Your Pre-Competitive "Strategy"

Before we all became competitive players, most of us were in-game battlers thinking we were awesome because we swept the elite 4 with our Fly Charizard. There were Pokemon and moves that we thought were good, but in reality were awful competitively, like Charizard, and like Fly.

For example, the move I remember liking the most before smogon was Extrasensory, the move that's Psychic but worse. The only reason I remember liking it was because during my elite 4 runs, I would always run out of PP halfway through and ragequit. Then Ho-Oh got extrasensory and I had a 30 PP move that still did damage. I remember spending hours on end on Bulbapedia learning which pokemon learned the move, and where I could find them.

What were some of your "Pre-Competitive" Good Moves/Pokemon? (try to use something besides a starter)
 
Back in R/B I used focus energy sometimes. I didn't know that it actually made it impossible to get a crit back then.
 
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I like my Aurorus with Aurora Beam. I haven't come across Ice Beam in XY yet so it's pretty good for now.

I also remember playing 1st/2nd gen and having more than one move of the same type. Vine Whip and Razor Leaf and Solarbeam and Strength on my Venusaur.
 
I know you said no starters but I remember this from FireRed:
Charizard
Adamant
Blast Burn
Overheat
Fire Blast
Flamethrower
I gave it a Choice Band bc I wanted da power. It was perfect except for Fire not being a physical type back then. BLAST BURN CHARIZARD FTW.
 
This is an amazing thread idea and I applaud you for creating it. You've gotten me caught up in a fit of nostalgia. I remember pretty vividly my "semi-competitive" days between early '06 and mid '07 where I had a very loose grasp on competitive play and my vague understanding led to hilarious results.

  • In Leaf Green, I trained up a Swords Dance / Rock Slide / Earthquake / Fury Cutter Armaldo. However, most of the time I went with Fury Cutter because of how cool having a Bug STAB attack seemed awesome.
  • Between mid May and early June, I would go to the serebii Wi-Fi chat and fight this teenaged sounding guy and his little brother. I thought they were awesome because they could hack Pokemon, and I got a shiny Arceus and Darkrai off of them. I distinctly remember fighting a Magnet Bomb Deoxys versus one of them.
  • My first attempt at EV training was training a Toxicroak. I figured that it would be cool to have a Toxicroak because you could use Fake Out to weaken Psychic-types and then use Sucker Punch to NEVER LOSE TO PSYCHIC-TYPES, WOW. It had me vaguely fighting stuff that rewarded attack for a few battles, then I just started fighting random crap for EXP. Grinding with Mud Bomb as your main attack is painful.
  • Beating the shit out of Gastlies in the old chaeua was the coolest thing. seeing a Roserade get like +20 Special Attack after fighting 50 or so Gastlies was the bomb.
  • I gave up a shiny Gengar for an allegedly EV trained Yanmega in Serebii's wi-fi chat. Needless to say it wasn't and I had to EV train it myself.
  • I hit competitive battling like a sack of bricks with my Elite team of starter Torterra, Brave Manaphy from the Pokemon Ranger thing, Calm Mind / Dark Pulse / Shadow Ball / Thunderbolt Mismagius, Fly Honchkrow with Thunder Wave, Rock Slide and Shadow Claw Lucario, and some other shit I forget. I distinctly remember losing with this team a lot, but won a game thanks to my Torterra holding on with a Focus Band to kill something (and himself) with Wood Hammer.
  • It was a depressing day when I learned about IVs and how my starter was always going to suck.

Fuck, this thread made me boot up my Pearl version and look at all this old stuff and the fruits of Wi-Fi trading I generated back then. It's been six years and it's weird to say I feel nostalgic for it.
 

Hulavuta

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I did a lot of things that were already mentioned in this thread, but the really atrocious thing that I did was that I never used boosting moves...like at all. Which is fine in-game; you can get by without using boosting moves, but I actually thought boosting moves were totally useless. I recall one time I even said to my brother: "The problem with boosting moves is that they barely boost your stats at all. So you're always better off just using that turn to attack." Pretty dumb, I know. :P
 

Diana

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I never boosted either, though I think that was fueled by actually seeing something that said they barely raised stats at all, probably something like 1.1x but that was a decade ago.

Basically it was 6 Pokemon with 4 attacks on each. Not necessarily good Pokemon either. It admittedly worked for some (Metagross with Meteor Mash/Psychic/Shadow Ball/Earthquake) but not for others (Togetic with Fly, Solarbeam, Fire Blast, and Psychic I believe? It's been a while) I legitimately thought Wailord was as good as Kyogre because "they both learned Water Spout" so I wasn't exactly too bright. And to think, people thought I was the good one here...

I once was really dumb and tried to beat Yellow with one Pokemon when I was like 9. A Pidgeot. You can probably guess how well that went.
 

