Thanks for that great write-up and summary @PremoBeats
Rogue’s stats are a prime example of how extremely high peak performance, paired with low consistency, can create the illusion of long-term dominance. His clutch wins in big moments really stand out, but they can also distort our perception of sustained excellence. That said, Rogue is undeniably one of the all-time greats, especially under pressure, where his mental resilience often outshines his peers. Still, I wouldn’t put him in the GOAT conversation across the full span of the game.
Now, here's where I go full heretic: Has anyone ever done a similar breakdown for Flash in Brood War? Looking at his Liquipedia page, his overall match win rate is listed at 72.3%—though I’m not sure how current that stat is. If we compare that to the best of SC2 using PremoBeats’ data: Serral sits at 70.73%, Rain at 68.15%, and Maru (already trailing more noticeably) at 65.9%. Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
Flash's major achievements came at the absolute peak of BW competition.
Serral's major achievements came after the absolute peak of SC2 competition.
I don't think that comparing the two is appropriate in the slightest.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
Flash's major achievements came at the absolute peak of BW competition.
Serral's major achievements came after the absolute peak of SC2 competition.
I don't think that comparing the two is appropriate in the slightest.
This is the correct take. I mean no disrespect to the EU qualifier this weekend but look at who serral had to play:
Letalex, shameless, arrogfire, krystianer, goblin and reynor.
That is not comparable to tournaments at the peak of bw or SC2. Even if he's having an off day imo none of those players besides reynor have a chance.
Frankly speaking, others already pointed out, but the second a counter factual of someone not qualifying for events for a few years potentially improving their overall standing in "GOAT" analysis comes up, it screams that one messed up their methodology from the ground up and should re-do it again. There a few other sanity checks like that i have in mind: for example is someone winning every tournament with the same top 4 placements for a year or two more or less "great" than someone consistently top 4 in tournaments that otherwise have completely different top 4 in every single one in the same time span (and for check's sake, same tournament count). By OP's metrics i am fairly sure the former is "great"er on every single measurement but we all know who would be the GOAT among the two (i am not stating those are real players, so don't let possible associations with real players confuse you).
EDIT: I'd figure the former is indeed more dominant but "greatness" is far more ephemeral of concept.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
At least one community figure was calling serral the goat in 2018, when serral had no business being even in the conversation. You can justify serral's achievements however you want, but claiming he's underrated is wild.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
Flash's major achievements came at the absolute peak of BW competition.
Serral's major achievements came after the absolute peak of SC2 competition.
I don't think that comparing the two is appropriate in the slightest.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable, albeit close to impossible to directly compare for my money. But the natural inclination to compare the two respective GOATs in a game and its sequel wouldn’t be inappropriate for me, just would be inconclusive
I’ll give Flash the points for ruthless competition levels, he gets that one.
Serral has some pluses in his column as well: - To all intents and purposes, he’s just some bloke playing from his house, and his competition are alumni of full-time gaming houses full of talent. Indeed, Jin Air still maintained their setup for a fair while. We see in contemporary BW quite how hard it is for folks without experience within the Kespa system to break through even now.
Some more neutral/incomparable IMO points. I don’t know if any of these are better/worse for a comparison in the direction of either player: - Until post-Kespa Flash played the vast majority of his games in prep formats and leveraging his teammates, although ofc his opposition gets that benefit as well. The majority of Serral’s career is showing up at a tournament and figuring out how to navigate whoever the bracket throws up at him. - SC2 keeps getting changed, and BW does not minus the maps. Serral has to navigate that flux and stay on top. On the flipside Flash has to deal with a scene that knows his tendencies and are always seeking some edge. - SC2 is arguably easier for a mid player to beat a top player, but harder to dominate in terms of huge win rates for that exact reason. This was almost the consensus from my memory back in the day. To paraphrase, ‘you won’t see Flash win rates because even the best players will lose the dice roll to the occasional inferior player doing an all-in or cheese.’ This was actually my stance too, and really would have remained so except Serral just went and did it.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
Flash's major achievements came at the absolute peak of BW competition.
Serral's major achievements came after the absolute peak of SC2 competition.
I don't think that comparing the two is appropriate in the slightest.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable, albeit close to impossible to directly compare for my money. But the natural inclination to compare the two respective GOATs in a game and its sequel wouldn’t be inappropriate for me, just would be inconclusive
I’ll give Flash the points for ruthless competition levels, he gets that one.
Serral has some pluses in his column as well: - To all intents and purposes, he’s just some bloke playing from his house, and his competition are alumni of full-time gaming houses full of talent. Indeed, Jin Air still maintained their setup for a fair while. We see in contemporary BW quite how hard it is for folks without experience within the Kespa system to break through even now.
Some more neutral/incomparable IMO points. I don’t know if any of these are better/worse for a comparison in the direction of either player: - Until post-Kespa Flash played the vast majority of his games in prep formats and leveraging his teammates, although ofc his opposition gets that benefit as well. The majority of Serral’s career is showing up at a tournament and figuring out how to navigate whoever the bracket throws up at him. - SC2 keeps getting changed, and BW does not minus the maps. Serral has to navigate that flux and stay on top. On the flipside Flash has to deal with a scene that knows his tendencies and are always seeking some edge. - SC2 is arguably easier for a mid player to beat a top player, but harder to dominate in terms of huge win rates for that exact reason. This was almost the consensus from my memory back in the day. To paraphrase, ‘you won’t see Flash win rates because even the best players will lose the dice roll to the occasional inferior player doing an all-in or cheese.’ This was actually my stance too, and really would have remained so except Serral just went and did it.
Flash was dominant during the peak of BW competition.
Flash has been equally-if-not-more dominant post-KeSPA.
We could therefore say that Flash's dominance post-KeSPA is the icing on the cake.
Taking the analogy further, Serral's cake consists of nothing but icing.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
At least one community figure was calling serral the goat in 2018, when serral had no business being even in the conversation. You can justify serral's achievements however you want, but claiming he's underrated is wild.
