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[Comp Guide] Defensive Play Guide


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Disclaimer: Everything here is my opinion

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How you design your pokemon team and play in duels depends on what kind of balance you prefer to have between risk and reward. Use the graph below for a visual aid.

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Different team designs represent different points on the graph. As you play more offensively (risky), your potential reward goes up in the form of the amount of damage you are able to deal to your opponent. A very offensive team is represented by point "C". In contrast, a defensive team is represented by point "A". How you choose to play in the end simply comes down to personal preference.

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When you start up any game there are various elements like equipment, levels, and abilities. In our game there are many elements we deal with:

  • -IV’s
  • –Natures
  • -Base Points of Pokemon
  • -Critical Hits
  • –Dueling Skills/Experience

The first thing you learn as a serious duelist is you want your IV’s to be as close to 31 and you want your correct nature for each pokemon. Why is this? We do this because we do not want these elements to be contributing factors to a loss. We try to stop these from being on our list of factors that influence our duels. In any game, you want to ideally cross out all elements except skills. The goal is to have an even playing field or one where you have the advantage so your skills and experience can guide you to victory. In a game full of “RNG” and unpredictability like PokeMMO, there is only so much you can do to control elements like critical hits, flinches, and missed attacks. All you can do is try to create a consistent playing field for yourself that is as fair as possible. The most ideal way of doing this is by playing defensively. A defensive style does not limit critical hits and other RNG you sustain, but it makes them a much less contributing element to your wins/loses. The reason being with more bulk, recovery options, etc. you have more chances to show that you know how to outplay the opponent. It lets your experience, dueling skills, and personal decisions have a greater impact on whether you win or lose.

  • -IV’s
  • –Natures
  • -Base Points of Pokemon
  • -Critical Hits
  • –“Dueling Skills/Experience”

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We start with building a team of course! Building a beautiful team of any sort from scratch is never fast or perfect the first time. It may look cheap and easy, but building an extremely successful defensive team can be very difficult and time consuming in our metagame as well. This statement is even more true with the addition of the choice band creating powerful "wall breakers".

 

There are multiple reasons for an exceptionally designed defensive team to not be easy to create :

A defensive team depends on the ability to consistently and repeatedly predict and absorb various types of damage. If you start losing the ability to absorb damage, you start to lose your chances of winning – it's that simple. From this thought, you can see that it takes a lot of preparation and a lot of thought. You need to be prepared for literally anything in the game that comes your way. In a game with as many different creatures and attack combinations as ours, I will be the first to tell you this: it’s impossible to be ready for everything. There is no “perfect” team against everything. So, what can you do?

 

In the end, your team design should come down to a little bit of exploration through trial and error and a balance between ideas. For a defensive play style you want to balance between these ideas when building your team:

  • What are my primary threats in this game? Go watch other people play and be a spectator. Go to the Tierlist of your choice and read about the possible things you will be facing. Write down what you feel your biggest threats are and what common attack combinations they use. Watch what people tend to do and how they play. Plan out how to deal with these things. Basically you want to figure out what your threats are and what you need to prioritize being able to defend against.
  • Synergy, Synergy and more Synergy. Synergy means individual members of your team with different roles complement one another and work well together to make one solid unbreakable team. I'll provide an example using my most recent dueling team. These are two team mates that I designed to work together. Their main purpose is to be the primary physical "defensive core" of my team.

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Weezing

Resistists the many pokemon which carry the ghost/fighting attack combination. This is one of the most common physical attacking threats in the game

Levitates.

Instant Recovery.

Special Attacker.

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Solrock

Resists ground/normal/flying attacks. It also resists fire which is the traditionally the most common special attack type on a mixed physical sweeper.

Levitates.

Instant Recovery.

Physical Attacker.

 

As you can see these two have great physical defensive synergy. When solrock is weak to bug and ghost, weezing is there. When weezing is overwhelmed by double edges and strong normal stabs, solrock can sometimes step in. I never said it was a perfect core. Anyone can name something that will break it when only looking at these two. Nevertheless, this is a great example of synergy and this pair covers a large portion of the physical threats in the metagame. Remember, it's impossible to defend against everything. That's not what I'm trying to convince you that you can do. The only thing to take from this is the idea that the more synergy you can get between your team members, the tighter you team will be and the harder it will be to break. As you build your team keep synergy in mind.

 

  • What is the goal of my team. As much as you want to consider your threats, at the same time you need to have a strategy yourself which should have the end goal of allowing you to inflict more damage than you take. In some ways, it doesn’t matter if you deal a lot of damage or not much on a "play by play" level. The main thing is that overall you want to consistently push out more damage than you absorb. As you build you team keep your strategy in mind.
  • A worthwhile tip to mention while team building is that since defensive teams do not pack as much punch as offensive teams, supporting your team members through indirect damage can often win you literally half the battle. Whether or not you need indirect damage depends on your team design. It’s not always necessary but it is a great option. Indirect damage:

    Spikes, status effects (Will-o-Wisp, toxic), Knock Off(loss of all items, especially recovery items), etc.

