How LOUD Make no Sentinel Fracture Work
No Sentinel Fracture is Definitely Weird
During the regular season everyone kind of had the idea that LOUD were taking it easy and once playoffs rolled around they would just be the best and LOUD definitely showed that they were the best, losing only one map during their playoff run to be crowned America’s Champions.
But LOUD did more than just showing up and playing well, they had notable additions to their map pool in Bind and Fracture and while both are certainly worth an article for their off meta team comps. No Sentinel Fracture is a very unique and interesting approach to the map.
Why Play Sentinels on Fracture?
The first thing to answer is why even play Sentinels on Fracture in the first place?
On defense a Sentinel’s role is fairly simplistic, you can set up your utility to be a hard site anchor, or you can set up your utility for info gathering purposes (AKA in site entrances/chokes) which would allow your teammates to push aggressively towards others parts of the map with player advantages while the Sentinel player plays passively for a retake set up. Obviously this isn’t mutually exclusive, Sentinels can certainly set up utility in a way that lets them act as a site anchor, while also providing info and allowing teammates to push aggressively.
On attack Sentinels do basically one thing, solo hold either the top or bottom part of the map. You’ve probably seen a set up similar to this a million times when watching Fracture at a pro level.
This set up is so popular because it’s very strong for how simple it is, by virtue of a Sentinel being able to solo hold an entire side of the map, it ensures that your teammates attempts at early map control are almost always going to be successful through sheer numbers advantage. Additionally, it keeps your mid round flexible as well, allowing you the easy opportunity into retaking parts of the map while also holding the space you gained from your teams initial map control if you desire.
The Sentinel utility acts as a early warning system for the Sentinel player to take the rope back if they’re being pressured and even if the Sentinel gets pressured off of their space, it allows your teammates to respond quickly and take lots of map control as it’s very common for crunches on Fracture to involve 3+ people.
LOUD’s Comp
LOUD, in place of opting for a traditional Sentinel instead opt into a double Controller comp of Viper and Omen, paired with a double Initiator combo of KAY/O and Breach with Neon rounding out their comp.
Defense
Defensively their comp has more than enough utility to stall and deter hits from the enemy team and probably even out performs a more traditional Fracture comp running a Sentinel. Viper meanwhile can very easily still create a set up that can allow her to act as a site anchor while also allowing her teammates to play aggressively.
There are some issues with info gathering within this comp though, KAY/O knife is nice but it’s one piece of info every 45s and as strong as Viper is defensively none of her utility provides info like a Cypher trip/cam or a KJ turret/alarm bot. On paper this means if a team had a slower pace and took large amounts of map control from LOUD, they could struggle to answer questions about enemy player positions in the mid and late round without peeking and risking their lives or positions.
Attack
LOUD obviously don’t have a Sentinel so it can be difficult if not impossible to be in a 4-1 across the map default that’s so commonly seen, they’ll likely have to expend more utility or manpower if they want to spread out more on the map. What LOUD loses in their ability to do a 4-1 default they gain in info/vision denial through double controller and very explosive executes through the trio of KAY/O, Breach, and Neon.
Also they have no utility to watch flanks, they’ll have to commit bodies for that, but in the grand scheme of things a relatively minor thing to play around.
LOUD’s comp is arguably defensively stronger than a traditional Sentinel comp and on attack they have the ability for some very strong explosive executes paired with strong post plant utility such as Viper mollys, KAY/O molly and Breach utility. But this comes at the expense of info gathering tools, and having to put in more effort if LOUD want to spread out more on attack.
How LOUD Play no Sentinel Fracture
Now that we’ve established the strengths and weaknesses of LOUD’s comp, at least on paper, let’s see how it actually played out during their playoff run.
Attack
Starting off with LOUD’s attacking side we can see LOUD have a very fast attacking pace, approximately half of LOUD’s kills prior to getting a plant comes within the first 30 seconds of a round. Obviously low sample size disclaimer for LOUD.
For comparison here are some other notable Fracture teams throughout Americas and their attacking speed.
Evil Geniuses:
Cloud9:
Explosive Executes
Can’t avoid talking about the executes with this LOUD comp so lets start with that.
