SERRAL vs MARU: GOATS Fight in $500k Grand Final! | IEM Katowice (Bo7 ZvT) - StarCraft 2

Subscribe to PiG Casts! 🐷 Serral (Zerg) faced off against Maru (Terran) in the $500,000 IEM Katowice Grand Finals in this Best of 7 ZvT Pro StarCraft 2 Series
Serral did in fact lose to mech at least twice, back in the BC Mech era: • EPIC MECH - Maru (T) v... | • Serral vs Cure (ZvT) -...
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[@OnigoroshiZero]

Getting another cast from you on this was amazing, as it was watching Serral obliterate Maru once again. Anyone still debating the GOAT subject at this point, especially by mentioning someone like Maru, must check his brain for serious injuries.

[@sakesaurus]

not only is he this capable, he also goes against a trend of generally worse level european players. I can't imagine there's a serious social medium for pros in Finland. There's just a guy. And he completely owns the ladder. Stuff of legends.

[@ryguy9933]

I've just recently come across PiG's casting and it is by far some of the best casting! Props man! I am also here to see the "nerf zerg weeeeeee waahhhhhhhh" because serral has perfected zerg and crybabies can not handle it.

[@B1gLupu]

Sure, they might both be GOAT-ish, but Serral is clearly the bigger, meaner ram of the two.

[@matuspetrus]

It was so so ... in many moments. You need also understand that majority of comments was about serral. Maru played it well ... 3-5 sec and it would be other way...

[@marcelbenner993]

@@matuspetrus Historically it is not even close. Serral's personal win record vs Maru as well as Serral's wins in high end tournaments events in addition to Serral's win rates vs top Koreans make this story pretty clear.

[@tungnse]

Serral made every Maru in particular and Terran whiny teenager/teenager-like fas crying the sh out LMAO.

[@andriesv8903]

I know you cast this, i was online but I NEED a relaxed and a beer to see this commententing by PIG on hes chanel :)

[@PiGCasts]

thanks for rewatching this fantastic display mate :)

[@Giimasu]

Hey, PiG, thank you for the short replay analysis! It's quite easy to lost track for the players' actions with direct casting, so the replay analysis is a good addition. On IEM live cast, you never mentioned about the time of the roaches. Now, I understand even more just how amazing Serral's build was. Serral knows that Maru knows, so he made a proper adjustment to fool Maru. That one minute difference was massive. About the build on game 1. I tried to search for recent Serral's game against Terran, and I think it's really the first time he used it. And like you always say, Serral uses the 15Hatch+Pool with many different branches, that it's hard to see what's the direction he's taking. There was the double overseers build that he used against Maru at Master Coliseum 6. The roaches ravagers army hit the lower barracks at 6 minutes, and the roaches have speed. The thing is, Serral baited an aggression from Maru with the hatch on rich gas base of Neohumanity. So by the time the roaches arrived, Maru's army was already dwindled. Not helping that he already sent a 4 widow mines drop, and there was overseers' contamination over the factory. The next time they met, Serral used the same opening, making Maru wary and defensive. However, Serral now branched out into quick Ultra with quick +1 armor and plating. Also, Serral has new details. IIRC, he never morphs zerglings with this 15hatch pool roaches aggresion. However, here he made 2 lings to delay the reaper, so Queens could defend the bases easily. There was no scout nor economy damage. Back in the prior game with the double overseers, Serral took some disruptions when the reaper dive into mineral lines.

[@marcelbenner993]

