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AAA Almost Any Ability
- Thread starter Isaiah
- Start date
I like double explosion but my previous team is kind of like a stall team after you have exploded so I decided to take an offensive approach to it. I used Azelf as a hazard lead which is quite effective in setting hazard and doing a decent chunk into the steel type like Tread or Hoodra. This team doesn't want rocks to be up on your side so Regieleki is my choice for hazard remover. After the Azelf exploded, you can go into this to get fast pivot or just boom for damage. In some match up you might want to keep this for speed control.
After that I decided to throw in some strong sets that I get swept by on the ladder. First is the Ceruledge set. It is nothing crazy but it is really hard to check and can catch many people off guard because of life orb. Next is Quaquaval. I knew when I built an HO team I wouldn't have a reliable switchin against most threats but I still like having double weather to give me some out. Quaquaval set is also pretty basic but as with the Ceruledge, Wave Crash damage in rain with mystic water can do a lot of damage to unsuspecting victims. However, be careful when using these sets as either can't do anything if it gets counter weather (Zapdos and Iron Moth). Most people don't bring both so you are probably safe. My probably favourite mon in this team is Polteageist. I was playing a game where I had Alola-Muk against my opponent's Polt. I thought it was dazzling or something but was kind of shock when I found out. I ended up have to sack Scream Tail and losed from there. I don't think this set is super good or something but it can do a lot against team without priorities (Also funny interaction if you skill swap Regen you can heal up the chip and save you Focus Sash for next time). I won't talk much about Zam because I hate it but I also need some type of speed control on my team and a mon that is decently bulky. You could replace it with Garchomp if you don't care about that.
Overall a fun team if you want to turn off your brain. I feel like I keep Scream Tail in mind way too much when building HO but ended up didn't encounter that much on the ladder and all of the encounters were on stall so I lost anyway. Looking forward to AAAPL.
I added a couple more sample teams :D go and take a look
More likely coming soonTM
Oh yeah, also:
More likely coming soonTM
Oh yeah, also:
After internal discussion in council, there was general consensus on allowing the metagame to develop further during AAAPL before voting on any tiering action. Obviously, if something ends up being horrifically broken then we'll have no choice but to do something about it, but otherwise, any suspect tests or quickban slates will pretty much be put on hold until after the tour :P (and even at that, it's likely that a 2AC suspect test will happen before anything on individual Pokemon, since a complete mechanics change would mandate re-evaluating parts of the banlist regardless).
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OMPL Team Dump
Well the W Virrizions have officially been knocked from the first round of playoffs and I thought well, might as well make sure the 20k messages and many teams we spent within cooking in our team prep wouldn't go to waste. So here's a team dump of all the teams/concepts I think are actually half-decent post-Home + the W1/2 pre-Home teams because why not.
Week 1 vs tieracid -
by LordBox
We had a few concepts flying around before this but never anything we were that satisfied with. The pre-Home meta was admittedly pretty static and given the fact tier we knew had pretty barebones AAA knowledge and support we were aiming for a pretty solid team with some sauce maybe. Eventually it came to fruition that Tinted Lens Gambit was cool, and while I usually use more solid defensive cores, decided to take a page from Ivar's book and run Regen ChainChomp to help lure in Corv + win the hazard war. Rest was pretty standard for the time and led to a fairly clean win.
Week 2 vs The Number Man
by LordBox
Again we had a few concepts lying around. Originally this began from the fact I thought Sword of Ruin physical Fires were kinda broken asf. We worked on it a bit and then we had another team ready along with other teams, including this one. I did feel more comfortable with this loading into TNM given I saw their usage of Rotom-Wash which was irritating into our other so I convinced our pilot FrankJosh to switch it up. Lo and behold TN did not bring Rotom-Wash an incredibly irritating MGLO Hawlucha which trolled long-term with no Intimidate Corv + a very sketchy Ceruledge MU ourselves which taught me... a lesson for the future on any balance team.
Week 3 vs cumps
by Isaiah
I was unfortunately busy this week so Tranquility and Isaiah mainly took the reins. From what I can tell there were a few ideas flying around like Samurott-H and MGLO Heatran but eventually decided on the fact that screens is broken asf and decided to load this. All pretty broken stuff crammed into one team. We were originally Sub on Zama-C but I hated Sub on Zama-C I always preferred SEdge and we changed to Taunt on the Enamorus to prevent Ting-Lu from setting up rocks on us first turn and GG.
Week 4 vs shiloh
by Isaiah
We knew that at this point that shiloh had inclined to bring some crazy and wacky offense given the teambuilding style of Career Ended up to ths point so we from the start had a very clear direction to bring very safe balance or fat/stall. A few ideas floated around although a few ended up being invalidated since I accidentally leaked a few. Eventually we decided to bring one of Isaiah's fairly safe teams which focused on sitting there and eventually let Talonflame wear down the enemy, or chip and hazards.
Week 5 vs MZ
by hariyana grande
Tbh, in hindsight, we lost this week because I think we were a bit confused on what our concept should've been and bringing an ultra-safe balance or stall like from last week could've won but shrug. We had prepped a pivot offense team that was performing nicely in tests but ultimately we all grew too uncomfortable with our matchup into stuff like Zama-C to load it and prepped this last second I believe. It was somewhat similar pivot offense but a bit less loaded on the offense side but still pretty sketch on the defensive side of things with a Fluffy Lando to amend our sketch Zama-C mu from before and thus our loss to MZ.
Week 6 vs atha
by hariyana grande + LordBox
From the get-go, we wished to push something far more offensive onto the table vs atha. We looked at atha's scout and noticed a pretty clear weakness in all of atha's team beforehand and that they didn't like to use RegenVest mons and preferred more cope methods to answer the enemy's offense. What really annoyed me was that pivot-offense team from before could've been cool but we had already tested it into atha... but whatever. Eventually we made this pivot spam offensive with Cinderace + Regieleki forming a fierce pivot spam core and Thundurus as our main breaker which ended up making the money work. TDebris Chomp is odd but served as a nice physfire check and also way to steal momentum by forcing a break of the stalemate. Originally it was Thundy-T i think but guaranteeing the outspeed onto Chomp and also Iron Moth was the reasoning behind the change by Greybaum I think.
Week 7 vs Ivar57
by LordBox + Taka
We originally had a bunch of generic ass Chien-Pao balance teams to spam into Ivar57 which I didn't particularly agree with Chien-Pao being that broken as people adapted to playing around it and its support but whatever it ended up not mattering. Since we had already guaranteed playoffs before our AAA player even had the chance to play, I decided to say fuck it and they let me sub in for the week. Built this really dumb Explosion bait spam HO team with Surge Surfer Hoopa and Triage Enam was backup speed control for annoying stuff like Chien-Pao and scarfers + could take advantage of RegenVest being removed. Ultimately regretted making the Azelf Tinted Lens over even -Ate Explosion or Protean as it would've won me the game most likely and also lost to a timer loss so lmaooo but the team showcased it nicely anyway. Useless if the opponent knows what's coming... and I'm making this public so lol.
W1 Playoffs vs Osake
by Greybaum + Fiora (astralydia)
Fiora joined the party this week and brought some interesting concepts to the table which will discussed at a later point in this point. However the one thing we did agree on was that MGLO Heatran (and Chomp by some extension) were kinda broken for their ability to continously set hazards, with MGLO Heatran being a scary breaker in its own right which exploited the ultra-passive STail without doubles, although our own hazard removal was kinda oof. Main issues were that bringing MGLO Heatran really slows down the team and we were without real speed control so we had to cope with our defensive core. Also malding since we knew DGleam Moth would be a pain but were like who even uses that and behold.... not made better by the fact I suggested Goodra over RegenVest Hydreigon before to help against our Thundy-T and Volc issue but shrug, what can you about it.
Chien-Pao Balance Teams
by Greybaum
by Tranquility
by Tranquility
by Tranquility
by hariyana grande
by LordBox
by LordBox
by Isaiah
I obviously won't comment on all of these teams, and heck there's even more versions but they're too similar to be put in here. The main idea was obviously well supporting the big Chien-Pao to break as we thought it was broken. Iron Treads is a very common theme within these teams for its ability to chip down Corv and support with Rapid Spin removal or even SR if we could fit in. EE was preferred usually as that way it could usually reliably remove hazards against the setters. Generally I preferred big offense to support Chien-Pao tbh as good players had either supremely solid checks to Chien-Pao or were very conservative with their Corv if Chien-Pao was really the only real breaker on the team (see Slither Wing or Dark spam teams). These teams probably have holes in them, we had yet to settle on a concept before we decided to meme, but they are probably usable so I decided to make sure they weren't going to waste. Some other funny concepts, vanilla Slowking was to check Volcanion and physfires I think? But I don't think it did anyway. Fluffy Glowking is a quad fighting resist with pivot, no explanation needed and Utility Umbrella Pex was to cope against Volcanion as well as Physfires + Zama-C.
HO
by LordBox + Taka
by LordBox
by Greybaum
The webs team was made after we got into playoffs and wanted to build some dumb shit. Yes I am aware only 2 mons on team actually abuse webs, but in fairness, it really was made at 4am. Thundurus was used to outspeed HDB Moth. The screens is pretty generic, used to be Ursaluna but replaced. SFLO Volc is kinda broken I'm NGL I 6-0'd Osake and TNM multiple times with that thing I think. Fun fish. The STail was a warping of an ideas designed to be bulkier HO with STail that could continously replenish screens. Ursaluna is banned, you could replace it with like Gapdos or smth idk. Quick Claw on Ursa is.... cursed but genuinely saved me a few teams and pissed off a few LOL so if it works it works.
MGLO Heatran Balance
by Fiora (astralydia)
by LordBox
by LordBox
by LordBox
by Fiora (astralydia)
by LordBox (I think?)
by LordBox
My teams were definitely not in the best form they could've been in and I was in the process of refining them until we settled on the W1 Playoff team but shrug I'm just dumping everything here in case people want some ideas to take. Intim STail was wacky and originally Fluffy but its physbulk is actually better than Corv + quad fighting resist so there's your appeal even if passive AF. My teams were meant to be fat considering I saw not much way out given Heatran was super fat but it resulted in some wacky jank in order to make these defensive structures work. The first team was a team that Fiora was very happy about but our player veto'd due to our only removal being RegenScarf Quaq lol (idea by Greybaum). That being said it did quite well in tests so... try it out for yourself! Zarude was an idea I didn't particularly like but it did work. The idea was a offensive Chomper punish as Chomp was kinda broken. Intim Corv is annoying but +1 Crunch did around 60 and you could Synthesis off the U-turn damage later and its speed meant it didn't let it some breakers like Volc to go brrr. Diancie was a fun idea as it had the broken moves Spikes and a decent defensive profile. Samurott-H is cool as well but GF please give it like +20 more SpDef I don't believe in offensive Samurott-H.
Talonflame Balance
by LordBox
by LordBox
by LordBox
Talonflame is a fun mon! Both ideas were to just be FAT and eventually Talonflame can break through its checks and win long-term. Again Diancie is broken mon with spikes with fun defensive utility and NatCure is here to help check Physfires, even removing their annoying burns. Quaq was filler as the second team was actually unfinished but works to check Kingambit while providing nice offensive power. I am also of the opinion lately that Goodra > Goodra-H due to its Fire resist and also lack of Fighting weakness so it can better check stuff like Volcarona and Thundy but maybe that's just me. Sylveon is probably better replaced by STail tbh I was just paranoid of big Hydreigon.
Pivot-based Offense
by LordBox
by LordBox + Tranquility
by LordBox
by LordBox
I swear there was more... but honestly going trying through the entire 20k messages to find a team you think existed is a great way to waste time. The first team was in contention for using against atha, although the 2nd was the aforementioned one we originally planned to use against MZ but paranoia got to us. That being said tests for the team went pretty well so shrug. EQ on Slither Wing was intentional as otherwise Desolate Land Dirge was really annoying and TDebris Chomp was our cope physfire check while also trolling to disrupt momentum if it got out our hands. I swear Physfire breakers when they aren't using Desoland are broken, Tinted may be better on Ace tbh. Eleki served as nice speed control and hazard removal + pivot in RegenVest mons for our physbreakers. Azelf could potentially be replaced by another fast pivot, the last team suffers from kind of of enough breaking power tbh and it was kinda only there for Triage Ursuluna (now banned) and Zapdos can deal with Chesnaught on the last team although 3rd idk.
Stall
by LordBox
by LordBox
by LordBox
Stall was a cool idea that we thought of bringing multiple times but never quite following through. These teams are all most likely somewhat flawed given they were never the final polished version but shrug, I think they work mostly fine. One big concern would probably be no real water immunity which could make the Volc MU iffy.
Other Balance Teams
by LordBox
by Isaiah
by hayedenn + Isaiah
by Greybaum + LordBox (modified)
by Fiora (astralydia)
by LordBox
by hayedenn
The rest of the random scattered balances I found (there are probably more but there are so many pastes here I cannot be bothered going through every single paste to find all the teams here because LOL there are 370 of them...) WBB Clodsire is probably replaceable. Very passive mon and Garchomp is really probably better even without reliable recovery. The teams are a bit slow so you're kinda coping there with a bit of priority but shrug what can you do. Desoland Heatran served as a Water Immunity and Talonflame check + progress maker but tbh it doesn't actually work as an immunity for Volc so may be replaceable. MGLO Zapdos on the 2nd last team can probably be replaced to MGLO Heatran as well as it is THE broken mon. The Zama-C on the last team is probably replaceable by a better progress maker that's fast enough (or bulky enough) to deal with Talonflame.
