The (un)Official DPP Ladder Tournament - Cycle 2

[BKC]

Hi! Let's play some DPP.

1. The hosts of this tournament are Bad Ass and BKC. We will be using the Smogtours Pokemon Showdown DPP OU ladder for this tournament, not a new one. This will ensure maximum activity and competition.

2. The qualification period for the DPLT will run for a total of 28 days with 7 day cycles, which is 1 month to put things into perspective. After each 7 day cycle, the top 4 accounts that appear on the leaderboard (using ELO) at the end of the cycle with the sign-up criteria explained in #3 below will qualify for the playoffs of the OLT, which will be a 16 man, best of three, double elimination tournament. The tournament is not seeded. Pairings for the qualified 16 are randomized. The ladder is not reset after each cycle, only alts are (meaning you create new alts after each cycle).

3. We are not requiring you to sign up for this tournament! In order to preserve the spirit of the days of Shoddy Battle ladder, we are allowing, even encouraging you to play on whatever random alt you want! However, the alternate account you use must have "LTX" (where X is the cycle number) as a tag. Furthermore, anyone qualifying for the top 4 in any cycle must post in that cycle's thread, tagging both me and Bad Ass and confirming your alt, much like you would in a suspect test. Pretty easy process.

[00:58:45] ___: how many alts are we allowed to sign up with
[00:58:48] ___: 1?
[00:58:56] %BKC: you dont have to sign up at all
[00:59:03] %BKC: you can use as many as youd like

[01:01:48] ___: you dont even
[01:01:51] ___: have to post in the threaD?
[01:01:57] %BKC: not if you dont want

Hopefully this clears it up.

4. Don't be dumb and cheat. Yes, we are checking all top 4 accounts for registration date. All cheaters will have to face the punishment of one (1) facial mutilation from BKC. Don't do it. To avoid this, do not register your account for any cycle (this includes cycle 1) until AFTER it has began.

This cycle starts at 3:30 PM, Eastern Standard Time, on Sunday, February 7th and ends at exactly 3:30 PM EST the next Sunday. The 3:30 PM end time is to give the three major time zone blocks -- North America, Europe, and Oceania -- a chance to qualify without having to be up at an unreasonable hour. To avoid any unclarity, we will be taking a screenshot of the ladder exactly as it stands at 3:30 PM Eastern Standard Time each Sunday and using that to determine qualifiers.

THE DEADLINE IS 3:30 PM EASTERN TIME NEXT SUNDAY.

Best of luck and have fun! If you have a really great game on the ladder, feel free to post it in the thread (after the cycle ends is fine if you don't want your alt revealed till then).

There were complaints about replay scouting. However, the top players used a ton of teams and switched between them, while others consistently stayed with one and won a lot with it. I'm inclined to give the auto-replay thing another shot for this round, plus I'd prefer everyone played under the same conditions.

Cycle one qualifiers:
babidi1998 - lt1 rising dusk - #1, 1492, 54-17
boudouche - LT1 dRiSsSs - #2, 1490, 45-10
PDC - lt1 yan - #4, 1471, 57-18
badabing - lt1 shrang - #5, 1461, 35-9

 

[Tomahawk]

I thought this'd be moved to main? Or did something happen with the replay thing? I don't mind either way

e: ok cool sry

 

[BKC]

See the end of the OP

Played a ton today and holy Lucario, they are surging back, I felt like I was facing one every other battle. Faced a decent amount of Infernape and Heatran leads as well, plus a good deal of Roserade teams. Bulky SD Scizor gets more popular every day, especially on said Rade teams. It's a good surprise mon there for sure.

 

[badabing]

tran, loom, rachi, and gyara are setting the bar for me threatwise. they have very limited counterplay and sway/break games. just slippery to handle when their sprite enters the field. mixnite and ape don't make this list because they're more pivotable and residual prone. less tran and jira should be holding sr, but this is old news. i feel like a lot of the time they're just holding it out of afterthought. an anonymous retard offered the insight that some offensive tran could even afford to run leftovers (in response to jira, longevity in the skarm matchup) and i agree. berry 4 atk is still the top dog set tho, which bkc/heist/bad ass' replays can attest to. for lack of better articulation, it just does more shit and takes the least amount of support.

a lot of people are turned off by gyara when it's switching into sandy sr and leftovers waterfalling into bulky starmie, but they're just doing it wrong. i can't think of anything else that has as much of a chance to put a hole in or outright win any game. easy to support and can provide plenty of its own. very scary for defense due to taunt and flinch potential and threatening vs offense for backfooting them into exploitable pokemon unless they run cune (at least ppl notice this thing is kinda good still). finds windows everywhere with it's typing and intimi, but obviously has to pick its one spot. put on da reyscarface reading sombrero and band it to see what having no switchin is like. i mean shit, gyara's one dude the old gen of players had right when they dragged vappy out the storage box. the atrocious pokemon. there's a reason i brought that holo card to kindergarten show and tell you motherfuckers.

