Well in 2014 I dont think he was top 3 for most of the year because of Dade’s insane form domestically and even Ambition’s last great year as a midlaner on top of the obvious names such as Faker and Rookie
He was however 100% better than PawN which he showed in the SSW/TSM series where he won lane every game and overall carried TSM to their only W against White.
In 2015 and 2016 there is no debate. Bjergsen dumpstered the likes of Mapple,GodV and Crown who were all hyped up to be amongst the best in the world. He consistently held a CS lead vs basically everh international midlaner he played and only Faker/Rookie were better individual midlaners than him back then
In comparison I dont think Caps or Perkz were ever at that level individually. Caps got dumpstered hard by Scout and Rookie in 2018 and completely mid-gapped by Chovy in 2019 groupstage (3 games out of 3 so as many as in a BO)
Bjergsen was just held back by playing in NA and never being enabled to compete for trophies due to his poor level of teammates over the years.
I still believe he is individually the best Western player ever although he is not the most accomplished.
My brother Perkz hard carried against golden road RNG. 2018 RNG is very similar to 2023 JDG. A team that everyone predicted to win worlds. He went into that series with quite literally no one believing in them because G2 was so hated back then.
In that year G2 was extremely weak. Wunder was not in his prime yet and still growing, and Hjarnin and Wadid were a meme botlane, Perkz only had Jankos to play with. And he still managed to win that series.
I don’t even want to talk about Caps.