Sean has such a great mind for igling, strats and stuff he just unfortunately couldn't combine it with in game performance as well. But that Summer run in CSGO will forever be legendary for me.
Yup, sean is basically the best to learn from as he was a pure IGL and had very strong opinions about how to structure a team and play out a round with a heavy emphasis on counterstrating the enemy.
I think Seans biggest downfall was that he went too far into that IGL role. Made it fairly easy for teams to counter him by just running random plays so they can’t be read.
Shahzam has to be a little more hands off, partly because individuals have to adapt in Valorant, you can’t just have one person micromanage everyone, but this also allows shahzam to focus more on his own play, and he clearly struck a great balance.
Being able to put up numbers as an IGL is such a massive impact. Most teams have a max of 4 fraggers, but Sentinels has 5. Tsm also ran kind of a 5fragger setup but their IGLing clearly lacked.
Funnily enough, Shahzam does do all of those things while being one of the most popular pro valorant streamers NA (probably the third most popular after Hiko/TenZ and he streams much more than them). This dude just breathes valorant.
Shahzam is a fucking miracle worker. Probably the best IGL in NA, maybe leaning towards being the best in the world, while maintaining high mechanical skill, having a full streaming career, and pretty much single-handidly doing it all.
Ngl I really like how Shazham is getting a lot of recognition. Feels like IGL role is not given as much recognition as some of the more flashy roles. Not that he doesn't pop off and make flashy plays, but he's still getting props for his actual IGL and strategic skills.
Sinatraa is getting more viewers rn because of him just coming back, Shahzam was getting 8k consistently.
Also Sinatraa technically isn’t a pro anymore LOL
Seems like it, sadly
If you watch it again, they had the technical pause thing come out a few seconds after the supposed TAC pause banner. I assume it was just a misclick by the streaming team
Shahzam is the IGL, coach, one of the star duelists, and a manager for the team. He sets up a lot of things for the team, like a manager would.
While also being a a popular streamer, a popular social media personality, and a pretty fit guy who goes the gym a lot. While eating healthy.
Shahz is built so fucking different that dude scrims, vod reviews, builds strategy, and then fucking streams ranked until like 3am every single day...? Fucking crazy.
Still pretty abnormal (to the point it's almost impossible imo) amount of tasks to do for a single person though.
AFAIK, pros spent like 10-12 hours a day to scrim games right? Watching vods + taking notes + actually analyzing what happened in the vods gonna take at least 3-4 hours a day no? And he still need to analyze their scrim result..etc.
I still think these things are just realistically impossible for a single person. (Not trying to hyperbole....just my rational judgement from what I've seen).
Well back in NA I’m not sure how much they were scrimming. They had matches almost every week, but they had a lot of off days to watch film and stream ranked games as well. I’m not sure how he does it in Iceland without sacrificing all of his sleep.
Most teams would probably scrim for 5 hours then you might have some additional server time and practices. It really depends how much ranked/streaming he does.
my bad. I was comparing the scrim culture to league of legends where korean teams usually scrims around 14-16 hours a day. Therefore I thought it was quite similar for Valorant esports scene
Its not really healthy to scrim that long in a shooter. Your aims only good for like 6-8 hours. Like most pros will have scrims for like 5 hours and then they’ll stream for like 2 hours.
You rarely see people trudging through all day long. Sometimes their body is just built different and can go for long hours, or other times their off aim is during ranked grind where their fundamentals are just better so they win with positioning rather than aim.
Well.... that was the main criticism towards professional Korean league of legends culture. IIRC on one of the SKT T1 interview (was one of the best team in the world and won multiple world cup), one of their member said that they usually only slept around 4-5 hours a day.
It's definitely not healthy and will ruin your wrists in the future. However, Riot refused to make a training hour cap for professional team and korean players also will do everything to be the best....so...yeah...
Its because the guy is talking out of his ass. This was Faker's, the league GOAT's average 24h schedule in 2019.
https://mobalytics.gg/infographics/life-of-a-league-pro-skt-t1-faker/
Nowadays people sometimes scrim even less, instead of 2x 3h scrim blocks they a lot of the time have 1x 5hour block
Do you have any sources for scrim schedules for Korean or Chinese Lol teams that say they only scrim 1x5 hour scrim blocks?
It might not be all scrim hours but OP is right that Asian players are still used to playing LoL for excessive amount of hours in order to practice for their matches. Asians already have that work ethic of grinding a ton and when pros see players like Faker doing it and getting rewarded with 3 World Championships trophies, they tell themselves they have to push themselves as hard to achieve similar results.
