Power Rank - Esports World Cup 2025

On July 26 2025 01:31 BonitiilloO wrote:
This is why larva production has to be torn down a little bit, serral had 70 supply lead... there is no way to hold that....

On July 25 2025 14:46 PremoBeats wrote:


To me, the new players are giants in their own right... the stable meta simply was not meant for many players from the prime era.
How do we know that? Because there are many from that time still around getting great results, despite the new players that entered post 2016. It was further not impossible to stay in the game or to even pick it up like a later world champion has shown. You are right that the competitiveness changed, but as I said in my previous post: Wouldn't there have been so many more tournaments, many players names wouldn't even have been mentioned as often.

On July 26 2025 17:32 johnnyh123 wrote:



I don't agree with your phrasing of "competitiveness changed" - it's "competitiveness has declined significantly." It's almost like comparing the competitiveness of winning a national championship in a medium-sized country (Australia or the Netherlands) versus winning the Olympics, if you compare winning SC2 tournaments today versus back in 2012-13.

Let me explain (definitely not a perfect analogy, but interesting and relevant) from some quick prize pool math:

First, I want to break down how many players the prize pool can realistically sustain:
- 2025: Total prize pool $1M USD. Divided by $40k living wage = sustains about 25 pro players. But $700k of that is just one tournament (EWC). Without EWC, you have $300k / $40k = enough to sustain 7 maybe 8 full-time pro players.
- 2012: Total prize pool $4.2M USD. Adjusted for inflation (~50% since then), $26.5k living wage then. $4.2m divided by $26.5k = sustains around 158 players. Even removing the biggest tournament (WCS at $250k), you still have $3.95M / $26.5k (2012 dollars) = enough to sustain 149 full-time pro players.

In short, we're comparing 149 vs 7 (or 8) players, that's 4.7% of the number of pro-playes the prize money excluding world championship can sustain. Afterall, you can't just rely on 1 single bonus that you may or may not get. Like, would you take a job that pays a livable annual bonus depending on the company and on your performance, but you receive near $0 base salary. I know I wouldn't unless I'm already rich. (Granted, this perspective is more beneficial to my argument, so for sure I would be biased towards it)

So why did I mention Australia or the Netherlands before, let's do an Olympics comparison. The most recent Olympics being the 2024 Paris Olympics, it had 329 gold medals total. Multiply by 5.37% and you get 17.7 medals. Countries that won around 17.7 gold medals? Australia at (18) or France (17), but since they are the host countries, let's skip it, the Netherlands (15).

You're essentially arguing that winning the UK or Netherland national championship is just as competitive as winning Olympic gold because "the competition changed, not declined."

Let's also look at Aligulac (admittedly, not a great measurement of skills in SC2 for most of its life, but it is a datapoint), let's look at
- List 402 (Latest, July 23, 2025): who's at #100+, FIGARO (#100), nanO (#101), Deca (#102), LunaSea (#103) it's honestly only at #131 at PiG do I even know the player, and I only know PiG because he's a caster, not because of his competition.
- List 75 (first in 2013, January 9th, 2013): who's at #100+, monchi (#100), Dark (#101), Jim (#102), JYP (#103), I know so many players that are actually strong and active but are ranked lower like GanZi (#105), Special (#106), soO (#108), FanTaSy (#111), ByuL (#112), herO (#115)

Honestly, in
- 2025, there are probably 10 players that are competitive (consistent with our prize pool point above)
- 2013, there are like 200ish players that are competitive, I'm looking at around #200, we got Zest (#199), Bisu (#208), XY (#217), Cure (#222), Harstem (#228), True (#240), Rogue (#243), etc. (also consistent with our prize pool point above)

Your "stable meta" argument misses the point entirely. Yes, some 2013 players adapted and survived, some didn't. But they're now competing against 6 or 10 other serious players instead of 148 or 200 (1st number: prize pool sustain, 2nd number: Aligulac approximate). If you take the first number, today might be 4% as competitive as back in 2013. That's not evolution, that's the decline of competition and the scene.

