ORAS NU bring leppa berries (peaked #1)

[Luck O' the Irish]

Hello Smogon,

My name is Luck O' the Irish and I'm here with a team that some of you in the NU community might recognize, and it's a team that has had success in multiple tours and peaked number 1 on the ladder, demonstrating its effectiveness.

Nah just kidding this team was a meme team I made a few months ago based around pp stall. I've always been curious if it's legitimately possible to completely stall someone out of pp and while it's both gimmicky as hell and frustrating to play against it's been surprisingly effective, peaking 1514 on the ladder. 1514 might be nothing to some people, but it's solid given that the team looks like something you'd see people use when you started laddering on a fresh alt.

teambuilding process

The main idea behind building this team was basically throw on a bunch of pressure mons and then mons that support them.

So here are the pressure mons I decided to use. None of them are amazing in the tier but they all have pressure which would allow me to feasibly carry out the goal. They weren't necessarily picked due to their synergy with each other but together they pack enough resistances and bulk to be able to wall a reasonable portion of the tier. Articuno is the only one of these that's not generally considered a shitmon in this tier, but don't sleep on any of these guys- put in the right position, they can clean entire teams.

Trapinch came next since it's both a cute meme and an answer to a pretty big threat to this team in skuntank. Physical skunk is obviously really annoying for teams that want to spam non attacking moves and its ability to pursuit dusclops and poison things with poison jab means I really want it gone. trapinch also traps grounded poisons which are annoying as they can absorb t spikes.

Roselia was added as special water types (mainly ludicolo) and lilligant looked pretty annoying, and I had no way to prevent t spikes. Rosella also provides the team with its own which allows the team to speed up the stalling process and deal with certain threats that would otherwise own the team.

Ditto was the final mon I added since it dealt with the biggest threat to protect spamming- people setting up on me. Ditto is also useful for scouting sets and setting up rocks if you really want to be a try hard with this team. It's also nice as it can be used defensively- ditto can switch into stuff like aggron and lanturn. Stuff that resists its own stabs basically.

Articuno @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 136 Def / 68 SpD / 56 Spe
Calm Nature
- Substitute
- Roost
- Protect
- Freeze-Dry​

The first pressure mon, Articuno distinguishes itself from the other two by having a reasonable amount of speed, which allows it to set up on more things. The speed allows it to outrun 252 neutral nature base 60's such as abomasnow, and bulk it split just so it's generally bulky on both sides. Sub + protect and roost allows it to just stall people for a reasonable amount of time and waste people's pp, which is the main goal of this team, and it works well with tspikes. Freeze dry is the attack of choice to hit lanturn for more damage since it can act as a cleric. This is by no means a good set but it does enough for the scope of the team.

Dusclops @ Eviolite
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpA
Bold Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Calm Mind
- Rest
- Shadow Ball​

This set, on the other hand, is actually pretty solid. Dusclops is normally branded as a passive shitmon but thanks to its bulk and ability to boost with calm mind it's actually a threat to a lot of teams. Dusclops is also useful for acting as a spinblocker to this team. Mono ghost coverage means it gets walled by a lot of things but between wisp, titanic physical bulk, and calm mind there aren't a lot of things that actually threaten it. Knock off is obviously a problem but wisp helps cripple most common users of it.

To give you an idea of how hard to deal with dusclops can be, if pyroar switches in predicting will-o and you calm mind, you actually win 1v1 no matter what unless it crits or carries taunt. Even specs fire blast won't do enough to 2HKO at +1 and if it carries life orb it will die to recoil eventually. Even if it carries another item it will run out of fire blast pp fast thanks to pressure and be completely unable to touch you from there. With rest dusclops beats every passive mon and even walls tauros, which is the most threatening mon in the tier atm. If you use this team, putting dusclops in a position to win should be the goal for most games.

Wailord @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Def / 248 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
- Aqua Ring
- Scald
- Substitute
- Protect​

The god himself, Wailord is the third and final pressure abuser of the team. This is a set I think i first saw rozes use in a room tour and it's really funny when it works. Splitting ev's between defense and sp def is more effective since wailord has 5000 hp already. Getting set up opportunities can be a bit difficult but when you do, wailord is really difficult to break- with aqua ring, you can just spam sub and protect and not lose any hp. Scald is the attack move of choice for stab and its ability to burn.

Wailord is useful since it provides a fire resist and it can reliably 1v1 slower wincons such as crodino and every calm mind musharna variant thanks to pressure as eventually they will run out of attack moves or recovery. It's also this teams best bet against chickenpass- you can generally set up a sub on combusken since it's risky to go for wisp turn 1 and risk taking a ton of damage from scald. When they pass to xatu, as long as you don't consistently protect on calm minds and attack on stored powers you have a pretty good shot at stalling it out of stored power and/or roost. Scald burning is your friend here.
Wailord obviously isn't great by any means but every now and then it pretty much singlehandedly wins games and its awesome :)

Trapinch @ Eviolite
Ability: Arena Trap
EVs: 248 HP / 48 Atk / 212 Def
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
​

Trapinch doesn't do a lot for this team, but what it does do it pretty important. This set is meant to remove grounded poisons, such as garbodor and especially skuntank, which ruin the basic strategy of this team by taunting everything and absorbing toxic spikes. The attack ev's allow it to OHKO 0/0 skuntank and the rest goes into physical bulk so it can switch into things. Running special defense > defense can also be worth it if you're concerned about dark pulse flinches from special skuntank or you want to use this to trap lanturn. It can also do nice stuff like get off some chip damage on steelix and hariyama (it lives non banded cc) and stall heal bellers such as wish audino and miltank so they can be taken down more easily.

