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Is it possible?
- Thread starter chaos 9
- Start date
To go along with this thread, in my experience, the most solid and stable teams are a well build stall team. Assuming competent battling skills of course where you don't needlessly sacrifice pokemon and play it safe.
The reason for this is that, barring some luck factor like crit or freeze, your team basically tries to counter as many pokemon in the metagame as possible. While it's not possible to counter every single threat in the metagame anymore, you can certainly cover the majority of them. Now assuming both battlers are of equal skill, if you've got your opponent's pokemon countered at every step of the game, they have no choice but to keep switching out and take indirect damage.
Of course this is all just on paper. Obviously factors like luck and prediction also come into play. But theoretically, as long as you don't run into the pokemon your team can't counter, you should win most of the time.
The reason for this is that, barring some luck factor like crit or freeze, your team basically tries to counter as many pokemon in the metagame as possible. While it's not possible to counter every single threat in the metagame anymore, you can certainly cover the majority of them. Now assuming both battlers are of equal skill, if you've got your opponent's pokemon countered at every step of the game, they have no choice but to keep switching out and take indirect damage.
Of course this is all just on paper. Obviously factors like luck and prediction also come into play. But theoretically, as long as you don't run into the pokemon your team can't counter, you should win most of the time.
I think having a good team is also dependent on having a good battler. And there are such varied styles of playing that you could pick two random battlers that you might place on the same level, and one will be more successful with the team than the other. Not to mention the metagame has shifted, maybe it'll reach a point where it stops shifting but who knows. I guess it just happens that way. So I don't think it's even possible to create a sort of "almost perfect team", that anyone can use with minimal failure.
I think this comes down to, as Mop would say: "Paper-battle is retarded."
It doesn't matter how much calculation you put into possibly mathematically minimizing the potential damage taken from the various possible threats in the game, because in the end-- even if you minimize over all there's still a lot of potential damage to be walloped in by this or that threat, and it comes back to where we start: skill, both in building one's own team and knowing how to use it.
It doesn't matter how much calculation you put into possibly mathematically minimizing the potential damage taken from the various possible threats in the game, because in the end-- even if you minimize over all there's still a lot of potential damage to be walloped in by this or that threat, and it comes back to where we start: skill, both in building one's own team and knowing how to use it.
haha lol, i did this once. lets just say that he didnt realize the danger of swords dance mawile. which is a lot. it was quite funny.
but yeah, invincible team = not exist.
as countless others have said, eventually, a team will be made with the sole purpose of defeating this so called invincible team. although hypothetically, a team with a bunch of gimmick sets could in theory run through teams when supposed counters are taken out with the gimmicks.
purely hypothetical though, it would also take a great battler to pull this off as well. meaning not me. ive tried. i failed. i suck at gimmick teams.
I'd say a users play style is mostly pointless for this experment. The idea is not "does this team suit my offensive/defensive playstyle" rather "can this team handle ____".
Even if the perfect team does not exist it should be interesting to see what multiple people could come up with from a team building perspective beginning from start to finish.
/uphill battle
@alive. Blissey beats Tentacruel. Tentacruel can't stop stat increasing special attackers.
I nominate Garchomp as the second pokemon. Everyone's already afraid of him so it's only natural that the 'not perfect but tries to minimize damage taken while increasing effectiveness politically correct' team includes him..
Even if the perfect team does not exist it should be interesting to see what multiple people could come up with from a team building perspective beginning from start to finish.
/uphill battle
@alive. Blissey beats Tentacruel. Tentacruel can't stop stat increasing special attackers.
I nominate Garchomp as the second pokemon. Everyone's already afraid of him so it's only natural that the 'not perfect but tries to minimize damage taken while increasing effectiveness politically correct' team includes him..
