EPTTable of content
1. Introduction
2. General methodology
3. Aligulac rank analysis
4. Analysis of Aligulac Hall of Fame
5. Match win rates analysis
6. Tournament Analysis
6.1 Percentage of won tournaments
6.2 Average place achieved
6.3 Tournament score
6.4 Efficiency score
7. Discussion
8. Opinion piece/hypotheticals
1. Introduction
Determining the greatest StarCraft 2 player of all time is no easy task. The challenges inherent in such an undertaking are manifold. StarCraft 2, a game of immense complexity and strategic depth, has seen numerous players rise to prominence through different eras, each contributing to the evolution of the game in unique ways. Moreover, the ever-changing meta, the introduction of new strategies, and the diverse range of opponents faced over the years make it difficult to establish a definitive benchmark for greatness.
My goal in this analysis is to sift through the myriad accomplishments and performances to identify who stands out as the ultimate StarCraft 2 player. This endeavor is driven by a desire to celebrate the extraordinary skill and dedication that these players bring to the game, and to offer a comprehensive evaluation that honors their contributions to the StarCraft 2 community. I will try to be as objective as possible, keeping subjective categorizations to a minimum, while accepting that there are subjective topics like difficulty of different eras that will always retain some sort of subjectivity.
I will further give detailed explanations about my methodology and I will be as transparent as possible.
Who am I anyway? I am a long time StarCraft 2 fan and have a background in critical thinking as I was part of many debate clubs. I enjoy doing statistics and to analyze this subject was a long time goal of mine. Simply put - I am a number’s guy. But enough of me… let’s get to the interesting part: The players.
In a first screening I evaluated the players that come up most frequently in GOAT discussions. These pre-contenders are: ByuN, Dark, INnoVation, herO, Life, Maru, MMA, Mvp, Rain, Reynor, Rogue, Serral, soO, sOs, TaeJa, TY, Zest.
For the pre-screening I looked at the following metrics:
- World Championships won
- Premier Tournaments won
- Duration of career
- Win rate against top Korean players in any given year
It became obvious pretty soon that four players stand out without question among the 16 pre-contenders. The final contenders for my GOAT-discussion thus are: INnoVation, Maru, Rogue and Serral.
As you will see, I did extensive analyses of these player’s careers. The player’s results in the excel sheets will be listed in accordance to their first entrance into the top 10 ranks of the world. The order thus is INnoVation, Maru, Serral, Rogue.
2. General methodology
The 3 main metrics I analyzed are consistency, dominance and efficiency and all available data until the 30th of June 2024 was used in this article.
Consistency - A metric that is showing if players are able to perform over long periods of time at the same level or a similar quality. A sub-category would be duration, although duration by itself doesn’t say anything about quality.
Dominance - A quality that shows that a player is stronger or better than other players.
Efficiency - A metric to show that a player is able to generate the best results in a short period of time
At first glance efficiency and consistency might seem to contradict each other. Consistency is more like a base level that needs to be cleared. For my pre-screening I used 3 years of playing at the top level as an entrance barrier to the final contender list. Still, some players have more than a decade of playing at top level. Thus, players can be more efficient than others over long periods of time, amassing more titles in similar times frames.
Only looking at tournament placements like other GOAT discussions did in the past would leave out important context. Thus, I evaluated the following data in order to substantiate the 3 factors consistency, dominance and efficiency.
Aligulac rank analysis
- Percentage of occupying rank 1 on Aligulac
- Percentage of occupying rank 1 or 2 on Aligulac
Aligulac Hall of Fame
Match win rates
Tournament analysis (including an era analysis and in depth analysis of the tournaments played by these players)
- Percentage of won tournaments
- Average place achieved
- Tournament score
- Efficiency score
It is important to mention that I ONLY looked at match win rates or tournaments where top Koreans participated. I did this because of the correct notion that it would be easier for Serral to score points in these metrics as he played in tournaments that are region-locked which have heavy influence on match win rates, placement in tournaments or the percentage of won tournaments.
!The only exception for this is one sub-analysis (Tournament score) as I found no fair or objective way to make up for the time Serral would have lost by simply leaving out these tournaments completely. I addressed this issue by devaluing the region locked tournaments immensely, but more on that down below.!
All the data gathered is available online for free at aligulac.com and liqupedia.com so everyone is welcomed to double check if I made any mistakes to let me correct them in an update.
That being said, this is a very dry subject. I am also neither a native English speaker nor do I have a proper education in writing and on top I am also human - thus errors in form of grammar, bad wording, boring writing or even wrong countings at times can occur. I tried to analyze the topic of GOAT in StarCraft2 to the best of my ability and was attempting to look at every angle of argumentation in the discussion. Unfortunately I also have no skills whatsoever in presenting the gathered data in a nice fashion, thus excel needs to do.
It was a lot of work and I hope that you will enjoy this little discussion.
3. Aligulac rank analysis
Methodology
I clicked through all aligulac lists and made notes whether a given contender was ranked 1, 2, 3 or was placed inside the top 10. I then calculated their respective percentages of being either ranked 1 or ranked 1 or 2. I also made notes in regards to interesting events and thus this brief timeline was established.
