Approved by Sweep
Based on other Player of the Week threads
Art by NicoReaper
Welcome everyone to Ubers Player of the Week! This will be a weekly project where I interview well known players to try and see into their mind a bit. If anyone has any suggestions on who I should interview, feel free to shoot me a PM. Anyways, lets get to it!
steelskitty
Most Known For.
SPL finalist, Ubers Open finalist, WCOP winner, perfect UPL record (8-0), a while ago he was really lucky and people still tease him about it today.
Favourite Pokémon.
competitively, Latios. From personal experience the dude's good in every gen of ubers i've tried (4-6) and it also slays in bw ou. it's probably the mon that shows up on most of my teams throughout all the tiers i've played. from an aesthetic standpoint, skitty; i really like cats and skitty is incredibly cute, unlike fellow cat pokemon PUReUGLY..
Tell us a little about yourself
i'm a 16 year-old american. i'm gonna be a junior in high school this fall. i like boys even though i have a girlfriend, i should probably get around to telling her that sometime.. (i'm bisexual). i'm very artistically-minded; most of my free time is spent on graphic design and various forms of musicianship (mainly electronic music, but also singing, piano, and sometimes guitar). i overuse parentheses and semicolons. i haven't accomplished anything in mons since the last time i did one of these interviews. nobody appreciates my taste in music ever since i started listening to experimental electronica.
How did you choose the name steelskitty? And who is jacqueline?
there's more of a backstory to this than there probably should be. i've cycled between usernames in my time on smogon. my first PS! username ever was steeljackal, which was something cool-sounding i stole from a (dpp, i think) serebii analysis of lucario. steeljackal was already taken on smogon by the time i joined so i went by steelskitty instead. i chose skitty in particular because it was the mascot pokemon of oriserver, which was a place 13 year-old me greatly preferred to main (main had no rooms system when i first discovered it; it was just a lobby, which was about as horrific as you'd imagine). i switched my username to steeljackal<3 when i realized i could... i had grown to think steelskitty sounded immature. i went by that for a while but come spl time i got mocked for having a heart after my name. insecure, anxious 14 year-old me didn't like that so i switched to steelphoenix to sound more MASCULINE. a little while ago i switched back to steelskitty because i realized there's nothing wrong with it and steelphoenix is a fucking terrible name.
jacqueline is my drag queen name and my alt on irc. i stole it from a teacher i thought was hot in my freshman year of high school. i've seen her in the hallway since then and she's not really to my taste anymore but i still keep the name because it sounds pretty.
What is your favorite generation in Ubers, and why?
bw used to be my favorite because of its high skill ceiling, spike-stacking, smarter playerbase, and the fact that the power creep was really balanced. the tier is unimaginably stale now though, and if i got back into playing it i don't think i'd enjoy it. i think xy (pre-oras) is now my favorite. xy has a lot of the good characteristics of bw but it doesn't feel as stale. maybe my opinion of it would change if i went back and seriously played it again, but for now i'm content staring back at it through my rose-tinted glasses.
What's your favorite playstyle and why?
practically speaking, offense with a suicide lead. it's the best way to abuse all the killer offensive threats ubers offers and is the best for scoring easy wins. i do have a soft spot for stall, even if it's not viable; there's a certain sadistic satisfaction to be gained from watching your inexperienced opponent's pokemon slowly die as they're unable to break the impeccable series of walls you have constructed.
If you could change two things in the ORAS metagame, what would those be?
well, first i'd make it xy ubers. then i'd get blue jay and my other old friends to come back and i'd actually enjoy playing this game again.
kidding, but honestly i don't think only two changes can really save this tier. i could say "ban primal groudon!" but then primal kyogre becomes a massive pain in the ass and xerneas becomes (more of a) massive pain in the ass. i could say "ban mega salamence!" and then primal groudon becomes harder to deal with and offense loses one of its most valuable toys. i guess getting rid of darkrai and xerneas would take care of two of the tier's biggest problems whilst having the least collateral damage as a result; it's not like getting rid of either of them nerfs anything except offense, which already needs to be put in check anyway.
