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How do i win officials? (serious thread)


Vaeldras

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I sometimes use this as an annoying joke, but for someone who's not used to play in officials this might be a legit question.

Also, theorymon aside, by looking closely at what kind of teams has proven to be the most successful in official tournaments one could better acknowledge what pokemon are actually the most relevant.

Usage is a thing, but it would be interesting to see how many times the top threats were seen in the winning team.

For example, we've seen a few special kids running pikachu in ou, but does that little usage make it "more relevant" than other pokes who have been used (at times even successfully) by just one person? don't know if i made myself clear.

 

We'll just refer to official and unofficial tournaments, since verm 1 is (fairly) regarded as a per se world.

So, if some of you mlg pros would be so kind to do that, could you share a few thoughts on teambuilding for serious competitions? playstyles, tips etc.

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I'm no pro, but I do love to battle. Dismiss my thoughts if you think only the pros can have good ideas. :P

 

A short spoiler.[spoiler]

To be fair, if players go purely on statistics, they don't have a hope in hell. You've got to get the feel of your team, by using it. Trial and error style. You can't account for hax on paper, and you sure as hell can't calculate and predict everything. A lot of people tend to have unique quirks and variations of the same Pokemon for flexible teams. Knowing the main threats of your tier is a good start, but you've got to use that. Build a team around them or build a team to take them out, whatever you're going for. Have variations and multiple teams, for your own flexibility. Other than that, just pray for luck and give it your all.

[/spoiler]

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Truthfully you have to get great at scouting and counter teaming. Not an easy task as good players change their team throughout the tournament, so it can seriously back fire. Even when I countered team someone, I always made sure it was fairly balance and could play well against any type of team. So many times I have seen players over commit to countering they get swept by a common threat. Then you have to figure what kind of player your opponent is, do they play safe or make high risk reward plays. That doesn't mean just for one tournament, I'll remember that one players play style for the rest of his career. Having creative sets help so much as they can create a unpredicted hole in your opponents team. Like not expecting a certain hidden or getting hit by a focus punch. Learn how to beat the common cores, if you see Chaney, arca and ludicolo, figure a unique/unpredictable set/poke to deal with it easily. All ready kinda went over this but change your team, can't ever think of a time where I ran the same team twice in a row. Other things I'm forgetting, might add later.

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I watch a lot of tournaments and I am always interested to think how tournament winners go about getting that official win. Do they have a specific strategy? It would be great for some previous tournament winners to give input into this thread. 

 

Examples

 

DoubleJ - Summer Ball Final

Stayed in the top bracket the whole way through and did an awesome job. I wondered if he stuck with one main core and then just swapped out team members in between to change it up? 

 

Gbwead - Monotype Mania

Literally one of my most favourite official finals ever, always wondered where Gb got the idea for that Aerodactyl as it was the first time I had seen one like that used in a PokeMMO Official. 

 

Frags - Verdanturf Pignic and Bellossom's Tea Party

Won two NU officials in a row and as far as I am aware was one of the first players to start incorporating Aggron into their team build. I always wonder how players manage to build such reliable teams for a new meta and if the "old UU" had any influence on their play style and Pokemon choices for the "new NU"

 

Daniellegal Little Cup Old School Marathon Monotype Petit Cup Free - for - All Little Cup (again)

Seriously how did this guy get so good at gimmicks? ;)

 

There are plenty others but these are the first ones that popped into my head. 

 

P.S. As the thread title states, this is a serious thread so please keep the responses that way - think in terms of Bowser's post above~

Edited by Noad
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mfw.... you deleted my post... I edited with some good advice. Guess I'l say it again..

 

 

Having creative sets help so much as they can create a unpredicted hole in your opponents team. Like not expecting a certain hidden or getting hit by a focus punch. 

This is great advice. If you use the standard sets everyone uses you become predictable which is a huge factor is such a strategic game. Be creative, switch your movesets to be compatible with your team.

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Truthfully you have to get great at scouting and counter teaming. Not an easy task as good players change their team throughout the tournament, so it can seriously back fire. Even when I countered team someone, I always made sure it was fairly balance and could play well against any type of team. So many times I have seen players over commit to countering they get swept by a common threat. Then you have to figure what kind of player your opponent is, do they play safe or make high risk reward plays. That doesn't mean just for one tournament, I'll remember that one players play style for the rest of his career.

