Resource ZU Old Gens Hub - ADV Shifts #391

[5gen]

ORAS ZU Viability Rankings Update (click to view voting sheet)

Hey all, ORAS ZU council recently voted on the entire VR. Congrats to estra for joining ORAS council, and thank you to each council member for voting. Credit to estra for creating the voting sheet, thanks a bunch. Here is the original voting sheet with some reasonings.

Rises

Bronzor A to A+
Swalot A to S

Furfrou A- to A
Gourgeist-Large A- to A
Meowstic A- to A
Persian A- to A

Marshtomp B+ to A-
Meganium B+ to A-
Wigglytuff B+ to A-

Seaking B to A-

Mienfoo B- to B+
Mightyena B- to B
Solrock B- to B

Corsola C+ to B-
Ditto C+ to B-
Heatmor C+ to B-
Kricketune C+ to B-
Luxray C+ to B-

Banette C to C+
Wormadam-Trash C to C+

Bibarel C- to B-
Dunsparce C- to C

Hypno UR to C
Noctowl UR to C
Phione UR to C+
Pikachu-Belle UR to C
Shedinja UR to C
Slowpoke UR to C-
Sudowoodo UR to C-
Tropius UR to C-
Unfezant UR to C

Drops

Electabuzz S- to A+

Dustox A+ to A
Lairon A+ to A-
Politoed A+ to A

Frogadier A to A-
Magmar A to A-
Vibrava A to A-

Sawsbuck A- to B+
Swoobat A- to B+

Hippopotas B+ to B-
Murkrow B+ to B
Trubbish B+ to B

Butterfree B to B-
Dragonair B to B-
Glaceon B to B-
Lunatone B to B-
Meowstic-F B to B-
Raticate B to C+
Zweilous B to B-

Chimecho B- to C+
Chinchou B- to C
Fearow B- to C+
Gastly B- to C+
Girafarig B- to C+
Lampent B- to C+
Magcargo B- to C+
Slaking B- to C+
Tentacool B- to C+

Emolga C+ to C
Illumise C+ to C
Meditite C+ to C
Munchlax C+ to C-
Palpitoad C+ to C-
Shelgon C+ to C

Ariados C to C-
Magnemite C to C-
Mothim C to C-
Octillery C to C-
Stunky C to C-

Frillish C- to UR
Grotle C- to UR

Notable Changes

• A to S: Swalot has proven to be a metagame staple due to how much offensive and defensive utility it offers. Similarly to Servine, Swalot is incredibly easy to fit and helps drive the metagame. Swalot is one of the main checks to Grass-types, which are everywhere, and can check a lot of key threats such as Scraggy, Pignite, and Electabuzz. Moreover, Swalot threatens a lot thanks to its stats and movepool, and has lots of opportunities to switch in thanks to its typing, bulk, and Sticky Hold. In a nutshell, Swalot can fit on any team.
• S- to A+: The ORAS ZU icon, Electabuzz, is no longer part of the S-ranks. Sad day. Seriously though, Electabuzz has taken a dip because of how popular bulky Grass-types, Dustox, and AV Swalot are. Also, trends like Seaking and Marshtomp give teams some more flexibility against it. The meta has adapted to Electabuzz in ways that made it less dominant. In addition, one can argue that Servine and Swalot are that much better as S-ranks.
• A+ to A: Defog users in ORAS ZU simply don't hold up as well against the metagame nowadays. Rockers like Gigalith and Bronzor have an easy time keeping Stealth Rock up against Dustox. Dustox is also easy to pressure, as even Grass-types like Simisage and Gogoat can tech Rock Slide, and Servine annoys it with its tools. However, Dustox is still a solid Defogger and special wall, and Double Dance sets are really nice at the moment.
• A+ to A-: A lot of the current trends hurt Lairon's viability. Examples include the following: Pignite, bulky SD Mienfoo, Bronzor, PuP Swalot, and Marshtomp. Compared to rockers like Gigalith and Bronzor, Lairon does not offer as good defensive utility and is worse off as a result.
• A+ to A: Politoed's viability has taken a steady dip since last ZUPL because of trends like Servine, Meganium, Seaking, and screens. Moreover, Politoed faces increased competition from Water-types like Huntail, Seaking, and Simipour, so it's slightly tougher to fit nowadays.
• A to A+: Bronzor trended up mainly because of how well it sets Stealth Rock and helps cover threats like Duosion, Gigalith, Klang, and so on incredibly well. Arguably, there's no other rocker that offers the kind of defensive utility Bronzor does.
• A- to A: Meowstic drives screens and screens are incredible. Screens as a style consistently does well in tours and has been a bit of a hot topic around the meta.
• A- to A: Furfrou is arguably the best Normal-type breaker in the tier, and being faster than Simisage and Simipour is crucial. It forces teams to pack Normal-type resists and even then, Furfrou has the tools to overcome many of them (i.e., Iron Tail for Carbink and Toxic for Gourgeist-L and Gigalith).
• A- to A: Gourgeist-Large is arguably better now as a physical wall thanks trends like Furfrou, Persian, and PuP Swalot. Aside from Duosion, nothing wants to switch into Leech Seed and Will-O-Wisp. While Gourgeist-L may seem passive on paper, it has the tools both wall threats and whittle teams down.
• A- to A: Since the Purugly ban, Persian has steadily risen in the metagame. Persian is one of the tier's best revenge killers, and NP sets are quite threatening as well.
• B to A-: Seaking trended up because of its ability to check Electabuzz, Pignite, Gigalith, and so on, and threaten much of the meta. The Protect 3 attacks set caught on and made Seaking shine. With Megahorn and Knock Off, Seaking is able to break down a lot of structures by flipping matchups against typical Water-type checks like Servine and Politoed
• In general, much of the B and C ranks were cleaned up. Feel free to check the original voting sheet for some reasoning.

Ideally, there should be explanations for each change made. I'm too tired to write up explanations for each change, so feel free to ping me or other council members in the ZU Discord with any questions. If we made any errors counting votes or compiling changes, please let us know. Thanks for reading!

 

[5gen]

The ORAS ZU council has decided to set up a vote on Meowstic and Huntail. With the upcoming ORAS Underground tournament, now is an ideal time to vote.

Screens as a playstyle has been at the forefront of ORAS ZU for years now, and Meowstic is the best screen setter by far. In this meta, screens are consistent and highly potent. As seen in official tours like ZUPL, Olympiad, and ORAS Cup, screens are one of easiest styles to use and toughest to prepare for. The central argument against screens is that the ability to stack so many sweepers restricts teams and leads to too many threats to cover.

Huntail is arguably the deadliest setup sweeper in the tier. Huntail's ability to run physical, special, or mixed sets make it highly difficult to answer defensively. Sucker Punch allows Huntail to pick off revenge killers, which makes it difficult to revenge kill. Much of the time, it feels like Huntail can position itself to overcome typical checks (especially on screens).

However, there are arguments to keep Meowstic and/or Huntail in the tier. One may argue that the meta has enough outs vs screens, or that looking at Light Clay may be preferred. Meanwhile, Huntail's low Speed and poor special bulk limit its ability to set up. Another issue Huntail faces is that it often has one chance to sweep in a game, which forces players to position it well. In some games that's easy, but in others Huntail is just another sweeper.

These two Pokemon are the most controversial elements in ORAS ZU. We'd love to hear people's thoughts here or in the ZU Discord.

 

[BaitWiz]

Thoughts on Screens and Huntail in ORAS

I think screens as a whole is overbearing as hell, having to account for every single sweeper is just a nightmare while still keeping every other potential playstyle in mind. Screens doesn't really 'have' to use specific mons, it can pick or choose its sweepers accordingly, which makes it all the more difficult to account for in the builder and dangerous in battle - if it was just having to prepare for Scraggy, Huntail (more on that in a second), Klang, and Swoobat then I think it wouldn't be too bad, but the fact that there's a lot of more niche options screens can use as well really pushes it over the line - simi's slotting in alright, Electabuzz being an ever reliable pivot, Swalot as a bulky setup sweeper, hell I've even seen the likes of Magcargo, Ditto, and Beedrill do well on screens. Having almost a dozen different potential setup sweepers in screens is extremely difficult to account for when they last for a full seven turns, and it gives the screens user a lot more room to maneuver their win conditions around compared to other generations of ZU where Light Clay isn't legal. I could see an argument for both Meowstic and Light Clay being the problem; my preference is towards Meowstic, as the next best setter after Meowstic is probably either the ridiculously frail Swoobat (who is crucially outsped by Persian and gets hit with Knock Off from Choice Scarf users) or mons like Solrock who have their own host of issues. I think a Light Clay ban would be totally valid as well though, and would probably remove screens altogether.

Huntail can seem honest at face value; it has one shot to get off a Shell Smash, and when it does it's going to try to sweep you with Water STABs. Problem is, Huntail's not all that honest in practice. It can run a bevy of different items, from standard stuff like White Herb and Lum Berry to more oddball items like Life Orb and even weird berries like Ganlon or Lansat for one time Natural Gift coverage; furthermore, while you can sometimes judge whether it's physical or special based on its teammates, you never truly know until you're already facing it down fully boosted most of the time. It also really doesn't help that Huntail can often mix its two sets together, opting for mixed variants with Ice Beam splashed into physical sets or Sucker Punch splashed into special ones. I think Huntail is screens' strongest abuser, and without the support of screens it often both has to find the correct time to setup and have the correct set in order to finish the game; a combination of factors that's difficult to find in practice and is reflected accordingly in the usage stats of both of the most recent team tournaments featuring ORAS ZU, ZUPL VI and ZU Olympiad III; Huntail finds itself below a 50% winrate in both of these tournaments. I'd personally be in favor of action on screens over action on Huntail at this time.

 

[sleid]

Results from the recent ORAS ZU ban slate are in! Light Clay is banned with a whopping 80% majority vote, while Huntail just barely reached the threshold to be banned with a 60% majority vote. Tagging Marty and dhelmise to implement this! Thank you!

Here's to ushering a new and healthier era of ORAS ZU. I am excited to build for this new meta and know others are too!

 

[Theycallmephil]

Hello ZU old gens thread.
I hope this is the right thread for this post.

I won gsc slam league alongside the hitmonlees while playing GSC ZU.
As this tier has an obvious issue to address id like to share my thoughts on it.

But before all that im doing a teamdump lol

WEEK ONE vs Missangelic(win),
(Charm lead nidorina)

https://pokepast.es/46bf4b0acbaa9342
To be very clear, this was my first team ever in this tier. It was only made possible due to my extremely helpful team during prep. As it was my first shot its fairly standard. I came up with a checklist of ideas, I needed something that could tank opposing mantine. So I used nidorina who packed a solid combination of instant recovery, decent spatk, thunder, ice beam to ensure my tine check wasn't bullied by onix as seen in the game. I saw most people had chosen their charms to be physical lately, so to be slightly different i opted for a special resttalk set to better handle enemy sleepers. From there I used a 3 attacks mantine and a resttalk aipom, this would be the last time I bring an aipom walled by onix. When presented with the newly dropped ariados I looked immediately at its bulk, opting to create the ideal resttalk set. The attacks I chose were psychic to hit the numerous poisons and to take advantage of its unresisted nature. And sludge bomb to abuse ariados's absurd attack. The last add to the team like usual was my favorite croconaw set, its simple and effective.

WEEK 2 vs Magalice(Loss)
(Grimer lead-Attract mantine)

https://pokepast.es/c645417c6a31c46b
I wanted to take an approach closer to what Maris did week one, opting for a curse grimer lead idea. So the team is built around that. But while just chatting about the tier a sick and twisted idea came to me, mantine can probably afford attract. This mon already has no switch ins and now I can abuse those aswell?
Sign me up. This set performed as cheesy as planned both in game and in tests, im satisfied with it. And as mentioned i was pretty disappointed with aipom being helpless versus onix, so I chose to give my aipom hp water and infact even used thief to hopefully cripple another mon.
I also tried onix for the first time this week although it ended up fairly disappointing.
Other 2 were just resttalk charm again and boring croconaw.

FINALS vs Zause(win)

https://pokepast.es/cdce6cdb55feab5b
I was subbed in mid-way through the week but I locked in immediately. I had my mission and I needed my teams help to build up a squad to win this. Immediately I knew i wanted to use lead aipom and wanted to go back to a less unique mantine. From here we added croconaw as is standard. I finally decided to grow a pair and use a new charmeleon set, using belly drum at bees recommendation. From there we wanted a way around opposing weepinbell, a few ideas were suggested. But ponyta and ariados were my favorites. I went with ariados. And finally bee pointed out this team had some issues with opposing croc, I built 2 versions of the team as a result, this version with weepinbell that I used to great success and another version with koffing
https://pokepast.es/09c67e520f96039b
Seen here.

Now I want to address the obvious issue mentioned at the start of this post.

I think most will agree with me when I say this pokemon desperately needs to be banned, it trades 2 for 1 every game, can abuse cheesy strats, has 0 real switch ins.
This mon absolutely cannot be dropped and centralizes everything around it.

