League Analysis — Fnatic vs Team Vitality — LEC Week 5
20 FEBRUARY 2021 — by League Analyst
Halfway there
We have reached the halfway point of the split, which means all teams have faced each other once. Today we’ll get to see the first rematch as Fnatic faces of against Team Vitality. Last time the two teams played was in week 2 and that time, Fnatic came out on top after a hard outdraft and some early mistakes done by Vitality.
Looking at the standings, Fnatic is sitting comfortably in 3rd after a solid 2–0 performance last week. Vitality on the other hand is struggling a lot, only having one victory to their name so far.
Based on the play we have seen so far from the two teams, this should be an easy sweep for Fnatic. The squad has been on an upwards trajectory over the last couple of weeks and is showing no signs of slowing down.
One interesting stat that we’ll have to keep in mind is that Vitality has showed the ability go grow early game leads despite being 1–8. Looking at the graph below we can see the team’s gold lead over time. Overall it doesn’t look all to shabby. Excluding the two games against G2 and Fnatic, the team has been able to stay relatively close or even ahead up until 15 minutes. It’s in the mid-game where the team falters and looses control over their games. This trend is something that a team as capable as Fnatic most likely will be able to abuse in game.
Draft breakdown
Finished draft shown at the bottom of the breakdown.
Blue Bans:
Ban 1 — Thresh
Like so many times before, Thresh comes in as a ban from blue side. His lantern combined with immobile hypercarries can bring insane value to a team.
Ban 2 — Samira
The Samira is a respect ban against Upset. He is currently 3–0 on the champion with 15.7 KDA so taking it away is most definitely justified.
Ban 3 — Renekton
Renekton comes in as the third ban. A staple toplaner that continues to have high priority despite nerfs to his build. I am personally surprised to see it being banned away, at least at such an early stage of the draft.
Red Bans:
Ban 1 — Udyr
The power pick of the patch. Will most likely be accompanied by Twisted Fate in one of the following bans.
Ban 2 — Twisted Fate
TF comes in as predicted, standard red side bans so far.
Ban 3 — Camille
With Renekton banned away, the Camille ban is pretty natural as the Croc counters her in lane. A good read by Fnatic.
Picks:
B1 Pick — Seraphine
I really like the early Seraphine because of her flex potential. She is very versatile and guarantees that the team will be favorable in extended fights due to her AOE healing.
R1 Pick — Kai’Sa
With the Samira getting banned away Kai’Sa is the natural ADC pick on the tierlist. But like last week I’d like to mention that her winrate is rather low and is continually dropping week by week. If teams aren’t finding success on the champion I wonder if it really is the way to go.
R2 Pick — Olaf
Now Olaf comes in early and as we’ve discussed in previous weeks, the pick should decrease in priority, even more so with the jungle nerfs that are coming up in patch 11.4. I really don’t like this, not only because of the continuous nerfs but because they are facing Vitality.
Like mentioned earlier, Vitality has had a lot of issues in the mid-game and are not able to close out effectively. So opting into a snowball champion like Olaf is very unnecessary in my mind. Fnatic should be the better team all around, so picking for a slower phased game would in my mind result in a higher percentage chance to win.
B2 Pick — Lillia
Another strong, versatile pick that can function in most compositions due to her pick potential and flexible item builds.
B3 Pick — Rell
In my opinion the strongest support this patch, sets up for some disgusting CC combos with the rest of the team.
R3 Pick — Alistar
Hyli on Alistar, to be expected I guess.
Blue bans:
Ban 4 — Orianna
One of the big mages taken away, her natural synergy with Olaf and Alistar makes it a fine ban.
Ban 5 — Volibear
The Bwipo special, another respect ban from the side of Vitality.
Red bans:
Ban 4 — Lucian
The power of the Seraphine forces a midlane ban from Fnatic. It probably means that Fnatic is looking for some type of mage in the midlane that has a hard time in lane against Lucian.
