Are Standard teams better or "strategy" teams better?

[Wei]

In general, is it how well a team counters standard threats (Gyarados, Garchomp, Blissey, etc.) that determines how well it does in battle, or how good of a strategy it has (rain dance, TSS, ummm flinch hax??, ) and how well it excecutes it?

Since people have been always talking about standards and counter this and that, every team that I see has been mostly the same pokemon and movesets. If a team sets out to do one particular strategy (status everything and stall, set up for one pokemon, baton pass, etc) can it ignore having to counter common threats?

I'm sure in 2v2 most teams are centered around one strategy. Why can't 1v1 be more like that?

 

[Game Over.]

Teams with actual strategies are much harder to execute properly, as someone who knows what you are doing, can most likely screw over your whole strategy with a single move/pokemon, Baton Pass teams for instance, a dude with Roar (besides when Mimes out), is pwnt by Roar/Whirlwind..

I screw around with all kinds of teams though, teams based of strats (currently making a Hail-based team), teams based off elements (like a all-fire team), or even just a "standard" team.

I always have like 1 or 2 pokemon even in my standard-ish teams that is under used (from what I've seen) though, just to keep things fresh and perhaps inspire some people (Feraligatr for instance).

 

[MauriiDS]

I always have like 1 or 2 pokemon even in my standard-ish teams that is under used (from what I've seen) though, just to keep things fresh and perhaps inspire some people (Feraligatr for instance).

Ill go for Lopunny!! Switcherooooooooo & Healing Wish can save my team.

 

[Glen ^^]

No matter what anyone ways, you HAVE to counter a lot of things and Pokemon. If you don't want to get raped easily by stupid (and simple) Pokemon like a Choice Banded Heracross you have to use standards (or UU's of standards). Flinchax? Garchomp and Electvire just destroy this. Even a non Choice Band/Specs Lucario will easily sweep it.
Weather abuse teams are the only ones that works lacking Blissey, Spinners, etc.

 

[aquasuicune]

Teams with actual strategies are much harder to execute properly, as someone who knows what you are doing, can most likely screw over your whole strategy with a single move/pokemon, Baton Pass teams for instance, a dude with Roar (besides when Mimes out), is pwnt by Roar/Whirlwind..

Ingrain smeargle says hi. But yeah, if they break your sub, a hazer also completely kills you.

 

[Hipmonlee]

There should be no differentiation between a team with a strategy, and a team that counters standards.

Ultimately, to win a battle, you must faint 6 pokemon. You must have some form of a strategy to achieve this. If you want to win consistently, you also need to make sure fainting all 6 of your pokemon is not going to be a trivial affair for your opponent.. Therefore you must have a legitimate chance of stopping any pokemon your opponent might have, hence the importance of countering pokemon.

Even baton pass teams are built with countering standards in mind.. That is why they have pokemon like Mr.Mime. It is in the team specifically to counter users of roar.

Personally, I generally pick the 6 most versatile pokemon I can think of, while trying to prevent myself being swept by any one specific threat.. The value of strong pokemon should not be underestimated!

Have a nice day.

 

[Mekkah]

The only example of a Strategy Team that sort of got to ignore the whole "counter everything in sight with the best Pokemon" idea was the Baton Pass chain in Advance. However, it seems that DP added so many Pokemon and moves that are a threat to the standard RS Baton Pass team it would have to be revised again and possibly can't do this anymore.

Even if your team idea is Rain Dance, you aren't going to be sweeping much if you don't have a Gyarados or Salamence counter unless each of your Pokemon OHKOs both of them. That tends to go for a lot of "strategy teams": unless your strategy is so flawless that it just kills everything in sight, you still need to think about your defense a bit.

 

[Hipmonlee]

I totally owned mekkah just now, before he even posted!

Uhh, yeah just to prevent this being totaly trolling I am gonna note that if a strategy is totally flawless, it will end up being banned anyway, so you might as well not bother.

Have a nice day.

 

[Footnote]

I think a distinction can be made between teams whose strategy is countering as many Pokémon as possible and teams with other strategies.

