Foggy is 26 years old today. How far is he from his first world championship?

Original Author: War3station
Translator: GLH

There is not much suspense, even though Linguagua was boasting himself before the game, he said he will win Night Elf and get the championship. However, when he actually played, he still found out that Foggy were an insurmountable mountain for him. The Championship of Xiaoy cup in this week still does not belong to him.

Since 2015, Foggy has been improving as fast as rocket. This Ukrainian boy put all his energy on Warcraft and practices 10 hours a day, he has become a first-class player step by step.

Today is Foggy’s 26th birthday, it is reasonable to say that this is the late stage for an e-sports professional player, but considering the particularity of the Warcraft III, and Foggy debut himself on this circle so late, Foggy’s future is full of uncertainty. After WGL Winter in last year, Foggy said that he would become the best Night Elf in the future. Can he do it?

The data won’t lie, Foggy’s result make him like a super player!

In fact, as early as 2015, Foggy had the chance to play in the major tournament, however, he didn’t make it, he didn’t go to Cologne, Germany to participate in the WCA European regional finals, because of the problem of visa.

Luckily, this incident did not affect Foggy’s mentality, he saved his energy until the first time of being in offline tournament, in this time, he made it and he shocked the world. In the group stage, he defeated Lyn and advanced to the Ro8, this made everyone recognized his unusual potential. Even though Lyn had just returned to Warcraft III, and he also hadn’t recovered his shape to the best, but the ability to knock down a Super player was enough to let Foggy to highlight his strength.

As expected, after that, Foggy didn’t stop his progress. In the GCS Fall 2016, he defeated TH000 to win the third place, and another Super player fell under his punch. By the time of the WGL Winter 2017, Foggy had already stood on the stage of the Grand Finals. After seven games against TH000, Foggy lost the series and the championship.

A year later, Foggy made a comeback. After winning the game versus Lawliet and Infi, he advanced to the Grand Finals again. In this time, his opponent was the Legend, Moon. Of course, Foggy seems relatively young compared to Moon’s experiences, and he once again missed the chance to climb to the top.

WGL (and GCS) is currently the highest level Warcraft III tournament. Foggy played 6 season, and he won 2 runner-ups, 2 third places and reached to Ro8 for twice. The stability of the results are as good as other Super players. Compared to other Night Elf players, Foggy is slightly worse than Moon only.

Similarly, in some online major tournaments, Foggy’s results are also very eye-catching, he got the runner-up in OTOMADS cup, Shen Kui Cup, and the fourth place in Thunder Fire Cup. This is very hard for him to get with the ping problem.

Unlike the Chinese players who making income with streaming, most of Foggy’s incomes depend on the prizes of tournament, so he keeps practicing with tournaments, so his shape has been maintained very well. In the case of getting hungry when you can’t get the results, Foggy is able to withstand the pressure and get good grades. It is really admirable.

Lost at the starting line, dropped into a nightmare by Infi’s four races

Despite Foggy many impressive results, if he wants to be a true Super player, he still has a lot of resistance.

First of all, he is a Ukrainian, (There is no discrimination against nationality. We are talking about his network situation.) the delay and ping issue will make you like playing a different game, the delay is undoubtedly a big problem for the effect of practicing. Although he can come to China for training in advance for the offline tournaments every year, he still lacks of good environment to practice in such a short period of time. Additionally, there are many events only invite Chinese and Korean players, Foggy has lost a lot of opportunities to improve himself.

Second, the environment of  European Warcraft III is not as active as China and South Korea. The language problem prevents him from communicating with other similar level players. Numerous facts show that those who lock themselves and don’t communicate with others will not be able to improve and complete the progress, you have to improve with constant communication. At this level, Foggy suffered another disadvantage.

In addition, the shorter time to contact Warcraft III is also a major disadvantage. Moon, Infi, TH000, Fly and other players are all veterans of the field for more than 10 years, and Foggy has played too few offline tournaments and that makes his offline experience is seriously insufficient.

Just one year before, Foggy was defeated by Infi, a player can play with four races. In the face of Infi’s unique style, Foggy looked stunned, once he entered the unknown domain, he was often at a loss, copying Moon’s strategies can solve a lot of problems, but certainly not all the problems.

Of course, we all know that Foggy has ambitious goal and unremitting efforts. But at the same time, only such inspiration couldn’t solve all problems.

The world champion dream might be difficult for Foggy

Look at Foggy’s results in major tournament, he always got into Top 8, in addition to very few games, Foggy can qualify from the group stage almost every time, but he is always a little worse than the final champion. The gap between dreams and reality is sometimes so cruel, in the world of Warcraft III, the gap is like the distance between Foggy and Moon, we describe the Moon as “great player”, but we describe Foggy as “good player”, there are several reasons for this difference, among these reasons, talent might be the key role.

E-sports are so cruel sometimes: your effort determines your lowest limit, but your talent determines the highest limit. What kind of level a player can achieve, the thing that comes with it is his talent. And this is exactly what Foggy is facing. When we are talking about diligence and hard work, there may not be many people who can surpass Foggy, and this also let him has stepped from a normal player to his standing nowadays. Advancing to the top 8 and top 4 in big tournament, or winning the minor cups and tournaments are not a problem for Foggy. However, he has reached this position and level, and if he wants to go one step further, there will be only one step named “S-level”. You can see the names Infi, 120, Moon, TH000 and Lyn, what Foggy needs is only a “world champion.”

Can he do it? It is still too early to draw conclusions, but everyone has seen something recently. After the release of patch 1.30.4, Foggy has been losing to Human many times, and he was helpless in the face of TH000 and Infi. In the face of Lyn, he has only very few wins even in patch 1.30.1. Moreover, he was defeated by Check in the mTw Legend Cup. Without the advantage from the patch, Foggy seems once again lost the strength for the world champion.

Foggy grew from normal people to a star. This story is inspirational and inspiring. But it also has a lot of people who don’t mention the other side. In this side, in Warcraft III, no one seems to treat him as an S-class player or a future S-class player.

In the interview, Moon praised 120 and Life. He even said that he wanted to help Life grows step by step because he saw his youth in Life. But many experts, including Moon and Infi, they have never said that Foggy has talent. In many times, Foggy’s style is relatively fixed, he is lacking flexibility.

Let use XiaoY Cup finals as an example, Foggy started with double Ancient of War and went for expansion, after the expansion was finished, he would go to attack for sure, and he did it every round. Such a routine, ignoring the timing of situation was like a high school student who directly used an example to write in his writing exam, when he faces a great player, the games will be very hard for Foggy.

When Foggy played WGL for the first time, Foggy said that his goal is to be a world champion. From the current situation, it looks really hard for him.

Foggy’s comment to this article (on Wechat)

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