Favorite SPL/UPL/Seasonal/Ubers Open game(s)?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen5ubers-137849816
was my last game in the upl i played in. very intense and important match, i wasn't expecting to win it till the end. 14 year-old me could almost unfailingly be counted on to act moronic in battle chats.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ubers-33751
all my spl games were stupid fun but this one is probably my favorite solely because of how mad problems got.
Do you think Ubers should be in SPL 8? Why? Would you like to play Ubers again?
i mean, maybe. i think the playerbase is worse than it's been in a long time (myself definitely included, i was only ever good at mons because i played it constantly and now that i've spent time away from the game i am disgustingly bad), but that's inevitable when nearly every high-level tour player in the tier quits or goes on indefinite hiatus. i think there's enough old guys coming back and enough new guys who have become good at the game to make it a good show in the end, though. i think the tier needs work but it's certainly not the worst one that could be in spl. i dunno how new mons would affect it, i haven't been paying attention to the hype around next generation and i don't think anybody really knows how sun/moon would change the tier yet.
currently, i don't wish to play ubers in spl, or pokemon in general again. one of the biggest reasons i got into this game was because it helped me cope with the excessive stress i felt when i was 13 but now that i've grown older a lot of that is gone. my life right now is wonderful, i don't need pokemon to compensate for anything or fill up time and i can spend my days doing better things. i don't see myself coming back to this game again unless i really feel like i have nothing better to do with my time, but who knows.
Since you had one of the best Ubers records in SPL and you are an experienced tournament player, how did you go about preparing your matches?
i experimented with different ways of preparing for opponents. de-stressing before big tour games was something i always did, and the ways i did this varied. sometimes i fixed myself a drink i liked, sometimes i meditated, usually i masturbated... (this is common practice among tour players, don't let them tell you otherwise). typically i would find as many of the guy's replays as i could and watch them over the span of an hour or so. i looked at the plays they made in certain situations more than the teams they were using, but i occasionally made a list of their teams too. i found that people tend to react similarly in 50/50 situations from game to game and that can define who they are as a player, whether they're safe or aggressive, illogical or calculating, etc. if a person used a team a lot or had a lot of their team revealed during a game i would sometimes try to recreate it in the teambuilder. it was useful having a visual reference like that for counter-styling and it gave me an idea of the sets they preferred. if they posted often in the ubers subforum i would occasionally look over their posts because doing that would give me an idea about their attitude toward the game and alert me to any gimmicks to expect. i always looked over a person's "forum presence" on their profile because that's generally a good indicator of the sort of player they are. if they had 500 posts in various tournament subforums then i'd expect them to be good and have friends that could provide them teams even if they didn't play the tier. same if they had posts in the spl/wcop forums beyond shittalk or farm league. if 80% of their posts were in orange islands or, say, another tier's subforum then i'd relax a little because i'd know they weren't experienced at ubers tours. sometimes i counter-teamed and other times i simply counter-styled... both worked sometimes and didn't work others. counter-styling is safer than counter-teaming but that doesn't make it better.
ultimately, i'd say i rarely went into games having no idea about my opponent.
Are you planning to come back to Ubers or will you wait till Sun&Moon?
i don't think people really want me to come back. i don't want me to come back. i did what i could in pokemon, i mean. i could stay here and get around to actually winning some of the tours where i only made it to finals. i could pick up bw ou again and do wcop or classic. i could shake off the rust and start practicing constantly with my friends in the community, or spend hours teambuilding. i could start tutoring again, do analyses, keep my cc badge, maybe become a mod or a tier leader someday. but why? i don't have anything to prove anymore. when i first started out in the tour community there was this drive to be like one of those elite guys like problems or edgar or blim who got to play in spl and had their own clique of strong players. in 2015 i got to that point and kinda plateaued... i feel no drive to prove myself to anybody around here anymore. i don't enjoy playing mons now, even. teambuilding is a massive hassle and this game fucks with my anxiety disorder in terrible ways. i've just gotten to the point where there's nothing to gain from mons and i only very recently realized it. i guess i could come back at some point in the distant future but now there's no drive to and i don't think there will be for a while.
