The Better Battlers Project (Round 3 Critiques) [READ OP]

[doughboy]

Hosted by: ThePillsburyDoughBoy and The Great Mighty Doom
Approved by Birkal and Pocket
where's my art badge!

Preface
One of the most important exercises to become a better player at chess is to review your matches after you play them. In doing so, we find the mistakes, positions, and techniques that could have turned our loss into a win. In Pokemon we seldom review our matches, often due to the to the frustrating implications of a loss. Well, what if we applied the principles of chess to Pokemon?

In this community wide exercise, together we can develop our skills to become better battlers! Whereas most OU forum projects focus on the team-building aspect of Pokemon, this project intends to develop the battling skills of everyone from around the forum. Here is how it works: each round, users within this thread will submit a battle through the PS! replay viewer and the first three to be posted will be the ones under critique. Once the 3 battles are submitted, the round of critiques will officially begin. From here, the experienced battlers of OU can give constructive criticism of the battle in question. Once the battles have been sufficiently critiqued, either me or The Great Mighty Doom will end the round. At the end of the round, we will hand pick what we think was the best critique of the bunch. Those who win the round will be inducted in our critique Hall of Fame! Remember, good posts do not go unnoticed!

In addition to maintaining a Hall of Fame for critiques, we will also have a guide to the battles listed in each round. That way if you missed out on an earlier round, you can always review a battle that covers a certain skill!​

Rules:

• In this thread, we are aiming to provide constructive criticism in order to improve our battling skills. If you can not give constructive criticism, whether be with your attitude or skill, refrain from posting in this thread. Likewise if you can not take constructive criticism do not post in this thread.
• In order to prevent an imbalance of battles to critiques; only a limited amount of battles posted will be rated. This will occur on a first come, first serve basis. A user can submit only one individual battle, so choose wisely! The first three battles posted at the beginning of a round will be the ones critiqued. After a set of three is submitted in this thread, submissions will stop and the critiques will commence. A new set of 3 submissions will not begin until all 3 battles are critiqued and me or The Great Mighty Doom post to start submissions. Failure to recognize an established set of three battles will result in your post being ignored and deleted.
• If you are using an alt please specify who you actually are in relation to your username.

Guidelines:

• If you are newer to the game and are inexperienced in OU, refrain from posting a critique of another battler. However, feel free to post a battle once a new set of three submissions begins.
• Even if you are experienced in OU, feel free to submit a battle where you think it could act as a good learning experience for yourself and the OU community. No battler is infallible!
• The quality of a critique is directly linked to a quality of a battle. Ideally the battle you submit should be one where the loss was closer, lacking hax, and where no obvious pitfalls were made. An example of a bad submission: "When I played The Great Mighty Doom he beat me 6-0, he froze 3 of my pokemon, and I used Explosion on my only Pokemon who could beat X pokemon on his team".
• Giving information what you were trying to accomplish with your team or what your goal was for the battle will allow you to put context on what you were doing for your critics.
• To those giving critiques, remember that you are giving advice to possibly newer and more inexperienced players. Thus, try to remain as concise as possible in your explanation. In addition, use the terms of your post correctly. For example, the difference between a check and a counter.
• However, to those who are receiving the critique, it is your responsibility to understand the definitions and explanations used by the critic. Therefore, perusing the Gen 5 Pokemon Dictionary can be a great asset to get what your critic is saying.
• Flaming other users on their skills, teambuilding, and/or intelligence WILL NOT be tolerated.

______________________________________

Round 3 has begun you may now post a battle.

 

[doughboy]

~Critique Hall of Fame~
____________________________________

Round 1

Stathakis - Critique of Sora13 on Minimizing Risk

Round 2
Enguarde - Critique of Mikel on Getting an Early Game Lead

Round 3

 

[TGMD]

~Replay Compilation~
____________________________________

Round 1

http://pastebin.com/EWmCTvbB - Submitted by Princess Bri

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833507 - Submitted by DrunkDemon

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833622 - Submitted by sora13
____________________________________

Round 2

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5993005 - Submitted by Mikel

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou6105507 - Submitted by StarmanXL

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou6268054 - Submitted by Ganj4lf
____________________________________

Round 3

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou6583157 - Submitted by BlankZero

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/oucurrent6750161 - Submitted by Blackrussian

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/oucurrent6763539 - Submitted by White symphoni

 

[dice]

Here's a battle between Bloo and I:

We battled while testing teams and here are the logs, sorry about not having the actual replay, but I hope this can suffice:

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/~~kupo/battle-oucurrent2721

http://pastebin.com/EWmCTvbB

 

[DrunkDemon]

This is a really cool idea, hopefully this can help me out some.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833507

edit: Forgot to mention my alt is AARP.

 

[sora13]

This is a battle with my HO team, and although the win was pretty clearly mine if not for small amounts of hax, those hax forced me to make some decisions on how to proceed with the battle like who to sac and whatnot, and I would like some feedback for my decisions throughout this battle. Thank you! My sets are as follows:

Salamence (F) @ Lum Berry
Trait: Moxie
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
IVs: 30 HP
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Fire Blast

Cloyster (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Skill Link
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Naive Nature
- Shell Smash
- Icicle Spear
- Hydro Pump
- Rock Blast

Volcarona (M) @ Lum Berry
Trait: Flame Body
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
IVs: 30 SAtk / 30 SDef
- Quiver Dance
- Fire Blast
- Bug Buzz
- Giga Drain

Lucario (F) @ Life Orb
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Hi Jump Kick
- Crunch
- ExtremeSpeed

Ludicolo (F) @ Life Orb
Trait: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 HP
Timid Nature
- Rain Dance
- Hydro Pump
- Giga Drain
- Ice Beam

Mew @ Normal Gem
Trait: Synchronize
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Taunt
- Stealth Rock
- Magic Coat
- Explosion



Edit: I am MachFire on the left side.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833622

 

[ssbbm]

@bri

you could have pp stalled donphan with skarm to get spikes up, and it's not like skarm does anything for you


@sora 13:

cc > hjk, dont stay in with ludi against tenta, make less obvious moves (especially with outrage)

also your team seems really tenta weak in general


edit:
thats understandable (i was pretty sure you were trying to overload it) but the problem with that is that the only reason that strategy worked is because your opponent played carelessly with ferro (such as sending it in on lucario or volcarona)

 

[sora13]

cc > hjk, dont stay in with ludi against tenta, make less obvious moves (especially with outrage)

also your team seems really tenta weak in general

My game plan from the beginning was to break down tenta and ferrothorn with my other members so ludicolo could have a clean sweep, just for reference, which is why i decided to outrage to weaken it. But all other points taken :)

Edit: PillsburyDoughboy and/or great mighty doom, I suggest we require a small and succinct description of the team and it's plan to win for each log just to give some context. How does that sound?

 

[TGMD]

This is a really cool idea, hopefully this can help me out some.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833507

edit: Forgot to mention my alt is AARP.

