Alright, let's talk about something that I'm seeing a complete lack of in 1v1: PLAYS
I always get so triggered about seeing people lose won battles because they don't know how they've won, or they're using a plain inferior set to an ideal one, so I decided to make a decently comprehensive post to analyze the most common situations and how we can go about winning them more efficiently, as well as being overall better when it comes to teambuilding.
Please bear in mind that I will be avoiding the psychological aspect of the game to the best of my ability, since those types of situations typically wind down to random chance once you've gotten past the first few battles with an opponent.
Setup:
Builds/Spreads
Concluding notes:
Thank you all for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day/night/afternoon ^-^
I always get so triggered about seeing people lose won battles because they don't know how they've won, or they're using a plain inferior set to an ideal one, so I decided to make a decently comprehensive post to analyze the most common situations and how we can go about winning them more efficiently, as well as being overall better when it comes to teambuilding.
Please bear in mind that I will be avoiding the psychological aspect of the game to the best of my ability, since those types of situations typically wind down to random chance once you've gotten past the first few battles with an opponent.
Setup:
+1
+2
There are dozens of mons that rely on boosting their stats/taking advantage of a turn to gain an advantage for later turns. Though a notion that people don't realize is that there are several situations where you don't need to set up.
The main culprit of wasteful setup are mons who set up to get +1 to either offensive stat, namely, Gyarados-Mega and Charizard-X, though there are plenty others that apply as well, these two are the most common. Typically, setting up with DD is how you handle most mons who you think could possibly withstand an attack, which is a fair thought, but the problem is that Dragon Dance only provides +1 to the Attack stat, which is basically the equivalent of having a Choice Band or just ordinary STAB if you're using a non-STAB move. The only fair reason you'd ever want to use DD is if you need to outspeed a threat and THEN proceed to OHKO them, otherwise, you're better off just attacking twice, since two attacks = double damage in 2 turns while setting up DD and attacking = 1.5x damage in 2 turns. Not to mention, the more times you attack the opponent, the more likely you are to get added effects or crits, which provides greater incentive to attack multiple times instead of setting up a lesser number of more powerful attacks.
The main culprit of wasteful setup are mons who set up to get +1 to either offensive stat, namely, Gyarados-Mega and Charizard-X, though there are plenty others that apply as well, these two are the most common. Typically, setting up with DD is how you handle most mons who you think could possibly withstand an attack, which is a fair thought, but the problem is that Dragon Dance only provides +1 to the Attack stat, which is basically the equivalent of having a Choice Band or just ordinary STAB if you're using a non-STAB move. The only fair reason you'd ever want to use DD is if you need to outspeed a threat and THEN proceed to OHKO them, otherwise, you're better off just attacking twice, since two attacks = double damage in 2 turns while setting up DD and attacking = 1.5x damage in 2 turns. Not to mention, the more times you attack the opponent, the more likely you are to get added effects or crits, which provides greater incentive to attack multiple times instead of setting up a lesser number of more powerful attacks.
+2 setup is a different case, since it becomes the same as attacking twice without setting up, though results can vary depending on the circumstance, such as using Swords Dance after being hit by Intimidate, which is more powerful than just hitting twice, despite the loss of having increased chances of secondary effects/crits.
-1 252+ Atk Huge Power Mawile-Mega Play Rough vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Gyarados: 225-265 (67.9 - 80%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ Atk Huge Power Mawile-Mega Play Rough vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Gyarados: 502-592 (151.6 - 178.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
At the same time, however, the further you boost your stats, the less effective the boosts become, which is most noticeable with +2 boosts.
0--> +2 = 2x
+2--> +4 = 3x = 1.5x(2x) Choice Band equivalent
+4--> +6 = 4x = 1.33x(3x) Adaptability equivalent
With this in mind, in situations where your opponent is boosting their bulk while you're boosting your power, it's typically best to actively calculate how much damage an attack would do if you were to attack without setting up completely while they continued boosting, and vice versa for you being the one boosting bulk. The same science can be applied to +1 boosts, but like I said, the difference is much more noticeable with +2 boosts.
-1 252+ Atk Huge Power Mawile-Mega Play Rough vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Gyarados: 225-265 (67.9 - 80%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ Atk Huge Power Mawile-Mega Play Rough vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Gyarados: 502-592 (151.6 - 178.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
At the same time, however, the further you boost your stats, the less effective the boosts become, which is most noticeable with +2 boosts.
0--> +2 = 2x
+2--> +4 = 3x = 1.5x(2x) Choice Band equivalent
+4--> +6 = 4x = 1.33x(3x) Adaptability equivalent
With this in mind, in situations where your opponent is boosting their bulk while you're boosting your power, it's typically best to actively calculate how much damage an attack would do if you were to attack without setting up completely while they continued boosting, and vice versa for you being the one boosting bulk. The same science can be applied to +1 boosts, but like I said, the difference is much more noticeable with +2 boosts.
