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[Crazymoogle]

lol round 3 right?

-_-;;;;;;;;

basically

 

[EBCubs03]

-If your Pokemon has over 300 Speed at level 100, it's often a good candidate for one of the attack-boosting items: Choice Band, Choice Specs, Life Orb, Wise Glasses, or Muscle Band. At that speed level, there are only two situations you tend to end up in: 1) The opponent has a counter that you'll have to end up running from. This is usually the early or middle part of a match, and it's where Choice Band and Choice Specs shine brightest. If you're going to be switching out regardless, being locked into the same attack is no loss, but doing 1.5x damage is a big gain. 2) The opponent doesn't have a counter, so you can stay in and keep firing away. If that happens really early in the match, the non-Choice items are best; they may not have a counter, but they could at least find a resistance and force you to switch at one point if they realized you were stuck with the same move. Later in the match, Choice Band/Specs shine again; once you know there's nothing left that resists Ice, that Choice Band Ice Punch Weavile will go in and slaughter stuff no problem.

I should probably mention expert belt. I'm not a huge fan of Muscle Band and stuff like Electivire uses them well. There are a lot of pokemon with terrible speed but bulky defenses who make great choice band/specs users. Snorlax is a pretty nice choice band user who gets Self-Destruct if you really wanna do some damage. Heatran is another cool choice who can either go Choice Specs or Choice Scard - depending on what you want to do.

-Until you get really awesome with either prediction or just plain knowledge (of what things can learn what moves, of what things hit how hard, etc.), Protect and Substitute can be nice to keep you alive through the learning process. They're not usually going to win you anything most of the time, but you might find that learning one more possible move that someone has can help you in all future matches.

I think protect and substitute provide much more than just a chance to get used to your pokemon. I always - always - always use substitute on Gengar because it gives me Pursuit protection. Will-o-Wisp helps prevents a lot of them from coming in, but Heracross doesn't mind eating a burn and can bite you in the ass when it happens. I prefer subbing on the switch, then either getting out, trying to burn, or attacking if I can 2HKO or OHKO.

Protect is great on leads who want to scout moves, like Breloom and Swampert. It helps bone over choice leads and takes the pressure off predicting just what move he's going to use. Protect can provide double leftovers recovery which can get annoying for the other player as well.

-Focus Sash is great, but putting it on anything except your first Pokemon is slightly asking for trouble. I wouldn't recommend it unless you 1) have a Rapid Spinner to get rid of Spikes/Stealth Rock to make sure Focus Sash will be able to work on a switch-in, or 2) at least a third of your team counters Tyranitar and Hippowdon. That way, even if sandstorm conditions are up to ruin your Focus Sash fun, you'll take the Tyranitar/Hippowdon down with you. It's still possible to work with multiples of that item without these other considerations, but you wind up having to hope that the opponent doesn't have any of those moves/abilities.

Nothing much I can add here, you pretty much said it all. Focus Sash is a lot more plausible on non-leading pokemon in underused where Hippowdon and Tyranitar aren't present, but instead you have Abomnasnow to deal with. The plus side to this is that if they ARE using Abomnasnow they're likely to lose anyway >_>

-Your starter (not the starters, but the Pokemon you use to start a battle with) should have a wide variety of attacks to choose from, to cover a wide variety of possible opponents instead of risking putting yourself at a disadvantage from the beginning. By attacks, I don't just mean direct damage (although that's one option); having a status effect or an unexpected move can be awesome if it ends up being that your starter can force a switch. For example, a starter Starmie (base 100 Special Attack, 115 Speed) would force a starter Salamence to run away, but the switch-in would probably be something like Blissey (base 255 HP, 135 Special Defense) or Snorlax (160 HP, 110 Special Defense), who laugh in the face of every direct attack Starmie's got, or something like Weavile (120 Attack, 125 Speed) who can survive one attack and then take Starmie down.

So, rather than using all attacks, you could consider setting aside a moveslot for something more general purpose such as Thunder Wave, Reflect, or Light Screen. Look at the possible outcomes: Thunder Wave would mean that even if Salamence stays in, its good speed is ruined. Weavile's awesome speed would be ruined. Blissey would be put in a slight dilemma, having to either switch or use Heal Bell/Aromatherapy to eliminate the paralysis, or ignore the paralysis and attempt to go after you regardless. Reflect causes trouble for a physical attacker Salamence, prevents Snorlax from doing much damage, prevents Weavile from taking out Starmie, and helps protect your team from all things physical for the next four turns. Light Screen causes trouble for special attacker Salamence and allows many things to safely come in against a Blissey who doesn't have Seismic Toss or Thunder Wave.

