Today’s victory at ESL One Frankfurt SEA regional qualifiers brings Fnatic the fourth LAN ticket for this summer.
Fnatic and MVP Phoenix met in a grand final for the second time in less than a month with a a LAN spot on the line, and in both cases the Malaysian team emerged victorious despite playing without their captain, Yee 'Mushi' Fung Chai.
In the first game of the series Fnatic had a strong start, tricking MVP with an aggressive trilane (Juggernaut, Rubik and a support Enchantress), which put a lot of pressure on MVP’s Phantom Assassin. By the end of the laning phase Sun 'QO' Kim was on par with Fnatic’s supports on net worth and the game looked like it was already lost for his team.
However, the tremendous lead that Fnatic built in the early stages came back to haunt them as they started to feel overconfident. A few unnecessary tower dives and sloppy team fights allowed MVP to close the gold and experience gap with a five man wipe of Fnatic at the 17 minute mark.
Unfortunately for the MVP fans, the perspective of a full comeback was shut down only three minutes later when Fnatic lured Kim 'DuBu' Doo-Young’s team into a Roshan Pit team fight trap where four MVP heroes died in their attempt of contesting the Aegis.
With the Aegis placed on Juggernaut, Fnatic won the next big team fight as well, and the one that followed with a stolen Death Ward by Adam '343' Shah. The MVP Phoenix squad was cornered in its own base and was forced to call out the GG having to defend against mega creeps.
The second game of the series featured a totally different approach from MVP, who swapped Pyo 'MentalProtector' No-a into the carry role on Spectre and sent QO in the mid lane on Windranger. Their draft relied on no less than four strong initiation heroes and that came into play from the first blood, taken at the starting bounty rune.
A way more coordinated MVP managed to fight on their own terms and take advantage of the global presence of Spectre in team fights to outfarm and outmaneuver Wai 'net' Pern Lim’s Gyrocopter, which in the end lead the Koreans to victory.
Although they kept MentalProtector in the carry role for the third match of the series, MVP was not able to take the game score lead and once again were outplayed by Fnatic’s Djardel Jicko 'DJ' Mampusti’s Enchantress, who was creating chaos for the MVP supports from the first minute of the game. Apart from the spectacular performance of DJ, Fnatic had the upper hand with Chong Xin 'Ohaiyo' Khoo’s Nyx Assassin last pick to counter MVP’s Batrider. The game ended in just 23 minutes with a negative 0-4-5 personal score for MVP’s carry Sven.
Fighting for their lives in the grand finals of ESL One Frankfurt SEA qualifiers, MVP went back to their normal player roles and drafted a Juggernaut for QO, with an interesting Faceless Void choice for the offlane given their entire heroes line-up.
Just an in game two, MVP had all the initiation power a team could dream of, plus very strong spells to control the team fights. However, Fnatic had two strong answers: a mid Puck for Yeik Zheng 'Miduan' Nai to silence them all, and a last pick Medusa for Net.
The early part of the game was dictated by continuous skirmishes and fair kill trades, but once DJ’s Bounty Hunter reached level six the kill trades started to be more advantageous for Fnatic, who was able to build a double Dagon on both Puck and Bounty due to the track kills.
The dynamic duo that Puck and Bounty Hunter can become even without a double Dagon, was simply too much for MVP to overcome. Hero after hero, they were continuously picked off, and even though Fnatic got extremely overconfident with their chasing abilities and served MVP with a four man wipe in a cartoonish run after QO’s Void 21 minutes into the game, the Koreans were not able to safely farm their cores.
A five man Dota was not an option either given their lack of BkB’s and so they struggled for 37 minutes to drag the game to a point where either Void or the Juggernaut would make a difference. Unfortunately for them that moment never came and they suffered another loss in front of their biggest rivals in the SEA scene. As a result, Fnatic will be playing on the Commerzbank-Arena at the last big LAN event prior to The International 6.
