I think sand balance is the way to go here. It has some new components highlighted by sandslash that could lead to a pretty cool team. It is also underrated but not too underrated. The first two CCATs used things so weird or "underrated" they failed. I think sand has a very good place in this metagame when supported well, sandslash provides a rapid spinner without needing to use forretress or starmie which is pretty cool.
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OU CCAT- 3rd Edition VOTING DISCUSSION SEE #157
- Thread starter Electrolyte
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My idea is similiar to a phazing team but slightly different. The team would focus on getting spikes/SR up (A spike stacking team), and then keeping it up. Perhaps incorporating two ghost types for ultimate spinblocking. Other pokemon that can phaze well should also be added in to fully take advantage of the entry hazards. This team really punishes teams who don't carry a spinner, have types that are weak to hazards, and/or can't beat spinblockers. Destroying the popular fire filled sun teams, and hurting our good friend dragonite.
Good pokes:
Deo-D: Someone that many people fear, who can at least get down SR, and one layer of spikes.
Jellicent: He blocks the spin, and hurts a lot of spinners 'nuf said.
Gengar: Another ghost type, that can be an offensive spinblocker.
Good pokes:
Deo-D: Someone that many people fear, who can at least get down SR, and one layer of spikes.
Jellicent: He blocks the spin, and hurts a lot of spinners 'nuf said.
Gengar: Another ghost type, that can be an offensive spinblocker.
Let's please not do sun stall, it was completely matchup dependent in BW1 and it definitely will be the same in BW2. Sun stall performed well against sun offense (though Dragonite could decimate it, as could Salamence and Volcarona if they play their cards right, and don't get me started on Dugtrio forcing double switches) and weatherless balance, and if you got really lucky matchup-wise, specially based rain offense that lacked Dugtrio. With Dugtrio being terribly popular, Chansey and Blissey are the only Pokemon that can tank a powerful Fire-type hit on a sun stall team, as you can't sacrifice Ninetales or you'll lose a key Pokemon, and the only viable spinner you can use to sponge one is Tentacruel, who is typically weak to another coverage move that most Pokemon with Fire-type moves have to carry (not to mention Scald's power is cut in half).
Sand offense is user-friendly, promotes diversity, and definitely works well in this metagame. Even if you choose to go with Tyranitar unlike what I posted, it still works very well provided you can cover Terrakion. Hippowdon is easily the easiest weather starter to use, and for the people that will be using our CCAT, it allows more room for errors because it can tank a lot of hits and heal them off.
Rain offense provides a bit of diversity, albeit less. There are a few Pokemon you're basically limited to: Keldeo, Tornadus-T, Thundurus-T, Jirachi, Starmie, Forretress, Latios, Latias, Genesect, Terrakion, and Rotom-W. That's not much diversity actually when comparing the Pokemon you can viably run on a sand offense team. Before you accuse me of being narrow-minded, there are definitely other Pokemon you can run, this list simply produces the best teams.
All hail teams are built off of just two cores, so I definitely don't recommend it. There's little to no diversity as far as hail stall goes, and bubbly's team (which you should all check out!) pretty much exemplifies near-perfect hail stall in this metagame. I don't think you can do better than that. Hail offense is arguably the weakest offense in this metagame, and considering how terrible Abomasnow is, I wouldn't call it user-friendly.
You can probably consider sun offense but those teams all look the same so I'd rather not go there. Sand stall or sand balance has stuff to prove though, so basically I'm supporting any type of defensive sand team. I want to be able to prove you can run defensive teams effectively in this metagame and still do well, and sand is definitely the way to go if you don't want to use an archetypical hail or rain stall team.
Sand offense is user-friendly, promotes diversity, and definitely works well in this metagame. Even if you choose to go with Tyranitar unlike what I posted, it still works very well provided you can cover Terrakion. Hippowdon is easily the easiest weather starter to use, and for the people that will be using our CCAT, it allows more room for errors because it can tank a lot of hits and heal them off.
Rain offense provides a bit of diversity, albeit less. There are a few Pokemon you're basically limited to: Keldeo, Tornadus-T, Thundurus-T, Jirachi, Starmie, Forretress, Latios, Latias, Genesect, Terrakion, and Rotom-W. That's not much diversity actually when comparing the Pokemon you can viably run on a sand offense team. Before you accuse me of being narrow-minded, there are definitely other Pokemon you can run, this list simply produces the best teams.
All hail teams are built off of just two cores, so I definitely don't recommend it. There's little to no diversity as far as hail stall goes, and bubbly's team (which you should all check out!) pretty much exemplifies near-perfect hail stall in this metagame. I don't think you can do better than that. Hail offense is arguably the weakest offense in this metagame, and considering how terrible Abomasnow is, I wouldn't call it user-friendly.
