OU CCAT- 3rd Edition VOTING DISCUSSION SEE #157

[Katakiri]

I'd like to submit Rain Dance Offense. That doesn't necessarily mean hyper offense, it can be a balanced-style team with Swift Swim abuse. Swift Swim and the Hydro Pumps that follow are an extremely potent threat even by today's standards. Backed by functional Rain Dance supporters such as Scizor, Rotom-W, Jirachi, Mew, or anything we could come up with, it could work very well even against Sand, Sun, & Hail.

[ace combat]

I would highly advise AGAINST Quickstall in because it really isn't all that effective in OU. The reason why it can be used effectively in Ubers is that Uber pokemon have absolutely massive HPs to drain Leech Seed from and with grass being a much more common type in OU as well as having a lower average HP, quick stall becomes much less effective. Also in Ubers you can have walls that can actually hit HARD, which is another reason why it is more viable in Ubers. In my past experiences when playing with Quickstall it was a particularly hard strategy to use, as many of its abusers are quite gimmicky, with it only being especially effective against Smash Pass teams (and it is not as if I am a poor battler). Therefore I would highly advise against Quickstall because the average battler in OU would have a terrible time making this strategy work.

I would like to nominate regular Stall because I think that it is also a less used strategy in OU right now an I think that we could make a pretty cool team using something like Choice Scarf Healing Wish Latias as our revenge killer while also giving us the opportunity to experiment with different stall weathers. I think that it would also be good to introduce newer battlers to this play style with a good and effective team, as the stall play style really goes unappreciated with the newer battlers.

Edit: If you really want to read more about Quickstall in Ubers click here http://www.smogon.com/bw/articles/ubers_stall#full

[Mailman]

Originally Posted by Fat Katakiri

I'd like to submit Rain Dance Offense. That doesn't necessarily mean hyper offense, it can be a balanced-style team with Swift Swim abuse. Swift Swim and the Hydro Pumps that follow are an extremely potent threat even by today's standards. Backed by functional Rain Dance supporters such as Scizor, Rotom-W, Jirachi, Mew, or anything we could come up with, it could work very well even against Sand, Sun, & Hail.

This is a really fun type of team that given proper support can take teams unexpectedly and just steamroll. Plus with rains popularity there is a huge upside to this team.

[Scarfwynaut]

Im still not sure how exactly this voting is going to work, but I feel that when voting "stall" should be a general option to not break it up (including "semi-stall" I guess to), and if it is chosen we could just debate on what type of stall. Im actually surprised at the amount of people looking forward to stall. ^_^

[Jimbon]

Cool stuff, I'll hope to get involved.

I'm gonna nominate Hail Offense, it's a playstyle I really haven't seen a lot of people perform successfully and it's pretty anti metagame right now due to to the prevalence of other weathers.

[Leyla]

I agree with the choice of Stall. It is a large definition that can be taken in many unique and different ways (Sand Stall? Semi Stall?). It also need not be mutually exclusive with themes such as weather and field effects. Futher more, it is rarely seen in this offensive meta and could carry some value in surprise.

[gengarsnemisis]

Id have to say gravity. Gravity to me is such an interesting and untouched playstyle. I think that as a community we could make an effective team and inspire more gravity teams to be seen.

[bubbly]

Originally Posted by Fat ace combat

I would highly advise AGAINST Quickstall in because it really isn't all that effective in OU. The reason why it can be used effectively in Ubers is that Uber pokemon have absolutely massive HPs to drain Leech Seed from and with grass being a much more common type in OU as well as having a lower average HP, quick stall becomes much less effective. Also in Ubers you can have walls that can actually hit HARD, which is another reason why it is more viable in Ubers. In my past experiences when playing with Quickstall it was a particularly hard strategy to use, as many of its abusers are quite gimmicky, with it only being especially effective against Smash Pass teams (and it is not as if I am a poor battler). Therefore I would highly advise against Quickstall because the average battler in OU would have a terrible time making this strategy work.

I would like to nominate regular Stall because I think that it is also a less used strategy in OU right now an I think that we could make a pretty cool team using something like Choice Scarf Healing Wish Latias as our revenge killer while also giving us the opportunity to experiment with different stall weathers. I think that it would also be good to introduce newer battlers to this play style with a good and effective team, as the stall play style really goes unappreciated with the newer battlers.

Edit: If you really want to read more about Quickstall in Ubers click here http://www.smogon.com/bw/articles/ubers_stall#full

Respectfully, I really 100% disagree with this. You obviously don't understand the breadth of possibilities which can be contained by the quickstall playstyle. Leech Seed is terrible in this meta on things like Whimsicott or Jumpluff, yeah. So, we shouldn't use Leech Seed. It's that simple. Also, most of quickstalls best abusers in OU aren't gimmicky at all; think SubToxic Gliscor, or Disable Gengar; these are among the most popular sets for those pokemon already.

[Superpowerdude]

agreeing with Bubbly no body said anything about quick stall having to use sub seeders at all and i agree with you when you say that sub seeding isn't effective in ou. Where i don't agree with you is where you said that quickstall is not effective in ou. After the defensive core is made for a quick stall you are not just limited to "gimmick" sets. Anything that can abuse the hazards and cause switches are welcome.

Stall does seem very interasting and i would like to see it happen with all those new offensive threats of B/w2

[ganj4lF]

As uncreative as I am, I'm going to nominate weatherless balance. I tried to build a fair amount of those teams, and making one that can answer all those powerful threats that infest OU right now without resorting to a weather starter is quite a challenging task, but a rewarding one, too. This may have some similarities with Spike Staking Offense, which was already nominated, but it tries to handle threats with a combination of walls, forcing switches and hazards damage, and offensive checks, while more offensive teams tend to avoid the walling part and just throw powerful attacks at them.

Many pokemons can fit into this strategy, the ones I find myself using more often are Ferrothorn, that can spike stack and is an awesome answer to strong, choiced Water attacks, Bulky Rotom-W, for the same reason and the ability to check Tornadus-T, and Starmie, that can check a variety of threats while providing Rapid Spin Support. Also, more offensively oriented pokes like Terrakion and Lando-T are useful to just nuke down the enemy team, while also being able to set up SR if needed.

[ClubbingSealCub]

I'm going to go ahead and nominate Dual Weather. A team that can abuse and set up two different weathes, EG Aboma/Toed + Hurricane / Blizzard Dnite.

Double Weather is something that I barely see on the ladder, and I feel it has a lot of potential.

[FaceFaceFace]

Originally Posted by Fat bubbly

most of quickstalls best abusers in OU aren't gimmicky at all; think SubToxic Gliscor, or Disable Gengar; these are among the most popular sets for those pokemon already.

I wholeheartedly agree. The annoyance factor just makes it all the better.

Let's make a team that induces massive hair loss factor.

[Pocket]

I've seen enough Hail and "balance sand" to the extent that I believe they're "overdone." Also definitely no Rain, Sun, and Spike Stacking Offense either, because those are overused. I am digging Trick Room, Rain Dance (Swift Swimmer galore), and any form of stall for something refreshing and for discovering something new >:d

Trick Room: Opens us to slow sweepers that are often overshadowed by crazy fast sweepers of OU. Potential TR sweepers being Rhyperior, Conkeldurr, Victini (in the sun), and Crawdaunt (in the Rain).

Rain Dance: RD + Swift Swimmers is a powerful strategy in UU and below; it will be interesting to see how effectively this same strategy can be pulled off in OU. There are quite a few Swift Swimmers that are interesting to use, namely Kingdra, SD Kabutops, Shell Smash Gorebyss, SD Qwilfish, and Belly Drum Poliwrath. It would be a perfect way to troll Rain Teams!

However, the challenge comes in dealing with other weather archetypes, namely Sun.

Stall: Quick Stall, Semi Stall, Full Stall, Weather(less) Stall, whatever works. People claim that stall is made unviable by the recent BW2 additions, but that's certainly not true. Let's bust this myth!

[Shurtugal]

stall changing vote to stall so we don't make quick stall: which seems unappealing.

[Electrolyte]

I have played with the strategy quickstall before, and ai've got to say it is as annoying as heck. Although it's not full quick stall, I made an RMT featuring one if quickstall's best- Jumpluff- as well as a warstory I'm sure most of you read. I support that idea, however keep in mind that the candidates for quickstall are relatively few in OU, as this is an Uber strategy, so picking pokemon in the final stages will be tougher.

