BurntZebra

Hm I guess I did. I'll update op in a bit

The first thing worth discussing is when PSL 9 will happen. I've touched base on this before in previous posts, so I won't elaborate too much on it. Waiting 6+ months (at least imo) would work for PSL assuming we had other big events that got any hype at all, but unfortunately, most events are a one time thing (Eggplant's 5v5 showdown thing) or died due to lack of hype to begin with (Orange's WCOP), so PSL is really the only reason why a lot of competitive players stick around. Devs have made the competitive atmosphere not worth grinding for with the automation of tournaments and less valuable and more controlled prizes. People who have already committed the grind to be up-to-date in tiers don't even bother logging in for tournaments unless the staff host a tournament with a "rare" prize, which is once a blue moon. For me, PSL was the only thing really keeping me active in game, but even then, PSL did not garner hype like it used to in the first few seasons. Maybe it's the disconnect between the older generation of players and the newer generation of players that somewhat kills some of the hype. As for the "upcoming" update, I have little to no interest in playing the game once the update hits. The game is already stale and the update will be like what Jon Snow (aka A.T.) said, "just more of the same". It'll be new pokemon and a new region, but it'll probably still be the same old grind, with a similar time investment required. I'm fairly confident the devs won't prove me wrong on this. If we decide to have a PSL 9 before the update hits, then I will be willing to discuss the actual parts of PSL, but if we decide to wait until after the update hits, then there is a good chance that I won't return as a host, unless I become gunthug 2.0 and just play a showdown tier+be disconnected from the actual pokemmo community in-game.

I agree with some of what you're saying with some players *cough telf* having a general lack of knowledge about the tier, which causes it to be less competitive, since there are just some blatant misplays or misunderstanding of sets of pokemon. But on the other hand, SM OU has an infinite amount more resources than any PokeMMO tier as there are thousands of replays from "good" players, either from SPL, WCOP, Smog Tour, OU Ladder, or anything other smaller tournaments really, along with forums that are heavily based on competitive play (teambuilding activities, RMT's, up-to-date viability threads, up-to-date pokedex of competitive pokemon and their sets, etc). So once you have a basic understanding of competitive play from this game, the skill pretty much transfers over as long as you put in the effort of looking at the resources available to anyone. Even if you get into a battle and you're not sure of something, there's a lot less of a time constraint on showdown than an in-game battle, as the timer is off by default, and even if it is on, it is very generous with the amount of time you get, so there's always time to do some research (either in the 10 minutes before the match starts, or just during the match). I think teambuilding was fine overall in general, as in we can't really expect pokemmo players to revolutionize gen 7 SM OU the same way as a very select few individuals on Smogon do, although rotom-w+muk+ a few other pokemon had a bit more usage than necessary. Even if you look at higher level play on Smogon, you will notice 80% of the time, players are just using recycled teams from previous matches. This is the same for DPP as well. Also SM OU was fairly stable the whole time PSL 8 was going on, bar a few megas being released, which didn't have too much of an impact on the tier in general. Personally, I don't think SM OU was that much below DPP in terms of skill, especially considering this was SM OU's first season, while DPP has been around for 4 or 5 seasons now. There are some good players in each tier that take advantage of the resources given to them, to allow them to teambuild better teams, and there are the players that don't invest enough time into the tier to learn about teambuilding etc.

I was almost a bit sad about Little finger. Not saying he didn't deserve it, but he has been quite pathetic by being in love with a girl like 30 years younger than him etc. I'm a bit bummed at the overall rushed feeling of this season (ie being truncated to 7 episodes instead of 10) and the fact that season 8 might not come until 2019, which will also be only 6 episodes, so it'll probably be more of season 7.

