slant

i've been trying to get a team going with a firespam core since the past gen but never gotten it to work. can you make a team out of Charizard @ Charizardite Y Ability: Blaze EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe Timid Nature - Fire Blast - Solar Beam - Focus Blast - Roost Heatran @ Choice Specs EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe Timid Nature - Fire Blast - Flamethrower - Earth Power - Flash Cannon

first off, nice guide! I wanted to write a balance guide of my own but I was really dragging my feet cause I couldn't figure out what to say in it. this articulates my thoughts a lot better than I could have so props on a wellwritten guide. One thing I want to point out is that balance teams have so many ways to attack the opponent that it is tough to figure out exactly what you want to do in the early game or team preview. However it's still a good idea to try, i.e. if your only shot at winning involves outstalling your opponent, it would be better to figure that out early game rather than lategame when you may have already thrown away that one crucial pokemon that you needed earlier. On the flip side of this, another great thing about the flexibility of balance is that you can create backup plans. If your first plan doesn't work, you aren't screwed (compared to some other styles which are just one trick ponies).

no mention of the AV set?!

i remember there was also a toxic stall moltres set: flamethrower/roost/sub/toxic, is that still used anymore?

sure! monotype seems to be a pretty popular tier in reborn so we should probably have a tutor for it.

In an effort to drum up interest in Reborn's competitive battling scene, I've created a new channel called Reborn University. If you are willing to learn or teach, stop by for teambuilding help or battle tips. So why do we need this channel? Well if you're like me, you've noticed that the tutoring thread is on its last legs. The main issue is that it's too tough for tutee and tutor to work out a mutually agreeable time to meet due to schedule conflicts, etc. So rather than having a dedicated tutor for each tutee, a more efficient way to go about it would be to have a pool of available tutors in a backchannel so that anyone can go and get the tips or teambuilding help they need immediately. If you're interested in helping out or being a tutor, especially if you have experience in tiers besides OU, please drop an application down below. I can do OU but know next to nothing about other tiers so I need someone that is knowledgeable to help out. If you are interested, please leave some info in your application: Application: New or experienced, we hope to see you at Reborn University! Comments, questions, and applications are welcome!

thanks for the feedback! @ Lostelle: the greninja core has been removed as you suggested @ Void: your teambuilding checklist has been added updated with some more information, descriptions for suicide leads and offensive cores. if there are any other suggestions let me know, i'm not really a great HO player so any pointers would be welcome and thanks for the feedback!