    If you have enough room on your team to start stacking indirect damage, it just gets NASTY. Knock off a vaporeons leftovers while you have your spikes out. You will watch the vaporeon spam wish over and over while your opponent will most likely be "acknowledging" the nice design of your team.

  • Do the Calculations. Know what you are fighting against and let your team be prepared. The idea is to dish out more damage than you take right? Well, playing defensively isn't always about just creating the most slow and bulky creature possible. You only should use what you need. Overkill in bulk is simply overkill and a loss of efficiency. Pay attention to your EV Spreads, Natures, and Stats of your pokemon. What do I mean? The best way to explain this is by an example. On my team I use a cloyster which is my terrain control (spiker). In this situation most people run a bold cloyster and they just want it to be as bulky as possible, which is not wrong if that's what you want.

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Bold Cloyster's stats can look like this:

-Hit Points: 156    252 Ev's

-Attack:       X

-Defense:   218

-Spe Attck: 121    129 Ev's

-Spe Def:    80     129 Ev's

-Speed:       86     

 

Watch what happens if I change the nature to timid and adjust the spread:

-Hit Points: 156    252 Ev's

-Attack:       X

-Defense:   200

-Spe Attck: 121    129 Ev's

-Spe Def:     73     64  Ev's

-Speed:       107     64 Ev's

 

What happens is I've lost about 10% of my physical defense. So if a snorlax hits me with a body slam and was doing 50 HP on the Bold cloyster it will do 55 to 60 now. To me, this is not significant. I know my math may not be precise, but I hope you can understand the point here. The point is to do your calculations and try to be prepared - don't be caught off guard because knowing how much damage you can take is key to playing defensively. In this example, I've given up 10% of my defense, to gain 21 points in speed which allows me to out run a pokemon that can be a potential threat to any team: Marowak. To me, it is worth it because cloyster's purpose on my team is just just mainly my influence on the terrain (spikes/rapid spin). If something like this is worth it to you or not will depend on the way your team is set up.  You may not have expected to read this in this guide from me, but is speed the best defense sometimes? The answer is most definitely yes. To conclude this bullet point: consider what you want your team members to do. It's not about just throwing bulk everywhere as much as possible as some haters will claim. Doing that won't win you those tough games. Consider what roles and expectations you have for your team members and optimize them as much as possible for performance.

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Keep your mind open when you start to duel with your new defensive team and take your time as you are clicking your moves. Think clear, don't rush. Being a defensive player takes a certain mindset. It’s a somewhat different mindset than offensive players use.

 

What mindset do I mean? Well there's just different things to keep more focus on.

  • Basically when you play you have to continually remind yourself what you team is built for and what you are trying to do. Let that thought influence your decisions as you play. Remember, you built your team to do certain things. Remember your strategy you planned. If your opponent lends you a “free turn” remember to always try to set conditions in your favor. This could mean setting up indirect damage to help out your struggling team members. It could also mean healing up your 2 main work horses that dish out the hurt. Don’t play your opponents game by trying to reciprocate their damage punch for punch. Don’t try to follow them. You won’t win because your opponents team is better designed for their game. Play your game and play your strategy. Do what your team was designed for.
  • Another tip for the mindset: one thing I do as I duel is once I have scouted to some degree, I pretend I am the opponent that I am fighting. I ask myself "what would I do against that pokemon in this situation". There are never any guarentees, but if you keep a cool head and keep your opponent's perspective in mind, you will often find them making a logical decision in which case you will have successfully predicted it.
  • Also remember that as a defensive player with a defensive team, you aren’t necessarily trying to sweep or beat down things fast. One of your goals is efficiency. So, don’t get too hungry when you are in a situation where you think you can “smell the blood” in the water because that could just be the opponent baiting you. Remember what we said: walls are far from invincible - when you lose the ability to absorb damage you start to lose. If you "smell the blood" and the opponent's pokemon is no threat to you, why worry or rush? You can always come back and finish them later on. So, if you are not threatened by any move on the opposing pokemon, scout first!  You should worry more about the things you don’t see. If the case is that you are in fact being baited, the predictable move is the obvious choice - that's when you think can smell the blood. You can surprise people by not being that person that picks the predictable move by instead scouting for unseen threats. If the opponent has not revealed his pokemon and you are in a position where you are not threatened, scout for threats by pick a move that doesn’t make sense. Afterwords, when you are more aware of your opponents strategy and the hidden surprises are gone, you can then start following through with your normal game plan by using your optimum defender (efficiency) for each individual encounter and etc.

