NU Player of the Week [Week 11 - ryan]

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Shadestep

volition immanent
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnus

ryan
Favorite Pokemon: Wingull
Most used Pokemon: Xatu
Most known for: my humble and understated personality

Shadestep: Hey there, ryan. How are you?
ryan: good!

Shadestep:
Is ryan your real name? If not, why did you choose this name?
ryan: yea it's my real name. I started out on Smogon as Treecko, which isn't my favorite Pokemon or my favorite starter, because it was the name people knew me by on PO. I was Treecko37 there btw, not the Treecko sans numbers who was well-known on PO at the time. I picked that name ironically but then it stuck. I switched to hollywood because at the time I barely even liked Pokemon and didn't want to be named after one, and I chose that name because it was a nickname some irl friends had given me back in the day. switched to ryan cuz i was feelin myself.

Shadestep:
You’ve been around on Smogon for about 4 years. Have you been active ever since you joined?
ryan: jesus christ time flies. I didn't do anything on the forums when I first joined because I started out as a PO kid. Eventually I got PS voice via the randbats challenge while I was drunk laddering. A lot of my PO friends at the time had quit, and when I tried to branch out and get into the competitive scene, I got kinda shut out because I hadn't done anything to prove myself at the time. I eventually joined the first NUPL where Raseri picked me up because I'd donked him in a DPP LC tourney and went undefeated. By the end of it, I'd made a lot of friends on Smogon so I just kinda stuck around.

Shadestep:
What got you into NU? Was it the first tier you played at a highly competitive level?
ryan: When I first started playing competitively, I played most of the tiers pretty evenly. Somewhere along the way, I got really into NU and started focusing my attention there. What really got me into NU was laddering for the Dark Horse challenge, where I'd peaked somewhere in the top 10 with a 20something-0 record. Once I figured out that I could actually hold my own, I really wanted to keep going.

Shadestep:
You’ve done an incredible amount of work here on Smogon. What is the thing you enjoy doing most?
ryan: Before I took my leave, I had moved more into an advisory role than a proactive contributing one. I'm kinda still there now, though I've done more direct contributing since I've come back then the few months before I left. This is where I feel most comfortable. I could write a bunch of analyses or run a bunch of threads, but what's the end goal there? It's fun for me, but it's more fun to help other people do those things. You get the feeling of appreciation from the person you help, and you get to see them help others in turn. What I'm getting at here is that the most fun thing for me is to help develop others into the users (and even just people in some instances) that I know they have the potential to be. I've already gotten the great feeling that comes from contributing throughout the site, and now I get to help others do that.

Shadestep:
What made you come back eventually, after leaving Smogon for a while?
ryan: Funny story actually. I'd just decided I was going to stop taking breaks at work with a friend because we were the fucking worst when we were on break together and would come back like 5 minutes late and I needed to get my act together. So I was riding solo on break, sitting in my car with nothing to do. Browsed Facebook for a while, got tired of that, and started checking out the Smogworld again. It's not that funny in retrospect. I realized I'd missed it! The things that made me quit were all still present (working 40+ hours a week left me with little free time, and the community stopped feeling supportive and started feeling more cutthroat), but I figured if I made time for Smogon and didn't spent it dealing with the people who made me hate it, I'd enjoy it again.

Shadestep:
What tier besides NU do you play and enjoy the most?
ryan: hnng idk i have a love/hate relationship with most of them. ou, uu, and ru are all sparingly good but all of them have something that keeps me from getting invested. bw ou is fun in a "i have the urge to play rain or zam" kinda way. but there's a lot of stuff that should be suspected that won't be suspected this gen that really prevent me from loving any of our tiers.

Shadestep:
Do you enjoy having the responsibilities you have on this website?
ryan: responsibility on this site has just become part of the experience for me. i have my own laissez faire approach to things and like to let people get into trouble and learn for themselves rather than directly interfering when i know stuff is gonna go south. but sometimes you kind of have to take a smackdown approach because some people just don't get it. I'm trying to go back to school next year to be a teacher because this stuff comes pretty naturally to me. it's hard for me not to have responsibilities because i like to fix things (and because i always think i know best even when i don't, which is where my "learning from your own mistakes" ideology comes into play).

Shadestep:
What do you like most on Smogon? What made you stick around for so long?
ryan: I like being a part of something bigger, and there's no better place on the internet for that than Smogon, at least not for me. you can go it alone on here and do well, but no matter where you go, there's a sense of community. each lower tier has at least one main group of people, ou has tons of groups, c&c is a team effort, the best team raters do their thing with the interests of the builder in mind and work off of other rates. it's all about cooperation, and channeling the best parts of each person in a group is a really special thing.

