SP Shared Power

[altifying]

i have recently made a galvinise prioty spam with sweeper h-samu. idk if its any good so am posting here if you wanna help. (sorry no sprites i dont know how it works)
Pawmot @ Zap Plate
Ability: Volt Absorb
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Quick Attack
- Agility
- Double Shock
- Close Combat

Golem-Alola @ Custap Berry
Ability: Galvanize
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
- Explosion
- Volt Switch
- Rock Slide
- Endure

Lycanroc-Dusk @ Focus Sash
Ability: Tough Claws
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Accelerock
- Close Combat
- Stealth Rock
- Endeavor

Basculegion (M) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Flip Turn
- Aqua Jet
- Liquidation
- Phantom Force

Iron Hands @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Facade
- Swords Dance
- Drain Punch

Samurott-Hisui @ Focus Sash
Ability: Torrent
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Ceaseless Edge
- Aqua Cutter
- Sucker Punch

 

[jl36808]

i have recently made a galvinise prioty spam with sweeper h-samu. idk if its any good so am posting here if you wanna help. (sorry no sprites i dont know how it works)
Pawmot @ Zap Plate
Ability: Volt Absorb
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Quick Attack
- Agility
- Double Shock
- Close Combat

Golem-Alola @ Custap Berry
Ability: Galvanize
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
- Explosion
- Volt Switch
- Rock Slide
- Endure

Lycanroc-Dusk @ Focus Sash
Ability: Tough Claws
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Accelerock
- Close Combat
- Stealth Rock
- Endeavor

Basculegion (M) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Adaptability
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Flip Turn
- Aqua Jet
- Liquidation
- Phantom Force

Iron Hands @ Booster Energy
Ability: Quark Drive
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Facade
- Swords Dance
- Drain Punch

Samurott-Hisui @ Focus Sash
Ability: Torrent
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Aqua Jet
- Ceaseless Edge
- Aqua Cutter
- Sucker Punch

Taunt on lycan, run standard basc, and running anything other than samu are my first thoughts.

I think I had a wierd pikachu galvanize team a while ago as well
turns out it was pre quark ban, but it prob could win a couple matches still

https://pokepast.es/7a5b47dcf90e5ff8

 

[altifying]

pawmot is better than pikachu in every way more atk more bulk more spe only advantage of pikachu is mixed attacker.

edit hands is DIGUSTING -quark drive atk facade ohkoed dragapult

 

[Sn7k]

Max Damage Update: Hello all, I have an update to the max damage. This'll probably be the last update since I've been spending alooot of time trying to come up with every minute optimization I could find, and I've rewritten this draft several times as I kept coming up with ideas on how to improve it.

Here's the Attacking team, Defending Team, and the damage comes out to be: 2,023,729,992

TLDR: I remembered focus band exists, which let me use the Metronome item, and the move slot gained from not needing Switcheroo let me put Sunny Day on Target Smeargle, and after moving things around I replaced Trevenant with Toxicroak for Dry Skin with minimal losses and max Metronome damage, all for a ~60% damage increase.

Rough turn by turn: (Refer to Attacking Team and Defending Team)
Cycle through all attack team mons, end with Lilligant-H and Azumarill in front. Lilligant use Leech Seed then switch to Atk Smeargle so Azumarill can Copycat Leech Seed on it.

Switch to Toxicroak, use Swagger 3 times on Atk Smeargle. Switch to Azumarill and use Aqua Ring so that Atk Smeargle can Copycat Aqua Ring, heal Atk Smeargle back to max with Present.

Switch to Hoopa-U, use Skill Swap, then switch to Azumarill so Atk Smeargle can Copycat Skill Swap and obtain Huge Power. Begin Power Split cycling with Hoopa 9 times to raise Atk Smeargle's attack stat. Then Hoopa use Fire Punch to trigger Atk Smeargle Flash Fire.

Switch to Target Smeargle, use Reflect Type, and switch to Forretress so Atk Smeargle can Copycat Reflect Type and become a bug-steel type. Forretress use Thunder Wave to paralyze Atk Smeargle, then switch to Target Smeargle so Atk Smeargle can Copycat Thunder Wave and Paralyze Target Smeargle.

Switch to Houndstone, use Trick to give Atk Smeargle Metronome. Switch to Azumarill, use Present to heal Atk Smeargle to max. Use Tail Whip then switch to Target Smeargle, Atk Smeargle Copycat Tail Whip on Target Smeargle for 4 turns. Target Smeargle proc Paralysis all turns so latest Copycattable move does not update.

Atk Smeargle use Tar Shot, Conversion, then Pyro Ball 6 consecutive turns, proc Focus Band on Target Smeargle all hits besides last hit. Target Smeargle use Reflect Type on same turn as Tar Shot, Sunny Day within 5 turns of 6th Pyro Ball turn, and Glaive Rush on 5th Pyro Ball turn. Atk Smeargle Tera Fire on 6th Pyro Ball turn, hits with crit during sunlight with max Metronome boost.

The Calc: (Refer to 2,023,729,992 and Damage Formula)
Effective Atk value: 459 from Power Split and Power Trick, multiplied by 2 for Pure Power, 1.5 for Flash Fire, 1.5 for Guts, 1.5 for Blaze, 1.5 for Hustle, and 4 for +6 Atk stages. Total is 18,589.5

Base value, 120 BP attack at level 100 with 18,589.5 Atk, total is 1,873,824 rounded.

Multiply Base by 1.5 for Sun, 2 for Glaive Rush, 1.5 for Crit, 2 For STAB, 16 for Type effectiveness for Forest's Curse & Tar Shot, 6 for the Other bracket in parentheses (Sniper & Fluffy & Metronome), and 1.25 for Dry Skin. Total is ~2,023,729,992 total damage inflicted.

Neither Dry Skin's Bulba page nor the Damage formula page told me where to put the Dry Skin modifier in the equation, so I just tacked it on to the end. I would guess it goes in the Other bracket with Fluffy but idk.

Possible Improvements:
no

 

[civanna]

whats up everyone so like purifying salt unrestricted which is rlly cool and i like that change but the price is me makign the most obnoxious possible team. heres the paste first of all
https://pokepast.es/c9aa13c77965ec94
ok so lets talk abt this team. every mon here has pretty obvious roles, wo-chien/ting-lu to make myself more bulky, hoodra to prevent crits, gastro bc sticky hold is an awesome ability and i feel like people dont see it coming on a non berry team, garg for status immunity since clef is unaware not magic guard, and clef for gaming. im gonna focus on clef bc thats who the team is built around and stuff.
so clef, especially given like 1 or 2 turns to set up, is a monster when all its abilities are up, and i dont feel like i need to explain why those abilities are insanely good on an unaware bulky mon like clef. in terms of moves, im running cosmic power to increase its defenses and make it literally fucking unkillable, charge beam bc it has like no other way of boosting its spatk and also it cant be taunted, stored power for like insanely obvious reasons, and draining kiss to deal with dark types while also getting a tiny bit more recovery, since even though they cant be knocked off, lefties only give 6% a turn, so without dkiss it can get a bit overwhelmed
now i bet ur all looking at this thinking "oh wow civanna ur so awesome this team is so good i dont think theres anything that can beat it!" and to that i say literally every word of that sentence was wrong and also why are u thinking that. anyway, in terms of things that beat it, may i introduce u to the move taunt. its rlly good and kinda shuts down this strat, and i could run smth like oblivious or aroma veil to beat taunt, i dont rlly want to get rid of like anything on this team so womp womp, feel free to try that out tho im sure it could be good. all in all, while this team is rlly gimmicky its also a ton of fun to use, im like top 10 on ladder with it rn and omg im so sorry to everyone ive faced with this team its so obnoxious anyway cya enjoy wreaking havoc on ladder with this until people figure out how to beat it (just to be clear i dont think this is unbalanced its just rlly obnoxious and i will judge anyone who uses it this includes myself)

 

[amanwithaplaNN]

can poision teams counter misty surge?