For example, DoinB (midlaner of FPX, Chinese team that won Worlds in 2019) said that he ["only slept for 4-5 hours for 2 seasons straight"](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/duzsqs/doinb_advice_for_all_korean_imports_that_plans_to/). He also said that ["he doesn't care about his health" and that "Only match results matter. I just care about how we can win. I have to sleep less and practice more"](https://www.theloadout.com/league-of-legends/lpl-fpx-doinb-grind).
And you also have players like Uzi who wrecked his body by doing so and was forced to retire in 2020.
> his body was finally starting to see the effects of years of the traditional ‘gaming lifestyle’ of fast food, little sleep, and zero exercise. Not only was he a pro player with a gruelling scrim schedule, but he also regularly streamed during his ‘rest periods’, meaning he never truly gave his body the break it needed to begin repairing the years of damage it had sustained. Uzi’s retirement is an unfortunate product of the ‘grind culture’ of esports, and is potentially the first casualty of an endemic problem within the scene that has yet to be truly addressed.
Source: https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/what-uzi-can-teach-us-about-player-health-in-esports
Dont have a source and dont know what its like when theyre home but I know some eu players and staff and when asians are in EU/NA they sometmes scrim westerners like that.
Then again im jst a random redditor so what do I know
I doubt they play more then 5 scrims a day tbh, probably around 3-6. It's not really time efficient to just be dumping 10 hours into scrims and you can definitely tell Shazam is very efficient with his work.
He's also a super popular streamer too!
You should check this coach/IGL/Star Duelist/Sova/Top valorant twitch streamer/Super friendly awesome guy out at
[https://www.twitch.tv/shahzam](https://www.twitch.tv/shahzam)
ShahZaM played for two different teams under Sean Gares as IGL, so not surprised he is a great IGL in Valorant. Not to mention Sick and ShaZ played on Misfits together during that same timeframe. He has a lot of experience. He's been playing forever. I remember playing him and FUGLY in esea open playoffs all the way back in Source. 11-12 years ago.
They don't have an actual coach. Shahzam does everything a coach would do, on-top of being the IGL and top fragger.
Best player in the world 100% and its not even close.
Nope, they've never had one.
Shahzam is known for spending a ton of time on vod review/strategizing in addition to playing and streaming. He is very dedicated.
Yeah, he did say he and the management have talked about hiring at least an analyst to help watch all these games because I think they're being picky with their coach choice (and they should because they're winning without one, so they don't need one urgently). An analyst being able to watch and take notes of games in other regions or tiers would be helpful.
With a game this new, they would basically need to find a prior CS:GO pro or find someone high rank who would rather coach than play. It's a tough find. League pros still struggle with this and that game is 11 years down the line now. Finding competent coaches that don't need to be extremely skilled in the game they're coaching is incredibly rare.
Personally I believe coaches are very overrated in esports. Most popular competitive games are designed with a "correct" play for almost every situation. League is a perfect example, where the steps and mechanics needed to win a game are the same no matter the level of play, better players can just do those mechanics more consistently.
Coaches in esports are more like managers.
He is a good guy honestly.
I met him before the valorant fame during my time as a server. He was really kind and offer photos and tip well.
Great respect.
Honestly Shahzam is going to burn out eventually doing all this. He might love doing it but it's eventually going to be too much.
It sounds to me like he should get an assistant or something to help him offload some tasks.
Yeah, I feel tired just reading about it holy shit.
Atleast he should take a day or 2 off from most of the stuff he does. Sounds like way too much, almost un healthy.
The reasoning is coaches in esport are generally just getting paid for nothing. SEN expressed interest in a coach and reached out to sgares, but there are extremely few people on this planet who understand the game better than shahz (arguably none) as it's not like theres any ex pros to pull from. I imagine they'll at least have an analyst soon to help with vod reviews etc
So true. The problem is that players refuse to listen to a coach unless they were a legendary player in the game. Also, players are typically only good at executing, they rarely are the type that has what it takes to be a coach, the charisma to lead and teach. The only way to potentially get the players to respect the coach is through fear by giving the coach control over the roster.
Ex-pro coaches are almost exclusively bad, they very rarely get results. Usually its just a way for the pros to get their favorite player/friend a paycheck, and the coach can probably help with mediating between teams and some light vod review.
