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What do you consider most in a Pokemon Battle, the Offense or the Defense?

hi guys!! my second post here in Pokecharms!!hope you like it like the first one!!

ehem...anyway..as we all know...we have our own different battle styles..some come up with a strategies that is really a turn-of-events,much like Ash's way of battling that it comes to the point where impossibility meets reality,if you know what I mean. Now this time,I'm a bit curious: what do you prefer? Offense or Defense? If you'll gonna ask me,I'll prefer the Offensive type of battle.I hate being squished out by some powerful attacks easily.
I might as well counter it with a more powerful attack to beat it.So how about you?What do you prefer?

I will wait for your answers!!thanks!!



 
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Sir Red

Charms' Caped Crusader
Personally, I go for a solid balance of the two. Seeing as I competitively battle I need Sweepers and Walls on my teams so that I can have Pokemon to fulfill various needs.

However, I personally have more fun with playing a Defensive style of battle. There's just something fun about taking that first hit and then slowly crushing a Pokemon that had the type advantage on your Pokemon. It's very rewarding to get wins with a defensively minded Pokemon as opposed to an all out attacker.
 

Shiny Motley

2016 Singles Football
I've always liked hard and fast hitters, and never really cared much about defense. The more powerful and faster a Pokemon is, and the more moves it has that enables it to either go first or deal heavy damage regardless of accuracy, the more likely I was going to use it. That's really only because I've never gone competetive before, so this strategy's worked for me since the beginning. XD

I do believe that having a good combination of both is better, though. You need defense or else all your Pokemon will die from lack of it, but offense is necesarry as well if you want to actually defeat your opponent instead of dragging the fight for so long. I personally have more fun not from tanks or walls, but from supporters and annoyers, because they really do annoy your opponent to no end if you use them well.
 
An all out offense for me. To me, I don't like moves that don't deal damge, as I consider that a waste of a turn (again, to me). However, I definately don't mind if a move deals damge and hurts stats. However, I also beleive in give and take, so I'll gladly sacrifice some of my own stats for more damage.
 
A

Anonymous

Offence. If your pokemon can k.o anything in a few hits then defence dosent matter plus I dont like wi-fi battling so I dont need to concider sweepers or walls.
 
I started out as all out offense, but now I'm solidly balanced thanks to competitive battling and I've learned to love playing defense sometimes. All out offense tends to get you killed very quickly against more skilled players that have a balanced team. There's nothing as frustrating as not being able to deal a lot of damage to your opponent, but it's also fun to deal out a ton of damage as well.
 

KoL

Expert FPS Player
Staff member
Moderator
I usually lean towards using more offensively-geared teams nowadays since it's more what I'm used to, but most people will attest to the fact that I usually play extremely defensively even with such a team, even to the point of pure stalling sometimes.
 
Doubled said:
An all out offense for me. To me, I don't like moves that don't deal damge, as I consider that a waste of a turn (again, to me). However, I definately don't mind if a move deals damge and hurts stats. However, I also beleive in give and take, so I'll gladly sacrifice some of my own stats for more damage.
My thoughts exactly.
 

Sir Red

Charms' Caped Crusader
Thepokemontrainer said:
I think that a move that is not an attack (ex.Protect) is a complete waste of a move. On the other hand, I don't mind about moves like Toxic.
You don't know how blissfully wrong that statement is. If you actually know what you're doing, moves like Protect can insanely useful and win you battles. I employ it in a number of ways on various Pokemon. It stacks beautifully with Toxic, allowing the Poison to worsen whilst nothing bad happens to you. Pretty handy right there.

And Detect (which does the same thing) when on a Yanmega can result in some insane sweeping. Simply by using Detect on your first turn you not only get to scout out your opponent's moves (another very handy use for moves of the Protect nature), but Yanmega gets a free Speed boost and can therefore reek havoc upon those that stand in it's way by slamming them hard and fast.

Simply by being patient and using "defensive" moves you can then flip things around and go into an all-out offensive assault. To really excel you have to be able to cover both ends of the spectrum to at least some degree.
 
Um... Yeah, I don't actually have anything other than attacks on my pokemon team. Seriously, no one of my pokemon has a move that doesn't hurt. So yeah, I suck when it comes to powering up my pokemon.
 

Sir Red

Charms' Caped Crusader
Maxie said:
Um... Yeah, I don't actually have anything other than attacks on my pokemon team. Seriously, no one of my pokemon has a move that doesn't hurt. So yeah, I suck when it comes to powering up my pokemon.

Just because you don't use defensive moves doesn't mean you "suck". I did that too right up through my first playthrough of Diamond, but once I started reading about competitive battling after joining Pokecharms I started to change my move choices once I realized how to utilize various moves. All out attacking can work perfectly fine Ingame (well, pretty much anything can really :T), but it's when you change over to playing against other, intelligent people that the more "defensive" moves become truly handy. But again, playing with an all-out attacking style is perfectly fine, I just personally enjoy exploiting a stall-ish style of battle.
 
I think it's better to have a balance, as if you have loads of hard-hitting powerhouses with lower defences, when you need to switch out, your Alakazam or Infernape or Gengar or whatever can easily get hammered. Also, when prediction comes into play, sweepers are more predictable and defensive Pokemon tend to be more tricky to deal with.
 
I like to power through the game with sweeper pokemon for the most part. I usually get impatient with more defensive styles of play.
 
I always liked defense more. Its fun having a gyarados use hyperbeam and you still have 3/4 of your life left. But i always feel like im quenching a thirst when an my attack takes an extreme amount of damage on my enemy.
 
