Rate of the Week V3: Week 17

[Enki]

Rate of the Week
​

Welcome to Rate of the Week! This is a project that looks to bring quality individual rates into the spotlight and recognizes the hard work of unbadged raters. Here's how it will work:

• Each week, official Team Raters will be paying close attention to the RMT forum and reading the rates posted in their respective tiers. They will then shortlist a few which will be in contention for the Rate of the Week award.
• From the pool of shortlisted rates, one will be chosen which most exemplifies the qualities of an excellent rate. That rater will be the winner for that particular tier!
• A post will be made by an official TR who specialises in that tier, explaining how and why the particular rate won. This will allow aspiring raters to gain an idea of what constitutes high-quality rates, and hopefully incorporate those aspects into their own rates.
• There will be multiple winners every week, one from OU and a couple from other tiers depending on the quality of the rates posted. We hope that in this way we can expand rating activity in less popular tiers, while maintaining a weekly OU winner.
• Official Team Raters are eligible to win, but not more than once. Unbadged raters can win the award multiple times.

So what's in it for the winners? Well, they will earn a place in the Hall of Fame, which will be kept in the OP of every thread, and will earn more consideration for the Ladybug

and Team Rater

badges. Also, after gaining three places in the Hall of Fame, a rater will be eligible to earn voice status in the RMT room on PS! on the condition that they've shown an interest in getting involved.

We hope that this project will encourage people to put more effort into their rates and become better and more experienced raters, which will consequently increase the quality as well as the quantity of rates in the forum. Good luck to you all!

Hall of Fame

Week #1 - Toon Linked (OU)
Week #2 - Nedor (OU), Arifeen (UU)
Week #3 - Fireburn (Ubers), Do A Bibarel (UU)
Week #4 - AM (OU), Raiza (PU), Kiyo (NU)
Week #5 - FlamingVictini (OU)
Week #6 - Cyndequil. (UU)
Week #7 - BreloomMyHomie (OU)
Week #8 - FlamingVictini (OU)
Week #9 - oml it's too ez (OU), Cyndequil. (UU), MrAldo (RU)
Week #10 - Nedor (OU), Cyndequil. (UU), Cranham (Ubers), Lax (Monotype)
Week #11 - AM (OU)
Week #12 - Lange (OU), Amaroq (UU)
Week #13 - all falls down (UU)
Week #14 - Manipulative (UU)
Week #15 - mil (OU)
Week #16 - Tricking (OU)
Week #17 - Hector Hard Mode (OU), Christo. (UU)

 

[feen]

This week's UU winner is Christo.! His rate was very concise with a well written format. First, he changed Reuniclus to Hoopa, because unlike Reuniclus, Hoopa had a STAB move in Shadow Ball, and coupled with a higher Special Attack stat, acts as a better Trick Room attacker. Moreover, Hoopa also retains the ability to set up Trick Room on a lot of specially offensive Pokémon due to its high Special Defense.

His next suggestion was changing Life Orb Swampert to Colbur Berry Slowking, while running Stealth Rock over Hidden Power Grass on Camerupt to retain the move. Slowking gives the team another Trick Room setter, as the team used to have two, which are not enough in a full Trick Room team. Moreover, Slowking having Nasty Plot means that it also acts as a setup sweeper, giving a win condition to the team. Colbur Berry was chosen as the item in order to allow Slowking deal with Choice Band Krookodile, as the team was weak to it.

For his great and in-depth rate, Christo. has earned himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. Congrats!

 

[Tricking]

This week's OU winner is Hector Hard Mode. He wrote a well-formatted and complete rate with great suggestions that showed good metagame knowledge.

He started off outlining all the threats that the team struggled with in the current metagame, such as fast Scizor-Mega, Electric-types, Weavile, Breloom, Sableye-Mega stall, and Spikes stacking teams. Therefore he suggested to change Metagross' set in other to deal with the annoying Ferrothorn by simply replacing Earthquake with Hammer Arm; he also said that Pursuit would be helpful against latwins which are kinda annoying for the team. He suggested to put Grass Knot alternatively in order to beat Quagsire automatically improving team's matchup against stall teams.

After that, he made the best change in his rate: in fact he suggested to run Naive Expert Belt Kyurem-Black with Hidden Power Fire. The aim of this set is to lure the Choice Scarf variant, while being able to destroy Scizor after the switch into Ice Beam. The same applies for bulky Water-types that are KOed by Fusion Bolt after a bit of prior damage.

Then he focused on covering as many threats as possible without changing the team structure too much. Since the team is offensively-oriented, he suggested to add Keldeo over Slowbro in order to check the annoying Bisharp and revenge kill Lopunny-Mega and Diancie-Mega. Though, the removal of Slowbro caused a glaring weakness to Excadrill, he therefore suggested to use Double Dance Landorus-Therian which has the same potential as Serperior in regard to lategame sweeps. Finally, in order to pressure Sableye-Mega and stallish builds, he went for offensive Magma Storm Heatran to have more chances of setting up Stealth rock pressuring opposing bulky teams.

Thanks to his rate, Hector Hard Mode has earned himself a spot in the Hall of Fame. Congratulations =)