You can probably consider sun offense but those teams all look the same so I'd rather not go there. Sand stall or sand balance has stuff to prove though, so basically I'm supporting any type of defensive sand team. I want to be able to prove you can run defensive teams effectively in this metagame and still do well, and sand is definitely the way to go if you don't want to use an archetypical hail or rain stall team.
I told you I'd be active, and I will be.
I've got some fairly different opinions than other people itt.
Weatherless quickstall is a good bet. It is perhaps the epitome of unexplored on many levels in the BW2 metagame, with stall often being defined as impossible, which I firmly believe is complete ignorance, as stall is still and extremely consistent playstyle if done correctly. Weatherless is similar, especially with weather being so dominant and the thought when teambuilding often being "what weather do I want?" Current teambuilding is centered around offense and weather, with little thought being made outside of these, therefore weatherless quickstall is an excellent choice. In addition, many of the Pokemon that could find a home on a quickstall team might be misconstrued for inferior Pokemon on other teams. There is a lot of freedom when teambuilding and almost every Pokemon on the team will be underrated. Something I'm seeing a lot of is people not knowing how to define quickstall. Someone (bubbly I think) has the right idea.
Quickstall - a form of stall where entry hazards are set up early-game and then abused through risky, fast-paced Pokemon such as SubDisable Gengar and SubToxic Gliscor. Such teams could be described as functioning with an offensive tempo but possessing a stallish nature, having somewhat of the same reliability of stall as well.
There, you can all vote for it now.
Some opinions on other playstyles talked about:
I'm going to begin with full stall. The main issue here is that people don't like stall for the most part. Stall is difficult to play for many, with most people generally wanting the fast tempo that comes with an offensive team and the joy that comes with sweeping with some badass Pokemon. I mean come on, who doesn't enjoy surprising walls, predicting and KOing switch-ins, et cetera. A full stall team would, I guarantee you, turn out generic, boring, and generally lack participation. While full stall is definitely a viable playstyle, it just is not ideal for CCAT.
I personally don't lime the idea of sand/rain/weatherless balance. Such teams already have heavily defined roles and members throughout the course of the BW1 and BW2 metagames. These teams are so ridiculously easy to make that it is not even funny. Do you have walls? Do you have hazards and offensive pokes? Okay synergy? That's a balance team. If that doesn't scream boring to you, then I don't know what will. Obviously I'm oversimplifying, as we COULD make fun and unique balance, I just feel that it's too easy, too simple, too defined to be a CCAT that is a learning experience.
Now on to dual weather. I kind of get it. I really do. I just think that this would turn out too cookie-cutter of we don't restrict it enough. Here's the deal. No rain + sand and this concept could succeed. I like the ideas of rain + sun, sand + sun, sun + hail, sand + hail, and rain + hail, but rain + sand is literally THE dual weather if you want to go that route for whatever reason. Dual weather is fun to play and fairly unique, but it loses its uniqueness of we go rain and sun.
Sun stall sounds neat. When you think of sun stall, what do you think of? Before reading recent posts in metagame discussion, I thought "lol noob strategy" almost immediately. Most of you probably felt the same way. This is for numerous reasons, mainly that Ninetales is horrible and sun is harmful to staples of stall teams, Steel-types. However, underrated Pokemon such as Cresselia can shine on sun stall, which is really cool, and we probably won't have much Genesect, the new bane of stall, trouble thanks to Ninetales and the possible Heatran, which is a huge draw. I still think that it may be a little boring, similar to full stall, but it's so unexplored that it shouldn't really matter.
Now that stall topics have been taken care of, I'm going to take the liberty of moving on to offensive playstyles. The first thing I saw was rain offense, to which I say come on, be creative! Rain offense is probably the single most explored playstyle in BW2. We want an unexplored playstyle, not standard. On the other hand, Rain Dance offense could be fun. However, since I strongly feel that CCAT should be a challenge, that it should not be allowed to include Kingdra. Kingdra is the premier and sometimes only used sweeper of Rain Dance teams, creativity is key. Ludicolo, Kabutops, Floatzel, let's try something new!
Next topic of offense is hail offense. I like this sort of team for one reason and one reason only: we would get to test out SubRoost Kyurem with Blizzard. That's something I've seen fairly heavy interest in, and I think our CCAT could turn out to be the culmination of everything tested and optimized for SubRoost Kyurem by going hail offense. This would get good participation from the people we WANT participating. Most people cannot construct a well-built hail offense team, and a hail offense CCAT could teach people how to properly do so and garner interest in the strategy, increasing the popularity and relevance of this extremely underrated playstyle. So yeah, I like hail offense.