Is there any advice that you would like to share with new users?
listen to the players who are better than you, even if they're snarky. some of the higher level players were assholes to me when i first started playing ubers but i deserved it and it helped me mature a lot both as a player and a person. during the many stints when i've laddered on alts for the fun of it i've run into so many apathetic idiots who are stuck in ladder hell in the first place because they think they're the hottest shit and don't even read analyses. i would try to give them advice about their team but they wouldn't listen regardless of how badly they were losing. don't be one of those people.
[RANT]
also, play the fucking game. if you're sitting around theorymonning, contributing, or giving handjobs more than you are actually playing mons then you're missing the point of being here in the first place. pokemon sites are good at being pokemon sites. they are incredibly inferior to other places when it comes to providing opportunities to contribute to a community or social networking or sharing ideas or anything else. i'm not saying you shouldn't make friends or help out the newer kids but don't lose sight of what you came here to do in the first place. nobody starts playing competitive pokemon because they have the idea that they want to teach others how to be pokemon masters or they want to document every pokemon in their respective tier or they want to hold power over an extremely niche area of the internet. people start playing competitive pokemon because they wanna play with their mons... if you're bad at the game then don't start contributing just to save face and impress people. if you're bad, then get better or move on to a different game. being good at mons isn't gonna impress anybody in your real world, anyway; don't fool yourself into thinking the praise of strangers over the internet matters more than the praise you can get from doing legitimate things with your real life.[/ENDRANT]
Any advice for people who try to quit mons?
well, getting grounded by my parents was how i did it, but...
unless the site legitimately doesn't function as well without you gone (i'm referring to tier leaders and some moderators; the site gets by just fine if someone with a few badges or a trophy quits), don't make an "i'm quitting" pastebin or post on your wall that you're leaving or make a thread about saying goodbye to this game. if you feel like you need to do this then you're not actually ready to quit. when i "quit" the first time i only told the people who were gonna bid on me in spl that day and a few very close friends.
leave the possibility that you might come back open. if you eventually do return (and lots of people do) you can just say "i was taking a long break" instead of "i wanted to say goodbye to this game for good but i pussied out and now i'm back here" (you'll notice that i myself tactfully left the possibility open in this very thread).
avoid going back and lurking around without logging in. it will depress you as you realize that people slowly stop caring about your absence. you can try it pretty infrequently and it feels nice at first to see all the "please don't go" messages on your wall, but after a while when people stop caring and you stop getting name-dropped you might feel the need to come back and prove stuff to people again. this is not good.
just disappearing one day works for some people. some of you should try it sometime.
What players do you look up to / are good friends with?
i don't look up to anybody anymore. friends i used to look up to included bkc, august, tdk, blim, hack, and ciele, because they're mature (except kevin maybe), easy to talk to, and very good tour players. upstanding guys in general who are good even though i didn't look up to them as much include Finchinator because he helped me through some really tough times,Nails because he's adorable, Stathakis because he's fun, insightful, and mature, Earth who is my true love even though he is a (BAN ME PLEASE).
Finally, could you provide us with a team of yours from any generation and tell us a brief explanation how it works?
here's a modification of my go-to sun team in bw.
feel free to ask me questions about non-mons related things, dudes! i barely wanna talk about mons anyway.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks to steelskitty for taking the time out to complete this interview.
Be sure to ask him any questions you have below!
Based on other Player of the Week threads
Art by NicoReaper
Welcome everyone to Ubers Player of the Week! This will be a weekly project where I interview well known players to try and see into their mind a bit. If anyone has any suggestions on who I should interview, feel free to shoot me a PM. Anyways, lets get to it!
steelskitty
Most Known For.
SPL finalist, Ubers Open finalist, WCOP winner, perfect UPL record (8-0), a while ago he was really lucky and people still tease him about it today.