The reason that most teams with other strategies don't fare as well as counter-based teams is because of the way the standard tier is set up. Because Pokémon like Tyranitar, Salamence, Azelf, Suicune, Garchomp, Metagross, etc. are allowed, the pool of Pokémon that can be used effectively is much smaller than it could be. When the pool of effective Pokémon is smaller, you have many fewer options when creating a team with a strategy.

You may be executing your strategy very well, but if you can't overcome the sheer hitting and staying power of these behemoths, you will lose anyway. You must instead devote most, if not all, of the Pokémon on your team to countering these threats. Hence, most teams are counter-based and many of them look very similar to one another.

 

[Synre]

I think this mostly sums up my thoughts on this

[11:46:48] <MrE> As if just because the entire team doesn't revolve around a single gimmick they don't have a general strategy worked out


If you just throw six standards together without an underlying strategy you are going to lose to a good player pretty much every single time. It doesn't matter if you're using a bunch of good pokemon if they don't work well together and you don't play them in a way that uses the synergy the pokemon have.

If you're about to build a team and thinking 'do i want to use a strategy or use standards'' you are doing something terribly, terribly wrong.

It's worth noting though for those of you have this inner hatred for using standards because you're trying to be nonconformist or whatever that I would say at least a majority of the really good 'standard teams' are, in addition to having a definite strategy, at least a few moves and personalities and EV spreads off the 'standard sets' because it makes them dramatically more difficult to deal with. If you're just taking 6 OU pokemon, copying from the Pokemon Analyses or from the dexes in previous generations, then yeah you'll probably beat other poor players but you're not going to beat good players without using some level of creativity and a high level of strategy. That's just how team building(and battling ignoring prediction) works.

 

[pervysenin]

Try using standards in none standard ways for something interesting, as most peoples predictions are based on standard movesets. For example, in advance I used an hp flying t-tar. It was great for taking out heras and brelooms, as people always switch them in to counter it.

 

[Surgo]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of my 'treatise' thread. MrE spoke wisely there, as did Synre. THAT is (mostly) what I meant.

 

[Footnote]

Building a team that eschews standards simply for the sake of doing so is usually a bad idea. That in itself is not a strategy and limits you significantly. Most of the standards are on the standards list because they're very good at what they do.

A distinction needs to be made here between using reactive strategy and using proactive strategy. Throwing six standards together is neither reactive nor proactive strategy. Most good teams that are posted use reactive strategy. They have good type coverage, can switch in to most threats, and have the normal parts that make up a good Single Battle team (like a Rapid Spinner, a Special Wall, etc). These teams are based around countering specific Pokémon and simple strategies.

Then there are teams that lean more toward a theme, such as Rain Dance, Sunny Day, paralysis/flinch-hax, stalling, etc. When I speak of the standard tier not being conducive to 'strategy', this proactive strategy is the sort of thing I'm talking about. From what I've seen, reactive strategy tends to be more crucial to a team than proactive strategy.

If you can fit both reactive and proactive strategy in your team, then you've got a great team. However, the point I was trying to make is that with all the very powerful Pokémon running around, it's very difficult to spare the spots on your team and the moveslots to succussfully implement a real proactive strategy.

As Game Over has noted, a team that relies entirely on a single theme is asking for trouble. There is almost always going to be a single Pokémon or move that will sweep most of your team. Hence, if you do decide to build a proactive strategy team, it's a good idea to have a few plans to fall back on in case one of your strategies fails.

 

[Hipmonlee]

A proactive strategy of the type you are suggesting is ridiculous. For it to work, you would need your first pokemon to be infallable. Because if your lead is at a disadvantage against your opponents, you will already need to switch or as you might say "play reactively". You need a sweeper that not only has no effective counter and also beats any other pokemon 1v1.. Basically the only way I can imagine this is a Baton Pass team, and even baton pass teams are designed with playing reactively in mind..

