Pokemon VGC 2015 Metagame Megathread
Closing thoughts about the International Challenge: never again. 21-9 with 2 disconnections (never happened in more than 500+ games on BP.. infact i thought it was a server problem but it wasn't) and 7 losses against Japan/Korean players. I've never challenged a player with more points than me (my reward for winning a match has always been a miserable amount of points while i had to drop over 20 points for every lost game). Regarding team compositions, i have to admit that Japan meta is quite ahead of ours at the moment (Japan Sand and TR M-Gardevoir are the most popular examples but they aren't even as much popular there as here, there are many other solid cores there around M-Kang too), however i had to face things such as double Prankster lead (Liepard/Sableye + Thundurus insane Swagger + TWave/W-o-W spam + Foul Play combo), Fire Punch M-Kang, Mental Herb Amoonguss, a lot of Jolly Landorus-T (because screw the damage output, i just want to rely on flinches more than you do!) and many other things (mostly based on RNG or situational moves - such as HP Grass M-Gardevoir, yes.. a 2HKO on my poor Gastrodon)
I am unlucky because due to my timezone it is more likely for me to be paired with JPN/KOR players than US players (apart for EU players obviously)
Anyway i hate this RNG based format and i don't really like the pairing system too. You could say: Battle Spot has the same format! Yes, it's still a BO1, but you can't build a RNG based team because BS needs consistency over anything else and you can't really expect to reach higher rated ladders if you rely on Swagger, while you only have to play 30 games in the International Challenge and you may be lucky enough to have the RNG in your favour at least 20 games out of 30, then the tourney is over and you finish with a score of 20-10 with a team you made with no time or effort.
I hope to see an online BO3 format in the future, which would be more than interesting as it would give the appropriate challenge and balance for this kind of competition.
I am unlucky because due to my timezone it is more likely for me to be paired with JPN/KOR players than US players (apart for EU players obviously)
Anyway i hate this RNG based format and i don't really like the pairing system too. You could say: Battle Spot has the same format! Yes, it's still a BO1, but you can't build a RNG based team because BS needs consistency over anything else and you can't really expect to reach higher rated ladders if you rely on Swagger, while you only have to play 30 games in the International Challenge and you may be lucky enough to have the RNG in your favour at least 20 games out of 30, then the tourney is over and you finish with a score of 20-10 with a team you made with no time or effort.
I hope to see an online BO3 format in the future, which would be more than interesting as it would give the appropriate challenge and balance for this kind of competition.
