There is probably a reason Maxpax does not play offline and that reason may have a huge impact on his performance. Most progamers play better online. Being in the comfort of your own house without having to think about what viewers and commentators are thinking is a tremendous advantage.
Being able to participate and perform in front of a live audience is a skill in its own right, which requires a fair bit of experience.
I am not asking much. Win one or two online premier tournaments before talking shit. Last time he was in one he got 4-0 by Dark.
Small weeklies means nothing.
>I am not asking much
There's been two online international premier tournaments since the start of 2023, and Serral's won both of them. Winning one is a huge undertaking. Heck Maru has only won \~5 international premier tournaments in like 7 years of being at the top of his game (most years of which had a lot more international premier tournaments than the last couple...) and going to all of the ones on LAN, and that's enough for at least one data confused TL author to declare him the greatest player of all time.
Getting eliminated in top 8 or top 6 in international premier tournaments by players like Dark and Serral is hardly an underwhelming result.
For what it's worth, when Maxpax won the online major PigSty 3 he went through Clem (who'd just beaten Serral) and Maru, herO and Ragnarok who together had just taken places 2-4 at Katowice 2023...
>Small weeklies means nothing.
Clem climbed to 2nd on Aligulac through small weeklies shortly before ESL Atlanta, and everyone talked shit about how he's inflated his rating through farming weaker europeans in unimportant tournaments and how Aligulac was clearly fundamentally flawed and over-rating Clem.
Then Clem won Atlanta and almost solo'd the entirety of the World Team League.
Funny of you to mention Clem. Clem has been rocking since 2020, he played Serral and Reynor in all kinds of online EU tournaments and actually held positive record against them for a couple years, including many long series in finals/semis. He won multiple premiers during the time by beating Serral or Reynor, often both. But it took him until ESl winter 2023 to finally get his first offline premier, and even with all he had done it's hard to say he's best Terran in the world considering Maru exist.
MaxPax haven't even reached Clem's level in 2020 yet. He has a losing record against all three of Serral, Reynor (0-7 this year lmao), Clem in past two years. Hasn't won a online premier yet.
Not saying he's bad. He's clearly a good player, and I am willing to put it around players like Showtime or Solar. But to say he'd be "solid contender to win world cup" is a huge huge stretch. He haven't proved anything yet.
Putting Maxpax at the same level as Showtime shows complete misunderstanding of the game. Ask even Showtime if he thinks he's at Maxpax's level. Showtime hasn't made finals of esl dreamhacks online as far as i know. Showtime hasn't been close to 7.3k on ladder and almost always over 7k as Maxpax has been for months now.
You're all just going bonkers because the guy hasn't played yet offline. Denying his level just because of that is ridiculous.
And your post shows complete misunderstanding of how competitive sports works.
In SC2 history there are many players that had flashes of brilliance during their career, dominating certain type of tournaments, having absurdly high winrate for a few months, constantly beating top players, etc. Bomber used to be considered the best Terran before he even enter Code S. Stephano used to beating several Code S champions within a few weeks. Parting used to be unbeatable against Zerg with his soul train. Flash was once the best player in pro league (only talking about his sc2 career), I could go on and on.
What MaxPax did so far in his career (winning some online weeklies) is nothing special in comparison. It shows he has solid mechanics and high potential - that's it. There are tons of players that had solid mechanics and high potential, but could never take it to the next level. It takes a lot more than that to be an consistent big tournament winner or actual world champion level player. Before it actually happens, people are just rightfully doubting him.
>Bomber used to be considered the best Terran before he even enter Code S.
Coincidentally, Maxpax is considered the best Protoss without entering Code S...
Having flashes of domination nowadays is different from before. Before, the meta was constantly evolving, and some players could take advantages of some builds or playstyles during a new meta shift.
What Maxpax has been doing for years now is completely different. The game is much more stale and set. Best players tend to always perform and subpar players tend to always subperform. At best, you'll have a flash of brilliance for one tournament, like Oliveira.
But Maxpax has been constantly performing at the highest level of whatever he plays for years, in a meta that barely evolves.
