BH Balanced Hackmons

[blackster0915]

For the Sample Team donation event I'd like to submitt this team https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...en-8-monotype-challenge.3680199/#post-8787840 that I used for a BH Laddering Challenge. I was able to go 29-1 on the BH ladder with this team so it's definitely reliable on ladder and an excellent pick for those wanting to get into the game. This team is especially good against Trapping, Rapid Spin, Cramorant and Palkia; all of which which has seen a recent uptick in the Metagame.

Hey fella! How cool is that! You just only used ghost types, yet you are winning most of your games! Congrats and respect!
I really like the team, especially the Dusclops, love that thing!
Keep it up!
Btw, I see this as a challenge to build my own monotype BH team :)

 

[Varrio]

View attachment 324061
Importable

Description of the Team

Zygarde-Complete @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Final Gambit
- Rapid Spin
- Stealth Rock
- U-Turn

Usually my lead - as long as they don't lead with chansey, I just final gambit to knock one out. Rapid Spin & Stealth Rock are there for utility; if they do run chansey I stealth rock because they either switch or trade. U-Turn is just for switching, in case you need to pivot.

Zamazenta-Crowned @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Belly Drum
- Close Combat
- Glacial Lance
- Sunsteel Strike

Self Improofed late game cleaner. Sunsteel prevents any sturdy FEAR shenanigans, and glance is there for coverage. Not much else to explain - but it's only a one time thing, so I don't usually send it in until I'm confident they have no speed control or if I need to kill a Zygarde-C.

Regigigas @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Shift Gear
- Baneful Bunker
- Facade
- Precipice Blades

A good general mon - cramorant counter, 24% heal if you protect every other turn, along with switchin against spectral thief if you need it. Somewhat Self-Improofed, but Facade doesn't 2HKO at +1 so don't rely on it. Baneful Bunker can be super useful against any physical mon, since this can stall against balance pretty well. Facade is 140BP along with STAB, so it hits really hard after a shift gear. Precipice blades is there for coverage against steels - but the lack of spectral thief makes this viable to anchor shot.

Xerneas @ Metronome
Ability: Pixilate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Boomburst
- Extreme Speed
- Spectral Thief/Blue Flare
- Imprison

Counter for AteSpeed. Boomburst hits hard because of metronome, so once any defensive steels or poisons are dead you can kill any non-resists with Boomburst then nuke whatever comes out next. Spectral Thief/Blue Flare each has it's uses, i prefer Blue Flare to suprise prankster registeels, but spectral thief is useful to counter any non-stored power setup mons.

Giratina @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Final Gambit
- Spectral Thief
- Trick
- U-turn

Final Gambit number two. Spectral Thief is there to get rid of boosts, and trick to wall stall/defensive mons and entrainment dragapult. U-Turn is again just there because I wanted a pivot move.

Mewtwo @ Shed Shell
Ability: Simple
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Mild Nature
- Imprison
- No Retreat
- Spectral Thief
- Stored Power

The main sweeper. This is pretty self-explanatory, start with imprison then set up and kill with stored power. It's main counters are non-imposter chansey and dark types, but it's not one-time setup so you don't have to wait until lategame.

Your team is pretty decent however I would suggest a few changes before this goes into sample teams.
For Regigigas, change Baneful Bunker to Spiky Shield/King's Shield because it is not self-improof if the imposter gets poisoned by bunker as well.
For Xerneas, you should really add Rapid Spin and Strength Sap because they are staple moves of the Metronome set, it gives a +1 speed boost and removes hazards, leech seed and all that, lets you start your snowball sweep with Boomburst. Strength Sap is useful because Xerneas can survive some stuff like Refrigerate Kyurem-B espeed and heal up fully from like 25% while crippling them. You can use Blue Flare for the last move or just use V-Create, Imprison is not really that useful when you are somewhat self improof because you have metronome.

As for Mewtwo, it's not really that great due to the Psychic typing. From my experience, Psychic types aren't that great in BH, no retreat only works once so you can easily be walled by ice scales steels and as you said, Chansey and Dark types. I recommend replacing Mewtwo with some other setup sweeper without these drawbacks.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

I'm curious to hear opinions on the thunderous kick/low kick/close combat trilemma. Personnally I believe thunderous kick should be chosen nearly all the time. I hate the fact low kick completely misses out on kartana because the user usualy doesn't carry another effective move against it. I also prefer thunderous kick to cc because I dislike cc's loss of defence when using both zamazentas or zacian-C. The main reason I prefer thunderous kick however is obviously for the secondary effect that makes your mon that much harder to wall. Thunderous kick is nearly as strong as cc when aiming for the 2hko and actualy makes 3hko relevant because your opponent can't heal while losing defence. It even makes 3hkos relevant when using another move for the main damage.

What do you guys think? I see low kick quite a lot and cc ocasionnaly, but to me they are rarely the optimal option and should only be chosen on certain pheromosa sets or if you're really aiming for the ohko or hit and runs.

EDIT: I purposefuly did not include body press in the question because it's pretty obvious it's a completely different move that's used on completely different sets, but y'all can include it in the discussion if you want too. Multi-attack is a great point I didn't consider, however I generally like the fact fighting types are a good knock off switch-in since only 2 mons have a locked item this gen (3 I guess if you count both giratinas as separate mons or include zamazenta-C but no one runs rusted shield).

 

[Champion Leon]

I'm curious to hear opinions on the thunderous kick/low kick/close combat trilemma. Personnally I believe thunderous kick should be chosen nearly all the time. I hate the fact low kick completely misses out on kartana because the user usualy doesn't carry another effective move against it. I also prefer thunderous kick to cc because I dislike cc's loss of defence when using both zamazentas or zacian-C. The main reason I prefer thunderous kick however is obviously for the secondary effect that makes your mon that much harder to wall. Thunderous kick is nearly as strong as cc when aiming for the 2hko and actualy makes 3hko relevant because your opponent can't heal while losing defence. It even makes 3hkos relevant when using another move for the main damage.

What do you guys think? I see low kick quite a lot and cc ocasionnaly, but to me they are rarely the optimal option and should only be chosen on certain pheromosa sets or if you're really aiming for the ohko or hit and runs.

I think the issue just becomes if CC is already a 1HKO, or if the Pokémon in question needs the power more, like Pheromosa. Due to its frailty, KOing makes Offense its only real Defense, so-to-speak, bc it would likely faint if it didn’t KO.

I think one option omitted from your list is also Multi-Attack Fighting Memory, particularly on Zamazenta-C as an Improof option, and bc it doesn’t have the debuffs of Close Combat. This is a unique case, where it would function best on a set like Unaware, where Imposter wouldn’t feel the Defense lost from Thunderous Kick, and would still potentially 2HKO you in the process.

I think a potential other consideration is Storm Throw, which bypasses the odd Defense boosts for Pokémon that use Cotton Guard + Body Press. Storm Throw would either fit on a Sniper set or Technician set (think of Urshifu’s 2 forms which could use either Wicked Blow or Surging Strikes for dual STAB with Storm Throw).

Speaking of Body Press, I could see that included in sets as well, especially if it has a unique ability like Stamina, or just uses Cotton Guard.

I think my points are case specific, but I wouldn’t want to skip them, bc sometimes it’s the ability, bulk, and the secondary typing that determines the best move, for the proper Fighting-type attack.

 

[A Touch Of Crazy]

Quite personally it depends on what pokemon and set you're running to determine which move is the best match for it. All three moves are good in their own right but there is oftentimes one of them that fits a set better than the others.

Low kick is a very good option for some walls or just on stall teams in general, due to its increased pp of 32 compared to 16 allowing you to spam it without having to worry as much about running out of PP in a long battle. Most of the pokemon in the current BH meta are in the 120 base power weight class due to most legendary pokemon being rather large, however there are a decent amount in the 80-100 range and a few lightweights as well. The main benefit to using low kick on a set is to get results when you need them, and being able to output more damage than thunderous kick for the first two turns of use is very nice as a high PP option to get some chip damage in. Of course this is weak to pokemon like Kartana that have an incredibly low weight tier, depending on the set you're running if you are capable of just stalling out Kartana and clicking spectral thief to prevent setup then you wont have too many problems most likely considering an average Kartana set isn't running recovery and functions as a choice/setup sweeper.

Thunderous kick is in a very interesting place due to being a base 90 move with a -1 defense drop on any opponent it hits, this is very good for putting pressure on a pokemon and maintaining some momentum while still being able to play semi-passively. This is very good for some sets and best used in a trapping set in order to drop defenses to where its impossible to outpace with recovery, or in a set with other good offensive moves that it would be able to set up for. An example is, your opponent swaps to Xerneas, it swaps into your thunderous kick and while that does very little on its own it can push Xerneas into or near the OHKO range from anchor shot. This move is best used to apply pressure, set up for another move, or trap an opponent and reduce their defense to where they can be killed despite having recovery. The main weakness of thunderous kick is its comparatively low PP of 16, which is standard for most offensive moves but not high enough like low kick's to enable it to play a large role in a stall team due to it requiring very optimal usage and being unideal for extended interactions. If thunderous kick had the same pp of 32 like low kick then I would easily advocate for it being better overall, as it has consistency and other added benefits/strategies that are very useful to have. However as a sidenote there is another move with similar effect called fire lash, which is a base 80 fire type move that drops defense as well. Fire lash is a much more viable option on any set that does not receive STAB from thunderous kick due to it having 24 pp and fire has pretty good coverage and also hits super effectively to Zacian-Crowned and neutral to Xerneas.

On the topic of fire lash, if you are wanting to run low kick on a Zama-C set but are afraid of being unable to damage Kartana you could also run fire lash on the same set to get some coverage while still retaining the ability to drop defense similar to thunderous kick. This also provides a very large amount of PP are your disposal, with 32 from low kick and 24 from fire lash. I have not tested this set in particular but depending on the overall set I think it could be very useful for some teams.

Close combat always hits with exactly 120 base power, however it drops both of the defense stats of its user after impacting an opponent. This is fine for most sweeper types of pokemon, example Zacian-Crowned, Kartana, or Kyurem-Black, as they need to prioritize a consistent and immediate kill opportunity over pp or an opposing defense drop. I don't particularly see any reason that you should ever run low kick or thunderous kick on a sweeper over close combat, the only exception to this would be on a very bulky offense with stab (lets be real here its just Zama). On the flip side I don't think you should run close combat on a deciated wall of any kind for coverage (or stab if Zama-C), due to its defense drop leaving you very vulnerable and unable to fulfill the pokemon's original goal on the team as a wall.

