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Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015.
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United States33466 Posts
metas will come and go in actual SC2 games, but the GOAT-debate meta will always be valid in SC content 
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On October 22 2025 10:13 Waxangel wrote:metas will come and go in actual SC2 games, but the GOAT-debate meta will always be valid in SC content
The guy bugging out on the Reddit thread made my day 😆
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On October 22 2025 06:09 TeamMamba wrote:
Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015.
Google the concept of absolute versus relative comparisons and apply it to your kespa 2015 comment and then see if you can understand what's going on here. It's a fairly simple concept applied regularly in other games and sports, but somehow confuses SC fans. Most chess play from past world champions--including Garry Kasparov, the GOAT--would be considered iffy (if not completely refuted) by modern standards. Relative to chess understandings of the time Kasparov's play was of course genius. In case that helps you understand better.
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Did Serral win a Zotac cup though?
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 22 2025 14:26 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2025 06:09 TeamMamba wrote:
Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015. Google the concept of absolute versus relative comparisons and apply it to your kespa 2015 comment and then see if you can understand what's going on here. It's a fairly simple concept applied regularly in other games and sports, but somehow confuses SC fans. Most chess play from past world champions--including Garry Kasparov, the GOAT--would be considered iffy (if not completely refuted) by modern standards. Relative to chess understandings of the time Kasparov's play was of course genius. In case that helps you understand better.
Plenty make the argument that the Kespa era was better skill-wise though as well. Not merely that it was an era with more competitive depth.
Unlike many other sports, the scene has completely changed about 4 times structurally, so comparing does get rather tricky.
Equally we’re not talking massive spans of time either. It is rather confusing in ways sure.
For me it’s Serral, partly because there isn’t really an outstanding counter-candidate from pre-Serral times. If there was a properly dominant, Flash-esque player in the Kespa era, that player probably is the GOAT.
As is, that player doesn’t really exist. And Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up.
I think Serral’s accomplishments go a little under the radar, as absurd as that sounds because the scene has gone on, and on. He smashed a seemingly unbreakable ceiling, basically as a solo player doing his thing.
Years of decline, the scene having a mere handful of genuine contenders, and other foreigners lifting WCs is kind of the norm we’re accustomed to, but in a way it detracts from the greatness of what Serral was doing way back in 2018 because we’ve got accustomed to it.
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Kespa era was definitely the most competitive, but not the highest-skilled. Valuing Kespa achievements highly is valid, but the funny thing is that the other goat contenders who get talked about (Rogue and Maru) have most of their achievements post-Kespa (Maru was a very good Kespa era player, but was nowhere near the goat debate pre-2018.)
If you took Kespa >>> all very seriously, Inno would probably be the GOAT? But then what do his poor results post-2017 (with the exception of the WESG win) mean? Okay, Inno had motivation issues, but Serral/Rogue/Maru still cleaned house with many players who were better than them during Kespa.
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Nice interview.. I like the longer format and learning more about the backgrounds of the interviewed
No surprises that Rotti sees Serral as the GOAT... I would have liked to hear follow-ups on the remark about many Koreans seeing it the same way.
Anyways, good job!
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It's hard to judge a player's career time while still being in it. Mvp wasn't seen as the absolute goat during wol at all, only upon hots did ppl start looking back and seeing him as the king of wings, looking back life was the best during kespa time + wol, and sOs and inno went above in post kespa. Because serral is still dominating after so many years can either mean that perhaps he tru;y is the greatest, or perhaps the scene is just not what it once was. I think it would be a mistake to take for granted how much he started to dominate and so suddenly, but at the same time I get annoyed when ppl think sc2 is all about mechanics and use the execution of top 3 players today as evidence against the kespa regime, when the game is so much more than being able to max out as fast as possible against the ai, or some other benchmark of execution.
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United States1896 Posts
Only a complete sicko would enjoy the 2016 Blizzcon finals.
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On October 22 2025 23:17 ejozl wrote:
It's hard to judge a player's career time while still being in it. Mvp wasn't seen as the absolute goat during wol at all, only upon hots did ppl start looking back and seeing him as the king of wings, looking back life was the best during kespa time + wol, and sOs and inno went above in post kespa. Because serral is still dominating after so many years can either mean that perhaps he tru;y is the greatest, or perhaps the scene is just not what it once was. I think it would be a mistake to take for granted how much he started to dominate and so suddenly, but at the same time I get annoyed when ppl think sc2 is all about mechanics and use the execution of top 3 players today as evidence against the kespa regime, when the game is so much more than being able to max out as fast as possible against the ai, or some other benchmark of execution.
Serral's longevity is noteworthy but imo also a symptome of the state of the scene. It's not just Serral even though he's the most consistent, but the overall field of championship contenders has hardly changed in the last years. The elite tier of players has pretty much remained the same for the last 7-8 years with the exception of Dark and Rogue leaving for military, herO returning and Clem finally overcoming the hurdle of international LAN events.
Compare that to the more competitive days where even by month to month basis the tournament favorites would change, I attribute this largely to the fact there just aren't any other players challenging the top dogs and they can just keep winning forever without any competition.
So of course over time the last remaining top players will accumulate the most amount of achievements, and with Serral as the best of the last generation he accordingly has the most achievements. Does that make him the Goat? Probably I guess since I don't think anyone else deserves this title, but it's still not comparable to someone like Flash who dominated during his games competitive peak.
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On October 22 2025 23:17 ejozl wrote:
It's hard to judge a player's career time while still being in it. Mvp wasn't seen as the absolute goat during wol at all, only upon hots did ppl start looking back and seeing him as the king of wings, looking back life was the best during kespa time + wol, and sOs and inno went above in post kespa. Because serral is still dominating after so many years can either mean that perhaps he tru;y is the greatest, or perhaps the scene is just not what it once was. I think it would be a mistake to take for granted how much he started to dominate and so suddenly, but at the same time I get annoyed when ppl think sc2 is all about mechanics and use the execution of top 3 players today as evidence against the kespa regime, when the game is so much more than being able to max out as fast as possible against the ai, or some other benchmark of execution.
Agreed. If there is anyone who's the GOAT before 2018, it would not be Maru but MVP, Life, sOs, or Innovation. I would consider Taeja if Maru is on the table. Since in this hypothetical situation we would be weighing 2013-2015 a lot and he was only a tad below Life. Taeja had such a crazy amount of tournament wins where players like Innovation, sOs, Life, MMA, MC etc. would compete. (And don't say those prize pools weren't big enough those other players didn't care and only Taeja did etc. Making $10k in 1 weekend of time is a lot more time-wise than prepping and playing months of a GSL season). Maru's time came after.
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United States33466 Posts
On October 22 2025 23:17 ejozl wrote:
It's hard to judge a player's career time while still being in it. Mvp wasn't seen as the absolute goat during wol at all, only upon hots did ppl start looking back and seeing him as the king of wings, looking back life was the best during kespa time + wol, and sOs and inno went above in post kespa. Because serral is still dominating after so many years can either mean that perhaps he tru;y is the greatest, or perhaps the scene is just not what it once was. I think it would be a mistake to take for granted how much he started to dominate and so suddenly, but at the same time I get annoyed when ppl think sc2 is all about mechanics and use the execution of top 3 players today as evidence against the kespa regime, when the game is so much more than being able to max out as fast as possible against the ai, or some other benchmark of execution.
Gonna heavily disagree with your recollection of Mvp here—IMO winning 2012 Season 2 sealed the deal for a lot of fans during the game's early history.
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On October 22 2025 19:03 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2025 14:26 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 06:09 TeamMamba wrote:
Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015. Google the concept of absolute versus relative comparisons and apply it to your kespa 2015 comment and then see if you can understand what's going on here. It's a fairly simple concept applied regularly in other games and sports, but somehow confuses SC fans. Most chess play from past world champions--including Garry Kasparov, the GOAT--would be considered iffy (if not completely refuted) by modern standards. Relative to chess understandings of the time Kasparov's play was of course genius. In case that helps you understand better. Plenty make the argument that the Kespa era was better skill-wise though as well. Not merely that it was an era with more competitive depth. Unlike many other sports, the scene has completely changed about 4 times structurally, so comparing does get rather tricky. Equally we’re not talking massive spans of time either. It is rather confusing in ways sure. For me it’s Serral, partly because there isn’t really an outstanding counter-candidate from pre-Serral times. If there was a properly dominant, Flash-esque player in the Kespa era, that player probably is the GOAT. As is, that player doesn’t really exist. And Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up. I think Serral’s accomplishments go a little under the radar, as absurd as that sounds because the scene has gone on, and on. He smashed a seemingly unbreakable ceiling, basically as a solo player doing his thing. Years of decline, the scene having a mere handful of genuine contenders, and other foreigners lifting WCs is kind of the norm we’re accustomed to, but in a way it detracts from the greatness of what Serral was doing way back in 2018 because we’ve got accustomed to it.
You're 100% right that SC2 is different than pretty much every other sport and game. I'm not aware of any other one besides perhaps baseball in which the consensus GOAT pick never competed in the most competitive leagues and tournaments in the most competitive era of the game. Certainly I'm not aware of GOATs from other sports and games that got easy quals verging on auto-entries into premier international tournaments and world championships while all other GOAT contenders were nerfed in this regard (I'm pretty sure every KR GOAT contender missed out on multiple such tournaments). I missed all Serral's games against Mvp and the other Kespa era hall of famers, can you link them? Jokes aside, I think your casually incorrect overstatement demonstrates some of the key analytical problems people are having here. In any event, I wasn't really trying to challenge the Serral = GOAT consensus/cult/etc. I am trying to challenge folks to see outside of their confirmation bias and understand how normal fans of other games and sports understand GOATs. I honestly think for many SC2 fans and pros this comes down to "best" = GOAT, and Serral is almost certainly the best so he's a good pick. I'm not sure it's helpful or adds much credibility to exaggerate and say ridiculous things like he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time.
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On October 22 2025 20:03 dysenterymd wrote:
Kespa era was definitely the most competitive, but not the highest-skilled. Valuing Kespa achievements highly is valid, but the funny thing is that the other goat contenders who get talked about (Rogue and Maru) have most of their achievements post-Kespa (Maru was a very good Kespa era player, but was nowhere near the goat debate pre-2018.)
