byulharang
formerly Holy Ghost
Approved by Nayrz with idea from Arii Stella
Banner by my good friend Six
Welcome to Ubers Player of the Week! I'll be interviewing top Ubers players that have had success and are respected in the community. You will be able to ask questions to the player I interview by commenting on this post. Everyone cannot be interviewed but you can VM me or DM on Discord suggestions, hope you enjoy!
orch
Favorite Pokemon?
I liked how it looks when I played Diamond. I was also impressed by how it was able to wall stuff and put stuff to sleep with Hypnosis. It was the gateway pokemon to competitive pokemon for me.
Most known for?
I'm mostly known in the community for being Gothitelle user and kinda an Ubers meme user, and to be clear I don't see myself that way lol. I started playing competitive pokemon in DPP on Shoddy. I didn't play much back then. At ending of BW2, I decided to play competitive pokemon much more and I started to really analyze the game. I was able to apply my analysis for XY and that's when I became more widely known in the community. I won an UPL game in three turns, and that gave me some notoriety.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ubers-10405
I kept up my competitive drive throughout XY and I became friendly with many people in the community. Looking back, XY was a great time and I had a lot of fun with my circle of people playing eachothers. Genesects was a blast. I was also very active through ORAS. I spammed Hypnosis Gengar a lot towards the ending of ORAS. I'm pretty sure that I was responsible for the sleep clause change. I'm most known for my ORAS abilities and that's the primary metagame that I play for team tournaments.
I also was pretty competent in SM. I was able to make to top 16 in seasonals when STAG clan was in the full force with their conspiracy to rig tournaments. I managed to beat 3 STAG members in row before losing to Thimo and Leru. I think that my SM is really good, but it's a shame that mid-gens are dead metas.
I like orchids.
My thought is that SS current meta has a lot of potential. I think that a lot of people are not valuing the role of protect in this metagame properly. It gives you ability to massively weaken Dynamax at cost of one slot along with other general utility. However, protect techs don't address the behemoth in the room: Zygarde. Right now, I think that it's worth to get rid of dynamax just to nerf Zygarde because my god, that thing is truly uncompetitive. There is basically only two pokemon that has any chance of beating Zygarde: Whimiscott and Tapu Bulu. Even these pokemon can be cheesed by glare parahax or pp stalled by Eternatus teammate. I don't think that Calyrex-S is deserving of a ban, but I think that it should be given a test. The community has strong feelings about Calyrex-S, and I think that it's a good idea to give community an outlet to express their feelings. Calyrex-S has a bunch of viable switch ins and it is limited to offensive techs with limited utility as cleric. Some people compare Calyrex-S to Mega Rayquaza, and I think that Mega Rayquaza ban was a mistake. I would like to see more inclusivity in the future direction of tiering rather than excluding mechanics/pokemons. I think that inclusivity is the spirit of Ubers while making sure that the meta is the titans of pokemons. So, I would love to see a suspect test for species clause. Removing species clause would fix a lot of issues with MU in SS imo.
My favorite gen is 6th. I really liked XY and ORAS. I liked weak mega mechanics and I enjoyed the wide range of choices. Defog buff absolutely changed the game of pokemon, and I love the change. XY metagame was a slow burn metagame and I enjoy playing the long game. Although in hindsight, XY was an immature metagame. ORAS is quicker paced. I really like how bulky offense is the peak archetype in ORAS which is one of the most fun playstyle to play. I also find the back and forth changes in momentum in ORAS to be exciting and I enjoy spectating ORAS games.
My least favorite gen is 5th. I don't like how strong spikes is in BW. If you click spikes in BW in early game, then you will be in the top 1 percentile of the game lol. I dislike how BW games are largely decided in first 5 turns due to the spikes metagaming. Rest of game is mostly hoping for chokes/haxes/lucky doubles. I gotta give props to BW for the sleep mechanics. BW definitely has the best sleep mechanics out of all gens. I like how you can reliably keep your pokemon asleep and spamming sleep talk.
What is your favorite type of team to use in oras and why is it your favorite generation?
(click for import)This is my favorite team to use in ORAS because it wins. Classic Dittelle is a powerful team that revolves around supporting a Groundceus to sweep. Groundceus is criminally underrated in ORAS and it is definitely one of top three pokemon in metagame. This team is so good that people are forced to theorize incredibly fringe sets such as Calm mind Ghostceus with Fire blast to beat this team. Even then, these theories still have ~30-40% chance of losing to this team. Gen 6 is my favorite generation because I find metagame to be endlessly rewarding for innovators. People who choose to believe in the memes of standard offenses being the best team will quickly find themselves losing to simple anti-meta teams. Gen 6 is a generation where if you put in effort of creating new teams, you will be quickly rewarded for doing so. I like that.
