According to serebii.com Ezra doesnt have the scarf-Heatran, so you dont need to worry about that. Congrats to that streak! I was sure in Unburden lies serious potential; probably that was after i saw your first attempt with it.
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Battle Tree Discussion and Records
- Thread starter Eisenherz
- Start date
I think Serebii's trainer lookup is missing some set 4s because Ezra and Christian can both have all four Heatran sets. Also thank you! I always had a feeling it had the potential too, and I'm glad it was able to get there.
Does the AI take terrain into account in damage calculations? For example, will latios prefer to use Draco Meteor (130 BP) or Psychic (90*1,5=135) against a regigigas?
While not really possible to "prove" it, anecdotal experience definitely shows it's the case.
The Ai doesn't use priority moves with Psychic terrain, doesn't use Status with misty terrain (aside from rare cases, I think Levitate mons and swagger/flatter tend to not register the terrain presence), but when it comes to damage moves it's accepted to use weighted rolls skewed in favor of 1hkos.
Thus if you grant it a 1hko with your electric terrain, the AI will generally attempt to thunderbolt your face.
Well that's why I said "weighted roll skewed" :P
I'm very much in an experimental phase and have begun to utilize the VGC finalists' teams from last year in an effort to max out my BP count in UM (also, as a way to pay my small tribute to them all, as I honestly wonder whether any of them will show up to the big dance this year, given how vastly different the meta's going to be). So, I'm rolling with these and will hopefully be able to update with any significant progress later.
For those interested in joining me on this ridiculous journey: VGC 18 World Championships Finalists' Team Dump (links to QRs are within the individual Pokepastes).
For those who won't be joining me: after looking at the Pokepastes, if you were forced to use one of these teams for Tree-climbing, gun-to-your-head-style, which would you consider using for this purpose?
For those interested in joining me on this ridiculous journey: VGC 18 World Championships Finalists' Team Dump (links to QRs are within the individual Pokepastes).
For those who won't be joining me: after looking at the Pokepastes, if you were forced to use one of these teams for Tree-climbing, gun-to-your-head-style, which would you consider using for this purpose?
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Paul Ruiz, no doubt. Double intimidate, fake out, setup opportunities, several win conditions, high immediate damage, fast modes and slow modes, recovery, natural bulk, special/physical split - I don't think you'll find many VGC teams better suited for the tree than his.
However, if I were you, I'd try the junior full trick room team, that seems so fun to play.
However, if I were you, I'd try the junior full trick room team, that seems so fun to play.
As it turns out, I tried Sota's team first: the structure demands that the team used be (setter)/Snorlax/MegaWile/Pelipper, but that means you're forced to carry a stunted Return on the team (the whole "QR Return/Frustration is a no-no" dealie). Because of that, Snorlax can only really deal damage with EQ...and since neither the setter (I used Dusclops) nor MegaWile carry Protect, chances to do even that are fairly limited. I tried and got only to 38 wins and Ferrothorn2 just grinded me down. Everyone, do yourselves a favor and make sure all of your teams carry some way to deal with all Ferrothorn.
Using Wonn's team has served better results so far: no matter the era, TerraCott in facilities has its place, even if no Wide Lens on Terrakion means that that place is an unstable one. With Soulblaze and MegaGar bringing up the rear, I have a powerful squad in place with Whimsicott as the centerpiece, since it can support every other team member with each of its moves and each other member has a "designated" support move it clearly benefits from. It makes decision-making with Whimsicott pretty easy. As MegaPunny streaks on here have shown, Encore also has its uses (locking Stealth Rock throwers into uselessness never stops being funny). At 63 wins with it, currently...
I appreciate both of you giving Paul's team such props, btw...not because he's a Champ, but because everyone acknowledging a fellow Ecuadorian's greatness is fucking cool.
(side note: if any of you actually know Wonn, or if he has any social media, let him know that his usual leads give the Porygons the "proper" Download boost. Bad times...)
Using Wonn's team has served better results so far: no matter the era, TerraCott in facilities has its place, even if no Wide Lens on Terrakion means that that place is an unstable one. With Soulblaze and MegaGar bringing up the rear, I have a powerful squad in place with Whimsicott as the centerpiece, since it can support every other team member with each of its moves and each other member has a "designated" support move it clearly benefits from. It makes decision-making with Whimsicott pretty easy. As MegaPunny streaks on here have shown, Encore also has its uses (locking Stealth Rock throwers into uselessness never stops being funny). At 63 wins with it, currently...
I appreciate both of you giving Paul's team such props, btw...not because he's a Champ, but because everyone acknowledging a fellow Ecuadorian's greatness is fucking cool.
(side note: if any of you actually know Wonn, or if he has any social media, let him know that his usual leads give the Porygons the "proper" Download boost. Bad times...)
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INTRODUCTION
Hi everyone! It's been quite a while since I posted a streak on this thread, but that doesn't mean I wasn't active on the Battle Tree! As a matter of fact, my backlog of things I want to post about has gotten so big, that I had to scratch some stuff entirely, and plan a series of posts to cover everything I wanted to. I hope the several posts I'll be making over the next next couple of weeks won't be annoying - at the very least, their content should be pretty diverse. Without further ado, let's get into it!
THE RAIN STREAK
First things first, I'm reporting a completed streak of 1391 in Ultra Sun Super Doubles with a team of Pelipper / Tapu Koko / Mega Swampert / Celesteela (QR team).
The team remains the same as it was in the 1000 post, but as a reminder...
THE TEAM
@ Focus Sash
Modest | Drizzle
IVs: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Tailwind / Hurricane / Brine / Protect
@ Choice Specs
Timid | Electric Surge
IVs: 31/4/31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Thunder / Dazzling Gleam / Hidden Power Fire / Volt Switch
@ Swampertite
Adamant | Damp -> Swift Swim
IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpDef / 252 Spe
Waterfall / Earthquake / Ice Punch / Protect
@ Leftovers
IVs: 31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)/31/31
Careful | Beast Boost
EVs: 244 HP / 28 Atk / 108 Def / 124 SpDef / 4 Spe
Heavy Slam / Leech Seed / Wide Guard / Protect
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What a ride it's been! I have very little to add to what I already said about the team in my two previous team reports; the threats remain the same, and my enjoyment of the team as well. By now, I would call the "teambuilding" part of it entirely finished, I don't think I'd envision any modifications if I was going to use it again. I actually planned to replace Brine with Scald for 50 battles when I was somewhere in the 1200s, just as a comparison point, since I had been using Brine since the very start. But right as that I made that plan, I had a couple of battles where Brine picked up KOs that Scald wouldn't have in clutch situations, and I immediately canceled the experiment. "If it's not broken, don't fix it"; I realized I wasn't ready to put this streak on the line for the sake of experimenting when I had a move that had proven its worth.
A few noteworthy battles happened between 1000 and the loss, so I'll talk about these a bit after, but first, I would like to talk about the big event...
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THE LOSS // 1392 vs. YOUTH ATHLETE HILARIO (KJ5G-WWWW-WWX2-V6QW)
While I found this loss to be soul-crushing, because I will probably never get over how terribly I handled that Starmie-Lycanroc duo, I do find solace in one thing, and that is... the fact I actually should have lost 14 battles before.
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BATTLE SPOTLIGHT // 1378 vs. RISING STAR DOLLY
That's right, the streak should have been 1377, not 1391, because under no circumstance should I have won this game; it still blows my mind that I did. Do you think the AI reads your plays and cheats? Then please watch this battle and see it do the exact opposite: throw a guaranteed win.
In the end, I do take comfort in knowing this should have been a loss when I think about the actual loss and feel terrible about it.
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CLOSING THOUGHTS
I obviously was hoping to take the team further, but my goal was 1000, and it had been reached a while back, so I'm still happy of how far I ended up taking the team. The way I lost leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I guess it's a learning experience. I don't want to limit myself with categorical statements, but I don't really intend to revisit this team again. Between the many small streaks where it slowly came together and the two actual big streaks it achieved, I spent countless hours playing with it, and I've had my share. It's been fun, but I'm ready to move on to new things (spoiler alert, I already have
)!
TOUKO'S TEAM
Next, I would like to go back to some unfinished business...
As a refresher, the team in question is the one that was featured in this post, which sparked some discussion and doubt. As promised, I'm now reporting back after the Ultra Moon Super Singles streak ended at 133 - I don't want it on the leaderboard, I just want to discuss a little more.
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THE TEAM
@ Blazikenite
Adamant | Speed Boost
IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpDef / 252 Spe
Flare Blitz / Superpower / Thunder Punch / Protect
@ Dragonium Z
Timid | Levitate
IVs: 31/0/31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Draco Meteor / Psychic / Surf / Roost
@ Leftovers
Brave | Iron Barbs
IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/0
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Atk / 36 Def / 92 SpDef
Power Whip / Gyro Ball / Leech Seed / Protect
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THOUGHTS
Firstly, I want to say I believe this is actually a pretty solid singles team. I don't have a ton of experience doing singles, but got a very decent streak out of it on my first attempt, and the streak could have been higher considering the losing battle was very winnable. It's a case of a rare singles team that doesn't rely on setting up and crippling, but rather on the more "intuitive" approach (outside of Tree) of raw damage and resist-switching (not to mention what I would consider the key element of the team, Ferrothorn's Leech Seed stalling potential).
Several concerns have been raised about the team, all of which definitely make a lot of sense, so I would like to address a few of them:
- Charizard X as a lead: I haven't faced any Charizard X lead, so I can only theorize the outcome, but in front of a Charizard lead, Protect would definitely be the play. Since Charizard X already outspeeds, I would think it's very likely to go for Dragon Rush over Dragon Dance, in which case on the following turn, Blaziken outspeeds and can Superpower twice, while Charizard starts an endless loop of Dragon Dances to try and catch up to Blaziken speed-wise. However, since Dragon Rush is not a guaranteed OHKO on Blaziken, there may be a chance for it to Dragon Dance turn 1? If that were to happen, doing the switches Touko mentioned (going Ferrothorn on Dragon Rush for the Iron Barbs, then Latios on the Flare Blitz, then Ferro again, etc.) would work, but probably at Latios' cost (it can only tank 2 +1 Flare Blitzes). Depending on the backline, this could be bad.
- Mega Salamence: I actually faced 2 Mega Salamence leads, one of which I saved and mock battled several times. My conclusion is that because the AI doesn't recognize the Aerilate ability turn 1, it will always go for Earthquake in front of Blaziken, and the safest play is to instantly switch to Latios to take advantage of the fact it doesn't pick Double-Edge. Then, on Latios, it will *almost* always Dragon Rush, so on turn 2, switching to Ferrothorn is the play, for some Iron Barbs chip. Then, obviously, Protect... at this point, it will spam Double-Edge, so you're stuck in there with Ferrothorn. After the Leftovers recovery, Ferrothorn can handily tank a non-crit Double-Edge, and has a very slight chance to tank even a crit; the second Iron Barbs hit, in addition to Double-Edge recoil and this calc:
124+ Atk Ferrothorn Gyro Ball (150 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Salamence-Mega: 81-96 (47.6 - 56.4%) -- 80.9% chance to 2HKO
ensures it will either go down at the end of that exchange, leaving Ferrothorn relatively low on HP, or with enough bad luck, be extremely low, in which case the next Iron Barbs hit takes it out, but then it's a 1 for 1 trade. If Salamence turns out to be set 3, then it will try to Hydro Pump Blaziken turn 1, making the Latios initial switch very safe.
- The team has no status protection: This is a very valid concern. In the long run, I think it's bound to go down to an untimely freeze, or a lot of paralysis in a row. Ferrothorn ends up being at the forefront of all battles that drag on. During my short streak, it got frozen 3 times, but the combination of Leftovers and Leech Seed allowed me to have enough turns to finally thaw out at some point, which was obviously lucky. Sooner or later, a deadly freeze was pretty much certain to happen, especially when Ferrothorn has to take care of Water-types that spam Ice moves in front of it.
- The team has no setup moves: It might not be the common approach to Tree, and certainly sounds unviable for a very long streak at first thought, but to me this was not an issue per se, it just means playing this team won't fit the usual pattern of "find the right matchup to setup something entirely and sweep", which is the tried and proven way of getting long singles streaks. I would raise this as an issue if someone told me they wanted to get 1000 with this team, but otherwise, I don't think that matters too much.
- Inaccurate moves: I would usually agree with this, but my experience has shown otherwise. This is mostly the way I feel about Celesteela on my rain team as well; it's really not a big problem that Leech Seed isn't 100% accurate, because in the very vast majority of cases, missing doesn't matter: you get a second, third, or even fourth chance and very rarely get punished for missing. In this case, the same went for Power Whip; I missed plenty of them, but it never mattered. In the long run, enough bad luck will surely happen, but of all Pokémon, I think Ferrothorn can pull off relying on inaccurate moves. So to my experience using the team, not really an issue. Ironically, the same cannot be said of Latios' Draco Meteor. If ever, you have to rely on hitting one, it means you're probably in bad shape and missing will be extremely costly; Latios doesn't tend to get multiple chances to attack. While regular Draco is very uncommon to be used compared to Ferrothorn's inaccurate moves, I found it to be way more of a problem.
- No backup plan: Now, this is, I think, what really nails the biggest problem of this team. Because it relies on resist-switches, some trades are bound to happen. More often than not, Latios gets "wasted" to handle one Pokémon, which means if it's needed as a switch-in against the last one, well... it's not there. I'm specifically taking Latios as an example because as a matter of fact, it had extremely underwhelming bulk, which made the typing synergy with the rest of the team almost irrelevant. Moreover, using the Z-move is a big gamble, not knowing what's in the back. I very, very rarely was able get any use out of Roost, it just doesn't have the bulk to pull off this set reliably in the Tree in my opinion. Ferrothorn, on the other hand, was an absolute champion at coming out on top of 1v1s, ready for the next one - but that also meant that if it had to be sacrificed at any point, things became very shaky, once again coming back to the point of no backup plan. The team has really good synergy, but once a piece falls, things can go down like dominos, and since you can't know which last Pokémon a trainer has in the back, you can never plan accordingly, your hand is almost always forced into certain plays, certain sacrifices for the threat at hand. I often found myself thinking "welp, here's hoping I won't need this Pokémon in the future!".
