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JangBi was almost never a presence in individual leagues outside of his 4 finals (5 if GOMTV) appearances. And the short 2007 Proleague was the only time he was the top Protoss in SPL. He became a paewang, and then won the last 2 OSL's in perhaps the most storied fashion ever.
He's a much more extreme version of Bisu's bipolar performances (in the sense that people remembers his high's more than the lows), and cannot seriously be discussed for even top 4 Protoss players (relative to their eras), imho. Reach and Nal_Ra brought more to their race and consistently represented it at the highest end better, and of course Stork and Bisu have been discussed to death. In terms of absolute skill, the 6 dragons are probably the best Protoss players period though.
Fantasy is quite legit though. Very clutch player in individual leagues despite being in the Kong line. 7-5 in Ro16s, 7-0 in Ro8s, 5-2 in Ro4s. I think if Pro BW lasted longer he could claim to be the best Terran behind the Bonjwa's and Flash. He already is in terms of finals appearances, which is important. But he had a relatively shorter career than TBLS (minus Flash who had the same length, and if one hell of a metric).
Besides Flash, who would rank above Fantasy for Terran from the 2008-2012 era as a whole? Sea was a SPL monster, but nothing individual. Light was the only other Terran to do well in both SPL and Starleagues, but his SL performance has nothing on Fantasy and his TvP was poor. It's Fantasy, period. To be second best Terran in the highest skill era ever is significant. ForGG only had 1 (amazing, but only 1) run.
Though the older players are before my time, so I don't know if players like Xellos and Goodfriend would be better in the grand scheme of things. Fantasy could contend for one of the best Terrans ever in terms of accomplishments and contributions (though I know some say his style was just iloveoov's ideas), and possibly second most in terms of peak skill.
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On January 01 2017 07:23 mauwee wrote:Show nested quote + Ultimately its a pretty subjective thing whether you consider Storks consistency or Bisu's accomplishments inspite of his instability, to be greater than the other. I think in terms of absolute quality Bisu and Jangbi were clearly the best protoss to have ever played, and were best able to show what a human might be capable of (after all professional bw is a small talent pool). But Stork was clearly consistent across many era's in ways neither were, and if you were to consider those achievements to merit being the greatest protoss ever, how could anyone even argue? Jangbi's winning % was only like 55% in his pro career, sure he won two OSL titles but that is when everyone was training for SC2. Saying that Jangbi is in anyway near the likes of Bisu or Stork is like saying Fantasy is one of the best Terran players ever..... Where the hell is the logic there? You have to win x amount of titles in order to have x quality of game play? Clearly not. What I was saying is that Jangbi and Bisu, when they played at their very best, elevated the race beyond what anyone else could do, not that they always played at that level.
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You just have to distinguish the difference between greatest peak skill level and other quantifiers. JangBi storms leave a big impression on the mind. But even to claim at peak JangBi was the 2nd greatest Protoss ever seems like an exercise in finding exactly where the peak was. He seems more of a player where his top dozen games look amazing, but then you have to remember all the times he saw loss after loss (even his 2 OSL championships were surrounded by negative SPL records).
He was truly amazing at times though, but what period do you think he may have been the second best? 08-09 with 3 finals and a positive SPL record (and great memories like NaDa storm drops)?
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Bisu and Jangbi were clearly the best protoss to have ever played, and were best able to show what a human might be capable of
It's clear to anyone who isnt looking for a fight that I was speaking of Jangbi and Bisu's ability, and not how we could summarize their total accomplishments as a player -- hell, the rest of the post was, and the whole meat of the reason I posted at all, speaking to the fact that "best" is a somewhat subjective term, because of what aspects of a career people think 'best'. The entire statement about Jangbi and Bisu only makes sense in context as a description of only their gameplay capacity [it not being a subjective thing]. It's just incoherent/drastically uncharitable to read it any other way. No doubt there were other, more stable protosses who could be described as 'better' within a certain conceptual prism, but also clearly, I was not speaking through that prism but merely temporary contingent abilities. Jangbi and Bisu at their very best, however ephemeral that was, were the best protoss to have ever played.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On January 01 2017 04:32 Letmelose wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2017 02:52 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: At the end of the day, all arguments put foward are going to be subjective, either by how you compare performances, or which statistics to compare. Perfect objectivity just isn't realistic, because there is no objective definition of greatness.
I mean, i could instead put forward statistical arguments, at the end of the day, Bisu has a significantly higher win percentage, so despite Stork winning more prestigious matches, Bisu has just flat out won at a better rate, even with the stats of his slump included. Or that he is simply the Protoss with the most number of Starleague gold medals, as well as a ton of proleague medals just from being skt1. Or the highest protoss ELO peak.
But those are just flat out not the reasons why I think him the greatest Protoss and i don't think them particularly relevant. At the end of the day, my reasons are his level of play and not cold hard statistics.
For Lachrymose, the standard just is that that PL season when he believed play was at it's peak.
As for quality of games comparing quality of gameplay from different time periods, yes, you need to compare the players to the level of play of their competition at the time, and it is much more difficult for older games/players. But in this case, this isn't an issue, as they are two contemporaries playing during the same time period where their play can be directly compared, with more or less their entire career in vod form.
In the end it comes down to what you value to be greatness, we could easily ask why it's important to progress into starleagues outside the obvious effect of winning games. Why does consistent placing well in starleagues over a long time matter more than just winning at a greater frequency over your career? I think we're starting to repeat ourselves. I'd love to just agree to disagree, but I'll post one more before I go to sleep. We've established the statistics that are in favour of Bisu. I was pointing out the statistics that are in favour of Stork. I originally brought up the topic of Stork versus Bisu, on the claim that Bisu was more ahead of other members of his race than it was the case for Jaedong, or Flash. I chose sAviOr as a point of comparison for Jaedong, and showed how Jaedong didn't only have more championships, but had sAviOr beaten comprehensively in all bracket stage performances, as well as every single ProLeague round that took place after Jaedong's debut round. Stork was my protoss of choice to be compared with Bisu. I think there's a slight argument to be made that Stork had the more extensive career (notice that I established my opinion that I think of Bisu as the superior player), based on his superior longetivity, which has led to an extra 2nd place, an extra semi-finals, two more round of 8 appearances, and eight more round of 16 appearances. He also had a more steady performance in the ProLeague going season by season, although Bisu more than made up for it in terms of overall records by having two year's worth of god-tier performances when the ProLeague scheduling was absolutely insane with 81 games (with a 81.5% win rate) in his best year (2010/2011), compared the 42 games (with a 73.8% win rate) Stork played during his best year of ProLeague. It's with the help of this inflation of these ProLeague games that Bisu achieves his highest ELO ever, rather than getting it during his MSL winnings streak. Bisu versus Stork analysis aside, which was a topic I brought up to silence the myth that any limitation that Bisu had was due to his choice of race, I'll answer your question on why it's important to consider success at which players had at qualifying for the lower bracket stages of the individual leagues, and why it's important to consider other placements during a player's career rather than just judging them by their 1st place finishes. GARIMTO. Although he played in a vastly different era, when the triumvirate of OGN StarLeague/MSL/ProLeague didn't exist, he had a very incomplete career, compared to someone like Stork. Although it's unfair to judge GARIMTO simply by the tournaments that survived to this date, due to how the landscape of his era was not necessarily the same, here is his entire career in OGN StarLeagues/KPGA Tournaments. 1st place finishes: 2 Finals or above: 2 Semi-finals or above: 2 Quarter-finals or above: 2 Round of 16 or above: 6 2 OGN StarLeague championships, four other times where he finished in the top 16. I don't care how much you think championships are worth, I don't think it's right to say GARIMTO achieved more than Stork in their entire careers. As for why longetivity matters, it's the only way to compensate for the fact that the professional Brood War scenes had huge changes in which tournaments had the most prize pool, had the most number of players attending, and the way in which the formatting worked. It changed so many times that winning two MSL titles in a row 2005 was completely different from winning two MSL titles in a row in 2009 for example. If you dropped straight out of the round of 16 in UZOO MSL, you weren't able to return for the following MSL no matter what. So in just in terms of the format difficulty, being in two consecutive MSL was objectively harder than it was in 2009, for example, where you could drop out of the round 32, and still return. Therefore, just comparing records, and placements without considering all the plethora of changes that happened in the scene makes the comparisons a little flawed to start with. The only option is to compare within that specific era. Winning two back to back OGN StarLeague may be not the same achievements in 2001, and 2009, but what doesn't change is the fact that dominating all the tournaments in 2001, makes you the best for a year, and the time frame is what makes the comparison easier. So if there is a player who is the best player in the scene for a year, and another who is the best player for two years, you obviously keep that in mind (without making any brash judgments), even if the other statistics don't follow. For example, by this criteria, Stork is the superior player to Bisu in the ProLeague because he was better for longer periods of time, whereas Bisu is the superior ProLeague player if you don't take eras into account, and just add up their overall records. Stork was there for the ride as well, so it's less of an issue here, but this method is more useful in preventing players who are mediocre otherwise like Really, from padding their statistics way up with performances during the inflated era of the ProLeague. For a holistic review of their careers season by season, Stork was better in 2005, Bisu was better in 2006 due to his win versus sAviOr, in 2007 it depends on your criteria, Stork was better in the ProLeague, while Bisu was better in the individual leagues, for the first half of 2008 Stork was better in the ProLeague, while Bisu was better in the individual leagues, in 2008/2009 Bisu was clearly better, in 2009/2010 Stork was clearly better, in 2010/2011 Bisu was better in the ProLeague, while Stork was better in the individual leagues, 2011/2012 Stork was clearly better. In summary, Stork was the better performing protoss player for three years (2005, 2009/2010, 2011/2012), Bisu was better for two years also (2006, 2008/2009), and the remaining two and a half years depends on how you weigh the importance of the ProLeague. If you think their discrepancies in the ProLeague results matter more, Bisu was better for three years versus the four and a half years for Stork. If you thought better individual placements matter more, Bisu was better for three and a half years, compared to the four years for Stork. Either way, Stork was more relevant as a player for a longer duration of his career. These are some of the merits Stork has. It's not indicative of their greatness, but it's a way of measuring their careers, by which, I believe, their greatness is measured by. It's ultimately how I judge these players, not by how they won, or if they should have won, but by how much they won. The exact method of measuring how much they won is up for discussion, which is why I welcome various statistics, and different approaches to judging their actual result such as win percentages, gathering up all their various placements, and peak ELO. I'm not stating that these stastics are the truth and the light, but rather more data to have a more complete understanding of the nature, and scope of these player's careers and achievements, by which their greatness can be understood. Without a proper attempt at understanding their careers, feelings, and impressions of their memorable moments are worthless, in my eyes.
