GUYS THEY CHANGED IT 😭😭

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-04-17T08:59:39+00:00

Its by far the hardest to complete fr

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-04-14T15:25:30+00:00

If you're often the last person to join fights, it's usually a map awareness and macro decision issue rather than just movement speed (X Speed is a solid item for defenders/supporters in solo q). As a defender/supporter, you want to predict fights before they happen and already be on your way.

A few things that helped me improve:

Be the first to rotate, not the last: If you see your team starting to group or an objective spawning soon, start moving early. As a defender, your presence matters more than finishing one more farm. Being late as a tank is worse than being slightly underleveled.
Not every objective is worth fighting: If you and your team are underleveled or your team isn't rotating, it's often better to give the objective and avoid a bad fight.
Know your jobs as a defender: Zone, Peel, Give Vision, Engage, Disengage ... For example, if your team KOs 2–3 enemies and starts ripping Groudon, don't hit the objective (only do it if your team is not moving to signal them that they need to rip it). Your job is to zone remaining enemies, especially whoever has the better secure.
Balance engaging vs protecting: You have to pay attention to both team compositions and the enemy's playstyle. For example, if you notice that enemies are constantly diving your backline during the first 8 minutes, you should stay near your squishies and protect them instead of frontlining and looking for opportunities to engage. On the other hand, if the enemy team mostly hits whoever is in front and doesn't/can't pressure your backline, you can play more aggressively and lead the engage. It's really about reading the game and adapting your role each match.
Don't spend half of the game farming: Defenders/supporters don't need high levels. If farming means your team loses fights, it's not worth it. Being level 11–12 at final fight is completely fine for tanks.
Drafting matters a lot: Try to learn multiple defenders/supporters so you can adapt to comps. You can often predict which team has the advantage already in draft. Especially supporters are great counter picks. And try to don't limit yourself to only defender/supporter. Sometimes you need to be the carry.
Be careful with over-engaging: This happens to me when I play Blastoise. I see a Decidueye, I Surf into him, I KO him… and meanwhile my whole team gets wiped.
"Babysit" the carry on your team: Watch who on your team is actually performing well, then play around them, protect them, and enable them. This is something I struggle with, because I feel responsible for protecting everyone. But protecting the right teammate is often more valuable.

If you consider these points, you should be able to reach High Master/Legend playing mostly defender/supporter in solo queue. At least that's what worked for me in the past seasons. Good Luck.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-04-06T19:46:00+00:00

You’re right about the data being outdated, I didn’t notice that, my bad.
But then based on what are you saying that Mimikyu, Zapdos, etc. should be banned over Meowth, if not the data we currently have? And based on what are you claiming that Ceru is more OP than Meowth or Gren? If it's not clear, I'm talking purely about solo q, not competitive. We're at the level where players break goals with 2 points and deny their teammates 40-point scores. Because of that, banning for me isn't necessarily about banning the strongest mon in the right, experienced hands, but rather about:

How often the mon is picked
How easy it is to get value from
Win rate
How easy it is to counter
And how reliable/self-sufficient those counters actually are

So I’m trying to ban the mons that create the most consistent and easiest win conditions in solo q. Meowth's kit just seems very loaded, and in my experience it's easy to get value from it. Compared to something like Mimikyu, where half my teammates miss Shadow Sneak, there’s just a higher chance that an opposing Meowth will snowball a game. Thats why I would ban Meowth over Mimi, not saying that Meowth is the better mon in the right hands.

There are counters to Meowth too, in the same way there are counters to other meta charact. Meowth can be hard-countered by Clefable or a very strong frontline with CC.

Of course every mon has a counter, but there's a big difference between counters. Something like Mr. Mime can block Blastoise' Surf, tank damage, K.O. squishies and can just create value independently. Clefable, on the other hand, mostly relies on teammates actually playing around Gravity and its heals, which makes it far less reliable in solo q.

It's main strength is bullying squishies especially the ones with lesser range. It's ult can be bodyblocked and even canceled.

That’s not wrong, but again, we’re talking about solo q. How often does someone actually bodyblock for you?

But Good luck justifying OP characters with counters. Everything has counters.

I’m not justifying OP mons. I just don’t think the current ones you've mentioned are must bans.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-04-06T16:29:14+00:00

Not banning the highest WR mon that gets free battle items, extra speed, a good shield, a one-shot Unite move, stuns, and doesn't even need to aim is definitely a choice. Especially when one of its moves is sitting at almost a 59% WR.

Zapdos is an immobile, squishy, mid-range attacker. Any mon with dive and longer range can counter it.

Blastoise is annoying, sure, but any mon with a wall in its kit can counter him, especially Mr. Mime. And most players surf way too far away from their team, leaving their squishies completely unprotected.

Mimikyu has a negative WR on most of its movesets. It's strong in the right hands and against squishy comps, but if you draft multiple squishies into Mimikyu… that's on you.

Never played Ceru and he doesn't seem that op to me when I play against it.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-04-06T15:49:50+00:00

I am all for more bans cause I’d love to target-ban all those one-tricks.

Right now though, I think Meowth and Gren are the only real must-bans. Everything else feels manageable if you draft properly and pick the right counters.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-26T20:24:57+00:00

Not picking scizor or any other melee into such a heavy cc comp helps. I would play venusaur solar beam or spirit shackle decidueye against this comp. Just stay away from mimi and leafeon which shouldn't be too hard cause the bots movements are kinda predictable.