On July 26 2025 17:32 johnnyh123 wrote:



I don't agree with your phrasing of "competitiveness changed" - it's "competitiveness has declined significantly." It's almost like comparing the competitiveness of winning a national championship in a medium-sized country (Australia or the Netherlands) versus winning the Olympics, if you compare winning SC2 tournaments today versus back in 2012-13.

Let me explain (definitely not a perfect analogy, but interesting and relevant) from some quick prize pool math:

First, I want to break down how many players the prize pool can realistically sustain:
- 2025: Total prize pool $1M USD. Divided by $40k living wage = sustains about 25 pro players. But $700k of that is just one tournament (EWC). Without EWC, you have $300k / $40k = enough to sustain 7 maybe 8 full-time pro players.
- 2012: Total prize pool $4.2M USD. Adjusted for inflation (~50% since then), $26.5k living wage then. $4.2m divided by $26.5k = sustains around 158 players. Even removing the biggest tournament (WCS at $250k), you still have $3.95M / $26.5k (2012 dollars) = enough to sustain 149 full-time pro players.

In short, we're comparing 149 vs 7 (or 8) players, that's 4.7% of the number of pro-playes the prize money excluding world championship can sustain. Afterall, you can't just rely on 1 single bonus that you may or may not get. Like, would you take a job that pays a livable annual bonus depending on the company and on your performance, but you receive near $0 base salary. I know I wouldn't unless I'm already rich. (Granted, this perspective is more beneficial to my argument, so for sure I would be biased towards it)

So why did I mention Australia or the Netherlands before, let's do an Olympics comparison. The most recent Olympics being the 2024 Paris Olympics, it had 329 gold medals total. Multiply by 5.37% and you get 17.7 medals. Countries that won around 17.7 gold medals? Australia at (18) or France (17), but since they are the host countries, let's skip it, the Netherlands (15).

You're essentially arguing that winning the UK or Netherland national championship is just as competitive as winning Olympic gold because "the competition changed, not declined."

Let's also look at Aligulac (admittedly, not a great measurement of skills in SC2 for most of its life, but it is a datapoint), let's look at
- List 402 (Latest, July 23, 2025): who's at #100+, FIGARO (#100), nanO (#101), Deca (#102), LunaSea (#103) it's honestly only at #131 at PiG do I even know the player, and I only know PiG because he's a caster, not because of his competition.
- List 75 (first in 2013, January 9th, 2013): who's at #100+, monchi (#100), Dark (#101), Jim (#102), JYP (#103), I know so many players that are actually strong and active but are ranked lower like GanZi (#105), Special (#106), soO (#108), FanTaSy (#111), ByuL (#112), herO (#115)

Honestly, in
- 2025, there are probably 10 players that are competitive (consistent with our prize pool point above)
- 2013, there are like 200ish players that are competitive, I'm looking at around #200, we got Zest (#199), Bisu (#208), XY (#217), Cure (#222), Harstem (#228), True (#240), Rogue (#243), etc. (also consistent with our prize pool point above)

Your "stable meta" argument misses the point entirely. Yes, some 2013 players adapted and survived, some didn't. But they're now competing against 6 or 10 other serious players instead of 148 or 200 (1st number: prize pool sustain, 2nd number: Aligulac approximate). If you take the first number, today might be 4% as competitive as back in 2013. That's not evolution, that's the decline of competition and the scene.

On July 26 2025 17:53 PremoBeats wrote:


Gotta go, so a quick answer must suffice atm:
No, we are not comparing over 100 with 8, because these 100 were not top tier. A lot of these names only won big tournaments, because there were so many tournaments. If we had only 15 tournaments back then as well, the tier lists would have been much steeper too.
Pros are also sustained by their teams, not only prize pools.

You probably didn't read the reasoning in my new GOAT list, but I will write a short summary how I arrived at my multipliers. I think it makes more sense to put numbers on this intangible discussion.