They’re not claiming he’s underrated I don’t think, they’re saying they disagree with the segments of the community who say he can’t be the GOAT without GSLs, just that specific cohort.
Yeah 2018 was pretty premature with that call I’d 100% agree there.
For me, Serral is too good at too much to need a GSL, at least based on his competition. Other opinions may differ!
Where Serral has his strong claims, they’re very strong. Trophies, win rates, average placement etc.
Where others may have claims he doesn’t have, such as Maru’s Starleagues, they tend to lack something else, or, are subject to the same criticisms that are levied at Serral. Maru still doesn’t have a WC. If he picked up a couple, added to him winning in the Strongest EraTM, then I think Serral has to get him some Starleagues.
Rogue, does have those but also doesn’t have wins in the strongest era, which is the biggest criticism of Serral’s claim. He’s got Starleagues, but loses a lot of head-to-head comparisons in other metrics. I think by sufficient margin to outweigh the Starleagues, some may disagree.
For me there isn’t a GOAT candidate with the complete package, trophies, dominance, longevity, Starleagues and World Champs, and doing it at the peak of competition.
Serral is probably the closest for me, overall. But also not a claim without flaws.
I also think the window where him winning some GSLs would have changed the minds of some has passed. Perhaps passed long ago.
Although the flipside to that is I think one can argue that GSL pretty much every season has lacked one of the top 4 players in the world.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
Flash's major achievements came at the absolute peak of BW competition.
Serral's major achievements came after the absolute peak of SC2 competition.
I don't think that comparing the two is appropriate in the slightest.
- SC2 is arguably easier for a mid player to beat a top player, but harder to dominate in terms of huge win rates for that exact reason. This was almost the consensus from my memory back in the day. To paraphrase, ‘you won’t see Flash win rates because even the best players will lose the dice roll to the occasional inferior player doing an all-in or cheese.’ This was actually my stance too, and really would have remained so except Serral just went and did it.
That was the consensus when the game was less figured it out. But Serral is not only one who reached insane winrates in sc2, I'd argue Maru did it before Serral against top competition when he won WESG + 3 GSL in 2018. Nowadays Clem is also up there.
In fact content creators like Artosis and PiG think that the opposite is true in todays sc2, that it's too hard to score upsets against superior players which makes the scene too predictable.
Some have had insane years, Maru’s 2018 being a great example of ‘Flash-like’ numbers. I think generally when people are talking about a comparison here, it’s career versus career, not best years versus best years.
For the record, no I don’t think Serral is Flash or whatever, different games etc. He is, however the only player with similar career win rate numbers.
I agree and disagree with the Notorious PiG on this one. I think it’s a problem, it does take the hype down a little. Things do get samey
On the flipside, some of these dominant players are just too good. How far do you have to change things to neuter Serral, a peak Clem a Maru?
Outside of really, a very, very select few, the game is quite volatile still. Things are super tight, most players can beat most others on the day. Dallas was pretty exciting, specially as Clem and Serral lost earlier than one could generally expect, GSL’s been hard to predict, the EWC qualifiers (esp Korea) the same.
I’ll see if I can dig up a rare case of me actually looking at numbers re win rates.
A lot of Kespa players actually have pretty similar win rates in the Kespa era, and after. Some improved a little, some dropped a little. Maru was one of the few who bumped his up by quite a lot actually from memory.
Let’s say we had a lot of title contender types with a 5-10% better win rate post-Kespa. Then, I think Serral, who played most of his top-level career in that era, you could crudely guesstimate that his Kespa era win rates would be in the ballpark of 5-10% lower. Or whatever
I think it WOULD be lower, of course. I’m not insane, but it has to drop a lot to bring him down in that metric.
Another observation I’d make is you haven’t really seen a big fluctuation in wider Korean/foreign relations.
If the Korean level had dropped considerably, I think you’d see that reflected more. The hierarchy and numbers are pretty similar than before.
The TLDR is, I think ofc the level’s dropped, but not all that much based on what I’ve observed anyway. Things you’d expect to see if Korea fell off a cliff largely have not.
My personal opinion is that Serral, and to a lesser degree Reynor and Clem are a glimpse at what a new Kespa player would look like now.
Start from a young age, the scene’s already established and the fundamentals are fleshed out, you’re not switching from another game, SC2 is what you’ve played almost exclusively and you get to go pro.
This is partly why Serral is so damn strong. He’s the next step, the difference is he’s not Korean, and there aren’t other Serrals in Korea that came through.
I think people have it a bit backwards by solely looking at the Kespa era, sometimes it’s interesting to flip it.
We don’t have to think how oov would do versus previous greats. We saw it, he wrecked them, and was part of that lineage which ended up in God himself.
I am not saying at all that Serral is, himself, on a totally other plane or anything like that. But I think he’s a glimpse of that future timeline. Wonder what could have come next?
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: Thanks for that great write-up and summary @PremoBeats
Rogue’s stats are a prime example of how extremely high peak performance, paired with low consistency, can create the illusion of long-term dominance. His clutch wins in big moments really stand out, but they can also distort our perception of sustained excellence. That said, Rogue is undeniably one of the all-time greats, especially under pressure, where his mental resilience often outshines his peers. Still, I wouldn’t put him in the GOAT conversation across the full span of the game.
Now, here's where I go full heretic: Has anyone ever done a similar breakdown for Flash in Brood War? Looking at his Liquipedia page, his overall match win rate is listed at 72.3%—though I’m not sure how current that stat is. If we compare that to the best of SC2 using PremoBeats’ data: Serral sits at 70.73%, Rain at 68.15%, and Maru (already trailing more noticeably) at 65.9%. Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
Thanks, mate
I just want to repeat it, as I get the impression that many people fail to understand this: This is Serral's lifetime win rate ONLY versus the top Koreans. Meaning Serral mostly played the best of the best, while the lifetime win rate of the Koreans in this article also include many more games versus tier 3, 4 or 5 Koreans from qualifiers and smaller tournaments. I touched this subject in the article, but if I would take a sample of 20 players and averaged this inflation out, a low estimate is that Serral would at least gain additional 2%. His lifetime match win rate overall is 79,14%.
