With PUCL I nearing its end, this thread is a place for YOU to share your teams, sets, ideas that you've used (or didn't use) throughout the tournament.
Good luck to the remaining teams in playoffs!
-
Smogon Premier League is here and the team collection is now available. Support your team!
-
Follow our Instagram!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2025 Smog Awards!
Tournament PUCL I - Set & Team Dump Thread
- Thread starter sugar ovens
- Start date
With PUCL I nearing its end, this thread is a place for YOU to share your teams, sets, ideas that you've used (or didn't use) throughout the tournament.
Good luck to the remaining teams in playoffs!
SS PU Lambovino teamdump and explanations
î__________(with araquanid, guzzlord, raichu-a and virizion in the tier)
î__________(with araquanid, guzzlord, raichu-a and virizion in the tier)
This season is over for me and ended on a bad 3-4 score, 2 tours in a row that i finish with that score, i guess it's time to admit that i'm kinda washed at this lol
I still had fun building for most of the tour and would like to give people access to the builds, the plans behind it, and how it worked in the real game etc... to give my opinion about the tier rn.
My first goal this tour was to use as much different mons / styles as I could to gauge the tier with the new drops better. Over the 7 weeks of the tournament, i managed to never use more than 3 times a mon, and only 6 mons were re-used (2 sneasel, 2 virizion, 2 aggron, 2 ribombee, 3 archeops and 3 weezing), which is telling about how diverse the tier can be, and how the new drops don't affect building liberty negatively (i didn't have a good record but idt it's because of the teams lol, except for w3 but we'll talk about that later).
(click on the sprites for the paste)
W1 - mixed Viriz offense - W
For week 1, i wanted to try virizion the most, as it seemed to be the mon with the more potential within the drops. I figured the best set would be LO cm stone edge, and I still think it's the case, because of how much pressure it can put on the opposing team, getting a free set up on passive mons like eldegoss, taking a moonblast from bee thanks to the cm and killing it with stone edge, as well as killing zard with stone edge too, opening the way for steelvally and qd bee in this team.
Something interesting to look at too is the use of bulky poison types, the arrival of viriz has greatly increased their use (mostly grounded ones for the tspikes MU) and i wasn't an exception to this. I used Garbodor week 1, a mon that I wasn't really a fan of prior to the drops, but who acted as a great viriz check, and also a doublade one if played with haze, on top of everything it's known for. Archeops is still a top 3 glue of the tier for me, covering the zard MU and adding some speed control mostly, while also keeping some new mons in check with dual wing beat like viriz / sub araq. I was very hesitant on the set i'd play, the special set was good because in tests i found the physical one to be too passive and claiming a kill early with meteor beam was helping me to keep the pressure up all the game. For the game, I still chose however to keep the physical one for better longevity. I put the special one in the past above because I do believe it's better if you're not a coward. Having stone edge on viriz helped me in not having roost on archeops since i have another fast zard rk option.
I am in the team giga drain on Virizion, I know it's quite bad dps wise, but the recovery can help you survive more with the LO/sandstorm chip damages that are very annoying.
The game was pretty fun, I had it in hand until termi made a good bluff (and god knows i'm a coward so i didn't try to call it) which made the endgame very interesting. In the early game we can see how good eject button eldegoss is, giving me a free turn while absorbing the opposing meteor beam and allowing my own archeops to come RK. I love usable items on eldegoss / weezing for that reason and gaining a gourgeist / trev check easily.
After losing a few 50/50s and basically all the advantage I had, giga drain viriz came in clutch, to not be a fodder after -2 spatk, and the recovery allowing it to have chances to take a +4 sneak from doublade, which made termi click claw at +2.
