LC Player of the Week Revival #2: BurntZebra

taranteeeno

levi premier league of the decade
is a Community Contributor


BurntZebra
Favorite Pokemon: Lickitung
Most Used LC Pokemon: Diglett
Known as: LC Winter Seasonal winner, star SM player of the LCPL 8 Tactical Totodiles, 6-3 Smogon Exhbition II, the only guy to beat Dundies last LCPL, Levi alt

We are back with another installment of LC Player of the Week! This week I have the recent LC Winter Seasonal winner, BurntZebra. Despite being a touted player in the community, you might not know much about the zebraman unless you are in the elusive Civ V jerk. Please help me welcome BurntZebra!​

Hi BurntZebra! You're hot off taking gold in the recent LC Winter Seasonal and clearly proving yourself as one of the top players in the current LC player pool, but you're still kind of a mystery to the community. Why don't you start off by telling us a bit about yourself?

I'm a 21 year old college student from the midwest region of the US. I like playing games other than pokemon, most recently, I've taken up speedrunning halo games and am currently playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey (hmu with other game suggestions). Back when I wasn't a lazy college student, I played tennis. Now I've retired and just watch people who are better than me play it. I'm also a big fan of GoT, although S8 is worse than my LCPL games this season.

Also, I have to ask.. what is the origin of your username?

Back in 5th grade (around 2008 or 2009), all the cool kids in my class were making gmail accounts to talk to each other outside of class. I wanted to make a cool gmail name to let all the girls know how creative and funny I was. I had a few different names that I thought of, including ExplosiveOrange, SuicidalCarrot, and BurntZebra. For some reason, I liked BurntZebra, perhaps because a burnt zebra would be entirely black, and thus would just be a black horse. Maybe looking back on it, I could have been a carrot with suicidal tendencies, but I think my current name is fine, besides being confused with zebraiken on a weekly basis.

SuicidalCarrot… that’s golden.

Ahem.. Okay back on topic. From my understanding, you were originally an old gens player who happened to be scouted out by Levi prior to LCPL 7. Can you talk about how you got into competitive mons in the first place? When did you transition into Little Cup?


My start was actually a different form of old gens. I found a game called PokeMMO through some random twitch stream in the summer of 2013, which was a gen 3 based pokemon MMO, with a focus on competitive play. The game taught me a lot about the basics, like IVs/EVs/natures, but it also taught me how to teambuild and how to actually play pokemon competitively. I remember being frustrated that I couldn't sweep with my endure reversal heracross whenever someone was running a weezing or skarmory. Eventually I got into ADV OU through PokeMMO's bastardization of SPL, called PSL (PokeMMO Super League), as ADV OU was one of the tiers. This got me more familiar with smogon/showdown, but I didn't really try LC until early 2018, when SM LC was a tier in PSL and I thought I'd try my hand at it. I ended up liking it more than SM OU at the time, so I figured I'd get involved with the smogon community by joining the LC swiss tournament, and eventually pm'ing levi saying I was interested in being on the piplups.
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So ADV is where you started with competitive. The mechanics, playstyle, strategies from ADV are very different from LC. What made you stick around in this metagame?

I liked future gen mechanics a lot more than ADV as I played it more. 1.5x damage critical hits were a lot more balanced than 2x damage. 1-3 sleep turns was a lot better than 2-5 sleep turns. The physical/special split makes types a lot more balanced. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I think as the generations progress, the new generations are getting more balanced in comparison to the old ones. As for LC specifically, I liked the way the meta was in terms of matchups and teambuilding. In gen 7 OU, I felt like some matchups were just unwinnable, since there are a lot more archetypes to prepare for. If you bring the most standard team in LC, the odds of losing on team matchup alone is very unlikely, since the top LC mons are all sort of safety nets for each other.

Speaking of teambuilding in SM LC, what are your favorite cores or sets to build around right now?