Well theres no one team that can minimize losses. Lets say eevrytime
you construct a team i will find a pokemon to counter it all. This is why
mix atkers and wall breakers have been created. Its honestly not the team
its the battler. How you play and make your choices in a battle decided
the outcome. An alright structure team can take down the best
strategy teams as long as the battler can read the strat befor eyou put it into
effect. People like to say Garchomp is uber and Scarfing a pokemon to
counter is centerlizing the metagame. Meh i'll centerlize the metagame then >_>
yeah thats my two cents. Enjoy.
you construct a team i will find a pokemon to counter it all. This is why
mix atkers and wall breakers have been created. Its honestly not the team
its the battler. How you play and make your choices in a battle decided
the outcome. An alright structure team can take down the best
strategy teams as long as the battler can read the strat befor eyou put it into
effect. People like to say Garchomp is uber and Scarfing a pokemon to
counter is centerlizing the metagame. Meh i'll centerlize the metagame then >_>
yeah thats my two cents. Enjoy.
yeah swchill hit the nail on the head. We are not trying to create the "perfect team" or an "invincible team." We are merely pooling the effort of many experienced battlers to make a very powerful team that can be used to maximum efficiency. Team team building if you will. I just find that if people can make very effective tournement winning teams alone, what can we accomplish together?
In theory, each different style metagame could have a combination of pokemon that counter all of the most common threats, but the metagame will constantly be changing. That being said, if the most intelligible battler has one of the best teams, it is possible that they can have a perfect battle record. However, the skill of the opponent and how good their team is also factors in.
I just realized that a possibly analogy could be the starter pokemon. Grass beats Water, Water beats Fire, and Fire beats Grass. Out of those three, none is the best. Likewise, a team can be perfectly countered by another team, but there is a counter for that team, and so on, until you get to that original team again.
You can't add a 4th unbeatable hand gesture to Rock/Paper/Scissors.
I just realized that a possibly analogy could be the starter pokemon. Grass beats Water, Water beats Fire, and Fire beats Grass. Out of those three, none is the best. Likewise, a team can be perfectly countered by another team, but there is a counter for that team, and so on, until you get to that original team again.
You can't add a 4th unbeatable hand gesture to Rock/Paper/Scissors.
Here's an example for you:
Back in RBY Slowbro was one of the most dominant pokemon. The famous TobyBro set (Amnesia/Thunder Wave/Surf/Rest) could take out any threat in the metagame (including Mewtwo). The reason was that the metagame back then was too limited. Not even Blissey could have taken a special stat of 500 after one amnesia.
That was RBY, in today's metagame, the situation is totally different. TobyBro crushed opponents because there weren't any good counters. With a relatively varied metagame in both offensive and defensive, no team can really hope to be both effective attacking AND defending. TobyBro gets owned by Weavile, and walled by Cressy, he just isn't used anymore.
Back in RBY Slowbro was one of the most dominant pokemon. The famous TobyBro set (Amnesia/Thunder Wave/Surf/Rest) could take out any threat in the metagame (including Mewtwo). The reason was that the metagame back then was too limited. Not even Blissey could have taken a special stat of 500 after one amnesia.
That was RBY, in today's metagame, the situation is totally different. TobyBro crushed opponents because there weren't any good counters. With a relatively varied metagame in both offensive and defensive, no team can really hope to be both effective attacking AND defending. TobyBro gets owned by Weavile, and walled by Cressy, he just isn't used anymore.
This is even less likely to be successful if you're just going to take pokemon who've been randomly mentioned (in this case Garchomp and Blissey) and put them on the team, thus completely ignoring the set of steps you outlined in your first post of the thread.
The reason people aren't taking this seriously is because no "best" team exists. You're getting annoyed at the people who are saying "no perfect team exists", no "team is unbeatable" etc, but you could just as easily swap "perfect" and "unbeatable" with "the best", and these people's arguments would in most cases remain true.
Firstly, the metagame is too diverse these days to have any chance of covering every major OU threat defensively. What if we make "the best" team, that maximizes winning and minimizes losses... but there's no room in it for a Gyarados counter. By adding one, we end up with a less impressive win/loss ratio. The choices here are to either make the team less effective overall by shoehorning in a way to stop Gyarados, or let Gyarados rape the team. Whichever option you take, the team is no longer "the best", because it had to draw some short straws. That's just an example of how you can't build a "best" team because something (most likely something OU) is going to give it serious issues regardless of what six pokes and what six movesets are chosen.
The second is that the metagame is too volatile to build a single "best" team, even if you would define it as a team capable of flexing to suit new environments. Whatever team we ultimately created, it would be entirely possible to build a team containing six Pokemon, possibly with their own tailor-made movesets, that counters the team we made. Which team is then "the best"? The team with the best win/loss ratio, or the team that beats the team with the best win/loss ratio? And then what if people make a counter to the counter team? As you can see, this is an infinite chain. As soon as a theoretically "best" team is made, counters will be made for it, counters for the counters, and it ends up with the "best" team being just like any other well-made team: Effective in the right hands, useless against certain teams and advantageous against others. We've got plenty of teams exactly like that in the RMT forum already.