[ginganinja]

I actually don't particularly like Rain Dance as an opinion. Sure, it utterly destroys Rain Teams, and thats neat, however, I really dislike he instant disadvantage you get when you run into Hail / Sun and Sand. You can try and dress it up as you like, but the fact remains a smart opponent will see your 2-3 swift swimmers, realise you are running a Damp Rock Team, and keep their weather inducer alive just to screw with your strategy. Then you realise that these sort of teams pack Rain checks anyway, which also provide obstacles to you easily sweeping. Sure, a 100% win against 99% of most rain teams is really cool, but I hate the obvious weakness to other weather teams (which are common) which is really really hard to handle, without losing out of swift swimmers (making you less effective at trolling rain) or Rain Dance users (making it harder to get your rain up).

Gravity

O.k, most people who know me are aware that I am a massive Gravity fan. The fact that the CCAT has quite a few people supporting Gravity is a source of joy for me, but I want everyone to think rationally here. Gravity is a tough team-style to make, sure, it gives us options (Gravity + Spikes, Gravity + EQ spammers, Gravity + Dugtrio etc) and it can be very effective when used correctly (Its very good in BW2 with the new tutors), but I can say with 100% certainty that its a very difficult strategy to build a team around, so do bear this in mind. Don't get me wrong, its definitely possible, and I think we can do it, I am just aware that its very difficult (tho I know exactly what sort of thing a successful Gravity team needs in this metagame) and some people might struggle to contribute to the project. Just something to think about.

[fuzzy]

Okay, i'll try to get into this! Seems like good fun :)

My nomination will be Balance/Semi-Stall (dunno if this term still exists tho). For starters, please check out these two wonderful, albeit old teams from the DPP era:

Team Ikki Tousen - Earthworm

Rotom, CHARGE! - JabbaTheGriffin

Both of them use a strong defensive core of four Pokémon, one Set-up Sweeper that gives Stall a hard time (with the help of Entry Hazards and/or other passive damage provided by the aformentioned core) and a Scarfer that acts as the failsafe to the rest of the team.

The beauty of that particular playstyle comes with its flexibility: These teams have two win-conditions, a more defensive one via Hazards (Spikes, Toxic etc.) and a more offensive approach thru the use of a dangerous sweeper or even the Scarfer after the opponents team is sufficiently weakend.

One thing to note is that you obviously can't cover every single threat with a defensive core of just four pokémon. That means you still have to play smart and kinda active with your defence, e.g. clever (double) switching and so on. However, a well-build balanced team will have just the right tools to beat nearly every other playstyle because of its various options. It then certainly depends on the players ability to figure out their best win-condition every single match and act accordingly.

Its not an easy task to create such a squad by any means, but it will be an interesting one for sure, cuz there are many different pokémon suited for a job like this. With the help from a templet like the one displayed on Jabbas and EWs teams, i'm pretty sure we will be able to build a good one as well :)

If we choose Balance/Semi-Stall as our playstyle, i would generally recommend a weatherless team, because it simply generates much more freedom within the teambuilding process. However, i really like the idea of using Hippowdon for a style like this: Its amazing on balanced teams, because it acts as an effective mixed wall (good overall bulk and a godly typing) with an instant healing move and the ability to provide crucial passive damage (Rocks and Sandstorm) plus a Phazer all in one. Just a really good pokémon itself (unlike Politoed, Ninetails and Abomasnow) that won't limit our future possibilities at all! Kevin Garrett Stall - Kevin Garrett may fit as an example for a team that utilizes Hippowdons strengths to its fullest.

Have a nice day

[PenguinX]

Is there any reason we changed to choosing playstyle first over a pokemon? I'm just worried that we're inevitably going to be stuck with Trick Room or Gravity, which as full strategies do not work and we'll end up with a pretty atrocious team if we try to base a team around it. Note that I'm actually against voting for a playstyle overall in CCATs, not just against voting for it first. I feel it severely limits team options down the line, to the extent that something like Zapdos would fit excellently in the team but shouldn't be included because it Hyper Offense (or on the other hand, we add Zapdos because it does fit and there was no reason even voting for Hyper Offense in the first place). With the exception of HO and full stall, I don't think anyone builds a team knowing the exact playstyle they want the outcome to be: I'd imagine most people let the Pokemon and sets they determine the playstyle, not let the playstyle dictate what Pokemon they can and can't use.