Hey DrunkDemon, first of all you should have led with Deoxys-D rather than Breloom. Looking at his team the 4 most likely leads were Breloom (can be Taunted to prevent Spore and then get up hazards as opposed to not KOing with Weavile then losin most important member to Mach Punch), Dragonite (Taunted to prevent DD then get up hazards as opposed to risking the CB Extremespeed and losing weavile), Landorus-T (spam hazards as opposed to risking chandelure switching in on Ice Shard and then putting you in a worse position no matter what you do), and Scizor (spam hazards as opposed to being forced out and losing momentum straight away.)

On turn 2 you probably should have gone to Garchomp, Keldeo was way too important (it's the best thing you've got for Chandelure and it can revenge pretty much the opposition's entire time after they've been weakened a little) to risk a banded Superpower on the switch or it being SD and then having to lose half your health, sac Deoxys-D and then kill it with a mon that just baits in Chandelure and causes even more problems. With Garchomp if Scizor is banded and it goes for U-Turn you do take a hefty chunk and lose momentum, but you now know it's set and worst case scenario you sac least important member. If it's SD or it's banded and it goes for any move except U-Turn then you can just take it out with Fire Blast/Fang. On turn 6 you probably should have gone to Weavile and Ice Sharded, that way you inflict some damage on Chandelure on the off chance your opponent preserves Scizor for death fodder and switches to Chandelure. On turn 9 you definitely shouldn't have gone to Gengar, Garchomp was the better play. If Landorus-T was Scarfed (very unlikely, but possible) and it outspeeds and KOes Garchomp with Earthquake then that's a free Sub, if not then worst case scenario you lose Garchomp and easily revenge kill Landorus-T. It was crucial you kept Gengar at this point in the battle, as the opposing Keldeo can pretty much spam Secret Sword and you're pretty much guarenteed to lose 1 or 2 members and then another one gets revenge-killed and at that point you've lost. Finally, for future reference Secret Sword does more to +1 Special Defense Keldeo than Hidden Power [Electric] / [Grass] as Secret Sword attacks defense not Special Defense and Hidden Power [Electric] / [Grass] had no chance of KOing +1 Keldeo from that range either, but it didn't matter in this battle as you'd already lost at that point.

I hope this helped and GL with your future battling endeavours :)

@bri

you could have pp stalled donphan with skarm to get spikes up, and it's not like skarm does anything for you


@sora 13:

cc > hjk, dont stay in with ludi against tenta, make less obvious moves (especially with outrage)

also your team seems really tenta weak in general


edit:
thats understandable (i was pretty sure you were trying to overload it) but the problem with that is that the only reason that strategy worked is because your opponent played carelessly with ferro (such as sending it in on lucario or volcarona)

Please try and do slightly more detailed replies from now on, if you studied a bit harder I'm sure you would have found something else to recommend. I'm not asking for you to do a huge response like mine but try and point out as much flaws as possible, this way the person who posted the log has more to work on in the future :)

PillsburyDoughboy and/or great mighty doom, I suggest we require a small and succinct description of the team and it's plan to win for each log just to give some context. How does that sound?

I think just saying what the sets are would be enough. It's very easy to work out what the goal of the team is based on how you play the team and what the sets are. Knowing the sets would really help determine whether they made the right play or not on certain turns, so this is a very good suggestion sora13. I'll talk to doughboy about making providing the sets a requirement, but anyone submitting replays can provide as much information about the team as they want, the more information you provide, the more likely you'll get help and the more likely the help you get will be helpful, lol :)

 

[TheDuckChris]

This seems like a really good idea, and I like what's here so far. As a semi-noobish battler it would be helpful if we had a couple rules. First, we need to know the sets, otherwise we don't know how we should or shouldn't play the teams. Second of all, in addition to pointing out specific errors made by the players (turn # etc), it would be nice if the critics could point out larger play errors, like focusing on keeping x member alive or trying to exploit x weakness in the opposing team. This would be helpful to improve us noobs

@sora13. Again, hard to know exactly what errors you made without knowing your sets, but one thing to maybe consider is that sending out the tornadus-t against your +1 salamence was a blatant lure for the outrage. Torn-T is definitely a threat, but he did switch it out earlier in the game.

 

[Myzozoa]

Here's a battle between Bloo and I:

We battled while testing teams and here are the logs, sorry about not having the actual replay, but I hope this can suffice:

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/~~kupo/battle-oucurrent2721

http://pastebin.com/EWmCTvbB

There is almost no way for you to win this battle as most of your team is fucked by jirachi, so I would expect the loss against someone as classy as blue. Sleeping Jirachi is your only play, so I would have been a lot less agressive with Roserade, you switched it in too early imo. The fact that he had sleep talk Torn-t didn't make it any easier, but thats basically your only out.

For DrunkDemon, you want to see the direction the battle is going to take before you pick your lead. In this case his team has two pokemon weak to Stealth Rock and no way of preventing you from setting it up. Lead Deo-d.

Note: I did not watch the battle, this is all what I see from team preview.

Now let's figure out your important pokemon. Looking at the teams, Keldeo is supremely important for you to avoid losing to Scizor, whose Bullet Punch OHKO or 2hkos everything else, and which can get in very easily on Weavile. The strategy for getting around his scizor has two possibilities. First, notice that Scizor is the only Steel on his team, which means you should try to be agressive with Garchomp so that it gets very weak from Outrages and entry hazards. The second part of the strategy is to use Gengar to lure it and weaken it with focus blast. Those are basically the two paths for this battle. Breloom is not very good for your team in this battle, so if he is able to get his Breloom in on Keldeo then it is the likely candidate for getting slept.

Ok so for him, the most important pokemon is Dragonite, which can rip though your steel-less team. Use Gengar to lure the outrage so that Weavile can KO it with Ice Shard. Gengar should affectively lure Dnite, as he has nothing on his team that enjoys being in on it, and Dnite is threatening enough to it that you can probably get him to send it in with some clever play and then Weavile gets it. His Keldeo and Chandelure are also good against your frail team, so just make careful sacrifices and go for the Keldeo sweep once his water resists are down.

The match-up isn't easy, but stealth rock and spikes will get you there if you make follow a sound strategy.

 

[Reymedy]

This is a really cool idea, hopefully this can help me out some.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833507

edit: Forgot to mention my alt is AARP.

As you team you use is somehow similar to my RMT, I feel like giving you my thoughts on the way you play.

- First, you should have start Deoxys-D like TGMD said. There was no reason to not start with it. If you see that your opponent starts with Chandelure, you can assume straight that it's a scarfed version, so you can either switch on Weavile (a little risky), or on Keldeo (lrisky).Or now that I think about it, you should have let your Deoxys-D against Chandelure also, if he Shadow Ball it's not a 0HKO anyway, so just put hazards and revenge it after with whatever (Weavile if Shadow Ball, Keldeo if Fire move).
Do you see anyone on his team not 2HKO by HPump ? There is only Dragonite iirc, but Weavile kills it, and Deoxys-D can prevent his set-up and take his hits even at +1 (he needs to get himself locked into Outrage).

