RMT of the Week V5: Week 16

[IronBullet]

RMT of the Week
co-hosted by Team Pokepals and Snowy.​

Ever wanted your team rated and noticed by a lot of people? Do you want all the efforts you put into testing your team, editing it and finalizing it to count? This is where RMT of the Week comes in! The aim of this project is to give people who put effort into making quality RMTs the attention they deserve. There are a lot of teams out there that are well-built and presented, but often left in the dark. Not anymore!

The concept is fairly simple:

• Every week, we will nominate a few teams as candidates for the RMT of the Week.
• These teams are put in a poll. Everyone can vote for the team they think is most deserving of the award.
• At the end of the week, the winner will be the team that receives the most votes.

So what's in it for the winners? Well, the winning team will be announced on social media. It will also be recorded in the Hall of Fame, which will be posted in the OP for each week, and people are encouraged to rate it. Winning the RMT of the Week also increases the chance of having your RMT added to Team Showcase, subject to review, since it brings it to the notice of the staff. Finally, the winner will have an opportunity to give a brief interview.

Now you're probably thinking, "Why would people rate this team in particular? After all, it's no different from any other team." Yeah, maybe. But this is the perfect opportunity for all you unbadged raters to draw attention to yourselves. If you post good rates for the RMT of the Week, something that most of the staff is going to look at, you increase your chances of earning the Team Rater

badge.

If you are interested in getting your team shortlisted, here are some things that you can do to increase your chances:

• Make sure your team is viable and effective: This one is self-explanatory. If your team doesn't fit into its tier or metagame, or lacks any kind of success, it won't have a high chance of being selected. It doesn't have to be archive worthy though, and it doesn't have to have peaked at #1; a moderately successful team can make it, but it has to work.
• Your team should be well-presented: Wouldn't you enjoy posting in a thread more if it was visually appealing? If you put effort into presenting your team attractively, people will be more willing to rate it. We appreciate it when you take time to improve the quality of your RMTs, as it enhances the quality of the forum.
• Be nice and receptive to people's opinions: No one likes to rate the team of a close-minded person!

For those whose teams are selected, don't ask anyone, be it friends or anyone else, on the forums or on PS! to vote for you. For friends of the people whose teams get selected, the same goes for you as well: please don't post the link in chat rooms to try and get people to vote.

The first time someone is caught cheating, their team will be disqualified and removed from the ongoing week. If someone is caught cheating for a second time, they will be permanently banned from the project.

Hall of Fame

Week 1:

[OU] Tripple Weather Is Stronk - Bluwing

Week 2:

[OU] Fight to the Finish - Team Pokepals

Week 3:

[UU] Rock 'N Roll Suicide - Hogg

Week 4:

[OU] Lord Cobalion and cute Mew - Costi

Week 5:

[UU] Real Friends - Shiba

Week 6:

[RU] Dance All Night - Feliburn

Week 7:

[AG] Philophobia - Dream Eater Gengar

Week 8:

[PU] 3005 - Dundies

Week 9:

[OU] Mexican Cena - Darkreaper215

Week 10:

[NU] i still play bp lol - iplaytennislol

Week 11:

[Ubers] Mega Mence is disgusting - Sweep

Week 12:

[PU] Ice Ice Baby - Paraplegic

Week 13:

[RBY] Memento /cpg/ - Bedschibaer

Week 14:

[UU] UU Stall - dodmen & hilarious

Week 15:

[UU] Handwritten - Mazz

Week 16 Nominees:

1. [OU] demons - p2

2. [OU] The Zero Requiem - Liones

3. [RU] Drop Pop Candy - Take an Azelfie

4. [PU] The Hunters - Sobi

5. [PU] birdbirdbirdbird - Mango Smoothie

6. [Balanced Hackmons] Underdog wreck - dsm77773

 

[IronBullet]

We caught up with last week's winner Mazz to ask him a few questions about his UU RMT, Handwritten.

1. Can you give a brief description of your team? What do you think is the reason behind its success?

Handwritten is an UnderUsed balance team built around Dragon Dance Salamence. The goal of the team is to help break opposing walls and sweepers via CB Heracross and LO Nidoking while Slowking, Florges, and Mega Aggron provide a reliable backbone and additional support via status, a cleric, and entry hazards respectively.

The team's success is mostly due in part to the effectiveness of balance teams in UnderUsed. The metagame has been so finely tuned and balanced since mid-XY that every playstyle is equally viable. Balance has the ability to check - and beat - other playstyles like HO, BO, or Stall. Using one of the tier's best offensive threats really helps push this team to a higher level. Dragon Dance Salamence simply just wins against opposing teams that either lack a Mamoswine / Mega Abomasnow or fail to keep them healthy once things like Forretress, Mega Aggron, and other defensive threats are eliminated or weakened.