 

[cheesesir]

Toxic Spikes will poison on the switch before Misty Surge activates, so you can poison one thing every 5 turns. Beyond that, you're stuck defogging the terrain away and then trying to poison from there. You could also bring your own terrain setter (maybe electric terrain to stop rest?). I almost never see Misty Surge teams though, so there might be some weird tech that I'm missing.

 

[Goldbanker27]

Hello Everyone,
I have also been using purifying salt in combination with unaware like Civanna. I was able to hit a rank of 1514 using it.

https://pokepast.es/2381b7854f1ed65d

The two stars of the show are skeledirge and clodsire. Each being a specialist for defeating physical or special attacking based teams that rely on setup. They are both tera dependent and were I spend my tera most often to have a critical resist. The teams that you have the most trouble against are crit based teams. They just have enough fire power to 2 hit most mons. Your best matchups are into anger shell boost teams and merciless poison teams almost auto wins. Other team comps are mostly based on play.

Skeledrige is fantastic dealing with physical and priority spam teams with key resists steel, fairy, and immunities to normal/fighting being an almost guaranteed win verse non scrappy/minds eye teams. The fairy tera is for this exact scenario which happens often and makes zama body press spam teams a cake walk. The major issue for skeledrige is crit based physical teams it just does not quite enough bulk to deal with them. Skeledrige is extremely strong verse berry/sun teams as they often rely on boost sweeping and torch song just goes to town. Heatran is the biggest counter to skeledirge with flash fire, but partnered with garganacl makes it a great partner. If heatran is on the enemy team do not tera skeledrige it is a waste most of the time.

Clodsire is your special wall and matches up well verse flutter mane and landuras when given levitate and purifying salt. Leaving only 1 super effective type in psychic and with indeedee being very common on spatking teams tera steel is an obvious choice enabling it stay in and continue the curse setup well still resisting fairy. Steel also helps with dragon pulse spam teams. Due to clodsires poison typing it also does ok in phyiscal teams if it can get a curse or 2 to setup. Poison jab and body press pair well together hitting everything but bug for neutral. Also poison jab is a very effective way to get some extra chip due to its 30% chance to poison helping knock down other defensive mons. Any physical offensive threat before a curse is a major threat and should be switch out of if possible.

Garganacl's purifying salt enables unaware. It allows them setup and deal with opponents 1v1 without status conditions playing a big role in generally bulky mons. Pairing with moves still provide progress like poison jab and torch song help deal with possible taunts. It also absolutely destroys an team archetype in merciless and gives you an auto win as most will not have the offensive fire power to blast through your team or passive damage as they rely on poison. Having a ghost resist on top is just a cherry. Severely harming the effectiveness of stab attacks from top threats like giratina, houndstone, flutter mane, ceruledge, dragapult and basulegion-f. That is 20% of the top 20 mons from Bobsican viability rankings from Feb 16,2025. Besides the ability gargancal is fantastic it provides a great support with passive chip from salt cure another great option into taunt. Salt cure is unsafe for every mon to switch into and often causes mons to constantly switch getting wither by rocks and salt. Curse is a win condition and with tera water deals with common threats like crawdaunt and quacauaval. Garg is my 3rd option to tera and can often solo physical teams. It does extremely well into toxic boost teams in particular with salt cure and toxic damage eating them alive. Gargs biggest threat I have found is orgepon-well spring ivy cudgel, and horn leech beat you down. Also basculegion-f with shooting off hydro pumps. After tera garg is pretty safe just have to watch out of big spatkers.

Ting-Lu is a donor and a stealth rock setter. Tings 1 job is to keep rocks up. It provides a good switch that has plenty of bulk to come in multiple times. Whirlwind is another option for setup sweepers and also enables some chip potential spamming it to wear down the enemy. Ruination works every well in to toxic boost/solar power teams cutting their teams up time in half. Throat chop just offers a good stab option to hit a decent amount of targets for neutral damage.

Wo-Chien honestly this is my favorite mon in this metagame and imo is highly underrated. Simple leech seed, stun spore, sub, and knock stall set. Knock off still provides a lot of value even if taunt removing valuable items. Always make progress should be the name of the game. Leech seed can provide healing on switch for team mates limiting damage. U-turn is wo-chien's bane but skeledrige takes them like a champ with a resist. Wo Chien is my 4th most used tera. Tera poison is by far a top 1 or 2 tera in this meta game if your running levitate. After tera wo chien is extremely hard to knock out of the game.

Giratina-Origin is my last mon and could be replaced if you think you can get more value with something else. I have tried shell armor/battle armor and oblivious mons with decent success. However levitate is extremely valuable and removes a large threat from the team ground moves with 3 out of the 6 mons being weak to ground. Spikes and phasing is also a major threat but with levitate your playing on a more equal field with rocks being the only hazard to worry about. Giratina is honestly my favorite answer to houndstone/porygon on this team being immune to trick and being neutral to ghost due to purifying salt and with t wave providing good support throughout a match.

 

[Byleth]

Team dropping with like 4 accounts above 1476 this om has been too fun
- GOOD UNLESS VS ZAMA + STEELS 4/28/2025 edit: This team has peaked number 1!
The least tested team but has won in high ladder does really good vs any non speed boosting Zama offense because of its speed and sand rush, band + non contact super boosted Stone Edge rips through walls really easily with no effort and Rock Blast is there to break sashes when ur outplayed/accelerock if you somehow lose Indeedee too early.

- VERY GOOD
There have been some dragon spam pastes going around in the OM room and this was my take on it, none of the scale shotters + dpult feels useless on this team so that's nice, dd+ scale shot is really good because it allows you to scare scarfers from coming in to the point where if they don't come in on a potential scale shot they may not outspeed you. Very easily steamrolled through most ladder people to 1497 on a fresh account.

- Meh
Wanted to find a mon that 6-0'd a lot of fat even though I think its pretty bad rn and what better mon to do it than Keldeo, who trolls teams relying on Fluffy for physical checks and since Ursa is on the team you can now afford substitute + taunt, and you have Fluffy + Dauntless scarf Zama to shore up the offense MU. This team needs more assessment but I think it has potential. (on further review I like this team the least, it may be fine to lose the scarf on Zama to run Iron Press, since Keldeo is the only good breaker besides the extremely situational Ursa and if that goes down you lose but I was just very fearful of speed boosting flutter mane, who this team will lose to if it isn't scarf anyway).

