BH Balanced Hackmons

[Nihilslave]

252+ Atk Choice Band Blaziken-Mega Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Beedrill-Mega: 124-146 (37.1 - 43.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Blaziken-Mega Electro Drift vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Beedrill-Mega: 100-118 (29.9 - 35.3%) -- 22.4% chance to 3HKO

Everything is nice. But can you show us the damage calc for Headlong Rush?

A random set (untested) to make this not a one-liner:


Blaziken-Mega @ Clear Amulet / Throat Spray
Ability: Simple
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Victory Dance
- Torch Song
- Secret Sword
- V-create

 

[MAMP]

hello all, i hope you are well. now that i've wrapped my head around building teams without poison heal i'm enjoying balanced hackmons again. here's some guys i've used lately that i wanted to talk about


6 images (Miraidon) @ Magnet
Ability: Galvanize
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Boomburst
- Nasty Plot
- Clanging Scales
- Strength Sap

built around this for my first round in omfl after i watched 2 different ompl games where someone stayed in with regenvest celesteela to uturn on a miraidon. it's not the most consistent breaker and in particular needs a bit of support to get through ting-lu, but plot + magnet gives you the firepower to bust straight through a lot of ice scales guys (scales arc gets 2hkod at +2). i improofed with lightning rod flutter mane.


Arceus-Grass @ Icicle Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Grass Knot / Matcha Gotcha
- Nasty Plot
- Judgment
- Earth Power

this just wins far more often than you'd expect


pasta bake (Garchomp-Mega) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Headlong Rush
- Glaive Rush
- Spikes

brought vs mok3s in farm league. i ran a lot of shit like this in gen 8. while i don't think it's as good in this meta bc defensive cores are so much more varied and salt cure/mortal spin are a nuisance for it, this can still come in on all kinds of passive guys over and over again and make a little bit of progress every single time. the joke here is that there is minimal overlap between chomp checks and hazard removers, so you can keep forcing in their fur coaters and steelas to spike up. offensive regen is mad underrated atm i feel


locket (Kyogre-Primal) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Salt Cure
- Steam Eruption
- Mortal Spin
- U-turn

brought this vs mok3s in farm league. i know i saw someone else talking about +speed regenvest ogre at some point but i can't remember who it was? but anyway everyone is running +atk/spa natures on their chickens and chomps and gardes and such, so timid can restrict their opportunities quite heavily. i would always run steam eruption > scald on this set, pp doesn't matter nearly as much as 2hkoing chomp. psychic noise > mortal spin could be cool to hit chicken harder and pester bulky structures


carrot juice (Gyarados-Mega) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Knock Off
- Flip Turn
- Salt Cure / Nuzzle

i chucked this on a team originally to imposter-proof some weird mewtwo set. this guy kinda sucks defensively and loses to every relevant breaker besides some versions of ash-gren, but he's got some cool qualities nonetheless. teams that aim to switch into regenvests with squishy magic guards and their own regenvests can get chipped down quickly by gyara's very strong knock off and flip turn, and he's also a decent rapid spinner. being weak to salt cure is useful against imposter also. if you want to get a bit freaky you can try running +speed to outpace ada chomp perhaps


remembrance (Miraidon) @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Cage
- Mortal Spin
- Taunt
- Gastro Acid

brought this vs rofna in r1 of bh seasonal. designed as a lure for mg blobs but it has a ton of utility besides that. you're pretty much unwallable long-term, especially if you have reliable hazard setting and other forms of passive damage, like trick + black sludge or other mortal spinners. taunt + gastro gives you the tools to outplay anything if you're cool enough, even regen grounds; you can force them into a position where they have to either uturn and get gastrod, or risk hard switching to heal and having the switchin get caged. psychic noise > taunt is justifiable, helps a lot vs magic bounce and eternatus. we're gastro > worry seed despite the lesser pp because imposter won't copy the ability suppression, so after you gastro their regen/magic guard you can go to imposter and still have their ability.

 

[Mok3s]

hello all, i hope you are well. now that i've wrapped my head around building teams without poison heal i'm enjoying balanced hackmons again. here's some guys i've used lately that i wanted to talk about


6 images (Miraidon) @ Magnet
Ability: Galvanize
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Boomburst
- Nasty Plot
- Clanging Scales
- Strength Sap

built around this for my first round in omfl after i watched 2 different ompl games where someone stayed in with regenvest celesteela to uturn on a miraidon. it's not the most consistent breaker and in particular needs a bit of support to get through ting-lu, but plot + magnet gives you the firepower to bust straight through a lot of ice scales guys (scales arc gets 2hkod at +2). i improofed with lightning rod flutter mane.


Arceus-Grass @ Icicle Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Grass Knot / Matcha Gotcha
- Nasty Plot
- Judgment
- Earth Power

this just wins far more often than you'd expect


pasta bake (Garchomp-Mega) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Headlong Rush
- Glaive Rush
- Spikes

brought vs mok3s in farm league. i ran a lot of shit like this in gen 8. while i don't think it's as good in this meta bc defensive cores are so much more varied and salt cure/mortal spin are a nuisance for it, this can still come in on all kinds of passive guys over and over again and make a little bit of progress every single time. the joke here is that there is minimal overlap between chomp checks and hazard removers, so you can keep forcing in their fur coaters and steelas to spike up. offensive regen is mad underrated atm i feel


locket (Kyogre-Primal) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Salt Cure
- Steam Eruption
- Mortal Spin
- U-turn

brought this vs mok3s in farm league. i know i saw someone else talking about +speed regenvest ogre at some point but i can't remember who it was? but anyway everyone is running +atk/spa natures on their chickens and chomps and gardes and such, so timid can restrict their opportunities quite heavily. i would always run steam eruption > scald on this set, pp doesn't matter nearly as much as 2hkoing chomp. psychic noise > mortal spin could be cool to hit chicken harder and pester bulky structures


carrot juice (Gyarados-Mega) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Knock Off
- Flip Turn
- Salt Cure / Nuzzle

i chucked this on a team originally to imposter-proof some weird mewtwo set. this guy kinda sucks defensively and loses to every relevant breaker besides some versions of ash-gren, but he's got some cool qualities nonetheless. teams that aim to switch into regenvests with squishy magic guards and their own regenvests can get chipped down quickly by gyara's very strong knock off and flip turn, and he's also a decent rapid spinner. being weak to salt cure is useful against imposter also. if you want to get a bit freaky you can try running +speed to outpace ada chomp perhaps


remembrance (Miraidon) @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Cage
- Mortal Spin
- Taunt
- Gastro Acid

brought this vs rofna in r1 of bh seasonal. designed as a lure for mg blobs but it has a ton of utility besides that. you're pretty much unwallable long-term, especially if you have reliable hazard setting and other forms of passive damage, like trick + black sludge or other mortal spinners. taunt + gastro gives you the tools to outplay anything if you're cool enough, even regen grounds; you can force them into a position where they have to either uturn and get gastrod, or risk hard switching to heal and having the switchin get caged. psychic noise > taunt is justifiable, helps a lot vs magic bounce and eternatus. we're gastro > worry seed despite the lesser pp because imposter won't copy the ability suppression, so after you gastro their regen/magic guard you can go to imposter and still have their ability.

all sets r good vs mok3s QwQ

 

[MAMP]

sample submission:

flowstate [triple spin balance]

https://pokepast.es/02612c8f29ad1c81

A versatile balance team aiming to stack hazards and punch holes with unconventional Giratina-O and Miraidon sets to facilitate a late-game Arceus-Fairy sweep. Keep up the offensive pressure with Miraidon, Giratina-O, and Arceus-Fairy, and comfortably play the long game against bulkier builds thanks to the two Regenerators and three spinners.

Weaknesses: Setup sweepers (particularly Victory Dance users and Arceus-Ghost), offensive Flutter Mane, Garchomp-Mega once they know the Miraidon set, Normalize + Entrainment

Effectiveness: Multiple wins in tournament games and pretty solid on ladder
Replays:
OMFL vs ANinjaDude's webs offense: Giratina-O grabs a couple of KOs, then Miraidon lures in and removes a Soundproof Magearna to clear the way for Arceus-Fairy

BH Seasonal vs benladil piloting Hallward's double bug team: Arceus-Fairy grinds down a team that lacks a long-term answer

Ladder vs ChillemRaen's rain offense: An early setup with Arceus-Fairy leads to a quick victory

 

[The Guy Who Has Many Alts]

Hello everyone, today I will start sharing sets and teams that I built during OMPL. Unlike most people, I will NOT be teamdumping. There are several reasons for this which includes:

1. I believe each team deserves their own post to show care and avoid sharing spotlights
2. I want to farm engagement, more likes and reacts
3. Super long posts need to be really good to retain attention, and I like posts to be short and sweet

This posts also doubles as a sample team submission and a test my hypothesis of my teams never making it to samples after the infamous Big Stall years ago.

Without further ado let's dive into these sets

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White Tezcátlipoca (Kyurem-White) @ Never-Melt Ice
Ability: Refrigerate
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
IVs: 30 HP
- Fake Out
- Extreme Speed
- Boomburst
- V-create

Now you may be wondering why we're running Fake Out and Extreme Speed. It's simple really. These two moves are forms of speed control and free chip. For example, we can bring this Kyurem in on Nasty Plot/SD sweepers (which may be Speed Boost), certain Take Heart mons or Torch Song Dragons (eg ) and kill them. Fake Out/Espeed also gives us room to outplay and click Boomburst on fast mons. For example, you can bring Kyurem on a full HP Flutter Mane. Because Flutter Mane dies to FakeSpeed, you can predict their switch and click Boomburst instead. Think of FakeSpeed as a Boomburst "enabler". Boomburst is Kyurem's best move and what we want to click. Having FakeSpeed gives us more opportunities to click Boomburst, hence FakeSpeed is a viable option on Kyurem. I have provided some calcs below to show what mons FakeSpeed force out so you can predict and click Boomburst. Note that Espeed is just double the damage (40 vs 80). I also want to quickly mention that passive from Poison, Burn or even Leech Seed and Sand help the set because Fake Out gives you a free tick of damage. Just think about it, Fake Out on a Posioned mon deals an additional 12.5% of their HP which is a lot. The reason why I like +speed is because there are a lot of people who dare go neutral speed on mons like and to "do more damage". Well, I'll be posting a lot of sets with +speed to punish these greedy players. I swear I will instill fear that their breakers will be outsped and die before accomplishing a single thing because they dare go neutral speed. Finally,I think V-create is the natural coverage choice since this move is very strong and hits steels.


252 Atk Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Flutter Mane: 102-121 (32.4 - 38.5%) -- 98.4% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Necrozma-Ultra: 146-174 (36.6 - 43.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eternatus: 150-176 (30.9 - 36.3%) -- 56.5% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Koraidon: 132-156 (32.6 - 38.6%) -- 97.9% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Miraidon: 144-170 (35.6 - 42%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Alakazam-Mega: 93-111 (29.6 - 35.3%) -- 19.3% chance to 3HKO
252 SpA Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Celesteela: 193-228 (48.4 - 57.2%) -- 91.8% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Never-Melt Ice Refrigerate Kyurem-White Boomburst vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Ting-Lu: 446-528 (86.7 - 102.7%) -- 18.8% chance to OHKO

Now, obviously there are certain weaknesses to the set which necessitates support from your other mons. Firstly, I think or is the best item on the set because we are running three Ice-type moves. This means that your team has to have strong hazard removal. Secondly, this set doesn't really beat TH Arceus which is the most common setup sweeper. This is a bit uncommon but Covert Cloak stops flinches (thanks VGC) though to be honest, most of the mons you want to Fake Out are offensive and so are unlikely to have it. It does matter on walls since you'll lose free chip damage but you probably want to click Boomburst.

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Mystery Dungeon (Dialga-Origin) @ Adamant Crystal
Ability: Wandering Spirit
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Revelation Dance
- Strength Sap
- Dragon Energy / Draco Meteor
- Thunder Cage

The next set is Wandering Spirit Dialga. If you know me you know I love this mon a lot. I played gen 4 many times and I think Dialga has a cool design, vibe and stats. I'm gonna keep this brief since I've posted and talked about this set before. Basically you bring this in to Regens using a contact move (e.g Knock Off, U-turn, Rapid Spin, Nuzzle, Dragon Tail). Wandering Spirit will automatically swap abilities with that Regen, giving you Regen and giving them a useless ability. Just be mindful not to have the same thing happen to your Regen though, for example if you switch Dialga out into a mon with a contact move. The main difference here is the move choice and nature. Once again we're running +speed to punish those greedy players. They think they can bring in their or in? They better think again because you will outspeed and attack them first (calcs provided below). Revelation Dance and Dragon Energy are strong STABs that will chunk most mons. Thunder Cage is one of the best moves on Wandering Spirit because it traps in regen and forces them to U-turn or Spin, both of which are contact moves and trigger our ability. To be honest, Strength Sap is optional. Jungle Healing makes Nuzzle Para less of an issue and Recover is solid. Depending on the matchup you can actually rely completely on Wandering Spirit and playing well for recovery, maybe with Wish support to have some room for error. This set is also self-proof in most circumstances. If they come in on Thunder Cage, you can win with Dragon Energy and speed ties. Draco Meteor is an option to always beat Imposter. Just remember that it's not self-proof if you replace Strength Sap though.

