2022 Worlds Prep — Fnatic (FNC — LEC Seed 3)
Analyzing one of the Play-In teams ahead of the 2022 League of Legends World Championship — by Tom Searfoss
**Note: Since teams have arrived in Mexico City, FNC has announced that both BEAN and Rhuckz may see play due to COVID. My analysis will be mostly focused on the intended starting roster for FNC**
Top Takeaways
- A familiar face — attending their 10th World Championship as an org
- Don’t skip leg day — Bot side focus and impressive carry stats from Bot Laner Upset
- Heralding doom — Struggle around top side of the map, and have the lowest HERALD% in their Region
- Punishing picks — All lanes are ahead early in CS, with favoritism on punishing lane match ups like Lucian and Nami
- Two is better than one — Mid and Bot lane are extremely efficient with the resources given, and output high damage numbers
- Emergency! — will be starting sub Support Rhuckz until Hylissang is cleared of COVID, which is the better of their two subs
TL;DR — Team History & Summer Split
- One of the most celebrated orgs in LEC history, making their 10th World Championship appearance
- Finished 3rd in Spring Playoffs, losing to eventual Champions G2
- Summer was a pretty close Split for LEC, with 7 teams above 50.0% WIN%
- Ended the Summer Regular Season in 5th place, after losing a tiebreaker match to Misfits (MSF)
- Made a Lower Bracket run from the start in Summer Playoffs, securing Worlds after Round 2
- Took 3rd, again, losing again, to eventual winners Rogue (RGE)
Overview of Team Play
Gold Graphs
During the Regular Season, FNC on average were ahead around their average Game Time (GT) and had issues in longer games. During Playoffs, their games not only went a little longer, but were closer, if not more in their opponent’s favor cresting the 30 minute mark.
Early Game Gold
Looking at a Major Region team vs Emerging Region teams is usually going to end up with the Major Region team looking pretty bad with their stats — especially the Gold Leads. With the Play-In Stage, you have teams that have lost during Playoffs from Major Regions competing statistically with teams that won their Emerging Region entirely. With that in mind, I’ve included domestic rankings for the stats I feel like would be the most lopsided — mainly the gold stats.
For FNC however, you can see that their early game gold is pretty close to the Play-In average — and is the highest at 10 minutes (GOLD@10) in the LEC. Although their gold lead (GD@10) is not the largest domestically, they are still ahead in gold (just not as much as other Play-In teams). The same applies to later on at 15 minutes.
A concern for FNC as a team is the fact that the number of games where they have leads does not grow between 10 and 15 minutes. Looking at the above gold graphs, we can see that there is only 1 game during the Regular Season where they trailed at 10 minutes that they ended up winning, and 2 at the 15 minute mark. This persisted into Playoffs, where they only won 1 game when behind at 10 minutes — but they never had a win with a deficit at 15 minutes either. Overall, you would expect teams to not have to come back to win games and that they should be getting ahead and staying ahead — but with the context of not being the first place team in mind, it would be a testament to FNC’s resilience to see them bounce back from early deficits more, rather than just having the game decided by the end of lane phase.
First Objectives
As to be expected from a 3rd place team rather than a 1st place team, FNC’s First Objective stats are below the Play-In averages for most of the categories. The one thing they excel at however is taking the First Dragon (FD%) of the game. While they do still secure First Blood (FB%), First Tower (FT%) and the First 3 Outer Towers (F3T) more than half the time — their low First Herald Rate (FH%) and the lack of cracking the First Mid Tower (FT Mid) might be a concern against teams that prioritize the Top Side of the map early game.
FNC is a team with a higher FD% than their FH%, which can tell us that their early game is going to revolved a little more on the Bot Side of the map. Whether they focus the objective themselves, or they are willing to trade Herald for Dragon early game — I anticipate FNC’s top side to be where their early leads come from.
