Get on the offense

[SkyNet]

Ho is a great playstyle to use in this current metagame, quagsire isn't that hard to break even if you use rivialy Hax as its 2hko'd by a non boosted outrage, you just have to play smart.

I've been using double dance hax and DD nite on my current team and it always been able to break sun offence as the power of dragons if just immence at the moment.

[Yousername]

Whats a better Deoxys-S set for these teams? Hazards or Dual Screens?

[Eggbert]

Dual screens, it's defense against early game scarfers and priority. This way you can get damage and setup in before they start revenge killing everything.

I was referring just to teams with 5 set up sweepers, they can't really function as well without screens. For the most part that is a fact.

[Stathakis]

Originally Posted by Fat Yousername

Whats a better Deoxys-S set for these teams? Hazards or Dual Screens?

depends on your team. anyone who tells you dual screens immediately is limiting your creativity. step back and look at your team. are you using strong choice attackers with few resists (e.g. specs tornadobro, cb dragons, cb terrakion, specs rotom etc)? if yes, then you'll probably appreciate the extra damage of spikes. are you using lots of things that try and weather a hit, then set up to the point where they can kill everything without switching (e.g. dd dragons, boosting terrakion, sdluke, etc)? if yes, then you'll want the weaker hits that come from having screens up. if you have any combination of the above, or something else entirely, just ask yourself what your team would prefer more and plan accordingly.

[That Noob]

I think he is referring to HO teams which don't have choiced users. When using HO, screen deoxys-s is a must.

[Stathakis]

Originally Posted by Fat That Noob

I think he is referring to HO teams which don't have choiced users. When using HO, screen deoxys-s is a must.

no, no it's not. sometimes HO teams have choice users. in fact, the very first HO team I ever posted to smogon had a choice user. it also didn't have screens.


you guys must realize that there is more to "HO" than screens + 5 sweepers. if that's all you think it is, then you are limiting yourself greatly. I'd say my best HO teams were the ones that "broke" the rules but still retained the principles of pressure and not being set up on, while overloading common counters.
screens + 5 setup sweepers will get you to the top of the ladder if you have enough time on your hands, but you must go BEYOND that if you want to take your team to the next level.

it seems my wall of text from a couple of pages ago has gone missed, being at the bottom of a page. let me re-quote it.

Originally Posted by Fat Stathakis

I advise you guys don't get caught up in the terminology, as it's pretty much 100% arbitrary. when i use the word "heavy offense" or "hyper offense" or even "offense" these all mean the same thing to me, that I'm trying to kill the other guy before he kills me. that's the bottom line. pretty much everything ssbbm said I agree with and it is extremely informative, but it might be a tad specific.



here are 2 concepts that I think go into having a good pokemon team:


1. make the opponent respond to you. this goes back to Surgo's original D/P threat list, where he made a disclaimer that you should always be trying to make the opponent respond. He said that in gen IV, there were simply too many different threats to play a reactive play style consistently, hence the better idea is to pose the threat than react. in gen V, there are even more threats and the only really notable defensive pokemon gained were burungeru and ferrothorn, off the top of my head.

NOTE: this does not mean stall is bad, but rather that the good stall is going to be the aggressive kind that gets its hazards up quickly and eliminates wall breakers quickly. in other words, the kind that doesn't just sit around waiting to get smashed. if you look at the greats, most notably IPL in my eyes, you'll see that this is an underlying theme.



2. have a unified purpose that every member of the team contributes to. this is a concept that is true of most real-time strategy games, with the easiest parallel to draw being various tcg decks. you don't just throw a bunch of strong cards together: they must work towards a purpose. similarly in pokemon, you will do much better if your pokemon help each other in some way. they don't necessarily have to lead to one pokemon's sweep or anything like that, but they should help each other out. i.e. if you have dual screen deoxys as a lead, you should have lots of pokemon that like not taking much damage for a few turns. conversely, if you have dual hazards deoxys, you should have lots of pokemon that hit hard on things that stay in, forcing the opponent to switch a lot and take maximum extra damage. little things like this cause your team to work better as a unit.

additionally, if you fulfill #2, you are far more likely to fulfill #1 because your opponent is forced to try and respond to your play unless they let you carry it out without a hitch, in which case you should win.



