Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
I agree with cityscapes' post. To expand on their points, I will now tell you:
Top 5 most offensive moves in the game
1. Knock Off: best move in the entire game. With extremely few exceptions, Knock Off will instantly cripple any Pokemon. Imagine mons are living in 2020 covid pandemic era, except instead of just covid, there are a dozen other deadly viruses. Knock Off basically removes your access to a mask and vaccine, leaving you vulnerable to all sorts of toxic diseases.
2. Stone Axe: Have you ever experienced road tax? Stone Axe sets up Stealth Rocks which is the game's equivalent of building roads for your opponent. Every time your opponent wants to switch in on your beautiful road that you have built, your opponent has to pay taxes in the form of health. Pokemon types are no different than vehicle types. If your Pokemon have a steely Bugatti la Voiture Noire or a Pagani Zonda HP Barchetta, they can avoid taxes and only take 6% but god forbid they have a peasant Toyota Corolla or Volkswagen Passat, they'll have to pay 25%.
3. Spikes: Spikes are similar to Stone Axe, except imagine that it is post 1964 and the United States Civil Rights act have just been passed through congress. Now instead of discriminating based on car types, all vehicles regardless of types pay the same amount of tax except for flying vehicles which technically do not use the beautiful red carpet you have laid out. You can even "upgrade" your road by clicking spikes multiple times, increasing the tax on your bigger and better roads.
4. Mortal Spin: Let's say you hate paying road tax. Fortunately for you, this move allows you to simply cancel the opposing government's construction project instantly AND apply a never-ending poison which is a manifestation of an ailment caused by your endless hatred towards road taxes.
5. Ruination: Ruination is another move developed after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. You see, different Pokemon have different typing and base stats. Moves have different base powers. There is too much... discrimination. I'll let Karen Kennedy, the pioneer of the Civil Rights Act describe this move:
"Strong Pokémon. Weak Pokémon. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled Trainers should ignore stats and deal true damage to try to win with the Pokémon they love best" - Karen Kennedy, 1963.
6. Salt Cure: This move is forces your opponent to pay rent. Does the opposing Pokemon want the privilege of staying in YOUR house? Well, they better cough up 12% living wage per turn. Are they a filthy water or steel type? well that rent is now DOUBLED.
7. Thunder Cage: This move is the same as salt cure, except you build an extremely unstable house first which deals a lot of damage to them as they first move in and then your opponent is legally obligated to stay and pay their mortgage for 5 years.
8. U-turn and other switch moves: This move lets you avoid accountability. Landlord wants you to pay rent? Adios, amigos. You don't want to pay mortgage for a badly built house? Hasta la vista, baby. I also simultaneously lets you contact your lawyer so they can come in and represent you in your legal dispute.
9. Dragon Energy/Glaive Rush: What the council doesn't tell you is that every single purely offensive move in the game is sanctioned by Big Imposter. However in recent years, a revolt led by the opposition party Big Dragon has been gathering massive popularity thanks to their innate self-loathing nature, a trait which resonates with the masses under scrutiny of the "true damage" moves listed above. Will their power and influence rise in the future? Only time will tell.
10. Torch Song: Torch song is a very popular move for special dragons including UNecro, Eternatus, MSceptile, Palkia and other dragons. This is an extremely efficient move which combines coverage and snowballing potential on a very respectable base power. Because it doesn't boost your own spdef like Calm Mind and Take Heart, you can still hit Imposters hard with Dragon Energy, making it a premier setup move. In a way, Torch Song is an investment. You can't simply just "get rich". You have to get rich quick, and this is exactly what Torch Song does: you do a lot of damage now so that in the future, you can do even more damage. It's a big tradeoff.
2. Stone Axe: Have you ever experienced road tax? Stone Axe sets up Stealth Rocks which is the game's equivalent of building roads for your opponent. Every time your opponent wants to switch in on your beautiful road that you have built, your opponent has to pay taxes in the form of health. Pokemon types are no different than vehicle types. If your Pokemon have a steely Bugatti la Voiture Noire or a Pagani Zonda HP Barchetta, they can avoid taxes and only take 6% but god forbid they have a peasant Toyota Corolla or Volkswagen Passat, they'll have to pay 25%.
3. Spikes: Spikes are similar to Stone Axe, except imagine that it is post 1964 and the United States Civil Rights act have just been passed through congress. Now instead of discriminating based on car types, all vehicles regardless of types pay the same amount of tax except for flying vehicles which technically do not use the beautiful red carpet you have laid out. You can even "upgrade" your road by clicking spikes multiple times, increasing the tax on your bigger and better roads.
Having worked as a tax attorney for big stall for generations, you can indeed evade taxes by wearing big boots. Wearing Magic Guards, however, is a much more discrete way to allow you to raise your tax deduction to infinity via tax loopholes because you don't need to worry about the government strongly encouraging that you knock it off.
Having worked as a tax attorney for big stall for generations, you can indeed evade taxes by wearing big boots. Wearing Magic Guards, however, is a much more discrete way to allow you to raise your tax deduction to infinity via tax loopholes because you don't need to worry about the government catching you and strongly encouraging that you knock it off.
Neutralizing Gases have long been prohibited in basically all jurisdictions of Kanto, Johnto, Hoen, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola due to being an extreme health hazard to the environment and the vast majority of pokemon. So fortunately, that is nothing to worry about in the vast majority of cases. Though, you are correct about its continued use in a select few rural jurisdictions of Galar and Paldea, in which case as you mentioned, you have to be very careful about the government disabling Magic Guards.
Neutralizing Gases have long been prohibited in basically all jurisdictions of Kanto, Johnto, Hoen, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola due to being an extreme health hazard to the environment and the vast majority of pokemon. So fortunately, that is nothing to worry about in the vast majority of cases. Though, you are correct about its continued use in a select few rural jurisdictions of Galar and Paldea, in which case as you mentioned, you have to be very careful about the government disabling Magic Guards.
Or you could just use the vegan equivalent by pelting people wit them Magic Guards by pelting them with Worry Seeds. It's less effective because you can't catch them before they take hazard damage, but it is a way to disable Magic Guards without being illegal in multiple regions
Neutralizing Gases have long been prohibited in basically all jurisdictions of Kanto, Johnto, Hoen, Sinnoh, Unova, Kalos, Alola due to being an extreme health hazard to the environment and the vast majority of pokemon. So fortunately, that is nothing to worry about in the vast majority of cases. Though, you are correct about its continued use in a select few rural jurisdictions of Galar and Paldea, in which case as you mentioned, you have to be very careful about the government disabling Magic Guards.
HOW TO BUILD WASP STALL: THE FINAL FRONTIER OF BIG STALL IN MODERN DAY BH
Before we begin, let me tell you a story. A story about Hōzōin In'ei. Hōzōin Kakuzenbō In'ei (宝蔵院覚禅房胤栄, 1521 – 16 October 1607) was a Buddhist monk and sōhei, abbot of Hōzōin temple, and guardian of all the temples of Nara. In the 1560's he founded Hōzōin-ryū, a school which taught the art of the spear, also known as Sōjutsu. Although In'ei has long since passed, he exists in the current BH metagame, now known as a name feared by all: Big Imposter.
1. Wasp Stall Explanation
Wasp stall is a permutation of what I define as the "relatable BH balance team". This term defines the common and effective team archetype which features the following:
a defensive FurScalesRegen core usually equipped with pivoting moves, but also includes a non-pivot, setup Arceus
an Imposter Chansey
a breaker (usually choiced but can also be SF LO or MG)
a flex spot
There are many options that you can run on the flex spot, including but not limited to an additional FurScalesRegen or breaker mon, a Magic Bounce, Prankster, Unaware, or spin/hazard control mon (levitate/primsea steel) .
This is a tried and true team archetype and probably the most consistent team you can bring to ladder and tournaments to a lesser extent. The general game plan is to safely bring in your breaker as much as possible and sweep late game with your Arceus.
So, what is wasp stall? Wasp stall stands for Wandering Spirit stall and although very similar in structure to the relatable balance team, has a very distinguishing factor which is enough to differentiate it into a different category: there are no breakers. Let's break down the structure of a wasp stall team:
an Imposter Chansey
double regen mons
double fur coat mons, one of which is a setup Arceus
a wandering spirit mon
You can also call this team archetype the "I'm god fr fr" which encapsulates the Imposter, the Arceus and the double Fur Coat and Regen.
So, how can you win without breakers? Well, if you read the Legend of Big Imposter above, you may have figured it out already. The answer is Imposter, followed by hazards then Arceus. That's right, this team archetype is built around Imposter, the undisputed strongest Pokemon in the current BH metagame. The entire purpose of your team is to knock, spread status and salt cure, control hazards and cripple setup sweepers. Big Stall's philosophy this generation has always been to sweep with Imposter ever since the culling of setup sweepers because of the Sub and PH ban. Once you spread enough knock, status and hazards, your Big Imposter WILL win. If not, you can endlessly switch and farm hazard damage or your Arceus can also sweep.
So, what is the purpose of Wandering Spirit? Well, it is actually as a 3rd Regen mon that counters other regen mons. If you don't know, improofing regen mons can be annoying, and so is trying to kill your opponent's regen mons with a no-breaker team such as this one. This team archetype doesn't really care about Fur Coat or Ice Scales because all of the moves do passive "true damage" which is only countered by Magic Guard. You can consider your wasp mon as a form of mercy that grants permanence to opposing regen mons, allowing them the peace of death.