If you took Kespa >>> all very seriously, Inno would probably be the GOAT? But then what do his poor results post-2017 (with the exception of the WESG win) mean? Okay, Inno had motivation issues, but Serral/Rogue/Maru still cleaned house with many players who were better than them during Kespa.
MJ's few "good" seasons with the Wizards are an absolute non-factor re: his GOAT candidacy and you really should just extend that same logic to Inno whatever the reasons for his drop-off. You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
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On October 23 2025 14:49 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2025 19:03 WombaT wrote:On October 22 2025 14:26 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 06:09 TeamMamba wrote:
Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015. Google the concept of absolute versus relative comparisons and apply it to your kespa 2015 comment and then see if you can understand what's going on here. It's a fairly simple concept applied regularly in other games and sports, but somehow confuses SC fans. Most chess play from past world champions--including Garry Kasparov, the GOAT--would be considered iffy (if not completely refuted) by modern standards. Relative to chess understandings of the time Kasparov's play was of course genius. In case that helps you understand better. Plenty make the argument that the Kespa era was better skill-wise though as well. Not merely that it was an era with more competitive depth. Unlike many other sports, the scene has completely changed about 4 times structurally, so comparing does get rather tricky. Equally we’re not talking massive spans of time either. It is rather confusing in ways sure. For me it’s Serral, partly because there isn’t really an outstanding counter-candidate from pre-Serral times. If there was a properly dominant, Flash-esque player in the Kespa era, that player probably is the GOAT. As is, that player doesn’t really exist. And Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up. I think Serral’s accomplishments go a little under the radar, as absurd as that sounds because the scene has gone on, and on. He smashed a seemingly unbreakable ceiling, basically as a solo player doing his thing. Years of decline, the scene having a mere handful of genuine contenders, and other foreigners lifting WCs is kind of the norm we’re accustomed to, but in a way it detracts from the greatness of what Serral was doing way back in 2018 because we’ve got accustomed to it. You're 100% right that SC2 is different than pretty much every other sport and game. I'm not aware of any other one besides perhaps baseball in which the consensus GOAT pick never competed in the most competitive leagues and tournaments in the most competitive era of the game. Certainly I'm not aware of GOATs from other sports and games that got easy quals verging on auto-entries into premier international tournaments and world championships while all other GOAT contenders were nerfed in this regard (I'm pretty sure every KR GOAT contender missed out on multiple such tournaments). I missed all Serral's games against Mvp and the other Kespa era hall of famers, can you link them? Jokes aside, I think your casually incorrect overstatement demonstrates some of the key analytical problems people are having here. In any event, I wasn't really trying to challenge the Serral = GOAT consensus/cult/etc. I am trying to challenge folks to see outside of their confirmation bias and understand how normal fans of other games and sports understand GOATs. I honestly think for many SC2 fans and pros this comes down to "best" = GOAT, and Serral is almost certainly the best so he's a good pick. I'm not sure it's helpful or adds much credibility to exaggerate and say ridiculous things like he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time.
Trying to chip away at Serral on the basis that he was not born Korean (as the implication is him missing a "proper" GSL win in his resume) is a weak leg to stand on, as was pointed out several times. He on multiple occasions showed to be perfectly able to win competitively even in Korea and in tournaments with top Korean participation on the international stage when competition was insanely strong. As Rotti stated, Serral did so with numbers that no one else was/is able to match in the slightest.
So you missed all of Serral's games against Mvp? Then you missed also all of Mvp's games against Serral, as the argument goes both ways. It would actually be quite ironic to pick Mvp to prove a point, as he has way less games than Serral against the greatest players of SC2.
He played the same amounts of games against Rain as Serral (2). He only played twice against TY. Against herO, Life, sOs, soO as well as Inno he only played once. And Mvp never played Dark, Maru, Classic, Rogue, Zest, Trap, Stats, MaxPax or Reynor while Serral demolished all of the aforementioned multiple times over several years with insane match win rates (except Life, whom he never played and Rain and Rogue against whom the record is somehow even).
This is what Rotti points out in the video: To claim that Serral only played outside of competitiveness is utterly absurd and has no basis in reality. He has a more than sufficient display against the Prime SC2 greats and against guys who were forged in that time and exploded later like Dark.
As we had this discussion multiple times, you know my stance by now: If you disagree that Serral is the GOAT - that is fine, but please use factual takes to support your claims.
Similar to your reply to WombaT, who didn't say that he "he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time". WombaT's words were "Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up".
There is no absolute claim about "every" hall of famer involved and the hyperbolic exaggeration of Serral being a "student playing part-time" is also not present in the original text.
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On October 23 2025 03:18 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2025 23:17 ejozl wrote:
It's hard to judge a player's career time while still being in it. Mvp wasn't seen as the absolute goat during wol at all, only upon hots did ppl start looking back and seeing him as the king of wings, looking back life was the best during kespa time + wol, and sOs and inno went above in post kespa. Because serral is still dominating after so many years can either mean that perhaps he tru;y is the greatest, or perhaps the scene is just not what it once was. I think it would be a mistake to take for granted how much he started to dominate and so suddenly, but at the same time I get annoyed when ppl think sc2 is all about mechanics and use the execution of top 3 players today as evidence against the kespa regime, when the game is so much more than being able to max out as fast as possible against the ai, or some other benchmark of execution. Gonna heavily disagree with your recollection of Mvp here—IMO winning 2012 Season 2 sealed the deal for a lot of fans during the game's early history.
He's not alone, I also was around all through WoL and I also am a bit confused by the "MVP is the untouchable GOAT of Wings" fervor that others seem to recall.
But I think maybe the problem is just one of relative perspective. Back in 2012 I don't recall that people would have been talking about whether or not MVP was "the GOAT" or even the greatest player of all time with emphasis on the all time. SC2 was a new game, and we all assumed it would have a lot of history going forward, just like BW. People very much did discuss and argue (on both sides) over whether he was "a bonjwa," and I would say something approaching a consensus ultimately accepted that he was. But a bonjwa is not exactly the same thing as *the GOAT* imo.
I agree that Life is the main retrospective loser in terms of people forgetting about how dominant and iconic he really was at his peak, and how long that peak was. But there are obvious reasons for that.
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On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2025 20:03 dysenterymd wrote:
Kespa era was definitely the most competitive, but not the highest-skilled. Valuing Kespa achievements highly is valid, but the funny thing is that the other goat contenders who get talked about (Rogue and Maru) have most of their achievements post-Kespa (Maru was a very good Kespa era player, but was nowhere near the goat debate pre-2018.)
If you took Kespa >>> all very seriously, Inno would probably be the GOAT? But then what do his poor results post-2017 (with the exception of the WESG win) mean? Okay, Inno had motivation issues, but Serral/Rogue/Maru still cleaned house with many players who were better than them during Kespa.
MJ's few "good" seasons with the Wizards are an absolute non-factor re: his GOAT candidacy and you really should just extend that same logic to Inno whatever the reasons for his drop-off. You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
Maru had 2 starleague wins, a bunch of deep runs, and a great proleague career pre-2018. sOs, Inno, Life, and Zest had clearly better Kespa careers than Maru, while players like Classic/soO/Rain/Soulkey/herO were in around Maru's ballpark depending on how you value certain achievements (2nd places vs 1st places, proleague vs non starleague championships, etc.)
I actually do think Maru being one of the top 10 most accomplished players of the most competitive era helps his case for goat significantly. I also think the community doesn't rate proleague success highly enough (I don't know the exact conversion factor, but players like Maru/Inno being so amazing in proleague has to be worth at least one starleague, right?) But it's still true that most of Maru's accomplishments are post Kespa.
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 23 2025 14:49 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 22 2025 19:03 WombaT wrote:On October 22 2025 14:26 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 06:09 TeamMamba wrote:
Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015. Google the concept of absolute versus relative comparisons and apply it to your kespa 2015 comment and then see if you can understand what's going on here. It's a fairly simple concept applied regularly in other games and sports, but somehow confuses SC fans. Most chess play from past world champions--including Garry Kasparov, the GOAT--would be considered iffy (if not completely refuted) by modern standards. Relative to chess understandings of the time Kasparov's play was of course genius. In case that helps you understand better. Plenty make the argument that the Kespa era was better skill-wise though as well. Not merely that it was an era with more competitive depth. Unlike many other sports, the scene has completely changed about 4 times structurally, so comparing does get rather tricky. Equally we’re not talking massive spans of time either. It is rather confusing in ways sure. For me it’s Serral, partly because there isn’t really an outstanding counter-candidate from pre-Serral times. If there was a properly dominant, Flash-esque player in the Kespa era, that player probably is the GOAT. As is, that player doesn’t really exist. And Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up. I think Serral’s accomplishments go a little under the radar, as absurd as that sounds because the scene has gone on, and on. He smashed a seemingly unbreakable ceiling, basically as a solo player doing his thing. Years of decline, the scene having a mere handful of genuine contenders, and other foreigners lifting WCs is kind of the norm we’re accustomed to, but in a way it detracts from the greatness of what Serral was doing way back in 2018 because we’ve got accustomed to it. You're 100% right that SC2 is different than pretty much every other sport and game. I'm not aware of any other one besides perhaps baseball in which the consensus GOAT pick never competed in the most competitive leagues and tournaments in the most competitive era of the game. Certainly I'm not aware of GOATs from other sports and games that got easy quals verging on auto-entries into premier international tournaments and world championships while all other GOAT contenders were nerfed in this regard (I'm pretty sure every KR GOAT contender missed out on multiple such tournaments). I missed all Serral's games against Mvp and the other Kespa era hall of famers, can you link them? Jokes aside, I think your casually incorrect overstatement demonstrates some of the key analytical problems people are having here. In any event, I wasn't really trying to challenge the Serral = GOAT consensus/cult/etc. I am trying to challenge folks to see outside of their confirmation bias and understand how normal fans of other games and sports understand GOATs. I honestly think for many SC2 fans and pros this comes down to "best" = GOAT, and Serral is almost certainly the best so he's a good pick. I'm not sure it's helpful or adds much credibility to exaggerate and say ridiculous things like he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time.
I can’t think of an individual sport where the GOAT never won a World Championship equivalent.
I follow plenty of other sports, they don’t all mesh neatly, but there are commonalities at times sure.