Later Game Objectives
Major Regions tend to play slower than the Emerging Regions, which leads to slower game times and overall less bloody, active (CK/M) games. FNC however, rank extremely low in these tempo-based statistics. Their overall Kills and Deaths per Game (KILL/G, DTH/G) are not just on the low end of the rankings — but they’re even. On average, they have a slightly higher Kill-Death Ratio (K/D) than “1.00” — but a 1.73 is still the 2nd lowest for Play-In teams. The one saving grace to FNC’s stats here is their higher ranked Team Damage per Minute (DMG/M). Because they are still dealing a large amount of damage and “taking someone with them” when they die — these stats could be heavily influenced by the fact they have lost more games than other Play-In teams have.
I would however, keep my eye on FNC objective fights. Prolonged engagements can rack up damage numbers — especially in the later stages of the game. But if they are still losing those prolonged engages (and losing objectives because of it) then that’s an avenue to victory teams can look to use against FNC.
FNC can not seem to secure Herald when it comes to their Objective Control. They go all-in on the Dragon plan — but still end up taking the Play-In average number of Plates per Game (PLATES/G) even without the Herald charges to help them. As mentioned above, Major Regions tend to have slower games compared to Emerging Regions, and FNC’s 3rd longest Avg GT showcases that.
Deep Dive — Herald Control
FNC’s HERALD% is the worst in the LEC in addition to being one of the lowest at the Play-In Stage. You might think that they just do not prioritize the Objective, and only take it if a trade exists for something across the map. But by looking at where FNC play on the map, we can learn what they actually do with and around the Herald.
At 15 minutes into their games, FNC has two key areas of the map they attack with multiple members — the Bot Lane, as suggested by looking at their Objective States — but the Herald pit is the other concentration of Kills and Assists.
The larger the circle, the more Assists that happen for kills in that area — meaning there has to be more members in that area for there to be more assists. So FNC is moving members towards the Herald area to fight for it…
…they are also dying a little more around the Herald pit than the bottom side of the map.
The one thing we can not tell from these Heatmaps however, is if FNC is showing up to contest the Herald (and losing more often than winning), or if they are fighting after the opponent already secures Herald — and trading kills with the enemies. My gut instinct is that with a focus on Bot Lane popping up through other stats, FNC is showing up post-Herald to fight their opponents — and as their K/D stats indicate — trading 1 for 1 with 4–5 members getting Assists.
Overview of Players
Lane Phase Stats
The CS differences (CSD) for all of FNC’s lanes are in their favor, which shows they are a strong laning team. Although Wunder is slightly behind in gold at 10 and 15, he’s still on par in XP at those marks.
I hypothesized that FNC would be a Bot Lane focused team, and Upset’s stats point towards that being not just true, but a reason for them to play that way. His CSD@10 is the highest for any starting player at Play-In Stage, and his CSD@15 is ranked 2nd. This leads to him being ahead in XP as well, propelling the main carry for the team further ahead than the other teams.
Unsurprisingly, the Jungler Razork is a driver for early game action — involved in 17 of the team’s 19 First Bloods. Hylissang is also a factor in early action for FNC, as his First Blood Kills & Assits (FBK+A) is also rather high.
Late Game Stats
Continuing the Bot Lane focus for the team, FNC devote the most resources, and get the most out of Upset. His Damage per Earned Gold (DMG/EGOLD) is 4th out of Play-In players — but Humanoid is also ranked highly, as the 2nd highest DMG/EGOLD player at Play-Ins. Both of these players combine to be the threats FNC finish games using.
In addition to leading his team in damage stats, Upset has the highest DMG/M of all Play-In players — not just Bot Laners!
Overview of Champions
Pick/Ban Stats
Fnatic hate Yuumi. Hylissang did not play it until Playoffs, and they do not want other teams having a sustaining bot lane Support to try and survive their bot lane focused game plan. They also ban out Kalista and Lucian more often than Zeri — taking away two lane-focused Bot Lane Champions.
Opponents do not want Hylissang getting Rakan, which is historically one of his best Champions. The ability to both protect Upset, as well as be a fight starter for FNC (and his patented flanking engages) are utilities opposing teams do not want FNC to have.
