that's why I uh... improved it to make by Togekiss take down something after taking all those hits. Before Platinum she can't, but now... mwahaha.
Banette too, since Bronzong with Explosion is way too effing obvious.
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that's why I uh... improved it to make by Togekiss take down something after taking all those hits. Before Platinum she can't, but now... mwahaha.
Banette too, since Bronzong with Explosion is way too effing obvious.
well, I meant, he test battled with me before we were to start battling, so that during his second round, when his opponent's Dusknoir used Imprison, he immediately thought of my Dusknoir which Imprisons Trick Room, and he didn't even bother trying to use Trick Room anymore >.< lol
lol, if I could only Taunt it, which I can.
Which is why I picked Banette.
besides, let's look at this for a bit.
you have to have Imprison and Trick Room, and since you are not retarded, you will include protect as well. That leaves you 1 room to do something, except for one little problem.
Taunting Weavile will rip him into a million pieces, unless you want to go with a Togekiss lead too.
Which is why I picked Banette.
besides, let's look at this for a bit.
you have to have Imprison and Trick Room, and since you are not retarded, you will include protect as well. That leaves you 1 room to do something, except for one little problem.
Taunting Weavile will rip him into a million pieces, unless you want to go with a Togekiss lead too.
Well, after watching the new videos, that Hyogo champ got lucky there considering Milotic could have KOed it.
It's also fairly surprising Dark Void isn't more popular; looking at it, many of these teams aren't running any form of status protection, so a Dark Void from Smeargle could really screw up some of these teams.
It's also fairly surprising Dark Void isn't more popular; looking at it, many of these teams aren't running any form of status protection, so a Dark Void from Smeargle could really screw up some of these teams.
I'm sorry I can't upload videos.
Saitama
Final : 50-73295-33873
1st(Mario) Togekiss/Metagross/Zapdos/Kingdra
2nd(Eiji) Hippowdon/Aerodactyl/Toxicroak/Empoleon
Akita
3rd vs champion( not an official battle ) : 58-25016-56670
1st(Eito) Azelf/Ampharos/Kabutops/Kingdra
2nd Dusknoir/Azelf/Metagross/Salamance
Miyagi
Final : 34-16068-40311
Semi Final (2nd vs semifinalist) : 21-91799-21099
1st(Miguel) Cresselia/Salamance/Metagross/Zapdos
2nd(Yo) Abomasnow/Infernape/Slamance/Glaceon
Hydro Pump is useful, because Surf's power is just 95*0.75=71. Interestingly, some Zapdos are balanced to withstand kingdra's rainy Hydro Pump(with its EV hp52, sdef20). But it's true that many kingdra has life orb.
Edited: Akita champion is said that not hacked.. we have to wait for the correct information.
The results listed above are senior, but some of the tournaments are held with junior and senior mixed because there are not enough players.
Saitama
Final : 50-73295-33873
1st(Mario) Togekiss/Metagross/Zapdos/Kingdra
2nd(Eiji) Hippowdon/Aerodactyl/Toxicroak/Empoleon
Akita
3rd vs champion( not an official battle ) : 58-25016-56670
1st(Eito) Azelf/Ampharos/Kabutops/Kingdra
2nd Dusknoir/Azelf/Metagross/Salamance
Miyagi
Final : 34-16068-40311
Semi Final (2nd vs semifinalist) : 21-91799-21099
1st(Miguel) Cresselia/Salamance/Metagross/Zapdos
2nd(Yo) Abomasnow/Infernape/Slamance/Glaceon
Hydro Pump is useful, because Surf's power is just 95*0.75=71. Interestingly, some Zapdos are balanced to withstand kingdra's rainy Hydro Pump(with its EV hp52, sdef20). But it's true that many kingdra has life orb.
Edited: Akita champion is said that not hacked.. we have to wait for the correct information.
The results listed above are senior, but some of the tournaments are held with junior and senior mixed because there are not enough players.
Here are the videos I uploaded from the Showdown, so if you want to edit them into the first post Zerowing feel free. The quality isn't very good but 2 of the 3 matches were in japanese anyway, so it isn't a big deal.
Semifinal 1-part 1
Semifinal 1-part 2
Semifinal 2-part 1
Semifinal 2-part 2
Finals-Part 1
Finals-Part 2
Thanks for all this information Micuat, it's really interesting to see the differences between our metagame and the japanese's metagame. Also, do you know if the Togekiss's that use Extremespeed use Hustle, or use Serene Grace? Because I was surprised at how much the extremespeeds were doing off of base 50 Atk, even though it has stab.