Fiora's Concept and Team Dumps
https://pokepast.es/e6438a14d21ec8d3
─────
About 42 teams here and that's excluding all the Ursaluna ones we made, teams that are a bit too wack (or unfinished), pre-Home and Enam meta teams and also I'm probably missing more than a few teams because sifting through the 370 Pokepast.es mentions in our AAA channel was honestly burning my brain out. From what I can tell from the ones we excluded... there are around 50-60 (somewhat) unique teams here in the channel. Honestly I was thinking taking a break from AAA for a bit... but the NDAAA kick-off tour and AAAPL are starting soon so I suppose I'm stuck eternally on the AAA grind (Isaiah you should add NDAAA to AAAPL :3)
Honestly I didn't know what I was going into when I signed up for this. This was my first big team tournament and I had only really been involved in the money tour before this. However it ended up being tons of fun with a based team, even if we didn't manage to end up winning the whole thing which was sad but hey we still made playoffs at least. Not good at doing individual shoutouts but for the AAA department, massive shoutouts to Greybaum Tranquility Isaiah Fiora (astralydia) hayedenn for their massive help and contribution and of course our GOAT pilot hariyana grande for playing the games (which I probably would've ended up throwing all of them LOL) and cooking skills as well. The credit given is generally based off my memory of who made the main base of finished product of the team but should be noted we all generally had our own inputs when looking over the team and creating it (and also feel free to kill me if I forgot your credit or team you think is viable). Also big shoutouts to pannu sylvi Taka city and Stareal for making the tour really fun and enjoyable and of course massive shoutouts for the rest of team and helpers!
Well the W Virrizions have officially been knocked from the first round of playoffs and I thought well, might as well make sure the 20k messages and many teams we spent within cooking in our team prep wouldn't go to waste. So here's a team dump of all the teams/concepts I think are actually half-decent post-Home + the W1/2 pre-Home teams because why not.
Week 1 vs tieracid -
by LordBoxWe had a few concepts flying around before this but never anything we were that satisfied with. The pre-Home meta was admittedly pretty static and given the fact tier we knew had pretty barebones AAA knowledge and support we were aiming for a pretty solid team with some sauce maybe. Eventually it came to fruition that Tinted Lens Gambit was cool, and while I usually use more solid defensive cores, decided to take a page from Ivar's book and run Regen ChainChomp to help lure in Corv + win the hazard war. Rest was pretty standard for the time and led to a fairly clean win.
Week 2 vs The Number Man
by LordBoxAgain we had a few concepts lying around. Originally this began from the fact I thought Sword of Ruin physical Fires were kinda broken asf. We worked on it a bit and then we had another team ready along with other teams, including this one. I did feel more comfortable with this loading into TNM given I saw their usage of Rotom-Wash which was irritating into our other so I convinced our pilot FrankJosh to switch it up. Lo and behold TN did not bring Rotom-Wash an incredibly irritating MGLO Hawlucha which trolled long-term with no Intimidate Corv + a very sketchy Ceruledge MU ourselves which taught me... a lesson for the future on any balance team.
Week 3 vs cumps
by IsaiahI was unfortunately busy this week so Tranquility and Isaiah mainly took the reins. From what I can tell there were a few ideas flying around like Samurott-H and MGLO Heatran but eventually decided on the fact that screens is broken asf and decided to load this. All pretty broken stuff crammed into one team. We were originally Sub on Zama-C but I hated Sub on Zama-C I always preferred SEdge and we changed to Taunt on the Enamorus to prevent Ting-Lu from setting up rocks on us first turn and GG.
Week 4 vs shiloh
We knew that at this point that shiloh had inclined to bring some crazy and wacky offense given the teambuilding style of Career Ended up to ths point so we from the start had a very clear direction to bring very safe balance or fat/stall. A few ideas floated around although a few ended up being invalidated since I accidentally leaked a few. Eventually we decided to bring one of Isaiah's fairly safe teams which focused on sitting there and eventually let Talonflame wear down the enemy, or chip and hazards.
Week 5 vs MZ
Tbh, in hindsight, we lost this week because I think we were a bit confused on what our concept should've been and bringing an ultra-safe balance or stall like from last week could've won but shrug. We had prepped a pivot offense team that was performing nicely in tests but ultimately we all grew too uncomfortable with our matchup into stuff like Zama-C to load it and prepped this last second I believe. It was somewhat similar pivot offense but a bit less loaded on the offense side but still pretty sketch on the defensive side of things with a Fluffy Lando to amend our sketch Zama-C mu from before and thus our loss to MZ.
Week 6 vs atha
From the get-go, we wished to push something far more offensive onto the table vs atha. We looked at atha's scout and noticed a pretty clear weakness in all of atha's team beforehand and that they didn't like to use RegenVest mons and preferred more cope methods to answer the enemy's offense. What really annoyed me was that pivot-offense team from before could've been cool but we had already tested it into atha... but whatever. Eventually we made this pivot spam offensive with Cinderace + Regieleki forming a fierce pivot spam core and Thundurus as our main breaker which ended up making the money work. TDebris Chomp is odd but served as a nice physfire check and also way to steal momentum by forcing a break of the stalemate. Originally it was Thundy-T i think but guaranteeing the outspeed onto Chomp and also Iron Moth was the reasoning behind the change by Greybaum I think.
Week 7 vs Ivar57
We originally had a bunch of generic ass Chien-Pao balance teams to spam into Ivar57 which I didn't particularly agree with Chien-Pao being that broken as people adapted to playing around it and its support but whatever it ended up not mattering. Since we had already guaranteed playoffs before our AAA player even had the chance to play, I decided to say fuck it and they let me sub in for the week. Built this really dumb Explosion bait spam HO team with Surge Surfer Hoopa and Triage Enam was backup speed control for annoying stuff like Chien-Pao and scarfers + could take advantage of RegenVest being removed. Ultimately regretted making the Azelf Tinted Lens over even -Ate Explosion or Protean as it would've won me the game most likely and also lost to a timer loss so lmaooo but the team showcased it nicely anyway. Useless if the opponent knows what's coming... and I'm making this public so lol.
W1 Playoffs vs Osake
Fiora joined the party this week and brought some interesting concepts to the table which will discussed at a later point in this point. However the one thing we did agree on was that MGLO Heatran (and Chomp by some extension) were kinda broken for their ability to continously set hazards, with MGLO Heatran being a scary breaker in its own right which exploited the ultra-passive STail without doubles, although our own hazard removal was kinda oof. Main issues were that bringing MGLO Heatran really slows down the team and we were without real speed control so we had to cope with our defensive core. Also malding since we knew DGleam Moth would be a pain but were like who even uses that and behold.... not made better by the fact I suggested Goodra over RegenVest Hydreigon before to help against our Thundy-T and Volc issue but shrug, what can you about it.
Chien-Pao Balance Teams
by Greybaum
by Tranquility
by Tranquilityby Tranquilityby hariyana grande
by LordBox
by LordBoxby IsaiahI obviously won't comment on all of these teams, and heck there's even more versions but they're too similar to be put in here. The main idea was obviously well supporting the big Chien-Pao to break as we thought it was broken. Iron Treads is a very common theme within these teams for its ability to chip down Corv and support with Rapid Spin removal or even SR if we could fit in. EE was preferred usually as that way it could usually reliably remove hazards against the setters. Generally I preferred big offense to support Chien-Pao tbh as good players had either supremely solid checks to Chien-Pao or were very conservative with their Corv if Chien-Pao was really the only real breaker on the team (see Slither Wing or Dark spam teams). These teams probably have holes in them, we had yet to settle on a concept before we decided to meme, but they are probably usable so I decided to make sure they weren't going to waste. Some other funny concepts, vanilla Slowking was to check Volcanion and physfires I think? But I don't think it did anyway. Fluffy Glowking is a quad fighting resist with pivot, no explanation needed and Utility Umbrella Pex was to cope against Volcanion as well as Physfires + Zama-C.
HO
by LordBox + Taka
by LordBox
by GreybaumThe webs team was made after we got into playoffs and wanted to build some dumb shit. Yes I am aware only 2 mons on team actually abuse webs, but in fairness, it really was made at 4am. Thundurus was used to outspeed HDB Moth. The screens is pretty generic, used to be Ursaluna but replaced. SFLO Volc is kinda broken I'm NGL I 6-0'd Osake and TNM multiple times with that thing I think. Fun fish. The STail was a warping of an ideas designed to be bulkier HO with STail that could continously replenish screens. Ursaluna is banned, you could replace it with like Gapdos or smth idk. Quick Claw on Ursa is.... cursed but genuinely saved me a few teams and pissed off a few LOL so if it works it works.
MGLO Heatran Balance
by Fiora (astralydia)
by LordBoxby LordBoxby LordBoxby Fiora (astralydia)by LordBox (I think?)
by LordBoxMy teams were definitely not in the best form they could've been in and I was in the process of refining them until we settled on the W1 Playoff team but shrug I'm just dumping everything here in case people want some ideas to take. Intim STail was wacky and originally Fluffy but its physbulk is actually better than Corv + quad fighting resist so there's your appeal even if passive AF. My teams were meant to be fat considering I saw not much way out given Heatran was super fat but it resulted in some wacky jank in order to make these defensive structures work. The first team was a team that Fiora was very happy about but our player veto'd due to our only removal being RegenScarf Quaq lol (idea by Greybaum). That being said it did quite well in tests so... try it out for yourself! Zarude was an idea I didn't particularly like but it did work. The idea was a offensive Chomper punish as Chomp was kinda broken. Intim Corv is annoying but +1 Crunch did around 60 and you could Synthesis off the U-turn damage later and its speed meant it didn't let it some breakers like Volc to go brrr. Diancie was a fun idea as it had the broken moves Spikes and a decent defensive profile. Samurott-H is cool as well but GF please give it like +20 more SpDef I don't believe in offensive Samurott-H.
Talonflame Balance
by LordBoxby LordBox
by LordBoxTalonflame is a fun mon! Both ideas were to just be FAT and eventually Talonflame can break through its checks and win long-term. Again Diancie is broken mon with spikes with fun defensive utility and NatCure is here to help check Physfires, even removing their annoying burns. Quaq was filler as the second team was actually unfinished but works to check Kingambit while providing nice offensive power. I am also of the opinion lately that Goodra > Goodra-H due to its Fire resist and also lack of Fighting weakness so it can better check stuff like Volcarona and Thundy but maybe that's just me. Sylveon is probably better replaced by STail tbh I was just paranoid of big Hydreigon.
Pivot-based Offense
by LordBox
by LordBox + Tranquility
by LordBoxby LordBoxI swear there was more... but honestly going trying through the entire 20k messages to find a team you think existed is a great way to waste time. The first team was in contention for using against atha, although the 2nd was the aforementioned one we originally planned to use against MZ but paranoia got to us. That being said tests for the team went pretty well so shrug. EQ on Slither Wing was intentional as otherwise Desolate Land Dirge was really annoying and TDebris Chomp was our cope physfire check while also trolling to disrupt momentum if it got out our hands. I swear Physfire breakers when they aren't using Desoland are broken, Tinted may be better on Ace tbh. Eleki served as nice speed control and hazard removal + pivot in RegenVest mons for our physbreakers. Azelf could potentially be replaced by another fast pivot, the last team suffers from kind of of enough breaking power tbh and it was kinda only there for Triage Ursuluna (now banned) and Zapdos can deal with Chesnaught on the last team although 3rd idk.
Stall
by LordBoxby LordBox
by LordBoxStall was a cool idea that we thought of bringing multiple times but never quite following through. These teams are all most likely somewhat flawed given they were never the final polished version but shrug, I think they work mostly fine. One big concern would probably be no real water immunity which could make the Volc MU iffy.
Other Balance Teams
by LordBoxby Isaiah
by hayedenn + Isaiah by Greybaum + LordBox (modified)by Fiora (astralydia)by LordBoxby hayedennThe rest of the random scattered balances I found (there are probably more but there are so many pastes here I cannot be bothered going through every single paste to find all the teams here because LOL there are 370 of them...) WBB Clodsire is probably replaceable. Very passive mon and Garchomp is really probably better even without reliable recovery. The teams are a bit slow so you're kinda coping there with a bit of priority but shrug what can you do. Desoland Heatran served as a Water Immunity and Talonflame check + progress maker but tbh it doesn't actually work as an immunity for Volc so may be replaceable. MGLO Zapdos on the 2nd last team can probably be replaced to MGLO Heatran as well as it is THE broken mon. The Zama-C on the last team is probably replaceable by a better progress maker that's fast enough (or bulky enough) to deal with Talonflame.
Fiora's Concept and Team Dumps
https://pokepast.es/e6438a14d21ec8d3
─────
About 42 teams here and that's excluding all the Ursaluna ones we made, teams that are a bit too wack (or unfinished), pre-Home and Enam meta teams and also I'm probably missing more than a few teams because sifting through the 370 Pokepast.es mentions in our AAA channel was honestly burning my brain out. From what I can tell from the ones we excluded... there are around 50-60 (somewhat) unique teams here in the channel. Honestly I was thinking taking a break from AAA for a bit... but the NDAAA kick-off tour and AAAPL are starting soon so I suppose I'm stuck eternally on the AAA grind (Isaiah you should add NDAAA to AAAPL :3)
Honestly I didn't know what I was going into when I signed up for this. This was my first big team tournament and I had only really been involved in the money tour before this. However it ended up being tons of fun with a based team, even if we didn't manage to end up winning the whole thing which was sad but hey we still made playoffs at least. Not good at doing individual shoutouts but for the AAA department, massive shoutouts to Greybaum Tranquility Isaiah Fiora (astralydia) hayedenn for their massive help and contribution and of course our GOAT pilot hariyana grande for playing the games (which I probably would've ended up throwing all of them LOL) and cooking skills as well. The credit given is generally based off my memory of who made the main base of finished product of the team but should be noted we all generally had our own inputs when looking over the team and creating it (and also feel free to kill me if I forgot your credit or team you think is viable). Also big shoutouts to pannu sylvi Taka city and Stareal for making the tour really fun and enjoyable and of course massive shoutouts for the rest of team and helpers!
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after a bit of half-assed laddering with a fun team, i boosted my tilted ass from 1300s to high 1500s (mid af gxe but eh), pretty neat. anyways id just like to discuss some underrated sets (specifically the ones i used in my team!)
im also not gonna talk about my team since 1) this was a 5-minute team and 2) someone below me is gonna talk abt their team too !!