Additionally you did not mention it in your post but body press is another fighting type move with a similar niche, primarily to Zama-C but also useful on other pokemon with high defense stats comparatively to their normal attack. Body press has the smallest niche of the fighting moves compared to the others, but still fulfills a goal that none of the others can achieve. Being able to deal damage with a defense stat instead of an attack stat is very beneficial when getting hit by strength sap, as the hp restored is diminishing but no longer impacts your damage output. You can of course also run cotton guard to get a defense boost while also increasing your power over twofold, this is not a very good set in my opinion but if used right it can still be decent at times. Overall due to it similarly having 16 pp while being the lowest base power out of the bunch it is reserved solely for niche sets that take full advantage of it, and not something to throw onto a set randomly. Sidenote but I think it is very important to mention that the ability Fur Coat does not increase the damage, as it only takes the base defense stat + stat changes, but still exclusively takes modifiers that normally effect a physical attack, like band and abilities like guts. I am sure many of you already know this but would like to put it out there as I know many people are under this misconception. (eviolite doesn't effect it either if that is ever useful information to you)

As Leon said above there is also fighting type Multi-Attack and storm throw, both are similar to body press in my opinion and have rather limited niches, however they fulfill their own niche a lot better than any of the other moves listed, unlike body press which can struggle to justify usage.

In summary, all of the moves have their respective niche for different sets and none are objectively better or worse than another. Low kick and thunderous kick both target similar niches with the superior move generally being up to personal preference or minor usage differences, leaving close combat to being by far the superior choice for a sweeper due to its reliable and immediate damage output. Body press is... an option I guess and I don't personally find it very effective most of the time on Zama-C but it is still nice to have options if you're looking to run a very specific set. Storm throw and Multi-Attack have their own individual niches for improofs or technician/sniper sets and do their job really well.
I hope this helps people in the future if they are uncertain of which move is the most effective for their set, as most of the time there is either a move that fits the set far better than the others, or comes down solely to personal preference/overall team functionality.

 

[Redchimp]

Team Name: Adaptable Offense
Description: Bulky Offense with two Adaptability wallbreakers supported by Cramorant's paralysis spreading to take down faster threats.
Pokepaste: https://pokepast.es/c4960e46936e8659
How to Use: Groudon is a decent lead that lets you scout your opponent's switch-in and see who their Fur Coat user is. If they lead Imposter, you can switch to Cramorant and tank a hit to paralyze them which helps out massively in the long run. Heavy-Duty Boots on Cramorant allows it to be a somewhat reliable Court Change user although you can't always count on it since this mon takes a lot of hits. Magic Bounce Tapu Fini helps cover hazards as well and also fully improofs Palkia. Mixed Adapt Palkia is super strong and can mess with Zama-C by sapping and using Glare, but you have to watch out for Magic Bounce in order to not cripple yourself. Fur Coat Zama-C makes sure the team isn't overrun by Regigigas and other physical threats like Zacian-C. Anchor Shot and Taunt is an annoying combination that can shut down walls. Prankster Giratina checks setup threats, removes items with Knock Off, and keeps the team from struggling with Imprison + Transform.
Weaknesses: Xerneas, both Pixilate and Poison Heal can be a pain depending on its moveset but is manageable if you don't let it get too much momentum. Tapu Fini can steal PH Xern's boosts but has to watch out for Thunder Cage. Baneful Bunker also throws off Pixilate Xern's Metronome count in a pinch. Pixilate Xern with Strength Sap can break past Zama-C but has to be careful not to have its Sap bounced back from Tapu Fini. Groudon and Palkia also deal massive damage and outspeed Modest Xerneas, but Palkia needs to watch out for Extreme Speed sets. Offensive Eternatus can be annoying to deal with, especially non-Choiced sets that can pressure Tapu Fini more easily, but they must watch out for paralysis from Cramorant. Other things like burns can really hamper this team but Tapu Fini and Giratina are decent Scald sponges. Opposing Cramorant is also annoying but can be worked around with careful playing or just eliminated with Groudon if you don't mind the paralysis.
Effectiveness: So far I've been surprised by the success this team has had, as it has gone 52-4 on the ladder. A small portion of this run used Zekrom in the last slot, but it hardly saw use on the team and was replaced after the Bolt Beak ban. The team can struggle in certain matchups, especially ones with Xerneas, Eternatus, and Cramorant all on the opposing team but has shown to be pretty consistent nonetheless.

Dude. This team is nuts. I suck at BH and have gone 22-5 with this team. Using Cramorant to para Zamazenta, xerneas, and chansey mainly just opens the door so good for Groudon and Palkia to deal big damage. I can mess with my opponett by going in between Zamazenta-C, Giratina, and Tapu Fini in the early game and start spreading status/stopping sweeps. Very good team, nice work

 

[opfish]

Avatar of Wrath (Yveltal) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Wicked Blow
- Acrobatics
- Belly Drum

Just curious, can it even ohko Imposter? But i am quite sure that Imposter can kill you if you can't kill it, you may need a electric type move.

 

[ToiriX]

Just curious, can it even ohko Imposter? But i am quite sure that Imposter can kill you if you can't kill it, you may need a electric type move.

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. +1 252 HP / 252 Def Yveltal: 433-510 (61.5 - 72.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Set with 250 HP for the opposing yveltal.

No, it doesn't OHKO, but (assuming chansey holds eviolite) neither does any other move from the imposter

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Wicked Blow vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Yveltal on a critical hit: 354-417 (77.6 - 91.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Acrobatics (55 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Yveltal: 324-382 (71 - 83.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

That assumes full health though

 

[opfish]

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Acrobatics (110 BP) vs. +1 252 HP / 252 Def Yveltal: 433-510 (61.5 - 72.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Set with 250 HP for the opposing yveltal.

No, it doesn't OHKO, but (assuming chansey holds eviolite) neither does any other move from the imposter

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Wicked Blow vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Yveltal on a critical hit: 354-417 (77.6 - 91.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Acrobatics (55 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Yveltal: 324-382 (71 - 83.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

That assumes full health though

Yveltal only has less than 75% after Belly Drum, so Imposter can kill it. That means the set doesn't work.

 

[XxLazzerpenguinxX]

Hey guys! So, now that BH Open (and finals) are over I can finally get active on the forum once again! So, I’d like to start off by dumping all the teams I’ve used throughout the tour with some discussion and replays behind them as well as a reflection on the tour in general. I’ve always really enjoyed reading previous team dumps after large tours, and I have wanted to do one for myself for a while now so I’m super excited to be writing this.

This was essentially my first ever smogon tour that I was ready to make a push in, and I actually did pretty well, making it all the way to the finals. This tour definitely changed my perspective on teambuilding, and opened my eyes to a new way of thinking about pokemon battling.

So, this tour started for me on January 31st, and went all the way to the first week of March. This story starts on January 24th, when I found out my R1 opponent was going to be In the Hills.

Round 1 vs. In the Hills

When I first found out that my round 1 opponent was going to be In the Hills, I remembered being instantly super scared. I had done some friendly battles with ITH before and I know that he’s a really solid pokemon player. I also knew that he hadn’t played bh8 for while now, so I had the advantage there going into the match. But, what I was also really scared of was him picking an omwc, or stresh team to use against me, since I wasn’t quite sure if he was going to be building his own teams or not. Regardless, I knew I had to make a strong team to get out of the 1st round.
So, the first team I built was the team I used in game 2 of this series. The idea behind this team was that I wanted to build something that was generally really solid against the majority of the metagame, but would also have it’s own unique way to win. This uniqueness came with Zacian-C’s set, which was the first pokemon I added to this team. The idea behind this set was that after one layer of spikes, Zacian woud have a guaranteed 2hko on fc Zamazenta-C if I clicked Precipice Blades → V-Create. Those were the first two moves I gave it. I then decided to add Bolt Beak + Play Rough because it rounded out the coverage on this set really well, and allowed for a pretty easy improof of it with volt absorb Ho-oh. The rest of the team was pretty standard, Regigigas was my spikes setter, and always put in work once Zacian-C was able whittle down my opponents steel pokemon, and Metroxern often cleaned up late game, as well as providing valuable hazards control. Ho-oh, Giratina, and Ferrothorn formed a really strong defensive core, allowing me to both deny and often force my opponent into plays when they were in.

For my second team, I wanted to build a stall team. I chose to make a stall team here, because in general stall is often the most reliable play style, and can really shine if enough prep and time is put into the team. I built this team around a Ho-oh set I had had in mind for a while, which was essentially a mold breaker scarf set, with trick, v-create, spikes, strength sap. This set allows me to possibly score surprise KOs on a lot of steel pokemon, notable Zacian-C who often thought they had a free bolt beak. Scarf trick works wonders on this team, because well built stall teams are inherently really difficult to break down, and get ever more difficult, once one of your mons is crippled. The rest of the team is really standard, with Fini being a middle man to get a lot of my pokemon in safely, and Chansey being there as a scouter. I was a bit wary of a Stresh Palkia team, which is why I brought Fini + AVregen Dialga this round. I decided to name this team ducky stall because he helped me build it.

Come game time, things actually went a lot better than I thought. In the Hills actually brought A LOSR’s sample game 1, and Cityscapes’ sample game 2. I had extensively tested with A LOSR that week in preparation for this match, so I was really well versed on how to play this matchup. I more or less made very few predictions game 1, and made all the obvious plays which I knew would lead me to a win, more or less on mu. The most pivotal turn of the match was probably when I was able to destiny bond the adaptability Yveltal, which I knew to be the only wincon on A LOSR’s team which had a chance of winning.

Game 2, was relatively straightforward as well. Cityscapes’ sample team in general is a team which really struggles when the opponent knows the sets, and relies more on surprise, and unique gameplay to win. I knew this mu really well, and that Zacian-C essentially 6-0ed his team since it was able to come in for free on the fc reshiram. Magearna was also on a timer because I brough magic bounce, and I knew its only way to recover was with Sap. This was a relatively straightforward game, and I was able to move onto round 2.

Reflecting on my R1 match, I was really satisfied with the prep that I had done, and in general I was ecstatic to make it out of R1. Since this was my first tour, basically every match for me was a real heart wrencher, and after every match, a whirl of emotions.

