By Blaze

Admittedly, we all saw it coming when the CEO of hearts, Pew, joined a team for HoN Tour Season 3, but since Cycle 3 it is official: Team Excellent is back in action! Taking over the old spot of Instant Reflex, Pew and his comrades are now roaming the Gold Division in an effort to make it to Diamond as fast as possible and to return the veterans of earlier HoN Tour Season to their destined place of work and glory. Currently, xCet, who are now calling themselves "Not Excellent" (perhaps to not raise false hopes and expectations), has the following players signed up along with Pew: [xCet]NoX, [Sync]Panny, [TKAG]Knymaan, [xCet]Massera, [xCet]FIbEli3 and [xCet]fajN`. Quite impressive indeed. So what is this team of returning stars up to this cycle and in the future? To find out, here is an interview with their carry-player NoX about all these things and more.

Legendary HoN Carry Player - NoX

Blaze:It's been a while since we have seen you in Heroes of Newerth. How does it feel to be back?

Nox: It feels good to be back playing some HoN again. When I quit, the game felt boring and static and I didn’t have any fun. Now after my break the game excites me again and the meta game is very open.

Your team got dropped to Losers Bracket in the Gold Division pretty early when playing against [Ogr]Shrek is Love. What happened there?

I thought you were gonna ask this question and I have two simple answers. My team has great potential when we have a good atmosphere, and the same is true for the opposite side of the spectrum. So that is gonna be our biggest working point to get consistency. The other reason is that we simply underestimated Shrek is Love. They were much better that we thought and they played two tight strategies.

More young and eager teams are waiting for you down the line in Gold and in Diamond. Will they be a real challenge and which of the new teams do you consider to be a real threat to your team?

Tbh I don’t really know much about the new teams and I haven’t watched a lot of HoN when I was gone, but I think there are a lot of decent teams to watch out for. In my opinion the biggest teams ahead are obviously Sync and then I think Rea and Team USA are the best atm. BMG could be really strong if they would practice a bit more.

Where do you think is your team currently at in the power rankings? And where do you expect to end up when the Season finishes?

Its still early to say because we haven’t even faced all the top teams but I am confident that we can take games off anyone right now and with a bit more practice we can be one of the teams to beat. I dont want to set a specific number on our placement after the season, but if everything works out we will break the top three.

After you disappeared for a while, HoN has changed significantly, especially with some carry heroes. What do you think about those changes and are there any new favourites you like to play?

I really like the changes and especially the new carry heroes. I think both Klanx and Tarot will be really strong if they are gonna be released into tournament mode as they are today. One of my favourite heroes of all time is Silhouette, and now she is back stronger than ever. I even would go so far to say that Silhouette is a bit overpowered with the new ultimate.

Which heroes still need to be worked on in your opinion?

This is always a big question because I feel like there are a lot of heroes that doesn’t have a place in competitive and on the other side they are really good in TMM, but the heroes that comes to mind are Revenant, Cthulhuphant and Silhouette. They seem a bit strong in some situations.

It's been around 2 years now since you and the others from QsQ 357 started to make a name for yourselves. Do you miss the old times sometime?

Of course I can think back to the old times and the motivation that drove me back then, but overall my life is much better now but the game itself was really fun to play back then and the atmosphere in the competitive scene was really positive.

You still call yourself the Carry-Q on your twitch stream. Have you thought about a revival of the old team, at least for another legendary 24 hour stream? I'm pretty sure many of your old fans would love it.

I have actually been in contact with Jascha (Nova) and Chris (Style) recently and who knows we might throw something together here, but I don’t think it will be 24 hours we are old men now.

Since our last interview, have you missed a single creep yet?

When the sun rises from the west I will miss a creep.

Any shoutouts?

I would like to thank all my fans and the support they have shown when I came back, thats it and thank you Blaze for taking the interest in putting this interview together here.


If you want to watch this team of "old men" in action, this Saturday will be their next match when they play against [PI]Prime Icarus, a team of seasoned players from old DONKEKONG and other Gold level teams, so this match will by no means be an easy task. The match will start at 12:00 EDT | 18:00 CEST and should easily be the match of the round in the Losers Bracket (and not only because there are only two). Will xCet live up to their reputation or will the training and better familiarity with the current HoN of Prime Icarus be the early end of the quick Diamond entry of Pew and friends? We will find out this Saturday! Good Luck and Have Fun to both teams and thanks for the interview, NoX! (ou and the other QsQs still owe me an evening of play to carry me to 1700, just saying ;])

About the author: Blaze