Redwall

As I write this message, Chiki is laddering furiously as "Gokou Ruri", an account unqualified for voting, using the team from his Smogon topic and gunning for voting reqs at the eleventh hour; you can confirm this alt is his from this topic. This is consistent with my claim that he was lying. More on topic, though, whether or not he was lying about procuring voting reqs has competitive implications: how, for example, does his team address well-played Aegislash, Terrakion, Mega Pinsir, Specs Keldeo, Manaphy, and other threats that escape me? If he indeed obtained voting reqs, then there would likely be a method of playing his team well that escapes me and that would prove educational for me and the other posters in the topic. I personally prefer eschewing Substitute and instead using a set of Spikes / Spiky Shield / Hammer Arm / Leech Seed since Chesnaught is a bit slow.

Certainly I find it interesting that Chiki claims to be uninterested in voting (which isn't exactly time-consuming) despite having invested considerable time in writing arguments in Smogon's thread, and despite supposedly having obtained voting reqs. But I am suggesting only that the Emperor may not, in fact, have any clothes; I am not suggesting that any of this should matter. If Chiki's team had enough offensive presence to dissuade Defoggers, as many MLuc teams do, then I would agree with you, but he clearly does not. Opposing Talonflame will force out everything on the team short of Salamence and Azumarill, neither of which can switch into Talonflame's Brave Bird.

Your post on Smogon ("I played on the ladder with a high rating a month ago or so") suggests otherwise: why not mention instead that you got a high rating on the current ladder? Your claim of seeing many Pokemon comparable to Swampert continues to leave me in doubt, given the considerably better constructed teams that pop up around the 1700 range. Posting a picture of your record in the voter-confirmation thread would not only shut me up here on SF, but would also lend credence to some of the arguments you've been making in Smogon's suspect thread. edit: To make clear a relation to the topic at hand--competitive play--and to prevent me from getting capital-W Warned, let me explain that my posts are rooted in doubts of the efficacy of this team Chiki constructed and subsequently used. The team has no answer to Talonflame because Heatran, the team's only Flying-type resistance, lacks Toxic. The team is arguably more vulnerable to Mega Pinsir since Heatran gets OHKOed by Earthquake, and since Talonflame, which is 4x weak to SR, cannot switch into Mega Pinsir's Return or Quick Attack. The team has no answer to Aegislash, since Heatran takes a minimum of 45.5% from Sacred Sword and since the other bulky Pokemon on the team, Salamence and Azumarill, take minimums of about 47% from Shadow Ball. Opposing Mega Lucario with Extremespeed also give this team trouble, as Salamence can be beaten with double-switches into Stealth Rock. Garchomp has neutral or better coverage against everything on the team. Celebi and Salamence have no offensive presence. The former has a particularly awful defensive typing for the current metagame. I also pointed out to Chiki on his profile feed sometime ago the inability for his team to break past stall teams that have Aegislash. As I, too, wish to be a winner, I would like for Chiki to either explain how he dealt with these threats or admit that he is lying about his procurement of voting requirements for the sake of wagging his e-peen.

Please answer my question. Did you or did you not qualify for Smogon's ongoing XY suspect test? Given the phrasing of this post and the phrasing of this other post ("I played on the ladder with a high rating a month ago or so"), I am inclined to believe that you haven't met the requirements on the current Elo-based ladder, but that your performance on last month's Glicko2-based ladder has led you to believe that you would qualify if you had the time. And while players with 1700 Elo aren't necessarily any good, I know for a fact they all use better Pokemon than Swampert (save for the players using obvious troll teams). Given this, and given the pace at which one would play the team you posted on Smogon ("balanced," as you described to me), I have reason to doubt that one would obtain voting reqs with your team in a matter of hours.

Assuming an average of five minutes per match, you would need over eight hours to qualify. At risk of sounding confrontational, could this be because you haven't actually qualified?

It takes about a hundred matches (fifty on each of the OU and suspect ladders to meet the deviation requirement of 50 or below) to qualify. I can't fathom how you would complete 100 games instantly.

Most people who play Pokemon also have real-life obligations; developing the skills to win a satisfactory fraction (whatever you deem this fraction to be) of your matches is not something that requires a whole lot of time commitment, given that most people online are also playing for fun and are not hardcore players in any capacity. You should watch this video to get a basic idea of what should be going through your head when battling.

