the next mewtwo's greatest soldier rmt... it's finally here... with the promised nicknames...
we yap a lot here so enjoy the paste early if you dont want to read it.
https://pokepast.es/975880676d0e4412 extreme speed version
https://pokepast.es/38a25af7a6883a36 jhealing + salt version
After an age of pain and suffering loading hyper offense where magic guard is a luxury, not a right, into ladder sets like mortal spin salt cure infestation burning bulwark, I had finally had enough. I was stuck in a rut of pain and suffering, forever jumping up and down between 14 and 1500 while trying to invent the next new heat. Nothing I could do seemed to work, until I finally decided that I was done being "the guy who loads ho on ladder". Let cityscapes and ANinjaDude handle the insane heat sets on sun and hyper offense, I wanted something that would force my ladder opponents to slow down and play my game instead of theirs.
Unfortunately, my attempts to build balances simply didn't work. I was back to jumping around, except now it was from 1300 to 1400. Every game, I felt like I needed something new, something that would save me from the endless pain of laddering. You could say I... needed a hero.
It was at this moment that I decided to stop bothering with pointless things like "a breaker" or "active pressure". These things were artifacts of my hyper offensive days. Instead, I turned to the incredible sets stolen from Akira 's amazing team used in hpl, vesp 's balance, and the sample sets.
With this power, I created https://pokepast.es/ccab7dc1096a8aec. It was ok (totally clipped ninja https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2452412986) but struggled with common threats like opposing necrozma, glaive/glance blaziken, shift gear blaziken if I didn't play damn near perfectly, and not having stealth rock. Overall, the team was definitely usable, but nowhere near consistent. Seriously like no rocks wtf why would you ever load this
I decided to update the team. First off, Giratina wasn't doing its job well enough, and could easily be replaced with a Fur Coat eternatus. I originally stole the moves from Ballfire 's stall rmt but later changed ruination to revelation dance to patch the normalize matchup better. Next, with etern as the Fur Coat, celesteela was free to run Magic Guard, allowing me to spinblock both the obnoxious salt cure knock off mortal spin pokemon that would otherwise force hazards off against me and Zamazenta, because it's neutral to fighting, doesn't care about knock, is immune to mortal spin, and semi-sapblocks (Unless it uses broken move triple arrows an fishes successfully ban this cheese move Chessking345). I also moved toxic spikes onto it over beak blast because I never pressed that move and stone axe over spikes because ghostceus got them up well enough and I did need the move on something.
With all that done, I only had one remaining weakness in the team: Necrozma. Not only was necrozma failing to make progress into defensive teams due to it losing to celesteela of all pokemon, one of the most common defensive pokemon, but it couldn't revenge kill threatening pokemon like mg eternatus or ash-greninja because it was simply too slow. I tried to fix this with sceptile, but it couldn't beat celesteela fast enough, offered no utility, forced in audino (which it also lost to which is very bad) compromizing the ghostceus mu, and generally barely missing kos it needed to hit. I then tried deoxys, which worked slightly better. Still, I felt something was missing. A superman that lost to knock ghostceus? Really? I was strugging so hard, I ended up asking for help from the bh discord. And what the absolute king of the game ANinjaDude suggested was the final piece needed to lock in this team. (https://pokepast.es/c7a480a06827126e the team pre-ninja)
MG lopunny. Jungle healing, Population Bomb, HJK, Dark. It beat ghostceus, it beat agren, it sort of beat etern if I got enough chip on it, it messed with mg chansey, it scored knocks- this pokemon singlehandedly anchored the team. I did shift it to extreme speed for anti-ladder purposes because priority is required there I believe, but with the new goat on the team, the Cats and Rabbits core secured, and no more ghostceus to torture me, I managed to push this team into the top 10.
