OU Elite 4 Challenge [APPLICATIONS] (Stage 2, 15 spots left)

OU Elite 4 Challenge Dark Horse Edition ELITE 4 APPLICATIONS
Approved by NixHex

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The OU Elite 4 challenge is coming! This thread will function much like the UU Mafia except that it will be an ongoing competition. If a player manages to beat all the Elite 4 that player will become the champion. The champion may be overthrown by another player if he/she manages to beat all the Elite 4 and the Champion just like in game. Players will challenge the "Elite 4" in best of three rounds. Once a player has beaten an Elite 4 he may then proceed to challenge the next one. If a player loses they must start from the very start again. Simple so far? good. The catch with this tournament is that after a player has beaten an Elite 4 the player must replace a pokemon in their team with another one below 40 in the usage list. Anyway further details will be provided when the official thread begins.

I am currently accepting Elite 4 applications. If you wish to be a part of the Elite 4 you must nominate yourself. applicants are required to be competent players, notable contributers and well known players in general. applications should include a brief paragraph as to why you think that you should be accepted. Attach ladder peaks if you see fit. They should also include your hours of availability for matches to be scheduled. Also on applications please put your name in bold somewhere on the post for me to sort through easier. Please do not nominate yourself if you do not think you fit the criteria. Having your nomination backed by someone else also helps. A total of 20 "Elite 4" will be chosen. These members will be chosen at my discretion. That said, if you feel you are right feel free to nominate yourself, I am eager to get this challenge started.


If you weren't chosen to be an Elite 4 don't worry! Stage 1 of the nominations is now over, we have selected the initial 4 Elites however the nominations are far from over. Stage 2 is now commencing. Stage 2 is a little more complicated and will be completed in 2-3 weeks or if a champion has emerged. In stage 2, 16 more Elite 4 will be chosen bringing us a total of 20, 4 for each region. The Elite 4 regions will then be reorganised to suite time zones. These Time Zones are:
Kanto: GMT -4 to -6
Johto: GMT +7 to GMT +1
Hoenn: GMT +1 to GMT -4
Sinnoh: GMT +12 to GMT +7
Unova: GMT -6 to GMT -8

Applications should now include which region you plan on applying for. Simply look at the above chart an choose your suited time zone. If your region is full you can still apply to be a sub. Once all the time zones are filled the challenge will be a lot more streamlined and organised. We have a considerable amount of Elite 4 to pick so keep the applications coming!

Kanto Elites GMT -4 to -6 (open) Kanto Elites GMT -4 to -6 (close)

Lorelei:
Bruno:
Agatha: Arcticblast
Lance: Shining_Latios

Johto Elites GMT +7 to GMT +1 (open) Johto Elites GMT +7 to GMT +1 (close)

Will: BKC
Koga:
Bruno:
Karen: Cherub Agent

Hoenn Elites GMT +1 to GMT -4 (open) Hoenn Elites GMT +1 to GMT -4 (close)

Sidney: Taylor
Phoebe:
Glacia:
Drake:

Sinnoh Elites GMT +12 to GMT +7 (open) Sinnoh Elites GMT +12 to GMT +7 (close)

Aaron: Stallion
Bertha:
Flint:
Lucian:

Unova Elites GMT -6 to GMT -8 (open) Unova Elites GMT -6 to GMT -8 (close)

Shauntal: Lavos Spawn
Marshal:
Grimsley:
Caitlin:

So as you can see we have a lot of spaces to fill so bring on the applications! Also a small thing if you are unhappy with your Elite and there is another free one in your region just tell me and I'll change it.

If you have any questions feel free to VM me, PM me or simply post here.

What if The Elite 4 was a Sand team, Sun Team, Rain Dance team, and Trick Room team? The contingency of having a single team would make the initial team of countering all 4 strategies very difficult, but the "ability" to swap a Pokemon out for a Pokemon under 40 in usage will add an additional layer of strategy to the event. Perhaps make it so after a pokemon has been switched in, it can't be the one removed after the next victory. So they couldn't put a Virizion (don't know if it's under 40) in after they defeated the Sun Team, use Virizion beat the Sand team, and then remove Virizion before the Trick Room team. This would keep the game from being 5 pokemon+1 switch out.

Sand and Rain teams can both be used as Stall teams or offensive teams, adding an additional hassle to the challenger, as the Elite 4 member would be able to select which one he or she wanted, while Sun Teams often destroy bulky offense teams that Trick Room has troubles with and Trick Room absolutely annihilates the Hyper Offensive teams that many weather teams experience problems with.

