Here’s a question for you diehard Pokemon Go-ers.
Which of these Pokemon pictured below, all of them Skarmory, is the likeliest to be useful competitively when fully optimized?
If your initial answer was “I don’t have enough information to make an advised decision” – congrats! You’re well on your way to being a good, potentially competitive, Pokemon Go player!
If, however, you attempted to guess, based on the information I’ve provided you, which of these Skarmories has the greatest chance to be competitively usable, then you may have a little bit of learning to do.
Ordinarily, as far as Pokemon Go goes, this sort of information, while helpful, hasn’t ever been truly necessary to grasp. However, Niantic recently announced on Twitter that PvP is in fact coming to Pokemon Go. We don’t know when exactly, but it isn’t crazy to assume such a feature should be coming quite soon.
For the longest time, competitive Pokemon Go has been pretty much a joke. Sure, there’s what they call the “metagame”—inherently, there are things that are better or worse than other things in this game. But as far as “competitive metagame,” such a thing has been nonexistent to this point in Pokemon Go’s life. Imagine this: you went to all the trouble to get yourself a Blissey, a Skarmory, an Umbreon, maybe a good Ground type and possibly a decent, bulky Psychic type, to try and lock down a gym with. Then remember that you can only put one Pokemon in to defend a gym at a time. Skarmory can’t cover Blissey’s weaknesses in the gym you’re trying to lockdown, and the reverse is true as well. Then, imagine someone from another team sees your gym. You just put your Blissey there. You cannot withdraw your Blissey, it does not have any healing or utility moves, it’s just this big, Normal type, with two piss-weak attacking moves, standing at that gym, may as well have a sign that reads “Please come beat the crap out of me with your Fighting types.” And, well, that’s exactly what this player does: loads up their team of six Machamps, destroys your Blissey, nothing you can do about it, and takes your gym. More or less, this is the extent of how ‘competitive’ this metagame has been. PvP, however, aims to correct this to a slight extent.
Mainstream Pokemon games have had an incredible competitive metagame since the days of Red, Blue and Yellow back in the late 1990s. Can Pokemon Go achieve that status? Well, let’s see. Below is a list of things mainstream Pokemon games have had that Pokemon Go currently doesn’t:
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Utility/healing moves, such as Toxic, Stealth Rock and Recover
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Held items
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Turn based gaming, allowing for some prior thought to be had by both players before making a move
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A tier based competitive systems; the best of the best Pokemon end up in the ‘Uber’ tier, while the Pokemon who just can’t cut it are banished to lower tiers, like PU, NU, RU or UU, in ascending order. You then have the OU tier, considered ‘standard play.’ Through this, everyone’s favorite Pokemon gets a better chance to be viable in a different metagame where they aren’t at as much of a risk of being outclassed or just totally unviable to begin with.
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No time limit on how long a battle can last, allowing for many different strategies, not just hyper offense ones, to thrive in each individual metagame
Here is a list of things Pokemon Go has, that aren’t present in mainstream Pokemon:
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A time limit on how long each battle may last, forcing the player(s) to bring their best offensive Pokemon, at the expense of bulk and longevity (incidentally driving up the need to use revives and possibly purchase potions using real life money)
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Strictly attacking moves, mostly lacking in outside utility, with no healing or pure utility moves
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Dodge mechanics, to make any attack in the game ‘dodgeable’ depending on how the player is able to maneuver their Pokemon
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A general dynamic which heavily discourages defensive play and makes the game more linear
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A stale metagame where a large majority of over four hundred Pokemon are useless and unviable, leading to many top players simply using the same exact thing as everyone else
As previously stated, currently, Pokemon Go is absolutely not a legitimately competitive metagame. PvP has some promise to turn this around. However, there are always going to be issues with this game’s legitimacy, competitively. Having only two attacking moves, with no utility or healing moves, is still going to put defensive and balanced play at a disadvantage, and will make primary wall/tank Pokemon like Blissey, Skarmory, Suicune and Cresselia much less useful than they would otherwise be. Dodging helps to make up for this somewhat. But, consider that, in the mainstream games, most defensive Pokemon, such as the aforementioned four, have mediocre at best, abysmal in most cases, direct offense; they generally pick up kills using utility status moves in Toxic, in Blissey and Skarmory’s case, setting entry hazards like Stealth Rock and Spikes to rack up fixed, consistent chip damage in Skarmory’s case, or through boosting their own Special Attack stat several times with Calm Mind and using said boosts to reach a respectable offensive standard in the case of Cresselia and Suicune. None of this stuff is possible, so it’s hardly surprising when my Skarmory’s Brave Bird doesn’t even dent that Tier 4 Pinsir Raid, despite Pinsir taking super effective damage from the move. That said, defensive play here can still be usable in PvP; heavily offensive, but frail, Pokemon like Gengar will struggle to break down a Blissey, given Blissey’s excellent bulk, resistance to Gengar’s Ghost attacks and ironically from the fact that Gengar cannot run Taunt to shut Blissey down, given that this utility move does not currently exist.
