Im surprised you didn't include Pursuit for the possibility of trapping Deoxys, but to be fair it'd be hard to give up a slot.
Also Stealth Rock, because... Stealth Rock
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Ubers UU National Dex Ubers UU [SURVEY @ 106]
- Thread starter Zrp200
- Start date
Also Stealth Rock, because... Stealth Rock
(click link below!!!)
some NDUUBERS teams i used in NDAMPL (+1 gg team)
I don't really have any new takes or ideas other than arceus-poison and pheromosa are 1 and 2 + webs are still cheap.
some NDUUBERS teams i used in NDAMPL (+1 gg team)
I don't really have any new takes or ideas other than arceus-poison and pheromosa are 1 and 2 + webs are still cheap.
Gm. As the resident 6-1er of NDAMPL's 35 Pokes I would also like to share some UUbers teams and concepts that I built and refined over the course of this PL in my free time.
Note: for mobile convenience, all of these tables below will be in screenshots.
Pokemon of Myth Offense
The team I built for Celeste in W3 vs Xurkiyee, and probably my favorite new invention of the entire tour. Xurk had been bringing lots of dishonest offenses with some occasional dips into the BO/Balance cores that were also commonplace in the meta, so an offense killer team that beat the most common forms while also accommodating for potential anti-offense builds such as webs and hard spikes balance did just the trick.
The 6 above form a very nice aggressive core with hyper minmaxed defensive utility stretched across each of its members, thus minimizing overlap in the builder and thus allowing for more MU flexibility. Scarf Palkia is something I've thought of before for its incredible anti-meta properties into teams overreliant on common scarfers such as G-Darm and Urshifu, but its efficiency at tearing through balance on par with its Origin counterpart ultimately sold me into building around it. I originally went with Dual Hazards on Diancie, but Encore was a really nice tech that took advantage of mistimed status and utility moves that it would often pivot into quite well while also blocking any attempts at Skill Swap Ribombee to negate Magic Bounce on lead. Finally, Dialga was a tremendous secondary rocker and Arc check that also provided great offensive utility with a Shuca Berry set reminscient of the ORAS days, allowing it to check more offensive threats in a vacuum with opposing offense.
The game itself also ran pretty smoothly for the most part, with Shuca Dialga having a good matchup into Magearna + Lando-T and Celeste also nicely dodging the Tera Ghost Gouging Fire with good play from Palkia's Trick and Diancie's Encore.
Firepon + Paradox Sun
I built this team for veti's W4 game vs Shadow0709, Shadow's scout showed a lot of traditional HO style teams in the previous 3 weeks with some occasional dips into stall archetypes based on their games in other tiers.
Veti sent me a screenshot of builder concepts she didn't end up finalizing for UUbers PL, which among them was a Sub 3a Walking Wake which caught my eye in particular, seemingly being built in a way that took its flexibility into offense into the fullest so we ultimately landed on that. I also noticed that many of Shadow's previous teams were either extremely linear with some form of dedicated lead + wincon Arceus + boosting sweepers, so I ended up building the rest of the team around having as many potential utility and offensive outs to these to make way for my crown jewel. Ogerpon-H is most likely if not the closest thing to a one-mon balance / stall killer, which I felt perfectly incentivised to bring here in lieu of a potential playstyle switch. That said, Shadow still ended up mixing up his team choices fairly well around this which was good. I find weather teams in general to be fundamentally flawed in Ubers with how many bad slots they tend to give away in a tier that feels all-encompassing around the narrative of 'match that pace or be able to slow the game down to match said pace', but was nonetheless fairly satisfied with the idea of taking these concepts and elevating their strengths into the meta to the fullest.
Come game time the team loaded reasonably well despite the rather unorthodox matchup and veti played around Palkia-O and Palafin correctly for the most part although I think the Healing Wish gameplan was quite mistimed with Wake not making full use of its unwallability during active Sun turns on t22, leading to an unfortunate loss. Better luck next time I hope.
BW Ubers with Hatt, Pao, and Gliscor
I helped make this team for Celeste's W4 game vs 7akakum, Sami was previously in the slot so I was originally going to prep for them, but it seems their own frustrations prior to the week led to them kicking the bucket on the teambuilder entirely so good on the incentive to sub I guess. Given I was fairly unsure on the prep play until Celeste suggested something cookie cutter with Spikes Ferrothorn - 'gg' on their terms. Got passed a draft with the original 3 to work from opening up the Uber player inside me once more.
