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So it looks like R Inanimate's record of 251 in Doubles (#19) points to a post in the Black & White Battle Subway thread. Looks like a mistake, that should probably be removed.
This is intended, that streak is one of the very oldest on the board and actually predates this thread (tl;dr board maintenance vacuum in the first little while of XY leading to Maison discussion happening in the Subway thread initially).
Aegislash is now 69 speed, down from 79 speed, after a mess involving a Lickilicky4: Iron Head miss into Lax Incense, EQ OHKO into blade form, explosion into Gliscor (which I survived, but was trying to sneak out an Agility so took a lot of damage; note that I don't end with a sub regardless, but also that a crit would OHKO without sub, so that's not great either), into panic. Third mon wasn't scary, but that could've been a problem. The big concern traditionally with dropping below 70 speed is electric attacks from Regice, but you don't really want to be sweeping with Aegislash against Veterans anyway, and even if you are you can either go to Gliscor and continue with the standard Regice plan from there, or (if low on subtect PP) risk para on Aegislash anyway because apparently anything that's left is even less threatening to Aegislash than non-SE Thunder (or more likely Thunderbolt) from a random Regice set.
The answer here is not a Speed cut, it's shuffling until either it booms or Earthquake is gone before it gets to that point. You shouldn't be risking that Lax Incense miss in the first place when you can just switch out of the telegraphed Earthquake and don't need to worry about Body Slam hax or Explosion either when you always have the option of switching Aegislash back into those. Plus, with the Speed cut you're actually forced to tank its Earthquakes no matter what now, and with a Lax Incense proc realistically putting you in crit range for a second Earthquake you're being forced out anyway at that point, meaning nothing has actually changed if the scenario you're trying to tweak around comes to pass--other than actually taking that Earthquake all the time regardless of whether it procs.
Yes of course giving up the Swords Dance boosts is not ideal, but I recall mentioning a few times (and I'm sure tobiuo has as well) that you should always be open to switching out a +6 Aegislash and that you can never trust it to be a game-winning setup. The whole thing with having two Earthquake immunities on the team is that that move is always a liability when the AI rolls up with it, not just in lead matchups, and unless Aegislash both outspeeds and OHKOes any followup Earthquake users then fighting them head-on rather than switching out is pretty much always (or maybe even actually always) a misplay; and if you can't switch Aegislash out on account of both Gyarados and Gliscor being gone already, then things went wrong way before that.
Eelektross is the interesting exception that will use a dangerous non-Earthquake move on Aegislash, but actually losing to it would be a very corner-case scenario (I think; of course with Toxic Gliscor it's less of a threat in my mind than it might be for others and I just don't have any real memories of having to make what felt like even medium-stakes decisions against it). Even if Gliscor has not activated its Toxic Orb yet to negate the risk altogether, Aegislash will still almost always beat it head-on between a still-huge KO chance plus enemy Protect spam usually letting it recover way back up before Eelektross will aim a direct hit into it in the first place. At the very least, I don't think any better odds you're giving yourself here will outweigh the risks you're now taking into Regice, or indeed into burn procs from Eelektross's Flamethrower that, like Lickilicky's Earthquake, you now are actually risking every single time and will all but checkmate Aegislash if they happen thanks to enemy Leftovers + Protect spam. Other reverse Speed targets like Tyranitar, Tangrowth, and Regirock are in the same category as Lickilicky where Intimidate shuffling or feeding them to Gliscor is just better regardless of Aegislash's Speed; all that to say, while you could deff say 71 versus 73 / 77 / 79 / 81 Speed may be preference based to an extent, I don't think Aegislash should ever go lower than that, and followup Earthquake users in general are not a risk for Aegislash as much as the AI giving you rope to hang it with.
Free turns against (ideally slower) Dragon Dance and Quiver Dance setup sweepers (most notably Volcarona4 and ambiguous Gyarados sets), meaning I can stall them dry (ideally even saving some subtect PP because of Sand Attack and not having to blindly subtect on boosting turns) and then fully set Gyarados against them.
This is nitpicking sorry but if you try stalling Volcarona it's gonna start launching massively boosted Bug Buzzes through Sub before it's out of attacking PP; take the following with a pinch of salt since I'm speaking off theory here, but Agility might actually work against you here as well when you're baiting it into the full six Quiver Dances much quicker with your now-perpetual Speed advantage, while I guess otherwise you might still get bailed out sometimes by misses plus not-yet-fully-boosted attacks, not that you should ever rely on that to begin with of course. Bulldoze is actually better here since it means your speed control will just kill Volcarona before it gets to that point in the first place. I don't actually know how good evasion / pseudo-evasion is at bailing you out here on account of no experience with evasion or pseudo-evasion, but at the very least this does not seem like the kind of skid I would wanna steer into.
