The Dallas Fuel and other Overwatch League teams have weathered a bizarre start to the season that has forced months of practice without games. Adding on to that was the introduction of hero pools, which has kept teams on their feet and forced significant preparation and flexibility.

Team Envy content creator and former Boston Uprising star Connor “Avast” Prince hopped on a call with The Dallas Morning News to discuss what those things look like for the Fuel and OWL teams.

Answers have been edited for clarity and length.

Q: As a former pro yourself, what do you suspect an OWL team would look like in its first official match in nearly two months?

Avast: “From a team perspective you’d hope they would come out the gates about the same. You’d think two months off stage was just two months more of practice, but that’s not the case always. Now for the Fuel at least, they were expecting to use their practicing facilities. Same with the San Francisco Shock. They were expecting to use their facilities at home, but with the shelter-in-place orders, now they are using personal setups in their apartments or in a team house not having stage time.

“We could see radically different performances than we expected. For the Shock, I’d expect them to be a top team but it’s tough to tell anything with this weird cycle we are in. At this point we still don’t know how half the teams look because a lot haven’t played or only played a couple times. I think at this point, you could count a team like the Shock or Fuel as having zero games played.”

Q: How do you think so much practice time can help or hurt a team like the Fuel or San Francisco Shock?

Avast: “I think the way to view a team is a lot like viewing a police force or military. If you go so long without a major crime, and then you have a robbery that takes place, they may not be completely prepared for that scenario because they have limited experience with it.

“Teams here could be the same way, and with esports it might be amplified because these are often very young players that know nothing other than playing video games. They are put into a spot where they aren’t playing and they get into a rut and in the routine of not doing anything or requiring mental preparation. It’s very easy to fall back into bad habits, so I would say extended periods away from the stage, or matches, are never good because you can always go back into bad habits as individual players or as teams.”

Q: Is it safe to say, even though these teams scrimmage each other all the time, that those types of matches don’t hold the weight because it can’t punish your record?

Avast: “I think that’s extremely fair to say. Teams across the league are reluctant. Last week was the exhibition matches showing off the new hero, Echo, that held no stakes. Teams don’t want to play or be there because it’s a waste of time other than potentially revealing what gameplay could look like later. Not having that pressure or urgency that you have to perform changes the entire mentality of practice.”

Q: You’ve seen some hero pool weeks now, so how does the quality of play compare to when you played with the Boston Uprising?

Avast: “‘Quality of play’ feels like a term thrown around by people saying ‘this is what the game is supposed to look like,’ as if you are a factory line worker, but with video games. You repeat the same thing over and over again and that’s what can be perfect. But even when we were doing that teams were still making mistakes. We’d argue for such a long time when teams that ran comps for long periods of time that they lost ability over time because they were so grounded to the dirt and juxtaposed an opposition of what play was supposed to be.

“Hero pools allow for teams to go into different metas that are good for them. I’ve talked with coaches that said ‘This is a great week for us, we feel really confident.’ Or next week they feel really bad about it. You could argue we may not see such perfect play execution, but the reality is we didn’t see that in non-hero pool play. We would see teams get low in morale because of it.

"Hero pools allow teams that have flexible players or play in different ways or coaches that are heavily influencing teams to learn fundamental gameplay. So personally I think the level of play has increased and has called for staff and players to up their game.”

Q: What do you expect to see from the Fuel lineup-wise? Should they be looking for a consistent six, or is it OK to have it change week-to-week?

Avast: “I’ve always been of the opinion, and most coaches have been this way too, that it is far easier to maintain a core than it is to have a rotation roster. We’ve only seen one team with any sort of success doing that, which was Seoul last year where they had two separate squads almost. Even then it was a mixed success. We’ve seen other teams with some success like the Gladiators, rotating out their DPS players. But they didn’t rotate anything else, though.

“Based on what I’ve seen teams have done before, that consistent group of people whether it’s four or six guys playing all the time was better. With hero pools we are spending so much time catching up each week and you never really know which heroes will be banned so you can’t just send someone to practice when you don’t know what the meta is going to really be. I think it’s far easier to maintain a core, but the ideal scenario is going to be something like the Shock. They have very good players in every role on top of having specialists and a staff that can utilize those guys.”

Find more esports stories from The Dallas Morning News here.

Find more Fuel stories from The News here.