THE TEAM
INTO THE METAVERSE (Celesteela) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Magic Guard / Shield Dust / Primordial Sea
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 29 Spe
- Strength Sap
- Circle Throw
- Stone Axe
- Toxic Spikes
This celesteela was the absolute anchor of the team, even without the shot. I didn't go a single game where this mon didn't put in work hard setting up dual hazards, cycling mons around to enjoy a toxic bath, scoring free chip to keep regenvests under control, or just sacking all its health to ice rider pop bomb to kill it first. The speed ivs allow us to circle throw as slowly as possible, potentially catching an intended teleport switch in and forcing it out after hazards so that it has to take a second round, while being faster than even jolly ice rider so that we can goob the ladder SD fridge sets. Magic Guard here spinblocks salt cure mortal spinners and also avoids passive chip damage like burning bulwark so that we can maintain a good amount of health. Shield Dust is an alternative to guarantee we spinblock zamazenta with broken triple arrows please ban by avoiding the chance of a defense drop or crit or flinch stopping us. It also blocks combat torque para which chessking says is just as broken as tarrows but it isnt I swear please ban tarrows. Primordial Sea is an alternative that improves the garchomp and blaziken and mg etern matchups while dodging moldy, it's ok but I think the other two are better with magic guard obviously being the best. Sap is the required healing in an 8 pp format, we could go stone axe on etern and dual healing on this but that's super sus. Circle Throw lets us block magic guard blissey/chansey from wishpassing to their breakers by cycling them out into something random. This is the main anchor in the BOMB SQUAD matchup. Stone Axe and Toxic Spikes are the required hazards on the hazard stack team.
improofing: gets all layers up, chucks imp into something else. ghostceus takes nothing, knocks imp, gets 3 spikes up. Shield dust chips imposter with helmet, lets imposter take poison if its poisoned, gets all layers up. we dont care about hazards but registeel can switch in to fish for healing and also spin.
MIND ALTERATOR (Audino-Mega) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Mortal Spin
- Haze
- Recover
Ransei 's goat. Required "doesn't lose to sword ghostceus/take heart gag pogre/other random special attackers". This set is a lot more basic than celesteela, you know what's going on. Maud is the sapblocker of the team, the primary special counter, it walls sword ghostceus, tcage th arcs, forces poison onto th mons much faster than entering on tspikes repeatedly, beats sceptile, beats most flutter and can haze the normalize setup ones, goobs that one th audino, swaps into water spout/eruption spammers on ladder, soaks hits from zam, garde, etc, it's just that guy. Mortal breaks out of tcage and also poisons stuff, moonblast means that we can chip mg mons or win endgames against regens swapping around on hazards, haze beats gag ceus and has a trillion pp, recovery move, boots is for the hazard stack agenda. Preserve boots into matchups where maud needs to check things even with hazards up, especially toxic spikes, or you will lose eventually.
improofing: registeel or celesteela are required to come in vs you or opponent gets to spin (scary). celesteela can get up hazards but registeel isnt sapblocked and gets to knock and regen and press dance for free so registeel is preferred.
LINETRACER (Eternatus) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Encore
- Revelation Dance
- Thunder Cage
- Strength Sap
Another very basic guy, this is the blaziken/physical attacker check. Once again, you know what this does. Sap is required healing move in 8 pp meta but also loses to chansey so you can run 8 pp move. Encore + Tcage beats people trying to set up against you, I've taken out too many cocky steelceus with this combination. Revdance just lets us hit grounds in a theoretical ting endgame where its coming back and forth on spikes. It also is the secondary normalize check but unfortunately doesn't really beat dragapult because it resists the attack. This guy won't work into ice attackers or garchomp, so you need to outplay those unfortunately. Garchomp especially is a hellish matchup if it outpredicts. Etern cannot be allowed to become paralyzed or knocked off into hazard stacking teams or your defensive integrity is heavily compromized.
this is sort of selfproof in that if imposter is poisoned you just click thunder cage and they die before you; if they arent poisoned registeel can handle the chip and gets to knock for free.
GHOST N TH MACHINE (Arceus-Ghost) @ Spooky Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Knock Off
- Judgment
- Shore Up
- Spikes
Boring set but its whatever. Ghostceus sets our special attackers up to break by forcing in their special checks and removing their items making it impossible to beat us once we get our full arsenal up. It also sets spikes on pokemon that it can't confront outright like maud, simply letting them die to poison in front of it as it gets even more hazards up for their eventual return. Ghostceus can serve as a check to certain attackers like pheremosa short term but hates being forced to waste its health blocking real threats. It will however happily beat zamazenta if you dont care about hazards, most passive regenvests, and anything that weirdly is fully resisted by a ghost. Normalize flutter mane that accidentally swapped into knock comes to mind. Ghostceus is the general progress maker that you want to rely on, it does its thing very well and with hazards up is unwallable long term except in specific situations.
improofing: selfproof, registeel might not care about losing av that much if you are truly in a dire situation.
