SS OU My Weird, Semi-Trick Room Balance Frankenteam

[Bold School]

The team started out as being more about testing concepts than anything else. Because I am me, I had to do something that wasn't like what everyone else was doing just to see what happened. In the end, I wound up with whatever this team is. Is the team itself good? Eh... The short answer is it's serviceable, but not really anything special as a whole. The team making process I used this time was a bit like ADHD the team builder. I added in a bunch of different concepts I wanted to try, dropped this for that several dozen times, and finally ended up with a team that has a lot of good individual pokemon and dual synergies, but is still sort of lacking in general direction. I hit a bit of a dead end with what I wanted to do with it.

There are two points to me posting this. First, there are several fairly original concepts in here that I want on record in case anything comes of any of it. Second, I want to see what people in the Smogon community would do to give this team a more solid direction. The meta is changing very rapidly so I wanted to post this before the Dynamax suspect ends, because that will inherently change the nature of everything again.

The Team:

Analyses:

Darmanitan-Galar @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Gorilla Tactics
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Flare Blitz
- U-turn
- Earthquake

It's the standard Scarf G-Darmanitan set. It was added for offense. I mostly use this to put pressure on my opponent or as a late game cleaner. It can also lead in some games, although it isn't Jolly. My reasoning for this is I find the extra power from Adamant seems to help secure certain KOs in only one or two hits. Otherwise, Scarf still let's it outspeed most things that are important. When facing Ditto or opposing G-Darmanitan, I don't go head to head unless it is Dynamaxed (and therefore guaranteed to be slower than me) or locked into a move besides Flare Blitz.

In Dynamax form, I find the weather control of being able to set Hail or Sun can be very helpful against Rain or Sand teams if you can get it off.

Machamp-Gmax @ Life Orb
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 Def
Adamant Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Dynamic Punch
- Knock Off
- Stone Edge
- Poison Jab

This is primarily used as the sole Trick Room abuser on the team. There are some games where I will switch things up and lead with this thing, especially if I think lead Excadrill is coming out. Life Orb is used to deal more damage. With Dynamic Punch and Knock Off, it is just very good at punching holes in the opposing team and causing general disruption. Machamp also has excellent coverage options. Stone Edge hits most flying, bug, and fire types hard. Poison Jab is for fairies, which is 100% necessary on a set with Dynamic Punch and Knock Off. While it can carry Ice Punch or Thunder Punch, Stone Edge hits most things harder and the increased crit rate is great. Earthquake is another option to hit poison types. However, there isn't really room on the set for it.

In Gigantimax Form, Machamp can use Max-Chi Strike to boost its crit rate for Stone Edge after it reverts, although this rarely has a chance to actually happen in game. In an emergency, Max Rockfall can be used to start a Sandstorm to stop rain abusers.

Oranguru @ Leftovers
Ability: Inner Focus
EVs: 252 Def / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Yawn
- Foul Play
- Future Sight

The Trick Room setter. I chose Oranguru because it was one of the only normal types with Trick Room available. The normal typing was important for the immunity to ghost attacks with ghosts like Dragapult running around in everyone's teams. The psychic typing gives it a much appreciated psychic resistance, which is 110% necessary with two poison types on my team. When I tested Indeedee on another account, it was just lacking. Oranguru has much better defensive stats, and therefore better survivability as a support pokemon and pivot. Leftovers adds some sustainability to this. The stat spread is just so I can have natural HP, Special Defense, and Defense all at or near 300ish for an all around defender. It's actually around 320 for Defense and HP and 284 for Special Defense. In this physical heavy meta, I would rather have a mixed defender to take special attacks than a focused special wall.

For moves, Trick Room was meant to be anti-meta. There are a lot of speed buffing stat boost builds, Choice Scarf builds, weather speed boosts, and naturally fast pokemon like Dragapult. Trick Room can flip those speed boosting strategies on their head for a bit. This is why I tested several semi-Trick Room concepts before arriving at this current team. Against teams with a lot of really slow pokemon, I often forgo using it.

Foul Play was added primarily because the meta is very physical right now. A lot of these stat boosting sets were physical, especially early on. Foul Play can punish this against a lot of pokemon, especially under Trick Room. It also hits ghost types hard, which is an important follow up to the ghost immunity. Another added bonus for Foul Play is that it will often do more damage than moves from an offensively uninvested Oranguru.

Yawn was put on this set because it was one of the few things that can sort of counter Dynamax. Once yawn hits, it either forces the Dynamax pokemon to swap or to stay in and fall asleep. Either way, a potential sweep is cut short. The same can be done with other stat boosting builds, so long as they don't hide behind a sub. In general, Yawn forces a lot of swaps. This is helpful with pushing out opposing pokemon I don't want to deal with right then bringing in Machamp more cleanly under Trick Room. Just be wary of Fairy and Electric Terrain.

