Zekken was obviously the prize of the off-season. JohnQT has been highly sought after. Zellsis was picked up by C9 before Sen even announced dropping him. Everyone seems to agree N4rrate is a B+ tier player. Bang was inconsistent but its not like he was a terrorist. Kaplan seems to be highly respected. If all the pieces are higly valued on their own, what stopped the sum from being greater than their parts?
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Why did Sen fail?
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bad mental, high expectations
history has shown that they only perform well when they are the underdog. and after dominating americas and finally looking like a competent team coming into stage 2 playoffs, the domination from g2 with leaf's first game back showed the huge gap between the two teams, and that broke their mental for the rest of the season
John, Z, and Zellsis seem to have p good mentals. Did Bang and N4rrate really pull them down that much?
bang to me seemed very quiet and and reserved, and narrate from the looks of things rarely had good mental. zellsis is ofc the vibes merchant, but this season it only seemed to be so when they were winning. They had such high expectations on themselves to perform like sen 24 did that anything less than 1st in americas felt like a failure.
Re: Zellsis I also kinda think his goofy style of emotional leadership only really works when you’re not the defacto “leader” of a roster. It took the edge off things when they had Sacy and TenZ to provide actual leadership but from an outsiders perspective I can totally see that kind of personality contributing to Bang and N4rrates tilting. E.g. “Dont sigh on the mic again”
Funny enough I think that roster would have had more much potential if they still had sacy and no zellsis for it. In my opinion n4rrate and sacy would have worked out much better than n4rrate and zellsis
Purely based off the games I've seen I think it's narrate tilting followed by him rage peeking and overheat + bang falling off during champs + zellsis
n4rrate was num 3 in americas rating wise during stage 2
B+ tier is insane slander
zellsis was a nepotism pickup because c9 coach is his ranked duo, very bad year overall from him
bang was mid basically all year outside early season being fr
johnqt had a pretty mid year calling and fragging wise
kaplan did not have the best meta read this year
For every person claiming N4rrate is the truth there’s someone else saying he’s a tilting thrower. Thats why I said an agreed upon B+. Lots of people think he’s worse than he probably is
tilting only happened early season and was pretty quickly fixed imo but people never let it go, vlr users specifically
he was far and beyond their best player by the end of year and if you are swayed by vlr ragebaiters into believing otherwise I question if you even have free will of your own
are you ok?
in stage 2 he was:
- just under aspas in ACS
- 3rd in vlr rating
- highest in FKPR out of any non-duelist player
- 2nd in KPR out of any non-duelist player
How is he baiting when he has the most first interactions in stage 2 outside of any duelist player?
kaplan is convinced the only way to play defense is to jerk off and give site then play retake
because they didn't mesh well at all, NRG basically proved that chemistry is key
bang was not the fit for sen, he's so passive and they were all 4 sending in zekken to die
They aren't really a great team playstyle wise. Zellsis, John, and Bang are all very passive players in one of the least passive meta's ever. It's why Sen was able to still look good, but not look great. They were the type of team where, if everything went to plan, they could play above the sum of their parts. But, the moment anything was off, they were just boomed. It's not great having your Sova be your second most aggro player. Teams that had successful years have multiple pieces of aggression within their flex, smokes, and Senti players.
It's not about like midrounding or calling, it's just about how they interacted as players.
Also the gameplan read wasn't optimal from Kap, but when you have a roster this passive you kinda do have to plan around hard retake angles.
Do you think that’s something the coaching staff is responsible for or whoever is making roster decisions?
I.E. Would it ever have been feasible to tell John or Bang to change to a more aggressive play style .
Yeah, it's on management to create a team that can function within the game well, but I genuinely don't think that was the direct priority when building the roster. I think they were going based on firepower over fit, like at the start of the year they were trying to get N4rrate (one of the best Scans in EMEA for 2024) to roleswap over to Senti. It fills in the gaps for the team - Have a strong firepower lurk, and a very structured hit (The Fnatic build). But when N4rrate couldn't get comfortable in proper situation, it left Sen Management in a bad scenario. N4rrate probably joined the roster with the intent from Kaplan to have him as their star Senti, and then bang can be an anchor role on the other side of the map. But when one side of the map is Zellsis, then you can't fully bet on him getting his 1 every round.
it was legit zekken and friends after toronto btw....zellsis was absolutely ass, bang fell off, narrate rage tilted every game
bro they tried to play the same exact system with 2 new players like how tf did they expect that to work . Like ok if u wanna keep the same system ok then get the players who are almost identical to their previous players they legit looked at vlr and checked their stats and picked bang and n4rrate up .
They couldnt figure out their own identity in the year and it was hard , kickoff- they ran narrate on senti and john on recon, john didnt do well on it except for tejo, stage 1- they put john on flash, narrate on recon and zellsis was switched to senti, and he clearly had no clue on how to lurk except for in a few situations , not even his fault as he never was a lurker, in stage 2- they finally reversed back their roles to narrate recon, zellsis flash, john senti, however it was too late already. They couldnt get a read on the meta, sometimes u see they ran solo duelist yoru zekken on lotus and just two days later they play lotus again, zekken is back to raze, same shit on split, you cant figure out what your team likes to play and what the meta is favouring. No one is playmaker like tenz taking the big risk, No one acts like the rock to give the team a round when it is needed like last year tenz and sacy did, Midrounding went to shit when sacy left.
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