Clearly sOs is the best player of all time, given he built a nexus in his opponent's base and won, during a professional match. No other accomplishment will ever outshine that, I don't care how many tournament wins you get or how much money you make.
Serral has kept winning despite balance changes and build snipes for the past 6 years. I'm not sure what else make you the goat, right? Others may come and go but serral has been a consistent top 2 atleast.
I agree Serral is goat but a lot of the nerfs to zerg were required because zerg was clearly overpowered at the highest level, for a long time. So saying he won despite being overpowered is kind of dumb.
he's been playing a bunch of emaciated Europeans with a weak culture, or minor online tournaments hosted from basically across the street against koreans. he's not very good..?
Basically, the author's argument hinges on Serral will never be the No.1 GOAT unless he wins a GSL Code S (Even though Serral frequently BEATS the best players of GSL) Emphasis seems to be more on GSL achievement. IF Serral entered and won a GSL expect the goal posts to be moved.
This is seriously delusional. The amount of mental gymnastics required for this train of thought is truly impressive. I think you're 100% right. If serral moved to Korea for a year and won gsl, the goal post would be moved to another nonsensical standard of why he isn't the best.
@@阿倉-o2yUnironically a true statement. Given that practically no one but rogue and Dark ever really wanted to play serral at a tournament pretty much every time we saw korean players learning they had to play serral it was always "I hope I can win" which isn't a confident statement.
#1 best player shouldn't necessarily be winning more against #2 player. In any complex game there is at least a bit of rock-paper-scissors going on between playstyles. I would argue that it's not possible to determine who is "GOAT" in general, only in terms of specific metrics.
@@fritt_wastaken Dude, Serral Smashes Maru. He has a 75% series win rate and 67% game count win rate, over Maru, Its not even close to 50/50, its a dominating win rate. He 4 - 0 in Katowice 2024, 3-0 in Master coliseum 7, 3 - 0 Master coliseum 6, 4 -1 in Starleague 9, 3 - 1 in king of battles, 3 -1 in Katowice 2022 Watch a video where someone actually has good metrics for determining the Goat. ua-cam.com/video/5p9eukjLJA0/v-deo.html
@@fritt_wastaken Yeah not necessarily, like when one player is fading and the other rising. But when the games are during relevant time period as most of these are then you can't be considered even the best player of that time period if you only win tournaments which don't include the other player. Aka if you take Maru and put him in WCS/ESL Serral continues winning, if you take Serral and put him in GSL, Serral continues winning... Look at how many of Marus "accomplishments" are post 2018 tournies that don't include Serral... And don't give me that GSL preparation tournies are different, any tournament Serral enters and someone else wants to win it, requires they have a plan for Serral.
@@Jeff-fc7nf I feel like you didn't read his comment or didn't care to respond to it. He's saying it doesn't matter if Serral wins 100% of the time against Maru, that's not the only factor in determining the GOAT. I personally think winning 3 GSLs in a row, the entire run for a year, is one of the most impressive feats in Starcraft and that adds major points for my personal calculations that I don't think can be quantified by win percentages, especially not against a single player.
@@Meatbrawl player A wins 75% against player B, player B - 75% against player C, player C - 75% against player A. Which one of them is the better player?
@@AggnogIt kinda matter. Between the two top contenders to the goat title one of them destroys the other regularly. Showing this is a way to try to bring to reality the deniers who still find a way in their heads to put maru at the top.
@@Aggnog Eh. I mean, arguably none of this matters much. It's certainly less important than, like, climate change. But if we are, collectively, going to try to momentarily distract ourselves from the crushing futility of existence by talking about how good Serral and Maru are at Starcraft (spoiler: they're very good), then I think it's a pretty relevant, and amusing, statistic!
@@TheAshhole123 Probably, but saying that Serral is so great that they nerf Infestor, while not mentioning how they also nerf Ghost and Raven because of Maru is a bit of a mis-memory.
@@tigera6 the Ghost was barely nerfed. It can still 1-shot every important unit, it's still extremely cheap for the value and power it provides (no Terran should be allowed to have more than 3-4 at one time with its current capabilities), 1-2 EMPs can disable every spellcaster of a Zerg or Protoss (while also damaging the entire Protoss army), it's by far the hardest spellcaster to kill, and it has a strong basic attack that can hit both ground and air which is ridiculous for a spellcaster support unit. There is no need to even talk about Mines, Mules, the brain dead easy defensive capabilities a Terran has with its units, or the literal cheat that is Scan.
@@OnigoroshiZero Meanwhile the Viper which can fly, instantly disable ground area, lift even massive unit like freaking BC/Thor/Carrier, can recharge energy and ALSO has an air splash damage in leave untouched for its entire existing. Yep you are completely making sense.
PiG is right, this GOAT list makes no sense. There is only ONE, undisputed, undefeated, flawless SC2 players, the Boss Toss MC. You might see losses on his record, but according to the Good Games for the Fans eSports Commission, those loses were deemed to be no contests retroactively. Serral is obvs 2nd
The most persuasive thing to me is that Serral has a positive win record against every single top player both online and offline (with the sole exception of Solar 1-3). You could *maybe* argue that Serral has a positive win record vs. Maru due to luck, or because the matchup favors Serral, but you can't explain why Serral beats *every* other top player.
I am pretty sure Maru also has positive win record against every single top player as well outside of Serral, if you use the cut-off year as 2017 as that when Serral career started. Maru had to start as a 12yo boys against adult since 2012 and suffer more beating and grow up from it. Serral gotta stay in his comfort zone being the region-locked EU tournaments to grow and learn.
@@tigera6 Serral also played Koreans pre 2018. IIRC Maru has a negative score vs Innovation (close) and versus Serral. I researched the topic a while back ago and it is true that only has a positive record versus the top Korean players he played regularly. His statistics are of the charts with him reaching win rates of over 85% Vs top Koreans.. no one else ever reached 80% (Maru came close with 78%) and he did it in 3 years... the guy is absolutely unmatched.
Agreed! Except I don't think one can argue that Serral won over Maru thanks to luck. Not 14 times out of 18 matches, all over 6 years and God knows how many patches, nerfs, meta shifts, etc. 1 win can absolutely be luck. 3 wins out of 4 - very hard to imagine, but still possible. 14 wins out of 18? Get out of here, luck has nothing to do with it.
@@marcelbenner993 Serral play mainly in the EU region before 2017 with only a couple tournament that has KR players. So for 3-4 years he doesnt have much win or loss against KR, then he took the big step and win A LOT starting 2018. But Maru probably had lots of growing pain since his starting career in 2012. He should be losing to top KR left and right between 2012 and 2017 because thats where he plays. So if you put Serral in KR in his early years, say 2014-2017, you think his record vs KR would stay the same?
@@tigera6 Maru doesn't have >50% maps wins vs Zest, or TY. They both have like 51-52% against him. If we count offline games only, Maru is 39.5% against Rogue, and 47.7% against Trap. That's a stark contrast to Serral's 77% against him overall, and 79% offline. The only players who gave Serral a close overall record are 53.7% vs Dark and 53.2% vs Rogue. Offline games, Serral is 64% in maps and 75% in matches vs Dark; and 83% in maps and 100% in matches vs Rogue, albeit there were only 4 offline matches.
I've watched a lot of SC2 in 2013-2015 era. During that time NOBODY regarded Maru as the best Terran in the world, he was top2-top3 Terran during this time. So we can't say he's a GOAT because of his 2013-15 results. We also cannot say he's a GOAT because of his 2018+ results because Serral clearly has a better record. So I don't understand how some people can say Maru's a GOAT, like WTF. For me GOAT is Serral or Life. Such a shame that Life did what he did. I still remember watching Blizzcon finals against MMA at 6 AM. It was such a great time for SC2 Esport
People put far too much weight into GSL as the be all and end all of SC2. In between incoherent ramblings, Artosis made a pretty good point about Maru that hes undoubtedly the best GSL player of all time, but not the "GOAT" as you cant really put that tag on a player as theres so many variables. He made the point that Fruitdealer was winning tournaments when Zerg were considered drastically underpowered, when no other Zergs were winning, so is he the greatest because he was able to overcome something like that?
Life was so good that he could only be beaten by someone like sOs… someone who plays the game his own way, always. No amount of practicing could prepare someone for an sOs 7-set finals. If I were to compare Life’s play to what I see now, it’s like Dark’s chaotic aggression with a gents mix of Serral’s precise mechanics. How I wish we’d have gotten to see Life develop for another 7+ years.
@@nasigil5928Flash? in sc2? Last game i remember seeing of him, was him getting bullied by dimaga, and then i think he kinda left for sc1 again no?(or are you including SC1?)
Rogue has a better claim than Maru as the Goat. Imo it's a legit 3 way discussion. Even Serral said multiple times in interviews that Rogue was the biggest threat to him in the tournaments. Rogue has basically all the argument Maru has (to a slightly less degree) like good proleague player, long consistent career, won many GSLs, but has also won big international events.
Rogue never had a long consistent player career, infact hes more like Serral then Maru, winning big tournaments since LOTV. He didnt do jack until late 2017 despite start playing from 2013.
@@tigera6 Rogue was known as the guy that consistently made Ro8 every season in HOTS starting from 2015, hence 'Rogue award'. Had good winrate in Pro league. But you are right he became a monster only in LoTV. Still I wouldn't say he didn't do jack before then.
Rogue absolutely does not have a better claim than Maru to GoAT lmao. Longevity is a primary factor I.E: How many years were you at an elite level for, and Maru has been elite since Wings of Liberty, no matter which version of the game or which patch. Rogue had success on one single patch at a time when Zerg was doing extremely well in general. Not the same.
I didn't believe that there were actually still people who would put Maru before Serral. For my perspective (I've never watched any proleague matches) that's kinda insane.
Why not, he plays the inferior race, gets second best results. He was winning everything pre raven nerf, no one could touch him. Not even Terran and we all know Zerg is serral worst match and that makes him human
@@otalgebra4436 giga copium lmao first of all right now terran is obviously not the "inferior race" right now and second serral has a 70% winrate in ZvZ, how is that human, yeah sometimes he loses to someone worse but thats because the matchum is so volatile rn
@@alexbaldazzi8083 lol you can't sit there and tell me Zerg isn't the superior race throughout the history of sc2 even now zvt winrrate is positive for the Zerg and this is before Terran nerfs lol. Broodlord infestor era, infested Terran era,swarmhosts need I say more? And yes serral does look consistently human against zergs. I actually do think serral is the goat but it's a lot closer than people think and maru definitely has a good justification.
Fun to come watch this video now, when Serral just beat Maru in ESL Spring Finals, again 4-0 EDIT: Also what PiG said at 33:38 , summaries my thougts very well about situation: "Even if Serral would go to GSL now, it would be too late to prove himself, because GLC isn't as competetive anymore"
Honestly ive always had a bit of a strange take on the goat. For me personally the goat is the person with the highest ever skill level, the person who at their peak could not reliably be defeated by anyone else. Yes that rules every old player out because the skill level was just way lower back then compared to today. I dont really care about who has the most GSL wins or whatever to me the goat is the highest skill player of all time, and i think that undeniably is serral.
@@jkkim6928 It's still quite weird how Zerg is deemed as overpowered in professional play but the race suffers lowest win ratio out of the 3 races in ladder play. I think the usage of spellcasters and the Zerg race as a whole being much more defensive and reactive in higher level play attributes in to this. Each race has their own strengths and playstyles, so it's tough to pick what would objectively be the "best".
@@75ncv4hu9tg7 exactly. The reality is that you cannot take tournament wins like they're the only things that matter in terms of balance. They absolutely do matter, but when qualifiers are dominated by Terrans and every Zerg tournament win is from the same 2 people you just can't rely on that small of a sample size to form an accurate opinion on balance. You have to look at a bigger picture, like the top of the ladder. And as a matter of fact, Zerg is quite disfavoured on the GM ladder right now, which is likely why the balance council didn't nerf it. But tell that to the starcraft subreddit, they're in mass psychosis mode right now because of the patch, pretending like tournament wins are the ultimate balance statistic.
Unlimited scanning and Mule production from the same Building counters your argument. Just get good at scanning. It's not like you don't have enough energy! Just get good Bro!@@Ace73Streaming
Nerfs because of Serral, Reynor, Rogue, Dark, Soo etc. There was more than just 1 Zerg, while for Terran there was only Maru (and sometimes TY). Very disingenuous to say Serral got them nerfed alone. By that metric, ByuN is the clear GOAT
@@Khaosgrenade Remember that time uthermal didn't qualify for a tournament but got in anyway because someone else dropped out? So since he hadn't prepared anything he decides to just 3 rax reaper every game? And then he won the tournament? But it was only ByuN who got reapers nerfed, right? Remember when nobody used burrowed roaches for years and then Serral rose to dominance and burrowed roaches were a staple of his play in all matchups? Then they nerfed burrowed roaches and Serral still dominated? Oh hey look, that's exactly what the OP was referencing, funny that.
Serral is the GOAT in SC2, it's not even debatable at this point. Especially placing someone that does not even exist outside of Korea like Maru above Serral, is flat-earth level of stupid.
Rogue is the GOAT of sc2 he's not only won 4 GSL's he's had international success not even debatable serrals region locked wins and online wins are not counted for a reason. If its not Rogue its Life
@@husman2368 Rogue better than Maru? A lot of more well known SC2 personalities seem to think so. Not sure if the dominance of Serral the last 6 years or so can be compared anyone. But it's a personal thing anyway. I think Life is the most skilled/talented player, but he had some other issues that disqualify him.
@@dawnstar81 I don't think he did he would've evolved (life) he was really something special but he's an idiot for ruining his life. Yeah I would 100 percent argue that rogue is the GOAT tho give maru zerg and it's a different conversation. Serral is definitely a special player top 5 maybe even top 3 of all time and the best player right now.
@@husman2368 Maru is given zerg, as everyone playing the game, he just choose Terran. You can't blame choice of race, see this video when PiG brings in the balance "issue" at the end.
29:52 And that's where Miz convinced me. To stand so tall above your best competition is exactly what it means to be the greatest. And to do it so consistently and over such a long time, is what separates Serral from every single other player.
29:52 The GOAT debate begins and ends with this. Everyone on the list is an incredible player in their own right, some of them straight up legendary... yet Serral has a disgustingly high W/L over all almost of them offline, with the notable exception of Solar (albeit over just 3 offline matches), and has a winning record no lower than 57.14% (due to Rogue) against all of them when online tournaments are included. Note that, aside from Rogue, the next "lowest" overall W/L Serral has is 63.64% (Reynor).
I liked Serral, but I didn't really have an opinon of Goat. However, after seeing this, im quite sure he is. How can anyone even say Maru is the Goat? The community never even saw him as the best sc2 player. I rather see Life or Mvp in the first place if we dislike foreingers
Maru doesnt possess the mindset of a champion imo while he definitely has the skill of one. He just seems to be getting into his own way too many times in critical moment and just never learned or innovate himself from it.
@@tigera6 Given his choke hold on the GSL, I'm not sure I agree with the "mindset" comment. However, he's is a player who's career people would look back on and ask "how comes _he_ didn't win an IEM Katowice?"
@@henryviiifake8244 He also should have won 3-4 more GSL than he currently have had he played more sharp. Also, had Rogue not gone to the military at the best timing for Maru, he might not be running away with such GSL counts now. People are acting like Maru in GSL and Maru in IEM are 2 different players, but I am telling you they are the same one. Great consistency, have great deep run most of the time but couldnt get the job done in the end. The difference is that Maru has so many chance to try and fail in GSL, so eventually he will win several because hes too good. He would need more tries to get a win eventually in IEM as well, its not like his chance of winning is Zero percent there.
