what the fuck is this steaming pile of garbage
three sentinels??
Nah, they absolutely need flashes. Lotus has a lot of areas to contest, and no flashes/info meant constant dry peeking to control A and C. Breach is an interesting choice for sure though, but I understand the thought process. The main goal of the comp is stall (which is why they had viper, cypher, and sage initially) Furthermore, Jett acts as a pseudo-sentinel and omen is the default controller. However, clearly it wasn't as great as they thought, since they had no map control besides what was given. Breach has the most bang for buck utility with two flashes and a regenerable stun. I think the meta initiators didn't look so promising either. Skye has two info flashes + dog, but no refreshing utility is not great, especially since their comp is built on stalling/fighting for certain areas. Having a refreshing stun allows for constant fighting and cross map support. Gekko requires too much commitment at times to refresh his utility and he is lowkey terrible for stalling (since his shit gets blasted + if you throw util to stall, you aint ever getting it back) Fade looks promising but lacks the immediate power of flashes. I think they probably tested out kayo in scrims, but it probably didn't work out too well for whatever reason. I think it might be because kayo has basically the same util as breach, but kayo's flashes require too much prepartion? idk
I think M80's comp was actually built on this idea of stalling, forgoing the Jett for a sentinel and Viper for a true sentinel. Although I think viper would've been better for this comp, I think they didn't trust anyone that wasn't zander to play viper at a high enough level, but I digress.
But hey, what do I know? I'm not the greatest player myself and my knowledge on game theory is rudimentary at best.
viper would work so much better over sage or deadlock in this comp because despite her being a controller, her abilities and the fact you can set everything up as you would a sentinel allow for a lot more map control than you would have with sage or deadlock
i also just don’t think lotus should be played without a duelist because it makes site takes much harder due to lotus having so many chokepoints on site
I think that second point was one of the reasons they were opting for the Sage.
I remember doing a mini-analysis to see how they were running C execs. In the game against MXS, they hit C 4 rounds, and they did this same Sage wall on all four execs: https://imgur.com/a/wFRrPVj. What this Sage wall does is it lets them flood into Bend, as well as let koalanoob take an early fight from an advantageous angle