- You shouldn't have switch Keldeo in on Scizor *This is WHAT made you lose; definitely*, Garchomp is what I'd have done, basically just to fodder it and putting SR in the process (in this type of team, you need to realise that in fact, only Weavile and Keldeo are "useful", the other pokemons should just pave their way). After dieing, you can send Gengar and revenge it with HP Fire (I assume you got it since you seem to have Focus Sash) while he thinks that he kill you. Nothing on his team can outspeed a Gengar, so you should be able to damage a pokemon and win the memento (he probably switch to Chandelure, but if he Shadow ball, Weavile revenges it with Pursuit, if he Overheat you will probably set-up with anything else).


- I don't understand the fodder of Deoxys-D, it is probably coming from the fact that you thought that you take 2 Bullet Punch, or because you prefered save Garchomp (since he has SR). Anyway, I don't know why Deoxys-D doesn't have SR :\

- The HUGE thing, is when you have to sac your Breloom to +1 Keldeo. If you wouldn't have let your Keldeo take this Bullet Punch in the start, you could have take a +1 HP Electric.
Then you HP Electric ( I assume) on a +1 Keldeo. Like why ?!
You had the exchange, in fact, Keldeo was at 46% and watch this :
"252SpAtk Keldeo (Neutral) Secret Sword vs 4HP/0Def Keldeo (Neutral): 47% - 55% (153 - 180 HP)"
It was a sure shot !
This was the "biggest mistake" in this game in fact. There was no way to win this game at this point though. Because if you kill Keldeo, he needs to switch to Breloom, and Mach Punch from Jolly Breloom with LO isn't a 100% kill against Keldeo, you have more chances to survive it. However then, he lives barely the Secret Sword and Mach Punch you then kill your Weavile with Chandelure.

 

[Schpoonman]

My game plan from the beginning was to break down tenta and ferrothorn with my other members so ludicolo could have a clean sweep, just for reference, which is why i decided to outrage to weaken it. But all other points taken :)

My biggest grip with your playing is that you didn't predict any switches. Every move you made, you made it with the assumption that they would keep their Pokémon in and take whatever punishment you were dishing out. Salamence against Tornadus was already brought up, so I'll bring up Volcarona. After the switch into Ferrothorn, you really should have seen the switch back into Tentacruel coming.

 

[blunder]

This is a battle with my HO team, and although the win was pretty clearly mine if not for small amounts of hax, those hax forced me to make some decisions on how to proceed with the battle like who to sac and whatnot, and I would like some feedback for my decisions throughout this battle. Thank you!

Edit: I am MachFire on the left side.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833622

Even though you were haxed a bit, I think that you still would have won if you just saved Salamence until Ferrothorn died or was weakened to 30-40% and then set up in something like cruel. After that it would have been a clean sweep

 

[Eranu]

This is a battle with my HO team, and although the win was pretty clearly mine if not for small amounts of hax, those hax forced me to make some decisions on how to proceed with the battle like who to sac and whatnot, and I would like some feedback for my decisions throughout this battle. Thank you!

Edit: I am MachFire on the left side.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833622

First off, on Turn 3 you used Giga Drain on Tentacruel. You should have went to Salamence right away, since Ludicolo can't really touch Tentacruel with Giga Drain if rain is up. The Rapid Spin was quite obvious. Since the opponent has both Tornadus-T and Volcarona it's only logical he would want those Stealth Rocks away asap. You could've seen the Ferrothorn switch in coming on Turn 6. Salamence can't do anything to Ferrothorn in rain. Outrage was an understandable move seeing how Tornadus-T is a really big threat, however playing safely with Salamence is really important versus that team since it's your only way of taking out Tentacruel opening up a sweep for Volcarona or Lucario. On Turn 10, after your Lucario was at +2, going for Crunch right away would've been better. This way Tentacruel would've been a 2hko as well without risking to lose 50% of your health. Also, if you got a low roll on Crunch, or since it would be quite obvious he would want to save Tentacruel if you didn't, you could've taken out any other 'mon on your opponents team with High Jump Kick + Extremespeed. I don;t know if your cloyster carries Rapid Spin, seeing as how you carry Volc and Salamence I hope it does. But if it does, Turn 13 would've been a good opportunity to Spin away the rocks and spikes. You would've been able to outspeed Ferrothorn and get rid of the hazards, which is worth more than Cloyster itself for your team. After the spin, if you managed to live the Iron Barb damage + Power Whip (which would be quite rare), you can just Icicle Spear on the obvious Stealth Rock or switch to Volcarona since Ferrothorn can do nothing against it. As for turn 20 it's the same as on turn 6, the Outrage lure was again pretty obvious. All in all, you had a pretty big team disadvantage and you weren;t really lucky either. One note about your team, since you carry Hyper Offense, you should carry a spin blocker, like Gengar. Also, since Cloyster isn't the best spinner if it even has Rapid Spin, I'd like to suggest changing it to Starmie. Starmie will make it easier to handle Tentacruel too. That's about it. Good luck.

 

[Stathakis]

This is a battle with my HO team, and although the win was pretty clearly mine if not for small amounts of hax, those hax forced me to make some decisions on how to proceed with the battle like who to sac and whatnot, and I would like some feedback for my decisions throughout this battle. Thank you!

Edit: I am MachFire on the left side.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5833622

I would say you did well this game. You forced a situation in which you have a swift swimming ludicolo and all of the enemy pokemon who can take a hit from him are dead. at the end of the day, that's the simplest, most efficient way for your team to win against his.

my thoughts on this battle:

switching to ludicolo right after exploding was a good move. though it led to an unfavorable matchup for you, it prevented the far worse matchup of tornadobro vs. any one of your sweepers pre-setup. however, once you had ludi vs tentacruel, I would have gone straight to lucario. early game, your opponent is less likely to make ballsy predictions and more likely to go for the safer rapid spin or toxic, both of which favor lucario. from there, you swords dance while he scalds and get to one of the following situations:

1. cripple the tentacruel that stays in

Hide

this situation basically leads you to a win, because after lucario dies, salamence comes in and low health tentacruel is forced to switch to ferrothorn, who will lose chunks of health to lum-intact salamence. at that point, tenta and ferro are both severely injured and you can just sacrifice the rest of your guys to do the extra 20% to each of them, then proceed to win with ludicolo

2. kill the incoming tornadus

Hide

this is also hugely favorable, as your opponent has sacrificed tornadus to hjk+espeed, and he's the only one who can revenge lucario but is also the most dangerous pokemon to you. once tornadus is dead, he has to send out another pokemon to revenge lucario. if tentacruel comes in, you are back to situation 1 but with an extra kill. clearly winning. if anyone else other than volc comes in, you just get a free kill and back to this situation until volc comes in. volc would live the +2 espeed and be forced to fire blast immediately, as espeed 2hkos. i'd then send in ludicolo, to force out or kill the volcarona. mence would be a better choice, but only if you could guarantee that either you win the speed tie or volcarona doesn't have hurricane. of course, you can't, so I'd go the safe way and just force it out. from here, all your sweepers are pretty dangerous and he only has gastrodon, nattorei, and a heavily damaged volcarona left against your ludicolo, cloyster, salamence, and giga drain volcarona. by that point the game plan is simple: weaken tentacruel, then either volc or ludi can sweep. i'd probably set up volcarona against the ferro that will eventually have to switch into salamence and sac him to cripple tentacruel. then ludicolo sweeps.

