Pokémon X&Y post-launch discussion thread - AKA Jinx is Upset

[WildRaubtier]

wellllll...... since we're interested in this thread...

Seems like Diancie has finally been revealed. It's apparently a mutated carbink, with similar stats.

A special Floette based on AZ's has also surfaced, somewhere. It has different stats compared a normal Floette, and a special move called "Light of Ruin" that is fairy type and has 140 power/90 accuracy :O

Also, Volcanion's special move is a Scald with the power of Hydro Pump lol

[Shaibana]

so they added new pokemon? :o

[WildRaubtier]

Nah, these are just the Mews of this gen.

spoilered in case you don't want to knowLeft to right: Diancie, Volcanion, Hoopa.


further reading about those three

Floette-Eternal (AZ's Floette)


And finally... Mega Latias/Latios:


That's all of it.

[Dat Matt]

Diance has been revealed. Not sure when we'll get it, but I am excite.

[edczxcvbnm]

I have recently purchase a 3DS and this game and I am having a blast. I have 4 gym badges and 100 pokemon. I have caught all of the mons that I can in central Kalos and now and I working on doing that for the next area before I move on.

By going off and trying to catch-e-mall, I am now super over leveled(Greninja is level 65)...it also helps that I find the Battle Chateau a great deal of fun.

I know I can't get all of them due to Nintendo's stupid insistence on special event and other things of that nature but I will try to capture as many as I can on my own and go through the evolutions and breeding processes.

I am having a blast so far. I have not yet done any friend code stuff so I don't have that to give out to anyone yet.

[Fynn]

Alright, so like I said earlier, I never really got into competitive battling, so to whomever I'll face in the meet-up tonight - I'll be using the Pokemon I used to beat the champion, so they are decent, but not really championship material, and I kinda suck at any strategies

[Skyblade]

I wouldn't recommend getting into competitive battling. It's...not fun. The game becomes an absolutely insane numbers game for min/maxing Pokémon, and there are huge shifts to even the ways you have to think and how you approach battles. Battling friends can be fun on rare occasions, but the serious competitive scene? Blech.

That said, if you want to battle, make sure everyone has downloaded Patch 1.2, or the game won't let you.

[Fynn]

I wouldn't recommend getting into competitive battling. It's...not fun. The game becomes an absolutely insane numbers game for min/maxing Pokémon, and there are huge shifts to even the ways you have to think and how you approach battles. Battling friends can be fun on rare occasions, but the serious competitive scene? Blech.

That said, if you want to battle, make sure everyone has downloaded Patch 1.2, or the game won't let you.

Yeah, well, if it stops being fun, I don't intend to keep going at it. I just really wanna test myself, see how I do and experiment with the meta game a little. But battling friends is the most fun thing ever, so I can't wait to battle you guys ^.^

[Ultima Shadow]

I wouldn't recommend getting into competitive battling. It's...not fun.

Totally disagree with you. It's great. Have you actually given it a serious shot? You don't HAVE to build every pokemon like the Smogon sets to do well.

It will be important to keep track of certain speeds, like... Garchomp who has just slightly above 100 speed should usually make use of that and put enough EVs in speed to outspeed max-speed base 100. But things like that aside, you can often put points where you feel like. You just have to use some common sense, like... bulky pokemon that function better as walls should have their EV's in HP and defense rather than speed and attack etc. Smogon can be good as a general reference at times, but you certainly don't need perfectly min/maxed to outspeed exactly that specific pokemon while being able to survive attack x from another pokemon.

With a team where I had non-"standard" sets on 4 out of 6 pokemons, I still placed 3rd at a X and Y tounament. And I've swept a whole competitive team with an insane set that Smogon would never put on their site for being too ridiculous.


Also, the actual battling IS fun once you have your team(s) - whenever your pokemons are mainstream or not. It's the number one way to keep enjoying the game after finishing the main story.

So yeah, if you ask, I totally recommend trying competitive battling out. If it's not for you, then it's not. But it can certainly be a hell of a lot of fun, just like any other competitive game.

[Shaibana]

Its fun when you win once in a while perhaps. ;p.

Bah i couldnt get an connection in the frist train last night and the 2nd dient had internet at all :o
I might be online tonight , ive got internet here . Pls me, im sure ive alredy added you ( of ur on the list)

Im in for a friendly match

P.s sign in for my Pokémon battle competition for eoff pls

[Skyblade]

I wouldn't recommend getting into competitive battling. It's...not fun.

Totally disagree with you. It's great. Have you actually given it a serious shot? You don't HAVE to build every pokemon like the Smogon sets to do well.

