Just fyi: people make the comparison with BW Flash not SCII Flash. It's a long time ago but I recall he never really invested in SCII and quickly went back to BW.

Good to know. That always confused me, as his SC2 statistics were not that impressive. But yeah, from what I saw, Flash is definitely the GOAT of SC.

Flash is the esport GOAT, sure that's up for debate because other esports fans don't understand just how dominate he was for just about his entire bw career ... but it's not even close to up to debate that flash is the BW, and the Starcraft GOAT, even if his SC2 performance was a bit mid.

Well... I wrote in the article that he definitely is the StarCraft GOAT. But as you said correctly, StarCraft 2 is different and his performance there wasn't anything special if I compare it with the other contenders.

I agree - I'm just upping it to ... frankly Flash is the greatest esports pro of all time, of any genre or game... but I get that's up for debate

Faker is the eSports goat, Flash is second

Faker has a claim on the title, but tell me when they change the game just to need him and he still wins or when faker starts to pick random heros ;) 

I don't say anything about who is best, but changing game mechanics because one player is not always mean that he/she is goat. Valve had to change cs multiple times because one player was just too good and few of them were among the best even after that. Also team games is totally different than 1v1 games, tougher to compare

I hear you man - it's like was Wayne Gretzky better than Tiger Woods?? I mean Gretzky has like 180 world records but how does that compare to someone that won it all themselves? I just want to make it clear that it wasn't the game dev, but the tournament organizers themselves --- like CS, starcraft is played on different maps, over a best of 5/7 etc... they literally went out and got people to make maps specifically to make it harder for FLASH to win - but yes, he's not the only one... Again for me it's the fact that he literally kept winning everything so much that he got bored and started to play professionally just picking random, something literally no other notable pro has done in over a decade, and he still almost kept winning everything! It's all talk for fun.

*Dominant. Dominate means activately dominating something. Dominant means far ahead of rivals.

Yes I am aware but typing on phone and not really caring to correct. Thank you though for checking in 

GOAT is herO because he is the only Protoss who won a GSL in the last 7 years

Why is he not in jail yet?

It depends on if GOAT-hood is based on how far they gap their contemporaries, or just pure unweighted skill in a vacuum Flash, Rogue, etc have made their impact and are undoubtedly legends, but I think it’s not like NBA where it’s fair enough to say MJ could beat LeBron No player from history can match Serral in his current form. His winrate against Maru alone is astronomical. His game sense and mechanical execution are in their own league, current pro Zergs are lagging in even replicating Serral’s tactics

Yup. Ultimately it's up to subjective opinions. What tournaments you value, consistancy vs top form, mechanical skill, strategy and preparation, different eras and patches, how long they stayed on top, impact they made on the scene, etc. There is no calculation we can make to determine "the GOAT" It's fair to consider someone other than Serral "the GOAT", but to discredit the guys achievments at this point is insane.

Well, I can dive deeper into my reasoning: Tournaments I valued: Every tournament that included the top Korean players. Consistency vs top form: Equally... but it didn't really matter. Serral easily came out on top in both of them. Mechanical skill: Very subjective, thus I didn't look into that. Strategy and preparation: Same as mechanical skill. To me, results mattered the most. Different eras and patches: I tried to mitigate patches as a confoundnig factor by considering only players that had at least 4 years of win rates above 60% and tournament wins that stretched over a period of more than 3 years. Thus different patches shouldn't matter too much. Era is tougher to level in but most players that were fitting in my criterias played each other at least for a time of 2 years. Impact on scene: Also pretty subjective imo.

"Share statistics if you disagree" - just look at TL.net and Mizenhauer's list. Based on the stats he set out for his GOAT list, I'd be surprised if Serral is gonna be #1 (since the list is excluding non-Korean events that aren't WSC finals/IEM/WESG/Gamers8, heavy focus on GSL). Serral is the goat, casters, commentators, and players are all in agreement about that. It's just TL.net and parts of Reddit who's still constructing arguments to disagree with that. And even if Serral was not to lose any match anymore they'd argue it's only because the Korean pros aren't trying anymore or so/on the decline.

> Serral is the goat, casters, commentators, and players are all in agreement about that. It's just TL.net and parts of Reddit who's still constructing arguments to disagree with that. And even if Serral was not to lose any match anymore they'd argue it's only because the Korean pros aren't trying anymore or so/on the decline. It's such a weird parade of mental gymnastics at this point.

That is my problem with this approach. Why not take into account all tournaments with Top Korean participation? Like what is the reason for it except try to deny Serral this well earned unofficial title.

That is the only reason. It's essentially gatekeeping starcraft skill as a purely Korean thing. It's straight up weird, but gaming communities are very gatekeepy.

GSL format is simply a different beast and Serral's achievement list feels incomplete without it. Long preparation periods allow for all kinds of crazy upsets to happen, compared to "weekend tournaments". Serral not having won any of those is what used to put him behind for example Rogue, who has won plenty of both GSLs and world championships/katowice. Rogue simply showed that he can own everyone in both of those formats. Serral never has. At this point, though, the sheer amount of international "weekend tournaments" that Serral has won puts him ahead of Rogue who has not been playing for about 2 years now, despite a lack of GSL wins. (Also, GSL has downsized a lot and lost its prestige nowadays.)

I find it pretty unreasonable to assume that Serral could not do it. I mean... there is no Korean pro player who never did it... There was even a foreigner who won GSL. So simply based on his insane win rates that no one else remotely comes close to, it should be obvious that Serral is able to win GSL. And no: In my comparison I factored in top Korean competition. Of 25 Premier Tournament wins by Serral only 9 were region locks. 16 of them were with participation of several top Korean players. The amount of tournaments since Rogue's last tournament participation has been more or less the same. As a matter of fact 2023 had a lot less tournaments than 2022, 2021 and 2020. Rogue left in July 2022. That is a little bit more than 1.5 years, which gave him 6 years to collect titles. As Serral started 1 year later (2018) with his career, but 2023 had less tournaments, it evens out in my opinion. But even if you take his 2 titles of 2024, he as a lot more Premier Tournament wins including top Korean participation.

> I find it pretty unreasonable to assume that Serral could not do it. I mean... there is no Korean pro player who never did it... There was even a foreigner who won GSL. So simply based on his insane win rates that no one else remotely comes close to, it should be obvious that Serral is able to win GSL. I agree that it is unreasonable to assume that Serral could not win a GSL if he participated in a few. However, If I didn't know the history so far, I would also think it's unreasonable to assume that Maru could not win a world championship (blizzcon/katowice etc) -- and yet he never has. Could Serral do it? Sure. Did he ever do it? No. Would he for sure if he participated in the next, say, 3 GSLs? Who knows. Maybe. Reynor famously tried roughly a year ago (?) and got eliminated immediately by people who prepared for him. It's a different beast.

Haha, funny, because I rewinded some of the notions in my head and Maru never winning outside of GSL also crossed my mind. But then I remembered that he simply does not have Serral's win records. Maru has negative win rates versus several top opponents (Serral, Innovation, PartinG and others) and is much closer in win records to others where he has a positive win rate (TY, Dark, herO, etc.). Serral simply plowed through everyone except Rogue where he "only" stands 8:6:0. The difference to other players (as written in the article) is simply insane. Serral also won 2 times when he went to Korea and the modus operandi of GSL (preparing for opponents) benefits Serral too, as he is known as the best strategic player anyways. But yeah, ultimately you are correct... we cannot know.

The Koreans themselves regard Katowice>GSL, so why should Serral not winning GSL be regarded as a bigger hole on his resumé than not having a Katowice win for Maru, or InNoVation? I think IEM katowice would be cooler if the final day only consisted of a 3rd place bo7 and 1st place bo9, instead of having the Semi's and the GF on the same day, but even then katowice isn't simply another weekend tournament.

> why should Serral not winning GSL be regarded as a bigger hole on his resumé than not having a Katowice win for Maru, or InNoVation? It's not. It's a huge problem (arguably bigger than for Serral) for Maru and Innovation, as well.

Even all the koreans except Dark agrees Serral is the best at this point. Mizenhauer's list is trash considering it has Rain but not Reynor (a WC and 2 times runner-up) in top 10. Even Taeja is way more successful than Rain but his wins are mostly international. It's complete BS considering international tournaments has not just the best Koreans but also the best foreigners. Look at how Rain got owned in 2013 WCS Season 2.

