Welcome back to player of the week, this week we have room moderator
Solaros & Lunaris!
What do you do outside of Smogon?
I’m a high school senior who will graduate in May. In my free time I like to read various books, listen to music, and watch out-of-season anime, mostly because I hate keeping up with stuff. I also play trumpet and do tae-kwon-do, though I do the latter alot less since I obtained my 2nd degree black belt.
What are you most known for inside the National Dex community?
I’m a moderator for the PS room and Discord, and a NatDex team rater on the Smogon Discord. I’m also a member of the VR Council and QC team, and run the Good Cores, Teambuilding Competition, and Community Create-A-Team threads on the NatDex forums. As you can tell, my “impact” on the metagame is alot more community-oriented, something I’m quite happy with.
How did you get into National Dex?
I have been playing National Dex ever since the ladder was released on Pokemon Showdown. It wasn’t just the return of old Pokemon that brought me to NatDex; the importance of Megas (which made SM, a meta I was familiar with, quite funky) also increased my interest in the tier.
What do you like the most about the format and community?
See above for the format but tl;dr the sheer amount of diversity in the tier thanks to Megas and Z-Moves means the tier never truly feels stale. There’s always something on the up-and-up and something that is losing traction; this makes the meta feel quite dynamic without needing suspects or anything like that. As for the community, its pretty chill, but the tendency to discuss something that is clearly unviable hurts my overall communication with it. As a result, I feel that I separate myself from the greater community, which makes me feel partially elitist. I‘d be really happy with metagame development if people weren’t constantly saying “Chandelure is viable” for the umpteenth time.
How do you feel about the state of the National Dex metagame right now? Any Pokemon that stick out as issues to you?
This interview comes at the worst possible time, because I obviously think that Cinderace warps the tier to such an unhealthy margin that I’ve almost refused to prepare for it. However, as it is being voted on, I have to say that’s my only real meta issue. Magearna and Slowbro are things that I cannot get a feel for being properly broken because Cinderace warps much of their counterplay. Other Pokemon like Mega Latias and Mega Mawile are in a similar boat.
Are there any Pokemon you don’t think are rated enough / rated too highly?
I think Mega Diancie and Serperior are definitely underrated at the moment. The former is a devastating wallbreaker, doing minimum 40% to anything that it touches neutrally. Its Speed blazes past Garchomp, which is huge for such a powerful breaker, and it can set Stealth Rock with phenomonal ease. The latter is super annoying for common balance structures, and in tandem with Pokemon like Mega Mawile or Mega Heracross, its not hard to see why teams struggle against the smug snake. Naturally, I expect these two to only get better when Cinderace (hopefully) leaves the tier. As for overrated, I haven’t really gotten the recent hype around Mega Mawile. This might be my playstyle, but it’s relatively easy to limit MMaw’s ability to come in without risking a double switch. Obviously if you’re big on prediction, MMaw is incredibly rewarding Pokemon, but if that’s not the case, then you just have another big breaker with some defensive qualities.
What is your favorite Pokemon and kind of team to use in National Dex?
Corviknight is probably my favorite Pokemon to use in the tier. It’s ability to provide a million roles without compromising on momentum thanks to U-turn means it has a purpose in every game I bring it to. My favorite style of team is probably Bulky Offense; I hate balance teams that want to have hard answers to everything, so keeping up momentum and limiting entry of huge wallbreakers while letting my own Pokemon shine tends to be my preferred style.
Would you mind sharing a team that reflects that?
MediVile Offense I built this with Aurodian for the teambuilding lab, which requested for Medicham and Weavile together. I took this idea and made a funky bulky offense with it that patches up the weaknesses of more common MediVile structures, such as Magearna and Heatran. I also like the team’s aesthetic
Any last things you want to leave us with?
Shoutouts to the Krooks who are probably the coolest group of people who I’ve met online. Shoutouts to my NDWC team
who will take the trophy because we have the best manager and literally Finchinator. (Update: we lost but I was glad to work with all of you, and I hope we can take next NDWC’s trophy.) Shoutout to Lameflame for being an awesome forum poster who deserves more credit because its hard to find good forum posts anymore ngl Lastly, shoutout to Lupla and R8 Konijn for giving me pals to listen to Undertale music with; you make me happy to be apart of the fandom. Also s/o to Optify for interviewing me and cohosting CCAT.
We'd like to thank Solaros for their time, and feel free to ask them any questions in the thread!
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