GODDAMN CHEAP TACTICS

[Zak Rodgers]

Continuing on from my previous rant:

Way too many players use really cheap, near-impossible to counter strategies all the goddamn time. It's like they just don't know how to win if they don't do these things. These tactics CAN be countered, but it's really hard. It really bugs me how most players just resort to these in place of training Pokemon, buffing EVs and generally coming up with fresh strategies. The most common ones I've seen are:

Belly Drum/Aqua Jet/Leftovers Azumarill
Brave Bird/Gale Wings/Choice Band Talonflame
Taunt/Recover/Prankster Sableye
Toxic/Leech Seed/Protect ANYTHING
Dark Void/Nasty Plot Darkrai
Protect/Speed Boost Blaziken

Now I know some of these are the only way that a Pokemon can be used effectively, but seriously. All the time? Nothing else? These tactics are generic, annoying and cheap; you don't really need any skill or anything. Just spam spam spam these strategies and BOOM, you've instantly got over 200 wins. COME ON.

Main reason I hate this is it's pretty much idiots with no idea how to win otherwise.

[Drago]

Taking a look at these, and offering my opinion... Keep in mind, these are based entirely on my experience. Totally subjective here.

Belly Drum/Aqua Jet/Leftovers Azumarill
As long as you have a way of hitting the Azumarill hard after the Belly Drum, this one isn't too bad. Especially if you've got a Water Absorb Pokemon with something that can hit other Water-types hard. It's cheap, but since it's so common, it's possible to counter it before things get too rough.

Brave Bird/Gale Wings/Choice Band Talonflame
I hate Talonflame for many reasons. First of all, it's got the worst name in Pokemon, bar none. It sounds like something a seven year old came up with. Beyond that, I struggle with Talonflame immensely. Its high speed means even if I've got a good counter, it'll probably lay the smack down before I can fight back. Brave Bird + Choice Band can decimate anything that doesn't resist it. Ridiculous. Hate that thing.

Taunt/Recover/Prankster Sableye
Haven't met up with this one yet. Would be interested to see how I fare.

Toxic/Leech Seed/Protect ANYTHING
...Okay, I confess: I sometimes run a Leech Seed/Protect Venusaur with Sunny Day thrown in for funsies. It's dog, I know. No Toxic, though.

Dark Void/Nasty Plot Darkrai
As soon as someone runs a Darkrai to begin with, I already dismiss them as cheap. Legendary Pokemon are not for competitive play.

Protect/Speed Boost Blaziken
Also guilty of this one. It's part of a larger Baton Pass team, so it doesn't get much actual combat use, but that doesn't really excuse it. Funnily enough, my typical team has the perfect counter in the form of Mega Alakazam. It was against a Scolipede instead of a Blaziken, but once I Traced their Speed Boost, they evacuated the method. Funny stuff.

I really dig your posts, man. Makes me think more on competitive battling. I'd love to try my luck and see how I fare against you.

[Zak Rodgers]

Haha, thanks man! I'm not an expert at PvP but I still do pretty well. If you're interested in battling my friend code is 4399 0155 5342.

Also, the way the Sableye one works is they use taunt (given priority by prankster) to stop you from setting anything up. I tend to run confuse ray/thunder wave/swords dance a lot so this makes me rage. Because of prankster, it has priority will-o-wisp to make your life generally less pleasant and priority recover for when its HP gets low. It usually has either foul play or shadow sneak in the last slot. The only real way I've ever beaten this was with a full-out attacking Infernape, who couldn't be burned and took very little damage from foul play. It managed to get a burn on the Sableye and I won, thank god Seriously, you never want to come up againt this cute little ghosty thing

[shadownite90]

Got another 2. The Fear Rattata is annoying then this, i first saw in a 1v1
Spore/Imprison/Mean Look/Transform/focus sash/Smeargle
try to fight that...

[Zak Rodgers]

F.E.A.R is generally replaced by anything with Choice Scarf/Destiny Bond nowadays, F.E.A.R was more D/P stuff.
That Smeargle one seems impossible! Banned list no doubt? That one alone will probably cause lots of rage quits.

[shadownite90]

F.E.A.R is generally replaced by anything with Choice Scarf/Destiny Bond nowadays, F.E.A.R was more D/P stuff.
That Smeargle one seems impossible! Banned list no doubt? That one alone will probably cause lots of rage quits.

