OU Adv. guide to competitive battling/team building: the shit that people don't tell you

[Deleted User 108547]

Quite welcome bud. I'm sorry I can't tell you much about those other players, i'm not familiar with any of them. I'll give you a team here that would be considered the most standard build for the type of GSCers you're talking about:

1.Raikou
Thunder, hp ice, rest, sleep talk

2. Cloyster
Spikes, toxic, surf, explosion

3. Snorlax
Lovely Kiss, curse/belly drum, return, rest

4. Suicune
Toxic/ice beam, surf, rest, sleep talk

5. Skarmory
Toxic/curse, drill peck, whirlwind, rest

6. Rhydon
Curse, earthquake, rock slide, roar
(perish trap misdreavus is actually more common here but since sleep perish trap & double team is banned I feel rhydon pulls its weight a lot more)

Leftovers on all pokes.

Without going into in depth analysis (it's probably already been done on this page) this is the classic defensive team, and really one of the most solid combos you can get in GSC. I would lean towards Toxic on the options there. If you plan on modding/customizing anything suicune and rhydon are the best ones to switch up, just be aware that suicune is important for checking mixed attackers, primarily Nidoking who will chew through this team without a sleep talking check. For example if you switch suicune for exeggutor you'll need to make snorlax a sleep talker for Nidoking. The #6 slot is a secondary check for snorlax with a fire move as it kills skarm so if you change him you need to implement a plan for firelaxs. I'm not sure what your gen 2 experience is but this team is good for beginners as its easy to use and absolutely holds its own in the high end of the tier too.

Thanks for the analysis, I'm not an experienced player and contributions like those you did are always welcome for the newcomers players.

Couldn't tell you who bob is referring too, but havoc wrote a bunch of early GSC guides and was a supermod on the forums, chris I assume is referring to Sir Chris who is widely regarded as one of the best players to play GSC. chris could also be referring to chaos who i heard wasn't too shabby back in the day

Awesome comment buddy, being able to sout their content is a pure mine of knowledge. Thanks!

 

[The_Real_IMAP]

Ah, an excellent read, Mr. Borat. It definitely brings me back to the days of competitive bot battling so many years ago. Is Sir Chris still around?

Your point is spot on: pure stall teams are inferior to ones that are more proactive. People complained about my luck back in the day, but when I perform several more damaging and paralyzing attacks throughout a match, I make my own luck.

 

[OliSTDS]

Anyone have a good GSC team/core I can borrow?

 

[Meriksn]

Anyone have a good GSC team/core I can borrow?

Here are two common team archetypes:

Snorlax, Zapdos, Exeggutor, Cloyster, Steelix

Snorlax, Raikou, Skarmory, Cloyster, Miltank

Note how I only mention five Pokémon on each team. The sixth member is where you can get creative. For instance, Borat's most famous team is the first archetype with Vaporeon in the last slot. I usually run Gengar, but you could also use things like Raikou or Machamp with success. The same applies to the second team. Those five Pokémon form an excellent defensive unit, where the most common options for the last slot might be Suicune or Starmie. Zapdos should also work well, if you want to run double Electric, but feel free to try those things you've always wanted to try in the sixth slot on either team.

 

[OliSTDS]

Here are two common team archetypes:

Snorlax, Zapdos, Exeggutor, Cloyster, Steelix

Snorlax, Raikou, Skarmory, Cloyster, Miltank

Note how I only mention five Pokémon on each team. The sixth member is where you can get creative. For instance, Borat's most famous team is the first archetype with Vaporeon in the last slot. I usually run Gengar, but you could also use things like Raikou or Machamp with success. The same applies to the second team. Those five Pokémon form an excellent defensive unit, where the most common options for the last slot might be Suicune or Starmie. Zapdos should also work well, if you want to run double Electric, but feel free to try those things you've always wanted to try in the sixth slot on either team.

ty I'll definitely try those. Do u think that Entei could be possible on the first team?

 

[Mr.E]

The first is my general go-to shell (usually Gengar instead of Steelix though) and the general answer is yeah. That five-mon core pretty much covers all bases you might want in a usual team: Snorlax, Spikes, pseudohazing (Steelix), Normal resist (Steelix), Sleep user (Eggy), status absorber (STalk Zapdos), and a healthy spread of offensive and defensive typings. All that's missing is a Fire resist defensively, which is not generally a big deal in GSC OU because Fire is only normally seen as a coverage move on a narrow pool of attackers, and the niche Heal Bell and Rapid Spin options on offer. Similar could be said of the second team, although I would replace Miltank with "something that can switch into Machamp" as part of the core, leaving Miltank to be a merely viable #6 if you want the support it offers. (It also has no Rock resist, but with Rock Slide being all that GSC has to offer I wouldn't consider that a necessity either.)