This would also make it more "themed" as the games have with types. I think this should be considered especially because the Smogon Frontier already exists, and this would add yet another characteristic that separates it from a mini-tour.

Can there be a list of OU players that would be willing to participate? I mean I don't know which of the top OU players would actually be willing to play, so it's kind of hard to pick someone to nominate.

Also I agree with Absolete, and there could be a vote on the 4 types of teams or something.

Eh, if we have themed teams, I think that Hail should take the place of Trick Room. 4 weathers sounds better imo. Also you could add an extra challenge, in that challengers are unable to use auto-weather inducers of their own. This could give it an extra twist.

Nominating Stallion, as he's an excellent player but is perfectly beatable because he suffers from hax like nobody I've ever known. Is also known to ragequit.

Nah the Elites should be allowed to use whatever team they want.

Also we don't need to restrict ourselves to 4 Elites. For one, the demand of challenges may be overwhelming to each individual elites. Secondly, we have no shortage of competent players.

How about we have Elites for each region. A challenger becomes the regional champion when he defeats all 4 Elites in a row and in no particular order. For instance:

Kanto
Lorelei - AccidentalGreed
Bruno - Aerrow
Agatha - afterburn
Lance - Alakapimp

Johto
Will - Amarillo
Koga - Amell
Bruno - Aerrow
Karen - Antar

Hoenn
Sidney - Aqualouis
Phoebe - Arcticblast
Glacia - badabing
Drake - billymills

Sinnoh
Aaron - Biosci
Bertha - bojangles
Flint - Bribery
Lucian - bro fist

Unova
Shauntal - bugmaniacbob
Marshal - Bummer
Grimsley - Cherub Agent
Caitlin - Crystal

Once a champion has been declared, the next challenger of that region must also defeat the champion.

Availability is an issue here. Inactive Elites should be "subbed" out. Johning champions should be forced to retire once a challenger waits for ~4 days to battle him, etc.

I don't think we need to be selective with the E4 selection process. As long as the people are Smogon OU regulars who know what they are talking about and are available to battle they should be able to become an Elite. We should also have "subs" just in case some of the Elites become MIA. I mean, defeating 4 or 5 players in a row is no easy feat :o

Thoughts?

I really love that idea Pocket (not only because you thought I should be Grimsely <3). OU has a much larger playerbase than any of the tiers where this kind of thing has already been done, so it makes perfect sense to have multiple ones.

Pocket EDIT: haha, np ;)

Sounds fair to my ears. I'm just curious about some details about your plan:

1. Can a player be the champion of multiple regions?
2. Can a E4 member challenge another Region to become their champ? (InGame example would be Lance > E4 Kanto, Champ Jotho)

Husky

1. yes
2. yes

Ideally we want ~30 participants willing to be an Elite or a sub. If that's too many people to gather, we can cut down on the number of regions we support in this challenge.

It's all up to CrackinSkulls, though, since he's the OP of this thread.

This doesn't mean we can't start signing up as Elites while we await for his response, though.

I'd like to nominate myself to be an Elite Four member for this Dark Horse challenge. Although I'm rather new to the community, I've already established a reputation for myself. I went 5-1 in the 2012 World Cup of Pokemon, which my team, USA West, won. I have peaked #1 on the Pokemon Online ladder in March 2012, May 2012 (twice), and July 2012. I have also peaked #1 on the Pokemon Showdown ladder multiple times this month, August 2012. I am a common sight in the top 5 of both ladders (though on PO I use alt nicknames). Additionally, I am reasonably well known in the community, and my posts are a common sight in the OU Rate My Team section and the Overused megathread. I was also recently appointed to the OU QC team. I'm very active, ranging from 2-4 online hours every single day (GMT -7). All in all, I believe I'm an excellent candidate for an Elite Four position, and would love to participate in this challenge as well. Please consider my candidacy carefully.

Pocket's suggestion is cool, consider that too!

Hello,

This competition seems very interesting so I would like to be nominated for an Elite Four member. I have been playing pokemon competitively since the beginning of Gen 4. I have been on smogon since February 2010 and i have been active 70% of the time. I have had many successes on PO ladders. I am also known for making original teams with original cores and original movesets. I am usually active on the 'Overused' and 'Rate my team' thread. I am pretty much completely free after 17.00 (5.00pm) GMT+1. So that is around 4 hours.
In a nutshell, i think that i could be a good member of the Elite Four, it would be an honor for me if i get accepted.

