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Tournament The OLT XIII Discussion Thread
- Thread starter cala
- Start date
Give them a minute, they are reverse calcing the EVs.
For the first time in OLT history i actually felt burnt out from laddering, even in the past while i was banned/tourbanned and joined OLT just to play for the sake of it cause i love laddering. Hax, misplays and bad MU never got to me. every single OLT i always used one or two teams and spammed it over and over.
2021 - Rain
2022 (tourbanned) - mew daunt HO
2023 - Rain
2024 - Prime Pult
2025 (banned) - Prime Pult and trick room
i managed to make it to the leaderboard in 3/5 (2 times in 2022 as #1 too) of those even if i was banned and my point didnt get counted (and even hold the highest elo for qualifying OLT to this day in SV back in 2023), but oh my god this is the first time i actually felt like crashing out, after one too many games like this and my brain shutting off. maybe the era of mimi 1000 games per week with the same team is over, im just not built or motivated for it no more....
ok rant over im gonna try my best else i dissapoint my friends hellom IPF leng loi im getting my custom avatar back
2021 - Rain
2022 (tourbanned) - mew daunt HO
2023 - Rain
2024 - Prime Pult
2025 (banned) - Prime Pult and trick room
i managed to make it to the leaderboard in 3/5 (2 times in 2022 as #1 too) of those even if i was banned and my point didnt get counted (and even hold the highest elo for qualifying OLT to this day in SV back in 2023), but oh my god this is the first time i actually felt like crashing out, after one too many games like this and my brain shutting off. maybe the era of mimi 1000 games per week with the same team is over, im just not built or motivated for it no more....
ok rant over im gonna try my best else i dissapoint my friends hellom IPF leng loi im getting my custom avatar back
chusei20 on ladder is blessed by god, you gotta play around that. no clicking moves that can miss
ban Kyurem already. freeze makes it broken and uncompetitive. OLT should have shown enough such games
Getting back into playing SV OU slowly. I probably won’t sign up for OLT this year, but I enjoy seeing the crazy tech at the highest level and the metagame trends.
Like with every OLT season. Lots of Offense with a downturn in Balance as demonstrated by the recent VR slate. A massive wave of
, and a slightly favorable meta for 
, and 
while defensive staples such as 
saw a slight drop in viability.
cycle 2 teams. only includes teams with 80%+ revealed moves/items/terra. ev calculator is also now far better, to the point where the full pastes are useful now kinda (at least based on what can be inferred thru replays(still not perfect tho at all, but i found it pretty solid for now))
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...OJREK6nmNYwHQAJvoj_uMzYmFULPNz2G19-Iz/pubhtml
also redone cycle 1 with the better evs
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...QDBNYilJgQuCh8hiE__Aky5U3Yil6XMqtUfuD/pubhtml
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...OJREK6nmNYwHQAJvoj_uMzYmFULPNz2G19-Iz/pubhtml
also redone cycle 1 with the better evs
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...QDBNYilJgQuCh8hiE__Aky5U3Yil6XMqtUfuD/pubhtml
Keep doing god's work. We need more heroes like you in the community.
These threads used to be filled with posts from qualifiers talking about how their laddering experience went, what teams they thought were good, and just general thoughts on the meta as a whole, so it's both surprising and a little bit lame that we're already a bit into cycle 3 with no posts from qualifiers in sight. Hopefully more people opt to post here, as I believe they're one of the most underrated parts of this tournament.
With all that being said I'm not really a big poster either, and I don't really know what to put here atp, will try my best tho.
After ending cycle 1 in 9th because I didn't think I'd get passed in time (in retrospect... terrible decision by me to not load lmaooo) I was p confident going into cycle 2 since I had a week's worth of laddering knowledge and thought I'd have a decent grasp of what would be best for climbing.
Quick disclaimer that I used some other stuff besides what's shown below, but not really enough to post about, so they're excluded.
1000-1600s:
Saw that Franco was using this in cycle 1 and he had 90% gxe so I thought the team was pretty reliable, I tried it a bit above 1600s too and didn't like it as much, but others had success with it high up too, so the team prob is just good overall. Makes a lot of sense to load too since there's a lot of cress teams being used atm and Ttar + Drill + phazing + toxic is about as reliable as you can get vs that stuff imo.