On the other hand the only truly reactive team, that makes no effort to play proactively is a stall team.. And I havent seen a stall team posted on these forums in a long time.. To build an effective team without some plan for fainting all 6 of your opponents pokemon is every bit as unlikely as trying to find a flawless proactive strategy.

Every team needs to have both a proactive strategy and an effective method of countering the majority of pokemon. If it doesnt it will not work. And I have seen a fair number of teams that do not have both of these things on these forums, but those are the teams I would describe as being bad..

When someone says "this is a flinchhax team" then I would suggest that that is less of a cohesive strategy and more of a gimmick. A strategy like "I will force as many switchins against my uncounterable pokemon x as possible" might seem like just playing reactively, but that is as good a proactive strategy as you will find anywhere.

Have a nice day.

 

[SimChao]

The problem with Pokemon is that it's terribly unbalanced, so you are FORCED to use standard Pokemon and movesets to compete. That's why all of your team builds come out nearly identical, because standard teams in general are nearly identical. You always have the options of trying original strategies or using your favorite Pokemon for a more fun experience, but you will end up losing majority of the time. If you play 6vs6 competitive, you WILL use standards, or you WILL lose.

This is why I rarely play 6vs6 competitive anymore. 3vs3 on the upcoming Pokemon Battle Revolution for Wii is, to me, a much more fun way of playing Pokemon. It allows you to fit favorites and lower tier onto your team with the support of some standards, and still have a good chance of winning if you play smart. I reccomend you get into this if you're tired of boring 6on6 standard battles and cannot find anyone to play UU with (I sure can't...).

You tend to see a larger variety of Pokemon get used on PBR because of the fact that in 3on3, you can't easily counter every single Pokemon and situation because you never know which 3 Pokemon you will be up against, so the winner is usually the one who executed the strategy better, not the one who spent months antagonizing over countering everything with their standards. And that's the way it SHOULD be.

 

[Matt]

ATTENTION USERS: Standard teams are standard because they use strategies that work. I don't know why people seem to think that "standard" and "strategy" are two separate things.

 

[-FL-]

ATTENTION USERS: Standard teams are standard because they use strategies that work. I don't know why people seem to think that "standard" and "strategy" are two separate things.

Totally agree with that, the best is also the most used... play UU if you are tired of seeing Garchomps or Gyarados/Electivires owning you 6-0...

 

[Synre]

Except UU has its standards too and deviating too much from that against a good player will normally make you lose too. The idea that everything is on an even playing field in UU is flawed and no one that has played it for any length of time in a serious setting believes it. It's certainly easier for the shitty pokemon to do something, but they're still vastly inferior to the 'UU Standards.'


People will always primarily use the best available pokemon in any tier lists. People use the best Ubers and the best pokemon that counter Ubers in Ubers, the best OU and the best pokemon that counter OU in OU, and the best UU and the best pokemon that counter the best UU in UU. It's just how the game works, no matter what rule set you play at if you aren't using the best available pokemon you're putting yourself at a disadvantage, end of story.

I'm not certain why people have such a difficult time grasping this.

 

[SimChao]

ATTENTION USERS: Standard teams are standard because they use strategies that work.

...And how exactly was that supposed to counter my argument? <_< The reason why we even HAVE standards is because Pokemon is unbalanced, which I said, and I was correct about. Some Pokemon are grossly overpowered, which limits viable options severely and makes the game boring, IMO.

And that's exactly why I suggested an alternative for him if he's tired of seeing the same "OU" standards.

Of course "UU" has it's standards as well, but if you get bored of "OU", you can play in another "tier" or Pokemon Battle Revolution and get a chance to see/use some different Pokemon, besides "OU". I'm currently fed up with the current state of 6on6 standard play (and I'm not the only one), so I play 3on3 PBR mostly, with Pokemon from all different "tiers".

Wei, if you do decide to play 6on6 "OU", I recommend you go into the RMT forum and find a solid team, and then copy it exactly... Since even if you try to build your own "OU" team, by the time you are done countering everything and getting validation from all your Smogon peers, it will probably look pretty damn close, anyway. I realize that a lot of people love the competitive style of playing Pokemon, but every once in a while, it's fun to take a break from the imaginary fan-fiction that is the "tier list" and just have fun, since it is, you know, a fucking GAME after all.