AuraRayquaza

I would also like to be nominated as an elite 4 member. I am relatively new to the community (around the same time as Lavos Spawn) but I feel that I am a relatively good battler. I have peaked at #4 on the PO ladder with a rating of 1661 in June and #16 on the PS ladder with a rating of 1874 in July (although the ladder has improved considerably since then). Im not that well known in the community (except for the LC forum, where I'm fairly well known) but I am very commonly seen participating in tournaments and I have participated in LC teambuilding discussions on IRC and I have rated a few teams as well as posted on the OU forum a fair few times. I am free on nearly every weekday from 7:30pm GMT+1 (but if the situation calls for an earlier time, I can sometimes do 17:00) to 12:00am. I'm also free every other weekend from 1:30pm to 3:00pm and 10:00pm to 12:00am (although not always, I prefer weekdays). I am also commonly on #pokemon or #littlecup/#rarelyused/#RuinsOfAlph so I am easy to find. For these reasons I feel that I am a pretty good candidate for a spot and most definitely be grateful and honored if I was to be chosen.

Oh, this sounds fun.

I would love to be an E4 (though challenging is fun as well), but I have no idea if I'm well known or considered "competent" in OU, so...

@ Pocket: Are E4 members only able to use mons native to their own region?
Are challengers also required to use those if so?

Pocket, I think you're a little overly optimistic about how many good players would want to be the "elite 4" or whatever. Frontier had trouble getting 12 brains, and that's an official tournament.

The ideas of elites using different types of teams is bad. Obviously, I would recommend not doing that.

Obviously this E4 selection wouldn't be as highly selective as the Frontier brain screening process. Any half-decent player whose name is familiar to us should have a shot at this (at least that's what I was thinking). I was envisioning signing up as an Elite would be *almost* as easy as signing in for a tournament :x

Perhaps an Elite with a 1:3 win ratio after min of 20 games should be eliminated and replaced by the next person on the sub list.

I wouldn't mind being a sub for the E4. I'm a fairly accomplished OU player, and have peaked #1 on PO once (June) (and #2 about 20 times grr). I post regularly in the RMT forum and people have, on more than one occasion, expressed the opinion that I know what I'm talking about :) Also, I live in Australia, and I think it would be helpful to have E4 members from spread timezones so challengers from non-US zones wouldn't be disadvantaged.

Suggestion: if the Elite Four is split into regions, as Pocket has suggested, then make each 'region' correspond with a set of adjacent time zones. It would make scheduling matches considerably easier, I should think.

Hey guys thanks for all the responses i just have a few things to say first i would like to comment on Pocket's suggestion:

First off i just wanted to ask how exactly you created this list and why they all start with a and b. I was planning on increasing the elite 4 groups like you mentioned but only after i gave it a test run to see the amount of challenges etc. You mentioned in your post "I don't think we need to be selective with the E4 selection process." I honestly would prefer if we were selective because i was hoping that the E4 would take a more active role in the competition. It would also make the thread more "official" if you know what i mean. In summary i do like you idea of having multiple Elite 4 but I would rather conduct a selective process. That I would still like to know how exactly how you came about with that list (if it isn't too much trouble). I think Undisputed brings up a good point that many players simply wouldn't wish to be an E4, that is basically the whole reason i started this thread.

Woodchuck, I was planning on grouping timezones but like a stated before, I would rather start out smaller and slowly increase in size. As the competition increased i planned on grouping Elite 4 by time zones. I think what will happen is that i will leave this thread running while i start the competition after we get the first E4. Don't worry i will update the OP with all the details.


@Brostime and Skore and anyone else that i missed. I am really sorry to be that bitch but if you could maybe avoid posting things like that i would appreciate it. I am a little bit of a clean freak, i would prefer if this thread was a little cleaner so i could sort through it a little. I do appreciate the comments and excitement. Sorry about this.

Just adressing Ningildo's and Absolete's comments. Ningildo this challenge is supposed to be a competitive battling challenge so although we have tried to incorporate certain in game aspects it is still a competitive battling tournament. This is why any pokemon in the OU tier (or below) are allowed in the tournament. I created the "Dark Horse" aspect for other reasons but essentially it should still maintain a competitive battling feel. This applies to Absolete's suggestion about "themed teams." Again it is ultimately a competitive battling tournament and in my opinion such a concept takes away from the competitiveness.

also I am sorry that i was not clear about this but i meant nominating yourself... I didn't realize people would take it that way :P

To sum up I am taking Pocket's suggestion seriously and I think that i will include multiple elite 4. These Elite 4 will be grouped by time zone. If you didn't catch all of that don't worry i will edit the Op

oh and one last thing if it isn't too much of a hassle could people who have nominated themselves please somewhere on there nomination put their name in bold. Just so i can sort through easier. Thanks guys and again this will be edited in the OP.

