Project OM Matchmaking - On Hiatus Until gen 9

[The Dragon Master]

(art by Chloe)​

OM Matchmaking
Hello everyone, and welcome to OM Matchmaking, a project designed to pick the best partner for a Pokemon! Every week I or UT will post a Pokemon, and you will need to post a partner with a short description of how the two form the perfect match!

How this works:
Each week, one of us will submit a Pokemon and set, and people will have about a week to submit their best partner to the sample set, with a short explanation on why the two form a good core. After the submission period, we will choose the top 3 submissions and they will be archived in the Hall of Fame. This project will rotate weekly between Almost Any Ability, Balanced Hackmons, and STABmons each cycle!

Rules:

• When you reserve a Pokémon, please state what set you are reserving
• Reservations expire 24 hours after they're posted. If you do not post in that time frame, someone else may take it.
• An explanation is mandatory. It doesn't need to be very long—two or three concise sentences should suffice—but make sure it's there.
• You may nominate a different set for a Pokémon that has already been submitted. However, it's important that the set is distinct from the other submission—Submissions where the only difference is something simple like 1 move or an EV spread unless the change substantially alters how the core functions, will not be accepted
• A little theorymonning is inevitable in a project like this, but please try to post based on your experience using and/or facing the Pokémon in question rather than just listing something you have no experience using and/or facing.
• It's completely fine (encouraged, in fact) to give feedback on other people's submissions, but please be nice!

Posting Tips
I recommend using the following format when posting:

Example Submission

Mix and Mega: Manectite Magearna

Slowbro @ Sablenite
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Psychic
- Slack Off
- Calm Mind
Calm Mind Sablenite Slowbro is an excellent partner for Magearna due to its Water typing allowing it to take on Ground-, Steel-, and Fire-type Pokemon that annoy Magearna, such as Arcanine, Necrozma-Dusk-Mane, and Hippowdon, that would otherwise annoy Magearna. Many of these pokemon can take advantage of Magearna to set Stealth Rocks, which Slowbro can reflect with Magic Bounce. In exchange, Magearna can absorb Dark-type attacks, and the attack drop from intimidate can give Slowbro a useful edge in checking and setting up on many of the metagame's more troublesome physical attackers. Magearna can also serve to counteract the fact that Slowbro is something of a momentum sink due to its access to Volt Switch. However, some Fire-type Pokemon such as Volcarona, Rotom-H, and Chandelure have secondary STAB moves that allow them to hit both Slowbro and Magearna super effectively, so pairing them with partners such as Blissey or Rhyperior can be handy to cover that weakness.

No specific types of detail are mandatory, but things that are worth considering when writing your explanation include:

• How the Pokémon listed is useful to the nominated partner and vice versa
• Why the set listed is chosen over other variants, if applicable
• Strengths and/or weaknesses of the core in question
• Potential threats to the core mentioned
• Potential options for additional partners when using the core
• Replays that show off the core in full force

 

[The Dragon Master]

Hall of Fame​

Old

Almost Any Ability:

Hide

Winners: Atha, Quantum Tesseract, OM
Winners: drampa's grandpa, Atha, OM
Winners: Quantum Tesseract Atha The Number Man
Winners: Flaming Deoxys Thinkerino Quantum Tesseract
Winners: Quantum Tesseract In The Hills Thinkerino Chazm
Winners: Flaming Deoxys The Number Man Atha
Winners: OM Thinkerino In The Hills
Winners: drampa's grandpa The Number Man Thinkerino
Winners: Thinkerino Atha LBDC

Balanced Hackmons:

Hide

Winners: a loser, anaconja, lph, In The Hills
Winners: cityscapes, lph, Flaming Deoxys
Winners: Apathetic Inaction a loser cityscapes
Winners: a loser cityscapes Flaming Deoxys
Winners: a loser willdbeast lph
Winners: a loser XxSevagxX lph
Winners: lph Lunatic Hai SuperSkylake
Winners: SuperSkylake a loser willdbeast Mordecai & Rigby

Rotating Metas (Camomons/Mix and Mega/STABmons)

Hide

Camomons:

Hide

Winners: : The Number Man Chazm a loser

Mix and Mega:

Hide

Winners: Andyboy Quantum Tesseract Redflix
Winners: drampa's grandpa Flaming Deoxys abriel gabram Gmansour20
Winners: Andyboy Chazm drampa's grandpa
Winners: Chazm parr0t Quantum Tesseract

