On January 08 2013 03:17 1Dhalism wrote: to be honest the reason Flash didnt qualify for code S is probably because KTF fielded him in proleague. That was a horrible decision; between tiredness, wasting bo1 strategies, and allowing your opponents to study you(something koreans are very good at) there was a very slim chance of him making it out of UnDs
What about Taeja? He was fielded in the proleague, and still manage to dominate his U-D group. Which is why everyone is saying Flash might be good, but is not the best.
a) his matches where a day apart b) who knows how he wouldve performed in UnDs if he had won 4 games c) he is a lot more experienced then flash, and probably has more strategies that he is capable of executing well d) his UnD group was a lot weaker. And as far as coaches decision to field him - they picked him as 3rd player, not first.
Stop making excuses for Flash. Man. He lost. He is not a top code S player. He probably is good enough to be low Code S right now. I dont even see why there is a discussion on this. He has failed twice. I fully suspect that he will continue improving and he has some amazing games played already. He is just not at the top yet.
The point is Flash didn't exactly lost. He was in a three-way tie with MC and Jeadong. All three of them has a score of 3-2 in maps, but Flash lost due to tie-breaker.
Your saying: MC is Code-S and Flash is not? It was a bit unlucky to have such an even group. And I can bet that Flash will be the only player in Up&Down groups with 3:2 record that didn't get a Wild Card group at least.
On January 08 2013 05:51 Emzeeshady wrote: Also I have a suspicion the op just made this thread to enjoy the chaos that would ensue :p
Idk, this site: http://aligulac.com/players/55/ is by far the most accurate, detailed, and in depth rating system of players and it has Flash at # 11.
I doubted it because it sometimes produced questionable predictions with foreign matches, but it's been updated and many speak in its favor. He has beaten several Code S players, good ones at that, and his play continues to rapidly improve. Look at his games from the hyprid proleague, to the MLG invitational, to the MVP invitational, and to today.
He is still improving and performs very well in macro games. Just like Baby, Bbyong, and Innovation. Remember how bad innovation looked against Leenock? Perfect responses to games that aren't standard aren't just magically made. They come from huge amounts of experience that enable you to react perfectly in a given situation. So Flash died to an aggressive protoss poke and an early muta ling bane timing. Do you think he will make the same mistake again?
Macro wise he is high Code S. I don't know how that can be doubted. He somehow always has a significant supply lead against his opponents, even zergs. His micro is lacking, but of all things that can be improved micro is the most straightforward, and he will learn how to defend while doing his greedy macro builds.
I'll admit I'm a Flash fanboy-- his play has revitalized my passion for this game and I have started to enjoy playing it again, things I lost during the Queen Patch massacre. He plays such an in depth and thorough macro style unlike any other SC2 player I've seen, constantly scouting with scvs, building turret roads with his mech pushes, scanning everywhere, flawless macro, and just solid and clean play leaving nothing to chance.
He has started taking more risks, but if you watched his proxy barracks game you can see that they really aren't risks. He may not have made Code S this season, but he is certainly here to stay. Having the best record in Proleague is a tremendous feat, and I foresee him becoming the world's best player, as he was in BW, sometime within the next year.
I really don't know how Flash gets his advantages so well. Its said that he just does more of the "little things", but it always seems like he is just better and ahead of his opponent... Flash fighting!!!
He's Code S caliber for sure, but just ended up in the group of death and lost out on tiebreakers. The thing is with code s, the 32 players cap is just an arbitrary number. With the exception of the elite, the difference b/w code s and code a players is not very large. Most code a players can beat code s players in a bo 1 or a bo 3 on any given day and even the elite can drop games too against them.
On January 08 2013 07:04 Canucklehead wrote: He's Code S caliber for sure, but just ended up in the group of death and lost out on tiebreakers. The thing is with code s, the 32 players cap is just an arbitrary number. With the exception of the elite, the difference b/w code s and code a players is not very large. Most code a players can beat code s players in a bo 1 or a bo 3 on any given day and even the elite can drop games too against them.
I agree with this. But really there's no weak groups in Up/Downs. I think there's an even harder group (group D) than the one Flash got in.
On January 08 2013 07:04 Canucklehead wrote: He's Code S caliber for sure, but just ended up in the group of death and lost out on tiebreakers. The thing is with code s, the 32 players cap is just an arbitrary number. With the exception of the elite, the difference b/w code s and code a players is not very large. Most code a players can beat code s players in a bo 1 or a bo 3 on any given day and even the elite can drop games too against them.