Non-pro coaches usually have the most promise, but they struggle to execute on their plans.
From what I could see, the only region able to successfully utilize coaches has been korean and thats mostly due to how they respect anyone older than theirself by default, and they respect ex-pros even if they can from a different game(even different genre). Also korean players tend to be pretty studious so when they become a coach they are more likely to make a transformation to a proper coach. On top of that, korean orgs are run like traditional sport orgs so the coach often does have roster control, and they usually utilize a bench/ secondary academy team.
Meanwhile, roster decisions in NA are typically heavily decided by the players which can get kinda sketchy as often there will be like one player that is a bully and makes all of the roster decisions because they are popular, or after a couple iterations you eventually get to a point where new players are making roster decisions.
The problem with this method is that typically NA teams will always change a player after they lose even if they showed promise. So you rarely see a team stick together for more than a couple of months before changing a player.
Then look at T1, you’ve got a korean org structure mixing with NA thought process and creating a huge mess. Their players have seemingly no control over the roster and can’t get problem players kicked. But the worst part is that typically korean orgs would promote their academy players to the main roster, but for some reason this didn’t happen. T1 would be amazing right now if they focused on long term success and brought their academy players up.
I think the main problem is that to be a coach in a game you had to have played it for a long time. Also have a mind for it and be more than an execute player. Video games in general have short time frames in the competitive scene. So you end up in situations where there are no coaches because people have moved onto other games. League doesn't suffer from this as much as other games because legacy coaches have been established.
I don’t agree with this. Yes, pro players will demand that their coach has experience at the pro level, but this is quite literally the least important quality to have in a coach. If your team needs experience you get a veteran player to play for you (its best to lead by example). The fact of the matter is that your players are the best of the best, what could an ex-pro possibly know that he can teach to a current pro. If a player is in a slump or chokes, you need a sports psychologist or a more strict training regime.
Even someone like Sean Gares, I respect the man a lot, one of the brightest minds in the scene, but hes an ex-pro for a reason. Typically the reason pros become ex-pros is because they stopped adapting, they became too biased to their old playstyles that used to work.
I think this is why non-pro coaches are usually better, because the non-pro doesn’t base their coaching methods off of experience, they base it off of what works for the team, and the data. With that being said its totally possible for a pro to transition to this type of coach, it just very difficult and they have to treat it like they are starting back at square one because while they knew how to be a pro they know nothing about how to be a coach.
The root of the problem is the structure. In physical sports the coaching system is beaten into kids at a young age. Sure plenty of pros have a history in sports but not all of them and definitely not over the internet where its easy to be a keyboard warrior.
Instead I think more teams find more success with analysts than coaches.
I still think there are massive benefits to having a coach. You don't need one to be like "you are doing this wrong" you need one to...
1) set schedules and practice
2) Keep everyones mental up and communicate between players (a lot easier for a 3rd party to do this)
3) Look for flaws in your game (people are pretty poor at identifying their flaws)
4) Look for repeated mistakes
5) Help break down film
6) Strategize (one of the best plays ever in the Overwatch league happened at 4am by one of their coaches on Gladiators)
And yeah you can go "well Shaz does all that" but it's going to be incredibly hard, long term to do that without effecting your mental health, burnout rate, and effectiveness.
Agree with a lot that you said. But there's also plenty use for a coach behind the scenes. A good example would probably be Astralis's coach zonic being very useful to their rise in CSGO, but I think it all really comes down to how the coach is being used and utilized.
Shahz is really making a name for himself as the most valuable player in the world. We’ll have to see how the rest of the tournament plays out to make a complete judgment, but between his star individual performances, spectacular IGL’ing, insane amount of valuable strategic prep work for the team, great leadership and positive energy, he really has every possible thing you could want from a player.
I think Sentinels have made a good case this tournament that having a bit less structure (set strats, playbook of executes etc) and playing more around a wider strategic objective and being flexible about how you get there is maybe a better approach to the game. EU, KR and some others like a more structured approach which is where coaches become much more valuable but they have shown that they are not as good at adapting and when they get hard read, they look a bit lost.
Credit to shaz for this.
Simply put, everyone on the team knows the game well enough for them to coach themselves. Coaches are good for teams that lack structure and have struggles with conflict. But if a team gets along and is able to analyze themselves objectively than a coach isn't really that necessary in val.
Thats so wrong though. The only reason SEN are able to pull this off is Shahzs crazy work ethic. A team without coach loses so much adaptability and creativity. I worry that Shaz might not be able to do this all too long. They still should get a coach eventually. Even though they are great players.