@ the loss battle, this is gonna be speculation (and I don't actually remember my lead Froslass1234 run-ins, probably singular anyways and unfun to figure out way back when but I digress...) but those AI quirks aren't too hard to make sense of at least. Hex having boosted odds into a statused target such as Gliscor would track at least, and while this is more of a guess (since it's extremely rare for a generic priority move to actually be the strongest move on a set) Ice Shard dropping a little bit on the ladder into a naturally slower enemy would not be the weirdest thing out there I guess. I'm sure other people have a more specific answer here. And yes Avalanche's AI is a nightmare and you can never predict it with full confidence.
Early sub plus mega was probably the safest combination there. Yet another "why didn't I just hit the mega button" Marathon moment, I guess, though at least it wasn't multiple thousand battles in.
Don't ever early sub on Struggle fwiw, like you said if you do take the crit then it's 25% HP on both Pokemon down the drain for nothing and if you don't take the crit then no need to sub in the first place. You only ever sub on the final Struggle so that any potential crits are targeting the full-health Sub; if a crit Struggle can't break the Sub (like say Gengar) then you're good to do it on the turn the enemy dies, if a crit Struggle does break it (like here) then yes unfortunately you may have to actually do it on the turn before and have Gyarados deliver the final blow itself. Not a hard and fast rule since some rosters are nonthreatening enough to where you may be good to risk it, but in general keep in mind that +1 with Sub >>>>> +2 without, and this is a case where it can come into play.
The answer here is not a Speed cut, it's shuffling until either it booms or Earthquake is gone before it gets to that point. You shouldn't be risking that Lax Incense miss in the first place when you can just switch out of the telegraphed Earthquake and don't need to worry about Body Slam hax or Explosion either when you always have the option of switching Aegislash back into those. Plus, with the Speed cut you're actually forced to tank its Earthquakes no matter what now, and with a Lax Incense proc realistically putting you in crit range for a second Earthquake you're being forced out anyway at that point, meaning nothing has actually changed if the scenario you're trying to tweak around comes to pass--other than actually taking that Earthquake all the time regardless of whether it procs.
What specifically do you think the correct line is from here (Lickilicky4 backup against +6 Aegislash)? Intimidate switches into Gyarados (and Gliscor once if I don't have orb yet) until EQ's gone, then re-set Aegislash? I'm less worried about Explosion killing something and more worried about Explosion into the Aegislash switch, leaving me +0 Aegislash against unknown third mon (though I guess it's 3v1 at that point, so maybe I should be okay with that - worst case we sac Gyarados instead of setting it up at the end or something?). Underspeeding gives me a 90% chance of (damaged) +6 Aegislash against unknown backup, and makes the 10% miss chance not a complete disaster (though if I do miss I guess damaged +0 Aegislash against unknown third mon is worse than just switching immediately?). Anything in particular you'd be worried about as third mon?
I could definitely see switching out against generic EQ users like Tangrowth, which can't explode. Consistent Bouffalant (because Life Orb) still seems like an advantage, though, unless there's a better line into a Gyarados setup that I haven't found yet.
Eelektross vs Aegislash is probably fine, but the OHKO's not guaranteed and we have: +6 252+ Atk Aegislash-Blade Shadow Sneak vs. 252 HP / 0+ Def Eelektross: 183-216 (95.3 - 112.5%) -- 75% chance to OHKO
0 SpA Eelektross Flamethrower vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Aegislash-Blade: 120-142 (71.8 - 85%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
which is a bit sketchy (missed OHKO into burn or crit and we might have a bad day). Granted, sac'ing Aeg into the main plan of stalling dry with Gliscor by burning most of my Agility PP then partial setting Gyarados is probably good enough in that case. I think Aegislash still "wins" the 1v1 even after immediate burn (we're looking at 3HKOs on both sides and we can Sneak), but that's not a happy place to end up in against third mon.
That said, I think you're right that fast Aegislash is probably better than slow Aegislash against Eelektross4 assuming we started with enough health to tank a non-crit Flamethrower. Slow Aegislash has a 10% chance of a bad day from immediate burn. Fast Aegislash has a 0.25*(~0.15) = ~4% chance of a bad day.
This is nitpicking sorry but if you try stalling Volcarona it's gonna start launching massively boosted Bug Buzzes through Sub before it's out of attacking PP
tobiuo was concerned about this as well, but it ends up working fine in practice. For some reason that I don't fully understand, Volcarona uses Hurricane over Bug Buzz >95% of the time, and Gliscor can take a non-crit +6 Buzz anyway. (I suspect these are related, actually - I think it's using Hurricane because it sees a KO there. Don't remember when I was seeing Buzz randomly, but it might've been with Gliscor at lowish HP.) So you're almost always coming into Bug Buzz with Hurricane out of PP, -6 accuracy Volcarona, and full health Gliscor. Turns out you don't even have to count carefully either; if nothing weird happens, you burn 25 Gliscor PP before Buzz starts (precompute+addition is easier than counting!), at which point you start using Protect (every other turn is probably fine). Admittedly, it's not too uncommon to lose Gliscor here, but then: +6 0 SpA Volcarona Bug Buzz vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Aegislash-Shield on a critical hit: 69-81 (41.3 - 48.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
and we've got King's Shield, Leftovers, and -6 accuracy, so the odds of actually losing Aegislash to 3 back-to-back-to-back crits is tiny (I guess SpD drop chance exists, but still...), and even if every Buzz that isn't outright blocked hits and crits up to now that only leaves 2 Buzz PP to KO Gyarados (plus we could be playing for double King's Shield if things start looking bad). And then we get a full Gyarados setup with no burn risk from Flame Body (I clear with EQ, standard Marathon should just let it implode to struggle but that should be fine), as opposed to a partial Gyarados setup with reasonable burn risk.
