Week 9:Still on vacation, sorry I ran out of time

Vacation and DOTA2 finals caught up with me, sorry I was unable to do articles for 2 weeks =X.

Grats to Cloud 9 for their perfect week 9 and 2nd place in the standings!

My next article will likely be about TSM and their changing of the guard again. Picking up Lustboy is the most controversial thing they've done specifically because of the timing. 2 weeks before finals? gg TSM.

Week 8: On Vacation, but gotta' talk LMQ!

This week's article will be a bit short and a bit late as I am on vacation for the DOTA2 finals this week.

However, I do plan on doing some writing about LMQ and their awesome week they had in NA!

Ackerman, NoName, XaioWeiXaio, Vasilli and Mor - dominating the rift. (Hope I got the names spelled correctly, they will be for the article)

Also, big props to Vasilli for answering one of the questions in English, very well done sir.

Sorry I was unable to get to this, I will do an article on LMQ sometime soon as they've had 2 perfect weeks in a row and hold 1st place in NALCS!

My car got towed on my vacation and I ended up going out to bars with my buddies until 3 am every night =P. Sorry I was enjoying myself! I am a terrible nerd! qq.

Week 7: Or what I like to call…How Fnatic Got Their Groove Back

This past week was the LCS super week and what a week it was. We saw everything from non-traditional top laners, to surprise jungle picks, and even the standings in the NA scene finally changing! However, one team, this week, cannot go unnoticed. Despite arguably the largest fan base anywhere in the world, their constant dominance of EU finals, and the fact that they were very average for a portion of this season; Fnatic had an absolutely astounding Super Week. While many believe that this was simply a matter of Fnatic finding their groove and playing correctly; the keen observer will notice one giant similarity in all Fnatic’s games. This week’s article is how Fnatic how their groove back, by way of their shot calling.

Fnatic closed out Super Week being the only team that was 4-0 in either NA or EU LCS. While it is arguable that their schedule was a bit(except for Alliance I suppose?) soft, this is still an amazing accomplishment for any team. In both NA and EU, it is hard enough to go on a 4 game win streak, let alone, have a perfect Super Week. Many people point to Fnatic's leader and main-shot-caller in xPeke: speaking of how he apparently learned to play Syndra. Many others will look to the Fnatic bottom lane talking about the amazing coordination and KDA of Rekkles and YelloWStaR (which is impressive!). Still others will talk about how SoaZ seemed to find his rhythm being able to play Lee Sin and Yorick in the top lane! While all these are true, they are simply a shroud; hiding what Fnatic's real success was this week. Fnatic, more than any other team, this week had extremely decisive calls. They were focused, organized, willing to listen to the shots called, and ready to follow through on said decisions. In times where one voice needed to make one decision to be followed by the whole team, Fnatic performed flawlessly. We have seen how this level of communication and micromanagement has provided other teams great success, however, many of them did this on the backs of superior lane rotations. Fnatic still does not have the strongest rotations, but they were decisive and they were able to ride their superior team play to their perfect week.

The easiest example of this can be seen in their 3^rd win of the week against Gambit. As xPeke said in the interview afterwards: Gambits team was weak at jump: Iraelia, Skarner, Twisted Fate, Lucian, and Nami. Essentially, this is a team without an early game: Iraelia needs to be ahead and stay ahead, Twisted Fate doesn’t come online until 6, and Skarner has mediocre pre-6 ganks at best. Knowing this, Fnatic were easily able to pick a Vayne in the bottom lane with a strong baby-sitter in Morgana and essentially just free-farm as long as Vayne is going even or better. Further, due to Gambit exposing their whole strategy, picking their carries on the first set of picks, Fnatic were able to deny Lee Sin and Elise and force Gambit into an alternate jungle pick. Knowing this, Fnatic applied constant map pressure levels 1 through 5 and then snowball the game from there. From the 2 minute mark, Fnatic read the lane-swap and used the Elise/Lee sin combo to contest every buff and by 3 minutes had stolen a blue buff, took the red buff off Diamond’s Skarner and then took a 4 minute dragon. Fnatic then rotated back down to bottom lane and got another kill on Darien’s Iraelia and easily took control of the game. The biggest thing to notice here is how the entire team worked and moved together. The call was made: contest the blue buff, and four members of the Fnatic team jumped right into the fray; locking down and killing Diamond's Skarner and stealing both buffs. Without hesitation, they zoned Darien out, burning his flash and went to Dragon. After this, a slight pause to read the map and then the next call: Bottom tower, which resulted in the afore-mentioned Iraelia kill. The entire team listened, responded, and acted. After, when Gambit tried to go back to lanes and farm, Fnatic took action and pressed their advantage again. This then lead to another easy kill on Darien’s Iraelia by Rekkles and YelloWStaR and by minute 5 Iraelia had no impact on the remainder of the game. Three simple calls in the early game: contest a blue buff, kill the dragon, tower-dive the bottom lane, meant all the difference in the early game and gave Fnatic complete control by minute 5.

