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Sorry, everybody. It appears I've made a bit of a blunder. The proper spread for VinCune has 40 Special Defense, not 40 Defense. For those wondering, it is so Suicune's Substitute can live a Giga Drain from Amoonguss at +1. Furthermore, for anyone who saw the OP shortly after posting, VinCune should only be running Protect, not Roar. This was due to an error on my part setting up the VinCune set in the Teambuilder, as I was modifying it from a build utilizing Roar. Just so we're clear, you all should be using this set and this set only:
Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 40 SpD / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
- Protect
I apologize again for any confusion this caused. Best of luck to everyone researching!
So I'm going to post my thoughts now as I think I would forget it otherwise.
VinCune really impressed me and its saved me countless times by just outright sweeping the opponents team. It is a good way of beating Amoonguss balance as most of those types of balances rely on Amoonguss + Dragon to check water types where VinCune 1v1's Amoonguss and also 1v1's Hydreigon. VinCune + SD Gliscor also is a good way of beating stall with only 1 unaware user as VinCune can pp stall it then go Gliscor and sweep the rest of their team. On the second team I made I used Suicune + a core of dual lures which aims at killing all of VinCune's checks and then just sweeping the rest of the team.
SubRoost Kyurem has been a huge dissapointment for me which is sad as in ORAS I really liked that set as I mono'd stall back then. I can't put much more feedback as it never did anything for me with this meta being really bad for it with all the steel, fairy, dragon and hazard stack everywhere. This might be because I can't buid a team with it, but until then my opinion on it is that it doesn't fit in this meta.
Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 40 SpD / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Protect
- Scald
- Substitute
- Calm Mind
This is a Semistall team with it originally having a pressure core of VinCune and SubRoost Kyurem + T-Spikes. I changed the Kyurem set because I had to little immediate offensive presence. The Nidoqueen spread allows it to outspeed Ada Craw with Gliscor running enough speed to beat max base 80's. This team fits my playstyle well but I'm not sure how it would people who play more aggresively.
Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 40 SpD / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Protect
- Scald
- Calm Mind
- Substitute
Volcanion @ Fightinium Z
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 80 HP / 252 SpA / 176 Spe
Rash Nature
- Fire Blast
- Steam Eruption
- Superpower
- Earth Power
Clefable @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder
- Soft-Boiled
- Calm Mind
- Moonblast
This team is quite a fun team utilising Fightinium-Z Volc to lure Blissey and LO Thunder Clefable to lure and KO Mantine after rocks. I'm also running Earth power on Volcanion to beat Haze Tenta. I then chose to run CB Krook to also be able to pursuit trap Blissey if need be and then added Celebi to take on the Grass and Electric types. The last slot was quite pressured as I needed Defog support and a flying resist and I ended up going for Bulky M-Aero.
SubRoost Kyurem has been pretty lackluster for me. It seemed like it was always being pressured super easily, and even when it got an opportunity to get a sub up, it couldn't effectively PP stall due to my opponent having mons that could break the pp stall and KO after ~5 subs and a Roost (sciz, keld, conk, coba, etc). While there was a couple times where it could do its job, they were few and far between due to the amount of support it needed. The majority of the time I found myself wishing I was scarf/specs as there are so many mons that can pressure kyu when it stays in for more than a turn, even if it is behind a sub. I think SubRoost Kyurem is outclassed by VinCune, who does its job as a PP staller much better.
SubRoost Kyurem has been pretty lackluster for me. It seemed like it was always being pressured super easily, and even when it got an opportunity to get a sub up, it couldn't effectively PP stall due to my opponent having mons that could break the pp stall and KO after ~5 subs and a Roost (sciz, keld, conk, coba, etc). While there was a couple times where it could do its job, they were few and far between due to the amount of support it needed. The majority of the time I found myself wishing I was scarf/specs as there are so many mons that can pressure kyu when it stays in for more than a turn, even if it is behind a sub. I think SubRoost Kyurem is outclassed by VinCune, who does its job as a PP staller much better.
i don't think sub roost Kyurem is actually supposed to just PP stall everything, its more so it can stall out a choiced mon locked into a low pp move (band krook w/ stone edge for example) or win stall wars against resists (amoonguss or something). it also can abuse substitutes using forced switches vs offense and take advantage of the longevity of roost
i don't think sub roost Kyurem is actually supposed to just PP stall everything, its more so it can stall out a choiced mon locked into a low pp move (band krook w/ stone edge for example) or win stall wars against resists (amoonguss or something). it also can abuse substitutes using forced switches vs offense and take advantage of the longevity of roost
I might've phrased that poorly. I was trying to say that since its pressured so easily by so many mons, it doesn't really get the opportunity to do much. Like i could bring it in to stall out a krook, but my opp would just bring in one of the many mons that can force it out. Meanwhile all kyu really did was set up a sub and either roost or get some chip before being forced out. the same thing applied vs offense, where i could get a sub up on a switch, but since kyu was so pressured by common offense mons all it couldn't do anything with it.
