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[Comp Guide] My guide to offensive play


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The Prologue

 

Hello there. I have decided to write this mostly because I'm bored and I wanted to write something. The purpose of this guide is to approach teambuilding in Pokemon from my perspective, which happens to be rather offensive. Therefor, the purpose of this guide is to give my insights of battling, the way I see things. For example, I never run stall based teams and I wouldn't even know how to properly play them because I have dedicated myself so much to offensive play. Therefor, I thought I would approach this guide as an ”Offensive play” guide from my eyes. I hope you enjoy.

 

My definition of offensive teambuilding: A team built with a goal to defeat the other team with raw damage. Or in other words, your team has 0 chance trying to outstall your opponent.

 

And mandatory disclaimer: I do not have anything against defensive playstyle, quite rather I've been really impressed the teams of some known defensive players. Even though that is the path I don't feel like taking.

 

 

 

Chapter 1

 

The key to offensive teambuilding

 

The key to sucsessful offensive is to have offensive teambuild as a result instead of having it as a goal. If you wanna become a successful offensive player, this is a must. This works to both offensive and defensive play, by the way. Let me explain exactly what I mean: I enjoyed talking about teambuilding with a in-game friend of mine, Blonde, who's known for pretty much the exact opposite kinds of teams I run. Really stally. This conversation in fact helped me understand better my own teambuilding. For a little while, I thought her goal was to make defensive teams and I even called her stallteams ”art”. A further discussion to the matter I realized that Blonde did not in fact want to make exactly defensive teams instead of making her Pokemon defensive to make sure they would defeat the certain threats of the metagame. This is an example of defensive play being a result and not a goal and the reason why I felt like this was the reason for her success battling in-game.

 

To flip this to the offensive teambuilding, you shouldn't necessarily have a goal to bring 6 sweepers to your team and expect it to work. Like in aforementioned example your goal should be considering things like ”what Pokemon do I need to defeat the stall with raw damage” and you come to the conclusion defensive Pokemon you need to be aware of are Chansey, Weezing, Skarmory etc. And NOW you consider what Pokemon do you need to beat these defensive Pokemon with raw damage and notice the strategy to beat these Pokemon in fact TURNED offensive instead of trying to be an offensive player by slapping offensive Pokemon in your team and high fiving yourself for being a Hyper Offense master.


So, easy right? Oh? Other offensive teams? We need to be worried about those? This is where some could say things get complicated but in fact here is the part where the metagame is supposed to get so called ”fun”. I've always considered myself a hyper offensive player. In some official tournament where I was trying to spam my Porygon2 to full health I remember Forfiter complaining how bullshit was my claim that I play offensively.

 

Well, Recover Porygon2 is a stall Pokemon, right? And here is where we get to part of complete teambuilding. I was running a team that was crippling weak to Jolteon while all the defensive had been covered twice. I think I had like 4 electric weaknesses. Knowing I had really huge threat in my team of getting destroyed by Jolteon if anyone wanted to run one I had to have the hardest possible counter to it and that I found to be P2, while my other team was offensive. Notice that I would consdier my team offensive even if I used Chansey as my Pokemon for the job because the goal of my team was not to beat opponent by stalling but to beat the match inflicting only raw damage.

 

This is my example of my team becoming as a result offensive based, than having a goal of having an offensive team.

 

 

Chapter 2


Understanding metagame and tiering


”B-but Orange, wtf has tiering to do with offensive play guide?”

 

Okay, no one asked that question but let's pretend someone did. Understanding metagame is crucial. Tiering is used to control the metagame artificially. I can compare this to sport. American football has tight rules of preventing offensive holding by giving a notable penalties for it because offensive linemen being able to hold would overpower pass plays over run plays and overpowering offense over defense. Other example is not having the offside rule in ”European” football (call it ”normal” if you want to, I don't care) making the lives of defenders a living hell because defending other team's offensive players would be rather difficult. These rules are artificial rules to be able to reach some certain virtues about the game.

 

Pokemon tiering is in the same way similar. Pokemon have bans so that things would be as virtous from competitive aspect as possible. One important and probably the most important virtue is diversity. If there were no bans, teams could become nothing but offensive basically limiting the potential the game could have strategic wise. You would have no difficulty trying to wander around in the diverse world when the metagame is narrow, you would not need to consider enough factors when deciding the correct metagame plays if the selection is limited, therefor boring.

 

What has this to do with anything?

 

Any metagame you're going to approach that have bans are supposed to be diverse. Therefor there's a reason your 6 sweeper teams shouldn't exactly work by default.