May 2013/List 83 INnoVation enters Top 10
July 2013/List 89 INnoVation claims rank 1 for the first time
Jan 2015/List 127 Maru enters Top 10
June 2017/List 191 Serral enters Top 10
Dec 2017/List 203 Serral claims rank 1 for the first time
May 2018/List 214 Maru claims rank 1 for the first time
Sept 2017/List 197 Rogue enters Top 10
Nov 2022/List 332 Rogue leaves for Military Service
Sept 2021/List 301 INnoVation leaves for Military Service
March 2023/List 340 INnoVation returns from Military Service and re-enters on rank 18
June 2023/List 348 INnoVation ends his career on rank 25
April 2024/List 368 Rogue returns from Military Service and re-enters on rank 17
April 2024/List 369 Serral loses rank 1 due to inactivity (Military Service); Maru claims rank 1
May 2024/List 370 Maru loses rank 1 to Clem
May 2024/List 371 Serral reclaims rank 1 with a 276 points rating difference to Clem
Things that stood out:
1. Serral has occupied either Rank 1 or 2 since Dec 2017/List 2023 when he claimed rank 1 for the first time (he only lost it on list 369 and 370 due to the start of his military service where a break in playing signed him as inactive).
2. Maru lost rank 2 in that same time frame to several people including Dark, Reynor, Clem and MaxPax.
3. Maru never reached INoVation’s rank 1 count (see tables below).
4. Only a total of 5 players achieved to be the best of the world against all three races: Mvp, TaeJa, INnoVation, Byun and Serral who did so on several occasions over a period of 6 years (list 249, 262 and 317, 375). I did not include DIMAGA who was the best against all 3 races when the game still had under 100 players at the beginning of StarCraft 2.
Results
The table below shows what the counting and calculations ended up in. INnoVation for example played in the Top 10 for 167 Aligulac lists. Out of those 167 lists, he was ranked 1 32 times, ranked 2 38 times and ranked 3 20 times.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/8A5trTH.jpg)
Serral by far is the best player in this comparison. He was either ranked 1 or 2 since December 2017 - this is a quota of 93,65% and occupied rank 1 71,43% of the time, since he first entered the top 10. The 2nd best player by percentage and absolute numbers if only looking at rank 1 is INnoVation as he beats Maru in absolute numbers (32 vs 30) as well as relatively to his amount in the top 10 (19,16% vs 13,95%). This seems only to be because of the emergence of Serral, as Maru would have been ranked 1 innumerable times more often, if it wasn’t for the Finnish player. Maru is placed 2nd if both rank 1 and 2 are taken into account.
Rogue was never ranked 1 and was present in the top 3 only 4 times.
Which metrics does this analysis address?
We can safely deduct that all 4 players have a sufficient amount of time played at the top level. A counterexample to duration would be Mvp who was hyper dominant for 1 year but then fell off pretty quickly.
The analysis also gives credit to the player’s domination and consistency, as it takes a lot of both to stay in the top 10 for such long periods of time.
4. Aligulac Hall of Fame
Methodology
I simply looked at the Aligulac Hall of Fame, which is on their website.
The HoF is - as it is stated on the aligulac page - a measurement of a player’s domination over time, so called periods of domination. Aligulac measures the rating point distance a player has to rank 7 when they are ranked 1 to 6. They add up this distance for all lists where players are ranked 6 and above and add up the score as Period-Points (PP). The system thus rewards large rating gaps as well as long periods of being at the top.
Results
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/neJGHvU.jpg)
Three of the contenders are in the top 5 of the Aligulac Hall of Fame:
Serral being first with 53536 PP, Maru in second place with 32761 PP and INnoVation comes in 5th with 13083 PP. Rogue is 34th with 566 PP. This analysis by Aligulac is congruent with my findings and makes Serral dominance better visible with a higher resolution as the rating point gap is included too. He is more than 60% ahead of Maru and has around more than 4 times the amount of PP than rank 3 Reynor who sports 13398 PP.
Serral, similar to the first analysis, dominates this analysis quite heavily.
Which metrics does this analysis address?
As stated on the aligulac page, the HoF measures the metrics consistency and dominance as dominance is recorded over time.
But Rank is not the only metric we should look at. Let us turn to overall Match Win Rates.
5. Match win rates
Methodology
I went on the Aligulac match history of a respective contender and singled out given years (for example 2013-01-01 till 2013-12-31) as well as the country (South Korean). As Serral’s score versus the others was not included in this list (as he obviously isn’t Korean), I also made notes of all encounters INnoVation, Maru and Rogue had with Serral, which I added into the equation. For example, below Rogue’s match win rate list is shown. In 2017 he played a total of 127 matches vs the top Koreans and won 81 for a win rate percentage of 63,78%. As he also played and won one match versus Serral that year, his total win rate went up to 64,06%.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/TNDlndA.jpg)
Results
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/fN4DHN6.jpg)
Serral for a third time, sits on top with an overall lifetime match win rate of 69,58%. As I said before, this is only versus top Koreans. What was interesting to see was the fact that if you look at the best years that have been played, Serral occupies the first 4 spots. In 2020 and 2018 he has 85,71% (2020 is rated higher, as he played more games), in 2023 he scored 85,11% and 76,67% in 2019. Maru follows in place number 5 with his 2021’s 76,39%.
It should be noted that - if things keep going like they are now - Serral will finish this year with a match win rate of over 92% versus the top Koreans. Maru will defend his 5th spot as he is heading towards over 82%.