On June 02 2025 22:52 lolfail9001 wrote: Frankly speaking, others already pointed out, but the second a counter factual of someone not qualifying for events for a few years potentially improving their overall standing in "GOAT" analysis comes up, it screams that one messed up their methodology from the ground up and should re-do it again. There a few other sanity checks like that i have in mind: for example is someone winning every tournament with the same top 4 placements for a year or two more or less "great" than someone consistently top 4 in tournaments that otherwise have completely different top 4 in every single one in the same time span (and for check's sake, same tournament count). By OP's metrics i am fairly sure the former is "great"er on every single measurement but we all know who would be the GOAT among the two (i am not stating those are real players, so don't let possible associations with real players confuse you).
EDIT: I'd figure the former is indeed more dominant but "greatness" is far more ephemeral of concept.
But how is that the case with my methodology? It would decrease their efficiency and they wouldn't rack in points in the tournament score. Not qualifying for big events would mean that you cannot score tournament score points and your efficiency would drop. And I did not quite understand your example, sorry. I don't get what "winning with the same top 4 placements" means... If you won, you get awarded the placement-multiplier for first place. All other things are related to the era and tournament difficulty.
On June 01 2025 16:16 Mizenhauer wrote: My only question is, given that Rogue's GOAT score is so disproportionately low compared to the other players in this study, do you feel it's an indication of some fundamental error in your process? I say this because that kind of skew in results leads me to believe that something is inherently incorrect when it comes to the calculation/tabulation of your GOAT score. Maybe that's ChatGPT (it's pretty damning).
Isn't the thing about Rogue that he was more streaky or perhaps more clutchy. I never looked at Rogue and thought he was dominant or even the best player in the world at any point in time.
Personally I put MVP/Inno over Rogue on my GOAT list. A criteria for being the GOAT is imo that you were the best player in the world for some period in time.
I weight MVP's era of dominance and the early KESPA era multiple times higher per tournament than what happened in the past few years.
On the other hand we had more tournaments back then so that offsets it partially.
On a per tournament basis I would give perhaps 5 times more weight to a tournament during Starcraft's peak era than today.
However, the margin of dominance also matters, and that's where Serral truly shines and still comes in at number 1. MVP had perhaps 6 months where he looked a level above everyone else, but after that it felt more like he was one of the better players but just pretty clutchy. In contrast Serral has always been the favorite or huge favorite for 7 years straight.
5 times more? Like a blank multiplier? Even though there were Premier Tournaments where two to three top tier Koreans flew to foreign regions to farm them? These situations are comparable to Serral winning in Europe and you'd want to award these tournaments 5 times the amount in relation to modern ones? I don't think that this is a sound multiplier, unless I misunderstood you.
On June 02 2025 00:30 JJH777 wrote: Aligulac being 20% of your determination is insane. Aligulac is a bad ELO system for a bunch of reasons. It consistently overrates people from outside of the KR scene. There are tons of examples even before Serral was notable. Serral specifically hit rank 1 for the first time when he still had <50% win rate vs Koreans. For much of his career his ranking was inflated by playing a huge amount of games vs mid to low tier EU players which he always swept. Maru would have swept those too. If you put Maru into 3 8 player round robin groups vs non Serral/Reynor/Clem EU players per year (format of EU regional for most of the years being discussed) what do you think happens to his aligulac rating? I guarantee it skyrockets. It's also funny that you punish Marus tournament winrrate for winning against "low tier" Koreans but don't take that into account that Serral's aligulac ranking heavily benefits from beating up low tier EU players.
I also heavily disagree with the idea of average placement/efficiency/percentage of won tournaments in all premiers played being important. That just specifically punishes players with long careers who consistently qualified for premiers. A longer career with consistent premier qualifications should be a boon to goat candidacy not a negative. The fact that Marus ranking in these categories would go up dramatically if you exclude his pre 2018 results shows alone how flawed it is. Maru being an S tier player from 2013-2018 should not penalize his chances of being goat.
I know for some of these aspects you slightly adjusted for this by determining prime years but I disagree with it being a consideration at all. Certainly not a combined 42.5% of your ranking.
1. The overall result wouldn't change (Serral would still lead with nearly 300 points), even if I removed the Aligulac-metric entirely 2. I think you got this the wrong way round. The machine's algorithm saw the explosion of wins Serral had versus Europeans and through cross-regional comparisons correctly "predicted" that he would defeat the Koreans as well, which was exactly what happened in the first quarter of 2018 when his win rates skyrocketed to over 80%. What you mentioned is a super rare case, that shows how well Aligulac works cross-regionally. These inflation-arguments were a thing in the early 2010s... not anymore in 2017. Further, after 2018, Serral played enough Koreans per year, which made the calculation pretty reliable. 3. I only pointed the Korean's inflation against Serral through weaker Korean players out. As I wrote in the article, I did not actually incorporate these findings in the calculation. 4. No, it punishes no one. It simply shows, that there are some players that have the ability to always finish on top and others that don't. That the player you favor by chance is not good in this metric, does not mean that the metric per se is bad. 5. Some argue rightfully, that it would be unfair to players like Rain and Mvp who had short, kick-started careers if one discounts the worse years of players, hence I went for a mix. In the tournament score Maru's longer careers ears him more points. And if he was as efficient as Serral over 7 years, he'd easily be up there with him. That is simply what a fair analysis shows... strengths and weaknesses.
Aligulac called King Kong a top 10 player in the world as late as 2014. I'm pretty sure he has never beaten a top pro. He got that ranking by being dominant in his region while never having any global results. He stayed in the top 50 range for years despite the fact that on a skill basis he was likely never even top 100. Aligulac has huge issues judging players who dominate their own region. Another good example is Polt. Polt is in the top 15 all time on aligulac. He was regularly top 5 and even 1st while active. He did that by dominating NA. He was never truly competitive with top GSL players post 2011 but dominating a weaker region kept him at the top of aligulac for ages.