1600-2000s:
Swiped the top 2 out of GXE's wcop channel because Samu Ghold stack probably will never be bad for laddering, and they worked p well. There's lots of variations of this type of stuff and some might be better? Worth trying for anyone interested.
The pult cress team was smth I made before olt started & had a friend test, and I ended up liking how it looked into people's ladder stuff. The original version had a Hawlucha, but I kept fighting Raging Bolt's so I got told to just run Zama instead. Stuff like Tspikes or Sand are fairly annoying, but sets can be changed around if you keep fighting the same stuff and wanna try to do better into them, which I'd recommend doing for teams you spam in general, changing sets can only help you in laddering for this tournament (alongside switching teams up so you don't risk snipers).
Bea sent me the last team on the last day of cycle 1 because I wasn't feelin what I was using that day, started at like 1990 and after a couple games I ended right back around that point, so I wanted to try smth diff/proven. Team was pretty fun to use, I think I didn't lose a game on the way to 2070 (might be wrong and I lost 1-2, been too long to remember though), unfortunately I fumbled the bag with loading (as mentioned earlier), but yea the team was clutch. I used it slightly less in cycle 2 but still used it enough to decide it remained a good team to load up during the cycle.
I'll add another disclaimer that there's definitely a lot more teams than what I posted that are effective for climbing in this tournament, I was mostly just too lazy to bother building more stuff/recreating or asking for stuff to ladder with since I was okay with what I had already (3/5 teams above were just already in my builder). Will also add that OLT tends to shift metas pretty quickly between cycles, so the same stuff that worked in a previous cycle may not be as effective in another one.
That's pretty much it for the ladder portion, sorry if it isn't really that interesting/if I had any typos or poor grammar somewhere, didn't really QC this or double read much. Hopefully some people find the post interesting regardless.
I'll drop some quick meta thoughts now, some people may disagree with them which is okay, but thought it's better to share them than leave this thread dry:
Think I'd definitely suspect Light Clay atp, I've felt this way for a while now, but I think seeing the meta without screens would be nice, and would make some offensive mons less of a burden to deal with in game/in the builder. I'd get why people wouldn't want this gone/I don't think screens is unbeatable or anything, but tbh I don't think it adds much to the tier at all and I feel like the meta would improve with it banned.
Probably a hot take but I'd seriously consider suspect testing Solgaleo now. Having access to all of psyfangs/knock/roar/steel typing means it adds both a new anti-setup tool, while it's naturally high attack stat (137 for reference) means it adds a new breaker to the tier. Unlike the past few bans in this tier (tblast, Roaring Moon, Gouging Fire, Volcarona, Palafin), which were all more or less related to setting up and utilizing tera to sweep through teams, Solgaleo doesn't really have the toolkit for sweeping I feel. The only setup moves it gets are Calm Mind, Cosmic Power, Meteor Beam, Iron Defense, and Flame Charge. It also notably does NOT have access to either Body Press or Stored Power. I just don't see what would make this mon gamebreaking in current day, it has respectable bulk and attack, but the speed tier is just okay at best (97 base speed), being outpaced by a large portion of the metagame. Like maybe calm mind sets could cheese through stuff? I really doubt it'd be anything insane though, and I'm not sure if it'd even use those sets over just teleport sets/phazing sets/aoa breaking sets. I think Solg has the potential to add a lot to this tier, so hopefully it gets a fair chance via suspect at some point. If it ends up being broken and people don't want it in then so be it, but on paper it doesn't seem broken enough to immediately dismiss the idea of trying it out.
Would prob keep an eye out for the first 2, not gonna say they're objectively broken just yet, but they've definitely been on the rise for a while, and I've seen lots of others complain about them as well. Ceru in particular sometimes feels like it can just autoend games if it gets the setup opportunity and has either the right coverage/tera or gets a play right vs sucker punch or something. Sun is pretty annoying rn as well although I'm not sure if that's just an OLT trend or not. Would be cool to hear other people's thoughts on these guys asw.
Free my mans... although I wouldn't really wanna see it in the tier with Clay still around, I think if it goes then suspecting RM back would be cool. This ones a bit biased because I liked this guy and didn't really want him gone the first time around though. This ones probably not likely to happen but thought I'd include it anyways.
Again though this is all my personal opinion, and it'd be cool to see what others think.
