Introduction
Hazard stacking is at possibly an all-time high right now. The introduction of mons like
, 
, and now with home support, 
into this gen’s meta makes it very easy to introduce hazards and very hard to remove them consistently—only 
, 
, and mold breaker 
can consistently bypass to remove hazards, all of which are relatively frail, and while is obviously really good it cannot remove hazards completely if there are hazards on both sides. Dealing with hazards also generally requires valuable turns positioning to get your hazard remover in safely and, well, removing them, even in the best of cases. When your opponent has a tera ghost rest and a and you brought lefties 
as your hazard removal…good luck.
Or…you can run a bunch of boots. Yes, the opportunity cost of your item slot is not to be understated, and yes, you have to play around knock off, but the moveslots and valuable time you would have dedicated to hazard removal are now free to use to focus on applying pressure to the opposing team and outpositioning your opponent (without worrying about hazard chip) instead. Additionally you make it much more difficult for your opponent to force damage on mons that need to be cleared out of the way in order to sweep.
Now, I’ll admit, when I decided to build around this concept I did not expect it to incur nearly the resounding success that it has for me thus far. After all, there are plenty of really nicely put together offense teams that do well overall into a variety of teamstyles including hazard stacking in part by making use of solid hazard control, and I fully expect this team to end up being relegated to the status of fun concept that, in practice, struggles to be consistent. The end result even looks a bit unorthodox—notably omitting and 
while pulling its only ground type from UU, because eight fucking ground types apparently weren’t enough to guarantee that an OU ground type make the team. This said, in practice it has not struggled whatsoever to be consistent. I just kinda…keep winning.
Team Overview
The paste: https://pokepast.es/8e8cae6b1ac28ecb
I knew off the bat that if I was going to make a team built around resilience to hazards, I wanted something to abuse pivoting around frequently and maintaining momentum, preferably while also being able to make progress just by switching into and out of things (i.e., offensive and defensive contact effects). This made
the first inclusion, using the poison touch pivot set to spread status as well as offer solid speed control between its natural speed and its use of fake out.
James Howlett (Sneasler) (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Poison Touch
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Close Combat
- Dire Claw
- U-turn
A difficult to switch into offensive pivot that excels at spreading status, spamming u-turn, and acting as an emergency check to any non-ghost type via fake out. Offensively, checks a vast supply of the meta’s offensive threats such as 
, , 
, 
, , and some variants (namely, it can live a hit other than psyshock and +2 cc and ohko in return—obviously not reliable, but has a niche use in the matchup if you’re really behind), as long as you can get it on the field safely. also puts a lot of pressure on most fat balance and stall cores as it gets more opportunities to threaten status, both in general and with dire claw, which can status poison types despite their poison touch immunity, while covering steel types sans with close combat (
also dodges the 2HKO unless you tera, in which case it’s an unfavorable roll). The threat of such status pigeonholes its completely safe switch-ins mainly to a select few steel types and tera water 
(rock cannot switch into close combat, tera water, and survive a 2nd close combat without physdef investment).
Ivan Drago (Dragapult) (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Infiltrator
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 76 Atk / 180 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- U-turn
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hex
- Dragon Darts
Up next is a fairly standard utility pivot
, acting as great speed control with the defensive typing and offensive prowess to check 
, 
, 
(especially ice body which can be burned), , in a pinch if you must risk dire claw status, sd with tera, , and 
. Not much needs to be said about this set that hasn’t already been said about this set; all I’ll say is -spdef is chosen over -def so that it’s better against , as well as , sd , and with tera.