Saying aligulac was just predicting Serral's future success is a copout when that future success wasn't until over a year after he hit rank 1. During which time he regularly lost matches to Koreans but still during that entire period he was almost always 1st with just a few falls down to 2-3. I'm definitely not saying he didn't deserve it the majority of the time he had it but the margin he had it by was heavily inflated and there were many times he would have been passed with a system that didn't over reward winning against far weaker competition.
I don't know how possible it is to calculate, probably depends on how accessible aligulac's source code/algorithm and result sets are but I am genuinely curious about how aligulac would have changed if Maru played 24 bo3s vs mid and lower rank EU players (basically everyone sans Serral and Reynor until 2022 then everyone besides them and Clem after that) every year from 2017-2024. Giving him whatever his current winrrate is vs that group in those bo3s. Based on aligulac's history of over rewarding beating lower competition I am confident his rating would increase significantly but I can't say for sure. I may try to do that someday when I have free time.
Marus "ability to finish on top" is punished by playing in an era with far more active full time pros and by having a far higher amount of events played in. Those criteria definitely uniquely punishes Marus career as it is the longest of any top pro by a considerable margin. By those criteria he would literally rank higher if he had just failed to qualify for events than if he qualifies for them. The fact that you can't agree that is backwards is crazy to me.
Serral's metrics in all categories besides tournament results are inflated by not playing in GSL. If Serral played in GSL regularly it's extremely likely his aligulac, matchup win rates, efficiency, average tournament placement, and percentage of won tournaments would all decline. I do agree he would likely win some GSLs which would benefit his tournament score but when you're only giving tournament score 22% of the overall weight it's not like that makes much difference.
- I already said that Aligulac had issues in the 2010s. - Didn't he hit rank 1 on the last list of 2017? And started winning against Koreans in January 2018? I mean.. that is exactly what the machine is built to do. Weigh players relative to their statistics against each other. - Which exact time frame are you talking about when talking about Maru? And which metric? - Why would Serral lose more games in GSL than versus top Koreans at other Premier Tournaments? Because of its structure?
You said early 2010s. The issues I mentioned were 2014-2017. A more recent example would be heromarine shortly after the open cups started. He won a bunch in a row because most top players didn't play in them and shot up the rankings and was top 10 for a while. I like heromarine but I don't really believe he was ever top 10 worldwide in terms of skill. Even after his one Kato top 4 he didn't follow that up with any major results suggesting it was a fluke.
Regardless even 2014 is late enough to show issues. Those first years were the most active years of SC2. Why would a system that by your own admission didn't work with 100,000 data points suddenly work with 200,000-300,000? Numbers are estimated based on aligulac's search function.
The timeframe for Maru would be 2012-2017 and the metrics I already specified were efficiency, average placement, and percentage of won tournaments. The way you measure those Maru would have been better off being an unknown/inactive player who never qualified for anything during that era because then his 2018 forward timeframe would produce much better results in those metrics. Any measuring system that determines being inactive superior to Maru's 2012-2017 results is crazy.
Prep format, offline in Korea, having to travel back and forth to events and simply a higher sample size. Some of Serral's impressive win rate years vs Koreans are based on a very small number of series. For example 2018 I doubt he could have kept that winrrate as high if he played more than 28 series.
On the flipside, it’s not even a versus Korean win rate really, it’s almost a win rate specifically against top, top tier Koreans. I think there’s a case that the form he was in, 2018 Serral could have raised his win rate if he was unleashed on a bunch of perpetual GSL Ro32/Ro16 at best level Koreans
In some subsequent years I think that’s less the case, in 2018 the opposition really was somewhat filtered that way.
I’m not sure you take Serral’s opponents that year, have another Korean play those sets and have any of them get that win rate.
He has quite a few years that are streets ahead of most by that specific metric, and he’s rarely playing the lower tier Koreans.
What ifs are always tricky, but I'm not sold he'd increase his winrate if he had played in gsl that year. It's just likely he would've been given the reynor treatment and kicked out in groups. For all the talk about his good winrate against koreans, in 2018 his matches against koreans (in his best case scenario of no gsl level prep) were competitive but he wasn't dominating them.
Iem 2018: went 3-2 against trap in the ro8 and 0-3 against classic in the semis
Wesg 2018: went 0-3 against maru in the semis
His best result by far that whole year was blizzcon, and even then stats took 2 games off of him.
my point was more he doesn’t tend to play the lower calibre of that cohort. Which Korean players do get to do more often. Not just in GSL itself but qualifiers, and qualifiers for international tournaments as well
Exactly right. Serral mostly played the best of the best in major tournaments, as explained in the article and made visible at the 2018 comparison against Maru.
On June 02 2025 09:58 WombaT wrote: @Premo nice one, great job, should stir some debate anyway! Saw it on Reddit too said he’ll there
I appreciate you showing the raw numbers alongside your adjustments too. Makes things less opaque. It irks me when people show their adjusted scores without the raw data, it makes it hard to sorta judge at a glance, as well as assess the weightings themselves.
I think you can’t win some battles, some crit is fine, some is a bit harsh.
I think factoring in ELO, good idea. People bring up Aligulac’s flaws. I also agree it has flaws. But there isn’t an alternative ELO ranking set to use, so what do?
I’d rather you just threw it in, it’s some interesting data anyway, one can take it or leave it.
People will claim x era is weaker or stronger, but then if you weight for it, ‘hey you can’t do that that’s arbitrary!’
Overall I think it’s a great read, and I think a reader can take what they want from it, bar hostility which I think is unwarranted. Worst case it’s some numbers someone has pulled, saves me going through Aligulac! I skimmed it mostly just looking at the numbers and some of your rationales but I’ll return to really pore over the whole thing properly.
We cycle back to my usual point on this. And I’m referring to fans of particular players or positions, not people who write things like this.
You can either say x is the GOAT because various things I value and intangibles, or do something in the realms of cold hard numbers. Or blend the two to some degree.