I'm going to lump Trick Room and Gravity together and regurgitate what others have already said. These strategies are going to give us an inferior team if we pick them right away. Basing a team around Trick Room is extraordinarily difficult to pull of and imho not worth the effort. While I am slightly more convinced by Gravity, I still think that it will have us end up with an inferior team. I originally was thinking of a 2 FEAR no Riolu team, but it falls under this category on the fine line between viable and not viable.
Before I move on to another topic, I'd like to bring up one of my own ideas: dual screens heavy offense, albeit with one restriction. That's right, I want us to make a dual screens HO team without Deoxys-D and to explore other options for dual screeners. My reasoning is as follows: Deoxys-D is the standard and pretty much only used dual screener. My personal vision for this CCAT is something obscure and creative yet still effective, so finding a different dual screener with a solid niche would be a requirement for a dual screens heavy offense team.
Okay, I'm going to wrap up this post with a bit about your process. It's pretty good, but I suggest two things:
For one, I suggest restricting more common and defined playstyles from their biggest, most threatening guy on the block. This allows us to learn more from CCAT and to not just create some bog-standard team, which I have emphasized upon many times throughout this post. There isn't much else to say on this subject; it's a suggestion, take it or leave it.
The second and last thing to note is that while it may have seemed a cool incentive in your head, abolish the vote winners' bonus. It may encourage people to join and contribute from the beginning, but it has another unintended side effect: it turns off people from joining in the middle of the CCAT. When you've got people who have votes that count for more than yours', you feel as though your say doesn't mean much when you've got these people with 50% more powerful votes. These people should be able to convince others to agree with their viewpoint if it is valid and should not needed more-weighted votes to do so. Abolish this bonus and you will be better off.
That's my two cents on the playstyles we should go for on this CCAT. Electrolye, drop me a VM or catch me on IRC if you have any questions.
I will be watching and participating itt often. Electrolyte, tú es chido. That will be all.
I've got some fairly different opinions than other people itt.
Weatherless quickstall is a good bet. It is perhaps the epitome of unexplored on many levels in the BW2 metagame, with stall often being defined as impossible, which I firmly believe is complete ignorance, as stall is still and extremely consistent playstyle if done correctly. Weatherless is similar, especially with weather being so dominant and the thought when teambuilding often being "what weather do I want?" Current teambuilding is centered around offense and weather, with little thought being made outside of these, therefore weatherless quickstall is an excellent choice. In addition, many of the Pokemon that could find a home on a quickstall team might be misconstrued for inferior Pokemon on other teams. There is a lot of freedom when teambuilding and almost every Pokemon on the team will be underrated. Something I'm seeing a lot of is people not knowing how to define quickstall. Someone (bubbly I think) has the right idea.
Quickstall - a form of stall where entry hazards are set up early-game and then abused through risky, fast-paced Pokemon such as SubDisable Gengar and SubToxic Gliscor. Such teams could be described as functioning with an offensive tempo but possessing a stallish nature, having somewhat of the same reliability of stall as well.
There, you can all vote for it now.
Some opinions on other playstyles talked about:
I'm going to begin with full stall. The main issue here is that people don't like stall for the most part. Stall is difficult to play for many, with most people generally wanting the fast tempo that comes with an offensive team and the joy that comes with sweeping with some badass Pokemon. I mean come on, who doesn't enjoy surprising walls, predicting and KOing switch-ins, et cetera. A full stall team would, I guarantee you, turn out generic, boring, and generally lack participation. While full stall is definitely a viable playstyle, it just is not ideal for CCAT.
I personally don't lime the idea of sand/rain/weatherless balance. Such teams already have heavily defined roles and members throughout the course of the BW1 and BW2 metagames. These teams are so ridiculously easy to make that it is not even funny. Do you have walls? Do you have hazards and offensive pokes? Okay synergy? That's a balance team. If that doesn't scream boring to you, then I don't know what will. Obviously I'm oversimplifying, as we COULD make fun and unique balance, I just feel that it's too easy, too simple, too defined to be a CCAT that is a learning experience.
Now on to dual weather. I kind of get it. I really do. I just think that this would turn out too cookie-cutter of we don't restrict it enough. Here's the deal. No rain + sand and this concept could succeed. I like the ideas of rain + sun, sand + sun, sun + hail, sand + hail, and rain + hail, but rain + sand is literally THE dual weather if you want to go that route for whatever reason. Dual weather is fun to play and fairly unique, but it loses its uniqueness of we go rain and sun.