HARDDRIVE (Registeel) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Knock Off
- U-turn
- Revelation Dance
- Rapid Spin / Salt Cure
"gardevoir is kill" "no". Registeel is the team's dedicated gardevoir counter, the team's best switch for almost any unscouted ladder set, the team's best status absorber, the team's best midground into rain teams, the team's best option into normalize flutter mane, the list goes on. Registeel can be the team's bulwark that wards off alakazam or tsongless etern so that maud can work its magic on walling the deadliest threats. Knock Off lets registeel make progress into common switchins by simply removing their vest or boots or whatever, slowly cracking away at a team's defensive core. U-Turn preserves momentum into things like alakazam that just clicked psycho boost, bringing in a different guy to check the new threat without needing to hardswap. Revelation dance is the team's best option for normalize flutter mane, registeel takes little enough damage from the attacks that it puts real pressure out even with your pathetic attacking stat. Entrainment does unfortunately block you from healing so your matchup into thunder cage with max hazards up can be dubious. Registeel as a whole is dubious with max hazards up, so do try to not just let the opponent set them for free. Rapid Spin can be good once ghosts are gone or to generically press if hazards are up and you don't need anything else. Salt Cure is an alternative to improve the matchup into steelceus and other threats that maud can't check. Goat pokemon that can be demonically hard for many mons to get past. Even knock ghostceus can find itself getting a few judgements sponged.
improof: ghostceus blocks spin and doesnt care about any attack, celesteela doesnt care about any attack unless salt + primsea but lets hazards off
UPLOAD SPEED: HIGH (Lopunny-Mega) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Population Bomb
- Knock Off
- Jungle Healing / Extreme Speed
The pokemon that distinguishes this team from hard stall. Magic guard Lopunny is a (kind of) bulky threat that loves slapping off boots from fur coats and watching them expire in front of the supreme life form. High Jump Kick and Population Bomb run through frailer threats like ash-greninja, chipped eternatus, blaziken, garchomp, steelceus (after about 12%), gardevoir, and so much more. Knock is the utility move that also has a lot more pp than wicked blow so that magic guard ghostceus gets all the recovery moves used and dies. Speaking of mg ghostceus. This guy gets absolutely dunked on by the bunny. Magic Guard ignores hazards so longterm you don't lose actually, that one sample with mortal spin makes even less progress than the usual knock, which can only remove life orb and then expire to the spam of knock off. If you run out of knock pp though its over so try to not do that. Extreme Speed revenge kills the random stuff you find on ladder like headlong glaive tidy up garchomp once it gets low. Lop is the team's main actual strong progress maker, and it excels at doing that with it's virulent ability to turn even the stoutest of fur coats into easy hazard fodder. Preserving it is important, especially in matchups where you need it to not lose to something.
improof: ghostceus, unfortunately you do nothing back and let imposter clear it's status and heal to full. try not to let imp in on lop often and punish it attempting to swap in with strong damage. celesteela can also larp as the improof but it doesnt work well. jaw lock on something could be interesting to force imp on this to trade but i wouldn't recommend it.
DIFFICULT MATCHUPS
Like SupaGmoney always says, while this team is good, it's not unbeatable.
Garchomp's stabs hit your fur coat and it often runs coverage for celesteela. The solution here is to keep up toxic spikes and pressure it, don't ever give it free entry if you don't have to and if it gets in either predict it or if you don't feel up to predicting sack accordingly. Ghostceus can eat one attack and so can etern if its already in. If it reads you or has bounce support though its joever.
