Playing Pokemon Competitively

[Quicksilver_Phoenix]

I feel like i'm one of the few who will say this but.....honestly? I really don't enjoy Pokemon if it's competitive. Part of the fun, for me, is building a team of Pokemon I enjoy based mainly on what type they are and how they look. I've no idea if Blaziken, Altaria and Gyarados are a good combination, and I don't really care. I think they look really cool together as a team and I had a look of fun with them when I played through Ruby (i'd use a more recent example, but none of the new Pokemon really capture me anymore).

I've always found that, personally, trying to obsess over natures, EV's etc always takes the fun out of the game for me. I know someone who's heavily into that and, while interesting to listen to, it's really not something that's for me.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I play using Pokemon Online.
I find speed the most important stat but most my teams are more about using a cool (not cheap) tactic to win. I rely heavily on abilities rather than high stats in most cases. My favorite match was one that I lost where my Weezing held out against a Mew, Zapdos and Registeel for 142 turns before dying from struggle.

 

[Nikolaj Bilgrau]

As well as showing me one child that uses the Toxic Orb.

Its surprisingly useful, actually. Poison Heal Gliscor needs it- it gives it status immunity and a 1/8 healing each turn. Guts Conkeldurr can use it- unlike Burn it doesn't reduce attack, giving 'Durr a 1.5* attack boost right off the bat. Synchronize Alakazm can also use it, although it reduces special attack so generally Flame orb is better.

I feel like I should tell you that Guts eliminates the attack drop that's inherent to a burn. Simmilar abilities like Quick Feet, however, do not.
A burn does nothing to impede special attack, by the way.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

I don't have the patience to breed and ev train my Pokemon so I just play competitively on Pokemon Online instead and play the main games fairly casually instead. I really love making a team with a distinctive gimmick to it, for example my favourite team is my hail team where I always lead with an abomasnow who starts the hail and all my other Pokemon are ice type and have a passive ability which benefits from hail. I also have a hail team for Little Cup with Snover as the lead. The hail team is surprisingly strong for having a massive weakness to fighting or fire types and I have a pretty solid win rate with it.

 

[IronMit]

I have a question for everyone here that still plays competitive multiplayer;

From Diamond Pearl (i think) all these extra hold items start popping up like '+50% Special attack but you can only do one move' and '50% speed but can only do one move'.

Does this not throws the game into a different balance. With pokemon being one hit ko'd left right and centre and people constantly swapping pokemon in and out for the fear of being one hit ko'd by a standard earthquake by a v good pokemon v your decent pokemon with not bad defensive attribute& HP?
So then people have to train up pokemon to such an extent ..they monitor both IV and EV's so they can withstand a specific move from a specific popular pokemon that's been trained a certain way then it holding that OP item.

I watched a battle online and the mind game was reduced to figuring out weather an opponent would be intimidated enough to swap out on fear of a one hit ko and so should you do a 'set up' move instead (swords dance, double team, sunstitute, baton pass).

I was happy with how the game before...i had no problem with my jolteon being one hit ko'd by an earthquake by a ground type or very high attack pokemon or my dragonite by an ice beam (4x effectiveness).. but I saw those items and it got ridiculous.

Do all standard tournaments allow both these hold items and legendaries? Would i need to find special tournaments with rules to have a more balanced game..but then have even further restrictions don't they...like 'no jolteon' because it;s Over used.

 

[Razentsu]

Competitive Pokemon is a beautiful thing. I used to be pretty active on Shoddy battle and D/P netplay. I remember mainly running a super boring team; Infernape, Salamence, Blissey... all that staple stuff. I also had a sandstorm team, but that stuff got wrecked by Swamperts. Bulky waters are amazing, yo. XD

The games are as good as ever, but I don't play anymore. I'm too rusty and lazy to familiarize myself with today's metagame. I'm content with just admiring from afar. I still love to talk Pokemon, even though I lack the knowledge of today's stuff.

 

[GamemasterAnthony]

I don't battle competitively, but I love seeing what kind of teams are made for competitive play. You'd be surprised what kind of strategies people can come up with even using Pokémon that many think are utter crap.

As for a Rain Dance team...that could be tricky. A lot of Pokémon that make the best use of Rain Dance are Water and Electric type...with Parasect, DW Jynx, and Toxicroak being exceptions due to Dry Skin. So, that can limit your choices.

CAPTCHA: run the gauntlet

Not yet! He hasn't built a team yet!

 

[Ljs1121]

I don't personally competitively play, but a few of my friends do and it looks fun.

Any reccomendations for basing a team around Rain Dance?

Thunder would be a good move to have somewhere, I'd think. Also, if you're going for a water team (which I assume you are since you're basing it around Rain Dance), Swampert or Empoleon would both be good for neutralizing the weaknesses to Electric and Grass types respectively.