 

 

Chapter 3

 

The actual battle experience with your offensive team

 

3.1 Beating a defensive team


Well, now you've build a well rounded team that has turned out to be an offensive one. That wallbreaks all your biggest enemies. How to play with it though?
This is every new player's nightmare. And here we approach to the reason why defensive play is so frowned upon. It might seem rather weird but the pressure on a metagame is always on the offensive player side. The offensive player have to make the move, the initiative. This is something the beginning offensive players have hard time understanding. 

 

A general new offensive player could have a situation where he has a Medicham and a Jolteon versus a Weezing and a Blissey. The offensive player in this situation is pretty much fucked. The defensive player can always switch a counter to the offensive player's Pokemon and heal itself back up while the offensive player has basically nothing to do. How to avoid this kind of situation?


Leakage (wallbreaking)


This is my made up term but I think it describes the situation the best. Your opponent's defensive team is a wall that can't be broken. For this you need a Pokemon that can cause leakage. What this means is that this Pokemon with a right prediction can bring down one of the strongest defensive Pokemon you need to play against. We don't necessarily realize but the most offensive Pokemon we use are actually what I'm describing as the best Pokemon in the metagame are that due to the fact they can cause leakage. CB Metagross can defeat Skarm+Chansey+Weezing+Slowbro. Heracross can defeat Chansey + Slowbro + Weezing after Guts. Blaziken can beat Skarm + Chansey + Weezing. Meanwhile strong physical attackers like Medicham or Dodrio suffer to get any usage at all due to the fact they can't cause any leakage to defensive player's team leading to the aformentioned example of Jolteon + Medicham. Pokemon like Jolteon can be insane sweepers lategame when the leakage have been caused to opposing (special) wall. After you've caused the leakage playing against a defensive team becomes like playing against offensive one. And that follows...


3.2 Beating an offensive team


Beating an offensive team is fairly straight forward. You basically need to predict what your opponent does and select the right moves against. Like mentioned in a previous chapter your teambuild already should have some Pokemon to protect you from the offensive ones to maximize your chance of winning. Basically, what you have to do in general is to maximize your chance of winning by thinking the pros of cons of every switch and attack. But this is pretty nubbish which I get to in next chapter.

 

 

Chapter 4


Beating different level opponents

 

I valuate my opponent's level by 5th turn and it controls thoroughly how I play my match onwards. Depending whether your opponent is good or less experienced I use different ways to beat them.


4.1. Beating a less experienced opponent


The key to beat a worse opponent than you is not to outplay yourself. I consider you a better player than your opponent when you understand what certain actions cause to the outcome of the match better than your opponent does. Against this type of player you should always play the best overall play you feel in the situation. You feel like you don't lose much anything by trying if your opponent overpredicts and switches? Go ahead and attack your seemingly unbreakable opposing Pokemon. Feel like you can pull a double switch that can gain momentum with little to no penalty if you fail? Not only is this double switch now an option for you, it's a mandatory play for you. Every situation where you feel like your pros outweight the possible cons you will go to that play and against less experienced players this should be an easy recipe for victory.

 

 

4.2. Beating an experienced opponent


Here's we get to the difficult part. What if your opponent knows everything you do? Your opponents start to realize seemingly cost-free double switches/non switches and starting countering them by getting one level above you. This is where things get really difficult. Except, they don't. You still keep thinking what is the overall best play in every situation while taking in conisderation to the fact your opponent can understand everything about every situation what is the best move for you and himself. And you use THAT against your opponent by countering that. It's hard to explain but in a battle you probably can think of situations where this has happened.

 

In addition, experienced players can read your behavior. Show them one and do the other.

 

 

That's so far the end of my comp guide which I felt like I wanted to make before and now I actually got a bit of time and boredom to complete it. Hope you enjoyed.


 

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49 minutes ago, OrangeManiac said:

In some official tournament where I was trying to get my Porygon2 to full health I remember Forfiter complaining how bullshit was my claim that I play offensively.

You remember wrong, I said that your claim is bullshit because your team had 2 typically offensive pokes, 1 tanks and 3 walls. That sounds more like balanced rather than offensive and that was my argument. Jolt, Meta, Pory, Weezing were your pokes back then- can't remind last 2. I remember that day as well x)

 

The key to success I had before I got rusty as fuck was offensive synergy based on understanding and adapting to the meta. It's totally impossible to cover all offensive threats in any of tiers. For example in OU, Rhydon + Gyarados form a fantastic offensive core, covering each other's weaknesses and common switches. Rhydon takes care of Slowbro, takes advantage of most Weezings and is generally super viable right now in current OU meta. Gyarados on the other hand is THE shit in OU, able to destroy entire teams with orbed DD set.

Those 2 got a common foe though, which is Cloyster. Because special based teams are hardly viable I tend to throw in a third offensive pokemon that can cover Cloyster while also weakening other pokes. Heracross is the top tier threat which also works pretty well in the mentioned tandem, I liked using Medicham a lot as well but did not enjoy switching a defensive poke into a goddamn weezing.