Lord Ozai (Moltres) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 248 HP / 248 Def / 12 Spe
Bold Nature
- U-turn
- Flamethrower
- Hurricane
- Roost
has honestly been such a strong performer on this team and fits the current meta incredibly well. It matches up well into —possibly the closest thing to a blanket enamorus counter there is, especially with spdef but even with the listed physdef set—, 
, , 
, , ice body , (libero variants can even get burned for u-turning), 
(who can get burned by flame body since draining kiss is actually contact), 
, , 
, 
, and 
, while also acting as a slow pivot against most offensive pivots, amazing rapid spin dissuasion/punishment via flame body, and a generally invaluable contact move absorber and punisher that allows you to make progress just by switching into contact moves. The whole point is to play faster than your opponent, after all, and you’re making progress without clicking a move while dissuading fast playstyles reliant on spamming u-turn. The game that made me realize just how valuable it was for the team involved me playing around a knock off until I realized I had a mon asleep meaning beat the rest of his team, consisting of , , , and . Tera fairy allows you to shed all of your existing weaknesses and keep a relatively similar defensive profile while dropping your weakness to rocks and checking , , and SD better in emergencies (you’re also EV’d to outspeed even jolly ); however, many teams (including this one) drop rocks completely since spikes are so much easier to set and so valuable in the current meta, and should you identify that the opposing team lacks rocks, can act as a dedicated knock off absorber without the need for tera. I almost never tera this thing as a big part of its value comes from its excellent dual typing and it’s generally better to just look to take knock off with something that either cares less or is worse in the matchup. Honestly deserves more love in general but has just been so good on this team.
Gus Fring (Amoonguss) (M) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 240 HP / 200 Def / 68 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Spore
- Grass Knot
- Stomping Tantrum
- Clear Smog
PSA: you’ve been EVing your wrong. The stated purpose of the listed EV spread is to always (barring spdef drops) avoid 2HKO from timid specs shadow ball, which you can do with just 68 spdef EVs rather than the listed 84. If your only concern on the special side is meeting this benchmark you can also drop 12 HP EVs for defense EVs, which I’ve done here. Finally, even if you don’t care about the reasoning behind the original 252/172+/84 spread, it can objectively be improved to 244/176+/88 anyway since your spdef is right around half your HP (so 4 spdef EVs and 8 HP EVs have the same proportional benefit), while because of your nature the jump from 172+ to 176+ grants 2 stat points to defense.
is every offensive team’s favorite defensive check for a reason. It has the bulk to check just about everything once (or to sponge smaller hits routinely without trouble), regenerator to threaten to do so again later, and spore to do away with a threat immediately and generate momentum. Its offensive prowess shouldn’t be underestimated either; with grass knot amoonguss flat out OHKOs offensive , 2HKOs (63.4-75%) physdef 
(and 3HKOs max spdef doing 42-50%), 2HKOs (66-78.5%) uninvested , 3HKOs (38.5-45.6%) 
, 2HKOs (67.3-79.8%) 
(rarely relevant, although you can always live headlong rush from full and live facade 75% of the time if you really need to), is your only move that breaks sub (26.2-30.9%) on standard IDBP , and 2HKOs (61.9-74%) 
. Additionally, stomping tantrum helps your team handle as this team does not have any proper hard-stop counters in theory ( is your closest one but may need its balloon for later for or ) but in practice rarely gives up much progress to due to a combination of mons that are good at pressuring it, included. loves to use spore as a switch-in opportunity because of its immunity and should spore fail your stomping tantrum gets doubled power, dealing 62.2-73.6% to offensive (meaning if they don’t have lefties and don’t recover they have a ~60-70% chance to die—unfortunately the calc can’t solve this one for me) and 37-43.9% to defensive . Maybe it helps you break someone’s substitute if they sub as you spore, I’m not going to bother finding out, although I did greatly enjoy trying to spore an who immediately healing wished a spdef 
, only to watch as an tanked its magma storm without tera and OHKO’d it back (you can also do this if you get taunted out of a spore). Clear smog allows you to avoid being setup bait from non-steels/non-sub-users (or sub-cm ) after spore is used up, or on occasion use it as a sort of emergency haze to allow something else to beat a threat. It’s also probably your best general knock off absorber even if you should generally try to look at the matchup to decide. If it weren’t for this would be the MVP of the team.
