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Battle Spot - Simple Questions and Answers
- Thread starter Age of Kings
- Start date
Hi! Welcome to smogon! :)
Your original team looks more like it was originally built for the OU ladder, since I see a rocks setter and a rapid spinner. If you want to continue using your team in OU, you might get a better response in OU's Simple Questions, Simple Answers thread (link).
This sub-forum is dedicated to Nintendo's official in-game ladder, called Battle Spot, which has 3v3 singles, 4v4 doubles, 4v4 rotations, 6v6 triples, and a special ladder which changes every season. We're in a bit of a lull period, where the in-game ladder is currently undergoing maintenance until the upcoming release of ORAS. If you'd like to pursue one of the battle spot metagames (3v3 singles maybe?), I'd recommend posting your team in the RMT thread (link), and ask for help converting it into a good battle spot team. Or, you could try one of the sample teams listed in this thread (link).
Good luck!
Ok. Thank you! :)
Diancie isn't legal in Battle Spot so I'm not sure this is the best place for this... However, I'd say keep going. Mega Diancie needs a positive Speed nature to outspeed Terrakion, Garchomp and everything else that's relevant in the 100-110 speed bracket. A tip for SRing: don't simply rely on the IV Judge for checking IVs. Cross-reference the stats of each SR with an IV calculator like this one - your Diancie might have a couple of >25 IVs that the IV Judge just doesn't recognise so it's always worth checking.
Yeah, but I couldn't figure out which forum would be appropriate yet since the competitive ones just use Showdown and Orange Islands is for non-competitive (and isn't she legal in the non-league/ladder battle spot? Just no mega since that's not out yet). Either way thanks for the advice.
Ah, that's really helpful. Thank you so much.
If you wanted a defensive fire type, and didnt have access to heatran, who would be better, Magcargo or Arcanine? Both can fill a very similar role it seems. I just can't really decide. Both can spread burn, and both have decent sustain with 50% recovery moves. Arcanine of course being slightly less durable and magcargo having middling offensive presence. Anyone have any imput?
P.S. Feel free to offer another pokemon if you can think of a better one.
P.S. Feel free to offer another pokemon if you can think of a better one.
You can also ask in the Wi-Fi forum's Simple Questions thread, 70% of posts there atm are about Diancie SRs. However they have a strict rule (because of pc++) that you cannot ask if a stat boosted by nature is not 31 (unless it's 30 / close to it for hidden power purposes) to prevent the thread being spammed.
As for yours. easy toss. Once the cutscene is over, check the summary screen to see what nature you have first. If it is a neutral nature (like quirky) or something like gentle (+def -sdef) then toss straight away. You really do want a +speed nature or something that supports a mixed set (lonely / naughty, mild / rash). Adamant and jolly are sub-optimal as Diancie has like 1 good physical move (but if you get 5iv flawless or something then probably keep).
Also re: free battle spot; yes Diancie can be used in it but we focus on rated battles so I wouldn't bother going there. I'm sure there will be a ladder / competition that will allow Diancie / all legends sooner or later (there always is) so get your Diancie and prep for that :)
edit: seconding Zard X and Rotom-H. Arcanine is popular amongst Japanese players as a defensive fire type also. It has Intimidate backed up by nice stats, as well as Will-O-Wisp / Morning Sun (it's wrecked me lots of times). I seriously would not bother with Magcargo, it's way too slow and has no offensive presence and is outclassed by the others we listed already
Magcargo is a hard counter to all Talonflame sets but loses to nigh on everything else; being 4x weak to Earthquake and Scald is not a good thing in a meta where almost every Pokémon you see carries one or the other (or a Fighting move). Thirding Rotom-H, imo it's the best way to answer Talonflame, Scizor, Aegislash, Charizard Y and it burns everything else. It can beat Azumarill with full physical investment, if you don't mind losing ~40% of your health to an Aqua Jet. It's not weak to EQ bar Mold Breaker, which is a big advantage that it has over other Fire-types like ZardX and Arcanine. It also gets a pivoting move in Volt Switch, and doesn't mind staying in on Ground-types to burn them. I use one and it's great. ^_^
Magcargo hard counters Talonflame, beats non-Earthquake / Drain Punch Mega Kangaskhan (if Flame Body kicks in), Breloom sorta, kinda fares well against Mawile and can potentially beat Dragonite on a good day. However it relies on Flame Body activating and if its opponent runs Ground or Water moves (or even has the potential to) Maggy risks just getting wrecked without doing anything.
If you use Magcargo it's because it is a really cool Pokemon. Arcanine and Rotom Heat are waaaaay better otherwise.
If you use Magcargo it's because it is a really cool Pokemon. Arcanine and Rotom Heat are waaaaay better otherwise.