Starmie's just one example, of course, and not even a particularly good one when we're talking about starters. But I'm only trying to get across the point that having one general purpose move that hurts all possible counters is often a good idea. Not always necessary, though, but something to think about.

Remember when Starmie was one of the best leads in ADV? Yeah, pursuit definitely screwed him over.

-Why not use a defensive Pokemon as the starter? Wouldn't it be a surprise if everyone's expecting something fast? Well, yeah, it would, but the problem with being defensive from the outset is that while they still have a full team of six, they probably have something that can take out your wall--and usually walls don't have the offense to do much back to them in return. They tend to have to boost up with Calm Mind or Curse or even just wait out some status damage from Toxic/Will-O-Wisp to do anything too significant, so it's good to save them for a time when you've already gotten rid of everything on the enemy team that could do significant damage to your wall. If they already know what your wall is, they'll play more carefully to keep the things alive that can beat it.

I don't think leading with a defensive pokemon like Donphan or Snorlax is such a bad idea - as long as they're not going to be taking over half of their HP from a pursuit. I dislike leading with my sweepers because then the opponent knows one of my pokemon they need to take out for their walls to stay alive. I try not to use Gyarados at all until very late in the game or unless I really need intimidate support.

-Sacrifices are necessary on occasion--sometimes you just have to eat an attack and lose a team member so that you can safely get another Pokemon in without it taking damage on the switch in. Sacrifices are especially worthy of consideration when a Pokemon has done the main job that it's good at. For example, a Skarmory that laid down three Spikes and Stealth Rock is much more expendable than before it set up its moves. Sticking with the same team example... If the enemy has no Rapid Spinner to erase all your spikes in one hit, the Mismagius, Gengar, Dusknoir, Froslass, Spiritomb, Drifblim, or any other Ghost you might have on your team for its immunity to RS loses part of its strategic value, and is more expendable than if they did have an RSer.

Let's take other examples. If you have a team loaded up on four special attackers and they have a Blissey, the single most valuable thing you've got is your physical attacker, who has to be kept alive at all costs. But if Blissey is their only Pokemon who can soak up special hits, and you successfully get rid of her, the physical attacker has done its job and isn't as necessary anymore.

Or let's say that for some unusual reason your team is Tyranitar (Rock/Dark), Claydol (Ground/Psychic), Slowbro (Water/Psychic), Starmie (Water/Psychic), Crobat (Poison/Flying), and Heatran (Fire/Steel). I could say a number of things about recurring weaknesses that happened to accidentally appear in this lineup, but the only main goal I had in mind was to produce a lineup where the first four Pokemon are weak against Grass and against Bug. That means that Crobat and Heatran, both 4x resistant to Grass and to Bug, are the most valuable team members, and the ones who should be last on the sacrifice list... ...at least until you get rid of any enemies who might have those types of attacks. After that point, Crobat and Heatran are more expendable.

There are a number of other ways to decide what can be sacrificed and what can't. You could invert the Blissey example and think about which things on your team have the best special defense and try to protect them. You could look at the issue by considering speed; if their only things left are Snorlax, Bronzong, and Swampert, your Pokemon who run fast and hit hard are really reduced to Pokemon who hit hard, since speed will end up in your favor anyway. And so on.

This is definitely a big issue with new players. You pretty much said it all. This is where wish support really shines and is extremely useful on someone who has an assload of resists like Jirachi. Get a wish up, send in Infernape, and you don't really have to worry about being 2HKOed on the switch in. Now you can take down that annoying psychic Bronzong.

-Remember to do the minor math instead of relying on the terms "super-effective" and "not very effective." A Heracross' Megahorn, which is 120 base power and 180 with STAB, ends up having 90 power against (for example) Staraptor--but that's still more power than, say, Night Slash, which stays at its neutral 70. Likewise, super-effective Night Slash might have 140 power against Jynx, but neutral Close Combat from that same Heracross hits 180.

