Rating Basics

Sayonara

don't forget
Hey i like to believe i give out some good advice but my team rating is far from perfect i would like someone to rate my rate if that makes sense (lol) and tell me what i have done wrong and right Thanks http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3468806
(I noticed a week went by without anyone replying, so I decided to give it a shot!) Hi! I find that replacing 3 Pokemon on a team isn't a good idea, as it opens the team to new threats. Additionally, your format is sorta messy. You don't have to put 3 distinct spoiler boxes; you can just put all sets in a single spoiler at the end of your rate. When mentioning sets, I would recommend this format:

Pokemon @ Item | Trait
Nature | 252 / 4 / 252
Move / Move / Move / Move

For the Abomasnow change, you don't really explain the benefits of using that set over his current set. Saying "good players use this set" won't help the reader understand how and why to use that set over the one he / she currently uses. You're just describing the moves and not explaining why he should use the set. Finally, you should also change some of his team's EVs, as they are not all optimal at this point. Just some pointers.
 

Sayonara

don't forget
Why I never have this much insight into my own teams, I will never know, but here's my stab in the dark.

Link
Pretty solid rate and nicely organized; well done! A few suggestions:

  • For Starmie's addition, make sure to point out which item it should hold; that's important.
  • Volcarona doesn't learn Recover - it learns Roost.
  • (Optional) When you mention the Tinkerbell set without giving out the moves in detail, I would link the Celebi analysis so the user can go check out the set. Now it would look like this:
Unbreakable said:
The Tinkerbell set in particular is designed to do whatever you need it to do at the time, be it offense, defense or support, so I would imagine it's a great "panic button."
Unbreakable said:
or if rain is an issue you can run Hurricane in the fourth slot, enabling the moth to function in both sun and rain.
This part is a bit confusing, as Hurricane doesn't actually function well in Sun (it has a 50% accuracy, making it unreliable).
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
@TrollFreak: your rate is decent but in my opinion, changing 3 pokemon (and with completely different roles that the previous members of the team) isn't helpful because its like you were making a brand new team. In some way it's probably a fault of the OP too if his team h

So basically, when you rate teams try not to change the way the team works and is centered about. In resume, try to improve the team but changing the least as posible.

Edit: not noticed the latias suggestion, I shouldnt do this at 2am. Anyway, my point stands since 3/6 pokemon are changed and it would have probably been better to replace either Darkrai or Blaziken as they were by far e most replaceable pokemon on his team.
 
Superpowerdude - You did a good job noticing that he had too many Choice item users, and I would probably agree with you as far as SubCharge Magnezone goes, as it helps him get rid of Steel-types and let Staraptor or Salamence sweep. However, when you suggested changing Salamence to Politoed or Heatran, I don't think I'd agree with you. In my opinion, Staraptor was easily the weakest link, but he obviously won't change that. However, I find that replacing Salamence for something slower opens up too many holes, as he no longer gets an answer to +1 Volcarona, and Heatran can still lose to Hidden Power Ground variants, while Politoed doesn't really provide anything useful to the team other than Thunder. It also makes the team very weak to Electric-type attacks, especially VoltTurn. I would probably suggest a few things; first off, tell him to use a Jolly nature on Salamence in order to have a semi-reliable check to Volcarona. Also, this team is for BW2, and it's really, really weak to rain offense. You point out that sun offense is a threat, which it can be, but rain is a much bigger problem in this metagame, and Agility Thundurus-T has a field day when it comes into a Choice-locked Electric-type move. You could maybe recommend a Jirachi over Scizor, who I find has not been as useful in this metagame. Jirachi tanks lots of hits from rain offense and it can provide U-turn as well to keep momentum.

At the end of the day, I don't really think the team you rated was very well-equipped for this metagame, but you did point out some useful things. Sorry about the length of this, I wanted to get down all of my thoughts as quickly as possible. Keep up with rating, you're definitely improving!
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
@spuds4ever: while the rate seems decent to me there are some things I dont completely get. You say the team is weak to rayquaza and blaziken (half of the rate tells why) but then you don't give an y solution to deal with them (jirachi isn't really a good response). The Rayquaza / Blaziken issue can befixed way better suggesting a diferent ev spread / moves on Groudon. Then you say he cant t deal with Mewtwo, who cant switch in on anything and he has chople ttar/excadrill/kyurem and even ho-oh to check it.

However, you didn't point out the huge weakness Gliscor and Giratina-O the team has.

To be fair, while youvdid a good effort (which is nice to see) I think you should think longer and try to find the biggest weaknesses of the team to be able to make better rates, while triying to help the user to fix them / play around it. It's completely ok that you point out a weakness (like blaziken) but if you don't tell the poster how to fix it they may not overcome correctly (lets say you tell somebody hes gyarados weak, if you don't recommend how to stop it they might just slap a Jolteon over something and call it a day)

Try to keep it in mind next time :)
 
Groudon will still go down to SD rayquaza so fixing its spread and set wasn't really enough IMO. Scarf jirachi seems like a pretty good response IMO, with ice punch always OHKOing after rocks. Giratina-O and gliscor aren't really really an issue to the team I don't think. Grassceus basically hard-counters gliscor and giratina-O will certainly struggle against ttar.