Semifinal 1-part 1
Semifinal 1-part 2
Semifinal 2-part 1
Semifinal 2-part 2
Finals-Part 1
Finals-Part 2
Thanks for all this information Micuat, it's really interesting to see the differences between our metagame and the japanese's metagame. Also, do you know if the Togekiss's that use Extremespeed use Hustle, or use Serene Grace? Because I was surprised at how much the extremespeeds were doing off of base 50 Atk, even though it has stab.
I was very very surprised the Togekiss came out of an Ultra Ball and not a regular Poke Ball. Does this mean it was a Togekiss from XD? It would seem weird as he didn't use Tri-Attack, so what would be the benefit of using such Togekiss over a regularly bred one?
Also, does Smogon have NO plans to try and encourage people to start thinking of a Showdown future? Something like a Smogon Tour with the Showdown format over WiFi? It feels like Smogon should be doing more for the actual real life battling of the Pokemon aspect instead of just focusing on Shoddy.
If you use Extremespeed with NOT hustle, it would deal about 1/6 to Hippowdon, if hustle, 1/4( culculated with togekiss A.252 hippowdon HP.252 Def.0 )
I think they are not so good players compared with Molf, Keima, Ikarekko.. top japanese players. The most remarkable tournaments are Chiba, Kanagawa and Okayama.
By the way, Togekiss is interesting. With Follow Me, we can use Trick Room safely. And with Platinum's move tutor, he can use Endure that Lv.2 Togetic may role as smeagle( with no Dark Void, Fake Out, but its flying so no damage with Earthquake )
Also I want Smogon users to play double battle with official rules. Many japanese think all foreigners are using ubers and not good at pokemon battles, even at single battle... I'm tired of that kind of stereotypes.
I think they are not so good players compared with Molf, Keima, Ikarekko.. top japanese players. The most remarkable tournaments are Chiba, Kanagawa and Okayama.
By the way, Togekiss is interesting. With Follow Me, we can use Trick Room safely. And with Platinum's move tutor, he can use Endure that Lv.2 Togetic may role as smeagle( with no Dark Void, Fake Out, but its flying so no damage with Earthquake )
Also I want Smogon users to play double battle with official rules. Many japanese think all foreigners are using ubers and not good at pokemon battles, even at single battle... I'm tired of that kind of stereotypes.
Lee - Oh my bad, then it either was caught in Route 230 using the PokeRadar, or hacked, but I don't think they'd use hacked Pokemon at Tournaments, but it makes no sense to use a randomly caught one!
micuat - I agree. I wish that would happen too and that the Smogon admins would try and encourage everyone to play by those rules and everything.
micuat - I agree. I wish that would happen too and that the Smogon admins would try and encourage everyone to play by those rules and everything.
Thing is that Smogon emphasis on Singles is not only large but what caused the site to be nuilt in the first place. Starting another site that is directly linked to smogon and vice versa is probably the best option that can be done to redirect those interested in Doubles and have all articles hosted on while creating subboards just for doubles discussion here or an entire new forum. Excellent doubles players are really just widespread among random forums that really aren't as active as Smogon is or even get that much traffic, so by simply having Smogon, the hub of the Competitive Pokemon Community, say "Hey, were trying have all Competitive Discussion on Double Battles go on here" would cause an explosion in it's development.
It's not so much that surprising that Dark Void is not really present, but the lack of Lum/Chesto berries. Because I probably would have put at least one of those on my leads if I was using Togekiss/Bronzong to prevent a Hypnosis/Spore.
I'm assuming that the Togekiss Extremespeed discussion is from a video I haven't seen/hasn't been posted yet? >_>
Lol, I'd love it if the format was singles...that's one stereotype that'd probably be swept away.
Overall though, double battles have never been too popular here at all as far as I know, even I don't like them too much. They've always been presented (imo) as the sort of "gimmick" alternative to straight-up singles.
truth is... it's a totally different game.
Walls that work in singles will not work in Doubles. Ganging up, Protect, Fake Out... etc. It is a whole new level of mind games.
btw, I've got a waaay better idea than Extremespeed on Togekiss.
Miyagi and Saitama videos have been uploaded, the Akita video has been recorded but I haven't uploaded it yet and probably won't until tomorrow.
