and even pre-injury problems there’s the odd ‘he lost to who? result that stands out.
So my best guess is maybe Serral doesn’t gap the competition in terms of titles. But he’s probably the guy who’s making most playoff rounds, or the guy who doesn’t have that season he drops out of Code S entirely.
I think that’s Serral’s special sauce, perhaps even beyond his ability to hang with elite players. If you’re basically always able to navigate those early rounds you set yourself up to just naturally be more likely to take titles.
I also remember something being said among those lines. And it would make sense... I mean, Aligulac had Serral as #1 slightly before he started to take off, which absolutely makes sense, given that before winning his first PT in early 2018, he had a year full of 2nd places in Major and Premier Tournaments. While other guys won an event here and there, Serral already showed consistency in making final runs in most of the tournaments he participated in. No wonder, the algorithm noticed that.
And of course his average placements or tournament-participation-win-rates would go down if he was put in the KeSPA period, I think anyone is doubting that. But your points about consistency certainly make sense. He most likely wouldn't have less titles than other contenders and possibly achieved slightly more.
On February 08 2025 12:30 Charoisaur wrote:
I agree with you but what makes you say Serral wasn't at his best in 2018? He had his best winrates in that year after 2024 but due to the relative competitiveness I'd say 2018 was the more impressive year out of the two
His best win rates versus Koreans indeed were 2018, 2020 and 2023 (85%), apart from the exceptionally insane 96% last year, where a lot of the gap is attributed to aging Koreans. But then the question needs to be permitted: Why did #2 Clem and #3 MaxPax, both in their prime age in comparison to the older Serral and who inflated their numbers with lower ranked Koreans in Weeklies, achieve "only" 75% and 78% respectively in the same period, while Serral couldn't train normally because of his Military Service
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Serral wasn't even at his best in 2018, but he managed to beat sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue and Stats (all of whom either won or made the finals of a KIL in 2017/18). His win rates would almost certainly drop if he was randomly inserted into the peak of the KeSPA era (hypotheticals don't enter in my rankings, but I'll entertain it for this discussion (no one wants to be a party pooper)).
One has to remember that the definition of "dominance" is not universal and the parameters change given the situation. Rain was arguably the best KIL performer in HotS because he won two KIL and made the finals of another. This might not seem "dominant" when you compare it to what Serral achieved in recent years or how Mvp lapped the field in WoL, but he achieved something no one else managed during that three year stretch. Serral would have had a lot of competition, but there's no reason to believe that Serral couldn't have been as successful as players like Rain, Maru, Classic and INnoVation—all of whom won two KIL between 2013 and 2015.
I agree with you but what makes you say Serral wasn't at his best in 2018? He had his best winrates in that year after 2024 but due to the relative competitiveness I'd say 2018 was the more impressive year out of the two
I think Serral improved as a player with time, even if the gulf between him and his peers was larger in 2018 than in the years that would follow.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Serral wasn't even at his best in 2018, but he managed to beat sOs, Zest, Dark, Rogue and Stats (all of whom either won or made the finals of a KIL in 2017/18). His win rates would almost certainly drop if he was randomly inserted into the peak of the KeSPA era (hypotheticals don't enter in my rankings, but I'll entertain it for this discussion (no one wants to be a party pooper)).
One has to remember that the definition of "dominance" is not universal and the parameters change given the situation. Rain was arguably the best KIL performer in HotS because he won two KIL and made the finals of another. This might not seem "dominant" when you compare it to what Serral achieved in recent years or how Mvp lapped the field in WoL, but he achieved something no one else managed during that three year stretch. Serral would have had a lot of competition, but there's no reason to believe that Serral couldn't have been as successful as players like Rain, Maru, Classic and INnoVation—all of whom won two KIL between 2013 and 2015.
From memory, I assume it was you that mentioned it as you’ve chatted soO a bit. Am I correct that soO was saying the Koreans were already pretty aware of Serral being a fearsome player when he was a mere ladder monster and hadn’t quite broke through?
