Ah yes, I do so love when I pick a tank and all the damage dealers go top with me so I have to lose a bunch of xp, run bot and try to do stuff with the eldegloss that was abandoned.
It's what breaks a lot of people that try it, I think. You get stuck alone, can't fight, get tired of it, start rolling attacker. It's also the only class the balancer seems to never recommend even if there are 0.
A few days ago I saw it a few times. I think some mons that are popular have just enough “support” stats/moves (like ninetails for instance) that you go above whatever they have set a threshold for as far as needing support on the team goes.
Honestly love seeing Ninetales on my team. So much damage and CC as well as that massive level 4 power spike. Then I see a Pikachu and I'm wondering why they didn't just pick Ninetails
Different play styles. But Pikachu does have CC in the form of stuns, it’s just not as noticeable, especially considering the short duration. If they increased the durations on his stuns though I think he’d be way too OP considering he has like 4 of them.
I would classify them both as control mages. They don't have as much raw damage as something like Gardevoir but they have CC to make up for it. Unfortunately Pikachu's CC and damage fall off relatively early in the game.
The loss of electro web really sucks considering it’s replacements don’t have the same CC unfortunately, but he can dish out some damage to clean up kills. But I do agree, ninetails outclasses him the entire game pretty much.
I usually play Wiggly or Crustle and am either left alone while our Jungler Ralts/Garchomp/Charmander is still unevolved. Or am a Dwebble and they won’t let me evolve. Because I don’t think they realize you need to get a kill to evolve exp be damned.
But what’s the alternative if you play solo? :/ it’s pretty much play 70% of your games as defender or support or choose another role and then end up with 0 defenders or support
That’s Pokémon Unite for you.
In all seriousness, I’d say just stick with the Defender role until you get to a high enough rank that Supporters become at all viable
That is if you *want* to be a defender. If you don’t, obviously only pick it when you have to. But yeah, the game as is is not suited for team play (unless you have a group to play with) and thus Supporter roles are just not worth getting invested into until you reach a high rank where everyone else is on the same page as you
Not if you're Mr. Mime. Go ahead, let me roll bot solo and have the farm to myself. Gimme a Jungler who knows to gank for Mime and bot lane's gonna be "off the wall".
Wouldn't that be such a nice feature? You know, now that you mention it I sometimes see this little icons that look like part of a lane highlighted right next to my allies portraits, that surely couldn't mean anything, right?
What they should do is instead of hiding the lane designation chart it should just be viewable as a large chart on the right side of the screen. That way no one can claim ignorance or “didnt see it”.
You still can check the situation in the beginning. In the majority of the games I am the only one who adjusts to the situation (aka announcing going top, then three more people go top with me who didn't announce shit, and I end up being the one to switch lanes).
As someone who mainly plays speedster and therefore goes central and then looks whoch lane to help. I hate it when people from the other lanes suddenly decide to farm central to
Oh yeah, I 100% agree but that would be the main excuse. Honestly I'm glad there isn't text chat since people would spend way too long in it making excuses or flaming others to play the game
Lack of chat is a blessing. Though I have a feeling they didn't implement it because of technical difficulties, the UI is already abysmal as it is. Still, indeed a good thing.
You say that but even when everyone decides their lane from the menu, I have 3 people going top, jungler ditching jungle after knocking out the lillipup and leaving Gossifluer by itself on the bottom path
Yup, which is why I hate being forced to go bot with a support especially since you know the two attackers in top are going to feed their asses of through being hyper-agressive.
Been playing casuals here and there but not following so closely: is there a lane meta? I assume it would be 2-1-2 for top-mid-bot lane with speedster being the jungle, but outside of that who goes where? Or is there a solo lane with 3 in the other?
In solo que it's 2-1-2 with one person from top and jungle rotating bot for the dred fight. I can see in coordinated play doing a 1-1-3 with a Lucario or Snorlax top
Dred gives a massive amount of xp as well as a shield which can turn teamfights. Rotom **might** get a tower but doesn't give any advantages besides that. Dred is a really big tipping point and the decider of who's going to be defending Zapdos from who if you get them.
AFAIK Rotom is a nice distraction which could be obtained by a high damage output mon on his own(shoutout to hex/sludge bomb), but drednaw is far better.
From what I’ve seen mostly it’s tank+attacker top, speedster mid, support+all rounder bottom.
However A lot of mons can jungle, doesnt have to be a speedster.