It should further be mentioned that the Korean players' match win rates are slightly inflated in relation to Serral, as Serral only plays the top of the Korean players. The Koreans on the other hand also play lower rated players - who are easier to beat - in qualifiers or lower Premier tier tournaments.
To showcase this, I looked at the adversaries rank that a given player faced in a certain year. I controlled for two categories. First, players ranked 41 - 80 and second, players ranked below 80. In the year 2018 for example, Serral played 3 Koreans from the first category (rank 52, 67 and 60). Maru played 6 Koreans (rank 2x 54, 57, 56, 41, and 45) from the first and 3 Koreans (rank 88, 81, 138) from the second category. Serral’s win rate thus went from 85,71% to 84,00% and Maru’s from 66,18% to 62,71%. This is because he not only played more lower ranked players but also lost to one.
Another example would be 2021, where Serral played 2 players from the first and 1 player from the second category and Maru 7 from the first and 4 from the second, again losing to one of them. Serral therefore dropped from 70,31% to 68,85%, Maru from 76,39% to 70,97%.
I didn’t include this correction in my overall rating but wanted to highlight that this effect is clearly measurable and would boost Serral’s result in relation to the 3 Korean contenders even further if it was included .
To give you a small impression how this looks like, I included the following screenshot. The lists were too long to include them entirely.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/2YYSYES.jpg)
Out of fun, I also looked at the player’s rating after they established their spot in the top10 which led to Serral attaining a 76,59% - meaning over 3 out of 4 matches - match win rate versus the best Koreans of the world since 2017. But as this correction only helped Maru and Serral I simply wanted to include this fun fact as a side note.
Which metrics does this analysis address?
Dominance and consistency are measured by this analysis. If you are only good for 1 or 2 years, consistency lacks, if your domination isn’t on point, you get lower win rates.
6. Tournament analysis
I want to start this section of my GOAT analysis while addressing the “era issue”, briefly summing up the game’s history before explaining methodology for this section.
History
StarCraft 2 peaked in popularity and player count immediately following its release in 2010, particularly around 2010-2014 (some would say 2013). The game sold over three million copies within the first month, reflecting a strong and immediate interest from both old fans and new players. The competitive scene peaked at the end of this period, even going into 2015, where the professional scene saw both established legends and emerging stars competing.
Challenges following this period included the match fixing scandal, competition due to the rise of other popular esports titles like League of Legends and the disbandment of KeSPA, which marked the end of an era. Many professional teams associated with KeSPA either disbanded or shifted their focus to other games. The competitive scene in Korea underwent significant changes, with a shift towards more decentralized and independent tournament organization and a greater reliance on international competitions.
Between 2016 and 2018, several notable StarCraft II professional players retired or significantly reduced their competitive activity. This period saw the departure of some legendary figures from the scene, such as Life, MC and Bomber while others like Mvp or Rain already retired in 2015. Reasons for retirement were manifold, including increased competition through new talents, the desire for a new career path, financial challenges through the disbandment of KeSPA as well as personal reasons like health issues or burn out.
Despite these challenges, the StarCraft II community remained resilient. Independent tournaments, such as those organized by AfreecaTV and other international events, continued to support the competitive scene. The departure of the above mentioned players in congruence with the disbandment of KeSPA marked the end of an era but also highlighted the evolving nature of the StarCraft II scene. New players continued to rise and maintain the competitive spirit of the game, ensuring its ongoing legacy in the e-sports world.
Non-Korean players like Serral and Reynor, as well as later on MaxPax and Clem rose to prominence, demonstrating that the game still had a strong and competitive player base. On top, many names that already were competing at the start of the game or the peak of competitiveness were still around such as sOs, Zest, TaeJa, Trap, Creator, , Classic, TY, soO, herO, Cure, Dark, ByuN, Stats, Solar, Maru and INnoVation.
These players demonstrated an ability to adapt to changes in the game’s meta and maintain high skill levels. They not only continued to compete but also often achieved significant results, showcasing the enduring appeal and competitive nature of StarCraft II with their careers spanning multiple eras of the game and them contributing to the game’s legacy in the e-sports world.
A key question in regards to the “era-issue” is whether it was harder to win titles back then or today.
At first glance, this question is easy to answer as the depth of talent in Korea was immense, with many top-tier players vying for titles, making it extremely challenging to win major tournaments. This notion is supported by the argument that the bigger the player pool is, the more likely it is that talents and top-tier players emerge.
But a second look might give other reasons why there were so many different title winners back then.
The WCS system was complex, with separate regions and premier tournaments like GSL and SSL having extremely high stakes and intense competition. Players often competed in multiple leagues simultaneously, adding to the difficulty due to a packed schedule and constant high-level competition - at times it was simply impossible to compete in every event.
Further, frequent balance patches and meta shifts meant players had to constantly adapt to new strategies and changes. The intensity of competition, especially in Korean leagues, was arguably at its peak in 2015.
From 2018 onward, the WCS system was more streamlined, with clearer paths to qualification for global events. By this time, the game also had reached a more stable meta with fewer drastic changes, allowing players to develop and refine their strategies more consistently. While the strategic depth reached ever newer heights, players had more time to adapt and perfect their playstyles in a relatively stable environment - a different quality of its own. Players like Serral and Reynor rose to prominence, and winning titles required overcoming a broader array of international talent, which added a different layer of difficulty, many could not overcome.
