Skill Level

[Lady_Lyndis]

I think its all prediction. When skilled players fight unskilled players the skilled player is practically psychic. Virtually any team can win if you predict right.

I agree prediction is key, but to an extent to good players battling the mind games will come down to luck. Pokemon involves mostly luck more than anything, such as moves hitting, criticals, etc. Luck and ablity to use a team to adapt to a situation like stopping a sweep or getting a key unit frozen (luck again).

as for "Virtually any team can win if you predict right." dont respond to this comment im about to say its just a nitpick. Thats not true, no matter your prediction what are you going to do in a situation, for example, when a scarfchomp outruns your whole team, and ohko's it all. Of course obviously that said team needs to be pretty poorly built.

 

[Jayce19]

I think people are overlooking the importance of figures and general/specific knowledge of the game mechanics in what a good player needs.

From the basic to the most important ones, from the speed tiers to the average damage X move should do to Y pokemon with a Z moveset/item/ev spread.

Of course, this might not be that needed with Shoddy being used a lot, and internet resources to compensate anyone lack of knowledge of such statistics, but I find it impressive to know such things perfectly, in the occurence for example of a local tournament, where such data are not supposed to be available (unless you come around with it printed on paper, which I would find rather unfair towards other participants).

But I will agree with Aeroblacktyl on the overall caracteristics of a good player that are Experience and Luck, because my point and every other things said in this topic fall in either of those two categories (Experience mostly of course).

 

[Forsety]

10% preparation, 40% experience, 60% luck.
(Yes I'm aware that doesn't add up.)

Part of being a good player is being able to take luck into account.

 

[Sovereign]

Imo, the bulk has to do with 2 things:

a) Prediction
b) Using the pages of standard movesets as a counter list. Aka, using anti standards.

 

[GengarCrysis92]

Like a lot of people said on the first page: It starts with the team building process. Like say you have a massive weak to Starmie [My team does], what do you do? Well, I invested in a Stalling Magnezone whitch not only helps against said Starmie, but allows my to switch into my Driftblim due to Magnezone drawing in Ground and Fighting moves. So, if your team is all ice and is immensly weak to MixApe, even if you had one Ice type that had the strentgh and speed to wipe out Ape, it doesn't matter that you had the disadvantage. It comes down to the fact, man I am starting to sound like Ash, that if you have the right moves, backed with the right team members, you can really take down a threat. That is what makes a good battler.

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

No it doesn't. Anyone can overspecialitze and slap a few Fire resist berries, add a Scarf here and then slap some Focus Sash on something. All that means is that you're competent. =/

 

[the Lexx]

Team building does matter, but not as much as skill, and as mop mentioned earlier, experience - which is something a lot of newer battlers don't seem to understand. I'm not a "veteran" by any means as I've only been battling for a couple years, but it's a noticeable difference. Actual intelligence matters too, and skills such as the ability to read your opponent and mess with their head during the battle.

 

[TAY]

Imo, the bulk has to do with 2 things:

a) Prediction
b) Using the pages of standard movesets as a counter list. Aka, using anti standards.

Most of the really good players don't take their movesets/EV spreads from the smogon strategy dex, so countering standard movesets won't get you anywhere.

Obviously luck is important but it isn't what separates the good players from the bad ones, since everyone has the same amount of it (at least in pokemon =P)

I have to agree with mop that experience is incredibly important. Knowing what to expect when you see a certain pokemon or move is amazingly helpful.

Something that has somehow been completely overlooked, however, is that the good players are smart. Without the capacity to apply everything you've learned to later battles, experience is meaningless.

Team building, prediction, "preparation" (??? do you put on your lucky pkmn hat and do some stretches or what?)...all of it boils down to using your general intelligence to apply your experience with past battles and past teams.

Good Luck, Smart Players! --TAY

 

[Sovereign]

Umm...ok? Good players not using the strategy dex means exactly using anti standards, hence why they actually seem to work perfectly.

 

[merubin]

Uh, unless you wrote your own post up there wrong, it's not the same thing at all. There's a large difference between concocting, say, the original TyraniBOAH or the recent spike in Scarfgar with HP Ice--true anti-standards--and simply thinking through and calculating mostly your EVs but occasionally a move or two so that your team is tuned well as a team and not as a series of individuals.

 

[kamikaen]

People keep mentioning luck, and while that's a factor, it's not something that you can affect. Show me years of missed Air Slashes and critical hits against your Curselax, and it still won't affect your future playing. So while, yeah, luck is a factor, it doesn't separate the good from from the great players, as everyone has the same luck. Luck might influence you in battle, but losing to someone whose every move was a critical hit doesn't make someone a bad player. So even your win/loss record doesn't undoubtedly display how good you are, though it can often be a decent reflection.