Something interesting to look at too is the use of bulky poison types, the arrival of viriz has greatly increased their use (mostly grounded ones for the tspikes MU) and i wasn't an exception to this. I used Garbodor week 1, a mon that I wasn't really a fan of prior to the drops, but who acted as a great viriz check, and also a doublade one if played with haze, on top of everything it's known for. Archeops is still a top 3 glue of the tier for me, covering the zard MU and adding some speed control mostly, while also keeping some new mons in check with dual wing beat like viriz / sub araq. I was very hesitant on the set i'd play, the special set was good because in tests i found the physical one to be too passive and claiming a kill early with meteor beam was helping me to keep the pressure up all the game. For the game, I still chose however to keep the physical one for better longevity. I put the special one in the past above because I do believe it's better if you're not a coward. Having stone edge on viriz helped me in not having roost on archeops since i have another fast zard rk option.
I am in the team giga drain on Virizion, I know it's quite bad dps wise, but the recovery can help you survive more with the LO/sandstorm chip damages that are very annoying.
The game was pretty fun, I had it in hand until termi made a good bluff (and god knows i'm a coward so i didn't try to call it) which made the endgame very interesting. In the early game we can see how good eject button eldegoss is, giving me a free turn while absorbing the opposing meteor beam and allowing my own archeops to come RK. I love usable items on eldegoss / weezing for that reason and gaining a gourgeist / trev check easily.
After losing a few 50/50s and basically all the advantage I had, giga drain viriz came in clutch, to not be a fodder after -2 spatk, and the recovery allowing it to have chances to take a +4 sneak from doublade, which made termi click claw at +2.
W2 - Lycan Araq Guno - L
For week 2 I wanted to try Araquanid, as it was the most intriguing mon and I managed to get some OK results with it in testgames before the tour started. Some people were saying it was dogshit, and i remember how the discourse around it back when it was banned was that it had no checks, so i wanted to try it out myself.
I spent a LOT of time trying to find the best way to play Araq, without much success. It was always losing to something, everytime. I found an ok midground with the use of stockpile, allowing it to tank a uturn from wishiwashi behind the sub so you wouldn't be beaten so easily. I also tried giving it the metronome, but the leftovers recovery were too useful. I really don't think toxic is so good on it, as most bulky teams have a cleric anyway, and it's checks are like taunt jelli / rest wishi lol. If you wanna try it yourself, note that the speed game is very interesting on araq, as it is in competition with elde / weez. Also, some wow support can be good to balance it's worse bulky side, I had some ok results with wow haunter to get gigalith for example.
I tried to pair it with Future Sight Guno there, thinking it would do a good breaking core, and added the classic mandatory poison type to the core, this time with eject button weezing, giving me a free switch to araq after using future sight, and allowing me to have a great polter gourgeist check since my 2 first mons were really weak to it. I then chose the goat Gunfisk to complete the team, as the first 3 mons were completly destroyed by magneton. Gunfisk has some nice benefits, it can easily trade against zard, which was good for my team here, and most importantly it makes you vika/mag proof for the next few weeks, which is insane to free your mind a bit during the building phase. I finished with the classic fairy + fire type check combo, with whimsicott as a fairy there because of the nice role compression it offers, being a ground / water check with defog / koff / encore. For the fire type check I was using the classic archeops at first, but changed last minute to Lycanroc because i was 6-0d by sneasel. Lycanroc was pretty fun to use, the calc of +2 drill run on doublade is interesting (especially after a whimsi koff), and the prio is always nice against HO, which is something my opponent likes to bring. I almost used the scope lens to have a 50% chance to crit a drill run, as +2 crit was doing insane damages to doublade, but figure it would be too much of a gamble for a tour game lol.
In the real game i fought uturn wishi + encore whimsi which is pretty much the worst thing you can expect for a sub araq lol, and on top of that I messed up my guno spread so it was slower than the opposing sawk, which made me lose the game (you have the right spread on the paste i linked above). I was happy about gunfisk's performance tho, and Lycanroc could have done something great if it had Close Combat, so i'll keep that in mind for another game where i'll be more doublade proof with my team.
I spent a LOT of time trying to find the best way to play Araq, without much success. It was always losing to something, everytime. I found an ok midground with the use of stockpile, allowing it to tank a uturn from wishiwashi behind the sub so you wouldn't be beaten so easily. I also tried giving it the metronome, but the leftovers recovery were too useful. I really don't think toxic is so good on it, as most bulky teams have a cleric anyway, and it's checks are like taunt jelli / rest wishi lol. If you wanna try it yourself, note that the speed game is very interesting on araq, as it is in competition with elde / weez. Also, some wow support can be good to balance it's worse bulky side, I had some ok results with wow haunter to get gigalith for example.
