Other The Play Style Play-Offs! [Round 3 Sign-Ups]

[Air]

Air and RotomPoison present:

Art by Andrew
​

Welcome to the Play Style Play-Offs! This is a project designed to see which play style is the best and how certain play styles interact with each other.

Ok, but how will we do that?

I was getting to that, don't rush me. Every two weeks, we will put two random play styles against each other. In first week, we create two teams that are assigned to the two play styles. There job in the first week is to build a team that is that play style, and that fits under certain rules. In the second week, each player will be put against one from the other team; and must use the team that there team built. Whichever team has more wins overall is declared the winner for that round! This will go on until all 10 play styles (number not certain) have been played. I give full credit to The Shellder Smuggler for the idea which was used in the Offensive vs Defensive project.

Alright, I think I get what your saying, but what are these play styles and rules your talking about?

As of right now, there are 10 play styles with specific rules. They are as follows:

Play Styles

Subject to Change

HYPER OFFENCE

• No more than 12 EVs in Defense or Special Defense. (Boosting Natures to these are banned too)

STALL

• No-Restrictions

BALANCE

• No-Restrictions

SAND

• One Pokemon must have the move Sandstorm or Sand Stream.
• One Pokemon must have Sand Rush or Sand Force

RAIN

• One Pokemon must have the move Rain Dance or Drizzle; and that pokemon must have the Damp Rock
• One Pokemon must have Swift Swim or Rain Dish

SUN

• One Pokemon must have the move Sunny Day or Drought (includes Char-Y); and that pokemon must have the Heat Rock or Charizardite Y
• One Pokemon must have Chlorophyll or Solar Power

HAIL

• One Pokemon must have the move Hail or Snow Warming; and that pokemon must have the Ice Rock or Abomasnowite
• Two Pokemon must be Ice Type

VOLT-TURN

• 3 Pokemon must have U-Turn, Volt-Switch or Parting Shot

TRICK ROOM

• 2 Pokemon must have Trick Room

Ok then, how to I sign-up?

When the time comes, all you'll have to do is say which side you want to be on, in bold.

 

[Air]

WINS AND LOSES
Round 1: Sand Defeated Rain with a score of 10 - 0.​

 

[Air]

UPDATES​

• Round 3 Battles on now

 

[EnerG218]

I dont think the rule of 252 in either atk or satk is fair, mixed attackers wont be able to run custom spreads. Maybe make it like you must invest in attack and/or special attack?

 

[Air]

I dont think the rule of 252 in either atk or satk is fair, mixed attackers wont be able to run custom spreads. Maybe make it like you must invest in attack and/or special attack?

Great idea, thanks.

 

[Clair]

The basic idea of the project is great, but it has some major problems which need addressing before things get under way.

• The restrictions on stall need to be alleviated. No attack investment severely limits the scope for teambuilding creativity and effectiveness. Requiring every mon to have one status move is utter rubbish, I shouldn't need to explain why to anyone who's used stall before. Stall in the real metagame doesn't follow these rules, and if this project is going to be worthwhile, it should be as realistic as possible.
• The restriction on balance is also awful. Balance teams simply aren't made up of three HO mons and three stall mons. Sure, doing so might make the game work, but it prevents it from having any bearing on the actual metagame.

Also, what happens if the different playstyles overlap? For instance, I'm assuming the Sand Offense team would be banned from using three or more VoltTurners?

 

[Air]

The basic idea of the project is great, but it has some major problems which need addressing before things get under way.

• The restrictions on stall need to be alleviated. No attack investment severely limits the scope for teambuilding creativity. Requiring every mon to have one status move is utter rubbish, I shouldn't need to explain why to anyone who's used stall before.
• The restriction on balance is also awful. Balance teams simply aren't made up of three HO mons and three stall mons. Sure, doing so might make the game work, but it prevents it from having any bearing on the actual metagame.

Also, what happens if the different playstyles overlap? For instance, I'm assuming the Sand Offense team would be banned from using three or more VoltTurners?

The play styles can overlap, they are still in that catagory.
As for stall and balance, those are the two that I'm no sure about.

Question: What should the rules be for stall and balance?
And
Question: What should balance be replaced? If so, what with?

