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[bdt2002]

I have a question the more experienced player base. Coming from a low ladder scrub- hey, I’m just saying my skill level as it is- am I the only one who finds Spikes to be a bit obnoxious in the current metagame? Or is that just me? To a point, my concerns also stretch to Stealth Rock, but for now I’m mainly just focused on Spikes. I don’t have enough experience to speak on whether or not Spikes is “broken”, but what I can say with a decent level of confidence is that Spikes seems to restrict creative team building at both the lower and higher levels of play rather than encourage creative team building.

What makes Spikes unique in Gen 5 compared to other generations isn’t the move itself, but how this is arguably one of the hardest generations to actually deal with the move without specifically addressing the core issues. Gen 5 has multiple spinblockers available and while some of them are significantly more viable for the role than others, often times you don’t even need to run a spinblocker to punish the opponent for trying to clear your hazards. Yes, you absolutely can still run things like Jellicent to great success, but if your team doesn’t need a spinblocker or if none of the best options synergize well with your core, you still have Gen 5’s improved options for contact punishing. The distribution of Rough Skin was increased here, as was Iron Barbs being introduced, and on top of that you have the Rocky Helmet which is a common item on multiple viable hazard setters. Couple this with the fact that the available options for viable Rapid Spin users can feel somewhat limited at times, and you start to realize that the hazard metagame and specifically Spikes stacking is massively skewed towards the hazard setters to the point where teams are better off running multiple Spikes-immune Pokémon, which isn’t strictly a problem on its own. After all, Gen 3 has a lot of these “Superman” structures. The problem is, the ever-looming threat of Stealth Rock makes those kinds of structures hard to justify when you need to spend valuable team slots accounting for Gen 5’s powerful offensive threats and the ease of stacking Spikes makes those Pokémon feel unbearable to play against sometimes.

This brings me to my other point. I already mentioned Rapid Spin, but the other available counterplay to Spikes isn’t exactly viable either. Magic Bounce users are rare as is being limited in what teams they fit on, and while Xatu can still U-Turn out of Tyranitar to avoid a Pursuit trap, the Tyranitar user can elect to try and play around this accordingly. Using Taunt to stop the opponent from setting up their hazards seems like it would be more consistent, and it definitely is depending on your Taunt user, but if your opponent suspects you clicking Taunt is too obvious not to do, depending on the state of the battle and what their hazards setter is, they may blindside you with something you’re not expecting. In fact, this just happened to me in a Gen 4 battle earlier today, where I used my leads Crobat’s Taunt on their Azelf expecting Stealth Rock only to get blasted by a Psychic to the face. (Note to self- don’t forget the Focus Sash next time.) Ultimately my issue is just how easy it is for Spikes to be set up and stacked in Gen 5 relative to the difficulty of playing and building around it. Magic Guard and Levitate Pokémon have it the best where they’re immune to Spikes without being weak to Stealth Rock, and those same Magic Guard Pokémon would likely feel far less oppressive if Spikes were out of the picture. I can promise you a lot less people would think, say, Reuniclus is broken if Spikes aren’t involved.

Edit: I almost forgot, I also want to shout out two Spikes users in particular who on their own are definitely not broken Pokémon but have specific traits that enhance their ability to set hazards to a potential unhealthy degree. Ferrothorn is in a unique spot with its typing where it can used on both Sand and Rain and also to where it can set up hazards and also Leech Seed, while we’re on the subject of Rapid Spin, and naturally has Iron Barbs built in to punish spinning away Ferrothorn’s moves. You’d be surprised to see how often people forget Rapid Spin works against Leech Seed. Meanwhile Skarmory is seen more on hyper offense and has gained some stock of its own with both Rocky Helmet and Custap Berry + Sturdy as a dedicated Spikes lead who can, pending Taunt, usually get its team off to a strong start and synergizes well with Jellicent and various offensive sweepers, though I’ve also seen Skarmory on bulky Sand teams on occasion.

 

[Monai]

Post

I have a question the more experienced player base. Coming from a low ladder scrub- hey, I’m just saying my skill level as it is- am I the only one who finds Spikes to be a bit obnoxious in the current metagame? Or is that just me? To a point, my concerns also stretch to Stealth Rock, but for now I’m mainly just focused on Spikes. I don’t have enough experience to speak on whether or not Spikes is “broken”, but what I can say with a decent level of confidence is that Spikes seems to restrict creative team building at both the lower and higher levels of play rather than encourage creative team building.

