Hello frens and welcome back to "ZU Player of the Week"!. I am Jett and I will be your host for this edition of the project. This project will feature interviews from some of the most prominent personalities in ZU so that we can discover more about their Pokémon and personal lives. I am grateful that I will have the chance to interview so many amazing ZU players and I hope that you enjoy these as much as I do. For this week, I was fortunate enough to interview one of our Spring Seasonal Finalists...
daniYSB!!
Favorite Pokemon:
(ZU Voice, ZU Spring Seaonal Runner Up, Quagsire enthusiast, poliwrathlover69)
Ditto used Transform!
Ditto transformed into Quagsire!
*quaaag*
Our second quagsire so far :o
Hey daniYSB, how are you doing?
I’m doing great how bout yourself
I'm also doing pretty good myself tho, just been spending a lot of time chilling about these days.
To get this interview going, do you mind telling us a bit about yourself?
My name is dani, I’m 17 and I’m about to be a senior in high school. I am on the debate team and I enjoy mons, hanging out with friends and working out.
That's cool!
How did you get yourself started on Smogon and Showdown?
I was a freshman and was grounded from my phone. So I looked up Pokémon games on my chrome book since I used to play it as a kid. After that I became addicted.
I got into smogon through the NU room on PS, and started becoming more active when I posted my RMTs of topping ladder.
LOL that's probably one of the funnier but more interesting stories i've heard of people finding their way onto PS.
So what brought you to ZU then?
Through the NU room, I met good friends like Kay and Ho3nconfirm3d, who convinced me to play zu since in Kay’s words it was ‘DLC 1 NU but with new fat stall mons’
This was after the newest wave of drops
Ah yes, I recall that you joined around the same time I did, when January gave us a ton of mons, many of which were NU at some point, and we were starting to ban out the brokens due to the same insane power creep in the metagame
Yeah I entered right when zu got all those mons. My plan was to top the ladder and farm likes for my rmt, but I ended up loving the community and the tier itself
That's incredible!! We're definitely glad you stayed though as im sure we as a community love you back
Thank you! I’m glad I stayed too. The tier is by far my favorite to play at the moment.
Same here, ZU is definitely a blast atm
You mentioned stall earlier, and I would say you are pretty fond of the playstyle or at the very least someone who has a lot more experience in using it when compared to most the playerbase. What are your thoughts on Stall's position in the current ZU metagame?
Well, as you may know from my recent games, I’ve been trying to shift away from stall. There are a few reasons for that, the main one is that I like to diversify my play style so I’m not too predictable. The other ones and the answer to ur question is that in my opinion it is difficult to use and build a successful full stall team in the current meta. Hazard stack is one of the most potent playstyles currently, and that makes it difficult to use a stall without a magic bounce user. And Hattrem no matter how much I try to use it, is a wasted slot in many of the games it’s in. Stall definitely is usable in zu, but it requires meeting a lot of building requirements which is difficult with just 6 mons
Ye I've definitely noticed that there are way fewer stall teams going around, and you've definitely been vocal about the fact you haven't been using stall throughout the recent tournaments you've been in
Well when apa(love him) said that I only use stall and manual rain I took that personally
Not rlly but I was like wait that might be a big issue if I’m always using stall. Gotta switch it up.
that's a fair point, i guess apa also helped with that thought giving you some motivation to prove him wrong
Ye by that point I was in round 7 of the seasonal I think, and I was pretty proud of not using a full stall the entire tour.
I was a big abuser of regenerator though as u might remember from our series
ah ye damn that eldegoss :(
but I really liked the teams you were using there
Thanks. I was rlly big on the lycanroc fat team. Good thing Lycan rose though it was pretty busted.
ah ye it was hella broken but I very much miss that dog
Eh we have lycan lite which I think czim used to success once. Obv not as good but we take what we can get
ye definitely an interesting mon which is probably a little underrated
fs
Onto tournaments now which we've briefly started to mention. UMPL has wrapped up where your team placed third and you had a solid showing, you're currently in the grand finals of the spring seasonal (personally I'm looking forward to that) and are in the playoffs of the ongoing ladder tour so I think it's fair to say you've had a lot of tournament success so far this year. You're allowed to be modest but who do you think you owe thanks to for that? Is it yourself or are there people who helped you along the way?
