Battle Tree Discussion and Records

There's nothing gray about it at all. It's a streak. The game only considers the battle you won or lost when stating the current/final number and this thread essentially does the same. People list the pokemon and moves more because they're points of interest than something to be scrutinized (with rare exceptions) but it's ultimately the player on the leaderboard because they did the work. Making changes as the streak progresses be it out of realisation or necessity or even boredom plays no part in legitimacy.
 
Yes, YOU, the player has a streak of 90, but the team you used doesn't. Especially when you are reporting yourself for the leaderboard, where the team streak is what matters and not the player streak.
The game defines a "streak" as the number of battles you (the player) win in a row, without regard to which Pokemon you used or for how long. This thread is an objective listing of those streaks. This isn't an opinion matter, this is a straight ranking of in-game statistics. There's no such things as "team streaks" unless you want to keep track of your own on an individual basis.

Or if you really want to keep streaks of separate Pokemon, there's always the gen 4 Battle Hall :)
 
I am not talking about the record in the game, I am talking about the one being kept in this forum. At least for me, I don't find a team that skipped the early parts as informative as ones that went through the entire thing. And let's be honest here, we care more about a team that reached an amazing streak than the player that did it.

Going back to my other point, I am currently on an 80 streak with a team that has lost multiple times in the early part of the tree. The fact is that the team gets destroyed by early tree strategy that it hasn't encountered since (cough Trick Room / Hypnosis Bronzong cough). If I start counting from Battle 40 on, it's actually undefeated :D
 
When you guys mention "Fling Ironball" I still have nightmares of the Conkeldurr set nearly wiping my 99 streak at like 6x for istantly deleting my marowak and deleting hariyama the turn after. Pls don't.
 
I also would recognize streaks that use a quick rusher team to fight through the first battles. I guess any team that is succesful after battle 50, can also manage the battles before. Even if it would need (what i dont think for most of the teams) more attempts i would consider the streak as legitime, because once you get past these battles, there are the same conditions with which you got the bigger streak. These battle facilities are long term things. If you fight hundreds or thousands of battles, few events at the beginning dont matter - its all about how consistently and reliable you can defeat the threats that will occur infinte times. I personally would appreciate it, if any set may occur at any time. I actually would appreciate, that there are no sets belonging to special trainers. Why isnt any combination of opponent Pokemon possible? Would make things more difficult of course. For the same reason hax should be our best friend (he actually is, but nobody honors this poor boy). Difficulty destroys streaks - but saves life time. If the trees difficulty was "doubled", the average streak would be "halved", and there was still a ranking of good teams. If before a 1000-streak was impressive, now a 500-streak is. I dont have the latest editions, but i like to theorize teams and i find the thought of fighting thousands of battles to get under top 3 or whatever unbelievable tiring.

(Also, how would you know if one claims a streak, that he didnt use other Pokemon inbetween? A proof picture wont show you this)
 
It is honestly quite simple to see if someone lies on his streak, and the writeup required to prove the validness of the streak generally is enough: if the writed knows how to handle post-40 sets, which do feature actually harder and stronger version of a lot of pre 20 cheese sets, it tends to show he actually spent plenty of time facing said sets.
 
Those pre-20 cheese sets have cost me many, many streaks and will no doubt cost me many, many more. I hate anything that has evasion boosting/accuracy lowering moves/items and don't even get me started on Quick Claw users. Thankfully those become fairly scarce but they're still a pain in the ass.

As for using a different team to rack up quick wins to get to the harder battles I'm not really bothered. I did it a lot myself back in the Maison purely because I wanted to try out different teams against the Triples Chatelaine without knowing in advance the order she'd send out her Pokemon, as I would know if I was doing a mock battle. I used a standard team to reach Battle 50 before switching to whatever team I wanted to use. It was much faster that trying to win my way there with the stally troll teams I had fun with. I miss Triples...