Anything involving diglett is a pretty good core to build around. Anyone who has watched my exhibition games knows that I run a lot of diglett. Diglett has so much versatility in what it can trap with its various sets. It's almost easier to list off the things that can't get trapped by diglett than the things that diglett can trap. Need something that can switch in and trap abra? Beat up eviolite diglett. Need something that can take out flying/normal resists? Any diglett set. Need to take out spritzee? LO sludge bomb diglett. The sky is your limit with diglett. You can pretty much choose any offensive pokemon and come up with a diglett set that supports it. Now with trapinch banned, the only thing truly limiting diglett are opposing digletts, especially scarf or air balloon digletts.

Takes notes everyone! Moving onto LCPL 8, we are in the thick of the action and you are the star SM player on the Tactical Totodiles. What was your reaction to being bought for 25k and how has the season been so far? How is this LCPL different from the last?

I was sort of surprised with my value this year. I knew my value would increase from last LCPL, but I wasn't sure how much it would. I think performing well in the recent LC tournaments (winter seasonal/exhibition) has inflated the value of myself a fair amount. The role I play on my LCPL team has changed a lot as well, from a team with an SM lineup of levi/kingler/ninjadog, supported by star, to a team where I'm the most expensive player and have a much bigger role to fill in terms of team building and some leadership as well. I'd say there's a fair amount of pressure on myself (mostly self-imposed). So far we're doing well and better than what most people predicted, but it's still early in the season, so there's still a lot that can happen because the competition is fierce, besides another water-based team who's name will not be mentioned.

:blobglare: I know you’re thinking of a team with a certain banned bird or maybe those turtles from last year.. Yep, let’s go with that.

Since we are on the topic of the Totodiles, there quite a few up-and-coming players with a lot to prove this LCPL, what is your advice to newer players in the community?


I still consider myself a relatively new player to the LC community, but there are a few things that newer people can do to improve their LC skills and their standing in the community. First thing is to play in all the LC tournaments. There's only a handful of them every year, so it's not a big commitment to play in all of them throughout the year. This forces you to be always playing LC some throughout the seasons so that you don't fall behind on new meta trends or just general battle experience. Playing in the individual LC tournaments will also make it a lot easier to get a spot in the team tournaments, as being able to point to your success in an individual tournament is a lot more impressive than being top 10 on the LC ladder. Another thing is to get to know the top LC'ers, as they are typically good sources of advice and practice, while they can also put in a good word for you if you find yourself struggling to get picked in LCPL. The last thing I have to say in terms of advice is to not get too upset about a single loss. Every time I lose, I think about what went wrong in the teambuilding process and what went wrong in the match itself, which helps me improve for future matches, instead of self-loathing about my pokemon skills.

Great advice. It’s crazy to think that you only joined the tour scene last LCPL. Newer players should definitely take notes.

Now just another question or two before wrap this up. Who do you respect in the LC player community?


Even though this is the internet and we're all supposed to hate each other behind the anonymity of our keyboards, I'd like to think I respect everyone until they give me a reason not to respect them. There are a few people that I have greater respect for, as they have shown great dedication to LC. I think anyone who can stick around for more than a couple of years in LC deserves some respect too. I'd say Levi gets the most respect from me, as he's been around in LC forever and gave me a chance in LCPL to prove myself and to interact with other LC players and tournament players.

And in this edition of LC POTW, I am adding a new segment, Teeeno’s Tea , where we get hot takes from the best. Is there anybody you think is overrated?

Hot take, starmaster is overrated. Imagine being tourbanned for 21 months and coming back, and still being praised as the best LC player ever. Like who even cares about old SPL performances, his best tier wasn't even LC. The only tournaments that matter are the highly prestigious LC seasonal tournaments that have occurred in the past 12 months and maybe some one-off tournaments like the Last Chance tournament or the Swiss tournament. Little known fact, all of starmaster's success is actually thanks to the greatest player of our generation, Nili_Aoe, also known as Kingler12345.