One good thing that will come from competitive Pokemon Go, as highlighted at the beginning of this article, will be that the game will finally demand that the players pay closer attention to their Pokemon’s IVs and general competitive usability. This newly found widespread awareness will also help outside of competitive play; that asshole who keeps bringing a team of Hypnos or Chanseys to the T5 Cresselia raid is now going to realize that their Pokemon are not doing a thing of damage to said Cresselia, while on a 300 second timer to defeat it, causing the team to have to carry them a lot harder, and will now have the mind to search for some usable Dark/Ghost type counters to Cresselia in an effort to actually be useful. Most importantly, attention to your Pokemon’s IVs will now have to be stricter. For example, remember when I asked you what you thought of my Skarmories, with regards to which was going to be the best, competitively? The correct answer would have been my ‘Warren Byrd’ Skarmory, despite its middling Combat Power. My Warren Byrd Skarmory has a perfect 15/15/15 set of IVs, whereas my other Skarmories do not. My highest Combat Power Skarmory, ‘Jeff Wyngz’, has decent 10/15/13 IVs, but if Warren Byrd’s CP was closer to Jeff Wyngz’’ CP, Warren would begin to outperform Jeff across the board, noticeably. Raising CP is not particularly difficult, so Warren Byrd’s CP, with about two or three days of work, could reach that of Jeff Wyngz’ CP pretty quickly. You can find out a general idea of your Pokemon’s IVs by selecting the ‘Appraise’ option from the right side of your screen when viewing your Pokemon. If your Professor comments on how breathtaking and wonderful your Pokemon is, it means that, out of 45 possible, total IVs you can have, your Pokemon has at least a combined total of 36 (80% of the maximum) and could potentially have the full 45, or anywhere in between. Generally, this is going to be what you want to aim for. Too fewer than 80%, and it will begin to affect your Pokemon’s usability in competitive play. Don’t just stop there, though; you’ll actually want to check the specific values your Pokemon has for IVs. For example, Skarmory is better suited in a defensive role. If my Skarmory has 15 Attack IVs, but only has 6 Defense IVs and 7 HP IVs, I would prefer a Skarmory with 10 Attack IVs, 10 Defense IVs and 10 HP IVs to it. A great way to do this is through the app “Poke Genie”—Poke Genie can check, right down to the digit, what IVs your Pokemon has. It’s a fantastic source for those looking to competitively optimize themselves.
Ultimately, we know little in terms of specifics of how Niantic will facilitate PvP in Pokemon Go. But, barring a huge dynamics change, not much should change about the competitive metagame; the same Pokemon who were great before will probably be great again here, and vice versa with the crappy Pokemon. What will change is a greater sense of awareness about your own Pokemon and their IVs. I hope this writeup has been helpful in that effort, and I wish you luck in your future endeavors in the upcoming PvP mode!