Online Competitive Pokemon Battle Showdown Happy Fun Times

[Chiko]

I hate Durant now.

I could've won this match had Durant not been an imbecile.

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by HeroicRein

I hate Durant now.

I could've won this match had Durant not been an imbecile.

So I have to ask -- your Durant didn't happen to have Hone Claws, did it?

[Chiko]

That's a negative, it didn't have Hone Claws.

Which, that fact, basically cost me the match.

[Red Panda]

Shiny new OU team

Spoiler: show

So today I battled Lost with an OU team I haven't used in a while, and it got me interested in it again. So, I made a new team!

A technique I had never tried out before was Baton Pass, and a pokemon that I've always loved is Crawdaunt. Crawdaunt is crippled by it's horrible speed stat, but this gen it got Adaptability, so I figured that boosting that speed would be the best thing to do.

So, I put Scolipede on my team. It only has Megahorn as an attacking move, but I haven't used it yet. I usually Swords Dance first, then Protect, then Baton Pass.

And let me tell you, Crawdaunt is really good. If not for Crabhammer missing I would've swept the team.

Gothitelle is an excellent trapper, and I love using it. I wouldn't expect MegaManectric to be useful, but it's definitely saved me a few times. Espeon is an excellent screener. Hawlucha is a great Revenge killer, though I'm still unsure of whether or not I should put Weavile in it's place simply because of more speed (outspeeding Greninja and Adamant Talonflames).

[rotomotorz]

Originally Posted by Red Panda

Shiny new OU team

Spoiler: show

So today I battled Lost with an OU team I haven't used in a while, and it got me interested in it again. So, I made a new team!

A technique I had never tried out before was Baton Pass, and a pokemon that I've always loved is Crawdaunt. Crawdaunt is crippled by it's horrible speed stat, but this gen it got Adaptability, so I figured that boosting that speed would be the best thing to do.

So, I put Scolipede on my team. It only has Megahorn as an attacking move, but I haven't used it yet. I usually Swords Dance first, then Protect, then Baton Pass.

And let me tell you, Crawdaunt is really good. If not for Crabhammer missing I would've swept the team.

Gothitelle is an excellent trapper, and I love using it. I wouldn't expect MegaManectric to be useful, but it's definitely saved me a few times. Espeon is an excellent screener. Hawlucha is a great Revenge killer, though I'm still unsure of whether or not I should put Weavile in it's place simply because of more speed (outspeeding Greninja and Adamant Talonflames).

While its not common or of concern, your team looks like it gets totally wrecked by Trick Room :P

[Mew The Gato]

Originally Posted by Red Panda

Shiny new OU team

Spoiler: show

So today I battled Lost with an OU team I haven't used in a while, and it got me interested in it again. So, I made a new team!

A technique I had never tried out before was Baton Pass, and a pokemon that I've always loved is Crawdaunt. Crawdaunt is crippled by it's horrible speed stat, but this gen it got Adaptability, so I figured that boosting that speed would be the best thing to do.

So, I put Scolipede on my team. It only has Megahorn as an attacking move, but I haven't used it yet. I usually Swords Dance first, then Protect, then Baton Pass.

And let me tell you, Crawdaunt is really good. If not for Crabhammer missing I would've swept the team.

Gothitelle is an excellent trapper, and I love using it. I wouldn't expect MegaManectric to be useful, but it's definitely saved me a few times. Espeon is an excellent screener. Hawlucha is a great Revenge killer, though I'm still unsure of whether or not I should put Weavile in it's place simply because of more speed (outspeeding Greninja and Adamant Talonflames).

Actually, maximum Speed Deoxys-S is faster than Crawdaunt, even if the latter is at +2, and a lot of Deoxys-S carry Superpower. You might want to give Crawdaunt Aqua Jet to deal with priority users. It would save it from Thundurus, because most Thundurus carry Thunder Wave, which would cripple Crawdaunt. If you can outspeed, you can use +2 Aqua Jet to OHKO it before it does so. Adamant +2 Aqua Jet will always do this, while Jolly usually shall, too. Unfortunately, even Adamant Aqua Jet at +2 will not always OHKO Deoxys-S, so, you might want to set up Entry Hazards. They are always good for a sweep, anyway.

[Cloneblazer12]

Originally Posted by Red Panda

Shiny new OU team

Spoiler: show

So today I battled Lost with an OU team I haven't used in a while, and it got me interested in it again. So, I made a new team!