The next great call comes at 8:25 when Fnatic try to re-invade the Gambit blue buff. Cyanide starts the buff out and gets seen by Darien and Diamond who go in to contest the buff. Cyanide is immediately joined by SoaZ and Rekkles to try and secure his buff and they trade slightly. However, Gambit is joined by NiQ’s Twisted Fate and Edward’s Nami and you can see the exact moment of the Fnatic call “switch to Twisted Fate”. All three of Fnatic's members instantly give up on the blue buff, turn, and engage onto NiQ; first being led by a SoaZ Sonic Wave/Resonating Strike, followed by a Cyanide Rappel into Venomous Bite and finished off by a flash, Dark Binding, and Tormented Soil from YellOwStaR’s Morgana for an easy kill. This sends Gambit retreating and even ends in another death on Darien’s Iraelia.

This level of communication and decision making can even been seen into the late-game where Fnatic close out the game after securing Baron at 27:15. Once they have Baron defeated, they take turns buying, regroup to the middle lane, and proceed to use their buff advantage to take the middle inhibitor. However, after this, Fnatic immediately clear out the pink wards dropped inside the Gambit base and clear an incoming wave of minions. This means that Fnatic’s middle lane will be constantly pushing in and traps Gambit deeper inside their base. They then send Rekkles’ Vayne and SoaZ’s Lee Sin top lane to push the wave in while xPeke’s Ziggs, YellOwStaR’s Morgana, and Cyanide’s Elise run vision-patrol; killing wards where they can and laying them in important places. They even setup a small ambush in one of the brushes outside the Gambit base, just to make sure no one attempts to leave the base and find and easy kill. From here: Fnatic begin sieging the top inhibitor turret keeping in mind that anytime they get an easy catch, the priority is the turret as they are so far head. Eventually, Cyanide lands a Cocoon which is immediately jumped on by SoaZ’s Lee Sin who attempts to Dragon’s Rage the Cocooned Diamond into Fnatic while the other Fnatic members used the distraction to finish the turret. Fnatic then turned to shield and position behind SoaZ so that Gambit is unable to finish SoaZ off and Fnatic switch to poking at the inhibitor. A few seconds later, the inhibitor does fall and Gambit decide to initiate onto Cyanide’s Elise using Skarner’s Impale, dragging him back. However, Cyanide calmly Rappel’s and YellOwStaR walks in, puts Soul Shackles on two players, xPeke follows up with a Mega Inferno Bomb, the Soul Shackles ends and stuns Diamond’s Skarner who then dies. Forty seconds later, Fnatic destroy the nexus. Fnatic (simply) made decisive calls ahead of time; planning to go in at any opportunity and being aware that YellOwStaR can initiate at any time. All 5 members of the team were ready to respond and support their teammates any team xPeke or anyone else made the call to do so. Fnatic was able to close out this game in 31 minutes and up almost 18,000 gold. This, almost entirely due to their decisive planning and the momentum gained off their early-game calls before minute 8. Their willingness to listen to one voice and change or plan out tactics at a moment’s notice led them to one of the strongest victories of week 7. However, we can also see this kind of decision making in Fnatic’s late-game calls such as their victory against Alliance.

Fnatic’s victory against Alliance was much more difficult to secure as Fnatic were not able to capitalize on an early-game snowball to lead them to victory. In fact, this game had a lot of back-and-forth and many baits and setups around the Baron pit before its thrilling, single-fight conclusion. We as fans have seen that, often times, a victory will come from one decisive team fight. This can be off the back of securing an objective, the result of catching an opponent out of position, or simply a good initiation that forces a 4v5. In these situations, the team who coordinates the best and supports their team is the victor. At the pro level, this comes down to which team makes better calls and coordinates their abilities better to take down their opponents and make the final push. In Fnatic v. Alliance: Fnatic have gold and map advantage at 54 minutes. This time, again, having the Baron buff and being up nearly 9 thousand gold. However, at 54 minutes in the game most of the carries have all 6 of their major items and this gold difference means very little. This game is won by a single call to keep chasing and secure a few kills.

