approved by scpinion
based off of other potws
Hello everyone and welcome to the fourth installment of Monotype's Player of the Week!
To start things off, what is your favorite Pokemon?
I don't think I have a specific favorite Pokemon, but some of my favorite Pokemon are Sharpedo, Bisharp & Feraligatr. All of these Pokemon are really strong and give off an intimidating vibe; all of their designs look really cool too.
How did you come up with your PS! username?
Back when I made my PS! account Kanye West was one of my favorite artists, and 'all falls down' was my favorite Kanye song at the time. It's off his first album (which also happens to be my favorite Kanye album), and it's an iconic, meaningful song that's always relevant since it's about race, wealth, and life in general. Here's the link to the music video (
)
How did you first get into Monotype?
One of my good friends (his username was cba) showed me PS! and he happened to play OU and Monotype. We usually just came on PS! to have fun battles and joke around (if you dig around you can find some replays of me using some terrible BW teams). Consequently, those two tiers he introduced me to were and are the two main tiers I play to this day, where he doesn't even play anymore unfortunately. The thing I love about PS! is all the different formats and tiers that you can play-- it keeps you from getting bored. Because of this, I've tried almost every tier since then, and my favorite non-monotype tiers right now are OU, RU, and UU but I've tried every official tier and a bunch of OMs.
What Pokemon do you use the most?
The Pokemon I use most in Monotype is probably the classic regular DD Bounce Gyarados. I love Water teams and I have always found that regular Gyarados is criminally underused and underrated and provides much more utility to water teams than Mega Gyarados ever could. Leftovers keeps it healthy and hard to revenge kill, Bounce is an amazing STAB that can, with enough speed, check huge threats to Water teams like Breloom and Venusaur.
What are you most known for?
Funnily enough, I think I was originally known as 'that one guy that ladders a lot'! (editor note: for reference he's played roughly 5k ladder games!) On the old OU Monotype ladder (even before Monotype had its own banlist and council and everything), I had something like 3,000 monotype games and another collective 3,000 games from other tiers (take this with a grain of salt, that ladder was up with no resets for a long,long time!) I used a lot of fun alts with the name 'bobo' on it, you might remember me using a joke Murkrow + Sigilyph team (cool replay of Murkrow: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/oumonotype-151411335) After that, I was known for making a few cool teams, like the Deoxys spikes stacking Psychic team, which is probably my favorite team in its respective meta, HO Steel, and a bunch of teams abusing Greninja.
Favorite Type?
I've always found it hard to pick one type, I use a bunch of them! If I had to narrow it down, my favorite 3 types are Water, Flying, and Psychic, aka the broken best types :).
Favorite Playstyle?
In Monotype I've always found the classic balanced core of dedicated defensive walls and offensive attackers to be really boring, so the teams I make usually try to stray away from that. My favorite, most reliable playstyle is probably bulky offense, and that's true of virtually every tier I play in, from Monotype to RU. I also really love making HO teams, even though a bunch of the HO teams I try to make end up failing.
What players do you look up to or are really good friends with?
My closest friends on PS that I always talk to have always been Chakra, Yaksok, and you of course. I've learned to play other tiers, had so many great laughs, and got into joining Smogon tournaments from you three (mostly from you for the latter). Our original skype group of you three, me, Kammi, Zenith, Hazey and a couple others was great and so much fun and the time when all of us played PS! was one of my favorite time periods on PS :3
I have a bunch of good friends, including all the cool private room people I've met the past year, like ceraa, MrAldoPls, Meteordash, Feliburn, Shit User, cityfolk, Ranbu No Melody, Diogo and a bunch more that would make this line way too long.
People I look up to include Barian, scpinion, Wyn, Arifeen, Clearly, SaNeski, Freeroamer and so many more.
If there was anything you could change about Monotype, what would it be?
I'd definitely change how the general community treats newer players. It's always great to see players from other tiers trying to play Monotype, and unfortunately sometimes the community doesn't behave the best around these people.
Any advice for new Monotype players?
Use the Smogon forums!!! I can't say how many times I've met new Monotype players either from Frost/Origin or from other tiers that play Monotype but don't even have a Smogon account. It's filled with amazing resources and is a great hub to talk about the metagame and everything encompassing it. You can also join all the amazing, fun tournaments that make this site what it is!
