Tournaments Smogon Premier League: DPP OU Discussion

[Bedschibaer]

Smogon Premier League
Season Schedule
Rosters

The Smogon Premier League is one of the biggest stages of competition on this website and a good opportunity to showcase quality matches of metagames that do not get alot of exposure otherwise. Every past generation will have 5 matches each week that we can discuss here. I will update this thread with the matchups and the replays/logs of every week. This thread should be a place for constructive discussion about things like team choices, matchups, plays but also tendencies in the metagame and so on. Trashtalking players is not allowed. Players commenting on their teams or on certain key turns and answering questions is encouraged.​

Players and prices

coming soon

Week 1

• [RUIN] Bad Ass vs. Stathakis [WOLF]
• [CRYO] TV-Rocka vs. Go10 [SCTR]
• [CONG] Ojama vs. Tamahome [FLCN]
• [SHRK] gene vs. Lady Bug [TGRS]
• [BIGS] Malekith vs. Marshall.Law [RAID]

Week 2

• [BIGS] Malekith vs. Flaming Victini [WOLF]
• [CONG] Ojama vs. Honor [TGRS]
• [SHRK] Golden Sun vs. Marshall.Law [RAID]
• [CRYO] Porengan vs. Tamahome [FLCN]
• [RUIN] Bad Ass vs. Go10 [SCTR]

Week 3

• [RAID] Marshall.Law vs. Lady Bug [TGRS]
• [CRYO] Porengan vs. Stathakis [WOLF]
• [SCTR] Go10 vs. Tamahome [FLCN]
• [CONG] Ojama vs. Bad Ass [RUIN]
• [SHRK] gene vs. boudouche [BIGS]

Week 4

• [RUIN] Bad Ass vs. Malekith [BIGS]
• [TGRS] Lady Bug vs. Tamahome [FLCN]
• [CRYO] Porengan vs. Ojama [CONG]
• [SHRK] Smurf. vs. Go10 [SCTR]
• [WOLF] PDC vs. Marshall.Law [RAID]

Week 5

• [CONG] Zamrock vs. Alastor Law [SHRK]
• [RAID] Marshall.Law vs. Bad Ass [RUIN]
• [BIGS] Malekith vs. Tamahome [FLCN]
• [SCTR] liberty32 vs. Stathakis [WOLF]
• [TGRS] Lady Bug vs. Sweepage [CRYO]

Player Records

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...cFVpZtSnKLSw/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=1896956711

Modern DPPers or old school veterans?

 

[Shadow_Sneak]

Ok, so this has many good games this week. Bad Ass vs Stath will be interesting to see. Ojama vs Tamahome is the highlight game for me this week, I am really hoping that it will be a good game. The rest of the games are cool as well, I wanna see the Malekith vs Law game as that looks to be interesting as well. Overall, I would say that all of the games are pretty good although Pana not playing is quite odd. I want to see how well gene will do this week due to him being known for things like his gsc play more and Panamax is was ranked #1 on power rankings too iirc.

 

[Lord Ninjax]

Quick talk: best looking games are Ojama vs Tamahome and Rocka vs Go10, every game will be pretty interesting though honestly. This week'll also establish how comitted/competent gene and Lady Bug are, whether Go10 can follow up on last season and how Malekith'll do after not playing high-level DPP for some time.

Will follow up with my analysis of the Rocka-Go10 game, which is a pretty interesting one and a nice way to start this off.

 

[BKC]

Let's get this going

Ojama vs. Tamahome

Battle

Against defensive teams, SR Azelf tends to put its team in a position to gain momentum right from the get-go, offensive Pokes ready to pounce with SR digging into their counters. However, DM's team is so resistant to it, and Ojama's team so unable to immediately take out Clef, that OJ's good lead matchup doesn't amount to much.

Gengar enters and we see DM has problems with it as he switches Swampert in. The Explosion taking a chunk out of Bronzong is key here, since Zong is usually a fine check to Gar. DM's forced to use Ice Beam to put it in Starmie range rather than set up SR; Ojama's team isn't really greatly affected by it, so it's not a huge loss, but DM didn't know that at the time. This goes to show how much of an underrated holepuncher Gar can be, especially when leading off with FB against SB-neutral targets to keep Scarftar away.

Kingdra shows off one of its best traits; easy entry on Starmie. I think everyone, Malfoy included, expected the now-staple of RD, which has to Draco to kill bulky Star; figuring getting rid of SR for Zapdos in exchange for Starmie is a fair trade, DM goes for Spin... only to have the Kingdra DD in his face. While we all rag on DD Dra for being a weak fucker, it can still be a threat, especially with the dead Swampert. We see this as Breloom and Bronzong go down to its +3 assault.

This is a great example of what can happen if you disregard the possibility of Kingdra being a DDer, and how its counters to both sides of the spectrum tend to be quite different - aside from, like, bulky Shaymin/Celebi (who gets smashed by Signal Beam RD sets), nothing can really take it on. I think the best move to account for either set was Breloom. If it was RD (or used Meteor on the switch, which would show LO/Specs), Starmie comes in afterwards to harass Ojama's team more (remember, Kingdra was his switchin, so if it's forced to switch out then DM's in a pretty good spot), and DM knows the set for sure the next time it comes in. If it was DD, it limits it to 2, so Bronzong can tank an Outrage and finish it off, with Zapdos still alive (and it would've been useful even with SR up without its Leftovers negated, all it needs is one Roost).

Anyway, Malfoy sends out Zapdos as his last resort.

+3 252+ Atk Kingdra Outrage vs. 248 HP / 252+ Def Zapdos: 346-408 (90.3 - 106.5%) -- 37.5% chance to OHKO

shakingdra used Outrage!
The opposing Zapdos lost 95.6% of its health!

Well, I suppose there is some merit to DD Dra being made fun of for lack of power...

Anyway, Malfoy's looking really good at this point. Metagross is revealed, and Malfoy rather unnecessarily lets Clefable take a Meteor Mash (perhaps he was trying to guard against a double, but SToss only punishes Starmie, who Clef would have zero problem switching into) before switching to Starmie. This damage on Clef is what should allow Ojama to win the game, and here's why.

If I'm Ojama, against that Starmie I'm going to Empoleon on the Hydro and using Grass Knot to guarantee a win. If you don't want to eat Tbolt on the switch or let Clef double back in for crucial Lefties (both extremely unlikely but let's consider everything, you want to be safe - even though the week was over, BD and pride are on the line), letting Metagross die guarantees the win too. In fact this is much better. All that needs to happen is Empoleon facing off against Starmie.

252+ SpA Empoleon Grass Knot (80 BP) vs. 248 HP / 0 SpD Zapdos: 47-55 (12.2 - 14.3%)
Zapdos was at 11% (actually 10.4% as seen from Gengar's Explosion on it) so it would've died. It needs 160 SpDef EVs to take less than that with minimum damage.

gg falcons used Hydro Pump!
The opposing Clefable lost 38.8% of its health!

Note how Clefable lived the hit with 6%, aka the Leftovers recovery it got when it switched in on Agility. Clefable was at 38-39% when it took the attack, and healed up to 45%, going from guaranteed to die to Hydro to never dying to Hydro.
252+ SpA Empoleon Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Clefable: 150-177 (38 - 44.9%)
As long as Clef doesn't switch in on Agility, thus getting Leftovers, the game is over barring Pump misses.

There's more to what ended up actually happening, but it should never have gotten to that point. If Malfoy doesn't let Clefable take the Mash earlier, Ojama's way to victory is luring in Clefable with Empoleon then double switching to Gar to for (possible) Explosion, so it would've been a prediction battle.

To summarize, the hole punched by Gengar + Dra was enough to break through Malfoy's tough team, Ojama just didn't execute. A fine battle though, very interesting in a variety of ways and exemplary of many a thing notable in the metagame. GG both, I look forward to both of their future battles.