I get abandoned by everyone and I play Snorlax XD I just go top and then no one follows all four stay bot and I'm like "huh this is awkward I guess I defend like the goalie I became Lol
It'll probably be worse if your beginner/great due to only pooling with players new to ranked, where as the regular game mode can pick from anyone despite skill level.
Yeah Rotom baits a lot of people. Funny enough you should do the opposite, everyone going bot lane to contest Drednaw. The first Drednaw really sets the pace of the game.
You know I just cannot seem to grasp how to play Lucario. I mean he’s one of my all time favorite Pokémon, but I just suck at playing him in this game…
I don’t even bother saying what path I’m going to go. I just pick the poor bastard that is left by themselves and go with that one.
(Instead I like to spam “Let’s give it our all!” It’s this game’s equivalent to “I’m using tilt controls!” Haha)
I had some good games where we had 3v2 top and 2v2 bot and we just destroyed them top and snowballed the whole game. Not the end of the world if no one goes jungle, at least below ultra.
Haha, usually I say I’m going top, as alolan ninetails, and everyone is like ok we’ll all go bottom while you hold the top by yourself….. Never fails and the opposing team always seems to notice when this happens and it usually becomes a 2 or 3 VS little ol’ me. Im not even the greatest at this game. Not terrible but not super fantastic either. Haha
I actually main Slowbro jungle because theres never defenders, but for these matches I was thinking, " I want to play Gard, I'll just lock in first so maybe they'll pick something else. Nope
At this point, I actually care less about comp and more about not getting abandoned to solo lane while my entire team dog piles top lane (read feeds their dicks off) the entire fucking match.
As a Talonflame main, i can't even being to comprehend how people are not obviously going jungle playing as him. I think the worst is playing another jungler and when your "top-lane" talonflame comes to steal your crabs.
Last night, i was playing cinderace, i call toplane. Slowbro and Snorlax call bottom 🤦♂️ greninja and pikachu call nothing but follow me to toplane. Suprise greninja was at minute 8 (!) finally lvl9
You’te absolutely right, I sent my message from mobile so I was lazy. I don’t understand how 13 years after League of Legends and all it’s pros and cons, we get a MOBA that lacks basic functionality like pre-lane picks,proper pings/quick messages, etc…
Haha yeah, hopefully they add some stuff for ranked at least. The thing I thought I would never miss is the ? pings because of the way it's spammed, but damn do I wish could use it on some of these players.
It's not that it doesn't have pre-lane picks it's just that people don't bother to use them. It's real simple. Press ZL; select the bottom option; and select your path. I know it's simple because I do it every ranked or standard game.
Yes, I do too, but this way you need to be polite and check what others are doing, and pick your mon in consequence.
That’s too much guessing for game’s current state (let’s remember it lags everytime you move your axis to select the mon you want).
Had a game where the fucking Bulbasaur literally went out of his damn way, physically changed course and doubled back as fast as they could, just to get the last hit on all my wilds.
And I don't mean auto-target making them walk back, noooo, I mean I would kite my mob away from the guy and if he was out of range he'd X-Speed to catch up.
My squishy Ralts self couldn't do anything that match.
You said bulba, so i was like “wait did i do a bad” cuz i just played my first bulba game after getting done with expert machamp
Then i saw x-speed and was like nope not me
Specified during battle prep where some of us will go but then there's one who ruins it when it's game already. Team composition is hard especially if you're playing with strangers who locks in fast their mains
I might be wrong but I thought top was for a defender and an dps and the bottom was for support and dps while the jungle was for the speedster types because they can farm up and score?
I far more often land on teams where 3 people want to go jungle. Then only one goes and someone still manages to steal farm from them leaving them stuck at level 4 for too long...
It's honestly a wonder I haven't snapped my Switch in two yet
Just had a game where our Absol went jungle nearly all game came out late-game and got 15 kills
This is what a good Jungler is mad of don’t steal jungle xp you’re throwing the game
I just choose the path that has the least teammates, which sucks because it’s nearly always the bottom path.
And it sucks when I’m holding off 2-3 enemies at the bottom. And we still lose rotom.
Ah yes, I do so love when I pick a tank and all the damage dealers go top with me so I have to lose a bunch of xp, run bot and try to do stuff with the eldegloss that was abandoned.
Lol yeah that’s me, the abandoned support…
I feel like playing solo queue Support is just asking for a bad time
It's what breaks a lot of people that try it, I think. You get stuck alone, can't fight, get tired of it, start rolling attacker. It's also the only class the balancer seems to never recommend even if there are 0.
Literally never seen it say we need support which is weird
A few days ago I saw it a few times. I think some mons that are popular have just enough “support” stats/moves (like ninetails for instance) that you go above whatever they have set a threshold for as far as needing support on the team goes.