Picks to Watch
Wunder as Tanks
Wunder and Tanks — name a more iconic duo. Normally left to the weak side of the map, Wunder did not have a win on traditional Top Lane carries other than Gwen or Kayle until Playoffs — with a single win on Gnar and two wins on Renekton.
Razork’s Trundle
Razork fully embraced the Trundle-Poppy Jungle meta — maybe because of his poor record on Wukong. FNC will ban out Wukong and opt in to either side of Trundle-Poppy it looks like — although Razork’s Trundle seems much better than his Poppy as well.
Humanoid’s Sylas
Although only played in 1 game (a win) during the Regular Season, Humanoid’s Sylas was his most played during their Playoff run to great success.
Upset’s Zeri
With Upset happy to play any of the meta Bot Laners, you could pick any number of his 10 different Champions in this slot. Zeri just so happens to be his most played, his only 100% WIN% with more than 1 game played, and his Highest KDA & DMG/M pick.
Lucian-Nami Combo
In Playoffs, FNC went for this bot lane powerhouse duo in 7 of their 16 games. Although they only won 4 of the 7 games, the stats on the Champions and the fact that this powerful lane combo can crush weaker Bot Lanes is something to keep our eyes on.
Substitute Players
Although their Champion Pools can be somewhat interchangeable with their main roster counterparts, FNC with BEAN would be in a much worse spot than FNC with Rhuckz.
Bean’s stats from the LVP SL Summer 2022 paint him as a different type of player than Upset. He’s often behind in lane, and is not the main damage threat on the team. His DMG% is lower than his EGOLD% — which means any resources funneled into him are not as well spent as they could be on another member. FNC having to play with BEAN would be a heavier burden on Humanoid to carry, as Wunder is usually on Tank duty and FNC are not accustomed to playing around Top Side (and struggle doing so early game).
Rhuckz on the other hand, would be a much easier plug-and-play sub for FNC. Although lower FBK+A than Hylissang, FNC TQ only has 9 first bloods total, so he is a part of 66.67% of them. His lane stats and his KP are actually a little better than Hylissang’s (granted, the League is much easier than the LEC) — and he brings more tanks to the table than Hylissang does. The biggest downside though, is the fact that Rhuckz has not won a game in Summer as Rakan — a pick that FNC loves to play around with Hylissang in the lineup.
Conclusion
Even with substitutes on the horizon (thankfully, it’s Rhuckz and not BEAN that has to play) I believe Fnatic are an easy favorite in the Group. They have arguably one of the best Bot Laners in the Play-In Stage (besides RNG GALA) and a solid game plan on how they like to play.
A lot of pressure will be on Wunder this event, as the weak side of the map is also a pressure point for some of the Emerging Region teams in their group. I believe that overall, Wunder is a better player than Evi, Robo and Topoon — but he also has to worry about the Junglers in these equations. Teams may find themselves more successfully taking Herald against Fnatic, and maybe even taking the first mid lane tower. But what they will need to watch out for are multiple ganks pre-15 minutes on the Bot Side, and trying to stop FNC from getting the First (and second) Dragon of the game because of them.
Overall, I don’t see teams being able to out-macro FNC later game, and with all their lanes having CS advantages against the competition in the LEC — I don’t see teams getting much of an advantage against them early either. The one area that FNC may stumble is in early skirmishes where they may not be prepared for the aggression Chiefs (CHF) and LOUD (LLL) may output against them.
I have little doubt that FNC will emerge either first or second from the group. Their biggest opponent is Evil Geniuses (EG) who honestly have a very similar game plan to FNC — but a few question marks on their roster. Impact and Wunder is honestly a toss up — it could end up being two tanks smashing against each other — while Jojo and Danny are younger players that could have very high highs. My instinct however, is to take the consistency of Humanoid and Upset over the “NA Zoomers” as the favorites — but having Rhuckz in over Hylissang for their first head to head game with EG could lead to an EG victory because FNC can not play as punishing a bot lane (like Lucian/Nami) with Upset and Rhuckz not having the synergy established as a Bot Lane duo quite yet. If Inspired reads Razork’s gank pathing well enough, EG will win. However, I would still give FNC at least 55–45 odds even with a sub Support.
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