Pokémon Thread XXIII: The Thread With No Name

[Rising Phoenix]

If anyone wonders how you use an electric squirrel to become a world champion here's how you do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7jQk5QTtFw

It's not the actual final match, but damn that rodent can be bulky.

[Sajiri]

I haven't played pokemon competitively since Gen IV (and back then I just spent a whole lot of time on PBR doing mostly random wifi matchups against people all using Dialga or Palkia), but I kinda wish I'd kept up with it this gen. I was planning to get into it but then I look at tiers and most of my favourites all seem to fall into OU or NU..doesn't really match well I suppose. I'd been intending to get into it again but for some reason didn't, kinda feel like it's too late now. Even though I don't keep up with any official tournaments either, I like hearing about the different themes they have, sounds fun. Especially that eevee one they had a while back, wished I'd had all my eeveelutions trained up for that.

I suppose thats another project I could work on, I've always wanted to have all the eevees.

[noparlpf]

I haven't played pokemon competitively since Gen IV (and back then I just spent a whole lot of time on PBR doing mostly random wifi matchups against people all using Dialga or Palkia), but I kinda wish I'd kept up with it this gen. I was planning to get into it but then I look at tiers and most of my favourites all seem to fall into OU or NU..doesn't really match well I suppose. I'd been intending to get into it again but for some reason didn't, kinda feel like it's too late now. Even though I don't keep up with any official tournaments either, I like hearing about the different themes they have, sounds fun. Especially that eevee one they had a while back, wished I'd had all my eeveelutions trained up for that.

I suppose thats another project I could work on, I've always wanted to have all the eevees.

The Smogon tier system is based primarily on usage under the assumption that popular competitive Pokémon are better than less-used ones. It is possible to run some lower-tier Pokémon and still do well.
The basic tiers run Uber-OU-UU-RU-NU. Uber is generally banned, so OU and UU are the "strong" tiers. You do occasionally see a lower-tier Pokémon being used in higher-tier play, though, like that Pachirisu (NU) that was a key player in the world championship winning team. And sometimes Smogon puts things in different tiers due to their biased playstyle. So don't be discouraged by their rating system.

[noparlpf]

Alright, that's just after my lunch hour (finishing now). Catch you in 4+ hours?

Missed you the other day but I just remembered, and I have a 5-IV Protean male for you. I'll be home in like half an hour.

[Sajiri]

The Smogon tier system is based primarily on usage under the assumption that popular competitive Pokémon are better than less-used ones. It is possible to run some lower-tier Pokémon and still do well.
The basic tiers run Uber-OU-UU-RU-NU. Uber is generally banned, so OU and UU are the "strong" tiers. You do occasionally see a lower-tier Pokémon being used in higher-tier play, though, like that Pachirisu (NU) that was a key player in the world championship winning team. And sometimes Smogon puts things in different tiers due to their biased playstyle. So don't be discouraged by their rating system.

Yeah I was aware of how their system worked, but it seems specifically the ones I like (altaria, dedenne, delcatty...although even I think delcatty isnt that great) they specifically say its a bad pokemon and cant do much of anything even in their tier.

Wasnt that pachirisu used in doubles? I dunno if that changes things, as in some are better than others for doubles, I only ever do single battles.

I do recall more than one smogon people (I assume so since they had smogon in their trainer comments) challenging me while I was still going through the main game in X and wiping the floor with me (to be expected at the time, since I only had caught pokemon and they werent all evolved), very clear to see I wasnt ready for battles yet consistently kept spamming me with battle requests afterwards, trying to rack up their win count or something. It disappointed me

[Mando Knight]

Yeah I was aware of how their system worked, but it seems specifically the ones I like (altaria, dedenne, delcatty...although even I think delcatty isnt that great) they specifically say its a bad pokemon and cant do much of anything even in their tier.

Wasnt that pachirisu used in doubles? I dunno if that changes things, as in some are better than others for doubles, I only ever do single battles.

