SP Shared Power

Following the Spectrier ban and given how Deoxys-Attack was on the survey, is there any way for Deoxys to actually be viable? Deoxys donates a terrible ability as a sweeper, only has 1 STAB being Psychic, and hates relatively common Pokemon such as Heatran, Ting-Lu, Crawdaunt, Giratina-O, and Houndstone. Furthermore, its extreme frailty necessitates the usage of Indeedee, which has been nerfed with the Psychic Surge restriction. Physically, Deoxys offers almost nothing besides the elemental punches, Zen Headbutt, Knock Off, and Superpower, which can easily be countered with Houndstone, and specially, it has Psychic, Psyshock, Ice Beam, Dark Pulse, Focus Miss (forcing Galvantula or Lycanroc-Midnight/Golurk), and Energy Ball. This is because Deoxys wants to maintain its STAB, defeat Dark and Steel types, defeat Ghosts, and have random coverage.

However, unlike Darkrai and Flutter Mane, Deoxys barely has any setup opportunities and is punished extremely hard for not OHKOing an opposing Pokemon. While Darkrai and Flutter Mane have some bulk to maybe tank an opposing hit, Deoxys's 50/50/50 defenses means that anything that it doesn't OHKO will almost definitely be OHKOing Deoxys. In addition, since Deoxys is already extremely fast and has a bad STAB, using a Choice Scarf or Choice Specs either becomes a waste of an itemslot (Choice Scarf only beats other Scarfers) or an extremely easy revenge-kill/setup opportunity for the opponent.

Do y'all have any ideas of how Deoxys could be viable? I tried building a team once with it, but it included Scarfed Spectrier and it carried the entire team more than Deoxys.
 
InkyDarkBird said:
Following the Spectrier ban and given how Deoxys-Attack was on the survey, is there any way for Deoxys to actually be viable? Deoxys donates a terrible ability as a sweeper, only has 1 STAB being Psychic, and hates relatively common Pokemon such as Heatran, Ting-Lu, Crawdaunt, Giratina-O, and Houndstone. Furthermore, its extreme frailty necessitates the usage of Indeedee, which has been nerfed with the Psychic Surge restriction. Physically, Deoxys offers almost nothing besides the elemental punches, Zen Headbutt, Knock Off, and Superpower, which can easily be countered with Houndstone, and specially, it has Psychic, Psyshock, Ice Beam, Dark Pulse, Focus Miss (forcing Galvantula or Lycanroc-Midnight/Golurk), and Energy Ball. This is because Deoxys wants to maintain its STAB, defeat Dark and Steel types, defeat Ghosts, and have random coverage.

However, unlike Darkrai and Flutter Mane, Deoxys barely has any setup opportunities and is punished extremely hard for not OHKOing an opposing Pokemon. While Darkrai and Flutter Mane have some bulk to maybe tank an opposing hit, Deoxys's 50/50/50 defenses means that anything that it doesn't OHKO will almost definitely be OHKOing Deoxys. In addition, since Deoxys is already extremely fast and has a bad STAB, using a Choice Scarf or Choice Specs either becomes a waste of an itemslot (Choice Scarf only beats other Scarfers) or an extremely easy revenge-kill/setup opportunity for the opponent.

Do y'all have any ideas of how Deoxys could be viable? I tried building a team once with it, but it included Scarfed Spectrier and it carried the entire team more than Deoxys
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My only thought is special attacker. Running power herb and meteor beam maybe, going for nasty plot is risky. I am not sure if beam spatk boost works if you put sheer force on the team but sheer force would help immensely with all the coverage moves. I have thought about no guard team with it spamming zap cannon or focus blast. The problem is priority moves (sucker punch) eat deoxys alive and most teams have at least 1 or 2 priority users likely need defensive tera but you generally want an offensive tera for sweeping.
 
I want to know what people think should be done about Harvest, currently the council believes the voting option should be to Ban it, but I imagine some may want it restricted instead. The deal with Harvest is that this wouldn't be the first time we have to nerf the strategy as two berries are currently banned, so more action that doesn't go to the core of the problem can be seen as trying to preserve a broken element.
 
