Approved by Sam and Hikari
Hello, and welcome to UU's player of the week where I interview
some of Smogon's most accomplished and well knowns 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 next week, shoot me a PM!
radianthero156
Can you tell us a bit about yourself? I'm a brazilian 19 year old dude who studies electrical engineering (2nd year), plays drums/piano/keyboard in 5 different bands and who loves math, Steven Universe and, obviously, Pokémon. Also, my irl name is heat: ARIEL CLYDE.
Most Known For: I was considered a new talent after I got into the UU council like 2 weeks after I joined smogon, then I did decently in tournaments like OLT/POCL, and was the UU starter in my SPL team, and I'm really talkative and friendly in the #xyuu channel :]
Favorite Pokemon: Magneton. For some reason, I like weird pkmn. Aegislash is my 2nd favorite one o_o
Most used UU Pokemon: I think it's probably Aerodactyl, since it has very little risk + very high reward. The second one would be Porygon2, since it covers SO many threats and makes teambuilding much easier.
Where did you get your name from? "Radiant Hero" is Ike's title in Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn (I'm also a huge fan of Fire Emblem) and the number 156 has an interesting story behind it. Basically when I played neopets back in like 2004 if I remember correctly, I was gonna use the nickname AriEx256 (my birth date is June 25th), then I accidentally commited a typo, and stood with it anyways. 7 years later I accidentally found out about an interesting mathematical conjecture (which I can't explain here) using the number 156, and thought "yep this number rules".
How and when did you get into competitive battling? I found out about Pokemon Showdown from a friend back in October 2013 (he doesn't even play anymore at this point). He owned me using a bad team (since my team was even worse), and then I found the game really interesting. Then, I found out about Smogon, read up a lot of stuff there and, 3 months after, I created this account.
Opinions on ORAS compared to XY? We're comparing XY UU to ORAS UU, right? In that case, I'd say ORAS is definitely the better. XY is just a Zygarde/MegaZam spam, and, even if those got banned, it'd still be a less versatile version of ORAS, since no mega Sharledo/Pidgeot/Sceptile/etc. (I asked if we were talking about UU because XY OU is much much better than ORAS OU)
What is your favorite playstyle and why? Offense, both Bulky and Hyper. I also play other team archetypes in order to make harder for my opponents to counter-style me, but I feel defensive teams give the initiative to your opponent, which I don't really like; also, it's way less risky to try a ballsy predict when using offense than when using stall; if you mispredict using offense, you lose momentum; however, a misprediction using stall might cost you a key wall and the game.
Favorite non UU tier? XY OU. It's so exciting, diverse and fresh, while still being able to avoid 100% matchup losses (which doesn't occur in ORAS, unfortunately). RBY OU deserves a mention as well because I love the mathematical aspect of it; games are a probability war. I'm not very good at it, but I still enjoy it
Do you think any mon is suspect worthy atm? If yes, which mon and why. Can I say Scald? If not, I guess the metagame is fine. I used to think Mega Aero was kinda broken because of how easily it destroyed Hyper Offense, but with the rise of offensive Mega Swampert, HO is fine. But, just between us, sometimes I feel like we could drop like 15 BL's just to see what would happen haha.
Favorite moment of SPL? "radianthero156: SOLD to the Wifi Wolfpack for 3000".
I can't describle how happy I was after this. When the list of managers was released, I knew I wanted to play with wolves, because Bloo is the best player I've ever seen and Hugo is an incredible teambuilder. I knew I'd learn A LOT just by sitting on their channel. Then they had retained Adam, Joey and Tama who're not only AMAZING players, but are also really chill and cool.
Also, I had been on a hiatus since OLT's cycle 4 (and I wasnt even a very good player anyways), so I knew I wasnt gonna get bought unless if I worked hard. Thus, I played and won an extensive amount of tryout battles which the guys above watched. Then, in the auction day, I saw Calloflochie being bought by them, and since I didnt tryout for any other team, I was like "RIP well lets try joining a random team in midseason i guess"; then I got bought :]. Even though we were last place, I feel I was one of the biggest winners of this SPL because I made amazing friends and improved so much. I have literally 0 regrets.