Isaiah said it was a bad set, but i found it really useful on this team when paired with volcanion's regenvest demolishing prowess. with spikes up, it becomes harder and harder for hoodra to come in while taking ~30% from boomburst / ~45% from focus blast, while melo and amuk cannot come in safely on volc at all. specially frail resists like iron treads also cannot come in on boomburst risking the 2hko.
banded moon is really crazy. fire fang deletes corv while crunch nukes everything else, while retaining ridiculously high bulk and an excellent speed tier. im ngl i only clicked either crunch / ffang with it and maybe uturn once. pretty bonkers mon ngl.
this is a really fun mon to use. it has knock, the obv cedge, sucker for speed control / mind games, liquidation for second stab, brick break for anti-leads, and even encore for trolling mons that think its setup fodder. i ran boots on this team so i could switch it in and set spikes repeatedly, but band is also suggested. LO works too! it also gets SD but idt anyones gonna use sweeper hamurott LOL
im also not gonna talk about my team since 1) this was a 5-minute team and 2) someone below me is gonna talk abt their team too !!
Got bored of AAA as of late so I decided to explore some niche options that haven't seen much used.
The LordBox's post inspired me to use MGLO Heatran as I realised it was kind of broken. I wanted to build a fat team so I just used some common sets like Corviknight, Zapdos, Goodra-H. I saw someone mentioned Fluffy Gastrodon in Discord so I decided to use Quagsire as my Fluffy mon because he is cool. It provides Spike and Toxic which my fat team needs. Chilling Water is because I lost to Fluffy Roaring Moon once with EQ but both are fine. After that I realised that my team is kind of slow and just get 6-0 by Zama so I want a scarf special fire type. Initially it was Armarouge but because everyone was such a big hater of it (LordBox and Atha) I switch to Chi-Yu instead. It is still an UR mon but it is better than Armarouge.
Replay where the two UR mons went crazy (pls ignore the Heatran): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9almostanyability-1907531918
When home dropped, I built a garssy BO in OU and I kind of like the idea of it. I wanted to make a team with that idea in AAA so I started building. At first I wanted to make a hazard stack team because I think that Skeledirge can spin block tread if Grassy Terrain is up so I pick Meow as my Grassy Terrain user because it has spike and uturn. Tablets on Dirge because I want to lower the EQ and Knock damage. In practice I was never able to get up hazard because Meow is bad so I decided to make this team HO instead. I slapped on some strong set that I've been using lately and all of the fit pretty nicely into the team. WBB Kingambit with Grassy Terrain is very hard to remove. Heatran takes EQ from Hoodra for days and can break through every team. Zama can easily set up on ground types and the heal is very clutch. Ceruledge is broken and with Grassy Terrain Chomp isn't even a check to it. Skeledirge at this point doesn't seem like it fit on the team but I still like it because otherwise my team would just lose to Fighting and Fire type.
Replay for all of you Dirge haters: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9almostanyability-1909149649-9iqdosknmbysl3s25x3yz9dhxsoamqmpw
I could probably got higher if I really try but these team are for fun anyway. I am aware that these teams aren't that good and there are a lot of optimization that can be done but I don't really care. If 2 AC comes back then I will actually try to build a good team but for now I'm kind of bored so I will be building teams with bad mons. I hope you also have fun using these team if you are also tired of the meta rn.
The LordBox's post inspired me to use MGLO Heatran as I realised it was kind of broken. I wanted to build a fat team so I just used some common sets like Corviknight, Zapdos, Goodra-H. I saw someone mentioned Fluffy Gastrodon in Discord so I decided to use Quagsire as my Fluffy mon because he is cool. It provides Spike and Toxic which my fat team needs. Chilling Water is because I lost to Fluffy Roaring Moon once with EQ but both are fine. After that I realised that my team is kind of slow and just get 6-0 by Zama so I want a scarf special fire type. Initially it was Armarouge but because everyone was such a big hater of it (LordBox and Atha) I switch to Chi-Yu instead. It is still an UR mon but it is better than Armarouge.
Replay where the two UR mons went crazy (pls ignore the Heatran): https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9almostanyability-1907531918
When home dropped, I built a garssy BO in OU and I kind of like the idea of it. I wanted to make a team with that idea in AAA so I started building. At first I wanted to make a hazard stack team because I think that Skeledirge can spin block tread if Grassy Terrain is up so I pick Meow as my Grassy Terrain user because it has spike and uturn. Tablets on Dirge because I want to lower the EQ and Knock damage. In practice I was never able to get up hazard because Meow is bad so I decided to make this team HO instead. I slapped on some strong set that I've been using lately and all of the fit pretty nicely into the team. WBB Kingambit with Grassy Terrain is very hard to remove. Heatran takes EQ from Hoodra for days and can break through every team. Zama can easily set up on ground types and the heal is very clutch. Ceruledge is broken and with Grassy Terrain Chomp isn't even a check to it. Skeledirge at this point doesn't seem like it fit on the team but I still like it because otherwise my team would just lose to Fighting and Fire type.
Replay for all of you Dirge haters: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9almostanyability-1909149649-9iqdosknmbysl3s25x3yz9dhxsoamqmpw
I could probably got higher if I really try but these team are for fun anyway. I am aware that these teams aren't that good and there are a lot of optimization that can be done but I don't really care. If 2 AC comes back then I will actually try to build a good team but for now I'm kind of bored so I will be building teams with bad mons. I hope you also have fun using these team if you are also tired of the meta rn.
Here's my new balance team built around Choice Banded Roaring Moon.
The idea of the team is to cripple physical walls like Corviknight with Knock Off, Will-O-Wisp, and Stealth Rocks. After adding chip damage you want to spam pivot around to slowly whittle them down, then start dealing massive damage with Roaring Moon. Since I don't want to remove my own Stealth Rocks using Corviknight, I ran a couple of different physical answers instead. Rotom-Wash and Zapdos help deal with physical attackers like Quaquaval, Zapdos-Galar, and Slither Wing. Slither Wing is the Knock Off absorber of the team and also helps deal with physical attackers like Roaring Moon, Meowscarada, and Iron Treads. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this team!
The idea of the team is to cripple physical walls like Corviknight with Knock Off, Will-O-Wisp, and Stealth Rocks. After adding chip damage you want to spam pivot around to slowly whittle them down, then start dealing massive damage with Roaring Moon. Since I don't want to remove my own Stealth Rocks using Corviknight, I ran a couple of different physical answers instead. Rotom-Wash and Zapdos help deal with physical attackers like Quaquaval, Zapdos-Galar, and Slither Wing. Slither Wing is the Knock Off absorber of the team and also helps deal with physical attackers like Roaring Moon, Meowscarada, and Iron Treads. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this team!
I need help here. I have been using Scarf Meowscarada and it has helped massively in most matchups (outspeeding and OHKOing notable threats like Iron Moth, Kilowattrel, and especially Roaring moon). However, when looking at the VRs, I notice that I severely overrated most of my team and underrated key threats (mostly Garchomp). Can I have some advice on how to improve my team? I have tried to use Garchomp before and it has been very underwhelming, but with the rise of SoR Swords Dance, I see some potential in it. Is my team outdated? Anything I can imrpove? I am also pretty low ladder, so I want to know what you guys are running up there. Thanks!Some post-OMPL VR noms based on closely following this year's OMPL AAA games.
Meloetta A to A-
Heralded as one of the best RegenVest users released with Home, Meloetta completely flopped on the OMPL AAA stage. As an extremely passive Regenerator user that can barely ever find a time to click moves other than U-turn, it is outclassed by other "toolbox" Regenerator users like Garchomp and Landorus as well as Hisuian Goodra who comes with better offensive tactics and a better typing. Don't get me wrong, it's still a powerful Regenerator pivot who can absorb a wide variety of special attacks (as is expected of any RegenVest pivot), but it struggles to make meaningful progress outside of clicking U-turn and its other 3 moveslots feel like wasted potential.
Completely missing in the post-Home OMPL meta. Seemingly unable to keep up with the omnipresent Corviknight and new post-Home toys like Zamazenta and Hisuian Goodra, Meowscarada has fallen from one of the meta's scariest scarfers to a fringe pick. This change isn't only represented in its complete absence in OMPL, but also in its fall from #10 to #27 in 1760 ladder usage. With other more explosive SOR picks like Galarian Zapdos and the meta's gravity towards Steel-types, I think that Meowscarada will continue to drop in viability in the upcoming months.
Purely explosive. With Refrigerate, Regieleki becomes an extremely aggressive spinner and BoltBeam spammer that can close out games when the opponent's special walls have been weakened. Tera Blast gives this Pokemon so much when it comes to offensive options, and it completely blows Pokemon that previously would have walled an Electric spammer like Garchomp and Landorus out of the water. This doesn't even account for its volatility with Explosion, always keeping opponents guessing and trying to dodge a superpowered Ice-type move that can end a foe in the blink of an eye.
Garchomp A+ to S
With upwards of 50% usage and a positive winrate in OMPL (as well as a ridiculous 42% usage of the CorviChomp core), I don't see any argument for Garchomp not being up there with the face of the tier. This Pokemon has a ridiculous toolbox that has been fully utilized in this tournament season, threatening with utility Regenerator, offensive SOR , access to hazard stacking, and the ability to viably run mixed sets. Chomp is the ultimate toolbox Pokemon that can act as anything on preview, and it has the usage and winrate to back itself up.
An absolute disappointment this OMPL season. Kingambit is a Pokemon that's great on paper and falls short in practice, most notably by struggling against Corviknight in-game. This is a great example of "calcs don't tell the whole story", as 2HKOs on Corviknight are only ever really facilitated in the late game when anything else on your team would beat corv anyway. This Pokemon also suffers from extreme predictability: all non-Adaptability sets struggle heavily against Corv (which is an instant losing ticket in a meta with 70% Corv usage) and it has nearly no variance in its moveset to deal with other up-and-coming threats like Zamazenta-C.
A surprise as one of the most-used Pokemon this OMPL, Zamazenta has shown itself to be both an offensive and defensive powerhouse. Dauntless' nerf is unfortunate to say the least, and I think with old Dauntless this would be a much easier nomination to justify, but the addition of Body Press to Zamazenta's movepool gives it its best tool to date. Zama is able to effectively take advantage of some of the top threats and metagame staples in Hisuian Goodra, Scream Tail, Chien-Pao, Kingambit, Iron Treads, Slither Wing, and others, letting it blanket check a wide variety of physical attackers and toolbox Pokemon while having high potential to retaliate. Additionally, it just has the ability to insta-win certain matchups on preview as a defensively-oriented Pokemon by spamming Iron Defense, a trait that's usually found on hyper offense builds including sweepers like Chien-Pao or Iron Moth.
Honorable Mentions:
I really wanted to find a place for Heatran in A tier, but I don't think it has that kind of power right now. The up-and-coming MGLO Mixtran set is pretty terrifying on paper and Heatran has had good results this OMPL through both special MGLO and IronPress sets, but I can't see this Pokemon fitting into the A tier as it stands right now.
Galarian Slowking
Another Pokemon that I'm generally confused about, but I think has untapped potential. While it saw pretty minimal usage throughout the tour, I think the combination of Chilly Reception as a pivot move and Future Sight is a combo that holds pretty intense power.
how do i make pokemon emojis (pokepaste)
You asked a few days ago what could really break your team in chatroomsHere's my new balance team built around Choice Banded Roaring Moon.
The idea of the team is to cripple physical walls like Corviknight with Knock Off, Will-O-Wisp, and Stealth Rocks. After adding chip damage you want to spam pivot around to slowly whittle them down, then start dealing massive damage with Roaring Moon. Since I don't want to remove my own Stealth Rocks using Corviknight, I ran a couple of different physical answers instead. Rotom-Wash and Zapdos help deal with physical attackers like Quaquaval, Zapdos-Galar, and Slither Wing. Slither Wing is the Knock Off absorber of the team and also helps deal with physical attackers like Roaring Moon, Meowscarada, and Iron Treads. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this team!
How about scarf gapdos?
Ofc you have rotom but even with fluffy u-turn + rocks will break it eventually
Not to mention teammates exist to wall it as well
For example, on a wrong predict on a treads, you can accidentally willowisp it and die to eq if it's wbb
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1. you can make pokemon emojis with the pokemon's name between colons:
:nidoking: becomes 
2. First of all, viability rankings (and my suggestions) luckily aren't gospel- I based my nominations and ideas on the pool of AAA games in Other Metas Premiere League, which (hypothetically) offers us the highest level of play, preparation, and thought that goes into each decision. Keep in mind that this is only a pool of right around 20 games in the post-Home meta. This is by no means a large sample size: I could play more than 20 games on the ladder in one day- however, this sample offers us what the best players think the best pokemon are in a pretty stringent set of circumstances: against certain players, expecting certain team compositions, with all of their opponent's team history, and trying to account for surprise meta fluctuations.
Is Meowscarada failing to appear (and my post requesting a discussion for it to be dropped) really a sign that it is an absolute fail flop loser pokemon? The answer is no, but it's also complicated. There's no clear cut definition on what a B+ ranked mon is, outside of being slightly "more meta" than a B mon and slightly "less meta" than an A- mon in the current moment. This might just mean that players have discovered a way to more effectively beat or wall Meowscarada, or its counters or walls are hot and rising in popularity. But whether you're playing on day 1 of the generation or revisiting the tier in 10 years, a team that hasn't prepped for Meowscarada will still lose to it- an arbitrary ranking in a smogon post that's meant to capture the current snapshot only holds so much weight when it's your six against your opponent's. If you're succeeding and getting kills with scarf meow and feel confident with it in your next games, an A- to B+ shift is no reason to stop using it- but now players have caught wind of Zamazenta-C, who undeniably hard counters Meow, so just know that's an option on the rise when you're loading up the team.
The highest level players in tournament effectively ignore the viability rankings in order of tastes and solid teambuilding- but that's only because they have access to the opponent's team history, playstyles, favored mons, and anything else they can scramble on top of to gain an advantage and win their tournament game. Nothing is added to a seasoned player's knowledge by seeing that Chien Pao is A ranked- if you see that your opponent has a great record and has used Zarude every week in the last 10 weeks, you bet that they're going to prep for Zarude (a C ranked Pokemon) instead of Chien Pao.