He said that Serral was the best Zerg at a WCS Circuit event where two Zergs not named Serral made the Round of 4.
MARU INNO SERRAL SOS LIFE DARK ROGUE ZEST TY MC STATS BYUN MMA HERO CLASSIC NEEB TAEJA PARTING SOO SPECIAL
While a fine list it does showcase the number one weakness of using esportsearnings, and that is that some tournaments simply disallow some players of participating in SC2. This is why I introduced 'welfare' and it affects: Serral, MC, MMA, Neeb and special. It's just me arbitrarily going in a deciding to substract % of money away from certain years, this is pretty much just molesting the stats, but I think it's still better than voiding out these players, or leaving it be.
The top 3 abusers of their race according to my list are: Dark, SoO and Serral, Rogue is closely behind, so your analysis putting Rogue together with Serral in terms of when they were winning most of their earnings is correct.
MVP and Rain are very low because they were the top 1 abusers of the other races, though still ranking behind most of the Zergs, hell even though Life is the lowest abuser of Zerg, he's still higher than MVP.
The balance factor for the year is simply found dividing earnings by race by total earnings. I don't know what else there is to reveal, I did say WoL era was higher than post kespa (blizzcon still around), but I now see that I've rated it the same.
MARU INNO SERRAL SOS LIFE DARK ROGUE ZEST TY MC STATS BYUN MMA HERO CLASSIC NEEB TAEJA PARTING SOO SPECIAL
While a fine list it does showcase the number one weakness of using esportsearnings, and that is that some tournaments simply disallow some players of participating in SC2. This is why I introduced 'welfare' and it affects: Serral, MC, MMA, Neeb and special. It's just me arbitrarily going in a deciding to substract % of money away from certain years, this is pretty much just molesting the stats, but I think it's still better than voiding out these players, or leaving it be.
The top 3 abusers of their race according to my list are: Dark, SoO and Serral, Rogue is closely behind, so your analysis putting Rogue together with Serral in terms of when they were winning most of their earnings is correct.
MVP and Rain are very low because they were the top 1 abusers of the other races, though still ranking behind most of the Zergs, hell even though Life is the lowest abuser of Zerg, he's still higher than MVP.
The balance factor for the year is simply found dividing earnings by race by total earnings. I don't know what else there is to reveal, I did say WoL era was higher than post kespa (blizzcon still around), but I now see that I've rated it the same.
So this list is with your era- and the balance-multiplier (prize money per race/total prize money for a given year) but without the welfare-multiplier, correct? The equation for Serral for 2018 without the welfare-multiplier would be 0,5*1593385/3592321*478420, yes? So what is Serral's score with the welfare mulitiplier in that year?
Can you show a screenshot of one of the players sheet/excel? What is the range for this welfare cut? Or was it always the same amount? Did you look per year and apply it each year individually?
You write that "Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest", although he was before them in your original list as well. And that "herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG" but herO was ahead of PartinG before.
You said "Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024". How does this work, when Serral on the non-updated list was rank 11 out of 20?
Given that the modern era gets divided by 4 in comparison to KeSPA and your original article came out in August 2024, I don't see how an update after August 2024 with a dividend of 4 is able to jumpstart Serral from the bottom of the list to rank 8. There is no calculation that could make this work, given the little change that the end of 2024 or even 2024 in its entirety contributed to Serral's total earnings, especially with a denominator of 4. If I make a quick calculation according to your own explanations, Serral made roughly 85% of his earnings from 2017-2023. And those measly 15% he got in 2024 somehow put him from the bottom of the list to rank 8? And again... how did Serral end up at the bottom of the list at all, when was rank 11 in the original list?
Unless I am misunderstanding something very gravely, seeing how there are contradicting or mutually exclusive as well as non-sensical statements, I am gonna repeat my words from August 9th: "But are there seriously people thinking that this isn't a troll-/bait-post, lol?"