Do you agree with the Mega Rayquaza ban in Oras? Do you think anything deserves a ban or is the meta as fine at it'll get?
I don't agree with Mega Rayquaza ban. There are excellent and highly viable checks and counters for Mega Rayquaza. I think that it should have had a chance to be tested by Ubers community. I would have voted Don't Ban personally. I think that ORAS Ubers is fine as it is now, but it would be interesting to see inclusive suspects such as a Species clause suspect, Mega Rayquaza suspect, and so on.
What are the most overrated and underrated Pokemon in Oras in your opinion?
Oh geez, that's hard. There's a lot of overrated pokemon in ORAS imo. I think that all but one in A+ ranks in the final ORAS ubers viability thread are highly overrated: Ho-Oh, Deoxys-Attack, and Arceus-Water. They're all B+ at maximum in my personal opinion. I think that Ditto is the most underrated pokemon. It's currently ranked at C+ but it should be at least A+.
Do you think ORAS is unfairly hated?
No. I just think that it isn't the cup of tea for everyone. My intuition is telling me that ORAS ubers has some of the most watched and commented on ubers games. I'm not worried about haters.
I don't think that ORAS is any harder than any other Ubers generation other than current generation Ubers. It's usually just a matter of effort, time, and networking for people to learn new Ubers generation. I think that the current generation Ubers will always be the easiest generation to break in because of massive networking happening in real time. I don't think that ORAS is any harder than any other generation to be good and consistent in. ORAS is far from being solved, and I'm confident that it will never be solved. All teams have their own weaknesses that can be exploited ad infinitum which leads to constantly changing trends. I believe that 2020 ORAS in UPL shows clearly that ORAS Ubers is a constantly evolving metagame.
Congratulations on winning UPL with the Dapper Dracovishes! How was your experience throughout the tour and what was your prep like?
Thank you! I really enjoyed my time on Dapper Dracovishes. I had a lot of fun with playing with my teammates. Shout outs to Dave for drafting the winning team! I prepped a lot for my games and my teammates' games. I gathered my opponents' usage data and replays from previous PL's. I would watch their games and try to observe their patterns. Then, I built teams from scratch and playtested with Abs, Carl, and PG and apply their feedback to improve my teams. I also built most of PG's ORAS teams for his BO3's.
You played in Most Wanted with the Cutthroat Corviknights, how did you feel about the new tournament format? Did you have a fun season?
I did have fun. I know that my record in the first installment of MW is garbage. I intend to improve my record. I played and theorymonned a lot with terracotta and absdaddy to push the boundaries of Pre-DLC meta. I think that Mr. 378 drafted a great team and I had tons of fun. I would like to play again. The format has potential to be an interesting format. The format just needs some refining for the rough edges. Minority has proposed fixes which I think are great and will improve the format for the next installment.
Generally, I think that Ubers tiering direction has been too exclusionary since BW tiering. I would like to see a balance between exclusionary and inclusive tests rather than extremes of either side. I think that ORAS Mega Rayquaza sticks out for me because it was not decided by community and it was incredibly dramatic. It was triggered by a salty BW player posting in secret badged only forum and escalated out of the control right after Ubers leadership rigged STAG suspect to ban STAG. I'm really happy with how Ubers tiering has been since ORAS. The votes have been handled well and I feel like decisions that have been made are well justified.
Favorite game you've witnessed?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ubers-733139613
It was a really thrilling experience to watch my UPL teammate terracotta sweep 6 pokemon with 1 HP left in real time!
Any advice to new players looking to break into Ubers?
If you're totally new: my advice is to grab a sample and ladder until you hit ~1500's. 1500's is when people on ladder generally start to play the game. Befriend with other people with 1500+ rating. Try to figure out why you've lost game and ask yourself if you could've done anything to change the outcome. Ask questions in Ubers room on PS. Don't shy from the discussions and don't be worried about being wrong. If you know how to play competitive pokemon in general, then you should join Ubers discord and just join the conversation. Watch and talk about the tournament games. Become friends with people who plays Ubers a lot. They'll tell you the right ideas to shortcut a lot of trial and error.
This is my favorite team to use in ORAS because it wins. Classic Dittelle is a powerful team that revolves around supporting a Groundceus to sweep. Groundceus is criminally underrated in ORAS and it is definitely one of top three pokemon in metagame. This team is so good that people are forced to theorize incredibly fringe sets such as Calm mind Ghostceus with Fire blast to beat this team. Even then, these theories still have ~30-40% chance of losing to this team.
I don't like eating Tuna.