- No knowledge of the Tree sets: And here is, in my opinion, the nail in the coffin of the claimed streak. While I firmly believe that team is solid and could - with some luck - reach a number like 400, I don't think it's possible at all without looking up sets. I went into this not wanting to look up any sets to get the "real" experience of the claim, but I simply couldn't. Firstly, I already know several of the sets, so this would be some kind of "cheating" already, but in addition, I quickly realized the team's potential heavily relied on looking up sets. The Tree sets have a lot of unusual, surprising moves that can and will screw you if you're not expecting them. That team, in particular, has absolutely no margin of error when it comes to those. You leave a Pokémon on an unexpected move, and suddenly, a crucial piece of the equation is lost; not only that, but most likely the piece you thought was the answer to what you're currently facing. This takes the "no backup plan" point to the next level, because without looking up sets, you can't make any sort of reliable prediction. Relying on generic competitive knowledge doesn't work out for Tree, at least not in the long run, because the Tree has too many unconventional sets. The Mega Salamence plan I outlined, for example, relies entirely on not only knowing the moveset, but AI behavior as well, and that kind of stuff came into play almost every single battle. I don't believe I could even have reached 100 without looking up sets, it's the one thing that allowed the synergy of the team to come into play and shine. Thus, from my personal experience, I would have an extremely hard time believing this team got above 400 without any knowledge of the Tree sets, without looking them up, and without doing calcs.
Which makes for a pretty good transition to the losing battle, because as it turns out, a move took me by surprise...
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THE LOSS // 134 vs. ACE TRAINER LEVI (YQMG-WWWW-WWX2-VK9A)
And thus ended my adventure with the team, granted, a bit prematurely because of terrible play. While the turn 2 play of Roost, in my opinion, would have made sense to anyone who doesn't know the Tree sets, switching out instead of going for Z-Draco really is inexcusable.
This concludes post #1 (out of 4, if things go as planned, which they may not!). I would love to do some shout outs, but I don't want to constantly tag people, so I will do these at the end of the 4th post, which I'm hoping will be the best of the bunch!
Until the next one, thanks a lot for reading!
Hi everyone! It's been quite a while since I posted a streak on this thread, but that doesn't mean I wasn't active on the Battle Tree! As a matter of fact, my backlog of things I want to post about has gotten so big, that I had to scratch some stuff entirely, and plan a series of posts to cover everything I wanted to. I hope the several posts I'll be making over the next next couple of weeks won't be annoying - at the very least, their content should be pretty diverse. Without further ado, let's get into it!
THE RAIN STREAK
First things first, I'm reporting a completed streak of 1391 in Ultra Sun Super Doubles with a team of Pelipper / Tapu Koko / Mega Swampert / Celesteela (QR team).
The team remains the same as it was in the 1000 post, but as a reminder...
THE TEAM
Modest | Drizzle
IVs: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Tailwind / Hurricane / Brine / Protect
Timid | Electric Surge
IVs: 31/4/31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Thunder / Dazzling Gleam / Hidden Power Fire / Volt Switch
Adamant | Damp -> Swift Swim
IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpDef / 252 Spe
Waterfall / Earthquake / Ice Punch / Protect
IVs: 31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)/31/31
Careful | Beast Boost
EVs: 244 HP / 28 Atk / 108 Def / 124 SpDef / 4 Spe
Heavy Slam / Leech Seed / Wide Guard / Protect
—————————————————————
What a ride it's been! I have very little to add to what I already said about the team in my two previous team reports; the threats remain the same, and my enjoyment of the team as well. By now, I would call the "teambuilding" part of it entirely finished, I don't think I'd envision any modifications if I was going to use it again. I actually planned to replace Brine with Scald for 50 battles when I was somewhere in the 1200s, just as a comparison point, since I had been using Brine since the very start. But right as that I made that plan, I had a couple of battles where Brine picked up KOs that Scald wouldn't have in clutch situations, and I immediately canceled the experiment. "If it's not broken, don't fix it"; I realized I wasn't ready to put this streak on the line for the sake of experimenting when I had a move that had proven its worth.
A few noteworthy battles happened between 1000 and the loss, so I'll talk about these a bit after, but first, I would like to talk about the big event...
—————————————————————
THE LOSS // 1392 vs. YOUTH ATHLETE HILARIO (KJ5G-WWWW-WWX2-V6QW)
I was streaming on Twitch when it happened, but unfortunately, Twitch only saves the VOD for 10 days, and I didn't think of downloading it, so the live narration of it has been forever lost. However, since it happened a few months ago now, I've had plenty of time to reflect on it, so here's a turn-by-turn breakdown of it:
TURN 1:
vs.
Turn 1 was a pretty big one. I obviously couldn't know Alakazam would be Mega, so the possibility of Sceptile being the Mega was there, though the regular set with White Herb is always the most threatening to me because of potential Unburden, allowing Sceptile to outspeed M-Swampert in rain. However, the Mega possibility prevented Koko from going for any Electric move. In any case, this was a very threatening lead, where both opponents potentially outsped Koko.
I usually would have gone for Tailwind + Dazzling Gleam in this situation; it ensures I get something out of the turn, whether it's the speed control I need for Swampert/Pelipper itself, or otherwise, a 2HKO on both these two threats with D-Gleam. The AI had to double up Pelipper to KO it (though a Rock Slide flinch from M-Sceptile was a bad scenario), and Gleam was all the damage I needed for Celesteela to finish off whichever of the two ended up being more threatening (most likely Sceptile) with Heavy Slam. Additionally, if that was indeed M-Sceptile, as long as Koko didn't flinch, it would go down to Gleam. Mind you, I don't think I would have taken the time to analyze things that much - TW + Gleam was more like an "autopilot" pick that I would do in front of that type of lead, to ensure I got something out of it. From experience, I often lost Koko from such decisions, but it was usually worth it for the long run.
However, with this being live on Twitch, things were a bit different than usual. I noticed that whenever I'm streaming, I tend to play a bit differently; I try to be super "safe" with my plays (because I don't want to lose face by making a dumb play!), but I also don't feel comfortable sitting in front of a situation for a long time unsure of what play I want to make, because that's really un-entertaining; I feel pressured by the fact people are waiting for me to make a move.
Point in case, Level 51, in chat, suggested switching in Celesteela for Koko since it was a very safe switch vs. both of these Pokémon. While this went against my "usual" pattern of play, it actually did seem much safer than Tailwind + Dazzling Gleam, so my initial reaction was "oh, yeah, that's actually a much better idea, let's do that!". So I did...
TURN 2:
vs.
...and it didn't work out too well. The AI did double up Pelipper, so I got no Tailwind out of it, and no damage either. Additionally, one thing I (and L51) hadn't considered: this allowed Mega Alakazam to Trace Beast Boost from Celesteela
Since I usually leave Koko in on any Alakazam and Thunder (thanks to this blessed calc: 252 SpA Alakazam-Mega Psychic vs. 0 HP / 0 SpD Tapu Koko: 121-144 (83.4 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO), the thought hadn't even crossed my mind... oops! In the end, this didn't matter all that much, since it only forced Celesteela to target M-Alakazam as a priority over Sceptile, which I may have done anyway.
This is also where I realized something that had never come into play thus far: Mega Alakazam has Grass Knot! Since Heavy Slam was a 2HKO on both of these threats, it meant I basically had to sacrifice a second Pokémon to finally get M-Alakazam out of there with Celesteela. My best bet, at that point, was Sceptile not being Unburden, and going M-Swampert, which would outspeed both and score a KO before being sacrificed (252+ Atk Swampert-Mega Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Sceptile: 148-176 (102 - 121.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO).
I had to hope Specs Koko in Rain and +1 SpD Celesteela would be enough to finish things off afterwards, which did seem very likely. With that plan in mind, I protected Swampert on that turn and got the first Heavy Slam hit on Alakazam. As expected, both opponents targeted Swampert.
TURN 3:
vs.
Second part of the plan: sacrificing Swampert and getting a KO on Sceptile in the process. From the previous turn, I saw Sceptile was indeed not Unburden, which at least helped a ton (otherwise, Koko also would have had to tank a -2 Leaf Storm on the following turn, which decreased my odds of success!).
This worked out as envisioned, Sceptile was OHKOd by Ice Punch, Alakazam got its Beast Boost from the OHKO on Swampert with Grass Knot, and Celesteela finished off Alakazam in return with Heavy Slam for its own Beast Boost. Phew, what a turn...!
TURN 4:
vs.
This is where things *actually* go very wrong. When I saw the last two, I had a huge sigh of relief. After stressing out for minutes over the last couple of turns, I thought this was a done deal. My thought process was the following: we're in rain, Starmie could be King's Rock and flinch Celesteela, which would prevent it from Heavy Slamming Lycanroc, so I need to prioritize getting rid of it with Thunder... but it could also be Sash, in which case I don't want to target it and get no KO out of this turn, because Koko might not be there next turn if Lycanroc Stone Edges it while Starmie is going for rain-boosted moves. From memory, one of the Starmie sets had Surf and the other Hydro Pump, which is wrong (both have Surf), so I thought I should just double-target Starmie to ensure the KO, and Lycanroc could be dealt with by any of Koko or Celesteela in the event that one of them was double-targetted or crit and went down that turn. If Starmie turned out to be King's Rock, then it would go down to Thunder and the Heavy Slam would be redirected to Lycanroc anyway, so this seemed like a good, straightforward play.
And I will forever regret that turn. I didn't take the time to look up the sets. I was just so relieved to have been able to get through Alakazam-Sceptile and be left with two "non-threats" (Lycanroc, in particular, never gave the team trouble in the past), and I felt like the stream had dragged on this battle for way too long already. If I looked up the sets, I would have seen Starmie only could have Surf, and would obviously not go for it next to Lycanroc (otherwise, it would be in my advantage as well anyway), so taking my Thunder OHKO on Lycanroc was actually much wiser; or at least, Heavy Slam it, because if Starmie is Sash, it's never a threat to Celesteela anyway! I also would have seen Lycanroc had access to an Electric Terrain-boosted Thunder Fang, which I completely forgot about; in my mind, it only had Stone Edge, Sucker Punch, and two filler moves it never used. In the end, this is the turn where the battle turned into a loss - not the debatable first turn - and it's entirely my fault.
TURN 5:
vs.
Starmie was Sash, so I successfully got rid of it with my double-up, but the AI also doubled up Koko, which led to this 1v1 Celesteela vs. Lycanroc. At that point, I still thought I had played it out properly and that the win was in my pocket. Then Lycanroc shows Thunder Fang, and I gasp, as I remember the possible side-effects, and the fact it's Terrain-boosted. It does more than half; if somehow Heavy Slam didn't go through this turn from a flinch, I could have protected, and 2 turns of Leftovers + Terrain being gone could allow Celesteela to tank another Thunder Fang, giving me another chance at Slamming.
But what Lycanroc got was not the 10% flinch, but the 10% paralysis... into a 25% full paralysis. That's where my gasp turned into sweat bullets. This... is still fine, right? I just need to not be fully paralyzed again as I protect, and then connect my Heavy Slam on the following turn... the odds are still in my favor, right?
TURN 6:
vs.
No, on a long enough streak, odds don't matter, the worst will inevitably happen one day or the other; "you misplayed, now pay the price!". Celesteela got fully paralyzed again, and Lycanroc finished it off. And that's how it ends.
It ends with a poorly handled threatening lead, which I was lucky to get out of, into a stupid misplay, into some very unlucky hax. If anything, I guess it's a testament to how good this team was, that it still got so many chances to run away with the win despite all of that. I meant it, when in my 1000 post, I said the team provides multiple chances to win when things don't go to plan, it certainly did in this case, and unfortunately, I was not able to grab those chances.
For what it's worth, I've replayed the matchup over 10 times in mock battles afterwards (a few of them on stream right after), and handily won every time by going for Tailwind + D-Gleam on Turn 1. But to be fair, the vast majority of the time, Sceptile actually ended up going for Detect on that turn, which made things infinitely easier, since I get both Tailwind and the damage on M-Alakazam, making the rest of the battle an absolute breeze.
I also have to take full responsibility for going Celesteela Turn 1: even though L51 suggested it, it did seem like a great idea to me, and I didn't think twice, which, as the one who has experience with the team, I should have! He obviously meant well with that suggestion, and it made a lot of sense as a defensive play, since Celesteela effectively walled both.
But even the actual safer play of using Protect + switch to Celesteela on turn 1 would, in my opinion, have been the wrong call in the end, since no position I could achieve prevented the AI from scoring a KO on Celesteela's partner; if anything, this ensured Tailwind wouldn't go up afterwards since they would be guaranteed to double-target Pelipper while I get my 2HKO on Alakazam. Had Sceptile been Unburden, this leaves me in the exact same spot as this battle did. Seeing how Tailwind was highly valuable, I think the aggressive turn 1 play was better since it had decent odds of granting it. This is all hindsight, though!
TURN 1:
Turn 1 was a pretty big one. I obviously couldn't know Alakazam would be Mega, so the possibility of Sceptile being the Mega was there, though the regular set with White Herb is always the most threatening to me because of potential Unburden, allowing Sceptile to outspeed M-Swampert in rain. However, the Mega possibility prevented Koko from going for any Electric move. In any case, this was a very threatening lead, where both opponents potentially outsped Koko.
