Pokemon: The Tactical Advantage

Many players will often assume that the most amount of damage is the ultimate factor in who wins, however that is not the case at all. This is why various status moves exist, to shift the advantage. Also many abilities can do this, like prankster or gale wings to take the speed advantage. There are a lot of moves and abilities that are overlooked though, because they offer no obvious advantage.

Luck based tactics can be very effective, but require the correct setups to work at all. Instant KO moves have very low chances of success, they are luck based. but with the correct build, a highly defensive pokemon that has defensive boosts, for example, will benefit the luck based tactic, offering you a lot of chances to use the high risk moves. But if you fail to build the pokemon correctly, you will fail.

Defensive tactics are overlooked a lot, turning everything into glass cannons. Sure, the glass cannon may be capable of sweeping another glass cannon who has lower speed, but you will lose that glass cannon. If your opponent is smart, you will lose that cannon quickly. Mega Kangaskhan is the perfect example of something many players turn into a glass cannon, my Sableye scoffs at those using foul play to bring them down.

So when you boost up the offensive ability, you lose out on a massive tank. Mega Kangas should be utilized as a wall more than a cannon, take advantage of those high defenses and use it's ability to make up for a lack in offensive, because one or two hits from foul play will bring it down if you don't.

One move that can give you a huge tactical advantage is power split, one of those highly underrated moves. Take a pokemon with almost no offense but massive defenses, power split with the toughest opponent. That opponent is weakened and your power swapper becomes invincible, possibly even a sweeper with the right damage moves.

There are also many moves you can use on an ally in doubles, like guard split for a highly defensive pokemon, use it on your glass cannon and that cannon becomes massive, while the user of guard split only suffers a little. This offers you a tactical advantage, which can win the match.

One other tactical advantage is the force switch, keep hitting your opponent with hard status effects in doubles matches and force them to switch their pokemon into attacks, with the right predictions you will easily win the match. Predicting your opponent's actions and builds is another way to claim the tactical advantage.

The most important tactic though, be prepared for anything. It is possible to build a team that is ready for any situation, in spite of claims to the contrary. Go through the moves and abilities of your teams, build a team that is capable of dealing with status and damage moves, plan on things like sleep, confusion, and poison. Expect the common ones, but do not forget the uncommon builds.

What brought this topic up was the fact that a lot of players who are cheating others out of rightful wins by disconnecting are either mega Kangaskhan players, or Smogonites. So I will take this last moment to add this, Smogon does NOT control Pokemon, if you cannot take the heat, change kitchens. Smogon has their own arena to battle in, those of us on Battle Spot are not interested in your rules, and most of us don't even know your rules, the few of us that even know you exist. So stop trying to force everyone to think like you do, in other words, stop cheating.

Pokemon Battles: Why Smogon is Stupid

I get it, yes I do, you like the little offbeat challenged like all level one, all underused, etc. But for open matches, arbitrary restrictions on a ton of things is simply not of interest to the vast majority of the players. Let's catch up to the modern age already.

Originally the game system for Pokemon was broken, for lack of a better descriptive, when applied to competitive gaming. What do you expect? There was no wifi, there was barely a functional internet, and you were limited to about 10 feet from any possible opponent. Competitive play was simply a possibility .... for the future.

Fast forward ahead, we are finally here, in the future, when players from around the globe can finally battle in epic tournaments. Did you think Game Freak was just sitting around twiddling their thumbs this whole time as well? No, they tweaked, tested, and made changes to the battle system, correcting errors and filling in holes. They were balancing it out for competitive play. Is it perfect? Well, not yet, but it is actually balanced.

Let's take the big restriction I hear so much about, the sleep restriction. Yeah, can you believe Smogon players are so bad at the game, they have no idea or viable tactic to counter sleep? There's an ability, it's pretty common, insomnia. Why don't you have one of the pokemon with insomnia? Oh, that's right, because they can't do a ton of damage to the opponent. Well duh, that's what balances it.

Those who depend on non-damaging tactics like sleep are not powerful pokemon, they're all pretty easy to knock out with the right strike. Every time they are considering a pokemon, the only thing they ever look at are how high the stats are. This is because all they are playing is a brawl battle, no strategy, no tactics, no underhanded plays. Just a plain, straight up, who can do as much damage as everyone else.

Which is not bad, it's actually perfectly okay, and not my gripe. What is my gripe is how stupid these people are, how extremely shortsighted and naive they are. To make the claim that "pokemon is just broken in competitive play" is truly outdated, much worse, to assume that an elite few are better at making that call than the creators of the actual game is arrogant. It would be the same as a human saying that honey from bees is made wrong.

Another good example is the evasion boosting, double team being the most common move. Use it on a heavy hitter and it's a waste of a turn, and move slot. With all the combinations of types, not to mention double type pokemon, you need those heavy hitters to have as many different move types as possible, and keep at least one of each STAB available.

Then your status inflicters are the ones you need double team on, so they have a chance to do something. Good status inflicting pokemon are all low in stats, most cannot take a hit, few can do any damage, their role is to disrupt the tanks, walls, and stallers. How can they do that job, if they are knocked out by a single blow from one of them? Double team becomes the balancing move, you have an escape hatch, a reason to use a variety of pokemon.

Another thing about Smogon fans, they don't use bugs. Bug pokemon are awesome, most of them are have move pools that can frustrate any opponent, force them to think outside the box. But most bugs are easy to knock out, which is fine considering what they can do for your team. Poison, sleep, stun, draining, everything in on kind of pokemon. But their stats are lower than most of the others, of course, they'd be capable of sweeping if they had a total of 600 like the dragons.

There it is, the one thing that Game Freak really needed to fix, the most broken thing in the series, the dragon. Dragons are so cool looking, I love them, but their typing was broken in the game for so long, and they were never really that rare. The thing is, it's not because of their abilities that they were broken, it's because of their stat totals. With ice and themselves as the only real threats, players suddenly had teams of nothing but dragons, which was possible and still never have any of the same pokemon.

But instead of offering some arbitrary ban, Game Freak put their heads together and decided that their new type, the fairy, will be the bane of dragons. Fairy are not just the bane of dragons, they are the bane of almost all tanks. A team of fairies and bugs, with mostly status moves, can wreck a team of dragons, as long as you don't follow arbitrary rules formulated by a popular opinion of some few elite jerks who think they're the best of the world at something.

So I put out this challenge, all you snooty Smogon fools, battle players who don't follow your idiotic rules, while still following your own idiotic rules. If you can defeat all of us, without ever losing, then you can claim to be something. Until then, you are just too weak and too stupid to play real Pokemon.