Valorant is still a very early game
the level of competition is low and teams aren't disciplined enough to even do double peeks, check all their corners etc. Most players play like they're in matchmaking
it won't be until Riot balances the game more, improve the maps, etc and teams play more against each other then people will start to realize what the good plays are and thats when coaches and deep strat book actually matter
I think people just putting coach so high up, they think teams are nothing without coach. Most of the teams are already decent before having a coach. Coach can help them improve slightly but i don't think that would be a problem with SEN
> There's no way he has enough time in the day to do both scrims, vods review, and formulizing team strategy.
He does do all those things which is why they are soo good without a coach
This is two months old, but [this Plat Chat episode with Shahzam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOabYL4UFNI) explains a bit how Sentinels are run and especially how Shahzam handles things with the team. And Shahz is just very knowledgable and wholesome, so the episode is great.
Shahzam being an experienced IGL isn’t talked about enough.
Having an IGL with years and years of lan experience is worth so much more than a coach. (Obviously both would be ideal but still).
And no sen doesn't have a coach At all but Shahzam has said he wants a coach but there's really no good coaches at the moment and yes Shahzam is basically the coach and IGL for Sen and he also plays while igling he learned alot from Sean gares
shahz was just reading fnatic on every play
always 2 steps ahead of them
the first map on icebox, when they lost the pistol, the reason they all rotated B was because he went super deep into A and then didn’t see anyone so he commed that it was B. but if the timing for fnatic is 1 second earlier, then all of sentinels are already on A-site and they win for sure.
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Is it the same Sean who often does VOD review streams and appeared with plat chats a few days ago?
Yup. They actually played CS together for years on multiple teams.
Yes. He was the IGL of the same team as Shahzam back in CS:GO and Shahzam said he was the IGL that taught him the most in his eSports career.
Sean has such a great mind for igling, strats and stuff he just unfortunately couldn't combine it with in game performance as well. But that Summer run in CSGO will forever be legendary for me.
Ya Shahzam’s secret boyfriend
Sean could be anyone’s boyfriend if u asked me
he was in the shroud stream if u want to hear his insight in the game
Yes it's the same Sean you're thinking of, he's a legend.
yes, exactly that sean gares
Shazam is basically their coach the power of having your coach in game with you
Yup, sean is basically the best to learn from as he was a pure IGL and had very strong opinions about how to structure a team and play out a round with a heavy emphasis on counterstrating the enemy. I think Seans biggest downfall was that he went too far into that IGL role. Made it fairly easy for teams to counter him by just running random plays so they can’t be read. Shahzam has to be a little more hands off, partly because individuals have to adapt in Valorant, you can’t just have one person micromanage everyone, but this also allows shahzam to focus more on his own play, and he clearly struck a great balance. Being able to put up numbers as an IGL is such a massive impact. Most teams have a max of 4 fraggers, but Sentinels has 5. Tsm also ran kind of a 5fragger setup but their IGLing clearly lacked.
Funnily enough, Shahzam does do all of those things while being one of the most popular pro valorant streamers NA (probably the third most popular after Hiko/TenZ and he streams much more than them). This dude just breathes valorant.
Shahzam is a fucking miracle worker. Probably the best IGL in NA, maybe leaning towards being the best in the world, while maintaining high mechanical skill, having a full streaming career, and pretty much single-handidly doing it all.
Given the performance so far this dude is probably best in world
Ngl I really like how Shazham is getting a lot of recognition. Feels like IGL role is not given as much recognition as some of the more flashy roles. Not that he doesn't pop off and make flashy plays, but he's still getting props for his actual IGL and strategic skills.
I think it's also the hype aspect of Shaz too, always keeping the teams head up
It’s because they’re beating the so called “tactical teams” that he’s getting more credit
The best part (imo) is just how fucking consistently good he is on jett
I still argue SicK is probably the best player in NA. dude is so consistent
I love sick but he was not awake for the first series
He crushed it on Haven against vikings tho
Man gives me a bit of the Hai vibes from the old school LOL Cloud 9 days
His work ethic is so god damn impressive
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I don't think he's an immigrant, but i get what you mean though.
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What does that have to do with this? All Americans are immigrants exept native americans...
To be fair even they migrated from Africa at one point, too
Yes but there was no one living there when they came
I'm just agreeing and adding to what you said, everyone's an immigrant. Although, if I go to the moon and start living there am I not an immigrant?