"If we dislike foriegners" wtf..there is some kind of nationalist BS. SC is an American made game in the first place and a personas ethnicity or nationality doesn't matter.
yeah this isnt best peak ever wich is clearly serral undisputed, this is a goat debate and career length and other accomplishments put maru and rogue on the debate i think in the next years serral is going end the debate, but right now there are solid arguments for those 3 for goat
I am a huge Maru fan and hope he can eventually be the GOAT (still attainable, IMO). But it is very hard to argue for him as the GOAT. After all, to be the greatest of ALL time, you have to first be the greatest of YOUR time. But unfortunately there has never been a Maru's time. If only he won BlizzCon 2018. Or Katowice 2022. Sad.
So there's a guy, let's say a boxer or a race car driver, who has amazing career and is elite player in the best league. Then there's a guy who just destroys everyone, that guy included and everyone from that prestigious league and does it 6 years straight. Now which one is the GOAT?
@@husman2368 life would have easily been the goat if he didnt fuck it up... he was so young too man he woulda been 10 times gsl champ and 3 time world champ easily today
@@GroteskerBastard wym shit record? his record is okay and he clearly has a positive record otherwise he could have not won all those tournaments lmao also "he never was dominant" is such a weird take to say about a 4 times gsl champ and 2 time world champ lmao
Honestly just Serrals winrates are enough to put him ss the goat. I mean a positive winrate vs LITERALLY every other goat player with the sole exception of solar.
I got to watch life at MLG Anaheim , and it was nuts. It was during the qualifiers so he was at a table and I got to stand 4ft away from him in awe. Watching him micro and play was insane, I always wonder how long Life would’ve ruled the SC scene. Serral is dominant, when he plays it’s just perfect, you just always have that feeling that he is gonna win. I always question what Maru shows up to tournaments, I’ve seen him untouchable but I’ve seen him get rekt 😂 All are good Life is the greatest that never was Serral is the greatest no question And Maru is 2nd but it’s not even close imo
Serral is definitely #1 on my personal GOAT list. However, I do think there is an inherent difference between the GSL style finals and the "weekender" style tournaments that Serral dominates in. All the world stage tournaments seem to, at best, have semifinals and finals on the same day. However, I do like the GSLs that have finals as its own day and players have a week to prepare specifically for each other. I think it's an interesting dynamic, the players don't seem to face stamina as a huge factor, and highly specialized builds seem to be more highly rewarded. And it seems as though we never get to see Serral play in that kind of environment.
I see your point, but I'd say GOAT is the one who is best against the whole field without specific preparation. I think a week long prep is a special format and yes, interesting one at that, but not what Starcraft is or should be at it's core.
People who rank gsls above big tournaments confuse me, every other game uses big tournaments as their most prestigious events, gsl is a highly specialized tournament format that isn't even remotely close to how the game is practiced or played by 99.9% of the player base. Also the reason Serral doesn't compete in gsl is because he would have to sit out 46 tournaments while upending his life and living in Korea to win one tournament that has a lower population prize pool than any of the 46 he went to during it. Putting anyone above Serral is ridiculous
I don't think Serral not playing in a GSW-style tournament affects his status at all. In international tournaments, he's playing by the same rules as all the other great players coming out of Korea that he _regularly_ stomps all over, with Maru himself - the undisputed greatest GSL player ever imo - being one of Serral's biggest victims (according to W/L). If Serral was in a GSW-style tournament with the time to prepare for each opponent, I have a hard time imagining he'd do any worse than in international tournament formats.
If at any other sport you called someone without zero world championships the GOAT you'd be laughed out. Especially if the second place has an 80% winrate against them... Also, hard agree that Dark got robbed.
GSL is basically a region locked tournament. You possibly have to stay in Korea for more than a month for a singular tournament. This is something a lot of players, and apparently Serral, doesn't want to do
@@Numenorean921 GSL isn't the same level tournament it used to be and doesn't even have the biggest prize pool. Also professional sports athletes are supported through their state/country, not some small time org. Great comparison
Everyone seems to forget that from mid 2018 to 2021 protoss could only beat zerg with deception and cheap one off all ins. The balance of the PvZ matchup was so atrocious. If both sides played perfectly, 0 mistakes from either side zerg was 100% to win, between infested terrans and abduct outranging feedback the zerg could endlessly trade energy for carriers. Serral is probably the strongest player in history but his results will always be tainted by zerg being objectively overpowered for over two years.
Sorry, I don't think that argument can hold if we're talking a timespan ranging years. Warcraft 3 pro scene has demonstrated that people can win with an off race, bringing other races for very specific matchups on very specific maps. If you keep losing for an extended period of time and its your race then its your problem. Yes, the balance is a problem, but at the end of the day you can't make balance changes, but you can change your race. I'm watching SC1 ASL S17 and I'm awestruck by the shape Snow is in, he's dodging Siege Tank shots with Reavers by splitsecond microing pickups with Shuttles, and while it was known to be theoretically possible, it was unheard of to be done consistently. He's completely dominated the opposition with Protoss, which has historically heavily underperformed in SC1: winning only 2/3 prize money that Z and T have.
@@kane_lives You've named 2 fundamentally different games to use as evidence for a third? And we're talking literally half of Serral's career worth of time and you're acting as if that's irrelevant. Brood war isnt subject to balance changes. Neither is WC3. Through those 3 years numerous changes were made that actively hurt protoss and helped zerg. And that's irrelevant? Of his 27 Premier tournament wins, 18 of them happened between 2018 and the end of 2021. That's 2/3 of his premier tournament championships. And of his 21 Major tournament wins, 11 occurred between 2018 and the end of 2021. Thats over half. Out of 48 first place finishes, 29 are arguably influenced by poor balance. That's significant.
32:02 With the greatest respect to Maru, I have to disagree with the "greater resume" argument. That's because Serral has absolutely dogwalked the same great players Maru turned into spliffs back in Korea... and has a dominant W/L against Maru _himself_ both online (4-1) and offline (14-4).
To the Rogue argument, I don't see Rogue having a single month of Aligulac best against all races status for a single month. 5 of 6 of his GSLs came when Serral was the known best player. I don't think he was ever consistent enough to hold a status of best player against all match ups. Someone who can't hold first place for a single month doesn't deserve to be in the GOAT argument at all. LOL, I guess PiG had it right with this video only mentioning him taking down Maru. He was great at farming his fellow South Koreans in GSLs, I'll give him that.
I remember watching the pre final interview with Maru at recent Katowice. Its the first time I've ever seen him not be confident, he was saying it was going to be a very very hard match, Serral is so good etc etc. I could tell he considered himself the underdog. I think that says it all. Maru himself recognises Serral is generally a stronger player and over a BO7 is going to win 9/10 times. Maru has also had some big dips in performance over the last few years while Serral has consistently maintained his level. Put it this way, if you had to choose 1 player to play a BO7 and they lost you would be shot in the head. Who would you choose? I'm picking Serral every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Hopefully he is one the the people Raynor mentioned might be going over to Korea soon and we can end this debate once and for all.
Back in 2018/19 I still was totally all for Maru being the GOAT. His 4 GSL titles in a row were just unbelievable. But over time Serral proved that he's managing to stay on top with incredibly consistency which I think is unmatched. The only argument one could make for Maru, is that he's been competing in high preparation league systems (GSL) and in weekender-tournaments all the time while Serral only competed in the latter ones. We saw it with Reynor how differently hard competition in GSL can be when he got kicked out in group stage being a favorite on paper. But that's comparing guess work since Serral will never compete in GSL and even if he did, it wouldn't be as meaningful nowadays.
I think you can penalize players in the GOAT argument for only playing for a short amount of time. There is a lot of adaptation that you need to handle from opponents to stay on top. Mentioning staying on top, you should be the best player. GOAT shouldn't be the second or fourth best player and unable to beat the best at the time. I think your list did great, PiG. Personally, I put more weight on who is the best for how long while winning big international tournaments. Serral was a no-brainer for me.
@@leinis80 I kinda feel like this is all SC2 commentators at some point. Artosis spent his prime working years in esports. I sure hope they paid him bookoo bucks, because what does he have going now?
the silly thing about getting 2nd in a tournament being worth so much is that you could avoid all the best players and still get 2nd if you have a lucky bracket. If Maru loses to Serral in the semi-finals then Serral beats Raynor in the finals, that doesn't mean Raynor would have beaten Maru.
Yeah and first place could be substantially better than 2nd or just slightly better. Obviously a lot of the time there's a noticeable gap which really devaules the 2nd placing.
To liken this to American Football, the GSL argument is the same as arguing that unless an NFC team wins an AFC Championship, it doesn't matter how many superbowls they've won, or how many of the best teams and players they've beat. Absolute madness.
GSL is the superbowl though. Its the hardest and most stacked tournament and Korea will always be the country to play in, in any of the SC series. That #2 didnt even try to compete says alot about how scary it is.
@@SsSHardtAre you saying that the Koreans don't care about the world championship trophies? Or about the massive prize pools of other international tournaments? How come they are so outclassed against Serral if GSL is the most stacked? You'd think that Serral with his EU ladder buddies wouldn't be able to keep up?
@@manumainio Again you are talking about a weekend style tournament. Real starcraft tourneys have always been prep tourneys. But I guess you know that if you actually are a SC fan
I am a Maru fan and think Serral is the Goat. I think there's an argument that Serral counters Maru style wise. The other good argument is that clem and reynor are not considered #2 or #3 by a long shot but have far better win rates vs serral. This is because they have more exposure to playing serral's style. I think the argument has validity. I still think Serral is the goat but people who don't still have a vvalid argument. If Serral was regularly playing on Korean servers in Korea would his win rate increase or decrease? I think it would decrease. The question is by how much?
Serral has the playstyle of doing base mechanics of the game very well. The only thing to counter that is abuse of race mechanics you have to scout or something like that which is also difficult to use vs. serral because of how well he scouts and bc of his game sense. Right now, clem gives serral the hardest time out of all terrans despite T being outright overtuned vs. zerg, but i kinda doubt it's because they play each other so much, clem gives all zergs a hard time. And i don't even agree that serrals style counters maru, because maru likes to play endgames and T definitely has a big advantage atm in endgame TvZ.
I disagree. If you look at rankings Korea is dominantly in the top 20. If you look at who is in the top 20 for western players. People will notice several western players rated above Korean players. This is because of region locking. For the longest time anyone could play in Korea but Koreans couldn't play in other regions. This allowed for a diverse set of regions to blossom. But, it has the consequence of skewing ranks. While, Maru is one of the best late game players he is known for :"proxy" and has been citied multiple times mentioning he doesn't like late game. Also, tournament format matters as well. Most of Maru's wins are GSL. Most tournaments aren't setup that way. Serral has never won a GSL. When I say serral counters maru there is a lot to unpack. What format the player excels at is also important, that's part of style. I could go deep, but w/e this just the comment section.
@@Noctani Koreans can play in any region easily nowadays, so any region lock effects have evaporated for quite a while, that's not an argument. Maru has done tons of proxies in the past and does almost none nowadays, especially because T has many MANY other, better options nowadays. In the past, especially in TvP, T could so easily lose in mid- or lategame that they rather proxied than risk it. The GSL does not have a very special tournament format except for very long times in between matches. Serral has never won a GSL because serral never participated in a GSL, and that's mostly because he does not want to commit to living in south korea for over a month just to play in an inhouse tournament against players he beats in all other tournaments all the time. I don't see any relevance of the GSL in terms of skill because serral is mostly threatened by clem these days and clem will not be playing in the GSL. Imo why maru wins the GSLs is not because he excels at any kind of format but because among the koreans he is probably the best player and thus in korean-only tournaments, he will excel. Against non-koreans or while playing overseas, he's not as good (which in itself speaks against him being the GOAT already).
Example 1: When Serral was ranked #1 and the main player taking games off serral was Reynor and Reynor was ranked #2. Reynor and Serral were winning everything in the west so they had the most points in the west. Korea had 5 top players so points are more split. Scoring isn't a good representation of the world unless the world is fighting in the same pool at all times. 2: Region lock still exists in tournaments even the ESL 2024 Spring. So, I don't know where you're getting the information that only a certain # of players from a particular region will be allowed to play. If the top 32 players get into a tournament and most of them are korean the chance of a korean player winning is higher. But when region locking is in place maybe only 4 or 8 can get in. 3: In GSL players seed their own group. That is a strategic skill set unto itself. Also, I'd argue the top 16 Korean players are more likely to defeat Serral than the top 16 western players, so it does matter. I still think he's the best, but I don't think he'd have as much success if tournaments were not region locked. @@asdfasdf-mn8iu
@@Noctani There is not a single player that comes close to beating serral even half reguarly, with the exception of reynor in the past (not as much anymore) and most recently clem. Rogue was the only player who gave serral a hard time, but also way in the past and serral's ZvZ is pretty good by now when it used to be worse (can be easily seen in his katowice games vs. dark in which he mopped the floor with dark). So how is region locking gonna factor in serral's success at all, if there is nobody in korea who poses a relevant threat to serral and he WILL play them from ro16 or ro8 if they're good enough to make it that far? Also, afaik, only few tournaments do even do region-locking. If regions were not locked, serral would potentially not have to play clem, reynor or maxpax, which have a far higher chance of knocking him out than any of the koreans. I don't understand how you think region locking plays a relevant role in that regard when clearly the strongest player for T and Z come from the same region, europe, and not korea. But honestly, whatever. Think what you want to think, we agree on serral being the GOAT by far, so there's really not much point to this discussion.
why? doesn't matter how good of a player you are, if you are a scumbag cheater you should never be mentioned among the greatest players, you're a disgrace.
Right?! I didn't find out about what happened with him until years later, but watching his matches was what really got me into Starcraft II. He was amazing. It's a real shame we'll never get to see what he could have done if he'd been able to play longer and later.
The thing that i dont get about this argument is: Serral is better than maru. He's simply a beter player. And their shining star periods mostly coincide with eachother. So, saying maru is the GOAT is like saying ding liren is the world champion in chess. Sure, your parameters may say that. But everyone knows that the "GOAT" or the "World champion" isnt the best player. Its serral for sc2, and magnus carlsen for Chess.
I like the analogy to chess, but the problem is that Magnus Carlsen has literally won every single prestigious chess tournament, many of them multiple times, and has been the most dominant player for over a decade. Your analogy would work better if Magnus hadn't actually competed in and won an incredibly prestigious tournament format like the rapid and blitz world championship, or the world cup, etc. (to analogize to Serral not having competed in and won a prep-based GSL/Korean individual league tourney). Even still, chess has a relatively stable and accepted ELO rating system, and Magnus being #1 for over a decade matters a lot in chess GOAT convos (which is why a lot of people feel Kasparov is the GOAT over Carlsen). A better analogy for you to play with might be like Magnus v. Vishy Anand, in that the former beat the latter.
@@rahawalaTournament styles, region locks, who went to which country - all of this is entirely unnecessary when we have 1v1 records. Maru played Serral 18 times. Maru won 4 of these matches, and Serral won 14. That's it. SC2 is a 1v1 game, like boxing or chess. If we have a direct match between 2 players in their prime, and one guy wins - he won, that's it. In boxing, beating a guy just once often means you're considered better, period. Having a 3/1 record, including a few title fights, is considered overwhelming evidence. We have fucking 18 matches. 18! Both online and offline, tournament finals and everything else. Maru won 4 times and lost 14 times. There is no debate, Serral beats maru 77% of the time. That's it.