Ultimately I enjoyed this tier but it has its problems.
Just my 2 cents on the tier

 

[BeeOrSomething]

Following the conclusion of GSC Slam League, the GSC ZU council has collectively decided to take a look at Mantine. Mantine has been an absolute powerhouse in the new metagame, simply standing on a pedestal above every other Pokemon with its gargantuan stats, being extremely difficult to take down while 2HKOing or at worst 3HKOing every other Pokemon. Mantine warps the entire metagame around it, and at base 70 speed is quite fast while having a diverse range of moveset options from RestTalk to Agility to Protect to even Attract along with its choice of Hydro Pump or Surf, none of which it can go wrong with. Mantine is not an extremely good defensive Pokemon necessarily; it's primarily an offensive superpower, and it just so happens to have the best bulk stats of basically anything in the tier to make it difficult to force out or take down once it's already on the battlefield. Extremely little checks Mantine, as the only attacks that 2HKO it are Thunder, Explosion, and Togetic's Zap Cannon, all of which are very high risk moves, and Mantine 2HKOes most relevant users of these moves like Aipom, Koffing, and Meowth while still 3HKOing Togetic. Even Hidden Power Electrics can really only 3HKO Mantine, meanwhile it usually OHKOes HP Elec Charmeleon with Hydro Pump, 3HKOes HP Elec or Rock Slide Croconaw, and usually trades positively against an HP Electric Tentacool that has to switch into it. Most Pokemon that would want HP Electric to hit Mantine hard are also usually making themselves much worse against the rest of the metagame to do so. Mantine is simply too good and has too few downsides to ever consider not using in some form on every single team, and every time it will dominate.

For these reasons, GSC ZU council has chosen to vote on Mantine. The threshold is a simple majority at 5/8 votes necessary for a ban.

Votes

Zpice: Ban
BloodAce: Ban
BeeOrSomething: Ban
THE_CHUNGLER: Ban
Aurist: Ban
LustfulLice: Ban
BeatsBlack: Ban
Hitmonstars: Ban

As such, the result is that Mantine is now banned from GSC ZU.

Tagging dhelmise and Marty to implement.

 

[czim]

With my ZUPL run being over, here are some nominations because I feel like the current ADV ZU VR is not reflective of the current metagame

Rises

A+ -> S
Pony is stupidly good and the best mon in the metagame with Mightyena as a close second. It provides so much utility with its high BST, giving it decent bulk, very high speed and good coverage trading well with almost everything not dedicated to checking it. Almost every team should run it, there's very little reason not to.
A -> A+
I know this is getting banned but if not it should rise to A+ because it's nuts, while not as splashable as Pony and Mighty
A- -> A+ (maybe A)
Doduo is the strongest CB normal in the tier and has an absurdly strong Quick Attack, making it very splashable and flexible as a breaker and revenge killer, notably KOing Salac users like Anorith and Beedrill with its Quick Attack, since these mons usually tech for Ponyta's which is much weaker. It also is a great lead, being able to one-shot Clamperl and force out most things slower than it. It is frail though, so it can't be switched into most attacks, which might make it A instead of A+
B+ -> A+
Ariados is a very versatile Pokemon that has found its footing on the meta as a physically defensive pokemon with slow Baton Pass to enable breakers such as Cubone, Meditite and the always obnoxious Clamperl. What puts it in A+ imo is how its other sets can make it a very big threat. The possibility of it running Signal Beam, Giga Drain or Psychic (or even Substitute or Agility) makes it very awkward to switch into and can punish hard if the opponent goes for a midground like Mightyena or Onix to not let a slow breaker in with the possible Baton Pass
B -> A+
Delcatty also found its footing on this metagame as the best special wall around, being able to pick between Heal Bell and Baton Pass as a 4th move depending on the team, giving valuable defensive or tempo support. Hard to justify using anything else over this as a dedicated special wall
A- -> A
Quilava is pretty good, specially with its Sub Toxic set that is able to wear down Ponyta a bit for its teammates. It hits very hard and Blaze STAB can break special walls well like Delcatty
C -> A
Nosepass is a pretty solid defensive pokemon, completely walling Ponyta and Ariados and checking well the CB normals like Doduo and Aipom. It also has access to Thunder Wave and Explosion, making switching in into it hard. Its only flaws are how it falls prey to slow passers due to its passivity and how ground-types such as Cubone and Onix can easily switch in on it without much harm
B- -> A-
Onix is a cool mon, it is a fast normal resist that can explode on common waters and grasses like Clamperl, Seaking or Gloom before they can take it out, but it's quad weakness to HP Grass make the Ponyta matchup awkward, and its low attack makes it a bad breaker when it's not exploding. It is much better than B- though, even if inconsistent
B -> A-
Great breaker and abuses well the best normal resists in the tier, such as Onix and Nosepass. Should be on the same rank as Meditite
B -> A-
Needs support but is a great lead, revenge killer and cleaner. Crucial speed tier that revenges big threats such as Ponyta and Abra
B- -> A-
Lombre is shit, but this is Clamperl meta so it can't be below A- since it is the only thing that switches somewhat comfortably into it.

Drops

A+ -> B
Corsola is so awkward, it's a water-type that doesn't check waters, fires and can't even 1v1 ground types, so it makes team compositions with it feel weird, since it doesnt really check anything bar the normals reliably. With Clamperl and the abundance of HP Grass users in the tier Corsola feels really out of place in the metagame.
A- -> B+
Noctowl is cool and versatile, but it struggles in a meta as fast as this one, since its best sets all involve Toxic stalling, and it is not very strong to break without it, and this tier is very Heal Bell oriented
A- -> B-
Castform is another mon that doesn't do anything particularly well. It's best niche is as some anti-weather mon that spams Thunder Wave but it also doesn't do that very well, and that's not very valuable in a tier where every team has a dedicated Heal Bell user. As a mixed attacker it can be annoying to switch into but that's it i guess. I just can't make it fit on a team tbh

 

[5gen]

I built a lot of SM teams this year. Up until Olympiad, I had been mostly playing SS and ORAS in ZU team tours. After I supported MZ in ZUOL, SM Cup was going on and I figured I could have fun with the unused teams from ZUOL. I built some more for SM Cup too. Then ZU was in SMPL, which was really nice to see and participate in. I opted to slot into SM in ZUPL for the first time in ages (probably since it was cg). Point is I built a lot and want to post some thoughts on the VR/mons.

Summary of Noms

A to A+
XL A to A-
A to A-
A to A-
Silv-Poison A to A-
A- to B+
A- to B+
Dragon A- to A
A- to A
B+ to A-
B+ to A
B+ to B
Ground B+ to A-
B to B+
B to A-
B- to B
Small B- to B
C+ to C
C+ to B-
C+ to C
C to B-

S Rank
Electivire

Hide

There isn't much to say about Evire that everyone doesn't already know. Evire is clearly the best mon in the tier just off the Scarf set imo. However, I used Ebelt a lot and must say it's really good too. In ZUOL we figured HP Grass > Cross Chop was a good idea to pop Golem and Sandslash. Ebelt Evire is somewhat flexible in what it can run alongside Wild Charge and Ice Punch, which makes it pretty fun to build with. For example, EQ > Cross Chop gives Evire room to break Golem, Electrics, and Silv-Poison. Another option is HP Grass like I mentioned, which allows you to drop Ice Punch and keep Flamethrower to really punish those Golem + Wishi + Grass cores (i.e., Leafeon and Gourg).

A Rank

A+
Golem
Leafeon
Rotom-Fan
Simisage
Swanna
Torterra
Wishiwashi

Hide

I don't see anything dropping from A+ except maybe Swanna and Leafeon. Each mon is established and influences the meta greatly. I'll try to keep my thoughts short for each mon.

Golem is the most splashable rocker. It's a top 2 or 3 Evire check and compresses a lot of defensive utility that other rockers simply don't match. Offensive sets are also pretty solid, though you will need to build in ways that pressure Evire (i.e., punish it when Evire clicks EQ or Ice Punch). One thing I started doing on some defensive Golem sets is running Sucker Punch > Protect or Toxic. Sucker on defensive Golem is a nice surprise factor to catch stuff like Kadabra, Simisage, and Swanna. Another trend I saw was Toxic + Protect and mono EQ. I first saw Tene use it last ZUPL, then some other players here and there. I tested it myself and became a fan. Toxic Tect is nice not only to whittle things down, but it also helps Golem recover with Lefties more easily.

Leafeon is still one of the tier's scariest setup sweepers. Leaf also has good defensive utility, which helps it fit well on many structures. For example, Synth on Z-Celebrate allows Leafeon to repeatedly check mons like Golem, Torterra, and Sub Punch Wrath. However, I feel that the meta has adjusted to Leafeon more compared to last ZUPL and ZUOL. I find that it's easier to prep for Leafeon in this meta because Leafeon's natural checks are good, namely Fantom, Grimer-A, and Silv-Poison. I still rate it as an A+ mon, but just not as strongly as the others. As for different sets, I built a team around SD Grassium 3 atks Leafeon vs afo. Unfortunately the team missed and I overlooked the Gourg-XL matchup. The idea was +2 Z-Leaf Blade is a nuke and Knock + Return let it punch through Bronzor, Bouff, and Fantom.

To me, prepping for Rotom-S now feels like prepping for Evire. What I mean is what used to be a lure set, offensive Defog or Wisp + Hidden Power Water or Ground, is now a legit set one has to consider. One has to think twice staying in with Golem, let alone switching it into Fantom because it can drop to HP Water. Silv-Ground, Sandslash, and Evire risk getting Wisped or chipped down, so blocking Fantom's Volt is tricky. Defensively, Fantom is as good as ever, maybe even trending up because of how good Grasses are.

Simisage is perhaps the scariest mon to prep for on paper because of the amount of sets it can run. NP can run 3-4 sets that are all good. Accounting for standard NP, Synth + Z-Leaf Storm, NP Z-Hyper Beam, and NP with Grassium Z Leaf Storm + Focus Blast is super difficult. Add standard AOA or Synth 3 atks to that list and checking Simisage feels almost impossible. Most of the time I rely on stacking a check or multiple soft checks + enough speed control. It helps that many of these sets have overlapping checks like Silv-Poison, Grimer-A, and Silv-Dragon (kinda). Offensively, I think there's enough counterplay to give teams a good pool to pick from.

Remember when some people thought Swanna was broken? The calls to suspect Swanna seemed like a vocal minority to me, and nowadays I don't see that feeling anymore. If anything, Swanna has trended down since last ZUPL. People have learned to better prep for Swanna. Swanna also needs to be primed for a sweep, which makes Z-MM and Z-RD sets not as easy to pull off. Since Swanna relies on those Z moves so heavily, it can feel hit or miss some games. As in, if it doesn't secure that one chance to sweep, it often doesn't perform like an A+ mon should. It doesn't help that walls like Wishiwashi, Bronzor, and Dusclops are better now imo.

Tort is one of my fav mons to use. I wrote about SD sets in this post so I'll keep things short. SD sets are what make Tort an A+ mon. Tort doesn't need all that much defensive investment to check what it needs to. Offensive sets check Grounds, Evire, and some other attackers well enough. I end up not using SpD Tort most of the time SD sets check the mons I want Tort to check. SpD SR is still a solid set, but I find myself wanting the breaking power of SD or using the occasional RP or CB set instead.

Wishiwashi. Not much to say here about the standard set. Rest-Talk Wishi is the best SpD pivot in the meta imo, and all its usage and role compression shows why its that good. I've been liking offensive variants. Aside from AV, I messed around with aoa + resist berry. For example, Wacan + EQ is a cool lure to catch Raichu, and EQ pops Grimer-A and Mareanie. Rindo + Ice Beam is a nice emergency check vs Leafeon and Simisage.

A
Beheeyem
Bouffalant
Bronzor
Gourgeist-Super
Grimer-Alola
Komala
Poliwrath
Silvally-Poison
Simipour

Hide

Beheeyem is a mon I really like using. I messed around with it a lot during SMPL and some during ZUPL. HP Ground is p nice on Specs to catch Grimer-A. Modest NP 3 atks is another set I tried, with HP Ground + Signal Beam to flip the matchup vs Grimer-A and Silv-Dark. The defensive CM set is quite solid too. All in all, I think Beheyeem is fine where it's at. While offensive Beh is easy to pressure, it obliterates slower builds or at least claims 1-2 kills against teams without good Psychic resists. Def Beh is also deceptively bulky, which makes it a good setup mon and tank.