2. Choosing your mons
Because wasp stall is an archetype, it isn't something concrete. There are endless possibilities of regen and fc mons to choose from, depending on the meta. As long as your 2 regen and 2 fc mons can cover the popular mons on the tier, they can be anything. I'll list some examples below.
I have barely listed these mons off the top of my head. It is up to you to decide what fc and regen mons are best for the current meta or your opponent in tournament. The mons above can be run as FC or regen, as long as it fits the meta. I'll note that there are some rules to keep in mind.
You should generally run setup FC arceus. Arceus is not a good regen mon because it's much better as a setup sweeper, a role with few other options.
You want your regen mons to run Assault Vest. This team archetype lacks Ice Scales and you need the extra spdef. Some mons like Blissey can be run without vest though but I still recommend double AV.
Your regen mons must have mostly contact moves. This is so you can punish them with your wasp mon. I'll get into the moves in the next section.
You want one low attack mon to sapblock.
you want a ghost or a steel type, preferably both so you can spin block.
3. Choosing your wandering spirit mon
This part of the process should happen simultaneously with the previous part. Your choice of wasp mon will influence what mons and move you can run. Here are the criteria for your wasp mon:
has to be bulky and/or have useful immunities/resistances to common moves
does not care about getting knocked. This mon is also your knock absorber since most knock users are regen. Don't expect your wasp mon to keep its item.
has to be able to apply pressure in some way
I'm gonna be upfront: 70% of the game, you will have your regen or wasp mon on the field. If your opponent has a relatable balance team with imposter, you will switch your wasp mon in a lot. This means they need to be as annoying as possible. I'll provide some examples of a good wasp mon
1. Can run DD and adamant crystal. Walls most kyogres and mortal spin. Deals a lot of damage with DD. weak to salt cure and grounds.
2. Can run Jaboca Berry with Belch for spicy improofs (eg fairy arc). Cannot be poisoned. Fast, strong and bulky.
3. frail but has useful immunity to dragon. Garde can also run future sight
4. super weak to knock but can block rapid spin and run future sight.
5. super bulky, can run griseous core to be immune to knock. I guess you can also run the origin forme and some offensive moves
6. super bulky, can burn stuff with scald but is weak to salt cure. Technically could also run belch.
7. immune to knock. very good mon in general, but the downside is you can't run FC setup arc.
8. ground immunity. blocks mortal spin. weak to salt cure.
9. low key kinda good with bulwark but you can't come in on regen mons with high attack like swampert or kyogre so only bring for cteam.
10. has knock immunity with lustrous globe. weak to salt cure. Can run scald/spout and dragon energy for damage. Hard to block mortal spin w scald/spout.
11. weak to knock and uturn but can run future sight and glaive rush for damage. Only bring if you want to cteam an opponent and if you run knock on a low attack regen mon.
4. Choosing your moves
I want to stress that your wasp mon will have an influence in move selection. For example, if you choose Doom Desire Dialga, you can run double knock and double mortal spin but probably should avoid salt cure. If you run Eternatus, you can run more salt cure.
Firstly, you want at least 2.5 spinners. this means 2 mons on your team must have spin and your imposter must also have spin. If you can fit in a 4th spinner, that's great too. The reason is because unless you're running a bunch of rock-resists, you'll have to keep paying that road tax. I think 2.5 spinners is a good number but the more the better. Try to also make your mons spin block each other so you can keep your hazards. Spikes on your wasp or fc mon is playable but you need to double or triple up on spin blockers. Then, you want your 4 defensive mons to have as much utility as possible. Generally you should ONLY choose from the moves below. Forget about other moves. The list is ordered in terms of importance and I have indicated how many of each moves you should have at least. You can get away with not running the bottom moves but you have to run the top ones.
2+ uturn
2+ knock off
2+ rapid/mortal spin
1+ stone axe
1+ salt cure
1 nuzzle
1 parting shot
1 haze
1 clear smog
The list is mostly for regen mons. Obviously your FC mons will need recover and a setup control move which includes salt cure and nuzzle. If you follow the recommended number of moves, you'll have a very solid utility defensive core that can pave the way for Big Imposter, your wasp mon or Arceus.
My main thought is that this type of team is hyper-specialized for high ladder and is usually ineffective against low ladder players. Low ladder players really have no idea what they're doing and they don't really have any "violent intent" to mirror back. Their offensive breakers are lackluster at best and their walls get KO'd by RegenVest Pokemon.
The team works better against high ladder players, but even then it is reliant on the opponent having RegenVest Pokemon or else Dialga, or whatever Wandering Spirit Pokemon, is sitting there uselessly. It also relies on the opponent both being willing and ignorant enough to capitalize on whatever RegenVest Pokemon you use via Imposter; this proves difficult against opponents who are conservative in their Imposter usage.
I also wanted to note that Corrosive Gas should be added to the list and can function as a substitute for Knock Off on Wandering Spirit Pokemon without triggering the ability's effects.
Overall, 7/10 team, I would be interested in playing against some higher ladder players to test this against.
Hey, I don't really do this but since The Guy (can I call you The Guy or would you prefer TGWMA?) posted a really nice tutorial for WASP stall I thought I'd take the excuse to learn how to build so I wanted to ask what you guys think of this team:
I don't know how to put the sprites so you'll have to bear with an awful explanation of it without them unfortunately.
Chansey: I started with Big Impostor™ himself using a really standard set, improof eternatus or at least I'm pretty sure it should always be able to, in all the games I've played I've used blissey for arc but it probably can manage to trap that too.
Blissey: is probably the team slot I'm least satisfied with, I remembered it being a good pivot in Augustakira's Cannibal Magical and I already had seen clear smog being used in a si ilar set, possibly could switch it for something else as I actually now realise it doesn't help your wandering spirit mon but whatever. For the rest it's blissey, check special walls but can't deal with any mixed attackers.
Aceus: the standard furceus set, again not much to say except I chose fairy because it checks many offensive threats thanks to typing alone, it could probably be water as well but I wanted to try the ting with Eternatus that The Guy suggested so just that. Judgment thunder cage is just standard, probably could come up with a better plate to hold tho. It's supposed to help improof eternatus (actually I should have build thinking this was the etern improof and given some other things to do to Chansey)
Eternatus: Belch seemed like a cool idea, you should probably play trying to limit how much your wandering spirit can get copied but it limits imposter in general so its helpful even if arc didn't end up being an improof. I should try using corrosive gas instead of salt cure probably but actually I filled his moves with it mostly because the team started with a covert cloak giratina as a salt cure haze fur coat Mon, but had to switch it up because ghosts absolutely ran this team down.
Yveltal: is the substitute of giratina and does work quite well, it's the smooth analysis set so not much to say but I gotta argue that haze could be used instead of topsy since every time I see an arcdark I'm worried it's gonna be the nasty plot magic bounce set and not simple no retreat. Other than that works really well to spread know off and pivot around. I thought about giving ceaseless edge to one regen Bester and switching U-turn for rapid spin but I still gotta test it since this team handles the hazard war quite badly actually.
Solgaleo: I actually don't remember what was here instead before but I can say I was thinking of using dialga as the wandering spirit mon but ended up not liking the idea. I still needed a steel type for my own mortal spin and sol is actually bulkier than registeel (At least I'm pretty sure it should be) but actually I can't block my regenvesters using one of them so don't really know where to bang my head.
I could try dialga-o as a regen vested and not a wanderer but probably the best thing to patch the hazard game would be using dialga-o as the wanderer as it can block mortal spin effectively and run 3 mortal spinner and a half spinner in Chansey, putting topsy on it too for Arceus. Also I'm really struggling to fit a cloak+salt cure Mon as I haven't been able to carve out a knock off safe team slot, which is definitely my fault as I have 2 knock absorber and 2 regenvester but I really can't manage to find the right furcoat Mon since my regenvest core is flawed.
The team isn't really good I realise that but I wanted to hear more suggestions for it so I appreciate any criticism. Saying it worked good on ladder also wouldn't mean anything as 1 I'm still half bad at using WASP, 2 I mostly faced 1100 and only got like 5 actually good battles out of 2 hours of testing. I'm posting some of them as they can help but don't expect anything entertaining or good
Had a pretty awful winrate this OMPL, but a lot of that was matchups or play mistakes on my end. So I'm quite happy with the teams I built, here's a teamdump.
Team idea of adapt LO unecro + pixi fairyceus
Offensive core is great, but I think it's too ambitious and the defensive core and sustainability kinda sucks trying to fit both of these guys on a single team.
Soft Superman team (imp is still vulnerable to hazards) with 4A Mscept (first usage of physical coverage on mg mscept afaik?) + bulwark scales bliss and taunt setup mg ursa
This team is pretty good, no real issues. Vulnerable to some forms of cheese and I think given the rise of Sceptile and the increase in Celesteela usage during OMPL, both breakers have more common counterplay than they did at the start of the tour. The team feels a bit out of date and slow now.
Misty Surge Hyper Offense
I really like this one despite it's bad performance in tour. It's not exactly the most consistent of teams but its wincons are all really cool and I think it's fun to pilot. Can still catch plenty of meta teams unaware and just sweep them.
Unused team, planned to bring vs Chessking but got accidentally leaked.