Sun stall sounds neat. When you think of sun stall, what do you think of? Before reading recent posts in metagame discussion, I thought "lol noob strategy" almost immediately. Most of you probably felt the same way. This is for numerous reasons, mainly that Ninetales is horrible and sun is harmful to staples of stall teams, Steel-types. However, underrated Pokemon such as Cresselia can shine on sun stall, which is really cool, and we probably won't have much Genesect, the new bane of stall, trouble thanks to Ninetales and the possible Heatran, which is a huge draw. I still think that it may be a little boring, similar to full stall, but it's so unexplored that it shouldn't really matter.
Now that stall topics have been taken care of, I'm going to take the liberty of moving on to offensive playstyles. The first thing I saw was rain offense, to which I say come on, be creative! Rain offense is probably the single most explored playstyle in BW2. We want an unexplored playstyle, not standard. On the other hand, Rain Dance offense could be fun. However, since I strongly feel that CCAT should be a challenge, that it should not be allowed to include Kingdra. Kingdra is the premier and sometimes only used sweeper of Rain Dance teams, creativity is key. Ludicolo, Kabutops, Floatzel, let's try something new!
Next topic of offense is hail offense. I like this sort of team for one reason and one reason only: we would get to test out SubRoost Kyurem with Blizzard. That's something I've seen fairly heavy interest in, and I think our CCAT could turn out to be the culmination of everything tested and optimized for SubRoost Kyurem by going hail offense. This would get good participation from the people we WANT participating. Most people cannot construct a well-built hail offense team, and a hail offense CCAT could teach people how to properly do so and garner interest in the strategy, increasing the popularity and relevance of this extremely underrated playstyle. So yeah, I like hail offense.
I'm going to lump Trick Room and Gravity together and regurgitate what others have already said. These strategies are going to give us an inferior team if we pick them right away. Basing a team around Trick Room is extraordinarily difficult to pull of and imho not worth the effort. While I am slightly more convinced by Gravity, I still think that it will have us end up with an inferior team. I originally was thinking of a 2 FEAR no Riolu team, but it falls under this category on the fine line between viable and not viable.
Before I move on to another topic, I'd like to bring up one of my own ideas: dual screens heavy offense, albeit with one restriction. That's right, I want us to make a dual screens HO team without Deoxys-D and to explore other options for dual screeners. My reasoning is as follows: Deoxys-D is the standard and pretty much only used dual screener. My personal vision for this CCAT is something obscure and creative yet still effective, so finding a different dual screener with a solid niche would be a requirement for a dual screens heavy offense team.
Okay, I'm going to wrap up this post with a bit about your process. It's pretty good, but I suggest two things:
For one, I suggest restricting more common and defined playstyles from their biggest, most threatening guy on the block. This allows us to learn more from CCAT and to not just create some bog-standard team, which I have emphasized upon many times throughout this post. There isn't much else to say on this subject; it's a suggestion, take it or leave it.
The second and last thing to note is that while it may have seemed a cool incentive in your head, abolish the vote winners' bonus. It may encourage people to join and contribute from the beginning, but it has another unintended side effect: it turns off people from joining in the middle of the CCAT. When you've got people who have votes that count for more than yours', you feel as though your say doesn't mean much when you've got these people with 50% more powerful votes. These people should be able to convince others to agree with their viewpoint if it is valid and should not needed more-weighted votes to do so. Abolish this bonus and you will be better off.
That's my two cents on the playstyles we should go for on this CCAT. Electrolye, drop me a VM or catch me on IRC if you have any questions.
I will be watching and participating itt often. Electrolyte, tú es chido. That will be all.
As promised, I am finally doing a real, actual submission. My support is officially for a Gravity team because I want ginga to loooove me
I don't really need to justify why I think it's a great choice. Unrepresented in the metagame, unique option, blah blah blah. Gravity teams are just cool. No denying it.
Gonna throw this link out there because I can: Gravity
I don't really need to justify why I think it's a great choice. Unrepresented in the metagame, unique option, blah blah blah. Gravity teams are just cool. No denying it.