76+ Atk Choice Band Nidoking Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 96 Def Kingdra: 97-115 (53.2 - 63.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery 0 SpA Kingdra Surf vs. 252 HP / 96 SpD Nidoking in Rain: 168-198 (89.3 - 105.3%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO Alternatively, you run lovely kiss+soft sand on nidoking with 252 attack or run taunt and win a 50/50 predict

randoms is shit

I'd like some further reasoning on why 10 tiers would be preferred to 8. Were there worthy people that attempted to join PSL and did not get drafted? Personally speaking, seasons 6 and 7 felt like they had a lot of filler matches that had zero hype, but it also did give people the opportunity to prove themselves, especially in slots like OU3/NU2. The main reason why I chose 8 tiers this season was to make PSL a bit more selective/elite, by not allowing just any competitive player to get drafted and get a slot in the lineup, instead, requiring people to put in more effort in proving themselves to managers. But even this was not incentive enough for new and upcoming players to really put forth any effort into making themselves more appealing to managers (learning SM OU, DPP OU, doubles, etc, instead of choosing just OU or UU to play). SM OU had some lack of competition, although I still liked it exponentially more than VGC in past seasons. The main appeal of SM OU over something like LC was the ability to jump into the tier, as it is a showdown tier, and there are no limitations on what you can run on a team, unlike LC where it takes hours of investment breeding for it and there are limited opportunities to practice it, unlike SM OU, where you can play 50 matches in a day if you really wanted to, all against new and different players. LC also had a very low turnout in signups, even compared to SM OU. The issue with showdown tiers in PSL in general is that they are a safe harbor for outdated competitive players that no longer actively play the game like the rest of the people who play in PSL (at least for the most part anyways). The other issue is that people are too afraid to pick up a new metagame with new mechanics and new pokemon, even though picking up a new metagame is quite rewarding in multiple ways (becoming more of an asset for PSL, being knowledgeable for future updates in Pokemmo, expanding your horizons for the current metagame of pokemon, etc). I think I can safely say randoms won't be a part of PSL if I host again and I don't think mixing doubles and LC together is a good idea, as that will cut down the playerbase into like 5 people who play both of them, or doubles players will just get coached by an LC player during their match. Further discussion on issues in PSL will come later down the line.

I can hold money as well if a middle man is needed (or any staff member is probably willing as well)

Activity Announcement: To finish semifinals week, I gave no contests to the last 2 matches that did not get played, as they were not necessary matches and I don't think anyone will argue to get an activity win. Let the finals commence!

Can you believe he still denies this

#finalshype #whowilltakeitall #fragsvsosukihype #kamimiwead #FrenchPower #SpanishPower #NoCoachingAllowed #BattleoftheChokers #WillTelfLearnwhatabilitiesdo #kevolastillass Matchups and Standings : http://challonge.com/psl8 + http://challonge.com/PSL8Playoffs Player stats: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XCteI6kgP-IA5hRCHRVjZnxpeytbLNrqbYSX14PogVg/edit#gid=0 Sportsmanship: Ghosting & Coaching: Substitutions: Scheduling your matches: The Finale The Boosted Monkeys (3) vs The Hungry Salamences (5) OU: belieberboy vs LucasCisneros OU: Miguelez vs Aerun UU: Axoa vs Frags UU: Kanzo vs Mlhawk NU: Lazaaro vs Kriliin Doubles: Kamimiii vs StriderxD DPP: XPLOZ vs Gunthug SM: Telf vs Kizhaz Deadline : Friday, September 1st, 11:59 PM EST Don't forget to PM your opponent ASAP! PM your opponent in-game if they are not active on forums. Remember to post your scheduled battle time in this thread at least 10 minutes before it starts. Showdown players must provide replays. All PokeMMO battles must be played in Vermillion Channel 7 PC.

I was actually coaching riga the whole time who in turn was coaching enchanteur

Milotic+umbreon+metagross+starmie outspeed wynaut and forretress sets up spikes for free vs wynaut. Bowser would be ashamed at how bad you are at using wynaut

@DoubleJ 6 of the 7 pokemon you listed as typical switch ins to lunatone gg lunatone, shit entry, 2/10.

That's what I thought, but once gyarados absorbed the spore from smeargle, going forretress seems like a pretty easy play to spin away hazards or set up hazards if he feared rotom (KG stall also runs payback on forretress which makes forretress pretty much risk free actually)

I'd assume explosion and the 25% of rock blast hitting harder than rock slide is the only reason to run graveler over lairon. Otherwise lairon seems to be better as it 4x resists flying/normal while also being a psychic check. Also has pretty similar base stats, but higher base def/hp/sp def/speed at the cost of -5 attack. Cb eq isn't that great, although I guess it would come in handy vs qwilfish (but lairon also lives 2 waterfalls from qwilfish since its only 2x weak to water

