Topic: Competitive Mentorship Program - Student Signups and New Plan

[Richard and Blaziken]

Alright, so I'm sure some of you remember The Competitive Mentorship discussion I started a while back. The response seemed overwhelmingly positive, so I got things rolling with a search for which members could assist me in this task. While I got two applicants, one is relatively inexperienced and new to competitive battling, while the other is a member I don't know very well, and I'm uncomfortable in having them teach the metagame to others. This is not meant to be rude, disparage, slander, or otherwise hurt either of those members, because I sincerely like both of you and I hope you don't take that as a personal attack.

For this reason, I have decided that I will attempt to run this mentorship program alone for now, to sort of gauge how many of you are still interested. So here's how this will work. For now, I will be accepting 2-3 people that genuinely want to learn competitive battling in the OU metagame. This includes teaching things like EVs (if necessary), team building, and what Pokemon are viable in the current metagame. I can teach practically anything about competitive battling, so you tell me what you'd like to learn! This will be run on a first-come-first-serve basis, so fill out this form:

Preferred Name: (How would you prefer me to address you?)
Timezone and available hours: (When are you available? I'd like to meet with you for at least 1-2 hours a week to teach, but schedules can clash, and I understand this. I'm flexible)
What do you want to learn?: (Simply put, what would you like to learn about competitive battling? If you don't know what to put here, don't worry! I can teach things as simple as learning how to EV train a Pokemon, to the most complicated things like building a well-rounded team that covers all of the prominent OU threats! It's perfectly acceptable to have no experience in battling! In fact, you're the ones I'm reaching out to the most! "I don't know" is an acceptable answer here. :>)
Questions?: (I encourage questions! Anything you're curious about, just ask! There is no such thing as a dumb question!)

For competitive battling, I will be teaching about the OU tier only. OU is the standard tier and is the one that is kept the most balanced by Smogon, so I'll not be teaching Uber, UU, RU, or NU.

I think that covers it! I will try my best to work with whoever wants to try this out with me. I can't say things will go perfectly, but I sincerely want to do my best to help those that want to get into competitive battling, but have a hard time swimming through oceans of information like this. Hope I haven't missed anything, and I hope some of you are still interested in this. =)

[SirBlaziken]

one is relatively inexperienced and new to competitive battling

Me. And I for one am not offended. It's true, I haven't been doing this for even a year. So it's not best that I teach until I learn more about OU. I'm UU is foggy in this gen, and LC is one this gen I haven't done.

I'm going to be brutally honest. I can be kinda lazy and forgetful sometimes. Then arrogant and mean some other times. That may irritate some with the former and scare some off with the latter.

My life is also a bit of a mess now (family, finance issues). That with the fact that I have a lot on my plate now (league meetings, bowling, class online to get into Geometry next year, etc.) means that I wouldn't have much time at the moment.

Rich, I'm coming to wish you luck in this. I won't waste slots for students that need more help than me by signing up, however I may sign up if no one seems interested after a few days. I'm not taking this personally, and I understand what you're saying. I'll hone my skills and try again in the future.

Ciao.

[Del]

initially i said i wasn't that interested in learning, but i kind of wanna learn a new competitive game, so why not.

Preferred Name: Del.
Timezone & Available Hours: GMT, available pretty much all day every day except for 12-5pm Monday, 8am-1pm Tuesday, 9am-4pm Wednesday and 8am-1pm Friday.
What I want to learn: Mostly just the theory behind team building; what makes a team good, why doesn't everyone use 6 sweepers, stuff like that for the most part. Not sure if there's anything else I might need.
Questions?: Don't think I've got anything right now, will edit this later if I think of something tho.

Forgive me for any typos but I'm typing in a rush on my phone. Looking forward to learning, as long as this is satisfactory for you Rich~

[Richard and Blaziken]

Looks good to me! I'll pm you and we'll work out some times to meet. =)

And thanks, Blaze, I appreciate it!

[SirBlaziken]

No problem. And I noticed Calm Blissey has lower (yes, lower) SpD than Calm Florges. It's only like 10 points, but still, and HP on blissey is godlike, so meh.

Hope everything goes well.

[kindtocrows]

Preferred Name: My username is good enough, or just dragon if you want to shorten it
Timezone and available hours: Newfoundland Standard Time (it's a half hour later then Atlantic Standard Time). Evenings are probably best for me, really any time past 7 PM should be fine (except on Thursday), though I'd prefer if it ended before 1 AM. Sorry if these times are a little weird for you, I live in a weird timezone...
What do you want to learn?: I mostly just want to learn how to build a good team, but I'll probably end up needing to learn more then just that...
Questions?: None for now.

[Richard and Blaziken]

Looks good! I'll PM you and we'll work out a time! =)

[SirBlaziken]

Are you still doing this? If so.... bump. I think in a bit, I may consider coming in and getting some more information from someone wiser than me in this. Also, I just battled with dragoncat, she's got a lot of potential.

[Richard and Blaziken]

I'd like to, but after the first session, interest seemed to fizzle out. People are busy, and I suspect this will be the case until Summer comes. I'm more than happy to help people if they want it.

[OpalRhea]

Bump because I'd forgotten about this, but did intend to take part.

Preferred Name: Rhea. Jo works to
Timezone and available hours: GMT +10. (all avaliable times are in my time, sorry, it's just easier)
Monday: Midnight-4 am (Note. This is for all of the week except for friday, saturday and maybe Sunday)
Tuesday: 8 am-Noon
Wednesday: 8 am-4.30pm
Thursday: 8 am-Noon
Friday: 2 pm- 8 pm
Saturday: 3 pm-11.30 pm
Sunday:N/A
What do you want to learn?: Whatever you'd be willing to teach. Work on the assumption that I'm a fresh newbie, who wants to get into the scene.
Questions?: ....None at the moment

[Richard and Blaziken]

I'll PM you some time soon about meeting next week. This week is incredibly busy for me, but next week should be better.

[OpalRhea]

Alright. Thank you for letting me know

[SirBlaziken]

Summer is here.... my annoying algebra online class is almost complete, and I'm out of things to do since i'm saving up for ssb4 instead of getting MK8. We've already started, but just slot me in to make it official. The team is working well so far.

[aMartini607]

Preferred Name: Austin, or Martini whichever you prefer haha
Timezone and available hours: Eastern Standard Time U.S.A., and every day of the week, 11 A M.-2 A.M.
What do you want to learn?: I have a pretty good knowledge of basic Competitive Battling, but I noticed that I can be God awful at predicting my opponents moves and/or overpredicting, and being out-predicted myself because of this, and I guess I could do with learning how to build an overall well-balanced team, as I usually tend to go with one theme with 4-5 of my Pokemon
Questions?: None at the moment, but I won't hesitate to ask if any rise over the course of you educating me

[Richard and Blaziken]

I'll get started with you both as soon as I can. At the moment I'm too sick to do much of anything, so try to be patient with me.