I encourage everyone to use damage calcs. They really help out even when you think you've got an easy 2HKO or OHKO. Sometimes you're wrong and a damage check always helps you assess the risk of your decisions. Pay attention to how hard they are hitting, what on your team they have outsped, etc.. this way you can estimate how many sp. atk, atk, or speed EVs they have so you can eliminate the possibility that they are running max HP/max Def.

-If one of your strategies involves getting a stat boost from Dragon Dance, Agility, Swords Dance, etc. and then destroying things, there tend to be only two items you should consider: Leftovers and Lum Berry. Either will help protect you in that vital turn where you're boosting.

It's useful to hold other berries that only cure one status condition, instead of all of them like lum berry does. Swords Dancing Infernape doesn't fear will-o-wisp since he is immune to it, so something like Cheri Berry that heals Paralysis I think would be more useful. It depends on whether or not you have aromatherapy support, I guess.

 

[Firestorm]

Yeah Crazymoogle, you're against FootNinja next.

I have a question, how does Protect against choice items work? Can they choose another move after hitting the protect? How about substitute?

 

[usea]

I have a question, how does Protect against choice items work? Can they choose another move after hitting the protect? How about substitute?

You have to use the same move again even if your attack hit a protect or substitute.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Yeah Crazymoogle, you're against FootNinja next.

I have a question, how does Protect against choice items work? Can they choose another move after hitting the protect? How about substitute?

?

If you protect vs. a choice move, it's the same as always, no effect if protect worked, hits if protect failed.

If you have a choice item and use protect...you're locked into protect until you switch out or lose the item. Yes, that means your odds are going to go in the toilet. Protect genre moves have their own sort of shitty odds factor to encourage you not to use it repeatedly.

Sub has no effect on the odds of protect working.

edit: and what usea said...

 

[EBCubs03]

?

If you protect vs. a choice move, it's the same as always, no effect if protect worked, hits if protect failed.

If you have a choice item and use protect...you're locked into protect until you switch out or lose the item. Yes, that means your odds are going to go in the toilet. Protect genre moves have their own sort of shitty odds factor to encourage you not to use it repeatedly.

Sub has no effect on the odds of protect working.

edit: and what usea said...

1st protect: 100%
2nd protect: 50%
3rd protect: 25%
4th protect: will always fail

However, if you do it like this:

1st protect: 100%
1st Sub
2nd Protect: 100%
2nd Sub

And so on.

Back in ADV I used an insanely annoying Leech Seed, Leaf Blade, Sub, Protect Sceptile. If you don't have a faster pokemon, you basically are probably going to lose the match. Roar is a good defense, but with the damage you'll be taking from leaf blade your phazer could get low on health very quickly.

 

[Firestorm]

You have to use the same move again even if your attack hit a protect or substitute.

Ok, basically what I was asking. I thought someone told me they could pick another move after hitting protect and was always confused.

 

[Jiggy]

I should probably mention expert belt. I'm not a huge fan of Muscle Band and stuff like Electivire uses them well. There are a lot of pokemon with terrible speed but bulky defenses who make great choice band/specs users. Snorlax is a pretty nice choice band user who gets Self-Destruct if you really wanna do some damage. Heatran is another cool choice who can either go Choice Specs or Choice Scard - depending on what you want to do.

Forgot Expert Belt, but yeah, that's excellent also. For physical attackers, it's probably better in almost all cases since the type coverage with physical attackers is usually fantastic, far above special attackers.
Defensiveness plus Choice Band... Well, if we're talking about something like Snorlax, sure. I wasn't really trying to comment on what bulky Pokemon should do one way or the other, just fast and offensive ones.

I think protect and substitute provide much more than just a chance to get used to your pokemon. I always - always - always use substitute on Gengar because it gives me Pursuit protection. Will-o-Wisp helps prevents a lot of them from coming in, but Heracross doesn't mind eating a burn and can bite you in the ass when it happens. I prefer subbing on the switch, then either getting out, trying to burn, or attacking if I can 2HKO or OHKO.

Protect is great on leads who want to scout moves, like Breloom and Swampert. It helps bone over choice leads and takes the pressure off predicting just what move he's going to use. Protect can provide double leftovers recovery which can get annoying for the other player as well.

Let's see, several points here... Substitute is great, yes; an underrated move, particularly by newer players. You've already explained it, no need for me to elaborate.

While we're mentioning Breloom, Protect would be especially useful on that for starting up Poison Heal with Flame Orb. Swellow could get a guaranteed Guts if you were so inclined. I was just being general, but yeah, these are good specifics to bring up; always nice to know what the opponent has or doesn't, especially when you're defensively weak like Breloom or only have one nagging weakness like Swampert.