What makes Spikes unique in Gen 5 compared to other generations isn’t the move itself, but how this is arguably one of the hardest generations to actually deal with the move without specifically addressing the core issues. Gen 5 has multiple spinblockers available and while some of them are significantly more viable for the role than others, often times you don’t even need to run a spinblocker to punish the opponent for trying to clear your hazards. Yes, you absolutely can still run things like Jellicent to great success, but if your team doesn’t need a spinblocker or if none of the best options synergize well with your core, you still have Gen 5’s improved options for contact punishing. The distribution of Rough Skin was increased here, as was Iron Barbs being introduced, and on top of that you have the Rocky Helmet which is a common item on multiple viable hazard setters. Couple this with the fact that the available options for viable Rapid Spin users can feel somewhat limited at times, and you start to realize that the hazard metagame and specifically Spikes stacking is massively skewed towards the hazard setters to the point where teams are better off running multiple Spikes-immune Pokémon, which isn’t strictly a problem on its own. After all, Gen 3 has a lot of these “Superman” structures. The problem is, the ever-looming threat of Stealth Rock makes those kinds of structures hard to justify when you need to spend valuable team slots accounting for Gen 5’s powerful offensive threats and the ease of stacking Spikes makes those Pokémon feel unbearable to play against sometimes.

This brings me to my other point. I already mentioned Rapid Spin, but the other available counterplay to Spikes isn’t exactly viable either. Magic Bounce users are rare as is being limited in what teams they fit on, and while Xatu can still U-Turn out of Tyranitar to avoid a Pursuit trap, the Tyranitar user can elect to try and play around this accordingly. Using Taunt to stop the opponent from setting up their hazards seems like it would be more consistent, and it definitely is depending on your Taunt user, but if your opponent suspects you clicking Taunt is too obvious not to do, depending on the state of the battle and what their hazards setter is, they may blindside you with something you’re not expecting. In fact, this just happened to me in a Gen 4 battle earlier today, where I used my leads Crobat’s Taunt on their Azelf expecting Stealth Rock only to get blasted by a Psychic to the face. (Note to self- don’t forget the Focus Sash next time.) Ultimately my issue is just how easy it is for Spikes to be set up and stacked in Gen 5 relative to the difficulty of playing and building around it. Magic Guard and Levitate Pokémon have it the best where they’re immune to Spikes without being weak to Stealth Rock, and those same Magic Guard Pokémon would likely feel far less oppressive if Spikes were out of the picture. I can promise you a lot less people would think, say, Reuniclus is broken if Spikes aren’t involved.

Edit: I almost forgot, I also want to shout out two Spikes users in particular who on their own are definitely not broken Pokémon but have specific traits that enhance their ability to set hazards to a potential unhealthy degree. Ferrothorn is in a unique spot with its typing where it can used on both Sand and Rain and also to where it can set up hazards and also Leech Seed, while we’re on the subject of Rapid Spin, and naturally has Iron Barbs built in to punish spinning away Ferrothorn’s moves. You’d be surprised to see how often people forget Rapid Spin works against Leech Seed. Meanwhile Skarmory is seen more on hyper offense and has gained some stock of its own with both Rocky Helmet and Custap Berry + Sturdy as a dedicated Spikes lead who can, pending Taunt, usually get its team off to a strong start and synergizes well with Jellicent and various offensive sweepers, though I’ve also seen Skarmory on bulky Sand teams on occasion.

I don't personally agree with a lot of the assertions made here, but it's the general opinion of "spikes too strong" is held by a pretty big number of players, so I'll try to address it point by point rather than writing it off. At the end of the day Ferro is a really fucked up Pokemon so I get it.

but what I can say with a decent level of confidence is that Spikes seems to restrict creative team building at both the lower and higher levels of play rather than encourage creative team building.

This is a very subjective claim, and one that I think you could pretty easily level at other tiers with broken spikers like adv and SV. If you don't like it, then fair enough, but pretty much any top tier / good Pokemon "restricts" the team building options around it, and my opinion is that it's only problematic when it completely crowds out other options or is "unreasonably difficult" to handle, which I'll address based on the rest of your post.

