art by Brumirage
1v1 Player Interviews
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#6 smely socks
Favorite Pokemon:
Most used Pokemon:
Most known for: Winning the recent World Cup with US Central and being one of the most wholesome users in the 1v1 community.
Howdy! I know it's been a bit of a while (to think some people don't believe me when I say not to expect these consistently-), but I'm glad to have you here! So, how are you? What's life like for smely socks, these days?
I'm doing good thanks for asking! School just started up recently so that has kept me busy but I'm finally getting into a rhythm.
Great to hear! I know with COVID stuff going on it can be easy to just stagnate, but glad to see you're breaking through it. Now, before we get too wrapped up in things, I gotta know: what's the deal with the name smely socks? I can imagine the properly spelled version was taken long ago, but I'm just curious to hear what compels someone to name themselves after socks-
Oh it isn't anything too exciting, before joining 1v1 I needed a username for some game or something I don't remember, but I mainly wanted something that was recognizable by everyone. I didn't want a name that was some obscure reference or had numbers at the end because those just aren't my style. A household object or something similar sounded good to me, and I just happened to think of socks I guess. Socks ended up being taken so I tried smelly socks and it worked and smely socks happened to not be taken on ps so yea
Fair enough. On the topic of names, I've noticed you've taken to identifying under "elesa", and of course it's no secret to anyone that you're a fan of hers. If given the opportunity, would you get the name change to elesa? Or would you still prefer the socks moniker you've taken thus far?
I don't have any plans on name changing to elesa at the moment. Although I do use elesa for a few things I still much rather would keep the name socks name because elesa starts to fall into that references thing that I mentioned before as to what I actually don't want as my name to be. So even though I use elesa for alts and such, I still prefer the more familiar smely socks for now
Fair, fair. So, starting off, how'd you get into Pokemon? Do you have any history with competitive prior to joining PS? Or just played casually?
I've been a pokemon fan since I was little. It started with when I played Pearl as a little kid when me and my incredibly over leveled luxray failed over and over to beat the elite four. Since then, I've always been a casual pokemon fan but didn't understand the actual competitive aspect until much later. I found out about ps around high school and spent my freshman year study hall laddering randbats on a different account, but I still had no clue what I was doing really. I got into 1v1 from the tours room actually when there was a 1v1 tour and realized that it was kinda fun. I tried laddering a little bit but didn't really get anywhere and stopped playing until right around when ss dropped and the rest is history
I see, glad to see you stuck around ever since c: With that said, let's get into the big stuff: World Cup. Congrats again on the win! What would you say the team atmosphere in US Central was like, throughout the progression of the tour?
Thanks! Overall I felt like Central was a super fun team to be on. Just a lot of friendly and nice people which really helped us in the long run. In the start it was kind of quiet until LRXC decided to start prepping and from then on it was constant chatter about building from him which really got the rest of us going. The guy ended up with nearly 20k lines in the discord which was insane and helped out with literally every gen he could which was a huge help. As you all know though LRXC started focusing on some things in his life towards the end of pools but the motivation to win kept us pretty active and positive without his constant presence that we had before. All in all it was just a super fun team like I said filled with great people.
To my knowledge, this is your second major 1v1 team tour, right? How would you say this experience compares to the last of being on the Dustox? Also coincidentally managed by Nalei- Different or similar team vibes, experience, etc.
It was, although I joined dustox pretty late so I didn't really get a complete experience and thus it was pretty different from world cup. With dustox, I was still pretty new to tournaments and didn't really know how to prep or anything so it was mostly just trying to get comfortable while everyone else did their thing. With world cup I really got my first taste at what it's like to be a part of a team like this. I really got to play a part and try to help other people when I could and actually contribute which made it a lot more meaningful to me. Having Nalei as my manager for both tours was a great experience for me because she was the one who really helped me the most when I joined dustox and is just a great person overall which really was really helpful for me.
Nice. Doubling back to World Cup; with this being the first time you've been in playoffs for a major tournament, what would you say the atmosphere felt like, having such a massive spotlight on the battles you played? Did it feel different from pools? Did it feel different from playing in, say, a seasonal game?
It was kind of stressful in all honesty. I usually don't link games for anything unless my opponent asks so having people actually watch was both exciting and nerve racking at the same time. It didn't help that nearly every series I played went to five games. I will say playoffs didn't feel all that different from pools, however it was also my first time doing pools so that may be why. It definitely felt way different from a seasonal game because like I said, I don't usually share games unless needed but it has also been helpful because I now feel much more relaxed when I play because there isn't as much pressure.