Balls to the Wall: A Guide to Hyper Offense by Slant and Destructive Skitty Why Hyper Offense? So you read the battling 101 guide and decided that for your next team, you want to go balls out crazy and pummel your opponent into submission. Great choice! Who needs stupid shit like defense when you can just blow the opposition into oblivion with six dragon dancers? That's the general essence of hyper offense: stacking a bunch of offensive pokemon takes away any breathing room your opponent has; if you stack 5 or 6 sweepers on a team then sooner or later one of them will break through your opponent's defenses and leave him helpless. Okay...while that might be the general mindset, I might have exaggerated a little. Since the tiers are all quite balanced, against a well built team you can't just mindlessly set up and expect your pokemon to hulk out and destroy your opponent. In reality, as with most things pokemon, it requires careful planning and precision before you can pull off a sweep. Why go with hyper offense? Feels good to demolish your opponent. Games end really quick! ORAS power creeps means that hyper offense is more powerful than ever! It's a really fun battle style once you get the hang of it! There is almost no luck component involved. ------------------------------------------------ It's all part of the plan: the hyper-offense mindset I really struggled in figuring out the organization of this guide. Normally I would organize the guide into a 'teambuilding' section and then a 'battling' section, but in this case I hesitated a bit since the two are so closely linked, i.e. once you are finished teambuilding, you should have an exact blueprint of how the battle should go. This usually comes about because of two reasons: You are setting the momentum. In most cases, a match between two players is a struggle to see which player can execute his gameplan and successfully disrupt his opponent's. However the greatest strength of a well-played hyper offense team is that you are constantly pressuring your opponent to the point that he cannot successfully execute his strategy since all he is focused on is surviving your onslaught. Put another way, this means that a hyper offense team starts disrupting the opponent's strategy from turn 1. Hyper offense requires almost no prediction. In normal matches, there is always an element of prediction: if the opponent stays in then you should use move X, but if he switches out to another pokemon, you should use move Y. In the case of hyper offense though, this is no longer an issue. Go ahead and attack with move X. Since hyper offense pokemon tend to be speedy with great coverage, even if your opponent switches out, you can outspeed next turn and hit them hard with the appropriate attack. Similarly, you shouldn't be too worried about switching vs. your opponent. Since you have almost no defense to speak of there is no point in playing switching games with your opponent anyways. Observe how luck is no longer a factor here. If all goes well then YOU are the one that is setting the tone of the match, for the whole game. OK, but now here comes the required disclaimer: it is really easy to play badly using a hyper-offense team. The difference is that if you lose, it is due to user error rather than luck. Hyper offense teams tend to have a higher skill requirement than other styles, which is why I don't recommend it to beginners. The main issue is, now that prediction has been taken out of the equation, we can focus on the endgame starting from turn 1. This is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing since it is possible to see into the endgame from the beginning, but a curse since it significantly complicates the analysis. I feel like I need to reiterate the last point one more time since it is at the heart of hyper offense. In a standard balance/bulky offense team, it is impossible to see so far into the endgame, so the best you can do is come up with some short term plans, for example 'set up stealth rock, volt turn a bit to get some chip damage and spread status, and go from there.' However in hyper offense, ideally you need to come up with your entire gameplan starting from the beginning. So from turn 1 you need to start thinking about who to keep alive, who to sacrifice, who is going to go for that final sweep, and which one of your opponent's pokemon can stop that sweep. The worst feeling in the world is to get halfway through the match and then realize that you have no chance of winning because pokemon X on the opponent's team stops all your sweepers cold. To give an idea of the level of planning required, it is common for heavy offense teams to be losing 6-2 before going for the win, i.e. HO players throw away 2/3rds of their team and it's all part of their plan! -------------------------------------------- Diving in: How to beat your opponent to a pulp Now that you're all pumped up for hyper offense, let's talk about how to actually go for the win. Keep in mind that the main reason to use hyper offense is to execute your gameplan while simultaneously minimizing prediction. Here are some pointers to go about doing that: -------------------------------------------- Teambuilding: assembling your death squad We'll start with the teambuilding. At the very basic level, the hyper offense composition is one suicide lead, and 5 late-game sweepers. The suicide lead: This is your dedicated lead, the one that comes out first 100% of the time. The role of this guy is to guarantee that stealth rocks get set up. This move is absolutely essential for your momentum since it turns a lot of 2HKOs into OHKOs and breaks any focus sashes which can otherwise be a nightmare for your team. The only problem is that setting up stealth rocks violates a basic tenet of hyper offense philosophy: don't give your opponent any free turns. But OK, we can be forgiven just this once for bending the rules since stealth rocks are so damn important. However this brings me to the second role of your suicide lead: destroy any momentum that your opponent may have gained from that one free turn that you set up stealth rocks. Granted it may not be much, but in such a high pressure environment every little bit counts. Example of a suicide lead: Suicide leads (OU): The sweepers: The heart of hyper offense, these are the guys that make or break the team. The main thing to think about here is offensive type synergy. A common pitfall that many people fall into here is that they think this means that they should have a variety of attacks: for example, some physical, some special, varied across different types, the idea being that 'ok if I can hit across a bunch of different spectrums then presumably I can hit everything for super effective damage and put the hurt on my opponent.' Nice try, but that's wrong. The problem with this line of thinking is that it doesn't take into account that the opponent switches around too. For example if you try to attack on both the physical and special side, then if your opponent has Chansey and Skarmory then the damage is spread out among two pokemon if he switches out appropriately. However if you attack only on the physical side, then only Skarmory is left available to take your beating. Here's the key insight that guides the philosophy of HO teambuilding: every team only packs one or two defensive counters to each pokemon. Any more, and the team becomes so specialized that it loses its defensive power against the myriad threats that are present in the tier. So, if we're building a HO team, this leads us to a basic tenet: we need to pack the team full of sweepers with similar counters so that if the opponent has any of these counters, they will quickly be worn down. Once the opponent loses their counter, that's when the floodgates open and it's open season on the remainder of their team. As an example of this, consider the birdspam core: and. Here Pinsir and Talonflame fire off either flying-type or coverage moves when appropriate to take huge chunks off the opponent. The main counters off the top of my head to flying types are Tyranitar, Rotom-W, and Heatran. All three take huge amounts of damage or are outright KOed by Pinsir if it carries close combat. Once these checks are either dead or severely weakened, then Talonflame can sweep freely with a priority Brave Bird. Let's take a look at other properties needed by sweepers: Here is a checklist for roles that should be filled on a hyper offense team (thanks to Void) In every tier, there are some awesome cores that, if played correctly, just break through defenses. People have put a lot of thought into these cores to think about how they remove each other's checks and counters. Here are a couple to check out: Offensive cores (OU) (stolen shamelessly from Smogon) Sample teambuilding process (OU): ----------------------------- Conclusion: get out there and kick ass! Hyper offense is a tricky style to pull off, mainly because it demands such a high level of precision to work properly. Compared to other playstyles which allow a player to "come back" after making a misplay, in the case of HO any mistake made, no matter how small, can be disastrous. On the plus side though, it's attractive to more experienced players because it rewards long-term thinking over winning prediction games (ironically, this is a feature that it shares with the full stall playstyle on the polar opposite side of the spectrum). It is also immensely rewarding to master the playstyle and helps you develop good habits since it forces you to think constantly about the endgame.