This team has a cool magearna set but overall it kinda sucks, has no spdef, breakers are not amazing. The dd circle throw magearna idea is really effective but hard to improof and I developped it a fair bit later in the tour. Bad team.
Cool team, built this for Stolen Identity for w1 of omfl.
Pretty basic standard 5 mon core with encore on ghostceus to spice it up a little. The team was really functional even with just 5 slots so I let myself have a bit of fun with slot 6 and included a scarf utility Xerneas.
Superman hard stall featuring pressure Blissey.
Pretty stupid team, very obvious in what it does, protect moves + tons of chip is a lot of fun. Only lost to Ivar because I loaded into a team where every mon had recover and had its healing farmed by Imposter, so maybe an Imposter-less stall is unviable...
Cool bait spectrier set to enable either Imposter or Sceptile to go for a sweep.
Poor removal though and imposter farms Ting Lu.
Guess the bait isn't worth much once the team is public nor is ladder good enough to switch out of an unrevealed spectrier so you can thunder cage. Wouldn't use this team outside of a tour lol.
Unused team intended to be brought vs Aerobee but i decided on the previous team. Ended up being used last week in OMFL by oh the guilt
Cool gren set, cool mage set although the improofing is suspect, I really like bounce ho-oh as a progress maker. Defensive core is suspect though especially in this case the sniper gren MU.
Lucario + Webs defensive Fmane
Supposed to cteam QT, didn't work out so well.
I think the concept is cool though Lucario is insane with webs support.
Have a couple other unused teams but they were either co-built with other players or I'd like to reserve them for seasonal, so I'll edit them in later if I remember to do so.
https://pokepast.es/67f20fddb60a65cf
this team looks so scuffed looking back on it, HOW WAS IT A TEAM I CONSIDERED ViABLE???
either way the arceus-ice set is cool
GaG toxapex would in theory work if it weren't hot garbage, its "bulk" means nothing here in a tier where basically everything 2hkos it
dont use this one (or do)
https://pokepast.es/3aa1f231c926f5bf
this team was another one i built in a panic for the w5 match
(wasnt even finished until after the match in question)
https://pokepast.es/dca79ebf30a41fa7
this is my most recent team I actually built for OMPL, back when city was experimenting with this FC arceus-rock sun team
would've been nice if i didnt keep running into v87 rain during testing
i wouldve dumped every single one of my teams since the start but i've decided to save that for the end of the gen. anyways, heres all the teams i've seriously planned to bring to any game.
(btw 90% of things i name here are references to something, try to get all the references!!)
cool bulky balance around selfproof mglo chicken. idk why i didn't bring this it's very solid. cons are it's a bit slow though
basic wasp stall. didn't bring bc it's way too public and also weak to quite a bit of common threats (unec, fboost flutter, etc)
band koraidon balance, though its very dated (built all the way back before open) and suffers the same problems as the wasp stall. loses hard to bulwark mons.
this is a remake of a HO team i made back in diancie meta with a couple adjustments for the modern meta and to account for bans. team is basically snr ghostceus the team as everything else tries to exhaust all the ghostceus checks. didn't bring cuz its a mu fish
this is also a HO but it's much more MU fish bc its a worse team. idk how i got bee as the bouncer here tbh
remake of my first ever #1 ladder peak (check out the rmt in my signature btw) but less for ladder and more for tours. lunala is mortal bc i wanted to fit a steel on the last slot to block opp mortal. however did poorly during testing (prolly stems from doing nothing to fairies) so didn't bring
WARNING: YOU ARE ENTERING UNTESTED BS TERRITORY
tried to build kyu-b with so much sapblockers that they never actually heal. hazard control extremely dire, and loses to like everything physical that zac can't check.
what the fuck was i trying to do here? i have no idea
it's in the name, tried building a hard immune improof to mg etern. structure feels really scuffed though and it was a time where i tried to put imp on every structure cuz my brain was still ladder pilled so that's one less slot for something useful. also ran into SI on ladder so i couldnt bring it anyways lol
CURRENTLY EN ROUTE TO: TEAMS ACTUALLY USED
(w1, l2)
no nickname version used in matches.
this is a remake of a ladder team. not much else to say, brian is a goat mon and team is pretty solid.
sole agren progress maker means you can get ct'd pretty easily though.
don't remember building this but apparently i sent this in bh channel in spectriercord
wasp stall but i put gag darkceus in it
didn't use because i accidentally sent it in another discord and yoko got ahold of it
(l3)
wanted to try out sflo zam, didnt work bc i didnt have calcdex to know how much imposter blueflare did. also the actual paste has th groundceus but i ported the wrong version to stours which didn't help.
boring balance
(l4)
classic lunala ghostceus bulky special setup structure. fc palko is interesting but agren (which SI brought) mu was rough.
(w semis)
superman semistall with huge mglo kyu-w
agren mu is also hard but i didn't expect hiusi to bring it bc i just lost to agren w4 and no way was i gonna bring another team that lost to gren.
yeah i think thats everything i considered alright emough to at least consider bringing to omfl. use them or modify them however you like. if any of these somehow become a sample and destroy ladder for some reason blame me if you will.
Hello everyone. It's been a long time since my last post. To be honest, I'm basically retired now but I have barely played for a long time mostly because I didn't particularly like how powerful certain moves (Stone Axe, Mortal Spin, Knock Off) and strategy (Balance with 1 nuke (choiced or SF) and 1 setup (Arceus usually)) are. Nevertheless, I'm glad other people enjoy the meta. In the recent OMPL and OMFL, people are more willing to run weirder sets because cteaming your opponent in a BO1 is a much more effective strategy than trying to cover as many threats as you can like on ladder. Anyways the purpose of this post is to promote some sets that I made for you to explore, if you want. I'll give a brief description of why you should use this set as well as its weaknesses.
1. SF LO Gren
Greninja-Ash (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Steam Eruption
- Fiery Wrath
- Noxious Torque
- Bolt Strike
Strength: The main purpose of this set is a solid all-around breaker that kills both FC and Scales Audino. If you don't know, Haylighter's favourite mon is almost everywhere on ladder and tournament because of how solid it is at countering dragons, gren and arceus. With the power of SF LO Steam + Noxious, you're able to 2HKO every FurScales Audino. Because most people currently expect Sniper Gren, you can easily deal 60% to the Audino on the switch and force it out immediately if you predict correctly. Fiery Wrath is deceptively strong and 2HKOs Eternatus and OHKOs Ghost Arc.
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Steam Eruption vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Audino-Mega: 231-273 (56.3 - 66.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Noxious Torque vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Audino-Mega: 270-320 (65.8 - 78%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Steam Eruption vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Fairy: 239-282 (53.8 - 63.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Noxious Torque vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Arceus-Fairy: 278-330 (62.6 - 74.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Fiery Wrath vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Eternatus: 230-270 (47.5 - 55.7%) -- 79.3% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Fiery Wrath vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Ghost: 393-463 (88.5 - 104.2%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Fiery Wrath vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Necrozma-Ultra: 452-533 (113.5 - 133.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Bolt Strike vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Kyogre-Primal: 400-473 (99 - 117%) -- 93.8% chance to OHKO
Weakness: SF Gren's biggest weakness is that its STABs aren't SE vs dragons, meaning that you're never gonna OHKO offensive dragons. There is one exception in Necrozma though which is nice. However this means that you need some prior chip from hazards to make this set really shine. Another thing is that both your STABs are actually resisted by Imposters. Of course you can predict and click Bolt Strike but you can miss and if you don't click Bolt Strike on the switch, you're probably forced out. This is just the weakness of not being a ghost or dragon offensive mon that you have to deal with. The best proofs for this set include Scales/Regen Dialga and Koraidon, but there are other more niche options like Scales/Regen Eternatus and Ferrothorn.
2. SF LO Kyogre
Kyogre-Primal @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Mild / Hasty Nature
- Steam Eruption
- Bolt Strike
- Noxious Torque
- Moonblast / Ice Beam
Strength: You may have noticed that this is almost exactly the same set as the greninja. This set is actually designed to be used with Sticky Webs or nuzzle support. I think you have to run webs though because no one is gonna let their offensive mon get paralysed. Offensive Kyogre sets are so few and far between that people don't realise that this mon can actually 2HKO everything, but its speed is holding it back. I'll post some calcs below to show what a demon this mon is. Once again though ideally you run +SpAtk with webs for max damage but if you want to use it without webs then you probably have to go +Spe though at that point, just use the frog.
252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Greninja-Ash Steam Eruption vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Fairy: 239-282 (53.8 - 63.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Kyogre-Primal Steam Eruption vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Arceus-Fairy: 298-351 (67.1 - 79%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
For comparison of Steam Eruptions, just know Mild Kyogre does 25% more damage.
252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Kyogre-Primal Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Eternatus: 382-450 (78.9 - 92.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Kyogre-Primal Moonblast vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Garchomp-Mega: 403-476 (95.9 - 113.3%) -- 75% chance to OHKO
Weakness: I've already said it before, this mon is slow so you have to run webs or nuzzle support. I'll briefly mention that you could technically run Tailwind but I've tried making that move work but there's not enough Tailwind-related mechanics at the moment to make it worth.