Future Sight is a move that was added because it really helped screw with my opponent. First of all, there are a number of Substitute builds going around. Future Sight will typically attack the Substitute pokemon at some point in the next few turns against most non-dark types, making them much easier to deal with. It also eases prediction. The psychic typing of Future Sight often encourages dark and sometimes steel pokemon to come in. Predicting this makes countering them easier, especially because my Trick Room abuser is the fighting type Machamp. At the same time, Future Sight discourages my opponent from playing poison types like Gengar, Toxapex, Toxtricity and G-Weezing. The same can be said of fighting types like Hawlucha, Conkeldurr, Kommo-o, and Falinks. The right way to use this move is to think a few moves in advance like the name implies.

Gengar @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Cursed Body
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Sludge Wave
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast

Gengar is my fast special attacker. It has Scarf to deal with most lead Dragapult and Choice Scarf G-Darm builds. It has a Modest nature because the scarf build is honestly lacking a bit in raw power. I can get away with it in most cases, so I trade a bit of speed for much needed damage. Shadow Ball and Sludge Wave are the main STABs. Thunderbolt hits most water types hard and is good against rain teams. It also helps me hit Corvinight, which can otherwise be a bit problematic for some of my other team members. Focus Blast was primarily to hit Rock and Steel types and to 1HKO G-Darm on the first turn. It can also hit normal and dark types. The accuracy for Focus Miss is a bit sketchy, but it does tend to hit on the first attack more often than it misses.

Dracovish @ Life Orb
Ability: Strong Jaw
Happiness: 160
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fishious Rend
- Crunch
- Psychic Fangs
- Dragon Rush

The water nuke itself. The irony is I added this primarily because I was having trouble checking opposing Dracovish. The water/dragon typing actually makes this a better check for Vicious Fishious Rend than most defensive options due to the double resistance to water moves. I run Jolly to get as much speed as I can without Choice Scarf. I went with a Life Orb set because I wanted damage and the ability to switch moves. I legitimately struggle to understand why some people run Choice Band on this thing when Life Orb gives plenty of damage for a wall breaker set, especially combined with that Strong Jaw ability. Strong Jaw boosts the first 3 moves of my set, which is pretty outrageous. The main thing it can't deal with is Ferrothorn, which is why it often has to rely on the team to take that out before it can be effective.

Fishious Rend kills anything that doesn't resist it. And the ability to switch from that move to something else and ice versa is invaluable when punching holes through the enemy team. Psychic Fangs is for poison types, mostly Toxapex. It also does a lot of neutral damage to those that resist Fishious Rend. Crunch hits Jellicent and almost anything that somehow resists both Psychic Fangs and Fishious Rend at the same time. Dragon Rush is to hit opposing dragons, especially Dracovish. So you switch into Fishious Rend and then try to 1HKO it with Dragon Rush.

When Dracovish can be brought in cleanly, it usually put a ton of pressure on the opposing team. Defensively, it can be really great to bring in on opposing Water and Fire type moves. Switching in against opposing fire type pokemon usually puts the opponent in a bad spot. In addition to being a pseudo-counter for itself, it can also be brought in to take Flare Blitz from G-Darm. So either on the predicted Flare Blitz or after it is locked in, Dracovish can usually come in cleanly and put pressure. This luxury allows me to rely less on speed ties with my own G-Darm.

Weezing-Galar @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
Happiness: 160
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Aromatherapy
- Toxic Spikes
- Strange Steam

My physical wall and primary support. While each of the other pokemon on my team are good individually, the team as a whole lacked some things. Namely, hazard support and a way to deal with the ever present status spam. I made the stat focus physically defensive because that the meta is very physical right now and that is the strength of Weezing anyway. While the fairy typing makes checking steel types nearly impossible, the dragon immunity really helps round out a weakness if my team. Hydreigon in particular was problematic. For an ability, I find Levitate helps me more when checking physical attackers, since Earthquake is very common. Neutralizing Gas is still a consideration if it turns out I need it more.

Before adding this, I cannot tell you how many games I lost because of burn crippling my physical attackers or especially Thunder Wave hax activating on the first turn for an entire week. That's what Aromatherapy is for. Defog is to clear hazards. Toxic Spikes is just so that I had some sort of hazard myself, since I was having trouble fitting room for it. Although, it might not be entirely optimal. The problem is I didn't have a decent way to put rocks on this team.

Strange Steam is an excellent move for this team. It hits dark types, dragons, and squishies hard. The confusion chance further messes with a lot of physical attackers that this physical wall switches into.

