After watching 100T for over 6 years, since first strike, Ive had two major conclusions.
1) At no iteration of the 100T roster, was there ever a "game anchor". The way I define a game anchor is the players who are able to change the tied of the games single handedly, and consistently. Yes, if pointed out, Cryo 100% is a game anchor, but in my opinion, consistency is also a key requirement. Cryo has the potential, but at the current moment, he is not as consistent. A few years ago, he was also consistent, but the impact was not significant in the bigger picture. By bigger picture I mean, in the entire tournament or bracket.
The reason, the hiko-nitro-steel iteration, or the stellar-derrek iteration, or the boostio-berlin iteration got as far as they did, in my opinion, was more of a team credit than an individual credit, which yes, thats how it should work too, but you still need players who can take control of a game by themselves when it matters most.
The likes of JohnQT, or Cortezia, or Oxy, or Sato, or Ethan, or Brawk, Mada, Skuba, even dgzin and so on. With most of these players, you as a fan, 100% have the confidence that they will bring the game back somehow or someway, and the main reason I am saying this whole point is that confidence. Never have I felt true confidence that the game will be back, it’s been a pleasant surprise or an expected loss. Another way to put it is a scare factor. Unlike other teams, 100T does not have or had scary players.
2) Again, with so many coach and player changes, the way 100Ts game progresses, has somehow not changed at all. Metas changed, and they have kept up with it, but this isnt about the agent pool, or strats, but about individual and team thought process.
Their approach is somehow been the exact same, as first strike w.r.t the game. This wouldn’t be bad, if 100T were a strong team (not talking about results), but that is not the case. They have their runs, they show potential, but each time it’s almost become easy to predict how they’ll fail in the tournament if they don’t succeed, because the way the play is so fundamentally similar, that you know some of these games will just go the way you think they will, no matter the odds.
A dominating game like the one on Breeze against NRG, or a horrible upset, where they lose to a weaker team, or just close misses, each game since 2021, I’ve somehow been able to predict how they will fail game to game, that is if they do end up failing, because even the failure path stays consistent. Idk how this happens, and I don’t think Asuna is the one to blame.
Anyways, I think they have a good team right now, but I think they also need to train Vora or anyone else to also be a massive anchor to the team, performance wise, strats wise, vibe wise, everything. One person is not expected to do it all, neither do I think you need dedicated people for each, but I think because they lack the game definers like JohnQT, or someone else, they need to play the team diff games the way Furia is playing. Furia also doesnt have game definers, that might be cause they are a young team so you cant make the decision, but nonetheless they are playing a fundamentally different game as a team which has lead them to where they are today, and I think 100T needs to do that too.
All of these opinions are my observations from watching them, but I am sharing cause I want to know what you guys think, and just to make it clear: I do not think replacing Asuna will fix the world.
Edit: Just saw that the ex 100T coach saw this post. Very logical of him to read only the first sentence of both points and say that the guy who wrote it is an idiot. 1) Yes, these are views as fans not as people integrable part of the team. 2) You said that my second point was wrong because when you joined "100T was a individual fights team, and then became a full retake team.", and what about it? my point was about the actual results that 100T gets for some games and the way they lose. By becoming a retake team you are not revolutionizing anything imo, the only thing you are doing is switching up strategies. Most teams do that for each season, they get aggressive sometimes, they play more passive and so on. Thats part of the meta, comps, and the coaches in place. My point was that even with all those changes, the results somehow was always predictable, the manner of losses was predictable, the upsets were predictable, the micros of in game decisions also remained the same, along with the bigger picture of the yearly performance. I personally believe its very shallow of you to point faults without reading the whole point.
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