Countless ESL tournaments, UNGL, FnaticPlay, Dreamhack Winter and SteelSeries Worldcup to name only some tournaments - a winning percentage above 95% (training games included): Fnatic's HoN squad once looked unbeatable, untouchable and performed trendsetting games.
The dominating execution January in the last sequence of the long-winded event, the Worldcup, destroyed hopes of faithful [SK] and [EG] fans all around the world. Forward a bit, more precisely to March, 2011. Whereas most teams still fall to the HoN team, you can find a few second place finishes, even an early tournament exit here and there. "Random" teams take maps from Fnatic and the first fans scream "slump" and search a new team to cheer two or three weeks for. (Hey, atleast we held you longer than any other team!)

So what has happened? Did the team suddenly drop skill? Did we lose motivation? Maybe the other teams became better, finally caught up and adjusted quicker to new patches and changes such as the Realignment Patch?

A bit of everything. It is certain to say that the feeling of dominating the competition makes hungry for more while giving you something good for the endless hours of training and theorycrafting you spent. Yet, surprisingly, there seem to be limits for this kind of motivation and the Grand Finals of the Worldcup apparently made us reach them. Some of the strategic elements we prepared for [EG] in the Winnerbracket Finals weren't even necessary. Then [SK] proved to be the better team and we kinda simply threw them "away" in the Grand Finals with the same effect: with all due respect to them, the games were walkovers and the victory tasted somewhat stale. You can only show so much skill as the enemy allows you to. That works in both directions.

The HoN team lost motivation overall. The games felt too easy, World of Warcraft more interesting and so did other activities. Why train while you could go out when it isn't necessary anyways? A few bumps in the road were treated as flukes and it took several weeks to figure out that we lost our fierce grip on the scene. Yes, the other teams did not only catch up, we also simply fell behind.
Some of the losses might have been caused by a bad draft by Tal (Fly), yet the picking phase actually still won us most of the games during that time. Even though the scene was shifting in different directions due to the many change heavy patches, Tal always had a commanding lead over other drafters or teams that picked together. From there on it was execution, natural skill but only with sparks of the brilliance that once was our signature.
Interestingly enough the team that wasn't used to defeat (atleast not in such a dimension and that often) somewhat kept together their spirit. Naturally there were arguments and a bit of bad blood here and there but everything within healthy measures.

Okey, so we suck and barely stay in all the tournaments we participate.
And now?

A change happens. People returned and started treating HoN as serious as "back then". Gamer's Assembly might not have been the best example since five Codex couriers don't exactly showcase the other teams' skilllevel, yet it was a start and more importantly: it was a LAN event. There's nothing better than an offline event to weld together a team and regain motivation.

There we are. One week ago we played six hours of tournaments and lost only one game. Yesterday we beat [EG] 2:1. Admittedly the second game's performance was disappointing but we're far away from the old perfection.

But watch out, folks - we are on the way.
Once again.