R1 Teams and Replays

Game 1:
https://pokepast.es/e0bc7087d1af6c68 (ducky stall)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1273513968
Game 2:
https://pokepast.es/3912503a4ebf02d9 (metroxern + fc Zama killer Zac BO)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1273522440-u5qms78fo6wn4ofyjloa1w2h6p95yalpw

Round 2 vs. LBDC

Round 2:

When pairings were announced for Round 2 and I saw that I was matched against LBDC, I got really nervous. I’ve heard that he is a really strong OM player, and I was really scared of that one French team with baton pass Zacian-C, since that MU is always a hard one to play. I wasn’t sure how much prep LBDC was going to do, but I was confident that I needed my prep to be strong. For the match, I decided to build an HO team to try and steel G1.
The general gist of my game 1 team revolved around keeping constant pressure on my opponent by always having either Zacian-C or Regieleki in. Reshiram was to break through many of the bulky steels and dragons that the French often bring, and bolt beak is to beta ho-oh 1v1. Kart & Rayquaza were my late game cleaners and Cram was a soft improof to a lot of my mons, and also offered some last minute checks to offensive threats if I slipped up. G1 went as planned and Regieleki & Zac carried me through that MU. The most notable turn here was when I knew that since LBDC wasn’t too caught up with the meta that he probably wasn’t expecting the transistor bolt beak to just KO Regigigas, so I was able to just get a free kill there, and then held my advantage throughout the match.

For game 2 I wanted to bring a mon that he wouldn’t quite expect. For this pokemon, I took inspiration from a dear friend of mine’s, Smeds. This was a download pheromosa with choice specs. The idea here was if I got +1 spa I’d just obliterate a pokemon w/ +1 spa + specs, and if I got +1 att I would just pivot out. I also really wanted to bring this Triage Yveltal which I thought was sick. Long story short thought, I got absolutely owned this match, and the game did not go exactly to plan.

For game 3, I ended up bringing an HO team I built with Ducky. It has a similar theme as my first HO team, but instead it had a lot more set up going for it + prankster as my anti-sweep mon of choice. This game 3 was actually a really interesting match because LBDC brought stresh rain bulky offense. I was familiar with this team and I knew that he would lead either Regigigas or Zygarde to set up rain, so my Kartana was a pretty safe switch in. He ended up leading with Regigigas on my Kartana. I knew that he probably thought I was band steelworker, and he would probably try to scout my move with protect, so I was essentially able to get a free belly drum turn 1. I ended up just picking up like 3 kills with Kartana, including the swift swim palkia which had sweeping potential even though he had Unaware Zama in the back. In all honestly I wasn’t sure why he didn’t bring that out, maybe he thought drain punch would 2hko, or thought I had V-Create, or even didn’t realize his Zama was unaware. Regardless, after the kills Kart picked up, mold breaker Zekrom was able to just sweep with taunt + shift gear and I moved onto Round 3.
Reflecting on round 2, I was overall pretty happy with how the matches went and it was kind of my first taste of tournament win, where you sometimes build a team that’s only supposed to win once, since for this HO after a lot of the sets are revealed my opponent would have a lot easier time dealing with it.

R2 Teams and Replays

Game 1:
https://pokepast.es/a2acd97576c65aa3 (Transistor Regieleki + Zac pressure HO)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1277900803-ycxv60i11oua9tc7vlde7txgao0mmxipw
Game 2:
https://pokepast.es/462347035cbcf4ab (Download Pheromosa balance)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1277907462-8z1yrxw86nf73a6ch75hnvkaivsh1t3pw
Game 3:
https://pokepast.es/c8716587b2f837e6 (Pheal regigigas + triage kart HO)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1277912460-hmaqy5s3j1wlw3gbxway30o8808r2ekpw

Round 3 vs. Quantum Tesseract

Round 3:

Haha, so round 3 was actually a fun one, and probably my most memorable set all tour. Here, I was paired with quantum tesseract. I know qt is a really strong bh player so I definitely had my work cut out for me, but I was also really excited for this mu, because this was the first time this tour, I was playing against somebody who I had experience playing / could prepare against.

Just quickly, some stuff that I knew about qt’s team building style was that he relies on a lot of trapping to imposter proof and often values other move slots over pivoting. His style of play is often slower, going for the long con win, and his pokemon are always well improofed. A lot of his team are often generally more meta, but often have their own lethal twist to them and all have incredibly strong hazards play. At times during battle however, he can sometimes be a bit predictable, and thus cheese sets can sometimes work.

I was talking about this with ducky, and he was like “ya know, this is probably a great opportunity to bring baton pass cheese” and I was like “YOOOOOO”, so we built baton pass cheese. For this match, I was hoping that qt would bring one of his slower teams which is built around really strong hazard play.

So for the wya the match up essentially looked for game 1 was that qt brought a relatively standard team with a lot of the elements I noted above, but he had adaptability Landorus-therian. I led with my dauntless shield type: null and got up a substitute and baton passed it into my normalize skill swap giratina, which I brought in on a Zamazenta-C switch in. Qt swapped out his zamazenta-C and brought in pixi Xerneas on anchor shot. In most cases Xerneas would outspeed and KO me with pixi boomburst. Luckily, the Giratina was +spe specifically to win those speed matchups, so I was able to skill swap normalize onto the Xerneas before it could hit me. I then proceeded to accupressure up and sweep with power trip imprison Obstagoon. I was able to cheese through game 1, but game 2 was a different story.

In game 2, I felt like a ot of my prep really shined through, but I also had a major shortcoming. I wanted to seriously hard counter a lot of qt’s hazard play + high pp trappers, and what better way to do that then leppa berry sticky hold. So, the first mon I slapped onto this team was leppa berry sticky hold eternatus (inspired by onyx onix 7). The next mon I wanted to add was a pokemon that could counter and stop all pheal xern sets from making progress. I spent a really long time searching for that mon, and eventually landed on bounce Cresselia. I gave it shed shell so that it wouldn’t get trapped and would be able to switch out of hazard setters with high pp. The rest of the pokemon were pretty standard with mguard ho-oh added at the last minute. My plan worked out to perfection, qt had no way of making progress against me, and thus I would be able to win because Eternatus had infinite pp. The only problem was, I wasn’t going to be able to stall him fast enough, and totally forgot to have a counter for shed shell Chansey. Despite the fact that I could slowly wear out u-turns every time shed Imposter has to switch to a different pokemon this wouldn’t happen soon enough since there’s a 1000 turn limit on PS. Thus, at around turn 350 we agreed on a draw.In all honesty, I only really prepped for two matches because of school, but now I had two more matches to play, so we took a 30 minute break which was much appreciated (I needed to cool off a little bit & build a team lol).

For game 3, I didn’t end up building a team b/c I was too nervous so I just pulled one that I had, which I really enjoyed using. My game 3 team was inspired by one of the match makings which ITH has been hosting, so I had paired a pheal gigas w/ regen hdb reshiram. For game 3, qt ended up just bringing his game 1 team because not much had been revealed and so the game began. This game was an odd one because early on, I very nearly just insta won with regigigas before qt was able to deal with it. And then unbeknown to me my Pheramosa nearly 6-0ed his whole team. QT, ended up totally outplaying me, and I let him kill my pheromosa after I didn’t calc hjk on zamazenta-C and ended up just losing game 3, thus our 3 match series moved on to game 4.

For game 4, I had chosen to bring a variation of my “ducky stall” team, but I decided to change ho-oh to bounce ho-oh because magic bounce often puts a lot of work against his teams, and I added an imprison trap xern (a certified thermp set) which I thought would be effective against him. Qt chose to bring an electric surge team to game 4, so we battled as such.

Electric surge really caught me by surprise and early on, I thought I was going to get destroyed by his team since I was totally not prepared for it. Early on in the game qt found an opportunity to get his mold breaker Zekrom into the game safely, which had the potential to sweep me on the spot there. I contemplated bringing either Dialga or Registeel in there, to either ward it off with core enforcer, or just destiny bond it. Both seemed appealing, but I decided to keep Dialga healthy because I knew I would need it to wall Xurkitree and potentially Tapu Koko as well. Qt more or less let me just bond on Zekrom, so I was able to prevent one of his potential wincons from sweeping. We danced around a little bit, and then I was in a position where I had to switch Dialga into a Xurkitree rising voltage. That did about 37% to me, which was a ton to AV dialga, but I had the opportunity to get valuable chip on it with a core enforcer. The second turn though, qt crit me bringing my dialga down to just 4 hp. In a panicked state at that point, I hard switched to Giratina, which in hindsight was a passive misplay since it would have gotten 2hkoes by Rising voltage. Here, I ended up just hard switching into Tapu Fini and sacking it because it wasn’t going to be putting in any work since it literally died to all of qt’s breakers, which is what I should have done originally. After that, I had the opportunity to bring Xerneas in on it and click moonblast (I outspeed here because Dialga suppressed Xurkitree’s ability with core). Qt bring Zamazenta-C in on moonblast, and then recovering up on the next turn. Here I trapped Zamazenta-C, and then proceeded to click imprison (stop it from using anchor shot) and then transformed into it. Zamazenta-C at this point just struggled to death.

The next half of the battle went by really quickly. On the final struggle I got the opportunity to bring in Dialga for some free healing. Qt, brought in his Transistor Tapu Koko and here is where I made my second miss-play. I should have sacked Ho-oh at this point and then healed up Giratina, but I hard switched Giratina into Koko. I ended up getting lucky though and survived the bolt beak 2hko (which was a roll in my favor) but it should never have come to that. From that point on qt didn’t really have a way to get back in the game, since with Dialga & Giratina at full, and Xurkitree chipped a little bit he wouldn’t be able to hard commit to any plays and rocks was going to slowly whittle him away. I eventually found an opportunity to bring in Xerneas on Prankster Giratian and proceeded to click Imprison in preparation of transforming into anything qt brings in, but I ended up whittling Giratina down to really low health before transforming into it and preventing it from healing. From here the match was more or less over and I was able to secure the bag. This was probably my favorite match this tour, which is why this discussion was so long.
Well, after a really long set I was able to make it to round 4, where I got paired with Pileosand.

R3 Teams and Replays

Game 1:
https://pokepast.es/b99bc8bc3534c276 (Baton pass cheese)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1282661807
Game 2:
https://pokepast.es/c62bee6a759e8d03 (sticky hold leppa berry stall)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1282663847
Game 3:
https://pokepast.es/2b452a78e68d6cec (specs Ray + regen Resh BO)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1282709335
Game 4:
https://pokepast.es/b69364cf9f0fc2b8 (edited ducky stall, replaced imp with imprison trap Xern)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1282717551

Quarterfinals vs. Pileosand

Round 4:

So, getting into round 4 meant that I had made it into the quarter finals, and that there were only 8 of us left, and everyone here was a really strong player. Getting matched with Pileosand was a bit lucky, because she was one of the few people remaining who hadn’t invested much time into bh8 so I had a big advantage there. However, Pileosand is a really experienced tour player, and a really strong player themselves, so I knew I had to prep correctly to get through this round. For game 1, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to bring, but I was struck by a moment of inspiration when I saw an HO team by Asou & Chihiro which featured Sticky webs Zacian-C. I decided to build my team around that and that resulted in a Cramorant HO team revolving around Eternatutus to blow through holes, and two extremely dangerous wincons, Zekrom and Kyurem-Black that have the potentially to sweep through teams, even if she had fc Zamazenta-C. The day before our match though, I wasn’t quite set on the team, because I saw some holes in it that I didn’t like so I was still pondering over how to change it, but then I saw stresh’s set for this round where he brought a team which featured a Zacian-C + Cramorant baton pass chain. Inspired by that, I decided to tweak my team a little bit to have a similar feature as this, which led me to a HO Zac + Cram baton pass team with sticky webs.

