Vitality’s mortal weakness as a team all year has been their inability to come back from any sort of early game deficit. And today, with the help of their new jungler Mateusz “Kikis” Szkudlarek, they came back after dropping first blood to Fnatic and crushed the defending EU LCS champions.
This is the second time Kikis has helped the team overcome their early game shortcomings since he joined last week, and although that sucks for Erberk “Gilius” Demir who is competing for the starting jungle spot, it’s great for Vitality.
Although it’s true that Vitality and Kikis performed very well, Fnatic also definitely floundered around a bit throughout this game. Paul “sOAZ” Boyer teleported too late from his lane into a fight in his own team’s jungle on the bot side. His top lane opponent, Lucas “Cabochard ” Simon-Meslet on Vitality, was there right away, and that was the difference that Vitality needed to win the fight.
There were other strange incidents like that, such as Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau failing to use his Galio ultimate during a couple all-in fights. Overall, though, the blame can’t really be placed on any one Fnatic player in particular (except maybe Martin “Rekkles” Larsson). it was just a shoddy performance on all fronts.
With that, Vitality is poised to continue pushing for a number two seed in the playoffs. Their next game is tomorrow at 12pm CT against Unicorns of Love.
