EPTThe SCII GOAT: A statistical Evaluation - Page 10
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ejozl
Denmark3364 Posts
That said, of course this tournament win rate stat isn't everything, and I think taeja might even score higher on this. But take into account balance, think about it, life was the best player, while zerg was on slow corruptors, low neural range, no rocket launcher ITs, bad cracklings, literal garbage ultralisks, viper with no free 4th spell, hydras and roaches had no future and hydras had 10 less hp, inject had to be done at a precise timing, and yet zergs nowadays are complaining that they have to right click carriers, meanwhile at this time carriers were more powerful and so were the tempests and colossus. It would seem like a miracle these days that life were winning tbh, and he was pretty much the only zerg that did. I still don't think he can be the goat with the tournament record he had, but he might've been the highest talent player. | ||
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ejozl
Denmark3364 Posts
On June 26 2025 05:04 Mizenhauer wrote: At this point let's not even pretend we're aiming for objectivity.  Is it more objective to ignore these factoids? | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25047 Posts
On June 27 2025 22:40 ejozl wrote: Doesn't Clem also show that serral isn't an anomaly and this could continue in the future, maybe zoun takes over and becomes the best player for 10 years, is he then the goat, at some point you have to zoom out and look, maybe just maybe serral isn't twice as good as the second goat, and mb we're just looking at a 2-4 times weaker era. If so serral's 52% win rate could be counted as a 16% win rate in the strongest era, which is still insane and if was kept for the full duration of sc2, would make you the goat. It seems more likely to me that life was the goat when it mattered by 1-2% rather than serral is the goat and by 200%. That said, of course this tournament win rate stat isn't everything, and I think taeja might even score higher on this. But take into account balance, think about it, life was the best player, while zerg was on slow corruptors, low neural range, no rocket launcher ITs, bad cracklings, literal garbage ultralisks, viper with no free 4th spell, hydras and roaches had no future and hydras had 10 less hp, inject had to be done at a precise timing, and yet zergs nowadays are complaining that they have to right click carriers, meanwhile at this time carriers were more powerful and so were the tempests and colossus. It would seem like a miracle these days that life were winning tbh, and he was pretty much the only zerg that did. I still don't think he can be the goat with the tournament record he had, but he might've been the highest talent player. Are they factoids if in the early part of Life’s championship contender career, we had multiple all-Zerg GSL finals that didn’t feature him? soO was doing his thing at this time too, and he broke his silver duck in the Kespa Cup against another different Zerg in Dark. Soulkey, Roro, Symbol, Byul and others made Korean Individual League finals or won them in HoTS. Jaedong made a Blizzcon final. There’s like 7+ Zergs who made a Premier final, or won one who aren’t Life, I fail to see how he’s pulling off miracles. Life wasn’t carrying Zerg, he wasn’t doing a Fruitdealer and winning against the odds. Zerg was doing pretty well overall in his career span. He may have been the best, or most talented one of the bunch. But I don’t think that analysis holds up at all. On the flipside, I don’t think you can claim’s been riding a Zerg OP wave for half the time SC2’s existed. Not saying you are making that claim, but I hear it a lot. You can see Zerg results drop off from similar to Serral levels, to nowhere near, based on the past few patches, especially in ZvP. No top Zergs are complaining that they have to focus Carriers. Lambo made a whole video about a patch, and he said he considered lowering the target priority a good QoL change for lower-level players, and he overall favoured it. He did make the point that at his level, it’s a minor nerf, because it’s harder to strategically pull back specifically to nuke interceptors. Any other unit within range will take priority. So for top players, actually a bad change, but he considered the trade worth it to make playing against Carriers at lower levels less frustrating. Clem? Well it’s an interesting one. Watch his FPVoD and he can do stuff nobody’s been able to do. So one can make the case that in raw skill he’s raised the bar, and would smack people around if sent back in time. I dunno if there’s enough juice left in the StarCraft orange for him to accomplish enough to jump ahead of a Serral or a Maru, but he could occupy a position of ‘the best, but didn’t get to show it’ for me. Personally I feel we need a patch solely for those two to play on, I think it would be fascinating. It feels Zerg maybe got slightly overnerfed in ways that only really matter when it’s Clem Serral is facing. If someone like Zoun, clearly very good at the game started dominating it’s a bit different. A dominant player in a weaker era, but is also clearly the best one has seen can maybe brute force their way into GOAT chats. If a player who’s still very good but clearly not better than what came before, much less so. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15919 Posts