A good example of the last bullet point above is what I personally perceive as the rising popularity of the houndoom lately. Pokemon that are weak to fire (scizor, forretress) are used as bait to activate flash fire on the houndoom and then it can pursuit trap or fire off powered up fire attacks which can be potentially hard to absorb. So for me, when I have my dusclops out (which is houndoom bait), I am already clicking my focus punch anytime #1 dusclops is not threatened and #2. I do not yet know what the opponent has on his team. I know people see the dusclops and think: "Will-o-Wisp". That is when I will pick focus punch or something different - I turn a potentially predictable situation into an unpredictable situation. Then again, after you have fully scouted, you can then start trying to punch back in the holes you find with your normal strategy.

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Thank you for reading my guide. I hope that you got some ideas and maybe learned something. I could have condensed this and I could have also expanded some sections of it. I suppose the best teacher is experience and sometimes words just arn't enough. I wrote this because I like to create open minds around me in my life. I like to see people who are willing to learn and grow. I would also like for someone who duels a lot and has been around a long time to write out a deep offensive guide that somewhat reciprocates this defensive one. I am very interested in learning to play different styles and I don't feel like I would be very good in this moment as some of you. I've poured pretty much everything I know and how I create my teams in this guide. The rest is up to you. Fun is the thing we often forget and I hope you have fun and do well in your games. Good luck!

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She went at it with Jay for 3 hours 15 minutes before logging out. Blonde, you may want to add a warning that if someone tries this in an official they will 99% be getting timeclaused and disqualified.

Chaaaaampppiioooooonnnnnnnnnn.

 

But yea, you will 100% get dq'd in an official.  Stick to viridian and you won't have an issue with that.

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There is nothing wrong with defensive play, i have watched some of your battles and they are OK. People who criticize stall play should probably not use Blissey as an answer to a Blissey for example. The problem is, with the team you have in your signature, you have slow Pokemon only, and while they are bulky and together can resist hits by most OU Pokemon, there are some big holes in it, even at first glance.

 

1. The absence of a cleric - your team can suffer from status such as posion or burn, the latter making some of them incapable of doing good damage. From all your Pokemon, Umbreon would be the only one capable of healing the team, and although it is a very good special defense wall, it lacks any offensive pressure, and without pairing it with some fast or strong attackers, it will invite your opponent to suffocate you offensively. I don't see one pokemon in your team that can deal with substitute Kangaskhan effectively, and that is just the first thing that comes to my mind. Umbreon and Dusclops will be setup baits, and your specially offensive Weezing will not be able to break the sub, and take good damage from Return.

 

2. The absence of a viable spinner - Cloyster is inferior to Skarmory and Forretress for a good reason - its typing. This means that when it comes to rapid spin the spikes that my Forretress leaves, it can get poisoned, and it will get worn down to the level that it needs to switch out, and probably just come in once more for a grand exit (after which it becomes useless as a wall). Not to mention if you want to spin, it invites Gengar in to block the spin, and once Gengar is in, you are forced to switch out, because Thunderbolt will kill you.

 

If you want to play stall, you have to do it properly. You have to be able to deal with spikes your opponent sets on you or with the status, or else you will be slowly damaged and eventually killed. Many hard hitters can prove problematic for your team, from Guts users to Sub users or Taunt Pokemon that can power up. You have to be able to successfully prevent them from setting up, and find a way to put pressure yourself on your opponent - something you cannot really do with the team I have seen you use.

 

Maybe that is not your permanent team, but I remember it because I wrote it down, being very skeptical about Solrock in OU. Maybe I still am, but I hope you can prove me wrong and win an official with a stall team. Good luck, and a nice read.

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I disapprove of this thread. :angry:

We should play against each other one time Blonde, I'm super excited about hyper defensive team meeting a hyper offensive one B)

As others pointed out, the major flaw of such team is the time clause that practicly prevents you from playing in officials. I haven't actually played a hyper-defensive team in OU (I met many in UU- thanks Zebra), I'm curious how it will look like ;)

[spoiler]Maybe I should try making a hyper-offensive guide?[/spoiler]

Edited by RysPicz
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1. The absence of a cleric - your team can suffer from status such as posion or burn, the latter making some of them incapable of doing good damage. From all your Pokemon, Umbreon would be the only one capable of healing the team, and although it is a very good special defense wall, it lacks any offensive pressure, and without pairing it with some fast or strong attackers, it will invite your opponent to suffocate you offensively. I don't see one pokemon in your team that can deal with substitute Kangaskhan effectively, and that is just the first thing that comes to my mind. Umbreon and Dusclops will be setup baits, and your specially offensive Weezing will not be able to break the sub, and take good damage from Return.

 

2. The absence of a viable spinner - Cloyster is inferior to Skarmory and Forretress for a good reason - its typing. This means that when it comes to rapid spin the spikes that my Forretress leaves, it can get poisoned, and it will get worn down to the level that it needs to switch out, and probably just come in once more for a grand exit (after which it becomes useless as a wall). Not to mention if you want to spin, it invites Gengar in to block the spin, and once Gengar is in, you are forced to switch out, because Thunderbolt will kill you.