Nice to see you're settling into it. I'm sure you'll be in similar positions many times over, if US Central stays strong! Now, moving on to another major thing for you, your promotion! Congrats again on making driver! Out of curiosity, what compelled you to wanna take the jump from hanging out in the room to staffing it?
Thanks again! Honestly I never really expected to end up staffing the room, but when it happened I realized it would be a fun opportunity. I'm online a lot and know a lot of the people in the room so I figured why not try it. It's been fun so far and I'm happy to be a part of it.
We're glad to have you on board :) With that said, do you have any plans on getting more involved with other things? Stuff like hosting tours or projects, writing analyses, general smogon stuff, etc.
I would certainly like to try. A lot of my focus so far has been on ps either just being in the room or on ladder. I definitely am interested in getting more involved on smogon, and have dabbled in analyses. I will be a bit busier for a little bit coming up soon so I don't know how quickly I'll get to it, but I'm sure I'll start getting involved in that eventually.
I'm sure people would love to see your work! Moving on; as far as I can tell, you've been pretty consistency involved in the gen 8 1v1 meta pretty much since release. How would you say the meta has progressed from then to now? Like, how long would you say it really took before the meta started to stagnate? Or become "stale" as some people call it- Or do you feel that the meta is still rapidly evolving even up to now?
I would say the meta has become incredibly different over time since those first days when dmax was legalfree dmax ;w;. At first it felt like there was an abundance of physical attackers like haxorus and darm g, but over time it shifted to a lot of the prim sylv pult we saw near the end of pre dlc. Post dlc has obviously shaken that up with some new players like urshifu, pz, and zone. However, that has ended up creating the top heavy meta we have now where the top 6 or 7 mons are miles ahead of everything else in usage, and it's incredibly difficult to make a team not using one of those mons. Regarding when exactly it became stale, I personally have been calling it stale less than a month into dlc which felt like a slight exaggeration at the time, but here we are now and it's become a pretty common opinion on the current meta. If I had to pick a favorite meta frm all of these it was probably that post jirachi ban to pre hidden abilities period when sylv and prim were on top for a while.
Interesting. Would you say any of the best teams from prior "chapters" of the metagame still hold up nowadays? Or has each change just been too volatile for any team pre-DLC or pre-Home or pre-Hidden abilities or etc to withstand the test of time, relative to where the current meta stands?
I would say that some of them can be used with some minor tweaks but overall you really can't use old teams. What I noticed when dlc first dropped was a ton of my old teams and other peoples teams on ladder was that most were 3-0d by zone and scizor. Obviously now every team has some kind of magnezone lure because teambuilding has adapted and most people have some way to beat scizor, but if you use old teams odds are they probably get 3-0d by some common dlc mon so I wouldn't recommend trying it. That being said, you can occasionally get lucky and with a couple of tweaks in eving or moves you can adapt an older team for dlc but odds are even then it won't be great.
Makes sense. Bearing in mind that a lot of the people reading this may very well not know the meta at this point in time, would you mind providing an example of a present-meta team that has served you well and explain how the team was tailored to handle the top-heavy meta?
Oh true sorry, so a team I really enjoy using on ladder is AV rhyperior, scarf togekiss, and chople snorlax or ron as it's commonly known. So rhyperior is a great ladder mon because it beats most togekiss's, pult's, and pz's which is super important because those are seen a ton on ladder. It also serves as our magnezone lure because with AV and bulldoze you tank a hit and outspeed turn 2 to finish them off. Ron is great for beating a lot of the zera, prim, and rilla spam you see on ladder while also providing a ton support for togekiss and rhyp. Scarf togekiss is a great third as I found out because it is just an incredible mon overall, being able to beat almost every top tier like rilla, urshifu, prim and sylv with some luck, etc. It's also useful for times when you are 2.5-0d because you can just click it and pray to win as I'm sure everyone who has used or faced togekiss knows.
Yeah in general I'm personally just glad to see the love for Rhyperior coming back after it died down from like, post-Home meta or so. On the topic of Togekiss, however, I'm sure many of the 1v1 community are curious to hear your takes regarding it, considering its currently ongoing suspect test. If I'm not mistaken, you leaned more on the ban side, correct?
