Mawouel

Wow i didnt have any opponent for like 3 weeks, i'm away for 2 days and i instantly get disqualified ? I mean i didnt have anyone to look for, the moment i had an opponent i got forfeited the same day, seems legit... I guess the moderators might juste have disqualified everyone not playing to go for the following turn, which means i never ever had to play the tournament because i never had any opponent on the tree......

I am really curiour about what kind of team would you suggest. Having a predictable team doesnt mean it's bad, you just dont get the element of surprise and most people are prepared to counter the top tier poke of the meta (those you use). I think what he meant is besides viability tiers, using off meta pokes can prove very good because people are not prepared to face them. You have to take into account that other people will be using similar pokes to yours, so you have to prepare yourself some solutions.

You can find where to find every item in the game in the guide section, so you know which mob you can covet and where they are ! About the holding item while using thief, honestly i don't know.

no, if you didn't fight him in round 1 when you were supposed to fight him and the time expired than you both were disqualified. Yeah, I was waiting for round 1 to be played to get my round 2 opponent, then i saw i was automatically sent to round 3. Didnt Moltisanti look for his round 1 opponent ? Shouldnt only be the other one disqualified and him still in the tournament ?

That's how competitive pokemon is, some pokemon are strictly better than others. And with no clause, there is no reason for players not to use top tier pokemons in ranked play. If you want fun games, do battles with your friends and not ranked games !

I'm glad i got put in the first half of the tree of the tournament, so much top ranked players battling each others on the second half first and second round :Shocked:

It will be against the tournament rules tho

I dont think i've encountered any entirely sp def trained blissey's yet, always bold or at least max evs invested in def. A psyshock from my modest 252 ev, 31 iv togekiss doesnt do more than 30%... yea no stab but still, with 370+ sp atk thats sad :| I'm not saying curselax and blissey are unbeatable, but changes like choice items / encore / trick / destiny bond / etc would even out pvp a lot more and make a lot more pokemon viable. Oh i just remembered, one person i battled used blissey to tank my azumaril (adamant, huge power...) no belly drum or superpower though (blissey was faster so it just uses softboiled to heal up any dmg it took from aqua tail or play rough, which was around 50-60%). Kinda demoralizing when that happens.. Im running superpower on Azumarill and enough speed EV to outspeed 31IV-4EV speed Blisseys so i pretty much never had this problem as long as Azumarill was healthy enough to tank one seismic toss. About spdef Blisseys, yes they are rare, because they are obviously way worst than their def counterpart. I agree about the items tho, choice items, life orb, flame orb/ toxic orb are really needed to open up the possibilities. But i think we can say the same about bugged abilities/moves and not implemented pokes, this will take time.

First, you should get a macho brac. getting only +1 means you don't have one, and it's mandatory for EV training. Seaking gives 2 atk ev tho. I would suggest you to ev train each stat independantly, so go for digglett cave entrance for speed EV, and tohjo falls water for atk EV. Those 2 spots are perfect spots that will give you ONLY the stat you want.

You may add a special wall that could fit the team well, and i would also suggest trying to get rock blast from egg move tutor for your cloyster (not sure if it's available but gives great coverage) I like your Rapidash set tho, as it will check nicely all the fairy types not named belly drummed azumarill.

Tentacruel is a good option for a bulky specially defensive pokemon, as it has access to rapid spin. On the other hand, liquid ooze doesnt work at the moment so dont expect it to check Venusaur/giga drain and leech seed users. Dragons can fit several different roles, like Altaria or Goodra being mostly bulkies that allows you to check a lot of attacks, or Haxorus and Dragonite that are mostly played as setup sweepers. What you should try to do in the first place is set your 2 walls that will help you rotate between your sweepers. Getting one physical and one special wall is a good thing to do for a balanced team, or you might get your team down only by trying to get good switch ins. Physical walls exemples : Skarmory (spikes/stealth rock/roar/toxic or counter or brave bird), Donphan (stealth rock/ earthquake/rapid spin or endeavour/ice shard or fire fang or thunder fang), Foretress, Dusknoir... Special walls exemples : Blissey (Heal bell/seismic toss/thunderwave or toxic/Softboiled), Snorlax (crunch/body slam/rest/sleep talk or curse), Florges, Umbreon... Those are the most played walls that are effective due to all their moves being available (outside of roost for skarmory), but nothing holds you from being innovative and bringing something else in your team.

I agree with TR3Y idea. Sometimes i can take a long time to play a turn when i need to check calculations of a risky move i want to make, but i dont mind getting my following turn time reduced as it is rare for it to happen. Getting a "rope" system like in Hearthstone could be helpful with this kind of behaviour. In substance, those people are not breaking any rules so they don't deserve to be banned, but changing the timer system could avoid this kind of behaviour. I mostly see it happen when a server reset annoucement is made, as people know that if they stall long enough for the server to reset, the game wont end and they wont lose any point. In my opinion, it is by far more toxic than simply be a ragekid and extending the game time for no reason.

As the precedent posts said, nature and ability are the first things to check. About IVs, it mostly depends on what the pokemon is and what you wanna do with it. For exemple, atk IV for a huge power azumarill is CRUCIAL as every IV point get doubled, but speed stat is less an issue compared to most sweepers as Azumarill speed tier is mostly tied by EV training. On the other hand, defensive stats on very squishies pokemon like honchcrow can sometimes be overlooked, as most of the time it wont survive any hit anyways. What i want to say here is don't try to get a full team of 25+ all IV, as it may take an incredible time to farm, time you could have used to enjoy what you wanted to do in the first place, playing PvP. The higher is always the better, but believe me you can do good if you play with a good team composition that got average IV.

About curselax, there are quite a few ways to deal with it that are already implemented and working : haze, dragon tail, roar to reset the boost count. Other than that, i can only advise you to carry 1/2 fighting moves users in your team (everything that can use close combat or superpower with a decent atk stat can do it), in the current meta it's the only way to deal with defensive blissey and snorlax. Specially defensive blissey isnt an issue at all, getting even 2hko by a 0 spatk slowbro's psyshock. Carrying psyshock on strong special attackers like alakazam or starmie can also be a good way to deal with both blissey/snorlax and skarmory.

Will Shane give us a date for the ladder reset some days in advance when he will be free again ? Because a random reset can be very infuriating for some players i bet, especially those very close to 25th place. The best we can do atm is store as much points as possible i guess.