Shahz has always been a good IGL. It's just that SEN didn't give him the correct infrastructure for prolonged success. He looks like a top igl in tier 2 rn. He would def be an upgrade over Boostio and Depthh
He was NOT the problem.
SEN would be more cohesive if
they kept the SEN core of shahz, dapr, and tenz...
add a world class controller like pancada or marved
add zekken as flex
and that’s it
Agreed 100%
Let's review SEN 2022:
He comes back in tier 2 with a new squad and coach and finds immediate success.
shahz wasn't the problem - team never had a chance that year. But the community narrative made Rob Moore do something impulsive - which he's shown to be once again with the sykko firing.
Shahz-dapr-TenZ + (Ethan/bcj/Marved/Zander) in the smokes role, and (zellsis/zekken/penny/nismo) in the flex role would have been a legit squad.
Regarding that second point: there was a point where everyone was pushing this narrative that shahz didn't believe in practice or make his team practice. And after a loss, steel talked on stream about how SEN had to cancel a lot of scrims because their players were sleeping through practice, which got a lot of attention on reddit.
People gave shahz SOOO much hate for this, and he took it all on the chin and never threw sick under the bus, on his stream or his twitter- just one reddit comment explaining there are extenuating circumstances.
Same. And when sick was going through his episode on Twitter, shahz was being a real friend, trying to help him even though they weren't teammates anymore. Think he was replying to his tweets before he got arrested saying "pick up your phone."
Makes me sad because he's extremely reviled on this site, but these two finer points (along with the video that was made after he lost his father) made me really respect him as a human being.
you’d be surprised ! people were blaming shahz insinuating he was not a good igl anymore, sentinels were lazy and didn’t want to practice, they let the iceland win get to them and now they’re just coasting by !
this narrative was pushed and shahz got the short end of the stick when SicK was making them miss practic3 bc of mental health issues. Kanpeki came into a shitshow and didn’t work out. When they finally got their shit together with Zellsis as their flex and shroud as their controller, things were looking up..
but Syyko went with xset core and it’s not really working out for them now unfortunately .
It's unfortunate really. People blamed Shahzam for not doing enough when in reality there wasnt much he could do. He said that when he recommended coaches like Sean Gares to the ORG the ORG did not want to pay the salary they were asking. If the ORG is unwilling to get a coach how much can an IGL do alone?
FNS is undoubtedly one of the best IGLs in NA but even him without CHET would find it immensely difficult to do everything alone. Vod reviews, comps, ideas, starts, etc. I mean Shahzam has a person life as well. He is human afterall. How can he possibly make time for himself when he has to do all that alone?
If the organization CLEARLY didn't care enough to get that team a coach and analyst then why should Shahzam care Kekw.
TenZ was probably untouchable in the eye of SEN management cause of his brand and following
realistically his ability to be a championship winning duelist is questionable to me. His mechanics are insane and in early valorant he probably got away with a lot that he can't anymore. his inability to play raze definitely screwed over SEN at least a few times. He's never been known to be a smart player, but with the level of competition this high you need both, even if you're the star duelist.
but imo his performance is the least of SEN's worries and replacing him for another duelist won't fix this team.
hard agree, i think things would be so much different for sen now if they just listened to and supported their players. If they got a experienced coach on time tenz probably wouldn't be struggling as much as he is now. I feel bad that we dont get so see them play together anymore cause they were such a fun team to watch even when they were losing.
if sen got a good coach on time and an actual smokes player instead of kanpeki who is an initiator and shroud who has no experience they could have qualified for masters at least. They needed someone to help fix their team culture, motivate them to practice and help with strats and comps. People with an actual brain know that its not teams fault for having basically no strats and adapting to the meta late when they had no help from the org in terms of staff. If igls can do everything by themselves why would orgs waist money on coaches. If sen wanted to get results quicker they should have kept their core players instead of getting 5 talented players from 3 different teams and then expect them to give instant results. As much as i find shaz annoying his midrounding looked better then dephh and he would have probably improved if they had an experienced coach to help
YUP!
people on reddit and vlr loved pushing the narrative that shahz was washed, sentinel players were lazy and didn’t want to practice.
When in reality they had to cancel scrims because of Sick. They finally benched him so he can get better.
Brought in kanpeki when they needed a dedicated smokes player so he didn’t work out.
Shroud is amazing at FPS but he doesn’t grind the game like he use to. they looked decent with Zellsis and Shroud though in LCQ.
All we needed was someone like marved to fill smokes and a flex like zekken for franchise and we’d be golden but Syyko cooked up something entirely different when NRG, LOUD, C9 kept their core that played together for so long.
i feel this is based on G2 performance in T2 and alot of people for some reason believe M80, Guard and G2 are franchise-worthy. I feel these three teams would still lose to Fnatic, Leviathan, NRG - the three teams which Sykko and Depphh lead Sentinels lost to. The reason why Sykko and Dephh were given the chance to lead Sentinels is because XSET did great last year - something most SEN fans have forgotten over 3 losses.
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