Hello and welcome to my first RMT of gen 8 UU. With Terrakion being suspected and likely leaving the tier within a few weeks I wanted to share a team that’s been working out well for me. Chances are you’ve run into this team if you’ve played in any UU room tours or laddered at unholy hours of night or been fortunate enough to have been paired against me in a tour, etc etc. This has been a gen with a lot of ups and downs to say the least, but I think at this point this thoroughly encrusted boomer has it down enough to write a semi-coherent post about a team that has been performing well both in tournament and ladder settings.
It’s been a difficult road getting into gen 8 UU and honestly for a long time I wasn’t up to the challenge, but thanks to coronavirus I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands, and, well, here we are. If you know me at all you’ll know I like to complain far far more than I enjoy actually playing the game, so it is to the surprise of everyone including myself that I have gotten it together enough to learn the tier and achieve what in my probably faulty opinion is a reasonable amount of success with the team.
Before we get into the team I can't help but go off on a lil rant about the state of Pokemon in generation 8. The meta could not feel more different from gen 7 uu, it's basically at this point a lite version of gen 7 ou with some added bullshittery in the form of terrain spam (which I am as guilty as everyone else in abusing), new roided up regen pivots, lack of zmoves giving bulkier team styles an irritating level of consistency, in addition to a buncha other smaller things that just make the playing and building experience entirely different to the point that the skills that I honed for the better part of three years last gen feel mostly irrelevant in today's meta. Part of that I think is due to what I feel is less room for creativity in the tier nowadays (yes I know I sound like every Gen 1 elitist saying this but it's true that the higher level of power in the tier makes it more difficult to innovate and make off-meta shit work etc) and sticking to the shit that works remains as important as ever.
Obviously I also think pushing against the mold of the tier applies to a lot of things not just desperately searching for niches in unmons lmao. Labbing sets/spreads together and just generally following what you know > the norm does a lot for you and potentially the tier, and it's just something I personally value a lot in builders. Realistically there's a balance of the two required, obviously it's better to have general meta knowledge than not... preferably a lil falls under "what you know". This is where I start to ramble about check-box builders though, check-box builders are what I call the people who build too heavily based upon an imaginary check-box that is unique to whatever tier they're building. A lot of tiers overlap in these cases, stuff like steel types, ground types, rockers/speed control obviously, aren't unique to one or two tiers. The imaginary check-box obviously plays a role in building, a decently sized one at that, check-box builders are the people I consider to rely too heavily upon it or think that's what building ultimately is. Over the years of being in countless team chats and being a nerd talking about mons w/ people I've always found it impressive seeing the best players seemingly (at times) have a better grasp on a meta almost instantaneously over somewhat newer users even if they're like diehard mains of whatever tier, it's just because they have better building fundamentals and a better understanding of pokemon in general.
So, this team actually somewhat stemmed from an older webs team from around the time UU snake started, I will include a replay or two of that team at the bottom.
Fitting a rocker and a webber in two separate slots is honestly probably ideal so you don't have to use smth like Indeedee but it also feels unfortunate in the builder and in practice, a lot of the time you're gonna find yourself feeling like rocks are beneficial but if you get the turn right and click the right attacking move it'd be a little more beneficial and it's like eh. Either way I ended up going with Indeedee after some thought, Indeedee at a glance felt pretty anti-meta, I mean I've heard some Indeedee slander recently and I don't really understand it, Indeedee's benefits for itself and the team on psy terrain are obvious with it's unique typing, high dmg output, and access to Psychic Surge to act as Defog fodder.
I remember having a discussion with roamer about Band Krook on psy terrain and how potentially obnoxious it'd be like quite a while back. I felt like Indeedee inevitably getting rkilled by dark types could give Krook solid opportunities setup, I also think it can act as an early breaker to heavily heavily chip some faster threats like Salamence and put one or two things in a body bag for free which has obvious merits on a team filled with breakers and sweepers.
Zeraora with psy terrain up is extremely potent since it stops big bad Terrakion from being a soft check to any degree as well as a reliable rkiller, which is a big deal. It can also blanket pivot into a lot of things at least once, things like Amoonguss, Celesteela, Skarmory, etc. can be really annoying for offenses if you don't have a super direct way of dealing with them but are generally overwhelmed by aggressive play. I think this thing is especially good at setting Indeedee and Krookodile up for success, it chips dragons extremely well and abuses oncoming Slowking for setup opportunities. If you're looking for something more traditional for psy terrain and more oomph you can go a chandy route for sure and this would still be neato I think.
Polteageist feels disgusting on webs, the normal immunity is vital so Blissey doesn't just straight up massacre you, it obviously isn't a hard answer to any extent but this + prio makes Blissey not feel like an auto loss to any degree which is a big deal since the nature of HO is usually just getting cyberfucked by smth with that speed tier and coverage + boots. This thing's damage output is honestly stupid and it's speed tier feels like it was made with webs in mind in the context of this tier. Outpacing Palpitoad is fuckin huge.
Moltres-Galar is the second dark type and feels pretty great within the context of the rest of the team. It benefits greatly from Indeedee + Krook breaking down it's checks for it and being able to reliably rkill Terrakion is huge here. More setup the better, the dark typing is pretty good to help the zam/mew mu as well as random non-fairy types and all that. Goltres's typing by nature usually means it can stomach at least one hit from non fire type moves if it needs to, obviously depends.
Terrakion with psy terrain up is extremely potent since it stops big bad Zeraora from being a soft check to any degree as well as a reliable rkiller, which is a big deal. It can also blanket pivot into a lot of things at least once, things like Amoonguss, Celesteela, Skarmory, etc. can be really annoying for offenses if you don't have a super direct way of dealing with them but are generally overwhelmed by aggressive play. I think this thing is especially good at setting Indeedee and Krookodile up for success, it chips dragons extremely well and abuses oncoming Slowking for setup opportunities. If you're looking for something more traditional for psy terrain and more oomph you can go a chandy route for sure and this would still be neato I think.
Shoutouts
vivalospride - I bet you're upset you're below fuma and pif eh
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