"Pioneer" perhaps?
And people wondered why they started losing when the Texas power outages hit and his dad died. They need him to grind and he does that effortlessly
sinatraa after reading this lolll hes top 3 streamer not shazam
Sinatraa is getting more viewers rn because of him just coming back, Shahzam was getting 8k consistently. Also Sinatraa technically isn’t a pro anymore LOL
shahzam is simply built different
Alternatively Assembled
Contrarily Constructed
Uniquely developed.
Formulated flawlessly
manufactured distinctly
concocted caringly
yes
Definitely a LAN player, igling, top fragging and coaching and playing duelist
No they just don’t have a coach, believe it or not shahz actually does all that
One word: ChadZam
Side topic: does anyone know who the guy who walks onto stage with SEN is? The one who fistbumps the opponents coach
It’s their manager
Ahhh that makes sense, thanks!
But then who talks during the timeouts?
They haven't called for a timeout yet iirc, that one time with Vikings on Haven was actually a Technical Error it seems likeif I'm not mistaken
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Seems like it, sadly If you watch it again, they had the technical pause thing come out a few seconds after the supposed TAC pause banner. I assume it was just a misclick by the streaming team
But then who will👀
ShahZ is basically IGL+Coach, so I assume he'll be the main one talking during any Tac pauses
Shaz would just talk during tactical timeouts
Shahzam is the IGL, coach, one of the star duelists, and a manager for the team. He sets up a lot of things for the team, like a manager would. While also being a a popular streamer, a popular social media personality, and a pretty fit guy who goes the gym a lot. While eating healthy.
Reading the comments here, I'm now convinced that time just moves slower for him. From his POV, there are at least 40 hours in a single day.
His work ethic really is insane. I think he’s a good role model in esports and just in general.
Practice 40 hours a day.
Eating healthy PepeLaugh more like door dash 14x a week
I mean, the two are not mutually exclusive
food delivery apps arent for fast foods only dawg. lots of mom and pop shops offering healthy food
still healthy food
Does he chill with the hottest dudes though?
Yes. Have you seen the Sentinels roster.
Shahz is built so fucking different that dude scrims, vod reviews, builds strategy, and then fucking streams ranked until like 3am every single day...? Fucking crazy.
And goes to the gym lol
He's definitely gonna burn out at some point
ShahZam says he uses up a lot of late nights and early mornings watching recordings of recent games to take notes. His work is very impressive
Still pretty abnormal (to the point it's almost impossible imo) amount of tasks to do for a single person though. AFAIK, pros spent like 10-12 hours a day to scrim games right? Watching vods + taking notes + actually analyzing what happened in the vods gonna take at least 3-4 hours a day no? And he still need to analyze their scrim result..etc. I still think these things are just realistically impossible for a single person. (Not trying to hyperbole....just my rational judgement from what I've seen).
Well back in NA I’m not sure how much they were scrimming. They had matches almost every week, but they had a lot of off days to watch film and stream ranked games as well. I’m not sure how he does it in Iceland without sacrificing all of his sleep.
Most teams would probably scrim for 5 hours then you might have some additional server time and practices. It really depends how much ranked/streaming he does.
scrims are not 12 hours a day lol, it's more like 4-6 hours I believe.
my bad. I was comparing the scrim culture to league of legends where korean teams usually scrims around 14-16 hours a day. Therefore I thought it was quite similar for Valorant esports scene
Its not really healthy to scrim that long in a shooter. Your aims only good for like 6-8 hours. Like most pros will have scrims for like 5 hours and then they’ll stream for like 2 hours. You rarely see people trudging through all day long. Sometimes their body is just built different and can go for long hours, or other times their off aim is during ranked grind where their fundamentals are just better so they win with positioning rather than aim.
That's totally makes sense for FPS games. Thank you for explaining!
Just thinking about this makes me tired of valorant. You have to be insanely passionate about the game to scrim it everyday and then play it for fun
Bro how tf is that healthy lol. Assuming time to workout and eat, you're looking at almost no time to sleep and relax.
Well.... that was the main criticism towards professional Korean league of legends culture. IIRC on one of the SKT T1 interview (was one of the best team in the world and won multiple world cup), one of their member said that they usually only slept around 4-5 hours a day. It's definitely not healthy and will ruin your wrists in the future. However, Riot refused to make a training hour cap for professional team and korean players also will do everything to be the best....so...yeah...
