The majority of your time for a battle should be spent on preparing yourself for the battle over the actual battle itself. So, a little about me and why I feel like I can write about this effectively. I come from a board and tabletop gaming background. I grew up playing mini war games like Warhammer, and for the past ten years have played competitive Warmachine and Hordes, I have also dabbled in Guild Ball. What does that mean to you guys that don't know what those are? Simply it means that I know how important planning is on a battle.
Now I did lose my last match due to poor playing especially at the end of the match, but my planning was spot on, down to knowing what things Sam would bring. But without much ado the 10 Things to do When Planning for a Battle.
The first two things only really work for league and lightly work for ladder. For clarity, going forward your "team" is your 11 mons(and z crystal), your "list" is the 6 you bring to a match.
1. Know what things you have. Know what they can do. Know what synergies your team can do. some obvious ones would be like a weather setter and someone that utilizes that weather like Ttar and Excadrill, Pelipper and M-Swampert, Torkoal and M-Houndoom.
In our league the most obvious one is probably Sam's Bulu with Heatran and M-Diancie. But the flip side to this is know what things certain mons are weak at and which ones cover that. A good example of that is my Fini and Ferrothorn. Every weakness of one is a resistance of the other and vice versa.
Along with this, know if your team is a majority physical damage or special damage or if there is a good mix. This will help you build a good list later.
2. Know what things your opponent has. Basically do the same thing that you did for your team, but do it for your opponent's team. Know what things they can do to try to surprise you. That can be a bulky Mon that isn't normally bulky in a certain way, like AV Ferrothorn expecting HP fire. The big thing here is knowing if they have predominately physical or special damage. You don't want to build a lot of specially defensive mons into a physical team, or vice versa.
3. Decide what you want to play for. Maybe you're not the most competitive player, that's okay. You should always be playing to win but you should want to have fun first and foremost. Maybe you just got a new mon from free agency, and you know you want it in your list. Maybe you want to try a weird set on your M-Lopunny like Fakeout Last Resort. Or maybe you really want to counter a certain Mon on the other team. I definitely didn't do that last year in my first match against Adam with his Jolteon, who he didn't even bring.
But maybe you do want to win, at any means necessary. You don't care about K/D or differential, you just want to get that win.
4. Figure out your win conditions and your loss conditions.
Your win conditions are on your opponents team, your loss conditions are in your list. A win condition is: "If I take this/these certain things out, I win" a loss condition is the opposite: "If I lose this thing, I lose" And understand that your win/loss conditions can change throughout the battle.
5. Figure out how to draw out your win condition in a manner that benefits you. If your win condition is getting rid of their Heatran, good luck using Swampert to draw it out. But if it's M-Diancie, then why even try M-Sableye to remove it?
This can be the most difficult step in the process. This may cause you to go into the tank(take extra time) both before the battle and during it.
6. Figure out how to set up your Loss Condition. Typically if something is a loss condition, you want it to be a contributing factor in your list. If it's offensive, how are you going to set it up to sweep or break them down? If it's defensive, how are you going to keep it alive and breaking down enemies slowly? Wish, protect, leftovers, Subs, Leech seed, Toxic, etc all help; but don't forget about Taunt.
7. Start building your list.
If during step 3 you wanted to bring certain things, start with those. If not, start with your loss conditions and build from there. Use what you think they would bring against you.
If you had their team and were going against yours, what would you bring? Typically you can narrow down what they will bring to around 7-9. Your list better be able to handle any combination of those 9, with something to deal with the other ones if for some reason they come too.
When you build your team, look at speed especially. What things are you trying to out speed, in this game it doesn't matter if you out speed by 1 or 50, you still get to attack first ignoring priority. Take some of the excess investment you don't need to other stats. Keep in mind only two mons can be scarfed, and that scarf is a 1.5x Multiplier.
You can do this with other stats as well using Showdown's calculator for damage. But remember to switch them to level 50 because the damage changes a bit.
7.b. Send your list to another player, get their input on it. But don't just send it to them as is. Tell them what things you want to do with that list. What things you expect, and what you're doing for them. Just sending 6 mons with moves, items, and EVs doesn't help too much.
8. Test your team. Preferably using showdown. Ask someone to build a team for the other player(do this for their opponent as well). Don't be afraid of asking them to try certain things. Some that people have asked of me is things like lead Galvantula or Silvally-Ground instead of Fire or Scarf Volcanion instead of lefties. Don't feel like you need to go through the entire battle every time, but also don't feel like you can't make tweaks and changes to more optimize your list. Have certain ideas of what you want to do in early, mid, and late game.
If you're there to help, listen to what they want as help. Ask them questions why they're bringing certain things or doing certain things.
9. Build your list. Check with showdown at level to make sure your stats are right. I noticed in one of the replays that a certain mon only had 30 HP IVs, which didn't make a difference in that match but if you are planning on using a certain Hidden Power, and it's the wrong one. You're a lot SOL.
9.b. TEST YOUR LIST. Using Battle Spot or challenging another player to make sure the game doesn't freak out about your team. You don't want any surprises to come up during your match if you can avoid them.
10. Before your match make sure you're set up. Make sure you have a charger, something to drink(optional), a solid playing area that you won't get interrupted at. You may want music playing, you may not, I recommend finding a consistent playing environment from week to week.
All of this should happen before you even hit battle. Then a whole other level of planning comes into play.
Talking about most of these steps with another player will help you a lot. When you plan by yourself, you often pigeonhole onto one set up or one plan. There's no reason to hinder yourself because you didn't ask someone's opinion on something.
In the next week, I'll go over things you should be doing during the battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment