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For the last couple of days, European League of Legends fans have been on a high after the region’s representatives won all but one of their games through the first two days of the group stage at the 2022 World Championship.
Fnatic has been one of the hottest teams at the tournament so far, but their hype train has been derailed by the defending champions, Edward Gaming.
Prior to today, Fnatic found themselves in the spotlight after an impressive victory against iconic Korean organization, T1. They hadn’t dropped a single game up to this point, going all the way back to the play-in stage.
One player that has turned up his gameplay to new heights is Fnatic’s star mid laner Humanoid, who has been a huge catalyst for his team’s success.
On the other hand, EDG has been on an upward trend after their loss to T1 on the opening day of groups. With a bounce back win against Cloud9 under their belt, the star-studded roster had a pretty huge task ahead of them. Luckily for them though they found the perfect way to start the game off with free kills to their AD carry phenom, Viper.
Venomous bite meet roundhouse kick
Fnatic started off the game with an unfortunate encounter in the bottom side of the Rift, when the European third seed opted to invade EDG’s jungle. Their classic death brush was found out easily, and the Chinese powerhouse collapsed to nab themselves a double kill for Sivir.
As expected, EDG ran through the bottom lane to snowball Viper’s lead. He locked down multiple other kills thanks to the advantage he snatched away in the opening minutes. Razork tried to stem the growing fire in the bottom lane, but he was countered by Jiejie’s Lee Sin. The 20-year-old jungler also had a massive game, finding perfectly executed InSec kicks to catch his enemies off-guard to start off teamfights.
In the teamfights, Jiejie and Viper posed a huge threat to anything Fnatic wanted to accomplish. No matter how good a skirmish looked for the EU representatives, Jiejie could turn the fight into EDG’s favor with his significant damage and playmaking potential, while Viper dished out destructive amount of damage with Sivir’s boomerangs and auto-attacks.
By the end of the game, Viper had 10 kills and eight assists with a single death, while Jiejie participated in 12 of his team’s 19 kills.
Not without a fight
Even though Fnatic did lose, they didn’t just roll over and give up after handing over a couple of free early kills.
Instead, they looked to enable the top side of the map, while focusing on better teamfighting with a strong collection of champions, including Renata Glasc, Ornn, and Azir.
In fact, Humanoid had another transcendent performance and was a massive factor in helping the team claw back into a better position. In a big teamfight at the 17-minute mark, Humanoid was forced to flash forward with a sliver of health to barely win a teamfight alongside his AD carry teammate, Upset.
His superhuman effort was not enough, though. As a whole, EDG’s teamfighting was far too decisive and clean for Fnatic to handle in the latter parts of the game, and although they did stumble, Viper, Jiejie, and the rest of EDG ironed out the wrinkles to find the dub.
For EU fans, this loss will sting, but there are still plenty of silver linings to take home from the game. EDG is one of the best teams in the tournament, but Fnatic was still able to persevere through the tough start and win some battles to make the match interesting.
As a result, LEC supporters should still feel confident in the boys in orange as the League group stage moves into all-play days later this week.
Published: Oct 9, 2022 07:46 pm