A technique I had never tried out before was Baton Pass, and a pokemon that I've always loved is Crawdaunt. Crawdaunt is crippled by it's horrible speed stat, but this gen it got Adaptability, so I figured that boosting that speed would be the best thing to do.

So, I put Scolipede on my team. It only has Megahorn as an attacking move, but I haven't used it yet. I usually Swords Dance first, then Protect, then Baton Pass.

And let me tell you, Crawdaunt is really good. If not for Crabhammer missing I would've swept the team.

Gothitelle is an excellent trapper, and I love using it. I wouldn't expect MegaManectric to be useful, but it's definitely saved me a few times. Espeon is an excellent screener. Hawlucha is a great Revenge killer, though I'm still unsure of whether or not I should put Weavile in it's place simply because of more speed (outspeeding Greninja and Adamant Talonflames).

Little nitpick, but Aqua Jet was a OHKO against Excadrill, assuming you had it. Excadrills defenses are piss poor weak. Cool team tho.

[Red Panda]

Yeah the first set I had for Crawdaunt was Crabhammer/X-Scissor/Brick Break/Knock Off. I changed it to Crabhammer/Rock Slide/X-Scissor/Knock Off.

But yes I could really use the priority, and rock slide is useless, so I'll put in Aqua Jet. Thanks for the suggestions! And the one TR team I faced only had Reuniclus as a setter so Gothitelle destroyed.

[Heather]

Ah, Crawdaunt. I LOVE Crawdaunt. He pulled it through a Protean Her inja's Dark pulse to KO said Greninja and win the match with an Adaptability Night Slash.

[Mew The Gato]

Originally Posted by Red Panda

Yeah the first set I had for Crawdaunt was Crabhammer/X-Scissor/Brick Break/Knock Off. I changed it to Crabhammer/Rock Slide/X-Scissor/Knock Off.

But yes I could really use the priority, and rock slide is useless, so I'll put in Aqua Jet. Thanks for the suggestions! And the one TR team I faced only had Reuniclus as a setter so Gothitelle destroyed.

Consider adding some bulky Pokemon. Gothitelle is the closest you have to one, and even it suffers from average base HP. While your team may have a lot of offensive presence with a +2 Speed Crawdaunt running around, all of the Pokemon in the team are incredibly frail. You may want to use Klefki for a Dual Screens user over Espeon, and give Heal Bell to Gothitelle. Klefki's own Thunder Wave can be used to stop sweeps short, not to mention it lets Crawdaunt be a serious threat, even without a Speed boost. You can run Spikes / Dual Screen / Thunder Wave Klefki to set up Spikes for the Entry Hazards that will allow you to sweep, Dual Screens to help the fact that the entirety of your team is frail without Dual Screens, and Thunder Wave to stop threats that could otherwise pull off a clean sweep. For example, if Manectric has not Mega Evolved, Mega Pinsir is perfectly capable of tearing through the entire team. Same with Mega Charizard X if it manages to set up Dragon Dance, who does not even care about Manectric being Mega Evolved. Or you may replace a move with Foul Play to prevent it form being Taunt bait.

Or you can ignore this and go for Hyper Offense.

[Red Panda]

No, I'll test out your theories. I definitely have a problem with Choice Darmanitan and CharX, so maybe Bulky Quagsire? Not sure. Will swap out Espeon for Klefki though.

[Princess Ana]

Bulky Quagsire is the only Pokemon who can wall CharX.

Also what tier are you playing that Banded Darmanitan is an issue?

[Red Panda]

I'm playing OU. My score sits around mid 1300's. And for some reason Scarf Darmanitan outspeeds like my whole team.

[Princess Ana]

Ahhh. Yeah once you get out of there no one uses Darmanitan.

SR is key. Also screens suck do not use screens.

[Talon87]

"dio cane" (VGC 2014, 8 turns)

Spoiler: show

For the first time in ... possibly ever, I drafted neither Charizard nor Gardevoir when picking my team out this time. I took one look at his team and I systematically ruled in others or ruled out one of those two, and in the end I found that I had selected Rotom-W and Salamence for my leads (anti-physical attack, not too uncomfortable with Gengar either though not ideal) and with Talonflame and Aegislash on hand for backup.