TLDR: This works better than you'd think it should, feel free to test against a video and see for yourself. (I'd recommend a throwaway Gliscor with Rock Polish instead of Agility to avoid rebreeding, though maxing subtect PP is still probably necessary.)
Don't ever early sub on Struggle fwiw, like you said if you do take the crit then it's 25% HP on both Pokemon down the drain for nothing and if you don't take the crit then no need to sub in the first place.
To be fair, I think there are scenarios where early Struggle is the correct play, but they'd be when you're barely above a sub health threshold. If Gyarados has 50 HP instead of 79 HP on that turn, some version of early sub is definitely correct, since even without mega you're only about 12% to lose the sub to one of the Struggles critting while skipping early sub means you definitely end without a sub. At 91 HP early sub might also be correct just to preserve tactical re-sub options later if we lose the first sub, such as to crit Struggle (in case of something like backup Torterra4 - not sure if there's an analogous thing on Andrei's roster though), though I'm not actually sure there. At 79 HP early sub is sketchier, though I'm still slightly worried about losing Gyarados to hail chip from a backup like Snow Warning Abomasnow4 (which I guess I'm not beating at +2 anyway, so maybe not relevant, though maybe throwing Waterfalls from behind a sub and hoping for flinch is still good) or Snow Warning Aurorus into something possibly with Protect, or even manual Hail from something sashed or bulky (Glaceon3, Walrein3, Cryogonal4, Avalugg3) and the extra health post-sub could help there (admittedly, I didn't do that threat analysis during the battle and was just going off a vague sense of fear, but I think it's justified?). So I think even here I still stand by mega+early sub being the correct move there, but only because with mega at -5 the sub literally only breaks to double maxroll crit+non-crit, or double crit, and I think the odds of hail chip becoming a problem are bigger than the ~0.5% chance of losing that sub (but I like your tactical option of KOing it myself if the first Struggle crits into the sub then). Granted, I hadn't been counting Intimidates carefully, and if it's actually at, say, -3 then maybe mega+DD into non-early sub is better.
Yeah, I hate it, ava just always* has 5/16 to get +1 prio, SE has its own 50/50 +1 for being a SE move with high crit (and incidentally hilariously there's also a 50/50 to boost it to attack into defense boost, but not out of attack drops, so that doesn't apply but you'd think it should), so there's just always an 8%ish chance to get nailed on the Gliscor switch-in. It's not actually supposed to kill from -1 (-1 252+ Atk Avalugg-4 Avalanche vs. 220 HP / 0 Def Gliscor: 120-144 (67.4 - 80.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal) but I got crit by this t1 once and never did it again lol
*there's some jank to deprio it for some conditions that might stop you from attacking, notably it doesn't give a shit about your speed
Yeah, sendout AI doesn't know much about special mechanics (even stab), it's working strictly with type-adjusted BP with most variable powers treated as 60.
No, it does and Hex correctly calcs more damage, it's just that both Hex gets a *chance* to get extra prio when attacking into a statused target *and* Ice Shard gets a *chance* to get extra prio when 4x SE. It's supposed to be about 79:21 to get Hex vs Ice Shard in this matchup.
What specifically do you think the correct line is from here (Lickilicky4 backup against +6 Aegislash)? Intimidate switches into Gyarados (and Gliscor once if I don't have orb yet) until EQ's gone, then re-set Aegislash? I'm less worried about Explosion killing something and more worried about Explosion into the Aegislash switch, leaving me +0 Aegislash against unknown third mon (though I guess it's 3v1 at that point, so maybe I should be okay with that - worst case we sac Gyarados instead of setting it up at the end or something?).
yeah the thing is it's frequently "safe" to have to sac aegi into a 3v1 because things mostly fall into the categories (a) things that you can switch out of aegi on, (b) things that you'd normally bring aegi in on and then set up because you can't switch aegi out, (c) things you wouldn't normally bring aegi in on that you'd normally get glis safely in on by switching from gyara, but you have aegi out on and now it has to die to get glis in safely. (c) becomes a non-problem in a 3v1. (There are some edge cases, but in a 3v1 you can kind of just throw bodies at a lot of problems.)
