GSC OU I want to take some credit away from Borat

[Jame$ G]

And what teams in gen2 have this guaranteed synergy against stall raikous and growth vaporeons? They just have a good matchup against most pokes, that's why they're popular. Thief rest Misdreavus is pretty gimmicky niche and purely for hardcore stalling, its not exactly common, and not exactly at the top of the threat list for average beginner who's trying to learn the gen is it? Either way they're pretty much the stall cores in their most common form; if I missed something there please point it out. I was actually thinking the latters biggest problem was its own lax is its best answer to last poke curselax. Either way I think these are much better teams to be learning with than the Borat team. If you have a more suitable option do share it with us Sulcata..

 

[Jame$ G]

With regards to Borats team imho the biggest problem with it is it just has a bad switch in synergy for Raikou, Zapdos & Gengar, especially if its mono lax. Overall speed is lower than what i'd be comfortable with too. I get why it has appeal, if you have the stall frustration fever it offers you the tools to break it (if you're a damn good player). But newbies I think would benefit much more from having a Raikou team so they don't have to worry about being outpaced by the 3 aforementioned so easily.

 

[sulcata]

you don't need guaranteed synergy, but literally relying on one pokemon for repeatedly switching in is bad enough. automatically getting stalemated by stall is a whole other situation. the first team has absolutely 0 ways of beating raikou/snorlax/skarmory/miltank or missy. missy doesn't even need to be rest when you can't pin it down.

vaporeon is kind of an issue if you're facing someone competent because you don't have any water resists that take it on. suicune and starmie just let vaporeon set up, so they really can't count. raikou isn't exactly stellar at switching into surfs, even unboosted. that's assuming you still have it and that you didn't happen to lose it.

thief rest is the most common in the meta at this point. i really wouldn't call it a gimmicky niche, it tends to work much better than perish trap.

The reason I don't like the iteration borat posted is specifically because it doesn't do well v. stall. It's also kinda missing a few tools that make offense a bit easier to face. Monolax isn't great on that team imo. HP Fire should be slashed first over giga drain on egg, ice beam/hp electric is probably more effective on cloyster overall for baiting opposing exeggutor and cloyster.

I already pointed out that conflict's template is fairly suitable for beginners. Jorgen's teambuilding heuristics are still fairly relevant. Overall, if you're giving newbies teams that get stalemated from turn 1 or that get pressured by pokemon like vaporeon for free, I think they'll get quite frustrated and turned off from gsc.

edit: i'd say that not having one of the following:
zapdos, explosion cloy, explosion egg, roar suicune, a lax set that actually beats vaporeon, or literally anything to force vaporeon out while not getting 3hko'd by surf.
is generally unacceptable. especially if you're not running spikes.

 

[Roostur]

I climbed the ladder with the team once. From what I remember monolax covered more but then you would get hard countered by a team like this [Gen 2] OU replay: teass vs. Roostur - Pokémon Showdown . I had to change it to a belly drum lax to beat this guy (who is benny south street) . Though belly drum lax will beat that team, it will lose to other teams, more teams than monolax. It is just an inconsistent team that isn't worth using on the ladder. Might be good in tournament if you know what your opponent likes to play, but even then there are just better teams out there.

 

[Jame$ G]

So team 1 has trouble with a mirrored replica of itself? I think that's something you could apply to any team. I don't see how Nidoking is walled by any of them? Its always a case of predicting right but I don't see how that's a given? The team has switch ins for all the checks you mentoined so if you're saying that the fact it can be stalled is the problem what's to stop you stalling right back? Yeah I agree explosion cloyster is nice for a pinch solution for vaps but that opens the team up to Machamp a bit. My thinking is that learning explosion teams is probably the next stage you go to after you got a grasp of the fundamentals, like you say, for freshmen it normally only seems to serve as path to faster suicide. We're not talking about cutting edge SPL breaking teams here; just the most suitable thing to allow newcomers to get their foot in the door. I think they're good enough to give newbies a good shot at beating 90% of the ladder players without the requirement of a high level of skill applied. I don't know what this conflict team is, but like I say, you've got something that you think would be better to give these guys a good start in the tier i'm all ears.

 

[Roostur]

So team 1 has trouble with a mirrored replica of itself? I think that's something you could apply to any team. I don't see how Nidoking is walled by any of them? Its always a case of predicting right but I don't see how that's a given? The team has switch ins for all the checks you mentoined so if you're saying that the fact it can be stalled is the problem what's to stop you stalling right back? Yeah I agree explosion cloyster is nice for a pinch solution for vaps but that opens the team up to Machamp a bit. My thinking is that learning explosion teams is probably the next stage you go to after you got a grasp of the fundamentals, like you say, for freshmen it normally only seems to serve as path to faster suicide. We're not talking about cutting edge SPL breaking teams here; just the most suitable thing to allow newcomers to get their foot in the door. I think they're good enough to give newbies a good shot at beating 90% of the ladder players without the requirement of a high level of skill applied. I don't know what this conflict team is, but like I say, you've got something that you think would be better to give these guys a good start in the tier i'm all ears.

What areil rebel said basically. Stallish teams like that teach you the whole "this poke sees this poke, and this poke sees this poke" game really well. Pokemon really isn't the most complicated thing in the world in the first place though so ultimately I don't think it actually matters what you start with. Play long enough and watch what other people do and you'll learn.

 

[Ch01W0n5h1n]

Since this has evolved into a advice Thread, I´m going to point one thing out: If you are trying to learn a new gen, you don´t have to start at Square one, the first step you should try is finding the equivalent of Elements you used before.

