Tuesday, August 19, 2014

You're not a beautiful, unique snowflake, part 2

You're blind. You're deaf. Or rather, you just see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear. If you paid any attention to the post-match interview, you would've heard the man himself say his first choice was Amoonguss (the same as any smart and reasonable Pokémon player, at least in the absence of Togekiss), and only tried Pachirisu afterwards after the overgrown mushroom yielded questionable results. This means that he didn't use Pachirisu because he had a soft spot for the thing and slapped Follow Me on it just because it's what it did better than anything else, it's because Pachirisu gave him a chance to win more matches. Yes, maybe he genuinely likes Pachirisu. But since it wasn't his first choice, it's obvious that it's not the reason why he used it. No matter how much you want to believe the opposite, he used Pachirisu the same way he would a chess piece. He applied the same logic to this whole thing as any of the Smogonites you despise oh so much. It just so happens that he picked a Pokémon that rarely sees use by most normal players in most normal environments because of the restrictions of the 2014 VGC format. So please keep your annoying "YOU CAN WIN WITH YOUR FAVORITES" bullshit at the door.

Oh, I just mentioned chess pieces. That's something else. When have you ever heard the everyday Joe complain about how Russian grandmasters are obsessed with queens? Never. That's because chess players are above that shit. Not Pokémon players, by the looks of things. You never see some scrub brag, "I always underpromote because queens are so overrated!" Yes, underpromotion is something that happens, although rarely, most often to avoid a stalemate caused by a promotion to a queen. And that's exactly what happened this weekend. Se Jun Park used a seemingly lesser option compared to Amoonguss because the latter ended up dying more often because of its relative plethora of weaknesses than because he played it badly. At that point he simply was better served by a Pokémon with only one weakness, massive loss of HP be damned. Remember how I keep saying different Pokémon can see wild fluctuations in usefulness and usage depending on the level at which it's played? When you're arguably the best player in the world, it goes double for you. Any of us regular schmoes would replace our Amoongusses with Pachirisus on the VGC ladder overnight (something I get the feeling may happen, stay tuned for monthly stats!), we'd get pulverized and left wondering, how the fuck did he do what he did?

Oh, by the way, way to conveniently forget that the rest of his team was absolutely bog standard. Guess which Pokémon Pachirisu gave a chance to molest its opponents constantly in the finals? Garchomp, the Pokémon most closely associated with what you call "self-centered stuck-up Smogon elitists"! Pachirisu, the new darling of casuals everywhere, standing next to Garchomp, Smogon's uncontested favorite (or so they say). Pretty sure the universe is about to implode. We also got such staples as Talonflame, Gyarados and Gardevoir, with only Gothitelle being slightly more exotic (but not at all a bad or uncommon choice, Shadow Tag and all).

Bottom line: the man you hail as your new hero is actually a horrible villain by your standards. But never let the truth get in the way of a good story, right?

28 comments:

  1. Playing OU today i've seen 2 Pachirisu teams, is this a sign of something

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    1. In SINGLES? Are you fucking serious? This thing's only saving grace is being a quasi-passable Follow Me user when Togekiss isn't allowed. Take that away, and it's absolutely dismal.

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    2. My only question for you is how quickly did their Pachirisu die, and how quickly did you deal with the rest of their team afterwards?

      I also wonder how many people are sticking Follow Me onto theirs because that's what the champion did, without realizing what the move is actually for.

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    3. Oh man, the monthly stats are going to be a riot, I can tell. In a world where Eviolite Slowbro and Assault Vest Doublade are things, nothing can surprise me anymore.

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    4. People still think Slowking evolves from Slowbro? It's been 5 generations and 15 years already people, come on!

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    5. Pachirisu died one hit from a lot of stuff, and in one of the battles was their lead, the rest of their team was a standard OU team, just with only 5 worthwhile team members

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  2. Even Aya would probably make a cursory mention that he used more than just Pachirisu. The actual Aya, not my Hawlucha (sorry. Even when I found out it was a luchador, it's still a frighteningly fast bird. I couldn't help myself, and I already did something for Talonflame))...

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  3. Ah, there's no point in trying to convince them. It's kind of a situation like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AefCywaYD6s

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  4. This is off topic but, am I the only one who thinks the new Zero Suit Samus look in the new Smash Bros. is less sexualized than her full-body skin-tight blue suit despite showing more skin? (To me it looks less emphasizing on her "assets") Then again I'm not a white-knight who thinks a female character has to stay in her suit because attractive means bad (therefore no femininity is allowed).

