Special Ladder Season 12: Classic 3v3

[cant say]

Nothing exciting here this season, the Special ruleset we're stuck with for the next two months is normal singles - ie: 3v3 with the Pentagon rule in play. This is presumably available due to the recent dropping of the Pentagon rule from all other Battle Spot formats, and allows people to play Singles without worrying about Sheer Cold Suicune transfers.

The only reason I'm interested in seeing how this meta plays out is because the playerbase of the Special ladders each season is considerably smaller than that of the other formats, in fact one could say only serious/experienced players bother to play on this ladder. The only evidence I have is the aforementioned smaller playerbase, and that when looking through the usage statistics for various Special rulesets, there are far less instances of weird items popping up, and Pokemon with multiple abilities only have their best/optimal one used (eg: Gale Wings on Talonflame being used 100% of the time, as opposed to the small percentage of Flame Body that shows in the regular Singles stats). This has lead to my theory that we'll be able to get a taste of high-level Singles action without having to climb the regular Singles ladder to 1800+.

Another example of how this meta may end up being vastly different from old ORAS Singles is the early usage statistics! I know the Season is only half a week old but the top 12 is already pretty different than what normal Singles ever has been! For the first time this generation, Gyarados is in the top 12 (currently sitting at #5), Serperior has finally broken the top 12 (at #6) after sitting around 13-15 for the last two seasons, and Ferrothorn has popped up at #11! What's also pretty weird is that Gengar is sitting all the way down at #12, it also doesn't even have Perish Sing in its top 10 moves! Now I did say this could just be the early season weird stats trend, but I've never seen the first few updates of normal Singles look like this! When I checked earlier today, Garchomp wasn't even at #1 (he's since made his way back up though). Talonflame has moved up to #3, and Mamoswine has seen a massive increase up to #7.

Is anyone playing this instead of the Pentagon-less Singles meta? Have you noticed anything that's actually different to old ORAS Singles? Can you even find a game at all?

 

[NOVED]

I feel like this ladder isn't going to be a great representation of the meta just because I think most of the more dedicated singles players will be sticking to the normal singles ladder, even without the pentagon rule. But I could be wrong, I obviously have no idea how the japanese community feels about the change this season. It'll definitely be fun to play though if you want a break from facing sheer cold suicunes.

 

[GroudonEmpire]

Mr cant say , I used flame body talonflame to be a top 100 finisher in season 10 inverse/special ladder. You were saying >_<

 

[Flamedood]

Guys some pretty interesting stats on GL, Gengar is currently no.1( jumping from 12 earlier) most used in front of Kang and Garchomp and Serp is still in the top 12. Whilst a regular top 3 finisher, and although it's only early days I find this pretty interesting as Can't Say said. Also such high Serp usage, ahead of things like Cress, Charizard and Rotom etc. Thoughts? Does anyone play the ladder? Have you noticed any meta changes? (The top like 120 are all Japanese players so maybe no one's even playing lol)

Edit: Wow you should X and y special ladder... female meowstic most used Mon! Top 12 features other gems such as cinccino and Raichu! No Garchomp at all! Guessing no one's playing at all..

 

[Psynergy]

XY Special ladder is pretty much always like that, serious players have pretty much migrated over to ORAS by this point.

As for the ORAS Special ladder, I actually tried it a bit with my older teams since I've been too lazy to finish up a new one for the current regular ladder, and it felt a bit emptier. Took awhile to find games and I was pretty much only paired with people below me even in the 1500s range. Skill level didn't seem quite the same as I haven't seen any decent teams. That said I've only played a few games so I can't judge it too concretely (I should be 5-0 instead of 3-2 but my internet hates my 3DS and loves disconnecting mid-battle). Given the Top 12 is still showing a lot of the same Pokemon I'm sure there's a small crowd of good players at the top, but given that the top three ratings are already quite a bit apart (1845, 1810, 1798 for top 3) and that only 71 players have even broken 1700, it doesn't look like there's a particularly strong sample size for this ladder. Can't really blame people though, who's going to play this as a "Special" when it's the same thing we've had each season?

Personally I might play it a bit more and give it another shot but it definitely pales in comparison to the regular ladder's activity.

 

[cant say]

Yeah I was playing the special ladder exclusively at the start of the season but I could not break 1570 for the life of me! lol.. It was really hard to find games and when I could I was being paired with sub-1500 players who either had shitty teams (which I beat) or really solid teams (which beat me). I found it really hard to predict coz the ratings are misleading, you think they're gonna suck coz of their rating but it's only because of the small playerbase, so they come out and beat them because you underestimated them or something. It's seriously a weird metagame that I've so far found to be fairly different to the standard singles crowd (at least lower ladder). The usage stats seem to reflect that there are still a bunch of good players in it but the sample size is so small that we get things like Serp in the top 12 and Gengar at no.1 (these things were really popular in the upper ladder in normal singles previously so that's my logic).

I saw a tweet from nouthuca saying something about how currently there's like 200,000 people on the regular singles ladder, compared to something like 2,500 in special. I dunno, there are definitely skilled players, but why are they playing special instead of regular singles? Do they really hate the transfer rule? Do they think with less people that it'd be easier to get to the top / get bragging rights?

 

[GroudonEmpire]

I think all special ladders r like this. Sounds jus like my inverse experience. I wouldn't say anything bout bad players tho since my dece nt rating opp were 1800+ in singles and/or doubles triples typically. They didn't jus play n do well in special

Mid 1600s and higher is tough due to playerbase. Points skill relation is jus scaled down