The story of how Fnatic came to be:

The story starts in the post-TI4 period, after Chai 'Mushi' Yee Fung departed DK for Malaysia - and Titan's poor TI4 performance. Mushi and the players on Titan decided to form a new team named Team Malaysia, reviving the Orange eSports roster which finished third at TI3. All was not smooth sailing for the team as they were unable to repeat their past success and quickly disbanded. However, in March of 2015, the team reformed with three players from the old roster and started dominating the SEA Dota2 scene; by June, the team was noticed and picked up by Fnatic. Fnatic failed to perform at TI5 and subsequently went through roster changes. In the post TI5 shuffle, everyone but Mushi and Khoo 'Ohaiyo' Chong Xin were replaced and in the post Frankfurt Major shuffle, Dominik 'Black^' Reitmeier was dropped and an untested player, Yeik 'MidOne' Nai Zheng, was recruited.

Team roster: (Position 1 to 5 from top to bottom)
Chai 'Mushi' Yee Fung
Yeik 'MidOne' Nai Zheng
Khoo 'Ohaiyo' Chong Xin
 Djardel 'Dj' Mampusti 
Lim 'Net' Wai Pern

After being picked up by Fnatic in June, the team has been through multiple role changes, with Ohaiyo and Mushi frequently playing support, away from their respective main offlane and mid positions. The team's roles stablised when MidOne joined - Mushi took the carry role and Ohaiyo went to the offlane role; the comfort from this stability can be seen in Fnatic's recent performances, not dropping a game against any of the SEA teams. With this being said, these are some of Fnatic's recent achievements and drafting statistics this patch.

Achievements since Frankfurt Major:
3rd - 4th at BTS SEA #2
8th - 16th at WCA 2015
6th - 12th at Starladder|i-League
 

Fnatic's picks and bans in 6.86:

Mushi:

Gyrocopter (Seven games played; 71.4% win rate)

Anti Mage (Two games played; 100% win rate)

Clinkz (Two games played; 50% win rate)

MidOne:

Invoker (Five games played; 60% win rate)

Templar Assasin (Four games played; 70% win rate)

Puck (Three games played; 67% win rate)

*Statistics for MidOne were not available from Datdota and are manually collected.

Ohaiyo:

Dark Seer (Eight games played; 75% win rate)

Tusk (Four games played; 75% win rate)

Nature's Prophet (Four games played; 50% win rate)

Dj:

Rubick (Five games; 80% win rate)

Chen (Four games; 75% win rate)

Kunkka (Three games; 67% win rate)

Net:

Shadow Shaman (Six games; 67% win rate)

Disruptor (Four games; 100% win rate)

Bane (Three games; 33% win rate)

Stats from datdota.com

Fnatic's play style:

Fnatic's players have different play styles that work together well. As an offlaner, Ohaiyo is a more team orientated player, generally trying to disrupt enemy supports and helping the mid lane through ganks and denying runes to the enemy's mid. Doing what he can to slow the enemy down, Net can shine as a support. Net is infamous for hiding in the trees and waiting for an opportunistic solo kill. Most notably, when paired up with an Ancient Apparition and playing Sand King, Net frequently finds the opportunities to solo kill the enemy's carry. Meanwhile, MidOne - who can be inconsistent at times - is supported by Dj and Mushi's abilities to make the space necessary for him to get ahead or come back into the game.

Looking at the hero trends, Fnatic has not been playing quite a few of the popular heroes in this patch, preferring a five man lineup instead of the popular push strategies. In their drafts, Fnatic are picking heroes that their players are comfortable with, for instance, Mushi's Anti Mage, having played the hero in official games since his days in Orange and Net's Shadow Shaman - the fourth most played hero in his DotA career. This style of drafting could possibly be due to a limited hero pool, given the fact that Mushi has recently taken on the carry role and MidOne needing time to polish his skills on various heroes. The usage of less popular heroes might be to Fnatic's advantage as their opponents might not know what to expect.

The players on Fnatic are all highly skilled and can match players in top teams like LGD and EG. However, lacking in drafting and tactical prowess as well as possibly being held back by limited hero pools, the team falls short. Depending on how well these issues are resolved in Fnatic's boot camp prior to the Shanghai Majors, Fnatic could easily make the top eight - or take home another 16th place. It will be interesting to see if Fnatic decides to expand their hero pool to include high skill heroes like Lone Druid and Oracle or be content with just playing their current style better and with different approaches, with heroes like Net's Sand King or Ohaiyo's Centaur Warrunner.

Image of Fnatic taken from Fnatic's Facebook page