 

[direkiller]

*snip*

The metagame actually has a lot of depth. If you jump online and meet the wrong guy he could actually sweep your team of Legendaries with, say, a Shedinja.

Well, I have no clue what a Shedinja is, but I'm glad to hear the metagame's improved, at least. The first game didn't have a meta -- or even game balance -- to speak of. Mewtwo, Alakazam, Hypno...these were just better than any non-psychic option you could pick, since pure psychic Pokemon had no weaknesses (and Mewtwo was strictly better than the other psychics). The only things that could even pretend to be competitive were a properly tricked out Chancy or Snorelax, but unless you got pretty lucky with the RNG, it was still a losing proposition.

zapdose was another one that had no weakness and was super effective vs anything that did normal damage to it besides physic.


although i did kill a mewtwo with a kangaskhan.
The kangaskhan was lv 259 had fly, hyper beam,blizzard,fire blast but im calling it a win.(it simply one shot his entire team due to the 159 level diffidence)

 

[AnotherAvatar]

Me and a friend have been complaining for the past five years or so that Nintendo is retarded for not making Pokemon into an MMO.

It's so obvious, it's all sitting right there just waiting, in fact I want to say fans have even done it at this point... Personally for not doing it I feel gamefreak has their heads up their asses as just adding other players also adventuring around whom you can challenge at any time (make rivals, friends who you can battle along side in 2v2, maybe even some mechanic for 6v6) and fleshing out some kind of level 100 end game would make that series seem like so much more than it is.

Mind you, I grew up on Pokemon so nostalgia is making me forget how fucking terrible the stories are, but I will never stop arguing that the battle system has some solid depth to it (especially post ruby where they added the unique traits).

 

[CrazyCapnMorgan]

I've never played competitively and I've never EV or IV trained (hell, when I first heard about EV training, I thought people were getting Eevees, evolving them and then training them), but I do have type themed teams for teh lulz. I have:

A Steel team:
Scizor
Empoleon
Skarmory
Excadrill
Metagross
Bisharp

A Ghost team:
Chandelure
Golurk
Spiritomb
Drifblim
Cofagrigus
Gengar

and A Dragon team:
Kingdra
Hydreigon
Salamence
Garchomp
Haxorus
Dragonite

My teams have only competed against friends and even then, we were only doing it for fun.

OH! Thanks to Black/White 2, I now have ALL of the Eeveelutions in one game. Still, I hope they create a Ghost-type Eevee (I'd call it Shadeon) using the Dusk Stone.

 

[direkiller]

zapdose was another one that had no weakness and was super effective vs anything that did normal damage to it besides physic.

Due to flying Zapdos also has (and always had) the other two weaknesses of that type: Rock and Ice.

Flying was super effective to rock in gen 1
and Ice was an extension of water and died horribly to electricity in gen 1

both of them did normal damage to zabdos in red,blue,yellow because of his secondary type

 

[him over there]

I use to play competitively but the metagame has just gone to hell in a hand basket. It's all hyper offence/genesect+dugtrio and weather. Stall is dead and balance is wrecked.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

zapdose was another one that had no weakness and was super effective vs anything that did normal damage to it besides physic.

Due to flying Zapdos also has (and always had) the other two weaknesses of that type: Rock and Ice.

Flying was super effective to rock in gen 1
and Ice was an extension of water and died horribly to electricity in gen 1

both of them did normal damage to zabdos in red,blue,yellow because of his secondary type

I might be misremembering, but weren't fliers also weak to lightning? That would make Zapdos weak to it as well, IIRC, since a Pokemon's secondary type took priority over its primary type in Red/Blue (I assume this was a bug that they fixed in future iterations, though). That was why psychic moves were super-effective against ghosts -- because their second type was poison -- when psychic moves were supposed to be ineffective against them, at least according to the instruction manual.

At least Zapdos was better than Arcticuno, though. Poor ice bird. He died to everything.

 

[direkiller]

zapdose was another one that had no weakness and was super effective vs anything that did normal damage to it besides physic.

Due to flying Zapdos also has (and always had) the other two weaknesses of that type: Rock and Ice.

Flying was super effective to rock in gen 1
and Ice was an extension of water and died horribly to electricity in gen 1

both of them did normal damage to zabdos in red,blue,yellow because of his secondary type

I might be misremembering, but weren't fliers also weak to lightning? That would make Zapdos weak to it as well, IIRC, since a Pokemon's secondary type took priority over its primary type in Red/Blue (I assume this was a bug that they fixed in future iterations, though). That was why psychic moves were super-effective against ghosts -- because their second type was poison -- when psychic moves were supposed to be ineffective against them, at least according to the instruction manual.

At least Zapdos was better than Arcticuno, though. Poor ice bird. He died to everything.

yes bird got murderd by electric but electric dose normal to zapdos
The guy who corrected me was right though Ice,rock would hurt him but i did a little digging
Aerodactyl is the only one faster that zapdos that he had a weakness to