3. Garchomp is a pretty complex Pokemon, and I can't even say with confidence that I fully understand what it really does, but this is my best shot. Garchomp's biggest weakness in standard tiers is its complete lack of recovery: AAA is able to remedy that by using regenerator, giving an already bulky toolbox pokemon even more utility by being able to repeatedly switch in to strong attacks as well as set hazards with ease because it's always threatening to fire off a pretty strong attack. Additionally, the great variety of garchomp sets (spdef toolbox, mixchomp, sword, god knows what else this mon can run and still be viable) means that the opponent doesn't know its gameplan from turn one: contrast this with a Pokemon like Meowscarada- the one single set that saw any usage was scarf sword, so your opponent knows to preserve their physical walls to continue beating meow. Think about it this way: you lead with Garchomp on your first turn, you haven't revealed an ability, spread, speed, or anything else against your opponent's team. Your opponent's best guess is all they have- you could be leading with bulky Garchomp just because it's a solid lead to set hazards early in the game, you could be leading with mixchomp to dig for early chip against their Corviknight, you could be running an adaptability set and saving your regenerator for another slot on your team, again aiming to do as much damage as you can to the opposing team as quickly as possible. All three of these are equally viable options, and at this point, only you know what the garchomp can do.
Now, fast forward to the mid and late game. Your garchomp has revealed its spread, ability, and moveset, and your opponent has all of the knowledge to best estimate what it can do. However, in finding out what the hell you're actually running, they've exhausted resources, had some of their defensive walls chipped pretty hard, and have had their game plan slowed down by always having to clear the hazards that garchomp sets and keep up with its regenerator healing. By forcing your opponent to dig and find these stats out, you have expended their valuable resources just by having a single pokemon that might be able to run three or four different sets on your team.
I always find that weaker players vastly undervalue hazards, which is one of garchomp's specialties: obviously your stealth rocks can be cleared by an opponent's defog, but this takes a turn to switch corviknight in, a turn to use defog, and a turn to click uturn to get corviknight out to preserve it for a physical attacker. By clicking this one move, you have both forced damage as a result of one of the basic actions of Pokemon (switching), as well as making the opponent dig for at least one or two turns to remove what's causing this damage. There's a common meme that "hazards up = win", but it's more of "hazards up = a step ahead of the opponent, as long as they don't have a gameplan that aims to execute faster than hazards rack up damage". Now go and look at how easily Garchomp sets hazards: pretending to be mixchomp, you can force corviknight out by bluffing fire blast and set hazards there. Against anything weak to ground, rock, or dragon, you can set hazards by threatening with offensive power. Additionally, many offensive Pokemon can't just switch in on one of chomp's earthquakes and punish it for setting hazards, giving it some freedom to click earthquake as well.
4. Apologies it took so long, but now on to your team. I don't think your team is bad at all, but I'm no AAA pro teambuilder: instead, I'll offer you some of my personal (albeit intermediate, i'm not a high caliber player at the moment) teambuilding and playing philosophy and what I think of when I'm playing a game that "matters". AAA is a tier that rewards players for using Pokemon that can do everything: unfortunately, the most appealing Pokemon to use (attackers), only really do one thing, and that's pump out damage. Sure a team full of attackers looks great on paper: my iron moth can use fire moves, which fully beats corviknight! That works until... it doesn't. Would you ever keep your corviknight in against an iron moth? I didn't think you would. Now let's add another layer to this: You just sent your slither wing against the opponent's attacker, intending to revenge kill it with first impression. However, the opponent has a fully healthy corviknight in the back, who will gladly switch in and spare the poor frail attacker. Use my scenario from above, and think about you can make "progress" in a tier like AAA: the obvious answers are KOing the opponent, but some less obvious answers are as simple as setting hazards, depleting an opposing wall's recover pp, and plenty of other options. This isn't the case against one-track pokemon like iron moth: there's a reason it's at the top of any player's threatlist, but think about WHEN (early, mid, late game, Iron Moth undeniably succeeds when your opponent's special walls are weakened a bit) you are using the pokemon, WHAT it can do (set hazards, do damage, threaten a certain foe), and WHY it's on you team (X is on my team because it's a great wall, but it can ALSO pivot and clear hazards and threaten damage against certain attackers (i'm talking about corviknight if this wasn't clear enough)). Having too many Pokemon that only fill one of these roles can be detrimental, and I think that's the biggest downside of your team: too much energy invested in pokemon with too narrow a scope of utility and usage time.
Thanks for coming to AAA, and I hope this long post didn't scare you away. Have a great evening.
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I AM ABSOLUTELY READING ALLAT1. you can make pokemon emojis with the pokemon's name between colons::nidoking:becomes
2. First of all, viability rankings (and my suggestions) luckily aren't gospel- I based my nominations and ideas on the pool of AAA games in Other Metas Premiere League, which (hypothetically) offers us the highest level of play, preparation, and thought that goes into each decision. Keep in mind that this is only a pool of right around 20 games in the post-Home meta. This is by no means a large sample size: I could play more than 20 games on the ladder in one day- however, this sample offers us what the best players think the best pokemon are in a pretty stringent set of circumstances: against certain players, expecting certain team compositions, with all of their opponent's team history, and trying to account for surprise meta fluctuations.
Is Meowscarada failing to appear (and my post requesting a discussion for it to be dropped) really a sign that it is an absolute fail flop loser pokemon? The answer is no, but it's also complicated. There's no clear cut definition on what a B+ ranked mon is, outside of being slightly "more meta" than a B mon and slightly "less meta" than an A- mon in the current moment. This might just mean that players have discovered a way to more effectively beat or wall Meowscarada, or its counters or walls are hot and rising in popularity. But whether you're playing on day 1 of the generation or revisiting the tier in 10 years, a team that hasn't prepped for Meowscarada will still lose to it- an arbitrary ranking in a smogon post that's meant to capture the current snapshot only holds so much weight when it's your six against your opponent's. If you're succeeding and getting kills with scarf meow and feel confident with it in your next games, an A- to B+ shift is no reason to stop using it- but now players have caught wind of Zamazenta-C, who undeniably hard counters Meow, so just know that's an option on the rise when you're loading up the team.
The highest level players in tournament effectively ignore the viability rankings in order of tastes and solid teambuilding- but that's only because they have access to the opponent's team history, playstyles, favored mons, and anything else they can scramble on top of to gain an advantage and win their tournament game. Nothing is added to a seasoned player's knowledge by seeing that Chien Pao is A ranked- if you see that your opponent has a great record and has used Zarude every week in the last 10 weeks, you bet that they're going to prep for Zarude (a C ranked Pokemon) instead of Chien Pao.
3. Garchomp is a pretty complex Pokemon, and I can't even say with confidence that I fully understand what it really does, but this is my best shot. Garchomp's biggest weakness in standard tiers is its complete lack of recovery: AAA is able to remedy that by using regenerator, giving an already bulky toolbox pokemon even more utility by being able to repeatedly switch in to strong attacks as well as set hazards with ease because it's always threatening to fire off a pretty strong attack. Additionally, the great variety of garchomp sets (spdef toolbox, mixchomp, sword, god knows what else this mon can run and still be viable) means that the opponent doesn't know its gameplan from turn one: contrast this with a Pokemon like Meowscarada- the one single set that saw any usage was scarf sword, so your opponent knows to preserve their physical walls to continue beating meow. Think about it this way: you lead with Garchomp on your first turn, you haven't revealed an ability, spread, speed, or anything else against your opponent's team. Your opponent's best guess is all they have- you could be leading with bulky Garchomp just because it's a solid lead to set hazards early in the game, you could be leading with mixchomp to dig for early chip against their Corviknight, you could be running an adaptability set and saving your regenerator for another slot on your team, again aiming to do as much damage as you can to the opposing team as quickly as possible. All three of these are equally viable options, and at this point, only you know what the garchomp can do.
Now, fast forward to the mid and late game. Your garchomp has revealed its spread, ability, and moveset, and your opponent has all of the knowledge to best estimate what it can do. However, in finding out what the hell you're actually running, they've exhausted resources, had some of their defensive walls chipped pretty hard, and have had their game plan slowed down by always having to clear the hazards that garchomp sets and keep up with its regenerator healing. By forcing your opponent to dig and find these stats out, you have expended their valuable resources just by having a single pokemon that might be able to run three or four different sets on your team.
I always find that weaker players vastly undervalue hazards, which is one of garchomp's specialties: obviously your stealth rocks can be cleared by an opponent's defog, but this takes a turn to switch corviknight in, a turn to use defog, and a turn to click uturn to get corviknight out to preserve it for a physical attacker. By clicking this one move, you have both forced damage as a result of one of the basic actions of Pokemon (switching), as well as making the opponent dig for at least one or two turns to remove what's causing this damage. There's a common meme that "hazards up = win", but it's more of "hazards up = a step ahead of the opponent, as long as they don't have a gameplan that aims to execute faster than hazards rack up damage". Now go and look at how easily Garchomp sets hazards: pretending to be mixchomp, you can force corviknight out by bluffing fire blast and set hazards there. Against anything weak to ground, rock, or dragon, you can set hazards by threatening with offensive power. Additionally, many offensive Pokemon can't just switch in on one of chomp's earthquakes and punish it for setting hazards, giving it some freedom to click earthquake as well.
4. Apologies it took so long, but now on to your team. I don't think your team is bad at all, but I'm no AAA pro teambuilder: instead, I'll offer you some of my personal (albeit intermediate, i'm not a high caliber player at the moment) teambuilding and playing philosophy and what I think of when I'm playing a game that "matters". AAA is a tier that rewards players for using Pokemon that can do everything: unfortunately, the most appealing Pokemon to use (attackers), only really do one thing, and that's pump out damage. Sure a team full of attackers looks great on paper: my iron moth can use fire moves, which fully beats corviknight! That works until... it doesn't. Would you ever keep your corviknight in against an iron moth? I didn't think you would. Now let's add another layer to this: You just sent your slither wing against the opponent's attacker, intending to revenge kill it with first impression. However, the opponent has a fully healthy corviknight in the back, who will gladly switch in and spare the poor frail attacker. Use my scenario from above, and think about you can make "progress" in a tier like AAA: the obvious answers are KOing the opponent, but some less obvious answers are as simple as setting hazards, depleting an opposing wall's recover pp, and plenty of other options. This isn't the case against one-track pokemon like iron moth: there's a reason it's at the top of any player's threatlist, but think about WHEN (early, mid, late game, Iron Moth undeniably succeeds when your opponent's special walls are weakened a bit) you are using the pokemon, WHAT it can do (set hazards, do damage, threaten a certain foe), and WHY it's on you team (X is on my team because it's a great wall, but it can ALSO pivot and clear hazards and threaten damage against certain attackers (i'm talking about corviknight if this wasn't clear enough)). Having too many Pokemon that only fill one of these roles can be detrimental, and I think that's the biggest downside of your team: too much energy invested in pokemon with too narrow a scope of utility and usage time.
Thanks for coming to AAA, and I hope this long post didn't scare you away. Have a great evening.
I'm not leaving AAA. Played it since the beggining of the gen and it's easily my favorite tier.
Thanks for the advice! Now that I think about it, I don't really know how slither wing helps me. The only reason I have it is because it used to be a supreme overlord gimmick that I had on an alt but this team outpeerformed my last because Hatterene fell off and I kept it. Most of the time I lose games is because of missing 50/50s switching in Treads to get rocks up, so I'll look into Regenerator Garchomp
(Also Ceruledge is made solely as a hard counter spinblocker vs. Treads lol)
- - 
- 
- - Maybe a flaw that I realize with myteam is that it's very predictable, making it extremely prediction reliant. Hope I can aleviate this with Garchomp and Earth Eater Ceruledge
And hope I don't encounter a zamazenta if Chomp can't beat it (i need something for thay, maybe scarf shocks over meow?)
Also I decided to keep Meowscarada in spite of its flaws. Tried Gapdos and really missed it in the games I played. Need more testing.
EDIT: Meowscarada is a hard carry. Been re-encountering WBB Corvi which is def an annoyance for my team, but it's manageable.
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Venture into not using Intimidate Corviknight #1:
Wanted to build some teams with multiple rocks setters to spam them as much as possible and more reliably pressure some of the crazy offensive pressure in the tier rn (e.g. Chien-Pao and Volcanion).
Ting-Lu: Hazard setter that hard stops Iron Treads from getting out of hand. Also very nice mid-ground vs Choice Banded Crunch mons
Quaquaval: Kingambit and Mixed Heatran "counterplay", also hazard removal #1
Heatran: Enables me to pretend as though PrimSea Zapdos doesn't 6-0
Intimidate Scream Tail: Intim Corviknight replacement
Glimmora: Second hazard removal + more rocks can't hurt
Corviknight: Cinderace is broken
Bombirdier: Cool rocks setter that features knock and just enough bulk to pester defensive chomp, corv, pex, etc.
Blissey: Fire-types are broken, and now they can't hurt me anymore
Skeledirge: Anti-Quaquaval spin
Intimidate Scream Tail: Intim Corviknight replacement
Garchomp: Anti-Iron Treads hazard setter
Quaquaval: Kingambit answer + Feather Dance has an absurd amount of PP for what it does.
Wanted to build some teams with multiple rocks setters to spam them as much as possible and more reliably pressure some of the crazy offensive pressure in the tier rn (e.g. Chien-Pao and Volcanion).
Ting-Lu: Hazard setter that hard stops Iron Treads from getting out of hand. Also very nice mid-ground vs Choice Banded Crunch mons
Quaquaval: Kingambit and Mixed Heatran "counterplay", also hazard removal #1
Heatran: Enables me to pretend as though PrimSea Zapdos doesn't 6-0
Intimidate Scream Tail: Intim Corviknight replacement
Glimmora: Second hazard removal + more rocks can't hurt
Corviknight: Cinderace is broken
Bombirdier: Cool rocks setter that features knock and just enough bulk to pester defensive chomp, corv, pex, etc.
