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Team preferences

Which team do you prefer to use


  • Total voters
    353
I tend to gravitate towards more balanced teams that contain a one bulkier poke, frailer sweepers, and a supporter. My two main teams right now are unintentionally quite similar with an anti lead, a bulky hazard layer, and then a few frailer sweepers backed up by 1 wish supporter.
 
Bulky offense aka semi stall is the best way to go right now. You outright beat 99% of bulky offense teams, stall falls easily to phazers + residual damage, and any form of offense can't take repeated hits from the residual damage, plus the revenge killer it carries. You need to play almost perfectly to beat a good player using semi stall, and one little misplay can mean that they get their spikes up. That means you can't make the double switches you need to, and before you know it you're panicking and you get swept. It's as simple as that.
 
I really find HO good and has won me a lot of matches. But Bulky Offense seems a bit better for me now, having the ability to take attacks while having Offensive power so, yeah..
 
I think there's an Uber Quickstall RMT about Quickstall.

Am I right in thinking that a good balanced team should be able to switch readily from exerting offensive pressure to exerting defensive pressure?

Incidentally, should the original poll have included weather (including TR and Gravity) teams, and Baton Pass chain teams as separate categories?

I've come across a few Baton Pass teams. Given they always start with Ninjask, my Aerodactyl lead tends to beat them. (Aside: Does anyone use Ninjask on a team that ISN'T Baton Pass chain?) If they do pass Attack and Speed to something, I can either keep the offensive pressure up, or bring in a setup sweeper. Since intermediate chain members often lack offensive power, something like Salamence can get Dragon Dances in, and then strike hard before the Baton Pass team attacks.
Alternatively, Bronzong's Explosion can usually stop the chain before it gets too powerful. Uxie's Memento can also put them back to square one, but it's not an optimal option.
Once the chain is broken, they tend to go back to Ninjask to try and restart it, but at that point I have knowledge in my favour.
I think for Baton Pass, short chains, say only two or even one member before reaching your receiver, are going to be better.
 
While I used to play almost exclusively Bulky Offense or Hyper Offense, I have turned to the dark side and started playing stall. It really is more fun to me, as there are no more embarrasing losses where I get 4-0'd because I accidentally let an DDRay set up on me. Slowly building up hazards and have the "correct" switch-in for any of my opponent's pokemon appeals to me somehow. I guess it's due to my OCD.
 
extremely defensive balance, semistall, quickstall, whatever the hell you want to call it. heavy stall doesn't work anymore because heavy offense is too prevalent, but random wildcards such as scarfjirachi or curse pkmn help patch that up
 
i prefer to play bulky offense, i like keeping the pace of a battle in my favour and just by switching around resistances. I like playing quick battles too, and while i like hyper offense, it can be shut down rather easily if Azelf doesn't fully set up.
 
Not all Baton Pass teams are long-pass.

Mine utilizes a single pass strategy. Zapdos can easily handle Blissey if you pass a Nasty Plot or two, plus about anything else. Same goes for Agility Empoleon and Lucario.
 
I love semi-stall teams/balanced as I just think they are the most versatile, especially balanced, they can speed up or slow down the pace of the match according to their opponent. However, on the ladder I almost always use semi stall as it can stall but has more methods to beat stall.
 
Well, for me, I prefer to play more with bulky offense / balance teams. Bulky offense is truly wonderful as it can take a hit and dish out as well. However, I don't use Pokemon that are classified as "bulky attackers"; rather, I EV my Pokemon more towards their defense. I always maximize Hp on my Choice Band Tyranitar, and I use the less popular Bulky Gyarados and Salamence Dragon Dancer sets as opposed to the more offensively oriented counterparts. The main problem with using the 4 Hp / 252 (attaking stat) / 252 Spe spread is that, in today's metagame, everything hits like a truck. Another reason is that priority is running around everywhere you look. Bullet Punches fuck up a Salamence sweep horribly, as well as ensuring Azelf and Weavile see no action (non-lead Azelf, anyway). Extremespeeds are running rampant from the ever common Lucario, and while less common that other moves, there are still a fair share of Ice Shards.