252 SpA Adamant Crystal Dialga-Origin Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Garchomp-Mega: 534-630 (127.1 - 150%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 SpA Adamant Crystal Dialga-Origin Revelation Dance vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Gardevoir-Mega: 254-300 (74.7 - 88.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Adamant Crystal Dialga-Origin Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Blaziken-Mega: 297-351 (81.5 - 96.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Adamant Crystal Dialga-Origin Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Ting-Lu: 181-214 (35.2 - 41.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Dialga-Origin Thunder Cage vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Celesteela: 94-112 (23.6 - 28.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after trapping damage
252 SpA Adamant Crystal Dialga-Origin Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Giratina-Origin: 516-608 (102.3 - 120.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

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First Sun Xibalbá (Blissey) (F) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Clear Smog / Dragon Tail / Circle Throw
- U-turn
- Stone Axe
- Rapid Spin

This is another set I've posted before. RegenVest Blissey's primary purpose is to punish Take Heart mons (usually Arceus) without Secret Sword. This mon has insane special bulk and will wall most even if they're boosted. The moves are prtty self-explanatory, just your typical utility moves. Ruination is an option if you need damage. Although not a factor in the team I will post, Blissey has another reason why it's good with Physical wallbreakers. The reason if Imposter comes in on it and you U-turn, you can bring in your for free and OHKO it even from full.

252 SpA Arceus-Ground Revelation Dance vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Blissey: 55-66 (7.7 - 9.2%) -- possibly the worst move ever
252 SpA Life Orb Eternatus Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Blissey: 134-160 (18.7 - 22.4%) -- possible 5HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Necrozma-Ultra Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Blissey: 149-177 (20.8 - 24.7%) -- guaranteed 5HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Sceptile-Mega Dragon Energy (150 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Blissey: 134-160 (18.7 - 22.4%) -- possible 5HKO

Regen Blissey's biggest weakness is chip. Unlike other Regens which like , Blissey shares the same issue with Kyogre where they both take full damage from rocks and poison. This is why I would normally pair Blissey with a chip resistant secondary regen (e.g the aforementioned mons and ) or a Magic Guard mon. However, if you do end up loading into a TH Sap Arceus or non Secret Sword special breakers, this mon will perform exceptionally well.

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Team name: White Snow sweeps like wisp amidst Black Sea of Time
Pokepaste Link: https://pokepast.es/b662f11ab7650667
Overview: https://pokepast.es/b662f11ab7650667
This is a Balance team featuring Refrigerate Kyurem-White and Wandering Spirit Dialga.

Strengths and Weaknesses: You should use this team if you want to punish TH Sap Arceus and special breakers without Secret Sword. Also fantastic if you expect at least a Regen and Imposter. This team will out-sustain fat teams because it will effectively have 4 regen mons () Max Speed Kyogre lets it surprise Knock Off common medium-speed breakers and alleviate pressure. Good against spammers because Kyurem destroys that core. Bring vs TTTech and QT because they basically autolose to Kyurem + Blissey.

Do not bring if you expect Secret Sword, Hazard stack or Sniper Greninja. This team's physical walls aren't that great. It's only a single Fur Coat and the other mons don't offer useful physical bulk or typing so if you expect 2+ physical breakers then do not bring. Because of Dialga, our regens can't run Nuzzle or Salt Cure which makes it vulnerable to some TH sets.

The Vision (how to pilot properly): Ideally you lead a Regen and Knock/Mortal/Stone Axe as soon as possible. When they go to Imposter, hard switch to Dialga and force a defensive response. Keep your field clear for Kyurem and Regens. Keeping your side clear from hazards is more important than keeping rocks on your opponent's side, so prioritise clearing over setting hazards. You will out-sustain better assuming you load into a reasonable matchup. Bring in Kyurem on opposing fast frail breakers and reveal Fake Out + Espeed. After your opponent has knowledge of these two moves, you are able to outplay and Boomburst the next time. Do not disappoint me. Click Boomburst on that Necrozma, Sceptile or whatever. I will judge you if you don't. Kyurem, Dialga, Arceus and Imposter are all viable win cons depending on the match up, conditions and momentum. I'm not gonna get into explaining since that's hard to do but here is what I usually advise:

At the start of every turn (frequency lowers the better player you are), ask yourself "How difficult is it to win with X?" where X is one of the aforementioned win conditions. Then ask "What is stopping me from winning with X?", followed by "How can I make progress so I can win with X". Repeat for every win condition and hopefully you will be able to identify the path to victory.

As an additional advice, ask yourself "How can my opponent win?", then "How do I not lose to their win condition X", and finally and most difficult is "How do I progress towards winning while stopping my opponent from winning".

EXLCLUSIVE REVIEW FROM Wheaty and TTTech:

Review

And that concludes this post, I hope you learnt something. If I were to sum up this post, I'll say

1. Punish those greedy BH players who dare go neutral speed on breakers.
2. Try out my sets, they'll add some spice to teambuilding.
3. Check out my team if you're bored of the current meta.

 

[GhastlyPixie]

Well I’m out of bh seasonal so here are the teams I built.

https://pokepast.es/51d1ebf5122f7953

https://pokepast.es/9967ff71079ca44a

https://pokepast.es/54634abc875af0c2

For week 1 I really enjoyed the Rockeus team, was fun to build and play with.

https://pokepast.es/3141d578303eef8e
I had no guard on my mind while building this team

https://pokepast.es/7ef935ea839f6606
Wanted to build a webs team but honestly the defensive core was lacking and I failed to get webs up.

https://pokepast.es/e1dba63252c0f8e3

I knew I was building with shield dust in this tour so I made this team and got a near perfect matchup honestly.

Overall I had fun and built most of these teams while a little bit high.

 

[The Guy Who Has Many Alts]

Alright people, I'm back with another banger post.

First draft of me trying to explain THE VISION

Have you ever sat down to build a BH team and thought to yourself "man there are so many threats to cover in the tier, how can my FurScalesRegen cover everything if I wanna run Imposter and two extra mons that win the game?" Well I have the revolutionary way of building that is sure to tickle your fancy. What if instead of only running one or two big nukes and a bunch of filler, we run six offensive mons, BUT they are fat so they can take a hit or two. In my opinion, this type of teams are more lenient because if unlike the "solo carry" teams that people are running, you're not screwed if your offensive mon dies, because all your mons can attack and win. Basically against teams with only one or two offensive mons, we can just sac a mon to chunk their nuke and put it into OHKO range. Then, we simply use another mon to kill it. Similar idea with two nukes. Your opponent losing 1/1 or 1/2 offensive mons is more significant than you losing 1/6 or 2/6 offensive mons. If you're wondering if this is an HO mentality, it's not because the whole team is fat and is designed to win vs the 5 non-nuke mons.

The Vision™

• We bring unga bunga 6 "offensive" mons with big BST that can tank.
• Go +speed nature to outspeed neutral 100s and below.
• Just attack their nuke when it's in so it's in OHKO range. Sacking a mon to do this is fine because every mon is offensive.
• Opponent losing 1/1 or 1/2 offensive threats (100% and 50% respectively) is worse than us losing 1/5 or 1/6 (20% and 17%) "offensive mons".
• We bring a Bouncer Improof + 2 MG Sappers because they can sustain, wall and break.
• Put as many physical mons as possible so opponent can't rely on RegenVests to come in as easily, or have offensive moves on both spectrums (thanks High BST). Difference is RegenVests never click recovery while FC/Scales need to click them.
• Minimal positioning required, simply keep attacking.
• Run a bunch of typings that provide immunities (Flying, Ground, Fairy, Steel, Dark, Ghost) so you can discourage opponent clicking their best moves (more on the FC Zac section)
• Team has a lot of aura because all mons are menacing (very important)

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HERO-KING MARTH (Tyranitar-Mega) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Stone Axe
- Knock Off
- Shift Gear
- Jungle Healing

This post will feature some of my favourite mons. My preferred type of mons are slow high-bst gigachads and I think it fits perfectly with the vision of this archetype. Tyranitar has a great 164 base attack and STAB on two of the top 2 best utility moves in BH: Knock Off and Stone Axe. There is no counter to these moves. Even if they do 0 damage (it won't), it's still guaranteed progress against enemy FCs. Don't be deceived by the bad typing. I believe that it's powerful Knock and Stone Axe is so good that you can patch up its weaknesses with a defensive ability. If you need an "unwallable" progress maker, this is the mon for you. I'll list some abilities that will provide opportunities for Tyranitar to enter the scene.

Magic Bounce / GaG Comes in on status moves.
Magic Guard Comes in on passive damage moves and gives access to recoil-less LO Head Smash which does a million damage.
Soundproof - Walls and comes in on Torch Song and Parting Shot for free.
Levitate - Soft checks (come in on ground move, V-create and Bolt Strike), Spike immunity, can beat with certain moves
Sap Sipper - Sap Blocks and walls some MG mons that use Chloroblast.
Sand Stream / Ice Scales - Smooth Rock Sand Stream is 48% chip over 8 turns which is a lot. I'd use it on stall as a solo progress maker. Ice Scales lets Tyranitar tank Secret Sword though you shouldn't use this mon if you expect that move.
Misty Surge - Walls non-Secret Sword like a champ. Misty Surge makes it so grounded pokemon can't get statused which is very nice. Also halves Dragon-type damage which is low key insane if your opponent's breaker uses a Dragon move.
Desolate Land :tyranityar-mega: walls Sniper though it's rare atm and trolls Flip Turn if your opponent runs that for some reason. Also walls GaG pogre. Obviously we run V-create to do a million damage as well.
Tera Shell - This is a Disneyland ability (your head must be in Disneyland to pull this off) but I think this is a very spicy ability that lets Tyrantar Knock Off against ANY mon. on the field? I don't care. Do you care? Tera Shell certainly doesn't care. Tera Shell will let Tyranitar come in and Knock them.

I hope this section increases Tyranitar stonks because this is a very cool-looking mon and it's a shame nobody wants to use it.
Here are some big damage calcs to show that this mon is no joke (especially if you click Shift Gear).

+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Gardevoir-Mega: 321-378 (94.4 - 111.1%) -- 62.5% chance to OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eternatus: 255-300 (52.6 - 61.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Arceus-Ghost: 290-344 (65.3 - 77.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Flutter Mane: 351-414 (111.7 - 131.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Sceptile-Mega: 295-348 (85.7 - 101.1%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Stone Axe vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Yveltal: 338-402 (74.1 - 88.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Registeel: 123-145 (33.7 - 39.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 248 HP / 252 Def Celesteela: 160-190 (40.3 - 47.8%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Dialga-Origin: 144-171 (35.6 - 42.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Extra calcs for Shift Gear MG / DesoLand for damage to show damage that makes you go
+1 252+ Atk Life Orb Tyranitar-Mega Head Smash vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Fairy: 218-257 (49 - 57.8%) -- 57.8% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
+1 252+ Atk Life Orb Tyranitar-Mega Head Smash vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eternatus: 508-601 (104.9 - 124.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Tyranitar-Mega Head Smash vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Blaziken-Mega: 380-448 (104.3 - 123%) -- guaranteed OHKO

+1 252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega V-create vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Fairy in Harsh Sunshine: 201-237 (45.2 - 53.3%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery
252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega V-create vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Registeel in Harsh Sunshine: 454-536 (124.7 - 147.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ Atk Tyranitar-Mega V-create vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Ting-Lu in Harsh Sunshine: 260-307 (50.5 - 59.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO


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Snake (Koraidon) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Ice
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Combat Torque / Triple Arrows
- Dragon Tail / Dragon Darts
- Mortal Spin / Gigaton Hammer
- U-turn

So you might be wondering why you would run a RegenVest that doesn't really wall special attackers. The answer is because of speed and damage. This koraidon isn't supposed to wall, it's supposed to come in and force threats out rather than slow pivot. For example, you can bring this is on or on resisted moves and threaten them with strong stabs. Likewise, + Dragon Darts actually lets you stay in on Dragon Energy mons like because after you Dragon Darts them their Dragon Energy won't do much back. In the context of my team later, this mon also improofs Tyranitar.

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Wolf (Zacian) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Ice
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Spirit Break
- Spirit Shackle
- Milk Drink
- Topsy-Turvy / Haze

I just have to shout out FC Zacian. A certain other FC dog is very popular right now but I am here to shatter the illusion and bring you back to reality. FC Zamazenta is a fraud. This mon is donating wins to meta slaves running . Every time you bring this bozo in on a physical breaker, know that you are basically putting down a red carpet for these two mons to come in to Sap Block and force you out. I also have to mention you resists nothing relevant except for Dark and nobody's using right now. Unlike Zamazenta, Zacian has a beautiful Fairy typing. Wanna know what's better than taking 60% from Garchomp Glaive Rush? Taking 0 fucking percent because you have a real defensive typing.