When I saw the matchup for game 1, I was super scared. At first glance I thought Pileosand was bringing a rain offense with imposter Pikachu. That would have been a really difficult matchup for me, because palkia would be able to outspeed me even through sticky webs, and pikachu can overpower my defenses since my improofs revolved around Type: Null and Cramorant. The game started off super chaotic, as I led Zacian turn 1 because even if she was bringing rain palkia, I would still want to outspeed when rain wasn’t present and it would help against Zamazezenta-C. Eventually, I got Eternatus in for free which had sweeping potential, but since Pileosand brought Cramorant, I figured it would be better to just kill Cram there and not have to worry about it. I killed Cram, but was paralyzed in the process. She then brought in Pikachu, and proceeded to kill me with dragon energy. In hindsight, I should have gone Cramorant here, as that would have allowed me to just sweep her entire team with either Zekrom or Kyurem-Black, but I decided to just sack Eternatus there, and then just go Cram and force Pikachu out. I was reaching for a play where she would double to another mon there, because she wouldn’t have wanted her Pikachu to get paralyzed, but the upside to going Cram was just so much higher, than getting that play correctly. For the next 10 or so turns though, Zekrom was able to make a ton of progress against Pileosand’s team, and basically won me the game from there. I got a little lucky with my Pikachu play, but it all worked out in the end.

For game 2, I wasn’t quite sure what to bring, but knowing that Pileosand was inexperienced in gen8bh, I thought stall would be really strong. I didn’t have much time to build a stall team, and didn’t think it would have been a great idea to reuse my “ducky stall” team, so I decided to just grab Onyx Onix 7’s stall team from the samples. Despite it being a sample, Onyx’s stall team is probably the best stall team post-dlc so I was confident it would do well against Pileosand.

In game 2, Pileosand ended up bringing Aurora Veil HO, which would have done really well against my other HO teams I’d have brought, and would have definitely beaten my team I had brought in game 1. Luckily though, this was the match up in game 2, and her team was simply unable to break through Onyx’s team so I was able to pick up the dub there and move onto the semis where I was then paired with A LOSR.

R4 Teams and Replays

Game 1:
https://pokepast.es/5e72359aa54938a5 (Zac + Cram baton pass HO)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1287231887
Game 2:
https://pokepast.es/adeb9a077e55a339 (onyx onix 7 sample stall)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1287233866

Semifinals vs. A LOSR

Round 5:

In all honesty, at this point of the tournament I was really burned out. Building a couple teams for each round, and doing that for 4 weeks straight, while in the midst of school was a lot more tiring than I thought it would be. Regardless, when I was paired against A LOSR for the semifinals I was really excited. I had hoped for this pairing since the start of the tournament, because me and LOSR had been sparring a lot throughout and before this tournament, so I knew it would be a really fun match up since we both knew how we play and were both building some pretty cool teams throughout this tournament.

Before our match even started A LOSR started to play some mind games. He knew that I had scheduled all my prior tour matches on Sundays because I am a busy college student and need time to prep, so he said “he was only available on the weekdays”. This was an obvious lie, but I couldn’t do anything about it so our match was scheduled for Friday.

As planned by A LOSR, he had successfully stopped me from having time to build teams until the day of our match. But, little did he know I had Ivar on my side, who would help me build teams the day of. So, about 3 hours before our match me and Ivar got into a call and got into a deep team building session. I had really wanted to build around specs pixi Xerneas, and band adaptability groudon as part of a voltturn core. With these two pokemon as my offensive core, I started to build around the team. The first thing I wanted to do was improof Xerneas, and for this I decided to go with a more offensive pokemon, and landed on Zacian-C. Zacian-C was perfect for this team because it was also able to get up spikes really effortlessly, which every voltturn team wants so that the opponent can’t just infinitely switch. I then wanted a bounce pokemon to improof Zacian-C, so I chose Giratina and then gave Zacian-C moves to beat a large portion of the magic bounce pokemon, but not break through Giratina. I then slapped on Cramorant for speed control, and a soft groudon improof, and AVregen Dialga, to be able to get momentum with and have a safe switch-in to the majority of the meta. A gimmick of this team that I really liked too was that it has 2 trick choiced pokemon, which gave me the ability to also cripple stall if A LOSR brought it. This team came together in about 10 minutes, since bouncing ideas off of Ivar was really helpful.
Game 1 ended up being a really fast, and action packed game. A LOSR here brought a relatively offensive team, with some unique sets mixed into it. I led the game with Groudon as it had a relatively good matchup against most of his pokemon, and figured if he led Eternatus, I can just hard switch into Zacian-C, which is what ended up happening. After that, I then hard switched into Cramorant, covering for Blue Flare, and A LOSR, hard switched into Reshiram. I tried to then trick the scarf onto Reshiram, but A LOSR hard switched into an AV regigigas, and my cram was more or less useless throughout the match and had become a designated innards out mon. I would then switch Giratina in on Regigigas, and A LOSR pivoted to Urshifu which proceeded to click imprison on my teleport. Here, I was deathly afraid of an imprison trapping Urshifu with wicked blow (even though it turned out not to be) and thus put in Xerneas to be in a position where I can ohko it. A LOSR went into his Zacian-C on boomburst and proceeded to take about 40%. I then stayed in with Xerneas, expecting him to predict me going into Cram, and proceeded to just die to anchor shot. I then swapped in Groudon who ended up dodging a play rough and ohkoed A LOSR’s Zacian-C. This miss turned out to be not too important, but who knows. We then danced around a bit (A LOSR crit two of my pokemon to 1% hp xD) and proceeded to go into an endgame where I had Zacian-C and Dialga, and A LOSR had Urshifu and Eternatus. I was in a position where I would be able to KO Urshifu with Core enforcer, from Dialga, and didn’t have to fear getting imprison trapped. What ended up proceeding was that Urshifu clicked Thunderous Kick on my Dialga, which didn’t have a high chance to kill, and I KOed it with Core Enforcer. I ended up winning this match since Zacian-C & Dialga both countered Eternatus pretty heavily. A LOSR actually told me after the game though, that his Urshiu was imprison + Core enforcer, and he didn’t calc that Thunderous Kick wasn’t going to kill. If he clicked imprison this definitely could have been a different end game, but it would all depend on whether he would be able to final gambit my Zacian-C or Dialga w/ Eternatus. So, I was able to get through game 1, and took a 1-0 lead to game 2.

The team I brought to game 2, was the ducky stall team I brought against In the Hills in round 1. My reasoning behind bringing this team, even though I had played against A LOSR with it multiple times was because the team structure in general was really good against a lot of A LOSR’s builds and previously he hadn’t managed to beat that team. So, I thought it would be a smart move to bring something reliable to this match.

On match up, this seemed like a smart choice, I had a lot of the tools to beat his team, the only thing worrying though was normalize spectrier, but it would turn out I had bigger things to worry about. The game started off really well on my end, I was able to beat his Zekrom early on, without losing a mon, and had the advantage. I was putting up decent pressure against A LOSR and slowly whittling him away, but he had an ace up his sleeve. Adaptability Dialga with substitute. This pokemon proved to be an extremely annoying pokemon to break and to stop from making progress with stall. It ended up being really difficult to play around and I started to get worried that it would chip away at my whole team. Throughout this match, I saw that the only way for me to beat it would be by tricking scarf onto it, so I kept trying to do this with Ho-oh constantly, but every time A LOSR would go into his own scarf blissey and nothing would end up happening for me. Eventually though, A LOSR over thought a little bit, and tried to stay in on me predicting an incoming blissey, and I was able to trick my scarf on Dialga and from then on the match began to be a lot more manageable. Without my scarf, I was free to stack all the hazards that I would want, and I quickly realized that A LOSR had no hazard removal, and with 3 sets of spikes and stealth rocks up it would prove to be too much for A LOSR to handle, as he slowly got chipped away, and I was able to deal with his final wincon, Electrify Lightning Rod Spectrier, with my Mold Breaker Ho-oh and move onto the finals where I would face Stresh.

Looking back at this set I was very happy with my overall play. Throughout each match there were times where I felt really nervous and in a hole and other times where I was comfortable and felt like I was in control. In both matches, we both had opportunities and ways to win, but I felt like I was just able to play an overall better game and outplay A LOSR here, even though he did missplay a couple times. My set against QT may have been my favorite of the tour, but my set against A LOSR I felt like was the best I had played so far.

R5 Teams and Replays

Game 1:
https://pokepast.es/822f00532c8700ca (Adapt Groudon + Specs Xern BO)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1290475885
Game 2:
https://pokepast.es/4a31065b78fe82ca (used in game 1 against In the Hills)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1290483330

Finals vs. Stresh

Round 6:

In all honesty, I was a bit shocked after I beat A LOSR. I did not think I was going to make it to the finals of this tournament since it was literally my first gen8bh tournament. But, here I was I guess and I had a match to prep for now. Unfortunately though, school started amping up this week, and I wasn’t able to start prepping until literally the day of the tournament on Sunday. The first team I ended up building was a tweaked version of a previous gambit HO team I built involving D-max Eternatus and Calyrex-SR. The main tweak I made was adding Cramorant and replacing Calyrex-SR with Necrozma-Dusk-Mane. The idea of this team was more or less simple, gambit a couple types, and look for an opening where either Necrozma or Eternatus will just become an instant wincon and win. Unfortunately though, this was not the case game 1.

The day of this match it would be an understatement if I said I had butterflies. I was near freaking out lol, and good barely focused on anything besides this match. But, I tried my best to steady myself and relax. Going into the match, I had a couple of things in mind which I was afraid of, a team with two fairy types, a team with regigigas, a team with cramorant, and a team with imposter. Stresh’s team had all of those so the match up was not ideal. However, I was playing a gambit spam team, which meant I would have chances.