Alright everyone, Week 7 is done! Congratulations to Ov3r Ac3 for winning his third week in a row!
VinCune has seen very positive results, according to Ov3r Ac3. It has a great matchup against standard balance and stall builds, punishing passive Water resists such as Amoonguss and Alomomola by setting up on them and beating them 1v1. It also has an edge versus offensive builds that rely on passive pivots like Forretress and bulky Starmie to check certain things, making it very tough to break for a wide array of playstyles. It can be tough to get off the ground, through, since its initial passivity makes it easy to pressure, and the lack of bulk investment or recovery outside of Leftovers makes Suicune's health a much more limited resource compared to a set utilizing Rest. SubRoost Kyurem was a bit of a letdown, from what we saw. As Notily pointed out, its Ice typing holds it back immensely in its goal of PP stalling versus most builds, while really only shining versus extremely passive ones, which is far from unique in this meta. Furthermore, a large number of offensive threats, such as Keldeo, Scizor, and Clefable, can easily eat its unboosted coverage and beat it 1v1. It's a neat stallbreaker by itself, but there are ways to stallbreak without being so match-up based.
Unfortunately, no one said anything about Stored Power Clefable. However, I think it has a lot of potential as a more stallbreaking oriented set, for reasons that I gave at the beginning of the week: namely, that it can punish teams that rely on Poison-types and Unaware users to check standard Calm Mind Clefable. Losing the coverage of Flamethrower and the utility of Knock Off sucks versus most standard builds, and you can of course still win most games simply by virtue of being Clefable, but Stored Power won't always be optimal or universally applicable in the way other coverage or a utility move will.
We didn't choose any particular theme this week, but we did choose Pokemon that have seen success in the past. With a bit of Special Defense investment, Mirror Coat Swampert can act as a neat lure to a number of special attackers that seek to take advantage of it, such as Latias, Clefable, and Primarina. It can require a bit of prediction versus Pokemon that set up, such as the aforementioned Clefable, but being able to drastically weaken, if not outright eliminate such threats gives it a powerful niche over Swampert's bread and butter set. We left the item slot open because we feel that this set can utilize a Rindo Berry well, since it covers Swampert's only weakness. Offensive Trick Room Bronzong is a tried and true set, having seen usage as far back as DPP. However, Bronzong as a Pokemon has yet to gain a secure footing in today's meta with such heavy competition from the likes of Scizor and Empoleon as a Steel-type. This set is by far its most unique, acting as a cleaner or wallbreaker while also offering uncontested defensive utility as a Steel-type with Levitate. And finally, Tornadus is another overlooked Pokemon that has a lot of unexplored potential, but has yet to see any sort of usage. Great offensive stats, ludicrous coverage, a boosting move in Bulk Up, and utility options such as Taunt and Tailwind make Tornadus extremely unpredictable. However, its optimal niche in the current meta has yet to be seen.
As always, sign up with a fresh RW alt, and post your results, as well as your own thoughts on the Pokemon in question. You are free to edit your signup post if your post count is a concern. The deadline is Friday, April 7th, at 11:59 pm GMT+2. My co-host Ark or I will check everyone's ladder scores then and decide the winner. Good luck, everyone, and have fun!
Tornadus is a very unique Pokémon, with a solo Flying type and a really wide movepool. It also has two unique abilities in Prankster and Defiant.
Hurricane is Tornadus' most spammable move. In one hand, a STAB 110 BP move with a 30% chance to confuse your opponent but on the other hand, well, 70% accuracy. So, I thought of this balance breaking set with Wide Lens to increase Hurricane's accuracy:
With this, Tornadus' Hurricane's accuracy jumps to 77%, making it have a better shot at hitting. It looked good on paper but in reality, Hurricane still missed all the time. I don't know if it's just me with my bad luck or not.