Favourite Pokémon.
competitively, Latios. From personal experience the dude's good in every gen of ubers i've tried (4-6) and it also slays in bw ou. it's probably the mon that shows up on most of my teams throughout all the tiers i've played. from an aesthetic standpoint, skitty; i really like cats and skitty is incredibly cute, unlike fellow cat pokemon PUReUGLY..
Tell us a little about yourself
i'm a 16 year-old american. i'm gonna be a junior in high school this fall. i like boys even though i have a girlfriend, i should probably get around to telling her that sometime.. (i'm bisexual). i'm very artistically-minded; most of my free time is spent on graphic design and various forms of musicianship (mainly electronic music, but also singing, piano, and sometimes guitar). i overuse parentheses and semicolons. i haven't accomplished anything in mons since the last time i did one of these interviews. nobody appreciates my taste in music ever since i started listening to experimental electronica.
How did you choose the name steelskitty? And who is jacqueline?
there's more of a backstory to this than there probably should be. i've cycled between usernames in my time on smogon. my first PS! username ever was steeljackal, which was something cool-sounding i stole from a (dpp, i think) serebii analysis of lucario. steeljackal was already taken on smogon by the time i joined so i went by steelskitty instead. i chose skitty in particular because it was the mascot pokemon of oriserver, which was a place 13 year-old me greatly preferred to main (main had no rooms system when i first discovered it; it was just a lobby, which was about as horrific as you'd imagine). i switched my username to steeljackal<3 when i realized i could... i had grown to think steelskitty sounded immature. i went by that for a while but come spl time i got mocked for having a heart after my name. insecure, anxious 14 year-old me didn't like that so i switched to steelphoenix to sound more MASCULINE. a little while ago i switched back to steelskitty because i realized there's nothing wrong with it and steelphoenix is a fucking terrible name.
jacqueline is my drag queen name and my alt on irc. i stole it from a teacher i thought was hot in my freshman year of high school. i've seen her in the hallway since then and she's not really to my taste anymore but i still keep the name because it sounds pretty.
What is your favorite generation in Ubers, and why?
bw used to be my favorite because of its high skill ceiling, spike-stacking, smarter playerbase, and the fact that the power creep was really balanced. the tier is unimaginably stale now though, and if i got back into playing it i don't think i'd enjoy it. i think xy (pre-oras) is now my favorite. xy has a lot of the good characteristics of bw but it doesn't feel as stale. maybe my opinion of it would change if i went back and seriously played it again, but for now i'm content staring back at it through my rose-tinted glasses.
What's your favorite playstyle and why?
practically speaking, offense with a suicide lead. it's the best way to abuse all the killer offensive threats ubers offers and is the best for scoring easy wins. i do have a soft spot for stall, even if it's not viable; there's a certain sadistic satisfaction to be gained from watching your inexperienced opponent's pokemon slowly die as they're unable to break the impeccable series of walls you have constructed.
If you could change two things in the ORAS metagame, what would those be?
well, first i'd make it xy ubers. then i'd get blue jay and my other old friends to come back and i'd actually enjoy playing this game again.
kidding, but honestly i don't think only two changes can really save this tier. i could say "ban primal groudon!" but then primal kyogre becomes a massive pain in the ass and xerneas becomes (more of a) massive pain in the ass. i could say "ban mega salamence!" and then primal groudon becomes harder to deal with and offense loses one of its most valuable toys. i guess getting rid of darkrai and xerneas would take care of two of the tier's biggest problems whilst having the least collateral damage as a result; it's not like getting rid of either of them nerfs anything except offense, which already needs to be put in check anyway.
Favorite SPL/UPL/Seasonal/Ubers Open game(s)?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen5ubers-137849816
was my last game in the upl i played in. very intense and important match, i wasn't expecting to win it till the end. 14 year-old me could almost unfailingly be counted on to act moronic in battle chats.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ubers-33751
all my spl games were stupid fun but this one is probably my favorite solely because of how mad problems got.