nice! one thing that I would add is that the mega isn't too useful: LO latios reaches the same levels of power and you don't use the mega slot. Correct me if I'm wrong but you only make latios the mega if you've made the team already and there is literally nothing else you need to mega. nvm i think you already wrote that, i am stupid.

Yea to echo skitty, ferro seems out of place since it destroys your u turn momentum. I would get rid of it for a wall breaker to take advantage of free switch ins, something like band terrakion, specs Latios, or gothitelle. If you go that route then you can stick rocks on lando (maybe make it a defensive set?) Nice team! It's a nightmare to face for any balance/stall user such as myself, that manaphy scares the bejesus out of me.

First off thanks everyone for the support, we really appreciate it! @Hilda: So I think Skitty reworded it to sound less mean as you suggested. But I stand by what I said. There's a time and place for innovation, and that is not when you are beginning the game (and this guide is targeted towards beginners). However it's not like I am forbidding people from using innovative sets. If you're just having fun experimenting then fine, go for it. I am just saying that if you do, you should be aware that they probably won't succeed in a competitive setting. If you want to win and use pokemon effectively, a much safer bet is to use the 'standard' sets that are tried and true. To drive the point home, here is an example of an innovative moveset: Charizard-X 248 HP / 148 SPDEF / 112 SPEED -Earthquake -Will-o-Wisp -Roost -Dragon Claw I remember when people first starting using this set. At first I laughed at them because srsly a defensive Charizard-X? Then I got whomped by it and started taking it seriously. But observe how much effort and knowledge of the metagame went into crafting this set (which a beginner doesn't have). You need to -Recognize that this niche is unfilled. This is a bulky-offensive special tank with unique typing. A lot of new movesets on pokemon, even if they work, are done better by other pokemon. -Recognize that the biggest counters to Char-X hit the physical defense rather than special defense. Hence, why it is packing will-o-wisp to cripple its counters. -Craft the EVs correctly. 248 HP EVs allow you to switch into stealth rock one more time, 112 Speed EVs allow you to outspeed all relevant threats, and the remainder is put in spdef for additional bulk. Your other suggestion is good too. I have a section on common OU pokemon to use, and I guess for completeness there should be sections for other tiers as well. The problem is that I don't know anything about the other tiers so I will have to find someone else to add to it. However the guide as a whole is meant for any tier, I just used OU for all my examples since that's what I'm comfortable with. @Void: videos have been added, thanks!