For some reason that I don't fully understand, Volcarona uses Hurricane over Bug Buzz >95% of the time, and Gliscor can take a non-crit +6 Buzz anyway. (I suspect these are related, actually - I think it's using Hurricane because it sees a KO there. Don't remember when I was seeing Buzz randomly, but it might've been with Gliscor at lowish HP.)
Yeah, +6 0 SpA Volcarona-4 Hurricane vs. 204 HP / 228+ SpD Gliscor: 188-222 (106.8 - 126.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO, which is something like 10% to see Buzz when HW has no pp, but after that you still have to facetank all the buzzes?? Like, yeah, -6 accuracy means your chances of getting crit are low, but you die to like "any" crit (~1/55 from full) and decent number of sequence of "b2b" hits with 0-2 misses in between?
That said, I think you're right that fast Aegislash is probably better than slow Aegislash against Eelektross4 assuming we started with enough health to tank a non-crit Flamethrower. Slow Aegislash has a 10% chance of a bad day from immediate burn. Fast Aegislash has a 0.25*(~0.15) = ~4% chance of a bad day.
so this is funny but you actually head here because even though the calc is lower you can just flinch it, it doesn't matter anyway because if you die you just go glis and stall everything and go +3 gyara
Yeah, I hate it, ava just always* has 5/16 to get +1 prio, SE has its own 50/50 +1 for being a SE move with high crit (and incidentally hilariously there's also a 50/50 to boost it to attack into defense boost, but not out of attack drops, so that doesn't apply but you'd think it should), so there's just always an 8%ish chance to get nailed on the Gliscor switch-in.
Alright, you sound like you know what you're talking about here, and I definitely don't. Are there any resources on how the AI works (both in general and for move-specific stuff like this)? Pretty sure this is at least one level past Bulbapedia, and I don't think there's anything detailed in the links in the initial post.
Yeah, +6 0 SpA Volcarona-4 Hurricane vs. 204 HP / 228+ SpD Gliscor: 188-222 (106.8 - 126.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO, which is something like 10% to see Buzz when HW has no pp, but after that you still have to facetank all the buzzes?? Like, yeah, -6 accuracy means your chances of getting crit are low, but you die to like "any" crit (~1/55 from full) and decent number of sequence of "b2b" hits with 0-2 misses in between?
Yes, Gliscor sometimes dies here. That's fine. The win condition here isn't "keep everyone alive", it's "keep Gyarados alive against a Volcarona that only has Quiver Dance left". If you're counting correctly (which is easy, just subtract Gliscor's used PP), you can protect every other Buzz starting with the first one, so Volcarona only has 4 Buzzes to kill Gliscor and Aegislash in order to have any Buzz PP left to use against Gyarados. In particular, against Aegislash, we have: +6 0 SpA Volcarona Bug Buzz vs. 252 HP / 4 SpD Aegislash-Shield: 46-54 (27.5 - 32.3%) -- guaranteed 4HKO
and that's not counting Leftovers (plus more Leftovers on King's Shield turns). 2 non-crits on Gliscor isn't even a concern since that doesn't leave enough PP to reasonably get past Aegislash.
Running some quick and dirty numbers, Aegislash can technically die in 2 hits, but both need to crit, the first one needs to SpD drop, and the damage rolls need to be roughly average (maxroll crits are 81 then 121 so 202 damage total; you have effectively 187 HP given 2 turns of Leftovers). This is stupidly unlikely (1/16*1/16*1/10*1/2 is about 0.05%, and that's before accounting for Buzzes actually hitting and getting through Gliscor, which is either 1/81 for 4 hits or about 1/6 for 3 hits and 1/16 for a crit on Gliscor, so in the end it's more like 0.001% that this is a problem). Otherwise, Aegislash dies to 3+ Buzz hits, so for Gyarados to even be threatened the first 4 Buzzes all have to hit through -6 accuracy (1/3 chance each, so 1/81 total), the first one has to crit Gliscor (1/16), and then Aegislash actually has to die to 3 Buzzes so we're looking at either a SpD drop immediately (10%) or some combination of 2 crits and/or SpD drop on second attack (~5%), which comes out to about 0.01%. And all of this is before considering that if you're really scared you can even try playing for double protects, since you don't have anything better to be doing with those turns or PP anyway, but that's some ugly math that I don't care to figure out.
So you're looking at about a 1/10000 chance that Gyarados is even in danger, which should be more than good enough for our purposes. For what it's worth, in my testing (which was obviously well under 10000 tries), I've never even lost Aegislash to 5 Buzzes (though I've definitely lost Gliscor sometimes). Even if Gyarados does somehow end up in danger, there's only 2 Buzz PP left, there's a 4/9 chance they both miss, it's 6/16 that a single non-crit leaves you with enough HP to sub, and you only outright die to 2 hits or a crit.