I also don't think that experience is what makes you good or great, or bad or whatever, but I'm less sure on this one. I do agree that it contributes to your prediction or preparation skills, but it isn't a factor on it's own. Just because you've played millions of battles doesn't make you a good battler. It will likely contribute to your prediction and preparation skills, but it's just that, a contribution to both of those. A person may also be very good at Pokemon from the get-go. It's unlikely that they'll know everything right off the bat, but I think it's possible. In the same way, intelligence just contributes to prediction & preparation, it doesn't stand alone from my point of view.

If you have the perfect team, yet can't predict, you will still be beaten.

And at the same time, if you can predict perfectly, yet have no skill building teams (let's take it to the extreme; you build a team of Magikarps), you won't win, either. If everyone has some prediction skill from 0-10 (let's be geeks and gauge it), and some preparation skill from 0-10, and has 0 in either one of those, they will never win as long as the gauges stay the same. Through experience, they may vary their gauges, however.

Thats why people who copy Obi's teams on Shoddy still suck.

If, say, Aldaron (because I forget who's at the top of the ladder right now, I'll just use a name I've seen before) copied Obi's team, he would likely win with it, assuming you agree that Obi's teams are good, and Aldaron is good. If Aldaron had a team of Magikarp, he's unlikely to win, and if "Ketchum2990" (who is inexperienced and terrible) uses Obi's team, he's also unlikely to win. People who copy Obi's teams, or any other teams aren't bad because they copy it (though they are generally bad).

So both factors that remain, preparation and prediction, are needed in good quantity to be "good", or "great". I think that team building is "worth more" in a prediction : preparation ratio, but with every generation, and with everything getting new options, adding new Pokemon, etc., prediction becomes more and more important. I won't bother to give my own exact ratio, because it can't be accurately pinpointed.

 

[merubin]

People keep mentioning luck, and while that's a factor, it's not something that you can affect. Show me years of missed Air Slashes and critical hits against your Curselax, and it still won't affect your future playing. So while, yeah, luck is a factor, it doesn't separate the good from from the great players, as everyone has the same luck. Luck might influence you in battle, but losing to someone whose every move was a critical hit doesn't make someone a bad player. So even your win/loss record doesn't undoubtedly display how good you are, though it can often be a decent reflection.

Yes and no. Most instances of luck in Pokemon are just that, but a more experienced player is likely to handle things in a way that minimizes the chances luck will cost them a match.

Off the top of my head, things like CMing up to 6 when 3 is sufficient to sweep the rest of the match and then crying hax when those extra 3 tries are just extra chances to land that crit KO which bypasses all their boosted defenses. Or even little things like being more conservative and healing more often if you're trying to stall when you're paralyzed.

 

[Brawley]

The 3 Biggest things are:
1. Team Building
2. Experience
3.Luck

 

[kamikaen]

Yes and no. Most instances of luck in Pokemon are just that, but a more experienced player is likely to handle things in a way that minimizes the chances luck will cost them a match.

Off the top of my head, things like CMing up to 6 when 3 is sufficient to sweep the rest of the match and then crying hax when those extra 3 tries are just extra chances to land that crit KO which bypasses all their boosted defenses. Or even little things like being more conservative and healing more often if you're trying to stall when you're paralyzed.

Actually, I find that many skilled players I've faced use Fire Blast over Flamethrower, even though that gives luck a chance to kill them. But really, I think that luck simply gives you an opportunity to showcase your prediction/team building skills, and since luck does not discriminate, everyone gets an equal opportunity, and therefore luck does not separate the good from the bad.

 

[bullfrogegg8]

It's prediction. Prediction get the kos you need.

 

[TAY]

Umm...ok? Good players not using the strategy dex means exactly using anti standards, hence why they actually seem to work perfectly.

There's a difference between ''not taking movesets/EV spreads from the strategy dex," as I posted, and 'using the strategy dex to create a team which counters the perceived metagame,' which is what I assume you meant by "anti-standard" in your earlier post. Obviously both cannot be definitions for the same term.

Using the strategy dex to create a counter-metagame team is stupid because it assumes that the smogon strategy dex defines the metagame. There is no entry in the strategy dex for Taunt LO Heatran, even though it is arguably better than Choice Scarf Heatran. Does that mean you should never expect it? Of course not. If creating a working anti-metagame team were possible it would require that you have some knowledge of the actual metagame--not what you read from the strat dex--and that you are smart enough to apply that knowledge in a useful manner when making your team. (Of course, it is impossible to create a team which can even handle all probable threats, simply because D/P provided the game with so many new options.)