 

And this is why people should not be allowed to change their teams during a tournament. Hopefully tournament automation (battle box?) can fix that.

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mfw.... you deleted my post... I edited with some good advice. Guess I'l say it again..

 

 

This is great advice. If you use the standard sets everyone uses you become predictable which is a huge factor is such a strategic game. Be creative, switch your movesets to be compatible with your team.

Apologies, you must have ninja edited just as I hid it. 

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Never been a fan of counterteaming. I don't mind if someone does that but personally it just distracts me. I tend to build teams that can beat any kind of a teambuild and Pokemon with the correct predictions. However, the emphasis still remains on the metagame. If there's a highly used threat I'll make extra sure I have something for that. What comes to playstyles, if stall is popular in the tier I lean my teams to be ready to break the main defensive threats sometimes even with the expense of being weak to some offensive threats. It's basically all about trying to maximize the chance to win with everything I do. Since counterteaming is a thing I tend to build at least 2 teams for me to use, which sometimes may even share a lot of same Pokemon but just showing an unscouted Pokemon or two is usually enough to drive your opponent away from the perception you're running same team as last round. An example of this could be running Gardevoir instead of Porygon2 to counter Jolteon. Your team is similar on its philosophy but you're just replacing the same role with another and it hopefully is enough for possible counterteam opponent to throw their scout sheets away.

Not an expert either but this is the way I've always approached teambuilding.

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It's pretty much as Bowser said but I'd like to emphazise a lot on it. 

 

1) Knowing your opponent - This will happen only if you've spectated or preferably, played him before. Once you've done either of those things, you'll be in a position to know his mindset, whether he makes risky plays or ALWAYS plays it safe. With the people who play it safe, you can always take advantage of these situations because you'll know what your opponent is going to switch to and hence double switch. 

 

2) Scouting+Counter Teaming - These 2 are pre-requisites to building the right team. The one thing you should know is that most players usually do not change their defensive core. They stick to it because it's a safety measure and they change their offensive core depending on how they want to put holes into the opponent's team. Find out what pokemon you have in your box, that can exploit your opponent's defensive core. Every single pokemon, be it offensive or defensive, is a liability or set up bait for another pokemon and you have to use this to your advantage. For eg - Arcanine / Ursaring are good switch ins for a Weezing while Gyarados / Aero / Rhydon are all good switch ins for Arcanine and it goes on. In UU, Muk switches into Vileplume with ease, so the Vile user needs to pair it with Altaria or Quagsire so that Muk can't dent holes into the team. Hitmonlee is paired with Crawdaunt because Slowking is the one pokemon that walls most of hitmonlee's attacks which makes crawdaunt a good partner since it resits both of slowking's stabs. Like this, find offensive cores which can beat your opponent. For eg the latest offensive core in UU, is spikes + breloom & houndoom and I pretty much lost in the finals of last tourney because of that. At the same time, see if any of your opponent's offensive pokemon can wreck one of your walls, because if he has scouted you, you can bet that he'll run it. So accordingly change your team but retain at least 3 members from your previous winning team so that it doesn't seem like an entirely new team and so that there's always some balance.

 

3) Don't be afraid to get creative - Most good players build their defensive core so that they can take care of almost all kinds of threats. When this situation arises, you need to very creative. For eg Bowser ran a sub punch ludicolo which set up on an Umbreon and as a result was successful as a wallbreaker. I ran a CM / Wish / Taunt / Psychic Gardevoir with the sole purpose of beating Chansey and it worked. Of course that last set sucks if your opponent has a umbreon or metagross, so make sure that they're either not running one, or that you've taken it out. I took out my opponent's metagross before I revealed Gardevoir and that helped.

 

4) Pray for RNG - No matter how skillful or awesome you play, RNG can screw you over or win you a match. I was very lucky in my last OU tournament where it was Metagross vs Tauros and I barely survived CB EQ and I won it with a crit meteor mash. Honestly I should've lost that match but I was very lucky. There have been countless times where I've outpredicted my opponent but still lost due to rng and that can be incredibly frustrating or make you even feel like quitting the game. 