I'd still like to sum it up to the agree to disagree conclusion.
While I am totally OK with your approach of measuring how well they placed over time, and think it'a s totally valid approach. I would point out it is not so much a measure of how much they won, as how well they placed.
The mathematically pure way of measuring how much they won is quite simple. Stork beats Bisu with more wins 478-436. Bisu beats Storks with fewer losses 230 - 306. Eg Stork has won more games, Bisu wins a greater proportion of his games. *barring tlpd not being totally accurate/thorough
I don't think those are totally fair statistics to Stork, because I feel Bisu on the whole had easier games. But if you just want a measure of how much they won. It's hard to argue with a total and a mean. It doesn't care about how you played in your wins or losses, it doesn't care how your wins or losses are distributed throughout your career. It puts streaky and consistent players on even ground of 'get wins, I don't care how or when'. It places no emphasis on anything but winning.
You place greater importance on tournament and proleague placements, and I place greater emphasis on level of play. I think your method is valid but I don't think it's fair to call your approach how much they won.
I think it's more of a measure of 'how long they were relevant' vs 'how they played'. While 'how much they won' is actually fairly statistically uninteresting, not because it's not important, but because the most objective possible measure can be found by literally clicking on tlpd.
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On January 01 2017 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:Thanks!!!!!
no prob.
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On January 01 2017 09:59 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2017 04:32 Letmelose wrote:On January 01 2017 02:52 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: At the end of the day, all arguments put foward are going to be subjective, either by how you compare performances, or which statistics to compare. Perfect objectivity just isn't realistic, because there is no objective definition of greatness.
I mean, i could instead put forward statistical arguments, at the end of the day, Bisu has a significantly higher win percentage, so despite Stork winning more prestigious matches, Bisu has just flat out won at a better rate, even with the stats of his slump included. Or that he is simply the Protoss with the most number of Starleague gold medals, as well as a ton of proleague medals just from being skt1. Or the highest protoss ELO peak.
But those are just flat out not the reasons why I think him the greatest Protoss and i don't think them particularly relevant. At the end of the day, my reasons are his level of play and not cold hard statistics.
For Lachrymose, the standard just is that that PL season when he believed play was at it's peak.
As for quality of games comparing quality of gameplay from different time periods, yes, you need to compare the players to the level of play of their competition at the time, and it is much more difficult for older games/players. But in this case, this isn't an issue, as they are two contemporaries playing during the same time period where their play can be directly compared, with more or less their entire career in vod form.
In the end it comes down to what you value to be greatness, we could easily ask why it's important to progress into starleagues outside the obvious effect of winning games. Why does consistent placing well in starleagues over a long time matter more than just winning at a greater frequency over your career? I think we're starting to repeat ourselves. I'd love to just agree to disagree, but I'll post one more before I go to sleep. We've established the statistics that are in favour of Bisu. I was pointing out the statistics that are in favour of Stork. I originally brought up the topic of Stork versus Bisu, on the claim that Bisu was more ahead of other members of his race than it was the case for Jaedong, or Flash. I chose sAviOr as a point of comparison for Jaedong, and showed how Jaedong didn't only have more championships, but had sAviOr beaten comprehensively in all bracket stage performances, as well as every single ProLeague round that took place after Jaedong's debut round. Stork was my protoss of choice to be compared with Bisu. I think there's a slight argument to be made that Stork had the more extensive career (notice that I established my opinion that I think of Bisu as the superior player), based on his superior longetivity, which has led to an extra 2nd place, an extra semi-finals, two more round of 8 appearances, and eight more round of 16 appearances. He also had a more steady performance in the ProLeague going season by season, although Bisu more than made up for it in terms of overall records by having two year's worth of god-tier performances when the ProLeague scheduling was absolutely insane with 81 games (with a 81.5% win rate) in his best year (2010/2011), compared the 42 games (with a 73.8% win rate) Stork played during his best year of ProLeague. It's with the help of this inflation of these ProLeague games that Bisu achieves his highest ELO ever, rather than getting it during his MSL winnings streak. Bisu versus Stork analysis aside, which was a topic I brought up to silence the myth that any limitation that Bisu had was due to his choice of race, I'll answer your question on why it's important to consider success at which players had at qualifying for the lower bracket stages of the individual leagues, and why it's important to consider other placements during a player's career rather than just judging them by their 1st place finishes. GARIMTO. Although he played in a vastly different era, when the triumvirate of OGN StarLeague/MSL/ProLeague didn't exist, he had a very incomplete career, compared to someone like Stork. Although it's unfair to judge GARIMTO simply by the tournaments that survived to this date, due to how the landscape of his era was not necessarily the same, here is his entire career in OGN StarLeagues/KPGA Tournaments. 1st place finishes: 2 Finals or above: 2 Semi-finals or above: 2 Quarter-finals or above: 2 Round of 16 or above: 6 2 OGN StarLeague championships, four other times where he finished in the top 16. I don't care how much you think championships are worth, I don't think it's right to say GARIMTO achieved more than Stork in their entire careers. As for why longetivity matters, it's the only way to compensate for the fact that the professional Brood War scenes had huge changes in which tournaments had the most prize pool, had the most number of players attending, and the way in which the formatting worked. It changed so many times that winning two MSL titles in a row 2005 was completely different from winning two MSL titles in a row in 2009 for example. If you dropped straight out of the round of 16 in UZOO MSL, you weren't able to return for the following MSL no matter what. So in just in terms of the format difficulty, being in two consecutive MSL was objectively harder than it was in 2009, for example, where you could drop out of the round 32, and still return. Therefore, just comparing records, and placements without considering all the plethora of changes that happened in the scene makes the comparisons a little flawed to start with. The only option is to compare within that specific era. Winning two back to back OGN StarLeague may be not the same achievements in 2001, and 2009, but what doesn't change is the fact that dominating all the tournaments in 2001, makes you the best for a year, and the time frame is what makes the comparison easier. So if there is a player who is the best player in the scene for a year, and another who is the best player for two years, you obviously keep that in mind (without making any brash judgments), even if the other statistics don't follow. For example, by this criteria, Stork is the superior player to Bisu in the ProLeague because he was better for longer periods of time, whereas Bisu is the superior ProLeague player if you don't take eras into account, and just add up their overall records. Stork was there for the ride as well, so it's less of an issue here, but this method is more useful in preventing players who are mediocre otherwise like Really, from padding their statistics way up with performances during the inflated era of the ProLeague. For a holistic review of their careers season by season, Stork was better in 2005, Bisu was better in 2006 due to his win versus sAviOr, in 2007 it depends on your criteria, Stork was better in the ProLeague, while Bisu was better in the individual leagues, for the first half of 2008 Stork was better in the ProLeague, while Bisu was better in the individual leagues, in 2008/2009 Bisu was clearly better, in 2009/2010 Stork was clearly better, in 2010/2011 Bisu was better in the ProLeague, while Stork was better in the individual leagues, 2011/2012 Stork was clearly better. In summary, Stork was the better performing protoss player for three years (2005, 2009/2010, 2011/2012), Bisu was better for two years also (2006, 2008/2009), and the remaining two and a half years depends on how you weigh the importance of the ProLeague. If you think their discrepancies in the ProLeague results matter more, Bisu was better for three years versus the four and a half years for Stork. If you thought better individual placements matter more, Bisu was better