Gonna throw this link out there because I can: Gravity
the thing about sun stall is that if you build it well, ninetales, and sun itself, becomes the weakest link. that's what i don't like about it. any team with a defensive slant in this metagame has the odds stacked against it - powerhouses everywhere with easy ways to outlast stall's residual damage (cough regenerator) and a dearth of heavily defensive stallmons with which to oppose them. you need every single pokemon on the team to be pulling its absolute maximum weight to make such a thing work.
ninetales can't. it can't pull its own weight because it has no pull to begin with. on offense, the benefits of sun outweigh the awful horror of having to use ninetales (there are a lot of offensive benefits to sun, especially when sized against other weathers - sun has chlorophyll where as rain lost swift swim, and most of its nukes hit as hard as or harder than their unboosted water counterparts), and ninetales isn't completely useless on offensive if you get the chance to throw around a sun boosted fire blast without being killed by like everything.
defensively though, ninetales is even worse. it's obviously a shit useless defensive mon in general, but the real problem is that so few of its teammates gain anything useful from its support. the only real benefits are 1) cresselia's moonlight (still sucks, 8 pp lol), 2) you can fight weather wars where as weatherless stall has to suck it up (but without dugtrio, those are wars you will lose), and 3) you cut water weakness which can admittedly help a lot of mons. sun doesn't have any analogues to rain dish, and common defensive types (cough steel) do not benefit much from reduced water damage; moreover your steels (crucial to surviving in the modern metagame) are now all bait for dragon fire coverage. dnite's fire punch can't break through regular skarmory easily in neutral weather - in sun, your skarmory might as well already be dead.
there are things to be had by playing sun on a stall team, but i have extreme difficulty believing that running ninetales on the team is worth those flaws.
ninetales can't. it can't pull its own weight because it has no pull to begin with. on offense, the benefits of sun outweigh the awful horror of having to use ninetales (there are a lot of offensive benefits to sun, especially when sized against other weathers - sun has chlorophyll where as rain lost swift swim, and most of its nukes hit as hard as or harder than their unboosted water counterparts), and ninetales isn't completely useless on offensive if you get the chance to throw around a sun boosted fire blast without being killed by like everything.
defensively though, ninetales is even worse. it's obviously a shit useless defensive mon in general, but the real problem is that so few of its teammates gain anything useful from its support. the only real benefits are 1) cresselia's moonlight (still sucks, 8 pp lol), 2) you can fight weather wars where as weatherless stall has to suck it up (but without dugtrio, those are wars you will lose), and 3) you cut water weakness which can admittedly help a lot of mons. sun doesn't have any analogues to rain dish, and common defensive types (cough steel) do not benefit much from reduced water damage; moreover your steels (crucial to surviving in the modern metagame) are now all bait for dragon fire coverage. dnite's fire punch can't break through regular skarmory easily in neutral weather - in sun, your skarmory might as well already be dead.
there are things to be had by playing sun on a stall team, but i have extreme difficulty believing that running ninetales on the team is worth those flaws.
Yeah, I kind of agree with alkine. I've used a fair bit of Sun stall, and the only benefit I ever got from it is that is allows you to spinblock effectively with things like Sableye and even Gengar (since Tenta and Starmie's STAB is weakened). It's also a lot like Hail stall, in that there are only about four to five possible combinations of pokemon which cover weaknesses sufficiently. The only thing I think could be interesting would be Sun-based quickstall, since it lets you abuse pokemon like SubSeed Venusaur and Jumpluff effectively.
Btw, do we have a deadline for the playstyle vote yet?
Btw, do we have a deadline for the playstyle vote yet?
Asek
Banned deucer.
Nominating Weatherless Offense for this CCAT. With all this weather running around, and lots of (All) new players simply slapping Politoed + Torn + Water Spam onto a team, I think that by creating a weatherless team, we can show off a bit of creativity and we still have plenty of options for team slots so we aren't restricted too much, but we have to consider how to counter all the weather the team will be playing against. Good pokemon to have on a team like this would be Heatran, Reuniclus, Gastrodon, genesect as well as powerful dragons such as Dragonite and Latios
I'm going to nominate Quick Stall. I feel like stall has generally become less effective as of late since so many new, offensive threats have been introduced into the metagame, preventing stall teams from reliably checking all of them. I think Quick Stall would be really interesting to build and might be a viable, unorthodox alternative to the common balance/heavy offense teams that are so ubiquitous now.
Even if we don't end up being successful with a quickstall team (I think we can, but hypothetically), we still end up learning a massive amount about the playstyle. There is literally almost no theory behind it right now, all we have is a general idea of how it's supposed to work and that a few teams have been successful using it, so everything which might come up in discussion and teambuilding is contributing to the communities knowledge base.
Righto
Since Gravity has got a fair amount of support, I am here to post what your general Gravity team needs.
Step #1: You need Gravity users, at least two if your going for a balanced Gravity team, 3-4 if more hyper offensive.
Step #2: You need Stealth Rock, its pretty much essential to have, and most half decent Gravity teams have a Spikes user as well
Step #3: You need a Ground Type. It can be anything from Dugtrio to Landorus but you rly need to abuse that Earthquake, otherwise your sorta defeating the point of using Gravity
Step #5: You NEED a Grass type. You have to have a Ground resist somewhere if using a Gravity team, its just essential.