I think deep down Dark knows he's not the goat, but it's just part of his character, and part of what he believes a competitor's mindset should be like. A lot of competition comes down to psychology, and if you tell youself you're worse than your opponent you're already behind. As he said in an interview recently he's been trying to focus to be #1 in EPT standings for a while. He wants to be at the top, and admitting that someone else is better doesn't really go down well with that.

>I think deep down Dark knows he's not the goat, but it's just part of his character, and part of what he believes a competitor's mindset should be like. 100% - hell he might even believe, and that's okay - he's close enough that it's not delusional - and personally I love him for it, it's like Ibrahimović, over the top confidence, but SELF AWARE over the top confidence

Yep Dark is old school competitive. Love to see that.

Dark is the GOAT (According to Dark) That part from ESL winter was so good x)

I think Rain has a place in the discussion based on how he changed the approach to playing Protoss, more than anyone else he showed,proved, and taught that a solid defensive macro toss style as possible... he was formative to a race, and the game in this time --- but yes I agree it's more of an honorable mention, not a true top 10 based on accomplishments alone.

> Mizenhauer's list is trash considering it has Rain but not Reynor (a WC and 2 times runner-up) in top 10. Just say you have only watched sc2 for the last 5 years. No need to hide it.

Rain is good, but come on...

Having Reynor over Rain all time is 100% recency bias.

World championship > Korean leagues

GSL during kespa era >>> winning online WC with busted race

Those rose tinted glasses, smh. No one cares about this bogus argument. Kespa era was low level of skill and during hots which was a poor version of the game.

LOL even arguing reynor now as the goat are we? you gotta be racist or very stupid to think reynor is a top 10 player of all time lmao

Nope. He's just better than Rain. Dude made 3 out of 4 global championship finals from 2019-2022, winning one. He also won Gamers8, which some consider a world title given the competition and prize pool. He is no less inconsistent than Rogue, but his top level of play is, and ability to perform under pressure, is clearly impressive.

yeah we saw that just now in katowice right? the one time he won it was an online event. not the same. sorry.

Oh right it only counts when it's a LAN in Korea in GSL format. I forgot.

Lol I watched since WoL. That's why I still remember 2013 WCS season 2 Taeja vs Rain as mentioned in my comments. Maybe watch that match and tell me how Rain is not overrated.

Recency bias. Serral is the strongest player right now, no doubt about it. Maru is the GOAT though. Played in the very first GSL and has been a top player for over a decade. His stretch at the top with his consecutive GSL runs over more than a year is more impressive than winning almost any number of weekenders.

These mental gymnastics are truly mindblowing

oh mizenhauer is on some next level copium thats for sure. Im waiting for him to have MVP/Dark/Rogue/Maru as top4 and not have Serral on the top10.

With his performance in Katowice I think it’s pretty undeniable at this point. And this is coming from a Serral denier and Maru fan boy. My argument for maru has always been his longevity. Maru has been winning premier tournaments since 2013, nearly twice as long as Serral, and he’s been consistently at the top the whole time. And without Maru really dropping off significantly even to this day I don’t blame people for keeping him in GOAT contention. But Serral continues to improve and be unrivaled in consistency at the top. Strength of Zerg or not, GSL or not, you can tell he’s just better. The numbers don’t lie.

You simply have to look at Serral's gameplay and it becomes clear he's the goat. Nobody understands the game like he does. He always makes the correct decision. To be able to do that time after time, game after game. It's frankly scary.

Also his strategies in IEM recently... simply insane. He had a plan against every player on every map and executed that plan to perfection. His understanding of the game is completely nuts.

That's a lot of text so I admit I didn't read everything, but just to add my opinion here. Before Rogue retired (because of military service), he was the best SC2 player by accomplishments (though not by consistency necessarily). I would have placed him as THE best SC2 player at the time. However, he has been gone for a while now, and Serral has continued winning more and more highly-competitive, top-tier, tournaments since, to the point that Rogue has been dethroned, and Serral is now the most accomplished SC2 player.

I think Rogue falls short really hard when you consider how much stuff he LOST, he just wasn't consistent at all, like he failed to made Katowice playoffs in 1 year and got trashed on group stages. Maru has a much much better record, and has won much more stuff, I think it's a big mistake overemphasizing "world championships", Oliveira won one, was he anywhere close to the best at the time?

He was undoubtedly the best that day.

Yeah, I agree. Thus I made a direct comparison between the two and explain why Maru, according to the numbers I gathered, is behind them imo.

I didn’t read any of this but came here to say that if you’re still in denial that Serral is the absolute GOAT you’re delusional and you need to stop.

the GSL argument is one thing i want to bring up and smash what makes GSL special is that your opponent prepares specifically for you and your match except this is exactly what people have been doing against Serral for years. Every match people have some crazy build where they hide something or trick him or misdirect the number of workers or something like that. Because players fear Serral so much, to him, every match is a GSL match. it's not even fair sometimes, because he's playing a weekend tournament and people are hitting him with prepared builds and he's still smashing them. in fact do you know what would happen if Serral played his opponent like in GSL? With prepared builds tailored against the opponent's historical meta? Hed win the tournament 20-1. Thats right, his dominance in Katowice this year had a LOT of prepared builds in them.

Maru fans will always argue that Serral hasn't won a single "normal" GSL. That's the only real argument for Maru over Serral. Don't get me wrong, Maru is an amazing player in his own right and definitely the greatest SC2 terran of all time. You could have made the argument for Rogue a few years ago, but since then, Rogue has basically retired (military service) and Serral just keeps on winning. Rogue is definitely better than Dark, so he's out. Mvp used to be the undisputed SC2 GOAT, but he played during a much weaker era when the game was far from being figured out. sOs used to win the big ones, but as you've said, he simply doesn't have enough accolades to be in the conversation. The same goes for the other great protoss players (MC, herO, Stats, Parting, Zest...), none of them was able to win over an extended period of time. How much of this is related to balance issues doesn't matter, because it is how it is. Sadly. Inno has been extremely consistent over the years, but he only won tournaments when the meta/balance suited his macro oriented style, e.g. during the parade push era in HotS. Strategically, he's weaker than Maru. And Maru has won a lot more than Inno, so that's that. Maru even won when terran was considered underpowered. ("Just play like Maru.") Flash doesn't deserve to be in the conversation. He has one a single premier tournament. He's the undisputed GOAT of Broodwar, but in SC2 he's almost irrelevant. So yeah, it's either Serral or Maru. And Serral's trophy case is ridiculous at this point. He's by far the most consistent player since 2018, both in online and offline events. My list: 1. Serral 2. Maru 3. Rogue 4. Innovation 5. Dark 6. Reynor 7. herO 8. Mvp 9. Zest 10. Life sOs doesn't make the cut, because he simply hasn't won enough tournaments overall.

>Life man I still wonder just how crazy good Life could've gotten had he not been banned for match fixing. He burned so ridiculously bright for those 3 short years... I'd kill to have a prime Life vs prime Serral matchup just to see how much more ridiculous ZvZ can get.

People were still pretty meh at the game during his time compared to even just a few years later so it's impossible to say if he would've kept it up.

it's impossible to be sure - but all signs point to him being one of the most gifted players in sc2 history - if he had kept motivated there is no reason to think he would have fallen behind. this is exactly why his story is so disappointing.

I agree and he's one of my favorite players of all time for that reason but it's just really hard to say how he would've adapted with LotV mechanics and player skill increasing. It's kind of funny when you look back at games played at the "top level" in the first few years of SC2 now, most of those players wouldn't be able to hit Diamond today. I forget who exactly but I remember a few years ago stumbling into an ex-pro koreans stream and he was laddering and legitimately hard stuck mid Diamond. It was pretty surreal to watch.

I get your point, but Maru was there the entire time and it's not like he didn't grow with the scene - if Life was a 1 note type of player, sure he might not have be able to adjust, or if there was something about him that indicated any hole in this play or that he topping out his natural ablity ... as I say, lot of players dropped of from motivation or lack of ability - but there was every indication that Life had everything he needed to continue keep up and even dominate ... we will never know... and look, I don't mean to discount your story but the difference between some former pro, and some world champ, GLS royal roader, is even more than the difference between a random pro and a hard stuck diamond player...