Vito Corleone (Gastrodon) (M) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Storm Drain
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Earth Power
- Icy Wind
- Recover
shores up weaknesses to 
( checks it but doesn’t love t wave and can’t prevent volt switch) and 
nicely, provides the team as a whole some much-needed spdef, helps to check , lays spikes, and keeps specially offensive setup threats from becoming unmanageable via icy wind. It also pulls pressure off of to check . Kind of plays a quieter glue role in the team but don’t underestimate its damage output with a storm drain boost. It may seem as though water absorb 
would fit this role better due to its superior special bulk while still countering the aforementioned , , and , but earns its spot by being much stronger offensively, better against due to its resistance to make it rain and better moveset for deleting balloons, and relatively indifferent to burns which cripple ’s only usable offense stat.
Wilson Fisk (Kingambit) (F) @ Air Balloon
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Kowtow Cleave
The premier late game cleaner of the tier and an amazing check to, , and, thanks to balloon, . While balloon is intact it takes 1/16 from rocks and is thus still quite close to immune to hazards, and its impressive bulk and even more impressive power strike fear into a slew of opposing mons. Honestly, hardly needs further explanation at all—the most important detail is that balloon allows you to counter and ignore spikes.
Possible Variations
can certainly rock tera dark instead of tera flying for the increased power; I chose tera flying so that you could switch into with balloon intact and then tera in order to continue to check it.
’s tera type is honestly very up in the air; I chose steel as it improves the specs matchup, turns your grass quad weakness into a resistance, and makes you immune to poison, but I rarely use it.
can consider t wave over wisp to act as even better speed control, crippling threats like , unburden and swift swim 
and basically ensuring is the faster mon on the field the turn after; I chose wisp as it makes it harder for to take advantage of it.
Conclusion
Admittedly I’ve not bothered to save replays for this team—maybe I’ll come back and update this post for that soon. Either way, I hope you enjoy the team and some of the same success this team has granted me. Thanks for reading!
Hazard stacking is at possibly an all-time high right now. The introduction of mons like
, , and now with home support, into this gen’s meta makes it very easy to introduce hazards and very hard to remove them consistently—only , , and mold breaker can consistently bypass to remove hazards, all of which are relatively frail, and while is obviously really good it cannot remove hazards completely if there are hazards on both sides. Dealing with hazards also generally requires valuable turns positioning to get your hazard remover in safely and, well, removing them, even in the best of cases. When your opponent has a tera ghost rest and a and you brought lefties as your hazard removal…good luck.Or…you can run a bunch of boots. Yes, the opportunity cost of your item slot is not to be understated, and yes, you have to play around knock off, but the moveslots and valuable time you would have dedicated to hazard removal are now free to use to focus on applying pressure to the opposing team and outpositioning your opponent (without worrying about hazard chip) instead. Additionally you make it much more difficult for your opponent to force damage on mons that need to be cleared out of the way in order to sweep.