On June 27 2025 23:47 WombaT wrote: Are they factoids if in the early part of Life’s championship contender career, we had multiple all-Zerg GSL finals that didn’t feature him? soO was doing his thing at this time too, and he broke his silver duck in the Kespa Cup against another different Zerg in Dark. Soulkey, Roro, Symbol, Byul and others made Korean Individual League finals or won them in HoTS. Jaedong made a Blizzcon final. There’s like 7+ Zergs who made a Premier final, or won one who aren’t Life, I fail to see how he’s pulling off miracles. Life wasn’t carrying Zerg, he wasn’t doing a Fruitdealer and winning against the odds. Zerg was doing pretty well overall in his career span. He may have been the best, or most talented one of the bunch. But I don’t think that analysis holds up at all. On the flipside, I don’t think you can claim’s been riding a Zerg OP wave for half the time SC2’s existed. Not saying you are making that claim, but I hear it a lot. You can see Zerg results drop off from similar to Serral levels, to nowhere near, based on the past few patches, especially in ZvP. No top Zergs are complaining that they have to focus Carriers. Lambo made a whole video about a patch, and he said he considered lowering the target priority a good QoL change for lower-level players, and he overall favoured it. He did make the point that at his level, it’s a minor nerf, because it’s harder to strategically pull back specifically to nuke interceptors. Any other unit within range will take priority. So for top players, actually a bad change, but he considered the trade worth it to make playing against Carriers at lower levels less frustrating. Clem? Well it’s an interesting one. Watch his FPVoD and he can do stuff nobody’s been able to do. So one can make the case that in raw skill he’s raised the bar, and would smack people around if sent back in time. I dunno if there’s enough juice left in the StarCraft orange for him to accomplish enough to jump ahead of a Serral or a Maru, but he could occupy a position of ‘the best, but didn’t get to show it’ for me. Personally I feel we need a patch solely for those two to play on, I think it would be fascinating. It feels Zerg maybe got slightly overnerfed in ways that only really matter when it’s Clem Serral is facing. If someone like Zoun, clearly very good at the game started dominating it’s a bit different. A dominant player in a weaker era, but is also clearly the best one has seen can maybe brute force their way into GOAT chats. If a player who’s still very good but clearly not better than what came before, much less so. Zerg certainly wasn't utterly underpowered during Life's reign but I'm sure if you would do a ranking of how the races performed during the eras most people would agree it's Toss > Terran > Zerg in HotS and Zerg > Terran > Toss in LotV. Factoring in all context I would agree that Life's 3 year span was more impressive than any 3 year span Serral had, but would still rank Serral ahead overall due to his longevity | ||
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rwala
280 Posts
On June 27 2025 05:27 WombaT wrote: In what sport does the following not get annointed the GOAT? Most tournament wins, highest conversion rate of entry to wins. Highest average placement. Top of ELO rankings for forever, highest match win percentage, winning record against basically every contemporary. For, at this stage a span that’s basically over half of the entirety of the game’s existence. Serral isn’t lacking in intangibles either. He’s just some Finnish bloke doing his own thing and he didn’t only get to the level of hanging with Kespa graduates, but clearly surpassed them. We've been over all this stuff. Serral is a great GOAT pick for all the reasons you say, and more. It's just that he simply didn't play, let alone show results, in the most competitive era, or in the most competitive tournaments and leagues. That's not his fault, but that's also just a fact. The GOAT of the minor leagues who crushes it in a declining/diminshed version of the major leagues All Star games from time to time is still just the GOAT of the minor leagues. (It's not even clear to me that Serral is GOAT of the minor leagues in this analogy tbh, given Clem's dominance in the Euro region.) Serral also benefited from a region-lock system that surely gave him quite a few additional bites at the international premier tournament and world championship apple. People forget that Rogue barely qualified for the global finals that he won, and that was a feature, not a bug, of the system. It's a system that by design excluded champion-caliber Korean players consistently. It's also a system that gave Serral a trophy for something Time/Oliveira had previously accomplished. These aren't necessarily arguments against Serral as much as they are arguments against silly ideas like Serral is 5X GOATier than Rogue. | ||
Mizenhauer
United States1847 Posts
If you can't make your point well it might be better to not make it at all. | ||
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lokol4890
108 Posts