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Then we can agree
Looking at your example though, I think you'd have to set at least a 60% win base line. In the time frame you mentioned, Serral's match win rate versus these 4 guys is 61% in total. And it includes a period where you have to add a 45% win rate versus Rogue in a pool of only 4 players. As Rogue is the only player that could match Serral overall (Serral by 2022, which I would still count as Rogue's prime, wins slightly with 8:7 - 53%), I'd take that sample size and time frame, where a 45% win rate versus Rogue is incorporated in a pool of 4 players with a grain of salt. Especially when prime players like INno, sOs, Zest and Solar all had over 65% against the top Koreans from 2013-2015. I don't see, Serral performing worse than them.
Yeah about 60-65% winrate against the top players seems reasonable. Keep in mind that's the winrate I'd expect from him against the championship contenders of that era, vs lower tiered koreans I'd expect a much higher winrate, making his overall winrate probably around 70%
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Then we can agree
Looking at your example though, I think you'd have to set at least a 60% win base line. In the time frame you mentioned, Serral's match win rate versus these 4 guys is 61% in total. And it includes a period where you have to add a 45% win rate versus Rogue in a pool of only 4 players. As Rogue is the only player that could match Serral overall (Serral by 2022, which I would still count as Rogue's prime, wins slightly with 8:7 - 53%), I'd take that sample size and time frame, where a 45% win rate versus Rogue is incorporated in a pool of 4 players with a grain of salt. Especially when prime players like INno, sOs, Zest and Solar all had over 65% against the top Koreans from 2013-2015. I don't see, Serral performing worse than them.
Yeah about 60-65% winrate against the top players seems reasonable. Keep in mind that's the winrate I'd expect from him against the championship contenders of that era, vs lower tiered koreans I'd expect a much higher winrate, making his overall winrate probably around 70%
Just to be clear, I was referring to your example, which I still think isn't the best comparison. I think Serral would perform better. If I look at the numbers of 2013-2015 and how INno (73,62%), Solar (73,49%) and PartinG (71,10%) performed versus the top Korean sample size I used for my era comparison, I gotta wonder why Serral shouldn't achieve similar records. Yes, I could only test him against the same players a couple of years later and for some not in their prime (2018-2019) but in a pool of Zest, sOs, TY, Classic, INnoVation, Maru, soO, Trap, Creator, Solar, Dark and Stats Serral had a win rate of 85,42% (Rogue wasn't in that pool, as there was no data for him in 2013-2015, but including him, would only boost Serral's numbers, as he won 3 times against Rogue in that period). Even if we subtract roughly 12,5% because of motivation, age, etc. which I find an extremely high number, Serral would still be around 70-75% versus the best, not even talking about the lower tier Koreans. But I guess, we will never know for sure
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Then we can agree
Looking at your example though, I think you'd have to set at least a 60% win base line. In the time frame you mentioned, Serral's match win rate versus these 4 guys is 61% in total. And it includes a period where you have to add a 45% win rate versus Rogue in a pool of only 4 players. As Rogue is the only player that could match Serral overall (Serral by 2022, which I would still count as Rogue's prime, wins slightly with 8:7 - 53%), I'd take that sample size and time frame, where a 45% win rate versus Rogue is incorporated in a pool of 4 players with a grain of salt. Especially when prime players like INno, sOs, Zest and Solar all had over 65% against the top Koreans from 2013-2015. I don't see, Serral performing worse than them.
Yeah about 60-65% winrate against the top players seems reasonable. Keep in mind that's the winrate I'd expect from him against the championship contenders of that era, vs lower tiered koreans I'd expect a much higher winrate, making his overall winrate probably around 70%
Just to be clear, I was referring to your example, which I still think isn't the best comparison. I think Serral would perform better. If I look at the numbers of 2013-2015 and how INno (73,62%), Solar (73,49%) and PartinG (71,10%) performed versus the top Korean sample size I used for my era comparison, I gotta wonder why Serral shouldn't achieve similar records.
