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Playing With Your Favorites

Do you play with your favorites?


  • Total voters
    215

Porgon-XYZ

Wut are you saying?
Alot of my favorites happen to be already great in general, (like Stunfisk, Typhlosion, Haxorus) but I do use my favorites even in competitive play! Just EV train them, give them the right moves and team support and... BAM! I have a team of competitive favorites!
 

AudinoGlitch

Weird Person
I play with Stoutland whom I find cute and FLUFFEH!
 

Victory

Banned
I play with Simipour, I lover her desgin in general, and she us actually a good late game sweeper. I also use Braviary, who I find to be great with bulk up
 

Monster Guy

Fairy type Trainer
I mostly play UU. Most of my favorite Pokemon are UU or below anyway so that's good for me.

A team consisting of Mew, Yanmega, Flygon, Togekiss, Milotic, and Hitmontop actually works there, and I like them all, so it's more fun for me.

Plus, I don't really care for a lot of the OU Pokemon.
 

kaiser soze

Reading ADWD
Hitmontop has done some good things for me recently. Really good Latios counter suprisingly. Bulky Volcarona too.
 

BlazingCold

Well-Known Member
Well, if my favorites are good I'll use them. I'm not gonna use Delcatty in OU, but I can spark up Conkeldurr.
 
Most of the pokemon I like kind of suck, but I've gotten to like how a few OU pokemon play, like Gengar and Reuniclus. Their designs might not make them favorites of mine but they're some of my favorite to actually use.
 

pambihirang_nilalang

epic AWESOMENESS!
i have three diff. teams (wifi)
all have Infernape
Lead(Sash), Physical(CB) and Special one(Sash)
 

TrollFreak

Pit is Awesome :P
rofl, imma fail then, i love mence but i always end up using dragonite/Latios, depends on the job i want it to do
 

MasterLucario

No life till leather
Sadly, we lose 90% when we use our favorites. Certain guys like Mudquaza can make it work, but most people aren't skilled enough. If I really want to use a certain guy however, I will try to center a team around them.
 

PurpleOshawatt

King of Awesome
I love bouffalant and all but I don't know if he's any good
Competitively. I'd love to know any sets For him or how to use him effectively
 

MasterLucario

No life till leather
I love bouffalant and all but I don't know if he's any good
Competitively. I'd love to know any sets For him or how to use him effectively

A nice choice set benefits him nicely

Boufallant @Choice Scarf/ Band Adamant/ Jolly
4 HP/ 252 Attack/ 252 speed Reckless/ Sap Sipper
-Head Charge
-Wild Charge
-Megahorn
-Earthquake
 

PokeMaster366

Well-Known Member
The pokemon I consider my favorites tend to be the ones I see potential in. For example, I noticed that few people ever use Bisharp, and its cool design compelled me to do research on it. After a bit of research, I found out that it has a good ability in Defiant since it worked as a counter version of Clear Body by letting his attack go up 2 stages whenever someone else tries to NERF his attack or any other stat. This was alright at first, but when I saw that it can learn both Metal Burst and Sucker Punch, I started to come up with some good ideas with a Focus Sash set since most of my other pokemon don't use the sash. After some fine tuning and hours of breeding and poketransfer, I got Bisharp the way I wanted him.
I took him to the 2011 VGC Regionals in Atlanta, Georgia, and honestly, I was actually able to make it to the top 8 even after some extra rounds, and I did this b/c of Bisharp, since he gave me a ray of hope against Jellicent, Chandelure, and even Terrakion and Conkeldurr.If I hadn't thought of Bisharp beforehand, I probably wouldn't have gotten as far as I did at the VGC in 2011. Truth be honest, if the programmers decided to let Defiant work whenever stat loss is self-inflicted, like when you get your own whimsicott to use tickle on Bisharp, I think Bisharp would have been an undisputable UBER game breaker. I just wish I could have gone to the Nationals, but what can you do when money is the issue.
 
I'm working on a competitive team with my favorites as of now so when I feel I'm finally ready for competitive play, I'll do so.