There are a lot of games where trapinch doesn't actually do anything at all but death fodder is never a bad thing. Trapinch is cute :)

Roselia @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
- Toxic Spikes
- Synthesis
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb​

Roselia is the t-spiker for this team, which is often important because many threats aren't sufficiently dealt with by simply spamming sub-protect. Whenever you see a team that doesn't have hazard control you should probably be leading with this unless you really want the thrill of causing the other man to struggle. This is the standard set but with tspikes > spikes, allowing you to take as many special hits as possible while getting up spikes.

Getting t-spikes up can be huge throughout the course of the game and it can make things like magmortar and tauros significantly easier to deal with. The goal should be to remove anything stopping you from poisoning their entire team with trapinch (which may involve toxicing the mantine and foddering trapinch it later in the match) and then getting roselia in and putting spikes up. Roselia is also important in getting rid of opposing tspikes, which cripple wailord.

Ditto @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Imposter
EVs: 252 HP
- Transform
-
-
-​

Ditto gets a lot of shit for being terrible but it works pretty well as the glue to this team. Plenty of things will be attempt to exploit my clicking sub and protect repeatedly by using set up moves, and ditto alleviates this problem by threatening to sweep the opponent with its own mon. While this is its main job, ditto does a lot of other things-- gives me a cleaner if i transform into an offensive mon, a way to scout sets (which is important so i can know not to set up on something if it randomly has toxic or knock off, for example), use stealth rock and/or clear hazards by copying the opponents hazard control, revenge kill miscellaneous things, and gives me a lot of room for creativity in general. Ditto can be played defensively if I need it to (switches into aggron's head smash with ease) and can even do shit like be a cleric if the other team has mega audino.

Yeah ditto's ultimately not even that good of a mon but it does a lot for this team while maintaining the memey vibe. Just watch out for sub users, ditto can't copy opponents then :(

playstyle tips

Not only does this team look weird, it also plays much differently than one might expect. Most teams consisting of a bunch of walls require defensive synergy and teammates to be alive and healthy to wall the other team. Not this team; in fact, it plays a lot more like hyper offense than traditional stall.
To win, you will not need everything to be healthy or alive- you just need to take out or cripple the checks of one of the pressure mons, find a set up opportunity, and win. This may require the sacking of multiple mons and nearly flawless play at times to have a chance, but any game is winnable... probably 90-95% of the time

While this team has put in work at the end of day it's matchup-based as fuck. As you have probably noticed this team has a lot of crippling flaws that means that some teams will have no trouble in dealing with team. A lot of the time it will mean you have to play flawlessly if you want to win while occasionally it means you're better off clicking x than sticking around, unless you really want to be a dick.

Threats

Definitely the biggest standalone threat to the team. Stallbreaker obviously is a huge pain to deal with and you'll probably have to sack something to get status on it and then try and take it out from there. If it's sub nasty plot with leftovers, click x.

You have likely noticed my lack of knock off switchins, and indeed powerful knock off users are a pain in the ass to deal with. Shiftry can be dealt with although something will probably have to die in the process and hariyama loses to cuno and wailord if it's statused. Malamar is tricky to deal with thanks to resttalk making it difficult to pp stall, but if you keep dusclops healthy enough and come in on superpowers you should be ok.

With lovely kiss and nasty plot, jynx is really annoying to take on. This is also made worse by the fact that it resists its own stabs, which means ditto has more difficulty revenge killing it. Breaking its sash is key and you will need to keep ditto healthy, as unless the jynx user gets greedy and goes to +4 you will not be able to take it out in one hit. Vivillon is annoying as well for similar reasons but ditto revenge kills with much more ease. just don't let either set up a sub.

Nonetheless, this team is a lot of fun to ladder with and it's produced a lot of funny moments, some of which I have placed for your viewing pleasure.

replays

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-381104123 trapinch and ditto put in a ton of work in this game and dusclops cleans up from there.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-380275750 textbook win for this team- setting up and abusing tspikes and cleaning with a pressure mon.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-362038336 pp stall is triumphant after 182 turns. Also got someone to use struggle lol

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-369110600 fun game versus hootie, jynx is kept in check by ditto and dusclops proves its worth.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-370301186 thanks to pressure I'm able to stall out
orphic's +6 beheeyem completely out of attack moves and then win with dusclops.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-nu-161027 as shaneghoul proves this team is quite viable in the tourney scene.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-358696317
★erisia: i have never been wailord stalled before lol

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/nu-366000499 after being haxed countless times on the ladder by this team i finally get my revenge

And there you have it. While this team is a bad gimmick at best it's been a lot of fun to use and more viable than I would have ever expected. For a team with no stealth rock, a mon 4x weak to rocks and no hazard control, and no mons that are NU by usage you could probably do a lot worse.

shoutouts

astroboy Brick Small. Hootie Shaneghoul yall are chill, glad I met you guys :)

importable

Articuno @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 136 Def / 68 SpD / 56 Spe
Calm Nature
- Substitute
- Roost
- Protect
- Freeze-Dry

Trapinch @ Eviolite
Ability: Arena Trap
EVs: 248 HP / 48 Atk / 212 Def
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Ditto @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Imposter
EVs: 252 HP
- Transform
-
-

Dusclops @ Eviolite
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpA
Bold Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Calm Mind
- Rest
- Shadow Ball

Wailord @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Def / 248 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
- Aqua Ring
- Scald
- Substitute
- Protect

Roselia @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
- Toxic Spikes
- Synthesis
- Giga Drain
- Sludge Bomb