I usually would have gone for Tailwind + Dazzling Gleam in this situation; it ensures I get something out of the turn, whether it's the speed control I need for Swampert/Pelipper itself, or otherwise, a 2HKO on both these two threats with D-Gleam. The AI had to double up Pelipper to KO it (though a Rock Slide flinch from M-Sceptile was a bad scenario), and Gleam was all the damage I needed for Celesteela to finish off whichever of the two ended up being more threatening (most likely Sceptile) with Heavy Slam. Additionally, if that was indeed M-Sceptile, as long as Koko didn't flinch, it would go down to Gleam. Mind you, I don't think I would have taken the time to analyze things that much - TW + Gleam was more like an "autopilot" pick that I would do in front of that type of lead, to ensure I got something out of it. From experience, I often lost Koko from such decisions, but it was usually worth it for the long run.
However, with this being live on Twitch, things were a bit different than usual. I noticed that whenever I'm streaming, I tend to play a bit differently; I try to be super "safe" with my plays (because I don't want to lose face by making a dumb play!), but I also don't feel comfortable sitting in front of a situation for a long time unsure of what play I want to make, because that's really un-entertaining; I feel pressured by the fact people are waiting for me to make a move.
Point in case, Level 51, in chat, suggested switching in Celesteela for Koko since it was a very safe switch vs. both of these Pokémon. While this went against my "usual" pattern of play, it actually did seem much safer than Tailwind + Dazzling Gleam, so my initial reaction was "oh, yeah, that's actually a much better idea, let's do that!". So I did...
TURN 2:
...and it didn't work out too well. The AI did double up Pelipper, so I got no Tailwind out of it, and no damage either. Additionally, one thing I (and L51) hadn't considered: this allowed Mega Alakazam to Trace Beast Boost from Celesteela
This is also where I realized something that had never come into play thus far: Mega Alakazam has Grass Knot! Since Heavy Slam was a 2HKO on both of these threats, it meant I basically had to sacrifice a second Pokémon to finally get M-Alakazam out of there with Celesteela. My best bet, at that point, was Sceptile not being Unburden, and going M-Swampert, which would outspeed both and score a KO before being sacrificed (252+ Atk Swampert-Mega Ice Punch vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Sceptile: 148-176 (102 - 121.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO).
I had to hope Specs Koko in Rain and +1 SpD Celesteela would be enough to finish things off afterwards, which did seem very likely. With that plan in mind, I protected Swampert on that turn and got the first Heavy Slam hit on Alakazam. As expected, both opponents targeted Swampert.
TURN 3:
Second part of the plan: sacrificing Swampert and getting a KO on Sceptile in the process. From the previous turn, I saw Sceptile was indeed not Unburden, which at least helped a ton (otherwise, Koko also would have had to tank a -2 Leaf Storm on the following turn, which decreased my odds of success!).
This worked out as envisioned, Sceptile was OHKOd by Ice Punch, Alakazam got its Beast Boost from the OHKO on Swampert with Grass Knot, and Celesteela finished off Alakazam in return with Heavy Slam for its own Beast Boost. Phew, what a turn...!
TURN 4:
This is where things *actually* go very wrong. When I saw the last two, I had a huge sigh of relief. After stressing out for minutes over the last couple of turns, I thought this was a done deal. My thought process was the following: we're in rain, Starmie could be King's Rock and flinch Celesteela, which would prevent it from Heavy Slamming Lycanroc, so I need to prioritize getting rid of it with Thunder... but it could also be Sash, in which case I don't want to target it and get no KO out of this turn, because Koko might not be there next turn if Lycanroc Stone Edges it while Starmie is going for rain-boosted moves. From memory, one of the Starmie sets had Surf and the other Hydro Pump, which is wrong (both have Surf), so I thought I should just double-target Starmie to ensure the KO, and Lycanroc could be dealt with by any of Koko or Celesteela in the event that one of them was double-targetted or crit and went down that turn. If Starmie turned out to be King's Rock, then it would go down to Thunder and the Heavy Slam would be redirected to Lycanroc anyway, so this seemed like a good, straightforward play.
And I will forever regret that turn. I didn't take the time to look up the sets. I was just so relieved to have been able to get through Alakazam-Sceptile and be left with two "non-threats" (Lycanroc, in particular, never gave the team trouble in the past), and I felt like the stream had dragged on this battle for way too long already. If I looked up the sets, I would have seen Starmie only could have Surf, and would obviously not go for it next to Lycanroc (otherwise, it would be in my advantage as well anyway), so taking my Thunder OHKO on Lycanroc was actually much wiser; or at least, Heavy Slam it, because if Starmie is Sash, it's never a threat to Celesteela anyway! I also would have seen Lycanroc had access to an Electric Terrain-boosted Thunder Fang, which I completely forgot about; in my mind, it only had Stone Edge, Sucker Punch, and two filler moves it never used. In the end, this is the turn where the battle turned into a loss - not the debatable first turn - and it's entirely my fault.
TURN 5:
Starmie was Sash, so I successfully got rid of it with my double-up, but the AI also doubled up Koko, which led to this 1v1 Celesteela vs. Lycanroc. At that point, I still thought I had played it out properly and that the win was in my pocket. Then Lycanroc shows Thunder Fang, and I gasp, as I remember the possible side-effects, and the fact it's Terrain-boosted. It does more than half; if somehow Heavy Slam didn't go through this turn from a flinch, I could have protected, and 2 turns of Leftovers + Terrain being gone could allow Celesteela to tank another Thunder Fang, giving me another chance at Slamming.
But what Lycanroc got was not the 10% flinch, but the 10% paralysis... into a 25% full paralysis. That's where my gasp turned into sweat bullets. This... is still fine, right? I just need to not be fully paralyzed again as I protect, and then connect my Heavy Slam on the following turn... the odds are still in my favor, right?
TURN 6:
No, on a long enough streak, odds don't matter, the worst will inevitably happen one day or the other; "you misplayed, now pay the price!". Celesteela got fully paralyzed again, and Lycanroc finished it off. And that's how it ends.
It ends with a poorly handled threatening lead, which I was lucky to get out of, into a stupid misplay, into some very unlucky hax. If anything, I guess it's a testament to how good this team was, that it still got so many chances to run away with the win despite all of that. I meant it, when in my 1000 post, I said the team provides multiple chances to win when things don't go to plan, it certainly did in this case, and unfortunately, I was not able to grab those chances.
For what it's worth, I've replayed the matchup over 10 times in mock battles afterwards (a few of them on stream right after), and handily won every time by going for Tailwind + D-Gleam on Turn 1. But to be fair, the vast majority of the time, Sceptile actually ended up going for Detect on that turn, which made things infinitely easier, since I get both Tailwind and the damage on M-Alakazam, making the rest of the battle an absolute breeze.
I also have to take full responsibility for going Celesteela Turn 1: even though L51 suggested it, it did seem like a great idea to me, and I didn't think twice, which, as the one who has experience with the team, I should have! He obviously meant well with that suggestion, and it made a lot of sense as a defensive play, since Celesteela effectively walled both.
But even the actual safer play of using Protect + switch to Celesteela on turn 1 would, in my opinion, have been the wrong call in the end, since no position I could achieve prevented the AI from scoring a KO on Celesteela's partner; if anything, this ensured Tailwind wouldn't go up afterwards since they would be guaranteed to double-target Pelipper while I get my 2HKO on Alakazam. Had Sceptile been Unburden, this leaves me in the exact same spot as this battle did. Seeing how Tailwind was highly valuable, I think the aggressive turn 1 play was better since it had decent odds of granting it. This is all hindsight, though!
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BATTLE SPOTLIGHT // 1378 vs. RISING STAR DOLLY
That's right, the streak should have been 1377, not 1391, because under no circumstance should I have won this game; it still blows my mind that I did. Do you think the AI reads your plays and cheats? Then please watch this battle and see it do the exact opposite: throw a guaranteed win.
Unlike the actual losing battle, there is not much in my, or the team's defense here. This would have been an absolutely legitimate loss; if anything, I probably would have been a lot less bitter and sad had this been the end. No doubt though, the disbelief and hype the ending created will definitely remain engraved as one of my best Tree memories!
TURN 1:
vs.
Suicune had a 50% chance of having Protect, and if it did, a high chance to go for it (from experience), so I took my safe Pelipper target with Thunder, and Tailwinded, a pretty straightforward Turn 1 play.
Unfortunately, Suicune went for Blizzard and froze Koko. Definitely not good, but I knew that if this was Suicune2, I could actually lose Koko to Hydro Pump on that turn, so a freeze wasn't actually the worst case scenario; at least, I had a chance to thaw.
TURN 2:
vs.
This time, Suicune does Protect, so the fact Koko doesn't thaw is pointless (I targeted Suicune with Thunder that turn). Because I considered both of my backline's Pokémon HP valuable for the rest of this matchup (both can do well against opposing rain usually), I decided to not switch and just sacrifice for the fresh switch. I knew Suicune would be a pain to break through, but Swampert + Celesteela usually can, especially if rain expires somewhere in there, which was more likely as the battle dragged. I hindsight, that was a mistake, since looking at Dolly's roster (this is something I never bother to do...), I could have seen Ludicolo is part of it, and that I may need to preserve Pelipper for that possibility. But I stand by my play; if I went as far as to look through entire rosters every time, battles would take absolutely forever, and I think my enjoyment would go so far down the drain that I could never have a streak this long. In the circumstance of having a fully healthy backline and only one unrevealed Pokémon from the AI, I think sacrificing the lead made sense, and probably would do it again, especially with the appeal of a 2HKO on Beartic with Hurricane.
Beartic, in retaliation, goes for Rock Slide, which brings both of my leads very low in HP, but doesn't score any KO.
TURN 3:
vs.
Now would be a great time to thaw, Koko! Please?
Nope. However, I do get my KO on Beartic with the second Hurricane, while Suicune goes for a surprising Surf (that would most likely have finished Beartic off! Imagine if I just protected Pelipper! But I couldn't count on that happening...) and KOs both of my leads. In my mind, at this point, things are looking up, since Celesteela can wall Suicune entirely with Wide Guard, and probably just Leech Seed it to victory. Surely I have the means of handling the last one, let's see what it is...
TURN 4:
vs.
<- me when Ludicolo came out.
So... um... how does Swampert-Celesteela beat Ludicolo? After spending several minutes discussing it with myself and chat, we came to a unanimous call: it doesn't.
Ice Punch does a sizeable chunk of damage, but if it's Ludicolo3, it heals it all right back with Giga Drain. It was thus established that to win, I needed an Ice Punch freeze. Suicune froze Koko, that would only be fair right?
Of course, that's "long term" - for now, I can at least protect Swampert for a turn and setup Celesteela for an unlikely endgame by getting the extra recovery it will very much need: Leech Seed successfully goes into Suicune, while Ludicolo reveals to be set 3, and Suicune Surfs.
TURN 5:
vs.
Time for that freeze! Go, Ice Punch!
...oh well, I tried.
Giga Drain OHKOs Swampert, Ludicolo is back at full, Celesteela is down to half HP and Heavy Slams Ludi for way more damage than I expected (a good 25%?), but with Leftovers, it's negligible damage in the end.
Rain ends, which means Suicune is left to be a mostly passive presence I can ignore (at this point, worrying about more Blizzard freezes is the least of my concerns).
TURN 6:
vs.
So now, Ludicolo just has to Leech Seed Celesteela, and through a long and painful dragged-out ending, be guaranteed to win from that, since the Leech Seed recovery Celesteela gets from Suicune will run out, and Ludicolo will heal more than I can damage it every turn. A slow and painful death.
While Ludicolo has taken some damage (keep in mind it's taking a little bit from Suicune's Surf every turn as well - all chip is good chip) I decide that if somehow Celesteela can do this, it will be through several Heavy Slam crits, and I better get going while it's "low". So I do, and Ludicolo prioritizes setting the rain again over Leech Seeding, which makes sense knowing the AI, and Heavy Slam dents it down to about 40%, which is making me almost hopeful! Maybe a super crit next turn could do it before it Leech Seeds for the win?
TURN 7:
vs.
Thanks to Leech Seed + Lefties, Celesteela managed to remain relatively healthy through all this. Ludicolo goes for the Protect on this turn, which makes sense because it was also going for Surf, and the AI *loves* to Protect next to a spread move when possible. Unfortunately, that's free Lefties for Ludicolo, and free rain-boosted damage on Celesteela; I felt like I couldn't afford to give free Lefties to Ludi in case in didn't Protect, though.
TURN 8:
vs.
Ludicolo is still around 50%, which isn't too bad? And that's when the unbelievable happens... Ludicolo goes for Giga Drain?? Into Celesteela?? Not Leech Seed?? WHY???
I'm sure there's a reason, obviously, the answer to my question is somewhere in the AI's code, but from experience, that Ludicolo set loves to Leech Seed stuff, so I guess I may have gotten lucky? Anyway, that obviously does no damage, while Suicune crits Surf on Ludicolo (which also does no damage, lol), and Heavy Slam dents a big chunk further. Celesteela is now very low from the repeated rain-boosted Surfs, but Ludicolo is in the red, and will be KOd by another Heavy Slam!! Is this possible?!
TURN 9:
vs.
This turn, I'm forced to protect, because Celesteela was too low on HP, and from the previous pattern, Ludicolo was very likely to Protect from the ally Surf anyway, which is exactly what happens. However, Leftovers only take it up to low yellow HP, perhaps in range of Heavy Slam still, especially with the small Surf chip?
TURN 10:
vs.
Yup! Ludicolo goes for Giga Drain again, which makes no difference this time since it was definitely in Heavy Slam range, and just like that, the AI's wincon has come and gone, and I am left in disbelief. All it had to do, on any of these turns, is Leech Seed, and it was over.
TURN 11+:
vs.
At this point, Celesteela can spam Wide Guard to wall Suicune entirely as Leech Seed does its thing, which is exactly what I did, so I'll spare the turn-by-turn narration.
Looking back at it, other than the fact it may have been wiser to preserve Pelipper, or at least to Protect it on the turn Koko+Pelipper went down, I'm not too upset at myself for how I played it. Unlike my loss, this was very much played the way I usually would, and would have been a fitting, yet cruel ending: Celesteela Leech Seeded to death, the very way it brought despair upon its enemies for hundreds of battles...
