UU Player of the Week #11: radianthero156

Approved by Sam and Hikari



Hello, and welcome to UU's player of the week where I interview
some of Smogon's most accomplished and well knowns players in the tier to give
some insight on who they are and their views on certain aspects of the metagame.
If there's someone you want to see interviewed next week, shoot me a PM!

radianthero156
Can you tell us a bit about yourself? I'm a brazilian 19 year old dude who studies electrical engineering (2nd year), plays drums/piano/keyboard in 5 different bands and who loves math, Steven Universe and, obviously, Pokémon. Also, my irl name is heat: ARIEL CLYDE.

Most Known For: I was considered a new talent after I got into the UU council like 2 weeks after I joined smogon, then I did decently in tournaments like OLT/POCL, and was the UU starter in my SPL team, and I'm really talkative and friendly in the #xyuu channel :]

Favorite Pokemon: Magneton. For some reason, I like weird pkmn. Aegislash is my 2nd favorite one o_o

Most used UU Pokemon: I think it's probably Aerodactyl, since it has very little risk + very high reward. The second one would be Porygon2, since it covers SO many threats and makes teambuilding much easier.

Where did you get your name from? "Radiant Hero" is Ike's title in Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn (I'm also a huge fan of Fire Emblem) and the number 156 has an interesting story behind it. Basically when I played neopets back in like 2004 if I remember correctly, I was gonna use the nickname AriEx256 (my birth date is June 25th), then I accidentally commited a typo, and stood with it anyways. 7 years later I accidentally found out about an interesting mathematical conjecture (which I can't explain here) using the number 156, and thought "yep this number rules".

How and when did you get into competitive battling? I found out about Pokemon Showdown from a friend back in October 2013 (he doesn't even play anymore at this point). He owned me using a bad team (since my team was even worse), and then I found the game really interesting. Then, I found out about Smogon, read up a lot of stuff there and, 3 months after, I created this account.

Opinions on ORAS compared to XY? We're comparing XY UU to ORAS UU, right? In that case, I'd say ORAS is definitely the better. XY is just a Zygarde/MegaZam spam, and, even if those got banned, it'd still be a less versatile version of ORAS, since no mega Sharledo/Pidgeot/Sceptile/etc. (I asked if we were talking about UU because XY OU is much much better than ORAS OU)

What is your favorite playstyle and why? Offense, both Bulky and Hyper. I also play other team archetypes in order to make harder for my opponents to counter-style me, but I feel defensive teams give the initiative to your opponent, which I don't really like; also, it's way less risky to try a ballsy predict when using offense than when using stall; if you mispredict using offense, you lose momentum; however, a misprediction using stall might cost you a key wall and the game.

Favorite non UU tier? XY OU. It's so exciting, diverse and fresh, while still being able to avoid 100% matchup losses (which doesn't occur in ORAS, unfortunately). RBY OU deserves a mention as well because I love the mathematical aspect of it; games are a probability war. I'm not very good at it, but I still enjoy it

Do you think any mon is suspect worthy atm? If yes, which mon and why. Can I say Scald? If not, I guess the metagame is fine. I used to think Mega Aero was kinda broken because of how easily it destroyed Hyper Offense, but with the rise of offensive Mega Swampert, HO is fine. But, just between us, sometimes I feel like we could drop like 15 BL's just to see what would happen haha.

Favorite moment of SPL? "radianthero156: SOLD to the Wifi Wolfpack for 3000".

I can't describle how happy I was after this. When the list of managers was released, I knew I wanted to play with wolves, because Bloo is the best player I've ever seen and Hugo is an incredible teambuilder. I knew I'd learn A LOT just by sitting on their channel. Then they had retained Adam, Joey and Tama who're not only AMAZING players, but are also really chill and cool.

Also, I had been on a hiatus since OLT's cycle 4 (and I wasnt even a very good player anyways), so I knew I wasnt gonna get bought unless if I worked hard. Thus, I played and won an extensive amount of tryout battles which the guys above watched. Then, in the auction day, I saw Calloflochie being bought by them, and since I didnt tryout for any other team, I was like "RIP well lets try joining a random team in midseason i guess"; then I got bought :]. Even though we were last place, I feel I was one of the biggest winners of this SPL because I made amazing friends and improved so much. I have literally 0 regrets.

Who do you think is the most underrated uu player atm? Hmm, tricky question. I'll answer my boy dodmen, because that guy is a god but didn't even get bought for SPL. I predicted him to get the best ORAS record in UUPL and he's already 5-0 (well he played XY too but w/e).

What is some advice you can give to new players who want to get noticed? Well, basically what I did was: lurked a lot (4 months) -> defeated good players on the ladder and peak it -> joined the #xyuu channel and were friendly. But if you're a good user and a good player, you'll get (positively) noticed naturally. And the best way of becoming a good player is playing good players and learning.