My choices ended up being pretty great given who he decided to bring. He leads with Medicham and Machamp, who I immediately intimidate down to 0.67x Attack strength. Unfortunately, Turn 1 wasn't so hot for me from there: my opponent used both Fake Out and DynamicPunch against Rotom-W, locking me out of getting a Reflect up that turn as well as locking me out of having much of a turn period: because I used that same turn to get Salamence the fuck out of there, anticipating that he was to be Machamp's target, and in I switched an Aegislash in his place. Weeeeeell boo. :\

From there, though, the match proceeded into a game I'm quite fond of (and, if I may say, quite good at ): which is the game of "I switch, you switch" where eventually I wrest sente from my opponent and dictate the flow of the match from there. It doesn't take long, and by Turn 5 I am ready to make some sacrifices in the name of winning the entire game.

Turn 5 sees me exposing Aegislash and Salamence to the threat of KOs. I can't risk using King's Shield that turn and then my opponent ends up targeting Salamence -- which, being exactly what he ended up doing, makes my decision all the greater. I also can't be too afraid of him switching out Medicham -- he isn't likely to switch to anything else which is immune to Ghost and so I can count on Aegislash doing at least some good damage this turn. But the turn goes better than anticipated when:

• I get a OHKO off against a Medicham who stays put
• Yache Berry helps Salamence avoid being KOed by Lickilicky
• Salamence gets in a Dragon Dance

And then comes Turn 6. My opponent chooses to call Lickilicky back for Gengar -- not a great move -- while I have Aegislash target Lickilicky's position with Iron Head and I have Salamence go for Machamp's jugular with a powered-up Dragon Claw. My dragon is able to shave off 75% of Machamp's HP ... and my ghost sword snags yet another OHKO. Salamence falls, but not before my opponent mutters a defeated "dio cane", which is apparently Italian for "God dog" and I guess means something along the lines of "son of a bitch" or "mother fucker" but with God squeezed in there instead? ^^; It's not a nice phrase, whatever it is.

Turn 7 is just me playing cautiously. I could've gone for another Shadow Sneak but I opted not to.

Turn 8 he forfeits, emotionally defeated as well as in no real position to win the game. Aegislash had been ordered to use Shadow Sneak against Machamp while Rotom-W had been ordered to fire off a second Discharge. With a completely healthy Talonflame still warming my team's bench, it was gg.

[Red Panda]

So after a few battles, some thoughts:

Klefki is a definite no. It's probably great at what it does, but for me even walls and support need to have some sort of offensive presence. I basically see it as an empty slot.

I replaced Hawlucha with Quagsire. Ehhhhh. I don't think that it was the right pokemon to replace. Thoughts on this? Overall Quaggy does his job nicely, but I miss Hawlucha.

[Princess Ana]

Why did you use Hawlucha again? I mean...you could use Terrak. Sub Salac was pretty pro come the end of Gen V, not sure if its any good now though.

[Red Panda]

Hawlucha I used for the Fighting coverage and revenge-killing.

[Princess Ana]

I would try out Choice Scarf Terrak for that slot then. Works a lot better.

[Red Panda]

Will do!

[rotomotorz]

Originally Posted by Talon87

"dio cane" (VGC 2014, 8 turns)

Spoiler: show

For the first time in ... possibly ever, I drafted neither Charizard nor Gardevoir when picking my team out this time. I took one look at his team and I systematically ruled in others or ruled out one of those two, and in the end I found that I had selected Rotom-W and Salamence for my leads (anti-physical attack, not too uncomfortable with Gengar either though not ideal) and with Talonflame and Aegislash on hand for backup.

My choices ended up being pretty great given who he decided to bring. He leads with Medicham and Machamp, who I immediately intimidate down to 0.67x Attack strength. Unfortunately, Turn 1 wasn't so hot for me from there: my opponent used both Fake Out and DynamicPunch against Rotom-W, locking me out of getting a Reflect up that turn as well as locking me out of having much of a turn period: because I used that same turn to get Salamence the fuck out of there, anticipating that he was to be Machamp's target, and in I switched an Aegislash in his place. Weeeeeell boo. :\

From there, though, the match proceeded into a game I'm quite fond of (and, if I may say, quite good at ): which is the game of "I switch, you switch" where eventually I wrest sente from my opponent and dictate the flow of the match from there. It doesn't take long, and by Turn 5 I am ready to make some sacrifices in the name of winning the entire game.