On June 27 2025 23:47 WombaT wrote: Are they factoids if in the early part of Life’s championship contender career, we had multiple all-Zerg GSL finals that didn’t feature him? soO was doing his thing at this time too, and he broke his silver duck in the Kespa Cup against another different Zerg in Dark. Soulkey, Roro, Symbol, Byul and others made Korean Individual League finals or won them in HoTS. Jaedong made a Blizzcon final. There’s like 7+ Zergs who made a Premier final, or won one who aren’t Life, I fail to see how he’s pulling off miracles. Life wasn’t carrying Zerg, he wasn’t doing a Fruitdealer and winning against the odds. Zerg was doing pretty well overall in his career span. He may have been the best, or most talented one of the bunch. But I don’t think that analysis holds up at all. On the flipside, I don’t think you can claim’s been riding a Zerg OP wave for half the time SC2’s existed. Not saying you are making that claim, but I hear it a lot. You can see Zerg results drop off from similar to Serral levels, to nowhere near, based on the past few patches, especially in ZvP. No top Zergs are complaining that they have to focus Carriers. Lambo made a whole video about a patch, and he said he considered lowering the target priority a good QoL change for lower-level players, and he overall favoured it. He did make the point that at his level, it’s a minor nerf, because it’s harder to strategically pull back specifically to nuke interceptors. Any other unit within range will take priority. So for top players, actually a bad change, but he considered the trade worth it to make playing against Carriers at lower levels less frustrating. Clem? Well it’s an interesting one. Watch his FPVoD and he can do stuff nobody’s been able to do. So one can make the case that in raw skill he’s raised the bar, and would smack people around if sent back in time. I dunno if there’s enough juice left in the StarCraft orange for him to accomplish enough to jump ahead of a Serral or a Maru, but he could occupy a position of ‘the best, but didn’t get to show it’ for me. Personally I feel we need a patch solely for those two to play on, I think it would be fascinating. It feels Zerg maybe got slightly overnerfed in ways that only really matter when it’s Clem Serral is facing. If someone like Zoun, clearly very good at the game started dominating it’s a bit different. A dominant player in a weaker era, but is also clearly the best one has seen can maybe brute force their way into GOAT chats. If a player who’s still very good but clearly not better than what came before, much less so. Life may not have carried zerg but he sure as hell wasn't playing when zergs were for years consistently winning a lot of tournaments. If you look at carrying in terms of degrees instead of a binary, he carried it more than serral has ever done. I'm sure a lot of people will agree with you but I don't buy the perception that serral and clem are that above (if at all) of anyone else. The same clem that beat serral in their most recent official encounter also lost to shin at dh, a shin who from my understanding has never beat maru. At some point people gotta realize that stylistic differences matter quite a bit. Reading some of these comments people would think serral wins everything he enters. Reminder that he's entered two official tournaments in 2025 and lost them both. | ||
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PremoBeats
356 Posts
I understand this point very well. But I specifically gave context to each and every metric and why it makes sense to be included in a GOAT discussion. If you think one should be removed or you are able to think of another metric that should be included, please make the suggestion and give logical and reasonable context and explanations. Putting Aligulac at 20% is not something I would have done, it was an AI that proposed it. I was completely transparent about this decision and it was wrong (So arguing against this final result won't do much... I already suggested a different weighting in this very thread several times). I should have given more thought to publishing the final weighting as it was, but - as several people pointed out - it is completely irrelevant, as Serral is the best in every metric (except arguably the least important, where he placed 2nd). Now you could go on and analyze if one of the 6 metrics is biased towards Serral, but I wouldn't understand which one that may be. "Greatness is about doing what no one thought was possible, overcoming insurmountable odds, facing the fiercest possible competition and finding a way to win, and marking your place in history." Didn't Serral do this? "It's not that he didn't utilize numbers and stats, it's just that he placed them in their appropriate supporting context of a human understanding of greatness." How do you know that Miz did it like you explained? If they are only the support, why is the whole methodology explained as gradings, rankings and relations? You can't even critique his overall result the same way you do mine. Had I only posted rank 1 to 7 without numbers, you'd have no angle to make a critique... I think my transparency shows, that I strive for a fair verdict, especially with the constant corrections. As I said before: My actual numbers or reasoning can't be too much off, as I arrive at pretty similar results, if I use the information from the intro-article and reverse-enginer the list. Except that I can't figure out how Serral ever was in 2nd place, or how he managed to get ahead of Maru in such a small time frame until the update (especially as Miz did not have era multipliers and used prime years, which favor Serral). For factors I am not aware of, I can use substitutes to push Maru ahead of Serral... but that would lead to completely different results at the other places. @Charoisaur Do we crown online cup weekly heroes, where most of the