How many people on this forum battle/have battled competitively before? And I don’t necessarily mean going to VGC Tournaments (which is awesome if you have). It can be something as simple as regularly playing on Pokemon Showdown or memories from link battles as a kid.
It’s something that isn’t discussed on this forum much, but I’m sure there are some people here who are into this side of the games (I know I’ve had discussions with @c0ll3ct0r on competitive battling before).
I figured I would start a thread on it so those interested can share stories or maybe even link up for battles on Pokemon Showdown.
So, who here is interested in the competitive side of the Pokemon games? And if so, who are some of your favorite all-time favorite Pokemon to use in competitive battling?
And can we all agree that this guy below is the competitive king?
In college I was in a Pokemon Club that would host themed tournaments every week, so for a short time I was into the competitive scene. This was around XY/ORAS. We actually had a really cool tournament where everyone was assigned a type and depending on how well you did you were placed as a gym leader/elite 4/champion. Existing or new members could take the gym leader challenge to get themselves a spot in the rankings which was really cool. I had an electric team that landed me a spot as an elite 4 member which was really cool.
I haven’t really kept up with the competitive scene at all but I had a lot of fun when I was in that club.
I started trying VGC again recently, but it’s not been going so well😅 I always want to try and big brain my way to the top/use Pokémon that are not popular (in my head I’m Billy Beane assembling a team of underdogs), but I guess there’s a reason they’re unpopular ha.
My recent thing was finishing 249th in the Mythical Melee competition.
I remember Incineroar, Regieleki, Landotus-T and Urshifu-dark cant remember the last two on top of my head. I’ll tell you the team once I get home and give you the rundown of the team as a whole if you like to know more.
I’m not sure if this is true or not, but I remember reading that if you miss an attack, you are actually more likely than usual to miss again on the next turn. So if you have a 95 percent accurate attack and you miss on Turn 1, it will be less than 95 percent accurate on Turn 2.
I was into VGC mainly around late BW into XY/ORAS years. I still enjoy watching but haven’t played seriously in years. I never really ran anything crazy off-meta - luckily a lot of my favorites (weather trio, Salamence, Garchomp, TTar) got plenty of spotlight across multiple gens.
Definitely agree with this. Most of my favorite Pokemon through the generations are the ones that I had on my team (even just for casual playthroughs).
Light clay Regieleki with dual screens, electroweb and volt switch. Idea behind it was just to set screens and if it survives to check flying / water types. It was also pretty great that Eleki hits hard so if its survives it has potential to do big dmg.
White herb Lando-T with max attack and atm my main dynamax mon, it checked Incineroar and other Lando-T pretty well thanks to white herb and it hit Incin super hard with earthquake / max move and gave speed control with fly / max move
Sitrus Incineroar very basic Incin, fake out, flare bliz and parting shot but little twist with darkest lariat to hit trick room ghost types. Intimidate fake out, parting shot out and the cycle begins again to give trouble for physical mons.
Sash Urshifu-dark yet again very basic Shifu at the time, wicked blow, sucker punch, close combat and detect. Comboed with Incin darkest lariat I was usually able to KO trick room setters before it was up. Also shifu was good ace in a sleeve since it hits hard but its pretty weak itself so last mon on the field with sash made sure it got at least 2 hits off most of the time
Leftovers Tapu Fini it was there to threaten rock / ground types with muddy water and give hard time to dragons with moon blast. Main idea was to keep Tapu in the field as long as possible with protect and leftovers and set up few calm minds in the progress.
Assault vest Kartana water types were big problem for this team so Kartana took care of them pretty well. Also I dynamaxed Kart time to time since it gets pretty good moves : Brick Break so shatters opponents screens if they are on the field, Smart Strike was good max move, Leaf Blade for those pesty water types also gave problems for ground types as well and Aereal Ace for max moves to gain speed in dynamax.
At the time this was pretty good team, I cracked top 1500 which I’m happy about but nowadays I don’t think this would be very competitive any more, meta has changed a lot since.
Ah man! I battle with my best friend regularly to this day!
RBY/GSC champion!
Full fully evolved Pokedex level 100 round robin tournies, a little betting cash to spice things up. And Matt, you will love this… all old fashioned, link cable style with GB SP.
Yes, Tauros was straight broken in Gen 1, but even in gen 2 he is a god.
Here is my ranking of best guys for Gen 2 framework, no legendaries included:
Espeon (broken if you don’t have a dark type in your party or faster Alakazam)
Blissey
Starmie
Alakazam
Tauros
Exeggutor
Many of these guys will steamroll a whole party with no counters, but even with counters, will guarantee taking at least 2-3 Pokemon down in a game, which is a huge sway in overall record during each round robin.
I made it to top of the ladder in showdown doubles back in 2017 with a fun hailstorm team.
110 base power plus stab and 100% accuracy plus freeze chance blizzard spam lol
most of the time now I use sandstorm with storm drain cradily to cover all the water weaknesses of rock and ground types which works pretty well. Nobody suspects cradily in OU tiers and he is bulky af
Then you also had Umbreon, who didn’t offer much in the way of offense but was a PAIN IN THE PADDED REAR END to take out because it was so damn bulky AND had access to Moonlight.
Seeing Umbreon in GSC is like seeing Misdreavus, your blood pressure automatically goes up. I’ve ran Roar on Nidoking before just to have another killswitch against both.
Mean look passing is well, mean, and brilliant, but it’s so obvious you rarely see it in ADV these days. In GSC however, the options to stop it are that much more limited, so you see a bit more of it.
Gen 2 is so weird like that. It’s probably the only generation where you can have Pokemon that don’t even run attacking moves still manage to wreak havoc in the OU tier. Mean Look/Perish Song/Protect/Confuse Ray Misdreavus is one of my worst nightmares in Gen 2 competitive. Not a single physical attacking move in there, and yet, that set is brutal.
I actually love Gen 2 competitive battling because there is so much strategy involved, but be prepared to sit there for 45 minutes, especially if your opponent brings something like an Umbreon or a Misdreavus. I’m not sure there is a generation where there is more stalling.
Good point. I would even venture to say that Celebi is fairly passive in Gen 2. Not nearly to the extent of Misdreavus or Umbreon, but if you’re using Celebi in Gen 2, it’s basically for Leech Seed and Heal Bell (which is pretty similar to ADV). Of course, its Psychic hits pretty hard, but Celebi is more of a support Pokemon, which is obviously strange for a Mythical.
