ASCENSION
(Wow, I don't think I've ever posted to this subforum before.)
Hi everyone! The era of USUM has long since drawn to a close, but I'm here, once again, for a last pass at Gen VII—this time with possibly my favorite team I've ever built. I think that even in a metagame which has been explored as thoroughly as USUM and left to sit, there are sometimes gems which can be found twinkling in the twilight of a slowly setting Sun and the gentle beams of a slowly rising Moon. This team is one such example. ★
Hyper-offense teams, like the one featured in my previous RMT COTTON ON, have always made me uncomfortable. It's a lot like playing Jenga with cylinders: a lot rides on the fragile structure of a bunch of offensive behemoths and there's not much wiggle room in case something goes wrong. My preferred style of team, in fact, is something more like this one: a slow, deliberate team which isn't extremely prediction-heavy and is in no rush to incrementally choke the life out of an opponent. It's not about the speed of the climb; it's about the height of the ASCENSION.
Shedinja @ Focus Sash
Ability: Wonder Guard
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
IVs: 0 HP / 0 Def / 0 SpA / 0 SpD
- Shadow Sneak
- Will-O-Wisp
- Ally Switch
- Protect
I'd been experimenting with some "classic" ladder badmons for a while before I came across Shedinja (you can see an early effort with Slaking here). Shedinja, I think, is the epitome of the choke-hold, with the ability to tie up games by itself, and even make an opponent play differently by its mere presence somewhere in the back of your team. I think most ladder teams use Shedinja incorrectly by attempting to Soak it or give it Sturdy or put Wonder Guard on something else; the number of viable Pokemon which can actually threaten Shedinja is already surprisingly low as is. Shedinja is perhaps best used as a solid defensive pivot early-game, kept alive until late game to put the pressure on an opponent to preserve whatever checks they may have. Against certain cores like a Psyspam duo or a Rain core, Shedinja can sit on the field for surprising amounts of time, burning things and even taking some KOs after the rest of the team has done some work on chipping—Pokemon like Metagross and Kyurem-B have a tendency to leave some frailer Pokemon at around 20% HP after a single hit, which Shedinja can take advantage of with a Shadow Sneak.
Shedinja seems to not really make that much sense, especially in an era already hit by Stealth Rock fever, but it's surprising how far you can make Shedinja go even in these circumstances. Hazards aside, not many viable Pokemon can actually touch Shedinja: many of the common examples that can—Incineroar, Kyurem-B, Charizard, and Salamence, for example—share a common weakness to Stealth Rock, which is easily implemented on a team, usually easy to set up, and generally persists, making it an extremely effective tool to aid in Shedinja's survival. While perhaps always not obvious, therefore, a Shedinja archetype actually has a lot of tools at its disposal in SM DOU.
The set itself is standard (with minimized Def / SpD EVs to weaken opposing transformed Shedinja-Mew); the only things worth noting are Will-O-Wisp instead of Toxic and Ally Switch as a move at all. I originally ran Toxic on this set, but I realised my team is significantly vulnerable to the likes of Kartana and opposing Mega Metagross. Will-O-Wisp does lose out on some win conditions (e.g. 1v1 vs opposing Zapdos or Milotic), but especially against good opposition, those come up far more infrequently than one might imagine.
The notable move slot here is Ally Switch. I don't think it's a super surprising move to have on Shedinja—if you followed VGC 2019, it's already been made (in)famous by players such as Melvin Keh—but it's a really interesting move in terms of the amount of possibilities you can make happen with this move. Now that we've played some SWSH DOU and more people have been exposed to this move, I think its potency is clear to most, especially on a Pokemon like Shedinja which is capable of turning ridiculous amounts of damage to no damage at all.
Chansey (F) @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled
- Toxic
I knew almost immediately that I wanted a secondary win condition with which to pressure opponents through a match. Chansey holds a similar power to Shedinja in that it holds the power to force opponents to make otherwise strange sacrifices in order to avoid ending up in a losing position. This is a fairly straightforward Chansey set; the only notable moveslot here is probably the inclusion of Stealth Rock at the expense of something like Heal Pulse. While Heal Pulse seems very nice in theory, especially alongside Pokemon like Kyurem-B and Metagross which often take little from each hit but accumulate damage throughout a battle, I found Stealth Rock too valuable to give up and the team's synergy too cohesive to consider putting it on any other Pokemon.
Tapu Fini @ Wiki Berry
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 252 HP / 32 Def / 224 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Muddy Water
- Moonblast
- Defog
- Protect
Tapu Fini is, as always, a valuable ally to any team that relies on the persistent survival of a single Pokemon, preventing a stray Toxic from ruining the team's win condition. It may seem strange to have a Misty Surge user on a team which quite often relies on Toxic and Will-O-Wisp for its win conditions, but it's proved to be a worthwhile addition, and it merely means that I have to play more cautiously around my own Terrain.