It will be important to keep track of certain speeds, like... Garchomp who has just slightly above 100 speed should usually make use of that and put enough EVs in speed to outspeed max-speed base 100. But things like that aside, you can often put points where you feel like. You just have to use some common sense, like... bulky pokemon that function better as walls should have their EV's in HP and defense rather than speed and attack etc. Smogon can be good as a general reference at times, but you certainly don't need perfectly min/maxed to outspeed exactly that specific pokemon while being able to survive attack x from another pokemon.

With a team where I had non-"standard" sets on 4 out of 6 pokemons, I still placed 3rd at a X and Y tounament. And I've swept a whole competitive team with an insane set that Smogon would never put on their site for being too ridiculous.


Also, the actual battling IS fun once you have your team(s) - whenever your pokemons are mainstream or not. It's the number one way to keep enjoying the game after finishing the main story.

So yeah, if you ask, I totally recommend trying competitive battling out. If it's not for you, then it's not. But it can certainly be a hell of a lot of fun, just like any other competitive game.

Yeah, you're kind of proving my point here. Whether you choose Smogon sets or not, you need to know Speed tiers. You pretty much need to know damage rolls, and what has the potential to one-shot you. You need to know how to maximize coverage and cross coverage. You need to learn a completely different strategy for swapping Pokemon and how to support as a team. And you need to understand the insanely complicated concepts behind momentum that turn Pokemon almost more into a version of Go than the game we're familiar with.

Or you can just get demolished by every competitive trainer you meet, I guess that's always an option.

[Ultima Shadow]

Yeah, you're kind of proving my point here. Whether you choose Smogon sets or not, you need to know Speed tiers. You pretty much need to know damage rolls, and what has the potential to one-shot you. You need to know how to maximize coverage and cross coverage. You need to learn a completely different strategy for swapping Pokemon and how to support as a team. And you need to understand the insanely complicated concepts behind momentum that turn Pokemon almost more into a version of Go than the game we're familiar with.

Or you can just get demolished by every competitive trainer you meet, I guess that's always an option.

I said you DON'T need to exakt EV spread to survive "attack x". Speed tiers, yes, but that's not actually hard. You simply need to know the base speeds, and that's pretty much it. It's also only relevant when it comes to sweeper vs sweeper and such. If they have a Crobat out when your tank/wall is out, it's obvious who goes first. And same applies to many similar but not quite as extreme situations too. But really, speed is the only thing. The rest is something that's up to guessing and experience.

If your slower Psychic type is out against Gengar, you can probably figure out that it does not appreciate a Shadow Ball, even if you don't know whenever you'll survive it or not. And by simply knowing that, you can decide to either take the risk of sacrificing it, or switch it out.

As for the actual thinking game, that's the part that's FUN. Learning how to play against other competitive people is different from playing against CPU's, and that's the point. There's more strategy and thinking involved, and that's what makes it fun to some.

[Skyblade]

Yeah, you're kind of proving my point here. Whether you choose Smogon sets or not, you need to know Speed tiers. You pretty much need to know damage rolls, and what has the potential to one-shot you. You need to know how to maximize coverage and cross coverage. You need to learn a completely different strategy for swapping Pokemon and how to support as a team. And you need to understand the insanely complicated concepts behind momentum that turn Pokemon almost more into a version of Go than the game we're familiar with.

Or you can just get demolished by every competitive trainer you meet, I guess that's always an option.

I said you DON'T need to exakt EV spread to survive "attack x". Speed tiers, yes, but that's not actually hard. You simply need to know the base speeds, and that's pretty much it. It's also only relevant when it comes to sweeper vs sweeper and such. If they have a Crobat out when your tank/wall is out, it's obvious who goes first. And same applies to many similar but not quite as extreme situations too. But really, speed is the only thing. The rest is something that's up to guessing and experience.

If your slower Psychic type is out against Gengar, you can probably figure out that it does not appreciate a Shadow Ball, even if you don't know whenever you'll survive it or not. And by simply knowing that, you can decide to either take the risk of sacrificing it, or switch it out.

As for the actual thinking game, that's the part that's FUN. Learning how to play against other competitive people is different from playing against CPU's, and that's the point. There's more strategy and thinking involved, and that's what makes it fun to some.

One thing I forgot to mention: You also have to learn to give up on about half the Pokémon in the game because Stealth Rocks is hideously broken and cripples a ton of really fun Pokémon, and Game Freak has still not bothered to address this (nor, for that matter, have they managed to address the way they absolutely butchered the Psychic type to the point that it is almost unusable).

I do really disagree with you. Casual battling can be fun, but competitive just takes things way too far. Yeah, you don't "need" to know what your Pokémon can withstand and what it can't. But, on the other hand, if you don't know that Emboar can now carry Sucker Punch via an Egg Move, you might find that same Psychic Pokémon getting toasted by a move you didn't know to prepare for.