That'll conclude my post, like I said above I really hope other people post here too, it's always nice reading what others have to say about this tour/the tier. Apologies again if the grammar here was bad or I spaced things poorly/worded something wrong. Thanks for reading!
With all that being said I'm not really a big poster either, and I don't really know what to put here atp, will try my best tho.
After ending cycle 1 in 9th because I didn't think I'd get passed in time (in retrospect... terrible decision by me to not load lmaooo) I was p confident going into cycle 2 since I had a week's worth of laddering knowledge and thought I'd have a decent grasp of what would be best for climbing.
Quick disclaimer that I used some other stuff besides what's shown below, but not really enough to post about, so they're excluded.
1000-1600s:
Saw that Franco was using this in cycle 1 and he had 90% gxe so I thought the team was pretty reliable, I tried it a bit above 1600s too and didn't like it as much, but others had success with it high up too, so the team prob is just good overall. Makes a lot of sense to load too since there's a lot of cress teams being used atm and Ttar + Drill + phazing + toxic is about as reliable as you can get vs that stuff imo.
1600-2000s:
Swiped the top 2 out of GXE's wcop channel because Samu Ghold stack probably will never be bad for laddering, and they worked p well. There's lots of variations of this type of stuff and some might be better? Worth trying for anyone interested.
The pult cress team was smth I made before olt started & had a friend test, and I ended up liking how it looked into people's ladder stuff. The original version had a Hawlucha, but I kept fighting Raging Bolt's so I got told to just run Zama instead. Stuff like Tspikes or Sand are fairly annoying, but sets can be changed around if you keep fighting the same stuff and wanna try to do better into them, which I'd recommend doing for teams you spam in general, changing sets can only help you in laddering for this tournament (alongside switching teams up so you don't risk snipers).
I'll add another disclaimer that there's definitely a lot more teams than what I posted that are effective for climbing in this tournament, I was mostly just too lazy to bother building more stuff/recreating or asking for stuff to ladder with since I was okay with what I had already (3/5 teams above were just already in my builder). Will also add that OLT tends to shift metas pretty quickly between cycles, so the same stuff that worked in a previous cycle may not be as effective in another one.
That's pretty much it for the ladder portion, sorry if it isn't really that interesting/if I had any typos or poor grammar somewhere, didn't really QC this or double read much. Hopefully some people find the post interesting regardless.
I'll drop some quick meta thoughts now, some people may disagree with them which is okay, but thought it's better to share them than leave this thread dry:
Think I'd definitely suspect Light Clay atp, I've felt this way for a while now, but I think seeing the meta without screens would be nice, and would make some offensive mons less of a burden to deal with in game/in the builder. I'd get why people wouldn't want this gone/I don't think screens is unbeatable or anything, but tbh I don't think it adds much to the tier at all and I feel like the meta would improve with it banned.
Probably a hot take but I'd seriously consider suspect testing Solgaleo now. Having access to all of psyfangs/knock/roar/steel typing means it adds both a new anti-setup tool, while it's naturally high attack stat (137 for reference) means it adds a new breaker to the tier. Unlike the past few bans in this tier (tblast, Roaring Moon, Gouging Fire, Volcarona, Palafin), which were all more or less related to setting up and utilizing tera to sweep through teams, Solgaleo doesn't really have the toolkit for sweeping I feel. The only setup moves it gets are Calm Mind, Cosmic Power, Meteor Beam, Iron Defense, and Flame Charge. It also notably does NOT have access to either Body Press or Stored Power. I just don't see what would make this mon gamebreaking in current day, it has respectable bulk and attack, but the speed tier is just okay at best (97 base speed), being outpaced by a large portion of the metagame. Like maybe calm mind sets could cheese through stuff? I really doubt it'd be anything insane though, and I'm not sure if it'd even use those sets over just teleport sets/phazing sets/aoa breaking sets. I think Solg has the potential to add a lot to this tier, so hopefully it gets a fair chance via suspect at some point. If it ends up being broken and people don't want it in then so be it, but on paper it doesn't seem broken enough to immediately dismiss the idea of trying it out.
Would prob keep an eye out for the first 2, not gonna say they're objectively broken just yet, but they've definitely been on the rise for a while, and I've seen lots of others complain about them as well. Ceru in particular sometimes feels like it can just autoend games if it gets the setup opportunity and has either the right coverage/tera or gets a play right vs sucker punch or something. Sun is pretty annoying rn as well although I'm not sure if that's just an OLT trend or not. Would be cool to hear other people's thoughts on these guys asw.
