Fnatic eliminate Undying behind Raven’s record-breaking performance at The International 10

The memes and the dreams of Team Undying’s run at The International 10 have come to a close following the North American Dota 2 team’s loss to Fnatic in the best-of-one opening round in the lower bracket today.

Fnatic were favored by many coming in despite being the lower seed and the Southeast Asian stalwarts showed that they’re ready to compete, finally breaking their streak of 13th place, or lower, finishes that started at TI7. 

Outside of a few opening blips, Fnatic controlled the pace of the game from the start, putting a lot of pressure on Raven’s Luna to perform early—and he lived up to those expectations. The pairing of Luna with DJ’s support Clockwerk combined to go 17/5/29 for 27,500 hero damage, though all of those deaths were on DJ. 

Along with his generally strong performance in other areas, Raven also broke the TI record for the highest tower damage achieved in a single match, dealing 22,204 damage to those structures as his team marched through lanes. 

Undying just couldn’t keep up with the early to mid-game scaling of Fnatic, struggling to keep their core competitive while their SEA opponent started getting consistent picks starting around 10 minutes in. No member of the team recorded more than two kills and MoonMeander, DuBu, and SabeRLighT died a total of 24 times, leaving Bryle and Timado to fend for themselves when in confrontations without support. 

With this performance, Fnatic have survived the best-of-ones and have already placed higher than they have since finishing fourth at TI6. DJ is the only representative from that team still competing under the Fnatic banner. And after a poor showing in the group stage, this performance is already a huge step up. 

“I think as a team we came into this tournament not as a strong team or weak team, but we were kind of inconsistent,” DJ said. “But we know what we are capable of and just reminded ourselves of that and played our best.”

Fnatic will face Team Spirit in the next round of the lower bracket, while Undying is heading home tied for 13th place and $600,300 richer.