It’s a matter of accepting both sides of a particular coin, people tend to often just look at one. A pit you’re jumping into yourself while ostensibly trying to educate others on bias.
I am happy to accept there was a decline in cutthroat competition and optimal training environments after the Kespa pull-out. The other side of that particular coin however is that Serral never had that environment to begin with. And there was still plenty of prize money to go around, it didn’t fall off a cliff immediately, so plenty of incentives for other pros. Yet with that equaliser, Serral was consistently very competitive.
GSL again, I think is a fair crit and I would have loved to have seen Serral give it a shot, it’s his only mountain left to climb. But the other side of that particular coin is that Serral wasn’t in the field, and he was basically perpetually a top 4-5 player in the world at absolute worst, and often the best at best. It goes both ways. If, for some reason like peak Roger Federer refused to play the French Open, it’s absolutely a mark against his GOAT claim, but equally whoever wins didn’t have to play peak Federer. Not the best example given Nadal is the greatest clay court player, but hey!
Going back to the teams thing and the post Kespa era, and something that is almost never mentioned. JAGW did not disband with the Kespa pull-out, indeed they kept going for years.
A span which happens to cover Maru’s GSL 4-peat and Rogue jumping from being a good solid pro to a prolific tournament contender. As well as Trap being the best Toss for a while, Cure doing Cure things and sOs doing his thing.
I think there’s a plausible argument that Maru and Rogue’s GOAT claims were boosted by Kespa’s collapse, more than anyone else’s including Serral. It made things more level, where Serral had similar practice environments to many Korean pros, but the JAGW crew had a bit of a structural advantage over both.
Was like in Serie A when Juventus got relegated and other teams crippled. My Inter boys were making hay in winning leagues but, not quite as satisfying.
I think you have a point re qualifying for every tournament being more difficult for Koreans, especially in such a cutthroat era. Equally this wouldn’t really be an argument in most regular sports I’m aware of and follow. Usain Bolt is the GOAT precisely because he beat stiff competition in a strong sprinting nation to even get to the Olympics, and then smashing the best of the rest. It’s a more binary sport where times are king sure, but if he’d failed to qualify for multiple Olympics he’d not be regarded as highly.
In a weaker, less competitive era Maru’s basically been a lock for every WC event anyway. He’s had as many shots as Serral has had, and more before Serral went Serral mode.
Serral for me is the GOAT simply because there isn’t another obvious outstanding candidate, and he’s probably the closest with his trophies and general numbers.
Voldemort did his thing. Mvp’s body broke down. Both Inno and Maru haven’t got a WC under their belts, Rain dipped early, and both Rogue and Dark have the big titles + Starleagues (that Serral doesn’t) but aren’t as crazily consistent
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 23 2025 20:49 dysenterymd wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 20:03 dysenterymd wrote:
Kespa era was definitely the most competitive, but not the highest-skilled. Valuing Kespa achievements highly is valid, but the funny thing is that the other goat contenders who get talked about (Rogue and Maru) have most of their achievements post-Kespa (Maru was a very good Kespa era player, but was nowhere near the goat debate pre-2018.)
If you took Kespa >>> all very seriously, Inno would probably be the GOAT? But then what do his poor results post-2017 (with the exception of the WESG win) mean? Okay, Inno had motivation issues, but Serral/Rogue/Maru still cleaned house with many players who were better than them during Kespa.
MJ's few "good" seasons with the Wizards are an absolute non-factor re: his GOAT candidacy and you really should just extend that same logic to Inno whatever the reasons for his drop-off. You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018. Maru had 2 starleague wins, a bunch of deep runs, and a great proleague career pre-2018. sOs, Inno, Life, and Zest had clearly better Kespa careers than Maru, while players like Classic/soO/Rain/Soulkey/herO were in around Maru's ballpark depending on how you value certain achievements (2nd places vs 1st places, proleague vs non starleague championships, etc.) I actually do think Maru being one of the top 10 most accomplished players of the most competitive era helps his case for goat significantly. I also think the community doesn't rate proleague success highly enough (I don't know the exact conversion factor, but players like Maru/Inno being so amazing in proleague has to be worth at least one starleague, right?) But it's still true that most of Maru's accomplishments are post Kespa.
I consider Proleague a useful tiebreaker for sure. But only a tiebreaker I don’t really consider it versus a non-Proleague individual.
It’s the most closed competition going, not only do you have to be in Korea, you have to be in a team participating.
It’s also a very different format
It’s a great competition don’t get me wrong, I just think it muddies waters a little, partly because outside GSL the scene has generally been focused on individual weekender gauntlets.
You might see some brilliant build, but whose idea was it?
Don’t get me wrong I think Proleague was fantastic, and I wish we’d had more team leagues, but the team thing does come into play.
If we’re talking individual GOATs, how does one factor in teams planning and workshopping things for a week in advance? It’s a tricky one.
Classic’s famous DT blink build to snipe Rogue, he’s talked about working on it in practice, that it generally failed in practice, but with the match on the line and struggling in more standard scenarios, his balls increased in size about 3x and he just went for it.
For me, in assessing individuals that’s some clutch, off-the-wall stuff Classic brought in an environment without an entourage, or much time to prep. It’s not complicated to credit Classic for that one.
With Proleague, it gets a bit trickier. Then you’re almost looking for sets where the plan went to complete shit and the player adjusted and prevailed. But that’s not always obvious from the outside
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I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask:
On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world?
Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many".
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
Yeah it’s an interesting interview all-round, not just another chance to relitigate GOAT chat :p
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United States1896 Posts
On October 24 2025 03:32 WombaT wrote:
Yeah it’s an interesting interview all-round, not just another chance to relitigate GOAT chat :p
GOAT addendum 2026 on the way!
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 24 2025 21:07 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2025 03:32 WombaT wrote:
Yeah it’s an interesting interview all-round, not just another chance to relitigate GOAT chat :p GOAT addendum 2026 on the way!
For realsies?
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On October 23 2025 20:42 Captain Peabody wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 03:18 Waxangel wrote:On October 22 2025 23:17 ejozl wrote:
It's hard to judge a player's career time while still being in it. Mvp wasn't seen as the absolute goat during wol at all, only upon hots did ppl start looking back and seeing him as the king of wings, looking back life was the best during kespa time + wol, and sOs and inno went above in post kespa. Because serral is still dominating after so many years can either mean that perhaps he tru;y is the greatest, or perhaps the scene is just not what it once was. I think it would be a mistake to take for granted how much he started to dominate and so suddenly, but at the same time I get annoyed when ppl think sc2 is all about mechanics and use the execution of top 3 players today as evidence against the kespa regime, when the game is so much more than being able to max out as fast as possible against the ai, or some other benchmark of execution. Gonna heavily disagree with your recollection of Mvp here—IMO winning 2012 Season 2 sealed the deal for a lot of fans during the game's early history. He's not alone, I also was around all through WoL and I also am a bit confused by the "MVP is the untouchable GOAT of Wings" fervor that others seem to recall. But I think maybe the problem is just one of relative perspective. Back in 2012 I don't recall that people would have been talking about whether or not MVP was "the GOAT" or even the greatest player of all time with emphasis on the all time. SC2 was a new game, and we all assumed it would have a lot of history going forward, just like BW. People very much did discuss and argue (on both sides) over whether he was "a bonjwa," and I would say something approaching a consensus ultimately accepted that he was. But a bonjwa is not exactly the same thing as *the GOAT* imo. I agree that Life is the main retrospective loser in terms of people forgetting about how dominant and iconic he really was at his peak, and how long that peak was. But there are obvious reasons for that.
That's true and it was wrong of me to use the word goat, but he wasn't the favourite in that 2012 gsl at all and that has after the fact increased his goatiness since he was able to win when he was weaker and all that old man mvp narrative despite him being 21. Mc was hailed as the winningest player for his earnings which he held to 2016 or smth. But as best player, there were always new ones on the rise, mma, HerO, drg, parting and life, and then there were the kespa influx. I don't think mvp was the favourite for most of his wins.
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 25 2025 03:33 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 20:42 Captain Peabody wrote:On October 23 2025 03:18 Waxangel wrote:On October 22 2025 23:17 ejozl wrote:
It's hard to judge a player's career time while still being in it. Mvp wasn't seen as the absolute goat during wol at all, only upon hots did ppl start looking back and seeing him as the king of wings, looking back life was the best during kespa time + wol, and sOs and inno went above in post kespa. Because serral is still dominating after so many years can either mean that perhaps he tru;y is the greatest, or perhaps the scene is just not what it once was. I think it would be a mistake to take for granted how much he started to dominate and so suddenly, but at the same time I get annoyed when ppl think sc2 is all about mechanics and use the execution of top 3 players today as evidence against the kespa regime, when the game is so much more than being able to max out as fast as possible against the ai, or some other benchmark of execution. Gonna heavily disagree with your recollection of Mvp here—IMO winning 2012 Season 2 sealed the deal for a lot of fans during the game's early history. He's not alone, I also was around all through WoL and I also am a bit confused by the "MVP is the untouchable GOAT of Wings" fervor that others seem to recall. But I think maybe the problem is just one of relative perspective. Back in 2012 I don't recall that people would have been talking about whether or not MVP was "the GOAT" or even the greatest player of all time with emphasis on the all time. SC2 was a new game, and we all assumed it would have a lot of history going forward, just like BW. People very much did discuss and argue (on both sides) over whether he was "a bonjwa," and I would say something approaching a consensus ultimately accepted that he was. But a bonjwa is not exactly the same thing as *the GOAT* imo. I agree that Life is the main retrospective loser in terms of people forgetting about how dominant and iconic he really was at his peak, and how long that peak was. But there are obvious reasons for that. That's true and it was wrong of me to use the word goat, but he wasn't the favourite in that 2012 gsl at all and that has after the fact increased his goatiness since he was able to win when he was weaker and all that old man mvp narrative despite him being 21. Mc was hailed as the winningest player for his earnings which he held to 2016 or smth. But as best player, there were always new ones on the rise, mma, HerO, drg, parting and life, and then there were the kespa influx. I don't think mvp was the favourite for most of his wins.
It was Mvp though the scene was so competitive he wasn’t as dominant as some of the modern guys. And the periods are much shorter then too, say 6 months versus several years.