3. kill something and then have tornadus switch in.

Hide

this is your opponent's most favorable situation. I'm assuming he sacs gastrodon since it's pretty much useless against your team. he could also feasibly sac volcarona as well I guess. I'd sac cloyster here, since he can't set up on any of the opponent's team. after this, go to ludicolo, hydro pump to be safe. if he goes to tentacruel, switch to salamence who still has a lum berry intact, then force him to go to nattorei and cripple nattorei. after that volc sets up, tenta gets crippled, ludi wins. volc and gastrodon obviously can't switch into ludicolo. if nattorei comes in, I'd probably go to volc and set up and force tentacruel to come in. volc dies, tenta is crippled as a result, and you can go to mence. he is forced to go to nattorei as you dd or lose even more pokemon, then you cripple nattorei and gg since tentacruel is also weak

should you choose to go to salamence instead of lucario against rapid spin, the same thing pretty much happens, except you can actually cripple nattorei when he switches in since your lum berry is intact.


ok, so you go to mence which yields pretty similar outcomes, but you do it with slightly less efficiency since salamence loses his lum berry and thus isn't able to cripple ferrothorn straight away. you miss an early chance to guarantee a win, but you can still work with the current situation. no problem. lucario still does big damage to tentacruel with hjk and then you crunch. I agree with that move as it also scouts possible protects from tentacruel to try and make you crash. fine. he goes to nattorei in response to the crunch, good for him. he now has a 30% tentacruel who is no longer equipped to fight ludicolo (if he has protect that makes his moveset protect/scald/rapidspin/knockoff, meaning you can just hit him with repeated giga drains and he can't do anything back to you. if he doesn't have protect giga drain just kills straight up since he can't recover hp). furthermore, he has a 50% nattorei against a +2 lucario. all you have to do to win is cripple nattorei. you go for the hjk. you could have gone for a crunch since he got a def drop. lucario would die, nattorei would take another 25%, and then salamence can come in and dd followed by earthquaking him to death, all 100% accurate moves so it's safer. hjk is good too since it kills, but in addition to protect there is always the miss chance, and obviously that bites you in the ass here.

after lucario dies you make the good move of forcing him out by going to volcarona, and then going for the giga drain against tcruel. these are good moves. he is forced again to go to nattorei. in hindsight bug buzz is the better option because after that nattorei is in cloyster ko range. of course fire blast misses and he gets leech seed and some health and safely switches out.

you sac volcarona, set up mence, and kill tentacruel. by this point these are the best moves, since nattorei is once again forced to come in and take more abuse. he baits your outrage, outrage being a good move still since it does 40% to nattorei and allows cloyster to come in. by this point the game is a 50/50 tossup. if cloyster icicle spears the ferrothorn that stays in, you win as ferro is too crippled to fight ludicolo. if cloyster icicle spears a switching in gastrodon, he takes 50% and you are forced to attack again, as scald kos cloyster if you try to shell smash. at this point he can go to tornadus, force out cloyster, and ferrothorn has too much health for ludicolo to fight. that's what happens if you icicle spear. if you shell smash and he switches, you win by cloyster sweep. if he stays in and goes for the power whip, you lose as cloyster is dead and ludicolo can't beat nattorei.

you of course win the 50/50 prediction or maybe your opponent isn't aware of his options and decides to stay in. by that point you are winning. hax makes you lose but you still forced the optimal position for your team. no shame in that.


main points here: I only really saw three mistakes. your long term thinking was good and you had the right idea to win. your first mistake was staying in against tentacruel, giving him a free turn, when you could have just gone to salamence or lucario and ended the game more quickly. your second mistake was using hi jump kick against ferrothorn when at -1 defense crunch would have weakened him enough that he can't fight mence, with no chance of missing. your third mistake was using fire blast against ferrothorn with volcarona when bug buzz would have also done the job. these three mistakes reduced the game to a 50/50 prediction when you could have actually for sure won. after you won the 50/50 prediction you were in a situation that you win 8 times out of 10. unfortunately for you, you lost, but you still forced the optimal position for yourself (i.e. from a 50/50 tossup game to a 80/20 heavily stacked in your favor). taking the outrage bait imo was always the best move for you to do, as it always led you to a winning situation even if nattorei switched in. there is no need to try and predict in this match because you can carry out your plan without predicting, and so you played that part well. overall good job.

tl;dr in the future try to minimize risk. if the 100% accurate move does enough for your purposes but doesn't outright kill, it might still be ok to use.

 

[TGMD]

I am very impressed with the critiques so far everyone! In my own critique I forgot to point out the game plan and such and only focused on the missplays made each turn, which was pretty stupid of me. But most of you did indeed do that so great job. The 3 replays posted thus far have now been sufficiently critiqued, so round 2 has begun, you may now post the next set of 3 replays! This round is going to be longer than the previous one whether or not the replays are sufficiently critiqued, this'll give people some extra time to respond to the critiques they received in the current / previous round.

Also, congratulations to Stathakis for being the first to enter the Critique Hall of Fame! Stathakis provided a very in-depth critique that pointed out the flaws in game plan and the missplays made.

P.S. Remember that the more information you provide about your team and thought process, the more likely it is for you to get good critiques in response :)

 

[sora13]

I would say you did well this game. You forced a situation in which you have a swift swimming ludicolo and all of the enemy pokemon who can take a hit from him are dead. at the end of the day, that's the simplest, most efficient way for your team to win against his.

my thoughts on this battle:

switching to ludicolo right after exploding was a good move. though it led to an unfavorable matchup for you, it prevented the far worse matchup of tornadobro vs. any one of your sweepers pre-setup. however, once you had ludi vs tentacruel, I would have gone straight to lucario. early game, your opponent is less likely to make ballsy predictions and more likely to go for the safer rapid spin or toxic, both of which favor lucario. from there, you swords dance while he scalds and get to one of the following situations:

1. cripple the tentacruel that stays in

Hide

this situation basically leads you to a win, because after lucario dies, salamence comes in and low health tentacruel is forced to switch to ferrothorn, who will lose chunks of health to lum-intact salamence. at that point, tenta and ferro are both severely injured and you can just sacrifice the rest of your guys to do the extra 20% to each of them, then proceed to win with ludicolo

2. kill the incoming tornadus

Hide

this is also hugely favorable, as your opponent has sacrificed tornadus to hjk+espeed, and he's the only one who can revenge lucario but is also the most dangerous pokemon to you. once tornadus is dead, he has to send out another pokemon to revenge lucario. if tentacruel comes in, you are back to situation 1 but with an extra kill. clearly winning. if anyone else other than volc comes in, you just get a free kill and back to this situation until volc comes in. volc would live the +2 espeed and be forced to fire blast immediately, as espeed 2hkos. i'd then send in ludicolo, to force out or kill the volcarona. mence would be a better choice, but only if you could guarantee that either you win the speed tie or volcarona doesn't have hurricane. of course, you can't, so I'd go the safe way and just force it out. from here, all your sweepers are pretty dangerous and he only has gastrodon, nattorei, and a heavily damaged volcarona left against your ludicolo, cloyster, salamence, and giga drain volcarona. by that point the game plan is simple: weaken tentacruel, then either volc or ludi can sweep. i'd probably set up volcarona against the ferro that will eventually have to switch into salamence and sac him to cripple tentacruel. then ludicolo sweeps.

