Rate of the Week V3: Week 24

[Enki]

Rate of the Week
​

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 unbadged raters will have priority since that is the main focus of this project.

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 will earn more consideration for the Ladybug

and Team Rater

badges. Also, after gaining three places in the Hall of Fame, a rater will be eligible to earn voice status in the RMT room on PS! on the condition that they've shown an interest in getting involved.

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 - Toon Linked (OU)
Week #2 - Nedor (OU), Arifeen (UU)
Week #3 - Fireburn (Ubers), Do A Bibarel (UU)
Week #4 - AM (OU), Raiza (PU), Kiyo (NU)
Week #5 - FlamingVictini (OU)
Week #6 - Cyndequil. (UU)
Week #7 - BreloomMyHomie (OU)
Week #8 - FlamingVictini (OU)
Week #9 - oml it's too ez (OU), Cyndequil. (UU), MrAldo (RU)
Week #10 - Nedor (OU), Cyndequil. (UU), Cranham (Ubers), Lax (Monotype)
Week #11 - AM (OU)
Week #12 - Lange (OU), Amaroq (UU)
Week #13 - all falls down (UU)
Week #14 - Manipulative (UU)
Week #15 - mil (OU)
Week #16 - Tricking (OU)
Week #17 - Hector Hard Mode (OU), Christo. (UU)
Week #18 - p2 (OU), all falls down (UU)
Week #19 - ez (OU), Chakra (RU), S0LID G0LD (LC), Memoric (Doubles)
Week #20 - nv (UU), GradeAGarchomp (VGC), Joshz (Anything Goes)
Week #21 - King Sun (OU), PrinceLucian (NU), GradeAGarchomp (VGC), NOVED (Battle Spot)
Week #22 - ez (OU), fran17 (LC), TONE114 (PU)
Week #23 - Sken (LC)
Week #24 - Nedor (OU), RebornFX (VGC)

 

[Tricking]

This week's OU winner is Nedor. He wrote a long and detailed rate featuring good explanations and two different versions of the team.

He started off considering the various threats, the redundance of some sets in the original team, and then started improving the team with his suggestions. First of all, he replaced the useless Assault Vest on Tyranitar with a Choice Scarf, being one of the best set at the moment, which serves as a revenge-killer of stuff like Bisharp and Gengar. Then, he suggested to replace Toxic with Reflect type on Starmie, while adopting a Jolly max speed set. Not only does this help versus Bisharp and Ferrothorn, but also it allows Starmie to outspeed a good portion of the metagame. After that, he decided to run Chople Berry Ferrothorn with Power Whip+Spikes and the standard spread to deal with the likes Mega Alakazam, Keldeo, Lopunny. In fact this set serves as a one-time lure to those aforementioned threats. His last minor change was the addition of Nasty Plot in lieu of Volt Switch on Thundurus. This allows Thundurus to sweep in some scenarios after having weakened all the threats. The only "big" change he suggested was to replace Jirachi with Swords Dance defensive Landorus-Therian. This serves both as a better defensive backbone and a more reliable Stealth Rock setter, being able to pressure some bulky Pokemon the team struggles to deal with. In the second version of the team he opted for Substitute + Calm Mind Keldeo over Thundurus to soften the weakness to Weavile and because of its synergy with the rest of the team. Thus, he outlined that Life Orb Starmie is much more useful than a defensive variant, since the addition of Keldeo is enough to deal with the likes of Bisharp and Ferrothorn.

Thanks to his insightful rate, Nedor has earned himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. Congrats!

 

[Draconid997]

This week's winning VGC rate comes from RebornFX! His rate provides a wealth of clear and well thought out guidance on running the infamous perish trap strategy in the current VGC 2016 format.

He begins his rate by explaining how the builder's original team of gengar-mega/kyogre-primal/raichu/dugtrio/azumarill/whimsicott dedicated too much of its structure to setting up perish song. To summarize, having 3 pokemon that perform relatively similar roles for perish trap is now slightly counter-productive in this offensively orientated format, so RebornFX's changes aimed to give the team some much needed offensive pressure in the intention that perish trap could be seen as more of a win condition, as opposed to the main strategy.

His choice of Mega Rayquaza as a secondary restricted legend gives rawrsome's team a source of raw damage output, as RebornFX describes in his rate (iPRODiGY VGC also makes an interesting point later on in the thread of the use of primal groudon to 'trap' primal kyogre in late game, which is something Wolfe Glick had recently been using).
He goes on to make more changes to the team which benefit its matchup against common threats to the RayOgre archetype, such as swapping out azumarill to ferrothorn and whimsicott to crobat to deal with xerneas, smeargle and kyogre more successfully.
He also refines the sets of other pokemon on the team to further optimize their roles, which gives rawrsome's team a much more balanced approach to perish trap, as well as giving the writer some invaluable advice on this year's format.

Thanks to his well presented and detailed rate, RebornFX has earned himself a place in the Hall of Fame.
Congratulations! I'm really looking forward to reading your future rates :)