I agree with this. But really there's no weak groups in Up/Downs. I think there's an even harder group (group D) than the one Flash got in.
Group E seems by far the easiest to me. Flash's group was weird. Jaedong is an enigma, a combination of terrific mechanics and lack of experience making him capable of near perfect games or horrible Code B games. Yoda is a top Terran, Yongwha a teamleague Juggernaut, and Vampire the odd man out.
I agree that his group wasn't the hardest, but all Up/Down groups certainly aren't the same. As aforementioned, group E is lackluster and fields players like Huk (free win for anyone) and Nestea (poor mechanics by Korean standards) and low-mid tier palyers like Center and Finale.
if flash was 'code s caliber' then he'd be in code s, and not barely getting into the up and downs. he's not that good. he makes alot of mistakes in his sc2 games. he is mid level code a. proven by his performances.
On January 08 2013 05:51 Emzeeshady wrote: Also I have a suspicion the op just made this thread to enjoy the chaos that would ensue :p
Idk, this site: http://aligulac.com/players/55/ is by far the most accurate, detailed, and in depth rating system of players and it has Flash at # 11.
I doubted it because it sometimes produced questionable predictions with foreign matches, but it's been updated and many speak in its favor. He has beaten several Code S players, good ones at that, and his play continues to rapidly improve. Look at his games from the hyprid proleague, to the MLG invitational, to the MVP invitational, and to today.
He is still improving and performs very well in macro games. Just like Baby, Bbyong, and Innovation. Remember how bad innovation looked against Leenock? Perfect responses to games that aren't standard aren't just magically made. They come from huge amounts of experience that enable you to react perfectly in a given situation. So Flash died to an aggressive protoss poke and an early muta ling bane timing. Do you think he will make the same mistake again?
Macro wise he is high Code S. I don't know how that can be doubted. He somehow always has a significant supply lead against his opponents, even zergs. His micro is lacking, but of all things that can be improved micro is the most straightforward, and he will learn how to defend while doing his greedy macro builds.
I'll admit I'm a Flash fanboy-- his play has revitalized my passion for this game and I have started to enjoy playing it again, things I lost during the Queen Patch massacre. He plays such an in depth and thorough macro style unlike any other SC2 player I've seen, constantly scouting with scvs, building turret roads with his mech pushes, scanning everywhere, flawless macro, and just solid and clean play leaving nothing to chance.
He has started taking more risks, but if you watched his proxy barracks game you can see that they really aren't risks. He may not have made Code S this season, but he is certainly here to stay. Having the best record in Proleague is a tremendous feat, and I foresee him becoming the world's best player, as he was in BW, sometime within the next year.
No one works harder than this man.
LMFAO that list is not accurate at all. It places Effort at 10 and Leenock at 12. I don't know what stats the owner of that site used to rank them but they are clearly misguided.
If you look at the math it's anything but misguided. Not that I expect anyone here to do that.
On January 08 2013 03:17 1Dhalism wrote: to be honest the reason Flash didnt qualify for code S is probably because KTF fielded him in proleague. That was a horrible decision; between tiredness, wasting bo1 strategies, and allowing your opponents to study you(something koreans are very good at) there was a very slim chance of him making it out of UnDs
What about Taeja? He was fielded in the proleague, and still manage to dominate his U-D group. Which is why everyone is saying Flash might be good, but is not the best.
a) his matches where a day apart b) who knows how he wouldve performed in UnDs if he had won 4 games c) he is a lot more experienced then flash, and probably has more strategies that he is capable of executing well d) his UnD group was a lot weaker. And as far as coaches decision to field him - they picked him as 3rd player, not first.
Stop making excuses for Flash. Man. He lost. He is not a top code S player. He probably is good enough to be low Code S right now. I dont even see why there is a discussion on this. He has failed twice. I fully suspect that he will continue improving and he has some amazing games played already. He is just not at the top yet.
The thing is,,, that if you watched the games and if your decent at the game as well, you can easily see how insanely good this guy it is. Results fucking don't matter in the short run cus variance is too high and one can lose to silly stuff (which he actually did).