He wasn’t on top the whole time, and Nestea was putting in similar accomplishments early doors, but dropped off a lot quicker. They were almost the ‘Big 2’ for a bit.
MC, MMA, DRG won big things they entered the conversation and were probably the world’s best at times. But perhaps they didn’t maintain it to surpass Mvp. Taeja did Taeja things, and I think he was incredible but he didn’t really win the big prestige prizes.
Parting I dunno why he always features in this convos but anyway :p
There was stiff competition, and it’s not as clear cut as say, Maru and Serral in post-Kespa, but I think on balance Mvp definitely deserved the King of Wings moniker.
For me the lineage of like an outright best player for any sizeable span , Voldemort and Inno took over after a bit, and then we have a pretty long period where you’ve got a handful of top players without one outstanding candidate. Then we’re into the ‘modern era’ which is like half the game’s life where you’ve had a few deviations but Serral and Maru probably stayed on top the longest
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On October 23 2025 20:49 dysenterymd wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 20:03 dysenterymd wrote:
Kespa era was definitely the most competitive, but not the highest-skilled. Valuing Kespa achievements highly is valid, but the funny thing is that the other goat contenders who get talked about (Rogue and Maru) have most of their achievements post-Kespa (Maru was a very good Kespa era player, but was nowhere near the goat debate pre-2018.)
If you took Kespa >>> all very seriously, Inno would probably be the GOAT? But then what do his poor results post-2017 (with the exception of the WESG win) mean? Okay, Inno had motivation issues, but Serral/Rogue/Maru still cleaned house with many players who were better than them during Kespa.
MJ's few "good" seasons with the Wizards are an absolute non-factor re: his GOAT candidacy and you really should just extend that same logic to Inno whatever the reasons for his drop-off. You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018. Maru had 2 starleague wins, a bunch of deep runs, and a great proleague career pre-2018. sOs, Inno, Life, and Zest had clearly better Kespa careers than Maru, while players like Classic/soO/Rain/Soulkey/herO were in around Maru's ballpark depending on how you value certain achievements (2nd places vs 1st places, proleague vs non starleague championships, etc.) I actually do think Maru being one of the top 10 most accomplished players of the most competitive era helps his case for goat significantly. I also think the community doesn't rate proleague success highly enough (I don't know the exact conversion factor, but players like Maru/Inno being so amazing in proleague has to be worth at least one starleague, right?) But it's still true that most of Maru's accomplishments are post Kespa.
Totally premo and wombat in other threads literally said proleague doesn’t matter at all and then started changing their tune when they realized how silly it sounded.
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On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many".
Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in.
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On October 23 2025 16:47 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 14:49 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 19:03 WombaT wrote:On October 22 2025 14:26 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 06:09 TeamMamba wrote:
Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015. Google the concept of absolute versus relative comparisons and apply it to your kespa 2015 comment and then see if you can understand what's going on here. It's a fairly simple concept applied regularly in other games and sports, but somehow confuses SC fans. Most chess play from past world champions--including Garry Kasparov, the GOAT--would be considered iffy (if not completely refuted) by modern standards. Relative to chess understandings of the time Kasparov's play was of course genius. In case that helps you understand better. Plenty make the argument that the Kespa era was better skill-wise though as well. Not merely that it was an era with more competitive depth. Unlike many other sports, the scene has completely changed about 4 times structurally, so comparing does get rather tricky. Equally we’re not talking massive spans of time either. It is rather confusing in ways sure. For me it’s Serral, partly because there isn’t really an outstanding counter-candidate from pre-Serral times. If there was a properly dominant, Flash-esque player in the Kespa era, that player probably is the GOAT. As is, that player doesn’t really exist. And Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up. I think Serral’s accomplishments go a little under the radar, as absurd as that sounds because the scene has gone on, and on. He smashed a seemingly unbreakable ceiling, basically as a solo player doing his thing. Years of decline, the scene having a mere handful of genuine contenders, and other foreigners lifting WCs is kind of the norm we’re accustomed to, but in a way it detracts from the greatness of what Serral was doing way back in 2018 because we’ve got accustomed to it. You're 100% right that SC2 is different than pretty much every other sport and game. I'm not aware of any other one besides perhaps baseball in which the consensus GOAT pick never competed in the most competitive leagues and tournaments in the most competitive era of the game. Certainly I'm not aware of GOATs from other sports and games that got easy quals verging on auto-entries into premier international tournaments and world championships while all other GOAT contenders were nerfed in this regard (I'm pretty sure every KR GOAT contender missed out on multiple such tournaments). I missed all Serral's games against Mvp and the other Kespa era hall of famers, can you link them? Jokes aside, I think your casually incorrect overstatement demonstrates some of the key analytical problems people are having here. In any event, I wasn't really trying to challenge the Serral = GOAT consensus/cult/etc. I am trying to challenge folks to see outside of their confirmation bias and understand how normal fans of other games and sports understand GOATs. I honestly think for many SC2 fans and pros this comes down to "best" = GOAT, and Serral is almost certainly the best so he's a good pick. I'm not sure it's helpful or adds much credibility to exaggerate and say ridiculous things like he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time. Trying to chip away at Serral on the basis that he was not born Korean (as the implication is him missing a "proper" GSL win in his resume) is a weak leg to stand on, as was pointed out several times. He on multiple occasions showed to be perfectly able to win competitively even in Korea and in tournaments with top Korean participation on the international stage when competition was insanely strong. As Rotti stated, Serral did so with numbers that no one else was/is able to match in the slightest. So you missed all of Serral's games against Mvp? Then you missed also all of Mvp's games against Serral, as the argument goes both ways. It would actually be quite ironic to pick Mvp to prove a point, as he has way less games than Serral against the greatest players of SC2. He played the same amounts of games against Rain as Serral (2). He only played twice against TY. Against herO, Life, sOs, soO as well as Inno he only played once. And Mvp never played Dark, Maru, Classic, Rogue, Zest, Trap, Stats, MaxPax or Reynor while Serral demolished all of the aforementioned multiple times over several years with insane match win rates (except Life, whom he never played and Rain and Rogue against whom the record is somehow even). This is what Rotti points out in the video: To claim that Serral only played outside of competitiveness is utterly absurd and has no basis in reality. He has a more than sufficient display against the Prime SC2 greats and against guys who were forged in that time and exploded later like Dark. As we had this discussion multiple times, you know my stance by now: If you disagree that Serral is the GOAT - that is fine, but please use factual takes to support your claims. Similar to your reply to WombaT, who didn't say that he "he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time". WombaT's words were "Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up". There is no absolute claim about "every" hall of famer involved and the hyperbolic exaggeration of Serral being a "student playing part-time" is also not present in the original text.
I don’t know who you’re arguing with since I don’t care what soil anyone is born on or plays on. It’s ironic that you’re doing what you accuse me of. But fair, I did overstate Wombat’s point. But he is fundamentally incorrect in his point. Serral simply did not compete with many hall of famers and—again—he did not compete in the most competitive tournaments and leagues. That’s just not a debatable proposition. It’s a mathematical reality. Proleague was the most competitive league. He did not play in it. KILs were the most competitive tournaments. He sis not play in them. He basically got auto entries into every premier tourney and world championship that many Korean GOAT contenders were excluded from. Not debatable. Serral can still be the GOAT, but the issue is folks like you bending over backwards to say that math equation can tell you objectively who is the GOAt…iit’s just kinda cringe to be honest. You end up saying weird things like Proleague doesn’t matter but Aligulac rating does.
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On October 25 2025 14:17 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 16:47 PremoBeats wrote:On October 23 2025 14:49 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 19:03 WombaT wrote:On October 22 2025 14:26 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 06:09 TeamMamba wrote:
Thanks for another great interview
Always enjoy Rotterdam contents and agree with most of what he said in regards to sc2 stuff.
