Unofficial Metagames agL cAnT Use BaLancE (AG) (Peak 2057)

Introduction
Over my time playing in ag I have been well known as a player who never uses balance and the times I did use balance usually ended up going terribly wrong, but over the past couple months I have been practicing using balance and Skarph telling me has has no respect for the teams I use gave me the push I needed to build and then use a balance team on ladder. Over time I grew to love this team and I actually found success with it, getting the highest elo I have ever achieved.


Song because everyone does it lmao
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Gengar-Mega @ Gengarite
Ability: Shadow Tag
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Perish Song
- Substitute
- Disable
- Shadow Ball

Sub disable Gengar was the mon this entire team was built around, Sub disable perish Gengar is very good at beating mono attacking sets such as support Arceus, cm refresh calm mind arceus, and even mons such as defenive Necrozma-Dusk-Mane, It also provides a check to the very common ultra necrozma with shadow ball being able to ohko it from full. Using this is quite simple too, against mono attacking sets you just sub, if they break your sub you disable, and then you perish song. Your opponent can't switch so they are just forced to wait 3 turns for their pokemon to die.

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Necrozma-Dusk-Mane @ Ultranecrozium Z
Ability: Prism Armor
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Photon Geyser
- Heat Wave
- Dragon Pulse

Calm mind ultra necrozma was the second mon I put on this team, I saw zayele run this along side sub perish disable gengar on her team so I thought I would be a good idea to do the same on my team. Unlike swords dance ultra necrozma calm mind is able to set up on will-o-wisp arceus and is able to to survive a gengar shadow ball after a calm mind. This mon is very valuable to the team for its ability to beat bulkier teams and fire off powerful light that burns they skies. Heat wave is run to hit the various steel types of the tier such as ferrothorn, celesteela, and necrozma-dusk-mane. and dragon pulse is a very powerful move that deals a surprising amount of damage to the dark types that normally check sd ultra. overall this mon was great addition to the team.
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Arceus-Fairy @ Pixie Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 240 HP / 252 Def / 16 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Judgment
- Recover
- Defog
- Toxic

I decided to run arceus fairy because I needed a defogger and a marsh check as well as a way to beat mega rayquaza and fairyceus checked all 3 of those boxes. Arceus fairy is a very solid defensive mon in anything goes, its ability to defenively check a ton of the metagame makes it invaluable to the team. I chose to run pretty much the standard defensive arceus set with judgement hitting plenty of the metagame very hard even without special attack investment just because of how good of an offenive type fairy is in ag made it a very good pick. This mon also paired very well with mega gengar giving me a mon to switch in to from gengar because it beats most of Gengar's checks such as yveltal and marshadow.
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Arceus-Dark @ Dread Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Judgment
- Recover
- Refresh
Calm mind arceus dark is amazing in its ability to set up against a large portion of the meta game and the fact that it is very difficult to stop one a sweep has been set up. This mon also provides an incredible necrozma check and a way to deal with teams that attempt to win by toxic stalling. This set is so hard to stop that it can every beat arceus fairy once it sets up a calm mind as long as the arc fairy doesn't have roar, calm mind, or perish song but most standard arc fairies don't have those. I have had so many great games where I lead arc dark and proceed to 6-0 because there is just nothing they can do about it. overall a very good mon and probably the mon i most rely on to sweep for this team
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Xerneas @ Power Herb
Ability: Fairy Aura
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Geomancy
- Moonblast
- Focus Blast
- Psyshock
With plenty of ways to beat xern's most common checks on this team I thought it would be a great idea to run geoxern on this team. This mon is usually my late game sweeper that I use once the opposing team has been weakened enough for xern to be able to sweep. I chose to run a 252/252 spread on it because I wanted it to be able to beat the annoying scarf marshadow and also speed tie with life orb yveltal to get a chance to geomany up on it. focus blast is incredible at beating steel types that would otherwise beat it and psyshock deals 60-80% to arc poison which is one of the most common fairy checks in anything goes. I really love xerneas and I am really happy that I was able to make it fit on this team, tbh xerneas is probably my favorite ag mon now.

