Alright to spice things up, ive got some AAA teambuilding challenges for this week for sv, uu, ubers and ss. Sadly I cant dish out super impressive rewards for completing any of these, best I can offer is my kudos. Your welcome for the heat teambuilding ideas and looking forward to seeing if anyone cooks something cool :)
Firstly SV:
So this meta is the main reason I wanted to do this, every team looks the same and thats just cos trying to be creative isnt rewarded nearly as much in this meta as any other aaa meta ive seen. The top mons are just that much better than the rest, due to just better movepools and better stats, especially speed. Furthermore defensive options are like insanely limited on both flanks. Its often a toss up between corv or pecha on the physdef side, and a toss up between mana and pert on the spdef side, with then a tusk on most every team to add a rmoon switchin and hazard removal. Consider myself bored. HO seems to be the only playstyle where I see more inventiveness mostly because you can forgo the defensive structure and that gives you more slots to play around with. That being said I am not gonna give some kinda crazy challenge, but a more I think reasonable challenge that could net a pretty cool team if pulled off (hopefully!).
I challenge someone to build around gengar. I swear ive never seen this mon used this far and the only reasonable reason i can see is that 350 speed is hilariously too slow for the formula 1 meta that is sv ou aaa. That being said, i think it has more versatility than people allocate for the mon and can do some pretty cool things to differentiate/make up for it being slower than deo-s. Examples include access to knock, wow, tspikes, dbond, and theres always mean look skill swap shenanigans. I feel like this could help it overcome the lack of deo-s speed or a pivot move like lati and moth (2 other powerful spa attackers at the same speed as gar). And like even ignoring this, the full coverage sflo set or even dropping a coverage move for np hits quite substantially harder than deo-s, and can break through the typical cores without too much extra conditioning so with the right team I can see it being quite the menace.
SV Ubers:
Ubers I think is arguably more centralised than sv ou but on the down low lmao, mainly cos there are a few stand out brokens offensively, and limited defensive options. However I havent been subjugated to building for this tier for months as is the case with sv ou, so that coupled with the new mons and some freed abilities means ive actually been enjoying teambuilding for it. I think some bans are very much needed though - the main ones that come to mind are NDM, Deo-A, and Mirai. For the former, its double stab moldy moves paired with insanely good defensive typing, and a crazy movepool is just ridiculous. In general in a furscales meta, having your main stabs have automatic mold breaker is just a bit overtuned imho, like off that principal id personally ban ndw and lunala too (solg kinda stinks) cos both of them can run unburden with meteor beam or elec seed and just yea autowin too very easily. The latter 2 are a fair bit more manageable though with worse typing, as well as only really being utterly terrifuing can 6-0 you on the spot with unburden from my experience, still ridiculous but a bit more manageable. NDM though is just insane, you can run like 50 different sets and they all can win. You can fun scales, fur coat, wbb, unburden, adapt, tinted and the list goes on. Because all it takes is 2-3 dragon dances and odds are you lose. As for deo-a and mirai, mons are just ludicrously fast and ludicrously strong, kinda straight forward. In mirai's case, it basically forces you to run an elec immune or you lose to the mon, kinda straight up. You can spam specs, boots, and scarf sets to your hearts content and it will almost always be a legit wincon, especially as there really just arent many viable grounds. Groundceus feels like the best option byfar, but that burns your arc slot and arc being probably the second best mon and byfar the best defensive utility option in the tier means youre burning quite a lot for just 1 mon. Deo-a is broken for similar reasons, its effectively the fastest mon in the tier, paired with 180 base attack and spa, which on paper is digusting. It then also has some versatility in protean and surge sets, both of which are terrifying. It benefits massively from the very noticeable lack of defensive dark types (again similar to the mirai situation) which is only slightly held in check by the fact that there are at least a lot of steel types to resist those psychic stabs, but with protean mixed sets deo-a kinda circumvents this and is yea overtuned. I don't think banning these 3 mons fixes the core issue which remains the fact that there are a lot of great offensive options and a lot less good defensive options (especially when you factor in the fact that you only get one arceus per team lol), not to mention removal SUCKS, like its somehow worse than sv ou, although not as bad as uu i guess. That being said, I think these 3 bans as a minumum would be nice to see before poffs.
Anyways, with that whole monologue over, lemme move onto my ubers challenge. As a disclaimer, you can try as much as you want, you still wont cook up anything as heat as jrdn this week, the mons hes won in tests with...... theres a reason hes my aaa goat.
So Ive got 2 mons as options for the ubers challenge(cos both are pretty tricky): Ursaluna as the main one and Dragapult for personal reasons.