Team building becomes an absolute headache. Strategy takes on hundreds of levels as you have to plan an obsess over every single Pokémon the opponent has, try to determine what moves they're carrying, then get absolutely destroyed when it turns out you're wrong. You have to know move sets, play styles, combination strategies, and the potential of several hundred different Pokémon. Or you will get trounced by the serious battlers. Maybe not all the time, but often enough.

Admittedly, I do loathe PvP activity in most games, but there is no way I am going to make the mistake of stepping into the competitive game in Pokémon for a very long time, if ever. I'll stick to casuals when I feel like battling someone. You can keep trying to lure in the casual battlers so you can toast them, but I've been burned before, it won't work on me.

[Ultima Shadow]

One thing I forgot to mention: You also have to learn to give up on about half the Pokémon in the game because Stealth Rocks is hideously broken and cripples a ton of really fun Pokémon, and Game Freak has still not bothered to address this (nor, for that matter, have they managed to address the way they absolutely butchered the Psychic type to the point that it is almost unusable).

I do really disagree with you. Casual battling can be fun, but competitive just takes things way too far. Yeah, you don't "need" to know what your Pokémon can withstand and what it can't. But, on the other hand, if you don't know that Emboar can now carry Sucker Punch via an Egg Move, you might find that same Psychic Pokémon getting toasted by a move you didn't know to prepare for.

Team building becomes an absolute headache. Strategy takes on hundreds of levels as you have to plan an obsess over every single Pokémon the opponent has, try to determine what moves they're carrying, then get absolutely destroyed when it turns out you're wrong. You have to know move sets, play styles, combination strategies, and the potential of several hundred different Pokémon. Or you will get trounced by the serious battlers. Maybe not all the time, but often enough.

Admittedly, I do loathe PvP activity in most games, but there is no way I am going to make the mistake of stepping into the competitive game in Pokémon for a very long time, if ever. I'll stick to casuals when I feel like battling someone. You can keep trying to lure in the casual battlers so you can toast them, but I've been burned before, it won't work on me.

I will agree with you that Stealth Rocks are stupidly overpowered and ruins a lot of pokemons. Luckily, there are a few ways to get rid of them, so that the pokemon with 4x weakness to it can still be played, but the fact that playing these pokemons require anti-SR support does suck.

I do disagree, however, with just how much planning has to go into the teambuilding and you certainly don't need to know the moveset of hundreds of pokemons to do well. I've seriously just trained a whole bunch of pokemons that I like, and I switchs them around pretty randomly, only making sure I don't have any massive weakness when I make up teams to battle people with. More often than not, this works just fine as well. Maybe I haven't encountered any of the super MLG mega-pros or whatever, but I almost always battle serious players with smogon OU teams. And more often than not, my semi-random team building does work pretty well. It's not like I always win with such teams, but I can at least put up a good fight even when I don't.

And sure... if your Psychic type got Sucker Punched, that sucks. But hey, at least you'll know next time. Even a 6-0 loss, while frustrating, isn't the end of the world.


Also, I'm not trying to "lure" anyone in. I simply have a very different view on competitive battling, since I actually really enjoy PvP and competitive play in most games. I think it's fun, I like it, I enjoy it. That's all. I've figured it's not for you, but I think it's worth for The White Wizard of Fynn to try it out if he wants to without expecting it to be bad and boring. If it ends up not being his kind of thing, then it isn't. I'm not trying to ruin anyone's experience.

[Skyblade]

One thing I forgot to mention: You also have to learn to give up on about half the Pokémon in the game because Stealth Rocks is hideously broken and cripples a ton of really fun Pokémon, and Game Freak has still not bothered to address this (nor, for that matter, have they managed to address the way they absolutely butchered the Psychic type to the point that it is almost unusable).

I do really disagree with you. Casual battling can be fun, but competitive just takes things way too far. Yeah, you don't "need" to know what your Pokémon can withstand and what it can't. But, on the other hand, if you don't know that Emboar can now carry Sucker Punch via an Egg Move, you might find that same Psychic Pokémon getting toasted by a move you didn't know to prepare for.

Team building becomes an absolute headache. Strategy takes on hundreds of levels as you have to plan an obsess over every single Pokémon the opponent has, try to determine what moves they're carrying, then get absolutely destroyed when it turns out you're wrong. You have to know move sets, play styles, combination strategies, and the potential of several hundred different Pokémon. Or you will get trounced by the serious battlers. Maybe not all the time, but often enough.

Admittedly, I do loathe PvP activity in most games, but there is no way I am going to make the mistake of stepping into the competitive game in Pokémon for a very long time, if ever. I'll stick to casuals when I feel like battling someone. You can keep trying to lure in the casual battlers so you can toast them, but I've been burned before, it won't work on me.