DHR-107

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I did a lot of things that were already mentioned in this thread, but the really atrocious thing that I did was that I never used boosting moves...like at all. Which is fine in-game; you can get by without using boosting moves, but I actually thought boosting moves were totally useless. I recall one time I even said to my brother: "The problem with boosting moves is that they barely boost your stats at all. So you're always better off just using that turn to attack." Pretty dumb, I know. :P
This so fucking hard @_@ I didnt realise the potential of them until way into 3rd gen at the last gym vs Wallace. His Milotic was tearing my team apart until I only have Gardevoir with Thunderbolt left. I'd heard about Calm Mind's boosts and though, screw it lets try it (I have very few heals left and was fairly underlevelled). After 2 boosts I suddenly realised he couldnt do jack crap and tbolt did over half (I had accidentally paralyzed it earlier so Marvel Scale was active). Was a good day for boosting moves.

I remember back in my Red game I used to battle with rare candied mons at Lv 95 vs my brother, and his lv 80 odd mons would always beat me cause he'd actually trained them. I didnt realise back then how much of a difference STAT EXP actually made :| Also I thought Articuno was a god until I actually started playing competitive on netbattle :3
 
Like most kids i thought that any move that didn't do any damage was useless. This changed in gen4 but up until gen3 most of my pokemon had the boltbeamthrower combo. Like my flamethrower+icebeam+thunderbolt gyrados and absol and dragonite and exploude. Basically if it could learn these moves it would have it.
I also hated moves with less than 100% accuracy. I never taught my kyogre thunder lol.
 
Before we all became competitive players, most of us were in-game battlers thinking we were awesome because we swept the elite 4 with our Fly Charizard. There were Pokemon and moves that we thought were good, but in reality were awful competitively, like Charizard, and like Fly.

What were some of your "Pre-Competitive" Good Moves/Pokemon? (try to use something besides a starter)
Hey now, in Blue version my Charizard was F****ing level 81 already. He was so awesome that he solo'd all of Lance and "Asshole"'s team all by himself. He had Fire Blast, Earthquake, Wing Attack, and Flamethrower. Respect, damnit.

Mewtwo was my favorite, having no knowledge of STAB when I was 10, I slapped Blizzard, Thunder, Fire Blast, and Earthquake on him (hey, this is Blue version)... I could basically hit anything for super-effective damage and instantly kill it.
 
I thought I was smart when playing silver I taught my Kadabra Shadow Ball to beat other psychic types and my Ampharos Iron tail for those nasty Rock/ground types. At that time, I didn't know much about how physical and special moves worked and I could swear that shadow ball was special, it looks like a special move ! I didn't know that all ghost type moves were physical at that time.
 
Tbh, when it comes to in game I just take what I get. If I see something I like I pick it up, I try and keep the amount of pokes in my party no more than the gym I'm fighting next, which means I don't take on a six mon team until after the 5th gm usually. I just find it helps me avoid grinding. I keep all my mons at the same level and have a rotational policy with strict rules.

1. Lowest level goes at front.
2. If there is a tie - lowest Max HP
3. If there is a tie - Highest remaining HP

When a new mon comes in it goes at the back of the party with an experience share until it gets within two levels then it is a part of the above rules, if the game is before Exp. Share then it is trained by the same rules. I will usually not stray from these rules until E4, and I just deal with type matchups when they come I don't prepare and I'll usually just leave in a weak mon because personal rules.

That's pretty much it. I try to avoid using things often as I play through old games fairly frequently.
 
Coverage on everything. If it learnt a move of a different type it would know it.

This lead to amusing things like me using 40BP moves when I'd have an 80+ BP STAB.
 
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Me not knowing about natures and IVs...oh when I got on here the first time, I kept on doubting myself that I was still good. I was horribly wrong.

When I saw that my Pokemon could be even better, and have better movesets (since Hyper Beam was unviable), that was what started my Smogon "career." I've never been disappointed with it ever since.
 
Uhhh I remember only grinding my percieved strongest pokemon in pokemon crystal (It was a meganium). In fact I spent so long trying to defeat bugsy's scyther with it that it became a meganium. Needless to say I had no idea what people were talking about when they said Whitney was hard because I had a LvL 40 pokemon to steamroll her with. I know you said not to include starters but I needed to share this.
 
See, I have one that's weirder than most. I had a Lv. 100 Blaziken in my first Sapphire file with Blaze Kick, Hi Jump Kick, Earthquake, and Strength.

Aside from Strength, you might be thinking this isn't that bad. The problem is that I managed to LOSE, multiple times, to the Hoenn Elite 4 with this.
 
I definitely need to check my Colosseum and XD teams. That's where I finally started getting behind strategy in Pokemon battles. Back in Stadium I battled my cousins with a "no switching" rule because I thought switching was too cheap lol.

I EV trained my first mon in Emerald ~2006, but I didn't know how to breed for IVs. The Pokemon was a bold Ninetales with defense investment so that I could live an EQ from a Gyarados and then burn it. Why I wanted to do that, who knows. Its moves were Hypnosis, Confuse Ray, Will-O-Wisp, and Fire Blast. Most of my first mons utilized gimmicky strategies that didn't work in practice, though I will admit, Screech + Explosion Skuntank is SO much fun.
 

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