People really need to stop boosting and overrating the skills level during kespa 2015. Google the concept of absolute versus relative comparisons and apply it to your kespa 2015 comment and then see if you can understand what's going on here. It's a fairly simple concept applied regularly in other games and sports, but somehow confuses SC fans. Most chess play from past world champions--including Garry Kasparov, the GOAT--would be considered iffy (if not completely refuted) by modern standards. Relative to chess understandings of the time Kasparov's play was of course genius. In case that helps you understand better. Plenty make the argument that the Kespa era was better skill-wise though as well. Not merely that it was an era with more competitive depth. Unlike many other sports, the scene has completely changed about 4 times structurally, so comparing does get rather tricky. Equally we’re not talking massive spans of time either. It is rather confusing in ways sure. For me it’s Serral, partly because there isn’t really an outstanding counter-candidate from pre-Serral times. If there was a properly dominant, Flash-esque player in the Kespa era, that player probably is the GOAT. As is, that player doesn’t really exist. And Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up. I think Serral’s accomplishments go a little under the radar, as absurd as that sounds because the scene has gone on, and on. He smashed a seemingly unbreakable ceiling, basically as a solo player doing his thing. Years of decline, the scene having a mere handful of genuine contenders, and other foreigners lifting WCs is kind of the norm we’re accustomed to, but in a way it detracts from the greatness of what Serral was doing way back in 2018 because we’ve got accustomed to it. You're 100% right that SC2 is different than pretty much every other sport and game. I'm not aware of any other one besides perhaps baseball in which the consensus GOAT pick never competed in the most competitive leagues and tournaments in the most competitive era of the game. Certainly I'm not aware of GOATs from other sports and games that got easy quals verging on auto-entries into premier international tournaments and world championships while all other GOAT contenders were nerfed in this regard (I'm pretty sure every KR GOAT contender missed out on multiple such tournaments). I missed all Serral's games against Mvp and the other Kespa era hall of famers, can you link them? Jokes aside, I think your casually incorrect overstatement demonstrates some of the key analytical problems people are having here. In any event, I wasn't really trying to challenge the Serral = GOAT consensus/cult/etc. I am trying to challenge folks to see outside of their confirmation bias and understand how normal fans of other games and sports understand GOATs. I honestly think for many SC2 fans and pros this comes down to "best" = GOAT, and Serral is almost certainly the best so he's a good pick. I'm not sure it's helpful or adds much credibility to exaggerate and say ridiculous things like he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time. Trying to chip away at Serral on the basis that he was not born Korean (as the implication is him missing a "proper" GSL win in his resume) is a weak leg to stand on, as was pointed out several times. He on multiple occasions showed to be perfectly able to win competitively even in Korea and in tournaments with top Korean participation on the international stage when competition was insanely strong. As Rotti stated, Serral did so with numbers that no one else was/is able to match in the slightest. So you missed all of Serral's games against Mvp? Then you missed also all of Mvp's games against Serral, as the argument goes both ways. It would actually be quite ironic to pick Mvp to prove a point, as he has way less games than Serral against the greatest players of SC2. He played the same amounts of games against Rain as Serral (2). He only played twice against TY. Against herO, Life, sOs, soO as well as Inno he only played once. And Mvp never played Dark, Maru, Classic, Rogue, Zest, Trap, Stats, MaxPax or Reynor while Serral demolished all of the aforementioned multiple times over several years with insane match win rates (except Life, whom he never played and Rain and Rogue against whom the record is somehow even). This is what Rotti points out in the video: To claim that Serral only played outside of competitiveness is utterly absurd and has no basis in reality. He has a more than sufficient display against the Prime SC2 greats and against guys who were forged in that time and exploded later like Dark. As we had this discussion multiple times, you know my stance by now: If you disagree that Serral is the GOAT - that is fine, but please use factual takes to support your claims. Similar to your reply to WombaT, who didn't say that he "he beat every hall of famer while he was a student playing part-time". WombaT's words were "Serral’s playing against the existing hall of famers, without training in full-time team houses and they can’t really keep up". There is no absolute claim about "every" hall of famer involved and the hyperbolic exaggeration of Serral being a "student playing part-time" is also not present in the original text. I don’t know who you’re arguing with since I don’t care what soil anyone is born on or plays on. It’s ironic that you’re doing what you accuse me of. But fair, I did overstate Wombat’s point. But he is fundamentally incorrect in his point. Serral simply did not compete with many hall of famers and—again—he did not compete in the most competitive tournaments and leagues. That’s just not a debatable proposition. It’s a mathematical reality. Proleague was the most competitive league. He did not play in it. KILs were the most competitive tournaments. He sis not play in them. He basically got auto entries into every premier tourney and world championship that many Korean GOAT contenders were excluded from. Not debatable. Serral can still be the GOAT, but the issue is folks like you bending over backwards to say that math equation can tell you objectively who is the GOAt…iit’s just kinda cringe to be honest. You end up saying weird things like Proleague doesn’t matter but Aligulac rating does.
Which Hall of Famers didn't Serral play against? Let's put some numbers on that claim.
And I am not bending over backwards, as I used plausible regression models.
Up until the weighting (which I concede for the 100th time, as you still try to make a point where none is to be made) - which was utterly pointless to begin with as Serral topped every category - my subjective decisions were based on player strengths in tournaments, regression models and the analysis of surrounding datapoints leading to these two.
I basically only had 2 debatable modifiers if we leave weighting out of the equation (era and tournament score) and showed that Serral only loses his first spot if you hyper-focus era. This would lead to him losing out in the end to Life. I never checked how much tweaking it would take for Maru to overtake him, but my gut feeling is, that if the rest of the setup is fairly and - most importantly - consistently measured, that Inno would overtake Maru, before Maru overtakes Serral, as it would take a lot of tweaking before Maru's achievements in the prime era outweigh what Serral has done in the time that they both were at the top. And that is basically my whole claim. I don't claim that Serral played in KILs and Proleague. My claim is that the players and the tournaments he played are clearing the threshhold to call him GOAT easily.
And in regards to the 2 debatable modifiers: even the suggestions of people criticizing my entire approach wouldn't have led to massively different results as we were only discussing tiny tweaks in the grand scheme of things.
On October 25 2025 13:46 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 20:49 dysenterymd wrote:On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:On October 22 2025 20:03 dysenterymd wrote:
Kespa era was definitely the most competitive, but not the highest-skilled. Valuing Kespa achievements highly is valid, but the funny thing is that the other goat contenders who get talked about (Rogue and Maru) have most of their achievements post-Kespa (Maru was a very good Kespa era player, but was nowhere near the goat debate pre-2018.)
If you took Kespa >>> all very seriously, Inno would probably be the GOAT? But then what do his poor results post-2017 (with the exception of the WESG win) mean? Okay, Inno had motivation issues, but Serral/Rogue/Maru still cleaned house with many players who were better than them during Kespa.
MJ's few "good" seasons with the Wizards are an absolute non-factor re: his GOAT candidacy and you really should just extend that same logic to Inno whatever the reasons for his drop-off. You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018. Maru had 2 starleague wins, a bunch of deep runs, and a great proleague career pre-2018. sOs, Inno, Life, and Zest had clearly better Kespa careers than Maru, while players like Classic/soO/Rain/Soulkey/herO were in around Maru's ballpark depending on how you value certain achievements (2nd places vs 1st places, proleague vs non starleague championships, etc.) I actually do think Maru being one of the top 10 most accomplished players of the most competitive era helps his case for goat significantly. I also think the community doesn't rate proleague success highly enough (I don't know the exact conversion factor, but players like Maru/Inno being so amazing in proleague has to be worth at least one starleague, right?) But it's still true that most of Maru's accomplishments are post Kespa. Totally premo and wombat in other threads literally said proleague doesn’t matter at all and then started changing their tune when they realized how silly it sounded.
Please quote that. Because as far as I remember and as far as can be read upon in my first article, I discarded team results because of the inherent issues of adding them to individual results (being carried by a team, putting a burden on your team but still receicing points as the team performed well, how to measure contribution, how to handle the fact there there were only 8 teams versus 32 or 64 players which leads to fewer knockout stages, etc.), not because I thought that Proleague didn't matter. I established a whole new system to include team results (fairly imo) in the 2nd article. So again: Why the need to put words in my mouth or mischaracterize what happened?
I am also not aware of any quote WombaT made in that direction.
Here are my exact words from the first article.
+ Show Spoiler +
As you can see, I did not include team scores, as I see the GOAT discussion as an enterprise of an individual. A player could have been lifted up or put down by a team and including team scores would dilute the results heavily. But player’s accomplishments - such as Maru’s phenomenal Proleague run in 2016 (22-4) - will be included in the match win rate analysis, to give credit to individual accomplishments and to not discard team achievements entirely.
And these are the texts from the 2nd:
+ Show Spoiler +
As a critique of the first article by others:
b. Including match win rates of team events is not enough to honor the accomplishments of players and team events should be included in the tournament score as well
and
Team result handling
For the team result multipliers that were newly added, I did the following:
I checked the win rate of a given player. If it was below 50% then the tournament was not counted for that player, because if everyone had this player's win rate, the team would have never gotten an upper placement in the league. This result is an indicator that a player was lifted up by his team-mates and thus, there should be no points handed out. It serves as an entrance barrier and as a marker for contribution. It also takes away one of my concerns for including team-results.
One could argue that the entrance barrier should be higher, but adding more to a team than being neutral or a burden is fine for me.
There will be another new multiplier, named participation-multiplier.
Why is that necessary? For example: A team played 60 games in a given season and the player only participated in 2 games, his contribution is extremely small. The fairest and most practical idea I had was to incorporate a participation rate.
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in.
The scene has always been more individual tournament focused in perception, and team leagues in general go a bit under the radar. Taeja at IPL TAC, Inno in GSTL, Serral in NationWars, are also rarely mentioned in such discussions, although I’m not saying those are equivalently prestigious leagues to Proleague.
I’ve not discounted Proleague from consideration, I factor it between players who competed in it, and not for comparison with players who did not.
It’s also just a completely different format, and one where the team element is a big factor. Outside of Starleagues, the majority of tournies are weekend gauntlets where players largely have to think on their feet in navigating it.
It also only ran for a few years in a 15 year scene, and it was a very closed off competition. If we’re gonna talk about regional lock and its effects, which is a fair observation, you have to apply that to Proleague as well.
So I just find it difficult to factor in, that doesn’t mean I think it’s irrelevant or anything, but it’s simply easier to compare like with like.
The Ryder and Davis Cups in golf and tennis are big, prestige deals in golf and tennis respectively. Performance in them doesn’t tend to factor too prominently in GOAT debates because the rest of their circuits are all individual competitions.
I think it’s a little similar here, but a bit different in Kespa Brood War times because Proleague was such an integral part of that scene for so long.
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On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in.
How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO Stats. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs.
Maru didn't "fail to break through regionlock", he missed the qualification-line by over 3000 points, that's equal to more than a GSL-2nd place.
It is also funny that you proclaim people don't remember Proleague and then completly misrepresent how easy it is/was for foreigner to get into Blizzcon. Especially since you hand-picked Elazer, a player who only very barely got into Blizzcon 2016, he narrowly avoided to have to play a LastChance decider against Violet to get in (it got a bit less dramatic afterwards because Polt dropped out aswell). There was no "near autoqualify".
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. Maru didn't "fail to break through regionlock", he missed the qualification-line by over 3000 points, that's equal to more than a GSL-2nd place. It is also funny that you proclaim people don't remember Proleague and then completly misrepresent how easy it is/was for foreigner to get into Blizzcon. Especially since you hand-picked Elazer, a player who only very barely got into Blizzcon 2016, he narrowly avoided to have to play a LastChance decider against Violet to get in (it got a bit less dramatic afterwards because Polt dropped out aswell). There was no "near autoqualify".
You’ve also got team tactics to factor in. I’d have to go and look over those times, and perhaps I shall at some point!
All-kill versus set picking depending on what format is going at a particular time.
If you’re facing a team with a real killer ace player, who’s favoured against even your best player, it can be the prudent play to try and predict when they’re sent out and put out your weakest. Play the percentages.
As I’ve already said I also haven’t checked so nobody @
me yet haha, and it’s also something of a compliment to the ace player in the first place, but I think it’s conceivable that super aces get a slight boost in that kind of scenario.
There’s obviously a lot of variance, but in an ideal world you send out a lineup that’s favoured in every matchup, be it sheer quality of player, matchup speciality or a particular map strat.
As I said I don’t remotely discount things like Proleague, there’s just a lot of added complexity that makes it tricky.