3. Bounce Aerodactyl
Aerodactyl-Mega @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Axe
- Recover
- Taunt
- Dragon Ascent / Glacial Lance
Strength: This set was made to counter Sceptile, Eternatus and stop mons from recovering via Bounce and Taunt. You can outspeed and OHKO Sceptile so if you want to cteam that mon, I highly recommend this. Glacial Lance is a lot better vs Imps and Eternatus, though you don't get STAB on it. Thanks to your speed and typing, you can 1v1 Eternatus and switch in on moves that are not Dragon Energy. Once you are in, you can attack the Etern and weaken the DE so you win that matchup. You can also beat Ground Arcs if they don't have Thunder Cage.
Weakness: This is a rocks-weak mon so you have to keep its boots. You also don't actually do that much damage to FC mon and most rely on Taunt and Stone Axe to chip them. Every steel walls this unless you can't to sacrifice Taunt or your 4th move to hit them. I think you should run Taunt because it's way more valuable than trying to kill stuff with your mediocre attack though. Easily improved by a regen mon that resists your 4th move (preferably a steel).
Strength: I think Refrigerate Kyurem is criminally underrated right now. Ice is one of the best offensive types because of current popularity of Ground and Dragon mons like Ting-Lu, Ground Arc, Garchomp, Sceptile, Necrozma, etc. It's actually the same reason why Sceptile is popular, in my opinion.
If it weren't for the rocks weakness I would recommend this mon on every team since you soft check a ton of offensive mons if you run Fake Out + Extreme Speed. I think Fake Out is also a secretly good move because it lets you predict a switch and click Spikes or Boomburst instead, particularly on Kyurem-White.
252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-Black Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Necrozma-Ultra: 338-402 (84.9 - 101%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-Black Extreme Speed vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Miraidon: 332-392 (82.1 - 97%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Eternatus: 122-146 (25.2 - 30.1%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
252 Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Necrozma-Ultra: 120-144 (30.1 - 36.1%) -- 43% chance to 3HKO
252 Atk Refrigerate Kyurem-White Fake Out vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Miraidon: 116-140 (28.7 - 34.6%) -- 8.3% chance to 3HKO
Weakness: You're slow and rocks weak and you need to predict switches to maximise the number of times you click Boomburst or Spikes.
Strength: MG Ho-oh is actually one of my favourite mons, but it's easily exploitable by Imposters. This is a slightly different spin on it though, with Shackle and Vdance to try and sweep teams instead of just chunking stuff with dual stabs. I think it could be effective if your opponent is not prepared for it since you can setup for free if you shackle the right mon.
Weakness: Dragons resist your Flare Blitz so you can't stay in on one, vdance and ohko them. Brave Bird is an option but the Imposter matchup is more shaky. You can also just never sweep because of Topsy and Sap but that applies to every vdance mon.
5. Regen Stakataka
Stakataka @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Stone Axe
- U-turn
- Knock Off
- Salt Cure
Strength: This set is specifically to spin block Mortal Spin users with V-create like Ho-oh. It's kinda like a Steel but less bulky and not weak to fire. I would only recommend this if you want to cteam a fire move Mortal Spinner and Torch Song Dragons. Quick shoutout to Heatran who can also pull of the same set. You'll be surprise that this thing's Stone Axe actually does decent damage too. Also the Shiny form is GOLDEN which looks very cool.
Weakness: Generally would not recommend unless you're cteaming.
Strength: Giratina is another one of my favourite mons but unfortunately it's pretty bad as a FurScalesRegen mon right now since a lot of offensive mons are ghost, dragon or fairy. This set shifts Giratina's role to counter regen mons which are usually not those 3 types. Unlike Dialga, you don't really have much offensive presence but there are several options you can run to exert pressure. Hazards is the easiest one, you also spin block so that's nice. You can run Infernal Parade / Dragon Tail to do some chip with Griseous Core. Finally you can run Take Heart if you want a status removal and a way to be threatening. I think this is a very cool mon that is unfortunately held back by its typing right now. Nevertheless I think with enough commitment and team building skills you can make this mon work. Just run it with its boyfriend Audino for that near perfect 2-mon weakness coverage.
Weakness: Your typing is kinda trash right now despite the godly bulk but you can block Rapid Spin and wall Blaziken at least.
Strength: I think this is one of the most reliable dual screeners thanks to its speed and bulk. Your stabs are annoying and you don't have to spend turns recovering because of regenerator.
Weakness: walled by steels and screens shine on offence but offence is hard to build and play this meta.
6. CURSE YOU, HAIL! (I HEREBY VOW, YOU WILL RUE THIS DAY! BEHOLD, A TRUE DRAKE WARRIOR AND I, IGON, YOUR FEARS MADE FLESH! SOLID OF SCALES YOU MAY BE, FOUL DRAGON BUT I WILL RIDDLE WITH HOLES YOUR ROTTEN HIDE! WITH A HAIL OF HARPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONS!!!!!! WITH EVERY LAST DROP OF MY BEING! GRAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!! BAYLE THE DREAD! YOU WILL HAUNT ME NO LONGER! https://pokepast.es/d09716a8a687c70d
We've all heard of v87 rain. The team was great vs ladder, but was never brought into tours until now. And oh boy does it fucking annihilate regular structures. Tinted Lens AGren, if played correctly, is quite literally unwallable under rain. It's not like a TC EDrift Chomper situation where you can just outspeed it and click Sap, there's only a select number of viable mons that can actually force AGren out with it's speed. You're unfortunately shoehorned into a Water Absorb mon for improofing, but is it really that bad when the main clicker literally 6-0s teams that doesn't prepare specifically for it?
We're all seeing this happen in SSNL. But the real question I wanna ask is that... Rain + Tinted AGren is for sure broken, but which one is really the deciding factor? Is it Damp Rock extending rain to stupid amounts allowing AGren to click more buttons, is it just Rain in general (spoiler alert no agren rain is bad), or is it AGren being broken itself?
I'd like to see your opinions on this matter, feel free to send it here.
We've all heard of v87 rain. The team was great vs ladder, but was never brought into tours until now. And oh boy does it fucking annihilate regular structures. Tinted Lens AGren, if played correctly, is quite literally unwallable under rain. It's not like a TC EDrift Chomper situation where you can just outspeed it and click Sap, there's only a select number of viable mons that can actually force AGren out with it's speed. You're unfortunately shoehorned into a Water Absorb mon for improofing, but is it really that bad when the main clicker literally 6-0s teams that doesn't prepare specifically for it?
We're all seeing this happen in SSNL. But the real question I wanna ask is that... Rain + Tinted AGren is for sure broken, but which one is really the deciding factor? Is it Damp Rock extending rain to stupid amounts allowing AGren to click more buttons, is it just Rain in general (spoiler alert no agren rain is bad), or is it AGren being broken itself?
I'd like to see your opinions on this matter, feel free to send it here.
The big old bad boy of rain is finally becoming actually noticed, congratulations to him
Anyways if we are being serious this is my take on rain currently since i have used a bit fair bit of it, and lemme just get the obvious bit out, Holy shit is it Broken Sometimes, Rain while being Mu reliant is like Really really broken atm into regular structures due to the fact of its Abuser's Sheer Force, is of course the biggest abuser of it with Tlens Specs Set being Pretty Much unwallable due to the fact of it being mixed and not having many Pokemons who can outright Outspeed it or Live a hit and deal meaningful damage back, on the top of my mind some counters are just mons that outspeed ( are Pokemon who can do this) and Of Course the Obvious Water Absorb due to it almost always being 4 water moves, the latter being way more uncommon.
Even if u do have a Pokemon that can Outspeed The Ash-Greninja still doesnt mean its gonna win, As Rain almost always have ways to deal with Pokemon that are Troublesome like which with Prankster can shutdown setup Sweeps and Gigaton Copycat is no joke in terms of damage (Destiny Bond is also another way aswell to not get Swept but more inconsistent), Some Forms of rain also do run Pokemon like Unaware , Defensive or even Imposter , making it hard to make a team that "always" beats Rain thats also not bad into regular Structures. Anyways lets talk about the Other Main People of Rain
These two while being less overwhelming than Ash-Greninja are still threatening on their own, Primal Kyogre is one of the Og big 6 from V87's Rain team and is usually stuff like Tidy up punching glove Surging Dragon Darts Sap letting it even beat Fc Rocky Helmet Mega Audino (in the past, v87 used to run like surging jet punch volt switch ice shard or smt iirc), meanwhile Palkia-Origin while being less common, is almost as Threatening of a sweeper, being able use Either a Speed Boost Set or a Swift Swim one (less common) to just blast the Enemy and stuff that would usually wall it like Scales Mega Audino can be dealt with by the other Teammates (usually )
Now that ive talked about a couple bits of rain (wouldve talked more but like cba...) ill give my opinion on that matter That Rightclicker Proposed, Ive give my opinion, I think that Damp Rock should be Either Suspected First or QuickBanned before any action on Rain or Ash-Gren, The reasonings quite obvious aswell as Damp Rock extending Rain Turns just Makes it Way easier for Rain to manuevre around and in the case of Ash-Gren do more Absurd Damage in general, with the removal of Damp it would definetely make Rain more Managable but I can still see it being a little bit of a issue since this action doesnt actually resolve the problem of Ash Gren and other Rain Abusers doing Crazy damage besides limiting them which may make some setup sets unviable ig, so if the Damp Rock ban Doesnt make Rain Any less Out of Hand the next action imo is to Ban Drizzle and Not Ash-Greninja, While this may not be physically possible to be Tiering Policies this would be the next best Course of Action in my opinion due to the fact of Ash-Greninja actually having Other Qualities besides Rain, The Main ones being its Sniper and Sheer Force sets which are Pretty Popular and Make it a kind of Staple in the tier, removing it just because of Rain wouldnt feel right as it isnt broken on any other playstyle besides it only leaving a drizzle ban atp. However if Ash-Greninja does end up getting banned it wont be like the worst Case.