KaenSoul said:
I want to know what people think should be done about Harvest, currently the council believes the voting option should be to Ban it, but I imagine some may want it restricted instead. The deal with Harvest is that this wouldn't be the first time we have to nerf the strategy as two berries are currently banned, so more action that doesn't go to the core of the problem can be seen as trying to preserve a broken element.
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harvest per se is not a broken ability that deserves a ban solely because its 50% to proc and the best harvest mon is trevenant with curse, if berry doesnt proc then it effectively doesnt do much so i highly doubt people are going to use trevenant with harvest being restricted, i believe restrict is fine because there is no way to abuse it, a ban would be too much for a mon that barely does anything alone
 
I would like to tackle some of the abilities that are paired with Harvest, specifically Cheek Pouch and Cud Chew, instead. I believe the current problem with Harvest teams is that the Pokemon can quickly ramp up in defensive and specially defensive boosts, all while recovering a large portion of their health. Restricting/banning Cheek Pouch and/or Cud Chew would slow that down by reducing the healing effect of berries and eliminating healing from stat-boosting berries, as well as preventing Pokemon from simply just protecting to guarantee a Cud Chew activation healing the Pokemon.
 
KaenSoul said:
I want to know what people think should be done about Harvest, currently the council believes the voting option should be to Ban it, but I imagine some may want it restricted instead. The deal with Harvest is that this wouldn't be the first time we have to nerf the strategy as two berries are currently banned, so more action that doesn't go to the core of the problem can be seen as trying to preserve a broken element.
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I am a strong believer that Harvest is not ban worthy. With how much power is in SP if you cant kill a mon that uses berries that's not the games fault. Berry teams have very simple counter play that is not only effective but also helpful. The argument of "Will you purposefully use a bad mon with unnerve to beat berries?" isn't a reason, A couple strong architypes use Corviknight or Galvantula which can both use Unnerve and have a purpose on the team as well. Cheek Pouch in my eyes is what gives harvest the potential it has currently, restrict cheek pouch and cud chew and you limit the versatility of berry teams.
 
Disclaimer: These are merely my personal thoughts and don't represent the council as the whole.

Berry teams as they are right now are problematic. My Berry Offense sample team has carried me for almost a year at this point, mainly revolving around Zamazenta as a Body Press sweeper that can get to +6 Defense simply by spamming Substitute over and over, which is just awfully cheesy.

I can see the argument of hitting Cheek Pouch; at least for this team it would throw a massive wrench into its gameplan, but then you could just build teams around Ripen Sitrus Berries alongside manual setup. Cud Chew has been my go-to for getting around bad Harvest RNG, so a restriction there, while making Berry spam less reliable, could be partially mitigated by running Drought instead.

There are two issues though: First, restricting Cheek Pouch and potentially Cud Chew means that there are several bans around Berry Spam (reminder, we already have two Berries banned thanks to their antics), and at some point the Berry-shaped problem has to be pulled out by its roots. The second, and possibly bigger issue: This is a discussion about a Harvest suspect test in the first place, and whether a ban or restriction makes more sense. I'm not sure if suspecting a different Ability is on the table (I don't make the rules), but two at the same time, probably isn't.

Moving onto Harvest itself:
In a way, Berry spam is matchup fishy: If you run into Unnerve, your chances of winning plummet. But isn't Unverve in itself a matchup fish? It only does anything against those teams, and is a dead Ability slot against anything else. At least with Mewtwo and Caly-I you had good reasons to run them regardless of Unnerve.
Slothy0wl said:
A couple strong architypes use Corviknight or Galvantula which can both use Unnerve and have a purpose on the team as well.
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Yes, Galvantula is used on some strong archetypes, but that's primarily because it can support Hustle or other low-accuracy moves with Compound Eyes. The vast majority runs that over Unnerve, for a reason. (see https://www.smogon.com/stats/2024-11/moveset/gen9sharedpower-1500.txt for reference: Unnerve is used in less than 20% of cases)
Corviknight can get away with running Unnerve, but what does it do? Which Archetype does it fit on? some kinda bulky offense using Corv as a setup win condition? It's fairly specific, resulting in low usage rate, especially on higher ladder. So it's not like Berry spam has to worry about running into that on the regular.