3. don't 100% rely on only one way to win. if your team makes life perfect for cm rest sleep talk suicune, but can't win without him, and your opponent just happens to carry raikou, celebi, roar vaporeon, explosion heatran, and other things that make his life difficult, then you are going to lose. thus, your team should be able to win in multiple ways, not just one. in the above example for instance, if heatran exploded on your suicune, that might be okay if you can toxic spikes them to death. toxic spikes also help suicune a lot by stalling stuff. oh hey, suddenly you're not lost without suicune.



these concepts are I think pretty basic and apply to all pokemon teams, not just offense. keep in mind, there are no hard and fast rules. if you blindly follow rules, you only limit your own creativity. thus, I encourage you guys to question every "rule" that I or anyone else tells you about pokemon.


anyways, how does this all apply to offense? well, I think ssbbm covers a lot of that, but remember, you should never blindly follow rules but always be questioning them. anyways, I'll give a little summary of how I think the above concepts apply to offense.



1. make the opponent respond to you. well, I think this is where a lot of the controversial things I say come from. like, I don't like choice scarfs, because they lock you into a move without very much power attached to it. this means your opponent can very easily come in and take advantage of you with a resist or bulky pokemon, forcing you to switch around and be on the back foot. basically, I think the less you have to switch, the better, because switching takes a turn where you could be doing something towards winning and spends it changing pokemon instead. obviously, you have to switch, so you shouldn't just stay in all the time, but if you make your team so that you don't have to switch as much, you can spend more of your turns smashing things with strong attacks that your opponent has to respond to.

the easiest way to not have to switch is to use pokemon that set up. by nature, they don't like switching. they can switch moves, and usually because of boosts they are very powerful and don't give away many free turns. of course, there are other ways as well. I'm sure you guys all know how specs tornadobro works. flying is barely resisted by anything, so shooting off a huge attack that isn't resisted by much coming off of fast speed, you don't have to switch much. you can just spam hurricane. that's just one example. strong u-turners fit the bill too. I mean, if you hit an opponent with a cb u-turn from scizor, you are switching but you are still using a strong attack, and if they switched that means you can go to a pokemon that beats them. you haven't wasted any time, and you are still forcing the opponent to respond to you. that's the bottom line. keep the opponent on the back foot and you will win.


2. have a unified purpose. I think this one is pretty easy for offense, since the purpose is always "kill the opponent fast." to do this, you have to do things like kill walls and kill revenge killers. this is where the "all physical" or "all special" concept comes from. if you use a bunch of special sweepers, and your opponent's team is a bunch of physically bulky pokemon and blissey, then once you kill blissey you are hitting the rest of the opponent's pokemon on their weaker defense stat, helping you kill them faster. thus, all of your pokemon suddenly become really dangerous to that team, because only blissey can handle them. that means no one pokemon is supremely valuable to your team in this battle, because you can do huge damage with all of them. thus, if you sacrifice two guys to do, say, 60% to blissey, and then force her out and take more sr/spikes damage when she comes back in, she can't handle the next guy. so, even though you've lost 2 pokemon to only do a little more than half to one pokemon, suddenly you are at the advantage because blissey can no longer handle the rest of the team, and the rest of the team is short pickings afterwards. if you use lots of different types of attackers, then your opponent is more likely to have an answer to every pokemon you have, meaning you have to kill lots of pokemon before you can win, rather than just one or two.

this doesn't mean that you have to go all physical/all special though. if you have a bunch of pokemon that are very difficult to counter outside one or two answers that counter them all, then you slap those all on a team. let's say, in gen IV, you have dd gyarados, agility empoleon, life orb heatran, dd salamence, and other pokemon that are all countered by defensive water types. your opponent might carry two at most. once you overpower them by sacrificing your guys to do damage, you will make short work. note that this hypothetical team has 2-3 physical and 2-3 special sweepers (disclaimer: this is all off the top of my head so if the team sucks/is incomplete, don't judge me, it's just for an example).



