It’s an objective fact that you don’t know what objective means.

Ah yes, 2020 in North Africa’s First Strike.

He’s surely an EMEA player.

Icebox requires a sentinel for mid-coverage (Even Loud succumbed and played KJ). Also, it’s been established that you don’t need a duelist because the chokes are so wide and varied that you can literally contact in with a drone.

I think they should keep Sacy on Gekko, Zellsis on Viper, and Johnqt on Killjoy. Switch Zekken to Sova, and have Tenz flex to one of three agents. Have him play Kayo for flashes/suppress, Omen for verticality/op’ing, or Harbor for smokes/plant and defuse support.

All three of those variations are viable with Omen having the most flexibility. He has a strong flash for trap plays and retakes, coverage as a secondary smoker, and can abuse verticality similarly to a Jett to Op on defense or secure space aggressively on attack — not to mention the opportunity for lurks.

It’s Icebox. They don’t need a duelist.
Put Zekken on Sova and run triple initiator, moving the Op around on defense so teams can’t make hard reads based off seeing utility.

Allez Les Bleus.

FNC loses 0-2 to KC in their sloppiest performance since the roster rebuild.
No new strats or adaptations and being anti-stratted on Lotus by a team that showed off 6x more footage than them. It seems I was right.

It looks like I was right.

KC 2-0 FNC and continue onto Madrid

I hope so.

I hope it means that those saved strats aren’t wholly untested like LOUD’s during Tokyo too

This first chart illustrates FNC’s poor trading habits — mostly due to slow defaults on attack. They struggle with large team fights that’d you’d see when teams scrap for heavily contested space.

[Trading Stats] (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/818683218747195412/1210806401400832081/IMG_0163.png?ex=65ebe655&is=65d97155&hm=1d473eab4d12862a62bd0d1a05a1dc257a8562706545ad3ef4a0b3f2feae7d5a)

This second chart illustrates the amount of rounds each player nets their team when they have an above average amount of kills. Essentially how much each team relies on a player to pop-off each map. Note how low the EG players are, signifying how balanced their impact is regardless of individual under/over performance. The best way to read it is the average amount of rounds Lost when a player gets less than 16 kills a map.

[Round Differential] (https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/818683218747195412/1210806530388000849/IMG_0166.png?ex=65ebe674&is=65d97174&hm=6c5d8840eba9d6f770acca2de2f30ad42cd5fff556f975b7a54e3d40fd597d7d)

I think a FNC with EG stats would be the undisputed best in the world — they’re just not there yet and the numbers don’t lie.

Credit to Platoon

You don’t get it.

LOUD dropped out of Tokyo because of their bad Neon comps. So they CHANGED and performed better in champs.

FNC changed nothing and went from Winning Tokyo to coming FOURTH in champs.

Other teams get better and if you don’t improve yourself or compensate for potential anti-strats then you get left behind.

You’re insisting that it’s rock paper scissors. I’m saying it’s not because teams actually have to perform to reach their projected “power level”. FNC didn’t perform, twice. All three of the others did and the finalists did it better than LOUD who did it better than FNC. Watch some analysis on those matches and how every team picked up on anti-stratting FNC – LOUD just had the pleasure of sending them home.

Yo, how am I still getting downvoted while saying that I hope FNC wins another trophy? Y’all weird fr

I actually really love your take.

Perhaps “overrated” is too harsh of a term to use and reflects more so on the “Stans” that I’ve had the displeasure of running into than the actual potential of the team.

FNC has an immense ceiling and I wanted to emphasize how they squandered it leading up to champs because I don’t want that to happen again. I’m mostly worried that the lack of competition in EMEA will make them lax. I’m from NA but I a massive fan of Chronicle and I hope they take another trophy this year.

Cheers to unforgiving competition!

I’m not trying to invalidate their year friend. I’m saying they need to evolve because their champs results weren’t a fluke. Anyone saying otherwise is coping. It’s not just “1 bad event.” They were absolutely picked apart by the third best team twice.

Lmao that’s not an accusation. I’m literally saying it’s okay to extrapolate because it’s a skill based game. No top team wins a map based on luck — if you win, you are better. It’s not rock paper scissors.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying, especially in the case of Lotus.

LOUD beat FNC 13-6 and lost against EG 4-13. You think that’s not a good enough indicator of the respective teams’ strategies and protocols?? FNC literally ban it in the rematch.

Bind isn’t as clean but after losing 1-13 to DRX, I have zero faith in Champs FNC to win on that map against better teams.

