Gen 4 SHORT DPP GUIDE FOR NEW PLAYERS [SMOGON TOUR PREP]

SmogonWorkHorse

Banned deucer.
By SOMALIA,


Ok, so as the Smogon tour approaches I figured I might as well put my knowledge to good use and create a small guide for people who haven't touched the tier.


I. Differences in mechanics with newer generations


- You can paralyze Electric types and sleep Grass types With spore/sleep powder.

- No Life Orb recoil when attacking a Pokemon behind a Substitute.

- Sleep turns do not reset upon switching.

- Steel types resist Dark and Ghost type attacks.

- Ghosts can get trapped via abilities.

- Explosion halves the defense of the target.

-Sturdy ONLY protects against one hit KO moves such as Sheer Cold, Fissure etc.

- Volt Switch doesn't exist.

- Extremespeed has +1 priority, Eg. Weavile Ice Shard can outpace Dragonite's Extremespeed granted D Nite didn’t get any DD boosts/Agility to be faster than Weavile.

- Infernape is the King.

- No fairy types exist.

- Rotom forms are all GHOST/ELECTRIC however they still have their signature moves but lack STAB in them. Eg. Rotom Wash has Hydro Pump but doesn’t get STAB boost.

- No team preview.

- Encore lasts 2 to 6 turns while Taunt lasts for 2 to 4 turns.



II. Leads in DPP OU


http://pastebin.com/MLSWwZJ9

There is a guide made by myself on how to deal with leads when using stall, check it out here:


III. Metagame knowledge in a pickle


http://www.smogon.com/dex/dp/tags/ou

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/dpp-ou-viability-rankings-v2.3514029/

When you build a team in dpp with no knowledge its pretty much guranateed you'll create something that won't work or win you many games, especially at the tour level. Or this reason you need to know what each Pokemon does and the roles it can play. This can be quite tricky even for veterans as vertasile Pokemon such as Dragonite can play Banded, Mixed Life Orb, Dragon dance amongst a few other sets making it hard to safely scout what its set might be. Over time you will take this into consideration when team building as a lot of great wallbreakers exist in this tier.

To give you an idea on the dpp ou metagame, every type of playstyle ranging from trick room offense to stall works well. You can be quite creative in this metagame but at the same time have to respect the power of some of the Pokemon that exist as well. The majority of teams in this day and age in dpp ou tend to be ranging from Heavy Offense to Bulky offense; in fact stall is not used as much anymore. My advise to anyone who is new to this generation is to start with more offensively inclined teams, it makes you a better player within a shorter amount of time due to you having to avoid revealing your lategame sweeper too early, having to guess the opponents potential lategame sweeper from the rest of team and have a backup plan if for instance a certain setup mon gets up a boost or starts to sweep.

For instance, you have a weavile to finish of Dragon types (Dragonite, Kingdra and Flygon) that lock themselves into outrage since you have a Kingdra forcing them to. This in turn allows for you to get rid of their Dragon-type which is huge in dpp ou. You can take advantage of this by utilizing something like Infernape or Jirachi to clean.


My advice is to read up on individual Pokemon analysis which is available on Smogon and understand what the major threats do. Below I will skim through some things that should be running through your head when you play.

-Have a general plan no matter what or even several. Look at the team I linked below which is hyper offense. I have several win condition and have went through of producing worst case scenarios and having something to take advantage of it.


It is quite easy to be anti-metagame in DPP OU, as the metagame isn’t new and despite a few changes happening now and then in terms of new sets getting used and popularized, the majority of things stay the same. For instance, the metagame sees a lot of lum berry fast Tyranitar that can Stealth Rock, this is a lure to bring in the very common Breloom and roast it with Fire Blast. I decided to use jolly superpower loom to nail them in one hit rather then get outsped and just get bamboozled.

One of the most important parts about playing DPP is scouting for potential unconventional sets, such as Scarf Metagross. Of course you cant go out of your way in a dire situation where switching is life or death but if you have a safe option or two and see the opponent bring in Metagross in a funny way, think first.