Blissey: Fire-types are broken, and now they can't hurt me anymore
Skeledirge: Anti-Quaquaval spin
Intimidate Scream Tail: Intim Corviknight replacement
Garchomp: Anti-Iron Treads hazard setter
Quaquaval: Kingambit answer + Feather Dance has an absurd amount of PP for what it does.
alright so OMPL is over I made a post here with the teams I used and some explanations about them, will post a few more that I like but didn't use although they aren't all finished and give my thoughts on the meta
some of them were made by/with cumps who I forgot to shoutout on my post LOL I'm really bad, I'm sorry that you couldn't play more and that I often went with my own ideas despite the many cool teams you made and I couldn't help you the way I would've liked, I hope you still enjoyed the tournament come back next year and prove your strength
- 
- - - - 
- MG Tran + AV Samurott-H made by cumps, this team is surprisingly cool to use in everything not named Quaquaval, Heatran can delete the RegenVests for Kilo and CM Boom Wish Psyshock Scream Tail is a really good cleaner (I think I owned LordBox 4 or 5 times with it lol) since Scream Tail usually forces passive plays / is hard to 2HKO without being killed by Boomburst and you can setup easily when the opposite team is weakened, really cool mon that I never brought tho bc hoodra is still a pain
- 
- 
- - - - this is an alternate version of Tinted Ace + TSpikes that is still very weak into Pao but eh anf you also to Inteleon but who uses that, Garg probably has some potential but being so hard walled by Quaqua really sucks and Decidueye is an awful mon that you should never use and you would prob not use it on the ladder and outplay the ladder if they have a quaquaval (easy) but I dislike having such a 0-100 MU if pichus had brought Quaqua so Deci was needed anyway I didn't bring it
- 
- - - 
- 
- this is what I would've brought in finals if I was confident enough but I'm not, it's actually super cool and that's when I built it that I knew I still liked AAA despite being bored of the meta for the last 5 weeks because it's fire and not that bad I smashed some good players with it. What's really cool is that you can do a ton of edits depending of what you want (and there's probably an optimized version that I didn't make cuz I didnn't bring it but there are a lot of options over everyone) with 2 fire techs that I wish I brought : Red Card Heatran or in fact Red Card anything which is like Quick Claw Ursaluna but actually good aka they hit you and a random mon is sent and if you hit Magma Storm they die. It is very random and Career Ended called me a psycho for that and it's right but it's actually very funny (maybe Fire Blast would be better for accuracy here though) and probably a tech that could have other uses. Other tech is Proto Lucario with the main idea being that the team sounds and is physical spam and at some point they're gonna sac their special wall if you play well and then luc comes and cleans. It's really fire and surprises a lot because you expect to outspeed Luc easily with something that will live ESpeed or something but nah now you're slower :3
I almost brought Band Weavile to the finals which would've destroyed pichus team (why do you lose to pao so hard :pain:) OR SD Sash Stench Beat Up Counter Weavile which would've been really good too but I respected too much pichus to bring that, maybe I shouldn't have.. I also tried Lilligant-Hisui with SoR (and I discovered it had an analysis in the calc with this set but seriously who ever used that?), it's bad but I tried to pair it with Kingambit to take advantage of Corviknight not having both Body Press and Brave Bird which is another build path I wanted to exploit but never was able to, and also Lilligant is just walled by Scream Tail I hate this mon. RegenVest Dondozo, SFLO Hydreigon with Crunch, Specs Beads of Ruin Knock Off Hoopa, shit with Guards Dog or w/e is the ability to prevent Goodra DTail (Volcarona??), and the famous demon shocks that no one used despite being super good were all in my range of ideas but well you can't build everything and still try to win, even though I tried my best to bring funny/interesting techs and picks when I could (not W1, not really W5 and W7 even if SD Lefto Triage Luna or Deci are somewhat niche picks) because that's what makes the game interesting to me and what I enjoy in tournaments, I spoke of it with Isaiah when I was wondering if I could bring the Proto Luc team and he told me "boring is what wins" yeah I know but idk how ppl have fun bringing boring teams LOL
I always tried to innovate and well it's nothing new but I think people in OMs always tend to either stay with their basics and what they know and almost never cross the line of creativity or either cross it too much (hey Isaiah) and maybe forget a bit that we're still trying to have good teams LOL (I do know that I just can't agree with you when you say "well if you can't win this MU it's life you'll have 9 others when you can play" and I hate having teams that can just straight lose and I can't do anything, only did this W7 to meme Atha cuz he's bad), it's also something that I saw in NFE which Shing mentionned in their predicts and it's completely true that NFE builders lacked a lot of creativity and that's why I admire ojr bc he always had fire techs that were doing work and he's at a level I haven't reach yet but that's what makes Pokemon fun and interesting to me anyway not a big deal but I appreciated that we had many cool teams in AAA this OMPL (even if many others weren't), shoutouts to Career Ended and The Number Man for trying too (although Scarf WA Ceruledge is NOT a set bro) and LordBox Tranquility for being able to incorporate cool ideas inside your builds despite being relatively new and classic at the beginning :3
About the metagame itself well it's no surprise that many us didn't enjoy it much, at least AAA starters that are playing the tier for a long tiem (atha, TNM, Ivar even if more recently, and myself) and it was certainly a factor in atha's and ivar's records that do not reflect their skill, I talked of this a lot with atha and Siamato alongside the tournament and I think the tier has several problems, issue is that I do not see how we could solve them easily and do not think it's feasible easily so I'm also writing this to share my feelings and see what are other people thoughts and ideas. I will not do any proposal in this post (this is the job of Siamato) bc I'm bad at it but I'll just expose some issues I had during the tournament.
Some mons are too restrictive
On top of that list there's obviously Chien-Pao which is the main reason of Corviknight so high stats. My team in finals didn't have it and I had to pack Pex + Fluffy Zapdos + Bulky Quaquaval to have a relatively OK MU against it and I still lost to it (with bad plays, but still). pichus team didn't have Corviknight and unless she had a secret tech, Pao was very esaily beating her team with good positioning. Chien-Pao is wayyyy too restrictive, it also was pre-home (and my prep against shiloh was literally they'll forgot Pao and lose to it, it worked cuz no intim corv) and even though Zamazenta-C (mainly) helped a bit to build non-corv structures, you're almost forced to have a Corviknight in your team and, if not, you need to use Intimidate + Fluffy on two different mons to have a chance against physical breakers. Obviously it never appears as broken because it'll struggle against Corv (even though in many games Pao does beat Corv because of good positioning / Icicle Crash flinches, yes Atha im talking of you) but it is too restrictive and it needs to go.
(an argument could be made about Weavile replacing Pao if it's banned. I think Weavile is less threatening than Pao, but it could be true and I don't know. Maybe.)
Zamazenta-Crowned is in a similar situation even if less restrictive and less broken overall, but it is also a real pain to deal with it with absurd bulk and coverage options for almost everything you need, and yeah you can use Fluffy Landorus with Earth Power and stuff like that to deal with it but I often made teams and was like, well I lose to Zama / lose if X is a bit chipped which is realistically happening in a long game (and Zama against HO is a really good MU anyway) and had to delete the team. If Pao goes it won't be anymore a Pao check and it will just be a pain in the building imo, I think it's less likely to be suspect/banned that Pao but it still feels very annoying.
However, even if Pao gets banned it won't change Intim Corv's superiority in the tier and that's why
Too many mons are 'needed' in a team :
They're obviously not 100% needed, but if you need a physical check, you'll put Corv, if you need a special check, you'll put goodra, if you need anti setup/anti fish, you'll put Scream Tail. And they don't have good replacements, Goodra-H is by far the better RegenVester and the others only fit in very specific teams, and Cresselia is still generally worse than Scream Tail. And I hate having so little options in my teams to check things. Maybe I'm a bad builder and I tried to build teams without those, I brought AV Diancie, AV Muk, Blissey, 2 teams without Corv, and 4 teams without Scream Tail even though I hate Scream Tail I felt forced to bring it 4 times. I do not have a magic solution for that, but this is what makes AAA boring and annoying to build, it kinda feels like Ubers in 8G (I think it was Ubers?) when you had Yveltal/Eternatus/NDM/Zacian in every team and then 2 slots to fullfill with what you wanted. Having such proeminent mons, and not only one but many forced you to play either weird team structures to say "look I'm not using Intim Corv" (Isaiah's post just above is almost a caricature of that, teams may be interesting but saying "I don't want to use Intim Corviknight, I'll use Scream Tail Intimidate instead" is not how I see building in AAA kek) or always use 2/3/4 mons in 80% of your teams and it's just annoying. Obviously you could not change anything, it isn't broken or unplayable at all but I dislike it and will probably get bored if I don't find a way to not have to use always the same mons/cores or lose to 5-10 threats that I can't handle with other structures (losing to any special attacker when not using a RegenVest etc).
It leads me to my last point that is
I don't find the meta competitive
I expressed this in the last survey with the worst grades I ever gave on a survey with 4 and 4 to both fun and competitivity iirc and I do know "casual" AAA players were mostly happy and I respect that, but I genuiely think that AAA as a top level is not really competitive because you rely a lot and in my opinion too much on the match-up and I never had that feeling before, and I really feel it since Home is out, that you're either playing what everyone plays and that's boring or, if you try to change your habits, you'll always have threats that you just can't handle or will have a terrible MU into with little to 0 counterplay to it (example: the team I made for MZ completely loses to Inteleon. There's nothing you can do. And it's a really good team outside of that with a lot of great MUs. But you can't improve it to not make it lose to Inteleon, and probably other threats but Inteleon is the most blatant one) and it's rly different from the feeling I had in 8G where I felt you had more room to outplay / have tools in bad MUs. Maybe I became better and realised that, or the meta is really not enjoyable, I don't know. But many mons can be completely walled in some MUs and you can't do anything about that and that is, to me, the mark of a bad mon ; that is why good players usually don't use Belly Drum Fish and stuff like that because they know it is not reliable and unless you're specifically trying to catch your opponent's habit or have a team that knows this weakness and has ways to pressure Scream Tail on something, you don't use that. And I feel like there are too many mons/structures that can just lose if you roll the wrong MU with wayyyy less tools to make progress than in 8G, because it's normal to have good and bad MUs but I felt like it reached a point where it is not "bad" MUs but just unwinnable [if the opponent plays well, which fortunately doesn't happen often]
Now what ? I don't know. Minor changes like Pao ban won't change all of that, and the only thing that was discussed so far is the 2AC. This is probably a change of that extent (not necessarily being AC related) that could make the tier better imo but which one (or multiple ones), I don't know lol and I'm not confident in taking complicated paths (like banning 2-5 Abilities, 10 mons, etc) for an unexpected future due to some bad player rants, but if anyone has ideas..
About 2AC specifically, I honestly don't know. I feel like everyone came to have strong opinions about it, "it'll save the tier" or "it'll kill it" with some whimsical expectations of what the tier would look like. I don't have a strong opinion, and I think the solution of putting a slot in the incoming AAAPL is a good middleground, although it's very weird to build and play in a meta that doesn't exist. We'll see ! Unsure yet if I'll play or manage or watch atha getting destroyed every weak, but I'm quite happy this tour is happening nonetheless.
Take care of y'all
some of them were made by/with cumps who I forgot to shoutout on my post LOL I'm really bad, I'm sorry that you couldn't play more and that I often went with my own ideas despite the many cool teams you made and I couldn't help you the way I would've liked, I hope you still enjoyed the tournament come back next year and prove your strength
- - - - - - MG Tran + AV Samurott-H made by cumps, this team is surprisingly cool to use in everything not named Quaquaval, Heatran can delete the RegenVests for Kilo and CM Boom Wish Psyshock Scream Tail is a really good cleaner (I think I owned LordBox 4 or 5 times with it lol) since Scream Tail usually forces passive plays / is hard to 2HKO without being killed by Boomburst and you can setup easily when the opposite team is weakened, really cool mon that I never brought tho bc hoodra is still a pain - - - - - - this is an alternate version of Tinted Ace + TSpikes that is still very weak into Pao but eh anf you also to Inteleon but who uses that, Garg probably has some potential but being so hard walled by Quaqua really sucks and Decidueye is an awful mon that you should never use and you would prob not use it on the ladder and outplay the ladder if they have a quaquaval (easy) but I dislike having such a 0-100 MU if pichus had brought Quaqua so Deci was needed anyway I didn't bring it - - - - - - this is what I would've brought in finals if I was confident enough but I'm not, it's actually super cool and that's when I built it that I knew I still liked AAA despite being bored of the meta for the last 5 weeks because it's fire and not that bad I smashed some good players with it. What's really cool is that you can do a ton of edits depending of what you want (and there's probably an optimized version that I didn't make cuz I didnn't bring it but there are a lot of options over everyone) with 2 fire techs that I wish I brought : Red Card Heatran or in fact Red Card anything which is like Quick Claw Ursaluna but actually good aka they hit you and a random mon is sent and if you hit Magma Storm they die. It is very random and Career Ended called me a psycho for that and it's right but it's actually very funny (maybe Fire Blast would be better for accuracy here though) and probably a tech that could have other uses. Other tech is Proto Lucario with the main idea being that the team sounds and is physical spam and at some point they're gonna sac their special wall if you play well and then luc comes and cleans. It's really fire and surprises a lot because you expect to outspeed Luc easily with something that will live ESpeed or something but nah now you're slower :3 I almost brought Band Weavile to the finals which would've destroyed pichus team (why do you lose to pao so hard :pain:) OR SD Sash Stench Beat Up Counter Weavile which would've been really good too but I respected too much pichus to bring that, maybe I shouldn't have.. I also tried Lilligant-Hisui with SoR (and I discovered it had an analysis in the calc with this set but seriously who ever used that?), it's bad but I tried to pair it with Kingambit to take advantage of Corviknight not having both Body Press and Brave Bird which is another build path I wanted to exploit but never was able to, and also Lilligant is just walled by Scream Tail I hate this mon. RegenVest Dondozo, SFLO Hydreigon with Crunch, Specs Beads of Ruin Knock Off Hoopa, shit with Guards Dog or w/e is the ability to prevent Goodra DTail (Volcarona??), and the famous demon shocks that no one used despite being super good were all in my range of ideas but well you can't build everything and still try to win, even though I tried my best to bring funny/interesting techs and picks when I could (not W1, not really W5 and W7 even if SD Lefto Triage Luna or Deci are somewhat niche picks) because that's what makes the game interesting to me and what I enjoy in tournaments, I spoke of it with Isaiah when I was wondering if I could bring the Proto Luc team and he told me "boring is what wins" yeah I know but idk how ppl have fun bringing boring teams LOL
I always tried to innovate and well it's nothing new but I think people in OMs always tend to either stay with their basics and what they know and almost never cross the line of creativity or either cross it too much (hey Isaiah) and maybe forget a bit that we're still trying to have good teams LOL (I do know that I just can't agree with you when you say "well if you can't win this MU it's life you'll have 9 others when you can play" and I hate having teams that can just straight lose and I can't do anything, only did this W7 to meme Atha cuz he's bad), it's also something that I saw in NFE which Shing mentionned in their predicts and it's completely true that NFE builders lacked a lot of creativity and that's why I admire ojr bc he always had fire techs that were doing work and he's at a level I haven't reach yet but that's what makes Pokemon fun and interesting to me anyway not a big deal but I appreciated that we had many cool teams in AAA this OMPL (even if many others weren't), shoutouts to Career Ended and The Number Man for trying too (although Scarf WA Ceruledge is NOT a set bro) and LordBox Tranquility for being able to incorporate cool ideas inside your builds despite being relatively new and classic at the beginning :3
About the metagame itself well it's no surprise that many us didn't enjoy it much, at least AAA starters that are playing the tier for a long tiem (atha, TNM, Ivar even if more recently, and myself) and it was certainly a factor in atha's and ivar's records that do not reflect their skill, I talked of this a lot with atha and Siamato alongside the tournament and I think the tier has several problems, issue is that I do not see how we could solve them easily and do not think it's feasible easily so I'm also writing this to share my feelings and see what are other people thoughts and ideas. I will not do any proposal in this post (this is the job of Siamato) bc I'm bad at it but I'll just expose some issues I had during the tournament.
