Approved by 5gen & S1nn0hC0nfirm3d | Amazing Art by Albatr0ss and butchered by me. Thread formatting stolen from Jett
(Interview Date: 20th of October, 2021)
Hey friends and welcome to ZU
Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Swoobat!
*swooooo*
Hey yovan, how are you today?
Hey Czim! I'm fine, all goes right irl and ivl. School is cool and a new smash bros character appeared yesterday so I'm happy today! And you, what about yourself?
I'm fine too, thanks for asking! Glad to have you here on Player of the Week! To start, do you wanna tell us a bit about yourself outside of Smogon/PS?
Thanks to you, I was not expecting to be in player of the week. So I'm Yovan, I'm 19 and I'm french. I started to study law but I stopped because of covid and a lack of interest. I like to play football with friends and try hard super smash bros ultimate, and I also cook a lot. I also watch some korean series on netflix now. Some normal things but my life suits me!
So you mentioned Smash twice now already with the new character and that you're tryharding on it. Do you play in tournaments or stuff like that? If not, are you planning to in the future?
I'm trying, I started to participate in some weeklies, and in some monthlys when signups don't end 30mins after they opened, and I want to perform a day, why not. Like Pokemon, Smash Bros has a huge and cool community and it's interesting to talk and play irl with some other fans of the saga. I planned to start the competitive mood in march 2020, and my first tournament was canceled because of the starting of french quarantine. I waited for the end of confinement and now i will participate at all i can!
That's interesting to hear! Hope you perform well in them! Just to follow up on this, do you like/play any other games?
I'm playing chess and Pokemon Unite for fun when i'm not playing Smash Bros or Showdown, Pokemon unite to play with my friends and Chess to learn some tactics.
Great choices of games! You said you dropped out of law, is there any other career/path thats sparking your interest at the moment?
Yes, i am studying in sales, and i'm also searching for a real work and finding a flat. I don't know where I will be in 1 year but i'm working a lot to succeed in my new school curriculum.
Hope it all works out for you then! You also mentioned you like to cook. What're your favorites meals to cook and eat? Any favorite cuisine?
Thanks a lot! I have a hobby to cook a lot for me and my dad, I like to prepare my own burgers and cakes, but my favorite cuisine is indian/oriental food. I could eat chicken with curry every day! Salty, with some sugar, i love every meal with curry! Its the meal I prefer by far.
Nice! I also love asian food and anything with curry! Now let's get more into PS/Smogon. When and how did you get started on it? How did you end up in ZU?
So i discovered showdown when i was 12 years old. I was at school and two friends talked about a Pokemon fighting generator. They showed me Pokemon Showdown, and I created an account (Yovan) to play with them. i liked the idea of building anything you want and easily. I discovered smogon and the competitive face of showdown with a french strategical Youtuber who gave me the desire to build and play pokemon strategically, I started this way when I was in high school. I was playing SM Overused only, I was a SM OU main, but i started to be tired by playing the same tier everytime. I wanted to build some original and fun teams in a low tier like SM NU and SM RU, but i was to bad at building. But a day, at high school, i was waiting for a mathematics exam and i was scaried a lot about this exam. I was just trying to put my mind somewhere else so I opened Smogon in my phone to see my pairings for a ssnl, and i saw signups for some tiers i didn't play at the time were open, and I discovered the SM Zeroused at this moment. I posted "in" in the SM ZU ssnl thread, then I watched the list of zu Pokémon and I wanted to build a sun offense and a hail offense, since I always build around weathers when I discover a new tier. I built the worst teams i have ever built in my life and i had no chance to win with that, but i won anyway! My bo3 was so fun that I wanted to build more in smzu for the next rounds, and always around some new Pokemón to really understand the tier. Here is my zu beginning and here is my first zu team!
Lol, that looks very unviable. But we all started somewhere right? Considering we already are on this topic, you're widely known for being good at counterteaming people with unraked mons or very off meta picks. How's your thought process for those builds? How do you end with those very unorthodox teams?
