Welcome to the Featured Rater project! This is a series of interviews where we ask Team Raters, new and old, several questions about the RMT forum and their experiences within it. We hope that this offers both entertainment and an insight into their thought processes, which aspiring raters can look to incorporate into their own rates. This project is hosted by IronBullet, Snowy. and myself. Our nineteenth interviewee is one of our official NU raters, Can-Eh-Dian!
Tell us a little bit about your life outside Smogon.
well, i'm an 18 year old university student currently living in Ontario, Canada (although i've lived on the west coast as well oo). im a huge baseball fan (go jays o.o) and if im not on smogon, i'm usually hanging out w/ friends or watching baseball / baseball highlights haha.
What is your main tier? Do you rate teams from any other tiers?
My main tier and the only tier I rate is XY ORAS NU. I've rated some teams from other tiers in the past, but i don't usually since i don't feel like i have enough knowledge of the other ORAS metagames in order to make a solid rate.
When did you start rating and why?
I started rating back in XY NU (best tier ;_;), honestly because I was just lurking forums one day and saw that someone had posted a pretty mediocre NU trick room team. I myself had also been playing around with trick room at the time, so i decided to make a pretty comprehensive rate on it detailing my experiences with the playstyle and some possible improvements that he could have made. Later that day, i was approached by Soulgazer (an NU TR at the time) who told me that my rate was really good and that I should definitely keep rating teams, so I did.
Are there any raters whom you looked up to when you started rating?
i definitely looked up to soulgazer early on because he was supportive of me (as i said above), but as i started rating more I was really impressed with Blast's rates. His formatting was great and he provided just enough information to where it was both helpful and not a handful to read.
What do you most enjoy about rating?
The thing i most enjoy about rating is definitely the kind of "puzzle" that comes along with it. I treat each rate as a challenge and I love the fact that each team is different and has a different way of improving it, and figuring out each of these "puzzles" lets me improve as a rater and as a teambuilder myself.
Do you follow a process with your rates?
Usually when I start a rate, i'll just look the team over for any major weaknesses to common threats. I think it's important to have kind of a "checklist" in your head of the major threats in the tier atm. Once I address any major flaws, i'll just look for any smaller optimizations that will slightly improve the team / help against certain mons. With more solidly built teams, i'll usually just go right to the 2nd step and make those slight optimizations, because obviously the team already handles the major threats.
Do you have any words of advice for aspiring raters?
The biggest asset an aspiring rater can have is sound metagame knowledge imo. If you have a good understanding of the metagame (what beats what, what works well together, etc) then you can usually make a solid rate without understanding the nuances behind rating. Obviously if you have that down, then just learning the nuances of rating is huge (examples being don't try and change too much, try and keep your rates to a length where it's casually readable, having an appealing formatting in general), and learning all of those usually just comes from making rates and learning from experience.
Do you like the direction the forum is taking at the moment? If you could add or change something, what would it be?
I think that IB and the rest of the RMT staff are doing a great job atm. Although i don't usually contribute to RMT stuff, mainly because i'm pretty localized in NU.
What are your thoughts on the NU rating community? Do you have any ideas for how we could potentially boost our activity there?
The NU rating community is relatively small (just me and HJAD iirc), all the people that rated in XY (blast, montsegur, hollywood) have all retired from rating. I think the lack of activity just comes from a lack of decent NU RMTs to rate. I just browsed through the ORAS other teams section and saw 2 NU RMTs in the first 2 pages. It's hard to get activity in our tier's rating community if there's nothing to rate.
Do you have an RMT or a team you would like to share with us?
http://hastebin.com/imopovujay.md
this was my spl week 7 team when I played shaneghoul. It's a pretty standard looking balance with some creative sets like Taunt Special Steelix and the god SUCKER PUNCH Lanturn. The idea behind it was to use special lix to lure and break past common sd sceptile checks like weezing and sliggoo. Primeape gives me speed and a way to offensively pressure faster stuff like sceptile / swellow and it forms a neat core w/ skuntank since you trap all the annoying ghosts in NU. lanturn p much just checks fires provides a 2nd water resist, sucker punch is just stupid but i didnt know what else to put on and surprise priority can be nice in a pinch.
Has playing in SPL and tours in general had an impact on the way you approach rating?
i'd think it has. playing in SPL forces you to kind of take a different look at teambuilding and i think that it's really helped me look outside the box when it comes to rating teams. I guess i can best describe it as taking a look at checking certain mons through situations rather than just throwing on a mon that checks a certain threat, if that makes any sense haha.
Lastly, can you give us an example of a rate that exemplifies your particular style?
going back a bit cause again, there's like no NU RMTs. I think that this rate is one that shows my style pretty well. It doesn't really have the all-out formatting i used to put on my rates, but in a content sense it's very me: identify major threats, make changes accordingly, make some smaller optimizations that will help the team function better overall.