You can’t just pick and choose which to ignore, or highlight when it suits. You know like player x > y because y doesn’t have a particular thing ticked off. But for player z them not having a particular thing doesn’t matter.
Thus Rogue cannot be the GOAT IMO :p To take one example.
I kid, I think he can, but it has to be a claim heavily based on the intangible, things like his clutchness, his fiendish plays at times etc.
That’s absolutely A-OK by me. I still have Inno up at #3 for me, many, many disagree with that. But the peak Machine was the most terrifying player, relative to the level of his peers that I’ve ever seen, and I imagine we will see. Wasn’t long til folks caught up, but it’s was like watch a semi-pro like mid-GM against a good pro now. It wasn’t that he was better, it was like another level.
If people want to do that for Rogue too, that’s bloody swell if you ask me. But just do that
Once people try to do it by qualifiers and caveats it becomes a mess.
You end up with absurd situations where like someone will have Inno > Serral because he won most of his titles in the Kespa era, but also Rogue > Serral because he’s got Starleagues to tiebreak their WCs, but also Rogue > Maru despite Maru having more Starleagues because Rogue’s got WCs, but also Rogue > sOs because he won more titles overall.
Now, to clarify I don’t mind people using qualifiers whatsoever, I’m taking about sorta chaining them up and applying them in different head-to-heads differently
Thanks, man, your feedback is appreciated! What you wrote at the bottom is exactly why I do these things: Consistency and continuity in thought. People tell you that Serral can't be the GOAT as he had most of his wins post-prime but then try to sell you Rogue. It does not make sense. But I heard valid criticism here and on reddit, so I will prepare an update.
On June 01 2025 16:16 Mizenhauer wrote: My only question is, given that Rogue's GOAT score is so disproportionately low compared to the other players in this study, do you feel it's an indication of some fundamental error in your process? I say this because that kind of skew in results leads me to believe that something is inherently incorrect when it comes to the calculation/tabulation of your GOAT score. Maybe that's ChatGPT (it's pretty damning).
Isn't the thing about Rogue that he was more streaky or perhaps more clutchy. I never looked at Rogue and thought he was dominant or even the best player in the world at any point in time.
Personally I put MVP/Inno over Rogue on my GOAT list. A criteria for being the GOAT is imo that you were the best player in the world for some period in time.
I weight MVP's era of dominance and the early KESPA era multiple times higher per tournament than what happened in the past few years.
On the other hand we had more tournaments back then so that offsets it partially.
On a per tournament basis I would give perhaps 5 times more weight to a tournament during Starcraft's peak era than today.
However, the margin of dominance also matters, and that's where Serral truly shines and still comes in at number 1. MVP had perhaps 6 months where he looked a level above everyone else, but after that it felt more like he was one of the better players but just pretty clutchy. In contrast Serral has always been the favorite or huge favorite for 7 years straight.
5 times more? Like a blank multiplier? Even though there were Premier Tournaments where two to three top tier Koreans flew to foreign regions to farm them? These situations are comparable to Serral winning in Europe and you'd want to award these tournaments 5 times the amount in relation to modern ones? I don't think that this is a sound multiplier, unless I misunderstood you.
On June 02 2025 00:30 JJH777 wrote: Aligulac being 20% of your determination is insane. Aligulac is a bad ELO system for a bunch of reasons. It consistently overrates people from outside of the KR scene. There are tons of examples even before Serral was notable. Serral specifically hit rank 1 for the first time when he still had <50% win rate vs Koreans. For much of his career his ranking was inflated by playing a huge amount of games vs mid to low tier EU players which he always swept. Maru would have swept those too. If you put Maru into 3 8 player round robin groups vs non Serral/Reynor/Clem EU players per year (format of EU regional for most of the years being discussed) what do you think happens to his aligulac rating? I guarantee it skyrockets. It's also funny that you punish Marus tournament winrrate for winning against "low tier" Koreans but don't take that into account that Serral's aligulac ranking heavily benefits from beating up low tier EU players.
I also heavily disagree with the idea of average placement/efficiency/percentage of won tournaments in all premiers played being important. That just specifically punishes players with long careers who consistently qualified for premiers. A longer career with consistent premier qualifications should be a boon to goat candidacy not a negative. The fact that Marus ranking in these categories would go up dramatically if you exclude his pre 2018 results shows alone how flawed it is. Maru being an S tier player from 2013-2018 should not penalize his chances of being goat.
I know for some of these aspects you slightly adjusted for this by determining prime years but I disagree with it being a consideration at all. Certainly not a combined 42.5% of your ranking.
1. The overall result wouldn't change (Serral would still lead with nearly 300 points), even if I removed the Aligulac-metric entirely 2. I think you got this the wrong way round. The machine's algorithm saw the explosion of wins Serral had versus Europeans and through cross-regional comparisons correctly "predicted" that he would defeat the Koreans as well, which was exactly what happened in the first quarter of 2018 when his win rates skyrocketed to over 80%. What you mentioned is a super rare case, that shows how well Aligulac works cross-regionally. These inflation-arguments were a thing in the early 2010s... not anymore in 2017. Further, after 2018, Serral played enough Koreans per year, which made the calculation pretty reliable. 3. I only pointed the Korean's inflation against Serral through weaker Korean players out. As I wrote in the article, I did not actually incorporate these findings in the calculation. 4. No, it punishes no one. It simply shows, that there are some players that have the ability to always finish on top and others that don't. That the player you favor by chance is not good in this metric, does not mean that the metric per se is bad. 5. Some argue rightfully, that it would be unfair to players like Rain and Mvp who had short, kick-started careers if one discounts the worse years of players, hence I went for a mix. In the tournament score Maru's longer careers ears him more points. And if he was as efficient as Serral over 7 years, he'd easily be up there with him. That is simply what a fair analysis shows... strengths and weaknesses.
