2014 International Challenge – June
The second and final International Challenge is coming up in a few weeks! As the final chance for European players to earn points before Worlds and North American players to earn points before Nationals, it’s going to be a very heated event! The Top 128 players in each age division from each of those two regions will receive Championship Points for their efforts.
The International Challenge is an online ladder-based tournament. You will be able to play up to 20 battles per day (unplayed games will roll over to the next day) from 00:00 UTC on Friday, June 20th, 2014 (5:00 PM PDT on Thursday, June 19th ) to 23:59 UTC on Sunday June 22nd, 2014 (4:59 PM PDT on Sunday June 22nd).
To register, you’ll need to have an account on Pokemon.com and register your game with the Global Link. Your game must be attached to the same account that has the player ID you use to play in Regionals, Nationals, and other events in the Play! Pokémon program if you want to receive Championship Points. You will be able to participate if you are one of the first 50,000 players to register on the Global Link for the event between 00:00 UTC on Thursday June 12th, 2014 (5:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 11th) and 23:59 UTC on Thursday, June 19th, 2014 (4:59 PM PDT on Thursday, June 19th).
The tournament will use the Standard ruleset and should prove to be the most competitive tournament yet with thousands of players worldwide playing to prove themselves and increase their chances at a World Championship invite! Championship Points will be awarded as follows:
| Placement | Points |
| 1 | 10 |
| 2–8 | 8 |
| 9–16 | 4 |
| 17–64 | 2 |
| 65–128 | 1 |
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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Oh man. I haven’t competed since I was in worlds 2011, but I’m finally trying to get back into playing. Had a really good run 21-9 touching 1680, but today has been harsh. Probably a good 5 losses in a row and some just ridiculous flinches and misses, but that’s the game! My team is far too water weak and the rain, few and far between as they have been, has been fairly brutal.
Heracross-M
Pachirisu
Aerodactyl
Garchomp
Wigglytuff
Rotom-H <- if only I went with wash.
Here is the pitiful team I decided to go with I know I know the originality is simply beaming.
Ended up something-something at 16XX or something finishing like 49 battles or something and DCing the final battle during team preview because WOW I’m fed up at how well this team does. Haha just kidding it’s so bad having a Boomburst shatter my ear drums would be more pleasurable than playing with this grimer.
Everything is fine, except for this yamsing Kingdra. In spite of LITERALLY HAVING GLASSES it cannot hit what its meant to hit. Oh, leave that -2 Kangaskhan with 30% HP left alone, I simply need to hit this 1 HP Aerodactyl to win. Oh, just kidding because Kingdra saw this really cool-looking pebble over by Kangaskhan and decided to take all of its dank water with it over to that grimerty rock. GG!
I missed a MACHAMP. That’s not a very easy thing to do even if my opponent did use Skill Swap. I still found it horribly ironic (I lost to a Dark Voiding, Sheer Colding Smeargle I am appalled at myself).
I’m not sure how this is possible but I actually hit with Muddy Water more on Showdown than I did in this International Challenge. I don’t think I even missed more than two Hypnoses. And I used that grimer plenty because as you can tell by Muddy Water I play dirty (haha get it because this Kingdra is literally grimer).
Also all of my Pokemon were shiny idk why the sprites don’t follow. That allows the balls to be appreciated in their fullest. Also the MVP of the team is definitely Talonlame and that’s how you can tell how bad this team is.
In all seriousness, while being a very mundane chore, getting to see all of the creativity I did from my opponents was worth the poor performance. Some teams were very eye-opening and it was a pleasure getting defeated by things that deserved to win.
Okay, goodnight I need to muddy cry myself to sleep and get off this horrendous run-on sentence kick.
I entered with wrong moves on two of my Pokemon… Whoops. Lesson learned.
At least you aren’t unhappy with your Returns.
No we’re downright Frustrated with the move choices
Finished 40-20 and had a lot more fun playing in this one then the May IC.
Finished somewhere around 1750-60ish, not exactly good but I found some glaring holes in the team that should be easily fixable.
Played Rain in at least a third of my battles which was a lot more than I expected and saw tons more Smeargle than last time as well. (Smeargle mirrors suck btw) I think the overall skill level of everyone I played was miles ahead of the last IC, and I actually don’t recall playing any team that was so horribly stupid that it left an impression.