I can already hear you say "b-b-but Sunsteel Strike and Gigaton Hammer murders Zacian, what if they click it? Don't I just lose on the spot?"

Let me teach you a lesson on psychology. EVERY PHYSICAL BREAKER WANTS TO CLICK THEIR STAB ON FC ZAMAZENTA. :gachomp: WANTS to click Glaive/Headlong on Zama. WANTS to click V-create/CC on Zama. Physical WANTS to click Glaive on Zama. This means that FC Zama offers no "friction" to your opponent in clicking their best moves. On the other hand, having a Fairy type SIGNIFICANTLY deters your opponent from clicking a Dragon move. If their band mon lock into Glaive Rush on a Fairy type, you're in a fantastic spot. Just compare that to if they lock into Glaive Rush on your FC Zama. Do they care? No, because your fraud just took half and is forced to recover. Another example is or a PSea mon. Just the existence of these mons discourage from clicking V-create. Do you care if the band chicken clicks CC? Certainly not as much as if they click V-create under sun. This is why I suggest running a bunch of types that give immunity, or even abilities though I won't get into that in this post.

This is also why I think stuff like FC is fine as long as you have a Fairy-type, or a fire-weak FC with a Psea mon. Your opponent wants to click Glaive Rush to kill your FCs but you can predict that and go to your Fairy type. Note that this does require skill because if you play wrong you will get cooked but that's not my problem. Why are you getting outplayed? Are you bad?

"I am better. My opponent's feeble mind is no match for my superior move-clicking abilities. They will dance like a puppet on my strings. My opponent is not strong. Their achievements, their career, their records are but ashes fated to scatter before the lightest summer breeze. They have simply been blessed not to have been matched with a truly strong opponent such as myself."

It is only after you embrace this mentality that you too can call yourself a true XxFINAL DESTINATIONxX expert.

Anyways Spirit Break is a solid move that always drops special attack. Topsy is a good anti-setup move but I want to mention that Haze is actually good vs Strength Sap because you reset your attack drops. This means that if you poison/burn Zama, you can actually trap and 1v1 because you can reset your Attack and Defense drops from their Strength Sap and Triple Arrows.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Falco (Necrozma-Ultra) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Dragon Energy
- Psycho Boost
- Strength Sap
- Gigaton Hammer

What some people don't realise is that big BST grants you certain privileges. To the untrained eye, you may think that Ultra Necrozma is an innocuous offensive mon with its impressive dual-spectrum offensive stats, speed and mediocre bulk. Well guess what, Attack and Speed contributes to a mon's defensive profile, just ask the longest-reigning big boss of OU . Believe it or not, Necrozma's typing walls . Although it's weak to dragon, it can outspeed and attack physical dragons first since they are usually slow. Always remember, your mon can't die to an attack if your opponent dies first.

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Peach (Enamorus) (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Primordial Sea
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Hurricane
- Milk Drink
- Rapid Spin
- Magical Torque

"A true test of skill it is to face off with another on truly even footing."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope by now you understand The Vision™. I have three extremely powerful teams to share, one of which has actually been tested by yours truly (an occurrence few and far between, you may thank OMPL for this instance).

Team name: HERO-KING MARTH'S XxFINAL DESTINATION
Pokepaste Link: https://pokepast.es/485205794aebdf09
Overview:
This is a Hyper Balance featuring Magic Bounce Tyranitar

Strengths and Weaknesses: Very easy to pilot as long as you predict well. This team has exactly one pivot and it has 135 speed so forget about the traditional "slow pivot into nuke" gameplay. Simply click the strongest move available, every turn. Sac mons as needed to get chip but keep in mind the Improofing methods. This means to keep TTar alive and Koraidon if enemy Imposter is still healthy and not statused. This team's primary method to beat setup is to attack them but we do have some setup control. I do think it's on the weaker side so be sure to scout properly and avoid some setup sweepers like Water Arceus that may just wall everybody and win.

The Vision (how to pilot properly):

But that's not all. I have 2 more teams that follow this philosophy which is sure to bring you victory and definitely not lose to some common set that I don't want to think about.

SM4SH META KNIGHT's XxFINAL DESTINATIONxX

https://pokepast.es/83c33f3dd875254e

DEMON KING BOWSER'S XxFINAL DESTINATIONxX
:
https://pokepast.es/f131f50b75cc925f

 

[ANinjaDude]

Tera Shell only works on Terapagos, so I would advise against using it.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2401922835

 

[GhastlyPixie]

Sample team submission: Dusted Flame, featuring shield dust steelceus as well as desolate land blaze.

https://pokepast.es/32eacac78f5ab005

In games I’ve played so far the team has done wonderfully, it is just a basic balance featuring double fc (yvel and etern), scales flutter, shield dust steelceus, desoland Blaze and imposter.

Here are some games played with the team:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/...01700886-oqky6lubxndil6ornsp6el6odlinvvjpw?p2

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2398939221-q36dyy91b81qctohbsi1pij06p3729vpw

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/...01129106-sa97xyvywm53uvvogfo6b37jgy20a4kpw?p2

All in all I really enjoy this team and think it is pretty decent. That is all I have for now, keep playing bh and have fun!

 

[Chessking345]

Hello friends, with HPL II coming up, to help make the format as great as possible, we have a form of what formats people want to include, please fill it out if you’re interested in playing or managing! Form will be closed this weekend.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/form/hpl-interest-form.188/select

 

[Ivar57]

Teamdump after going 7-0 in bh this ompl
https://pokepast.es/771bba99de369c0c

 

[Onyx Onix 7]

Since I've been eliminated from the BH Seasonal, I might as well post some of the teams I've built for the tournament. Do keep in mind to use these at your own risk as most of them are probably not suitable for tournament play by virtue of being monotype. (Yes, I attempted to play in the BH seasonal with only monotype teams, and that went about as well as one would expect). Not that the result would've been any better with actual teams, given my horrible tournament track record. Also, why are folks still drafting me for team tournaments? The poor winrate hasn't improved from previous tournament runs.


Team: Sacred Seabed:

https://pokepast.es/238bb93487327852

Mono-Water Rain team that I ended up bringing vs Damflame, as I noticed their lack of reliable Water resists on a lot of their structures. This would've worked had I played the team correctly. Unfortunately, I somehow forgot Take Heart Kyogre is a thing ( Despite it being the most common set it uses) and completely threw an otherwise completely unlosable game in typical Onyx fashion.


Team: Volcanic Explosion:

https://pokepast.es/b8e7a088b71f040b

Mono-Fire Sun team I created with the intent of exploiting structures lacking a Fur Coat Arcueus Water, as Zamazenta and other Fur Coat Arceus Teams get completely owned by this type of team. However, every time I ran this, I always ran into Fur Coat Arceus Water or Covert Cloak Imposter. Go figure. Anyhow, if you don't have horrendous luck and keep running into the team's few counters, it tends to work decently well.


Team: The Ironworks:

https://pokepast.es/ab1b901a5fba6194

This is probably the only reliable Monotype aside from Ghost. This team is a genuinely solid stall team that excels at exploiting structures that rely on Mortal Spin and Rapid Spin to remove hazards. It also makes the little timmy teams that everyone for some reason still uses that have Mega Blaziken or Mega Gardevior as the player's sole progress maker instantly lose the game.


Fathomless Forest:

https://pokepast.es/93045a8f71f44ba4

I attempted to make a mono-grass team and then immediately shelved it as it immediately folds to Mega Garchomp and Blaziken. In other words, it would win against a grand total of zero competent players in the Bh Seasonal. Still fun though.


Team: Fantastical Fantasy:

https://pokepast.es/abcc09e5efbbc2a4

Mono-Dragon team I made at some point. Didn't like it and never got around to building a new Mono-Dragon Team. But it exists if your desire is to lose horribly to any competent team.


Team: Industrial Badlands:

https://pokepast.es/3a63445c5b70a068

Basically mono-steel stall, but bad since you can't reliably block Mortal Spin. Never ended up using it in tournament play and likely never will.


Team: The Skyscapes:

https://pokepast.es/3222f63d23b2f712

One of the better monotype structures. Essentially, Bootspam stall but bad. Would've won vs Damflame, though if I didn't get horrible paralysis rng.


Team: Micropolis:

https://pokepast.es/8527f6962e42d303

An intriguing mono-bug team I made using the duo of Mega-Heracross and Pinsir. Unfortunately, while this team looks good on paper, it is horribly slow and instaloses to Arceus Water. And if you are going to instalose to Arceus Water, might as well spam the big red button and instawin in its absence instead.


Team Frigid Frijords:

https://pokepast.es/127924de142a3881

Even with the defense boost under snow, this team has so many issues, and so it was never used in the tour.


Team Legend of Stonehenge:

https://pokepast.es/409858b4c2f9e67f

Yet another defensive structure, but instead of using something defensively sound like Poison or Steel, you are using Rock. Not good enough for tournament usage and so was never used.


Team: Beneath the Soil:

https://pokepast.es/d143b3fad025f2f7

Pretty solid team, nabbed a few wins vs Akira and some other good players in testing. Unfortunately never found a suitable opponent in the BH Seasonal to use this against. Had my run not been cut short by bad RNG and play vs Damflame and rolling one of the worst opponents for challenges like this: TTTech, definitely would've been used at some point in the tour.


Anyhow, that is my roster of BH monotype teams for anyone who wants to torture themselves in tours and on the ladder. Maybe they will fill the roster of BH monotype sample teams if that ever becomes a thing.

 

[MAMP]

post omfl teamdump (in some cases I've edited the team after the match, so the paste might not be the team I actually brought in tournament):

Week 1: vs Codename C.A.T — DEBUTANTE

replay | team paste

First team I built. I talked a bit about this Miraidon set in an earlier post; bulkier Miraidons have become so standard that SpDef electric resists have fallen off and many players are not respecting the possibility of strong electric moves from it, so will do things like leave in RegenVest Celesteela to U-turn. The defensive structure of this team is pretty rough (very dubious Take Heart Arceus/offensive Eternatus counterplay) but it's got enough random fast guys and breaking potential that you have outs in most matchups.

The match itself was mostly straightforward: my opponent had sketchy hazard control, so once Spikes were up their otherwise problematic Garchomp + sapblocker combo didn't get much opportunity to make progress. Lightning Rod Flutter Mane neatly handled their Miraidon, and once things were chipped down Ho-oh took care of the rest.

Week 2: vs mok3s — GUTWRENCH

replay | team paste

Built this team super last minute, and while there's some cool sets on it I think the structure overall is quite bad. Quite weak to a number of common threats, particularly Garchomp, Gardevoir, Miraidon, and Eternatus, and no real counterplay to a lot of Take Heart Arceus sets. Almost all of my losses when laddering for the Blaziken suspect were while using this team.

Ghostceus had a fantastic matchup in this game and should have basically won from preview, but once it got crit things became a lot trickier. However, through paralysis all things are possible, and once mok3s sacked the Steelceus, Eternatus had an easy path to victory. This game really shows the importance of running +speed in the 90-100 speed tiers; I don't know if I could have won this if my Kyogre and Garchomp didn't both outspeed the Gardevoir.

Week 4: vs ANinjaDude — FLOWSTATE

replay | team paste

I submitted this team as a sample, so I've talked about it a bit in this post. Initial concept was Spikes stacking with FC Dialga-O to block Mortal Spin, and MG Giratina-O to block Rapid Spin.

Played very silly around the Ghostceus at the beginning, which I could and perhaps should have lost for. The mid-game was a good showcase of why I feel Tina-O is underrated — it's got more bulk than Arceus and 2 very strong STABs with the capacity to go mixed, so it can be quite challenging for many teams to take on defensively and wins the 1v1 against a lot of offensive threats, especially if you're +speed or running options like Nuzzle. I generally don't fuck with Infernal Parade sets, Tina-O is too slow and awkward to position to rely on that sort of thing, it takes too much setup for it to actually threaten anything like that. Astral Barrage OHKOs Flutter Mane and you survive any hit from even Life Orb sets! Anyway, the endgame was very straightforward; Miraidon lured in and took out Soundproof Magearna, leaving no counterplay to Fairyceus clicking Boomburst.

Week 5: vs Fish Gaming — SPIDERWEB

replay | team paste

A bit of a more experimental team this time; Spirit Shackle + Magic Bounce + Eerie Impulse to lure in and beat Take Heart Arceus, particularly FC sets, is an idea I'd had for a while. I'm not sure that Ho-oh is the best option for it (weak to Thunder Cage, rocks weak), but it works out alright. CB Greninja is underrated currently, he does so much in so many matchups and really only needs a tiny bit of chip on his checks to be unwallable. FC Salamence is kinda like a worse version of FC Eternatus most of the time, but it's got a couple of unique features: the main one is the ground immunity, which can force CB Garchomp to think a bit before clicking Headlong Rush, and it doesn't lose to Headlong Rush Shift Gear Blaziken. It also has a good attack stat, so you can run silly sets like the V-create + Mortal Spin set I'm on here. This is solid support for Fairyceus, as people will often bring in Regenvest Celesteela on an unrevealed Salamence, which dies to V-create with minimal chip (very balanced move). Fairyceus is certainly not the best Heal Bell user in the game, but that move is quite strong currently and I think people should use it more often. On this team it's there mainly to alleviate the Zamazenta weakness, and make it easier to click buttons with Greninja without fearing Burning Bulwark.

