Welcome guys in the "UU Player Interview", a project where you'll be able to discover or re-discover some well known players of the UU community. Those people may be known thanks to their high-skilled level or their achievements on the strategic scene but also thanks to their dedication into the tier or within the community. Time to gossip !
Hey there viv, I'm glad you're here ! First of all, can you tell us what's your favorite Pokemon ?
Probably Araquanid or Shedinja. A lot of people who've known me for years probably remember the days where I was trying so hard to be discount Christo and I just spammed Shedinja an abnormal amount, if you scroll down to the bottom of my gen7uu scout you can find a bunch of shitty sheddy balances lmao. But my obsession with the webs playstyle eventually led to Araquanid becoming like my mascot, at first I think I actually heavily disliked araq's design but I warmed up to it after using it so much on the ladder and enjoying myself while playing with it to such an extent. Sceptile whether it's mega or not is another one I love a lot but unfortunately it sucks dick everywhere.
Yeah I definitively remember when you were using Shedinja before the Araquanid hype. Following that first question, what is the Pokemon you have used the most ?
I've got over 1.5k+ teams in my builder and like 80% of them at least are mine, and like 60-70% are prolly gen7uu. There is no way Scizor isn't the answer to this question, but that's a lame answer. I remember doing a scout on myself like a year 1/2 ago and seeing Araquanid as like the 3rd most used mon which was really funny. Over time I got to a point where I just couldn't ladder and have fun if I wasn't using HO of some variant, with webs being my go-to. I have a folder of around 60 webs teams I think, so Araquanid or Scizor is probably the best answer. There was also a period of time where I splashed the oven onto literally every team I ever rated or created LOL.
You're a true Bug Catcher lmao ! For what are you the most known for ?
I don't know, I have no idea what image I've painted of myself over time in this community. I can never tell how seriously people take me or how respected I am. I always feel under-appreciated or like I don't get the credit I deserve, but that's like 70% because I just have an enormous ego sometimes. I think a lot of people know me for my personality on this site, my NP posts that're just me rambling in a super casual tone about whatever's on my mind in the tier and completely disregarding everyone else's posts I just don't care enough to read. I'm sure a lot of people remember the days where I was just a UU room shitter and kept getting muted by cake, I was the most active user in uu room for a solid stretch of time. Maybe people know me for the teams I give that constantly infest the ladder, hopefully people know me for being good at mons/building to some extent bc I think I've come a long long way, especially with the latter I feel like I deserve a whole lot more credit. I hope by the end of my Smogon career I'm known as someone that people know they can reach out to and be comfortable with whether it's about mons or anything personal, and I hope I'm respected in the community as someone that knows what they're doing in regards to this shitty ass game we all consistently play for some reason. I think a lot of people see me as a "peoples' champ" sort of person, but I hope by the end of my Smogon career that my name holds some sort of weight to it in the community, whether it be as a personality or competitively, preferably both >:)
Actually, I do believe people do like you because you're overall a nice guy and a social person ! By the way, how it is going ?
LOL gracias mi amigo, It's going okay. I think I've gotten sick for the first time in many years so that's been kinda annoying. Not much else going on, ltpl is fun but I'm tired of building gen7uu so I'm excited for it to be over soon.
Yeah, the tournament looks fun and it's always good to see low tiers in the spotlight ! Can you tell us a bit yourself ?
Yeah sure, I'm 19 and living in Los Angeles. Most of you know me as vivalospride or Zenin, I got the name "vivalospride" bc my mexican friend in middle school made his name on other shit "vivalostaco" and our friend group started a clan with "vivalos" and then some random word. So vivaloslakers, vivalosclippers, vivalosvegas, vivalospride, etc. I chose pride as the word bc of the character Vegeta from Dragon Ball. Just had to explain that rq bc I'm tired of explaining it to people 1 by 1, now I can just link people this interview when they ask me wtf vivalospride means >:). Otherwise my hobbies are basketball, listening to music, drawing, and playing video games. I love music and basketball to an otherworldly extent, my favorite genres are Hip-Hop in it's entirety (old and new, and p much every sub-genre you can think of) and Soul/R&B. Lil Wayne, Anderson .Paak, Eminem, Nate Dogg, Hiatus Kaiyote, and Boogie are all artists I've taken the biggest likings to over time. My favorite basketball team is the OKC Thunder and I've stanned them to an obsessive extent p much my whole life, over time my interest in basketball has wavered tho so it's not quite the same as when I was little. I'm generally lazy as fuck and don't care about most things, I'm also irritable as fuck around people but at the same time I love talking to and helping people with their issues no matter how little or big of an issue it is. I'm super self deprecating but have an enormous ego at the same time, idk where I'm going with this I'm just explaining random things about myself LMAO. Ask Clefable for any further questions about me as a person I'm sure he'd love to talk to any of you about the ins and outs of the "psychology of vivalospride".
