"
IT'S PWNEMON DUMBASS"
Interviewee of the Week #4 - Stratos
1. Hi, who are you and where do you come from?
im Stratos, you may have known me as Pwnemon, i've lived in Maryland, USA for as long as I can remember. Currently enrolled as a freshman at University of Maryland though by the time this POTW is posted i'll have finished my freshman year!
2. What is your favourite Pokemon overall, and which is your favourite one to use competitively, and why?
I am super duper terrible at picking favorites, but a Pokemon which I really like aesthetically right now is Scizor. I seriously like the designs of like 2/3 of Pokemon, though, and I'm already doubting that choice. Competitively I rely way too much on a couple catch-all defensive Pokemon which I really love to use, those being Rotom-W, Amoonguss, and Aegislash. I'm trying to branch out with my teambuilding though, because I feel like I'm pretty easily counterteamed as is.
3. When did you join competitive Pokemon, and why did you?
I had played Pokemon casually for about three years, when shortly after I turned nine my dad took me and my brother to an EX Crystal Guardians pre-release tournament. I did really well and was hooked; I played the TCG competitively between 06-09, getting second in '07 states and top cutting '08 juniors Nationals, but I was still only casual on the video game side. sometime in 2009 my dad found a pokemon podcast (The Pallet Tribune) on iTunes and showed it to me, I listened to all of the episodes and decided to check out their website. That's where i was introduced to the magic of competitive mons, in late Platinum.
4. How do you feel ORAS plays compared to XY?
It's hard to quantify the difference between ORAS and XY. I want to say "it's more offensive," but that's not quite right either. Diancie definitely had a big impact on the meta and reduced the viability of a lot of defensive Pokemon, but it really just led to the defensive Pokemon left being more centralized in usage. I'm worried that as the metagame develops people will begin to find new ways to break down the defensive Pokemon which are left and at that point the meta will truly become more offensive, which would be bad for me as I am definitely a better defense player (though that's something I'm trying to work on). I preferred XY to ORAS because my favorite kinds of battles are the ones where the players can play positional games for three to four turns, switching back and forth to try and get into a position where they can KO the opponent's pokemon without opening themselves up, and multiple factors in ORAS have been hindering that type of play. honestly though that sort of thing started to die off when Arcticblast invented Substitute Kyurem-Black, which absolutely dismantles those kinds of teams, and only got worse when I popularized CM Cress, which does the same. It's one of the reasons I want to suspect both of those Pokemon.
5
. Apart from Calm Mind Cresselia and Substitute Kyurem-Black, is there anything else you would consider for a suspect test?
Well I absolutely don't think Mega Salamence will get unbanned, but lots of people want to see a retest, so it's in the pipes. My biggest problem with doubles is the proliferation of viable set up sweepers (i _hate it_ when someone comes up with a new good one) so that should tell you where I personally sit. People have thrown around the idea of a diancie suspect for a while and it might be worth our time, as I said diancie keeps a lot of defensive Pokemon pinned down so maybe it'll be necessary if the future I predicted comes to pass but in the current meta I don't think anyone sees diancie as a broken element. also ban rock slide its literally spread fake out
I also really hate belly drum cheese simply because it's no fun to watch or play against but that's not a good reason to ban
6. What are your plans for the future in this tier?
the number one thing that's always on my mind is playerbase. I think we have a great metagame and a great community so the one thing I'm really looking at is trying to grow our playerbase; it's one of the main reasons i added cash prizes to the seasonals like I just said I have like half a dozen suspect tests I'd like to *at least* try but the council is really suspect-averse in general (when i mentioned a CM test arctic responded with "lol ponymon") so i'm not exactly sure that those are ever going to happen. another thing is shaping all of the players in the ps room into absolutely top players. With people like finally, laga, and mizuhime losing interest in the tier we're going to need a new batch of representatives for next year's SPL. I'm still super into this but I obviously can't last forever either. we've got good players of course but i think everyone (myself included) has a long way to go before we can say we're truly optimal players, and so self-improvement (not in teambuilding, but in battle) is my main focus right now.
7. So are you basically scared that there will be not a big/optimal enough playerbase to be representing in the next Smogon Premier League?
