Crazy VALORANT season awaits us in 2023 with franchising coming to the VALORANT Champions Tour all over the world. Emergence of partner teams, the merger of regions where there are already big teams into a league, as well as the growing importance of local leagues, exponentially increase the uncertainty for upcoming season.
The fact that only 30 teams will be able to take part in the three major leagues has started to reveal stronger and stacked teams than before. One of the biggest examples of this is Sentinels, one of the leading teams in North America. Unlike other organizations, the team in red and black quickly announced their roster for the VALORANT 2023 season.
Rebirth of Sentinels with a renewed squad
Sentinels are one of the few teams that have seen both the top and the bottom during their journey on the VALORANT stage. In the early stages of the game, they managed to embargo almost all trophies, and the gap between them and their opponents was quite wide. This included VALORANT’s first international LAN tournament, VCT 2022 Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík.
However, their dominance lasted a year, and started to fade in 2021. SEN failed to achieve results in most tournaments in 2022. Both the team as a whole and the individual players on the roster went backwards. This was followed by an even worse 2022 season. Although the roster was shuffled a few times, the once king of the roster couldn’t return to its former glory.
Now they will enter a brand new season with a completely revamped squad.
TenZ is the only holdover from the old days in Sentinels’ roster for 2023. With his social media prowess and in-game skills, the Canadian will continue to contribute to the team. The in-game leader is dephh, a 30-year-old veteran from XSET. The United Kingdom native has played a big role in XSET’s rise, providing good leadership to the younger players around him.
The third player on the roster is also from XSET. 17-year-old zekken caught everyone’s attention with his outstanding performance last season. With a mature playstyle for his age, he filled the flex-dps role well. To fill out the rest of the roster, Sentinels made an unexpected and rather daring choice. The team completed its roster by signing Sacy and pANcada from VALORANT Champions 2022 champions LOUD of Brazil as the team’s 4th and 5th players.
SicK, who has been with Sentinels since its inception, will take on the role of the team’s 6th player.
These signing were only made available after several teams got snubbed from participating in VCT in 2023.
Everyone has a role on the new roster
North America’s giant featured great talent in their previous rosters. However, on paper and in terms of players’ natural roles, this is the first properly planned roster coming out of Sentinels.
Dephh has been competing in the FPS arena for a long time and has the necessary in-game leadership experience. pANcada and Sacy are among the best players in the world and are the perfect fit for the Controller and Initiator roles. Zekken and TenZ seem to be the two DPS players of the team. Zekken’s ability to flex into other roles when needed will be a huge advantage for Sentinels. In addition, for the first time, the team will have the opportunity to work with a specific coaching team for a long time. They will no longer be left behind in this area.
Just by pure stats and raw performance this roster is on par with the raw talented roster Sentinels usually goes for. The added benefit this time, is that the players are considered veterans in competitive Valorant specifically. The players combined have attended every major in Valorant to date, and both VCT Champions tournaments.
Like any new roster, Sentinels will need some time. We may see players struggling and some basic things not working. However, all members of the squad have the capacity and, more importantly, the professionalism to overcome such a challenge.
The future looks bright for Sentinels and we have no doubt that they will be one of the most enjoyable teams to watch in the new season.
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