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Groudon-Primal @ Red Orb
Ability: Desolate Land
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Roar
- Precipice Blades
- Overheat
- Stealth Rock

I put groudon on my team because it filled a bunch of the holes that my team had, Roar is a very good move on pdon, it allows it to check xerneas by living any attack xern can throw at it becuase of its special defenive investment and then roar it away. Roar also prevents pdon from being setup bait for mons such as mray by roaring them away after they try to set up. But the main reason I chose to use pdon was as a stealth rocks setter. Precipice blades and overheat are nice as stab moves on both the special and physical side. I chose to run 0 speed ivs and a speed negative nature to underspeed the other base 90 speed defoggers giratina and ho-oh so I can get my rocks up in calm mind defog wars


Conclusion
Over the past week I have grown to love building and using balance and I hope that I can continue to expand the playstyles that I use and grow even more as a player

Shoutout

Zayele- For being the inspiration for this team as well helping me improve my balance skills and being a good friend

Replays

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7anythinggoes-1001323876 vs wsun1

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7anythinggoes-1001065364 vs chippytreatz

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7anythinggoes-1000619913-uvyicqkzuf1b9wyekcv6s19cgctk41rpw vs Icemaster

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7anythinggoes-1000940138-ushhxc3sdqz3orvjlrmkzbv1ka7eegqpw vs polt

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7anythinggoes-1000819466-t217ud8uok0cdnwnxxp54pnn19wxyd9pw vs edgar


Importable
https://pokepast.es/ddc359042b634d7a
 
Hey there, looks like a pretty reasonable team, glad to see you're expending your horizons and using something other than boring HO. There's two changes that I would make personally:

1. The Darkceus spread. I don't really get max speed cm refresh arcs, the only thing the speed does is outrun +speed unboosted mray which for this particular team doesn't seem like a scenario that would happen too often; they would need to send out their ray while you already have darkceus out which is kinda dumb. You obviously can't switch darkceus into mray since you'll get destroyed, boosted ray just kills you, and you have better things to revenge kill ray like gengar and fairyceus. Speedtying with other cm arcs is absolutely irrelevant, you still need to crit them to win the cm war anyway. I would instead run

252 Hp/ 160 Def/ 96 Spe, Timid

which still lets you outspeed adamant mray while taking hits from things like SD ultra and Dusk-mane a lot better. You can also run a fully defensive spread like the one on your fairyceus so you have a backup mray revenge killer if needed that just tanks physical hits really well.

2. Xerneas. Xern doesn't seem necessary on this team imo, it gives you a win condition I guess against other xern weak teams but doesn't really help you with a lot of the offensive threats to your team. You have fairyceus already to deal with dark types and marshadow anyway. Meanwhile, you get 6-0ed by double dance dusk mane and opposing geo xern only needs a bit of chip on don to sweep, and thats very likely to happen since you need don to switch into ogre and set up rocks early. Also, your entire team seems to get walled by Ho-oh. I think I would use Ho-oh instead:

Ho-Oh @ Leftovers
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 204 Def / 52 SpD
IVs: 0 Spe
Relaxed Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Whirlwind
- Toxic
- Defog

Helps a lot vs dusk-mane, whirlwinds out boosted xern, counters mixed rock polish pdon and gives you a very strong counter to cm groundceus and steelceus (otherwise you're kind of forced to go into a 50-50 cm war with your darkceus). A second defogger is also nice in the webs matchup; your entire team is grounded and it seems to me that webs would easily tear you to shreds. Ho-oh also helps against stall, giving you a pivot that just refuses to die with regen.

If you do choose to keep xern though, you should definitely change psyshock for thunder or hp rock, your team is not weak to poisonceus lol, you have special ultra, pdon and mega gengar. Also 252 spa/ 252 spe seems like a terrible spread on geo xern, is scarf marshadow really that common? If you lose the speedtie vs yveltal and they taunt you then so what, just kill them on the next turn with moonblast...

Some other potential changes you could make:
- You could change mega-gengar to a more offensive set like sub/taunt/shadow ball/sludge wave, this can trap and kill fairyceus to help darkceus clean up later and gives you something to lead against smeargle so you don't have to take a sleep and pray you wake up early.
- Ultra could be swords dance instead, it breaks stuff much more quickly and can revenge a weakened geoxern in dusk-mane form in desperate situations. It also does better vs Ho-oh. You could also run power gem for Ho-oh I suppose.
- Toxic on pdon; without it, support arcs just wall you forever and slowly kill you with toxic and spam defog. If you make the Ho-oh change, I would recommend replacing roar with toxic.

Hope you appreciate my comments!
 

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