 

There's more I'd want to write but it's 11pm and I'm already drunk after Poland vs Germany match

Edited by RysPicz
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37 minutes ago, pachima said:

Thunderbolt gyarados says hi and bye to cloyster

With Thunderbolt you lose coverage over other stuff, something for something ;) I personally don't have a tbolt gyara yet and got no experience with it so I did not want to include it in my post

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1 hour ago, RysPicz said:

You remember wrong, I said that your claim is bullshit because your team had 2 typically offensive pokes, 1 tanks and 3 walls.

 

I mean, I would not have issues with myself even if that was the case but I will still point out that this just isn't true.

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Taking the thunderbolt gyarados as an example. With an hyper offensive team, which I do all the time, having some unusual moves can turn the tides of a game. Giving up some coverage on a specific pokemon in order to take out specific targets which could otherwise wall you can be proven useful.

 

Imagine this situation. You are in NU, you have a lot of physical mons, and you know tangela walls you hard. You can either counter tangela or lure it. 

How?

One of the best examples is primeape. If you dont spoil it too soon, prime can decimate tangela with overheat, probably detroying the physical wall of their team. 

Gyarados is the same thing. Thunderbolt can 2hko other gyarados and cloysters. With an offensive team, getting rid of a wall like that so easily is a big advantage.

Of course this is not as easy as it looks, but offensive teams surely love some surprise sets (If you know how to use them)

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1 hour ago, pachima said:

Taking the thunderbolt gyarados as an example. With an hyper offensive team, which I do all the time, having some unusual moves can turn the tides of a game. Giving up some coverage on a specific pokemon in order to take out specific targets which could otherwise wall you can be proven useful.

 

Imagine this situation. You are in NU, you have a lot of physical mons, and you know tangela walls you hard. You can either counter tangela or lure it. 

How?

One of the best examples is primeape. If you dont spoil it too soon, prime can decimate tangela with overheat, probably detroying the physical wall of their team. 

Gyarados is the same thing. Thunderbolt can 2hko other gyarados and cloysters. With an offensive team, getting rid of a wall like that so easily is a big advantage.

Of course this is not as easy as it looks, but offensive teams surely love some surprise sets (If you know how to use them)

I'd like to think that there are surprising moves that work most of the times, and surprising moves that drop a lot in success after being used the first time. Tbolt gyara falls in the second, especially in a game where it isn't all that hard to remember sets like those and just be more careful next time. As was said before, you drop coverage over tbolt, and if you depend on tbolt gyara to deal with an enemy cloyster/gyara/whatever, that's a pretty bad move. Just focusing on this, but it can be taken in context about similar scenarios like this one.

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16 hours ago, Spaintakula said:

I'd like to think that there are surprising moves that work most of the times, and surprising moves that drop a lot in success after being used the first time. Tbolt gyara falls in the second, especially in a game where it isn't all that hard to remember sets like those and just be more careful next time. As was said before, you drop coverage over tbolt, and if you depend on tbolt gyara to deal with an enemy cloyster/gyara/whatever, that's a pretty bad move. Just focusing on this, but it can be taken in context about similar scenarios like this one.

Well I think tbolt gyara still works most of the time, unless your opponent only uses gyarados counters that aren't weak to thunderbolt and can handle the other coverage moves gyarados has. If you run cloyster+weezing for gyarados, even if you know it has thunderbolt, you're still forced to play in a much different way, avoiding switching in cloyster vs gyarados (and therefore cloyster is somewhat useless, lacks good switch ins besides gyarados for the most part), and you're pretty much forced to go weezing any time gyarados comes in. Or you don't have the scouting to know that the gyarados has thunderbolt and then cloyster takes a big 70-90% chunk on the switch and is effectively crippled the rest of the match.

 

Same idea with fire blast snorlax. Either your opponent goes to skarmory and you bop them with a fire blast, or they are forced to make a suboptimal switch in like heracross and risk a body slam para or a big hit from fire blast. Either way, its a win win situation for the pokemon with the surprise set. Only time the surprise set wouldn't work is if your opponent scouts for it properly AND has a secondary counter to the pokemon. In the case of snorlax, if you reveal fire blast too early, then the person can go to dusclops safely knowing snorlax probably can't hurt it too much, but if you do predict properly, you can still catch the skarmory on the switch if your opponent doesn't know you have fire blast yet. 

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I don't know if this really qualifies as "offense" but something I don't see many newbies do is sacrifice switching

 

For example:

_You currently have an important pokemon on your field (for example it has a certain immunity that you need to keep)

_And you have a powerful but squishy sweeper that you really want to switch on right now because it could give you the win (big momentum, wallbreaking etc)

_The problem is that switching will damage/cripple your sweeper and that could compromise its sweep

 

well most newbs will just try to switch on something safe to "control the situation" and hope that they just get a better chance to use their sweeper later, while they could actually just send a low hp pokemon which is not essential to their win anymore as a "sacrifice", so that they get a clean switch after the previous pokemon faints.