Personally, on the topic of restrict vs. ban, I am leaning towards ban, just to be on the safe side. This is an upcoming suspect test, and the last thing I want to happen is Harvest teams still upsetting people even when the restriction goes through.
Perhaps in that case it would be a "git gud" situation, as Trevenant/Arboliva/Eggy are pretty flawed and easier to handle than stuff like Zamazenta and a whole team of endlessly regenerating Berries, so I'm personally not ruling out the option of restricting Harvest instead. And, after all, that's what the discussion is for: To see whether a restriction of Harvest would be more sensible in this case.
 
InkyDarkBird said:
Following the Spectrier ban and given how Deoxys-Attack was on the survey, is there any way for Deoxys to actually be viable? Deoxys donates a terrible ability as a sweeper, only has 1 STAB being Psychic, and hates relatively common Pokemon such as Heatran, Ting-Lu, Crawdaunt, Giratina-O, and Houndstone. Furthermore, its extreme frailty necessitates the usage of Indeedee, which has been nerfed with the Psychic Surge restriction. Physically, Deoxys offers almost nothing besides the elemental punches, Zen Headbutt, Knock Off, and Superpower, which can easily be countered with Houndstone, and specially, it has Psychic, Psyshock, Ice Beam, Dark Pulse, Focus Miss (forcing Galvantula or Lycanroc-Midnight/Golurk), and Energy Ball. This is because Deoxys wants to maintain its STAB, defeat Dark and Steel types, defeat Ghosts, and have random coverage.

However, unlike Darkrai and Flutter Mane, Deoxys barely has any setup opportunities and is punished extremely hard for not OHKOing an opposing Pokemon. While Darkrai and Flutter Mane have some bulk to maybe tank an opposing hit, Deoxys's 50/50/50 defenses means that anything that it doesn't OHKO will almost definitely be OHKOing Deoxys. In addition, since Deoxys is already extremely fast and has a bad STAB, using a Choice Scarf or Choice Specs either becomes a waste of an itemslot (Choice Scarf only beats other Scarfers) or an extremely easy revenge-kill/setup opportunity for the opponent.

Do y'all have any ideas of how Deoxys could be viable? I tried building a team once with it, but it included Scarfed Spectrier and it carried the entire team more than Deoxys.
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The only time I've seen Deoxys and thought it was the best mon for the role was in a cool berry team that babynogalXD built. Deoxys had a Petaya Berry and ran substitute + attacks. That set made use of Pressure and Deoxys's good stats. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be a lot of viability, which is crazy to say about something with 150/150/150 offenses. I do think there's promise in a lead set, though. Deoxys can set rocks, run a fast Taunt, and have some offensive presence, too. It's a like a better Deo-S since the speed tiers aren't that high for dedicated leads.

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As for Harvest, I was surprised to see it score so highly on the survey. I don't think Harvest is a problem, personally, but with that high (or is it low?) score, the clear path seemed to be to vote for a suspect. I'm sympathetic to Gimlaf's argument that testing non-Harvest elements is poking around the core of the mechanic, attempting to delicately strike the right balance. Further, I speculate that the reason Harvest scored so highly on the survey is because it's just annoying to play against. Berry teams are good, but they're not tearing up the ladder like neutral karma 's Spectrier + Comfey team. With that lack of overwhelming results, the shenanigans seem to be the real issue, and I don't see a benefit to preserving them in miniature with a restriction. Reading the thread, though, it seems that maybe I misjudged sentiments about how good berries are.