for three and a half years, compared to the four years for Stork. Either way, Stork was more relevant as a player for a longer duration of his career. These are some of the merits Stork has. It's not indicative of their greatness, but it's a way of measuring their careers, by which, I believe, their greatness is measured by. It's ultimately how I judge these players, not by how they won, or if they should have won, but by how much they won. The exact method of measuring how much they won is up for discussion, which is why I welcome various statistics, and different approaches to judging their actual result such as win percentages, gathering up all their various placements, and peak ELO. I'm not stating that these stastics are the truth and the light, but rather more data to have a more complete understanding of the nature, and scope of these player's careers and achievements, by which their greatness can be understood. Without a proper attempt at understanding their careers, feelings, and impressions of their memorable moments are worthless, in my eyes. I'd still like to sum it up to the agree to disagree conclusion. While I am totally OK with your approach of measuring how well they placed over time, and think it'a s totally valid approach. I would point out it is not so much a measure of how much they won, as how well they placed. The mathematically pure way of measuring how much they won is quite simple. Stork beats Bisu with more wins 478-436. Bisu beats Storks with fewer losses 230 - 306. Eg Stork has won more games, Bisu wins a greater proportion of his games. *barring tlpd not being totally accurate/thorough I don't think those are totally fair statistics to Stork, because I feel Bisu on the whole had easier games. But if you just want a measure of how much they won. It's hard to argue with a total and a mean. It doesn't care about how you played in your wins or losses, it doesn't care how your wins or losses are distributed throughout your career. It puts streaky and consistent players on even ground of 'get wins, I don't care how or when'. It places no emphasis on anything but winning. You place greater importance on tournament and proleague placements, and I place greater emphasis on level of play. I think your method is valid but I don't think it's fair to call your approach how much they won. I think it's more of a measure of 'how long they were relevant' vs 'how they played'. While 'how much they won' is actually fairly statistically uninteresting, not because it's not important, but because the most objective possible measure can be found by literally clicking on tlpd.
It's how much they won respective to their era. For example, iloveoov won 9 matches on his way to his 3rd MSL title from the round of 16. He played a single BO5 in the entire tournament due to the format. Bisu played three BO5 series starting from the round of eight (even if we exclude the games he had in the round of 32~16) on his way to the victory in Clubday Online MSL, one of which was against FBH, who at the time had a career TvP record of 45.5%. Sure Bisu won more. What could iloveoov do to win more apart from praying to god he was still a top level player when winning the MSL gave you more BO5 wins, and more opportunities to pad your overall statistics? Iloveoov played in the era of ProLeague when it was composed of 12 rounds of two 1v1 matches, and one 2v2 match without an ACE match. Even if he played in every possible round, the format restricted him to a cap of 12 wins. He ended up as the best player with the record of 8-1 (88.9%).
When Bisu was playing in his most successful ProLeague season, he played in 54 rounds, with the possible cap of 144 wins during the regular season (assuming there was ACE match every time, and Bisu all-killed in every single Winners League round). Sure Bisu won more, and his amazing record of 63 wins during the regular season is something that is more impressive than any other ProLeague achievement, but just saying a quick glance at the bunched up numbers is enough isn't paying sufficient respect to the massive changes in format and number of games that happened. Sometimes, judging players by how long they played well for is the only way to account for the massive changes that happened throughout the history of the scene. I'm okay with Bisu getting higher ELO, and higher overall career win rates due to his superlative ProLeague performances in these particular occasions, but I think that shouldn't be the end of the discussion.
What if iloveoov played three BO5 everytime he made it into the finals, instead of playing just one or two? What if he got to pad his statistics with clean 3-0 victories over pushovers like Firebathero (against protoss only, of course)? What if he sustained his 88.9% win rate in a season that allowed him to play 144 games, if all the stars aligned? What if Stork didn't play for 44 rounds during his best period during the 2007 ProLeague Season (when he had 75.6% win rate) , but had 54 rounds like Bisu, with 18 rounds of 4-0 all kill opportunities, some of which were against free fodder like Air Force ACE (you don't think Bisu took advantage of that)?
The fact of the matter is, Bisu was more impressive in seasons that had more massive scheduling. Stork couldn't take advantage of the 54 rounds of free wins, and only ended the season with 43 wins compared to the 63 wins taken by Bisu. However, this massive difference, while noteworthy, shouldn't overshadow the multitude of other ProLeague seasons such as 2007 Shinhan ProLeague R1 when Stork had regular season record of 15-4 (78.9%) while Bisu had a regular season record of 5-6 (45.5%), then failed against Anytime in the Play-Offs, the very same opponent Stork defeated to gain his Play-Offs MVP title. Don't you think the disparity here is greater? At least Stork had over half the number of wins Bisu had in Bisu's best season, while Bisu had third of the Stork's number of wins with a sub-50% win rate, and finished that off with a flop performance in the play-offs. However, all these years of Stork stomping Bisu in terms of ProLeague performance and statistics had its tables turned upside down with unreal levels of performance from Bisu in those 70~80 game seasons, and I'm fine with Bisu claiming greater win percentages due to these high peaks.
However, I personally believe that breaking down performances era by era is necessary to account for the various changes that happened to the ProLeague season when Stork and Bisu were around. Stork was better for longer. Bisu was much more memorable for exactly two years for those 70~ 80 game seasons. There were three massive seasons of ProLeague, and Stork sustained a steady level of performance that was neither bad, nor memorable. Bisu was amazing for the first one, flopped in the second, then shocked everyone by breaking the ProLeague regular season record set by Flash with 63 wins. This is just breaking down the 3 best years of Bisu's absolute best ProLeague performances. Stork, even when his levels of performance seemed to the most lackluster compared to Bisu at the height of his ProLeague prowess, was still putting respectable levels of performances. Plus he was better in the individual leagues throughout this period also.
This is why I place such value on placements, relative performances, and achievements based on the circumstances of the era. The same exact achievements bring forth vastly different statistics depending on the era. Bisu is rightly rewarded for his extreme highs in terms of peak ELO, number of championships, and overall career win rate, and Stork is rightly rewarded in terms of relative superiority going season by season, having greater resume except for the number of championships, and having more instances of being relevant in all three main platforms of competition (OGN StarLeague/MSL/ProLeague). This suggests that Stork had elements of his career that was superior to Bisu, while Bisu also had elements of his career that was superior. I'm not trying to suggest one or the other. Like I said, I don't have a strong feeling about it either way, but when provoked, I do tend to focus harder on negatives for the player the fanbase of which I consider obnoxious. Go through the same method of comparing data for players like Jaedong and sAviOr, for example, and any myths of Bisu being light-years ahead of his fellow protoss in terms of objective career results should be dispelled.
That's all I'm saying. Raw data from TLPD (incomplete data for older generations of players, but pretty much all-encompassing for modern day players like Stork) in terms of career records only tell part of of the story, especially if you are unaware of the format changes, and scheduling changes that happened in history. It's still a very important data, and an objective measure of how many games they won. I tried to add other information like how many they won relative to the era, and how much they were successful in going past certain bracket stages of individual leagues keeping in mind that the format did not remain a constant (a various cluster-fuck of BO1 double elimination, BO1 round robin, BO3, and BO5). I'm not saying you need to judge players purely by who was better for longer, but these are metrics you need to be aware of considering the changes that happened throughout history. To be quite honest, I didn't think I would discussing Bisu versus Stork for this long. It was a side topic brought up by me to thwart the assertions about Bisu I mentioned above.