Keldeo doesn't need HP Grass since Quagsire (assuming Unaware, since Gastrodon makes a way better Water Absorber) and Swampert get nuked by Hydro Pump. A Choice Specs set with HP Flying / Secret Sword / Hydro Pump / Icy Wind makes a pretty good wallbreaker in competitive matches since HP Flying bypasses Mega Venusaur's ability. Using a Life Orb and replacing HP Flying with Calm Mind is another option.

Stoutland is pretty good in Gen 5. Even putting aside its revenge-killing and late-game cleaning abilities (CB STAB Return is so good), you can use Stoutland to Pursuit-trap Politoed to a low enough HP such that Politoed dies to hazards and fails to trigger Rain on any subsequent switch-in.

It can be really difficult to keep it off if you're playing someone good. Taunt stops Defog (just EV Heatran to be faster than Mandibuzz); Exploding Smeargle on Mandibuzz or Skarmory as it tries to Defog makes the Defog fail; and of course there's double switching your Thundurus-I into a predicted Mandibuzz/Skarmory switch. The Lati twins get punished by Aegislash when Defogging: even if you have something that can switch into Shadow Ball, people sometimes run Pursuit on Aegislash higher up on the ladder, so you only get SR off for some amount of time unless you've also killed their Rocker.

The average Glicko-1 rating (*not* Elo) is 1500. The standard deviation is, according to this post, about 130. I have no clue what the average Elo rating on Showdown is, though. I think Glicko-1 is more likely to accurately predict wins since it's more robust (this is both a good thing and a bad thing, since real improvement is not borne out as noticeably under Glicko-1), whereas your Elo rating can fluctuate pretty wildly.

Well, this thread, for starters. As far as MLuc-team vs. non-MLuc-team matchups go, the only teams that match up well against Mega Lucario are the ones that either exert constant offensive pressure on it and have one or zero Pokemon that lose 1v1 to an unboosted Mega Luc, or the ones that are packed to the teeth with counters. Yes, but this would happen in a non-broken metagame as well. A pretty common example of Mega Lucario winning against a standard team would be when Aegislash switches in on Nasty Plot, expecting to tank a +2 Dark Pulse and KO with Shadow Ball and Shadow Sneak, but winds up eating a flinch 20% of the time and getting swept as a consequence; obviously the correct play for the Mega Lucario would be to simply chip at Aegislash with Dark Pulse, threatening everything else with its unboosted STABs, (which only reinforces the claim that Mega Lucario is a bit too good for OU), but a lot of ladder players just set up early for some reason. I've already explained why he's unhealthy. On the contrary, the players eligible to vote tend to be (by design) the players least likely to lose on the ladder and complain about non-broken stuff like stall teams. That they feel the need ban so many things suggests only that Gamefreak doesn't really care much about balancing the singles metagame (which is consistent with the fact that VGC favors doubles matches). You need only look to Smogon's doubles metagame, which features very few bans (MKanga is allowed in OU), to realize that Smogon players don't just ban things for the heck of it. Genesect was superfluous in the match. The winner could have double-switched to Deoxys-S on turn 3 and either set up another layer of Spikes or used Psycho Boost on Mega Venusaur. Later on, switching in Genesect on Latios wasn't necessary when Greninja could have simply attacked the Rotom-W switch-in. People on Smogon use a pretty stringent definition of check: a check to a certain Pokemon should, going by this subjectively chosen definition, win 100% of the time if given a free switch-in. Aegislash's reliance on King's Shield guessing games precludes it from being classified as this type of check.