Free my mans... although I wouldn't really wanna see it in the tier with Clay still around, I think if it goes then suspecting RM back would be cool. This ones a bit biased because I liked this guy and didn't really want him gone the first time around though. This ones probably not likely to happen but thought I'd include it anyways.
Again though this is all my personal opinion, and it'd be cool to see what others think.
That'll conclude my post, like I said above I really hope other people post here too, it's always nice reading what others have to say about this tour/the tier. Apologies again if the grammar here was bad or I spaced things poorly/worded something wrong. Thanks for reading!
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First off, congrats on the qual! Super awesome accomplishment, I'll be rooting you on when the elimination bracket starts.
Think I'd definitely suspect Light Clay atp
Would prob keep an eye out for the first 2,
But, I've seen these 4 takes a ton and I just gotta talk about this because honestly it's a bit annoying lol.
In order from least bannable to most
This item really isn't that good, and sun isn't either. In the recent vr,
dropped from A- to B+ which is an awful sign for sun. The only reason it was popular during olt is because people like to load HO since it's easiest and allows you to get in the most games lol. It will never be bannable because of the multitude of things that just completely destroy it. It's a matchup fish more then anything.Things that destroy sun
Banning light clay multiple months after the peak of screens is just a funny idea. Even though
screens has been rising (no thanks to storms cheap ass rmt) and other teams such as Liliou's rmt. Overall, a lot of offense archetypes are just plain better then screens. A big reason for this is because of 
being incredibly strong. With the newest version of German Bax being used, Cinderace teams are common again too. A lot of other offense teams can beat screens aswell.Better archetypes then screens:
, , Why ban light clay if only one screens team is super meta?
I see this take a lot, and most of the time it's from people who aren't builders, who have teams that get destroyed by cress and can't figure out how to beat it. This mon has so many checks and counters, but people can't figure it out for some reason. Because their are so many sets, let me break each ones checks down. Just don't leave home without encore or a breaker c'mon man. Also, this mon gives you an excuse to bring taunt which a lot of mons should start bringing for a lot of other things as well.
The biggest advice is all these cheap shits waste tera, expect it too. Find out their set and play around it.
BoltBeam (Tera Electric) Too Physically Weak
PhysDef (Tera Poison) Too Specially Weak
Moonblast (Tera Fairy) DON'T CLICK KOWTOW AS THEY TERA YOU'LL LOOK LIKE A BUM
Mons that Cress generally loses too
(trick+psyshock) . Pretty much every physical breaker, or trick/encore or disruptor.Wow this mon is honestly comically strong. Unfortunately, it's extremely hard to play around.
can come in on life orb sets since most are tera ghost, and comes in a few times, and stops a sweep. A lot of booster mons of mons that lose their items can run defensive teras based on their og typing to bait attacks and kill the ceru. Some examples are + tera normal 
, tera water 
. offense has a great matchup but this mon does destroy some balance/forces tera to kill it.Please just be careful around weak armor. Having a game plan and prepping early for ceru makes it easy to beat
UPDATED
Just played a game against a strong player who I think explained a lot of my points and why screens, ceru, and cress aren't overwhelming with the right team.
https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/battle-gen9ou-2666837065
Against
, H-Arc was able to deal with it, because I had strong physical mons that can force out cress, and stop it from setting up. Later in the game, Ogerpon Wellspring also dealt with it really solidly. had the same fate for different reasons. Ceruledge needs very good positioning to be sent out. A lot of players don't wait for a good opportunity to get it in safely. This game would've been much scarier if he got screens up, but by leading against it and trying to keep bringing in checks or potential knock off mons, they can't safely come in to set up the screens.
Another issue with screens is that every mon wants tera.
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ALSO BRUH CRESS LOSES TO MAGCARGO THIS MONS BUNS
HERES PROOF https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2663074952
HERES PROOF https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2663074952
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heileone’s OLT Qualification Guide
Background:
Hey everyone, I’m heileone. Recently I was inspired by my good friend Monster to make a meaningful contribution to the OLT discussion thread, since I really do agree with him that the quality of content in that thread has been declining quite a bit unfortunately. I think it's the inevitable result of the metagame dying and the playerbase becoming less passionate, but I digress.
