wym "hyped the whole off season" even in the platchat's vod they literally say that sayf was a W pick up but they didn't know about kicks or runner and said there were much better options than them. the only reason they had some hope was because of sayf's signing and that was pretty much it, without him there would have been no "hype" around the team.

losing no maps in lock in doesn't mean anything, not only were they playing against newly formed teams most of them were pretty trash ngl. even navi made it to finals flawless than got beat by fnatic who couldn't even beat them effortlessly, they still almost lost on both haven and fracture so doesn't mean anything about not losing any maps (btw navi didn't even make it to playoffs in both champs or tokyo). second only losing one map in tokyo doesn't exactly mean anything either except for beating eg, they had arguably the easier side of the bracket never having to met loud (even if they did they probably would have beaten them since they were shaky during the tourney) and only had to play against a shaky nrg and broken prx before meeting up with eg who btw had a very good chance at beating them so there was no "dominance" in any of these tourneys. also btw they got destroyed by loud in champs so idk where that "dominance" went.

fnatic even now is hella overrated, they were dominate in 2023 by winning both lock in and tokyo but then almost drop a map to vitality who aren't even ranked that high in terms of teams. the only times that fnatic has been pushed to ot or close to it were against teams like loud, eg, and tl during playoffs in emea all being high tier teams (with the exception of tl but they did better in playoffs than in champs and tokyo). so unless you want to classify vitality as a top tier team (which for now they aren't) than yeah fnatic has gotten much worse since 2023.

because valorant wasn't released in china until 2023? no one is playing the game to come up with strats except for pros or develop new and better players. Yet even with this navi and giants still got pooped on by edg