Hi guys. I wanted to put together a mini guide for players who already have a great understanding of the game. The purpose of this guide is to expand on player’s existing knowledge and advance them to the next PvP tier, whether it’s from top 100 to 50 or even top 25 to top 10. As a player you can take or leave these tips. I’m not up for disputing anything and I acknowledge that there are different ways of playing and teambuilding. If you find them helpful let me know in the comments below.
Some tips will expand on previous ones of this same post. I hope that this thread will help players become more creative. To illustrate points, I have I used examples from top players in the community. Here we go.
1. Tier Fluidity both in game and team building.
Understand that the tier list is fluid. This is not simply in reference to the patches, needs, buffs, new releases etc. but with each turn taken during your match. A monster’s effectiveness is always situational. For example Duscy with a Cobra on the field, is no long S tier. A monster such as Centurion with no targets, is no longer S tier. This is already obvious to most players within the matches, but not within the team building processes. An excellent player will see a monsters full potential, because they look at how they can maximise that monsters potential. For example, if you build the team around the monster, how effective can it be? One of my favourite all time players who has mastered this is @Unown , who proved this with Onigeist. A B rated monster could potentially be A or S tier, if it has the right support to unlock its full potential. Try to judge a monster by its maximum potential and then evaluate how easy it is to create those conditions when you’re team building. Always consider, how can I abuse this passive/ move? If you’re a F2P with limited sweepers, maximise them and try to build the team around them.
2. Deadweight.
Following on from this, top players understand that they should create deadweight in the enemy team. If you’re running poison, you can probably leave the sleeper monster, the duscy, the valzareign etc. If a shadowyrm has no protectors or sleep to kill leave it there. Keep the opponent running at 75% or even 50% efficiency. Most top players know this, although I still see some top 50 players killing enemy deadweight off. Moving on from this, my actual point here is that the top 10 players will usually have a way to remove their deadweight! This is absolutely key to maintaining 100% efficiency. @ziter and Josuinho are two players who are fantastic at this. Ziter often running Geomagnus and Josuinho with Voidress.
3. Timing
Don’t be afraid of allowing the opponent to kill a monster or two, if it means that the timing of the next monsters come in suit you. In a game against @Josuinho , I once had an incoming Mal, which if it landed would have won me the game. He stopped killing, actually killed 2 or 3 of his monsters himself, just to get his Sakura onto the field and handle the stun.
4. Reversal monsters
I like to categorise monsters by their purpose, as opposed to by letters. The community usually does this with “sweepers” and “support mons”. I like to expand this further, as this helps to understand each monster’s role in the game. An example is the category of “reversal monsters”. Put simply, monsters who can come in and turn the game around when you’re losing. @Mr.X is probably the master of this. He understands that once his frontline and follow up is gone, he might be on the back foot and has monsters to put the game back in his control. Examples of Reversal monsters are
Dolph - diamonds to slow the enemy attacks
Mal and sober - Tranquillising entrance
Froggie - shielding
Deathgazer - brings you turns.
Magmarinus - kills 2 mons at quick speed.
Inferno - same as Magma
5. Front line
I don’t care what the meta is, your frontline should always have a defence /answer to stun, sleep (OoO) and also consider high speed FLs. OoO is rare at the moment given the current meta and so many players have stun covered in their frontline, that stun in 5th is rare and then some players don’t protect themselves against one of them. And 9 out of 10 times it’s ok! But you know what? That 1 out of 10 moment is the difference between a top player and a top 10 player.
6. Frontline focus and the meta
Front lines will either go one of two ways. Some players focus on what they want to do and try to execute it, others focus on what they think the opponent/ meta will bring and look to counter. Personally I prefer the former, because you don’t know what every opponent will run, no matter how strong the meta is. Focus on yourself and try to anticipate what the counters will be. Soft counter the meta, but don’t hard counter it, because again, those 2 or 3 teams out of 10 which aren’t running the meta, are what’s separating you from being a top player to a top 10. You do need to consider the meta though, so if your FL really needs 3 out 4 mons to be specific, but there is some flexibility with the 4th, take that into account and adapt accordingly. Sometimes this can simply be switching something for its elemental equivalent.
7. It’s not just the meta…
You also need to think about the common counter to the meta as well. @ItsSherlock aka Sherlock is a great player who understands this. We were talking before and I had mentioned that after AP spam a poison meta will begin to surface. Acknowledging that, he also stated that many people will panic hard counter the poison meta. This is why the point above (number 6) is so important. Don’t simply hard counter a meta, soft counter it. Sherlock ran OoO last PvP and tore through the players who were hard countering. He also knew that like I mentioned in point 5, lots of players wouldn’t even bother to protect against it, thinking no one would dream of running OoO.
8. Monster pair combos.
I’m a massive fan of 2 monster combos, because you’re not putting all the eggs in one basket. Elaborating on point 1, the right 2 monsters together can raise each other’s rating on the tier scale. Also it means that if one gets to taken out, you don’t have the deadweight of a 3 monster combo and per my second point. Some 2 monster combos I like are
Novadrake and Chrome. Chrome clears stun protection, Nova stuns, Chrome accelerates and now the opponent is in trouble.
Flocco and Oakthulu. Flocco lowes the enemies health enough for Oak to one shot 2 monsters.
Hellfox and Diamonoid. Run diamond after it, now the opponent is forced into attacking the Hellfox because if the diamond comes in, its going to get charged and result in 2 kills, plus the passive damage.
What are your favourite 2 monster combos?
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That’s it from me. I do hope you found this useful. If you did, let me know in the comments below 
I hope this gives people more knowledge to create more innovative teams and further understand that of the player’s around them. Go through your entire team, ask yourself, what is this monsters purpose? If it does not fulfil a purpose or contribute towards the main aim of your team / strategy. What is it even doing there?
Remember that you might not have a collection as good as other players, but you can compensate for this with your team building.
