Resource Play-Style Analysis

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approuvé par Gary, based off ru's ver

~SM OU Play-Style Analysis~
art soon™

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This thread will be a "hub" if you will to provide resources for the ever changing play-styles in sm ou, giving people a general idea on how to use the given play-style effectively, some useful teambuilding blurbs and guides on building around team archetypes (stall, rain etc). Anyone here is free post their thoughts, advice or opinions on certain play-styles and it'll most likely be archived for others to check out, also if you have any questions about any sort of team archetypes or play-styles, don't be afraid to ask!

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Archive

General Rain Post
General Stall Post
 
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~Rain Analysis~


Rain offence has always been a potent play-style throughout the generations, usually appealing as a hyper offensive, quick paced play-style. Your overall goal with rain is to clean your opponents team as fast and efficiently as you can without having to play as reserved as you might normally. Rain is usually composed as: Rain Setter / 2 or 3 Rain abusers / wallbreaker for rain / hazard setter
which brings onto the next point.


The Common Faces
sprites are clickable for sets!

- Pelipper is the primary Rain setter in the tier, bearing decent defence and having access to great utility moves such as Defog to provide role compression or U-turn, providing much more momentum for its teammates. Thanks to Drizzle giving it much more powerful STAB attacks and 100% accurate Hurricanes, it has the options to run a more offensive set to hit foes as hard as possible.

- Kingdra is arguable rain's best wincon. Outrunning all of the non-scarfed meta as well as some scarfers in the rain, hammering a lot of unresisted foes with it's choice specs boosted STAB attacks in the rain making it one of rain's greatest assets.

- Mega-Swampert is rain's premier mega of choice, granting an electric immunity whilst being a viable, strong physical attacker that Rain generally lacked before without having to resort to Kabutops. Also taking on bulky Grass-types more efficiently in comparison to Kingdra, which risks the 50/50s of switches with being choiced locked and taking wearing down common rain checks as well.

- Ash-Greninja's already sky high special attack stat in tandem with Drizzle boost from rain boosts its Water-STAB to ridiculously powerful levels makes it one of Rain's top threats, also having priority in Water Shuriken is extremely useful for common revengers whilst dealing hefty damage.

- Keldeo offers great offensive coverage for rain, hitting Ferrothorn super-effectively with powerful STAB and having the room in its movepool to run useful coverage such as Hidden Power Electric for bulky Waters like Mantine. And much like the others, rain makes its Water STAB exceedingly powerful.


It is worth noting a sizeable amount of other mons like Omastar and Kabutops can also be some of Rains predominant abusers, but the Kingdra, Mega-Per and Keldeo are the most effective and have seen the most usage recently.

Checks & Counters
clickable too :3

- Bulky Grass-types like Ferrothorn, Tangrowth, Amoonguss or Mega-Venu are notable nuisances towards rain, resisting their most spammable Water-type attacks and either cripple them with status ailments, chip away at foes in tandem with leech seed or hit them with super-effective STAB.

- Mons that have access to weather somewhat invalidates rain as a whole, for example, Alolan-Ninetales can come in and nullify speed boosts from rain thanks to Swift Swim and set up Aurora Veil to take hit more efficiently while also firing off super-effective Freeze Drys to deal massive damage to the rain abusers. Charizard-Y can weaken Water-type attacks, lessening their damage output from STAB and utilising Solar Beam to exploit them, Tyranitar can also change the weather and invalidate Drizzle's affect to somewhat hinder the team but should be weary of the strong Water STAB.

- Bulky Waters can tank practically any hit Kingdra or Swampert throw their way, with Mantine and Gastrodon being immune to Water-type attacks, regaining it's health whenever it's hit by one, can stall them out with Toxic + Recover. While Alomamola isn't immune to Water-type attacks, it can still take most hits and do the same as the others by Toxic stalling.

- Scarf Kartana, gives rain an incredibly hard time, outrunning Mega-Swampert in rain, hitting Ferrothorn super-effectively in tandem with STAB, outrunning all the tapus and taking advantage of Rain weakening Fire-type attacks, lessening the damage output of any Fire coverage the team might be holding.