Somewhat related note: interesting that the Protect Zong had Gyro, which isn't often used. I think it could make better use of other moves, especially considering its teammates.

Teams

Azelf / Gengar / Starmie / Kingdra / Empoleon / Metagross
Ojama's is extremely similar to boudouche's old one. That one was used some time before the Clefable craze though so he doesn't have the greatest matchup, and something like Scarftar + SpDef Skarm would also be really annoying. It was great to see the forgotten LO Starmie used again, and I'm always a fan of Explosion Gengar (who is really good at surprising Skarm with Thunderbolt - which DD Kingdra loves - and could very possibly bust up that core if OJ plays his cards right, assuming he had it). Gar is a great pick for this team; Explode Blissey for Starmie / Empoleon, and TBolt (which I assume it has, since it's the best 4th for BoomGar) Skarm for DD Dra. If Azelf was, say, Colbur with Thunder Wave, it'd go even further in breaking apart standard balanced teams by making Scarftar a non-factor for Gar and Star, and Ojama's Pokes are all notorious offense killers. ScarfGon is the only thing that could really be a problem by itself, so with that in mind we can assume the Metagross had Shuca even before we note its lack of Life Orb or Lum Berry. Also, I like the Wacan on Emp for Zaps and Scarf Rotoms. Quite solid team with a various amount of good synergy and ways to win.

Swampert / Starmie / Breloom / Zapdos / Clefable / Bronzong
Malfoy decided it was not gonna be his day to lose to Ttar/Aero; Swampert, Breloom and even defensive Bronzong (which usually isn't seen alongside Pert). Team's quite solid overall, is built to do pretty much exactly what it did - outlasting offense, with only a few threats on their own like Taunt HP Grass Tran and SubCM Rachi. It has decent tools for games against more defensive stuff in Breloom + Knock Clefable, although Loom doesn't have the ideal support that makes it such a terror in those battles and it's definitely not a preferred matchup - however, overall this is a very good counterstyle team. PhysDef Zapdos is a very underrated set and it showed its stuff by tanking the +3 Kingdra Outrage, it also makes the team strong against Fighters which a lot of people forget about.

That took a while to write, so I'll leave the others for later. I did, however, get Marshall.Law vs. Malekith on Youtube if you want to check that out.

 

[Lord Ninjax]

TV-Rocka vs Go10: replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen4ou-112365

Teams:

Hide

Go10: Jirachi/Zapdos/Tyranitar/Flygon/Starmie/Suicune

Seems to me to be a pretty solid offensive team, Jirachi is as seen to be a SR lead with unknown other moves (cause it got slept), Zapdos the 3 Atks Lefties set I presume, Tyranitar I don't know because it got too haxed to even get a move off, but I presume a Choiced variant (Mixed would've FBed the Breloom, however it'd be a good pick too as it provides a stallbreaker which Go10's team is kind of short on), Flygon would be a CBer (Heatran outsped proving it's not Scarf, could've been an EBelt variant but idk), Starmie is the rare offensive set and Suicune was probably the rare CroCune (nothing else explains its failure to kill Zapdos and Breloom, it also cover's the team's relative lack of security against Physical Attackers). I think the premise was that Starmie would lure common answers to Suicune (such as Rotom-A, Jirachi, grasses), and kill them to clear the path for a lategame CroCune sweep, Jirachi makes a versatile lead, ScarfTar and Zapdos are playing their standard roles on offense while Flygon provides another wallbreaker (and could potentially lure other annoying mons like Vaporeon). Not particularly innovative outside the double waters but fairly effective.

TV-Rocka: Jirachi/Zapdos/Heatran/Breloom/Tyranitar/Starmie (got the last one from the usage stats as it wasn't shown in battle).

Rocka took a fairly common team type (the BKC special of Zap+Tar+Star+Loom+Tran+Filler), and threw all the roles out of whack, making a pretty interesting team. Jirachi takes over Stealth Rock from Tyranitar and Heatran allowing them to take on more offensive sets, while Zapdos is the rare Specially Defensive variant (took the IB from Cune, so it has to be pretty top-heavy on SDef), packing Discharge for paralysis purposes (as poor Lieutenant Biceps learned). Breloom and Heatran are the standardish variants of SubPunch and Scarf, which pose maximum threat, while Tyranitar was a DDer, probably Shuca as some mons like Flygon would be otherwise hard to handle. Breloom plays all the more crucially here to kill the bulky grounds that otherwise stop both ScarfTran and DDtar, and with those two gone they form a very effective 1-2 punch. Starmie would probably be a bulky set as that gets better synergy with the rest of the team. A very interesting team with several win-conditions and solid synergy, showing that there is always room to innovate within a structure.

Will add battle analysis later.

 

[BKC]

late response to above

SR on Rachi doesn't mean it's necessarily a special attacking set. Scarf sets used to run it quite often as leads.

Crocune would've been outsped by Zapdos, not every offensive Cune uses 252 SpA, Zap was packing a ton of bulk which is why it took +1 IB so well and Loom takes one even from fully invested Cune IB at high health with any semblance of bulk.

Porengan used his team against husk in WCoP previously (and perhaps circa ST15, I'm drawing a bit of a blank on specifics but that's when that sort of thing was first getting popular).

Week 1

Bad Ass vs. Stathakis
Non-Specs/LO/Scarf Overheat Tran is interesting, might get a crucial kill on dudes like Hippo/Clef/Emp at important ranges. Mystic Water Kingdra faking Specs early on almost got BA a sweet surprise kill, shame it didn't pan out but here's another example of Dra succesfully throwing people off. Stath nicely makes maneuvers to weaken the EB Jira he's weak to (suuuch a good anti-offense poke as we see here, only stopped by the equally dangerous Gengar forcing BA to sac something) and simultaneously is the biggest threat he can see to stopping a bulky SD zor sweep. BA's own Gar finds its way in on Tar's SP and weakens the hell out of Sciz though and that puts it in Kingdra range, and thus Stath becomes more open to ScarfGon. I think Stath could've maneuvered this one a bit better near the end, and I think it was worth trying for SR against Azelf as it exploded, but overall a very fine offense v. offense game. Kingdra, Gengar and ScarfGon - the return of, both players using them and showing why they shouldn't be as slept on as they are.

gene vs. Lady Bug
Exploding on Vap was a bit premature, the Protect was clear for a few reasons. I think it should've been abused as CBnite entry. Tran would've been nice to have for the same purpose considering it could switch once more into SR or a layer of Spikes, it could've come into the Skarm Roosting up and bombed Vap on the switch. Pretty straightforward game, letting Nido/Skarm types of defensive stuff set up early makes it hard to bust through especially when they've got offensive options.

Week 2

Malekith vs. FlamingVictini
This was very nicely played on FV's end. Early on he was careful and tried to catch a Pursuit-vulnerable Breloom check - very good thinking, he was emergency subbed in at a crucial point in the week - but Male's so weak to Loom that had FV just tunnel visioned and Focus Punched, he would've shredded something. Regardless, the double switch is good, and CBtar rears its head with a massive Stone Edge. Great to see Chesto Cune make an appearance, this is a perfect example of its usefulness. Aboma is as good a counter as you get, but with the huge weakness to both Loom and Tar (not only do they hit everything incredibly hard but they also get tons of switchin opportunities and are hard for Male to even damage), it's only Stone Edge misses that prevent FV from practically winning the game there. The outcome is the same though. Gengar continues showing us why it's such a threat, and MachLoom comes up clutch to finish the game off.