On July 26 2025 18:16 dedede wrote:


Honestly, don’t waste your time arguing with someone who denying the significant decline of competitiveness of the scene and also saying Zerg was not op in 2019……I mean how can you convince someone denying water is wet and fire is hot.

On July 26 2025 18:19 johnnyh123 wrote:


Buddy, don't reply now if you don't have time. Take the time to read and then reply, like I've done so with your previous posts. That's a bit disingenuous.

You can't just dismiss proposed numbers without providing counter-numbers of your own. It's easy to deny anything without providing evidence or arguments. This is textbook deflection tactics. Dismiss the evidence, offer no counter-data, then pivot to vague promises about "multipliers" and "GOAT lists". Please address the actual arguments or concede the point.

Your "only 15 tournaments" hypothetical proves nothing - we're comparing what actually happened, not imaginary scenarios.

"These 100 weren't top tier"? I literally listed Dark, soO, Zest, Bisu, Cure, Rogue at ranks #101-243 in 2013 List 75. These are great players in SC2, most with chances of winning major tournaments.

Now, look at EWC 2025, which is supposedly the top 18 players in the world, which I agree all the top players are there. There's Trigger and Cyan/Lancer, no disrespect to these guys, decent players, but not related to great at all, especially with Cyan being 32 and on the decline since awhile ago.

Now, if you want to say that they only got in because of region locks (American qualifiers and Asian qualifiers respectively), I agree. But this also further proves my point in that many regions simply don't have competitive players anymore. Back then, every region (Americas, EU, Asia, KR) all had actual competitive players.

Also, my point on 2025's List 402 #131 is PiG, who I only know as a caster. If you think 2013's depth wasn't "top tier," then today's scene is amateur hour.

The fundamental question remains: If today's scene is so competitive, why can 30+ year old military returnees immediately crack top-16? Why has no significant new talent emerged since MaxPax, who joined in 2019?

On July 26 2025 18:19 johnnyh123 wrote:


Buddy, don't reply now if you don't have time. Take the time to read and then reply, like I've done so with your previous posts. That's a bit disingenuous.

You can't just dismiss proposed numbers without providing counter-numbers of your own. It's easy to deny anything without providing evidence or arguments. This is textbook deflection tactics. Dismiss the evidence, offer no counter-data, then pivot to vague promises about "multipliers" and "GOAT lists". Please address the actual arguments or concede the point.

Your "only 15 tournaments" hypothetical proves nothing - we're comparing what actually happened, not imaginary scenarios.

"These 100 weren't top tier"? I literally listed Dark, soO, Zest, Bisu, Cure, Rogue at ranks #101-243 in 2013 List 75. These are great players in SC2, most with chances of winning major tournaments.

Now, look at EWC 2025, which is supposedly the top 18 players in the world, which I agree all the top players are there. There's Trigger and Cyan/Lancer, no disrespect to these guys, decent players, but not related to great at all, especially with Cyan being 32 and on the decline since awhile ago.

Now, if you want to say that they only got in because of region locks (American qualifiers and Asian qualifiers respectively), I agree. But this also further proves my point in that many regions simply don't have competitive players anymore. Back then, every region (Americas, EU, Asia, KR) all had actual competitive players.

Also, my point on 2025's List 402 #131 is PiG, who I only know as a caster. If you think 2013's depth wasn't "top tier," then today's scene is amateur hour.

The fundamental question remains: If today's scene is so competitive, why can 30+ year old military returnees immediately crack top-16? Why has no significant new talent emerged since MaxPax, who joined in 2019?

On July 27 2025 00:26 onPHYRE wrote:
You guys realize Maru and Serral played in the same era right? Maru winning some random tournament a few years before Serral started dominating world SC2 does not mean they did not have 95-97% of their accomplishments at the same time. You can’t use it to detract from Serral without also having it detract from Maru. And no one prior to them (or since) should even be in the GOAT discussion.