While I think the luck factor was overall more against me, I’d say the vast majority of my losses were a team hole which is fixable. No complaints from me this event. Shoutouts to TDS who I got to play twice, Hibiki, Mr. Eobo, KingofMars and probably a bunch of other players reading this who I either didn’t recognize the trainer name or I didn’t bother to look at the name. You probably beat me anyway…
Finished 40W/20L with somewhere in the low 1700’s for the score. I know hax happens, but it was getting pretty dang deflating this time around, even up to the last round. Things like multiple double-misses were getting way too common.
At least I did better than last time. I did my best, regardless of regrets.
External
Overall thoughts:
Same team as before, just switched out Ferrothorn for Insomnia Gourgeist-Average because the May IC showed me I was weak to good Smeargle players and I wanted something that could provide power control and wall Kangaskhan. Decided to quit after 20 battles as this is just for practise to find weaknesses in my team and right now I’m tired… NEVER play when you’re tired as that’ll just destroy your ranking and your mood! Pokémon is supposed to be fun and it stops being fun the moment you force yourself to play
Overall skill level of the players was indeed a lot higher and I’m glad that most of my fights were against strong players so I could get a good grasp on how high my own skill level is in comparison. Lost mostly to unorthodox tactics and mons I didn’t know about (Gourgeist vs…. a Payback Amoonguss?! O.O) so a clear sign that I need more experience and knowledge. Didn’t fight a single Smeargle sadly and about half of the Khan players didn’t bring it out of fear for Gourgeist.
The team has proven itself time and time again to be extremely solid with 1 or multiple answers to any given situation and Ampharos/Rotom-H’s ability to tank their way through a lot of fights is amazing. I also won a lot of fights thanks to how hard Ampharos hits, making switches against him a very dangerous play. However, the June IC did show me that smart Salamence/Hydreigon players and overall really fast teams were still a big problem, and Discharge spam is a strong but inconsistent way of speed control, and those equate to about half my losses. So after much debate I’ll be putting Trick Room on Gourgeist to deal with this issue and it also gives the pumpkin a better tool for leading the fight.
Team analysis:
Ampharos: this girl hasn’t let me down yet! Her incredible bulk and power have pulled me through many a battle and gotta love her amazing typing that walls so many common mons in the metagame! Discharge also make her a really dangerous mon to switch into as you’ll be taking 40-80% damage and have a 30% change of paralysis. The speed investment allows her to outspeed common Azumarill/Mawile/Wigglytuff builds and this gave a lot of surprise OHKO’s when paired with Lanturn’s Soak.
Lanturn: together with Ampharos my most used lead combo and for good reason. The rise of Lum Berry Garchomp means Lanturn outspeeds and OHKO’s him, arguably one of Ampharos’ bigger threats, and Soak shifts any match-up in my favor and grants me OHKO’s against mons that would otherwise wall them. Switched out Volt Switch for Discharge to make him a better supporter and it was a good change as it did help me in 2 fights. Still rarely use it as Ice Beam and Soak are so good that Lanturn 9/10 times gets locked into those moves instead.
Rotom-H: love this little toaster! Fire/Electric is just too good for this meta and he pairs really well with everyone.
Mamoswine: this guy’s been getting more popular lately and I see why. Ground and Ice are so good offensively and the ability to quick remove double dragon is a huge benefit for every team. Also lets me use the DisQuake tactic and why do so few people use it? It’s a really strong tactic o.O
Azumarill: Expert Belt Superpower! Never gets old seeing Khan getting OHKO’ed by it! Azumarill also has great synergy with the rest of the team, though it’s probably my least brought mon seeing how solid the previous four are and how many match-ups they can win. Azumarill usually gets brought against dragons and Khan users or when I see Tyranitars without Amoonguss in team preview.
Gourgeist: the Average one was an experimental choice as I felt the bit lesser bulk was a good trade-off to get the biggest Khan Artist counter in the game, which my team was weak against. Rarely brought it, but it served its purpose by keeping some players from bringing their Khan and going for another Mega instead (saw a LOT of Kangaskhan + Charizard Y teams O.O) and giving me the win by stalling a couple of opponents to death. I have Phantom Force on there to break Protects for Azumarill and Ampharos, but am changing it to Trick Room. It does lower Gourgeist’s stalling capability quite a bit, but the team in general will greatly benefit from having a strong type of speed control to fall back on when Salamence, Hydreigon or fast teams show themselves which they struggled against in this IC.