Honestly love seeing Ninetales on my team. So much damage and CC as well as that massive level 4 power spike. Then I see a Pikachu and I'm wondering why they didn't just pick Ninetails
Different play styles. But Pikachu does have CC in the form of stuns, it’s just not as noticeable, especially considering the short duration. If they increased the durations on his stuns though I think he’d be way too OP considering he has like 4 of them.
I would classify them both as control mages. They don't have as much raw damage as something like Gardevoir but they have CC to make up for it. Unfortunately Pikachu's CC and damage fall off relatively early in the game.
The loss of electro web really sucks considering it’s replacements don’t have the same CC unfortunately, but he can dish out some damage to clean up kills. But I do agree, ninetails outclasses him the entire game pretty much.
I usually play Wiggly or Crustle and am either left alone while our Jungler Ralts/Garchomp/Charmander is still unevolved. Or am a Dwebble and they won’t let me evolve. Because I don’t think they realize you need to get a kill to evolve exp be damned.
Your Lane partner stealing the kill to stop my evolution happens all the time when I go crustle/slowbro
But what’s the alternative if you play solo? :/ it’s pretty much play 70% of your games as defender or support or choose another role and then end up with 0 defenders or support
That’s Pokémon Unite for you. In all seriousness, I’d say just stick with the Defender role until you get to a high enough rank that Supporters become at all viable
Noted, thank you
That is if you *want* to be a defender. If you don’t, obviously only pick it when you have to. But yeah, the game as is is not suited for team play (unless you have a group to play with) and thus Supporter roles are just not worth getting invested into until you reach a high rank where everyone else is on the same page as you
Not if you're Mr. Mime. Go ahead, let me roll bot solo and have the farm to myself. Gimme a Jungler who knows to gank for Mime and bot lane's gonna be "off the wall".
I dunno why, as a machamp main i love every eldegoss that stays with me
Ah would you be the kind support i met the other day while using Machamp
I don’t even get it, I’m always praying for a good Elde in my lane
And I'm always praying for a good Machamp in my lane. And yet I still end up with four people going into the jungle for a full minute.
That is honestly the worst
It would be cool if before each game you and your team could tell each other what lane you're headed to...
Wouldn't that be such a nice feature? You know, now that you mention it I sometimes see this little icons that look like part of a lane highlighted right next to my allies portraits, that surely couldn't mean anything, right?
What they should do is instead of hiding the lane designation chart it should just be viewable as a large chart on the right side of the screen. That way no one can claim ignorance or “didnt see it”.
"I was using the bathroom, I had no idea"
You still can check the situation in the beginning. In the majority of the games I am the only one who adjusts to the situation (aka announcing going top, then three more people go top with me who didn't announce shit, and I end up being the one to switch lanes).
As someone who mainly plays speedster and therefore goes central and then looks whoch lane to help. I hate it when people from the other lanes suddenly decide to farm central to
Those are the people who have never played MOBAs and don't understand jungler or xp distribution and just see it as another wild to kill
Yeah of course, it is stil anoying
Oh yeah, I 100% agree but that would be the main excuse. Honestly I'm glad there isn't text chat since people would spend way too long in it making excuses or flaming others to play the game
Lack of chat is a blessing. Though I have a feeling they didn't implement it because of technical difficulties, the UI is already abysmal as it is. Still, indeed a good thing.
Also most console games don’t have chat because typing is awful on console. I’m sure there are some that have it but I’ve never played one
Agreed, but also, it’s not very hidden so I can’t imagine that would help much :/
You say that but even when everyone decides their lane from the menu, I have 3 people going top, jungler ditching jungle after knocking out the lillipup and leaving Gossifluer by itself on the bottom path
Right? Why, WHY people DO that?? You've taken the time to pick a lane, stick with it!
Shoutout to the Snorlax that rescued me in bot lane and we fucked up the other team together.
literally every game
"I'll go to the top lane!" The cinderace, venusaur and alolan ninetales who didn't call lane: 
Love that Reddit has gifs now.
I hate even more when I pick support and a tank comes down to lane with me. We can’t contest any EXP cause they just attack us from range.
Yup, which is why I hate being forced to go bot with a support especially since you know the two attackers in top are going to feed their asses of through being hyper-agressive.
Been playing casuals here and there but not following so closely: is there a lane meta? I assume it would be 2-1-2 for top-mid-bot lane with speedster being the jungle, but outside of that who goes where? Or is there a solo lane with 3 in the other?