Banner by my good friend Six
Welcome to Ubers Player of the Week! I'll be interviewing top Ubers players that have had success and are respected in the community. You will be able to ask questions to the player I interview by commenting on this post. Everyone cannot be interviewed but you can VM me or DM on Discord suggestions, hope you enjoy!
orch
Favorite Pokemon?
I liked how it looks when I played Diamond. I was also impressed by how it was able to wall stuff and put stuff to sleep with Hypnosis. It was the gateway pokemon to competitive pokemon for me.
Most known for?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ubers-10405
I kept up my competitive drive throughout XY and I became friendly with many people in the community. Looking back, XY was a great time and I had a lot of fun with my circle of people playing eachothers. Genesects was a blast. I was also very active through ORAS. I spammed Hypnosis Gengar a lot towards the ending of ORAS. I'm pretty sure that I was responsible for the sleep clause change. I'm most known for my ORAS abilities and that's the primary metagame that I play for team tournaments.
I also was pretty competent in SM. I was able to make to top 16 in seasonals when STAG clan was in the full force with their conspiracy to rig tournaments. I managed to beat 3 STAG members in row before losing to Thimo and Leru. I think that my SM is really good, but it's a shame that mid-gens are dead metas.
Any backstory on your name?
I like orchids.
What are your thoughts on the SS current meta? Do you have a stance on the current suspect test for Dynamax and do you think anything else such as
calyrex-s is deserving of a ban/test?
calyrex-s is deserving of a ban/test?
My thought is that SS current meta has a lot of potential. I think that a lot of people are not valuing the role of protect in this metagame properly. It gives you ability to massively weaken Dynamax at cost of one slot along with other general utility. However, protect techs don't address the behemoth in the room: Zygarde. Right now, I think that it's worth to get rid of dynamax just to nerf Zygarde because my god, that thing is truly uncompetitive. There is basically only two pokemon that has any chance of beating Zygarde: Whimiscott and Tapu Bulu. Even these pokemon can be cheesed by glare parahax or pp stalled by Eternatus teammate. I don't think that Calyrex-S is deserving of a ban, but I think that it should be given a test. The community has strong feelings about Calyrex-S, and I think that it's a good idea to give community an outlet to express their feelings. Calyrex-S has a bunch of viable switch ins and it is limited to offensive techs with limited utility as cleric. Some people compare Calyrex-S to Mega Rayquaza, and I think that Mega Rayquaza ban was a mistake. I would like to see more inclusivity in the future direction of tiering rather than excluding mechanics/pokemons. I think that inclusivity is the spirit of Ubers while making sure that the meta is the titans of pokemons. So, I would love to see a suspect test for species clause. Removing species clause would fix a lot of issues with MU in SS imo.
Favorite and Least favorite gen?
My favorite gen is 6th. I really liked XY and ORAS. I liked weak mega mechanics and I enjoyed the wide range of choices. Defog buff absolutely changed the game of pokemon, and I love the change. XY metagame was a slow burn metagame and I enjoy playing the long game. Although in hindsight, XY was an immature metagame. ORAS is quicker paced. I really like how bulky offense is the peak archetype in ORAS which is one of the most fun playstyle to play. I also find the back and forth changes in momentum in ORAS to be exciting and I enjoy spectating ORAS games.
My least favorite gen is 5th. I don't like how strong spikes is in BW. If you click spikes in BW in early game, then you will be in the top 1 percentile of the game lol. I dislike how BW games are largely decided in first 5 turns due to the spikes metagaming. Rest of game is mostly hoping for chokes/haxes/lucky doubles. I gotta give props to BW for the sleep mechanics. BW definitely has the best sleep mechanics out of all gens. I like how you can reliably keep your pokemon asleep and spamming sleep talk.
What is your favorite type of team to use in oras and why is it your favorite generation?
(click for import)
Do you agree with the Mega Rayquaza ban in Oras? Do you think anything deserves a ban or is the meta as fine at it'll get?
I don't agree with Mega Rayquaza ban. There are excellent and highly viable checks and counters for Mega Rayquaza. I think that it should have had a chance to be tested by Ubers community. I would have voted Don't Ban personally. I think that ORAS Ubers is fine as it is now, but it would be interesting to see inclusive suspects such as a Species clause suspect, Mega Rayquaza suspect, and so on.
What are the most overrated and underrated Pokemon in Oras in your opinion?
Oh geez, that's hard. There's a lot of overrated pokemon in ORAS imo. I think that all but one in A+ ranks in the final ORAS ubers viability thread are highly overrated: Ho-Oh, Deoxys-Attack, and Arceus-Water. They're all B+ at maximum in my personal opinion. I think that Ditto is the most underrated pokemon. It's currently ranked at C+ but it should be at least A+.
