Other Evolution and Viability of Playstyles

[Arcanine is Regal]

Ive been away for about a month or two and have come back to a meta that seems to be dominated by volt-turn, which is surprising for me because I always thought volt-turn teams needed specific matchups to be useful. But now I dont think I have seen a team without a scarf lando-t, and mega manectric is up there in popularity too. Its actually quite annoying/effective to play against because you never really know whats coming. But anyway I was hoping this could be a thread where we talk about certain playstyles and where there are currently in the metagame, maybe we rank them in a very unofficial broad way, because there are sub playstyles and I relly dont want to get into that(like semi-stall, balance offense or whatever, etc...). I think Ill break it into Volt-turn/balance/stall(semistall)/hyper offense/bulky offense, I think bulky offense and hyper offense are different(and prevalent) enough to warrant their own categories.

1.Volt-Turn
2.Balance
3.Hyper Offense
4.Bulky Offense
5.Stall

(subject to change) I also want to know if you guys think more playstyles should be added

This is what I am feeling in terms of ranking them, I think ill just start by explaining why I think volt-turn is best, and maybe do the rest if this thread sticks.

Volt-turn seems to be so good because scarf lando-t and mega manectric are so fast that they can either get serious damage on something before taking any, or get important chip damage while switching to something that can more adequately take a hit. It seems those two dont even take damage until the end of the game. if manec is in on a flying type either it dies or you get free momentum into something like latios which is also amazing right now and something will die and then manectric can just come back in and repeat. To be more broad, if something fears the volt-turn, they either switch or take a shit ton of damage(or die) either way they are playing on their heels the whole game. People start making very risky plays like switching a scarf lando-t into a manectric(ive seen it many times) just to try and break the volt-turn chain. Also switching heatran into lando-t to take the "obvious" u-turn, bottom line is it causes what some may consider 50/50s, although their typically is a right play which is why I dont think its uncompetitive. An effective stop to this sort of team seems to be mamoswine as it remains to be pretty anti-meta.

Idk maybe someone else can take a crack at explaining volt-turn, but this is something I would like to see, maybe posts like this: (credit to Talenheim)

• Hyper Offense
  • Hyper Hyper Offense
    • Birdspam
    • any team with 6 mons that can't take a hit, i.e. weavile or greninja
  • Baton Pass(OP edit: Fuck Baton Pass)
    • Teams that are built around getting enough momentum to BP boosts to a pokemon to sweep. This can be either an extention to a standard team, i.e. standard HO teams with Scolipede, or an entire strategy to itself, i.e. Dennis' Legacy.
  • Offense
    • Has one wall/one or two bulky mons that can take hits, i.e. Ferro or M-Hera
• Bulky Offense
  • Standard Bulky Offense
    • Sacrifices speed for bulk; usually appreciates a wishpasser, usually has mons that can take hits, i.e. M-Hera, Lando-T or MegaZard X
  • Trick Room
    • Includes bulky Trick Room setters; TR teams use hard-hitting but slow mons that have average bulk, as they can dump the usually needed speed EVs into HP, i.e. Diggersby or Crawdaunt
• Balanced
  • Hazard Stacking
    • Teams that set up more hazards other than stealth rock, usually spikes, and have mix of very bulky setters, i.e. Skarmory or Ferro, and offensive mons that can take advantage of them, i.e. Greninja or MegaMan. Usually has a spinner over a defogger.
  • Standard Balanced
    • Either has 3 walls/3 HO mons, or 6 tanks, or anywhere in between. Mons that are usually classified as Tanks are usually seen here, i.e. Rhyperior or Rotom-W, or Bulky MZardX.
• Semistall
  • Standard Semistall
    • These teams use one or two offensive mons to cover threats and act as wincons rather than two other walls, i.e. Garchomp or any HO mon, or use walls that can still hit back hard and aren't just passive, i.e. Doublade or Sylveon.
• Stall
  • Full Stall
    • These teams are composed of 6 walls, with a few passive ones, whose goal is to whittle the opponent's health down while negating any they take. Examples of pokemon usually seen on full stall are cresselia, mew, chansey, skarmory... any passive wall.

These are good summaries of relevant playstyles, feel free to expand on any one that you feel has had substantial change or is particularly good in todays meta(including ORAS).

 

[alexwolf]

The OP is fine, and the subject seems interesting, so there is no problem with this thread. As discussion progresses, i expect you to update the OP though MegaScizor.