Ojama vs. Honor
Great use of the underrated ScarfGar here. It's first seen when Ojama is pivoting it into a free turn Starmie to protect his SR after Pert goes down early, having being reservedly thrown in to weather the opposing Pert's hits. Honor might've wanted to use a water move against Gar after it killed Tran, though; in the age of "Water resist: optional" it's good to throw them out at any chance, and the lack of LO/Black Sludge shown by Gar made it pretty clear as to what the set was. Colbur has been used before but it sucks. Anyway, hitting Tran as it switched into Psychic there would've been huge and possibly outcome-altering, seeing how it ended! Later down the line, Ojama looks to have a Scarf SB sweep lined up, until Honor makes use of the bluff gg (pretend like you've lost to get your opponent to tunnel vision and catch him by surprise) to get a kill with his own ScarfGar; Ojama was running a ton of bulk on his, so no tie. OJ's second Scarfer puts a charge into Starmie but just barely comes up short, however Honor's Star doesn't have Recover yet isn't max special attack (which would've done 59% minimum to the bulkiest of Tran), so I'm not sure what's going on there. Anyway, Tran finishes it off for game. Interesting team on OJ's end, an offensive one with double Scarf yet a SpD Tran. Honor's was pretty nice as well.

Golden Sun vs. Marshall.Law
Marshall's team is a really cool blend of powerful semistall combos and offensive synergy. GS has a lot of offensive powerhouses that work together, tried and true. CB Ape shows its strength in different ways, as its U-turn puts Jira into the relatively weak Zong's EQ range (although I want to think it was -Def because jeez). GS is using a fantastic set in pure offensive Heatran, which I love, and to top it off he even has Magma Storm. The bulky Starmie era definitely can't handle it. However, Marshall is using an equally great set on an underrated Pokemon - Milotic with offensive investment, and it shuts Tran down hard barring an Explosion, hich GS definitely should've done imo - Tran was never going to come out of that without doing so. Instead, Milo gets away and GS gets nearly no use out of his Tran. Dead Milo would've opened hell up for Starmie and Dragonite. This early mishap leads to Marshall being able to dance around GS' threatening team without much trouble, when it could've been a very different game. It was nice to see LO Mie again, though.

Tamahome vs. Porengan
Uh, there's not much to really say for this one. DM uses an old Fakes semistall and it works as well as ever. Rocka's team was not that good and he didn't play very well (SR nowhere to be seen is just the beginning), imo. He had the tools to break through but didn't use them the right way, so even with some pretty nasty luck going for him it doesn't amount to much. The best players have off days though, I don't doubt soon I'll be writing about how he was in a zone and kicked the absolute dogshit out of someone. I was glad to see Zapdos using Toxic.

Week 3

Lady Bug vs. Marshall.Law
shameless plug, it's worth watching I swear

Stathakis vs. Porengan
I absolutely love seeing this. Two players bringing their usual style without worrying about any counterteam/counterstyle nonsense and just duking it out. Stath is dangerous with these kinds of LO Zelf offenses and Porengan swears by his Crobat/Quagsire duo alongside some other of his usual favs. Tar eventually gets Tran to go down, which really opens Zelf up. Porengan's team quite struggles with HP Grass Tran; Rocka tries to double back to bat to both handle a potential grass switchin and check for HP Grass, which would let him know if he had to reveal Tar to fight Tran, but Stath very nicely predicts that and catches him. A few turns later, the Azelf has revealed Grass Knot and is staring down Quagsire; not wanting to go right to Tar, Rocka tries to pivot a little with a Magnezone that can also threaten to Custap, but Stath gets another kill with a predicted Fire Blast, which also would've roasted Celebi. The predict also prevents any LO stalling fun, since the Zelf was below half health. Zong beats Cele and Tar so Rocka's forced to try to stave it off with Quag, but Zong explodes and none other than a fucking Aggron finishes the game. Love it, great stuff on both sides.

Bad Ass vs. Ojama
ZHB Gross is cool, it can potentially flinch Champ if it doesn't outright kill/there's Sash and it packs coverage on Zap/Rotom. After this, I disagree with a few things on both ends. Ojama fearing Custap Champ and switching to Rotom is totally legit, but using a Scarf Rotom to revenge kill something on turn 2 is begging for trouble. I think switching back to Gross was best there, since Tyranitar's extremely likely to come in. BA can't exactly DynamicPunch figuring "well he's gonna kill me lol so may as well try to catch a double" since he has to respect the possibility of Sub, so the other option was Payback. So Tar comes in, and... he lets the Rotom get away. Taking two Tbolts sucks, but letting Rotom get away is much, much worse, especially when the first TB already crit - Tar is not going to be able to switch into things anymore. It makes life so much harder for BA's otherwise extremely threatening Gyarados and his BS Rachi. The Crunch lands on Pert, which takes a fucking ton - an easy 3HKO, in fact, Leftovers show it's not CB/Specs and thus clearly SR with a 4 attack Meta lead - and Bad Ass needlessly switches out to Gengar, which hits Pert pretty hard but then gets evaporated by the Hydro Pump which is generally rare but was predictable from the lack of bulk. Both teams were good but the early plays set the tone and the rest just sorta happened. I'm a big fan of Overheat Scarftran though, very solid pick.

gene vs. boudouche
We see some rare stuff right off the bat; Leftovers Rotom, and it happens to be carrying WoW at that, and it immediately goes for WoW against Machamp with no fear of Lum or Heatran. It works out, since it ends up hitting Dragonite; however, the mix set's primary threat is its mighty Draco Meteor, which stings Hippo like hell but allows Skarm to come in and Spike pressure. MixNite at 25% would seem like it's only gonna come in for one more hit later on, but this one has Roost, so douche values longevity for the long haul against defensive stuff, and this could suggest he feels secure enough against offense to forgo ExtremeSpeed. Indeed, we see a Scarf Rotom, which manages to cripple Hippo - always a win for an offensive team - but then is taken out by Scarftar. After the SR exchange and Machamp crits the Skarm looking to catch a payback, gene reveals Lucario. It's not seen very often but it's still extremely dangerous - Pursuiting Rotom and then going to town with CC is the oldest trick in the book against offense. With the ghost gone, SR up and Dragonite at 56%, there's a kill imminent, and douche is forced to let Machamp go. Jirachi appears, and offensive sets doing a fine job revenge killing Luc, but they can't come in. This shows how Luc's "new role" in the metagame if it continues to be "rediscovered" may be more as a very dangerous holepuncher (and it always did well at revenge killing with priority). It ends up cleaning here, as gene's hazards + Rotom + Scarftar allowed him to easily dance around douche's revenge/wallbreak attempts. The last, Kingdra, is great against offense with its RD set, further reinforcing Roost Nite from earlier. Good stuff on both ends here.

 

[Tamahome]

I wish this thread had as many posts as the UU one had...that would be awesome! So, I just wanted to say a couple things about this SPL season and my own matches.

First off, it was pretty cool to watch some games, and it was equally sad to see a few others. It's amazing how this tier is volatile, in the sense players like Bad Ass and Porengan are on a pretty big slump after taking it to the next level in prior seasons. Hell, even I was pretty bad last year and came back to have the best record this season. Of course for all the players I'm sure there could be pointed many reasons such as real life, and the fact January is a month full of exams for like everyone in the world (usually doesn't happen in Brazil, but for bad government reasons my state had this shit going), but the biggest reason why I think that is because DPP OU is hands down the hardest old gen tier. Be it because there are too many (?) available mons, be it because team synergy is something so hard to find. So kudos to everyone ending this season with a positive record: you were really lucky or...the things just had gone in your way, I guess lol!

In order to prevent you guys from my personal crying little text, I'll just hide it. So, if you are going to read it, be aware for the amount of salt in it! Sorry in advance for the .kael btw.

Personal rants about the season

Onto my season now, I think the first week's game was the best one in this tier SPL had so far. I really liked how I prepared for this one, and the team I used is one of the most solids I've ever built. Despite the outcome, I just like to think it was pretty well played from both sides, and the endgame was really crazy. But I guess BKC already thoroughly analysed the match (you should do it for more matches!).