What makes Spikes unique in Gen 5 compared to other generations isn’t the move itself, but how this is arguably one of the hardest generations to actually deal with the move without specifically addressing the core issues. Gen 5 has multiple spinblockers available and while some of them are significantly more viable for the role than others, often times you don’t even need to run a spinblocker to punish the opponent for trying to clear your hazards. Yes, you absolutely can still run things like Jellicent to great success, but if your team doesn’t need a spinblocker or if none of the best options synergize well with your core, you still have Gen 5’s improved options for contact punishing. The distribution of Rough Skin was increased here, as was Iron Barbs being introduced, and on top of that you have the Rocky Helmet which is a common item on multiple viable hazard setters.

There's a couple of weird assertions made here, and I'll try to argue against them.
- Spin blockers being too strong is almost a non starter. Our best is Jellicent, who is solid, and our options then taper off into like Gengar and Rotom-Normal? Who are hyper niche at best? Jellicent itself notoriously barely spin blocks Excadrill and can be beaten out by it, while it relies on pretty narrow teammates to beat out starmie more than once.
- Rough Skin / Iron Barbs / Rocky Helmet hints at the actual "problem," being Ferrothorns insane splashability and good matchup into nearly every Spinner. Rhelm Skarm is great too, but it's usually confined to very fat teams and can be played around with plenty of common options like Knock Off + Exca, Starmie virtually always spins at least once while being very threatening without the aforementioned Scarf Tar or maybe Alakazam. Sand balances also regularly carry plenty of anti fat tools to abuse skarm's slow pace and lack of natural recovery while styles like Rain and HO can blitz through depending on matchup. RHelm Chomp is OK but hardly on anyone's radar. If you want to make an argument about spikers and residual being too good, you should probably narrow your scope to ferrothorn

Couple this with the fact that the available options for viable Rapid Spin users can feel somewhat limited at times, and you start to realize that the hazard metagame and specifically Spikes stacking is massively skewed towards the hazard setters to the point where teams are better off running multiple Spikes-immune Pokémon, which isn’t strictly a problem on its own. After all, Gen 3 has a lot of these “Superman” structures. The problem is, the ever-looming threat of Stealth Rock makes those kinds of structures hard to justify when you need to spend valuable team slots accounting for Gen 5’s powerful offensive threats and the ease of stacking Spikes makes those Pokémon feel unbearable to play against sometimes.

Superman structures are hardly weak to Stealth Rocks? The term usually includes being resistant to SR and residual too. I think you accidentally alluded to another solution to Spike Stacking + cleaners balance, which is just hitting them with "Gen 5's powerful offensive threats." Pokemon such as Terrakion, Garchomp, Thundyt, and Conk can put tremendous pressure on spikers and are a viable playstyle outside of Spikes offense/bulky off.

this is memes man come on

This brings me to my other point. I already mentioned Rapid Spin, but the other available counterplay to Spikes isn’t exactly viable either. Magic Bounce users are rare as is being limited in what teams they fit on, and while Xatu can still U-Turn out of Tyranitar to avoid a Pursuit trap, the Tyranitar user can elect to try and play around this accordingly. Using Taunt to stop the opponent from setting up their hazards seems like it would be more consistent, and it definitely is depending on your Taunt user, but if your opponent suspects you clicking Taunt is too obvious not to do, depending on the state of the battle and what their hazards setter is, they may blindside you with something you’re not expecting. In fact, this just happened to me in a Gen 4 battle earlier today, where I used my leads Crobat’s Taunt on their Azelf expecting Stealth Rock only to get blasted by a Psychic to the face. (Note to self- don’t forget the Focus Sash next time.)

Ultimately my issue is just how easy it is for Spikes to be set up and stacked in Gen 5 relative to the difficulty of playing and building around it. Magic Guard and Levitate Pokémon have it the best where they’re immune to Spikes without being weak to Stealth Rock, and those same Magic Guard Pokémon would likely feel far less oppressive if Spikes were out of the picture. I can promise you a lot less people would think, say, Reuniclus is broken if Spikes aren’t involved.