I'm super high on Bouff. In SMPL, I thought Bouff was a top 5 mon, partly because I was exploring Cotton Guard sets heavily. CG sets can solo some teams, and I tried fast Bouff with Sub/SD/CG/Head Charge to be able to set up on Golem, Tort, Leafeon, and so on. Another move change I began to adopt was Head Charge > Return. Using Head Charge allows Bouff to trade better vs offensive mons and allows you to drop some Atk to fit defensive benchmarks (i.e., enough SpD to live +2 Simisear Fire Blast, always live def Fantom's Volt Switch with Sub, tank +2 BB from Swanna, etc). While I don't think Bouff is necessarily top 5 anymore, I think it's right there because it can do so much and trade incredibly well vs faster threats. Moreover, can flip the matchup on just about anything other than Dusclops and Sub CM Drifblim, which makes it p threatening and fun to build with.

Bronzor is Bronzor. I think Pursuit, Knock, and natural threats are too common to raise Bronzor to A+. However, I started to use Bronzor a lot more because like Golem, Bronzor is a rocker that compresses a lot of defensive utility in one slot. Moreover, Tect > Rest makes Bronzor an easier fit on faster-paced teams. I also explored some wild EQ > SR set for stall that I wish I brought vs afo because it would've come clutch (I considered stalling but used smth else sadly).

I'm on the fence on whether Gourgeist-XL should stay in A or drop to A-. I'm leaning A- because while fitting Gourg-XL benefits from trends like SD Tort and Sub Punch Wrath, Gourg-XL is threatened by many common mons like NP Sage, Fantom, and Silv-Poison. Building with Gourg-XL is also somewhat challenging in that Gourg-XL it is somewhat passive and crippled by status. The need to run Seed Bomb > Leech Seed to beat Sub Punch Wrath makes Gourg-XL more passive too. Without Leech Seed, you have to hope Gourg-XL matches up into mons it walls like Furf, Leafeon, Crustle, and so on. Also to be frank, I find Gourg-S easier to fit a lot of the time due to it checking most of the same mons.

I thought Grimer-A rising to A was overrating it. I don't see Grimer-A on the level of the A-rank mons because I find its niche is too limited. If Grimer-A doesn't face a Psychic, a lot of its niche is gone because Pursuit is way less valuable. I also think Grimer-A's bulk leaves a lot to be desired. I find that Grimer-A is pretty easy to overwhelm, and if it does invest in bulk over attack, Grimer-A needs Poison Touch activation to carry it most of the time. However, I do assume I'm lower on Grimer-A than a lot of SM players. Knock + Poison Touch is super annoying to switch into, and Grimer-A does have a valuable niche and defensive typing. For example, it's one of the few things that check Simisage/Grasses and Psychics in one slot.

Komala is fine where it's at. CB is still a menace, but isn't too easy to build with because CB doesn't have many entry points and instead needs pivots with it. Bulk Up and support sets like Spin + U-turn or Knock + U-turn are solid, though not as potent as CB imo. Scarf and AV are more niche and fit on the right structures, so I don't see them as affecting Komala's rank that much.

Sub Punch Wrath still does its thing. I like using special tank and defensive sets because Sub Punch sets don't make use of Wrath's defensive utility as much. All in all, Sub Punch Wrath is one of those sets you have to prep for.

I'm a bit on the fence about Silv-Poison. It has a very good niche as a Defogger + Sage check. However, Bolt Beam only gets it so far. Most of the time it feels like poisonvally chips at things and soft checks what it needs to until it dies. Moreover, Silv-Poison is easy to wear down, which means offensive Grasses can overwhelm it. It also doesn't have good matchups into most hazard setters, which hurts its role as a Defogger. In a nutshell, I think Silv-Poison's niche is more suited for A- than A.

Simipour just isn't a consistent enough attacker to be A. The meta has too many popular natural checks to Simipour like Wishi, Wrath, Scarf Evire, CB Furf, Kadabra, and so. Simipour usually has to run HP Electric or Grass Knot over Taunt, which makes it more difficult for Simipour to break fat teams.

A-
Altaria
Cacturne
Combusken
Crustle
Furfrou
Kadabra
Kecleon
Mawile
Mr. Mime
Rapidash
Sandslash
Silvally-Dragon
Simisear
Toucannon

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Writing for each mon is getting tiresome so I'll try to be concise.

Good mon that is kind of passive and exploitable, so I see it dropping to B+. Alt is in a somewhat awkward position in this meta because a lot sits on it. I've also been liking Defog Silv-Dragon more than Alt.

Stomping Tantrum > Spikes or Superpower is nice to pop poisons and the occasional Pawn or Busken.

I'm kind of high on Busken because it's a p scary mon to face. Mareanie trending down helps, though Clops trending up hurts Busken's viablity.

I don't think much has changed for Crustle. I built with it more often because it was a natural fit alongside SR SD Tort or Bronzor. Normal check + good physical bulk make it a potent setup sweeper. Hazard sets are nice too. I had fun with Spikes + Smash.

Teams are better prepped for Furf these days due to Dusclops, Mawile, and Crustle. Furf is still scary for teams that rely on Golem to check Normals cuz Gknot smashes it.

Kadabra doesn't like how popular Wishi is, which is a shame cuz Sash and LO are two good sets. I messed around a bit with Knock as the 4th on Sash sets to give Kadabra some more utility (i.e., vs Bronzor, SpD Normals).

Kecleon is really nice in this meta if you can fit it. Kec is a nice option into offense and pulls its weight vs balance and bulkier builds. Main issue is low speed and physical bulk. Tpunch > Fake Out is a cool option to lure bulky waters.

Really nice rocker if you limit your expectations and build accordingly. When I build with Mawile, it's p much to check certain physical attackers, punish U-turn w/ Helmet, and provide Knock and/or Taunt support. LO sets are good.

I really tried to make Mr. Mime during ZUOL. I tried different sets on a range of structures. I didn't build or test Specs or Z-Encore, so my opinion on Mime could be skewed. However, I think all of Mime's sets run into the same issues. The issues are base 90 Speed, poor bulk, and slightly underwhelming power. Wishi is a safe check to Mime and makes it way easier to keep in check. Moreover, the meta is built around Scarf Evire and outspeeding Swanna, so the byproducts of that like Furf, Gourg-S, Simis, Rap, etc all make Mime worse.

Coming from SS back to SM, Rap not having SD is very noticeable. Because of that, I tested CB Rap a fair bit and am a fan. Although many teams pack Golem + Wishi or Sub Punch Wrath, CB Rap can power through checks with the right prediction. For reference, Low Kick does 54.9% min to Golem and Blitz does 32.9-39% to Wishi. Both of these checks are easy to overwhelm with partners. Also, this set is a menace vs offense or teams that rely on Swanna, Sub Punch Wrath, and/or Silv-Dragon as fire resists. CB Rap does need good hazard removal though. The standard Z move and Lefties sets are still good. I also tried Passho Berry as an emergency check to Swanna (vs Tack in ZUPL and it didn't come into play). Defensively, Rap is still nice as it's one of the few offensive Grass checks with recovery.

Slash is like Mawile for me in that it does its roles and generally won't be needed for more. I find Slash easy to fit on a lot of teams. That is probably lazy team building from me; however, blocking Evire + removing hazards is a huge plus for me.

First off, s/o to Greybaum for opening my eyes to Sub SD Silv-Dragon. Seeing that set inspired me to use Dragonvally a lot more and to explore different sets. SD sets are what push Silv-Dragon to A because they are that good at finding chances to set up and sweep. Sub SD is one of the ultimate reverse sweep mons in the tier. Dragonvally can even tech Iron Head > Sub to lure Granbull and Mime. As for other sets, SD Rest Talk Multi is great at breaking fat teams and trading vs balance (as long as there are no Fairies). I've also come around to SpD Defog with Toxic or SD in the 4th slot. SpD Silv-Dragon helps patch up weaknesses vs Wishi, Sage, Z-RD Swanna, Raichu, and Fantom mainly. It won't counter these mons on its own, but it is a good pivot into them.

Fine where it's at. I could see Simisear dropping because of trends like Wishi and the focus on outspeeding Simisage, but Simisear has the tools to work around its checks. Bloom Doom is a good set to break through Waters, whereas the traditional Taunt + NP set breaks stall (which is somewhat popular). Moreover, Gluttony + Salac showed up in SMPL and I gotta say that's p annoying to account for. Salac adds another fold and makes Simisear more threatening vs offense.

I feel Touc should rise to A because it pressures current structures very well. For example, Touc rips through common defensive cores like Golem + Wishi + Silv-Poison and Tort + Zor. Touc has like 4 viable sets (SD, Z-TW, Scarf, mixed) and then Terracotta had to go use SD Flame Charge. Since it has that many sets it can run, Touc can set up Tailwind or bluff Scarf vs faster mons. Not knowing whether Touc is Scarf or about to set TW on a switch adds an annoying degree of uncertainty when playing around Touc. Moreover, SD and aoa sets have very few switch-ins, so it feels very difficult to account for Touc when using slower teams.

B Rank

B+
Chatot
Dusclops
Floatzel
Lapras
Mareanie
Muk
Pawniard
Purugly
Raichu
Servine
Silvally-Dark
Silvally-Fighting
Silvally-Ground
Silvally-Water
Trevenant

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Chatot is sneaky good to me because it can put in work even if it can't set up. At 309, Chatot fails to outspeed Evire and up, which leaves it weak to a lot of common attackers. However, 309 Speed is faster than Fantom and any mid speed breakers, which is key. Chatot threatens enough mons with Boomburst to where it's a solid early or mid-game breaker. I also think DD sets are p scary and that Chatot is a good cleaner due to how good it is at forcing switches.

Dusclops should move to A. This is the hottest take yet. To me, Dusclops is slept on. Clops has many matchups where it walls at least four mons, and even has some autowin matchups because teams overlook having ways around it. Its weakness to Knock may be big, but between Silvs and Z moves, most teams pack at least two Knock absorbers. I find Dusclops very easy to support as a result. Moreover, while Clops is passive, its ability to wall teams anyway helps make up for its passivity. With Wisp, Clops shuts down many physical attackers, so it has outs vs stuff like Leafeon, Crustle, or even Grimer-A that'd normally scare Clops out. All in all I think Dusclops is one of the best walls in the tier.

Floatzel doesn't like how popular Wishi and Wrath are. Float is threatened by a lot and has mediocre power, so it tends to struggle to break through teams or clean. When running Floatzel, one has to bank on running into offense or not facing Wishi. I just think Float is in a poor spot.

Raichu is better than B+. The Air Balloon set (first saw it from Greybaum) allows Raichu to punish Evire. Raichu is a special breaker that beats the common special walls in Wishi, Licky, and Tort (not as much though), and its Speed is great. I tested LO Gknot + Signal Beam with NP to make Raichu more immediately threatening vs Sage, Leafeon, Golem, etc.

I see Silv-Ground on the same level of Sandslash, except it can actually check Fantom by running enough Speed + Ice Beam.

Offensive Silv-Water is the set I like most. It has enough defensive utility and good enough offenses to threaten stuff. AOA Watervally isn't breaking through walls. Its job is to pick apart balance, trade when it needs to, and provide pivot support. Greybaum brought a cool SD Flame Charge Explosion set vs me in SMPL semis. I can see that set catching on cuz it's a nice anti-offense mon and lures Wishi and other bulky Waters. I'm on the fence on raising Watervally to A-, so yeah.

All of these mons should stay in B+ imo. Lap is p nice into the common structures nowadays, but isn't easy to build with because it's not super strong or fast and is rocks weak. I think Mareanie is kind of slept on, though it's often overshadowed by Wishi as the designated bulky water. It doesn't help Mare that the meta pressures it p well. Muk is cool mostly due to lure sets like special aoa + Infestation and Sub sets. Curse is alright too but often too passive and easy to wall. Pawn is pretty nice. I started using less Speed and more HP like in SS, which helps vs some things like Psychics and Normals. Purugly is good fwiw (solid revenge killer, Knock + U-turn, & Defog deterent). Servine is p solid. It's a good option for Defog because of its utility and freeing up the silv spot. I started running Adamant and more bulk on some Silv-Darks to have some more utility (kind of inspired by Terra). Good option to trap things better. I also like Sub SD. I could see Silv-Fighting drop to B, but I find it offers enough utility as a Dark and Normal check. Offensive sets are nice too cuz Fighting is one of the only formes that can pull off aoa mixed. Trev is Trev, super annoying to face and has solid defensive utility.

B
Avalugg
Duosion
Electrode
Fraxure
Golduck
Granbull
Lickilicky
Marowak
Rampardos
Pinsir
Pyukumuku
Silvally
Silvally-Electric

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Stall always gets some usage in team tours. I'm undecided on whether stall as a playstyle is better than B because while the tier has many ways to break stall, I feel the style is somewhat underexplored. To me, Licky + Pyuku are the only must haves for stall. Stall can fit more than Grimer-A, Avalugg, Hippo, Alt, Clops, and Ditto. I messed around with stall and wish I brought it more than once. Pokemon like Bronzor, Vullaby, Silv-Poison, Silv-Dark, Silv-Elec, Tort, Golem, and Vibrava are what I experimented with on stall. Also, Licky and Pyuku aren't tied down to stall, so I could see those two rising and Avalugg staying in B. I messed around with a Lefties Taunt Pyuku set and it never saw a tour game (maybe if I asked for bo3s I'd have put these ideas into play).