Do you think ORAS is unfairly hated?
No. I just think that it isn't the cup of tea for everyone. My intuition is telling me that ORAS ubers has some of the most watched and commented on ubers games. I'm not worried about haters.
How do you think Oras's skill cap fares to other Uber generations? Do you consider it a harder generation to be good and consistent in or not? Would you say it is a solved meta?
I don't think that ORAS is any harder than any other Ubers generation other than current generation Ubers. It's usually just a matter of effort, time, and networking for people to learn new Ubers generation. I think that the current generation Ubers will always be the easiest generation to break in because of massive networking happening in real time. I don't think that ORAS is any harder than any other generation to be good and consistent in. ORAS is far from being solved, and I'm confident that it will never be solved. All teams have their own weaknesses that can be exploited ad infinitum which leads to constantly changing trends. I believe that 2020 ORAS in UPL shows clearly that ORAS Ubers is a constantly evolving metagame.
Congratulations on winning UPL with the Dapper Dracovishes! How was your experience throughout the tour and what was your prep like?
Thank you! I really enjoyed my time on Dapper Dracovishes. I had a lot of fun with playing with my teammates. Shout outs to Dave for drafting the winning team! I prepped a lot for my games and my teammates' games. I gathered my opponents' usage data and replays from previous PL's. I would watch their games and try to observe their patterns. Then, I built teams from scratch and playtested with Abs, Carl, and PG and apply their feedback to improve my teams. I also built most of PG's ORAS teams for his BO3's.
You played in Most Wanted with the Cutthroat Corviknights, how did you feel about the new tournament format? Did you have a fun season?
I did have fun. I know that my record in the first installment of MW is garbage. I intend to improve my record. I played and theorymonned a lot with terracotta and absdaddy to push the boundaries of Pre-DLC meta. I think that Mr. 378 drafted a great team and I had tons of fun. I would like to play again. The format has potential to be an interesting format. The format just needs some refining for the rough edges. Minority has proposed fixes which I think are great and will improve the format for the next installment.
How do you feel about Ubers tiering decisions as a whole across the generations? Do you think any stick out in a negative way?
Generally, I think that Ubers tiering direction has been too exclusionary since BW tiering. I would like to see a balance between exclusionary and inclusive tests rather than extremes of either side. I think that ORAS Mega Rayquaza sticks out for me because it was not decided by community and it was incredibly dramatic. It was triggered by a salty BW player posting in secret badged only forum and escalated out of the control right after Ubers leadership rigged STAG suspect to ban STAG. I'm really happy with how Ubers tiering has been since ORAS. The votes have been handled well and I feel like decisions that have been made are well justified.
Favorite game you've witnessed?
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7ubers-733139613
It was a really thrilling experience to watch my UPL teammate terracotta sweep 6 pokemon with 1 HP left in real time!
What do you love and hate the most about ubers?
I love building Ubers teams the most. I like to think about what can win and seeing it actually winning the games. I don't really hate anything about Ubers lol. If I hated something about Ubers, I wouldn't be here.
Any advice to new players looking to break into Ubers?
If you're totally new: my advice is to grab a sample and ladder until you hit ~1500's. 1500's is when people on ladder generally start to play the game. Befriend with other people with 1500+ rating. Try to figure out why you've lost game and ask yourself if you could've done anything to change the outcome. Ask questions in Ubers room on PS. Don't shy from the discussions and don't be worried about being wrong. If you know how to play competitive pokemon in general, then you should join Ubers discord and just join the conversation. Watch and talk about the tournament games. Become friends with people who plays Ubers a lot. They'll tell you the right ideas to shortcut a lot of trial and error.
This is my favorite team to use in ORAS because it wins. Classic Dittelle is a powerful team that revolves around supporting a Groundceus to sweep. Groundceus is criminally underrated in ORAS and it is definitely one of top three pokemon in metagame. This team is so good that people are forced to theorize incredibly fringe sets such as Calm mind Ghostceus with Fire blast to beat this team. Even then, these theories still have ~30-40% chance of losing to this team.
Personal Question: Most unpopular opinion?
I don't like eating Tuna.
=
Thank you Orch for answering these questions! Feel free to ask more questions in the thread below! This is the final interview I will be uploading, maybe more in the future. Thanks everyone for participating in both answering questions and asking. Unfortunately I cannot interview everyone as it would be pretty impossible, many people deserve one. More down the road? :)
Thank you Orch for answering these questions! Feel free to ask more questions in the thread below! This is the final interview I will be uploading, maybe more in the future. Thanks everyone for participating in both answering questions and asking. Unfortunately I cannot interview everyone as it would be pretty impossible, many people deserve one. More down the road? :)