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Competitive introduction thingy

22,586
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11
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  • Age 34
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Is it a shame that I haven't made use of the blog feature even though I have it since...well, long enough? It probably doesn't matter that much, as long as it finds some sort of use, right? So, how do we start this...

I suppose the first post should mostly be some sort of introduction, but considering that most information that might be important to you is already on my profile anyway (and anything that isn't can easily retrieved via that fancy VM function), I might as well skip most of it.

--------------------------

Competitive Play. While I have made my experiences with people who play on a competitive level quite a while ago, that was mostly just me getting annihilated because I didn't know anything about how to play against opponents that aren't just the stupid AI. My first experience was somewhere in December 2010 in some sort of a mini tournament on another forum, where I was able to win one whole battle (against someone else who didn't know anything about Competitive Play). Even one year later I still ran into exactly the same situation, the only differense being that I was aware of the existance of a competitive community (a.k.a. Smogon University, or Smogon for short).

It actually took me until X and Y to actually take a closer look. Back then I was still watching some Let's Plays of those games, but slowly but surely I got really tired of them. In fact I may have watched way too many Pokemon Let's Plays and Nutzlockes in the past, because I've completely lost interest of that kind of content. <_<
At the same time, however, I started watching Pokemon battles uploaded by self proclaimed "competitive battlers". Looking back to it, a lot of them aren't, at least not as much as they might think they are. Then again, the mentality of content creators who upload battles on Youtube for entertainment purposes is a lot different than the actual competitive battler's.

The way it was then, I kinda fell into the same trap, that a lot of other people fall into, when they think about Competitive Play: mistaking breeding as part of competitive battling, when in fact it's just a prerequisite, or even just a foodnote, if you so will. That lead me into spending tons of hours getting some (partially really exotic) Pokemon through breeding, with most of them not getting used at all. Needless to say, at some point I just stopped caring, especially since there's a neat simulator online that doesn't need that kind of preparations.

Another noob problem that I always ran into was team building. If you don't know much about what building a team is all about, then chances are, you take to heart what the games taught you (use your favorites no matter how terrible they are) or you follow the example of your favorite Youtuber (take some random mons from every tier, say you use Smogon rules and pretend it's not OU).
When did I start trying to build around actual strategy? It's actually been not that long. At the beginning of season one of PCL (before some of the clans where removed), I was making a team. However, I just made it the same way I always did it: put in some random mons and be done with it.
When I showed it to the other clan members, the reactions weren't exactly positive. IIrk, it was sri, who pointed out, that my team didn't have any strategy. While he didn't really say anything more than that, it at least made me think and take a closer look into team building to a point where I basically spend the whole first season of PCL diving through any ressource I could find, just to learn more.

But even with slightly better team building skills, I still have a couple problems and they are big ones. For one I have a hugh problem getting myself into battles as my motivation easily drops down to zero (though that's a problem that affects basically anything I do, it's by no means restricted to competitive battling only), then there's also my "loser attitude", if you wanna call it that. Let's just say, getting into battle with an attitude that I'll most likely lose, doesn't really help me winning. {XD}

And lastly, I still need to get into the flow of battle. The answer to that is doing more battles, obviously. Basically, if I found some motivation and self confidence, I'd have quite the potential to become at least somewhat decent at battling. It's one of the reasons why I somewhat look forward to PCL resuming.
 

Nah

15,918
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  • Age 31
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I would just hit the like button but we don't have have that for blog posts so you get this **** post instead.

Hopefully when PCL starts up again I can help you out a bit with competitive battling stuff.....even though you might actually be better than me
 
22,586
Posts
11
Years
  • Age 34
  • Seen yesterday
Nah;bt104236 said:
I would just hit the like button but we don't have have that for blog posts so you get this **** post instead.

Hopefully when PCL starts up again I can help you out a bit with competitive battling stuff.....even though you might actually be better than me
Well, thanks and I'm looking forward to it. However, I'd think twice about whether or not I'm better than you. {XD}
 
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