Is it possible that EG could magically beat Loud and PRX in close games but absolutely fumble against FNC?

Yes.

But given how Loud crushed FNC on the maps I referenced I’d say it’s unlikely. Teams don’t win maps with luck. They create strong protocols and strats and PERFORM.

You’re allowed to make extrapolations about how teams might perform against others when you get significant scoreline differences. There’s a reason why FNC banned Fracture against EG after seeing them perform against others in Tokyo.

You’re basically saying “my team aren’t champions because they were unlucky with the bracket.”

FNC placed 4th because they lost twice to the 3rd place team who lost to both the 2nd and 1st placed teams, in a BO3 and BO5 respectively.

Yeah, I mistakenly put down Breeze instead of Haven but it plays out the same. The map breakdown is valuable because it illuminates a team’s weaknesses when they’re forced into a BO5 and are forced to adapt after their playbooks are exhausted/countered.

They innovate a lot less than their international counterparts. You won’t convince me that both their losses to LOUD weren’t a result of heavy anti-stratting — something that Potter is renowned for.

EG hard fixed their Lotus and took the map against both Loud and PRX (latter beat Loud). LOUD crushed FNC on that map during champs.

Split is much closer given that both times they played the scoreline was 13-11.

I did make a mistake of marking EG’s map ban as Breeze but you’re right that Haven was in rotation during champs and FNC would take it.

That means with FNC map ban of Fracture and Pearl, EG takes Ascent, Bind, and potentially Lotus while FNC takes Haven. The rest are a toss up. I’d still give EG odds there.

Let’s not pretend like Lock-In was a competitive tournament given that there was no Double Elim and almost every roster was new — they still almost lost.

Your perspective on Tokyo is narrow. FNC played 4 matches total that tournament and 3 of them were against the two teams I mentioned had disadvantages. Even then, EG nearly won upper finals and map ban advantage.

They lost against two teams but finished 4th in champs. The one team they lost to at champs lost to two other teams (thats not a matter of luck).

I’m not insisting that FNC isn’t a top 4 team. I’m saying they’ll be at the bottom of those four if they don’t innovate. It means nothing to “dominate” your region when your goal is supposed to be the best.

FNC definitely earned those two trophies but not nearly as dominantly as many remember.

Lock-In ended with a comeback from a 3-11 score line on the final map. It easily could have gone LOUD’s way.

Tokyo featured a PRX with a substitute that still placed 3rd and an EG with no practice with their primary duelist due to Visa issues — still managing two close maps.

I think FNC are a phenomenal team with at least three players in the top 3 of their respective roles. I’m worried that very strength will make them complacent as a team as it did during Champs.

Look at EG’s conversion rate after losing a first blood, where no loss of any single player had a significant impact on their round wins — they had the best protocols and mid rounding of any team. Platoon’s video on the best player in the world illustrates this.

If FNC wants to maintain global dominance, they need to compensate for their immense mechanical advantage over their competition by innovating. The mindset to relentlessly refine their “basics” instead of pushing the needle is going to punish them when they run into international teams that can match them mechanically.

I keep seeing cope about how FNC would have won champs if they didn’t run into LOUD — perhaps even having the mental edge against EG. With an eye test though, you could tell FNC was becoming readable and had issues with spacing for trades properly. Even with their most recent match they looked sloppy against Vitality on Lotus.

Here’s the map pool break down of the hypothetical champs matchup by comparing the respective teams’ performances against LOUD and accounting for each other’s bans.

EG Take: Pearl, Fracture, Lotus, and Bind.

FNC Take: Haven.

Toss Up: Split and Ascent

It’s clear that FNC has 4 mechanical superstars (sorry boaster, Boostio and Saadhak clear), but there’s too much cope about hiding strats — It was the same last year when they took the exact same comps from Tokyo to Champs. EG did the opposite and experimented until they fixed their Lotus, Bind, and Split.

I’m praying that the Gekko and Yoru rumors are true because seeing FNC has been stale and I firmly believe that they’re becoming complacent because of weaker competition in their region.

Edit: Changed Breeze to Haven as I mistook which map was in the pool.

Hard to argue that Jinggg is the best Raze when he’s lost the head to head against Jawgemo in both Tokyo and Champions. Re-watch the Champs finals and peeps their stats. You could say that Jinggg is more consistent but Jawgemo has a higher ceiling.

EG lower bracket run to beat all of the top 5 teams before finishing it out with a revenge match against LOUD. Final map will be a 13-0. Boostio tournament MVP and best IGL.

https://www.vlr.gg/pickem/8b90507d