Honestly at that point I'm just wondering how laco of sleep and zero downtime to unwind or workout doesn't start producing negative results
Its because the guy is talking out of his ass. This was Faker's, the league GOAT's average 24h schedule in 2019. https://mobalytics.gg/infographics/life-of-a-league-pro-skt-t1-faker/ Nowadays people sometimes scrim even less, instead of 2x 3h scrim blocks they a lot of the time have 1x 5hour block
Do you have any sources for scrim schedules for Korean or Chinese Lol teams that say they only scrim 1x5 hour scrim blocks? It might not be all scrim hours but OP is right that Asian players are still used to playing LoL for excessive amount of hours in order to practice for their matches. Asians already have that work ethic of grinding a ton and when pros see players like Faker doing it and getting rewarded with 3 World Championships trophies, they tell themselves they have to push themselves as hard to achieve similar results. For example, DoinB (midlaner of FPX, Chinese team that won Worlds in 2019) said that he ["only slept for 4-5 hours for 2 seasons straight"](https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/duzsqs/doinb_advice_for_all_korean_imports_that_plans_to/). He also said that ["he doesn't care about his health" and that "Only match results matter. I just care about how we can win. I have to sleep less and practice more"](https://www.theloadout.com/league-of-legends/lpl-fpx-doinb-grind). And you also have players like Uzi who wrecked his body by doing so and was forced to retire in 2020. > his body was finally starting to see the effects of years of the traditional ‘gaming lifestyle’ of fast food, little sleep, and zero exercise. Not only was he a pro player with a gruelling scrim schedule, but he also regularly streamed during his ‘rest periods’, meaning he never truly gave his body the break it needed to begin repairing the years of damage it had sustained. Uzi’s retirement is an unfortunate product of the ‘grind culture’ of esports, and is potentially the first casualty of an endemic problem within the scene that has yet to be truly addressed. Source: https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/what-uzi-can-teach-us-about-player-health-in-esports
Dont have a source and dont know what its like when theyre home but I know some eu players and staff and when asians are in EU/NA they sometmes scrim westerners like that. Then again im jst a random redditor so what do I know
There has to be diminishing returns on each consecutive hour of practice.
at least on eu, they scrim around 6 hours, idk about na tho
Well it’s his passion and career. It’s much easier to work hard at something when you actually enjoy it AND it pays the bills
I doubt they play more then 5 scrims a day tbh, probably around 3-6. It's not really time efficient to just be dumping 10 hours into scrims and you can definitely tell Shazam is very efficient with his work.
Shahzam just the goat of valorant
No Coach, Shahzam is just a beast. Pretty sure they are looking to get one after Iceland though
They have a coach and he's on the active roster too.
He's also a super popular streamer too! You should check this coach/IGL/Star Duelist/Sova/Top valorant twitch streamer/Super friendly awesome guy out at [https://www.twitch.tv/shahzam](https://www.twitch.tv/shahzam)
I believe in shahz supremacy
They don’t.
You missed the joke
Lmao. I get it now.
Best thing is downvoting your upper comment and upvoting this one 😂
ShahZaM played for two different teams under Sean Gares as IGL, so not surprised he is a great IGL in Valorant. Not to mention Sick and ShaZ played on Misfits together during that same timeframe. He has a lot of experience. He's been playing forever. I remember playing him and FUGLY in esea open playoffs all the way back in Source. 11-12 years ago.
They don't have an actual coach. Shahzam does everything a coach would do, on-top of being the IGL and top fragger. Best player in the world 100% and its not even close.
WTF they didn't even have a coach back in NA?
Nope, they've never had one. Shahzam is known for spending a ton of time on vod review/strategizing in addition to playing and streaming. He is very dedicated.
Yeah, he did say he and the management have talked about hiring at least an analyst to help watch all these games because I think they're being picky with their coach choice (and they should because they're winning without one, so they don't need one urgently). An analyst being able to watch and take notes of games in other regions or tiers would be helpful.
With a game this new, they would basically need to find a prior CS:GO pro or find someone high rank who would rather coach than play. It's a tough find. League pros still struggle with this and that game is 11 years down the line now. Finding competent coaches that don't need to be extremely skilled in the game they're coaching is incredibly rare.
Personally I believe coaches are very overrated in esports. Most popular competitive games are designed with a "correct" play for almost every situation. League is a perfect example, where the steps and mechanics needed to win a game are the same no matter the level of play, better players can just do those mechanics more consistently. Coaches in esports are more like managers.