Conclusion:
Ended up some 30-40 points lower than in May with 20 battles fought instead of the 40 I did then, but I’m very pleased with this performance as I’ve fought far stronger opponents this time and found more ways to improve myself and the team. Hope these IC’s become a regular thing as they’re a great way for players to grow and have fun
Went 14-13 with a rating of 1499. I wanted to break 1500 before quitting but I decided to stop. External I think I’ll make the obvious fixes and then set it aside as a finished “fun team”. This was really fun and I learned a lot! For example, one thing I learned is that Aurorus is actually pretty rad. What surprised me was that it was actually my most valuable mon, even without Nature Power. o.O
Also, if my data doesn’t show it, the 1500-ish meta is really… interesting. Lots of laughs.
I also think I’ll continue organizing my stuff like this in the future because the way I did this forced me to reflect a bit on each match. I found that it kept any tilting constrained to just that one battle.
Finally managed to break 1700 after about 3 hours of sitting at 1670 >.< I’m happy with how I did, seeing as I got a higher rating than the May IC in less battles too. I’m done for the the IC, and a side note to myself that in future tourneys I shouldn’t leave all my battles to the last day as it was incredibly difficult to just find opponents.
Does anyone know that if you DC during the find oppponents screen it counts as a loss? I accidentally pressed ‘yes’ when it said ‘do you want to continue battling’ and I couldn’t figure out any way to exit the ‘searching for an opponent’ screen so I just shut off my ds to risk losing and preserve my rating.
Learned a lot from my losses. Particularly to play it safe when I had the upper hand.
There was a particularly hilarious match that I lost due to hax which was totally my own fault. It was basically my Garchomp at -1 and Aegislash with unactivated Weakness Policy against a Sylveon at full health. Instead of playing it safe and protecting the garchomp to 2HKO sylveon with flash cannon, I thought, ‘Hey! let’s be rad and end this battle in 1 turn! I can activate the weakness policy since garchomp can’t hurt its teammate at -1, and I can KO the Sylveon with +2 flash cannon!..
Garchomp used Earthquake!
A critical hit on Aegislash!
It’s super effective on Aegislash!
Aegislash fainted!
Sylveon used Hyper Beam!
It’s super effective!
Garchomp fainted!
Oops. That was total fail on my part. I think I laughed a little at the end.
Attn user with the IGN /Donks/. You. Are. Evil! Hahaha. Smeargles that do things other than Dark Void are the worst LOL. I was gonna forfeit, but you know, there’s always a chance your Internet cuts out.
why does the system pair me with someone of 1428 ratings when my ratings are around 1800 already? =(
then the guy proceeds to use minimize toxic stall tactics on me… nearly lost that one..
well, elaborate!
I’m a little disappointed with my results so far, since hax ruined some games to me yesterday and I didn’t play the rest of them highly motivated… but most of that was just because my team wasn’t too prepared for “hax control”, and I have just realized that the lack of Speed Control can hurt me in many situations, too. Therefore, it’s more me and not the hax, since the chances are always there and one thing you have to do is try to manipulate them, wich I poorly did. I encourage everyone complaining about being haxed to improve their teams and make them more efficient against those chances. I think that’s a good way to improve yourself as a player, and that’s what I’m going to do. This IC I won’t have an excellent record, but at least I learned a valuable lesson, and how I can improve this team around my Mega (Venusaur).
PS: if anyone remembers what I said in my last message about rain teams… forget it. I have found like 4-5 high ranked Rain teams after that lol
I guess here’s where I pull the plug, pretty disappointing.
17-2, 169X
13-1, 4-1 on the respective days I got to play.
I really wanted to test the waters of trying to break 1800 as I doubt that’s a mark many other Australians will reach, but exams are exams. Priorities or something like that.Team was fun and effective, both my losses came to a greninja.
Highlights:
– Clawing back after a disastrous RNG provoked mess to win with sub-chomp in front of sub-aegi
– Specs salamence OHKOd 3/3 Sableyes turn 1
– Salamence having rock tomb instead of sleep talk OR hyper beam, the result being me switching it in to eat a dark void and only realising the flaw upon trying to select it next turn. Highlight because garchomp forgave my sins, feeling nice and evasive in front of a scarf DV.