Screens are legit and better than the stuff in B. Electrode is the best setter so it should rise to reflect Screens' viability. While SM has plenty of Defog and ways to check setup sweepers, Screens teams have a lot of variety. Sub SD Silv-Dragon or Dark are musts on Screens to me because they're so potent and Silvs are crazy bulky under screens. From there, Screens teams can lean in different directions. NP Sage, NP Raichu, CM Swoobat, SS Huntail, SD Busken, SD Bibs, SD Touc, and the list goes on. You can opt for variants that stall break very well, go more anti-offense, build in ways that play around Ditto, and/or add an extra support option like Custap Memento Muk or Glare Servine.

I used to think Pinsir fell off. Its current B rank shows that council felt the same. However, during SMPL I tested Z-MF once again and found that it's more threatening than what we gave it credit for. Pinsir's checks like Fantom, Golem, Silv-Poison, Mawile, and Alt are easy to wear down. Moreover, Z-MF Pinsir benefits from trends like less Mareanie usage, more offensive Fantom usage, and Sub Punch Wrath. It benefits because Fantom and Wrath opt for offensive sets, which make it easier to position Z-MF Pinsir for sweeps (i.e., easier to get offensive Fantom into Stone Edge range than 252 HP sets). Lastly, Pinsir has good setup opportunities in this meta. It can set up on Leafeon, Evire, Simisage, Tort, etc and fitting good removal around it, even double removal, is easy.

B-
Armaldo
Bellossom
Camerupt
Ditto
Dugtrio
Drifblim
Glaceon
Gourgeist-Small
Hippopotas
Huntail
Sawsbuck
Shuckle
Swoobat
Vigoroth

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Rain is legit and Armaldo is one of the top sweepers there. I think it should be next to Golduck (even though I think Golduck is a slightly better rain sweeper).

Gourg-S is a nice support option/glue for teams that need a Normal and Ground check, and an out vs Leafeon, Swanna, and Wrath. I find Gourg-S naturally fits on structures that want that extra Normal check and still have something fast. Sub Seed is solid. I mostly tried Synth + Toxic or Wisp + Seed Bomb + Foul Play or Scarf Trick.

I'm undecided on raising Huntail to B. I need to test it more. I think it could be B rank because it's a cool sweeper with decent upside. Huntail can run Darkinium or White Herb, either to pop Wishi/Bronzor in one slot or have a partner hold the Z. Huntail has enough setup opportunities thanks to its typing + Water Veil, allowing it to set up on stuff like Wishi, Golem, and Rap. All that being said, Huntail does lack Speed and +2 Sucker isn't super strong without LO.

C Rank

C+
Arbok
Basculin
Beartic
Bibarel
Cradily
Ninjask
Quilladin
Volbeat

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Arbok just doesn't have the stats nor setup opportunities to be that scary most of the time. Arbok is smth you usually have to go out of your way to use. Moreover, Mare isn't as common as it used to be imo, which means Tspikes aren't as common anymore. I'm just not a fan of Arbok. Too much has to go right for it to be worth using. Maybe CB has merit but I haven't tested that.

I've been a fan of LO Basc since ORAS PU. In my mind it's a B- mon mostly because of how good it feels on hazard stack, but idt I can make a good argument for it to rise. It really doesn't like meta trends rn. However, I still like using it.

Scariest mon in the tier, s/o apa. For real though SD Bibs is good enough on Screens to be B-. It's definitely on par with the B- mons.

Quill is something I can see rising to B- as more people explore it. Its defensive profile is solid b/c it can run mixed bulk to check stuff like Sage, Wrath, and Tort, and has good support options in Taunt and Roar. I haven't tested Quill enough to argue for a rise rn.

I hate to do it cuz I like Cradily. It should drop to C. I think Cradily has way too many obstacles in this meta to be worth using most of the time. I see it on the same level as Corsola. Main issues with Cradily are passiveness and it can't keep rocks up vs most removers. Giga Drain + Toxic or Earth Power leaves Cradily open to way too much. Also, it's a Normal check weak to U-turn and a Water check that Wishi chunks with U-turn and Wrath smacks with Focus Punch or Ice Punch.

C
Corsola
Golem-Alola
Jumpluff
Machoke
Monferno
Natu
Probopass
Shiinotic
Smeargle
Stunfisk
Vibrava
Vullaby
Zebstrika

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What a shame that Pluff is in C with these shitmons. Pluff should be B- because it's that good. Seriously though, SD/Sap/Acro/Bullet Seed is the sauce. Pluff outspeeds most attackers, has the typing to check and set up on a lot, and its stabs are surprisingly good. Here is a replay from SMPL vs Greybaum that shows what I mean. I chickened out and didn't attack Wishi, but if I clicked Bullet Seed, Wishi could've died and Pluff could come in at any point later. Basically, Pluff punishes common structures, especially ones that rely on Sash Kadabra for speed control.

I could see these rising to C+ because they seem better than the C mons. I'm not sold on them completely though. Fisk is better now imo because it counters Fantom and lures Grasses, and Machoke is a decent tank when it fits.

C-
Carbink
Chimecho
Hakamo-o
Lycanroc-Midnight
Meowstic-M
Metang
Misdreavus
Oricorio-Baille
Raticate
Relicanth
Solrock
Zweilous

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I don't have much to say here. Chime is intriguing and doesn't work most of the time. Lycan is sad. Meow-M could rise just off Screens, but Trode or Swoobat are better most of the time from my experience (yes setter Swoobat works). I could argue for Missy to rise. I won't though b/c realistically there's not really a difference between C- and C. Ori-Baille should be UR. Z-MF Rat is cool (s/o ayevon) and probs C or C+, I haven't tested it enough. Z-MF is a great mechanic and Hustle + SD pair nicely with it.

Not formal noms (don't feel like compiling replays). Each of these is on the 5gen VR. CM + Agility Noctowl is a cool niche sweeper b/c it has the bulk to stay in on Sage, Tort, Silvs, etc unlike Chatot (not saying it's better than Chatot). Silv-Grass should be C+ or B- cuz it soft checks Sage, Waters, and Grasses, and is a Silv that reliably defogs on Golem + Tort. Pau is a niche sweeper on Screens. I messed around with WP Agility CM and it's cool. If Carbink is ranked, Dusknoir should be too. Aside from TR, I toyed around with 252 HP / 252 Spe Timid with Taunt and Wisp or Wisp Hex to act as a disruptor. Set is designed to annoy all the 190 - 200 speed mons and creepers, check Normals, and pressure walls and slow set up mons.

 

[Apagogie]

Let's talk a bit about SM

Rotom-Fan
This isn’t a Pokémon you can switch into comfortably. HP Water destroys Golem, Electivire risks getting burned by WoW, Bronzor and Dusclops get Tricked, and anything else can just get flinched down by Air Slash or losing momentum every time you Volt Switch. It’s easily one of the most disruptive Pokémon in the tier. That being said, I really dislike using Rotom-Fan. Especially the Choice Scarf set. You are running a scarfer weak to rocks, with 4MSS, that’s walled by Raichu w/o HP ground, slower than +2 Combusken|Torterra, and which hits like a wet noodle. This creates real issues both in teambuilding and in battle where aggressive plays with Electivire often don’t pay off if made with Rotom-Fan. I'm in the minority but I value Rotom-Fan utility probably less than most of players.

Dusclops
I’m glad to see Dusclops utility finally getting the recognition it deserves, especially since I was the one who invented/popularized it back in SM when it was current gen. I believe Dusclops should be treated in teambuilding much like Bronzor is now in the sense where you really need multiple checks to handle it properly. These days, I tend to prefer mixed defensive spreads over fully specially defensive ones, though the choice depends heavily on the team. A fully physically defensive set is perfectly fine too. While it’s often seen on bulkier builds, I think Dusclops also fits on BO. It can cover threats that are typically hard to deal with for offense like offensive special Silvally.

Marowak
I want to talk about SR Marowak for a moment. It’s not the strongest option overall but if you’re tired of the usual rockers, it’s a fun alternative to try. It puts solid pressure on Bronzor and passive defensive cores which is the main reason to use it compared to other rockers. The good point is that SR Marowak still fits into viable team compositions.

1. ( )
   Let’s start building around Marowak. Since it doesn’t resist Normal-type moves which is a role usually filled by the team’s rocker, it needs proper support. Gourgeist is the most natural partner in providing a Normal resist that can absorb Knock Off, comfortably handle Torterra which is one common SI to Marowak and reduce reliance on Marowak to check Electivire. Gourgeist-Small is also a viable alternative to Gourgeist-Super if you are looking for a more offensively oriented option. If you want to get more creative, Trevenant does more or less the same thing than Gourgeist but flips certain match ups. Other funny options are like Crustle or Dusclops which can both also work as early partners. You would need reliable hazard removal and Knock Off absorption. Torterra is also perhaps possible but I'm less sure. Pairing Choice Band/Autotomize Golem with SR Marowak seems like a teambuilding mistake but who knows.
2. 
   After that, you’ll want to add an Ice resist, a pivot to safely bring Marowak onto the field since it really doesn’t like taking hits and some form of hazard control. A Combusken check is also essential. Water types fit these roles nicely. Silvally-Water offers some speed control/hazard remover/pivot, Wishiwashi provides natural bulk+pivot, and Mareanie can absorb opposing Toxic Spikes. Swanna and Poliwrath are also solid options. Swanna adds speed, offensive pressure and potential Defog support while Poliwrath can pressure Normal type and can potentially take well Knock Off according to the sets.
3. ( )
   For the fourth slot, you’ll need something that helps cover your Knock Off weakness, provides pivoting options and contributes to speed control. This slot is most of the time taken by either Rotom-Fan or a Silvally form. If not, it likely means you’re building a more offensive team. In that case, consider adding a Knock Off absorber. Z-Move users can fill that role. Leafeon is an interesting option due to the good physical bulk which acts as a pseudo physical wall (mainly for Golem). Combusken can handle Normal types and fits well on offensive builds. Silvally-Fighting is also a good choice for that reason. If Toxic Spikes are a concern and you still dont have hazard removers, you probably need Silvally-Poison at this point due to the added speed. If your team already has decent speed, Muk is a perfectly viable pick otherwise.
4. ( )
   The last two slots should focus on applying offensive pressure and providing speed control. Ideally, both should outspeed Simisage. Rotom-Fan can be troublesome for slower builds and Swanna may also pose problems depending on your earlier choices. Raichu, Electivire, or a Scarf Rotom are all strong fits for this reason. If you feel weak to Bronzor, adding a second answer can help. Scarf Komala, Rapidash and Purugly can work for this reason. Simisear too. Kadabra is a bit more niche but is a option to consider if you need an emergency check to some Pokemon. Other potential scarfers like Pinsir, Swanna, the Simis, Mr. Mime, Chatot or Ditto and fast picks like Floatzel or Furfrou are also viable if they fill a needed role on your team.

Tiering action?

The only tiering action I’d currently consider in SM is banning Light Clay. The playstyle it enables requires little skill and creates too much variance between users to be prepared for reliably. While it isn’t as consistent as ORAS Screens was back when it was legal, it still doesn’t represent a particularly skillful or healthy aspect of the tier. That said, it might be best to gather more results before making any final decision.

 

[BaitWiz]

Art by sketched_reality on Instagram!

Sun in SS ZU​

I’ve been wanting to write a post about Sun in SS ZU for a while - it’s the most polarizing playstyle in the tier, with some people finding it uncompetitive, some believing it outright broken, and some arguing that its presence is mandatory for the tier to continue to exist. Today I’d like to break down the fundamental pieces of Sun analytically and then present an argument for it being at minimum uncompetitive, but first there’s an important and simple question that must be acknowledged: If sun is broken, why don’t more people use it? I feel that there are three key reasons why sun is not used more often.

First and foremost, sun is a playstyle in which you don’t have much control as a player. Assuming optimal play, the outcome of a sun game is known from team preview, which is something that turns off basically anyone who has faith in their own skills from wanting to use the playstyle. Sun runs on very specific lines with little deviation where both players know the exact moves that will be made each turn; it’s just a case of whether the team facing Sun has the tools to take the heat or not.
This leads directly into my second point, which is that players simply don’t enjoy playing Sun. Most people prefer playing ‘normal’ SS ZU, not wanting to use Sun since it’s a fairly rigid hyper offense playstyle as opposed to the more standard balances and offenses that are typically seen in tournaments featuring SS ZU.
Finally, sun is a playstyle that at times sees varying degrees of preparation for it in the builder. Pokemon like Golduck and Coalossal see usage in at least some part due to their strong matchups into sun and both of Miltank’s standard abilities find value in the Sun matchup as well, with Thick Fat helping against Rapidash and Sap Sipper helping to stall out turns against the likes of Shiftry and Ivysaur. Articuno of all mons sees value in the sun matchup since it’s usually able to take a boosted Ivysaur Weather Ball and chip it down with Freeze-Dry, though this alone often isn’t enough to take out Ivysaur with a choice scarfer or priority afterwards.

