Rate of the Week V2: Week 5

[IronBullet]

Rate of the Week
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Welcome to Rate of the Week! This is a project that looks to bring quality individual rates into the spotlight and recognizes the hard work of unbadged raters. Here's how it will work:

• Each week, official Team Raters will be paying close attention to the RMT forum and reading the rates posted in their respective tiers. They will then shortlist a few which will be in contention for the Rate of the Week award.
• From the pool of shortlisted rates, one will be chosen which most exemplifies the qualities of an excellent rate. That rater will be the winner for that particular tier!
• A post will be made by an official TR who specialises in that tier, explaining how and why the particular rate won. This will allow aspiring raters to gain an idea of what constitutes high-quality rates, and hopefully incorporate those aspects into their own rates.
• There will be multiple winners every week, one from OU and a couple from other tiers depending on the quality of the rates posted. We hope that in this way we can expand rating activity in less popular tiers, while maintaining a weekly OU winner.
• Official Team Raters are eligible to win, but not more than once. Unbadged raters can win the award multiple times.

So what's in it for the winners? Well, they will earn a place in the Hall of Fame, which will be kept in the OP of every thread, and their rates will be announced on Twitter. Winners also earn more consideration for the Ladybug

and Team Rater

badges.

We hope that this project will encourage people to put more effort into their rates and become better and more experienced raters, which will consequently increase the quality as well as the quantity of rates in the forum. Good luck to you all! :)

Hall of Fame

Week #1 - Nedor (OU) and fran17 (LC)

Week #2 - shui3 (OU), YABO (UU), and 49 (RU)

Week #3 - celes (OU), Serapis (VGC)

Week #4 - FlamingVictini (OU)

Week #5 - Albacore (OU), dodmen (UU), 49 (RU), and Corporal Levi (LC)

 

[IronBullet]

This week's UU winner is dodmen! His rate was chosen as it's a prime example of an ideal rate with excellent suggestions, good formatting, and solid reasoning to back it up. He starts off by identifying the likes of Lucario, DD Salamence, Feraligatr, and Cobalion as huge threats to the team if offered even a single turn of free setup, which he proposes to remedy by replacing Calm Mind on Suicune with Sleep Talk. This enables Suicune to act as a more reliable check to the aforementioned threats and not be completely helpless while sleeping. Since AllAttack loses a win condition if CM is replaced, dodmen suggests that he can run Calm Mind + Synthesis Florges instead of the Wish version. Seeing as Roar + SleepTalk Suicune works devastatingly with Spikes on the field, he then proposes to run SR + Dread Plate on Krookodile over its current CB set, which frees up a slot for Forretress to run Spikes. As a plus, Florges and Mega Aerodactyl also abuse Spikes heavily. The loss of power that Krookodile suffers is not of too much consequence as bulky Psychic-types, such as Cresselia and Reuniclus, are taken care of by Heracross.

Lastly, dodmen reasons that Earthquake is more useful than Hone Claws for Mega Aerodactyl as it allows Aero to hit Empoleon and Cobalion, which are pretty annoying for the team to deal with, super effectively. His excellent rate has earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame, congrats!

 

[fran17]

This week's RU winner is 49! His rate shows high knowledge of the meta, and improved the team thanks to some good and well-explained suggestions.

His first suggestion is to change Meloetta's set to a more offensive variant with Colbur Berry and Shadow Ball, allowing Meloetta to pressure more Psychic types, while also preventing Glalie from mega evolving, which is rather problematic for the team. The second suggestion he has for the team is to remove Togetic. 49 sees that the team exhibit a decent handle in the hazards game, so he suggests running Icy Wind+Psychic Spiritomb over Togetic. The set aims to act as an active spin blocker and bulky pursuit trapper that can deal with threats to the team such as Delphox and Sigilyph. Lastly he suggests Scald on Qwilfish and Stone Edge on Steelix. Scald aims to break more specially defensive builds, while Stone Edge on Steelix helps againist Fletchinder, a rather problematic mon for the team.
This well explained rate with an amazing formatting earned 49 a spot in the Hall Of Fame. Congratulations!

