A new split has come, but things haven’t changed for Fnatic so far, as they went 0-3 in the first week of LEC Spring 2023. Even though we are only one week in, the odds are getting rough for them. What are Fnatic’s current issues with the new roster? Is the team really risking to end last this split? Let’s dive into the analysis.
Image Credits | Michal Konkol/Riot Games
Fnatic and the win-less week 1 of LEC Spring 2023
Fnatic came into LEC Spring with two new players on their roster: Oscarinin replaced Wunder in the top lane, while Advienne came to substitute Rhuckz in support. While the latter can be considered an upgrade over Rhuckz considering Advienne’s past LEC experiences, putting a young ERL player in a team like Fnatic is suicidal, to say the least. And it showed completely right off in week 1.
Oscarinin and the enormous pressure on his shoulders
The Spanish top laner has clearly shown its limits against the other top laners in the LEC, getting punished and solo killed left and right in all three games played. Unfortunately for him, it didn’t help the fact that he was facing some of the best players in the league: Irrelevant, Photon come from a great Winter Split, and Odoamne, well, is still Odoamne.
Teams probably have also noticed that it becomes much easier to punish Fnatic’s top lane, which is something that also happened with Wunder. The problem with this is that even though Oscarinin absorbs all the pressure, Fnatic is unable to find advantages elsewhere on the map: this is the main issue that must be fixed. That said, it looks like the team’s drafts are heavily handicapping the players, once again, not giving them a chance to fight.
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Sub-optimal meta read – again?
The sub-optimal drafts have been a major issue that Fnatic had from the last split and despite the meta shift, the problem seems to be still there. While it can be good to draft double ranged bot lane to have good lane prio and allow Razork to be proactive around that area on the map, Fnatic has been punished far too much for it to be considered a good strategy.
Heimerdinger, in particular, has been more of a bait pick in the split so far: only 1 win out of 5 games played so far. Ashe, on the other hand, has been banned 13 times, proving how important teams regard the pick. Despite Fnatic being the only team able to play it, they were unable to make it work.
Image Credits | Michal Konkol/Riot Games
With most teams going for engage supports, Fnatic will have to find a way to resolve the issue and see if they can play through their bot lane proactively, or have their bot lane play for jungle and mid lane. As it stands, it seems like nothing has changed much, given that Humanoid and Razork are still looking quite desperate to make plays and build leads for themselves.
Is there a glimpse of hope for Fnatic in Spring?
Despite all the issues, we have seen some minor improvements. They look slightly more coordinated to set up dives which we have seen in the series against SK Gaming, for example. On top of that, Oscarinin should be expected to get better over the course of the split, as he will be able to get more scrim time and preparation for the upcoming matches.
That being said, what Fnatic really has to work around is finding a way to make things happen on the map in bottom side of the map, and have Rekkles and Humanoid get the resources to carry. It will be tough, considering the short amount of time Fnatic gets, and the pressure of knowing that losing more games will eliminate them from groups contention.
Sometimes competitions are like that: you rise and fall. For Fnatic, however, this fall is probably far too much to digest.
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