USUM UU Player of the Week #3: Pak

[Cynde]

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!

Previous Interviews

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usum-uu-manager-of-the-week-2-tony.3622329/
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usum-uu-player-of-the-week-1-bushtush.3621818/

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?

Ganern

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?

HIM

iconic yugioh villain that participated in the greatest fight scene in the history of anime. And he has the chest I aspire to have.

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.

---

Thanks for taking the time to do the interview Pak!
If you have any questions for him, feel free to leave them below

 

[pokemonisfun]

How much of Pokemon is luck? How much is skill? Can Pokemon be fairly described like that?

 

[miltankmilk]

Why’d you dodge me when I actually came to an event in your town.

How’s it feel to be one of the few tours room superstars to play in official tours?

Are you the last Abs available in the SPL auction?

 

[Feliburn]

how does it feel to be really bad at cc1v1? mandiqueen or nidobuzz??!

 

[Machiavelli]

Why have you said nothing about your love for sand? I recall you using a sand team for like months it was fun

 

[Accel]

Would you rather have the ganern meme omitted from the history books or would you permaban hydreigon from oras uu?

 

[Kingler]

Pakistan is a great country, nothing bad to say here

 

[Pak]

How much of Pokemon is luck? How much is skill? Can Pokemon be fairly described like that?

I'd say like 80% skill 20% luck. While the presence of luck in mons is undeniable, even in RBY which is supposedly the most luck based tier, the best players consistently putting up good results in tournaments and it's really no different in any other meta.

Why’d you dodge me when I actually came to an event in your town.

How’s it feel to be one of the few tours room superstars to play in official tours?

Are you the last Abs available in the SPL auction?

My car's engine clearly hates you

Fletchinder Eterna was unmatched nothing to add

According to omfuga, yes apparently so

how does it feel to be really bad at cc1v1? mandiqueen or nidobuzz??!

atrocious.

I too enjoy the Nidoking + Electabuzz core

Why have you said nothing about your love for sand? I recall you using a sand team for like months it was fun

The world will never be ready for oras uu baby hippo sand or triple fetus

Would you rather have the ganern meme omitted from the history books or would you permaban hydreigon from oras uu?

ban conk instead

 

[rs]

mfk ab soul, j cole, kendrick

is Lonzo Ball the next titan of the rap game?

do you think you're worth the 16k needed to become the 2nd Smashers™ franchise player?

How many times are you going to use Fletch this ORAS cup (0 not an acceptable answer)

From an outside perspective (from reading convos, etc), who is the best melee player and why is it Leffen?

Have you ever gotten the shit beaten out of you by a set of jumper cables?

Drake is actually fire

 

[ez]

What is your ethnicity ?

 

[Nuked]

what are some currently unranked pokemon on the VR that you think should have a rank, if any?

 

[Amaroq]

General Pokemon Stuff:
Who do you think are the top five SM UU players and why (feel free to list the top ten if you feel like ranking that many players)?

Who do you think are the top five ORAS UU players and why (feel free to list the top ten if you feel like ranking that many players)?

Who do you think are some good up-and-coming UU players?

What do you think of UU's current tournament structure? How do you think it could or should be improved?

What is your opinion regarding the influence Z-Moves have on the competitive metagame? How do you feel about this mechanic?

What do you think should be done to help the UU community continue to grow and develop (feel free to talk about any or all of the following aspects: increasing the size of the playerbase as a whole, increasing the competitiveness of the playerbase at any and all levels, fostering more forum contribution, helping new players network with more experienced players, etc.)?

If you could go back and balance old UU metas, what would you do and why (you already answered ORAS, but I'm interested in whether you have thoughts on older metas as well)?

Please share any thoughts on the wonderful avatar DrReuniclus made for me.

Team Tours (UUPL, Snake, etc. Feel free to skip all or part of these questions if you don't feel comfortable answering them. I know that the UUPL questions in particular are months out of date, but I'm interested in hearing your answers):
What did you think of UUPL/Snake? Did teams and players perform more or less as you expected them to?

Which player or team's performance surprised you the most (this can be positive or negative and applies to both UUPL and Snake, as do most of the following questions)?

How closely did your team's final draft align with your expectations/desires?

What did you think of the auction/draft as a whole?

What good decisions do you think managers made before or during the draft (for example, Shiba retaining HT)?

What bad decisions do you think managers made before or during the draft (for example, Shiba spending 10,000 credits on that Amaroq idiot)?

What decisions related to the draft do you find just plain confusing (for example, Shiba being allowed to manage to begin with)?

Did the various managers draft more or less the way you thought they would, or did some of them surprise you?

Why was the UUPL V Smashers objectively the best team ever created, despite spending 10,000 credits on Killintime?

What do you think of the decision to add retention rights and relegations to UUPL?

Do you ever intend to manage UUPL in the future?

Non-Pokemon-Related Questions
What do you think about meeting and interacting with people from all over the world through Smogon?

What other games do you play, if any?

Do you watch live-action shows or movies? If so, what genres, shows, and/or movies are your favorite?

You said you lift weights, but do you play any sports or get any other forms of exercise?

Do you like to read? If so, what books/genres are your favorite(s)?

On a scale of 0 to Drapion, how strong is your deep and enduring love for Killintime?

On a scale of 0 to the world's most powerful biceps, how strong is your deep and enduring love for Barclay Stockett?

What is it like to have abs so amazing that they deserve their own SPL slot?

Thank you for your time.