On July 27 2025 00:26 onPHYRE wrote:
You guys realize Maru and Serral played in the same era right? Maru winning some random tournament a few years before Serral started dominating world SC2 does not mean they did not have 95-97% of their accomplishments at the same time. You can’t use it to detract from Serral without also having it detract from Maru. And no one prior to them (or since) should even be in the GOAT discussion.

And no one prior to them (or since) should even be in the GOAT discussion

On July 27 2025 04:52 WombaT wrote:
Part Deux
I didn’t fully crunch the numbers, but I did some initial investigations re the question of competitiveness. Amongst the real top Kespa players I looked at, there have been some who’ve jumped up a bit, a couple significantly and most have remained with pretty stable win-rates between Kespa years and post-Kespa

Rogue was the real notable mover, somewhat to be expected given he was a solid pro in Kespa era, but only a championship contender afterwards.

In general, there wasn’t a huge amount of a shift, it was quite stable actually. If the competitive level was appreciably dropping, I’d have expected more movement from a few potential categories:
1. Top players who become more dominant as others drop off.
2. People who weren’t top players becoming contenders for the same reason.
3. Some change in Korean vs foreigner dynamics. In either direction, unless the two scenes are declining at the exact same rate.

I don’t observe a massive amount of these, incidentally on point 3 I’m excluding Serral, he’s the outlier we’re trying to place. We haven’t seen the ex-Kespa level drop sufficiently in say, players like Showtime or Heromarine doing much better. Zero shade on those guys, incidentally, I’m just using them as an example of a solid foreign pro who hasn’t shown much of an uptick even post-Kespa versus Koreans.

I’ll add the caveat that I’m not as rigorous as some at sticking things in a spreadsheet and showing my working, this stuff is ballpark, but some further observations/arguments:
1. Kespa players’ win rates are, with a few exceptions generally within a sub-5% range of improvement between Kespa and post-Kespa
2. Clem and Reynor’s international LAN records are within the range of the top Kespa players.
3. Serral is way, way out there in Serral land. His LAN win rates record(including WCS) from 2018 to now is 18% better than Clem and Reynor’s. Eighteen!

Why are Clem and Reynor’s careers way more similar to a top Korean champ contender now, and why did it take them a while to get to that level (more Clem), if the competitive level fell off a cliff?

I hope this isn’t disputed, I think it’s fair to say that the scene has stopped producing S tier players, and quite a while ago. I also think it’s fair to say Reynor and Clem are, as yet the last S-class players to break through. I hope nobody is going to argue that at the very least they’re two of, if not the mechanically fastest players of all time.

If the level had significantly dropped, one would expect a few things versus the increasingly old men. Reynor to be more consistent, Clem to make his international LAN breakthrough sooner. Obviously other factors also come into play.

But their overall profile is more similar to a top Korean than Serral. Similar win rates, can win big, but also can lose early.

On July 27 2025 05:33 PremoBeats wrote:


I found similar results in my article when looking at Neeb, Scarlett, Mana and Nerchio, hence I am not surprised. Many players who had good results in 2017 and following weren't even ripe in the KeSPA time, thus I would value 2017-2020 higher than 2010-2012.

As I said before: Old age drops some reflexes and speed. But SC2 is a game with an immensely high skill ceiling, where experience and knowledge is super rewarding.
I remember that I learned LoL in a couple of months to reach diamond after the game has been going for 6 years. Back then I think that was around top 0.5% of EU... I would have NEVER been able to do something similar with SC2.

But it is a notion that goes against the narrative so I guess this opinion war won't be over anytime soon

On July 27 2025 21:29 PremoBeats wrote:
Unfortunately no tips... I counted most of my statistics manually, as I wrote in the article. For me this is like meditation... I am entirely dull :D
But I keep it consistent. On weekends I have a time slot where I invest 1.5h into data research, before my girlfriend wakes up.

A couple of questions in regards to your methodology:
1. Did you use overall win rates or only versus Koreans?
2. If you only looked at Koreans, did you control for Serral?

Because I got mixed results when checking for best years or best 2 to 3 year periods. A lot of that was in KeSPA, either from players who started in WoL or ones that kept playing into LotV. I couldn't really tell that KeSPA meant a big drop in win rates across the board.