@@kathorsees Requires some deeper thinking. Boxing doesn’t have tournaments so of course tournament format doesn’t matter, but tennis does and it’s hugely important there (e.g. if someone couldn’t win on grass or clay they’d be pretty much out of contention). Tennis is also instructive because if you just did it on head-to-head, Federer wouldn’t even be in the conversation, but when you do it based on achievements and results, he certainly is. SC2 is more unique than other sports/games in that you have an early period of region lock in which Korean individual leagues clearly were more competitive so it’s just challenging because we have a GOAT candidate who (through no fault of his own) simply did not compete and secure results in the most competitive tournaments and leagues the game has had. There are other nuances re: tournament format to think about, but this should give you a good start. If you want to reduce it to head-to-head, that’s fine, but then you’re going to have to say Effort is a more deserving GOAT candidate than Flash, which maybe isn’t the direction you want to go in.
@@rahawala A very civilized and polite answer, thank you! Definitely more calm than my comment - sorry, I tend to get carried away. Yes, I do think head-to-head win count is what matters the most in a 1v1 sport. Doubly so between 2 players in their prime, who have played a lot of matches against each other, over many years and metas. This means that between these two, the guy who won more matches is the clear winner. If it isn't so, I don't know what winning even means. I can understand using other metrics if the players have never faced each other, or one was really past their prime, or there was only 1 or 2 matches where they've met. But there's no such issues here, nothing to cloud the matter or force us to use proxies. Serral beat Maru in 77% of their games. He won more. It's all tautological at this point, really. If the #2 and #1 contenders were Serral and, I don't know, Life - then there's something to discuss, there's inherent ambiguity, like Tyson vs Ali or smth. But if you're comparing 2 guys in a 1v1 sport, and you dismiss their direct 1v1 win count? You (and by "you" I mean the author of the article) are clearly just trying to come up with a complicated scoring system, squinting and playing with numbers to explain why your fav guy *actually* won despite what the score card says.
That's fair, yet the likes of Innovation, Byun, Stats, Rogue, Maru, Dark etc regularly do well in international tournaments, which - I think - legitimises the opinion that Korea is the strongest region overall. With that said, the way Serral has been dominant against that same roster of elite players only serves to prove how much of a monster _he_ is. I would also say I personally find it very controversial to be declared the greatest in a 1v1 competition and not have a World Title (as in IEM Katowice) to your name.
What disturbs me about this conversation is that skill is never factored in. Players in 2024 are more skilled than they were in 2011. It used to be that to beat banelings, Terrans would have to focus fire them. Focus firing was an insane skill to have. Then players realized that they could do marine splits, and that was the skill to have. Now Terrans can focus fire, split, and then pick up and reposition in an instant. Players now are better at not losing units than ever before. 2024 Maru would dominate 2015 Maru. Any player today would beat players back then.
It feels too much like recency bias when that argument is openly made. It allows people to run historical arguments about who won what and when, and they get some weird answers out of that. When the argument for GOAT sticks to the best player Serral is the obvious answer.
@@kmurphy0620 Thanks for your response. How do you reckon "people play SC2 better today than they did in 2011" is recency bias? There are players today in Diamond that could have played in Grandmaster, and Maru of 2024 would absolutely mop the floor with Maru of 2015, as I said in my previous comment. Players in general are much better, more skilled at protecting units and getting value out of them. The level of gameplay is simply higher.
@@smantie It appears to be recency bias when you make the most best player argument because Serral normally beats Byun despite Byun's times of dominance. I do think there is more to skill now being higher than before, so a player of the past is less capable of holding the GOAT status. If SC2 had 4-ish years of a dominant player before Serral, then Serral's 5-6 years of dominance being on top wouldn't clearly make him the GOAT because they may be more skilled now. The problem is that the 2nd best players who were greatest of their eras can't be the clear best player according to places like Aligulac for more than a 1.5 years, like a Byun, MVP or Innovation.
@@kmurphy0620 Your argument doesn't make much sense, perhaps UA-cam comments aren't the best venue to get our points across. ByuN's dominance came with a broken unit, and wasn't nearly sustained as long as Serral's has. Serral's peak has been higher. In fact, using MMR and aliguilac and other tools we can see that Serral's relative skill level has been significantly higher than ByuN's ever was. I'm not even sure what your argument there is trying to be. ByuN still plays at a ridiculously high level, arguably as good or better than he was when he won, and he knows to bow to Serral and beg for mercy.
@@smantie I think where you're getting me wrong is "APPEARS to be recency bias" isn't me disagreeing with you that it's the obvious answer. I said in my original comment that I AGREE with you that it's the obvious answer if you're concerned with the best player, not trying to make this about something else. Serral has 5 years of dominance against all races according to Aligulac, and everyone else has around 1.5 years at best. It's that simple. He's clearly the GOAT by my criteria. I didn't mean to make it seem like I was meaning otherwise. I'll just leave it there.
There's a bunch of points Artosis makes that I think you missed focusing on Miz's article. There's a good argument for Rogue based on your own overvaluing of 1st place finishes given Rogue's insane Bo7 grand finals win rate in premier tournaments in both Korean individual leagues and world championship-tier tourneys. I'm somewhat surprised that you think it's so obvious without having even looked at Rogue...
I actually think Rogue has a great argument for being higher placed than Maru. That streak from mid 2016-early 2017 with dual world champs + Kato 2020 another world champ is HUGE. I realised I'd already spent way too long talking about Maru vs Serral and didn't want to add to the run time. My thoughts would be that Rogue has the highest highs which Serral has only recently reached in the last year in terms of HOW he wins. In that the games often don't even look competitive and his knowledge of builds and strategies combine with his mechanics + macro to win games so one sidedly that top tier opposition doesn't even belong in the match with him. For me showdown between Rogue and Serral in 2018 Blizzcon and since then where Serral won all their LAN matches, combined with Rogue falling out of so many tournaments in the first round vs Serral's higher consistency puts Serral ahead. Rogue's career is still absolutely monumental though and he definitely deserves his spot in the top 3, probably 2nd.
I have not heared any good points from Artosis regarding the Gost discussion. But to be fair, Artosis throwing Rogue out there as a option is not bad. But his reasoning is.
@@PiGstarcraft Fair, but now you're mixing in a bunch of other factors beyond just the first place finishes you said should be valued so highly (consistency, head-to-head record, etc.). Miz explained in great detail how Serral had quite similar peaks and valleys, but more importantly if you follow your own logic of just going with legacy-defining 1st place finishes in premier tournaments, Artosis is right that Rogue takes it. I'm not saying that's the criteria you should use, I'm saying it's what you yourself articulated and seem to be now introducing other factors to justify your opinion that Serral is the GOAT. Totally fine that you have a different take than Miz, but failing to consider Rogue when he's the natural candidate based on what you yourself said you value is a little sus tbh...
This is crazy.. Maru have a tough time winning against Serral. I'm a Maru Terran fanboy but don't get me wrong Serral is consistent in every tournament and series he play especially this 5 years period.
The most impressive feat of Serral (at least in my eyes) is shifting the center of weight from Korea to Europe. Before Serral it was like "Foreigner made it to the round of four, then got drunk and embarrassed himself". Nowadays is like "Who won the last premier championship? It was Serral, right?" Or maybe Reynor, Clem, MaxPax... He first surpassed the top Koreans in skill (those numbers don't lie), and then essentially dragged an entire region to that level. Even if he retires tomorrow, he set such a high standard of play that Reynor, Clem and MaxPax will continue to dominate for years to come. If that isn't greatness, I don't know what is. Maru has literally grown up in the Korean eSports system, and eventually rose to dominate it. But he didn't establish that system, performs rather poorly outside of it, and there is no bunch of talented 20 year-olds vying to topple him from the throne.
GSL used to be the strongest tournament out there. But nowadays the strongest tournament is ESL weekly cup Europe (not kidding, since this is where MaxPax plays).
Starcraft 2 was the Korean people's game for a long time and they had the best talent pool in the world for that game. GSL happened to be their national tournament which took in the best players from their extremely skilled player pool. So of course it's logical to consider Maru being the best player in the world during that time when he dominated GSL. Serral took the title of the best player in the world from Maru.
Serrals 2018 run was legendary, that blizzcon fell on my birthday i remember coming home from work at midnight and staying up till the sun came up watching serrals games
all anyone has to do is link the guy who made this article the video that was posted months ago, maybe over a year now. Of some dude breaking down the stats of all sc2 pros of all time. serral is like seriously leagues above everyone else. In the video he literally makes a chart showing the difference in many different stats across all pros. in about 90% of the stat reads and obviously overall. serral is quite literally fucking 6 steps above every other pro player the chart be looking like .serral . maru . ppl i forget .? .? .? .? .? .? .? .? .? .? etc its actually not even close. if there was a new rank above grand master. serral would be the rank above that.
@@ghoch3 after rewatching this, just as i described. Its not even remotely close. Everyone else in the pro scene has similar scores around their respective skill level. But serral is on a different plane.
For me I just think the 4 GSL's in a row period that Maru had is what puts him 1st for me. Dominated Classic when he was next level in PvT at the time, bashing every Terran with ease. Maru made him look like a gold player. The game 7 push that he had NO business winning vs TY, who everyone agreed was the best TvT'er at the time. The absolute innovation of the Terran race with Proxie's into macro play flawlessly. All at a time where no other Terran but TY was making it deep into tournaments. Serral/Rogue are better in weekend tournaments, but there is no argument for me that Maru is the greatest PREPERATION tournament player. That's why it's tough for me to seperate those guys and claim Serral is the clear GOAT without at least trying a GSL Code S and the long prep format vs those top tier Koreans..
So if I understand you correctly, I order for you to say Serral is #1, he'd need to participate in the Premier Korean tournaments as well? Despite 2x IEM Katowice wins? And, just to play devil's advocate (no, he doesn't pay), wouldn't giving preparation time to someone who's already dominant in a format where prep time is limited given them an _advantage?_
@@henryviiifake8244 No you dont understand me. Preperation tournament (Code S) is different to premier tournament (Super tournament, GSL vs the World). Zerg has had the advantage for YEARS in weekend tournaments. The preperation style of Code S is a completely different beast, that unfortunately, Serral hasnt participated in. That's why Rogue>Serral too. 4 GSL's in addition to his weekend accomplishments. He's a champion in all arenas
You're spot on here. You have to either be sub 70s IQ to not understand the data in front of you or be completely delusional to twist the facts to fit your narrative.
Well, Maru shouldn't even get in the top 4 of a World Championship (or any top global tournament), but he can thank his broken race for hard-carrying him there 2 times (turtling until he gets 12-15 Ghosts each time makes it a literal cheat-mode). And in both, his lack of skill for the title was clearly apparent, especially in the recent 4-0 demolition by the GOAT.
@@OnigoroshiZero I disagree, he is an amazing player and he does deserve that Global Champion title. Hope he gets it someday. Also, no Terran is not OP, zerg is.
Well you can never be a GOAT if you didnt even try to enter the hardest tournament in the world. Go get some GSL's and we can talk. Its like saying a player from the finish football league is the goat cause he scored on his home turf.
Life being in GOAT list would just be insult to everyone else. He's the poster child of disgracing the scene. He doesn't belong anywhere near there and his existence a null. IDK if you can really compare dominating after proleague-collapse and subsequent lack of player pool vs playing during when there were constant cycle and up-and-coming players, where Code A doesn't exist due to lack of players and GSL isn't the competition it once was, with pro players having 2nd job. Serral no doubt would have been a top player but would he have had the same amount of dominance? Previously, if progamer were in mid-20s, they were considered very old as it was pretty disadvantaged field vs a newer up and coming player due to less injuries/load/burnout/skill on a more physically/mechanically skilled younger player. Nowadays, younger progamers in mid-20s are considered young and a lot of pros are approaching or in 30s. Have people forgetten how prestigious and stacked GSL once was?
I think they have...people are always quick to dismiss the times and eras when *their* goats didn't play, I used to get into these kinds of debates but I don't anymore. For me Mvp will always be #1 but I recognise that that's not a popular opinion anymore, where once his greatness was appreciated now people mock the era when he played because it was apparently "diamond level". (I also consider the likes of NaDa and BoxeR to be greater than Flash, which is another unpopular position to take) At the end of the day none of this accomplishes anything, there is no such thing as the greatest of all time. All of it is subjective, people coming up with different arguments to try to cover the fact that their position is nothing more than an emotional viewpoint, not a fact. If someone says to me that they don't think Mvp is the goat, that's fine by me, but to say I'm wrong to think what I think makes no sense!
Probably one of the best metrics to measure player excellence for SC2 would be to look at player matchup WRs versus going rates for tournament player for the same time periods, basically 'by how much' are these top level players overperforming across all 3 matchups.
I don't consider any of these players the GOAT. Just like, if you say Maru is the best Terran player then all other players are the best player of their main chosen race. In my mind, you have to be the best with all three races to be considered the GOAT. But, that's not the case because how can you do well with all three races so, all these players are just the "best" terran, protoss, and or zerg players only.
@@dustinchen lebron played longer than jordan but its not like he dominated consistently in his 21 year career considering he is also notorious for switching teams and never won a ring without switching he won 3 rings but didn't really dominated during those times since he has a allstar team plus he lost 6 times and swept a lot that last ring of his isn't even validated since during that time its covid half of the teams ain't even playing he ain't even top 5 in all time maybe in his generation
Maru was inzane in 2018, remeber watch him play and it was sick. He didnt missed a single beat. But there after that kind of unicorn magic disapear. Ofcourse he is really really reaaaaally good. But serral have done this for years. No argue. Serral is and probaly always be the goat
The Problem with GSL, that most dont want to think about, is that you have to live in Korea for a month, and most global players just cant do that. So the tournament itself filters out 90% of the player pool thus making it much less competitive by actual numbers of applicants.
That's not even an argument. If GSL enables the G.O.A.T. status, Dark, Stats, Zest... can be G.O.A.Ts. Maru was never a World Champion. lol@@Numenorean921
i'm a huge maru fanboi and its clear that maru struggles with premiere tournaments outside of korea because his playstyle is insanely intense and he is just mentally exhausted by the time he reaches the grand final... that said, Serral is the GOAT Maru is #2. i don't even really enjoy watching Serral, but the dude is an absolute machine who has completely figured out the zerg race
Its a dumb thing to say "maru struggles with premiere tournaments outside of KR", just because he hasnt won the championship doesnt mean he got eliminated in the first round. He just got runner-up 2 times in a row, multiple Ro4 and Runner up in tournaments outside of KR as well. If thats the definition of him struggling, then whoever saying that is complete dis-honest or just F up. Now, it is correct to say that Maru has trouble CLOSING the tournament, then I agree. And to be honest, he has trouble with closing in KR as well. The guy win 7 GSL but he could have won 10 if he didnt "choke" the other ones.
beating the guy that was dominant could just mean the previous best player fell off which is also difficult to say if they keep patching the game based on whenever one or two guys wins too much now that's crazy.