 Fnatic are split-pushing with SoaZ’s Yorick in the bottom lane while the rest of the team holds the minion wave in the middle lane. Shook’s Evelynn attempts to engage by catching an Agony’s Embrace onto two Fnatic members and Alliance nearly kills xPeke’s Syndra. Fnatic already have a plan for this: any engagement and SoaZ is going to teleport in, which he does, and Alliance counter with their teleport. With the two abilities cancelling each other out, Fnatic makes the call to go back to holding the lane and poking until the next crowd control lands. This comes in the form of a Syndra Scatter the Weak a few moments later. xPeke lands his ability onto Nyph’s Thresh, stunning him, and allowing YellOwStaR to follow up with Tidal Wave from Nami. This gives Fnatic a chance to zone and spread out Alliance and isolates Nyph as a kill target. Fnatic seem to have no way to follow up on this, until, Nyph lands a Death Sentence onto Cyanide’s Elise and the call is made to kill the Thresh. Again, the reader can see all 4 members of Fnatic immediately turn and follow up with: a flurry of damage abilities from SoaZ’s Yorick, another Scatter the Weak and stun from XPeke’s Syndra, a Cocoon and Venomous Bite from Cyanide’s Elise, and finally a Culling and Double Tap buffed by YellOwStaR’s Nami’s Tidecaller’s Blessing from Rekkles’ Lucian to finish him off.  Despite being deterred by Wickd’s Lulu’s Wild Growth and a barrage of shields from other Alliance team members; Fnatic is able to capitalize off the good call and keep pursuing until Thresh is downed. They then further call to keep chasing which then leads into another Cocoon onto Tabzz’ Kog’Maw which then has to use its flash to get away. Fnatic, now all in chase mode, make a final call to use anything to keep chasing; expending three of their own flashes and baiting an Orianna Shockwave that is invalidated by a Zhonya’s Hourglass active from xPeke that nets Fnatic two more kills that then allows them to finish the game. 

One miss-position by Alliance and Fnatic making a decisive call to kill Nyph made all the difference between victory and defeat. Had any member on Fnatic not been in the same mindset (as the Alliance members were, not all joining in to defend their Thresh) the Thresh would not have gone down as Fnatic used nearly all their ultimates singling out and (barely) killing Nyph. It is one of the easier to miss, but crucial decisions that were made by Fnatic in their domination of super week. We see these decisions happen all the time, especially in EU. Often times, teams are not ready to respond to crowd control provided by their team mates and even a half-a-second too late on a reaction can mean the difference between securing a kill and letting the opponent retreat. We even saw this kind of hesitation in one of my earlier articles about All-Stars where xPeke didn’t capitalize on a chance to kill Faker that set his team’s momentum back nearly 15 minutes in their eventual defeat. Professional League of Legends teams need to be organized and flexible, fans will hear casters say these words over and over (because they’re right and its true).

In the post-game Rekkles and YelloWStaR even talked about how Alliance has superior rotations and team movement, so they(Fnatic) need to take advantages wherever they can. They even specifically called out how they needed to bait out the Kog’Maw cool downs first, and then pursue after that; which they did. In the final team fight Fnatic baiting out the Kog’Maw flash, heal, all the Alliance team shields, and then chased to additional kills. This superior planning and in-game decision making is what really shined and is one of the reasons for the long-history of Fnatic success. In all their games in week 7, Fnatic showed excellent moments of this brilliant shot calling and really systematically shut down their opponents. This will again be one of the building blocks they will be working on with their new coaching staff and something we will be looking for as Fnatic attempts to secure their top 2 placement for Worlds.

So as we look back and the successes and failures of super week, we look fondly at the world-renown juggernaut that is Fnatic. With their fan-base standing strong and showing up in force each week in Germany it is hard to think that Fnatic will ever have a bad split and will not time, and time-again be in the battle for the best team in EU. Fnatic talk about how much they trust each other, and how much confidence they have in each other’s picks, however, trust means nothing when everyone is talking at once. The Fnatic secret of superior shot-calling might be well known and easy to see, but teams will need to be able to match this in order to take down the two-time EU champion.