I personally wouldn't post a streak of my own for the leaderboard unless my team had reached that far by itself because I think part of the challenge comes from being able to overcome the pre-40 trash sets even if they become pretty much obsolete after 50. I wouldn't feel like my team earned its place if it hadn't done all the work itself especially when most of my streaks end because of the earlier sets.

If others want to use multiple teams I don't have a problem with it. I just want my streaks to consist of the one team because it feels more like I accomplished something.
 

Smuckem

Resident Facility Bot Wannabe
is a Community Contributor Alumnus
You should post on your Maison Triples experiences sometime, the Maison thread is still open and a few of us still dabble in that format. Any fresh ideas are always welcome!
 
0 Atk Bronzong Gyro Ball (51 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Zangoose: 40-48 (27 - 32.4%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
snip
...which doubles into what I said: the cheesey sets pre 20 are in fact just going to be replaced by actually scary sets that mimic same mechanics post 40.
Regigigas for example, has several double team / toxic sets, so does Blissey which also adds softboiled and mud bomb to the equation, and they are DEFINITELY more scary than the completely random Garchomp-1.

In general, outside of the odd random loss to a cheese (I just lost a streak at 19 yesterday to Incense Goodra dodging 3 attacks in a row, well peace) which definitely feels frustrating, properly built teams should not have any issue making it through the bunch of set 1 and 2, expecially considering said sets have low IVs which makes 1hkos way more frequent.
 
You should post on your Maison Triples experiences sometime, the Maison thread is still open and a few of us still dabble in that format. Any fresh ideas are always welcome!
I should. I do miss Triples and my old stalling Pokemon which don't work in any other format. Not to mention the ORAS rival music is my fave track for battling and it would be nice to listen to it with sound effects again.

On an entirely unrelated note, which is your favourite shape of Unown?
F because I always thought it looked like a duck, as dumb as that sounds. Still do.

This I guess goes to show the bias of vanity inherent in the assumption that set1/2 are "off the wall threats", which anyone who switches teams after some early battles is just avoiding, and the later sets are more "straightforward" and thus easier for certain teams to handle. (Actually "blitz teams", in the proud tradition of 4th gen Life Orb Starmie, would naturally be more susceptible to evasion items.)

Out of 24 Brightpowder holders, exactly half are set1/2 (counting legendaries properly among the "later" sets). Out of 15 Lax Incense holders, eight of them are set1/2, one of which is Beartic-2 which, need I say it again, absolutely can also appear in later battles, and I happened to see it (where its set could be discerned) just as often as either of Beartic-3/4: that is, exactly once. For Double Team, the distribution is 16/11 in favour of "early". Of course, what matters are the exact mons/sets you face so any team could be threatened by either of the first or the latter half, but my point is that "early Tree strategies" as such don't exist.
I never said anything about people using different teams to blitz through to later battles because some teams can't handle the early ones or anything about the later sets being more straightforward. I said I did that because I usually play stall which means battles take a lot longer than they would with offensive sets. The reason I said the later sets were harder is because they have more threatening sets and higher IVs.

I honestly don't recall encountering any of the evasion/accuracy sets after 50 which is why I assumed most of them were the early sets. That was my mistake. I know there are a couple of legendary ones I could see (IIRC Cresselia and Regigigas were 2 of them) but I knew about them beforehand from XYORAS and I never saw them once in the Tree.

I can only speak from my own experiences with the Tree/Maison which is why I said what I did. Obviously the evasion mons etc do exist post 50, I honestly wasn't aware of how many there are, I just never saw them. Guess I got lucky.

They're still a pain in the ass though.
 
What is baseless and shitty about if you made it to Battle 91 but only started using your real team after battle 50, that team only has a streak of 40? Yes, YOU, the player has a streak of 90, but the team you used doesn't. Especially when you are reporting yourself for the leaderboard, where the team streak is what matters and not the player streak. And I would consider teams that skipped the early part to be lesser than teams that played through that part because there are legitimate threatening sets that don't exist in later parts. Yes, your real team may be able to beat those threats quite easily, but without battling against them, there's no proof. And I don't understand why someone brought up Stall Garchomp, that set is legitimately crap.