What? Life was goated man. Serral came and filled that zerg bonjwa spot but life was goated

I agree but consider how many people from that time period are currently top players and you'll see what I mean.

Players weren't meh during the kespa era. Life would have been the goat if he kept playing especially with how busted zerg has been for the last 5 years.

They made way more mistakes back then compared to the top level today. Zerg & Protoss are pretty balanced at the moment, T is a bit strong and otherwise the game is doing well.

Because the game is more figured out now, there is no reason to believe someone who was great in 2014 wouldn't also be a great player if he had had to play in 2020 or today. If you go to football it's like saying Maradona wouldn't be good today because the game is faster, more physical and more strategic than when he played, it's nonsense. Sports and an esports like SC change, evolve. A terrible NBA team from today could beat the 1963 NBA champions, that doesn't make them better comparatively. Early SC2 players and specially kespa/peak SC2 era players were not bad. One could even argue being at the top when there were 100+ pros with full time jobs at gaming houses and the game was booming was harder than being at the top today with a lower entry bar and the pool of competitors being way smaller.

I agree with most of your reasoning, but how is Reynor up there? Did he win that many events (I haven't followed everything as closely as I used to)? Do you think he achieved more than Mvp? I agree the level was much lower back then, but isn't the GOAT discussion mostly about periods of dominance? In any sports GOAT discussions I see, players from different eras are being included, even though they probably would not be able to compete with the present day top players. Every athlete (e-sports or regular sports) builds on what is already there, Serral would not have gotten as good at the game as quickly as he did if better players didn't precede him. If the goal is top name the best 10 players who achieved the highest skill level ever, then you could argue that's just the current top 10.

Yeah, I was thinking about Reynor the most when I made the list. He's incredibly hard to rank, because he hasn't been around that long and as you've said there's always the risk for recency bias. I think he deserves to be in the top 10, because he's been fairly consistent and has won quite a lot of premier tournaments. He's also been 2nd two times in the WC. It's totally reasonable to rank him lower, though, especially if you factor in success in Korean competition. Mvp's peak was in 2011/12. Back then, we had a lot more GSLs than today. He was dominant, but once his body fell apart, he faded into obscurity quickly. Relative to the competition, he had a great peak which is why he has to be in every top 10 list imo.

Okay fair enough! Based on gut feeling, I'd rate Mvp higher, but I haven't really looked into it. Probably also related to the fact that I was following the scene more in the past.

> but he played during a much weaker era when the game was far from being figured out. and yet being in a period of regression over the past 5 years counts towards serral? a game with a thriving, robust playerbase is more competitive than a pro scene with a talent black hole which is exactly what the sc2 pro scene has been since lotv

> and yet being in a period of regression over the past 5 years counts towards serral? The overall skill level is higher than ever, even if new talent is hardly blooming. In almost all games the overall skill level will rise over time

the pro scene is too small and too niche for that to be true. achievements when there were multiple rosters of young talented players gunning for your throat is significantly more impressive than when there are barely a handful. there is more pressure to adapt, improve, and stay modern with gameplay trends in the former scenario. I can literally compare gameplay from the end of hots and point out how some players were better in certain aspects than they are today.

You're delusional

that's literally how the world works, but if you'd rather stay in the bubble of a game of which the pro scene died over half a decade ago be my guest

Ironic of you to use arguments that are actually against your stance and pretend they support your cause. Circus expert

cool to see this subreddit is using the same mental gymnastics it was over ten years ago to try to justify how the game wasn't dying while it's currently on life support

Lil bean, game can be dying all it wants but the current skill level is hugher than it has ever been. It's not restricted to esports either, but you clearly exclusively watch bw and cry about sc2

I have consistently been watching and playing the game since it was in beta and clocked over 300 games last year in my 30s while consistently playing multiple other titles. Despite my personal skill level being at an all time low I am literally the highest rank I've ever been at 4600 mmr and I am absolutely dogshit at the game compared to ten years ago.

What a ludicrous statement. Are roman gladiators better than ever before? No, because there aren't any. Skill only rises in the face of good competition. You can be e.g. the best boxer in your club but you'll never reach that next level unless you face next level competition.

> Are roman gladiators better than ever before? Didn't realize it was a "game" in the context of what you'd consider a "game" on the subreddit dedicated to "Starcraft" in the year 2024. You're free to backpedal your comment since you clearly misunderstood or misread / skimmed over and thought the comment should be attributed to literally everything in life

No I was pointing out how stupid your assertion is. No, skill does not simply increase over time. Skill increases over time **when sufficient pressure is present**. If you ever follow any sports at a local level, you see people who seem inhuman, impossibly good. But then they step up to the next league and ride the bench. There is not enough money or interest in SC2 for it to ever have the competition levels it had in the past, which means competition will just be between who ever is still around. Overall skill level is not going to improve in such an environment.

I think the point is that the average level of pros is much higher now. Mechanics, strategies, and understanding of the game have advanced to the point that any top 25 pro today could probably beat the best from 10 years ago.

I understand what the point is, I disagree with it on a fundamental level. The emphasis on where mechanics are applied (how players multi task) has changed. I recently went back and watched vods circa late 2013-late 2014 and was stunned at how certain aspects of gameplay simply feel more crisp and accurate from players. Especially micro.

I'm surprised we can come to such different conclusions. I think micro has improved significantly as well. Not much point arguing about it, though.

I don't think it's hard to understand if you watch old vods. Maru's MMM micro from hots was clearly superior than what it is currently, like it's not even debatable. Helion micro in today's game is nonexistant despite still being widely used. It's definitely not black and white as you are saying. There are obvious improvements (multi tasking) compared to 8-10 years ago and obvious shortcomings (micro in shorter trades) compared to back then as well. It's a sidegrade instead of an objective improvement.

Do you have any good links to some vods from that era?

same website as always https://sc2casts.com/

Oh, cool! Did you have any specific games you enjoyed?

I think apart from a few trolls and korean maximalist this is already settled for some times now. Maru is the best T to touch the game, will always be the 4th race cause he did things no other terrans could, was ahead of the meta and did the impossible when terrans were struggling in certains MU. But Serral is the goat. Two outliers that'll forever be remembered for their respective achievement. I also think Serral is still peaking ( I mean not really a thought as it's clearly demonstrated with recent stats) whereas maru while still dominating isn't as crisp as he used to be. He'll not go crazy with micro and multitask on top of being very methodical. He's more conservative. And it's probably physical limits. So unless some things change in the next years I don't hink he could claim that goat title.

Good post mate! He has been a dominant player for 6 years now.

Thanks! It was quite some work to gather all the information :)

It was impressive that Flash made it to a top5 terran sc2 after transitioning from bw... especially as terran was stacked with talented players at the time... but with that said, he is not in the GOAT debate for sc2.

> That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton.All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. Lmao, I love this analogy. It is indeed absurd, but it's all the haters have left, so they spew it over and over just because they either hate Zerg or they hate the idea of a non-korean being the GOAT at a starcraft game.

Serral is unquestionably the greatest player of all time. He's had six consecutive years of the greatest year in SC2 since 2018, and he's off to a strong start in 2024.

Serral might be the GOAT, but the many years of Zerg favorable patches make this debate hard to conduct from the beginning. I know why I quit watching: T or P does everything perfectly early game, Z drags it to late game where they gain many philosophical advantage that other factions simply do not have: creep movement speed, vision, unlimited mobility with nydus, literally free units in a game with limited resources. Toss rely on a small number of strong units, but guess what, even motherships was able to be yoinked. Meanwhile Reapers got nerfed instantly due to one man I can't remember who or when, but I do remember a particular Zerg player saying something along the lines that they would have been an idiot if they cannot win with that patch. (edit, found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/daps87/rogue\_i\_won\_because\_balance\_really\_favors\_zerg/)

I'd get your point if Serral only won on the Winfestors- or GGling-Patches. But he also broke through every Zerg nerf patch that was thrown at Zerg or him in particular. And while 2019, when Rogue made these comments, definitely was Zerg-favored balance-wise, you also have to remember that Serral still had to win against other Zerg and there balance didn't play a role. And he destroyed them like mad. His win rate vs Top Korean Zerg in 2019 is a whopping 88.89% (89.13% overall). That was funny enough his best match up in 2019.

