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Sup folks. I have been into competitive pokemon for god knows how many years. Starting from Gen1 link cable battles with friends and later discovering smogon / showdown in gen4, I've always really enjoyed pokemon PvP.

 

PRO is no different. Love the fact that there is a competitive ladder on PRO and that there are frequent pvp seasons, awarding the top rated players rewards. Amazing.

 

However, one huge flaw decreasing skillcap greatly; Team Preview. Granted the title is self-explanatory, one HUGE part of competitive pokemon (Especially on a higher level) is, like most of you know, predicting. A core mechanic from PvP does not even exist on PRO due to lack of team preview.

Don't get me wrong, if you're facing a Tyranitar with a Talonflame it's not a very hard call to switch out into your physical tank, even in PRO.

 

The way pokemon works with checks and counters, some mons beat others, you need to be switching and predicting constantly. In team preview you can see things like how many physical tanks your opponent is running; Do I need to save my special attacker for these? Or can i play loosely with my special attack and give it up? Do I need to save my own physical tank for something specific? Things like this are crucial. In PRO,If say, you lose your only special attacker to something you think is a decent trade, but turns out your opponent had two physical tanks in the back, you would never have given up your special attacker since you obviously needed it for these, but you had no way of knowing and now lose by default. Team preview allows you to identify your win conditions and the important mons in your matchup which is a skill in itself, and now this doesnt even exist.

 

However. If I knew what his physical tank was, I might not even click my stone edge on my Ttar, but switch into my gengar since I know his physical tank is a tangrowth, which i can deal a lot of damage to with my sludge bomb. But hey. He saw my team too. He knows about my gengar. He knows it's a very good matchup. Maybe he wont even go to his tangrowth, but over-predict and just go into starmie to have a good matchup vs. my gengar, while still being able to live a stone edge.

 

This is just a very random example i thought up on the spot but my point is the same. Team preview adds a huge layer of mindgames and skill to PvP and I feel like it should be implemented in some way. Also picking a lead is a big part of pvp and now there is literally zero skill to choosing a lead but simply hoping for the best. Further some issues, some mons are just extremely risky to run in PRO meta with the lack of team preview, skarmory comes to mind, you have no way of knowing if you need to be looking out for a magnezone trap or not, making skarm extremely risky to run. It can be an amazing phys. tank and your only answear to a mon on your opponents team, but o look, he happens to run a magnezone. I now have no answears to X, guess i just lose by default. Oh hey did you just get your heatran hours? Caught and trained your heatran up? Ready to bust it out in pvp? Sweet. Time to get trapped by a dugtrio and lose your mon for free, seeing you had literally zero chance of knowing it was there, whereas with previews you would masterfully played around it.

 

There are thousands of examples and points i could make here. But I think this is enough for now.

My two cents. Discuss.

I think personally that without the team preview is cool because it allows a surprise effect during the game. play an electivire with team preview and without it totally different. I love this surprise side of the team without preview as in 4G. It allows to play things that the person opposite does not expect it ^^ it is my opinion =)

good game ! And go Ranked!

I think personally that without the team preview is cool because it allows a surprise effect during the game. play an electivire with team preview and without it totally different. I love this surprise side of the team without preview as in 4G. It allows to play things that the person opposite does not expect it ^^ it is my opinion =)

good game ! And go Ranked!

 

I can understand that the surprise effect can be fun for some, but in all honesty it does not belong in RATED Pvp, where the goal is to outplay, which simply isnt possible without the preview (at least to a much less extent). Maybe you could keep the none-team preview in none-rated battles for fun / surprise effect?

I agree I would love for team preview to be implemented in PvP only, team preview allows us to try and predict our opponents play before they send out their first, it would also help counter annoying setup pokemon at the beginning of the match such as froslass, it would also help us counter big stall pokemon like chansey before we use our counters to it. Overall I would only want it in PvP because chosing your pokemon to send out in anything but PvP is weird xD

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