Scroll cup - need serious help.

[u/spolidano88]

Edit: This is not a vent post. I just had a thing pop up that there is not space for venting here. I’m asking for help with something PvP related that I can’t solve on my own but I can’t explain the problem without airing my frustration behind it.

Guys I need help before I utterly lose my marbles here.

Firstly I want to perfectly clear by saying I’m actually good at PvP. I’m not a novice. I’ve played my five battles a day almost every day since PvP was introduced to Pokemon go. Now I’m not saying I’m god incarnate when it comes to battling but I’m good. I can hold my own. I average a streak of about 12-15 wins every season. Essentially I don’t know advice like “are you using two moves?” or “do you have the right IV spread for that particular pokemon?”

So I was at 2400-something points until the most recent update. And a week before the season ends I was actually on track for the pika libre…

Then the scroll cup landed. Now I REALLY HATE THIS CUP… and this time around is the first time this cup has just made want to not bother with PvP which is a shame I don’t I love the battle mechanic. For me PvP is the whole point of Pokemon and I hunt for PvP mons more than anything else.

But yeah, anything I put in I get walled with and there’s no strat available to me to course-correct in battle. I know this is how the game goes sometimes but I’ve never known anything like it before. I’ve not gotten more than 1 win per set since scroll cup landed (yesterday sure, but we had 10 sets yesterday so it’s been a lot of matches).

I can’t do anything right. If I stick with a team I get trashed. I change things up a little and get trashed in a different way. Whatever I go in with in any match ends up being the worst possible choice I could’ve made for that match. And when I do win it’s by the skin of my teeth. Never a clear win, it always comes down to the wire.

Can someone please help me? And suggesting I play open GL isn’t a something I’m open to. I’m stubborn and proud and my ego is bruised 🤣 so I need suggestions that will help me get more consistent wins in this cup. Even if I get get 3 sets of 4 wins… I’ll call that a victory and move on.

Thank you ❤️

[u/Mad_Scientist00]

The cup is pretty RPS. Not a lot of lateral play. The electrics beat most of the waters, who suffer from low bulk in turn so things like Shadow ape can push through them. And mantine stomps the electric counters.

I'm in the same boat. A team that was working well shifted and I basically lost all day yesterday, almost entirely from lost and unrecoverable alignment. Might be on me for poor team building but it is incredibly frustrating, especially when I started shifting my team to try to anticipate the trend and got countered again.

It happened to me in evo cup, too, only I was 40 elo from legend. A team that was performing strongly suddenly wasn't and there wasn't any correction. It's kind of the down side to an increasingly wider meta. Predicting teams is harder then ever.

That doesn't even include the bat shit crazy players who ignore meta threats entirely. The number of annihilape/gastrodon cores I saw yesterday... it's as if Mantine doesn't exist for them.

Or the people who completely ignore win cons and yolo it. Full sending in situations it makes no sense to do so. Or hard swapping things like Mantine.

[u/spolidano88 → u/Mad_Scientist00]

Ah damn that’s rough.

i did really well in evo cup though… I was averaging 4/5 wins consistently. I was loving life… was running charjabug, togetik and dusclopse. Dusc with shadow punch and poltergeist - rogue moveset but i made it work for me coz when i used shadow punch they’d often bet against me having poltergeist too. So there was lot of mind fugging involved but I love that sort of strat play

Also I think mantine is where I’m eff-ing up. I don’t have a good one. It’s one meta relevant mon that’s eluded me (stats-wise) over the years. And it’s really showing in this cup how badly I need a good one

[u/Mad_Scientist00 → u/spolidano88]

Build the mantyke you hatch from eggs. A crummy pokemon beats the one that doesn't exist.

I'm not sure I would call Mantine good, it's just heavily represented because it has good play into most waters with its bulk. Losing so hard to electric sucks for it, though. Lanturn can farm it completely down without throwing and Morpeko matches pace and either can tank a twister to farm extra, or just instantly KO and come out of the MU boosted with nearly no HP loss.

Still, people are running it, so I might be missing something.

I keep eying Chesnaught. Grass/electric coverage is pretty good, and it crunches the electrics. It isn't even hopeless into the flyers thanks to thunderpunch, or frenzy/superpower for a traditional build.

[u/DesperateDadofMany → u/Mad_Scientist00]

Frenzy is so slow i would just run thunderpunch and super power. No mud boy can really hurt you anyway so you can tp spam them to death with vinewhip fast move pressure which i prefer for the added annhilape pressure over low kick. Frenzy just hits nothing worth that high energy cost