Ursaluna I legit think could be solid. It gets solid stab options paired with curse and sd as setup options, and its bulk is very respectable. I get that fc mons, and especially fur coat waterceus feel like they invalidate the mon, but I think it offers a lot more than regigigas and would like to see if someone can figure the mon out. Draga on the other hand is cos it was one of the most fun mons to use during my favorite period of aaa ever - pre-home gen 8 dexit aaa. The mon was busted and got banned, but from its scarf dazzling sets (it made more sense when triage kiss was everywhere lol) outspeeding literally everything, to its mixed sflo sets breaking everything.... idk it was just fun af to use. That being said, this one I think is a reach and potentially too troll to build with in an ubers meta, cos I reckon it just doesn't hit hard enough. Its ghost stab is nonexistent on the physical side, its dragon darts band dmaw sets are a little too exposed by any steel type (i doubt it even breaks fc waterceus) and then the big one is magearna, which I doubt it ever really does all that much to. That being said if someone cooks with it youll officially make my tour :)
SV UU:
UU is a frustrating meta, mostly because it feels so close to being really really really good. It genuinly feels like such a breath of fresh air playing a meta where the speed tiers look actually normal for once. Nothing feels ludicrously busted, and it feels like there are a lot of cool team comps to play around with. It just feels like it needs corviknight tbh lol. Oh and 2ac would be nice for it too. But yea its basically an indication to me that my idea of banning all the ludicrously fast mons in sv would make the meta feel better, but there are still some distinct more fundamental issues that would keep that from actually fixing the meta. The biggest issue is really the hazard control, like its just even worse sv ou cos you lose court change with cinderace, as well as corv and tusk the 2 most reliable options..... and you gain..... blastoise and altaria? Like its bad. The second biggest issue are the typings for defensive options. There are like no good ghosts, hardly any good steels, and the biggest one is there are like no consistently usable fairies. But there are some legit really cool options for sweeping sets and breaking sets which means this might be the easiest meta for a challenge. That being said I am still gonna offer up 2 cos I like both of these.
The first mon is Tornadus-t and the second is hoopa.
Tornadus feels like the only genie ive seen 0 of (idk if ive missed it cos i havent seen every game tbf, but im including my own team tests here) and like i get it, it doesnt have dual stabs and generally feels far less threatening than thundy offensively, whilst offering far less defensively than lando (which has typing + usually desoland as extra immunity). Like that is a huge thing to miss out on. But what torn does have is speed over the other 2. I cant see it functioning as a sweeper, especially with mons like mamo and sneasler being so good (mainly cos all the best defensive mons seem to drop to either ice or ground coverage). But I can see it functioning in maybe a similar role as rmoon in svou (although obviously wayyyy less good). Like its a fast mon with enough power to be a legit concern whilst also capable of harrasing and out pivoting your defensive switches. Hoopa on the other hand is probably unusable but i wanna see if anyone can come up with something. I was thinking something tr based, or something prank dbond based but yea idk, mon is so damn powerful but has some of the worst typing imaginable on a mon that is as slow and as weak defensively as it is. Like its a knock away from getting one shot at all times. It had a niche as an unburden mon back in gen 7 but yea, feels like its time has passed but id love to see it shine. Also I didnt mention it earlier but would be cool to see volcanion too tbh, mglo or primordial weather sets sound pretty cool with mixed sets and id like to see if it could work here.
SS:
SS was the biggest surprise for me cos I never played it after i retired post home ages ago, and id heard most of my friends like stresh and jrdn disliked it quite a lot. On paper I wanted to agree as it was a farcry from the meta I loved back when I left mons, with stuff like bounce and ph gone. Not to mention I remember hating the power creep gf introcuded in gen 8 for pivoting moves by adding flip turn and tp, so yea all in all I was ready to hate this meta. I cant tell if its just cos i hate sv so much that having dual regen cores back and actually good and different defensive options is just that nice, and having uh ACTUAL REMOVAL OPTIONS (fuck you gamefreak xox), or that its actually quite a balaanced fun meta..... but i really like this meta atm. I haven't quite clicked teambuilding wise with it, feel like im close on a lot of teams but not able to get to the level where im confident if i play well that the team will win into most mu's, but regardless its been a pleasant experience. I do with gzap was gone though, the mon is a bit much.
As for challenges Ive got a few: Offensive mew, marowak-a, and Grimmsnarl
Mew is just insane and its so so nice to play with mew being good again. Also old dauntless shield is so nice. That being said I remember offensive sets being also pretty damn good absolutely ages ago. Idk if theyll ever reach the peaks of gen 7 with the mew zmove which was so heat, buuut id like to see if an offensive set that isnt like goddamn regenscarf or devil cosmic power setup be good. Marowak is probably un-usable but still, it has the potential to hit so ludicrously hard and id love to see if a vintage tr marowak or just a team that gets it in a lot could function. The niche of being wow immune and fucking up mew seems pretty cool. Finally Grimmsnarl might be one of my favorite mons of all time.
Isaiah will remember how good that mon used to be, like if you had it on your team your team was basically broken. Id love to see it make a comeback lol, doubt its doable but would be dope to see.
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