Aligulac called King Kong a top 10 player in the world as late as 2014. I'm pretty sure he has never beaten a top pro. He got that ranking by being dominant in his region while never having any global results. He stayed in the top 50 range for years despite the fact that on a skill basis he was likely never even top 100. Aligulac has huge issues judging players who dominate their own region. Another good example is Polt. Polt is in the top 15 all time on aligulac. He was regularly top 5 and even 1st while active. He did that by dominating NA. He was never truly competitive with top GSL players post 2011 but dominating a weaker region kept him at the top of aligulac for ages.
Saying aligulac was just predicting Serral's future success is a copout when that future success wasn't until over a year after he hit rank 1. During which time he regularly lost matches to Koreans but still during that entire period he was almost always 1st with just a few falls down to 2-3. I'm definitely not saying he didn't deserve it the majority of the time he had it but the margin he had it by was heavily inflated and there were many times he would have been passed with a system that didn't over reward winning against far weaker competition.
I don't know how possible it is to calculate, probably depends on how accessible aligulac's source code/algorithm and result sets are but I am genuinely curious about how aligulac would have changed if Maru played 24 bo3s vs mid and lower rank EU players (basically everyone sans Serral and Reynor until 2022 then everyone besides them and Clem after that) every year from 2017-2024. Giving him whatever his current winrrate is vs that group in those bo3s. Based on aligulac's history of over rewarding beating lower competition I am confident his rating would increase significantly but I can't say for sure. I may try to do that someday when I have free time.
Marus "ability to finish on top" is punished by playing in an era with far more active full time pros and by having a far higher amount of events played in. Those criteria definitely uniquely punishes Marus career as it is the longest of any top pro by a considerable margin. By those criteria he would literally rank higher if he had just failed to qualify for events than if he qualifies for them. The fact that you can't agree that is backwards is crazy to me.
Serral's metrics in all categories besides tournament results are inflated by not playing in GSL. If Serral played in GSL regularly it's extremely likely his aligulac, matchup win rates, efficiency, average tournament placement, and percentage of won tournaments would all decline. I do agree he would likely win some GSLs which would benefit his tournament score but when you're only giving tournament score 22% of the overall weight it's not like that makes much difference.
- I already said that Aligulac had issues in the 2010s. - Didn't he hit rank 1 on the last list of 2017? And started winning against Koreans in January 2018? I mean.. that is exactly what the machine is built to do. Weigh players relative to their statistics against each other. - Which exact time frame are you talking about when talking about Maru? And which metric? - Why would Serral lose more games in GSL than versus top Koreans at other Premier Tournaments? Because of its structure?
You said early 2010s. The issues I mentioned were 2014-2017. A more recent example would be heromarine shortly after the open cups started. He won a bunch in a row because most top players didn't play in them and shot up the rankings and was top 10 for a while. I like heromarine but I don't really believe he was ever top 10 worldwide in terms of skill. Even after his one Kato top 4 he didn't follow that up with any major results suggesting it was a fluke.
Regardless even 2014 is late enough to show issues. Those first years were the most active years of SC2. Why would a system that by your own admission didn't work with 100,000 data points suddenly work with 200,000-300,000? Numbers are estimated based on aligulac's search function.
The timeframe for Maru would be 2012-2017 and the metrics I already specified were efficiency, average placement, and percentage of won tournaments. The way you measure those Maru would have been better off being an unknown/inactive player who never qualified for anything during that era because then his 2018 forward timeframe would produce much better results in those metrics. Any measuring system that determines being inactive superior to Maru's 2012-2017 results is crazy.
Prep format, offline in Korea, having to travel back and forth to events and simply a higher sample size. Some of Serral's impressive win rate years vs Koreans are based on a very small number of series. For example 2018 I doubt he could have kept that winrrate as high if he played more than 28 series.
WombaT already addressed HM, so I will talk about the general idea: Is Aligualc perfect? Hell no. But it is working to a degree that it is far from being useless. I mean.. what would you say was the discrepancy in terms of rank 1es? 3%? 5 at most? Serral is the only foreigner in this article and for most of Aligulac's existence (except maybe Reynor and Clem later on) only he, who regularly played Koreans post 2018, was up there. 5% error of 20% weighting is 1% error quote for the final result. What are we talking about here :D
And I still don't understand your point about Maru. He is not punished in any sense. No one is. Players simply gain more or less points depending on their results against their peers and era-multipliers have been incorporated to account for more difficult times. If Maru had played less, he simply would not have gained as many tournament points. The tournament win % is only affected by playing, same is average place. For efficiency this is true however. But as this hypothetical of not playing at all doesn't even concern any player I don't understand why you bring it up. On the other hand, if these players played and did not win, their efficiency drops... that is exactly what the score is measuring and its purpose.
The things you list at the end are hypotheticals. They could be true. What we do know is that he played 3 GSL versus the world in Korea and won 2 of them (the other 1 being before his prime). He played one prep tournament and won it in the finals versus Maru and he won many tournaments on different continents. Sample size? Not the biggest, but big enough to make fair assessments.
On June 01 2025 16:16 Mizenhauer wrote: My only question is, given that Rogue's GOAT score is so disproportionately low compared to the other players in this study, do you feel it's an indication of some fundamental error in your process? I say this because that kind of skew in results leads me to believe that something is inherently incorrect when it comes to the calculation/tabulation of your GOAT score. Maybe that's ChatGPT (it's pretty damning).
100% agree. This way of thinking about GOATs inevitably leads to such bizarre results. It’s the kind of process that for sure leaves Muhammad Ali no where near the top 10 on a boxing GOAT list (that’s not conjecture, stats-based boxing rankings have consistently produced this result). Basically a deep, conceptual misunderstanding of what “greatness” means.
It’s interesting that this is framed as having taken seriously critiques of the previous analysis when it ironically reproduces this conceptual error so glaringly and fails to even attempt to address it.
As I wasn't really expecting any praise from you, your comment didn't come as a surprise. But there are still some things worth exploring:
What way of thinking exactly? Making a statistical, data-driven judgement? Like Miz did too?
A result can only be bizarre if you have preconceptions that get flipped on their head (similar to the gender equality/patriarchy paradox). Rogue being not the most consistent player is not secret, so I am a little bit astonished at people's reaction towards his result.