I wouldn't say that, though I am a little afraid that with high player turnover the managers will just default to drafting known VGC players instead of those who've proven themselves in seasonals. But I want every tournament's top 8 to be composed of people who are invested into our metagame. I'm not saying that we had a terrible showing in the winter seasonals at all; in fact, that's basically what happened. But I want to keep improving our players until this is a consistent pattern, and also applies to top 16 or even 32, a lot of people who i thought would go far unfortunately lost early due to nerves or just poorly optimized play and I don't want to see that happen in the future. And yes, the biggest stage for outside observers to see our community is SPL, so I really dont want that to happen in SPL.
I see SPL as sort of a place where each community advertises themselves to Smogon at large, so I always want Doubles to have a good showing there of course.
This ties in back with what I was saying earlier about growing the playerbase. When people in SPL make a metagame look fun and intense with good players, it sparks interest and draws established Smogoners in, which is fantastic.
8. What are your ambitions in general, on Pokémon Showdown and Smogon?
ambitions on showdown? I don't give a single shit about global auth or anything, as long as I get to keep being RO of the doubles room. my ambitions on showdown are accomplished.
On Smogon as a whole I'd really like if I could become a super mod at some point, because it would make it easier to get what i want done with Doubles OU. I've learned that if you want something done on Smogon you really have to do it yourself and there's a lot of things you can't do when you're not in a broader decision-making position, though I've been making the best of it. I know my odds of ever becoming super mod aren't that great though; fortunately I have good working relationships with a lot of the current super moderators and they're often willing to lend a helping hand. The only other Smogon ambition I really have is being recognized as one of the top Doubles players outside of the Doubles community, i.e. going for a decent sum in an SPL auction, getting to start, and doing well. But that's just an ego thing. Oh obviously I want to be
#1 on the doubles power rankings but I'm not sure if that counts as a "smogon ambition"
9. In the previous answer you've stated you wanted to get stuff done with Doubles OU. Could you give a few examples of it?
oh, you know, just things as they come up. Like right now I'm trying to resolve an issue with the cash prizes in the seasonals and trying to get a certain user badged for their work in another area of the site and things like that. And it's a lot of middle manning, "Hey x can you talk to y for me?" and asking for favors and if i was a supermod then I would have access to private means of communication where I could do things a lot more directly
10. What do you think about activity on the forums, and are there any plans about changing it?
I wish the forums were more active, of course, but I despise "activity just to be active" projects like "Victim of the week" and whatever the shit that doesn't actually help people get better at the game. Maybe it's because of my secondary interest in Melee, but I see the ultimate goal of everything as to win more matches. The main role of the forum is to catalog and share information between players that they can then apply to their game. I don't see forum activity as a reward in itself.
It's a shame that so much knowledge which is spread on IRC channels and the like never makes its way onto the forum where more people can see it. I think a lot to blame is smogon's culture of "don't post unless it's a huge giant mega insightful ultrapost." I also think likes are to blame for this. People make jokes of it, but the "postcount-to-like-ratio" syndrome is a real thing. People don't want to post thigns which they know won't get likes.
I really wish the simple question simple answer thread would get used a lot more, and I wish we could sustain discussion threads. I've tried to kickstart these both in the past, but you can't fake activity. Our community is heavily chat-based, and I'm not sure how to change it.
11. But how do you feel about Doubles Players of the Week then? It isn't really something that improves people in battling directly.
No, but asking the best players for their opinions on a variety of things is still generating valuable knowledge. Like I said, not everything has to be a super insightful ultra mega-post. Let me give an example. Just recently the following exchange happened:
Shunz: can ludicolo be used outside of rain?
Shunz: on a regular team
#Stratos: Shunz
#Stratos: ive used ludicolo outside of rain once
#Stratos: and it did ok
#Stratos: problem is its super bad physical defense
#Stratos: ludicolo outside of rain is super niche but i wouldn't say it can't work
#Stratos: it's just if you really need its coverage
this sort of thing is the kind of thing that happens in chat twenty times a day and I wish happened on the forum instead.
12. You've made clear what you'd want to improve on the forums - but how about the ladder? This is a very important part of the tier in my opinion and looking as it is right now, it doesn't seem like it is a good place to battle. People often mock it for being shitty, what do you think of that?
