Featured Rater #5 - Trinitrotoluene

[Snowy]

Banner by @Living So Zambian

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 IronBullet, Analytic and me. Our fifth interviewee is Trinitrotoluene, one of RMT's oldest official raters and one who has been deeply involved with the forums for a long time now!

Trinitrotoluene
​

Tell us a little bit about your life outside Smogon.

hi, i am trinitrotoluene, and i'm very honored to be chosen as the fifth featured rater. i am a 19 y.o. (soon to be 20!) uni student from socal that is majoring in nursing. besides pokemon, i also play splatoon at a high competitive level. for the curious, my main weapons are both dynamo rollers, and i am currently in the process of developing my skills with the e-liter 3k scope. i also happen to be the leader of the visionaries. anyone who knows me well will tell you that i'm a massive drum n bass enthusiast, to the point where i can and have rambled about its intricacies more than once. i also am a very casual anime watcher / manga reader, getting my fill from various shōnen series (e.g.: bleach, one piece, hunter x hunter, one-punch man).

What is your main tier? Do you rate teams from any other tiers?

ou (for both the oras and bw metagames) is my main tier of expertise. while i do enjoy playing other tiers, such as ubers and ru, i am not knowledgeable enough to produce high-quality rates for any of them.

When did you start rating and why?

ah, this is a somewhat interesting story. for the newly badged rmt kiddies out there, just be happy that you didn't have to go through the same process for earning team rater badges that the older badged team raters and i had to go through. i'm also certain the standards for achieving the team rater badge were even harder before i was badged, so there's that!

i started rating in the early half of 2012 because two of my friends from treehouse (a pokemon online server that we all had positions of power in), harsha and sayonara (who went by kira light and expert physics before this last username change), had already earned their team rater badges and convinced me that it was a great way to get integrated on smogon. they were so enthused about getting me into the team rating business that they actually invited me to the (old) private channel for team raters to shoot the breeze so i could get acquainted with the badged team raters (and as far as i know, i was the only unbadged user back then to know about its existence). while i didn't build any deep relationships with them like i did with my pokemon online friends, talking to them did help convince me to start getting more involved on smogon's forums. as the summer progressed, sayonara would constantly give me feedback regarding my rates and inform me of topics that i needed to work on to improve my rating game. my efforts would pay off, with me earning my pre-contributor badge with a focus on the rmt forum just a few weeks after jirachee earned his team rater badge. thanks to school, my rating activity went on-and-off and i kept my ladybug for longer than the usual ladybug case. i then earned my team rater badge by kicking my activity levels up a few notches.

Are there any raters who you looked up to when you started rating?

i am rather fortunate that i started rating back in 2012 because i had very talented raters like delko, faladran, san_pellegrino, smith, and stathakis, as well as harsha and sayonara, to look up to and copy. i also learned quite a bit from user: tab, whose rate format i still use when i rate teams today. the fact that every one of these users were incredibly friendly to me whenever i asked them for rating help definitely helped.

What do you most enjoy about rating?

the fact that i'm helping someone out with their team is the main facet of rating that i enjoy the most. also, just like celticpride said in his interview, being able to meet newer users and see them successfully get integrated into smogon (whether they get involved in rmt or a different section) makes me feel incredibly happy.

Do you follow a process with your rates?

as i mentioned in one of the previous questions, i follow the tab format™ (which you can see in the hide tags below) whenever i rate teams.

the tab format™

paragraph 1: short summary of the main problems with the team.
paragraph 2: fix important stuff.
paragraph 3: fix less important stuff (minor/somewhat subjective changes).
paragraph 4: conclude.

i'm also a firm believer in stathakis's rating philosophy: "good rates are ones that help people beat threats without compromising the team's purpose; even better rates are ones that improve the execution of the team's purpose without compromising its ability to deal with threats." as an example, if i'm rating an offensive team that uses a magnezone + weavile core but is weak to azumarill, i'm not going to suggest to the op that he should replace said offensive core with a fat core of slowbro + amoonguss just so he can deal with the azumarill weak a little better. does this suggestion fix up the op's team's azumarill weakness? for the most part, it does. does it make the team better? nope. this is because it removes the idea behind the offensive team in the first place.

on top of all this, i make sure to step back after making a suggestion to evaluate how it will affect the team. if it creates any new problems, i go back to the drawing board to come up with more ideas to resolve this issue. i rinse and repeat this process until i come up with a good rate that fixes as many problems as possible.