Nintendo's VGC tournaments are always 4v4 Doubles, which makes a vast array of Pokémon a lot more viable: they don't necessarily need to survive switching in and out to be useful support Pokémon, and Earthquake is significantly weakened (part of how the champ's Pachirisu survived STAB Earthquakes, though it did also survive STAB Draco Meteors).

On top of that, it makes sense for the official tournaments to be run this way, since there's a lot of moves now that only do something useful (if at all) in Doubles, and Pachi made use of one of those moves (Follow Me) to great effect.

Altaria is currently simply overshadowed by better, faster, and stronger Dragons, which themselves took a hit with the introduction of Fairy types. Mega Altaria may be viable when it hits in a few months. Dedenne and Delcatty don't have much going for them other than that they're adorable and will make excellent Contest Pokémon. If Dedenne had better defenses and Follow Me, it could do what the Pachirisu did at Worlds (and Cheek pouch is a good ability for this if they're not flinging Thunderbolt around), but Follow Me has terrible distribution in general.

[Sajiri]

Dedenne and Delcatty don't have much going for them other than that they're adorable and will make excellent Contest Pokémon.

Thats pretty much just why I like them right now. I go through phases, used to be dragons and cool looking things- salamence, arcanine, hydreigon etc. Right now my thing seems to be cute and pink ._.;

I am looking forward to mega altraria though. IIRC it gets atk and spatk boosts as well as pixilate, which I think will make return or hyper voice its most powerful attacks depending whether its going special or physical. It also has it's decent bulk still I believe. Although I am still pretty attached to mega absol.

The things I like are fine for the single player game of course, although there's only so many times you can play that before it gets boring. Then again I was still playing Emerald right up until XY was released, and probably would have kept playing it if my DS would still recognise the game cart.

The things that seem to be considered good just usually aren't what I like. For example, I still want to make a sun team for some reason, I love my drought vulpix, but then other things you pretty much always see on those teams like venasaur and charizard (I dont actually dislike char, just bored of it after so many years), and the ones I like which could benefit from sun in some way (...I guess any grass or fire pokemon) are the ones that either arent good, or always have something that fills the same role as them, but better

Now that I think of it though, with those hoenn contests coming back I guess I can have fun using those adorable pokemon for that instead. I wasted so much of my life just playing with those contests, and haven't liked any of them since. It would be great if they were multiplayer.

Edit: ...wait I googled it and Im seeing something about there ARE multiplayer contests? Did I really just somehow miss this or am I reading misleading facts o_o

[TamerBill]

Edit: ...wait I googled it and Im seeing something about there ARE multiplayer contests? Did I really just somehow miss this or am I reading misleading facts o_o

Third gen had multiplayer contests, yes. Local multiplayer only, though, since online wasn't added 'til fourth. I wouldn't be surprised if ORAS added online contests, though.

[Sajiri]

Third gen had multiplayer contests, yes. Local multiplayer only, though, since online wasn't added 'til fourth. I wouldn't be surprised if ORAS added online contests, though.

Yeah I remembered that afterwards. I only had one friend who played pokemon back then though and she didn't do contests so multiplayer was never a thing I did. Although it sounded like there would be multiplayer this time, at least with people on friendslist?

[Sylthia]

What I really want is to be able to do 6v6 singles over wifi. It seems odd that you can only do it by spamming passersby.

[Quietus]

I suppose I should mention, if anyone's interested in Mawiles, I'm breeding them en masse - I'm nearing 500 bred, trying to get a competitive shiny. I can very easy throw around some 5 IV (missing s.atk) ones with Intimidate.

[ZeltArruin]

I suppose I should mention, if anyone's interested in Mawiles, I'm breeding them en masse - I'm nearing 500 bred, trying to get a competitive shiny. I can very easy throw around some 5 IV (missing s.atk) ones with Intimidate.

The damn thing went Uber. Because high attack and no durability, I guess.