I’ve always disliked togekiss as a mon, but it wasn’t until more recently that I began to see the serious issues it causes with the meta. It used to be just an annoying flinch gimmick, but over time people have started to use the other sets like twave and it’s resist berry sets which is where the problems started occurring. Now, togekiss is by far the hardest to prep for mon in gen 8 because it has so many different lure sets that even if you bring a togekiss counter you can still be caught by some weird set. For example, a lot of people use rhyperior as their kiss answer but then specs grass knot beats that so it’s just really hard to find mons that can handle all the different sets. So although it started off fine, togekiss recently had really started giving me mimikyu vibes in the pressure it puts on building and preview. I think with it gone we will be able to see a lot more rilla and urshifu come out into the spotlight and hopefully a lot less zera which will open up opportunity for some other mons to shine that I’ve been waiting excitedly to use once togekiss is hopefully banned.
Funny you mention Mimikyu, weren't you in favor of keeping it? Or has that opinion since changed? I agree that it was suspected for similar reasons of having an overwhelming variety of competent sets, though I wanna know what made the two different enough to wanna keep one but ban the other, in your eyes.
I was in favor of keeping it at the time, but I also realize now how unhealthy it was for the meta. The biggest difference is likely that I’ve had a lot more experience having to prep for tours and such which is much different from ladder. On ladder people mostly use basic sets like scarf which are annoying but not broken. It isn’t until you end up in a tour game and have to try and figure out exactly what togekiss your opponent is running and how to beat it that you really realize that this mon is a huge problem. Even if you click the mon that beats it you can still easily get caught by a different set than you expected and it feels like the majority of your effort is put into figuring out how to handle togekiss in game and while building. If I had that same experience with mimi I might have felt the same way even if I like mimi personally so that’s probably the key difference for me.
Interesting, glad to see doing tour games helped broaden your perspective! Now, as we start to wrap this up, it's plain to see you're incredibly active within the 1v1 community, being third in roomstats only after Scrappie and LRXC, in addition to your consistent activity in the 1v1 Discord. With that in mind, I'm sure many of the outsiders reading this are curious to know your honest feelings on the 1v1 community and how it's developed in your time here. Has it been nothing but good experiences? Rough around the edges? Somewhere in between?
For the most part it has been great. Obviously it isn’t 100 percent perfect but it has been almost as close as possible for me. I’ve met a lot of great people in this community and they are definitely the ones who have kept me here otherwise I probably would have gotten burned out a while ago. Even when I first joined the people have been overall friendly and pleasant so I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who have been kind to me along the way. It really means a lot and y’all are the reason I still enjoy this.
Any last words to the readers?
Nothing much, just thanks for having me because I never expected to get to do something like this, and I’m excited to see what happens as the year wraps up with classic and dlc 2
Thanks for your time :)
1v1 Player Interviews
#1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5
#6 smely socks
Favorite Pokemon:
Most used Pokemon:
Most known for: Winning the recent World Cup with US Central and being one of the most wholesome users in the 1v1 community.
Howdy! I know it's been a bit of a while (to think some people don't believe me when I say not to expect these consistently-), but I'm glad to have you here! So, how are you? What's life like for smely socks, these days?
I'm doing good thanks for asking! School just started up recently so that has kept me busy but I'm finally getting into a rhythm.
Great to hear! I know with COVID stuff going on it can be easy to just stagnate, but glad to see you're breaking through it. Now, before we get too wrapped up in things, I gotta know: what's the deal with the name smely socks? I can imagine the properly spelled version was taken long ago, but I'm just curious to hear what compels someone to name themselves after socks-
Oh it isn't anything too exciting, before joining 1v1 I needed a username for some game or something I don't remember, but I mainly wanted something that was recognizable by everyone. I didn't want a name that was some obscure reference or had numbers at the end because those just aren't my style. A household object or something similar sounded good to me, and I just happened to think of socks I guess. Socks ended up being taken so I tried smelly socks and it worked and smely socks happened to not be taken on ps so yea
Fair enough. On the topic of names, I've noticed you've taken to identifying under "elesa", and of course it's no secret to anyone that you're a fan of hers. If given the opportunity, would you get the name change to elesa? Or would you still prefer the socks moniker you've taken thus far?
I don't have any plans on name changing to elesa at the moment. Although I do use elesa for a few things I still much rather would keep the name socks name because elesa starts to fall into that references thing that I mentioned before as to what I actually don't want as my name to be. So even though I use elesa for alts and such, I still prefer the more familiar smely socks for now
Fair, fair. So, starting off, how'd you get into Pokemon? Do you have any history with competitive prior to joining PS? Or just played casually?