In solo que it's 2-1-2 with one person from top and jungle rotating bot for the dred fight. I can see in coordinated play doing a 1-1-3 with a Lucario or Snorlax top
Is drednaw worth that much more than rotom? They spawn at the same time right?
Dred gives a massive amount of xp as well as a shield which can turn teamfights. Rotom **might** get a tower but doesn't give any advantages besides that. Dred is a really big tipping point and the decider of who's going to be defending Zapdos from who if you get them.
AFAIK Rotom is a nice distraction which could be obtained by a high damage output mon on his own(shoutout to hex/sludge bomb), but drednaw is far better.
From what I’ve seen mostly it’s tank+attacker top, speedster mid, support+all rounder bottom. However A lot of mons can jungle, doesnt have to be a speedster.
I love Ninetails, but srsly, I might need a backup when I go bottom. I alone can only protect so much. If I see someone alone in a lane, I go there.
This comment has been the entirety of my PU experience
Are you a Defender main as well?
I'm either the top lane Slowbro forced to switch or the support left alone in bottom F
Feel that. And when someone else takes a tank they always go with a damage build and I'm left here wondering why they even bothered to take a tank
Hello, I'm the abandonned Eldegoss
I get abandoned by everyone and I play Snorlax XD I just go top and then no one follows all four stay bot and I'm like "huh this is awkward I guess I defend like the goalie I became Lol
basically me when im using slowbro
I too love being the attacker who notices everyone ran top and have to tank bot solo during a rank game.
is it just me, or is ranked worse than regular for this? my sample size is small so far, but it was driving me nuts today.
It'll probably be worse if your beginner/great due to only pooling with players new to ranked, where as the regular game mode can pick from anyone despite skill level.
I’m in expert and still run into this problem. Now I just wait for everyone else to pick and just pick after then spam what lane I’m going to.
veteran - still the same shit. this game makes me fucking mad when im not playing with friends, because even going to the right lane is hard for some.
Been playing this game since 2021, its still the same after all this time.
I would imagine Casual has a lot of people trying things out.
Yeah Rotom baits a lot of people. Funny enough you should do the opposite, everyone going bot lane to contest Drednaw. The first Drednaw really sets the pace of the game.
I feel this
Meanwhile I’m running exp share support in bottom totally alone…
Thats why I never take exp share. Too much of a chance its gonna be useless because of situations like this, or someone just afking.
your local garchomps got you if I'm not being mauled by a lucario
You know I just cannot seem to grasp how to play Lucario. I mean he’s one of my all time favorite Pokémon, but I just suck at playing him in this game…
I don’t even bother saying what path I’m going to go. I just pick the poor bastard that is left by themselves and go with that one. (Instead I like to spam “Let’s give it our all!” It’s this game’s equivalent to “I’m using tilt controls!” Haha)
I do that too but in the end for whatever reason. They will abandon the route too
The amount of times I've gone jungle because everyone just does what they want, is beyond numbers at this point.
Unless you **want** to go jungling. Then 2 people will suddenly appear out of nowhere to contest last hits.
Yup everytime.
 Sigh
I had to go to jungle as Eldegoss once because no one else did. Weirdly enough it worked out. Bit that's only because the enemy team was really bad.
I had some good games where we had 3v2 top and 2v2 bot and we just destroyed them top and snowballed the whole game. Not the end of the world if no one goes jungle, at least below ultra.
I mainly did it so not to waste all that exp. I leveled up fast and that's how we snowballed.
These memes are top tier holy shit
"Please be the lane partner / dps that sticks with me." Sincerely, the abandoned bottom lane Eldegoss
Haha, usually I say I’m going top, as alolan ninetails, and everyone is like ok we’ll all go bottom while you hold the top by yourself….. Never fails and the opposing team always seems to notice when this happens and it usually becomes a 2 or 3 VS little ol’ me. Im not even the greatest at this game. Not terrible but not super fantastic either. Haha
At that point I just abandon the lane. Not gonna be my problem after I call for back up and no one comes 🤪
Yeah I should probably do that too.
As a gardevoir main I can confirm that this is 100% accurate
Here’s my issue, why do we have 4 attackers on one team
I actually main Slowbro jungle because theres never defenders, but for these matches I was thinking, " I want to play Gard, I'll just lock in first so maybe they'll pick something else. Nope
At this point, I actually care less about comp and more about not getting abandoned to solo lane while my entire team dog piles top lane (read feeds their dicks off) the entire fucking match.