For the second week I was just feeling more confident after beating Ojama and decided I could just bring and old reliable team to bring the W, and so the team did the magic. I don't know why BKC said it's a Fakes team, cause I built it like 4 years ago. I guess he's not to blame, since it's just easier to attribute the teambuilding for someone other than just admitting it's the same 6 Pokémon haha! The match was pretty stale from beginning, in which I had a large matchup advantage over him due to Quagsire being a boss and walling most of his team. Not much to say, other than hope next year Rocka will rise from the ashes and beat everyone again! :D

My third SPL match was reaaaaally disappointing. Of course I won't blame hax exclusively for my loss but it was just a very complicated week irl in which there were some commitments that stopped me from teambuilding and scouting as much as I wanted to, so 5 minutes prior to the match Tesung gave me that team, and the first turn was really good! But as per the second one, I guess I could have foreseen what I was gonna get in that day. I really don't know what would have happened in that match had I been a little more lucky, but I think I had a pretty good shot if everything didn't really had gone his way.

In the fourth week, my opponent was no one but the Legend_bug. Not much to say about this match, except I just felt good my real life schedule didn't mess up this week (probably the only week I played before the weekend). I don't know if Lady bug was for real when he said about quitting; if he was, I'm gonna miss his craziness for sure. I'm just happy I could play one of the best DPPers at least once.

Did I say my third match was disappointing? Well, I don't know how to adjective the fifth one. I really tried to keep it cool for the first days, but I can't say I'm not salty for what happened in that one vs Malekith. According to some calcs a friend of mine ran, even when he had his Infernape at the Blaze range he couldn't kill my Hippo, which had max SDef in that particular team. And thus began the biggest shitfest I've have ever had after 13 years playing competitive mons. I can't know right now if I'm more disappointed due to the lack of prepare I had (carnival week) or all the hax that seemingly only he got. I've faced the worst Flygon set I've ever seen, and lost the match. Still love Male though.

After being haxed to hell and back, I figured it would be better to bring an offensive, straight-forward team to face Marshall, someone that beat me in the past SPL when I used a bulkier team. As my team was already out, I really didn't care anymore about building and crazy preparing to the matches, so apologies for the lack of variety on teams this week onwards. Again, not much to say about the match, as I attacked most of the turns and felt pretty good about how my plan actually worked out.

In the seventh week, I faced someone I was willing to play against ever since the SPL started. Unfortunately, Bad Ass had gone thru what I can bet is the biggest slump he ever had in mons. The match was really fast, it ended in like 6 minutes! Moves were pretty straight forward, not much to analyze here. To culomalo, I can only wish the same I did to Rocka. And bring some water resists, ffs!!!

The season is almost ending thank GOD sadly, so I made a little twist to an old-ish team of mine to put together the squad I liked the most throughout the ones I used this season. The match was well played by both sides, as I was fairly unlucky in the beginning, and was lucky toward the end, so I guess it was fair? Some could say it was ''pkm'', but oh well.

And finally, the last game. I had my latop charger broken the whole week and couldn't even try to prepare as much as I wanted. However, this season just wasn't meant to be, in any aspect at all, so I rushed my go-to team with a little twisted EVs like having Jirachi at max HP, something I never do. I get critted in the very fist turn, but after some deep thought I don't think that mattered as much as I could argue for. I really was disappointed due to lack of prepare in my first week of vacations, aka the first week I actually had loads of free time and couldn't even build properly. Oh well! Kudos to Cicada for bringing such a cool team.

All in all, I think it would be fair if I ended up 7-2, but I don't have many regrets. It was tiring, but my opponents were pretty cool guys so there's that!

Not much of a poster, so this felt like a walltext. Hope you guys enjoyed (even if just a little bit) my games and whatnot. I also hope for good playoff matches, and to see some more posts in this very thread by the dudes that played this fucking ass tier!

 

[Lady Bug]

I wish this thread had as many posts as the UU one had...that would be awesome! So, I just wanted to say a couple things about this SPL season and my own matches.

First off, it was pretty cool to watch some games, and it was equally sad to see a few others. It's amazing how this tier is volatile, in the sense players like Bad Ass and Porengan are on a pretty big slump after taking it to the next level in prior seasons. Hell, even I was pretty bad last year and came back to have the best record this season. Of course for all the players I'm sure there could be pointed many reasons such as real life, and the fact January is a month full of exams for like everyone in the world (usually doesn't happen in Brazil, but for bad government reasons my state had this shit going), but the biggest reason why I think that is because DPP OU is hands down the hardest old gen tier. Be it because there are too many (?) available mons, be it because team synergy is something so hard to find. So kudos to everyone ending this season with a positive record: you were really lucky or...the things just had gone in your way, I guess lol!

In order to prevent you guys from my personal crying little text, I'll just hide it. So, if you are going to read it, be aware for the amount of salt in it! Sorry in advance for the .kael btw.

Personal rants about the season

Onto my season now, I think the first week's game was the best one in this tier SPL had so far. I really liked how I prepared for this one, and the team I used is one of the most solids I've ever built. Despite the outcome, I just like to think it was pretty well played from both sides, and the endgame was really crazy. But I guess BKC already thoroughly analysed the match (you should do it for more matches!).

For the second week I was just feeling more confident after beating Ojama and decided I could just bring and old reliable team to bring the W, and so the team did the magic. I don't know why BKC said it's a Fakes team, cause I built it like 4 years ago. I guess he's not to blame, since it's just easier to attribute the teambuilding for someone other than just admitting it's the same 6 Pokémon haha! The match was pretty stale from beginning, in which I had a large matchup advantage over him due to Quagsire being a boss and walling most of his team. Not much to say, other than hope next year Rocka will rise from the ashes and beat everyone again! :D

My third SPL match was reaaaaally disappointing. Of course I won't blame hax exclusively for my loss but it was just a very complicated week irl in which there were some commitments that stopped me from teambuilding and scouting as much as I wanted to, so 5 minutes prior to the match Tesung gave me that team, and the first turn was really good! But as per the second one, I guess I could have foreseen what I was gonna get in that day. I really don't know what would have happened in that match had I been a little more lucky, but I think I had a pretty good shot if everything didn't really had gone his way.

In the fourth week, my opponent was no one but the Legend_bug. Not much to say about this match, except I just felt good my real life schedule didn't mess up this week (probably the only week I played before the weekend). I don't know if Lady bug was for real when he said about quitting; if he was, I'm gonna miss his craziness for sure. I'm just happy I could play one of the best DPPers at least once.

Did I say my third match was disappointing? Well, I don't know how to adjective the fifth one. I really tried to keep it cool for the first days, but I can't say I'm not salty for what happened in that one vs Malekith. According to some calcs a friend of mine ran, even when he had his Infernape at the Blaze range he couldn't kill my Hippo, which had max SDef in that particular team. And thus began the biggest shitfest I've have ever had after 13 years playing competitive mons. I can't know right now if I'm more disappointed due to the lack of prepare I had (carnival week) or all the hax that seemingly only he got. I've faced the worst Flygon set I've ever seen, and lost the match. Still love Male though.

After being haxed to hell and back, I figured it would be better to bring an offensive, straight-forward team to face Marshall, someone that beat me in the past SPL when I used a bulkier team. As my team was already out, I really didn't care anymore about building and crazy preparing to the matches, so apologies for the lack of variety on teams this week onwards. Again, not much to say about the match, as I attacked most of the turns and felt pretty good about how my plan actually worked out.

In the seventh week, I faced someone I was willing to play against ever since the SPL started. Unfortunately, Bad Ass had gone thru what I can bet is the biggest slump he ever had in mons. The match was really fast, it ended in like 6 minutes! Moves were pretty straight forward, not much to analyze here. To culomalo, I can only wish the same I did to Rocka. And bring some water resists, ffs!!!