 

[I AM THE JAMAICAN BOBSLED TEAM]

The play styles can overlap, they are still in that catagory.
As for stall and balance, those are the two that I'm no sure about.

Question: What should the rules be for stall and balance?

i think we could use something like a scale for offensive presence, idk how it would work tho

 

[Air]

i think we could use something like a scale for offensive presence, idk how it would work tho

I'm thinking of an entire team-limit for attacking moves. But, I'm not sure what

 

[DC-Shadow_Blaze]

I'm thinking of an entire team-limit for attacking moves. But, I'm not sure what

Systems that come to mind include:
-Base Power Cap, maybe a total of 500 for Stall
-Leaving STAB Moves unregulated, but restricting coverage (I.E, no Coverage moves 90 Base Power or over, so Hippo must run Rock Slide > Stone Edge, and Clefable must forgo Flamethrower)

Thoughts?

 

[D-Ssain]

Sounds like a great idea. For balanced you could have the rules be 2 attackers, 2 special attackers, 1 physical wall and 1 special wall. so recovery moves only on the walls and investment in offence in the attackers/special attackers.

 

[Air]

Systems that come to mind include:
-Base Power Cap, maybe a total of 500 for Stall
-Leaving STAB Moves unregulated, but restricting coverage (I.E, no Coverage moves 90 Base Power or over, so Hippo must run Rock Slide > Stone Edge, and Clefable must forgo Flamethrower)

Thoughts?

That's great!

Sounds like a great idea. For balanced you could have the rules be 2 attackers, 2 special attackers, 1 physical wall and 1 special wall. so recovery moves only on the walls and investment in offence in the attackers/special attackers.

That's not how balanced really works, I'm considering removing balance entirely.

 

[D-Ssain]

That's great!

That's not how balanced really works, I'm considering removing balance entirely.

For what bulky? STICKY WEB!!!!!!!

 

[Air]

For what bulky? STICKY WEB!!!!!!!

Sticky web can't really work, theres no restrictions that can be used for It. :/

 

[DC-Shadow_Blaze]

That's great!

That's not how balanced really works, I'm considering removing balance entirely.

Gracias.

And I think that we do need to examine Balance a bit more, as it has become quite murky as a playstyle. While historically viable, Balance is now ironically vulnerable to wallbreakers, and strong priority, effectively inheriting one disadvantage to the two playstyles it spawned...

If anything, Balance should be an option to team builders, but it would be more of a wildcard, in my eyes.

 

[D-Ssain]

Sticky web can't really work, theres no restrictions that can be used for It. :/

I agree sticky web is a vague play style but it is an existing play style. One sticky user and three pokes other than the sticky web user should have base speed lower than 85.

 

[DC-Shadow_Blaze]

I agree sticky web is a vague play style but it is an existing play style . One sticky user and three pokes other than the sticky web user should have base speed lower than 85.

I like the idea, but I can see this being more of a subset to Gravity, which is a boon to Sticky Web's viability.

 

[vyomov]

• Status moves other than Stealth Rock, Spikes, and Boosting moves that boost Attack, Special Attack or Speed are Banned

I think HO needs Taunt too, it's an essential part of the playstyle

 

[Pagoose]

Gravity should be removed, there is no such thing as a gravity team. The only thing that ever runs gravity is landorus, and it's still very rare. For HO, make it only 1 or 2 recovery moves. Things like charizard x, scizor and lati@s commonly use recovery moves. Also add thunder wave to the list of status moves, because of thundurus. For stall, the no more than 500 base power total thing is stupid. Mega venusaur commonly carries giga drain + sludge bomb which is 165, + earthquake/HP fire adds up to 265/225 by itself. Amoonguss is similar. Quagsire uses scald + earthquake, 180. Assualt vest slowbro would use 370 by itself. Get rid of the restriction on moves or make it much higher. As Clair said, forcing us to use nothing with invested attack is stupid. Good stall teams have some sort of offensive presence. Make it something like "at least 4 members need to have at least 400 evs in HP, defense or special defense." That covers custom spreads such as speed creep and makes sure you don't have to use 6 walls. For sand, take away the item restriction. Sand teams dont have to use smooth rock because unlike rain and sun, there is really only 1 good abuser, excadrill. Also a little nitpick, don't forgot that for sun the item could be charizardite y, and I would prObably put the number of abusers down to 1. As a general rule, the more freedom we get when teambuilding, the better.