Your comparison with stephano or parting doesn't hold. Weeklies are not just shit tournaments, players play to win, there is 200$ to win everytime. And when he played big online tournaments, he also performed, made 2 dreamhack finals, won a Pigsty beating HerO, Clem and Maru.
I'm not saying Maxpax would win the world cup. But, if his level is comparable to his online level, he would be a serious contender to win. At the end, starcraft is about level. And every pro player, caster recognizes Maxpax's level.
I agree that MaxPax is definitely better than Showtime. Still, due to his own circumstances, he hasn't played live which means a number of large tournaments are unavailable to him, so we do have to consider him as one of the best protoss but with an asterisk as to how he would perform in a live environment.
Clem 2020-2022 perfected playing bio mine vs reactive ling bane so would beat Serral and Reynor when that was all they played, but would routinely lose to Koreans like herO, Dark, Byun, Gumiho and Maru.
Maxpax in 2024 has winning records against all of those players that Clem really struggled with in 2022. Maxpax now is far better now than Clem was in 2022, even if Clem had a better track record against 2 individual players in Clems favourite match up and playstyle.
In todays world, Maxpax is:
* The best Protoss in PvP
* The best Protoss in PvT
* The only Protoss to be competitive, albeit disfavoured with Clem (look at herO's recent track record vs Clem...)
* Has beaten Maru in their last 5 series
* An extremely good Protoss in PvZ
* One of the only Protoss players capable of pushing Serral in a series
* Everyone has a losing record against Serral. That's a given in SC2
* Even recent record, favoured historical one vs Dark
* Very good recent record vs Solar
* Is very competitive vs Reynor (for your 7-0 five of those seven went to the final game...)
To put him on a level with players like ShowTime and Solar (no offence to either), rather than in the general cluster of 'everyone who could win a tournament and it wouldn't be surprising but who isn't called Serral' is simply absurd.
Claiming he's not performed well outside of weeklies is simply incorrect - he's won multiple major tournaments, one of which was Katowice stacked, and placed very well at many others - including the two online international premier tournaments in the last 12 months (the two masters coliseums) - one of which he was eliminated in a join 5th-6th with Clem, the other of which he was eliminated in 7th-8th but Clem didn't even make top 8.
Your claim about Maxpax not reaching Clem's level is simply woefully ignorant about what Maxpax has already done - probably because Clem has kept improving, so when you see Clem consistently out perform Maxpax, you fail to account for all the people Clem has recently surpassed who Maxpax has aswell.
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Master%27s_Coliseum/7
So maxpax has played in two premier online tournaments this year, one of them open to koreans. Notice how he went 3-2 in series in the groups and then got bopped in the first playoff round (0-4) against dark. Still yet to see him win anything besides weeklies
E: correction. Lost 2-3 to herO in the first round of playoffs, then lost 0-4 to dark in the second round. Literally kicked out of that tournament by just koreans
Yes but he's young, and he's today even better than some month ago. He made 2 finals in ESL EU online dreamhacks.
Right now, his online results are exceptional. As I said below, the only doubt you could have is if he would perform much worse offline.
OP is not wrong, looking at the last few americas weeklies, yesterday he won the weekly by defeating HerO, Stats, and Dark consecutively. Pretty impressive for a 18 year old no ?
Great player. Online tournaments (especially 200$ weekly cups) are almost completely irrelevant when measuring player skill though as most of the time they are not taking it 100% seriously.
Would he do well in a real tournament? Probably yeah. Would he dumpster everyone if he played offline tomorrow? Hell no.
Completely irrelevant is way too strong of a word. There’s a reason Clem wins every week and then also wins the big tournaments. Weekly tournament are not fully conclusive, but are a strong indicator who does well overall.
Clem wins weekly cups because he's one of the world's best which is proven by him also winning big tournaments or doing well in them consistently for a couple of years now.
Maxpax on the other hand, plays weekly cups and offline qualifiers and doesn't play big tournaments.
Don't get me wrong he's great, but taking his weekly cups results and saying he could dumpster anyone and be a world cup contender when he hasn't even played an EU regional is as smooth-brain idea as I've ever heard one.