Yo PiG, while I was lying sick in bed, I looked into some statistics and wrote this article based on them... do you have any thoughts? - There is a player who achieved the Triple Crown twice, which only 2 other players achieved. - There is a player who has the highest win rate vs top Korean players in 5 years out of 13 StarCraft2 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023). - There is a player who won the world championship twice (most wins among two others) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against at least Top 100 players (47 consecutive wins - 12th of May 2018 till 6th of October 2018) - There is a player who holds the longest winning streak against top Koreans (19 consecutive wins 17th of May 2023 till 3rd of August 2023; 2nd place the same player with 18 consecutive wins 4th of August 2018 till 1st of May 2019) - There is a player who achieved an over 90% match win rate in a year (2023) overall - which no one else ever achieved (The closest is Maru with 76% also in 2023) - There is a player who achieved an over 73% (73,24%) game win rate in a year (2023) vs Koreans, which no one else ever achieved (closest is Serral with 69,86% in 2018 and Maru’s 69,44% also in 2023). - There is a player who achieved an over 85% (!!!!) match win rate in three years (2018, 2020, 2023) vs Koreans. The next best players being Maru with 78% in 2023, Serral with 76,76% in 2019 and herO with 74% in 2017. - There is a player who has by far the most Premier Tournaments wins with top Korean Participation (16) and overall (25) - There is a player who has NO negative win rate vs ANY pro player since his first Premier Tournament win in 2015 which he played on a regular basis (at least 10 games) - which no one else ever achieved Here are these player’s records against the top Koreans (wins:Korean player wins: draws): vs Maru: 13:4:2 vs Dark: 8:5:1 vs GuMiho: 10:4:0 vs Solar: 16:7:1 vs Cure: 17:3:0 vs ByuN: 12:5:0 vs Classic: 8:2:0 vs Bunny: 9:2:0 vs stats: 9:4:0 vs soO: 8:4:0 vs Innovation: 16:8:0 vs Rogue: 8:6:0 vs Trap: 14:3:0 vs Zest: 10:5:0 And here the records vs some top world players : vs Reynor: 31:16:0 vs MaxPax: 18:4:0 vs Heromarine: 26:4:0 That player has been so dominant since his rise to the top in 2018 in Seoul that he won more tournaments - with participation of the best Koreans in the world - in 6 years of playing StarCraft 2 than all players who have been present among the top players for much longer. That player is Serral. I have no idea how anyone can deny that Serral is the GOAT of StarCraft 2. Not one player comes even close to such a dominance over such a long period of time while at the same time amassing more important trophies in less time than anyone else. Serral's win rate vs his weakest matchup (Zerg) is higher than most pro's overall win rates. To anyone arguing flash = SC2 GOAT: Flash never had win rates that even come close to Serral's and had lower win rates than Innovation at time. He also was only present in SC2 for around 2 years. He most definitely is the SC GOAT though. To anyone arguing Innovation/Maru: These two both failed to show up on the really big stages. Maru only ever got a 2nd place at Worlds with his 2023 defeat against Oliveira. He didn’t do what sOs, ROgue or Serral did: Go to a big stage, where the best of the world compete and win. The same is true for Innovation. Both Maru and him falter when competition from outside of Korea is present/when the big stage calls. Also both have lower win rates vs the top players and less achievements. To anyone arguing sOs: sOs, who is a 2 time world champion, only has 5 premier tournament wins. If you consider Rogue and Serral, who also are in the debate, sOs falls short. The same holds true as for Innovation and Maru. Less achievements, less dominance. Rogue has won 11 premier tournaments from 2017 to 2022. He, as well as Serral, won 2 Worlds. Now let’s bring Serral into the equation. Out of his 25 premier tournament wins which span from 2018 to 2023, 16 are with top Korean participation, Serral won 2 World Championships. Him and Rogue in my opinion are the only two players who are consistent and showed up when the best of the world are present. They have achieved similar high end feats. BUT: Serral has way more Premier Tournament wins (with top Korean participation and yet even more without) and was more dominant in his win rates and records versus other Korean players. To anyone arguing MVP: He only had 1 really good year where he won most of his Premier tournaments but even then, he only won 27% of the tournaments he could have won that year (2011). Serral won 60% of the tournaments with top Korean participation he could have won in 2018 and in 2023 40%. Plus, Serral had several other good years and isn’t limited to one good year. To people arguing that Serral never won a GSL, I have to reply “So what”? He played the best of the best from GSL and defeated them time and again (see record vs these players and overall win rate vs Koreans above). Does anyone seriously believe Serral would not have won the GSL if he was born Korean? And at the same taking Premier titles away from players who now claim them? If anything, Serral's dominance would have been EVEN MORE apparent. Plus, Serral even went to Korea twice and both times won the GSL vs Worlds where the best of the GSL participated. He is able to beat these players and he has done so on Korean soil without being Korean. So if all people have to offer is: “Meh, GSL” it simply seems like a last straw to hold on to. That argument sounds a little bit like this: Real Madrid (Serral) who defeated all Premier League teams (Chelsea, Man City, Liverpool etc.) in the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) is not better than Liverpool because it never played in the Premier League. The argument is absurd. The Premier League (Korea) sends its best teams (Maru, Dark, Rogue) to the Champions League (GSL vs World, World Championship, etc.) and these best teams get beaten by Madrid (Serral). No one in their right mind would argue that Madrid isn’t the best team in the world, simply because it didn't play versus Wolverhampton. All this is not even taking into account that out of the last 6 years, the world champion only came out of Korea 2 times. Meaning yes, Korea still has the broadest and best player base, but at the top, there are several other players from around the world who are able to show them their limits. There is also a fact about Serral never playing GSL or other Korean tournaments that is overlooked. While it is true, that Serral has easier wins in Europe due to the lack of top Koreans (the reason why I only looked at data from tournaments with top Korean participation), Koreans more often than Serral play Koreans that are not top notch. This means that Serral’s win rate versus Koreans mostly includes the best of the best, whereas Korean player’s win rates vs Koreans include players that many people have not heard of or that hardly earned any prize money. This inflates Korean win rates in comparison to Serral’s. Some argue that the GSL was “a different beast” back then. But how? Even back in the days you had always the same guys in Ro8, Ro4, finals and winners. Serral played most big names toe to toe except a couple of super early pros, that didn’t last very long. To stretch this point: He dominated and dominates nearly every big name. Plus: What can be said about Serral (he never played against MVP or Life), can also be said about them… they never had to prove their worth against Serral. I thought I could also address the “Zerg=imba, thus Serral wins a lot”-notion too: Anyone who claims Zerg is OP or imba based on Serral's performance has no idea what a statistical outlier is. In statistics, you always take out the results that are too far away from the mean or average. For example: If you want to know the average temperature of objects in a room with 50 objects in it and you can't measure all of them, you pick 5 at random. 4 of them are between 20° and 22° C, and one is at 250° C. If you don't recognize that this one hot object is a stove, you'll deduct utterly wrong that the average temperature is 67° and you are in lowly heated sauna, instead of a kitchen. Serral is just that - the stove in the kitchen... the outlier. Every other Zerg is not that good and numbers show it. Balance is a question of averages. And you can't find the average, if you base your statistics on outliers. On average, Zerg wins less than Terran, and Protoss wins even less than that. Just to showcase this: Serral makes up over 46% of Zerg wins since 2018. Since 2022 this Number went up even more, where he is responsible for 56%. If we give him the same win rate as other Zerg players, Terrans are by far the race with the most tournament wins. To sum it up: No one dominated other players peak- and lengthwise the same as Serral did since 2018 and still does until this day. Not a single player comes close to his achievements, match records, win rates, tournament wins and list of excellent players they faced and defeated regularly. Anyways, these are my thoughts. Share statistics, if you disagree :)

