specialization vs diversification

[gautama]

Hello there. When making a team is it better to have the team be specialized in order to work together to use benefits such as hail, rain, sandstorm, etc. but then risk the chance that only 2 or 3 pokemon may be able to destroy the whole team? For instance, on a sandstorm team wouldn't it just take one water pokemon (to kill ground and rock types) and one fire pokemon (to kill steel) to counter the ENTIRE sandstorm party? That sounds dangerous and risky to me.

I was working on a team where I have an equal amount of high defense pokemon and high offense pokemon and I have STAB moves that can counter ANY type so I can be super effective against any pokemon thrown at me (cept those without weaknesses). Basically my team is made up of a whole bunch of different pokemon with different types with a bunch of different moves. (a lot have defense boosting moves, or status effecting (confuse ray, toxic, etc.) and also sweeping moves)

Long story short, when making a competitive team must one always have some overarching strategy in mind? Or is it ok to just have a team that is so diverse that it could conceivably adapt to any situation but not necessarily all work together or benefit from one special move (rain, sunlight) The point of my team would be that each pokemon would be completely unique and unlike the others on the team so countering one does not mean that you counter the others. What you guys think?

 

[Cheesus Is Lord]

With the number of powerful threats out there, it is almost impossible to have a counter for every single one of them. Having an overarching strategy is very important because of this, since it gives a check to them. Your opponent has to focus their energy into breaking your strategy rather than setting up their own. As you pointed out, specializing in one thing is risky. However, if you become enormously weak to only one or two Pokemon, you can devote one or two members of your team solely to checking those threats, even if they don't work with the rest of the strategy. This is very common. You almost never find Hail teams, for example, with only Ice Pokemon on them.

 

[coolking503]

What you say of having one pokemon destroy your team is not true. There is almost nothing that can take a kingdra's waterfall in the rain, then a kubutops waterfall in the rain, then another (outside of a vaporeon or a dry skin pokemon. Kingdra can 2ko any pokemon under the rain with either outrage or waterfall. after it takes out a couple pokemon, can the team stand up to a kabutops sweeping the weakened team, or if they survive that, a quilfish or gorebyss, etc.

basically, since that may be a bit confusing, people only tend to carry one counter to each pokemon. However, you only can have 6 pokemon to counter the whole metagame, so needless to say, it needs to have each pokemon counter multiple pokemon. Now, say, for example, zapdos is the only counter on a team for metagross and gyarados. If metagross is sacraficed to kill zapdos, the team has no counter to the gyarados, who can sweep. this is a similar mentality to most weather basedattacking teams. most stall teams only have 3 or 4 pokemon immune to their weather, the rest carry leftovers so they can not lose any health. I don't like weather based stall unless it carries toxic spikes, so even pokemon immiune to the the weather are hit. However, i don't play weather stall so IDK about it really.

 

[Badal]

You will have to keep the different kinds of battling styles in mind:
Heavy offense- HIT HARD
Stall (different kinds)- STALL!
and many more. Though it is important to have one of these while building a team. You can't have half stall pokemon and half attacking

 

[gautama]

so you are all basically saying that I do need to specialize in order to be competitive? That means like either all stallers or all sweepers but not a mix?

Doesn't having a team with complete diversification warrant some credit simply because it is very unpredictable? (mixing stalling tactics, poison, confusion, light screen, etc. with some sweeping.) Lol, what is the harm in trying to have a balance? (I can sweep until I run into a high defense tank pokemon, then I can switch strategies and stall with confusion, poison, sleep to take it out.)

 

[Badal]

Well if you mix, you can stall for sometime and then sweep but then your team by itself is weak since it doesn't have a main pokemon that the team is based around since if that pokemon is a sweeper then the whole team should be offensive or if its a staller then the team should be stall.

 

[gautama]

yeah people keep saying that the team will be weak if I don't have a main pokemon to build the team around. I just don't understand why I need a main pokemon or why the rest of my team should be built around one particular team member. What if all of my pokemon are strong and bring something different to the table?

Everyone keeps saying "you should do this" or "you should do that" but I still don't understand WHY it is BETTER to specialize rather than diversify.

 

[coolking503]

as I said earlier, each team has 6 pokemon. One pokemon is meant to counter many threats, all similar. But if it cannot deal with many of these threats in a row, it wil fall and the rest of the team can sweep. This is why you specialize a heavy offense team. However, stall teams are the opposite, where you need to diversify in oreder to take on all threats in the game, even if it means haveing sandstorm team without an immunity to sandstorm. A good stall team checks everything twice while still maintaining reasonable balance.