TURN 1:
Suicune had a 50% chance of having Protect, and if it did, a high chance to go for it (from experience), so I took my safe Pelipper target with Thunder, and Tailwinded, a pretty straightforward Turn 1 play.
Unfortunately, Suicune went for Blizzard and froze Koko. Definitely not good, but I knew that if this was Suicune2, I could actually lose Koko to Hydro Pump on that turn, so a freeze wasn't actually the worst case scenario; at least, I had a chance to thaw.
TURN 2:
This time, Suicune does Protect, so the fact Koko doesn't thaw is pointless (I targeted Suicune with Thunder that turn). Because I considered both of my backline's Pokémon HP valuable for the rest of this matchup (both can do well against opposing rain usually), I decided to not switch and just sacrifice for the fresh switch. I knew Suicune would be a pain to break through, but Swampert + Celesteela usually can, especially if rain expires somewhere in there, which was more likely as the battle dragged. I hindsight, that was a mistake, since looking at Dolly's roster (this is something I never bother to do...), I could have seen Ludicolo is part of it, and that I may need to preserve Pelipper for that possibility. But I stand by my play; if I went as far as to look through entire rosters every time, battles would take absolutely forever, and I think my enjoyment would go so far down the drain that I could never have a streak this long. In the circumstance of having a fully healthy backline and only one unrevealed Pokémon from the AI, I think sacrificing the lead made sense, and probably would do it again, especially with the appeal of a 2HKO on Beartic with Hurricane.
Beartic, in retaliation, goes for Rock Slide, which brings both of my leads very low in HP, but doesn't score any KO.
TURN 3:
Now would be a great time to thaw, Koko! Please?
Nope. However, I do get my KO on Beartic with the second Hurricane, while Suicune goes for a surprising Surf (that would most likely have finished Beartic off! Imagine if I just protected Pelipper! But I couldn't count on that happening...) and KOs both of my leads. In my mind, at this point, things are looking up, since Celesteela can wall Suicune entirely with Wide Guard, and probably just Leech Seed it to victory. Surely I have the means of handling the last one, let's see what it is...
TURN 4:
<- me when Ludicolo came out.So... um... how does Swampert-Celesteela beat Ludicolo? After spending several minutes discussing it with myself and chat, we came to a unanimous call: it doesn't.
Ice Punch does a sizeable chunk of damage, but if it's Ludicolo3, it heals it all right back with Giga Drain. It was thus established that to win, I needed an Ice Punch freeze. Suicune froze Koko, that would only be fair right?
Of course, that's "long term" - for now, I can at least protect Swampert for a turn and setup Celesteela for an unlikely endgame by getting the extra recovery it will very much need: Leech Seed successfully goes into Suicune, while Ludicolo reveals to be set 3, and Suicune Surfs.
TURN 5:
Time for that freeze! Go, Ice Punch!
...oh well, I tried.
Giga Drain OHKOs Swampert, Ludicolo is back at full, Celesteela is down to half HP and Heavy Slams Ludi for way more damage than I expected (a good 25%?), but with Leftovers, it's negligible damage in the end.
Rain ends, which means Suicune is left to be a mostly passive presence I can ignore (at this point, worrying about more Blizzard freezes is the least of my concerns).
TURN 6:
So now, Ludicolo just has to Leech Seed Celesteela, and through a long and painful dragged-out ending, be guaranteed to win from that, since the Leech Seed recovery Celesteela gets from Suicune will run out, and Ludicolo will heal more than I can damage it every turn. A slow and painful death.
While Ludicolo has taken some damage (keep in mind it's taking a little bit from Suicune's Surf every turn as well - all chip is good chip) I decide that if somehow Celesteela can do this, it will be through several Heavy Slam crits, and I better get going while it's "low". So I do, and Ludicolo prioritizes setting the rain again over Leech Seeding, which makes sense knowing the AI, and Heavy Slam dents it down to about 40%, which is making me almost hopeful! Maybe a super crit next turn could do it before it Leech Seeds for the win?
TURN 7:
Thanks to Leech Seed + Lefties, Celesteela managed to remain relatively healthy through all this. Ludicolo goes for the Protect on this turn, which makes sense because it was also going for Surf, and the AI *loves* to Protect next to a spread move when possible. Unfortunately, that's free Lefties for Ludicolo, and free rain-boosted damage on Celesteela; I felt like I couldn't afford to give free Lefties to Ludi in case in didn't Protect, though.
TURN 8:
Ludicolo is still around 50%, which isn't too bad? And that's when the unbelievable happens... Ludicolo goes for Giga Drain?? Into Celesteela?? Not Leech Seed?? WHY???
I'm sure there's a reason, obviously, the answer to my question is somewhere in the AI's code, but from experience, that Ludicolo set loves to Leech Seed stuff, so I guess I may have gotten lucky? Anyway, that obviously does no damage, while Suicune crits Surf on Ludicolo (which also does no damage, lol), and Heavy Slam dents a big chunk further. Celesteela is now very low from the repeated rain-boosted Surfs, but Ludicolo is in the red, and will be KOd by another Heavy Slam!! Is this possible?!
TURN 9:
This turn, I'm forced to protect, because Celesteela was too low on HP, and from the previous pattern, Ludicolo was very likely to Protect from the ally Surf anyway, which is exactly what happens. However, Leftovers only take it up to low yellow HP, perhaps in range of Heavy Slam still, especially with the small Surf chip?
TURN 10:
Yup! Ludicolo goes for Giga Drain again, which makes no difference this time since it was definitely in Heavy Slam range, and just like that, the AI's wincon has come and gone, and I am left in disbelief. All it had to do, on any of these turns, is Leech Seed, and it was over.
TURN 11+:
At this point, Celesteela can spam Wide Guard to wall Suicune entirely as Leech Seed does its thing, which is exactly what I did, so I'll spare the turn-by-turn narration.
Looking back at it, other than the fact it may have been wiser to preserve Pelipper, or at least to Protect it on the turn Koko+Pelipper went down, I'm not too upset at myself for how I played it. Unlike my loss, this was very much played the way I usually would, and would have been a fitting, yet cruel ending: Celesteela Leech Seeded to death, the very way it brought despair upon its enemies for hundreds of battles...
—————————————————————
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I obviously was hoping to take the team further, but my goal was 1000, and it had been reached a while back, so I'm still happy of how far I ended up taking the team. The way I lost leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I guess it's a learning experience. I don't want to limit myself with categorical statements, but I don't really intend to revisit this team again. Between the many small streaks where it slowly came together and the two actual big streaks it achieved, I spent countless hours playing with it, and I've had my share. It's been fun, but I'm ready to move on to new things (spoiler alert, I already have
TOUKO'S TEAM
Next, I would like to go back to some unfinished business...
As a refresher, the team in question is the one that was featured in this post, which sparked some discussion and doubt. As promised, I'm now reporting back after the Ultra Moon Super Singles streak ended at 133 - I don't want it on the leaderboard, I just want to discuss a little more.
—————————————————————
THE TEAM
Adamant | Speed Boost
IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/31
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpDef / 252 Spe
Flare Blitz / Superpower / Thunder Punch / Protect
Timid | Levitate
IVs: 31/0/31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Draco Meteor / Psychic / Surf / Roost
Brave | Iron Barbs
IVs: 31/31/31/31/31/0
EVs: 252 HP / 124 Atk / 36 Def / 92 SpDef
Power Whip / Gyro Ball / Leech Seed / Protect
—————————————————————
THOUGHTS
Firstly, I want to say I believe this is actually a pretty solid singles team. I don't have a ton of experience doing singles, but got a very decent streak out of it on my first attempt, and the streak could have been higher considering the losing battle was very winnable. It's a case of a rare singles team that doesn't rely on setting up and crippling, but rather on the more "intuitive" approach (outside of Tree) of raw damage and resist-switching (not to mention what I would consider the key element of the team, Ferrothorn's Leech Seed stalling potential).
Several concerns have been raised about the team, all of which definitely make a lot of sense, so I would like to address a few of them:
- Charizard X as a lead: I haven't faced any Charizard X lead, so I can only theorize the outcome, but in front of a Charizard lead, Protect would definitely be the play. Since Charizard X already outspeeds, I would think it's very likely to go for Dragon Rush over Dragon Dance, in which case on the following turn, Blaziken outspeeds and can Superpower twice, while Charizard starts an endless loop of Dragon Dances to try and catch up to Blaziken speed-wise. However, since Dragon Rush is not a guaranteed OHKO on Blaziken, there may be a chance for it to Dragon Dance turn 1? If that were to happen, doing the switches Touko mentioned (going Ferrothorn on Dragon Rush for the Iron Barbs, then Latios on the Flare Blitz, then Ferro again, etc.) would work, but probably at Latios' cost (it can only tank 2 +1 Flare Blitzes). Depending on the backline, this could be bad.
- Mega Salamence: I actually faced 2 Mega Salamence leads, one of which I saved and mock battled several times. My conclusion is that because the AI doesn't recognize the Aerilate ability turn 1, it will always go for Earthquake in front of Blaziken, and the safest play is to instantly switch to Latios to take advantage of the fact it doesn't pick Double-Edge. Then, on Latios, it will *almost* always Dragon Rush, so on turn 2, switching to Ferrothorn is the play, for some Iron Barbs chip. Then, obviously, Protect... at this point, it will spam Double-Edge, so you're stuck in there with Ferrothorn. After the Leftovers recovery, Ferrothorn can handily tank a non-crit Double-Edge, and has a very slight chance to tank even a crit; the second Iron Barbs hit, in addition to Double-Edge recoil and this calc:
124+ Atk Ferrothorn Gyro Ball (150 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Salamence-Mega: 81-96 (47.6 - 56.4%) -- 80.9% chance to 2HKO
ensures it will either go down at the end of that exchange, leaving Ferrothorn relatively low on HP, or with enough bad luck, be extremely low, in which case the next Iron Barbs hit takes it out, but then it's a 1 for 1 trade. If Salamence turns out to be set 3, then it will try to Hydro Pump Blaziken turn 1, making the Latios initial switch very safe.
- The team has no status protection: This is a very valid concern. In the long run, I think it's bound to go down to an untimely freeze, or a lot of paralysis in a row. Ferrothorn ends up being at the forefront of all battles that drag on. During my short streak, it got frozen 3 times, but the combination of Leftovers and Leech Seed allowed me to have enough turns to finally thaw out at some point, which was obviously lucky. Sooner or later, a deadly freeze was pretty much certain to happen, especially when Ferrothorn has to take care of Water-types that spam Ice moves in front of it.
- The team has no setup moves: It might not be the common approach to Tree, and certainly sounds unviable for a very long streak at first thought, but to me this was not an issue per se, it just means playing this team won't fit the usual pattern of "find the right matchup to setup something entirely and sweep", which is the tried and proven way of getting long singles streaks. I would raise this as an issue if someone told me they wanted to get 1000 with this team, but otherwise, I don't think that matters too much.
- Inaccurate moves: I would usually agree with this, but my experience has shown otherwise. This is mostly the way I feel about Celesteela on my rain team as well; it's really not a big problem that Leech Seed isn't 100% accurate, because in the very vast majority of cases, missing doesn't matter: you get a second, third, or even fourth chance and very rarely get punished for missing. In this case, the same went for Power Whip; I missed plenty of them, but it never mattered. In the long run, enough bad luck will surely happen, but of all Pokémon, I think Ferrothorn can pull off relying on inaccurate moves. So to my experience using the team, not really an issue. Ironically, the same cannot be said of Latios' Draco Meteor. If ever, you have to rely on hitting one, it means you're probably in bad shape and missing will be extremely costly; Latios doesn't tend to get multiple chances to attack. While regular Draco is very uncommon to be used compared to Ferrothorn's inaccurate moves, I found it to be way more of a problem.
- No backup plan: Now, this is, I think, what really nails the biggest problem of this team. Because it relies on resist-switches, some trades are bound to happen. More often than not, Latios gets "wasted" to handle one Pokémon, which means if it's needed as a switch-in against the last one, well... it's not there. I'm specifically taking Latios as an example because as a matter of fact, it had extremely underwhelming bulk, which made the typing synergy with the rest of the team almost irrelevant. Moreover, using the Z-move is a big gamble, not knowing what's in the back. I very, very rarely was able get any use out of Roost, it just doesn't have the bulk to pull off this set reliably in the Tree in my opinion. Ferrothorn, on the other hand, was an absolute champion at coming out on top of 1v1s, ready for the next one - but that also meant that if it had to be sacrificed at any point, things became very shaky, once again coming back to the point of no backup plan. The team has really good synergy, but once a piece falls, things can go down like dominos, and since you can't know which last Pokémon a trainer has in the back, you can never plan accordingly, your hand is almost always forced into certain plays, certain sacrifices for the threat at hand. I often found myself thinking "welp, here's hoping I won't need this Pokémon in the future!".
- No knowledge of the Tree sets: And here is, in my opinion, the nail in the coffin of the claimed streak. While I firmly believe that team is solid and could - with some luck - reach a number like 400, I don't think it's possible at all without looking up sets. I went into this not wanting to look up any sets to get the "real" experience of the claim, but I simply couldn't. Firstly, I already know several of the sets, so this would be some kind of "cheating" already, but in addition, I quickly realized the team's potential heavily relied on looking up sets. The Tree sets have a lot of unusual, surprising moves that can and will screw you if you're not expecting them. That team, in particular, has absolutely no margin of error when it comes to those. You leave a Pokémon on an unexpected move, and suddenly, a crucial piece of the equation is lost; not only that, but most likely the piece you thought was the answer to what you're currently facing. This takes the "no backup plan" point to the next level, because without looking up sets, you can't make any sort of reliable prediction. Relying on generic competitive knowledge doesn't work out for Tree, at least not in the long run, because the Tree has too many unconventional sets. The Mega Salamence plan I outlined, for example, relies entirely on not only knowing the moveset, but AI behavior as well, and that kind of stuff came into play almost every single battle. I don't believe I could even have reached 100 without looking up sets, it's the one thing that allowed the synergy of the team to come into play and shine. Thus, from my personal experience, I would have an extremely hard time believing this team got above 400 without any knowledge of the Tree sets, without looking them up, and without doing calcs.