This is pretty much the core of the issue, and it's a valid take to not like spikes spam. But I would encourage you to learn how to actually play around spikers more thoroughly, as you listed pretty meme options compared to just like, Exca + Rotom and beat Ferrothorn to death.

Edit. Meanwhile Skarmory is seen more on hyper offense and has gained some stock of its own with both Rocky Helmet and Custap Berry + Sturdy as a dedicated Spikes lead who can, pending Taunt, usually get its team off to a strong start and synergizes well with Jellicent and various offensive sweepers, though I’ve also seen Skarmory on bulky Sand teams on occasion.

Skarm is absolutely a fat or bulky option, skarm jelli is really rare outside of ladder.

 

[bdt2002]

I don't personally agree with a lot of the assertions made here, but it's the general opinion of "spikes too strong" is held by a pretty big number of players, so I'll try to address it point by point rather than writing it off. At the end of the day Ferro is a really fucked up Pokemon so I get it.

This is a very subjective claim, and one that I think you could pretty easily level at other tiers with broken spikers like adv and SV. If you don't like it, then fair enough, but pretty much any top tier / good Pokemon "restricts" the team building options around it, and my opinion is that it's only problematic when it completely crowds out other options or is "unreasonably difficult" to handle, which I'll address based on the rest of your post.

There's a couple of weird assertions made here, and I'll try to argue against them.
- Spin blockers being too strong is almost a non starter. Our best is Jellicent, who is solid, and our options then taper off into like Gengar and Rotom-Normal? Who are hyper niche at best? Jellicent itself notoriously barely spin blocks Excadrill and can be beaten out by it, while it relies on pretty narrow teammates to beat out starmie more than once.
- Rough Skin / Iron Barbs / Rocky Helmet hints at the actual "problem," being Ferrothorns insane splashability and good matchup into nearly every Spinner. Rhelm Skarm is great too, but it's usually confined to very fat teams and can be played around with plenty of common options like Knock Off + Exca, Starmie virtually always spins at least once while being very threatening without the aforementioned Scarf Tar or maybe Alakazam. Sand balances also regularly carry plenty of anti fat tools to abuse skarm's slow pace and lack of natural recovery while styles like Rain and HO can blitz through depending on matchup. RHelm Chomp is OK but hardly on anyone's radar. If you want to make an argument about spikers and residual being too good, you should probably narrow your scope to ferrothorn

Superman structures are hardly weak to Stealth Rocks? The term usually includes being resistant to SR and residual too. I think you accidentally alluded to another solution to Spike Stacking + cleaners balance, which is just hitting them with "Gen 5's powerful offensive threats." Pokemon such as Terrakion, Garchomp, Thundyt, and Conk can put tremendous pressure on spikers and are a viable playstyle outside of Spikes offense/bulky off.


This is pretty much the core of the issue, and it's a valid take to not like spikes spam. But I would encourage you to learn how to actually play around spikers more thoroughly, as you listed pretty meme options compared to just like, Exca + Rotom and beat Ferrothorn to death.


Skarm is absolutely a fat or bulky option, skarm jelli is really rare outside of ladder.

A few things I wanted to mention since I agree with pretty much everything here. Looking back at my post, some things were poorly phrased:

• When I made it sound like spinblockers were too strong, I said that with the notion that the more experienced playerbase may have more input than I do. I think we can all agree Jellicent is indeed the best spinblocker, but I must have been under the impression the other options were better than I made them sound like. So in a way, my hunch that more experienced players had more ball knowledge was… kind of right? …no, seriously, have the non-Jellicent spinblockers always been underperforming?
• Superman structures and their measure of viability against Stealth Rock is something that’s been hard for me to judge for a while now. On one hand, Stealth Rock setters aren’t in short supply at all and many of those setters have options to help with some of Superman’s most common pieces, but at the same time, I can’t exactly argue with anything you said. This may be a result of me frequently getting the Gen 3 and post-Gen 3 definitions of Superman mixed up fairly often. Must be force of habit, I guess.
• It seems like after reading your response that my problem I have with contact punishing Rapid Spin (and Leech Seed, to some extent) might just be a Ferrorthorn problem. And a skill issue in my end. I had a feeling that might be the case. In regards to Skarmory, the one thing I will say is that when I said “Skarmory is better on offense”, I wasn’t saying that in such a way to try and diminish Skarmory’s defensive strengths that allow it to succeed on bulkier teams too. This might be one of those situations where I just have to play the game more and learn for myself, honestly.