I had an excellent matchup against the stall that my opponent brought to this game, but I feel I could have lost the long game to hazards if they'd prioritised pressuring Fairyceus with Celesteela. Thankfully, they allowed all of their Wicked Blow switchins to take chip, so Greninja cleaned up.

Finals: vs Rei — SIDEWINDER

replay | team paste

This was the only matchup where I did any scouting. I saw Rei had brought a lot of teams with mons like FC Zamazenta, Celesteela, and Flutter Mane, so I loaded up an old Aerodactyl team that I suspected would have a good matchup. This team is quite one-note and Aerodactyl is a really awesome mon that suffers a little from the climate of fear around Blaziken that has gripped the meta of late. Regardless, most of its defensive checks are quite susceptible to Spikes or reliant on Strength Sap to recover, so you've got tools to wear them down into range of Head Smash in most matchups. Magic Bounce + Knock Off Take Heart Fairyceus is a good sapblocker and also consistently beats a large majority of other Take Heart Arceus' in the 1v1.

In game, scouting with Imposter allowed me to quickly identify that my opponent likely couldn't remove hazards against my 2 steel types, so I had no qualms about sacrificing a defensively useless Slowbro to get up rocks early. From there the match was quite straightforward; with full layers up their Fairyceus checks were poor, so I was able to take out the FC Waterceus that was their only real Aerodactyl switchin, then got enough chip on Imposter that it would die to hazards. The crit on my Fairyceus didn't matter particularly, but was annoying because with just a bit more damage on Imposter I could've gone to Aerodactyl after Fairyceus went down and just clicked Brave Bird/Flare Blitz 5 times to win. As it was, I had to piss around with Chansey a bit to PP stall Moonblast (after this game I immediately changed Chansey to Spirit Shackle + Haze rather than Block + Topsy-Turvy). I could've Brave Birded Swampert with Aerodactyl the first time on turn 41 and almost certainly would've won; it was a 50/50 roll to KO, and even if it hadn't, Flip Turn into Gardevoir's Espeed doesn't KO Aerodactyl, as we'll see later. My fear was that they could survive and then either crit Flip Turn or Espeed, or they could Knock Off my Life Orb, which would mean Aerodactyl would need to hit Head Smash and get a good roll to KO HDB or Magic Guard Flutter Mane, at which point I could've lost to some weird set. We faff around a bit sacrificing mons back and forth until Aerodactyl is in an unstoppable position; even with crits, Impostered Gardevoir would've brought it home. I'm not entirely sure if my line here was correct but at the time it felt like it had the best probability.

----

couple other sets i've used as of late:


Arceus-Ground @ Leftovers
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Earth Power
- Glare
- Recover
- Taunt

Paralysis + Taunt is a cute tech against Take Heart Arceus, but both moves are super useful in a whole range of matchups (at least as long as nobody's running Magic Bounce). Run Zap Cannon > Glare if you don't want to get sat on by Celesteela.


Mewtwo @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psychic Noise
- Take Heart
- Strength Sap
- Magma Storm

Very fishy and you will lose every time to Magma Storm accuracy, but some teams don't actually have any counterplay to this. Beats most Take Heart Arceus 1v1, benefits enormously from Spikes and Knock Off support.

 

[Siffy Star]

Hi everyone, this is my first time posting here although I've been a lurker in BH for a very long time. I've just been generally shy and not super active in the public space.. I know its not uncommon and possibly even frowned upon for a newcomer to post about the metagame without involving theirself in the community for at least some time, but I want to bring my opinion up on something, and while I expect a fair amount of disagreement, I would at least like my post to be taken somewhat seriously.

With the closing suspect test being a factor into my thoughts on the meta, I feel like Balanced Hackmons has a lot of something called "matchup fishing". I simultaneously feel like there's a lot of strain for newcomers to build teams as a result of this. I want to give my opinion on a bunch of sets I've seen that I feel quantify as such, however I do not advocate for banning all of these.

Matchup Fishing in BH

Just so I don't immediately come off as inexperienced or biased, some matchup fishing is fine, and not everything that's a favorable matchup against you is inherently a matchup fish, per se. One famous example I've seen people complain about in my games a lot, but do not support a ban for...

Normalize

Normalize is the most famous matchup fish, being something that's been around for several generations now as Entrainment and Normalize have been in the games since Generation 5. Normalize is the most simple matchup fish there is. Either you have a Revelation Dance/Judgment user or a Magic Bounce/Good as Gold Pokemon, or you lose. While Normal-types are immune to Spooky Judgment, I've seen sets that specifically counter these by running Thunder Cage/Infestation and Taunt.

While ladder seems to like Dragapult more, researching the topic, it seems that Flutter Mane is preferred amongst top players. It's possible to force these users out with a fast pokemon like Mega Alakazam, but it cannot switch in freely. My experience is that priority tends to be a mixed bag as -ate users prefer hitting harder over priority, especially priority that rarely OHKOes these mons, even if the Normalize users don't usually pack recovery moves.

In any event, Normalize puts a mild strain on teambuilding as if you don't account for it, you will lose on team preview. No one at the high level supports a ban for this, and I think it has enough checks that it isn't problematic, but I listed it here as an example.

For some more relevant matchup fishes that may require attention...

Mega Blaziken/V-create

One thing I've noticed when looking into this topic is that BH amongst other metas have something called primacy bias, where stuff that has existed yet was legal in former metas is much more tolerated and pro-Do Not Ban than something more recent. Mega Blaziken is legal in both XY Balanced Hackmons and Sun and Moon Balanced Hackmons, but I don't feel qualified to comment on those in depth. V-create however has been legal for longer than that, and during Sword and Shield BH.

There's a thought experiment I've had, where I think about how if V-create was introduced this Generation alongside Rage Fist and Last Respects, two other extremely high BP and otherwise low risk moves, that all three would have been banned without a second thought. I read what cityscapes had to say in the suspect thread regarding moves not being an inherent property of a pokemon, and I agree with her overall take on the matter that V-create has valid reason for a ban.

Mega Blaziken is really a simple Pokemon whose entire deal is finding a way to break a team apart systematically and uses its set variance for that purpose. There is a fair argument that V-create is what enables it to be as offensive as it is. But with 160/130 offenses, Mega Blaziken is a pokemon that rewards running a dozen different movesets including band Desolate Land, setup Desolate Land, mixed Speed Boost on Sun (+2 V-create in sun ohkoes non-FC Eternatus), mixed Tough Claws, Mold Breaker, and there are even arguments that Tinted Lens, Tough Claws Scarf, and Simple Shift Gear/Dragon Dance is able to work.

I wasn't able to get reqs in the recent suspect, but I thoroughly believe a pokemon whose entire focal point is "V-create with coverage to nuke checks" is a matchup fish that requires a Fire-resist, except Mega Blaziken can freely spec its moveset to adapt to any would-be check, meaning playing against the pokemon boils down to a rock-paper-scissors match.

But what about Rain/Sun?

You probably read the above and questioned why I didn't mention weather. If you point out that Sun and Rain are matchup fishes, congratulations: you're correct. In a sense, I don't actually think that Rain is that offensive right now, as the abundance of Dragon and Water-types right now does mitigate the damage they can do. But on the other hand, weathers are very meta dependent and both weathers can be dominant over one or another at any given time.

This ties in to my V-create point but I obviously think that Sun is busted with that context in mind, and Growth in Sun basically mandates Imposter or a Primordial Sea user to reliably check short term. Being able to get +2 Attack and Special Attack will often instantly win games if on the likes of Speed Boost Blaziken or almost any Ultra Necrozma set.

Do I think weather should be actioned upon? Well, no, I don't. I think the problem is mainly Blaziken or V-create, and to be fair, a 180 BP move that gets a 1.5x boost in Sun is ridiculous! Even with immunity abilities readily available.

Mega Garchomp

Mega Garchomp suffers from most of the same issues as Mega Blaziken, but is slightly more predictable and unlike Blaziken, it disincentivizes Imposter from switching in. Mega Garchomp separates itself from the likes of Black Kyurem and other similarly high Attack Pokemon because its STAB combo is nearly unresisted, and the few pokemon that can resist both of its STABs like Celesteela lack the bulk to take it on especially if it has Bolt Strike in its moveset.

Mega Garchomp isn't much different from Mega Blaziken in practice in that its main STABs will easily grind down any FCs. Other than Fur Coat, Levitate has been used as a check but in my opinion, Levitate is a pretty crappy check as V-create isn't uncommon and nukes any Steel-types that would use it. For all intents and purposes, Levitate is only for dealing with imposter. This might be another point to banning V-create, although I highly doubt it would matter in this exact case as a OHKO would turn into a 2HKO at best.

It has slightly lower Special Attack than Mega Blaziken, but still usable enough to chunk Electric-weak walls with Electro Drift and is more than capable of adapting its moveset to include special attacks as necessary. It has all the same ability to change its moveset to deal with virtually any counter imaginable and it coming in will usually guarantee a KO, especially if its a setup variant that gets a single turn of setup. It fishes matchups in all the same way as Mega Blaziken even though it is more prediction reliant.

Toxic Spikes/Debris

Toxic Spikes, or more precisely Toxic Debris (what I say applies to both equally) has gotten more popular in recent times with a specific team that was passed around. Toxic Spikes is one of the more egregious examples of matchup fishing because this is a meta that strongly incentivizes running Covert Cloak, and spinblocking is very easy. The problem with Toxic Spikes is two-fold. Poison-types except for Eternatus are niche and largely stink. I have seen Fezandipiti and Clodsire but they are very niche pokemon and shouldn't be run for the sole purpose of worrying about Toxic Spikes. Eternatus has its own problems: Its one of the most common setup sweepers and can very easily be bullied out by the tspiker in question (Dragon STAB for Toxic Debris Dialga; outspeeding with Pain Split and Moonblast while healing very low with Strength Sap for Toxic Spikes Flutter Mane) while Red Card has been used to force switches for an immediate effect with Toxic Spikes.

Toxic Spikes as an entry hazard boils down to one of three things:

1. My opponent instantly loses as their core is susceptible to Toxic Spikes and being poisoned or even badly poisoned puts them on a timer which even more strongly punishes sapblocking.
2. My opponent is able to Tidy Up, Pixilate Spin, or Defog, but they can't bring in their win cons and I end up being at an advantage while my opponent is forced into a static gameplan as a result.
3. Most Toxic Spikes teams aren't built around the hazard entirely, so I will either face an Eternatus or some Magic Bounce user that hard counters my Toxic Spikes user and I end up resorting to a backup gameplan. I'm at a mild disadvantage but otherwise nowhere near as bad as the above two cases. Notably, Toxic Debris has less of this problem as Magic Bounce isn't relevant and Red Card can brute force poison.

I also want to say I think Tidy Up only works on very offensive teams due to its low PP, and Defog is just a bad move period as it will always be out-PPed by a competent player, not to mention Good as Gold blocking it. Pixilate/Aerilate Rapid Spin is the only long term check to Toxic Spikes and is reliant on Heavy Duty Boots to not instantly lose. While Toxic Spikes has a few checks, it does end up bruteforcing teams more often than not and people don't like having to run Eternatus or boots -ate Spin on every team.

I've gone on long enough, but I figure I'll mention a few other things before I close this post off. I don't necessary call action on these, I merely want to mention them to make a point.

et cedera

Unburden is a pretty darn obvious matchup fish to mention, with Necrozma-DW being one such pokemon. Necrozma-DW is seen more as cheese, but with Taunt it can brute force a fair number of Ice Scales users and is completely unconcerned with Imposter. Marshadow and other Poltergeist users are commonly used with Unburden. Another common Unburden user is Mega Lucario, who can run Secret Sword and Tachyon cutter which can take on most things provided it uses the 4th moveslot for fat Water-types. Speaking of Lucario...

If there is any single pokemon in this meta which can abuse its stats to fish matchups harder than any other, it is Mega Lucario with insane 145/140 offensive stats. It doesn't seem impressive at first glance, but it can run Steely Spirit Choice Band, Tough Claws Choice Band, Choice Specs Sharpness, and even Simple Fist Plate Nasty Plot. The fact that it isn't clear whether its physical or special gives it an immediate advantage the first turn it comes in and it can very easily 2HKO an opponent's pokemon if they make an unfortunate prediction. A mon like this can easily nuke Water-types with its special attack stat being even higher than Mega Blaziken, as it will almost always get off Volt Switch with ease and Electro Drift does even more damage. Any other physical walls get shredded by STAB Sunsteel Strike.