+ nuzzle / glare / good sapblocking or whatever
Eating headlongs from blaziken longterm with etern isnt sustainable if they have a sapblock. using a recover clone solves this but introduces other problems like what if it shifts gears. Basically what you want to do is the same as chomper, force hazards, don't let it enter, block wishpass with circle throw, blow it up when it's in. Try to win before they do if it comes down to it.
:calyrex-ice-rider:
It has stab for your main fur coat. Also you don't have a good resist to it and it will randomly have coverage for both registeel and celesteela. If it's fridge its fine because steela comes in and presses sap forever but if it's simple weakness policy
+ threat you want tspikes for
you need toxic spikes to beat some things and this beats you having toxic spikes for those things so its not good
gag arceus is annoying because you can't just encore it with etern to stop it. Arceus steel is double annoying because you can't mortal spin or toxic spike it. Salt cure registeel solves this issue pretty well though.
:pheremosa:
Random coverage fish guys are annoying because you don't have imposter. The solution is to beat them the second game.
it's hard to beat magic guard blobs because they can wishpass forever and you can't pressure them well short of reading bulwark with lopunny and then killing or being capable of killing whatever wants to switch in to eat the wish. Circle throw does a good job at beating this though. They will also sapblock etern and steela which can be crippling. This is one of the reasons that magic guard is preferred, because you can circle into bulwark and not lose on the spot.
:decideuye-hisui:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2452684948 thinking of this game where I got super toxic because this cheese move killed my spinblocker and instantly threw my opponent back into the game because they got a lucky dice roll. Please just ban this move.
random glare guys can catch etern or lopunny and cripple you. to counter this scout. if you genuinely couldn't like glare on ho-oh or whatever just try to cope with it.
REPLAYS
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2453240765
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2453108273
I actually saved a lot more than this. They didn't show up, so I assume they were privated.
CONCLUSION
I'm genuinely not sure if this is a good team or not because of how bad ladder is. It feels pretty good to use though. Superman Hstack is a fun archetype because you go from thinking "how do i win" to "how do i not let them remove or make too much progress"
COMING SOON
guide on how to play vs EVERY current sample, analysis of the MU, and replays with actually good players piloting the team
see you next week with my also high peaking hyper offense team the third
we yap a lot here so enjoy the paste early if you dont want to read it.
https://pokepast.es/975880676d0e4412 extreme speed version
https://pokepast.es/38a25af7a6883a36 jhealing + salt version
After an age of pain and suffering loading hyper offense where magic guard is a luxury, not a right, into ladder sets like mortal spin salt cure infestation burning bulwark, I had finally had enough. I was stuck in a rut of pain and suffering, forever jumping up and down between 14 and 1500 while trying to invent the next new heat. Nothing I could do seemed to work, until I finally decided that I was done being "the guy who loads ho on ladder". Let cityscapes and ANinjaDude handle the insane heat sets on sun and hyper offense, I wanted something that would force my ladder opponents to slow down and play my game instead of theirs.
Unfortunately, my attempts to build balances simply didn't work. I was back to jumping around, except now it was from 1300 to 1400. Every game, I felt like I needed something new, something that would save me from the endless pain of laddering. You could say I... needed a hero.
It was at this moment that I decided to stop bothering with pointless things like "a breaker" or "active pressure". These things were artifacts of my hyper offensive days. Instead, I turned to the incredible sets stolen from Akira 's amazing team used in hpl, vesp 's balance, and the sample sets.
With this power, I created https://pokepast.es/ccab7dc1096a8aec. It was ok (totally clipped ninja https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2452412986) but struggled with common threats like opposing necrozma, glaive/glance blaziken, shift gear blaziken if I didn't play damn near perfectly, and not having stealth rock. Overall, the team was definitely usable, but nowhere near consistent. Seriously like no rocks wtf why would you ever load this
I decided to update the team. First off, Giratina wasn't doing its job well enough, and could easily be replaced with a Fur Coat eternatus. I originally stole the moves from Ballfire 's stall rmt but later changed ruination to revelation dance to patch the normalize matchup better. Next, with etern as the Fur Coat, celesteela was free to run Magic Guard, allowing me to spinblock both the obnoxious salt cure knock off mortal spin pokemon that would otherwise force hazards off against me and Zamazenta, because it's neutral to fighting, doesn't care about knock, is immune to mortal spin, and semi-sapblocks (Unless it uses broken move triple arrows an fishes successfully ban this cheese move Chessking345). I also moved toxic spikes onto it over beak blast because I never pressed that move and stone axe over spikes because ghostceus got them up well enough and I did need the move on something.