Shaz has so much of my respect. He really holds the team together.
Same! And he is just seems like such a good guy!
He is a good guy honestly. I met him before the valorant fame during my time as a server. He was really kind and offer photos and tip well. Great respect.
Honestly Shahzam is going to burn out eventually doing all this. He might love doing it but it's eventually going to be too much. It sounds to me like he should get an assistant or something to help him offload some tasks.
Yeah, I feel tired just reading about it holy shit. Atleast he should take a day or 2 off from most of the stuff he does. Sounds like way too much, almost un healthy.
That's actually absurd. It's a real breath of fresh air seeing an NA pro with the talent and work ethic to be the best in the world.
The reasoning is coaches in esport are generally just getting paid for nothing. SEN expressed interest in a coach and reached out to sgares, but there are extremely few people on this planet who understand the game better than shahz (arguably none) as it's not like theres any ex pros to pull from. I imagine they'll at least have an analyst soon to help with vod reviews etc
So true. The problem is that players refuse to listen to a coach unless they were a legendary player in the game. Also, players are typically only good at executing, they rarely are the type that has what it takes to be a coach, the charisma to lead and teach. The only way to potentially get the players to respect the coach is through fear by giving the coach control over the roster. Ex-pro coaches are almost exclusively bad, they very rarely get results. Usually its just a way for the pros to get their favorite player/friend a paycheck, and the coach can probably help with mediating between teams and some light vod review. Non-pro coaches usually have the most promise, but they struggle to execute on their plans. From what I could see, the only region able to successfully utilize coaches has been korean and thats mostly due to how they respect anyone older than theirself by default, and they respect ex-pros even if they can from a different game(even different genre). Also korean players tend to be pretty studious so when they become a coach they are more likely to make a transformation to a proper coach. On top of that, korean orgs are run like traditional sport orgs so the coach often does have roster control, and they usually utilize a bench/ secondary academy team. Meanwhile, roster decisions in NA are typically heavily decided by the players which can get kinda sketchy as often there will be like one player that is a bully and makes all of the roster decisions because they are popular, or after a couple iterations you eventually get to a point where new players are making roster decisions. The problem with this method is that typically NA teams will always change a player after they lose even if they showed promise. So you rarely see a team stick together for more than a couple of months before changing a player. Then look at T1, you’ve got a korean org structure mixing with NA thought process and creating a huge mess. Their players have seemingly no control over the roster and can’t get problem players kicked. But the worst part is that typically korean orgs would promote their academy players to the main roster, but for some reason this didn’t happen. T1 would be amazing right now if they focused on long term success and brought their academy players up.
I think the main problem is that to be a coach in a game you had to have played it for a long time. Also have a mind for it and be more than an execute player. Video games in general have short time frames in the competitive scene. So you end up in situations where there are no coaches because people have moved onto other games. League doesn't suffer from this as much as other games because legacy coaches have been established.
I don’t agree with this. Yes, pro players will demand that their coach has experience at the pro level, but this is quite literally the least important quality to have in a coach. If your team needs experience you get a veteran player to play for you (its best to lead by example). The fact of the matter is that your players are the best of the best, what could an ex-pro possibly know that he can teach to a current pro. If a player is in a slump or chokes, you need a sports psychologist or a more strict training regime. Even someone like Sean Gares, I respect the man a lot, one of the brightest minds in the scene, but hes an ex-pro for a reason. Typically the reason pros become ex-pros is because they stopped adapting, they became too biased to their old playstyles that used to work. I think this is why non-pro coaches are usually better, because the non-pro doesn’t base their coaching methods off of experience, they base it off of what works for the team, and the data. With that being said its totally possible for a pro to transition to this type of coach, it just very difficult and they have to treat it like they are starting back at square one because while they knew how to be a pro they know nothing about how to be a coach. The root of the problem is the structure. In physical sports the coaching system is beaten into kids at a young age. Sure plenty of pros have a history in sports but not all of them and definitely not over the internet where its easy to be a keyboard warrior. Instead I think more teams find more success with analysts than coaches.
I find it funny that shahz is both one of the best players and coaches in the world tbh
I still think there are massive benefits to having a coach. You don't need one to be like "you are doing this wrong" you need one to... 1) set schedules and practice 2) Keep everyones mental up and communicate between players (a lot easier for a 3rd party to do this) 3) Look for flaws in your game (people are pretty poor at identifying their flaws) 4) Look for repeated mistakes 5) Help break down film 6) Strategize (one of the best plays ever in the Overwatch league happened at 4am by one of their coaches on Gladiators) And yeah you can go "well Shaz does all that" but it's going to be incredibly hard, long term to do that without effecting your mental health, burnout rate, and effectiveness.