Then, Ov3r Ac3 approached me and said "why not use Flynium Z" so I was like alright and used it.
The results were much better... it gives Tornadus a one-time nuke, a STAB 185 BP Supersonic Skystrike.
Hurricane into Supersonic Skystrike kills almost everything that doesn't resist Flying and between us, almost nobody runs flying resists anymore..
The results were pretty good, but still, Hurricane tended to miss a lot.
It looked good on paper - Tornadus has Prankster, Taunt, acceptable bulk and typing - what could go wrong?
Well, it's good versus stall and maye balance, but with Clefable and Scizor all around, this thing didn't get to show off so much.
I was pretty skeptical about it. Didn't think Bronzong could do well as an offensive Trick Room abuser. I have made this Trick Room team and used Bronzong as my offensive Stealth Rock setter. Honesty, it is really good.
You know, it's one of these Pokémon who just does what you want it to do. It can take almsot every one hit, set-up Trick Room either nuke the opponent with a powerful Explosion / Gyro Ball, set-up Stealth Rock and die, or both. Nobody expects an offensive Bronzong and it catches many opponents off-guard. Not only that, it has a very good offensive synergy with common physical Trick Room abusers such as Crawdaunt and Bisharp, exploding in the face of their common counters and allowing one of them to break holes or even sweep. Currently playing in the mid 1400s with this team and having really good success. Won one room tour with the team... ^^'
Bronzong @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Gyro Ball
- Trick Room
- Explosion
- Earthquake
I'll just drop off this set which I have been using. I had decent success with it especially in conjunction with a bulky crawdaunt xd.
Easy role actually activate trick room and explode unless gyro/eq can hurt the opp badly. Explosion gives the other slow mons a handy 3 turn boost which it can use to destroy the team. I tried using it in a pure tr team and failed miserably so decided to use it with a bulky team where more often than not one mon can use the trick room.
alright so i might ladder a bit more tomorrow but for today i am done with this game ;_;
anyway torn has definitely been cool from my experience as it gives me a flying type to mess around with until mega-pidgeot drops x_x
z-move torn is 100% the way to go i believe (be it physical or special) bc even in games where it shouldn't be doing much in theory it can act as a nuke and take an unsuspecting threat like primarina or nidoqueen down with it turn 1. i'll have to admit that it was dead weight a lot of games too tho. the ubiquity of mega aerodactyl and raikou does not help its case very much, but if you can deal with them (like slow them down or trap them) tornadus can make use of the general lack of flying resists on teams and dish out some juicy damage.
the set i've been messing around with, however, is this:
Sky Scout (Tornadus) @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fly
- Superpower
- Knock Off
- Bulk Up
bulk up torn was one of my favourite underrated sets during oras so i wanted to give it a shot in this generation too. this set doesnt have acrobatics but instead makes use of fly to get the strongest possible physical flying move that tornadus has in the form of a z-move. +1 supersonic skystrike is a really powerful one-time-nuke and superpower + knock gives torn real good coverage alongside its stab. be aware that this set will most likely not sweep an entire team tho, it's supposed to act as a breaker. as for partners for this set: i used scarf krook to surprise raikou and trap aero after some chip + double powder amoonguss to slow down aero + defensive infernape with wow to lure aero. i'll just leave the team down below and edit some replays into here tomorrow too:
Sky Scout (Tornadus) @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fly
- Superpower
- Knock Off
- Bulk Up
sth else i wanna try out is special tornadus with darkinium-z and embargo (cancels item effect which is meh but at least stops lefties ig). z-embargo gives tornadus a +1 spatk boost with the freedom to switch up moves at the cost of immediate power and an attacking slot. not sure if it is worth it yet but i'll let you guys know once i try it out. it's sad that it doesn't get heal block tho... (which gives +2 spatk when used as a z-move + blocks recovery which is really cool imo)
edit @ below: yeah idk why i didnt have defiant on this, 100% should be
So, I joined this research week not really knowing what I was gonna do with Tornadus. Then a couple days ago, it dawned on me: I've been looking for a new flying type wallbreaker on my old birdspam team for a while. So, I spammed birds.
The first set I tried for tornadus was a more straightforward type of wallbreaker, a specs set:
Tornadus (M) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Defiant (For bluffing, because prankster wasn't useful with this moveset)
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hurricane
- Heat Wave
- Grass Knot
- U-turn
This set was interesting to toy around with; I got a kill on a Swampert at one point, and a kill on a Scizor at another. However, Hurricane just missed way, way too much to be consistent in its role as anything but a lure for various mons weak to grass or fire.
