Doubles Player of the Week #12 - Audiosurfer
1. Hi, who are you and where do you come from?
i'm audiosurfer. i was born in ghana but i'm nigerian and have spent almost all of my life in chicago (i'll be goin to tucson, az for college though)
2. Where did you get your name from?
it comes from the game audiosurf (audio-surf.com). kind of a long story
when the zune hd came out one of the games for it was audiosurf. never ended up buying the device but it made me look up audiosurf, which made me hear about steam, which got me into pc gaming. used to go by a lamer username but when i realized that name was lame i switched to audiosurfer and have been using it or some variation for most of my online activities so yeah that's pretty much it. i think it's worked pretty well thusfar
3. How and when did you get into competitive Pokemon, and why did you stick around?
well i initially played competitive yugioh over at pojo which was where I spent most of my time online, but I stumbled on an IGN article about competitive pokemon (before that the thought of pokemon as a competitive game never occured to me) and i started googling a bunch about it. i first found stuff on serebii (shudder) but my search also turned up an old intro to competitive battling article on smogon so i started poking around the forums and made an account after a bit. i initially started in ou (my first team i remember building was this smashpass team with mixed metagross as a receiver which was pretty fun), but then after spending time buildin bad ou teams i gave nu a whirl and started building bad nu teams. my first nu team was just taking two seperate cores posted in the nu cores thread and slapping them together and then adding a 6th mon lol. i kept getting beaten on the ladder (as hard as that may sound to those reading this) so i signed up for b101 in NU and got DTC as a tutor. he was the one who got me on irc and taught me the basics of competitive battling and everything, and thanks to him i felt more apart of the site and fell in with the NU crowd for a while. that lasted for some months, but during that time i also heard about VGC because of solace (back then the well, which is like an AMA-type thread focused on different users was running and she was the one in it. people were askin her questions which included a few about vgc, so i asked one of my own and i started thinking about trying out vgc.
the issue was that the whole idea of playing it sounded really intimidating. first off, i ddin't have a ds or a copy of black or white. and also all my memories of playing the game involved a lot of dumb grinding to level up pokemon which was really unappealing to me by then, and i didn't want to have to start reading up on breeding and ev/iving and all that sort of stuff. so the idea of playin a doubles format sorta fell out of my thoughts until by chance i saw the thread announcing smogon doubles. at that time it was just a single thread in the om subforum and a few people in #doubles
so i went on there, built a team, and asked someone to battle, i ended up winning that first battle which got me to play some more, and back then they had a leaderboard thing that you could be placed on for making good posts and stuff and i really wanted to be on it. so i started posting there regularly too
so yeah from there i got more and more involved with the tier, was there to help lead it through a ton of its firsts, and made a bigger name for myself on the site in general through my involvement with it
and now i'm here
this is the leaderboard btw:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-leaderboard.3488975/
and this is the initial thread:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/general-doubles-metagame-thread.3476469/
just a bit of dubs history for the new people who weren't around for it
4. What is your favourite metagame to play outside of Doubles?
well i'm a big fan of the random metagames, so randbats and random doubles (which i made like 99% of the movepools for) mainly otherwise it's strictly doubles unless i'm playin in a tour
5. What is your favourite Pokemon to use competitively, and why?
hmm, i'm not sure i really have one. i've been enjoying using azumarill though. its typing is great, it's strong, reasonably bulky, has nifty priority, isn't too hard to set up with, and is absolutely terrifying once you do set up so it's a great way to apply pressure to the opponent. if your opponent isn't as good or is off their game a +6 azu will just make them misplay since they'll panic and from there you're free to dictate the pace of the game
so yeah #bunnylove
6. How do you feel about how the metagame changed from BW to XY to ORAS?
well i can say i enjoyed bw more because people were newer, if that makes any sense, like now a lot of people seem to have no idea how to teambuild because they just use the most generic, boring-looking teams i've ever seen although users like level 51 are always fighting the good fight on the interesting teams front, but back in bw we would try anything since we were still discovering stuff and it just felt like people were more open to experimentation.i'm sure it led to some pretty weird stuff, but it also led to discovering stuff that was really cool. oras is pretty nice though, i think more people are getting back to trying things that aren't quite so boring, xy was pretty lame though, that metagame i didn't enjoy much.