Alright and what brought you to Smogon and competitive Pokemon in general ?
So when I was like 13 I watched this youtuber named KYR SP33DY, he was a pretty big deal on youtube at the time so I'm sure at least a few people know of him. But on his second channel he'd sometimes post Pokemon Showdown videos, although it was very rare. I found PS through those videos in early-mid 2014, but what a lot of people don't know is that I've been on Smogon since 2012, I was playing wifi battles and using rare candy cheats to level up my mons in-game during the ancient times of DPP/BW/B2W2, then I took an indefinite break from mons until like 2014 and didn't take it super seriously again until like early 2017. What got me into competitive in the first place is prolly just being a competitive person and having friends to play with seriously, I wanted to win and I wanted to improve, and I loved the cartridge games so much that competitive was something I wanted to explore. In 2017 I randomly came across the UU room on PS and started being active in there and ever since I've been a UU tryhard.
That's good to know and since you're playing since a while at Pokemon, I’ll be curious to know what is your favorite generation ?
Definitely DPP, all my competitive knowledge of the tiers has completely washed away from my brain but I played both OU and UU during DPP's time. But in terms of the cartridge games, DPP gave me a feeling of escapism that no following or previous mons games have ever come close to in comparison. I beat Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum all individually and spent an absurd amount of hours on each one. Gen 7 is/was complete and utter ass but it's probably my other favorite simply bc it's the gen where I got my competitive chops up, and I enjoyed my time on this site during Gen 7. I didn't play the gen 7 cartridge games tho ngl. Gen 3 is also incredible and has some cool competitive tiers.
And what about gen8 ? Any thoughts on SS UU metagame so far ?
I haven't gotten into the tier an absurd amount but I've spent a decent amount of time trying to build and kinda learn it. I have nothing but negative thoughts about it atm, LOL. Other than the fact that we have some cool and interesting mons that're viable, with the dex being cut in half, a lot of previous gen unmons that I never expected to be good competitively have gotten to shine and I think that's awesome. But yeah there's too much on the tier's plate, we need some bans dawg. I like the council that Hogg and TDK came up with, it's a nice change of pace from the standard method of choosing council which is generally just tls looking at the SHEET and picking names. Sirfetch'd and Galar Weezing are two of the coolest fuckin mons I've ever seen. I think webs are overrated honestly, I've been using them and they don't feel nearly as good as people have been hyping them up to be. But for the most part I think we just needa ban or suspect some shit bc damn there's a lotta shit goin on. Kommo and Sylv leaving makes building a bit easier tho. Obstagoon, Lucha, and Gengar gotta go tho!! There's so little defensive counterplay to like literally everything it's hilarious, we're all using ice coffee tables to blanket check physical attackers, so yeah I have pretty negative feelings about the current metagame but I have faith it'll shape into something far far more enjoyable than gen7uu.
Yeah the council gonna do its best to make the tier better. Otherwise, do you have any special goals for the upcoming year ? On Smogon or IRL ?
As for Smogon I wanna get into an official, that's been the goal since day 1 of my existence on this site, and this is definitely the year I wanna make it happen w/o question. I've already done a lot of the stuff I originally wanted to do on Smogon, I probably won't contribute nearly as much as I did last year bc it's just so unrewarding for me mentally. Otherwise I'd just like to continue raising my stock as a player as much as I can, I will prolly take a short break after ltpl bc I'm burnt out as fuck w/ how frustrating building is in gen7uu, I been burnt out for like 5 months. Learning gen8uu to a comfortable extent is obviously something I inevitably have to do so that's a goal ig. In terms of irl, probably just be as healthy and active as possible, it's p much just an on-going goal that never ends yet I consistently only somewhat achieve. Get further along the road that is life, be more productive in general, make more friends and get out of the shell that anxiety consistently keeps me in, be less cringe than the ending of this answer was, etc.
Wow, I hope you'll be able to succeed everything ! Even though you get along with a lot of people, who are some of your favorite people in the Smogon Community ?
