Best Case Scenario Rosters

listen I'm all aboard the Zander train but that was just a throw on the op by Sato

He has some big shoes to fill, that's all I'm saying.

Bro I'm the biggest hater of GE, so don't even bother.

N4rrate is also an insane jett, but also brings a huge agent pool that sen needs based on what they lost (does demon1 play fade, skye, gekko, etc?) He is easily the best fit available for SEN, leaving open a smokes role.

Demon1 doesn't really work, besides brim (easiest smokes in the game) he's only played astra. He's unproven on Omen/Viper which are much harder to master (especially viper).

Tenz unretiring isn't possible (yes in the literal sense it is possible, but that's not the point), and this is meant to be whats possible.

Jawgemo is debatable, but he hasn't played smokes in a long time, meanwhile zander is actively a proven stud on smokes (m80 doesn't go to finals tommorrow if zander doesn't go nuclear on sunset)

Yay is obviously a gamble for the reasons you described, and any rational person in SEN's position goes with zander over yay given the choice.

Sure, if you add the quantifier "on smokes". But not even TenZ played just smokes. TenZ played Yoru, Kayo and Gekko all this year. Zander has never even played any of those agents. So he can't even operate as a 1/1 replace of TenZ the way Jawgemo would, and you'd have to change your roles around just to accomodate him.

And in general, I think "x player = y role" is a bad way of team building, You have no idea what's going to be strong before the season is done. Building your team assuuming last year's meta and team comps will still work means you are 1 meta shift or agent buff/nerf away from being behind all the other teams. Look at what happened to NRG witih Demon1 or 100T last year with Cryo. You even saw it this year with Sen. They obviously thought Deadlock was strong but couldn't use any of those comps because they lacked a player who could play that agent. You mitigate that by having flexible players who can all cover multiple roles and agents. Especially when your IGL only plays 2 or 3 agents already.

For example- SPG in APAC plays an Ascent comp that is Brim, Neon, Habror, Fade, Yoru. How could Sen even play that comp with Zander? N4rrate on Fade, and logically, you put John on Brimstone. So what does Zander play? You could put him on Harbor, but he's never played Harbor before. And even then you would have to put Zellsis on duelist. In this same comp, Jawgemo was the Harbor player for EG during their Championship run. But mroe realistic you let Zellsis play Harbor (which he used to do on Pearl for C9), and then Jawgemo can play either duelist.