 

[Pak]

mfk ab soul, j cole, kendrick
marry ab-soul, fuck kendrick, kill j cole
is Lonzo Ball the next titan of the rap game?
chances are better than one of his shots going in
do you think you're worth the 16k needed to become the 2nd Smashers™ franchise player?
hopefully
How many times are you going to use Fletch this ORAS cup (0 not an acceptable answer)
been like a year since i used him idk chieftain
From an outside perspective (from reading convos, etc), who is the best melee player and why is it Leffen?
plup because uses samus
Have you ever gotten the shit beaten out of you by a set of jumper cables?
only by my father
Drake is actually fire
yeah alright.

What is your ethnicity ?

white af

what are some currently unranked pokemon on the VR that you think should have a rank, if any?

only thing I can think of off the top of my head is diancie since it can counter non steel coverage hydreigon, toge, and moltres while soft checking stuff like latias, mega alt, and infernape

General Pokemon Stuff:
Who do you think are the top five SM UU players and why (feel free to list the top ten if you feel like ranking that many players)?
top 3 is no particular order is dod, pearl, and sacri then it's kind of all over the place
Who do you think are the top five ORAS UU players and why (feel free to list the top ten if you feel like ranking that many players)?
hm hard to say since no one plays anymore but based purely off of uupl players, something like rodri, j0ris, lcans, pearl, and ht in no order
Who do you think are some good up-and-coming UU players?
bushtush, eyan, TSR
What do you think of UU's current tournament structure? How do you think it could or should be improved?
as a whole, I'd say it's pretty solid since classic, uupl, and uu open are all nice tours but I wasn't a big fan of the majors format this year. Our community isn't quite big enough to support weekly live tours especially with snake and other stuff going on at the same time. Unless the community grows a bunch by next year, I'm hoping to see it either edited again or replaced by something else.
What is your opinion regarding the influence Z-Moves have on the competitive metagame? How do you feel about this mechanic?
tbh I was a bit overwhelmed by them when i first started playing sm but idt they're all that bad anymore
What do you think should be done to help the UU community continue to grow and develop (feel free to talk about any or all of the following aspects: increasing the size of the playerbase as a whole, increasing the competitiveness of the playerbase at any and all levels, fostering more forum contribution, helping new players network with more experienced players, etc.)?
To help newer players get a feel for the game, it's important for the more experienced players to offer insight or contribute in one way or another (posting in the subforum, writing analyses, tutoring, rating teams, etc). Luckily, UU currently does a pretty good job at this and I hope it continues in the future, but obviously it can always improve.
If you could go back and balance old UU metas, what would you do and why (you already answered ORAS, but I'm interested in whether you have thoughts on older metas as well)?
Not really any strong opinions on anything other than oras given my level of experience but ik most people are in favor of banning victini from bw
Please share any thoughts on the wonderful avatar DrReuniclus made for me.
flawless.

Team Tours (UUPL, Snake, etc. Feel free to skip all or part of these questions if you don't feel comfortable answering them. I know that the UUPL questions in particular are months out of date, but I'm interested in hearing your answers):
What did you think of UUPL? Did teams and players perform more or less as you expected them to?
pretty much as expected aside from omfuga's generally solid teams finally falling from grace
Which player or team's performance surprised you the most (this can be positive or negative)?
j0ris cemented himself as a really good oras player with good record to compliment his ladder tour win a year ago
How closely did your team's final draft align with your expectations/desires?
I was really happy with how our team worked out but we just couldn't take care of business in semis
What did you think of the auction/draft as a whole?
Went p much as expected besides the ernesto situation
What good decisions do you think managers made before or during the draft (for example, Shiba retaining HT)?
Tony getting 50k credits pre auction from trading retention rights
What bad decisions do you think managers made before or during the draft (for example, Shiba spending 10,000 credits on that Amaroq idiot)?
While hogg did put together a great collection of overall pokemon talent, i was surprised he didn't really get any dedicated uu builders besides himself to compliment his team's in game playing capabilities
What decisions related to the draft do you find just plain confusing (for example, Shiba being allowed to manage to begin with)?
^
Did the various managers draft more or less the way you thought they would, or did some of them surprise you?
Pretty much as expected
Why was the UUPL V Smashers objectively the best team ever created, despite spending 10,000 credits on Killintime?
We did a nice job of covering all our bases in terms of tiers while putting together a good group of people. Well, aside from killintime.
What do you think of the decision to add retention rights and relegations to UUPL?
It added an interesting dynamic to the auction itself especially with the trades of retention rights and retains basically acting as assmans. Its results were pretty clear as it was basically the deciding factor in letting Tony put together perhaps the most dominant team in the history of the tournament
Do you ever intend to manage UUPL in the future?
I probably wouldn't ever manage myself but I wouldn't rule it out

Non-Pokemon-Related Questions
What do you think about meeting and interacting with people from all over the world through Smogon?
It's honestly one of my favorite parts of smogon, letting me learn a bit about the different cultures and living conditions around the world
What other games do you play, if any?
Not really competitively anymore but I used to be big into the NBA 2k games
Do you watch live-action shows or movies? If so, what genres, shows, and/or movies are your favorite?
Not any huge preferences with TV shows but with movies I'm a huge advocate of shitty comedies, the worse it is, the better
You said you lift weights, but do you play any sports or get any other forms of exercise?
I used to play football and basketball but I quit pursuing them seriously before taking up fitness, as weird as that may sound
Do you like to read? If so, what books/genres are your favorite(s)?
nah
On a scale of 0 to Drapion, how strong is your deep and enduring love for Killintime?
Skorupi, can never forget uupl
On a scale of 0 to the world's most powerful biceps, how strong is your deep and enduring love for Barclay Stockett?
The world's most powerful biceps
What is it like to have abs so amazing that they deserve their own SPL slot?
feels great, omfuga
Thank you for your time.