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Thanks for taking the time to do this! Feel free to leave any questions you'd like to ask Can below
well, i'm an 18 year old university student currently living in Ontario, Canada (although i've lived on the west coast as well oo). im a huge baseball fan (go jays o.o) and if im not on smogon, i'm usually hanging out w/ friends or watching baseball / baseball highlights haha.
What is your main tier? Do you rate teams from any other tiers?
My main tier and the only tier I rate is XY ORAS NU. I've rated some teams from other tiers in the past, but i don't usually since i don't feel like i have enough knowledge of the other ORAS metagames in order to make a solid rate.
When did you start rating and why?
I started rating back in XY NU (best tier ;_;), honestly because I was just lurking forums one day and saw that someone had posted a pretty mediocre NU trick room team. I myself had also been playing around with trick room at the time, so i decided to make a pretty comprehensive rate on it detailing my experiences with the playstyle and some possible improvements that he could have made. Later that day, i was approached by Soulgazer (an NU TR at the time) who told me that my rate was really good and that I should definitely keep rating teams, so I did.
Are there any raters whom you looked up to when you started rating?
i definitely looked up to soulgazer early on because he was supportive of me (as i said above), but as i started rating more I was really impressed with Blast's rates. His formatting was great and he provided just enough information to where it was both helpful and not a handful to read.
What do you most enjoy about rating?
The thing i most enjoy about rating is definitely the kind of "puzzle" that comes along with it. I treat each rate as a challenge and I love the fact that each team is different and has a different way of improving it, and figuring out each of these "puzzles" lets me improve as a rater and as a teambuilder myself.
Do you follow a process with your rates?
Usually when I start a rate, i'll just look the team over for any major weaknesses to common threats. I think it's important to have kind of a "checklist" in your head of the major threats in the tier atm. Once I address any major flaws, i'll just look for any smaller optimizations that will slightly improve the team / help against certain mons. With more solidly built teams, i'll usually just go right to the 2nd step and make those slight optimizations, because obviously the team already handles the major threats.
Do you have any words of advice for aspiring raters?
The biggest asset an aspiring rater can have is sound metagame knowledge imo. If you have a good understanding of the metagame (what beats what, what works well together, etc) then you can usually make a solid rate without understanding the nuances behind rating. Obviously if you have that down, then just learning the nuances of rating is huge (examples being don't try and change too much, try and keep your rates to a length where it's casually readable, having an appealing formatting in general), and learning all of those usually just comes from making rates and learning from experience.
Do you like the direction the forum is taking at the moment? If you could add or change something, what would it be?
I think that IB and the rest of the RMT staff are doing a great job atm. Although i don't usually contribute to RMT stuff, mainly because i'm pretty localized in NU.
What are your thoughts on the NU rating community? Do you have any ideas for how we could potentially boost our activity there?
The NU rating community is relatively small (just me and HJAD iirc), all the people that rated in XY (blast, montsegur, hollywood) have all retired from rating. I think the lack of activity just comes from a lack of decent NU RMTs to rate. I just browsed through the ORAS other teams section and saw 2 NU RMTs in the first 2 pages. It's hard to get activity in our tier's rating community if there's nothing to rate.
Do you have an RMT or a team you would like to share with us?
http://hastebin.com/imopovujay.md
this was my spl week 7 team when I played shaneghoul. It's a pretty standard looking balance with some creative sets like Taunt Special Steelix and the god SUCKER PUNCH Lanturn. The idea behind it was to use special lix to lure and break past common sd sceptile checks like weezing and sliggoo. Primeape gives me speed and a way to offensively pressure faster stuff like sceptile / swellow and it forms a neat core w/ skuntank since you trap all the annoying ghosts in NU. lanturn p much just checks fires provides a 2nd water resist, sucker punch is just stupid but i didnt know what else to put on and surprise priority can be nice in a pinch.
Has playing in SPL and tours in general had an impact on the way you approach rating?
i'd think it has. playing in SPL forces you to kind of take a different look at teambuilding and i think that it's really helped me look outside the box when it comes to rating teams. I guess i can best describe it as taking a look at checking certain mons through situations rather than just throwing on a mon that checks a certain threat, if that makes any sense haha.
Lastly, can you give us an example of a rate that exemplifies your particular style?
going back a bit cause again, there's like no NU RMTs. I think that this rate is one that shows my style pretty well. It doesn't really have the all-out formatting i used to put on my rates, but in a content sense it's very me: identify major threats, make changes accordingly, make some smaller optimizations that will help the team function better overall.
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Thanks for taking the time to do this! Feel free to leave any questions you'd like to ask Can below