On July 28 2025 17:08 PremoBeats wrote:
Haha, pretty different weddings we had :D

Yeah, the issue about online cups is true. But if they are included in the KeSPA and the non-KeSPA periods I wouldn't mind them too much.
They are more of an issue when comparing players who play them a lot (MaxPax, Reynor, Clem, herO, Classic) versus others that don't (Maru, Serral, etc.). Then the win rate comparisons massively lack context, as the online players boost their win rate in relation to the players who do not participate in them with lower skilled pros (Similar to the findings I had in regards to Serral versus the Koreans). Clem versus Serral's 2025 is a good example. Clem's win rate is around 5% higher than Serral's versus Koreans, but if you control for players like grape or LunaSea who aren't even in the top80, his win rate is actually a lot lower.

Funny that you mention it... when I looked at all the work I still have to do I thought about other people who might contribute. We could even fuse some data to look if they correlate. Definitely something to think about!

Don't know if you saw it beneath the wall of text in the other thread.. but here are the fun facts/quirks/statistics I talked about:

- He was on rank 1 on Aligulac for over 40% of the game’s existence. If you include rank two it is over 50%.
- Serral is the only player to be listed as the best versus all three races multiple times at different points of time in his career and did so four times overall.
- Only player to go over 3800 Aligulac rating
- Only player to go over 3900 Aligulac rating
- Serral is either rank 1 or 2 since the beginning of 2018.
- Serral wasn’t overtaken by anyone on Aligulac since April 2023.
- Longest ever consecutive run of not losing a match versus Koreans: 26
- 2nd longest ever consecutive run of not losing a match versus Koreans: 19
- 3rd longest ever consecutive run of not losing a match versus Koreans: 18
- Longest ever consecutive run of not losing a match: 47
- Highest yearly win rates ever achieved (only versus Koreans): 96,30%, 85,71%, 2x 85,11%
- Highest career long match win rate, despite others having much shorter careers (only versus Koreans): 70,73
- Highest career long match win rate overall: 79,17%
- Highest prime match win rate versus Koreans: 80,27%
- Highest prime match win rate overall: 86,23%
- Highest life time tournament win percentage: 38,10%
- Even if you include all GSLs that Serral missed from 2018-2025 as a loss, his tournament win percentage is the highest in the history of the game.
- When he goes into a tournament, he on average reaches the semi-finals (average place of 3,24)
- Player with the most official and unofficial World Championships
- Participated in 9 consecutive World Championships, won 3, has an average place of 4,39 and win rate of 33,33%
- Most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean participation by far (tied with Maru)
- Most Premier Tournament wins overall by far
- One of two players (Mvp being the other) to achieve the Triple Crown twice
- Played his longest match against Trap, with an in game time of 3 hours 5 minutes and 38 seconds
- Serral has a positive match record versus every pro he played regularly, including all relevant GOAT contenders from his time: Dark, Cure, GuMiho, herO, Solar, Maru, ByuN, Classic, Bunny, Stats, soO, INnoVation, Rogue, Trap, Zest, Reynor, Clem and MaxPax. Dark, Rogue and Clem are the only 3 players that achieved to put Serral below a 60% win rate versus them.
Dark -10:6:1- 58,8%
Cure -24:2:1- 88,9%
GuMiho -11:4:0- 73,3%
herO -10:3:0- 76,9%
Solar -18:7:1- 69,2%
Maru -19:4:2- 76,0%
ByuN -14:6-0- 70,0%
Classic -12:3-0- 80,0%
Bunny -9:2:0- 81,8%
Stats -9:4:0- 69,2%
soO -8:4:0- 66,7%
Innovation -16:8:0- 66,7%
Rogue -8:7:0- 53,3%
Trap -14:3:0- 82,4%
Zest -10:5:0- 66,7%
Reynor -34-15:0- 69,4%
MaxPax -21:7:0- 75,0%
Clem -32:23:0- 58,2%