Hiding the fish from the sunlight
Regulation G Ladder [2025 February]
A team report by Wagie
==Proof of peak==Regulation G Ladder [2025 February]
A team report by Wagie
==Team importable==
https://pokepast.es/bf445cd34347a8a2
==Introduction==
Hey there! I'm Wagie from the VGC Pokemon Showdown room. I'm a retired spanish player that now just plays for fun, but my beginnings go back to 2011, when I started playing at the age of 11 years old.
This has been one of my favourite formats so far and I've been doing multiple viable teams with restricteds that are not as usually seen. My ultimate goal is to have fun, I do not compete anymore, but it's always enjoyable to open the meta a little bit and allow other people to realise that there are more things viable other than the usual Calyrex (shadow/ice) balance + the trio rilla inci urshifu. Some of the interesting sets I've been able to top 300 with so far are the likes of Zacian, Ho-oh, specs Kyogre, Terapagos (t-spikes variant), and now it's going to be banded Koraidon, which is the star of this team.
I will try as best as I can to explain the process behind the team, what's the reason for the moves and the pokemons present on it, and how it eventually got better over time to get me to top 200 on Bo3 ladder.
== The team ==
So, it all started with our boy, Koraidon. Let's first take a look at this guy and explore how we can get the best out of it.
First, let's go with the advantages this mon brings to the table with the set we are used to see, clear amulet.
The first one and more obvious is it sets up the sun, enabling many mons that otherwise would be lacking to launch some powerful fire type attacks, while also boosting protosynthesis mons. Heat wave is a strong move because in sun it forces the tera of Amoonguss, and it can eventually burn if thrown multiple times, which is something to consider. So we could say Koraidon is a good team player.
Another thing to consider is this mon is one of the very few to OHKO incineroar with one single attack. So inci is forced to hold it back and gain time using fake out against it or tera ghost. The same happens with Terapagos, because even though you need sun to OHKO it, you still apply a lot of pressure by just being there.
It uses virtually two STABs: Fire and fighting, so even though it requires sun to function as an STAB, whenever sun is up, you can tera fire to deal monstrous amounts of damage.
It has access to flame charge, boosting itself even further and taking advantadge of dead turns to become even more threatening, getting to outspeed even some pokemon in tailwind because this thing is incredibly fast by itself.
It can switch into kyogre very easily and take a water type attack because it's dragon type.
Now let's check out the downsides of using Koraidon with this set:
It's an expensive mon. And this is by far the thing that is holding it back the most from being a top tier restricted. You are very vulnerable to intimidate and anyone can EV against you because they expect you to use clear amulet. It's easy to pick a calculator and to prevent the damage from KOing you, because you already know how much a koraidon is going to do to you. It's not like calyrex-ice where you can use never-melt-ice or caly-shadow which can go life orb.
Also, not only you do boost your protosynthesis pokemon, but also you do activate your opponent's past paradox mon, and you are very weak to flutter and raging bolt, which are extremely common. So you are usually forced to tera fire in early stages because flutter can threaten an OHKO on you with just a spread move.
You die very easily because unfortunately the best move koraidon has to deal real damage is flare blitz, and you take a lot of recoil (this also goes for the life orb set). Ironically, a common way to stop koraidon is to run rocky helmet amoonguss (a pokemon that koraidon is supposed to check!!) and let it take a million recoil damage to leave it at around 35-40% and then just kill it with a fast attacker.
Also, flame charge does only 50 damage if you have not tera yet (remember the minimum BP of a move of your tera type will be 60). So basically that means, once more, that koraidon is extremely tera-reliant.
Finally, if kyogre comes in, your sun won't be up anymore. And your virtually life-orb boosted hits (remember orichalcum pulse is the reason why it hits hard) won't do as much damage anymore. So you have to predict it switching in, making your plays more passive and risking hard switch-outs when it may not be necessary.
So, for these reasons above, I decided to test a new koraidon set: Choice banded.
