Pet Mod VaporeMons - Randbats is the Pet Mod of the Month - VR Update @ Post 809

[Yoshiblaze]

PMPL IV has now concluded, with VaporeMons having another pretty good outing! Like I said in the Megas Revisited thread, I didn't do much with the tier during the tier as I was busy (though I did at least help people test teams, shoutouts to the gourgs), but from what I saw the tier look pretty fun, balanced, and fairly diverse, which I'm very glad to see!

Hydrei has already taken the liberty of posting the tournament's usage stats in the post above, so here's just a couple very quick thoughts on them:

• Milotic very much proved why it's in S Tier, that mon can really do whatever it wants.
• Our other S-Tier in Magearna definitely underperformed though, 5 uses with just 2 wins is quite rough
• Weavile also had 10 uses, but a pretty paltry 40% winrate. Weavile is still great, but it does struggle into a lot of top mons like Milotic, Magearna, and Crabominable. Also, this:
  
  (funny that its winrate did go up after this)
• Mandibuzz, a UU mon currently, really popped off in this tournament. It was also used a good bit in PMPL III as an Ogerpon answer, but it went to the next level in this tour. It initially sprung up again as a response to Pecharunt, who was insane in Week 1 before we removed Choke from it, but it stuck around due to just having a crazy defensive profile between its good bulk, decent typing, the amazing Overcoat, and solid movepool
• Speaking of Mandibuzz, it highkey felt like every other game had the core of Mandibuzz/Great Tusk/Milotic, and I would be kinda right since that combination of 3 was used 4 times in the tournament with a 75% winrate, with Dragapult being used alongside them 3 of those times. Seems like they may be a little mini-Big 3 for the tier, which makes sense considering how flexible all three of them are. Also note that Slowking-G was also common beside them or used instead of Milotic
• The most used mon with a 100% winrate was Magnezone and yeah that doesn't really surprise me, it's not an S-Tier mon anymore but it's still an insanely good glue mon
• Kingambit wasn't used a single time, we really killed that mon. But with Milotic, Crabominable, Magearna, Zamazenta, Tusk, and even less common stuff like Gouging Fire (thank you to people in the tournament for reminding me that it even exists) in the tier and Tera not existing, it's really not that surprising.
• I keep mentioning Crabominable but it had a pretty horrible run in this tournament surprisingly, with only 3 uses and a 0% winrate.

I could keep going cuz there are a lot of mons that I was kinda shocked underperformed actually (Darkrai, Jolteon, Ogerpon-W, Iron Valiant (but not that shocking actually), etc.) but I don't wanna drone on with my thoughts for too long as I want to hear your thoughts!
Just like last year, we have created a community survey to see how those who played in the tournament think about the metagame and how it could improve. I highly encourage responding to the survey, whether you played tournament games or just helped with testing, your answers will be highly appreciated!

>>>CLICK TO ANSWER SURVEY<<<

Tagging those who played in PMPL

ihbst
LpZ
big tony 2014
Fragments
HydreigonTheChild
Xrn
LOOR
Bobsican
Clas (also play me in orre colosseum some time)
Peum
Nashrock

That's all for now, but please stay tuned for any events in the near future for VaporeMons. See you soon!

 

[Xrn]

another season wrapped up of the greatest tour on Smogon, wanted to share my teams and some thoughts
(note: pastes may be slightly different from what I actually loaded)

