what's up guys today we're going to be talking about play Styles or more accurately team archetypes technically a play style is how a team is used in practice and an archetype is how a team is structured you could play a stall team the bulkiest archetype like it's a hyper offense the most offensive archetype but it wouldn't go very well that's why play style and archetype are often used interchangeably in the Pokemon Community because there's generally an optimal play style associated with each archetype that being said just to be clear we are disc in archetypes today things like stall hyper offense balance Etc I've seen so many players and viewers get confused or perplexed over what play style their team is or what it should be they say things like pink across I tried to make an offense team but it turned out as more of a balance and things like that in reality many archetype distinctions are blurry and unnecessary to building and battling there are really only three distinct categories you need to understand stall hyper offense and everything in between which we'll call the balance umbrella stall is unique because it almost entirely gives up on offensive Firepower it relies solely upon small damage like status conditions hazards and low damaging moves to win the game a good stall team will sacrifice breaking power for Superior defenses a good stall team will also have a well-arranged series of Pokemon that optimize the team's chances to win slowly but the emphasis is on defense the best teams will frequently face matchups where they cannot do any meaningful damage to the opponent but in such matchups the hope is that the opponent can't break your team either and yours is designed to last the longest hyper offense is unique because it's the only play style that involves sacking Pokemon as part of the standard game plan this is the hard line drawn between hyper offense and offense a hyper offense intends to lose sweepers in order to win the game Pokemon like roaring moon for example Are Meant To Die offense although it will often have to sack Pokemon in practice will not have any Pokemon that are designed to die everything else functions in basically the same way just on a spectrum you use bulk your supporting Pokemon to enable your more offensive or powerful Pokemon to break the difference is to what degree you do these things and that's where we get all these different classifications of balance teams all of these different classifications fundamentally function in the same way a bulky balance team may have four defensive Pokemon and two offensive Pokemon and an offensive team may have four offensive Pokemon and two defensive Pokemon still there's no hard line between how these two archetypes function so why do I draw these hard lines and separate all good teams into these three categories it comes down to two factors intention to break and intention to let Pokemon be ko'ed or sacked if team intends to let Pokemon be koed and intends to break it's hyper offense if a team doesn't intend to break or sack Pokemon it is stall if a team intends to break but not let Pokemon be koed it is under the balance umbrella going all the way from semi- stall to offense and if a team intends to let Pokemon be ko'ed but not break it's just a terrible team that will lose all the time let's take a look at some successful teams that clearly show these lines for first up let's take a look at this famous hydrael stall if you look at this team you notice this hydrael not designed to break definitely not this Blissey not this dondoo no no and no nothing on this team is designed to really pack a-p punch now you do have things that are designed to slowly make progress right like hydrael does have a fairly reasonable base special attack you've got poison sting for status on Claire poison jab and knockoff on gcore spikes on glcore Stealth Rock on Blissey but nothing on this team is made to break it's great if it does but most balanced teams are be able are going to be able to wall this for many many turns and you're okay with that that's why you have other backup plans things like PP stall that's why you're running a 56 PP move like poison sting uh so but yeah the plan here is not to break now we compare this with a famous semi stall and we see something very very different now you have a lot of the same Pokemon a lot of you know hazards and uh a lot of UN aware Pokemon a lot of bulk but we have a Meara here and it's only one you might say well this looks really similar to stall but it's actually quite different because so you've got this Stealth Rock clef AEL spikes glcore a future sight glow King with Chile reception and then this mowar here with four attacks Max attack investment and protan this combination of Pokemon hazards plus knock Meara to remove boots plus future sight support is very very good at getting past any defensive core so this team just intends to have the bulk to last long enough to let meow Scara do its job not forever and it has an intention to break it is meant to bust open defensive cores and that is a huge difference now looking at the difference between hyper offense and offense let's take a look at this ho team so we've got this rombi is this meant to die absolutely get sticky webs up die this glamora is it meant to die yes you medor beam you switch out you I mean sorry you don't switch out you metor beam you're in right you've got this power herb uh it's a one time use item you are in Mana frequently you're not going to switch this out either right you set up tail glow you do damage you die zamazenta same situation this thing has a temporary ability you you're either going for the win or you're dying if you're bringing this in you're typically not going to switch zenta out even this recover Gango often times it probably would be worth just letting it go down since nothing on this team is good at switching into really any attack and then you've got raring Moon here once again classic example of a Pokemon meant to die you switch this out you bring it in it's a lot weaker CU of booster energy generally you switch in Roaring Moon that will be its last time on the