Assuming Gyarados doesn't take any damage before struggle, crit struggle does 25 damage max, which notably does not break sub, so you'll always end up at non-mega +6 and sub with some spare health in case of chip damage even when you let it struggle to death to avoid potential Flame Body because you're not running EQ on Gyarados (which I do, but probably shouldn't). This should be game-winning (unless there's more stuff to be afraid of than Accelgor4 or egregious misplay? I guess maybe Static or Effect Spore (or with EQ, something like a Leafeon4 or Exeggutor4, which could happen from AB pool so maybe I do need to be less aggressive here?).).
It still feels like this line is better than throwing a Waterfall at Volcarona and risking something like a 10% burn chance from Flame Body, and either way facing an unknown un-Intimidated backup (though with Aegislash and Gliscor completely fresh). Either way, both lines are probably good enough to not be too concerned?
Putting on my mad scientist hat (something something Gyarados ate the lab coat...) I decided to try some teambuilding.
I suck at teambuilding.
Theory: Marathon isn't a specific team as much as a mindset. We want to PP stall the lead until it can't hurt us, set up a sweeper, and sweep the backups. Sure, the Gyarados+Aegislash+Gliscor team seems to be the best way to do it, but it's not the only way (see the Salamence version, tobiuo's Masquerain runs, Kangliscune on a bad day). Can we do better?
I'm pretty sure Gliscor is irreplaceable here. It stalls basically everything with subtect, Breloom sucks (mostly because it's slower and less defensive), and nothing else can really do that (TODO maybe Aqua Ring nonsense like Tentacruel (which is faster than Gliscor!) or Regenerator Alomamola but this feels stupidly slow and expensive). So we've got our first team member. Now we need to deal with whatever Gliscor can't stall, and we need a sweeper.
Gliscor only has a few potential problems. Multi-hit moves (curse+rock blast killed a streak pre-40 but doesn't seem to be a thing after that), setup sweepers with too much PP to subtect (Salamence2 killed a streak pre-40 but should be pretty rare after that), and things that outrun and KO it before it can get subtect going. Gliscor's fairly fast and pretty defensive; outside of a few crazy strong attacks like Tyrantrum4 Head Smash (which we can outrun), we probably only have to worry about fast water and ice moves. The obvious choice seems to be a bulky water type. I'm not sure why everyone defaulted to Aegislash (I'm guessing mostly as a switch-in to Tyrantrum4 Head Smash).
Alright, so which bulky water and sweeper do we want? Clearly the best answer is something like Suicune (bulky, pressure, generally solid all around) and Mega Kangaskhan (multi-hit to get past sturdy/sash). But we've got two problems here: First, it's been done already (and "Kangliscune but every day is a bad day" probably isn't comparatively great as a team), and second with the GTS no longer available I have no way to trade between games so I'm limited to a single-cart team.
So thinking through what bulky water options I have available in Y (because there's no Gliscor in ORAS), I'm realizing I don't have a ton of great options. No Suicune, no Milotic. Lapras exists and probably doesn't suck. OTOH, regenerator Slowbro also exists and sounds fun to use, especially since the typical gameplan is to either stall everything with Gliscor or switch-stall scary moves with the bulky water (regenerator value!) and then stall everything else with Gliscor.
And then I picked a sweeper that looked fun. I kept the "flier behind a sub" idea. Sub is important; EQ immunity is convenient but not necessary. Intimidate is overrated since double crit KOing Gliscor doesn't care about Attack drops. Fun is essential.
Gliscor leads because I don't have Intimidate, and being able to Protect to guarantee Toxic Orb activates is useful against stuff like Absol4; also, not having to take an attack on switch-in, then another attack before the first Agility/Sub against stuff like Togekiss4 is nice.
This is the same pacifist Gliscor moveset I've been messing around with in standard Marathon. I'm strongly considering switching to Bulldoze and possibly Double Team as in tobiuo's version of Marathon, which would require me to get comfortable with how Bulldoze interacts with stuff like Volcarona4, accept the fact that there's stuff like Raikou1 we no longer get to stall out, etc, but would deal with a key threat I'll get to later.
204 HP EVs hits a final HP of 176 for maximum PH recovery (I do not see a scenario where being able to make an eighth consecutive sub is useful). 124 Spe EVs hits a final Speed of 131 to outrun Feraligatr4. This does lead to a few speed ties, but with Agility we don't care too much and I didn't want to go all the way to 134 Speed to avoid them. (Amusingly, if one did want to do that, you'd be at the point where Jolly nature gets you one more stat point than Careful would; with my current Speed, you'd overmax SpD EVs.) Remaining EVs are in SpD since Def is fairly solid.
I see your Team Growl and I raise you... whatever this set is, I guess. Regenerator is good for switch-stall. Yawn lets us safely trigger Regenerator if needed (it's effectively Slack Off, except it takes twice as long and heals half as much, which is obviously a good thing). Surf over Scald because Talonflame must die and burn prevents effective stalling on everything else.
