Metagame Hot Potato

OK for those who are new here and are looking for sets to try, first, be my guest and innovate. There are a lot of hilarious sets waiting for you to try out. But if you'll are looking for sets that may or may not work because you can't think of anything or looking for a template of moves to look into, I'm gonna post something interesting here.

Can't think of moves to look into and exploit for this metagame? Here are all moves you can use to reduce your stats, before tossing them like a smokin' hot Potato to your opponent.
  • Overheat
  • Psycho Boost
  • V-Create
  • Leaf Storm
  • Draco Meteor
  • Superpower
  • Close Combat
  • Shell Smash
  • Curse
  • Hammer Arm
  • Dragon Ascent
  • Hyperspace Fury
  • Fleur Cannon
  • Ice Hammer
With these moves, let your imagination go wild and try out different sets.


Tornadus @ Lum Berry
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Acrobatics
- Knock Off
- Superpower
- Iron Tail
Any Mon who can exploit stat debuffs from close combat and run wild will definitely work well here. Lum Berry to take status like burn and toxic from someone like Conkeldurr and boost Acrobatics' power to sweep.

Aegislash (M) @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Autotomize
- King's Shield
- Shadow Ball
- Flash Cannon
For those who are new, Aegislash is unbanned, so this set aims to exploit that. Tank a super effective hit in Shield Mode (Courtesy of its good base 150 defenses), activate Weakness Policy, Autotomize for Speed, go into Blade Mode and run WILD (again, courtesy of its still monstrous 337 SpA, even when uninvested and unboosted.) Nothing more to add but that King's Shield also helping punish contact priority moves (the rare few that can hit it of course) helps.

Hoopa-Unbound @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Magician
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Hyperspace Fury
- Zen Headbutt
- Gunk Shot
- Drain Punch / Fire Punch
Simple, hit with Hyperspace Fury, lower your enemies' defense, and repeat. Use all other moves only when necessary, and watch you enemy crumble as Hoopa-Unbound sends them packing.

Burn Em' Down (Charizard-Mega-Y) @ Charizardite Y
Ability: Drought
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Overheat
- Solar Beam
- Earthquake
- Roost / Air Slash
My favourite Mon, cause why not? Overheat for power and to weaken your opponent, and use the rest of the moves as coverage. Earthquake for Heatran cause I hate missing Focus Miss. Air Slash is a possibility with all the Fighting-Type Pokemon that are bound to run around (and also as backup STAB because Overheat can still miss, can't forget that it only has 90% accuracy and 8 PP)
 
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Better version of the team. https://pokepast.es/96c969bc25ad4e12
I was just saying that for a team based on Defiant Webs, Thundy barely interacts with the webs
..Ok, so what. Very little pokemon with defiant actually are on the ground. This is for stuff like defog or some other pass u can take. I wanted a good electric mon I have one.

I first put the most obvious pokemon on. Bisharp which has priority and defiant which makes it easy to deal with webs coming back. Darkinium Z is for Aeg. I wanted a Jolly nature over Adamant because on this team I valued Speed. Serp gets a speed boost if webs are on our side. Also when the opponent Goes for defog if you bring this pokemon in you get an evasion boost and can spam sub. Ribombee sets up webs. Most tran feel 100% safe vs ribombee so go for hp ground. Mismagius looked fun boasting Levitate and being a Spin Blocker(can we please get gengar back plss). The berry helps with shadow sneak from aeg when you are near full. Thundurus Gave us strong electric power and If it is defogged on it gets +2 attack. Fly Z is for serperior. Zard Y is broken.

Edit: even vs a bot it needs very close to perfect playing. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-6810 http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-6811
 
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Better version of the team. https://pokepast.es/96c969bc25ad4e12

..Ok, so what. Very little pokemon with defiant actually are on the ground. This is for stuff like defog or some other pass u can take. I wanted a good electric mon I have one.