These reasons out of the way, I’d like to address the three parts of the team that make sun work: the Setters, the Abusers, and the Sixth Slot.

The Setters: and

Uxie and Liepard’s roles are extremely simple in sun: Get the rays shining, prevent the opponent from setting up, and get the hell out so the abusers can work their magic. Liepard’s access to Prankster makes it literally impossible to prevent Liepard from setting sun if it’s led turn 1. Uxie’s role in Sun is somewhat similar in setting sun quickly with its solid speed tier and additionally serves as sun’s only hazard setter in most teams. Unlike Liepard, its role can be hindered by the likes of Knock Off from Sawk or Trick from Rotom. In exchange it has significantly better bulk, able to take a hit if it needs to while setting Sun where Liepard typically can’t.

The Abusers: , , and /

- Bulky Ivysaur is the crown jewel of sun in SS ZU. It takes hits like almost nothing else and dishes out insane damage once boosted. While Ivysaur’s set is pretty fixed move-wise, the ability to so freely set up a boost and at times even set up two boosts drives Ivysaur from being just ‘strong’ to being the best abuser in the tier.
- Rapidash serves as the ‘mandatory’ Fire-type abuser, already being a great Pokemon in the tier outside of the sun and greatly appreciating both the powering up of its STAB Flare Blitz and the addition of Solar Blade to its movepool when in the sun.
- The final sun abuser is typically Shiftry, which has the strongest raw attack from Sun with STAB Solar Blade coming in at a staggering 125 base power off of 100 base attack with a Life Orb boost on top of it all. This combines excellently with Knock Off as secondary STAB and the user’s choice between Sucker Punch and Heat Wave for the final attack, making for a threat with unmatched breaking power under the sun, especially once boosted.
- Leafeon can take on a similar role to Shiftry with a slightly stronger Solar Blade and improved Speed, but in exchange it has significantly worse Special Attack and a non STAB Knock Off - I personally rate Leafeon as a direct downgrade to Shiftry outside of the sun mirror (which I won’t be discussing in this post) but I know other people consider it as fully viable, so not mentioning it at all would be a disservice.

The Sixth Slot: Examples include , , , , , and

Sun’s abusers are all stressful on the builder and can require specific counterplay to manage, but sun always gets one final benefit as a playstyle: no matter how well you prep for the other five slots in sun, the sixth slot can potentially break your team anyway. This is where sun gets to pick and choose what it's beating and what it's losing to, at least to some degree. There’s a lot of creativity that can be used here, which makes this slot perhaps the most dangerous of all of Sun’s team members - I’ll just briefly cover a few examples of Pokemon I’ve seen in this sixth slot before.
- Froslass can be used as a dedicated lead to set spikes, prevent the opponent from setting hazards to chip sun’s abusers into kill range, and even sometimes steal a kill itself with destiny bond.
or - Carracosta and Lunatone are Rock-type setup sweepers who can self-sufficiently launch their assault against some of Sun’s checks and can break for Sun or vice versa.
- Silvally forms serve as great sweepers in their own regard with Swords Dance and Flame Charge or the infamous Silvally-Dark Resttalk set.
- Alcremie can serve as a final win condition for Sun after everything else is done, with both calm mind and double dance sets seeing usage in the final slot.
- I want to acknowledge the newest set we’ve seen with Lilligant 6th, which as far as I understand abuses opposing Exeggutor and utilizes Leaf Guard instead of Chlorophyll to ignore Toxic from the likes of Sap Sipper Miltank attempting to beat it.

Is Sun Unhealthy for the Tier?

Ultimately, I think the answer is yes. I find that consistently I have to make a decision in the builder between losing to Sun and losing to the rest of the metagame and frequently my teams suffer for wanting to account for both. There are many, many teams loaded by players in this ZUPL alone that could find struggles into sun, even teams loaded by the most successful players in the tournament. Sun also has an 80% win rate this ZUPL in its five showings, showing its power as a specialized tool - furthermore, it has regularly found strong showings in past editions of ZUPL as well (Ivysaur has had a winrate over 50% in every edition of ZUPL with recorded usage stats), though its success across all tours featuring SS ZU ebbs and flows since Sun does require some degree of skill expression despite its overall straightforward nature. I think that whether or not Sun is broken is something that could potentially be up for debate but regardless of brokenness it’s a playstyle that requires accounting for in the builder far more than anything else in SS ZU at present.

 

[kay]

The State Of Current SS ZU

So, while sun is broken, I wanted to take a minute to talk about how we got here and why, because sun is very much a symptom of a bigger problem that has really killed a lot of the skill expression and health that the tier once had. In the current state of the tier, set up breakers are the main way to make progress in games. You'll often find two in almost every team from this ZUPL, for good reason; along side the scattered success Spikes found at making progress, set up sweepers have found their way as the premier way to make progress in games, which has led the tier down a path of pick your set up mons and hope you get the match up where they win.

So with the tier trending hard towards set up breakers, its no surprise that the archetype known for having the most set up breakers available to it is able to thrive in this environment.


But How Did We Get Here?

This is really where I want to make a bulk of my post, because the tier didn't used to be like this despite having near identical pokemon available, and to explain it I want to go back in time a bit to 2022 after the Perrserker ban. Using the Wayback Machine we can see the meta didn't look too different from the one we have now, with one notable exception: Miltank isn't in S yet, which wouldn't happen until mid 2023.
At this point in time, the tier was generally accepted to have been at its peak. Gameplay was interactive and full of skill expression; the meta was balance-skewed but every playstyle was seeing success, small choices had long term effects which promoted good gameplay, and overall it was probably one of the healthiest metagames I've ever had the experience to play.

And the main reason it was so healthy and interactive was because of how Toxic was able to make progress versus balance teams, and how Knock Off was able to change the ranges of several Pokemon when paired with Toxic chip. Getting a Toxic on a Stunfisk meant that, with proper play, a Klinklang user could out-grind the match-up and secure a win, or how if you were able to catch a Toxic on Rhydon you could lead that into being able to snowball that into getting it range for +2 Rapidash to kill. The tier was filled with so many of these small interactions being pivotal moments in a game and it made every move thoughtful and calculated based on long-term risk vs. reward.

However, things started to take a shift once balance teams started to shift towards Miltank. Now, these teams no longer had to care about the long-term implications of taking a Toxic, because you could reasonably end a game before your Miltank even thinks about running out of PP. The result of this was a rather dramatic shift in the tier's identity, as now the main way to make progress in the tier, toxic and Knock Off, became non-factors, as Miltank kept both at bay by being able to sponge up Knock Offs from any walls like Tangela and clearing the threat of Toxic away.

So, as a result of Miltank usage going up, teams had to shift their approach from a long-term risk vs. reward mindset to something else that could make progress, and the answer the players found was set-up spam, which leads up into the meta we have today, where set-up spam is the main way of being able to make progress in a match.



So What Does This Mean?
SSZU feels like a shell of its former self, and Sun is really just taking the optimal way to play the tier into an easy-to-execute shell that anyone can pilot. While I do think sun broken and deserves to be banned, I also don't want to shy away from the bigger overall conversation about the impact Miltank single-handedly has had on our tier to take us in this direction that encourages these types of teams.

And the reason this direction is so unhealthy is because of how coin-flip set-up sweeper meta are. If you brought the wrong set-up sweeper for a given match-up, you physically can't make progress unless your opponent decides to just throw away the game randomly. Sun just happens to be a set-up spam team that can just brute-force through team match-up through sheer willpower off the back of Ivysaur and Shiftry.

While this isn't a post to outright say we should ban Miltank, I did want to catalog my experience with the tier as someone that left during the peak of 2022 and came back to experience the present day meta of SSZU is like.

 

[Tuthur]

This is really where I want to make a bulk of my post, because the tier didn't used to be like this despite having near identical pokemon available, and to explain it I want to go back in time a bit to 2022 after the Perrserker ban. Using the Wayback Machine we can see the meta didn't look too different from the one we have now, with one notable exception: Miltank isn't in S yet, which wouldn't happen until mid 2023.
At this point in time, the tier was generally accepted to have been at its peak. Gameplay was interactive and full of skill expression; the meta was balance-skewed but every playstyle was seeing success, small choices had long term effects which promoted good gameplay, and overall it was probably one of the healthiest metagames I've ever had the experience to play.

While it's okay to be upset with how SS ZU has turned out, a lot of this post is wrong and straight up misinformation, which I'm unhappy with. 2022 was peak SS ZU because it was a year with barely any tier shifts affecting ZU with only 4 Pokémon leaving (Sandslash-Alola, Cinccino, Wishiwashi, and Eldegoss) and 2 dropping (Cofagrigus and Palossand); this was a very quiet year compared to the chaos that SS ZU was and the nightmare that it had been to remove progressively all the broken wallbreakers that unbalanced the tier, until we banned Aurorus early 2022. Other broken Pokémons like Ninjask, Glastrier, and Perrserker were very quickly banned; while Klinklang stayed legal after its suspect test.

As for Miltank's predominance, it was just as prominent in 2022; just because we were slow to rise to S rank doesn't mean it wasn't just the same as now. I would argue that it got worse as people found better ways to play against it, as Pokémon like RestTalk DarkVally, Throh, and Rapidash Galar were far less common back then. If you compare 2022 ZUPL stats to 2025 ZUPL stats, you can see that Miltank already was 3rd most used Pokémon with ~28% usage, and Miltank structures had already been figured out. You can also find many VR posts throughout 2022 asking to rise Miltank to S (1, 2, 3), and I remember it being a serious topic on the discord server.

And the main reason it was so healthy and interactive was because of how Toxic was able to make progress versus balance teams, and how Knock Off was able to change the ranges of several Pokemon when paired with Toxic chip. Getting a Toxic on a Stunfisk meant that, with proper play, a Klinklang user could out-grind the match-up and secure a win, or how if you were able to catch a Toxic on Rhydon you could lead that into being able to snowball that into getting it range for +2 Rapidash to kill. The tier was filled with so many of these small interactions being pivotal moments in a game and it made every move thoughtful and calculated based on long-term risk vs. reward.

There are 16 PP of Toxic for 8 PP of Heal Bell; with proper plays Klinklang still beats Stunfisk/Rapidash paired with Miltank. It just isn't as straightforward as beating it when paired without Miltank. I don't really know what's clicking Toxic on Rhydon beside Miltank itself, but due to its lack of recovery, it is usually not the hardest thing to chip down (Corrosive Gas Skuntank has been a thing for ever). Also Heal Bell Alcremie and Articuno are also a thing, Aromatherapy Eldegoss used to be a thing too.

However, things started to take a shift once balance teams started to shift towards Miltank. Now, these teams no longer had to care about the long-term implications of taking a Toxic, because you could reasonably end a game before your Miltank even thinks about running out of PP. The result of this was a rather dramatic shift in the tier's identity, as now the main way to make progress in the tier, toxic and Knock Off, became non-factors, as Miltank kept both at bay by being able to sponge up Knock Offs from any walls like Tangela and clearing the threat of Toxic away.

Miltank is not the only Toxic + Knock Off absorber. Throh, Altaria, Qwilfish, Silvally Dark, and Rapidash Galar are all able to do it, while being ranked in the A ranks.

So, as a result of Miltank usage going up, teams had to shift their approach from a long-term risk vs. reward mindset to something else that could make progress, and the answer the players found was set-up spam, which leads up into the meta we have today, where set-up spam is the main way of being able to make progress in a match.

That's not true. Status are powerful even if Miltank exists because Miltank has to come on the field and click Heal Bell; that's two turns and a Miltank that hasn't clicked Milk Drink. Item removal whether it's Knock Off + Spikes, which has seen a lot of usage this ZUPL with Pokémon like Roselia and Accelgor, or Skuntank + Grassy Terrain which is just as powerful as ever. Exeggutor has been an excellent breaker that doesn't use set-up. Set-up is also obviously very strong and is common, but it is not just set-up spam. Just look at the teams used in ZUPL, beside sun, barely any can qualify as set-up spam, even those without Miltank.

 

[kay]

While it's okay to be upset with how SS ZU has turned out, a lot of this post is wrong and straight up misinformation

okay bit extreme. You are correct that I was a little messy on the timeline, I had dm'd someone to double check the timeline and we both used the VR as a rough estimate of something that happened over 2-3 years ago. After talking with you more on discord we found that the shift to Miltank rising in popularity was around ZUPL 4, and the meta I was referring to was after ZUPL 3 starting in January 2022 - which is a timespan of 6 months. So while I did fudge up the timeline a bit, its in extremely bad faith to call something like this straight up misinformation because the meta I described did very well exist, I was just off a bit of the when which I stand corrected on, the VR that I was using to get a rough timeline didn't reflect the meta.

As for Miltank's predominance, it was just as prominent in 2022; just because we were slow to rise to S rank doesn't mean it wasn't just the same as now.

