Competitive VG Simple Questions Thread

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RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Speed Boost does compensate for it. You can't effectively raise its Special Attack so having the higher value there is more important, especially if you decide to put Protect / Detect on it so you get a free Speed Boost turn when you need it.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

^Thanks... I was more inclined to that thought too but I needed an opinion...
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Metalizard said:
I suppose I can post this question here but if not, let me know...

So, I've been trying to catch a decent Modest Yanma with Speed Boost for hours... I got these two:

first Yanma's IVs (in order HP/Atk/Def/SpAtk/SpDef/Speed):
14 - 8 - 10 - 15 - 10 - 29

second Yanma's IVs:
14 - 11 - 3 - 31 - 21 - 3

I really want to keep the second one because (this is me just being picky but wtv) it's caught in a Net Ball while the first is in a boring Ultra Ball and I really like the 31 IV in Special Attack but the Speed IV is so low I'm not sure... Does Speed Boost compensate for the low Speed IV?

Which one should I keep?

Why not breeding it for a better Yanma ? You can breed one and it will also be in the same pokeball you cought it
 
Non-Mega Competitive Pinsir

I'm playing Pokemon Y and want to use a pinsir on my competitive team. I plan to use the GTS to get the pinsir, but I doubt that I can get a mega-stone. In case I can't get a mega stone for pinsir, is there a pinsir moveset and EV spread that can give my normal pinsir a fighting chance?
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Not really. The only reason Pinsir is OU instead of NU this gen is because of Pinsirite. A regular Pinsir would probably be best as a Choice Scarf user, but the problem with that is that there are better scarfers you should be using instead like Excadrill, Terrakion, Garchomp, Keldeo, etc. I wouldn't recommend getting one from the GTS because it probably has poor IV's and the person would probably be asking for ridiculous crap like a level 91+ Xerneas. This is partly why all the cool kids use PokemonShowdown.
 
RE: Non-Mega Competitive Pinsir

[leimstoan]Fargo said:
I'm playing Pokemon Y and want to use a pinsir on my competitive team. I plan to use the GTS to get the pinsir, but I doubt that I can get a mega-stone. In case I can't get a mega stone for pinsir, is there a pinsir moveset and EV spread that can give my normal pinsir a fighting chance?
Remember that breeding mechanics were changed this gen. Even if the GTS is the source of your first pinsir, you can still breed using a Destiny Knot and Everstone to work your way to near perfect stats (IVs) and the nature you want (though it does take time, especially without access to a perfect IV'd ditto)
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

How viable is unpredictability? I get ideas about the meta game despite not being very competitive and this has been nagging at me for a while. Could you run a party based solely on the element of surprise, bait and switch, backwards tactics and still have it face up to the more competitively solid teams?

Say, I don't know, buff your attack a bunch but Baton Switch to an Espeon. Something along those lines.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

There are many things that are straight up not viable (mostly due to being outclassed), but unpredictability can change battles to some degree. It's not easy to control, but essentially the best form of unpredictability is to be able to out-predict your opponent and make choices accordingly. Custom sets or not, you have to know your team and be able to determine what move your foe will chose well in advance. With stall teams, defensive planning makes tactics like move-baiting easy to pull off and you can get away with much more 'unorthodox' shenanigans since you'll usually focus more on indirect damage than straight-forward attacks (hence the observation that stall teams success comes from 90% from design and 10% from actual execution).

Buffing attack and passing to Espeon is a horrible example since (1) Baton pass chains generally don't work against experienced players and (2) you wasted the boosting turns and left yourself vulnerable when switching to Espeon. There is literally no way you could turn that 'unpredictability' to your advantage without getting uber lucky.

What does work, to some extent, is taking a gimmicky strategy and devoting the rest of the team to patching its weaknesses or removing the normal counters (note: this is EXTREMELY hard to pull off and I've only done so once or twice myself, only to net very little improvement in win-rate above 'normal' competitive teams). While it may not seem worth it, I actually recommend experimenting with gimmicks after you get a firm grasp of game mechanics and most competitive principles, as it helps you not only prepare for unexpected sets with your own teams, but also forces you to experiment with pokemon and moves you otherwise wouldn't. Occasionally one of the gimmicky sets (or something you design to cover a gimmick's weakness) will prove useful in more orthodox settings as well, and that's when you can truly get better as a player. A prime example of this is my 'Vegetasaur' set (seen in my latest RMT). Originally designed to be a gimmicky, bulk-oriented Mega Venusaur, it proved easy to set up with and could cripple a large portion of an enemy team while dealing with many of M.Venusaur's normal counters easily (with good prediction).

