2022 FNC and VIT- a great battle only to finish behind G2
With the LEC having near confirmed rosters for 2022 following a chaotic offseason, the annual question of relative strength comes front and…
With the LEC having near confirmed rosters for 2022 following a chaotic offseason, the annual question of relative strength comes front and center. Unless EU manages a shocking victory at the next MSI, it’s safe to assume the LEC will have 3 seeds to next year’s North American World Championship. In my mind, this means the best lens to analyze team quality is to put them in 2 baskets- Top 3 Contenders, and, well, not.
Fnatic and Vitality seem to be first in line to dominate the league in 2022- they’ve assembled fan favorite rosters with superstars in just about every role (Labrov should be able to cement his legacy this year). After that, people seem to think MAD, Rogue, and G2 will toil away, far below the power of the top 2. Per the title, I clearly disagree.
MAD and Rogue have both dropped their 2 best players, Humanoid-Carzzy, and Hans-Inspired, respectively. While I could see these teams putting on impressive rookie performances, their rosters simply aren’t experienced enough. I’m not expecting the team that won off of their enigmatic jungler’s perennial jungle diff to win much with a different player who seems to boast the sole accolade of “being Korean”, with the added loss of the kingpin ADC who normally served as their de facto carry. Rogue’s success in 2021 came from having the best jungler and best bot laner in the west by significant margins, and I just doubt Malrang and Comp will match up. MAD, on the other hand, saw its best carry performances from the mid and adc positions. Humanoid was widely considered the best LEC mid for most of the year, and Carzzy-Kaiser has been praised heavily for the synergy they’d built since 2019, with lane dominant play that flourished on the international stage this year.
G2, on the other hand, hasn’t lost its top 2 players. Caps may have suffered from a statistics perspective over the course of the year, but simply watching the games indicates the problem was with team cohesion, not with individual skill. Wunder was too easy to exploit, and Rekkles was at odds with the preferred playstyle of the team. This is where the strength of G2’s roster next year is being unfairly doubted. In 2019, the team won by playing around its topside and naturally smashing jungle, with a bot lane that could pivot and mold to whatever the team needed. These are exactly what they plan to return to next year.
BrokenBlade smashed the LEC from the top lane last year- feeling like a 2020 Alphari (stuck on a 10th place team while performing at a world class level). He’s a strong side player who matches the strengths Wunder brought for the team when the team played at their peak. Everyone remembers Wunder picking Pyke and Neeko in top lane, pushing his opponents to face champions they couldn’t deal with. We’ve seen BB pull out champions like Darius and Urgot, and even his namesake of Riven, when most other top laners wouldn’t touch them. He’s a lane dominant, but flexible player who will fit well with G2’s “flex pick” playstyle while also being a stylistic match for Jankos’s hyper-aggressive playstyle.
The elephant in the room, however, was always the bot lane. Flakked and Targamas have received an incredibly unfair amount of hate, with most saying that neither are a general upgrade on the certifiable legends who they are replacing. Flakked has taken the brunt of the community’s vitriol, having far fewer fans of his own compared to the Karmine Corp aura around his lane partner. He was also a shocking choice, considering that the LEC bot roster is so stacked that Rekkles, Jackspektra, and Crownshot were denied spots, but a middling ERL carry player is given a spot on the greatest organization the west has ever seen?
It is those G2 fans, the ones who claim that Flakked is unworthy of a starting position, who seem to have forgotten 2019’s winning formula that I mentioned earlier. Despite Perkz and MikyX being held in high esteem as part of G2’s success that year, neither of their playstyles were those of veteran players in their positions. In fact, Perkz played a lot like a rookie- able to pull out a wide array of champions, playing a flexible side lane that absorbed the pressure that the rest of the map created. MikyX has spent his entire career as the epitome of the “W-Key” mentality- he was always roaming mid or top to continue their snowball or flexing odd champs to push for a win in the bot lane. If you need a duo lane that could match this back burner style that plays for the team, you aren’t looking at players like Upset or Hans Sama, who will look to smash the game from their side of the map- it makes sense that these rookie players could have actually fit G2’s roster.
After all, it makes no sense for G2 to make moves this bold unless they are fully certain. Even if Miky doesn’t find a tier 1 team for 2022, it doesn’t change that the G2 2021 roster was the strongest it has ever been on paper. The players haven’t lost their skill, they just didn’t fit together. It seems like the decisions have been made to prioritize cohesion and synergy, which were what took the team to their peak in 2019, rather than brute force strength like every fan of the LEC hoped this year’s roster could have been.
But, how are these players going to outdo VIT and FNC? Well, one simply needs to look at the rosters themselves. There’s no doubt that FNC have the best bot lane- Upset and Hylli are a terrifying prospect who I hope can clash against TL’s Hans Sama-CoreJJ rumored duo at worlds (or MSI) next year, because I sincerely doubt anyone will offer a domestic challenge to them. However, FNC had this bot lane this year too, and it was basically the only look they were able to offer. VIT and G2 will look to play through their topside, while FNC is likely to put Wunder on a flexible bruiser or tank and look to transition mid pressure to bot advantage. I just think neither of these can work against G2.
Caps-Jankos are the only returning mid-jungle duo out of these 3 teams, and are far and away stronger than the other two- Razork and Humanoid had good years in 2021, but both were basically guaranteed resources by nature of their teams and their playstyles. Humanoid has never looked as good as his recent form (which dipped noticeably for worlds), but he had the advantage of playing against Upset-Hylli, meaning he had a bot lane that played to “not lose”, instead of to win. VIT, on the other hand, has a bot lane that is certainly strong, but one that I see on the level of Jezu-Treatz, especially with Carzzy’s underwhelming tail end of 2021. Alphari is the shining light of this team, and it will likely be a Selfmade-camps-top gameplan for most of the year, which, just like FNC, is just 1 very strong look. Also just like FNC, their jungler is coming out of a middling team that gave him high resources and priority by nature- Lider wasn’t winning lane anyway, he might as well move for crab. Then again, Perkz lost lane to home grown NA mids, so maybe it will be just like 2021 VIT for Selfmade.
Overall, I think the hype around the two EU superteams is grossly misguided. The last (and only) time a western superteam worked was when all 5 of the players were unparalleled in flexibility from champ select to playstyle. Players that spent 2021 getting very good with one highly impressive look simply do not fit on teams with others who cannot bend to their style easily. After all, if the rigidity of players like Humanoid or Selfmade starts to get in the way, you might have to compromise Upset or Alphari, and that’s when it all starts to go sideways.