Do you have any words of advice for aspiring raters out there?

read this thread. it contains excellent guidelines that i guarantee will improve your team rating capabilities if you integrate them into your rating repertoire.

don't be afraid to pm one or two of the raters that specialize in whatever tier you're rating to ask for rate evaluations.

participate in the rating practice teams project.

the most important tip i can give: if you want to get involved in rmt, just start rating. the people who post threads here don't bite. the mods won't bite too (unless you break one or more of the rules of the forum).

Do you like the direction the RMT forum is taking at the moment? If you could change something, what would it be?

any badged team raters active during the late bw era can back me when i say that the rmt forum used to be in a very heavy slump, so having active leaders in jirachee and ironbullet and a passionate userbase in all the current badged team raters is absolutely incredible. at this point, we can only head up, and i can say that i'm very happy about this.

if i could change one aspect of the rmt forum, i'd have a system set so that everyone who attempts to post a thread for the first time in the rmt forum gets an opportunity to view the rules of the rmt forum. this will make modding the rmt forum much easier for myself and my fellow rmt mods because it will eliminate the "i didn't see the rules of the forum" excuse that someone is bound to bring up when their rmt gets locked.

As a moderator, do you think there's any way in which we could enforce the basic RMT rules so that more people would follow them?

honestly, people are people. no matter how large an emphasis we put on reading the rules and lurking before posting in the rmt forum, people are still going to unintentionally break the rules. at this point, beyond implementing a system similar to what i've suggested above, there really is no clear-cut way to ensure that more people will follow the basic rmt rules.

Apart from the current activities going on in RMT, do you have any projects in mind that could potentially be run in the room?

a project where badged team raters break down one or a few of their rates and demonstrate their logic throughout would be quite interesting, actually! it's fascinating to see the thought processes other raters use, and this would be a very educational experience for people wanting to break into the team rating scene.

Do you have an RMT or a team you could share with us?

i actually have an rmt in the works, so be sure to keep an eye out on the rmt subforum as a whole over the next few weeks! the tier which this team will fall under may or may not surprise you, depending on how long you've been on smogon.

that being said, here's a team that i've been having a blast using over the past few weeks:

zeitgeist

HELIOS (Hoopa-Unbound) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Magician
EVs: 136 Atk / 164 SpA / 208 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Hyperspace Fury
- Psychic
- Focus Blast
- Trick

RUHEPULS (Metagross) @ Metagrossite
Ability: Clear Body
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 64 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 188 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Earthquake
- Zen Headbutt
- Rock Polish

DREAMCATCHER (Weavile) (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 29 HP
- Ice Shard
- Icicle Crash
- Knock Off
- Swords Dance

FAITH (Azumarill) (F) @ Choice Band
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 152 HP / 252 Atk / 12 Def / 92 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Play Rough
- Waterfall
- Superpower

VICE (Garchomp) (F) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 152 HP / 252 Def / 104 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Dragon Tail
- Earthquake
- Endure

AURORA (Manaphy) @ Wacan Berry
Ability: Hydration
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Tail Glow
- Surf
- Energy Ball
- Hidden Power [Fire]

this is a fun hyper offense team i made when i wanted to test out rock polish mega metagross (thanks for the suggestion, rumor), which is beastly against the many offensive teams popular in ou today. from there, i stacked it up with threat after threat after threat to get what i have now. while this team is incredibly fun to play, it also suffers from weaknesses to quite a few relevant ou threats, such as sand rush excadrill, dragon dance mega charizard-x, and opposing weavile. you could probably mitigate the excadrill weakness a bit by using modest air balloon magnezone (which also has the bonus ability to trap and kill opposing ferrothorn and mega scizor, alongside the aforementioned excadrill), which would probably also help weavile too. scarf hoopa-unbound is the most replaceable member of the team, and replacing it would probably do wonders for fixing the zard-x weak. just some food for thought for those of you who will probably steal this team in a heartbeat.

the nicknames for each team member and the title of the team overall come from zeitgeist, camo & krooked's third lp (and my personal favorite lp from them to boot).

Lastly, can you give us an example of a rate that exemplifies your particular style?

sure! here's a rate that i feel encapsulates my overall rating style quite well. just from taking a glance at it, the first thing you may notice is that unlike many of the raters featured previously, i have a tendency to ramble quite a bit. this is because i want the people reading my rates to understand the mental processes that go on when i was making the rate. i start this rate by fixing up farcticblast's team's inability to break past stall teams by changing up his landorus-therian to a more offensive set. however, since this robs his team of a sr setter, i replace calm mind on clefable with sr so it has some utility beyond just sitting around and passing wishes. after fixing up these important issues, i then go for smaller changes that i feel would make arcticblast's team more consistent overall.

