RU Ready to Say "Goodbye?" - Interviews with RU Veterans

Hey.

Let's see... I was playing OU quite a bit during the early part of BW1 and it started to get a bit boring to me. I was considering trying out UU but I heard that there was a fresh new tier called RU being made. I thought it'd be a fun new thing to try so I played a few matches, liked the tier, and I've been playing it ever since.

I actually fell in love with it immediately: I really liked a lot of Pokémon in the metagame. The community was also really nice, even though I had a really rough start with them at first. Anyone around back then will remember. When I first joined the RU community, I was pretty young and immature (I actually only missed being COPPA-banned by a few months). I was also pretty impulsive and tended to act before I thought about the consequences. Because there was a lot of strain between me and the rest of the RU community, and I ended up getting kicked or banned from IRC channels and the battle server quite a bit because of my behaviour and stuff. It took me a pretty long time to get rewarded for my work in C&C, taking like double or triple the amount of work it took other people to get a ladybug even after I was badged. I was still pretty immature and I did a lot of dumb stuff (most notably RU Metang 2012, I seriously have no clue why I did that lol). Eventually, I started getting used to the community a bit more and became less immature and impulsive, and everything turned out fine in the end.

It was quite surprising to be chosen as a tier leader, given my track record, heh.

Most of the time I just use joke teams and Pokémon for the fun of it, often just to see if I can win with them, although there are some joke sets / Pokémon I've actually used on serious teams because they managed to perform well through my time playing RU. I'm not sure if they helped form the metagame themselves, but using joke teams kinda helped bring the community together, if you know what I mean. It's always fun to make a team with the most absurd Pokémon and sets possible, then try and make it work.

I'd have to say I liked three periods of RU in particular: the metagame just before Honchkrow and company moved up to UU, the very end of BW1 RU, and right now.

The Late-Krow meta was probably the metagame I played the most, and it had a lot of old favorites of mine such as Honchkrow, Cofagrigus, and Sharpedo (Cofagrigus didn't move up until a bit later though). Teambuilding and battling was always a blast during that period. The very end of BW1 was probably the most balanced the metagame has ever been, with nothing really standing out as really overpowered in my opinion. There was a decent balance between all playstyles being viable, and because of how balanced everything was, it seemed like you could use almost anything with any shred of viability and make it work. Late BW1 was incredibly balanced and almost always fun to play. Today's metagame is sort of similar to that period, but with the loss of Pokémon such as Cofagrigus, some buffs, and a few newcomers along with the freeing of Durant, it's a bit different and more offensively-leaning. Still though, I find the current metagame to be pretty fun.

Well, Druddigon is easily one of the most powerful and threatening Pokémon in RU at the moment, and it fits on quite a few teams effectively due to its good overall stats, decent movepool, and Dragon typing (it has pretty much no competition as a fully evolved Dragon actually, as the other Dragons are either Altaria or NFE, although Fraxure has a niche as a DD user). Choice Band Druddigon has always been a monster, and it's a great Pokémon to have just to punch holes in the opposing team and make it easier for something else to sweep. Of course, Stealth Rock and mixed sets are good too, but CB just takes the cake as the best set, in my opinion.

FWG cores are always pretty solid and RU most definitely has a lot of them (almost half of the RU by usage Pokémon can be part of a FWG core actually). I'm not sure if I specifically want the trend to continue into XY, but it's always pretty neat to have multiple cohesive FWG cores to work with that cover each other so well.

I'd have to say I was pretty annoyed that Cofagrigus left RU. Cofagrigus was one of those Pokémon that was always solid and very effective; its offensive Trick Room set was always amazing despite having to take 2 turns to fully set up. It was great as both an offensive and defensive spin blocker and is probably the best defensive Ghost to ever enter RU as it kept a lot of annoying things in check too. Right now for bulky Ghost-types we have Spiritomb and... Dusknoir, which isn't worth using.

The relatively low amount of Ground-types in the post-Nidoqueen meta was pretty annoying (the only Pokémon in RU by usage that are Ground-types are Steelix, Sandslash, Quagsire, and Rhydon, two of which are really niche). That Electric-type immunity is pretty invaluable, especially when there are quite a few Electric-types running around, and I would've liked to see more in the tier. Of course, we could pick out Ground-types from NU too, most notably Golurk (fun fact: Golurk would essentially be RU by usage this month if we had one more tier shift, just barely missed out on the last chance it got); otherwise I never really had too much of a problem with type balance. There weren't too many Dragons, but perhaps that was for the better, especially when you look at how strong they are in the higher tiers.

I don't really think I have one team that I like much more than all my others, but one notable team I liked a lot was probably my Trick Room team I used before Cofagrigus moved up. It was always pretty solid for me and I had quite a bit of success using it, especially considering that there are quite a few top-tier threats that either benefit from or set up Trick Room, such as Slowking and Druddigon. Trick Room + Healing Wish Mesprit made it all the better as I could bring any Pokémon back from near death and go for another round; overall, really fun and effective team. I'm not sure if it was the absolute best team since it had problems with certain Dark-types such as Absol, but it was definitely one of the teams I played best with.

At first, I wasn't too sure but XY most certainly seems interesting and fun to play, and I'm excited to see how it turns out in XY, so I guess I'm ready.

See ya.