3. kill something and then have tornadus switch in.

Hide

this is your opponent's most favorable situation. I'm assuming he sacs gastrodon since it's pretty much useless against your team. he could also feasibly sac volcarona as well I guess. I'd sac cloyster here, since he can't set up on any of the opponent's team. after this, go to ludicolo, hydro pump to be safe. if he goes to tentacruel, switch to salamence who still has a lum berry intact, then force him to go to nattorei and cripple nattorei. after that volc sets up, tenta gets crippled, ludi wins. volc and gastrodon obviously can't switch into ludicolo. if nattorei comes in, I'd probably go to volc and set up and force tentacruel to come in. volc dies, tenta is crippled as a result, and you can go to mence. he is forced to go to nattorei as you dd or lose even more pokemon, then you cripple nattorei and gg since tentacruel is also weak

should you choose to go to salamence instead of lucario against rapid spin, the same thing pretty much happens, except you can actually cripple nattorei when he switches in since your lum berry is intact.


ok, so you go to mence which yields pretty similar outcomes, but you do it with slightly less efficiency since salamence loses his lum berry and thus isn't able to cripple ferrothorn straight away. you miss an early chance to guarantee a win, but you can still work with the current situation. no problem. lucario still does big damage to tentacruel with hjk and then you crunch. I agree with that move as it also scouts possible protects from tentacruel to try and make you crash. fine. he goes to nattorei in response to the crunch, good for him. he now has a 30% tentacruel who is no longer equipped to fight ludicolo (if he has protect that makes his moveset protect/scald/rapidspin/knockoff, meaning you can just hit him with repeated giga drains and he can't do anything back to you. if he doesn't have protect giga drain just kills straight up since he can't recover hp). furthermore, he has a 50% nattorei against a +2 lucario. all you have to do to win is cripple nattorei. you go for the hjk. you could have gone for a crunch since he got a def drop. lucario would die, nattorei would take another 25%, and then salamence can come in and dd followed by earthquaking him to death, all 100% accurate moves so it's safer. hjk is good too since it kills, but in addition to protect there is always the miss chance, and obviously that bites you in the ass here.

after lucario dies you make the good move of forcing him out by going to volcarona, and then going for the giga drain against tcruel. these are good moves. he is forced again to go to nattorei. in hindsight bug buzz is the better option because after that nattorei is in cloyster ko range. of course fire blast misses and he gets leech seed and some health and safely switches out.

you sac volcarona, set up mence, and kill tentacruel. by this point these are the best moves, since nattorei is once again forced to come in and take more abuse. he baits your outrage, outrage being a good move still since it does 40% to nattorei and allows cloyster to come in. by this point the game is a 50/50 tossup. if cloyster icicle spears the ferrothorn that stays in, you win as ferro is too crippled to fight ludicolo. if cloyster icicle spears a switching in gastrodon, he takes 50% and you are forced to attack again, as scald kos cloyster if you try to shell smash. at this point he can go to tornadus, force out cloyster, and ferrothorn has too much health for ludicolo to fight. that's what happens if you icicle spear. if you shell smash and he switches, you win by cloyster sweep. if he stays in and goes for the power whip, you lose as cloyster is dead and ludicolo can't beat nattorei.

you of course win the 50/50 prediction or maybe your opponent isn't aware of his options and decides to stay in. by that point you are winning. hax makes you lose but you still forced the optimal position for your team. no shame in that.


main points here: I only really saw three mistakes. your long term thinking was good and you had the right idea to win. your first mistake was staying in against tentacruel, giving him a free turn, when you could have just gone to salamence or lucario and ended the game more quickly. your second mistake was using hi jump kick against ferrothorn when at -1 defense crunch would have weakened him enough that he can't fight mence, with no chance of missing. your third mistake was using fire blast against ferrothorn with volcarona when bug buzz would have also done the job. these three mistakes reduced the game to a 50/50 prediction when you could have actually for sure won. after you won the 50/50 prediction you were in a situation that you win 8 times out of 10. unfortunately for you, you lost, but you still forced the optimal position for yourself (i.e. from a 50/50 tossup game to a 80/20 heavily stacked in your favor). taking the outrage bait imo was always the best move for you to do, as it always led you to a winning situation even if nattorei switched in. there is no need to try and predict in this match because you can carry out your plan without predicting, and so you played that part well. overall good job.

tl;dr in the future try to minimize risk. if the 100% accurate move does enough for your purposes but doesn't outright kill, it might still be ok to use.

Man thanks a lot Stathakis! From the person whose rmt compelled me to make my first HO team as well(I dunno if you remember my old 4th gen HO rmt which you rated, but w/e).

I really think I stayed in Tentacruel to see just how much giga drain did to this particular tentacruel out of curiousity really(since I had encountered an offensive tenta a couple rounds back, which was really easy to deal with), though I could've just calced that and avoided all the hassle that happened. Tbh, I would've never thought of switching lucario into tentacreul until you suggested it, but after reading your explanations, it made a ton of sense to me. I think the most i took out of this is based around the fact that I always have this somewhat idealistic image of one of my pokemon clean sweeping the opposite person's team,my +2 lucario for example(which i couldnt have done because of because of LO recoil anyways -_-), which is why I decided to go for the hjk. I have to start looking at the more optimal and risk free ways to win. I learned a surprising bit more than I expected to learn from this thread, and that's thanks to you! :)

Edit:I also wanted to add that I used icicle spear on ferrothorn because if he had thunder wave earlier he would've used that on volcarona. and power whip wouldnt have killed ludicolo at the health i was then,plus with ludicolo being immune to leech seed and all I don't have to worry about it. so i could've killed him with two hydro pumps while he couldnt do anything and using icicle spear was the best all around decision in the end.

 

[michael]

Ok then, I'll post a replay of mine. This is a battle that I had using a reasonably offensive team I built with TGMDoom as part of B101.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou5993005

The team is built around a Landorus-T sweep. Lucario and Gothitelle serve to weaken and/or KO Landy's counters (Zong, Slowbro, Skarm, Rotom-W), while SashChomp is a neat lead which reliably gets up Stealth Rock. ScarfRachi is a cool throwback to DPP OU and revenge kills a large number of threats which can be dangerous to the team, and also provides necessary Flying- and Dragon-type resistances.