Do you think Ubers should be in SPL 8? Why? Would you like to play Ubers again?
i mean, maybe. i think the playerbase is worse than it's been in a long time (myself definitely included, i was only ever good at mons because i played it constantly and now that i've spent time away from the game i am disgustingly bad), but that's inevitable when nearly every high-level tour player in the tier quits or goes on indefinite hiatus. i think there's enough old guys coming back and enough new guys who have become good at the game to make it a good show in the end, though. i think the tier needs work but it's certainly not the worst one that could be in spl. i dunno how new mons would affect it, i haven't been paying attention to the hype around next generation and i don't think anybody really knows how sun/moon would change the tier yet.
currently, i don't wish to play ubers in spl, or pokemon in general again. one of the biggest reasons i got into this game was because it helped me cope with the excessive stress i felt when i was 13 but now that i've grown older a lot of that is gone. my life right now is wonderful, i don't need pokemon to compensate for anything or fill up time and i can spend my days doing better things. i don't see myself coming back to this game again unless i really feel like i have nothing better to do with my time, but who knows.
Since you had one of the best Ubers records in SPL and you are an experienced tournament player, how did you go about preparing your matches?
i experimented with different ways of preparing for opponents. de-stressing before big tour games was something i always did, and the ways i did this varied. sometimes i fixed myself a drink i liked, sometimes i meditated, usually i masturbated... (this is common practice among tour players, don't let them tell you otherwise). typically i would find as many of the guy's replays as i could and watch them over the span of an hour or so. i looked at the plays they made in certain situations more than the teams they were using, but i occasionally made a list of their teams too. i found that people tend to react similarly in 50/50 situations from game to game and that can define who they are as a player, whether they're safe or aggressive, illogical or calculating, etc. if a person used a team a lot or had a lot of their team revealed during a game i would sometimes try to recreate it in the teambuilder. it was useful having a visual reference like that for counter-styling and it gave me an idea of the sets they preferred. if they posted often in the ubers subforum i would occasionally look over their posts because doing that would give me an idea about their attitude toward the game and alert me to any gimmicks to expect. i always looked over a person's "forum presence" on their profile because that's generally a good indicator of the sort of player they are. if they had 500 posts in various tournament subforums then i'd expect them to be good and have friends that could provide them teams even if they didn't play the tier. same if they had posts in the spl/wcop forums beyond shittalk or farm league. if 80% of their posts were in orange islands or, say, another tier's subforum then i'd relax a little because i'd know they weren't experienced at ubers tours. sometimes i counter-teamed and other times i simply counter-styled... both worked sometimes and didn't work others. counter-styling is safer than counter-teaming but that doesn't make it better.
ultimately, i'd say i rarely went into games having no idea about my opponent.
Are you planning to come back to Ubers or will you wait till Sun&Moon?
i don't think people really want me to come back. i don't want me to come back. i did what i could in pokemon, i mean. i could stay here and get around to actually winning some of the tours where i only made it to finals. i could pick up bw ou again and do wcop or classic. i could shake off the rust and start practicing constantly with my friends in the community, or spend hours teambuilding. i could start tutoring again, do analyses, keep my cc badge, maybe become a mod or a tier leader someday. but why? i don't have anything to prove anymore. when i first started out in the tour community there was this drive to be like one of those elite guys like problems or edgar or blim who got to play in spl and had their own clique of strong players. in 2015 i got to that point and kinda plateaued... i feel no drive to prove myself to anybody around here anymore. i don't enjoy playing mons now, even. teambuilding is a massive hassle and this game fucks with my anxiety disorder in terrible ways. i've just gotten to the point where there's nothing to gain from mons and i only very recently realized it. i guess i could come back at some point in the distant future but now there's no drive to and i don't think there will be for a while.
Is there any advice that you would like to share with new users?
listen to the players who are better than you, even if they're snarky. some of the higher level players were assholes to me when i first started playing ubers but i deserved it and it helped me mature a lot both as a player and a person. during the many stints when i've laddered on alts for the fun of it i've run into so many apathetic idiots who are stuck in ladder hell in the first place because they think they're the hottest shit and don't even read analyses. i would try to give them advice about their team but they wouldn't listen regardless of how badly they were losing. don't be one of those people.