Initially, this Tapu Fini was a Calm Mind set (which is where the strange EV spread originates from), but with the oddly high frequency of Stealth Rock in the late SM DOU metagame, Defog was too valuable an option to pass up. Tapu Fini's synergy with Shedinja isn't merely defensive, however—many common threats to Shedinja, such as Incineroar or Kyurem-B, are at least mildly checked or scared away by Tapu Fini, allowing me to rack up either direct hits or further Stealth Rock damage on them. I never reconsidered the EV spread from the CM set, but it's nice to have Moonblast and Muddy Water deal some amount of damage to the threats Tapu Fini needs to check.
Incineroar @ Figy Berry
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 104 Atk / 20 Def / 116 SpD / 16 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Flare Blitz
- Knock Off
- U-turn
Of course! Don't tell me you weren't expecting this one. Incineroar is, like Fini, another one of those all-around good Pokemon that can aid most archetypes. This is one of them; Incineroar's most obvious benefits to the team are Fake Out and U-turn, which are both quite clearly excellent for aiding the team in its maneuverability requirements. Some more specific traits Incineroar brings to this team, however, are its ability to strongly check Ferrothorn, Celesteela, and somewhat check Mega Venusaur, all of which mess with Shedinja via Leech Seed and with Chansey via their immunity to Toxic and their ability to out-heal Seismic Toss. Even Intimidate, I feel, takes on more meaning on a team which often plays to a win condition around Chansey. Other than these, there's not much else to say about Incineroar, which is just as good a Pokemon as everyone knows it to be.
Metagross-Mega @ Metagrossite
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Iron Head
- Stomping Tantrum
- Ice Punch
- Protect
At this point, the team was rather slow-moving and passive and therefore not great at handling some opposing hyper-offense builds, so it was necessary to add a Pokemon which was able to outpace some mid-to-fast threats like Tapu Lele, Charizard, and Kyurem-B. Metagross was actually the last Pokemon to be added to this iteration of the team—it was originally a Salamence, but at some point I realised I was running a Shedinja team with 3 other Rock-weak Pokemon, and that that was probably a bad idea. Metagross patches up this weakness nicely, and makes the team a little more resilient in the face of many other matchups thanks to its generally useful Steel typing and good bulk. The team is a little atypical as a defensive team in that it doesn't have much actual healing; it carries only two pinch berries, and Chansey is the only Pokemon on the team that can heal itself. The team therefore relies on defensive switching to mitigate incoming damage a lot, which means that Metagross's Steel typing is especially useful, as it grants the team many more switch options in most given turns. (In particular, I lost a lot less to ladder Sand after I put Metagross on the team. Double Sand setters are about as bad a matchup as you might expect them to be.)
Metagross's moveset is pretty standard but is especially effective on this team: Iron Head is great for removing Diancie, Stomping Tantrum chunks Incineroar neatly, and Ice Punch threatens and chunks or OHKOs many Landorus-T and Salamence sets. Each of these poses significant threats for the team in different ways, and since the rest of my team (especially Shedinja) has significant difficulty in facing these threats, it's nice to have an offensive Pokemon capable of just removing or heavily denting them if they're played badly or switched in carelessly.
Kyurem-Black @ Icium Z
Ability: Teravolt
EVs: 204 Atk / 52 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Freeze Shock
- Fusion Bolt
- Ice Beam
- Protect
Kyurem-B is another offensive member of the team, but it plays a slightly different role from Metagross. Whereas Metagross's role is to deal good damage to a fairly wide range of Pokemon as a result of its nice coverage, Kyurem-B is important to the team for its capacity to outright remove single Pokemon from play with Z-Freeze Shock: for example, opposing Pokemon like Celesteela and Mega Venusaur can be annoying threats with Leech Seed (and sometimes Flamethrower, in Celesteela's case), but Kyurem-B can immediately put an end to all of that with a well-timed Subzero Slammer.
Apart from this one moveslot, Kyurem-B does well in its ability to threaten or force out common threats like Landorus-T and Mega Salamence, which are otherwise pretty capable of breaking through the defensive core of the team simply by spamming powerful moves, and more generally, Kyurem-B's offensive output, like Metagross's, acts as a neat catch-all to mop up some Pokemon which can be surprisingly threatening in the wrong circumstances, like Milotic or even Gyarados. Overall, it's a good solid Pokemon capable of picking up the team's overall pace so that it doesn't fall victim to the classic problem of being so slow that it creates opportunities to lose to luck.
★ ★ ★
Overall, I'm glad to have been able to build and pilot this team; doing well with obscure Pokemon is one of the few things that still brings me joy in competitive Pokemon. To anyone reading this hoping to draw inspiration for a magnum opus of their own: please note that, while I did use an unconventional Pokemon just for the kick of it, I built a team in such a way that its unique strengths were highlighted and it couldn't be replaced with another more conventional Pokemon at all. I think this team's success was the culmination of a set of exceedingly kind and well-fitting circumstances; the metagame isn't often so kind to the renegades.
Thanks for checking out my RMT! I think the end of a generation is a good time to reflect on the passing of time—a lot of time has passed and I think I've hung on to what scraps of spotlight I could get for perhaps a little too long. I expect not to be much of a figure in the community at all in this new generation, and I think this is a good note on which to try to start to fade into the background. Thank you for having me. ★
ASCENSION
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