Now, I’ll admit, when I decided to build around this concept I did not expect it to incur nearly the resounding success that it has for me thus far. After all, there are plenty of really nicely put together offense teams that do well overall into a variety of teamstyles including hazard stacking in part by making use of solid hazard control, and I fully expect this team to end up being relegated to the status of fun concept that, in practice, struggles to be consistent. The end result even looks a bit unorthodox—notably omitting
and while pulling its only ground type from UU, because eight fucking ground types apparently weren’t enough to guarantee that an OU ground type make the team. This said, in practice it has not struggled whatsoever to be consistent. I just kinda…keep winning. Team Overview
The paste: https://pokepast.es/8e8cae6b1ac28ecb
I knew off the bat that if I was going to make a team built around resilience to hazards, I wanted something to abuse pivoting around frequently and maintaining momentum, preferably while also being able to make progress just by switching into and out of things (i.e., offensive and defensive contact effects). This made
the first inclusion, using the poison touch pivot set to spread status as well as offer solid speed control between its natural speed and its use of fake out.James Howlett (Sneasler) (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Poison Touch
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Close Combat
- Dire Claw
- U-turn
A difficult to switch into offensive pivot that excels at spreading status, spamming u-turn, and acting as an emergency check to any non-ghost type via fake out. Offensively,
checks a vast supply of the meta’s offensive threats such as , , , , , and some variants (namely, it can live a hit other than psyshock and +2 cc and ohko in return—obviously not reliable, but has a niche use in the matchup if you’re really behind), as long as you can get it on the field safely. also puts a lot of pressure on most fat balance and stall cores as it gets more opportunities to threaten status, both in general and with dire claw, which can status poison types despite their poison touch immunity, while covering steel types sans with close combat ( also dodges the 2HKO unless you tera, in which case it’s an unfavorable roll). The threat of such status pigeonholes its completely safe switch-ins mainly to a select few steel types and tera water (rock cannot switch into close combat, tera water, and survive a 2nd close combat without physdef investment).Ivan Drago (Dragapult) (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Infiltrator
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 76 Atk / 180 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- U-turn
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hex
- Dragon Darts
Up next is a fairly standard utility pivot
, acting as great speed control with the defensive typing and offensive prowess to check , , (especially ice body which can be burned), , in a pinch if you must risk dire claw status, sd with tera, , and . Not much needs to be said about this set that hasn’t already been said about this set; all I’ll say is -spdef is chosen over -def so that it’s better against , as well as , sd , and with tera.Lord Ozai (Moltres) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 248 HP / 248 Def / 12 Spe
Bold Nature
- U-turn
- Flamethrower
- Hurricane
- Roost
has honestly been such a strong performer on this team and fits the current meta incredibly well. It matches up well into —possibly the closest thing to a blanket enamorus counter there is, especially with spdef but even with the listed physdef set—, , , , , ice body , (libero variants can even get burned for u-turning), (who can get burned by flame body since draining kiss is actually contact), , , , , and , while also acting as a slow pivot against most offensive pivots, amazing rapid spin dissuasion/punishment via flame body, and a generally invaluable contact move absorber and punisher that allows you to make progress just by switching into contact moves. The whole point is to play faster than your opponent, after all, and you’re making progress without clicking a move while dissuading fast playstyles reliant on spamming u-turn. The game that made me realize just how valuable it was for the team involved me playing around a knock off until I realized I had a mon asleep meaning beat the rest of his team, consisting of , , , and . Tera fairy allows you to shed all of your existing weaknesses and keep a relatively similar defensive profile while dropping your weakness to rocks and checking , , and SD better in emergencies (you’re also EV’d to outspeed even jolly ); however, many teams (including this one) drop rocks completely since spikes are so much easier to set and so valuable in the current meta, and should you identify that the opposing team lacks rocks, can act as a dedicated knock off absorber without the need for tera. I almost never tera this thing as a big part of its value comes from its excellent dual typing and it’s generally better to just look to take knock off with something that either cares less or is worse in the matchup. Honestly deserves more love in general but has just been so good on this team.Gus Fring (Amoonguss) (M) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 240 HP / 200 Def / 68 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Spore
- Grass Knot