 

5) Get help from people before / during / after tournaments - I cannot stress how important this is because having your teammates give you practice or scout or lend you pokes or give you advice helps a lot. When I mean help during a tournament, I don't mean coaching move for move, but like I mentioned above helping you scout or finding the right wallbreaker. Also, it's okay to get help at times during matches because each and every single teammate of yours will have their own perspective and that gives you wide range of options to think of and then you get to make a decision. Sometimes during my matches, I'm so focused on fainting one of my opponent's pokemon that I risk allowing a large portion of damage to a pokemon that I would need at later parts of the match. Or at other times I'm always thinking of what my opponent is about to do, that I focus on outplaying him half of the time by making the right switches, instead of attacking and thus weakening his pokemon step by step. After tournaments or your match, always think back to what mistake you made. If you lost due to rng, think of a way that you could've won despite rng screwing you over, or if you lost due to a mistake you made, think of an alternate way of how you would've played that particular scenario because one of the worst feelings in comp battling is repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Sometimes you make the dumbest moves of all, which makes you lose a match and you're haunted by it, but that's a good thing because it always serves as a reminder to not do that dumb shit again. 

 

I think that's all for now.

Edited by NikhilR
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Why does it matter, learn to change your team. This is always just going to be a opinion base debate. Smogon does tournaments like we do.

 

I am not pointing fingers to anyone, I counter team a lot myself. However, I think this style is cancer and we need to get rid of it.

 

Smogon is a battle simulator, which means you have access to any comp any time. In here however, old players like us have a huge advantage over starting players by having every viable comp, or access from friends. This way, they ensure that the wealthiest competitor has means to counterteam the starting player. This is one of the reasons why the competitive scene is such a big letdown for most new players.

 

If a battle box system used in all official pokemon competitions was added here, where you focus your effort on a team of 6 that focuses on beating any threats, the competitive scene will be much more pleasant for everyone. I am more than sure that such a thing is not hard to implement, all we need to change is some mentalities who have been going on for years. As for smogon, most of its usage stats come from the showdown ladder, where due to the large number of players, you cannot really counter team. So there's 2 arguments there.

Edited by OldKeith
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DoubleJ's Secret to Success:

 

With all of the resources we have available to us on these forums, I always start with the Usage Statistics listed here. With this I can identify the top threats in the tier and begin to build my teams with these. 

 

In initial team building I tend to stick to a very common formula for a Balanced Team: I select a SpDef Wall, a Def Wall, and a Tank that can patch up any defensive holes I might still have. For example, my SpDef wall is Ampharos and my Def Wall is Forretress. The common weakness is a susceptibility to powerful Ground attacks (EQ), so I typically throw in something like Altaria (which also covers up Forretress's Fire weakness). 

 

Then I design their move-sets to benefit my team. When thinking about defensive walls, I try to get the following aspects, beyond just having them act as glorified pivots: a spiker, a spinner, a status-user, and a cleric. If I can't get all 4 then ohhhh well, but I try to get all of them WITHOUT SACRIFICING MY DEFENSIVE SYNERGY.

 

After that I build my sweepers around these defensive walls. I think of it like this: if I have this wall, what common pokes are going to switch into it to try and gain momentum? I then choose a sweeper that can abuse most of these common switch-ins. For example, Ampharos is going to attract things like Donphan, Rhydon, and Chansey. What covers all of these? Well Azumarill with STAB physical Waterfall is going to beast so there's one physical attacker. I then look at my other wall and do the same thing. After that I add in what I'm lacking. If I picked two physical attackers then I obviously pick a Special Sweeper that covers the tier, such as Starmie or Manectric. 

 

Once I've built my team, I then practice, practice, and practice some more. Undoubtedly you will identify weaknesses in your team and will have to make the appropriate changes to patch up these holes. After that I then proceed with a tournament, where scouting, counter-teaming, and all of the other fun stuff that OldKeith hates come into play. 

 

In tournament play, I do make changes to my team. That's something that has led to my success because I'm fairly "unpredictable" and people are wary to counter-team against me. So to summarize, I not only make one standard team for which I use, but usually 3-4 that I alternate between.

 

Each of these teams have went through the process I just described above. 

 

Typically though you will have one team, of those 3-4, that is really freaking good. So lead with this team and try to use it as frequently as possible. 

 

This is a good starting point for someone wanting to earn their first win. Beyond that it comes down to understanding the players within our competitive community and learning how to take advantage of each. 

Edited by DoubleJ
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