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Team preferences

Which team do you prefer to use

  • Total voters
    353
I use Bulky Offense almost exclusively. The things I like about bulky offense is that it is the most versatile kind of team, with multiple different options for star Pokemon and attacking/defending combinations. Pokemon associated with bulky offense usually have many resistances as well, making team-building easier.

Stall teams have too many threats to deal with in six slots, and people often use gimmicky sweepers or wallbreakers that you won't have prepared for. Back before Platinum, stall was my favorite playstyle because it was much easier to wall the relatively limited number of threats in the metagame than to sweep with them.

Heavy offense teams are the kind I have the least experience with. I don't like to use Heavy Offense teams mainly because if they lose the momentum of the match, they will quickly be swept by one of their many team weaknesses. Heavy offense teams are also very vulnerable to losing a turn from a miss or overprediction.
 
Bulky Offense and Heavy Offense. They are much more fast-paced than Stall (which I also don't have the experience or patience to play), and Stall is hard to make a team that can handle all the threats in the metagame now. Bulky Offense is a lot more flexible and its easier to play with.
 
I often played Bulky Offense in the past. But now I'm testing some Heavy Offense.

I also wanted to play Stall but it's realy difficult for me ( I mean classic stall). So maybe I'd be better in the future !
 
none of those.....they are just terrible, my teams are always diferent.
maybe not terrible, but I just hate them....stall is far too borin and bulky offensive is terrible against stall... at least of what'ive tried.... or just I don't understand BO?
 
Easily Heavy Offense, for a few reasons. The first is that I suck at any form of stall, and I hate slow-paced games or stall wars. Second, Stall requires so much prediction, which is one of my bad points. Plus, the longer the game takes, the more time there is to make a mistake. Finally, there are too many roles to fulfill on a Stall team, and I only have six spots on my team. I also fail to understand how to win when hardly any of your Pokemon can inflict decent damage.
 
I usually always go offensive-balance.

I really frown upon traditional stall, being the epitome of negativity. However, heavy offense teams just fail spectacularly on the ladder so its a no go. I have tried my hand at 'semi-stall' or stall based balance, but have found there are simply too many threats to check with a core of 3-4 mons. So i typically build a team of both bulky and glass cannons around a single wall, which acts as a pivot.
 
I love stall. But I always pack some attacker for finishing off my opponent's battered down pokemon. I guess that counts as Modern Stall. My most effective teams are pure stall.

To all you people complaining about stall being slow. Stall players play quickly. Stall opponents take up the time. I constantly have full time when using my stall teams while my opponents always take a few minutes. Stall may lead to games with more turns, but my opponents (playing HO or semi-stall most of the time) are the ones taking up all the time. In stall, you know what your pokemon can do. You know the damage calcs for Jolly vs. Adament Salamence and Lucario. I know how bulky my opponent's Gyarados is from the damage it took coming in on my Gyara-weak special wall. HO opponents (the ones who complain about taking too long) must calculate every attack to determine how badly his attacker will fare against my walls. And yet they say I am the one taking up all their precious time. I've had rage quits after some epic matches because my opponent wanted a quick fight, not a good one.

Also, stall is far less luck-based. Using 100% accuracy moves with 24 PP is far more reliable than 85% accuracy with 8 PP despite the damage drop. Every EV in stall counts, and as such every pokemon is specifically designed to take on specific threats. Stall does not deal with prediction like HO and even semi-stall. Sure, gimmicks exist. Tough. Stall simply switches in its best counter/check every time and uses the appropriate attack to deal with it. It does not guess until the very late game what the opponent will do. It deals with the threat at hand. My opponent "outpredicts" me (read as: guesses correctly)? Take the SR/Spikes/Toxic Spikes and cry as my check now becomes a counter. You need that critical hit to take out my wall? Roll the 16-sided die and hope for 16. So many warstories have someone wishing for hax at a critical moment. I need one more turn to make you die of poison+sandstorm? Flip a coin with Protect. 50% chance is not hax in my book but a fair bet. I've killed off a good number of pokemon with double Protecting and lost an equal amount of my own pokemon. But I can accept it as a chance that was worth taking. Stall: less hax, less prediction, more skill (all of these are debatable but reflect my personal opinions).

Enough ranting. I'm just tired of everyone calling stall boring or bad. People can throw together 6 attackers and call it HO. It may even be effective. Throw together 6 walls and your team will die 90% of the time. Stall must fill so many roles it isn't even funny. All 6 pokemon are chosen for a reason. Understand that stall is like medical school. You have to spend lots and lots of time and (virtual) money to even stand a chance. You have to know all sorts of wierd, extremely specific numbers that could be crucial mid-operation. That is stall.

And stall fits me perfectly. I will do homework rather than copy it. I will read the book instead of just SparkNotes. Why? Because I believe the patience makes me a better person. I take shortcuts, sure, but they are minor or are the source of my mistakes. An intellectual life, defined by the ability to be prepared for good and tough times, outweighs the hit-and-miss dreams of becoming a celebrity or professional athlete.

