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edit: i wasnt happy with the team after testing it, so i made some changes. the explanation refers the updated version.
the focal point of the team is lax. typically, lax runs sball to harm gengar and boom to remain useful whilst burned. skarm, however, walls lax indefinitely and so mag is a frequent partner. sub + fp inverts this relationship, allowing lax to beat skarm but sacrificing the ability to hurt gengar. to deal with gengar, suittar is therefore chosen over mag. a strength of the standard lax mag pairing is that skarm teams often need spikes in order to do harm and, because preventing the trap involves not spiking, punishing mag can be a challenge, even when it is anticipated. gengar teams, on the other hand, dont typically depend on it to act positively to make progress and so can punish failed traps. substitute allows snorlax to threaten to stay and focus punch against gengar and so enables more consistent trapping. beyond that, sub makes use of lax's high hp, supports hitting-and-running, generally synergises with focus punch and allows lax to better exploit body slam paras. to complete snorlax's moveset, curse allows it to beat pokemon with recovery moves like celebi, milo, jira that would otherwise wall it.
to support lax to hit-and-run, jolteon is chosen as it earns lax attacking opportunities and is able to heal it with wish. by acting as a proactive midground switch-in to gengar, jolteon also improves the effectiveness with which it is trapped. wish and tect are neccesary for jolt to have longevity. toxic is a strong alternative to bp as a consistent punish to switch-ins. tox annoys bliss, which suittar teams lacking a strong switch-in to it enjoy, and alongside protect, claydol is more heavily punished than it would be by hidden power alone. given these three moves, however, choosing the obvious 4th of tbolt means that jolt's main protection against dug is just the potential of a fast bp. whilst it doesnt fit on this team specifically, i do run a set of toxic, wish, tect, hp ice, which bluffs pokemon like skarmory and starmie, for example on https://pokepast.es/6c829d044dbbc24c, https://pokepast.es/531b86c1d932cdf8. by scaring dug away, the precedent of hidden power facilitates a set of mono tbolt for teams that require jolt to be able to hit skarm.
to compete the team, a spinner is chosen for hazard control to exploit the removal of the ghost. starmie faciliates running metagross as the rock resist to give less opportunity to celebi and reinforce the tean against lax. gyarados acts as the team's fighting resist and wincon.
Thought process with the team was to have self-sufficient sweepers that could receive SD and possibly wreak havoc. "Self-sufficient" is key so I don't have to rely on Celebi's SD for offensive pressure.
Water/Grass is always a good defensive combination so Pert + Celebi ofc are great together. Pert comes in on opposing Metagross and super-effective attackers like hp flying Mence or hp bug Aero/Ttar. Meanwhile, Celebi dissuades hp grass Zapdos/Jolteon from doing too much (in fear of leech seed) and generally forces out Milotic. It is somewhat easy to pass Pert a substitute because of their synergy, but that may not always be an optimal choice since Pert lacks offensive punch. Also I must say that mixed attackers such as Ttar and Mence can pose an issue against the duo with their common coverage options.
I should point out is much stronger in the case of the aforementioned mixed attackers. She out-damages mixed Mence and if Ttar does not have rock slide then her matchup is safer. Zapdos is, of course, a great switch into bulky waters (Milo/Cune/Vap generally give Pert trouble) and Mons like Metagross or Charizard whom Celebi does not like. So her offensive presence can alleviate some pressure off Pert/Bi to defensively check who they usually do, while being the primary deterrent for Skarmory. The real beauty in Zapdos is her intermediary presence: receiving baton-passed subs to use for herself or pass to another friend. Celebi will likely pass her a sub, only for it to be broken upon entry. However, if Zapdos poses enough threat she can simply use substitute and pass it back for a leech seed sequence. SubZap can take advantage of ice beam Blissey: if she lacks stoss then Gross/Ttar can enter with the sub intact and start boosting.