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    1. First off, there's nothing new about it in the proper sense of the term. Second... is it just an alternate skin or something? The old style is still up on the official site...

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    2. Screenshot shows Samus in the costume Ryan described...

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    3. I know, what I mean is that both seem to exist in the game.

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  5. I like "you're not Se Jun Park" as rhetoric, but I think that for your "target audience" here it's just going to distract them from the more important points about the game. They're just going to whine about elitism and miss the substance of the argument.

    Obviously, of course, being Se Jun Park helps - but you can't use GARCHOMP as effectively as Se Jun Park; your understanding of Pokémon as a game is pathetic compared to his. Instead, the point that really needs to be taken away is that, if you're using some shit-tier mon in a metagame where it's almost entirely outclassed, you need to know exactly why the mon isn't typically considered "good," what you need out of it that nothing better can provide, and why your team justifies that kind of specialized support.

    I'm not Se Jun Park. I'm not a great player, probably not even a good one. So let's go with an anecdote so I can break down why "VGC '14 proves that you can just use your favorites and win" is dumb.

    Earlier today, I was testing out an OU birdspam team with Crobat on it. Suspect ladder - not going for recs, just trying to get a quick feel for what the new meta will be like after M-Mawile is banned. I started kinda late to make recs, and I don't have the patience to do that much laddering in one sitting.

    Crobat is not a good Pokémon in OU. It's not, sorry. So let's discuss how I arrived at the conclusion that Crobat was the Pokémon I should use, and how that worked.

    Obviously, the central offensive core of a birdspam team is going to be Pinsir/Talonflame. These two want rock-solid hazard control, and they want Pokémon that can take a Return or a Brave Bird weakened enough to be within KO range for those moves.

    I chose Kyurem-B to do that. It nails a long list of important defensive mons like Rotom-W and Skarmory which stand in the way of my spamming Flying moves until I win. Hazards would help me soften up an opposing team, and I wanted a mon that was able to help Kyurem-B to brute-force through things that stand in the way of my Talonflame/Pinsir core, so I added Garchomp next. Garchomp sets up Stealth Rock, and once that's done, allows me to bring opposing Dragons and bulky Steel-types into play earlier. I wanted to keep my own hazards in play; Bisharp punishes Defog and helps to alleviate my team's Fairy/Ice weaknesses.

    Now is where Crobat entered the picture. I wanted a fast Defogger; that part was non-negotiable. What I also wanted, though, was the ability to use a fast U-turn out to keep my Defogger alive in case I'd need it later without losing momentum. Optimally, I wanted it to be fast enough to come back in against whatever it needed to in the lategame and get an emergency Defog in to prepare for a sweep, in case the opponent managed to get Stealth Rock back in play. I also wanted a mon that would help Talonflame stay alive a little longer by putting things in a KO range that didn't involve it losing half its health at the same time. Crobat filled all of these needs - just bulky enough to be serviceable with HP investment, fast as fuck,

    What I wound up running was this set:

    Crobat@Black Sludge
    Jolly
    248 HP/8 Def/252 Spe
    Infiltrator
    -Defog
    -U-turn
    -Super Fang
    -Hypnosis

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    1. Crobat was used because it could fill these multiple utility roles more effectively than anything else I looked at. It provided exactly the support I wanted, while nothing else filled all the same roles; there were a couple other Pokémon I looked at, but they either didn't work as well with Talonflame or they didn't have as attractive a speed tier.

      I did not pick Crobat because it's cool. I do not maintain that Crobat is a good Pokemon in this metagame - fuck no. I'd go as far to say that Crobat should never be used outside of birdspam teams that benefit from its very specific set of support options; 90 percent of the time, there are much better Defoggers.

      Here's the thing: Crobat turned out pretty well for me. It did all the jobs I wanted from it. Even so, though, using a Pokémon like this requires you to accept real compromises. Crobat is "bulky," but it still out and out can't switch in on a lot of dangerous offensive threats. It's good at softening up a team, but it's pretty much wholly without direct offensive presence; that U-turn will never, ever kill anything. It's barely better than a dry pass. Hypnosis lets you make a targeted removal of one threat from the match, but it's also 60 percent accurate. I was frequently able to sleep something, put two or three mons at half health, and keep hazards off the field, but I had to play with an acute awareness of all the things Crobat can't do. Even then, a bad team matchup can make the support a mon like Crobat offers irrelevant, and then the rest of your team has to be capable of picking up the slack for the fact that you have a mon that comes in, uses Defog, and then immediately dies. It's also important that your personal playstyle meshes with the mon in question; Crobat worked for me because the things I'm good at (forcing switches and predicting what's coming in, mainly) align with the skills you need to make it work. If you can't tell when you want to Super Fang on the impending switch-in, when you want to U-turn, and when you want to risk a Hypnosis - it's not going to work for you. Period.

