Rating Basics

Hi Asek,

Your rates are good and you clearly explain the problems a team might have and how someone might change their team to deal with them. One thing I do see is the pros and cons of the changes you suggest. In your 4th rate, you recommend a Sub Punching Breloom over his Choice Banded set, and you go on to explain that Sub Punch Breloom is a much better late game sweeper. Choice Band Breloom gives his team valuable priority, which is especially helpful when he stacks hazards with Deoxys-D. As the OP mentioned he is weak to scarfers, I don't think changing Breloom to a set without priority would be preferred, as it does seem to be his main answer to a lot of Scarfers. I think a better change would be changing the Dugtrio set to Focus Sash, as two Choice Band mons on one team does seem a little redundant, not to mention Breloom's priority is more powerful than Dugtrio's, and Dugtrio can make a good use of a Focus Sash with Rapid Spin Support from Starmie,

Your layout is very good, however I do think you could separate your paragraphs when talking about different changes of a team. It makes it a lot easier to read, without being too cramped. One thing I would suggest is to weigh the pros and cons of each suggestion, and if a change opens up more problems than before, then the change isn't worth it.

Good luck, hope I helped!
 
Trinitrotoluene - Your first rate was good, but when you point out "so you can score the OHKO on several notable physical walls, such as Gliscor and Skarmory", that's not always true. When Gliscor is at full health, +2 Rock Gem Stone Edge has a 31.25 % chance of landing a OHKO. Saying "you can always score a OHKO on Gliscor after Stealth Rock" would be more precise. For Skarmory, +2 Rock Gem Stone Edge deals 83.83% - 98.8%, which is a 2HKO, not a OHKO, making your statement of "being able to OHKO Skarmory" invalid. Making false statement is something you should try avoiding as much as possible! Anyways, that's just a minor point, the rest of the rate was good.

For your second rate, the Shed Shell recommendation was good. I find that his team was rather weak to Dragons in general, so a change I would have recommended is Hidden Power Ice over Hidden Power Fire on Venusaur, in order to revenge-kill opponents like Salamence and Dragonite, who are pretty much walling his Venusaur otherwise. Hidden Power Fire isn't really necessary, seeing as Steels aren't usually problems for Sun teams. Steels are dealt with by Ninetales, Heatran, Terrakion and Virizion. If he goes with Hidden Power Ice, Sleep Powder would be better than Sludge Bomb, allowing Venusaur to set up on an opponent asleep. Sludge Bomb is an awful move anyways.

Now, onto rate número tres. Well, since he mentioned in his OP that he only wanted Choice users, Life Orb Mamoswine isn't really a good fit. "good rates are ones that help people beat threats without compromising the team's purpose. In my opinion, even better rates are ones that improve the execution of the team's purpose without compromising its ability to deal with threats." - Stathakis
If a team is based around Choice users, then you should rate it in function of its purpose, which is to use Choice users, and not provide something like Life Orb Mamoswine as a solution. He pointed out in his OP that Jolteon was a problem, so a Choice Scarf Mamoswine would have done the job, allowing it to outspeed and OHKO Jolteon with Earthquake.

For your 4th rate, you did a good job helping his team deal with SubSD Gliscor. Hydreigon wants Focus Blast over Earth Power, in order to help deal with Ferrothorn in Rain (Rain is common and he doesn't utilize weather), as well as being a better and stronger coverage move than Earth Power. His team can already deal with Heatran well (Breloom, Lanturn, Gliscor). I don't have much else to add to this rate.

I find that you are a promising team rater, getting better every day. Your layout is also pretty good, and I can see you put a lot of efforts into your rates. Keep up your good work, Trinitrotoluene!
 
Expert Physics said:
Trinitrotoluene - Your first rate was good, but when you point out "so you can score the OHKO on several notable physical walls, such as Gliscor and Skarmory", that's not always true. When Gliscor is at full health, +2 Rock Gem Stone Edge has a 31.25 % chance of landing a OHKO. Saying "you can always score a OHKO on Gliscor after Stealth Rock" would be more precise. For Skarmory, +2 Rock Gem Stone Edge deals 83.83% - 98.8%, which is a 2HKO, not a OHKO, making your statement of "being able to OHKO Skarmory" invalid. Making false statement is something you should try avoiding as much as possible! Anyways, that's just a minor point, the rest of the rate was good.

For your second rate, the Shed Shell recommendation was good. I find that his team was rather weak to Dragons in general, so a change I would have recommended is Hidden Power Ice over Hidden Power Fire on Venusaur, in order to revenge-kill opponents like Salamence and Dragonite, who are pretty much walling his Venusaur otherwise. Hidden Power Fire isn't really necessary, seeing as Steels aren't usually problems for Sun teams. Steels are dealt with by Ninetales, Heatran, Terrakion and Virizion. If he goes with Hidden Power Ice, Sleep Powder would be better than Sludge Bomb, allowing Venusaur to set up on an opponent asleep. Sludge Bomb is an awful move anyways.