Which makes for a pretty good transition to the losing battle, because as it turns out, a move took me by surprise...
—————————————————————
THE LOSS // 134 vs. ACE TRAINER LEVI (YQMG-WWWW-WWX2-VK9A)
I managed to choke this battle not once, but twice!
TURN 1:
vs.
Arcanine has Intimidate, so I have no chance to OHKO, and the -1 Def from Superpower actually makes any hit + Extreme Speed KO - not to mention, it can go for All-Out Pummelling if set 4. The obvious switch-in is Latios.
TURN 2:
vs.
Arcanine is set 4 and does go for All-Out Pummelling, doing about half to Latios.
TURN 3:
vs.
First misplay, and it's a big one! I decided to Roost with Latios, since I thought it walled Arcanine (I didn't check the sets and only went from memory - Flare Blitz, Close Combat, E-Speed... what was the 4th move again? Probably irrelevant, I never see it...). News flash, it doesn't! Arcanine has Crunch, and does over half to Latios, making me regret going for Roost.
TURN 4:
vs.
New plan! Never mind the fact I could have Z-moved Arcanine on the spot and gotten rid of it, for some reason, I had a real brain fart, and decided I needed to take advantage of that next Crunch to get some Iron Barbs chip on Arcanine and put it in range of Superpower; the plan being to switch Blaziken in on the Flare Blitz Arcanine would target at Ferrothorn. That's a good plan, right? Why Z-Draco didn't cross my mind, I'll never know! Ferrothorn tanks the Crunch, gets the Iron Barbs chip.
TURN 5:
vs.
Well obviously I'm not going to switch right back out, I need to Protect for my extra Leftovers! That's Ferrothorn 101, duh!
TURN 6:
vs.
On the switch, Blaziken takes a hefty 40+% from Flare Blitz. But it's in Superpower range! I swear, I'll get through this Arcanine, somehow!
TURN 7:
vs.
Go, Superpower! Oh no... Arcanine outspeeds... what the heck? Obviously, this is my second misplay, and this one cost me the game. I expected M-Blaziken to outspeed. It doesn't. I had no reason not to Protect for the Speed Boost, other than laziness, and I got slapped hard for it. Arcanine is Jolly 252, you fool, you're Adamant, you fool! Arcanine Close Combats Blaziken for the KO. There goes my unnecessary 200 IQ plan. (Side-note: Arcanine actually crit Close Combat there, and without the crit, it never KOd. That's not an excuse at all, since in any case, Protecting was the play, but I guess it adds salt to the wound?).
TURN 8:
vs.
Somehow, it feels like I made a convoluted circle to come back to the starting point. I wonder if Surf will KO after the Close Combat? Looks like it's a roll, just like Psychic... WAIT! THE Z-MOVE! This is the where I realized how dumb I had been. I could, and obviously should, have just nuked it from the very beginning. Well... better late than never?
TURN 9:
vs.
Uh oh, I'm pretty sure I needed Blaziken to beat this. No, actually, I'm very sure I needed Blaziken to beat this. Well, let's... click Surf? Because I really have no better play, and the "Super effective" feature is luring me like a beginner that clicks Earthquake on Rotom. Surf does about half, Volcarona Bug Buzzes, Latios is down.
TURN 10:
vs.
That's not an ideal matchup for Ferrothorn. Among the possible bad matchups, I'd say it's definitely somewhere up there. Luckily, there may be a tiny bit of hope, since Volcarona has Heat Wave! Oh... I guess they never miss, huh?
TURN 1:
Arcanine has Intimidate, so I have no chance to OHKO, and the -1 Def from Superpower actually makes any hit + Extreme Speed KO - not to mention, it can go for All-Out Pummelling if set 4. The obvious switch-in is Latios.
TURN 2:
Arcanine is set 4 and does go for All-Out Pummelling, doing about half to Latios.
TURN 3:
First misplay, and it's a big one! I decided to Roost with Latios, since I thought it walled Arcanine (I didn't check the sets and only went from memory - Flare Blitz, Close Combat, E-Speed... what was the 4th move again? Probably irrelevant, I never see it...). News flash, it doesn't! Arcanine has Crunch, and does over half to Latios, making me regret going for Roost.
TURN 4:
New plan! Never mind the fact I could have Z-moved Arcanine on the spot and gotten rid of it, for some reason, I had a real brain fart, and decided I needed to take advantage of that next Crunch to get some Iron Barbs chip on Arcanine and put it in range of Superpower; the plan being to switch Blaziken in on the Flare Blitz Arcanine would target at Ferrothorn. That's a good plan, right? Why Z-Draco didn't cross my mind, I'll never know! Ferrothorn tanks the Crunch, gets the Iron Barbs chip.
TURN 5:
Well obviously I'm not going to switch right back out, I need to Protect for my extra Leftovers! That's Ferrothorn 101, duh!
TURN 6:
On the switch, Blaziken takes a hefty 40+% from Flare Blitz. But it's in Superpower range! I swear, I'll get through this Arcanine, somehow!
TURN 7:
Go, Superpower! Oh no... Arcanine outspeeds... what the heck? Obviously, this is my second misplay, and this one cost me the game. I expected M-Blaziken to outspeed. It doesn't. I had no reason not to Protect for the Speed Boost, other than laziness, and I got slapped hard for it. Arcanine is Jolly 252, you fool, you're Adamant, you fool! Arcanine Close Combats Blaziken for the KO. There goes my unnecessary 200 IQ plan. (Side-note: Arcanine actually crit Close Combat there, and without the crit, it never KOd. That's not an excuse at all, since in any case, Protecting was the play, but I guess it adds salt to the wound?).
TURN 8:
Somehow, it feels like I made a convoluted circle to come back to the starting point. I wonder if Surf will KO after the Close Combat? Looks like it's a roll, just like Psychic... WAIT! THE Z-MOVE! This is the where I realized how dumb I had been. I could, and obviously should, have just nuked it from the very beginning. Well... better late than never?
TURN 9:
Uh oh, I'm pretty sure I needed Blaziken to beat this. No, actually, I'm very sure I needed Blaziken to beat this. Well, let's... click Surf? Because I really have no better play, and the "Super effective" feature is luring me like a beginner that clicks Earthquake on Rotom. Surf does about half, Volcarona Bug Buzzes, Latios is down.
TURN 10:
That's not an ideal matchup for Ferrothorn. Among the possible bad matchups, I'd say it's definitely somewhere up there. Luckily, there may be a tiny bit of hope, since Volcarona has Heat Wave! Oh... I guess they never miss, huh?
This concludes post #1 (out of 4, if things go as planned, which they may not!). I would love to do some shout outs, but I don't want to constantly tag people, so I will do these at the end of the 4th post, which I'm hoping will be the best of the bunch!
Until the next one, thanks a lot for reading!
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DRIFLELE
Submitting a completed streak of 232 in Ultra Moon Super Doubles with a team of Drifblim / Tapu Lele / Mega Blastoise / Kartana (QR team).
HISTORY & TEAMBUILDING
I ran this team on Ultra Moon, when my rain streak was alive and well on Ultra Sun. At the time (I believe August or September 2018), I had just started streaming Battle Tree on Twitch and really wanted to try out fun teams rather than constantly do the same thing with rain (which was getting less and less exciting to me). It was put together pretty quickly and I never approached it with the idea of getting a high streak, but its performance surprised me to the point I find it worth sharing it here.
It seems to be a consistent trend: a majority of my Tree teams take inspiration from current VGC trends, and this one was no different. I had been meaning to try out some sort of DrifLele combo, but never felt too inspired as to what Tailwind sweepers I wanted until I saw Aarong Zheng use Mega Blastoise on the Battle Spot ladder (link to the episode, check it out, it's a good one!). Instantly, I saw Mega Blastoise's potential for the Tree; DrifLele+Blastoise was a very flowchart-y core that was well-suited to facing all kinds of matchups, had very reliable speed control, and most importantly, a means of providing M-Blastoise with rain, which makes the sweeping potential of Water Spout go through the roof.
Finding the fourth team member was a little tricky: looking at Aaron's team, I didn't find any of these members covering the rest of the team's bases too well in Tree, except maybe Bulu. However, I didn't think Scarf Bulu was a good call in the context of Tree (despite it being amazing for him in the VGC games he showcased), and I wasn't sold on the moveset I would have to run on this team (no Z-move, double Grass moves + ...Superpower? Substitute? Rock Slide? Stone Edge was out of the question...). Double Fairy also seemed a bit dangerous when the Poison resist was Drifblim, which is hardly a check. It may have worked anyway, but I thought there should be better options.
Browsing through my boxes, I came across Kartana and thought it fit the bill perfectly. I wanted to sweep under Tailwind as I would in Trick Room: steamrolling as quickly as possible before it runs out. Beast Boost is an amazing ability to help with that, and Kartana's power is undeniable. It obviously leaves a lot to be desired defensively, but this is the where my set choice came into play... (I'll go into more detail below).
I quickly went through the EV spreads I wanted, got the training done, tested out the team, and found it to work really well. Not only did the battles go as envisioned, but it made for very fast-paced games that allowed me to climb quickly, and the team's flowchart-y nature allowed me to not have too many difficult calls to make, which made it perfect to stream. From battle 30, I streamed the entire streak all the way to the loss over the course of a few days. I purposefully played a little carelessly, since I wasn't really trying to get as high as possible, but just wanted to showcase the team for a while before moving on to the next thing. I now regret that approach a little bit, because it didn't do the team justice, and I think it deserves a higher streak number - maybe I'll revisit it someday, though by now, the might of Lele + Unburden Tailwind has definitely been proven by JustinTR's fantastic LeleLucha team!
THE TEAM
@ Psychic Seed
Timid | Unburden
IVs: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 100 Def / 220 SpAtk / 36 SpDef / 148 Spe
Tailwind / Shadow Ball / Will-O-Wisp / Rain Dance
Drifblim next to Tapu Lele is probably the most reliable Tailwind setter one could come across. Ever since it was popularized by SHADEviera in the 2017 ONOG Invitational tournament, it's been a consistent presence in VGC through the different metas. It makes sense: immunity to Fake Out paired with the Unburden speed boost to get that Tailwind going before any other Pokémon can move.
Timid with 148 speed EVs grant it 260 speed points after Unburden, allowing it to outspeed the fastest post-40 Pokémon in Tree, Scarf Manectric. While it may have been tempting to make the rest of the EV spread very defensive to capitalize on Drifblim's great natural bulk, I decided to make it as offensive as possible, since the point was not to stick around after setting up Tailwind for too many turns. From my experience, there is nothing worse than having your speed control Pokémon be a passive presence that ends up contributing to the AI successfully stalling out turns, so by investing more in offence, I ensured it wouldn't be too passive (it's by no means strong, but Shadow Ball at least does decent damage) and would not stick around too long, making room for Blastoise's big entrance. More specifically, 220 SpAtk grants the OHKO on non-mega Gengar as well as Medicham and Bruxish3 most of the time. 100 Def allows it to survive a Weavile Ice Punch, a non-crit M-Steelix Stone Edge, and plenty of other stuff (the list of blessed calcs is pretty impressive!), while 36 SpDef means it almost always lives a Magnezone3 or Specs Latios Thunder. Both the offensive and defensive sides are balanced to give excellent-but-not-perfect odds on some relevant calcs, but I was comfortable with that since ultimately, Drifblim's role is setting up Tailwind first and foremost, and the rest is bonus.
As mentioned, Shadow Ball prevents Drifblim from being passive, and actually does very good damage on super effective targets, which is particularly handy with it being Tapu Lele's partner, which is weak to Ghost. It's also really good use to break through the fat Psychic-types that crowd some trainers' rosters. Rain Dance was also a no-brainer for the team, as it sets Blastoise up for a clean Water Spout sweep. What I didn't anticipate is just how amazing a super-fast manual weather move would be to mess with the Tree in general. Weather teams are super common to face, and having a near-priority Rain Dance in front of Sun teams was an absolute delight, weakening their attacks immensely, and sometimes locking them into Solar Beam. It was also great against Sand teams to remove that SpDef boost instantly, or against Hail teams to give Blizzard a chance to miss. After this experience, I think I would run Rain Dance on Drifblim no matter whether or not I have a Water-type in the back, its usefulness went way beyond my expectations.
Will-O-Wisp is the "filler" move of the set. Drifblim has a ton of potentially useful support moves, and settling for an inaccurate one may sound strange, but I think it was the right choice. I tried to make sure I never relied on it, but only used it when hitting it would improve my situation even further at pretty much no cost, and it worked pretty well for that. Tapu Lele has really good natural SpDef, so hitting a Will-O-Wisp can basically patch its lower Def, and I found that to be extremely valuable; better having a 85% chance to allow Lele to tank an extra hit and make it through the turn, than no chance at all! I also made sure to burn all the annoying stally Pokémon like Blissey, Cresselia, Uxie, etc. as early as possible, since residual damage on these goes a really long way. The fact Will-O-Wisp is fired from such high speed is also part of why it's so good, even Scarf Garchomp can be burned before it moves! If I had to pick a different move, I think Memento would be my choice, since it provides more control on when you get your free switch into Blastoise, and also cripples a foe much like Will-O-Wisp does, but after experimenting a bit with it, I haven't been a huge fan of how "final" it is; crippling something with the plan of setting up a Rain Dance, or a new Tailwind afterwards isn't entirely uncommon. Destiny Bond could be a decent option as well, albeit probably a little unreliable and frustrating because of Drifblim's bulk; it's tough to predict exactly when it will go down, not to mention it gets targeted by Stone Edge all the time, and whether these will hit or not is up in the air... Other than that, I'm generally a big fan of Disable, but in the case of this team in particular, that kind of defensive play seems very counterproductive, as it stalls out Tailwind more than anything else (Will-O-Wisp already has that drawback, but in a less drastic way). I could go on, because Drifblim really has a lot of options, but I think none of them fit what this team is trying to achieve. If only it got Taunt! That would be my pick, without any hesitation!