Another Option is ofcourse just to moniter and look how the playerbase adapts to it aswell, (this will prob happen since idt council is taking action before ompl ends/ssnl is getting to the final rounds), this has already been a bit shown in some tours and practice where People have actually testing their teams for rain matchups now due to its increased in usage hence they do know how it works, removing element of suprise, and how to play around/against it in needed, take this replay from the Second round of Bh Ssnl from Stolen Identity vs Kinetic (https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen9balancedhackmons-780566) in this mu, which maybe seemed in favor of Kinetic due to rain, Stolen Identity's overall prep and expectation of fighting Rain let him win pretty convincing, while this may be a "one off" there has been other cases of this (even games where the person not using Rain lost like Rofna Vs TTTech_ in Round 1 of SSNL, TTTech_ almost won this game and had a pretty solid game overall), this does kind of showcase that even if u dont have a "good" mu vs rain u still can win given if u play well and have experience vs it
now that ive talked to myself about this for a while ill give my opinions of what will happen Option 1: Damp Rock gets Suspected / Quick Banned and Rain is not as Unhealthy (Semi Likely)
Option 2: Damp Rock Gets Banned / Suspected and Rain is still unhealthy leading to a Ash-Greninja Ban (Most Probably)
Option 3: Damp Rock Gets Banned / Suspected and Drizzle gets outright banned, preserving Ash Greninja in the tier (Not probably)
Option 4: Ash Greninja is outright banned and rain is not Unhealthy (Likely)
Option 5: No action is Taken and People learn to adapt and overcome Rain Eventually (Least Likely)
TLDR: Rain is a bit unhealthy in the tier currently and the main abuser of it is Greninja-Ash, so we should probably suspect damp rock first then Maybe Ash-Greninja if its still unhealthy, which i wouldnt mind but banning it outright still ruins its qualities outside rain tho, and if somehow rain is still unhealthy ban Drizzle, wheres the take heart suspect anyways
Anyways ty for listening to my rambling (or if u didnt have a good day), sorry for any set mistakes or grammer ones a bit tired atm, anyways id like to hear the thoughts of other ppl aswell who have more experience than me about rain (council members and anyone really good tbf..):D
full rain fucking sucks and is an unviable playstyle. if tiering action is to be taken, i'd prefer it target ashgren cause you need to run one of a very small selection of fc guys, which is not fun and doesn't allow for interesting structures (a problem compounded by gren ignoring screens). furthermore, gren can run sets like lo coverage, sd, or spikes to fuck over these fc guys without compromising usability. i don't think it's a good mon because of how much trouble it has getting in and how vulnerable it is to helmet, but it's just uninteresting and makes the game uninteresting imo. reminds me of diancie. anyway, back to rain
let's review the structure of full rain first:
drizzler
rain abuser #1. this is typically choiced ash gren. specs has become the standard, because band can't run lens due to being reliant on sniper and has other problems like helmet. mixed adapt is weaker and thus inconsistent.
rain abuser #2. if you started with specs gren, a surging strikes guy is traditionally used here, though something like palkia is also fine
water absorber
guy that handles fast mons and sweepers defensively. traditionally, prank is used here to cover stuff like snr while being able to force out stuff like scept via encore and trade with dbond to prevent instant losses. you can also try imposter or making an fc/scales core with the last guy.
arc slot. v87 uses take heart unaware etern here as a secondary setup answer, which is essentially also an arc.
here are the main issues with the rain structure:
if specs ashgren takes damage he can no longer kill things and you lose
you have to lead with a useless drizzle guy and give your opponent free turns, then keep going to the drizzle guy later on
forced to defend and waste turns against imposter, knock off, and especially hazards (see first point). due to wasting 2 ability slots on drizzle and water absorb, the structure can't really afford to use active removal.
if you run into desolate land you lose
team has no real longevity and will eventually fold to fc/scales structures if it can't break through immediately. this isn't as bad if you run imposter or fc/scales instead of prank, but those come with their own tradeoffs
on preview it's very easy for the opponent to tell they're facing rain and make an appropriate gameplan
have fun guessing fc or scales against unrevealed arc and audino lol
secondary initiatives with e.g. setup arcs have no actual support behind them and are entirely vulnerable to sapblocking, hazards chipping them down, being the primary switchin to too much shit, etc. their only real purpose is to prevent the opponent from sacrificing certain things or catch the opponent off guard lategame with something like fc shackle tidy torque sap fairyceus.
if you're facing rain, i don't care what kind of team you're using, you can find something to do. anyone can click stone axe or spikes, or try for knock, all while the rain user has no idea what you're trying to do. if you have a surging strikes switchin but not a water spout switchin, you can park your spdef guy in front of every pivot and prevent them from bringing in ash gren lest they spout for 70 and instantly lose to uturn or mortal or literally anything. if you don't have any switchin to anything, you can pressure with fast mons, throw away water-weak mons as sacrifices, get up hazards, and keep imposter around to gain time. if you don't have any switchin to anything and you don't have any fast mons, your team fucking sucks and you need to learn what a water resist is.
i'll go through the teams i brought to ompl and describe how each one of them plays against rain (click sprites for pokepastes):
free win against any rain that doesn't have palk. we lead palk and set a spike. we go aegi against weird ass defensive mons that will try to spin, we have imposter to waste time. game is a matter of being patient until we find a good opportunity to set up audino then we win we have desolate land we win bye bye our team is slow as fuck and we have no priority but it's fine cause kyogre and dialga practically win this on their own. ogre clicks bunker at every opportunity to waste time, sets spikes, and poses immense problems with take heart unless they have specifically palkia (which loses to dialga), while dialga blocks mortals and takes some of the pressure off ogre. clod ghostceus and audino are sacrifices that we do in order depending on what the non-water types are. imposter again gives us even more time that we don't need. despite being a wack ass structure meant primarily to counter hazard builds we STILL win against rain. lead palk, click knock, go to our fast mons against the knock switchin. again the only mon that can pose any threat to us is swift swim palkia, which has to guess between steela and fairyceus/imposter. another thing we can do is just play for chip on things and then hjk everyone down with the bunny. this team fucking sucks because we have no fast mons and no surging strikes switchin, but EVEN DESPITE THIS rain is less of a threat to us than a lone ashgren on some balance team. simply put we can lead dialga and get a spike and chill out, countering special attackers with our blobs. balance typically does not let us get free spikes, because it is an actually good playstyle. sun vs rain, surely an exciting clash of two evenly-matched titans, right? well, not exactly. i'll keep this brief: we have a functional fc/scales core, dual screens, hazards, demon ogre, and long-term special attacker counterplay, and they don't. we also have a palkia counter (flutter) which is funny, though we're more than set against any non-palkia rain. despite flutter matching up dubiously into drizzle pert, this is not a hard matchup. terrible team that i made in like 10 minutes. i would say slightly worse into v87 rain because we have 2 grounds, no hazard, and no surging strikes switchin, but even despite all this we can try to win with bundle boomburst, getting our grounds in on the steels, and wasting time with imposter. if a team like this has this much play you guys really have no excuse
for the record, regarding this game (tttech vs rofna seasonal g3), as far as i can tell that was totally decided by tttech losing fairyceus to dbond, likely because he just didn't expect it. if he was more careful about that in particular, fairyceus had no issues winning that game on its own. outside of that, his gameplan was generally good and he did a good job preventing the sweepers from getting opportunities.
anyway, tl;dr is that ashgren already forces teams to run a very solid water resist so rain kind of just sucks in general because of that. it was a lot better in like gen 8 imo
now that it's after OMPL (its not but who cares), let's look at the banlist and see which items (in my opinion), deserve a second chance
1: Shedinja
In this current meta, being a Shedinja seems like it would be pretty tough. We have three very prominent that can break past Sturdinja.
Hazards
Salt Cure/Mortal Spin
Sunsteel / Moongeist
All three of those require a different item to avoid, and these (at least the first two) are decently common to the point where you aren't completely useless against Sturdinja on team preview.
2: Photon Geyser
A specific broken abuser of this move is now gone, and has been for quite some time.
3: Quiver Dance
Other people have talked about it before, and they can explain their points way better than I can.
1: Shedinja
In this current meta, being a Shedinja seems like it would be pretty tough. We have three very prominent that can break past Sturdinja.
Hazards
Salt Cure/Mortal Spin
Sunsteel / Moongeist
Boots, Cloak and AShield all negate these. Not even mentioning Sunsteel/Moongeist users aren't excessively common too. You can run all 3 to catch every Shed variant but at that point surely it's centralizing enough? Also, the fact that it can just make most mons that don't tech specifically for it want to die simply by existing isn't healthy either
Man come on why do you wanna free QD so you can't even out offense certain threats like Ghostceus whose weakness to being revenged after chip is certainly big. It's fairly easy to tech for Topsy too (GAG/Bounce) and Haze is very uncommon.