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On January 01 2017 08:26 Crisium wrote: JangBi was almost never a presence in individual leagues outside of his 4 finals (5 if GOMTV) appearances. And the short 2007 Proleague was the only time he was the top Protoss in SPL. He became a paewang, and then won the last 2 OSL's in perhaps the most storied fashion ever.
He's a much more extreme version of Bisu's bipolar performances (in the sense that people remembers his high's more than the lows), and cannot seriously be discussed for even top 4 Protoss players (relative to their eras), imho. Reach and Nal_Ra brought more to their race and consistently represented it at the highest end better, and of course Stork and Bisu have been discussed to death. In terms of absolute skill, the 6 dragons are probably the best Protoss players period though.
Fantasy is quite legit though. Very clutch player in individual leagues despite being in the Kong line. 7-5 in Ro16s, 7-0 in Ro8s, 5-2 in Ro4s. I think if Pro BW lasted longer he could claim to be the best Terran behind the Bonjwa's and Flash. He already is in terms of finals appearances, which is important. But he had a relatively shorter career than TBLS (minus Flash who had the same length, and if one hell of a metric).
Besides Flash, who would rank above Fantasy for Terran from the 2008-2012 era as a whole? Sea was a SPL monster, but nothing individual. Light was the only other Terran to do well in both SPL and Starleagues, but his SL performance has nothing on Fantasy and his TvP was poor. It's Fantasy, period. To be second best Terran in the highest skill era ever is significant. ForGG only had 1 (amazing, but only 1) run.
Though the older players are before my time, so I don't know if players like Xellos and Goodfriend would be better in the grand scheme of things. Fantasy could contend for one of the best Terrans ever in terms of accomplishments and contributions (though I know some say his style was just iloveoov's ideas), and possibly second most in terms of peak skill.
It was late 2006, and I was an avid user of Fightforum, a Korean discussion board that has been shut down for years now, as well as starting to post on this site after discovering a whole new world of English speaking communities (some of the guys were literally insane staying up at night just to read about the games that were happening). The turn-over rate of the professionals at the time was at its peak, with the expansion of the ProLeague, viewerships doing fantastic, more businesses taking an interest, and we had BoxeR, legitimize e-Sports in the eyes of official Korean governing bodies with the creation of Air Force ACE and talks of encorporating e-Sports into the sporting realm like Asian Games. It wasn't not like the final few years of Starcraft with the amateur player-base stagnating, and the absolute best holding on to their reign for longer partly due to this factor.
The discussion for the discovery of the next hot thing was all the rage back then (and due to how dynamic the scene was back then, you would sometimes get some right, and would feel good about yourself). I remember some people harping on about Bisu's ilovejs account, which had insane records in PGTour, a place where professional players could practice in cognito. On Fighterforum, JangBi was all the rage, with people saying he would be the next bonjwa after sAviOr. I think he was an amateur who streamed from time to time, his micro-management, his large scale battling potential, and his blazing fast reaction speed were all so inhuman for people who were more used to Nal_rA's slow paced games. It was kind of like watching NaDa play protoss.
By early 2007, I thought Jaedong would surpass sAviOr soon, he was getting unreal levels of praise for how monstrous he was during practice. JangBi was supposed to be already the best protoss player during practice after he made it into Samsung Khan in late 2006, but he was so god awful in televised games, I just assumed he was just another case of a player who couldn't get over stage-fright. I also thought that Light would be the next great terran due to his super crisp mechanics, good late-game focus, and insanely high effective APM. I remember watching some show on MBC Game where they brought on MBC Game HERO players to play fun unofficial games, and there was this spectacular game Light played where he was losing this game to Bisu on Arcadia, but overcame everything through pure multi-tasking and late-game management. I can't find the VOD for it, but I remember thinking this was the makings of the next best terran.
During mid-2007 this three day Starcraft LAN takes place, named Seoul e-Sports Festival. It was just a RO256 BO3 from start to finish, and no time for preparation. It seemed like the perfect tournament to prove who was the best in terms of on-the-day, pure match-up of skill without specific preparation. I kind of felt vindicated as Jaedong won the finals versus JangBi, with Light going all the way to the semi-finals.
JangBi always had the potential to be better in my opinion. He didn't have the work ethic of Bisu. He was extremely emotional, and was worthless as a player if you just took away his gaming talents. However, it's my personal belief that JangBi was the most talented protoss player ever in terms of sheer gaming ability, although Bisu comes close, and had better work ethic on top of that. As a professional player? JangBi was a horrendous failure who failed to live up to his hype, and only performed when things were clicking for him, in a manner that was almost unacceptable. Korean communities berated him to no ends (love often turns into hate). Naming him "Paewang" and other derogatory titles. JangBi would waste his energy fighting with the Korean communities, and didn't play the game at all for months due to the inner turmoil he had with the team management. But in terms of sheer talent, JangBi had so much promise.
I would have lengthy discussions with friends whether Bisu or JangBi had better pure gaming ability. Bisu would often come out on top. I'm personally of the opinion that JangBi had better talent initially, with Bisu not that far behind, but Bisu caught up, and probably surpassed him with his professional mindset, and discipline, and after improving even further after he transfered to SK Telecom T1, while JangBi was wasting his talents being really unhappy with his situation at Samsung Khan.
There's a reason why JangBi's return to glory after years of being washed up, having barely touched the game for months on end, and being a failed prodigy was met with so much praise within the Korean community. There was a reason why people were already on the hype train after JangBi made it past the qualifiers for the first time in what seemed like forever. It was a desperate longing that was not only felt by JangBi, but thousands of Korean fans who were waiting for JangBi to become the next protoss bonjwa since 2006.
+ Show Spoiler +
Sure JangBi's career was a total waste of his gaming abilities. No one can deny that. However, in terms of sheer talent, JangBi is one of the great "what-ifs" in history.
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Im tired of that "everyone was practicing sc2 while jangbi was wining 2 osls". I have to say NO, OSL is the most prestigeous tournament in korea, you think players in it will just throw that oportunity to practice sc2? Have u considered that Fantasy was with perfect record untill finals, no loss, then he got destroyed. Have you forgot how other progamers were praising jangbi for his skill during practice? Stork claiming Jangbi is the best protoss on KHAN in practice. He was inconsistent on stage, but what i saw is that he evolved. He became calm and confident, just see him on the last finals vs fantasy - no stress. He was on the rise and maybe about to become next bonjwa.
What made me his fan was about his emotional character. The spirit he emanates during gameplay is incredible, he is bringing real life to these virtual units.
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On January 01 2017 23:06 _Animus_ wrote: Im tired of that "everyone was practicing sc2 while jangbi was wining 2 osls". I have to say NO, OSL is the most prestigeous tournament in korea, you think players in it will just throw that oportunity to practice sc2? Have u considered that Fantasy was with perfect record untill finals, no loss, then he got destroyed. Have you forgot how other progamers were praising jangbi for his skill during practice? Stork claiming Jangbi is the best protoss on KHAN in practice. He was inconsistent on stage, but what i saw is that he evolved. He became calm and confident, just see him on the last finals vs fantasy - no stress. He was on the rise and maybe about to become next bonjwa.
What made me his fan was about his emotional character. The spirit he emanates during gameplay is incredible, he is bringing real life to these virtual units.
I've been keeping an eye out for JangBi before his professional career began, but it's not enough to be just fantastic at the game to be one of the greatest, you need discipline to make use of your talents (unless you are NaDa, but even he saw the fruits of his over-reliance of talent towards the end), on top of that you need to be in control of your emotions to function on the biggest stage regardless of the situation. All JangBi had was his other wordly gaming abilities.
When doctors performed fMRI on professional gamers such as XellOs, or BoxeR had enhanced limbic system compared to the average person, and Flash had his prefrontal cortex developed on top of that, suggesting an even greater capacity to control his emotions.
JangBi, when he was firing all cylinders, was a force of nature, a dream come true. However he was never a player who could keep his composure when things were going wrong, on top of that, was plagued with motivational issues throughout his entire career. His highs are just a glimpse of the immense talent he had, but all the assessments on JangBi's career are pretty much spot on in my opinion. Although, as a Brood War gamer, he was, in my humble opinion, the most talented protoss player to ever grace the scene.