I first put the most obvious pokemon on. Bisharp which has priority and defiant which makes it easy to deal with webs coming back. Darkinium Z is for Aeg. I wanted a Jolly nature over Adamant because on this team I valued Speed. Serp gets a speed boost if webs are on our side. Also when the opponent Goes for defog if you bring this pokemon in you get an evasion boost and can spam sub. Ribombee sets up webs. Most tran feel 100% safe vs ribombee so go for hp ground. Mismagius looked fun boasting Levitate and being a Spin Blocker(can we please get gengar back plss). The berry helps with shadow sneak from aeg when you are near full. Thundurus Gave us strong electric power and If it is defogged on it gets +2 attack. Fly Z is for serperior. Zard Y is broken.

Edit: even vs a bot it needs very close to perfect playing. http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-6810 http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-6811
Love the team you came up with! This team will take you far
 
Hey sorry for the inactivity, but can we come to a conclusion about whether to ban contrary or not? My argument was that it’s unhealthy, see my post for more details.
 
Hey sorry for the inactivity, but can we come to a conclusion about whether to ban contrary or not? My argument was that it’s unhealthy, see my post for more details.
Yeah, we either need to ban Contrary or Contrary+Defog. My opinion on which ones sways a bit, but now I'm leaning towards Contrary
LOL. I thought TDA's post was good enough but let me say this. GO WIN WITH CONTRARY. RN GO WIN WITH CONTRARY. GO WIN WITH CONTRARY. YOU RIGHT NOW SAYING IN GEN 8 OU ITS GOOD TO JUST BAN POKEMON BECAUSE THEY LOOK BROKEN. When I go for defog unless there are hazards/sweet scent in the back I have to switch and I can lose from going for evasion. How is it unhealthy if it does not work? When I use serp I use it as a way to apply pressure.
 
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Ginger Princess

Girl moding so hard rn
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Hey everyone, I'm not sure if y'all missed it but I did make a post concerning contrary and Serperior here. Long story short: there needs to be more evidence (battles w/ that strat) that they are a threat competitively. We can theorycraft all day but that doesn't really mean anything unless its a problem in a real fight
 
Hey everyone, I'm not sure if y'all missed it but I did make a post concerning contrary and Serperior here. Long story short: there needs to be more evidence (battles w/ that strat) that they are a threat competitively. We can theorycraft all day but that doesn't really mean anything unless its a problem in a real fight
The only issue there is that running evasion r lies on luck, so we can’t always prove that it works unless we have luck. So, say there’s a 20% chance of me winning because of x’s attacks missing, then if I win, it’ll be all down to luck. So we can’t prove it unless I bribe charizard8888 to mess with the code on dragon heaven to make it an 100% chance of working lmao.
 
The only issue there is that running evasion r lies on luck, so we can’t always prove that it works unless we have luck. So, say there’s a 20% chance of me winning because of x’s attacks missing, then if I win, it’ll be all down to luck. So we can’t prove it unless I bribe charizard8888 to mess with the code on dragon heaven to make it an 100% chance of working lmao.
Or play a crap ton of games 0_0
 
The only issue there is that running evasion r lies on luck, so we can’t always prove that it works unless we have luck. So, say there’s a 20% chance of me winning because of x’s attacks missing, then if I win, it’ll be all down to luck. So we can’t prove it unless I bribe charizard8888 to mess with the code on dragon heaven to make it an 100% chance of working lmao.
........ are you kidding me first get the evasion. I don't think anyone has even gotten evasion. Because going for it is. A bad play. Provide replays or i will not care what you post about this subject.
 
OK, this chat's going on about evasion Serperior being potentially unhealthy while I'm still figuring out how to run a meme sun team in OU. Seriously, are we still going on about this? LOL.