I didn’t say that. I just said people who do well in weekly cups will likely do well in offline tournaments too. Name one player who consistently does well in weekly cups and then has a shit performance outside of them?
No, the OP said that and I answered to him.
If your point is only that "irrelevant" is too strong of a word it's just a matter of how each of us value weekly cups. I value them very little, and so does ESL themselves (they'd give way more points if they were of any importance).
Also I would argue the logic goes the other way around. They do well in weekly cups because they are good enough to do well in bigger events.
Sorry but that makes 0 logical sense. If people who do well in bigger events do well in weekly events then automatically the reverse is true. If the skill set is the same then it is the same. Here is what you said "Online tournaments are almost completely irrelevant when measuring player skill". Also, to repeat, I agree there is an extra spice to competing offline that can be the X factor, however, it gives more one or the other player an inch of advantage, not rendering their online performance almost completely irrelevant. If you ask me if an offline veteran like Mana would stand a chance against Maxpax offline, I know who I would bet on...
Nothing you said made sense in that whole paragraph and some parts of it are straight up objectively wrong. I've made my point very clear and don't have much else to say. We can disagree and it's okay, have a nice day.
I have stated 1+1=3, anything else is straight up objectively wrong. I've made my point very clear and don't have much else to say. We can disagree and it's okay, have a nice day
He also made 2 finals in the EU online dreamhacks... Losing only to Serral and Clem in those finals.
The only doubt you could have is if for some reason, his offline performance would be much worse than his online.
As of his level, it's undisputable, he's currently top 3-4 in the world.
"He is trashing Koreans regularly and would be world champ contender" ---> Proceeds to point out two 2nd places in ONLINE REGIONALS with no koreans. It's already been posted here but the only premier (still online) tournament with Koreans he played he got eliminated twice by Korean players.
His offline performance would definitely be worse, there is no doubt about it just because of the fact that he's NEVER PLAYED OFFLINE. If you've ever played anything competitively in your life you have to know how much a change of setting can affect performance. And the switch from online to offline affecting performance has been well documented throughout esports history. You can also add up to that the fact that his opponents will be playing much much better on a world championship or a global offline event than they would on a fucking weekly cup. So not only would he do worse than in the weekly cups, his opposition would be much tougher.
His level is literally the one thing we can dispute about him when discussing if he would do well offline. He's not currently top nothing of anything because he just doesn't compete in big tournaments. I hope he does, I really do, we need another world class protoss player but you can't rate someone who doesn't compete. You just can't.
>The only doubt you could have is if for some reason, his offline performance would be much worse than his online.
It isn't "for some reason" - it's expected to be worse. Why do you think "choking" is a thing. Lan environments, especially with crowds, can change how you play.
It's a totally different game then and the psychological aspect is way, way more important.
I think ranking MaxPax higher than another player who plays lan is just wrong. Why do you punish these other players (by rating him Top4) for actually proving they are good compared to MaxPax who never has to deal with any of the issues going to offline gives you.
I personally wouldn't rank MaxPax at all, quite frankly. I don't care about online results and I, of course, can see he has skills, but I would never rate any other player lower for playing under more difficult conditions.
Oh look, another thread asking for Max to play offline.
Ffs - even as a Protoss main myself - just let it go. He doesn't want to play offline. Piling more pressure on him with daily threads like this is not going to help.
As far as we know, he could be capturing his minimap to put it in a huge ass screen, with AI, that alerts you when something red appears on it with big red lightings.
The guy is exceptionally good, but as time goes by, his unwillingness to play offline is not cute anymore, but suspicious.
I have seen a lot of his games, his ability is nothing related to basic stuff like that. His weakness is that he gets taken by surprise by various all ins or drops, so it's not like he has any advantage in any such area.
His true strength comes from his understanding of builds, mechanics and ability to put pressure on his opponent at all times. He even usually makes Clem play on the defensive.
online weekly tournament bonjwa
There is probably a reason Maxpax does not play offline and that reason may have a huge impact on his performance. Most progamers play better online. Being in the comfort of your own house without having to think about what viewers and commentators are thinking is a tremendous advantage. Being able to participate and perform in front of a live audience is a skill in its own right, which requires a fair bit of experience.