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Jangbi wasn't even that impressive in my eyes. All the games people were fawning over his great skill still felt lacking in some way. It mostly felt like he would have lost if his oponent played to his full ability. Or if he played players like Flash, Bisu or Jaedong in their prime he would have been smashed. He always pulled through on a razor-thin margin with great storms etc. but never showed any kind of dominance over his oponents.
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On January 02 2017 11:06 Miragee wrote: Jangbi wasn't even that impressive in my eyes. All the games people were fawning over his great skill still felt lacking in some way. It mostly felt like he would have lost if his oponent played to his full ability. Or if he played players like Flash, Bisu or Jaedong in their prime he would have been smashed. He always pulled through on a razor-thin margin with great storms etc. but never showed any kind of dominance over his oponents.
I don't think anybody here is suggesting JangBi's reputation as a beast during practice (some of the rumours are quite impressive), and the few moments he had where he somewhat resembled the player that he was hyped to be, was a regular occurence throughout his disappointing career. JangBi did have quality games versus the likes of Flash, Bisu, and Jaedong (some of which I'll link below), but I think nobody is claiming that he had great success against these players, or even against players of lower calibre with any consistency.
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +
JangBi's professional career is a series of embarassing lows, with glimpses of what JangBi was famous for (lightning quick reaction times, great multi-tasking, clean, crisp mastery of various units and army compositions, and superb execution of large scale battles) against some of the best players of his era. Stork may have had the mastery of the protoss units, but lacked the fast paced multi-tasking of JangBi. Bisu may have had the multi-tasking of a god, but lacked the large scale battling ability, and finer mastery of certain protoss units. JangBi, especially before he had motivational issues, was probably the only protoss who had perfected the art of executing protoss plays. He would make bad decisions, choke on stage, and was an emotional wreck half the time, but the times he gathered himself sufficiently to pull off the plays he was capable of pulling off, it was a sight to behold. It was all the more infuriating if you had heard about some of the performances and results he was pulling off during practice. JangBi was never destined for greatness with all the issues he had a professional player. However, I think you may be underestimating how talented he was at the game, although little shone through in a career that was plagued by what I believe may be stage fright, emotional instability, motivational issues, and almost zero mental fortitude.
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Japan11285 Posts
Had professional BW not transitioned, perhaps we would have witnessed JangBi realize his potential after all. One can dream.
Comparing today's players to legends like GARIMTO, SsamJang, TheBoy, H.O.T-Forever, Grrrr... and company is not fair. Sure they may not have the kind of careers as TBLS but their impact on the way the game is played and how they paved the way to a legitimate e-sports circuit should more than count as great accomplishments.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On January 02 2017 11:06 Miragee wrote: Jangbi wasn't even that impressive in my eyes. All the games people were fawning over his great skill still felt lacking in some way. It mostly felt like he would have lost if his oponent played to his full ability. Or if he played players like Flash, Bisu or Jaedong in their prime he would have been smashed. He always pulled through on a razor-thin margin with great storms etc. but never showed any kind of dominance over his oponents.
I get the feeling that Jangbi suffers in that department which makes him look less good than he actually was. Is that just being protoss, he was particularly vulnerable to zerg. Not just 'the top zergs always feel like they could beat him' but it always seemed like any zerg good at zvp was always a big threat, no matter the form Jangbi himself was in.
I think of all the six dragons, as well as pretty much every protoss starleague winnner (Basically every noteworthy protoss ever), with the exception of Bisu at times, always had that dark cloud hanging over them. I think for Nal_ra, Reach, Anytime and every dragon other than Bisu. If you put the question out there, what was their weakest matchup, their achilles heel if you will, the vast majority of the community who knew something of them, without needing to look up stats, or really think about it would instantly tell you it's PvZ.
Personally, I feel, at his peaks, Jangbi's PvT, was just as good, and in fact comparable in nature to Bisu's PvZ. I would go as far to say as Jangbi's PvT, when he was playing well, was the best PvT I've ever seen. His understanding of the matchup was at least as good as any other protoss, and his execution was immaculate.
But the problem is. The bar for PvT is much higher. The background skill level for top protosses against terran was just incredibly high. I feel like Bisu had a certain weakness of understanding in the matchup, especially in the lategame, yet he still performed incredibly against terran. All the other dragons bar Bisu had PvT as their best matchup.
In that sort of atmosphere, I think being the best at PvT just doesn't look as impressive, because everyone else is also performing so well. If it were possible to completely remove the Bisu factor from your mind, and let every other protoss set the standard for PvZ. Suddenly, Jangbi's PvZ is just par for the course. While he was still unstable, but his level of play in PvT suddenly becomes more differentiating.
Between that and Jangbi's general instability, I think it's easy to lose track, of just how good his PvT was when he was in form.
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On January 02 2017 12:49 c3rberUs wrote: Had professional BW not transitioned, perhaps we would have witnessed JangBi realize his potential after all. One can dream.
Comparing today's players to legends like GARIMTO, SsamJang, TheBoy, H.O.T-Forever, Grrrr... and company is not fair. Sure they may not have the kind of careers as TBLS but their impact on the way the game is played and how they paved the way to a legitimate e-sports circuit should more than count as great accomplishments.
Judging the first generation of players, except for BoxeR, who was still making it to the finals in 2005, is extremely challenging for the following reasons.
1) None except BoxeR have been relevant at the very top for more than a couple of years, at best. For those who were not there to watch their careers unfold, it's so tempting to assume that they were just pioneers who were not able to evolve with the times except for BoxeR. Most of the greats in history have around four to five years as one of the top players in the scene, if not more. 2) So much of their records aren't available in online databases, and there's not even much record left by the word of mouth since so many sites have been closed. Finding VODs, whether they were televised at the time or not, are even harder, since most of the broadcasting stations have shut down for years now. 3) The few VODs/full records available for any analysis provides only a minimal body work, and in-depth articles about the context of their careers are incredibly difficult to locate. 4) Sure players such as St.Eagle won massive tournaments that had more prize money than OGN StarLeague at the time, and was vital in the evolution of the current meta-game, but the fact of the matter is that there is almost zero VOD proof of him being an innovator of a certain meta-game, just word of mouth, and the tournaments he won have its records lost forever. We don't even know who St.Eagle faced in the round of 16, for example on his way to his APGL triumph. Almost everything is dependent on word of mouth, and even that's hard to find, and once we actually look into the statistics and VODs that are available for analysis today, there is almost nothing of substance. 5) If even one other player apart from BoxeR was achieving anything of note post-2003, they could be compared to players whose careers that had sustained level of excellence for multiple years like the great players of the televised era like NaDa, Reach, and YellOw, and we could sort of fill in the blanks in the periods where there isn't much remaining records, but for the vast majority of them, it simply isn't possible. 6) Grrrr...'s status as the best player in the world relies a lot from his achievements earned outside of the context of professional Brood War in Korea, and his initial sucess at conquering the Korean domain in 2000 (some of the records of which are even listed on TLPD), and his overall career achievements aren't that spectacular just within the context of professional gaming in Korea. How do you rate such as a player? As a Brood War player, sure he was a legendary figure dating way back to 1998, and was probably the most accomplished, and most famous player between 1998~2000 (I know next to nothing about this period), but that period has minimal overlap with the Korean e-Sports scene, and even less overlap with Korean e-Sports scene that has its records available for discussion.
If we break it down by eras, Grrr... definitely deserves his place in history, probably less so as a professional gamer in Korea.