Miyagi
Saitama
Once again another observation about the Japanese players; I noticed a couple have opted for the more powerful yet less accurate Fire Blast over Flamethrower, and I think I'm noticing a bit of a trend with their move selections. Strength over reliability, while the United States players have opted for the reliability of Flamethrower, Surf, Thunderbolt, instead of Fire Blast, Hydro Pump, and Thunder. Another note is the lack of Sleep moves in these Finals and perhaps Chesto/Lum Berry, while this may only be true of the videos we've seen so far and perhaps the Berries just haven't been a factor in these videos, it may be worth noting should you make it to the finals in San Diego.
Miyagi
Saitama
Once again another observation about the Japanese players; I noticed a couple have opted for the more powerful yet less accurate Fire Blast over Flamethrower, and I think I'm noticing a bit of a trend with their move selections. Strength over reliability, while the United States players have opted for the reliability of Flamethrower, Surf, Thunderbolt, instead of Fire Blast, Hydro Pump, and Thunder. Another note is the lack of Sleep moves in these Finals and perhaps Chesto/Lum Berry, while this may only be true of the videos we've seen so far and perhaps the Berries just haven't been a factor in these videos, it may be worth noting should you make it to the finals in San Diego.
Micuat, where do you go to get this information? I myself would like a chance to interact with the Japanese players online (I speak the language to a certain degree).
Just my comments from looking at the videos, Hyogo champ aside, many of the winning teams this year didn't really seem to focus on a "doubles" strategy per say; outside of Fake Out and the occasional Protect/Explosion thrown on, a good many of them so far seem to be cobbled up of OU/BL Pokemon really. Things like Helping Hand, Light Screen/Reflect and such that you'd think would be seen don't seem really prevalent at all; rather, it's more about having each Pokemon (or both at times) beat on the Pokemon they counter. Granted, there are exceptions such as the Hyogo champ's Rain Dance-based team, but outside of that, they really just seem to be an extension of offensive-based singles, except you have 2 Pokemon to play around with each turn to attack something.
zerowing,
that's very interesting issue. We japanese think how many turns it takes that the pokemon KO opponent's pokemon. If it takes two turns with flamethrower to KO and one turn with fire blast, they choose fire blast. Also defending pokemon have to be balanced to endure opponent's expected attack. This is the main of the japanese metagame.
I'm planning to use Dark Void Smeagle if this trend ( no chesto/lum berries nor safeguards ) continues.
And thanks for uploading videos.
ChouToshio,
I usually see the pokemon board of 2channel(http://schiphol.2ch.net/poke/) There are plenty of informations, but I don't recommend it for communicating. Pokedex (http://pokedex.jp/) or Pokemon Style (http://www.pokemon-style.com/) are popular but almost of the users are kids.. Actually, top japanese players use closed community such as Pokemon Underground (http://pokemon-underground.com/ ; Keima, japanese 2nd, Ikarekko, world 2nd are both authority of it) and they improve thier skills among offline parties.
Shinryu,
We should wait for Okayama, Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa tournaments. Top players are consentrated on those prefectures.
that's very interesting issue. We japanese think how many turns it takes that the pokemon KO opponent's pokemon. If it takes two turns with flamethrower to KO and one turn with fire blast, they choose fire blast. Also defending pokemon have to be balanced to endure opponent's expected attack. This is the main of the japanese metagame.
I'm planning to use Dark Void Smeagle if this trend ( no chesto/lum berries nor safeguards ) continues.
And thanks for uploading videos.
ChouToshio,
I usually see the pokemon board of 2channel(http://schiphol.2ch.net/poke/) There are plenty of informations, but I don't recommend it for communicating. Pokedex (http://pokedex.jp/) or Pokemon Style (http://www.pokemon-style.com/) are popular but almost of the users are kids.. Actually, top japanese players use closed community such as Pokemon Underground (http://pokemon-underground.com/ ; Keima, japanese 2nd, Ikarekko, world 2nd are both authority of it) and they improve thier skills among offline parties.
Shinryu,
We should wait for Okayama, Tokyo, Chiba, and Kanagawa tournaments. Top players are consentrated on those prefectures.
Do you happen to know the dates of those tournaments micuat?
I was reading through Skarm's old JAA conspiracy thread, and found a quote that I came across that I really feel aplies to this. This was posted by Fish in response to all the posts about hating Nintendo, etc.
"I have to be honest, I really don't see a point to this thread, but it doesn't surprise me that it got posted. Exactly why are we here half a year after the fact trying to justify our board's poor performance at the finals? If I were on the outside looking at this, I would be laughing at this pitiful attempt to explain our loss by formulating this absurd conspiracy theory. However, sitting where I am, I can only shake my head.