This is my OLT qualification guide, which I’ve decided to write to help liven this thread up. Let's start with the most important question: Why should you listen to my advice? As of this OLT, I’ve now qualified for OLT in the first cycle twice in a row, and I’ve put up decent results in other trophy team tours as well (Although as you’ll learn in this guide, that's far less relevant considering how different OLT is from those tours). I think it's clear that I have at least some acumen for qualifying for this tour, so I hope that the general practices and principles I’ve collated can help you on your OLT journey as well. Without further ado, let's get into the guide!
Chapter 0: The Numbers Game
From the moment the tour starts, the result has already been determined for 97% of participants.
Some readers may be confused by this statement, but allow me to explain. OLT does not start when the cycle 1 post goes up. At the end of the day, you need to be good enough at pokemon to come out ahead of the vast majority of the roughly 400 other participants. You need to be dedicated to the game and grinding ladder outside of just during OLT with a focus on improving your own gameplay. As an example, I recently tried to audit the number of games I played across all my accounts. In the past 3 years since I first started, I’ve played roughly 25,000 games of pokemon on the ladder. That’s 25 games a day for 3 years! Of course, if you’re naturally talented for pokemon or dedicate yourself to just improvement, you could probably qualify with significantly less practice. But I would say the most important thing is that you need to be having fun. If you don’t have fun, then you’ll burn, get tired, and drop the game without committing a serious amount of time into it (And that's ok!). For the majority of readers, this is where this guide probably ends. If you aren’t good enough to qualify, then unfortunately there isn't much I can't teach you aside from “get good”, as unsatisfying as that may be.
So who is this guide for? Well, remember when I said that the outcome of the tour is determined for 97% of participants? I believe that of the 8 slots every cycle, 4 go to the players who are a cut above the rest in terms of laddering skill and can basically qualify at will. Think people like vert or nat. The remaining 4 are slots that are fought over by anywhere from 12-15 players who are good enough to qualify but not so much better that they can brute force the issue. This guide is for those 3% of signups, so if you think that might be you, keep reading! I’m sure you’ll find something insightful that will help you get over that edge and make it to the swiss stage.
Chapter 0.5: The Basics
Let’s get the basics out of the way.
Your body is a machine, and you need to keep it in good condition to perform well. Make sure that when you’re laddering, you’re well rested and well fed. Seriously, I cannot understate the importance of this. In fact, it’s probably the most important thing you as a person on the cusp of qualification can do. I know when I’m on 3 hours of sleep I play like a 1700, and I’m sure you do to whether you admit it or not. Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get onto the more specific OLT advice.
Chapter 1: In Game Strategy
This chapter is going to be broken up into two parts, How to Ladder and Team Selection.
How To Ladder:
When it comes to the ladder, CONSISTENCY IS KEY!
What do I mean by consistency?
Laddering from OLT is interesting because it’s very different from the typical tour experience in pokemon, with only Smogon Tour live tours being even somewhat similar to it. Let’s look at the goal for the average team tour. Realistically, in a team tour going positive means doing well. It means you get your “contract renewed”, so to speak. People will probably buy you if you show you can win 5 out of 9 best of ones. For OLT though, this is not the case. Even if you ignore the fact that the average OLT qualifier plays probably 15 times this amount of games, if you look at the win rates for these players, they usually are in the range of 66%-70%, with the majority of their games played at or near the top of the ladder. You need to be able to CONSISTENTLY beat players who are at the apex of the ladder to qualify. What does this mean?
Ladder rewards risky nut checks much less than tour plays.
The most important things when considering the large sample size of games played, in my opinion, are beating players worse than you, and minimizing throws. Aggressive plays that threaten to put you far behind are much better in tours, where a chaotic game played on a knife's edge can let you pick up wins against players that are “better” than you. In a tour, if you can pick up a win like this, it’s 1/9th of your tour performance. That’s a massive boon, and it's no wonder that there's a crop of players who play super aggressively like this that have come in from the tour scene! But on the ladder, it represents a much smaller portion of your overall games, and opens you up to devastating losses against players you should always be beating and unnecessary throws that will cost you huge amounts of points when you’re near qualification. In my opinion, the best way to ladder is through smart sequencing, positioning, and reserving the reads (risks!) for when you truly need to cut off a devastating line.
When it comes to laddering, consistency is the name of the game, so we want to minimize risks. And there is no better way to minimize risk than through team selection!