This will help you creating your own Playstyle. and you will eventually find out about Mon vs Mon Scenarios while playing (as you proceed to edit your team(s)). Not to mention that you will probably save yourself some time too, instead of being stuck to use something you maybe don´t enjoy to.

The reason why I point this out is that I think that when players learn a Tier, and start with stallish or Standard teams, they will later on not differ from previous Players, turning them into another copy, instead of encouraging the Player to build his/her own Teams, Sets, and making own Mon Choices.

 

[Jame$ G]

I guess we all have our ideas on where to start in this game. I'm not really trying to start a pissing match, so the advice is probably best directed at the guys who are asking for help here. I'm just giving my 2 cents.

 

[Ch01W0n5h1n]

I didn´t try to fed anyone up or something, I mean we can all have different takes on some topics, but we don´t have to smash our heads because of it ^^

Don´t even think it´s the only way, ways work out differently from player to player, so I don´t think any way of learning is the one universal way you should take, but that alternative routes do exist. But I sure do have a personal preference

 

[sulcata]

Nidoking can only LK one thing. Nidoking v. Suicune varies based the current state of the game, but Suicune almost always has the upper hand without worrying about spikes. Snorlax can easily rest loop nidoking too.

My point with that first one was mainly that it doesn't beat any stall. Every stall stalemates it in a best case scenario for the user of the team. In a worst case scenario you'll get spin blocked and eventually something will die. Literally every stall team I have and almost every stall team that I've seen used at high levels of play can just switch against that and set up a winning path at leisure. Even the random stall teams people use on the ladder stalemate it most of the time. The team does not even need to be a "mirrored replica". Once snorlax is out of the way, certain offensive teams might even be able to stalemate you.

There's a huge difference between stall and stalemate. Stalling at least means you're forcing your opponent to waste PP, health, or some other resource. Getting stalemated would mean that the optimal move is to not use any of your resources for both sides. Recommending a team like that to beginners would just turn them off from the game.

Offensive explosion teams are the teams I see beginners do best with. Stall teams are quite a bit more difficult to play since newer players will often put themselves into switch patterns that are very easy to read. When I was talking about the template conflict posted, I meant earlier in this thread. I've seen beginners do fairly well with most permutations of that.

 

[borat]

Bumping dead thread to clarify a few things.

Specific combinations of 6 pokemon is impossible to "invent", especially when looking at things retroactively with "current knowledge". The best inventions are always intuitive when looking back (see: smartphones), and explosion teams were one of the best archetypes.

The "team" part of it isn't the pokemon but the sets. Thunder zapdos wasn't really a thing. Mono curselax wasn't a thing either. That steelix is also rarely used due to inability to hit the #2 pokemon at the time (though popular with vil/havoc/a few vets). Combining them was high unheard of. And of course vaporeon is vaporeon, if not a bit forced. I'd argue havocs team was the archetype of good explosion teams back then, with the primary true innovation being clamp cloyster. It was a collection of 6 good pokemon rather than something structured primarily around synergy, which did not exist at the time.

Moreover when it comes to effectiveness, everybody knows the most effective things are surprises. How else could something like up electric cloyster enter the meta? That's why "scouting" the team with phazer is such a big part of the game. No surprises. That's why people at the time did a lot of battles without spectators.

That's why I've always been a bit hesitant to publicly release it. It's a bit of a catch22 really -- if I used it as a guide to build an effective team, then it would be public, popular and known, thus not as effective due to losing the surprise factor. Then would I essentially be describing how to build something ineffective? Maybe. Hence why the meat of the guide is technically in allowing different options and variations to keep your opponents on their toes.

Unfortunately things don't play out the same. People see the wall of text, scroll down to the list, then net team. This greatly reduces the effectiveness of you use something predictable. That is the whole point of offering different options. Not just the vaporeon slot, it's really about the snorlax, cloyster, and exeggutor movesets as well.

Some of my favorites at the time were machamp and gengar for vapors on spots. And explosion snorlax was the number one switch up. Sets and pokemon are always going to be meta specific. What I had worked for what I faced at the time. There's no way an offensive team like that is going to stand the test of time without the person having some ability to adapt to the meta (there are literally three pokemon that get hardwalled) And if that wasn't the gist of what I inferred, then it wasn't a really good guide to begin with.

 

[Lojh]

Borat's idea of growthvap and LK lax are very good and probably even bigger than the team. I liked the "wall of text," it brought me to pokemon and It was a great read. If borat did not create the team, he sure as hell optimized it.

 

[Lojh]

Also on the topic of stall, I "individually" built a rather common stall team that already existed, in the form of Zap/lax/cloy/skarm/kou/umb, which was already existing at the time. Because I built it with around 600+ battles of tweaking and perfecting it has become my most comfortable team. I encourage beginners to build a random team with OU mons and tweak the hell out of it. My team transferred from a hodgepodge of OU mons to very good stall team that has got me Decent results.


Tl;dr beginners, try stuff out, build what you want to, dont net team because then you suck with that team.

 

[Disaster Area]

net teaming is fine for learning stuff, honestly. Sometimes u need to just throw yourself at the game and see what happens for a bit. Everyone's different.

 

[Lojh]

If you dony make a team you won't understand it as thoroughly and it won't be personalized. If I instead net teamed my stall from Roostur or Borat or something I wouldn't understand it as much and it wouldn't play it as well.

 

[borat]

I think netteaming is fine.

But netteaming is never going to be as effective unless you understand metaing move/pokemon replacements. Teams in gsc are really just groundwork archetypes rather than a specific set of 6 pokemon and 24 moves.