SENs issue is obv right?

It's N4RRATE and Bang, not because they are bad players, but because they had the impossible task of filling the gap left behind sacy and TenZ. How do you go from two seasoned players with titles under their belt to N4RRATE, who's been playing for the least amount of time than anyone on the current or past SEN roster, and also Bang, who really only fits well in a team that will hype him up 100T but also lacks experience at big events and has shown little promise.

I think people grossly underestimate how far synergy and coordination get you in pro play. So, bottom line, SEN went for a gamble signing two random players that were good but zero correlation to the remaining SEN roster after 2024, and guess what, the team fell apart. I think the right move for SEN is to drop N4RRATE and bang and sign tier 2 talent they have invested in so Johnqt and Zellsis can mentor.

so the problem is their unexperience and the solution is more unexperience

I agree when you say that synergy and coordination are more important than most people think. However I don't agree SEN doesn't work because they lack experience. I think you already said it. They lack chemistry in game. The team looks disconnected at times and sometimes it looks like they endure the flow of the game instead of setting the pace. NRG wins champs with s0m and Ethan, seasoned players, but also with 3 players that were in tier 2 before this year. Experience wise they are behind alot of teams but that clearly didn't matter.

If you ask me SEN's "problem" this season, they didn't have a bad season because they did make every international event this year. The problem is imo a lack of depth when it comes to strategy. They stuck with alot of team comps, didn't innovate much strats wise and I think those problems are mostly the coaching staff's fault.

narrate going to be alright once he stop losing his mind mid games. technical ability makes up for the lack of experience.
but for bang i genuinely never understood how so much people rate him. bar average every year in tier 1 with a few glimpses here and there while being a complete snowflake mentality wise. not even a beautiful nor memorable screen and never picking up a vandal definitely a red flag.

Not really. The team still did good this year. They made every international—one more than they did last year—and were always good in America's. They were worse, yes, but as you say their pieces were also worse this year. Rookie's also aren't that huge of a deal. NRG won champs, and they had Brawk, Mada, and Skuba.

Sen were still a good team this year, just not a world-beater. They can easily get there by swapping around some parts, upgrading some talent, or refining what they have to be honest.

I disagree with anyone saying N4rrate was a problem in Sen. IMO, he was their best player for most of the year, outside of Split 1 where they had him on a completely new role.

The real problem with Sen this year is simply that their read on the meta sucked. 90% of good teams this year heavily leaned into the Yoru meta. You get the best flashes in the game, with global map presence and a great ult.

Sen for some reason, decided to lean away from Yoru in Split 2. Which is fine if that's their read. But they didn't replace Yoru with another flash initiator, instead, leaning into double senti or double smokes instead. So Zekken was going in dry and getting owned.

And even still that's fine if double senti and double smokes made it so that their defense side was elite like NRG's. But it wasn't, because they kept trying to retake without flushing out util first during the initial site hit.

Adding to that they took Zellsis off his best role which is flash initiator, and put him on Senti. But in 2025 Valorant, Sentinel players need elite mechanics and the ability to hold a site by themselves and at least get 1 or 2 before dying. Which Zellsis isn't capable of.

So Sen had three options this year: put John back on senti and have Zellsis run flash initiator, run double duelist with N4rrate and Zekken with one of them playing Yoru, or drop Zellsis for an elite sentinel player. They chose option D and got stomped for Stage 2 + Champs.

their issue was they didnt get the right replacements, they replaced a world class initiator and an aggressive omen/initiator flex with a passive controller and initiator/duelist flex.

they need a top class initiator DESPERATELY this offseason