I have been constantly losing on the ladder after getting to the 1700s. Sometimes I lose because I double switched and my opponent stayed in with their mon. I keep losing to random unmeta shit from Rilla, to Gyarados, to Sub-NP Hydrei, and even Piloswine. How do I recover from losing to a team with a fucking Piloswine? Should I do room tours instead of torturing myself on ladder?
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
Resource Simple Questions, Simple Answers Thread
- Thread starter Jordy
- Start date
From my own experience, the simple fact of the matter is: if you are not enjoying your session on the ladder, and laddering outright is growing to be frustrating due to factors that confound your experience, experimenting with a healthier, more conducive way to practice that you both enjoy more and can use to help improve your teams and gameplay is always a good option. Roomtours are a very solid and relatively consistent way to practice against people who are more generally vigilant of OU and its landscape at large, but simply doing friendlies with those you know can also be a really good option too, and can be a really cool way to enhance your ability to analyze trends in common opponents' playstyles.
That isn't to say ladder doesn't have its advantages; ladder is great for quick and snappy games, for instance. If you still value those, then simply laddering in bursts and stopping yourself when you start to tilt is also a really good approach. In the grand scheme of things, if your experiences begin frustrate you to a point where your enjoyment in playing is diminished, it's just not worth it, and it never hurts to take a break. Always put yourself first!
edit: IPF's take is really good too. It really boils down to you at the end of the day; don't be afraid to experiment with your options and find what helps you the best!
Gonna disagree a bit with ausma's post above, the ladder is THE best way to improve and from what I've seen the quality of room tours is pretty shambolic. Everyone is prone to tilting, and everyone has their own ways of recovering from tilt. Personally, I find laddering to be frustrating when I'm hellbent on reaching a certain milestone, and I find laddering to be the most rewarding when I'm trying out new teams and thinking about my plays rather than mindlessly clicking. Realistically, if you are losing to mons like Piloswine, then what that says to me is there's deficiencies in your ability to gameplan (this is not a diss), and that's a fundamental part of the game that you can easily improve! After all that, if you're not enjoying your ladder session, then it's usually a good sign to take a break and try again with a fresh mindset. Nothing will make you improve more than practice.
TLDR ladder is goated, my advice would be to change your approach to games and think>click, don't keep playing if you're excessively tilted
I recently got kinda bored with OU. Don't get me wrong - OU is great, but IMO the meta is stale and very uninteresting.
I now play Balanced Hackmons and I am having so much fun. I'm learning so much about BH and it's new, it's exciting, and it's really fun. Did I say that already? Anyway, if you ever have a hard time on ladder, shake it off and play your off-format.
, 
, and 
on it? Thanks in advance!
the best rocks setter by far is heatran, followed by lando, ferro, and clef
spikes usually come from ferro but have some use with skarm on fatter teams
garchomp isn't that great of a rocker because tank (non sd) sets tend to be passive while rocks + sd misses out on vital coverage that makes it an offensive threat. rocks tar is similarly weak and passive, assuming a standard spdef set, while rocks exca loses to pretty much every defogger in the tier
spikes usually come from ferro but have some use with skarm on fatter teams
garchomp isn't that great of a rocker because tank (non sd) sets tend to be passive while rocks + sd misses out on vital coverage that makes it an offensive threat. rocks tar is similarly weak and passive, assuming a standard spdef set, while rocks exca loses to pretty much every defogger in the tier
Hello! I am new, to both Smogon and competitive Pokémon. I am building my first competitive team for Single Battles in SwSh. I wanted to ask, how important would you say three-type cores are?
One spot on my team is for a strong Ghost-type Special Attacker, either Gengar or Chandelure. Gengar is generally better to my understanding, having great Sp. Atk and excellent Spd, as well as access to Nasty Plot. However, if I opted for Chandelure, it would be the Fire-type needed for a Fire/Water/Grass core.
Is it worth taking Chandelure to have a Fire/Water/Grass core for my team? Or should I opt for the faster threat and go with Gengar?
One spot on my team is for a strong Ghost-type Special Attacker, either Gengar or Chandelure. Gengar is generally better to my understanding, having great Sp. Atk and excellent Spd, as well as access to Nasty Plot. However, if I opted for Chandelure, it would be the Fire-type needed for a Fire/Water/Grass core.
Is it worth taking Chandelure to have a Fire/Water/Grass core for my team? Or should I opt for the faster threat and go with Gengar?
Hey again Nahff, to be fair you don't really need to build your team around a "type core". Cores that work well are rather those build to cover efficiently most metagame threats (for defensive cores) or to pressure each other checks (for offensive ones). Fire Grass Water is a great trio overall in the game, but these kinds of cores are rare in SS OU simply because of the Pokemon used in the metagame. Things you rather have in a SS OU team are for instance a Water resistance, an Electric immunity, a Shadow Ball answer, a Steel type... Most importantly, you want to have something to deal with all the top metagame threats. If you are not familiar with SS OU, I would recommand checking this thread: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...ranking-thread-see-page-78-post-1948.3674058/ to see who these top threats are.
As for your second question, both Gengar and Chandelure are bad in the tier and if you want to run a strong Ghost breaker you would rather use Dragapult or Blacephalon. Dragapult brings a lot of Speed to a team and can use U-turn to keep the momentum when your opponent has a reliable answer. Blacephalon can either run a Choice Specs set and become extremely hard to switch into, or run a Choice Scarf set to be a deadly revenge killer and an extremely threatening cleaner. For more info you can read their detailled analyses here: https://www.smogon.com/dex/ss/formats/ou/
(Feel free to tell me here or in PM if I'm using terms you don't understand)
Really? Maybe my information is outdated. I thought Gengar was OU and Chandelure was UU. Okay, I will go back to the drawing board.
Last edited:
Gengar is in UUBL and generally not used in OU outside of stall-smashing which really isn’t huge this gen. Chandelure is basically completely outclassed by blacephalon.
Having a three-type core is helpful but by no means should you go out of your way to choose suboptimal 'mons to fill the holes. Gengar is UUBL and Chandelure is RU, meaning they're not the best to use. If you want a Ghost, there's always the two OU Ghosts,
Dragapult and 
Blacephalon.Honestly, for me, typing doesn't matter as much as roles.
Dragapult is extremely fast but isn't as poweful as other Pokemon, and Blacephalon is very powerful but gets outsped by a variety of threats. Power, speed, bulk, and utility -- the roles of the pokemon in your team -- are what you should be thinking about, mostly.Cores still help, of course. But there's a difference between typing synergy and role synergy, and great players will use both to their advantage.
Teambuilding Guide
Good Cores
Cores and Counters
Role Compendium
Last edited:
so ive been building a lot lately but came across a problem, is there any particular mon that beats offense? in SM M-Loppunny is the best anti offense mon maybe followed by ash gren. I was trying to build with togekiss which is notorious for haxing through fat but struggle with current day offense (koko, weavile, lele, zera, kart, melm) and is there a particular mon or combination of mons that can beat offense like SM M-Lopp?
What are some good teammates for HDB 4 Attacks Volcanion and Protect + Toxic Melmetal?
An Electric immune and Ground immune like Landorus-T would be a great pick. Fast pivots like Dragapult and Tapu Koko can work, too.
what does slowbro drop to run body press?
Here's the set:
Slowbro @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Teleport
- Future Sight
- Body Press
- Slack Off
It drops Scald. This Slowbro set is meant to lure in those Darks like Weavile and Bisharp, tank a hit with Colbur Berry, and eleminate them with Body Press. It can then heal off some damage with Regenerator.
Slowbro @ Colbur Berry
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Teleport
- Future Sight
- Body Press
- Slack Off
It drops Scald. This Slowbro set is meant to lure in those Darks like Weavile and Bisharp, tank a hit with Colbur Berry, and eleminate them with Body Press. It can then heal off some damage with Regenerator.
Offense is usually decimated by Pult, while Lele deals with the bulkier teams.
Ferrothorn is the only common Leech Seed user in OU. It's not super hard to fit in a team, even though you generally add it when you like having Spikes and you need a bulky Steel type (and not really because you need a Leech Seed user, cause that's not really something you need in a team).
Ferrothorn
Don't get hung up on them. Types don't mean as much in the grand scheme of things as the game tries to tell you they do, as often Pokémon will have plenty of ways to bypass poor type matchups*. They matter a lot, obviously, as taking reduced/no damage from something is obviously going to change how they need to be addressed and will be more impactful if you can't at least hit neutral with a STAB type, but you should focus more on Pokemon that cover for each other’s specific Pokemon weaknesses on defence (moreso than for their type weaknesses, though obviously there is a certain amount of overlap), and on offence you're much better off trying to stack Pokemon that share (or which can reliably bait and neuter/cripple) specific checks so that you can overwhelm them. Ultimately, a core of fire/water/grass or dragon/fairy/steel or whatever that occurs by happenstance will usually achieve more than one which is rigidly forced into a structure, and you often will achieve this on balance/bulky offence/defence teams anyway.
* Type coverage to cover resistances with proactive play is obviously the first thing that comes to mind here, but a good example of a Pokemon that can bypass resistances quite easily is Heatran, who (unintuitively) doesn't actually care a huge amount about most defensive Water-types because of how it can overwhelm most of them with Magma Storm's secondary effects alongside Toxic/Earth Power/Taunt.
Last edited:
Could you have both Melm and Ferro/Kart on the same team? What about Clef and the Tapus on the same team?
Yes, you should not worry about overlapping types. Focus more on covering threats than basic type synergy. The game is against actual Pokémon with many characteristics to them, not simple types. We see lots of teams with multiple Steel or Fairy types (among others).