u/tilting-module

Note that I am asking who are the best in the world RIGHT NOW. Not over the past year, over the past 5 years, or all-time.

Anyway, my vote for best in the world is ZywOo. His current dominance together with the level of competition in Counter-Strike makes it an extremely easy choice for me.

Honorable Mentions (not exhaustive): Peterbot (Fortnite), mrekk (Osu), Zoink (Geometry Dash), Cody Schwab (Super Smash bros Melee), GreenSuigi (Super Mario 64), Knight (League of Legends), Hera (Age of Empires 2)

Note that I could post this to r/SSBM or r/smashbros instead, and I've already criticized Mang0 to the people on those subreddits in their faces, but the people in the smash community can't handle any criticism of him (including, of course, his personal issues) so I'm posting this here instead.

One of the prevailing notions in the Super Smash bros Melee community is that Mang0 is either the GOAT or the second GOAT to Armada. I'm making a post to voice and explain my opinion that, no, Mang0 is not the GOAT, or the second GOAT, or even the third GOAT of SSBM. He is, at best, the fourth greatest SSBM player of all time.

When I rate players in esports, I tend to always weigh peak over longevity. For a player to belong in some kind of GOAT contention, they must have a defining era (or eras) where they were the clear best player in the game. Mang0 definitely had years of being the best Melee player in the game, but let's compare his eras to the reigns of the people I'd definitely rank above Mang0: Armada, Hungrybox, and Zain.

• Armada: Definitively the GOAT of SSBM due to his overall dominance. His best years were 2011-2012 and 2015-2016. Note that 2011-2012 were, in some sense, the revival of the Melee scene after the release of Brawl, right at the peak of the era of the Five Gods. Meanwhile, 2015-2016 was, historically speaking, at the absolute height of Melee's public popularity and visibility, smack dab in the middle of the platinum era. Armada was praised not only for the number of tournaments he won, but for the pure consistency in his tournament placements. He boasted winning records against all the other Gods as well as Leffen and Plup, the next best players of this era.
• Hungrybox: Super underrated in SSBM GOAT discussions because of his polarizing choice of main in Jigglypuff (a very defensive/campy character). Nonetheless, he was the best player in the world in 2010 and in 2017-2019. The 2010 peak I don't really value again because the game was kind of dead due to Brawl but 2017-2019 was again, during the platinum era of Super Smash bros Melee. He was so dominant (and hated due to his dominance) during that time that, after winning a major, someone from the audience literally threw a live crab at him. Hungrybox fell off after the Covid pandemic but the main foundation to his GOAT case is, again, his dominance during 2017-2019
• Zain: Plenty of Melee fans weigh the post-covid years (so 2021-present) the most heavily in legacy discussions because the Slippi online tool made the game so much more accessible to practice and improve at, and people were able to improve so much, as a result. Personally, I would do so as well, but not so much more than the platinum era years (2015-2019), because Melee also lost a lot of public visibility and popularity due to the pandemic and the negative reputation the smash community gained due to sexual violence and sexual harassment related controversies. Anyway, Zain's dominance and consistency is nowhere near Armada's, and his longevity nowhere near Hungrybox, but he has been the undisputed best overall player of the Slippi era (though not continuously--he has often been contested by Cody Schwab).

Meanwhile, what are the years Mang0 was considered the best player in the world? He was considered best in the world in 2009, 2013-2014, and 2021. Okay, in 2021, this one is debatable with Zain, because Zain was overall much more dominant over the full year, but Mang0 arguably won the most important SSBM tournament of all time in Smash Summit 11 (the first in-person Smash tournament since the beginning of the pandemic, and the largest prize pool of all time). But even if the 2021 year is debatable, I still value that year so much more than the, let's be honest, mickey mouse years of 2009 and 2013-2014. In 2009, Mang0 was best in the world, but SSBM as a game was rather dead due to the recent release of Super Smash Bros Brawl. And 2013-2014 were overall very publically popular years of Melee, but not quite as much as in 2015-2019. However, the biggest asterisk for those years is that Mang0's main rival, as well as the best player of 2011-2012, Armada, was soft retired for those two years. Armada really didn't attend much tourneys during 2013-2014. Imagine you're in an alternate universe where prime Faker in LoL went to play DotA in 2015-2016 and some other LoL player won 2 world championships during that time and then claimed they were the GOAT. That's Mang0.

Anyway this post is already getting kind of long but anyway I find it absolutely hilarious and mind boggling how much the smash community worships him despite the objective flaws in his overall resume as an esports player AND how they've twisted the undeniable fact that he was banned from competitive play due to sexual harrassment into a narrative that he is serving a one year ban from alcoholism. If we're talking about greatest video gaming accomplishments by North Americans, don't ever compare Mang0 to real legends like JWong, Rapha, Peterbot, or GreenSuigi.

As you can tell. I tried putting a different show in every cell (including favorite protagonist/antagonist).