Take Heart is a move that can invalidate most forms of passively checking a Pokemon with the sole exception of Salt Cure, and is very easily abused on a lot of pokemon to be able to win games through brute force rather than strategy. Arceus is the most common user, but really, anything with a passable Special Attack/Defense stat can utilize this move and apply pressure rather easily. Most non-standard TH pokemon are used for the purpose of fishing matchups because there's very little that can take these pokemon on once more than one boost is accrued. Even beyond that, defensive pokemon like Primal Kyogre can utilize Take Heart and can break slower teams with ease. Basically, the only genuinely bad Take Heart user I've seen is Mega Audino. I think Mega Audino sucks for any offensive purposes.

I feel like I've rambled on long enough, and while this post is significantly longer than most, I've written my experience with SV Balanced Hackmons over the course of the generation passively playing. My main point is that I think that while the metagame is somewhat stable with nothing truly super offending, I also think that this metagame is extremely heavy on matchup fishing and the problem with this is that it is very hard at a baseline level for most players to make a team due to the teambuilding strain, as there are constantly matchups that are borderline if not outright unwinnable and unplayable against, regardless of the skill level of both players involved. Looking at previous generations, its clear that offense ended up benefitting heavily while defensive pokemon were severely nerfed.

Sorry for the long post, everyone, I wanted to get my thoughts off on a lot of stuff and wanted some thoughts from other players on what I said. I know given I'm fairly new that my opinion has less weight than other people like old timers, but I hope some other people give it some genuine thought. For the record: I think action should happen with Mega Blaziken/V-create in some form, but wasn't able to get reqs in time...

 

[quojova]

Hi everyone, this is my first time posting here although I've been a lurker in BH for a very long time. I've just been generally shy and not super active in the public space.. I know its not uncommon and possibly even frowned upon for a newcomer to post about the metagame without involving theirself in the community for at least some time, but I want to bring my opinion up on something, and while I expect a fair amount of disagreement, I would at least like my post to be taken somewhat seriously.

With the closing suspect test being a factor into my thoughts on the meta, I feel like Balanced Hackmons has a lot of something called "matchup fishing". I simultaneously feel like there's a lot of strain for newcomers to build teams as a result of this. I want to give my opinion on a bunch of sets I've seen that I feel quantify as such, however I do not advocate for banning all of these.
View attachment 760933 Matchup Fishing in BHView attachment 760933
Just so I don't immediately come off as inexperienced or biased, some matchup fishing is fine, and not everything that's a favorable matchup against you is inherently a matchup fish, per se. One famous example I've seen people complain about in my games a lot, but do not support a ban for...

Normalize

Normalize is the most famous matchup fish, being something that's been around for several generations now as Entrainment and Normalize have been in the games since Generation 5. Normalize is the most simple matchup fish there is. Either you have a Revelation Dance/Judgment user or a Magic Bounce/Good as Gold Pokemon, or you lose. While Normal-types are immune to Spooky Judgment, I've seen sets that specifically counter these by running Thunder Cage/Infestation and Taunt.

While ladder seems to like Dragapult more, researching the topic, it seems that Flutter Mane is preferred amongst top players. It's possible to force these users out with a fast pokemon like Mega Alakazam, but it cannot switch in freely. My experience is that priority tends to be a mixed bag as -ate users prefer hitting harder over priority, especially priority that rarely OHKOes these mons, even if the Normalize users don't usually pack recovery moves.

In any event, Normalize puts a mild strain on teambuilding as if you don't account for it, you will lose on team preview. No one at the high level supports a ban for this, and I think it has enough checks that it isn't problematic, but I listed it here as an example.

For some more relevant matchup fishes that may require attention...

Mega Blaziken/V-create

One thing I've noticed when looking into this topic is that BH amongst other metas have something called primacy bias, where stuff that has existed yet was legal in former metas is much more tolerated and pro-Do Not Ban than something more recent. Mega Blaziken is legal in both XY Balanced Hackmons and Sun and Moon Balanced Hackmons, but I don't feel qualified to comment on those in depth. V-create however has been legal for longer than that, and during Sword and Shield BH.

There's a thought experiment I've had, where I think about how if V-create was introduced this Generation alongside Rage Fist and Last Respects, two other extremely high BP and otherwise low risk moves, that all three would have been banned without a second thought. I read what cityscapes had to say in the suspect thread regarding moves not being an inherent property of a pokemon, and I agree with her overall take on the matter that V-create has valid reason for a ban.

Mega Blaziken is really a simple Pokemon whose entire deal is finding a way to break a team apart systematically and uses its set variance for that purpose. There is a fair argument that V-create is what enables it to be as offensive as it is. But with 160/130 offenses, Mega Blaziken is a pokemon that rewards running a dozen different movesets including band Desolate Land, setup Desolate Land, mixed Speed Boost on Sun (+2 V-create in sun ohkoes non-FC Eternatus), mixed Tough Claws, Mold Breaker, and there are even arguments that Tinted Lens, Tough Claws Scarf, and Simple Shift Gear/Dragon Dance is able to work.

I wasn't able to get reqs in the recent suspect, but I thoroughly believe a pokemon whose entire focal point is "V-create with coverage to nuke checks" is a matchup fish that requires a Fire-resist, except Mega Blaziken can freely spec its moveset to adapt to any would-be check, meaning playing against the pokemon boils down to a rock-paper-scissors match.

But what about Rain/Sun?

You probably read the above and questioned why I didn't mention weather. If you point out that Sun and Rain are matchup fishes, congratulations: you're correct. In a sense, I don't actually think that Rain is that offensive right now, as the abundance of Dragon and Water-types right now does mitigate the damage they can do. But on the other hand, weathers are very meta dependent and both weathers can be dominant over one or another at any given time.

This ties in to my V-create point but I obviously think that Sun is busted with that context in mind, and Growth in Sun basically mandates Imposter or a Primordial Sea user to reliably check short term. Being able to get +2 Attack and Special Attack will often instantly win games if on the likes of Speed Boost Blaziken or almost any Ultra Necrozma set.

Do I think weather should be actioned upon? Well, no, I don't. I think the problem is mainly Blaziken or V-create, and to be fair, a 180 BP move that gets a 1.5x boost in Sun is ridiculous! Even with immunity abilities readily available.

Mega Garchomp

Mega Garchomp suffers from most of the same issues as Mega Blaziken, but is slightly more predictable and unlike Blaziken, it disincentivizes Imposter from switching in. Mega Garchomp separates itself from the likes of Black Kyurem and other similarly high Attack Pokemon because its STAB combo is nearly unresisted, and the few pokemon that can resist both of its STABs like Celesteela lack the bulk to take it on especially if it has Bolt Strike in its moveset.

Mega Garchomp isn't much different from Mega Blaziken in practice in that its main STABs will easily grind down any FCs. Other than Fur Coat, Levitate has been used as a check but in my opinion, Levitate is a pretty crappy check as V-create isn't uncommon and nukes any Steel-types that would use it. For all intents and purposes, Levitate is only for dealing with imposter. This might be another point to banning V-create, although I highly doubt it would matter in this exact case as a OHKO would turn into a 2HKO at best.

It has slightly lower Special Attack than Mega Blaziken, but still usable enough to chunk Electric-weak walls with Electro Drift and is more than capable of adapting its moveset to include special attacks as necessary. It has all the same ability to change its moveset to deal with virtually any counter imaginable and it coming in will usually guarantee a KO, especially if its a setup variant that gets a single turn of setup. It fishes matchups in all the same way as Mega Blaziken even though it is more prediction reliant.

Toxic Spikes/Debris

Toxic Spikes, or more precisely Toxic Debris (what I say applies to both equally) has gotten more popular in recent times with a specific team that was passed around. Toxic Spikes is one of the more egregious examples of matchup fishing because this is a meta that strongly incentivizes running Covert Cloak, and spinblocking is very easy. The problem with Toxic Spikes is two-fold. Poison-types except for Eternatus are niche and largely stink. I have seen Fezandipiti and Clodsire but they are very niche pokemon and shouldn't be run for the sole purpose of worrying about Toxic Spikes. Eternatus has its own problems: Its one of the most common setup sweepers and can very easily be bullied out by the tspiker in question (Dragon STAB for Toxic Debris Dialga; outspeeding with Pain Split and Moonblast while healing very low with Strength Sap for Toxic Spikes Flutter Mane) while Red Card has been used to force switches for an immediate effect with Toxic Spikes.

Toxic Spikes as an entry hazard boils down to one of three things:

1. My opponent instantly loses as their core is susceptible to Toxic Spikes and being poisoned or even badly poisoned puts them on a timer which even more strongly punishes sapblocking.
2. My opponent is able to Tidy Up, Pixilate Spin, or Defog, but they can't bring in their win cons and I end up being at an advantage while my opponent is forced into a static gameplan as a result.
3. Most Toxic Spikes teams aren't built around the hazard entirely, so I will either face an Eternatus or some Magic Bounce user that hard counters my Toxic Spikes user and I end up resorting to a backup gameplan. I'm at a mild disadvantage but otherwise nowhere near as bad as the above two cases. Notably, Toxic Debris has less of this problem as Magic Bounce isn't relevant and Red Card can brute force poison.

I also want to say I think Tidy Up only works on very offensive teams due to its low PP, and Defog is just a bad move period as it will always be out-PPed by a competent player, not to mention Good as Gold blocking it. Pixilate/Aerilate Rapid Spin is the only long term check to Toxic Spikes and is reliant on Heavy Duty Boots to not instantly lose. While Toxic Spikes has a few checks, it does end up bruteforcing teams more often than not and people don't like having to run Eternatus or boots -ate Spin on every team.

I've gone on long enough, but I figure I'll mention a few other things before I close this post off. I don't necessary call action on these, I merely want to mention them to make a point.

et cedera

Unburden is a pretty darn obvious matchup fish to mention, with Necrozma-DW being one such pokemon. Necrozma-DW is seen more as cheese, but with Taunt it can brute force a fair number of Ice Scales users and is completely unconcerned with Imposter. Marshadow and other Poltergeist users are commonly used with Unburden. Another common Unburden user is Mega Lucario, who can run Secret Sword and Tachyon cutter which can take on most things provided it uses the 4th moveslot for fat Water-types. Speaking of Lucario...

If there is any single pokemon in this meta which can abuse its stats to fish matchups harder than any other, it is Mega Lucario with insane 145/140 offensive stats. It doesn't seem impressive at first glance, but it can run Steely Spirit Choice Band, Tough Claws Choice Band, Choice Specs Sharpness, and even Simple Fist Plate Nasty Plot. The fact that it isn't clear whether its physical or special gives it an immediate advantage the first turn it comes in and it can very easily 2HKO an opponent's pokemon if they make an unfortunate prediction. A mon like this can easily nuke Water-types with its special attack stat being even higher than Mega Blaziken, as it will almost always get off Volt Switch with ease and Electro Drift does even more damage. Any other physical walls get shredded by STAB Sunsteel Strike.

Take Heart is a move that can invalidate most forms of passively checking a Pokemon with the sole exception of Salt Cure, and is very easily abused on a lot of pokemon to be able to win games through brute force rather than strategy. Arceus is the most common user, but really, anything with a passable Special Attack/Defense stat can utilize this move and apply pressure rather easily. Most non-standard TH pokemon are used for the purpose of fishing matchups because there's very little that can take these pokemon on once more than one boost is accrued. Even beyond that, defensive pokemon like Primal Kyogre can utilize Take Heart and can break slower teams with ease. Basically, the only genuinely bad Take Heart user I've seen is Mega Audino. I think Mega Audino sucks for any offensive purposes.

I feel like I've rambled on long enough, and while this post is significantly longer than most, I've written my experience with SV Balanced Hackmons over the course of the generation passively playing. My main point is that I think that while the metagame is somewhat stable with nothing truly super offending, I also think that this metagame is extremely heavy on matchup fishing and the problem with this is that it is very hard at a baseline level for most players to make a team due to the teambuilding strain, as there are constantly matchups that are borderline if not outright unwinnable and unplayable against, regardless of the skill level of both players involved. Looking at previous generations, its clear that offense ended up benefitting heavily while defensive pokemon were severely nerfed.

Sorry for the long post, everyone, I wanted to get my thoughts off on a lot of stuff and wanted some thoughts from other players on what I said. I know given I'm fairly new that my opinion has less weight than other people like old timers, but I hope some other people give it some genuine thought. For the record: I think action should happen with Mega Blaziken/V-create in some form, but wasn't able to get reqs in time...

I think your post is awesome and it shows you have a lot of knowledge of this tier. I agree we need to do something about blaziken or v-create, specifically because of what shift gear blaziken does to the tier in my opinion. Banded blaziken you can revenge easily and wear down with hazards, or outpredict with fire immunes, but I think shift gear blaziken sets up and wins against a little too many otherwise good teams. Air balloon psea flutter stopped being a counter the moment it got used, because the last move really does not need to be headlong rush. The most telling thing to me is how many later week ompl teams packed an fc fire resist. Mandating specific fc or scales resists has always been a canary for me to tell when something is a little too strong: it was true with zacc, hadron, opulse, now this. It restricts teambuilding too much to know you probably need one of these specific fcs when building a team to be solid against shift gear blaziken. It also contributes to teams feeling similar to eachother. Of course there are some niche options like aerilate espeed or umbrella but these aren't very widely applicable.