How do you go about preparing for tournament matches? If it's a random unofficial tour I just use a team I know is solid and try to outplay the guy. If it's an important tournament like SPL, I watch a lot of replays from my opponent and develop a team that has a balance between: a) softly covering every relevant threat; b) hard-covering threats my opponent likes to use and; c) including an innovation that can cause huge issues to cores my opponent likes. Obviously it's not a 100% perfect strategy, but it arguably worked well for me in SPL. Like, I went 4-4, but I only got a bad matchup in a single game (which was vs IB93 where I brought a bulky offense team with LO Medicham looking to exploit his FWG teams, but he masterfully surprised me with SandStout + CM Twave Reuniclus); in my other 3 losses I just choked/got outplayed :v

Who are some of your favorite people in the Smogon community? Man I have soooo many friends here that this question is tough, but I'd say my top 5 dearest users are Adam, aim, Bloo, dekzeh, and gr8astard, not exactly in this order. yeah, i dont give a fuck about the ost drama, I just want bloo and hugo back :'(

But there are also these guys I wanna give a shoutout to. I might be forgetting someone but it's a risk I wanna take. Again, just in alphabetical order
BR PORRA: Blue_Star, denissss, Destiny Device, Disenchanted, GoaoTwo, HANTSUKI, Hill, kael, papai noel, silverghooost, sogeking, soulraiser, Speto, Tamahome, Tiba

UU (BAN ME PLEASE): Bouffalant, dingbat, dodmen, Finchinator, Fire Lord Mako, Hairy Toenail, Hikari, IronBullet93, King UU, kokoloko, Limitless, Pearl., Psychotic, Sam

VoD noobs who're aids at tagpro bop: CTC, FAJI, FLCL, imanalt, Moet, KratosMana, Omfuga, Sthatakis TDK, Tesung, Tsunami

Wolfies: BLUNDER, Calloflochie, Colchonero, DANILO, JamVLAD, SoulSurvivor/Snakes, Shoka

Others: BKC, Cased, henry, Jirachee, McMeghan

Oh and also ium is very cute x)


Finally can you provide for us a team that you think reflects you as a player with a brief explanation of how it works?



Swampert @ Swampertite
Ability: Torrent
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rain Dance
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Waterfall

Honchkrow @ Life Orb
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Brave Bird
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit
- Heat Wave

Whimsicott @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Giga Drain
- Moonblast
- Tailwind
- U-turn

Lucario @ Life Orb
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- ExtremeSpeed
- Crunch

Salamence @ Life Orb
Ability: Intimidate
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Iron Tail

Aerodactyl @ Focus Sash
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 184 Atk / 72 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Double-Edge
- Taunt
- Fire Blast


Straight from my team archive, (and with a sick name LOL) this team isnt new, and possibly even outdated, but there's no other team that fits my style better. I mean, I usually play all kinds of team archetypes in order to make harder for my opponents to counter-style me, but offense is the one I play the best, because it's way less risky to play aggressively with offense than with stall.

As for the team itself, it works like this: Aero leads, putting SR and preventing your opp from doing so. (Rock Head-less Double-Edge suicides into spinners to avoid the rs). If you're facing defense, choose one of Krow/Mence/Luke/Pert as your win condition (pick the one that need the least work to sweep); the other 3 will be your breakers. You can those recklessly to kill whats stopping your sweeper. Lets say the opp has a P2 and 5 mons killed by mence; if you sac everything but mence just to kill p2, you win. Vs offense, well, you got a TWind/Encore Whimsicott, 2 sweepers that outspeed everything after setup and 2 attackers with powerful priority, so you should win.

----

Thanks for reading. If you guys have questions for rh156 leave them down below. See you next week!
 
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What's your favourite FE game and thoughts on FE:IF?
Fire Emblem: The Sword of Seals, followed by Radiant Dawn; the first gets a lot of flack due to accuraccy reasons but it's my personal favorite because it's CHALLENGING, while the latter simply has one of the most sensational stories I've ever seen in video games (it's really high up there, with KH). And FE:IF looks amazing, I wish I could get a 3DS :[

What would you like to see drop to UU
I'm waiting for Sylveon since like XY OU days. (Seriously stop using that in OU, it's a worse Clefable ffs) Sylveon dropping also means we'd get an offensive fairy that, unlike Slurpuff, can take hits in the early-/mid-game.