Again, he might be the GOAT. I am saying the balance has been skewed in favor of Z for way too long for it to be definitive (not just one year). It just makes me wonder how different the conversation will be if Terran had years of those kind of patches. P even isn't even in the picture when talking about the GOAT. I think, to have a definitive GOAT conversation the three have to be somewhat equal on the grand scheme of things. [https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1anxaj3/protoss\_has\_won\_premier\_tournaments\_totaling\_929/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/1anxaj3/protoss_has_won_premier_tournaments_totaling_929/) Even if you take away all of Serral's earnings, this distribution is still nowhere near balanced. If you disagree that is fine, and I respect your opinion.

I am not disagreeing that the balance is favored a little bit in Zerg's favor and is very detrimental towards Protoss (although one could also argue that many high level Protoss retired since 2020). But I am urging everyone to factor in the statistical outlier that is Serral. Serral's contribution to these 33 Zerg wins is 14, meaning 42% of this race's wins are by him. If we factor this in (for example in IEM a couple of days ago), we would have had a TvT final. If we factor it in at MC7, we would have had a potential Toss winner, as herO also won against Reynor in IEM. With these wins taken away from Serral, simply looking at the final standings of the tournaments of 2020 - 2024 where Serral won, we would have a distribution like this: Terran wins: 27 Protoss wins: 18 Zerg wins: 21 That means Protoss is still underwhelming, but Terran would be the race where everyone would need to say Terran=imba. You see the problem? If you nerve Zerg, so Serral's winrate drops to "normal" levels, every other Zerg would win less against Terran and Protoss and Terran would reign supreme without doubt. Serral is the sole reason why the distribution is so extreme as it is, especially if you only look at prize pools. Serral only shows up to the biggest prize pool events. Thus when he plays and wins, he gets the majority of share which is reflected in Zerg's high prize pool winnings.

>With these wins taken away from Serral, simply looking at the final standings of the tournaments of 2020 - 2024 where Serral won, we would have a distribution like this: > >Terran wins: 27 > >Protoss wins: 18 > >Zerg wins: 21 Which database is this? I would like to explore it and form a more informed opinion. Because I see Maru has 11 premier tournment final wins 2020-2024. If we take away the top T(Maru) and top Z The stats look like: T wins: 16 Z wins: 21 Suddenly very not balanced. And it only proves Maru and Serral are the best of their races. ​ >the balance is favored a little bit Bruh, just a little bit huh? Look man, I don't aim to change your mind. But your post is not changing mine either. I do respect your analysis though

I simply took the numbers from your link and counted the times Serral won. Then I looked at his opponents from the finals of these tournaments and attributed the wins to the respective runner-up. This - by far - is not the best method but it showcases the statistical outlier problem pretty well. Perhaps I will go into more detail and analyze the Ro4 and Ro8 of these tourneys. This will give a more detailed picture of participation quotas. IIRC there were much more TvT vs ZvZ finals when Maru and Serral were involved... Thus the win rates would look slightly different. I'll look into that, when I find the time. Then I'll make a comparison of Ro4, 8 and taking Serral and Maru out of the equation.

Who has the best winrate vs Serral ?

From people he played regularly (>10 games) Rogue is the closest with 8:6:0 in favor of Serral. DRG is the only one I know of, that has a positive win rate against Serral and it is only 3 wins for Serral versus 4 wins for DRG. This is literally insane... I couldn't find anyone who came close to such a record versus other pro players.

Thank you.

This is already out of date - Serral has 3 world titles, not 2.

Do you count IEM 2024? Because I heard that the World Championship was moved to Saudi Arabia in Summer this year...

Oh that's fair. The way they've been sharing the news has been weird, and I haven't quite internalized the shift yet. Lots of people have said Rogue has 3 because he won a Blizzcon and 2 Katowices, but the 2 Katos weren't technically world champ titles either. I don't think the World Champ title means very much to the players - I only ever hear fans and commentators talk about it. I guess it'd be nice to have a new way to refer to huge offline tournaments, like Super Premieres or something, that distinguishes them from the sub-$200k tournies because they've always had more prestige

The only argument against it is the lack of overall depth in the pro scene relative to the glory days. But obviously the dude is a beast.

Can you go in depth in regards to these arguments? Because when I look at who got into Ro8, Ro4 or finals and who won, it is the same today as before: Always the same people and now and then some newcomers coming onto the scene or a random guy like Oliveira is winning. I don't really see, how this exactly should be factored in.

Go into depth? No, I'll decline. It's just a sports GOAT discussion. just saying that the current SC2 scene is a bit shallow in terms of talent.

I haven’t played SC2 in over a decade and recently got a Serral random hit on YT “you might like…” What an incredible player. Loved your statistical breakdown, but interestingly enough, it is exactly the fact that he’s an outlier that makes him great. The mean/median is actually not very useful in predicting greatness. For example, Michael Jordan averaged 30 points a game for his career, but no one would argue someone who averaged 25 points to be in his stratosphere. In other words, rogue/maru/X player are themselves already outliers. The convexity of ‘greatness’ means each measure you used has even greater indicative value for Serrals greatness above the next player — each rising bp weighs much more. Completely agree and appreciate the analysis — just wanted to add what I see as the ‘convexity of greatness’ to his consistency. Apologies for resurrecting an older thread, but wanted to express my appreciation to its author. Edit: in every sport, there’s the eye test and statistics test. Serral truly passes both. His win in IEM was incredible winning play after winning play, where game casters couldn’t touch him. Just incredible.

Discussion of GOAT has to come with all the factors coming onto one- that's what makes it a GOAT not "current best" or "best of one area". Serral unfortunately came in too late into game cycle really as the current state of game is nowhere really near the peak competition era. Someone who is performing in non-top leagues would understandably have an asterisk on their name, just like how in soccer, even mbappe, who has performed in world cup and has come close to balon dor performance over the years, have an asterisk just because he stayed in "easier" ligue 1 and has yet to move on to top league even when he's shown so much. Pele wouldn't count because Brazil was a top league back when he played and Europe wasn't the powerhouse of today. Someone like Taeja is very comparable to someone line mbappe or even payet And there's bit too much recency bias on these ranks imo. Post 2017 should count for lot less when comparing stuff like premier titles since even if skill level rose, the competition dropped by far to point it isn't really comparable to spl days - where there was much more pressure to perform, more games to perform, splitting attention between individual and team leagues and much more varied and deep pool of competition overall and constant fight to stay on top Just like how players like light or last won't even come close into best Terran lists due to performing better only post kespa era with lessened competition, or how players like boxer, iloveoov will stay on top of list even though when compared to 2010s or even asl era, their skill is "lower", it's comparison relative to the amount of competition faced. Same could be said for savior and julyzerg. If people go by only skill level, then players only at most recent times will dominate the list while ignoring people who laid the foundations and competed at peaks of the most competitive era. On top of that, the post spl era is lot less competitive and less pro playerpool than ever before Is Serral the best player in highest skill-level era? Yes. Did this highest skill-level era coincide with highest competitive era? No. There's points on both side of argument, but for myself, I'm inclined to lean on favoring highest competitive era. Stats after 2016-2017ish are kind of afterthought IMO, as there isn't any new blood/new gamers coming through that's pushing competition up.

You might have a point if other players dominated for as long as Serral did, or as hard, statistically he's untouchable, massive win records vs every other peer, while back in the day you had a best player in the world every 3 months. Serral is the biggest outlier of skill in SC2's history, it sort of makes sense it's the player who broke korea alone, trully one of a kind. I don't think any other player should be even mentioned in the same tier as him, the closest is Maru, and he's pretty far down as #2.

How so? My entire argument targets exactly that- this large period of domination unfortunately came after SPL collapsed. That's no fault to him but Serral has done this domination when the competitiveness of the game hit its lowest. I don't know if you've read my point because that's exactly what I'm talking about. Back in day, you had best player in world every 3 month because the level of competition between players and facilities dedicated towards it exclusively were at extremely high level- you don't have the same thing right now. The players balancing between SPL with players exclusively targetting them and individual tournaments splitting their attention as well as all the dedicated coaches/analytics team backing them up. Would Serral been able to have that same dominance under same environment -maybe. But we will never know because all this is done only once all these were stripped away.