1998: Zileas? 1999~2000: Grrrr... 2001: BoxeR 2002: NaDa 2003: NaDa/iloveoov 2004~2005: iloveoov/July 2006: sAviOr 2007: Bisu/Stork 2008~2009: Jaedong 2010~2011: Flash 2012: JangBi/FanTaSy
After reading about the old tournaments, perhaps Grrrr...'s domination over other players wasn't set in stone. I just figured since he won Blizzard 1999 World Championship, and was doing great in the ladder in 1998, he was considered the best player, as it is written in Korean articles (a lot of Korean posts about Starcraft in 1998 mention that Grrrr... beat Zileas with mass hydralisks in some hyped showmatch), but a lot of English sites seem to think highly of Zileas due to his highly intelligent approach to the game.
http://kaviksc.blogspot.kr/2011/12/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-ko-x.html https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/4crxl0/starcraft_competitive_scene_19982001_a_trip_down/
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On January 02 2017 14:44 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2017 11:06 Miragee wrote: Jangbi wasn't even that impressive in my eyes. All the games people were fawning over his great skill still felt lacking in some way. It mostly felt like he would have lost if his oponent played to his full ability. Or if he played players like Flash, Bisu or Jaedong in their prime he would have been smashed. He always pulled through on a razor-thin margin with great storms etc. but never showed any kind of dominance over his oponents. I get the feeling that Jangbi suffers in that department which makes him look less good than he actually was. Is that just being protoss, he was particularly vulnerable to zerg. Not just 'the top zergs always feel like they could beat him' but it always seemed like any zerg good at zvp was always a big threat, no matter the form Jangbi himself was in. I think of all the six dragons, as well as pretty much every protoss starleague winnner (Basically every noteworthy protoss ever), with the exception of Bisu at times, always had that dark cloud hanging over them. I think for Nal_ra, Reach, Anytime and every dragon other than Bisu. If you put the question out there, what was their weakest matchup, their achilles heel if you will, the vast majority of the community who knew something of them, without needing to look up stats, or really think about it would instantly tell you it's PvZ. Personally, I feel, at his peaks, Jangbi's PvT, was just as good, and in fact comparable in nature to Bisu's PvZ. I would go as far to say as Jangbi's PvT, when he was playing well, was the best PvT I've ever seen. His understanding of the matchup was at least as good as any other protoss, and his execution was immaculate. But the problem is. The bar for PvT is much higher. The background skill level for top protosses against terran was just incredibly high. I feel like Bisu had a certain weakness of understanding in the matchup, especially in the lategame, yet he still performed incredibly against terran. All the other dragons bar Bisu had PvT as their best matchup. In that sort of atmosphere, I think being the best at PvT just doesn't look as impressive, because everyone else is also performing so well. If it were possible to completely remove the Bisu factor from your mind, and let every other protoss set the standard for PvZ. Suddenly, Jangbi's PvZ is just par for the course. While he was still unstable, but his level of play in PvT suddenly becomes more differentiating. Between that and Jangbi's general instability, I think it's easy to lose track, of just how good his PvT was when he was in form.
While JangBi's flawless execution of the diverse styles he mastered in the PvT match-up were some of the cleanest in history, BeSt probably had comparable, or superior understanding of the match-up if we compare players from the modern era. The "T1 build" that helped protoss players immensely during the early game was invented by BeSt. BeSt was at times immaculate at the match-up, even if his mastery over the units wasn't quite the cleanest, his optimization of builds, and how to maximize his production from the gateways could be considered as some of the best in my opinion.
Bisu's PvZ could be considered as one of the absolute best in history (if we only consider performance of players against a single race, his PvZ is probably pretty close to the TvZ ability of Flash, or ZvZ ability of Jaedong, some of the most legendary single match-up performances in history) not only in terms of statistics, but quality of play in all aspects. Bisu's understanding of the match-up, after revolutionizing match-up after taking the evolution further from the innovations of other protosses such as Daezang, was unparalleled. His mastery of units that were pivotal in the match-up such as his early zealot micro-management, and corsair utilization was nothing short of amazing.
JangBi wasn't the player who was ahead of the times, or had the most sound decision making (I'm not sure whether it was better in practice environments but suffered on stage due to nerves, or whether his practice results were so immaculate due to how overwhelmingly powerful his execution of plays were), but his execution of various styles of plays, whether it was in PvP, PvT, or PvZ, was second to none when JangBi was firing all cylinders. His ability to make miraculous plays (non-stop harassments, large scale PvT army managements, and his famous storm usage) was apparently a thing that happened all the time during practice, against whatever level of player he was playing against the time. However, we rarely got to see those moments, although JangBi did most frequrently against terran players in televised games (JangBi's PvZ was supposed to be monstrous during practice, even against Jaedong, who was supposed to be invincible against protoss during practice). I wouldn't compare JangBi's PvT to Bisu's PvZ, Bisu's PvZ was literally god-tier, not just compared to other protoss players, but almost any player who played versus the zerg race.
To put it simply, if I were to create the perfect PvZ player by combining the strengths of various players. I think I'll just leave Bisu be. If I were to create the pefect PvT player, I'll add the early mind games of Snow (to prevent counter-optimization BeSt struggled against at times), standard play build optimization of BeSt, to the abilities shown by JangBi in the match-up when he was hitting his strides.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On January 02 2017 15:32 Letmelose wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2017 14:44 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On January 02 2017 11:06 Miragee wrote: Jangbi wasn't even that impressive in my eyes. All the games people were fawning over his great skill still felt lacking in some way. It mostly felt like he would have lost if his oponent played to his full ability. Or if he played players like Flash, Bisu or Jaedong in their prime he would have been smashed. He always pulled through on a razor-thin margin with great storms etc. but never showed any kind of dominance over his oponents. I get the feeling that Jangbi suffers in that department which makes him look less good than he actually was. Is that just being protoss, he was particularly vulnerable to zerg. Not just 'the top zergs always feel like they could beat him' but it always seemed like any zerg good at zvp was always a big threat, no matter the form Jangbi himself was in. I think of all the six dragons, as well as pretty much every protoss starleague winnner (Basically every noteworthy protoss ever), with the exception of Bisu at times, always had that dark cloud hanging over them. I think for Nal_ra, Reach, Anytime and every dragon other than Bisu. If you put the question out there, what was their weakest matchup, their achilles heel if you will, the vast majority of the community who knew something of them, without needing to look up stats, or really think about it would instantly tell you it's PvZ. Personally, I feel, at his peaks, Jangbi's PvT, was just as good, and in fact comparable in nature to Bisu's PvZ. I would go as far to say as Jangbi's PvT, when he was playing well, was the best PvT I've ever seen. His understanding of the matchup was at least as good as any other protoss, and his execution was immaculate. But the problem is. The bar for PvT is much higher. The background skill level for top protosses against terran was just incredibly high. I feel like Bisu had a certain weakness of understanding in the matchup, especially in the lategame, yet he still performed incredibly against terran. All the other dragons bar Bisu had PvT as their best matchup. In that sort of atmosphere, I think being the best at PvT just doesn't look as impressive, because everyone else is also performing so well. If it were possible to completely remove the Bisu factor from your mind, and let every other protoss set the standard for PvZ. Suddenly, Jangbi's PvZ is just par for the course. While he was still unstable, but his level of play in PvT suddenly becomes more differentiating. Between that and Jangbi's general instability, I think it's easy to lose track, of just how good his PvT was when he was in form. While JangBi's flawless execution of the diverse styles he mastered in the PvT match-up were some of the cleanest in history, BeSt probably had comparable, or superior understanding of the match-up if we compare players from the modern era. The "T1 build" that helped protoss players immensely during the early game was invented by BeSt. BeSt was at times immaculate at the match-up, even if his mastery over the units wasn't quite the cleanest, his optimization of builds, and how to maximize his production from the gateways could be considered as some of the best in my opinion. Bisu's PvZ could be considered as one of the absolute best in history (if we only consider performance of players against a single race, his PvZ is probably pretty close to the TvZ ability of Flash, or ZvZ ability of Jaedong, some of the most legendary single match-up performances in history) not only in terms of statistics, but quality of play in all aspects. Bisu's understanding of the match-up, after revolutionizing match-up after taking the evolution further from the innovations of other protosses such as Daezang, was unparalleled. His mastery of units that were pivotal in the match-up such as his early zealot micro-management, and corsair utilization was nothing short of amazing. JangBi wasn't the player who was ahead of the times, or had the most sound decision making (I'm not sure whether it was better in practice environments but suffered on stage due to nerves, or whether his practice results were so immaculate due to how overwhelmingly powerful his execution of plays were), but his execution of various styles of plays, whether it was in PvP, PvT, or PvZ, was second to none when JangBi was firing all cylinders. His ability to make miraculous plays (non-stop harassments, large scale PvT army managements, and his famous storm usage) was apparently a thing that happened all the time during practice, against whatever level of player he was playing against the time. However, we rarely got to see those moments, although JangBi did most frequrently against terran players in televised games (JangBi's PvZ was supposed to be monstrous during practice, even against Jaedong, who was supposed to be invincible against protoss during practice). I wouldn't compare JangBi's PvT to Bisu's PvZ, Bisu's PvZ was literally god-tier, not just compared to other protoss players, but almost any player who played versus the zerg race. To put it simply, if I were to create the perfect PvZ player by combining the strengths of various players. I think I'll just leave Bisu be. If I were to create the pefect PvT player, I'll add the early mind games of Snow (to prevent counter-optimization BeSt struggled against at times), standard play build optimization of BeSt, to the abilities shown by JangBi in the match-up when he was hitting his strides.