Battling 101 Guide by Slant and Destructive Skitty ------------------------------------- I. Welcome to Battling 101! So this section has seen a huge increase in the number of guides on the different tiers of the game. No matter the tier though, you can't win matches without a solid understanding of the basics. We've both tutored our fair share of new players and this guide is an amalgamation of all the tips and tricks that we've tried to pass on. Before we get started and move into the details though, let's get one thing clear about the basic philosophy behind Pokemon strategy: A good strategy is one that allows the player to win consistently and with minimal risk. If you don't agree with this statement, you likely won't agree with a lot of what is said in this guide. This means we won't be focusing on gimmicks, surprise factor, or innovation. Gimmicks and surprises won't likely win you games in the long run although they might work in the short run. On the other hand there is something to be said about inventing and running innovative movesets, but it requires a lot of experience and having a better understanding of the metagame. So this guide is going to focus on developing solid and dependable strategies for battling. I know it's not really flashy or exciting and everyone wants to go and try battling with all sorts of crazy shit, but unfortunately you have to walk before you run. Just get the basics down first. -------------------------------------------- II. Teambuilding To me, teambuilding is THE most important part of the match. A match between two Pokemon trainers is 60% teambuilding and 40% battling skill. Put another way, if you build your team right, then depending on team matchup the game may already be won or lost before the match even starts. The biggest pitfall I see people make in teambuilding is that they don't have a gameplan in mind, they just throw random Pokemon into the team that cover each other's weaknesses typing-wise. Don't do this. The most important part of teambuilding is to -have a plan-. One way to go about doing this is to start with your "win condition", i.e. figure out exactly how you're going to win, and then work backwards from there. I can't stress the importance of this idea enough. Without a plan you are just farting around, akin to sailing without a rudder. With a plan you have purpose; at any moment you should know exactly what your short-term and long-term goals are in the match and give some idea about how to execute your strategy effectively. Here's an example of a quick walkthrough of the teambuilding process. Observe that the key question I answer at every step is, 'how does this team member contribute to my win condition'? : Teambuilding example Of course, this is not the only way to build a team. Win conditions are diverse and varied and don't always boil down to helping pokemon X set up a sweep. In general though they only boil down into several team archetypes (with varying shades inbetween): Team Archetypes In general playstyles and strategies in the ORAS metagame are so varied that it is pretty much a losing proposition to prepare for all of them. This means that your focus should be on playing a proactive rather than a reactive game. Rather than concentrating on responding to your opponent's strategy, your main goal should be on developing your own gameplan and forcing your opponent to react to you. If you have control of how a match is going to play out, victory is all but assured. With that said, I highly recommend using some Pokemon from the following list in your next team if you are just starting out. These are a select few pokemon that bring a tremendous amount of pressure, either defensively or offensively, to any match to the point that there are really only a few niche ways to counter them successfully. In other words, using these pokemon almost completely forces the opponent to halt their gameplan to deal with your pokemon, i.e. now your opponent is playing on your terms. Obviously this list is really subjective but I'm the one writing this guide so I get to choose what goes in the list and what doesn't. Good pokemon to use (OU) Before wrapping up this section, Skitty and I thought it would be a good idea to finish with a checklist of roles your pokemon should fill. We were kind of hesitant in the beginning to include one since there is so much give and take, i.e. you don't NEED a defogger/spinner but it would be nice. So when going through the checklist, please keep this in mind. These are rough guidelines but in the end it is up to you to figure out what is essential and what is not to execute your gameplan successfully. Teambuilding checklist ----------------------------------- III. Battle Skills When a battle starts, the first thing the player is plopped into is team preview. This is the most crucial part. Look at your team. Now look at your opponent's team. Now ask yourself the following questions: What's your opponent going to try to do? How likely is it to work? Which of your opponent's pokemon are standing in the way of your sweep? Which of your opponent's pokemon are most threatening to your team? What are the most important pokemon you need to keep alive in order to hinder your opponent? Answering these three questions is key to formulating your strategy. Not only do you need to think about this at the beginning of the match, but these questions should always be in the back of your mind for the remainder of the game as well. It takes some experience to figure out an opponent's strategy based on team preview but once you get used to the roles different pokemon play, you should be able to figure it out. Here are two examples to try out: (Easy) Your team: Opponent's team: (A bit harder) Your team: Opponent's team: First, whenever you look at the opponents team in Team Preview, you must analyze the main threats. Obviously right? Many people overlook this and just pick out a random lead and click on moves. Wrong! Team preview is the first step towards your success in any battle. One must look at the opposing team and must gather what kinds of threats are to your team. For example, let's say your team is Keldeo, Garchomp, and Bisharp. Now let's say your opponent has a Latios, Scizor, and a Keldeo as well. Judging by the type matchup, it is very clear that the Opponent's Latios is a huge threat to Keldeo and Garchomp. If you want to sweep with Garchomp or Keldeo succesfully, you must remove the Latios from play by utilizing your Bisharp to defeat the Latios that threatens your team. That's a example of what a game plan is supposed to look like. There are many ways to handle threats to your team just by analyzing what is important. Now that you have formed your plan (the most important part), the rest is easy. Here's a brief checklist to help you get through the match: Match phases ----------------------------------- IV. Conclusion In teambuilding, the recurring question to ask is "what gameplan do I want to execute?" In matchups, your main goal is to execute your plan and prevent the opponent from executing his. Now that you've made it to the end of this guide, you should recognize that the recurring theme here is control. Your main objective, in both teambuilding and battles, should always be to control the match. If your opponent's plan has been disrupted and yours has not, then the opponent is pretty much going along with your plan, i.e. you are the one in control and he is not. From there, victory is all but assured. ********If you are more of a visual learner, here are some video tutorials from Void to help you out!********* *******If you want a more in-depth guide to which pokemon fill which roles, check out the following Smogon threads*******