Honestly I hate all of you, but some of you I hate less than others. Amane Misa has been my best friend for a long time, she's a complete asshole but she's still my homie forever >:). Sage and yeezyknows are two of my oldest friends on this site who I love unconditionally. FUMA HI-FI, pokeisfun, Clefable, and TheCoastsOfToast I consider irl friends moreso than mons friends at this point even tho I haven't met any of them. Pak and his whole circlejerk of scrubs is like a shitty family environment that I enjoy sometimes being a part of, I'm sure all of you know who you are I just don't feel like hl'ing the whole site. CoolStoryBrobat and 'sei. are like my internet big brothers who I'll always be grateful for. Twilight is the internet son I always wanted but I got itsjustdrew instead. The entirety of the POKEMON SAFARI FRIEND ZONERS, last uupl will go down in my heart as one of my favorite online experiences ever, especially when it all started I'm p sure all of us wanted to get the fuck off of that team that was destined to finish last (we didn't). I could hl 70% of this website if I wanted to but I'm keeping it at this, some of my closest friends weren't even mentioned so stfu if you're annoyed I didn't mention you, buncha hooligans. Also s/o everyone from studio room on PS bc you guys welcomed me into your community 200000x faster than bumass UU did. Lookin at you Brandon and st. pablo .. Shoutout MSPL, obviously.
I luv u although you didn't mentionned me.. :[ last but not least, could you share with us one of your favorite UU teams ?
You were on the friends so I technically did, gen 7 or 8 team? or does it matter
That's true <o<.. Whatever you want mate, one that deserves to be shared according to you !
Yeah so I'll give two variations of one team, first one Sacri used week 1 of LTPL and the second I used in semis of LTPL. Sacri basically said he wanted to use sub prim and this is the one he liked the most that pak or I came up with. Starts with Substitute Primarina + pivot to get it in vs favorable opponents like Hydreigon and Latias, I chose Rotom-H as the pivot bc it does the job perfectly while also giving the standard oven ROLE COMPRESSION, hoping to make the building process easier vs other options. Doublade was the next mon I decided on, Doublade + Primarina on paper checks the tier's plethora of offensive fighting types to a good extent, and Doublade + Rotom-H is generally enough to say you have a good Scizor matchup, I also wanted to take note of how much both prim and doub benefit from willowisp oven, crippling things like Krookodile and Bisharp primarily. Next 2 slots were pretty easy, Nidoqueen + Scarf Hydreigon is a very common core and for good reason. Hydreigon is the perfect pivot to get nidoq into good positions to get free rocks or click buttons freely. I really like the utility that Nidoqueen gives as well, being able to actually break bulkier fairies like Florges or Sylveon while also being able to trade with a lot of the tier, especially fighting types... it all makes Doublade's job significantly easier by giving it less food on it's plate so it can potentially get better setup opportunities late game for sweeps. Scarf Hydreigon is pretty self explanatory, Krookodile switch in, speed control, pivot to form a core with oven and to get nidoq in safely, etc etc. Before mentioning the last slot, I went with a pretty offensive z move variant of the oven because it helps the knock Scizor matchup and helps breaking things like Curse Aggron, also it's literally free as there's nowhere else to put the z move. Willowisp on oven works well w/ prim/doub as mentioned before. On the first variant either claw or sword works on doub, 2nd variant 100% go claw. On the 2nd variant of the team also definitely do Toxic or Tbolt on oven > willowisp, willo is definitely a much worse option. Pak convinced me on Crunch as the filler slot for Hydreigon as fire coverage isn't really necessary and bolt beam lati can be kinda scary on the 1st variant since no Toxic on oven. But as for the last mon, on the first variant I went with Defog Empoleon, it works great here because it takes so much pressure off of oven and doub as a bird resist and lati check, it also switches into prima and tenta which is really helpful for the whole team. On the second variant I went with AV Tsareena > Empo in the last slot, can eat a moonblast in dire situations and isn't 2HKOd by Sludge Bomb from Tentacruel, helps Suicune matchup as well which is the main reason for this change honestly. Also gives the team a more offensive feel and flow to it, replacing super solidified defensive counterplay to a plethora of things in Empoleon to a much looser route of checking those things while keeping the offensive pressure up a bit more, it makes Lati matchup worse but it's very doable.
Both teams looks dope, it always super nice to see those kind of teams with specific techniques like Crunch Hydreigon which is definitively smth you didn't see otherwise. Anyway viv, thanks a lot for your time and your detailed answers !