3. don't rely on one way to win. this is also easy for offense, since almost every pokemon you use will be able to do a lot of damage quickly and thus win games. a nice rule of thumb that I like is once you have your team of 6 pokemon, take out one pokemon and turn it into a team of 5 pokemon. could it still work decently well in a hypothetical 5v5 metagame? do this with every pokemon, and if you can answer yes for every guy on the team, then you know you are really not relying on anyone. that should also show you that sometimes, if called for, it's ok to sacrifice a guy for the good of the team, even if he's not "death fodder" (i.e. weakened and useless).

again, that's not a rule by any stretch of the imagination, and a team is not necessarily bad if it can't do without a pokemon. it's just a little exercise I like to do.



If you apply these concepts to offense, you get a type of offense that doesn't switch much and tries to force the opponent to react, as opposed to the kind that facilitates maneuvering around the opponent with revenge killers and defensive pokemon. this is a good type of offense too, just different. to differentiate the two, I used to call the former "heavy offense," referring to the idea that it skips the bells and whistles and focuses more heavily on hurting things. some of my friends called it "hyper offense," with the same idea in mind. we shortened it to "HO" because that's easier to type fast. the bottom line is there is no official terminology. at the end of the day it's all just offense. this take on it has been around long before me as well, so I'm not trying to take credit for naming it or whatever.


anyways, if you apply these concepts, this sometimes means lots of setup sweepers since they switch less. if you have enough, dual screens fit well. thus, the concept of "dual screens + 5 sweepers." I wouldn't say that type of team is the definition of "heavy offense," just an example.




sorry for the length of the post. I could probably make it more concise or format it and make it pretty but I can't be assed right now. thanks for reading.

hopefully that will encourage you guys to think more outside the box

[bluemon]

ive seen choice scarf terrakions and banded haxoruses on HO TEAMS actually

[ssbbm]

ok my original ho post was about ds offense /:

i'm sorry if i confused anyone, but ds + 5 sweepers is just the most common form of ho (that i see) so that's what i was talking about

but i'll try to make ho's defining factor short and concise.

HO is defined by the pressure that each member of your team puts on the opponent; this pressure lets you control the flow of the match, not the opponent.

[Gideon]

Originally Posted by Fat bluemon

ive seen choice scarf terrakions and banded haxoruses on HO TEAMS actually

Scarf Terrakion is a big no-no considering scarfers are almost never used on HO because they lack the punch to hit switch-ins that banders and specs do. Basically they give the opponent more chances for free turns than Band and Specs do.

In particular, Choiced Terrakion's Stab CC is an easy move to set up on for ghosts, like Jellicent (spammed WOW fucks Physical HO) and Gengar. Gengar can be a problem for HO with Shadow Ball/Focus Blast/Hp Fire. Gyara/Mence/Dnite also have a field day.

[waterwarrior]

Originally Posted by Fat Gideon

In particular, Choiced Terrakion's Stab CC is an easy move to set up on for ghosts, like Jellicent (spammed WOW fucks Physical HO) and Gengar. Gyara/Mence/Dnite also have a field day.

Actually, from my experiences from a pseudo-bulky offense team, Scarf Terrakion is an absolutely AMAZING late game cleaner with its high Speed, great Attack, and awesome STABs in CC and Stone Edge. I can certainly see it on a HO team to finish things off.

And speaking of Stone Edge, none of the pokes you listed likes taking a Stone Edge to the face except for Jellicent, even with Intimidate.

[Stathakis]

Originally Posted by Fat Gideon

Scarf Terrakion is a big no-no considering scarfers are almost never used on HO because they lack the punch to hit switch-ins that banders and specs do. Basically they give the opponent more chances for free turns than Band and Specs do.