Dude. I don’t think I can explain in words how much I owe my decent showing in UMPL and my finals appearance in ssnl to Kay. The vast majority of my teams and in fact all of my teams these later rounds have been built by kay with a bit of my help. He is the absolute goat and the guy who is probably the most hype for these finals. So biggest shout out to KAY. Some other guys who have helped me a ton with testing and building have been Tuthur, Rav3ndan, S1nn0hC0nfirm3d, czim, Landon, and Hys. They’re goated as well
That's great to hear. I'm sure you've also put a lot of effort into this in order to achieve these amazing results so far. Would definitely be interesting to see when ZUPL happens, which I'm hoping Kay signs up to, whether a team snags the two of you together onto one team :D
That would be preferred, don’t wanna be on the other side of Kay’s building ability lol.
haha I'd definitely have to agree with that
Are there any Pokemon in ZU that you believe deserve a suspect at the moment or do you think that the metagame is in a pretty good place for the time being?
Personally I think it’s in a good place. There are a few mons that might need looking into. The first one is Alcremie, I think there is limited counterplay and it’s a bit absurd to deal with in the builder. The other ones I think might need a sus or some kind of action would be centiskorch and groundvally to a lesser extent
Groundvally and centi are fs manageable to some extent since they’re usually predictable in what they do, but that being said ground is running mixed atm, and centi just muscles it’s way past it’s checks really easily
Alcremie is definitely an interesting one, it isn't one that most people go towards immediately but it's definitely a very scary threat especially when teams sometimes straight up lose to it as they lack the answers to one of its several setup sets but I wouldn't disagree that and wouldn't be opposed to seeing something done about alcremie in the near future, i definitely agree with groundvally and centi as well, it's a shame PU wont take centi away from us ever haha
Yeah you put it much more eloquently
haha thank you, you definitely sold me on it tho
moving away from mons now, do you have any hobbies that you enjoy doing during your free time?
Yeah I enjoy biking lifting watching anime and hanging out with friends
Any animes in particular that you've been watching either recently, or are your favourites?
That’s a hard question because I’ve seen a lot but if I had to pick I would say deathnote bunny girl senpai space dandy and NGE
very nice :), some of my friends keep asking me to watch more anime so I'll consider giving some of these a shot
What about TV, movie, and music interests? Do you have a favourite song, movie, or TV show?
In regards to music I have a varied music taste but some of my favorite genres are rock rap and salsa I like a lot of old music. My favorite artists right now are Lil Uzi , the offspring, and Hector Lavoe. I enjoyed watching Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad . My favorite movies include V is for Vendetta, Fight Club, and The hunt for red October
oo your favourite genres of music are super interesting a unique. Really good choices overall here and I definitely approve of your choices of tv shows and movies
Thank you
Do you have a role model in life (not including yourself)?
I would say some of my most prominent role models would be my dad my grandfather who have both lived insane lives and probably David Goggins
that's awesome to hear :>
Now, my favourite question of the interview. If you were a screen writer and the whole of ZU auth were your cast, who would be the main protagonist, the main antagonist, and what would be the general plot of the movie?
Assuming I weren’t here because I would be the (protagonist) I would make Kay the protagonist and Greg the antagonist in the plight to get Poliwrath to a higher rank. Poliwrath Gang 4L
LOL that sounds amazing, greg managing to be mentioned a 3rd time in a row for these sorts of questions
I guess this is becoming a tradition at this point
Yeah lol
Mind dropping your favourite ZU team ever? Could be from any gen, and explain your thought process behind it
My favorite team would be the one I RMT’d
:
(note: Palossand is no longer legal in ZU)Here is a bonus team that I used during UMPL
Thanks for sharing that. Looked like a really fun and cool team for the time.
Any final remarks and anyone you'd like a give a shout out to (i know you've done a few already but that was more tour related ig) before we wrap this up?
Shoutout to kay and S1nn0hC0nfirm3d for getting me into ZU and shoutout to them for always passing me teams. And shoutout to everyone helping me learn the tier. And shoutout to yovan33321 for the stall v stall games during the ladder tour very fun
Nice although I hope I never have to witness you play Yovan on ladder hehe! That concludes the ZU Player of the Week interview, Thanks dani for taking some time out of your day to answer these questions.
Np it was fun
Feel free to ask to daniYSB any questions you want!
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