[2019] [Vedius VOD Review] - Fnatic vs Vitality LEC Week 8

I feel like you're taking a lot of what I say out of context. Whenever I criticize Broxah, it's because when I look at the map state there's something else he could've been doing.

With regards to the first play bot, I talk about how the expectation is that Vitality will look to make a play bot in the next few minutes. In a 3v3, Fnatic should lose. Therefore, the better play would be for Broxah to clear out his top side camps that have just respawned and look for a play towards the flashless Karma top lane so that Fnatic can trade plates for the infernal drake that they shouldn't be able to contest. The duo of Rekkles and Hyli can then clear out the Krugs that haven't been killed yet this game to set them up for Broxah later. On paper, this is the play that, to me, makes the most sense. He doesn't do it, so I question what he was doing it and if I agreed with it, which in the end I didn't.

With regards to the second time, objectively he just doesn't do anything. There's no reason for him to be shadowing his top laner here. The wave is pushed in. This means that Bwipo wants to catch the wave and slowly push it out. The only way he dies in this situation is if Mowgli comes through the lane and they create a 2v1, but even then Broxah should be looking to make a cross map play top to threaten a kill onto Cabo and get more towers. There are so many reasons as to why shadowing Bwipo doesn't make sense and he could be using his time more effectively, which is why I criticize him.

He's not the only player I criticized this game, but my expectations of what should happen vs what he does conflict, so either there's something that I don't understand, which is possible and why I challenge and ask these questions, or he's making a mistake. Right now, I believe he's making mistakes. Now where these mistakes come from is an entirely different debate. It could be that his bot lane told him to come bot and protect them in that initial play. It could be Bwipo told him to come bot and shadow him. If that's happening then the real mistake falls on the communication within Fnatic, but I can't know that for sure. So I just judge based on what I see.

I think it's important though! Sometimes people interpret things in a different way, and providing more context is always valuable in my opinion. People are allowed to disagree with me, they can think that Broxah's decisions are fine. I just wanted to explain that I don't hate Broxah :)

1. It's because it's all about pressure. Even if Broxah doesn't have kick, it's 2v1 top and it's a jayce. They have the damage to kill a flashless Karma. So she should be forced to back away, allowing Fnatic to trade plates. The problem fnatic has is by sending broxah bot, it allows the duo to play slightly further up because they have jungle support, but because they lose the 3v3 regardless, they end up losing their farm + their flashes bot and gain nothing for it. In this situation, Fnatic COULD have made it a 'trade' of resources, instead it's simply a loss. Does that make sense?

2. I'm not really sure I follow your logic on point 2. As I said in the VOD review, the game should've been slowing down at this point. Fnatic had the push in mid giving them priority to the river, allowing them to move to top lane first. This means that Fnatic can generate a numbers advantage top lane before Vitality can, allowing them to get damage or in best case scenario secure the tower. If they don't, they just move around the lanes and repeat this process throughout the map. The last thing they actually want to do is force a fight, because as you say they outscale. By trying to force that fight, without Broxah being there, was also a mistake. However, the reason why I put so much weight on Broxah's poor decision is that it's important that he moves with Nemesis because that 1. provides nemesis with the safety to approach the wave incase olaf is there and 2. you want to create a numbers advantage. 3v2 is very different compared to a 4v2. Regardless of what Broxah wanted to do bot, he should've been playing with his team. In my opinion, Nemesis also made a mistake by forcing this engage and ultimately leading to Fnatic losing a fight.

It's all about pressure and playing around your numbers. And in the early game, it's really important for the jungler to be leveraging that as he most easily creates these number discrepancies. I hope this makes sense.

It has absolutely nothing to do with bias. It's more to do with expectations of the team.

Fnatic has a long history, mainly of success. Therefore, I naturally hold them to a higher standard because that's the benchmark they play in. Constantly, I have to compare them to the top teams that surround them because that's the ball game they play in. I don't put the same criticisms onto XL because expectations are that this team might just barely make playoffs but then don't, so sitting there and talking about what they lack compared to a top team in Europe isn't super valuable when they need to reach a base level.

Fnatic have excellent players, they also understand how to play league at a high level. They're proficient on their champions and while I do believe the number of ways that they play league is limited, they're very good at it. However, they have big problems that can be exploited and have been exploited by the other top teams around them, and if they want to win they need to fix them.

If you would prefer I just sit there and praise Fnatic for all the things they do well, I can do that. However, I think it's disingenuous to the caliber at which fnatic aim for.

The skill ceiling of their players are high. In terms of their laning an teamfighting, they are easily top 3 in every role domestically. One thing that often goes unnoticed is how effective Bwipo is at using his windows. Something to watch is how he spends his time after he pushes a lane and how he often works with Broxah to set up plays on the map.

I personally think they're mid game is actually really solid too. They know what to do with a lead and are effective at utilizing pressure. They're also very good at playing harder to play pick comps and are actually willing to take a lot of risks unlike other teams. A lot of their drafts this split have focused on attacking side lanes, and they've often executed it very well.

Fnatic do a lot of very good things, that's why they sit at the top of the standings. The problem is they have to be compared to the likes of our other top teams and there are areas that can easily be fixed but they still seem to struggle with. This means top teams will exploit them. Broxah's early pathing and decision making, Bwipo's regular over extensions and desire to force fights along with Hylissang's inconsistencies in performance. Fnatic have a great shot at making it to the finals. However, it's a lot harder to say that they'll win the split.

The plan is to do playoffs for the major regions starting with NA next week! Not sure if I do every game, but definitely want to do some reviews for TL.

They do, it's just hard to do when it's only a single game. In my initial VOD review, I talked a lot about how poorly G2 played and the mistakes that they made. Last week in their games vs OG and SK, I also criticized them for how often they greeded and tried to force poor plays. The problem is they aren't consistent problems. These aren't issues that occur in every game or even on a regular basis, they're one offs.

Fnatic's issues have been occurring for the last 3-4 weeks. There are multiple VODs of the same issues reoccurring and it's easy to spot out these tendencies. In the specific case of G2, the same can't be said.

It CAN be said for the likes of Splyce though. We've been criticizing their mid game for weeks, and there's so much footage of them throwing leads and making poor decisions the moment they leave the laning phase. Week 8 they showcased some very clean games, but even then I need to see them do the same thing against the likes of Fnatic for me to believe that these issues are fixed.

When Fnatic showcased really big problems in their game against Splyce, the first thing I actually said on air was that this was an uncharacteristic game from them and this likely won't happen again. They then lost to Rogue. When that happens, you need to be put under more of a magnifying glass to really see where the issues exist.

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