Crazy feats; Not to mention Maru back to back runner up for Katowice though... Rogue being only player in history to win Blizzcon then win Katowice. (Rogue also being away from military, could he have more if he didn't have to leave yet?) TY being the only player/caster to ever win a GSL, let alone 2 in the same year and making ro4 the one he didn't win, is impressive. Reynor making GSL RO32 when he was 15, then turned 16 flew back overseas for his first WCS event. Innovation was the only active player, until he retired that had won a GSL in wings/swarm/lotv era (1 in each, pretty awesome). Life's story is super impressive, shameful how it ended unfortunately. soO's 6 time GSL finals, multiple finals in other tournies as well-- Darks consistant ro4/8 over so many years. Fairly sure Neeb was the first foreigner to win on Korean soil-- Competition; the other thing to say would be typically in GSL, their are favourites, but also anyone can sort of win to an extent, in the last WCS years, it's really only serral/reynor/clem win them. GSL being lesser prize pools now is true, but at the same time the player pools got massively cut as well, but the when you look at the ro16 and see the names you can look at it and say, realistically any of these players have a chance of winning--where as european style, serral/clem/reynor are there--you see them winning. But at the same time the Korean's have so much pride in winning such a glorified tournament, does that differ because of prize money? Not to mention The kespa era, there were also way more players and way more GSLs throughout the year as well. Also WCS formats is different compared to GSL and have alot less prep times. Region lock and online tournaments are a huge difference too... What is the best though? Maru doing stuff since 2013, is that more impressive to the rise of Serral since circa '18? No one will ever forget Blizzcon 2018 when Serral did win it to become the first foreigner to do so. Everyone has their own story and changes depending how you choose to look at it. "this person won this era, this patch was bad, rogue only won cause nydus broken' etcetc. You're either going to agree or find an argument because 'you' want one, because it 'doesn't match the way you think/feel about the situation. Which sometimes will be changed because this was memorable for this reason you were at home or with friends and witnessed it together--so that in it's self helps the meaning from the victory imo-- Personally, I love Rogue/TY/herO/stats/reynor That's my opinion, great analysis pig.
I feel that "best" or "GOAT" is always going to cause issues... for me the "best" is the person that elevates the game the most. Maybe not in wins, but in bringing excitement, discussions and the public eye to the game. The person that makes others want to play and makes the public want to watch, or participate. It might stem from a name you can chant out in a crowd, or a personality quirk... something that is greater than them, greater than the game, but brings us all in to the game. For me honestly it's 5 Names.. Lowko, PiG, Harstem, GuMiHo, and Scarlet Lowko, that accent and joy of the game bridges that gap from gamers to normals in a relatable, quirky but really enjoyable way. Passion really describes his stuff. PiG, excitement, better breakdowns, fun challenges and competitions, and willing to take it a little less seriously while still bringing new content. (Pro gamer vs 12 Cheater AI comes to mind.) Harstem, Beating GM with stupid stuff, loves to mess around and has fun, and yet still can get in the to 4 of pro events, showing he's damn good and still loving the game. GuMiHo. The name chants so well, he doesn't win often but always brings something new and fresh to the table, always smiles and his games seem never boring. Scarlet. The only female pro SC2 player I know of, and as far as I can tell gender is never brought up, but she does fun challenges, revolutionized creep spread and engages with fan and casters like PiG's holdout challenges, and while doesn't win a lot compared to some others, she brings people to the game, and we need more female role models to enjoy. Without these 5 people, and people like them... it fades off into a game that someone else does, and plays and we stop caring... and it slowly goes away....
thank you for saying the obvious thing everyone else is too afraid to say. life easily is top 5 all time, and easily would be the goat if we didnt ban him. he was serral level dominant in the most competitive era, and he was like 14. no one else comes close.
I commented this on Tasteless's video but I will put it here too: This debate pisses me off. It is just blatant bias against and disrespect towards Serral. That isn't a question he is the GOAT in SC2 and nobody comes close. He has a 69% win rate in offline tournaments, and his lowest win rate is 68.73% against Terran....but but Koreans!!! He has a 58% win rate in games, and a 60.87% match win rate...okay that doesn't seem crazy pretty comparable to Maru against Koreans...But this is where things get crazy: Since 2017 (7 years) Serral is 218-114 (65.66%) in games against Koreans in offline matches, 78-28 (73.58%) in matches against Koreans in offline matches. His ZvT is 63.85%, his ZvP is 67.29%, his ZvZ is 66.32% overall of 65.66% Just for reference Maru is at 60% in games, 64% in matches. with TvP is 58%, TvT is 63%, TvZ is 60%. Just for reference Flash in SC1 is TvP is 73%, TvT is 73%, and TvZ is 71% with a 72.4% overall. The difference between Serral and Maru is as big as the difference between Serral and Flash. Given the context of Flash, that is a REALLY BIG difference. +300 games is more than enough to have confidence in the results. This is why it isn't even a discussion or a debate. NOBODY needs time to think about who was better at their respective game it is Flash, you don't even think about it. That difference between Serral and Flash, is the same as the difference between Serral and Maru right now. Serral isn't competing to be the GOAT of SC2, he already is. Serral's only competition is literally chasing down the GOAT in not just Starcraft but in Gaming. Lets go down their list: Maru: Serral is 13-3 (2 ties) in matches against Maru. He just 4-0 Maru and is 39-19 against Maru, he has a 67% win rate against Maru. Rogue: Serral vs Rogue is 8-7 in matches Serral favored, and 25-22 in games Serral favored. INnoVation: 16-8 in matches. 40-23 in games. Serral favored Zest: 11-4 in matches. 27-11 in games. Serral favored SoO: 8-4 in matches. 29-14 in games. Serral favored SoS: 3-0 in matches, 5-0 in games. Serral favored TY: 6-2 in matches, 18-9 in games. Serral favored Rain: 1-1 in matches. 3-2 in games. Draw. Literally if Serral is in a best of ANYTHING against ANYONE on the list he is not only favored but HEAVILY favored to win. Want to add in more? Since he already is clearly ahead of any of the Koreans on the list? Dark: 9-5 in matches, 29-25 in games. Serral favored Byun: 13-6 in matches, 38-19 in games. Serral favored Solar: 16-7-1 in matches, 43-30 in games. Serral favored Cure: 18--2 in matches, 43-17 in games. Serral favored HerO: 6-3 in matches, 16-9 in games. Serral favored GuMiho: 10-4 in matches, 25-16 in games. Serral favored There is no reality where Serral isn't the GOAT in Starcraft 2. There isn't anyone REMOTELY as dominant as Serral is. He hasn't won a GSL. And guess what Serral is good enough to not need to in order to be the GOAT. If a player wants to play the best individual player, go play in Europe. Sound familiar? If a player wants to play the best collection of players, go play in Korea. The sentiment is the same. If a player wants to be the GOAT in SC2 go and dominate Serral as hard as he has dominated LITERALLY everyone else. People do not get to hide behind "He hasn't won a GSL" when it is pretty obvious he would have won multiple if he was consistently playing in them. Talks of "weeks of prep" Do you know what players do when Serral in a tournament? Either prep against Serral or prep for 2nd place...these things are not mutually exclusive. And to nip this in the bud comparing Serral to other non-koreans, they ARE NOT comparable. Reynor vs Koreans in offline formats: 111-108 (50.68%) in games, 38-34 (52.78%) in matches. Astrea vs Koreans in offline formats: 60-86 (41.10%) in games, 21-33 (38.89%) in matches. Scarlet vs Koreans in offline formats: 263-307 (46.14%) in games, 96-127 (43.05%) in matches. They are not comparable for the same reason that Serral is the GOAT and none of them are even sniffing the top 10 list.
I get the point of more players being more competitive, but looking as the quality of gameplay and the complexity of armies handles compared to the past, the game play has evolved to a whole other level. I would argue that many todays tier 2 players might be highly competitive with players and their styles in the past. Granted, they old guard might have evolved, we do not know, but many dropped off a bit and it does not take away the additional skill and knowledge they have now.
100% agree. You can't be the GOAT if there's another play who beats you *all the time*--at the very least there would be an asterisk next to your GOAT title. And if that other player who beats you all the time *also* beats all the other players most of the time, well... then they're clearly the GOAT, not you. For me, the top 3 of all time are Serral, then Life, and finally Maru in that order.
The only excuse I have for Serral to not be the GOAT of SC2 is the fact that he was not dominant at all in Wings of Liberty or Heart of the Swarm and only truly dominant in Legacy of the Void. Things to note: WOL released in 2010, HOTS released in 2013, LOTV released in 2015. Based off Serral's liquipedia page, he didn't get his first premier tournament top 3 until 2017-06-19 in WCS Jönköping which is almost a year after the release of LOTV. Other than these reasons, I still think that Serral's win rate, amount of premier tournament wins, and earnings still makes him the best player of SC2. Maybe not the greatest of all "TIME".
I share your opinion, Serral is clearly the GOAT in by every metric, it shouldn't be a discussion. Happy to see Life mentioned too, I personally think he should come in at 5th just behind InNoVation with Rogue taking 2nd and Maru 3rd.
Life broke my heart a little bit at the time, he was my favourite player from the moment he appeared and I thought he was GOAT even after he was banned, but as I said it did break my heart a bit. Until Serral appeared there wasn't another player who I liked anywhere near as much as Life
Going to be late 2025 at the earliest. He has military service this year. We'll see how long SC2 stays competitive, but I doubt a GSL trophy at that point would count for much in peoples minds.
Serral studying his opponents and coming with strategies for every single one of them AND executing those strategies flawlessly makes him the GOAT in my opinion.
@@nogghorn7080 cause he cannot put Maru anymore. But yeah before Serral kicked Maru ass, he was saying Maru. He still say Maru is the player that impress him the most.
@@ppnoir And most recently he's saying Clem is better than Serral- not even that, he's saying that Zerg is OP because obviously Clem is the best player! Bonkers
Serral haters. 1. Serral wins TOO MUCH 2. Serral is not GOAT wins not enough 3. Nerf Zerg until Serral can't reach quarterfinals, at the detriment of other Zerg players.
I don't know anywhere near enough to weigh in on the topic at hand. However, my personal favorite is MarineKing. Not really a contender here on relevance or stats. Also caught some shame on his name even though he was vetted as a non participant in the drama. But, his influence over how Terran gets played (multi prong, distractions infront of decisive strikes etc) still creeps up in the best Terrans currently out there. I feel like in some ways, he wrote the book- he built the ship, and the next generation flew the wings off of it.
A long and detailed study into how to tweak the parameters so that Maru just rises above Serral has paid off. But I guess a few more years of Serral brutally beating everyone, including Maru, are needed to get to the point where no amount of gaming the stats will end up with anyone but Serral at the GOAT position.
I think my biggest problem with the Maru vs Serral debate is it really honestly feels like everything pre 2018 is ignored, which is odd, as, at least for me, while post 2018 is technically the highest level of play (from Serral, Maru, Stats, Reynor, Rogue, Dark specifically), I do not think a game that is this underfunded and a scene that sees this little in terms of justification to enter and grind deserves as much credence. With the majority of Maru's success (and all of Serral's) happening in post 2017, I question the legitimacy of calling either of them GOAT. Hell I'd call Rogue GOAT over either of them and he has a very similar problem. This really is all Life's fault for match-fixing because no shot we he wouldn't be undisputed had it not been for his crimes...
Clearly sOs is the best player of all time, given he built a nexus in his opponent's base and won, during a professional match. No other accomplishment will ever outshine that, I don't care how many tournament wins you get or how much money you make.
For Florencio that's a Tuesday.
Astrea did that as well
@@enriquegarciacota3914 Flo does that while smurfing vs diamonds
I unironically love this
I was thinking it was Scarlett, rolling Protoss for the memes against DRG and winning :P
What i found really suspicious is that Miz wrote a notable list for every other person in the list except Serral and instead just linked liquipedia
Well duh, its literally everyone
Serral has kept winning despite balance changes and build snipes for the past 6 years. I'm not sure what else make you the goat, right? Others may come and go but serral has been a consistent top 2 atleast.
I agree Serral is goat but a lot of the nerfs to zerg were required because zerg was clearly overpowered at the highest level, for a long time. So saying he won despite being overpowered is kind of dumb.
dude, on what drugs you are? we had 2 balance patches in last 6 months, 3rd will be out soon and before that 7 years we had same thing.
he's been playing a bunch of emaciated Europeans with a weak culture, or minor online tournaments hosted from basically across the street against koreans. he's not very good..?
@@fjoiewafnoso if zerg was so overpower why do you not win a champion??
@@courage3535 blatantly op? Why isn't all top spots zerg?
Basically, the author's argument hinges on Serral will never be the No.1 GOAT unless he wins a GSL Code S
(Even though Serral frequently BEATS the best players of GSL) Emphasis seems to be more on GSL achievement.
IF Serral entered and won a GSL expect the goal posts to be moved.
This is seriously delusional. The amount of mental gymnastics required for this train of thought is truly impressive.
I think you're 100% right. If serral moved to Korea for a year and won gsl, the goal post would be moved to another nonsensical standard of why he isn't the best.
@@AbgarMusayelyanit would be "GSL isnt competetive anymore so it doesnt count"
All Korean players are thankful that Serral doesn't play GSL, or otherwise GSL champion will no longer in Korean players hand.
@@阿倉-o2yUnironically a true statement. Given that practically no one but rogue and Dark ever really wanted to play serral at a tournament pretty much every time we saw korean players learning they had to play serral it was always "I hope I can win" which isn't a confident statement.
The counterpoint is maru never won a world championship, ever. You can’t be goat if you’ve never won katowice or wcs
I mean, if the GOAT has a 23% win rate against the 2nd on the list - should he really be the GOAT?
#1 best player shouldn't necessarily be winning more against #2 player. In any complex game there is at least a bit of rock-paper-scissors going on between playstyles.
I would argue that it's not possible to determine who is "GOAT" in general, only in terms of specific metrics.
@@fritt_wastaken Dude, Serral Smashes Maru. He has a 75% series win rate and 67% game count win rate, over Maru, Its not even close to 50/50, its a dominating win rate.
He 4 - 0 in Katowice 2024,
3-0 in Master coliseum 7,
3 - 0 Master coliseum 6,
4 -1 in Starleague 9,
3 - 1 in king of battles,
3 -1 in Katowice 2022
Watch a video where someone actually has good metrics for determining the Goat. ua-cam.com/video/5p9eukjLJA0/v-deo.html
@@fritt_wastaken Yeah not necessarily, like when one player is fading and the other rising.
But when the games are during relevant time period as most of these are then you can't be considered even the best player of that time period if you only win tournaments which don't include the other player.
Aka if you take Maru and put him in WCS/ESL Serral continues winning, if you take Serral and put him in GSL, Serral continues winning...
Look at how many of Marus "accomplishments" are post 2018 tournies that don't include Serral...
And don't give me that GSL preparation tournies are different, any tournament Serral enters and someone else wants to win it, requires they have a plan for Serral.
@@Jeff-fc7nf I feel like you didn't read his comment or didn't care to respond to it. He's saying it doesn't matter if Serral wins 100% of the time against Maru, that's not the only factor in determining the GOAT. I personally think winning 3 GSLs in a row, the entire run for a year, is one of the most impressive feats in Starcraft and that adds major points for my personal calculations that I don't think can be quantified by win percentages, especially not against a single player.
@@Meatbrawl player A wins 75% against player B, player B - 75% against player C, player C - 75% against player A.
Which one of them is the better player?
Serral's series win rate against Maru is better than Maru's series win rate (against the field)
The fact that this doesn't matter at all but people upvote it is why this drama is so funny.
@@AggnogIt kinda matter. Between the two top contenders to the goat title one of them destroys the other regularly. Showing this is a way to try to bring to reality the deniers who still find a way in their heads to put maru at the top.
@@Aggnog if your "GOAT" is my "GOAT"'s punching bag, it absolutely matters and you would be a clown.