These are their overall records in that era - limited to vs korean only Inno has a 70% winrate with PartinG and Solar being around 64%. So yeah I'd expect Serral to perform similar to Inno during that era or slightly better, which is not too shabby I think as Inno was really really good.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Then we can agree
Looking at your example though, I think you'd have to set at least a 60% win base line. In the time frame you mentioned, Serral's match win rate versus these 4 guys is 61% in total. And it includes a period where you have to add a 45% win rate versus Rogue in a pool of only 4 players. As Rogue is the only player that could match Serral overall (Serral by 2022, which I would still count as Rogue's prime, wins slightly with 8:7 - 53%), I'd take that sample size and time frame, where a 45% win rate versus Rogue is incorporated in a pool of 4 players with a grain of salt. Especially when prime players like INno, sOs, Zest and Solar all had over 65% against the top Koreans from 2013-2015. I don't see, Serral performing worse than them.
Yeah about 60-65% winrate against the top players seems reasonable. Keep in mind that's the winrate I'd expect from him against the championship contenders of that era, vs lower tiered koreans I'd expect a much higher winrate, making his overall winrate probably around 70%
Just to be clear, I was referring to your example, which I still think isn't the best comparison. I think Serral would perform better. If I look at the numbers of 2013-2015 and how INno (73,62%), Solar (73,49%) and PartinG (71,10%) performed versus the top Korean sample size I used for my era comparison, I gotta wonder why Serral shouldn't achieve similar records.
These are their overall records in that era - limited to vs korean only Inno has a 70% winrate with PartinG and Solar being around 64%. So yeah I'd expect Serral to perform similar to Inno during that era or slightly better, which is not too shabby I think as Inno was really really good.
Ah, yeah my bad, you're right... I looked at the wrong column in my list. Inno was 69,48% and soO came in second at 62,78% versus the mentioned player pool. Still, given how Serral beat all of them at a 85% win rate, I doubt he'd be worse than INno if 2018/2019 Serral was put in 2013-2015.
MARU INNO SERRAL SOS LIFE DARK ROGUE ZEST TY MC STATS BYUN MMA HERO CLASSIC NEEB TAEJA PARTING SOO SPECIAL
While a fine list it does showcase the number one weakness of using esportsearnings, and that is that some tournaments simply disallow some players of participating in SC2. This is why I introduced 'welfare' and it affects: Serral, MC, MMA, Neeb and special. It's just me arbitrarily going in a deciding to substract % of money away from certain years, this is pretty much just molesting the stats, but I think it's still better than voiding out these players, or leaving it be.
The top 3 abusers of their race according to my list are: Dark, SoO and Serral, Rogue is closely behind, so your analysis putting Rogue together with Serral in terms of when they were winning most of their earnings is correct.
MVP and Rain are very low because they were the top 1 abusers of the other races, though still ranking behind most of the Zergs, hell even though Life is the lowest abuser of Zerg, he's still higher than MVP.
The balance factor for the year is simply found dividing earnings by race by total earnings. I don't know what else there is to reveal, I did say WoL era was higher than post kespa (blizzcon still around), but I now see that I've rated it the same.
Cheers for the response.
I’m surprised that Rain is the number one Toss abuser, is he notably so by your numbers?
It’s tricky to really gauge by prize money alone, because SC2 has always been so top-heavy in prize distribution. Both between placings generally, plus of course between tournaments.
Also if we’re weighting for that, I assume you’re applying the welfare modifier to racial earnings as well?
Otherwise say, Serral can be doubly punished by his earnings dropping by the welfare modifier, but also get minused for a ‘Zerg OP’ modifier that could be very influenced by those welfare tournaments.