Well of course your gona have 3/4 of your hp left when gyarados uses hyper beam. Gyarados shouldnt be taught special attacks thats its worst stat to use. Now if you were talking about giga impact thats a different story. I use to hate defense pokemon but now i actually like having some on my team, it gives you time to think what you should do and gives you more options rather than the same thing over and over with attackers.. But i still like power over defense
 

Linkachu

Hero of Pizza
Staff member
Administrator
I'd say that I'm more of an offensive battler but I'll still focus on defense as well.

While my ideal Pokemon have always been the ones that hit hard and fast, I don't like how fragile many of them are. For that reason I quite enjoy training the more slow, bulky Pokemon who still have high attack stats. For the Pokemon with high defenses and low attack stats, I'll usually choose moves that can turn them into beasts (ie. Mirror Coat, Counter, Leech Seed and Giga Dream, Bulk Up/Calm Mind/Swords Dance, etc.). I also enjoy using support attacks like T-Wave, Will-o-Wisp, Toxic, and so on, but only if I can find good usage for 'em.

I think the only 'defensive' style of Pokemon I don't train are stallers/annoyers. As effective as they can be, I like having the ability to actively attack when I choose - or at the very least, attack after a set-up. Stalling just isn't for me.
 
Offense. Bigtime. I always give my PokeMon attacks- Nothing else, not even healing moves. My strategy is to deal damage, and nothing else. Aggresive as that sounds, it has worked for the last four gens :p

EDIT: Actually, LIES. I use Hypnosis + Dream Eater sometimes.
 
I agree with Dark Soul. The point of Pokemon battles is to make all the opponent's Pokemon faint. You just can't do that if your team is focused on healing, or staying in for as long as possible. It doesn't matter if your Torterra can survive three Hyper Beams, if all it knows are Synthesis, Iron Defence, Tackle and Earthquake it's not going to last long against, say, a Pidgeot. If i'm going down, i'm going down fighting, not avoiding the inevitable with Recover.
 
Haha who would give a torterra tackle? Me? I go for more offense, like 4 of my pokemon would be attacking while 2 is defense. And yeah having straight all out attackers with frail defense is scary, my team just doesnt feel complete with all 6 pokemon like that. You need defense cause what if someone has a pokemon faster and stronger than all your attackers? What are you gonna do? Pretty much just watch your pokemon die helplessly
 
Golly, everyone's so aggressive with ATTACK ATTACK DIEDIEDIE!

I myself prefer the defensive end of the spectrum ♥ There are more than enough annoyer moves to have a lot of fun, and I rather enjoy Toxistall, which for the most part will totally piss off thine opponent ♥ I like offense too, but only if they have something to take advantage of that will let me switch them in safely, like, say, Vaporeon and Water Absorb (Mind you, Vaporeon can pretty much switch in to a ton of stuff anyway, but this is not my point :V) If I do use offense, I tend to avoid all the staple things, like Blaziken and Lucario and pretty much the things with obnoxious amounts of fans, ahoohoo. Usually the highest base stat of my offenses is around the mid-eighties, and I'm fine with that~! And I find it fun watching RAEG ensue when I play defense with others, although I don't really play often, do I~?

Mhm yepyep, defense is nice. And, er~

"I LOVE DEFEEEEEEEEEEEEENSE!"
 
Generally I prefer having both on my team. I used to be a completely offensive person, until the day I discovered... reflect+light screen+ stealth rock combo. Then I started appreciating defensive types and got myself a Blissey, who is now an invaluable member of my team.
 
to be honest defense because i like steel types as an example my bronzongs moveset: Iron defense, Gyroball, Psychic, Lightscreen. Why bother with reflect when all my pokemon have brill defense already
 
Well the offense and the defense of my pokemon have to both be really high, but I would go for offense. All my pokemon have high attack and sp.attack which enables me to quickly defeat the opposing trainer. If there's no offense there's no battle or victory for you!
 
I've slided on the offensive side for since I started playing pokemon games. For me, I usually teach offense rather than defense, and in that case, I rarely use attacks for defense or lowering the opponent's stats. Really, I go for moves that either increase speed, lower opponent's attack, or lower their accuracy.
 
I prefer pokemon with high speed and power, but when it comes to team making I seam to try level and type weakness before working on attack and defence, I believe that I have a mix of about 65% attacking pokemon and 35% defensive pokemon on my teams, I believe I try to keep it balanced, but if that is really true, I don’t have a clue.
 
To be honest, being the reckless and all out attack battler that I am; I tend to strive more for the offense side of battle.

Though, I have recently developed a love for the moves such as protect and defense curl when training Pokemon for my teams :>
 
I'm about 75% offense, 25% defensive/tactical on this one. Most of my move sets end up fitting in perfectly with this here template:

Move 1 - Move that benefits from STAB
Move 2 - Other move benefiting from STAB
Move 3 - Random WTF move (generally offensive)
Move 4 - Defensive/tactical move
 
Most of the time I go for offense. I use defense near the beginning of the battle, like I use moves such as 'dragon dance' or moves like that. I'm usually random in games, so it isn't a specific one, I guess.
 
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I try to go for both, but i might have more of the defense side any way. My team consists of a shuckle, and a steelix, so i really like defensive pokemon.
 
I'm a more offensive kind of person in anything. I have defensive Pokemon on my team so that if I can't go fullout attack, I'm not slaughtered. I love the feeling of dealing heavy damage before the opponent can strike.
 
id go with both cuz if the opponent is faster than you and has more offense then you take more damage and possibly a 1 hit ko.if you have a lot of attack then the battle will be easier to beat
 
WHEN I'M AT A TYPE ADVANTAGE, I GO FOR OFFENSE. IF I'M SWITCHING BECAUSE OF A TYPE DISADVANTAGE, I WORRY ABOUT DEFENSE AND WHETHER OR NOT i can survive the possible hit.
 
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