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Fnatic Boom Out of Potential LEC Finals
The LEC semi-finals just came to a close and while most had predicted Fnatic to take home the win and face their arch-nemesis G2 Esports in the finals for the trillionth time in a row, it seems like Rogue took the 3-0 loss to G2 personally and want to show everyone that they can win a trophy.
Fnatic on the other hand started off strong in the semi-final series with a dominating game 1, but the moment Rogue figured out which champions to pick and how to draft around Fnatic's strengths, it seemed doomed for the powerhouse.
What Went Wrong for Fnatic?
The first game went as planned for the powerhouse team, with a dominant first game which completely crushed Rogue. Most fans and analysts figured they'd be in for a short series judging by the way Rogue bombed out of the first game.
According to Rogue, in the post-game press conference, the team does tend to have at least 'one game of int' in every series, which is why they were not worried after their first loss in the series.
I think Rogue managed to play better than expected, right? [...] I think, today, there was some minor mistakes which caused us a lot in the draft that we were playing
Fnatic head coach Jakob "YamatoCannon" Mebdi explained after the loss. Ahead of game 3 of the series, Fnatic had side selection, due to their loss of game 2, opting in to choosing red side rather than blue, which in the current meta seems to be the preferred side.
While the end goal of having Rogue switch up the draft did work, minor mistakes and players being caught out in the wrong position, meant that Fnatic would fall behind 2-1 in the series.
We thought blue side draft was kind of bad. We thought we could do some adjustments and put in some traps, but it just didn't work out. We were happy with the situation and made some minor changes and that's it... We are not mindless pawns who are going to pick blue side, because everyone is picking blue side.
In the fourth game Fnatic ended up choosing blue side, unhappy with their previous performance, but it seemed like by that point. During a pause early on, due to odd behaviour of the blue buff, which Riot had to fix with a chronobreak, Fnatic players looked visibly tense.
In the end, Rogue, took charge with ADC Comp playing some of the best League in a long time. His third game of Lucian showed how comfortable he was as Fnatic found no answer to the onslaught of Rogue, getting decimated by the underdogs in the end.