You had mentioned that I accidentally alluded to a possible solution to my own problem, also. I hadn’t realized I did that. The issue I’ve ran into in the past that’s kept me stuck in the depths of low ladder “bad at the game” level is that I can sometimes struggle with getting those threats onto the field to deal with the hazard setters in the first place. Maybe I just need to get better at pivoting? My whole point I’m trying to make is, your post was informative and helpful.

 

[ohko by scald]

Thoughts on cb ferro? Like I know it's not exactly good, but it's super fun to use. Clicking Bulldoze only for the Heatran coming in to have air balloon sucks, but I could see cb ferro as a Heatran lure to enable for example Volcarona.

 

[Finchinator]

Thoughts on cb ferro? Like I know it's not exactly good, but it's super fun to use. Clicking Bulldoze only for the Heatran coming in to have air balloon sucks, but I could see cb ferro as a Heatran lure to enable for example Volcarona.

The issue really is fit. If you’re exhausting a team slot on Ferrothorn, but investing fully in attack and Choice Band, you still need to use other slots for entry hazards, potentially checking BW cornerstones like Rain Hydro and Specs Draco, etc. — you lose the bulk and utility of the conventional set.

I wouldn’t try this seriously due to this, but there’s novelty and one-off lure appeal there. Similar to SD Ferro, which has some funny interactions against HippoClef, NP Recover Celebi, and utility Gliscor games. Isn’t really something that is too serious sadly, but you can justify it and build a somewhat consistent team if you really want to.

 

[peng]

Helped a team for SPL again this year but we got knocked out, sad!

Just wanted to point out some trends that have been interesting to me this year. Even among "standard" "boring" teams there are re-inventions of the meta staples constantly.

Rocky Helmet
9 appearances 2024 -> 14 appearances 2025 -> 17 appearances 2025 (so far)
Feels like an obvious one from this SPL - helmet has been kinda everywhere. Normally this has only been common on Skarmory and Slowbro, but we've seen it extended to Rotom-Wash, Starmie, Cresselia, Hippowdon, and Magnezone this tournament. Lots of useful applications for Rocky Helmet (messes with spinners, Uturn scarfers, helps Pursuit-weaks chip Tyranitar etc), but its particularly good right now as a way to flip the Conkeldurr MU. Rocky Helmet Magnezone is an interesting one too, giving Magnezone some utility beyond just trapping (makes good use of the defensive typing into Dragonite, punishes ScarfRachi even if it U-turns, etc).

Custap Berry (mostly on Tyranitar)
2 appearances 2024 -> 3 appearances 2025 -> 8 appearances 2026 (so far)
Gradually decreasing usage of Focus Blast across Alakazam, Reuniclus, and Thundurus-T over the last few years means Tyranitar can drop Chople Berry more often and run some interesting item choices. We've seen more CBTar than usual this year, but the bigger impact has come from Custap Berry. The idea here is that Tyranitar is frequently left at low HP, and Custap Berry allows you turn that death fodder into a single time revenge killer to many of the tier's top threats with access to Crunch, Rock Slide, Ice Beam, Fire Blast, Superpower, and Thunder Wave. We've also seen a lot of Custap Stealth Rock, which can Pursuit Starmie and then lay up a free SR on the following turn. Custap is particularly strong into the pairing of Latios + Alakazam, with Tyranitar often chipped into Custap range by Latios + hazards, but then getting a cheap Crunch/Pursuit into Alakazam lategame. Other Custap users we've seen are Landorus-T (can be both a rocker and a ScarfDrill / Chomp / Dnite rkiller) and Jellicent (can beat Starmie with Modest Shadow Ball).

