Is the trailblazer who really blew the Starcraft meta wide open originally the best, or is the guy who took that and improved on it the best?
in my mind "the best" is who would win in a head to head, you deserve credit for being innovative but if someone has copied all of your innovations and executes better than you they can beat you unless you can innovate beyond that as well, which isn't the case with all games as there is sometimes a ceiling. similarly I think most of the best sports players of all time have been relatively recent because the level of athleticism these days is much higher, most of the science on how to train to the utmost effectiveness is within the past 40 years or so. like in football the great teams of the 60s and 70s are frequently argued to be the greatest ever but if you actually watch them they're very slow compared to how the game is played now, if you time machined them into this era they would get mauled by half of the NFL