Pokemon Metagame

csjun89 | Jun 2, 2011 |

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Many of you have played pokemon, but did you know that some people take the game of pokemon to the next level? Instead of playing on the gameboy editions or the different variations of Nintendo DS or its sucessors, they instead use an online virtual platform filled with perfect pokemon. What are perfect pokemon for them? They are pokemon with ideal EVs, personality types and IV spreads. If you have no idea what they are, then that is no surprise either for it is the case that most pokemon players do not.

EV refers to effort values and are hidden stat points that are gained from defeating other pokemon. IV are the internal statistics of the pokemon. The personality type affects by % the stats of the pokemon.

By using a virtual platform to create these pokemon, they avoid problems like not choosing pokemon versions that they wanted or hunting in the wild grass for that ideal personality or IV spread.

This bring new life to the game for people who are reluctant to spend 20 hours trudging through 8 gym leaders every time to catch a legendary for the legendary series game.

Here are some of the other terms for a quick start to the pokemon metagame:

Sweepers

In pokemon there is a build set for an individual pokemon called a sweeper, that has two key elements. Getting the first hit or some way of ensuring a hit, and packing the hit such that it one hit KOs the target.

Other ways to enhance this set involves: Allowing for greater endurance via defences or higher hp pool to take a hit and squeeze in another. Another is using set up skill like swords dance or dragon dance that improves performance.

It could be countered by a better performing sweeper, or stonewalled by a wall.

A sweeper can be strong in either special attack moves or attack moves, or specialized in both. If it has both high sp. Atk and atk then it can be said to be a mixed sweeper.

Often a pure Atk sweeper would carry a boost move like swords dance or dragon dance.

Glass Canons

Sometimes the logical conclusion of a sweeper would lead to a glass canon where it has immensely high offensive stat to one shot the opponent but has pitiful defensive stats and would get one shot itself like Chandelure to surf.

Revenge Kills

Revenge killers are pokemon that come in after one of your pokemon has been taken out by the opponent.

Fake out can be a useful move in certain scenarios.

Walls and stalls

The opposite would of course be wallers and stallers. Wallers can be there to block the rampaging advance of a garchomp and turn the tide by changing the field. Stallers can be there to launch set after set of toxic spikes, spikes, stealth rocks and other deadly abilities that slowly but surely do a percentage based damage over time eventually knocking out the opponent.

Sometimes they will also have movesets that allow for healing or specialty trick uses that requires a counter. Blissey and Bronzong are common walls but do it in very different ways.

Blissey goes with a high hp to soak incoming damage while Bronzong has decent hp but one of the better all round defence stats in the game. Even their support options are also rather different.

Cleansers

For things like toxic spikes there are pokemon like Starmie whose use is to remove these. Naturally this pretty much guarantees a pokemon with an electric offensive move to nullify and knock out Starmie on the first turn for stall teams.

Tricks

Another creative use of game mechanics is in the move Trick, and tricking items like choice specs onto the opponent on a well timed swap, locking them into a single move allowing you to plan around it.

Overall

The careful balance of the different players will lead to a different macro group outcome depending on who makes it to the 6 slots.

If you have 6 sweepers or mostly sweepers and one support then it is very likely to be an all out aggressive team to quickly take out all the opposing team without many defensive measures.

That said a purely sweeper team might well be cleanly swept by a team with a few careful counters. Often it can be a dilemma between switching a pokemon of yours out or to sacrifice it so as to give your sweeper a free turn. You would then need to balance between the risk:reward and see if your pokemon will lead to taking out a crucial member of their team.

Little Cup

Little cup is a special form of play that only allows baby pokemon to battle. In Smogon, they have quite a few extra rules that you can read in their little cup guide.

http://www.smogon.com/dp/articles/little_cup_guide

Basically, one can use pokemon like dratini but not dragonair or its final evolution that is dragonite.

Overpowered series or UU

These group of pokemon have abilities or stat pools that take them out of normal play. Almost all of the legendary pokemon are in this category as they are too powerful to be countered normally. They would require a special counter set to take them out. Surprisingly wobuffet and wynaut its baby pre-evolution is also in this category due to their “hax” abilities and special ability that prevents switching out. If you are interested you can do more research on Smogon.

Every tier of battle has certain pokemon that are banned for being unstoppable within the confines and rules of that particular tier.

Smogon:

They are the source and the discussion forums for many, many strategies.

They even do in depth reviews on game mechanics, as well as numerous write ups on the many different pokemon from Black and White all the way to Red.

However, if you are not that into online battling you might not quite be in favor of their battling rules. It turns into quite the mind game of complex rock paper scissors over 12 pokemon.