I want Zapdos to be bulky, would be sooo dope but the speed and power is needed here. If I face offensive Suicune I'm cooked after two CMs if I'm too slow. Also she has the strongest tbolt by far so Modest really puts in work, but the benefit of Timid could never be disregarded. in the lead
Is not my favorite choice but is quite potent in this position. Uncertainty is what we feel in front of this Starmie, so leads that fear super-effective coverage (besides Zapdos) will switch out. This is why I often press t-wave first! No one knows what kind of Starmie I have and they may assume defensive simply off the t-wave reveal, also free para on anyone who isn't Blissey/Celebi. Conversely, someone may not expect an incoming t-wave midgame when I make it apparent the Starmie is offensive. I desire the output because toxic Skarm is very annoying, my gosh lets not talk about wish Rachi. Low pp does suck balls in a prolonged exchange but t-wave + hpump is much more potent than surf, especially when they full-para on their protect. Ice beam allows me to comfortably threaten Celebi and Zapdos with a 2hko, so spinning is very possible. I don't think I would try to spin away 1 layer. If Gengar does attempt to spinblock then receiving a hpump or t-wave is huge momentum and makes the task of spinning much easier later on. Forretress with hp bug is not an ideal opponent but it does not want to switch into hpump more than once.
Also 252 HP Tyranitar won't get ohko'd, shits crazy.
I mean theres not much to say
I'm cheesing tf out of subleech until I can 1. press SD or 2. pass something safely to Tyranitar
252 HP gives me 101 subs to give Blissey living hell
252+ Speed lets me subleech a lot of Mons
This Celebi is just switchbait bro, I scare away the bulky water or hp grass elec every time, then pop a sub/SD
ngl you are going to dry-pass like it is your professional career (lmao)
Skarm will keep coming in, you need to get some positioning
The remaining 3 need only a sparse explanation:
Swampert as said before is mostly here for defensive integrity: denying most physical attackers, hp ice elecs, and beating Skarm/Forre with hydro
Metagross will hopefully just win at +2/+2
Tyranitar has roar which is kind of fun against Skarm becus they need to use it too
Raikou a little too scary for this team lol but when is he not dangerous
Don't let it CM or substitute for free
CM Celebi seems even worse but we have boom if all else fails
This isn't even good into SkarmBliss LMAO but at least Pert will always beat Skarm with hydro + refresh
If the opponent has SkarmBliss + Pert (which can certainly happen) then hp grass over roar for Ttar works well. (I'd choose Hasty personally)
Hey look guys I'm just having fun ok, it was either this or trick + pain split + lead/salac
For those of you in disbelief of Golduck, click here: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen3ou-2576158290 Maybe I should post this nutty team instead
For this competition, I figured I’d build something unique that I think the meta is ready to re-introduce: Sun Offense. When gen 3 was current, lots of local metas actually respected sun offense as a team style and Exeggutor was still feared as a meta threat. But over time, TSS became more widespread and it slowly fell out of favor because TSS just Protects and uses Tyranitar to stop a sweep before it begins. However, in recent years new innovations for offense have granted insights on how offenses can be built to break TSS, to the point where most big 5 teams are considered outdated. Thus, this is the perfect time to use those innovations to re-introduce SunOff.
There are a few problems that had SunOff fall out of favor that I would like to highlight.
Dugtrio was automatically included to trap Tyranitar. Dugtrio immediately loses tempo after it revenges something, which is unacceptable for a team that expects to win the game as quickly as possible. Dugtrio trapping Tyranitar is nice, but it doesn’t add anything else, thus leading me to the conclusion that this is the first principle of traditional sun offense that I had to bin.
Sun offense was mainly built up out of members that weren’t used outside of sun builds. This dramatically simplifies the game for strong opponents, as they immediately know which pieces need to be preserved to prevent an endgame sweep. For an offense build to be as effective as possible, it needs to hide information to complicate the opponent’s decision making.
Sun offense overly relied on sun being active to sweep. This partly ties back to the Dugtrio idea, but the problem with a sun sweeper compared to a normal one is that sun is not permanent, thus being especially prone to getting stalled out
To combat these problems, here are the main ideas I built the team on:
Sun setters need to be able to threaten Tyranitar without sun up;
The team must be able to hide that it’s sun offense in the initial turns to complicate scouting;
The team needs to be capable of pivoting without losing momentum;
The team should not automatically lose if it can’t keep up the sun.