Anytime
Feel free to ask to vivalospride any questions you want !
If you have some recommendations for an interview, feel free to DM me !
Hey there viv, I'm glad you're here ! First of all, can you tell us what's your favorite Pokemon ?
Probably Araquanid or Shedinja. A lot of people who've known me for years probably remember the days where I was trying so hard to be discount Christo and I just spammed Shedinja an abnormal amount, if you scroll down to the bottom of my gen7uu scout you can find a bunch of shitty sheddy balances lmao. But my obsession with the webs playstyle eventually led to Araquanid becoming like my mascot, at first I think I actually heavily disliked araq's design but I warmed up to it after using it so much on the ladder and enjoying myself while playing with it to such an extent. Sceptile whether it's mega or not is another one I love a lot but unfortunately it sucks dick everywhere.
Yeah I definitively remember when you were using Shedinja before the Araquanid hype. Following that first question, what is the Pokemon you have used the most ?
I've got over 1.5k+ teams in my builder and like 80% of them at least are mine, and like 60-70% are prolly gen7uu. There is no way Scizor isn't the answer to this question, but that's a lame answer. I remember doing a scout on myself like a year 1/2 ago and seeing Araquanid as like the 3rd most used mon which was really funny. Over time I got to a point where I just couldn't ladder and have fun if I wasn't using HO of some variant, with webs being my go-to. I have a folder of around 60 webs teams I think, so Araquanid or Scizor is probably the best answer. There was also a period of time where I splashed the oven onto literally every team I ever rated or created LOL.
You're a true Bug Catcher lmao ! For what are you the most known for ?
I don't know, I have no idea what image I've painted of myself over time in this community. I can never tell how seriously people take me or how respected I am. I always feel under-appreciated or like I don't get the credit I deserve, but that's like 70% because I just have an enormous ego sometimes. I think a lot of people know me for my personality on this site, my NP posts that're just me rambling in a super casual tone about whatever's on my mind in the tier and completely disregarding everyone else's posts I just don't care enough to read. I'm sure a lot of people remember the days where I was just a UU room shitter and kept getting muted by cake, I was the most active user in uu room for a solid stretch of time. Maybe people know me for the teams I give that constantly infest the ladder, hopefully people know me for being good at mons/building to some extent bc I think I've come a long long way, especially with the latter I feel like I deserve a whole lot more credit. I hope by the end of my Smogon career I'm known as someone that people know they can reach out to and be comfortable with whether it's about mons or anything personal, and I hope I'm respected in the community as someone that knows what they're doing in regards to this shitty ass game we all consistently play for some reason. I think a lot of people see me as a "peoples' champ" sort of person, but I hope by the end of my Smogon career that my name holds some sort of weight to it in the community, whether it be as a personality or competitively, preferably both >:)
Actually, I do believe people do like you because you're overall a nice guy and a social person ! By the way, how it is going ?
LOL gracias mi amigo, It's going okay. I think I've gotten sick for the first time in many years so that's been kinda annoying. Not much else going on, ltpl is fun but I'm tired of building gen7uu so I'm excited for it to be over soon.
Yeah, the tournament looks fun and it's always good to see low tiers in the spotlight ! Can you tell us a bit yourself ?
Yeah sure, I'm 19 and living in Los Angeles. Most of you know me as vivalospride or Zenin, I got the name "vivalospride" bc my mexican friend in middle school made his name on other shit "vivalostaco" and our friend group started a clan with "vivalos" and then some random word. So vivaloslakers, vivalosclippers, vivalosvegas, vivalospride, etc. I chose pride as the word bc of the character Vegeta from Dragon Ball. Just had to explain that rq bc I'm tired of explaining it to people 1 by 1, now I can just link people this interview when they ask me wtf vivalospride means >:). Otherwise my hobbies are basketball, listening to music, drawing, and playing video games. I love music and basketball to an otherworldly extent, my favorite genres are Hip-Hop in it's entirety (old and new, and p much every sub-genre you can think of) and Soul/R&B. Lil Wayne, Anderson .Paak, Eminem, Nate Dogg, Hiatus Kaiyote, and Boogie are all artists I've taken the biggest likings to over time. My favorite basketball team is the OKC Thunder and I've stanned them to an obsessive extent p much my whole life, over time my interest in basketball has wavered tho so it's not quite the same as when I was little. I'm generally lazy as fuck and don't care about most things, I'm also irritable as fuck around people but at the same time I love talking to and helping people with their issues no matter how little or big of an issue it is. I'm super self deprecating but have an enormous ego at the same time, idk where I'm going with this I'm just explaining random things about myself LMAO. Ask Clefable for any further questions about me as a person I'm sure he'd love to talk to any of you about the ins and outs of the "psychology of vivalospride".