Shadestep:
As the NU tier leader, you obviously know a whole lot about the tier. Is there anything you think is worthy of a suspect or potentially broken?
ryan: a handful of things have crossed my mind, the most realistic of which the council has been discussing. there aren't many overwhelming pokemon in the tier, so you have to look at it in a different way. rather than thinking "what is too difficult to handle in this tier" you have to think "what makes this tier less fun" and go from there. you shouldn't just suspect and/or ban something just because it's not fun, but it's a good thing to measure because if something isn't fun to play against, there's usually an underlying reason for it.

look at some past suspects for examples. tauros is a pokemon that has never been impossible to deal with, but it's also never fun to play against because it's very difficult to check both defensively and offensively. it simultaneously dicks on offensive and defensive teams really easily, which leads to nu becoming a very bulky offense/balance-oriented metagame. that's fine depending on your approach to tiering, but i've always looked at each suspect and asked myself "would the game be better without it?" and go from there. axing tauros would allow players to explore other archetypes more easily and it would ease the pressures of checking a bunch of offensive powerhouses in only six slots, which is why i pushed for a suspect and voted to ban it.

right now, i think xatu and garbodor are two pokemon that make the tier less fun because they do very much what tauros does. garbodor's ability to come in on a lot of stuff and set up spikes and tspikes encourages rapid spin and defog support even on teams without anything weak to stealth rock, and those types of pokemon fit best on balance/bulky offense archetypes. xatu is kind of a different beast altogether that limits the potential of stall in the tier and has played an integral role in other suspects (combusken is the obvious one here, but other pokemon such as sawk and typhlosion would have had more counterplay without xatu around). unfortunately, we only have about a month and a half left of oras, so the time we have to explore not-so-obvious suspects is limited and i don't think it's feasible to be able to get a concrete answer to the question as to whether or not they are truly broken with the time we have.

Shadestep: Any underrated or overlooked Pokemon you like to use in NU?
ryan: i love using weird shit. clefairy has been receiving some more attention lately, but i think cm twave is a really powerful set that deserves a lot more usage. i also think simisage is lowkey brilliant right now. life orb/specs leaf storm is a huge nuke in a tier where the most common grass resists are stuff like garbodor and skuntank, and the others (charizard/scyther/magmortar) all take a lot from or die to hp rock. we don't have many immediately threatening grass-types, so i think simisage is in a good spot in the meta.

Shadestep:
How does your hard work on here blend in with your social life? Do your friends and family know you play Pokemon? Are you ashamed of publicly stating that you play Pokemon?
ryan: i don't take it too seriously, so i don't really even think to talk about it with most of my friends and family. i was briefly dating a guy a while back who thought it was awesome that i played competitive pokemon, so you know that relationship had to get a swift axe.. i talked to my brother about it a couple years back when i was really into it, and he didn't think much of it. my roommate thinks i'm a fucking loser but he's sitting on our couch shirtless, listening to avril lavigne, and playing destiny right now so i think he's got me beat on that one.

Shadestep:
What kind of music do you listen to?
ryan: mostly hipstery shit, folk, alternative, indie, acoustic kinda stuff. also love beyonce and can always jam out to the stuff at the top of the charts. been really into spoken word lately too which is fucking badass btw, highly recommend. some great spoken word poets to check out are shane koyczan (the crickets have arthritis, to this day), neil hilborn (OCD, punk rock john, the future), and hotel books (car crash, nicole).

Shadestep: How does a regular day in your life look like?
ryan: i wake up at 4 am, drink some coffee and watch whatever good shows were on last night, go to work, come home, eat dinner, go tan, come back home and wind down before i go to bed around 8. weekends are anything from laying around the house and relaxing to working overtime to going out with friends, visiting family, whatever. pretty simple but after the last few years of my life i'm good with simple.

Shadestep: What is your favourite NU meta and why?
ryan: bw post-emboar/cinccino/amoonguss/absol, pre-scolipede/jynx/primeape. it was this really sweet spot where musharna was crazy but not broken because it was passive, you could cover stuff pretty well without stall being too good, hazards were good but they didn't rule the meta. beautiful meta, probably the most balanced meta i've ever played that wasn't boring.

Shadestep: Who do you think the starting NU players will be coming SPL? (if NU will be played that is)
ryan: just me really i'm tha greatest

Shadestep:
Any upcoming NU players and/or contributors you think are worth looking out for?
ryan: all of them! it takes one breakout performance to get noticed in the tournament scene, and anyone could do it given the right amount of commitment. i mean tennis did it so.. on a contribution level, it's been pretty lax because of nu open, the ladder tour, and other tiers holding suspects.

Shadestep: Do you have any tips for newer NU players wanting to start contributing here?
ryan: don't give up if you don't really get noticed. we're at the end of a generation, and while your contributions are absolutely appreciated, don't expect the same kind of attention that you might have gotten a year or even a couple months ago. if you're having fun tho, keep going for it! and don't take it too seriously. that's how people get burned out here. if you get your feelings hurt or you start to feel defeated, just remember that this is a pokemon site and if you aren't having fun, what's the point?


Shadestep:
Will you post a picture of yourself?
ryan: ya sure. this is me on my birthday this year, i was really drunk and i literally pissed my pants walking to my apartment door that night because i was a dumbass and literally didn't pee all night at the club i was at. good night tho!

Thanks for your time ryan, all the great answers are appreciated. If you have any more questions to ask yourself or just want to shitpost a tiny bit that's okay, enjoy yourself. :)
 
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