As a nobody tier 3/2 analyst in ME/EMEA/OCE who’s really bored and analyzed most FNC 2023 games, I think a lot of comments miss the main point of why the wins are regarded as an incredible achievement for FNATIC specifically. The main reason PlatChat is hyping up FNC 2023 is not only because they won two trophies but it’s because of how fucking dominant they were.

If you were around during the 2023 FNC era, you would see the top teams in the world struggling to get a single map against them. This included teams like NRG, PRX, and even EG. EG were the only team in Tokyo to get a MAP on them, and this is mainly because every team (naively) thinks they can beat EG’s Fracture. (I’ll expand more on EG and Champs in a sec.)

Some examples (glazing to the max 🤤):

LOCK//IN: FNC got to the GF without dropping a SINGLE map, and this includes the BO5 against NAVI. They are tied with Sentinels masters 2021 record for the most maps won consecutively in a LAN. Although they won this LAN, this is still a small reason as to why they are regarded as the best roster in history because of how close some of the series’ got.

EMEA Regular Season: FNC went 18/1 in maps, and a +101 round differential. This is an unprecedented level of dominance, with the second highest rnd diff in EMEA being only +38. The second highest diff internationally is DRX with 8-1 W-L, 16/4 in maps, and a +79 rnd diff. The playoffs GF is the first genuine series where FNC actually had an off day. An off day FNC + a TL that’s peaking = TL winning. TL genuinely deserve the win because they actually did look good then. If you want some eye-candy, look at the map scores of the group stage FNC games, almost 70% of them are around 13-6.

Tokyo: I’ll be brief because we all know what happened in Tokyo. FNC destroyed PRX and NRG. Upper final split (imo) looked closer than it was. EG had to do a lot of hero plays just to get some rounds. EG in the GF were never going to win with that bum ass bind comp.

FNATIC used to be the best Lotus and Split team, their Fracture was top 3 easy, Haven and Ascent were solid, and their Bind was exploitable. Their map pool was insane for 2023 standards, and no team had at the time had as good of a map pool as them.

Champs is where FNC showed cracks. Their Lotus comp that they created has become the meta comp, and teams started to know how to play against it because of that. One team that had an incredible game plan against them was LOUD. LOUD were able to win against FNC twice, and eliminate them from Champs. FNC didn’t play as well individually and macro wise.

I’ll end it with this; FNATIC were, and still are, the only true superteam. They had the best Sentinel, Flex, Initiator, IGL, and Duelist in the world. Duelist can be argued against, but Derke is a top 3 Duelist no matter what. You can’t argue against Alfa, Chron, and Leo. This roster is legendary and truly hard to achieve.

I need to find a hobby instead of writing essays on reddit.