I might personally disagree with some of the other mons you mentioned as matchup fishes. For chomp, assuming band because it's by far the most common, I think it has a generally pretty balanced matchup spread. It can make progress against basically any team with predicts but also any team can revenge it with speed or defense after a choice lock. It loves facing teams that want to go regenvest registeel on every defensive mon or teams with no ground resist (there like 1 or 2 good ones), but I wouldn't personally say it's vastly overperforming in these matchups to the point of fishing. Also not a bad thing in my view that there's something that punishes those registeel spam styles. Lucario, at least banded, fits into this category as well for me, although it's a lot less good as an overall mon so it's more likely to get walled hard or lose to opposing pressure. But I can't really say I've seen any games where I saw banded lucario had a dream matchup that was unwinnable for the opponent.

I think something I can agree with is that teams that lean heavily into 1-2 breakers that do all the work while the other mons are very passive can have some pretty unbalanced matchup spreads (shoutouts bomb squad (no hate though wheaty)). I wouldn't necessarily say it's an incorrect way to build but it does seem to invite these kinds of games. I've seen many people comment at an ompl game "yep player x's breaker was walled and player y's breaker wasn't" and it does feel like that in a lot of these games.

Toxic spikes is interesting, I think it's very underexplored and it could end up being unhealthy if more people used it as you say. Take heart is also a move I used to want banned, now I'm not sure. At this point it's so common I don't know if it's much of a matchup fish because all good teams just need a plan against it. While it may not be fishing to me I can for sure see why it contributes to your concern of it being hard to build an actually good team in this meta, especially one that does something interesting. There are a whole lot of checkboxes to tick in building right now, another one being needing a steel for mortal (the other move I used to want banned, maybe still do). Definitely would feel constricting as a new player trying to make a good team, even for experienced players I think. For what it's worth I'm definitely approaching this from the perspective of someone who mostly makes defensive-ish teams, and the necessities for offense are totally different, but I think it's even harder to build that. Anyway those were just some scattered thoughts on the meta.

 

[Chessking345]

The suspect test votes have started coming in, and as a result, Mega Blaziken will remain unbanned. The suspect will stay up for a bit longer so everyone who hasn’t voted yet gets a chance, but it is no longer possible for banning Mega Blaziken to get a supermajority of votes.

 

[Siffy Star]

I think your post is awesome and it shows you have a lot of knowledge of this tier. I agree we need to do something about blaziken or v-create, specifically because of what shift gear blaziken does to the tier in my opinion. Banded blaziken you can revenge easily and wear down with hazards, or outpredict with fire immunes, but I think shift gear blaziken sets up and wins against a little too many otherwise good teams. Air balloon psea flutter stopped being a counter the moment it got used, because the last move really does not need to be headlong rush. The most telling thing to me is how many later week ompl teams packed an fc fire resist. Mandating specific fc or scales resists has always been a canary for me to tell when something is a little too strong: it was true with zacc, hadron, opulse, now this. It restricts teambuilding too much to know you probably need one of these specific fcs when building a team to be solid against shift gear blaziken. It also contributes to teams feeling similar to eachother. Of course there are some niche options like aerilate espeed or umbrella but these aren't very widely applicable.

I might personally disagree with some of the other mons you mentioned as matchup fishes. For chomp, assuming band because it's by far the most common, I think it has a generally pretty balanced matchup spread. It can make progress against basically any team with predicts but also any team can revenge it with speed or defense after a choice lock. It loves facing teams that want to go regenvest registeel on every defensive mon or teams with no ground resist (there like 1 or 2 good ones), but I wouldn't personally say it's vastly overperforming in these matchups to the point of fishing. Also not a bad thing in my view that there's something that punishes those registeel spam styles. Lucario, at least banded, fits into this category as well for me, although it's a lot less good as an overall mon so it's more likely to get walled hard or lose to opposing pressure. But I can't really say I've seen any games where I saw banded lucario had a dream matchup that was unwinnable for the opponent.

I think something I can agree with is that teams that lean heavily into 1-2 breakers that do all the work while the other mons are very passive can have some pretty unbalanced matchup spreads (shoutouts bomb squad (no hate though wheaty)). I wouldn't necessarily say it's an incorrect way to build but it does seem to invite these kinds of games. I've seen many people comment at an ompl game "yep player x's breaker was walled and player y's breaker wasn't" and it does feel like that in a lot of these games.

Toxic spikes is interesting, I think it's very underexplored and it could end up being unhealthy if more people used it as you say. Take heart is also a move I used to want banned, now I'm not sure. At this point it's so common I don't know if it's much of a matchup fish because all good teams just need a plan against it. While it may not be fishing to me I can for sure see why it contributes to your concern of it being hard to build an actually good team in this meta, especially one that does something interesting. There are a whole lot of checkboxes to tick in building right now, another one being needing a steel for mortal (the other move I used to want banned, maybe still do). Definitely would feel constricting as a new player trying to make a good team, even for experienced players I think. For what it's worth I'm definitely approaching this from the perspective of someone who mostly makes defensive-ish teams, and the necessities for offense are totally different, but I think it's even harder to build that. Anyway those were just some scattered thoughts on the meta.

Suppose with the recent DNB result, Mega Blaziken is no longer being considered. The question remains as to whether V-create is under any consideration at this point, not just being limited to Mega Blaziken as coverage. Otherwise the metagame is going to evolve into fatter balance teams (2 Fur Coats; FC + Regen Mega Slowbro, etc.) with much more stiff teambuilding as a constraint from Mega Blaziken as well as the other things I mentioned. In my opinion, defensive Flutter Mane is exclusively good for setting Spikes and improofing. I'm not even sure it is good as an Ice Scales user, frankly. Flutter Mane is a busted mon whose utility and longevity in the hands of a competent player is unparalleled given how it punishes passive pokemon. Shield Dust has recently surfaced for this exact reason, trading Magic Guard's immunity to hazards for an immunity to Nuzzle. But it was never a serious Mega Blaziken check. For all intents and purposes, the only good short term checks for Mega Blaziken are Arceus-Water, Giratina, FC Eternatus, and Eviolite Imposter.

I'll concede that Mega Garchomp isn't as strong as Blaziken, and Blaziken wins games faster, easier, and with less effort. But Mega Garchomp has the same amount of sets as Mega Blaziken and can also run mixed / setup sets. The main difference between them is that Mega Blaziken has an exceptionally powerful STAB move as well as Sun to support it, while Mega Garchomp hits effectively everything with its STABs; something that Blaziken cannot do with Giratina and Eternatus commonly seen. I have found that Mega Garchomp will win games after setup almost as well as Blaziken itself does, especially if it runs Mold Breaker, Good as Gold, or Magic Bounce. Setup Mold Breaker especially wins games with ease. Virtually any chip allows Mega Garchomp to mow down any Fur Coat after one Shift Gear.

+1 252+ Atk Life Orb Mold Breaker Garchomp-Mega Headlong Rush vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Arceus-Water: 356-421 (80.1 - 94.8%) -- 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

I think that having read into Mega Lucario discussions and talked to a few players about it, that Mega Lucario is severely underrated. People think its a one-trick noob trap mon due to certain ladder players running Choice Band Steely Spirit on it. It is not nearly as one-dimensional as people make it out to be. Lucario overwhelmingly punishes teams with its special sets, both Specs and setup, and switching a physical wall into Specs Sharpness will usually result in the wall being chunked. I think people see a 145/140 offenses mon whose "main STAB is Gigaton Hammer/Sunsteel Strike" and discount it knowing it underspeeds Arceus. I'm not going to pretend its better than Garchomp or Blaziken, but its much more of an anti-meta mon than both of those and given how it outspeeds both of those as well as Mega Gardevoir, its much easier to put Mega Lucario into a favorable position through pivoting and gain progress.

Regarding Toxic Spikes, one thing cityscapes mentioned was there is no move that's an inherent property of a pokemon. With regular metagames, Toxic Spikes users are few and far between, and there is only one Toxic Debris user. Even so, just because a pokemon can learn Toxic Spikes in those metas doesn't mean it will; Greninja is primarily used with 4 attacks in UU/OU. In Balanced Hackmons, Toxic Spikes is extremely unpredictable. Any pokemon can run both Spikes and Debris and those pokemon can run phazing unlike standard meta spikers. But the main reason its problematic is simply because it will instantly win vs teams that lack Eternatus or reliable removal with Heavy-Duty Boots. It is not hard to plan around those two, either, given what I previously said. Toxic Debris is more committal but much more effective at bruteforcing progress, while Toxic Spikes is very non-committal while slightly less effective at bruteforcing progress. Debris doesn't have to care very much about Eternatus or Pixispin, while Toxic Spikes can plan around them.

So you have a hazard that's extremely hard to predict without Imposter, two ways to utilize that hazard, a metagame that is very easy to spinblock in with only one Poison-type that's seriously used (I maintain that Clodsire, Fezandipiti, and Arceus-Poison are niche), and the hazard might as well permanently chip the opposing team's pokemon as Heal Bell is mediocre due to 4MSS and Imposter. I think the only reason Toxic Spikes hasn't been actioned upon is because it's uncommon, but in most cases when it is used, it will cheese wins even against otherwise competently built teams. I know, because I've been actively using Toxic Spikes and have been occasionally facing other Smogon users.

I'm not sure what's going to happen going forward, but I still do believe teambuilding strain is something that should be addressed somehow by the BH council, especially V-create and the necessity of having Fire-resistant FCs.

 

[Chessking345]

Just because Mega Blaziken is DNB from suspect does not mean we will tier V-create. Evidently a significant portion of the playerbase is ok with V-create Blaziken and just as before unless there is explicit showcase of other otherwise-balanced mons being problematic with V-create we will not be considering any tiering action.
Btw for any V-create ban supporters having Blaziken banned would’ve been advantageous because it would’ve been way easier to try to argue the other Fire-types are also problematic with them.
We will, however, be considering some other tiering actions that have been brought up relatively recently.

 

[quojova]

Suppose with the recent DNB result, Mega Blaziken is no longer being considered. The question remains as to whether V-create is under any consideration at this point, not just being limited to Mega Blaziken as coverage. Otherwise the metagame is going to evolve into fatter balance teams (2 Fur Coats; FC + Regen Mega Slowbro, etc.) with much more stiff teambuilding as a constraint from Mega Blaziken as well as the other things I mentioned. In my opinion, defensive Flutter Mane is exclusively good for setting Spikes and improofing. I'm not even sure it is good as an Ice Scales user, frankly. Flutter Mane is a busted mon whose utility and longevity in the hands of a competent player is unparalleled given how it punishes passive pokemon. Shield Dust has recently surfaced for this exact reason, trading Magic Guard's immunity to hazards for an immunity to Nuzzle. But it was never a serious Mega Blaziken check. For all intents and purposes, the only good short term checks for Mega Blaziken are Arceus-Water, Giratina, FC Eternatus, and Eviolite Imposter.

I'll concede that Mega Garchomp isn't as strong as Blaziken, and Blaziken wins games faster, easier, and with less effort. But Mega Garchomp has the same amount of sets as Mega Blaziken and can also run mixed / setup sets. The main difference between them is that Mega Blaziken has an exceptionally powerful STAB move as well as Sun to support it, while Mega Garchomp hits effectively everything with its STABs; something that Blaziken cannot do with Giratina and Eternatus commonly seen. I have found that Mega Garchomp will win games after setup almost as well as Blaziken itself does, especially if it runs Mold Breaker, Good as Gold, or Magic Bounce. Setup Mold Breaker especially wins games with ease. Virtually any chip allows Mega Garchomp to mow down any Fur Coat after one Shift Gear.

+1 252+ Atk Life Orb Mold Breaker Garchomp-Mega Headlong Rush vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Arceus-Water: 356-421 (80.1 - 94.8%) -- 50% chance to OHKO after Stealth Rock

I think that having read into Mega Lucario discussions and talked to a few players about it, that Mega Lucario is severely underrated. People think its a one-trick noob trap mon due to certain ladder players running Choice Band Steely Spirit on it. It is not nearly as one-dimensional as people make it out to be. Lucario overwhelmingly punishes teams with its special sets, both Specs and setup, and switching a physical wall into Specs Sharpness will usually result in the wall being chunked. I think people see a 145/140 offenses mon whose "main STAB is Gigaton Hammer/Sunsteel Strike" and discount it knowing it underspeeds Arceus. I'm not going to pretend its better than Garchomp or Blaziken, but its much more of an anti-meta mon than both of those and given how it outspeeds both of those as well as Mega Gardevoir, its much easier to put Mega Lucario into a favorable position through pivoting and gain progress.