I think the region lock point on WCs does have some merit, but equally if you’re the GOAT and can’t even qualify on occasions? Surely that’s a minus, even if a minor one.
At this juncture I think Maru’s had more shots at a WC than any other player and hasn’t won one, even in the weaker era.
Personally I think he’s top 3 in pure SC skill, and probably top 2 GOAT, but I think he kinda blew his shot to be the GOAT when he lost to Oliveira. The stars aligned, his TvT was crazy at the time and he’s facing the biggest WC finalist underdog and he couldn’t deliver.
In more recent times I don’t really hold stuff like Serral battering him against him, he’s basically the longest serving pro, has injuries etc
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On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: Show nested quote +On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many".
Only the Maru fans, majority had Maru sitting comfortably outside of top 5. Maru was basically a gatekeeper before he broke out in 2018. His ssl path run was quite easy due to luck bracket
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On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in.
lol why are people still trying to over exaggerate pro league.
It has already been proven thwt league was a match fixing league.
We just don’t know how many other games were fixed beside the one that was caught
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On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs.
8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4.
Stop lying out of your ass.
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On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass.
Yeah, apparently I can't read (which is hilarious, considering how often you people force me to look up these statistics). Love the completly unnecessary aggression though.
So yeah, I had multiple fuckups in that...no idea why I mixed herO in that when I looked at Stats...well, stats.
His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more.
Buuuuut the fact that you already have to make these discussions shows that Marus 2016 Proleague is not such a marvelous "one of a kind"-things people pretend it to be.
Special thanks however to Google-AI for this answer to my question "who was the 2016 Starcraft 2 Proleague MVP?":
The 2016 StarCraft 2 Proleague MVP was Clem, who was awarded this title at the end of the 2016 Proleague season.
And you people proclaim Maru is a wonderchild, where is his MVP award with 14 in a league he didn't play in, HUH?
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On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. Buuuuut the fact that you already have to make these discussions shows that Marus 2016 Proleague is not such a marvelous "one of a kind"-things people pretend it to be.
So by that logic if people say Serral is not the Goat because he hasn't won a GSL, the fact this discussion exists shows that he really isn't as clear cut at the top as his fans pretend to be?.
People making bad arguments doesn't prove anything
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On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more.
ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral.
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On October 26 2025 04:22 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more. ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral.
So you complain about people making "bad arguments" to then come to this marvelous and hopefully sarcastic statement, which even then is just...not that smart?
Proleague, buddy, Proleague. We are talking about stats in Proleague, one particular season, the easiest to compare two players. If you can't even do that...well *shrug*
Anyway. I originally just joined this one for the question "when was Maru the best player pre-2018?" and the answer from you two is: Never, can't back it up at all, completly made up, *angry noises*. So I got my my answer and wish you much fun screaming into the void.
See y'all back when Mizenhauers addendum drops!
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On October 25 2025 22:46 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. Maru didn't "fail to break through regionlock", he missed the qualification-line by over 3000 points, that's equal to more than a GSL-2nd place. It is also funny that you proclaim people don't remember Proleague and then completly misrepresent how easy it is/was for foreigner to get into Blizzcon. Especially since you hand-picked Elazer, a player who only very barely got into Blizzcon 2016, he narrowly avoided to have to play a LastChance decider against Violet to get in (it got a bit less dramatic afterwards because Polt dropped out aswell). There was no "near autoqualify". At this juncture I think Maru’s had more shots at a WC than any other player and hasn’t won one, even in the weaker era.
I think him and herO are equalled here, counting the official WCs (till 2019 Blizzcon, 21-23 IEM, from 24 EWC). Which I find pretty impressive by herO tbh, as he lost 2 years because of his military service.
Overall, I think he gets too little credit in GOAT discussions and having advanced my analysis by a couple more players, I am quite interested if he is able to place inside the top 10, which he didn't do in Miz' list.
On October 26 2025 06:15 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 04:22 Charoisaur wrote:On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more. ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral. "when was Maru the best player pre-2018?"
The argument against objective statistics in GOAT-discussions never really stuck with me, but if the adjective in question is "best" and not "greatest", I think no one should have issues with some factuals on this one, especially as we stay rather intra-era.
Maru's statistics starting from 2013-2017 (average place, won tournaments, match win rate):
2013: 7,08, 1, 65,37%
2014: 7,93, none, 64,29%
2015: 6,50, 1, 66,99%
2016: 7,83, none, 73,44%
2017: 9,22, none, 62,71%
Looking at a Zerg World Champion: Life (would have used soO, but I don't have the data yet)
2013: 6,35, 3, 66,36%
2014: 6,35, 3, 63,76%
2015: 7,55, 2, 61,47%
2016: /
2017: /
Looking at another old-timer: herO
2013: 15,33%, 1, 66,67%
2014: 6,00%, 2, 68,87%
2015: 5,77%, 2, 66,37%
2016: 10,50%, 0, 63,21%
2017: 7,40%, 1, 68,52%
Looking at a fellow Terran: INnoVation
2013: 5,00, 1, 69,83%
2014: 5,63, 1, 67,96%
2015: 5,83, 2, 75,23%
2016: 7,75, 1, 69,09%
2017: 5,86, 3, 68,94%
I can't imagine people meaning a win in a singular tournament to determine the best. That would lead to Serral outscaling Maru massively in the bigger picture.
And even if we look at that: Maru won SSL in 2015, but is flanked by Life's GSL season 1 and IEM Taipei, where Life beat Maru in the finals.
2013... as Maru was still up and coming at that time and others outperformed him in hard statistics, I would need some discussions from back then to be convinced. In that time frame he was beaten twice by Dear, who won finals against Soulkey and soO not much after. I doubt Maru was a clear cut best, even if he put his name on the board in that time... but I am open for a case to be made.
Of course, one could also look at Rain, soO, Zest, Taeja and sOs on top, but I don't have the numbers yet. So yeah, even looking at the comparison above... I'd like to know which time frames exactly are meant for this notion, as rwala proclaimed "many stints pre-2018".
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On October 26 2025 06:15 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 04:22 Charoisaur wrote:On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more. ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral. So you complain about people making "bad arguments" to then come to this marvelous and hopefully sarcastic statement, which even then is just...not that smart? Proleague, buddy, Proleague. We are talking about stats in Proleague, one particular season, the easiest to compare two players. If you can't even do that...well *shrug* Anyway. I originally just joined this one for the question "when was Maru the best player pre-2018?" and the answer from you two is: Never, can't back it up at all, completly made up, *angry noises*. So I got my my answer and wish you much fun screaming into the void. See y'all back when Mizenhauers addendum drops!
Now I'm curious to hear what's different when Serral has the highest winrates but lower wins in total compared to when Maru has it. The only reason Stats has more wins is... because he played more games - exactly the same reason as it is for ByuN vs Serral.
Not sure why it's relevant at how many tournaments we're looking, the reason for having more wins but lower winrate is exactly the same
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On October 26 2025 15:57 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 06:15 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 04:22 Charoisaur wrote:On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more. ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral. So you complain about people making "bad arguments" to then come to this marvelous and hopefully sarcastic statement, which even then is just...not that smart? Proleague, buddy, Proleague. We are talking about stats in Proleague, one particular season, the easiest to compare two players. If you can't even do that...well *shrug* Anyway. I originally just joined this one for the question "when was Maru the best player pre-2018?" and the answer from you two is: Never, can't back it up at all, completly made up, *angry noises*. So I got my my answer and wish you much fun screaming into the void. See y'all back when Mizenhauers addendum drops! Now I'm curious to hear what's different when Serral has the highest winrates but lower wins in total compared to when Maru has it. The only reason Stats has more wins is... because he played more games - exactly the same reason as it is for ByuN vs Serral. Not sure why it's relevant at how many tournaments we're looking, the reason for having more wins but lower winrate is exactly the same
"Maru is the best GSL player of all time, having won by far the most of them"
"Yeah, but Clem has won far more ESL Cups. When we talk about tournament wins it shouldn't matter at what tournaments we look at, so Clem is the far better player."
That is your argument right now. We however talk about a specific teamleague season, which naturally has wildly different "rules" compared to just randomly looking at a bunch of unrelated 1v1 tournaments.
If you think winrate is THE most important stat that trumps everything in Proleague, then that is fine. Would also mean that a player who snipes one other player and then never plays again becomes your Proleague MVP with 1-0 stats...but in seriousness: I always thought that going 12-10 is more impressive than going 5-3.
Usually in most sports, we do not go by percentages. You become the Top Striker in Football by getting the most goals - doesn't matter how many games you need for that, as long as your number is bigger than anyone elses. Stats numbers are bigger...partially. I'm still 100% fine with calling Maru the 2016 Proleague MVP, especially if you factor in that he got the finals MVP (for beating TY I guess?). I'm just not buying into it that it is a miraculous run that forever shaked the foundation of the game...it was not.
And it still, to loop this back, doesn't help the original question. So again the answer remains "never".
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Guys we’ve been through all this before. Your boy Serral is the GOAT in most people’s minds but it’s despite—not because—he showed results in the most competitive tournaments and leagues and eras and regions of the game. He simply did not. These are not really debatable propositions and when you try to debate them by discounting Proleague or proclaiming Blizzcon to be the most competitive tournament in the history of the game, it’s what we lawyers call “proving too much.”
Balnazza you’re completely missing the point re: Elazer. The point is simply to note that region lock is designed to give non-Koreans more shots at international premier and world championship titles. Wombat smartly concedes this point because it’s not disputable. Why do you feel the need to debate it? Pointing out that Inno and Maru—world champion contenders for sure—-missed out on Blizzcon by massive amounts of WCS points demonstrates the opposite of what you think it does.
Here’s the thing, and this is really the bottom line. We do not know what Serral’s achievements would look like if he had played in the most competitive eras, leagues, and tournaments. It’s certainly possible that he would have been equally if not more dominant. But it’s also possible that for reasons of style or substance or metas or patches that there would have been certain players or eras or matches that would have posed much more significant barriers that Serral faced in the modern LOV era…especially if he was fighting through the brutal KIL tournament formats and KR region nerf for world championship qualification. Saying that he won on Korean soil and against the top KR players in the modern era is a very shallow rejoinder to this.
