[DISCUSSION] Getting Into Competitive

[w2gMk]

Weeeeeell time to search through my thought drain for this...

1. How were you introduced or known about Competitive Mons? Was it reviewing online sites like Smogon, NB, Serebii, etc? Was is a certain "Poketuber" or someone / thing IRL who told you about this?
   
   I first started playing pokemon (the game not comp) on a gameboy advance when i was 12, 9 years ago. It was fire red, I then got sapphire. When I just started high school when I was 14, I had picked up a copy of white. No internet accessibility however. (probably could have, but alas, didn't know how routers worked, am but a poor boy) I liked white so much, the battle train was really really noice. And thats when I started getting introduced to competitive. I wanted to crush the everlasting goo out of the battle train, so I looked on teh youtubes and found people like Jwittz, and Verlisify, and from verlis' old collaborations Alex Ogloza, and that one guy with the hair and pizza and stuff, and learned about EV training, and natures, and I bred pokemon on white. I never bred for IV's at this time however. Invisible numbers? Who has time for that. Eventually, just about 5 months from when ORAS dropped, I went to pokemon showdown from Verlis, cuz hey I wanna play pokemons maaan I didnt even have a 3ds/2ds, no DSi or whatever. I just had a millennium old DS lite, and from what I could tell, showdown was free. I then learned how to play mons from there. I mostly spent my time playing NU for like, 3 years until I got rekt by nu room mawds, and now I lurk in the anime room. Thanks based gawd verlis. To this day, when i see some of the first teams I made, I cri.
   
   
   
   
2. What's the main reason why you play Competitive Pokemon in general? Basically the endgame goal aside "be the very best". If you don't play competitive, can you explain so. (Here I won't judge too much in everyone's response to this, but will be noted).
   
   I play to win. As most people do. However, I like to use things I wanna use. I wanna git gud, so gud no one can question if I'm not gud. Buuut I don't wanna git gud via Cresselia Heatran Amoongus Landorus Kangaskhan spam. Ew. 100% ew. I'll just take my alomomola and based god wigglytuff, and attempt to win with them instead.
   
   
   
3. Are there any areas you struggle with from Teambuilding, Theorymoning, Battling, Prediction v Rewards, RNG Management, or anything I didn't listed. Essentially to regards to the Competitive Pokemon itself.
   
   Well 2 things.
   1: When I team build I build balance teams, which are set up sweeper, def wall, spd wall, SpA sweeper, Physical sweeper, whatever I need. If I don't use balance, its usually weather, which justn eeds to blow up everything. My problem with this however, is I go to a team builder, chose my sweeper, then build type wise from there. Building for meta's I have absolutely no idea how to do. There is no guide out there, there is no way I can find out myself without playing for 5 generations. If I'm using my scizor, I don't know that pokemon X will have hp fire 100% of the time, until I physically see it, in a battle, right in front of me. Never when I'm building. The extent of my meta knowledge is down to specific pokemon when I meet them in battle or in team preview. Not during my builds. This impacts theorymoning as well, I assume. If this sounds confusing, it probably is, I'm okay with explaining further.
   
   
   2: I pretty much assume people are playing at the same mental level I am on, both higher players, and lower players. I usually play at level 2, which consists of knowing what my pokemon does, what my opponants pokemon does, and what their pokemon is likely to do. So I get destroyed a lot because gud players will see oh, he's predicting too much. And not so good players will take out my mons just because I expected them to do different. An example being me u-turning my darmanitan on a bisharp. (it had focus sash metal burst so i guess I'd be played either way lel) Another being me using sticky web galvantula, when they have an espeon. Instead of sticky webbing, I'll thunder, expecting an espeon switch, to no avail because they didnt switch :L. This absolutely ruins me on showdown's ladder, as low ladder players get the best of me because of this, and when I start getting out of low ladder, I've been playing to their level too long, and now I get ruined by people playing at higher levels.
   
   One final thing that doesn't really fit in either of those 2 but I don't think is important enough to be listed as #3 though, is when I ask for help finishing up a team I made. If a team I make is bad, I ditch it immediately, so the only teams I ever have that I ask for help on are teams which I have made that are pretty decent, I have used a lot to quite a lot of success, but have a little problem that I don't know how to fix. It's usually with the pokemon that isn't essential to the team. I'd think asking for help in such a case from people better than me would be easy and simple but for some reason it never is. My team is solid, Its like Helms Deep from Lord of The Rings. All I need is the little hole in the wall replaced. However when I ask for help, the people that "help" end up literally destroying what makes my team, my team. They take out the glue that keeps it together, they replace the thing I use to protect my main sweeper for a thing that doesn't do anything productive. They take the burger out of my cheese burger, and turn it into chicken nuggets. :L
   
   
   
4. Kinda similar to Q2. Are they any issues concerning with Competitive not regarding actual battling itself (Skip if you want).
   
   I don't like hax0ring. But everyone knows that by now. The end. GG no RE
   
   One thing I would really really like is to see what people on GTS have put up for trade. I want to see the pokemon's summary. That way I can know for certain what I'm getting. Too long have I been giving up decent breedjects on gts for brave nature, non hidden ability, Jynx. It's a tad frustrating.
   
   
5. If there's one thing about competitive Pokemon that will make it "accessible", what its it?
   
   More accessible battle information. On showdown, you got all the information you need. On ds, not so much. Remember hitting that pangoro to 50%hp 42 turns ago? Showdown does. Just hover over the pangoro to see. DS? Nope, you gotta remember that. Remember how your opponent had a zoroark on his team in the beginning? Showdown remembers. Even after 100 turns showdown remembers. DS? Nope. I got a youtuber I watch really good because of this, as he forgot I had a zoroark because there's no way of knowing 40 turns in unless you could remember. Flamethrower "alomomola" op.
   Sure, this makes the skill of the game a little lower, but here's the thing... the gods of the game are still going to be gods, regardless of whether or not they can physically see as much information or not. Not a fan of such an argument as good players already know and understand what's happening, with or without the extra info. It is selfish to want to deprive new players of such information, because you, a person who knows every damage calc in the game in every situation without having to even thing about it thinks it makes the game easy.More information will make the game much more accessible to new players, causing the whole community to get better, allowing more and more players to become better, which will help grow the community which I think is overall better than catering to the gods of the game. Ever start to play a game, just to find out the community is dead and only the best of the best who have ever been the best are the only people that still play it? This is how to stop that from happening.
   
   
6. Final Question: How optimistic you feel about Competitive Pokemon for Generation 7? Yes the poll, though people can just say their feeling about competitive for this gen. Obviously we are only 3 weeks in Gen 7, but like to ask still.
   
   Right now I feel like this gen is going to be very fruitful. Althought UB's and Tapu's are everywhere, and are incredibly horrific to fight full teams of them as they are basically legendaries (a few of them are terrible though). Terrains are now usable or at least prevalent enough to be considered, more items are out there that do a lot of things to help counter old things (adamant orbs seem cool for special attackers and defiant users rip landorus maybe). I think I'm going to actually like OU this gen. Didn't like it at all last gen, it was basically stall or 6 mons that 1-2 shot literally everything that wasn't stall. My xp with it at least. Although as stated previously by marcus, smogon will probably destroy it so they can continue on with their talonchomps. I hope battlespot singles 6v6 will prove to be nice if this proves to be the case. I havent battled on sun/moon battlespot as of yet, but I hope they have 6v6 singles with restrictions. Nothing worse than having a nice vgc style team you want to paly in 6v6, just to find everyone you challange using 6 arceus :L
   

Sorry in advance for this autobiography of a post. I can't resist such opportunities to rant talk about things.