The season is almost ending thank GOD sadly, so I made a little twist to an old-ish team of mine to put together the squad I liked the most throughout the ones I used this season. The match was well played by both sides, as I was fairly unlucky in the beginning, and was lucky toward the end, so I guess it was fair? Some could say it was ''pkm'', but oh well.

And finally, the last game. I had my latop charger broken the whole week and couldn't even try to prepare as much as I wanted. However, this season just wasn't meant to be, in any aspect at all, so I rushed my go-to team with a little twisted EVs like having Jirachi at max HP, something I never do. I get critted in the very fist turn, but after some deep thought I don't think that mattered as much as I could argue for. I really was disappointed due to lack of prepare in my first week of vacations, aka the first week I actually had loads of free time and couldn't even build properly. Oh well! Kudos to Cicada for bringing such a cool team.

All in all, I think it would be fair if I ended up 7-2, but I don't have many regrets. It was tiring, but my opponents were pretty cool guys so there's that!

Not much of a poster, so this felt like a walltext. Hope you guys enjoyed (even if just a little bit) my games and whatnot. I also hope for good playoff matches, and to see some more posts in this very thread by the dudes that played this fucking ass tier!

I agree with DP being the hardest. It just feels a lot less... closed? than other gens. Like, it feels every turn matters and if you get one prediction wrong you're behind your opponent by a lot. There are also a lot of 50/50 situations that pop out all the time. Most common one is Starmie being out wanting to spin SR/Spikesaway, but there's a Rotom which makes it a guessing game between Spin or Hydro/Surf. Scarf TTar is another common one with Pursuit/Crunch. I'm sure there are many more. They always seem to affect the match greatly too.

To be honest I regret the Mence ban now. The metagame felt a lot more fun with it around. Now it feels like there isn't anything that is strong and fast at the same time, though I admit that it is balanced. Just a little boring maybe.

Anyway, I had fun playing this season and I'm glad I could land a few wins for my team. Building a solid team for DP every week is like a nightmare though. It's just frustrating how you make a good team and then find out you're straight up 6-0ed by Empoleon. It was alright in the first few weeks, but then it gets tiring really, so you end up just hoping they don't bring that threat.

One more thing about DP is I find it hard to be creative in it. I don't know why, but it feels impossible to use something fun that also works. I always try to have fun and use weird stuff in other gens (I mean I missed around a lot with XY and BW), but whenever I tried it in DP it just fails really.

Oh and Breloom everywhere. Also please unban Frosslass. Whenever I remember that ban I cry.

 

[Smurf.]

Sadly, I have to say this tier is now officially terrible as it stands. Jirachi needs to be hooked. Far too many players relying on it as a crutch to hax their way through to a W. You cant ban gliscor and not ban Jirachi, thats just ludicrous to me.

No doubt some will disagree with me, but they are probably the very same people who use it 8/9 weeks and need to have a good look at themselves.

 

[Deleted User 108547]

What a good times when some people used to use Yanmega or even things like Ambipom as lead instead that shitty DPunch Machamp and no one brought 3 Steel types per team.

Also I'm agree with Smurf, the omnipresent Jirachi and his ability makes no sense for me in the current metagame. If we ban Froslass and snow cloak for a 20% we should study the case of Jirachi and his 60% secondary effects.

 

[august]

i should be grading papers but w/e..

dpp definitely doesn't have the same feel that it did for me even a couple years ago... 2 wcops ago i like to think i used a pretty big variety of teams / pkmn and i had a lot of fun playing. last spl i also played but didnt do so hott - not many people on my team were true DPPers so a lot of my tests (not that I had a lot because I wasnt a great teammate) were against cookie cutter teams that i had seen before and knew inside and out. but overall i just didnt like the feel of the teams i was using, because i like to use a couple strange sets and try to get an advantage from that, but i got a pretty big builders block and ended up resorting to using some boring lightly tested teams and got crushed (by fakes and malfoy in particular). its just so boring sometimes trying to prepare for the major offensive threats like flygon / tran / breloom (i hate trying to cover breloom, its such a pain) and also making sure you arent weak to defensive builds / make sure you arent abundantly weak to tspikes / have a stealth rocker that doesnt get stopped cold by starmie if you dont have a spinblocker etc. it really leaves a lot to be desired in terms of innovation.

i decided i would play wcop anyway because it was the summer and i was bored. i think the reason i had so much fun in wcop was because of my opponents - porengan and I have a pretty old rivalry dating back to the blast to the past tournament where i was granted a pretty unfair activity win over him, and then of course we split the series last spl in 2 great games (bulky gengar living my max spatk rotom-w shadow ball gave me a heart attack dude wtf) and then some other tournaments like superstars and a previous wcop match (in BW, yuck) so its always a pleasure getting the chance to play with him again. i was traveling a lot and didnt have much time to prepare so i used a team bkc gave me which ended up having an awesome matchup and using some underrated sets (gk starmie, custap machamp, dd boltbeam punch dnite). i played rocka again this spl and ended up bringing the stall team that tama brought vs heist week 1 last spl (hippo / fat starmie / twave ib bliss / restalk appliance / zapdos / skarm), solely because i have never used full stall against him and after doing a heavy analysis (gathering 20+ of his teams, finding common patterns and statistics on how often he uses certain mons, spinners, blockers etc) i decided on bringing the tama team instead of heists double pink team, which has lost a little bit of its flash in this metagame i think.

i also played go10 last wcop and had a bit of a chip on my shoulder from spl week 1 where he crit my moltres (guess thats what happens when i try to innovate) and also got some timely crits on my scarftar and roserade.. so i made sure to bring my a-game there and really studied him a lot. he liked to rely on stuff like scarftar / pert / rotom-w to stop offensive zapdos sets (like most of the french) so i figured that bringing tspikes would be a good idea since pert cant wall zapdos forever with TS down and scarftar will crumble to repeated tbolts / ts damage and a fairly reliable switch in (i picked swampert). the other really cool mon i got a chance to use was 4 atk hp grass boomtran. with ts down u can put quite a bit of pressure on starmie just by clicking fire blast, u pretty easily smack pert switch ins with hp grass, and when u think tran has done enough work u click explode and hopefully take down a gyarados or dragonite or bliss/fable. it helps that the majority of teams using ts lead rade will utilize the shuca/passho SR tran, which gets some pretty bad 4mss, so if you keep your real rocker hidden for a bit it becomes easy to get some nice surprise kills. i played go10 again this spl too actually and opted to use zapdos again, this time a sub baton pass set. people told me that its way better to use u-turn etc but i like sub hp grass to KO the swampert that he likes and scouting for scarftran before I go into dugtrio. dugtrio also trapped some common zapdos checks like spdef tran, tar, nidoqueen etc. i originally had an aero lead but after talking to tama we decided zapdos lead + a sturdier rocker (sr mixtar) was probably a better idea because my only fire resist was an offensive cune lol. the team was rounded out by some glue (scarf jirachi, the eternal glue to stop set up sweepers if u dont think they will bring magnezone) and then offensive cune with hp grass (i was walled by quagsire p hard i guess) and sd bulky scizor... they both also appreciated being passed subs and were good late game win conditions.

the other wcop opponent i played that i knew was none other than the legend phil7086. in his prime the man was a destroyer of worlds, and he kept to 2 playstyles generally. he used a lot of offense, and i actually had a couple of his offensive teams at my disposal. he loved boosting water types like emp / cune and also stuff like SD sciz. he also used a good amount of.. ill call it strange offense. he liked some cool stuff like trick iron ball gross with strong physical sweepers. i figured he'd bring something more reliable, so i focused more on the first option. i brought a double weather team with scarftar and abomasnow, because aboma stops a lot of bulky waters. i ended up losing the game, i got a little bad luck but im not sure it really mattered, he had a cool taunt wisp gengar set that did p well vs my team and rain dance kingdra cleaned me up pretty handily. never any shame losing to phil, he's a true bro who will always be there and no matter whether or not people think he's washed up, he will bring his a-game 100% and he should never be taken lightly. on a side note he's definitely one of the best teammates u could ever have for anything.. he's never reluctant to playtest and he will pretty much only bring his own teams, which is something i really appreciate. u know the teams he builds are always solid so the tests will actually mean something, and theres something to be said about someone who always builds there own teams for important matches these days.