 

 

If I remember correctly, her umbreon did have heal bell at one point, although I don't know if she dropped it for something else like taunt. Also I would rate cloyster higher than forretress as a spinner because of its ability to actually hit gengar (barring hp ghost on forretress). You use the example of gengar coming in on cloyster but the same can be said about forretress as well, but to an even higher degree as forretress basically has no attacks for gengar (earthquake, signal beam, explosion, rapid spin), while cloyster can ice beam or surf and hit gengar relatively hard on the switch and make gengar think twice again before it tries to come in again on cloyster and spin block.

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If I remember correctly, her umbreon did have heal bell at one point, although I don't know if she dropped it for something else like taunt. Also I would rate cloyster higher than forretress as a spinner because of its ability to actually hit gengar (barring hp ghost on forretress). You use the example of gengar coming in on cloyster but the same can be said about forretress as well, but to an even higher degree as forretress basically has no attacks for gengar (earthquake, signal beam, explosion, rapid spin), while cloyster can ice beam or surf and hit gengar relatively hard on the switch and make gengar think twice again before it tries to come in again on cloyster and spin block.

To be fair, I see a decent amount of rock slide forret in OU lately, probably solely to hit gengar. I do think that cloyster is slightly superior, though, simply because it's not trapped and killed by the ubiquitous mag

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2. The absence of a viable spinner - Cloyster is inferior to Skarmory and Forretress for a good reason - its typing. This means that when it comes to rapid spin the spikes that my Forretress leaves, it can get poisoned, and it will get worn down to the level that it needs to switch out, and probably just come in once more for a grand exit (after which it becomes useless as a wall). Not to mention if you want to spin, it invites Gengar in to block the spin, and once Gengar is in, you are forced to switch out, because Thunderbolt will kill you.

Hi! I'm glad to see you thinking about your team and evaluating things you see. I will respond to one of your bullet points, and I will pick this one.

 

#1 First, there are advantages and disadvantages to all of the pokemon (generic statement, but true).

#2 I also used forretress and skarmory for a very long time and I know they are good team mates.

#3 There's also a good chance that forretress works better for you on your team design than it would for me. 

 

In my case I choose cloyster a couple months ago for these reasons:

  • Cloyster uses special attack so as a spinner it is not weakened by Will-o-Wisp. This means you may not overpower a dusclops spinblocker, but it has a better chance when looking at as a standalone pokemon. As you can see, I was also looking at special attacked invested cloysters, so mine has some extra kick to hit dusclops or gengar. Forretress builds don't usually* have a chance to break dusclops alone (as you probably know) mostly because of Will-o-Wisp.
  • You can use starmie as a spinner and it has recover and hits harder; however, it is less bulky and is 2 hit by dusclops shadow ball. Cloyster is weak to focus punch, but it is not as likely to get hit by that as starmie is by shadow ball because you will be attacking.
  • Cloyster never has to worry about being magnet pull trapped, and in the same situation you are not forced to carry a move (EQ) to hit magneton.
  • I made the mistake of trying to spike along with a forretress yesterday when I should have surfed it. 1 v 1 Forretress can not continually stay in against cloyster. I think it's a 3 hit or 4 hit KO with surf depending on the spread of the forretress. The only way forretress can stay in is it has Toxic and Rest and is special defense invested. 1 v 1 in that situation it would turn into stall of some sort for me because my cloyster has recovery.
  • Cloyster immediately crosses off claydol and donphan from being a big threat as spinners because of its powerful surf or ice beam stab. If you're using one of those, you're already out of the game. In this way, Cloyster creates a funnel for viable spinners that can be used against its team. From there your opponents options are probably blastoise, starmie, or if you arn't afraid of magneton you can run forretress. Blastoise is not usually a problem, but repeated torrent can be a threat. You have to finish it off. Special Defense invested dusclops has no fear against any starmie except the modest one; however, modest starmie is going to need prediction or luck in 1 v 1 because shadow ball is a 2HKO on starmie. The only other thing to watch out for is forretress baiting for houndoom as I mentioned in my opening post at the bottom. So you have a few things to watch out for there that can be potential holes, but for just 2 pokemon against any spinner in the game, that's some pretty darn good synergy.
  • Cloyster is weak to thunderbolt like you said, but that doesn't mean a lot. Everything is weak to something, you just cover it or use it for bait just like you cover forretress from fire.
  • This is much less significant, but Cloyster currently has a great opportunity to control the field with the amount of vaporeons on teams. With a slight special defense investment, Cloyster takes a surf and ice beam quite well. Cloyster is also not a super popular pokemon in my opinion which is really good because anything weird or unpopular has greater chances of being less prepared for by other players.

Cloyster and Dusclops are in my opinion probably the best 2 pokemon in the game right now for terrain control if we're talking about pairs. They have great synergy.