- DECENT IF NOT CTEAMED
Stole from a person I lost to on ladder named Nuza. Team is really good until they run shell armor/sap sipper and now you auto lose. Pon is the sweeper of choice I assume from the speed boost Tera gives + Ivy Cudgel crit doing way too much damage and Glide + Surge to try and combat things faster than it.

- Okayish
Initial team I used to push one of my accounts past thresholds in 1500, the idea is that you break stall in half with Moldy Exca + buffs and you deal with offense with Dragapult. This team has a bigger flaw than the others, which is Tera Fairy/Flutter on the opposing offense because Dragapult can't really touch that at all, consider T-Wave to catch them on the switch but it will involve wasting too many turns likely.

There's also my Roaring Moon setup team that got me to #2 now in a previous post so go figure.

Not sharing any stalls because I think it's very ass right now.

- GOOD?
Here is a surprisingly working stall that has gotten me to 1594. Pressure is very mandatory for pp stalling strong moves and sets the team can not deal with long term, which is why 5/6 team members have Protect and the last features Spite Corviknight to remove the PP off a strong move from their sweeper in a pinch. This lets my team beat things that might normally be annoying like non contact boosted low pp moves like Stone Edge or max boosted Tachyon Cutter. Alcremie helps beat Taunt, Encore, AND psychic noise, a common way of beating stall. Rest of team is probably self explanatory, will run into huge problems with special spam but stall can't beat everything.



Two other stalls that I've built with much better special attacker mu's in favor of just relying on a sole Iron Defense wincon to check physical teams, which can happen often and neither of these pokemon are particularly entirely halted by ghost. Chesnaught might be a bit unnecessary but Bulletproof randomly comes in clutch and Purifying Salt on Garg is really strong and weakens Poltergeist and Shadow Ball. The first team is all boots minus Houndstone since no levitate and the second has a lot of lefties spam because I believe leftovers are preferable when you only have to deal with Stealth Rocks since Levitate makes you immune to Spikes.

My current takes on the meta:

This is near mandatory on any serious offense that doesn't utilize Zamazenta or Fluffy to combat priority spam, I think it's ridiculously strong but I don't want to imagine what would happen with priority if it was ever gone. I would argue with how useless Thwackey is and with how there's little reason to actually run electric terrain + priority, that Indeedee teams are just as strong as they were when they shared psychic surge.

Stall is very weak. Purifying salt was a much needed unban because stall was struggling, unfortunately Merciless is only one of the infinite ways you can pressure stall very well right now, it feels like Stall builds to beat maybe like 2-3 strategies and has massive holes versus anything else. 4/28/2025 edit: Stall is not that weak, but it is also not that strong. Build carefully.

/ A lot of teams really lack proper speed control, these guys are fast enough but unless your team is already like decently bulky they NEED scarf. Things like Fluttermane, Maushold, etc WILL be incentivized to run scarf/Speed Booster Energy and they will outspeed all of your team including your base 135+ that you thought was fast enough to deal with it with Indeedee to block priority and KO all of your team if you do not build right. Having a chloro sweeper or wind rider or an extreme speed tier scarfer usually alleviates most of these issues, you will find yourself having free wins vs the maushold sample.

I like this core or any that utilizes in stacking Fluffy or Dauntless with some defense multiplier or just fatter pokemon in general because I think these allow you to run offense besides berries that don't end up with Indeedee or your opposing Priority spam. That being said Zamazenta finds itself being a little strong in what it brings to a team, it almost always will be of use because of its speed tier.

Berry teams are pretty fine, I don't have any problems with them. 4/28/2025 edit: berry teams are a pain in the ass actually.

Dragon spam is very strong, and they have ways to bypass Tera Fairy checks if you build properly, very scary team archetype.

Technician is banned, I think this guy is fine? Grass is an easy STAB to resist offensively and Fluffy is literally everywhere, at least a bit more incentive to run Grassy Surge to combat Indeedee teams would help but that's just my opinion. It would encourage more RPS when loading on ladder, so maybe not though.

account peaks as of 4/28/2025

Screenshots

5 accounts in the top 15 wow i need life

 

[InkyDarkBird]

I don't know why Merciless spam, of all ideas, keeps popping up as the noobtrap strategy that infests the entire ladder to some degree. You would think people would instead spam Guts, Harvest, Super Luck, or even just ignore the ban/restrict list and use Medicham and Lokix, but no, they resort to one of the worst strategies to exist. If you look at the stats from March or February and compare them with the 1760 stats (March, February), you will see that for some unknown reason, you will see that Glimmora stubbornly hovers around 7-10%, Salazzle at around 3-5%, and Toxapex at around 6-7%, despite their usages absolutely tanking in high ladder, with Glimmora at 2-7% (I have absolutely no idea why some people are using Glimmora more than Toxapex in high ladder), Salazzle at 0.1-0.5%, and Toxapex at 3-5% (contributed to by normal stall according to moveset data, but for some reason people ran Merciless more than Regenerator in February).

Now, you may be wondering, why is Merciless guts spam so bad? Because it loses to almost every single archetype in the metagame. It loses to Natural Cure stall (or Purifying Salt or Shell Armor), it loses to any variation of Guts priority spam that has Stealth Rock, it loses to any variation of special HO that has Stealth Rock, it loses to Dragon spam from Scale Shot, it loses to Maushold, it loses other variations of critspam (Sucker Punch Urshifu incoming), and it loses to Steel spam. Heck, if probably even loses to Rain stall of strategies due to Hydration and Dry Skin invalidating Inteleon. This isn't even mentioning more matchup-fishy abilities/Pokemon, such as Giratina-O or Hydreigon ignoring Toxic Spikes, Muk(-Alola) removing Toxic Spikes, Corviknight using Defog, Landorus using Taunt, etc. Choice Scarfed Pokemon such as Maushold and Dragapult easily KO Inteleon and Salazzle since Merciless teams are slow compared to other strategies.

So then why does this horrible strategy still exist?
1. Generic matchup fishing
Not everyone runs Giratina-O or hazards, enabling this strategy to fish Guts priority spam using Focus Sash (literally the only strategy to heavily rely on Focus Sash)

2. New toy syndrome
People love to experiment with new ideas. Unfortunately, the experiment they have chosen has been proven to give terrible results over and over again.

3. It can beat Harvest
Self-explanatory.
People hate Harvest and hate using Unnerve, so they'd rather build around an entire unviable strategy that naturally counters Harvest if they lack hazard removal.

 

[Dorsia]

Hi, that might be a stupid question but I'm still asking: do Long Reach / Protective Pads really ignore Fluffy? I'm seeing everywhere and it's ruining my Hustle/No Guard/Tough Claws core

If yes, is even viable? I guess it has a niche as a defogger?

Also, I've seen Gluttony + Ripen + Cud Chew + Harvest + Cheek Pouch + Drought and that's quite impressive once all abilities are combined. I mean, is anyone using Unnerve?