My number one favorite will always be Arcanine. I'm trying to make one like this:

Nature: Jolly
~Morning Sun
~Extreme Speed
~Flare Blitz
~Thunder Fang

Back when Scizor was #1, a friend of mine made this Arcanine set with Intimidate over Flash Fire that was a full Scizor counter. Was pretty cool but I can't remember it xD. (Back then a Scizor counter was really good thing to have since Scizor was in over 30% of the teams.)

I'm in no way a "prioritized" player since I use the best option available but I do use my favorites. My most successful team actually was a team composed of 6 of my favorites. That was pretty awesome. I guess I'm lucky that my favorites include Tyranitar (back then Tar wasn't as used as much as now ._.), Infernape and Lucario (not that they're good typewise, but when combined with the other three, the teams was fairly balanced).

I'm ok with these "prioritized" players since they can play the game how they want to play, I just think that there's a way to have fun and stay competitive. That is using pokemon that not necessarily are your favorites but that are good and you like. For example, Salamence has never been one of my favorite pokemon looks-wise but has always been one of the pokemon that I've enjoyed the most using. If I hadn't given Mence the chance because he doesn't look as cool Ape to be my mixed sweeper (depends on the team but for the sake of this example let's just say that I need any mixed sweeper), I wouldn't known how much fun and how much thinking goes into using Salamence. The same goes for the opposite case. Gyarados is an amazing pokemon, great sweeper, really good typing and versatile. However, and the ones that remember me when I played know what I'll say, I could never use Gyarados to success (even though it's easy to use in comparison with many other sweepers that need some more thinking into it). Of course, I got a sweep every once in a while, but I don't feel "comfortable" using it.

So what I mean by that is that I know why some people don't want to use certain options and not always is just about how much you like or don't like the looks of the pokemon but how much you like or don't like actually using the pokemon. I just think it's kind of silly to limit yourself to only the same few pokemon for every team just because you don't like how the sprite of the suggested pokemon look.


That said, wow Rhys you're still here ;D. Blue Harvest I see hasn't left yet, either. How's it going, guys? Is anybody else left?
 

ShadowSplash

Spring is Coming!
In this thread I would like to spark discussion of players who use only their favorite Pokemon (I refer to them as prioritized players). To clarify, these are not players who like a large variety of Pokemon, nor players who use their favorites and are equally open-minded, or even players who like Pokemon that are already incredibly good, but players who only use outclassed Pokemon like Flareon or Raichu solely based on looks or other random reasons. This is NOT a hate thread and in no way am I attempting to bash prioritized players. I would like those posting in this thread to post if they play with their favorites or not and explain why. Because quite frankly, I'm curious about each and every one of you and knowing why you make your decisions is intriguing.​


No one said that your favorites have to be UU and below.

There is a reason a lot of competitive players will tell you to forget about using your favorites when it comes to competitive battling. I am one of them. While the entire premise of the game is designed to let the player succeed with their favorites, that is not how competitive works.

You can't say that isn't how competitive works. If someone wants to try to build a team with only their favorites, I immediately have much more respect for you than someone who just throws together a team of OU Pokemon because they think those are the best.

Furthermore, I note that, on average, players who use only their favorites are less-effective battlers than those who don't.

I make sure that all of the Pokemon on my team are my favorites. And I am not less-effective as a battler as anyone else. I might not have a perfect win/loss record, but I'm winning quite a bit more than I'm losing. And that's almost always against teams that are higher tiers than me.

- From the very start, you are limiting your options. I feel the best thing about the Pokemon games is that there is so much variety. When you say you are only going to use your favorites, you are immediately secluding yourself to a handful of Pokemon and focusing only on those. Though individually, the sets you use for teams can be creative, the general strategies are bland or ineffective as you have to cater to your limitations.

You're kidding, right? The most creative team and strategy you could make is to break away from the norm and make something using Pokemon that are not normally seen out on the field. Who wants to see purely OU Pokemon when you could come across a team that has Raichu and Sandslash on it, and then have it kick your a*s? When everyone is using OU or Uber Pokemon, you know what to expect when they throw that out at you. If someone threw out Beedrill, yeah you know it's stats and type weaknesses, but you might not be prepared for what strategy they have up their sleeve, since that's not a Pokemon you're always seeing out there.