In particular, Choiced Terrakion's Stab CC is an easy move to set up on for ghosts, like Jellicent (spammed WOW fucks Physical HO) and Gengar. Gengar can be a problem for HO with Shadow Ball/Focus Blast/Hp Fire. Gyara/Mence/Dnite also have a field day.

I think it might not be as bad as you make it sound. team preview lets you be much more careful with ghosts than otherwise, and stab stone edge is still a killer. scarf terrakion is still pretty hard to set up on, if you play him correctly. that is, saving him until late game when you know there are no resists to your stab move left (be it stone edge or close combat).


then again, I haven't tested. that's all just speculation.

[Gideon]

Originally Posted by Fat waterwarrior

Actually, from my experiences from a pseudo-bulky offense team, Scarf Terrakion is an absolutely AMAZING late game cleaner with its high Speed, great Attack, and awesome STABs in CC and Stone Edge. I can certainly see it on a HO team to finish things off.

And speaking of Stone Edge, none of the pokes you listed likes taking a Stone Edge to the face except for Jellicent, even with Intimidate.

Definitely true. But you're saying from your experiences using a bulky-offense team, which is just that, bulky. You have pokemon that are able to switch in on Terrakion's counters after he CC's a ghost or whatever. You don't have that necessity with a ho team. The team is not built to be able to switch and take hits. And also using Stone Edge on the switch to a ghost or flying mon takes prediction, which HO doesn't like to rely on. What if he stays in and your Terrakion gets smoked? Its a 50/50. HO players don't like that. I've seen Stath talk about this a little in some HO threads.

Also, If Terrakion is being used as a late game cleaner on Ho, wouldn't band be preferable, because he already outspeeds the vast majority of the metagame anyway. BW is mostly a bulky, slow metagame. Most people don't run very speedy mons from my experience. The extra power is definitely felt from band.

[BTzz]

What do you guys think of Rain Dance + Swift Swim offence? (Tornadus + Kingdra, Ludi, Kabotups, Ferro etc). These teams are very powerful although they fall apart quite easily. If you can't keep rain up you'll have a bunch of fucked up sweepers, if you're going up against other weather you'll constantly have to switch around so hazards will wear you down easily, and finally these teams suffer from being to one dimensional. I find Dugtrio is a great asset to these teams since he can free up moveslots on some of your sweepers by eliminating opposing weather inducers for them. These teams can work though. If you can get their weather inducer out of the way early with duggy (which isn't hard considering they'll have to switch in to get rid of your rain) then you have a great shot at breaking through the rest of their team.

[Myzozoa]

I think it would probably be better to run a team of rain abusers and politoed. Obviously you can't use swift swim pokemon, but its more consistent over all.

hypothetical example:
Specs Politoed
Specs Tornadus
LO Latios
CM Latias
DD Nite
Forretress

Basically you try to get up toxic spikes and stealth rocks with forretress, while keeping sr off the board so that Dragonite can keep magic scale active.

I guess water typing really is the future of heavy offense... ( I hope someone gets this reference)

[Pocket]

That's a cool lineup, Myzozoa. I also find Iconic's rain offensive team displayed in #Pokemon tournament very clever. The offense consists of Specs Toed, LO Tornadus, Physical Sharpedo, and LO Starmie, all of them walled by either Jirachi or Ferrothorn. Magnezone removes these problematic Steel Types, letting these Rain Sweepers rip loose. Handful of Jirachi are beginning to pack U-turn / Fire Punch to deal with Magnezone, but it's not a huge loss, since only Tornadus really runs into problems against it. A RainMag Team if you will, lol :x

[Eggbert]

There aren't any rules to follow, I don't get where that's coming from. The stuff i'm saying is from trial and error and testing. Through trial and error I've found that things like choice users and lack of screens is bad for 5 setup sweepers. From that same method i've found the kind of things that work and the kind of things that don't work, there wasn't any list I had to follow. I didn't just take deo-s and say it was the best DS lead. I've used Latios, Starmie, and even SubPass Espeon first. It's just the kind of team I prefer.