I like ZU because I think every pokemon in ZU and below ZU is usable. Using a SU pokemon in a zu team is like use a UU pokemon in a OU team, and every unranked mon or unviable mon can become viable in a team with a great coverage. I also like ZU because its really funny to scout your opponent and find the Pokémon, the weird set or even just a type that threaten them. Some ZU players are also building around the VR and do not care about unused Pokémon, and sometimes I want to surprise my opponents with a set that checks them. In SM ZU I used a lot of NFE mons like marshtomp and others rest/talk users, but now in SS ZU I want to create my own sets to be sure to surprise my opponent, like block rest trevenant instead of the offensive set or block malamar. I also think a huge part of zu pokemons can be used as banded or specs'd. I often start my building with an offensive pokemon, even if it is unviable. For me, "unviable" is just a word to describe a pokemon that a beginner should not use because of a difficulty of building right with. That is why I build around every Pokémon, to try and prove they are not that unviable if I manage to win with them, and give some ideas to others players I think. Thanks for saying i'm good, but in my opinion the thing that does the difference and make my builds unorthodox is that I don't try to check everything, and no problem if i'm 6-0 by a S rank pokemon if I am sure my opponent will not use it. Sometimes that work, sometimes not but it's the goal of counterteaming, to find the best way to beat someone, even if thats look unviable at first glance.
That's a very good answer and ye it shows that this strategy has its negatives too. But you just can't beat everything even with standard builds. Finally, the most important question. Why 33321?
If i don't count myself, only one other person knows why I'm yovan33321, and it's a friend irl. I'm using my joker haha, I can answer every question but not this one, maybe it's a state secret, maybe it's not that hype but nobody will ever know. I only can say I got this alt because I lost the password of my account "Yovan" and I can't prove its me to ask for a new password. Sorry !
Fine, it will remain one of life's greatest mysteries then lol. It still bothers me it is 33321 over 333221 though. Back into the current SS ZU metagame. What're your thoughts on it? Anything you'd want to ban/unban?
The recent metagame is great. ZUPL helped to accurate the metagame with some new sets, and I think Audino rising is the best thing that could happen to SS ZU, With that, maybe we will see more offensive teams, because a lot of mons were walled/annoyed by audino. In my opinion we are coming in the best ZU metagame of the generation. The only pokemon I would ban is Rotom, S tier only walled by spdef krokorok, the sub set is a threat for the entire tier. otherwise i don't think about any unban from PU. all is good at this moment !
Interesting take, people definitely have mixed opinions on Rotom! You did forget Spdef Shiftry though lol. Now on a less serious question, if you could have a superpower, what would it be and why would you pick it?
I know I watch too much My hero Academia but when I saw this stress power in the new season, i was like "if I was in that world I could be this guy". It's a power that converts your stress into power and strength, and i'm a stress master, I get stressed for all and nothing.
Lol, at least you put stress into good use. Do you have a team you'd like to share with us?
(Fighting)
is the build that I am the most proud: I built this for the third week of ZUPL I, to face S1nn0hC0nfirm3d and its the best counterteam I have ever built. Some of my teammates wanted to use a build more viable but i trusted in my protect pyukumuku, double scarf and others weird sets. I have finally beaten Ho3n after a game where every pokemons had the utility i wanted. https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7zu-967034234I don't have any sszu build to share at the moment because audino rose and I deleted a lot of my builds lol
Oh, I remember that. I was one of the teammates actually! That was a pretty nasty counterteam! We're starting to wrap this up so, is there anyone you wanna shout out? Anything else you wanna say?
For the finish, I want to shout out every opponent I had who made me build something unorthodox, it's cool te be known as a good builder. I will also s/o Apagogie and S1nn0hC0nfirm3d for the three cool ZUPL editions even if we did not make playoffs with Ho3n's team, sadly. Anything i wanna say? Build what you want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and have fun !
Having fun should be the end goal for everyone in here after all, so it's nice you said that! Thanks for letting me interview you, was a fun one.
Thanks to you czim, that was a good surprise and a cool experience !
Feel free to ask to yovan33321 any questions you want!
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