battlefield as well as its first time now looking at an offense team we have no recovery moves on this entire team even the sticky web team had a recover Gango now we do have regenerator some would consider recovery but if we look here this is for the most part an offensive team we've got kind of a ton defensive core but the rest of this is designed to really just put on offensive pressure so what's the difference between this and Hy offense well you are not meant to sack these Pokemon you want to preserve their life and you can see that in the way this team is constructed first of all we do have this defensive core here which the hyper offense didn't have but also we have a lot of pivoting moves which makes it easier for these offense teams to switch since it is harder to switch into attacks the more offensive your team gets and the less bulky right we've got Chile reception here U-turn Lando utan Cinder so you see these differences this is a team that is not designed to sack Pokemon and that may all the difference when you compare this to hyper offense if you're wondering where stuff like rain or sun or sticky web is these are all sub archetypes that fall into various categories for example rain and sun are typically offense and sticky web is typically hyper offense I'm not going to discuss any sub archetypes in this video just the major archetype categories before I continue I want to remind you all that your final exam in building and battling 101 is coming up in about a month month subscribe for an additional Five Points and given the past fail rate of this class I think those Five Points could be a big deal now also before we go on I want to clarify that just because there are no hard lines between semi stall and offense and they all fall under that Balan umbrella it doesn't mean there aren't differences to consider when building and playing on this spectrum the main one is going to be game length which influences a lot of other factors bulkier teams are generally going to produce longer games they can stop sweepers with walls but because of those longer games it means their checks en counters must be more solid but switching into to take hits is more manageable which makes momentum and not having any passive Pokemon not as big of a deal more offensive teams will have shorter games they'll have to stop sweepers with offensive pressure checks en counters can be temporary and pivoting moves and momentum and not having passive Pokemon in general is a lot more more important due to this game of length a great way to illustrate this difference is to look at landras and gcore both are commonly used on teams in this balanced range but landras is typically used on more offensively inclined teams while glcore is typically used on more defensively inclined teams on this spectrum landras offers a lot of What offense needs more bulk in the shortterm due to intimidate despite not being able to wall threats as long as gcore it also doesn't have to run protect like gcore allowing landras to fit U-turn easier and as we discussed pivoting moves are very helpful for offensively inclined teams on the other hand bulkier teams will want a more reliable switch into threats like raging bolts King Gambit and Heatran making gcore a better option gcore can switch into these threats many times whereas landras can typically only do so once or twice keep in mind that these rules I'm discussing apply only in the range of semi- stala offense hyper offense and stall break a lot of rules typically associated with the Spectrum which is why I draw a hard line between hyper offense stall and the archetypes you see here there are many other smaller factors that are different as well of teams on this spectrum such as temporary items like booster energy and air balloon being more acceptable to run on more offensive teams a temporary item goes well with a shorter game since you won't suffer the consequence of that item being gone as long as you would in a drawn out game another example is that removal such as Cinder Court change is typically better on offensive teams rather than bulky teams since Court change is often stronger in shorter games where the opponent won't have a chance to reset hazards or will lose a lot of momentum doing so now you know about the three main archetypes but what does this mean for you how will this concept help make you a better player so this concept is most helpful in team building and the big lesson is to not worry about whether your team is a bulky offense balance or bulky balance When You're Building let the team go where it wants to go add the Pokemon that seem like they would fit well and as long as you don't stray across the lines of hyper offense Pokemon or stall Pokemon you're going to be okay if you do cross these lines though you'll be in big trouble having Pokemon that you're meant to sack like roaring Moon along with balance Pokemon that art meant to be sacked or even worse alongside passive stall Pokemon like dondoo on the same team is a recipe for disaster when I say they're M when I tell someone their team is bad because they're mixing play Styles this is what I've mean they've crossed those lines within the same team you still should consider the small difference we discussed caused by differences in game length you don't want to put a cinder race as your only removal if you're running a hazard weak bulky balance that being said if you're stressing out about whether a team is a bulky balance or a bulky offense it really doesn't matter if the team is defensively and offensively comfortable with the length of games it typically generates and it performs well into testing you don't have to worry about it being a a particular archetype the purpose of all these classifications like bulky offense bulky balance semi- stall is just to offer additional ways to sort Balan teams since it makes up such a large portion of teams created it doesn't mean anything significant about how the team should be built or played good luck in your team building and battling and remember you really only need to worry about three archetypes have a great day and I'll see you guys next time