 

[Byleth]

Hi, that might be a stupid question but I'm still asking: do Long Reach / Protective Pads really ignore Fluffy? I'm seeing everywhere and it's ruining my Hustle/No Guard/Tough Claws core

If yes, is even viable? I guess it has a niche as a defogger?

Also, I've seen Gluttony + Ripen + Cud Chew + Harvest + Cheek Pouch + Drought and that's quite impressive once all abilities are combined. I mean, is anyone using Unnerve?

Hiya,
Long reach bypasses Fluffy, but Protective Pads does not.

is viable solely for ignoring Fluffy for contact teams (check one of the samples for a long reach team!), but it is not viable with Tough Claws specifically as Long Reach makes all of your moves non contact, which don't give a Tough Claws boost. As shown here, with a Lycanroc doing more damage initially with Tough Claws and then less damage with the same Attack stat as Scyther (I altered both to have exactly 243 ATK) when Long Reach is added.
Decidueye usually is just fodder to get your stronger pokes going but Defog is a good thing to slot on it or utilizing trapping or priority.

Unnerve is a bit rare, but it does serve as a hard counter to these teams. It is usually not run because it is a wasted slot into every other team style.

 

[cheesesir]

Hello everyone, I'd like to add a bit of a long post about Merciless. I've been playing it for the past year or so, and have had some success, peaking in the top 20 a few times. Merciless is a fun teamstyle, so I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts about it.

Archetype Breakdown

Merciless is honestly a really interesting idea, but I think a lot of the standard teams are using it wrong. To start, a Merciless team has 3-4 components that are needed to make it function. You need Merciless (obviously), a Corrosion mon (to be able to touch Steel and Poison type pokemon), and an ability that can spread poison (normally Toxic Debris or Toxic Chain). I suppose it is possible to go without an ability that spreads poison, but you would spend too much time manually spreading toxic, and get crumpled by offence teams. In my opinion, you need both Toxic Debris and Toxic Chain on the team. Toxic Debris is giving insane value in 50-80% of games in my experience, but is useless into steel types or levitate teams. For those, you still need a way to spread poison, so Toxic Chain is needed unless you want to spend 6 turns clicking Toxic to be able to start using your main strategy. There are definitely ways to play without this exact combination of abilities, but in my experience all 4 are needed to have consistent counterplay against the dominant strategies in this meta.

For those 4 core abilities you need for a strong Merciless team, 2 are unique. So Toxapex and Glimmora are both going to be on your team, and that leaves Salazzle as the only Corrosion mon. Now you are left with choosing a Toxic Chain pokemon, which gives you 3 choices. Okidogi doesn't do much of anything, being too slow for outspeeding, but not bulky enough to tank the strong hits flying around the meta. Both Fezendipiti and Munkidori have pros and cons, but I think the extra speed makes Munkidori the strongest candidate. Both can be used to some success. However, this leaves us with only 2 free team slots.

The last two team slots are where the creativity comes into building a Merciless team, and is where most of the teams I see on ladder fail. The biggest trap, in my opinion, is using Sniper. To begin with, none of the Sniper pokemon are very good. Inteleon is the best one, but it's still Inteleon. It's outsped by every relevant scarfer, and not strong enough to pick up neutral KO's in most situations. Otherwise, all the Snipers are just bad. The biggest issue is that the power boost from Sniper is not relevant most of the time. As has been noted before, the meta is dominated by Stall and Offence, with very little in between. Stall's gameplan against Merciless is to a) not get poisoned (via Salt Cure) or b) never have a poisoned Pokemon take a hit (via Boots/Levitate and Natural Cure). So the Sniper boost is almost never going to activate, and the extra power will not come into play. However, stall is a bit of a lost cause (I'll talk more about that later). Against Offence, the extra damage very rarely matters. A critical hit coming off of a stab is going to melt nearly every Pokemon on an offence based team unless it's resisted, regardless of if you have the Sniper boost or not. It is much more beneficial to have an additional utility ability instead of sniper, especially when you can get an actually good pokemon instead of inteleon. Speaking of utility abilities, there are several good ones out there. Depending on which matchup trouples you most, Cursed Body (for multihit spam back when that was relevant), Infiltrator (to stop sub), Levitate (because 4/6 of your team is weak to ground), Mycelium Might (if you really hate Purifying Salt), and Cloud Nine (to counter Hydration teams), can all be potential options. I'm sure there are other potential abilties out there that could see use, but those are the ones I've tried out to some success in the past. However, more important than the abilites are the Pokemon.

As a bit of a sidetrack, there are two main ways you can win with a Merciless team. You can either overpower the other team with strong critical hits, or rack up passive damage through hazards and toxic while slowly chipping the opponent down and outlasting them. Because you have so many team slots dedicated to poison, you aren't going to be able to stall out the strong hits running around the meta, so only aiming for passive damage is going to see you absolutely run over by fast-paced offence. However, you don't have enough offensive power to steamroll through anything with a defensive backbone, and so being able to chip away is vital for success. A team should be able to use either of these two modes, and occasionally switch between them midgame. Of the essential members, Toxapex is very firmly a passive damage fiend, while the other 3 pokemon can do a little bit of both. Munkidori and Fezendipiti get some interesting utility moves (U-Turn, Toxic, and Taunt, notably), alongside some midpower STAB moves that are terrifying with Merciless Crits. Salazzle is fast and deceptively strong, while also spreading fast Toxic, and potentially using Protect or Taunt to get extra utility. However, that mean your last two team slots should be going to strong, fast attackers. The two I've had the most success with are Hydreigon and Dragapult, but Gengar, Inteleon (if you're into that sort of things), Garchomp, Giratina-O, Blissey, and many others could potentially be useful (though I haven't used them to any great results).

Unfortunately, for all the fun that Merciless brings, it has a lot of downsides as well. You sacrifice the ability to take strong hits, and so must rely on focus sash if you want most of your pokemon to survive more than one turn. You also lack power-boosting options outside of critical hits, so if you can't poison the opponent you can't deal *that much* damage. Several matchups are unwinnible or very difficult. Purifying Salt is nearly a gauranteed loss (technically can be beaten with Mycelium Might (do not use this ability), or exceptionally strong hazard pressure). Natural Cure and Levitate seems to be unbeatable, and Steel Spam requires insanely careful play and your opponent to make mistakes. Hydration rain is a losing matchup, but you can win with careful play around hazards and judicious use of strong moves (hydration cures status at the end of the turn, so you can get crits if a pokemon switches into toxic spikes). Dragon spam is dangerous, but can be beaten with Fairy tera on key pokemon. These are just some of the examples of losing matchups. However, with careful gameplay and tweaks to your team, Merciless has the capability to compete with nearly all of these archetypes. On the flip side, Merciless decimates most offence based teams (Stealth Rock can be played around with Glimmora+taunt in most cases, outside of steel-spam). If you aren't running Levitate or Boots spam, Toxic Spikes will ruin your game. Guts based offence teams crumble to strong critical hits, and poison themselves. The only versions of offence that have consistent success against Merciless are Steel spam, and Iron Crown focused teams. Both are dangerous, but have counterplay (Toxapex can consistently wall many members of Steel Spam once Corrosion is active, and Salazzle can get a poison on Iron Crown before letting it slowly getting chipped down). As well, Merciless eats Harvest teams for lunch (or it did before Purifying Salt was released, I'm still unsure how that much Purifying Salt will change the meta). As well, you force Stall teams to run Natural Cure or Purifying Salt, and if you happen to catch a Stall team without one of those then they will be destroyed by a Toxic onslaught.

