▲ Zealots back in March at Western Clash after a map loss. (Photos: Blizzard)

One of the more fascinatingly frustrating stories of the Heroes of the Storm Heroes Global Championship (HGC) scene involves a European team with all the potential in the world who shows flashes of brilliance followed by moments of a letdown.

This Jekyll and Hyde act involving the Zealots has created a paradigm where you can never rule them out of a match due to their talent, but you need to keep your expectations grounded as they can lose to, essentially, anyone.

After pushing Team Dignitas to a thrilling Game 6 at the Western Clash in Poland, raising their expectations for the rest of Phase 1 and 2 in the process, the Zealots have put together a map record of 22-34 since and dropped two of their members.

The new roster consisting of Daniel “Shad” González, Matic “Zarmony” Mikec, Christoph “Cris” Gowitzke, Dob “Quackniix” Engström and Robert “robadobah” Purling is currently sporting a 0-5 match record this phase with a 5-15 map record.

While it’s common for a new roster to need time to learn to play with one another, I wondered: How did we even get to this point?

I recently spoke to Shad, the team’s Support player, who shed some light into what was going on behind the scenes, mainly, personality conflicts:

“It wasn’t always a problem or we wouldn’t have gone as far as we did. It’s just something that happens occasionally but it is a problem. It’s a problem for getting practice, maybe some people had a bad discussion or they’re not getting along very well and that makes it hard to get into scrims sometimes because of personal issues. When the environment is toxic, it’s hard to even do simple things such as giving feedback.”

The two players who were removed from the roster, Adrian “adrd” Wojcik and Maksym “Mopsio” Szczypa, to make room for Quackniix and robadobah, may have needed a change of scenery to improve the Zealots’ morale.

▲ Zealots hope Quackniix's leadership can help right the ship.

Currently, both adrd and Mopsio’s new teams, Method and Leftovers, respectively, are ahead of the Zealots in the standings but Shad isn’t worried:

“I think with time our team will be as good, if not better than before. Our challenge is to make it work before it’s too late so we can make it to the playoffs and make it to BlizzCon, if that’s still possible.”

While two talented players were removed from the roster at the end of Phase 1, the addition of a seasoned veteran, Quackniix, who was removed from Fnatic, adds a great deal of experience to a young roster. His shotcalling abilities, in addition to his experience dealing with colorful personalities, lend well to a team that needs him to be their rock when things go awry.

Shad agrees:

“Skill-wise I think [compared to our old roster] it's similar, like if you look at it individually it’s not better and worse but it’s better in the environment, attitude, in personality. We had some struggles in the past personality-wise with two or three people on any given day depending on the situation, the team is better in that regard.”

With the European group of HGC as competitive as ever, the Zealots will need to dig themselves out of the hole they’ve created for themselves or risk being a flash-in-the-pan and fizzling out into The Crucible.