Do you legitimately find Hoopa-U a threat to the metagame and that it should be banned? Explain.
Hoopa-U is an interesting Pokemon. I definitely find it a huge threat that has the potential to get banned, which is why I voted for a suspect test for it. Personally, I don't think it's that bad, because it's slow and is forced to run a Scarf on Dark teams usually, which makes it predictable and without a Scarf it's easy to revenge kill because of that terrible defensive typing and bulk.
How would you recommend new players to build effectively? This ties in with the recommendation for new players - Smogon is a great resource for teambuilding. Look at the viability rankings, the ev spread thread, and creative sets. Build around cores or Pokemon that you like and add Pokemon that support that Pokemon. After you're done building the preliminary team, test it as much as you can and make edits. The best teams are made from consequent testing and editing. Don't worry too much about EV spreads, think about that when you've perfected the rest of the team. Try building around underrated threats or Pokemon that you think are cool (but still viable), and you'll probably have a team at the end that you like more.
Finally, could you post a team with your favorite type and playstyle with a brief explanation on how it works?
This is one of my favorite Water teams I've made, and I mean this literally because the only Water team that I've built that I like more than this is a Band Greninja team from early ORAS. This team shows my teambuilding style, as it's Bulky Offense and is built around the entire team pivoting around and weakening the team for a Mega Sharpedo sweep. This team does really well, with its main weaknesses being to Clefable fairy teams and Dragon teams with a lot of choiced Outrage/Draco Meteor Pokemon. I used to abuse the shit out of this team since Keldeo + Sharpedo is like one of the best offensive cores in the Monotype metagame-- It absolutely ravages the top types. Back when I used to ladder in Monotype I also used this team a lot.
Well, that's all for now guys! Thanks again afd and the thread is now open so you can ask your own questions! :)
based off of other potws
Hello everyone and welcome to the fourth installment of Monotype's Player of the Week!
This week, I have a Monotype room moderator and respected player, all falls down! Creator of the easily spammable HO Steel team and affectionately called Raj! :) Like every other forum that does this, this'll be a weekly thing 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!
all falls down
all falls down
To start things off, what is your favorite Pokemon?
I don't think I have a specific favorite Pokemon, but some of my favorite Pokemon are Sharpedo, Bisharp & Feraligatr. All of these Pokemon are really strong and give off an intimidating vibe; all of their designs look really cool too.
How did you come up with your PS! username?
Back when I made my PS! account Kanye West was one of my favorite artists, and 'all falls down' was my favorite Kanye song at the time. It's off his first album (which also happens to be my favorite Kanye album), and it's an iconic, meaningful song that's always relevant since it's about race, wealth, and life in general. Here's the link to the music video (
How did you first get into Monotype?
One of my good friends (his username was cba) showed me PS! and he happened to play OU and Monotype. We usually just came on PS! to have fun battles and joke around (if you dig around you can find some replays of me using some terrible BW teams). Consequently, those two tiers he introduced me to were and are the two main tiers I play to this day, where he doesn't even play anymore unfortunately. The thing I love about PS! is all the different formats and tiers that you can play-- it keeps you from getting bored. Because of this, I've tried almost every tier since then, and my favorite non-monotype tiers right now are OU, RU, and UU but I've tried every official tier and a bunch of OMs.
What Pokemon do you use the most?
The Pokemon I use most in Monotype is probably the classic regular DD Bounce Gyarados. I love Water teams and I have always found that regular Gyarados is criminally underused and underrated and provides much more utility to water teams than Mega Gyarados ever could. Leftovers keeps it healthy and hard to revenge kill, Bounce is an amazing STAB that can, with enough speed, check huge threats to Water teams like Breloom and Venusaur.
What are you most known for?
Funnily enough, I think I was originally known as 'that one guy that ladders a lot'! (editor note: for reference he's played roughly 5k ladder games!) On the old OU Monotype ladder (even before Monotype had its own banlist and council and everything), I had something like 3,000 monotype games and another collective 3,000 games from other tiers (take this with a grain of salt, that ladder was up with no resets for a long,long time!) I used a lot of fun alts with the name 'bobo' on it, you might remember me using a joke Murkrow + Sigilyph team (cool replay of Murkrow: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/oumonotype-151411335) After that, I was known for making a few cool teams, like the Deoxys spikes stacking Psychic team, which is probably my favorite team in its respective meta, HO Steel, and a bunch of teams abusing Greninja.