With that in mind, here is the squad I ended up with:
I edited this 1 day after my initial post to use Aerodactyl over Starmie.
If I dare oversimplify, every member fits in 1 or more of these 3 roles: setter, breaker and pivot. Setters make sun and either pivot out to a breaker or boom to get it in, breakers use sun to do offense things and pivots are there for their defensive utility.
Before I talk about the individual members I want to emphasize the importance of mixing up between either pivoting normally or using boom to get a threat in. The defensive synergies are built specifically so that the opponent has to guess between the move that hits/protects against the thing on the field or the move that punishes the switch-in.
Metagross
Role: setter, pivot, breaker
Data Centers (Metagross) @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 100 Atk / 220 SpA / 188 Spe
Mild Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Sunny Day
- Explosion
"Oh f*** it's Metagross lead."
Metagross is a perfect candidate for a setter, because it heavily threatens Tyranitar and it baits things that other team members can pivot into. In the lead slot, people have to fear Houdini. This tends to let them play into sun Metagross' hand by going to Skarmory after they see Meteor Mash, or Protecting turn 1 if they have Skarmory lead. Defensively, it forms a particularly good duo with Flygon, which can come in on anything that threatens Metagross bar Gengar and Moltres. Don't blow up Metagross too early unless you can get a particularly good target, as it can be really nice to have as either a lategame boom or breaker after the rest of the team has lured and KOed the physical walls.
Regirock
Role: pivot, setter
Ignorance (Regirock) @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 252 HP / 48 Atk / 208 SpD
Careful Nature
- Brick Break
- Thunder Wave
- Sunny Day
- Explosion / Rock Slide
Regirock is another great setter and actually a decent mixed wall with sun up, fearing basically nothing but STAB Grass moves on the special side. Brick Break threatens Tyranitar while Thunder Wave threatens practically everything else bar Claydol, Flygon and Swampert, who are amazing boom targets to open up Metagross, Flygon and Aerodactyl. Regirock and Exeggutor are also great buddies defensively, especially if you choose to run Wish on Exeggutor.
Regirock often finds a lot of activity early. It's the most expendable thing to pivot into status that's not Toxic and will likely cripple something with Thunder Wave or give Exeggutor a turn in the sun for free, as they will probably assume you run a Rock move.
You could replace Explosion with Rock Slide to hit Flying and Ghost Types, but I prefer to have the option of exploding after a Sunny Day, against a Substitute or to trade with Ground Types. You might also want to use Superpower over Brick Break for more power, but I don't like the drops because they can often be the difference between Thunder Waving a Metagross as it tries to revenge or simply getting KOed by it. Brick Break always 2HKOs 252HP Tyranitar with these EVs and not dropping your own Attack also ensures that your boom afterwards is as powerful as possible, should you choose to.
Snorlax Role: pivot, setter
Attention span (Snorlax) @ Leftovers
Ability: Immunity
EVs: 140 Atk / 252 SpA / 116 SpD
Quiet Nature
- Fire Blast
- Sunny Day
- Body Slam
- Self-Destruct
Snorlax is another incredibly reliable setter and a secondary mixed wall. It takes 2 hits from anything, which is perfect for when it needs to set sun and boom to get 1 of the breakers in. If Flygon or Metagross didn't already bait their Steel types, somehow they always feel like they're safe when they see the Snorlax and you get a free KO. Fire Blast is also just pretty powerful in general when sun is up. Snorlax is 3rd here for a reason. Don't use it until you've seen most of the enemy team. If they have Raikou or Jolteon with HP Ice, Snorlax is the main answer and it can't answer them if it's not healthy. With sun up, Snorlax might as well be immune to Water, which is great for Suicune and Starmie.
Note that I don’t run Sunny Day on this. The reason being that I value the rainbow of coverage far more. Anyone that’s played or faced a 3 attacks Celebi or Superrachi can attest to how hard it is to switch into the Fire/Grass/Psychic combo. Add Explosion to the mix and literally nothing can avoid its power in the sun. Explosion also brings surprise value, as people tend to assume your 4th move is Sunny Day after they see 3 attacks. In some cases it's fine if Exeggutor's sole contribution is to trade with the special wall, as that can open the way for Flygon.