Serral has an 80% series win rate against Koreans since 2018 or so (lowest being 68%, highest being 84% in a year)
@@Aggnog Eh. I mean, arguably none of this matters much. It's certainly less important than, like, climate change. But if we are, collectively, going to try to momentarily distract ourselves from the crushing futility of existence by talking about how good Serral and Maru are at Starcraft (spoiler: they're very good), then I think it's a pretty relevant, and amusing, statistic!
"Life could be the best player of all time". "I took a map off Life". :P:P:P
I watched IEM Katowice I don't think anyone can argue Serral isn't the GOAT. Man destroyed everybody. So much so he got infestor nerfed again.
Maru got Ghost and Raven nerfed during the last 2 years before this but thats no sign of him being great apparently.
@@tigera6 he's pretty great, just not serral level great
@@TheAshhole123 Probably, but saying that Serral is so great that they nerf Infestor, while not mentioning how they also nerf Ghost and Raven because of Maru is a bit of a mis-memory.
@@tigera6 the Ghost was barely nerfed. It can still 1-shot every important unit, it's still extremely cheap for the value and power it provides (no Terran should be allowed to have more than 3-4 at one time with its current capabilities), 1-2 EMPs can disable every spellcaster of a Zerg or Protoss (while also damaging the entire Protoss army), it's by far the hardest spellcaster to kill, and it has a strong basic attack that can hit both ground and air which is ridiculous for a spellcaster support unit.
There is no need to even talk about Mines, Mules, the brain dead easy defensive capabilities a Terran has with its units, or the literal cheat that is Scan.
@@OnigoroshiZero Meanwhile the Viper which can fly, instantly disable ground area, lift even massive unit like freaking BC/Thor/Carrier, can recharge energy and ALSO has an air splash damage in leave untouched for its entire existing. Yep you are completely making sense.
PiG is right, this GOAT list makes no sense. There is only ONE, undisputed, undefeated, flawless SC2 players, the Boss Toss MC. You might see losses on his record, but according to the Good Games for the Fans eSports Commission, those loses were deemed to be no contests retroactively. Serral is obvs 2nd
The most persuasive thing to me is that Serral has a positive win record against every single top player both online and offline (with the sole exception of Solar 1-3). You could *maybe* argue that Serral has a positive win record vs. Maru due to luck, or because the matchup favors Serral, but you can't explain why Serral beats *every* other top player.
I am pretty sure Maru also has positive win record against every single top player as well outside of Serral, if you use the cut-off year as 2017 as that when Serral career started. Maru had to start as a 12yo boys against adult since 2012 and suffer more beating and grow up from it. Serral gotta stay in his comfort zone being the region-locked EU tournaments to grow and learn.
@@tigera6
Serral also played Koreans pre 2018. IIRC Maru has a negative score vs Innovation (close) and versus Serral.
I researched the topic a while back ago and it is true that only has a positive record versus the top Korean players he played regularly. His statistics are of the charts with him reaching win rates of over 85% Vs top Koreans.. no one else ever reached 80% (Maru came close with 78%) and he did it in 3 years... the guy is absolutely unmatched.
Agreed! Except I don't think one can argue that Serral won over Maru thanks to luck. Not 14 times out of 18 matches, all over 6 years and God knows how many patches, nerfs, meta shifts, etc.
1 win can absolutely be luck. 3 wins out of 4 - very hard to imagine, but still possible. 14 wins out of 18? Get out of here, luck has nothing to do with it.
@@marcelbenner993 Serral play mainly in the EU region before 2017 with only a couple tournament that has KR players. So for 3-4 years he doesnt have much win or loss against KR, then he took the big step and win A LOT starting 2018.
But Maru probably had lots of growing pain since his starting career in 2012. He should be losing to top KR left and right between 2012 and 2017 because thats where he plays. So if you put Serral in KR in his early years, say 2014-2017, you think his record vs KR would stay the same?
@@tigera6 Maru doesn't have >50% maps wins vs Zest, or TY. They both have like 51-52% against him. If we count offline games only, Maru is 39.5% against Rogue, and 47.7% against Trap. That's a stark contrast to Serral's 77% against him overall, and 79% offline.
The only players who gave Serral a close overall record are 53.7% vs Dark and 53.2% vs Rogue. Offline games, Serral is 64% in maps and 75% in matches vs Dark; and 83% in maps and 100% in matches vs Rogue, albeit there were only 4 offline matches.
I've watched a lot of SC2 in 2013-2015 era. During that time NOBODY regarded Maru as the best Terran in the world, he was top2-top3 Terran during this time. So we can't say he's a GOAT because of his 2013-15 results. We also cannot say he's a GOAT because of his 2018+ results because Serral clearly has a better record. So I don't understand how some people can say Maru's a GOAT, like WTF.
For me GOAT is Serral or Life. Such a shame that Life did what he did. I still remember watching Blizzcon finals against MMA at 6 AM. It was such a great time for SC2 Esport
People put far too much weight into GSL as the be all and end all of SC2. In between incoherent ramblings, Artosis made a pretty good point about Maru that hes undoubtedly the best GSL player of all time, but not the "GOAT" as you cant really put that tag on a player as theres so many variables. He made the point that Fruitdealer was winning tournaments when Zerg were considered drastically underpowered, when no other Zergs were winning, so is he the greatest because he was able to overcome something like that?
Life was so good that he could only be beaten by someone like sOs… someone who plays the game his own way, always. No amount of practicing could prepare someone for an sOs 7-set finals.
If I were to compare Life’s play to what I see now, it’s like Dark’s chaotic aggression with a gents mix of Serral’s precise mechanics. How I wish we’d have gotten to see Life develop for another 7+ years.
Innovation was by far the best Terran before in that 2013-15, then Maru was up there with Taeja and Flash as candidates for second best.
@@nasigil5928Flash? in sc2?
Last game i remember seeing of him, was him getting bullied by dimaga, and then i think he kinda left for sc1 again no?(or are you including SC1?)
Did Life give you lemons? Well then you know what to do.
Rogue has a better claim than Maru as the Goat. Imo it's a legit 3 way discussion. Even Serral said multiple times in interviews that Rogue was the biggest threat to him in the tournaments. Rogue has basically all the argument Maru has (to a slightly less degree) like good proleague player, long consistent career, won many GSLs, but has also won big international events.
Rogue never had a long consistent player career, infact hes more like Serral then Maru, winning big tournaments since LOTV. He didnt do jack until late 2017 despite start playing from 2013.
@@tigera6 Rogue was known as the guy that consistently made Ro8 every season in HOTS starting from 2015, hence 'Rogue award'. Had good winrate in Pro league. But you are right he became a monster only in LoTV. Still I wouldn't say he didn't do jack before then.
@@Young-ep8ik Yeah he didnt win the big tournament but did get into Ro4/8 a couple time, you are right.
Rogue absolutely does not have a better claim than Maru to GoAT lmao. Longevity is a primary factor I.E: How many years were you at an elite level for, and Maru has been elite since Wings of Liberty, no matter which version of the game or which patch.
Rogue had success on one single patch at a time when Zerg was doing extremely well in general. Not the same.
I didn't believe that there were actually still people who would put Maru before Serral. For my perspective (I've never watched any proleague matches) that's kinda insane.
Why not, he plays the inferior race, gets second best results. He was winning everything pre raven nerf, no one could touch him. Not even Terran and we all know Zerg is serral worst match and that makes him human
@@otalgebra4436 giga copium lmao first of all right now terran is obviously not the "inferior race" right now and second serral has a 70% winrate in ZvZ, how is that human, yeah sometimes he loses to someone worse but thats because the matchum is so volatile rn
Artosis thinks it's Rogue.
@@alexbaldazzi8083 lol you can't sit there and tell me Zerg isn't the superior race throughout the history of sc2 even now zvt winrrate is positive for the Zerg and this is before Terran nerfs lol. Broodlord infestor era, infested Terran era,swarmhosts need I say more? And yes serral does look consistently human against zergs. I actually do think serral is the goat but it's a lot closer than people think and maru definitely has a good justification.
@@otalgebra4436 Terran is vastly more OP compared to both Zerg and Protoss, it's not even close.
I felt kinda bad about MaxPax's winrate vs. Serral, but it turns out, it's basically in line with top players. xD
Fun to come watch this video now, when Serral just beat Maru in ESL Spring Finals, again 4-0
EDIT: Also what PiG said at 33:38 , summaries my thougts very well about situation: "Even if Serral would go to GSL now, it would be too late to prove himself, because GLC isn't as competetive anymore"
Honestly ive always had a bit of a strange take on the goat. For me personally the goat is the person with the highest ever skill level, the person who at their peak could not reliably be defeated by anyone else. Yes that rules every old player out because the skill level was just way lower back then compared to today. I dont really care about who has the most GSL wins or whatever to me the goat is the highest skill player of all time, and i think that undeniably is serral.
+99 for skill
-10 for race advantage
XD
@@jkkim6928Zerg is definitely not the advantages race.
And less so now than at other times, in my estimation @@christopherneedham9584
@@jkkim6928 It's still quite weird how Zerg is deemed as overpowered in professional play but the race suffers lowest win ratio out of the 3 races in ladder play. I think the usage of spellcasters and the Zerg race as a whole being much more defensive and reactive in higher level play attributes in to this. Each race has their own strengths and playstyles, so it's tough to pick what would objectively be the "best".
@@75ncv4hu9tg7 exactly. The reality is that you cannot take tournament wins like they're the only things that matter in terms of balance. They absolutely do matter, but when qualifiers are dominated by Terrans and every Zerg tournament win is from the same 2 people you just can't rely on that small of a sample size to form an accurate opinion on balance.
You have to look at a bigger picture, like the top of the ladder. And as a matter of fact, Zerg is quite disfavoured on the GM ladder right now, which is likely why the balance council didn't nerf it. But tell that to the starcraft subreddit, they're in mass psychosis mode right now because of the patch, pretending like tournament wins are the ultimate balance statistic.
dont forget the huge nerfs zerg has gotten because of serral and he still wins.
burrowed roaches entered the chat
Unlimited scanning and Mule production from the same Building counters your argument. Just get good at scanning. It's not like you don't have enough energy! Just get good Bro!@@Ace73Streaming
Nerfs because of Serral, Reynor, Rogue, Dark, Soo etc. There was more than just 1 Zerg, while for Terran there was only Maru (and sometimes TY). Very disingenuous to say Serral got them nerfed alone. By that metric, ByuN is the clear GOAT
@@Ace73Streaming unlimited scans auto-ban on burrow
@@Khaosgrenade Remember that time uthermal didn't qualify for a tournament but got in anyway because someone else dropped out? So since he hadn't prepared anything he decides to just 3 rax reaper every game? And then he won the tournament? But it was only ByuN who got reapers nerfed, right?
Remember when nobody used burrowed roaches for years and then Serral rose to dominance and burrowed roaches were a staple of his play in all matchups? Then they nerfed burrowed roaches and Serral still dominated? Oh hey look, that's exactly what the OP was referencing, funny that.
Serral is the GOAT in SC2, it's not even debatable at this point. Especially placing someone that does not even exist outside of Korea like Maru above Serral, is flat-earth level of stupid.
Rogue is the GOAT of sc2 he's not only won 4 GSL's he's had international success not even debatable serrals region locked wins and online wins are not counted for a reason. If its not Rogue its Life
@@husman2368 Rogue better than Maru? A lot of more well known SC2 personalities seem to think so. Not sure if the dominance of Serral the last 6 years or so can be compared anyone. But it's a personal thing anyway. I think Life is the most skilled/talented player, but he had some other issues that disqualify him.
Hmmm debatable.
@@dawnstar81 I don't think he did he would've evolved (life) he was really something special but he's an idiot for ruining his life. Yeah I would 100 percent argue that rogue is the GOAT tho give maru zerg and it's a different conversation.
Serral is definitely a special player top 5 maybe even top 3 of all time and the best player right now.
@@husman2368 Maru is given zerg, as everyone playing the game, he just choose Terran. You can't blame choice of race, see this video when PiG brings in the balance "issue" at the end.
29:52 And that's where Miz convinced me. To stand so tall above your best competition is exactly what it means to be the greatest. And to do it so consistently and over such a long time, is what separates Serral from every single other player.
29:52 The GOAT debate begins and ends with this.
Everyone on the list is an incredible player in their own right, some of them straight up legendary... yet Serral has a disgustingly high W/L over all almost of them offline, with the notable exception of Solar (albeit over just 3 offline matches), and has a winning record no lower than 57.14% (due to Rogue) against all of them when online tournaments are included.
Note that, aside from Rogue, the next "lowest" overall W/L Serral has is 63.64% (Reynor).
I liked Serral, but I didn't really have an opinon of Goat. However, after seeing this, im quite sure he is. How can anyone even say Maru is the Goat? The community never even saw him as the best sc2 player. I rather see Life or Mvp in the first place if we dislike foreingers
Maru doesnt possess the mindset of a champion imo while he definitely has the skill of one. He just seems to be getting into his own way too many times in critical moment and just never learned or innovate himself from it.
@@tigera6 Given his choke hold on the GSL, I'm not sure I agree with the "mindset" comment. However, he's is a player who's career people would look back on and ask "how comes _he_ didn't win an IEM Katowice?"
@@henryviiifake8244 He also should have won 3-4 more GSL than he currently have had he played more sharp. Also, had Rogue not gone to the military at the best timing for Maru, he might not be running away with such GSL counts now.
People are acting like Maru in GSL and Maru in IEM are 2 different players, but I am telling you they are the same one. Great consistency, have great deep run most of the time but couldnt get the job done in the end.
The difference is that Maru has so many chance to try and fail in GSL, so eventually he will win several because hes too good. He would need more tries to get a win eventually in IEM as well, its not like his chance of winning is Zero percent there.
"If we dislike foriegners" wtf..there is some kind of nationalist BS. SC is an American made game in the first place and a personas ethnicity or nationality doesn't matter.
he clearly is wrong. SERRAL is by faaaaar the best, hands down. not a question, not a debate
yeah this isnt best peak ever wich is clearly serral undisputed, this is a goat debate and career length and other accomplishments put maru and rogue on the debate
i think in the next years serral is going end the debate, but right now there are solid arguments for those 3 for goat
@@fabianbravo6008 Serral's reign at the top has been like 5 years now, I think he has already put the career argument to bed too
Lmao... The salty tears of Serral's ballsweat sniffers are surprisingly delicious.
He can be if he won more GSL, clearly you don't understand why he isn't
@@trumpet43samuraiSerral has won like 4 non regional offline tournaments, hardly a 5 year dominance
I wonder how crazy the pro scene would have been if Life, YoDa, and all them didn't match fix. I would have LOVED to see a Life vs Serral match.
I am a huge Maru fan and hope he can eventually be the GOAT (still attainable, IMO). But it is very hard to argue for him as the GOAT. After all, to be the greatest of ALL time, you have to first be the greatest of YOUR time. But unfortunately there has never been a Maru's time. If only he won BlizzCon 2018. Or Katowice 2022. Sad.
Lol he won 2022. That final was crap.
@@Caccac40 If only he won 2022 bro.
So there's a guy, let's say a boxer or a race car driver, who has amazing career and is elite player in the best league. Then there's a guy who just destroys everyone, that guy included and everyone from that prestigious league and does it 6 years straight. Now which one is the GOAT?
The third guy who did both: Beat the best league AND destroys everyone in all the other leagues. That guy is called Rogue.
@@Nuurix 100 percent correct either him or life
@@Nuurix Except that Rogue has a shit record against a whole bunch of people. Dude has some great tournament wins, but he never was dominant.