On February 07 2025 20:34 Charoisaur wrote: Now your arguments are getting absolutely wild. Taking Stephano's performance who semi-retired after WoL as baseline that korean skill level didn't get worse I don't even know if it's worth continuing this argument at this point. That's the same as taking Serral's winrate as baseline and saying because his winrates got better after 2017 koreans got worse
Accepted, Stephano was a shitty example. What about Scarlett, Nerchio and MaNa? And yes, I know, this is the biggest sample size, but none of them correlate with the idea that individual Korean skill level massively droped.
Why not take Serral as a baseline? Wouldn't he be the most suitable candidate for serving as the baseline given he's the most consistent player ever and hasn't lost motivation at all as far as we can tell? In his first 3 years after his ascension his winrates against koreans were:
2018: Serral is 61–27 (69.32%) in games and 24–4 (85.71%) in matches. 2019:Serral is 65–29 (69.15%) in games and 23–7 (76.67%) in matches. 2020: Serral is 102–44 (69.86%) in games and 42–7 (85.71%) in matches.
and in 2024: Serral is 68–9 (88.31%) in games and 26–1 (96.30%) in matches.
By your own logic that should be irrefutable proof that koreans have declined. If you want to say "but Serral has improved" you may come to the conclusion that you can't use any player as the baseline because nobody's skill level stays completely consistent across the years.
Personally, I will just go what with the pros say. Inno said he's gotten slower with advanced age. Dark said it. Maru said he can't practice much any more due to his injuries. Uthermal in his interview with sc2historian extensively spoke about how younger players are just advantaged in competitive sc2.
I don't deny that age takes its toll. It is the scope that is the issue. If we only speak about age droping win percentages by 3%, that is absolutely fine by me. But that would not counter Serral's GOAT claim.
And Serral imo isn't the best example because he is the biggest outlier in SC2 history. Further, you cannot take the player that you are trying to relate, as the anchor for the comparison. The relation between prime era players and Serral is the topic, thus you have to have other players to which you compare the idea, that Koreans overall got worse in comparison to Serral, who subsequently rose to power.
Serral also has 71% in 2021. Then again 85% in 2023. Did his age reset? What about the other foreigners? Why didn't they get better versus the Koreans?
I do not deny that some of these prime era guys probably had injuries or weren't as fast as they were aged 22. My point is that this decline doesn't make a big impact on the GOAT debate.
Well, then I agree, I also think that if he played in the Kespa era he likely would have better winrates then anyone who played back then (although only by a slight degree). I just disagree with the premise that korean skill level hasn't decreased at all which in some of your previous replies it seemed you believed.
For Serral vs prime era guys I think we've seen that. Maru, Dark, Rogue and Stats were in their prime from 2018-2021 and are considered to be among the greatest of all time. Serral's winrate vs them in that era is probably a good predictor on how he would've fared against the top 10-12 players in the Kespa era (mostly in the 50-60% range).
Then we can agree
Looking at your example though, I think you'd have to set at least a 60% win base line. In the time frame you mentioned, Serral's match win rate versus these 4 guys is 61% in total. And it includes a period where you have to add a 45% win rate versus Rogue in a pool of only 4 players. As Rogue is the only player that could match Serral overall (Serral by 2022, which I would still count as Rogue's prime, wins slightly with 8:7 - 53%), I'd take that sample size and time frame, where a 45% win rate versus Rogue is incorporated in a pool of 4 players with a grain of salt. Especially when prime players like INno, sOs, Zest and Solar all had over 65% against the top Koreans from 2013-2015. I don't see, Serral performing worse than them.