The moveset I tried was this one:
Koraidon @ Choice Band
Ability: Orichalcum Pulse
Level: 50
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 36 Atk / 4 Def / 12 SpD / 204 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Collision Course
- U-turn
- Outrage
-U-turn is one of the unexpectedly best moves of this set. It can OHKO many farigiraf sets, it allows you to pivot into something bulky like raging bolt to take a hit in rain matchups and then come back again later to set up sun again. It also forces the tera on calyrex-ice because otherwise it would take a million damage, and punishes tera grass mons trying to avoid a spore from smeargle.
-Collision course is an amazing move and I would choose it to deal damage over outrage if you want to keep control of the battle in the early-mid game.
-Flare blitz is your hardest-hitting attack (remember that, if the hit is not super effective, it's the strongest of your moves with 120 BP, tied with outrage). And if you tera, you will deal 180 BP damage!!! But remember flare blitz will make you take recoil damage, so always respect the possibility of your opponent hitting back at you after they survive the hit. There are not many things that do not get OHKOed by tera fire choice band koraidon if you don't intimidate it or do something about it. This thing hits like a truck.
-Outrage is a late game finisher or a passive early game punisher. If you have played choice band dragonite, I will make this comparison to illustrate: This thing does x1.3 more damage because sun is up. It's absolutely stupid. If there were any people who DARED to not bring any dragon immunities like a tera fairy and this guy would punish them. Even if you can't hit the correct target, somehow you will end up doing a good trade of damage, because I will spoil you: This team loves the battles to finish quickly.
The EVs are made to outspeed every zamazenta (no one is going to run more than 180 speed), and every mon that tries to speed creep zamazenta. Particularly, I did draw the line on outspeeding 180 because that's what many bulky flutters do to outspeed ogerpon and speed creep other flutters. I do like that speed tier and sometimes I can outspeed some miraidon that go too bulky, winning me the battle on the spot because they can't stand well physical hits.
The other EVs are used to maximize bulk while not losing offensive presence.
So now let's move on to the other heavy hitter of the team, flutter mane.
Probably at this point I won't have to tell you why this mon is so threatening. It's the best paradox mon together with raging bolt, marvelous typing offensively, a speed tier that surpasses the once fastest tapu koko, with the possibility of having a choice scarf boost that doesn't lock you into a move thanks to protosynthesis, access to support moves, and a min-maxed stat distribution that makes it easy to cover if you run an intimidate pokemon.
Unfortunately, this regulation our once feared flutter mane, has to compete with a top tier restricted in the form of calyrex-shadow. Not only that, but also we are in a metagame where you will very likely invest more defensive EVs on special defense rather than in taking physical hits, thanks to players adapting to survive nuke hits like miraidon specs boosted hits, terapagos both specs and calm mind tera starstorm, or calyrex shadow's life orb (and sometimes nasty plot) boosted hits.
So in this context, flutter itself can't be the sweeper it once was. But still it's an amazing mon that has good damage output, and more importantly, it has excellent synergy with koraidon. So it's worth a shot to run it offensively on this team, instead of the support twave, taunt variant that we are seeing on some archetypes.
If you are running flutter specs in Regulation G, you really need a way to boost the damage. I don't mind if it's protosynthesis boost (in SpAtk), chi-yu, helping hand, or even fake tears. But you need help to pick up the KOes because otherwise your opponent will take the hit and retaliate with something that will KO you.
So this mon was a bit of a headache when building with it, and I even thought about the possibility of leaving it out of the team because there were so many KOes I wasn't picking... Fortunately, I ended up finding a solution in chi-yu.
So let's have a look at the set:
Flutter Mane @ Choice Specs
Ability: Protosynthesis
Level: 50
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 116 HP / 140 Def / 36 SpA / 4 SpD / 212 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Power Gem
- Moonblast
- Dazzling Gleam
- Icy Wind
One point faster than koraidon in Speed to chip out the pokemon and allow koraidon to pick up a KO. Normally you are going to be the fastest mon on the field unless you are facing the rare iron bundle, and thanks to tera you will be able to take a hit or two. You are doing consistent spread damage with dazzling gleam every turn.