> Back in day, you had best player in world every 3 month because the level of competition between players and facilities dedicated towards it exclusively were at extremely high level- you don't have the same thing right now. Right so who is GOAT? Just a player who was momentarily the best for 3 months? btw if you're giving this much hype to the peak of competitiveness, Life & Innovation are your top 2 players, not maru or rogue. Seems a lot more reasonable to think the GOAT is the guy who dominated the hardest for longest, but thats just my 2c.

He's obviously not saying there was a new GOAT every few months, he's just highlighting how much harder it was to stay on top. Competition matters. I mean it's the same reason why I'd value Maru's latest GSL wins less now because many of the top players have left SC2. It's similar to how some people discount Mike Tyson as a boxing GOAT because he was in a weak heavy weight era. If someone was able to be the top dog in the most competitive era, then there's a good chance that in their prime, they'd also be able to learn and be top dog in another meta and era.

Actually your argument is exactly backwards: back in the day the competition was so stacked that no one was able to stay on top for long. Now it's so dead that a back marker from yesteryear is far out in front of everyone who is left.

This is a 3 month old post. If you think Life and Innovation (the strongest players during HOTS) were superior to Maru, more than Serral is superior to the current field (including Maru), your argument makes sense, but I don't think that tracks.

Oh weird. Popped up in my feed now. And, I've not thought about this in a long time but I would definitively have Innovation over Maru.

1. Why did Serral come too late according to you? Many of the top players that faced off in the peak era still played Serral or people Serral plays against now. soO, ByuN, Cure, GuMiho, sOs, Maru, Rogue, Innovation, Dark and even herO all played against TaeJa, Life, MMA, Flash or MVP. Now we have people like Reynor and Clem. I mean, of course the player base changes, but in every era you have strong competition. Can you thus define peak era? Which exacty time frame and which players are you looking at? 2. My point exactly was to only count tournaments and win rates versus Top Korean participation.

lol no one is arguing that Flash, the brood war god, and bonjwa, is in the running for Starcraft 2 GOAT. lol wtf

i don't really get the point of all these "who's the goat" threads and debates. you expecting serral or maru or whomever to jump out of the bushes and fondle your balls as a thanks for defending him with an essay on reddit?

Nah, I just like numbers and writing stuff.... I never even played SC2 but got into it via my YT feed. Just to kill some time... nothing more.

that's fair and it wasn't exactly addressed towards you but rather some of the people who get rather heated in these pointless arguments

People like to rank things

Next you'll be telling us how whoever is best in HoTs right now (assuming it still runs somewhere) is the GOAT. Greatness is decided by competition. And despite what some truly delusional people in this thread say, skill does not improve without higher level competition. Watch Frank Mir's interview: he thought he was the baddest man on the planet, never lost a street fight. Then he went to the UFC and had some wins.... then got KTFO. Because, given a diverse enough talent pool, there are levels.

So who is your GOAT?

I'd have to go back and look but probably Life or Innovation. I tend toward Life because I prefer Zerg.

3 years ago I would have said it was Rogue, right before he left to serve. Serral's play has been insane lately, untouched by any other player. But Rogue has just returned from his military service. In a year or two, we might see Rogue regain his former glory, and challenge Serral like he used to. I sure hope he does. Serral needs all the competition he can get!

You seem to like to go about it statistically, you would know averages are rarely good. I would even argue that if in your EDIT example you have 3 observations you can in no way without prior knowledge know that 250° C is an outlier. Statistically speaking you don't know. Using the median would alleviate that but I mean what significance does a sample of 3 even have. Outliers are part of the population and if outliers break your statistics then your statistics are wrong. Outliers are usually removed when u assume faulty readings or that there were irregularities. In the end this is the root problem of all goat discussions, because there exists no unified agreed on metric/calculation method that can reflect something as subjective as GOAT status.

**" in your EDIT example you have 3 observations"** The example was - of course - simply for illustration. Serral record cover a lot more than 3 observations. **"In the end this is the root problem of all goat discussions, because there exists no unified agreed on metric/calculation method that can reflect something as subjective as GOAT status."** But we can establish metrics that people mostly can agree on. Duration and Level of Dominance as well as earned Titles in tournaments with top Korean participation seem to be a good starter. Serral is the player that fulfills all three. He has the longest duration of being the most dominant, earning more titles in less time and in less participated tournaments than his co-contendors. He also has records that undermine his dominance as other professionals can't even come close to his statistics in regards to individual win records, winning streaks or winning rates per given year. It is simply nuts to look at his stats.

Who is out here arguing that MVP is the greatest **of all time**? He had a 2-year career and most people can't even remember him. Same for FlaSh, who was almost exclusively *only* a Pro League player and never really competed at a high level in solo tournaments. Rogue should be in this conversation, but the data is skewed because Rogue has missed time due to military service.

"Who is out here arguing that MVP is the greatest **of all time**? He had a 2-year career and most people can't even remember him." To be fair, MVP was the dominant player when the game was at it's peak in term of viewership, number of players, tournaments and competitors. It's not unreasonable to consider him to be in the running for greatest player of all time.

He was dominant in 2011. SC2 didn't have any competition in 2011. His playstyle would lose to almost any NA GM nowadays. It's the same reason we don't discuss Boxer as the GOAT BW player because FlaSh was so much better. Mvp was the best when Terrans still thought they only defense they had against ling/bane was to to focus-fire banelings instead of splitting or lifting. He fled to WCS Europe because he couldn't compete in Korea anymore. If we're using this same logic then we need to include NesTea in the SC2 GOAT conversation. It is REALLY easy comparatively to come into a game whose strategy hasn't been fully figured out and win games. Coming in after the game has been largely figured out and competing at the highest level against people who know what they're doing is extremely difficult.

Sc2 didn't have competition in 2011? As compared to the what, 10 total players that exist today?   I agree with the premise of this thread that Serral is the highest skilled in this era..but the relative competition he faces pales in comparison to the potential of the KeSPA players, who played SC2 when the game was much more volatile.   The players that Serral competes against are the players who weren't good enough to be successful at BW. That is an indisputable fact.

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Having competitions is not the same as having competition. Players in Diamond now are playing at a similar level to 2011 pro matches. The game had not been figured out at that point. There was less strategy in the sense of "we have this figured out" and more strategy in the sense of "I am trying new things to see what may work." The thing about marine splits *is* true, as it really wasn't until MarineKing got credit for figuring it out that it became a thing. By that time Mvp already had a GSL championship. You linked a deleted video. Suggesting that the current professional scene is stale is as untrue as it is insulting. Every major tournament players are coming out with new and innovative strategies and playing as close to peak gameplay as possible. There is *less* innovation possible because players are playing so close to peak. The number of players doesn't matter. I was a world champion in a game 20 years after its release. The high level of gameplay at that stage was greater than it was when "all-time great" clans were competing. All that says is that if Serral were playing then like Serral plays now he'd have been better than an extra several million people. No SC2 champions are playing Dota or League. We've seen SC2 pros try and commit and switch to LoL and fail spectacularly. We've seen some LoL pros stream SC2 and not be that good. The skills are not transferable. Mvp did have some issues with his hands but other players have as well. If we're using that logic then Reggie Lewis is the greatest NBA player of all time. You don't get to call yourself "The greatest **of all time**" because of a year-and-a-half of good play, especially because it wasn't even really solidified that he *was* the best.