– Losing my first game and going on a 14 game win stream afterwards
Lowlights:
– My two losses were painful sub 1550 opponents
– Greninja freezing tyranitar
– Playing so many greninjas
– Greninja existing
– Missing about 5 turns on timer because I zoned out after getting in a winning situation and started browsing the internet (focus!!!)
– Not actually getting to test my ability of how high I can go and compare to top level players
Is it just me? cause the Japanese players sure know how to Hax people xD
I decided to finish at 10 battles going 9-1 and getting somewhere around 1630-1640. Lost a battle due to a Triple Kings Shield, but hey, what can you do right? Also that was freaking awesome to see anyway.
Day 1: 3-0
Day 2: 2-1
Day 3: 4-0
Highlights: Playing Drizzleboy’s Brother, playing Nick from Victoria (someone from my own country .O.), Going 9-1, losing to a Triple Kings Shield, playing mono-flying.
Lowlights: Not getting enough time to actually play more games and possibly get a more decent rating.
I’m so unlucky right now so I’m stopping at 35-17 I believe at a mid 1600 rating.
No kiding all but 2 of my loses were from people from japan or korea. Im going to contiune battling cause it was stupid of me to battle att 1am while worring about my doggy that was at the er at that time. So i wanna finish >1742. Also, RAIN OP.
Well I reached one of my goals in having a 1700 ranking, but I probably need ~1740 to get to top 5 in Canada. I’ve been getting paired up with 1500s more than I’d like, so I don’t know if I should keep going or not…
I wish the ic`s would give more accurate match ups. I could have the same record as some one else but we could be hundreds of points apart due to one of us reciving bad match ups. I wish they would have more accurate scoring like a system similar to our scramble where loses are the same amount and wins can change in value. That or just give us a year round vgc battle spot ladder where i can recover from a loss against a low person because i dont have a battle limit.
Currently 5-1 today, loss was misfortunate but y’know
I used to completely despise Smeargle but…..using it for more than just Dark Void is absolutely fun, those 2 Mega Khans at +2 and even +4 is really OP
Going to call it here. I’m somewhere in the low 1600s. I’m not thrilled with my performance, but this was a fun team to mess around with. Lapras was a solid team member, and between it and Mega Venusaur they manhandled rain teams. I had some issues with mamoswine. I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a single time I didn’t flinch from Icicle crash. Meowstic was definitely the glue thanks to charm shutting down physical attackers and its general supportive services; between him and aerodactyl Charizard was able to pull off dragon dances more often than I hoped.This team had some issues with taking hits from strong special attackers since I don’t have a way to shut them down like meowstic can with physical attackers.
EDIT: Not sure why my battle box is loading like this.
Architeuthis, try Ice Shard instead of Ancient Power, there’s not anything really that Ancient Power can hit that Lapras can’t handle already, there is Charizard but he won’t be doing too much to you. Also from my experience Lapras counters Mamoswine….at least it has done for me 100% of the time.
I’ll definitely give ice shard a shot on my next lapras, I did like ancient power’s ability to smack Charizard in the sun and I was leery of splitting EVs for ice shard to hit hard enough to finish things. I really just had poor luck against mamoswine, lapras would tend to either get flinched by rock slide or miss hydropump; when it didn’t get flinched it handled it easily.
Day 1: 14W-06L
Day 2: 02W-04L
Day 3: 19W-15L
Final ranking: Really low 1,600 at best (Which is really bad, because I was alittle over 1,700 on the first day ;_
While the team looks kind of inconsistent, I can guarantee you; it sometimes is.
While the core for this team is Venusaur, Rotom-H and Azumarill the team was originally built around Jumpluff, which ended being my MVP for atleast 4/5 of the 60 matches. It’s there to do whatever it takes to make sure that the other team mates survive, even if it means that it needs to descent into its own demise. Sure, it sometimes failed me with the Sleep Powder, but that Rage Powder worked wonders throughout the tournament with enough prediction. It didn’t always work out with using Rage Powder at the right moment, and when it didn’t I had to pay with a good chunk of my team.
The things that got my alarms blinking red for the main part was Trick Room teams, and seeing a Greninja on the opponent’s team in general. Atleast 4 pokémon on my team are weak to its usual Hydro Pump/Scald, Dark Pulse and Ice Beam/Blizzard combo that Greninjas can utilize, and if it carries a grass move aswell then it’s 5/6 pokémon that has trouble dealing with it, making Venusaur an even bigger target for my opponent to wanna take out.
