Fnatic - Lose Era. Make it official and give Xcalibur his spot. His pool of heroes may be a bit more limited, but he clearly has the kind of upside you want out of a young player. He's someone that can become a face for the team for many years to come. Let Era get all the peace and quiet he needs...on someone else's dime.
You're a monster.
Honestly even though I'm a big fan of Fnatic the only standout player I think they have is H4nn1, N0tail has been fairly awful lately, Fly has been a bit of a non-factor, Trixi is either great or terrible and lately mostly terrible, Era is a sold player but made a few mistakes at TI (maybe lack of practice), Excalibur after his explosive start pretty much did nothing for them come ESL
I honestly have no idea what they can do with the roster because none of them have really been performing lately, role swaps might be what they need though
I didn't see a lot of their games but the ones I did Era was certainly not the weakest link. Xcalibur is really underwhelming as a replacement. He doesn't have nearly the synergy with the old style of play Fnatic ran and he just folds under pressure once teams put him as a higher priority. When he played with them it forced n0tail to team up with H4nn1 instead of Era and changed their entire strategy.
Personally, I feel the team is more in the same position as Alliance. They need to get their act together and put in more practice. When they're on point, they can beat the top teams. The problem is they're probably the least consistent team in the scene. Replacing Era won't fix that. Trixi will go from feeding the enemy to carrying the team--all in the same best of three. Perhaps they could shake up roles, though I thought they experimented with that post TI3 with incredibly underwhelming results.
I think they should focus more on their flexibility. Shoot for unpredictability to get the edge. Have players move into different roles. H4nn1's support ES is pretty good considering he hasn't had a lot of time in that position. N0tail can play a decent farming position if needed. Expand the player's positions and I think they can really be a top team with the improved drafting possibilities.
If there's one thing to take away from Vici's performance it's that the team with the greater adaptability will win. Fnatic should really strive for that adaptability.
Or they can drop some of the players which they've been playing with for years for an incredibly unstable and likely even more underperforming team.
I don't like Lumi at all. What the hell does he even add? It certainly ain't knowledge. I want Merlini, Synd, and other ex-pros as analysis guys. I was a huge hater of Ayesee but he's gotten better, now I don't like Tobi.
Agreed. I have no idea how Lumi landed not only the main stage but the finals as well. Tobi is awful and the combination with Lumi made it really hard not to run them on mute. At the very least put Synd in there as a compromise.
If Fear doesn't return to playing, I do hope to see more of his casting. I actually enjoyed his stuff for the qualifiers and The Summit. It would also expand the pool of ex-pros to join up with "colour commentary" or whatever we're calling Ayesee, LD, Tobi nowadays. It would be sad to lose Fear from EG, though, but with Mason I'm not convinced they're looking for him to come back.