- Stomping Tantrum
- Clear Smog
PSA: you’ve been EVing your
wrong. The stated purpose of the listed EV spread is to always (barring spdef drops) avoid 2HKO from timid specs shadow ball, which you can do with just 68 spdef EVs rather than the listed 84. If your only concern on the special side is meeting this benchmark you can also drop 12 HP EVs for defense EVs, which I’ve done here. Finally, even if you don’t care about the reasoning behind the original 252/172+/84 spread, it can objectively be improved to 244/176+/88 anyway since your spdef is right around half your HP (so 4 spdef EVs and 8 HP EVs have the same proportional benefit), while because of your nature the jump from 172+ to 176+ grants 2 stat points to defense. is every offensive team’s favorite defensive check for a reason. It has the bulk to check just about everything once (or to sponge smaller hits routinely without trouble), regenerator to threaten to do so again later, and spore to do away with a threat immediately and generate momentum. Its offensive prowess shouldn’t be underestimated either; with grass knot amoonguss flat out OHKOs offensive , 2HKOs (63.4-75%) physdef (and 3HKOs max spdef doing 42-50%), 2HKOs (66-78.5%) uninvested , 3HKOs (38.5-45.6%) , 2HKOs (67.3-79.8%) (rarely relevant, although you can always live headlong rush from full and live facade 75% of the time if you really need to), is your only move that breaks sub (26.2-30.9%) on standard IDBP , and 2HKOs (61.9-74%) . Additionally, stomping tantrum helps your team handle as this team does not have any proper hard-stop counters in theory ( is your closest one but may need its balloon for later for or ) but in practice rarely gives up much progress to due to a combination of mons that are good at pressuring it, included. loves to use spore as a switch-in opportunity because of its immunity and should spore fail your stomping tantrum gets doubled power, dealing 62.2-73.6% to offensive (meaning if they don’t have lefties and don’t recover they have a ~60-70% chance to die—unfortunately the calc can’t solve this one for me) and 37-43.9% to defensive . Maybe it helps you break someone’s substitute if they sub as you spore, I’m not going to bother finding out, although I did greatly enjoy trying to spore an who immediately healing wished a spdef , only to watch as an tanked its magma storm without tera and OHKO’d it back (you can also do this if you get taunted out of a spore). Clear smog allows you to avoid being setup bait from non-steels/non-sub-users (or sub-cm ) after spore is used up, or on occasion use it as a sort of emergency haze to allow something else to beat a threat. It’s also probably your best general knock off absorber even if you should generally try to look at the matchup to decide. If it weren’t for this would be the MVP of the team.Vito Corleone (Gastrodon) (M) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Storm Drain
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Earth Power
- Icy Wind
- Recover
shores up weaknesses to ( checks it but doesn’t love t wave and can’t prevent volt switch) and nicely, provides the team as a whole some much-needed spdef, helps to check , lays spikes, and keeps specially offensive setup threats from becoming unmanageable via icy wind. It also pulls pressure off of to check . Kind of plays a quieter glue role in the team but don’t underestimate its damage output with a storm drain boost. It may seem as though water absorb would fit this role better due to its superior special bulk while still countering the aforementioned , , and , but earns its spot by being much stronger offensively, better against due to its resistance to make it rain and better moveset for deleting balloons, and relatively indifferent to burns which cripple ’s only usable offense stat.Wilson Fisk (Kingambit) (F) @ Air Balloon
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
- Sucker Punch
- Kowtow Cleave
The premier late game cleaner of the tier and an amazing check to
, , and, thanks to balloon, . While balloon is intact it takes 1/16 from rocks and is thus still quite close to immune to hazards, and its impressive bulk and even more impressive power strike fear into a slew of opposing mons. Honestly, hardly needs further explanation at all—the most important detail is that balloon allows you to counter and ignore spikes.Possible Variations
can certainly rock tera dark instead of tera flying for the increased power; I chose tera flying so that you could switch into with balloon intact and then tera in order to continue to check it.’s tera type is honestly very up in the air; I chose steel as it improves the specs matchup, turns your grass quad weakness into a resistance, and makes you immune to poison, but I rarely use it. can consider t wave over wisp to act as even better speed control, crippling threats like , unburden and swift swim and basically ensuring is the faster mon on the field the turn after; I chose wisp as it makes it harder for to take advantage of it.Conclusion
Admittedly I’ve not bothered to save replays for this team—maybe I’ll come back and update this post for that soon. Either way, I hope you enjoy the team and some of the same success this team has granted me. Thanks for reading!
set. It still keeps those boots. Here is a quick run down of the set:
which you can predict the lead against and kill it crippling their strat also 
set. Its VERY bulky and its ground type weakness (eg. 