Who do you think is the most underrated uu player atm? Hmm, tricky question. I'll answer my boy dodmen, because that guy is a god but didn't even get bought for SPL. I predicted him to get the best ORAS record in UUPL and he's already 5-0 (well he played XY too but w/e).
What is some advice you can give to new players who want to get noticed? Well, basically what I did was: lurked a lot (4 months) -> defeated good players on the ladder and peak it -> joined the #xyuu channel and were friendly. But if you're a good user and a good player, you'll get (positively) noticed naturally. And the best way of becoming a good player is playing good players and learning.
How do you go about preparing for tournament matches? If it's a random unofficial tour I just use a team I know is solid and try to outplay the guy. If it's an important tournament like SPL, I watch a lot of replays from my opponent and develop a team that has a balance between: a) softly covering every relevant threat; b) hard-covering threats my opponent likes to use and; c) including an innovation that can cause huge issues to cores my opponent likes. Obviously it's not a 100% perfect strategy, but it arguably worked well for me in SPL. Like, I went 4-4, but I only got a bad matchup in a single game (which was vs IB93 where I brought a bulky offense team with LO Medicham looking to exploit his FWG teams, but he masterfully surprised me with SandStout + CM Twave Reuniclus); in my other 3 losses I just choked/got outplayed :v
Who are some of your favorite people in the Smogon community? Man I have soooo many friends here that this question is tough, but I'd say my top 5 dearest users are Adam, aim, Bloo, dekzeh, and gr8astard, not exactly in this order. yeah, i dont give a fuck about the ost drama, I just want bloo and hugo back :'(
But there are also these guys I wanna give a shoutout to. I might be forgetting someone but it's a risk I wanna take. Again, just in alphabetical order
Finally can you provide for us a team that you think reflects you as a player with a brief explanation of how it works?
Straight from my team archive, (and with a sick name LOL) this team isnt new, and possibly even outdated, but there's no other team that fits my style better. I mean, I usually play all kinds of team archetypes in order to make harder for my opponents to counter-style me, but offense is the one I play the best, because it's way less risky to play aggressively with offense than with stall.
As for the team itself, it works like this: Aero leads, putting SR and preventing your opp from doing so. (Rock Head-less Double-Edge suicides into spinners to avoid the rs). If you're facing defense, choose one of Krow/Mence/Luke/Pert as your win condition (pick the one that need the least work to sweep); the other 3 will be your breakers. You can those recklessly to kill whats stopping your sweeper. Lets say the opp has a P2 and 5 mons killed by mence; if you sac everything but mence just to kill p2, you win. Vs offense, well, you got a TWind/Encore Whimsicott, 2 sweepers that outspeed everything after setup and 2 attackers with powerful priority, so you should win.
----
Thanks for reading. If you guys have questions for rh156 leave them down below. See you next week!
Hello, and welcome to UU's player of the week where I interview
some of Smogon's most accomplished and well knowns 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 next week, shoot me a PM!
radianthero156
Most Known For: I was considered a new talent after I got into the UU council like 2 weeks after I joined smogon, then I did decently in tournaments like OLT/POCL, and was the UU starter in my SPL team, and I'm really talkative and friendly in the #xyuu channel :]
Favorite Pokemon: Magneton. For some reason, I like weird pkmn. Aegislash is my 2nd favorite one o_o
Most used UU Pokemon: I think it's probably Aerodactyl, since it has very little risk + very high reward. The second one would be Porygon2, since it covers SO many threats and makes teambuilding much easier.
Where did you get your name from? "Radiant Hero" is Ike's title in Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn (I'm also a huge fan of Fire Emblem) and the number 156 has an interesting story behind it. Basically when I played neopets back in like 2004 if I remember correctly, I was gonna use the nickname AriEx256 (my birth date is June 25th), then I accidentally commited a typo, and stood with it anyways. 7 years later I accidentally found out about an interesting mathematical conjecture (which I can't explain here) using the number 156, and thought "yep this number rules".