Turn 5 sees me exposing Aegislash and Salamence to the threat of KOs. I can't risk using King's Shield that turn and then my opponent ends up targeting Salamence -- which, being exactly what he ended up doing, makes my decision all the greater. I also can't be too afraid of him switching out Medicham -- he isn't likely to switch to anything else which is immune to Ghost and so I can count on Aegislash doing at least some good damage this turn. But the turn goes better than anticipated when:

• I get a OHKO off against a Medicham who stays put
• Yache Berry helps Salamence avoid being KOed by Lickilicky
• Salamence gets in a Dragon Dance

And then comes Turn 6. My opponent chooses to call Lickilicky back for Gengar -- not a great move -- while I have Aegislash target Lickilicky's position with Iron Head and I have Salamence go for Machamp's jugular with a powered-up Dragon Claw. My dragon is able to shave off 75% of Machamp's HP ... and my ghost sword snags yet another OHKO. Salamence falls, but not before my opponent mutters a defeated "dio cane", which is apparently Italian for "God dog" and I guess means something along the lines of "son of a bitch" or "mother fucker" but with God squeezed in there instead? ^^; It's not a nice phrase, whatever it is.

Turn 7 is just me playing cautiously. I could've gone for another Shadow Sneak but I opted not to.

Turn 8 he forfeits, emotionally defeated as well as in no real position to win the game. Aegislash had been ordered to use Shadow Sneak against Machamp while Rotom-W had been ordered to fire off a second Discharge. With a completely healthy Talonflame still warming my team's bench, it was gg.

>Reads this
>Decides to go ladder some more
>First opponent is the same person you just faced

Well okay then

[DaisyInari]

It's anything goes until the very end of the last turn BD

[Talon87]

First Random Battle in months. (Random Battle, 37 turns)

It felt like stepping off of an airplane and arriving back home after a month-long vacation somewhere else. Like, that's not just me using flowery language: I actually mean that the sensation I experienced during the battle was similar to that feeling! ^^; It was very strange. Things felt familiar yet different, certain yet uncertain. I felt like I'd forgotten so much yet really I hadn't forgotten too too much. (I had forgotten some very, very few things though, which did disappoint me. :\ For example, I was confident that a Landorus-I in RandBats would not have had a base speed higher than a Porygon-Z at 183, but I was wrong.) In the end ...

Spoiler: show

... I pulled through 3-0 and cost a guy his spot in the 1700s. ^^; My score has apparently decayed a lot since I last played -- while I had been in the 1700s myself previously on all three accounts, I apparently had fallen to the mid-1500s on Zuisho through ladder decay by the time I took up this match. Makes sense given how long I've been away from the format.

I was really astonished though by how weak his Dunsparce was. I remember Dunsparce being not such a bad little Pokémon when I last played with one in Random Battle. Yet this guy's Dunsparce was doing shit damage before the burn and shit shit damage after the burn. It was ridiculous. Too lazy to confirm, but iirc my Leftovers healed me back more life than he was able to take away from me on some turns. Crazy.

I was also astonished by the fact that he only ever had Dunsparce use Roost once. Three turns in a row I expected him to use Roost so that Dunsparce wouldn't die. And three turns in a row he did not. When I finally did get to attack him, that did him in. Crazy. And stupid. How did someone like this get past 1700!?

Given how disoriented I felt during the game, I'll probably not play another Random Battle game any time soon. Probably not until I reach my goal in VGC (whatever that may be) or until I formally decide to give up on VGC and go back to Random Battle and/or OU.

[KamenAeons]

While I'm nowhere near as good as Talon, Daisy and the many others who rank highly in the Randbats, I had a rather nice match up today.

Lightning revival!

Spoiler: show

Well, what to say. I got greedy with the predictions which lost me my Rayquaza. That can also be said about my Deoxys-D. To be honest, I thought I was going to lose. Thankfully though, he missed a few attacks which gave me enough time to set up and finish off Dragonite and Typhlosion with my Raikou.

EDIT: Iron Determination and Shining Foxes!

Spoiler: show

It's always nice to meet a polite battler, and not only that, they were lucky enough to have a shiny Delphox in their team! I made the silly play of Tricking a Scarf onto a Grumpig with Shadow Ball which basically wiped out a chunk of my team. And then Cobalion saved the day with SubDance IRON HEAD OF JUSTICE! And Close Combat to boot the Cloyster. XD

[rotomotorz]

So I just had a horrid losing streak in VGC pushing me from 1450s to 1200s. There goes my self esteem Dx