Well first I want to make it clear: I think the ladder is not a terrible place to practice your play. Unlike challenging your friends, because you know nothing about your opponent, it can help you learn to make the play which works in
*every* situation instead of just relying on reads, which you often do, even if unintentionally, against friends.
However, that doesn't take away from the fact that the majority of players on the ladder are stinking garbage. I'm 100% serious that I want to divulge tiering from ladder stats in DOU because there simply is not a weight you can set where the swarms of bad players outweigh the few good ones. the way I see it, the ladder is truly unsalvageable. It's sad, but true. Statistics are just not in our favor. Even at the literal
#1 spot on the ladder half or more of your battles are against players with purely unviable teams.
Back in DPP, the ladder stats a were more accurate representation of the metagame than the ones we have now are (there were only two to three really not good Pokemon in OU—Ninjask, Electivire, and ~Togekiss), and in DPP the ladder stats were
_unweighted_. For all the good things Pokemon Showdown did, removing every barrier of entry from playing Pokemon has turned the ladder into 90% purely uncompetitive players, which isn't something sustainable. People bring up projects to revitalize the ladder because they see the problem as there simply not being enough good players, but the problem with the ladder is much more simply that your opponent is not vetted.
In a tournament, to get
#1, you have to beat
#2 in a head-to-head match. In a ladder, to get to
#1, you just have to thrash thirty people in a row who use Avalugg and Cradily with such a large proportion of people on the PS ladder using Avalugg and Cradily, this is more possible than ever, and it's even impossible to avoid them. That's why nobody wants to play ladder anymore. There's no easy way to fix this.
13. Who did improve the most during the Seasonals in your opinion, or is there anyone who really impressed you?
Everyone in the winner's bracket really caught me off guard. Didn't even know who kamikaze17 was before this tournament but now he's a great player and contributor. deoxys speed has always been ok but his wins over makiri and finally were both pretty big upsets imo. Lasagne is definitely the odd-man-out of the tournament, he got to top 8 while only playing three rounds through activity + bunnies. No offense bro but you 100% slipped through the cracks. Super impressed by the first two i mentioned though. As for who's improved a lot, I have to go with quality content. Haven't watched his earlier matches but if the rumors of him using cosmic power clefable in the earlier rounds are true then he made impressive strides in a short time. hashtag has also improved a lot lately, though he's not still in it. And deoxys speed; I already talked about him though. A lot of the PS crew are overtaking the "old guard;" laga and arcticblast both lost in early rounds but people like Kyle, Hashtag, and deo speed made it quite far
14. What is your favourite thing about the Doubles tier, it can also be about the community.
I already said I'm terrible at picking favorites. I love how balanced the metagame is, but if I had to choose one thing, it'd be the weight of each and every turn. singles games can flip on a single turn too, but often the players are playing by a "script" between these few pivotal turns where each only has a single real option. In doubles, basically every turn has four or five viable options and a lot of decisions to be made and hypotheticals to run through, which is exhilarating to both play and watch. With regards to the community, I like that we've made big strides recently when it comes to our game manners. We used to be extremely salty, and it's nice that instead i'm seeing a lot of "lost gg." It makes everything a lot more fun.
15. How do you go preparing for tournament matches? Is there any specified thought process, any preparation?
It's not something I'm proud of, but I'm really susceptible to pressure, so I put a lot of effort into my tournament preparation. One of the things I do when playing tournament matches is play good VGM in the background. having the music first helps me to calm my thoughts, and second forces me to concentrate harder in order to think, so that I don't make rash split-second decision plays.
16. What is your favourite tier outside of Doubles, and why?
DPP OU. I'm not too good at it (.sad) but if I were to ever invest serious effort into learning a tier it would be that. For one, it was how I got my start in Pokemon so it still holds a place in my heart. For two, it's incredibly diverse and balanced and has a really high skill ceiling. Easily the best singles format ever IMO.
17. What is your favourite anime?
Despite the fact that I talk about anime all the time, I've actually only watched six so far. Of these my favorite is definitely Toradora. I'm a huge sucker for romance, and Toradora is like the premier romance anime, and makes me super nostalgic for high school to boot. I could go on and on about how awesome toradora is but i'll just say if you like slice of life and haven't seen toradora you are literally worthless. The other anime I've seen which I would rate as a "must watch" is Code Geass.
thanks for the interview