Step #6: Sun + rain + Sand playstyles checked and shit. Personally, I think a spinblocker of some sort is also good since you tend to be hazard heavy anyway but whatever, not quite essential.
The Above 6 steps are the thing we all need to bear in mind if you want to Vote for Gravity for the CCAT. If you think the above requirements are impossible, then basically don't vote for it. If you think it is possible and want to give it a go... then get thinking!!!
EDIT
Worth noting my guides sorta out of date. I did manage to make a fully successful + Competitive Gravity team back in the Excadrill era, I suspect its going trickier this time around tho.
I think this is completely reasonable, and can act as a good blueprint for our team if we choose Gravity.
(Incidentally, what's step 4? It's a little early for that to be PROFIT!)
I've been trying to work out a similar quickstall teambuilding formula...I was thinking a rough setup like this but other opinions would be good, especially about if we need a dedicated transition pokemon.
#1-3 = Defensive core, includes entry hazard support
#4 = Transitional pokemon which is used to switch between the defensive and offensive parts of the team. Wobbuffet is the best example, but might be impractical, so slow VoltTurn users are also nice.
#5-6 = Offensive pokemon which can abuse residual damage while stalling (almost always using Substitute). Ideally they should be able to keep momentum on your side even when they're forced out (e.g. through Encore, Taunt, etc). Having good synergy between the two offensive mons is really important.
You've probably noticed that a defensive core of 3 pokemon which also has to set up hazards and Rapid Spin is a bit overloaded; so obviously there needs to be some overlap in the different roles.
#1-3 = Defensive core, includes entry hazard support
#4 = Transitional pokemon which is used to switch between the defensive and offensive parts of the team. Wobbuffet is the best example, but might be impractical, so slow VoltTurn users are also nice.
#5-6 = Offensive pokemon which can abuse residual damage while stalling (almost always using Substitute). Ideally they should be able to keep momentum on your side even when they're forced out (e.g. through Encore, Taunt, etc). Having good synergy between the two offensive mons is really important.
You've probably noticed that a defensive core of 3 pokemon which also has to set up hazards and Rapid Spin is a bit overloaded; so obviously there needs to be some overlap in the different roles.
Bryce
Lun
This seems like fun.I would go with Gravity since it seems an interesting playstyle.Gravity also creates plenty of opportunity with Ground spamming and abusing moves such as Focus Blast and Will-O-Wisp.It will be pretty creative imo.
Quick Stall and Trick Room also seems cool option.Quick stall sounds interesting but I have some doubt about being successful this meta with so many fast offensive threats around since quick stall will not focus on having heavy walls like regular stall.Trick Room would be pretty much anti metagame trolling those HO and weathered offensive teams full of fast frail hitters.But TR lacks diversity imo because we will likely be using regular TR setters of Reuniclus,Bronzong,Porygon 2 and regular abusers such as Conkeldurr.(Rhyperieor is good too but Bullet punch,Mach Punch and 4x water weakness is meh in this meta).
Quick Stall and Trick Room also seems cool option.Quick stall sounds interesting but I have some doubt about being successful this meta with so many fast offensive threats around since quick stall will not focus on having heavy walls like regular stall.Trick Room would be pretty much anti metagame trolling those HO and weathered offensive teams full of fast frail hitters.But TR lacks diversity imo because we will likely be using regular TR setters of Reuniclus,Bronzong,Porygon 2 and regular abusers such as Conkeldurr.(Rhyperieor is good too but Bullet punch,Mach Punch and 4x water weakness is meh in this meta).
Looking back, maybe Dual Weather wasn't a good suggestion, since it forces 2 pokes from the get-go.
... Changing my vote to (Quick)Stall. Something like Whimsicott / TormentTran / Gliscor and Hazards support sounds freakin' great (and annoying as fuck).
... Changing my vote to (Quick)Stall. Something like Whimsicott / TormentTran / Gliscor and Hazards support sounds freakin' great (and annoying as fuck).
I'm going to diagree with gravity, not because we can't do it, but because I feel its generally hard to create and not many people would be able to contribute. I think stall (any kind) would be best since its not around as much and people can contribute more; hence making the team as best as it can be. I also don't think we should do specific stall / specific anything, because it limits our choices. Just say offense, stall, weather stall or weather offense and let the rest work itself out.
BW2 brought a ton of aggressive new Pokemon to the OU metagame, including things like the Therian-forms, Genesect, Technician Breloom, uprising MoxieMence to name a few, but also the likes of Scizor and Dragonite, which all are offering good offensive presence in almost any team. Even though a solid bulk and a solid defensive (typing) core is what defines most teams in the end.