Almost Any Ability:

Hide

Winners: drampa's grandpa Think UT
Winners:The Number Man UT avyrie astralydia
Winners: iapt The Number Man UT Isaiah
Winners: iapt beauts Sylveon.
Winners: iapt beauts avyrie Reece
Winners: DuckeryDoodle iapt

Balanced Hackmons

Hide

Winners: XxSevagxX Quantum Tesseract a loser
Winners: Onyx Onix 7 UT a loser
Winners: XxSevagxX a loser
Winners: cityscapes DuGuo MAMP
Winners: Tea Guzzler willdbeast Darkrai Retribution
Winners: Tea Guzzler ItsChew. a loser XxSevagxX

Mix and Mega

Hide

Winners: beauts iapt iapt
Winners: :@TectonicDestroyer iapt Aggrometaile in the hills

STABmons

Hide

Winners: Dr. Phd. BJ The Dragon Master
Winners: Dr. Phd. BJ Fissure The Dragon Master
Winners: drampa's grandpa The Dragon Master OM
Winners: in the hills drampa's grandpa hidden
Winners: in the hills drampa's grandpa
Winners: drampa's grandpa in the hills

 

[The Dragon Master]

Core Archive​

DLC1 Archive

Almost Any Ability:

Hide

+
+
+
+
+
+

Balanced Hackmons:

Hide

+
+
+
+

Mix and Mega:

Hide

+
+
+
+
+
+
+

Almost Any Ability:

Hide

+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

Balanced Hackmons:

Hide

+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+

Camomons:

Hide

+
+
+

Mix and Mega:

Hide

+
+
+
+
+
+

STABmons

Hide

none yet

 

[in the hills]

Week 1: Choice Specs Noivern (Almost Any Ability)

Noivern @ Choice Specs
Ability: Aerilate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Boomburst
- U-turn
- Switcheroo
- Flamethrower​

You have until 9/18 to come up with the best partner for Noivern. Guidelines on how to post can be found in the OP. Reminder that reservations are allowed but please finish them within 24 hours.

 

[The Number Man]

Choice Specs Noivern (Almost Any Ability)

Hippowdon @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Wandering Spirit
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Slack Off
- Whirlwind

The reason I picked Wandering Spirit (WS from now on) Helmet Hippo is because it punishes most common forms of Noivern counterplay that cannot be taken care of by Switcheroo. The best Noivern counters are those that can switch in and pivot out, preserving momentum - Flying resistant Regenvesters, Regen Corviknight and post dlc Regen Chansey/Blissey as well.
A pivot with Wandering spirit acts as great counterplay to this strategy, as it comes in on a U-turn, chips with helmet and takes away their Regenerator, meaning that they should be in range of a 2hko after rocks on the next switchin. This lets your Noivern actually make meaningful progress against the opponent, as well as forcing 50/50 decisions after WS is revealed - is the opponent going to uturn, knowing that they could be punished by WS + Helmet, are they gonna attack, or are they gonna double switch? This gives the Noivern user another opportunity to outplay if they didn't uturn on the switch. While this doesn't meaningfully punish Regen blobs, those are more substantially crippled by Switcheroo than the less passive regenvesters/regen corviknight, so I would say Noivern has the tools to make progress vs those by default.
The reason I picked Hippo over anything else (Corviknight, for example) is that as a ground type, it arguably matches up better vs Electric Silvally and it importantly has reliable recovery in Slack off. WS also helps you shut down physically oriented Poison Healers, such as Lax, which is an example of a pokemon that can check Noivern and helps with checking physically oriented Triage as well. This core struggles substantially with Weavile, since both are weak to it, so you definitely need something that can take that on such as Pex, Primarina, Dauntless Corvi etc.

 

[Atha]

Marowak-Alola @ Thick Club
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Fire Punch
- Toxic
- Shadow Bone

Noivern is well known in AAA for forcing slow SpDef walls to come in, even if you know it will most likely U-Turn, because due to how broken this move is you can't possibly lose momentum when clicking it. Well if it U-Turns on your Spdef wall incomes Marowak-A, a.k.a. the Destroyer. It's faster than Corviknight and Blissey/Chansey, and doesn't care about AV Silvally or Jirachi despite being slower, and all these the best Noivern switch-ins. It ohkoes everything that's not a physical wall, and 2hkoes most physical walls. The only things that are not 2hkoed are Dauntless Shield Hippowdon and Kommo-O, Tyranitar and Primordial Sea Mandibuzz, which are all 2hkoed in case of hazards or Toxic.