Yeah, that's great. A bunch of Smogoners had tough breaks early or was pitted against each other in round 1. If that was the case, the surviving members should have cruised to the final four with minimal resistance. Shotwell was identified as the top non-Smogon competitor? What is the basis for that, just because we knew who he was? Well, he didn't fare too well himself. Part of our failure was arrogance. We thought since we are Smogon, we are the best competitive Pokémon players there are, and we need to worry about each other, not the competition. See where that got us?
Being confident is empowering to a degree. Being painfully overconfident, however, is a huge weakness. And we are more than guilty of the latter. I will say right now that we are not the top competitive Pokémon battlers out there. I will try to explain why, as I see it.
We have a good, strong community with a lot of great battlers. It is possible that we could be the best group of battlers around, but we are currently not. It's not that we lack skill or knowledge by any means, but we do lack diversity. There is one thing we are great at. If you click open a Netbattle team builder, and under version find a little tab called "Mod: Smogon University," you will find what we excel at.
We are the best at a metagame that we have created, and that nobody else cares about. We ban moves. We tier Pokémon. We omit entire play types, which for the most part we deem irrelevant, but when it comes time to need to know them, such as the double battle setup for JAA, we find we aren't quite up to snuff.
All this is fine, if all you care about is beating each other and random newbies senseless on Netbattle or Competitor. Sure, Netbattle was the only way to battle over distance before, and even then it attracted barely a fraction of the entire Pokémon playing population. Imagine now, with Wifi capabilities, how many people will be interested in playing an unofficial bots the like of Competitor? Sure, the immediate members of our community will like it, but outside of that, will anyone? And if we stay on the same track we are in clausing, banning, and limiting the game of Pokémon, will it even be of benefit to Smogon's bigger goals, or will it further contribute to our biased way of thought?
We didn't lose to bad luck in pairings or elaborate conspiracy theories, we lost to our shortsighted metagame and arrogance. We may be the best in the world at our own metagame, but what difference does that make if we're the only ones who play it. Until we start playing a more all-inclusive Pokémon game, we're likely to see the same type of struggles in any future national events."
I don't really want to start an argument over this, just that its two years later and the the problem we had in JAA(Smogon users weren't used to this metagame as much as they were to 6v6 singles) where our poor performance was justified by terrible luck due to Nintendo's Pairings being on purpose, it seems a very similar thing happened two years later. When only I think about 8 of the 32 players left after the first round were US(Combining US and Junior divisions), it means we definitely weren't prepared enough. There isn't really much left to say that the quote doesn't say, but the fact that History repeats itself is definitely true here, and if we want to do well in future Nintendo tournaments, I think we need to change our attitude. Don't get me wrong, I play(ed) Shoddy a ton and never pated any mind to doubles, but ever since the Tournament in Orlando, I think I changed my views about it. Doubles seems to be the standard rule set for Nintendo, and we don't have any way to play doubles for practice outside of forming small groups on aim where we can strategize/playtest etc, and if this continues to be the case the japanese players are going to dominate us every time, and we will keep underperforming.
Anyway, Micuat, I'm also interested in the dates of the tournaments where you said a lot of good players enter(Tokyo, Chiba, Okayama, etc). I hope the Kaa guy wins wherever he is playing!
Also, for you conspiracy theory guys, don't say you're from Smogon until AFTER you've won. Keeping a low profile can only help, lol.
But really, personally I feel that the way they determine who even goes to the showdown tourney is the flawed process more than anything. For example, last year they had only 2 qualifiers total, at LA and NYC. Obviously, not everyone can make it to those, so you get a fairly low turnout of people who actually know how to play in the first place, and the bulk of people being either complete noobs or ones who might read articles and such, but don't have any practical experience.
But really, personally I feel that the way they determine who even goes to the showdown tourney is the flawed process more than anything. For example, last year they had only 2 qualifiers total, at LA and NYC. Obviously, not everyone can make it to those, so you get a fairly low turnout of people who actually know how to play in the first place, and the bulk of people being either complete noobs or ones who might read articles and such, but don't have any practical experience.
Haha I had the same idea, basically psychologically damaging your opponent before the battle even starts, like send in two Pokemon from Ultra Balls that are both Shiny, for one thing, they'll see Ultra Balls and a good player would think you don't know much about IVs and you're all about those Shinies where as a newer player would be in awe by your Shinies, take that moment to strike your opponent with a devastating hit and they might not recover from the shock, or atleast you'll have KO'd half their team already. And during the qualifiers, I tried evading mentioning Smogon unless someone else mentioned it to me XD (also ended up overhearing other people talking about their teams...sort of...)
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