SC2 Power Rank: March 2019 - Page 12

On March 18 2019 08:48 BerserkSword wrote:
do the people complaining even know what monthly power rankings are?

they are a short term thing, not a long term thing

soO won the premier tournament of that month and put on a masterclass of ZvZ and ZvP against the best Zerg and Protoss players of last year. Putting him at No. 1 isnt unreasonable at all depending on the criteria being used. that's all there is to it

On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote:


The point is there can be either one or no players(in the case there is no one who is evidently way ahead of his competitors) globally dominating, whereas there can be two players dominating regionally(one in Korea, one in WCS); GSL, despite being open to everyone and having some foreigners trying to qualify , is essentially a korean tournament, while you are treating it as international.
The existence of Serral also implies there is a strong contender not competing for the Code S title, unlike what happened in the past when the best 16 players in the world were all korean.

On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote:
By your estimates, one WCS would be roughly worth 1/4 of Code S?
That's almost reasonable and way more than the majority of "korean elitists" are ready to admit(see Charoisaur above not believing Serral would have made ro8 on a regular basis).

On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote:
Even equating a WCS winner to a Code S ro8 player does not mean every top 8 korean would have won four consecutive WCS, just that there is a chanche they might have done it; such a feat takes a huge consistency as they were played in the span of ten months during different patches.

On March 11 2019 09:34 Xain0n wrote:
It's quite hard to properly compare Serral and Maru as they don't play in the same circuit and never faced in official matches while they both were at their apex; however, numbers like earnings, win percentage, average placement in lost tournaments, streak and Premier victories are all on Serral's side and I don't believe the higher average quality of Maru's victory can make up for them, especially considering he lost more tournaments than he won and ended the year crashing out of BlizzCon early and brutally.

On March 18 2019 08:54 Parrek wrote:
People are also complaining because they started this ranking saying current results would matter a little less than recent form. Then they stick soO as number one on the back of literally only Katowice

On March 17 2019 21:43 Xain0n wrote:
This list's main flaw is his awful timing. What if Inno drops out of his GSL group? We should wait for more results in 2019 before we can proclaim anyone the best, Serral had to be given the benefit of doubt and I'm still convinced he may still be the most well rounded player at the moment.

On March 19 2019 07:44 fronkschnonk wrote:


Oh, I actually do think that two players can be globally dominating at the same time. Sometimes it just happens that two players are ahead of anybody else and thus are both dominating. Sometimes it also can happen that the results of both those players don't give a clear indication who of them is the actual best.
GSL might be an essentially korean tournament (which is debatable, considering that we always had 2 to 4 top foreigners trying to qualify or actually participating in 2018 - it's not that we have many more) but it is equal in toughness to any international event because the difficulty of opponents from Ro8 on is similarly hard. Most of the time it is already harder from in the earlier rounds.
The existence of Serral is the one exception. And since he does not compete in GSL it is just guesswork how he would perform in such a format while almost every top Korean proved to be capable of doing great in "weekenders", too.



No, as I elaborated, I see the IEMs as more representative skillwise, so it would be more like 1/6. In order to get to GSL Ro8 Serral probably would've had to beat more players of a certain level than he needed to reach a WCS final. He proved that he was capable of doing so - twice (with HSC being somewhat in between considering his tournament path which wasn't the hardest up to the finals).



Consistency is nice and all but winning multiple tournaments in a row with a difficulty level of x only makes you consistently good at the level of x. It doesn't say anything about your abilities above the level of x. This is why I only can count Serral's victory at GSL vs The World as clear starting point of his dominance in 2018.



At some level earnings don't say much if anything about the level of a player. Yes, you have to be incredibly good to earn as much as Seral or Maru did in 2018. But with some tournaments having a much higher prize pool than others without being actually harder distorts this factor quite a lot. Also winning very high prize money by beating easier competition.
Win percentage differs only slightly in the relevant phases of their years - especially if you only take top opponents into consideration plus the factor that Maru played vs more of those opponents in his dominant phase.
Average placement in lost tournaments is a more valid point. But also this factor can be distorted by the number of actually played tournaments of a certain difficulty level (which Maru played more of), by the difficulty of the tournaments a player lost in (for example Serral lost in WESG in a very high round but didn't face a comparable difficult opponents in earlier rounds wich would've been different in other tournaments) and by the difficulty of the opponents a player lost to. One can lose in a kind of early round by being beaten by an eventual finalist or even tournament winner.
Streak is barely on Serral's side with said distorting factors.
Serral did not have more premier victories of the same quality. WCS tournaments being called premier is a mere reference to their prizepool and doesn't say a thing about the difficulty of those tournaments. HSCs, which are called "major" are harder than WCS tournaments while not being as hard as toughest competition (GSL, Blizzcon etc.)



That's just a lie - or bad reading comprehension. The PR was introduced with the criteria that recent form is the most important factor but that consistency will be valued higher than in other PRs before.



Serral was given the benefit of doubt which is why he was ranked higher than IEM results would have implied with soO, Stats and Dark performing better than him.

On March 19 2019 06:16 stilt wrote:


"Masterclass zvp" the games were quite unimpressives imo.
And he barely got out of his group, it's strange for the best player of the month.
Finally, all these concerns have been confirmed, this TL ranking has no purpose other than buzz.

On March 19 2019 11:47 xelnaga_empire wrote:
These poweranks should consider longer term performance than just one tournament. Serral is probably still the best player in the world. He rolled over his group at IEM and only lost to the eventual champion Soo, in a close series. And then Serral barely lost at WESG.

Even with the IEM win, Soo is not a top 3 player. He barely got out of his group at IEM. Also, his performance over the last 8 months doesn't justify it, except for his IEM win.

If power rankings are done this way, whoever wins the latest premier tournament can become #1, the power ranking loses its credibility. There should be a more objective system such as point allocation which takes into consideration a player's performance over the last X months, with perhaps more weight given to recent performances. But one single performance (i.e. IEM) shouldn't vault a player to the #1 spot.

On March 19 2019 17:47 Charoisaur wrote:

That's exactly what they do but because IEM was the only tournament in 3 months it was higher valued than usually.
They still valued previous performances which is why Maru and Serral were higher ranked than their performance at IEM would warrant.

Everyone on this thread is such an expert on what would be the "proper" way to do a PR but I bet, no matter who of you would do it - people would bitch just as much about it.