Your GOAT Top 10 player list!

Yes, because one victory that involved both a lot of skill and some very good bounces is evidence of…something? The guy has been runner up in GSL like 8 times.

I’m not sure. Zerg is a weird race - left alone, overwhelmingly strong and capable of tech switching rapidly to punch an enemy to death. However this requires a substantial bank and not getting too far behind the ball early on. Zerg has always been a nightmare to balance - too weak early and they just get all-inned and rushed to death. Too strong early (or players find a way to repel certain kinds of harassment) and they can seem OP.

I’d say Zerg are by far the hardest of the three races to balance easily.

However, blaming ‘Zerg OP’ for the wins this year is taking credit away from some incredible players. There is a reason that people have declared that Serral is the best player in the world currently, with Dark as a likely #2. These guys are on fire right now, and both of the stronger Terrans (Innovation, Maru) seem to be in a bit of a slump. Inno especially.

This is the usual cycle of SC2. Next year, I’m betting Toss will be on top again in the GSL but Serral will continue smashing face elsewhere.

Was this purely because of the race, or because these Zerg players are playing extremely well right now?

Neither Dark nor Serral used Infestors all that much to secure victories. Dark’s frankly unbelievable micro and Roach/Ravager pushes/Nydus play and Serra’s incredible calls and map awareness seem to be what is driving this more than anything.

Let’s leave it to that.

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  1. You didn’t even know he won this tournament. So you were caught off guard.
  2. I already addressed this before…SoO is a great player…Zerg being OP could have only helped.

You can call it taking credit away from these players if you want. All I know is zerg was OP this year. I’m not saying Serral or Dark are poor players.

This year, definitely due to mostly race. If it was 1 or 2 zerg players, then it’s more questionable. But 5 different zergs, it gets a little bit closer to saying maybe the race had some significant importance.

However man, its really not a big deal. It was a year where balance favored zerg, and good zerg players took advantage of that. I don’t know why you tremendously care.

No, I knew. You…aren’t getting my point here it seems.

Actually, someone mathed it out. Zerg are doing about as well as they should:

You are cherry picking data.

Right back at you?

Guys, let’s focus on the topic, your Top 10.

We are at, who is better between Life and Soo??

Also between Classic and Stats, who will be a better player overrall?

Pleas let us know.

You asked which tournament because you didn’t know he won a premier one this year.

Batz made flaws that were mentioned throughout his thread.

One of the major flaws is that included hundreds of tournaments in which 0-2 pro players were even a part of.

He purposely left out that of the 15 premier tournaments, zerg won 9 of them, or 60% of them.

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Google ‘Rhetorical Question’. It may be informative.

As a general overview of the game, a larger sample size is much better. Focusing in on one year of pro-play is not especially productive, as many of the tournaments (ST, GSLvW) are insanely volatile and often a simple matter of seeding.

larger sample size isn’t better when many of those tournaments has 0-2 pro players.

That’s why you look at premier tournaments, where all players are pro and its the pique of competition. People play their best when actual money is on the line.

I see we are at an impasse.

Somehow you don’t see zerg as OP in 2019. You stay with the 1% of people that don’t think zerg was OP in 2019. I’ll stay with reality and agree with Blizzard on this one.

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If your larger sample size is comprised of tournaments where 1-2 players are pros and the rest are not near that level, then every single one of the games between a pro and a non-pro is going to be an outlier that heavily screws the results.

This is why people do not include the results of non-premiere tournaments. It would be like holding a tournament with a grandmaster player using 1 race and a bunch of people in gold and silver league using the other races. The games between the grandmasters and silver or gold players is not indicative of balance.

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It’s a chicken/egg issue. I mostly follow the Korean scene, and from what I’m seeing it feels more like a handful of Zerg players have really hit their stride/the two top Terrans are in a slump.

Now - is this because the players are good or because Zerg is too strong? We will see. Keep in mind that 2018 was not a good year for Zerg. Let’s see what happens in 2020.

zerg strong.

yup 2020 cant be any worse.

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I don’t know. I’d find it just as boring if it was like 2018 with Zergs getting bulldozed.

I think the current ‘Zerg OP’ thing is coming from both a psychological desire to see Zerg lose, as the ‘bad guys’ and two top tier Zergs coming into their own while the top T/P players are coincidentally in a slump.

No one wants that. They want times where zerg and terran were head to head in balance. Like when Polt vs. Stephano type times.

I think expressing psychological attributes to gamers is too braizen for my taste.

I think people are saying zerg was OP this year just thought there was quite a bit of ZvZ finals and 60% of wins going to one race.

Balance has a tremendous impact on pro’s, especially korean.

One super tournament had 7 protoss and 1 terran.

Protoss was nerfed shortly after and then it was just a zerg circus.

Pros sometimes emerge out of nowhere, it can be done. However, most of the time pros somehwat fluctuate with their races OP/UP’ness of the current time.

For example, Dark was a top 4 player for years. Zerg becomes just OP enough that he was able to take those iconic top 4 spots to tournament winning positions. This happens a lot.

So while pros can “slump”, its often more likely that their race in the current form is just not favored enough to have that appearance.

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If you are talking about WoL…that was not a good indicator of balance. Until maybe the final year (and even then) the game was decided less by balance and skill and more by timing attacks and scouting.

From the outside, it’s not that arcane. There is an understandable reason why people don’t like it when Zerg wins.

And people were still calling Zerg OP. The ‘Zerg OP’ train simply never ended, whether it be baneling busts or mass burrowed festors in WoL or Swarmhosts in HoTS.

Really? Look at the first few GSLs. Pros tend to do well when they are doing well, or come up with strategies that other players simply don’t know an answer to.

Dark is a weird one. He is quite streaky. He has seasons where he does well and seasons where he gets rolled. This does not always correspond with perceived balance and seems to revolve more around his mindset, confidence and match-up. He has always struggled against timing attacks and ZvZ will always be a volatile matchup.

But you admit - pros can slump. And you cannot say that Innovation/Classic don’t look really tired these days, whether it be in interviews or in games.

Maru is pretty much the best remaining terran and Toss…Stats?

Pros can certainly slump, but it appears more likely that pros are influenced by balance so significantly that balance can turn a top 8 tournament finisher into the tournament champ after a patch. It’s happened quite a bit.

Give protoss a slight edge, and players like Classic will dominate, etc.

Sometimes we wish for a player to be good despite every patch, good, bad, or ugly thrown at them, and this is extremely rare.

Serral and Maru may be one of the very few.

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I’d also add SoO, DRG and MVP.

Regarding Dark, there was one period where he wasn’t good, at that was 2018 - where, for some reason, he seemed to forget that the Spire existed.

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I miss those times so much, what happened in LOTV, that the balance is so bad?

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No clue. LOTV really took a few steps back in terms of balance, but who knows exactly why.

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Too many micro heavy, high risk/reward units like adepts and libs. These were simply too powerful in the hands of pros.

HOTS was a golden era until the end.

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Now Hots is not even in the ladder ))).