National Dex Mega Ampharos Trick Room and The Case for Suboptimality (A year of teambuilds 5/13)

[Moon Jelly]

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Team Overview:​

PASTE HERE​

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I ended last month's post with a very bold statement. I declared that the focus of this team would be Mega Ampharos, and more importantly for this write up, I stated that it had no replacement. I could not have been more wrong. It’s a slow, bulky, electric dragon packing a pocket nuke in the form of its special attack. If I were to give you that description before you read the title of this thread, I have a feeling a different pokemon would have come to mind. One with an already established role in OU and one I do not doubt you’ve played against in the past few days. Great Neck, aka Raging Bolt. And believe it or not, it is almost strictly better than Ampha in every single way. It’s faster, it’s bulkier (just slightly), it has a stronger button in draco, it doesn’t take a mega slot and when you factor in the item it can hold, it hits harder too.

Let me tell you that was not a fun realization to come to, and it established the core challenge of this month's build very very early. How do I make a team that wouldn’t strictly be better by slotting Bolt in over Amph? Ignore the fact that you know the outcome from the title and indulge me in walking through the process here. First things first, it’s important to establish the few strengths Mega Amph does have over Bolt and here there are two big ones. First, it has a more flexible and arguably stronger ability in Mold breaker, and second and most importantly, it’s a gen 2 pokemon and as such, has access to a gen 2 move pool, for better and for worse. I’ll skip ahead and tell you the three big moves that matter for Amph over Bolt are Heal Bell, Focus Blast and Hidden Power. Heal bell has potential but it's not on the team I built and as such we can disregard it. I despise focus blast and it did nothing but let me down this climb so I’m willing to rule that out too even if I did run it. But hidden power. Hidden power has potential.

Being able to smack the ground flying’s of the tier is pretty nice, and is something Bolt has to waste a z move on to truly do effectively. Gliscor is a pretty scary matchup for Bolt that swings heavily in Amphs favour when you’re not relying on a one time prediction to handle it. And yeah, that’s about it. You’re better into Gliscor and Lando. What an amazing trade off for losing an item, mega and a strong priority move. At least that’s what I thought initially. My first 20 games were on a squad that I was fully prepared to admit was just strictly worse for Amphs inclusion. But that felt wrong, there had to be something I was missing, some factor I wasn’t quite considering. And then it hit me. I had been looking at Bolt’s advantages all wrong. I had recognized that Bolt was faster, but had failed to recognize that Amph was slower. That was the key to everything.

Trick room was the one structure where it is undeniably stronger to run an Ampharos than a Raging Bolt. 45 speed is legendarily slow, and manipulating stats to lower that even further means that only mons blessed by Stackatacka itself have any real chance of being slower. It’s nuclear offense and surprising bulk truly gets to shine here too. Very little can stomach a thunderbolt and almost nothing can stomach one and kill Ampharos back. Pair it up with an entirely unresistible combo of an insane ground type and a devastating fairy type and you have a legitimately unwallable (Rotom heat doesn’t exist, it can’t hurt you) offensive core that cannot be handled assuming you can get it in the right situation.

And that’s where this team begins to fall apart, and where the second half of the title comes into play. This team is not great. Don’t get me wrong, it’s competent. It has a cohesive game plan, a solid structure and good synergy or so I’d like to think. But the inherent ceiling of an unreliable strategy paired with a frankly underequipped pokemon for the tier means that no matter how well structured it may be, it will forever be capped in what it can achieve. This is not a meta team, it is not a meta idea, and no matter how much you work on it, no matter how much you tweak, it will never be. And you know what? That doesn’t matter in the slightest. Because this team is so bloody fun. It’s got mega Ampharos for god's sake, and sometimes, a team doesn’t need to be anything else. Throughout my builds I get so caught up in the idea that if something doesn’t break the format wide open, if it doesn’t catapult me straight to the upper echelons of a made up ladder, it’s worthless. But that’s not true, this was a success, perhaps the biggest one so far, and it opened my eyes up to a whole new world of building approaches. A team doesn’t have to be competitively viable to be successful, it just has to do what you want it to. It took a flawed pokemon in a flawed style to help me realize just how flawed my own mentality has been and I think that’s kinda beautiful.