I stand by my first post. Experience and intellingence are what makes a player good; good team building and prediction arise naturally if a player has these two things. The strategy dex is a useful resource, but thinking it will transform you into a good player is simply naive.

Good Luck; Gain Experience and lvl up! --TAY

 

[merubin]

Actually, I find that many skilled players I've faced use Fire Blast over Flamethrower, even though that gives luck a chance to kill them. But really, I think that luck simply gives you an opportunity to showcase your prediction/team building skills, and since luck does not discriminate, everyone gets an equal opportunity, and therefore luck does not separate the good from the bad.

For that specific example, though, it's usually irrelevant whether Fire Blast missing will have an unlucky chance to kill them, as Flamethrower wouldn't have enough power and they'd die anyway or have to switch out.

 

[Llama]

To me it is mostly prediction and Using what works or what you can make work not sticking with pokemon that you may like greatly, even though they are not entirely effective.

 

[goofball]

lol...team building is hardly a factor most of the time...The key thing is experience after time you just understand what to do in most situation. you can give a bad player my team but if they don't know what to do and how to work around my weakness its pointless. Team building is a factor but in the end its all experience the longer you play, the better you'll get.

 

[Derek(PUK)]

Adapting to the metagame makes someone good?

So Gyarados has become the most used lead. I throw HP Electric on my lead Pokemon because the metagame consists of 90% of all leads being Gyarados. Does this make me a good battler?

it will make you better if you lead with something like mixpert..

 

[merubin]

The thing is, though, given moderately equal skill, the better team is going to win, and most battlers aren't exactly going to have pros building their teams for them--they have to build or at least tweak them personally. Team-building is always going to be a factor, and something like, say, Obi's stall team certainly demonstrates more skill than most anything else spammed in the RMT subforum.

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

Also anyone mentioning the strategy dexes, please don't. Because no where does that apply to everyone. What about those that actually wrote the strategy dex? I helped edit like nearly every single OU one, so anything about 'countering' those wouldn't apply to me, now would it? Seriously, almost any of the staff, or most of the Pokemon staff here, could take a look at the movepool of a Pokemon, and come up with most of the sets that are now posted, because that IS in fact what happened.

Sometimes an overlooked part of Pokemon is, simply put, common sense.

 

[TAY]

The thing is, though, given moderately equal skill, the better team is going to win, and most battlers aren't exactly going to have pros building their teams for them--they have to build or at least tweak them personally. Team-building is always going to be a factor, and something like, say, Obi's stall team certainly demonstrates more skill than most anything else spammed in the RMT subforum.

This is a good logical argument; unfortunately it's based on the false assumption that the better team will win given equal skill of the two players. A team consisting of Gengar, Azelf, Alakazam, Mismagius, Espeon, and Jynx will lose every time to a team of five jigglypuffs and a choice scarf weavile. While I realize this is an extreme example, my point is that if your opponent is playing a couple of subpar pokes that happen to counter your team, that does not make them a good player. My old team was weak to DD/Waterfall/Ice Punch/Crunch Feraligatr. If someone uses Feraligatr, despite the fact that Gyarados is better in almost every situation, and beats me, does that make them a good player? Similarly, a number of players pointed out that Obi's stall team is annihilated by taunting Heatran; however just using taunt heatran doesn't make you a good player.

While team building is a factor in the outcome of a single match, it plays little role in the outcome of a series of matches in comparison to overall experience and intelligence. Also, that's not to say that a "bad" team can't be created. Most halfway-decent players can create a team which maximizes defensive/offensive coverage and minimizes threats. Most matches will come down to each players ability to play around their own teams weaknesses and remove their opponent's offensive and/or defensive threats; or else it will come down to chance.

Good Luck, Luck! --TAY

 

[goofball]

You just think you're cool because you're the only person who uses Shuckle as a lead.

Actually, I think it's really cool too.

That's not me if you're referring to goofballANGRY, I'm about 239043 times better than him !!!! I've never used shuckle and I think its pretty mediocre lol

and I dont get your first statement if I was suppose to get it at all @_@

 

[Blue Harvest]

Standard Boah to standard Hippowdon is 54.76% - 64.29%.

Mine has 120 SD EVs. With Leftovers it makes Boah Ice Beam a 3HKO-barely.

Makes me want a Swampert...