@@husman2368 life would have easily been the goat if he didnt fuck it up... he was so young too man he woulda been 10 times gsl champ and 3 time world champ easily today
@@GroteskerBastard wym shit record? his record is okay and he clearly has a positive record otherwise he could have not won all those tournaments lmao
also "he never was dominant" is such a weird take to say about a 4 times gsl champ and 2 time world champ lmao
I was a Serral fanboy until 13:52, where you single-handedly convinced me that Life is the GOAT. I can't care about numbers after that.
Ouuhh ok and then I learned what happened after. Ouch ouch ouch.
@@enriquegarciacota3914 LOL. I read that and i was like waiiit and then yeah
if Life was being normal from long ago, yeah his dominance probably even greater than serral, he is absolutely monster back then
Showing up drunk for the finals is pretty darn next level 😅
he was a great promise, takes more than that to be the goat
Artosis being korean fan enter the chat :
artosis is a korean, technically hes filipino but lives in korea.
@@TerryD5000 many korean cant admit uerope player are better then them, if you ask they will give some excuse
Western fans enter this youtube channel:
But but but the GSL!
@@philh2932but but but eu locked tournament
Absolutely agreed.
Couldn't be more obvious to me, I'm sorry Artosis but u can't compare Rogue to Serral lmao.
Honestly just Serrals winrates are enough to put him ss the goat. I mean a positive winrate vs LITERALLY every other goat player with the sole exception of solar.
I got to watch life at MLG Anaheim , and it was nuts. It was during the qualifiers so he was at a table and I got to stand 4ft away from him in awe. Watching him micro and play was insane, I always wonder how long Life would’ve ruled the SC scene.
Serral is dominant, when he plays it’s just perfect, you just always have that feeling that he is gonna win.
I always question what Maru shows up to tournaments, I’ve seen him untouchable but I’ve seen him get rekt 😂
All are good
Life is the greatest that never was
Serral is the greatest no question
And Maru is 2nd but it’s not even close imo
Could you smell the alcohol on him from where you were seated? Sorry just trolling!
Eh it's one mans opinion. Serral is #1 for me and it's not even close.
Serral is definitely #1 on my personal GOAT list. However, I do think there is an inherent difference between the GSL style finals and the "weekender" style tournaments that Serral dominates in. All the world stage tournaments seem to, at best, have semifinals and finals on the same day. However, I do like the GSLs that have finals as its own day and players have a week to prepare specifically for each other. I think it's an interesting dynamic, the players don't seem to face stamina as a huge factor, and highly specialized builds seem to be more highly rewarded. And it seems as though we never get to see Serral play in that kind of environment.
I see your point, but I'd say GOAT is the one who is best against the whole field without specific preparation. I think a week long prep is a special format and yes, interesting one at that, but not what Starcraft is or should be at it's core.
Serral one every GSL tournament he ever attended. Gsl vs the world 2018-19 champion. Serral is the best period
this is like arguing Flash isn't the greatest at Broodwars. Just complete indifference to the facts.
People who rank gsls above big tournaments confuse me, every other game uses big tournaments as their most prestigious events, gsl is a highly specialized tournament format that isn't even remotely close to how the game is practiced or played by 99.9% of the player base.
Also the reason Serral doesn't compete in gsl is because he would have to sit out 46 tournaments while upending his life and living in Korea to win one tournament that has a lower population prize pool than any of the 46 he went to during it.
Putting anyone above Serral is ridiculous
I don't think Serral not playing in a GSW-style tournament affects his status at all.
In international tournaments, he's playing by the same rules as all the other great players coming out of Korea that he _regularly_ stomps all over, with Maru himself - the undisputed greatest GSL player ever imo - being one of Serral's biggest victims (according to W/L).
If Serral was in a GSW-style tournament with the time to prepare for each opponent, I have a hard time imagining he'd do any worse than in international tournament formats.
Maru has never won Katowice or the world championship. Serral has 2 Katowice wins and a World Championship.
Korea fanboys think only GSL matters... they're delusional
The thing I didn't know here was that Maru hasn't beaten Serral at lan in nearly 7 years shesh.
So yeah if not disqualified I'd say life was goat... but currently goat is serral by far. Hes gotten zerfed a bunch like byun with reapers.
If at any other sport you called someone without zero world championships the GOAT you'd be laughed out. Especially if the second place has an 80% winrate against them...
Also, hard agree that Dark got robbed.
GSL is basically a region locked tournament. You possibly have to stay in Korea for more than a month for a singular tournament. This is something a lot of players, and apparently Serral, doesn't want to do
how did Raynor do? got trashed in group stage. GSL is only real tournament, rest is amateur hour
that's a sad cope, imagine being a 'professional' tennis player and never playing wimbleton or being a golf player and never playing in the masters
@@Numenorean921 GSL isn't the same level tournament it used to be and doesn't even have the biggest prize pool. Also professional sports athletes are supported through their state/country, not some small time org. Great comparison
@@origon4477 good, GOOD, let the cope flow through you.
@@Numenorean921 Good. Stats don't lie
Everyone seems to forget that from mid 2018 to 2021 protoss could only beat zerg with deception and cheap one off all ins. The balance of the PvZ matchup was so atrocious. If both sides played perfectly, 0 mistakes from either side zerg was 100% to win, between infested terrans and abduct outranging feedback the zerg could endlessly trade energy for carriers. Serral is probably the strongest player in history but his results will always be tainted by zerg being objectively overpowered for over two years.
Sorry, I don't think that argument can hold if we're talking a timespan ranging years. Warcraft 3 pro scene has demonstrated that people can win with an off race, bringing other races for very specific matchups on very specific maps.
If you keep losing for an extended period of time and its your race then its your problem. Yes, the balance is a problem, but at the end of the day you can't make balance changes, but you can change your race.
I'm watching SC1 ASL S17 and I'm awestruck by the shape Snow is in, he's dodging Siege Tank shots with Reavers by splitsecond microing pickups with Shuttles, and while it was known to be theoretically possible, it was unheard of to be done consistently. He's completely dominated the opposition with Protoss, which has historically heavily underperformed in SC1: winning only 2/3 prize money that Z and T have.
@@kane_lives You've named 2 fundamentally different games to use as evidence for a third? And we're talking literally half of Serral's career worth of time and you're acting as if that's irrelevant. Brood war isnt subject to balance changes. Neither is WC3. Through those 3 years numerous changes were made that actively hurt protoss and helped zerg. And that's irrelevant? Of his 27 Premier tournament wins, 18 of them happened between 2018 and the end of 2021. That's 2/3 of his premier tournament championships. And of his 21 Major tournament wins, 11 occurred between 2018 and the end of 2021. Thats over half. Out of 48 first place finishes, 29 are arguably influenced by poor balance. That's significant.
32:02 With the greatest respect to Maru, I have to disagree with the "greater resume" argument.
That's because Serral has absolutely dogwalked the same great players Maru turned into spliffs back in Korea... and has a dominant W/L against Maru _himself_ both online (4-1) and offline (14-4).
To the Rogue argument, I don't see Rogue having a single month of Aligulac best against all races status for a single month. 5 of 6 of his GSLs came when Serral was the known best player. I don't think he was ever consistent enough to hold a status of best player against all match ups. Someone who can't hold first place for a single month doesn't deserve to be in the GOAT argument at all. LOL, I guess PiG had it right with this video only mentioning him taking down Maru. He was great at farming his fellow South Koreans in GSLs, I'll give him that.
I remember watching the pre final interview with Maru at recent Katowice. Its the first time I've ever seen him not be confident, he was saying it was going to be a very very hard match, Serral is so good etc etc. I could tell he considered himself the underdog. I think that says it all. Maru himself recognises Serral is generally a stronger player and over a BO7 is going to win 9/10 times. Maru has also had some big dips in performance over the last few years while Serral has consistently maintained his level.
Put it this way, if you had to choose 1 player to play a BO7 and they lost you would be shot in the head. Who would you choose? I'm picking Serral every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Hopefully he is one the the people Raynor mentioned might be going over to Korea soon and we can end this debate once and for all.
reynor said in his last stream he is going alone
Back in 2018/19 I still was totally all for Maru being the GOAT. His 4 GSL titles in a row were just unbelievable. But over time Serral proved that he's managing to stay on top with incredibly consistency which I think is unmatched.
The only argument one could make for Maru, is that he's been competing in high preparation league systems (GSL) and in weekender-tournaments all the time while Serral only competed in the latter ones. We saw it with Reynor how differently hard competition in GSL can be when he got kicked out in group stage being a favorite on paper. But that's comparing guess work since Serral will never compete in GSL and even if he did, it wouldn't be as meaningful nowadays.
I think you can penalize players in the GOAT argument for only playing for a short amount of time. There is a lot of adaptation that you need to handle from opponents to stay on top.
Mentioning staying on top, you should be the best player. GOAT shouldn't be the second or fourth best player and unable to beat the best at the time.
I think your list did great, PiG.
Personally, I put more weight on who is the best for how long while winning big international tournaments. Serral was a no-brainer for me.
I want to see you have a nice conversation discussion with Artosis about who is the G.O.A.T
Lol. No one can have a nice discussion with Artosis about this. That guy is broken beyond repair.
@@leinis80I think he can when not talking/reading chat
@@leinis80 I kinda feel like this is all SC2 commentators at some point. Artosis spent his prime working years in esports. I sure hope they paid him bookoo bucks, because what does he have going now?
the silly thing about getting 2nd in a tournament being worth so much is that you could avoid all the best players and still get 2nd if you have a lucky bracket. If Maru loses to Serral in the semi-finals then Serral beats Raynor in the finals, that doesn't mean Raynor would have beaten Maru.
Yeah and first place could be substantially better than 2nd or just slightly better. Obviously a lot of the time there's a noticeable gap which really devaules the 2nd placing.
To liken this to American Football, the GSL argument is the same as arguing that unless an NFC team wins an AFC Championship, it doesn't matter how many superbowls they've won, or how many of the best teams and players they've beat. Absolute madness.
GSL is the superbowl though. Its the hardest and most stacked tournament and Korea will always be the country to play in, in any of the SC series. That #2 didnt even try to compete says alot about how scary it is.
@@SsSHardt It's not. The World Championship is the superbowl.
@@SsSHardtAre you saying that the Koreans don't care about the world championship trophies? Or about the massive prize pools of other international tournaments?
How come they are so outclassed against Serral if GSL is the most stacked? You'd think that Serral with his EU ladder buddies wouldn't be able to keep up?
@@manumainio Again you are talking about a weekend style tournament. Real starcraft tourneys have always been prep tourneys. But I guess you know that if you actually are a SC fan
I am a Maru fan and think Serral is the Goat. I think there's an argument that Serral counters Maru style wise. The other good argument is that clem and reynor are not considered #2 or #3 by a long shot but have far better win rates vs serral. This is because they have more exposure to playing serral's style. I think the argument has validity. I still think Serral is the goat but people who don't still have a vvalid argument. If Serral was regularly playing on Korean servers in Korea would his win rate increase or decrease? I think it would decrease. The question is by how much?
Serral has the playstyle of doing base mechanics of the game very well. The only thing to counter that is abuse of race mechanics you have to scout or something like that which is also difficult to use vs. serral because of how well he scouts and bc of his game sense. Right now, clem gives serral the hardest time out of all terrans despite T being outright overtuned vs. zerg, but i kinda doubt it's because they play each other so much, clem gives all zergs a hard time. And i don't even agree that serrals style counters maru, because maru likes to play endgames and T definitely has a big advantage atm in endgame TvZ.
I disagree. If you look at rankings Korea is dominantly in the top 20. If you look at who is in the top 20 for western players. People will notice several western players rated above Korean players. This is because of region locking. For the longest time anyone could play in Korea but Koreans couldn't play in other regions. This allowed for a diverse set of regions to blossom. But, it has the consequence of skewing ranks. While, Maru is one of the best late game players he is known for :"proxy" and has been citied multiple times mentioning he doesn't like late game. Also, tournament format matters as well. Most of Maru's wins are GSL. Most tournaments aren't setup that way. Serral has never won a GSL. When I say serral counters maru there is a lot to unpack. What format the player excels at is also important, that's part of style. I could go deep, but w/e this just the comment section.
@@Noctani Koreans can play in any region easily nowadays, so any region lock effects have evaporated for quite a while, that's not an argument.
Maru has done tons of proxies in the past and does almost none nowadays, especially because T has many MANY other, better options nowadays. In the past, especially in TvP, T could so easily lose in mid- or lategame that they rather proxied than risk it.
The GSL does not have a very special tournament format except for very long times in between matches. Serral has never won a GSL because serral never participated in a GSL, and that's mostly because he does not want to commit to living in south korea for over a month just to play in an inhouse tournament against players he beats in all other tournaments all the time. I don't see any relevance of the GSL in terms of skill because serral is mostly threatened by clem these days and clem will not be playing in the GSL. Imo why maru wins the GSLs is not because he excels at any kind of format but because among the koreans he is probably the best player and thus in korean-only tournaments, he will excel. Against non-koreans or while playing overseas, he's not as good (which in itself speaks against him being the GOAT already).
Example 1: When Serral was ranked #1 and the main player taking games off serral was Reynor and Reynor was ranked #2. Reynor and Serral were winning everything in the west so they had the most points in the west. Korea had 5 top players so points are more split. Scoring isn't a good representation of the world unless the world is fighting in the same pool at all times. 2: Region lock still exists in tournaments even the ESL 2024 Spring. So, I don't know where you're getting the information that only a certain # of players from a particular region will be allowed to play. If the top 32 players get into a tournament and most of them are korean the chance of a korean player winning is higher. But when region locking is in place maybe only 4 or 8 can get in. 3: In GSL players seed their own group. That is a strategic skill set unto itself. Also, I'd argue the top 16 Korean players are more likely to defeat Serral than the top 16 western players, so it does matter. I still think he's the best, but I don't think he'd have as much success if tournaments were not region locked. @@asdfasdf-mn8iu
@@Noctani There is not a single player that comes close to beating serral even half reguarly, with the exception of reynor in the past (not as much anymore) and most recently clem. Rogue was the only player who gave serral a hard time, but also way in the past and serral's ZvZ is pretty good by now when it used to be worse (can be easily seen in his katowice games vs. dark in which he mopped the floor with dark). So how is region locking gonna factor in serral's success at all, if there is nobody in korea who poses a relevant threat to serral and he WILL play them from ro16 or ro8 if they're good enough to make it that far? Also, afaik, only few tournaments do even do region-locking. If regions were not locked, serral would potentially not have to play clem, reynor or maxpax, which have a far higher chance of knocking him out than any of the koreans.
I don't understand how you think region locking plays a relevant role in that regard when clearly the strongest player for T and Z come from the same region, europe, and not korea.
But honestly, whatever. Think what you want to think, we agree on serral being the GOAT by far, so there's really not much point to this discussion.
Thank you for mentioning Life
why? doesn't matter how good of a player you are, if you are a scumbag cheater you should never be mentioned among the greatest players, you're a disgrace.
Right?! I didn't find out about what happened with him until years later, but watching his matches was what really got me into Starcraft II. He was amazing. It's a real shame we'll never get to see what he could have done if he'd been able to play longer and later.
