Welcome to the Featured Rater project! This is a series of interviews where we ask official 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 Snowy. and myself. Our thirteenth interviewee is -Clone-, a respected rater and tutor who hosted his own OU interview series for a long time.
Tell us a little bit about your life outside Smogon.i'm an 18 year old college student attending college in pennsylvania. i'm a criminal justice major and want to go into law enforcement upon graduation. my ultimate goal is to work in the swat department for the chicago pd. aside from that, i like star wars and game of thrones. i spend my free time hanging out with friends or binge watching netflix. i'm currently on futurama right now.
How did you come up with your name?
old name was cloneblazer12. clone came from the clones in star wars, and blazer was the nickname of my blaziken in emerald. 12 was the age i was when i made this name. i shortened it to -clone- because clone was taken and people call me clone all the time. hopefully a certain someone can pull a few strings for me so i can get the name Clone pls
What is your main tier? Do you rate teams from any other tiers?
ou. idk any other tiers well enough so if i were to rate a team from a different tier i'd probably make the team worse
When did you start rating and why?
i wanted something to do in my free rime over the summer and i remembered that i rated beforehand several months prior. i felt confident enough in my knowledge of ou so i decided to help people to relieve my boredom. this dweeb named Celticpride went over my rates and told me they were good so i stuck with it.
Are there any raters who you looked up to when you started rating?
as previously mentioned, celticpride helped me out. i guess i looked up to him in that sense? i really just did my own thing when it came to rating cuz i was told i was good at it.
ib is also cool
What do you most enjoy about rating?
helping people who really don't know what they are doing when they post a team. i was there once and i didn't have the same help so i sort of feel obligated to at least attempt to rate those "godawful teams" as they're humbly known as.
Do you follow a process with your rates?
- identify the focus of the team
- identify threats
- formulate a way to rectify weaknesses to those threats while also not opening up any major (keyword here) new weaknesses
- make small adjustments to slightly improve either individual sets or other small weaknesses of the team
- review the rate to ensure it isn't total horseshit
- post rate
Do you have any words of advice for aspiring raters out there?
make sure you know what you're talking about before making random changes to teams. it does the op no good if all you do is make bad changes and don't improve the team. i don't want this to discourage anyone from rating with this, but i wouldn't just jump in and start rating if you can't get past the 1400s on the showdown ladder.
also, please ask for help if you're unsure if your rates are good enough. all the official team raters are approachable enough and honest enough to tell you how your rates are. if you don't believe me, then you can even ask me personally through a forum pm. we are more than happy to point you in the right direction or give you feedback to help you improve. please trust me on this ^^
finally, make sure you keep the team's original focus in mind when you do rate. changing a hyper offense team to have a ferrothorn to patch up an azumarill weakness is generally not a good idea. ho doesn't need switch ins to everything. it's ho.
Do you like the direction the RMT forum is taking at the moment? If you could change something, what would it be?
i have no qualms with it. there's enough raters to last the forum for a good while, and that's something i like. i wouldn't really change anything tbh
Has your experience with rating teams had an influence on the way you play?
i actually learned how to teambuild eons better through both rating and building for the ou workshop. as for playing, not really. i guess i'm better at guessing sets on team preview?
As a former interviewer yourself, how are you enjoying our Featured Rater Series? Is there anything more you would like to see from the series?
it's cool. it's still young so i don't really have an answer to the second part of the question yet.
Do you think there's any way to encourage more successful tour players, and tour players in general, to post their teams, considering the current lack of ORAS OU teams in the archive?
no. if they don't want to do something, then they won't. all you can do is ask and hope for the best.
What's your opinion on the current state of the OU metagame? Are there any popular cores or trends that you've noticed among recently posted RMTs? And are there any Pokemon that you think are currently underrated and deserve more attention?
wish you asked me 3 weeks ago back when i still played daily. i honestly haven't played much lately due to tiem constraints and a waning interest in the game. all i have really noticed from watching olt and smogon tour replays is that balance isn't dead and GOTH STALL NEEDS TO GO OML
use nidoking people. i promise it's good
Can you give us an example of a rate that exemplifies your particular style?
oh god.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/volt-turn-team-help.3552158/#post-6466286
like all my rates, it's pretty short and to the point, and it keeps the focus of the team in mind. i'm not good at explaining old rates so i can't say much more about it. sorry =[
finding this was way harder than it should have been. there needs to be a way to click the # of posts you have to go to a list of said posts. i'm sure i have a better one out there somewhere but i have too many posts for my own good.
Lastly, do you have an RMT or a team you would like to share with us?
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/nothing-stopping-me-2k-rmt.3550305/
best nidoking team on the market
------------
Thanks for taking the time to do this man! Feel free to leave any questions you have for him below. See you all next time