I tried to pair it with Future Sight Guno there, thinking it would do a good breaking core, and added the classic mandatory poison type to the core, this time with eject button weezing, giving me a free switch to araq after using future sight, and allowing me to have a great polter gourgeist check since my 2 first mons were really weak to it. I then chose the goat Gunfisk to complete the team, as the first 3 mons were completly destroyed by magneton. Gunfisk has some nice benefits, it can easily trade against zard, which was good for my team here, and most importantly it makes you vika/mag proof for the next few weeks, which is insane to free your mind a bit during the building phase. I finished with the classic fairy + fire type check combo, with whimsicott as a fairy there because of the nice role compression it offers, being a ground / water check with defog / koff / encore. For the fire type check I was using the classic archeops at first, but changed last minute to Lycanroc because i was 6-0d by sneasel. Lycanroc was pretty fun to use, the calc of +2 drill run on doublade is interesting (especially after a whimsi koff), and the prio is always nice against HO, which is something my opponent likes to bring. I almost used the scope lens to have a 50% chance to crit a drill run, as +2 crit was doing insane damages to doublade, but figure it would be too much of a gamble for a tour game lol.
In the real game i fought uturn wishi + encore whimsi which is pretty much the worst thing you can expect for a sub araq lol, and on top of that I messed up my guno spread so it was slower than the opposing sawk, which made me lose the game (you have the right spread on the paste i linked above). I was happy about gunfisk's performance tho, and Lycanroc could have done something great if it had Close Combat, so i'll keep that in mind for another game where i'll be more doublade proof with my team.
W3 - roseli Guzz dark spam - L (don't steal this one it's bad)
Guzzlord SUCKS it is BAD do NOT play it if you want to win !!!!!!!
Over the 7 weeks of regular phase of this tour, do you want to know how many non mirror games a Guzzlord won ? ONE
Honnestly i'm surprised this mon doesn't work well in this tier when it is viable in some upper tiers. I think the problem comes from how we have good ways to scout it's set, between regen mons like audino / eldegoss, a lot of tect mons like Gigalith, a fairy type in almost every team with ribombee / whimsi / aromatisse / silvally, a lot of residual damages with hazard stack / status spam / sandstorm that makes it hard to switch into more than once and still keep advantage of it's bulk...
I had lots of different ideas to try guzzlord this week but ended up not finding anything that i liked, so i just used something that looked fun : roseli berry + sd non ice shard sneasel, so i can get rid of bee / whimsi and sd 3 atk sneasel has a great MU against the rest. I also saw in the opponent's scout that he NEVER used tspikes in recent tours, so i thought why not try to commit on a specific MU because guzzlord was hard to make it work in all MUs, and I ended up facing tspikes. My guzzlord took too much residual damages so he wasn't out of range of moonblast anymore, and the game ended tragically withme not being able to do much things....
It's the only team I would advise not to steal, but at least it showed that taunt hex toxic jelli can still be good
Over the 7 weeks of regular phase of this tour, do you want to know how many non mirror games a Guzzlord won ? ONE
Honnestly i'm surprised this mon doesn't work well in this tier when it is viable in some upper tiers. I think the problem comes from how we have good ways to scout it's set, between regen mons like audino / eldegoss, a lot of tect mons like Gigalith, a fairy type in almost every team with ribombee / whimsi / aromatisse / silvally, a lot of residual damages with hazard stack / status spam / sandstorm that makes it hard to switch into more than once and still keep advantage of it's bulk...
I had lots of different ideas to try guzzlord this week but ended up not finding anything that i liked, so i just used something that looked fun : roseli berry + sd non ice shard sneasel, so i can get rid of bee / whimsi and sd 3 atk sneasel has a great MU against the rest. I also saw in the opponent's scout that he NEVER used tspikes in recent tours, so i thought why not try to commit on a specific MU because guzzlord was hard to make it work in all MUs, and I ended up facing tspikes. My guzzlord took too much residual damages so he wasn't out of range of moonblast anymore, and the game ended tragically withme not being able to do much things....
