IMO, the lack of originality has put a little bit of a damper on the tournament. I'm still going to be watching the Finals in a half an hour, but I wish we had at least one or two teams that brought something new to the table.
(Aug 23, 2015, 09:32 AM)DanielJames Wrote: IMO, the lack of originality has put a little bit of a damper on the tournament. I'm still going to be watching the Finals in a half an hour, but I wish we had at least one or two teams that brought something new to the table.
I second this notion. I see it like this...I've never been a fan of the use of legendary Pokemon in competitive play regardless of tiering on places like Smogon, but the fact that 4 out of the 5 "most used" slots across all age groups in VGC are owned or shared by legendaries is somewhat more telling. But even that aside, it's like watching the same teams over and over again, with minor variations, which is not only unoriginal, but boring. If you were to compare VGC to an international tournament like, say, the World Cup, it would be like the same players on every team playing against each other, with nothing but a lucky bounce one way or another determining who wins, rather than the actual team members being better trained, or having a better strategy.
I hate referencing the anime, but I'd imagine an actual Pokemon tournament, like those portrayed in the Anime, would contain more diverse teams that actually mean something to their trainers, rather than just tossing Lando-T and Mega Kang onto your team like everybody else.
-sandragon13
Be sure to check out my Otaru Regional Fakedex. Updating regularly with new Fakemon. Always looking for feedback!
I agree with you all, VGC 2015 has been a little dissapointing to me. The first matches were awesome, because I could see some Pokémon with ''new'' or unusual movesets (like Follow Me Lucario) but, in the end, teams became Landorus + M-Kangaskhan + Heatran. And it's true: US and EU trainers usually introduce original Pokémon in their teams (Gastrodon, for example).
I loved Mark Mcquillan's Machamp. IMO Senior and Junior were more competitive than Master; maybe children have more imagination?
Just imagine how diverse teams would be if legendaries were banned. It'd open the meta up to more team options and strategies. Sure, people would try to gravitate towards certain Pokémon, but it would give more freedom to try out new ideas.
Well, you first need to look at just what these people are playing for here.
"1st: $10,000
Pokémon World Championships Trophy
A Travel Award for the winner (and parent or legal guardian for players considered minors) to the 2016 World Championships
An invitation to the 2016 World Championships
Two boxes of the most current Pokémon TCG expansion"
Pretty big stakes here haha.
And honestly, there's a reason why these teams made the top 8 cut. Sure, they take little effort, are simple, really straight forward & easy to make: But they're SO good.
Most teams that could beat these teams rely on a gimmick of some sort, or have to meet perfect conditions to win. Meaning, they just won't work effectively in a best of 3. If your gimmick is some weird trick room setter, a weird mental herb mon, or just some sort of weird perish team, some weird will-o user, some weird hp user, etc etc; you can get the jump on them on just that one game, you know?
Basically, this was no fluke. People definitely tried to counter teams like these, but even their counters couldn't work/only worked for one match. I figure a lot of players realized that these meta teams were the best, and basically had no holes. So the best way to beat them was through a mirror match. Just my opinion.
50 thousand people used to live here...Now it's a ghost town.
Aug 24, 2015, 12:45 AM (This post was last modified: Aug 24, 2015, 12:46 AM by GiMYz.)
EmbC from Nugget Bridge:
"In my opinion, Japan and the rest of the world were playing different games in this tournament. I may be completely wrong, but I think the japanese mentality was having Landorus' intimidate and offensive pressure on the field at the exact right time while allowing heatran to do its job with Kangaskhan's help. The western players were trying to maybe outlead their opponents and cause pressure with the pokemon they had on the field.
Well, the japanese having a very fixed goal helped them out, since they had answers to most leads by setting up their own strategy or by simply switching out into intimidate and redirection supporters. Shuca berry and Intimidate made it almost impossible to OHKO those heatrans and, even though I wasn't there and this is simply based on MY conclusions taken from what I saw, I think players kind of ignored the threat of Sub Heatran, since western players are more used to that pokemon paired with other megas and the concept of sub steel-types wasn't very exploited throughtout the season. Beating sub heatran requires heavy pressure onto it on turn 1, since, otherwise, a double target will be necessary to KO it, which allows pokemon like Kangaskhan and Landorus to gain some momentum and start tearing apart the opposing team.
I also think that another problem may lie on the fact that players may have thought that, looking at how badly Kangaskhan did last year at worlds, no one would dare bringing it this time around, thus spending more time practicing versus other matchups and leaving the job of taking care of Kangaskhan to less effective pokemon, which makes things complicated when they have to pressure both kangaskhan and heatran, without straight up losing to amoonguss' spore spam and landorus' strong spread moves.
On another note, many players agree that this format relies a lot on lead matchup, since the presence of Mega's and legendary pokemon don't allow many pokemon to take moves upon switching into a better position, making "neutral" leads a very important part of a team in 2015. An example of this is the common "double genies" lead. With those 2, you can start paralysing opposing pokemon and u-turning out to try and counter the opposing leads, which is by itself a solid strategy and doesn't rely too much on the leading matchup.
I hope I'm not terribly wrong on this. I really just wanted to leave my thoughts here and I hope I get some counter-arguments to help me understand the situation a bit more as well."
A look at Pokemon usage at worlds in top 8.