The only thing that is on par with that in my opinion would be Forretress (with EQ), Gengar/Dusclops, and probably Houndoom. Houndoom has embarrassingly low physical defense (right along with something like charmander), but it covers for forretress and is the most powerful pursuit trapper in the game to catch spinblocking ghosts. The only bad thing about running that trio is it's 3 pokemon instead of 2 so that's half your team if you do that. It all comes down to what you want.

 

Those were my thoughts when I picked cloyster. It's not always worth getting into "this vs that" because often times it comes down to how you run something (nature, spread, moveset) and what its team mates are. That holds true in this case too because despite the hardships I mentioned for forretress, it is still a great pokemon.

Edited by bl0nde
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Hi! I'm glad to see you thinking about your team and evaluating things you see. I will respond to one of your bullet points, and I will pick this one.

 

#1 First, there are advantages and disadvantages to all of the pokemon (generic statement, but true).

#2 I also used forretress and skarmory for a very long time and I know they are good team mates.

#3 There's also a good chance that forretress works better for you on your team design than it would for me. 

 

In my case I choose cloyster a couple months ago for these reasons:

  • Cloyster uses special attack so as a spinner it is not weakened by Will-o-Wisp. This means you may not overpower a dusclops spinblocker, but it has a better chance when looking at as a standalone pokemon. As you can see, I was also looking at special attacked invested cloysters, so mine has some extra kick to hit dusclops or gengar. Forretress builds don't usually* have a chance to break dusclops alone (as you probably know) mostly because of Will-o-Wisp.
  • You can use starmie as a spinner and it has recover and hits harder; however, it is less bulky and is 2 hit by dusclops shadow ball. Cloyster is weak to focus punch, but it is not as likely to get hit by that as starmie is by shadow ball because you will be attacking.
  • Cloyster never has to worry about being magnet pull trapped, and in the same situation you are not forced to carry a move (EQ) to hit magneton.
  • I made the mistake of trying to spike along with a forretress yesterday when I should have surfed it. 1 v 1 Forretress can not continually stay in against cloyster. I think it's a 3 hit or 4 hit KO with surf depending on the spread of the forretress. The only way forretress can stay in is it has Toxic and Rest and is special defense invested. 1 v 1 in that situation it would turn into stall of some sort for me because my cloyster has recovery.
  • Cloyster immediately crosses off claydol and donphan from being a big threat as spinners because of its powerful surf or ice beam stab. If you're using one of those, you're already out of the game. In this way, Cloyster creates a funnel for viable spinners that can be used against its team. From there your opponents options are probably blastoise, starmie, or if you arn't afraid of magneton you can run forretress. Special Defense invested dusclops has no fear against any of those except modest starmie, which is still probably going to need a crit to win 1 v 1 if dusclops has shadow ball. The only other thing to watch out for is forretress baiting for houndoom as I mentioned in my opening post at the bottom.
  • Cloyster is weak to thunderbolt like you said, but that doesn't mean a lot. Everything is weak to something, you just cover it or use it for bait just like you cover forretress from fire.
  • This is much less significant, but Cloyster currently has a great opportunity to control the field with the amount of vaporeons on teams. With a slight special defense investment, Cloyster takes a surf quite well. Cloyster is also not a super popular pokemon in my opinion which is really good because anything weird or unpopular has greater chances of being less prepared for by other players.

Cloyster and Dusclops are in my opinion probably the best 2 pokemon in the game right now for terrain control if we're talking about pairs. They have great synergy.

The only thing that is on par with that in my opinion would be Forretress (with EQ), Gengar/Dusclops, and probably Houndoom. Houndoom has embarrassingly low physical defense (right along with something like charmander), but it covers for forretress and is the most powerful pursuit trapper in the game to catch spinblocking ghosts. The only bad thing about running that trio is it's 3 pokemon instead of 2 so that's half your team if you do that. It all comes down to what you want.

 

Those were my thoughts when I picked cloyster. It's not always worth getting into "this vs that" because often times it comes down to how you run something (nature, spread, moveset) and what its team mates are. That holds true in this case too because despite the hardships I mentioned for forretress, it is still a great pokemon.

 

That is an elaborate response, but please also answer how you are going to deal with status and pokemon setting up substitutes on your umbreon/other walls.

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That is an elaborate response, but please also answer how you are going to deal with status and pokemon setting up substitutes on your umbreon/other walls.

My umbreon has heal bell 8 PP. I could run blissey (I used to), but I like to punish people for switches. When you run a defensive team, you'll find people switch like crazy trying to try put a hole in you. I try to make that have a cost. I also prefer my umbreon because she can take a good lick on the physical side and I don't have to worry about her. It's a preference thing. Spamming ice beam on blissey can be fun fishing for freezes. However, I prefer to punish with pursuit more.

