Pokémon Diamond/Pearl *FRIEND CODES IN CLANOCR THREAD*

[Arek the Absolute]

i gotta say that you were rude when you called him gafgarion

way to step ouuta line the damned

[Gafgarion]

Dude, at least spell my name right Arek.

[Brushfire]

O__O

I go away for a couple of days and everybody goes off on a tangent.

Cool!!

[The Damned]

10 characters

[Aninymouse]

lol, I was quoted :3

[Brushfire]

Speaking of quotes, next week here in Misawa is the first ever Mini-Con!!

In this illustrious (see: small) anime convention is a tournement for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl where the winner walks away with $100.

I'm in to win.

Wish me luck OCR!! ^__^

[Aninymouse]

Speaking of quotes, next week here in Misawa is the first ever Mini-Con!!

In this illustrious (see: small) anime convention is a tournement for Pokemon Diamond and Pearl where the winner walks away with $100.

I'm in to win.

Wish me luck OCR!! ^__^

See, here's my biggest beef the current gen Pokemon games: the finicky auto-leveling!

If you play a match online, everyone plays at an equal level. This goes for D/P AND Battle Revolution.

If you play LOCALLY on D/P, there's NO AUTO-LEVELING! Why, Game Freak, why? I've lost lots of tournaments to players of lesser skill just because they bothered to raise their Pokes to Lv.100 while most of mine stay around the 45-65 range!

If there isn't going to be any Wi-Fi, MAKE SURE YOU'RE PLAYING BATTLE REVOLUTION!! Bring your own Wii and game and TV if you have to! Two tournies I went to last year were ruined for a lot of people because of this.

[The Damned]

Yeah, never mind. Trades completed. Carry on.

[Brushfire]

Well the games were indeed played at lvl 100 on the Wii. It was 16 Man, Single Elimination game with the winner recieving a $50 gift card and a booster box of Pokemon cards. I won but I didn't keep the cards.

I love my Double Teaming Ninjask! I used the same strategy the entire time. Send Ninjask(Khepri) out, DT twice, Swords Dance, than send out my Metagross(Mjolnir) or my Tyranitar(Titan). I didn't even have to use my Weavile(Kamaitachi), Lucario(Anubis), or my Electivire(Zeus).

I got to beat up a bunch of kids and thier Poke-at-Mans.

I'm rad as F***!

[Gafgarion]

Congrats on your win!

[The Damned]

Booo! Double Team is banned from standard competitive battles. You suck.

OK, actually, it's the majority of Japanese players that seem to suck. Several times, I've read articles or interviews with top internet players, and they say that once they start playing against Japanese players (even though they are obsessive as fuck about the games) they don't EV train, breed for IVs, or bother with Natures or standard movesets.

It seems that North America and Europe are the top regions for competitive playing.

[Brushfire]

Talk about bad competiotion, I faced one girl who was about 19 who had a team of Eevee evolutions. Then there was the 7 year old with the team of Arceus.

Some people just don't know how to play.

[Aninymouse]

Booo! Double Team is banned from standard competitive battles. You suck.

OK, actually, it's the majority of Japanese players that seem to suck. Several times, I've read articles or interviews with top internet players, and they say that once they start playing against Japanese players (even though they are obsessive as fuck about the games) they don't EV train, breed for IVs, or bother with Natures or standard movesets.

It seems that North America and Europe are the top regions for competitive playing.

This is scarily close to the truth, believe it or not.

I remember when DP was new, a Smogon regular was over in Japan and faced a local. As much was discovered. It was dubbed the "first international DP battle," lol. Good memories.

So speaking of Smogon: I hadn't been there in sooooo long, but lately I've been dropping in just to see what's up. Maybe it was the new form of Giratina that showed up recently... anyway, apparently there's this long-running debate over if Garchomp is too cheap for standard OU battles.

Now, I left the competitive scene around the time people were heralding the "GrowthTran" combo of Tangrowth and Heatran, so I pretty much have no idea what's been going on with the Shoddy Battle metagame since it's conception. However, at the time of my leaving most considered Garchomp to be a force to be reckoned with, but no insurmountable obstacle in and of himself. In fact, more people were upset over Salamence, or even Gyarados. So, I suppose my question is, has the special-attacking (or mixed attacking) version of Garchomp turned out to be more deadly than originally thought?

Basically, people feared Salamence because of Choice Specs Draco Meteor; anything but Blissey (and MAYBE Empoleon or Bronzong) were getting 2KOed AND it was impossible to tell what threat it posed to you until it pretty much took out one of your duders. This got people REALLY pissed off because no one likes to be FORCED to use Blissey. The physical version of Mence was still dangerous, but was only a concern insomuch that it would eat your Blissey for breakfast if you guessed wrong! Also, Empoleon and Bronzong do not like Earthquake or Fire Blast, respectively. The only thing keeping Gyara & Mence in line was Stealth Rock, which isn't even something you can guarantee like a spot on your roster.