[@sordis3309]

Watched this live and I'm gonna watch it again! I really love your casting PiG; succinct, precise and very easy to listen to. Thank you! Serral owned this tournament!

[@miniwaern]

PiG I just wanna say that your commentary is god-level TIER too!!!

[@NtrTainUs]

Totally curious why Maru didn't make a Raven earlier in Game 2. Detecting those Infestors would have changed the game.

[@Routiercasanier]

It was painful for clem and maru....serral was rolling on this tournament.

[@PiGCasts]

He had so many slick builds up his sleeve it was incredible

[@sakesaurus]

13:30 you can try to rub your nose bridge at your eyebrow level whenever you feel a sneeze coming on. Do this early enough to avoid sneezing

[@BestPrezz]

pressing your tongue against your palate also works

[@PiGCasts]

yeah I usually press the flat of my finger firmly up against the bottom of my nose and it works pretty well, gotta be quick to it though just like your one!

[@Willdreynolds870621]

i miss the days when Maru hung on with the smallest of hope. now he Bish quit the moment he loses 1 more hellion or marine than he wanted like toddler with a tantrum.... DAMN get it together MARU please been faithful for years.

[@jean-baptisteroche2788]

Serral did loose to MEC in WESG against Maru in an insane comeback ! @pigcast

[@normanwierdle6749]

Serral is sharpening Maru. I want to see what this season of upsets for Maru turn him into. The Finnish Phenom ,THE ZERG OVERMIND GG SERRAL!❤ Thanks PiG

[@totalprocall6894]

There are physical limits to micro'ing terran. They have been nerfed into oblivion lets face it...even worse for protoss.

[@tungnse]

@@totalprocall6894 Terran and their micro whining, something never gets old LMAO

[@TrybunaVoodoo]

You were great at Katowice.

[@lhewjb]

Watched this series. Thought Maru could make it a close series but Serral reads him like ABC... Is Serral World Number 1 ranking? Thnks PiG for amazing recast... You didn't go to Poland to commentate?

