Metagaming; Beneficial or detrimental?

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Huy

INSTANT BALLS
is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnus
I feel like a lot of people have lost the ability to build a cohesive team. With the advent of PO and the introduction of team preview, people have begun to fall for the 'I need to counter everything that my opponent can throw at me' trap. A cohesive team needs a direction. Lately what I've found is that people are throwing together teams where 'Pokemon A checks Pokemon B and C while Pokemon D check Pokemon B and E." All this does is force you to play your opponents game while you try to react to whatever they do.
 

muffinhead

b202 wifi vgc
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
moof♥
eraddd:D

today on skarmbliss i battled someone who had a cofagrigus. i ohkoed it with a strong shadow ball. 5 minutes later we battled again and he had a focus sash on his cofagrigus.

the reason this super fast changing happens on simulators is the small amount of people, ideas, and specific teams on simulators. in a scenario where 40 people try to beat each other, their teams will change rapidly to beat everyone else. in a scenario where 40 000 people play each other, there is no point to changing your team instantly after a loss, because the odds that you fill face that person again or that person's team again are too small to risk.

po can be used as a prediction of how competitions in the near future might be, but past a certain point, its just trying to beat things that try to beat you when you try to beat them.

this is why the gbu is awesome, and players who play both on simulators and gbu have a huge advantage over everyone else (plus you get used to the wifi mechanics :D)

huy did you read my mind or something o.O
 

DeagleBeagle

Banned deucer.
In regionals it is a lot different than PO and there are a lot of noobish teams you don't prepare for and for whatever reason you never see on PO. One random team that catches you off guard will make you lose a whole tournament, and that sucks in single elimination. Just go with a team that doesnt focus on specifically countering things that good people use, use something that will cover a very large amount of threats and has good synergy as well as being simple.

Try to avoid using things that are made for singles, like Leech Seed. In nationals when people actually have good teams that aren't really unexpected, you can try to counter some of the things good people use. But don't get so caught up in countering all the current threats that you miss all the other ones. Just make a good team that works and don't focus on what you think people will use and you will do better.

Worlds is the only time to maybe really think about countering a possible metagame except from my experience, Worlds teams are totally different than nationals, but nationals teams are not very different from regionals. The trend seems to be: use a lot of high power spread moves and go for high speed pokemon in regionals, in nationals use good pokemon that are bulkier and hyper offense is more rare, and in worlds everyone seems to use just the bulkiest crap possible and combine a good supporter with a very powerful ally. But you also see the people who win worlds usually use something totally new, like Ray Rizzo used Sub Hydreigon and really bulky Thundurus to catch people off guard in worlds, and it was good.
 
PO should only be used when starting to form a new team or to test changes to a preexisting team. Playing on a PO server will only prepare you for that servers metagame. It may help to go to the Smogon, Skarmbliss, and Mexico VGC servers and compare metagames there before RNGing your Pokemon, but playing on these servers excessively, in my opinion, will hurt your chances of success. When TheCalmSnivy wrote his World's Warstory, he wrote something on the lines of, 'PO doesn't count toward actual tournaments.' A few weeks ago, Maski said, 'PO should only be used to find a stable team, then stop playing.' And a few days ago, JRank and I were talking and I said, 'I hardly practiced for Dallas Regional last year, I really shouldn't have won.' He replied, 'Neither did Aaron, yet he won.' Team Seniors seems to agree, PO is a great asset, but only in small amounts.
 
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