Yeah about 60-65% winrate against the top players seems reasonable. Keep in mind that's the winrate I'd expect from him against the championship contenders of that era, vs lower tiered koreans I'd expect a much higher winrate, making his overall winrate probably around 70%
Just to be clear, I was referring to your example, which I still think isn't the best comparison. I think Serral would perform better. If I look at the numbers of 2013-2015 and how INno (73,62%), Solar (73,49%) and PartinG (71,10%) performed versus the top Korean sample size I used for my era comparison, I gotta wonder why Serral shouldn't achieve similar records. Yes, I could only test him against the same players a couple of years later and for some not in their prime (2018-2019) but in a pool of Zest, sOs, TY, Classic, INnoVation, Maru, soO, Trap, Creator, Solar, Dark and Stats Serral had a win rate of 85,42% (Rogue wasn't in that pool, as there was no data for him in 2013-2015, but including him, would only boost Serral's numbers, as he won 3 times against Rogue in that period). Even if we subtract roughly 12,5% because of motivation, age, etc. which I find an extremely high number, Serral would still be around 70-75% versus the best, not even talking about the lower tier Koreans. But I guess, we will never know for sure
I’ll have to continue working on my time machine!
Just based on Serral’s rather long-demonstrated consistency, not having notable slumps, and beating players he’s expected to most all of the time, I think he’d be grand. Not every other player, even GOAT list residents tick all 3 boxes to quite that degree.
Perhaps the biggest variable is really just the different game. Can Serral be as good in HoTS? Or at least as consistently good. That I’m not so sure about.
It feels that Serral can mostly just play his game reasonably comfortably and get to the phase he excels, nearly every game.
Maybe just the extra bit of volatility in HoTS drops him a little?
Granted the drop I’d be talking about is from the #1 guy with a winrate way ahead, to at worst one of the top guys, with the best winrate but by a lesser margin.
Until my time machine is ready alas I cannot definitively answer, but I think it’s exceedingly likely he’d at least be up there. As is the ‘would he win a GSL if he’d been regularly competing in it?’ question.
On February 09 2025 22:06 WombaT wrote: Cheers for the response.
I’m surprised that Rain is the number one Toss abuser, is he notably so by your numbers?
It’s tricky to really gauge by prize money alone, because SC2 has always been so top-heavy in prize distribution. Both between placings generally, plus of course between tournaments.
Also if we’re weighting for that, I assume you’re applying the welfare modifier to racial earnings as well?
Otherwise say, Serral can be doubly punished by his earnings dropping by the welfare modifier, but also get minused for a ‘Zerg OP’ modifier that could be very influenced by those welfare tournaments.
I don't think this list makes a lot of sense in any case anyway. Like you yourself said, arbitrary multipliers of 4 and 2 that put ByuN who only ever won a patch PT ahead of Serral is simply absurd. You further have another completely intransparent, arbitrary welfare-multiplier for a metric like prize money that is inherently flawed, while also not taking into account that the prime era also had a lot more tournaments that dispersed the player pool and allowed for more winnings than the modern era. There are many more things like statements by the author which don't make sense if we compare the players in the initial and the updated list. Apply to that the dismissive, borderline sarcastic tone of the original article, I doubt that any of this should be taken seriously.
On February 09 2025 20:44 WombaT wrote:
I’ll have to continue working on my time machine!
Just based on Serral’s rather long-demonstrated consistency, not having notable slumps, and beating players he’s expected to most all of the time, I think he’d be grand. Not every other player, even GOAT list residents tick all 3 boxes to quite that degree.
Perhaps the biggest variable is really just the different game. Can Serral be as good in HoTS? Or at least as consistently good. That I’m not so sure about.
It feels that Serral can mostly just play his game reasonably comfortably and get to the phase he excels, nearly every game.
Maybe just the extra bit of volatility in HoTS drops him a little?
Granted the drop I’d be talking about is from the #1 guy with a winrate way ahead, to at worst one of the top guys, with the best winrate but by a lesser margin.
Until my time machine is ready alas I cannot definitively answer, but I think it’s exceedingly likely he’d at least be up there. As is the ‘would he win a GSL if he’d been regularly competing in it?’ question.
Yeah, a time machine would help sort things out indeed... but would also make these discussions a lot more boring
EPT
![[image loading]](https://i.ibb.co/C7wkj7J/gsl.png)
ARTING 