Regarding Toxic Spikes, one thing cityscapes mentioned was there is no move that's an inherent property of a pokemon. With regular metagames, Toxic Spikes users are few and far between, and there is only one Toxic Debris user. Even so, just because a pokemon can learn Toxic Spikes in those metas doesn't mean it will; Greninja is primarily used with 4 attacks in UU/OU. In Balanced Hackmons, Toxic Spikes is extremely unpredictable. Any pokemon can run both Spikes and Debris and those pokemon can run phazing unlike standard meta spikers. But the main reason its problematic is simply because it will instantly win vs teams that lack Eternatus or reliable removal with Heavy-Duty Boots. It is not hard to plan around those two, either, given what I previously said. Toxic Debris is more committal but much more effective at bruteforcing progress, while Toxic Spikes is very non-committal while slightly less effective at bruteforcing progress. Debris doesn't have to care very much about Eternatus or Pixispin, while Toxic Spikes can plan around them.

So you have a hazard that's extremely hard to predict without Imposter, two ways to utilize that hazard, a metagame that is very easy to spinblock in with only one Poison-type that's seriously used (I maintain that Clodsire, Fezandipiti, and Arceus-Poison are niche), and the hazard might as well permanently chip the opposing team's pokemon as Heal Bell is mediocre due to 4MSS and Imposter. I think the only reason Toxic Spikes hasn't been actioned upon is because it's uncommon, but in most cases when it is used, it will cheese wins even against otherwise competently built teams. I know, because I've been actively using Toxic Spikes and have been occasionally facing other Smogon users.

I'm not sure what's going to happen going forward, but I still do believe teambuilding strain is something that should be addressed somehow by the BH council, especially V-create and the necessity of having Fire-resistant FCs.

Fire immune flutter has definitely been used as a serious blaziken check in the past. One ompl game in particular comes to mind for me. From memory it was used a lot that tour:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9balancedhackmons-847163

Although it doesn’t really matter anyway. I think we’re having miscommunication on what we mean by matchup fish. Your first post was mostly about these so mine was as well. In my view for something to be a matchup fish it has to be polarizing - have a big difference between the amazing and terrible matchups, and by doing so it skews the result of games to depend more on team selection. I think everyone would agree a matchup fish has to be something along those lines.

I think chomp is better than blaziken. In that chomp teams I’ve seen are better at getting wins on average, although this is like a gut feeling more than anything. As you say the combined stabs allow it hit a lot more physdef walls consistently hard. I also think it’s usually easier to slot on a team. But blaziken is undoubtedly a bigger matchup fish. Standard shiftgear sets without special coverage feel useless into fc arc-water. But also a lot of teams get used that just kinda hope they don’t run into it with stuff like mono fc zama. Power is different than matchup-fishiness. I think it would help if you clearly separated those two things. Some teams cannot reliably wall lucario, but don’t good teams basically always have a way to fight back against lucario’s speed and low defenses?

Why do you need to wall mold breaker chomp with FC arc-water? That set is exactly designed to smash through that particular answer. Mold breaker sets have always been tough to use in practice because although the calcs on FCs are great, what you miss are the OHKOs on mons you would expect to kill after a boost. You’re going to get moonblasted by scales audino that never needed to come out, judgemented by mg ghostceus you couldn’t chip, sapped on, win the tie vs imposter and not kill, all while taking life orb chip. It is true that the mixup between tough claws and sap immune chomp can be pretty dumb though.

Tspikes have solid distribution in standard tiers although there’s some variation. I suspect if we were to look into why they are not banned there we would find answers that are pretty applicable here. I personally think debris is a huge difference because you set them up without clicking a move. But it needs more exploration - hardly anyone makes teams with it (at least to my knowledge). All this is just my take on things though - feel free to disagree of course. It's great to see discussion in the forum.

 

[Siffy Star]

Fire immune flutter has definitely been used as a serious blaziken check in the past. One ompl game in particular comes to mind for me. From memory it was used a lot that tour:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9balancedhackmons-847163

Although it doesn’t really matter anyway. I think we’re having miscommunication on what we mean by matchup fish. Your first post was mostly about these so mine was as well. In my view for something to be a matchup fish it has to be polarizing - have a big difference between the amazing and terrible matchups, and by doing so it skews the result of games to depend more on team selection. I think everyone would agree a matchup fish has to be something along those lines.

I think chomp is better than blaziken. In that chomp teams I’ve seen are better at getting wins on average, although this is like a gut feeling more than anything. As you say the combined stabs allow it hit a lot more physdef walls consistently hard. I also think it’s usually easier to slot on a team. But blaziken is undoubtedly a bigger matchup fish. Standard shiftgear sets without special coverage feel useless into fc arc-water. But also a lot of teams get used that just kinda hope they don’t run into it with stuff like mono fc zama. Power is different than matchup-fishiness. I think it would help if you clearly separated those two things. Some teams cannot reliably wall lucario, but don’t good teams basically always have a way to fight back against lucario’s speed and low defenses?

Why do you need to wall mold breaker chomp with FC arc-water? That set is exactly designed to smash through that particular answer. Mold breaker sets have always been tough to use in practice because although the calcs on FCs are great, what you miss are the OHKOs on mons you would expect to kill after a boost. You’re going to get moonblasted by scales audino that never needed to come out, judgemented by mg ghostceus you couldn’t chip, sapped on, win the tie vs imposter and not kill, all while taking life orb chip. It is true that the mixup between tough claws and sap immune chomp can be pretty dumb though.

Tspikes have solid distribution in standard tiers although there’s some variation. I suspect if we were to look into why they are not banned there we would find answers that are pretty applicable here. I personally think debris is a huge difference because you set them up without clicking a move. But it needs more exploration - hardly anyone makes teams with it (at least to my knowledge). All this is just my take on things though - feel free to disagree of course. It's great to see discussion in the forum.

My take on a matchup fish is very simple, and I'd like to apologize if at any point it was not expressed clearly. Does the pokemon you use, be it through its move or ability---or selection of sets, strain teambuilding in any form? Will it win games instantly in most cases given one free turn, which isn't exactly hard to get? I mentioned Unburden being a huge matchup fish. There are very, very, very few things that can take on competent Unburden sets besides Prankster, which is uncommon and not particularly advantageous to build around in most cases. If the answer to my questions are yes for any given thing, it is a matchup fish to me.

Toxic Spikes as a hazard fishes matchups against teams without Eternatus or reliable removal. Blaziken, Garchomp, and Lucario are all similar in that they don't have any single reliable checks and are able to spec their sets in such a way that they can bruteforce any specific mons of their choice. They often have wildly different checks depending on what set they run. Most mons either have reliable checks, prominently use one attack stat instead of both, or they lack a sufficiently good type/speed/power. The focus wasn't really on Mold Breaker Garchomp, more than it was that Arceus-Water can be OHKOed if the Garchomp set in question is Mold Breaker, which is usually game given a +1 LO Garchomp is typically going to steamroll opponents if rocks are up.

I find this metagame lends itself far too often to games where there just isn't a way to salvage a battle even early on, and opportunities to outplay are minimal if not outright absent depending on how poor the matchup is. If you face Unburden NDW with Moongeist/Psystrike/Torch Song/Taunt, there is a solid chance it can win a 1v1 with Ice Scales Mega Audino unless it carries Clear Smog, and most other mons stand even less of a chance against it. There are a fair amount of strategies which mandate highly specific teambuilding to be able to check, otherwise no amount of good play will be able to subvert an unwinnable matchup.

To be clear here, I think having to outplay a breaker is healthy and not just any breaker is a matchup fish. But when you have mons that can minimize this factor and gain a huge advantage turn 1, it becomes questionable. I overwhelmingly feel like Blaziken, Garchomp, and Lucario all share this in common. All in all, I think the amount of teambuilding strain right now is significant enough to mention in detail.

 

[vesp]

Got back into this tier after like 3 years of not touching and i have to say its pretty fucking amazing. Props to chessking and tea guzzler this is probably the most fun ive had in SV. Gloomstalker got me into it again. I tried out physical arc fairy and honeslty i think its got some good potential. This tier hates physical fairies cause theres zero good ones(pixie zac is a gimmick, and the other fairies have like 10 attack). Its pretty alright. very easy to improof!!! most of its checks lose to other phys breakers like chomp. I ran ice scales cause i needed a special wall, but bounce and shit is probably pretty gross too. its especially nice on scales cause u lure steelceus and kill it, and most special breakers i.e. Zam, Garde, and Flutter have horrible defense. Probably not an amazing set but i wanted to share it!

Arceus-Fairy @ your preference
Ability: Ice Scales / literally anything idgaf
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Tidy Up
- Magical Torque
- Collision Course / Precipice Blades
- Shore Up

 

[mayonnaise. mayo.]

i'm bored, have this wack psysurge team i made

 

[The Guy Who Has Many Alts]

Pikachu-Starter @ Light Ball
Ability: Electric Surge
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
- Rising Voltage
- Bolt Strike
- Volt Switch / U-turn / Flip Turn
- Pain Split / Glacial Lance / U-turn

What's up BH gamers today I will present a brand-new, never-before-seen Pikachu set: Electric Surge. To be honest, Zekrom can run this exact same set but Pikachu is new and has much higher damage so I figured why not. The last move has some options. The reason why I put Pain Split is because you can run a RegenVest which moves such as Nuzzle, Rapid Spin, Salt Cure, Ruination or Stone Axe with U-turn. You can easily switch in Pikachu to Nuzzle and Rapid Spin specifically and take nothing (assuming your regenvest is 0 attack) and Pain Split the damage off. It's also kinda ok into Ting-Lu since there is a big HP difference between the two. Glacial Lance is a more standard option which hits grounds. Alternatively, U-turn can be run though I don't think it's very good since Electric Terrain (ET) boosted volt switch is 1/3 of the reason you're using this set in the first place.

The set is extremely simple. Most Pikachu are already running two electric moves on both spectrums so I figured why not just triple down and run Electric Surge and give up on coverage? At first you may think this is a terrible idea because obviously if you cut coverage then your breaker will simply end up getting walled. However, there are a couple of reasons why I think it's fine.

1. Electric Surge + Rising Voltage is the highest and most consistent electric move Pikachu has. Not only does it beat Tough Claws Bolt Strike, it also has 100% accuracy albeit you don't have that 20% paralysis chance. It also has 32 PP which doesn't matter often but is nice. Also, unlike Electro Drift, you don't need to hit SE damage to have 133 BP. It's 140 BP always except against Flying-types which should get destroyed by Bolt Strike and Volt Switch.

252+ Atk Light Ball Tough Claws Pikachu Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Arceus-Ghost: 304-358 (68.4 - 80.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Light Ball Pikachu Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Ghost in Electric Terrain: 315-372 (70.9 - 83.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

2. We get boosted Volt Switch. Volt Switch is essentially our "coverage" against all non-grounds. Unlike Tough Claws Pikachu who can be your only nuke, I do think ESurge Pika should be run with other ET benefactors.

3. Electric Terrain enhances already strong breakers and enables some unconventional breakers. This is actually the main reason why you'd wanna run this set.


These three gain access to boosted Bolt Strike, Volt Tackle and Rising Voltage to hit waters such as . Volt Tackle is mostly for MG LO while Bolt Strike and Rising Voltage is more general use. Here are some calcs.


252 SpA Blaziken-Mega Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Water in Electric Terrain: 276-326 (62.1 - 73.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Blaziken-Mega Electro Drift (133.3251953125 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Water: 204-240 (45.9 - 54%) -- 48.4% chance to 2HKO
252 Atk Choice Band Blaziken-Mega Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Water in Electric Terrain: 226-266 (50.9 - 59.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

As you can see, assuming the same Special Attack, you can expect a 35% damage increase between Electro Drift (133) and Rising Voltage (182). This is a nice upgrade. I have also put other calcs below if you're curious.

252 SpA Garchomp-Mega Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Water in Electric Terrain: 260-308 (58.5 - 69.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Greninja-Ash Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Water in Electric Terrain: 312-368 (70.2 - 82.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
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Miraidon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Dragon Energy
- Volt Switch
- Rising Voltage
- Trick

Believe it or not, you can build your own Hadron Engine. Unfortunately this means both your breakers are electrics with no coverage so your opponent better not have brought a Ting-Lu or Ice Scales Ground/Elec Arc or you are finished. If they didn't though this mon should just blow up everything.

252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Miraidon Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Ice Scales Arceus-Steel in Electric Terrain: 213-251 (47.9 - 56.5%) -- 85.9% chance to 2HKO

252 SpA Choice Specs Adaptability Miraidon Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Registeel in Electric Terrain: 220-260 (60.4 - 71.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO


This next part will be on partners who can help take advantage of incoming grounds. Do keep in mind that you need to run U-turn/Flip Turn OR hard switch to do it.


Sceptile-Mega @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Grass
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Chloroblast
- Dragon Energy
- Volt Tackle / Torch Song
- V-create / High Jump Kick / Strength Sap

This is a classic Sceptile Set which handles Ting-Lu Ground Arc, Miraidon and other Dragons very well. With ET, we can run boosted Volt Tackle to kill Celesteelas and Ho-ohs. There are a few options for the 3rd and 4th slot. Technically Volt Tackle is not actually necessary. I like V-create because to be honest Torch Song is kinda slow. Nobody has time to click Torch Song twice on a RegenVest Registeel. I say just run V-create because that move is very good. HJK hits Dialga while Strength Sap gives you recovery if you want.