starmie is the odd man out in s-tier by a longshot, but it clicks recover and rapid spin i know. this thing takes way more support than meets the eye unless you're just trying to chunk a passho tran or play without sr for 3 turns. mainly focus on how it punishes skarm spikes when building with this frail fucking starfish. it can also be a gyara counter if you're immune to hax and believe pursuit doesn't exist. i used a bad hail stall with this expressionless piece of garbage and took unnecessary losses due to sr pressure. run it more offensively if you wanna strike fear into people just keeping sr up or, at the very least, don't be walled by loom because that might be the worst possible thing in this metagame. reflect can mitigate that last point, but slapping on hydro bolt recover starm like it's oozing glue is irredeemable. however, pivoting in on high-powered mix ape stabs and fast checking is a huge point in its favor, despite being maimed by coverage. definitely something to take into account when building vs a non-enduring threat.

o and whoever said stall is unviable in dpp is obviously a colossal fucking idiot. that's it for the big picture stuff mainly.

 

[BKC]

to touch a little more on cb gyara, since I used it a lot: breloom likes to switch in and play games with the dder, but with sr/sand it easily dies to 2 band waterfalls, that certainly never got old. ripping massive chunks out of pert and skarm, killing scarfgon/rotom that expected a dd, taking bronzong out from like 50%, it was a joy. it was also fun ice fanging the shit out of a max hp loom and watching it drop.

dd has been scaring the bejesus out of me though. him alongside kingdra and random empoleons (the worst trend) make me wanna bust out vappy again, although fucking loom makes me hesitate.

speaking of watching things drop and kingdra, I used a lot of specs and while I expected good things, it really blew me away. first off, it's strong as hell, I used modest so it's nearly latias level. dragon pulse shredded gliscors and looms (sensing a pattern? fuck loom man), draco is nuts even to resists, I lost count of how many perts I surfed the hell out of on the initial switch or how many healthy tars stayed in on me only to get fucking hammered by pump. it's not just the immediate, spammable power either, not even the excellent entry points of starmie and heatran. it was not taking any lo recoil. rd can run mystic water but it's not the same,hydro is fine but unboosted draco/signal kinda blow. hp electric would still prob get its job done.... anyway being able to just continue attacking without any repercussions was amazing.

on the same team, I used a subsplit wow rotom. most sub rotoms are offensive but this set is still amazing. clef is a bit of a bummer but you pain split and switch on the soft. breloom and shaymin are pricks too, sdef tran would be if people used it. that aside, it gave so many of my opponents so much trouble, hiding behind sub and burning tar, tbolting tran, scouting kingdra, checking physical steels, the works.

infernape is a B. yeah he has recoil issues but I used expert belt over lo on the special mix set and it was great. the only scenarios where I wish it was a little stronger was gking bulky starmie and gyarados, both on the switch with sand and sr. maybe facing down a full hp pert. regardless, the pros easily outweighed the cons. plus you wouldn't believe how many people think it's choiced and get killed as they try to set up. ape was a gg machine. also scarfgon on switch and nite looking for a dd fall for hp ice every time.

 

[NightFox]

Has anyone tried offensive Colbur berry Starmie? I've been using it a lot and its very effective at escaping, getting the spin and luring Tyranitar for something like Scarftran or Raikou. It also do some cool things like survive a payback from Machamp and buff a scarf set (This is very rare through).

 

[Smurf.]

Has anyone tried offensive Colbur berry Starmie? I've been using it a lot and its very effective at escaping, getting the spin and luring Tyranitar for something like Scarftran or Raikou. It also do some cool things like survive a payback from Machamp and buff a scarf set (This is very rare through).

Starmie @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Thunderbolt
- Rapid Spin
- Thunder Wave

Pretty neat set I tried on a para spam + hard hitter squad. Does a decent enough job at luring scarf tar for something like gengar to do work later on. Would recommend if you wanna be a cool cat.

 

[NightFox]

Starmie @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Thunderbolt
- Rapid Spin
- Thunder Wave

Pretty neat set I tried on a para spam + hard hitter squad. Does a decent enough job at luring scarf tar for something like gengar to do work later on. Would recommend if you wanna be a cool cat.

Paralisys is nice but personally i go with ice beam to avoid being walled by grass types and Dragonite.

Its ridiculous how that sub body slam Jirachi can paralyze and flinch to death things like Heatran and Bronzong. I really hate that thing.

 

[Bad Ass]

didn't like the low activity this round! tell ya friends, tell ya wife, tell ya kids, and let's have an awesome final 2 rounds!

Hide

LT2 blink - 1401 - 29W / 8L
LT2 SOMALIA - 1401 - 24W / 4L
LT2 cloverfield - 1368 - 19W / 1L
LT2 flyboy - 1366 - 31W / 13L


confirmo here boys

 

[NightFox]

Bad Ass I'm LT2 flyboy.

 

[Tamahome]

Confirming as cloverfield.

 

[nLTk]

I know this is probably a really stupid question, but has the third cycle automatically started or do we wait for another BKC post first?

 

[BKC]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...nament-cycle-3-important-info-inside.3564681/

 

[bruno]

late but confirming as blink