Why Tesla?
Tesla is probably a top 3 greatest inventors this world has ever seen, and he didn't care about money, just science. He's one of my favorite personalities ever. Plus it makes for a really classy avatar o_o
 
Reminds me i need to answer my own questions haha. Will you be playing for Brazil this year during WC? How do you feel about tournaments like Grand Slam? Will you show your UU Prowess
Yep you really should. Stop ignoring your fans, man :(. And yeah, I def wanna play for Brazil, it'll depend if I'm good enough though. Also, Grand Slam is a pretty cool tournament, but I doubt I'll do well in it, since I'm decent in UU and subpar in the rest rip. Last year I got to UU top 8 (or top 16? idr) before losing to lowgock in a tight series, but lost before r3 in the rest lol.
Favorite type of music?
Most underrated UU mon?
Have you thought about places you might want to intern or apply to during/after your studies?
Because I'm always aspiring to become a complete musician, I play/listen to many genres, including, in order of preference: rock, pop, funk (american, not carioca), bossa nova, classical, jazz, electronic music, samba, heavy metal and forró. But my top 5 bands/artists would be rhcp, u2, paralamas do sucesso, tom jobim and djavan.

Most underrated mon? Hmm, thats a tough question, but I'm finding Kyurem to be surprisingly good and it's actually nowhere to be seen in competitive play, but for no reason. It's really bulky and versatile and hard-hitting. I guess everyone just forgot it exists lol.

As for the last question, I haven't, but I think the market is so welcoming for electrical engineers that a place will suddenly pop up wanting me haha. Otherwise I'll just work on my uncle's company o.o
 
Not really a question but thnx for recommending I try out for uupl because it was cool to get bought and to get a win in a tournament after theorizing and preparing for a week :)
 

YABO

King Turt
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
How long have you played drums? What styles of music are you best at/like to play? What's your favorite performing experience/memory? I play drums too if you couldn't tell.
 
Not really a question but thnx for recommending I try out for uupl because it was cool to get bought and to get a win in a tournament after theorizing and preparing for a week :)
no problem. that's how one improves!
ayyyy lmao let's jam one day
ayy lmao for sure.
If any of us were to visit Brazil, what are 3 must-see places we would have to go to?
i'd recommend going to Copacabana (probably the most famous neighborhood in brazil), belem/manaus/any city close to amazonia (biological content there is amazing), and Natal (the city where i live, and it rules).
How long have you played drums? What styles of music are you best at/like to play? What's your favorite performing experience/memory? I play drums too if you couldn't tell.
ah hello fellow fan of the magnificent art of drumming. i've been playing for 9 years now, and i'd say my best styles are rock and funk. i think my best performance was in a concert called Som da Mata, which is a musical event that happens in a forest park, i think there were approx 1000 ppl there.
Favorite branch of math?
Favorite mathematician?
Math or meth?
What is the conjecture on 156?
geometry, closely followed by calculus.

i think newton, as he heavily contributed to calculus as we know it (as well as revolutionizing physics), but gauss and euler are also high in my book

math.

i might use that conjecture on my phd thesis, so i'd rather keep it hidden for now o.o

What do you think is the most-overrated UU mon?
What are your thoughts on OU Aegislash?
Do you prefer the Koko system, or the Normal system?
most overrated uu mon? umm well, i think cresselia, since it's A+ rank but imo it's outclassed by reuniclus and slowking as a cmer, and outclassed by p2 as a wall. it's still a legit mon tho.

aegislash uhhhh. that's a really tough question. in one hand, aegi counters many many threats in a single team slot, makes ORAS OU less matchup based (in my opinion) and has an amazing design. in another hand, it's broken as fuck (godly typing + registeel defenses + a STAB move coming from 150 sp.a that nothing resists + perfect movepool) and will severely damper the usage of many mons. all in all, after i've played over 50 games on the suspect ladder, i must say i honestly prefer the aegi meta than the current one, but i think the optimal solution would be keep aegi banned + ban altaria/gross/lando-i.

i'm a huge fan of koko's system because it was responsible for making probably one of the best and most balanced tiers ever. however, i'd say i like the current format better because it tends to invite more players into the tier; that's really good since some of them are potentially hidden gems, and you never know when the next dodmen is gonna appear. but fuck u guys u rly banned serp for nothing smh
 
What qould you like to see in a new pokemon game? Pokemon? story? Poke ball customization for wifi battle?
first and foremost i'd like to be able to play it. 3ds + original game costs like 1.5 minimum wages here in brazil, thats a lot more than i can afford lol. as for the game itself i think pokemon games are so good they don't need to change much. but please make steel resist ghost again, and introduce a 7th pokemon slot, ou is too matchup based and it'll only get worse with new threats lol
 
been trying that team of yours on the ladder :) things i changed = encore for u-turn on whims and a nature here and there. Overall a really amazing team man! Works perfectly in the current meta! thanks for sharing
 

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