An alternative to Explosion is to run Wish instead. Wish helps Metagross, Regirock and Snorlax get another turn after taking damage. Moreover, Protect is commonly used to mitigate Exeggutor's sun turns, which Wish punishes. However, you’re giving up pressure against setup sweepers that can come in as sun ends. It also means you have no counterplay against Pursuit trappers. Perhaps there is a world where you run Wish over Psychic, but I prefer to have Psychic to cover the things that resist Grass + Fire without needing to blow up and to have a STAB move outside of sun. Psychic also importantly OHKOs Gengar, while Exeggutor survives a single Ice Punch and Fire Punch outside of the sun. Wish + Boom is something literally only Exeggutor can do in gen 3 though, so there's that.
Flygon
Role: pivot, breaker
Desertification (Flygon) @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 36 Atk / 220 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Fire Blast
- Solar Beam
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
Flygon ties the whole team together. With Fire/Grass and Ground/Rock coverage, it is a force to be reckoned with when sun is up. Solar Beam is guaranteed to OHKO max HP 0 SpDef Swampert and heavily favored to OHKO against other common spreads, which would normally be a safe switch-in. In particular, pivoting from Metagross to Flygon on Swampert’s Earthquake can bait it very hard, as they usually Ice Beam or Earthquake again expecting a double switch. All in all, Flygon pivots beautifully with Metagross, Regirock and Snorlax and it is hard to overstate how much utility and power it brings to the team. If you lose Flygon early the team can quickly fall apart, so make sure to scout for Ice Beam on things that might run it.
Starmie uniquely combines the role of defensive piece and cleaner/cleaner support with thanks to its excellent Speed tier and access to Recover. Starmie provides insurance against Ice Beam + Thunder Wave Blissey by staring at it until it runs out of moves, a Speed tier that outruns Gengar and paralysis to help with the otherwise low speed of most of the team. Rapid Spin can be nice because the team is mostly grounded, mostly reserved for if they manage to get 3 Spikes or if it makes the difference between something switching into an attack or not. I settled on Ice Beam as the attack because it hits the dragons, Zapdos, Celebi and Aerodactyl, but Surf or Psychic can provide a bit more power on neutral hits. Psychic also helps against fighters and can remove Gengar, rather than Thunder Waving it and hoping you can clean it afterwards. If you’re confident about your ability to stop the spikers or want to play particularly aggressively with your booms, you can go spinless with 2 attacks as well.
Edit 1 day after the initial post: I'll be blunt about it, I was simply wrong to use Starmie in the last slot. The reason I thought I needed it was from a vestigial previous version of the team, where I had Shiftry over Regirock and that meant Starmie's defensive utility was incredibly important. After playing a couple more matches, I realized Starmie doesn't pack enough of a punch to warrant its slot and Regirock basically overlaps its defensive utility. Removing Spikes also just doesn't make the difference that often with how fast this team wants to play. I found myself in awkward situations where I could pivot Starmie into something, but if they had a Blissey with either Seismic Toss, Thunderbolt or a move to aid its team it could just come in for free and slowly win the game. After thinking about it some more, I realized I broke my own rule with the Starmie inclusion; pivots can't give up momentum. So I decided to update this post and present Aerodactyl as the final member instead.
Aerodactyl
Role: Breaker, (pivot)
Habitat loss (Aerodactyl) @ Choice Band
Ability: Rock Head
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake
- Double-Edge
- Hidden Power [Flying]
Aerodactyl is a perfect final addition to the team, because all the pivots lure physical walls and can either trade or KO them. Between the team's Solar Beams, Fire moves and booms, you should have a lot of opportunities to remove the opposing Rock resists, opening the way for an Aero sweep. That said, Aerodactyl's role isn't limited to just your final sweeper. If the opponents don't have a fast Ice Beam user, Flygon can sweep weakened teams just fine by itself. Aerodactyl can pivot in off of Exeggutor and Metagross by virtue of its resistance to Fire and Flying and its Ground immunity, further complicating the opponent's decision making. Keep in mind that, like with every Choice Bander, if Aerodactyl comes in to break rather than to sweep, you also need an angle to pivot back out. In practice, this usually means that Snorlax has to be healthy or you need a couple sun turns to spare and a healthy Regirock, because the typical answer to an early Aerodactyl is to either status it or bring out your bulky Water.