top do not even participate, GOAT now? Disregarding region-locks entirely without letting post 2020 GSLs take a hit too, does not seem honest. Yes, I know they basically were not locked, but I think there is are reasons that the numbers of foreign participants in GSL is roughly the same as resident Koreans participating in region locked European and American tournaments. I get your point... but if we include the word "relevant" into WombaT's statement, I don't think anyone would disagree that Serral clearly has the most wins. @WombaT Or Reynor, who was the best in the world for quite some time. In regards to your inquiry... I will post it in 3-4 weeks... I also have to organize a weeding as best man... my available time is extremely limited atm :/ @ejozl How do you think Clem shows that? He only won 2 non-locked Premier Tournaments so far. In total he misses nearly 20 total tournament wins. His average placement and tournament win % as well as tournament lifetime achievements pale in comparison to Serral's. If some other person equals Serral's statistics for 7 years (which I absolutely think is impossible, especially when Serral is still around to counter that person) and Serral stays as the 2nd or 3rd best player of the world, that other player would need another 7 years as the 2nd or 3rd best player to equalize Serral's life time achievements. Clem at the moment is probably the slightly best player and he showed skills that make him the mechanically best player to ever touch mouse and keyboard. But Reynor was the best at one point in time. Even Maru, Rogue or Dark. But none of them were so consistently at the top 3 as Serral. Similar to WombaT I was a little bit surprised that you seem to have forgotten soO, Dark, Soulkey, Roro, Byul or even Solar for that matter. On June 28 2025 12:59 lokol4890 wrote: Reading some of these comments people would think serral wins everything he enters. Reminder that he's entered two official tournaments in 2025 and lost them both. Congratulations… you discovered why small sample sizes are shite  He entered DreamHack (5th to 8th), PigSty 5 (1st), PigSty 6 (3rd/4th), Zagora (2nd), LiuLi (3rd) and MC8 (1st). So I'd say 2025 is far from being his best year... but he did better than all others, except probably Clem. He also retains the fact that on average, he makes it to the semis. @The whole discussion I gave thought to the idea of “Serral’s numbers can’t be 5x Rogue... this invalidates the methodology”. Well, yes and no. No, in the sense of: if that is what the data shows with sensible reasoning then that can very well be the case. The question is: was the data used sensibly? My view: Mostly yes, but some decisions or circumstances can lead to immensely differing results. Weighting is obvious, but what wasn’t talked about so far is the normalization. But more on that down below. Era isn’t a very big factor in comparing Serral with Rogue and it only helps Rogue (although not very much, as it only is a factor in 6 of his placements). Another thing is sample size. In normalizations, if there are only 7 players, a min-max 0-100 normalization or even z-scores and percentile ones carry much more weight, when the sample size is smaller. Meaning: If we add other players that are below Rogue, his relative relation to Serral will naturally get smaller. I thus conclude that Rogue being so far behind Serral is a mix of sample size, weighting and the normalization-method. - Weighting can be adjusted within a couple of minutes so I changed it directly (leaving Aligulac in or not does not change much). - I also used different kinds of normalizations on my unweighted, un-normalized results (z-scores, percentile ones and a composite). I will post the results directly, but will also take my time to make it visually more appealing like the original article. But this will take some time - hopefully, any critiques about using too “little statistics” will be silenced - Sample size is an issue, as some metrics such as tournament win% and average place simply take an abysmal amount of time to collect. Aligulac means clicking through all lists again and takes notes about the players that will be looked at. Tournament score is rather easy via Liquipedia’s player pages, as I already have most tournaments evaluated… efficiency is similarly easy as I simply have to divide the TS through the year count. Match win rates also should be quite ok. My proposal: NesTea, MC, MMA, soO, sOs, Zest, Zoun, Stats, TY, Dark, Reynor, herO, perhaps ByuN. Including Clem does not make much sense as he has too few non-locked-wins, which could screw the statistics into one or the other direction. This will take a lot of time, but I think it will be worthwhile. It will probably be a years-long-endeavour and at the moment I am extremely busy as I am starting two new companies. But I enjoy diving into these numbers and the more I post, the more - at least I think - the results resemble a fair point of view. I still strive for logical consistency and transparency. Meaning if we apply era in one player comparison, the same factor should be applied in other comparisons too (in the same metric). If we say we are focusing on non-region-locked top events, it does not make sense to crown Clem the king of Europe, as Serral still has more PT wins. Yes, one can call him the “King of Europe of minor events, where Serral and Reynor do not participate much”, but we are talking about GOATs here. So if anyone still has issues with