Favorite Generation for Competitive Battling

I'd have to agree with [member='Nate'], Gen VI introduced some Pokémon who's viability in competitive play is imperative. Some names that come to mind, for me, are Staraptor, Gastrodon, Drifblim, Lopunny, Garchomp, Lucario, Weavile, Magnezone, Togekiss, Gliscor, Gallade, Dusknoir and Rotom, not counting legendaries.

 

For me, Gen V is my favorite. Even though it had Politoed and perma-rain, I didn't find it to be a bad thing, since I enjoyed weather wars, due to how it it enabled some creativity on how to use the weather you have, and what weather your opponent potentially has. Team from that time could be easily dived to 5 categories, Rain, Sun, Sand, Balanced, and Anti-Weather. Rain and Sand both had 3 different playstyles too, Stall, Balanced and HO, while Sun commonly only had Balanced and HO. Balanced teams are quite self-explanatory, but all of them had Pokémon that could either benefit from a weather, or beat it, Gastrodon being a good example of this. Anti-Weather is also easy to explain. The core idea was to beat weather teams, and in some cases, get rid of their weather completely with Hail, since the biggest reason to use Hail was to get rid of your opponents weather. The teams were usually either Balanced or Stall.

I can understand if someone doesn't like Gen V, since the metagame revolved around the weather wars, but I find Gen VI to be worse, since the metagame revolves around the Megas, and most of them are offensive, causing most of the teams being HO or Balanced. Stall is something that you don't see often due to many strong Pokémon that can almost single-handedly beat Stall, like Mega Heracross and Mega Sableye. I can also understand if there are some who says that this is good thing, due to how they find Stall to be a boring strategy, even though it is the one that takes the most skill to use well.

 

Generation V. Trying to find things to combat all the weather teams was pretty fun imo

 

Third Generation. No Stealth Rocks, Lando-T, Talonfame, Megas, etc. It also feels like you need to be creative with your set to win in Gen 3 battles.

I would have said Gen 1, only because I think the mechanics are quite funny. Everyone should know the terror of Gen 1 Wrap Dragonite.

 

The cleanest tier in the history of history was late XY/early-ORAS UU no scald. But as far as gens go, I'd say it's a tie between Gen 4 and Gen 6 for me. Especially as an Ubers player, Gen 6 Ubers is prolly the best Ubers yet, it's really balanced with the exception of pdon, but even then, it still has viable checks.

The reason why a lot of Gen 4 strategies don't translate over is the general powercreep with every new generation and the fact that team preview became a thing, so building shifted in a different direction. In terms of balance, I loved Gen 4 OU's metagame.

I also like Gen 6's OU metagame, which at tournament levels is dominated by bulky offense, balance, and semi-stall. I disagree with Nairus as far as stall taking the most skill to use, but it definitely is the strat that takes the most skill to build. A good Gen 6 stall team can still flatten the typical HO team (bulky chomp + 5), but it runs into issues with balance, something that stall didn't really have issues with in past gens and does now. Which is why most people are saying this is the death of stall, because the most commonly used strat now has hard counters to it, but it just means that stall players need to be comfortable with using different build styles and strats to get the job done.