Some mons are too restrictive
On top of that list there's obviously Chien-Pao which is the main reason of Corviknight so high stats. My team in finals didn't have it and I had to pack Pex + Fluffy Zapdos + Bulky Quaquaval to have a relatively OK MU against it and I still lost to it (with bad plays, but still). pichus team didn't have Corviknight and unless she had a secret tech, Pao was very esaily beating her team with good positioning. Chien-Pao is wayyyy too restrictive, it also was pre-home (and my prep against shiloh was literally they'll forgot Pao and lose to it, it worked cuz no intim corv) and even though Zamazenta-C (mainly) helped a bit to build non-corv structures, you're almost forced to have a Corviknight in your team and, if not, you need to use Intimidate + Fluffy on two different mons to have a chance against physical breakers. Obviously it never appears as broken because it'll struggle against Corv (even though in many games Pao does beat Corv because of good positioning / Icicle Crash flinches, yes Atha im talking of you) but it is too restrictive and it needs to go.
(an argument could be made about Weavile replacing Pao if it's banned. I think Weavile is less threatening than Pao, but it could be true and I don't know. Maybe.)
Zamazenta-Crowned is in a similar situation even if less restrictive and less broken overall, but it is also a real pain to deal with it with absurd bulk and coverage options for almost everything you need, and yeah you can use Fluffy Landorus with Earth Power and stuff like that to deal with it but I often made teams and was like, well I lose to Zama / lose if X is a bit chipped which is realistically happening in a long game (and Zama against HO is a really good MU anyway) and had to delete the team. If Pao goes it won't be anymore a Pao check and it will just be a pain in the building imo, I think it's less likely to be suspect/banned that Pao but it still feels very annoying.
However, even if Pao gets banned it won't change Intim Corv's superiority in the tier and that's why
Too many mons are 'needed' in a team :
They're obviously not 100% needed, but if you need a physical check, you'll put Corv, if you need a special check, you'll put goodra, if you need anti setup/anti fish, you'll put Scream Tail. And they don't have good replacements, Goodra-H is by far the better RegenVester and the others only fit in very specific teams, and Cresselia is still generally worse than Scream Tail. And I hate having so little options in my teams to check things. Maybe I'm a bad builder and I tried to build teams without those, I brought AV Diancie, AV Muk, Blissey, 2 teams without Corv, and 4 teams without Scream Tail even though I hate Scream Tail I felt forced to bring it 4 times. I do not have a magic solution for that, but this is what makes AAA boring and annoying to build, it kinda feels like Ubers in 8G (I think it was Ubers?) when you had Yveltal/Eternatus/NDM/Zacian in every team and then 2 slots to fullfill with what you wanted. Having such proeminent mons, and not only one but many forced you to play either weird team structures to say "look I'm not using Intim Corv" (Isaiah's post just above is almost a caricature of that, teams may be interesting but saying "I don't want to use Intim Corviknight, I'll use Scream Tail Intimidate instead" is not how I see building in AAA kek) or always use 2/3/4 mons in 80% of your teams and it's just annoying. Obviously you could not change anything, it isn't broken or unplayable at all but I dislike it and will probably get bored if I don't find a way to not have to use always the same mons/cores or lose to 5-10 threats that I can't handle with other structures (losing to any special attacker when not using a RegenVest etc).
It leads me to my last point that is
I don't find the meta competitive
I expressed this in the last survey with the worst grades I ever gave on a survey with 4 and 4 to both fun and competitivity iirc and I do know "casual" AAA players were mostly happy and I respect that, but I genuiely think that AAA as a top level is not really competitive because you rely a lot and in my opinion too much on the match-up and I never had that feeling before, and I really feel it since Home is out, that you're either playing what everyone plays and that's boring or, if you try to change your habits, you'll always have threats that you just can't handle or will have a terrible MU into with little to 0 counterplay to it (example: the team I made for MZ completely loses to Inteleon. There's nothing you can do. And it's a really good team outside of that with a lot of great MUs. But you can't improve it to not make it lose to Inteleon, and probably other threats but Inteleon is the most blatant one) and it's rly different from the feeling I had in 8G where I felt you had more room to outplay / have tools in bad MUs. Maybe I became better and realised that, or the meta is really not enjoyable, I don't know. But many mons can be completely walled in some MUs and you can't do anything about that and that is, to me, the mark of a bad mon ; that is why good players usually don't use Belly Drum Fish and stuff like that because they know it is not reliable and unless you're specifically trying to catch your opponent's habit or have a team that knows this weakness and has ways to pressure Scream Tail on something, you don't use that. And I feel like there are too many mons/structures that can just lose if you roll the wrong MU with wayyyy less tools to make progress than in 8G, because it's normal to have good and bad MUs but I felt like it reached a point where it is not "bad" MUs but just unwinnable [if the opponent plays well, which fortunately doesn't happen often]
Now what ? I don't know. Minor changes like Pao ban won't change all of that, and the only thing that was discussed so far is the 2AC. This is probably a change of that extent (not necessarily being AC related) that could make the tier better imo but which one (or multiple ones), I don't know lol and I'm not confident in taking complicated paths (like banning 2-5 Abilities, 10 mons, etc) for an unexpected future due to some bad player rants, but if anyone has ideas..
About 2AC specifically, I honestly don't know. I feel like everyone came to have strong opinions about it, "it'll save the tier" or "it'll kill it" with some whimsical expectations of what the tier would look like. I don't have a strong opinion, and I think the solution of putting a slot in the incoming AAAPL is a good middleground, although it's very weird to build and play in a meta that doesn't exist. We'll see ! Unsure yet if I'll play or manage or watch atha getting destroyed every weak, but I'm quite happy this tour is happening nonetheless.
Take care of y'all
i agree with this sentiment ALOT, it feels like "pick these three mons and 3 random breakers". Scream Tail is really the glue for generic balance because it was almost like it's was specifically made for AAA. There's like maybe 4-5 viable mons that can break this core, but they need to grab a boost / get worn down by hazards and a potentialToo many mons are 'needed' in a team :
They're obviously not 100% needed, but if you need a physical check, you'll put Corv, if you need a special check, you'll put goodra, if you need anti setup/anti fish, you'll put Scream Tail. And they don't have good replacements, Goodra-H is by far the better RegenVester and the others only fit in very specific teams, and Cresselia is still generally worse than Scream Tail.
Take care of y'all
, or just get outsped or walled by other teammates. Sometimes even the worse case scenario, all of the above .This is sentiment is also shared by Natcrozma in this post right here.
BoR Nasty Plot 
:Drei is very slow and has a hard time getting a boost and can be baited into recoil and worn down by hazards and heavily relies on flinches to actually beat .
SFLO Nasty Plot
: Lando-I isn't very slow, but it isn't particularly fast considering the context of AAA and struggles to find that one boost. Also has problems if the regenveseter appears to or 
, basically being stonewalled by it's brother or having the wrong coverage.
It can be played around easily with and a ground immunity i.e. , Earth Eater mons.
SFLO Nasty Plot
: Imagine if you made Drei but amplify all of its worst problems. This guy is so damn slow, lil bro is outspeed by minimal speed investment and is ohko'd by knock off.
Adaptability Swords Dance : Could definitely break the core, but it struggles to find SD opportunities since defensive can be tacked on and can run body press to easily dispatch your attempt. Also mons that are bulky enough to take a sucker punch (at full health) such as MGLO & can "check" it. Also burning is an option if you have a , , etc.
MGLO (aka mixed) : Can actually break the core and is not worn down by hazards, but has speed (and ev) issues since the standard set reaches 240 max speed and ties if the regenvester is . Tends to also get pivoted around with Primordial Sea and immunity abilities.
Nasty Plot :Drei is very slow and has a hard time getting a boost and can be baited into recoil and worn down by hazards and heavily relies on flinches to actually beat .SFLO Nasty Plot
: Lando-I isn't very slow, but it isn't particularly fast considering the context of AAA and struggles to find that one boost. Also has problems if the regenveseter appears to or , basically being stonewalled by it's brother or having the wrong coverage.It can be played around easily with
and a ground immunity i.e. , Earth Eater mons.SFLO Nasty Plot
: Imagine if you made Drei but amplify all of its worst problems. This guy is so damn slow, lil bro is outspeed by minimal speed investment and is ohko'd by knock off.Adaptability Swords Dance
: Could definitely break the core, but it struggles to find SD opportunities since defensive can be tacked on and can run body press to easily dispatch your attempt. Also mons that are bulky enough to take a sucker punch (at full health) such as MGLO & can "check" it. Also burning is an option if you have a , , etc.MGLO
(aka mixed) : Can actually break the core and is not worn down by hazards, but has speed (and ev) issues since the standard set reaches 240 max speed and ties if the regenvester is . Tends to also get pivoted around with Primordial Sea and immunity abilities.
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Posting a team I got to top 2 on an alt with, also submitting it as a sample team
-----
^featured mon (set stolen from GlalieGoesBoom)
can 1v1 tusk (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Mold Breaker
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Bulk Up
- Smack Down
- Earthquake
Ima just start off by saying that this bitch is broken as hell, no wall is winning vs this hoe (unless ur name is Ting-Lu). the second it gets a sub off you KNOW somethin is dying
an amazingly convenient speed stat + great stats AND SETUP?!?!? SIGN ME TF UP
But seriously, this Lando-T set is genuinely great, it can come in on a variety of things like Corv, Electric moves, Ground moves, and possibly more that I just haven't encountered. As great as this set is, it wouldn't be as effective as it is without its teammates. Admittedly, I did not put much thought into its teammates, (hence the typical Dra/Corv/Quaq core), however its other teammates (Zapdos, Cinder) put in a lot more work than I'd expect (esp cinder but thats probably b/c this is like my first time using it).
Powerful MGLO breaker, not gonna go in-depth about its set but yk what it does. It's very effective after Lando-T has removed mons like WBB, 
, Primsea , non-Pixilate , and possibly more. Also the fastest mon on the team.
Very useful SpAtk'ing utility mon, para is very useful for speed control. Also has pivot.
I'd share replays, but (no offense to anyone I battled) I didn't really get any games that showed Lando-T over a long course of time.
Not gonna go in-depth more purely cuz this team was made without a real thought in my head, all i knew is that i wanted to use the Lando set & Cinderace
may nom lando or smth idk
-----^featured mon (set stolen from GlalieGoesBoom)
can 1v1 tusk (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Mold Breaker
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Bulk Up
- Smack Down
- Earthquake
Ima just start off by saying that this bitch is broken as hell, no wall is winning vs this hoe (unless ur name is Ting-Lu). the second it gets a sub off you KNOW somethin is dying
an amazingly convenient speed stat + great stats AND SETUP?!?!? SIGN ME TF UP
But seriously, this Lando-T set is genuinely great, it can come in on a variety of things like Corv, Electric moves, Ground moves, and possibly more that I just haven't encountered. As great as this set is, it wouldn't be as effective as it is without its teammates. Admittedly, I did not put much thought into its teammates, (hence the typical Dra/Corv/Quaq core), however its other teammates (Zapdos, Cinder) put in a lot more work than I'd expect (esp cinder but thats probably b/c this is like my first time using it).
Powerful MGLO breaker, not gonna go in-depth about its set but yk what it does. It's very effective after Lando-T has removed mons like WBB
, , Primsea , non-Pixilate , and possibly more. Also the fastest mon on the team.Very useful SpAtk'ing utility mon, para is very useful for speed control. Also has pivot.
I'd share replays, but (no offense to anyone I battled) I didn't really get any games that showed Lando-T over a long course of time.
Not gonna go in-depth more purely cuz this team was made without a real thought in my head, all i knew is that i wanted to use the Lando set & Cinderace
may nom lando or smth idk
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Hey everybody.