One final thing to note about Drifblim is that due to its very high post-unburden speed, it's a Thunder Wave magnet, and ends up being paralyzed a lot, which isn't great. I used Taunt on Lele very often to prevent paralysis, which I found more important than being safe for a turn. The combination of Tailwind + Unburden means Drifblim still outspeeds the vast majority of Pokémon even when paralyzed, but that 25% chance of full paralysis is obviously the issue. Despite that, I was extremely satisfied with Drifblim's performance on this team and am absolutely planning on running it again!
@ Psychium Z
Modest | Psychic Surge
IVs: 31/28/31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)
EVs: 12 HP / 244 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Psychic / Moonblast / Taunt / Protect
Tapu Lele needs no introduction, it's a staple on several of the teams on the leaderboard, including the classic PheroLele, and it's easy to see why as soon as one tries it out. Its damage output is through the roof thanks to Psychic Terrain, has an amazing offensive typing, and the Z-move is one of the most powerful nukes one can possibly fire, sometimes making type resistance irrelevant.
Since I firmly believe Tapu Lele's STAB moves, Psychic and Moonblast, are all it needs to do its offensive job, I'm a big fan of using the 3rd slot for utility rather than "coverage for the sake of coverage". Substitute, as used by Level 51 on PheroLele, can be a pretty nice option (I used it in the past and enjoyed it), but now that I've tried Taunt, I'm never going back! Granted, for this team, Taunt was basically a necessity given just how threatening Trick Room is! Ensuring Trick Room didn't go up was a much higher priority than preserving Tapu Lele's health, so I did not hesitate to Taunt when in doubt (or, sometimes, go for the more reliable Z-move nuke on threats like Trevenant, Dusknoir and Aromatisse). Such aggressive Trick Room prevention methods allowed me to successfully avoid it most of the time, though this left the problematic case of double Trick Room setters lead, where I took my coinflip guess and hoped for the best. The few times Trick Room did go up, I was fortunately able to stall it out (it's been a long time and I don't truly remember how things went down), but that definitely remains one of the biggest threats to the team. As mentioned previously, I also generously taunted all Pokémon that are known as hax machines (I'm looking at you, Regigigas, and Uxie, and Cresselia, and...), usually to great success (I found it particularly satisfying to blindly Taunt and then see they were indeed going for that Confuse Ray, or Thunder Wave, etc.).
Protect doesn't really need to be explained, especially on a Tailwind team where the "default" safe turn 1 play is always "Tailwind + Protect". This is also why I allowed myself to indulge in Tapu Lele's full power by going Modest, an extra bit of strength that was most welcome from the usual Timid calcs! I still went for 252 EVs in speed since I wanted to outspeed Gyarados outside Tailwind, and also generally to have a fast Taunt.
@ Blastoisinite
Modest | Rain Dish -> Mega Launcher
IVs: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 244 Spe
Water Spout / Water Pulse / Dark Pulse / Protect
With Tapu Lele's insane damage output upfront, it's easy to forget the team is first and foremost built around Mega Blastoise! And to be honest, this isn't the first time I make a Mega Blastoise team, though all my past ones have been severely underwhelming. As a matter of fact, I remember mentioning, in an early report, how Mega Blastoise was originally on my rain team rather than Swampert, and was just very awkward to use. Its potential and power is undeniable: as long as it gets to fire full-HP Water Spouts in rain, it's an incredible sweeper, but with its middling speed tier, getting it in the right position to do so repeatedly is not as easy as one would think. DrifLele, in my opinion, provide the perfect platform to allow Mega Blastoise to finally shine to its full potential.
Thanks to the front setup, it's actually easy and common for Blastoise to successfully come in fresh from the backline, in rain, with Tailwind under effect for at least a couple of turns, and Tapu Lele by its side to assist. When that setup is successful, very few things in the Tree can withstand the incoming deluge. However, things obviously don't always go perfectly, and it can definitely happen that Blastoise has to come out without Tailwind. In those cases, Water Pulse is a necessary option to still allow Blastoise to do big, reliable damage when it's no longer at full health. Double Water move may seem redundant, but those two moves are truly Blastoise's best weapons, and I would say both were equally essential to its success.
When it comes to the other two moves, decisions can be a bit difficult to make, and those are, in my opinion, very dependant on the team Blastoise is on. Obviously, the coverage of Dark Pulse and Aura Sphere, both Mega Launcher-boosted, is an extremely appealing option. However, because of Blastoise's weakness to Grass, combined with both Grass- and Dragon-types resisting Water, Ice Beam makes a ton of sense; there's a reason Ice coverage is generally very good on Water-types. On top of that, Blastoise has access to Fake Out, which is arguably the best utility move in doubles... how am I supposed to find room for Protect with all of this??
Because of Blastoise's role, it was pretty clear to me that Fake Out, at least, was going to be ditched, since Blastoise is there to sweep from full HP, not to mention Psychic Terrain would clash with it anyway. I originally decided that Dark Pulse and Ice Beam were the best options, and went for these moves, thinking I should adjust along the way depending on my experience, keeping Aura Sphere as a potential option. But rather than seeing myself wish I had different coverage, I noticed I constantly wished I had Protect. With Kartana and Drifblim already being Protect-less, there's wasn't a ton of room for repositioning with the current setup, and giving Kartana or Lele a free turn on the side to deal with a threat would have made things so much safer. Thankfully, Ice Beam ended up being easy to let go of, I don't think I used it a single time in 40 battles, while Dark Pulse appeared to be the go-to neutral hit for everything that resisted Water, and everything I really needed. After all, the true important part of the set was Water Spout, which is easy to forget when you're looking at coverage options. After adding Protect, things were instantly a lot smoother, and I never looked back. I also never wished I had Aura Sphere, though that may be in part due to Kartana's Sacred Sword.
The EV spread is very straightforward, and it simply maximizes what little bulk investment it can afford, guaranteeing Rampardos34's Head Smash never OHKOs. It outspeeds everything in Tailwind barring Scarf Manectric, with which it speed ties. I decided that was no big deal, since both Tapu Lele and Kartana can deal with Manectric if need be. Because 129 is close to several other speed tiers in Tree, including Virizion4 (spoiler alert, Virizion is a huge threat to my backline), I didn't want to cut anymore on speed. My instinct of "survivability > tiny bit of extra power" made me try *really* hard to find a way to invest this Blastoise in bulk, but the rolls that give Blastoise an excellent chance of getting the OHKO on Raikou34, Passho Rotom-Heat, Rotom-Frost34 as well as Mega Metagross in rain were just too important to overlook (not to mention, a guaranteed OHKO on Garchomp3).
@ Assault Vest
IVs: 30(HT)/31/29(HT)/5(HT)/31/31
Adamant | Beast Boost
EVs: 180 HP / 44 Atk / 12 Def / 204 SpD / 68 Spe
Leaf Blade / Smart Strike / Sacred Sword / Knock Off
To anyone who doesn't play or watch VGC, Assault Vest probably seems like an outlandish item to use on Kartana, and admittedly, it appeared that way to me as well when I first saw it. Kartana has such abysmal SpDef that it's often (unfairly) being made fun of for its "paper-thin defences", overlooking the fact it actually has very good physical bulk. To my knowledge, the first advocate of Assault Vest Kartana was Ray Rizzo in this video recorded pretty early during the VGC 2017 season. At that point, no one had probably given the set a serious try, but I remember his analysis leaving a very strong impression on me, because it helped me understand much better how "bulk" functioned in Pokémon, and how investing in the lower stats, as opposed to the doctrine of "always invest in the highest stats", gave you a lot more return for your investment (I do recommend anyone who is interested in EV spread creation to watch that video, it's really instructive). This is obviously not necessarily desirable for all situations, but in Kartana's case, its abysmal SpDef, combined with the mediocre HP, meant that investing in both of those stats + adding an Assault Vest made it possible to give Kartana some legit special bulk. The initial reaction from most people was "who cares, it still goes down to any Fire move" or "it may survive this and that special move, but they still do a lot of damage". Then, slowly, as the season went by, people learned that Kartana could be played defensively with much success, and that it had the potential to be much more than just a glass cannon. Its typing is more than just 4x weak to Fire, it also happens to offer a bunch of excellent resists (8 in total!), including the ever-oppressive Fairy, and by the end of the season, several months after Ray Rizzo theorized Kartana's AV potential, people started running it more seriously. However, VGC 2018 is when the set really took off, and within a couple of months, during which it "legitimized" itself by being on several well-performing teams, the set became the most commonly used, and remains so to this day in VGC 19.
Despite the strong impression Ray Rizzo's analysis left on me, I kept doubting AV Kartana's potential until VGC 2018, which is when I personally gave it a try, and instantly fell in love. The set is easy to write off in theory, but performed amazingly in practice (granted, the addition of Knock Off to Kartana's movepool in USUM made a huge improvement to the set). Of course, just because the set performs well in VGC doesn't mean it's going to be good in the Tree, where the variety of threats and archetypes is much wider, and the absence of team preview removes a ton of flexibility. But I went into this streak for the fun of it, and I had this newly-trained Adamant AV Kartana (which was the latest meta trend in VGC at the time, everything was going slower in favor of bulk) that I really wanted to put to good use, so I figured I might as well give it a shot!
The coverage offered by its 4 moves is pretty ideal, and the fact several of these moves come with added benefits makes this even better. As a matter of fact, Smart Strike/Sacred Sword is definitely one of the reasons I was so quick to take Kartana on board, since the team had very little to deal with the bulky evasion boosters of the Tree, Blissey in particular, and for sure, those moves came in absolutely clutch during the streak. I consider Knock Off to be one of the best moves in the game, period, and I find this to be also true in Tree. I will touch this point in a future post, so I won't elaborate too much on this thought, but suffice it to say getting rid of Bright Powders, Chesto Berries, Sitrus Berries, etc. can make a huge difference. Leaf Blade is Kartana's STAB of choice most of the time, so that's a straightforward pick.
The EV spread was a spin-off of the one I already had for VGC 18. I changed the speed to outspeed Articuno3, Toxicroak, Whimsicott34 and Azelf1 outside of Tailwind, while in Tailwind, it obviously outspeeds everything. Most notably, it underspeeds Tapu Lele, which is very much voluntary: this was to be able to double up a target with these two and have Kartana finish it off to grab a Beast Boost. It didn't come into play as much as I would have liked, though, because Kartana was very rarely next to Lele, and rather came in last, next to Blastoise.
The EV spread allows for these nice calcs:
In the end, I can't say it was the most trying of tests for AV Kartana, because it didn't see a ton of use on the team. Most of the time, Blastoise cleaned up, and Kartana was lucky if it got to have one KO for itself before the battle was over. I did use its defensive potential as a switch-in a couple of times, it was especially great against Electric- and opposing Water-types, but a few instances is obviously not enough to draw conclusions. In any case, I can safely say the AV set didn't get in the way of the team's success, and I would love to test it some more on other teams, though I think it's a very circumstantial pick and should only be considered on very offensive teams that feature a reliable Tailwind setter. If I was doing another run with this team, I may look into replacing Kartana altogether for a more defensive Pokémon, but I may also end up going back to Kartana; there's definitely room for experimentation in order to perfect this team!
THE LOSS // 233 vs. LASS SAMANTHA
CONCLUSION
One thing I would like to stress is how fun and straightforward the team was (and how happy I am that Mega Blastoise was able to find a environment where it could shine so well). I would not hesitate to recommend the team to newer players who are interested in learning to play Tree, as well as to people who are only aiming to quickly get the stamp. It does sometimes involve tough decisions, especially with Tapu Lele on turn 1, but if anything, I feel like this provides a good learning experience into looking up sets when in doubt. I would love to revisit the team on a more serious attempt in the future, maybe with a couple of modifications, because I definitely believe in its potential.
This concludes post #2 of my series! I was planning on covering 2 teams in this post and ended up running out of room sooooo... I guess this now means it's going to be at least 5 posts in total? Oops! Special shoutout to Worldie who was in chat for almost the entirety of that streak!
Until the next one, thanks a lot for reading!
Submitting a completed streak of 232 in Ultra Moon Super Doubles with a team of Drifblim / Tapu Lele / Mega Blastoise / Kartana (QR team).
HISTORY & TEAMBUILDING
I ran this team on Ultra Moon, when my rain streak was alive and well on Ultra Sun. At the time (I believe August or September 2018), I had just started streaming Battle Tree on Twitch and really wanted to try out fun teams rather than constantly do the same thing with rain (which was getting less and less exciting to me). It was put together pretty quickly and I never approached it with the idea of getting a high streak, but its performance surprised me to the point I find it worth sharing it here.
It seems to be a consistent trend: a majority of my Tree teams take inspiration from current VGC trends, and this one was no different. I had been meaning to try out some sort of DrifLele combo, but never felt too inspired as to what Tailwind sweepers I wanted until I saw Aarong Zheng use Mega Blastoise on the Battle Spot ladder (link to the episode, check it out, it's a good one!). Instantly, I saw Mega Blastoise's potential for the Tree; DrifLele+Blastoise was a very flowchart-y core that was well-suited to facing all kinds of matchups, had very reliable speed control, and most importantly, a means of providing M-Blastoise with rain, which makes the sweeping potential of Water Spout go through the roof.
Finding the fourth team member was a little tricky: looking at Aaron's team, I didn't find any of these members covering the rest of the team's bases too well in Tree, except maybe Bulu. However, I didn't think Scarf Bulu was a good call in the context of Tree (despite it being amazing for him in the VGC games he showcased), and I wasn't sold on the moveset I would have to run on this team (no Z-move, double Grass moves + ...Superpower? Substitute? Rock Slide? Stone Edge was out of the question...). Double Fairy also seemed a bit dangerous when the Poison resist was Drifblim, which is hardly a check. It may have worked anyway, but I thought there should be better options.