This is only half true. While ZUPL 4 did have its usage up to levels we see today, ZUPL 3 did not. Which to your credit is not 2022 yet, but it was October 2021 and the meta I was describing was post a-slash rise which was in January 2022. Miltank did not gain prominence until Sub Toxic Klinklang came around which was in mid 2022 around the time of zupl 4; We confirmed this together on discord. Miltank was not prominent in the meta I was referring to which was between January 2022 all the way until July 2022 when zupl 4 started and Miltank started to rise up in the meta to what its known as today. Which again, just to repeat, was a span of 6 months.

There are 16 PP of Toxic for 8 PP of Heal Bell; with proper plays Klinklang still beats Stunfisk/Rapidash paired with Miltank. It just isn't as straightforward as beating it when paired without Miltank. I don't really know what's clicking Toxic on Rhydon beside Miltank itself, but due to its lack of recovery, it is usually not the hardest thing to chip down (Corrosive Gas Skuntank has been a thing for ever). Also Heal Bell Alcremie and Articuno are also a thing, Aromatherapy Eldegoss used to be a thing too.

Anyone who played the tier back then would tell you that pp stalling Miltank Heal Bells was not a viable strategy to break down Stunfisk. i'd love to see even one replay of a tournament match where Miltank's PP was successfully PP stalled, toxic was then gotten on the intended target and worn down through toxic, and then the win condition was able to win after through the use of PP stalling Miltank and getting the Toxic kill. To my knowledge I can't think of a single tournament game where that's ever come up because of the insane amount of turns it'd take to actually do that and then grind out the pokemon in question.

Miltank is not the only Toxic + Knock Off absorber. Throh, Altaria, Qwilfish, Silvally Dark, and Rapidash Galar are all able to do it, while being ranked in the A ranks.

This completely misses the point of my entire point, and equating an absorber to a cleric is disingenuous. If you have to play around taking a toxic with an absorber then I'd call that good and interactive gameplay that doesn't mitigate the reward the toxic player has by managing to force a situation where they got the toxic on the intended target because the absorber wasn't in a position to come in.

Miltank is the opposite of that because it completely removes the reward the toxic player would have gotten while also removing the interactive gameplay because now you can just not play around it and not care about the long term effects of the toxic because you can cleric it after the fact. This is a completely disingenuous take to the point I was making.

That's not true. Status are powerful even if Miltank exists because Miltank has to come on the field and click Heal Bell; that's two turns and a Miltank that hasn't clicked Milk Drink. Item removal whether it's Knock Off + Spikes, which has seen a lot of usage this ZUPL with Pokémon like Roselia and Accelgor, or Skuntank + Grassy Terrain which is just as powerful as ever. Exeggutor has been an excellent breaker that doesn't use set-up. Set-up is also obviously very strong and is common, but it is not just set-up spam. Just look at the teams used in ZUPL, beside sun, barely any can qualify as set-up spam, even those without Miltank.

The key word I used here was "main way to make progress" which I don't think anyone in the tier would disagree with, its by far the most common and most widely successful way of gaining progress. You're right that its not the only way, but nowhere in my post did I say or imply that it was the only way and everything else didn't have merit. Specs jinx and Eggy can make progress without set up, but they're less commonly used than trying to make progress through set up. This is just a weird strawman argument because I never made the claims you're implying I did. I even specifically talked about the scattered success spikes had at making progress in my post; it didn't have the most usage in the tournament but when it showed up it did very well and I made note of that so its weird that you'd strawman like this.



I dont like to make posts like this but this really came across in bad faith. I appreciate you bringing up the VR wasn't reflective of the metas progression and that miltank rose much earlier than I said it did in my post, but the meta im talking about was between start of 2022 before miltank rose in prominence up until its rise with ZUPL 4. So while I was wrong on that and I will absolutely take accountability for not having confirmed the timeline correctly using tournament usage stats instead of VR shifts, it ultimately did not matter to the broader post because everything else I said was still accurate.


EDIT: And just to preemptively reply to something, "other" clerics outside miltank were not popular at this time. Alcremie saw play as a cleric sometimes, but it wasn't so common that you'd go into a game assuming that you'd automatically play against a cleric like we did after the rise of Miltank. And outside Alcremie we didn't have any cleric with common usage, the most "common" ones being heal bell Clefairy which wasn't a popular set, heal bell Articuno which saw almost zero usage, Eldegoss whose main set wasn't aroma, and Lurantis was not common to see in the meta at all. Cleric were not a defining staple of the tier until Miltank took over.

 

[diegoyuhhi]

VR NOMS

ADV
RISES
B -> A+
amazing special wall like few others in the tier, access to heal bell is huge and wishpassing is great for partners like mightyena and seaking (you can even run baton pass with another cleric to improve your wishpassing capabilities even further).

B+ -> A-
solid pivot that lets you bring in your frail breakers, with a pretty cool defensive typing. sub and aoa sets are also menacing with its rainbow offensive coverage. can struggle a bit with longevity but it works well on more offensively oriented teams.

B -> A-
this mon hits so stupidly hard, ground resists are scarce and they get decimated by dedge. it can run either very bulky sets to trade damage or fast sub on more dedicated paraspam teams. it often doesn't even need to click sd with how strong it hits.

C -> A-
what the hell is this mon doing in C. best pony check in the tier while also easily handling the normals, great para spreader and boom user, this mon patches a lot of defensive holes in the builder in just one slot, and can fit on a huge variety of teams.

B- -> B+
not a mon i particularly love personally but i think putting it on par with rhyhorn is fair, the bulk is very similar but onix's speed tier and access to boom make it a valuable pick on offensive teams.

DROPS
A- -> B+
big ball of stats but pretty passive and not hard to wear down throughout a game. even less bulky normals like porygon and delcatty feel more bulky than it because of their access to recovery.

B -> C+
with clamp banned, this mon's entire niche is being a check to specific seaking sets (not even all of them) while outputting very little damage on both the physical and special side even after a sd, and taking so much damage from many other mons in the tier.

SS
RISES
A- -> A
the rise of belgium. this mon has been getting a lot of usage this past zupl, and for good reasons: cool offensive rocker with pretty decent defensive utility too (enhanced even further by air balloon) despite its low bulk, softchecking a wide range of mons from rotom to kk to skuntank, while having the speed tier to revenge kill mons like rapidash and access to stab moves/coverage to pressure the main defoggers. fits amazingly on the more offensive types of bulky offense that have been becoming more popular lately.

B -> B+
the bulky spikes recover set has been on a steady rise since olympiad, and it has really cemented itself as a real presence in the metagame during zupl. its massive speed stat lets it outspeed every non-scarfer with just minimal investment, meaning that it can use all the evs to patch up its pretty bad physical bulk. sticky hold letting it absorb knock makes it a decent check to the likes of tangela and thwackey, and spikes have become more and more prevalent as a way to make progress, especially when paired with accelgor's access to knock and u-turn to pressure defoggers and provide teammates with safe entry points.

DROPS
A- -> B
let's all collectively stop coping and pretending this mon is any good. not doing any of the things you want your ground type/rocker to do (checking rotom, checking skuntank, having a way to pressure cuno/alt from defogging on your face) makes building around this mon extremely awkward, and it's not even a sturdy check into the likes of kk/dash/rhydon since they can just break past it after some chip and clicking their setup move even once. it's also weak to darkvally and weird to pair with most darkvally checks.

hold
i wanted to nom this mon down to B since it's really not done much in the last couple of years, but the recent rise of spikestack (the team style i personally think it works best in, since they enhance its otherwise mid damage output) and more ways to pressure the likes of cuno (one of its main checks) makes me think that it might have a resurgence in the near future. keep an eye on it.

(small) B+ -> B-
when the best thing your offensive choice item user can do is click trick you know smth went wrong. scarf's damage output is so funnily low that being faster than most other scarfers and +1 vallies is not even that relevant, and even band has a hard time breaking due to stuff like sap sipper miltank or tangela simply shutting it down. the defensive utility is nice but other grasses (including its xl variant) offer the same things better, and stuff like thwackey does a better job as a fast grass.

 

[Apagogie]

Time to write SM VR nominations. I agree with most of 5gen nomination above (only not Pinsir/chatot to a-) so I will not repeat them. Go read his post above, it's very good. I will only write down new ones that hasnt been mentioned yet. I do not expect that everything will be agreed upon but most of them are fair:

Bronzor A -> A+
Bronzor has few problems in the metagame but I do think it is more splashable than the rest of the A rank . It remains a semi normal resist which resists Rock and Ground moves and therefore would also be your main switch in to the two other rockers Golem and Torterra without Crunch while beating Furfou and some Bouffalant sets. It can handle most special Silvally sets which are seeing a little comeback nowadays. Depending on its EV spread, it can switch into both Swanna variants, only truly fearing Z-Rain Dance. It is very good against the only S tier Electivire too. It stands as one of the few safe switch-ins to non-Scarf Rotom-Fan. NP simisage struggles to break through it. You aslo have always an out if you messed up versus Raichu/Simipour lines. Breaking through it often requires dedicating two team slots. Simply put, I do think it's in top 3 of the Pokemon which brings the most utility in teams and I would not feel surprise if some players consider it first. It deserves to be ranked accordingly with the other top dogs.

Mareanie B+ -> A-
Teams still get owned by Toxic Spikes, we have seen it in ZUPL and until it does not happen anymore, Mareanie cannot get out of the A rank. Speaking of ZUPL, it was the fourteenth mon the most played above Bouffalant, Dusclops, Combusken, Sandslash, Leafeon that are considered top Pokemon of the metagame. That's also why I'm a bit skeptical with the narrative that Mareanie usage dropped. In any case, whatever you do, the Pokemon still remains the best counter to Combusken and while Combusken is highly a match up fish, if you dont prepare for it, you will get 6-0. It is also ironically one of the best toxic spikes absorber that we have. I like Knock Off these days but Toxic/haze still good.

Muk B+ -> A-
It is always the same problem but if you want an answer against toxic spikes and you're playing a Silvally as defoger which is not a Silvally-Poison, you do not have that many choices. It is not only that but this Pokemon is the best counter to Simisage. CurseSet is also the hardest counter to Rotom-Fan in the metagame. Its also great versus special Swanna. Great lure sets as well which target Mareanie, Bronzor and Golem. Only poison type used in Rain which is strong. It lacks a bit of "wow" factor at times but the Pokemon benefits well fort the metagame. Tenth mon the most used in ZUPL as well.

Raichu B+ -> A-
Hot take of the day, this Pokemon is more threating than all the Simis ranked. Even if you do not agree with this, you need to agree that the Pokemon is a scary set up sweeper extremely difficult to revenge kill. Let's say that you play Furfou + Rotom-Fan scarf HP water as speed control, you can reasonably get swept by this without too much troubles. Balloon set prevents Evire to click ground move. Only few teams have comfortable match up versus this and it is mostly composed of teams with Purugly, scarf komala/ditto/pinsir/etc, fat grass types or loaded with several priorities. Due to its speed tier and Focus Blast, it finds itself an other utility in being able to revenge kill all slower normal types. By the way, very strong showcases in ZUPL in being also tied with Mareanie the fourteenth Pokemon the most played with an impressive 85% winrate, with strong presence in almost all of the victories, even though sample size is low to give any definitive conclusion.

Silvally-Dark B+ -> A-
Trapping Bronzor opens doors for different kind of breakers/teams that would struggle to do otherwise. It can also trapped more effectively other Pokemon such as Electivre locked on Ice Punch (which would be a high risk/high reward for grimer-alola). It offers usually more utility such as defog or u-turn and therefore makes the teambuilding more fluid. Sub SD sets are also a modest threat (it is not as threating as I sometimes hear) but still need to play around carefully, especially on screens.

Pyukumuku B -> B+
Lickilicky B -> B+
The playerbase prefer experiencing playstyles more flashy than stall so it is a bit hard to rank the playstyle. I also agree that it feels a bit underexplored as we are not so sure how stall is adaptating to Simisage or Toucannon. However, I also feel it is also less taken into account in the teambuilding with lower usage of Beheyeem and Taunt on Set up Sweepers. Stall also have a playable match up against several cheesy archetypes in the metagame such as Screens or Rain, which I unfortunately cannot say it is the case for most of the teams I see in SM. I do believe it has consistent match ups, more than what Fraxure, Servine, Duosion and Trevenant can hope for, which are all Pokémon ranked somewhere in B or B+.

Bellossom B- -> B
This sweeps offense without too much trouble. Compared to current gen, Z-Grassium gives her two new moves with a nuke button with Z-Giga Drain or an unkillable button on the physical side with Z-Strength Sap. The counterplay to this Pokemon is common but not carried in every team with Bouffalant, SD Busken, Toucannon full life, Curse Muk, Pawniard full life. Bronzor technically too but it gets trapped easily. Toxic does not work due to Safeguard sets. It becomes an even bigger threat under screens where most of the offensive counterplay disappears even more and you usually need your defensive pokemon to deal with other threats. Some trends go against her but it stays one of the most unfair Pokemon which currently exists in the tier. B- is a very low rank which does not reflect the threating power of Bellossom. She should rise.

