Ever since our last player of the week interview all the way back in
april 2018, we've had an influx or new community members and players, as well as enough time having passed to re-do some old interviews. However, the approach is a little different this time as we've renamed to Community Spotlight with the intention of delivering bigger and more quality interviews. To start off, we got our most recent Doubles seasonal winner Lord Death Man. Despite starting in RU, the man with the edgiest username in the community became a DUUde and simultaneously carried out his spectacular winter seasonals run, beating qsns, miltankmilk, fespy, EmbCPT, london13, emiforbes, Human, and Tman twice to bring it home. Will lord death man keep up his success in DPL after being picked up for 15k by the Hoenn Heroes?
1. Hi lord death man, could you give us an introduction of yourself?
I'm Lord Death Man, I'm 24 years old, from Dallas, TX, and I'm going to be starting law school this fall.
2. I think we all know what your username means, but where does it come from and why did you stick with it?
There's a fairly
obscure batman villain with the same name, I stuck with it because I think it's stupid.
3. What do your avatar and custom title mean?
Your guess is as good as mine.
4. What got you into competitive Pokémon initially, and what drew you to Doubles?
I had a lot of friends who were really into pokemon in college; we played on showdown before XY was released but most of us really played a lot more when XY came out; I think I'm the only one who stuck with it after that, though. I started playing doubles to try and get the suspect badge, which led to me trying DUU. I found the meta very interesting but the XY DUU ladder was mostly dead, so I kind of shelved that until SM came out. I almost didn't enter the seasonal I won; I didn't really feel very familiar with the tier but I figured that the best way to learn is by doing.
5. Congratulations on your spectacular seasonals win! How does it feel to achieve such a victory?
Good! I'm very surprised I managed to win, every week kind of felt like a fluke and I feel like I lucked a lot of opponents early on, but that's mons.
6. You had to deal with a really tough bracket versus talented and proven players, what were your favorite sets to play? And which opponents were you most frightened of facing?
I enjoyed my
games with tman; I played him in 3 sets and I think there was a lot of vareity in builds with both used.
Emforbes was also fun, especially game one with Persian-A bouncing around Diancie while I tried to get back into position after making some questionable plays.
I was really scared of facing tman the second and third time, and human; I had already lost to tman once and kind of felt that his preferred builds were really good vs my preferred builds, and human's goth teams really scared me because they were so unlike anything I had been facing up to that point, and goth is one of my least favorite mons to play against by far.
7. How did you approach preparation for these seasonals? Where did you find inspiration for teams throughout?
In all honesty, I only really prepped for the last few games; before then I just tried to use generically strong teams and hoped for the best.
Most of my teams were samples, but I changed sets to try to make them less predictable.
talkingtree helped me make one of the teams I used vs human, which I later changed somewhat for my matches vs tman, and one of the teams was just me putting stuff together that I thought would work, and it kind of did but not as well as I had hoped.
8. At what point did you start thinking you had a good shot at winning the entire seasonal?
Turn 10 or 11 of game 3 vs tman, when I caught the Bulu with Sludge Bomb.
9. You have been drafted for DPL by the Hoenn Heroes. What was your initial reaction to being drafted by this team and your fee?
I figured I would be bought by other
n10sit or talkingtree's teams; they knew me the best and I wasn't quite sure if anyone else was really familiar with me at all honestly.
I was shocked at just how much they paid for me, I missed the draft so I'm not sure how it went but I kind of expected to be about half the price.
10. What teams or players do you consider big threats in this tournament?
Everyone! I think Rustboro Baptist Church has one of the strongest rosters but I think any team could win it.
11. Doubles is often seen as a difficult tier by other singles players. As someone who originally started in RU, how was transitioning into DUU and DOU?
It took me a while to really feel like I had even the faintest idea of what I was doing with doubles, and I still really struggle with building teams that feel like they cover common threats.
12. Could you give us a team that resembles your playing and building style and give a little explanation about it?
TalkingTree helped me a lot while making this, but I later made significant changes. Several very threatening offensive mons (Aegislash, Volcanion) try to break open holes so that I can later sweep with Salamence-Mega. Mew, Greninja, and Tapu Koko provide various forms of offensive support that help me break down big checks to Salamence, such as Tapu Fini.
We built this with toxic spikes in mind (and Greninja was originally a Nihilego), but I think Greninja's mat block has been much more useful; it's an excellent move that forces opponents who don't have Tapu Koko or a scarfer to waste some time, and as people increasingly forgo protect it can provide a huge amount of momentum.
13. How do you currently feel about the Doubles metagame and is there anything that currently warrants special attention, perhaps something being suspectworthy, or an overrated or underrated set?
I like the meta a lot, tons of stuff feel viable. I despise playing against Goth but I don't really think it quite approaches the level of suspect-worthy.
