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This is more of a tournament question than a LC question, but I have good reason to believe my opponent has ghosted the tournament (new profile, only post signing up for LC, will not reply to my attempts for scheduling). what do I do and when do I do it?
 
BeardedDrakon said:
This is more of a tournament question than a LC question, but I have good reason to believe my opponent has ghosted the tournament (new profile, only post signing up for LC, will not reply to my attempts for scheduling). what do I do and when do I do it?
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No stress, if your opponent doesn't reply to your messages, you should post in the tournament thread, letting your host know that your opponent hasn't replied and you're requesting an activity win. At the end of the round, assuming nothing changes, you will advance to the next round.
 
I'm pretty new to LC and have been enjoying it a lot. I've mainly been using one of the sample teams with Eviolite Grookey + Staryu (PokePaste), but I have had some serious problems with Fire types, am I missing something with this team that makes it deal with Fire types (aside from Staryu obviously), or is there a change that I could make to the team that would make it better against them? If this question is supposed to go somewhere else please let me know.
 
Hobie said:
I'm pretty new to LC and have been enjoying it a lot. I've mainly been using one of the sample teams with Eviolite Grookey + Staryu (PokePaste), but I have had some serious problems with Fire types, am I missing something with this team that makes it deal with Fire types (aside from Staryu obviously), or is there a change that I could make to the team that would make it better against them? If this question is supposed to go somewhere else please let me know.
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It depeneds. Ponyta is by far the best and most common fire type, and it usually runs a berry juice set with 4 attacks. Staryu should be an okay enough stop to it, and Mienfoo + Sucker Punch Pawniard can do the trick too. Try and pressure it with Stealth Rocks, smart Mienfoo pivots and Knocks from Grookey, and as long as Staryu or Mienfoo are healthy, Ponyta should be manageable.

The i think second most common fire type is larvesta. With that team, you have two mons that Larvesta checks and tries to burn, so you gotta play smart about it. Still, Larvesta is really Stealth Rock weak, and gets pressured by your other 4 mons (especially Staryu of course), and even by Mienfoo High Jump Kick after Knock Off if you haven’t gotten burned.

And lastly, the other relevant, more explosive fire type archetype is sun (teams with Vulpix + Charmander and/or Ponyta). Against this kind of team, you have to play really smart, since it’s so offensive and one small mistake can cost you the battle. You have Mienfoo to kind of check Ponyta or Vulpix in Sun, and of course Staryu is gonna be crucial. Try and stall Sun turns (and even Solar Power chip) with Fake Out, play smart with Stealth Rocks and the pressure from Pawniard’s Sucker Punch (and Koffing living hits) should help you win.
I hope this helped
 
Hey, I have heard that pawniard has become more used, but for me ferroseed is easier to use due to the prominence of water types such as staryu, mareanie (if seed is okay to be knocked), frillish, and carvanha making it difficult to slot pawniard. when using pawniard, what are good checks to waters/dig other than evio grook and what are common defensive shells utilizing pawniard?
 
BeardedDrakon said:
when using pawniard, what are good checks to waters/dig other than evio grook and what are common defensive shells utilizing pawniard?
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pawn builds have a harder time finding waters resists, yeah. grookey (evio or not) does the trick, but after that all waters have different counterplay. for example, if you get foongus as your poison you have a soft check to staryu and frillish, but carvanha isnt covered by it. similarly, you own frillish does wall staryu but has a hard time vs carvanha (there are few carv defensive checks, your best bets usually will be ferro, evio grook, star and trace pory, but smart play from carv lets it get past all those). you will wanna beat carv usually by limiting its entrances via hazards, life orb recoil and prediction on the protects.
tldr: grook, foongus, frillish, trace porygon, staryu and mareanie can work as water resists vs staryu, but you will wanna check carvanha offensively rather than defensively
 
What's going on with the little cup ladder? There are 400+ accounts with an elo between 1500 and 1499, most of which haven't even played enough games to get a GXE score.
 
Thootjuh said:
What's going on with the little cup ladder? There are 400+ accounts with an elo between 1500 and 1499, most of which haven't even played enough games to get a GXE score.
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if you don’t ladder for a while your elo slowly decays, and it stops decaying around the 1500 mark

if you can’t see their gxe, idk why but my guess is that it expires after a while
 
the analysis for agility evio porygon uses the EVs leftover from SpA and Spe on defense, but investing them in SpD seems viable due to the substantially reduced koffing sludge bomb role (9 damage without investment to 7 damage with a point on almost all roles, pory has 23 HP). I also got suggested to keep the def but take away a point of SpA for SpD, and while all of the important benchmarks/mons I need to pressure seem unaffected by the change many other roles such as against SpD natu do less. which spread is the best for my porygon considering it is my best koffing pivot with loon dig as an option, and is my primary wincon?
 