A Execute
Interestingly, LOUD when executing A basically always prioritize pathing through Sands they might do like a 4-1 site split where Breach is late A main but they’ll always go through Sands.
You can see a variation on this execute here.
B Execute
This is basically a perfect execute, it covers every single possibility of where a player could be and appropriately deals with them.
Here is a video example of LOUD using this execute.
Something to note here is that for a lot of these executes LOUD basically never went Arcade or Dish, even if they were fast explosive executes, they would just opt into going Sands or B main. They did do a dish execute once per game but one of them was out of a timeout and low frequency of them makes it so I’m hesitant to include them in this article and act like it’s a consistent part of their stratbook. But you can see them do it here.
You also start to notice when LOUD is planting how much they prioritize planting for main. This makes obvious sense though as LOUD have a ridiculous amount of post plant utility and planting in these areas basically all but guarantees a round win.
Same Side Default
Obviously though LOUD just don’t do executes all the time, it’s important to change up the pace and structure of rounds so you don’t become predictable. In that case what does their default look like?
It looks like this, this is their only default by the way. We talked earlier about how with this comp if LOUD wanted to default across the entire map they would have to invest more resources instead of letting a Sentinel hold an entire side of Fracture and then just coming back later and reclearing. LOUD just decided not to worry about that at all and just default on one side of the map.
It’s likely LOUD only default the bottom side of the map because it’s the most versatile, you still get safe access to underpass and thus Arcade, and if you execute A you can split the site by going through Sands and A main instead of just the chokepoint at Drop.
A Note On 4-1 Map Wide Starts
So very rarely like 1-2 times in an attacking half LOUD start in 4-1 map wide configuration that’s more inline with more traditional Fracture comps, unlike a more traditional Fracture comp though LOUD has Viper solo hold spawn while the rest of the team goes Dish/Arcade.
Defense
Moving onto defense, one of LOUD’s biggest weaknesses with this comp is the lack of good, safe info gathering tools, if a team were to play slow against LOUD and take map control from LOUD they’ll struggle to safely reclear areas for information without risking death. So how do LOUD deal with that?
They fight. They fight a lot, usually towards A.
For example in their pistol round vs EG they had a trap play towards A main
Generally though you can see a map wide set up more like this. It's very strong A main control while KAY/O and Viper B are should be strong enough defensively to at least buy enough time for rotates/flanks.
In that case what about Dish or Arcade? Well LOUD don’t really care, again at B KAY/O and Viper can turtle on site effectively enough to buy time for teammates to come support them and Dish doesn’t really matter for LOUD. You’ll see a lot of pro teams on Fracture when retaking A go through door and try to retake A main because if you’re successful, A site itself doesn’t have very good post plant positions and if you can smoke off drop anyone playing there is pretty useless which lets you crunch anyone stuck on site, so LOUD just decide to skip the retaking step and just hold onto A main if the enemy team executes through Dish, it also helps that it’s difficult to push LOUD off of A main in the first place due to the oppressive utility they have.
This round vs EG is a pretty good example of this idea being played out.
They’re also willing to push other parts of the map as well although these aren’t as frequent.
Such as an aggressive B push vs EG.
Or something like a like a top side play vs NRG.
Note vs NRG
LOUD had more varied set ups vs NRG. On defense they were they a little more passive at times and spread out on the map, they even brought out an OP for Aspas at one point, this isn’t included mostly because it’s one game and it wasn’t super great, it worked how you expect a Jettless OP to play on Fracture which is holding super passive lines because you’re scared of Breach stun and other utility, on Attack they played a lot slower and started out in their defaults a lot more. Whether that’s because they thought NRG were a better team over EG or just natural development that occurred throughout their playoff run doesn’t really matter but I just thought it was something interesting to bring up.
Conclusion
To answer the question of how LOUD play no Sentinel Fracture, they just play to their strengths. On attack they have strong executes so they don’t waste time risking map wide defaults, just one side of the map is good enough and when they inevitably regroup they know they can get the spike down and play their strong post-plant. On defense they’ve identified what parts of the map they’re okay giving up and developed good plans and protocols to be able to play against a wide variety of attacking rounds.