Team Selection:
Let's start with what type of teams you should bring:
They should be able to beat a wide variety of matchups
They should be something you are comfortable with
Most bad matchups should be outplayable(Its ok to have 1 or 2 unwinnable ones)
And that's it! Three simple criteria. The teams can be any flavor of offense, bulky offense, balance, or semistall you like, as long as it meets these 3 criteria. Now let's talk about what you shouldn't bring:
Cheese
And that's it!
Ok let me elaborate. I consider cheese to be: Stall, Screens, Sun, Webs, Rain.
Why is it bad to bring these?
The biggest reason is because they remove agency from the game. “But heileone!” you cry out, “I beat so and so spl player with scr-” Let me stop you right there. As I mentioned before, consistency is key. These styles have a very polar matchup spread that will allow you to beat players “better” than you and force you to lose against players “worse” than you. Additionally, and this is a BIG problem, if they get too popular the meta adaptation is generally very easy. I’ve seen it in two OLTs now where cheese comes out to an early lead, only to be brutally countered into oblivion down the road. In fact, if you look at the qualifiers from the past two years, only one person has qualified with cheese (THAT I CAN RECALL). That person is vert, who could probably qualify with 5 pokemon. Simply put, even if you disagree with my view here, history has shown that I am probably right about this. So don’t cheese if you want to qualify.
Chapter 2: Climbing Strategy
Let’s talk about climbing strategy.
One thing that I personally think is important in this tour is starting day 1 and maintaining a top 4-8 position throughout the tour. Starting from day three, you should be playing until you hit that position and then logging off to rest/live your life. This might be a hundred games or it might be 3 games, but the important thing is to PACE yourself and make sure you are moving at the correct speed day by day. There's no reason to play any more games, and if you play less you risk missing qualification.
DO NOT START LATER THAN DAY 2
Seriously! I don’t know why people think this isn't a massive debuff to their qualification chances! I mean sure, if you’re a beast and can qualify anyway, go for it, but this guide isn’t for you anyway. You get a massive advantage playing during the first weekend and being in a good position throughout the week! No playing catch up needed if you keep a good pace!
As you approach the last day, you should start to accelerate. On the second to last day, before you log off, you should aim to be in position 1-3, or at the very least at a high enough elo that you won’t have to play a billion games on the last day. Ideally, you would be two wins away from qualifying AT WORST. Try to be qualified by the day before or at the very least only one win away. For me, last OLT I didn’t have to play any games on the last day, and this OLT I woke up, saw that my position dropped a bit and then only played a quick game before work. This strategy also has several other advantages. If you need to play only a couple of games at the end, you can pick your battles very easily. You can wait until people with bad matchups are in game and queue, or you can actively seek out good matchups through sniping. Either way, it's a massive advantage you don't want to be giving up!
My next climbing tip is don’t throw! Consider that I only made it this cycle because all of JustFranco, crying, and Storm Zone threw qualified positions! If you are in the lead and above other people at the top, they have to come to you. Even the very best players end up with less than a 75% win rate, so by forcing others to play you make them take the inevitable risk that they drop. So why would you take that risk yourself? Just stay calm and relaxed, but be ready to queue! Ideally, if you followed the rest of the advice in this guide, you’re in a position where only one more win saves you if you’re at risk of being knocked out, and you can pick a nice battle for yourself that will get you back into that qualifying position.
Closing Remarks:
With that, that's all I have to say. Thanks for taking the time to read my guide! I hope you were able to glean something from it. And if not, then I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it! Also ban light clay.
Background:
Hey everyone, I’m heileone. Recently I was inspired by my good friend Monster to make a meaningful contribution to the OLT discussion thread, since I really do agree with him that the quality of content in that thread has been declining quite a bit unfortunately. I think it's the inevitable result of the metagame dying and the playerbase becoming less passionate, but I digress.
This is my OLT qualification guide, which I’ve decided to write to help liven this thread up. Let's start with the most important question: Why should you listen to my advice? As of this OLT, I’ve now qualified for OLT in the first cycle twice in a row, and I’ve put up decent results in other trophy team tours as well (Although as you’ll learn in this guide, that's far less relevant considering how different OLT is from those tours). I think it's clear that I have at least some acumen for qualifying for this tour, so I hope that the general practices and principles I’ve collated can help you on your OLT journey as well. Without further ado, let's get into the guide!