In building the remaining 3, I wanted to pursue an offensive angle that could give the breakers enough legroom to safely play around offensive threats such as Mewtwo and Lucario they were otherwise tasked with forcing out without compromising on their ability to force progress, so I decided to allocate Spikes to Gliscor which in turn gave way to the anti offense style of play that this team functions on. Scarf Genesect isn’t anything particularly new, but I feel it works exceptionally well here due to its nifty offensive resists combined with coverage and fast U-turn that was able to wear down defensive targets quite quickly in conjunction with Spikes. Mirroring the style of team seen in BW Ubers. Then I added Hatterene to control the hazard game, taking a very good set from SV Ubers that gave it the necessary longevity it needed to function long-term without compromising on offensive presence.
Celeste went into the game with a slightly altered version that dropped setup Ferrothorn and had Mega Lucario > Genesect, which worked fairly well with the more immediate power and stronger priority giving it an edge into the Steelceus balance bring. Ultimately the game came down to whoever had the hazard advantage and / or could execute their offensive gameplan before the former was fully in effect, in which Celeste pulled through after neutralising the offensive Lando with fast Toxic Gliscor, securing the dub after Arc successfully setup and swept.
Double Ground BO
Came back a little late to bring home the finals ring but I helped build this team for Veti's game vs Xurkiyee. Was originally going to suggest reusing offense but Veti felt that Ting-Lu builds were the way to go for a game as important as finals due to their builder consistency and flexibility, which worked well into Xurkiyee's team choices given the necessary outplay angle they provided.
Upon preview the team matchup looked to be fairly even as expected, with it mostly boiling down to play and how well certain opportunities could be limited where they’d otherwise equate to significant progress. Given there was still some relative turbulence when veti allowed Lando-I to come in freely, but this was soon made up for with DD Poisonceus going full yolo mode and managing to hit all of its Gunk Shots, leading to a tense win. I think Xurk did well regardless to keep the game close, although Tera on Ferrothorn into SD Scizor was probably not the ideal angle in retrospect given its use case in other areas.
And that’s it! Always had fun building despite being relegated to other tiers, special thanks to Celeste and veti for trusting me with these builds in particular. Cya around in Seasonal and when the next innovation arrives.
Note: for mobile convenience, all of these tables below will be in screenshots.
Pokemon of Myth Offense
The team I built for Celeste in W3 vs Xurkiyee, and probably my favorite new invention of the entire tour. Xurk had been bringing lots of dishonest offenses with some occasional dips into the BO/Balance cores that were also commonplace in the meta, so an offense killer team that beat the most common forms while also accommodating for potential anti-offense builds such as webs and hard spikes balance did just the trick.
The 6 above form a very nice aggressive core with hyper minmaxed defensive utility stretched across each of its members, thus minimizing overlap in the builder and thus allowing for more MU flexibility. Scarf Palkia is something I've thought of before for its incredible anti-meta properties into teams overreliant on common scarfers such as G-Darm and Urshifu, but its efficiency at tearing through balance on par with its Origin counterpart ultimately sold me into building around it. I originally went with Dual Hazards on Diancie, but Encore was a really nice tech that took advantage of mistimed status and utility moves that it would often pivot into quite well while also blocking any attempts at Skill Swap Ribombee to negate Magic Bounce on lead. Finally, Dialga was a tremendous secondary rocker and Arc check that also provided great offensive utility with a Shuca Berry set reminscient of the ORAS days, allowing it to check more offensive threats in a vacuum with opposing offense.
The game itself also ran pretty smoothly for the most part, with Shuca Dialga having a good matchup into Magearna + Lando-T and Celeste also nicely dodging the Tera Ghost Gouging Fire with good play from Palkia's Trick and Diancie's Encore.
Firepon + Paradox Sun
I built this team for veti's W4 game vs Shadow0709, Shadow's scout showed a lot of traditional HO style teams in the previous 3 weeks with some occasional dips into stall archetypes based on their games in other tiers.