??? Of course when you don’t tech for a Pokémon you have a bad mu into it, teammates to mons like Blacephalon or mega garde can still reasonably handle shedinja.
Overall I think shedinja would be balanced for the current metagame
Also re: rain it’s 100% ash greninja being dumb in and outside of it, without it the next water types are well, mid.
anyway, i had really been planning to quit bh for good after winning a crispy $80 in money tour with my beloved speed boost celesteela. the only thing that had really been bothering me, deep down, was the whole replay database problem. 2020-2024 were definitely my best years playing bh. i had a ton of good memories from the past few years, including friendly gen 7 bh games against various boomers, suffocating my opponents (and being suffocated in return) with zama-c and etern in gen 8, tower of power, lil kiss, zap cannon palkia, lilith, morgana, that one time i reverse swept sevag with av boomburst/diamond storm/nuzzle/body press xern, and of course gen 9 up to and including the money tour.
but even if i played in ompl, it's not like those replays would magically come back. really the best i could hope for was just another good experience with all my guys. the problem was that there had been several bans since i'd last played (mmx, diancie, and kart if memory serves), as well as some other meta changes like ashgren and blissey becoming much more prominent. i needed a push to get back into the game, and i got one by an old friend of mine. now by old friend i don't mean a person, i mean a certain pokemon that had sat at the periphery of the generation for quite a while.
Old God's Ambition (Yveltal) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Brave Bird
- Strength Sap
- Stone Axe
- Sucker Punch
Newmaker (Volcanion) @ Shuca Berry
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Strength Sap
- Glare
- Teleport
- Scald
the last time i'd tried to make xern work, it was way near the start of fulldex, with some av nuzzle set similar to the one i'd used to sweep sevag last gen (paste). that was obviously pretty silly, but when i came up with this new one similar to ye old cherry dragon from fucking 6 and a half years ago, i knew i wanted to build around it.
scales groundceus was a favorite of mine at the time and seemed very consistent because back then you could actually count on not running into celesteela. mg aegi obviously seems very silly now but back then i felt like a genius for coming up with it and shutting down everyone's salt cure + mortal spin idea. mg yveltal was cause i was sick of using groundceus + steela, i think sucker killed like 3 mzams. shuca volcanion is to live sword of ruin chomp +1 headlong probably and glare it, volcanion is a super hit-or-miss mon so it doesn't feel like it needs boots that badly.
anyway i ended up laddering a bunch with this team on my lesser-known ompl ladder alt, oceanicfishfriend. and uhhh
suffice it to say that after this i was fully confident that i could do fine in ompl. that said, there was another team in that story.
espeed is a very, very good move, and i also felt like bringing back one of the lesser-known city sets of gen 8, fc drum/espeed/thousand waves/recover type null. now there are a few problems with bringing this set into gen 9: you don't have thousand waves as a strong coverage move that also traps imposter, drum is straight up banned, you have much less recover pp, people can just poison you with mortal, and everyone uses strength sap now.
so i decided to commit to sapblocking as an idea, not run recovery at all and instead run this sort of semi-pivot idea, and stack the rest of the team with unhinged guys that could get out of control at any moment, with prank lunar dance to stave off big setup and revive null for a big moment lategame. unfortunately it never really ended up like this. null is slow, weak, and resists nothing, so committing to it would almost never be worth it over something else--the best it could do was be around to block sap and pressure with stone axe. i did end up using this team for a few games on oceanicfishfriend and miraculously kept the streak going, but the games were close enough that i knew i should probably build something better before disaster struck.
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Block
- Tidy Up
- Roost
- Haze
Ho-Oh @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Shore Up
- V-create
- Spikes
- Topsy-Turvy
Normal Pills (Pidgeot-Mega) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Aerilate
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Boomburst
- Volt Switch
- Secret Sword
- Blue Flare
Aerodactyl-Mega @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Glare
- Dragon Ascent
- Stone Axe
- Strength Sap
theres this funny game from ompl 7 where my teammate and fellow lunatic Anna says hi gentlemans no mray against quantum tesseract then brings my specs zard y + triage yveltal team into diancie flying resist and wins on the spot. i felt that the same specs zard y was near-unviable in this gen cause of slower than arc + rocks being trivial, so heres normal pills instead. this team really isn't anything special but it's chill, i got several games where there was no pidgeot answer and had a lot of fun in those.
you might also notice a habit of mine where my steel types are always super passive and beat no mortal users ever. this was a habit i was pretty conscious of, and over time i tried to overcome it.
4. The Horrors
Nihilego @ Smooth Rock
Ability: Sand Stream
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shore Up
- Spikes
- Topsy-Turvy
- Revelation Dance
Arceus-Water @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Knock Off
- Shore Up
- Scald
- Spirit Shackle
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shore Up
- Heal Bell
- Block
- Haze
Altaria-Mega @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Psychic
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Magical Torque
- Strength Sap
- Stone Axe
- Collision Course
Stunfisk-Galar @ Ability Shield
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
- Toxic
- Teleport
- Shore Up
- Salt Cure
as far as mg teams go, you can definitely get a lot slower than the xern aegi yveltal one, so here's this fucking disgusting sand stall. i still believe that people should be trying to make ridiculous, rainbow offense-style lugia sets like this one, though we hardly have any offensive idea at all going on here. scales stunfisk was surprisingly good and adept at beating both cage guys and mortal guys.
5. "ok light clay, i get it." "no... you... DONT!!!" *duplicates*
Arceus-Water @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Knock Off
- Scald
- Shore Up
- Taunt
Kyurem-Black @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sword of Ruin
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Glacial Lance
- Bolt Strike
- V-create
- Ice Shard
Blissey (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- U-turn
- Stone Axe
- Ruination
- Leech Seed
Blaziken-Mega @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- V-create
- Mortal Spin
- Close Combat
- Strength Sap
so i was trying to remake this team in gen 9. now i know you all are like "why be inspired by that fucking creation instead of anything else" but 1) this team was actually uncomfortably consistent on gen 7 ladder 2) the whole av chomper idea was really unique and interesting 3) i really wanted to remake a multitype arc team cause freeceus was a huge buff for those guys. i really cant tell you what was going through my head for the rest of the team, but this really is surprisingly consistent and i remember getting a win on qt with it. that's quadruple spdef for you baby
6. cylindrical clod-ventures
Aerodactyl-Mega @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- Stone Axe
- Headlong Rush
- Swords Dance
Gyarados-Mega @ Light Clay
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Reflect
- Light Screen
- Shore Up
- Glare
got a bit more serious for this one. bounce clodsire is a very, very good pokemon, able to shut down a ton of spikes setters and sapblock extremely effectively even against bozos that think they can tech on secret sword or whatever and be safe. if you run into cage fairyceus you probably win on the spot. this was also the introduction of this aero set here, a very cool mon that makes progress over time and is also hella fast, kind of like sceptile but actually good. the team has a problem against celesteela though.
7. ONE TEAMSLOT?? FOR THAT COSMOEM???
Dialga-Origin @ Adamant Crystal
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Serious Nature
- Steel Beam
- High Jump Kick
- Strength Sap
- Stone Axe
Kyogre-Primal @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Sassy Nature
- U-turn
- Salt Cure
- Mortal Spin
- Revelation Dance
Ho-Oh @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Shore Up
- Topsy-Turvy
- Knock Off
- Mortal Spin
the sapblocking game seemed to revolve around blissey and to a lesser extent audino and nihilego, and i wanted something with an entirely different set of weaknesses. enter the galaxy. sapping cosmoem gives you back 56 hp, and the mon is about as bulky as deoxys-d or cresselia. the rest of the team is rather uninspired featuring an absolutely terrible pixilate fairyceus + fc hooh complex, but surprisingly i think the real mon to blame here is mg dialga, the primary idea of the team. steel beam is so fuckin bad man
8. semi-semi-rain (Unviable Edition)
Kyogre-Primal @ Damp Rock
Ability: Speed Boost
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Take Heart
- Revelation Dance
- Strength Sap
- Rain Dance
Eternatus @ Dragon Fang
Ability: Beads of Ruin
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dragon Energy
- Malignant Chain
- Torch Song
- Shore Up
Arceus-Steel @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Gigaton Hammer
- Glare
- Strength Sap
- Stone Axe
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Roost
- Tidy Up
- Haze
- Block
Togekiss @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Water Absorb
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Shore Up
- Spikes
- Will-O-Wisp
Camerupt-Mega @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Earth Power
- Haze
- Shore Up
- Tidy Up
as i'm sure most of you are aware, oceanicfishfriend wasn't the only alt i used for laddering before and during ompl. i also busted out the most beloved character, the god of the second amendment
this alt was meant to act as a more "stable" one to ladder on so i didn't have to risk my winstreak. i also thought it was a more clever attempt at masking my identity: a very masculine persona was very at odds with how i presented elsewhere online as well as who i am in general. it was a fun little in-joke & callback to old times even if i probably didn't need to go to such lengths.
