GSC Offense/HO have the firepower to break through these incredibly bulky teams that are just entirely do nothing.
Also fighting coverage on Zapdos is a bit rare.
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- Thread starter vapicuno
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Also fighting coverage on Zapdos is a bit rare.
Spreek would probably make a war crime team just to get soundproof banned again if soundproof was ever unbanned.
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Mr. Mime is one of my favorite mons so yes. I would love him to be free, but it is for his own good to stay in prison.
The last ban in my sentence was meant to be an unban if that confused u
I'm new to competitive and I'm looking for a basic stall team to try. I've played big 5 spikes a bit and some offense oriented stuff. Stall + some kind of boost sweeper seems like an easy win con to play with. Any recs?
you seem to want a slower paced team that allows you to control the pace of the match. you might like the v5 archetype found in samples(check here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/adv-ou-sample-teams.3687813/) or the unemployed 6 variants of teams based on this description. hclat has some YouTube videos on unemployed 6 here(
I don't really understand the math behind Snorlax EVs. It seems that the majority of Snorlax sets run a seemingly chaotic combination of Atk, Def, SDef and HP, without maxing any of them. For example this is the first spread from the wiki:
Careful (+SDef):
It seems that you'd practically get the same mixed bulk as the above spread, with a spread like this:
Careful (+SDef) Max HP:
Careful (+SDef) Max HP, optimized nature rounding:
These max HP spreads also have the added benefit of making you bulkier against Seismic Toss. However, one could argue that you want to keep your HP low to minimize Leech Seed and Pain Split healing for your opponent, and that these are more important than Seismic Toss. But if that's the reason, why not simply keep HP at 0 like this?
Careful (+SDef) Minimum HP:
"Never put a single point in HP, unless you have at least one of the defenses maxed first"?
Although for optimal Leftovers recovery, you'd need to put a minimum of 12 EVs to HP. With this, to achieve as similar balance of mixed bulk as possible to the Wiki spread, we'd do:
Careful (+SDef), Minimum HP, optimized nature rounding and Leftovers recovery:
TLDR: Why does Snorlax typically spread defensive EVs so evenly, instead of either maxing HP or minimizing HP?
Careful (+SDef):
- 144 HP
- 96 Atk
- 132 Def
- 136 SDef
It seems that you'd practically get the same mixed bulk as the above spread, with a spread like this:
Careful (+SDef) Max HP:
- 252 HP
- 96 Atk
- 92 Def
- 68 SDef
Careful (+SDef) Max HP, optimized nature rounding:
- 252 HP
- 96 Atk
- 104 Def
- 56 SDef
These max HP spreads also have the added benefit of making you bulkier against Seismic Toss. However, one could argue that you want to keep your HP low to minimize Leech Seed and Pain Split healing for your opponent, and that these are more important than Seismic Toss. But if that's the reason, why not simply keep HP at 0 like this?
Careful (+SDef) Minimum HP:
- 0 HP
- 96 Atk
- 192 Def
- 220 SDef
- 0 HP
- 96 Atk
- 196 Def
- 216 SDef
"Never put a single point in HP, unless you have at least one of the defenses maxed first"?
Although for optimal Leftovers recovery, you'd need to put a minimum of 12 EVs to HP. With this, to achieve as similar balance of mixed bulk as possible to the Wiki spread, we'd do:
Careful (+SDef), Minimum HP, optimized nature rounding and Leftovers recovery:
- 12 HP
- 96 Atk
- 184 Def
- 216 SDef
TLDR: Why does Snorlax typically spread defensive EVs so evenly, instead of either maxing HP or minimizing HP?
most players use 12hp evs lax sets nowadays (especially on not curse rest lax), those sets are a bit outdated.
Curse rest however likes to use a lot of hp like you stated.
Ah thank you, this clears my confusion then - I had the wrong impression that most people were running the higher HP sets.
How are you defining "mixed bulk" here? If you use what I would consider to be standard definitions (i.e. Special Bulk = HP * Spdef, Physical Bulk = HP * Def, and Mixed Bulk to be some average of the two whether arithmetic or geometric), the Smogon set is outperforming all of the sets you suggested. (Here I have taken the square roots to keep everything on roughly the same scale but obviously, the comparisons still hold)
Is there a specific reason for the 12hp mathematically? I've never been the best with understanding true optimization with EVs, and I'd like to at least understand it in this case.
the idea is to get HP to a multiple of 16 such that leftovers restores floor(464/16) = 29 hp per turn instead of floor(461/16) = 28 hp per turn. in general you don't want to be slightly under a multiple of 16 hp on a pokemon running leftovers (particularly for sand immune ones) -- but it's ok to be slightly above a multiple of 16.
I thought I would write something about this. https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/snorlax-evs-demystified.3776727/
Do we have an up-to-date analysis of the current lead matchups? I've seen zf's thread in the first post of this thread and also that there's an updated version from 2023 (which for some reason isn't linked in this thread's frontpage). But even as a beginner, it seems that this is kinda outdated simply because Dugtrio isn't mentioned even though it (to me) seems to have become a pretty popular choice. I think a good guide to the lead matchups and common lines might be very helpful for new players to not get wrecked in the first couple of turns.
excellent idea. I will let you know when we complete it, but this is now on my docket.