With the Noivern + Maro-A core you can't possibly go wrong because Marowak will always force progress in a way that should not be shown to sensitive souls.
See : https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1170039768-vi8lp9o3jkakuhjf43ozlqux5nmh9k7pw (I lost to a Bite flinch which was pretty sad ("Bite" means "cock" in french, making it even more embarrassing)).
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8almostanyability-1168708315-8x2nn5ntfv4zizwm5c3tlrvetrx8jnepw Long game but the core puts great work at the end

 

[Eli]

reserving magnet pull conkeldurr.

Conkeldurr @ Choice Band
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Mach Punch
- Close Combat
- Knock Off
- Earthquake

so noivern doesnt like steels for the most part, and magpull conk can trap and smack a lot of the slower bulky ones with band cc or eq, if its something like jirachi, and it also can come in on things like weavile and mach punch for noivern if it doesnt switch. conk can struggle with like skarm but it doesnt like boomburst with the not so great special bulk, so noivern can deal with it. trapping things like rachi and silvally steel is great because noivern cant do too much do them on its own. noivern also hits high physdef mons for conk like slowbro, and can switcheroo specs to them to make them struggle. this can struggle with fairies so a good steel friend is cool for it, but otherwise it punches many many holes in others .

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

Reserving Primordial Sea Barraskewda

Barraskewda @ Choice Band
Ability: Primordial Sea
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Flip Turn
- Liquidation
- Aqua Jet
- Close Combat

Barraskewda forms an excellent VoltTurn core with Noivern. Noivern excells at taking on the physically defensive Pokemon that like to switch into Barraskewda, such as Mew, as well as most water resistances, and can serve as an answer to attempt to revenge kill Barraskewda with Grassy Glide. This offensive synergy means that most of its checks have a hard time staying in and recovering from the damage Barraskewda deals with Flip Turn. On the other hand, Barraskewda takes on all of the specially defensive pokemon and flying resistances that could otherwise take Noivern's Boomburst, such as Chansey and specially defensive Corviknight, with ease, and has an easy time coming in on these checks to force them out thanks to Noivern's U-turn. Barraskewda is also a very easy Pokemon to try and fit onto teams with Noivern, as it slots nicely onto most offensive compositions as a combination pivot, wallbreaker, and revenge killer. The main defensive threats to this core are Regenerator Pokemon, especially the Rotom-Wash and Goodra, as they are much hard to wear down; pairing this core with an entry hazard setter like Ferrothorn can be quite useful.

 

[PandaDoux]

Reserving Talonflame Magic Guard

 

[Palapapop]

Terrakion @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Close Combat
- Toxic
- Sacred Sword

hello ! so my core is quite basic : noivern deals a lot of damage to the terrakion checks (like hippowdon, mew or palossand) and terrakion hurts strongly noivern's checks (revengvest/blissey mainly) but noivern has another weakness : fast pokemon which are faster than it like talonflame or weavile to stop them or at least revenge kill them. Sacred sword is mainly for corviknight dauntless shield who can defeat my core

 

[OM]

Magnet Pull Rotom-H

Rotom-Heat @ Choice Specs
Ability: Magnet Pull
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick
- Overheat
- Volt Switch
- Nasty Plot

Reserving this fiery lad will finish this after school tmrw

 

[in the hills]

Thank you to everyone who submitted! The submissions are as follows:
The Number Man Wandering Spirit Hippowdon
Atha Adaptability Marowak-Alola
Flaming Deoxys Magnet Pull Conkeldurr
Quantum Tesseract Primordial Sea Barraskewda
Palapapop Adaptability Terrakion
OM Magnet Pull Rotom-Heat
Voting starts now! Vote for your favorite 3 submissions, in order of who you think should win! People who submitted sets may vote, but may not vote for themselves. As an example, I’ll show my vote for this week.

1. OM
2. Atha
3. Quantum Tesseract

Voting closes 9/20

 

[Atha]

1. Quantum Tesseract
2. The Number Man
3. OM

I hope my vote doesn’t reduce my chances of winning because that would encourage people to not vote.