Bad matchups
Dusclops is very annoying. The team relies a lot on physical attackers and boom, which makes both Will o Wisp and Ghost typing problematic. Flygon and Aerodactyl have to leave if they face a healthy Dusclops, which usually means I pivot to Regirock and try to Thunder Wave it. If it Rests, Aerodactyl can come in and do 40% per hit to keep it out of the game, plus you might flinch it. Fighting this thing can be a real chore, but eventually you should be able to punch your way through it. If you can paralyze it with Regirock, Will o Wisp's likeliness to hit drops pretty significantly and you can roll the paraflinch dice on it. You have to make some ballsy plays to stay on top of it, which definitely makes the game harder to play. If you're particularly unfond of this matchup, you could try swapping Explosion away on Regirock to make way for Rock Slide.
While the team doesn’t fall over at the sight of it, Gengar can pose a very real threat to the team. Will o Wisp + Taunt sets with Electric and Ice coverage threaten practically the whole team. You need to get Regirock in and play the mixup of either going Exeggutor/Aerodactyl or clicking Thunder Wave, so that Gengar has to choose between Taunt or trying to hit the switch-in. If the opponent doesn't know the Regirock set, they will fear Rock moves and might risk a Wisp. If you do Thunder Wave it successfully then Exeggutor, Aerodactyl and (to a lesser extent) Flygon and Metagross can take it on. Otherwise Exeggutor can take any single hit from it and OHKO with Psychic.
The team has a lot of members that are weak to Fighting type moves and no solid resist, so naturally the fighters are a bad matchup.
Breloom is probably the hardest fighter to face because of Spore. Very annoying if it comes out before you know which of your pivots is important to keep awake. If you're in the position where you just need to guess a sleep sac, Regirock tends to be the best candidate.
Medicham puts a lot of pressure on the team by existing, but also has a tendency to barely miss KOs and die before it does much of anything. If it's in on Snorlax or Regirock, it's usually best to just boom to trade. If you don't fear Focus Punch, you can try your hand at Thunder Waving it first with Regirock too.
Heracross is very powerful and if it gets into Salac range you can be completely screwed. Usually, you boom its Substitute before it gets into Salac Berry range so that Aerodactyl can come in. There is a very real chance you just lose to it if it finds a good position. Megahorn can always miss though, so at least Exeggutor has a slight chance to beat it even if it does manage to get into Salac range.
Machamp can be a problem. Luckily it falls over if you Psychic or HP Fly it and it’s too slow to reliably find all the KOs they might hope to get. Machamp also doesn't get OHKOs against Regirock or Snorlax unless Cross Chop crits, who are its main target. Once again, you're pretty much forced to boom in this situation.
All in all, I’d say Breloom can pose the biggest threat because it can guarantee progress with sleep.
Outspeeds the team outside of sun and speed ties with Aerodactyl, spreads Thunder Wave and might just run HP Ice and/or Substitute to ruin your day. It does have to fear Snorlax and Regirock if they're healthy though.
Moltres can find a lot of entry points once they figure out that your sun setters aren’t running Rock Slide. Like the others, it doesn’t end the game on the spot, but it can be pretty hard to play against. Make sure not to pivot Flygon or Aerodactyl in on a potential Wisp. Just like with Gengar and Dusclops, it's usually worth trading a burn on Regirock for paralysis on Moltres.
Conclusion
All in all, I feel like this team has the tools to play just about any matchup. I encourage everyone to try and build sun offense for themselves. Things I’ve looked at that didn’t make the final cut were Registeel, Gengar, Shiftry, Victreebel and Weezing. I’m sure some people that are more experienced in tour can find ways for those to fit with about 10% of the effort it takes me. Gengar in particular can undoubtedly fit, but probably performs better on a build that brings Spikes. Registeel can take Snorlax’s, Regirock's or Metagross’ spot and things will work just about the same with a bit less direct offensive power. The firebirds and other Grass types probably also have potential, but I figured this particular team would become weak to opposing Aerodactyl far too quickly, so I haven’t looked at them extensively.