And yes, I listed the 4 biggest criticism that were addressed in the article (as well as convos I had with Charo about skill deterioration that led to further data sets). I am sorry though that I wasn't able to incorporate "all data driven GOAT discussions are worthless" in a data driven GOAT discussion. And a small heads-up, so you won't be as shocked next time: This wasn't the last.
Most of the metrics can show both, although some are harder to sustain for long periods, I agree.
Yeah, that's the point. It just heavily punishes players who have high longevity but were never really dominant (like Dark), compared to players who only shined during a brief period but were very dominant (like Mvp). I don't see any objective reasons why the achievements of someone like Dark should be worth less, just because he needed more time to accomplish them. In the opposite, he proved he can succeed in many more different metas and fields of competition than Mvp, which should count for something.
It's a good ranking for most dominant player of all time, but at least for me that's not (solely) what Greatest of all time means.
So what's the suggestion? Only look at prime years for a comparison? Wouldn't that be unfair to players like Rain and Mvp who kickstarted into the scene?
Also, why should it be done in the first place, when we have a player who demonstrates that it is possible to do. Could be interpretated as favoritism towards Inno and Maru. Do we subsequently also discount those years in the tournament score though?
I could do it for a comparison though... this wouldn’t take too much time I guess, as I'd simply have to redo the prime years, which shouldn't take too long.
Edit: I already did for average place anyways, as those data sets were super bothersome to gather.
I already said it, for me the tournament score is the only metric that's relevant because those are the actual achievements a player has accomplished during their career. I don't see why this score needs to be adjusted with other, very subjective metrics. Accomplishments for me don't become less impressive because players needed longer to accomplish them or had worse aligulac rating during them, worse winrates etc.
Imagine a tie. Wouldn't it be interesting to see who needed less time to do so? -> Efficiency and tournament win % Imagine a tie there as well: Wouldn't it be interesting to see who had higher average places? Imagine a tier there as well: Wouldn't it be good to have another metric that is able to give you a hinter?
We could also list winning streaks, match records versus top players, etc... I think these all have their place in such a discussion. Even more subjective things like doing something for the first time, impact on the scene etc.
But I generally agree with you that titles and tournaments should be weighed higher. Perhaps another survey to capture the community's mood?
Maru will always be my GOAT because he was holding the torch when all other Terrans were dropping like flies. Winning tournaments during unfavourable balance is something that people don't seem to appreciate enough.
On June 02 2025 21:32 Lorian wrote: Those numbers aren’t that far off from Flash’s. It feels like Serral doesn't always get the recognition he deserves among parts of the SC2 community simply for never competing in a normal GSL.
Flash's major achievements came at the absolute peak of BW competition.
Serral's major achievements came after the absolute peak of SC2 competition.
I don't think that comparing the two is appropriate in the slightest.
- SC2 is arguably easier for a mid player to beat a top player, but harder to dominate in terms of huge win rates for that exact reason. This was almost the consensus from my memory back in the day. To paraphrase, ‘you won’t see Flash win rates because even the best players will lose the dice roll to the occasional inferior player doing an all-in or cheese.’ This was actually my stance too, and really would have remained so except Serral just went and did it.
That was the consensus when the game was less figured it out. But Serral is not only one who reached insane winrates in sc2, I'd argue Maru did it before Serral against top competition when he won WESG + 3 GSL in 2018. Nowadays Clem is also up there.
In fact content creators like Artosis and PiG think that the opposite is true in todays sc2, that it's too hard to score upsets against superior players which makes the scene too predictable.
On June 01 2025 16:35 tigera6 wrote: and everybody who watch SC2 know for a FACT that 2024 wasnt Serral best year in term of gameplay, but it happen in the year where there are only so few tournament around.
He won Katowice last year, under same bracket and rules as in years past, which on any of those years would have earned him his third World Championship title. He also smashed some other tournies in the first half (Dallas, WTL, Master's Coliseum), and it was only during/after EWC that Clem (a player not in the running for GOAT) hit the top in terms of skill - also the part of the year where the 'few tournaments' hit that you're mentioning.
On June 01 2025 16:35 tigera6 wrote: If your methodology end up giving Rogue outside of top 5 in GOAT, redo your methodology better. What about Dark and Reynor, I wonder?
Also, the tournament weighted/scale point is not accurate imo. I think the spread should be much higher than 1.1 and 0.7. And put 20% on Aligulac ranking is a bit high imo. I would also question how you adjust for the era, and everybody who watch SC2 know for a FACT that 2024 wasnt Serral best year in term of gameplay, but it happen in the year where there are only so few tournament around.
So tweak the numbers until the subjective GOAT candidate is on top? Nope, thanks Agree on Aligulac. It was what ChatGPT suggested.. I would have changed Aligulac and tournament win %.
With Serral's best year being 2024, I meant statistically, not gameplay.
The spread is 0.5 to 1.1
Like I said, if Rogue is outside of your top 5, then you need to investigate it. I never claim Rogued to be the GOAT, but hes not outside of top 5 for sure. Thats where you methodology fallen off, and thats why I raise the case of Reynor and Dark. Remember some of criticism on Miz list was Dark outside of his top 10.
And its better to survey your % weight for each category within the SC2 community, even for tournament weight. Off the top of my head, I would put Blizzcon/EWC as a 3, IEM and WESG/Gamers8 as 2, then GSL before 2022 as 1.5, offline tournament as 1 and online as 0.75. Thats just me.
2024 just have to few tournament to really make any comparison, I would weight it down comparing to the other years where we have a full circuit.
Rogue simply has subpar results, except when he dominated certain tournaments. His match win rates are simply not close to the others. He was not once on first rank at Aligulac. There is no statistic where he truly shines. That is exactly why I looked at different qualities and metrics. If one simply wants to look at the tournament score, Rogue is in the top 4. Getting rid of the era-multiplier should put him in the third spot above INno... then I would have the exact same top 5 as Miz after the update, as my tournament score is roughly the same as his overall list (ignoring Life, who probably wasn't on Miz list due to the match-fixing).