It's the only team I would advise not to steal, but at least it showed that taunt hex toxic jelli can still be good
W4 - Vika HO - L
I was facing gum this week so i wanted to not fall into my habbits and tried to ct theirs. I wanted to load HO for that reason, especially with sd ice shard sneasel because i knew they liked to use ninjask to rk things. sd qwil is a good mon to use in HOs because of it being a grounded poison + the water / poison coverage works well against most balanced teams, and i wanted to use doublade too since i basically never do. Viriz ended up being a naturally fitting mon there, which shows how it can help a lot while building this archetype, and I used the same set as before.
Not too much to say with this game, i missed triple axel into got a bad roll on hitmonlee vs doublade so I lost it. I really don't like terrain because of how coinflippy it is and it showed again how frustrating it can be to face it and lose on a random set up mon that got a good roll
Not too much to say with this game, i missed triple axel into got a bad roll on hitmonlee vs doublade so I lost it. I really don't like terrain because of how coinflippy it is and it showed again how frustrating it can be to face it and lose on a random set up mon that got a good roll
W5 - Raichu elec terrain HO - W
at that point i was in 1-3, with 2 games lost on dumb things and 1 because of another dumb thing, i was pretty depressed and didn't know what to do. Lyra advised me to use terrain, so I decided to fight my demons from last week and play terrain myself. But not grassy terrain... it was finally time to use raichu alola, with an electric terrain team. It was actually one of the teams i built before the tour while trying the new mons, and it was pretty fun so I decided to do little edits and load it for real. I think it is as close as it can be to the best elec terrain raichu-alola team. I started with the 2 classic terrain sweepers Hitmonlee and Thievul, then Pincurchin as a terrain and spikes setter, being a doublade check as well. Claydol felt good there, acting like the coalossal of grassy teams but tailored for elec teams, with a very needed eq immune, spin to support the hazard stack from pincurchin, teleport to bring the various sweepers on the field etc etc...
I added a ghostvally to block spin from the opposing team, supporting the hazard stack even more, and sd sub to beat audino. I like how the elec terrain helps against sleep powder eldegoss, so you're actually safe to switch into it to spinblock, walling 2/4 moves. I had sd explosion at first to beat guzzlord for raichu / thievul, but i knew the opponent wouldn't bring it so sub was just better.
Raichu alola was the mon I spent the most time on trying to understand what would be the best possible set. While LO offers really good offensive power, seed can help him setting up and NP and not die of priorities. It had np rising voltage set, but could run a psychic move, grass knot for quag / gigalith, focus blast for gigalith / guzzlord, draining kiss for guzzlord...
I decided to use the safest set, with seed, enough bulk for doublade's sneak, dkiss to not miss focus blast and regain HPs on guzzlord, and knot to not be walled by quag and open the way for other sweepers. We found the spread with Bloshh , it ouspeeds ninjask, and it worked really well in the game, keeping itself just out of the sneak range in the endgame. I'm kinda happy it worked cause people were saying terrain would be really bad, and after giving the paste to Addison who made her own version it won again, proving that elec terrain raichu-alola is a MENACE.
I added a ghostvally to block spin from the opposing team, supporting the hazard stack even more, and sd sub to beat audino. I like how the elec terrain helps against sleep powder eldegoss, so you're actually safe to switch into it to spinblock, walling 2/4 moves. I had sd explosion at first to beat guzzlord for raichu / thievul, but i knew the opponent wouldn't bring it so sub was just better.
Raichu alola was the mon I spent the most time on trying to understand what would be the best possible set. While LO offers really good offensive power, seed can help him setting up and NP and not die of priorities. It had np rising voltage set, but could run a psychic move, grass knot for quag / gigalith, focus blast for gigalith / guzzlord, draining kiss for guzzlord...