How and when did you get into competitive battling? I found out about Pokemon Showdown from a friend back in October 2013 (he doesn't even play anymore at this point). He owned me using a bad team (since my team was even worse), and then I found the game really interesting. Then, I found out about Smogon, read up a lot of stuff there and, 3 months after, I created this account.
Opinions on ORAS compared to XY? We're comparing XY UU to ORAS UU, right? In that case, I'd say ORAS is definitely the better. XY is just a Zygarde/MegaZam spam, and, even if those got banned, it'd still be a less versatile version of ORAS, since no mega Sharledo/Pidgeot/Sceptile/etc. (I asked if we were talking about UU because XY OU is much much better than ORAS OU)
What is your favorite playstyle and why? Offense, both Bulky and Hyper. I also play other team archetypes in order to make harder for my opponents to counter-style me, but I feel defensive teams give the initiative to your opponent, which I don't really like; also, it's way less risky to try a ballsy predict when using offense than when using stall; if you mispredict using offense, you lose momentum; however, a misprediction using stall might cost you a key wall and the game.
Favorite non UU tier? XY OU. It's so exciting, diverse and fresh, while still being able to avoid 100% matchup losses (which doesn't occur in ORAS, unfortunately). RBY OU deserves a mention as well because I love the mathematical aspect of it; games are a probability war. I'm not very good at it, but I still enjoy it
Do you think any mon is suspect worthy atm? If yes, which mon and why. Can I say Scald? If not, I guess the metagame is fine. I used to think Mega Aero was kinda broken because of how easily it destroyed Hyper Offense, but with the rise of offensive Mega Swampert, HO is fine. But, just between us, sometimes I feel like we could drop like 15 BL's just to see what would happen haha.
Favorite moment of SPL? "radianthero156: SOLD to the Wifi Wolfpack for 3000".
I can't describle how happy I was after this. When the list of managers was released, I knew I wanted to play with wolves, because Bloo is the best player I've ever seen and Hugo is an incredible teambuilder. I knew I'd learn A LOT just by sitting on their channel. Then they had retained Adam, Joey and Tama who're not only AMAZING players, but are also really chill and cool.
Also, I had been on a hiatus since OLT's cycle 4 (and I wasnt even a very good player anyways), so I knew I wasnt gonna get bought unless if I worked hard. Thus, I played and won an extensive amount of tryout battles which the guys above watched. Then, in the auction day, I saw Calloflochie being bought by them, and since I didnt tryout for any other team, I was like "RIP well lets try joining a random team in midseason i guess"; then I got bought :]. Even though we were last place, I feel I was one of the biggest winners of this SPL because I made amazing friends and improved so much. I have literally 0 regrets.
Who do you think is the most underrated uu player atm? Hmm, tricky question. I'll answer my boy dodmen, because that guy is a god but didn't even get bought for SPL. I predicted him to get the best ORAS record in UUPL and he's already 5-0 (well he played XY too but w/e).
What is some advice you can give to new players who want to get noticed? Well, basically what I did was: lurked a lot (4 months) -> defeated good players on the ladder and peak it -> joined the #xyuu channel and were friendly. But if you're a good user and a good player, you'll get (positively) noticed naturally. And the best way of becoming a good player is playing good players and learning.