Now, onto rate número tres. Well, since he mentioned in his OP that he only wanted Choice users, Life Orb Mamoswine isn't really a good fit. "good rates are ones that help people beat threats without compromising the team's purpose. In my opinion, even better rates are ones that improve the execution of the team's purpose without compromising its ability to deal with threats." - Stathakis
If a team is based around Choice users, then you should rate it in function of its purpose, which is to use Choice users, and not provide something like Life Orb Mamoswine as a solution. He pointed out in hits OP that Jolteon was a problem, so a Choice Scarf Mamoswine would have done the job, allowing it to outspeed and OHKO Jolteon with Earthquake.

For your 4th rate, you did a good job helping his team deal with SubSD Gliscor. Hydreigon wants Focus Blast over Earth Power, in order to help deal with Ferrothorn in Rain (Rain is common and he doesn't utilize weather), as well as being a better and stronger coverage move than Earth Power. His team can already deal with Heatran well (Breloom, Lanturn, Gliscor). I don't have much else to add to this rate.

I find that you are a promising team rater, getting better every day. Your layout is also pretty good, and I can see you put a lot of efforts into your rates. Keep up your good work, Trinitrotoluene!
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Thanks for the evaluation Kira! I appreciate all of the critique. Regarding my first rate, I forgot to run damage calcs, and I was assuming that SR was on the field already. Other than that, you're right about everything else.
 
Delko and I have been talking, and we've realized a lot of people aren't adhering to some essential rating skills -- this ranges from normal users to even some of our newer badged members. When rating, you're trying to make the subject's team as good as possible while changing as little as possible. You don't want to be changing 3 Pokemon to make the team viable in your eyes; rather, you need to make the best out of what is there while keeping changes to a minimum. The best rates are often the ones that changed the least, and I can attest to this from old experiences: Delko once changed one move and an EV spread for one of my old teams, turning it into a leader boarding team, when it was originally just average. Making too many unnecessary changes often deters the team from its original purpose, and is just a bad practice in general. The other things we want to make clear are when rating, you're not trying to cover the relevant threats. What you're trying to do is make the team perform at its optimal level; this is where your fixes come into play. Try and adhere to the team's goals instead of mindlessly posting a "Choice Scarf Terrakion covers your Volcarona weakness, so use it!" This is the kind of rate that, while it can help occasionally, will often be detrimental because it leaves more holes open. You all need to be aware of what you're actually doing to the team -- I suggest you make a suggestion that makes the team more efficient, and then take a step back to see if you left stuff uncovered. Most of the time, by doing just this, you can eliminate many potential threats. This is evidently a growing problem from a lot of the rates I read, though admittedly, not all of you are culprits. We'd still like you all to bear this in mind, as it will make the community as a whole a better group of raters.

To everyone posting in this thread, keep up your work! It's good to see many aspiring raters posting, and consistently working to become better raters. I think this goes hand-in-hand with playing as well -- rating certainly helped me in this department as well. Be sure you are confident with your suggestions, and emphasize what the person will lose and gain as a result of the change. I hope you'll take these suggestions into account; they basically date back to even the DPP era, where this still held true. However, we're in BW(2) now, and with all the new threats, this holds true more than ever. Thank you all for your time.

EDIT: Explained this in more detail over here; check it out.
 
Morpheus said:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3470090#12

First rate, i'm not really good in english, sorry.
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Hi Morpheus, while the changes suggested on your rate were good and most of them helped the team to handle threats, the problem of your rate is what Harsha explains on the post above yours. When you rate a team, you must explain why you suggest some change, how the change improves the team and in general, making the user that post the RMT realizing how the changes make the performance of the team better or how he could play the team to get the best of it.

I understand that if your English-speaking level is low, you will have more troubles to make long posts and explain stuff, but you could think about this like a way to improve your English too! I can tell you that I have improved my English quite a lot since I joined Smogon.
 
Hey, I know there is a first rate posted above mine already, but, I thought I would post my first as well. Sorry if this happens to intrude..

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3470129#4

First Paragraph: Intro type thing.
Second and third: Change of item and Move
Fourth: A special build (since the team is physically offensive everywhere
Fifth: Suggesting a bulkier spread, or just a change of move
Sixth: Changing a whole entire lead to enable the team to have more potential to take out foes x:
Seventh: Describing threats, how the team with changes can handle them, and suggesting an item (the original is Shell Bell)
Final: A spoiler with the three movesets (Lanturn is the most optional)

All in all, I tried to change one Pokemon. Two Moves/Items. One, and a possible second, set. Toomuch.