252 Atk Life Orb Sceptile-Mega Volt Tackle vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Celesteela in Electric Terrain: 307-361 (77.1 - 90.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Sceptile-Mega Volt Tackle vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Ho-Oh in Electric Terrain: 333-393 (80 - 94.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

OR
Kyurem-Black @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Glacial Lance
- Volt Tackle
- Gigaton Hammer
- V-create


Kyurem-White @ Choice Specs
Ability: Refrigerate
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
- Boomburst
- Extreme Speed
- Rising Voltage
- V-create

If you're looking for a mon that beats Ground-types, Miraidon and other Dragons, obviously you shouldn't forget about Kyurem. The MG LO set is flexible. You can run either or with both spectrums of moves. I think an ice move such as Glacial Lance or the weaker Ice Beam alongside an electric move is 100% mandatory. Volt Tackle and Rising Voltage are good options on both of them, though may as well run Rising Voltage for FC water arcs. The last two moves can be any coverage you want depending on your other mons. Gigaton Hammer and Steel Beam hit fairies. V-create, HJK, Headlong Rush and Flare Blitz hit steels. Strength Sap if you want recovery. Knock Off for utility. there are a ton of options. The next set is just Specs Kyurem, very underrated mon that destroys every Ting-Lu + Steela spammers. With Rising Voltage, you now blow up Water arc and Pogre so those are no longer walls. This means you can run last move V-create to hit steels. You do still need to predict though.

252+ SpA Choice Specs Kyurem-White Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Kyogre-Primal in Electric Terrain: 274-324 (67.8 - 80.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252+ Atk Life Orb Kyurem-Black Volt Tackle vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Water in Electric Terrain: 208-247 (46.8 - 55.6%) -- 74.2% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Kyurem-Black Rising Voltage (140 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Water in Electric Terrain: 338-400 (76.1 - 90%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Also don't forget the (Pain Split?) Pikachu which also blows water types for Kyurem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alright now here is the fun part. If you don't know, according to Bulbapedia, Psyblade's base power is increased to 120 on an Electric Terrain. If used by a pokemon with Sharpness, its power is increased by 50%.

This means that we can stack ET with Sharpness to produce a 180 BP Psyblade. With STAB and Choice Band, that number goes up to 405. This is the first confirmed case of physical Psychic-type breakers since the ban on Photon Geyser. Psychic is actually kind of good because it kills FC Zama and Eternatus, and with special mon choices below we can also blow up Ting-Lu and Registeel

OR
Necrozma-Ultra @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Psyblade
- Rising Voltage / Volt Tackle
- Dragon Energy / Chloroblast
- High Jump Kick / V-create

Calyrex-Ice @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Psyblade
- Volt Tackle
- Glacial Lance
- High Jump Kick / V-create

Ok I lied but I just have to get the boring stuff out of the way. Yes you can simply run MG LO Unecro. Same thing with Deo-N. Very cool. Very nice. Anyone cares?

Special shout outs to MG CALYREX though.
252+ Atk Life Orb Calyrex-Ice Glacial Lance vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Ting-Lu: 455-538 (88.5 - 104.6%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Calyrex-Ice Psyblade (120 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Zamazenta in Electric Terrain: 242-289 (62.3 - 74.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Calyrex-Ice Volt Tackle vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Water: 159-187 (35.8 - 42.1%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

Alright now we can move on to the real heat.

OR
Necrozma-Ultra @ Choice Band / Choice Scarf
Ability: Sharpness
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Psyblade
- Glaive Rush
- Behemoth Blade
- V-create

Here are the fastest Psyblade user. I think you just run Choice Band and blow stuff up. 3 coverage moves can be whatever, just make sure to rrun V-create because that move does a lot of damage. As you can see below, Unecro actually 2-taps FC Arceus and RegenVest Registeel after rocks so that's how you know this mon slaps.

252 Atk Choice Band Sharpness Necrozma-Ultra Psyblade (120 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Arceus-Fairy in Electric Terrain: 186-219 (41.8 - 49.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

252 Atk Choice Band Sharpness Necrozma-Ultra Psyblade (120 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Registeel in Electric Terrain: 156-185 (42.8 - 50.8%) -- 3.9% chance to 2HKO

252 Atk Choice Band Sharpness Necrozma-Ultra Psyblade (120 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Fur Coat Zamazenta in Electric Terrain: 384-452 (98.9 - 116.4%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For this last section I'm just gonna list some spicy Sharpness mons if you want to try new things. I don't think these compare to the best breakers available but hey, sometimes the element of surprise is a that extra boost you need to perform.


Gallade-Mega (M) @ Choice Band / Choice Scarf
Ability: Sharpness
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Psyblade
- Sacred Sword
- Bolt Strike
- V-create


Metagross-Mega @ Choice Band / Choice Scarf
Ability: Sharpness
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Psyblade
- Behemoth Blade
- Bolt Strike
- V-create


Hoopa-Unbound @ Choice Scarf / Choice Band
Ability: Sharpness
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Psyblade
- Kowtow Cleave
- Rising Voltage
- Psycho Boost / V-create

The moves are very self explanatory. Simply run two STABs, Bolt Strike and V-create. That should cover almost everything.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Chessking345]

Some teams I have built in the past months since my last team dump and aren't horrifically outdated (basically OMPL+)?

OMPL Week 1 Clas vs fififlutters - Glare Garchomp

Fairly standard Garchomp team with Glare 4th to punish Recover Fur Coats that I think were rising in popularity. Take Heart Audino improofs, Timid + Moonlight for Blaze. Flutter wasn't Balloon originally I think but Balloon is just good here. Standard Bounce support + RegenVests to fill out the rest. Overall decently solid team.

OMPL Week 2 XxLazzerpenguinxX vs quojova - WASP Steelceus

Don't remember the building process too much and too lazy to find it. But idea is WASP Steelceus is a cool user of WASP with built in self improof and fits in on a special offense structure to heavily pressure RegenVests. Mirai naturally forces U-turns from RegenVests with Thunder Cage and Moldy is here to deter Scales users (and also having unbounceable Sap).

Scalesless Superman ft. Gholdengo Iteration 1

I forgot exactly how it came to be but I got interested in the core of Triple MG Etern Yveltal Chansey as a Scalesless way to answer a good number of special attackers, most notably beating every Take Heart Arc since Etern covers Sword Eleceus and Yveltal covers Sword Ghostceus. Ho-Oh covers Garde and soft checks Blaze, Turboblaze is a particularly cool set even now I find as getting up hazards having unblockable Sap and doing good damage to Fur Coats is great. Fairyceus is the FC of choice with Gholdengo to provide some spinblocking and some more Blaze counterplay. Btw Transform Blob is very cool much better on Blissey because you actually can get Knocked and not care as much, but the idea is you can either Salt -> Transform to beat Take Heart Cagers or hit the button on the RegenVest coming in and doing momentum stuff.

HPL Week 4 Chessking345 vs NightEdge - Scalesless Superman ft. Sableye now (Iteration 2)

After some test games I think with the first iteration I got annoyed my hazards kept getting removed so I wanted another spinblocker. Purifying Salt Sableye still kind of checks Ghostceus while spinblocking MG Ghostceus (notoriously annoying to spinblock) and Rapid Spin Ting-Lu (also annoying to spinblock) while being able to do some utility with Knock Off and slow pivot. Here I went with double recovery in Sap and Split since Split is unreliable and with Sab needing to spinblock these guys that run Knock Off I'm going to end up taking a lot of hazard chip so I need the extra recovery.

Band Greninja + Double Future Sight

I think this sprouted from just trying out Gren + Future Sight, which sounds highly appealing with FS smacking Fightings and Etern, but in reality this doesn't work that well because theres other Gren soft checks that don't care about FS that much, on top of the setup being pretty hard to get. Questionable picks like the Audino also doesn't help. Solgaleo is a much better Future Sight setter than Slowbro though that guy is terrible at getting Future Sights up.

Pixi Flutter WASP Special Spam

Built this based on I think Sevag wanting a team with Pixi Flutter maybe also Zam? Reusing the idea from the previous WASP Steelceus as a special offense core but this team was never used nor tested I think because it was very rushed and has some serious issues, one notable one being momentum.

OMPL Week 7 XxLazzerpenguinxX vs The Guy Who Has Many Alts - MG Cage Necro

I don't know which last move Sevag ended up with. This was built around this interesting Necro set Sevag had, with Cage being a pretty generally good move and avoids some of the pivoting around that Necro can have issues with. Had a lot of iterations with figuring out improof and rest of team and ultimately settled on Levi Heatran being the least suspect. Regi Korai was also picked over Kyogre Dondozo as the final 2. Really bad into Groundceus.

Generic Chomp Clod

One of the most generic Chomp + Bounce Clod teams ever. Built this for playoffs I think, again in a rush and was not used. I think I loaded this in future test games like twice maybe.

Zam + MG Fireceus

Zam + Eleceus + FC Ground
(Pick one of Ground)
Zam + Eleceus + FC Kyogre

Zam + Eleceus + FC Kyogre ver. Alt

HPL Week 1 Taka vs Codename C.A.T - Zam + BandRegen Chomp

Many iterations on trying to build around Psycho/Geist/Fleur/Armor Zam which is appealing by OHKOing Steels after knock. One problem is running into Blobs since you have no Psystrike, so originally I tried pairing with Sword Etern which also pressures Scales Audino, but ultimately ended up with Eleceus. Heatran is the obvious Improof. Final team features a RegenBand Garchomp which has acceptable damage output, provides pivoting into Zam on physical walls, and can soft check Blaze a couple of times and can surprise with Jolly. Altaria FC isn't that needed and -ate Spin was useful to have.

HPL Week 1 Chessking345 vs pannu - Flare Flutter Double Blob

Was expecting heavy prep against the traditional Choiced breakers of Chomp and Garde so went with the broken Flare Flutter + a fairly standard defensive core. Magearna was elected as the RegenSteel since it had the highest SpA for Revelation Dance. Originally I had Imp Chansey MG Blissey with Transform because I wanted to try that set again but due to Sword Eleceus weakness I was convinced to swap them.

HPL Week 3 Chessking345 vs Treeko928 - Chomp FC Tusk

I wanted to load Chomp because Treeko's phys def has always seemed weaker than special def. Tusk because I really wanted to try the mon after weeks of failing to do so. Rest is fairly standard I think, the Koraidon is really sus though because you get walled by Steelceus and this team does actually lose to Steelceus as is, would change Korai to Fighting move which gives you a check.

We will be updating VR soon so I will just save some effort on posting meta thoughts and such and leave it for that update post.

 

[The Guy Who Has Many Alts]

https://pokepast.es/38456f9153a119e8

Unlike some people I don't like team dumping because of a couple reasons.

1. It divides focus. I want you to only care about the one team I'm posting.

2. I have to write explain different teams which do their own different things so it's roo much effort.

3. I can farm more reacts heh.

Teambuilding process:

So while I was building BH teams I kept on running the same issue as other players: "how do I deal with all the threats in BH?" And one of the answers I reached was "I'm just gonna do my own thing and give the barest amount of respect to my opponent".

The goal of the team is to make Deoxys work. Deoxys by itself is actually a mediocre breaker, it does way less damage than your traditional choiced chicken, garde etc. However there are some very nice things about Deoxys. Firstly it's 150 speed so you outspeed and blow up every offensive mon with the right moves. Secondly Psychic is actually a good offensive type because it hits Eternatus, Zamazenta and Blaziken. A lot of people will say Steels wall you but thanks to LO V-create, we blow those up anyways. The speed is so good that even at -1 you're still at 288 speed which is faster than neutral 90s. I knew that I wanted to run MG LO Psycho Boost + V-create because I think it's stronger than stuff like SF LO which uses lower base power moves. Now at this point I know the perfect improof: Regenerator . Tyranitar is a great partner because it baits in all Zamazenta and Koraidon for Deoxys. It's strong enough to force in FCs since most mons don't want to take it's Knock. Combat Torque is there for Imposters and Ting-Lu. The paralysis chance is also very nice paired with Knock Off. For the last two moves, I decided on Astral Barrage to blast Ghosts and Glacial Lance for dragons and ting lu. Imposters will likely click Astral Barrage because thats the only move that ohkos you so that's a free switch to tyranitar.

The rest of the team is pretty much a snoozefest so here's a quick rundown:

he's here so I can soft check garchomp and nuzzle stuff

I don't like dealing with take heart arceus so I'm running one that beats the other set up Arcs (except for Ground arc) instead of some underwhelming topsy/haze scales mon. Also comes in on Imposter steela.

here to aurafarm and scout because I built this for jojen who is a bh newcomer

fraud mon but since I'm only running one fc it is what it is. Also you bait in etern and flutter for Deoxys too which is nice.

This team has a 100% win rate with a massive undisclosable number of sample size so it clearly works.


https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2422300962-y6c73um3ssjt8orxqvpy2qk0bp6cg3cpw

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9balancedhackmons-869229?p2