Teammates for Rain
guess what? clickable oo

- Tapu Koko + Hawlucha synergies extremely well with each and wth rain. Koko can partner well with Pelipper providing a VolTurn core, also certain sets being tailored to take on bulky Grass-types like Tangrowth or Amoonguss with Mean Look + Tapunium Z, or just a more offensive set for 100% accurate Thunders to break through the bulky Waters that rain heavily struggles against. Hawlucha takes advantage of Electric Terrain with Electric Seed to obtain +1 defence, burning an item for unburden. In addition to this Hawlucha deals with pessimistic Steel or Grass-types like Ferro, Tang, Kartana, Bulu, Mega -Venu and Amoonguss effectively with its respectable STAB attacks.

- Steel-types that are notably weak to Fire-type attacls make great use of Rain weakening the damage from Fire attacks. Ferrothorn sets up hazards to support the team while becoming formidably bulky with its 4x weakness being mitigated. Magearna can
set up easier against the likes of Heatran, Charizard-Y and Magnezone becoming a formidable threat, while Kartana can either set up or just all out attack, not having to worry so much about its inherit weakness against Fire-type attacks. Mega-Scizor can become the teams form of hazard removal if Pelipper opts to not run it.

Some honourable mentions include; Zapdos, which can remove hazards against the likes of Ferro whilst taking on bulky Waters like Mantine and Alomomola, Dugtrio can trap pessimistic specially defensive mons like Chansey which rain can fall short to if Mega-Pert or Keldeo have been eliminated also trapping other weather setter like Tyranitar or Alolan-Ninetales, Mega-Gardevoir can break through a lot of the defensive mons like Ferro, Amoonguss, Tang whilst taking on more passive Waters.

Tips & Get Out There!


Pelipper can be used as a good lead, setting up weather instantly for teammates, but it should be played quite conservatively and reserved. You should only eve sack Pelipper when you're confident that you have enough rain turns to win with a Rain abuser.

- team provided by njnp, This team is a great example of how to exploit the Rain abusers weaknesses in Koko + Hawlucha, eliminating mons like Mega-Venu or Ferro to let Kingdra and Swampert come in and sweep. Also Ferrothorn providing hazard stack support and wearing down foes for others to do their job more efficiently. You can read much more about the team here and a better, in-depth explanation of the team.


you guys can now feel free to post!
i really hoped this helped ;w;

 
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Leo

after hours
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MPL Champion
Hey man, great thread! I really like the direction you're taking with this, keep it up. Anyways, here's my 2 cents about rain, and it's actually about a mon I just got to use very recently with impressive results
Araquanid

This is a mon I feel is very underrated in Rain despite the hate it got early SM when it was considered a shittier Crawdaunt. While it obviously lacks some of Crawdaunt's qualities (STAB Knock Off, Aqua Jet, access to SD) there's a set I've used with some success on the ladder, which I think does well on Rain teams.


Araquanid @ Waterium Z
Ability: Water Bubble
EVs: 104 HP / 252 Atk / 152 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rain Dance
- Liquidation
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

This is the set robopoke posted in the Creative and Underrated Sets thread with some more Speed for Clefable and the other pink goons. With its great natural bulk and access to RestTalk, it puts an insane amount of pressure on most Water resists like Tangrowth, Ferrothorn, Toxapex, etc which then allows its teammates to clean up more easily in the late game. It also brings some defensive utility to the table, as it acts as a nice emergency Ash Greninja check and can also switch into Heatran for free because Heatran usually gets a free Toxic on a rain abuser after forcing out Ferrothorn. Additionally, this mon can also pressure Stall builds very nicely, which in combination with the pressure its teammates apply can overwhelm and eventually break these fat cores. All in all, I think Araquanid is a cool pick for a Rain team that shouldnt be understimated because of the stigma that this mon's shit

ps if it wasn't clear enough full credits to robopoke for coming up with this
 

Zokuru

The Stall Lord
is a Tiering Contributor
Great thread man ! Will be glad help you for the stall archtype analysis if that's possible, as it's my main playstyle, and I think I'm good enough to share what I know about it.

Edit : Oh we can post freely, I'll make something then.

Edit 2 : I start ding the analysis
 
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Zokuru

The Stall Lord
is a Tiering Contributor
~~Stall Analysis~~
Stall has always been a frustrating play-style to play against throughout the generations, as its main goal is just to " not lose " until recoil, cheap damages, win by itself, and, if it isn't sufficient, make use of the momentum swing due to the Pokemon battle system itself, the longer the game goes, the more momentum the Stall gains. Your overall goal with Stall is to wear down potential breaker in your opponent's team as fast and efficiently as you can without being overwhelmed by the other Pokemon, and, not trading something that could make you lose to another threat, then, it's pretty much autopilot until the win.