Then, I read Esche's post, and decided to try his wallbreaking set, but with defiant, because i like defiant. This set proved to be just as useful as Esche hyped it up to be. Tornadus came in handy quite a few times with its powerful skystrikes and its nice coverage in superpower/knock.
I got rather high on the ladder for my standards, maxing at 1410 elo before I decided to stop due to my insanely bad luck in the following several games.
In conclusion, Esche's Z-fly Tornadus is a rather nice wallbreaker which can do some sizeable damage to bulky teams. I can definitely see it as a viable option for a lot of teams, but it's especially good for the current, raptorless birdspam.
Week 8 is over! Good job, everyone, and congratulations to Amane Misa for winning this week!
Mirror Coat Swampert, unfortunately, saw no recorded usage this week. However, for reasons I listed at the beginning of the week, I personally think it's a viable alternative to standard Swampert. Things like Latias and Primarina generally think they get to fire off a free Draco Meteor / Hydro Pump / Moonblast if they come in versus Swampert, and surprising those Pokemon with Mirror Coat is a really effective way of opening doors for a teammate that shares common checks with it, like Keldeo or Hydreigon.
Offensive Trick Room Bronzong proved to be decent. Amane Misa used more of a suicide set using Stealth Rock, forgoing self-sufficiency for the ability to support potential Trick Room abusers in Crawdaunt and Drampa. Raphael2711 used a more standard approach of Trick Room + 3 attacks, also to support Crawdaunt, which, between their typing and power, can overwhelm a surprising number of common builds. Both sets used this week showed Bronzong has lots of potential as an offensive support Pokemon that can handle some tricky Pokemon, such as Clefable, Mega Aerodactyl, and Latias, giving it some neat role compression on top of acting as a wincon.
And lastly, Tornadus saw the most usage this week, and arguably the most success. A variety of creative sets were used (Amane Misa's SubToxic set intrigued me the most), but Lord Esche and A Cake Wearing A Hat got the most mileage out of a Bulk Up + 3 attacks set with Flyinium Z and a Choice Specs set. Both sets were able to achieve their goal of being extremely powerful wallbreakers, and were able to find helpful teammates in Krookodile and Scizor to check Raikou + Mega Aerodactyl and appreciate Tornadus' ability to threaten physical walls, respectively. Definitely a powerful Pokemon, but a bit tough to tailor to your team despite its versatility due to being forced out by the aforementioned Raikou and Mega Aerodactyl, two massive headaches for the offensive teams on which Tornadus is meant to shine.
Feraligatr @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
filler evs
filler nature
-
-
-
-
This week is looking quite a bit like last. Offensive Trick Room Cofagrigus is, in many ways, similar to last week's Bronzong, but is arguably much more solid as a wincon do to its better STAB and boosting move in Nasty Plot, although it offers lesser defensive utility. Despite this, the lack of Ghost resists + Cofagigrus' good bulk allow for a pretty straightforward path to victory versus a good number of teams. Shell Smash Minior saw some use very early in the meta, but it very quickly faded into obscurity as New Toy Syndrome died down. This is in large part because Shields Down is a tricky Ability to take advantage of against a competent opponent, leaving you vulnerable to opposing setup. However, its combination of pre-Shields-Down bulk, offensive typing, coverage, and the ability to go physical, special, or mixed can be extremely dangerous in the right hands. And lastly, Feraligatr is another overlooked Pokemon in this meta. Despite being a Water-type with decent bulk, it doesn't have the same consistency offensively or defensively as our plethora of other bulky Water-type wallbreakers, such as Primarina, Mega Blastoise, or Keldeo, meaning that it's a bit more high maintenance than you'd typically want from your offensive Water-type. However, it more than makes up for this with its ridiculous power, 3 potential boosting moves in Dragon Dance, Swords Dance, and Agility, and usable coverage for all 3 sets to take advantage of.
As always, sign up with a fresh RW alt, and post your results, as well as your own thoughts on the Pokemon in question. You are free to edit your signup post if your post count is a concern. The deadline is Friday, April 14th, at 11:59 pm GMT+2. My co-host Ark or I will check everyone's ladder scores then and decide the winner. Good luck everyone!