Well my comparison to Bisu's PvZ in this case was mostly regarding understanding of the matchup and execution, not so much in innovation, or superiority over other protoss the matchup.
But understanding of a matchup, is not merely innovation. It takes understanding merely to execute into the lategame. And I feel Jangbi's understanding of PvT when he was playing well, was in fact top notch, and I genuinely stand by the statement that it is comparable to Bisu's PvZ understanding. The difference was PvT is both better understood by other protoss, and less volatile in general, than the PvZ matchup. There were other protoss around to innovate the matchup in the little ways required, there was no competition for Bisu in PvZ.
As an example I will use Bisu, for non-innovation related understanding, particularly, I felt he actually had a deficit in that department, into the PvT late game. I felt that it showed very clearly when he was panned for his carrier play late in his professional career, it's not that Bisu is terrible with carriers. But he had a flawed understanding of the game state. He wasn't sure what Terran could and couldn't do. He, of course would have understood on a general level, how his build is supposed to work, and why he switched to carriers. But I felt like he wasn't quite sure, what he was supposed to prioritise and what specifically his carriers are for, and how best to proceed from there. Of course Bisu's PvT was still overall excellent, but I just wanted to make clearer the sort of understanding I was talking about, it is tied into, and virtually what you have termed decision making.
The original point I was trying to make, was that people lose sight of how good Jangbi's PvT was (when he was actually playing well), because so many other protoss are good at PvT. There were comparable players in every department, but noone quite had the package like he did.
If we were to use Bisu's PvZ as a standard, every other protoss is abjectly terrible at the matchup. That was in fact a point I made on our other disagreement, that Bisu had contributed so much to PvZ, cos frankly, throughout most of his career, there wasn't any other protoss carrying their weight in PvZ. And in PvZ Bisu's contribution to the PvZ metagame is so nearly total, that massive does not begin to describe it.
That is in fact the very point i was trying to make, Bisu's PvZ is so ridiculously superior to every other protoss, that it skews the amount of differentiation we expect in the other match ups, and makes it harder to notice how good Jangbi's PvT was, because so many other Protoss were also good at PvT.
But other protoss also being good at PvT should not take away from how good Jangbi's PvT actually was. If your PvT is the best among a whole army of other PvTs, that still makes yours pretty damn incredible.
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On January 02 2017 22:22 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2017 15:32 Letmelose wrote:On January 02 2017 14:44 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:On January 02 2017 11:06 Miragee wrote: Jangbi wasn't even that impressive in my eyes. All the games people were fawning over his great skill still felt lacking in some way. It mostly felt like he would have lost if his oponent played to his full ability. Or if he played players like Flash, Bisu or Jaedong in their prime he would have been smashed. He always pulled through on a razor-thin margin with great storms etc. but never showed any kind of dominance over his oponents. I get the feeling that Jangbi suffers in that department which makes him look less good than he actually was. Is that just being protoss, he was particularly vulnerable to zerg. Not just 'the top zergs always feel like they could beat him' but it always seemed like any zerg good at zvp was always a big threat, no matter the form Jangbi himself was in. I think of all the six dragons, as well as pretty much every protoss starleague winnner (Basically every noteworthy protoss ever), with the exception of Bisu at times, always had that dark cloud hanging over them. I think for Nal_ra, Reach, Anytime and every dragon other than Bisu. If you put the question out there, what was their weakest matchup, their achilles heel if you will, the vast majority of the community who knew something of them, without needing to look up stats, or really think about it would instantly tell you it's PvZ. Personally, I feel, at his peaks, Jangbi's PvT, was just as good, and in fact comparable in nature to Bisu's PvZ. I would go as far to say as Jangbi's PvT, when he was playing well, was the best PvT I've ever seen. His understanding of the matchup was at least as good as any other protoss, and his execution was immaculate. But the problem is. The bar for PvT is much higher. The background skill level for top protosses against terran was just incredibly high. I feel like Bisu had a certain weakness of understanding in the matchup, especially in the lategame, yet he still performed incredibly against terran. All the other dragons bar Bisu had PvT as their best matchup. In that sort of atmosphere, I think being the best at PvT just doesn't look as impressive, because everyone else is also performing so well. If it were possible to completely remove the Bisu factor from your mind, and let every other protoss set the standard for PvZ. Suddenly, Jangbi's PvZ is just par for the course. While he was still unstable, but his level of play in PvT suddenly becomes more differentiating. Between that and Jangbi's general instability, I think it's easy to lose track, of just how good his PvT was when he was in form. While JangBi's flawless execution of the diverse styles he mastered in the PvT match-up were some of the cleanest in history, BeSt probably had comparable, or superior understanding of the match-up if we compare players from the modern era. The "T1 build" that helped protoss players immensely during the early game was invented by BeSt. BeSt was at times immaculate at the match-up, even if his mastery over the units wasn't quite the cleanest, his optimization of builds, and how to maximize his production from the gateways could be considered as some of the best in my opinion. Bisu's PvZ could be considered as one of the absolute best in history (if we only consider performance of players against a single race, his PvZ is probably pretty close to the TvZ ability of Flash, or ZvZ ability of Jaedong, some of the most legendary single match-up performances in history) not only in terms of statistics, but quality of play in all aspects. Bisu's understanding of the match-up, after revolutionizing match-up after taking the evolution further from the innovations of other protosses such as Daezang, was unparalleled. His mastery of units that were pivotal in the match-up such as his early zealot micro-management, and corsair utilization was nothing short of amazing. JangBi wasn't the player who was ahead of the times, or had the most sound decision making (I'm not sure whether it was better in practice environments but suffered on stage due to nerves, or whether his practice results were so immaculate due to how overwhelmingly powerful his execution of plays were), but his execution of various styles of plays, whether it was in PvP, PvT, or PvZ, was second to none when JangBi was firing all cylinders. His ability to make miraculous plays (non-stop harassments, large scale PvT army managements, and his famous storm usage) was apparently a thing that happened all the time during practice, against whatever level of player he was playing against the time. However, we rarely got to see those moments, although JangBi did most frequrently against terran players in televised games (JangBi's PvZ was supposed to be monstrous during practice, even against Jaedong, who was supposed to be invincible against protoss during practice). I wouldn't compare JangBi's PvT to Bisu's PvZ, Bisu's PvZ was literally god-tier, not just compared to other protoss players, but almost any player who played versus the zerg race. To put it simply, if I were to create the perfect PvZ player by combining the strengths of various players. I think I'll just leave Bisu be. If I were to create the pefect PvT player, I'll add the early mind games of Snow (to prevent counter-optimization BeSt struggled against at times), standard play build optimization of BeSt, to the abilities shown by JangBi in the match-up when he was hitting his strides. Well my comparison to Bisu's PvZ in this case was mostly regarding understanding of the matchup and execution, not so much in innovation, or superiority over other protoss the matchup. But understanding of a matchup, is not merely innovation. It takes understanding merely to execute into the lategame. And I feel Jangbi's understanding of PvT when he was playing well, was in fact top notch, and I genuinely stand by the statement that it is comparable to Bisu's PvZ understanding. The difference was PvT is both better understood by other protoss, and less volatile in general, than the PvZ matchup. There were other protoss around to innovate the matchup in the little ways required, there was no competition for Bisu in PvZ. As an example I will use Bisu, for non-innovation related understanding, particularly, I felt he actually had a deficit in that department, into the PvT late game. I felt that it showed very clearly when he was panned for his carrier play late in his professional career, it's not that Bisu is terrible with carriers. But he had a flawed understanding of the game state. He wasn't sure what Terran could and couldn't do. He, of course would have understood on a general level, how his build is supposed to work, and why he switched to carriers. But I felt like he wasn't quite sure, what he was supposed to prioritise and what specifically his carriers are for, and how best to proceed from there. Of course Bisu's PvT was still overall excellent, but I just wanted to make clearer the sort of understanding I was talking about, it is tied into, and virtually what you have termed decision making. The original point I was trying to make, was that people lose sight of how good Jangbi's PvT was (when he was actually playing well), because so many other protoss are good at PvT. There were comparable players in every department, but noone quite had the package like he did. If we were to use Bisu's PvZ as a standard, every other protoss is abjectly terrible at the matchup. That was in fact a point I made on our other disagreement, that Bisu had contributed so much to PvZ, cos frankly, throughout most of his career, there wasn't any other protoss carrying their weight in PvZ. And in PvZ Bisu's contribution to the PvZ metagame is so nearly total, that massive does not begin to describe it. That is in fact the very point i was trying to make, Bisu's PvZ is so ridiculously superior to every other protoss, that it skews the amount of differentiation we expect in the other match ups, and makes it harder to notice how good Jangbi's PvT was, because so many other Protoss were also good at PvT. But other protoss also being good at PvT should not take away from how good Jangbi's PvT actually was. If your PvT is the best among a whole army of other PvTs, that still makes yours pretty damn incredible.