So, the match ended up starting with me leading eternatus and Stresh leading Xerneas. I remember this turn because I kept clicking and unclicking sludge wave. On one hand I wanted to just go for it, and on the other hand I wanted to start off the game a bit safer, and kind of slowly get the feel of what a finals match would be like. However, I played far too safely. I went to Solgaleo on Xerneas, when I could have just sludge waved it because stresh stayed in, and from literally that one safe play it was extremely difficult to get back into the game. Throughout the match I played way too safe and I didn’t really try to go for any massive plays. I threw Cramorant into the game way too many times, which totally sapped my momentum, and Stresh had a countermeasure to Cramorant, that being jungle healing Zacian-C. However, I was able to slowly crawl my way back into the match with Necrozma as it was able to pick up a kill, but by that point it was already kind of over. I didn’t have a real counter to regigigas besides basically just keeping momentum, but stresh being the amazing player he is didn’t give me that opportunity. I had to dramatically change my play style once solgaleo died because I had no way to stop a Regigigas sweep but then irony struck. On a turn where my Cramorant needed to not get paralyzed and encore Regigigas into dragon dance, it got paralyzed and the game was over as Regigigas proceeded to sweep my whole team. So, we went on to game 2.

I regrettably wasn’t able to find time to build another team against Stresh which I thought was good enough so I decided to just use a team I really enjoyed playing with which was the adaptability groudon + pixelate Xerneas voltturn core I used against A LOSR.

When game 2 started, I was surprised to see that stresh had rolled up with the same team. I remember seeing the line up and thinking that I actually had a relatively solid matchup. Both Xerneas and groudon would be able to put in a lot of work, but the Zacian crowned matchup was really really scary. Sadly enough though, I played just as overly cautious in this match as I had done so in game 1. But, not only that I also failed to find a way in which I was planning on winning.

The game actually began in my favor. I lead with Groudon and was able to get a nice early paralysis on Stresh’s Imposter which would be really helpful to chip it down in the future. The game began on more even turns, with both of us trying to make plays to get into an advantageous position. Within these turns, I allowed stresh to put my dialga to sleep which really hurt, because it made playing around with it a lot more difficult. This was also frustrating because I had magic bounce giratina in the back which essentially for the momentum stopped Regigigas from getting opportunities to make progress. Stresh was also able to find an opportunity to court change back some spikes I had set up which seriously dampened my ability to voltturn with Xerneas and Groudon. Throughout this match, Stresh would put a lot of pressure on my team by not allowing me to make progress and find an opportunity for Xerneas to come in, which was needed to allow Groudon to break through his team. Unfortunately as well, Groudon needed to find a free turn to come so that Xerneas would be able to make progress but I couldn’t find that either. Throughout this match, Stresh would just kind of suffocate me and not really allow me to make any plays and by turn 32 the match was more or less over and stresh was able to win 2-0.

Reflecting on this match, and the series in general there were a lot of things which went wrong for me. One of them was my prep. The style of teams I had in mind to bring were just not fit for this match. I had a rough idea on how Stresh played, and I should have brought more stall-esc teams which I had a lot of success with this tour. My play throughout the match was also poor and Stresh on this day was simply too good for me. Despite my disappointing loss in the finals I was still extremely happy with my overall performance, and can look back at this tournament with joy.

R6 Teams and Replays

Game 1:
https://pokepast.es/f379a5006dc68cd3 (gambit spam + Necrozma / Dmaw Etern HO)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1296591827
Game 2:
https://pokepast.es/e663865e861f2a11 (used in game 1 against A LOSR)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1296602442

So, that concludes my BH Open journey. I’d like to just end this post with a reflection on my run in general.

This tournament in general was very very stressful for me. Before every game my heart would be pounding like crazy and even prepping was a really time intensive and stressful task because of the high expectation that I have for each team I make. To a certain extent this detracted my enjoyment of bh a little bit because I had trouble enjoying what I like so much, which is to just explore new sets and be able to lay back and just play a couple games with friends or on ladder. But also, on the other side this was a really unique opportunity. Rarely do we have the opportunity to be able to build teams to just win 1 game, and rarely do we have the opportunity to build teams specifically preparing against one opponent. Not only that, the plays made during tournament play are way different than in ladder or casual play. When looking at the moves one can make there are so many more factors to look at, not just the 50 / 50s but more so creating complex gameplans and trying to find more unique ways to win. In tournament play your opponent knows all the options you have and you would also know all the options your opponent has and your job is to not only predict what your opponent might do, but to also ensure that they don’t have the opportunity to get their best option, all while trying to find ways to win. This type of battling really intrigues me, because of all the complexities and I really hope that I have more opportunities to play against bh players at the very top with similar gameplay.

Overall, I’m really happy with my performance. I think I showed some of the best pokemon I’ve ever played throughout this tournament, but there's also a ton I have to improve on which is always really exciting. Throughout the tournament I learned a ton about building and playing, and the new complexities which this adds really excites and I look forward to building and playing better, at a higher level. I’d also like to say congrats to Stresh for winning it all, he totally crushed this tournament and imo showed why he’s currently the best bh player by a long shot.

I’d also like to acknowledge some of the people who really helped me out throughout this tournament, not only by testing and team building but also by just being really supportive and keeping my morals up. So thank you to Ivar57 , willdbeast , Aethernum , cityscapes , Ducky, lph , a loser , DarkRisingRay , draegn , HFroste, Palapapop , Dragonillis , Smove_$wag , Smeds, Onyx Onix 7 , and the whole SR discord. This run wouldn’t have been possible without you. :))

P.S. all my teams are still usable except for the bolt beak Regieleki ones (on the Zekrom team just change Bolt Beak to Bolt Strike and it’s fine.)

P.S.S. Bonus Team I never got to use that I would have used in G3 against LOSR & Stresh: https://pokepast.es/680356b98aaf5afc

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Just wanted to share a cool thing I've noticed which I haven't seen on the ladder yet. Download isn't that good of a replacement to intrepid sword because it depends on the opposing mon, but photon geyser and shell side arm can abuse that fact. These 2 moves change from physical to special depending on your own attack stats (photon) or on the damage that phyiscal and special option would deal (SSA). This change considers the boost you've earned from download. When used on mons with good dual attacking properties, you can basicaly create 2 different wallbreakers depending on which mon you switch-in. This strategy is also easier to improof than intrepid sword because you can tweak your mon's own defences to decide what boost imposters will get, guaranteeing you will never face your own mon with either +2 att or +2 sp.a (depening on which defence you keep lower)

Photon geyser clearly has better abusers in mewtwo, both necromza, lunala and solgaleo all having 110+ in both attacking stats. The ability clearing effect of photon also counters fur coat, ice scales or unaware.

The inability to consistently reach max power with choice items and the fact it only works with 2 moves that complement themselves pretty badly creates less power than intrepid sword did, but to be able to always attack the lower defence and ignore defence doubling abilities is worth the tradeoff in many cases. Psychic terrain can also be used to make PH even more powerful.

Make sure you don't forget to check this if it applies to your set

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Just FYI, I don’t think SSA factors in Ice Scales, only Fur Coat bc Ice Scales doesn’t double SpD, it only halves SpA moves, while FC doubles Def.
———————-

Yeah I included SSA in the post for fun, but it should really be used for photon since eternatus' attack stat is shit, galar slowking/bro just aren't fit for a download set and poison in general as an attacking type is meh.

 

[XxLazzerpenguinxX]

Team Name: Honk Honk Stall
Description: Trick Stall
Pokepaste: https://pokepast.es/84d3f6837dc86df8
How to Use: A lot of the gameplay here revolves around scouting and getting a feel for the match up to understand the opponent's team dynamic and how you plan on witling it down with the tools this team has. Throughout this process, you'll find yourself switching in Dialga often and pivoting out to Chansey. Here you'll also want to find a safe opportunity to active the toxic orb on Tapu Fini, so that you can begin clicking Knock Off and Scald. If your opponent has Zacian-C you'll probably want to find an opportunity where you can bait it into staying in during this time and then OHKO it with Ho-oh's V-Create (but only if you weren't able to kill it turn 1, when you lead with Ho-oh and they lead with Zacian-C which is part of the game plan). If your opponent doesn't have Zacian-C you'll want to trick scarf onto an important pokemon so that you can then start setting up spikes for free. From this point forward, the goal of the team is to whittle down the opponent with hazards and status, and to just outlast them with Tapu Fini, Dialga, and Chansey. Registeel should be used sparingly only when you want to pp stall or you have to bring it in to prevent set up.
Weaknesses: If the opponent is familiar with the team, Griseous Orb Giratina can be a pain sometimes as it prevents trick coming off of Ho-oh. It is still possible to set up spikes, but often times things can get a little tricky. The team also struggles to deal with very proactive teams which have really strong hazards play as Dialga and Tapu Fini can be prone to chip damage if the opponent is able to really keep the pressure going. Mold Breaker Kyurem-Black can be really difficult to handle sometimes, forcing the team to rely on Registeel to either destiny bond, or Chansey to come in and tank a hit. Besides these pokemon, there isn't really one notable pokemon which can 6-0 this team, but in a scenario where a specific set has that capability Registeel should be used to try and get a destiny bond off. In the end, the main way this team will often lose will be against strong hazards teams, w/ really proactive play, which doesn't allow for Fini and Dialga to heal up. So, to counter that you should also try and play proactively and really put pressure on your opponent by setting up hazards profusely, and trying to use Chansey to deny them progress as much as possible.
Effectiveness: With this team, and one varient of it I went 3-0 in the BH Open. I also used this team to get requirements during the bolt beak & glacial lance suspect test going 29-1 with it. Two other people were also able to get requirements with this team, with a similar record. I've also won multiple room tours with this team.

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Pheromosa @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Close Combat
- Glacial Lance
- Steel Beam
- Volt Switch/Volt Tackle

This set is pretty straight forward and is designed to thrive in heavy hazard control teams. Life orb and magic guard is probably the best way to abuse of phermosa as a mixed attacker. With it's insane coverage, you're practicaly guaranteed to find ohkos on nearly everything after big hazard damage and thanks to magic guard you don't take hazard damage yourself, giving you an easy win in the long run against teams that only carry court change as hazard control. The fact imposters are not taking advantage of life orb or hazard damage immunity makes it not too hard to improof.

Imo volt switch should be used over volt tackle because you'll be pivoting a lot early game when you can't pull off the ohko or 2hko on the switch yet. You could use u-turn to get the stab, but you'd lose the extra damage on ho-oh and water types which are likely to be what your opponent will try to wall you with.

 

[Champion Leon]

I have been testing Mega Launcher Terrain Pulse on Xerneas, as an alternative to Pixelate, and I have to say I am impressed with the results.

With Misty Surge limiting status, including PHeal on opposing teams, and cutting Dragon moves in half for your defense Dragon-types like Zygarde-C, I have to say I am impressed. Mega Launcher also boosts Aura Sphere for Steel coverage, while Origin Pulse is also boosted for the jump on Ho-Oh, and Groudon / Landorous-T.

I typically use Life Orb for full boost on all moves, and Strength Sap to giggle at 2HKO Physical Offense.
Replay
I will find a better one soon.