While the team can be inconsistent at times, I could have had a better final score if I didn’t mess it up for myself for a good ammount of the battles.
Either way, I had fun and that’s all that matters, right? Right? Right.
Cheers!
External
I am still not a fan of this IC system where you are limited to 20 battles a day; I would have loved to be able to do 35 battles Friday and then whatever I had time for during the weekend.
The team finished at approx. 1700, which could have been more if I had more time. I started out by playing poorly and lost to a lot of Japanese gimmicks, including Snow Cloak Glaceon and some Greninja + Abomasnow Blizzard spammers – I really should have been prepared for that when I saw team preview, but oh well – live and learn.
I absolutely love the team! I have been using it for a while on Showdown with huge succes thanks to the big number of rain teams on there, but I have also used it a bit in some of the Live Tournaments on here, though, not with as much succes, probably because of the player
I really can’t say this team has a specific weakness as such, which is why I am so happy about it:
– Garchomp + Rotom-H beats sun
– Lapras beats rain
– Mawile + Gengar beats Kangaskhan, usually Garchomp will do a lot of work against Mom too, though
– Hydreigon beats Perish Trap and gives me some much needed speed
In testing, the biggest weakness was Rage Powder, and a lot of people on Showdown run Amoonguss + Tyranitar, which has the potential to rip the team apart, but I didn’t face a single team in the IC with this Pokemon combination, however, Amoonguss + Greninja turned out to be a nasty surprise once or twice.
A combination of rain + Kangaskhan was probably the scariest thing I faced.
Before the IC, Garchomp was the Pokemon I was considering to replace, since it didn’t do too well in my testing on Showdown – however, it ended up being the MVP by miles. Amazing speed, amazing typing, immune to Thunder Wave, can fight the bidoof Smeargles, can let Talonflame and Kangaskhan deal more damage to themselves than they dish out, and just generally be able to dish out damage quickly. While I have always loved the nice tools Garchomp has, now it is my favorite of all the dragons; Garchomp has won me many games and it has also won my heart
Least used Pokemon, which is to be expected, is the Lapras. I tested the spread found on Eggy Emporium on Showdown, but I never really thought it was optimal, so I specialized it to have a lot more special bulk and more speed, and just removed its physical defense altogether to add more power – this is why the rain + Kangaskhan combination was lethal, as Mega Mom does so much damage to Lapras. Lapras won 3-4 games on its own, 3 of them against rain teams, so it fulfilled its role perfectly despite spending a lot of time on the bench.
I’ve had a ton of fun with this team and saved a lot of good battle videos as well, so overall, I’m really happy with this International Challenge. If only it would last a few more days so I could finish all the battles and not have to stop at (I think) 35.
Before I go on about my experience in this, want to say how awesome it is to not really have to spend copious amounts of time moderating these IC threads and instead actually enjoying reading through it this year. I’m not sure if it’s the community growing more mature or the new system not allowing DCs- or a little of both- but these are turning out to be the best threads on the entire forum. Keep it up
I decided to take See’s 3rd place May IC team team for a test run. I took off the Garchomp and added the bunny to help give a little bit more secure answer to my rain / Greninja problems (thanks Angel for the idea!) I don’t know what he was running on everything, but I think I came relatively close to what he had.
Going to add a little more opinion to this one as I think I was playing this half to reinforce some of the things I’ve been observing this season.
I ended with a 29-14 record, less than optimal but also sort of easy to understand why it wasn’t better. I think again I played a team that I was 1) uncomfortable with / learning on the fly and 2) am guessing was a phase, but I was very scared of facing mega Tyranitar at nationals and wanted to figure out exactly how it worked so I could find its weaknesses. I would say 5-6 of my losses were due to me misplaying earlier in the tournament, not knowing the switch sequencing and DD setup timing needed versus certain threats. Almost the entire rest of my losses were where I needed a single flinch out of 2-4 rock slides and didn’t get one, or I got one and then didn’t make the plays I needed to.
Almost any variant of rain was a really awful matchup to try to deal with. Talonflame isn’t consistent enough to help with Ludicolo as it needed its Ludicolo-weak teammates to get it in position to lock a win condition, and Kingdra still was hard to deal with, even with Amoonguss on my team.
Mega Tyranitar was severely underwhelming overall. If I would have hit a ~30% flinch rate maybe I’d be singing a different song, but I was well under 20% for the tournament (my accuracy was right around 90% though). It sounds a little ridiculous, but getting some of those losing situations to swing into a win because of a single flinch is huge, and I didn’t catch many breaks in this tournament. Two of the three big breaks I caught were against people I recognized (Phenac, Christshawn) and Phenac still managed to pull off the win. I could be playing it wrong, but after seeing Scarf Tyranitar tear apart things with Rock Slide the last few years, I kind of got used to “well, if there’s no other out, create one” situations and sort of expect the odds to eventually balance out. I wasn’t relying on this as my usual win condition, but I tend to focus on the losses a lot more than the wins in these. I also couldn’t bring it every game…which is kind of stupid, as I don’t think there’s enough power balance with the rest of the team to win games without Tyranitar coming most of the time.
Life Orb Talonflame is stupid. Taunt IMO is the best move in the game right now, though, so I think it counteracted the awful part of Life Orb. I still think a very bulky WoW / Taunt Talonflame is the way to go if you’re going to run it, but I didn’t really have the nerve to run something like that through Greninja-land.
I ran TURBOSLASH which was an interesting experience. I think it did alright at what it did but do not suggest using it without making really bidoof sure it fits what you need it to do (beat Rotom, Gardevoir, and not be a good switch-in despite its typing because of the lack of bulk). It’s much more offensive than most Aegislash, and I had a bit of a hard time adjusting to that. I think this was another situation in which I might have wanted Weakness Policy, I lost at least one game where WP would have given me an instant wincon.
Rocky Helmet Amoonguss is a cool guy. I wanted to run a more specially bulky spread, but was lazy and just used the Bold one that’s been rotting in my box since November.
CB Azu was an enigma. I had some games that it absolutely locked down, and some games where I brought it and was kicking myself hard. I think with enough practice and on the right type of approach with a team, it could be devastating (it did make 2nd in Florida and was actually super frightening on that team). I think it’s more consistent than the Belly Drum set, but slightly less consistent than the HH Lum set. Superpower was used quite a bit more than I expected since I kept running into people who thought Ferrothorn vs Azumarill was a win condition.
Choice Scarf Salamence has gotten progressively worse recently, probably to the point of where I would not touch it again. It’s alright, but ugh, it just doesn’t get the job done. It’s got a niche that nothing else (except maybe Staraptor) can fill, but that niche’s use is fading.
The annoying things for the team were Amoonguss, opposing Talonflame, Rotom-H, Hammer Arm Kanga (sigh…), Blastoise, Ludicolo, and hard Rain. Sometimes Manectric turned into an issue but I could usually play around it a bit.
And for the other major thing I wanted to get out of this tournament: I thought that opposing Azumarill, Ferrothorn, and Gardevoir would be extremely big issues, but I guess I keep finding the same trend over and over regardless of how teams look to them. I’ve used Azumarill rather extensively in testing and it’s severely underwhelming in play compared to what its theory suggests. I still think if someone can build a team that allows it to flourish it could go extremely deep at a tournament (JoeJ M’s was a really good example), but it’s very tricky to use. , but especially to the most random moves, and I think Superpower Azumarill was another one of those. I still think Ferrothorn is the worst Pokemon that gets extensive use this year and regardless of how weak my teams are to it, I never have had issues with it. It dies to everything despite what its bulk and typing suggest. It has no offensive presence and its defensive -> offensive presence is more pitiful than Gastrodon’s was last year as it pretty much baits Kangaskhan attacks on a switch and then sits there without being able to OHKO anything important. Gardevoir is right up there with Ferrothorn on the “bad Pokemon with extensive use” platform, but it has enough offense to actually pressure things off of the field which made it at least a pseudo-issue. It forced Salamence out sometimes, but usually I could confidently and safely switch around it. The fact that it still didn’t beat things not named Kanga and Mawile is concerning and probably reinforced my thoughts on it: I think there’s a way or two to run it successfully, but the common Specs / Life Orb is the wrong idea. All three of these Pokemon are things I was strongly considering using if only to deal with Amoonguss + Pokemon, and all of them were very lackluster vs it.
tl;dr people often bend over backwards to heavily resist Dragon-type moves when it’s usually more economical to keep the answers closer to home.
I definitely will not be using this (or much of anything on it) at nationals, but I’m glad I played it as I now know where the holes lie with mega Tyranitar.
While I will not apologize for that game, melevin9… I will agree that that was an extremely grimery game, that I didn’t deserve to win.