 

[Bold School]

While I'm using my one bump on a team no one cares about, I suppose I might as well mention something about the previous semi-Trick Room version of the team. It had two setters and two abusers in Copperajah and Runerigus. Runerigus was also my rocker. The biggest problem was Runerigus is terrible in this meta.

 

[chimp]

Is there any particular reason why you are using Gigantamax Machamp? You even said it yourself, Machamp's G-Max move hardly comes into effect. Since Gigantmax's only benefit over regular Dynamaxing is the G-moves, it would behoove you to just use dynamax Machamp. Max Knuckle is one of the best Max Moves available, and the potential snowballing effects of multiple Attack boosts seems way more effective than a boost Crit Rate for an unstabbed 70% accuracy move.

Thats the only thing I particularly have to say at the moment, sorry! It is definitely a hodge-podge of a team, which isn't *necessarily* a bad thing, though I'm unsure that playstyle fits Trick Room better than it, say, rain or something. Going max speed investment on Dracovish is interesting because how 'vish should be played is changed up depending on whether or not its under Trick Room. The most fearsome aspect of Dracovish is its ability to pressure slow builds, but under Trick Room it no longer can do that, since things like Ferrothorn and Toxapex will avoid the Fishious Rend boost. Instead, under TR it puts pressure on Pokemon that are generally faster than it. Its a bit of a non-committal strategy as far as Dracovish goes, but I suppose it can work out. Have you considered scarf/specs Dragapult over Gengar? It would help you out a bit against opposing Dracovish, which is something you cited as a weakness, and it can run U-turn to help bring Oranguru in.

 

[Bold School]

Is there any particular reason why you are using Gigantamax Machamp? You even said it yourself, Machamp's G-Max move hardly comes into effect. Since Gigantmax's only benefit over regular Dynamaxing is the G-moves, it would behoove you to just use dynamax Machamp. Max Knuckle is one of the best Max Moves available, and the potential snowballing effects of multiple Attack boosts seems way more effective than a boost Crit Rate for an unstabbed 70% accuracy move.

This is an interesting point. I originally wanted to use the special Machamp Gigantimax form. The idea was that only one Max Chi Strike was needed to boost the Crit Rate of Stone Edge (which by the way is 80% accuracy and a guaranteed hit with No Guard) and a crit would bypass boosted defenses. But you are probably right that straight up attack buffing would be better. Of course, this will likely be moot soon anyway when they ban Dynamax.

Going max speed investment on Dracovish is interesting because how 'vish should be played is changed up depending on whether or not its under Trick Room. The most fearsome aspect of Dracovish is its ability to pressure slow builds, but under Trick Room it no longer can do that, since things like Ferrothorn and Toxapex will avoid the Fishious Rend boost. Instead, under TR it puts pressure on Pokemon that are generally faster than it. Its a bit of a non-committal strategy as far as Dracovish goes, but I suppose it can work out.

This is a semi-Trick Room team, which was primary designed to support Machamp and as a sort of counterplay to all the Choice Scarf and Speed Buff builds (Also Max Airstream) running around. It's not easy to consistently set up Trick Room with only one setter so I just treat most of the rest of the team like a normal team. On the previous version where I had two Trick Room setters and abusers, it could have made more sense to make Dracovish slow.

The other reason is that Dracovish is primarily a wall breaker here. So it's better if it can outspeed them to take advantage of Fishious Rend. A lot of the walls like G-Corsola and Hatterene are really slow and would likely outspeed Dracovish under Trick Room anyway.

Have you considered scarf/specs Dragapult over Gengar? It would help you out a bit against opposing Dracovish, which is something you cited as a weakness, and it can run U-turn to help bring Oranguru in.

Nearly everyone is running Dragapult so there are a lot of counters out there. Beyond that, I find Dragapult's offensive power sort of underwhelming, particularly for a special attacker. There are also a lot of Choice Scarf builds running around that can outspeed and 1 hit most Dragapult builds. This includes G-Darm, Gengar, and Hydreigon. So you have to run Choice Scarf if you want to still outspeed them. But then you sacrifice power to do that. I would sooner run a more powerful special attacker like Gengar or Hydreigon as a scarfer than run a weaker Choice Scarf Dragapult or run a more powerful Dragapult that loses to other prominent scarfers.

The other problem is team composition. If I add another dragon type, well that is two on my team for a double dragon weakness and a triple fairy weakness due to Machamp. I don't want half my team weak to fairy. Gengar counters most fairy types.

As far as countering Dracovish goes, I do ok with my own Dracovish because it has a double resist to water type moves. There aren't many pokemon that can switch into Fishious Rend. Dracovish can and it gives me a potent wall breaker to do it. Dragapult has only a single water resist and poor defenses. I could be wrong, but I really don't think Dragapult would survive Fishious Rend. It might be able to revenge kill Dracovish. But most of the attackers on my team could already do that in many cases.