With all that done, I only had one remaining weakness in the team: Necrozma. Not only was necrozma failing to make progress into defensive teams due to it losing to celesteela of all pokemon, one of the most common defensive pokemon, but it couldn't revenge kill threatening pokemon like mg eternatus or ash-greninja because it was simply too slow. I tried to fix this with sceptile, but it couldn't beat celesteela fast enough, offered no utility, forced in audino (which it also lost to which is very bad) compromizing the ghostceus mu, and generally barely missing kos it needed to hit. I then tried deoxys, which worked slightly better. Still, I felt something was missing. A superman that lost to knock ghostceus? Really? I was strugging so hard, I ended up asking for help from the bh discord. And what the absolute king of the game ANinjaDude suggested was the final piece needed to lock in this team. (https://pokepast.es/c7a480a06827126e the team pre-ninja)
MG lopunny. Jungle healing, Population Bomb, HJK, Dark. It beat ghostceus, it beat agren, it sort of beat etern if I got enough chip on it, it messed with mg chansey, it scored knocks- this pokemon singlehandedly anchored the team. I did shift it to extreme speed for anti-ladder purposes because priority is required there I believe, but with the new goat on the team, the Cats and Rabbits core secured, and no more ghostceus to torture me, I managed to push this team into the top 10.
THE TEAM
INTO THE METAVERSE (Celesteela) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Magic Guard / Shield Dust / Primordial Sea
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 29 Spe
- Strength Sap
- Circle Throw
- Stone Axe
- Toxic Spikes
This celesteela was the absolute anchor of the team, even without the shot. I didn't go a single game where this mon didn't put in work hard setting up dual hazards, cycling mons around to enjoy a toxic bath, scoring free chip to keep regenvests under control, or just sacking all its health to ice rider pop bomb to kill it first. The speed ivs allow us to circle throw as slowly as possible, potentially catching an intended teleport switch in and forcing it out after hazards so that it has to take a second round, while being faster than even jolly ice rider so that we can goob the ladder SD fridge sets. Magic Guard here spinblocks salt cure mortal spinners and also avoids passive chip damage like burning bulwark so that we can maintain a good amount of health. Shield Dust is an alternative to guarantee we spinblock zamazenta with broken triple arrows please ban by avoiding the chance of a defense drop or crit or flinch stopping us. It also blocks combat torque para which chessking says is just as broken as tarrows but it isnt I swear please ban tarrows. Primordial Sea is an alternative that improves the garchomp and blaziken and mg etern matchups while dodging moldy, it's ok but I think the other two are better with magic guard obviously being the best. Sap is the required healing in an 8 pp format, we could go stone axe on etern and dual healing on this but that's super sus. Circle Throw lets us block magic guard blissey/chansey from wishpassing to their breakers by cycling them out into something random. This is the main anchor in the BOMB SQUAD matchup. Stone Axe and Toxic Spikes are the required hazards on the hazard stack team.
improofing: gets all layers up, chucks imp into something else. ghostceus takes nothing, knocks imp, gets 3 spikes up. Shield dust chips imposter with helmet, lets imposter take poison if its poisoned, gets all layers up. we dont care about hazards but registeel can switch in to fish for healing and also spin.
MIND ALTERATOR (Audino-Mega) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Ice Scales
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Mortal Spin
- Haze
- Recover
Ransei 's goat. Required "doesn't lose to sword ghostceus/take heart gag pogre/other random special attackers". This set is a lot more basic than celesteela, you know what's going on. Maud is the sapblocker of the team, the primary special counter, it walls sword ghostceus, tcage th arcs, forces poison onto th mons much faster than entering on tspikes repeatedly, beats sceptile, beats most flutter and can haze the normalize setup ones, goobs that one th audino, swaps into water spout/eruption spammers on ladder, soaks hits from zam, garde, etc, it's just that guy. Mortal breaks out of tcage and also poisons stuff, moonblast means that we can chip mg mons or win endgames against regens swapping around on hazards, haze beats gag ceus and has a trillion pp, recovery move, boots is for the hazard stack agenda. Preserve boots into matchups where maud needs to check things even with hazards up, especially toxic spikes, or you will lose eventually.
improofing: registeel or celesteela are required to come in vs you or opponent gets to spin (scary). celesteela can get up hazards but registeel isnt sapblocked and gets to knock and regen and press dance for free so registeel is preferred.
