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Welcome to the Featured Rater project! This is a series of interviews where we will ask official Team Raters, new and old, several questions about the RMT forum and their experiences within it. We hope that this will offer both entertainment and an insight into their thought processes, which aspiring raters can look to incorporate into their own rates. This project will be hosted by Steve Angello and me. Our first interviewee is Jirachee, my cute co-leader and a long-time rater!
Jirachee
My life is pretty boring tbh
I'm just a french canadian maths student who happens to love video games, Pokemon in particular.What is your main tier? Do you rate teams from any other tiers?
My main tier is BW OU! I don't rate as much as I used to but I rate a few UU teams once in a while, since BW isn't the main gen anymore. I'll always be happy to give a BW or DPP OU rate though.
When did you start rating and why?
Uh, around summer of 2011. Back then I was still pretty new and I was looking to make a name for myself on smogon, so I thought getting a badge would be the best way to do that. I liked RMT because it was a simple way to help people, unlike C&C which had a complicated process. I stopped rating a few times which is why I only got the badge pretty much a full year later. Back then BW was the main gen, and I wasn't really good yet, but interestingly enough rating teams really helped me improve my team building game, which is another reason why I loved doing it.
Are there any raters who you looked up to when you first started rating?
Quite a few! My co-leader ib93 is one of them. I pretty much stole my rating format from him at first, which is one of the most important aspects of a good rate imo. Also took a few pages out of that noob harsha's book ~_~
What do you most enjoy about rating?
I really like the feeling you get when you make a good rate that really improves someone's team. I see quite a few raters only trying to fix weaknesses which is boring. A team is a concept, and being able to improve it is really nice.
Do you follow a process with your rates?
Of course. The first thing I do is look at the team and get a "gut" feeling. Sometimes they just don't feel right and I try to identify what makes me feel that way. Sometimes you can easily improve how a team tries to accomplish its goal and those make for the best rate. Then, I check if the team is able to handle the most common offensive threats, if it's able to break stall, and if it's weak to something common (like hazards for example) and try to find solutions.
Do you have any advice for the aspiring raters out there?
My biggest advice is: stop trying to look for weaknesses to x threat. Every team has weaknesses but that's not the most important aspect of a team, especially on offensive teams. Try and understand what the builder was trying to do with their team, and improve that idea. Sometimes an idea can be really good, but the execution is poor. You can easily ruin an idea and make a team that makes no sense at all if you're just trying to patch another Keldeo weakness.
Also, play the damn game. The best advice comes from experience, not theory.
What are your thoughts on how the RMT forum, and rating in general, has evolved over the years?
Well I wasn't really around for the so called "glory days", but from what I see not much has changed on the raters side. We still have a lot of motivated people to make things happen. The biggest change is the ridiculous increase in traffic we have compared to the BW days, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing.
Do you like the direction the RMT forum is taking at the moment? If you could change something, what would it be?
I really like that we have a lot of active raters at the moment. It makes me feel confident about the future of the section. At one point I wasn't sure we'd have enough people to make it progress. And there's no "if", as if I see something that I can change to make things better, I'll make it happen ;]
Lastly, can you give us an example of a rate that exemplifies your particular style of rating?
Yeah, this one: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/☻.3512485/#post-5599908
So as you can see, this is a stall team with a random ass Keldeo on it. I thought that it would benefit a lot more from Suicune, since those teams usually lack a win condition to close games and will just win or lose on match up. Suicune is a very reliable win condition and can help in situations where you face a bad match up by setting up aggressively.
Also 0 speed gliscor? harsha is a retard LOL
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Thanks Jirachee for a great interview! Feel free to leave any questions you have for him below. See you all next time
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