Hello everyone, I'm Polo and I'd like to post this. For years, I have been trying to play competitive, but I wasn't able to find general guides on how to do it. I have found some of them more specific guides, like that:http://www.smogon.com/bw/articles/ou_sun, but not something like "the structure of balanced teams and some basic tips on how to use them". I think having something like that will benefit Smogon as the best providing information about competitive playing on the whole Internet. I know there is a mentorship program, but, for everyone who has no time due to exams, or work, or something like that, having a reference guide to look will be a good new, as they will be able to learn by themselves by only readind the guide, not having to lose time of studying or work. I really think that this would be a strong point for Smogon as the best information on competitive Pokemon website.
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- Thread starter Polo
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Well something like OU Sun really has about 6 sun abusers and 10-odd team mates. Balanced could theoretically include about 45-55 viable Pokémon (that's just a guess) so I don't think anyone really has the time, energy or will to create a full guide. If they posted a half-completed guide people would say "what about x?" and "the info on y is incorrect" and on something as open as balanced, offense etc. it would take literally months to complete the article to completion. If someone was to do it then it's not like we wouldn't accept it, but chances are they won't.
Yeah, I'm sorry if I didn't find the words to express what I wanted to say. I mean something like Brammi said. Not exactly all the pokemon that can be used (may be with the time they can be included), but general strategies about the use of it and something like that, the structure of the team (like "it has to have a sweeper with these characteristics, some support with that characteristics, etc.), how to use it ("do this at the beginning, then do that..."), etc.
Vryheid
fudge jelly
Like it or not, Smogon guides have always be first about knowledge (raw information like pokemon stats and movesets) and second about strategy (preferred movesets and team structure), with skill (how to actually play the game intelligently) being a very distant third. In other words, what you're looking for is barely covered at all on the Smogon article dex or on the forum and to get more help there you will have to dig pretty deep on this site. The sun article you linked to is a perfect example of this, never once discussing what resources a sun team should prioritize, how much they should bank on prediction, what a typical win condition for sun teams should look like, or whether wins are typically momentum or material based. That shit is way more important than spending a page describing every obscure moveset of how Jumpluff and Victreebell can abuse frigging Chlorophyll, yet that's literally as deep as that article ever gets. It's kind of sad that we expect people to go through a mentorship process to learn about mindgaming, resource management, momentum control and prediction when some good articles on the subject could be just as effective.
That's not to say these types of guides don't exist. These guides on psychological warfare and risk/reward guides do a good job teaching about the basic concepts of resource management and mindgaming in Pokemon, though they don't really cover momentum control and less abstract descriptions of how to use these tactics with specific team archetypes. This video is primarily related to chess but its main lesson is incredibly important- "to take is a mistake" (when it means giving your opponent a chance to reverse momentum) is absolutely fundamental to becoming better at Pokemon and new players unfortunately tend to lose matches by ignoring this on a regular basis. I've written about material based play in Gen 5 OU, though some of the basic concepts are still applicable here. Entire essays could be written about momentum control in Gen 6 but I haven't seen anything particularly cohesive yet. I'd say your best bet for improving your skills in this gen is to try to watch matches by advanced players and listen to commentary from reasonably intelligent Youtube battlers, though once again, that isn't a replacement for really understanding the theory behind what makes effective play in these battles.
That's not to say these types of guides don't exist. These guides on psychological warfare and risk/reward guides do a good job teaching about the basic concepts of resource management and mindgaming in Pokemon, though they don't really cover momentum control and less abstract descriptions of how to use these tactics with specific team archetypes. This video is primarily related to chess but its main lesson is incredibly important- "to take is a mistake" (when it means giving your opponent a chance to reverse momentum) is absolutely fundamental to becoming better at Pokemon and new players unfortunately tend to lose matches by ignoring this on a regular basis. I've written about material based play in Gen 5 OU, though some of the basic concepts are still applicable here. Entire essays could be written about momentum control in Gen 6 but I haven't seen anything particularly cohesive yet. I'd say your best bet for improving your skills in this gen is to try to watch matches by advanced players and listen to commentary from reasonably intelligent Youtube battlers, though once again, that isn't a replacement for really understanding the theory behind what makes effective play in these battles.