      The moral of the story? If I can find success with a shitty mon like Crobat, anyone can - but you need to be approaching things correctly. You're not picking a Pokémon because you like it and then working out what it does, you're identifying a hole that happens to be in a really funky shape with tons of twists and turns and shit, and then picking the one horribly malformed peg that happens to fit it.

      If you can't justify exactly why you're using Pachirisu, use Amoonguss, Togekiss, or ANY OTHER ELECTRIC TYPE IN THE GAME, depending on if you're playing VGC '14, open doubles, or singles. If you can't justify exactly why you're using Crobat, use Latios, Mandibuzz, Mew, Mega Scizor, etc. And so on. By and large, disused Pokémon are disused for a reason; sometimes they're going to be exactly what you need for a team, but that doesn't mean that they're the equals of the more common things.

      (Also, sorry about stealing your soapbox, yo.)

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    2. I agree with the essence of what you're saying. The age of Crobat being a decent pick for OU teams is pretty much gone, but it still has some inherent qualities, as you mentioned.

      Still, the notion of Pokémon's usefulness varying depending on the level of play, you guessed it, varies depending on the Pokémon. Garchomp is one of those bread-and-butter Pokémon that excels everywhere, it's not a put-a-foot-wrong-and-you're-done deal like Pachirisu (except for Ice moves, but I'm talking about the player's decisions here moreso than what the opponent uses on you). Sure, we can't handle Chomp the way he does, but its qualities don't fade away because you're world championship caliber or playing Pokémon for the first time.

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    3. Oh, definitely. If you play Garchomp badly it's still a threat because it's relatively fast, bulky, and very powerful. If you play Pachirisu badly it's a red smear.

      I'm just noting that, sure, feel free to experiment as long as you know exactly what you need from this mon that only it can provide, why you need that, and why it's not a common pick.

      Then again, I'm probably overestimating the GameFAQs denizens' understanding of the game when I say that they "could" use something like Pachirisu successfully if they were approaching it from the correct angle and they had the appropriate psychological factors. I suppose that if they were capable of analyzing a Pokémon to that extent, they wouldn't be making these stupid arguments.

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  6. http://www.reddit.com/r/pokemon/comments/2e1n8e/pachirisu_in_the_championship_team_is_really_the/

    people are idiots...

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    1. Well, poor fucker got told at the very least. All the popular replies are those that utterly deconstruct his stance.

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    2. Also, nice catch about Rage Powder doing squat to Grass-types. If he used Amoonguss, that WoW from Rotom-M would've hit Garchomp, and who knows how things would've turned out.

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  7. Just because a highly skilled player manages to (with some luck) play a pokemon that is incredibly subpar because and only because it fit an exact niche for his team, after trying out other more seemingly optimal pokemon which failed to work, on a team of highly standard mons, does not mean that your Pichus and four-fire Zards are good now. Feeble cursed ones,

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  8. "Feeble cursed one, you lack intelligence. Weak, so terribly weak... Heh heh heh..."

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    1. I'd be willing to give them a trial of guts. Well...More a cruel, brutal wake-up call...

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    2. "The stupid one. He is stupid, yes?"

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  9. "You're blind. You're deaf. Or rather, you just see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear."

    Wow, Slowflake... This is just... so deep.

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  10. Oh, oh! What if your favorite Pokémon happen to be in the OU tier? Or if a Pokémon is your favorite BECAUSE it's in the OU tier? What if all of your favorite Pokémon are in OU?

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    1. Some of my favorites are actually Uber. In terms of your question, it depends on how firmly they are in the tier. For example, Technician Scizor will make at least one Pokemon on the other guy's team sweat...

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    2. That's the logic that goes into my favorites (Tyranitar/Excadrill/Aegislash).

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    3. Even if that's the case, they still have to synergize pretty well. Synergy between the different members of your team is much more important than where they are in the monthly stats or viability rankings or whatever their BST is, hence why Pachirisu managed to work in that tournament.

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