Sometimes, I like the nerdy Pokemon Chess Club that is "OU" competitive, but I highly recommend to everyone to mix it up sometimes, and try different styles of play. I respect Smogon, but it is not the be-all-end-all of Pokemon, and there ARE other ways to have fun with the game. Don't be so narrow minded.

 

[leafgreen386]

Anyone who doesn't see that the way a team works together is strategy shouldn't be playing competitively. You cannot have strategy if your team does not work together. Teams focused on countering are strategy in and of themselves.

Now, I don't see why people are complaining about the variability of pokemon. It's easy to recognize that certain pokemon just plain suck, but anything BL or above has its own niche that makes it useful... and there are a lot of BL+ pokemon. For example, in advance, steelix was generally considered BL, since despite its incredible def, it still got ravaged by eq and fp. However, if you paired it with another pokemon like weezing or a defensive gyarados, you suddenly had amazing coverage, and you didn't have to worry about maggy leaving you completely defenseless. Sweepers that are good, but not great at what they do, if they have certain other moves or defensive typing that certain teams might find useful will still find their way into the metagame, even if they aren't ttar quality. DP is still fairly new, and right now people are mainly worried about covering their bases as much as possible, so they use what they know will work. You could argue that it is the same way even in stale metagames like adv, but the difference is in adv people already know what their opponents are using, and can use some nonstandard things effectively to counter them, that if they don't work, can be easily dropped. Remember that this isn't netbattle - it takes time to raise a team of pokemon. Unless you use AR you can't change teams every day. Once people start to understand how the metagame is unfolding better, they'll be able to experiment more, with less risk. Once competitor is released, dp will kick into high gear, and I think we'll encounter some of the most variation of dp history. But unlike adv, the metagame won't be stale, and people will be able to try many new ideas out risk free.

Also, I don't think that what tenchi said was aimed at you, Sim.

 

[Hrothgar]

ATTENTION USERS: Standard teams are standard because they use strategies that work. I don't know why people seem to think that "standard" and "strategy" are two separate things.

"Standard" is just slapping six High OU pokemon together and playing mindlessly (I hear people saying things like "skarmbliss noobs" and "sheep teams" all the time, so I guess that's who i'm talking about here), while "strategy" is being creative, thoughtful and original, even if you are using six standards. That's the way I look at it, at least. And since I look at it that way, i'd have to say that a strategic team is infinitely more useful than a standard team.

I guess the best example would be to compare it to Magic: the Gathering. Ever been to a vintage MTG tournament? There are like 10000 different cards available, but only about 5 different decks present at any given tournament. And they are all the same - the best the metagame has to offer plucked directly from the pages of Inquest Gamer. Those decks would be "standard". And there are always a couple of guys that show up with original decks designed against those 5 standard decks and proceed to kick ass. These people would be examples of "strategy".

It's worth noting though for those of you have this inner hatred for using standards because you're trying to be nonconformist or whatever...

I personally refuse to use High-tier standards and the reason isn't a conformity issue. There is much satisfaction to be gained by defeating a "sheep team" (i hate that term) with an original team, and using your favorite pokemon is immeasurably more fun than using pokemon you can't stand looking at. Whenever I used blissey on my team, i was always like "eh, w/e" when I won. It just felt empty. Also, I enjoy a challenge.

It should also be noted that I get by just fine without using superstandards, even against ttarchompblisskarmperiordosblahblahblah teams. The average "skarmbliss noob" (i hate that term, too) can't handle the unexpected. It's when an experienced player shows up that things get fun, and I assure you that I can hold my own.

Edit: Obviously, using pokemon like blissey and garchomp doesn't automatically make you a blind sheep. The difference is mindful vs. mindless. -.-a

 

[Dusk [old]]

"Standard" is just slapping six High OU pokemon together and playing mindlessly (I hear people saying things like "skarmbliss noobs" and "sheep teams" all the time, so I guess that's who i'm talking about here), while "strategy" is being creative, thoughtful and original, even if you are using six standards. That's the way I look at it, at least. And since I look at it that way, i'd have to say that a strategic team is infinitely more useful than a standard team.