anyway, i bring this up because my first loss on this account was also my first and last game using this team. it is truly cosmically bad. i don't know how i fucked up the idea of take heart kyogre that badly when it turned out to be so strong in the end lol
Ho-Oh @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Shore Up
- Salt Cure
- Sacred Fire
- Knock Off
Blissey (F) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Corrosive Gas
- Teleport
- Recover
- Stone Axe
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Block
- Roost
- Tidy Up
- Haze
earth plate mlix, i hope you fuckers are happy. we lose to mg ghostceus but no one was using that guy back then. scream tail is a really fuckin cool mon and i think people should try it out more.
its articuno!!!! i was never really able to get this gigaton/axe/glare/recover steelceus to work very well, this is probably its best performance, though the team is a bit more hazard-weak than i'd like and articuno unfortunately does let in imposter. this team still did fine, the sab was cool and fc palk is one of my mainstays. mon covers so much and no one is ever ready for it
11. the offroaders
Miraidon @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Volt Switch
- Shore Up
- Draco Meteor
- Will-O-Wisp
Arceus @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Extreme Speed
- Flare Blitz
- Strength Sap
Carbink @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Knock Off
- U-turn
- Ruination
- Salt Cure
Melmetal @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Well-Baked Body
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Gigaton Hammer
- Stone Axe
- U-turn
- Strength Sap
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Block
- Roost
- Tidy Up
- Strength Sap
i firmly believe that normceus is hugely underrated, especially when its imposter proofed 3 times over. anyway, i have many vivid memories of using this team in 100-200+ turn games to mixed success against omcord people. hazard matchup on this team is a huge meme but most of the time you can just go obama on knock, click sap to heal from hazards, and defend against whoever they go to. thanks obama!
12. twice the firepower! twice the coolness! twice the speed and defense drops!
Reshiram @ Draco Plate
Ability: Simple
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
- No Retreat
- V-create
- Judgment
- Volt Switch
Flutter Mane @ Spooky Plate
Ability: Normalize
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Entrainment
- Take Heart
- Spikes
- Judgment
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Haze
- Shore Up
- Block
- Heal Bell
Meloetta @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
- Shore Up
- Ruination
- Teleport
- Salt Cure
Arceus-Water @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Tidy Up
- Crabhammer
- Strength Sap
- Glare
Celesteela @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Lunar Dance
- Shore Up
- Topsy-Turvy
- Stone Axe
take heart norm is still lowkey insane. fortunately for the playerbase i am an honest woman who uses only spikes. anyway, the snr resh never really seemed to work that well, unfortunately. snr bros one day it'll be our day
13. new pokemon game where the starters are lando-t, iceus, and volcanion
Landorus-Therian (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Tidy Up
- Brave Bird
- Headlong Rush
- Strength Sap
Zeraora @ Light Clay
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Aurora Veil
- Stone Axe
- Strength Sap
- Bolt Strike
Blissey (F) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Shore Up
- Ruination
- U-turn
- Topsy-Turvy
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Block
- Roost
- Heal Bell
- Haze
this is unfortunately not really a coherent team by any metric, it's mostly just me trying to make the old chilly veil and iceus + volc stuff work a year later. fc zera is very funny though.
14. PENGUIN EMERGES FROM THE DEPTHS
Muk-Alola @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- U-turn
- Clear Smog
- Ruination
- Knock Off
Iron Valiant @ Expert Belt
Ability: No Guard
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Moonblast
- Stone Axe
- Zap Cannon
- High Jump Kick
Eternatus @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dragon Energy
- Malignant Chain
- Torch Song
- Strength Sap
Empoleon @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Topsy-Turvy
- Shore Up
- Glare
- Teleport
Arceus-Water @ Ability Shield
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Revelation Dance
- Strength Sap
- Take Heart
- Knock Off
team is as iconic as it is insane. we have no hazard removal and no formal valiant imposter-proofer and the team still kind of works. i built it on the premise that muk was good and beat a lot of annoying fast special guys, and valiant really liked having those special guys out of the way, then i discovered penguin who was actually very good, then i added 2 terrible fur coat guys that only vaguely work. very funny team that feels like it absolutely needs imposter, but also lowkey coasts as-is under a thick blanket of multi-physdef and multi-spdef. we can also see the beginnings of take heart ogre in this waterceus.
15. my life is an infernal parade without the parade
Arceus-Dragon @ Draco Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Judgment
- Torch Song
- Knock Off
- Shore Up
Iron Moth @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Shore Up
- Inferno
- Nuzzle
- Clear Smog
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tidy Up
- Haze
- Shore Up
- Block
Cobalion @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Shore Up
- Circle Throw
- Stone Axe
- Combat Torque
unhinged iron moth, unhinged cobalion, entirely unhelpful lunala, can still win games because tower of power is really fuckin good and the dragonceus + hazardstack + bouncer is fine. almost good enough to consider actually bringing to stuff but we have no ground resist whatsoever. lowkey i kinda want to build with zamac now imagine trying to mortal against that guy
16. the only good webs team anyone has ever made
Pecharunt @ Spooky Plate
Ability: Normalize
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Entrainment
- Judgment
- Take Heart
- Sticky Web
rebuild of this fearsome gen 7 team, committing to pecharunt instead of a better ghost was probably not best but as far as pecharunts go this is really not bad at all. rest of the team is pretty stupid though, we have double explode + double lunar dance, darkceus isn't bad but we're definitely putting all our eggs in one basket here.
17. Arctic Circle Deluxe
Kyogre-Primal @ Leftovers
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
- Take Heart
- Revelation Dance
- Stone Axe
- Baneful Bunker
Audino-Mega @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shore Up
- Teleport
- Ruination
- Fleur Cannon
Ho-Oh @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Glare
- Knock Off
- Topsy-Turvy
- Shore Up
HERE'S our fucking take heart ogre. stone axe is truly baffling but i was modeling it after my old ph qd/scald/knock/stealth rock guy from 5 years ago. sd iceus is honestly pretty interesting but i don't do it justice on this team, providing only the meager aegislash for imposter-proofing (we take like 44 at +2).
18. super pill shooter and the safe defensive core
Daybreak (Audino-Mega) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Triage
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Take Heart
- Draining Kiss
- Strength Sap
- Thunder Cage
Mr. Sophistication (Aerodactyl-Mega) (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- Stone Axe
- Headlong Rush
- Swords Dance
Late-stage JRPG (Chansey) (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tidy Up
- Roost
- Block
- Haze
saw this guy "bozo plays pokemon" bringing triage take heart audino to casual games and i was like wait this actually kicks ass. so i built around it trying to incorporate all the mons that i'd had success with in the past and ultimately came up with this, which was definitely the most solid team i'd made up to that point. levitate aegislash was miles better than mg, and boots palk + boots groundceus made waves in the up-and-coming superman scene. of course the main issue with groundceus and mr. sophistication here is opposing celesteela, but this wasn't too much of a problem to me because in practice we could just chill out and defend forever until the opportunities came.
anyway, at this point ompl started, so in an effort to interpret the stuff i had, i made this chart:
anyway basically i decided to go with team 18 for week 1, the link is here. to say the least i was incredibly unsatisfied with this game. my opponent had done their research (i was pretty sure stresh had a hand in the building process) so we ended up in a superman mirror, and despite breaking through by catching celesteela out i got crit almost immediately then fucked up a calc i thought would kill.
this was pretty heartbreaking and inspired me to not lose any more games. what was even more heartbreaking though was watching other players lose week after week to unecro without thinking to bring like misty surge balance or dual screens or whatever. looking back on these games it's clear that i'm not the best at in-game decision making or whatever but i'd at least like to have a bigger impact on the community in terms of building. i'll probably make a post on dual screens in the future maybe.
Perfect Radiation (Aegislash) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Ruination
- U-turn
- Knock Off
- Nuzzle
History of Depth (Kyogre-Primal) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Tidy Up
- Spirit Shackle
- Wave Crash
- Strength Sap
ogerpon was on the above chart but i hadn't actually used her, i just knew of the cb desolate land idea with hitting imposter for neutral. i wanted to give that a fair try so i built this team featuring the formidable crimsonia. mg ogre ties it all together, offering a way out of the superman mirror hell of last week with proactive hazard removal so i can continue sending my opponents directly to hell with pretty much every mon on the team especially under screens. this team certainly isn't perfect but i really do like how it turned out.