I neglected to mention the Choice protection factor largely because I think when we're talking about the skill level of an average person on this forum, most are going to shy away from using more than one Choice item per team due to things like not knowing their own prediction ability just yet, not having all-important speed stats memorized, etc. As people play longer, Protect could get progressively more important.

Double Leftovers via Protect is nice. I actually want to try Ingrain or Aqua Ring (or both) with Protect and Leftovers some time. Could be interesting.

I don't think leading with a defensive pokemon like Donphan or Snorlax is such a bad idea - as long as they're not going to be taking over half of their HP from a pursuit. I dislike leading with my sweepers because then the opponent knows one of my pokemon they need to take out for their walls to stay alive. I try not to use Gyarados at all until very late in the game or unless I really need intimidate support.

I should have clarified that I was talking about mostly fast sweepers, which Gyarados isn't. Actually, come to think of it, I was going to say something about never using Dragon Dance, Swords Dance, etc. early in the game while the opponent still has loads of things to take care of it, but I guess I forgot.

I'm still iffy on starting with anything defensive, though you're right that there are definite disadvantages to starting with a sweeper... All-rounders like Cresselia, Suicune, Jirachi, Dusknoir, Thick Fat Snorlax, or Swampert would probably be the safest defensive choices. Donphan seems too much to me like a prayer that the opponent didn't open up with Gengar, Azelf, Specsmence, etc.

I encourage everyone to use damage calcs. They really help out even when you think you've got an easy 2HKO or OHKO. Sometimes you're wrong and a damage check always helps you assess the risk of your decisions. Pay attention to how hard they are hitting, what on your team they have outsped, etc.. this way you can estimate how many sp. atk, atk, or speed EVs they have so you can eliminate the possibility that they are running max HP/max Def.

Reminds me of a recent Smogon post pointing out how much people underestimate the defenses of seemingly weak Pokemon... Azelf can survive a CB Weavile Pursuit if it stays in with (I believe it was) 40 HP EVs, and likewise Weavile can survive (unboosted) Azelf Flamethrower with, I think, 36.

Or my favorite example that I saw, because it was so random: Adamant unboosted Metagross (no CB, Expert Belt, etc.) can't OHKO a Dodrio who has 92 Defense EVs with Meteor Mash, Thunderpunch, or Rock Slide. (And then the Dodrio could Endeavor back and take Metagross to virtually no HP.) And this is Dodrio, not exactly the pinnacle of defensiveness with its base 60 HP and base 70 Defense.

It's useful to hold other berries that only cure one status condition, instead of all of them like lum berry does. Swords Dancing Infernape doesn't fear will-o-wisp since he is immune to it, so something like Cheri Berry that heals Paralysis I think would be more useful. It depends on whether or not you have aromatherapy support, I guess.

This is true, types should be accounted for. Garchomp's immune to Thunder Wave, and things like Armaldo and Scizor are slow enough that Thunder Wave's not really a threat. It's mainly stuff like DD Salamence and non-defensive Metagross that have to worry about both types of status.

 

[Crazymoogle]

Footninja, pm or post when you're ready to battle..

 

[AKingNamedPaul]

rdy when u r mr moogle man

 

[Crazymoogle]

rdy when u r mr moogle man

Heading online now.

 

[AKingNamedPaul]

gg you got the luckiest break early on :\ shoulda used my A team

moogle won

 

[Crazymoogle]

whew, I managed to pull off the win.

wow, good game! lots of outthinking and trapping there. -_-;;;

 

[Divvy]

Hey Death_Born if you're around, I can battle anytime in the next 1-2 hours.

 

[Firestorm]

Has Death_Born been in contact with you at all?

 

[Firestorm]

I was about to PM him, but you're both online so play now =O

 

[Divvy]

Yup yup, we're about to do our battle within the next few minutes

 

[Divvy]

C'mon death_born we were supposed to battle 2 hours ago. Where are joo?

 

[yeb]

usea won our battle.

Great game, closest match I've ever had. Your late game surprises caught me. Based on the damage it did, I should've expected for that one pokemon to outspeed me

 

[usea]

usea won our battle.