It needs to be pointed out that it is my opinion that the issues of scheduling events, burn out, injuries and the structure of tournaments like Code S are the main reasons why winning titles was so much harder. There are many players that penetrated the top 10 as soon as 2012 or held rank 2 at completely different eras/metas. It is illogical to assume that these players all suddenly got worse, once the new generation arrived. For example we have INnoVation who entered the top 10 in 2013, Scarlett being ranked 9 in July 2014 or herO who was ranked 1 at that time. Or even Maru who was entering the top 10 in early 2015. I doubt anyone would argue that Maru was worse in 2018 than he was in 2015, as he matured as a player and as most players got better with age. These players simply adapted to the new environment better than others.
To sum this history lesson up: In my opinion,StarCraft 2’s competitiveness was peaking in 2015, but player’s skill levels which are portrayed through the ranking system were not influenced by the sudden player decline. This theory is supported by the fact that match win rates or tournament win rates didn’t suddenly go through the roof for everyone. We saw a constant change from older to newer players like it has been the case throughout the game’s history.
Therefore, all tournaments post-2018 - because of their inherently more difficult structure as well as the peak competitiveness - in this analysis will be given a handicap. Pre-2018 tournaments are awarded a bonus of 50% in all analyzed topics. It has to be noted that the tournament count went down a lot over the years, meaning that there were also less Premier Tournaments to win post-2018. This negative effect was ignored though to make up even more for the competitive nature of the time surrounding 2015.
6.1 Percentage of won tournaments
Methodology
For the percentage of won tournaments lists I counted every tournament a given player was participating in - for Serral only the ones with top Korean participation. Then I counted the wins, calculated the percentage of winning tournaments and added 50% to each tournament that was won pre-2018. This mostly helps INnoVation as most of his tournaments and wins are located in that time frame. Maru benefits from this correction in two years, Rogue in one, Serral in no year. Here is a small screenshot from the data analysis.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/7DWYT9a.jpg)
Results
Once again, Serral’s dominance is shown in the CFE (Controlled for era) ranking. Serral comes out on top with a 34,00% win rate. This means that out of the 50 Premier tournaments he participated in, he won 17. Mind you, that this only includes tournaments where the top Koreans were involved, no region locked WCS. Rogue places 2nd on this list with 20,83, followed closely by INnoVation with 19,12 and Maru with 18,75.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/cjMEwXh.jpg)
Which metrics does this analysis address?
This metric clearly highlights dominance. To score a high percentage on this list, one needs to be better than other players. The longer a player achieves this, the more consistent he is as well.
6.2 Average place achieved
Methodology
For the calculation of the average place achieved, I started by singling out the prime years of the players. I did so, to make the comparison fairer for players who had longer careers in the pro scene and weren’t always able to play at the top level. One could argue that this is unfair to players like Serral and Rogue who were simply kick-starting into the pro-scene in comparison (a testimony to efficiency), but this correction - again - gives credit to the harder era, as it mostly targets the pre-2018 period (And - Spoiler Alert - didn’t influence the result).
This correction helped INnoVation and Maru by a very large margin more than it did help Serral and Rogue - Serral benefitting the least in relation to everyone else.
After figuring out the players’ prime years (INnoVation 2014-2017, Maru 2018-2024, Serral 2018-2024 and Rogue 2017-2022) I was looking up every placement of a player in these years (For Serral only in tournaments with top Korean participation) and averaging the result out. After that, all results pre-2018 were divided by 3 and multiplied by 2 to adjust for era (50% handicap). This helps INnoVation the most and Rogue in one year. Maru and Serral do not benefit from this correction.
Below you can see Rogue’s counting sheet were 2017 was corrected by 50%/factor 1.5 and which ended in an average place of 8,56 over the 6 year that were counted.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/ydZhSCh.jpg)
Results
Despite receiving no correction to help him, Serral distances the competition once again. Serral stands at an average rank of 3,20 in his prime, meaning on average Serral reaches the Semi-Finals when he goes into a tournament. INnoVation comes in 2nd (3,83), Maru 3rd (5,20) and Rogue 4th (8,56). Keep in mind that INnoVation’s score is highly inflated due to 2013, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 not being counted.
A ranking of the best years played, finds Serral on first place with a score of 1,00 (so far he won every tournament he played in 2024), Maru comes in 2nd with 2,25 (also 2024) and Serral on 3rd to 5th (2018: 2,92, 2019: 2,92 and 2022: 3,17).
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/xTBFZpY.jpg)
Which metrics does this analysis address?
We once again have a result that showcases dominance. To be able to place high in these top level events simply shows how a player is stronger than his adversaries in given tournaments.
6.3 Tournament score
Methodology
Tournament score. This metric took different multipliers to determine a score for Premier Tournaments. First we already have the era-multiplier I mentioned before. Pre-2018 tournaments have a multiplier of 1,5, post-2018 tournaments have 1.
The rank multiplier is next. In my opinion, to be the greatest of all time, winning a tournament matters a lot more than coming in 2nd, let alone placing 3rd or 4th. But I don’t want to be accused of favoring Serral, thus I settled for the ratio as Mizenhauer did in his GOAT list, which is 3:2, meaning rank 1 has the multiplier 1,5, rank 2 has the multiplier 1 (I would have gone for 2:0,99). Rank 3 and 4 both have the multiplier 0,45. I didn’t make a distinction between these two as it doesn’t make much of a difference for the end result. But to be precise: INnoVation would lose out on some points as he has 4 more 3rd than 4th places, while Maru gains a little bit as he sports two more 4th than 3rd places. Serral loses the most points by this decision, as he has 5 3rd places and no 4th ones. Rogue loses 1 3rd place difference.