- Players who use only their favorites generally ignore better options. Even though Heracross is exponentionally better than Pinsir, these players would still use Pinsir, the sole reason being they prefer Pinsir aesthetically. This is like saying you'd rather walk three hours to work/school instead of driving 20 minutes because you like to walk, or declining an upgraded plane ticket because you prefer 3rd class, or declining an inflated basketball at a game because you like the feel of a deflated ball in your hands, or even saying no to free money because you like how much cash you have in your wallet/bank account at the moment. Quite frankly, every reason I've heard defending prioritized players when I've touched upon this subject were only excuses.

And why is that bad? What if they still win with Pinsir? You can't say that using the more inferior Pokemon automatically dooms them to failure. There was someone at a Pokemon tournament 2 years ago who won, and his team had Beedrill, Sandslash and some other UU/NU Pokemon on it. And you were allowed to use 2 Ubers, and he had one. He was in the top 3. Just because I have a Flygon and not Salamence of Dragonite on my team doesn't mean I'm going to lose. It's not always about the Pokemon, it's how you strategize and build your team. I've seen OU and Uber teams fall to UU and NU teams. It's not horribly uncommon. Besides, it's not even fun when everyone has 6 Pokemon from the same group (being OU) of Pokemon, and everyone knows what to expect. Someone sends out TTar and you're just yawning because this is the 17th Sandstorm team you've battled.

- Through forums and live engagement with prioritized players, I have noticed a pattern of difficulty with adaptivity and/or improvement. If you use certain Pokemon exclusively, you will have issues when you run into specific threats or metagame shifts. At the same time, since players are only using their favorites, lack of exploration tends to leave their growth stunted since the players only know how to use specific Pokemon. Usually when I run into someone who plays in a closed circut (only plays with a group of friends), they believe certain Pokemon/sets are an arm and head above everything else. When a suggestion is made contradicting this, nearly none will respond with open minds or logical discussion. Instead, I tend to hear stories about poorly designed teams being crushed by a threat that they have no answer to. Since they don't move outside their comfort zone, their issues are rarely resolved and are usually done so by banning things which have no reason to be banned in a general competitive standpoint.

I think you're generalizing too much. And who's to say that someone's "favorites" is limited to only 10 Pokemon. You could ask me to list my favorites, and I would probably get to about 50, and then my secondary (not top top favorites, but Pokemon I really like) would put that list to 150+. Honestly, yes, if someone is saying they're only going to use a specific 6 Pokemon, then that's not going to get them far. But I think you're generalizing way too much because a lot of players who will use their favorites are very open to suggestions. They aren't going to just drop their favorite one for something that's not their favorite, but they can take the idea of "Well, you need a Pokemon that can counter Bronzong, and you don't have any fire Pokemon or fire moves." Something like that, they will take into consideration. To say that all of the people who are using their favorites are completely close minded is rather harsh considering that I only use my favorites and I'm very flexible and willing to try out a different Pokemon (as long as it's not something I don't like). In fact, in the last 5 months I've tried so many different options and to this day I'm still practicing and refining my main team. And I am very open-minded on the subject. And I am a good battler with a very good strategy.

Some argue competitive battlers go down a similar road by banning things from tiers, such as Garchomp. However, they fail to realize general competitive battlers will use any and every mean to find an answer to a problem and when there is none, that is when a decision is made. Prioritized battlers simply don't want to face the problem because losing with your favorites a horrendous number of times makes the game no longer fun.

Again generalizing. My team of favorites only has one OU Pokemon on my team. The rest of my Pokemon are UU, RU, or NU. And when I run into a team of OU or Ubers, I don't give up. And because of that, I've won many times against full OU teams. Yes, I'm not going to beat a full Ubers team anymore, now that I've retired my only Uber off my team, but I don't expect a full OU team to beat a full Uber team either. They're Uber for a reason. But the mere fact that I can take down 4 Ubers on a team with my team tells me that I don't need to make an OU team to win.

There is a complete flipside to all of this logic. While prioritized players do have downsides, there are upsides to them as well.