The Common Faces
Chansey is one of the most played Pokemon in Stall since ADV ( considering Blissey and Chansey share enough points to count as one entity and GSC Blissey is more a niche than a staple ), without any SpD investment it can tank powerful wallbreaker such as Mega-Charizard Y, Mega-Camerupt, any Specs that don't use Secret Sword or Psyshock, and pretty much everything. On the other hand, someones can say that Chansey is really frail physically, but that's not true, as it can eat 2 Thousand Arrows from Adamant Zygarde Band for exemple, and even 1v1 Mega-Mawile under the right circumstances. It also have access to a plethora of support move, like Toxic, Heal Bell, Wish, Thunder Wave, Healing Wish, and the very new but super effective Skill Swap.
Skarmory is one of the most powerful Pokemon in stall since GSC, it's ability to complement any special wall by its sturdiness on the physical plan is surely the first thing that comes to your mind, but Skarmory isn't just a super tank, it has Spikes if you want to play a " fast stall ", Counter then you can trade versus any phycical attacker that want to wear you down by using sheer power and super useful on a Pokemon that has Sturdy as an ability, Defog, what is one of the best move in the game especially in stall, Toxic to reduce the opponent switch possibilities and win the Hasard War more efficiently.
Dugtrio is the most controversial Pokemon at the moment, some people want it to get banned, some just think it's really playable around, but everyone agree to say this thing is powerful especially on ladder, its ability to remove Heatran, Hoopa, Tyranitar, Tapu Lele, and other well known stall threats is a given for this kind of team. Nothing much to say, it has 2 really strong sets, Sash and Z-Earthquake, and a more gimmick one but really strong against the new wave of " I want to win versus stall ", Z-Wild Charge Tapu Koko.

Mega-Sableye was banned in the ORAS era, but it's now available to play. It's a relatively bulky Pokemon, with great support moves such as Knock Off, Will-o-Wisp, Night Shade and Fake Out ( even if Protect is better with Tapu Lele everywhere ). Its main tool is its ability Magic Bounce, which gives a really strong hasard control by invalidating most Spikes and TSpikes user, and some SR setter, depending on the spread, and the team shape for your opponent, for exemple, Hippowdon in a Bulky Offense team will mostly not be able to setup SR vs Sableye, but in a more defensive one it can use the Sandstorm to wear down Sableye without using a PP and setup SR in a long run.

Clefable and Quagsire provide the ability to gain momentum by letting setup-sweeper gain boosts and Toxic them with whatever they want to setup on, and wall them with Unaware. Where Clefable provides some extra support with Wish and Heal Bell, Quagsire provides the ability to catch Latios or Rotom with a Toxic, or more sturdiness with the likes of Curse, to handle things like Mega-Gyarados.


How to play with stall and some advices

Do not lose, that's the only thing you have to do. " What is the best so as not to lose ? " is what you have to wonder at team preview. Make your gameplan, know what you have to do according to the opponent's team. If it's a very fast paced team ( HO ) just don't get overwhelmed, the opposing team will lose by its own, so you can think at Short term ( ~ 40/50 turns battle ), for fast paced teams ( Bulky Offense ) think at Short / Middle term ( 50/80 turns batlle ), versus more slow paced team ( Semi Stall ), and and varition of speed slower, play agressively if you are a faster paced team, and outstall if you are slower.
In the difficult Matchups, especially against fast paced teams, don't be worried and play aggresively. The faster you'll control the momentum of the game, the best chances you have to win. So If you cannot flatout wall the entire opponent team you HAVE TO supply that by no letting free momentum to you opponent's winconds. Which can be Entry Hasards, Setup, Z move user, or whatever.

Don't forget that Stall is like any other team, you have to know what your Pokemon can do, offensively and defensively, and you must practice to develop your own tricks to defeat your opponent. For exemple, I know that Mawile want to have a final 1v1 vs Chansey and love coming on it. So if it's a non-SD Mawile I can just skill swap as it comes and win the duel, so it's forced to switch, and if it's the SD version, Clefable just wins after Skill Swap versus non-Iron Head, Skarm can also counter etc, I also know that my dugtrio can Sub on the Sucker Punch and trap-kill. Just to say that, you don't need to blank counter everything, just play smartly. Also, several Pokemon can be used to handle one, that means you can check the movesets before acting.