I didn't actually say he was weak to mewtwo, I was just saying that jirachi was able to take it down.

Granted, the best I could do to solve the blaziken weakness without making a hefty change (not many players are eager to switch out two pokemon) was to put regenerator on ho-oh.

Maybe my rate just wasn't very clear, but thankyou for the feedback anyway. :)
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
Kyurem could already revenge Sd Rayquaza (not as well but it could). Gliscor is dangerous because it can easily switch in and start toxic stalling (of course it can't win alone but its really dangerous when paired with something like Kyogre.

Giratina is very dangerous becauae it walls half of the team, blocks spin and can abuse hazards, which hurt a lot that team and it has WoW and dragon tail so ttar is not a good giratina counter
 

Jirachee

phoenix reborn
is a Forum Moderatoris a Tiering Contributoris a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnus
Hey superpowerdude I'll edit this later because I can't really write right now but I wanna say two things. First, your links to rate 2 and 3 don't work for me, and in your rate 5 you suggest dropping Bug Buzz on Volcarona which is a terrible idea, since it gets you walled by stuff like Latios which is extremely common.

Edit: So alright about your rate 5, I really don't think the ScarfMence > Scarf Haxorus suggestion was that good of an idea. Reason is, Haxorus is also able to sweep late game, so I really don't get why you'd swap it for Salamence. If anything, both work in a similar way except Haxorus has higher Attack and Mold Breaker, while Salamence gets Moxie. I don't think this team has trouble with sweeping late game with 2 scarfers and Volcarona. Also I'll explain a bit more the reason why I don't like Giga Drain over Bug Buzz. They both cover different stuff but I think Bug Buzz clearlu has the advantage here, since it beats stuff you can't even scratch with Giga Drain, like Hydreigon, Latios (and Latias), and it also gives you the opportunity to beat frailer stuff that resist Fiery Dance like Haxorus. Without Sun boosted Fire Blast Bug Buzz becomes its most powerful move which is extremely important. If you really want to fit Giga Drain it should have been over HP Rock, since i's only purpose is to cover Dragonite, Gyarados and Salamence.

In my opinion your fourth rate is MUCH better, since it's probably true that Forretress is a much greater help to this team than Ferrothorn, considering he can cover the threats that Ferrothorn covered with his other Pokemon. However I feel like you could have explained a bit more about that change. In his reply after, he didn't seem to understand how much that change would help him, as he replied you that Forretress "was beaten by Fire and Water attacks". Maybe telling him that even though he loses Ferrothorn as a Water resist, he still has Latios which is one of the best, and it has great synergy with Forretress, while also having Suicune who can take a Water hit from something without Electric coverage. That would probably have made him understand your suggestion better and I'm sure he would have liked it.

I think your first rate is the best in the three I could see, and by far. You clearly explained what was the issue with Bronzong not having Hidden Power Ice, which is great, and why would Volcarona benefit from dropping Fire Blast for Giga Drain. Maybe he could have used Roost too in that situation though, as it is much more reliable for healing Life Orb recoil considering your opponent might not send Grass weak Pokemon against Volcarona, and Hurricane still does a ton of damage to anything that doesn't resist it but to me it seems alright.

Good job, keep up the good work.
 
Thanks alot for the help jirachi i will try and expand on my descriptions of why to make a certian change as well as re thing what a move offers coverage wise before replacing it.( I was only thinking about steels when swapping giga drain to bug buzz) So thanks for the help jirachi! :)
 

destinyunknown

Banned deucer.
@Superpowerdude: not going to tell you whats wrong on each rate since jirachi already did so it would be a waste of time. However, I recommend that you do not base your rates on personal preference exclusivelly because on most of the rates i have seen from you, you only change moves/pokemon regarding to what you "like the most" instead of what the creator of the team wants/need. For example, when you suggest (on the rate 5 ) using Hp ground on Volcarona, you should think before"does he really need Heatran out that bad?" "what's the move with the best sinergy for the team?". Once you have thought about it, you must explain to the user why that change, how is his team/set improvong with that tweak.

Oh, and I know it can be boring but the most important thing before starting to rate is find the most important threats to the team. Something you can do when you do not find the threats immediately is looking upon the threatlists for the tier of the team you're rating and trying to figure how the team handles each threat.

Hope I helped
 

Jirachee

phoenix reborn
is a Forum Moderatoris a Tiering Contributoris a Top Tutor Alumnusis a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnus
Hey bluewooper,

In your first rate, you clearly identified one of the team's weakness, which was the lack of Electric resist, making it much weaker to Thundurus-T. Then, you fixed that Thundurus-T weakness with one of its best checks, Mamoswine. While that helps that team tremendeously against Thundurus-T, it doesn't really help it against some of the other Electric attacks abusers, like Rotom-W. Rotom-W can still mow this team down because the only Electric immunity gets blasted by Hydro Pump. I think that maybe you should have suggested him something that resists Electric and can beat most Electric Pokemon, not just a specific one, Thundurus-T in this case, because that still leaves him with a glaring weakness to other Electric types.

I like your layout though, I don't really have time to help you with the second rate. Keep up the good work.
 

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