That Smeargle is not banned because it only works once. after using it switching it out and then reusing it is pretty hard, and it's that or stick with your opponent's pokemon build, which may require a specific item or just be a bad build. In 1v1 though, you're done.

[Zak Rodgers]

Haha, I can imagine! It's the only absolute wall I can think of, so even if it's not banned it's pretty OP.
Nowadays you get a lot of "bomb" Pokemon, i.e instantly taking out the other Pokemon at the cost of your own. I use Mega Gengar as a bomb sometimes. Shadow Tag = can't escape, Taunt = opponent must use an attack, Destiny Bond = double KO (possible).

Mega Gengar is squishy enough to be taken out easily enough for D.B to work, and fast enough to set it up beforehand.

[shadownite90]

Haha, I can imagine! It's the only absolute wall I can think of, so even if it's not banned it's pretty OP.
Nowadays you get a lot of "bomb" Pokemon, i.e instantly taking out the other Pokemon at the cost of your own. I use Mega Gengar as a bomb sometimes. Shadow Tag = can't escape, Taunt = opponent must use an attack, Destiny Bond = double KO (possible).

Mega Gengar is squishy enough to be taken out easily enough for D.B to work, and fast enough to set it up beforehand.

I didn't think of that use of Gengar. I always thought Hypnosis/Curse/Nightmare/Dream Eater and let them die slowly in their sleep.

[Blademaster]

I played some comp Pokemon shortly after Gen 5 was released.

Sandstorm. EVERYWHERE.

Never again.

[Zak Rodgers]

I didn't think of that use of Gengar. I always thought Hypnosis/Curse/Nightmare/Dream Eater and let them die slowly in their sleep.

My strategy works with anything that can use taunt/D.B, but I found Mega Gengar works the best because of Shadow Tag (people tend to switch out when D.B is used)

[DarkestLight]

Talonflame alone is so broken I stopped doing comp play :/ I just started looking at my 3DS again to see who I wanted to level up for OR/AS mega life...uurgh. And that Smeargle is old hat annoying :/ Very old hat annoying.

[Lady Vulpix]

I must admit I've used Toxic/Leech Seed/Protect in White 2, but only on a few occasions and with a Pokemon I don't always include in my team (because I still have the habit of training far more than 6 Pokemon at a time). Never trained a Talonflame, I took the harder route and trained a physical Charizard in X (because I've always liked Charizard and couldn't get a good special one).

My main problem is IVs, though. I find IV-breeding extremely boring, so I usually resort to finding Pokemon with semi-decent stats and trying to make the best out of them. So avid IV-breeders usually 1HKO my Pokemon before they can make a move, which is not fun, but friendly battles can still be interesting.

Oh, and I had a nice moveset for my Ninetales in White 2... I like Ninetales in Gen V because, while its stats are not the best, they're good enough to get a couple of hits in, and a good strategy can win many battles. But they completely nerfed Ninetales in Gen VI, so... not happy about that.

[Magmar]

Alas, gone are the days when you could just rock up to a battle with your favorites and stand a chance ):

[Zak Rodgers]

Alas, gone are the days when you could just rock up to a battle with your favorites and stand a chance ):

I KNOW RIGHT!! I tell you, I've looked for so many ways to make my favourites work well, but I can't find any bar Drapion (my most favouritist Pokemon ever!)
I think the only competitive Pokemon I use that I actually really like are Drapion and Infernape - my best sweepers.

[shadownite90]

What build do you use on the drapion, I've been curious? And in my experience, 1 in 20 people will actually switch out of D.B.

[Zak Rodgers]

What build do you use on the drapion, I've been curious? And in my experience, 1 in 20 people will actually switch out of D.B.

Confuse Ray + Swords Dance + Knock Off + Cross Poison
252 HP, 252 Attack, 4 Speed
Scope Lens
Sniper

Confuse Ray often stops them from attacking with a little damage to boot. This gives time to get a couple of Swords Dance boosts. From then on Drapion is a bulky physical sweeper as Knock Off has 130 base power if the opponent is holding an item, plus swords dance boosts. It's fast enough to outspeed about 60% of Pokemon with little to no speed investment as well. The scope lens boosts critical hit rate, and Cross Poison also has a high critical hit rate. Sniper boosts the power of critical hits, so a swords dance boosted cross poison is almost guaranteed to score a crit and OHKO anything that doesn't resist it and even some that do.

[Zak Rodgers]

Confuse Ray is one of Drapion's egg moves BTW