Veti sent me a screenshot of builder concepts she didn't end up finalizing for UUbers PL, which among them was a Sub 3a Walking Wake which caught my eye in particular, seemingly being built in a way that took its flexibility into offense into the fullest so we ultimately landed on that. I also noticed that many of Shadow's previous teams were either extremely linear with some form of dedicated lead + wincon Arceus + boosting sweepers, so I ended up building the rest of the team around having as many potential utility and offensive outs to these to make way for my crown jewel. Ogerpon-H is most likely if not the closest thing to a one-mon balance / stall killer, which I felt perfectly incentivised to bring here in lieu of a potential playstyle switch. That said, Shadow still ended up mixing up his team choices fairly well around this which was good. I find weather teams in general to be fundamentally flawed in Ubers with how many bad slots they tend to give away in a tier that feels all-encompassing around the narrative of 'match that pace or be able to slow the game down to match said pace', but was nonetheless fairly satisfied with the idea of taking these concepts and elevating their strengths into the meta to the fullest.
Come game time the team loaded reasonably well despite the rather unorthodox matchup and veti played around Palkia-O and Palafin correctly for the most part although I think the Healing Wish gameplan was quite mistimed with Wake not making full use of its unwallability during active Sun turns on t22, leading to an unfortunate loss. Better luck next time I hope.
BW Ubers with Hatt, Pao, and Gliscor
I helped make this team for Celeste's W4 game vs 7akakum, Sami was previously in the slot so I was originally going to prep for them, but it seems their own frustrations prior to the week led to them kicking the bucket on the teambuilder entirely so good on the incentive to sub I guess. Given I was fairly unsure on the prep play until Celeste suggested something cookie cutter with Spikes Ferrothorn - 'gg' on their terms. Got passed a draft with the original 3 to work from opening up the Uber player inside me once more.
In building the remaining 3, I wanted to pursue an offensive angle that could give the breakers enough legroom to safely play around offensive threats such as Mewtwo and Lucario they were otherwise tasked with forcing out without compromising on their ability to force progress, so I decided to allocate Spikes to Gliscor which in turn gave way to the anti offense style of play that this team functions on. Scarf Genesect isn’t anything particularly new, but I feel it works exceptionally well here due to its nifty offensive resists combined with coverage and fast U-turn that was able to wear down defensive targets quite quickly in conjunction with Spikes. Mirroring the style of team seen in BW Ubers. Then I added Hatterene to control the hazard game, taking a very good set from SV Ubers that gave it the necessary longevity it needed to function long-term without compromising on offensive presence.
Celeste went into the game with a slightly altered version that dropped setup Ferrothorn and had Mega Lucario > Genesect, which worked fairly well with the more immediate power and stronger priority giving it an edge into the Steelceus balance bring. Ultimately the game came down to whoever had the hazard advantage and / or could execute their offensive gameplan before the former was fully in effect, in which Celeste pulled through after neutralising the offensive Lando with fast Toxic Gliscor, securing the dub after Arc successfully setup and swept.
Double Ground BO
Came back a little late to bring home the finals ring but I helped build this team for Veti's game vs Xurkiyee. Was originally going to suggest reusing offense but Veti felt that Ting-Lu builds were the way to go for a game as important as finals due to their builder consistency and flexibility, which worked well into Xurkiyee's team choices given the necessary outplay angle they provided.
Upon preview the team matchup looked to be fairly even as expected, with it mostly boiling down to play and how well certain opportunities could be limited where they’d otherwise equate to significant progress. Given there was still some relative turbulence when veti allowed Lando-I to come in freely, but this was soon made up for with DD Poisonceus going full yolo mode and managing to hit all of its Gunk Shots, leading to a tense win. I think Xurk did well regardless to keep the game close, although Tera on Ferrothorn into SD Scizor was probably not the ideal angle in retrospect given its use case in other areas.
I think the tier is in a very interesting spot right now where concepts directly taken from past generations of Ubers are able to encourage positive developments due to the mutual concepts that surrounds Ubers as a whole in both pacing and tempo control, as seen with the prominence of DPP and BW style hazard stack teams with an emphasis on bulky wincon spam and phasing as well as the rise of Dialga. Offense is king but I think a lot of the teams I've seen continue to see fundamental flaws in ways that can be easily exploited by well prepared bulkier archetypes.
