Mono Player of the Week #5: balto

[lax]

approved by scpinion
based off of other potws

Hello everyone and welcome to the fifth installment of Monotype's Player of the Week!

(credits to Acast for banner (:)​

This week, I have a Monotype room voice, youtuber, and all around great player; balto! Like every other forum that does this, this'll be a weekly thing where I interview well known players to try and see into their mind a bit. If anyone has any suggestions on who I should interview, feel free to shoot me a PM. Anyways, lets get to it!

Balto​

To start things off, what is your favorite Pokemon?
My favorite pokemon is easily Porygon2. It was one of the first pokemon I used when I first began playing monotype, and completed the key Chansey/Porygon2 core. I've used it consistently in every monotype metagame, and it's always served me well.

How did you come up with your username?
Growing up I was a huge fan of the movie 'Balto'. When I started joining games online, it quickly found it's way into my alias. The name 'Balto' always had positive feelings tied to it for me, since it represented the bravery that was shown in the Balto movie.

How did you get into Monotype?
I first got into monotype back in 2013, when the main server first introduced public league rooms. I made my way into the Tempest League, and was almost immediately hooked. Tempest is where I really developed into a good player and learned how to use my first type, normal. I'm still quite good with normal today, and it's also still one of my favorite types to build/use. I also met really good friends in the Tempest League, such as Barian, Auburn, Riley, etc. Tempest went down about a year later, but I still get nostalgic when thinking about all the good times.

What Pokemon do you use the most?
Overall, Clefable is my used mon. In Overused, a good portion of the meta centralizes around Clefable. It fills so many holes in a team that it's almost difficult to not include it into a team. In monotype however, Clefable is such a valuable mon that it's on every one of my fairy teams. It's sheer versatility is probably clef's biggest advantage to a team. It can set hazards, setup sweep, hit status, or just go for coverage. Clefable's great viability on fairy is one of the reasons fairy is one of my favorite types.

What are you most known for?
I've gotten a lot of recognition for my use of fairy. This mainly started after the major nerfs to the type in the Mega Mawile ban. I continued to use the type post ban, and although fairy was definitely lackluster at the time, I had some decent success. Between the older player group though, I'm recognized a good amount of my veteranship. I can't really think of anybody that was playing monotype before myself and is still around.

Favorite Type?
It's kinda difficult to pick a single type, but my top two are definitely fairy and normal. I've used those two the most throughout my time playing monotype,and they've just proven to be really consistent which is what I like. Some other types I enjoyed using were flying and psychic though.

Favorite Playstyle?
I'd say my favorite playstyle would be balance. I really like the consistency a perfect offense+defense brings. Usually when I build my teams, they turn out to be balance. However, there are exceptions to that. I really enjoy certain styles on types, hyper offense steel being an example.

What players do you look up to or are really good friends with?
Some of my good friends on PS would be Barian, Yaksok, Sabella, Wanka, and a few others.(s/o to skype squad) When I began playing, I looked up to a lot of the big players at the time, like Auburn, TheMaverick, & BrokenGoth.

If there was anything you could change about Monotype, what would it be?
I would definitely like to see the community become more involved with smogon. Although recently everybody has gotten more involved, I definitely think our forums+tour activity could be a lot bigger with the size of our community.

Any advice for new Monotype players?
Don't be afraid to make changes to your team/play, and get involved with tours. The best way to get noticed/move up in the community is to do well in tours, without a doubt.

What are your thoughts on the Hoopa-Unbound suspect results?
The Hoopa-U suspect result wasn't too surprising. The results came out the same as all the pre-suspect polls which was pretty much a split group defending or wanting to ban hoopa. Personally, I voted ban but even I was on the fence between ban-no ban.

How do you feel about this year's Monotype Premier League?
This season of MPL was really fun! My only complaints(which isn't entirely the TDs fault) is the inconsistency between getting the threads up on time. Other than that though, it was a great season, and I'm really looking forward to all the awesome playoff games!

Finally, could you post a team with your favorite type and playstyle with a brief explanation on how it works?

Balanced Fairy

Clefable @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spe
Bold Nature
- Fire Blast
- Moonblast
- Stealth Rock
- Soft-Boiled

Klefki @ Light Clay
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
- Light Screen
- Reflect
- Thunder Wave
- Foul Play

Azumarill @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Belly Drum
- Aqua Jet
- Play Rough
- Knock Off

Diancie @ Diancite
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Protect
- Diamond Storm
- Moonblast
- Hidden Power [Fire]

Slurpuff @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Play Rough
- Belly Drum
- Aromatherapy

Sylveon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Shadow Ball

This is a nice balanced fairy I built a while back. It has my typical staples on fairy(klef, dianc, azu,). The niche to this team is SR clef, which is useful in a ton of situations for fairy, namely flying & bug. Overall the team's primary goal is to put azu in a sweeping position by using hazards, wallbreaker sylv, or diancie. Puff is solely a normal type check, since I opted for hazards clef over CM on this build.

For those interested, his YouTube is located here or click the icon at the top.