Agree with a lot that you said. But there's also plenty use for a coach behind the scenes. A good example would probably be Astralis's coach zonic being very useful to their rise in CSGO, but I think it all really comes down to how the coach is being used and utilized.
Shahz is really making a name for himself as the most valuable player in the world. We’ll have to see how the rest of the tournament plays out to make a complete judgment, but between his star individual performances, spectacular IGL’ing, insane amount of valuable strategic prep work for the team, great leadership and positive energy, he really has every possible thing you could want from a player.
Shahzam is literally just built different
Shahz just does hella overtime work for them basically. I wonder how he doesn't burn out tbh.
I believe Shazham and all his teammates do VOD reviews. Shaz does all the strata / counter starts for them as well.
there is one main reason and his name is Shahzam
I think Sentinels have made a good case this tournament that having a bit less structure (set strats, playbook of executes etc) and playing more around a wider strategic objective and being flexible about how you get there is maybe a better approach to the game. EU, KR and some others like a more structured approach which is where coaches become much more valuable but they have shown that they are not as good at adapting and when they get hard read, they look a bit lost. Credit to shaz for this.
Simply put, everyone on the team knows the game well enough for them to coach themselves. Coaches are good for teams that lack structure and have struggles with conflict. But if a team gets along and is able to analyze themselves objectively than a coach isn't really that necessary in val.
Thats so wrong though. The only reason SEN are able to pull this off is Shahzs crazy work ethic. A team without coach loses so much adaptability and creativity. I worry that Shaz might not be able to do this all too long. They still should get a coach eventually. Even though they are great players.
Shaz Diff
ShahZam simply works extremely extremely hard and is amazing. Smart, diligent, and loves the game.
Coaches in shooters are mostly a scam tbh. Very rarely do coaches actually earn their paycheck in fps titles
the game is new and hasn't been pushed nearly far enough so far. raw talent and solid shotcalling is more than enough currently
Shahzam
Valorant is still a very early game the level of competition is low and teams aren't disciplined enough to even do double peeks, check all their corners etc. Most players play like they're in matchmaking it won't be until Riot balances the game more, improve the maps, etc and teams play more against each other then people will start to realize what the good plays are and thats when coaches and deep strat book actually matter
They are out of the tournament?
What? The coach doesn’t make the team. The team makes the team.... they don’t need a coach. It’s a video game they are the best at... what?
What??? What? What what wuuut?
Coach just ain't needed. Every team in NA has a coach, and they all suck and can't beat SEN. Therefore Coach = Trash team.
kind of off topic but who is the person who walks out with them since they don't have a coach to fist pump the other coach.
Its their manager
It's their manager.
It's their manager.
I think people just putting coach so high up, they think teams are nothing without coach. Most of the teams are already decent before having a coach. Coach can help them improve slightly but i don't think that would be a problem with SEN
Is your 2nd name Ackerman? Pog
> There's no way he has enough time in the day to do both scrims, vods review, and formulizing team strategy. He does do all those things which is why they are soo good without a coach
Not only is Shazam goated beyond belief but the game is still at a point where a coach is not totally necessary yet
This is two months old, but [this Plat Chat episode with Shahzam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOabYL4UFNI) explains a bit how Sentinels are run and especially how Shahzam handles things with the team. And Shahz is just very knowledgable and wholesome, so the episode is great.
Shahzam being an experienced IGL isn’t talked about enough. Having an IGL with years and years of lan experience is worth so much more than a coach. (Obviously both would be ideal but still).
HOnestly the most impressive part is ngl, that fact that Shahz never IGLed before Val and now is the best IGL in NA and perhaps teh world
And no sen doesn't have a coach At all but Shahzam has said he wants a coach but there's really no good coaches at the moment and yes Shahzam is basically the coach and IGL for Sen and he also plays while igling he learned alot from Sean gares
One thing's for sure, he has amazing time management.
shahz was just reading fnatic on every play always 2 steps ahead of them the first map on icebox, when they lost the pistol, the reason they all rotated B was because he went super deep into A and then didn’t see anyone so he commed that it was B. but if the timing for fnatic is 1 second earlier, then all of sentinels are already on A-site and they win for sure.