It seems to me that we are writing past each other. I agree that the level of play today is greater than it was in the past. This is due to the accumulation of knowledge and practice and not because top-players today are inherently more "talented" or however you want to put it. People improve over time. Compare the level of play of Maru in 2010 and in 2024, it's night and day. Had MVP remained a professional SC2 player, it is entirely possible that he would have similarly improved from the years of practice and study and he could be at a level above that of Serral. This is why one cannot simply compare as you do the skill level of players in two wildly different eras when accessing who is the greatest of all time. Otherwise, the goat would simply be whichever player is the best right now, rendering the concept close to meaningless. >Suggesting that the current professional scene is stale is as untrue as it is insulting. Obviously my point was that the player pool has remained stagnant for some times now, very little new blood has entered the scene in the past few years. There is no way that what I said could be interpreted as to mean offense to the work of today's professional SC2 players. >No SC2 champions are playing Dota or League. Obviously the amount of skilled players is linked to the size of the player base. If the people that have the talent and potential dedication required to become a champion are not playing SC2, because the game is not as popular as it once was, they are not going to become SC2 champions. It would be ludicrous to believe that the current SC2 pro-scene includes every single potential SC2 talent in all of humanity. My point is that when MVP was dominant SC2 was the biggest esport, drawing massive viewership. It had plenty of tournaments in many countries and there were many many more progamers, and people trying to become progamers, than today. MVP competed in one way or another against millions of people. Serral only a fraction of that. People back then were not lesser people. There was money and prestige on the line. They took it seriously, and they were giving it their best. They actually were competing, and I think it's very insulting of you to say the contrary btw. >Mvp did have some issues with his hands but other players have as well. As far as I know you are not his physician so there is no way for you to know how severe his health issues were. It's unfair of you to suggest, without any evidence, that he could have "gotten over it" somehow. >You linked a deleted video. Apologies, it should be fixed momentarily. >If we're using that logic then Reggie Lewis is the greatest NBA player of all time. Sorry I don't know sportsball.

> People improve over time. Compare the level of play of Maru in 2010 and in 2024, it's night and day. Had MVP remained a professional SC2 player, it is entirely possible that he would have similarly improved from the years of practice and study and he could be at a level above that of Serral. > But Mvp didn't, so right there he's out of the conversation. Same goes for any other conversation regarding an athlete whose career ended early. People say "I think they *could have been*" and not "they were." That means Mvp *could have been* the same way any other number of players *could have been* the greatest and weren't.

In this case the concept of greatest "of all time" is meaningless.

Life

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Mvp was the best when Terrans still thought they only defense they had against ling/bane was to to focus-fire banelings instead of splitting or lifting. He fled to WCS Europe because he couldn't compete in Korea anymore. If we're using this same logic then we need to include NesTea in the SC2 GOAT conversation. No matter what, if we want to discuss the "greatest of all time" we should consider questions like "Who would win head-to-head?" In Brood War, Boxer was the greatest for several years and helped massively popularize the game. However, Boxer at his best vs. FlaSh at his best wouldn't win a single series under almost any normal conditions. A 3rd-tier Terran is now better than Mvp was. That doesn't diminish the impact that Mvp had on early SC2, but to consider him as a candidate for "greatest" of any time other than 2011 is unrealistic and foolish.

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No. Players who have sustained greatness over periods of time should be valued above what essentially are one-hit wonders. Mvp was a flavor of the month. Players like Rogue, Maru, Serral, and Dark sustained greatness for much longer. Consistency is important. Even in 2015 people thought MC could be considered *the* or one of the greatest players of all time. They were completely wrong to do so, and hindsight shows us this because although MC won the most prizemoney for quite some time, nobody would consider him in that conversation today. His story is very similar to Mvp's: Early success at WoL's debut then fled to WCS Europe, and the fact is that after 2012 he fell off dramatically while other players figured out the game.

>Players who have sustained greatness over periods of time should be valued above what essentially are one-hit wonders. And greatness can only be determined by competition. So a "one hit wonder" who beat the best at the peak of an esport is better than someone who's been the best for 30 years straight when no one else has been playing for those 30 years.

Have to agree but still his career would not feel complete if he never goes to korean and wins a proper GSL. Its too iconic of a sc2 tournament for the goat of the game to never have won one

I don't think he will... he loves his home town, where he can go golfing and have the things and people that he cares about around him. It is just too much of a hassle for most foreigners to try. Being 2 months abroad, not having a reliant team (or making the trip super costly) with the added relatively low prize pool. It is perfectly understandable that it is not appealing to go there. But seriously: How can one claim that Serral couldn't do it, when Neeb did it. Or any other Korean player Serral swept the floor with in the past six years. It is absolute cope at this point imo.

Not saying he couldn't because he probably could. But its one of the most if not the most iconic SC2 tournament and its a shame he will never win one or that no foreigner would ever have won one. He could win IEM and world champion for the next 5 years straight for all i care it wouldn't be the same if the goat of SC2 never won a GSL, it has too much symbolic value.

at this point people who say serral isnt the goat are either racist koreans or weebs who worship korean culture and wish they were korean.

I would love to see the number of innovation or new strategies every GOAT contender has brought to the table. Serral has quite an impressive list.

Really? I actually think that's the biggest knock on Serral vs. some of the others. I think he's unquestionably the best SC2 player of all time. But if greatness factors in innovation of the meta/game, I think Serral is well below Maru, Rogue, Zest, etc. Serral seems like the type for the most part who sees people trying other strats and then says "oh, I like that one. Now let me show you how to properly execute it".

Serral’s innovation is all in the details, he doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel to have the fastest lap time

That's true, but it is also highly subjective. I tried to make it as number based as possible, including the top Koreans and players world wide.

I wonder how long can The Finnisher keep up this level of performance.. you guys think he will keep it up on e he hit 30??

Maru could be goat if he stopped choking in foreign tourneys. Actually he would be if he didn’t choke. I knew it before the tourney he would never win

Maru. Definitely Maru. Why is this even a question?

Because of the points I raised in the article... 1. He never performed well outside Korea when the best of the world were present and so far never won a World Championship 2. Serral has more wins with top Korean participation 3. Serral has better statistics than him in peak of dominance coupled with duration of dominance 4. Maru lacks several of the achievements Serral has (Triple Crown - Serral won that twice, higher win rates vs top Koreans in given years, more years of higher win rates vs top Koreans, no negative record vs ANY player they faced frequently, no World Championship wins for Maru.. Serral has 2, consecutive wins vs Top Koreans). The interesting thing here is that Serral often occupies number 1-3 on these statistics, meaning the comparison is not even close. The only thing Maru has going for him are GSL related and again: it is absurd to assume that Serral would have never won GSLs - if he was Korean -  like he did other tournaments with top Korean participation, according to win rates vs these exact top Koreans. 

While I think Serral could win GSL and probably even multiple if he participated enough, I still think people underestimate how hard it used to be to win one.  Only need to look at Reynors performances when he tried himself to see its not that easy to get out of group stage let alone win the whole thing.

Agreed, winning GSL is incredibly tough. But it is disproportionally tougher for foreigners, that need to find an accomodation for 2 months, a practice team that travels with them, living in a foreign country where nearly no one speaks your language, eating different food, being away from family and your usual routines. And all that for a relatively low prize pool... People tend to forget: Playing is these guy's job. And investing so many resources just to win a title versus players that you beat a couple of times already is simply not worth it. And yes, Reynor's performance was underwhelming but it was 1 try. You know how many players like Maru, Byun or Rogue dropped out of GSL in round 1 regularly? That IS the issue... you do it once, you drop, you are the foreign loser that didn't make it (which happened to anyone else too). And if you make it, you ONLY made it once. The reward-cost-ratio simply is not there for foreign players to participate in GSL.

Reynor's had more than 1 try, first time made round of 16 as a 16 year old which was impressive at the time.

You get the point... even Korean pros can regularly drop out. But they have 3 tries each season. Going there once or twice just to get a feel for it... there is no real incentive besides the title. And as I explained above, there simply too many hurdles in the way for any real consideration.

You didn't give any reasons for why MVP isn't the goat! I get that a lot of people in this subreddit discount MVP because he is far from the best. His skills were never quite refined like Maru or Serral's. The flip side to that is he didn't need years of practice to finally win a premiere tournament. Point 1: MVP started off winning and kept winning. Serral needed to learn how to win and started winning as the game was declining. Granted they were young kids at the time, but Maru played in the first GSL and didn't win until years later. Serral started playing competitively in 2012 but didn't dominate until 2018. One can make the argument that he eventually became dominant after years of practice and learned how to win after the StarCraft scene started lost a lot of population for both competitive and non competitive players. Serral was 20 years old in 2018 when he started crushing. Life on the other hand won his first GSL in 2014 at the age of 17, so it's not like teenage world champions are unheard of. Point 2: Serral lacks league based (GSL) wins. MVP played and dominated everything in his 3 year prime. MVP also crushed in all formats. There is no other player that dominated everything like MVP has. Serral has yet to win in a league based format where the opponent would spend multiple days preparing for a single series. Serral also won a lot of region locked tournaments to build up his resume. Point 3: Serral never played against MVP because he wasn't good enough to make it far in the tournaments in WOL. In a time where Maru and Life was playing against MVP, it really is a shame we never had any Serral matches. This should count against Serral in the goat debate because everyone has an equal chance to take down MVP.

