This is a really dumb question, but not necessarily a simple one. Sorry in advance for how shitty it is.
How does one ("one" being "me", so "how does me") play offensively?
I'm mostly into the theorymon and the discussions, less so the actual playing. But all the way since gen 4, when I have played I've always gravitated towards heavier 'mons; balance, or bulky offense, or even semi-stall. But I'm terrible at playing offensively or with entirely offensive Pokemon. Sacking things, and knowing when to do it early on, or forcing switches on 'mons so Weavile or Bisharp can set up SD and not have to switch out immediately afterwards. Or just die to whatever I tried to predict a switch on. I've a competition going on IRL in three weeks that I do every year and it's the one time of the year where I actually make any kind of effort, and I'd like to use a darkspam team with those guys ^. But I can't get it off the ground. Like, double switches, sure, I do those, although I'm not always sure I did it for the right reasons. Crutches like slow voltturns from Rotom or Screens from Klefki are obvously easy enough to use. But any time I try to use just regular offensive strategies I just end up getting my frailer 'mons killed. Last time I tried anything offensive, I used a MLop/Bisharp/Gengar/Slowbro/Clef/Heatran team from the RMT forum, and it was just a disaster. Everything did so little and died so fast, sans the bulkier half, which had to carry my mistakes. Bleh, this is embarrassing. But, like, what's the change in mindset needed to go from taking hits and denying momentum to dealing them and taking it?