All in all, Merciless is not the best archetype out there. However, it is a fun one to use, and is not completely irrelevant. It can definitely be matchup fishy at times, and has some games where you lose from teambuilder. However, a well constructed Merciless team has the tools to distrupt and outplay nearly everything. Even in losing matchups, you can force your opponent to actually beat your team, which has led to more wins than it probably should have. I've peaked in the top 20 a few times, but ran into poor matchups and started playing tilted before I've cracked the top 5. Anyways, Merciless is a fun playstyle, and can definitely see some success if you shake it up outside of the usual team.

Now, with that ramble of a discussion on Merciless over, I'll give a bit of a breakdown on the latest team that I've been using. While it's probably not the optimal team, and has a few losing matchups, it's carried me over 1500 a few times on ladder, and is fun to use. I've run a few variations in the past, and this is the one that has had the most success.

Team

Glimmora @ Focus Sash
Ability: Toxic Debris
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
- Mortal Spin
- Power Gem

Toxapex @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Merciless
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Venoshock
- Recover
- Surf

Salazzle @ Focus Sash
Ability: Corrosion
Tera Type: Dark
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Protect
- Flamethrower
- Sludge Bomb

Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Flash Cannon
- Draco Meteor
- Dark Pulse
- U-turn

Munkidori @ Focus Sash
Ability: Toxic Chain
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Taunt
- U-turn
- Toxic
- Psychic

Dragapult @ Focus Sash
Ability: Infiltrator
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Phantom Force
- Dragon Darts
- Sucker Punch
- Protect

Team Explanation

Glimmora is a very boring set, Stealth Rock and Spikes help rack up damage if you have a few free turns, Mortal Spin keeps hazards away and lets all of the Focus Sashes work as intended, and Power Gem is there so you aren't completely passive. You can get some cheap KO's sometimes, as people forget that Glim has a very servicable special attack stat. Tera Dark is specifically to cover for Stealth Rock Lando-I, as with Levitate, you are immune to 2/3 of it's attacking moves, and you can safely spin away the rocks and get your own up. Otherwise, Glim does not really need a tera.

Toxapex is necessary as a donor for Merciless, but has some surprising utility outside of that. Toxic and Recover are obvious choices, but Surf and Venoshock get surprising good damage against the glass cannons running around the tier, and you will often have people try to set up in your face only to get smacked by a crit venoshock and faint. Rocky Helmet is your counter to Scarf Maushold if the opponent doesn't have Long Reach. Tera Steel isn't too impactful, but can avoid some kills from Rock Head teams spamming Brave Bird and Head Smash. You almost never tera Toxapex.

Salazzle generally poisons one thing and then dies. It is solely there so that you don't lose to Steel types. With that being said, it has a shockingly good special attack stat, and can get some surprise OHKO's with a Merciless Crit. Notably, it outspeeds and oneshots most non-scarf Mausholds, and also applies solid pressure with Toxic. Protect can help scout out strong moves, and also get free chip from poison. Tera Dark is there to stop Stored Power sweeps, but is rarely useful.

Munkidori is a useful pivot, and can distrupt well with Toxic and Taunt, while dishing out solid damage from Psychic. U-Turn is always nice to have, and poisoning 30% of the time is also great for setting up the heavy hitters. Munkidori is almost never winning a game on it's own, but Toxic Chain is necessary for beating Levitate teams. Tera Fairy exists to stop Scale Shot teams, but you almost never want to use it.

Hydreigon is one of the most underrated pokemon in this meta IMO. Draco Meteor KO's basically everything on offense, and Dark Pulse is a 2HKO on most things before you even take crits into account. Levitate is an amazing ability, not just for the ground immunity, but also because it avoids Spikes and Sticky Webs. U-Turn is good for repositioning, and Flash Cannon is there to deal with Fairies. Hydreigon is the star of this team, with Draco Meteor effectively having no drawback thanks to the auto-crit from Merciless. With Stealth Rock and Toxic Spikes up, Hydreigon will often mop up opposing teams, absolutely annihilating anything not Fairy or Steel type. Choice Scarf lets it outspeed most of the meta, but it still feels like it could use a bit more. Unfortunately, Scarf Hydreigon speed ties with Speed-Booster Iron Crown, which means those games are often coming down to a speed tie coinflip. However, Hydreigon absolutely dismantles most offense teams, and is one of my favourite pokemon to use. It leads well into almost everything, and can generate momentum easily.

Dragapult is the most recent addition to this team, and could probably use some more workshopping. There is an arguement for a Special Attacking set, but my team was already stacked with Special Attackers, so Physical seemed like the way to go. It definitely suffers from 4MSS, but the current set of Dragon Darts, Phantom Force, Protect, and Sucker Punch are a solid line-up. Dragon Darts is very powerful, and has 2 chances to poison (roughly a 50% chance for Toxic Chain to activate on two hits). Protect scouts the opponents move and lets Toxic damage stack up. Sucker Punch lets you play mindgames, and can steal some sneaky KO's. Phantom Force is the weakest move here, and is completely useless into No Guard teams. However, Dragapult is hurting for Physical Ghost moves, and being able to stall an extra turn can help rack up even more poison damage. It also lets Dragapult go invulnerable, dodge a move, have the opponent die from poison, and then smack the new switch-in next turn. It's a niche pick, but can help salvage endgames that should be losing. Infiltrator helps beat anything running substitute, which trivializes a few select matchups. Tera Fairy helps beat some of the scarfers running around, and is another layer of defense against Scale Shot.

In conclusion, Merciless is a very fun teamstyle. It is not the strongest thing out there, and has a few losing matchups. However, it can be very strong, and with skilled piloting can result in fun and creative games. If you are looking purely to win against the largest array of teams out there, Merciless is probably not the team for you. But if you want a style that requires care and small modifications to gain an advantadge over others, Merciless is my personal favourite.

Sorry for the long post, I had a lot of thoughts and wanted to get stuff out there.

 

[Goldbanker27]

Hi, that might be a stupid question but I'm still asking: do Long Reach / Protective Pads really ignore Fluffy? I'm seeing everywhere and it's ruining my Hustle/No Guard/Tough Claws core

If yes, is even viable? I guess it has a niche as a defogger?

Also, I've seen Gluttony + Ripen + Cud Chew + Harvest + Cheek Pouch + Drought and that's quite impressive once all abilities are combined. I mean, is anyone using Unnerve?

Fluffy is a massive deal in the meta game and having a fluffy answer is a big deal.
Abilities that ignore fluffy: long reach, and mold breaker
Items: Punching gloves only for punching moves does not include sucker punch
Moves: Sunsteel Strike, Poltergeist, Feint, Petal Dance, Ice Shard, Bullet Seed, Rock Blast, Icicle Spear, Gunk Shot, and others. Needs to be non contact or ignores abilities.
Fire moves in general beat fluffy but heatran so often paired so this is unreliable.
Otherwise you need some type of setup like sd or dd.
Just make a Spatk team.