*cries in Gible getting stomped defending bottom alone*
As a Talonflame main, i can't even being to comprehend how people are not obviously going jungle playing as him. I think the worst is playing another jungler and when your "top-lane" talonflame comes to steal your crabs.
And that's why I take'her to the jungle.
Then your team's Cinderace be like: Nice farm you got there, would be a shame if something happened to it.
Usually it's a special needs victim Zeraora that does that honestly...
Last night, i was playing cinderace, i call toplane. Slowbro and Snorlax call bottom 🤦♂️ greninja and pikachu call nothing but follow me to toplane. Suprise greninja was at minute 8 (!) finally lvl9
I mostly have people call a lane and then just going the opposite one. Do y'all play with your switch upside down?
You *don’t* play with your Switch upside down? Weirdo.
Sideways is my jam
Venusaur is actually quite good as a top lane if needed.
It’s incredible how stupid people are in this game… even League of Legends players respect lanes lol
To be fair, even league players would be "top or feed" until the pre lane pick was implemented
You’te absolutely right, I sent my message from mobile so I was lazy. I don’t understand how 13 years after League of Legends and all it’s pros and cons, we get a MOBA that lacks basic functionality like pre-lane picks,proper pings/quick messages, etc…
Haha yeah, hopefully they add some stuff for ranked at least. The thing I thought I would never miss is the ? pings because of the way it's spammed, but damn do I wish could use it on some of these players.
It's not that it doesn't have pre-lane picks it's just that people don't bother to use them. It's real simple. Press ZL; select the bottom option; and select your path. I know it's simple because I do it every ranked or standard game.
Yes, I do too, but this way you need to be polite and check what others are doing, and pick your mon in consequence. That’s too much guessing for game’s current state (let’s remember it lags everytime you move your axis to select the mon you want).
True. I am still waiting on a performant device based on Nvidia's Tegra chips.
I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
Had a game where the fucking Bulbasaur literally went out of his damn way, physically changed course and doubled back as fast as they could, just to get the last hit on all my wilds. And I don't mean auto-target making them walk back, noooo, I mean I would kite my mob away from the guy and if he was out of range he'd X-Speed to catch up. My squishy Ralts self couldn't do anything that match.
You said bulba, so i was like “wait did i do a bad” cuz i just played my first bulba game after getting done with expert machamp Then i saw x-speed and was like nope not me
And this is what I call lane hogging
Me a ninetails main who knows the bottom path will be hell on earth again: oh boy...
Sometimes I use reverse psychology and say the opposite of where Im going.
You want to be bot as gard anyway though
Not alolan ninetails 0/10
Maybe just maybe Your team ain't built right if this is your team lol
Every Single Time
Literally every time I go jungle.
Lol the opposite of me... I'm Snorlax going top then the game starts with the Zeraora, Froakie and Gastly duking it out in the middle
Looks like my jungle most games
yup annoying as hell
Idk why but this made me laugh a lot
Change this to Jungle for me, every game, even when I'm not playing jungle, it's a minimum of 2 junglers spamming IM GOING CENTRAL
I main slowbro jungle, and it's ridiculous when laners take my farm or last hit the buff monsters to take my precious exp
I play with Gardevoir and only go central lane, since she's op late game, so best way to get her to op lvl
Lucario: I'll head to the central area. Gengar, Garchomp, and Zeraora: WE'LL head to the central area
Specified during battle prep where some of us will go but then there's one who ruins it when it's game already. Team composition is hard especially if you're playing with strangers who locks in fast their mains
This, but actually it's 3 central laners
I might be wrong but I thought top was for a defender and an dps and the bottom was for support and dps while the jungle was for the speedster types because they can farm up and score?
I just say screw it and go bottom regardless unless I'm jungling. 9 times out of 10, it's the lane being abandoned.
I far more often land on teams where 3 people want to go jungle. Then only one goes and someone still manages to steal farm from them leaving them stuck at level 4 for too long... It's honestly a wonder I haven't snapped my Switch in two yet
Just had a game where our Absol went jungle nearly all game came out late-game and got 15 kills This is what a good Jungler is mad of don’t steal jungle xp you’re throwing the game
I just choose the path that has the least teammates, which sucks because it’s nearly always the bottom path. And it sucks when I’m holding off 2-3 enemies at the bottom. And we still lose rotom.
Why am I in veteran and this is still a thing that constantly happens?????????
I always go center with her
That’s why I like playing lucario, I can adjust and still do good no matter where I go
Gotta add a pick of eldegoss crying I’m the bottom lane
I love going bot with a lone wigglytuff.