HO in rejuv

[Sceptilespy]

Hi, you may or may not know me for more horribly unbalanced fights I make up on the fly out of bursts of inspiration. I'd like to talk about with you guys what you think about hyper/heavy offense in rejuv. 

Now, I'm pretty obsessed with hyper offense, and what sucked me into Reborn/Desolation/Rejuv was the fact, that with field effects and EV training, I always struggled to use HO. Honestly, I hate using defensive tactics because I believe it's easy to defeat with taunt, and set up. And overall, especially with field effects buffing your moves, why waste time stalling out the opponent, when you can one shot the opponent? I'm just more for not giving the opponent a chance to do anything, instead of being set up fodder. Anyway, with the introduction of Flora and Neon in Rejuv, it got me thinking. "Wow, so far, defensive strats have sucked.) On Flora, you took advantage of the grass type weakness, easily destroying any sort of defense she thought she had, and on neon, since Bronzong has literally no attacks, you just sniped Magenta's pokemon and set up on Bronzong or slowly killed his mons. I won't waste time making a team, even though my Neon/Magenta revamp is definitely my best and most balanced work (no legendaries, surprise, surprise.) Ok, so far i'm just rambling, but let's actually start. For one, I want to focus on where and why HO should be implemented more, and why defense mostly lacks. Two, I'd like to go over the problems of HO. 

 

(Sorry if it's a bit random. I ramble a LOT. I hope the point gets across regardless, and if it doesn't I'll elaborate.)

Alright, soooo, I went over it a bit in my introduction, but Gym Leaders/Bosses are supposed to be a challenge. They're there to be a roadblock in your progress and you're supposed to overcome those roadblocks. I don't know where I was going with that. Anyways, I find it that usually, defensive tactics are stopped instantly by setting up. The problem with defensive tactics and movesets in-game, is that there isn't really a meta you can build around. For instance, basic smogon stall has 6 mons if I'm updated right: Skarmory, Mega Sableye, Chansey, Toxapex, Clefable, and Dugtrio. On paper, this might seem like a dogshit team, but this has been built around the OU meta to destroy threats that would otherwise destroy it. It focuses on getting up hazards and outlasting the opponent. Now, the thing that makes stall shine here is, there's an OU meta of about 50 pokemon at max to build around. In-game, you have to prepare for at least 300. I'm not saying someone can't throw a curveball at you in competitive, but in terms of what you're probably expecting when you make defensive ingame, curveballs are everywhere. There's always going to be a pokemon who can break your strategy, taunt you, set up on you. There's to much to prepare for to put in 4 moves when you go for a defensive strategy. Now, a lot of this could be applied to HO, but the difference is, bosses and whatnot and take advantage of the field effects. Therefore, offensively they ALWAYS have an edge on you. This not only solidifies their challenge, but it solidifies how they stand as a leader. They are stronger then you, and you can't just run in recklessly and try to overpower them because you can't. That's hyper-offense specific, because with defensive, they're never overpowering you. Even with potions, they can't ever do enough damage or stall you out before they die first. Probably the best perk of hyper offense is being able to build around types and not pokemon. With HO you just want to swiftly kill everything, so you can run 4 moves of coverage and safely destroy just about everything lol. Just, notice how the hardest battles are never defensive. I think Pokemon Insurgence is the best example of HO being used well. (More specifically, offense in general, but offense nonetheless.) Oh, by the way. SPOILERS AHOY: SO IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPOILERS, LIKE SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH. Anyways, Jearn's Mega Rayquaza has crushed lives. Mainly because the Mray outsped and instantly bodied everything. Nothing took a neutral Dragon Ascent (excluding sturdy and stuff). And everything that didn't 4x resist it took half. 

(Forgot to mention hazards on defensive, but after playing through desolation and fighting rosetta again, i've found that hazards+AI don't work to well together.) 

 

So I actually went over everything I wanted to go over except the problems of HO and where it can be implemented. Oops. But of course, if HO is somehow overpowered, it's basically an instant loss. This can be done through various ways, such as lowering the attack/special attack stat of the opposing pokemon. Outspeeding them, making sure you resist their hits, etc. Also, even though I hate it, stall/defensive, when played right, obviously can beat any form of offense due to the fact their polar opposites. Where one lacks, the other excels. So, of course, if the offense couldn't break your defense, then that could be an instant win due to low defense on the opposing side. 

 

Oh yeah, I also think Flora and Florin should be a double battle anyway and then Flora gets exposed/not exposed/neutral. So Flora should have some slight team adjustments to help support Florin. 

Neon's team just needs to be thrown in the gutter and start over with. Ok bye. 

 

This was to start a conversation. Not to like, start a war between sides or anything. 

[Commander]

[FairFamily]

I have tried both a stall team and an offensive one in reborn. The thing with both teams is that I never ever run them pure. It's actually very uncommon to run any of my teams pure. My stall team has delphox which with it's high speed and excellent movepool can cripple offensive threats and its typing allows me to deal with poison/steel types. My offensive team has an amoonguss which serves as a pivot with regenerator and spore to either set up a sweep or get the right matchup (which is not just type vs coverage matchup). There are fights which are a nightmare to do with the offensive team and there are fights which were difficult to do with stall. Also this topic puts Pulse Swalot as the most difficult Pulse Battle which is a stall battle. 

 

The problem with implementing HO is that it easily can become the most boring fight in the game. You either lose hard or win hard as you said. Amber is a clear example of a boring fight. I don't know what half her team does simply because I swept it with either Thyplosion or ditto, otherwise I was getting swept.  Basically she uses eruption and that's it. It's powerfull field boosted, weather boosted eruption and that's it. Extremely boring. Same with a lot of other rejuvs fight is that they don't give a fighting chance. This might be a valid tactic if it were not for the legendaries, level cap/breaking, illegal movepool, custom moves, one-sided field effects, ... . This actually makes the fights not feel intense but rather cheap. It will get your kill count up but they are not contributing to the experience.

 

Does that mean you have to implement full stall? Of course not. Pure stall also gets it fair share of weaknesses. I advocate for more varied battles. Take reborn for instance Adrienn is a cool concept taken to the max. Intimidate + mist field slows down the game by a lot while still providing pressure. Florinia took a desert theme to her team for the grass type and still brought a good challenge. Shade has a secondary lightning element to his team. Then let's not forget the difference between Samson and Kiki or Aya and Corey. By offereing this variety of teams you can challenge the player in different ways. Not all fights will be difficult some teams can handle other teams better but they will all have that gym leader/PULSE they find particullary challenging.

[Busti]

I find it hard to have a team build just for a playing style. To quote:

 

"Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled Trainers should try to win with the Pokémon they love best." - Karen from G/S/C/HG/SS

 

I usually take one very tanky pokemon, and one sweeping pokemon. The other 4 are simply my favorites from different types.

In Insurgence for instance, Slowbro and Tyranitar were my tanks and Gyarados/Volcarona were my HO sweepers.

It just matters very much when you decide to stall or sweep.

 

Edited September 10, 2017 by Busti