- I believe the tier system would not be what it is today without prioritized players. Beyond Ubers and OU (disregarding BL), the tiers are filled with Pokemon that would see very little use if it wasn't for the fact players wanted to use them. UU and LC are prime examples of this: you will never see things like Croagunk or Blastoise making metagame shifts or threatening one of the higher tiered Pokemon's place on the usage ladder, yet in their respective tiers they are viable candidates. Not to mention these tiers have plenty of candidates to choose from, which from a general standpoint makes them more dynamic. Even though I am a strict OU battler whenever I do battle, playing the lower tiers was a fun and exciting experience. Within the competitive battling game, there are more than 4 actual games to train, explore, and enjoy. For this, you can thank those who are dedicated to finding a place for their favorites. They are not necessarily the #1 reason these tiers exist, but they most certainly help them thrive.

I respect Smogon's tiers because 99% of the time, if a Pokemon is in a tier, that's where it should be. The Uber Pokemon are in there for a reason, the OU, UU, etc. Smogon earns my respect for the most part for that. However, it's wrong if you believe that an UU Pokemon is going to be completely slaughtered in the higher tiers. I won't repeat myself again, but my team has on OU and everything is below, yet I've beaten teams of full OU and even teams that have a couple of Ubers.

- Prioritized players may not know this, but from what I have seen on average, they enjoy the game more than the average non-prioritized player. When I play against people at Nintendo and use my favorites, I enjoy it the most simply because it's fun too watch Nidoking work as a powerhouse sweeper. Without the pressure to use the strongest and best Pokemon, it's refreshing to use what you want to use. It's luxury over efficiency. Though currently I have a single tutee, I do suggest to everyone I give advice to play with your favorites every once in a while. It keeps most players playing the game longer and opens their mind to more creative ideas, as some players work very hard to use their favorites efficiently. And to those who only play one or two of their favorites that sit in OU: try it. You may enjoy yourself.

If you've personally experienced the thrill, why are you putting people down for using their favorites? You just said you've had your Nidoking become a powerhouse sweeper. Or was that only against Pokemon of your tier? I bet if you really wanted to, you could use Nidoking, along with your favorites, against OU Pokemon.

- If players only focused on the Pokemon that excell, we may not know as much about competitive as we do now. Whenever Smogon opens up the floodgates for analyses, almost everyone goes for their favorites while the common Pokemon are generally left for top players to mop up. If only metagame important Pokemon received attention like this, odds are we wouldn't know much about Pokemon like Leafeon. Players have made effective and plausible strategies for Traunt Durant, and that's saying something. Though prioritized players may not necessarily be the cause for research like this, their support for their favorite Pokemon goes a long way to promote this.

I'll agree with you here. But there are a ton of people that will use UU and lower Pokemon even in the higher tiers, regardless of what people think or say. And they can win.

I'm not trying to have a fight with you. But when I've personally seen and experience people using lower tier Pokemon (their favorites), and winning, I have extreme respect and it makes me happy to see that not everyone tries to just do what they feel is what wins.
 
I know you directed your post at Rhys but I'll reply to it. Shadowslash, why are you so proud you can win with a team of UU/NU in OU? This is something I don't get. People seem to have this idea that using lower tiers make you in some way "special" or "unique". I believe this was mentioned in the Op. I mean, is there really that much difference from copying and pasting an OU pokemon's set or an UU/NU's that is listed to be used in OU anyways. "I use Pinsir instead of Heracross, therefore I'm a better player than the one who uses Heracross and I'm more original." How so? Also, why do you "respect people who use their favorites instead of using what they think will win"? You see a Tyranitar and "yawn because it's the 17th time you've played against it". Really? So if a favorite of mine is in OU, like Tar or Lucario, I stop being original? I stop having your respect? How does that work?

I do use the pokemon I like. If my favorite doesn't fit a team, I change it. I don't think of myself a better player because I use lower tiers. I see people using the fact that they use lower tiers as an excuse for their losses and as a way to make their wins more "special". I just don't like this self-admiration that goes on with people who use lower tiered pokemon.
 
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