BKC has a great video on exactly this. It’s doesn’t include dug, but you aren’t normally making any choices when there’s a dug lead anyway
The timer is more than reasonable when you consider that it's meant to be used more in the early game to think about your long term decision making. If anything it isn't used enough(especially by me, I could do a lot better with that). I think it's definitely tedious when people just leave the game and you need to wait to collect ELO, but for pure competitive gameplay us having the timer be what it is makes for players making what they feel is the best decision in that moment.
I also want to point out that they may not be thinking about the "basic play." Like I said, it's not just about the next play, but they could be thinking about the next 5 turns after that, deciding if now is the time they want to make a risky decision etc.
I could be giving the ladder people too much good faith but I do think it's important to defend the use case for timer in general. When you play a game of Pokemon it could be over in 20 turns or even 200 just based on the way the game plays(ADV does tend to have some pretty long games if you're running v5 or other teams since we have more defensive/balance tools compared to pure all out offense).
*sigh* ya started replying after I was like "well ill save everyone the ranting and just get ridda that" get what deserve
i guess no one's gonna agree with me on it but I'd like to point out that most of the things ur saying are in favor of just having the timer off completely, aside from the necessary "afk prevention". there is a lot of leeway with the time... +15 increment seems high to me. easy to replenish with repetitive loops and then sit on your full timer again for maximum suffering. zzz
like theyre losin the game, theyre takin a full minute to click protect vs magneton, its lame. i do think im in the minority for what i enjoy in the game though. most ppl seem to like long, kinda stally games.
Personally I think the timer is fine as it is. I've had ladder matches where it really came down to the timer, and I've seen Tournament games where spectating felt no different from watching a replay.
If you're familiar with the fast and slow type of thinking; the timer allows you to use slow thinking to really plan out the game, but you also have to be able to just intuitively know the right moves to click, because you can't afford to use slow thinking on every turn.
That being said, I just think that there should be some sort of penalty system on ladder for just letting your time run out. Like maybe if you lost to the timer and you had more than a minute to make your move, you lose extra elo for that.
Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, but I've had days where every other opponent would just let their timer run out.
If you're familiar with the fast and slow type of thinking; the timer allows you to use slow thinking to really plan out the game, but you also have to be able to just intuitively know the right moves to click, because you can't afford to use slow thinking on every turn.
That being said, I just think that there should be some sort of penalty system on ladder for just letting your time run out. Like maybe if you lost to the timer and you had more than a minute to make your move, you lose extra elo for that.
Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse, but I've had days where every other opponent would just let their timer run out.
"I've had ladder matches where it really came down to the timer" I'm sure you have lol. maybe the people who leave vs you felt that you were wasting their time, i cant say.
I meant that as in people genuinely go down to 5 seconds against me sometimes. Not because they want to waste my time, but because they are thinking about their moves.
I understand that it's not common to see the timer used in low ladder, but in my opinion those are the players that would benefit the most from thinking just one or two more turns ahead.
I hope you don't see my response as trying to call you out as much as it is offering a different perspective, but yeah, like I said, thinking does not have to be limited to one singular turn, they could be mapping out their gameplay for the next 5 turns. I think the issue is less that people like long/stally games and more that you're playing a generation of competitive Pokemon that, at its core, generally leans toward fatter structures due to having more defensive tools than we do offensive ones. There's no one such meta that is truly hyper offense based but I can tell you for sure that if you want quick games on average, ADV is not it unless you head into some of our OMs like Orre, DOU, and so on.
If you queue onto the ladder and/or play a tournament game you implicitly accept that you're in the game for however long it lasts. I know that sounds like a sweaty remark but if those hypothetical players feel that their time is being wasted then maybe they have better uses of their time than to be playing competitive Pokemon. Believe me I am the first person to get annoyed when people waste time in terms of activity(not scheduling properly, missing times etc) but nobody should ever be faulted for taking the time to make what they feel is the best use of their timer when playing the actual game. Staying engaged and making sharp plays as the moment calls for them is not always the easiest thing to do, and if they need to take an extra 20 seconds or whatever, I'm not gonna ever fault them for it. Timer psychology is actually a very big part of the game however you want to look at it.
Lowkey i feel like If we cut timers in half It would be better just to put more pressure on time management and reward people who think about sequences faster
But thats a very uncommon take and realistically the time being so long helps the competitive integrity of the game, so i suggest opening 2 games at the same time If ur opponent is timer stalling
But thats a very uncommon take and realistically the time being so long helps the competitive integrity of the game, so i suggest opening 2 games at the same time If ur opponent is timer stalling
What makes a metagame qualified for a Smogon ladder? With the release of FRLG on Switch, I think it's a good time to discuss a potential FRLG OU format.