Fnatic vs. SK Gaming: By the Numbers

Fnatic showed us Thursday how to pick apart a European giant by systematically punishing them for their consistency.

SK Gaming is best known for their tried and true strategy: rely heavily on each lane to establish dominance (in the form of CS rather than kills) and secure objectives to earn global gold.  For SK, they play League against the computer: they see the enemy team as sort of an annoyance that occasionally needs to be dealt with en route to the enemy Nexus.

Fnatic, on the other hand, are out for blood.  They secured their first kill at 4:12 by punishing Fredy for his over-aggression.  At the 10 minute mark, the death count was 4 - 0 in favor of Fnatic; at 20 minutes it was 10 - 5.  Fnatic let things die down a bit between 20 and 30 minutes while they focused on objectives (dragon and 3 towers--and another 2 kills), and then revved up the kills again, securing 13 more kills between 30-40 minutes, to SK's 6 kills.  Let's look at what tore down the previously undefeated SK Gaming.

Fnatic collapsing on the top lane.

1.  Fnatic's pack mentality.  Even though SK Gaming had more players at every kill (3.9 to Fnatic's 3.3), when Fnatic was on the hunt they found a kill (and usually a few more besides).  This also allowed them to push lanes harder than SK, taking their first Tier 2 tower at 16:12 (SK wouldn't take down their first Tier 2 until 33:10).

There is no such thing as an easy kill on Forg1ven.

2.  Forg1ven is a beast.  With 100% kill participation and 396 CS (roughly 9 CS/minute), Forg1ven was only 690 gold behind Steeelback when Fnatic took the Nexus.  That might not seem like much, unless you consider that Fnatic had a 16,065 gold lead on SK--an average of 3,213 per player.  He's clearly a step above the other ADC's in the European LCS.  However, Forg1ven's "immortal" nature often puts him far at the back line, ready to escape should things turn sour for his team.

They can see EVERYTHING in the jungle--the map is showing the fog of war for Fnatic.

3.  Fnatic have figured out how to reveal the map.  Have you looked at Fnatic's vision control lately?  They're dropping nearly 4 wards a minute, with 168 total wards over the course of the game--compare that to SK's 99.  They also denied 34% of SK's vision (1 of every 3 wards placed), compared to 25% from SK (1 of every 4).  Both YellOwStaR and Reignover had over 1 ward a minute (1.7 and 1.1 respectively), and Huni wasn't far behind at .7.

His hooks--this one on Svenskeren--truly were a death sentence.

4.  YellOwStaR's hooks.  Fnatic didn't have a lot of hard engage in this fight.  Huni could provide zoning with his Equalizer, Reignover could do a Flash knock up every 5 minutes (4 minutes after he bought Distortion for his boots at 28:24), but Fnatic's composition really lacked the power of a Tibbers or Cataclysm.  Not that it mattered much, though, because YellOwStaR's hooks were on point, consistently pulling a target out to push a fight.  This is most evident in the fact that Fnatic dealt 50% more damage to Champions than SK.

That ace in the mid lane, nearly followed by another ace two minutes later.

5.  SK can't help dying.  It took less than 5000 damage to kill three members of SK, and 7000 to kill any of them (nRated was lowest with 3.7k, followed by Svenskeren at 4k, Fox at 4.7k, Forg1ven at 6.6k, and Fredy at 6.7k).  On the other side of the board, the squishiest teammate was YellOwStaR, who fell after an average of 6.8k damage.

That said, SK is still a tough nut to crack.  The game lasted nearly 45 minutes with a 6k gold lead for Fnatic for just over half the game.  SK didn't lose their first Inhibitor until 36 minutes (when they were 10k gold behind), which was later than it took CLG to break into TSM's base (with only a 5k gold lead at that point).

What about the rematch?  SK will need to have an answer for Fnatic's hunting pack style that doesn't leave their team vulnerable to ganks.  Their objective control is still excellent, but Fnatic's push for kills threw off their regular strategy.  If Fnatic wants to keep the wins rolling, they'll need to focus a bit more on shutting down Forg1ven.

Other interesting statistics:

• Fox dishes a lot of damage to Champions, averaging 2k damage for each kill and assist.  2nd place was Forg1ven with 1.886k, and 3rd Steeelback with 1.878k.

• Steeelback gave significantly more hurt than he took, with a 3.05 Damage Done to Damage Taken ratio.  2nd place was Huni at 1.52, and 3rd Forg1ven at 1.34.

• The top half of the map was the place to fight with 23 deaths in the top lane / Baron region, compared to 12 in bot lane / Dragon (4 / 8 respectively).

• Forg1ven had the best kill participation in the match (100%).  2nd place was Huni (83%), and 3rd nRated (79%).