Pentanet.GG Pabu and his team may be bowing out of the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) after the Rumble Stage, but they’ll definitely be remembered for making history as the first Oceanic team to make it out of Groups in an international League of Legends esports tournament.
Finishing with a 1-9 record, Pentanet.GG’s sole but celebrated win was against LCS representatives Cloud9, the only other team heading to the airport.
Pentanet.GG Pabu opens up about the scrim situation at MSI
Coming into a high level tournament like MSI as a minor region team can be daunting for many reasons. Often, minor region teams end up practicing against each other instead of getting more exposure against major region teams.
“We did predominantly scrim minor region teams, but we had more than our fair share of major region teams,” Pentanet.GG jungler Jackson “Pabu” Pavone told ONE Esports.
“I was extremely surprised that we got to scrim better teams. It was pretty eye-opening for a lot of things inside the game.”
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How did Pentanet.GG adapt to the MSI meta?
Besides pushing their limits on stage and offstage, minor region teams also had to wrestle with the MSI 2021 tournament meta that’s heavily influenced by major regions, based on patch 11.9.
Historically, more successful minor region teams that cause upsets or push major region teams are those that choose to stick to their guns. Albus NoX Luna’s Kirill “Likkrit” Malofeyev for example, famously upset the norm on his signature Brand support at Worlds 2016.
Reflecting on team’s adaption here at MSI 2021, Pabu explains that they tried to get the best of both worlds, for there were some playstyles and champions that they struggled to or couldn’t play, which in turn, influenced how they drafted.
“Our game against Cloud9, we played Senna, Tahm Kench, Viktor — that’s a very standard, outrange, defensive composition that is hard to beat if you don’t draft properly,” Pabu explained.
“That’s right up our alley. We’re super comfortable on all those champions, and 5v5 team fighting is a strength of ours so when that presents itself, we take it.”
At other times, Pentanet.GG surprised by drafting Zed and Qiyana mid, and even Urgot and Yorick top.
While Pabu thinks they’re good champions, he agrees that they’re definitely not the same tier as meta favorites. Still, the team takes pride in dipping into their own champion pools.
“We played Lucian-Braum today and solo boloed the Damwon KIA bot lane even. You wouldn’t expect that one to happen,” said Pabu.
Pentanet.GG Pabu returns to Oceania with a firm resolution
As Pabu packs his bags, one thing is for sure — they aren’t just filled with clothes, but also invaluable lessons that he’s taking back to Oceania.
Pentanet.GG may have dominated the League of Legends Circuit Oceania (LCO) Split 1, but Pabu has realized that the team has been complement, for all they’ve been doing is “win really easily” and scale in “boring style games where we put in very little variance”.
Though this style does have its advantages in the instance against Cloud9, Pabu elaborated, “Good teams push teams really hard. And they end the game if you’re not playing properly, so I will do to Oceanic teams what RNG does to us.”
“I can be the RNG of OCE. We can definitely force the region to level up, or force the region to lose in ten minutes. I want to play really hard, and play really fast, and punish everything I see in OCE until people learn.”
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