For those of you who somehow don’t know, Super Mario 64 is probably the most historically significant speedrun of all time. It is also one of the most optimized, prestigious, popular, and competitive speedgames of all time, being a cornerstone of speedrunning itself.

SM64 has 5 main categories: 0, 1, 16, 70, and 120 star. About a year and a half ago, GreenSuigi broke the 70 star WR to become the first person in SM64 history to hold all 5/5 main category world records at the same time. Since then, he has broken his own WR in every category except for 16 star, all the while no one else has taken away a single one of his WRs at any point in time. There is even an ongoing $10,000 bounty which is to be rewarded to the first person to break Suigi’s 5/5.

In more recent years (since 2020), Minecraft has risen as maybe THE most popular speedgame of all time. However, no Minecraft speedrunner stands out like GreenSuigi does for SM64. Feinberg has AA, lowkey has playoffs titles and RSG, Hax has the best overall playoffs placements, infume has 1.7 and the most dominant ranked ladder performances. The question I would ask, then, of course: what kind of MCSR accomplishments would be akin to GreenSuigi’s in SM64?

So, just for funsies, what if there was a Minecraft speed-runner with all these (simultaneous) accomplishments?
- Ranked playoffs 3peat
- Top 2 on ranked ladder in each of the seasons as the playoffs 3peat
- RSG WR
- AA WR
- Something else (NRI titles, Ranked LAN winner, 1.7 WR)

Then they would undoubtedly be by far the GreenSuigi of MCSR, perhaps even more impressive. Probably the GOAT of Competitive Minecraft (as a whole) and speedrunning (as a whole) as well. Of course, none of the names I’ve listed is even close to making this kind of resume happen.

No brainer picks:

Asia: Faker (LoL)
Europe: ZywOo (CS)
Australia: Mrekk (Osu!)

For North America I honestly have no idea who to pick. Some initial contenders include Justin Wong, SonicFox (FGC), Hungrybox (SSBM), GreenSuigi (SM64).

For South America I think it would be a tough conversation between Coldzera and FalleN (both CS). FalleN is probably favored overall due to his insane longevity, but Coldzera’s peak was insane.

For Africa it’s probably Dralii (Rocket League).

From left to right, then top to bottom:

• Nanachi (Made in Abyss)
• Hina (Torture Princess)
• Killua Zoldyck (Hunter x Hunter)
• Gintoki Sakata (Gintama)
• Yuki Sorimachi (Shiboyugi)
• Frieren (Frieren)
• Emilia (Re:Zero)
• Vladilena Milize (86)
• Lu Guang (Link Click)

So, the MCSR Ranked LAN event (LVLUP EXPO) is over. Let's talk about it.

In particular, let's talk about the relative weight of various MCSR tournaments. IMO:

1. Ranked Playoffs. The combination of total competition, rigorous standards for qualification, a decent amount of money on the line, and an excellent format with only Bo5's and Bo7's, makes MCSR Ranked Playoffs the most prestigious tournament. It also goes without saying that the more modern playoffs are more highly weighed than the older ones, mainly because there are so many more players on the ranked ladder today than in the past.

2. Ranked LAN. Being a in-person LAN event (the first ever!) with a large prize pool makes it a massive deal by default. It feels like a genuine Super Smash Bros Melee Invitational Major. However, I can't rate it as highly as modern playoffs, because the competitive field is limited in scope: it's an invitational, and many talented players are perhaps not willing to fly out to Las Vegas.

3. Couriway No Reset Invitational. Couriway hand picks the best players in the world, meaning that the competition is sky high. That being said, no reset is not the main format that ranked players compete in, and moreover, NRI's happen relatively frequently, meaning that each individual NRI title matters less.

4. Couriway EG Tourney. There's a massive amount of competition (1000+ runners), but the random seeding (Infume vs edcr round 1?) and the bad format with a million Bo1's except for Grand Finals means that I can't weigh this tournament so highly.

Anyway, I think there's a pretty big gap between #2 and #3 in terms of weight.

On another note, here are some other tournaments that I don't know how to weigh:

• Mid Season Showdown.
• Nisqy Invitational.
• Feinberg Tourneys pre Ranked Playoffs. Essentially a large part of the case for Feinberg as MCSR GOAT takes into account his dominance in tourneys prior to the rise of Ranked (along with his other accomplishments, like AA dominance). In particular, even if I would weigh pre-MCSR ranked achievements less, I don't think it was a "mickey mouse era:" Minecraft speedrunning boomed in popularity since 2020 so all achievements post-1.16 should be taken into serious account when evaluating various players legacies. That's why I think Infume and Hax were pretty based when they put Cube1337 and Ontricus in top 10 MCSR players of all time considerations in one of Infume's streams.

On another note, on that same stream, Infume and Hax ultimately decided to exclude Skycrab from their Top 10 MCSR players of all time, saying that he was just on the brink of making it to the list and just needed a little bit more on his resume. It's safe to say, then, that Skycrab's win at the LAN, catapults him onto a surefire spot onto the Top 10