I guess the best example would be to compare it to Magic: the Gathering. Ever been to a vintage MTG tournament? There are like 10000 different cards available, but only about 5 different decks present at any given tournament. And they are all the same - the best the metagame has to offer plucked directly from the pages of Inquest Gamer. Those decks would be "standard". And there are always a couple of guys that show up with original decks designed against those 5 standard decks and proceed to kick ass. These people would be examples of "strategy".

Your ignorance pains me young one! Have a seat and listen.

The terms "standard" and "strategy" aren't polar opposites or anything like that. A pokemon team can have an overall theme, strategy, gimmick, whatever you want to call it, AND use certain pokemon to counter others.

In your M:tG example, the unwashed masses that copy and use the four or five decks that are posted all over the internet and in magazines are using strategy. Specifically they're using the strategy or strategies that those four or five decks are designed to use to win (beatdown, denial, comboing out, etc.). Those that show up to a tournament with decks designed soley to defeat those few decks taken from the magazines and the internet are METAGAMING. The term metagame is derived from metagaming. It's not the otherway around.

Meta (from Greek: μετά = "after", "beyond", "with") in this case means that the player is playing above, beyond, or outside the game. Meaning that someone is looking at the current environment and planning to counter common strategies (decks or "gimmick" teams, like sandstorm or flinchax teams) or individual elements (cards or pokemon). Basically metagaming means that you develop your plan/s around what your know or think your opponent is going to do.

The way you used the term metagame is wrong. But everyone (myself included; just look further on in this post) does the same thing. As a noun it'd literally mean something like, "the game outside the game." When we use the word like that what's meant is something along the lines of, "the current enviornment of the game." Few people use it as a present-tense verb.

But I've digressed etymologically.

A large part of the strategy in pokemon is putting together an effective - can KO six opposing pokemon with relative easy - and stable - six pokemon that aren't going to get mollywhopped by one or two of the opponents - team. Occasionally a team will need help meeting one of these two goals, thus we metagame and select pokemon to eleminate common threats. Or we employ pokemon to counter things detrimental to the overall strategy.

Edit 1: I've been beaten by Mr. E (see surgo's post) and hipno on just about every front.
Edit 2: I've spent WAY too much time and effort on this MONSTEROUS post
Edit 3: I never even clearly answered the OP's question. The answer is that the ability to counter threats and your over-arching strategy are intertwined and are equally important to a well balanced and designed team.

 

[Mr.E]

I personally refuse to use High-tier standards and the reason isn't a conformity issue. There is much satisfaction to be gained by defeating a "sheep team" (i hate that term) with an original team, and using your favorite pokemon is immeasurably more fun than using pokemon you can't stand looking at. Whenever I used blissey on my team, i was always like "eh, w/e" when I won. It just felt empty. Also, I enjoy a challenge.

Why can't people have, say, Rhyperior or Tyranitar as some of their favorite pokemon?

 

[Blizzard1]

They can. Everyone does.

Well, kidding. But some people probably do! For instance, I'm like "Hey, Blissey has high HP. That looks cool! I should add one to my team. It seems like an annoying stalling pokemon!"

And, of course, I'm a n00b for doing so since everyone else and their proverbial grandmother will ALSO do it, but oh well...

'course, I still have to catch/breed one. I may try catching 50000 of them first to see if I can get a lucky egg. :P

 

[Hrothgar]

Why can't people have, say, Rhyperior or Tyranitar as some of their favorite pokemon?

Oh, they can. By all means! Making an awesome team using your favorite pokes is extremely rewarding, especially when you beat superstandard teams with it, like I mentioned earlier. Adding pokemon you abhor (blissey, if you're me) to increase your team's winning potential is just something I choose not to do. And i'm not saying that it's lame or noobish to do so, although others might. Competition is competition, after all. It's just personal preference.