Overbuilding
Underbuilding
Overbuilding is when you give a mon more of a stat than the minimum that it needs, and/or moves of higher power than what it needs. Common examples of overbuilding are: running max speed on something that's already faster than what it needs to outspeed, running max atk/spa on something that already lands a lot of OHKO's without the excess power, running max bulk when you already withstand all the hits you need to, and everything in between.
We need to keep in mind that 1v1 isn't a team-oriented meta/tier, so you don't need to worry about switching into attacks and the like, you only need to worry about individual mons, which means that most bulky mons can afford to run less bulk, and powerful mons can afford to run less power, and so on/so forth. Typically, it's best to experiment around with the damage calc to find suitable ev spreads that fit the needs of your team.
Overbuilding with moves is a bit simpler of a problem, since there are only but so many potential viable move combinations. Typically, you're overbuilding with moves if you're running moves more powerful than you need them to be. With that said, there aren't really very many circumstances where running less powerful moves would be more beneficial than the riskier high-power options, other than things like avoiding high chances of moves failing (Thunderbolt>Thunder, Ice Beam>Blizzard, etc). These kinds of things can fall in line with how many evs you have in your corresponding offensive stat.
We need to keep in mind that 1v1 isn't a team-oriented meta/tier, so you don't need to worry about switching into attacks and the like, you only need to worry about individual mons, which means that most bulky mons can afford to run less bulk, and powerful mons can afford to run less power, and so on/so forth. Typically, it's best to experiment around with the damage calc to find suitable ev spreads that fit the needs of your team.
Overbuilding with moves is a bit simpler of a problem, since there are only but so many potential viable move combinations. Typically, you're overbuilding with moves if you're running moves more powerful than you need them to be. With that said, there aren't really very many circumstances where running less powerful moves would be more beneficial than the riskier high-power options, other than things like avoiding high chances of moves failing (Thunderbolt>Thunder, Ice Beam>Blizzard, etc). These kinds of things can fall in line with how many evs you have in your corresponding offensive stat.
Underbuilding is the opposite of Overbuilding, where you aren't using a mon to its potential viability. Underbuilding is commonly the result of Overbuilding, since you'll have so many evs placed into one stat that your other stats won't benefit anywhere near as much as they could, if at all. Underbuilding can also result from the use of moves that don't have much of an overall effective use to the user, though the worth of a move ultimately depends upon the current context of when you're building a team and for what purpose you're building it.
You can't handle everything in one set regardless of how hard you try, the only things that even come close to that are those who rely on hax to win, so it's best not to worry about things that your mon could beat as opposed to things it already does beat, since you'll always have two partners to make up for it.
Just so I'm clear on move Underbuilding, it's a concept that pertains to what relevance a move has within the 1v1 metagame. A great example is Ice type coverage; typically, it's one of the most helpful types you can have for offensive purposes, but in 1v1, there aren't very many threats that are weak to Ice that you can't just take out with a STAB attack. And on the other hand, Air Slash on Charizard-Y is also useless, unless you're the kind of sadist who knows it's only good for hax and still uses it anyways.
You can't handle everything in one set regardless of how hard you try, the only things that even come close to that are those who rely on hax to win, so it's best not to worry about things that your mon could beat as opposed to things it already does beat, since you'll always have two partners to make up for it.
Just so I'm clear on move Underbuilding, it's a concept that pertains to what relevance a move has within the 1v1 metagame. A great example is Ice type coverage; typically, it's one of the most helpful types you can have for offensive purposes, but in 1v1, there aren't very many threats that are weak to Ice that you can't just take out with a STAB attack. And on the other hand, Air Slash on Charizard-Y is also useless, unless you're the kind of sadist who knows it's only good for hax and still uses it anyways.
Just like how things are with everything in 1v1, you have to perceive everything twice, the first time being in regards to overall viability, which is how we make the vr and other official smogon-y stuff, and the second time being in regards to what people are using on the ladder or in tournaments right now, since there will always be people who don't know about these things or purposefully choose to ignore them.
Because of this, there may be times when it's better to run Stone Edge over Rock Slide because of a Charizard-X who bulked themselves to take a Kyurem Outrage, or HP Fire on a Porygon-Z because Genesect is pissing you off, or Heatran/Conkeldurr on your team because everyone's using mostly the big S rank mons right now.
Because of this, there may be times when it's better to run Stone Edge over Rock Slide because of a Charizard-X who bulked themselves to take a Kyurem Outrage, or HP Fire on a Porygon-Z because Genesect is pissing you off, or Heatran/Conkeldurr on your team because everyone's using mostly the big S rank mons right now.
Thank you all for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day/night/afternoon ^-^