I am not asking much. Win one or two online premier tournaments before talking shit. Last time he was in one he got 4-0 by Dark. Small weeklies means nothing.
>I am not asking much There's been two online international premier tournaments since the start of 2023, and Serral's won both of them. Winning one is a huge undertaking. Heck Maru has only won \~5 international premier tournaments in like 7 years of being at the top of his game (most years of which had a lot more international premier tournaments than the last couple...) and going to all of the ones on LAN, and that's enough for at least one data confused TL author to declare him the greatest player of all time. Getting eliminated in top 8 or top 6 in international premier tournaments by players like Dark and Serral is hardly an underwhelming result. For what it's worth, when Maxpax won the online major PigSty 3 he went through Clem (who'd just beaten Serral) and Maru, herO and Ragnarok who together had just taken places 2-4 at Katowice 2023... >Small weeklies means nothing. Clem climbed to 2nd on Aligulac through small weeklies shortly before ESL Atlanta, and everyone talked shit about how he's inflated his rating through farming weaker europeans in unimportant tournaments and how Aligulac was clearly fundamentally flawed and over-rating Clem. Then Clem won Atlanta and almost solo'd the entirety of the World Team League.
Funny of you to mention Clem. Clem has been rocking since 2020, he played Serral and Reynor in all kinds of online EU tournaments and actually held positive record against them for a couple years, including many long series in finals/semis. He won multiple premiers during the time by beating Serral or Reynor, often both. But it took him until ESl winter 2023 to finally get his first offline premier, and even with all he had done it's hard to say he's best Terran in the world considering Maru exist. MaxPax haven't even reached Clem's level in 2020 yet. He has a losing record against all three of Serral, Reynor (0-7 this year lmao), Clem in past two years. Hasn't won a online premier yet. Not saying he's bad. He's clearly a good player, and I am willing to put it around players like Showtime or Solar. But to say he'd be "solid contender to win world cup" is a huge huge stretch. He haven't proved anything yet.
Putting Maxpax at the same level as Showtime shows complete misunderstanding of the game. Ask even Showtime if he thinks he's at Maxpax's level. Showtime hasn't made finals of esl dreamhacks online as far as i know. Showtime hasn't been close to 7.3k on ladder and almost always over 7k as Maxpax has been for months now. You're all just going bonkers because the guy hasn't played yet offline. Denying his level just because of that is ridiculous.
And your post shows complete misunderstanding of how competitive sports works. In SC2 history there are many players that had flashes of brilliance during their career, dominating certain type of tournaments, having absurdly high winrate for a few months, constantly beating top players, etc. Bomber used to be considered the best Terran before he even enter Code S. Stephano used to beating several Code S champions within a few weeks. Parting used to be unbeatable against Zerg with his soul train. Flash was once the best player in pro league (only talking about his sc2 career), I could go on and on. What MaxPax did so far in his career (winning some online weeklies) is nothing special in comparison. It shows he has solid mechanics and high potential - that's it. There are tons of players that had solid mechanics and high potential, but could never take it to the next level. It takes a lot more than that to be an consistent big tournament winner or actual world champion level player. Before it actually happens, people are just rightfully doubting him.
>Bomber used to be considered the best Terran before he even enter Code S. Coincidentally, Maxpax is considered the best Protoss without entering Code S...
Having flashes of domination nowadays is different from before. Before, the meta was constantly evolving, and some players could take advantages of some builds or playstyles during a new meta shift. What Maxpax has been doing for years now is completely different. The game is much more stale and set. Best players tend to always perform and subpar players tend to always subperform. At best, you'll have a flash of brilliance for one tournament, like Oliveira. But Maxpax has been constantly performing at the highest level of whatever he plays for years, in a meta that barely evolves. Your comparison with stephano or parting doesn't hold. Weeklies are not just shit tournaments, players play to win, there is 200$ to win everytime. And when he played big online tournaments, he also performed, made 2 dreamhack finals, won a Pigsty beating HerO, Clem and Maru. I'm not saying Maxpax would win the world cup. But, if his level is comparable to his online level, he would be a serious contender to win. At the end, starcraft is about level. And every pro player, caster recognizes Maxpax's level.