I've been a pokemon fan since I was little. It started with when I played Pearl as a little kid when me and my incredibly over leveled luxray failed over and over to beat the elite four. Since then, I've always been a casual pokemon fan but didn't understand the actual competitive aspect until much later. I found out about ps around high school and spent my freshman year study hall laddering randbats on a different account, but I still had no clue what I was doing really. I got into 1v1 from the tours room actually when there was a 1v1 tour and realized that it was kinda fun. I tried laddering a little bit but didn't really get anywhere and stopped playing until right around when ss dropped and the rest is history
I see, glad to see you stuck around ever since c: With that said, let's get into the big stuff: World Cup. Congrats again on the win! What would you say the team atmosphere in US Central was like, throughout the progression of the tour?
Thanks! Overall I felt like Central was a super fun team to be on. Just a lot of friendly and nice people which really helped us in the long run. In the start it was kind of quiet until LRXC decided to start prepping and from then on it was constant chatter about building from him which really got the rest of us going. The guy ended up with nearly 20k lines in the discord which was insane and helped out with literally every gen he could which was a huge help. As you all know though LRXC started focusing on some things in his life towards the end of pools but the motivation to win kept us pretty active and positive without his constant presence that we had before. All in all it was just a super fun team like I said filled with great people.
To my knowledge, this is your second major 1v1 team tour, right? How would you say this experience compares to the last of being on the Dustox? Also coincidentally managed by Nalei- Different or similar team vibes, experience, etc.
It was, although I joined dustox pretty late so I didn't really get a complete experience and thus it was pretty different from world cup. With dustox, I was still pretty new to tournaments and didn't really know how to prep or anything so it was mostly just trying to get comfortable while everyone else did their thing. With world cup I really got my first taste at what it's like to be a part of a team like this. I really got to play a part and try to help other people when I could and actually contribute which made it a lot more meaningful to me. Having Nalei as my manager for both tours was a great experience for me because she was the one who really helped me the most when I joined dustox and is just a great person overall which really was really helpful for me.
Nice. Doubling back to World Cup; with this being the first time you've been in playoffs for a major tournament, what would you say the atmosphere felt like, having such a massive spotlight on the battles you played? Did it feel different from pools? Did it feel different from playing in, say, a seasonal game?
It was kind of stressful in all honesty. I usually don't link games for anything unless my opponent asks so having people actually watch was both exciting and nerve racking at the same time. It didn't help that nearly every series I played went to five games. I will say playoffs didn't feel all that different from pools, however it was also my first time doing pools so that may be why. It definitely felt way different from a seasonal game because like I said, I don't usually share games unless needed but it has also been helpful because I now feel much more relaxed when I play because there isn't as much pressure.
Nice to see you're settling into it. I'm sure you'll be in similar positions many times over, if US Central stays strong! Now, moving on to another major thing for you, your promotion! Congrats again on making driver! Out of curiosity, what compelled you to wanna take the jump from hanging out in the room to staffing it?
Thanks again! Honestly I never really expected to end up staffing the room, but when it happened I realized it would be a fun opportunity. I'm online a lot and know a lot of the people in the room so I figured why not try it. It's been fun so far and I'm happy to be a part of it.
We're glad to have you on board :) With that said, do you have any plans on getting more involved with other things? Stuff like hosting tours or projects, writing analyses, general smogon stuff, etc.
I would certainly like to try. A lot of my focus so far has been on ps either just being in the room or on ladder. I definitely am interested in getting more involved on smogon, and have dabbled in analyses. I will be a bit busier for a little bit coming up soon so I don't know how quickly I'll get to it, but I'm sure I'll start getting involved in that eventually.
I'm sure people would love to see your work! Moving on; as far as I can tell, you've been pretty consistency involved in the gen 8 1v1 meta pretty much since release. How would you say the meta has progressed from then to now? Like, how long would you say it really took before the meta started to stagnate? Or become "stale" as some people call it- Or do you feel that the meta is still rapidly evolving even up to now?
I would say the meta has become incredibly different over time since those first days when dmax was legal
Interesting. Would you say any of the best teams from prior "chapters" of the metagame still hold up nowadays? Or has each change just been too volatile for any team pre-DLC or pre-Home or pre-Hidden abilities or etc to withstand the test of time, relative to where the current meta stands?
I would say that some of them can be used with some minor tweaks but overall you really can't use old teams. What I noticed when dlc first dropped was a ton of my old teams and other peoples teams on ladder was that most were 3-0d by zone and scizor. Obviously now every team has some kind of magnezone lure because teambuilding has adapted and most people have some way to beat scizor, but if you use old teams odds are they probably get 3-0d by some common dlc mon so I wouldn't recommend trying it. That being said, you can occasionally get lucky and with a couple of tweaks in eving or moves you can adapt an older team for dlc but odds are even then it won't be great.