Favorite Type?
I've always found it hard to pick one type, I use a bunch of them! If I had to narrow it down, my favorite 3 types are Water, Flying, and Psychic, aka the broken best types :).
Favorite Playstyle?
In Monotype I've always found the classic balanced core of dedicated defensive walls and offensive attackers to be really boring, so the teams I make usually try to stray away from that. My favorite, most reliable playstyle is probably bulky offense, and that's true of virtually every tier I play in, from Monotype to RU. I also really love making HO teams, even though a bunch of the HO teams I try to make end up failing.
What players do you look up to or are really good friends with?
My closest friends on PS that I always talk to have always been Chakra, Yaksok, and you of course. I've learned to play other tiers, had so many great laughs, and got into joining Smogon tournaments from you three (mostly from you for the latter). Our original skype group of you three, me, Kammi, Zenith, Hazey and a couple others was great and so much fun and the time when all of us played PS! was one of my favorite time periods on PS :3
I have a bunch of good friends, including all the cool private room people I've met the past year, like ceraa, MrAldoPls, Meteordash, Feliburn, Shit User, cityfolk, Ranbu No Melody, Diogo and a bunch more that would make this line way too long.
People I look up to include Barian, scpinion, Wyn, Arifeen, Clearly, SaNeski, Freeroamer and so many more.
If there was anything you could change about Monotype, what would it be?
I'd definitely change how the general community treats newer players. It's always great to see players from other tiers trying to play Monotype, and unfortunately sometimes the community doesn't behave the best around these people.
Any advice for new Monotype players?
Use the Smogon forums!!! I can't say how many times I've met new Monotype players either from Frost/Origin or from other tiers that play Monotype but don't even have a Smogon account. It's filled with amazing resources and is a great hub to talk about the metagame and everything encompassing it. You can also join all the amazing, fun tournaments that make this site what it is!
Do you legitimately find Hoopa-U a threat to the metagame and that it should be banned? Explain.
Hoopa-U is an interesting Pokemon. I definitely find it a huge threat that has the potential to get banned, which is why I voted for a suspect test for it. Personally, I don't think it's that bad, because it's slow and is forced to run a Scarf on Dark teams usually, which makes it predictable and without a Scarf it's easy to revenge kill because of that terrible defensive typing and bulk.
How would you recommend new players to build effectively? This ties in with the recommendation for new players - Smogon is a great resource for teambuilding. Look at the viability rankings, the ev spread thread, and creative sets. Build around cores or Pokemon that you like and add Pokemon that support that Pokemon. After you're done building the preliminary team, test it as much as you can and make edits. The best teams are made from consequent testing and editing. Don't worry too much about EV spreads, think about that when you've perfected the rest of the team. Try building around underrated threats or Pokemon that you think are cool (but still viable), and you'll probably have a team at the end that you like more.
Finally, could you post a team with your favorite type and playstyle with a brief explanation on how it works?
Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split
Gyarados @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 88 HP / 252 Atk / 168 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Substitute
- Waterfall
- Bounce
Sharpedo @ Sharpedonite
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Protect
- Crunch
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Fang
Starmie @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 16 SpD / 244 Spe
Timid Nature
- Reflect Type
- Scald
- Rapid Spin
- Recover
Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Scald
- Secret Sword
- Icy Wind
Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 252 HP / 132 Def / 124 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
- Earthquake
- Scald
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split
Gyarados @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 88 HP / 252 Atk / 168 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Substitute
- Waterfall
- Bounce
Sharpedo @ Sharpedonite
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Protect
- Crunch
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Fang
Starmie @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 16 SpD / 244 Spe
Timid Nature
- Reflect Type
- Scald
- Rapid Spin
- Recover
Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Scald
- Secret Sword
- Icy Wind
Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 252 HP / 132 Def / 124 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
- Earthquake
- Scald
Well, that's all for now guys! Thanks again afd and the thread is now open so you can ask your own questions! :)
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