 

[Ajwf]

Hmm. I would definitely add semi-stall as a category because it does have such a different wincon from a full stall team. There's also varieties of semi-stall and different ideas on the amount of attackers to walls... I think the most common is two attackers and four walls... at least three of those have recovery.

I say this because semi-stall and stall are both clearly different in their viability right now. Stall has always had some issues and it's only become more apparent since the ban of aegislash. In the current metagame, you could still grab about 70-80% on simply using walls, but that 20-30% you left open includes common pokemon like landorus, Mega-Wallbreaker trio, Mew, goth and some other taunt stall breakers. Whereas the early parts of XY saw a ton of VenuTran+SkarmBliss cores, these teams would be broken in an instant anymore with the rise of Magnezone as well as the omnipresent breakers mentioned above. The metagame really did adapt to stall within the first few months of this strong wall core + quagsire. However, stall refused to adapt and really, outside of a few really neat teams and core concepts (such as AVTornT+Amoongus for LandoI/Aegi, as well as the ZardY Goth stall by fingerscrossed), stall stagnated. Eventually, ZardX took off in popularity and we got to see some life in stall, however the popularity never caught on.

Currently, stall is in a bit of a slump because, as Jukain, Toxzn and many others have pointed out, you simply cannot be that passive and expect to win. This isn't to say there haven't been some interesting teams, just no real trend towards them. There's really no truly perfect defensive stall team out there right now. Obviously, the core idea behind defense-only could only lead to a draw at best, so some form of offense is needed. The issue is, where's your offense with Chansey and Skarmory? Stall has had a bit of an issue finding a good balance to offense and defense, and it's been made more difficult by the fact that pokemon keep getting more powerful, seeming to force stall on the back heel more and more. The fallacy would of course be to try status-based or hazard-based stall and focus on full defense. It simply will not work.

So there is a certain amount of speed and fire power needed on any stall team to make it truly successful. Offensively minded stall teams are also far more successful than the old toxic stall ideology. And yes, finding this balance between offense and defense is a bit (if not really) difficult. This gives way to pokemon like Chesnaught, Rhyperior, Aerodactyl-Mega, Clef/Sylveon, Jirachi, Gliscor, Heatran and even offensive pokemon like Latias and ZardXY becoming far more useful for stall. Even using stallbreakers like mew/MtGClef has proven to be very effective due to a defensive niche (countering MMedi) and the ability to break other stall teams. Some would argue that all this pushes that into a balanced team. I think the separation here is the fact that you're still aiming to "Counter" the meta as wholy as possible, but you just don't want the meta around for as long as it would be vs a more defensive/status stall team.

As for where I'd rank it... I don't really know. At a high level, it's still truly a frightening style... However, that 'high level' has only been seen in a few teams since Aegi got banned.

 

[WebBowser]

Well, here goes nothing...

Quickpass HO: Boosting moves have always been a significant part of the meta. The viability of many pokemon lie not in their raw stats, but in how effectively they can boost those stats, for example D-Nite is considered to be a far better sweeper then Kyub despite Kyub having all around superior stats thanks to dragon dance (that's not to say Kyub is bad, it's just not a good sweeper). There are many mons in OU that have the potential to be positively broken but do not have access to the boosting moves required to make it so. Baton pass is a move that passes a wide variety of effects to a team mate, most notably boosts. The goal of quickpass team is to safely give a mon boosts that it either cannot get on it's own or cannot reliably obtain those boosts to enable a very difficult to stop sweep.

Strengths: Quickpass has numerous things going for it, some of these traits are more concrete then others.

1. The best BPers tend to be far more efficient at boosting then your average sweeper. The average sweeper is generally capable of boosting two stats per turn (usually either one offensive stat to +2 or one offensive stat and speed to +1). The most viable BPers are capable of boosting at least 3 stats in one turn(scolipede, venomoth, etc). Special mention must go to smeargle, whom with geomancy is capable of boosting a whopping 6 stats given a single turn to do so. IMO, this is the reason why quickpass is a viable playstyle.

2. BPers allow potential sweepers to get boosts that they would normally not have access to. Every sweeper would love to have boosts in speed, offense AND defense (to make it harder to revenge), but most sweeper sets have room for at best 2 out of 3 of those boosts. The aid of a BPer allows a sweeper to potentially obtain boosts that he is either unable to get, doesn't want to spend the moveslots to get, or cannot obtain those same boosts as efficiently. For example, Zard-X would love some extra defense to prevent scarf lando-t from killing him with EQ, so I can pair him up with ID scolipede (the most reliable defense passer imo) and give him that AND some speed to boot (meaning I could even afford to run SD instead of DD for more immediate power).