Xerneas @ Life Orb
Ability: Mega Launcher
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Terrain Pulse
- Origin Pulse
- Aura Sphere
- Strength Sap

I like Timid to get the jump on Adamant Landorous-T, and to ensure you outspeeds Ho-Oh, and Groudon.

Pheromosa @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Close Combat
- Glacial Lance
- Steel Beam
- Volt Switch/Volt Tackle

This set is pretty straight forward and is designed to thrive in heavy hazard control teams. Life orb and magic guard is probably the best way to abuse of phermosa as a mixed attacker. With it's insane coverage, you're practicaly guaranteed to find ohkos on nearly everything after big hazard damage and thanks to magic guard you don't take hazard damage yourself, giving you an easy win in the long run against teams that only carry court change as hazard control. The fact imposters are not taking advantage of life orb or hazard damage immunity makes it not too hard to improof.

Imo volt switch should be used over volt tackle because you'll be pivoting a lot early game when you can't pull off the ohko or 2hko on the switch yet. You could use u-turn to get the stab, but you'd lose the extra damage on ho-oh and water types which are likely to be what your opponent will try to wall you with.

How about Hi-Jump Kick? More PP, 1/8 boost in power, only a little less accuracy. Most importantly, it allows you to still survive a resisted hit after it lands, while Close Combat reduces your defense so you lose even to say a STAB Ground or Fighting move.

Due to Magic Bounce, this also gets added to the Fighting-type move slot discussion.

 

[cityscapes]

mega launcher terrain pulse is silly cause a) youre reliant on terrain and b) either way its still weaker than pixilate boomburst. yes you do get the boosts on origin pulse/aura sphere but pixilate can also cover hooh and steels extremely easily if it so desires, anything from rend to dstorm to focus blast to vcreate to pblades is workable, even metronome can blitz through them if you have chip or status in the equation.

you can be funny with terrain pulse if you want and run something like electric surge w mega launcher palkia or double terrain shenanigans but its a ton of commitment considering the shenanigans id rather be pulling with my other guys.

misty surge is good in general though from my exp, would recommend

 

[Champion Leon]

mega launcher terrain pulse is silly cause a) youre reliant on terrain and b) either way its still weaker than pixilate boomburst. yes you do get the boosts on origin pulse/aura sphere but pixilate can also cover hooh and steels extremely easily if it so desires, anything from rend to dstorm to focus blast to vcreate to pblades is workable, even metronome can blitz through them if you have chip or status in the equation.

you can be funny with terrain pulse if you want and run something like electric surge w mega launcher palkia or double terrain shenanigans but its a ton of commitment considering the shenanigans id rather be pulling with my other guys.

misty surge is good in general though from my exp, would recommend

Most of your points, we’re already in consideration when creating the team.

For reasons why I like the set:

Why would I prefer Focus Blast with a 30% miss rate? Mega Launcher Aura Sphere matches the power and its effect makes it never miss. Fishous Rend at 170, hits about as hard as Mega Launcher Origin Pulse at 165, but Origin Pulse works without reliance on Speed, meaning if you get paralyzed, hit with Sticky Web, or just face Ho-Oh who had used Rapid Spin, you aren’t losing 1/2 your power by going second.

Typically Steel types have higher or equal Def than SpD, so hitting Aura Sphere against the likes of Dialga, Ferrothorn, etc. will do more damage than say Precipice Blades, especially with their secondary typing / Ability neutralizing Fire / Ground, respectively.

V-Create lowering Speed makes it compromise the effectiveness of Fishous Rend, and it limits what coverage you need to pack to handle the same threats, I.e. Ho-Oh resists Boomburst and V-Create, and can now outspeed you and force you out with its own V-Create due to lower Defenses.

Whereas the current set I have doesn’t lose speed, so it can outspeed with Strength Sap, and use Aura Sphere for Steels without compromising its stats, and handle Ho-Oh with Origin Pulse, all at once.

Metronome is situational, it takes 3 turns of activating Metronome, in a row, to equal 2 turns of Life Orb. 1x, then 1.2x, then 1.4x = 60% over 3 turns vs 1.3x and 1.3x = 60% over 2 turns.

With all SpA’s I don’t risk moves that make contact which can trigger Baneful Bunker, Rocky Helmet, etc. and make it harder for Strength Sap users to heal.

Misty Terrain isn’t just for Mega Launcher, it benefits my team and can hinder theirs, I use it anyway, and tried adding Xerneas with Mega Launcher to see if it could benefit from it; and it works well enough.

 

[opfish]

Most of your points, we’re already in consideration when creating the team.

For reasons why I like the set:

Why would I prefer Focus Blast with a 30% miss rate? Mega Launcher Aura Sphere matches the power and its effect makes it never miss. Fishous Rend at 170, hits about as hard as Mega Launcher Origin Pulse at 165, but Origin Pulse works without reliance on Speed, meaning if you get paralyzed, hit with Sticky Web, or just face Ho-Oh who had used Rapid Spin, you aren’t losing 1/2 your power by going second.

Typically Steel types have higher or equal Def than SpD, so hitting Aura Sphere against the likes of Dialga, Ferrothorn, etc. will do more damage than say Precipice Blades, especially with their secondary typing / Ability neutralizing Fire / Ground, respectively.

V-Create lowering Speed makes it compromise the effectiveness of Fishous Rend, and it limits what coverage you need to pack to handle the same threats, I.e. Ho-Oh resists Boomburst and V-Create, and can now outspeed you and force you out with its own V-Create due to lower Defenses.

Whereas the current set I have doesn’t lose speed, so it can outspeed with Strength Sap, and use Aura Sphere for Steels without compromising its stats, and handle Ho-Oh with Origin Pulse, all at once.

Metronome is situational, it takes 3 turns of activating Metronome, in a row, to equal 2 turns of Life Orb. 1x, then 1.2x, then 1.4x = 60% over 3 turns vs 1.3x and 1.3x = 60% over 2 turns.

With all SpA’s I don’t risk moves that make contact which can trigger Baneful Bunker, Rocky Helmet, etc. and make it harder for Strength Sap users to heal.

Misty Terrain isn’t just for Mega Launcher, it benefits my team and can hinder theirs, I use it anyway, and tried adding Xerneas with Mega Launcher to see if it could benefit from it; and it works well enough.

Metronome Xerneas is much better than Mega Launcher.
Firstly, the Misty Terrain will end in a period of time, but you can spam Boomburst with MetroXern.
Secondly, Pixilate Boomburst is stronger than Terrain Pulse, with Mega Launcher, Terrain Pulse is 150bp, but Boomburst has 168 bp, Life Orb will hurt yourself by 10% of your Max Health, while Metronome won't.
Thirdly, MetroXern can work as Hazards Removal and boost speed with Rapid Spin.
Last but not least, MetroXern has much more PP than Mega Launcher Xern.
I don't see a reason to use Mega Launcher when Pixilate exist.

 

[Champion Leon]

Metronome Xerneas is much better than Mega Launcher.
Firstly, the Misty Terrain will end in a period of time, but you can spam Boomburst with MetroXern.
Secondly, Pixilate Boomburst is stronger than Terrain Pulse, with Mega Launcher, Terrain Pulse is 150bp, but Boomburst has 168 bp, Life Orb will hurt yourself by 10% of your Max Health, while Metronome won't.
Thirdly, MetroXern can work as Hazards Removal and boost speed with Rapid Spin.
Last but not least, MetroXern has much more PP than Mega Launcher Xern.
I don't see a reason to use Mega Launcher when Pixilate exist.

To end this discussion so the thread doesn’t get sidetracked:

1. Mega Launcher boosts 3 moves, so the moves selected for Pixelate naturally differ. The only comparison would be against Pixelate with Boomburst, Focus Blast and Fishous Rend, in which Mega Launcher is obviously better for the accuracy, power consistency, non-contact move, non-Strength Sap lure, etc. (outlined in my prior post).

*Boomburst is about 12% stronger, which is a mild difference, and mitigated by Life Orb.

2. Life Orb does hurt it by 10%, which is why I opt for Strength Sap. The benefit of Life Orb is being able to switch moves, as needed, and boost your super effective coverage move, such as when Ho-Oh switches into the Fairy-STAB, where you can threaten it with the boosted Origin Pulse.

Life Orb suits the set more, due to not staying in, but I could see someone make the case for something else like Pixie Plate or Expert Belt.

3. The reason to use it, is if you already have Misty Terrain, need a Fairy that gets a consistent boost to handle its typical counters. I would see Pixelate more for taking advantage of Extreme Speed, Rapid Spin, and/or Fake-Out and some recovery or coverage move, while this set is very move specific.

I think for the thread, let’s allow this post to be the final one on this topic. I doubt the rest of the thread is interested beyond this point.

 

[Lunatic Hai]

[Day 85 of shilling for Metrosexual]

Been a bit since I've checked in, but only fitting that that return coincides with the praise of based drip deer.

Metronome Xerneas is much better than Mega Launcher.
Firstly, the Misty Terrain will end in a period of time, but you can spam Boomburst with MetroXern.
Secondly, Pixilate Boomburst is stronger than Terrain Pulse, with Mega Launcher, Terrain Pulse is 150bp, but Boomburst has 168 bp, Life Orb will hurt yourself by 10% of your Max Health, while Metronome won't.
Thirdly, MetroXern can work as Hazards Removal and boost speed with Rapid Spin.
Last but not least, MetroXern has much more PP than Mega Launcher Xern.
I don't see a reason to use Mega Launcher when Pixilate exist.

Not to mention the fact that Metrosexual also functions as a pseudo setup mon with metronome boosting it up on consecutive moves. There's also an interaction sevag found where you could more or less recover stall a good number of walls that can't heavily threaten you coughZamacough with rapid spin dealing respectable chunks of damage.

Metronome is situational, it takes 3 turns of activating Metronome, in a row, to equal 2 turns of Life Orb. 1x, then 1.2x, then 1.4x = 60% over 3 turns vs 1.3x and 1.3x = 60% over 2 turns.

This is a flawed calculation. For one thing, you're forgetting that these items don't exist in a vacuum and are being used on different sets with different moves and abilities. Yes, life orb is generally better than metronome, hence it largely being used more, but that doesn't really matter in this comparison since we're taking into account the totality of the two sets. Even if metronome's power isn't as immediately high as life orb, running pix boomburst at 182 BP is more powerful than mega launcher misty terrain pulse at only 150 BP (about 21% stronger), thus offsetting a good bit of that advantage.