+2 252 Atk Mega Lucario Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Talonflame: 249-294 (83.8 - 98.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO If we adopt these definitions, Talonflame can't be considered a check to ES Mega Lucario. Also not a reliable check since +2 Vacuum Wave does 67.8% minimum. Genesect can get worn down pretty fast when SR is up. Greninja fails to check Mega Lucario reliably unless the former has Shadow Sneak to make itself immune to Mega Lucario's priority. +2 Extreme Speed does 91.6% minimum, while +2 Vacuum Wave is a clean OHKO. Mach Punch doesn't OHKO Mega Lucario, dealing a max of 70.9% to 4 HP / 0 Def / 0 SDef Mega Lucario. +2 Flash Cannon deals 84% minimum to 252 HP / 0 SDef AV Conk, and while it is true that competent players shove some of the HP EVs into SDef, it remains a clean 2HKO. +2 Close Combat OHKOs. While Mach Punch OHKOs, Mega Lucario outprioritizes with ES or Vacuum Wave and OHKOs with a SD or NP. LO Starmie has only a 47.23% chance of OHKOing full-health Mega Lucario with Hydro Pump after accounting for accuracy and crits, with Analytic neglected. 4 HP / 0 Def Starmie also gets OHKOed by +2 ES 70.7% of the time if SR is up and we account for crits. Scarf users don't have priority attacks and often lose you a tempo when Mega Lucario switches out. It is for this reason that Darkrai isn't allowed in OU in spite of its susceptibility to a Fighting Pokemon with a Scarf. And while it is true Excadrill checks Mega Lucario when sand is up, it only prevents Mega Lucario from setting up; it doesn't dissuade it from firing unboosted attacks on slower Pokemon that will have to die if Excadrill is to safely get in. Azumarill gets OHKOed by +2 Flash Cannon. Sableye doesn't do anything to the NP set and doesn't get much done beyond burning the switch (which will likely be something that can force out Sableye). From there Mega Lucario can (for example) get in on a double-switch and continue threatening the opponent. Again, Klefki's not worth much more than a free paralysis on something expendable unless you're using the Swagger set, which is a losing set on average. It's true that it cripples the NP set, but the SD set beats it without losing a step: +2 252 Atk Mega Lucario Extreme Speed vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Thundurus: 252-297 (84.2 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock Yes for physical sets lacking Ice Punch, but this has little value when considering that you basically lose a Pokemon if you incorrectly guess Mega Lucario's set. Still a shaky check since +2 Vacuum Wave and +1 ES deal minimums of 79% and 60.4% respectively. It gets beaten by the NP set if it lacks a Choice Scarf. If it does have a Choice Scarf, then it's worth noting that EQ and Superpower are among the worst moves to be Scarf-locked into. It can't switch into Dark moves at all, taking about 40% minimum with 252 HP EVs and four or none in the appropriate defense. The risk-reward game favors the Mega Lucario much more when considering that you often have no other Pokemon who can switch into Mega Lucario's Fighting STAB. A Landorus-T and Aegislash combo won't fear Fighting STAB but will get worn down by Dark Pulse. Sleep Powder isn't reliable both because of accuracy and because the opponent can fodder something to sleep. Mega Venusaur's Earthquake fails to OHKO Mega Lucario unless the latter has a CC defense drop, while +2 Crunch and CC used in succession will KO any Mega Venusaur not at full health and with significant Def investment. +2 Flash Cannon still 2HKOs even the most specially defensive MVenu, who will only 2HKO back with Earthquake or put something expendable to sleep. It's really easy to wear these guys down with double-switches into SR. When you have to spin/Defog to get these guys in, it's the Mega Lucario player who's dictating the game, even if he can't sweep right away, since he can capitalize on that free turn and make you react to it the way he wants. While it beats Mega Lucario lacking a Dark move, basically every competent player uses a Dark move on their Mega Lucario given the prevalence of Aegislash. This is likely something not borne out in the ladder's weighted usage statistics given that only a small fraction of ladder players are any good. As with bulky Salamence, you basically lose a Pokemon if you incorrectly guess Mega Lucario's set. While Flygon, Celebi, Gengar, and Jirachi all outsped Lucario in Gen 4 without needing a Choice Scarf, they (and the Gen 5 musketeers and Lati twins) now find themselves incapable of forcing out a Mega-evolved Lucario even with the health to take boosted priority moves. Compared to LO Lucario, Mega Lucario barely worries about putting itself on a timer thanks to its lack of LO recoil; CC is the most likely to run out of PP, but in those games where you do run out of PP, the opponent will probably be in a losing position from having taken so many CCs (assuming the Mega Lucario player uses double-switches to punish Zapdos). You can prevent Mega Lucario from setting up if constant offensive pressure is applied by making everything on your team capable of 2HKOing Mega Lucario, but this limits teambuilding significantly. Given its ridiculous speed and the fact that the only Pokemon that can switch into both the main sets (SD Crunch and NP) are all weak to SR, I think a ban is fair. It's also worth noting that some people use Vacuum Wave / Dark Pulse / Flash Cannon on the NP set to retain a priority move while still being able to hit Aegislash.