The thing that i dont get about this argument is: Serral is better than maru. He's simply a beter player. And their shining star periods mostly coincide with eachother. So, saying maru is the GOAT is like saying ding liren is the world champion in chess. Sure, your parameters may say that. But everyone knows that the "GOAT" or the "World champion" isnt the best player. Its serral for sc2, and magnus carlsen for Chess.
i mean. ding liren is the world champion in chess. thats note a technicality, its a fact.
he's not the best chess player, but he is the world champion
I like the analogy to chess, but the problem is that Magnus Carlsen has literally won every single prestigious chess tournament, many of them multiple times, and has been the most dominant player for over a decade. Your analogy would work better if Magnus hadn't actually competed in and won an incredibly prestigious tournament format like the rapid and blitz world championship, or the world cup, etc. (to analogize to Serral not having competed in and won a prep-based GSL/Korean individual league tourney). Even still, chess has a relatively stable and accepted ELO rating system, and Magnus being #1 for over a decade matters a lot in chess GOAT convos (which is why a lot of people feel Kasparov is the GOAT over Carlsen). A better analogy for you to play with might be like Magnus v. Vishy Anand, in that the former beat the latter.
@@rahawalaTournament styles, region locks, who went to which country - all of this is entirely unnecessary when we have 1v1 records. Maru played Serral 18 times. Maru won 4 of these matches, and Serral won 14. That's it.
SC2 is a 1v1 game, like boxing or chess. If we have a direct match between 2 players in their prime, and one guy wins - he won, that's it.
In boxing, beating a guy just once often means you're considered better, period. Having a 3/1 record, including a few title fights, is considered overwhelming evidence.
We have fucking 18 matches. 18! Both online and offline, tournament finals and everything else. Maru won 4 times and lost 14 times. There is no debate, Serral beats maru 77% of the time. That's it.
@@kathorsees Requires some deeper thinking. Boxing doesn’t have tournaments so of course tournament format doesn’t matter, but tennis does and it’s hugely important there (e.g. if someone couldn’t win on grass or clay they’d be pretty much out of contention). Tennis is also instructive because if you just did it on head-to-head, Federer wouldn’t even be in the conversation, but when you do it based on achievements and results, he certainly is. SC2 is more unique than other sports/games in that you have an early period of region lock in which Korean individual leagues clearly were more competitive so it’s just challenging because we have a GOAT candidate who (through no fault of his own) simply did not compete and secure results in the most competitive tournaments and leagues the game has had. There are other nuances re: tournament format to think about, but this should give you a good start. If you want to reduce it to head-to-head, that’s fine, but then you’re going to have to say Effort is a more deserving GOAT candidate than Flash, which maybe isn’t the direction you want to go in.
@@rahawala A very civilized and polite answer, thank you! Definitely more calm than my comment - sorry, I tend to get carried away.
Yes, I do think head-to-head win count is what matters the most in a 1v1 sport. Doubly so between 2 players in their prime, who have played a lot of matches against each other, over many years and metas. This means that between these two, the guy who won more matches is the clear winner. If it isn't so, I don't know what winning even means.
I can understand using other metrics if the players have never faced each other, or one was really past their prime, or there was only 1 or 2 matches where they've met. But there's no such issues here, nothing to cloud the matter or force us to use proxies. Serral beat Maru in 77% of their games. He won more. It's all tautological at this point, really.
If the #2 and #1 contenders were Serral and, I don't know, Life - then there's something to discuss, there's inherent ambiguity, like Tyson vs Ali or smth. But if you're comparing 2 guys in a 1v1 sport, and you dismiss their direct 1v1 win count? You (and by "you" I mean the author of the article) are clearly just trying to come up with a complicated scoring system, squinting and playing with numbers to explain why your fav guy *actually* won despite what the score card says.
A lot of the Korean scene is at least soft region locked.
That's fair, yet the likes of Innovation, Byun, Stats, Rogue, Maru, Dark etc regularly do well in international tournaments, which - I think - legitimises the opinion that Korea is the strongest region overall.
With that said, the way Serral has been dominant against that same roster of elite players only serves to prove how much of a monster _he_ is.
I would also say I personally find it very controversial to be declared the greatest in a 1v1 competition and not have a World Title (as in IEM Katowice) to your name.
Sounds like a my nation is better kind of nationalism BS. @@henryviiifake8244
What disturbs me about this conversation is that skill is never factored in. Players in 2024 are more skilled than they were in 2011. It used to be that to beat banelings, Terrans would have to focus fire them. Focus firing was an insane skill to have. Then players realized that they could do marine splits, and that was the skill to have. Now Terrans can focus fire, split, and then pick up and reposition in an instant. Players now are better at not losing units than ever before. 2024 Maru would dominate 2015 Maru. Any player today would beat players back then.
It feels too much like recency bias when that argument is openly made. It allows people to run historical arguments about who won what and when, and they get some weird answers out of that.
When the argument for GOAT sticks to the best player Serral is the obvious answer.
@@kmurphy0620 Thanks for your response. How do you reckon "people play SC2 better today than they did in 2011" is recency bias? There are players today in Diamond that could have played in Grandmaster, and Maru of 2024 would absolutely mop the floor with Maru of 2015, as I said in my previous comment. Players in general are much better, more skilled at protecting units and getting value out of them. The level of gameplay is simply higher.
@@smantie It appears to be recency bias when you make the most best player argument because Serral normally beats Byun despite Byun's times of dominance.
I do think there is more to skill now being higher than before, so a player of the past is less capable of holding the GOAT status. If SC2 had 4-ish years of a dominant player before Serral, then Serral's 5-6 years of dominance being on top wouldn't clearly make him the GOAT because they may be more skilled now. The problem is that the 2nd best players who were greatest of their eras can't be the clear best player according to places like Aligulac for more than a 1.5 years, like a Byun, MVP or Innovation.
@@kmurphy0620 Your argument doesn't make much sense, perhaps UA-cam comments aren't the best venue to get our points across.
ByuN's dominance came with a broken unit, and wasn't nearly sustained as long as Serral's has. Serral's peak has been higher. In fact, using MMR and aliguilac and other tools we can see that Serral's relative skill level has been significantly higher than ByuN's ever was. I'm not even sure what your argument there is trying to be. ByuN still plays at a ridiculously high level, arguably as good or better than he was when he won, and he knows to bow to Serral and beg for mercy.
@@smantie I think where you're getting me wrong is "APPEARS to be recency bias" isn't me disagreeing with you that it's the obvious answer. I said in my original comment that I AGREE with you that it's the obvious answer if you're concerned with the best player, not trying to make this about something else.
Serral has 5 years of dominance against all races according to Aligulac, and everyone else has around 1.5 years at best. It's that simple. He's clearly the GOAT by my criteria. I didn't mean to make it seem like I was meaning otherwise. I'll just leave it there.
There's a bunch of points Artosis makes that I think you missed focusing on Miz's article. There's a good argument for Rogue based on your own overvaluing of 1st place finishes given Rogue's insane Bo7 grand finals win rate in premier tournaments in both Korean individual leagues and world championship-tier tourneys. I'm somewhat surprised that you think it's so obvious without having even looked at Rogue...
I actually think Rogue has a great argument for being higher placed than Maru. That streak from mid 2016-early 2017 with dual world champs + Kato 2020 another world champ is HUGE.
I realised I'd already spent way too long talking about Maru vs Serral and didn't want to add to the run time. My thoughts would be that Rogue has the highest highs which Serral has only recently reached in the last year in terms of HOW he wins. In that the games often don't even look competitive and his knowledge of builds and strategies combine with his mechanics + macro to win games so one sidedly that top tier opposition doesn't even belong in the match with him. For me showdown between Rogue and Serral in 2018 Blizzcon and since then where Serral won all their LAN matches, combined with Rogue falling out of so many tournaments in the first round vs Serral's higher consistency puts Serral ahead. Rogue's career is still absolutely monumental though and he definitely deserves his spot in the top 3, probably 2nd.
I have not heared any good points from Artosis regarding the Gost discussion. But to be fair, Artosis throwing Rogue out there as a option is not bad. But his reasoning is.
*goat, not gost
@@PiGstarcraft Fair, but now you're mixing in a bunch of other factors beyond just the first place finishes you said should be valued so highly (consistency, head-to-head record, etc.). Miz explained in great detail how Serral had quite similar peaks and valleys, but more importantly if you follow your own logic of just going with legacy-defining 1st place finishes in premier tournaments, Artosis is right that Rogue takes it. I'm not saying that's the criteria you should use, I'm saying it's what you yourself articulated and seem to be now introducing other factors to justify your opinion that Serral is the GOAT. Totally fine that you have a different take than Miz, but failing to consider Rogue when he's the natural candidate based on what you yourself said you value is a little sus tbh...
This is crazy.. Maru have a tough time winning against Serral. I'm a Maru Terran fanboy but don't get me wrong Serral is consistent in every tournament and series he play especially this 5 years period.
I think you pretty much destroyed TL article. Serral is the greatest indeed.
The most impressive feat of Serral (at least in my eyes) is shifting the center of weight from Korea to Europe. Before Serral it was like "Foreigner made it to the round of four, then got drunk and embarrassed himself". Nowadays is like "Who won the last premier championship? It was Serral, right?" Or maybe Reynor, Clem, MaxPax... He first surpassed the top Koreans in skill (those numbers don't lie), and then essentially dragged an entire region to that level. Even if he retires tomorrow, he set such a high standard of play that Reynor, Clem and MaxPax will continue to dominate for years to come. If that isn't greatness, I don't know what is. Maru has literally grown up in the Korean eSports system, and eventually rose to dominate it. But he didn't establish that system, performs rather poorly outside of it, and there is no bunch of talented 20 year-olds vying to topple him from the throne.
GSL wins are way overvalued. You can see it in the play, it doesn't hold up to serral.
GSL used to be the strongest tournament out there. But nowadays the strongest tournament is ESL weekly cup Europe (not kidding, since this is where MaxPax plays).
seriously gsl is the best sc2 tournament? even serral will struggle like reynor or clem
Starcraft 2 was the Korean people's game for a long time and they had the best talent pool in the world for that game. GSL happened to be their national tournament which took in the best players from their extremely skilled player pool. So of course it's logical to consider Maru being the best player in the world during that time when he dominated GSL.
Serral took the title of the best player in the world from Maru.
@@rapha.12 maybe he would have in the past, but anymore, nah
It's clearly partinG any other response is wrong and all of you are incorrect.
The BIG boi
Big Boi will always shine on as the greatest, best looking, most charming, and most drunk player of all time.
@@richarddudley1318 most drunk? sounds like Life has him beat there too 😂
Serrals 2018 run was legendary, that blizzcon fell on my birthday i remember coming home from work at midnight and staying up till the sun came up watching serrals games
Serral went pro in 2017 and has been the best player in the game since 2018. If you agree on that, you can't argue that he is not the GOAT.
all anyone has to do is link the guy who made this article the video that was posted months ago, maybe over a year now. Of some dude breaking down the stats of all sc2 pros of all time. serral is like seriously leagues above everyone else. In the video he literally makes a chart showing the difference in many different stats across all pros. in about 90% of the stat reads and obviously overall. serral is quite literally fucking 6 steps above every other pro player the chart be looking like
.serral
. maru
. ppl i forget
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.? .? .?
.? .?
.? .? .?
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etc
its actually not even close. if there was a new rank above grand master. serral would be the rank above that.
Do you have a Link to this Video?
@@ghoch3 ua-cam.com/video/5p9eukjLJA0/v-deo.html
@@ghoch3 It does not let me link it through the comments, but its called "The TRUTH about the SC2 GOAT".
@@ghoch3 after rewatching this, just as i described. Its not even remotely close. Everyone else in the pro scene has similar scores around their respective skill level. But serral is on a different plane.
For me I just think the 4 GSL's in a row period that Maru had is what puts him 1st for me. Dominated Classic when he was next level in PvT at the time, bashing every Terran with ease. Maru made him look like a gold player. The game 7 push that he had NO business winning vs TY, who everyone agreed was the best TvT'er at the time. The absolute innovation of the Terran race with Proxie's into macro play flawlessly. All at a time where no other Terran but TY was making it deep into tournaments. Serral/Rogue are better in weekend tournaments, but there is no argument for me that Maru is the greatest PREPERATION tournament player. That's why it's tough for me to seperate those guys and claim Serral is the clear GOAT without at least trying a GSL Code S and the long prep format vs those top tier Koreans..
So if I understand you correctly, I order for you to say Serral is #1, he'd need to participate in the Premier Korean tournaments as well?
Despite 2x IEM Katowice wins?
And, just to play devil's advocate (no, he doesn't pay), wouldn't giving preparation time to someone who's already dominant in a format where prep time is limited given them an _advantage?_
@@henryviiifake8244 No you dont understand me. Preperation tournament (Code S) is different to premier tournament (Super tournament, GSL vs the World). Zerg has had the advantage for YEARS in weekend tournaments. The preperation style of Code S is a completely different beast, that unfortunately, Serral hasnt participated in. That's why Rogue>Serral too. 4 GSL's in addition to his weekend accomplishments. He's a champion in all arenas
There's no debate serral is the goat of sc2,he constatly defeated the best and won everything except gsl for way to long
Denying Serral as SC2 GOAT is like saying the world is Flat... just look at data.
You're spot on here. You have to either be sub 70s IQ to not understand the data in front of you or be completely delusional to twist the facts to fit your narrative.
No world championships. That disqualifies Maru for me right away.
Yeah, wierd how that has not happened yet.
And I doubt itll happen. Just look at his demeanor after the loss to Ollivera, he's a broken man and it seems he cant get that monkey off his back.
Well, Maru shouldn't even get in the top 4 of a World Championship (or any top global tournament), but he can thank his broken race for hard-carrying him there 2 times (turtling until he gets 12-15 Ghosts each time makes it a literal cheat-mode). And in both, his lack of skill for the title was clearly apparent, especially in the recent 4-0 demolition by the GOAT.
@@OnigoroshiZero I disagree, he is an amazing player and he does deserve that Global Champion title. Hope he gets it someday. Also, no Terran is not OP, zerg is.
Well you can never be a GOAT if you didnt even try to enter the hardest tournament in the world. Go get some GSL's and we can talk.
Its like saying a player from the finish football league is the goat cause he scored on his home turf.
Life being in GOAT list would just be insult to everyone else. He's the poster child of disgracing the scene. He doesn't belong anywhere near there and his existence a null.
IDK if you can really compare dominating after proleague-collapse and subsequent lack of player pool vs playing during when there were constant cycle and up-and-coming players, where Code A doesn't exist due to lack of players and GSL isn't the competition it once was, with pro players having 2nd job.
Serral no doubt would have been a top player but would he have had the same amount of dominance? Previously, if progamer were in mid-20s, they were considered very old as it was pretty disadvantaged field vs a newer up and coming player due to less injuries/load/burnout/skill on a more physically/mechanically skilled younger player. Nowadays, younger progamers in mid-20s are considered young and a lot of pros are approaching or in 30s.
Have people forgetten how prestigious and stacked GSL once was?
I think they have...people are always quick to dismiss the times and eras when *their* goats didn't play, I used to get into these kinds of debates but I don't anymore.
For me Mvp will always be #1 but I recognise that that's not a popular opinion anymore, where once his greatness was appreciated now people mock the era when he played because it was apparently "diamond level". (I also consider the likes of NaDa and BoxeR to be greater than Flash, which is another unpopular position to take)
At the end of the day none of this accomplishes anything, there is no such thing as the greatest of all time. All of it is subjective, people coming up with different arguments to try to cover the fact that their position is nothing more than an emotional viewpoint, not a fact. If someone says to me that they don't think Mvp is the goat, that's fine by me, but to say I'm wrong to think what I think makes no sense!
Probably one of the best metrics to measure player excellence for SC2 would be to look at player matchup WRs versus going rates for tournament player for the same time periods, basically 'by how much' are these top level players overperforming across all 3 matchups.