im kinda glad i didnt have to actually play mop because he can bring anything and some say that no replays exist of him... a truly mysterious man. he was my manager when i played for sharks and as observant as he is i can guarantee he picked up on some of my tendencies.

but ok this post is about the current state of dpp... i don't like having to resort to using such standard teams cause its just not my style. i'm not young and reckless anymore like i was when i won ost when i was 13; i can't just bring super hard offense and expect to outplay my opponents and make really risky low reward plays just because no one knows who i am. i also can't just spam mixmence anymore, and to be honest i really miss having a dangerous mix/set up mon like mence that could also survive thanks to good resistances, intimidate, and roost. a big part of me thinks that bringing back mence/latias or both would really help dpp become less stale. right after their ban (i think the spl after their ban? im not sure i disappear a lot), more defensive playstyles dominated the metagame and people like tama who play this style really well were destroying everyone with a mixed arsenal of defensive teams.. but dpp isnt like that anymore. offense has become stale. the same mons dominate usage week in and week out. when i won ost i used kabutops a couple games. you can't just slap kabutops on a team anymore. i really miss the days where teambuilding wasn't relegated to using the most popular pkmn in the tier. people can argue that mence and latias centralized the metagame but there is clear evidence now that mons like star / tran / loom / tar / flygon centralize the metagame. i know this post won't fix that but it makes me sad to see my favorite tier - the one that i learned competitive pokemon in, the one that i won ost in, the one i played competitively at the peak of my pkmn career (lol) turn into a tier with restrictive team building.

anyway ill be posting a team soon here, one that i have a lot of confidence in that i've used the 2 times i needed to win big games. i would have used it today if i had to play mop. just a warning, im gonna derail that very same rmt with a lot of memories i have from playing every era of dpp, and ill probably include a couple teams there in hide tags too that always have a special place in my heart,

alright thats enough heartbreak for 2day

 

[dekzeh]

I'm saving my big ass text from when SPL is over for my team, but it is intriguing to me how I could relate to so much of what august said about DPP to my thoughts on the current state of ADV. Makes me question if it is even the metagame's at fault here or if are we have just been around for too long to still be excited about it.

 

[Ojama]

when i signed up for spl this year i told shake i wanted to dpp and nothing else because to me it was the best current tier and also because i hated adv so much. building in adv can be terribly unfunny because of how unstoppable certain threats like ddtar / cm sweepers can be whenever u dont wanna bring swampert + aero/blissey. spikes + gengar also makes this tier so unbelievably boring but it's so good and easy to use that when u wanna secure a win/good matchup u bring that and u have a 75% chance of winning.

turned out that i got pretty bored of playing dpp after only 4 weeks and started liking adv again. several things make dpp what is now, something extremely painful to both play and build in mainly because the originality in this tier is close to zero. breloom is a (BAN ME PLEASE) and is starting to centralize the tier a bit too much in my opinion. infernape is literally impossible to handle. breloom is so popular and i hate facing it so much that i became a scarftar hater because i dont wanna give it the slightest chance to set up. because of that, there are threats really hard to handle like suicune or zapdos. it became so easy to just pair up any special sweepers with breloom that's crazy. how many times have we seen the "zapdos-jirachi-breloom-heatran-starmie-flygon" team in tournaments like spl/classic/st. way too many times in my opinion. but i cant blame anyone really, this is the same as using spikes-gengar in adv, it's so easy to use and having breloom on your team gives u the feeling that nothing can happen to you if u find a way to set up. taking the momentum with breloom is so easy unless u give it literally 0 chance to make a move.

im gonna briefly talk about my water resistless teams that im known for. ive read so many things about my teams that it really makes laugh no one has realized that water resists are overrated yet. do you really consider shaymin/celebi as your water switchin when both are 2hko'd by icebeam lo starmie or +1 suicune or even +0 modest empoleon? havent u realized yet that water pokemons have an amazing coverage that allow them to get past your so called "water resistances". most of the time u guys kill starmie with a tyranitar yet you keep thinking that having a starmie switchin is necessary. suicune and empoleon are rather slow so instead of taking their hits why not hitting in their weaknesses? also bulky bslam jirachi became people's favorite water switchin at the moment so you guys are being kinda hypocrite here arent you?

to end this finchinatoresque post, i am one hundred percent in favor of a tias-mence suspect/unban (kind of hard to suspect something when the ladder is dead) though im sure this will never happen and im not sure why. both are undoubtedly very powerful and can be considered """broken""" but i am positive that the way people would build to handle them both today is radically different than it was in 2010. i really dont think they are unhealthy for the metagame, quite the opposite actually. i also truly believe that their speeds and typing would be a very good thing for the metagame to make some stuff less threatening. it always saddened me how slow dragonite was because even tho its resistances are really good u usually get hit twice before attacking so even if the said move is "not very effective" it actually is quite effective when it does 70% (hello sr + sand/lo). salamence being faster than timid cune is a benediction lol. the current metagame really lacks of a good ddancer imo, setting up with gyara/nite/tar became really hard because of their speeds and they are rather weak at +0 so they end up being dead weight most of the time which isnt the case with mence (nite has the same attack but like i said above it's too slow so not a chance u're sweeping with a +0 dnite lol. people also run lum berry on ddnite. LO on ddmence. big diff). as for latias, it's quite obvious having her on your team would make it less weak to special sweepers and that's something to take into account. it became really hard nowadays to handle stuff like zapper-cm cune or even shaymin (thank god no one uses it because it sure is really scary). i agree cm/specs tias is scary but i think the metagame being much more offensive as it used to be in the dp era i think it's manageable. kind of hard to theorymon anyway.

just my 2 cents about this tier that i used to love and kind of despise at the moment because of the lack of originality and i really feel like we are going around in circles and it might be time for some change.

#shakingdra4president

 

[badabing]

gotta disagree with some of the sentiment in this thread. despite the validity of certain concerns, lemme just offer a lil caution against any lati mence test mob that might be forming. injecting two mons that would be hands down at the apex is an incredibly drastic move for a tier in which nothing is really broken. theorymonning the productivity of their defensive niches aside, i feel like anybody who'd want this test is discounting the possibility that it could go horribly wrong. quite frankly, i don't trust any council of players that had the oversight to needlessly ban froslass (who arguably represented the highest viability of an entire playstyle) to tamper with the best modern ou. i rly shouldn't need to post an essay about how it's troubling to consider the permanence of something slightly above mixnite power level with more speed (turns), more durability/reward for switching into the field with intimidate, and a threat of dd that current speed tiers can't accommodate without either diminishing the utility of the scarf slot with worse faster mons or going back to exploitable zor spam. "hope it's not jollE" - the goat generation of smog.

as for lati, i mean... it's so fucking good lmao. it would stick out like a sore thumb and immediately centralize the metagame. it hard checks almost all of the special side of the tier with more reliable offense and support than anything else. it's shutting so many motherfuckers down with significantly less ways to pressure it or say "you're not fucking switching into this" compared to later gens. it would be used on every team.