I'd also say Lando-T and Chien-Pao have both settled in pretty nicely as #1 and #2 glue mons of the tier respectively. Granted Pao is a little warping at times but I moreso see it as a Volcarona type mon in that its more threatening on paper but manageable in practice due how much hazards and the pacing of the tier restricts it.
I'd also say Lando-T and Chien-Pao have both settled in pretty nicely as #1 and #2 glue mons of the tier respectively. Granted Pao is a little warping at times but I moreso see it as a Volcarona type mon in that its more threatening on paper but manageable in practice due how much hazards and the pacing of the tier restricts it.
And that’s it! Always had fun building despite being relegated to other tiers, special thanks to Celeste and veti for trusting me with these builds in particular. Cya around in Seasonal and when the next innovation arrives.
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A bit late, but I wanted to thank everyone who made this spotlight ladder possible!
We got a total of 4691 games over the course of August, which is really good! For reference, we had only 380 games last December....
It is a deep regret of mine to have gone the whole month without supplying a single sample team for use.
This occurred largely due to a very inefficient sample approval process; as such, I'm changing the processes we use to determine samples to ensure we get them out much more timely in the future.
As of the time of this posting, we have nine up now, but we are still tweaking teams, so that number may be subject to change as we continue to discuss them!
There's a lot of shifts here, and there were stark differences on rankings for certain Pokemon that probably needed to be discussed a bit more.
Ultimately, we were underrating a lot of Pokemon that deserved more attention.
I'll only comment on a few of them that I feel particularly strongly about, but you can find a list of the full shifts in that link. Some other council members may make their own statements on shifts and the meta at large.
As an additional note, we did not make a VR for the last cycle, so shifts are in relation to two cycles ago, which funnily enough was very similar to the current cycle outside of lacking Chien Pao and Ditto.
It outspeeds everything short of Pheromosa and the uncommon Iron Bundle, and odds are that one of its sets can easily fit onto virtually any team with basically zero opportunity cost.
Its bulk is deceptively solid, and it has sets to break basically any wall in the tier (Fightinium Z/Darkinium Z/Choice Band) or to completely goob Sticky Web teams (HDB).
I was originally worried this would be broken, but it hasn't seemed to be from my experience. Non-HDB sets absolutely loathe hazards—which are quite plentiful currently—while HDB sets lack power even after boosting.
It's undeniably extremely good, all things considered.
Landorus-T continues to be an incredible glue on teams. It sets hazards, it pivots, it knocks, and it's a rare viable Defog user if needed.
This tier is basically its playground; basically any set of Landorus-T can be experimented with and will find some sort of viability somewhere, even if just out of the novelty factor.
Arceus-Steel isn't a bad mon by any means: the ability to run a mono-Judgment Calm Mind set is incredibly powerful, but ultimately its coverage is somewhat underwhelming, and its Steel typing tends to be redundant when running other Steels like Magearna.
Arceus-Poison's typing synergizes well with popular metagame picks; notabaly, resisting rather than being folded by the casual Close Combat lets it exploit non-Drill Run Pheromosa. It's also a much better physical wallbreaker due to having better STAB moves. Even just running Gunk Shot without setup can break Alomomola with minor chip or a poison proc and either OHKO or nearly OHKO frail sweepers like Chien Pao.
Pheromosa has cemented itself as a premier Speed control and wallbreaker in the tier. In fact, it was the second most used Pokemon on the ladder!
Its absurd Speed lets it easily outspeed virtually everything—including Chien Pao, Deoxys, and even Choice Scarf Dracovish—and STAB Close Combat coming off its rather generous Attack stat lets it hit like a truck into neutral targets, especially with boosts from Choice Band, Tera, and possibly Beast Boost.
Lure sets utilizing Groundium Z to break Toxapex, Gholdengo, Arceus-Poison, and Magearna only add to its wallbreaking prowess and unpredictability.
Rapid Spin sets have also been shown to at least be usable, providing offensive teams with an emergency removal option.
Probably the only real Electric type in the tier, and it can easily find opportunities to set up against common foes like Magearna, Arceus-Steel, and Alomomola. The grounds, outside of Ting-Lu, really don't like dealing with it, making consistent counterplay that doesn't involve Tera or Reshiram deceptively hard to find.