So, like... competitive 'mons was looking stale since the tried and true "wall/counter" system of Advance was settling DP into stagnation WAY too early. A lot of good players started playing Ubers just because there was no possible way to play it in a "wall then counter" manner because everything is ridiculously overpowered and unbalanced there. [by the way, Ubers is hella fun to play.]

So... I left and took a break. The only thing I've done in DP since winning the Gamestop tourney was... breed some special-attacking Riolu.

...

MY QUESTION THEN: Anyone here play competitively? Is Garchomp too cheap for OU? If this does not apply to you, what are you doing in DP these days instead?

[cobaltstarfire]

Last time I poked around Smogon, garchomp didn't seemed that hyped up, it's got a couple of counters anyway, just kill it quick before it boosts up too much is all I can say. (I bet a vaporeon with hp/def/spA ev's could switch into and ice beam one down pretty easily).

I don't play competitively though, most of the pokemon I like are BL/UU, and they don't fit together in a cohesive team. I have thought of sitting down some day and trying to make one though. IV's also take me a while since school eats up a lot of my time. I've been working on a flygon for two months, and the best I will have bred by this point is. 23/23/27/29/19/27 I can't begin to fathom how long it'll take to get a whole team of IV'd pokemon.

Even then, I learn through experience and, honestly too many competitive gamers seem to be dickweeds. I want to play to have fun and learn, not listen to some egotistical prick be an ass to me about the pokemon I like, and how much I suck.

[Aninymouse]

I kind of agree that competitive battling isn't the be-all-end-all of the Pokemon metagame. Still, they're not all a bunch of dickweeds. Every competition has dickeeds, though. Leave them to their weedly ways, I say.

BTW Vaporeon isn't a smart switch-in because of that 65 base Def. Even if it's fully fattened up, you need some SA to KO dragons an' stuff. Then again, I didn't run any numbers, really. Just memory. I have no further desire to "run numbers" after all I did last year, though...

I just realy like special-attacking Lucario. There isn't anything that walls it besides Cresselia, really, but it's so frail and it's not all that fast, so it seems pretty fair to me. IMO, Lucario is one of the best DP Pokemon by far, in utility alone. Great resistances, passable defenses, superb offense, moderate speed, astounding movepool...

[cobaltstarfire]

I honestly just pulled a vaporeon out of my butt cause I beat the champions garchomp with my vaporeon when it was something like...20 levels weaker (with a crit ice beam, it's hp dropped quick too so I imagine a normal one woulda done the trick). Granted I don't remember the situation beyond "did my vaporeon just 1hko this big scary landshark?" And her pokemon probably aren't IV/EV trained for maximum stompage like a serious players would be.

I think the only reason it didn't die is either the chomp used an attack that missed, or vaporeon had max acid armor, took the attack and, ice beamed it.

I have a habbit of sacrificing pokemon in battle sometimes, which probably isn't really the best habit to have.

Edit: I rather like Lucario myself just aesthetically speaking I've heard he's a good all around pokemon too, He's on the back burner for training though. I don't know if I want a special or physical attacker yet..

[Brushfire]

Just make a Scarfcario and you really can't go wrong either way. Unless you you pick a wrong move by mistake when your stylus sorta misses the touch screen >_<.

[Strati]

I don't really like Lucario. I guess I'm still bitter about Drack raping my entire team with one several times. D:

[cobaltstarfire]

I don't particularly want to use the sets posted on smogon either though, it's not really any fun that way.

And Lucario is awesome, I lead with my untrained one once against Drack a long time ago, totally surprised him and killed his tyranitar. XD After that I think he ate the rest of my team I maybe killed one or two others...but I'll take it since he had EV'd pokemon, and mine were just my elite four pokemon with no special training or coherency.

It just occurred to me that years ago when I beat my cousins pokemon once, even though they were higher level, it was probably cause he just cheated and used rare candies to do it. His pokemon maybe have been lv 100 but they had 0 ev's.

Stupid cousin, he always turned out to cheat at everything we competed with, and that's the only time he lost because of it. *grumble grumble*

[Gafgarion]

A Luxray and a Magmortar would be a great combination. Despite that they both have weakness to grounds attacks, like Earthquake, their moves can combine to beat almost every type. Where Magmortar stands, he is dishing out a lot of special attack, like high powered fire attacks, and then some ground attacks also. Luxray, swinging out with some very high attack, can come in with its Crunch, Thunderbolt, or Iron Tail. They have a variety of moves that can go up against just about any type well. Also, both of them being single type helps with the weakness factor.