LINETRACER (Eternatus) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Fur Coat
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Encore
- Revelation Dance
- Thunder Cage
- Strength Sap
Another very basic guy, this is the blaziken/physical attacker check. Once again, you know what this does. Sap is required healing move in 8 pp meta but also loses to chansey so you can run 8 pp move. Encore + Tcage beats people trying to set up against you, I've taken out too many cocky steelceus with this combination. Revdance just lets us hit grounds in a theoretical ting endgame where its coming back and forth on spikes. It also is the secondary normalize check but unfortunately doesn't really beat dragapult because it resists the attack. This guy won't work into ice attackers or garchomp, so you need to outplay those unfortunately. Garchomp especially is a hellish matchup if it outpredicts. Etern cannot be allowed to become paralyzed or knocked off into hazard stacking teams or your defensive integrity is heavily compromized.
this is sort of selfproof in that if imposter is poisoned you just click thunder cage and they die before you; if they arent poisoned registeel can handle the chip and gets to knock for free.
GHOST N TH MACHINE (Arceus-Ghost) @ Spooky Plate
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Knock Off
- Judgment
- Shore Up
- Spikes
Boring set but its whatever. Ghostceus sets our special attackers up to break by forcing in their special checks and removing their items making it impossible to beat us once we get our full arsenal up. It also sets spikes on pokemon that it can't confront outright like maud, simply letting them die to poison in front of it as it gets even more hazards up for their eventual return. Ghostceus can serve as a check to certain attackers like pheremosa short term but hates being forced to waste its health blocking real threats. It will however happily beat zamazenta if you dont care about hazards, most passive regenvests, and anything that weirdly is fully resisted by a ghost. Normalize flutter mane that accidentally swapped into knock comes to mind. Ghostceus is the general progress maker that you want to rely on, it does its thing very well and with hazards up is unwallable long term except in specific situations.
improofing: selfproof, registeel might not care about losing av that much if you are truly in a dire situation.
HARDDRIVE (Registeel) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Knock Off
- U-turn
- Revelation Dance
- Rapid Spin / Salt Cure
"gardevoir is kill" "no". Registeel is the team's dedicated gardevoir counter, the team's best switch for almost any unscouted ladder set, the team's best status absorber, the team's best midground into rain teams, the team's best option into normalize flutter mane, the list goes on. Registeel can be the team's bulwark that wards off alakazam or tsongless etern so that maud can work its magic on walling the deadliest threats. Knock Off lets registeel make progress into common switchins by simply removing their vest or boots or whatever, slowly cracking away at a team's defensive core. U-Turn preserves momentum into things like alakazam that just clicked psycho boost, bringing in a different guy to check the new threat without needing to hardswap. Revelation dance is the team's best option for normalize flutter mane, registeel takes little enough damage from the attacks that it puts real pressure out even with your pathetic attacking stat. Entrainment does unfortunately block you from healing so your matchup into thunder cage with max hazards up can be dubious. Registeel as a whole is dubious with max hazards up, so do try to not just let the opponent set them for free. Rapid Spin can be good once ghosts are gone or to generically press if hazards are up and you don't need anything else. Salt Cure is an alternative to improve the matchup into steelceus and other threats that maud can't check. Goat pokemon that can be demonically hard for many mons to get past. Even knock ghostceus can find itself getting a few judgements sponged.