Well, that's all for now guys! Thanks again balto and the thread is now open so you can ask your own questions! :)

(edit: fixed mistakes, blame smogon lol)

 

[Crestfall]

Why do you predict my opp to win against me every single week in your MPL predictions :^(
rude

Electric or Poison, what's the better type (overall; so how it could match up versus every other type, not just being good against the top ones) in ORAS?

Another MPL question, I know a lot of people have been discussing adding 2 more teams to MPL next year, I'm a firm opponent to this, what do you think?

 

[1 True Lycan]

What made you want to do youtube?

 

[Balto]

Why do you predict my opp to win against me every single week in your MPL predictions :^(
rude

Electric or Poison, what's the better type (overall; so how it could match up versus every other type, not just being good against the top ones) in ORAS?

Another MPL question, I know a lot of people have been discussing adding 2 more teams to MPL next year, I'm a firm opponent to this, what do you think?

Well, for your first question, there were so many dons in BW, and it was hard to predict against them.

As for poison vs electric,(good question by the way) these two types are pretty much on par. If I had to give an edge to one though, it's definitely be poison. The interesting thing about poison is that it does well vs most of the top used types(nidos for steel+flying,scolipedr can almost singlehandedly clean psy, etc.) However, electric is still nonetheless solid.

I actually hadn't heard anything about this last question up to this point. It's really difficult to say whether or not this would work, since we don't entirely know what the playerbase will look like in a year. If monotype continues to grow, and more top players emerge, sure, there'd be no reason to not include two more. At the end of the day it's a lot of 'ifs', but as of now I'd say two more teams wouldn't really be possible without cutting a tier or two from MPL.

 

[Balto]

What made you want to do youtube?

I really enjoyed putting content out to the community. About a year ago I was streaming fairly regularly, but a bad computer was holding me back. Switching to YouTube was something I'd considered for a while, but didn't want to do without good support, which I did get later on.

 

[Alexis Breeze]

What are you looking forward on the next games (Sun and Moon) that will/could affect Monotype?
Who is your favorite adult movie star lol (looks at av)?

 

[Balto]

What are you looking forward on the next games (Sun and Moon) that will/could affect Monotype?
Who is your favorite adult movie star lol (looks at av)?

I feel like every generation at this point I'm more worried nintendo will include a change to the game that hurts competitive. Last gen it was Megas, and there's speculation of them including 'pokemon fusions' in this game, so it'll be interesting. As for things that benefit monotype, any special new typings, or mons in general will be very important.

 

[Fírnen]

If something has to be unbanned in Monotype, what will you chose?
What's your favorite Mega in Normal type, why?

 

[Anttya]

Favorite Mono OM?

Do you wish that Togekiss is still a Normal / Fairy type?

 

[Misaka Mikoto]

Hmm....what are some of your hobbies you enjoy doing?

Do you plan on streaming or uploading more YouTube videos Pokemon related after the MPL is over? I really like your videos.

What got you into joining Smogon?

What type do you hate playing against in Monotype?

What other tiers do you enjoy playing besides Monotype?

 

[Balto]

If something has to be unbanned in Monotype, what will you chose?
What's your favorite Mega in Normal type, why?

Probably Altaria. Never really liked the basis for the ban in the first place, and on top of hoopa+megasab sticking around on dark for a while, it would be a nice balancer in the meta i think.
As for the normal type mega i'd have to go with lopunny. It breaks balance so well and speed tier just compliments normal incredibly. Pidgeot's another favorite, but staraptor can play the bird role without taking a mega slot, which i like.

 

[Balto]

Favorite Mono OM?

Do you wish that Togekiss is still a Normal / Fairy type?

My favorite mono OM is definitely stabmons.(unless we're considering BW?) The fact that in just the MPL season there was an established metagame and (I think this was a thing, not sure though) even a normal type nerf/ban shows how far that metagame came, and it's just really fun to watch. Almost Any Ability is a close second.

 

[Balto]

Hmm....what are some of your hobbies you enjoy doing?

Do you plan on streaming or uploading more YouTube videos Pokemon related after the MPL is over? I really like your videos.

What got you into joining Smogon?

What type do you hate playing against in Monotype?

What other tiers do you enjoy playing besides Monotype?

A lot of my time is unfortunately spent on school/work/friends, but I do play baseball in the spring.(1 yr left, rip)
I actually think I made a smogon account to join MPL a year ago. It was either that or some other really important tour i was urged to join.
My least favorite type to play against...Hmm. Probably steel/dark. Those two cores are so annoying to play against depending on what im using. balanced psychic is really annoying to play against as well(cough mew)

Besides monotype, i play a lot of ORAS,RU, and recently a bit of oldgens. It's currently smogtour season which means ill be playing a lot of ORAS/BW/DPP OU for the next six or so weeks.

As for the YouTube and streaming question, of course!(thank you for the support <3)I'm not exactly sure what content I'll put up yet, probably more along the lines of discussing the metagame with friends, announcements, etc. I love putting out videos for everybody and although the school year limits how much I can put up, I still plan on doing atleast one video a week.