Tales from Battle Spot Singles blog — Tools for Laddering (Special Edition)
And now for something completely different. Now, of course, it is a truth universally acknowledged that in order to play the game in ranked, all one has to do is click the find match-button on the Battle Spot. But I am here to inform you that there are external tools that make the experience of playing ranked more convenient...if properly employed.
This is something I had been meaning to type up for the longest time. But since Gen8 is only months away, I figured now was as good a time as any to produce something whose relevance will not only survive the transition between generations, but will also ideally remain a relatively useful page to refer newer players going forward.
1) Overview:
So then, what you will find below is a more or less comprehensive list of relevant tools and resources anyone wanting to climb the ranked ladder might want to have within arm's reach during a ladder session.
2) Tools & their usefulness:
The massive caveat that can not be ignored is the potential of over-reliance on these tools over common sense and player experience. Taking a dozen or so seconds in the team select screen to look up whether a potential offensive ace you might want to bring can indeed punch through enough of the opponent's bulk to justify bringing, or how much you need to trade inefficiently to chip opposing defensive anchors in order to do so is one thing, but being overwhelmed by trying to look up each individual thing only to end up not spending enough time thinking about your own approach to the match on even the most basic level is obviously counterproductive.
2.1 — Damage Calculator
Having the ability to almost instantly call up damage calculations is especially useful for players who are just starting out, or otherwise out of shape. To do this, simply go on Pokemon Showdown, make an exportable text file of your team, and paste it into https://cantsay.github.io/ to save your custom sets for future reference.
Not only is this convenient for situations where you are not sure about various damage ranges, and thereby empowering you to make more calculated plays (both literally and figuratively), it also allows you to infer opponents' movesets and held items, and can even affect your decisions in the team select screen.
Ideally, as a player gets more experienced, most numbers and damage ranges inevitably get internalized, lessening the calculator's overall impact as a laddering tool. Even then, there is just no excuse not to have your team in the calculator while laddering: if for nothing else than to satisfy the morbid curiosity of what could — or should — have been after a series of statistically improbable outcomes.
Although an aside, another thing that bears shouting from the rooftops is the damage calculator's invaluable role in team building itself. In a format as centralized as BSS, some of the best teams have individual sets that are specifically tailored to take certain hits, hit or avoid certain damage ranges: Adamant 124 HP / 196 Atk / 4 Def / 148 SpDef / 36 Spd lead mega-Metagross, for example, would always live a mega-Gengar Shadow Ball on turn 1, and, at a real stat of 135, is guaranteed to always outspeed +252 Breloom's 134 on turn 1, but only lives 252 Z-Thunderbolt from Tapu Koko some 93% of the time.
2.2 — Usage Stats
In order to make informed decisions both in game and in the team select screen, having usage stats data on hand is a resource that not should be discounted either. Below are links to three of the most prominent sites you might want to reserve a browser tab or two to while laddering.
https://boe2.github.io/bsus.html – Easy-to-navigate usage stats page covering various metas.
https://pokedb.tokyo/pokemon/ranking/usum — Individual player tracking site with a more visual presentation of stats (Japanese).
https://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/battle/usum/316/#single — The wretched official page.
2.3 — Deeper meta-research
What differentiates metagame knowledge from mere usage stats is context: the more comprehensive understanding of trends and play styles entailed by the former, something only implied by looking at usage stats alone.
Anyone who has pulled the trigger on hitting the ranked ladder will have almost immediately noted that Battle Spot Singles is overwhelmingly a Japanese format. This means that most of the top quality content out there, from individual player blogs to content aggregator sites, is in Japanese. Fortunately, though, this is a relatively minor inconvenience in the age of online translation tools, but it does mean that efficiently accruing meta-knowledge as a non-Japanese speaker is best done by partaking in the collective community efforts on smogon's Battle Spot forum and accompanying Discord channels:
https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/formats/battle_spot_singles/ — smogon's BSS hub remains the best English-language resource available.
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/battle-spot-singles-sample-teams.3619162/ — The magnificent Sample Teams Thread is an invaluable resource new or returning players should consult first above all after deciding their goals for playing the format.
As for that Japanese content, here are two suggestions on sources worth bookmarking to keep that ravenous Google Translate tab of any BSS player worth their salt satiated:
https://www.ponz-poke.com/ — Consistent content aggregator, covering trends usually through the perspective of individual pokemon and their set options.
http://nouthuca.com/topic/ — nouthuca is the go-to for top player teams, linking you to their blogs as well.
Another useful piece of advice one might want to follow is to make burner twitter and hatenablog accounts to follow and get notifications of new content by top players and team builders you come across on your nouthuca-browsing travels (this is chiefly why I ended up on this platform). There are also twitter memes to partake in.
2.4 — QR-rental teams -page
Unfortunately, the PGL website is an ungodly mess to use. Still, having the search and popular teams pages open can be worthwhile whenever hitting a QR team:
https://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/rentalteam/usum/search — Search tool, official page. Gotta go fast!
https://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/rentalteam/usum/use/#!/single/daily — Quick navigation frequently used teams page.
Because of the inconvenience of navigating the official page, a good rule of thumb I personally employ when deciding whether to look up opposing QR-teams is whether the opponent's team has Greninja. This is because its flexibility in terms of sets can be so game-defining, knowing its set is a massive boon for your prospects in any given match. Your search priorities might of course vary depending on what kind of team you yourself are piloting: defensive pokemon like Tapu Fini and Hippowdon might want to avoid hitting lure sets like Z-Solarbeam from Blaziken or Heatran, for example.
3) In conclusion:
The metrics available to me show that each of these entries I post here on hatena gets, at a minimum, around 300 unique visitors over the course of a month from when they go up, so hopefully this will be useful to some of you who keep coming back in building a more comprehensive picture of what can go into laddering aside from the banality of actually clicking the buttons on the 3DS itself, and, in my case, in learning a new team every month. Speaking of which, July's post-proper will be up within the week of this little diversion. And as always, thank you for your attention!
- Tox
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/tox.146/
