LC CCAT (Version III) [Ladder Race!] See Post #236

[Good_Luck!]

Shouting

FireMage's would be nice but I'd like to see Drilbur and Snover getting smacked.

[blarajan]

gotta go with mine

[Corkscrew]

Originally Posted by Fat blarajan

gotta go with mine

Originally Posted by Fat Electrolyte

I'll give you guys around a week to get your votes in. Vote for one submission only! You MAY NOT vote for your own concept!

[Electrolyte]

what a cheater

[Delver]

I'm going to vote for Blarajan's. I like shouting and FireMage's, but I'm in the firm belief that neither of these will actually go anywhere. Creativity in LC (at least with the meta now) should be coming from the versatility of the top teir mons rather than trying to force teams to work around less good mons. This is very wholly the difference between Little Cup and the rest of the teirs and is something that I've argued for a while. I personally don't think there are many viable "hidden gems" and to base a team around hail (because sun and rain blow) doesnt happen as much as "not letting sand teams have sand." Not that that's a bad thing. Just more that I dont see it becoming a team that really abuses its weather. Personal rants aside, Blara is as close to my own without voting for my own so I vote for him.

[The Unlucky one]

iss

[Nebuchadnezzar]

I really like blara and Chieliee's, but I'm going to go with

Chieliee

[fryfrey]

iss

[Hawkstar]

blarajan

[Elevator Music]

iss

[Joeyboy]

iss

[Sarkynin]

I'll vote for Blarajan

Heavy Offense is kinda rare in LC, where balanced is the most common playstyle. I believe HO would work in breaking teams, though it was very close between HO or Chieliee's VoltTurn.

[blarajan]

woulda gotten away with it too

weren't for you meddling smogonites

[Mylo Xyloto]

Vote goes to iss

[shuckles my hero]

Iss is who I'm voting for.

[kingmitus]

I go hidden gem but one thing with his idea is not go with underated but still used pretty good like purloin with prankster and parafusion

[Ray Jay]

blarajan

When I played LC frequently on PO, players that consistently topped the ladder (including myself, blara, iss, and em) would constantly use teams that revolved around beating the meta through knowing the meta, using the meta, and switching. This generally meant that the people that had been around the longest were the ones on the top of the ladder, and as we transferred to PS, I'd argue that that changed with one stipulation: due to how accessible LC battles were, it had quickly become whoever knows the meta best and gets the most battles climbs the ladder the most consistently.

While surprises or gimmicks are good and, in my recent undercover experience, can even best some of these top ladder players, I don't think that's a good direction to go with the CCAT. The idea of overwhelming offense is fantastic. Too many "good" LC players rely on utility switches which soak hits repeatedly with Eviolite.

In my opinion, a team that hits hard enough and from odd enough, almost unseen resistances is the best way to anti metagame right now, and a CCAT of this has the potential to lure in new players to LC and have them be successful while forcing us to rethink our current setup of LC of top mons who abuse resistances to other top mons in conjunction with Eviolite.

[tehy]

Blarajan

I'm not going to pretend that this vote isn't at least 60% "Hey! I Know that guy! (He infracted me that one time! Oh man, it was great!!), but the other 40% is interest in the idea. I've always liked the concept of wearing down counters with the same type of pokemon and eventually breaking the resist-less teams. Outside of weather, the best i've seen of this is DragMag and... Platinum Gym Leaders (No, seriously.) And those fights were hard as hell (The AI actually has brains in Platinum as I recall).
Point is, it's a potentially devastating strategy and it needs more use.

Oh yeah, and I'm not really sure which team is going with surprises or gimmicks (You mean the Hax team? Hidden Gem might be gimmicks, but not necessarily.), but creating it here will probably tip off just about everyone who pays attention to LC and is on Smogon, which will probably make that team not so useful/good.

[Electrolyte]

Popping in to say that I'm giving this voting session onepre day- those who still want to vote (*pokes blarajan*) should best get their votes in before tomorrow night!

Also, I'm not posting the current standings to 'prevent bandwagoning', that is against the spirit of the project and has absolutely no benefit to our cause. Please refrain from bandwagoning.

[Electrolyte]

Ok, look's like voting's pretty much over.

The winner of this round's concept is none other than blarajan- who beat iss by 2 votes. User blarajan gets 0.5 bonus voting points, so hopefully he doesn't put them to waste again and votes next time. >.>

Here's the concept again:

Concept: Overwhelming Offense

Purpose: Create a team that is meant to overwhelm a specific Pokemon's checks and counters (that isn't SandMag and is thus less well checked) in order to set up a sweep for the other thing.

Description: Things are easy to wear down in this tier. I'm sure spamming Fire types or Water types or Fighting types or something can lead to some sort of sweep.

Things to Consider:
Offenses greatest nemeses, Drilbur and Murkrow
Handling the tier
BEING STRONG

Sorry not much detail...just "spam Pokemon checked by the same stuff to WIN IT VIGOROUSLY"


So now, we need to pick a specific pokemon + set that we think will be a good start in the right direction. Blarajan's concept is to basically overindulge in one type of attack, and overwhelm the opponent's resistors and then clean up with another sweeper.
When picking our pokemon, there are some things to consider:
~Who do we want to use as a sweeper?
~What kind of attacks will we spam in order to subdue walls?
~Which types synergize well in LC? Which don't?
~How will we overcome solid counters? For example, if we choose fighting type spam, how do we defeat pokemon that can defeat fighting types like Scarf Murkrow / WoW Missy?


