League of Legends World Championship roster was nearly completed as LEC Regional Finals concluded. Fnatic and Splyce both earned their spots at the competition, the only question was who would be the #2 seed for Europe.
LEC Regional finals have concluded with a 3-0 sweep for Fnatic but the matchup was not that one-sided. The first game in best of five was incredibly close for the first 23 minutes, for example.
Splyce opened up the draft phase by focusing on improving their chances in the bot lane since three out of five bans were aimed at Hylissang's champion pool. The other two bans were Broxah's Lee Sin and Nemesis' Twisted Fate.
There was initially nothing to separate FNC and SPY since both teams traded kills all over the map while the gold difference was minimal and insignificant. All of this changed in a fateful team fight 23 minutes in when Fnatic almost aced Splyce in large part thanks to Nemesis' fantastic usage of defensive items on Cassiopeia.
Naturally, a Baron buff followed, after which FNC never let their domination slip as the scary snake kept melting SPY time and again, until 30th minute when FNC closed the match out.
SPY apparently didn't figure Nemesis' Cassiopeia is a force to be reckoned with during the draft phase for the second game. It was disastrous for them overall as they did not only let Nemesis have the scary snake but also left the Yuumi/ Garen combo open for FNC's bot lane.
Needless to say, these proved to be the driving force behind FNC's rampaging performance. Cassiopeia didn't go 10-1 this game but there were several plays that marked it, such as the terrifying instant kill during a gank, coming out alive and victorious out of a 1v2 situation, massive stun on three SPY players and a 1v3 in SPY base where Nemesis still managed to kill the opposing team's Vayne before going down himself. Fnatic closed this match out sooner, roughly at 28 minutes.
If SPY's draft phase was a disaster in Game 2, the one in the final match was a deliberate jump into the abyss. Once again, they didn't ban Cassiopeia but more importantly - they didn't ban Twisted Fate either. The analyst desk SPY are in for a world of hurt.
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This premonition didn't become apparent immediately as the teams went toe to toe for almost 20 minutes. It was then that FNC's hallmark zipping around the map occurred and they started snowballing in quick fashion. Nemesis didn't miss an opportunity to show some by sidestepping Shen's taunt in the meantime.
From that point, there was no coming back for Splyce and Fnatic choked the life out of them in less than five minutes for a clean sweep. Nemesis undoubtedly earned the series MVP award and Europe's teams have never looked stronger prior to the start of a World Championship. Now it only remains to be seen how well they perform on the international stage and how far G2 and FNC can go.
Do the fan dreams of the European giants meeting in the finals have a chance of coming true?