Hippowdon is mainly sp.def these days so hard hitting band users such as Ape can 2hko it with ease.

Thanks to no Volt Switch it is harder to get pivot chains going.

Know that Jirachi, Dragonite, Flygon and Infernape are sometimes mixed wallbreakers and are quite hard to anticipate therefore play with care.

However Infernape for instance goes by physical mix or special mix meaning that by calcin damage on a damage calc, you can anticipate what kind of Life Orb sub variant it is and therefore know that there is a lesser chance of it having Mach punch if it is a special variant and similarly less chance of it having Hidden Power Ice if it is a physical mixed ape.


In short if you don’t know the metagame, no matter how skilled you are in other generations, you won't be able to produce your best. For instance, knowing that the most common Infernape nowadays is choiced and that Offensive Suicune is super common allow you to prepare for them beforehand and make a gameplan during the game to execute your win.

Notorious tactics:

Luring in Steel-types such as Skarmory and Forretress with U-turners such as Scizor, Flygon, Jirachi etc and trap and demolish with Magnezone. In a similar vein, Dugtrio can trap Heatran, Blissey, Jirachi, Tyranitar; all of which are a hinderance to lategame sweepers such as Agility Life ORB Zapdos

Hyper offense overload with physical attackers with aide of dual screens, can prove problematic.

Gliscor Baton Passing SD / Agility to end game Metagross.

A good way to really break stall is LO Mixed Kingdra (Waterfall / Hydro Pump / Dragon move / Rain Dance)

Breloom is really hard to beat if you lack at least a counter and a check or few checks instead. Alot of stall teams that are poorly constructed and over-focus on beating Grounds and Rock types in general seem to get pummeled by Breloom, it cripples a Pokemon with Spore and with a smart player, once they see a stall team, they can avoid Sporing too early to see what Pokemon the opponent has as a COUNTER for Breloom, if it is celebi they will bring it on the Spore first time especially if their Pokemon out is Swampert / Sp.Def Hippowdon; if it is not and is something like Crobat / Skarmory they will let something less susceptible or even risk their current switch in to get spored to bring their counter unharmed.

Common late game sweepers to watch out for include:
http://pastebin.com/eP39520Y



IV. Teambuilding in DPP OU


I made a video on this and will leave the link, it was during BW OU but the point still stands. DPP OU is quite balanced metagame and thus you can be fairly successful following typical team frameworks which I explain in the video.




Making assumptions on the opponents team from the first two or so Pokemon is a skill that can only be built through experience.

For instance watch turn 12 of this battle vs a high level battler who I will keep anonymous:

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-39423

Looking at his team (Azelf, Snorlax, Gyarados and Flygon where revealed by that stage) it was clear that:

1) Rotom-W looked at that point to have a field day.
2) I felt he had a Heatran or Tyranitar hiding on his team due to him lacking a Steel-type or anything to reliably take powerful special Attacks, i went for Low Kick as it would pay off very very well if it worked out well, besides I was in a bad situation at that stage. I figured if he had Tyranitar at that point he'd bring it in as it was the "safe" play however thanks to my metagame knowledge it was obvious what the switch would be.
3) This also links to risk vs reward which every player should understand well, that was an excellent example of taking a calculated risk and not a random hunch. Pair this with metagame knowledge and you pretty much have a good chance lategame compared to the majority of other players.

V. Sample teams

http://pastebin.com/FEfhfF3C


Use the ABOVE guide as a reference when building, if you are building stall you need to have a plan or two for all of the mentioned inside. If using offense you need to have either multiple checks to these Pokemon and/or methods to pressure them from setting up.


Since some of my best teams have already been scattered like rain, here are them for you to try to get familiar with the metagame.

Most logical way is to use an existing team and just battle seasoned dpp battlers and just learn through battle the different combinations of mons used and the roles they play. ONCE and ONLY once you have established some sort of sense of what the metagame is like and different shit, you can then start making decent teams that can fare well rather then mashing up 6 random Pokemon and hoping for the best.

http://pastebin.com/isEaVF8n

If you need more help feel free to PM me on Smogon forums.


~SOMALIA
 
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