We'd previously underrated Ting Lu to a large degree. While it can't pivot or remove hazards, its titantic bulk makes it much more consistent defensively than Landorus-T, making it much better for stacking hazards over the course of a game and racking up passive damage.
Being a solid stop to Necrozma-DW, Spectrier, and Mewtwo is also invaluable., and spending Tera on it can shift its bad matchups into Mega Lucario, Mega Mewtwo X, and Pheromosa into strictly positive ones.
Feels like the second coming of Arceus-Dragon, minus a bunch of power and versatility. This is the better Dragon Dancer of the Fire/Dragons due to its access to Earthquake (Reshiram sobbing in the corner over this) and an item slot (unlike, say, Mega Charizard X).
It is very difficult to build bulkier teams without also running Alomomola. In fact, all my personal teams that aren't HO appear to include it.
It pivots extremely well into almost everything to enable a whole host of things that find difficulty in getting in to begin with to consistently provide offensive pressure throughout the game. It even can offset hazard damage with Wish!
These really appreciated Terapagos rising, as while they don't appreciate dealing with the Dark-types, they have way more options for dealing with these and tend to steamroll teams lacking them.
Jury's still out on whether Necrozma-DW is actually broken, or if its slowness and inability to convincingly handle Dark-types without using Tera is enough to keep it in check.
There are effectively no switch-ins to this under rain with Tera Water without resorting to Water Absorb. None.
You can revenge kill it pretty consistently, though, as Pheromosa outspeeds Choice Scarf Dracovish.
Hazard removal, while drastically better than in some other formats, is still rather hard to fit convincingly. Its wide supportive movepool and useful Fairy typing makes fitting this onto a wide variety of teams deceptively easy.
In a meta where HO is as effective as it is, Ditto is undeniably alluring. It's especially effective when matching into Pokemon like Mega Lucario, as it can always outspeed them, OHKO them, and then reverse sweep.
I personally ranked this higher, but Reshiram is the one of the most consistent hazard removers in the tier for bulkier teams. It's not only out of the fact that Turboblaze says NO to Good as Gold, but also that its solid matchup into Magearna, ND-exclusive access to Roost, strong damage output, and easy access to phazing all contribute to making playing around this a headache.
Steel and Electric resists make virtually any Reshiram a strong check to CM Arceus-Steel and Arceus-Electric, so it can get away running physically defensive sets to let it serve as a usable mixed wall; such Reshiram can even handle boosted Chien Pao comfortably, especially if it spends Tera, and smart use of Tera can let it trade effectively with boosted Mega Lucario.
The main issue with it stems from its annoying weakness to Ground, which makes it much less effective at preventing hazards from common Grounds in Landorus-Therian/Ting-Lu/Gliscor. It also doesn't appreciate dealing with Palkia-O; even it just switching into Blue Flare can quickly drain its very valuable PP, but Palkia-O can also easily break it with Spacial Rend or 2HKO it with Hydro Pump.
We got a total of 4691 games over the course of August, which is really good! For reference, we had only 380 games last December....
Survey
We're conducting a post-ladder survey looking for feedback on the tier!Council
ausma and Player350 have joined the council to replace Runo and veti!Samples
Samples have been updated! (finally)It is a deep regret of mine to have gone the whole month without supplying a single sample team for use.
This occurred largely due to a very inefficient sample approval process; as such, I'm changing the processes we use to determine samples to ensure we get them out much more timely in the future.
As of the time of this posting, we have nine up now, but we are still tweaking teams, so that number may be subject to change as we continue to discuss them!
VR Shifts
We have updated the VR! (finally)There's a lot of shifts here, and there were stark differences on rankings for certain Pokemon that probably needed to be discussed a bit more.
Ultimately, we were underrating a lot of Pokemon that deserved more attention.
I'll only comment on a few of them that I feel particularly strongly about, but you can find a list of the full shifts in that link. Some other council members may make their own statements on shifts and the meta at large.
As an additional note, we did not make a VR for the last cycle, so shifts are in relation to two cycles ago, which funnily enough was very similar to the current cycle outside of lacking Chien Pao and Ditto.