Again, my two cents. This is a case of powerful on paper, painful in practise. When one uses Serperior in OU, and even in here, he has to realise that as I mentioned in an earlier post...
Solo Grass also isn't the best defensive typing in OU, and many expected coverage options can help other pokemon hit grass-types for super-effective damage (HP Ice and the likes).
Serperior may be able to switch into Surfs and Earthquakes, but it really has a hard time staying in against switch-ins. This is especially the case when hiding behind a Substitute, one of the ways to avoid heavy damage, prevents you from receiving the boost, something I learned after trying it out at DragonHeaven. (First though, TDA, is this intentional, where you can't get passed stat debuffs behind a sub?) . The below replay was only achieved after like 15 tries (Either that, or I'm just a bad Serperior player.). Hence, my stand is that this isn't some uncompetitive strategy that instantly results in luck deciding the victor, rather, an elaborate set-up aimed at trying to abuse the tiniest bit of luck possible. Believe me, I've honestly seen worse, like sleep-abusing Snorlax in 1v1.
I will refer to the precedents set through the actions of Smogon concerning Z-Detect. This is an essentially free evasion boosting strategy that has relatively recently been unbanned. This is one of the exceptionally rare ways you can legitimately increase your evasion in competitive Pokemon. The reason it is allowed is essentially because the opportunity cost of running such a set was deemed too high for the reward given.
If you all are worried that evasion itself is too broken, refer to the example I'm quoting above this statement. Evasion is definitely possible in OU, believe it or not, and no one's crying foul over luck as these strategies are typically high-risk, low-reward, just like the Serperior evasion strategy in Hot Potato. Possible, but honestly so difficult to pull off it's really not worth. This is coming from a guy who plays around OU with King's Rock Cloyster and even Bright Powder-holding, Sand Veil Substitute Garchomp (Yes, that's a thing in OU, it's allowed), and I find those actually easier to pull off then evasion Serperior here. Before you all ask, this again isn't like just spamming Double Team or Sand Attack and praying your enemy misses, this strategy of abusing evasion on Serperior is not only elaborate enough to be too complicated to pull off easily in practice, it still holds a decent chance of backfire, (100% accuracy moves like Flamethrower and Ice Beam still have an above 50% in hitting, which is still a high enough chance in practice to get) Hence, summing my opinion up, Serperior should still get the pass for now.

P.S. Please teach how to tag someone, I'm still a newb at this
P.P.S This is tiring to type on mobile, but I'm overseas, so this has to do. Thanks for reading this mini essay. LOL.
 
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Ginger Princess

Girl moding so hard rn
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnus
(First though, TDA, is this intentional, where you can't get passed stat debuffs behind a sub?)


Serperior finally getting luck with evasion (work you silly snake):
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-7095



P.S. Please teach how to tag someone, I'm still a newb at this
1. Completely intentional. It is like trying to toxic someone when they have a sub up.
2. Finally someone got it to work rofl (against a bot)
3. To tag, type "@" and then the username, w/o a space. like this: @thisisntarealuser Failure999
 
3. To tag, type "@" and then the username, w/o a space. like this: @thisisntarealuser Failure999
Yay, thanks TDA, been quite some time I've been hoping to figure it out. Also, to not make this a one-liner, Aegislash does seem to still be OK with its special sets, as seen in the replays above, especially with fairies and Serperior running around, so yea (still doesn't get reliable recovery though, so be careful with switching in too many times).

Also, Monsareeasy (wow that is a tricky name), I know you are pissed about Serperior still being raised as a problem despite already being properly addressed, but your reaction seems a bit.... fierce. You could always just normally reply them without the caps. Their fears do have pretty solid roots, as evasion has always been seen as a horrible and unfun way to take a win from someone who may have deserved it. Hence, no one wants this to be a case in this metagame as skill-based and fun as possible without having luck be the reigning factor in this metagame (I mean it already is in pokemon, but you get what I mean) (just my thoughts, please don't beat me up).