Really, the people saying this is a hopeless endeavor aren't just being pessimistic; It is actually virtually impossible.
The reason people aren't taking this seriously is because no "best" team exists. You're getting annoyed at the people who are saying "no perfect team exists", no "team is unbeatable" etc, but you could just as easily swap "perfect" and "unbeatable" with "the best", and these people's arguments would in most cases remain true.
Firstly, the metagame is too diverse these days to have any chance of covering every major OU threat defensively. What if we make "the best" team, that maximizes winning and minimizes losses... but there's no room in it for a Gyarados counter. By adding one, we end up with a less impressive win/loss ratio. The choices here are to either make the team less effective overall by shoehorning in a way to stop Gyarados, or let Gyarados rape the team. Whichever option you take, the team is no longer "the best", because it had to draw some short straws. That's just an example of how you can't build a "best" team because something (most likely something OU) is going to give it serious issues regardless of what six pokes and what six movesets are chosen.
The second is that the metagame is too volatile to build a single "best" team, even if you would define it as a team capable of flexing to suit new environments. Whatever team we ultimately created, it would be entirely possible to build a team containing six Pokemon, possibly with their own tailor-made movesets, that counters the team we made. Which team is then "the best"? The team with the best win/loss ratio, or the team that beats the team with the best win/loss ratio? And then what if people make a counter to the counter team? As you can see, this is an infinite chain. As soon as a theoretically "best" team is made, counters will be made for it, counters for the counters, and it ends up with the "best" team being just like any other well-made team: Effective in the right hands, useless against certain teams and advantageous against others. We've got plenty of teams exactly like that in the RMT forum already.
Really, the people saying this is a hopeless endeavor aren't just being pessimistic; It is actually virtually impossible.
5 things + Garchomp. Lol seriously though this Metagame shifts alot and there's so many different teams. Your going to eventually lose to a team somewhere, just because it counters your team.
TobyBro was generally defeated by Starmie, with its Water resist and 25% crit rate.
He wasn't saying that Slowbro had no counters but that in todays metagame it would no longer be useful. But the idea is not to desgin a team that might be usless in 3 gens (lol) but that could generally be applied to todays current generation and/or metagame.
@whoever brought it up, I avoided the whole "which theme does best" because I think that's probably the worst way to go about this. It would be more efficient to take a look at the most used pokemon and how to mold these into the most effective team. If special attacks increase does Blissey usage go down or does she adjust her EVs? If Garchomp counters increase does Garchomp usage sink or do counters to those pokemon see more usage?
There are more than a few pokemon that are consistently useful and those are the kinds of pokemon that would find their way onto "not actually unbeatable but very well balanced team". Remember the first tier list for D/P? Starmie OU (4 gens in a row!).
I'm getting kind of bored with the attitudes of people around here so I probably won't be posting here much anymore. Might as well post a RMT if I'm the only one who has even a slight interest in this.
@whoever brought it up, I avoided the whole "which theme does best" because I think that's probably the worst way to go about this. It would be more efficient to take a look at the most used pokemon and how to mold these into the most effective team. If special attacks increase does Blissey usage go down or does she adjust her EVs? If Garchomp counters increase does Garchomp usage sink or do counters to those pokemon see more usage?
There are more than a few pokemon that are consistently useful and those are the kinds of pokemon that would find their way onto "not actually unbeatable but very well balanced team". Remember the first tier list for D/P? Starmie OU (4 gens in a row!).
I'm getting kind of bored with the attitudes of people around here so I probably won't be posting here much anymore. Might as well post a RMT if I'm the only one who has even a slight interest in this.
Back in the days of NetBattle, there used to be some sort of team power percentage that was autogenerated by the system and showed up when you challenged someone. To get a 100% power you had to use Raikou, Moltres, Zapdos, Mewtwo, Lugia and Ho-Oh, a team that never really worked in practice.
As to this generation, I think it's already been proved that there is no "perfect team".
As to this generation, I think it's already been proved that there is no "perfect team".