How do you go about preparing for tournament matches? If it's a random unofficial tour I just use a team I know is solid and try to outplay the guy. If it's an important tournament like SPL, I watch a lot of replays from my opponent and develop a team that has a balance between: a) softly covering every relevant threat; b) hard-covering threats my opponent likes to use and; c) including an innovation that can cause huge issues to cores my opponent likes. Obviously it's not a 100% perfect strategy, but it arguably worked well for me in SPL. Like, I went 4-4, but I only got a bad matchup in a single game (which was vs IB93 where I brought a bulky offense team with LO Medicham looking to exploit his FWG teams, but he masterfully surprised me with SandStout + CM Twave Reuniclus); in my other 3 losses I just choked/got outplayed :v
Who are some of your favorite people in the Smogon community? Man I have soooo many friends here that this question is tough, but I'd say my top 5 dearest users are Adam, aim, Bloo, dekzeh, and gr8astard, not exactly in this order. yeah, i dont give a fuck about the ost drama, I just want bloo and hugo back :'(
But there are also these guys I wanna give a shoutout to. I might be forgetting someone but it's a risk I wanna take. Again, just in alphabetical order
BR PORRA: Blue_Star, denissss, Destiny Device, Disenchanted, GoaoTwo, HANTSUKI, Hill, kael, papai noel, silverghooost, sogeking, soulraiser, Speto, Tamahome, Tiba
UU (BAN ME PLEASE): Bouffalant, dingbat, dodmen, Finchinator, Fire Lord Mako, Hairy Toenail, Hikari, IronBullet93, King UU, kokoloko, Limitless, Pearl., Psychotic, Sam
VoD noobs who're aids at tagpro bop: CTC, FAJI, FLCL, imanalt, Moet, KratosMana, Omfuga, Sthatakis TDK, Tesung, Tsunami
Wolfies: BLUNDER, Calloflochie, Colchonero, DANILO, JamVLAD, SoulSurvivor/Snakes, Shoka
Others: BKC, Cased, henry, Jirachee, McMeghan
Oh and also ium is very cute x)
UU (BAN ME PLEASE): Bouffalant, dingbat, dodmen, Finchinator, Fire Lord Mako, Hairy Toenail, Hikari, IronBullet93, King UU, kokoloko, Limitless, Pearl., Psychotic, Sam
VoD noobs who're aids at tagpro bop: CTC, FAJI, FLCL, imanalt, Moet, KratosMana, Omfuga, Sthatakis TDK, Tesung, Tsunami
Wolfies: BLUNDER, Calloflochie, Colchonero, DANILO, JamVLAD, SoulSurvivor/Snakes, Shoka
Others: BKC, Cased, henry, Jirachee, McMeghan
Oh and also ium is very cute x)
Finally can you provide for us a team that you think reflects you as a player with a brief explanation of how it works?
Swampert @ Swampertite
Ability: Torrent
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rain Dance
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Waterfall
Honchkrow @ Life Orb
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Brave Bird
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit
- Heat Wave
Whimsicott @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Giga Drain
- Moonblast
- Tailwind
- U-turn
Lucario @ Life Orb
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- ExtremeSpeed
- Crunch
Salamence @ Life Orb
Ability: Intimidate
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Iron Tail
Aerodactyl @ Focus Sash
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 184 Atk / 72 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Double-Edge
- Taunt
- Fire Blast
Ability: Torrent
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rain Dance
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Waterfall
Honchkrow @ Life Orb
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Brave Bird
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit
- Heat Wave
Whimsicott @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Giga Drain
- Moonblast
- Tailwind
- U-turn
Lucario @ Life Orb
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- ExtremeSpeed
- Crunch
Salamence @ Life Orb
Ability: Intimidate
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Iron Tail
Aerodactyl @ Focus Sash
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 184 Atk / 72 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Double-Edge
- Taunt
- Fire Blast
Straight from my team archive, (and with a sick name LOL) this team isnt new, and possibly even outdated, but there's no other team that fits my style better. I mean, I usually play all kinds of team archetypes in order to make harder for my opponents to counter-style me, but offense is the one I play the best, because it's way less risky to play aggressively with offense than with stall.
As for the team itself, it works like this: Aero leads, putting SR and preventing your opp from doing so. (Rock Head-less Double-Edge suicides into spinners to avoid the rs). If you're facing defense, choose one of Krow/Mence/Luke/Pert as your win condition (pick the one that need the least work to sweep); the other 3 will be your breakers. You can those recklessly to kill whats stopping your sweeper. Lets say the opp has a P2 and 5 mons killed by mence; if you sac everything but mence just to kill p2, you win. Vs offense, well, you got a TWind/Encore Whimsicott, 2 sweepers that outspeed everything after setup and 2 attackers with powerful priority, so you should win.
----
Thanks for reading. If you guys have questions for rh156 leave them down below. See you next week!
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