 

There's different ways of dealing with substitutes and the best thing to do depends on the moveset being used and the pokemon behind the sub. Everyone has different ways of dealing with things. A couple examples for me:

 

Breloom spore substitute: What a pain in the butt instant sleep is right? Well, I look at my opponents team and see what I don't need on mine and then I try to bait breloom into sleeping that pokemon. Usually they spore immediately instead of scouting as people love to spam spore. Weezing takes about 5 or 6 focus punches and has flamethrower. Yesterday my weezing lost to a breloom because it got slept, but that's the first time that has ever happened out of like 12 instances...so how you can you be mad? You can't. The stats say you're a winner. People that judge a team or player by one duel are often making a mistake.

 

Gengar substitute focus punhcer: Steelix has a spread that balances out its defenses and takes 0% from tbolts. Focus punch does about 1/5 HP to steelix if you get one in. It's not stab so it's not as strong as some people think against steelix. The special attacks are not a threat to steelix either unless it has a fire move. Steelix goes in with iron tail which most people arn't afraid of because 75% accuracy. The advantage of running iron tail is you lower the opponents defense if they try to stay in against steelix. I can't recall steelix ever losing to a gengar honestly. If I get terribles RNG with the iron tail, im just going to rest steelix then switch out to dusclops. I ran steelix in 2012 and did the same thing. If they are a disable one I can again switch out to dusclops and shadow ball it or umbreon can take out gengar subs in 1 hit with pursuit (lol) unless they are HP invested gengars. So that's 3 potential counters there, which is really kind of overkill.

 

I don't have an answer for everything though and it's impossible to cover everything as I have said in my guide. When you have something like kangaskhan or snorlax that has a strong normal stab, shadow ball and focus punch then subs, I don't have an answer for that. I'm not sure if anyone does (other than skarmory)? I've fought that attack combination before and won, but I can't say I would win every time. You never really know. That's the exciting thing about pokemon, right? In those cases though I would depend on the bulk of steelix and maybe one other to break the sub then try to work the opponents pokemon down. If I get past the sub, it's not a problem and steelix has PP max'd EQ's if I need a guarenteed hit to break the sub and avoid those painful focus punches. Usually they end up repeatedly swinging irrelevant body slams at steelix trying to get parahax so they can then sub and go for focus punches. If they are doing that I can also try to pressure stall with dusclops, but again there's no way to know what will happen there. If I am already out and see a sub coming in, Steelix also carries roar so I can force it out and maybe get in a bit of spike damage also. If snorlax isn't sent out until the end, it's a curselax which steelix will grind down. When it rests, Weezing comes in and hazes it.

 

That's just pieces of my team though, and it shouldn't be used as an ideal model. Maybe at best just for some ideas. Everyone has different ways of dealing with things and what I typed here is by no means the ideal way of dealing with these threats. I could type out all my movesets and stuff, but that would just lead people to want to copy and paste, which they already do often anyway. When I wrote this guide I wrote it so that people had the tools to make their own creations and their own strategies with whatever offensive/defensive balance they feel is appropriate for them.

Edited by bl0nde
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I came, I saw a chart saying greater risk gave greater reward. I stopped reading.

For the future dont use charts until you fully understand what they are saying please, they r both misleading and incorrect.

This comes from one who do believe taking some (keyword) calculated risk will give much greater reward than just playing it safe. Which by the way the title topic indicated this would be about anyway. I can only hope the rest was better explaining how to balance risk with defensive play to get better results unlike this chart ;)

Tl:dr I am aware u like to go by the name blonde but please, dont live up to your name, u r better than so.

Add more of a curve that goes up and then down agai at reward side depending on how far out on the risk side u go and it will be a better chart. Otherwise u tell us to play only squeeshy high damgers to get the best reward out of it which just wont fit to whatever u wrote under...

Edited by Volpi
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I came, I saw a chart saying greater risk gave greater reward. I stopped reading.

For the future dont use charts until you fully understand what they are saying please, they r both misleading and incorrect.

 

Hi ! I appreciate your feedback and I'd be interested in reading or seeing your interpretation of what I was trying to explain in my guide. Maybe I can make this guide more accurate or easy to understand for others through some critique. What I did when I wrote it is I took the most basic risk vs reward chart I could find just for a visual aid. When I was in college we used more complicated ones regularly in my portfolio class. You can type risk vs reward into google and you'll find the same charts:

[url=http://www.investopedia.com/university/risk/risk3.asp]link 1[/url]

[url=http://www.aaaabenefits.com/content/retirement-plans/plan-and-investment-info]link 2[/url]

 

I've always pictured something like a belly drum charizard being at point "C" on my chart in the opening post. The reason being you often only get one chance (high risk) but with that one chance you have a lot of potential reward in the form of being able to sweep. In contrast, I would picture something like a wish/protect vaporeon at point "A"(low risk). However, this is just my interpretation and how I think of the elements in this game. At the top of my guide you'll see the disclaimer: "Everything here is my opinion".