Checks And Counters
Gameplan : Having a gameplan is the best way to deal with Stall. Of course, there are many pokemon that can handle a non well-piloted Stall by their own, or just set that counter team, but the best way is always to use something you're confident with, with a gameplan versus Stall, and play your best, you will not flatout lose. It's not a 100% winrate, but it's a skill dependant strategy.

Setup that beat Unaware users and that Dugtrio can't trap : Some Pokemon like SubCM Chandelure can be great tools to beat stall, Sub Hone Claws Kyurem too, but there are often unviable versus fast paced teams, so bring them only if you hardly suspect your opponent to bring stall. Special mention to Mega-Gyarados, which is extremely viable while being a pain in the ass to face with stall.

Ditto + Bulky team : That's the easy way, infinite PP, just don't let your Ditto get trapped, it's very easy, take a Knock Off on it the fastest as you can, and enjoy. Long but 100% winrate.

I'll not make a " Teammates " section, just because there's many Pokemon you can use in stall, Pokemon such as Alomomola, Doublade, Charizard Y ( even with Defog yes ), Toxapex, Tangrowth, Zygarde, Victini, Ditto, can all find their own niche.


Conclusion
Stall is a powerful playstyle, but it has their own limits, such as its rigidity in battling and the fact that everyone will want to have a super easy Matchup versus it. However, there's no one you can"t beat with stall, except CT or haxx, so it's always a strong pick option if you know how to use it. That's another limitation, you can't play stall like you play a Bulky Offense or another archtype, so you'll need to practice a lot before being dangerous to face with stall.
 
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S. Court

[Takes hits in Spanish]
is a Contributor to Smogonis a Smogon Media Contributor
Really nice guide Zokuru, I'd add Toxapex to usual to The Common Faces of this archetype, it offers a second anti-set up barrier with Haze, can add Toxic Spikes, spread burns and with its great bulk, it can sponge a lot of attacks, and recovering damage via Regenerator AND Recover
 

Zokuru

The Stall Lord
is a Tiering Contributor
Really nice guide Zokuru, I'd add Toxapex to usual to The Common Faces of this archetype, it offers a second anti-set up barrier with Haze, can add Toxic Spikes, spread burns and with its great bulk, it can sponge a lot of attacks, and recovering damage via Regenerator AND Recover

I hesitated to do that, but Toxapex isn't in the Double Defog stall, what is the best stall atm, so I just added Sableye, it represent well this archtype of stall, where you can find Toxapex.

fuck stall

also in the role compendium theres a section on stallbreakers.
View attachment 87521
add them to the checks and counters if u want Zokuru

Yh, most of them are 100% counter, but I think I can add some of them + gameplan
 
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Bulky Offense


Bulky Offense has long reigned as the cream-of-the-crop playstyle due to it's immense versatility and room for creativity. What differentiates bulky offense from other offensive playstyles, predominantly hyper offense, is the use of bulky Pokemon that function as defensive pivots to fall back on rather than the traditional "sacking" (sacrificing the Pokemon on the field). Listed above are just a few examples of common components of bulky offense. Each Pokemon has a remarkable degree of bulk, usually in tandem with a recovery option via move (Synthesis, Recover) or item such as Leftovers. One also notices that each exemplar usually carries strong utility moves such as Stealth Rock, Volt Switch, (Toxic) Spikes, Defog, Knock Off or just functions as an overall excellent catch all to a wide variety of threats. These traits, as well as others, makes such teammates highly valuable and well worth the slot.


Here we have just a few specimens that benefit tremendously from bulky offense team structures. Under normal circumstances, most of these Pokemon are unable to stomach repeated attacks barring resists. This makes completing the mission of defeating the opposition a bit harder than it has to be. However, by implementing defensive backbones, these Pokemon are able to thrive when their checks and counters have countermeasures in place.

Core Examples


Perhaps one of the most well-known cores since Mega Pinsir's release, Magnezone fits right as home alongside it. Not only does Magnezone possess the ability to trap and remove most defensive stops to Mega Pinsir such as Celesteela and Skarmory, it's also able to function as a nice check to it's offensive stops such as Tapu Koko, Choice Scarf Tapu Lele, and Mega Diancie variants lacking Earth Power when utilizing it's Assault Vest set. Magnezone also provides valuable Volt Switch support, so Pinsir can near effortlessly be pivoted into Magnezone's own checks such as, Tangrowth + Mega Venusaur and use them as setup bait.