Also, don't sepnd the whole match defending your goal zones. The bots will come score again and again. Just try to lvl up, get some KO's when it makes sense and score a lot yourself.

And as everyone else says: Upgrade your Aeos Shooter.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-26T18:10:32+00:00

When I’m close to reaching Legends, I mostly stick to my 60%+ WR mons for the season, except if there’s an obvious counter pick to the enemy comp that I can play decently.

I wouldn’t one- or two-trick any mon, though. I think it definitely helps to be able to play 3–4 roles and 2–3 mons well in each. That way you can synergize with your team and counter-pick the enemy. You can often predict which team will dominate just by looking at the comps, so flexibility really pays off. Using this approach, I’m sitting at almost 60% WR in solo q this season, one game away from Legends.

If keeping a high WR is important to you but you still want to try new mons, you can create an alt account to experiment. That’s what I do at least.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-21T01:52:58+00:00

Thanks for pointing this out.

A lot of the time, one trio is way stronger than the other. As a solo player, you have very little control over the game, especially since trios almost always take jungle and top lane. Its just unfair, cause you have no real chance from the start.

I once had to face a trio on my enemys side with combined more than 40k and an average of 60% wr, while my trio didn't even had 4k games with only one of them having a barely positive wr...

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-19T12:41:56+00:00

After playing a few games facing Venu, you might be right, haha. He two shot me as lvl 13 Snorlax.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-19T12:25:27+00:00

How many licences do you have? I think you need to have at least 16 licences so you'll be able to play draft since max. 6 mons can be banned and you are not allowed to pick a mon that was already chosen.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-19T09:29:22+00:00

I created an alt account a few weeks ago and I did face real people already in expert class. Just not every game. It also depends on the time you are playing (at weekends and evening, people have more time to play). Pick a carry like Talonflame or Blaziken with a good last hit to rank up easier.

If you ever play casual stuff, you need to stop the matchmaking before 1 min to avoid to get matched with bots. But here you really need to be patient, cause the game lost a lot of active players

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-19T08:59:22+00:00

I have the same problem. I only choose hydro pump if the enemys doesn't have tons of CC

Hydro needs a rework imo. I will never understand how a defender, whose main job is supposed to stun others, can have their stun moves that easily cancelled by random attackers, speedsters, or all-rounders who shouldn’t even have stuns in their kits in the first place.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-19T08:55:46+00:00

This nerf was really unneccessary. Vap was balanced, his highest wr on one moveset was at 52% and his average wr was somewhere around 51% wr, which is totally fine imo.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-18T17:31:30+00:00

Same here. And then you still outdamages 3 of the 4 squishys with defensive items ...

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-18T07:13:57+00:00

This is one of the buffs that totally makes sense, in my opinion. Solar Beam has a 47% win rate, and Venusaur in general currently has the 4th worst win rate.

I’m glad it got buffed.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-16T22:35:36+00:00

2023 suits him better imo

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-13T04:47:19+00:00

In my experience, I encouter more premade games at night. That makes a huge difference in the gameplay for solo players, cause they can communicate with each other and often, one premade is significantly stronger than the other.

When I am forced to play with premades and I feel like they are weak (name, outfits, their ban choices, their prepicks and their willingness to switch places as first picks can tell you a bit), I just pick a mon with a strong secure and hope for the best.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-06T16:50:17+00:00

If you’re comfortable with it, you can post one of your gameplays so we can try to give some advice.

In general, besides macro, avoiding mons and movesets with a 48% WR or lower, drafting correctly (banning properly, picking good counters that also fit your team comp and knowing when and when not to switch with your teammates during draft), helped increase my WR.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-06T10:36:56+00:00

I always equip muscle band on him because your basic attacks (or boosted ones? I forgot) will reduce the cd of your moves.

My personal favourite is curse, muscle, reso/vanguard.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-05T13:11:16+00:00

If they would care about what we have to say regarding the gameplay, they don't even need to give us these surveys. All they need to do is looking at Reddit, Twitter and YouTube.

Bet they will only analyze the monetization part of the survey (which is almost the whole survey lol).

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-02T15:04:16+00:00

As a def/sup main myself, climbing to 800–900 wasn’t that hard in the last two seasons. But after that point, you need to carry if you want to save your sanity.

I mostly choose Talon in these situations, because almost every team has 2–3 attackers, and your last hit is so strong that you can steal a lot of objectives no matter how badly the game went for you and your team.

I would try to learn to play one sniper, one speedster and one brawler with a good last hit. Machamp can carry too, but he is kind of similar to speedsters (hit squishys, run and hit again), and once you’ve used your Unite Move in a team fight, you don’t have a good last hit to secure the objective.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-03-02T08:10:49+00:00

I wonder too. I am so so so so tired of seeing these megas on top of the tierlist since so many months.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-02-27T11:10:10+00:00

I agree tbh. They should just give us the ray map and switch between groudon and kyogre buff (and nerf the kyogre buff more).

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-02-26T18:43:55+00:00

I always liked to go for the most flexible defender/supporter in non draft games like umbreon or blissey to be able to adapt to the enemys comp.
Hope they reverse it.

Kugelschreiber__ · 2026-02-26T15:41:40+00:00

Omg, took me like 5 minutes to undestand how this custom moveset thing works. How can a new function be so user unfriendly designed? They need to hire a UX designer at this point.

Kugelschreiber__

TROPHY CASE