Not sure on the situation you're talking about, but encore is always 3 turns now, so rng doesn't play a role in that anymore

32 Atk Life Orb Electabuzz Cross Chop vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Umbreon on a critical hit: 120-143 (59.4 - 70.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Leftovers recovery the correct damage calc (gen 4 calc has 2x damage for crits, while we have 1.5x) I'd say jolteon is still better for the most part. It has better base stats across the board besides attack, and it has toxic to beat porygon/gardevoir. Relying on cross chop to beat some big threats is not reliable in my books when it can miss and only has 8 pp (probably worth checking if focus punch+tbolt kos porygon/umbreon).

Dugtrio can't really afford to switch in to chansey either, as it will mess up the sub+reversal strategy, so regardless of the special wall, it generally needs to come in on a double predict or on a recovery move from the wall.

Dugtrio still traps the relevant special walls (porygon/umbreon) and can also trap pretty much some of the biggest offensive threats like magneton, blaziken, heracross, metagross, etc. Not much has really changed in terms of what dugtrio does. If being able to trap chansey was what made it overpowered, then trapinch/diglett would have been booted as well, but that isn't the case.

The scripts to the whole season leaked the same time episode 4 leaked. Obviously reading a script is not hype at all so there really isn't a point in that. I'm gonna go check around for the video leak though

Well the only thing that really gets trapped by dugtrio on your team is heatran, so I'd probably recommend changing it to a magma storm earth power set with toxic and either stealth rock or taunt (if you go stealth rock, then you can potentially replace Ferro with a check to stuff like cb zygarde. I also dont think lopunny and tapu lele work that well together, as psychic terrain blocks lopunny from using fake out, but I guess they have a decent offensive synergy of wearing down steel types. Theres also something I don't like about zapdos and lando together. Not sure what it is, maybe because I run kyurem black a lot and it's pretty easy kos when someone runs 2x flying types and no ice resists. Mega defog scizor is an option over ferrothorn as well, which checks a lot of annoying threats in OU (zygarde, kyurem, lopunny, etc) and allows you to run 3 attacks on zapdos. Edit: watched rest of your match. Life orb on lele is generally pretty meh. Generally want a z fighting/specs if you're after power. Also volt switch on zapdos isn't really too popular, discharge is more common as it's quite annoying with paras.

Player Substitution Announcement: @OldKeith has substituted in @Mnemosyne for @Axelgor. @Sashaolin (Kriliin), schedule accordingly.

I wouldn't say we had a lack in funding this season, we still hit 50m+ in a reasonable amount of time. The prize isn't even that significant typically, since if you were really after money, you could grind away the entire PSL prize pool (50m) in the time it takes PSL to complete. As for PSL9, I'm not sure if it would be better to try and squeeze it in before the update whenever that is, or wait until the update hits, then for tiers to settle down. An update in the middle of PSL would be quite disastrous as there would need to be some tier changes to PSL or a long pause to get new tiers and have people make new comps for the tiers, and hope that people don't just quit when the update comes out since it'll add another big grind to the game. The first few seasons of PSL had a sizable gap between them, but that was when the game itself was a bit more tolerable (easy breeding, silph co officials, etc). Now the game for many people is pretty boring and the only reason to log on is PSL. The alternative to hosting PSL with a small gap is to host other large scale tournaments like smogon does. Orange attempted WCOP but the hype died fairly quickly with the player turnout combined with the very long initial round 1 matchups. Smogon has OUPL/UUPL which are smaller scale versions of SPL dedicated to one tier, but in multiple generations. They also have smogon tour/grand slam/etc that fill up the entire calendar year, so even though they only happen once or twice a year, people don't mind since there are other big competitive events happening throughout the year. Our playerpool is probably too small for some of their events or our tiers are too limited (a PSL of just OU or UU would be quite boring, since we don't have generations to divide up the tiers). Ultimately, I think it is up to player-run events to keep the game alive for the competitive community, as the upper staff of pokemmo are not doing a great job at keeping officials hyped up like they used to be. Those player-run events don't need to be PSL, but PSL is definitely the most hyped out of all of them in recent memory. Even unofficials with a huge prize like eggplant's 5v5 deathmatch tournament didn't have that great of a turnout.

UK sucks