[RANT]
also, play the fucking game. if you're sitting around theorymonning, contributing, or giving handjobs more than you are actually playing mons then you're missing the point of being here in the first place. pokemon sites are good at being pokemon sites. they are incredibly inferior to other places when it comes to providing opportunities to contribute to a community or social networking or sharing ideas or anything else. i'm not saying you shouldn't make friends or help out the newer kids but don't lose sight of what you came here to do in the first place. nobody starts playing competitive pokemon because they have the idea that they want to teach others how to be pokemon masters or they want to document every pokemon in their respective tier or they want to hold power over an extremely niche area of the internet. people start playing competitive pokemon because they wanna play with their mons... if you're bad at the game then don't start contributing just to save face and impress people. if you're bad, then get better or move on to a different game. being good at mons isn't gonna impress anybody in your real world, anyway; don't fool yourself into thinking the praise of strangers over the internet matters more than the praise you can get from doing legitimate things with your real life.[/ENDRANT]
Any advice for people who try to quit mons?
well, getting grounded by my parents was how i did it, but...
unless the site legitimately doesn't function as well without you gone (i'm referring to tier leaders and some moderators; the site gets by just fine if someone with a few badges or a trophy quits), don't make an "i'm quitting" pastebin or post on your wall that you're leaving or make a thread about saying goodbye to this game. if you feel like you need to do this then you're not actually ready to quit. when i "quit" the first time i only told the people who were gonna bid on me in spl that day and a few very close friends.
leave the possibility that you might come back open. if you eventually do return (and lots of people do) you can just say "i was taking a long break" instead of "i wanted to say goodbye to this game for good but i pussied out and now i'm back here" (you'll notice that i myself tactfully left the possibility open in this very thread).
avoid going back and lurking around without logging in. it will depress you as you realize that people slowly stop caring about your absence. you can try it pretty infrequently and it feels nice at first to see all the "please don't go" messages on your wall, but after a while when people stop caring and you stop getting name-dropped you might feel the need to come back and prove stuff to people again. this is not good.
just disappearing one day works for some people. some of you should try it sometime.
What players do you look up to / are good friends with?
i don't look up to anybody anymore. friends i used to look up to included bkc, august, tdk, blim, hack, and ciele, because they're mature (except kevin maybe), easy to talk to, and very good tour players. upstanding guys in general who are good even though i didn't look up to them as much include Finchinator because he helped me through some really tough times,Nails because he's adorable, Stathakis because he's fun, insightful, and mature, Earth who is my true love even though he is a (BAN ME PLEASE).
Finally, could you provide us with a team of yours from any generation and tell us a brief explanation how it works?
here's a modification of my go-to sun team in bw.
THE ENTANGLED (Groudon) @ Life Orb
Ability: Drought
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Dragon Tail
MOTION BLUR (Latios) (M) @ Soul Dew
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Calm Mind
- Psyshock
- Roost
GET DEADED (Ho-Oh) @ Choice Band
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 152 HP / 252 Atk / 104 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Brave Bird
- Sleep Talk
- Earthquake
MANTRA (Genesect) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Download
EVs: 248 Atk / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Iron Head
- U-turn
- Flamethrower
- Ice Beam
ANOMALY (Espeon) (F) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Magic Bounce
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Yawn
- Grass Knot
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Shadow Ball
VOODOO (Arceus-Fighting) @ Fist Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 252 HP / 80 SpA / 176 Spe
Timid Nature
- Judgment
- Thunder Wave
- Recover
- Ice Beam / Stone Edge
Ability: Drought
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Dragon Tail
MOTION BLUR (Latios) (M) @ Soul Dew
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Calm Mind
- Psyshock
- Roost
GET DEADED (Ho-Oh) @ Choice Band
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 152 HP / 252 Atk / 104 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Brave Bird
- Sleep Talk
- Earthquake
MANTRA (Genesect) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Download
EVs: 248 Atk / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Iron Head
- U-turn
- Flamethrower
- Ice Beam
ANOMALY (Espeon) (F) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Magic Bounce
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Yawn
- Grass Knot
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Shadow Ball
VOODOO (Arceus-Fighting) @ Fist Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 252 HP / 80 SpA / 176 Spe
Timid Nature
- Judgment
- Thunder Wave
- Recover
- Ice Beam / Stone Edge
the nicks are from noisia's new lp, which somehow managed to be as good as their first one. this is an alteration of an old rmt i did... at least, i'm pretty sure some of the sets are different. if not then at least you guys get better nicknames than the ones i was using then.
