A third-place Winter finish was not a disastrous start to the season for Fnatic, though the side had serious hopes for an LEC title with the bot lane additions of Upset and Mikyx leading many to label the roster a superteam.
Looking to try again in Spring, the team started perfectly with a 2-0 opening day win against GIANTX, though that was followed up by a disappointing 0-2 collapse against usual bottom feeders SK Gaming. We spoke to Fnatic jungler Iván “Razork” Martín after the loss.
Esports.net: What are your immediate thoughts on the SK series?
Razork: Well, we just discussed as a team what went wrong and stuff and obviously pretty disappointed. But we are not like- I’m trying to not take it to heart because [it’s] just another BO3.
There are gonna be a lot more games in the future, so it’s for sure some games that we can learn from. And yeah, it’s pretty obvious that we had a really bad day and everything just felt very off.
Lee Jones: You talked on broadcast over the weekend about how broken Naafiri is right now, but you guys didn’t manage to win with it in game one.
What do you think was the issue there?
Razork: I think the champ is, for sure, really strong. We have been playing a few scrims with her and we had pretty good results. But the champ is really hard to get in solo queue so for sure it’s not the champ that we have the most practice on.
I feel like our draft was not ideal to play with her, we were almost full AD damage against a few tanks so it was a hard one to execute. But I think we also played really bad.
Long-time GrabbZ collaborator joined Fnatic during the break as an assistant coach. What has he brought behind the scenes?
Razork: For now he’s in charge with Gax to do the reviews and making sure that we are all trying to be more mindful about tempo and how we want to play mid game and objective setup — even though today we did not show that.
I think we are already improving a lot on that, at least in scrims. And I think against GIANTX we also did quite good stuff.
Image credit: Riot Games
Lee Jones: I saw an interview you did with Jordi before the season, saying that you had two ‘bad cops’ with GrabbZ and Gaax.
Is Duffman a good cop?
Razork: He is for sure the chill guy. For the time that I’ve been with him, it’s just impossible to get mad at him. Just the way he talks and his voice is pretty chill. So it’s like a very good guy to be around. And he’s also very smart about the game. So yeah, I like him.
Lee Jones: In that interview, you talked about the contrast between Nightshare being very friendly with the players last year and GrabbZ being a bit more authoritative.
How are you finding that environment now that you’re a few months into the season?
Razork: For sure, I feel like GrabbZ has much more authority, I would say, in the team. But I also feel like he has a lot of moments where he is cracking jokes and laughing with us. So I don’t think he’s extremely strict. But yeah, I think he’s serious when we have to get serious. I think so far he has been amazing.
Lee Jones: I imagine the third-place finish in Winter was satisfying, though losing to KC in playoffs — the eventual winners — doesn’t sound so bad.
Did the team feel the need to reflect on that and find things to fix ahead of Spring?
Razork: I feel like it was a great experience to play BO5 Fearless, go to five games and go deep into the champion pool. It was a nice experience. But of course we were hoping to go farther than just third place losing to KC.
I think the change that we are planning to do is just, I guess, BO1s are out. So we’re already practicing for BO3s Fearless. I don’t have a lot of things that I think we changed. We just had a little break and go back to work with new meta, no lane swaps. So yeah, I would say that’s the most important stuff that happened.
Are you pleased that Fearless is permanent now? Do you think it suits Fnatic?
Razork: Yeah, I think Fearless brings a lot of spiciness to the competition. I feel like before Fearless it was kind of fine to just not have Fearless, but I think once you have it one split, I think it makes sense to just keep going with it because the game just feels a bit boring without it, at least in competitive. Seeing the same champs over and over or the same draft but with one champion different can be very, very good because you can get really good at that exact champ and be a perfectionist. But yeah, I think with Fearless you just need to have more champion pool and be open to not have the best compositions.