Competitive Mentorship Program? (Update!)

[Sizacu]

I think it would be nice to have a mentor from each 'popular' time zone in our community! So we could have maybe JSM mentoring GMTers, Richard&Blaziken mentoring GMT-6ers and so on rather than each person being given a random mentor or something, so that replies are more efficient.

As for being good enough to be a mentor, I think people who've been battling recently and have a good overview of how the battlefield goes are pretty good to start off with! Though if I had to choose between having a person who battled steadily over a year or two and a person who's just picked up on it one or two months ago to mentor me, I'd choose the former; correct if I'm wrong here, but they'd be the ones with the most experience of how the field develops, right?

If the mentor loses interest, I think it would be best for the mentees (is that a word?) to move on to another mentor, if they want to or are able to.

Now I'd love to sign up for this, but I just need to get Pokemon X first!

[sans the skeleton]

hm. i had an idea but i'm not sure how it would get implemented.

like at the end of each course or when the mentor thinks their student is ready, they battle using the knowledge they've gained and see how well they fare, maybe? or perhaps like a tournament to see what they've learned. kind of like an exam sort of thing but not as stressful because you can take it however many times. or maybe it could be a part of the courses instead of an end result, i guess?

[Richard and Blaziken]

I think it would be nice to have a mentor from each 'popular' time zone in our community! So we could have maybe JSM mentoring GMTers, Richard&Blaziken mentoring GMT-6ers and so on rather than each person being given a random mentor or something, so that replies are more efficient.

As for being good enough to be a mentor, I think people who've been battling recently and have a good overview of how the battlefield goes are pretty good to start off with! Though if I had to choose between having a person who battled steadily over a year or two and a person who's just picked up on it one or two months ago to mentor me, I'd choose the former; correct if I'm wrong here, but they'd be the ones with the most experience of how the field develops, right?

If the mentor loses interest, I think it would be best for the mentees (is that a word?) to move on to another mentor, if they want to or are able to.

Now I'd love to sign up for this, but I just need to get Pokemon X first!

The problem with this is that almost no one else on this site is GMT-6, so that'd limit me to teaching myself everything I know. xD

I am up at odd hours anyway, and usually catch most of you online, but I definitely agree that we need people from different time zones doing this if it has a chance to be successful.

It seems like popular vote would be a good way to determine who should be a mentor, but we could potentially run into the problem of people being voted in that don't have enough experience to teach someone how to do this. Being good at battling is one thing, but the ability to teach it can be frustrating for some people. For example, I consider RubyRobin to be one of the best battlers on the site (when he's not using something gimmicky, which is almost never =P), and we're great friends, but he himself has expressed that he doesn't think he would be able to effectively teach what he knows. So that would be a main concern of mine.

I have added a poll to the original post, to get a better gauge on how interested people are in this. Please vote! And please, continue the discussion! I want to hear as many opinions as possible, even if you're just agreeing with someone that has been said! :>

[Hahex and Oshawott]

Perhaps you could link it with the pokemon gym league we have going on here and have gym trainers under every leader or something? just a suggestion

[Spriter]

I would totally be happy with helping anyone. I might need to get my head into 6th Gen a lot more, but if anyone wants to go back to 5th Gen OU / UU / RU / NU and even Ubers...I'd be happy to help. 6th Gen is a mess right now if I'm honest, so that's why it's complex for me.

[OpalRhea]

I think Spriter's just come up with how to do this. Gen 6 metagame is so fluid right now, as people try to figure out what works, what should be banned, what is suddenly not as game changing etc. For teaching team building and prediction, i think working with an established meta game will be more useful than one that is as undefined as gen 6

[SirBlaziken]

I agree. We either wait until the 6th gen metagame is settled, which could be months. Or use gen 5 for now, which is likely our best option

[the bread dragon]

#BoycottGen6UntilGaleWingsIsBanned


...was that too long?

[SirBlaziken]

^ I think aqua jet Azumarill wreaks gale wings talonflame

[the bread dragon]

talon outspeeds it still iirc, and not if your azumarill is dead!

[Richard and Blaziken]

+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Talonflame Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Azumarill: 491-578 (121.5 - 143%) -- guaranteed OHKO

Regardless, I... somewhat agree, though I question whether or not that's a good idea. Learning an older metagame isn't always helpful; there's a lot of conflicting information between generation 5 and 6, and some things that were viable one generation ago are no longer seen so much.

The metagame is unstable at the moment, but I think once the current suspects are banned (2/3 of them are almost a given), things will even out a bit more. One thing that newcomers should be taught is that you adapt to the metagame, not the other way around. If you plan on being a competitive battler, you've got to use what works in the current metagame to win, and/or use what counters the Pokemon that are currently popular. The metagame will settle down, but I think it'd be counter-productive to teach gen 5 for multiple reasons:

-It's no longer going to be a relevant metagame, so not everything you'd teach would translate to gen 6
-Gen 5's weather wars made for the worst metagame we've ever had, and Game Freak seems to have realized this
-It would be a waste of time teaching a metagame that is already dead, as most of the best players from generation 5 have moved on already, and you'll never get a feel for how good you are, since the pool of players you're facing is much smaller than what it was, and what it is for gen 6.

The basics of competitive battling don't change much from generation to generation anymore, but teaching some very important new things (Fairy, for example, has changed a lot in the moves that Dragon types can safely run, and how they have to work around them when they weren't even existent before) that are applicable to the generation we're currently in seems like the most effective way to draw people in. In addition, many people are going to want to raise Pokemon in their X and Y games, and getting competitive Pokemon is much easier to accomplish now.

All that said, what is the general consensus? If a majority of you want to learn a now outdated metagame, I'd be fine with teaching it... it just seems counter-productive to me.

[Spriter]

I understand what you mean. Actually, I didn't imply that Gen 5 should be taught, but sticking with Gen 6 would be good. In fact, using Gen 6 would be easier, because some of us would have to relearn Gen 5 before teaching it.

As soon as Mega Luke and Genesect go up, things should be fine.

[Turner]

I'd be interested but I think one of the biggest issues most people have with competitive battling isn't so much that they're confused but that using their favorite Pokemon doesn't really yield worthwhile results. It's hard to construct a good competitive team of your favorite Pokemon when they're only useful in certain situations.

[Richard and Blaziken]

Teaching how to effectively use favorites in lower tiers is possible, but I can't really do much about the issue you're talking about; not everyone's favorites are viable in OU. Hell, some of mine are Uber, and some of them are NU, but that's not what real competitive battling is about. Like I said before: you adapt to the metagame, not the other way around.

[SirBlaziken]

Teaching Gen 5 does seem counter-productive. But i'm still good at it for anyone who's interested.