116 SpA EVs let us OHKO Talonflame4 with Surf; remaining EVs go in HP and Def to maximize overall bulk (and in particular, maximize our chances of surviving a Talonflame4 +2 Brave Bird crit). I'm strongly considering re-EVing to 244 HP / 252 Def / 12 SpD, which guarantees we survive either a +2 crit or +4 non-crit Brave Bird and KO it with recoil; I'd need to check AI tendencies there to see if that's good, but I think I prefer no SpA investment as the plan. Minimum Speed gives us a Speed of 31, which outslows almost everything.
Because it's fun. And to build a better moth! (Honestly, it's probably a luckier one more than anything else; tobiuo's second Masquerain streak-ender was an incredibly unlucky matchup, and my Vivillon streak should've ended four times over to Chandelure4 alone.)
Compound Eyes + Wide Lens gives Sleep Powder and Hurricane perfect accuracy (note that Hurricane loses accuracy in sun, though!). Fast psuedo-Spore is amazing. QD and Sub are obligatory setup moves. Once we're set up, we tend to stay in; the plan is to Sleep Powder anything that might survive a Hurricane and isn't immune to Sleep Powder and if needed hope for a free turn to re-Sub. If we're worried, we might even Sleep Powder into Chesto/Lum, sac our sub, sleep them again, and then aim to resub. The limiting factor here is having enough HP to keep resubbing (we have 155 total, which allows 4 subs). Leftovers would've been really cool here, but we need Wide Lens for the accuracy.
Maximum SpA because our sweeper needs to hit as hard as possible. 12 Spe EVs reach 111 Spe, which outruns Roserade4. It also outruns (Contrary) Serperior4 after one boost, which might be relevant if Gliscor takes a crit Leaf Storm. Remaining EVs in Def because it's lower than HP and our priority is facetanking struggles. Which is surprisingly hard because our base stats are awful.
The main plan is to stall the opponent down to Struggle, at which point we farm them for free turns. We forcibly keep them alive with Slowbro's Heal Pulse while Growling them down to -6 and possibly Yawning to buy some free turns, then heal them to full, Yawn, Heal Pulse (leaving them full health and asleep; this is why outslowing with Slowbro is good), switch to Vivillon on the guaranteed sleep turn, then QD up as much as we can, resleeping as necessary. We're guaranteed one QD before they wake up, which outruns most stuff, and a second QD outruns almost everything (up to Scarfed Darmanitan4). This usually ends with +6 Vivillon behind a sub, which then OHKOs most backups and frauds its way through the rest with Sleep Powder. Growl is important against stuff like: 252+ Atk Choice Band Tyrantrum Struggle vs. 0 HP / 244 Def Vivillon: 54-64 (34.8 - 41.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
which would be really embarrassing to lose Vivillon to and we don't want to lose time KOing it ourselves, so we Growl it down to something manageable and either hope it doesn't crit or have Vivillon lose some turns replacing Subs as we go.
Overall, this is not a good team, and I'm open to suggestions. Not having a second setup sweeper in Aegislash and committing most of Slowbro's moveset to farming struggle turns limits the available options mid-battle, but this might not be that much of a bad thing. Vivillon doesn't add consistent value to the team compared to any other sweeper (contrast to Gyarados, whose typing lets it handle stuff like Chandelure and Talonflame even unboosted; Vivillon is squishy enough that I don't even want to send it in if I don't have a safe setup), though it is fun to use and basically nothing forces it out once it's set up. Several probable losses got saved by Vivillon, but this is obviously unreliable and it'd be preferable to just not get in the ugly situations in the first place.
I'm also mildly curious if this team would do well back in the Gen V Battle Subway with a different sweeper. No Talonflame, no Infiltrator Chandelure, no Greninja, I didn't bother putting a Mega on this team, Gliscor and Slowbro are unchanged, and Substitute is better. Curse+rock blast can probably be growled down. OTOH, double-damage crits are scary.
Infiltrator Chandelure4. We can't beat it with Slowbro (with no boosts, Surf and Shadow Ball both 2HKO but Chandelure is faster; if CM on the switch, Slowbro loses even harder). Best plan is Protect (to prevent burn risk), spam Sand Attack, when Gliscor's about to die use Sub (Protect first if needed) and hope for not Infiltrator. When it is in fact Infiltrator, go to Slowbro; the best case is the first Shadow Ball misses and we Yawn, then the second Ball hits and Vivillon gets in for free. If that doesn't happen, whatever, it was basically Vivillon or bust from here anyway. Goal is to get Vivillon one more boost than Chandelure, at which point Hurricane is a 2HKO; don't waste time with Sub because Infiltrator; try to sneak one in on the first backup. This works because Vivillon apparently dodges all the Heat Waves! (Which is only 1-2 because of Sleep Powder, but still, each one is a coinflip, so that's really bad.)
Infiltrator Chandelure4. Are we sure it's 1/3 for HAs? Same idea as before (and by now I've worked out health ranges better)
Non-infiltrator Chandelure4. Which is only scary until I find out it's not Infiltrator. I saw maybe 2 of these though. Definitely more Infiltrator than not, though at these numbers it's presumably just bad luck, counteracted by Vivillon getting lucky and dodging Heat Waves.