Decidueye is niche but it has 2 things going for it priority and defog. It also has spirit shackle which can be used to trap in niche scenarios. But It's true value is long reach. IMO fluffy is so prevalent that long reach is better than tough claws. If you run long reach, I believe that tough claws will not work.

Berry teams are common. They work in 1 of 2 ways they are either trying to stall or boost sweeping with stat berries usually a combo of both. There are a lot of ways to deal with them.

Hazard stacks keep hp low and enable better ohko potential. They also often rely on tidy up from maushold a fraile common donor for cheek pouch. Phasing also keeps boosts from getting out of control well keeping berry mons low.

Boost sweepers are also really strong into berry teams set up a couple of times, start the sweep. Your sweeper does not even have to be that fast as most berry mons have less than 90 base speed. You may deal with 1 or 2 fast mons like maushold or zamazenta. Berry teams are often loaded with low bst mons and can be taken advantage of with moxie spiraling out of control if your running physical.

Abilities: Unnerve does straight up counter them but they can still eat a berry if they knock out one of your mons. Unnerve is wasted in any other game. Opportunist is also another good ability to deal with berry teams as you boost alongside them stealing their stat raises well attacking or raising your own. Opportunist can have value outside of the berry matchup. Unaware though restricted.

Moves: Psychic Noise also stops healing effects from berries but they still get boosts. Crit moves that either have improve chance of crits or guaranteed crits like wicked blow or surging strikes will bypass stat raises.

Toxic is also strong eventually knocking them out or forcing switches.

 

[Bobsican]

Well, there's been some attention given around the userbase and how the meta has developed by the council, so right now there's some plans to make a survey sometime soon once some internal preparations are made, especially as not much at all of the status quo has changed with the Purifying Salt unrestriction.

Also, everyone welcome Byleth as a new member of the council!

 

[abdu Latrish]

What abilities are indisputable

 

[abdu Latrish]

Well, there's been some attention given around the userbase and how the meta has developed by the council, so right now there's some plans to make a survey sometime soon once some internal preparations are made, especially as not much at all of the status quo has changed with the Purifying Salt unrestriction.

Also, everyone welcome Byleth as a new member of the council!

Do you know abilities that can’t be disputed

 

[Bobsican]

Do you know abilities that can’t be disputed

I'm afraid this request is vague as an ability being "disputable" doesn't really mean much within the purposes of the rules of the tier. That said, the OP does currently lay out the abilities that are currently banned (disallowed from any use in the tier), as well as restricted abilities (which only work on the native carrier of the respective one for balancing purposes). In the future I would also recommend to use this thread for that kind of questions, I hope that helps!

 

[Shockathy]

Hello everyone!
I've been using this steel focused team and hit #19 on ladder with it!

Ladder Screenshot

I got absolutely wrecked with a version of this team about a week ago, "borrowed" and adapted it into the version you can see at the bottom of this post. This team is built pretty much completely around enabling a Solgaleo sweep, as far as I have seen in the ~two dozen games I've played laddering it has all the tools to do that. I would love to get some feedback and thoughts from this explanation.

Team Breakdown

The Duck​

Quaquaval's role in this team is primarily passing Moxie to everyone else. This section will be pretty short both because I'm new to writing team explanations and since it's wrecked by a lot of the tier same as pretty much every other Moxie provider, you can swap it out for almost any of them and you'd only be losing rapid spin. You're probably just going to be pressing flip turn on turn one and if it ever comes out again it's most likely to sac. It can provide some coverage in a pinch if it's needed, though fuffy/immunity teams are so common and good that if it's providing much value beyond it's ability you didn't need this team's ace to win that battle.

The Seadragon​

Dragalge is again, used to pass its ability to the rest of the team. Practically every offensive team in this tier will have an Adaptability passer on it as it's simply an extra free STAB boost with no drawbacks. This set is pretty unusual but I've found it to be surprisingly consistent to catch your opponent off guard and steal a KO or at least set one up. Dragon/Poison is fantastic coverage, you'll only really struggle against Steel mons such as Goodra-Hisui and Corviknight, which you can just flip turn out on. It's in your best interest to pivot as fast as possible early game anyways, setting up all of your abilities fast and keeping the tempo high is this team's (and the whole tier's) bread and butter.

The Cat​

Perrserker is another donor but can actually be used well as it packs a punch, in most of my games it came out 3rd with Adaptability, Moxie and its own ability in play. With all of those boosts Iron Head hits VERY hard. I've made it decently bulky to eat at least one hit and retaliate or pivot out last with U-turn. It also has Fake Out since 50 speed with negative investment isn't going to be outspeeding anything besides Hatterine, Iron Hands, Glastrier, Toxapex and Garganacl. Knock Off support is fantastic as well and makes the matchup against Ghost mons much better for the team's ace.

The Frog​

Heatran is a mid-game Stealth Rock user in this instance that passes Flash Fire to the team. Hazards are entirely off the table for this team if you're against a team that has Magic Bounce which relagates Heatran to a bulky special attacker. It can hit hard with Adaptability and Steely Spirit both in play to power up Flash Cannon into a mini nuke to obliterate any Fairy or Rock mons in your way. If you play this tier much you know how common Heatran is, so you'll know how to play with/against it.

The Wyrm​

Giratina-Origin is a hard hitting, bulky physical attacker with an emergency special move in Draco Meteor. Levitate is absurdly valuable on this team since with both Flame Body and Levitate the ace is only weak to Dark/Ghost types. Shadow Sneak is a fantastic option to weaken a pokemon to allow a sweep later. Earthquake is there as another physical option but it tends to get neutralized by opposing Levitate users. Dragon Tail can be a last resort move to stop setup sweepers or just a general phasing tool to use with rocks. It's not perfect and I'll likely swap it out for Roar since Soundproof isn't common enough to discourage it. All of this has been leading up to:

The Ace​

Solgaleo is what this team is built for, with a strong ability-ignoring move in Sunsteel Strike and fantastic defensive typing it can run away with games very quickly. I've elected to run an attack boosting nature since with Agility it can outspeed any threat your opponent can throw at you. You can terastalize to pure Steel typing to lessen the blow from Sucker Punch or First Impression users or to lessen another blow and setup. Though it is better to utilize the rest of the team to weaken or remove those threats. Fighting type priority users such as Iron Valiant, Kommo-o, Ursaluna-Bloodmoon, Breloom and Conkeldur can pose a threat to this set once tera is used since they tend to be boosted with Adaptability, Guts and/or Iron Fist and can KO you by ignoring your speed. To get to the positive matchups you don't have to worry about Intimidate teams or secondary effects from moves since Full Metal Body blocks any stat drops from the enemy team. Steel/Psychic is a phenomenal STAB combo in this tier since they tend to cover each other's weaknesses, only struggling with opposing Heatran. This usually doesn't come into play because by the time Heatran would come out You will have gotten at least 1 Moxie boost allowing a 2 hit KO from Sunsteel Stike despite the 4x resist.