Makes sense. Bearing in mind that a lot of the people reading this may very well not know the meta at this point in time, would you mind providing an example of a present-meta team that has served you well and explain how the team was tailored to handle the top-heavy meta?
Oh true sorry, so a team I really enjoy using on ladder is AV rhyperior, scarf togekiss, and chople snorlax or ron as it's commonly known. So rhyperior is a great ladder mon because it beats most togekiss's, pult's, and pz's which is super important because those are seen a ton on ladder. It also serves as our magnezone lure because with AV and bulldoze you tank a hit and outspeed turn 2 to finish them off. Ron is great for beating a lot of the zera, prim, and rilla spam you see on ladder while also providing a ton support for togekiss and rhyp. Scarf togekiss is a great third as I found out because it is just an incredible mon overall, being able to beat almost every top tier like rilla, urshifu, prim and sylv with some luck, etc. It's also useful for times when you are 2.5-0d because you can just click it and pray to win as I'm sure everyone who has used or faced togekiss knows.
Yeah in general I'm personally just glad to see the love for Rhyperior coming back after it died down from like, post-Home meta or so. On the topic of Togekiss, however, I'm sure many of the 1v1 community are curious to hear your takes regarding it, considering its currently ongoing suspect test. If I'm not mistaken, you leaned more on the ban side, correct?
I’ve always disliked togekiss as a mon, but it wasn’t until more recently that I began to see the serious issues it causes with the meta. It used to be just an annoying flinch gimmick, but over time people have started to use the other sets like twave and it’s resist berry sets which is where the problems started occurring. Now, togekiss is by far the hardest to prep for mon in gen 8 because it has so many different lure sets that even if you bring a togekiss counter you can still be caught by some weird set. For example, a lot of people use rhyperior as their kiss answer but then specs grass knot beats that so it’s just really hard to find mons that can handle all the different sets. So although it started off fine, togekiss recently had really started giving me mimikyu vibes in the pressure it puts on building and preview. I think with it gone we will be able to see a lot more rilla and urshifu come out into the spotlight and hopefully a lot less zera which will open up opportunity for some other mons to shine that I’ve been waiting excitedly to use once togekiss is hopefully banned.
Funny you mention Mimikyu, weren't you in favor of keeping it? Or has that opinion since changed? I agree that it was suspected for similar reasons of having an overwhelming variety of competent sets, though I wanna know what made the two different enough to wanna keep one but ban the other, in your eyes.
I was in favor of keeping it at the time, but I also realize now how unhealthy it was for the meta. The biggest difference is likely that I’ve had a lot more experience having to prep for tours and such which is much different from ladder. On ladder people mostly use basic sets like scarf which are annoying but not broken. It isn’t until you end up in a tour game and have to try and figure out exactly what togekiss your opponent is running and how to beat it that you really realize that this mon is a huge problem. Even if you click the mon that beats it you can still easily get caught by a different set than you expected and it feels like the majority of your effort is put into figuring out how to handle togekiss in game and while building. If I had that same experience with mimi I might have felt the same way even if I like mimi personally so that’s probably the key difference for me.
Interesting, glad to see doing tour games helped broaden your perspective! Now, as we start to wrap this up, it's plain to see you're incredibly active within the 1v1 community, being third in roomstats only after Scrappie and LRXC, in addition to your consistent activity in the 1v1 Discord. With that in mind, I'm sure many of the outsiders reading this are curious to know your honest feelings on the 1v1 community and how it's developed in your time here. Has it been nothing but good experiences? Rough around the edges? Somewhere in between?
For the most part it has been great. Obviously it isn’t 100 percent perfect but it has been almost as close as possible for me. I’ve met a lot of great people in this community and they are definitely the ones who have kept me here otherwise I probably would have gotten burned out a while ago. Even when I first joined the people have been overall friendly and pleasant so I just wanted to say thanks to all of you who have been kind to me along the way. It really means a lot and y’all are the reason I still enjoy this.
Any last words to the readers?
Nothing much, just thanks for having me because I never expected to get to do something like this, and I’m excited to see what happens as the year wraps up with classic and dlc 2
Thanks for your time :)
======================================================================
Duration of interview: 2 hours, 59 minutes
If you have any questions of your own for smely socks, feel free to ask them here!
As for the next interview, don't expect a consistent schedule behind these-
Duration of interview: 2 hours, 59 minutes
If you have any questions of your own for smely socks, feel free to ask them here!
As for the next interview, don't expect a consistent schedule behind these-