Hey, I'm new to LC and Smogon as a whole, tho this acc is from 2019 xD. I've been running this sample team from tazz https://pokepast.es/95b87e766c74f4d7 for a while. I switched the Staryu for a Shellos and the set on the Natu to a crit me not one (which resulted in this - https://pokepast.es/592be40a40debb29). I'm doing fine tho I have a question about general Mienfoo leads. I know foo vs foo is obviously a speed tie and usually, there is a first turn fake out from both sides. The issue is about what happens next. I'm not sure when are people going for a knock off and when they are choosing high jump kick (I guess I'm too low on the ladder for ppl to u-turn :D). Personally, I prefer going for a knock off on turn 2, but it's bad to take a jump kick which my opponent sometimes opts for. On the other hand, if I predict a jump kick and switch to say Koffing, I sometimes get knocked off myself (which I would have preferred to happen to my foo instead of the Koffing). I hope it's not a prediction situation and there is sth I'm missing given that the only reliable answer for both moves would be a fairy which seems quite limiting... Thanks for any help in advance :)
 
kotarak said:
Hey, I'm new to LC and Smogon as a whole, tho this acc is from 2019 xD. I've been running this sample team from tazz https://pokepast.es/95b87e766c74f4d7 for a while. I switched the Staryu for a Shellos and the set on the Natu to a crit me not one (which resulted in this - https://pokepast.es/592be40a40debb29). I'm doing fine tho I have a question about general Mienfoo leads. I know foo vs foo is obviously a speed tie and usually, there is a first turn fake out from both sides. The issue is about what happens next. I'm not sure when are people going for a knock off and when they are choosing high jump kick (I guess I'm too low on the ladder for ppl to u-turn :D). Personally, I prefer going for a knock off on turn 2, but it's bad to take a jump kick which my opponent sometimes opts for. On the other hand, if I predict a jump kick and switch to say Koffing, I sometimes get knocked off myself (which I would have preferred to happen to my foo instead of the Koffing). I hope it's not a prediction situation and there is sth I'm missing given that the only reliable answer for both moves would be a fairy which seems quite limiting... Thanks for any help in advance :)
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in general, mienfoo wars go something like someone fake outs, both knock off (u-turn is not uncommon if you have something like abra in the back and have a sturdy foo answer and something that can force knock on foo later). after that whomever won the fakeout war has a certain OHKO with HJK, where the one who failed has only a role. this most commonly leads to the person who lost the war cutting their losses and going to their poison, but in certain scenarios you can risk the tie anyway since your opponent is likely to knock. on turn 2, knock off is more valuable than HJK damage since you can only regen the latter. If your opponent's only good lead is mienfoo, or mienfoo/grook are likely leads, you can lead Koffing which can fire off a sludge bomb into something in exchange for fake out/u-turn chip.

As for your team, the current archetype you are running is very matchup dependent, and even on most the ones shellos can win, you can fish for crits with something like porygon, and you can status the opponent to either force recovers and get turns, or have them lose turns to paralysis. your diglett would also greatly prefer to be SpA sash, which runs max SpA max Spe timid, with the set of sludge bomb earth power final gambit protect. this set can trap LO grookey with protect, and it can situationally trap even eviolite if terrain ends. Natu is also quite inconsistent and outright loses to carvanha, but you can run it with 13 SpDef 12 Def to deny Porygon the SpA boost. In general, I don't recommend your current archetype, as its very inconsistent and it doesn't play at all like most of the rest of the tier so is very hard to learn the tier on.
 
Thanks for the thorough answer. I implemented the changes you suggested, and am going to see how it goes. I understand the strategy is inconsistent, and am rotating between 2-3 teams right now. I do enjoy the crit me not archetype given that I don't usually like set up sweepers when they are offensive tho I'm open to change. The tazz team is good as well though it seems to be too passive at times... Open for any suggestions :)

I was wondering whether someone can explain to me what's the deal with fairies (sorry if this is more appropriate for the metagame thread). As far as I see it fairy is resistant to both dark, fighting, and bug (so perfect for foo) and one of their 2 weaknesses is covered by def due to the omnipresence of fighting types. I understand poison can be problematic since it's on almost every team as well, but I guessed this requires everyone to have a way to deal with them too... While looking at the VR the highest-rated Fairy I saw was Morelull and it only recently got upped on the ranking (with the provided explanation being "Mushroom"). I understand grass/fairy has many weaknesses. Why a pure type fairy such as Spritzee is so low on the ranking escapes me. I checked the dex page and the sets provided mentioned synergies but not specific counters as far as I can tell. I'll greatly appreciate it if someone can shed some light on the matter and am sorry if I'm missing something completely basic :D
 
kotarak said:
Thanks for the thorough answer. I implemented the changes you suggested, and am going to see how it goes. I understand the strategy is inconsistent, and am rotating between 2-3 teams right now. I do enjoy the crit me not archetype given that I don't usually like set up sweepers when they are offensive tho I'm open to change. The tazz team is good as well though it seems to be too passive at times... Open for any suggestions :)