My main win condition here was to set up with Lucario as it sweeps rather easily after a Swords Dance (note that it is a double priority set). I definitely misplayed early on by risking it against a Politoed; in hindsight, I should have switched to Amoonguss on Toed. After that, there wasn't too much I could do, as Weavile could reliably revenge kill Landy-T no matter how well it was set up, and I'd lost my main path to winning. Getting to 0-2 after a one turn sleep and a freeze was alright.

I'd love some feedback on my playing after the early misplay, trying to get back into the battle.

 

[StarmanXL]

Eh I guess I should post something. Been trying to get a battle that was "good" enough to be rated: most of them involved me using either a terrible team or losing to shit like Electivire.

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou6105507

A match with a rather generic rain team I've been using to try to get good at the ladder.

Hide

Politoed @ Leftovers
Trait: Drizzle
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 Spd
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Toxic
- Perish Song
- Ice Beam

Tornadus-Therian (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Regenerator
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 SDef
Timid Nature
- Hurricane
- Focus Blast
- U-turn
- Taunt

Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Trait: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 168 SDef / 88 Def
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Spikes
- Gyro Ball
- Stealth Rock
- Power Whip

Jirachi @ Leftovers
Trait: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 HP / 4 SAtk
Timid Nature
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Thunder
- Water Pulse

Keldeo @ Leftovers
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 SDef
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Secret Sword
- Calm Mind
- Hidden Power [Ghost]

Dragonite @ Lum Berry
Trait: Multiscale
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- ExtremeSpeed
- Earthquake

My team has a lot of problems with Tentacruel so I was trying to kill it as fast as possible with Dragonite but that worked against me. In addition I was hoping to wear down Rotom-W enough with attacks so that I could eventually kill it (hence the constant Focus Blasts on Tornadus-T when I thought the opponent would switch it in from Ferrothorn and Politoed) but that didn't work either, especially since I couldn't get a chance to lay down hazards. Also, if you're wondering why I never used U-Turn on Ferrothorn, it was because I thought they would Protect allowing it an extra turn of Leech Seed damage on Tornadus-T and I didn't want to incur a lot of residual damage on it. After Jirachi and Dragonite got wrecked I didn't really know what to do, since I didn't have any good switch ins to anything after that.

 

[ganj4lF]

I'm a little rusty since I don't have much time to play on the ladder (as you can see by my ranking, which went down in the 1550s cause of decay...), I played some games this afternoon with a slightly modified version of the last CCAT team and I'd like to submit one of them:

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou6268054

My Team

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 244 HP / 48 Def / 216 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Earthquake
- Taunt

Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Secret Sword
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Surf

Tyranitar @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 152 HP / 252 Atk / 104 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Stone Edge
- Superpower

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 SDef
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball
- Toxic
- Earthquake

Celebi @ Life Orb
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 144 HP / 252 SAtk / 112 Spd
Modest Nature
- Grass Knot
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Recover

Terrakion @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 SDef
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- X-Scissor
- Earthquake

As someone may already know, the last CCAT was based around SubPass Gliscor and a Keldeo + Tyranitar offensive core, to remove Jellicent, Celebi and such annoyances for Keldeo to sweep. My slightly modified version uses the Celebi set alexwolf proposed to fix some weaknesses, and Choice Specs Keldeo instead of a CM one (that thing is so slow to set up that's kinda annoying, and when you've set up usually Hydro Pump misses and you lose your sweeper...). In this battle I feel I've played decently, although I made some mistakes for lazy predictions (like switching a Gliscor into Lucario's Ice Punch while expecting Swords Dance); however, as you can see, I found myself in the end with 2 Fighting weak pokemons against a Status Orb Conkeldurr, that almost lost me the game. I think this is due to one of my biggest flaws when playing on the ladder: trying to do the best choice at the moment, without thinking ahead too much (not more than 2-3 turns, at least). I'd love to hear your feedback on this point and on the battle in general. Thank you.

 

[DarkBlazeR]

I'm a little rusty since I don't have much time to play on the ladder (as you can see by my ranking, which went down in the 1550s cause of decay...), I played some games this afternoon with a slightly modified version of the last CCAT team and I'd like to submit one of them:

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou6268054

My Team

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 244 HP / 48 Def / 216 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Earthquake
- Taunt

Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Secret Sword
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Surf

Tyranitar @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 152 HP / 252 Atk / 104 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Stone Edge
- Superpower

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 SDef
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball
- Toxic
- Earthquake

Celebi @ Life Orb
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 144 HP / 252 SAtk / 112 Spd
Modest Nature
- Grass Knot
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Recover

Terrakion @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 SDef
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- X-Scissor
- Earthquake

As someone may already know, the last CCAT was based around SubPass Gliscor and a Keldeo + Tyranitar offensive core, to remove Jellicent, Celebi and such annoyances for Keldeo to sweep. My slightly modified version uses the Celebi set alexwolf proposed to fix some weaknesses, and Choice Specs Keldeo instead of a CM one (that thing is so slow to set up that's kinda annoying, and when you've set up usually Hydro Pump misses and you lose your sweeper...). In this battle I feel I've played decently, although I made some mistakes for lazy predictions (like switching a Gliscor into Lucario's Ice Punch while expecting Swords Dance); however, as you can see, I found myself in the end with 2 Fighting weak pokemons against a Status Orb Conkeldurr, that almost lost me the game. I think this is due to one of my biggest flaws when playing on the ladder: trying to do the best choice at the moment, without thinking ahead too much (not more than 2-3 turns, at least). I'd love to hear your feedback on this point and on the battle in general. Thank you.

Really the only mistake I could spot here was letting Celebi die when it was clear that the opponent had two strong Fighting types left in the Team Preview. When Lucario came in on Celebi for the second time, you should've switched out to Bronzong instead of trying to kill Lucario. As it revealed Ice Punch a few turns earlier, you'll know that it's either running an SD with Ice Punch instead of Bullet Punch or Crunch, or it's running an Agility set with Close Combat/Crunch/Ice Punch - Bullet Punch is very unlikely. This means that there's effectively no risk at all in switching Bronzong in. If Lucario uses Ice Punch, you're fine as long as it doesn't freeze, and then Gyro Ball to whatever comes in/or if Lucario stays in. If it uses Close Combat or Swords Dance, sacrifice Bronzong and revenge kill it with Terrakion. If it uses Agility, just kill it with Earthquake. Keeping Celebi alive was very important, as Conkeldurr could've easily swept you otherwise. You would've lost had Conkeldurr used Bulk Up on Bronzong.

 

[Pocket]

Mikel, cool team - I dig.