Balance is a playstyle that some may see as inferior, though I don't know why; I find that having a healthy mix of supporters and sweepers in a team gives you the ability to not only aid the teams sweepers with greater ease, but check a larger portion of the metagame. For instance: I am currently laddering with a team on my alt (its hovering around #39 right now on the leaderboard) that runs both a Blissey and a Milotic, as well as a Dragon Dance Salamence and an Agility Metagross. Some may call it foolish, but I see it as smart. By using Blissey (or a physically defensive mon such as Skarmory or Hippowdon), you essentially check 1 / 2 of the metagame. While balanced teams are much more common in UU, in my opinion they work just as well in OU.

As for heavy offense, I don't see what the big deal is. A dual screen Azelf / other Pokemon lead is easily shut down by any Taunt user, any Tyranitar, or really any powerful attacker. Its another reason why my leads are rarely my Stealth Rock set-upper Pokemon. Heavy offense is predictible from turn one, when the lead lays the first screen. Once I see that, I just run to my Gliscor / Infernape / other powerful stallbreaker-wallbreaker and fuck the whole strategy. Its extremely boring and jejune and you can see whats coming easily. It also takes no skill to play (the exception being players such as Stath).

Just my two cents.
 
I do and have always liked balanced teams. I love the prediction aspect of the game and balanced teams use prediction a lot. They also do a good job at adapting to various threats. When you have a variety of Pokemon (tanks, sweepers, revenge killers) it is easy to counter whatever your opponent throws at you.
 
I'm bad at pokemon, so I play a lot of heavy offense which I am very successful with, but secretly my favorite style to play is defensive balanced with lots of toxic spikes and stuff. I also like to play with teams that use a lot of entry hazards and phazing. The only style I don't like playing with is modern stall, and this is because I'm bad at pokemon and can't play with anything that requires prediction.
 
Traditional Stall for me. Even though I find offensive teams more fun to use, I have a lot more success with stall.
 
I haven't changed my laddering team heavily ever since shoddy started.
Dunno if you're being sarcastic here, but if you're not, amen to that.
Not being the best team builder in the world, far from it, I stuck to the first good one I got. And with good results.

Balanced for me. Honestly, and this is going to sound bad, I simply couldn't use a team that wasn't fun, like most stall. Don't intrepret this as not using the most effective because "it's not fun", though. Everyone builds their own style with time.
 
Stall is one of my favorite play styles, but bulky offense and overall offense is becoming the main play style of play and most effective. Stall is still feared though but with teams 3 or 4 wall breakers stall has to shift to balance to keep up in the current meta game.
 
During the D/P era, I favored full-on stall. I liked the idea of having six bulky Pokemon to support me, knowing I will not go down without a fight. On Youtube, I was known as, "The King of Stall." The longest Wifi battle I have ever partaken in thus far lasted a staggering 160 minutes, resulting in the opponent to run. The team I am most well known for back in the day in my opinion consisted of the "infamous" SkarmBlissCress combo, supported by three choiced sweepers. Specifically: A CB Metagross, Choice Scarf Slaking, and Choice Specs Salamence. During that era, this team may only have attained 2-3 losses.

However, with the advent of Scizor, and wall breakers such as Salamence with Outrage and Lucario lurking at every corner, in my opinion, stall isn't as quite effective as it once used to be. Therefore, I have made the switch to bulky offensive.
 
Bulky Offense is my usual OU style, because I'm too lazy to stall... and I'm no good at it, always get outpredicted, once my team is known. With Bulky Offence, I have durability, and wear the foe down, but before my team is known, and hence, they can predict properly.

My teams could sometimes be classed as balanced too, things like support Jirachi, and Vaporeon make it to my team quite often, as with Latias and Rotom.

In NU, my main teir (Hey, this dosen't specifiy), Balance/Bulky Offence is again, my style. Gastrodon is great at takeing hits from both sides there, while I use set-up sweepers, and choice pokemon to do the bashing, like Dodrio with a Band, and Victreebel with Swords Dance.
 
Raikaria said:
In NU, my main teir (Hey, this dosen't specifiy)

Don't worry. We aren't going to flame you for posting about your preferences in NU. Though, it might be good advice to tell you that this thread is meant for OU since it was posted in Stark Mountain and not in any of the sub-forums.
 
To think about it Bulky Offense and Quick Stall is the evolution of the current metagame with Waters, specifically utilizing rain dance. This is my main idea..

Levels of Teams in Metagame from Offensive to Defensive:
~ Heavy Offense
~ Bulky Offense
~ Balanced
~ Quick Stall
~ Tradition Stall

Bulky Offense > Quick Stall > Balanced
 
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