the methodology, I’d urge them to point to things I did not already address. With these other players included, sample size should not be much of an issue. Weightings and normalization will be adjusted based on the new formulas. To give you a glimpse of how that might look like in the end (based on the results so far): Weighted z-score results (0.44 TS, 0.36 tournament win%, 4x 0.5 the other metrics): 1. Serral 1,45σ 2. Life 0,40σ 3. Maru 0,33σ 4. Mvp -0,14σ 5. INnoVation -0,33σ 6. Rogue -0,73σ 7. Rain -0,98σ A z-score tells you how many standard deviations above or below the mean a value is. So a player with -1.0 is simply one standard deviation below the mean. Weighted percentile normalization results (0.44, 0.36, 4x 0.5): 1. Serral 0,967 2. Life 0,700 3. Maru 0,646 4. INnoVation 0,531 5. Mvp 0,483 6. Rogue 0,451 7. Rain 0,221 Composite of both and weighted at 0.44, 0.36, 4x 0.5: Serral 1,000 Life 0,857 Maru 0,714 Mvp 0,571 INnoVation 0,429 Rogue 0,286 Rain 0,143 Now after turning the standard deviation above or below average into weightings, I turned this result into a percentile rank, meaning where does one player stand compared to all other players on this list. Serral is highest in composite z-score, so he is in the 100th percentile. Rain is lowest, so he is around the 14th percentile (lowest in this 7-player-group). Basically: Among these players, what percentage did this player outperform on the combined weighted score? My guess is, that sample size will flatten the difference between Rogue and Serral. But Rogue simply has the lowest Aliuglac Score, middling tournament score, low efficiency and average to below-average results in other metrics. His relation will be better in comparison to Serral, but adding more players will not lead to Rogue overtaking INno or Mvp (comparing this to Miz list: the reason could be the era-multiplier that I used and he did not, which means Rogue could be ahead of INno and Mvp, but in turn would also diminish Maru's case against Serral, because of him not receiving era-multipliers either). EDIT: One more thing I remember that someone here wrote: Making more era-subcategories... 2010-2012: Pre-KeSPA 1 2013-2016: Prime KeSPA 1,5 2017-2020: Transition period 1,25 2020-2024: Modern 1 Something like that? | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25047 Posts
On June 28 2025 17:21 PremoBeats wrote: @WombaT Or Reynor, who was the best in the world for quite some time. In regards to your inquiry... I will post it in 3-4 weeks... I also have to organize a weeding as best man... my available time is extremely limited atm :/ Dude are these alien space weeds or something? Joking aside, best of luck! I will of course come back to annoy you if you don’t post within a 4-5 week timeframe :p | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25047 Posts
On June 28 2025 12:59 lokol4890 wrote: Life may not have carried zerg but he sure as hell wasn't playing when zergs were for years consistently winning a lot of tournaments. If you look at carrying in terms of degrees instead of a binary, he carried it more than serral has ever done. I'm sure a lot of people will agree with you but I don't buy the perception that serral and clem are that above (if at all) of anyone else. The same clem that beat serral in their most recent official encounter also lost to shin at dh, a shin who from my understanding has never beat maru. At some point people gotta realize that stylistic differences matter quite a bit. Reading some of these comments people would think serral wins everything he enters. Reminder that he's entered two official tournaments in 2025 and lost them both. Did he though? Or was he just the best Zerg? Greatness is very much a vibe thing as much as anything else, and Voldemort was undoubtedly insane. But I think people don’t actually go back and look at the results in these timeframes. With Life, yeah I think it’s fair that overall HoTS wasn’t a Zerg expansion in terms of supremacy, but a lot of other players were putting in impressive results too. With Serral, same kinda deal. There were periods of his career where you had the Zerg ‘Big 4’ (Serral, Dark, Rogue, Reynor) carving up basically every tournament. When it was pretty hard to argue it wasn’t a Zerg-favoured meta, especially in ZvP. You even saw this with lesser Zerg lights like latter-day DRG and Armani making deep Code S runs. That isn’t Zerg now, it hasn’t been for a while. Everyone else has dropped off basically, only Serral’s maintaining his numbers. I don’t think he’s carrying the race, it’s still competitive, he just doesn't get the credit here I think he should, because people seem to be viewing it through the balance lens of patches years ago. Stylistic differences absolutely matter, and can dictate head-to-heads. It’s why I tend to not factor in head-to-heads too much in my personal calculus. Serral and Clem had a bad Dallas, and it’s been the biggest tournament in the recent past. Absolutely a failure but overall they’ve been munching face for a fair while. I highly doubt anyone in the field at EWC would do anything but breathe a sigh of relief if they got knocked out unexpectedly early | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15919 Posts