Final Thoughts​

This is a very high tempo team that relies on executing its strategy before your opponent realizes what it is (I realize how dumb that is now that I've typed it out.) You're going to want to aggressively pivot between everything then sacrifice the weakest link to allow Solgaleo clean entry to do its thing. It has fantastic matchups into stall (though I haven't encountered many stall players to fully confirm that assesment) and bulky slower paced not-quite-stall teams (except for maybe Merciless teams?) by simply blowing right through them. So far I haven't encountered any issues with opposing offensive teams since with one agility boost Solgaleo outspeeds everything that would hit hard enough to scare it.

₊⊹⁂Team Paste⁂⊹₊

 

[Goldbanker27]

Hello Everyone,

Back again with another team built around a core I stole from Arkieus of houndstone, garganacal, wo-chien, and heatran. I ended up changing the sweepers used and added a piece that is under looked on stall/setup teams. I was able to hit an elo rating of 1559 and making it into the top 10 last week. I really need to start taking screenshots. The team is built around setting up with 2 bulky setup sweepers in Lugia and Garganacl. https://pokepast.es/3095925aff13fc3d

Team Breakdown

Mamoswine is the first up and generally the main lead. Mamoswines main job is to get up stealth rock but it does have some ability to knock out other leads using earthquake and ice shard combo. With a chance to even snag another ohko with endeavor and ice shard. It has huge benefit to the team in donating oblivious denying taunt and encore that destroy stall and setup team. Oblivious also catch common taunt leads like lycan rock wasting a turn allowing you to deny rocks.

Houndstone is running a basic trick scarf set nothing special. Trick/Poltergeist/Will-o-wisp/Memento. Houndstone is mostly here to donate fluffy. Not much to say that has not already been said about houndstone in other posts.

Heatran is here to remove the fire weakness from fluffy but it also provides a secondary stealth rocker. Magma storm is great and trapping mons well doing consistent damage is fantastic. Taunt is there for other stall/setup mons like blissey in combination with magma storm. Steel beam is underrated and absolutely nukes anything that it hits. With leftovers you can potentially get more than 2 uses. Tera steel is there for rock spam teams. This is the only scenario where using tera for heatran is a good idea. It also provides a good pivot for another member of the team Wo-chien resisting u-turn.

Wo chien is up next using the same set from a previous post I made with tera poison, leech seed, knock off, substitute, and stun spore. Being weak to u-turn is the bane of its existence but partnered with heatran allows you to pivot quite safely around threats like meowscarada or cinderace. With the donated ability of oblivious wo chien becomes extremely hard to deal with for some teams constantly spreading paralysis and knocking off items. Just do not get tricked. Tera poison will beat almost every priority spam or body press team in combination with fluffy.

Garganacal is up next and the first of the bulky setup sweepers. Purifying salt removes another secondary threat to bulky setup and stall being status. Curse/Body Press/Salt Cure/Recover. Curse enables both salt cure and body press to sweep teams. Salt cure makes it unsafe for steel or water type checks to come in taking at least 25% on switch in. With tera water you will beat most waters and steels no problem. It EVed to bulky spdef for iron crown in particular. Garganacals main threats are spatkers or 1 of 2 physical attackers in hisui-lilligant and ogrepon. Both of which have stab grass or water moves that do not make contact ignoring fluffy. If garg does not have at least 2 curse stacks it is not safe against either most of the time. Otherwise garg destroys physical teams.

Last up everyone's favorite gen 2 legendary that just never seems to work well. Lugia has debatably the best defensive profile in all of pokemon tied for the 3rd highest spdef in 154. In combination with the donated abilities and multiscale lugia has at least 1 turn of setup allowing for a free calm mind. Against most fast offensive team your moving second allowing you to heal back to full reactivating multiscale and you can keep cycling building calm mind stacks. Aeroblast is great with the main downside of PP. It also boasts an improved crit chance which helps break setup races with other calm mind pokemon allowing you to crit through boosts. Psychic Noise ruins berry teams denying the healing as you break them down. Tera steel deals with dragon spam and flutter mane.

The main threats stopping your setup is sand based teams like byleth's lycanrock/ttar stone edge spam. Also moves like trick can derail mons like gargancal and lugia. Opportunist is also a problem hurting the ability deal with other sweepers as curse and calm mind boost the defense you want to breakthrough. Also phasing moves have caused problems.

All over the team is very bulky requiring your opponent to have extremely strong breakers that have setup of their own. Your early game is about getting up rocks and abilities activated safely increasing the lifespan of your team. Mid game is all about wearing down the enemy and trying to cripple key threats with will-o-wisp, trick, magma storm, leech seed, salt cure, and stun spore. The end game is all about that setup sweep with garg or lugia after removing a potential threat.

 

[amanwithaplaNN]

I don't know why Merciless spam, of all ideas, keeps popping up as the noobtrap strategy that infests the entire ladder to some degree. You would think people would instead spam Guts, Harvest, Super Luck, or even just ignore the ban/restrict list and use Medicham and Lokix, but no, they resort to one of the worst strategies to exist. If you look at the stats from March or February and compare them with the 1760 stats (March, February), you will see that for some unknown reason, you will see that Glimmora stubbornly hovers around 7-10%, Salazzle at around 3-5%, and Toxapex at around 6-7%, despite their usages absolutely tanking in high ladder, with Glimmora at 2-7% (I have absolutely no idea why some people are using Glimmora more than Toxapex in high ladder), Salazzle at 0.1-0.5%, and Toxapex at 3-5% (contributed to by normal stall according to moveset data, but for some reason people ran Merciless more than Regenerator in February).

Now, you may be wondering, why is Merciless guts spam so bad? Because it loses to almost every single archetype in the metagame. It loses to Natural Cure stall (or Purifying Salt or Shell Armor), it loses to any variation of Guts priority spam that has Stealth Rock, it loses to any variation of special HO that has Stealth Rock, it loses to Dragon spam from Scale Shot, it loses to Maushold, it loses other variations of critspam (Sucker Punch Urshifu incoming), and it loses to Steel spam. Heck, if probably even loses to Rain stall of strategies due to Hydration and Dry Skin invalidating Inteleon. This isn't even mentioning more matchup-fishy abilities/Pokemon, such as Giratina-O or Hydreigon ignoring Toxic Spikes, Muk(-Alola) removing Toxic Spikes, Corviknight using Defog, Landorus using Taunt, etc. Choice Scarfed Pokemon such as Maushold and Dragapult easily KO Inteleon and Salazzle since Merciless teams are slow compared to other strategies.

So then why does this horrible strategy still exist?
1. Generic matchup fishing
Not everyone runs Giratina-O or hazards, enabling this strategy to fish Guts priority spam using Focus Sash (literally the only strategy to heavily rely on Focus Sash)

2. New toy syndrome
People love to experiment with new ideas. Unfortunately, the experiment they have chosen has been proven to give terrible results over and over again.

3. It can beat Harvest
Self-explanatory.
People hate Harvest and hate using Unnerve, so they'd rather build around an entire unviable strategy that naturally counters Harvest if they lack hazard removal.

i just think its neat

 

[amanwithaplaNN]

Well, there's been some attention given around the userbase and how the meta has developed by the council, so right now there's some plans to make a survey sometime soon once some internal preparations are made, especially as not much at all of the status quo has changed with the Purifying Salt unrestriction.