Again, I am only speaking from a record keeping perspective, since that's part of what this thread is about. If you just want to get through those early battles to get to test your teams against later opponents, sure. But if you are actually reporting them as part of your streak for the leaderboard, then that's a really gray area.
1. The game itself only cares about the player streak. I have never failed to receive a Lansat/Starf Berry for winning 100/200 in a row in any generation, regardless of how many different teams I used to get to that point.

2. As has already been discussed, the first 40 or so battles are trivial enough to people who know what they're doing that nobody really cares what you used to pass them; it's like the free space on a Bingo card. If someone is actually making use of the resources in this thread or elsewhere online and can't get past 30, I would sincerely question how they managed to beat the story mode of the game to unlock the Battle Tree in the first place. Someone who used Durant/Glalie/Mimikyu or whatever you'd consider to be the most foolproof singles team possible for the first 50 battles and then got from 50-90 using a team with like Weezing will have fought roughly the same number of 'real' battles with the unique team as a player who went 1-90 with 3 Pokemon chosen from the same pool of 10 or so bulky offensive mons that pretty much everyone uses (OU/Uber Dragon Dancers, Aegislash, Tapu Fini/Koko, UBs, other Megas). I don't know about you, but I'd certainly consider whatever strategy someone used to get a Weezing team to 40 straight wins much more interesting and informative than getting 90 straight with 3 generic things we already know are powerful (which all have extremely predictable endings along the lines of "it was all good until the only Pokemon on my team that isn't weak to Ice got frozen by Ice Beam").

3. You vastly overrate the extent to which people care about a 90-win streak in the first place. Half the posts in this thread are just some form of "What's a good EV spread/moveset to use for [Pokemon whose EV spread and moveset, as well as extremely detailed instructions on how to use it, could be accessed simply by clicking on any of several teams at the top of the leaderboard that use that very Pokemon]?" If they couldn't be bothered to check the top teams in their respective formats, who is even looking at the bare minimum streaks of 90 in the first place? The overwhelming majority of people who care about this in the first place are completionists who just want to find an easy team to get the stamp and/or berries. To them there are no records worth noting that fall short of 100/200.

4. When it comes to milestones such as the stamp and/or berries, most people are super competitive and will strive for such a goal on their own terms before asking for help or advice. If I see a team that's won between 90-99 battles, I can safely assume that the player tried for quite a few streaks with the team and that was the best streak they managed to get (aka one would need to be lucky to replicate such a result). Had someone been rolling along only to get tripped up by a gimmicky set or a truly ridiculous amount of hax just short of 100 or 200, one would naturally assume based on human nature that they'd want to try again and obtain that milestone on their own terms.

5. As has been already mentioned, the vast majority of these sets actually suck and are only effective if you panic and have a team of glass cannons that wouldn't be making it on the leaderboard regardless.
 
Again, I don't care what you do to reach your streak or what you do on your own. I only care if you post a write up about the team that "took you the distance" without revealing that you didn't actually started using that team until half-way. Coming here and saying "this team got me to a streak of 100" is very misleading if it didn't.

And actually, I have a team that just made it to the leaderboard but racked up many losses to those early sets and I will post it when it loses. There are early strategies that are qualitatively different than later sets, and not just weaker versions that can straight up counter some teams. I already mentioned a few like Hypnosis Gengar, Hypnosis Bronzong and Flinchodactyl that present variables not found in later team.

And since I build and test my own teams instead of copying and pasting other people's high streak teams, I feel that taking them through the entire journey is part of the fun :)
Out of my current 90+ win teams, there are only two Pokemon that even appeared anywhere else on the leaderboard like once or twice. So I guess I am speaking from a standpoint of building your own team and piloting them than someone who just wants long streak by using a pre-established team.

