FNC Upset on Fnatic's stage problem: "Maybe people put too much pressure on themselves"

Fnatic's Summer keeps getting worse. A 2-0 loss to Karmine Corp leaves them 0-3, with no wins and few answers after a year spent hovering around sixth. RFT.GG caught up with Fnatic ADC Elias "Upset" Lipp after the defeat to talk about a team that wins in scrims and freezes on stage, what Soboro has changed, why Fnatic haven't gone mage bot, and what's realistically left of their season.

What are your first assessments of the game? Where do you think the difference was made?

The first game was somewhat close for the most part. They played the dragon timings very well, and we were pretty disconnected in some moments, which led to us falling behind. Early game in the jungle too — we got behind from the crab situation where Syndra took the crab. That put Razork in a really difficult situation, which led to them snowballing the jungle a lot.

And when the jungle is behind, the whole map has a harder time, because you can't really make proactive plays. There was some improvement in the next game: we had a team comp that relied on snowballing and roaming, playing that style with Ziggs just wave-clearing. But we fell behind early, which made the game very hard to play, because we're supposed to be the ones getting ahead.

You're starting the split 0-3. How would you explain that difficult start?

This whole year hasn't been easy for us — we've been around sixth or seventh for most of it. We're just not very good right now. We dropped the ball against Heretics, in my opinion, and against KC as well; today was somewhat winnable, though I think they were clearly better in a lot of aspects. So we're just not playing that well, and that's the explanation for why we're not getting wins. It sounds very simple, but that's the reality right now. We need to see what we can do.

The scrim results are apparently good, but you said in an interview that Fnatic have a kind of block on stage, with everyone going into autopilot. How do you explain that, even with experienced players like you and Razork?

It affects everyone differently, and there's no point pointing out individuals — it can change from day to day. But as a team, if you win a lot more in practice than on stage, there's probably something wrong: either with the way you're practising, or with how you're playing on stage. So it's not about experience for me.

Maybe people put too much pressure on themselves — I think they feel they have to play a lot better than they do, and when things don't go well on stage, they feel really bad about it.

I could imagine that's usually what happens when you do well in scrims and worse on stage. But I'm not sure.

Soboro came in for Empyros ahead of Summer. From inside the team, do you feel that change was what you needed to lift the dynamic?

We definitely needed a change in some regard, but it wasn't like Empyros was the only problem and everyone else was playing great — otherwise we wouldn't have been in that position in the first place. It was difficult to play around top when the laning maybe wasn't as good compared to other laners, when you have to play very volatile matchups, so we had to make our game plan more streamlined around mid and bot side. Now with Soboro, you can see his laning in a vacuum is up there with all of them — so far on stage he hasn't had much trouble. But that doesn't mean all our team problems are fixed. There's always a different set of problems with a different roster, so we still have to figure it out. So far, though, I think Soboro is playing quite well.

The meta is pushing mages bot side, even if ADCs are coming back on this patch. You hadn't played a single mage until that Ziggs in game two — why?

It depends a lot on the draft structure, on what value you see in flexing it and counterpicking it. As you can see in the LCK, the percentage of mages played was around 10%. It's more for draft flexibility and creating a game plan around the roaming support, because it's hard to blind supports like Camille and Shen — if you just have to lane with them you can somewhat do it, but those supports mostly benefit from roaming and using the catch-up XP to get back into the game while putting a solo laner or the jungler out of it. That was the main point of the mage meta, I think.

Last split we were doing pretty well in the bot lane too, which also meant we didn't necessarily want to force it when it isn't the most dominant meta — you can see most people are still playing AD carries. Today we tried the Ziggs with the Shen, where it's all about leaving bot alone and roaming a lot. It's one game, so sample size doesn't matter. But with what Riot has been saying about the next patch, I do think it's going to be much more AD carry-focused again, which I prefer.

Not that I don't like playing the mages, but it's definitely most fun for me to play. And I think every ADC's agree with me.

Funnelling resources bot side has been Fnatic's signature for a while now. Don't you think it's become too readable for opponents?

No — I think that's just a misconception about how the game works. Resources are given to a lane that's winning, because that creates pressure. Bot lane is all about pushing your lane so you can get dragons, so you can swap first for Grubs. That's been the case for a long time. With the ranged champions being so dominant right now with the roaming supports it's different, but it's Fearless — it changes from game to game. If you're playing a volatile ranged matchup bot and something like a bruiser top, of course it's much more about bot lane, but that's just how the game is supposed to be played, not a specific Fnatic strategy.

If the matchups on top are super volatile, of course you need to invest more resources there — but for that your top laner needs to be able to play them, and laning-wise I think Soboro is doing quite well with that. Mostly the jungler benefits from going to a lane that's pushing, because he wants to be able to play around it. It's a lot of give and take between the resources you give and what they provide in return: pressure, moving first, vision, dragons, invading camps. It's not just that you put resources in one place and that guy benefits — it works for the whole team.

Before the winter split, GrabbZ said that with more voices in the room it would stop being you against Razork and become a question of finding the best play together. Has this team actually found a way to pull in the same direction? Because that's not what it feels like right now.

In the end, a team plays well if every individual knows what to do themselves. Of course it's also important that people are on the same page — but

We're missing a lot of details in games, which causes us not to be on the same page, or not to be there at the right time with the right people.

The way we talk to each other is definitely fine; we're trying a lot to get on the same page. But the individual gameplay also just needs to be better if you want to play a good team game, because the team game is built on how individuals make decisions.

Last question — what's the realistic objective for Fnatic right now? Is it still Worlds first and foremost, or more of a step-by-step approach?

With this start, it would be foolish to think we're favourites to go to Worlds or anything. We really just have to focus on the next weeks. The split isn't very long, so you need to focus on every best-of-three like it could be your last. Make sure we do our very best — and in the end, if it isn't enough for what we initially wanted, then that's life. But we have to do everything we can to make the fans proud, to salvage this year a little, and also for ourselves, so we feel we gave our best.