I don't consider any of these players the GOAT. Just like, if you say Maru is the best Terran player then all other players are the best player of their main chosen race. In my mind, you have to be the best with all three races to be considered the GOAT. But, that's not the case because how can you do well with all three races so, all these players are just the "best" terran, protoss, and or zerg players only.
Maru Best Terran Player, Serral Best Zerg Player,,, Maru Vs Serral,,, hmmmmmm
Really good discussion. Seeeeeeeeeeerral is the 🐐.
Agree that the goat is about who is dominant for longest. Its boxing rules.
so lebron is better than jordan?
@@dustinchen I dont follow baseball.
@@dustinchen lebron played longer than jordan but its not like he dominated consistently in his 21 year career considering he is also notorious for switching teams and never won a ring without switching he won 3 rings but didn't really dominated during those times since he has a allstar team plus he lost 6 times and swept a lot that last ring of his isn't even validated since during that time its covid half of the teams ain't even playing he ain't even top 5 in all time maybe in his generation
as long as u agree with me i agree too@@zeroone2731
except we don't know if he's dominant unless he plays offline against the worlds toughest players. No GSL no GOAT
Excuse me, but Flash is clearly the GOAT of all e-sports
Maru was inzane in 2018, remeber watch him play and it was sick. He didnt missed a single beat. But there after that kind of unicorn magic disapear. Ofcourse he is really really reaaaaally good. But serral have done this for years. No argue. Serral is and probaly always be the goat
The Problem with GSL, that most dont want to think about, is that you have to live in Korea for a month, and most global players just cant do that. So the tournament itself filters out 90% of the player pool thus making it much less competitive by actual numbers of applicants.
Serral is the G.O.A.T.
Just look at the facts, all the rest is subjective.
I looked at the facts, no GSL no GOAT
That's not even an argument.
If GSL enables the G.O.A.T. status, Dark, Stats, Zest... can be G.O.A.Ts.
Maru was never a World Champion. lol@@Numenorean921
i'm a huge maru fanboi and its clear that maru struggles with premiere tournaments outside of korea because his playstyle is insanely intense and he is just mentally exhausted by the time he reaches the grand final...
that said, Serral is the GOAT Maru is #2. i don't even really enjoy watching Serral, but the dude is an absolute machine who has completely figured out the zerg race
Its a dumb thing to say "maru struggles with premiere tournaments outside of KR", just because he hasnt won the championship doesnt mean he got eliminated in the first round. He just got runner-up 2 times in a row, multiple Ro4 and Runner up in tournaments outside of KR as well. If thats the definition of him struggling, then whoever saying that is complete dis-honest or just F up. Now, it is correct to say that Maru has trouble CLOSING the tournament, then I agree. And to be honest, he has trouble with closing in KR as well. The guy win 7 GSL but he could have won 10 if he didnt "choke" the other ones.
For real tho, it's Serral, and it's not even that close.
no GSL. Online tournaments are worthless and his region locked wins dont really matter because the pool of players is weaker. Cope.
Right now I’d say Serral is #1 but would of been good to see him vs Maru in his prime
He literally clowned Maru over and over when they were both at their prime
What is Marus prime in your opinion?
beating the guy that was dominant could just mean the previous best player fell off which is also difficult to say if they keep patching the game based on whenever one or two guys wins too much now that's crazy.
Crazy feats;
Not to mention Maru back to back runner up for Katowice though...
Rogue being only player in history to win Blizzcon then win Katowice. (Rogue also being away from military, could he have more if he didn't have to leave yet?)
TY being the only player/caster to ever win a GSL, let alone 2 in the same year and making ro4 the one he didn't win, is impressive.
Reynor making GSL RO32 when he was 15, then turned 16 flew back overseas for his first WCS event.
Innovation was the only active player, until he retired that had won a GSL in wings/swarm/lotv era (1 in each, pretty awesome).
Life's story is super impressive, shameful how it ended unfortunately.
soO's 6 time GSL finals, multiple finals in other tournies as well--
Darks consistant ro4/8 over so many years.
Fairly sure Neeb was the first foreigner to win on Korean soil--
Competition;
the other thing to say would be typically in GSL, their are favourites, but also anyone can sort of win to an extent, in the last WCS years, it's really only serral/reynor/clem win them.
GSL being lesser prize pools now is true, but at the same time the player pools got massively cut as well, but the when you look at the ro16 and see the names you can look at it and say, realistically any of these players have a chance of winning--where as european style, serral/clem/reynor are there--you see them winning.
But at the same time the Korean's have so much pride in winning such a glorified tournament, does that differ because of prize money? Not to mention The kespa era, there were also way more players and way more GSLs throughout the year as well. Also WCS formats is different compared to GSL and have alot less prep times. Region lock and online tournaments are a huge difference too...
What is the best though? Maru doing stuff since 2013, is that more impressive to the rise of Serral since circa '18? No one will ever forget Blizzcon 2018 when Serral did win it to become the first foreigner to do so.
Everyone has their own story and changes depending how you choose to look at it. "this person won this era, this patch was bad, rogue only won cause nydus broken' etcetc.
You're either going to agree or find an argument because 'you' want one, because it 'doesn't match the way you think/feel about the situation. Which sometimes will be changed because this was memorable for this reason you were at home or with friends and witnessed it together--so that in it's self helps the meaning from the victory imo--
Personally, I love Rogue/TY/herO/stats/reynor
That's my opinion, great analysis pig.
Maru's biggest wins are in tournaments without Serral in them. That's just one of many conversation-ending points you can make in Serral's favor.
I feel that "best" or "GOAT" is always going to cause issues... for me the "best" is the person that elevates the game the most. Maybe not in wins, but in bringing excitement, discussions and the public eye to the game. The person that makes others want to play and makes the public want to watch, or participate. It might stem from a name you can chant out in a crowd, or a personality quirk... something that is greater than them, greater than the game, but brings us all in to the game.
For me honestly it's 5 Names.. Lowko, PiG, Harstem, GuMiHo, and Scarlet
Lowko, that accent and joy of the game bridges that gap from gamers to normals in a relatable, quirky but really enjoyable way. Passion really describes his stuff.
PiG, excitement, better breakdowns, fun challenges and competitions, and willing to take it a little less seriously while still bringing new content. (Pro gamer vs 12 Cheater AI comes to mind.)
Harstem, Beating GM with stupid stuff, loves to mess around and has fun, and yet still can get in the to 4 of pro events, showing he's damn good and still loving the game.
GuMiHo. The name chants so well, he doesn't win often but always brings something new and fresh to the table, always smiles and his games seem never boring.
Scarlet. The only female pro SC2 player I know of, and as far as I can tell gender is never brought up, but she does fun challenges, revolutionized creep spread and engages with fan and casters like PiG's holdout challenges, and while doesn't win a lot compared to some others, she brings people to the game, and we need more female role models to enjoy.
Without these 5 people, and people like them... it fades off into a game that someone else does, and plays and we stop caring... and it slowly goes away....
thank you for saying the obvious thing everyone else is too afraid to say. life easily is top 5 all time, and easily would be the goat if we didnt ban him. he was serral level dominant in the most competitive era, and he was like 14. no one else comes close.
I commented this on Tasteless's video but I will put it here too:
This debate pisses me off. It is just blatant bias against and disrespect towards Serral. That isn't a question he is the GOAT in SC2 and nobody comes close.
He has a 69% win rate in offline tournaments, and his lowest win rate is 68.73% against Terran....but but Koreans!!!
He has a 58% win rate in games, and a 60.87% match win rate...okay that doesn't seem crazy pretty comparable to Maru against Koreans...But this is where things get crazy:
Since 2017 (7 years) Serral is 218-114 (65.66%) in games against Koreans in offline matches, 78-28 (73.58%) in matches against Koreans in offline matches. His ZvT is 63.85%, his ZvP is 67.29%, his ZvZ is 66.32% overall of 65.66%
Just for reference Maru is at 60% in games, 64% in matches. with TvP is 58%, TvT is 63%, TvZ is 60%.
Just for reference Flash in SC1 is TvP is 73%, TvT is 73%, and TvZ is 71% with a 72.4% overall.
The difference between Serral and Maru is as big as the difference between Serral and Flash. Given the context of Flash, that is a REALLY BIG difference. +300 games is more than enough to have confidence in the results. This is why it isn't even a discussion or a debate. NOBODY needs time to think about who was better at their respective game it is Flash, you don't even think about it. That difference between Serral and Flash, is the same as the difference between Serral and Maru right now. Serral isn't competing to be the GOAT of SC2, he already is. Serral's only competition is literally chasing down the GOAT in not just Starcraft but in Gaming.
Lets go down their list:
Maru: Serral is 13-3 (2 ties) in matches against Maru. He just 4-0 Maru and is 39-19 against Maru, he has a 67% win rate against Maru.
Rogue: Serral vs Rogue is 8-7 in matches Serral favored, and 25-22 in games Serral favored.
INnoVation: 16-8 in matches. 40-23 in games. Serral favored
Zest: 11-4 in matches. 27-11 in games. Serral favored
SoO: 8-4 in matches. 29-14 in games. Serral favored
SoS: 3-0 in matches, 5-0 in games. Serral favored
TY: 6-2 in matches, 18-9 in games. Serral favored
Rain: 1-1 in matches. 3-2 in games. Draw.
Literally if Serral is in a best of ANYTHING against ANYONE on the list he is not only favored but HEAVILY favored to win.
Want to add in more? Since he already is clearly ahead of any of the Koreans on the list?
Dark: 9-5 in matches, 29-25 in games. Serral favored
Byun: 13-6 in matches, 38-19 in games. Serral favored
Solar: 16-7-1 in matches, 43-30 in games. Serral favored
Cure: 18--2 in matches, 43-17 in games. Serral favored
HerO: 6-3 in matches, 16-9 in games. Serral favored
GuMiho: 10-4 in matches, 25-16 in games. Serral favored
There is no reality where Serral isn't the GOAT in Starcraft 2. There isn't anyone REMOTELY as dominant as Serral is.
He hasn't won a GSL. And guess what Serral is good enough to not need to in order to be the GOAT. If a player wants to play the best individual player, go play in Europe. Sound familiar? If a player wants to play the best collection of players, go play in Korea. The sentiment is the same. If a player wants to be the GOAT in SC2 go and dominate Serral as hard as he has dominated LITERALLY everyone else. People do not get to hide behind "He hasn't won a GSL" when it is pretty obvious he would have won multiple if he was consistently playing in them.
Talks of "weeks of prep" Do you know what players do when Serral in a tournament? Either prep against Serral or prep for 2nd place...these things are not mutually exclusive.
And to nip this in the bud comparing Serral to other non-koreans, they ARE NOT comparable.
Reynor vs Koreans in offline formats: 111-108 (50.68%) in games, 38-34 (52.78%) in matches.
Astrea vs Koreans in offline formats: 60-86 (41.10%) in games, 21-33 (38.89%) in matches.
Scarlet vs Koreans in offline formats: 263-307 (46.14%) in games, 96-127 (43.05%) in matches.
They are not comparable for the same reason that Serral is the GOAT and none of them are even sniffing the top 10 list.
I get the point of more players being more competitive, but looking as the quality of gameplay and the complexity of armies handles compared to the past, the game play has evolved to a whole other level. I would argue that many todays tier 2 players might be highly competitive with players and their styles in the past. Granted, they old guard might have evolved, we do not know, but many dropped off a bit and it does not take away the additional skill and knowledge they have now.
100% agree. You can't be the GOAT if there's another play who beats you *all the time*--at the very least there would be an asterisk next to your GOAT title. And if that other player who beats you all the time *also* beats all the other players most of the time, well... then they're clearly the GOAT, not you. For me, the top 3 of all time are Serral, then Life, and finally Maru in that order.
The only excuse I have for Serral to not be the GOAT of SC2 is the fact that he was not dominant at all in Wings of Liberty or Heart of the Swarm and only truly dominant in Legacy of the Void. Things to note: WOL released in 2010, HOTS released in 2013, LOTV released in 2015. Based off Serral's liquipedia page, he didn't get his first premier tournament top 3 until 2017-06-19 in WCS Jönköping which is almost a year after the release of LOTV.
Other than these reasons, I still think that Serral's win rate, amount of premier tournament wins, and earnings still makes him the best player of SC2. Maybe not the greatest of all "TIME".
I share your opinion, Serral is clearly the GOAT in by every metric, it shouldn't be a discussion. Happy to see Life mentioned too, I personally think he should come in at 5th just behind InNoVation with Rogue taking 2nd and Maru 3rd.
Life broke my heart a little bit at the time, he was my favourite player from the moment he appeared and I thought he was GOAT even after he was banned, but as I said it did break my heart a bit. Until Serral appeared there wasn't another player who I liked anywhere near as much as Life
11:15 "Put under the tonue to get 120/80 blood pressure in 15 minutes"... WHYYYYYY no UBlock Origin?
serial is the goat. no debate at all.by far.
Serral should consider compete in GSL
He doesn't want to because you have to stay in Korea for a period of time. It's not worth it for him.
Going to be late 2025 at the earliest. He has military service this year. We'll see how long SC2 stays competitive, but I doubt a GSL trophy at that point would count for much in peoples minds.
Serral studying his opponents and coming with strategies for every single one of them AND executing those strategies flawlessly makes him the GOAT in my opinion.
Yup he definitely did this. He realized that Clems kryptonite is Lurkers and investors.
im sure the person who made this list is artosis.
Yeah, that guy is so butthurt his favorite Korean Terran boy gets destroyed outside of Korea, especially when playing against Serral.
nah arty would put rogue at #1
@@nogghorn7080 cause he cannot put Maru anymore. But yeah before Serral kicked Maru ass, he was saying Maru. He still say Maru is the player that impress him the most.
@@ppnoir And most recently he's saying Clem is better than Serral- not even that, he's saying that Zerg is OP because obviously Clem is the best player! Bonkers
Serral haters.
1. Serral wins TOO MUCH
2. Serral is not GOAT wins not enough
3. Nerf Zerg until Serral can't reach quarterfinals, at the detriment of other Zerg players.
If this was Christianity, Pig is God, Serral is Jesus, Life is Lucifer, and Maru is Michael.
I don't know anywhere near enough to weigh in on the topic at hand. However, my personal favorite is MarineKing. Not really a contender here on relevance or stats. Also caught some shame on his name even though he was vetted as a non participant in the drama. But, his influence over how Terran gets played (multi prong, distractions infront of decisive strikes etc) still creeps up in the best Terrans currently out there. I feel like in some ways, he wrote the book- he built the ship, and the next generation flew the wings off of it.
A long and detailed study into how to tweak the parameters so that Maru just rises above Serral has paid off. But I guess a few more years of Serral brutally beating everyone, including Maru, are needed to get to the point where no amount of gaming the stats will end up with anyone but Serral at the GOAT position.
I think my biggest problem with the Maru vs Serral debate is it really honestly feels like everything pre 2018 is ignored, which is odd, as, at least for me, while post 2018 is technically the highest level of play (from Serral, Maru, Stats, Reynor, Rogue, Dark specifically), I do not think a game that is this underfunded and a scene that sees this little in terms of justification to enter and grind deserves as much credence. With the majority of Maru's success (and all of Serral's) happening in post 2017, I question the legitimacy of calling either of them GOAT. Hell I'd call Rogue GOAT over either of them and he has a very similar problem.
This really is all Life's fault for match-fixing because no shot we he wouldn't be undisputed had it not been for his crimes...
36:11 can't stop laughing dude, thanks and of course Serral is the GOAT you're totally right
Raven was so busted, Terran on that patch only had a single player in the ro8 of WESG and Code S, and only had 2 players in the top 12 of IEM.