[Xondoure]

It seems to me that every time they ban a mega the next mega down the list gets banned within the month. Which... yeah, is sort of the problem with mega pokemon and tiers isn't it? They're good enough that most teams want them. But since you can only have one, this leads to heavy leaning on the few considered optimal.

[JustPlayItLoud]

The damn thing went Uber. Because high attack and no durability, I guess.

It's surpisingly bulky on the physical side. It can even beat Mega Garchomp if it hasn't gotten a prior setup. If it switches into an Outrage, Draco Meteor, or Dragon Claw and Intimidates, it can survive a -1 Earthquake from max Atk MegaChomp and OHKO back with Play Rough. Requires killer prediction and Garchomp not running Fire Blast (which can be a killer coverage move for Chomp to surprise certain walls and still provide coverage), but surviving a super effective hit from Garchomp and still being able to do something in return is fairly impressive. If it's a regular Garchomp you're guaranteed to survive even with switching into SR and might even live through Rough Skin damage.

Access to Sucker Punch is just icing on the cake to ensure it's incredibly difficult to revenge since it's neutral at worst to every priority move and only the rarely seen Vacuum Wave hits its worse defense.

[Quietus]

The damn thing went Uber. Because high attack and no durability, I guess.

Did it? I'm not following Smogon's ban options, really. If I want to play Smogon's rules, I'll hit Showdown. The offer will stand, for anyone who feels the same way.

[JustPlayItLoud]

Did it? I'm not following Smogon's ban options, really. If I want to play Smogon's rules, I'll hit Showdown. The offer will stand, for anyone who feels the same way.

It was fairly sudden. It seems like less than a week went by between banning Aegislash and banning Mawile, though I'm sure it was a bit longer. I still don't agree with either.

I never had much of a problem with Aegislash. Burning it crippled it, or made it easy to wall since it rarely carries special attacks aside from Shadow Ball. Knock Off seriously screws any version without Weakness Policy and some of its best users don't care that much about Weakness Policy. And WeakNite is better than WeakSlash anyway. Slow attackers can out predict and destroy Blade Forme with Earthquake or Earth Power. Fast attackers can just try to out muscle Shield Forme with a strong Earthquake.

And Mawile is strong but suffers from serious predictability. Sucker Punch, Brick Break, Play Rough, Knock Off, or Fire Punch, almost definitely Swords Dance. Almost guaranteed to pack an Intimidate, and guaranteed to pack Mawilite. Can be walled and worn down passively or beaten with a well played bulky attacker like Garchomp (even if a better player can beat Garchomp with M-Mawile) or hit against its unimpressive 50/95 special bulk.

I just don't see how Mawile gets banned when Charizard, Tyranitar, Garchomp, and Scizor all routinely beat it in usage percentage, provide more variety, and with the exception of Charizard are still OU worthy without going mega.

[ZeltArruin]

...Important words!...

I just don't see how Mawile gets banned when Charizard, Tyranitar, Garchomp, and Scizor all routinely beat it in usage percentage, provide more variety, and with the exception of Charizard are still OU worthy without going mega.

This is what bothers me. It's just a matter of time until all of them get pushed to Ubers, right? When counterable threats are pushed up there, what happens to normal, but high % threats?

[OracleofWuffing]

Last time around, I got the feeling that a bit of the "trend" is that people don't like seeing pokemon where a second moveset allows it to counter the counters to its first moveset, and then the first moveset counters the counters to its second moveset. As such it comes down to a coin flip on whether or not your counter actually counters Mega Mawhile, or if you're just going to be counter-countered by the pokemon you're trying to counter. Unless you want to run an odd Arcanine set or two counters and an additional third pokemon to identify which set you're up against. I have used the word "counter" so much that it has lost all meaning. It feels like less of a practical ban, and more of a game theory ban, like why Wobbuffet used to be Ubers.