JangBi style of PvT was more about abusing his knowledge of how to take advantage of terrans through his unit utilization, and his artful execution of that knowledge. His small scale, large scale mastery of protoss units is incredibly on point. BeSt's style of PvT was based on his abusing his understanding of when to add gateways, when to expand, when to produce probes, and when to cut down on workers to produce his army. His builds are a work of art in terms of optimization from early to mid-game, and BeSt used this to great effect against Flash during the early stages of their career, until Flash started to do his own brand of optimization against BeSt's style specifically.
BeSt doesn't have the multi-tasking of Bisu, doesn't have the cleanest micro-management, nor does he have insane storm usage like the Samsung Khan protosses, and he was the most famous for his macro-managament. Bisu was way better at actual unit production, and his ability to keep pumping units from his gateways, but BeSt's knowledge of how to optimize the macro-management aspect of PvT allowed him to have seemingly better macro-management.
The T1 build created by BeSt was just one of my examples of how well BeSt understood the match-up. Of course, BeSt was also kind of limited in his number of methods of winning, but in terms of understanding the standard game, he was probably the best in my opinion (no pun intended).
Bisu was the best player in PvZ in terms of maximizing unit utility (his corsairs were always more abusive, just like how JangBi's units seemed to have more battling potential against the terran race), knowing which unit compositions and timings hurt the zerg race the most (Movie was also good at this versus zerg, and JangBi knew how to do this against the terran race too), and in terms of cutting every little corner possible (just like BeSt was the best at this particular aspect versus terran). That's three areas Bisu mastered in PvZ compared to the two areas mastered by JangBi in PvT.
Bisu's contribution to the match-up of PvZ, while enormous, isn't as large as his contributions in terms of the creation of new build orders. I already discussed this particular topic with another poster, so I won't bother repeating myself. Like I said before, I think saying Bisu was the totality of all PvZ meta-game advancements is a fabrication created by the mythical status of his upset against sAviOr.
I won't waste much time on Bisu's PvT. He was a great player, but he never mastered the match-up like some of the other protosses in his era (both in terms of in depth understanding and execution). The results he earned in that match-up was due to his ability to absorb the good build orders (that got him early game advantages if his dragoon micro-management was up to par, which it was) from PuSan earlier on during his career, and BeSt during his stay at SK Telecom T1 (the protoss coach for SK Telecom T1 once mentioned that BeSt was more creative with new build orders than Bisu, while Bisu was good at executing those builds), and overall qualities as a player such as great basic unit micro-management (his small scale dragoon micro-management was excellent), great multi-tasking, and the ability to pump out units non-stop.
Your assertion that JangBi's PvT prowess has less wow factor due to the numerous other protosses that also had great success in that particular match-up is correct, however, it objectively had lower levels of mastery when compared to PvZ. In terms of styling on their opponents with impeccable unit micro-management and timing, perhaps, but not as abusive in terms of safe macro-management, which was BeSt's forte in my opinion.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On January 02 2017 23:09 Letmelose wrote: Bisu's contribution to the match-up of PvZ, while enormous, isn't as large as his contributions in terms of the creation of new build orders. I already discussed this particular topic with another poster, so I won't bother repeating myself. Like I said before, I think saying Bisu was the totality of all PvZ meta-game advancements is a fabrication created by the mythical status of his upset against sAviOr.
Just to clarify, I'm not summarising 'the entirety of the PvZ meta' as just the advent of the Bisu build. Obviously that was one big contribution that he pioneered after Daezang, and they've been a staple of PvZ ever since.
But even thereafter, he has been the one pioneering pretty much every minor variation and timing of these. When Bisu was briefly irrelevant to the matchup, the entire collective of other protoss came up with builds like the dragoon bust. While these are innovations, they are not exactly stable platforms from which to play a standard game of PvZ. I don't think it's really that unfair to say that for basically the entirety of his professional career he has been the standard by which the PvZ metagame has been defined. Others may have 'invented' builds/variations/whatever, but it's difficult to pioneer a build if you aren't actually good enough in the PvZ matchup to beat the top zergs with it consistently.
As for the rest of that, I pretty much agree. I'm simply not equating how good someone is in a matchup to being better than everyone else at the matchup.
I completely agree BeSt's understanding of certain parts of the matchup were better. But it's not like Jangbi's were bad (I mean i don't know, I have no information on whether he even optimises his own variations on build orders). But the fact that Jangbi maybe be bested on aspects of PvT by other players, doesn't take away from how good his PvT was.
It is consistent with my very original point. Jangbi's PvT is at times really really good, sometimes the best. But top protosses are much better against terran than they are against zerg. Even being the best, you are going to have more competition in every aspect of PvT. And that he should be BeSted (pun intended :p) in some aspects, doesn't make his PvT less good, it just means other people also have really good PvT.
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On January 03 2017 00:12 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote:Show nested quote +On January 02 2017 23:09 Letmelose wrote: Bisu's contribution to the match-up of PvZ, while enormous, isn't as large as his contributions in terms of the creation of new build orders. I already discussed this particular topic with another poster, so I won't bother repeating myself. Like I said before, I think saying Bisu was the totality of all PvZ meta-game advancements is a fabrication created by the mythical status of his upset against sAviOr.
Just to clarify, I'm not summarising 'the entirety of the PvZ meta' as just the advent of the Bisu build. Obviously that was one big contribution that he pioneered after Daezang, and they've been a staple of PvZ ever since. But even thereafter, he has been the one pioneering pretty much every minor variation and timing of these. When Bisu was briefly irrelevant to the matchup, the entire collective of other protoss came up with builds like the dragoon bust. While these are innovations, they are not exactly stable platforms from which to play a standard game of PvZ. I don't think it's really that unfair to say that for basically the entirety of his professional career he has been the standard by which the PvZ metagame has been defined. Others may have 'invented' builds/variations/whatever, but it's difficult to pioneer a build if you aren't actually good enough in the PvZ matchup to beat the top zergs with it consistently. As for the rest of that, I pretty much agree. I'm simply not equating how good someone is in a matchup to being better than everyone else at the matchup. I completely agree BeSt's understanding of certain parts of the matchup were better. But it's not like Jangbi's were bad (I mean i don't know, I have no information on whether he even optimises his own variations on build orders). But the fact that Jangbi maybe be bested on aspects of PvT by other players, doesn't take away from how good his PvT was. It is consistent with my very original point. Jangbi's PvT is at times really really good, sometimes the best. But top protosses are much better against terran than they are against zerg. Even being the best, you are going to have more competition in every aspect of PvT. And that he should be BeSted (pun intended :p) in some aspects, doesn't make his PvT less good, it just means other people also have really good PvT.
I don't think I've had such a lasting back and forth of opinions in a while. I think we've established pretty much all our opinions on Bisu and the protoss race in general. However, I'll add one more point of contention.
You can't credit Bisu for being the totality of all meta-game advancements just because he had the most success with it, and became the standard for the success or failure for any evolutions that happened during his career, If that's the case whoever's the best player at the time becomes responsible for any changes in the meta-game as long as he utilizes it to reasonable success.
That's like saying Flash is the totality of the late-game mech meta-game shift despite the fact that FanTaSy created the build by himself during practice, and first implemented it on a televised setting, just because Flash won more games with it, and used it to greater success than any other player. There's value of having success with implementing a certain strategy, and adding fine refinements to it, and another value of creating its idea in the first place. You can't just mix the two, and pretend that the amount of success a player has with a certain innovation gets the right to all the credit of the meta-game change that takes place exactly due to that innovation.
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