3. Quickpass teams are adaptable. Given the number of moveslots effective quickpass support can free up on any given sweeper, a lot of previously unviable sweepers suddenly become quite usable. This means that a smart BP teambuilder can choose his sweepers and support mons based on what is common in the meta. Haze giving you headaches? Trap it with goth. Sash endeavor stopping your sweeps cold? Run an offensive hazard setter lead or run a subs sweeper. HO making it hard to setup? Run duel screens. Prankster twave becoming an issue? Run a ground type sweeper like m-garchomp or SD excadrill.

4. Quickpass is punishing. I have never seen any other team capable of snowballing a single misplay quite as hard as a well built quickpass team. I have seen people lose because they screwed up a single crucial 50/50, lost their phaser, or accidentally gave the quick passer a free turn to take advantage of its absurd boosting moves(easy to do with trappers). This makes BP very frustrating to play against.

Weaknesses of Playstyle: For all of it's strengths, quickpass HO does have some weaknesses

1. Most passers are statistically lackluster at best. This generally deters them from becoming threatening sweepers on their own power, though this is certainly not always the case (e.g. UU venomoth, Blazekin).

2. Many of the strongest BPers require a fair bit of team support to do reliably. Because a significant amount of team support goes into the pass, if the pass fails to sweep it can leave the team in a difficult position. Nowhere is this more apparent then with the infamous Geopass team, where a full half of the team is saced to ensure that smeargle gets the change to get off a geomancy and live.

3. While quick pass teams are perfectly capable of adapting to any threat they need to, they cannot adapt to all of them at once (or at least, we haven't found a way to yet). This leaves individual quick pass teams very vulnerable to counter teaming. These weaknesses don't always overlap either. For example, running sableye is essentially an auto-win vs Denis' geopass team, but it can do very little to impede zard-x on my scolipass team, nor can it prevent scoli from passing due to mental herb. On the other hand, a well played phasor can usually win against my scolipass team, but is essentially useless against Denis' geopass team due to taunt spam.

inb4 BP isn't an actual playstyle

 

[Taliheim]

inb4 BP isn't an actual playstyle

Is it viable? Yes.
Is it legitimate? Certainly.
Is it cancerous? Possibly.
Is it annoying? ABSOLUTELY.
This pretty much sums up my stance on BP.

 

[Stef0w]

The last thing to call me is an expert, so I might "shit the bed" on some of the stuff I say here.

I think birdspam has defo changed a lot since I started using it, but I personally would say it's about as good as back then.

for one, aegislash getting theboot was a great boon for mega pinsir, since getting to run CC over EQ gives it supreme natural coverage, to the point where former complete counters like skarmory and rotom-W really hated switching into a +2 cc. aegi leaving also meant other steel-types stated to take it's place, meaning magnezone could finally take it's place in OU back.

I personally think the play-style has gotten faster, with excadrill and tyranitar replacing latias and conkeldurr, meaning birdspam now also had an additional wincon in sand rush exca, alongside stuff like raikou, to combat enemy birdspam.

I feel like I forgot a lot, stupid 5-year old brain.

 

[WebBowser]

The last thing to call me is an expert, so I might "shit the bed" on some of the stuff I say here.

I think birdspam has defo changed a lot since I started using it, but I personally would say it's about as good as back then.

for one, aegislash getting theboot was a great boon for mega pinsir, since getting to run CC over EQ gives it supreme natural coverage, to the point where former complete counters like skarmory and rotom-W really hated switching into a +2 cc. aegi leaving also meant other steel-types stated to take it's place, meaning magnezone could finally take it's place in OU back.

I personally think the play-style has gotten faster, with excadrill and tyranitar replacing latias and conkeldurr, meaning birdspam now also had an additional wincon in sand rush exca, alongside stuff like raikou, to combat enemy birdspam.

I feel like I forgot a lot, stupid 5-year old brain.

I think birdspam falls under what I like to call "redundancy HO", a subset of HO that stacks multiple dangerous mons with a similar and limited pool of checks and counters with the goal of weakening/removing those checks and counters and paving the way for an easy sweep.

IIRC, DragMag from gens 4 and 5 worked in a very similar manner. I'm sure that there are other teams over the years that have operated under similar principles.

 

[Lil YoshiXD]

IMO rain and sand both deserve their own mentions

 

[Ruffian]

In my opinion, there are many subgenres of teams. For example, I think that BirdSpam/DragMag can be put under Hyper Offense, and Semi-Stall is a team type that could be put under Bulky Offense or Stall. Despite Semi-Stall being a completely different style from Stall, it uses elements of it (In this case the stall core in there).