I decided to use the safest set, with seed, enough bulk for doublade's sneak, dkiss to not miss focus blast and regain HPs on guzzlord, and knot to not be walled by quag and open the way for other sweepers. We found the spread with Bloshh , it ouspeeds ninjask, and it worked really well in the game, keeping itself just out of the sneak range in the endgame. I'm kinda happy it worked cause people were saying terrain would be really bad, and after giving the paste to Addison who made her own version it won again, proving that elec terrain raichu-alola is a MENACE.
W6 - classic specs mag balanced - W
I didn't have any fresh idea and thought my opponent was inexperienced enough in the tier that I could load classic solid things and still get the upper hand matchup wise. Specs mag is one of the best things to surprise new players as it almost has no switch ins and they might not think to prep specifically for it, and i added a classic core of aggron / bee / archeops / weezing + grass type. I wanted to play ngaz weez here to prevent audino / eldegoss from regaining health after scouting mag's set, so tangela was preferred over eldegoss for the LO sandslash MU, which made me put defog on archeops lol.
nothing much to say on this game, except maybe that it's funny to see we both loaded dwb archeops for viriz / araq, it seems to have become a staple of the new tier.
I got a bit lucky with my magneton but I think i had the win regardless, the team pulled a really cool MU. It's not perfect tho, something like specs jelli would destroy it, but idt it's really meta rn.
nothing much to say on this game, except maybe that it's funny to see we both loaded dwb archeops for viriz / araq, it seems to have become a staple of the new tier.
I got a bit lucky with my magneton but I think i had the win regardless, the team pulled a really cool MU. It's not perfect tho, something like specs jelli would destroy it, but idt it's really meta rn.
W7 - 3 ZU mons - L
For this week my team was out already and the opponent's was guaranteed in POs. As we knew each other well, we agreed on a 2 ZU mons minimum use for this week. I spent the week trying to see what would be fun to use with ZU mons, and it reminded me of zben 's team he beat me with in last year's pu classic. He played a dubwool team, and it was pretty fun to look at, so i tried to do mine too. It ended up very similar to his, but with clef and gourgeist-small as ZU mons too. The main challenge was to see how I could deal with the new drops with ZU mons, which is interesting because it shows they are fair and balanced.
One thing to keep in mind is that I knew he would bring 2 ZU mons too, so I could do assumptions like "a concerning thing would be spikes stack + lo slash + doublade, but he won't bring that cause he needs 2 zu mons", knowing that doing a functionnal team with 2 ZU mons and this core was very hard.
I chose clef as a 2nd ZU mon because of how it could compress some roles, setting up SRs, checking specs guzzlord, cm virizion, charizard, vikavolt... That mon is pretty underrated, even if it's not perfect it is a bit better in this new meta and I was pretty hyped to use it. I would recommend using koff as 4th move, but I couldn't there cause I had a poltergeist mon. I was hesitating between toxic and twave, toxic helping against vikavolt and twave helping against zard (dubwool becomes faster) / poison types, and ended on twave hoping i wouldn't face vikavolt.
Dubwool was pretty fun to build around, the moves were locked from the beginning, cotton guard restalk body press is the best you can do with it, but I spent some time trying to find what spread and ability I should play. While Fluffy would have been cool to become a little physical wall, helping against things like araquanid or aggron, I chose bulletproof there. It helps against weezing, which is now walled by dubwool, as well as some cool stuffs like rock blast gigalith, focus blast zard (as well as not taking x2 on flamethrower)...
For the speed i chose to outspeed 252+ speed gallade, because it was crushing my team, and tried to focus the spread on how to beat it.
The scenario i worked with is the following : in a 1v1, if i click cotton guard vs cc from 252+atk LO gallade, and then cotton guard t2 on another cc, how many times do i survive with leftos to rest after that.
52.73% to live 2 cc with 252 hp /64 def
66.8% with 200 hp / 116 def
75.4% with 136 hp /180 def
200 HPs also made my HPs the right number for optimized leftos, so I went with that.
For the game...well... while talking with my opponent a few hours before the game, he told me "ah btw i'm not doing the deal", so I decided to still stick with that team and see how it goes, since it doesn't really matter anyway.