A well build Hyper Offense team should be able to break through nearly any form of stall, we see everywhere. But how should such a team work? Might running type immunities help such a team? What offensive elements are needed to run hyper offense successfully? What ways does an offensively oriented team against other offensive teams?
I think it's more of a challenge to try getting an aggressive playstyle working in OU, than "just" work on another balanced, bulky team. Also, Hyper Offense doesn't exactly require weather in our lines, so more underestimated Pokemon, like Swift Swim Kingdra suddenly might find a niche to work again. It's also easy to include a VoltTurn splash into Hyper Offense, making it more flexible than it appears at first.
A well build Hyper Offense team should be able to break through nearly any form of stall, we see everywhere. But how should such a team work? Might running type immunities help such a team? What offensive elements are needed to run hyper offense successfully? What ways does an offensively oriented team against other offensive teams?
I think it's more of a challenge to try getting an aggressive playstyle working in OU, than "just" work on another balanced, bulky team. Also, Hyper Offense doesn't exactly require weather in our lines, so more underestimated Pokemon, like Swift Swim Kingdra suddenly might find a niche to work again. It's also easy to include a VoltTurn splash into Hyper Offense, making it more flexible than it appears at first.
Was thinking a little about quick stall, and came across the idea of trickscarf whimsicott+wobb. It's simple, whimsicott with u-turn/leech seed/substitute/switcharoo and standard wobb, use whimsicott to trick a scarf on a switch to ferro/celebii/whatever, sub, and if they switch while you sub, proceed subseeding; if they stay and get locked in to a move, kill with wobb. Maybe with wish support?
You bring up something that I find incorporates all of the values of CCAT, which imo are:
1) engage the community. This type of project requires heavy participation and interest, and I can reasonably conclude that HO is fun and interesting for a majority of players. People have all kinds of creative offensive sets and then you've got your usually bog-standard, tried-and-true defensive sets.
2) provide a challenge to overcome. CCAT is, let's face it, boring as hell if you make a standard team with standard teambuilding. However, if a playstyle that has many obstacles to overcome is presented, interest grows, and HO succeeds where things like sun stall fail in that it is common enough to the point where people know what the hell they're talking about. It is challenging to create a team filled with offensive powerhouses that is reliable and effective in the higher levels of play, it's just that simple.
3) create an effective team that helps explore and learn about the metagame. You can make a standard Deoxys-D + 5 sweepers offensive team in 5 seconds and do well, but that's not what CCAT is for. CCAT is to explore new concepts and learn about the metagame, similar to the research weeks across various tiers. HO is known to be effective, unlike other suggestions that are less explored, and while I do feel that quickstall is an excellent choice, HO wins in this category and would help us as a community explore risk vs. reward, type synergy, effective partnerships, et cetera that come inherent in running HO.
So with that, you have some valid points to consider for HO. Consider this criteria when picking your votes when the time comes. That will be all. ¡Hasta la vista!
EDIT: btw bubbly provided the optimal teambuilding formula imo if we go with quickstall
It seems as if a lot of you guys are going out of the ordinary and choosing teams that aren't just plain weather- which is great, as it can allow us to explore new ideas and concepts that have secretly developed during the transition between BW1 and 2. Here are some of my thoughts on some of the submissions:
Quick Stall- definitely the best choice in my opinion. This strategy is very very clear cut- we either succeed, or we don't. Even if we don't, it will be obvious what our faltering points will be- and we can from there see how the strategy stands as of now. It also brings in a big dicersity of uncommon pokemon- such as Pranksters, Leech Seeders, and friends. I also like this not only because I've used it and it's successful- but also because it connects the OU and Uber tiers by copying a pasting a strategy from ubers into a metagame where ingeneral stallmons do not follow that idea. Definitely worth looking into, and should be considered by all voters.
Gravity- another novel idea. Gravity is a cool thing to work with- as it's a non-replaceable field effect. I think it's a decent thing to look into because of the numerous options we can delve into- it's basically like exploring a new weather. We can find ways to use the evasion drop- by abusing powerful, low accuracy moves. This could also tie into CAP a little bit by the way we play with risk- tweaking accuracy for both us and our opponents. Grounding opponents and hazard abuse is also a very interesting topic in this topic- how we'll take advantage of Skarmory and Bronzong's temporary weakness, and see what happens as the upcoming Garchomp is finally able to nail two of its greatest counters (though, we'll see when we get there) The only thing I don't really like about Gravity is its poir distribution- few pokemon learn the move, and few pokemon can take full advantage of it. Still, finding ways to overcome those problems will make Gravity a very worthwile decision.
