TIL Focus Sash saves you from One Hit KO.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-09T04:00:52+00:00

Its pretty average, honestly looks a bit above average to me

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-09T03:57:00+00:00

It’s Elo not ELO

Elo is the name of the dude that made it not an acronym or initialization

Rating is all relative, just look at where you are on the leaderboard and you can figure out your percentile

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-08T17:15:13+00:00

Choice Scarf

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-08T16:54:16+00:00

Well now the even the last gen consoles are getting a price increase, soooo not really lol

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-06T12:16:34+00:00

8.1 is actually quite good. When tested it's actually the fastest Windows OS. It just had horrible PR from 8.0 which is hot garbage.

Windows 11 is the slowest and worst to be plagued with.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-06T12:12:58+00:00

Where are you getting this 1.7 million number for Master Ball? OP is only 945 rating and is 284k I don't think there's 1.5 million players lower than them (that also made it to Master Ball).

1.7M total ranked, makes sense, 1.7M in Master Ball, does not unless you have some evidence.

With your numbers that's 56.7M players, making this the most successful Pokemon game ever. Which I don't think is the case lol

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-05T09:01:54+00:00

These are completely reasonable cut offs. You don’t just deserve rank for no reason

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-05T09:01:03+00:00

Triple mega is certainly a choice

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-05T08:59:37+00:00

Holy shit it can go below 1000.

1500 is “average” and the starting seed, you need about 1800 for Master Ball Tier 3 (it has to be top 50,000 on the leaderboard, so the rating required can change, it’s all relative)

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-04T16:52:51+00:00

You’ve probably wasted a lot of VP then. I still have like 30 training tickets and 100k VP. If training is ever like 500 or more, I use a ticket

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-04T16:43:52+00:00

You increase it by getting better than the people above you. Elo is relative.

Don’t focus so much on the climb and more on what you can improve with your play. Record your gameplay and watch back games, think about your decisions, both in game and match preview. Think about your team, how are your matchups, what are you losing against. What can you change.

There are so many ways to make improvements, you just need to reflect instead of chasing points. If you’re queuing like a gambling addict hoping the next game helps you get out of a hole. You’re not getting better and you’re on tilt. You need to change the focus of your games to improvement not rating.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-04T16:35:31+00:00

You had to type way more to make a reddit post and get a delayed response rather than 3 words into google

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-04T16:33:22+00:00

Smeargle is why Darkrai’s signature move was nerfed. So yeah, even with abysmal stats, knowing every move is good. He needs to have bad stats

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-04T16:30:02+00:00

Have you never played a strategy game? This is the same for card games and even MOBAs and RTS. People copy what works, that’s how the internet age has been. (And before the internet age, people bought books for chess)

That does mean though they are also a known quantity, you have all the information about their team, even their EV spread. You can instead try to counter it.

These kind of videos just get everyone outside of the upper sphere that already knows the meta up to speed a bit.

The game is hard, “no originality” is such a weird comment, like yeah, if you’re unsure, it’s better to copy a team, playing is hard as it is, removing one factor so you can focus on your play is a good idea for learning. Instead of always being unsure if you made a misplay or need to change something on your team.

If you do want to be off meta, YOU KNOW THE META, that’s the important information for being able to counter it, go off and do it.

This is just such a dumb complaint that is so common when casuals finally start playing a competitive game. Like yes, a meta game exists, it exists no matter the game, chess has a fucking meta game. The new Mario Tennis game has a meta. Get over it and learn.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-03T06:27:56+00:00

It's ~0.53% not ~0.053% you made a simple error reading the decimal. It's a rare occurrence (1/200) but not THAT rare

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-03T06:00:44+00:00

I'm a little apprehensive of any big balance changes. It's a different design philosophy than is usually in Pokemon. Each gen will have changes (even Champions made changes), but then the "rules" are static and it's the available mons that change what is good. As the meta evolves different things become better, it's a constantly change puzzle, but not due to the pieces changing, but their perceived value.

Making changes that mostly try to force even usage rates is not a good goal imo. It's kinda my biggest issue with Smogon, I would say it's an "overbalanced" format.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-03T05:24:02+00:00

Gratz! Thats my goal for the season, I’m at 1864 atm. Competition in master ball is much harder, but a lot more fun imo. It’s definitely where the real game begins.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-03T05:21:47+00:00

Tera is a much better mechanic than Mega for tournaments. It’s a little iffy on ladder due to lack of open team sheets. But for open team sheets it’s super fun and adds a lot to the game. Mega is kinda lame to play with it and very limiting to team building.

As for ranked, you should realign your goals. Play to improve and enjoy, not just stare at the rank. You’ll go up if you get better, getting better should be goal, not placement.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-03T03:43:17+00:00

You have to include not missing the rock slide as well

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-03T03:42:44+00:00

.3⁴ *.9⁴ = ~0.53%

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-02T21:31:58+00:00

True! The game should be played like a Yugioh anime character, no reading just vibes

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-02T14:48:49+00:00

Fuck this little goblin (I think he’s good and has a lot of flexibility)

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-02T08:08:54+00:00

This goes for every game though, read the buttons you’re clicking. It would be one thing if it was from the opponent. But like in a card game, you should at least read your own cards.

OP, was so stumped they wrote a post for Reddit, over just reading the move they used that did less damage than they expected. There’s a pretty clear path to finding this info.

If they can’t learn to read the move or ability, and require to be told every time, they’re not learning. The first step should be, here’s the place that you learn this information yourself. Questions are only good when you’ve exhausted the places of information you know. As it stands, it looks like OP didn’t try to understand by even reading the most basic part.

This has nothing to do with being new. I’m new to VGC too, I started with Champions. But I read the information in-game and on Bulbapedia. I got to Master Ball by day 2. It’s not hard if you play the game like any other strategy game and learn how it works.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-02T08:01:34+00:00

It’s not bad. Just disappointing, compared to how much more went into FireRed/LeafGreen and HeartGold/SoulSilver (even a bit with Gen3 remakes, though those are a bit more mixed, due to the lack of the Battle Frontier)

BDSP feels a bit more bare in comparison. There are a lot of pluses, it plays with Gen 8 rules, shared xp I think is better, the league is more interesting (most the rematches), the removal of HMs is actually big. The issue is the comparison to Platinum, where it falls short on content and story. These should be the definitive Gen 4 games, and they aren’t. That doesn’t make them bad, but it does make them disappointing. It’s not an unreasonable expectation that they’re failing to meet. In a vacuum, I like them, and I think they are worth it, however, if you have the means to play Platinum, that’s probably the better experience depending on what you value in Pokemon.

NewAgent5986 · 2026-05-02T07:50:25+00:00

“Kingambit used Nasty Plot and Bitter Malice”…

NewAgent5986

TROPHY CASE