League Analysis — Fnatic vs Schalke 04 — Playoffs Round 2
5 APRIL 2021 — by League Analyst
With round one of playoffs behind us, we are now moving towards round two in the LEC playoffs. Week one provided us with many exiting series and 5 teams are still in the fight for the 2021 spring championship.
Fnatic convincingly dealt with the rookie squad of SK gaming in a 3–1 series to keep their playoff hopes alive. Despite the fact that the team struggled with mid-game decision making and transferring their early game leads, it was clear that Fnatic was ions ahead in terms of individual strength. Toplaner Jenax preformed admirably to give his team a chance in the series, but in the end it was a clear cut victory for Fnatic.
On the other side of the bracket, Schalke had a rough round one as they had to play against the heavy favorites for the championship, G2 Esports. The series was however, not as one sided as many had predicted. After going down 0–2, S04 managed to bounce back and brought the series to game 5. In the end it wasn’t enough to defeat G2, but S04 earned a lot of respect and now has a second chance in the losers bracket.
Going into the series I heavily favor red side. Last pick will most likely be very important for the top matchup and both players has shown the ability to pull out some very spicy counterpicks. With the rest of the meta being very stale and few blindpicks being “OP”, the importance of counters increase dramatically.
I slightly favor Fnatic for the series and predict them to win 3–2. More than anything, consistency and clever drafting will be the deciding factor for these games since neither team has showed the ability to cleanly close out games after gaining advantages. Scaling will be ever so important and not putting yourself on a timer is crucial to not handicap yourself in draft.
Game 1 — Draft
The first draft of round two is here and we have two very different approaches coming in from the two teams. Schalke has a well rounded setup with a mix of engage and zoning tools. Fnatic on the other hand has opted for a 1 threat composition with Olaf being the main carry of the team. Xayah is also drafted but has very little synergy with the rest of the Fnatic team. So finding success with the champion will be much harder than what we usually see.
The big difference maker in this draft is Gangplank since Fnatic has very few tools to lock him down without running straight through his barrels and ultimate. I’d favor the Schalke draft 60/40 for game 1.
Game one — Key moments & possible adaptations
Schalke draws first blood with a game one victory in the series. The game began rather slowly with the main action coming from the two midlaners finding roams to pick up early kills. The first breakpoint of the game came at 9 minutes where S04 collapsed on a Fnatic engage to find 2 quick kills.
As the game progressed, S04 focused on farming up and keeping pressure in the sidelanes. This became crucial once Fnatic reached soul point. With total control of the jungle chokes, S04 was able to win out and stop the dragon stack. Shortly after, they also collected the baron buff and closed out the first game of the series.
In terms of adaptations my big concern for Fnatic is the draft approach. Putting all your eggs in the Olaf basket is not as viable of a strategy as it was a couple of patches ago. With the direct nerfs to the champion and the heavy hits to his preferred bruiser items, the pick has dropped a lot in overall strength.
Gameplay wise, this game was rather even with both teams finding picks using the Twisted Fate ultimate. And despite Abbedagge getting caught multiple times overextending in the sidelane, S04 clutched it out with superior scaling and sidlane control.
Game 2 — Draft
Fnatic comes in with the Lee Sin curveball for game two. What I don’t understand is why there is a Cho’Gath in this game. S04 already has a huge scaling advantage with Viktor and Gangplank and no toplane pick could have changed that fact. I’d much rather have seen something like the Nocturne to enable Bwipo to find some early advantages.
As it stands, it’s once again up to Fnatic to find an early gold lead and snowball the game in their favor. Lee Sin and Twisted Fate are the two champions to keep an eye on and Schalke’s laners will have to be extremely careful to not get caught overextending. If they can survive the early game, scaling will be in their favor. Pressure is all on Fnatic and I’d have to favor S04 once again after seeing the draft unfold.
Game two — Key moments & possible adaptations
Series point for S04 after another solid victory in game two. BrokenBlade had a massive performance and dominated the top matchup from start to finish. A huge fight in the toplane around 9 minutes left S04 with a big early game advantage and the game quickly got desperate for Fnatic. Their plays got more and more niche and in the fight over the third dragon, it was clear that the game was over as S04 demolished Fnatic with close to no resistance.
Selfmade was able to find a fantastic kick on the S04 midlaner, but despite the heroic effort, it wasn’t enough for Fnatic to win the following fight. Instead S04 picked up the baron and marched straight to the nexus, earning them an early 2–0 lead in the series.
For Fnatic it’s time to go back to basics, easy to execute 5v5 compositions with tons of scaling. I’d love to see them default back to champions like Ornn and Azir, allowing them to slow the game down and play front to back. That being said, I heavily doubt that they will go that way. It’s been clear from the beginning of the split that hard to execute snowball compositions is Fnatic’s preferred style and now it’s probably to late to opt away from that style.
Game 3 — Draft
Another disaster in draft for Fnatic in game three. There are two main reasons for this:
- Individually, all of Schalke’s lanes win their matchups.
- Thematically, S04’s comp will always come out on top.
The reasoning for the second statement is simple: With Corki and Urgot, S04 will have the range advantage against the Fnatic counterparts. S04 will also be favored in a kiteback scenario since Gragas, Udyr and Urgot are extremely hard to get past when grouped up.
The conclusion is that S04 theoretically never has to engage since they have the range advantage. They will also be favored when getting engaged upon because of their sturdy frontline. Essentially, Schalke is favored in most aspects if they play towards those conditions.
Game three — Key moments
A very messy game to end of the series with the early game swinging wildly as the two teams clashed. For a moment it looked like Fnatic was starting to build a small lead, but a huge overextension in the bot lane resulted in Corki getting three free kills, swinging the gold lead back in in Schalke’s favor.
The game collapsed in the bottom river as Fnatic tried to force their way back into the game. A valiant effort saw them dive towards the Schalke backline, but in the end there was no one that could reach the carries and Schalke quickly swept the fight, secured baron and closed out the series 3–0.
End of the road
This loss means that Fnatic’s spring split has come to an end. Overall it has been a very shaky split and the team never seemed to find their footing. Even in this series, drafts felt very all over the place and in-game, Fnatic struggled to find and transfer their leads into victories.
Looking at the positives, Upset has had a fantastic spring and Nisqy has also showed some great signs. Finding some balance on the top side of the map will be crucial for the team going into the summer split.
Both Bwipo and Selfmade have struggled this split and will need to bounce back in summer. It doesn’t seem like they have found their role on the squad and I’d say that the drafts have reflected that as well. Many “questionable” picks has come from either top or jungle, and to me that indicates that the two players are struggling to find their role in the team.
The team will now have a lot of time to evaluate their performance and reset for summer. With the meta being ever-changing, it’s hard to predict what type of team we should predict to see next split. For the fans this loss will hit hard, but I’m sure that the team can bounce back and show some good performances in summer.
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