I realize that HO can include alot of different teams as in the RMT forum you see teams that are considered HO and they have scarf Rotom and CB Terrakion, ect. Every time I try using a choice mon it plays to what people are used to, getting a safe switch in, ruining my momentum, ect. Even with things like Rotom that can volt switch you risk them switching in a ground type and ruining everything. For Scizor, I just prefer to run LO U-turn on the SD set. Bug bite is really only for checking things and hitting walls like Swampert, lategame when Scizor is sweeping you just need BP and superpower. U-turn stops it from being completely killed off by heatran after checking haxorus for example. I haven't found a purpose for CB yet. Running Forry gives free setup to almost every sweeper in the tier, offense isn't capable of supporting it. Most of the early game setup I get is against Forry, and most of the early game sweeps are against people who stay in for that extra layer of spikes.

Tornadus seems really promising for rain. It is very difficult to wall and switch into, and it also gets u-turn. Hammer arm dispatches Ferro and Blissey, u-turn gets away from rachi, its only solid counter, ect.

[ssbbm]

Originally Posted by Fat Myzozoa

I think it would probably be better to run a team of rain abusers and politoed. Obviously you can't use swift swim pokemon, but its more consistent over all.

hypothetical example:
Specs Politoed
Specs Tornadus
LO Latios
CM Latias
DD Nite
Forretress

Basically you try to get up toxic spikes and stealth rocks with forretress, while keeping sr off the board so that Dragonite can keep magic scale active.

I guess water typing really is the future of heavy offense... ( I hope someone gets this reference)

lol myzozoa i get the reference

but actually i've tried a team like that last round except it was something like

scarf toed
lo thundurus
lo rotom-w
lo starmie
lo gastrodon
lo jolteon

and it actually worked really well lol

[Pocket]

Recently 2 HO teams were posted that lacked Deoxys-S Dual Screen support. I find both of them enlightening:

MostWanted's Apocalypse

Showcases Magic Coat Deoxys-S, which I find ingenious to get the upper hand on other lead Deoxys and really pin down the opponent. Combined with Magic Coat + Taunt, nothing will set-up on this thing. It also has Rocky Helmet, which helps wear down opposing HO teams.

I also like the usage of CB Terrakion and CScarf Rotom-W, displaying the usefulness of choiced mons. You apparently need to think more carefully with the move-choice, but his selection of monsters makes a really threatening use of their choice items, so it won't be easy to catch these mons vulnerable, imo.

DDNite is here, no surprise.

X5Dragon's Heavy Dance Team

Really funky team. NO Deoxys / hazards support, which seems odd. However, LO Latios, QD Volcarona, DD Dragonite are all high-powered mons that can put on the offensive pressure effectively. Shell Smash Cloyster without Life Orb is a little lack-luster in power, imo, but is a fierce sweeper once the crucial physical tank of the opponent's side is crippled.

Spore Breloom and Rain Dance Starmie is an interesting addition to this team. Sleep support provides his 3 mons a free switch-in, as well as providing a free turn to set up Swords Dance Breloom as well. His Starmie is pretty odd, but does its job in clearing the skies and spinning hazards to keep Focus Sash / MultiScale intact. It may want Hydro Pump to combat with the recent rise in Gengar in HO teams.

O yea, a DDNite, no surprise there.

It's interesting to note, that none of these teams go full-out physical or special either, but it somehow works. It's easy to see why MostWanted Team works - it basically stack hazard damages with Volt-Turn switches and CB Terra's hole-punching firepower. DDNite can easily clean up the mess. Gengar serves an essential role in spinblocking.