Yes and no. In BS Singles, Kang is practically never seen without either Earthquake or Power-Up Punch unless it's a surprise special set, Magcargo is far slower than Breloom so it just gets Spored and then Mach Punched to death (it can't even hope for Flame Body hax against Toxic Orb sets), Mawile... maybe, but Iron Head would do a lot and if it's SubPunch then lol, and Dragonite can carry Earthquake. Magcargo can win against Fire Punch sets but it's not something you can bank on. Magcargo has plenty of cool points, I agree with you, but it's probably not worth it most of the time. Maybe as a Shell Smasher on a Sticky Web team thanks to it's positive matchup against Flying-types.
tbh Talonflame itself isn't a bad idea for what you want, its stats don't scream tank but Brave Bird / Taunt / WoW / Roost is actually fairly potent if you can come in on the right situation. The best targets are enemy Steels like Scizor and Mawile or people who just want to sit there and boost. However, this is mostly if you don't want to run Zard X.
Well to be fair Power Up Punch is usually a 3HKO taking into account the boosts so it has a pretty good chance of burning with Flame Body. I wouldn't call Magcargo a good Pokemon lol nor would I call it a Kangaskhan counter but with Rocky Helmet even if Kangaskhan wins it will walk away near dead and burned.
Or M Kanga runs Earthquake / Drain Punch and Maggy is completely wrecked.
If you wanted a defensive fire type, and didn't have access to heatran, I'd recommend putting a bunnelby on GTS asking for a heatran with the message "EnGarde", and then post here or on my distribution thread (link in sig) telling me your IGN. Then (assuming we don't get sniped), I'd be able to send you Helga. :) She won't be usable in the new ORAS league (she's a gen 5 pokemon, not Kalos born), but if you'd like to play in the XY metagame when it's up again, she's your heatran.
Heatran @ Air Balloon
Flash Fire
Modest
180 HP / 252 SpA / 76 Spd
Heat Wave
Earth Power
Ancient Power
Protect
Are you seriously suggesting that you use Magcargo to just sit there and hope Flame Body activates to win against those things? That's hardly a reliable way to check something. I know a ~60% chance of burn on Kangaskhan sounds appealing but (in singles at least) they pretty much all run Earthquake as a non-contact option so Magcargo will just die to those sets anyway. Seriously, using Magcargo / Flame Body is so gimmicky it makes Scarf-Sheer Cold Articuno look reliable* (at least when you land the 30% chance you actually kill something as opposed to just getting a lousy burn). If you want to use Magcargo because it's one of your favourites or whatever be my guest (that's the point of the game after all ^_^) but I'm just saying I don't like its chances...
*brb training this
*brb training this
Hey, I was wondering what the state of sleep is on battle spot atm. I was thinking about getting into BS since I'm getting the new game but last time the lack of sleep clause was one of the things turning me off from it. I thought I remembered teams basically requiring dedicated sleep talkers/chesto berry users to stop someone from just sporing everything. But looking at the sample teams link that was posted above it looks like that's not the case. What changed?
Hi! Welcome back to Smogon! :D
If you played during gen 5, there was a sleep mechanic change. In gen 5, the counter for the number of sleep turns reset every time the pokemon switched out, which made getting your pokemon to wake up pretty problematic. In gen 6 (the current generation), the sleep counter doesn't reset when you switch your pokemon out, which makes it much less powerful. Also, the most common sleep inducing move, spore, no longer works on grass type pokemon, which is a huge nerf to the sleep status.
Sleep is still a threat, but the other big status to watch out for in the current metagame is burn, especially for physical attackers. Most teams carry at least one pokemon (rotom) with will-o-wisp to combat the glut of powerful physical attackers running around. Thus, many teams carry a pokemon with lum berry (which also works against confusion), however it is not such a strong requirement that your team MUST have a lum berry pokemon in battle spot to be successful.
Other changes to status conditions is that grass type pokemon are immune to all powder moves (spore, sleep powder, rage powder, stun spore, leech seed, etc), electric type pokemon cannot be paralyzed, fire types can't be burned, poison types can't be poisoned, and ice types can't be frozen.
Thanks, and thanks for the help!
So how was the way you would play against sleep affected by the reset change? Is it just that you're one turn more likely to have your sleeping pokemon actually be useful if you're forced to swap it in later in the game after you take out the sleep inducer with someone else?
Also apparently I'm missing something because lum berry apparently removes all status. Was I just insane imagining people using chesto berries for some reason?
Finally the other thing I disliked about battling way back was the way some legendaries like the weather genies seemed to be crowding out normal pokemon. I heard that there will be a new ladder where you're restricted to things caught in gen 6 (which will be great for me) but I can't really remember what all that allows. Is there a list somewhere of what things are legal/which things are obtainable without some special event pass?
So how was the way you would play against sleep affected by the reset change? Is it just that you're one turn more likely to have your sleeping pokemon actually be useful if you're forced to swap it in later in the game after you take out the sleep inducer with someone else?
Also apparently I'm missing something because lum berry apparently removes all status. Was I just insane imagining people using chesto berries for some reason?
Finally the other thing I disliked about battling way back was the way some legendaries like the weather genies seemed to be crowding out normal pokemon. I heard that there will be a new ladder where you're restricted to things caught in gen 6 (which will be great for me) but I can't really remember what all that allows. Is there a list somewhere of what things are legal/which things are obtainable without some special event pass?