If we are definitely going ahead with voting for a playstyle, I don't have a massive preference as long as its something incredibly loose. I'm 100% against Trick Room and Gravity as strategies because 1) they are incredibly difficult to pull off effectively and 2) they are very restrictive in terms of viable Pokemon. As soon as you vote for Trick Room, we're already looking at a list of ~20 viable Pokemon at best for slots 1-5 and then a random scarfer in at slot 6. Its not really a Community-Create-A-Team if the playstyle already narrows down your Pokemon choices that much.

[bubbly]

I kinda agree with you, penguin, but remember that teams based on strategies like TR don't have to be wholly about that one strategy. For instance, I made a TR Hail semistall team which was really successful before the release of Genesect, based around a defensive core to rack up damage on Steel types with Substitute abusers + residual damage, and then a TR trio of Bronzong, Reuniclus and Conkeldurr which gave me a quick win condition once the appropriate defensive mons had been weakened (and TR was also really useful as an automatic stop to most fast sweepers). If we did go for a strategy like Trick Room or Gravity I'd prefer to go with something like this, which is much less limiting for the CCAT process.

[PenguinX]

Even then, I think its still probably better to start with Hail as the playstyle (or preferably, Abomasnow as the base Pokemon) and then incorporate Trick Room into it. Bronzong / Reuniclus / Conkeldurr fit well into Hail because of their resistances, and Trick Room is added on top of that. Starting with Hail and incorporating TR in later is generally a better idea as the team is far less likely to be Trick Room reliant.

If we start with Trick Room as the playstyle, you are much less likely to get a team like yours because the idea of Trick Room will be in everyone's heads from the offset. We'd inevitably end up with a heavily Trick Room-reliant team that crumbles when Trick Room doesn't get set-up. I have absolutely nothing against Trick Room as a whole because its generally excellent against opposing offense. One of my best teams at the moment has Trick Room Cresselia + Quiet SpecsTran at its heart, but part of the reason I find it works so well is because Trick Room was only an afterthought, and as such the rest of the team (prior to adding TR Cress) doesn't require TR support whatsoever.

I just feel that labeling your team as "Trick Room" from the get-go is setting yourself up for failure. There are next to no good "Trick Room teams" in BW2, but there are plenty that use it as a win condition without it being the focus of the team. I'd be much more confident in the team we produce if we start with a more generic playstyle choice, get a solid start with 3-4 Pokemon chosen and then think about the possibility of Trick Room or Gravity.

[HolyAvatar]

Electrolyte, this is a very nice project and I'm looking forward to it.
However, I really dislike the voting rules as it very heavily encourages bandwagoning. Knowing that your vote is going to count for less than someone who just came in and just followed the general trend is really unappealing.

That being said, I'm torn about gravity and stall (and sand force EQ is really scary if we pick both). In the end my heart goes to stall.

[Absolete]

I somewhat agree with PenguinX about the limited options of Trick Room teams, provided the few users of Trick Room. I however fully disagree with the statements of its inevitable failure. I believe there's a lot of room for exploration left in Trick Room, and barring Stall, a solid Trick Room team can be crafted that will be competitive at any level.

[Lavos Spawn]

Ok so let's take a quick look at the metagame. We have weatherless offense/HO, sand balanced, sand offense, rain balanced, rain offense, and sun offense. How about we try something new? Something that isn't often even considered, much less put into play? Something like...Sun Stall!

yeah deal with it

[Metroid78]

Originally Posted by Fat Lavos Spawn

Ok so let's take a quick look at the metagame. We have weatherless offense/HO, sand balanced, sand offense, rain balanced, rain offense, and sun offense. How about we try something new? Something that isn't often even considered, much less put into play? Something like...Sun Stall!

yeah deal with it

Hmm yeah I agree with you it'll be fun making something that isn't used much :D

[Arcticblast]

My only qualm with Quick Stall is that it is VERY hard to make if you don't have a solid definition of it. It's something I've tried to make for months with no real success, constantly building myself into a synergy nightmare or not actually having the tools I need to succeed. If we go with Quick Stall, we will need a rock-hard definition. That said, it gets my vote.

Really, I'll vote for ____ Stall as long as it isn't Rain Stall.