Scarlett vs Rogue

Probably one of the largest upsets of the year. Not saying Scarlett is bad, rather, Rogue as the multi-world champion of 2017 got eliminated in the round of 32 in the most prestigious SC2 tournament.



I dunno, I felt Rogue was riding a wave last year, unlike players like Inno who make waves. It's labeled a giant upset but i'm not surprised at all both Scarlett and Alive got out.



Scarlett just played this really, really well. She was like two steps ahead of Rogue in both matches. I'm really happy she's advancing. :)



It was -10 here so I watched this one on the couch with my month old daughter, who was awoken by my yelling at the ending. So pumped for Scarlett to finally advance!



@#2
I don't agree regarding Rogue riding a wave. He had two accounts of which both were #1 and #2 on the ladder for like 3 months with a 70-80% win percentage. He had a truly great understanding of the game and was in absolute top form.

As for Innovation, he's probably the most consistent Pro player in SC2 history (That may be a fact but I'm not up to date on the actual stats on that, perhaps SoO is more consistent (But less successful)), so comparing anyone to Innovation is kind of unfair.

It'd be more fair to compare him to other people that had similar experiences such as Zest and Byun in which they also both performed amazing feats for about 6 months/a year.

That said, it's not like it's game over for Rogue yet even though he'll have to pass on GSL Season 1. He'll have plenty of chances to prove himself still this year with like 6-7 premier tournaments still coming up.



And again, not to the discredit of Scarlett, that viper play and general decisionmaking is top notch. Bring that to the rest of the tournament and we might see magic happen all the way to the finals ;)



I am a huge fan of Scarlett, but damn I really felt for Rogue at the end, he looked absolutely crushed :(



The tastosis commentary as always was great :)



SCARLETTTT!!!! YEAAAAH! CANADA FUCK YEAH!
Also, GSL really does have great music.



I agree with #2. Not necessarily that Rogue was riding a wave, he certainly put in the work. But the SC2 community has a tendency to over-hype a victory, especially if they are getting paid to do so.

Rogue winning Blizzcon was great, especially since we need more top Zergs in KR (Dark and Soo are consistent, sometimes Solar is on point, otherwise it is an ocean of T and P). But still, winning Blizzcon isn't an indication that you are going to stay dominant long term. Same thing happened last year. Hype Byun up, and what has he accomplished since then? Not a whole lot.

To put it in perspective, if this GSL was played at oh around August last year, nobody would have called it an upset. Rogue, even with an account on top of the ladder, was never a consistent tournament winner. He had some decent games in Proleague, that was it. People would have just said, "Yep not an upset. Alive is good, and Scarlett is one of the top foreigners, and Rogue is inconsistent."

Literally the only reason people are calling this an upset is because he won Blizzcon. That is it. And just like Byun, I get to be annoyed by a year long of excuses of why Rogue isn't dominating every tournament from now on, as if Blizzcon gives a player a free pass to do so.

I want to see Rogue continue to do well, but personally I cannot call this an upset until he shows a bit more consistency with his results. Winning Blizzcon is huge, but not the definition of consistency.



If your definition of consistency is hitting #1 in premier tournaments for more than a year then that number becomes so small that you'll have less than a handful. Relatively speaking, very few people have won GSL more than once in their lifetime.

In fact, the most consistent (Unless your definition of consistency is hitting #1 in premier tournaments) player in SC2 ever has won no premier tournaments in his SC2 career (SoO) but that still makes him an extremely tough opponent to beat.

You can reference ByuN all you want but the only reason he won those tournaments was because of his Reaper play. He was the only person on the planet that could perform at that level with them, and that's why his skill with them carried him all the way to victory. Now that Reapers are nerfed, obviously he won't attain that level of success as easily.


I mean, to get on the level of someone like Innovation or sOs in his prime for even one year is simply not possible for 99.99% of all players that play SC2. Two, three or four years and that number slims down to less than a handful.


But even people like Inno sometimes don't even see the RO16 in GSL even though they're multi-time, multi-year, multi-premier tournament winners.


You have to make a fair definition of consistency that you can expect from a human being playing a game that gets changed and re-balanced 4-5-6 times a year.



In my book, if you haven't participated RO16/8 in almost any tournament and you beat a premier champion of last year (Or rather, 2-3 months ago), it counts as an upset. But the only thing I'm "hyping" for is for tournaments to start. And I loved all the games.



All I'm saying is, even the very best and most consistent players don't always succeed, and that's fine. Some people over hype, who cares? I will not enjoy watching these tournaments any less because of it.



"Relatively speaking, very few people have won GSL more than once in their lifetime."

I meant any premier tournament, not just GSL. My bad.



That is exactly the point. People seem to expect the next Flash to rise to the top, but we've never had that sort of player in SC2. Innovation probably is closest, and he doesn't win nearly as often as he should if we go according to win rates.

And no, it isn't that I'm not enjoying watching, just a minor gripe. "The Blizzcon champion knocked out in the round of 32, this is such a huge upset". Except it really isn't. KR is hyper-competitive and you and I both could name 15 players who could take out Rogue on any given day. Blizzcon champion or not. If Innovation hasn't even reached Flash levels of dominance, Rogue is even further away than that. I mean about the only Zerg player I could truly say getting knocked out in the round of 32 as an upset is probably Soo. Even Dark and Solar, who both have more achievements and consistency than Rogue, have a tendency to drop the random ZvZ series when it counts and get knocked out early.

Yes, I get it, people always hype up the previous champion to "defend the title", but did anyone other than Artosis really truly believe Rogue was going to continue to dominate as a SC2 Flash? I mean for me personally, I just hope he doesn't drop off completely and he continues to be competitive for top 8's. As I said earlier, we need more Z at the top.




First, I was hoping for Life to become Flash's version of SC2. In 2013 and early 2014 he could do things with Zerg similar to how ByuN could do things with Reapers - except when every Zerg was using Swarm Hosts, Life would just butcher people before it got to that phase most of the time.

After Life's disaster in 2014, I was hoping for Jaedong to step up. Didn't happen. Then ByuL showed great promise but was eventually crushed by Inno's late game plays (as far as I can remember, think it was a Terraform game in a finals?)

After that, it's just been Dark and SoO that stayed at the top of the Zerg food chain. Which was still lower than the Terran horsemen and Protoss top 5 or 6 (Classic/Zest/Dear/Stats/sOs/Hero in 2014/2015/2016)


Maru had a few good streaks. His "Maruders", cheesy as it sounds, were great until Blizzard put a nail in that coffin. His legend streak ended with that, the same way as ByuN's with Reapers.


Most of these Terran and Protoss pros have had a very dominant time while I'd say only Dark and SoO as Zergs could match. If we'd get more Zerg pros to get to their level of consistency then perhaps the odds of Zerg winning a few premier tournaments this year goes up.

The way Blizzard balanced things up for 2018 however, it doesn't seem too likely. Perhaps Scarlett has something to say about that, I'd love another top tier Zerg contender to be in the seats - foreigner or no -


Who knows, perhaps we'll see the tables turned and have everyone complain how OP Zerg is this year. One can dream right?



If Life never fucked up, perhaps he'd be the one all Zergs would look up to. But that's in another timeline.



Life has disproved Leibniz's metaphysics. We can't possibly be in the most perfect world, given that Life has fallen from grace.

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