Finally, just a note, Unnerve is a bad ability in my eyes. Teams that can't score OHKOs or shut down berry setups will also fall flat against stall or other kinds of bulky setup spam. Whenever I'm tempted to put Unnerve on a team, I take it as a sign that the whole team needs a redesign. The only exception is on stall itself because it's very tough to account for infinite healing and hazard immunity on stall. Corv is a good bundle of stats and typing, though, so Unnerve can sneak in through the back door there and still land on a good team.

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Here comes a team and some general thoughts from the Spectrier meta. I played pretty badly for a lot of that meta, so caveat emptor.

:iron-bundle:-:porygon-z:-:landorus:-:ho-oh:-:ting-lu:-:wo-chien:
The only real success I had was with this Sheer Force HO. It might still be good. What I like about this team is that it only has good mons on it. Adaptability and Sheer Force are all the offense a team needs. The offensive Ruin sets are fun, especially Wo-Chien. Taunt plus some high power STABs turn it into a pretty good breaker. This team naturally worked in some bulk with the ruins and Calm Mind Ho-oh, making it a little more consistent than the average HO. The matchup against that crazy Comfey team was decent and left the game up to the players. This team does lack mechanisms for coming back from losing positions, though. The lack of priority hurts and means that the team has to stay in front for the whole game against opposing HO.

That version of the meta is over, so here are some unfalsifiable claims.
Ting-Lu was the most splashable mon in the meta. That's not to say it was the best - that was Spectrier. But so many teams could use Ting-Lu. Spectrier (with Lando) required anything bulky to run Ting-Lu. Special HO could also use Ting-Lu to cancel out that opposing Vessel of Ruin. Ting-Lu's bulk meant that it could contribute in games against physical or mixed offense, too. Not exactly ground-breaking analysis, but still: every team that skipped out on Ting-Lu needed a very good reason to do so. The mon did something in every game.
Is Fluffy without Flash Fire growing more common? It seems to be. Bulky teams were in such a bad spot against Spectrier that Heatran builds were harder to justify. Houndstone saw some play on offenses, which dedicated the rest of their slots to attackers, not another defensive ability. Rain is kind of back and doesn't need Flash Fire, and it runs Dry Skin alongside. The upshot of this trend is that I think Fire is viable coverage again. That Ho-oh on the team above has Flamethrower as its STAB, and I was happy with the performance.
Quark Drive went crazy for a while, but it seemed that people adapted by stacking priority again despite the Technician restriction. Speed control is now not just about priority, but about fast priority. The neutral karma Spectrier + Comfey HO skipped the scramble for +1, but for the rest of us, speed still matters. Feint spam, Webs with priority, Upper Hand, and Scarf priority are not unusual. I am historically a Basulegion-M hater, but lately I think it may be preferable to Crawdaunt in some cases due to the better speed.
 
vnmmv said:
Quark Drive went crazy for a while, but it seemed that people adapted by stacking priority again despite the Technician restriction. Speed control is now not just about priority, but about fast priority. The neutral karma Spectrier + Comfey HO skipped the scramble for +1, but for the rest of us, speed still matters. Feint spam, Webs with priority, Upper Hand, and Scarf priority are not unusual. I am historically a Basulegion-M hater, but lately I think it may be preferable to Crawdaunt in some cases due to the better speed.
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I think basc is going to see more play over crawdaunt. It has a better typing against increasingly common priority teams being immune to fighting and normal well resisting the common aqua jet. It forces those teams to take something to hit ghosts.
 
Goldbanker27 said:
I think basc is going to see more play over crawdaunt. It has a better typing against increasingly common priority teams being immune to fighting and normal well resisting the common aqua jet. It forces those teams to take something to hit ghosts.
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...you sure about this when many priority teams already run Scrappy/Mind's Eye to hit Giratina-O and Houndstone and how Crawdaunt itself can counter Basculegion? Crawdaunt has consistently ranked above Basculegion in usage for unweighted and 1760 stats this whole year. What has changed now to make Basculegion more favorable?
 
just kinda threw this team together since i had a fun idea, might not be great but im doing pretty well on ladder with it, currently sitting at 84th on ladder with it so enjoy
https://pokepast.es/37977444bfb85c4e
its a fairly standard harvest abusing team except with kommo-o tacked on, u can run bulletproof if u want but i prefer soundproof to prevent any potential roar users and to prevent sound moves from bypassing sub. once ur abilities are ready, kommo-o can come in on a ton of mons, even more if ur willing to sac something, and start setting up with sub and/or clangorous soul. if u wanna go all in on the sub, u can run salac on kommo-o over aguav, but i prefer the extra healing aguav gives. lmk what u all think!