It is not so hard to imagine that players like Soulkey or Rain or Mvp or Byun or SOS or Zest or Soo or Taeja or Life or Dream or Flash or Jaedong or whoever in their prime posing major problems for Serral if he was battling for results in KILs or Proleague. Any one of these guys could have been the equivalent of a Clem that essentially makes the match-up a toss-up, at best, but more likely there would have been several such players. I think this is especially the case in ZvZ, but it could be in other match-ups. Guys like Solar in the modern era have had winning streaks against Serral so it’s just not at all hard to imagine many of the best players of earlier eras doing the same on a more consistent basis.
Let me clarify. I am not saying Serral would not have been equally dominant in earlier, more competitive eras and tournaments and regions. But to assume that he would have and to deny that his dominance is at least in part connected to the decline in competition is honestly just very strange.
You’ll notice I have not mentioned Maru’s name here. I am not making a case for him. I’m in an Mvp = GOAT phase and I know no one agrees with me, but I don’t care. My larger point here is that recency and confirmation bias are largely driving this convo, and I’m trying to challenge that a bit.
I don’t agree with Miz on everything he writes but the central theory of his GOAT analysis avoids the pitfalls of a lot of these heuristics and biases by not trying to diminish the more competitive earlier eras of the game just to justify crowning his preferred players. It’s great to be a Serral fanboy and most agree he’s the GOAT. It’s also fine (and better imho) to acknowledge that all of his results were from weaker eras, tournaments, leagues, and regions.
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On October 27 2025 01:03 rwala wrote:
especially if he was fighting through the brutal KIL tournament formats and KR region nerf for world championship qualification.
Wasn't it you who said that it isn't a nerf/buff when things are done to be equaled out or to approximate a "perfect" modifier, which this exact rule was meant to do? So how can you call this a nerf?
It is not so hard to imagine that players like Soulkey or Rain or Mvp or Byun or SOS or Zest or Soo or Taeja or Life or Dream or Flash or Jaedong or whoever in their prime posing major problems for Serral if he was battling for results
Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral.
As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your metrics?
See, this is my issue with you... it seems like you throw out unfounded accusations or proclaim arguments, but you rarely follow them through as an argument as well as coherently in applying logic.
It happened again in this very thread.
You misquote others, you put words in their mouth and you make claims without backing them up.
So far, I am still waiting for you to write at least one thing about your notion that Maru had "many stints pre-2018" where he was supposedly the best.
I am further waiting for you to prove the unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all".
But to assume that he would have
Who here does?? Stop having arguments in your head.
The only thing that was being said is that it would statistically be reasonable to assume that he would have been the best player if all players gathered in their prime. Not that he would have been equally dominant.
I don’t agree with Miz on everything he writes but the central theory of his GOAT analysis avoids the pitfalls of a lot of these heuristics and biases by not trying to diminish the more competitive earlier eras of the game just to justify crowning his preferred players.
Do you accuse anyone in particular when you talk about people justify crowning their preferred player?
Are you even aware that there is no more transparent list out there than mine, as I demonstrated every little detail of how I arrived at each and every number, without obfuscating, for all of you guys to double check?
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Balnazza you’re completely missing the point re: Elazer. The point is simply to note that region lock is designed to give non-Koreans more shots at international premier and world championship titles. Wombat smartly concedes this point because it’s not disputable. Why do you feel the need to debate it? Pointing out that Inno and Maru—world champion contenders for sure—-missed out on Blizzcon by massive amounts of WCS points demonstrates the opposite of what you think it does.
Actually, you are completly missing the point, because you fail to defend your own arguments. I never said anything about regionlock, of course it was designed to help the foreign scene. But that doesn't make it an "auto-qualify", especially not when you then pick a player who had to fight tooth and nail to be in that particular Blizzcon. Of course you picked Elazer because he reached the Ro4 and I guess you wanted to make some point that he got that spot gifted and for free...which he didn't.
You also do the same thing with Maru then: Mind you, my original question was for you to defend your argument that Maru "had many stints" pre-2018 where he was "the best player in the world". You failed to do that aswell, instead making these grandious arguments about KILs and Proleagues and what not.
Inno and Maru missing Blizzcon by massive amount of points in 2016 proved this point: Neither of them was in contention to be the best player in that year, because they performed poorly in their region. This says nothing about the qualitfy of KILs or Proleague in 2016, because that isn't important for your argument.
So how about this: Maybe stop using arguments people bring to Discussion A to then geniously disproving them in Discussion B and actually defend your own argument. When was Maru the best player in the world pre-2016 and why? You said "for many stints", so I assume you can atleast list 1-2 years he was the best player in the world?
It really is not that hard of a question, is it?
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On October 27 2025 03:37 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +Balnazza you’re completely missing the point re: Elazer. The point is simply to note that region lock is designed to give non-Koreans more shots at international premier and world championship titles. Wombat smartly concedes this point because it’s not disputable. Why do you feel the need to debate it? Pointing out that Inno and Maru—world champion contenders for sure—-missed out on Blizzcon by massive amounts of WCS points demonstrates the opposite of what you think it does. Actually, you are completly missing the point, because you fail to defend your own arguments. I never said anything about regionlock, of course it was designed to help the foreign scene. But that doesn't make it an "auto-qualify", especially not when you then pick a player who had to fight tooth and nail to be in that particular Blizzcon. Of course you picked Elazer because he reached the Ro4 and I guess you wanted to make some point that he got that spot gifted and for free...which he didn't. You also do the same thing with Maru then: Mind you, my original question was for you to defend your argument that Maru "had many stints" pre-2018 where he was "the best player in the world". You failed to do that aswell, instead making these grandious arguments about KILs and Proleagues and what not. Inno and Maru missing Blizzcon by massive amount of points in 2016 proved this point: Neither of them was in contention to be the best player in that year, because they performed poorly in their region. This says nothing about the qualitfy of KILs or Proleague in 2016, because that isn't important for your argument. So how about this: Maybe stop using arguments people bring to Discussion A to then geniously disproving them in Discussion B and actually defend your own argument. When was Maru the best player in the world pre-2016 and why? You said "for many stints", so I assume you can atleast list 1-2 years he was the best player in the world? It really is not that hard of a question, is it?
People need to stop disrespecting elazer.
Gsl vs the world the Koreans were literally too easy for Serral that elazer was his toughest opponent in that tournament
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On October 27 2025 02:07 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2025 01:03 rwala wrote:
especially if he was fighting through the brutal KIL tournament formats and KR region nerf for world championship qualification. Wasn't it you who said that it isn't a nerf/buff when things are done to be equaled out or to approximate a "perfect" modifier, which this exact rule was meant to do? So how can you call this a nerf? Show nested quote +It is not so hard to imagine that players like Soulkey or Rain or Mvp or Byun or SOS or Zest or Soo or Taeja or Life or Dream or Flash or Jaedong or whoever in their prime posing major problems for Serral if he was battling for results
Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral. As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your metrics? See, this is my issue with you... it seems like you throw out unfounded accusations or proclaim arguments, but you rarely follow them through as an argument as well as coherently in applying logic. It happened again in this very thread. You misquote others, you put words in their mouth and you make claims without backing them up. So far, I am still waiting for you to write at least one thing about your notion that Maru had "many stints pre-2018" where he was supposedly the best. I am further waiting for you to prove the unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all". Who here does?? Stop having arguments in your head. The only thing that was being said is that it would statistically be reasonable to assume that he would have been the best player if all players gathered in their prime. Not that he would have been equally dominant. Show nested quote +
I don’t agree with Miz on everything he writes but the central theory of his GOAT analysis avoids the pitfalls of a lot of these heuristics and biases by not trying to diminish the more competitive earlier eras of the game just to justify crowning his preferred players.
Do you accuse anyone in particular when you talk about people justify crowning their preferred player? Are you even aware that there is no more transparent list out there than mine, as I demonstrated every little detail of how I arrived at each and every number, without obfuscating, for all of you guys to double check?
I don’t apply metrics because I don’t invent math equations to crown my preferred candidate the GOAT. Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region. As Artosis said, you should be able to make your argument clearly, simply, and succinctly. When you can’t, you’re probably confused and likely seeking to confuse others.
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On October 26 2025 06:15 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 04:22 Charoisaur wrote:On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more. ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral. So you complain about people making "bad arguments" to then come to this marvelous and hopefully sarcastic statement, which even then is just...not that smart? Proleague, buddy, Proleague. We are talking about stats in Proleague, one particular season, the easiest to compare two players. If you can't even do that...well *shrug* Anyway. I originally just joined this one for the question "when was Maru the best player pre-2018?" and the answer from you two is: Never, can't back it up at all, completly made up, *angry noises*. So I got my my answer and wish you much fun screaming into the void. See y'all back when Mizenhauers addendum drops!
I answered you, but then you tried to dispute it with literal misinformation until Char called you out. Not sure that went the way you were hoping…
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On October 27 2025 10:48 TeamMamba wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2025 03:37 Balnazza wrote:Balnazza you’re completely missing the point re: Elazer. The point is simply to note that region lock is designed to give non-Koreans more shots at international premier and world championship titles. Wombat smartly concedes this point because it’s not disputable. Why do you feel the need to debate it? Pointing out that Inno and Maru—world champion contenders for sure—-missed out on Blizzcon by massive amounts of WCS points demonstrates the opposite of what you think it does. Actually, you are completly missing the point, because you fail to defend your own arguments. I never said anything about regionlock, of course it was designed to help the foreign scene. But that doesn't make it an "auto-qualify", especially not when you then pick a player who had to fight tooth and nail to be in that particular Blizzcon. Of course you picked Elazer because he reached the Ro4 and I guess you wanted to make some point that he got that spot gifted and for free...which he didn't. You also do the same thing with Maru then: Mind you, my original question was for you to defend your argument that Maru "had many stints" pre-2018 where he was "the best player in the world". You failed to do that aswell, instead making these grandious arguments about KILs and Proleagues and what not. Inno and Maru missing Blizzcon by massive amount of points in 2016 proved this point: Neither of them was in contention to be the best player in that year, because they performed poorly in their region. This says nothing about the qualitfy of KILs or Proleague in 2016, because that isn't important for your argument. So how about this: Maybe stop using arguments people bring to Discussion A to then geniously disproving them in Discussion B and actually defend your own argument. When was Maru the best player in the world pre-2016 and why? You said "for many stints", so I assume you can atleast list 1-2 years he was the best player in the world? It really is not that hard of a question, is it? People need to stop disrespecting elazer. Gsl vs the world the Koreans were literally too easy for Serral that elazer was his toughest opponent in that tournament
Elazer is great, so is Special, Time, Has, and others from non-KR regions that were repeatedly seeded into international premier and WC tourneys via region lock. But this isn’t the point. The point is that KILs and Proleague was were the fiercest competition was. These other tournaments had prestige and prize pool but were designed for marketing and business purposes to grow the game outside of South Korea. They were not intended to represent the highest level of competition, and they generally didn’t.
