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Welcome to the OU Player of the Week Project: Rebooted! For those of you that don't know, this is a project where I interview a tournament player and have you, the readers, leave any questions you may have down below for them to answer. The ultimate goal is to gain insight as to how they play this skillful and strategic video game. If any of you have a suggestion for who I should interview, feel free to VM/PM me, and I will take your suggestion into consideration. Now, enough of this boring intro. Let's get to it!
reiku
Can you tell us a little about yourself? -> I'm a Spanish 21 yo guy, I love sports in general and video games as well (Pokemon, LoL, Hearthstone, etc). Basically, when I'm not working I spend my time playing or watching anime.
Where did you get your name from? -> My nick is a combination between one of my favorite legendary Pokemon, Rayquaza, (always shiny pls) and Raikou, my favorite legendary dog.
How and when did you get into competitive battling? -> I started playing competitive mons in PO 5 or 6 years ago, in a Spanish speaking server. I laddered a lot in the main server, and then I hopped on to the Spanish competitive communities (Pokespain essentially) and I kept on playing until I was chosen to play for my country for many years here in the WCoP.
How do you feel about how ORAS plays compared to XY? -> I like ORAS much more than XY, since I remember XY as a very stallish metagame where few teams could break through others. I've also adapted much better to ORAS, it's a gen I enjoy playing a lot and where I've made a name for myself. You can also go with a lot of different playstyles and that's always positive in any gen.
To add onto the above, thoughts on the team matchup issue? -> I think the matchup excuse is a very typical one of the losers. It's true that in both ORAS and BW the matchup is pretty key, but if you play better than your opponent you'll probably win. Also, your building is super important, since if you don't make good teams you'll lose 99% of the time, but if you prepare your match a lot against your opponent and you play well, the matchup shouldn't be ever a big problem at all.
Do you feel that there is anything that is suspect worthy at the moment? -> Scald and Hoopa-U most likely. Scald is a very spammable move that can completely change a game with a 30% chance (which in reality is like…80%), while Hoopa-U simply destroys stall with his NP/SubLO set, destroys balanced with T-Wave support and offense with a Choice Scarf. Hoopa simply has to go in my opinion.
What's your favorite playstyle and why? -> Balanced, with no doubt, because it's the playstyle that covers this vast metagame best, having responses to both offensive and defensive threats. I've played every playstyle possible in Wcop, and the one I felt the most comfortable with was definitely balanced.
What's your favorite generation of OU and why? -> My favorite gen is ORAS, but the metagame I enjoyed the most back in the day was BW1, just because it has been the gen in which I've stood out the most and in which I've felt the most comfortable both building and playing.
How do you go about preparing for tournament matches? Does the process differ depending on the tournament? -> I search replays of my opponents and I study how they play, what playstyles do they use and what Pokemon they tend to play, and from that I build a very solid core that breaks through their favorite playstyle. I never try to counterteam; I always build with my own style a team that does well against my rivals without forgetting a very solid basis.
Favorite WCoP game? -> Definitely my tie-break match against Cosine180 ( replay: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ou-78121 ). That fight meant a lot for us: we were down 0-1 in the tie-break and I feel that I executed my plays perfectly, beating cosine180 that was 5-0 at that moment, allowing Spain to get one step closer to the finals of the WCoP.
Thoughts on the newly introduced Smogon Classic? Favorite to win? -> I'm pretty lame in Old Gens so I can't say much about it, but my favorite to win is Ojama
If you could change one thing about OU, what would it be and why? -> The council. I think there's some people there that don't know much about how to balance the metagame, and they take bad and slow decisions (in BW and in ORAS). I believe more things should have been suspected and banned back then, while in the other hand some re-tests were futile and non-sensical.
Do you have any advice for newer players for playing, and for Smogon in general? -> My advice for these newcomers is that although they come to this forum and lose, don't surrender; we've all lost a lot of matches when we first started at this game, and so we've learnt from our mistakes and become good players.
For Smogon in general, stop caring so much about trashtalkers and become a more serious community, with decent TDs that do their work well, and stop giving power to some people just because they're friends with someone in the staff.
If you could change one thing about Smogon as a whole to make it better, what would it be and why? -> Ban these trashtalkers and don't let the opinion of a very small group of people affect this big community, as I think that is the biggest problem of this site.
What players do you look up to / are good friends with? -> Fortunately I've a lot of good friends here in Smogon, such as BKC, finch, soulgazer, fooly, cased, xray, lord omfugod, mazary, zeb, cicada.. etc, my POCL team, people I've shared team with in past SPLs and of course my Spanish buddies, they're like brothers for me.
Finally, can you provide us a team that's a good fit for this metagame and reflects your playstyle, with a brief explanation of how it works? -> http://pastebin.com/sjgfLM52 This is the team I like the most and the one I feel the most comfortable with playing. I used it in the tie-break against Cosine, and it's a balanced team with 2 taunters (LO Torn and M-Gardy) to break Stall, Scarf Keldeo is the best anwser to Offense along with Spikes + Mamoswine (a very underrated Pokemon in ORAS) and the typical bulky SRChomp with a Lax nature to 2HKO Skarm with Fire Blast. This is a team that perfectly shows my playstyle based on the offensive side without forgetting the solidity of the team. The biggest problem of this team are entry hazards as I lack a defog user, but with 2 taunt users I don't consider that a big problem at all.
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feel free to leave any questions you have below. see you next week!