i ended up bringing this for week 2 here, where subterranean sun here saw no fire resist and shredded everything despite missing 2 vcreates. i had a few comments about the game after:
off topic i legitimately thought the ogerpon sprite was broken on forums for a while because i kept trying to spell it ogrepon. why the fuck is it spelled like that
Celesteela @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Well-Baked Body
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Stone Axe
- Nuzzle
- Recover
- U-turn
this dragapult set is easily one of the most cursed things ive ever come up with. its a real shame it didnt make an appearance in ompl. anyway, first appearance of the bunny, one of my favorite sets from this ompl. i was almost gonna bring this team but didn't:
okay so anyway an update on the temu team
i used it a few games on ladder and two things instantly became clear
this is not a bad team
i do not want to bring it this week
the main flaw with the team is actually really interesting so i want to share it here
it has this really weird thing going on where both of the progress makers are by far at their strongest in the late game
and during the early game the team doesn't have much to do and if you don't secure a specific advantage you can get into a bad position
city — 05/31/2024 9:19 PM
it reminds me of gensokyo millennium from gen 7
in fact the team structure is actually incredibly similar https://pokepast.es/1c4c126a5d701a85
this one
and the current team here https://pokepast.es/d4fd99bb4cd28572
in both cases we have the exact same thing going on with hazard pixilate imposter proofed by bouncer, fast chip-resistant taunt + 3 atks guy, imposter
city — 05/31/2024 10:47 PM
super temu lost to v87 who brought fucking surging strikes spam rain + prank encore melm + unaware draco plate etern i have never seen a more ridiculous matchup in my entire life
its won everything else w no effort
FUCK WHY IS LUCKY CHANT NOT IN THE GAME
THIS WOULD BE A LEGITIMATE USE CASE
Yveltal @ Leftovers
Ability: Simple
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
- No Retreat
- Stored Power
- Precipice Blades
- Flip Turn
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Block
- Haze
- Roost
- Heal Bell
Audino-Mega @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
- Parting Shot
- Rapid Spin
- Moonblast
- Shore Up
Empoleon @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- U-turn
- Stone Axe
- Revelation Dance
- Dragon Tail
truly sinister team stopped only by tspikes being awful and tspikes ghostceus being especially awful. they just have pivot normal + etern and you cant do anything
brought this week 3, here. a very silly game where broken ass kyogre faces off against broken ass groudon (just like in gen 3!) but i have the primal and tttech doesnt whicih is why i win. a very illuminating experience
24. beautiful ruins
Outer Core (Palkia-Origin) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
- Knock Off
- Revelation Dance
- Dragon Tail
- Shore Up
The Seer (Chansey) (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Block
- Roost
- Heal Bell
- Ruination
Moon Blood (Lopunny-Mega) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Population Bomb
- High Jump Kick
- Wicked Blow
- Taunt
Forgotten (Celesteela) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Nuzzle
- Stone Axe
- U-turn
- Circle Throw
brought this against guy who has many alts here, basically i was expecting a team themed around passive damage so i wanted something very hazard-resilient, and the first mon that came to mind was the bunny. despite the temu team from before being silly, i knew the bunny had a ton of potential and was incredibly difficult to consistently wall out. this was proven correct in the game, with the constant hazard pressure + bunny being ultimately too much to handle especially with annoying motherfuckers like palkia. i think hallward could've preserved giratina for a while and made the game a lot more annoying to play for me (once it died i just started going steela on everything), but then again you can only get so far with jungle healing as your only recovery move.
i thought this lando was like lowkey broken but also lowkey awful so i wanted to use it more. results were very mixed. still don't really know what to think about this mon
brought this against sevag here. one of the stupidest teams i brought in ompl which makes me mad that it won. no fault to sevag, several things went in my favor for the kyub sweep to work out, primarily the interactions on zacc (when i saw he brought this into that kyub i couldnt fucking believe it). dont get me wrong the doom desire dialga idea was cool, but i don't like the rest of the team at all, it also loses to ash gren
28. [redacted] fortress
DontStopTilYouDrop (Blaziken-Mega) @ Choice Band
Ability: Tinted Lens
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- V-create
- Close Combat
- Headlong Rush
- Extreme Speed
LETS ROCK BABY!! (Arceus-Rock) @ Stone Plate
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Judgment
- Growth
- V-create
- Moonlight
Lost Crisis (Audino-Mega) @ Light Clay
Ability: Prankster
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Haze
- Reflect
- Light Screen
- Lunar Dance
brought this against ivar here. things kind of balanced out because against sevag i felt that everything was in my favor, but this week everything was against me--fightceus being brought, scales take heart lunala being brought, psea celesteela, ps literally lying to me about hydro steam thawing opponent--except it wasn't balanced out at all because i hated the previous week's team but i loved this team. i mean sun rockceus?? hydro steam ogre??? an actual synergistic defensive core??? are you kidding me??? these are the kinds of structures that people dream of one day making work, and i had it in the palm of my hand, so the way this game went was incredibly disappointing for me.
anyway this team is so fucking cool and fun please use it its so awesome i swear ive been trying to make a structure like this work for literally like 3 years
29. the ballad of robo justice
Robo Justice (Zygarde) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Power Construct
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Victory Dance
- Stone Axe
- Earthquake
- Strength Sap
Nihilego @ Terrain Extender
Ability: Misty Surge
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
- Shore Up
- Clear Smog
- Ice Beam
- Knock Off
Dondozo @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Topsy-Turvy
- Teleport
- Shore Up
- Salt Cure
Arceus-Ghost @ Spooky Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Judgment
- Shore Up
- Torch Song
Melmetal @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Well-Baked Body
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Shore Up
- Knock Off
- Gigaton Hammer
- Extreme Speed
we are so fucking back. mr justice, for his part, isnt the best mon in the game but is incredibly funny backed by misty terrain, screens, and sapblocking. nihilego is the best misty surge user due to countering etern but dondozo is such an awful mon and every team with it is cursed to turn out mediocre. he could NEVER be suicune
30. can i axe you a question
Arceus-Fairy @ Pixie Plate
Ability: Pixilate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
- Boomburst
- V-create
- Stone Axe
- Strength Sap
Tapu Fini @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
- Moonblast
- Mortal Spin
- Recover
- Salt Cure
i got sick of putting spikes on pixilate fairyceus and having to run away from mortal guys so heres fairyceus + msab. i think the team does a good job expanding on the earlier idea of msab, and from ladder use it's been pretty consistent. moth fini are of course cursed but don't worry about it
31. the ballad of robo justice 2: lando drift
Landorus-Therian (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Victory Dance
- Low Kick
- Precipice Blades
- Spiky Shield
Zygarde @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Power Construct
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Victory Dance
- Precipice Blades
- Volt Tackle
- Strength Sap
Muk-Alola @ Terrain Extender
Ability: Misty Surge
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Knock Off
- Topsy-Turvy
- Shore Up
- Stone Axe
the reason i didnt go with the mortal volt lando again was because 1) misty surge made mortal a less good move 2) i was rly paranoid of covert imposter cause people were saying it was like the best imposter. so here's a different lando set that also beats imposter while being able to eventually kill celesteela. the double ground idea on this is cool, ive long believed that ground + elec coverage is near unwallable in this meta if you can get it to work. zyg isn't a very good mon for using it though
32. flesh injustice
Santa Claus(gay) (Iron Bundle) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Refrigerate
Tera Type: Ice
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
IVs: 0 SpD
- Boomburst
- Volt Switch
- Extreme Speed
- Blue Flare
The Motte (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Good as Gold
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Victory Dance
- Precipice Blades
- Low Kick
- Spiky Shield
The Dragon (Chansey) (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Block
- Transform
- Roost
- Haze
Last Request (Kyogre-Primal) @ Clear Amulet
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Wave Crash
- Spirit Shackle
- Strength Sap
- Tidy Up
Second Seraph (Arceus-Ground) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Precipice Blades
- Volt Tackle
- Strength Sap
brought this against chessking here. i think both of us were tired and brought dumb shit, he had triple elec weak which i'll maintain til the day i die is an admission of not even trying to outbuild your opponent. low key i think we both need to do better things with our time lol
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Imposter
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Tidy Up
- Block
- Shore Up
- Heal Bell
Celesteela @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Shore Up
- U-turn
- Stone Axe
- Nuzzle
Lopunny-Mega @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Population Bomb
- Taunt
- High Jump Kick
- Wicked Blow
Ho-Oh @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Magic Bounce
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Careful Nature
- Topsy-Turvy
- Shore Up
- Blazing Torque
- Mortal Spin
this one somehow got swallowed up by my python script that im using to generate the sprites + hide tags. anyway this is the true first appearance of the bunny. trickscarf was less effective than i thought itd be, but even then this team got some cool wins by overwhelming opponents with fairyceus + lop once they were forced to defend.
thoughts
i had fun w my teammates and friends but i also kinda hate being closed off from the rest of the community. at the end of the day what i'm here for is to show everyone else that you can do a ton of crazy and awesome things in this meta. i don't want to be part of a clique and i hate the idea of making my strategies more obscure than they already are. people have called me insane which don't get me wrong i take as a compliment, but i don't think it's one i entirely deserve. anyone can learn to play bh like this if they're interested.
i also hate being 4-3 but i dont really care that much end of the day. given my dwindling investment in this game it's about the result i expected.
thanks everyone for playing with me. it's been fun. i hope other people have fun with these teams too
Can run DD and adamant crystal. Walls most kyogres and mortal spin. Deals a lot of damage with DD. weak to salt cure and grounds.
frail but has useful immunity to dragon. Garde can also run future sight
super weak to knock but can block rapid spin and run future sight.
super bulky, can burn stuff with scald but is weak to salt cure. Technically could also run belch.
ground immunity. blocks mortal spin. weak to salt cure.
has knock immunity with lustrous globe. weak to salt cure. Can run scald/spout and dragon energy for damage. Hard to block mortal spin w scald/spout.
weak to knock and uturn but can run future sight and glaive rush for damage. Only bring if you want to cteam an opponent and if you run knock on a low attack regen mon.
is of course the biggest abuser of it with Tlens Specs Set being Pretty Much unwallable due to the fact of it being mixed and not having many Pokemons who can outright Outspeed it or Live a hit and deal meaningful damage back, on the top of my mind some counters are just mons that outspeed ( 
which with Prankster can shutdown setup Sweeps and Gigaton Copycat is no joke in terms of damage (Destiny Bond is also another way aswell to not get Swept but more inconsistent), Some Forms of rain also do run Pokemon like Unaware 
Shedinja