-Power gem: This move is specifically to have a matchup against ogerpon fire, a pokemon that can redirect hits, absorb smeargle's spore, and strike back from a sun boosted ivy cudgel. It also helps against a calyrex-ice if your opponent has already tera before. I prefer this move rather than shadow ball, because I realised I wasn't locking myself into shadow ball many times. Probably this is because the meta is adapted to take big ghost hits with the likes of tera dark or normal. If you have chi-yu on the field you are going to kill opposing flutters with moonblast anyway, and most calyrex-shadow will simply protect turn 1 and then tera to avoid the KO on them with it. So even though it can be useful for certain very specific situations, I prefer to use power gem.
-Moonblast: This is self-explanatory. 95 BP move that is boosted by tera fairy. No mon really walls this, you just accept the trade of damage and expect to KO flutter by retaliating back. I wouldn't ever play any flutter variant without this move.
-Dazzling gleam: As I said, it's good spread damage if you want to chip things for a bigger hitter.
-Icy wind: This move actually KOes landorus if chi-yu is on the field. It's not only to lower speed, but also to do some significant damage. Also, sometimes it happens that you punish switch-ins in tailwind. Let me explain this scenario, because it happens more often than not:
You've got your flutter and koraidon out, sun is up. And our opponent has a tornadus/whims and a pokemon that is dead slot, like urshi water, and he wants to switch into something that deals damage to you, like an ogerpon-fire for example. So he tailwinds and hard-switches out to this mon, expecting to threaten damage the next turn. You icy wind, and you've got an ogerpon-fire that is at -1 in tailwind. But because you are a fast flutter mane, you still outspeed it next turn because sun is up. So next turn you will icy wind again, and because it will be at -2, tailwind is virtually cancelled and you will kill it with koraidon without even giving it the chance to move.
Now let's go with chi-yu, the star of the team. The reason why this team went from a mid ELO team that sometimes works, to a real team that I would use in a regional.
But first we need to talk about who was the pokemon that was in the team before I brought chi-yu, heatran.
The reason for using this was that I was testing ways to punish calyrex-ice teams. Particularly, glacial lance spam. And I did not want to use suboptimal wide guard users, so I came up with the idea of using heatran tera fairy.
The idea of heatran is simple. You have an amazing typing, so at some point of the battle you will win because defensively your opponent won't be able to threaten you. In the meantime, you either spam some sun boosted heat waves fishing for a burn, or you sub to stay longer on the field. As long as you don't get snarl (which is not a common move in this meta) you will be good. Also, calyrex-ice won't be able to break the sub if he decides to glacial lance, so he will have to horsepower, wasting a precious trick room turn.
Also, by using tera fairy, you will be able to defeat 1v1 urshifu water in sun, since both moves will be resisted.
Heatran was an interesting mon defensively, and I will surely use it on another team probably, but if you are running such an all-out-attacking team like this, being good defensively is not enough. You need some offensive pressure so that your opponent does not have free turns to reposition himself.
So following this idea of sub leftovers, I came up with a crazy chi-yu set that ended up being the best set on the team in my opinion.
Chi-Yu @ Leftovers
Ability: Beads of Ruin
Level: 50
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 HP / 228 Def / 20 SpA / 4 SpD / 4 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Heat Wave
- Snarl
- Protect
The fact that chi-yu stayed on the field for so long thanks to the sub leftovers and a good bulk not only did help me in the matchup against trick room. It also made flutter and tornadus more threatening, since there would be more turns in which flutter would come in and chi-yu would still be on the field with its ability, beads of ruin.
Heat wave is an amazing move that although it can miss sometimes, it also gives you each turn the 17% chance to burn at least 1 pokemon (in this calculation I've included the possibility of missing). When a pokemon stays for this long on the field, the chances do increase over time.
Snarl is a good move that will help you against other chi-yu, terapagos and calyrex-shadow. Also, it's not weak to redirection. I prefer it over dark pulse because being this slow, I am not going to use the 20% chance to flinch anyway, since I will probably not attack first.
Sometimes this pokemon becomes a late game win condition if you are able to sub stall correctly, the defensive EVs allow the substitute, among other things, to survive an incineroar's flare blitz if it lacks firepower (which it normally does). We've got 4 EVs in Speed to outspeed those kyogre and groudon who don't run any speed, like the calm mind kyogre variant or the bulky AV groudon.