If you, yes you, the one reading this right now, take anything away from this whole process, this whole team building journey, take this idea and run with it. Go build something calling to you right now. Not because you think it has potential, not because you think it’s going to be the next big thing, but because it’s kinda funny and you want to mess around with it and see goofy stuff happen. Take some time to remember just how fun this game can be and I promise it will reward you in time.

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The Teambuilding Method:​

In my journey to learn high level team building I’ve committed to a method that ensures each idea gets the exploration and testing it deserves. I start with a rough concept of a team, typically the core members with unoptimized movesets, spreads and supporting cast. I then create a new alt and initially planned to ladder for 100 games, making any changes deemed necessary and honing the team over the course of those games until it emerges on the other side polished and prepared against the metagame. Unfortunately I’ve come to realize that it is just not possible for me to play 100 games of pokemon each month, especially not with a team like this. To help with this I have a second cutoff, 1650 elo or 50+ games, this ensures the team is competently tested, competitive and not life consuming for me. The record and final elo of each team will be recorded and compared against each other in order to both gauge the success of the individual team and also my skill and journey as a teambuilder. I believe that as these threads continue the progress in my building will be seen by how quickly the final form will be achieved. It is my goal to become one of the top team builders in this tier. In order to pursue that I will be completing this process with a new team every month next year. Be on the lookout for these threads to see how I get along.

I do not intend to compete myself, however I would love to make teams for competitors one day. Please let me know if you have any team idea suggestions or would like more info on any of the teams I have put together.

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This Teams Results:​

Results

This team made it to a peak of 1537 elo and had a win/Loss of 36/14

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The squad:​

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Hair Metal (Ampharos-Mega) @ Ampharosite ​

Ability: Static ​

EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SpA ​

Quiet Nature ​

IVs: 0 Atk ​

- Thunderbolt ​

- Focus Blast ​

- Hidden Power [Ice] ​

- Dragon Pulse ​

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Explanation

I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret here, Mega Ampharos is a role player on this team. Hold your pitchforks, stop gathering your mob and let me explain. This pokemon is not strong enough to sweep through 3 pokemon in 3 turns and another pokemon on this team is. That means that your default teleport recipient isn’t Amph, it’s as simple as that. That does not mean this pokemon isn’t valuable. Where this really shines is in being a reliable answer to like half of the truly annoying bs in the tier. Alomamola getting you down? Thunderbolt. Corviknight walling every team you’ve ever conceived? Thunderbolt. Ogerpon Wellspring? Thunderbolt? It’s great. Nothing can really switch in on it either. Spam thunderbolt, tank hits and delete enemies. Not much more to it.

I will say, this thing is suprisingly excellent at taking down Ogerpon-W. Play rough is pretty uncommon and everything else struggles to two shot with any degree of comfortability. Even u-turn can be punished by the pre mega static though thats risky. Lowkey was clutch as hell in the pre trick room squad for this exact reason. Maybe that's the potential to explore.

(Art by Ze Banded)

Fan Tracks (Ursaluna) @ Flame Orb
Ability: Guts
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Ice Punch
- Facade
- Headlong Rush
- Fire Punch

Explanation

The actual centerpiece of the team, Freddy Fazbear himself. This bear’s been a staple of trick room since its release and for damn good reason. I mentioned Amph can’t kill three things in three turns reliably. This can. Facade feels like the hammer of dawn, two shooting pretty much everything in the tier and absolutely claiming heads every time it comes in. Practically the only thing that can stop you under trick room is three good predictions in a row and this bear weights the dice so heavily in your favour that legitimately half your games will be functionally over by turn 5. The few things it can’t one shot Amph and Hatterene handle expertly. If you’re feeling extra spicy you can keep this in after trick room ends to pick up one last cheeky kill on the opponents switch, it works way more than it has any right to.

Hyperpop (Hatterene) (F) @ Fairium Z
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dazzling Gleam
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Mystical Fire

Explanation

Hatterene rounds out the Electric Ground Fairy Trifecta and is an absolute monster in its own right. Crazy high special attack and insanely spammable stab makes this a formidable threat offensively. Magic bounce makes it a formidable threat defensively. With the extra sauce that comes with holding a Z crystal this hat stand can get up to some downright devious sweeps. Typically the third choice when it comes to going to threats under trick room, but also the best of the three outside of it. Not really caring too much about taking a hit or two. Healing wish was run as the third move but it kinda sucked, might consider psychic noise or trick room here in order to not get absolutely eviscerated by a single mon with taunt.

