The "get hazards" / "deny hazards" / "punish hazards" triangle of the lead meta and all the gray areas in between those three teamplates are such a huge part of what makes non-team preview gens alluring to me. The fact that there are so many ways to set the tempo in your desired direction from turn 1, and so many potential interactions within that dance, is really something.
@@rbikidportlandI agree except in the case of gen 3 OU. The combination of no team preview and common, meta-relevant trapping (Magneton, Dugtrio, Porygon-2) is particularly stupid in my opinion.
one thing i appreciate about BKC videos is the aspect of Naming Guys. "hey, remember the player named megan fox?" feels like i'm with the homies just shooting the shit about 2000s basketball players
I remember my first time playing DPP having made my own team. I was like “deo-s is really good with trick scarf! Why does no one do this with azelf in OU?!” I peaked at 1400 before ultimately crashing out to 1200s. Pretty solid tier!
Have you ever seen a set for any mon in any metagame where a non-boosting nature (e.g. Hardy) was actually viable? I've never seen one in all these years and I really doubt there is but on the odd chance you have it might be an interesting video.
Not an answer to your question, but I remember way back, mixed Flygon had stat benchmarks it needed to reach in every single stat. It needed to outspeed certain threats, needed enough attack and special attack to beat certain targets, and it needed enough defense and special defense to handle certain threats. It'd be really tempting to give it a neutral nature so you wouldn't ruin any of the things it needed to do, but the correct thing to do was to reduce either defense or special defense, and having it incapable of doing certain things you wanted from it. But who knows, other things that used to be considered noob things back when it was current (black sludge, protect) are now considered good maybe the same could happen to neutral natures.
Unless there's an incredibly specific example or reason, you'd rather always take an extra 10% in a stat, as most Pokemon have a stat they don't care about investing in. Even those that do care about every stat can even run investment on a minus nature (like running speed with a brave or sassy nature) to mitigate it. So tldr, not really
i had an uhhh fond memory for exactly the interaction between Machamp and Colbur Azelf. I'm kinda fond at the optimization idea behind it - the EV being so "intricate" for that very very specific interaction was something im fond of seeing in general But in particulary because theres an RMT i was on that had Azelf against Champ. If i recall correctly the set i was running was supposed to be Sash Azelf, but during the RMT the guy was like "oh this is likely Colbur Azelf right" and like detailed a bunch of stuff about his turn 1 that boils down to "im prepped for this specific Azelf". What actually happened was i forgot my Focus Sash lol. Its not a good battle by any means but i kinda remember it a notch due to how freaked out my opponent was at Agility Torterra 4 Attack Gross, a Rocker, Starmie was a favorite for me at one point. Idk how good it is nowadays, but iirc its like Zen, Mash, Quake, Bullet/Boom? The main separation from classic Gross lead was the Zen to snipe Machamp
There’s only one occasion where machamp beats lumgross, and that’s sash counter, and even then, you’ll get rocks most of the time, as long as you have lum, you don’t need to use zen.