On June 27 2025 23:47 WombaT wrote: Are they factoids if in the early part of Life’s championship contender career, we had multiple all-Zerg GSL finals that didn’t feature him? soO was doing his thing at this time too, and he broke his silver duck in the Kespa Cup against another different Zerg in Dark. Soulkey, Roro, Symbol, Byul and others made Korean Individual League finals or won them in HoTS. Jaedong made a Blizzcon final. There’s like 7+ Zergs who made a Premier final, or won one who aren’t Life, I fail to see how he’s pulling off miracles. Life wasn’t carrying Zerg, he wasn’t doing a Fruitdealer and winning against the odds. Zerg was doing pretty well overall in his career span. He may have been the best, or most talented one of the bunch. But I don’t think that analysis holds up at all. On the flipside, I don’t think you can claim’s been riding a Zerg OP wave for half the time SC2’s existed. Not saying you are making that claim, but I hear it a lot. You can see Zerg results drop off from similar to Serral levels, to nowhere near, based on the past few patches, especially in ZvP. No top Zergs are complaining that they have to focus Carriers. Lambo made a whole video about a patch, and he said he considered lowering the target priority a good QoL change for lower-level players, and he overall favoured it. He did make the point that at his level, it’s a minor nerf, because it’s harder to strategically pull back specifically to nuke interceptors. Any other unit within range will take priority. So for top players, actually a bad change, but he considered the trade worth it to make playing against Carriers at lower levels less frustrating. Clem? Well it’s an interesting one. Watch his FPVoD and he can do stuff nobody’s been able to do. So one can make the case that in raw skill he’s raised the bar, and would smack people around if sent back in time. I dunno if there’s enough juice left in the StarCraft orange for him to accomplish enough to jump ahead of a Serral or a Maru, but he could occupy a position of ‘the best, but didn’t get to show it’ for me. Personally I feel we need a patch solely for those two to play on, I think it would be fascinating. It feels Zerg maybe got slightly overnerfed in ways that only really matter when it’s Clem Serral is facing. If someone like Zoun, clearly very good at the game started dominating it’s a bit different. A dominant player in a weaker era, but is also clearly the best one has seen can maybe brute force their way into GOAT chats. If a player who’s still very good but clearly not better than what came before, much less so. Pretty hard to argue that tournament winrate isn't inflated by the thinning player pool though atm. If you teleport Clem and Serral in a more competitive era even at their exact same relative skill level and exact same winrates against top players as they have currently, they'd still get eliminated from tournaments far more often just due to the virtue of there being more players that can occassionally beat them. | ||
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PremoBeats
356 Posts
On June 28 2025 20:49 WombaT wrote: Dude are these alien space weeds or something? Joking aside, best of luck! I will of course come back to annoy you if you don’t post within a 4-5 week timeframe :p Holy crap, you just gave me an inspiration for dessert On June 28 2025 22:05 Charoisaur wrote: Pretty hard to argue that tournament winrate isn't inflated by the thinning player pool though atm. If you teleport Clem and Serral in a more competitive era even at their exact same relative skill level and exact same winrates against top players as they have currently, they'd still get eliminated from tournaments far more often just due to the virtue of there being more players that can occassionally beat them. I think no one is arguing that a thinner player pool does not inflate win rate. What I argue - I think we had this in another thread as well iirc - is that INnoVation's and the other's win rates would drop as well when we add prime Mvp, Serral and the others into their era and at the end - according to observable win rates - Serral would still be the best player in a 3 to 4 year time frame. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25047 Posts
On June 28 2025 22:05 Charoisaur wrote: Pretty hard to argue that tournament winrate isn't inflated by the thinning player pool though atm. If you teleport Clem and Serral in a more competitive era even at their exact same relative skill level and exact same winrates against top players as they have currently, they'd still get eliminated from tournaments far more often just due to the virtue of there being more players that can occassionally beat them. I mean I wouldn’t dispute that, equally Serral’s been doing it for 7 years now. Clem may end up in the position where he ends up as the most skilled player ever to touch the game, but can’t really make a GOAT claim. My issue is where people take this argument to, to realms that make little sense. With a million inconsistent caveats. Hypothetically, let’s say that instead of just the teams disbanding, Kespa players retired en masse. If that happened, and Serral was dominating as he has, he’d be a ‘can’t categorise’ for me as a GOAT candidate. He may pass the eye test as the ‘best’ player, but lacks that competitive depth. IMO, somewhat where Clem actually is now. But that didn’t happen, he’s been smashing the same field. It’s thinned over time, but in 2018? We can acknowledge the lack of team houses, but ultimately it’s something of a reset where the Koreans had similar practice conditions to foreigners. An even playing field basically, in that particular domain. In an alternate history