So yes, use whatever you want in the last slot. The rest of the team will pick up its slack regardless of any shortcomings and you can use it to attack the metagame in unique ways or just whatever you like. Entei exploits the general lack of Fire resistance in the above two cores, so it's not necessarily a bad option. (Mind you that #6 may still cover and other cores exist. Starmie, Tyranitar, Vaporeon are all very common.) Entei isn't very good in OU, though, due to its terrible movepool and weird stat allocation. There are better choices if you want something that is both uncommon and still high-threat, but if you simply like Entei then have at it.

 

[Meriksn]

ty I'll definitely try those. Do u think that Entei could be possible on the first team?

Mr. E said it better than I ever will. It's not the best, but feel free to use it anyway, and the team is going to be fairly decent almost no matter what you use in that last slot. If I'm going to add one thing, make sure that it brings something that the team doesn't already have. For instance, if you really want to use Forretress, you use it in place of Cloyster, not the sixth slot, since they have very similar roles.

The first is my general go-to shell (usually Gengar instead of Steelix though) and the general answer is yeah. That five-mon core pretty much covers all bases you might want in a usual team: Snorlax, Spikes, pseudohazing (Steelix), Normal resist (Steelix), Sleep user (Eggy), status absorber (STalk Zapdos), and a healthy spread of offensive and defensive typings. All that's missing is a Fire resist defensively, which is not generally a big deal in GSC OU because Fire is only normally seen as a coverage move on a narrow pool of attackers, and the niche Heal Bell and Rapid Spin options on offer. Similar could be said of the second team, although I would replace Miltank with "something that can switch into Machamp" as part of the core, leaving Miltank to be a merely viable #6 if you want the support it offers. (It also has no Rock resist, but with Rock Slide being all that GSC has to offer I wouldn't consider that a necessity either.)

So yes, use whatever you want in the last slot. The rest of the team will pick up its slack regardless of any shortcomings and you can use it to attack the metagame in unique ways or just whatever you like. Entei exploits the general lack of Fire resistance in the above two cores, so it's not necessarily a bad option. (Mind you that #6 may still cover and other cores exist. Starmie, Tyranitar, Vaporeon are all very common.) Entei isn't very good in OU, though, due to its terrible movepool and weird stat allocation. There are better choices if you want something that is both uncommon and still high-threat, but if you simply like Entei then have at it.

That's a good point. I suppose the second team archetype could become very weak to Machamp, but the three suggestions for sixth (Starmie, Suicune, Zapdos) are not terrible against it.

 

[TheGreatVivi]

Back when GSC was brand new he was regarded as the best Pokemon player in the world, not undeservedly so either. I still see him every now and again on Showdown and there's probably a strong arguement to suggest he still is the best as gen2 goes. Savagely smart player, normally beats OU teams with weird UU stuff and quirky mono teams.

He never really stuck to one kind of team, predominantly I remember him using staple Raikou stall cores with a perish trapper.

One team I do remember was: Zapdos, suicune, forretress, snorlax, donphan, gengar. But things were a little different back then; double team and sleep perish trap weren't banned. Also the PCNY moves weren't in existence, and they radically changed the structure of competitive GSC. You'd have to ask him about a modern team, he's probably on Smogon. All I can tell you is he kicked my ass with a mono ice team a few months back, I don't remember it exactly; weird stuff like Jynx & Sneasel

Hey this isn't really true. Celia wasn't a big name at the start of G/S/C. They didn't become a name until at least 1 or 2 years after. I was another name that was big on the G/S/C from the very beginning. I competed in SMPT and Sneak 3. Sneak 3 was a mixture between RBY and GS and it was by far the biggest tournament the game saw. I went undefeated in the Gen 2 portion of Sneak 3 and even defeated the eventual winner of the tournament in Gen 2, Nitro. Nitro was a good friend of mine. Him and Nin10d0h. I love Nitro but he really lucked out when he knocked me out of the Gen 1 portion of Sneak 3 with a really lucky critical hit on the very last possible move. I should of won Sneak 3.

I remember I had a show down with Celia at the end of a very big tournament called Field of 64 where I won with a 6-0 victory after a lot of people were proclaiming Celia had become the best. I remember how I won too. Marowak swept. Almost 15 years go.

To me, the best Gen 2 players, at competitive peak were me, Nitro and Nin10d0h. We always used to chat together in our little irc channel. Shout out to QWERTY who I thought was VERY good competitive player but he vanished before the big Sneak 3 and other tournaments. I thought Fish151pkmn was an underrated player. IMAP was very strong. Trying to think who else was very strong...... Honestly, at my height, I can't think of anyone that could beat me. I felt confident in every match. My Gen 1 game was different story.

I'm checking in today because I'm just curious about this game. If people still play gen 2. What competitive looks like. How my team would fair.