Ban 5 — Miss Fortune
Miss Fortune is another strong laner that can set up huge ultimate's with Rell. It’s not something we see very often but I can see why they chose to ban it away.
Picks:
R4 Pick — Ryze
Now Ryze is a bit problematic in a spot like this. Vitality already has tons of pick potential and survivability in their team so the only was I can see the Ryze finding success is in the sidelane in a 1–3–1 setup. The thing is that Fnatic hasn’t been playing that style at all so far this split. It is possible? Yes, but it is a bit concerning in my mind.
B4 Pick — Xayah
A stable and safe ADC for Crownshot, it’s fairly standard and a good pickup.
B5 Pick — Aatrox
I like the Aatrox here since you know that Fnatic is looking to run you down. Having a champion that can turn on that engage and sync up with Rell to combo the squishy Fnatic teamcomp is very valuable. It’s not the best blindpick since it has quite a lot of soft counters, but it provides frontline and makes the win condition very clear compared to many other picks available.
R5 Pick — Wukong
Wukong is one of the soft counters to Aatrox but I don’t think it’s the pick to go for in a situation like this. I’d personally prefer to see Fnatic opt into a
1–3–1 setup with something like a Fiora/Gangplank. Even if you choose to go for the heavy fight setup, I’d argue that Malphite is even stronger into Seraphine/Rell.
Pre-game prediction
Fnatic is once again committing to a volatile and skirmish heavy teamcomp and I am just as worried as all the other times. Like in past games, my worry is that if the Fnatic comp doesn’t stomp the early game, Vitality’s draft is just better as a unit.
They have all the tools to in the world to kite out an Olaf/Wukong and sustain trough the engage that Fnatic has. Even in a world where Ryze is able to scale up and move into the sidelane, the loss on the other side of the map should be way to big to affect the outcome of the game.
Key moments
First of all, we got to see a fun adaptation from Selfmade, who pathed from raptors to blue to prevent the Lillia from going for the popular raptor invade. A clever move that we don’t usually see on the rift.
Like mentioned earlier, emphasis was on Fnatic to make plays in the early game to snowball the game. But Vitality was ready and answered well in the opening minutes of the game. Despite Vitality falling behind in tower plates, the game remained quite even and Skeanz managed to pick up quite a few kills in by responding to Fnatic’s aggressiveness.
The game dragged on with Fnatic always keeping a slight lead in terms of gold. But in the fight over the 4th dragon of the game, the clear weakness of Fnatic’s draft was glaring. Since they hadn’t been able to run over Vitality, the value of the Seraphine was to much for Fnatic to break through.
Even though Fnatic had presence in the sidelane and was able to break one inhibitor. There was just no way that Vitality could loose in a standard 5v5 fight. By forcing as five in the toplane they were able to close out the game, despite loosing control over the rest of the map.
This goes to show exactly why I argued against the early Olaf. The scaling option is such a strong backup plan and can tilt the game in a team’s favor simply by staling out a game. This time it was able to get Vitality a huge upset over Fnatic.
Post game takeaways
The winstreak comes to an end as Fnatic falls to Vitality. Am I surprised? Not really. When drafting to snowball and failing to do so, this type of game will be the natural result. It is the risk that Fnatic has to keep in mind when playing like they do.
In this game specifically, the draft didn’t hit the mark for me. What bothers me the most is the last pick Wukong. Despite being good in isolation, it’s so risky and puts such a short timer on the game. Like mentioned earlier, I don’t think that it’s the correct way to approach a game like this.
I’m harping a lot on the draft here, mainly because I think it’s an easy fix that will win Fnatic games in the future. Looking at the game itself, it was very similar to previous weeks; a lot of forced plays that could have worked out. But the fact that they have to go for them in the first place is an unnecessary handicap to put on the team in my opinion.
I don’t think that this is a big issue to overblow, but I want to make it as clear as possible to why Fnatic loose a game like this. I’m certain that the players and coaching staff is well aware of all of this and will be able to grow because of today’s result.
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