Filling the shoes of anyone in any job is hard. When you are set to replace all-star mid laner Enrique Cedeño Martinez (xPeke, now retired), it’s more daunting than ever imagined. Luckily for League of Legends team Fnatic, great scouting and coaching produced one of the most underrated mid laners to come out of Europe in a while.
Joining Fnatic from fellow EU team H2K, Fabian Diepstraten (Febiven) has produced incredible results in the year he has been on the team. Before joining Fnatic, Febiven was known for his fantastic mechanics on popular character Riven. After being picked up, Fnatic and Febiven ended second in the standings for the regular season and ended up winning the playoffs against Unicorns of Love.
Coming in as an unknown mid laner, he destroyed his enemies, ending the split with a 7.83 kill/death ratio in his debut split (the next closest was SK Gaming’s Fox, with 5.03). After his first split, Febiven and company were invited to the mid-season invitational in Tallahassee, Florida. Although they were knocked out in the semi-finals, Fnatic took famous Korean team SKTelecom to the full five matches. In these matches, Febiven became the first person ever to kill legendary player Faker twice in a 1v1 fight in the same game.
Killing the “Un-killable Demon King” Faker must have given Febiven a huge boost in confidence, as Fnatic became the first LCS team to have a flawless season, going 18–0 in the regular season and not dropping a single game until the playoff finals against rival team Origen.
Although not showing an incredible performance at the 2015 World Championships, by the end of the tournament Febiven ended third overall for minions killed per minute. 2016 has not been as kind to Febiven. Losing three players and bringing in three new, Fnatic now sits at fifth in the 2016 Spring Split regular season with an 8–6 win/loss ratio. If Febiven and Fnatic hope to repeat their 2015 showings, the team will need to perfect their synergy and upset the current leaders.