[@psa4026]

I thought the prize pool was 500k and the first place won 150k.

[@Barbaari111]

1:00:09 the entire tournament is 500k

[@PiGCasts]

yep

[@matispure2]

a littlle bitty clickbaiti but ok

[@cccservice1617]

Serral is like the flash of broodwar

[@anotherplatypus]

Wow.... Serral was so flexing having prepped after that Ragnorock game....

[@Kay-bs3bl]

Man it feels painful for Maru. There was a period when he was neck to neck with Serral and dominates with his turtle play, arguably the #1 player of the time, but Maru didn't manage to cement it with a GSL championship sadly and now it feels like his peaking point had passed. Meanwhile Serral's performance even on time frame of year doesn't seem to dip much.

[@anotherplatypus]

58:40 "BackseatGamer"... Sounds like a sweet name for us fans that don't really play.. *giggling shrugs*

[@anotherplatypus]

You know, cause when someone's dedicated to driving, us in the backseat on our phones have plenty of free time to criticize the person in the driver seat who's actually focused on controlling things that we ride along as passengers... so dorking out about the analogy... us passengers then get to point shit out and shoutout out of boredom... I love the term 'backseat gamer'... I want it to be you that coined it

[@abyrvalg_]

Radhuset station is a zerg map for pros, not for a major community.

[@mikkosaarinen3225]

Maru actually built a raven on Radhuset in the end!

[@displacedicon7643]

This is not really for pig but just talking about ping stuff. Yknow the ping thing does go both ways, especially when playing a terran who does use widow mines as zerg and protoss do need to split or react fairly quickly as well. So the argument never really had too much weight to it in my eyes since it is unit based, terrans worry about novas, storms, and banelings. Zerg worries about widow mines, storms, and novas. Protoss deals with mines, and banelings. (These are obviously just the main ones you could argue splitting banes from tank fire or cloaked units from a scan. There is much more for the argument of ping).

[@Cossaw]

Pig, will you cast Serral v Dark? Loved that series

[@PiGCasts]

will definitely be casting many more series from Kato!

[@Cossaw]

YAY

[@NoUseForAName06]

SPOILER WARNING: Man, I never really bought into Serral and the whole "GOAT thing" surrounding him since he never won a GSL, but after this is becomes harder for me to not see him as the greatest ever. Absolutely crushing the greatest Terran ever and going 21:1 the entire tournament is basically unheard of. What an unreal performance. Game 2 was also probably one of the greatest TvZs ever. Those infestor plays were unreal. He's basically flawless mechanically.

[@panzfaust9812]

to sweep the floor with another goat should cement one's goatness. IT MUST or nothing makes sense

[@rat2244]

It’s unheard of for a reason, the same reason why Zerg has won the most number of tournaments over the last 5 years. Serral is an amazing player, but he also plays the race with the highest skill cap, which allows him to tap into another level that Protoss and Terran cannot match

[@SuperReviews4you]

@@rat2244 Terran had 5 of the top 8 players in Katowice and Zerg had the lowest amount of players in the whole tourney. Serral is just that good. Dark who is the 2nd best Zerg in the world doesn't even do to Maru what Serral did.

[@rat2244]

@@SuperReviews4you you’re missing my point. The tournament winners are still Zerg: mostly Serral, rogue, dark and reynor. The reason for this is the current skillcap for Zerg is far greater than the other 2 races. If you can master it, you will likely beat Terran and Protoss, Serral is just good enough to utilize that skillcap consistently. Similarly Maru is one of the few terrans that can utilize his skillcap for his race but ultimately its lower than Zerg, which means Serral playing at his best will always beat Maru at his best. It’s not because he’s a more skilled player but rather Zerg allows him to utilize his apm and skills more effectively.

[@SuperReviews4you]

@@rat2244 No I get your point, im just saying its irrelevant. Serral is winning more than anyone else not because he picked Zerg. This is shown by Terrans having more wins than Zerg when Serral doesn't win. Also Terrans have more 2nd place finishes as well showing Serral is the factor not Zerg overall.

[@marvindias1377]

Serral is a different breed bro my goodness 😩

[@CamiloCBG]

The lack of ravens in these matches is disgusting.

[@dotathewot390]

Surely love seing from your channel❤

[@derubain5774]

"no one can pronounce Belgian places" funny enough so thinks the rest of flanders about the West flanders accent...