I’m not sure this can compete with Johnald’s SchnozKing stall, but dammit I tried my best.
(Placeholder - Will Update More Later) Phys-Spam Hyper Offense feat. Swordspass + 3xBoomers + 2xCB Disclaimers
* I think this team is pretty much a meme and doesn't hold a candle to some of the more well-thought out teams
(E.g., Johnald's / Spamon's / FJ2K's, and pretty much everything else up there).
* No offense to anyone who's religious, I came up with this team when I started playing ADV with a close IRL friend, and the nicknames aren't meant to disparage Christianity or anything like that, as he's pretty religious himself.
Overall Gameplan The concept pretty much revolves around aggressively trading down on Pokémon with Explosion and CB-spammers while you're up at least one Pokémon, and then clean-up against their fragmented defensive core. This team is not meant to be really played against metagames/players with high gar usage, as it is very weak to taunt+wisp gar, and gar in general. The team is also very much "surprise"-dependent; i.e., it works much better when your opponent doesn't know your team.
Best Case Scenario Flow 1. Optimally, against non-gar teams, you pretty much trade the Machamp in for whatever damage you can get for the first 1-2 turns and simply click Cross-Chop (barring a predicted Gengar switch). Losing Machamp right away in exchange for a chunk of your opponents health is a relatively good start for the team and isn't too much of a disadvantage. - (Sometimes against Lead Zapdos you still want to click cross-chop, since you make up for the damage in the case of a crit (1 stage increase per move), and they might just switch to Skarmory anyways if they predict rock slide).
2.A. At some point, you generally are fishing for an opening where Smeargle can safely come and Spore something slower than Smeargle to "virtually" be "up a pokemon". Best case scenario is you spore something slower that isn't natural cure, belly drum on their switch, and either E-Speed on Dugtrio (OHKOs), or Boom on a defensively invested phaser that is expecting baton pass (e.g., Skarmory or Suicune) - it's very scary for your opponent's skarmory to click protect on a 6+ Attack Baton-pass and generally isn't worth the risk if the opponent doesn't know your team. (This idea was taken from a celdanami replay I saw). This is generally the best method the team has to get advantage on trading down (when it works). The other advantage (if this all goes to plan w.r.t. the phasers - a big ask), is that it increases the odds of your Celebi actually getting off their swords-pass cleanly later in the game.
2.B. (alternatively) The next best thing is to just spore the defensive wall / phaser and belly drum + boom, but is slightly less preferable to the above.
3. generally use Lax to tank a couple special attacks, covering for the more valuable pokemon (e.g., Metagross, Aero), and booming pretty early. Sometimes it makes sense to switch this in against zapdos, saving your machamp for later.
4. Obviously, at some point you're fishing for a Swords-pass opening to a recipient in the form of either Aero or Meta and just sweeping outright. If you can, it's better to deploy Smeargle first before you click HP-Rock or Swords Dance on Celebi, since your opponent will know they can't both pass boosts per metagame rules, and it somewhat ruins the X-factor of the Smeargle set.
Other Minor Synergies Leech bi + Sub Aero This is pretty uncommon, but if you find yourself against boom spam + final-mon, you can leech and at least have the chance to sub-down and crit CM rest Suicune, as opposed to just losing outright. Same for Snorlax, but at that point you're kind of praying for a double crit.
Extra Notes * The Machamp is mostly an artifact from when I made the team last year, when lead Jynx SP-O was experiencing a small uptick; My friend wanted it to be a Slaking (i.e., Father; he wanted a "Normal-Type CB Spam" team), but it was too unsupported to be really playable (Hence Step-Father).
* If anyone has a suggestion for a better lead or EV optimizations, let me know in a DM.
to one of three recipients:
in the lead
+ pain split 
+ lead/salac 