The last multiplier was considering the tournament and was by far the statistic which took the longest time to put together.
Tournaments are built differently with each tournament containing unique structures and diverse players that participate in it. I looked at all (yes, all… this took forever) tournaments where the contenders placed first and second. Then I looked at the aligulac page of the final of a given tournament. It was too much work to do it for every step for non-weekenders, so I settled for this compromise. It shouldn’t influence the result too much thoug. I further made notes of the ranks of all players who got into Ro16 and Ro8. I made averages and compared the tournaments while also considering structure and prestige.
This is how my excel sheets for the tournament count looks like:
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/rHRTRoc.jpg)
This procedure led to 7 categories that were established which are mostly similar to the ranking that Mizenhauer pointed out as well, although I cannot say anything about the actual weighting he gave these tournaments.
1. World Championships and World Championship Level events. This category includes WCS Global Finals, BlizzCons and IEM World Championships after 2018, representing the most prestigious events of the world, where the best of the best compete. This category has a multiplier of 1,1.
2. GSL Code S, OSL, SSL until 2020 come in at a value of 1. The separation to later GSLs was made due to the restructuring of the tournament after 2020 Code S season 3 where player amount and difficulty of advancing was diminished a lot.
3. ESL Masters as well as DreamHack Season Finals from 2020 onwards, Master’s Coliseum. In contrast to Mizenhauer I devalued these events slightly in comparison to Code S, OSL and SSL. Although DH Last Chance 2022 (won by Maru), DH Last Chance 2021 (Serral 2nd place) as well as Master’s Coliseum 6 and 7 (both won by Serral) could have easily been upgraded to category 2 as the average player rank was simply absurd. MC6 had an Ro8 average of 4,75 and MC7 of 5,75 with 4,5 being the lowest possible score. These two tournaments were simply filled with the best the world had to offer until the very last moment. But out of respect to the old era (which again is a small added buff to this time) I devalued this category slightly at 0,95. This decision again disfaors Serral the most.
4. GSL Code S 2021 and following, GSL vs the World, WESG. The WESG should have been positioned in category 5 according to the involved players in Ro16 and Ro8 but was given an upward correction to category 4, as the prize pool was insane. GSL vs the world was corrected downward from category 3. Although the best of the world competed, the tournament structure was rather simple and it is widely regarded as a “show tournament” despite the best of the world attending. This category is a good example of my thought processes as for example 2013 DreamHack Open: Bucharest was corrected upward as only one player lowered the average score immensely. Lastly: 2013 WCS Season 1 was corrected upwards for era-reasonings, as it would have been placed in category 6 following the average player count. Category 4 is valued 0,85.
5. Category 5 includes random events such as King of Battles, miscellaneous Afreeca TV tournaments or ESL Masters locked regionals. Value: 0,8.
6. Mostly region-locked ESLs and HomeStoryCups which see another sharp decrease in value: 0,7.
7. This category only includes the Gold Professional Championship 2019 Season 1, which has the worst Ro16 and Ro8 ratings (86,38 and 44,75) as well as low price money. Nothing to write home about… sorry INnoVation, I can only multiply this tournament at 0,5.
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. This way, the influence of team members is kept out of the equation, which I think is the fairest approach for all players.
I further calculated the final score for each participant. Era-correction was not necessary here, as the era-multiplier was implemented directly in the equation.
Results
As most would have probably suspected, the long careers of Maru and Serral and their inhuman penetration of ultra high tier tournaments over long periods of time left the other contenders no chance. Serral comes out on top by only a very slight margin (46,64 vs 46,41). Because of this close call and the subjectivity of weighting first place versus second place as well as the tournament multiplier, I count this as Maru and Serral both having placed first here.
One could argue for awarding Serral first place as he was more efficient (he needed a lot less years) and had many and harsh penalties placed against him (the less favorable place1-place2-ratio, mashing place 3 and 4 in one pot, having the most highly devalued tournaments and not upwarding the tournaments where he placed in high positions), but it would also be fine to place Maru on top for his longer career accomplishments and scoring in an era that was more competitive. Honestly, I value this score as a tie between the two.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/63cKCN6.jpg)
Which metrics does this analysis address?
The tournament score is a clear indicator of consistency and dominance, similar to the Aligulac Hall of Fame, although the HoF has a different resolution as it incorporates a ranking difference as a measure of dominance. Here the dominance aspect can be seen as how often a player is able to penetrate high placements.
6.4. Efficiency-score
Methodology
For the efficiency score I simply divided the Tournament score by the sum of years a player was placed 4th or above. The higher the score, the better.
Results:
Efficiency-wise, Serral comes out clearly on top with an efficiency-score of 5,83. Maru being 2nd with 4,22, INnoVation sporting 2,64 and Rogue being 4th at 2,24.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/PT2puK9.jpg)
Which metrics does this analysis address?
The efficiency-score obviously tells us about a player’s efficiency.