[The Damned]

A Luxray and a Magmortar would be a great combination. Despite that they both have weakness to grounds attacks, like Earthquake, their moves can combine to beat almost every type. Where Magmortar stands, he is dishing out a lot of special attack, like high powered fire attacks, and then some ground attacks also. Luxray, swinging out with some very high attack, can come in with its Crunch, Thunderbolt, or Iron Tail. They have a variety of moves that can go up against just about any type well. Also, both of them being single type helps with the weakness factor.

Variety and Iron Tail (HAAA HAAA HAAAA! IRON TAIL IN AN ACTUAL BATTLE? HAAA HAAAAA!) are not going to help Luxray survive in the more offensively minded Double Battle metagame. Even with a +Speed nature and a full set of Speed EVs, he's out sped by a lot of popular Doubles standards. Throw in some rather mediocre defenses and the guy can't take a hit.

Glass cannon syndrome. And a limited use one, at that. He has some uses in the single battle UU arena, but once you start using him out of that, he's going to show how outclassed he is.

[Gafgarion]

So what you say is that physical and special sweepers are the best for double battles?

[Zombie]

MY QUESTION THEN: Anyone here play competitively? Is Garchomp too cheap for OU? If this does not apply to you, what are you doing in DP these days instead?

I wouldn't say I play competitively mainly because of the lack of players around where I live and my lack of motivation to do anything competitive online. I am working on a decent team though, fully ev trained and whatnot. I really don't try to breed for good IV's though. Takes too much time.

[cobaltstarfire]

Breeding for IV's is time consuming but it's kind of fun too (ok, maybe I'm just a little obsessive crazy). I think it's worth it though cause those extra IV's can make a difference sometimes, like with speed.

[The Damned]

So what you say is that physical and special sweepers are the best for double battles?

No, I'm saying that Luxray has shitty defenses and can't take the hits that pile up in Doubles. Look up "glass cannon" and you'll understand what I mean.

Unlike Singles, where you can afford to take the occasional hit in favor of a stat-up move or to let an ability to activate, in Doubles, you're facing a more offensive based metagame.

Your opponent might use both his pokes to attack one of yours. Even a tough defensive poke will be hurting from that. In most cases, you'll end up being short on poke by the end of the first round. That's a big disadvantage. Even if you manage to do some damage with both your pokes, you'll still be facing two opponents to your one (or two, but with lowered HP).

If he attacks both your pokes, then you're getting close to a stalemate. Unless you have managed to nail a few critical hits in that first round, it's going to be a close battle. Close battles are where really knowing your team and what the other player is trying to do makes a huge difference in winning.

Of course, simply using only offensive pokes isn't going to work. But trying to use stat-up moves and relying on type coverage isn't going to do jack shit. And seeing how Earthquake is common as hell, having a pure Fire and a pure Electric isn't a good idea. You've created a duo that has a big, common, shared weakness.

One popular tactic in Doubles is having a team where one or more pokemon uses a move that will hit everyone in battle including its teammates. But the other(s) have a move or ability that will negate damage from said attacks.

Example one would be EQ and Flying type/Levitate/Protect. Team one uses Protect (or just attacks if it's Flying type or has Levitate) on the first poke, and has the second use EQ (usually something with obscene attack and speed since you need to hit hard and fast). Protect is a priority move, so it goes first above all the other moves. The EQ goes through and hits both opponents.

Example two would be using a Ghost type with a bunch of Exploders. I've seen this used a lot back in Gen 3, and it still works pretty well today. Get something like a Gengar, and then three more pokes that can make good use of Explosion. Explosion is Normal type, so it can't hit Ghost types. The Explosion hits both opponents and the Ghost type is still free that round to attack. Once the turn ends, bring out your next kamikaze and repeat.

Example three would be the lesser used Surf and water absorbing ability combo. Surf's damage is divided in gen 4, so it's even less usefl now, but the basic idea is that using a water absorbing abilty, you can heal your teammate and hit both opponents at the same time.

This is just one of the sort of things you can expect from Double battles. There are other strategies out there, but they all revolve around doing a much damage to the other team as fast as possible. There is no time for Belly Drumming or Baton Passing chains. By the time you got that ready to use, you're already down to the point where you can't recover. Even if you go with using status changes like paralysis, by the end, you might not make it. Using Toxic is just stupid. There's no way you could crag a battle out long enough to make it do enough damage.

But yeah, Doubles is really offensive based. And to survive in that, you need that something that can take and deal out hits. Luxray does not do this.