Alright and what brought you to Smogon and competitive Pokemon in general ?
So when I was like 13 I watched this youtuber named KYR SP33DY, he was a pretty big deal on youtube at the time so I'm sure at least a few people know of him. But on his second channel he'd sometimes post Pokemon Showdown videos, although it was very rare. I found PS through those videos in early-mid 2014, but what a lot of people don't know is that I've been on Smogon since 2012, I was playing wifi battles and using rare candy cheats to level up my mons in-game during the ancient times of DPP/BW/B2W2, then I took an indefinite break from mons until like 2014 and didn't take it super seriously again until like early 2017. What got me into competitive in the first place is prolly just being a competitive person and having friends to play with seriously, I wanted to win and I wanted to improve, and I loved the cartridge games so much that competitive was something I wanted to explore. In 2017 I randomly came across the UU room on PS and started being active in there and ever since I've been a UU tryhard.
That's good to know and since you're playing since a while at Pokemon, I’ll be curious to know what is your favorite generation ?
Definitely DPP, all my competitive knowledge of the tiers has completely washed away from my brain but I played both OU and UU during DPP's time. But in terms of the cartridge games, DPP gave me a feeling of escapism that no following or previous mons games have ever come close to in comparison. I beat Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum all individually and spent an absurd amount of hours on each one. Gen 7 is/was complete and utter ass but it's probably my other favorite simply bc it's the gen where I got my competitive chops up, and I enjoyed my time on this site during Gen 7. I didn't play the gen 7 cartridge games tho ngl. Gen 3 is also incredible and has some cool competitive tiers.
And what about gen8 ? Any thoughts on SS UU metagame so far ?
I haven't gotten into the tier an absurd amount but I've spent a decent amount of time trying to build and kinda learn it. I have nothing but negative thoughts about it atm, LOL. Other than the fact that we have some cool and interesting mons that're viable, with the dex being cut in half, a lot of previous gen unmons that I never expected to be good competitively have gotten to shine and I think that's awesome. But yeah there's too much on the tier's plate, we need some bans dawg. I like the council that Hogg and TDK came up with, it's a nice change of pace from the standard method of choosing council which is generally just tls looking at the SHEET and picking names. Sirfetch'd and Galar Weezing are two of the coolest fuckin mons I've ever seen. I think webs are overrated honestly, I've been using them and they don't feel nearly as good as people have been hyping them up to be. But for the most part I think we just needa ban or suspect some shit bc damn there's a lotta shit goin on. Kommo and Sylv leaving makes building a bit easier tho. Obstagoon, Lucha, and Gengar gotta go tho!! There's so little defensive counterplay to like literally everything it's hilarious, we're all using ice coffee tables to blanket check physical attackers, so yeah I have pretty negative feelings about the current metagame but I have faith it'll shape into something far far more enjoyable than gen7uu.
Yeah the council gonna do its best to make the tier better. Otherwise, do you have any special goals for the upcoming year ? On Smogon or IRL ?
As for Smogon I wanna get into an official, that's been the goal since day 1 of my existence on this site, and this is definitely the year I wanna make it happen w/o question. I've already done a lot of the stuff I originally wanted to do on Smogon, I probably won't contribute nearly as much as I did last year bc it's just so unrewarding for me mentally. Otherwise I'd just like to continue raising my stock as a player as much as I can, I will prolly take a short break after ltpl bc I'm burnt out as fuck w/ how frustrating building is in gen7uu, I been burnt out for like 5 months. Learning gen8uu to a comfortable extent is obviously something I inevitably have to do so that's a goal ig. In terms of irl, probably just be as healthy and active as possible, it's p much just an on-going goal that never ends yet I consistently only somewhat achieve. Get further along the road that is life, be more productive in general, make more friends and get out of the shell that anxiety consistently keeps me in, be less cringe than the ending of this answer was, etc.
Wow, I hope you'll be able to succeed everything ! Even though you get along with a lot of people, who are some of your favorite people in the Smogon Community ?