7. Discussion
Initially I wanted to build up a sort of ranking to build up anticipation, but decided against it, as this turned out much longer than I wanted it to be (Because it was important to me that you all are able to understand my thought processes as well as the methodology used). Along the way, it became pretty obvious that one player stood out by a very large margin. Thus, I decided to skip the ranking and rather start directly by addressing the elephant in the room. But before I do, here are the final rankings of each analysis in one screenshot.
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/epsuUJU.jpg)
Serral won 7 out of 7 analyses while sharing one of them (tournament score) with Maru. He often did so in a fashion that distances every other contender by a large margin, while on several occasions being much harder penalized than other contenders. Where it was possible to divide results into yearly sub-categories, Serral occupied 4 out of the top 5 spots. These findings are absolutely monstrous… there is no other way to describe it.
Maru is the player with longest duration of playing at the very top level.
The most impressive things I came along while researching this topic are the following:
1. Serral occupying rank 1 or 2 since December 2017, having an over 71,43% rank 1 percentage relative to his top 10 appearances.
On top, he was on rank 1 for 36% of the game’s history (135 out of 375 lists) and ranked 1 or 2 for 47,2% of the entirety of the game. Maru is in the top 10 for 57,33% since the release of StarCraft 2, Serral for 50,4%.
2. I didn’t include this metric in my overall analysis as it is hard to compare players with it. But I made a list of the contender’s match records versus other professionals they played at least 10 times. A minimum amount of played matches is necessary to control for flukes. For example, a gold player might have beaten INnoVation or Serral on their journey to become the top of the world twice, thus having a 100% win rate and record of 2:0 against them. I figured 10 to be a good amount in order to remove randomness.
In this metric, Serral does not have a negative win record against ANY other professional he played against regularly since his first Major Tournament win in 2015. Maru for example has an equal record versus co-Contender INnoVation (12:12) and a negative win record versus Serral (15:4:2). It should be noted that the only relevant player that sports a positive record versus Serral is DRG (3:4) but as I said, this record didn’t meet the criteria as too few matches were played.
3. Serral won 34% of the tournaments he participated in. If this number is controlled for the years after he finished school and started playing StarCraft 2 seriously (2018 and later), it goes up to 39,53%, meaning Serral won nearly 40% of the tournaments he participated in since 2018.
4. Serral is the only player to be the best of the world against all 3 races at different metas of the game (5 players in total ever achieved this feat in the game’s history).
5. While researching for another article, I came along this record: Serral hold the longest winning streak against top Koreans. 19 consecutive wins from the 17th of May 2023 until 3rd of August 2023. The second longest winning streak is also Serral with 18 consecutive wins from 4th of August 2018 till 1st of March 2019.
Serral is by far the most dominant player this game has ever seen and he has been showing this dominance ever since he took the game seriously after finishing school. He was more efficient in placements, tournament score and his match win rates are outworldly.
That Serral made it even close to Maru, let alone score marginally higher, on the tournament score surprised me, as I thought that Maru would be the clear winner here because of his extremely long, impressive career (and the heavy penalties I put in Serral’s path). It could very well be, that Maru takes over this analysis in the future as ESL locked regionals are worth less than GSL in my scoring system and because of the fact that GSL is being held 3 times per year, while ESL regionals are only twice a year.
It also surprised me that INnoVation still sports more #1 spots than Maru despite him having basically retired in September 2021 (he only came back after military for 3 months) - recency bias on me, I guess.
Out of fun I looked at Mvp’s inhuman year of 2011. He won 6 out 13 tournaments (1 of these was BlizzCon 2011), which means that - era adjusted - he has a tournament win rate of 69,23%. He finished on an average place of 2,79 - era adjusted - 1,86. Utterly ridiculous. In this year he was also the best player against all 3 races. It is a pity, that he only had this outstanding success for such a short period of time but it is very clear, that this is the best year that was ever played in StarCraft 2 history, when keeping in mind era difficulties as well as the large amount of tournaments that were played.
As I said before I initially planed to have a complete ranking written out but later on decided against it, as the result became way too obvious. I thus thought, I’d spent my time addressing the notions that are mostly voiced by Korean elitists against Serral being the GOAT.
These are:
a. Serral only is so good because Zerg is overpowered
b. Serral never won GSL, a preparation style tournament
c. Serral can’t be GOAT because he didn’t play in the most competitive era
It should be highlighted that this next part of the discussion includes much more subjective opinion. I tried to ground these opinions in coherent logic and rational thinking, but this part is clearly separeted from the data driven writings up until here.
I also want to point out that it is not my intention to downplay the achievements of players from other eras or Maru in this next section - my only goal is to give a different perspective to established consensus in the Korean elitist scene.
8. Opinion piece/hypotheticals
a. Serral only is so good because Zerg is overpowered
As even prominent proponents of the notion that Maru or Rogue is GOAT don’t really consider this argument to be substantial, I will keep this rather short with a couple of points.
First: In the timeframe of 2016-2021 many big names retired. The least of them were Zerg, meaning that a power vacuum for Protoss and Terran emerged. Unfortunately for Protoss, one of its upcoming talents and the current best Protoss player of the world only plays online and is thus missing from a substantial amount of major events.
Second: Terran and Zerg each saw 2 extremely talented players on the rise: Maru, Serral, Reynor and Clem. Two of those are the biggest outliers in the history of the game since 2018… one is playing Terran, the other is playing Zerg. If we remove these two outliers, the game becomes a lot more balanced.
