credit to rozes for the artwork
Hello, and welcome to USUM UU's Player of the Week, where I interview
some of Smogon's most accomplished and well known players in the tier to give
some insight on who they are and their views on certain aspects of the metagame.
If there's someone you want to see interviewed, shoot me a PM!
Pak
Favourite Pokemon: Hydreigon
Most Used Pokemon: Nidoqueen
Most Known For: Being Drake's bitch
Hi Pakmasta! Tell me a little about yourself.
I'm currently a freshman in college planning to study exercise science. In my spare time i like to watch sports, specifically nba basketball, hang out with friends, work out, and ofc play mons
I'm glad you're fond of exercise but yet for some reason your chest is still far smaller than Dundies's, any comment?
low blow..
Speaking of work outs i've received super top ultra secret reports that you cannot function at a gym without PRE, confirm or deny?
Fight me i've been clean for a month
I'm not about to fight someone on performance boosters. Well anyway you're famous for your love for ORAS, is there any reason why you're so passionate about that metagame?
It's by far the metagame I've played, built for, and explored the most so it's pretty natural I'm drawn to it even though it doesn't have the best reputation. While I agree it isn't the best, I do think it's not well-liked for the wrong reasons and that people just kind of stick to their comfort zone and the same ideas over and over at times
What are some of your favourite things that you've discovered while exploring?
well, the obvious answer would be my love for mandiqueen but lately i've been playing around with some different slowking sets (dragon tail, toxic, colbur psychic for broken conk, etc) and just been playing around with some random shit like cofagrigus and misdreavus
What does your ideal oras meta consist of?
To be honest I haven't really considered potential drops much but the pokemon i would ban in a heartbeat are hydreigon, conkeldurr, and entei. The strain they place on balance and teams in general is just absolutely ridiculous and I don't see what positives they add to the tier, outside of hydreigon providing a good offensive check to stuff like crawdaunt, krook, etc
Interesting, lets talk about tours for a little bit. You recently played in the first edition of snake draft which was your first big team tour. What was that experience like?
to be frank i really disliked the tier at the time of the tour with broken dudes like weavile/garde and jirachi for phase one and I was really just disappointed with my performance as a whole. My team was a great and helpful group of guys and I'm disappointed I couldn't have done more to help but for whatever reason my motivation to prepare just wasnt there and it's no one's fault but my own. Not my best tournament obviously but a valuable experience
Is there anything you're looking to change if you get drafted for SPL?
I would 100% put more effort into prep. Official team tournaments are no joke and you can't be slacking like I was in snake for the latter half.
Origin story time!
one day my older brother was watching blame truth out loud in our living room in early 2014 when he started playing competitive mons. I looked over and the first thing I thought was like "why the hell do they switch every turn?" I had always been big into the cartridge games but never knew there was a real competitive scene outside of vgc, which I had no plans of pursuing. I went on ps and immediately started laddering xy ou purely because i thought greninja looked cool as shit. I kinda hopped around all of xy, never really focusing on anything until victini got banned in uu. That was about the time i settled down and started frequenting the uu room and eventually won the prestigious uust, getting me voice. Bit by bit i started to get a grasp for the game and got roommod and thought i had officially made it. blah blah found forums and realized there was much more to the game and eventually got to where i am today
What is UUST?
basically every non ranked user could join weekly live tours to qualify for a big one at the end the month. the winner of the big one got voice. winners were gully, shiba, and me i think. then they killed it off because it was an awful idea.
Do you think you could explain the meme behind this?
oh no
euphonos started saying pak ganern 40 times a day in uu chat. something something i got mad and we played for majors and this happened https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/uu-452538174
And I imagine it's become one of your favourite phrases.
Naturally
I've heard that you are a Yu-gi-oh fan, so could you give me a brief history about THELONIOUS VIPER?
The greatest? because i've heard it was when two tall dudes just burst their shirts to reveal they have more muscle than anything else on their body and started duking it out in a lengthy fist fight It had nothing to do with yugioh at all.
Accurate.
Lets get back to current stuff. What are your thoughts on the meta currently and are you happy with the direction that the council has been taking with the bans / unbans? Would you like to see something freed or banned?
I would say the meta is definitely heading in the right direction at this point in time, thankfully because kommo-o's z move and scolipede got the axe. For now, there's not much that sticks out to me so I'd let things settle a bit and then go from there
What underrated Pokemon would you like to see get more of a spotlight?
nihilego still seems a bit unexplored. It's been around for a while and the main sets floating around have always been specs, scarf, rocks but it's movepool is fairly deep and it's so unique that I feel like we might be missing something here
Who do you fuckin love in Smogon?
miltankmilk, Shiba, DrReuniclus, Pearl, Thisbemyalt, HT, Wanka, Donphantastic, YABO, Ark, Amaroq, Eyan, Hikari, BOUFF, Sacri', Accelgor, Killintime, TSR, rozes, Cynde, Always, Snowy, anto, Sabella, Posho, Kaori, ez, Kingler12345, Hogg, Aquadext, dodmen, Feliburn, col49, TDK
Could you please share one of your favourite teams?
http://pokepast.es/b77dd4cffe76fb48
This was a pretty standardish balance centered around calm mind reuniclus that I put together for my game against Pearl for uu championship r1. First mon I added was cm florges since it could cover broken conk, cover blastoise as well as possible without a blissey, and act as a secondary win con if need be. Offensive rocks mega pert gave me a nice physical breaker alongside the cm core, reliable rocks setter, and good overall check to the steels like doublade and metagross that gave my dudes trouble. I didn't have a direct way to pressure fairies or waters yet so roserade seemed like the perfect pick and this rose is just an absolute beast (please stop using spikes). Scarf Hydreigon added some speed control and a way to get roserade and swampert into favorable positions while having some nice defensive synergy with the rest of the squad. Doublade provided an additional check to mons like cobalion and toxicroak that I was a bit worried about and a way of handling opposing bulky psychics without getting into a cm war. Overall solid team and I like how it turned out but entei is broken as shit so watch out for him.
Lastly, why are you such a fucking beta?
oras conk will always be the alpha unfortunately.
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Thanks for taking the time to do the interview Pak!
If you have any questions for him, feel free to leave them below
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