The dubwool MU was the worst possible.
Taunt jelli was terrible to face itself (even tho i managed to get it low very early on), but aroma bee + zard in the back helped keeping it in check completly, and my team didn't have the necessary longevity to fight taunt toxic jelli + cleric. I do think i could have played this one better, like not allowing jelli to come back full health, but most of the time i bet on now allowing bee to come and aroma for free, which ultimately didn't work. The game was still fun and I was happy to play dubwool + clef, but still a tough loss.
One thing to keep in mind is that I knew he would bring 2 ZU mons too, so I could do assumptions like "a concerning thing would be spikes stack + lo slash + doublade, but he won't bring that cause he needs 2 zu mons", knowing that doing a functionnal team with 2 ZU mons and this core was very hard.
I chose clef as a 2nd ZU mon because of how it could compress some roles, setting up SRs, checking specs guzzlord, cm virizion, charizard, vikavolt... That mon is pretty underrated, even if it's not perfect it is a bit better in this new meta and I was pretty hyped to use it. I would recommend using koff as 4th move, but I couldn't there cause I had a poltergeist mon. I was hesitating between toxic and twave, toxic helping against vikavolt and twave helping against zard (dubwool becomes faster) / poison types, and ended on twave hoping i wouldn't face vikavolt.
Dubwool was pretty fun to build around, the moves were locked from the beginning, cotton guard restalk body press is the best you can do with it, but I spent some time trying to find what spread and ability I should play. While Fluffy would have been cool to become a little physical wall, helping against things like araquanid or aggron, I chose bulletproof there. It helps against weezing, which is now walled by dubwool, as well as some cool stuffs like rock blast gigalith, focus blast zard (as well as not taking x2 on flamethrower)...
For the speed i chose to outspeed 252+ speed gallade, because it was crushing my team, and tried to focus the spread on how to beat it.
The scenario i worked with is the following : in a 1v1, if i click cotton guard vs cc from 252+atk LO gallade, and then cotton guard t2 on another cc, how many times do i survive with leftos to rest after that.
52.73% to live 2 cc with 252 hp /64 def
66.8% with 200 hp / 116 def
75.4% with 136 hp /180 def
200 HPs also made my HPs the right number for optimized leftos, so I went with that.
For the game...well... while talking with my opponent a few hours before the game, he told me "ah btw i'm not doing the deal", so I decided to still stick with that team and see how it goes, since it doesn't really matter anyway.
The dubwool MU was the worst possible.
Taunt jelli was terrible to face itself (even tho i managed to get it low very early on), but aroma bee + zard in the back helped keeping it in check completly, and my team didn't have the necessary longevity to fight taunt toxic jelli + cleric. I do think i could have played this one better, like not allowing jelli to come back full health, but most of the time i bet on now allowing bee to come and aroma for free, which ultimately didn't work. The game was still fun and I was happy to play dubwool + clef, but still a tough loss.
Some teams that i built before the tour and never used because they're not *so* good :
https://pokepast.es/39c14c885c10dcc8 guzzlord fat
https://pokepast.es/8c239e40ba18f845 virizion volturn
https://pokepast.es/36446f7ebaae036a haunter araq
Conclusion on how I feel about the tier rn :
I think everybody that played it this season thinks the same tbh, great tier, Viriz brings a lot of value, Araq and Guzzlord are kinda mid but have some purposes, Raichu can be a threat both in terrain and in standard balanced teams but is not broken. I'd keep it like that for sure !
I probably have forgotten some things, feel free to dm me on discord (andreas5597) if you have any questions.
If you are searching for SS PU teams with Espeon, I am not the person you are searching for, please reach out to xcx (butterflynet on discord) and don't hesitate to ask for lots of things, they'll be very happy to help even more people.
final quick s/os to bloshh yan tap the vigs and french people in general for being good friends
anti s/o to joe for cheating w7, chungler
also while i'm at it, bring back old gens in puwc !!!!
Last edited: