Sinnoh Classic (Battle Spot Competition)

[Soki]

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Region: International
Registration Period: July 14th 2016 - July 21st 2016
Battle Period: July 22nd 2016 - July 24th 2016
Battle Type: Double Battle (four Pokémon)
Battle Limits: 10 battles per day
Pokémon Restrictions: National Pokédex #001-#493
Item Restrictions: No Mega Stones
Banned Pokémon: Dragonite, Mewtwo, Mew, Tyranitar, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Celebi, Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys, Dialga, Palkia, Heatran, Giratina, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, and Arceus.
Entry Gift:
Cynthia's Garchomp
Lv. 66
Ability: Sand Veil
Moves: Dragon Rush, Brick Break, Giga Impact, Earthquake

Double battles using only Pokémon from the Kanto, Johto, Hoenn and Sinnoh dex (excluding most Legendaries and Mythicals, together with Dragonite and Tyranitar). Mega Stones are not allowed.

So who's gonna join this one? What team are you going to use and which Pokémon do you expect to meet the most?

I think I'm going to try and only use Sinnoh dex Pokémon for this one, kinda sad it isn't restriced to only Sinnoh dex in the first place. Weavile and Infernape are a given, as they are my faves but not sure about the rest yet. Maybe I'll just use the team I had during my very first playthrough of Diamond, just for nostalgia sake

 

[Youngster_Jack]

I think HA Infernape, Calm Roserade and wall Gastro will be a good core to build around. Will probably look outside just the Sinnoh dex, though.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

Oh boy didn't see this coming! *sarcasm*

Personally I don't like how it's done, having Kanto Pokemon in the Johto Classic was necessary as they're directly connected in-game and most Pokemon from Kanto also inhabit Johto and in some cases vice versa. With this it should've been Pokemon in the regional Sinnoh dex only, which we can all find easily online.

But nonetheless I will be entering this, sounds fun either way I just would've structured it a bit better.

Like Soki, Weavile is also a favorite of mine and since my games were being shipped as I moved during the Flash Clash, I wasn't able to put mine to use, now that changes.

Empoleon is my favorite Pokemon so he's a given, anything else is up for grabs, this is doubles too which makes things interesting, I would've recycled a lot of my Johto Classic team otherwise.

 

[Soki]

And the competition has begun! How's everyone doing so far?

My team: Weavile, Togekiss, Infernape and Gastrodon (and Rotom Wash and Garchomp as fillers). I was doing great at first, beating the first three teams with just Weavile and Togekiss. And then the rain teams attacked D: Never expected to see so many of them (at least 50% of the opponents) so didn't have any proper defense against it and lost to all of them

Only managed to win 7 of the 15 (almost all the non-rain teams). Again sad that Battle Spot doesn't allow you to change teams inbetween, so I could get some better defense against all that rain...

Fun fact: my last battle ended up being Gastrodon (East sea) vs Gastrodon (West sea). I'm happy to say mine won, due to being faster and having access to recover East sea Gastrodon confirmed best Gastrodon

 

[Slife]

And the competition has begun! How's everyone doing so far?

My team: Weavile, Togekiss, Infernape and Gastrodon (and Rotom Wash and Garchomp as fillers). I was doing great at first, beating the first three teams with just Weavile and Togekiss. And then the rain teams attacked D: Never expected to see so many of them (at least 50% of the opponents) so didn't have any proper defense against it and lost to all of them

Only managed to win 7 of the 15 (almost all the non-rain teams). Again sad that Battle Spot doesn't allow you to change teams inbetween, so I could get some better defense against all that rain...

Fun fact: my last battle ended up being Gastrodon (East sea) vs Gastrodon (West sea). I'm happy to say mine won, due to being faster and having access to recover East sea Gastrodon confirmed best Gastrodon

I like that you have an all-Sinnoh team

For rain teams, Gastrodon should be a pretty good check (assuming it has storm drain) once you take care of Ludicolo. Same with Rotom-W. Togekiss can deal relatively well with Kingdra, and although it might not seem like a good idea to bring Infernape to a rain matchup, it can provide fast fake out support and bait water attacks for Gastrodon to soak up, as well as hit Scizor, which often accompanies rain teams.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

Day 1 I was 10-5, should've been at least 12-3 but my internet crapped during two battles I was 100% gonna win.

Day 2 so far I'm 2-0 but oh boy was the last battle close, had to make this video public, it was literally down to the final move and whether his quick claw would activate or not or whether my move would hit or not.

Video is here: 6QSW-WWWW-WW4G-KQ52

Shawn, if you're on here, that was a fantastic battle, really thought he had me right out of the box after countering my Smeargle.

Oh and my team is:

Salamence
Metagross
Latios
Smeargle
Empoleon
Rotom (Wash)

So far it's doing well for me. I knew I was gonna use Smeargle and whatever pseudo legendaries were legal (since they barred Tyranitar and Dragonite), however I didn't want to repeat Dragons 4x weak to Ice which is why Garchomp was excluded, admittedly I rarely use Salamence so in hindsight I'd love to trade him in but no complaints so far.

 

[Soki]

I like that you have an all-Sinnoh team

For rain teams, Gastrodon should be a pretty good check (assuming it has storm drain) once you take care of Ludicolo. Same with Rotom-W. Togekiss can deal relatively well with Kingdra, and although it might not seem like a good idea to bring Infernape to a rain matchup, it can provide fast fake out support and bait water attacks for Gastrodon to soak up, as well as hit Scizor, which often accompanies rain teams.

The Ludicolo are fine to get rid off, it's the damn Politoed I can't kill, especially cause they keep switching the thing out Same with the rest of the team, rain teams do a hell of a lot of switching, making it a real pain in the ass. Stupidly don't have any electric or grass type attacks, guess I simply forgot to think about it... And sadly my Infernape doesn't have fake out cause I'm a lazy breeder

 

[EmpoleonProd]

I went 26-19 at the end and got 4,445th... Ouch. Instead of top 5% like I got in the Johto Classic, I got top 25% in this one. I blame my WiFi for losing me three battles though, in Johto I went 27-18, so just one battle better, but got 1,187th instead and was in the top 5%, so obviously there's not too big of a correlation between your battle score and your rating, my end rating in Johto was 1642, my end rating in Sinnoh was 1544, is it because I had a bad day during day 3 in Sinnoh? I heard you lose more of your ranking for losses the higher you are, in Johto my day 2 was terrible but day 3 was a comeback, in Sinnoh my day 3 was the worst of the three.

 

[Soki]

@EmpoleonProd Well if it makes you feel any better, I'm in place 10,309 Wasn't able to do day 2 and 3 though due to becoming ill that weekend. But having pretty much no counter against those rain teams, I doubt I would've made it far anyway.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

@Soki The disparity in my scores is what amazes me the most, I did just one win better in the Johto Classic but got a rating difference of nearly 100. Do you know what's going on there?

 

[Soki]

@Soki The disparity in my scores is what amazes me the most, I did just one win better in the Johto Classic but got a rating difference of nearly 100. Do you know what's going on there?

Sadly I've never been able to find what exactly influences your rating but I do know for sure that it isn't just influenced by winning/losing alone. Because even though I've often won exactly half of the battles, I've never gotten back to the exact score of 1500 which you start with. If I start at 1500, lose a battle and then win one, I should be back at 1500, but it's always 1498 or 1502 or something like that.

So I think there's other things that influence your rating. For example, I'm pretty sure the amount of Pokémon you or your opponent have left at the end of the battle is one. Like winning a battle with only one Pokémon left will give you less points than with a fully alive team. And if you lose, you maybe lose less points if you were able to take out at least one of the opponent's Pokémon.

Other things that could maybe influence the rating:

• How many of your Pokémon are paralyzed/asleep/etc. after winning.
  
• How much times was left at the end of the battle.
• How high you and your opponent's ranking was at the start of the battle.

It could also be that losing/winning a battle because you or the opponent quit/lost their internet connection results in getting less/more points than losing/winning it 'fairly'.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

@Soki I really wish they'd release an overview of how exactly ratings are determined and calculated... Oh well.

 

[UB-01 Kenobi]

@Soki I really wish they'd release an overview of how exactly ratings are determined and calculated... Oh well.

Elo rating system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Almost certainly this. It's what most video game ladders use, including pokemon showdown. So what matters is the difference in ranking between you and your opponent - beat an opponent whose rank is higher than yours, and you gain more points than if you beat someone whose rank is lower than yours.

 

[EmpoleonProd]

Elo rating system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Almost certainly this. It's what most video game ladders use, including pokemon showdown. So what matters is the difference in ranking between you and your opponent - beat an opponent whose rank is higher than yours, and you gain more points than if you beat someone whose rank is lower than yours.

Good to know. I was discussing this with two friends and one of them brought up the Elo system, I hadn't heard of it before that and then you post this only hours later, I'd put my money on it.

 

[Slife]

I can confirm that Battle Spot rankings are based on the difference between you and your opponent's ratings.

I've been meaning to post this earlier but had some issues with the PGL. Here's the team I used

Spoiler

Finished 30-14 which put me at top 500 worldwide and top 60 in the US. It's definitely not one of my best performances because even though I felt the team I chose was pretty good, I didn't play as well with it as I could have. I brought and lead with Infernape most of the time, because Infernape's main role is to provide Fake Out support for either Zapdos (which was my other most common lead alongside Infernape), Scizor, or Azumarill to set up, dish out some decent damage, and then give me a free switch in to an offensive threat in the back who proceeds to overwhelm my opponent under tailwind. Infernape and Zapdos have some pretty great synergy and I found it hilarious how often people would target Infernape instead of Zapdos even though Zapdos was usually the bigger threat, since I used a more offensive tailwind Zapdos. Zapdos was easily the MVP of my team, nabbing KOs on water types and dragons who weren't expecting such an offensive Zapdos, and just dishing out so much damage in general for either Scizor or Azumarill to clean up on. Scizor was there for Trick Room setters and those annoying bulky Cresselia, but it helps out in most situations and Lum Berry is a great item for it because of so many things wanting to burn it, and Dark Void of course. Pachirisu-Azumarill was a fun combo to try out. I originally had Togekiss in Pachi's spot, but I needed something to deal with Zapdos better and after some thought I decided to go with the classic Se Jun Park World Champion Pachirisu set. Usually Pachi was a niche pick, but for teams that didn't have EQ spam or a way to deal with Azumarill, I would just outright lead Pachi-Azu and proceed to Follow Me + Belly Drum for an easy sweep. Latios is just a cool special nuke that completes the Steel-Fairy-Dragon core. The team does well against the biggest threats, namely Zapdos, Scizor, Cresselia, Smeargle, Garchomp, Weavile, Azumarill, and rain teams, though I did find myself struggling against the Garchomp-Zapdos duo more than I had anticipated. Overall it was definitely a fun throwback competition and it was awesome to be able to use Infernape, one of my favorite Pokemon, as a key player in the competition.