According to your suggestion only 1 metric would be influenced. And remember, that Serral's region locks are discarded anyway for Match win rates, average place, tournament win%, and Aligulac.
But I like the idea of a survey... I'll get to it once I find the time.
EDIT: Wouldn't you agree though, that the offline-online ratio is unfair to Europeans or North Americans? There are 2-4 offline-GSLs in Seoul per year, which geographically simply is not possible in Europe or the NA, due to geophraphical reasons and the players being way more dispersed over a larger area. It is simply a necessity. But as these offline-tournaments mostly overlap with region locks, which are devalued in my score anyway, I could imagine Maru taking the first place from Serral again (as I on top have an era-multiplier which Miz didn't use) but it doing not too much for Rogue in the overall result. Anyway: I am open to reevaluating the tournament multiplier after having gathered the findings of a survey
Rogue has excellent results compared to every StarCraft II player not named Maru and Serral (and it's close between those three). The difference between Rogue and the aforementioned pair is that they have won a ton and they've exhibited far more consistency during their careers. No one outside of the top 3 can compare to Rogue in sheer events won/high placings and the gap is so large that Rogue's inconsistencies don't matter when comparing him against anyone other than Maru/Serral (though the most staunch fan could present a reasonable-ish case that Mvp should be on the same tier.
"No one outside of the top 3 can compare to Rogue in sheer events won/high placings". I genuinely don't understand how you keep coming to this conclusion. Dark not only compares, he beats Rogue on nearly any metric that isn't only just counting GSL + WC golds (and it's not like Dark doesn't have wins in those). Especially since you specifically say high placings, Dark blows Rogue out of the water there.
Thank you for posting the actual list! Drove me nuts reading these unsubstantiated claims that Rogue laps the competition and I was about to go do what you did until I saw your comment.
On June 03 2025 04:50 Pentarp wrote: Maru will always be my GOAT because he was holding the torch when all other Terrans were dropping like flies. Winning tournaments during unfavourable balance is something that people don't seem to appreciate enough.
I think there’s a bit of a flipside here. For whatever reason, while Maru definitely did carry the Terran torch when the race overall was lagging, and more in a last man standing, sole Terran hope way rather than taking titles, he also didn’t tend to flip it and start totally dominating when the race was strong.
It’s less of a positive/negative Maru judgement, just something genuinely curious for me.
Mvp for example, just the outright best Terran of his time. Still competitive much of the time at his peak regardless of how Terran overall was doing. But pretty dominant when T overall was doing very well. Mvp’s gap to his peers would remain pretty similar.
My previous theory was that Maru outperformed other Terrans in rough metas, but in a better meta, other Ts would start to make it deeper and TvT him out of tournaments, to kind of counteract it in a way. However, I did some digging on that theory and really that doesn’t seem to be the case.
On June 03 2025 04:50 Pentarp wrote: Maru will always be my GOAT because he was holding the torch when all other Terrans were dropping like flies. Winning tournaments during unfavourable balance is something that people don't seem to appreciate enough.
I think there’s a bit of a flipside here. For whatever reason, while Maru definitely did carry the Terran torch when the race overall was lagging, and more in a last man standing, sole Terran hope way rather than taking titles, he also didn’t tend to flip it and start totally dominating when the race was strong.
It’s less of a positive/negative Maru judgement, just something genuinely curious for me.
Mvp for example, just the outright best Terran of his time. Still competitive much of the time at his peak regardless of how Terran overall was doing. But pretty dominant when T overall was doing very well. Mvp’s gap to his peers would remain pretty similar.
My previous theory was that Maru outperformed other Terrans in rough metas, but in a better meta, other Ts would start to make it deeper and TvT him out of tournaments, to kind of counteract it in a way. However, I did some digging on that theory and really that doesn’t seem to be the case.
A strange one!
herO also carries protoss when toss is weak but not as stable as Maru. And when protoss is strong herO might just lose pvp but I think it's also because pvp is more random than tvt. Maru used to have a unbeatable tvt record until IEM 2023. I think Maru's biggest enemies are always his teammates e.g. sOs and rogue lol (and zoun looks so scary with his pvt in the kr qualifiers hope maru won't need to play him). So far I don't know any zerg has carried the race when it's weak although which might also be because zerg hasn't had a truly weak patch in LOTV and often (over)represented in large tournaments.
On June 03 2025 07:31 uselless wrote: We are so back 3 pages of comments in 2 days nothing like the goat discussion to bring infinite activity instantly
This is the one true takeaway here.
I appreciate the analysis, despite the criticism some of its assumptions may or may not rightfully call for. It's always beautiful to learn about new statistics in which Serral shines.
I fully agree with anyone arguing that GoaTness is also a function of consistency and dominance, not just trophies accumulated, for the simple reason that it is far, far more difficult in SC2 to consistently perform well and continually compete with, if not outcompete, the absolute best of the best, than to have good or even great runs in more or less isolated periods of time. Which is the reason why I too think Rogue is a solid third at best, but not particularly close to Serral and Maru.
On June 03 2025 07:31 uselless wrote: We are so back 3 pages of comments in 2 days nothing like the goat discussion to bring infinite activity instantly
This is the one true takeaway here.
I appreciate the analysis, despite the criticism some of its assumptions may or may not rightfully call for. It's always beautiful to learn about new statistics in which Serral shines.
I fully agree with anyone arguing that GoaTness is also a function of consistency and dominance, not just trophies accumulated, for the simple reason that it is far, far more difficult in SC2 to consistently perform well and continually compete with, if not outcompete, the absolute best of the best, than to have good or even great runs in more or less isolated periods of time. Which is the reason why I too think Rogue is a solid third at best, but not particularly close to Serral and Maru.
Obv Rogue doesn't have the consistency of Serral or Maru, but he averaged over one WC or Code S win per year across a six year period. Trophy wise he is quite consistent compared to his overall win rates and average finishing in said events.
EPT