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 27 2025 22:28 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2025 02:07 PremoBeats wrote:On October 27 2025 01:03 rwala wrote:
especially if he was fighting through the brutal KIL tournament formats and KR region nerf for world championship qualification. Wasn't it you who said that it isn't a nerf/buff when things are done to be equaled out or to approximate a "perfect" modifier, which this exact rule was meant to do? So how can you call this a nerf? It is not so hard to imagine that players like Soulkey or Rain or Mvp or Byun or SOS or Zest or Soo or Taeja or Life or Dream or Flash or Jaedong or whoever in their prime posing major problems for Serral if he was battling for results
Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral. As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your metrics? See, this is my issue with you... it seems like you throw out unfounded accusations or proclaim arguments, but you rarely follow them through as an argument as well as coherently in applying logic. It happened again in this very thread. You misquote others, you put words in their mouth and you make claims without backing them up. So far, I am still waiting for you to write at least one thing about your notion that Maru had "many stints pre-2018" where he was supposedly the best. I am further waiting for you to prove the unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all".
But to assume that he would have
Who here does?? Stop having arguments in your head. The only thing that was being said is that it would statistically be reasonable to assume that he would have been the best player if all players gathered in their prime. Not that he would have been equally dominant.
I don’t agree with Miz on everything he writes but the central theory of his GOAT analysis avoids the pitfalls of a lot of these heuristics and biases by not trying to diminish the more competitive earlier eras of the game just to justify crowning his preferred players.
Do you accuse anyone in particular when you talk about people justify crowning their preferred player? Are you even aware that there is no more transparent list out there than mine, as I demonstrated every little detail of how I arrived at each and every number, without obfuscating, for all of you guys to double check? I don’t apply metrics because I don’t invent math equations to crown my preferred candidate the GOAT. Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region. As Artosis said, you should be able to make your argument clearly, simply, and succinctly. When you can’t, you’re probably confused and likely seeking to confuse others.
Haven’t you argued that the Kespa era was the most competitive era though?
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Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region
What is this claim based on? Surely the subsequent eras were much more competitive, given that the players who had dominated previously weren't good enough to continue dominating.
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Winrates don't account for strength of schedule.
Tournaments are a crapshoot because of bracket format, even if not, 1 single tournament shouldnt define your whole year or carreer.
Prize pool metrics are even wilder, with single elim tournaments being worth a huge chunk of the yearly prize pool.
The funny thing is, Serral wins on all 3 metrics, even when you filter winrates vs Koreans but don't account that Serral's Korean opponents are just way better than Koreans.
The best single measure of a players strength is Aligulac rating, and Serral has been far far more dominant than any other player, adn that reflects on betting lines, he is (almost?) always favoured to win.
So yes, Rotterdam is obviously right, there's only "controversy" on SC2 because of a few koreaboo die hard fans, much much more dominant than magnus is on Chess.
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Why do stints have to be years, I think there were many days at least that maru was the best player from 13-15. Of course if you divide it up in years you will lose a lot to low resolution since these years were so competitive. If Maru needed to be the best, it wasn't just 3 pro gamers that he had to beat.
You can't just compare proleague statistics and putting cure above maru is laughable. He was probably comfortably in top 7 in 2015 [life, soo, maru, inno, zest, herO and sOs]. And a record that herO holds is amazingly impressive since he was supposed to carry his team against all of the top dogs and in all of the ace matches, whereas if your just another top player in skt you will get to play trash, or lowely players.
Maru at 7-2 over sOs 7-4 does not mean he's better either, and that the team miscalculated, sOs played the harder matches and were their golden boy, it isn't maru's face that was featured on an aeroplane.
There's been other arguments that are faulty, for instance the fact that serral has dominated for half the game, if maxpax started winning all of the online cups for the next 15 years that could though impressive, never cement him the goat status.
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On October 27 2025 22:33 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2025 06:15 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 04:22 Charoisaur wrote:On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:On October 25 2025 14:05 rwala wrote:On October 24 2025 02:56 Balnazza wrote:I really want to stay out of the discussion, just to avoid repeating the same-old arguments in both directions, especially on a thread that isn't even really about the GOAT-topic...but I have to ask: On October 23 2025 15:01 rwala wrote:
You're right about Rogue but Maru was the best player in the world for many stints pre-2018.
What year(s) pre-2018 would anyone consider Maru to be the best player in the world? Even if you would do the ludicrous thing to proclaim him the best player after winning his two Premier events pre-2018...that would still just be two 'stints', which in my book hardly count as "many". Most of 2016 Proleague when he accomplished one of the greatest feats in all of SC. But I’d be happy to concede he wasn’t the best player as much as Inno, Rain, Zest, TY, MVP, and probably others. You can go back and watch Proleague and that’s what Wolf, GTR, Valdez were saying. A lot of the modern fans don’t really remember or even value Proleague because they never watched it or cared much about it and would probably point out that Maru didn’t even make Blizzcon in 2016. Neither did Inno, and in fact many Korean GOATs failed to break through region lock since they unfortunately didn’t have the region lock near autoqualify that got players like Elazer and Special in. How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs. 8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more. ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral. So you complain about people making "bad arguments" to then come to this marvelous and hopefully sarcastic statement, which even then is just...not that smart? Proleague, buddy, Proleague. We are talking about stats in Proleague, one particular season, the easiest to compare two players. If you can't even do that...well *shrug* Anyway. I originally just joined this one for the question "when was Maru the best player pre-2018?" and the answer from you two is: Never, can't back it up at all, completly made up, *angry noises*. So I got my my answer and wish you much fun screaming into the void. See y'all back when Mizenhauers addendum drops! I answered you, but then you tried to dispute it with literal misinformation until Char called you out. Not sure that went the way you were hoping…
I switched up a name, which I immediatly admitted as a mistake. Doesn't change that everything that I said holds true if you use the correct player - Stats.
So no, you didn't answer me. You avoided the topic and instead shifted the discussion to the value of KILs or Proleague...neither of which helped your original point. So again: 2016 was clearly not a year you would consider Maru to be "the best player in the world", because while he did great in Proleague, he failed to qualify for Blizzcon (which means: He failed to do well in the most competitive giga-galaxy tournaments of all time in that year). If you compare his 2016 to someone like Stats: Stats also did great (equal, slightly better or slightly worse, depending what you value) than Maru, but he qualified for Blizzcon. So Stats alone would have a bigger claim to be "the best player" in 2016...and you could make that argument for numerous players, not saying Stats is necessarily the best.
Which leaves, surprisingly, the question...when were those stints when Maru was "the best player in the world" pre-2018?
No one is having the argument with you about the value of Proleague. No one is disputing the competitiveness of GSL back in the day (though I will always fight on the importance of Blizzcon as the most competitive and important tournament of the year - case in point 2016: People always remember ByuN as a World Champion, the fact that he also won GSL that year kind of gets added on most of the time). But neither the value of Proleague nor the competitiveness of GSL by themselves make Maru "the best player in the world" randomly...this isn't even "Maru vs. Serral", this is literally "Maru vs. other koreans".
So can we make this easy? Do me the favor and do one of two things:
1)Point out these times Maru was "the best player in the world" pre-2018 and why.
2)Just admit you pulled that statement out of thin air and have literally no backup for it.
As Artosis said, you should be able to make your argument clearly, simply, and succinctly. When you can’t, you’re probably confused and likely seeking to confuse others.
If you try to make your argument so short you just skip over those little things called facts and statistics, you are not making an argument. You make up a baseless opinion. What would a lawyer call that? Hearsay?
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Literally barely anyone remember Maru nor anyone put him anywhere close as a top Koreans pre 2018.
Based on my memory, WOL was basically mvp nested and MC
Hots was basically a mix of all the other top Koreans and their accomplishments. For example sos 2 world champs, innovation the machine winning multiple GSLs, sOO failing short constantly , Life insane runs.
Maru fans would bring up his SSL win or his forgettable pro league stats. Majority of the fans base don’t even care about Maru prior to 2018.
Let’s be real here, Maru was literally a pedestrian pre 2018. If we do a goat list only from the period 2010-2017. Maru wouldn’t even be top 20
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Northern Ireland25939 Posts
On October 28 2025 06:16 TeamMamba wrote:
Literally barely anyone remember Maru nor anyone put him anywhere close as a top Koreans pre 2018.
Based on my memory, WOL was basically mvp nested and MC
Hots was basically a mix of all the other top Koreans and their accomplishments. For example sos 2 world champs, innovation the machine winning multiple GSLs, sOO failing short constantly , Life insane runs.
Maru fans would bring up his SSL win or his forgettable pro league stats. Majority of the fans base don’t even care about Maru prior to 2018.
Let’s be real here, Maru was literally a pedestrian pre 2018. If we do a goat list only from the period 2010-2017. Maru wouldn’t even be top 20
This is silly.
He was up there as a top contender for years, and in terms of sheer raw ability and skill level especially.
I don’t think he had an appreciable span as ‘the best’ before 2018, but few did. I’d say Mvp, Innovation and Life are amongst a handful who one could say that about.
I think it’s safe to say maybe one shouldn’t put too much stock in your memory of the scene’s history, your conclusions are bonkers.
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United States1896 Posts
On October 24 2025 21:53 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 24 2025 21:07 Mizenhauer wrote:On October 24 2025 03:32 WombaT wrote:
Yeah it’s an interesting interview all-round, not just another chance to relitigate GOAT chat :p GOAT addendum 2026 on the way! For realsies?
Yes. I need to finish a few projects, but once those are taken care of I'm on it!
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EPT