"but there's ttar and jira mang" -- well dam g, imagine if those zapdos dug shits suddenly got tooken to another level... or what if a balanced tier suddenly reverted to spike wars with stupid ass, tacked-on lucarios because you have to do certain things vs lati. gonna have to cater to the yunger demographic and say no to that legendary.

leaving this post focused, but there's other things to say

 

[BKC]

as someone who goes through a midlife crisis every other month in dpp/adv (and retreats to whichever one he's not currently annoyed with until he gets sick of it, by which time the other looks fun again) I know how you guys feel all too well.

on one hand, it IS an old gen, let's remember that; we aren't going to be able to be super original forever, or consistently, and we definitely cannot force it, especially not at the drop of a hat. being creative is one of those things that (usually) comes naturally. the idea of making a new team each week in spl sounds fun and exciting until you actually do it. then, unless you're one of those people who is totally cool with being weak to shit (I myself am not capable of such a laissez-faire approach), you're going to spend days bitching and moaning about how you can only use x because y is ridiculous, or how if you don't use z your team won't be as good as it can be, etc. sometimes we all just need to take a step back and look at things from a non-I-need-to-win-this-week-and-the-metagame-is-squeezing-my-balls-way-too-hard perspective. yes, I know that's way easier said than done in the heat of a tournament. it's why I much prefer the idea of making your teams in a no-pressure mode, just to make them and not for a tour, and then save them and use them in the tours (I realize replays throw a thorn in this somewhat but you didn't go around parading your best teams in public for all to see in the old days either). I find it is a lot easier to think of new/forgotten/cool things to play around with in such an environment. recently I've been playing around with a ton of fun stuff that works, and it was because I did it just to do it. I certainly couldn't with a big tournament game looming. I think it's very possible to get creative and have it work, but working under deadlines isn't one of our strengths as pokemon players. being able to play under pressure is an important skill, but teambuilding is made unnecessarily harder by it. it leaves a lot of people annoyed with the tier itself. if the teams were made in a less intense environment and the focus was more like "I'll bring my favorite superachi team this week" instead of "x can't beat stall, lemme build the best stall team ever" and 5 minutes later "why is aerial ace gliscor the only breloom counter that doesn't get smashed by everything else", it wouldn't be such a problem. bending over backwards to make the world's best counterstyle or a never-before-seen metagame innovation or both week after week after week just leads to frustration.

on the other, there are very valid points and annoyances I feel myself. half the reason breloom is so fucking common and feels so necessary on a lot of offensive teams is because it is one of the most reliable things at fucking with stall; mixnite, the "mence replacement" (and I hate to talk badly of it because I do think it's amazing) can't break sdef hippo unless it runs outrage and it lacks the speed to use that effectively. you pair that with the tar/aero resist factor, and how it gives longevity to an offensive team that'd otherwise get uncomfortably chipped at by blissey/clefable, and how mach checks everything, and how its counters are weak to super common/abusable shit... well long story short is that it has a ton of really important traits that make it very hard to not use. latias coming down would certainly help in both containing this monster and giving us more potential ways to screw with guys whose modus operandi is "switch between counters and heal when necessary." plus, zapdos is kind of ridiculous for a lot of teams, and it has broken ass uturn to make matters worse. I'm not saying zap is broken or anything but having more options to deal with it would be grand, and I do not believe latias is at all broken. I played tons of latias games, just for fun and to test for the tour and for the tour, and I really think it fits right at home, in both keeping big guys in check (and not at all unfairly, they have the tools to screw with it) and giving us a source of power (again, not unfairly... at least imo anyway). its stats/typing might seem overwhelming at a glance but in practice it fit in just fine. after a while rachee and I weren't even using lati every time because it didn't fit that well into whatever team we were trying to use. plus discouraging stupid ass bulky starmie usage is awesome. mence is... too much, I think.

the water resists thing is mainly uninformed junk that sideline dpp professors like to jeer but there is truth in it. gyarados is the biggest dude to worry about (remember when people used to rely on scarfgon to counter it and got rolled by wf on the switch?), or even cb pert. generally it's just good to have a resist to be able to pivot out on the coverage move - for example I much prefer to bring scarf rachi/tar in on starmie's ice beam/tbolt. now I'm not saying you absolutely need to have one on every team, the only thing you absolutely require is stealth rock... but to make a habit out of bringing such squads can definitely lead to trouble.

tldr: free my girl latias, but even if she isn't freed, don't try to reinvent an old metagame each week, make your teams in a no-pressure environment rather than worrying about your opponent likes to bring and trying to counterteam him; you'll see dpp is very kind to smart creativity. emphasis on the smart. you aren't going to be sweeping people with rp torterra or other stupid shit. however the next machloom is right around the corner. oh and free froslass and enslave bp goddamn.

edit: oh and fuck haxrachi too, christ almighty. talk about another pokemon that becomes stupid as fuck with sr/sand in the picture.

 

[panamaxis]

im gonna briefly talk about my water resistless teams that im known for. ive read so many things about my teams that it really makes laugh no one has realized that water resists are overrated yet. do you really consider shaymin/celebi as your water switchin when both are 2hko'd by icebeam lo starmie or +1 suicune or even +0 modest empoleon? havent u realized yet that water pokemons have an amazing coverage that allow them to get past your so called "water resistances". most of the time u guys kill starmie with a tyranitar yet you keep thinking that having a starmie switchin is necessary. suicune and empoleon are rather slow so instead of taking their hits why not hitting in their weaknesses? also bulky bslam jirachi became people's favorite water switchin at the moment so you guys are being kinda hypocrite here arent you?

I agree with what BKC said RE this. I feel like there's a big difference between the waters. Some teams without a water resist are okay vs the special ones (starmie empoleon and cune type waters), but then when you put a CB gyarados or CB pert against these teams it will straight up murder them (see go10 vs badass).

On another note, i agree with free froslass. I actually voted to ban snow cloak when that vote came up, but I didn't realise it was froslass' only ability and would therefore ban it from DPP. I wonder if anyone else was in the same boat as me (or whether it was just me that was oblivious). Snow cloak is retarded, don't get me wrong, but aboma + snow cloak teams are so rare that I feel froslass really should be prioritised and the snow cloak ban reverted. #freelass

 

[The Grand Babido]

lol all the fat cats piping up in this thread huh. unsurprisingly some thoughtful posts

take my words with a grain of salt as i haven't played this tier with winning as my sole motivation for a long time. every time i build and play i always have the ulterior motive of trying to stretch the tier to the limit or in other words throwing in dumb shit for the sake of throwing it in, but that is what i like to do and is why i play pokes i guess and its not an excuse but rather a disclaimer.

however this has got exponentially harder over the last year. this isn't surprising though... its just that the well has run dry. this tier has always attracted the more creative players due to its tendencies to create more clear cut 'phases' and linear structure which allows u to focus way more on what u are doing and almost entirely ignore what ur opponent is doing as long as what you're doing is being done very well (compared to other tiers... like if u look at ORAS OU u almost gotta approach squad building in the most reactive way possible in order to create solid teams). u can also much more reliably create situations for ur intended surprise or gimmick or whatever to succeed. custap champ probably uses its berry 70% of games it plays for example. my point is this tier naturally attracts innovators and its (as expected) reached a point where 98% of what can be innovated already has been.

this is what has also been happening in ADV but at a much slower rate due both to the age of the metagame and its slower pace. don't think staleness will ever truly impact that tier for a sustained period of time though as its a tier that we can expect to change over time as the metagame responds to threat usage. i don't think we will ever see anything resembling a paradigm shift in DP any time soon though. the best pokes are very obviously the best and they are also all extremely versatile (which obviously is part of why they're the best)

it is what it is i guess. u can't expect to come across new ideas as consistently as u could in the past and especially not forcefully on a weekly basis. just be thankful that only now u are experiencing this with the tier and consider that we were experiencing this with BW while it was still the primary meta.

still though, people continue to find new and cool things. bad ass was pretty awful this SPL but u can't deny his salac ape is not cool as hell. badabing built an almost quintessential uxie offense team... one that i'm surprised wasn't created before, even with an azelf in the front. tama's stall team against OJ week 1 was also pretty cool. there's still room to find cool stuff but u can't expect to do it at the rate u did in the past.

the allure of everything wears off after a while and 9 year old competitive pokemon tiers are surprisingly not exempt from this rule. as BKC says, some days u'll build an absolutely seamless offense and other days u'll think that games are entirely decided by jirachi's moveset, or that the tier is based completely on lures and surprise and momentum and so that u cannot consistently use the same team unless it has a very specific way of playing.

i agree with badabing RE latias and salamence. i would absolutely rather test a metagame without stealth rock before retrying those two and i'd actually be interested in seeing if there would be any serious support for that. i'll elaborate on this on the weekend if anyone is interested but it basically boils down to me thinking that the punishment for switching in this tier can be extremely high too often and that without sr certain centralizing dudes become much less of a threat.