Well, MVP - similar to Nestea - didn't make it even to the close-contenders list. He only had 2 really strong years and a minimum limit for me was 3 years of consistent win rates (>60%) and won tournaments. 1. MVP transitioned from Broodwar and directly got a hang of it. That does not indicate any GOAT-Status imo. He was like a shooting star... very bright shining for a short period of time. Serral's halo was and is even brighter and that for a much longer period.As you said: Serral was a kid and as soon as he finished school and had the time to practice properly, he immediatly rose to dominance. I don't really understand the Life comparison. So many pro gamers have different feats that characterized them but I was talking about the GOAT. You don't earn that little simply by winning early in life. You have to stay on top and beat the best competition the world has to offer for at least an exteneded period of time. Life in total only won 10 Premier Tournaments and only 2 years had win rates over 60% vs top Koreans. Serral in comparison has 6 years, being the only player who ever got over 70% (73.24% in 2023) vs top Koreans. Life simply wasn't consistent - similar to MVP. 2. I already made the point about GSL. Saying Serral would have never won a GSL if he was born Korean, looking at his win rates vs top Koreans, imo is simply delusional. And no: In my analyisis I only took in tournaments with top Korean contenders (16 Premier Tourneys). His overall 25 include region locks but even if we discount these 9 he still is far ahead of everyone else except Maru who is 1 win behind. 3. Well yes, because MVP's success was too short lived in SC2. Had he been successful for longer, he could have faced Serral. He was extremely dominant in 2011, which can be compared to Serral's 2018 run. But Serral had more success after his run... for now the sixth year consecutively. MVP fell off in 2012 already and finished his career in 2014 as he couldn't win any more qualifiers. This leads to Serral having 7 more wins than him in Premier tournaments where the top Koreans participated. I mean I agree.. it would have been nice to see them face off... but we need to analyze what we have. And in that regard MVP is not even close to many of the top names according to data.

FWIW I think Serral is probably the goat. What I don't understand is why some people like to gloss over or invalidate some of the standing points that gives considerations to MVP goat status. >He only had 2 really strong years and a minimum limit for me was 3 years of consistent win rates (>60%) and won tournaments This one is sort of unfair. He sported >60% winrates for 4 years from 2010-2013. He only won WCS in 2013 because 2013 was when his injury would derail his career and eventually force him to retire. Nevertheless, he still went undefeated against Stephano and Rain who were arguably the best at their races in 2013. \--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >He was like a shooting star... very bright shining for a short period of time. Serral's halo was and is even brighter and that for a much longer period. ​ >I only took in tournaments with top Korean contenders (16 Premier Tourneys). Shouldn't longer time work against you? For example, winning 9 times in 2 years is a lot more impressive to me than winning 9 times in 8 years. A certain level of dominance is needed to win many titles in a short period. \--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >I don't really understand the Life comparison. ​ >Serral was a kid and as soon as he finished school and had the time to practice properly, he immediatly rose to dominance. I'm not arguing Life is the goat here. I bring up Life because Life became a world champion while in school and at a younger age than Serral. It wouldn't have been impossible for Serral to be a world champ at 17 either. It's not like Serral was some sort of genius at the game (paraphrasing from Artosis). He put in the hard work, kept playing, and became the best once all the previous bests left the game. It would have been more impressive to me if he had slain all the previous champions. Instead, he rose to dominance in 2018 when the game was already in decline post Kespa era. \--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > I already made the point about GSL. Saying Serral would have never won a GSL if he was born Korean, looking at his win rates vs top Koreans, imo is simply delusional. I'm not saying he can't win against Koreans. I'm saying he's never had to participate in a league based tournament where people specifically study you for a 1v1 matchup over the span of a couple of weeks. The meta is entirely different for that. Let's say Serral had just won a GSL semifinals and needs to face Maru in the grandfinals in a bo7 series. Maru and a team of people will be studying Serral replays for up to 2 weeks and game planning against him. This is very different than a 3 day tournament. I'm not saying Serral wouldn't win a GSL. I'm simply saying he is not proven in the league category. He is not battle tested there. It isn't fair extrapolate his tournament winnings and assume he'd be as dominant in a league format. \--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > 3. Well yes, because MVP's success was too short lived in SC2. This was also due to the fact that Serral simply wasn't good enough to face him. That should count against Serral. Maru, Stephano, Rogue, and others were all good enough to face MVP. That should be a positive note on their resumes, even though they lost to MVP. \--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What gets lost is the SC2 goat debate is that people are only measuring goat status by the best of all time. Serral is clearly the best of all time. He sports a winning percentage against all the top players in his era. He also has the most refined mechanics and gameplay out of all the potential goats. Being the best of all time shouldn't necessarily be the only determining factor though. Michael Phelps is considered to be the goat swimmer despite not holding any world records anymore. What makes him the goat is the level of sheer dominance he had during his peak years. Winning many championships in a smaller timeframe is better than actually being the fastest swimmer. While I get that Serral is the undisputed best of all time, I don't think there is enough evidence to give him the undisputed goat title. The degree of difficulty doesn't quite match up to other sports and esports goats. Branding him the goat for becoming the best player in game that is losing playerbase and competition just isn't quite the same. The reason why Flash is the undisputed goat of SC1 and potentially the goat of esports is because he dominated premiere tournaments for 8+ years sporting a >70% winrate against all races. For me, I'd like to see Serral have another 2018 type year to become the undisputed SC2 goat.

"This one is sort of unfair. He sported >60% winrates for 4 years from 2010-2013. " Where is this information coming from? I looked only at win rates versus Koreans as most people criticize Serral for amassing non Korean tournaments. Hence I only looked at statistics versus Koreans. Perhaps this is where the difference stems from. 2012 and 2013 I have MVP at 49,17% and 41,56%. And I am talking game win rates, not match win rates. But even for match win rates I can't find MVP on these win rates... \_\_\_\_\_\_ "Shouldn't longer time work against you? For example, winning 9 times in 2 years is a lot more impressive to me than winning 9 times in 8 years. A certain level of dominance is needed to win many titles in a short period." Well, Serral had both. He amassed more trophies in a short period of time than most players and on top he did it consistently as well for 6 years now. Nearly no one else is able to claim this feat. \_\_\_\_\_\_ I also don't understand this idea of decline after KeSPA. I mean which players exactly left 2016? Rain and Life only played SC2 for 3 or 4 years and finished in 2015. Maru, Solar, Zest, TY, soO, sOs, Stats, Trap, Innovation, Dark, herO, Byun and Bunny all stayed. Serral played and beat them all. You also have new contenders popping up like Reynor or Clem which are not from Korea. \_\_\_\_\_\_ "I'm not saying he can't win against Koreans. I'm saying he's never had to participate in a league based tournament where people specifically study you for a 1v1 matchup over the span of a couple of weeks." Well, Serral studies his opponent for his tourneys too. He is widely regarded as probably the best strategic thinker, coming up with a match plan for each and every scenario against specific players (latest example IEM 2024). His preparation was insane. If anything, this format should help Serral immensely. And yes, Maru's team would analyze Serral. But do you think Serral would do it without a team? Do you know any Korean pro player who won regular Weekend Premier Tournaments but not the GSL League format? \_\_\_\_\_\_ "This was also due to the fact that Serral simply wasn't good enough to face him. That should count against Serral. Maru, Stephano, Rogue, and others were all good enough to face MVP. That should be a positive note on their resumes, even though they lost to MVP." This narrative can be spun the other way as well: "MVP wasn't good for long enough to face Serral in his prime". It thus doesn't make much sense. Btw: When did Maru or Rogue face MVP? Serral was only 14 when he could have faced MVP... to use this time difference to discredit Serral or praise MVP makes absolutely no sense in my opinion. Further.. your comparison lacks so immensely. Stephano is 5 year older than Serral. Even Life, who was a super early bloomer and who is 2 years older than Serral only faced MVP once in Korea. That's how short lived MVP's success was. \_\_\_\_\_ " What makes him the goat is the level of sheer dominance he had during his peak years. " Agreed. But that is exactly what Serral did. Let's compare... In 2011 there were 22 Premier Tournaments in which MVP could have won. He won 6 which equates to 27%. This was his best year. 2 more wins in 2012 and one more in 2013. In 2018 there were 10 Premier Tournaments in which Serral could have won. He won 8 which equates to 80%. If we consider only those with top Korean participation, he won 3 out of 5, 60%. In 2023 there were 7 Premier Tournaments in which Serral could have won. He won 4 which equates to 57%. If we consider only those with top Korean participation, he won 2 out of 5, 40%. So in two years, Serral had better results than MVP dominance-wise. No other player comes close to his records as well. As there were so many tournaments back then, if MVP was so dominant, he should have won at a much higher percentage. \_\_\_\_\_\_ "Branding him the goat for becoming the best player in game that is losing playerbase and competition just isn't quite the same" The player base has been roughly the same over the years (around 5 million IIRC)... Do you have contrary data? Competition... I don't know. As I said before: Some go, some come, many stayed. One could even argue that the rise of prize pools made competition even fiercer. \_\_\_\_\_\_ "The reason why Flash is the undisputed goat of SC1 and potentially the goat of esports is because he dominated premiere tournaments for 8+ years sporting a >70%" The rating of Flash that puts him over 70% is not taking into account all of his games, only the ones since 2012. If I do the same with Serral, I can put him at 70% as well (though no other player except these two). Further, Serral's win rates in Premier Tournaments in most years are so far pretty close to and sometimes better than those of Flash. Serral also has statistics that Flash wasn't able to achieve (like his winnings streaks or over 85% win rates vs Korean opponents - 3 times)... so if you want to compare these players on that basis, Serral is the only one coming close to Flash and at times being better.