 

[Air]

Gravity should be removed, there is no such thing as a gravity team. The only thing that ever runs gravity is landorus, and it's still very rare. For HO, make it only 1 or 2 recovery moves. Things like charizard x, scizor and lati@s commonly use recovery moves. Also add thunder wave to the list of status moves, because of thundurus. For stall, the no more than 500 base power total thing is stupid. Mega venusaur commonly carries giga drain + sludge bomb which is 165, + earthquake/HP fire adds up to 265/225 by itself. Amoonguss is similar. Quagsire uses scald + earthquake, 180. Assualt vest slowbro would use 370 by itself. Get rid of the restriction on moves or make it much higher. As Clair said, forcing us to use nothing with invested attack is stupid. Good stall teams have some sort of offensive presence. Make it something like "at least 4 members need to have at least 400 evs in HP, defense or special defense." That covers custom spreads such as speed creep and makes sure you don't have to use 6 walls. For sand, take away the item restriction. Sand teams dont have to use smooth rock because unlike rain and sun, there is really only 1 good abuser, excadrill. Also a little nitpick, don't forgot that for sun the item could be charizardite y, and I would prObably put the number of abusers down to 1. As a general rule, the more freedom we get when teambuilding, the better.

There IS such thing as a gravity team; it's just very, very underrated. I would go on a rant, but Ill keep it short. Gravity team use the accuracy to use more-powerful moves, the grounding effect to hit Flying types with Earthquake; and most importantly, hit all pokemon on the opposing side of the field with spikes and toxic spikes. Gravity + Phazers are the main type of gravity teams.

That 400 rule is cool, item restriction is fine.

Charizard alone isn't enough to support a sun team, unfortunately. 4 turns of sun is just, not enough for chlorophyll sweeps. Ninetales must be used. Also, one supporter is enough, yea.

To finish up the discussion peroid, we need rules for balance.
Round one will still comense no-matter what

 

[Pagoose]

For balance, I think judging the evs a mon uses is the simplest best way to figure it out. maybe you could make it: no more than 4 mons with at least 400 evs in att spatt and spd (5 would definitely be offense... Even 4 is starting to become bulky offense) And no more than 3 mons with at least 400 evs in HP defense and spdefense (4 would be stall, or at least semi stall or whatever)

 

[ryan]

The rule that states stall cannot have any moves that boost Attack, Special Attack, or Speed is a fairly bad one. A random Calm Mind booster isn't unheard of as a finisher for stall.

Also, requiring a sun team to use Ninetales or a random Pokemon with Sunny Day is dumb. The only viable "sun teams" in XY are teams with Charizard Y and maybe a random Pokemon that can benefit from the sun but functions well outside of it. Dedicated sun is unheard of because Ninetales is terrible. The best option would be axing it altogether from this, along with Gravity. Both playstyles are gimmicky at best. Tailwind as a playstyle is also not very good. You used to be able to slap Tailwind on random Pokemon, but relying on it isn't a very good idea in XY OU, where you'll usually find priority on at least two Pokemon per team outside of stall.

 

[Air]

Hmmm...

I do want to keep sun, but I'm thinking of removing Balance and Gravity. Balance is to broad to be a playstyle and gravity, as Hollywood said, is gimmicky.

Thoughts?

Also, suggestions for play styles would be great, but also include rules. I'm going to postpone round 1 due to changes

 

[Pagoose]

Definitely don't remove balance. I think you should use the evs of the mons to decide how stally or offensive it is. You get 508x6=3048 evs to invest per team. This is just an example, but you could say if the team has 0-800 evs in att spatt and spd then it is stall, 800-2500 it is balance, 2500-3048 it is offense. Even if you dont use this method, i dont think you should remove balance.

 

[Air]

Definitely don't remove balance. I think you should use the evs of the mons to decide how stally or offensive it is. You get 508x6=3048 evs to invest per team. This is just an example, but you could say if the team has 0-800 evs in att spatt and spd then it is stall, 800-2500 it is balance, 2500-3048 it is offense. Even if you dont use this method, i dont think you should remove balance.

The thing is, it's hard to teambuild around EV limits. Balance is a really broad category anyway.

PLAYSTYLE SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME NOW.