Reading through this thread, I can see right off the bat my first mistake: Don't try to change too much! But, eh, I tried ;-;
 
Audiosurfer said:
Here's my first rate ever: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3470177 Any critique would be appreciated.
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Hi Audiosurfer,

While I'm not too familiar with the lower tiers, I'll do my best to help you. In your rate you clearly suggest good changes for the user's team, however you don't fully explain the changes you have made, and what they do for a user's team. While changing Golurk's ability from No Guard to Iron Fist, you could explain what the pros and cons of using Iron Fist over No Guard are. It does turn some of Golurk's 2HKOs into OHKOs, but at the same time it does risk the shaky accuracy of Stone Edge. Balancing out the pros and cons of a change is the easiest way to tell whether the change is worth it. If using x over y covers a lot of weaknesses, while being slightly weaker to something else then the change is probably worth it. Mentioning the pros and cons of a change easily informs the OP about a potential change, and fully explaining why you think x is better than y will convince the user to make said change.

When rating a team, you should also consider the counter effect of suggesting a change to someone's team. For example when you suggest a Spikes set for Cacturne, the Spikes support greatly helps Golurk like you said. The Spikes support also grant easier KOs for Golurk, meaning that maybe Iron Fist might not be neccesary on Golurk, as Stone Edge has unreliable accuracy. Maybe Golurk should run Earthquake over Stone Edge to compensate for the lack of No Guard? Maybe Golurk should keep No Guard and keep the current moveset? Maybe the user should use a different Spikes user with better synergy than Cacturne? These are all changes that you should consider as an aspiring rater, as every change in a team can interrupt synergy, and weaknesses to individual threats.

Your format is very good, one thing I would recommend is to separate your changes into individual paragraphs, as it makes it a lot easier to read. Also highlighting your changes in Bold helps the OP to see what the changes are easily, as it stands out and immediately conveys the point you are trying to get across. Of course this is all personal preference, but I feel it makes it easier to navigate for the creator of the team, as one will not want to read lines of text.

Good luck rating!
 
Not sure if its only official TR's that can give feedback but I'll give it a shot.

@Cherub Agent: Both of your rates were really good , but the second rate had a lot of changes to it, so it may not have been worth the rate (no offense to the creator).

The 2 different layouts were good, but if you decide to stick with Rate 1's style I suggest Bolding/ Coloring the changes to make it easier for the viewer to spot out the changes straight away if they can't be bothered reading the whole rate. Alternatively a TL;DR section at the bottom can do the same thing. The suggestions you gave were spot on really. You gave solid reasons for the changes you suggested and pointed out why it was a better choice than what he was running. The Donphan suggestion was great, in the way you recognized he didn't want to change it, but you explained how there was a better fit for it. Linking back to another raters suggestion in this case was very good to help get the point across more that Donphan was exchangeable.

For Rate 2, the format was very good, but it took up a lot of space. Thats why you may want to consider putting all of your sets at the bottom of the rate in
tags. This makes the rate more compact but this is just preference really. As with rate 1 you explained why the changes were beneficial in great detail, and your logic is spot on in what you changed and how this would help his team achieve its goal

While these changes were all good, the amount of changes made was a bit too much as I said at the start. Changing a set entirely as well as replacing 2 mon's is a lot of changes, and if that much needs to be changed it may not be worth rating. Sometimes people will try sneak in a link to Battling 101 to people that are relatively new, but this is all up to choice as you may not want to offend in any way. Just remember if too many changes need to be made, its probably not worth rating.

Probably did a crappy job, but an official TR hadn't answered so this is just my 2 cents
 
Hey guys I have been rating teams quite frequently recently and I feel like I have improved alot. With the release of pokemon showdown I havnt rated OU team for a couple of weeks because I havnt been as active on smogon. However I have taken in advice that people have given me and I read up on Harshas "How to Rate" thread. Please tell me if there is anything wrong with this rate and I look foreward to rating more teams! http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4344678#post4344678
 
Superpowerdude said:
Hey guys I have been rating teams quite frequently recently and I feel like I have improved alot. With the release of pokemon showdown I havnt rated OU team for a couple of weeks because I havnt been as active on smogon. However I have taken in advice that people have given me and I read up on Harshas "How to Rate" thread. Please tell me if there is anything wrong with this rate and I look foreward to rating more teams! http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4344678#post4344678
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Hey,

While you did well recognizing Dragonite as a threat for his team, your changes weren't exactly what he needed to deal with Dragonite. The suggestion of using Hidden Power Ice on Heatran was good, but after that, you suggest using an Adamant Nature on Heracross - which makes him weaker to Dragonite because it fails to outspeed Jolly Dragonite and Haxorus (Haxorus is a big threat to his team too, even if he didn't mentioned it)

On the format, it would look much more cleaner if you didn't use abbreviations for everything, especially considering that some people may not know what some of those abbreviations mean, so it can be confusing for them. (Of course, it is acceptable for some things, like the stats (Atk, Def, HP, etc is fine)
 
Hi everyone! I haven't really rated much in the past, but recently I've gotten some encouragement from a friend and have been rating more and more.