Chapter 0: The Numbers Game
From the moment the tour starts, the result has already been determined for 97% of participants.
Some readers may be confused by this statement, but allow me to explain. OLT does not start when the cycle 1 post goes up. At the end of the day, you need to be good enough at pokemon to come out ahead of the vast majority of the roughly 400 other participants. You need to be dedicated to the game and grinding ladder outside of just during OLT with a focus on improving your own gameplay. As an example, I recently tried to audit the number of games I played across all my accounts. In the past 3 years since I first started, I’ve played roughly 25,000 games of pokemon on the ladder. That’s 25 games a day for 3 years! Of course, if you’re naturally talented for pokemon or dedicate yourself to just improvement, you could probably qualify with significantly less practice. But I would say the most important thing is that you need to be having fun. If you don’t have fun, then you’ll burn, get tired, and drop the game without committing a serious amount of time into it (And that's ok!). For the majority of readers, this is where this guide probably ends. If you aren’t good enough to qualify, then unfortunately there isn't much I can't teach you aside from “get good”, as unsatisfying as that may be.
So who is this guide for? Well, remember when I said that the outcome of the tour is determined for 97% of participants? I believe that of the 8 slots every cycle, 4 go to the players who are a cut above the rest in terms of laddering skill and can basically qualify at will. Think people like vert or nat. The remaining 4 are slots that are fought over by anywhere from 12-15 players who are good enough to qualify but not so much better that they can brute force the issue. This guide is for those 3% of signups, so if you think that might be you, keep reading! I’m sure you’ll find something insightful that will help you get over that edge and make it to the swiss stage.
Chapter 0.5: The Basics
Let’s get the basics out of the way.
Your body is a machine, and you need to keep it in good condition to perform well. Make sure that when you’re laddering, you’re well rested and well fed. Seriously, I cannot understate the importance of this. In fact, it’s probably the most important thing you as a person on the cusp of qualification can do. I know when I’m on 3 hours of sleep I play like a 1700, and I’m sure you do to whether you admit it or not. Anyway, with that out of the way, let's get onto the more specific OLT advice.
Chapter 1: In Game Strategy
This chapter is going to be broken up into two parts, How to Ladder and Team Selection.
How To Ladder:
When it comes to the ladder, CONSISTENCY IS KEY!
What do I mean by consistency?
Laddering from OLT is interesting because it’s very different from the typical tour experience in pokemon, with only Smogon Tour live tours being even somewhat similar to it. Let’s look at the goal for the average team tour. Realistically, in a team tour going positive means doing well. It means you get your “contract renewed”, so to speak. People will probably buy you if you show you can win 5 out of 9 best of ones. For OLT though, this is not the case. Even if you ignore the fact that the average OLT qualifier plays probably 15 times this amount of games, if you look at the win rates for these players, they usually are in the range of 66%-70%, with the majority of their games played at or near the top of the ladder. You need to be able to CONSISTENTLY beat players who are at the apex of the ladder to qualify. What does this mean?
Ladder rewards risky nut checks much less than tour plays.
The most important things when considering the large sample size of games played, in my opinion, are beating players worse than you, and minimizing throws. Aggressive plays that threaten to put you far behind are much better in tours, where a chaotic game played on a knife's edge can let you pick up wins against players that are “better” than you. In a tour, if you can pick up a win like this, it’s 1/9th of your tour performance. That’s a massive boon, and it's no wonder that there's a crop of players who play super aggressively like this that have come in from the tour scene! But on the ladder, it represents a much smaller portion of your overall games, and opens you up to devastating losses against players you should always be beating and unnecessary throws that will cost you huge amounts of points when you’re near qualification. In my opinion, the best way to ladder is through smart sequencing, positioning, and reserving the reads (risks!) for when you truly need to cut off a devastating line.
When it comes to laddering, consistency is the name of the game, so we want to minimize risks. And there is no better way to minimize risk than through team selection!
Team Selection:
Let's start with what type of teams you should bring:
They should be able to beat a wide variety of matchups
They should be something you are comfortable with
Most bad matchups should be outplayable(Its ok to have 1 or 2 unwinnable ones)
And that's it! Three simple criteria. The teams can be any flavor of offense, bulky offense, balance, or semistall you like, as long as it meets these 3 criteria. Now let's talk about what you shouldn't bring:
Cheese
And that's it!