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Thanks Trinitrotoluene for a great interview! Feel free to leave any questions you have for him below. See you all next time

 

[TPP]

What's your favorite mon to use in OU?
What's your favorite mon not in OU or BL to use in OU (from UU, RU, etc).
How did you come up with TNT as your username?

 

[Celticpride]

Trinitrotoluene :]

The username TNT is currently unregistered on Smogon. Would you change your name to that so we all don't have to go through the cumbersome task of trying to spell your full name?

Where do you prefer to rate teams, on PS or on the forums?

Thoughts on the OU metagame subforum (NOT the RMT OU section)? What would you do to improve various parts of it?

Why did you use a total of zero capital letter in your responses, then have your team member names in your sample team in ALL CAPS?

Most importantly, Pokemon or Splatoon?

 

[Trinitrotoluene]

amas are better when the person in question is active, so let's get some questions answered!

What's your favorite mon to use in OU?

mm, this is a hard question, actually. i like using a ton of pokemon, as long as they work well on hyper offense, my favorite playstyle. special mentions go to mega lopunny, mega gardevoir, mega metagross, and weavile though. they're incredibly fun to use.

What's your favorite mon not in OU or BL to use in OU (from UU, RU, etc).

! trapping abilities in ou are pure cash, and while wobb may have non-existent offenses, it's one of the best supporters for mons like charizard, weavile, and keldeo thanks to its excellent bulk and access to encore, which in turn gives them free switch-ins and set-up opportunities. it's much better than gothitelle in ou smh

How did you come up with TNT as your username?

ah ha, this is another mildly interesting story. back when i was active on pokemon online, i went by multiple usernames, but i never found one that really stuck with me. however, after reading through a bunch of bw rmts, i decided to use the title of this rmt as a screen name on pokemon online. i ended up really liking it, so it just stuck with me. my old name on forums (not saying it, but if you're curious, cute user: hulavuta knows what it was) was really dumb, so i got it changed to what you see now n_n

Trinitrotoluene :]

celticpride :]

The username TNT is currently unregistered on Smogon. Would you change your name to that so we all don't have to go through the cumbersome task of trying to spell your full name?

lol

one of the best perks of having my username is seeing people struggle to spell it correctly. this goes double on ps!. why would i change it and lose one of my main sources of entertainment? besides, it's really easy to spell for anyone who has taken a basic chemistry course in high school / secondary school.

Where do you prefer to rate teams, on PS or on the forums?

i like both equally. on ps!, i get to interact in real time with the creator of the team, so it's a lot easier for them to test their teams out and come back to me with immediate results. on the forums, i don't necessarily get that same level of interaction, but i do get quite a bit more time to think about the team and what i can suggest to improve it. they both have their perks and drawbacks.

Thoughts on the OU metagame subforum (NOT the RMT OU section)? What would you do to improve various parts of it?

the average post quality in overused is pretty bad, but there are plenty of good apples in there, so i'm fairly content with it. i think am and the other ou forum leaders are doing an incredible job of keeping the ou metagame subforum organized, so big ups to them. the multiple projects and resources in it are really good at getting people involved with ou, so that's another plus in my books.

the ou subforum's average post quality would see an improvement if people just took the time to lurk and think about their arguments before posting, but that isn't going to happen :/

Why did you use a total of zero capital letter in your responses, then have your team member names in your sample team in ALL CAPS?

because aesthetics.

Most importantly, Pokemon or Splatoon?

both games have their downsides. pokemon has its infamous rng (which always screws me over when i need something good to happen :[ ), and splatoon's matchmaking leaves a little bit to be desired at times (hello, full team of noobish chargers!), but i love them both equally because they are consistent in rewarding individual skill. however, splatoon gets the edge when playing with friends because of its team-based nature, while pokemon gets the edge when playing by myself.

 

[p2]

what are some mons / item changes you seem to use a lot when rating?
do you play any oldgens outside of bw?
thoughts on manaphy in ou rn?

 

[Trinitrotoluene]

what are some mons / item changes you seem to use a lot when rating?

there are no mon / item changes i fall back upon when i rate because each team has different problems that require different solutions.

do you play any oldgens outside of bw?

i started playing competitive pokemon in the dpp era, and i can hold my own against the likes of archphantom in dpp ou. i don't play any other past gen because i don't have enough knowledge to compete at a relatively high level.

thoughts on manaphy in ou rn?

people whine too much about this little sea pixie because it puts out an insane amount of pressure. i love it so much because it puts so much pressure on lame stall teams and because it synergizes well with my favorite mons :]

 

[Exeggutor]

why are you so cute? what can i do to be as cute as you?
will you eventually give up pokemon for competitive splatoon?