The best uses I can think of for the Arms Scrolls are pretty small: Catria can use Devil Swd as a Falco, possibly improving reliability of C19 (or not since you're not recruiting everyone); the Avatar can use Hauteclere as a DK to five-turn C20 if for some reason you don't get Sirius up to speed by then; Linde can deal another point of damage with each Levin Sword hit.

Catria doesn't need more than one Arms Scroll for her Sword rank (Devil Sword), and even that's iffy. I can't find the stats for the C20x Generals, so I'm not sure if Armorslayer will help. I'm pretty sure C19 can be six-turned without Armorslayer as a Falco. If you're gunning for a five-turn clear of C20, you need a Mercurius user and a Parthia user, and I'm pretty sure they a) they must both be Horsemen in that chapter to finish Hardin on turn five and b) at least one of them must have capped Str, with the other having not more than one point of Str below the Horseman cap. Sirius is the obvious candidate for Mercurius user due to his Swd rank, though I'm not sure if he's at a high enough level to reach 23 Str by C20. It may be worth giving him an Energy Drop and an Arms Scroll (since I'm not sure you can get him 60 WEXP in time).

I criticized one play, and I assure you my intent was not to piss you off. You could easily have discerned Rotom-W's high Def investment from the damage Knock Off did to it. That you claimed this to be a "friendly match" (it obviously wasn't, given you were clearly playing to win) doesn't make the play less of a mistake. Either use this as a learning experience--with the takeaways being that you can use damage calcs to get a ballpark estimate of an opponent's EVs, and that you should not make risky plays based opponents' EVs/moves if you can avoid it--or don't, but please spare me the butthurt.

I don't think PS! has an option to toggle Freeze Clause, at least not in Gen 6.

Mega Gengar isn't really designed to sweep teams, so if that's what you've been trying to use it for, then you should rethink your team. You should check this link to see some successful teams that can give you some ideas on what to use.

Dark Void wasn't on my mind since I assumed your team was constructed for rated battles and that you were only using it in free battles for practice. Using counter-weather and/or Tailwind aggressively could give you a means of outspeeding Chlorophyll mons that have Sleep Powder and lessen the need for Meowstic, whose only serious advantage over Quick Guard Hitmontop besides priority Safeguard is the ability to stop MKanga's Fake Out.

I don't know if your recent performance necessarily means you're making bad plays. It seems like your team just doesn't match up well against standard stuff. Simply replacing Goodra and Meowstic (garbage in both singles and doubles, imo) would probably increase your win rate significantly. And while this may be obvious, you should generally try to figure out sequences that secure wins without forcing you to predict.

Defog doesn't remove Leech Seed. Garchomp with Rocky Helmet is a good partner for Charizard X (opposing Talonflame takes a ton of damage from the combination of Rocky Helmet, Rough Skin, and recoil damage from its STABs). You may want an Aegislash to take opposing Dragon-type attacks.

I just recruit him ASAP for his Javelin and +5 Def. Delaying his recruitment favors going for the RHS (edit: wait idk what I was thinking, it probably doesn't), except the RHS has more enemies. The lower enemy count on the LHS means that even if you take a while to clear them out, you can more easily open the door in time to take out the northwest Knight and control the chokepoint (without stepping in range of any other enemies behind the door) to hold off the encroaching enemies who start on the southeast of the map.

Fighting with the Avatar and Frederick, sometimes with other partners and other times Paired Up with each other, and having the other units distract and hold off enemies encroaching from above the left passageway bounding the mountain. Distracting them is helpful to prevent the Avatar and Fred from being overwhelmed. I don't remember the exact details, but I doubt this differs much from Interceptor's guide. I had relatively few Luna+ spawns on my successful attempt, but even on a few of my unsuccessful ones that had more Luna+ enemies, I still had a low-but-reasonable chance (like, if an enemy missed an attack 80% true hit or something) at breaking through without casualties. This is kind of a small sample size from which to draw conclusions about the amount of luck you need, but yeah.

Yes; I did it with 10 Def (+Def asset and bad level-ups) and just a few resets.