 

[Taliheim]

Indeed. In my opinion, there are Archetypes, then Subarchetypes, then Strategies. I'll try to list all the ones I can think of here, but I'll probably miss some.

• Hyper Offense
  • Hyper Hyper Offense
    • Birdspam
    • any team with 6 mons that can't take a hit, i.e. weavile or greninja
  • Baton Pass
    • Teams that are built around getting enough momentum to BP boosts to a pokemon to sweep. This can be either an extention to a standard team, i.e. standard HO teams with Scolipede, or an entire strategy to itself, i.e. Dennis' Legacy.
  • Offense
    • Has one wall/one or two bulky mons that can take hits, i.e. Ferro or M-Hera
• Bulky Offense
  • Standard Bulky Offense
    • Sacrifices speed for bulk; usually appreciates a wishpasser, usually has mons that can take hits, i.e. M-Hera, Lando-T or MegaZard X
  • Trick Room
    • Includes bulky Trick Room setters; TR teams use hard-hitting but slow mons that have average bulk, as they can dump the usually needed speed EVs into HP, i.e. Diggersby or Crawdaunt
• Balanced
  • Hazard Stacking
    • Teams that set up more hazards other than stealth rock, usually spikes, and have mix of very bulky setters, i.e. Skarmory or Ferro, and offensive mons that can take advantage of them, i.e. Greninja or MegaMan. Usually has a spinner over a defogger.
  • Standard Balanced
    • Either has 3 walls/3 HO mons, or 6 tanks, or anywhere in between. Mons that are usually classified as Tanks are usually seen here, i.e. Rhyperior or Rotom-W, or Bulky MZardX.
• Semistall
  • Standard Semistall
    • These teams use one or two offensive mons to cover threats and act as wincons rather than two other walls, i.e. Garchomp or any HO mon, or use walls that can still hit back hard and aren't just passive, i.e. Doublade or Sylveon.
• Stall
  • Full Stall
    • These teams are composed of 6 walls, with a few passive ones, whose goal is to whittle the opponent's health down while negating any they take. Examples of pokemon usually seen on full stall are cresselia, mew, chansey, skarmory... any passive wall.

 

[Pagoose]

Indeed. In my opinion, there are Archetypes, then Subarchetypes, then Strategies. I'll try to list all the ones I can think of here, but I'll probably miss some.

• Hyper Offense
  • Hyper Hyper Offense
    • Birdspam
    • any team with 6 mons that can't take a hit, i.e. weavile or greninja
  • Baton Pass
    • Teams that are built around getting enough momentum to BP boosts to a pokemon to sweep. This can be either an extention to a standard team, i.e. standard HO teams with Scolipede, or an entire strategy to itself, i.e. Dennis' Legacy.
  • Offense
    • Has one wall/one or two bulky mons that can take hits, i.e. Ferro or M-Hera
• Bulky Offense
  • Standard Bulky Offense
    • Sacrifices speed for bulk; usually appreciates a wishpasser, usually has mons that can take hits, i.e. M-Hera, Lando-T or MegaZard X
  • Trick Room
    • Includes bulky Trick Room setters; TR teams use hard-hitting but slow mons that have average bulk, as they can dump the usually needed speed EVs into HP, i.e. Diggersby or Crawdaunt
• Balanced
  • Hazard Stacking
    • Teams that set up more hazards other than stealth rock, usually spikes, and have mix of very bulky setters, i.e. Skarmory or Ferro, and offensive mons that can take advantage of them, i.e. Greninja or MegaMan. Usually has a spinner over a defogger.
  • Standard Balanced
    • Either has 3 walls/3 HO mons, or 6 tanks, or anywhere in between. Mons that are usually classified as Tanks are usually seen here, i.e. Rhyperior or Rotom-W, or Bulky MZardX.
• Semistall
  • Standard Semistall
    • These teams use one or two offensive mons to cover threats and act as wincons rather than two other walls, i.e. Garchomp or any HO mon, or use walls that can still hit back hard and aren't just passive, i.e. Doublade or Sylveon.
• Stall
  • Full Stall
    • These teams are composed of 6 walls, with a few passive ones, whose goal is to whittle the opponent's health down while negating any they take. Examples of pokemon usually seen on full stall are cresselia, mew, chansey, skarmory... any passive wall.

Mew is hardly passive. If anything, its used more on balance than stall, although its good in either playstyle.