With AAAPL starting soon I'm sure we're all looking forward to seeing the SV (and old gens) meta(s)develop especially with some DLC pokemon coming in the latter half of the tour. But let's not forget what we learned from OMPL and the ongoing seasonal. The Luna ban was a great suspect and I think there was general consensus around the tiering action but since then it's been relatively quiet as far as SV AAA has gone. I'm curious to hear what players and council think about certain pokemon that I think are pretty absurd in the current tier. These pokemon being and . Chien pao is a very fast very strong physical breaker that can run a myriad of items and abilities and is very punishing in game. Adapt / SoR choice banded sets have very few relevant switch ins. Some combination of quaquaval, volcanion, dondozo and a regen dark resist (yache berry ting lu anyone) or intimidate walls such as scream tail or corviknight are the most common answers. Chien pao is easily able to muscle thru the waters thru their dark neutrality and being extremely susceptible to being 2hko'ed after a crunch defense drop. The same can be said of the intimidate walls and getting flinched by an Icicle Crash. Alongside chien pao's movepool including sacred sword which is great option to catch zamac for 80% and ohko kingambit as well as 2hko quaquaval. Chien pao also boasts 2 different priority stab options, Swords dance and even recover if you were crazy enough to run that. Dazzling SD sets wish focus sash are punishing towards particular offensive structures as well and all in all I think chien pao's sheer combination of speed and power make it too hard to reliably check either offensively or defensively. I covered in post #872 why I think zamac is very constraining to prepare for in the builder and not much has changed so I suggest you go read up on my thoughts there.
With AAAPL starting soon I'm sure we're all looking forward to seeing the SV (and old gens) meta(s)develop especially with some DLC pokemon coming in the latter half of the tour. But let's not forget what we learned from OMPL and the ongoing seasonal. The Luna ban was a great suspect and I think there was general consensus around the tiering action but since then it's been relatively quiet as far as SV AAA has gone. I'm curious to hear what players and council think about certain pokemon that I think are pretty absurd in the current tier. These pokemon being
and . Chien pao is a very fast very strong physical breaker that can run a myriad of items and abilities and is very punishing in game. Adapt / SoR choice banded sets have very few relevant switch ins. Some combination of quaquaval, volcanion, dondozo and a regen dark resist (yache berry ting lu anyone) or intimidate walls such as scream tail or corviknight are the most common answers. Chien pao is easily able to muscle thru the waters thru their dark neutrality and being extremely susceptible to being 2hko'ed after a crunch defense drop. The same can be said of the intimidate walls and getting flinched by an Icicle Crash. Alongside chien pao's movepool including sacred sword which is great option to catch zamac for 80% and ohko kingambit as well as 2hko quaquaval. Chien pao also boasts 2 different priority stab options, Swords dance and even recover if you were crazy enough to run that. Dazzling SD sets wish focus sash are punishing towards particular offensive structures as well and all in all I think chien pao's sheer combination of speed and power make it too hard to reliably check either offensively or defensively. I covered in post #872 why I think zamac is very constraining to prepare for in the builder and not much has changed so I suggest you go read up on my thoughts there.
I honestly don't think Chien-Pao needs to be banned. It is a strong, pure wallbreaker for sure, but I don't think it is negatively impacting teambuilding and I've seen it lose even in what could be construed as relatively good matchups (see the recent seasonal games involving Siamato, SammyCE, and placuszek). Chien-Pao's biggest weakness is the fact that unless it's running Choice Band + a non-Magic Guard offensive ability, it's pretty weak. I want to focus on this a bit and point out the reality that Swords Dance, Recover, and Dazzling are all "cool", but we shouldn't pretend as though almost every Chien-Pao in a competitive environment isn't running CB + Sword of Ruin (with the occasional Defiant tech to fish for a good Intimidate matchup). Those extra sets don't do a whole lot to make Chien-Pao more threatening--if anything, SD sets are easier to play around because they do such little damage, and Dazzling sets are mediocre because the majority of teams aren't using priority as their primary counterplay. The only truly scary thing about other sets is if people start running Adaptability + Choice Band to bluff other abilities, but that isn't really a thing yet.
Let's face it: against Chien-Pao, entry hazards are extremely effective. The current metagame helps this by featuring setters that all put insane amounts of pressure on the removal options. Garchomp, Iron Treads, Landorus formes, Heatran, etc. all have solid, viable ways to prevent you from getting rid of their entry hazard(s). "But Chien-Pao can just double in on the turn Stealth Rock is clicked" <- Sure, and this would be a great play, but the hazard setter can make plays too; anticipating this and attacking instead for chip damage is just as valid a play. Next, Intimidate Corviknight and Defensive Quaquaval are by no means perfect counters, but they will do the job a decent amount of the time provided that team members aren't just stacking passive options. Alternatively, you can opt for more offensive builds (bulky offense is a great one) to put more pressure on the opposing team more often.
If there are situations where Chien-Pao is broken, it's when it runs into a team that features things like 1) almost exclusively Pokemon slower than 405 Speed AND/OR 2) poor or no hazard setting AND/OR 3) things like no volt blocker and stacking passive Pokemon into cores (e.g. Corv + regenvest + defensive Zapdos)...but isn't that fine? They took the risk when building the team in hopes that they wouldn't run into that one unbearable matchup, and it didn't pan out. This is okay.
Reading back on it, this post is already longer than I intended it to be so all I'll say about Zamazenta-Crowned is that it's fine, when we free ability-locked Zacian-Crowned for DLC that'll balance it out...after all, we need to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that it's broken before applying it to the banlist, right...? Real talk though, I was going to make the survivability counterargument, but after using ZamaC as a glue on a lot of my recent bulky offense teams, I've realized that the lack of recovery + loss of Dauntless Shield after first turn out isn't even that bad--the bst and Iron Defense are often enough to punch big holes with a terrifying consistency. Is that enough to say it's broken? I'm kind of doubtful, so I'll wait and see what aaapl/the remaining seasonal games bring before forming my own opinion on that.
Let's face it: against Chien-Pao, entry hazards are extremely effective. The current metagame helps this by featuring setters that all put insane amounts of pressure on the removal options. Garchomp, Iron Treads, Landorus formes, Heatran, etc. all have solid, viable ways to prevent you from getting rid of their entry hazard(s). "But Chien-Pao can just double in on the turn Stealth Rock is clicked" <- Sure, and this would be a great play, but the hazard setter can make plays too; anticipating this and attacking instead for chip damage is just as valid a play. Next, Intimidate Corviknight and Defensive Quaquaval are by no means perfect counters, but they will do the job a decent amount of the time provided that team members aren't just stacking passive options. Alternatively, you can opt for more offensive builds (bulky offense is a great one) to put more pressure on the opposing team more often.
If there are situations where Chien-Pao is broken, it's when it runs into a team that features things like 1) almost exclusively Pokemon slower than 405 Speed AND/OR 2) poor or no hazard setting AND/OR 3) things like no volt blocker and stacking passive Pokemon into cores (e.g. Corv + regenvest + defensive Zapdos)...but isn't that fine? They took the risk when building the team in hopes that they wouldn't run into that one unbearable matchup, and it didn't pan out. This is okay.
Reading back on it, this post is already longer than I intended it to be so all I'll say about Zamazenta-Crowned is that it's fine, when we free ability-locked Zacian-Crowned for DLC that'll balance it out...after all, we need to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that it's broken before applying it to the banlist, right...? Real talk though, I was going to make the survivability counterargument, but after using ZamaC as a glue on a lot of my recent bulky offense teams, I've realized that the lack of recovery + loss of Dauntless Shield after first turn out isn't even that bad--the bst and Iron Defense are often enough to punch big holes with a terrifying consistency. Is that enough to say it's broken? I'm kind of doubtful, so I'll wait and see what aaapl/the remaining seasonal games bring before forming my own opinion on that.
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I shoulda made this a long time ago but 1) I was lazy and 2) I kept having to restart for dumb reasons. Now the meta is stale as hell and everyones just waiting for dlc to come out in a few weeks so good time as any to post this.
Peaked with stall
Analysis
Really easy to fish for flame body burns with all the uturn in the tier. A burned physical attacker is good as dead, and burned walls get worn down very quickly. Corv is also bulky enough to eat a strong hit and roost on something else even if it doesnt get the burn. 8 speed evs lets corv outspeed 171 speed kingambits and 2hko with body press, although min speed is probably better.
Great typing and bulk, resists the stabs of quaq, chienpao, slither wing, gapdos, and physical fires. Haze clears boosts from sd/iron defense, and stalls out cm stored power. Chilling water hits mg mons and removes atk boosts from dd/bulk up without having to haze. Infestation over toxic lets pex hit corv and trap/pp stall/force flame body burn on stuff.
-1 252 Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Zapdos-Galar Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 135-160 (44.4 - 52.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery
(I dont rmb gapdos being this strong but burn it with corv ig)
-1 252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Slither Wing Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 78-93 (25.6 - 30.5%) -- 1.2% chance to 4HKO after Black Sludge recovery
-1 252 Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Chien-Pao Crunch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 88-105 (28.9 - 34.5%) -- 99.6% chance to 4HKO after Black Sludge recovery
-1 252 Atk Choice Band Roaring Moon Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 124-146 (40.7 - 48%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery
+1 252 Atk Life Orb Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex in Harsh Sunshine: 140-166 (46 - 54.6%) -- 7.4% chance to 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
-1 252 Atk Life Orb Arcanine-Hisui Head Smash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 105-125 (34.5 - 41.1%) -- 53.3% chance to 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery
Unaware/fast encore deters a lot of setup sweepers, and can still wish protect stall moves if it needs to. 341 speed lets it outspeed mismagius, and dangerous nplotters like chiyu and thundy-t. Should not be switched in directly on moves but instead with prediction/corvs uturn.
Leppa+Recycle lets it freely spam soft boiled/heal bell against more defensive mons, corrosion+toxic, and random special attackers spamming moves. Can act as a wincon against bulkier teams once they lose their offensive pressure and their corv/quaquaval gets burned. 12 hp evs lets blissey survive polteageist stored power after two shell smashed and hit back with shadow ball, but seismic toss can also be used to beat opposing blissey+regenvester. Cm lets it beat skeledirge/iron moth/bulky cm sweepers, and waste enough pp for stail to wish protect stall even if it gets crit.
Great pivot, and primary switchin to special attackers as blissey is prone to getting uturned on. Also blocks volt switches from the fast electrics, and survives any super effective hit aside from eleki explosion. Donphan’s pure ground typing and rapid spin makes it one of the few mons that can remove garchomps hazards, aside from liquidation sets. Ice spinner threatens chomp and knock off is valuable utility to force progress. Donphan also underspeeds corv, letting it knock something after a uturn or eq on a roost. It does often rely on blissey to eat special hits so it can regen back up.
252 SpA Choice Specs Kilowattrel Weather Ball (100 BP Water) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan in Heavy Rain: 280-330 (72.9 - 85.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Zapdos Hurricane vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 115-136 (29.9 - 35.4%) -- 25.9% chance to 3HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Electrode-Hisui Chloroblast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 304-359 (79.1 - 93.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Refrigerate Regieleki Tera Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 114-136 (29.6 - 35.4%) -- 22.3% chance to 3HKO
252 SpA Rotom-Wash Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan in Heavy Rain: 306-362 (79.6 - 94.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Hadron Engine Sandy Shocks Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 123-145 (32 - 37.7%) -- 93.5% chance to 3HKO
+2 252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Thundurus-Therian Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 315-370 (82 - 96.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Walls the annoying mixed mglo mons heatran and volcanion, and can spin away heatrans rocks. Magic guard + Utility umbrella can be ran instead to counter magma storm heatran, but spec volc focus blast 2hkos without vessel of ruin. Covert cloak prevents serupt burn/sludge bomb poisons, as well as salt cure. 80 defense evs lets quaq survive two head smashes from mglo jolly harc and also spin away rocks, but then it gets scarily close to getting 2hkoed by specs volc serupt (49.7%).
Threats
@ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
Evs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
- Superpower
- Moonblast
- Mystical Fire
- Earth Power
Moonblast 2hkos donphan/stail, and has coverage moves for everything else. Pivot between stuff, and try to get donphan in on something that isnt moonblast, as it can live a moonblast after. Blissey lives two superpowers after an intimidate, or just beats it if it superpowers into corv and gets burned.
@ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
Evs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Nasty Plot
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast
- Grass Knot
Go hard donphan. If it nasty plots, go hard stail to eat a grass knot or focus blast and encore it. Stail can also just come in on nasty plot and encore that. If it doesnt have grass knot, donphan lives +2 focus blast and knocks off life orb, letting stail wish protect stall it.
@ Life Orb
Ability: Regenerator
Evs: 252 Hp / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Liquidation
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
Haven’t actually ran into this, but still a threat in theory. This set has the longevity to constantly come in and set up rocks, while also threatening the hazard control. Scream Tail walls it, but leaves rocks up. Best option is to fish for a burn with corv or hope ur opponent throws it away to ice spinner (doesnt actually ohko, have to chip it with eq).
@ Choice Scarf
Ability: Hadron Engine
Evs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Trick
- Hydro Pump
- Volt Switch
- Will-O-Wisp
Trick is annoying. Go stail first to scout the set, preferably eating a scarf in the process. Donphan can’t live a hydro pump if av gets tricked, but rotom also cant be annoying with willo and trick. Dont let donphan get tricked a scarf.
I was gonna put replays, but I cant be bothered to go through them so look for them yourself.
Peaked with stall
Really easy to fish for flame body burns with all the uturn in the tier. A burned physical attacker is good as dead, and burned walls get worn down very quickly. Corv is also bulky enough to eat a strong hit and roost on something else even if it doesnt get the burn. 8 speed evs lets corv outspeed 171 speed kingambits and 2hko with body press, although min speed is probably better.
Great typing and bulk, resists the stabs of quaq, chienpao, slither wing, gapdos, and physical fires. Haze clears boosts from sd/iron defense, and stalls out cm stored power. Chilling water hits mg mons and removes atk boosts from dd/bulk up without having to haze. Infestation over toxic lets pex hit corv and trap/pp stall/force flame body burn on stuff.
-1 252 Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Zapdos-Galar Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 135-160 (44.4 - 52.6%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery(I dont rmb gapdos being this strong but burn it with corv ig)
-1 252+ Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Slither Wing Close Combat vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 78-93 (25.6 - 30.5%) -- 1.2% chance to 4HKO after Black Sludge recovery -1 252 Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Chien-Pao Crunch vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 88-105 (28.9 - 34.5%) -- 99.6% chance to 4HKO after Black Sludge recovery -1 252 Atk Choice Band Roaring Moon Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 124-146 (40.7 - 48%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery +1 252 Atk Life Orb Cinderace Pyro Ball vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex in Harsh Sunshine: 140-166 (46 - 54.6%) -- 7.4% chance to 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery -1 252 Atk Life Orb Arcanine-Hisui Head Smash vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 105-125 (34.5 - 41.1%) -- 53.3% chance to 3HKO after Black Sludge recoveryUnaware/fast encore deters a lot of setup sweepers, and can still wish protect stall moves if it needs to. 341 speed lets it outspeed mismagius, and dangerous nplotters like chiyu and thundy-t. Should not be switched in directly on moves but instead with prediction/corvs uturn.