Ok let me elaborate. I consider cheese to be: Stall, Screens, Sun, Webs, Rain.
Why is it bad to bring these?
The biggest reason is because they remove agency from the game. “But heileone!” you cry out, “I beat so and so spl player with scr-” Let me stop you right there. As I mentioned before, consistency is key. These styles have a very polar matchup spread that will allow you to beat players “better” than you and force you to lose against players “worse” than you. Additionally, and this is a BIG problem, if they get too popular the meta adaptation is generally very easy. I’ve seen it in two OLTs now where cheese comes out to an early lead, only to be brutally countered into oblivion down the road. In fact, if you look at the qualifiers from the past two years, only one person has qualified with cheese (THAT I CAN RECALL). That person is vert, who could probably qualify with 5 pokemon. Simply put, even if you disagree with my view here, history has shown that I am probably right about this. So don’t cheese if you want to qualify.
Chapter 2: Climbing Strategy
Let’s talk about climbing strategy.
One thing that I personally think is important in this tour is starting day 1 and maintaining a top 4-8 position throughout the tour. Starting from day three, you should be playing until you hit that position and then logging off to rest/live your life. This might be a hundred games or it might be 3 games, but the important thing is to PACE yourself and make sure you are moving at the correct speed day by day. There's no reason to play any more games, and if you play less you risk missing qualification.
DO NOT START LATER THAN DAY 2
Seriously! I don’t know why people think this isn't a massive debuff to their qualification chances! I mean sure, if you’re a beast and can qualify anyway, go for it, but this guide isn’t for you anyway. You get a massive advantage playing during the first weekend and being in a good position throughout the week! No playing catch up needed if you keep a good pace!
As you approach the last day, you should start to accelerate. On the second to last day, before you log off, you should aim to be in position 1-3, or at the very least at a high enough elo that you won’t have to play a billion games on the last day. Ideally, you would be two wins away from qualifying AT WORST. Try to be qualified by the day before or at the very least only one win away. For me, last OLT I didn’t have to play any games on the last day, and this OLT I woke up, saw that my position dropped a bit and then only played a quick game before work. This strategy also has several other advantages. If you need to play only a couple of games at the end, you can pick your battles very easily. You can wait until people with bad matchups are in game and queue, or you can actively seek out good matchups through sniping. Either way, it's a massive advantage you don't want to be giving up!
My next climbing tip is don’t throw! Consider that I only made it this cycle because all of JustFranco, crying, and Storm Zone threw qualified positions! If you are in the lead and above other people at the top, they have to come to you. Even the very best players end up with less than a 75% win rate, so by forcing others to play you make them take the inevitable risk that they drop. So why would you take that risk yourself? Just stay calm and relaxed, but be ready to queue! Ideally, if you followed the rest of the advice in this guide, you’re in a position where only one more win saves you if you’re at risk of being knocked out, and you can pick a nice battle for yourself that will get you back into that qualifying position.
Closing Remarks:
With that, that's all I have to say. Thanks for taking the time to read my guide! I hope you were able to glean something from it. And if not, then I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it! Also ban light clay.
This is genuinely one of the best OLT reviews I've read and I wish we had more so do not take this as substantial criticism or anything, but you forgot a very crucial case:
But Mr. Heileone, I work 8-10 hour closing shifts full time at the ballcrusher factory with irregular days off. It's not viable for me to do start early. Assuming I follow the rest of the guide verbatim, how would I (the valiant wagie) compensate for this lack of advantage?
So let me give you some perspective. Last OLT I was unemployed and had a very easy time qualifying to be honest. This year I unfortunately also was working 8-10 hour shifts at the ball crusher factory (with 3-4 hours each day on the weekend) and it was undeniably much harder. However, that is where Chapter 0 comes in. You need to be dedicated to pokemon. Personally, I don't really have any other hobbies, so I was able to come home from work and just play before basically passing out. If you are unable to do this due to lack of drive or due to having a significant other or a family, then there really isn't much I can say to help you. Ultimately it is a competitive game and not everyone will be in a position where they can viably compete.
Wow, you did all this while also being the ABR of SV CAP?
Sorry I’m not listening to someone that tried to timer stall supaGmoney when he was on the verge of qualifying when you already qualified the first cycle. Big loser for that
bootlicker