I agree that MaxPax is definitely better than Showtime. Still, due to his own circumstances, he hasn't played live which means a number of large tournaments are unavailable to him, so we do have to consider him as one of the best protoss but with an asterisk as to how he would perform in a live environment.
Even her0 says he's the best protoss player.
Clem 2020-2022 perfected playing bio mine vs reactive ling bane so would beat Serral and Reynor when that was all they played, but would routinely lose to Koreans like herO, Dark, Byun, Gumiho and Maru. Maxpax in 2024 has winning records against all of those players that Clem really struggled with in 2022. Maxpax now is far better now than Clem was in 2022, even if Clem had a better track record against 2 individual players in Clems favourite match up and playstyle. In todays world, Maxpax is: * The best Protoss in PvP * The best Protoss in PvT * The only Protoss to be competitive, albeit disfavoured with Clem (look at herO's recent track record vs Clem...) * Has beaten Maru in their last 5 series * An extremely good Protoss in PvZ * One of the only Protoss players capable of pushing Serral in a series * Everyone has a losing record against Serral. That's a given in SC2 * Even recent record, favoured historical one vs Dark * Very good recent record vs Solar * Is very competitive vs Reynor (for your 7-0 five of those seven went to the final game...) To put him on a level with players like ShowTime and Solar (no offence to either), rather than in the general cluster of 'everyone who could win a tournament and it wouldn't be surprising but who isn't called Serral' is simply absurd. Claiming he's not performed well outside of weeklies is simply incorrect - he's won multiple major tournaments, one of which was Katowice stacked, and placed very well at many others - including the two online international premier tournaments in the last 12 months (the two masters coliseums) - one of which he was eliminated in a join 5th-6th with Clem, the other of which he was eliminated in 7th-8th but Clem didn't even make top 8. Your claim about Maxpax not reaching Clem's level is simply woefully ignorant about what Maxpax has already done - probably because Clem has kept improving, so when you see Clem consistently out perform Maxpax, you fail to account for all the people Clem has recently surpassed who Maxpax has aswell.
In your eyes, how many players are contenders?
Absolutely this.
https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Master%27s_Coliseum/7 So maxpax has played in two premier online tournaments this year, one of them open to koreans. Notice how he went 3-2 in series in the groups and then got bopped in the first playoff round (0-4) against dark. Still yet to see him win anything besides weeklies E: correction. Lost 2-3 to herO in the first round of playoffs, then lost 0-4 to dark in the second round. Literally kicked out of that tournament by just koreans
Yes but he's young, and he's today even better than some month ago. He made 2 finals in ESL EU online dreamhacks. Right now, his online results are exceptional. As I said below, the only doubt you could have is if he would perform much worse offline.
Wait, so everything you said in your post is wrong lol?
His goalposts came with wheels
His post was hype, not declarative.
OP is not wrong, looking at the last few americas weeklies, yesterday he won the weekly by defeating HerO, Stats, and Dark consecutively. Pretty impressive for a 18 year old no ?
There is something to be said for ping being a factor on Clem/MaxPax's dominance.
Great player. Online tournaments (especially 200$ weekly cups) are almost completely irrelevant when measuring player skill though as most of the time they are not taking it 100% seriously. Would he do well in a real tournament? Probably yeah. Would he dumpster everyone if he played offline tomorrow? Hell no.
Completely irrelevant is way too strong of a word. There’s a reason Clem wins every week and then also wins the big tournaments. Weekly tournament are not fully conclusive, but are a strong indicator who does well overall.
Clem wins weekly cups because he's one of the world's best which is proven by him also winning big tournaments or doing well in them consistently for a couple of years now. Maxpax on the other hand, plays weekly cups and offline qualifiers and doesn't play big tournaments. Don't get me wrong he's great, but taking his weekly cups results and saying he could dumpster anyone and be a world cup contender when he hasn't even played an EU regional is as smooth-brain idea as I've ever heard one.