Sucker Punch Nidoking is the best Alakazam check in UU btw. Defensively, it's slightly middling (don't try switching in, this just makes a mess of things), but the end result is spectacular.

2. Have you received any useful feedback for your team?

Handwritten actually hasn't garnered any feedback outside of the 50 some-odd likes its recieved, which has made tuning and tweaking it a bit difficult; I've had ideas but they all lead to more problems. I do like the highly-personal aspect of it though, it reminds me of owning a really junky old car: I'm the one left to fix it and because I know the ins and outs, I know specifically what she needs. Now its just a matter of getting things to stick.

Historically, the RMT forum has always been a reliable way to improve my teams or find inspiration for new ones. Back when I was a relatively new user I had BW OU, UU, and Ubers teams go through the RMT forum ad nauseam - any advice to help me improve was a blessing.

3. Is there any advice you'd like to give to future RMT posters?

Make your RMT worth reading and looking at. I've seen so many RMTs throughout the years that just look so boring: there's no passion, no love. That's your team. Make it stand out, make it eye-catching. Give the raters every incentive to look and think about your team. Plus, really pretty RMTs get lots of likes and can end up in the RMT showcase, so it's good for your ego :]

Most importantly, don't forget that those rating your team usually have a pretty good idea of what does what. Reading "X is STAB and hits A, B, and C" over and over sucks. It's dreadful. Tell the rater how you use that Pokemon, what it does for the team, why it's there, etc. Give your RMT some flare, and I guarantee that you'll get better results in less time. It may even help you identify some problems with your team, making the whole process of "fixing" your team easier.

Thanks for taking the time to do the interview man, and congrats again!

 

[IronBullet]

We also caught up with week 14's winner dodmen to ask him a few questions about his and hilarious's RMT, UU Stall.

1. Can you give a brief description of your team? What do you think is the reason behind its success?

It's basically a stall team that aims to beat the most common/dominant metagame trends. In short, Chesnaught and Alomomola wall most physical threats, Blissey walls most special threats, Salamence provides Defog support and checks most Fighting-types which can threaten the previous three (and gives us some useful speed against some threats like Nidoking, Chandelure, and Heracross), Steelix provides a necessary counter to some key threats like Slurpuff and provides Stealth Rock, and Sableye gives us another check to some Fighting-types and helps a ton vs opposing defensive teams.

Overall I would say it works because it was built with all of the top threats in mind. We have at least two checks for a large portion of the metagame;it will be hard for us to be overwhelmed by a core of, for example, Entei + Mamoswine + Mega Swampert, because we have multiples ways of beating all of those things. Also I think that a lot of UU building focuses around beating the myriad of dangerous offensive threats in the tier, and this means that defensive builds like this one will have an advantage.

2. What makes a particularly good RMT in your opinion? Is there any advice you'd like to give to our posters on how to write effective RMTs?

This might be just me but I feel like some people try to do too much with their RMT, like formatting-wise, and they try to make it really flashy with colors and fonts and stuff when in my opinion it should be mainly focused around presenting the team. In particular, I absolutely hate when people right-justify every other set in their team. Maybe I'm too biased because I do a lot of my Smogon browsing on mobile. Also, I think that a good RMT recognizes and presents the flaws in the team. No team is perfect, but I think some RMTs try to make them out to be. I see a lot of threatlists that say "X Pokemon can be annoying" when really it 2HKOs the whole team and outspeeds 4/6.

Also, presenting your team's performance in the current metagame as opposed to rattling off movesets and EVs like an analysis definitely makes RMTs 100x more interesting and enjoyable to read.

3. Are there any recent influential and successful UU builds that you think might be worthy of a spot in the archive?

There isn't a Suicune balance team in the archive right now, and I think that's influential enough to deserve a spot. Possibly with the tried and true Florges / Suicune / Forretress / Aero core, although Aerolyn has something pretty similar. Still though, Suicune balance should definitely get into the archive before ORAS ends, the Roar set specifically became a huge deal over the course of ORAS. I think a really good / well-built Alakazam team would fit perfectly in the archive, but I haven't noticed any yet.

Thanks for taking the time to do this man, and congrats again!

 

[IronBullet]

p2 wins with his OU RMT demons, congrats man! Tweeted, give his team a like and rate it if possible :)