NEW→S
It outspeeds everything short of Pheromosa and the uncommon Iron Bundle, and odds are that one of its sets can easily fit onto virtually any team with basically zero opportunity cost.Its bulk is deceptively solid, and it has sets to break basically any wall in the tier (Fightinium Z/Darkinium Z/Choice Band) or to completely goob Sticky Web teams (HDB).
I was originally worried this would be broken, but it hasn't seemed to be from my experience. Non-HDB sets absolutely loathe hazards—which are quite plentiful currently—while HDB sets lack power even after boosting.
It's undeniably extremely good, all things considered.
A+→S
Landorus-T continues to be an incredible glue on teams. It sets hazards, it pivots, it knocks, and it's a rare viable Defog user if needed.This tier is basically its playground; basically any set of Landorus-T can be experimented with and will find some sort of viability somewhere, even if just out of the novelty factor.
S→A+ 
A→A+
Arceus-Steel isn't a bad mon by any means: the ability to run a mono-Judgment Calm Mind set is incredibly powerful, but ultimately its coverage is somewhat underwhelming, and its Steel typing tends to be redundant when running other Steels like Magearna.Arceus-Poison's typing synergizes well with popular metagame picks; notabaly, resisting rather than being folded by the casual Close Combat lets it exploit non-Drill Run Pheromosa. It's also a much better physical wallbreaker due to having better STAB moves. Even just running Gunk Shot without setup can break Alomomola with minor chip or a poison proc and either OHKO or nearly OHKO frail sweepers like Chien Pao.
A-→A+
Pheromosa has cemented itself as a premier Speed control and wallbreaker in the tier. In fact, it was the second most used Pokemon on the ladder!Its absurd Speed lets it easily outspeed virtually everything—including Chien Pao, Deoxys, and even Choice Scarf Dracovish—and STAB Close Combat coming off its rather generous Attack stat lets it hit like a truck into neutral targets, especially with boosts from Choice Band, Tera, and possibly Beast Boost.
Lure sets utilizing Groundium Z to break Toxapex, Gholdengo, Arceus-Poison, and Magearna only add to its wallbreaking prowess and unpredictability.
Rapid Spin sets have also been shown to at least be usable, providing offensive teams with an emergency removal option.
B+→A
Probably the only real Electric type in the tier, and it can easily find opportunities to set up against common foes like Magearna, Arceus-Steel, and Alomomola. The grounds, outside of Ting-Lu, really don't like dealing with it, making consistent counterplay that doesn't involve Tera or Reshiram deceptively hard to find.
B→A
We'd previously underrated Ting Lu to a large degree. While it can't pivot or remove hazards, its titantic bulk makes it much more consistent defensively than Landorus-T, making it much better for stacking hazards over the course of a game and racking up passive damage.Being a solid stop to Necrozma-DW, Spectrier, and Mewtwo is also invaluable., and spending Tera on it can shift its bad matchups into Mega Lucario, Mega Mewtwo X, and Pheromosa into strictly positive ones.
B→A
Feels like the second coming of Arceus-Dragon, minus a bunch of power and versatility. This is the better Dragon Dancer of the Fire/Dragons due to its access to Earthquake (Reshiram sobbing in the corner over this) and an item slot (unlike, say, Mega Charizard X).
B+→A-
It is very difficult to build bulkier teams without also running Alomomola. In fact, all my personal teams that aren't HO appear to include it.It pivots extremely well into almost everything to enable a whole host of things that find difficulty in getting in to begin with to consistently provide offensive pressure throughout the game. It even can offset hazard damage with Wish!
B→A- 
A-→A
These really appreciated Terapagos rising, as while they don't appreciate dealing with the Dark-types, they have way more options for dealing with these and tend to steamroll teams lacking them.Jury's still out on whether Necrozma-DW is actually broken, or if its slowness and inability to convincingly handle Dark-types without using Tera is enough to keep it in check.
C+→B+
There are effectively no switch-ins to this under rain with Tera Water without resorting to Water Absorb. None.You can revenge kill it pretty consistently, though, as Pheromosa outspeeds Choice Scarf Dracovish.