Leppa+Recycle lets it freely spam soft boiled/heal bell against more defensive mons, corrosion+toxic, and random special attackers spamming moves. Can act as a wincon against bulkier teams once they lose their offensive pressure and their corv/quaquaval gets burned. 12 hp evs lets blissey survive polteageist stored power after two shell smashed and hit back with shadow ball, but seismic toss can also be used to beat opposing blissey+regenvester. Cm lets it beat skeledirge/iron moth/bulky cm sweepers, and waste enough pp for stail to wish protect stall even if it gets crit.
Great pivot, and primary switchin to special attackers as blissey is prone to getting uturned on. Also blocks volt switches from the fast electrics, and survives any super effective hit aside from eleki explosion. Donphan’s pure ground typing and rapid spin makes it one of the few mons that can remove garchomps hazards, aside from liquidation sets. Ice spinner threatens chomp and knock off is valuable utility to force progress. Donphan also underspeeds corv, letting it knock something after a uturn or eq on a roost. It does often rely on blissey to eat special hits so it can regen back up.
252 SpA Choice Specs Kilowattrel Weather Ball (100 BP Water) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan in Heavy Rain: 280-330 (72.9 - 85.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO 252 SpA Zapdos Hurricane vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 115-136 (29.9 - 35.4%) -- 25.9% chance to 3HKO 252 SpA Life Orb Electrode-Hisui Chloroblast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 304-359 (79.1 - 93.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO 252 SpA Refrigerate Regieleki Tera Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 114-136 (29.6 - 35.4%) -- 22.3% chance to 3HKO 252 SpA Rotom-Wash Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan in Heavy Rain: 306-362 (79.6 - 94.2%) -- guaranteed 2HKO 252 SpA Hadron Engine Sandy Shocks Earth Power vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 123-145 (32 - 37.7%) -- 93.5% chance to 3HKO +2 252 SpA Life Orb Sheer Force Thundurus-Therian Focus Blast vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Assault Vest Donphan: 315-370 (82 - 96.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKOWalls the annoying mixed mglo mons heatran and volcanion, and can spin away heatrans rocks. Magic guard + Utility umbrella can be ran instead to counter magma storm heatran, but spec volc focus blast 2hkos without vessel of ruin. Covert cloak prevents serupt burn/sludge bomb poisons, as well as salt cure. 80 defense evs lets quaq survive two head smashes from mglo jolly harc and also spin away rocks, but then it gets scarily close to getting 2hkoed by specs volc serupt (49.7%).
@ Life OrbAbility: Sheer Force
Evs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
- Superpower
- Moonblast
- Mystical Fire
- Earth Power
Moonblast 2hkos donphan/stail, and has coverage moves for everything else. Pivot between stuff, and try to get donphan in on something that isnt moonblast, as it can live a moonblast after. Blissey lives two superpowers after an intimidate, or just beats it if it superpowers into corv and gets burned.
@ Life OrbAbility: Sheer Force
Evs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Nasty Plot
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast
- Grass Knot
Go hard donphan. If it nasty plots, go hard stail to eat a grass knot or focus blast and encore it. Stail can also just come in on nasty plot and encore that. If it doesnt have grass knot, donphan lives +2 focus blast and knocks off life orb, letting stail wish protect stall it.
@ Life OrbAbility: Regenerator
Evs: 252 Hp / 252 Atk / 4 Def
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Liquidation
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
Haven’t actually ran into this, but still a threat in theory. This set has the longevity to constantly come in and set up rocks, while also threatening the hazard control. Scream Tail walls it, but leaves rocks up. Best option is to fish for a burn with corv or hope ur opponent throws it away to ice spinner (doesnt actually ohko, have to chip it with eq).
@ Choice ScarfAbility: Hadron Engine
Evs: 4 Hp / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Trick
- Hydro Pump
- Volt Switch
- Will-O-Wisp
Trick is annoying. Go stail first to scout the set, preferably eating a scarf in the process. Donphan can’t live a hydro pump if av gets tricked, but rotom also cant be annoying with willo and trick. Dont let donphan get tricked a scarf.
I was gonna put replays, but I cant be bothered to go through them so look for them yourself.
If you struggle to beat the stall above^, check out this replay, 900+ turn game where Glalie wasn't able to stall vs the wallbreaker of Heatran. A taunt or solar beam Heatran can break blissey / quag, didn't have either sadly but still managed.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9almostanyability-1911136835-7ycqsc3y1w7gcvtw0oik4tl3kyx4u4xpw
Just helping out my buddies who hate stall players.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9almostanyability-1911136835-7ycqsc3y1w7gcvtw0oik4tl3kyx4u4xpw
Just helping out my buddies who hate stall players.
I've come back to AAA after a break and wanted to share a couple mons I came up with.
I've been loving Meloetta-Pirouette and it's honestly kinda scary. You run Relic Song to change form then start deleting mons with Facade and CQC. Trick is some tech I thought was fun but can be swapped out easily. Can get walled by Intimidate Corviknight (but it still does solid damage) and ghost types but you can drop Trick for Shadow Claw to get through them.
Meloetta @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Facade
- Close Combat
- Relic Song
- Trick
Another fun set I've found is mixed attacker Salamance. Nobody expects Aerialate Facade anymore and especially nobody expects the Fire Blast destroying their Corviknight.
Salamence @ Flame Orb
Ability: Aerilate
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Facade
- Fire Blast
- Draco Meteor
- Dragon Dance
I'll admit though I haven't tested these very much but they've shown solid results from what I've seen. Try em out and see how you like them.
I've been loving Meloetta-Pirouette and it's honestly kinda scary. You run Relic Song to change form then start deleting mons with Facade and CQC. Trick is some tech I thought was fun but can be swapped out easily. Can get walled by Intimidate Corviknight (but it still does solid damage) and ghost types but you can drop Trick for Shadow Claw to get through them.
Meloetta @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Facade
- Close Combat
- Relic Song
- Trick
Another fun set I've found is mixed attacker Salamance. Nobody expects Aerialate Facade anymore and especially nobody expects the Fire Blast destroying their Corviknight.
Salamence @ Flame Orb
Ability: Aerilate
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Facade
- Fire Blast
- Draco Meteor
- Dragon Dance
I'll admit though I haven't tested these very much but they've shown solid results from what I've seen. Try em out and see how you like them.
Posting my team that helped me reach the top 2 ladder. (I also had another team that I copied, but I don't think it counts because I only used it in one match and lost in the end lol)
Garchomp @ Leftovers
Ability: Fluffy
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Liquidation
- Substitute
- Swords Dance
Having a passive pokemon with Fluffly doesn't seem bad to me, but it doesn't compare at all to having it in an aggressive pokemon. Garchomp with Fluffy is a beast, pulls substitute to avoid burns and in the face of Corvyknight, and then an SD to pressure the opponent offensively. It has Liquidation just in case you get a fire-type pokemon that has a ground-immune ability.
Corviknight @ Leftovers
Ability: Tablets of Ruin
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Defog
- Roost
Corvy is the best AAA pokemon at least in utility, he has Tablets of Ruin as an ability because it was impossible for Garchomp to do everything, especially for the ice and dragon type. I didn't choose Intimidate because many pokemon have U turn and switch to another physical attacker.At least with Tablets of Ruin I make sure I have the defense at all times.
Volcanion @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 100 HP / 252 Atk / 16 SpA / 140 Spe
Naive Nature
- Steam Eruption
- Flare Blitz
- Earthquake
- Taunt
Volcanion is the surprise for the team. A physical and special attacker who destroys Meloetta and Goodra AV Regenerator. Usually those pokemon lack defenses for physical attacks, so with Life Orb + Physical Attacks + Magic Guard I caused great damage to my rivals. Steam Eruption is the only special move and Taunt to stop passive pokemon like Cresselia.
Goodra-Hisui @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Heavy Slam
- Dragon Tail
- Earthquake
- Thunderbolt
Goodra H is the special wall of the team. I chose it over Meloetta because the equipment is weak to fairy-type triage users.
Sandy Shocks @ Focus Sash
Ability: Hadron Engine
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Earth Power
- Spikes
- Volt Switch
This is the lead of the team, it has the function of seeing the reaction of my rival, since let's be honest, Hadron Engine exerts offensive pressure, and the best user of defog is Corvy, so unless he is immune to the electric type with a skill, it is impossible for him to fight with Sandy Shocks.
Polteageist @ White Herb
Ability: Normalize
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Stored Power
- Skill Swap
- Shell Smash
In high ladder it is rare to find a Hyper Offense team that has priority moves. Ladder usually run into more unaware users and that, so having Normalize Polteageist catches many teams off guard, and neutralizes checks like Roaring Moon. The only way to counter the strategy is to have a ghost type with the abilities of the Pokemon Paradox because Skill Swap does not work with those abilities.
The only member of my team who thinks it's not mine is Polteageist but I don't know who to credit for because I found it a lot in ladder. This team has the terrible weakness of the ice type, especially with Cloyster among others, but luckily I did not meet them. That's all, if you want to use the team, go ahead.
Garchomp @ Leftovers
Ability: Fluffy
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Liquidation
- Substitute
- Swords Dance
Having a passive pokemon with Fluffly doesn't seem bad to me, but it doesn't compare at all to having it in an aggressive pokemon. Garchomp with Fluffy is a beast, pulls substitute to avoid burns and in the face of Corvyknight, and then an SD to pressure the opponent offensively. It has Liquidation just in case you get a fire-type pokemon that has a ground-immune ability.
Corviknight @ Leftovers
Ability: Tablets of Ruin
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Defog
- Roost
Corvy is the best AAA pokemon at least in utility, he has Tablets of Ruin as an ability because it was impossible for Garchomp to do everything, especially for the ice and dragon type. I didn't choose Intimidate because many pokemon have U turn and switch to another physical attacker.At least with Tablets of Ruin I make sure I have the defense at all times.
Volcanion @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 100 HP / 252 Atk / 16 SpA / 140 Spe
Naive Nature
- Steam Eruption
- Flare Blitz
- Earthquake
- Taunt
Volcanion is the surprise for the team. A physical and special attacker who destroys Meloetta and Goodra AV Regenerator. Usually those pokemon lack defenses for physical attacks, so with Life Orb + Physical Attacks + Magic Guard I caused great damage to my rivals. Steam Eruption is the only special move and Taunt to stop passive pokemon like Cresselia.
Goodra-Hisui @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Heavy Slam
- Dragon Tail
- Earthquake
- Thunderbolt
Goodra H is the special wall of the team. I chose it over Meloetta because the equipment is weak to fairy-type triage users.
Sandy Shocks @ Focus Sash
Ability: Hadron Engine
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Earth Power
- Spikes
- Volt Switch
This is the lead of the team, it has the function of seeing the reaction of my rival, since let's be honest, Hadron Engine exerts offensive pressure, and the best user of defog is Corvy, so unless he is immune to the electric type with a skill, it is impossible for him to fight with Sandy Shocks.
Polteageist @ White Herb
Ability: Normalize
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Stored Power
- Skill Swap
- Shell Smash
In high ladder it is rare to find a Hyper Offense team that has priority moves. Ladder usually run into more unaware users and that, so having Normalize Polteageist catches many teams off guard, and neutralizes checks like Roaring Moon. The only way to counter the strategy is to have a ghost type with the abilities of the Pokemon Paradox because Skill Swap does not work with those abilities.
The only member of my team who thinks it's not mine is Polteageist but I don't know who to credit for because I found it a lot in ladder. This team has the terrible weakness of the ice type, especially with Cloyster among others, but luckily I did not meet them. That's all, if you want to use the team, go ahead.
Hi guys, it's been a while
The council has been voting (and debating with gnashing of teeth) on what to unban with DLC 1 next week (September 13th).
Here's the list of candidates so far:
Great Tusk
Zacian-Crowned (it can only have intrepid sword)
Enamorus
Sneasler
Gholdengo
Walking Wake
Poison Heal
Zoroark-H
Gengar
Dragonite
Zamazenta
Thoughts? I won't show the votes yet since voting won't be over until probably sometime this weekend, but personally I'm voting to unban everything because I'm interested in trying out a new slate (even if it's only temporarily with DLC 2 coming 2-3 months after) and trying to balance from scratch--especially with all of the changes we'll have gotten from Home and DLC combined.
The council has been voting (and debating with gnashing of teeth) on what to unban with DLC 1 next week (September 13th).
Here's the list of candidates so far:
Great Tusk Zacian-Crowned (it can only have intrepid sword) Enamorus Sneasler Gholdengo Walking Wake Poison Heal Zoroark-H Gengar Dragonite ZamazentaThoughts? I won't show the votes yet since voting won't be over until probably sometime this weekend, but personally I'm voting to unban everything because I'm interested in trying out a new slate (even if it's only temporarily with DLC 2 coming 2-3 months after) and trying to balance from scratch--especially with all of the changes we'll have gotten from Home and DLC combined.
>legalizes zacian crownedHi guys, it's been a while
The council has been voting (and debating with gnashing of teeth) on what to unban with DLC 1 next week (September 13th).
Here's the list of candidates so far:
Thoughts? I won't show the votes yet since voting won't be over until probably sometime this weekend, but personally I'm voting to unban everything because I'm interested in trying out a new slate (even if it's only temporarily with DLC 2 coming 2-3 months after) and trying to balance from scratch--especially with all of the changes we'll have gotten from Home and DLC combined.
>keeps annihilape, iron hands, ursaluna banned
if you wanna just unban everything to ban it again then at least unban EVERYTHING :sob:
Well, the serious answer to this is that there's a decent chance of Triage seeing tiering action at some point if these leaks end up being valid...so, it's more appropriate to wait and see on those guys. Also,
/dt Rage Fist on PS.