Sentinels dropped out of VALORANT Champions Tour Stage 3 Masters Berlin Friday after a swift 0-2 defeat to fellow North American side Team Envy. The previous undisputed best team in the world, Sentinels lost some of their shine at the German tournament. They lost to G2 Esports in their second matchup and lost a map to the South Korean second seed F4Q.
How Sentinels went from defending champs to an early exit at VALORANT Masters Berlin
While not showing a similarly dominant run at Berlin – the team did not lose a single map at Masters ReykjavÃk– the loss to their regional rival was still a shock to fans. According to Sentinels, the team was behind on the meta at this event, returning to older compositions that felt comfortable rather than playing what is strong on the tournament patch.
“I don’t know if we practiced as much as we could have,” Sentinel’s Hunter “SicK” Mims said in the post-match press conference. “I think maybe we’re a little behind on meta. So I mean, that’s all out all our fault.”
Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan, Sentinels in-game leader, expanded on their meta woes. He said the team knew what they wanted to play meta-wise but were not able to execute with them, like in their final match, or decided to fall back on their comfort agents.
sometimes things just don’t go as planned :/ ggwp to Envy, that’s it for us here in Berlin
— G2 ShahZaM (@ShahZaMk) September 17, 2021
“We were in this thing where we’re scrimming new comps and then in game we were running old comps,” Michael “dapr” Gulino said in the press conference. “We’re scrimming a new comp, but we’re using an old comp, so you don’t want to show it. So yeah, it definitely hurt us.”
Sentinels did not have too much riding on this tournament run as whole, though, as they have already qualified for VALORANT’s prestigious year-end event, VCT Champions. While other teams were calculating circuit points or stressing about winning the event to qualify for Champions, Sentinels could sit back and compete under less pressure. But with their loss today, Dapr said he and his team now know that they can’t waltz into Champions unprepared.
“At the end of the day, this event genuinely means nothing to us in the fact that we already qualified for Champions, we knew we had Champions on lock before,” Dapr said. “That doesn’t mean we weren’t trying to win it. But a quarterfinal finish here, honestly, is almost a wake up call.”
Fans and fellow competitors will get to see what Sentinels do with that wake up call at Champions in December.
Published: Sep 17, 2021 08:34 pm