Pocket EDIT: The list of names are just random... it's just an example

I'd like to nominate myself for a spot. Though I usually don't brag about ladder peaks since I think those are overrated, I've been #1 on the ladder twice, and on the leaderboard more times than I can count. I've had some good tournament success, winning a dpp smogon tour, having a 3-1 record [BW OU] in SPL III after being picked up at midseason, and I'm currently in the finals of the Dual Weather Alert tournament. I'm also an official team rater so I know my stuff. My timezone is GMT +1 and I'm pretty flexible with the times I can be on, so I think I'd be a good E4 member. Thanks for your consideration.

These are my nominations outside of the people who nominated themselves. This is based on my experience posting here and in the OU RMT forum (also activity plays are large part in this). Problem with nominating others is that they may not be interested.

Nominations

alexwolf
Articblast
Electrolyte
Ginganinja
Harsha
Katakiri
Jirachi
Jimera0
LucararkZ
Pocket (already has interest in it)
PDC
Shining_Latios

I'll edit in the links to the profiles soon! In my opinion the E4 should be a lot smaller: three would suffice. Remember you need a good amount of active challengers as well!

edit: Also willing to do this if nominated

Just posting to say that if i was nominated / considered to get picked as an E4 memeber i wouldn't have a problem. And thx PilsDoughBoy!

EDIT: Just noticed that the OP changed. Anyway i still don't want to nominate myself, and i honestly think that a different method of picking E4 members should be chosen. I believe that we should have a voting period of 1 week or something, where everyone posts their top 10 of battlers they would like to see as E4 alites, in order of importance. Then the person with the most votes will get the place he wants (someone could want to be the first so that he would do a lot of battles, whereas another one could want to be last, to only battle strong opponents), and the next after will chose the second best seat, and so on, untill all the slots are filled.

Oh and something else. Everyone who get at least one vote in the voting stage, should post in this thread whenever he can, saying if he will be available or not.

Backing the nominations of following users

Jimbon
Pocket
Harsha
BKC
Lavos Spawn
Jirachi

Have had a fair bit of interaction with each of them (hence why im backing their nomination), most are fairly quality users and would add a fair but of challenge to the E4. Just make sure they actually want to participate lol.

I'm going to kick myself for taking on another project but here goes.

Accepting the nomination from TPDB, I'll be an elite four member should it be seen fit. While I don't tend to peak the ladder very often this is primarily because I don't ladder very often. I don't have any tournament wins... because I haven't competed in any tournaments. This doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing though. I have an extensive knowledge of BW2 OU and am an active contributor to the site analyses. While my best ladder peaking is something like 1768 on PS!, it should be noted I got there with a win-loss ratio of around 6:1 (discounting disconnects because PS! wasn't very stable a while back and it always seemed to hand me the loss >.>), and that the one night when I dedicated myself to breaching the top 100 I only lost one game out of around 20. What I do have over other applicants is my availability, which is almost unrestricted. Just about any time from 12pm to 12am EST is when I'm available. Just shoot me a message and I'll react within the hour.

Long story short, I don't have a lot of proof to show I'm a good battler but I know that I am, and those who have battled me can attest to it. Few can claim more knowledge of the metagame than me considering the amount of time I spend watching, reading, analyzing and yes, playing. And as far as availability goes, well you can't do worse. Honestly I'm not sure if this'll be enough to convince anyone seeing as I really have no "proof" as such, but I know I'm up for the task.

I would like to second Pockets proposal for regional Elite Fours if you can manage that many players. I will happily put myself forward if you need to fill the numbers, but only if 100% Needed. I haven't achieved anything major however; I have beaten some respected smogon players and I did peak #4 on PO ladder with 1685 (Although that doesn't mean much). Mainly I would be delighted to help out.

Ok guys so I have decided how this is going to work, the Elite 4 nominations will be broken up into w stages.

Stage 1: we choose 4 Elites as planned to get the challenge started. This stage is quite simple and is almost complete.

Stage 2: Do not fret if you didn't get an E4 in stage 1, 16 more E4 will be chosen as part of pocket's "regional E4" proposal. When the time is right the E4 will be reorganised and grouped into time zones.

This will be updated in the OP. If you have any questions/ comments/ suggestions just VM, PM or post.

Accepting TPDB's nomination (GMT-5 [technically it's UTC now, now GMT, but whatever]). I'm also backing the nomination for Lavos Spawn.

EDIT: Shit, backing Eo's nomination for locopoke on the next page, this guy thrashes me every time I play him.