I'll give you guys around a week or so to get your submissions in. Good luck!

[blarajan]

I am making the executive decision of disallowing any attempts at Sand for this team. There will be no mole spam.

edit: AND MY NOMINATION

If we're going to overwhelm the walls, we can either do so by smashing them or crippling them so they can't wall whatever other Pokemon we throw in. I say we start this CCAT off right with the best mother fucking monster that does BOTH THINGS. Afterwards we can figure out what it pressures, how it does that well, and how we can support its sweep / its pressure with other Pokemon (doesn't have to necessarily be the same type if it's checked by similar things).



Scraggy (F) @ Eviolite Trait: Shed Skin
EVs: 236 Atk / 36 SDef / 212 Spd
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Dragon Dance
- Drain Punch
- Crunch
- Knock Off

This is a cool sweeper as it supports other Pokemon by crippling its most common switch in (Mienfoo / Croagunk / etc) with a devastating Knock Off. That helps the overwhelming aspect of the CCAT by smashing the Pokemon that hurt Scraggy, with either its heavy hitting or its Knock Off. This paves the way for some cool partners later as it can potentially take out a Scarf Misdreavus / Scarf Murkrow Choice scarf if they switch in by predicting Knock Off, or very easily taking Mienfoo. Still hates Drilbur and can't really break through Hippopotas though.

[Corkscrew]

Drifloon @ Flying Gem
Trait: Unburden
Level: 5
EVs: 36 HP / 196 Atk / 196 Spd / 36 SAtk / 4 Def / 4 SDef
Naive Nature
- Acrobatics
- Shadow Ball
- Substitute / Hidden Power Ice / Hidden Power Fire / Hidden Power something else
- Destiny Bond

I believe Drifloon fits this concept very well. Partly due to being able to spam Acrobatics, but the key move is Destiny Bond. With Destiny Bond, Drifloon can often take out one of its counters allowing a similar pokemon to sweep easily. The 3rd slot can be changed depending on what we want really. Substitute eases prediction a bit, whilst a hidden power can be used to hit certain pokemon, if we want.

[Shouting]

I think we should really do Ghost offense for this concept. For example, not a lot in the tier can handle Missy, and those that can check it (Porygon, Murkrow, Vullaby, etc.) barely come out on top and are crippled and can't do too much else for the rest of the battle. There are also other hidden benefits to using ghosts on this team as most of them are immune to spikes (Missy, Gastly, Drifloon) are immune to one of the most common attacking types in the tier, which means a good number of switch ins, but most importantly it means spin blocking, allowing hazard setters like Dweeble fit in perfectly. I don't really see the need to use Fighting types for this one as most top, succesful teams already have at least 2 fighting types on them to begin with.


Gastly @ Oran Berry / Life Orb
Trait: Levitate
Level: 5
Evs: 68 HP / 40 Def / 200 SpA / 200 Spe
Modest Nature
~ Substitue
~ Hypnosis
~ Shadow Ball
~ Sludge Bomb

Possibly the most deadly set available to Gastly, it easily shuts down most speed bumps to a ghost sweep like Stunky and Porygon, 20 Special Attack is amazing and it's STABs will hit everything pretty hard, and with Substitute it is harder to revenge kill than your average Gastly. Main reason why I left out Hidden Power Fighting is that Sludge Bomb hits slightly harder than a super effective Hidden Power Fighting, so it's really only useful against steel types.

[Sarkynin]

Murkrow @ Life Orb
Trait: Insomnia
Level: 5
EVs: 240 Atk / 80 SAtk / 188 Spd
Naive Nature
- Brave Bird
- Sucker Punch
- Heat Wave
- Hidden Power [Grass]

The krow is spying you, ready to take you down from above...

MixKrow, fantastic pokémon. The simple fact that it 2HKOes chinchou, lileep and porygon, the only counters in the tier, makes it so good. Sucker punch is excellent for revenge killing, but brave bird is the only thing to spam, really. Heat wave is probably the move that you'll use the less, since the only thing it's good for is to hit bronzor and magnemite. even HP grass will see more use, raping the shell smashers, chinchou and hippopotas to a certain degree.

Since this is hyper offensive, it can break down teams to ease the other pokémon's sweeps. That thing BREAKS WALLS. It also eases down sweeps from ghosts (I like Shouting's gastly idea) by weakening their shared counters in Porygon and Lileep. Murkrow also takes on misdreavus.

[fryfrey]

Originally Posted by Fat Sarkynin

Murkrow @ Life Orb
Trait: Prankster
Level: 5
EVs: 240 Atk / 80 SAtk / 188 Spd
Naive Nature
- Brave Bird
- Sucker Punch
- Heat Wave
- Hidden Power [Grass]

What good is prankster if you have no non-attacking moves?