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RMT Rules and Forum Guidelines

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Welcome to the RMT forum! The purpose of this forum is to provide users an opportunity to share a team of theirs and have the community provide feedback to help improve teams that are posted. This thread contains the rules of this forum, as well as guides on how to post teams and how to rate teams. You can also find a list of our staff members and additional resources in this thread.

Contents of this thread
First off, here is how this forum is organized. SV OU Teams is the section where users may post current generation OU teams, and SV Other Teams is the section for current gen non-OU teams. Finally, Past Gen Teams is where users can post teams from previous generations. Team Showcase is a special section in which RMT's of exceptional quality will be housed. If you are looking for an example of a good RMT, Team Showcase is the place you'll want to go to. Rating Activities is where we host projects such as Rate of the Month, RMT's of the Month, and our occasional rating competitions. RMT Archive is a section reserved for successful meta defining teams that showcase the state of the metagame at that point in time. If you're ever curious to see what a solid team from a certain point in the metagame would look like, RMT Archive is the section to visit.

If you ever have a question or need help with something, below is a list of our staff members, including our moderators and our official Team Raters:

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Moderators
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- 6 Total

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Team Raters
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- 29 Total
Aside from participating in RMT on the forums, you are also welcome to join the Smogon Discord community in order to get your teams rated or rate other people's teams in real-time. We recommend all raters, both new and experienced, to join in the discussions. The staff members listed above will also be available in the discord linked above.

B101 now has a resource forum, it has useful resources for any newcomer, for a variety of different metagames. https://www.smogon.com/forums/forums/resources.557/[/user]
 
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RMT Forum Rules

These rules must be followed in order to avoid having your RMT locked and to avoid having your posts deleted.

For posting teams:​

  1. Don't post incomplete teams - this means having all 6 members with EV spreads and moves.

  2. Each member of the team requires a description that includes your reason for choosing that Pokémon, the Pokémon's role on that team, and a short description of its set. This is to help raters get an idea of what each member of the team does and will help them when trying to suggest changes to improve the team. We expect at least 3 lines of descriptions on desktop for each member. The better the descriptions, the easier it is for raters to understand your team and its members.

  3. Make sure your team is competitive and viable for that tier. Before other users can help you with your team, you need to do your part and make sure that you have tested and used the team before in order to hammer out the biggest flaws. We are here to help improve teams, not build new ones. If you're inexperienced, then you can learn the metagame and lurk more before posting a team.

  4. You are only allowed to post one new RMT every 7 days.

  5. You are allowed 1 bump, which means you are allowed to make 1 post if your thread has not had any activity for a while to push it to the top of unread threads.
Failure to follow these rules will result in a moderator locking your thread. If your team is locked for lacking sufficient descriptions, you are allowed to send the moderator that locked your thread updated descriptions in order to have your thread unlocked.

For rating or posting on threads:​

  1. Make sure your post is constructive in some way. We strongly prefer to avoid having single line posts outside of thanking someone for a rate. If you are not posting a rate, questions about the team are still allowed. Also, please avoid posting on threads from several months ago. Those teams are most likely outdated and posts bumping old teams will be deleted.

  2. Before attempting to rate, make sure you have sufficient metagame knowledge regarding the tier so that your suggestions are reasonable and helpful. Any rate that shows a blatant lack of metagame knowledge will be deleted.

  3. Be respectful when providing feedback and don't mini-mod.

  4. Avoid drastically changing the original team. We strongly recommend changing no more than 3 members of the original team so long as those changes have sufficient explanations.

  5. Explain your suggestions so that others can understand why those suggestions work and how you came up with that suggestion. If there's no explanation, then there's no basis for another user to go along with your suggestions. The better the explanations, the easier it'll be for others to accept or consider them.
Repeated failure to follow these rules can result in a moderator punishing you with an infraction.
 
