Great team I made with
Molk during the spring, which then saw lots of success in RU Majors, RU Open and finally - Smogon Snake Draft. This team was more or less built around the core of Max HP Nec + Cleric (Vap). At the time, and well, even to this day, the tier is lacking truly good fighting checks. Helm Vern is frail as fuck and gets its wings clipped apart, even if you only run enough speed for Lazzle and drop the rest into hp and def. The only solid fighting resist we had at the time was Slowbro. I had already built several teams around the idea of CM Bro + cleric, and thus when Molk brought up the idea of building Regi+Vap balance, I decided it would be cool to try out Max HP Nec. Little did I know at the time that we were about to discover a hidden gem. Max HP is way better at checking fightings, boosting and even more importantly - it's so goddamn hard to revenge. For instance you can simply Moonlight on Golisopod as it does 60 with FI and then bop it. Psychium Nec is absolutely necessary in order to have counterplay for Lax.
Regi has some def to help a bit vs Ttrum/Escav, but still mostly spdef bc it needs to take on Rose, Drag etc. Speed on Vap is for CB Rhyp + all the other breakers, shoutouts to
Killintime for this smart optimization. Some people decided it would be a good idea to drop Heal Bell when they used this build, but I would heavily advise you not to, as every mon but Nidoqueen heavily relies on it. For instance it lets you take Toxic from Regi/Zong with Mandi/Vap and Knock its lefties/Scaldburn, so that they are weakened for Nec to sweep. I saw people try to use Slowking and Milo over Vap during some of the snake games it was brought to, but to be frank, this is just not very smart. It makes it way harder to slowly weaken your opponent while your team remains nice and healthy, as the status weakness completely kills its longevity. Additionally, do not ever forego Tect on Regi. EQ isn't necessary on this build it's not weak to Lazzle, and it also makes Ninetales an even bigger issue, while making it way harder for Regi to sustain itself. I absolutely cannot stress this enough: do
not kill the longevity - it's what makes this team good.
This is based on my own battle experience of roughly 200 games with this team, as well as Bebo's - who also used it in more than 100 games and reached the mid 1900s on ladder with it. As for possible tweaks worth considering, there's really only one: Nidoqueens moveset. In fact I would even recommend using Ice Beam with the resurgence of Flygon - Toxic and Taunt can be used as well. For instance it doesn't necessarily need Sludge Wave - Regi still beats Florg. FB is mainly a tech for pesky Escavs and weakning Zong, although it can also be dropped. Tspikes is a personal favorite of mine, but can also be dropped. The only move it always needs is EP.
That being said, the team has been immensely successful to both Molk's and my own surprise, so I figured it was time to share it officially for once.