Browsing through my boxes, I came across Kartana and thought it fit the bill perfectly. I wanted to sweep under Tailwind as I would in Trick Room: steamrolling as quickly as possible before it runs out. Beast Boost is an amazing ability to help with that, and Kartana's power is undeniable. It obviously leaves a lot to be desired defensively, but this is the where my set choice came into play... (I'll go into more detail below).
I quickly went through the EV spreads I wanted, got the training done, tested out the team, and found it to work really well. Not only did the battles go as envisioned, but it made for very fast-paced games that allowed me to climb quickly, and the team's flowchart-y nature allowed me to not have too many difficult calls to make, which made it perfect to stream. From battle 30, I streamed the entire streak all the way to the loss over the course of a few days. I purposefully played a little carelessly, since I wasn't really trying to get as high as possible, but just wanted to showcase the team for a while before moving on to the next thing. I now regret that approach a little bit, because it didn't do the team justice, and I think it deserves a higher streak number - maybe I'll revisit it someday, though by now, the might of Lele + Unburden Tailwind has definitely been proven by JustinTR's fantastic LeleLucha team!
THE TEAM
Timid | Unburden
IVs: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 100 Def / 220 SpAtk / 36 SpDef / 148 Spe
Tailwind / Shadow Ball / Will-O-Wisp / Rain Dance
Drifblim next to Tapu Lele is probably the most reliable Tailwind setter one could come across. Ever since it was popularized by SHADEviera in the 2017 ONOG Invitational tournament, it's been a consistent presence in VGC through the different metas. It makes sense: immunity to Fake Out paired with the Unburden speed boost to get that Tailwind going before any other Pokémon can move.
Timid with 148 speed EVs grant it 260 speed points after Unburden, allowing it to outspeed the fastest post-40 Pokémon in Tree, Scarf Manectric. While it may have been tempting to make the rest of the EV spread very defensive to capitalize on Drifblim's great natural bulk, I decided to make it as offensive as possible, since the point was not to stick around after setting up Tailwind for too many turns. From my experience, there is nothing worse than having your speed control Pokémon be a passive presence that ends up contributing to the AI successfully stalling out turns, so by investing more in offence, I ensured it wouldn't be too passive (it's by no means strong, but Shadow Ball at least does decent damage) and would not stick around too long, making room for Blastoise's big entrance. More specifically, 220 SpAtk grants the OHKO on non-mega Gengar as well as Medicham and Bruxish3 most of the time. 100 Def allows it to survive a Weavile Ice Punch, a non-crit M-Steelix Stone Edge, and plenty of other stuff (the list of blessed calcs is pretty impressive!), while 36 SpDef means it almost always lives a Magnezone3 or Specs Latios Thunder. Both the offensive and defensive sides are balanced to give excellent-but-not-perfect odds on some relevant calcs, but I was comfortable with that since ultimately, Drifblim's role is setting up Tailwind first and foremost, and the rest is bonus.
As mentioned, Shadow Ball prevents Drifblim from being passive, and actually does very good damage on super effective targets, which is particularly handy with it being Tapu Lele's partner, which is weak to Ghost. It's also really good use to break through the fat Psychic-types that crowd some trainers' rosters. Rain Dance was also a no-brainer for the team, as it sets Blastoise up for a clean Water Spout sweep. What I didn't anticipate is just how amazing a super-fast manual weather move would be to mess with the Tree in general. Weather teams are super common to face, and having a near-priority Rain Dance in front of Sun teams was an absolute delight, weakening their attacks immensely, and sometimes locking them into Solar Beam. It was also great against Sand teams to remove that SpDef boost instantly, or against Hail teams to give Blizzard a chance to miss. After this experience, I think I would run Rain Dance on Drifblim no matter whether or not I have a Water-type in the back, its usefulness went way beyond my expectations.
Will-O-Wisp is the "filler" move of the set. Drifblim has a ton of potentially useful support moves, and settling for an inaccurate one may sound strange, but I think it was the right choice. I tried to make sure I never relied on it, but only used it when hitting it would improve my situation even further at pretty much no cost, and it worked pretty well for that. Tapu Lele has really good natural SpDef, so hitting a Will-O-Wisp can basically patch its lower Def, and I found that to be extremely valuable; better having a 85% chance to allow Lele to tank an extra hit and make it through the turn, than no chance at all! I also made sure to burn all the annoying stally Pokémon like Blissey, Cresselia, Uxie, etc. as early as possible, since residual damage on these goes a really long way. The fact Will-O-Wisp is fired from such high speed is also part of why it's so good, even Scarf Garchomp can be burned before it moves! If I had to pick a different move, I think Memento would be my choice, since it provides more control on when you get your free switch into Blastoise, and also cripples a foe much like Will-O-Wisp does, but after experimenting a bit with it, I haven't been a huge fan of how "final" it is; crippling something with the plan of setting up a Rain Dance, or a new Tailwind afterwards isn't entirely uncommon. Destiny Bond could be a decent option as well, albeit probably a little unreliable and frustrating because of Drifblim's bulk; it's tough to predict exactly when it will go down, not to mention it gets targeted by Stone Edge all the time, and whether these will hit or not is up in the air... Other than that, I'm generally a big fan of Disable, but in the case of this team in particular, that kind of defensive play seems very counterproductive, as it stalls out Tailwind more than anything else (Will-O-Wisp already has that drawback, but in a less drastic way). I could go on, because Drifblim really has a lot of options, but I think none of them fit what this team is trying to achieve. If only it got Taunt! That would be my pick, without any hesitation!
One final thing to note about Drifblim is that due to its very high post-unburden speed, it's a Thunder Wave magnet, and ends up being paralyzed a lot, which isn't great. I used Taunt on Lele very often to prevent paralysis, which I found more important than being safe for a turn. The combination of Tailwind + Unburden means Drifblim still outspeeds the vast majority of Pokémon even when paralyzed, but that 25% chance of full paralysis is obviously the issue. Despite that, I was extremely satisfied with Drifblim's performance on this team and am absolutely planning on running it again!
Modest | Psychic Surge
IVs: 31/28/31/30(HT)/31/30(HT)
EVs: 12 HP / 244 SpAtk / 252 Spe
Psychic / Moonblast / Taunt / Protect
Tapu Lele needs no introduction, it's a staple on several of the teams on the leaderboard, including the classic PheroLele, and it's easy to see why as soon as one tries it out. Its damage output is through the roof thanks to Psychic Terrain, has an amazing offensive typing, and the Z-move is one of the most powerful nukes one can possibly fire, sometimes making type resistance irrelevant.
Since I firmly believe Tapu Lele's STAB moves, Psychic and Moonblast, are all it needs to do its offensive job, I'm a big fan of using the 3rd slot for utility rather than "coverage for the sake of coverage". Substitute, as used by Level 51 on PheroLele, can be a pretty nice option (I used it in the past and enjoyed it), but now that I've tried Taunt, I'm never going back! Granted, for this team, Taunt was basically a necessity given just how threatening Trick Room is! Ensuring Trick Room didn't go up was a much higher priority than preserving Tapu Lele's health, so I did not hesitate to Taunt when in doubt (or, sometimes, go for the more reliable Z-move nuke on threats like Trevenant, Dusknoir and Aromatisse). Such aggressive Trick Room prevention methods allowed me to successfully avoid it most of the time, though this left the problematic case of double Trick Room setters lead, where I took my coinflip guess and hoped for the best. The few times Trick Room did go up, I was fortunately able to stall it out (it's been a long time and I don't truly remember how things went down), but that definitely remains one of the biggest threats to the team. As mentioned previously, I also generously taunted all Pokémon that are known as hax machines (I'm looking at you, Regigigas, and Uxie, and Cresselia, and...), usually to great success (I found it particularly satisfying to blindly Taunt and then see they were indeed going for that Confuse Ray, or Thunder Wave, etc.).
Protect doesn't really need to be explained, especially on a Tailwind team where the "default" safe turn 1 play is always "Tailwind + Protect". This is also why I allowed myself to indulge in Tapu Lele's full power by going Modest, an extra bit of strength that was most welcome from the usual Timid calcs! I still went for 252 EVs in speed since I wanted to outspeed Gyarados outside Tailwind, and also generally to have a fast Taunt.
Modest | Rain Dish -> Mega Launcher
IVs: 31/0/31/31/31/31
EVs: 4 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 244 Spe
Water Spout / Water Pulse / Dark Pulse / Protect
With Tapu Lele's insane damage output upfront, it's easy to forget the team is first and foremost built around Mega Blastoise! And to be honest, this isn't the first time I make a Mega Blastoise team, though all my past ones have been severely underwhelming. As a matter of fact, I remember mentioning, in an early report, how Mega Blastoise was originally on my rain team rather than Swampert, and was just very awkward to use. Its potential and power is undeniable: as long as it gets to fire full-HP Water Spouts in rain, it's an incredible sweeper, but with its middling speed tier, getting it in the right position to do so repeatedly is not as easy as one would think. DrifLele, in my opinion, provide the perfect platform to allow Mega Blastoise to finally shine to its full potential.
Thanks to the front setup, it's actually easy and common for Blastoise to successfully come in fresh from the backline, in rain, with Tailwind under effect for at least a couple of turns, and Tapu Lele by its side to assist. When that setup is successful, very few things in the Tree can withstand the incoming deluge. However, things obviously don't always go perfectly, and it can definitely happen that Blastoise has to come out without Tailwind. In those cases, Water Pulse is a necessary option to still allow Blastoise to do big, reliable damage when it's no longer at full health. Double Water move may seem redundant, but those two moves are truly Blastoise's best weapons, and I would say both were equally essential to its success.
When it comes to the other two moves, decisions can be a bit difficult to make, and those are, in my opinion, very dependant on the team Blastoise is on. Obviously, the coverage of Dark Pulse and Aura Sphere, both Mega Launcher-boosted, is an extremely appealing option. However, because of Blastoise's weakness to Grass, combined with both Grass- and Dragon-types resisting Water, Ice Beam makes a ton of sense; there's a reason Ice coverage is generally very good on Water-types. On top of that, Blastoise has access to Fake Out, which is arguably the best utility move in doubles... how am I supposed to find room for Protect with all of this??
Because of Blastoise's role, it was pretty clear to me that Fake Out, at least, was going to be ditched, since Blastoise is there to sweep from full HP, not to mention Psychic Terrain would clash with it anyway. I originally decided that Dark Pulse and Ice Beam were the best options, and went for these moves, thinking I should adjust along the way depending on my experience, keeping Aura Sphere as a potential option. But rather than seeing myself wish I had different coverage, I noticed I constantly wished I had Protect. With Kartana and Drifblim already being Protect-less, there's wasn't a ton of room for repositioning with the current setup, and giving Kartana or Lele a free turn on the side to deal with a threat would have made things so much safer. Thankfully, Ice Beam ended up being easy to let go of, I don't think I used it a single time in 40 battles, while Dark Pulse appeared to be the go-to neutral hit for everything that resisted Water, and everything I really needed. After all, the true important part of the set was Water Spout, which is easy to forget when you're looking at coverage options. After adding Protect, things were instantly a lot smoother, and I never looked back. I also never wished I had Aura Sphere, though that may be in part due to Kartana's Sacred Sword.
The EV spread is very straightforward, and it simply maximizes what little bulk investment it can afford, guaranteeing Rampardos34's Head Smash never OHKOs. It outspeeds everything in Tailwind barring Scarf Manectric, with which it speed ties. I decided that was no big deal, since both Tapu Lele and Kartana can deal with Manectric if need be. Because 129 is close to several other speed tiers in Tree, including Virizion4 (spoiler alert, Virizion is a huge threat to my backline), I didn't want to cut anymore on speed. My instinct of "survivability > tiny bit of extra power" made me try *really* hard to find a way to invest this Blastoise in bulk, but the rolls that give Blastoise an excellent chance of getting the OHKO on Raikou34, Passho Rotom-Heat, Rotom-Frost34 as well as Mega Metagross in rain were just too important to overlook (not to mention, a guaranteed OHKO on Garchomp3).
IVs: 30(HT)/31/29(HT)/5(HT)/31/31
Adamant | Beast Boost
EVs: 180 HP / 44 Atk / 12 Def / 204 SpD / 68 Spe
Leaf Blade / Smart Strike / Sacred Sword / Knock Off
To anyone who doesn't play or watch VGC, Assault Vest probably seems like an outlandish item to use on Kartana, and admittedly, it appeared that way to me as well when I first saw it. Kartana has such abysmal SpDef that it's often (unfairly) being made fun of for its "paper-thin defences", overlooking the fact it actually has very good physical bulk. To my knowledge, the first advocate of Assault Vest Kartana was Ray Rizzo in this video recorded pretty early during the VGC 2017 season. At that point, no one had probably given the set a serious try, but I remember his analysis leaving a very strong impression on me, because it helped me understand much better how "bulk" functioned in Pokémon, and how investing in the lower stats, as opposed to the doctrine of "always invest in the highest stats", gave you a lot more return for your investment (I do recommend anyone who is interested in EV spread creation to watch that video, it's really instructive). This is obviously not necessarily desirable for all situations, but in Kartana's case, its abysmal SpDef, combined with the mediocre HP, meant that investing in both of those stats + adding an Assault Vest made it possible to give Kartana some legit special bulk. The initial reaction from most people was "who cares, it still goes down to any Fire move" or "it may survive this and that special move, but they still do a lot of damage". Then, slowly, as the season went by, people learned that Kartana could be played defensively with much success, and that it had the potential to be much more than just a glass cannon. Its typing is more than just 4x weak to Fire, it also happens to offer a bunch of excellent resists (8 in total!), including the ever-oppressive Fairy, and by the end of the season, several months after Ray Rizzo theorized Kartana's AV potential, people started running it more seriously. However, VGC 2018 is when the set really took off, and within a couple of months, during which it "legitimized" itself by being on several well-performing teams, the set became the most commonly used, and remains so to this day in VGC 19.