the goal of the team was to abuse the latios/ho-oh offensive core since those two mons utterly smash everything. genesect absolutely slays here because every switch-in people could ever have to it gets utterly decimated by something on this team. espeon is chosen over the more conventional forretress because forretress is perhaps the tier's finest way to lose momentum (not to mention that it never, ever spins and clashes defensively with genesect)... with espeon you get at least two shots, sometimes more, at keeping rocks off for your bird. if you're playing well and the opponent isn't packing like two stealth rockers or some other inane shit then that's all you need. arceus-fighting was chosen over the more conventional arceus-ghost because it takes on dialga, darkrai, and extreme killer arceus better. it also viably runs thunder wave which is phenomenal to support my ho-oh. run stone edge if you're facing someone who likes sun, otherwise go with ice beam. latios is the resident groudon check and it also keeps kyogre at bay when sun, genesect, and offensive pressure just aren't enough. ho-oh is the main killing machine. it provides sleep fodder when you're not ballsy enough to switch espeon into the other guy's darkrai and it plays basically like it does in oras, except you don't need to keep it alive to fend off (BAN ME PLEASE) xerneas. groudon is fast, like a ramadan. this is to fuck up ho-oh and dialga, two mons that can be problems for this team when played correctly. the extra bulk to be gained from running defensive groudon pales in importance in comparison to the momentum and fast kills this one nets you. i chose life orb because it always KOs dialga without needing rocks, but if you're allergic to recoil items on mons that are meant to be defensive then earth plate is also viable to kill a fully healthy dialga 56% of the time. it's slightly better odds than switching espeon into it, i mean...
the goal of the team was to abuse the latios/ho-oh offensive core since those two mons utterly smash everything. genesect absolutely slays here because every switch-in people could ever have to it gets utterly decimated by something on this team. espeon is chosen over the more conventional forretress because forretress is perhaps the tier's finest way to lose momentum (not to mention that it never, ever spins and clashes defensively with genesect)... with espeon you get at least two shots, sometimes more, at keeping rocks off for your bird. if you're playing well and the opponent isn't packing like two stealth rockers or some other inane shit then that's all you need. arceus-fighting was chosen over the more conventional arceus-ghost because it takes on dialga, darkrai, and extreme killer arceus better. it also viably runs thunder wave which is phenomenal to support my ho-oh. run stone edge if you're facing someone who likes sun, otherwise go with ice beam. latios is the resident groudon check and it also keeps kyogre at bay when sun, genesect, and offensive pressure just aren't enough. ho-oh is the main killing machine. it provides sleep fodder when you're not ballsy enough to switch espeon into the other guy's darkrai and it plays basically like it does in oras, except you don't need to keep it alive to fend off (BAN ME PLEASE) xerneas. groudon is fast, like a ramadan. this is to fuck up ho-oh and dialga, two mons that can be problems for this team when played correctly. the extra bulk to be gained from running defensive groudon pales in importance in comparison to the momentum and fast kills this one nets you. i chose life orb because it always KOs dialga without needing rocks, but if you're allergic to recoil items on mons that are meant to be defensive then earth plate is also viable to kill a fully healthy dialga 56% of the time. it's slightly better odds than switching espeon into it, i mean...
feel free to ask me questions about non-mons related things, dudes! i barely wanna talk about mons anyway.
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Thanks to steelskitty for taking the time out to complete this interview.
Be sure to ask him any questions you have below!
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