Drops

Simisage A+ -> A
The metagame adapted to the introduction of Simisage which feels like a scarier threat on the teambuilding than on the actual games. Trends have been clearly against it during the last tournaments. We’ve seen a steady trend toward teams placing more emphasis on speed control. Teams carrying 333 speed and above became the norm with either double scarf or with Furfou, Purugly, Rapidash, Kadabra, Raichu, Jumpluff, Ninjask or Floatzel as second option alongside a scarfer. On top of this, Muk and Silvally-Poison increase in viability which further pressures Simisage forcing it to switch out. Simisage is not easy to bring on the field so switching out is a big loss of momentum. Bronzor and Dusclops are also pretty bad for NP sets and both either maintain or rose in usage. On paper, it has no counter but it's with four items and ten moves. In practise, you load Simisage in ZUPL finals and you face a team with four answers. It remains a consistent breaker but in a metagame with alternatives and where its utility in the teambuilding process stays limited.

Leafeon A+ -> A
Analyzing the place of Leafeon in the metagame is very hard. On paper, competition for a Grass slot, the faster pace of the tier and the rise of Simisage checks should make Leafeon struggle. However, the reality is more nuanced. Leafeon is a great versatile Pokémon which gives it strong adaptability to whatever metagame it fits in. Z-Celebrate sets perfectly adapt to the new surge of Offense. The bulk and staying power of the metagame also makes Leafeon not only harder to revenge kill for faster threats but also allow to play the long game against mons such as Muk or Silvally-Poison, something Simisage struggles to do. Lower Swanna usage and higher prevalence of Dusclops and Bronzor also work in its favor. Leafeon will always be meta in SM because its level of flexibility allows fast adaptation to bulkier and more offensive metagames.

That said, it would be misleading to claim these trends are purely positive. Let's take for a moment the example with Z-Celebrate sets. The Z-move while potent, remind us how Leafeon feels like a shaky top SM threat. The Pokemon does not hit hard enough to break past through its checks in a regular way. Without lure sets, Leafeon is unable to make fast progress against grass resists, especially when they have recovery. This was already true already with SD but Z-Celebrate feels even weaker in that sense. This lack of breaking power is why we opted for Simisage in the first place which breaks balance consistently without investment while punishing teams that rely only on Swanna as speed control alongside Evire. Through the years, we have seen Leafeon Z-Darkium, Normal Gem, Natural Gift to solve this issue of breaking, and frankly those are still the ones most players enjoy using but now, in a metagame which feels sometimes more hostile, with revenge killers and Simisage checks. There is no free lunch. You make concessions about being either easier to revenge killer, nerfing your staying power, lowering you damage input or decreasing your utility (mainly removing Knock Off). I do believe than none of the Leafeon sets feel A+ level of threat right now.

Another issue is splashability. Despite offering solid utility, Leafeon rarely feels easy to fit strangely enough. Leafeon is as a fast offensive check to Golem, Electivire and Torterra which threatens both Bronzor and Dusclops. The thing is the vast majority of team will either play Bronzor, Golem or Torterra as a rocker. Bronzor is already a counter to Golem/Crunch less Torterra and a solid answer to Electivire as well, especially if Physical Def. Leafeon provides here very little with only Knock Off and a good but not great speed tier. You have here direct competition with Simisage which is faster but also with plenty other alternatives. If you play Torterra as a rocker, you already hard counter Golem. Why would you want to add a second physically oriented grass type? You are starting a team with fake normal resists and fake Electivire switch ins and which will realistically end up weak to BoltBeam vally. Structures with defensive Torterra are often shaky but this structure is especially shaky. It leaves Golem and yeah, Leafeon works well with Golem. It's not an issue since Golem is one of the best Pokemon in the tier but it's restrictive. Gourgeist, Silvally-Grass, Servine or more offensive structures with Simisage, Bellossom all have good synergy with Golem and also work in these kind of teams.

Of course, Leafeon is not limited to Golem teams, Bronzor/Torterra structures are still possible and if you use lesser-used rockers like Mawile, Crustle, Sandslash, Marowak, utility of Leafeon has suddendly more merits. However, for most teams, it does not feel splashable which explains its low ZUPL usage. To be precise, it has also other positive aspects like answering SubPunch Poliwrath or with the Z-move, beating Bulk Up Knock Off Komala. But on the other hand, it also does not provide much counterplay against Screens, Rain or Stall. It does not provide the level of speed control that teams need nowadays. While it is good versus trending Dusclops, it is also weak against Simisage, BoltBeam Vally, Toucannon.

Ultimately, Leafeon does not offers the same level of splashability than Golem, Bronzor, Wishiwashi and Torterra (all A+ Pokemon) and often feels less threatening than Bouffalant, Simisage, Raichu, Combusken, Crustle, Furfou, Z-Rain Dance Swanna which are all Pokemon ranging from A+ to A- in the VR. Therefore, I think the A rank is more appropriate.

Beheeyem A -> A-
The faster and more offensive nature of the current metagame puts Beheeyem in an awkward position. The main reason it should drop in viability is that other wallbreakers like Swords Dance Torterra or Swords Dance Toucannon perform similar roles while being faster and offer therefore slot competition. Additionally, the prevalence of Dusclops and Bronzor forces Beheeyem into uncomfortable Shadow Ball predictions, with the added risk of getting trapped .The metagame’s offensive pace also makes it difficult for bulky setup sets to find opportunities. While the rise of Poison types look good on paper, in practice Beheeyem only switches safely into Mareanie. With so many strong breakers available in SM, Beheeyem sometimes feels like just another option among many. It remains one of the best choices against stall but since stall is rarely seen, that advantage hardly matters.

Cacturne A- -> B
Every team that uses a pivot Silvally has a solid check for this Pokémon. It’s definitely not splashable and only really fits on extremely offensive teams with strong pivoting support and even then, there are alternatives; The high usage of Simisage also hurts Cacturne’s viability as it increases the prevalence of Poison-types, which asks if you want to give up Spikes. It also gives a slight slot competition. Ultimately, it’s still the kind of Pokémon that lacks safe switch-ins, but it fits better in the B rank. Same rank as Marowak seems fair.

Silvally-Normal B -> B-

SD Normalium is fun and a pretty good mon overall. However, investing a Silvally-Form, the Z-move and a Normal type to still be at the end of the day a physical attacker walled by Defensive Golem and Gourgeist is not ideal. It competes heavily with other Silvally form but also other kind of breakers like Z-Chatot, Leafeon or the Simis which either breaks more consistently or provide more utility in teams. Silvally Normal also has a slight 4MSS: Crunch is mandatory at this point if you do not want to be shut down by Dusclops but that lets the last slot to be either Flame Charge or Explosion and you kinda want both. This kind of huge investment Pokemon is honestly a bit tricky to rank but I will settle on B-, above Ninjask which is a Pokemon that I would honestly prefer playing compared to Silvally-Normal.
I do believe that the Scarf Set is close to a teambuilding error. The tier already offers numerous excellent Scarf users that bring clear utility with Electivire, Furfou, Rotom-Fan, Swanna, the Simis, Ditto, Komala, Mime, Rapidash, Pinsir, Leafeon, Chatot among others. Skipping all of them is already a very specific choice to say the least but it becomes even more perplexing when opting for Silvally-Normal means that you're voluntarly locking yourself out of running an other Silvally-form in the team. These structures where Silvally-Scarf makes sense are highly uncommon and do not justify a B rank.

 

[Zpice]

ADV ZU Shifts - Fall '25

ADV PU has just updated their VR. Here are the following changes:

Rises:
Clamperl - ZUBL -> PU
Shedinja - ZUBL -> PU
Wartortle - ZU -> PU

Drops:
Lairon - PU -> ZUBL
Grovyle - PU -> ZU
Ivysaur - PU -> ZU

Tagging Marty and dhelmise to implement the new shifts.

These changes shall be in effect during ZU Classic and ADV Grand Slam Playoffs.​

 

[Zpice]

Double posting here (sue me), here are the complete usage stats for the most recent ADV ZU Cup to those who are interested:

Usage Stats

ZU Classic VII - ADV ZU Cup

+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Ponyta             |   72 |  57.14% |  50.00% |
| 2    | Seaking            |   61 |  48.41% |  55.74% |
| 3    | Mightyena          |   57 |  45.24% |  52.63% |
| 4    | Gloom              |   43 |  34.13% |  60.47% |
| 5    | Porygon            |   28 |  22.22% |  53.57% |
| 6    | Flaaffy            |   27 |  21.43% |  59.26% |
| 6    | Anorith            |   27 |  21.43% |  51.85% |
| 8    | Ariados            |   26 |  20.63% |  65.38% |
| 8    | Delcatty           |   26 |  20.63% |  46.15% |
| 10   | Doduo              |   23 |  18.25% |  47.83% |
| 11   | Koffing            |   21 |  16.67% |  33.33% |
| 12   | Abra               |   20 |  15.87% |  45.00% |
| 13   | Onix               |   19 |  15.08% |  57.89% |
| 14   | Cubone             |   18 |  14.29% |  50.00% |
| 15   | Nosepass           |   16 |  12.70% |  56.25% |
| 16   | Clamperl           |   15 |  11.90% |  60.00% |
| 16   | Wartortle          |   15 |  11.90% |  53.33% |
| 16   | Meditite           |   15 |  11.90% |  53.33% |
| 16   | Rhyhorn            |   15 |  11.90% |  53.33% |
| 16   | Tropius            |   15 |  11.90% |  40.00% |
| 21   | Castform           |   13 |  10.32% |  61.54% |
| 21   | Voltorb            |   13 |  10.32% |  23.08% |
| 23   | Beedrill           |   12 |   9.52% |  41.67% |
| 23   | Corsola            |   12 |   9.52% |  33.33% |
| 25   | Aipom              |   11 |   8.73% |  36.36% |
| 25   | Quilava            |   11 |   8.73% |  27.27% |
| 27   | Magnemite          |    9 |   7.14% |  44.44% |
| 27   | Elekid             |    9 |   7.14% |  33.33% |
| 29   | Snorunt            |    8 |   6.35% |  62.50% |
| 29   | Volbeat            |    8 |   6.35% |  37.50% |
| 31   | Chinchou           |    7 |   5.56% |  57.14% |
| 31   | Drowzee            |    7 |   5.56% |  42.86% |
| 33   | Wailmer            |    5 |   3.97% |  40.00% |
| 33   | Shuppet            |    5 |   3.97% |  20.00% |
| 35   | Lileep             |    4 |   3.17% |  25.00% |
| 35   | Dustox             |    4 |   3.17% |  25.00% |
| 37   | Smoochum           |    3 |   2.38% |  66.67% |
| 37   | Horsea             |    3 |   2.38% |   0.00% |
| 37   | Masquerain         |    3 |   2.38% |   0.00% |
| 40   | Noctowl            |    2 |   1.59% | 100.00% |
| 40   | Weepinbell         |    2 |   1.59% |  50.00% |
| 40   | Croconaw           |    2 |   1.59% |  50.00% |
| 40   | Kabuto             |    2 |   1.59% |   0.00% |
| 40   | Grimer             |    2 |   1.59% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Staryu             |    1 |   0.79% | 100.00% |
| 45   | Magby              |    1 |   0.79% | 100.00% |
| 45   | Natu               |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Growlithe          |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Delibird           |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Bagon              |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Luvdisc            |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Farfetch’d         |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Nuzleaf            |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Tentacool          |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 45   | Lombre             |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |

• Missing 1 Pokemon from OOFHIXD.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from M1CHAEL JORDAN.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from TWENTYTWAN.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from DIEGOYUHHI.
• Missing 2 Pokemon from SANKE CARP.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from SANKE CARP.
• Missing 3 Pokemon from 5GEN.
• Missing 2 Pokemon from ELVIRA.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from WHAT IN A LETTUCE.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from BYDY2.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from ZPICE.
• Missing 3 Pokemon from ZPICE.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from SUNROSE.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from LUSTFULLICE.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from LUSTFULLICE.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from DRACOPOPE.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from LLAFELL.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from LLAFELL.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from LLAFELL.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from LLAFELL.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from BYDY2.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from DIEGOYUHHI.
• Missing 1 Pokemon from ORANBERRYBLISSEY10.