 

 

I know it sounds really basic but there are a lot of people who just don't understand that some pokemon are worth sacrificing as long as they are not part of your win-conditions anymore. You could even sacrifice a big healthy poke if it meant 100% chance to place your win condiiton on the next turn.

Extreme example: sending your gyara on jolt so that your scarfmie can switch in cleanly and sweep what's left of their team (assuming theyre low and ouf of specil walls etc)

 

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17 minutes ago, aeeaeeaaa said:

Extreme example: sending your gyara on jolt so that your scarfmie can switch in cleanly and sweep what's left of their team (assuming theyre low and ouf of specil walls etc)

 

Yea and when that jolt subs on that gyara switch in, ggnore. 

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it's a complete theoretical example, you have no idea what was aganst jolt, the state of the match or the team composition. Why are you trying to nitpick like this ?

 

And yes, this kind of suicide switch can be really dangerous (more common than the sub would be an enemy switch too, that could really ruin your game), but offense is all about being able to gauge risk.

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Just now, aeeaeeaaa said:

it's a complete theoretical example, you have no idea what was aganst jolt, the state of the match or the team composition. Why are you trying to nitpick like this ?

 

And yes, this kind of suicide switch can be really dangerous (more common than the sub would be an enemy switch too, that could really ruin your game), but offense is all about being able to gauge risk.

I'm basically going by your "extreme" example, so suffice to say it's a bad one. Also yes offense involves a certain amount of risk but calculated ones, not blind.  Anyways, here's some criticism:

 

28 minutes ago, aeeaeeaaa said:

I don't know if this really qualifies as "offense" but something I don't see many newbies do is sacrifice switching

 

For example:

_You currently have an important pokemon on your field (for example it has a certain immunity that you need to keep)

_And you have a powerful but squishy sweeper that you really want to switch on right now because it could give you the win (big momentum, wallbreaking etc)

_The problem is that switching will damage/cripple your sweeper and that could compromise its sweep

 

well most newbs will just try to switch on something safe to "control the situation" and hope that they just get a better chance to use their sweeper later, while they could actually just send a low hp pokemon which is not essential to their win anymore as a "sacrifice", so that they get a clean switch after the previous pokemon faints.

 

You don't just immediately sack something without scouting what your opponent's set is. They could either be a set up poke or bander / scarfer, and if the former, sending something to sack could just as well end up being set up bait, example - sacking a weakened Arcanine vs CB Gyara would be alright, but not vs DD Gyara. That is why you always go to your safe switch in first and then deal with it accordingly. 

 

 

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No shit

seems obvious enough that a sweeper's full clean up is not something you do by turn 2 and that sacrifice switching is not something you do blindly. I didn't think it was worth mentioning

Anyway I stop there, you're trying to bring way too much thought about this example than it needs. I could have used literally any pokemons so feel free to replace poke that fit your views.

Edited by aeeaeeaaa
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3 minutes ago, aeeaeeaaa said:

No shit

seems obvious enough that a sweeper's full clean up is not something you do by turn 2 and that sacrifice switching is not something you do blindly. I didn't think it was worth mentioning

Anyway I stop there, you're trying to bring way too much thought about this example than it needs. I could have used literally any pokemons so feel free to replace poke that fit your views.

 

48 minutes ago, aeeaeeaaa said:

I don't know if this really qualifies as "offense" but something I don't see many newbies do is sacrifice switching

 

For example:

_You currently have an important pokemon on your field (for example it has a certain immunity that you need to keep)

_And you have a powerful but squishy sweeper that you really want to switch on right now because it could give you the win (big momentum, wallbreaking etc)

_The problem is that switching will damage/cripple your sweeper and that could compromise its sweep

 

well most newbs will just try to switch on something safe to "control the situation" and hope that they just get a better chance to use their sweeper later, while they could actually just send a low hp pokemon which is not essential to their win anymore as a "sacrifice", so that they get a clean switch after the previous pokemon faints.

 

 

I know it sounds really basic but there are a lot of people who just don't understand that some pokemon are worth sacrificing as long as they are not part of your win-conditions anymore. You could even sacrifice a big healthy poke if it meant 100% chance to place your win condiiton on the next turn.

Extreme example: sending your gyara on jolt so that your scarfmie can switch in cleanly and sweep what's left of their team (assuming theyre low and ouf of specil walls etc)

 

If you're gonna teach newbies something, then best to try to cover everything, even the obvious parts. 

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  • OrangeManiac changed the title to [Comp Guide] My guide to offensive play

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