Calling those early battles trivial is a complete insult to team builders. Those are the most important battles and part of the engineering and testing process to build a new tree team.
 
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They get credited for 500, but each team is credited for 5. I don't know what we are arguing here. It's just math. But what I am saying is that they shouldn't come here and make the claim that "I have a streak 500 wins with THIS team!" If you want to report your personal streak, that's cool. But if you want to credit your team, report the actual streak the team has made. It's also better if they can just post every team that they used for their streak.
 
So if someone gets to 500 consecutive wins but they change their Pokemon every 5 battles, you want them to be credited with a streak of 5?
Let me try to simplify a bit what the argument is about:

A streak has two meaning to two different people. People who pride in their achievements with whatever team they can get based on their knowledge of the tree.
Or people who pride in building a team that can go through 50+ battles without changing or resting or even switching up for an easier time.

I put myself in the later camp, while I do acknowledge a lot of people here is in the former camp.

But to me, when I see a leaderboard about "teams" that made insane amount of streak, I would automatically assume it means someone uses that team (without changing) and battle throughout the tree and made it that far.

However it seems like that is not that case, after some people revealing that those wins are only posssible if you switch teams.

So the leaderboard should be leaderboard of "People" who made the streaks, and they should post "All" their teams used in the battle instead of just the last one they used and lost.

In my opinion, that is more clear and less hypocritical if you know what I mean.

It doesn't matter the motivation, getting berries or what, it is just a matter of communication.
 
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I'm afraid you need better claims before asking for the "AI Cheating", because I see no cheating there, just a loss to a misplay trying to blame it on the AI.
Where did I blame the AI for this particular loss? I literally wrote " I thought Haxorus survived Lucario, it didn't(=MISPLAY, as I don't have enemy knowledge always by my side).
Afterwards the enemy simply had an Chesnaught threatening both my other mons. I also said that my mistake was in EV optimization for MegaBro.
No, seriously, where do I in any shape or form mention that I lost to AI cheating? ESPECIALLY considering it was a Fighting-Spam Team which is only SE against Chansey(and not the mentioned Ice/Fairy Types. Pinpoint it to me please :/ )


Codraroll said:

Word of advice: Don't try to bring that up here without backing it up with more than anecdotal evidence. We've yet to see any actual numbers crunched that suggest that the AI cheats, despite accusations going back more than a decade.
It is anectodal, but I thought it is funny how often the enemy lead with Fairy/Ice Types past ~ Battle 25, which is why I changed LumBerry to Steelium in the first place (that and Iron Tail Miss Chance). For example in my first run(Celesteela, Chansey, Slowbro) I never encountered Mamoswine, Ice Cone Mon, and the 10,20,30... Trainer having Ice Pokemon. In this run I did. Maybe it is confimation bias, considering I didn't really encounter Steel-Types(resist to Dragon), but it was odd how much Steelium improved it due to common Ice-Type and Fairy-Type leads.

Let's say I try it with the same team again and collect data about how often of the 25-40 battle(after Battle 25, hell let's say 20) are Ice- or Fairy Types. What would you consider a bias against the Player Team?
 
Sort of. Too small sample size. Expecially seeing you have not made it past 50.

There is an issue where people with streaks of hundreds or THOUSANDS of matches see absolutely no redundance or the AI "trying to hardcounter" them.

I myself have occasionally faces a few hard compositions in a row, purely by RNG. If you ever passed by Discord, you might have noticed me complaining about getting 3-4 fire trainers against in a row (who are often enough the bane of my compositions), or in my own biggest streak, me mentioning that Bisharp/Drapion was my hardest counter, and it inevitably happened at the 100th battle and ended said streak. It's random, it can happen, expecially when effectively talking of common pokemon.

25-40 battles are not a relevant sample size, EXPECIALLY knowing that between battle 25 and 40 there's 2 ice specialists and several Trick Room specialists who all have access to plenty of both.
A relevant sample size has 4 digits, or more.