 

[Clone]

What brought you back from grey everything to having even more colorful badges than before?

 

[Trinitrotoluene]

why are you so cute? what can i do to be as cute as you?

i don't know. you're cute as is imo n_n

will you eventually give up pokemon for competitive splatoon?

nope. while i love playing splatoon competitively, pokemon was the first game i really got gud at, so it holds a special place in my heart.

What brought you back from grey everything to having even more colorful badges than before?

back just before i got my team rater badge recolored, there were very few, if any, badged team raters posting rates. rmt was a bit of a wasteland when it came to actually having badged team raters post rates because of burn-out (which i too was guilty of being under). i wanted to be a model team rater for people who wanted to break into the rmt scene, and i knew that i could best set an example if my badges were recolored. my cc badge was recolored because i brought the rating practice team project back from hiatus.

 

[AM]

Hello esteemed mexican asian Tnt, how are you today?

• Why does your RMT take an eternity to complete?
• Is Exeggutor an angel?
• Why does all your Hyper Offense teams use the pixies from each generation and lose to Thundurus?
• I like haxing you in every game we play. Do you like it? Please tell me you do.
• Why hasn't UU banned Feraligatr yet?
• Bananas?
• Thoughts on the leader of the Panamanian players who is hiding in the shadows of this site with his fellow scheming panamanians, MrAldo . He can't fool me.
• Do you like managing in PSPL or any tour that requires managing?
• Do you think holding classes of sorts would be something possible in CT?
• Why don't you play in more tournaments? OU Forum holds some that are good practice in getting haxed and for warm-ups for when you face the real competition in myself. I feel like it would be a more rich experience in getting acquainted to our lovely user base in the OU forum, especially posters in the viability rankings :p

 

[Trinitrotoluene]

Hello esteemed mexican asian Tnt, how are you today?

i'm okay, thanks for asking.

• Why does your RMT take an eternity to complete?

i take quite a while writing and formatting my rmts, and sometimes, if i'm dissatisfied with how a rmt is progressing, i'll scrap it. not-so-fun fact: i've scrapped more than a dozen wip rmts in the past 6 months, all of them more than half-way complete :/

• Is Exeggutor an angel?

yes n_n

• Why does all your Hyper Offense teams use the pixies from each generation and lose to Thundurus?

pixies are fun to use, and thundurus no longer beats my hyper offense teams because weavile, latios, and / or hoopa-unbound :^)

• I like haxing you in every game we play. Do you like it? Please tell me you do.

i don't like it when you hax me because it shows how bad you are at this game lmao

• Why hasn't UU banned Feraligatr yet?

because you touch yourself at night

real talk though: i haven't played uu after the pidgeotite ban, so i don't really know. maybe the uu tier leaders like bone-crushing offense. maybe you should ask eyan, kreme, or hairy toenail. they're likely to have a better answer than me.

• Bananas?

great fruit. very tasty. contains quite a bit of potassium. you should eat one sometime. they're healthy for you.

• Thoughts on the leader of the Panamanian players who is hiding in the shadows of this site with his fellow scheming panamanians, MrAldo . He can't fool me.

very good user. glad he got badged :]

• Do you like managing in PSPL or any tour that requires managing?

yes. it's fun.

• Do you think holding classes of sorts would be something possible in CT?

definitely. it's just a matter of coordination.

• Why don't you play in more tournaments? OU Forum holds some that are good practice in getting haxed and for warm-ups for when you face the real competition in myself. I feel like it would be a more rich experience in getting acquainted to our lovely user base in the OU forum, especially posters in the viability rankings :p

i'm lazy and have prior commitments because of uni and other irl obligations.

---

keep bringing the questions in! this is fun. also, if you're starting to rate or wanting to learn how to rate effectively, please drop some questions here!

 

[blank]

Trinitrotoluene :D

why do you always have the best formatting for your posts and stuff?

suicide leads on HO y/n

 

[Trinitrotoluene]

sorry for getting to your question a bit late. i was busy.

Trinitrotoluene :D

m00ns :D

why do you always have the best formatting for your posts and stuff?

i'm a formatting freak. as for those different characters i use sometimes, i either use my phone keyboard (thank you based greek and russian keyboards) or use any of the symbol generators on this site.

suicide leads on HO y/n

n :[

the meta really doesn't favor them at all at the moment, and oftentimes, something fat like landoge or fatchomp is better for setting up rocks on hyper offense so fastmons like lopunny and aerodactyl don't overwhelm them.