 

After reading your post a second time, I think you maybe mean you like one that looks more like this?

concepts1_riskreturn.gif

 

I think I tried to find one without all the words on it but I couldn't. So I went with the one in the OP and hoped people got the general idea. On this one returns is talking about finances and investing and stuff which isn't really related, but I guess I could use it. Anyway, I'm interested in improving the guide if you have any advice or recommendations I will read it. Thanks for your comment, Volpi. tumblr_inline_mo11ajmGuP1qz4rgp.gif

Edited by bl0nde
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What u need is more of a diagram which also include that with too much risk u end up just lowering ur reward potential and tjerefor you need to find a diagtam that reflects this.

At same time it is no secret that people play safe for a reason so the too low risk gives a greater reward than the too hogh risk. If it wasnt tje case, curse snorlax (just an example), the very no risk but relatively great reward wouldnt been a thing.

Just exactly where on the chart risk affect the reward is what you can discuss. Some risk should be reccomended but not jist a simple chary claiming the higher risk the higher reward you get. If this was true, i would just go take up a loan of 100k $ and buy bet on Basel to win the champions league 2015 with it and when they do, i pay back the loan with interest and live on the profit i would just have made. Or rven use my profit to do the same for 2016 2017 2018.

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Just thought I'd comment that you really do have to play with a certain mindset when you play defensively, and this guide covers most of the concepts. Depending on the metagame, it can be easier or harder to play aggressively or defensively. It takes a lot of skill to play a defensive game well when you're playing with people at a certain level in PokeMMO, just like it takes skill to play aggressively at a certain level. I know I am an aggressive player and I am bad at defensive play because I gauge my options with an aggressive mindset over a defensive one. There are things to learn from this guide that apply to all play too, not just aggressive play! It's always important to keep in mind what your risk/reward is, and what style best suits the kind of team you have. So yeah, well done on this guide.

Edited by Barrage
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Just thought I'd comment that you really do have to play with a certain mindset when you play defensively, and this guide covers most of the concepts. Depending on the metagame, it can be easier or harder to play aggressively or defensively. It takes a lot of skill to play a defensive game well when you're playing with people at a certain level in PokeMMO, just like it takes skill to play aggressively at a certain level. I know I am an aggressive player and I am bad at defensive play because I gauge my options with an aggressive mindset over a defensive one. There are things to learn from this guide that apply to all play too, not just aggressive play! It's always important to keep in mind what your risk/reward is, and what style best suits the kind of team you have. So yeah, well done on this guide.


The risk reward would even then be more like a diagram i described and not what current one show... if aimed as respond to me. Although with a different curve than for one who play aggresively. The top point i havent even mentioned where should lay at and if you are really interested u can do this calculation yourself by doing following


Take all participants in the tournaments u care to analyze. Find a proper criteria for what is safe play what is risky play. Then what is defensive play and what is aggreaively play. Then analyze each turn between players


If you do this. Which require more data than any current players will be willing to analyze, u will get a roufh idea how different balances of safe aggresively and high risk low risk decisions would affect the outcome of the matches.

If you now start rating players depending on the resulults you found doing what i described earlier and recalculate the effort according to how well you rate the different players, you will start getting close to some data indicating something actual useful for players to learn from giving they can comprehend with thia information but, yes it is still a but, you would now need to define exactly what nakes a ev spread, move, switch, or movepool, high risk or low risk given to the certain sotuation.

All this will, if you actually end up trying to do something about it, only show how hard it is to apply exact math to something and expect an accurate result which can be applied to something.

You find out it will be easier to come up with a buisness model which cash u in millions of $ the following years than crack this code. Which make this a thread where people can freely express their feelings as they like, but never make this anything more than opinion based discussion of what reward comes with playong a more riskful style.
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I am excited to read through this guide and see the concepts presented here. It's really great for the game to see this guides appearing to help newer players. While we may not agree with some of the things listed, there is an overarching scheme that can be agreed upon.

 

Nice work bl0nde! And shout out to Robo for the aggressive play version presented earlier.

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[spoiler]

  • Do the Calculations. Know what you are fighting against and let your team be prepared. The idea is to dish out more damage than you take right? Well, playing defensively isn't always about just creating the most slow and bulky creature possible. You only should use what you need. Overkill in bulk is simply overkill and a loss of efficiency. Pay attention to your EV Spreads, Natures, and Stats of your pokemon. What do I mean? The best way to explain this is by an example. On my team I use a cloyster which is my terrain control (spiker). In this situation most people run a bold cloyster and they just want it to be as bulky as possible, which is not wrong if that's what you want.