Exploud4 into Drapion4. I don't have a great answer for Exploud4; the best I have is switch-stalling with Gliscor and Slowbro, using Protect every time; this burns 6 Protects and Exploud4 implodes to Life Orb against Slowbro, but my team is mostly healthy. Backup Drapion4 then uses Swords Dance as I go back to Gliscor to stall it. Sand Attack works (no Keen Eye, thankfully), and I technically survive this, but it costs me literally all the subtect PP and then hoping Gliscor doesn't die before the attacks run out. Marathon has Aegislash to switch-stall Cross Poison+EQ; this team has Gliscor's face (and maybe Slowbro's face), which is a worse plan. I'm considering re-EVing Vivillon to outrun this with Subs as a backup plan if things get close.
Absol4. Gliscor's already in, which is nice, but Sub makes it hard to find a good way to stall it out. If I do nothing, which I did here, I'm fine only if I can clear the sub on the first Struggle turn (usually I can go to Slowbro on the second Struggle turn and have time to heal them up, but here Absol's down health from the Sub and I need to clear the Sub before I can use Heal Pulse), and this requires careful counting. I hadn't been counting, so Absol implodes to Struggle damage. Backup is Chandelure4. Infiltrator. Vivillon continues dodging Heat Waves. Nothing makes sense anymore. Luckiest moth ever.
Starmie4. Plan is to switch-stall Ice Beam, Thunderbolt, and a bit of Surf between Gliscor+Slowbro. This works, but Slowbro gets frozen. And stays frozen. And I can't yawn-switch to heal because I'm frozen, even though I'm only taking Surf and Psychic and can live for a good chunk of time. Eventually, I sac Gliscor (I think this was Analytic Surf, didn't save the video), then Slowbro still doesn't thaw before it dies, at which point I set Vivillon to +2 and pray.
Moltres3. First turn Protect due to set ambiguity (burn from Moltres4 Heat Wave would be bad) as it uses Sunny Day. I survive anything short of an above-average crit Flamethrower, and from past experience I don't trust it to not randomly Solar Beam instead (if I did, I could switch-stall it with Gliscor, but sunny beam sets tend to get overly excited by sun and use beam randomly). Naturally, I take an above-average crit Flamethrower. I sac Slowbro to get a Yawn (Solar Beam is a 2HKO, and thankfully the first one doesn't crit Slowbro, so Vivillon gets in for free before the first sleep turn), sub, set to +2, and sweep the backups, but it's scary.
Greninja4. My zeroth thought (during teambuilding) was Slowbro's Psychic typing is a problem for Froslass4 and Greninja4, but Regenerator seemed fun, switch-stall seemed viable, and I didn't have any better ideas. Having successfully switch-stalled a Froslass4, I assumed I'd be fine. Greninja4 hits harder (higher base SpA and Modest; apparently even my Vivillon hits harder than a Froslass, which is crazy to me), to the point where if Gliscor takes a crit anywhere in the switch-stall process (not too unlikely), it will bleed out too much HP before Dark Pulse gets stalled out. There's also the chance that Slowbro takes a random Dark Pulse after Blizzard and Hydro Pump are gone, which doesn't OHKO (unless it crits) but it's close. Gliscor takes a crit fairly early, Slowbro took a random Dark Pulse before so I couldn't even try to sac it for a Yawn. Vivillon tanked a hit, slept Greninja, boosted to +2, KO'd, and swept the backups. Wondering if I should sac Gliscor to the last Hydro Pump to force the Yawn if I've been crit before then.
Volcarona4. It came up maybe three times (including twice in a row!), and the standard plan of maintaining Speed advantage and/or Sub, sanding it down before Bug Buzz, and then hoping to facetank +6 SpA -6 accuracy Bug Buzzes with Gliscor and Protect worked. Unfortunately, I don't have an Aegislash as backup, so losing Gliscor is significantly more concerning here, and Vivillon needs 3 QDs before it can survive a Bug Buzz with enough health to sub afterwards. Bulldoze might actually be better here. Due to inattention strategic genius I once lost Gliscor to a Hurricane, getting to an interesting spot where once Vivillon gets an initial Sub, -6 accuracy Volcarona is now using Hurricane which can be blocked by Subs and Vivillon can probably set up. This has the downside of requiring Vivillon to dodge the first Hurricane to get that first Sub though. I suspect this is just worse than trying to facetank Buzzes on Gliscor.
Skarmory4. Haven't actually seen it as a lead, not sure what I'd do about it. My tentative plan is to throw Vivillon Hurricanes at it until Vivillon dies, switch-stall it with Gliscor+Slowbro, and then carry an Agility and Sub on Gliscor as it implodes to Struggle, leaving me to stall two backups with a mostly-fresh Gliscor and Slowbro but with hazards up. Not a great plan, but it might work. The alternative is to throw Slowbro at it, but if Slowbro gets poisoned and Vivillon dies to rocks+Whirlwind things look a lot worse. Ideally I'd sac both Gliscor and Slowbro, then sub with Vivillon and sweep, but I don't think I can manage that before Vivillon dies to Whirlwind+rocks (in fact, I don't think I can get Gliscor to die at all!).