 

[drampa's grandpa]

1 Quantum Tesseract
2 Atha
3 The Number Man

 

[Palapapop]

1. Atha
2. OM
3.PandaDoux

 

[ShionShadows]

1. Quantum Terresact
2. OM
3. Flaming Deoxys

 

[The Immortal]

1. Atha
2. The Number Man
3. Quantum Tesseract

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

1. The Number Man
2. Atha
3. Palapapop

I cannot in good conscience support using magnet pull :v.

 

[voyage]

1. Atha
2. OM
3. Quantum Tesseract

 

[The Number Man]

1 Atha
2 Quantum Tesseract
3 Flaming Deoxys

 

[in the hills]

The winners of the first round of matchmaking are Atha in first place, Quantum Tesseract in second, and OM in third! Their names will be added to the Hall of Fame! Thank you all who participated this week! Round 2 is Balanced Hackmons!

Week 2: Poison Heal Zekrom (Balanced Hackmons)

Zekrom @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bolt Beak
- Dragon Darts
- Shift Gear
- Spikes​

You have until 9/25 to come up with the best partner to Zekrom! Reminder that reservations are valid for 24 hours so make sure to finish them if you reserve a set.

 

[willdbeast]

Does it even need a partner? it just wins tbh

 

[anaconja]

Woggas! (Zacian-Crowned) @ Rusted Sword
Ability: Intrepid Sword
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Photon Geyser
- Strength Sap
- U-turn / Baton Pass
(name inspired by cityscapes's ground/psychic greedent in camomons)

For Zekrom to set up it wants a pretty passive target so I decided on a pivoting speed controller. Zacian-Crowned is the fastest viable mon in the meta but then I thought of SL's post about it being really hard to improof. So I made it improofable by removing its STABs.

Relevant calcs:
+1 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Photon Geyser vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Eternatus: 298-352 (61.5 - 72.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery
+1 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Zamazenta-Crowned: 222-262 (57.2 - 67.5%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
+1 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Earthquake vs. 248 HP / 252 Def Darmanitan-Galar-Zen: 452-532 (109.4 - 128.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Earthquake vs. 252 HP / 252 Def Zekrom: 280-330 (69.3 - 81.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Poison Heal
+1 252 Atk Zacian-Crowned Photon Geyser vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Seismitoad: 173-204 (41.7 - 49.2%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

Improof by slapping a Mandibuzz or Corviknight (Magic Bounce is even better) on your team, or alternatively, choosing V-Create over PBlades and improofing with Darmanitan-Zen or Incineroar.

 

[Chessking345]

Teravolt Lunala

Lunala @ Whatever (Lum Lefties Colbur Kasib Helmet etc)
Ability: Teravolt
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hex
- Glare / Will-O-Wisp
- Strength Sap
- Filler (Hazards, other status move, Psystrike, Secret Sword, etc)

Zekrom hates mons like Steelix, Ferrothorn, random Volt Absorb Primarina/Corviknights/whatevers, certain bounce Grounds, etc. all of which Lunala can take on. Either status move works well, with Glare providing setup and cheese opportunities while Wisp provides long term chip damage and reduces EQ damage. Hex threatens nearly Zek answer. Lunala's Ghost-type also lets it spinblock if the opponent isn't Bounce. Filler can be anything, Psystrike helps pressure VA Prima if that's a thing while you can hazard stack if needed. In return almost all Lunala checks are Zek bait unless they have Knock Off Purify (Umbreon Ice Scales mons Snorlax Incin).

 

[Eli]

Excadrill @ Ground Memory
Ability: Mold Breaker
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Behemoth Blade
- Multi-Attack
- Bolt Beak
- Shift Gear

This Excadrill set is a nice offensive improof to Zekrom and itself, getting a free Shift Gear on switch-in. It can help Zekrom by getting rid of things it doesn't like, such as Fur Coat mons, Volt Absorb dragon type resists/immunities, and Behemoth Blade helps when they dynamax. After a shift gear, its speed lets it threaten everything with its strong STAB and coverage in bolt beak. Zekrom is able to take care of certain threats for Excadrill, like bulkier dragons.
Of course this is weak to other ground types, so running resists or immunities to it is also helpful, like grass types such as celebi or tangrowth.