Sakito: Hello everyone! Today I'm joined by Vay who placed 2nd on the RoA November leaderboard. Yo Vay how are you doing?

Vay: I'm fine, thank you, and you?

Sakito: I'm fine too, thanks! To begin this interview, can you introduce yourself in a few lines?

Vay: I'm French, 23 years old, and I study maths in university. I'm kind of a new player. I played my first games on Pokemon Showdown when ORAS was released and I learned stuff about the game through this gen, even though I was mostly playing League of legends with friends at that time. Then I tried playing a few games of SM OU, and I got bored so I decided to try DPP OU. I ended up really liking this gen so I decided to stick to it, peak the ladder, and try to participate in competitive tournaments on Smogon.

Sakito: Very cool! What are your thoughts on the current state of DPP OU?

Vay: I think DPP OU is ok as it is right now and I don't know what changes (ie ban/unban) could be made to render it better. Of course it's not perfect at all but personally, I think it's irrelevant to complain about the fact it's the most power creeped generation without team preview since it's the identity of DPP and what makes it unique. The only thing I would rant about is Dugtrio: not even because of usage or broken combos, but just because of "arena trap" itself.

Sakito: Are you trying to reach voting requirements in the Latias suspect happening right now? What are your thoughts on Latias?

Vay: I've currently played 37 games for suspect and i'm 30-7 right now. I do not enjoy laddering, I've played all 37 matches using the same team, the same damn patterns over and over, facing the same fat builds over and over. If I had to base my judgment only on my ladder experience, it would be “**** Latias" with no doubts. I think Latias as a pokemon in a vacuum is one of the best (if not the best) pokemon in DPP OU + Latias, especially if you pair it with a steel like Jirachi. You then have a core of 2 mons that can resist all types in the game bar dark and bug, and if you pair it with Scizor, you resist everything except rock type. Its movepool is super wide, it has very high stats, etc. Latias can use many cool sets, but from now on, I’ve almost only seen late game CM mono attacker and specs. To be honest, I really think we will need more than just one month. A suspect ladder with 10 battles and 6 live tours is simply not enough to see how it really changes the metagame. I suspect many cool sets have not even been discovered/popularized yet. However if that does not happen, I would gladly get rid of Latias.

Sakito: I see. What's your favorite Pokemon competitively speaking, and why?

Vay: My favorite pokemon competitively speaking is Gengar. I love to use this pokemon because it has a perfect neutral coverage with 2 moves, which allows it to play support moves on the two other slots like substitute, will-o-wisp, taunt, pain split, etc. (or even more attacks like thunderbolt of explosion). My favorite set is subsplit Gengar. Gengar also has very good immunities to fighting and ground, a neat resistance to grass and Tyranitar has more trouble to pursuit trap it than Rotom since it has access to Focus Blast and many Ttars play Passho Berry instead of Chople or Scarf.

Sakito: Gengar is always very scary to face. Now let's talk a bit of you, tell us the story behind your username.

Vay: Originally, I played Yu-Gi-Oh, and I needed a username to register on a forum where people played the game on cartridge (Yu-Gi-Oh world championship 20XX) and I named myself Vayû-sama because I loved the blackwings and because I was a weeb (both statements are still somewhat true). Then I grew up and removed the "Sama" and kept Vayû. When registering on Showdown, I didn't notice that the û disappeared from my name because PS doesn't accept accents, so I just decided to keep Vay.

Sakito: Haha I'm a weeb too. Do you have any goals on Smogon right now?

Vay: I don't know, play tournaments, go as far as I can, get better, then get even better, etc. I registered in SPL saying I’ll cost minimal price since no one will bid on me but someone deleted it so this smart move won't succeed lmao.

Sakito: I'm sure you have the potential to get better, what's the funniest battle you've ever seen, played?

Vay: The funniest battles I've ever played was this one: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen4ou-827718715 not because of the battle itself, but mainly because of the chat.

Sakito: LOL. Do you listen to music? if yes what do you listen to?

Vay: I listen to kpop, jpop, rap, metal, anime ost, pokemon ost and more. It’s mostly stuff I find on youtube and end up liking and downloading.

Sakito: Nice, I also listen to some of the same stuff. Speaking of animes, do you watch any?

Vay: Of course! I watch JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind, Yu-Gi-Oh Vrains, and I'm waiting for the next season of My Hero Academia, Code Geass and maybe Dragon Ball Super. I also read mangas like Tower of God and Darwin's Game.

Sakito: My Hero Academia is heat! I should watch JoJo too. How about movies? What kind of movies do you watch?

Vay: I rarely watch movies. The last one I saw was Deadpool 2. I like Marvel stuff and I've got some Deadpool&Cable at home, however Nathan Summers was a little bit disappointing in the movie.

Sakito: I love marvel movies and its universe! Would you like to learn another tier in addition to DPP OU?

Vay: GSC OU looks super cool, however I don't have much time to invest in mons, so I think I'll stick to DPP. I can play ORAS too, since I remember stuff I saw when I was learning the basics of the game. But if I want to do something new, that'll definitely be GSC.

Sakito: Who are some of your close friends/players you admire within the community?

Vay: I've got a very reliable group of friends that includes you, Excal, Seven Thunders, Pkel SweetforU, eden's embrace and more people! I'm not very into the community and I don't know the majority of players but I like to watch PokeaimMD's videos because I love how he comments his plays every turn, and ThunderBlunder777 videos on youtube because I like to hear him cursing every second, even though they don't play DPP. On top of that, I remember I enjoyed watching roscoe's replays in SPL 9. I started to play mons after watching Boudouche playing in a french cartridge tournament. After that I watched all his content on youtube and I cry everytime I remember he deleted it.

Sakito: Great! I don't have any more questions, do you want to add something?

Vay: I sometimes peep at the Latias discussion thread and I’ve seen some people saying stuff like "old gens should not be touched" refering to the Latias suspect. Personally, i don't think it's a relevant statement at all because old (and current) gens rules are made by:
A) Game Freak
B) Council that suspected/quickbanned arguably broken mons/moves/abilities/whatever and players who voted "ban" or "unban"
Game Freak won't touch DPP (the metagame) in the future because they've got other stuff to do but there are still people playing this gen here, and we still have a tiering council. So if the tiering council says "we want to suspect Latias" and the players say "ok, let's do that" (there was a poll and 60% people said yes, there even was a subpoll for tournament "great" players and 70% of them said yes iirc) then I think we should suspect Latias. Additionally, the best case scenario is that we have a better metagame; worst case scenario is that we can ban Latias again afterwards and pretend nothing happened.

Sakito: Well, thanks for your in depth answers! It's been a pleasure to do this interview!

Vay: The pleasure is mine bro!