Honestly I hate all of you, but some of you I hate less than others. Amane Misa has been my best friend for a long time, she's a complete asshole but she's still my homie forever >:). Sage and yeezyknows are two of my oldest friends on this site who I love unconditionally. FUMA HI-FI, pokeisfun, Clefable, and TheCoastsOfToast I consider irl friends moreso than mons friends at this point even tho I haven't met any of them. Pak and his whole circlejerk of scrubs is like a shitty family environment that I enjoy sometimes being a part of, I'm sure all of you know who you are I just don't feel like hl'ing the whole site. CoolStoryBrobat and 'sei. are like my internet big brothers who I'll always be grateful for. Twilight is the internet son I always wanted but I got itsjustdrew instead. The entirety of the POKEMON SAFARI FRIEND ZONERS, last uupl will go down in my heart as one of my favorite online experiences ever, especially when it all started I'm p sure all of us wanted to get the fuck off of that team that was destined to finish last (we didn't). I could hl 70% of this website if I wanted to but I'm keeping it at this, some of my closest friends weren't even mentioned so stfu if you're annoyed I didn't mention you, buncha hooligans. Also s/o everyone from studio room on PS bc you guys welcomed me into your community 200000x faster than bumass UU did. Lookin at you Brandon and st. pablo .. Shoutout MSPL, obviously.
I luv u although you didn't mentionned me.. :[ last but not least, could you share with us one of your favorite UU teams ?
You were on the friends so I technically did, gen 7 or 8 team? or does it matter
That's true <o<.. Whatever you want mate, one that deserves to be shared according to you !
Yeah so I'll give two variations of one team, first one Sacri used week 1 of LTPL and the second I used in semis of LTPL. Sacri basically said he wanted to use sub prim and this is the one he liked the most that pak or I came up with. Starts with Substitute Primarina + pivot to get it in vs favorable opponents like Hydreigon and Latias, I chose Rotom-H as the pivot bc it does the job perfectly while also giving the standard oven ROLE COMPRESSION, hoping to make the building process easier vs other options. Doublade was the next mon I decided on, Doublade + Primarina on paper checks the tier's plethora of offensive fighting types to a good extent, and Doublade + Rotom-H is generally enough to say you have a good Scizor matchup, I also wanted to take note of how much both prim and doub benefit from willowisp oven, crippling things like Krookodile and Bisharp primarily. Next 2 slots were pretty easy, Nidoqueen + Scarf Hydreigon is a very common core and for good reason. Hydreigon is the perfect pivot to get nidoq into good positions to get free rocks or click buttons freely. I really like the utility that Nidoqueen gives as well, being able to actually break bulkier fairies like Florges or Sylveon while also being able to trade with a lot of the tier, especially fighting types... it all makes Doublade's job significantly easier by giving it less food on it's plate so it can potentially get better setup opportunities late game for sweeps. Scarf Hydreigon is pretty self explanatory, Krookodile switch in, speed control, pivot to form a core with oven and to get nidoq in safely, etc etc. Before mentioning the last slot, I went with a pretty offensive z move variant of the oven because it helps the knock Scizor matchup and helps breaking things like Curse Aggron, also it's literally free as there's nowhere else to put the z move. Willowisp on oven works well w/ prim/doub as mentioned before. On the first variant either claw or sword works on doub, 2nd variant 100% go claw. On the 2nd variant of the team also definitely do Toxic or Tbolt on oven > willowisp, willo is definitely a much worse option. Pak convinced me on Crunch as the filler slot for Hydreigon as fire coverage isn't really necessary and bolt beam lati can be kinda scary on the 1st variant since no Toxic on oven. But as for the last mon, on the first variant I went with Defog Empoleon, it works great here because it takes so much pressure off of oven and doub as a bird resist and lati check, it also switches into prima and tenta which is really helpful for the whole team. On the second variant I went with AV Tsareena > Empo in the last slot, can eat a moonblast in dire situations and isn't 2HKOd by Sludge Bomb from Tentacruel, helps Suicune matchup as well which is the main reason for this change honestly. Also gives the team a more offensive feel and flow to it, replacing super solidified defensive counterplay to a plethora of things in Empoleon to a much looser route of checking those things while keeping the offensive pressure up a bit more, it makes Lati matchup worse but it's very doable.
Both teams looks dope, it always super nice to see those kind of teams with specific techniques like Crunch Hydreigon which is definitively smth you didn't see otherwise. Anyway viv, thanks a lot for your time and your detailed answers !
Anytime
Feel free to ask to vivalospride any questions you want !
If you have some recommendations for an interview, feel free to DM me !
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