[Bonus] Lead Statistics

ZU Classic VII - ADV ZU Cup

+ ---- + ----------------------- + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Leads                   | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ----------------------- + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Seaking                 |   15 |  11.90% |  60.00% |
| 2    | Voltorb                 |   10 |   7.94% |  10.00% |
| 3    | Flaaffy                 |    9 |   7.14% |  55.56% |
| 3    | Doduo                   |    9 |   7.14% |  33.33% |
| 5    | Cubone                  |    7 |   5.56% |  71.43% |
| 5    | Snorunt                 |    7 |   5.56% |  71.43% |
| 7    | Aipom                   |    6 |   4.76% |  50.00% |
| 7    | Meditite                |    6 |   4.76% |  50.00% |
| 7    | Quilava                 |    6 |   4.76% |  33.33% |
| 10   | Anorith                 |    5 |   3.97% |  60.00% |
| 10   | Volbeat                 |    5 |   3.97% |  20.00% |
| 12   | Ariados                 |    4 |   3.17% |  75.00% |
| 12   | Clamperl                |    4 |   3.17% |  75.00% |
| 12   | Elekid                  |    4 |   3.17% |  50.00% |
| 12   | Ponyta                  |    4 |   3.17% |  25.00% |
| 12   | Wailmer                 |    4 |   3.17% |  25.00% |
| 17   | Castform                |    3 |   2.38% | 100.00% |
| 17   | Abra                    |    3 |   2.38% |  66.67% |
| 17   | Chinchou                |    3 |   2.38% |  66.67% |
| 20   | Magnemite               |    2 |   1.59% |  50.00% |
| 20   | Mightyena               |    2 |   1.59% |  50.00% |
| 22   | Croconaw                |    1 |   0.79% | 100.00% |
| 22   | Gloom                   |    1 |   0.79% | 100.00% |
| 22   | Porygon                 |    1 |   0.79% | 100.00% |
| 22   | Onix                    |    1 |   0.79% | 100.00% |
| 22   | Growlithe               |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 22   | Koffing                 |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 22   | Drowzee                 |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |
| 22   | Grimer                  |    1 |   0.79% |   0.00% |

 

[Tack]

since zupl/bwpl are both over i may as well do this, mostly played a supporting role since i had xrn with me for zupl so i'm not gonna drop team deep dives but this should be an alright enough read if you like rambling, whenever i say "The Core" i'm referring to Grass + Poison + Solrock, which is an integral core that shows up multiple times in pretty much every person who's played this tier in tour's builder atp

vr stuff

mostly ordered till around A-, i swapped swalot / foo around like 20 minutes later in my head

Not super sure most of which mons specifically are rises / drops compared to current vr off the top but this is basically a whole vr nom

S Rank

I've thought

was the best mon in the tier for years at this point and also my fav, send me cute art of emolga, acro statchecks almost everything once and you're naturally faster than every single unboosted mon except for Persian and lopunny, and running volt switch in this current metagame is basically completely free since a ton of players are just cutting the ground or running molga/raich as a volt immune and just losing on a hard acro on a bad call, solrock in particular hates getting hit with volt switch into water and is *most* teams defensive check to the squirrel, and then in addition to acro volt you can pretty much pick any utility move you want for your build, I'm partial to encore roost but this thing has like 20 million status moves you can justify to just be a complete bastard to deal with, notably fullwon in zupl semis with basically just emolga clicking encore on every free turn my opponent gave me

I feel like this shouldn't be a controversial rise. Walrein has absolutely insane offensive and defensive presence and will legitimately just outstat anyone trying to play jankier comps, while forcing incredible amounts of progress into The Core just by nature of coming in on defensive solrock and threatening an ohko or a sub on a switchout, and 101 subs means you can kinda just pp stall clef softboileds if you have sub + encore, if you give this guy hp grass he pretty much immediately becomes the best check to both waters and glaceon which is insanely strong to have access to in a ton of matchups, old forbidden tech is cteaming people by putting a scarf on this guy when it looks good into a scout after using nothing but fat walrein, its funny when it works but doesnt do much into The Core so it's fallen to the wayside

I use way less of this mon than I should so this'll be short, its another mon that just eats jank teams alive but this time bc it has infinite utility and can glue any hole a team has while having the stats to eat literally whatever it wants and get twaves off while doing it, its an absolutely miserable mon to plan lines around for any time you dont run The Core and also just takes free progress if it comes in on solrock vs The Core

a+rank

This is the best scarfer in the tier by a lot. It has access to some other stuff but it has trick, a good speed tier and perfect coverage, its also a passable check to walrein / glaceon / simisear who are all super important existential threats to the tier that every team should always plan for.

I think Happy Dino is a stronger pokemon than leafeon in the current metagame, it has a ton of bulk and easy phazing with dtail for the Grass / Poison / Solrock cores that thrive in significantly longer games as well as some pretty good offensive prowess if you feel like taking specs or gem or sd for a whirl

This is faster than arbok and incredibly good at beating offense when you give it a gem but often ends up trading innefficiently into bulkier teamcomps featuring wormy-t and multiple poisons or anything with an emolga in the back, its a must answer threat that plays very linearly, and is great at cleaning up janky low stat mons

hey look another amorphous blob of stats, you can run literally whatever you want on this guy and he will do something in every single game, sometimes that something is baiting in solrock/arbok pivots for cheeky doubles, sometimes thats clicking curse once and winning the game, sometimes its custap explosion after trading with some other mon and putting you in a pretty hard advantage

intimidate is a very good ability that allows this mon to fairly reliably coil up on muk and it has some absolutely insane coverage to tear unprepared teams apart, gunk+eq gets neutral damage on basically every relevant mon except for solrock which hates eating a gem boosted seed bomb or aqua tail, if solrock has taken pretty much any chip Arbok becomes incredibly good at shredding The Core assuming its a meganium + Muk variant and generally trades well into Leafeon variants as well

if you run shed skin you're trolling and instantly reveal the bit, run intim.

a rank

If Walrein wasn't legal this absolute monster of a breaker would probably have been banned years ago, because walrein is the only real check to it should it ever get in on a defensive solrock being run on The Core, Glaceon's breaking genuinely feels like what would happen if CB slaking could actually get rid of truant, the rocks weakness and speed tier make it far less common than it probably should be but with how much people use The Core in this tier it'll just thanos entire scouts on its own

This is another one i dont use too much, it competes with emolga pretty hard as another fast voltblocker, raichu has NP which is just good into a lot of comps and will just choose the moves that own your balance teams

This is the last member of The Core, and its on the core because its the most splashable defensive check to the poisons in the tier thanks to having natural recovery and stealth rocks letting you cover a big hole for poisons+grasses and them also being a natural pivot point for solrock's weaknesses, Sometimes Solrock will run incredibly offensive and the playstyle of The Core can shift entirely to accomodate this plan, oftentimes you can expect SD meganium or leaf + boom muk if solrock reveals boom

I firmly believe that SD pawniard is a must use mon on HO teams in this tier, Having access to the persian obliterator heavily improves most HO teams matchup spreads and sucker punch means pawn also acts as emergency speed control and a wincon, all without opening any super detrimental weaknesses for most of them.

This is probably a hot take considering this guy used to be like, c rank for scarf stuff or something but I think phione is the best bulky water for teams that can't afford to run walrein for fear of a massive sr weakness that aren't stall, i've used it a lot and cross board base 80's with solid utility is just a completely acceptable statline and you can invest it to do pretty much whatever you want

Head Smash is REALLY good, and if you want this as a rocker you can probably just run polish to smoke persian teams if you get the free turn off a fake out

A- Rank

this mon hits like a wet noodle into The Core and just never ends up doing anything relevant unless its smoking pawnless HO, being faster than emolga is a very good trait to have but if emolga's at full silk scarf dedge is only a roll to kill and return just cant so you get forced to uturn or fake out on those turns some solid amount of the time, which sucks a lot! it competes with emolga for the "fast nuisance" slot but just doesnt make anywhere near the same amount of progress in your average game, with most of its contributions being more tempo down than tempo up feeling incredibly bad for a u-turn bot. and on top of all of this sometimes you will just load water pulse persian and stare down a wormy-t and just be completely stonewalled.

This pokemon is an incredibly good defensive piece on balance builds that makes for a solid rocker and a massive nuisance for leafeon/arbok in particular.

The defensive resttalk shelgon spread that outspeeds arbok at +1 is an absolutely phenomenal pick in this tier and will just steal games if you dont immediately plan to prevent it, the tier's general lack of steels means you can usually just afford to run mono outrage and be completely fine.

This mon is a really good defensive pivot, providing a slow uturn knock a rock resist and fight coverage for walrein/clef/persian/lairon/pawn, even when you're almost fully defensive HJK still hits things really hard and regenerator is just a good ability

this guy is pretty restricted to fatter teams but he's really good for them, as a volt immune that doesnt die to acro with 400ish defense recovery and phasing it has a fairly solid niche that they adore

This metagame is incredibly hostile to simisear currently, specs hates walrein and grumpig being everywhere, salac doesnt have enough power and the gem ones all kinda get thanos'd by an acro, it's still a massive threat thanks to having an incredible speed tier but a lot of things that eat it are super common right now, as well as generally having issues with The Core since muk is almost always able to trade off with a non specs sear

This is another fat restricted mon but this guy puts in massive numbers every time he shows up, swalot has a bunch of really cool utility that comes up for bulky teams with encore access on a mon thats immune to trick

This also kinda hits like a wet noodle, but its very very nice on healing wish offense as a 2nd copy of a broken pokemon that also doubles as mild speed control through its natural base speed being faster than Emolga

B+

Around here is where i usually try and use a lot less of these bc i think they're hard to fit on most comps

I'd put this in UR if it didnt have rapid spin.

Work Up and Sash Lead are both pretty solid, this mon does stuff

Matchup Moth does its thing often enough that it shouldnt be ranked super low but it hates how many muks are running around atm

Hwish Offense will be happy to have a mime, its usable but not super oppressive or common

this guy has a ton of spdef and is generally like, ok as a statblock

This guy is a very solid breaker thats pretty heavily hampered by its speed tier, x scissor water move plate fling sd will just break fat, and agility will eat some offense

I was scouting sea for bwpl and saw a team running a cb fez and saw it popping off pretty hard, its good into The Core and generally hits hard enough to pass the sniff test, I wouldnt be surprised if this goes up in usage in the upcoming seasons it seems very real

running max attack on this makes it a passable arbok/muk check that can trade fairly well into offense

Agility is solid enough, if youre running defensive i'd probably consider walrein or phione instead on most teams

Espeed is really good at cleaning up endgames into offense and its a massive offensive threat into The Core since it outspeeds the poison and the rocker

this guy is really good on stall

b

consider this bwpl game a direct nom for b rank, Specs lumi hits some crazy numbers if you can give it rain turns and has been a super fun breaker to mess with in friendlies over the past couple years

So this guy is a much better breaker than life orb mixed simisear, and any team where i've ever considered that set specifically heatmor has done the job 100x better thanks to its slightly better offensive stats, access to sucker punch and the fire immunity making opposing fires easier

Solid defensive pivot, i think earth power is forced or u risk getting owned pretty hard by arbok but it has slowturn recovery and a unique typing for the tier

you play 5v6 but this is pretty close to guaranteed rocks+spikes if they dont have a yu / taunt lead

this is a barely passable defensive spiker

Defensive Chime breaks The Core for fat incredibly easily if you force out dtail usage in the front half of a game

honestly? knock off from ivysaur's bulk with recovery is pretty nice, this guy does a lot of stuff everytime i see it

regen is a really really good ability and this kinda makes fat solrock persian and uturn emolga miserable a solid chunk of the time by being an immortal helmet pivot, being corsola obviously opens up issues with the super common grasses that need to be addressed in builder, but this mon is honestly really cool for some comps, try it out if ur using graveller in big 25

see staryu, its that without recovery

This guy's a fine intim pivot, emolga check that can actually damage clef is a reasonable enough consideration

b-

This mon is a matchup fish. It's really funny when it works but literally every single time people remember it exists they just put some way to hard fodder it on the truant turn or protect on the mons that slaking tries to revenge and smoke you for using slaking.

the only usable set on this mon if ur opponent has a grass is subtox and that set is balls

honestly i dont care much about the rest of these, they're all x player's pet mons but they've done more than the stuff in C in recent years so i put them higher

C

These are basically all petmons that aren't consistent outside of illumise, who is a cheese indicator rather than an actual mon, i honestly wouldnt be opposed to unranking all of them

please unrank these they're awful.

i have literally never seen that beartic rain team win a game with like, years of trying. and anywhere else this is legitimately a strictly worse kingler

Wish is entirely outclassed by hypno and all the offensive sets r just a worse version of simisear / heatmor / swagmar

guts facade is cool and all but this mon has such a short timer vs The Core that it pretty much doesnt get run, also i'm pretty sure stantler outclasses this and is already unranked

the only meaningful difference between gloom and ivysaur is that ivysaur has knock off, i'm pretty sure they legitimately have all the same tools aside from that.

imagine if glaceon had worse special attack and bulk, that is vanilluxe. Autotomize is worthless in a clef muk walrein world.

???????????

i've quite literally never seen this mon used

i get that this is a check to The Core, but this is actually just completely unusable in front of a clefairy

someone loaded scarf 7 years ago and crani's been c rank since, its not even faster than persian. we dont need to rank every single old meme mon.

this guy gets hard statchecked by every common mon that isnt weak to its stabs and just loses to physdef twave clef without running band