EDIT: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-7101
When I leech-seeded the Salamence with Serperior, the Salamence attacked me, passing on the Leech Seed status. One problem, Serperior was Grass type. The resulting inaccuracy caused the match to crash. I'm new to point out bugs, so who do I address for this? (I'm assuming this definitely isn't intentional)


EDIT: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-7110
Furthest I could get so far with a Solo Serperior. You could say that with a full team, this would have been an unfair win, but this took in itself almost 30 tries to get past 2 mons, even against a BOT , so I'll say this was just a bare stroke of luck that would realistically never happen in a real high-level match, with the opponent being smart enough to just switch into something like Charizard, Tornadus, or anything that has Super Effective STAB, tbh.
 
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I'm definitely on the opinion that serp shouldn't be banned tbh
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen7hotpotato-7110
Furthest I could get so far with a Solo Serperior. You could say that with a full team, this would have been an unfair win, but this took in itself almost 30 tries to get past 2 mons, even against a BOT , so I'll say this was just a bare stroke of luck that would realistically never happen in a real high-level match, with the opponent being smart enough to just switch into something like Charizard, Tornadus, or anything that has Super Effective STAB, tbh.
I've tried with using Sweet Scent on Serp, and Sweet Scent on supporting teammates like Ribombee, and even when I manage to get the combo off safely (which is very rarely), I still get hit all the time. What makes moves like Double Team and Minimize so bannable I think is the fact that they can be spammed, leaving a very small window where you can actually land a move. With this, that's not exactly plausible against human beings, at least not so much that the strategy would be banned.

Still shocked that this is still an issue tbh
 
Q: Do stuff like Taunt, Encore, Confusion, Sleep and Disable reset their timers when they are passed?
A: No, when they are passed they keep the amount of turns they have left. This also applies to Badly Poisoned, which will not reset when passed to a Pokemon.
Does this mean that poison heal users can build up their toxic timer for a while, then pass it to the opponent's pokemon for a large amount of toxic damage on the same turn it's passed?
 
Does this mean that poison heal users can build up their toxic timer for a while, then pass it to the opponent's pokemon for a large amount of toxic damage on the same turn it's passed?
No it doesn’t: each Toxic timer is separate, eg, if you build up your timer for a while, then pass it, they restart their Toxic timer unless they’ve been toxiced before, but if they pass it back, you keep on goin from where you left off.
 
No it doesn’t: each Toxic timer is separate, eg, if you build up your timer for a while, then pass it, they restart their Toxic timer unless they’ve been toxiced before, but if they pass it back, you keep on goin from where you left off.
Excuse me what? That doesn't really fit the way it was described originally. If other mechanics keep their timer when passed from the user, why would Toxic be done differently?
 
Excuse me what? That doesn't really fit the way you described it originally. If other mechanics keep their timer when passed from the user, why would Toxic be done differently?
I do not understand what you mean. What other mechanics? All I’m, saying is, no, each Pokemon’s Toxic Timer is separate.
 
This also applies to Badly Poisoned, which will not reset when passed to a Pokemon
But why would it be separate?
OK, this is hopefully end of trash posts, but wdym, Zygarde’s Toxic timer is different to Pinsir’s.

Anyway, now for niche of the day.

Zygarde @ Groundium Z
Ability: Aura Break
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Superpower
- Extreme Speed
- Coil
- Thousand Arrows

This set is bad, needs modifications deliberately.

I had this idea off classic Zygarde, except with Superpower. Superpower seems really good in this meta, and I wanted to abuse it with a top threat in the OU metagame.

The discussion sparked didn’t work last time, let’s hope it does now.
 
OK, this is hopefully end of trash posts, but wdym, Zygarde’s Toxic timer is different to Pinsir’s.

Anyway, now for niche of the day.

Zygarde @ Groundium Z
Ability: Aura Break
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Superpower
- Extreme Speed
- Coil
- Thousand Arrows

This set is bad, needs modifications deliberately.

I had this idea off classic Zygarde, except with Superpower. Superpower seems really good in this meta, and I wanted to abuse it with a top threat in the OU metagame.

The discussion sparked didn’t work last time, let’s hope it does now.
Extreme Speed makes the set TBH. Being able to attack at different priorities is extremely useful in Hot Potato
 

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