I would not have lead with Garchomp - the most likely lead for the opponent would have been Politoed or Forretress, and they both beat Garchomp. Starting off with Amoonguss may have been ideal - only Dragonite scares it, but you have Jirachi, Gothitelle, and Intimidate Landorus to fall back on. You could've Spored something easily there and could have delayed Forretress from setting up Rocks.

After you lead with Garchomp, setting up with Lucario was a poor decision. You should have realized that Landorus-T was not going to sweep in this match, and it should have been relegated as a wallbreaker that would set the stage for a Lucario sweep.

At that point of Garchomp vs Foretress face-off, the best option would have been to Swords Dance instead of switching to Lucario. Forretress would Rapid Spin and lose health from Rough Skin and now Garchomp is at +2. You have just gained major momentum, and something was gonna take a huge hit. The opponent would have most likely sacced either Forretress or Magnezone here. If the opponent ends up leaving Forretress in, then you could have done the following action sequence:

1. +2 Garchomp EQs as Forretress sets up Spikes / uses HP Ice or Gyro Ball
2. You set up Rocks as Forrestress sets up Spikes / uses HP Ice or Gyro Ball
3. You either kill Forretress or you switch into your Specs Goth / LO Landorus-T to take place of your fallen Garchomp

Now you have Rocks on the field to cut down on Dragonite and Weavile's longevity.

After Lucario's untimely fall, the obvious mistake was the manner in which you dealt against Politoed. Once it was locked into Ice Beam, you should have switched out Amoonguss to Jirachi and U-turn to Specs Gothitelle if Politoed doesn't switch out. Amoonguss was too important to take any risk at that point, checking Keldeo and Politoed, and being able to put something to sleep. And then when Amoonguss was beyond rescue, you decided to sac Gothitelle instead, which could have done some major work for you x.x;; You were too scared to bring in Gothitelle early game b/c of Weavile, and then you decided to sac it late-game b/c you thought Weavile rendered it useless. Gothitelle could have been very useful for taking out Politoed or Keldeo for you.

You were a bit U-turn happy with Jirachi. Especially when you used U-turn to kill a 4% Politoed. I would have probably used ThunderPunch here (if you had it). The opponent would have forced to bring out Dragonite. If it was a DDNite, then Landorus could negate a DD boost and force it to either Outrage or Waterfall, at which point you fodder Amoonguss. Since it was Rain Tank, though, Landorus-T may have switched into Thunder if it was lucky or Aqua Tail if less lucky. Either way, after Landorus-T / Amoonguss fall, you could always bring back Jirachi and Iron Head flinch DNite to death.

If your Jirachi didn't have ThunderPunch, you could have Iron Head kill Politoed. The opponent would then bring out Keldeo. If it was Scarf Keldeo you lose no matter what you do at this point. If it was non-scarfed, then your best bet is to Iron Head flinch it to death anyways.

Bottom Line:

1) Swap Landorus-T and Lucario roles; Landorus-T punches holes and Lucario sweeps
2) SR lead does not always have to lead a game when it would've lead to a disadvantageous match-up
3) Play Amoonguss more safely if the opponent still has Keldeo
4) Interject Gothitelle in the battle more, so it could have taken down Politoed / Keldeo before falling to Weavile
5) Don't U-turn KO if you don't have any mons that can corner the opponent to a wall. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself in a disadvantageous position, where you're forced to switch out / sac something.

 

[TGMD]

I'm a little rusty since I don't have much time to play on the ladder (as you can see by my ranking, which went down in the 1550s cause of decay...), I played some games this afternoon with a slightly modified version of the last CCAT team and I'd like to submit one of them:

http://pokemonshowdown.com/replay/ou6268054

My Team

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 244 HP / 48 Def / 216 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Baton Pass
- Earthquake
- Taunt

Keldeo @ Choice Specs
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Secret Sword
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Surf

Tyranitar @ Choice Band
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 152 HP / 252 Atk / 104 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Pursuit
- Crunch
- Stone Edge
- Superpower

Bronzong @ Leftovers
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 SDef
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball
- Toxic
- Earthquake

Celebi @ Life Orb
Trait: Natural Cure
EVs: 144 HP / 252 SAtk / 112 Spd
Modest Nature
- Grass Knot
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Recover

Terrakion @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 SDef
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Stone Edge
- X-Scissor
- Earthquake

As someone may already know, the last CCAT was based around SubPass Gliscor and a Keldeo + Tyranitar offensive core, to remove Jellicent, Celebi and such annoyances for Keldeo to sweep. My slightly modified version uses the Celebi set alexwolf proposed to fix some weaknesses, and Choice Specs Keldeo instead of a CM one (that thing is so slow to set up that's kinda annoying, and when you've set up usually Hydro Pump misses and you lose your sweeper...). In this battle I feel I've played decently, although I made some mistakes for lazy predictions (like switching a Gliscor into Lucario's Ice Punch while expecting Swords Dance); however, as you can see, I found myself in the end with 2 Fighting weak pokemons against a Status Orb Conkeldurr, that almost lost me the game. I think this is due to one of my biggest flaws when playing on the ladder: trying to do the best choice at the moment, without thinking ahead too much (not more than 2-3 turns, at least). I'd love to hear your feedback on this point and on the battle in general. Thank you.

Hey Ganj4lf, nice battle!

When looking at the team preview you need to identify the Pokemon on their team that are threatening to your team and what you need to do to get rid of them, this will also help identify the most important Pokemon in your own team for this matchup as well as the least important Pokemon. You also want to be identifying what your best win path is and what your opponent's best win path is. The major threats are Cloyster, Conkeldurr (if it's Bulk Up), and Thundurus-T (if it's Agility.) It's clear from the beginning that you need a healthy Keldeo, as Cloyster will otherwise likely sweep your team. With a Keldeo in Mach Punch range, 2 Pokemon weak to Fighting and 2 set-up fodders in your team, it's pretty clear you'll need Celebi for Conkeldurr, otherwise the Bulk Up set will sweep your team. A healthy Bronzong is important for Thundurus-T, because the Agility set can outspeed and OHKO everything else in your team other than Celebi (who you need healthy for Conkeldurr.) Tyranitar is just going to be trapping Jellicent, and also setting up the sand when switching in to do so, after that it's pretty much death fodder, you could use it to take down Thundurus-T if it's choiced, but you'll become easy setup fodder again and you have choiced Thundurus-T covered, so if you need a death fodder Tyranitar will likely be your first choice. Gliscor and Terrakion are there for Lucario and Terrakion, you definitely don't want to lose Gliscor unless it's been confirmed that Lucario doesn't have Bullet Punch and Terrakion isn't Scarf, if that's the case then you can just use Gliscor as a pivot or death fodder later on in the game. When looking at win paths it's pretty clear that your best win path is going to be a more defensive one because Terrakion is the only thing that even has a chance at sweeping, and for that to happen Lucario can't have Bullet Punch, Terrakion can't be scarfed, Jellicent needs to be dead, Conkeldurr needs to be dead and everything else needs to be within Close Combat KO range, lol. The best win path for you is to keep your important Pokemon outside of KO range from the sweepers they're there to get rid of and then use them get rid of their sweepers, pretty linear. Your opponent has multiple win paths, all of them involve weakening your checks to their sweepers and then sweeping you with the appropriate sweeper, the best 2 win paths were to weaken Keldeo then sweep with Cloyster or weaken Celebi then sweep with Conkeldurr. Seeing as your with path is to keep those Pokemon healthy, and theirs is to weaken those Pokemon, as long as you follow your win path your opponent will not be able to follow theirs.