[@PiGCasts]

haha I love that such a small country has such huge linguistic differences

[@reznya2700]

Why dont all T players against Sarral use a Raven?

[@kroekman6]

its written Ieper in Dutch and Ypres in French and its pronounced like keeper without the k (y)

[@muuanmies7372]

do the vs clem one

[@PiGCasts]

will definitely be casting many more series from Kato!

[@evelic]

Goated.

[@kazzkazzington6611]

the goat

[@Scawtsauce]

i should have been a GOAT

[@solreygames8407]

lings, being only half a supply, should they not only half benefit from upgrades?

[@lukesymonds1887]

So Roaches should get 2x the benefit? And Ravagers 3x? This comment makes no sense 😂

[@alexCh-ln2gw]

translation: Zombie grab was talking too much saying nothing in particular that pig did not get to cast.

[@darfboony824]

😂😂😂😂

[@PiGCasts]

I cast the finals with Wardi actually, I reckon he did a pretty kickass job

[@mattevans8090]

FIRST

[@igit_7296]

The hope for Maru is that Serral has to leave the game for his military service. As a huge fan of his, the Fin’s dominance over the last half decade has been painful.

[@B1gLupu]

Unlikely it will do much since Finland is not Korea. Serral is in the "sports corps" and its unlikely ihe will be doing that much "soldiering". Also, the dude wakes up early and is dedicated to his art, so its not like the military will have much to teach him about discipline :D

[@igit_7296]

@@B1gLupu that’s too bad for Maru, then. In the old days, maybe a Rogue or Zest could take Serral down for Maru. Now his only hope is Clem or maybe Solar does it. If not, I can see Maru never winning a major tournament where Europeans can participate also.

[@alexCh-ln2gw]

@@B1gLupu the fitness regime might add something extra to serral's play. Remember when micro jackson(byun) came out looking much thinner and he started winning a bunch . Now he's back to gaining weight and complaining about wrist problems

[@darfboony824]

​@@alexCh-ln2gwmost terran player complains about wrist problem

[@venezzrok871]

Seral will get a command position during war time where he controls the battlefield from behind his PC.

[@tangshuqiao]

Anti-spoiler comment

[@Scawtsauce]

i did construction work and labor and i got my first big boy job where i sit on my ass and do nothing all day so that i get paid a lot of money. i guess they pay you a lot because its so bad for your health, anyways thats me relating to you being old

[@JonahGhost]

Fungal needs some nerfing.

[@ZorkToma]

Spoil blocker

[@tungnse]

Serral >>> Maru any day. Cry Terran fanboys

[@BjeornBrown]

i think it is really about time ZERG get some big fundamental nerfs... Apperently once you master the macro and creep spread you become unstoppable. SC2 is dead untill Blizzard fixing this CLEAR UNBALLANCE,.,

[@hampehwakenabeb7773]

do you realize that only serral (out of billions of humans on this planet) can play zerg at this highest level consistently?

[@sakesaurus]

Clearly this doesn't bother BW community and flash dominates the same way as serral does

[@sakesaurus]

but I'd like some interesting buffs to protoss

[@Tonius126]

Yeah, like Reynor, solar are as dominant as Serral, Not. Lol. If Zerg is imba then those other two would curve stomp maru as Serral has.

[@marcelbenner993]

@BjeornBrown Anyone who claims Zerg is OP or imba based on Serral's performance has no idea what a statistical outlier is. In statistics, you always take out the results that are too far away from the mean or average. For example: If you want to know the average temperature of objects in a room with 50 objects in it and you can't measure all of them, you pick 5 at random. 4 of them are between 20° and 22° C, and one is at 250° C. If you don't recognize that this one hot object is a stove, you'll deduct utterly wrong that the average temperature is 67° and you are in lowly heated sauna, instead of a kitchen. Serral is just that - the stove in the kitchen... the outlier. Every other Zerg is not that good and numbers show it. Balance is a question of averages. And you can't find the average, if you base your statistics on outliers. On average, Zerg wins less than Terran, and Protoss wins even less than that. Just to showcase this: Serral makes up over 46% of Zerg wins since 2018. Since 2022 this Number went up even more, where he is responsible for 56%. If we give him the same win rate as other Zerg players, Terrans are by far the race with the most tournament wins.

[@1gammis]

omg I didnt want to spoil katowice man.... unfollowing you even if i love u, but name your videos better :(

[@tangshuqiao]

Anti-spoiler comment