I will agree with you that Stealth Rocks are stupidly overpowered and ruins a lot of pokemons. Luckily, there are a few ways to get rid of them, so that the pokemon with 4x weakness to it can still be played, but the fact that playing these pokemons require anti-SR support does suck.

I do disagree, however, with just how much planning has to go into the teambuilding and you certainly don't need to know the moveset of hundreds of pokemons to do well. I've seriously just trained a whole bunch of pokemons that I like, and I switchs them around pretty randomly, only making sure I don't have any massive weakness when I make up teams to battle people with. More often than not, this works just fine as well. Maybe I haven't encountered any of the super MLG mega-pros or whatever, but I almost always battle serious players with smogon OU teams. And more often than not, my semi-random team building does work pretty well. It's not like I always win with such teams, but I can at least put up a good fight even when I don't.

And sure... if your Psychic type got Sucker Punched, that sucks. But hey, at least you'll know next time. Even a 6-0 loss, while frustrating, isn't the end of the world.


Also, I'm not trying to "lure" anyone in. I simply have a very different view on competitive battling, since I actually really enjoy PvP and competitive play in most games. I think it's fun, I like it, I enjoy it. That's all. I've figured it's not for you, but I think it's worth for The White Wizard of Fynn to try it out if he wants to without expecting it to be bad and boring. If it ends up not being his kind of thing, then it isn't. I'm not trying to ruin anyone's experience.

I'm going to talk for a minute about Smogon. There was actually a huge debate on Smogon for quite a while about the people who come in, ripping teams straight off the recommendations, and play without a proper understanding of the metagame or competitive strategies, and the effect that has had on Smogon's policies.

See, Smogon is, at heart, an elitist competitive paradise. But as Smogon and its metagame have become more and more popular through word of mouth, a ton of people have joined in who don't understand the full details of how the game, properly played at the competitive level, works. Yet, because Smogon is also an open forum that anyone can join, these people were being heard and throwing off debates, tiering and other issues about development of the metagame. This became especially prevalent with the release of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, and frustrated a lot of the core competitive crowd. This became especially problematic with the quickban discussion surrounding Blaziken, Gengarite, and Kangaskhanite, with a ton of the newer members not understanding (or not caring) how the mechanics meant that these Pokémon completely break the metagame. To the point that a lot of the experienced players began constantly referencing the join date and ranking of those speaking against the bans, pointing out their inexperience with the metagame and how they simply had not climbed high enough to see these Pokémon at the true competitive level. While that has always happened in their community, it had never happened to the degree it had here.

Thus, Smogon's community, especially in its current incarnation since X and Y came out, is no longer strictly competitive. There is now a significant playerbase dwelling at the entry level. They use Smogon's techniques and build guides, without a true understanding of the fundamentals of the metagame. This has adjusted Smogon's tiering (as tiers are based on frequency of use) and ranking system, but it hasn't really changed the nature of the game at the true competitive level. It has, however, introduced a significant quasi-casual element to the competitive game. Casual players who want to be more than they are, but lack the understanding.

I'm not claiming that this is the only crowd you have faced, but I can say that this crowd is very different to play from the true competitive crowd. Go try to challenge one of the OU council, or any of the players ranked high enough to be considered, by the Smogon core, to be competitive (I'm not sure what the current ranking for that is, I think it was around 1500 last I checked). It's a very different game, and not one I ever plan on playing again.


However, I never said it was boring. It is anything but. I just don't think it is fun. The community itself, I actually really like. I like the theorycrafting, I like the build discussion, and I like the debates and ideas that come out of it. I just hate competing at that level (actually, I don't much care for competing in general, but at that level it is especially bad).

If you like that degree of play, more power to you. It is clearly fun for the people who engage in it (the metagame would never have developed if it wasn't fun). There is a lot of a thinking man's game there, and a lot of depth and strategy to work out. But I don't enjoy it myself, and I want to try to create a clear picture of the downside for those who are thinking of entering it. If you're attempting to enter the competitive world on the cartridge, instead of the simulators (where a lot of the competitive game takes place), there is a significant time and effort investment involved, and doing all of that only to wind up in a game that you aren't competitive in and aren't having fun in is not something I wish for anyone to have to go through.

I use some of the competitive builds myself. I theorycraft some of the strategies, and I do enjoy building up my Pokémon, breeding for Nature, IVs, Moves, etcetera. But I do not ever attempt to enter the world of the truly competitive metagame. It is a nightmare. If you like it, or think you will like it, great. Have fun. But know what you are getting into first. I recommend stepping onto Smogon, getting to know a couple of the decent competitors, and challenging a couple on the simulator. A lot of them are great guys, and plenty will happily help you understand the systems and theories, work on your team, and better your skills. But you'll find the game very different from the Pokémon you've been playing thus far, and make sure you're ok with it before you put in the effort required for the undertaking you're preparing for.