Normally you will end up in a lot of situations with smeargle chi-yu, since they have good synergy to set up and also they both resist astral barrage. For me, this pokemon is the one that enables all the crazy stuff this team comes with. So I recommend you to bring it every time you can unless you are into a fast kyogre matchup with chien-pao + dnite, or any type of physical spam.
Next up is Raging Bolt, which is the "glue pokemon" of the team. You don't really bring it to too many matchups, but we need it because first of all it puts a lot of pressure on team preview, and second, it patches up the water abuse matchups.
If you've read until this point, you will already know that the idea of the team itself is to not give your opponent "free lunches". You put pressure on them from the very beginning. If the battle lasts for too long, then they will eventually reposition themselves or tera into good defensive types to cover from your attacks, and end up winning you. Bolt doesn't threaten immediate pressure unlike flutter, koraidon, chi-yu, smeargle or even tornadus. So this would be the mon that I wouldn't bring to a normal matchup unless your opponent abuses defensive tera water pokemon or water pokemon in general (urshi pelipper etc).
But still there are three matchups where this mon is very necessary.
The first one being dondozo + caly-shadow + weezing. This thing and smeargle are the reason why dondozo has to terastalize to tera grass as early as it can. It also threatens sun boosted thunderclap into caly-shadow, who does not enjoy taking hits like this one because it's normally a fast and offensive variant and lacks bulk. You can still draco meteor an unaware dondozo in sun and deal a million damage.
The other matchup this mon is good into is water spam kyogre. All these mystic water and specs kyogre players want to do the same as you: Ending the battle as fast as they can. But sadly, kyogre is slower, and also they are paired with rain dance tornadus usually, so you are in a disadvantadge. That's where raging bolt comes in. It lowers kyogre's hp making it use the inconsistent origin pulse and not allowing its partner urshifu to sweep you in rain thanks to the pressure of tclap. I can't stress enough how hard it's to not get outpowered by the rain when you use koraidon, if you don't have a good way to pivot in and out. That's why I use it with AV and tera electric, to make sure I pick up the KO on kyogre in sun and into the urshifu even if sun is not up.
Raging Bolt @ Assault Vest
Ability: Protosynthesis
Level: 50
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 244 HP / 68 SpA / 196 SpD
Modest Nature
- Volt Switch
- Thunderbolt
- Thunderclap
- Draco Meteor
The moveset is simple: Volt switch is the most important move. It allows you to switch-in safely your offensive mons, threatens KO on urshifu in sun (or with tera electric), and allows koraidon to go and come back with the u-turn synergy and set up the sun if tornadus or kyogre decide to set the rain. Thunderbolt does good damage on dondozo and tera water mons, same as thunderclap.
Draco meteor is necessary for the rare tera dragon but specially against amoonguss and landorus-i. I did not mention it, but this set is able to take an sandsear storm from max spatt landorus-i single target life orb.
Now let's go with smeargle. Originally this spot was used by umbreon, but I ended up using smeargle so that I had one immunity to calyrex-shadow and one resistance in chi-yu in case it decided to go astral barrage. Every pokemon with access to wide guard is a viable mon and smeargle is not an exception. Not only that, but also it has great synergy with the fire/fairy core (we've seen this many times in previous formats with xerneas primal groudon), and most importantly, it is a way to deny trick room and force tera grass on your opponent.
One of the best things about smeargle is that it's a pokemon most people are not prepared for. You would normally think that by bringing urshifu-water you force tera grass on smeargle, pushing the opponent into a disadvantageous situation. But this smeargle does not need that because you are going to have sun up. Also, it's a very common scenario to use koraidon to remove the opposing ogerpon or any spore redirectors (unless it's cornerstone), and use smeargle to start gaining turns.
Let's go with the movepool, because this poor thing's stats don't allow it to take hits if you want to use it as a fast variant.