/

Mega Lopunny is among the best of anti-offense Pokemon to ever grace the tier, but it's lackluster defenses leave it susceptible to an array of faster threats. Assault Vest Magearna or Ferrothorn work spectacularly well with Lopunny. Both of them are able function as countermeasures to common Scarfers such as Latios, Tapu Lele, and Greninja with little difficulty bar the threat of Trick concerning Latios. Magearna offers Volt Switch support, which is nice for bringing Lopunny into play, while Ferrothorn has Spikes to make Lopunny all the more overbearing to face.

Role Compression, Momentum, and Counterplay

Many a time, new players consistently fall into this trap; the belief that all teambuilding should follow the set, inaccurate formula of Defensive Wall / Physical Sweeper / Special Sweeper / Specially Defensive Wall / Revenge Killer / Wallbreaker. This way of thinking has a very high chance to doom you to failure before you've even started building. What truly matters when building bulky offense or any non-formulaic playstyle for that matter can be summed up to three concepts.


The first concept, and most important, is role compression, which is the use of Pokemon that are able to take on many roles at once so you get more bang for your teamslot. For example, Defensive Landorus-T functions as a defensive pivot to approximately 50% or so of the metagame, while also setting up Stealth Rock fantastically well, thus being a good addition to most teams in terms of role compression. One could argue that Chansey does all this as well, so why can't I use Chansey?

Well, that ties into my next point: momentum. One thing Defensive Landorus-T has that Chansey doesn't, is the ability to maintain and regain momentum. Momentum, as simple as I can explain it, is the tide of the battle. If you can control how the opponent has to play, you have the upper hand, which is momentum. Chansey saps away all momentum you may have gained due to its passiveness, so almost anything can come in on it and capitalize off of it. Landorus-T's nowehere near as passive as Chansey is and has a useful tool in U-Turn to pivot out of incoming threats.

The last concept I'd like to touch on is counterplay, which can be lumped together with the idea of revenge killing. It's frankly impossible to counter every single threat in the metagame with only six teamslots, so that's where counterplay begins. Counterplay can be defined as the idea of being able to deal with the most common of threats without having a direct counter to said threats. A well-known way we utilize counterplay can be accredited to our use of a Choice Scarfed or strong, naturally fast Pokemon to deal with offensive threats that you can't afford to run a different Pokemon to completely counter it.

To further my point, say you have a partially complete team of 5 Pokemon and you realize that Volcarona can be overbearing to face against. Volcarona doesn't exactly have any counters for all of it's possible sets that are easy to place on teams. You also see that Mega Charizard-X can be overwhelming at times as well. Both of those Pokemon have vastly different checks, but similar forms counterplay. So it'd be profitable to use Choice Scarf Latios as it is able to revenge kill both of these threats and more, while also bringing a significant amount of role compression to the mix.

Sample Team

by Finchinator
Tapu Koko @ Choice Specs
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Dazzling Gleam
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Thunderbolt

Kyurem-Black @ Icium Z
Ability: Teravolt
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Freeze Shock
- Fusion Bolt
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Ice Beam

Latios @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Psyshock
- Defog
- Thunder Wave

Venusaur-Mega (M) @ Venusaurite
Ability: Chlorophyll
EVs: 248 HP / 164 Def / 96 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb
- Earthquake
- Synthesis

Landorus-Therian @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 248 HP / 216 Def / 4 SpA / 40 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Protect

Magearna @ Assault Vest
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 16 Spe
- Fleur Cannon
- Iron Head
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Volt Switch

Here we have a great example of a successful bulky offense team. It utilizes a very strong defensive backbone in Mega Venusaur, AV Magearna, and Defensive Landorus-T to hold the majority of OU threats at bay and support the primary offensive core of Tapu Koko + Kyurem-Black. It's then fitted with Choice Scarf Latios as auxillary support to function as a form of counterplay what the defensive portion of the team can't handle, while also bringing Defog support.


Conclusion

Bulky offense is simply one of those playstyle where you, usually, can't go wrong with. It provides you a remarkable amount of room for experimentation for whatever Pokemon you'd like to use within reasonable boundaries and is very effective, sustainable, and generally consistent as a playstyle.

i've been writing this for a while, hope it's satisfactory~
 
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