where Korean houses collapsed and Europe developed their own and hothoused talent in that environment, and it completely flipped, I’d feel a bit differently. I’ll also add that JAGW kept a team house for a decent while after. Was that advantageous to Maru? I try to be as unbiased as I can, I think I don’t appear so merely because others are so biased that an attempt at neutrality appears biased to them. One can apply the weak era argument, or bemoan the demise of Kespa, or whatever but couch it in consistency. Rogue was a good Proleague player with no real individual results in the ‘peak era’, he hoovered up a shitload of trophies subsequently, but you can’t make the argument that Serral was making hay in a weakened era and not apply it to Rogue. Maru, I think does have a legit case as the GOAT, although I vote Serral personally, but again a huge amount of his trophies are in the ‘Serral era’ as well. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25047 Posts
On June 28 2025 23:25 PremoBeats wrote: Holy crap, you just gave me an inspiration for dessert I think no one is arguing that a thinner player pool does not inflate win rate. What I argue - I think we had this in another thread as well iirc - is that INnoVation's and the other's win rates would drop as well when we add prime Mvp, Serral and the others into their era and at the end - according to observable win rates - Serral would still be the best player in a 3 to 4 year time frame. I hope the dessert works out well! I think it’s a dangerous assumption, but I think even discounting time travel contemporary Code S is the most obvious example of that. I think Code S you have to both navigate extended stays in Korea, as well as the prep format. I don’t have doubts Serral could prep, but maybe he’d struggle with the environment and not perform. Nonetheless Code S has been missing a guy who’s been #1 to MAYBE #4 at worst in the world for like 7 years. As an aside just based on some idle Aligulacing, it’s crazy to me that Serral still has a 32–23 (58.18%) record in matches against Clem. I just checked it, I thought Clem might have nudged ahead! Clem has certainly had the edge for a while now, but even still. I was genuinely surprised. Has there ever been a player where their nemesis, who finally starts to get an edge still has to win 9 series just to tie the head to head? Rogue is only one behind to be fair, they basically traded 50/50 at their peak but Serral has a pretty formidable head to head with everyone else I’ve checked. His losing records basically all come from his semi-pro, early pro days. He’s so dominant that I think it distorts things. I reckon if you were to straw poll people, they’d think him and Reynor trade 50/50, as their rivalry was very tight at one stage. It’s actually a 68/32 in Serral’s favour. Numbers aren’t everything, but I would recommend occasionally checking them! herO is the top PvZer and has been for a long time now. Winning record against a lot of big Zerg hitters (including all 3 of the rest of the modern ‘Big 4’). 23.08% win rate against Serral. Again I don’t think numbers are everything, but sometimes I think people make judgements on what they think the numbers are, versus just going on pure vibes. It’s kind of the worst of both worlds | ||
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ejozl
Denmark3364 Posts
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Mizenhauer
United States1847 Posts
On July 01 2025 02:29 ejozl wrote: Ppl say inno or maru carried terran alone, but for zerg this was much more the case with life. There were so many top terrans in hots, zerg had winners, but anyone as dominant as life? Only soO comes close and he is certainly not a winner. There were hyung, jaedong and solar, but I don't think many see these as the best of the best players, though they had there time in the sun. If soO enjoyed the balance serral had in 2018 and 2019, which he did as well and it made him finally win in 2019, but had he had that zerg version behind him in from 2013-2017 we might just have our goat, potentially 6 more wins right there. A lot of people used to give (maybe they still do, but soO 's reputation in KR went up a lot with time) soO a bunch of shit because he was the one stopping other Zergs from winning any tournaments. Another thing to consider when pondering sOs vs soO. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25047 Posts
On July 01 2025 02:29 ejozl wrote: Ppl say inno or maru carried terran alone, but for zerg this was much more the case with life. There were so many top terrans in hots, zerg had winners, but anyone as dominant as life? Only soO comes close and he is certainly not a winner. There were hyung, jaedong and solar, but I don't think many see these as the best of the best players, though they had there time in the sun. If soO enjoyed the balance serral had in 2018 and 2019, which he did as well and it made him finally win in 2019, but had he had that zerg version behind him in from 2013-2017 we might just have our goat, potentially 6 more wins right there. There were 4 Terran GSL champs in 2018, granted they were the same bloke. 3 TvPs, and 3 separate Ts at that, and one TvT. What is this balance that Serral supposedly benefitted from? It wasn’t too bad balance wise around that time, quite a variety of finals matchups and different faces too. I think a few years later, especially when Toss started to really struggle in PvZ, yeah that was a very strong period for Zerg. I think lately they’ve maybe been over-nerfed even. I just don’t think some of your observations actually stack up against results in the eras you’re talking about. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1138 Posts