But that's just me. It's your life. Do what you will with it.
 
I like to play the hazard phazing game and heavy offense if I dont want to think and just break shit. But balance-styled teams are my overall fun ways to play
 
Bulky offense FTW; it's more or less a balanced team, with just a tad more offense.

My favorite bulky offense pokemon is Togekiss. 85/95/115 defenses are awesome, and 120 Special Attack gives Kiss plenty of offensive power.
 
A lot of these coined terms for team themes don't really make sense to me, and I'm sure many people here have different opinions about "what is semi-stall" or "what is traditional" since they're not really definitive. What the team theme is (Baton Pass, Rain Dance, et cetra) and where it sits on the Offensive---Middle---Defensive spectrum seem exclusive from each other.

However, what I can say for myself is I always gravitate towards non-frail and Stealth Rock neutral or resistant Pokemon. The role that particular Pokemon plays is irrelevant as long as those conditions are not in place, so my teams can range between more offensive oriented or defensive, depending on the purpose of the team. Using something flimsy like Azelf, Gengar or Infernape doesn't sit very well with me, and I feel like I have holes in my team if I use said Pokemon.
 
My favorite type of game is one where I wall exclusively and then grind out until they submit (I do that to my noob irl friends and it is oh so much fun). Sadly this doesn't really work in the fast paced metagame we see these days. I play best when I use a defensive core as a scaffold to build a bulky team or a balanced team. I also fail miserably at theme teams excluding trick Room which I can pull off sometimes.
 
i play semi-stall almost exclusively, it's just something that i am good at and which i enjoy playing.
i've recently been experimenting with a bulky offensive team that works pretty well too
 
Among heavy offense though, there's 2 types, or rather there are 2 types of offensive pokemon-- "Breakers" and "Set-Up."

Obviously "Wall Breakers" are well known, but I'm basically lumping together all pokemon that have extraordinary power and/or speed from the start and are used to break the enemy without setting up. Band, Specs, Scarf and Mix-Sweepers are all part of this category, and most trappers do to (I guess with the exception of Sub-Magnezone or some weird Pursuit-Agility Gross).

The Second category goes without explanation, set-up users, Luke, Dragon Dancers, Agiligross, Empoleon, etc.

Within "Hyper Offense," there is a range from full-breakers to full-set-up and everything in between.
 
I like quite a balanced team myself. I usually have a sweeper in mind when I make a team, and then go from there to provide support necessary to succeed with that sweeper, which is usually quite defensive tbh.
 
I like stall. I tried balanced, heavy offense, and stall, and stall worked the best for me. It could be called bulky balance, because I have several usually offensive pokemon on my team, stalling, like metagross and dragonite.
 
Is there a definition of all these types somewhere? Because I can't distinguish between Obi stall and quick stall, for example.

Anyway: I've played several different kinds of teams, but I favour having sweepers and tanks as well. That means heavy offense is out of the question. Full stall is something that makes me go @_@, so it's out of the question as well. What's left is what I play. For example, I played teams that had three support Pokemon and three sweepers, teams that aimed for Linoone sweeps (includes screens, Memento, steel trapping ...), teams that had two Baton Passers passing speed boosts to sweepers, teams that had a little of everything, etc.
 
Although most of my teams eventually turn out to be Bulky Offensive or Balanced, I enjoy Semi-Stall as it's probably the most riskless strategy out there. On one hand, you can wear out offnesive teams using Spikes and counters, when Spikes reduce the likelihood of double switching thanks to the passive damage, and on the other hand you carry some late game sweeper to clean up vs Stall teams, and occasionally have Trick somewhere to deal with other late-game set-up sweepers such as CM Suicune, CM Latias, CM Wish Jirachi and Curselax. It's a style of team that prepares for the most possible threats in the current metagame, hence it's effectiveness. Without some kick into it it would just be some boring old regular stall team that falls to the classics.
 
I go with heavy offense as I find its generally the one I have the most fun playing, Bulky isn't bad either, but I can't stand to play Stall or anything that doesn't involve mostly offensive type strategies, its just way too boring.
 
Banedon said:
Is there a definition of all these types somewhere? Because I can't distinguish between Obi stall and quick stall, for example.

Anyway: I've played several different kinds of teams, but I favour having sweepers and tanks as well. That means heavy offense is out of the question. Full stall is something that makes me go @_@, so it's out of the question as well. What's left is what I play. For example, I played teams that had three support Pokemon and three sweepers, teams that aimed for Linoone sweeps (includes screens, Memento, steel trapping ...), teams that had two Baton Passers passing speed boosts to sweepers, teams that had a little of everything, etc.
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with the exception of heavy offense and heavy stall these playstyles arent well defined
 
I usually use Balance teams, or rather, my teams end up that way even if I try to make a different style work for me.
 
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