I actually think Landorus is a little overrated, it's a fantastic glue mon but it's really suffering from every team having multiple answers to it, and I feel that it often just sets rocks and then tries to get out of the way.
Meanwhile, I think Mew is somewhat underrated; it sets rocks, fakes out, offers several methods of speed control, and has access to the very unique and very powerful Transform, which can really enable setup sweepers to sort of throw themselves away so that mew can become a hugely bulky, very powerful +1 Zygarde/Salamence/Volcarona/etc.
14. What was your opinion on the recent Marshadow suspect test? And do you feel like anything else warrants a re-suspect?
I feel like Marsh would have been a strong negative influence to the meta; I like that set up is good and I don't like the idea of a single mon being able to essentially completely negate that aspect of the metagame.
I think pretty much everything currently banned probably deserves to be there; the closest, in my opinion, is probably Kangaskhan and I'd still lean heavily towards it being banned because it can do some ridiculous things with seismic toss.
15. How do you feel about Doubles UU right now? How do you think the large amount of April tier changes will affect the metagame?
I like doubles UU, but I think it's a very volatile tier and can sometimes feel a little unbalanced because of that (and the lack of bans, though I don't think anything is really suspect worth at the moment). It feels like a lot of things are very viable and there's lots of ways to build.
The recent drops (and rise of Zeraora) are huge; I think Suicune and Gyarados are going to reveal themselves as massive and versatile threats, trick room was doing very poorly but got two very strong tools in Oranguru and Torkoal,
16. Are you still active in RU and if yes, how do you feel about that metagame?
Not really, I was going to enter the Winter seasonals but I missed it. I don't hate the current metagame, but I do feel that there's something just barely not "right" about it and that I could enjoy it a lot more if something small changed - I'm hopeful that the decision to retest some of RUBL will help the tier. I also would really like it if Pidgeot dropped.
17. What are your favorite and least favorite ladder gimmicks to face in DOU?
I like Togemaru, it's interesting to see what people try to use with it and I like that it sort of works on it's own, too, which makes it feel less like a gimmick.
Wonder Guard shenanigans are the worst to face.
18. Is there any player you particularly look up to or take inspiration from? And is there anyone that you see as an up-and-comer?
I really like
Arcticblast's willigness to build with unorthodox mons. I think I'm a little too new to the community to really recognize who is up and coming, but I'm hopeful that some other DUU players make the transition from DUU ladder to DUU tournaments to DOU tournaments.
19. Do you have any advice to give to players who are looking to be succesful in tournaments, any tips or tricks?
There's a lot of luck involved, even before the match starts, so sometimes you can do your best and still lose. Don't get tilted off a bad game 1.
I also think that you learn by doing, so don't get discouraged if you're trying to get better but still find yourself getting knocked out early.
20. What are your hobbies and interests outside of playing Pokémon?
I like watching movies and playing smash and civ.
21. What are some of your favorite movies you'd recommend to the Doubles community?
I'm a big fan of
Noroi,
Belladonna of Sadness,
Coraline,
Perfect Blue,
Paprika,
The Truman Show, and
The Fifth Element.
22. Who do you main in Smash, and why?
Ridley, I really like most of his kit outside of his awful recovery, and no one I play with is so good that his flaws get in the way of me having fun. I also like Incineroar, Yoshi, and Piranha Plant.
23. What is your favorite civ, and why?
In Civ 6, I like the Kongo because it feels like you're playing from ahead (with their ability to have huge cities and a lot of great works) and behind all game, which leads to some unique interactions which I feel 6 as a whole is sort of lacking.
In Civ 5, I like Venice because they have a unique playstyle. I'm not a big fan of 5 over 6, which I know a lot of people disagree with, and that's because I feel like a lot of civs have a tendency to make the exact same moves in the same order; Venice plays unlike anyone else in 5 or 6.
24. What is your favorite log of the ones posted by Demantoid in the DPL meme thread?
literally any quote by zikam.
25. Are you pro or anti-cargo shorts, and why?
anti and I don't need a reason.
26. they made me do it
No, but one of my absolute all-time favorite films,
Belladonna of Sadness, is pretty much hentai-adjacent.
27. How do you feel about the development of mish slowly creeping into singles tourbro culture after already taking over Doubles, Battle Spot, and VGC?
I do my best not to think about tourbro culture.
28. Perhaps an even more worrying trend, how do you feel about epic gaming and Mint's obesssion with bug waifu Pheromosa? Is Mint a furry for this?
I have a real life friend who refers to Pheromosa as "that sexy cockroach"
29. Last question, but the most important one: who is your waifu/husbando?
The mirror.
30. Is there anything we missed in the interview that you would like to add?
I don't think so.
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That marks the end of our first new community spotlight with lord death man! I hope you enjoyed the pretty massive interview and feel free to ask our interviewee more questions in the replies, as that is half the fun~