 

[PDC]

i planned on replying to this thread awhile back but i lost track of time

like most of the people above me, dpp ou is probably my favorite metagame of all time. however as much as i adore this metagame and participate in it, i must say that i have noticed it growing more and more stale as time goes on. i mean this should be expected, gen 4's days as a main metagame have been over for about 6 years now and the constant fluctuation of styles and new ideas has to settle after awhile, but for what it's worth i believe dpp has been the most progressive metagame even when dormant. there is a huge difference between what the meta was like at the end of it and what it is like now, but they do share one similar feature: they are both kinda settling down, and for the latter metagame, i feel it might be for the last time.

there has been quite a bit of innovation the past few years in dpp. stuff like milotic, clefable, raikou, and a bunch of other various sets and mons have popped up especially after 2013. hell, even in this spl we saw some cool sets such as subsalac ape / cb pert, but generally speaking i believe it really is about that "time" where the water has run dry and that almost everything has been tried. you see a lot of the same types of teams now, mostly that zapdos / breloom / pert / steel balance that is so popular and a lot of heist clefable stall mixed in. to combat these fatter builds, a lot of players (myself included) have started using breloom a lot more. if there has ever been a pokemon that tortures stall or bulkier teams, it has to be breloom. i agree with ojama when he said it centralizes the tier to a great extent.

whenever i bring any sort of bulky team (read: not strong fast offense) i absolutely dread facing breloom more than anything else. it isn't the unpredictability factor, 9 times out of 10 i know exactly what this mon will do that given turn. the only things you really need to guess a bit with is when it will use spore, and if it is sub or mach punch. i know what breloom is going to do, but you can't really stop it considering it just shuts down these playstyles so well. u need multiple ways to beat breloom on a slower team. this includes: 1 actual counter that you can switch into repeatedly, a mon that you will need to take the spore, and a few other things thrown in there like psychic starmie or a defensive skarmory to at least slow down the momentum breloom puts on you. to make it even more annoying, breloom switches like zapdos or skarm need to heal up almost every single time they come in on a focus punch or even superpower, especially if rocks are up. moral of the story is breloom gives such amazing momentum against anything not offense, can be put on so many teams due to its utility in beating down a playstyle, and really is turning the metagame into a centralizing fest.

i think the quick solution a lot of people here have mentioned is dropping down salamence / latias to deal with the problem. i think generally these 2 (mostly latias) help solve to ape / loom wallbreaker problem pretty well and can spread out the metagame for awhile...but not for long. i remember 2009ish or something dpp being a spikes lati semistall (that is a word i haven't use in awhile) fest. badabing is right when he said latias is just way 2 good to not use. it has everything to fit every playstyle, offense, stall, whatever. i think it would just create a different type of centralization.

i remember there was a pm sent around a bunch of dpp guys like a year ago relating to a latias re-test. i cannot remember the salient points of the pm, nor will i dig it up atm, but there was at least some interest in a re-test, but it kinda died down after like a week or something. i think if we really want to get serious about testing a metagame with latias or something unveiled we need to really unite and push for it at this point. maybe one of you is willing to make a policy review thread on it? i wouldn't even mind bringing it up and posting a discussion on a serious platform if i thought it would go somewhere. i think a lot of stages would have to be passed though before anything serious actually is considered.

lol and now onto what i actually used and how i liked dpp in this spl.

week 4 i didn't really have a team available or ready to go. i remember fumbling around with some physically defensive milotic shit early on but i scrapped it a few hours before the game started. it wasn't very good and only really worked against specific type of stuff like dd spam. so last minute i decided to use something that i planned to use against mcmeghan in stour, which was cbgyarados offense. i like cb gyara quite a bit; gyarados has the water STAB which is so valuable right now due to lack of water resists and also a pretty solid defensive typing which when wielded early games make an impact. the rest of the team was just helping in wall breaking w/ stuff like mixnite and the forever annoying ebelt jirachi. i remember badass mentioned that ttar + scarflucario was a pretty cool combo and i liked the idea of two dainty steel types on a single team, so i went ahead and slapped those 2 on there to complete the core (a rotom-h is implied). generally speaking i use clef stall / balance way more than any other playstyle so i figured a more offensive team would be a good breakout for me in dpp. good team made my me & mdragon, a more creative take on a now more banal style of mixnite + lucario.

week 8 vs zamrock was another last minute pick. i juggled around a couple teams and ultimately decided on a good and trusted one: hnc's flygon clef mag stall. i always enjoyed this team due to how good magnezone + clef + gon is along with the solid backing core. magnezone is another favorite mon of mine in this metagame and i believe that it truly needs to be used more. the intrinsic value it holds on some teams is unmatched. being able to trap a scizor or skarm or jirachi is pretty damn incredible. there are also so many combinations you can use with it too. clef + mag is just one core that it works well with. mag + strong ground / dragon / water attackers is another solid base to start with. but enough of magnezone, this game vs zamrock i got kinda lucky with the starmie freeze (and with him choking), but i believe this shows just how optional a water resist can really be in this metagame. not to say you shouldn't have one tho, having a resistance to one of the most versatile types in the game is a nice cushion to have. burns me up though how i see people breaking their team's backs just to have a 1 time switch to an offensive cune's pump or something silly like that.

semis vs kg is where it got real. i decided to fall back on one of my trusted teams that i built week 4 for stathakis but modified. the scarfgon + breakers core, whatever it may be, is something that just "works" vs fatter stuff. sadly it failed me this time in part due to me playing suboptimally and just generally not having control over a game i should have, especially after a fortunate turn 2 with a stone edge ohko on machamp. but back to the team, the idea is just u-turn out and go to either loom or cbtar (sometimes tran) straight and wreck havoc from the start. usually gon doesn't do a very good job of preventing rocks, which is annoying, but i will say that if enough pressure is applied then hazards shouldn't be too much of a problem. i think starmie > milotic was the right choice here for sure. if i had some nice spinning action to keep tran healthy i think the game would have been in my court. i already have cbtar anyway....hmm....i gotta change that.

 

[Twisted Kneebar]

It's been beaten to the ground at this point but Latias took 4 votes where all but the last one said it was OK but for some reason the last one was permanent.

Wasn't Latias banned before Salamence? Wasn't the reason for Latias banning centralization/turning the metagame into dragon and steels? Well Salamence seems to have been a contributing factor, if I am indeed correct that Latias was banned before Salamence. I know the Choice Specs set was the thing changing minds but it's not like it can't be handled, just very good. I remember reading someone say not to mess with old games but IMO, the ones messing with the game were the ones who decided a bunch of tests saying Latias is fine weren't enough but ONE (1) test saying otherwise was enough. Like, seriously, what is stopping us from having a test? Bad bureaucracy? Is it too much for Smogon to allow people to battle, and for the best ones to vote? Do I have to pay off a Mod? It doesn't seem like it takes a lot of effort.

Oh and I don't know about tournaments and high level battling but in random SD and PO battles, Breloom has been an extremely common and centralizing staple for years now.

 

[george182]

If you want to 'shake up' the tier. Then ban Breloom.

Breloom isn't broken, but he does prevent loads of teams from existing.