Plus you need to consider that once you reach 30 and start facing set 3s who ARE optimized, and 40+ which only feature set 3-4 plus Legendaryes who are even further optimized for ideal coverage and movesets, you can get the impression of "the AI generating counters", without realizing that it's simply very common sets.
If you find yourself running a composition that does feel countered / hard to handle too often, it is an issue with the composition more than the AI.
Specifically, you run Haxorus, which is unfortunately for you, a mediocre / awful pokemon. It's not a safe Dragon Dancer, does not have the raw power that something like (Mega)Salamence has to tear through bulky Fairyes and most Water types who run Ice coverage (Ice beam and Blizzard are *extremely* common in most AI water types, and so is Dazzling Gleam on Psychic types), does not have an ability to ease setting up, does not have the bulk to take even strong resisted hits let alone supereffective (my Aromatisse in my streak could 1hko or 2hko most AI Haxoruses variants, with 0 spatk investment) is vulnerable to statusers (since you run Steelium Z Iron Tail I assume) and does not have a realistic way to kill stallers either.
How are you exactly planning to ever deal with Veteran Xio if you ever run into her post legend (and you will inevitably at some point)?
https://www.serebii.net/sunmoon/battletree/xio.shtml
She literally only runs Fairy types, with plenty of Grass/Fairy types with grass coverage who would make quick work of your Slowbro, on top of the possibility of mega Mawile (with Intimidate!) and Mimikyu who as well as deleting Slowbro and Haxorus will make quick work of Chansey.


So yes, rather than claiming the AI "builds specific counters to you", I suggest you to reconsider your composition if you feel that the AI is actually throwing too many counters at you.
If you can't safely handle most things in the way to 50, then believe me, you will get destroyed by post legend sets who ACTUALLY have mono legendary teams, with plenty of Steel, Ice and Fairy everywhere, including Mind Reader Sheer Cold Articuno (yes.)

Having a handful hard matchups is fine, but when every other matchup you have issues, there's problems with the composition.
 
It is anectodal, but I thought it is funny how often the enemy lead with Fairy/Ice Types past ~ Battle 25, which is why I changed LumBerry to Steelium in the first place (that and Iron Tail Miss Chance). For example in my first run(Celesteela, Chansey, Slowbro) I never encountered Mamoswine, Ice Cone Mon, and the 10,20,30... Trainer having Ice Pokemon. In this run I did. Maybe it is confimation bias, considering I didn't really encounter Steel-Types(resist to Dragon), but it was odd how much Steelium improved it due to common Ice-Type and Fairy-Type leads.

Let's say I try it with the same team again and collect data about how often of the 25-40 battle(after Battle 25, hell let's say 20) are Ice- or Fairy Types. What would you consider a bias against the Player Team?
I would consider it a bias if I saw 69 Ice or Fairy types from battles 25 to 40.
 
It is anectodal, but I thought it is funny how often the enemy lead with Fairy/Ice Types past ~ Battle 25, which is why I changed LumBerry to Steelium in the first place (that and Iron Tail Miss Chance). For example in my first run(Celesteela, Chansey, Slowbro) I never encountered Mamoswine, Ice Cone Mon, and the 10,20,30... Trainer having Ice Pokemon. In this run I did. Maybe it is confimation bias, considering I didn't really encounter Steel-Types(resist to Dragon), but it was odd how much Steelium improved it due to common Ice-Type and Fairy-Type leads.

Let's say I try it with the same team again and collect data about how often of the 25-40 battle(after Battle 25, hell let's say 20) are Ice- or Fairy Types. What would you consider a bias against the Player Team?
If you can provide solid proof the AI cheats I will eat my 3DS
 
No quag no, you promised me a shiny quagsire :(
It's okay, there's absolutely no proof of the AI ever cheesing the RNG, having illegal moves, or counterteaming, it's just something some people say to convince themselves they can't win because of it, rather than having teams with gaping holes to certain pokemon, moves, or trainers
 

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