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Guide on How to Post an RMT​

  1. First of all, make sure to read the rules above before considering to post a thread. If you want to look at an example of a good RMT, you can check out Team Showcase or Team Archive. Once that is done, you can move on to the next step.
  2. Click on the appropriate section your team falls under (OU, non-OU, past gen).
  3. Click on the "Post Thread" icon on the right side.
  4. Select the prefix that corresponds with the tier for your team.
  5. Choose a title for your team.
  6. Export your team from Pokémon Showdown and paste the importable into the blank section of the thread. This is where you will write up your RMT.
  7. Provide descriptions for each member of the team, with at least 3 lines per member.
  8. You are free to add images and a team building process if desired, but they are not mandatory.
  9. Click "Post Thread" at the bottom of the screen and you are set!
Guide on Rating​

  1. Before rating a team, make sure to read the rules above on rating and posting on other threads. If you are unsure about what a good rate looks like, you can check out the Rate of the Month project and its Hall of Fame.

  2. Take a look at the team and try to understand the purpose of that team and how that team operates. This can be helpful to recognize before suggesting changes to avoid changing the playstyle of the team.

  3. After understanding how the team functions, making the team more efficient is the next step. Try to identify weaknesses or threats the team struggles with. This may come in the form of a general weakness to another playstyle or certain threats, or it might be something the team lacks such as speed control or hazard removal. Every team does not need solid counters for every threat in the metagame, but reasonable or sufficient counter play against the more common threats can suffice. Remember that there are both offensive and defensive types of threats and that both should be considered when looking to see what a team struggles with.

  4. Once you have identified weaknesses, you can proceed to consider changes to the team in order to better handle those weaknesses. It is important to remember when changing members to avoid changing the team drastically, and if possible, to avoid changing the central focus of the team. If you change too much or if you change the focal point of the team, you would be altering the identity of the team and it would be more appropriate to say that you created a new team rather than adjusting the original one. If you believe that changing a core member of the team is necessary and truly improves the team's desired purpose, then you may do so as long as the explanation is solid.

  5. When writing up your rate, it is recommended to begin with the major changes and then moving on to the smaller changes. Major changes, such as swapping out a team member for a new member, can sometimes cause a string of changes and result in some smaller changes to compensate for that major change. Swapping out team members will always have some type of down side that was covered by the previous member, and it makes your rate easier to follow if you address the downside to the major change after you stated what the major change was. Keep in mind that big changes might not always be necessary, and that an alternative set or EV spread or move may be all the team needs.

  6. After coming up with suggestions for the team, take a step back and look to see if there are any new weaknesses to the team. If the remaining weaknesses are significant enough, then either reconsider the changes you made and look for a different route, or see if you can patch up the new weaknesses by changing another part of the team. Looking at the downsides to your changes will not only help improve the quality of your rate, but it can also reassure other users that you carefully considered your suggestions and they may be more accepting of them.

  7. Feel free to leave an updated threat list or a few mentions of potential threats even after your suggestions. It is also recommended to discuss how they may be threatening and how to handle them if possible. No team is perfect, but letting people have an idea as to what could be troublesome and how to handle it will surely help.

  8. Be sure to provide detailed and concise explanations for your suggestions so that others are more likely to consider and accept your changes. You are free to be as detailed as you desired, but make sure that there are enough details for users to understand your suggestions, and also avoid writing jargon for the sake of increasing the size of your rate. Long rates can be great as long as they are consistent with supporting the changes suggested and are easy to navigate through.

  9. Leave an importable of the new team at the end of your rate. You are free to use hide tags or https://pokepast.es/ to do so. To use a hide tag, you put [ Hide=name of the button ] importable or desired text here [ /hide ] without the spaces between the brackets and the text.

  10. Color and formatting are not required, but if you would like to include it, then you can bold some key words, such as major changes, but please avoid using a myriad of colors. They are unnecessary, overdone and may confuse some users trying to understand what colors represent what. If you choose to use color, then no more than 2 colors are recommended.

  11. Hit the "post reply" button and you are set!
 
Helpful Resources
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Finally, here are some helpful resources that can aid in making your RMT and rates more aesthetically appealing:
 
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