“Maybe amongst amateurs… the best among amateurs? But I don’t think he’s progamer level.”
What almost seems like dramatic irony now, these were JangBi’s words describing Nal_rA’s play earlier this year. After seeing one of his recalls:
Yet in today’s match against BByong – who now has a win rate against Protoss of 45.45% and an overall win rate of 42.86% – some of JangBi’s recalls weren't much better.
JangBi still holds the ELO peak in PvT. When thinking of his versus Terran moments like this spring to mind:
In that time, almost two years ago, JangBi reached three Starleague finals in just 5 months. After losing two of them 3-1 to Bisu and the other to Luxury he began to slump to an extent. But slumping as players do, and as he did then, never have I seen a player slump so hard as JangBi in the last few months:
+ Show Spoiler [JangBi's Current Record] +
Finally breaking his 0-11 losing streak with a win over HoeJJa his luck didn’t turn as he lost to Hydra and SKT1’s rookie Terran, Ssak, putting him out of the MSL. In his next match game, over two weeks later at the beginning of Proleague round 2, against Saint, he secured another win. That made two wins in his last 15 games, both against Zergs who’s records are as following:
+ Show Spoiler [HoeJJa's Current Record] +
+ Show Spoiler [Saint's Current Record] +
Nothing to get too hyped up about. But in his interview after his win over Saint, he seemed to be regaining confidence. He said he is a player of momentum, “When I win, I go on a winning streak, and when I lose, I fall into a losing one.” (See full interview here). So I hoped he was right, that he could find his way out of this. But it wasn’t to be as just three days later he lost to Stats.
When JangBi went up against Zero last week I assumed it would be a non-event, another failure, we can re-live some of it thanks to Zona’s commentary on the LR Thread:
Zona December 12 2010 14:13
jangbi = screwed
but now he's moving out with 6 sairs - hunting down fast OL's
but mass lings moving out for zero
jangbi better hold his choke!
December 12 2010 14:16
jangbi taking his 3rd at 6
but zero adding more and more hydra
morphing a few lurkers too
I don't think Jangbi can hold
December 12 2010 14:18.
jangbi on 7 gates now, shuttle loads up dt
his observatory finishes
zealot/archon needs to flee from lurkers outside jangbi's nat
lurkers burrowing in range of the nat
mass hydra join them
jangbi sending out zealots one by one to die
he still has no detection
hydra moving into the nat!
probes not being pulled
hydra trying to snipe retreating templar
December 12 2010 14:18.
hydra about to destroy jangbi's robo AND spinning core
zero about to lose his lair in his main
but jangbi losing his nat
zero loses his lair!
ol/hydra take their revent on the dt
jangbi's 3rd not mining at all, 2 probes there idle
December 12 2010 14:21.
jangbi not contrlling his airs [sic.] though and loses the last 3 of them
zealot/templar drop on zero's main
tries to storm the retreating drones, only gets 3 - huge storm drop at the nat though - probably 12 drone kills!
And then it began:
+ Show Spoiler [STORMMUUU!!!] +
Let’s take a look at that moment in the VOD:
Zero’s face said it all.
And as the game rolled on:
He took a break to smile at the camera! Was it true, was JangBi really back? Zero is a top level Zerg, and he had been ahead all game, this was an amazing comeback.
So I went in to today’s game with high hopes, stupidly high hopes. Not too long into the game:
+ Show Spoiler [LR Thread] +
And though it was a long – and quite exciting – game, these turned out to be recurring themes. JangBi seemed slow to deal with and clean up harasses, he was careless with mines, at one point he engaged BByong’s army before his Zealot’s arrived, saving himself by a clutch stasis so his Dragoon’s could escape just as four or five Zealots arrived. Later we saw what looked like a “Bermuda recall” but JangBi cleverly took out all BByong’s detection so the recall did a lot more damage than expected destroying a lot of depots. But the game trawled on, and after a lot of expos being taken out by both players, JangBi finally gg’d while losing the last of his army in the final engagement. Before today BByong's TvP was 40% (okay, he'd only played ten TvP's in his career) but a better Terran would have ended that game far far sooner.
JangBi's decline can be seen most clearly from the following statistics:
2008
All - 68 wins - 32 losses (68.00%)
PvP - 22 wins - 14 losses (61.11%)
PvT - 27 wins - 10 losses (72.97%)
PvZ - 19 wins - 8 losses (70.37%)
2009
All - 56 wins - 46 losses (54.90%)
PvP - 18 wins - 14 losses (56.25%)
PvT - 21 wins - 11 losses (65.63%)
PvZ - 17 wins - 21 losses (44.74%)
2010
All - 31 wins - 36 losses (46.27%)
PvP - 6 wins - 6 losses (50.00%)
PvT - 11 wins - 20 losses (35.48%)
PvZ - 14 wins - 10 losses (58.33%)
As pointed out by Mortality, his PvT has gone from being his best match-up to his worst match-up. He has gone from almost a 73% win-rate to a shocking 35%. His overall win-rate has plummeted in that time too, dropping lamost 13% each year. He has gone from almost S-class to, as he described Nal_rA, maybe amateur... "the best among amateurs but..."
In the last few days we got see some glimpses of the old JangBi, that epic spell micro – an example from today:
Here's the LR Thread from that moment:
+ Show Spoiler [stasis] +
But what we have seen is only a shade of the old JangBi. Maybe January needs to try something different, when Bisu was slumping earlier this year Coach Park changed his practice routine, he didn't play Bisu for a few matches and when he came back he was on form again. Whatever January needs to do for one of her star players, she needs to do it soon. Not since Savior's fall a few years ago have I seen such a slump (and after the match-fixing scandal that can hardly be counted any more).
It really is a tough time to be a JangBi fan.
Heo Yeong Moo fighting.