Approved by ishtar and DugZa (duh).
Inspired partially by the previous iteration of Player of the Week as well as Player Interview.
Art by the awesome Citadark Isle, Ishtar, and me :3.
Interviewee: DugZa
Favorite Pokemon:
Most used SV PU Pokemon:
(Interviewers note: this was interviewed two days ago, before shifts.)
Inspired partially by the previous iteration of Player of the Week as well as Player Interview.
Art by the awesome Citadark Isle, Ishtar, and me :3.
Interviewee: DugZa
Favorite Pokemon:
Most used SV PU Pokemon:
(Interviewers note: this was interviewed two days ago, before shifts.)
Hello Dugza and welcome to this latest episode of Spill the Sinistea! How have you been today?
Hello, I'm doing good; how about you? Just finished my classes for the day so very relaxed (for now!) I'm alright! Today has been nice since I had no work today, so I've been chilling. I also saw the wild robot today, super good movie! (although, the media section will be later in the show!) Speaking of classes and Irl life, would you mind telling a little bit about your life outside of smogon?Sure! I'm originally from Sri Lanka, but I am in Australia now for studies. I study genetics and genomics so basically a lot to do with genes and stuff. Studies and assignments are taking up most of my time these days but when I'm free I like to listen to music, hang out with friends or binge a lot of Korean tv shows!Wow! Interesting stuff! I actually did not know you were from Sri Lanka, so that's really neat! I haven't seen many Korean TV shows honestly, don't watch TV much anymore. Anyways, lets talk a bit of Smogon. What got you into Smogon in the first place and what got you into PU?When I first started PS! I was mainly playing a lot Monotype and met a lot of cool people one of them being Mateeus who basically forced me to signup for the Monotype Spring Seasonal in 2019 so I had to make an account for that and that's how I got into Smogon. As for PU in particular, it was kinda random I suppose. Even after joining Smogon I was almost exclusively playing Monotype for 2-3 years before trying out other tiers and at the start of 2022 I challenged myself to qualify for as many circuit playoffs as I possibly could and eventually qualified for 7 with PU being one of them but PU was the one I had most success with between PULT and circuit finals and my PUWC run that year so I ended up being more involved with PU more than the others. PU community and Shane, in particular, was also very welcoming at the time so things just clicked, so I ended up hanging around more and getting more involved with the tier as time passed.Makes sense, honestly! I find PU very welcoming and fun, and I think it's neat that it was just an out of the blue thing for you to end up playing the tier! You are council now, which is pretty impressive! With tier shifts coming extremely soon, how do you reflect on the metagame of the past 3 months? Anything notable have you seen develop in things such as SCL? Anything that is expected to leave that you will be sad about that will likely shake up the metagame massively with its departure?Yeah, pretty unfortunate that the shifts are gonna mess up the tier a lot. I personally think PU has been the best SV lower tier for the majority of this gen, evident even by the 8+ for competitiveness in the most recent survey which I don't think any other tier has matched all gen. The meta in past three months in particular have been great tbh, we had a major shift earlier in the year but we didn't really have to ban a lot of stuff, the tier was in amazing spot just after a couple of bans. As for SCL meta, this might be an unpopular take but I've felt like I enjoyed the variety in teams much more during PUPL than the teams I've seen in SCL. Could be an effect of Venusaur's presence now which we didn't have during PUPL but personally I thought we got to see a lot more unique looking teams and Pokemon during PUPL as opposed to SCL. We are losing a lot of Pokemon with the shifts, Pauros, Kilo, Bronzong, Glowbro, Toxicroak etc. at the top of my head and most of them are tier staples at this point so it's gonna be interesting to see how things pan out. I think stuff like Venusaur and Florges could potentially be overbearing with these changes so gotta keep an eye out. We are hoping to have a vote next weekend so let's see how things go. Yeah... It really sucks that the metagame that has been extremely stable and healthy is changing and i don't like how many tier stables are going to go, in particular losing Paldean Tauros and Galarian Slowbro really hurts. I haven't kept track of the SCL meta as much, but I did really like PUPL metagame a lot so to say it has been worse than SCL at large is something I agree with. Also, great to know there's a vote going to be happening soon! Great info for the community at large to be aware of! Speaking of voting, how do you decide what your votes will be on council decisions? How much of your consideration is based on how the community at large feels about a potential problem vs your own opinions?I do give a lot of weight to community opinion. I like to read the metagame discussion thread and the discord server every once in a while, especially before votes just to get an idea about what the majority of the community think fo a particular pokemon. Obviously I have my personal preferences and opinions but if there's an overwhelming majority for something, then it's worth heeding, to an extent at least, even if you personally disagree with it. Voting to ban Pauros-Fighting last year was one example of this, I didn't really think it was banworthy but the overwhelming support from the community was too significant to ignore imo. Makes sense! As a council member, it is important to acknowledge community opinion! Keeps a good reputation with the community at large which I and im sure many others respect immensely. Anyways, Its time to spill the Sinistea! You have managed so many tournaments recently, so you’ve have had your fair bit