I was wondering whether someone can explain to me what's the deal with fairies (sorry if this is more appropriate for the metagame thread). As far as I see it fairy is resistant to both dark, fighting, and bug (so perfect for foo) and one of their 2 weaknesses is covered by def due to the omnipresence of fighting types. I understand poison can be problematic since it's on almost every team as well, but I guessed this requires everyone to have a way to deal with them too... While looking at the VR the highest-rated Fairy I saw was Morelull and it only recently got upped on the ranking (with the provided explanation being "Mushroom"). I understand grass/fairy has many weaknesses. Why a pure type fairy such as Spritzee is so low on the ranking escapes me. I checked the dex page and the sets provided mentioned synergies but not specific counters as far as I can tell. I'll greatly appreciate it if someone can shed some light on the matter and am sorry if I'm missing something completely basic :D
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So the issue with fairies is not the type itself (granted, being weak to both poison and steel is not good, knowing that theres one of both in every team), but the fact that no fairy is that good and all of them have a lot problems against them. Morelull (which in my opinion is underrated) is deadweight against ferroseed teams, since it literally cannot damage it nor put it to sleep. Natu is also another mon that gives it trouble, since it blocks Spore too. Still, it has quite a few things going for it (checks the three of Mienfoo, Grookey and Carvanha, which is actually rare). Its just that half the time its kinda doing nothing.
The other ranked fairy, Spritzee, is never seriously considered at checking Mienfoo antics because it's too passive. It needs two turns to heal (with Wish + Protect), which makes it free for dangerous mons like pawniard or Koffing to come in and threaten it out, leaving it unable to heal without risking set up (like rocks for example). Also, it doesnt add much other than checking mienfoo. For example, mareanie knocks and scald + sludge is hard to switch into, and koffings attacks are even harder to check, plus neutralizing gas being broken itself, while spritzee just… moonblasts for 3 damage into ferroseed. It is just too passive a mon for this lc metagame.
so to put it simply, its not that the fairy type is bad, but the fairies are. The next best thing is like cottonee, which is hyper offense exclusive
 
Thanks, didn't realise Spritzee is that slow and that Koffing is that good of a tank lol. One either has to run timid or scarf to reach more than 12 spd in which case Psychic does:

252 SpA Spritzee Psychic vs. 0 HP / 76 SpD Eviolite Koffing: 12-16 (60 - 80%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (12, 12, 12, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 14, 16)

or do both timid and choice specs which is like:

252 SpA Choice Specs Spritzee Psychic vs. 0 HP / 76 SpD Eviolite Koffing: 18-22 (90 - 110%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
Possible damage amounts: (18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 20, 22)

It can't even delete foo with scarfs+modest

252+ SpA Spritzee Moonblast vs. 0 HP / 36 SpD Eviolite Mienfoo: 20-26 (95.2 - 123.8%) -- 75% chance to OHKO
Possible damage amounts: (20, 20, 20, 20, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 24, 26)

and is obviously absurd to stat with xD. Well, I guess fairies just ain't good enough. Thanks for the answer tho :D
 
hi id like to know is grookey/ presumably some other water resist/immunity popular or something? it seems that the standard set up set's attack is facade.
i mean base base 48 attack with not stab facade is used over 57 spa with hydro pump/scald?
 
realaccountami? said:
hi id like to know is grookey/ presumably some other water resist/immunity popular or something? it seems that the standard set up set's attack is facade.
i mean base base 48 attack with not stab facade is used over 57 spa with hydro pump/scald?
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I assume you're talking about Shellos.

:xy/shellos:

Shellos @ Eviolite
Level: 5
Ability: Sticky Hold
EVs: 228 HP / 132 Def / 100 SpD / 4 Spe
Impish Nature
- Facade
- Curse
- Amnesia
- Recover

Shellos uses a set of Curse, Amnesia, Recover and Facade to serve as a late game sweeper, and it is the the only viable Pokemon that gets the necessary traits needed to serve this function of "defensive sweeper".

Thanks to its ability Sticky Hold, it is impossible to remove Shellos' Eviolite item with Knock Off. this means that Shellos has a certain amount of "guaranteed bulk" from the Eviolite, allowing it to set up using Curse against physical attackers and Amnesia against special attackers. Once a Shellos gets set-up (which is quite simple to do), the only real way to stop it is with a crit or a hard counter like Ghost Types or Swords Dance Grookey.


Even though Shellos' special attack stat is higher, thanks to Curse boosting not only Defense but also Attack, it means that Shellos after setting up will hit significantly harder with physical attacks, moreso if Shellos is status'd thanks to Facade. For similar examples of this, other pokemon like Tapu Koko and Nidoking in Overused have higher attack than special attack, but use special movesets for a variety of reasons.


That's not to say you can't use things like Scald Shellos, I've seen it before, but I would highly discourage it, as you would be almost entirely outclassed by Frillish, Staryu and Mareanie. I hope this helps you understand how Shellos works, it can be a very hard Pokemon to deal with even for the best players.
 
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