Week 1

https://pokepast.es/5faf49583ca7734d
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen9vaporemons-15530
CB Weav + Chilly GKing for safe entry utilizing Snow Cloak and FSight to help break, also comfortably switches into Weav's best counters Milo/Magear. Plugged in Milo + Mandi to fill out the defensive core, these two can blanket check most of the tier you really just need to cover electrics elsewhere. GKing helps with that a bit so I figured I could go for a more offensive ground in Scarf Tusk, pairing nicely with GKing. I tried finding a set I liked with Rocks but they all felt clunky whereas Scarf was such a natural fit in my eyes. I've personally found that Rocks aren't too important in this tier anyway unless your game plan is fully based around hazards, so many removal options and Pokemon that simply don't care about them. Initially I added Pult here while I had Rocks Tusk, mainly for the speed to help offensively check the usual suspects (Ogers, Fightings, Jolt, etc), but it still felt like a pretty decent fit after the Scarf Tusk change so I kept it around. Something stronger into Milo could be better in that slot though like Jolt or ThundI. Team mostly worked as expected in game but I lost my best mon early by risking Weav against Hoopa, clicking Triple Axel when False Surrender likely killed. Fortunately though Scarf Tusk dodged a couple Static paras and Muscle Memory beefed up Headlong's damage enough to clean.

Week 2

https://pokepast.es/82b83d0fb39afc48
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/...emons-15909-f014o9u9mkjrx3l5mazl53vdpu4e19upw
This week I wasn't too inspired so my main options were a revamped version of my Grassy Terrain from last year and this goodstuffs slop I threw together, went with this cause it seemed stronger into the cheese I expected to fight. Specs Crown + Zama is a pretty sick offensive core with both still providing pretty real defensive utility. Milo again cause its the most solid defensive mon in the tier, Corv instead of Mandi this time for reasons I truthfully can't remember. I'm pretty sure this would just be better with Mandi but I knew I was adding Gouging which owns Hotpon so I thought I could justify Corv? Dunno, Mandi clears. Anyway as for Gouging it stomps out Hotpon/Cinder and electrics, most notably Magnezone, all of which I badly needed answers for. Additionally acts as a strong wincon with DD and anti setup with Prehistoric Might. Gliscor slots in at the end for Rocks + Volt immune + status absorption + general pivoting. I was expecting cheese and that's what I fought, pretty simple game. Crown gets to trade early in a matchup like this, Milo + Corv answer what they need to (except Corv died to crit Cudgel my goat Mandi would never), and Zama gets to play clean up. Gouging never had to come up but having it in the back was still excellent insurance to make sure this could never slip away.

Week 3

https://pokepast.es/09aaa458f65be748
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen9vaporemons-16319-nullpw
During W2 zxgzxg mentioned Zard Y and I was like "oh yeah I looked at that guy last year it seemed kinda neat." Upon giving it a second look I realized the boosts it gets from Y Shard really make it legit. Struggled a bit to find the right build with it at the time but after revisiting it this week I felt pretty good about it. Yard deletes just about everything in the tier and frankly I'm amazed it mostly flew under the radar. +1 spatk makes it stronger than actual Yard, then add on an additional 1.2x boost to Fire moves while reducing its SR weakness by making it pure fire... I think that's a pretty strong mon yeah. If I was using Yard I wanted to try to fit something with Protosynthesis too and CB Gouging Fire sounded way cooler than Walking Wake. I opted for speed boost Gouging instead of attack boost because I had a feeling I'd be playing HO again, but attack is also totally valid here. Alo + AV Zone is the first core I fell in love with last year and while I don't think it's as insane as I did initially, it's still a great duo that fits perfectly here. Slow pivots with removal for my big hazard weak hitters. Scarf LandoT next, needed a fast guy and his defensive traits were pretty appealing to me while also baiting in mons that the sun core feasts on. It also gives me triple removal because I really couldn't find a different 4th move that seemed more valuable. I had those 5 mons already put together in W2 but Fairy Garg helped tie it together for me this week. Dark resist, Pult answer, SR, and annoys Wetpon. The team isn't the most defensively sound but when the goal is to kill everything with the sun core it really shouldn't need to be perfect in that regard. Simple game against HO once again, the sun core blew shit up while the pivots served their purpose and Scarf LandoT was waiting to clean if necessary.