but yeah other than that there's not much to say except that it's definitely gotten less bulky over time like right now HO is more prevalent than it was back then. not sure how i feel about it though, since i can't say it's necesarily lead to better teambuilding
7. Do you like to play the current metagame? Is there anything you consider is suspect-worthy or should at least get a look at?
i'd say yeah to the first. i've been bored with pokemon for a while now and haven't built teams, but i have built a few recently and have enjoyed playing and testing with them so that's a good sign. with other life developments coming i don't know how much focus it'll get from me in the future but for now it's fun
as for suspects, definitely not. there's nothing in the meta right now that couldn't be overcome through either good building or good playing but stuff that's bein tossed around rn like skymin or w/e aren't even close to suspect-worthy
8. Who are you rooting for this seasonals?
kamikaze17 ofc, only way to be
9. If there is anything you could change about Doubles OU, what would it be?
boring teams would lead to an auto-loss, really though i'm tired of seein teams like kang skymin keld kyub + 2 other generic mons, that stuff is boring. also more people would play it it's definitely the best of the current metagames, i don't know why it's so slept on rn
10. What is your favourite strategy or playstyle to use and why?
well i used to be a big bulky offense type of person but recently my teams have been getting more offensive. i think that building a solid offensive team gives you more control over the match and just rewards good playing, beyond that i really don't use any particular strategy, i'll try almost anything (not like perishtrap or other bad gimmicks though, sorry trains).
11. Do you have advice to new people to the tier?
play a lot, read a lot (we have a huge amount of quality tier resources on the forums), don't be afraid to be wrong
when i'm discussing something regarding the tier (like a non-switching metagame trend) i like to argue my position fiercely to better understand an argument, but when i realize i'm wrong i'll (try to at least) back down and listen to the other person, that also means seeking the advice of others and giving it a fair shake
i'm very big on collaborative teambuilding, not in the initial stages of construction but when editing because i feel like other people will always find cool things you didn't even realize or approach building in a way you didn't consider, which can only benefit you and your team
12. Do you have a team that reflects your playstyle and could you give a brief explanation of it?
http://pastebin.com/CU5pNZm6
built it around mega aerodactyl since i kept readin about skymin + keld (really though people build more interesting stuff) and remembered how i used m-aero in the past and noted that it completely gobbles that core from there i wanted mons that could beat what m-aero got walled by so i had blaziken + azumarill, thundurus was a nice offensive pivot while taunt helped against bulkier mons and t-wave paired nicely w/ rock slide. at this point i realized that plenty of bulky mons would still give me a lot of trouble so i had hydreigon to act as another wallbreaker and help with this, then i had torterra since i thought i was super lando-t and rock slide weak generally and it had wide guard and it seemed fun to try (usin some weird stuff always make a team more interesting and who knows what you'll stumble on). after testing it i found that torterra always did near nothing, surprise surprise (although one game someone didn't think that wood hammer would kill their rotom-w so that kill was very satisfying), so i asked a bunch of people for feedback and decided on rhydon since the team had a big t-wave issue and rhydon was very strong and bulky so it could keep up offensive pressure. that version held for a while but i had to admit that while i love finally's blaziken set, its 80 speed was killng me since it meant i'd have to give up momentum against mons like kang and stuff to protect before it could really be useful, so infernape came in to better handle those faster offensive threats while still more or less handling what blaziken beat, also fake out :)
so yeah that's the team. if you're reading this and have any suggestions, i'd love to hear em
13. What is your favourite game to play outside of Pokémon, and why?
uhh idk, haxball? that's always fun. but yeah i keep my gaming strictly pokemon. one can only afford to waste so much of their life on games, and this is free and can be played on my lousy comp and internet
thanks for the interview, audiosurfer :)