Great game, closest match I've ever had. Your late game surprises caught me. Based on the damage it did, I should've expected for that one pokemon to outspeed me

To be honest, at that point in the match I was pretty tense and I completely forgot it would outspeed. I was pleasantly surprised when it happened.

 

[Crazymoogle]

hrm, so how does this work then...

(((Jiggy vs. (Adumaha/Death_Born)) vs. Crazymoogle) vs. yeb) vs. usea?

Is that more or less the gist of it?

 

[Divvy]

I won the battle against Death_born.

Hehe, good game. That was a good battle.

 

[Firestorm]

Round 8 Loser's Bracket
Deadline: 9:00 PM PDT (Midnight EDT) July 10th, 2007.

Division 1
Jiggy37
Adumaha

RagnarokX

Division 2
Crazymoogle
FootNinja

Firestorm

 

[Firestorm]

Moogle, we can have our match a bit later if you'd like. I want to eat dinner first.

 

[Death_Born]

I won the battle against Death_born.

Hehe, good game. That was a good battle.

Not really, I got totally owned. If I had used my [omitted for secrecy] team, it would have been another matter though :lol

 

[Firestorm]

Ok. Done eating. PM me if you wanna play Moogle =)

 

[Crazymoogle]

Ok. Done eating. PM me if you wanna play Moogle =)

gimme a couple mins

edit: wee for shorthand english. I'll PM.

 

[Firestorm]

gg Moogle! You had me scared near the beginning >_>;;

 

[Crazymoogle]

bleh. I knew it was coming, but I guess your salac berry outspeeds max speed+choice scarf. :/

 

[Firestorm]

clear your PMs moogle =O

 

[Crazymoogle]

clear your PMs moogle =O

cleared..

 

[Crazymoogle]

you better win, Firestorm. Vancouver represent!

 

[Divvy]

Jiggy, If you're there we can battle anytime.

 

[usea]

Firestorm is going all the way! You heard it here first.

 

[Jiggy]

I wouldn't be surprised if he did. Adumaha, I'll be there in about twenty minutes if you're around.

 

[Divvy]

I'll be there. My internet is being kinda screwy today so I hope Rogers doesn't crap out in the middle of our battle

 

[Jiggy]

I don't see you on, so I'm going to check that I entered the right friend code. >_>

 

[Divvy]

Sorry, internet died, coming on now.

 

[Jiggy]

That was a really stupidly lucky break for me. >_> Let's try again, though... Nobody had the advantage.

Edit: Unless you want to delay until tomorrow in hopes that your connection's working better.

 

[Divvy]

Well this problem always happens during the afternoon, tonight should be fine. But you had a good advantage there, I'd feel pretty guilty if I ended up winning.

Now excuse me while I firebomb Rogers HQ

 

[Jiggy]

Okay, we'll aim for later tonight.

 

[Divvy]

Seems like everything is in order now, wanna try now?

 

[Divvy]

Goddammit, alrite forget it. You had the advantage, and I got dcd so you win. I'm switching ISPs grrrrrrrrrrr

 

[Jiggy]

Yeah, at this point I know like your entire team and you only know half of mine... >_>

But it was an awesome battle while it lasted, though. I really love teams like yours that are very indirect... Putting a defensive team against another defensive team is so rare lately that I always enjoy it whenever the chance comes up. I'm also willing to bet that your team would do pretty splendidly in a round robin tournament, where most people haven't memorized basically everything that everything can learn. You'd be really hard to play around if you were even one step ahead.

 

[Divvy]

Hehe I still want a rematch sometime. I was debating a lot before this match whether to switch my starter. I switched and that cost me a bit. But yeah, I don't like using direct sweepers and prefer more sneaky tactics. But your team is great too, had me on the defensive the whole time.

 

[Jiggy]

Yeah, a rematch would be great. I could bring along six stallers or something and we could see how crazy things get. >_>

 

[Firestorm]

That round was nice and quick =P I'll update again now.

 

[Firestorm]

Round 9 Loser's Bracket
Deadline: 9:00 PM PDT (Midnight EDT) July 11th, 2007.

Division 1
Jiggy37
RagnarokX

Division 2
Crazymoogle
Firestorm

 

[Crazymoogle]

Are you trying to pretend I'm not eliminated? ;_;

 

[Firestorm]

Are you trying to pretend I'm not eliminated? ;_;

First post is updated correctly. That post is updated afterwards >_>; At the rate matches are going, tonight or tomorrow.