They qualified because of their read on the meta. They were playing yoru breach tejo before basically everyone else. EDG and DRX copied their pearl comp. EDG copied their split comp but with jett for yoru. Having tejo gave them an edge on SA teams who were generally running older comps and they had the individual fire power to push through teams, but everything was scrappy. This sen roster struggles with the cohesion that allowed 2024 sen to win madrid, thinking of the flood retakes on split and post plants on sunset. Bang and N4rrate are not integrated into the system, and it seems like johnqt's calling is more indecisive than last year. Zekken has no second entry on the team, bang plays very differently from tenz. It seems like they realized this but the only fix was taking zekken off of yoru, but it didn't fix the core issue.
Now to get to the parasocial take, this team has some internal issues. Zellsis seemed to reference it in their interview after their elimination saying that they need to remember to have fun while playing the game. I interpreted this as the team is facing some sort of burnout (unlikely since its the start of the season), more so I think it was pointed towards N4rrates mental, probably that he is too hard on himself during matches. Reminding him that its just a game so his negative mental doesn't boom him or spread to teammates is important to improve the mental resilience of sen. In the most cope take possible I think its good that Sen had an early exit, from Bangkok to try to work on becoming an integrated team, but I do think if they can't figure out their team identity by the end of stage 1 it might be the right call to make changes, either to roles or individuals.
allat: sen has good meta reads and firepower, but bad team cohesion which optimistically can be worked on by stage 1.
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