of different experiences and lessons that have shaped up your managing skills up to this SCL. What’s something you’ve changed your mind on regarding drafting/managing and what’s a “rule” or philosophy you have about it that you feel people don’t often mention? Hmm good question. The most important thing for me would be plan adaptability; not to be deadset on any particular player and to have your options open and not to bid on players for the sake of up bidding coz sometimes you end up with players you really would not like to team with because of a failed upbid. Something else I usually like to do in most tours I manage is to be involved with prep in every slot, to a certain extent at least. Obviously, it's impossible to know every tier in depth and provide great support in every tour I manage but I like to stay in the loop and know what's going on, give suggestions where possible and in general just be involved to some degree. I've managed most tours I have with Floss so we usually also prefer to handle the scouts ourselves early in the week, something I think all managers should be doing tbh but yeah all in all those are probably the main ones I try to stick to in most tours. Interesting! I've managed a few tours myself, and I will definitely take this advice for my next time managing! I do agree with you that it's important for managers to help prep in every slot even if you aren't that versed in the tier; I find it helps boost morale and makes the team at large much more active in prep. Anyways, its media time! You talked a bit before about how you watch a lot of Korean TV shows and listen to quite a bit of music! What's some of your favorite TV shows, Music Albums, books, movies, etc? Could be something you recently found yourself really interested in or could be something you have loved for a long time!Ah favorite TV shows are hard, as I've probably watched close to 70+! So it's hard but if I really had to pick then Under the Queen's Umbrella and Vincenzo are probably my favorites but Squid Game season 2 is coming out later this year so very excited for that!! As for music I listen to Alan Walker and Coldplay stuff a lot but no strong preferences really, I'll just listen to random mixes on sometimes as long as they sound good; I honestly don't know most music albums by name lol. Lol, fair enough to not know the names of music albums! On music, Coldplay is a good choice, my old username on Smogon itsallyellow is actually a coldplay reference believe it or not! And on tv shows, I have never heard of under the Queens umbrella or Vincenzo unfortunately but i did watch a bit of Squid Game and found it interesting and fun, so I'll probably watch season 2 when it comes out! Anyways, back to Pokemon. You've been all around Smogon, and you have found yourself playing a wide variety of metagames and tiers. What is your favorite tier to play from your time on Smogon, and do you have a team from that tier you would like to care and show off! (Can be a PU team or otherwise!) Ahh that's a very hard one. I'd probably have to go with SM Monotype, that was the first tier I started playing and the first tier I had success in winning the circuit and easily the best Monotype generation ever so it will always have a special place for me. However, I'll link a PU team instead since it's more relevant here; this is probably my favorite PU team ever even though it's from a much older SV meta, made this for kythr to use in Grand Slam last year and I just really like how it turned out. Unfortunate that the meta doesn't exist anymore! I've never played Monotype, but its nice that you found your favorite tier ever to be the one you played first! And this PU team is so funny to look back into now, that era of stuff like Carbink / Alola Persian / Leafeon / etc all being super viable and good was one of my favorite times ever in PU, and i miss it alot tbh. Now, heres a silly question that someone told me to ask you: Since you are a mod on PU forums, how has it been working with asa and ishtar as your fellow mods and managing the PU forum from that side of things and them both being your tier leaders? Could you say one nice thing about them both? ishtar is lazy as shit and asa is carrying her tbh.........In all seriousness, though, they've both been really fun to work with, and I think we complement each other well and are usually on the same wavelength about most things so it's really easy to keep things going smoothly. asa is nice, fuck ishtarLMFAOOOOOOOOOOOO. But seriously, I do think ishta and asa are great and i like them alot and consider them my friends! Thank you so much for spending time to do this interview, and before we finish off and do shoutouts, is there any potential pu projects and/or developments the community can look out for in the coming weeks / months? PUWC should be starting in (very) soon actually and we are hoping to have PUBD for the second time as well a few months after that since it had a lot of positive reception the first time, those are probably the most important things we have planned for now! woahhhh very interesting stuff! Can't wait for PUWC! (hopefully, this time the best west coast will win it all hehe) Anyways, thank you so much for spending the time to answer questions! Is there any shoutouts you would like to do before we close this out? I've met a lot of cool ppl over the years, I'm def gonna forget someone but wanna shout-out some ppl I've rly gotten close to over the years and enjoy talking to a lot including some ppl that I don't get to interact with as much as I would like to anymore: Floss, Kev, Attribute, ishtar, asa, GXE, Dj Breloominati♬, etern, kythr, Mateeus and ppl from Nexus, rhyps and other places I'm probably forgetting. I love the PU community as well looking forward to seeing it grow more and more. Lastly, go Spartans and shout-out to all of them for making SCL a rly fun experience so far!!Any questions left unanswered from DugZa? Well ask him here so we can continue to Spill the Sinistea!