Third: On the current Aligulac-List (376) we have 3 Zerg, 4 Terran and 3 Protoss players present. In the top 40 there are 11 Zerg, 13 Terran and 16 Protoss.
These points combined give a much more nuanced picture of the current balancing and it explains why professionals don’t give much thought to balance issues. Or as a certain proverb goes: “The balance can’t be that bad, when every race is whining equally.”
b. Serral never won GSL, a preparation style tournament
Although it is true that Serral never actually won a GSL, he definitely has shown that he is able to win preparation style tournaments, as he won the TeamLiquid StarLeague 9, where he beat Maru in the finals. Of course, this category 5 tournament is not comparable to a GSL, but it was held from 30th of June till 4th of September 2022, indicating that players were able to prepare for their matches extensively. To me, this was always a very weak argument, as most people who put it forth, seem to forget that Serral probably is arguably the best strategic player to ever touch mouse and keyboard. It seems like in recent years his preparation has reached another level of game understanding.
A good example for this notion was his win at IEM Katowice 2024. It seemed like he had a perfect plan for every group match, as well as the knock out stage. His adjusted roach- and worker-count versus ByuN to counter ByuN’s momentum and giving credit to a strategy, which took him down a couple of months earlier, followed by an utterly unexpected timing all-in in game 2 was spot on. In the quarter-finals Serral attacked Clem precisely at the moments that the other one usually strikes in order to divert his attention to his own home. Also his defense against Clem’s Liberators seemed a lot better in comparison to previous losses to Clem. The fast lair-build on equilibrium versus Dark or his first game versus Maru in the finals stick out too (although the 16-SUV-kill which was set up by one drone opening up the mineral line at around minute 9:30 on Alcyone was utterly beautiful to watch as well, which was a map specific move Serral prepared).
Serral simply is a preparation machine, thus it never made sense to me, why this tournament style should be detrimental to him. If anything, it benefits his strengths. NesTea once said that overseas games have a tighter schedule and that domestic games (meaning the ones in Korea) are more relaxed. This furthers the impression, that weekenders require an utterly different skill set and that at least this player, favors preparation tournaments. As said above: Serral has shown to excel at both and preparation tournaments suit his strong points.
Players at the top level also generally know each others strengths and weaknesses quite well. It perhaps was necessary in the past to incorporate preparation tournaments as the meta changed a lot more, but nowadays in this more stable environment, most tournaments are well prepared anyway, especially as there are fewer ones to begin with.
Further, GSL nowadays also lost a lot of prestige due to restructuring as well as financial appeal. People also tend to forget how incredible difficult it is to play in GSL for foreigners. You need flights, accomodation for a couple of months, living in a foreign country away from friends and family as well as being away from your usual practice environment. You’d also probably have to bring practivce partners aswell. All that will probably eat up any prize money GSL will net you (last GSL was 3.700 dollars prize money for first place).
On top, you are on a stage where it is expected of you as a foreigner to perform, playing against players who will do their utmost best to beat you as they see losing against an “overseaer” as hurting their own pride and the pride of Korea, as Won Jong-Wook, manager of StarTale once said. Kang Dong-Hoon, manager of LG-IM explained when talking about overseas-tournaments: “Performance falls back to proficiency in basic skills and personal competence. There is just no room to prep set games against individual opponents. They just have to take a seat in the arena and play in a very general sort of way.”. He also pointed out that losing against foreigners is “not an option” and “unacceptable”. The same is true for foreigners in Korea. They are at a disadvantage right from the get-go.Although Serral already won on Korean soil twice, the denial of repeating that “shame” is something an entire nation would try to achieve.
It also is not like the GOAT-deniers would happily accept Serral, once he wins a GSL. They probably would say that even if he won, he only won once in a watered down GSL (which obviously is true) and that this one win doesn’t prove anything. And if he loses, well, he has to try again in an environment where everyone will be set out to take him down. There is simply nothing to gain for Serral in a GSL.
c. Serral can’t be GOAT because he didn’t play in the most competitive era
As I established earlier 2015 was indeed peak StarCraft 2 competitive-wise. But what does this information tell us? Does it tell us that a player has to have dominated in that era? Or only played in it? If so, who is it? Because no one is standing out from that time like Serral does in all of StarCraft 2’s history. The same is true for Maru. He still needed to mature as a player and while he won one Premier Tournament in 2013 and one in 2015 after entering the top 10, no one would have put him on the very top pre-2018, as - for example - INnoVation had a much more impressive career with more titles, more years at the top including better win rates and more consistency. Also Zest, soO and sOs come to mind.
So if people are denying Serral the title because he was too young or didn’t have the cultural background to start the game as soon as the Koreans did on a professional level, logically Maru couldn’t be GOAT either. The bulk of Maru’s achievements - 15 ouf of his 17 Premier Tournament titles - came in 2018 and later. He also never achieved what Serral did while the old guard was still alive and kicking: winning the most prestigious trophy there is. As a matter of fact, he never won a World Championship title at all. Coming back to the point, some people make about Serral never trying GSL: Yes, Serral never tried and thus never won GSL. But Maru tried several times to win a World Championship title and failed every time. He could never win the trophy where the best of the world gather and crown himself the World Champion.