Landorus-T moving to Specially defensive OR Scarf
It seems like Max Speed Lefties Landorus-T is kinda... dead? Its been usurped by two sets, on two completely opposite sides of the spectrum - SDef, or good old-fashioned Choice Scarf. Both of these are adaptations towards offensive Psychics and Volcarona. Compared to Naive LandoT, SDef gains a favourable MU in mirror against opposing fast Landorus-T, tanks Meteors, checks Volcarona, checks non-Ice Alakazam can tank moves from Starmie etc etc etc, meaning it actually fits on a lot. This set has even been seeing some usage as a slow pivot / SR lead on Hyper Offense, cutting into some of Garchomp's usage. There are trade-offs to running this bulk - being slower than Excadrill can be pretty dire, as well as Breloom, Heatran, and so on. On the other side of the coin, Scarf Lando-T is also seeing a ton of usage, as it outruns Modest Volc at +1, and is a good punish to LO Alakazam. Naive Lando-T still has some important traits - its much better into things like Protect Heatran and Excadrill, which annoy Scarf and can outrun SDef sets, but these applications increasingly feel less important than checking the meta defining special attackers.

Physically defensive Excadrill
Excadrill has a crazy base stat spread that makes it excellent for EV experimentation, and one that we've seen pop up recently is physically defensive on sand. PDef Excadrill has been around before as a niche wless/sun stall spinner, but never made a serious metagame impact. In 2026, we've begun to see it pop up more frequently in order to give Excadrill more favourable MUs into the Spikers - Skarmory and Ferrothorn. Skarmory in particular really struggles to win the hazard war when its Brave Bird is turned from a 6HKO to a 9HKO. Bonus upsides - not getting OHKOd by Superpower Tyranitar in the Custap era, and being marginally better into Outrage-locked dragons.

Drop-off in Colbur Berry, return to Choiced
Colbur Berry activations per year: 8 times in 2024 -> 6 times in 2025 -> once in 2026 (so far)
Even Latios, the best Pokemon in the game, changes in the way its used from year to year. Choiced Latios have been historically dominant, but dropped off a little in recent years as we found value in unchoiced, Colbur Berry sets. That seems to be reverting to norm a bit, with a large majority of Latios in this tournament being Choiced once again (when counting revealed sets: 22 Specs, 10 Scarf, 8 unchoiced). Interestingly, Colbur Berry has only activated once in 50 games this tournament, indicating that even when brought, its maybe not finding the same value it once had. In my personal experience I have found myself building more and more with Specs this year especially - a lot of that is due to the threat of Conkeldurr but it also owns any kind of Pursuit-less fat team. Also just very high on Trick right now.

-----

Fun stuff I liked building with this year below. Scooters ended with an incredibly based 100% Lati@s usage btw


Brine week 2
Protect Terrakion + Spikes
Adaptation of a Fakes team. Built this for brine week 2 and we got bopped by HWish + LO Scizor, but the concept felt strong. Basically, lots of Terrakion rkillers in the current metagame are choiced - I've already pointed out Specs Latios being very prominent once again, but also Scarf Lando-T, Scarf Jirachi, and rain running Scarf/Band Scizor. This is a dream metagame for Protect Terrakion, which gets to call the bluff of those U-turn Scarfers especially and get the opportunity to fire off free LO CCs if the opponent gets cute. A fun micro-synergy was Leech Seed Protect Ferrothorn + Protect Terrakion, which could let your cheese out of some late game situations.


Unused
Weather clear Heatran + Conk
A lot of people had a similar concept at roughly the same time: what if Volc Conk could run a different fire type? This has been used in some other tours before, and Franco did a Magma Taunt Heatran version in week 9. I thought Sunny Heatran with Conkeldurr felt strong, as its weakest MU is probably aggro rain. Magma Heatran does some other interesting things like trapping Jellicent to let Starmie spin more freely. I think these Heatran Conk teams are kinda interesting and worth messing around with some more


Brine week 3
HP Fire Rotom-W + LO Focus Blast Alakazam
Will just mention this one briefly cos its obviously a very established 6, just a set combination I liked. We really wanted to use LO Focus Blast + HP Ice Alakazam cos its the sand balance shredder and I think we faced Gary this week, who spammed a lot of Heatran Keldeo Celebi Sand stuff. Issue with the set is just consistency - it can end up in spots where it needs to land Focus Blasts into Ferrothorn which is super dire. Normally you'd just use Wisp Rotom-W here but 1) it can miss 2) burnt Ferro can still paralyze Alakazam lategame if you miss a Focus Blast on it... So leading HP Fire Rotom-W with some investment felt like a rly good way to take loads of pressure off of Focus Blast accuracy. Tiny thing but it tested really well.