The game plan of X5Dragon is harder for me to tell, but I can see it work. Volcarona, for instance, lures in TTar, bulky Water, and Terrakion. He can easily double-switch to either Breloom to cripple a mon with sleep or Latios to start dishing out hard damage. Latios and DDNite also overload Jirachi and other bulky Steels that would otherwise stop Cloyster's sweep; I assume Volcarona / Breloom achieves the same thing by softening up / sleeping bulky Water mons. Very innovative.

[Eggbert]

Dual screens is best considered on teams that have alot of setup sweepers and for good reasons. Teams like Apocalypse don't want that kind of support since most of the team doesn't need screens or isn't offensive enough to abuse them (Scizor). They won't last lategame to where d-nite sweeps. But anyway on to the teams. I've only played Apocalypse once iirc so I don't know too much about how it plays. The thing with the choice users is that he has the defenses (scarf rotom) to check things that might set up. I still think it is really risky since Rotom can't check everything and things like Gastrodon and Conkeldurr can setup on the wrong move and prove very difficult to remove. It sacrifices offensive power though, running a scarf mon.

I have played X5's team like a million times though. Basically you don't even have time to think, you are under so much pressure. It's just sweeper after sweeper and eventually your team is weak to one of them. While I think dual screens are really helpful, the team also has coverage sweepers like Starmie and Latios they don't need them. Focus sash acts like pseudo screens too if you think about it. Focus sash abuse pissed me off, I've actually lost to the last mon Volc setting up with it while surviving an attack it really really shouldn't have. But it works because it is very difficult to keep SR up. Never played the team with stall, since something like skarm + bliss will give that team alot of trouble, which is why I usually stay with all special or physical most of the time. I think SD lucario is a decent exception with ice punch since it beats most of the physical walls except psychics which wall CM Virizion to an extent.

BTW d-nite is on pretty much every team now (stall to offense...) so it's good to pack things like Cloyster that can beat it.

[surly]

Quick question - is a team based around Swift Swim Sweepers doomed to fail in the current meta or could it be a viable strategy? Something like Kingra, Kabutops and Ludicolo in combination with something to set up rain plus two additional pokes to abuse rain.

[bluemon]

it could be viable because unsuspecting sun teams go down easily once ninetales is gone (which is not hard with the whole team spamming RAIN DANCE lol)

the metagame is pretty balanced, which means anything is pretty much viable.

[NoUserName]

Originally Posted by Fat Brizznetz

What do you guys think of Rain Dance + Swift Swim offence? (Tornadus + Kingdra, Ludi, Kabotups, Ferro etc). These teams are very powerful although they fall apart quite easily. If you can't keep rain up you'll have a bunch of fucked up sweepers, if you're going up against other weather you'll constantly have to switch around so hazards will wear you down easily, and finally these teams suffer from being to one dimensional. I find Dugtrio is a great asset to these teams since he can free up moveslots on some of your sweepers by eliminating opposing weather inducers for them. These teams can work though. If you can get their weather inducer out of the way early with duggy (which isn't hard considering they'll have to switch in to get rid of your rain) then you have a great shot at breaking through the rest of their team.

I thought the same, but I didn't think much about due to autoinducer weathers, but it might be worth trying it with Dugg as I am seeing.

The main trouble I find them is, I think, Eviolite Chansey.

[The Pokemon Ninja]

I find if you use the SubSplit Gengar on Chansey/Blissey and hit it hard with a fighting type attack usally gets them out the way reasonably easy.

[Rosey Oak]

Originally Posted by Fat The Pokemon Ninja

I find if you use the SubSplit Gengar on Chansey/Blissey and hit it hard with a fighting type attack usally gets them out the way reasonably easy.

I think most Chansey's/Blissey's would switch out on Gengar, being the fact that most don't carry a move to hit ghosts types. So sure Genger is a nice short term counter to blocking Chansey but it's not going to be a long term solution. I mean, if you switch in Chansey in on something that can't do shit to it, you can easily get up a wish up and use protect or switch out the next turn on the incoming Gengar.

Point being... I don't think Gengar is the greatest solution to Chansey - perhaps a mediocre temporary solution at best.