On July 01 2025 07:09 WombaT wrote: There were 4 Terran GSL champs in 2018, granted they were the same bloke. 3 TvPs, and 3 separate Ts at that, and one TvT. What is this balance that Serral supposedly benefitted from? It wasn’t too bad balance wise around that time, quite a variety of finals matchups and different faces too. I think a few years later, especially when Toss started to really struggle in PvZ, yeah that was a very strong period for Zerg. I think lately they’ve maybe been over-nerfed even. I just don’t think some of your observations actually stack up against results in the eras you’re talking about. Just to add to that: For the 2018 BlizzCon, five Zerg players qualified. From these five, two got direct invites (Serral and Rogue), the rest (Dark, Lambo, Nerchio) qualified through Points. If you look at the Korea and Global standings, Dark/Rogue and Lambo/Nerchio are on the respective bottom. So ironically, if you wanted to discredit Serrals Blizzcon run, it would be by saying he got lucky to play mostly ZvZ in the playoffs. But then you would need to admit that Zerg wasn't overpowered in 2018... Also...why is the imbecile still creeping up in these discussions? I don't get it. He does not have enough GSLs to be picked over Maru, he does not have the Proleague results (not to mention he has never won Proleague), he is missing a World Championship (Blizzard officially vacated his title) and above all he probably caused the most damage to the scene a singular person could gather up. Really not my sport, but does anyone notice that when cycling-fans talk about the GOAT and where Pogacar ranks, they compare him to Merckx or whatever. No one ever says "well, he is still behind Armstrong!" Because as far as GOAT-points go, Armstrong is so far off the list every toddler on a tricycle is above him. Same is true for the imbecile. Have you touched SC2 and found the A-move button? Yes? Great, you are a higher-rated GOAT-candidate than Life, have fun with that \ o / | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25047 Posts
On July 01 2025 11:04 Balnazza wrote: Just to add to that: For the 2018 BlizzCon, five Zerg players qualified. From these five, two got direct invites (Serral and Rogue), the rest (Dark, Lambo, Nerchio) qualified through Points. If you look at the Korea and Global standings, Dark/Rogue and Lambo/Nerchio are on the respective bottom. So ironically, if you wanted to discredit Serrals Blizzcon run, it would be by saying he got lucky to play mostly ZvZ in the playoffs. But then you would need to admit that Zerg wasn't overpowered in 2018... Also...why is the imbecile still creeping up in these discussions? I don't get it. He does not have enough GSLs to be picked over Maru, he does not have the Proleague results (not to mention he has never won Proleague), he is missing a World Championship (Blizzard officially vacated his title) and above all he probably caused the most damage to the scene a singular person could gather up. Really not my sport, but does anyone notice that when cycling-fans talk about the GOAT and where Pogacar ranks, they compare him to Merckx or whatever. No one ever says "well, he is still behind Armstrong!" Because as far as GOAT-points go, Armstrong is so far off the list every toddler on a tricycle is above him. Same is true for the imbecile. Have you touched SC2 and found the A-move button? Yes? Great, you are a higher-rated GOAT-candidate than Life, have fun with that \ o / To be awkward Pog is being compared to Merckx because he crushed face in the overall cycling calendar, where Armstrong basically focused 100% on the Tour de France. Pogacar is also similarly doing it in Monuments, Worlds etc. Even excluding the drugs part, Armstrong never really threatened Merckx as an all-round GOAT, but Pog may conceivably do so. That aside. Yes. Voldemort’s talent isn’t really in question, but I think people overlook the lead-up to his downfall too. His results were dipping, he wasn’t doing it in Proleague I personally think we were already seeing a guy whose latent talent was starting to be stretched versus maturing Kespa swaps, whose motivation had started to go already. I think it’s a redundant hypothetical personally. Whatever part of him dropped the level, that match fixed, is still a part of him. To hypothesise a version of him that didn’t do that, is to just circumvent reality. To whatever degree, whatever personality made him so great at the game, also saw him fuck over the scene. It’s like saying ‘what if Innovation was 100% motivated all the time?’ I mean I think he might be the undisputed GOAT if so. But he wasn’t, so, he wasn’t. Guys like Taeja, who I really don’t think was much behind in terms of natural talent, but plagued with injury, and of course Mvp, those are also what-ifs. But those are two players debilitated and gradually declining, and still competing despite. I rate them higher than their accomplishments for that reason. I don’t mind if someone wishes to acknowledge the talent of Voldemort but not if it’s basically ignoring the contemporary reality of his span, or that Serral’s been at the top of the game for 7 years because balance. That’s daft. | ||
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