That said, take what I say with a grain of salt, I'm not usually for PvP, Smogon or Nintendo rules.

[Kuroten]

Pokeball Vivillon has arrived to the rest of Europe. \o/

Fun fact: If you last saved the game with the trainer standing in the spot where the delivery lady usually arrives in, she'll take the spot to the left(or right, depending on which perspective you choose to see it from - yours or the trainer avatars :p) of the trainer once you have gotten the event pokemon.

[Qwertystop]

Pokeball Vivillon has arrived to the rest of Europe. \o/

Fun fact: If you last saved the game with the trainer standing in the spot where the delivery lady usually arrives in, she'll take the spot to the left(or right, depending on which perspective you choose to see it from - yours or the trainer avatars :p) of the trainer once you have gotten the event pokemon.

Yay remembering to check! I'd thought she might just not show up until you leave and come back.

[Elhann]

Oooooh, nice!

BTW, while hunting nuzleafs for my next breeding projects (shiftry, and extrasensory to breed onto a cyndaquil), I stumbled upon a red-skinned absol. So if any shiny hunter lacks absol in their stock, she is available for grabs. Naughty natured, unbeatable sp.def and speed, and her ability is justified.

[Sylthia]

Yay, just got a Master Ball from the daily ID lotto.

[boj0]

Very cool!

[Quietus]

I still haven't won that, despite playing daily.

[Jayngfet]

Speaking of vivilion, how do they handle in multiplayer battles? I've got a modern one I love the look of and it'd be a damn shame to let it rot once I've got the elite four done.

[OracleofWuffing]

Well, early game bug pokemon aren't usually known for being all that hot, but of them, Vivillion's near the top. It can make good use of Compound Eyes with Sleep Powder, and has a usable speed stat to pull it off. It can set up with Quiver Dance (though with those defenses, I doubt it) and Compound Eyes Hurricane can be a thing, too. You might be better off with Volcarona if you want a dancing winged insect of death, or Breloom if you want to put things to sleep and mess them up, but you could certainly do worse.

[Quietus]

Compoundeyes is really the key to using Vivillon well; it's got 90 base speed and 90 base special attack, plus Quiver Dance, and can run a 97.5% accurate Sleep Powder alongside 91% accurate Hurricane. It's very much a one trick pony; if you see it in multiplayer, it *will* have Sleep Powder, Quiver Dance, and Hurricane. The four slot sometimes varies, but those three are its primary payload.

I've seen it be very useful in Showdown replays, but haven't really brought mine out yet - I do have one fully trained and ready to go, but I think it'd need some support to really do its work. I've considered using a Doubles team with it, but I think that would really eliminate its one main advantage in being able to drop sleep powders for a turn of free setup. The opponent's second pokemon would still be able to attack it, and against its pathetic defenses, any good attack is a 1hko.

[Qwertystop]

Speaking of vivilion, how do they handle in multiplayer battles? I've got a modern one I love the look of and it'd be a damn shame to let it rot once I've got the elite four done.

Like people have said, it's not the best, but it's better than a lot of similar things. Also, it gets (exclusive?) access to Powder, which, while very situational, is nice if your team has a Fire weakness and you're playing a format that doesn't allow you much better to deal with it (usually some variant of theme-team, like monotype). For the same reason, it shreds Malva in ingame runs.

[Elhann]

I think I'm on a roll.

To the shiny absol previously mentioned, a shiny golden geodude is also up for whoever wants it.

[Aotrs Commander]

I just remember that about... time ago... Quietus said he'd check my friend safari when I was next online... And I haven't been online for a while and forgot all about it... Sorry about that. One thing and another has been going off and it looks depressingly like the next six months are going to be fairly nightmarish (unless I actually just snap) for various reasons. Among the upshots of that is going to be I'm even less likely to be online much... But if anyone does see me on the off chance and check, let me know what it is (PM might be best... I have no idea how much time I'm going to have for checking the thread regularly.)