Skimming most of these posts so sorry if I am repeating someone else. But my $.02 about Metagross: Can we suspect it? Sure. But I don't think it deserves to be banned down the line. Speaking as a player who has always gravitated towards the bulky offense/stall side of the playing style spectrum, Metagross joins a legion of other slightly bulky pokemon that can 1hko-2hko the entire metagame such as Pinsir, Gallade, Charizard, Keldeo, etc. etc. etc. The Gen 6 power creep is insane; I miss the Gen V days when a well played stall team could 6-0 the opponent with no single member below 90%. Now, just bringing out one of these guys vs. a defensive player means that something is gonna get chunked badly. So yeah as a defensive player I don't really understand what Metagross does that is ban-worthy. It hurts, yes, but no more than a ton of other threats. Against Metagross in particular, switching in Rotom-W is a pretty safe choice since most players tend to spam meteor mash instead of zen headbutt. Even zen headbutt does ~40% so even if the other guy predicts Rotom-W coming in it is not the end of the world. And about this.... Regardless of whether you call it luck or not, the fact remains that it's (almost) impossible to prepare ahead of time for Greninja's moveset.

We can also think about unbanning Genesect. The reason why it was originally banned was because it just hit too hard in the old metagame with its combination of high special attack and the possibility of nabbing its download boost. But in ORAS there are just too many things that already fill that niche that are not banned, i.e. Greninja so I don't see the point of keeping the ban on Genesect.

TIL that triangles can have more than 180 degrees if they aren't drawn on a flat surface! yay math