C+→B+
Hazard removal, while drastically better than in some other formats, is still rather hard to fit convincingly. Its wide supportive movepool and useful Fairy typing makes fitting this onto a wide variety of teams deceptively easy.
NEW→B+
In a meta where HO is as effective as it is, Ditto is undeniably alluring. It's especially effective when matching into Pokemon like Mega Lucario, as it can always outspeed them, OHKO them, and then reverse sweep.
B-→B
I personally ranked this higher, but Reshiram is the one of the most consistent hazard removers in the tier for bulkier teams. It's not only out of the fact that Turboblaze says NO to Good as Gold, but also that its solid matchup into Magearna, ND-exclusive access to Roost, strong damage output, and easy access to phazing all contribute to making playing around this a headache.Steel and Electric resists make virtually any Reshiram a strong check to CM Arceus-Steel and Arceus-Electric, so it can get away running physically defensive sets to let it serve as a usable mixed wall; such Reshiram can even handle boosted Chien Pao comfortably, especially if it spends Tera, and smart use of Tera can let it trade effectively with boosted Mega Lucario.
The main issue with it stems from its annoying weakness to Ground, which makes it much less effective at preventing hazards from common Grounds in Landorus-Therian/Ting-Lu/Gliscor. It also doesn't appreciate dealing with Palkia-O; even it just switching into Blue Flare can quickly drain its very valuable PP, but Palkia-O can also easily break it with Spacial Rend or 2HKO it with Hydro Pump.
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With Volcanion being ranked at C- this slate, I thought I would do a post on some experimental sets I have created for Volcanion as the person who nominated it.
Volcanion Example Sets:
Volcanion @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Water Absorb
Tera Type: Ground / Fairy / Poison
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Steam Eruption
- Fire Blast / Fire Spin
- Scorching Sands
- Taunt
Volcanion @ Choice Specs
Level: 100
Modest Nature
Tera Type: Fairy
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Steam Eruption
- Flamethrower
- Earth Power
- Tera Blast
Volcanion @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Water Absorb
Tera Type: Ground / Flying / Fairy
EVs: 48 Hp / 252 SpA / 208 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Steam Eruption
- Fire Blast
- Earth Power
- Defog / Tera Blast
Reasoning:
Hopefully, this post helps illuminate the reasoning behind Volcanion and encourages more experimentation with it.
Volcanion Example Sets:
Volcanion @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Water Absorb
Tera Type: Ground / Fairy / Poison
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Steam Eruption
- Fire Blast / Fire Spin
- Scorching Sands
- Taunt
Volcanion @ Choice Specs
Level: 100
Modest Nature
Tera Type: Fairy
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Steam Eruption
- Flamethrower
- Earth Power
- Tera Blast
Volcanion @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Water Absorb
Tera Type: Ground / Flying / Fairy
EVs: 48 Hp / 252 SpA / 208 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Steam Eruption
- Fire Blast
- Earth Power
- Defog / Tera Blast
Reasoning:
- Beats rain, notably blanking Dracovish and Barraskewda locked into water moves, as well as Palkio-O with Tera Fairy
- Tera Ground lets you boost Ground moves and blank Regieleki
- Helps into Chien Pao thanks to a 4x resist to ice: 252 Atk Choice Band Sword of Ruin Chien-Pao Icicle Crash vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Volcanion: 55-66 (18.2 - 21.9%) -- possible 5HKO
- For bulky offense teams, can act as an emergency Defogger, especially when running Scarf, which allows it to hit 375 speed with 208 speed investment and a positive speed nature, outspeeding even Spectrier
- Functions well into slower, bulkier balances that are unable to pressure Volcanion as hard. Specs sets employ its powerful STABS and special attack stats to click powerful moves, while its Boots set can shut down passive Pokemon with Taunt.
- Its stab moves enable it to 2hitko or OHKO a majority of the tier
- Water Absorb + Taunt or Tera allows it to completely blank Alomomola.
- Potentially trap and remove Mola with Fire Spin
- While many fire types struggle from being completely completely ruined by Waters and Ground such as Landerus-T, Waters often get blanked and Grounds cannot safely switch in
- Many otherwise safe switch-ins fear coverage or the relatively high chance of burn
Hopefully, this post helps illuminate the reasoning behind Volcanion and encourages more experimentation with it.