Flash is one of the best players in the world. Many of the kespa terrans are insanely good as well. Tough to say which one is the best, but without doubt Flash is a top 32 player in the world. Whether he is a top 5 player or "just" a top 30 player is tough to say. But I think people saying he is definitely a low code s player/high code are slightly ignorant as well. Noone can be that specific yet, and there aren't any apparing flaws in his game which isn't easily fixable.
let us not forget that flash played yoda after yoda was already through to code s, that was a free win for flash. yet he still didnt make it up.
also i find his cc first always build very boring. if he even did make it to code s, that build would get destroyed everytime and he'd get embarrassed like he did at MLG vs Life
I think hes the best terran right now, I would love to watch a bo7 between him and mvp to settle it. Hell, he might even be the best player overall, he plays unlike any other player, its rly too bad he got screwed in Up/Down
I think it's a bit unfair when people state: yeah, he lost against this rush, but he's not going to make the same mistake twice. As if Flash is the only person in the world that is improving. You can always say that about anybody.
While I have no problem with the intention behind this thread, it's another elephant-in-the-room thread that doesn't seem to really have any answers.
You're going to have the die-hard flash fans defending the hell out of him, and the sc2 nuts bashing the hell out of him. There are very few posts here that seem to be taking a legitimately moderate approach to the topic at hand.
Flash is a very good player, after seeing him play for real I no longer doubt that he will be one of the absolute bests at the game, and in fact don't want him to fail because I see so much potential for true greatness.
However I don't believe he is the all-powerful godlike player that he's been hyped up to be... yet. No amount of "up and down match format is flawed!" or "he all-killed egtl!" prove anything at all other than "he did really well in proleague vs egtl but lost in his up and down groups".
Feel free to keep spouting it as much as you'd like one way or another. That's your right on the forum and until TL takes a nazi approach to their modding I don't see it going away. I'm going to wait and see what happens, and hope that he can give some of the more popular long-time sc2 pros a run for their money as far as results are concerned.
On January 07 2013 21:07 Elroi wrote: I don't know how how good Life, Parting etc (the eSF (?)) players are. But I think Flash is the best proleague player. If you look at the way he played yesterday he clearly is better than Hero and Taeja. He literally was playing much better than them.
He wasn't "clearly better" than them. He played Antiga perfectly but it was Antiga. There's a reason why protoss hate this map and considering how it went, HerO put up a great fight. You can't take one game on a terran favored map and call him better than HerO. Didn't see the game vs Taeja.
Ah, the good ol' "Antiga" argument.
It's funny that it's claimed as such a 'great' Terran map, yet Terran had sub 50% winrates on it in both TvZ and TvP in 2012.
But, I guess you and all the other people that blindly spew shit you heard Idra say don't care about statistics.
So, yea I agree with you. Protoss can't beat Terran on Antiga.
a) Your arguments are horrible, b) I've never watched Idra stream even once and c) I also wrote a quick summary of what happened earlier. Maybe you noticed that I said "Flash played the map perfectly". Maybe not every terran does that. Should I explain to you why protoss hate the map or are you intelligent enough to figure it out yourself?
Well, protoss may hate the map but the numbers don't lie and those numbers are in favor of Protoss.
He is a very good player who would be a worry to any player he faces. I think that is all you need to know, it is very difficult to rank him against everybody else without any bias.
He does, and will continue to, cause a problem for anyone he faces. That is where I rank Flash at the moment.
On January 07 2013 21:07 Elroi wrote: I don't know how how good Life, Parting etc (the eSF (?)) players are. But I think Flash is the best proleague player. If you look at the way he played yesterday he clearly is better than Hero and Taeja. He literally was playing much better than them.
He wasn't "clearly better" than them. He played Antiga perfectly but it was Antiga. There's a reason why protoss hate this map and considering how it went, HerO put up a great fight. You can't take one game on a terran favored map and call him better than HerO. Didn't see the game vs Taeja.
Ah, the good ol' "Antiga" argument.
It's funny that it's claimed as such a 'great' Terran map, yet Terran had sub 50% winrates on it in both TvZ and TvP in 2012.
But, I guess you and all the other people that blindly spew shit you heard Idra say don't care about statistics.
So, yea I agree with you. Protoss can't beat Terran on Antiga.
a) Your arguments are horrible, b) I've never watched Idra stream even once and c) I also wrote a quick summary of what happened earlier. Maybe you noticed that I said "Flash played the map perfectly". Maybe not every terran does that. Should I explain to you why protoss hate the map or are you intelligent enough to figure it out yourself?
Well, protoss may hate the map but the numbers don't lie and those numbers are in favor of Protoss.
Eh, don't bother. I've tried and no one will listen. Protoss and Zergs will continue to claim that Antiga is a Terran map and they can't win on it, while having super 50% winrates.