Well, ORAS is actually adding most things that weren't previously available in gen 6, so ORAS League actually won't be that limited. Tutors and pretty much every previous gen. legendary have been confirmed to appear in ORAS. Sounds like GF is trying to phase out transferred pokemon by making everything available between XY/ORAS. So... In short, things like the genies will still be floating around in ORAS League. It probably will still restrict some things like event-only legendaries, though, much like XY Battle Spot did.
Hi noobius, I'll try to answer some of your questions.
I never played Gen 5 GBU (which was the equivalent of Battle Spot) so I'm not entirely sure about how things worked back then. I find that Sleep can be very powerful considering you only use three Pokemon at a time. However, there are a lot of answers to sleep now in Gen 6, another major change was that Grass-type Pokemon are now immune to Spore and Sleep Powder, the two main methods of inducing sleep. So if you're having trouble with sleep, you can throw on a Grass-type rather than having to resort to an Insomnia user or such. Goodra can also beat sleep due to Sap Sipper.
And Lum Berry does remove all status, so it is better most of the time. Chesto Berry is still extremely useful if you're going to put yourself to sleep, through Rest or so. That way, it only activates after you've used Rest, and won't activate if you've been hit by Will-o-Wisp or Thunder Wave or something (which Rest will cure anyway).
"Normal Pokemon" (I don't really like this word) are used very often on Battle Spot so don't worry about it. I'm not sure about the list, but I believe they are planning for every legendary to be able to be caught in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire so you'l probably still see them a lot. cannibal has it right. The pre-gen 6 changes were more to avoid hacked Pokemon (which was significantly easier to do in previous generations) rather than make legendaries less common, although they will be since you can't RNG them to have competitive stats (although that's not going to prevent the dedicated people from soft-resetting until they get them).
I never played Gen 5 GBU (which was the equivalent of Battle Spot) so I'm not entirely sure about how things worked back then. I find that Sleep can be very powerful considering you only use three Pokemon at a time. However, there are a lot of answers to sleep now in Gen 6, another major change was that Grass-type Pokemon are now immune to Spore and Sleep Powder, the two main methods of inducing sleep. So if you're having trouble with sleep, you can throw on a Grass-type rather than having to resort to an Insomnia user or such. Goodra can also beat sleep due to Sap Sipper.
And Lum Berry does remove all status, so it is better most of the time. Chesto Berry is still extremely useful if you're going to put yourself to sleep, through Rest or so. That way, it only activates after you've used Rest, and won't activate if you've been hit by Will-o-Wisp or Thunder Wave or something (which Rest will cure anyway).
"Normal Pokemon" (I don't really like this word) are used very often on Battle Spot so don't worry about it. I'm not sure about the list, but I believe they are planning for every legendary to be able to be caught in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire so you'l probably still see them a lot. cannibal has it right. The pre-gen 6 changes were more to avoid hacked Pokemon (which was significantly easier to do in previous generations) rather than make legendaries less common, although they will be since you can't RNG them to have competitive stats (although that's not going to prevent the dedicated people from soft-resetting until they get them).
Huh. Are you including event things like speed boost blaziken in that?
Oh I was just saying it'll be better for me because I'll have access to everything and won't be gimped for lacking event history or w/e by starting fresh. Not that their motivation was specifically to remove legendaries (though I was under the impression it would do that too until you guys corrected me).
That's one reason I don't like legendaries. There's no nice consistent algorithmic way to get effectively optimal things so people aren't all on the same playing field without a big time sink. The other one is that there are all these cool animal themed things running around that are often strictly suboptimal because they don't get huge stat pools thrown at them but that's admittedly more of a personal preference thing.
Hey there noobius, I think I get where you're coming from about the legendaries because the fact is that the genies and Cresselia were commonly used in BSpot and for good reasons. It didn't turn me away from playing but I did find it hard to get them on cartridge which made me consider turning to just staying on showdown. Also, rare event moves are still legal in BSpot which are nigh impossible to get (Wish Blissey isn't big on BSpot but it's the only example I can think of at the moment)
This is one of the main reasons why I'll be primarily playing the ORAS league. Although every team will be MMence and/or MMence counters, it sounds more like a level playing field. The ban list (This should include Diancie but can't find the updated list) already excludes event pokemon as well as event moves before XY. The only notable events that have happened that I can think of from the top of my head are Speed Boost Blaziken like you mentioned and Sludge Wave Gengar which is arguably outclassed by Gengars with egg moves. Both of which are still relatively easy to obtain if you ask around. Legendaries such as the genies will be available in ORAS and people will be soft resetting them for cloning anyways.
This is one of the main reasons why I'll be primarily playing the ORAS league. Although every team will be MMence and/or MMence counters, it sounds more like a level playing field. The ban list (This should include Diancie but can't find the updated list) already excludes event pokemon as well as event moves before XY. The only notable events that have happened that I can think of from the top of my head are Speed Boost Blaziken like you mentioned and Sludge Wave Gengar which is arguably outclassed by Gengars with egg moves. Both of which are still relatively easy to obtain if you ask around. Legendaries such as the genies will be available in ORAS and people will be soft resetting them for cloning anyways.
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