Additionally, this calc isn't even done properly even from a standpoint of supporting your argument. Three turns of metronome results in doing 360% of the turn 1, unassisted move. Cool. Life orb in 2 turns does 260%, but that's dumb, and the point of comparing the two is finding when metronome actually overtakes life orb. It doesn't do that in 3 turns, either, considering 3 turns of life orb is 390%. It actually takes 4 turns for the two to be dead even, since turn 4 metronome will do 1.6x, resulting in 520% of turn 1 unassisted damage, with life orb turn 4 also leading to a sum of 520% of that baseline number. This, of course, is disregarding the fact that pix bb > launcher misty pulse, because I can't be bothered to go that far into this damned calc tree. Is seizing on that little thing a matter of technicalities and semantics? Sure, but it's still just something that's blatantly wrong on your part. I'm trying to be fair to you to a degree and went through this dumb calc spiel that's a partial concession.

Why would I prefer Focus Blast with a 30% miss rate? Mega Launcher Aura Sphere matches the power and its effect makes it never miss. Fishous Rend at 170, hits about as hard as Mega Launcher Origin Pulse at 165, but Origin Pulse works without reliance on Speed, meaning if you get paralyzed, hit with Sticky Web, or just face Ho-Oh who had used Rapid Spin, you aren’t losing 1/2 your power by going second.

Typically Steel types have higher or equal Def than SpD, so hitting Aura Sphere against the likes of Dialga, Ferrothorn, etc. will do more damage than say Precipice Blades, especially with their secondary typing / Ability neutralizing Fire / Ground, respectively.

V-Create lowering Speed makes it compromise the effectiveness of Fishous Rend, and it limits what coverage you need to pack to handle the same threats, I.e. Ho-Oh resists Boomburst and V-Create, and can now outspeed you and force you out with its own V-Create due to lower Defenses.

Whereas the current set I have doesn’t lose speed, so it can outspeed with Strength Sap, and use Aura Sphere for Steels without compromising its stats, and handle Ho-Oh with Origin Pulse, all at once.

With all SpA’s I don’t risk moves that make contact which can trigger Baneful Bunker, Rocky Helmet, etc. and make it harder for Strength Sap users to heal.

Alright, let's take the rest of these point by point.
1: Focus Miss bad, SL meming. Besides, it doesn't matter too much to have fighting coverage vs dialga, since it gets spanked neutrally by pix bb, will find it harder to tank another metronome-boosted boomburst, and will find it even harder still to switch onto a metroxern that's already even partially ramped up. You can use magma storm to slap other steels anyway. Sure, it's got nasty accuracy, but it's definitely better than Focus Blast, and while aura launcher sphere can do some chunks, magma storm also has the added effect of trapping, and 1v1s where metrosexual can survive and spam hits is one of the spots it shines brightest in.
2: Precimiss Blades bad (for metrosexual)
3: V-Create kinda wack for metrosexual too, considering one of its selling points is spamming a move for ramp up. It's also either disingenuous or straight up blind on your part to assume that VC is being run in tandem to Rend. It's an alternate move and thus the imaginary interaction with it nerfing rend via speed drops would never play out; disregarding variants like espeed, the usual Metrosexual moveset consists of BB / Filler / Strength Sap / Rapid Spin. In case it wasn't obvious, though, SL's kind of being flippant with these moves; his point was that any of a wide variety of moves can accomplish the same goal even if it isn't optimal. And there's plenty of actually strong options that do deal with Ho-Oh and steels rather well. This all being done on a set that's just overall better, too.
4: Your current set doesn't lose speed because it can't be para'd, but you can just as easily run misty support for metrosexual as well, considering how much it hates being paralyzed? Not to mention drip deer also has rapid spin to get it ahead of faster mons and sap them before they can just ohko it (showdown calc is messy for me rn but I'm pretty sure Zam just ohkos if you can't get sap off first)
5: You can use all special moves on metrosexual too, though? Thunder cage comes to mind as a special move with coverage, utility, and spammability. In fact, that exact move is a large reason for ho-oh not really being the most reliable counter to Xern anymore, and was even mentioned earlier in this very thread iirc. Cage is only one such option, though, and there's several others, such as scald/plume to spread burns, magma storm, etc.

I have to say that the issue here is more or less a lack of meaningful utility. Misty Terrain itself provides some nice utility in terms of status avoidance and allowing fat dragons to actually stomach strong dragon hits, but Mega Launcher Xern itself doesn't do much outside of damage some stuff and stay alive. Sure, that's a lot of offensive mons, but the difference between this Xern and other offensive threats is that it doesn't actually do the damage + living part well enough to actually be worth the team slot, and other mons bring more to the table. There's basically 0 BH sets that actually run life orb without sheer force or magic guard, and a set that's meant to stay alive to deal damage while also taking recoil just seems inferior to sets that commit to one or the other, considering how contradictory the two are. In fact, the only mon I can think of that runs recoil + recovery is Talonflame (there may be others throughout the history of pokemon but I don't remember off the top of my head)

Metrosexual has hazard control, pseudo speed control (who needs to trade power for speed with timid when you can just be modest at +1 speed and have both?), and a filler slot that has an ungodly amount of flexibility. PH Xern isn't quite as strong now, but even that brings more to a team in that it packs setup, a similar utility/coverage slot to metrosexual, better survivability than both other Xern sets since it has PH along with sap, and can sponge both koff and status without any outside support (disregarding the always-annoying koff + purify combo, that is).

Point is, even with Xern sets specifically, you often want to have an attacker that's going to do more than just click damage moves and stay alive; without ungodly levels of power off the bat or setup potential, you need some kind of utility. Unless you're Pdon, Mray, Intrepid Band DGZ, or any other similarly nutty nuke, you're going to want a mon that contributes to the team in more ways than just that. Even Zac-C, with its solid defensive stats and typing, great ability, huge attack stat, etc. is largely used as more than just "click funny button they die," with sets ranging from a fast pivot to a satanic imprison trapper to a combination wallbreaker + hazard setter. Even if this Xern can outdamage metrosexual in a good number of scenarios, I'd rather have the latter thanks to its utility and flexibility. Again, you can just run misty support for metrosexual too lmao

Tldr you're making a lot of flawed arguments to argue in favor of an inferior set while also going "idk I like it and it works alright."


Ngl I kinda wanna build with metrosexual + misty terrain now tho-


Edit: damn we really typed this shit at the same time but y'know what I'm too lazy to edit out the stuff you already addressed

Double edit: Literally no metro xern set is gonna run bb / rend / focus miss, what is that ungodly monstrosity

 

[Sweet Jesus]

Cramorant-Gorging @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Gulp Missile
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Nature's Madness
- Flip Turn
- Taunt
- Recover

Cramorant-Gorging @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Gulp Missile
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Spectral Thief/Fishious Rend
- Taunt
- Parting Shot
- Recover


These 2 cramorant sets are just examples of sets that revolve around what I believe is the best move to use on cramorant: taunt. Since cramorant is such a pain to attack with moves that don't ohko, your opponent is likely to want to set up, set up hazards, recover low hp mons, use aromatherapy, use defog/court change or pivot with teleport/parting shot/baton pass. Taunt blocks all of those and forces your opponent to attack cramorant and take on all the effects he's trying to avoid. This is likely to force a lot of switches and works great with hazards. You still will need to deal with poison healers and magic bouncers which are cramorant's ultimate weaknesses.

The first set aims to use nature's madness to cut your opponent's hp by half, preferably before he attacks cramorant with a contact move (like rapid spin) and either dies or ends up in flip turn killing range. This set really struggles with poison healers however.

I prefer the second set which is more defensive and can use parting shot to stop slower magic bouncers from getting a free recover by forcing them to switch. This obviously works much better once hazards are on the field, otherwise your opponent can just pp stall parting shot by switching in his bouncer over and over (and heal with leftovers).

 

[dragonlordxxslayer]

Glacial Lance handles Prankster Zygarde-C, and covers Dragons like Eternatus.

Drain Punch should be replaced with Glacial Lance.

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Glacial Lance vs. +1 0 HP / 252 Def Dynamax Yveltal: 706-832 (89.8 - 105.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO (Chansey)

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Glacial Lance vs. 0 HP / 252 Def Dynamax Yveltal: 1058-1246 (134.6 - 158.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO (Blissey)


notes: * this only OHKO's if Yveltal has 21 defense Ivs and a -def nature
* this is done so you can OHKO imposter Chansey at 100% HP
* against Dynamax Yveltal so I can get Chansey levels of health


also has anybody thought of using flinch spam with multi-strike moves?

along the lines of something like this

Regieleki @ King's Rock
Ability: Skill Link
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Blast
- Arm Thrust
- Icicle Spear
- Scale Shot

 

[Champion Leon]

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Glacial Lance vs. +1 0 HP / 252 Def Dynamax Yveltal: 706-832 (89.8 - 105.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO (Chansey)

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Glacial Lance vs. 0 HP / 252 Def Dynamax Yveltal: 1058-1246 (134.6 - 158.5%) -- guaranteed OHKO (Blissey)


notes: * this only OHKO's if Yveltal has 21 defense Ivs and a -def nature
* this is done so you can OHKO imposter Chansey at 100% HP
* against Dynamax Yveltal so I can get Chansey levels of health


also has anybody thought of using flinch spam with multi-strike moves?

along the lines of something like this

Regieleki @ King's Rock
Ability: Skill Link
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Blast
- Arm Thrust
- Icicle Spear
- Scale Shot

The issue is shouldn’t you use 0 Defense EVs, IVs in your Calc (and the - Defense nature)

HP isn’t copied by Imposter, so Chansey’s IVs are unchanged by your Yveltal HP adjustment?

In either case, it looks like it will KO at 248 HP, and max Def EVs / IVs, just use a - Def nature.

Dynamax has been banned for a while, so it’s a not issue.

+6 252+ Atk Yveltal Glacial Lance vs. 248 HP / 252- Def Eviolite Chansey: 758-892 (107.8 - 126.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO

I made it Flying-type and matched the 95 Def base stat

 

[Lunatic Hai]

also has anybody thought of using flinch spam with multi-strike moves?

along the lines of something like this

Regieleki @ King's Rock
Ability: Skill Link
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Blast
- Arm Thrust
- Icicle Spear
- Scale Shot

This existed since past gens, and isn't particularly good. RNG is hell and it's pretty much always better to just run a set that's actually strong. It's low ladder cheese that can be funny to troll with, but not much else.

 

[Lunatic Hai]

I didn’t forget that they were used in different sets, if anything I had addressed we would see Pixelate for Boomburst as well as other moves it boosts like Extreme Speed, Rapid Spin, etc. and made it clear in my post that they would have a different function. Maybe scrolling up and re-reading the message before yours, in reply to opfish would be of help...