Predictability is a slight disadvantage, but if the set is efficient, it doesn't matter all that much. Even 'unpredictable' sets have to reveal their moves sometime, at which point they lose all advantage they had with the element of surprise. It IS possible to win a battel due to unpredictable sets alone, but doing so is not consistent. Almost all of my 'good' teams (even gimmicks) are primarily standard sets, with only a couple pokemon with either modified or custom sets, designed to turn the tide at opportune moments.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

I'm a former TCG player and have been bored recently, so I decided to try to get into the video games. This has brought about a few questions that I'm hoping someone here could answer for me. I downloaded Pokemon Online to practice but haven't been able to find any good instructions on how to use it, so most of my questions are related to that.

1. Is Pokemon Online the best simulator available or should I be using a different one?

2. I noticed that every player on Pokemon Online has a ranking of some sort, which I'm guessing is some form of ELO. Is there any way to see which players are the highest rated within a given metagame? If not, what is a good ranking for XY OU (or just in general)?

3. I've been playing XY OU singles since apparently that's the default. However, at least to my understanding, all official tournaments are held in doubles format. Is there a way to switch to doubles on Pokemon Online or another simulator so I could practice in the same format tournaments are held in? Or are there tournaments that are held in singles format?

4. Any other advice for a newcomer?

Thanks in advance!
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

1. I recommend using Pokemon Showdown. Nothing needs to be downloaded. It is the official simulator Smogon uses.
2. Couldn't really tell you much about that because I haven't used it in a while.
3. When building a team you choose what tier it is for.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Or PokeBattle. That is a viable option.

The only thing to note is they use a Point System instead of tiers. They default you at 1000 points and every pokemon has a different point value.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

1. Pokemon Showdown is the "standard" simulator that most people use, however it should be noted that Pokemon Online is the only current simulator that lets you play Advanced games (R/S/E) if you ever get into that.

2. If you click on the "ladder" button, it brings you to a new menu that shows all of the tiers. If you click on each tier, you can see the top 500 battlers in each tier and what their rankings are.

3. Pull down the "format" tab before you go to find a battle, and you can select the tier you want to paritcipate in. Nintendo official events would be the "VGC 2014" tier.

4. Mega Kang > VGC 2014
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Mega-Kangaskhan is really hard to get around in VGC.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Okay, thanks everyone! One more question that I can't seem to find on Pokemon's website. For the upcoming VGC season will Kalos-born Pokemon still be legal? Or will they have to be born in the new ORAS games?
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Celebi23 said:
Okay, thanks everyone! One more question that I can't seem to find on Pokemon's website. For the upcoming VGC season will Kalos-born Pokemon still be legal? Or will they have to be born in the new ORAS games?

If I had to guess, I would say it will be Kalos-born only until ORAS is released. So for October Regionals you will probably still be stuck with just Kalos-born, but anything after that should be after ORAS is released, so those tournaments should be ORAS on. That's what Nintendo did when BW2 was released mid-season, so I would assume that's what they do this year.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Celebi23 said:
If not, what is a good ranking for XY OU (or just in general)?
For Showdown, above 1500 is decent, above 1700 is pretty good, and above 1900 is great. The ladder has kind of a bad rap for having subpar players this gen, though, so a good rating doesn't mean what it used to.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

I agree with Cinesra. However, I would consider 1600 to be good imo.

Last last generation I topped 1900 and was labeled as average. :[
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

Pokemon showdown wasn't around in gen 4, so whichever sim that was on, it's not equivalent to 1900 on showdown.

The quality of players on showdown ladder is pretty poor atm, most good players just do tournaments. You can get some better players on the suspect ladder if there's an OU suspect though, because people want to get the reqs to vote.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

I said last twice like a idiot lol.

I mean't 5th generation.
 
RE: The Competitive Battling Simple Questions Thread

lol

The points system was weird last gen though, you'd gain a huge amount of points at first then drop later. You'd get a ton of people thinking they got #1 on the ladder after going 10-0. You needed to play a good amount of battles before your score became 'legit' and your name appeared on the ladder.
 
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