Thus, this question really needs to be answered: Can someone who tried several times to obtain the most prestigous trophy, but failed over such a long period be truly the Greatest Of All Time?
It seems like Maru was either too young and inexperienced or skill-wise not equipped to shine pre-2018 to his fullest potential (my guess is the former) and to truly dominate. And post-2018 there was always Serral to outclass him.
Other questions to think about: Can someone, who was never the greatest over the period of 11 years be the Greatest of all Time, simply for the fact that he was at but not on the very top for 11 years? Or can someone who played at the top, although never being the best, for 5 years and staying behind another player for the remainder of the time be the GOAT? In my opinion, the answer is a clear no.
If people want to deny Serral the GOAT title for not playing in the peak era, neither Maru nor Rogue should be considered as GOAT either, as most of their dominance was in the same time span. If we assume that winning a world championship title also is needed at least once, INnoVation falls flat as well and your next best bet would be either Zest (who won an IEM World Championship before the end of WCS) or sOs (who won WCS 2x and IEM once), with Zest amassing more overall titles in a similar timeframe, but sOs claiming the more prestigious ones.
But in my opinion, this whole reasoning is ludicrous to begin with. As stated above, Serral played many of the best the 2015-era had to offer. 3x World Champion sOs, 1x World Champion Zest, 3x World Champion Rogue, 1x World Champion PartinG, 1x World Champion TY, Classic, TaeJa, Trap, Creator, soO as well as INnoVation. Serral is still is battling World Champions ByuN, and Dark as well as herO, Cure, Stats, Solar and Maru on a regular basis who all were relevant in 2015 already. On top, Serral was able to fend of new talents such as World Champion Reynor or Clem and MaxPax.
And to be honest, I always wondered, why this era-argument is only played into one direction. Because pulling the UNO-reverse-card, it can also be argued that the 2015 players simply didn’t stand out among their peers the way Serral does, as well as not having the ability to stay relevant in later eras. As explained above, yes, it was harder to amass many Premier Tournaments titles, but win rates are a good factor to compare eras. And many players who played in all eras (Dark, herO, ByuN, etc.) have more or less the same win rates (Sometimes even higher in the time surrounding 2015). The good players persisted and Serral consistently had to play through the all-time greats since his rise. The mechanical level nowadays is arguably higher than it has ever been, which can give the impression that yes, the 2015 was more competetive, but that a lot of WoL-players simply weren’t made for the insane level of skill that was required in 2018 and following to stay relevant.
It also has to be noted, that Serral achieved all of this without the help of teamhouses.
To quote PartinG: “When we put our heads together, it always ends up in better builds. You can never get that practicing alone at home.”Or as NesTea puts it: “Teamwork is our strongest weapon. Foreign players don’t get team support at this level. I understand it is not a system that can easily be mimicked.”
Korean pro-gamers often take a step back in their school efforts or don’t even finish high school at all. And this is understandable, when you imagine staying at a teamhouse and playing for at least 12 hours a day, as NesTea once explained. Incredible Miracle players back then started their days at around 11am and then practiced from 2pm to 2am. How could such a lifestyle possibly be coupled with going to school?
Maru and Serral are roughly the same age. Maru joined Prime at the age of 13 in 2010, a couple of months after the release of Wings of Liberty. That means in 8 years leading up to Maru and Serral becoming the most dominant players the game has ever seen, Maru had the full support and guidance of a professional team including a teamhouse in the most dominant region StarCraft 2 had to offer. Serral was part of different teams since 2012 but contrary to many Korean pros, he stayed in school and only took StarCraft 2 seriously after finishing it mid 2017. The rest is history.
To finish this discussion I want to entertain the utterly hypothetical that Serral was born in Korea. Having the full support of a teamhouse and pro team starting from his early teen years. Would he have won Premier Tournaments like Maru early on? We cannot know, but considering his rapid rise after finishing school, which he achieved even without this kind of support, it is at least highly probable that he would have played at the very top. Continuing into 2018 and later - given the win rates he sports (which as I explained above are deflated in comparison to Koreans due to him only playing the top) - I think it is safe to assume that he would have at least won 1 or 2 GSLs pre 2021 as well as taking titles of other GOAT contenders.
A quick summary: Serral is the most dominant player this game has ever seen as this data analysis shows, even when controlling for massive era handicaps on several levels. Serral is consistently the best of the game since 7 years/nearly half of the game’s existence. He is the most efficient and holds every important record/ is the best at all major metrics that a GOAT discussion is offering. He achieved these metrics by having heavy penalties put against him and - at least in my opinion - the counterarguments to him being GOAT aren’t convincing if they are critically dissected and analyzed. You are all free to disagree.
It was a lot of hard work of several months gathering the data and writing this piece. If you find errors, please let me know and I will edit the article accordingly with time stamps of editing, leaving the formerly wrong notions visible.
RotterdaM said in the BASILISK vs Shopify Rebellion Match commentary that there is one StarCraft fan from Germany who likes to write and doesn't think that Serral is the GOAT. Well, here you have another German Starcraft fan who thinks that the numbers tell you very clearly that Serral is the GOAT.
I hope you enjoyed reading this piece as much as I had a good time writing it and I will try to answer questions to the best of my ability, although it will be tough to come back to all replies, regarding the controversial nature of the topic.
Congratulations to Serral for being the greatest StarCraft 2 player of all time!