:psywoke:That’s a hot take if I’ve ever seen one! Might have to do another one of these segments.

Anyway, you’ve been an awesome LC POTW guest. Do you mind closing this out by sharing a team with us? Maybe something that works really well in the current meta, so that people aren’t spamming starmaster webs or that old Stealth Rock-less Scarf Pony sample team on ladder.


Spritzee @ Eviolite
Ability: Aroma Veil
Level: 5
EVs: 212 HP / 196 Def / 12 SpA / 76 SpD / 12 Spe
Bold Nature
- Wish
- Protect
- Moonblast
- Covet

Ferroseed @ Eviolite
Ability: Iron Barbs
Level: 5
EVs: 84 HP / 36 Atk / 188 Def / 148 SpD / 36 Spe
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Knock Off
- Bullet Seed
- Thunder Wave

Archen
Ability: Defeatist
Level: 5
EVs: 144 Atk / 76 Def / 84 SpA / 196 Spe
Naive Nature
- Roost
- Acrobatics
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Knock Off

Diglett @ Eviolite
Ability: Arena Trap
Level: 5
EVs: 36 HP / 156 Atk / 76 SpD / 236 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Pursuit
- Sucker Punch
- Beat Up

Staryu @ Waterium Z
Ability: Analytic
Level: 5
EVs: 76 Def / 196 SpA / 236 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Rapid Spin
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Psychic

Timburr @ Eviolite
Ability: Iron Fist
Level: 5
EVs: 196 Atk / 156 Def / 156 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Mach Punch
- Knock Off
- Counter

This was a team I made when I was brainstorming for my tiebreak match vs Heysup in the exhibition semifinals, but I think coconut vetoed the team because she hates archen. I wanted a team with ferroseed and spritzee, but I found those two to be difficult to effectively build around, as they lack some key resistances and leave you weak to stuff like magnemite, vullaby, ponyta, and hp fire gastly. Archen was added to be a vullaby switch in and a solid check to fighting types. Eviolite diglett is one of my favorite sets, as it lives a lot of surprising things, like LO psychic from abra. Staryu is hazard control, some speed for the team, and gives a little more offense to the somewhat passive team so far outside of archen. Timburr was the obligatory fighting type for the team, giving some priority and a way to deal with pawniard. Counter is an interesting tech, mostly used for fighting types and mudbray, but there are other uses potentially, like ponyta.

Looking at this team more closely, it feels more and more bizarre, as it has no regenerator users, no u-turn users, and no vullaby, but it has been quite effective in the few matches I have played with it.

Thank you BurntZebra for your time and thanks everyone for reading. Feel free to ask any questions to our guest. Also, if you have any suggestions for new segments or you really really liked Teeeno’s Tea, let me know. See you soon!
 

Fille

Afk
is a Pre-Contributor
LCPL Champion
oml goat

Do you often drink? (The answer should be yes so fav liquor?)
Hottest mon this meta under B+?
How do you feel being the main protagonist of LC 2019?
Tits or ass?
I can't come up with non-Chad questions for Zebra, mans too hot
 
double but BurntZebra check in and reply gdmi
had to wait to make it look like I was cool and too busy doing other stuff to reply

I turned 21 back in April of this year, so I have taken up drinking relatively recently. Haven't had too many drinks yet though. Long island iced teas are pretty good though, will take other recommendations on drinks.

Archen is probably one of my favorite mons below B+ currently, since it can take advantage of vullaby existing on nearly every team and pressures pretty much every LC mon in the tier, given the right moveset. Corphish as of now is also way too good to be B currently, so that would be my alternative answer.

As a protagonist, it's important to figure out who my antagonists are. Obviously, the LC elite are the main group of antagonists. Me and serene grace are fighting to stop the oppression of the masses by the LC elite, although I've been beginning to suspect that serene grace has joined the LC elite. So there's a lot of pressure on me right now as the sole protagonist.

Clothed ass > clothed boobs, naked boobs > naked ass
 

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