On turn 1 I would have lead with Gliscor, You need Celebi's health desperately for Conkeldurr, whereas Gliscor's not too important, it can pivot out to other team members, and it was the best thing against his most likely lead: Terrakion (it's the only thing with access to rocks, so it was likely to be the lead Focus Sash Stealth Rock set.)

On turn 2 you probably should have gone to Terrakion because that extra 14% damage Keldeo took could have been the difference between KOing Cloyster and Cloyster KOing you because out of the 5 chances he had to crit, 2 crits, or 1 crit and enough max damage rolls was all it would take to KO Keldeo, as opposed to the 3 crits that would be needed if you didn't take that 14%. All this is really just controlling luck but that definitely is an important aspect of Pokemon. Terrakion only takes ~30% from Hidden Power [Ice] (which brings you into KO range Conkeldurr's Mach Punch, but if you'd made the correct play and kep Celebi alive later on, you wouldn't have ever had to take a Mach Punch from Conkeldurr), and it does the exact same thing that Keldeo was going to do that turn: lure in Jellicent so you could go to Celebi and gain back that important HP you lost on turn 1 (which was the perfect play at that point in the game, so good job!)

On Turn 6 going to Gliscor really wasn't that bad of a play, if it Ice Punches then that confirms Lucario doesn't have Bullet Punch, and since you know that Thundurus-T is scarfed, that pretty much confirms that Terrakion isn't, so Gliscor's role in the battle is now the same as Terrakion's and you don't need 2 Pokemon doing the same thing, so Gliscor is no longer needed. If it Crunches / Swords Dances / Close Combats then you outspeed and OHKO, even if Lucario is Jolly, with Gliscor. It still wasn't the best play though, it was likelier to Ice Punch / Crunch than it was to Swords Dance, neither Ice Punch nor Crunch would put Bronzong into Close Combat KO range, which means you can get up Stealth Rock to finish off Thundurus-T and hinder Cloyster before letting Bronzong die and then going out to Terrakion to either finish Lucario off or predict the Jellicent and double switch to Tyranitar. The reason Bronzong is a good play is because, with Thundurus-T revealed to be Scarfed (which means it can't sweep your team beause it's easily revenge killed by Terrakion, so you don't need a healthy Bronzong to put Agility Thundurus-T in check) and Thundurus-T dies to Stealth Rock on the switch, Bronzong no longer has an important role in the battle other than setting up Stealth Rock, and getting up rocks as soon as possible, when your opponent has a Thundurus-T that will die to rocks and a threatening Cloyster, is always a good plan. I understand you predicted Swords Dance, and going to Bronzong would be a Crunch / Ice Punch prediction, so technically you didn't missplay, you just predicted the wrong thing, but Bronzong had a better risk vs reward. Even if you predicted wrong and Lucario went for Swords Dance it wouldn't matter as much as it going for the Ice Punch and losing Gliscor, because the rocks Bronzong can set up are much more important now than they will be the nect time it tries to set them up, and Bronzong is also the easiest setup fodder target on your team, losing it wouldn't be as bad as losing Gliscor, who could still be helpful if their Terrakion is a Scarf (2 fast scarfers is ridiculously unlikely, but still) or a Sash (seeing as he still hasn't brought it out, a lead set that's meant to get up rocks as early in the game as possible is very unlikely) set because your Terrakion obviously can't beat these two sets (well, Terrakion can win the speed tie, but relying on luck is never a good idea.)

On Turn 9 you probably should have just stayed in and gone for the Crunch again, if it didn't have White Herb it probably would have died to sand and if it didn't have White Herb then it could have had King's Rock (which has gives 5-hit moves a 41% flinch rate), which would mean Keldeo would be even more likely to be KOed by Cloyster. Even though it did have White Herb, it's just less risky to sac Tyranitar overall, Tyranitar no longer has a role in the battle now that it has trapped Jellicent, and switching Keldeo in means Cloyster could hit you on the switch, this would likely put Keldeo within +2 Icicle Spear KO range, which means if Cloyster gets another setup oppurtunity later on in the match (and it has enough HP to not die to a few turns of Sandstorm) then you'll get swept.

Turn 12 was definitely the biggest missplay of the battle, losing Celebi meant that if Conkeldurr was Bulk Up you probably lost. You should have gone to Bronzong rather than leaving Celebi in to die, DarkBlazeR has already explained this situation really well, so I won't just parrot his critique.

In conclusion, your only major missplay was the one on Turn 12 and all the other missplays were much smaller things (every little thing does matter though) and you definitely made some good plays, so good job on the battle :) You said in your post that you really don't think ahead very far when battling on the ladder, this is a very important skill in battling and something you should definitely work on, you may want to read about the Nash equilibrium, it's a solution concept that can be applied to situations in pokemon. Right from the team preview you want to be analyzing the team matchup and looking for the best win path, but when doing so your opponent's best win path should to be taken into account. Anyway, I hope all this helped and good luck with your future battling endeavours.

 

[ganj4lF]

Yeah, thank you to both DarkBlazeR and TGMD for the reviews. I already read (or know about) the things you linked me, TGMD, my general problem in battles, as you noted, tend to be lack of long-term planning. I don't really know why, it's probably due more to lack of concentration, not being focused enough, or just playing to relax a bit or something. I feel very confident with the game mechanics and even with concepts like Nash's equilibrium, I just seem unable to apply them to the practical act of battling, that's definitely something I should work on. Thank you for confirming my "suspects" and for your review on the battle.

There's only one thing I don't really agree with you, and it's leading with Gliscor. Gliscor finds himself into a bad position against quite a good portion of its team (Cloyster, Thundurus, Jellicent, Conkeldurr or Lucario if it carries Ice Punch (and even if Conk doesn't, to be honest: you can't get a Sub intact cause of Payback / Stone Edge, and you should only spam EQ hoping it's foolish enough to stay in, prolly ginving a free switch to Thundurus). Celebi can absorb quite a good amount of blows, has reliable recovery, and would outright force out Jellicent, Conkeldurr, most Terrakions, and Thundurus (the most likely leads, to me). Yeah, preserving Celebi was vital, but so it was to not lose momentum on Turn 1. While I agree with you on various misplays during the match (letting Celebi die, and not using Bronzong to absorb blows when I quite clearly could), even after reading this (very enlightening) feedback, I'd do the same choice of lead. Maybe I'm not "controlling luck" well enough, but I think pros outweight cons.

Thank you again!