Also, everyone welcome Byleth as a new member of the council!

will you ever make a doubles version of this format, or national dex?

 

[Goldbanker27]

Been staring at the banned and restricted list lately well building teams. Below are a few mons I would like to petition the council to look at and possibly test as either restricted or free.

Regieleki

Regieleki needs to be suspected tested again. Its most common paired mons have all been removed or restricted such as technician, kyorge, spectrier, and quark drive. Kyorge was an overly bulky rain setter that spammed thunder boosted by transistor. Spectrier enabled spatkers to spiral out of control. Technician was the driving force of priority spam and could only use transistor when paired with galvanize. Quark drive is the other pain point at the time when paired with electric terrain. Terrain also boosting electric moves and providing a free boost with quark drive. Regieleki as a mon has 1 major thing going for it speed. Otherwise it is fragile and its atk and spatk are only 100 both being fairly average for the meta and nothing super special with no setup moves available. Not to mention it has limited move pool and would be heavily reliant on tera or an ability like pixelate for coverage with only normal, electric, and 1 flying atk available otherwise. All of the physical moves are contact except explosion limiting how good it is verse the popular fluffy teams and ting lu checks. Transistor as a type boosting ability is also fairly poor, 1.3x atk/spatk when using electric moves, when we have abilities like steely spirit, dragons maw, and rocky payload for other types that provide a 1.5x power boost to moves. Move power generally being better than having a slight atk or spatk raise that transistor provides. Transistor acts more like quark drive or protosynthesis boosting atk/spatk by 1.3 but is type restricted. With only 2 electric types above 2% usage in Galvantula and Toxtricity. I think the electric type could use a boost in viability.

Greninja

Greninja should be looked at as well. Battle bond is the main concern here and is likely too good to be given to all team members. Maybe the ability should be banned or restricted to limit the sweeping potential of potent mixed attackers like Giratina-Origin, and Landorus. Greninja's water shuriken is significantly less potent than it was with the restriction to technician and with a base 75 power with 5 hits appears fairly reasonable. It would rely heavily on rain for boosts and would not pair well with current flutter mane teams with sun teams. On top that it has no boosting moves and solely relies battle bond for boosts. If battle bond was a banned or restricted ability it would give spatking focused teams an option for protean/libero well also providing a new option for spatk priority instead of vacuum wave.

Chi-Yu

The most controversial idea being Chi-yu. This needs to be restricted but I think the mon could at least see the light of day. With restrictions to common pairings in quark drive, photosynthesis, grim neigh and psychic terrain from other bans, I think there are now ways to play around such an offensive threat. It is rock weak often forcing it to run boots. It also has a 100 base speed which forces it to run scarf or have team support to out speed if looking to sweep. Ting lu also nullifies beads of ruin for your whole team as well as still providing bulk for other special attackers. I firmly believe this is much less of a threat than spectrier who has had a recent test as it does not have the same spiral out of control mechanics. I do think it would be too much to allow flutter mane to have the beads of ruin ability.

Also some forms of Arceus but that involves a 20 page essay and a breakdown by typing. For a TLDR types I think could be free today without to much of meta shift: Dark, Fairy, Flying, Fighting, Ghost, Grass, Ground, and Psychic. The following need suspect testing due to type boosting abilities or defensive power: Poison, Steel, Water, Electric, and Rock. We have dragon free already which holds a similar attacking power to steel, water, and rock due to dragons maw. Normal should stay banned as being able to use a non plate item is likely to be too much.

 

[Dorsia]

Hi guys, I'd appreciate any help/review for this Fairy spam team:
https://pokepast.es/b9c5e68faadd1e66
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It's basically based on Fairy type Boomburst/Facade, so the main issue was to bypass Ghost type.
I could either run with Mind's Eye but since I want to have the maximum damage possible I'm going for Pixilate.

1. To begin with, we have for sharing Pixilate. I'm going Specs because it's too slow anyway.
2. Then, let's have for the Punk Rock boost. I don't know if it should run Specs or Shift Gear but whatever.
3. is a classic to share Adaptability to improve Boomburst/Facade even more.
4. has shit SpA but it should have some utility with so many improvements, and it's the fastest mon of the team.
5. is here for dealing with special walls.
6. Finally, is basically the big boss of the team, I'm going mixed with Drain Punch.

 

[vnmmv]

Hi guys, I'd appreciate any help/review for this Fairy spam team:
https://pokepast.es/b9c5e68faadd1e66
- - - - -

It's basically based on Fairy type Boomburst/Facade, so the main issue was to bypass Ghost type.
I could either run with Mind's Eye but since I want to have the maximum damage possible I'm going for Pixilate.

1. To begin with, we have for sharing Pixilate. I'm going Specs because it's too slow anyway.
2. Then, let's have for the Punk Rock boost. I don't know if it should run Specs or Shift Gear but whatever.
3. is a classic to share Adaptability to improve Boomburst/Facade even more.
4. has shit SpA but it should have some utility with so many improvements, and it's the fastest mon of the team.
5. is here for dealing with special walls.
6. Finally, is basically the big boss of the team, I'm going mixed with Drain Punch.

Haven’t played with the team yet but here are some first impressions.

1. I’d consider putting Aura Sphere over Drain Punch on Kommo-o. Your team’s hardest defensive matchup will be against the common Triple H core (Heatran, Houndstone, H…Levitate), and Aura Sphere gets more mileage there. Dropping Drain Punch does hurt against Blissey, but Heatran is more important. Another option there is Vacuum Wave. You’ve got some decent speed here with Scream Tail and Crawdaunt, but the team as a whole is on the slower side.

2. Psychic Noise over Stored Power on Scream Tail is worth considering. Without much recovery here, I don’t think bulky stuff is going to let you set up the multiple CM that you need. Psychic Noise is punk rock and adaptability boosted and does a similar job at beating bulky stuff. It doesn’t have that same high-end potential, but you’d need to be at +4/+4 for Stored Power to equal Boomburst’s power anyway.

3. I think fast Specs Sylveon is a good set, but I’d also look at Tera Steel and Roar as the fourth move. Scream Tail answers a lot of setup. With the prevalence of Tera Steel, though, you’ll be a little susceptible still. It might be nice to have a panic button.

4. Honestly, putting Guts and Boomburst spam on the same team feels too optimistic, and I’d drop Ursaluna. But if you find that it’s working out for you, I’d still drop Trailblaze for Protect. Against offense, the best that Ursaluna can do is trade, and Protect is better at making that happen.

5. If you do drop Ursaluna, add something that sets rocks. You have options in Scream Tail and Kommo-o, but they’ll want every move they currently have. Ting-Lu is my pick, to cancel out opposing Vessel of Ruin. Standard Rocks/Ruination/Whirlwind/Spikes works. On an upbeat offense like this, Mental Herb Rocks/Spikes/Memento/Ruination works too. Another option is Court Change Cinderace, which would let Toxtricity and Kommo-o use Adaptability Boomburst without tera.

Happy Easter everyone.