Moving my post-RUPL post from last year to the discussion thread as requested.
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I had a lot of fun playing and building ORAS this RUPL so I decided to make a post with the teams I used and share some personal thoughts about the tier right now. I'm not very good at explaining my building thought process so I'll just post the teams but feel free to ask me about anything that sparks your interest!
I didn't build the team I used in week 2 so I haven't included a link for that and week 7 I played SM but everything else was built by myself. I'll just talk a bit about my week 5 team I used vs. atomicllamas because that is by far my favorite team I used. I always thought Accelgor was pretty underrated but I really didn't like the sets people were using on it, Specs seemed very promising. The original core I had was Accelgor + Specs Magneton + Eject Button Slowking/Alomomola; the entire team ended up being fairly offensive-ish so Eject Button was to give me one of Accelgor or Magneton an extra opportunity to come in safely. Then
etern gave me the idea of pairing Xatu with it so I could volt on Regi into it to scout EQ + deny rocks which sounded great so I slapped that, ultimately ended up with Mola > Slowking so Band Flygon didn't maul me and Healing Wish felt like a great fit on this for late-game Virizion/Accelgor action. Accelgor is also faster than +1 Scrafty which is super cool and I had Modest on this for the extra power because we weren't expecting Aero/Jolteon but Timid is probably better in general.
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Some general thoughts on the tier —
I think the balance/fat teams structures are the best in the tier at the moment and will continue to be so, the tier has a lot of great defensive staples for them to not be good and having a great wish passer is perfect too. Although, hot take but I think Venusaur is a bit overrated? I only used it twice in the whole tour and my teams turned out just fine; it's a great Pokemon and needs to be accounted for at all times but I don't think its as metagame-warping as people make it seem. The Sludge Bomb sets with no Giga Drain can be taken advantage of by a bunch of Pokemon too which is a bit annoying.
All the megas (bar Glalie maybe) are underrated and need to be used more. Mega Camel in particular is amazing and offers a lot of defensive utility as well if you pair it with the right partners and sets; 3 atks + Rest or 2 atks + Rest Talk or no Rest with wish support are all perfectly valid and are great in different ways depending on the rest of the team. Having Rest and being able to switch in to Venusaur/Registeel etc. without worrying about status is always nice. Mega Banette and Audino also have their uses on the right teams.
Pokemon like Escavalier and Braviary are kinda underrated too now imo and they capitalise on balance/fat being good although just simple changes like Thunderbolt on Registeel makes them easier to deal with. Escavalier is a bit harder because of its really good defensive typing and stats in general but the reliance on Rest and slow speed can hold it back sometimes. Nonetheless, cool mons that should be used more.
Same with Jellicent, very underrated; Jellicent was used only 8 times the whole tour which is a bit wild but I never used it either so who am I to judge... although, competition with Slowking and Alomomola as defensive Water-types is a bit annoying sometimes. Taunt/WoW/Scald/Hex are all great and can annoy some teams, I had nascar Molas on some of my teams just so I didn't get completely bodied by lead Jellicent. Unsure what to make of Slowking, tried to use it on a bunch of teams but always ended up with different variations without it that felt better; maybe I'm just building wrong with it. Competition with Alomomola as a regen Water-type is annoying too and given my high Mola usage, it probably had a hard time finding its way onto most of my teams.
Flygon is by far the most splashable Pokemon in the tier and fits on all kinds of teams although not sure if I'd call it the best Pokemon in the tier. But still very good and customizable depending on what the team needs. On another note, my thoughts about Scrafty from
this post are still the same as well.
There are some other Pokemon that I think could be cool but never got a chance to or couldn't come up with a team that I liked with them: Clawitzer, Emboar, Mantine, Hitmonchan, and Aurorus are some of them at the top of my head but probably more that I'm forgetting. I've also put together some other teams I made but didn't end up using either because I didn't like how they turned out or they didn't feel great in tests but could probably be good with some tweaks:
https://pokepast.es/991662a02cee6788
Overall I had fun playing this tier after I randomly had an urge to lock myself to and play ORAS this tour. Big shout-out to everyone on the Hustlers (
Santu Beraldo Metallica and others

) that were constantly talking in my channel and keeping things going and making sure I wasn't going too outlandish with my ideas sometimes like my week 1 Mega Glalie + Mega Banette team....