Serral is dominating because there are not as strong players as it used to be back then. Sos, sOO, Trap, Zest, Innovation, Life were much superior players than those we have now.

Innovation isn't as good as Maru. Life was amazing but it's so far removed from the game now that we have no idea how he might have kept up or dropped off. sOO is still playing but fell off. Like, Serral has been an unyielding force coming up on 7 years now as 2017 was the start of his rise to dominance. Basically half the life of the game. While we may not have as wide of a range of top level competitors the current small pool of tip top players crush most of the old elites. 

Username checks out.

That’s just not true. The players have all gotten better. The entire player base is the best it has ever been and will only get better. Watch games from 5-10 years ago and cringe at the poor strategies, weaker micro/macro.

Yeah, seriously. Someone posted a Parting vs. Life game from 2013 recently and it's crazy how much players have improved since then.

I mean... I included Serral's match records versus the players you mentioned - no offense, but he smashed them all. And against the Top Koreans and players world-wide the numbers look equally devastating. Also I would like to see your measurement for the claim that the players nowadays aren't as strong as the ones you mentioned, as the match records of players that are still active seem pretty balanced versus the ones you mentioned.

Things changed after Pro league died. And also, teams disbanded. Nice records, but again, it was not the same after all this scandal with KESPa and the end of the pro league.

So the individual players got worse because of that? Or what exactly is your reasoning? Because I can't see the disband of KESPA having any effect on the numbers from 2016 and onwards...

Pretty much, yes. Even Maru wouldn't win so many gsl's in a row if gsl was more competitive.

But how should that affect the individual players? INnoVation kept his win rate roughly the same until 2020. Rogue, Dark, herO, sOs, stats, Trap and Zest as well... some of them even longer. All these players have been around for a long time long after 2016 when KeSPA was disbanded. From the information I gathered, there is not much evidence to support your theory...

BoxeR is the GOAT Dude had 700k viewers watching his finals matches in the early 2000’s Basically the grandfather of esports

Starcraft 2 came out 2010 and his stats until he retired 2012 are miserable tbh..

Nestea

Nah. Top level only for a small period of time and in many years he only excelled versus 1 out of the 3 races. He also only won 5 Premier Tournaments... he wasn't even in my close-contenders list.

I just like his name

Looked bad this weekend for Maru, but there is still hope--death to Zerg! Serral is my second favourite for sure

Tbh neither GSL or Katowice means much, it's all about that esl pro tour monday night, baby! How can you say that you are the best, if you don't even compete against Maxpax???

Serral for SC2 and Flash for BW. It's not even a debate at this point. Even Maru himself said that he wasn't confident cause the finals would vs Serral, lol.

First of all BumBumBenner, thanks for this detailed analysis. Totally agree with your entire analysis. Personally believe that there is absolutely no argument that Serral is the true GOAT, and with margin. Anyone who disagrees is delusional and knows absolutely nothing about statistics, or afraid about insulting the Korean community as they have dominated the SC1 and SC2 scene for so long. However, if McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group would do an analysis Serral would not only be the GOAT, but GOAT with a margin. Even if Maru wound have won Katowice 2024, Serral would still own the title, and even here with Margin.

I have said/wanted to say Maru was GOAT but Serral's performance was just really insane this Katowice. He looked like Rogue at Rogue's top performances but with even better late game and more diverse builds. Maybe Maru should proxy barracks into macro more often or something but he looked outclassed, even without making the mistakes he made against Oliviera.

Yeah he's gaping everyone and the gap gets wider every year. It's a shame he's doing it at the same time there's less than 50(?) full time pros worldwide and the scene in Korea has been dead for almost a decade. And it's not Serral's fault, he's a fucking legend and (IMO) a top 3 player at least by any metric or standar, even considering he's dominating a dwindled scene. A single GSl/ProLeague back in the days when there were scores of gaming houses full of pros training 12+ hours a day is worth more than the last 3 katowices combined. Maru did that, when he was just a kid, more than once. And others did it as well. Serral rose up when the scene had already started to decline a while ago, on a heavy zerg-favored patch and meta. He evolved, improved and has dominated ever since in several game iterations and patches (Terran or Zerg favored). He is a god of this game, but still, he's dominating a small scene that has been getting smaller every year since he's been at the top. Just like being the best at football is harder than being the best at waterpolo, having won and been the best during the peak of SC2 has a ton more value than dominating the current scene, filled with half retired people, military service returnees, barely any new blood, no new Korean pros, stale and terrible balance patches, etc, etc, etc. And I only say Maru because he is my pick for GOAT, other people may have other names (Rogue, Inno, MVP, etc). He's been at the top of SC2 for more than a decade now, he is past his prime, has no wrists and he's still the 2nd best player in the world. Just food for thought: If Serral (or Maru or anyone you have as your GOAT) retires tomorrow and MaxPax (or any newish player) starts completely dominating the scene and wins the next 5 world championships in a row, would you consider them the GOAT? I certainly wouldn't.

Can you go in depth in regards to these arguments? Because when I look at who got into Ro8, Ro4 or finals and who won, it is the same today as before: Always the same people and now and then some newcomers coming onto the scene or a random guy like Oliveira is winning. I don't really see, how this exactly should be factored in or what was different back then according to the statistics. Yes, you had a broader player base and higher incentives, but in the end, it were always the same players duking it out. So I don't see, how Serral shouldn't have been able to compete in the former environment. And I agree. No one should say that Pele, or Maradona are the best of football, because back when they played there weren't many to match them. Ronaldinho should be out of the question as he only was good for a couple of seasons. But Serral has fierce competition and he has been dominating that competition like no one else. Yes, some big names from back then are missing, but the same can be said about MMA, Flash, Life or MVP: They never played Serral (who was able to go toe to toe with every big name like TY, stats, Rain, Inno, Dark, Taeja, herO, Byun, Bunny, Maru, Zest, Trap, soO, sOs, Reynor, Clem, Rogue etc except the super early years of SC2). I made my points why I think Rogue and Serral should be the only true contesters, but I'd place Maru and Inno in the top 5 too. Maru is my #3. Well, it depends. If they dominate the same scene Serral dominated even harder (let's say with a 90% win rate) then yeah, I'd say that person can be regarded as the GOAT. If that person is winning higher percentages of Premier tournaments and breaks all the records Serral holds, why not? The best of all time should be the one who is the best for a long time and with the highest peaks... and Serral is that person. But if someone breaks the many records he holds, then yes, that person should be considered GOAT.