Despite the strong impression Ray Rizzo's analysis left on me, I kept doubting AV Kartana's potential until VGC 2018, which is when I personally gave it a try, and instantly fell in love. The set is easy to write off in theory, but performed amazingly in practice (granted, the addition of Knock Off to Kartana's movepool in USUM made a huge improvement to the set). Of course, just because the set performs well in VGC doesn't mean it's going to be good in the Tree, where the variety of threats and archetypes is much wider, and the absence of team preview removes a ton of flexibility. But I went into this streak for the fun of it, and I had this newly-trained Adamant AV Kartana (which was the latest meta trend in VGC at the time, everything was going slower in favor of bulk) that I really wanted to put to good use, so I figured I might as well give it a shot!
The coverage offered by its 4 moves is pretty ideal, and the fact several of these moves come with added benefits makes this even better. As a matter of fact, Smart Strike/Sacred Sword is definitely one of the reasons I was so quick to take Kartana on board, since the team had very little to deal with the bulky evasion boosters of the Tree, Blissey in particular, and for sure, those moves came in absolutely clutch during the streak. I consider Knock Off to be one of the best moves in the game, period, and I find this to be also true in Tree. I will touch this point in a future post, so I won't elaborate too much on this thought, but suffice it to say getting rid of Bright Powders, Chesto Berries, Sitrus Berries, etc. can make a huge difference. Leaf Blade is Kartana's STAB of choice most of the time, so that's a straightforward pick.
The EV spread was a spin-off of the one I already had for VGC 18. I changed the speed to outspeed Articuno3, Toxicroak, Whimsicott34 and Azelf1 outside of Tailwind, while in Tailwind, it obviously outspeeds everything. Most notably, it underspeeds Tapu Lele, which is very much voluntary: this was to be able to double up a target with these two and have Kartana finish it off to grab a Beast Boost. It didn't come into play as much as I would have liked, though, because Kartana was very rarely next to Lele, and rather came in last, next to Blastoise.
The EV spread allows for these nice calcs:
0 SpA Virizion Focus Blast vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 132-156 (84 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0 SpA Pelipper Hurricane vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 63-75 (40.1 - 47.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Togekiss Air Slash vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 64-76 (40.7 - 48.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ SpA Rotom-Fan Air Slash vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 64-76 (40.7 - 48.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Mold Breaker Gyarados-Mega Crunch vs. 180 HP / 12 Def Kartana: 61-73 (38.8 - 46.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ SpA Lapras Ice Beam vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 67-79 (42.6 - 50.3%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Decidueye Shadow Ball vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 67-79 (42.6 - 50.3%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Rotom-Frost Blizzard vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 69-82 (43.9 - 52.2%) -- 17.2% chance to 2HKO
168 SpA Lucario Aura Sphere vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 122-146 (77.7 - 92.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Talonflame Flare Blitz vs. 180 HP / 12 Def Kartana in Rain: 132-156 (84 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
0 SpA Pelipper Hurricane vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 63-75 (40.1 - 47.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Togekiss Air Slash vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 64-76 (40.7 - 48.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ SpA Rotom-Fan Air Slash vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 64-76 (40.7 - 48.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 Atk Mold Breaker Gyarados-Mega Crunch vs. 180 HP / 12 Def Kartana: 61-73 (38.8 - 46.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252+ SpA Lapras Ice Beam vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 67-79 (42.6 - 50.3%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Decidueye Shadow Ball vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 67-79 (42.6 - 50.3%) -- 1.2% chance to 2HKO
252+ SpA Rotom-Frost Blizzard vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 69-82 (43.9 - 52.2%) -- 17.2% chance to 2HKO
168 SpA Lucario Aura Sphere vs. 180 HP / 204 SpD Assault Vest Kartana: 122-146 (77.7 - 92.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ Atk Talonflame Flare Blitz vs. 180 HP / 12 Def Kartana in Rain: 132-156 (84 - 99.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
THE LOSS // 233 vs. LASS SAMANTHA
As I mentioned earlier, this entire streak was more for entertainment than serious Tree climbing, so I was playing pretty casually, and the loss definitely reflects that. However, it was a tough battle nonetheless that required making some difficult calls.
TURN 1:
vs.
I actually think my turn 1 play was very good. The big threat is Cresselia potentially going for Trick Room, so I needed it taunted asap, but clearly Cobalion was getting in the way of a safe turn 1 Taunt, so my best bet was burning it to allow Lele to tank an Iron Head, which is exactly what I did, and since this was indeed Cresselia4, it went exactly as planned.
TURN 2:
vs.
At this point, I was so focused on the necessity of getting rid of Cresselia before the Taunt ended that I decided to aggressively target it. At this point, I make the odd call to let Lele go down should it be targeted for a free switch into Blastoise, which should be able to deal with both Cresselia and Cobalion in Tailwind before the Taunt ended. It kind of makes sense, since Protecting Lele allows one turn of Taunt to go by, while Cobalion could finish it off on the next turn anyway. But I don't think I considered going for Tailwind + Protect in order to simply KO Cobalion on the next turn, which in hindsight seems like a better option. Then again, with this Cresselia having Shadow Ball, maybe getting a new Taunt would not have been possible and this would have indeed screwed me further, so I'm not entirely certain whether this was the absolute correct play, but it does seem to make more sense in any case. Lele goes down, and I start denting Cresselia with Shadow Ball to make sure I can finish it off before Taunt ends. Cresselia Psychics Drifblim (Terrain-boosted, because it's Iron Ball, ouch).
TURN 3:
vs.
I remember this turn very clearly, because the obvious play was to go Blastoise so I can either 1. Dark Pulse Cress or 2. Tailwind + Protect, and then Rain Dance + Water Spout for the double KO. Option #2 sounds better, but it relies on Drifblim surviving the turn, though the option of Dark Pulsing the next turn if things go wrong is there as well, not to mention Knock Off on the incoming Kartana. In both cases, Blastoise should have come in here. But I remember changing my mind last second, thinking "you know what, Kartana is fine here too! I don't give Kartana enough time in the spotlight, Blastoise is always my default switch after a lead goes down. Let's go Kartana for once and try to achieve a sweep!". To be fair, Kartana wasn't an awful idea, but for some reason I disregarded the obvious Close Combat coming from Cobalion, which did a good 50%, damage that I would rather not have taken. Moreover, I decide to KO Cobalion for a Beast Boost, leaving Cresselia for next turn since Taunt hadn't ended, and both my Pokémon could finish it off. This was short-sighted, as I trade a ton of damage on both my Pokémon for only 1 KO, give the AI a free switch, and lock myself into having to target one of the slots next turn in advance. And in comes the biggest threat to the team: Virizion.
TURN 4:
vs.
By leaving Cresselia in last turn, I forced myself to have to target it this turn, which is definitely not a good idea when you're giving the AI a free switch. Taunt having ended, I have to target Cresselia (or am I? that's how I saw it at the time, but in hindsight, Trick Room would actually have been a lot better for me here!), so I Shadow Ball it, Smart Strike into Virizion for about 95% damage (so close ;(), which can also pick a KO; Drifblim goes down to Stone Edge.
TURN 5:
vs.
When I saw Raikou was last, I knew that was the end. What I really needed in this game was Tailwind, and I was too short-sighted to set it up when I was given the occasion. I knew it was Raikou3 since it wasn't on a Balloon, and that it had the Z-move, so I Protected Blastoise hoping to burn that; it goes for it, but also does a ton of damage through Protect. I was hoping Virizion would also target Blastoise so I could finish it off, but it went for Kartana instead, leaving the poor turtle pretty lonely in front of both a Grass and an Electric legendary :S
TURN 6:
vs.
Adding insult to injury, Raikou now decides to Protect - but it obviously makes no difference, and Virizion takes the KO.
I think I would have improved my odds a ton by just going Blastoise after Lele went down, as I usually would have done. The team leans heavily on the benefit of Water Spout as a spread move, and not giving myself that option was costly (also most importantly, not setting my position appropriately with Tailwind in the 2 turns where I was given the chance - Cresselia being Taunted meant I had several ways of handling it and getting the KO before the Taunt ended, I don't know why I got so paranoid about that).
TURN 1:
I actually think my turn 1 play was very good. The big threat is Cresselia potentially going for Trick Room, so I needed it taunted asap, but clearly Cobalion was getting in the way of a safe turn 1 Taunt, so my best bet was burning it to allow Lele to tank an Iron Head, which is exactly what I did, and since this was indeed Cresselia4, it went exactly as planned.
TURN 2:
At this point, I was so focused on the necessity of getting rid of Cresselia before the Taunt ended that I decided to aggressively target it. At this point, I make the odd call to let Lele go down should it be targeted for a free switch into Blastoise, which should be able to deal with both Cresselia and Cobalion in Tailwind before the Taunt ended. It kind of makes sense, since Protecting Lele allows one turn of Taunt to go by, while Cobalion could finish it off on the next turn anyway. But I don't think I considered going for Tailwind + Protect in order to simply KO Cobalion on the next turn, which in hindsight seems like a better option. Then again, with this Cresselia having Shadow Ball, maybe getting a new Taunt would not have been possible and this would have indeed screwed me further, so I'm not entirely certain whether this was the absolute correct play, but it does seem to make more sense in any case. Lele goes down, and I start denting Cresselia with Shadow Ball to make sure I can finish it off before Taunt ends. Cresselia Psychics Drifblim (Terrain-boosted, because it's Iron Ball, ouch).
TURN 3:
I remember this turn very clearly, because the obvious play was to go Blastoise so I can either 1. Dark Pulse Cress or 2. Tailwind + Protect, and then Rain Dance + Water Spout for the double KO. Option #2 sounds better, but it relies on Drifblim surviving the turn, though the option of Dark Pulsing the next turn if things go wrong is there as well, not to mention Knock Off on the incoming Kartana. In both cases, Blastoise should have come in here. But I remember changing my mind last second, thinking "you know what, Kartana is fine here too! I don't give Kartana enough time in the spotlight, Blastoise is always my default switch after a lead goes down. Let's go Kartana for once and try to achieve a sweep!". To be fair, Kartana wasn't an awful idea, but for some reason I disregarded the obvious Close Combat coming from Cobalion, which did a good 50%, damage that I would rather not have taken. Moreover, I decide to KO Cobalion for a Beast Boost, leaving Cresselia for next turn since Taunt hadn't ended, and both my Pokémon could finish it off. This was short-sighted, as I trade a ton of damage on both my Pokémon for only 1 KO, give the AI a free switch, and lock myself into having to target one of the slots next turn in advance. And in comes the biggest threat to the team: Virizion.
TURN 4:
By leaving Cresselia in last turn, I forced myself to have to target it this turn, which is definitely not a good idea when you're giving the AI a free switch. Taunt having ended, I have to target Cresselia (or am I? that's how I saw it at the time, but in hindsight, Trick Room would actually have been a lot better for me here!), so I Shadow Ball it, Smart Strike into Virizion for about 95% damage (so close ;(), which can also pick a KO; Drifblim goes down to Stone Edge.
TURN 5:
When I saw Raikou was last, I knew that was the end. What I really needed in this game was Tailwind, and I was too short-sighted to set it up when I was given the occasion. I knew it was Raikou3 since it wasn't on a Balloon, and that it had the Z-move, so I Protected Blastoise hoping to burn that; it goes for it, but also does a ton of damage through Protect. I was hoping Virizion would also target Blastoise so I could finish it off, but it went for Kartana instead, leaving the poor turtle pretty lonely in front of both a Grass and an Electric legendary :S
TURN 6:
Adding insult to injury, Raikou now decides to Protect - but it obviously makes no difference, and Virizion takes the KO.
I think I would have improved my odds a ton by just going Blastoise after Lele went down, as I usually would have done. The team leans heavily on the benefit of Water Spout as a spread move, and not giving myself that option was costly (also most importantly, not setting my position appropriately with Tailwind in the 2 turns where I was given the chance - Cresselia being Taunted meant I had several ways of handling it and getting the KO before the Taunt ended, I don't know why I got so paranoid about that).
One thing I would like to stress is how fun and straightforward the team was (and how happy I am that Mega Blastoise was able to find a environment where it could shine so well). I would not hesitate to recommend the team to newer players who are interested in learning to play Tree, as well as to people who are only aiming to quickly get the stamp. It does sometimes involve tough decisions, especially with Tapu Lele on turn 1, but if anything, I feel like this provides a good learning experience into looking up sets when in doubt. I would love to revisit the team on a more serious attempt in the future, maybe with a couple of modifications, because I definitely believe in its potential.
This concludes post #2 of my series! I was planning on covering 2 teams in this post and ended up running out of room sooooo... I guess this now means it's going to be at least 5 posts in total? Oops! Special shoutout to Worldie who was in chat for almost the entirety of that streak!
Until the next one, thanks a lot for reading!
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Thank you! No, both Water Spout and Fake Out are regular egg moves, I think you might be mixing it up with Follow Me, which is an event move that's incompatible with both these egg moves.
Egg moves don't need to be passed all at once from a single parent. In this case, you can get Water Spout by breeding Wailmer and Remoraid to get it on a Remoraid male, then breed that male with a Squirtle, and the baby will now have Water Spout. Then, you breed that baby with a male Lombre for Fake Out, and the new baby will have both moves.
Yeah, I'm very sure, female parents not only pass egg moves, but they also get priority if the male and female parent have more than 4 possible egg moves together. I think this might have been added in Gen 6? That's when I started breeding stuff so I'm not entirely sure on the pre-Gen 6 mechanics though...!
That got changed a few gens ago :)
Right now, Male parents can pass about everything (egg moves, hidden ability, pokeball) except their species (except with Ditto, obv).
Males can only pass HA if it's with Ditto, just like species. Poke Ball type is slightly more liberating: they can do that if it's with Ditto or if both parents are the exact same species. This is a strict check; NidoranM and NidoranF are not considered "the same species" which, for one thing, makes it impossible to have HA Nidoran in an apricorn ball (each parent would need to pass down one of those traits, but the father cannot be eligible to pass down either of them).