3310nep.png

Bold Cloyster's stats can look like this:

-Hit Points: 156    252 Ev's

-Attack:       X

-Defense:   218

-Spe Attck: 121    129 Ev's

-Spe Def:    80     129 Ev's

-Speed:       86     

 

Watch what happens if I change the nature to timid and adjust the spread:

-Hit Points: 156    252 Ev's

-Attack:       X

-Defense:   200

-Spe Attck: 121    129 Ev's

-Spe Def:     73     64  Ev's

-Speed:       107     64 Ev's

 

What happens is I've lost about 10% of my physical defense. So if a snorlax hits me with a body slam and was doing 50 HP on the Bold cloyster it will do 55 to 60 now. To me, this is not significant. I know my math may not be precise, but I hope you can understand the point here. I've given up 10% of my defense, to gain 21 points in speed which allows me to out run a pokemon that can be a potential threat to any team: Marowak. To me, it is worth it because cloyster is just my influence on the terrain. If something like this is worth it to you or not will depend on the way your team is set up.  You may not have expected to read this in this guide from me, but is speed the best defense sometimes? The answer is most definitely yes. The point is, consider what you want your team members to do. It's not about just throwing bulk everywhere as much as possible. That won't win you those tough games. Consider what roles and expectations you have for your team members and optimize them as much as possible for performance. [/spoiler]

 

 

Hey guys,

I've been holding off on actually doing the above for one of my team members because I wanted to breed for higher IV's in defense on this particular pokemon in the future (not that it would be easy or worth it). Anyway, I have had this particular shellder in my box for awhile: 31-20-24-31-27-31 and I kept saying...nope needs more defense. The pickyness kept making me look past it. However, today I actually "took the plunge" and got the calc out on it for the first time thinking: what could it hurt? I was surprised to find out how true what I wrote was - even more so than I expected. I decided to share with you. Using [url=http://gamut-was-taken.github.io/]this[/url] calculator you can view the following information:

 

Timid Cloyster (31 IV HP 24 IV Def) level 50 vs adamant snorlax 68 attack EV's level 50

Body Slam: 24.2 - 28.6 % damage to cloyster

 

Bold Cloyster (31 IV HP 31 IV Def) level 50 vs adamant snorlax 68 attack EV's level 50

Body slam: 21.6 - 25.4 % damage to cloyster

 

So we're dropping 7 iv's in defense and losing the +defense nature and only taking an additional 3% damage. This is kind of surprising maybe, huh?

 

The reason that happens is because cloysters base defense is already so high. I'm not saying to never run a Bold cloyster. However, if you do not have a choice in the matter, the more important IV to pay attention to is the HP. Another way of saying it is If you have to choose between good defense or good HP IV's on pokemon like steelix, dusclops, and cloyster (low base HP) you always want to go with the high HP IV first as the more important stat. It's not a huge thing, but I suppose all the little things add up. It's worth getting on the calculator to see what you really need and what you don't. tumblr_inline_mo11akDOIn1qz4rgp.gif

 

Disclaimer: the above is my opinion and nothing more.

Edited by bl0nde
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Hey guys,

I've been holding off on actually doing the above for one of my team members because I wanted to breed for higher IV's in defense on this particular pokemon in the future (not that it would be easy or worth it). Anyway, I have had this particular shellder in my box for awhile: 31-20-24-31-27-31 and I kept saying...nope needs more defense. The pickyness kept making me look past it. However, today I actually "took the plunge" and got the calc out on it for the first time thinking: what could it hurt? I was surprised to find out how true what I wrote was - even more so than I expected. I decided to share with you. Using this calculator you can view the following information:

 

Timid Cloyster (31 IV HP 24 IV Def) level 50 vs adamant snorlax 68 attack EV's level 50

Body Slam: 24.2 - 28.6 % damage to cloyster

 

Bold Cloyster (31 IV HP 31 IV Def) level 50 vs adamant snorlax 68 attack EV's level 50

Body slam: 21.6 - 25.4 % damage to cloyster

 

So we're dropping 7 iv's in defense and losing the +defense nature and only taking an additional 3% damage. This is kind of surprising maybe, huh?

 

The reason that happens is because cloysters base defense is already so high. I'm not saying to never run a Bold cloyster. However, if you do not have a choice in the matter, the more important IV to pay attention to is the HP. Another way of saying it is If you have to choose between good defense or good HP IV's on pokemon like steelix, dusclops, and cloyster (low base HP) you always want to go with the high HP IV first as the more important stat. It's not a huge thing, but I suppose all the little things add up. It's worth getting on the calculator to see what you really need and what you don't. tumblr_inline_mo11akDOIn1qz4rgp.gif

 

Disclaimer: the above is my opinion and nothing more.

If I recall correctly, its more efficient to use a nature that boosts your highest stat (bold for cloyster's defence) then invest speed evs, although it depends on what you want to outspeed and if you run defence evs on timid cloyster as well. Timid would be better if you didn't care about your defence at all and just wanted to outspeed marowak and take special attacks better.

Example:

1bf0732c73e76f99e4fd3b713e1bc670.png vs dd0136f2cc45c5c6ab143add33690cee.png

So the bold one has the same speed stat as the timid one and 11 more defence if using the leftover evs that you didn't use in speed evs for the timid one, although if you want to put those 72 evs somewhere else like special attack or special defence, it would be a different story.

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