Hyper Offense- back when BW2 first started like 2-3 months ago, HO was a hugely popular playstyle that habited up to 50% of all teams. I do not think we can learn anything more about the metagame by looking into a strategy that has already been solidified and approved by many. Hyper Offense also slightly moves away from the traditional values of CCAT, which is using uncommon pokemon, and although that subject is of less importance in CCAT 3 it still accounts for something. We don't need to learn more about how VoltTurn makes people rip their hair what. We do need to learn how Gravity can be used, or how we can make fast, frailer pokemon succeed at walling opponents to death despite their frailty compared to other walls.
I'll give this discussion 24 more hours- maybe less, depending on how much more has to be said. Keep up the discussion gius- I'm seeing a lot of cool ideas and points!
Quick Stall- definitely the best choice in my opinion. This strategy is very very clear cut- we either succeed, or we don't. Even if we don't, it will be obvious what our faltering points will be- and we can from there see how the strategy stands as of now. It also brings in a big dicersity of uncommon pokemon- such as Pranksters, Leech Seeders, and friends. I also like this not only because I've used it and it's successful- but also because it connects the OU and Uber tiers by copying a pasting a strategy from ubers into a metagame where ingeneral stallmons do not follow that idea. Definitely worth looking into, and should be considered by all voters.
Gravity- another novel idea. Gravity is a cool thing to work with- as it's a non-replaceable field effect. I think it's a decent thing to look into because of the numerous options we can delve into- it's basically like exploring a new weather. We can find ways to use the evasion drop- by abusing powerful, low accuracy moves. This could also tie into CAP a little bit by the way we play with risk- tweaking accuracy for both us and our opponents. Grounding opponents and hazard abuse is also a very interesting topic in this topic- how we'll take advantage of Skarmory and Bronzong's temporary weakness, and see what happens as the upcoming Garchomp is finally able to nail two of its greatest counters (though, we'll see when we get there) The only thing I don't really like about Gravity is its poir distribution- few pokemon learn the move, and few pokemon can take full advantage of it. Still, finding ways to overcome those problems will make Gravity a very worthwile decision.
Hyper Offense- back when BW2 first started like 2-3 months ago, HO was a hugely popular playstyle that habited up to 50% of all teams. I do not think we can learn anything more about the metagame by looking into a strategy that has already been solidified and approved by many. Hyper Offense also slightly moves away from the traditional values of CCAT, which is using uncommon pokemon, and although that subject is of less importance in CCAT 3 it still accounts for something. We don't need to learn more about how VoltTurn makes people rip their hair what. We do need to learn how Gravity can be used, or how we can make fast, frailer pokemon succeed at walling opponents to death despite their frailty compared to other walls.
I'll give this discussion 24 more hours- maybe less, depending on how much more has to be said. Keep up the discussion gius- I'm seeing a lot of cool ideas and points!
Can we not do weather? I'm kind of tired of seeing so many weather teams, so a weatherless one would be great. I would prefer hyper offense, but anything not weather is fine.
I guess my vote is going for weatherless HO, at least for now.
EDIT: Note that this would also include TR and Gravity (provided it is offensive of course).
I guess my vote is going for weatherless HO, at least for now.
EDIT: Note that this would also include TR and Gravity (provided it is offensive of course).
My vote's for Gravity, purely for the uniqueness of the style. I'd like something that completely takes the standard and throws it away, and it seems like Gravity does this the best, and the most poignantly.
Also, it'd be a fun challenge to get one that works well. Quickstall would be an interesting second vote, purely because I love stall, and it doesn't seem like we are going to be voting for a true stall team, so that's as close to that I can get.
Also, it'd be a fun challenge to get one that works well. Quickstall would be an interesting second vote, purely because I love stall, and it doesn't seem like we are going to be voting for a true stall team, so that's as close to that I can get.
Gravity I suppose. Quick stall seems to be largely reliant on luck to succeed, so I don't really like it. Gravity is definitely not going to be easy, but with all these people thinking about it I think it can be done.
Also, why have we taken an enormous step backwards as far as voting is concerned? This seems positively designed to be unfair. I mean it's bad enough to have tactical voting just as far as the winner is concerned, but to encourage people to change their vote to the leading candidate in order to increase their say? That's absurd.
edit: ah, I suppose that's somewhat better.
Also, why have we taken an enormous step backwards as far as voting is concerned? This seems positively designed to be unfair. I mean it's bad enough to have tactical voting just as far as the winner is concerned, but to encourage people to change their vote to the leading candidate in order to increase their say? That's absurd.
edit: ah, I suppose that's somewhat better.
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