Week 4

https://pokepast.es/796e0b16e9471e50
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/dragonheaven-gen9vaporemons-16607-nullpw
This week I struggled to find the time to sit down and build so I decided to fall back on one of the other teams I made last week. Idea here was pretty much just "I want to use SD Trailblaze Wetpon", not very deep. Wouldn't make a ton of sense to go for Milo here so GKing as the general spdef guy and Mandi as the general phys def guy. Felt like a decent time to give Treads a shot as my ground to condense my hazard game and help out against some annoying guys like Ghold. Most importantly by having Treads be my removal I can free up a slot on Mandi for Toxic to better deal with setup mons like Gouging or Crab that won't just fold to Foul Play and I'd normally want to use Milo for. Kyurem as my main breaker fits in pretty naturally since it can find pretty free opportunities to click against Wetpon's best counters, and I have Chilly GKing for it too. Another GKing beneficiary is mandatory fast mon Zama who also helps patch the Weav matchup a bit which kinda rolls this team. Not my finest build but felt like it'd be enough to get the job done. The matchup I got is NOT what I wanted to see with Weav being an insanely big threat and Ghold/ThundI also being pretty scary. Weav was given up pretty early though so the game became much more manageable than it would've been otherwise. Still though my opp didn't make it easy and I failed to capitalize as hard as I could've on some openings, so it came down to a pretty close endgame won by Wetpon.

/

Bonus

https://pokepast.es/f10ea57162acac48 / https://pokepast.es/38a3d4d8013cbc39
For W5 I moved to Fusion Evolution because my team could NOT find a win there (before me!) and I wasn't totally clueless about it thanks to past PMPLs. I want to include a full season's worth builds though so here's another from W3 that I considered bringing. Somehow I had never used Magear so I tried to build with it, I know people like to use it with Healing Stones to keep it healthy but I wanted to be different so here's an Alo instead. SD LandoT/Ursa quite appreciate Wish from Alo, fills the ground slot and gives me some nice power. LandoT is faster with SR and more defensive utility whereas Ursa is the better breaker, not totally sure which would've played better. Jugulis had always interested me and it felt like it might be alright here so I just threw it on ngl. Cinder seemed like a pretty solid partner for Jug, able to bring it in against mons like Alo/Mandi/fat grounds while not being deadweight against the fairies Jug despises. Pech slots in lastly as the check to Oger and is a pretty neat Milo punish with Green-Eyed to prevent it from mindlessly clicking Recover after switching into Jug. Wasn't super convinced by this build, hence why I decided against it twice, but I think there are some cool ideas and it probably could've won.

Misc Thoughts:
- I still feel a little weird calling it #1 but Milotic is definitely the Pokemon I think about most while by building. Highly splashable and consistent game to game value. Frequently in the builder I'd have something going then realize "oh this can't really break Milo" or even "wait this kinda struggles to switch into Milo". Not a hot take or anything since it's in the highest VR tier but this season really confirmed that that's correct to me.
- Both Wellspring and Hearthflame still feel quite restricting in the builder but I wouldn't call either broken. Think there are just enough defensive tools to handle them and the speed tier is limiting.
- Grassy Terrain is still super good and the other terrains aren't remotely close in viability, unfortunately for those Drive users. Partially due to the fact that Shaymin itself is a solid mon but Iron Hands is also one of the most underused mon in the tier imo. You can see in big tony's finals game (it's only appearance of the tour) that it could've won almost singlehandedly. Of course Fragments' team was especially weak to it, but look at most teams and it can pretty easily get 2-3 kills if not win outright. The only reasons I never loaded it this year is I wanted to use other stuff and I was scared if I used it too much myself then more people would catch on LOL, the less I have to respect Hands the better.
- Really cool to see Mandibuzz see more success this tour. Not a mon without flaws but it's one of the few Oger swaps and just does well into most physical threats. In a meta that'll always remain somewhat underdeveloped with dozens of niche threats these blanket walls like Mandi on the physical side or Milo on the special side are great for finding consistency.
- Not having to deal with Round Jolteon was lovely. I think it's still pretty alright without it but the post nerf usage dip was inevitable.
- Last year I learned fake Mega Diancie is terrible, this year I learned fake Mega Charizard Y can be really strong. Curious where fake Mega Charizard X would land.