Smeargle @ Focus Sash
Ability: Moody
Level: 50
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Spore
- Wide Guard
- Follow Me
- Fake Out
Spore is the move that makes smeargle a threatening presence and the reason why your opponent will be forced to play mindgames every single turn using spread moves or focusing on smeargle. It stops bulky terapagos on the spot before it starts to calm mind up, it stops calyrex-ice from trick rooming without fearing a glacial lance (unlike taunt, for example).
Wide guard is such a versatile move that is the reason why suboptimal mons like araquanid or mienshao have some type of viability. How isn't it going to be good on a pokemon that is immune to astral barrage? Sometimes you may even use it as a way to stop kyogre's spam moves. And the fact that you are tera ghost allows you to be immune to a potential feint (keep in mind you need flutter mane next to it, so that both pokemon are immune and wide guard is not broken) or a fast fake out preventing the wide guard.
Follow me is a move that allows you to reposition yourself and send in a pokemon without taking damage (normally koraidon or flutter mane), but also it's an option to play mindgames around iron hands in the miraidon matchup. You will be immune to low kick and drain punch. And normally, when your opponent watches this team preview, they tend to not bring farigiraf. So smeargle helps into that matchup even though spore is disabled.
Fake out is a move that you need to keep in mind because it's your way to gain advantage from a glued situation. Let me get deeper into this: The first turns when you play this team are critical. And sometimes you lead smeargle + another mon to bait fake out and you use that turn not to fake out, but to switch into something that threatens immediate pressure like chi-yu (substitute setup) or tornadus (tailwind to outspeed everything or to match opposing tailwind). By retreating smeargle on that turn 1, you keep that fake out pressure for later, and trust me, you may need it if you don't read correctly against some specific matchups.
Last but not least we've got tornadus. It's a very important mon in the zamazenta matchup, the scream tail matchup, and against certain calyrex-ice + ogerpon-cornerstone matchups. Also it does have good synergy with chi-yu and the possibility of lowering the opponent's speed with bleakwind storm, putting you in a favourable position since opponents do not really have time to reposition themselves and get their stats back. You don't always have to hit bleakwind storm to be threatening.
Tornadus @ Covert Cloak
Ability: Prankster
Level: 50
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 36 Def / 220 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Taunt
- Tailwind
- Bleakwind Storm
- Protect
Taunt is used to put pressure on amoonguss, terapagos, scream tail (very important because we've got two choiced pokemon) and making sure that an slot will not be able to protect the next turn. Also, if your tailwind is up, it prevents other tornadus or whimsicott to use tailwind if they don't tera dark.
Tailwind is a move that absolutely turns the tables. It makes smeargle faster than any other pokemon (including regieleki) except for speed boost flutter or iron bundle, allowing it to put them to sleep and hoping to wake up. Since tornadus is bulky and smeargle has sash, you normally have a couple or three turns to do this.
Bleakwind storm is a move that gets boosted by chi-yu and threatens good damage on ogerpon, rillaboom and amoonguss (although you have other ways to hit them thanks to the sun). It's also important since you hit hard urshifu-dark, breaking its focus sash and allowing for other move to take it out. It makes the opponent think twice before setting the rain up because that will mean a 100 BP spread hit with more than 50% of lowering the speed of, at least 1 mon, will hit 100% of the time.
Protect will allow you to bait that last turn of trick room and then set up tailwind again. Other than that, this team does not use protect very often because it will make you lose turns. If you want to use sunny day instead, go on. But I think that last turn of tailwind it's important to keep tornadus alive to set up again and potentially finish the battle.
Covert cloak allows you to be immune to fake out, icy wind, or the rare snarl (although lately it has become more common of a move) and tera steel patches your inherent weakness to flutter, ogerpon-cornerstone, and calyrex-ice, while also allowing us to gain a very meaningful turn against chien-pao.
== Conclusion ==
So that is it! This team can beat everything and I feel that the meta is not truly prepared for a choice band koraidon. It was made 1 week prior to the EUIC, and right now I'm finishing this report immediately after Wolfey won with an item boosted Koraidon, so I guess this team was doing good in ladder for a reason!
I hope you guys did like this report and feel free to test the team. Hyper offense is underexplored and I feel that when we get to the GS Cup format with two restricteds, it will become better over the time.
See you!
Wagie.