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EDM (Moltres) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Flamethrower
- U-turn
- Defog
- Roost

Explanation

I treat this pokemon like flex tape. I don’t know what it is about my builds but time in and time out it seems Moltres is the only suitable solution for what the team needs in its final slot. In this case, the two most valuable assets are its defensive profile and defog. Nothing else matters, it provides resistance that this team desperately needs and gets the rocks off the field so you can look at Freddy Fazbear a few more times a game. Flamethrower still hurts, throw it out every now and then and cackle when the opponent loses a pokemon for clicking u-turn. Could probably be redesigned set wise, defog was less necessary than anticipated and some actual speed could be appreciated. Is scarf insane?

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(Art by Bryson Mcbee)
Nerdcore (Porygon2) @ Eviolite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick Room
- Teleport
- Toxic
- Recover

Explanation

Trick room bozo number one. Send it in against a special threat, click trick room, click teleport, maybe click toxic. There is very little else to this guy except that it provides decent defensive utility.

Oh and if you get taunted cry or something, idk. Trace is fun, do something cool with it and message me the replay.

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Psych Rock (Slowbro) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Future Sight
- Teleport
- Trick Room
- Scald

Explanation

Trick room bozo number two. Send it in against a physical threat, click trick room, click teleport, maybe click future sight. There is very little else to this guy except that it provides decent defensive utility.

There isn’t a lot to say about either of these pokemon, they are purely here for one thing and one thing alone, set up trick room and get a threat in. Consider which setter is more important for the late game as oftentimes you will have to sacrifice one in order to get a mid game trick room up. The choice should come down almost entirely to which one of these two would be able to survive attempting to set up trick room against the remaining threats. Again, there is absolutely nothing else to these guys. I guess you could call them a one trick room pony

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Threats:

Taunt:

Explanation

Taunt is so miserable to play against. You are absolutely reliant on getting a trick room off in order to accomplish pretty much anything and you know what taunt stops from happening? Trick room. Not much more to be said. Rely on Hatterene and hope they don't know how to work a keyboard and mouse.

Honestly everything else is winnable. You don’t love other really slow threats like melmetal but trick room is so fringe that pretty much no-one is prepared with -speed pokemon.

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Replays:

Replays

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2352568053-6cgelp8lkp1phqnxt571na774nsdl96pw?p2 (Regen p2 is pretty good)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2352572129-cn3c1uyjfeer1acwuv59cwr37la822hpw?p2 (Amph putting in work)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2352575208-prs3v2qn9c0oyppwqw9b7fklxq42k0spw (Legit what every second game was)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2352600229-wsk13vym5ha2v45alw4wqd70ww456s5pw (I'm not joking Ursa just keeps sweeping)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2353552309-bwk5wau29p99e8b648xeuld1almaajopw (No seriously though)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2352606300-xregdmpw1e5lpdvkkf4h4l28jhupn2vpw?p2 (Average MDiancie User)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2353553567-h53yln4p8h6poliddt7nlyoybemhy3fpw?p2 (My favourite game with this team, just watch it)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9nationaldex-2345681114-0v1hygnlmgijvl461pydba8lj2vsfappw (If you're interested in the og squad).

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Conclusion:​

The hardest part of this month's process wasn’t actually the team itself, that was a tremendous amount of fun. It was actually getting this write up out itself. Writer's block, burnout and a real life move all coincided to severely limit my ability to get this out. I'm sure that reflects in some of my writing this month. While I genuinely love this team I feel deeply uninspired writing about it. There's only so many ways I can say "yeah this is pretty fun" and "click trick room then facade". Sorry for getting this out a few days late, expect next month to be a bit delayed as well. Things are real hectic here. Oh and watch my favourite replay from the replay section, way too many funny interactions.

As for next month, I think I need a real challenge. Mega Ampharos is a bit too viable and I have a lot to atone for after the pex month so we're officially exploring Wo Chien's spot in the meta game!

Thanks for reading,
Moon Jelly​

 

[DaRotomMachine]

Anchor9