First long form post and I am completely new to this style of analysis and is incredibly rushed so there absolutely will be flaws, please feel free to ask for more info in the comments and ill try to respond in a manner that makes sense.
I originally titled this post "how FNS neutered zekken" because of the stats I saw of VLR but after watching the maps vs NRG I have realized its a fault of the team and by extension impacting zekken.
SEN is built for zekken
- Based off the gameplay I watch of zekken I extrapolate that he knows he is the best player in the lobby and plays like it
This is something that I noticed almost immediately when watching the game but at the start of every map zekken will permanently have a player tethered to him in a bid to enable his aggression and mitigate losses by trading out when something goes wrong. This is understandable for your duelist player but allows the easy location of him and will prove problematic when considering the second quirk I noticed - Almost always when there is a reclamation of space on defense it will involve zekken and one other person aggressively face checking angles, this causes it easy to track what information sen has as when you spot zekken you will know sen will be playing a more passive hold on the other side of the map, something that is heavily exploited on split as multiple rounds rotates have been called based off of his contact later in the round.
- Zekken is the fast rotate almost all the time which compounds this issue as you can locate zekken through his first contact and utility provided to set him up, put pressure on the other side of the map and know that there will be no aggressive reclear of the space he initially fought for before his rotate so you can slowly retake space without having to expend util. Later in the round when you do spot zekken plus one other player you will know for sure that sen doesnt have any space past that allowing easy working of the map and rotates.
zekken MUST go positive on fk/fd
- If you run in to zekken and get a pick on him, the entire sen team in neutered and loses confidence in its ability to clear the map and hold for space to mitigate risk, instead relying on overextensions from the enemy and prepping for a flood on a site
- This point is less analytical and more vibes-based (not like entire post isnt) but zekken is an incredibly streaky player that gets hot and stays hot, but once starts to get shut down, has problems getting back in to it, idk if this is a mental thing from his playstyle of walking around with his massive dick but it happens
SEN isnt dumb
- all of these points are addressed in some sort of manner during the game through mid-round adjustments indicating an ability to adapt, but these very adjustments cause even larger gaps that NRG absolutely exploited, sen gets sloppy without an explosive entry and that is something noticeable to not just the viewer but the team too
- I dont doubt that sen will adapt to these points and you do still have to keep in mind that this is an off-season event and not indicative of how the team will preform during the regular season but this is how a team with 2 weeks of practice took down one of the best teams in america
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