improof: ghostceus blocks spin and doesnt care about any attack, celesteela doesnt care about any attack unless salt + primsea but lets hazards off
UPLOAD SPEED: HIGH (Lopunny-Mega) @ Life Orb
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Population Bomb
- Knock Off
- Jungle Healing / Extreme Speed
The pokemon that distinguishes this team from hard stall. Magic guard Lopunny is a (kind of) bulky threat that loves slapping off boots from fur coats and watching them expire in front of the supreme life form. High Jump Kick and Population Bomb run through frailer threats like ash-greninja, chipped eternatus, blaziken, garchomp, steelceus (after about 12%), gardevoir, and so much more. Knock is the utility move that also has a lot more pp than wicked blow so that magic guard ghostceus gets all the recovery moves used and dies. Speaking of mg ghostceus. This guy gets absolutely dunked on by the bunny. Magic Guard ignores hazards so longterm you don't lose actually, that one sample with mortal spin makes even less progress than the usual knock, which can only remove life orb and then expire to the spam of knock off. If you run out of knock pp though its over so try to not do that. Extreme Speed revenge kills the random stuff you find on ladder like headlong glaive tidy up garchomp once it gets low. Lop is the team's main actual strong progress maker, and it excels at doing that with it's virulent ability to turn even the stoutest of fur coats into easy hazard fodder. Preserving it is important, especially in matchups where you need it to not lose to something.
improof: ghostceus, unfortunately you do nothing back and let imposter clear it's status and heal to full. try not to let imp in on lop often and punish it attempting to swap in with strong damage. celesteela can also larp as the improof but it doesnt work well. jaw lock on something could be interesting to force imp on this to trade but i wouldn't recommend it.
DIFFICULT MATCHUPS
Like SupaGmoney always says, while this team is good, it's not unbeatable.
Garchomp's stabs hit your fur coat and it often runs coverage for celesteela. The solution here is to keep up toxic spikes and pressure it, don't ever give it free entry if you don't have to and if it gets in either predict it or if you don't feel up to predicting sack accordingly. Ghostceus can eat one attack and so can etern if its already in. If it reads you or has bounce support though its joever.
+ nuzzle / glare / good sapblocking or whateverEating headlongs from blaziken longterm with etern isnt sustainable if they have a sapblock. using a recover clone solves this but introduces other problems like what if it shifts gears. Basically what you want to do is the same as chomper, force hazards, don't let it enter, block wishpass with circle throw, blow it up when it's in. Try to win before they do if it comes down to it.
:calyrex-ice-rider:
It has stab for your main fur coat. Also you don't have a good resist to it and it will randomly have coverage for both registeel and celesteela. If it's fridge its fine because steela comes in and presses sap forever but if it's simple weakness policy
+ threat you want tspikes foryou need toxic spikes to beat some things and this beats you having toxic spikes for those things so its not good
gag arceus is annoying because you can't just encore it with etern to stop it. Arceus steel is double annoying because you can't mortal spin or toxic spike it. Salt cure registeel solves this issue pretty well though.
:pheremosa:
Random coverage fish guys are annoying because you don't have imposter. The solution is to beat them the second game.
it's hard to beat magic guard blobs because they can wishpass forever and you can't pressure them well short of reading bulwark with lopunny and then killing or being capable of killing whatever wants to switch in to eat the wish. Circle throw does a good job at beating this though. They will also sapblock etern and steela which can be crippling. This is one of the reasons that magic guard is preferred, because you can circle into bulwark and not lose on the spot.
:decideuye-hisui:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2452684948 thinking of this game where I got super toxic because this cheese move killed my spinblocker and instantly threw my opponent back into the game because they got a lucky dice roll. Please just ban this move.
random glare guys can catch etern or lopunny and cripple you. to counter this scout. if you genuinely couldn't like glare on ho-oh or whatever just try to cope with it.
REPLAYS
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2453240765
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9balancedhackmons-2453108273
I actually saved a lot more than this. They didn't show up, so I assume they were privated.
CONCLUSION
I'm genuinely not sure if this is a good team or not because of how bad ladder is. It feels pretty good to use though. Superman Hstack is a fun archetype because you go from thinking "how do i win" to "how do i not let them remove or make too much progress"
COMING SOON
guide on how to play vs EVERY current sample, analysis of the MU, and replays with actually good players piloting the team
see you next week with my also high peaking hyper offense team the third