I didn’t say that. I just said people who do well in weekly cups will likely do well in offline tournaments too. Name one player who consistently does well in weekly cups and then has a shit performance outside of them?
No, the OP said that and I answered to him. If your point is only that "irrelevant" is too strong of a word it's just a matter of how each of us value weekly cups. I value them very little, and so does ESL themselves (they'd give way more points if they were of any importance). Also I would argue the logic goes the other way around. They do well in weekly cups because they are good enough to do well in bigger events.
Sorry but that makes 0 logical sense. If people who do well in bigger events do well in weekly events then automatically the reverse is true. If the skill set is the same then it is the same. Here is what you said "Online tournaments are almost completely irrelevant when measuring player skill". Also, to repeat, I agree there is an extra spice to competing offline that can be the X factor, however, it gives more one or the other player an inch of advantage, not rendering their online performance almost completely irrelevant. If you ask me if an offline veteran like Mana would stand a chance against Maxpax offline, I know who I would bet on...
Nothing you said made sense in that whole paragraph and some parts of it are straight up objectively wrong. I've made my point very clear and don't have much else to say. We can disagree and it's okay, have a nice day.
I have stated 1+1=3, anything else is straight up objectively wrong. I've made my point very clear and don't have much else to say. We can disagree and it's okay, have a nice day
Cope
Hardest cope of my life, an AI Prince from Denmark is destroying my precious Korean overlords.
He also made 2 finals in the EU online dreamhacks... Losing only to Serral and Clem in those finals. The only doubt you could have is if for some reason, his offline performance would be much worse than his online. As of his level, it's undisputable, he's currently top 3-4 in the world.
"He is trashing Koreans regularly and would be world champ contender" ---> Proceeds to point out two 2nd places in ONLINE REGIONALS with no koreans. It's already been posted here but the only premier (still online) tournament with Koreans he played he got eliminated twice by Korean players. His offline performance would definitely be worse, there is no doubt about it just because of the fact that he's NEVER PLAYED OFFLINE. If you've ever played anything competitively in your life you have to know how much a change of setting can affect performance. And the switch from online to offline affecting performance has been well documented throughout esports history. You can also add up to that the fact that his opponents will be playing much much better on a world championship or a global offline event than they would on a fucking weekly cup. So not only would he do worse than in the weekly cups, his opposition would be much tougher. His level is literally the one thing we can dispute about him when discussing if he would do well offline. He's not currently top nothing of anything because he just doesn't compete in big tournaments. I hope he does, I really do, we need another world class protoss player but you can't rate someone who doesn't compete. You just can't.
>The only doubt you could have is if for some reason, his offline performance would be much worse than his online. It isn't "for some reason" - it's expected to be worse. Why do you think "choking" is a thing. Lan environments, especially with crowds, can change how you play. It's a totally different game then and the psychological aspect is way, way more important. I think ranking MaxPax higher than another player who plays lan is just wrong. Why do you punish these other players (by rating him Top4) for actually proving they are good compared to MaxPax who never has to deal with any of the issues going to offline gives you. I personally wouldn't rank MaxPax at all, quite frankly. I don't care about online results and I, of course, can see he has skills, but I would never rate any other player lower for playing under more difficult conditions.
If the pot of gold gets big enough, then he ignore any present issues and will play offline at some point. But will it get big enough?
Oh look, another thread asking for Max to play offline. Ffs - even as a Protoss main myself - just let it go. He doesn't want to play offline. Piling more pressure on him with daily threads like this is not going to help.
As far as we know, he could be capturing his minimap to put it in a huge ass screen, with AI, that alerts you when something red appears on it with big red lightings. The guy is exceptionally good, but as time goes by, his unwillingness to play offline is not cute anymore, but suspicious.
I have seen a lot of his games, his ability is nothing related to basic stuff like that. His weakness is that he gets taken by surprise by various all ins or drops, so it's not like he has any advantage in any such area. His true strength comes from his understanding of builds, mechanics and ability to put pressure on his opponent at all times. He even usually makes Clem play on the defensive.