182 Base power is wrong for Boomburst, opfish already stated it is 168, and since it doesn’t get a boost the first turn, you are comparing Pixelate Boomburst at 168 base power vs 165 base power Mega Launcher Life Orb Terrain Pulse, so really just 3 base power.

*Basic math. Let’s not go into semantics if you cannot apply the semantics accurately...

Your whole argument assumes you have the opportunity to spam Boomburst repeatedly without having to use other moves like a Recovery move. It also has the limit on not being able to just come in turn 1 and deal boosted damage, which Life Orb offers its coverage moves.

Even adding 20% to 168, assuming you meant to use that number, is actually 186 base power, and if that were the case, you would still need to factor in Life Orb if you include the item.

Wouldn’t it be better to just use a super effective Aura Sphere to deal with Steels than a resisted STAB move? With Life Orb and Mega Launcher, Aura Sphere is 156 base power, and is 312 when Super Effective. Boomburst even if nuetral, like vs Zamazenta-C, is 252, and even with the 20% boost of using it twice in a row leaves it at 302 power.

If 18 base power in your miscalculation was enough to warrant a point, then 10 isn’t far off for it being a point here too, especially since Life Orb triggers both turns so 312 x 2 = 624, allowing the gap to grow to even more points... since in the same set of turns Boomburst would only deal 252 + 302 = 554, about 11.2% less.

By the third turn Aura Sphere is still ahead:

252 + 302 + 352.8 = 906
312 x 3 = 936

You are also ignoring turns it would take to use other moves like a Recovery move, which resets the damage after you get worn down, as you cannot necessarily spam Boomburst without interruption from Anchor Shots, Sunsteel Strikes, etc.

Look, you had some idea of what to say, but you got cocky along the way and made simple moot points that don’t help your case, actually... I know you wanted to come off high and mighty, but get it right if that’s the case...

1. I will apply the same base power argument for Dialga since it is also neutral to Fairy but weak to Aura Sphere.

Trapping is great, but Magma Storm has accuracy issues as well and requires you to not face Shed Shell users / Ghosts, and is bypasses with Pivoting.

If you need to hit with Magma Storm, then Boomburst twice afterwards to get the boost benefit, you may as well just use Aura Sphere, honestly, especially since partial Trapping moves can wear off. Moreover, what is Dialga doing while you are using those moves?

Doom Desire alone would KO by the end of that 2nd Boomburst. Who is threatening who here?

252 SpA Life Orb Mega Launcher Xerneas Aura Sphere vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Dialga: 247-291 (61.1 - 72%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252 SpA Life Orb Mega Launcher Xerneas Aura Sphere vs. +1 252 HP / 252+ SpD Dialga: 164-195 (40.5 - 48.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

So even if Dialga used Quiver Dance, after Xerneas used Aura Sphere, it would still be enough to KO. With minimal Atk, due to lacking Extreme Speed / Rapid Spin, etc. a Strength Sap from Dialga wouldn’t heal much either.

2. Seems just acknowledging the truth that Precipice Blades shouldn’t have been brought up.

3. I only mentioned what they brought up. I don’t think I ever indicated Fishous Rend and V-Create belong on the same set, if anything I indicated that because of V-Create, it would basically invalidate any use of Fishous Rend, as part of the “if you aren’t faster” argument that Mega Launcher Origin Pulse is more consistent to the extent this helps justify Mega Launcher.

Instead of arguing that, you blindly assume without understanding my very direct and clear point, that one hindering the other shows how limited they both are for coverage on an Xerneas Pixelate set.

I also think it is bad, overall, for anyone to suggest Xerneas could use V-Create on a Metronome set in the first place... but that was all beside the point.

I know the typical set is Strength Sap, Boomburst, and Rapid Spin to remove hazards in the face of Ghosts, with the last move being a coverage move, therefore I knew there isn’t room for both V-Create in the first place.

I think the point you missed, is how Xerneas on my set isn’t meant to support your team, it is using 3 Attacks, and no Utility move, when being compared to Rapid Spin Xerneas. And my point was how it would only be fair to compare similar movesets, to make the sets realistically comparable — based on their counterpoints...

When are you going to list an alternative moveset that accomplished what my set does, and prove it is better? If you cannot do all of what my set is designed to do, then you are comparing what you like, more than the same goal focus... afterall, I could have another teammate that does what your specific Pixelate Xerneas does. Do I need to compare all Xerneas sets to eachother, especially when they function separately? For example, bringing up PHeal?

Also, my point on Paralysis is based on the small likelihood they get the chance to use it. Afterall, Misty Surge works well, but in 100 matches, you cannot expect it to always be there, so the paralysis from, say a Cramorant, could come after they break your Misty Surge user, and you have to face the rest of their team.

4. My set wasn’t about my team, it was in regards to most Pixelate teams, as most people never use Misty Surge, especially if they have non-Flying Poison Heal teammates.

5. Using a non-2HKO move versus Ho-Oh could either mean they V-Create you, on Magic Guard, etc. sets, or they heal up / pivot. The lure of Xerneas is for Ho-Oh to get hit with Origin Pulse and either finish it off or force it out so it cannot wall what it would typically expect from the typical Xerneas Pixelate sets. Origin Pulse also provides nice coverage for stuff like Groudon, as a nice bonus.

Whoops. Did have a bit of a brain fart there, went with the old 1.3x for ate moves when it's 1.2x nowadays. My b :pensive:
I'll concede the majority of point 1, as far as raw damage and a specific matchup.

2: No duh that Precimiss shouldn't be brought up. The entire point is that SL was just tossing out random coverage moves that would still hit checks/counters hard, so seizing on that isn't really ideal.

Onto 3:

I only mentioned what they brought up. I don’t think I ever indicated Fishous Rend and V-Create belong on the same set, if anything I indicated that because of V-Create, it would basically invalidate any use of Fishous Rend, as part of the “if you aren’t faster” argument that Mega Launcher Origin Pulse is more consistent to the extent this helps justify Mega Launcher.

Instead of arguing that, you blindly assume without understanding my very direct and clear point, that one hindering the other shows how limited they both are for coverage on an Xerneas Pixelate set.

V-Create lowering Speed makes it compromise the effectiveness of Fishous Rend, and it limits what coverage you need to pack to handle the same threats, I.e. Ho-Oh resists Boomburst and V-Create, and can now outspeed you and force you out with its own V-Create due to lower Defenses.

SL never mentioned VC and Rend being run in tandem, he was listing them as moves that would compete for the same slot. You're criticizing VC + Rend when literally nobody is going to run that on that Xern set; the idea that one hinders the other doesn't play out in the slightest when you're not even using them together. Miss me with that nonsense. There is no reason to bring this point up if you're actually working with the assumption that they'd never be on the same set anyway.

4: My point here was in response to this
"Misty Terrain isn’t just for Mega Launcher, it benefits my team and can hinder theirs, I use it anyway, and tried adding Xerneas with Mega Launcher to see if it could benefit from it; and it works well enough."
Even if most teams with pix xern (most teams in general, really) don't touch Misty Terrain, the point I was making is that you can just as easily replace that Xern set with Metrosexual on a team with mist support and generally perform better.

5. Using a non-2HKO move versus Ho-Oh could either mean they V-Create you, on Magic Guard, etc. sets, or they heal up / pivot. The lure of Xerneas is for Ho-Oh to get hit with Origin Pulse and either finish it off or force it out so it cannot wall what it would typically expect from the typical Xerneas Pixelate sets. Origin Pulse also provides nice coverage for stuff like Groudon, as a nice bonus.

Rend... cleanly 2hkos though, and ohkos with only a little bit of chip. Xern also outspeeds Ho-Oh and easily saps it.
252 Atk Life Orb Ho-Oh V-create vs. 252 HP / 252- Def Xerneas: 347-409 (76 - 89.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Even if Magic Guard Ho-Oh is fast enough to outspeed, it isn't going to ohko xern without some solid chip. And given how often spin gets used, even +speed Ho-Oh is going to often get outsped by +SpAtk Xern. Not to mention the fact that Mild + Rend is actually a very strong option for Xern, considering how rend does pretty sizable chunks against most things that resist BB. You're outspeeding and cleanly 2HKOing both Don and Ho-Oh in most cases, and even if the latter outspeeds, it's not killing you.

I think the point you missed, is how Xerneas on my set isn’t meant to support your team, it is using 3 Attacks, and no Utility move, when being compared to Rapid Spin Xerneas. And my point was how it would only be fair to compare similar movesets, to make the sets realistically comparable — based on their counterpoints...

When are you going to list an alternative moveset that accomplished what my set does, and prove it is better? If you cannot do all of what my set is designed to do, then you are comparing what you like, more than the same goal focus... afterall, I could have another teammate that does what your specific Pixelate Xerneas does. Do I need to compare all Xerneas sets to eachother, especially when they function separately? For example, bringing up PHeal?

Again, if an offensive mon isn't going to just blast everything to the shadow realm right off the bat in most cases the way that some of BH's past nutty monstrosities did, just giving it attacks and sap isn't going to do much. The comparison between the two isn't really apples to oranges, it's more so apples to different flavored apples. Not to mention that the whole reason Metrosexual is a great set is because there really isn't any other mon that does everything it does in one slot, so no, you actually can't have a teammate that does what it does all at once, barring some purely inferior set that just copies it onto a different mon; if there was one that could do all of that to a similar degree, Metro Xern wouldn't get used nearly as much. The point of the comparison is opportunity cost; not only are you sacrificing a team slot to use this set, and one of the offensive slots you've reserved on your team at that, you're also sacrificing the ability to run an alternate Xern set. A non setup, non-nuke offensive mon that also provides 0 utility on its own while actively damaging itself is just inferior to mons that have several of these qualities baked into them. Hell, even based ICBM level Pdon often had utility in the form of trapping, hazards, etc. All this set is designed to do is hit things and not die, and there's plenty of other things that bring more to the table than that. Just because they don't do the exact same thing doesn't mean they're not better by virtue of being more generally useful in a wider variety of circumstances.

Look, you had some idea of what to say, but you got cocky along the way and made simple moot points that don’t help your case, actually... I know you wanted to come off high and mighty, but get it right if that’s the case...

While I admit that I didn't exactly make a perfect post, making a point and then calling a direct argument against that moot is more arrogant. Nice job attributing motive, though; I'm the last person to think of myself as high and mighty. I just enjoy BH, and definitely not someone extremely skilled like SL or [Banned User #42]. I didn't make my post in some attempt to grandstand and epically pwn OM! with FACTS and LOGIC. It's legit just a criticism of the set and of the responses to other criticisms. If you're just going to assume that someone's acting in bad faith when they're trying to make an earnest counterargument and insult them, then there's no point to this.

Edit: Stresh is an absolute madlad and ran VC + Rend, we've been bamboozled