Here is a link to a thread that I rated; it was upon request. Can someone tell me how it is?
The RMT thread

Thanks in advance!
 
Electrolyte - Recommending Ice Beam over Slack Off isn't a really good suggestion in my opinion, as Slowbro loses the ability to stall out the opponent, and it already loses 6.25% of its health each turn due to Sandstorm, so Slack Off is really a move it wants to keep. You say that it needs Ice Beam to beat Gliscor, but STAB Scald already accomplishes that. By suggesting Jolteon, his team becomes really weak to Celebi, who can beat Ferrothorn and Scizor with HP Fire, while beating Tyranitar, Jolteon, Slowbro and Sandslash with Leaf Storm. I think a 3 Attacks + Recover Latios would have been promising in Salamence's spot. Just my two cents. I hope you keep rating -- you're definitely improving. Keep up your good work.
 
Echoing what Expert Physics said, scald already does a minimum of 61% on standard Gliscor, making impossible for it to stall out Slowbro (sub\protect\toxic variants are still annoying but ice beam really helps only if it's Gliscor switching into Slowbro, which isn't usually the case).

Also, by suggesting Jolteon you not only make his team weak to Celebi, but you aslo remove his only ground immunity while adding another weakness to that type. Basically if his opponent has something like LO Landorus he gets a guaranteed kill each time Lando switches in. Not that Salamence is a counter to Landorus, but you get the point, you should probably suggest a faster ground immunity (Rotom-w?). I'd honestly be actually more worried about how his team deals with opposing weather, NP or LO Thundurus-t can literally massacre his team if sandstream isn't in play.

Your rate is detailed and thoughtful, but you need to work more on the content. Hope this helps.
 
Last time I got a little ignored. But, that's okay. I really want to get into team rating; I love seeing new teams and strategies, and telling people how good they are/ what they can improve on to better themselves.

Here is an example rate of what I just did. I dont like my format very much; it looks sloppy at best.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4354819#post4354819

Any help would be nice.

Edit: I can't spell Azumarill c:
 
Shovel said:
Last time I got a little ignored. But, that's okay. I really want to get into team rating; I love seeing new teams and strategies, and telling people how good they are/ what they can improve on to better themselves.

Here is an example rate of what I just did. I dont like my format very much; it looks sloppy at best.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4354819#post4354819

Any help would be nice.

Edit: I can't spell Azumarill c:
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Your rate was decent and seems well thought, but I thinkthe suggestion of changing Crobat was wrong. While his Crobat set was really bad (Nasty Plot wtf) and he should definitely be using Choice Band or Standard Crobat (using that is what you should have suggested), without Crobat he's team is extremely weak to Heracross, Mienshao and especially, to Scrafty.

While you're right on the Chandelure weakness (good catch) the best way to fix it without changing the team much would be suggesting changing Porygon2's ability to Trace.You did a good job suggesting using a Special Attacking Nidoking instead of the set he had, though.

Regarding the format, I think it's decent, but you should probably drop the ''synergy'' thing since it isn't important (you are covering threats, not simply types)
 
DestinyUnknown said:
Your rate was decent and seems well thought, but I think the suggestion of changing Crobat was wrong. While his Crobat set was really bad (Nasty Plot wtf) and he should definitely be using Choice Band or Standard Crobat (using that is what you should have suggested), without Crobat he's team is extremely weak to Heracross, Mienshao and especially, to Scrafty.

While you're right on the Chandelure weakness (good catch) the best way to fix it without changing the team much would be suggesting changing Porygon2's ability to Trace.You did a good job suggesting using a Special Attacking Nidoking instead of the set he had, though.

Regarding the format, I think it's decent, but you should probably drop the ''synergy'' thing since it isn't important (you are covering threats, not simply types)
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Thank you so much <3

I just realized how bad of a Herracross weakness there was. I'll edit my post suggesting a banded one, regarding the Crobat. It seems much more effective.

Trace never came to mind either, lolwtf. That's actually the best change. (Obviously I will edit these in to further help him, while still maintaining my content).

The synergy was to show how the new team compared in balance. Ill just put it in a spoiler and drop it in future rates.
 
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