 

[Enki]

This week's OU winner is Albacore! The format and structuring of his rate is excellent and it's very clear that he put a ton of effort into it. He begins by discussing what threatens the team in general, and then transitions to suggesting additions to the team to help with the threats he discussed. He did a great job when he suggested Lando-T, as he explained all positive and negative side on adding Landorus-T to his team, explained every set, including the defensive set (which makes the team pretty weak to Bisharp, Mega Gyarados and Ice Punch Mega Lopunny) and then talked about changing Scarf Jirachi to Scarf Landorus-T. This suggestion makes sense, but makes the team weaker to Clefable, and then talked about how the team is Ice weak. The last decision about this last rate was to change Raikou for Choice Scarf Landorus. Albacore explained it pretty well why he decided to pick two choice scarf users, which seem redundant, but doing so gave the team a good Electric check, an Ice check, and maintained high momentum thanks to the U-turn. Then he talked about changing Aqua Jet on Feraligatr for Superpower to help against Mega Gyarados and Ferrothorn pretty well. Another set change is Zen Headbutt over Healing Wish, which is pretty helpful against Keldeo, a big threat how he said before.

He started talking about other options to make the team less locked and give make it less difficult for the team to defeat defensive teams. His suggestion was changing Choice Scarf Jirachi for Magma Storm Heatran, which is a great answer against Clefable and a great check to HP Fire Latios. Then he talks about all sides of his change, talking about how this helps, and then how Air Balloon can help against Excadrill pretty well, but also makes the team weaker to Weavile since Heatran can not check Weavile. Another suggestion he gave to help out against Clefable was Tail Glow Manaphy, as it made the team less weak to Weavile, and supports Feraligatr and Mega Scizor pretty well. The last suggestion was to try Choice Band Azumarill, which also helps against Clefable, as it can easily 2HKO it, and check multiple threats including Latias and Keldeo. Manaphy also helps against Feraligatr's checks and helps against Mega Charizard X teams as well as Sand teams, making Landorus-T less of a necessity.

Thanks to his great formatting and his multiple in depth options to improve the team, Albacore was able to provide a great rate, and earned himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. Congrats!

 

[tcr]

This week's LC winner is Corporal Levi! This rate is excellent in both terms of game knowledge and in formatting and structure. It is clear that Corporal Levi put a lot of thought into his rate in order to make a mediocre team truly compete with the best. He begins by explaining how powerful attackers, in this example specifically Ice-type spammers like the cute ice dino Amaura or Snover, can just rampage through his team. Other Pokemon to watch out for would be a well played Fletchling, since his only other option was to tank it with his Hippopotas or to try to KO it with his Archen. Pawniard fixes these issues with its excellent typing that allows it to pivot into resisted attacks like Flying-type and Ice-type attacks. Since Abra was the weakest link, especially on a team with offensive threats in Archen and Drilbur, it was chosen to be replaced by Pawniard, which itself still maintains good momentum and can pressure most teams with its support moves Thunder Wave and Knock Off. Pawniard also happens to help him against other Hyper-Offensive teams, specifically Memento oriented Hyper Offense and Zigzagoon Offense teams. Lastly, Pawniard also helps out against threats like Snivy, whose best switchin is Croagunk, something that does not want to tank needless attacks and instead focus on stopping Fighting-types.

Lastly, instead of changing unnecessary team members, Corporal Levi focuses on polishing the team by swapping a few EV spreads around and making the team more efficient. It is smaller rates like this that truly make great teams shine, since most of the time the good teams are the ones that have no blatant weaknesses to common Pokemon. Levi suggests changing Hippopotas' EV spread to be more specially defensive inclined in order to tank Flash Cannons from Magnemite, one of the most common Pokemon in the tier. A nature change in Croagunk helps to make the spread more efficient, hitting even numbers to benefit Croagunk's Eviolite as well as forming better rolls from its attacks. Lastly, Levi leaves himself a "way out" if you will. Instead of forcing the OP to change several Pokemon he suggests a simple EV spread change to Archen in order to make one of the mentioned threats a lot easier to handle, although it is not as efficient of an answer as one would hope.

Due to formatting and presenting superior game knowledge, Levi has won the rate of the week for LC. Congratulations!