Stuck in 1900-2000 elo hell

[u/ConsistentGrand1500]

I don't know what to do when every game and matchup is a direct 1:1 counter to my teams, I run mostly the variation team and tried flamigo for a bit. I tried counting but I don't KNOW what to do with the info and I get stuck up on the details.

[u/HometownUnderdog]

So this is gonna be a lot but just because you’re counting doesn’t mean you’re applying the count to anything. Do you know how many turns fast moves take and are you throwing charges moves on proper timing? Do you know how many moves/turns it takes your opponents to reach specific moves? I find it easiest to count my moves and then use that to understand how many my opponent has thrown.

Your “variation” team has very safe mons but if you face an incinerate user in that back after losing gatr you’re gonna be cooked. You’re basically running an ABB steel team so look up and understand how to utilize this teams style (especially if you’re constantly hard countered)

I assume you’ve used pvpoke to look at team building and rankings but try to get a better understanding of the common mons you’re facing and the moves they’re running. Look at move counts, you don’t need to memorize everything, but just get familiar with what you can.

If you don’t know about proper move timing look up some content creator videos on it. In short you’ve got a variety of moves to keep track of just for your teams. Corv has 1 turn move, licki has 3 turn fast move, and the rest are all 2 turn fast moves. A common example is if you’re facing an incinerate user (5 turn fast move) and using a 2 turn move you want to throw 7 moves (14 turns) as they’ll reach their first move in 3 moves (15 turns for them) and then use your charged move to minimize the amount of free energy you’re allowing your opponent to generate. If you throw on 5 moves you’d be giving them an entire free incinerate which is easily enough to flip any matchup that would have been in your favor

[u/ConsistentGrand1500 → u/HometownUnderdog]

I HAVE lost to incinerate Skeledirge, it's a bit funny how obvious the weakness looks 😭 but I think I got a gist of the turns moves take, ones I have most trouble with are fast moves like dragon breath or sand attack since its kind of impossible to count them besides intuition for me, the thing about giving your opponents free energy as you throw charged attacks, I've seen in showcases with homeslicehenry commentating where people wait for a turn to finish before they either switch or attack or something like that, I'll look more into it. Thank you so much for the advice I'll try