Dragonite4 Dragon Rush turn 1 flinch preventing Agility. There's still plays from here (Growl, some switch-stall), but it's scary
Latios234 Draco Meteor crit
Mismagius34 set ambiguity into Mismagius3 Icy Wind crit OHKOing Gliscor, because perish trap is scarier
Weavile4 taunt switch-stall is probably okay but always feels sketchy
Yanmega4; haven't seen Tinted Lens yet but that seems scary
Froslass4 consecutive Shadow Balls (or a single highroll crit) into Slowbro during the switch-stall, despite Gliscor being low enough that Icy Wind should be a guaranteed KO. Hasn't been a problem yet, but scares me every time
Contrary Serperior4 Leaf Storm crit OHKO into Gliscor preventing Agility
Braviary34. These are less scary without Intimidate because we haven't triggered Defiant, and they can't KO anything if I play defensively, but the real concern is they eat a lot of subtect, then die to recoil, making backups scary. Braviary4 can reasonably be healed up with Slowbro especially after Superpower (moves get random because of Giga Impact, also Giga Impact crit OHKOs Slowbro, so that's concerning); Braviary3 probably just has to implode.
Virizion1 with Taunt and Leaf Blade, since I don't want Leaf Blade going into Slowbro
Tornadus, but the scariest ones are actually Tornadus14; Tornadus2 can be imploded by Struggle recoil if I'm worried about running out of Hurricane
Talonflame3, because on seeing Swords Dance I have to Surf it as if it's Talonflame4, but then sash goes off and it suddenly has full-power Flail and Acrobatics possibly with priority. Ironically, lower-power Surf might help here.
Another Infiltrator Chandelure4. This alone probably justifies running Bulldoze on Gliscor. Bulldoze is a 3HKO; Heat Wave is as well, but Gliscor's faster. I still have to Protect on turn 1, so it could CM then, but otherwise I'll win the 1v1. Chandelure doing exactly CM then Heat Wave is a problem, and if I see that it's probably Sub and pray for no Infiltrator, since I've burned too many turns to reasonably fraud from here with sand. Downside of running Bulldoze over Agility is I can no longer stall stuff like Raikou1, and I don't (currently) have enough experience with this to trust Feraligatr4 and Volcarona4 to behave
Perish trapping. Gliscor outruns, and Substitute (but NOT Protect) blocks Block and Mean Look (but doesn't let us escape once they've been used, unlike partial-trapping moves like Shuckle's Wrap). Rough idea is to switch out on perish count 2, then go back to Gliscor, reset the fight, and hope for no Infiltrator Chandelure4. This risks Lapras4 Body Slam paralysis into Slowbro, which is annoying for future stalling, but it's not a disaster.
Trick Room. Slowbro is slower than all setters (except Dusknoir2), and slower TR setters tend to immediately un-set TR on seeing Slowbro, which is silly and bad and leads to fairly easy stalls.
Unaware Quagsire4. Trick is to start with Slowbro Growling it to -6, then optionally sand it with Gliscor or something; this lets us implode it with Struggle recoil rather than spamming Hurricane and hoping for 2 crits and/or a lot of confusion self-hits. DO NOT stall with Gliscor immediately, as we can't safely get Slowbro in after identifying Unaware because then we're taking +6 EQs, and we don't want to take +6 Struggles either.
Registeel1. Trick is to bait rest with Surf (we have spare Surf PP, it's fine), then ~8HKO it with Hurricane, which looks really silly but it works. DO NOT just spam Hurricane into Rest or we get stalled out. Growl probably gets blocked by Clear Body, so we don't want to implode it to +6 struggle recoil because that hurts
Shadow Tag Gothitelle. Gliscor just implodes it to Struggle recoil, and we've got enough Agility PP that it's mostly fine; carry Agility and a sub
Thundurus3 U-Turn. Apparently it starts with useless Sky Drop on Gliscor, allowing me to sand it to -6. I can then switch in Vivillon to take another useless Sky Drop, then Sleep Powder on the release turn and Sub on the sleep turn and start QDing. If the sub doesn't immediately die (requires min-length sleep plus Wild Charge hitting through -6 accuracy), I reach 2 QDs and outrun, and can then probably set to full through -6 accuracy Wild Charge since I can reactively resleep whenever it wakes up, then resub whenever sub breaks. If the sub does die after the first QD, I can just go back to Gliscor and try again (though after the second time I probably just give up to preserve Vivillon health, especially as Sky Drop is likely low on PP).
Lost at battle 372 to my fourth Infiltrator Chandelure4. Vivillon can't keep dodging forever, apparently.