(p.s. to me this team only makes me feel like harvest needs to be restricted more than i did before, its so much fun to set up a +6 omniboost with a sub up while u have infinite healing and ur opponent just kinda has to sit there and lose)
 
yo been awhile im back with some more heat, enjoy destroying everybody with a broken team i just made that got me an insane record

team: https://pokepast.es/12382e5416d33a89
result:
1734860958782.png


ngl i dont feel like explaining the team cuz it would take too long and im kinda lazy but if u got any question lmk and ill answer
 
neutral karma said:
yo been awhile im back with some more heat, enjoy destroying everybody with a broken team i just made that got me an insane record

team: https://pokepast.es/12382e5416d33a89
result: View attachment 697414

ngl i dont feel like explaining the team cuz it would take too long and im kinda lazy but if u got any question lmk and ill answer
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Can confirm this team is good though weak to hazards and no flash fire to neutralise the fire weakness brought about by fluffy. The shining star to this team in my eye (I could be wrong and karma can correct me as to who the MVP is) has to be iron crown. I've been running my own iron crown team with offensive abilities to boost stored power and tachy while running defensive abilities removing as many weaknesses as possible and making it tanky. Crown has become my favourite mon to use in this meta.
 
Might as well drop my Deoxys team that I tried to make work a few weeks ago. I peaked around 1450 on my alt account, but then I fell due to MU fishing from someone using Pixibomb. I've gone back to using my stall team.

https://pokepast.es/42f1ad6981252f67
This entire team is self-explanatory besides Galvantula and Deoxys. I decided to use Unnerve Galvantula because there wasn't really any other offensive ability I could add for Deoxys besides Drifblim's Flare Boost, which I don't really like because it usually requires Protect. Unnerve + hazards also efficiently gets rid of the pesky Carbink on Berry teams. I have no idea if this is the best use of my 6th Pokemon slot on the team.

Deoxys moveset is mainly inspired by the argument with 1hfkqhwhrelk I had on Discord over Deoxys's viability. Psychic is generic STAB, Psyshock is anti-special wall STAB, Focus Blast is for nuking Dark and Steel Pokemon, and Nasty Plot is to (maybe) set up if an opponent tries to predict Psychic or Psyshock. This set obviously loses to any bulky Psychic Pokemon that resists both of Deoxys's STABs (Lati@s and Lugia?) and Spiritomb and Sableye. However, I have no idea how to improve the set.
 
hello everyone i have found how to break iron crown so im making this post mostly to make the council aware of it, for awhile i was thinking what is the best way to play an iron crown team, defensive? balanced? setup spam? so many ways... but pure offensive is something insane i thought about

team: https://pokepast.es/1a80d4b1e44fa18c

a replay to showcase how the team does vs a defensive team (we are never losing to offensive teams so no point in showcasing that)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9sharedpower-2270322679-6lwt62b7gsm9dlwtc3264eupw0f3o3kpw?p2

theres alot to say and im a bit lazy but for the sake of bettering the tier i will talk about a few things

1. klawf, u can argue that sheer force exists so klawf and goltres abilities are useless into it but nobody is using landorus sooo yes i believe klawf is a problematic mon into the format, giving all stats +1 is very scary into offensive mons or stored power mons and endure is an insane move every mon gets so its easy to abuse weak armor, anger shell and berserk. i believe some of these things should be discussed whether its anger shell or endure

2. iron crown, is this mon broken? the typing is good offensively and it has access to stored power, iron defense, agility, sub so it can basically fit any playstyle, im not so sure if this mon needs to go because to me this mon performs insanely well because of the supports it has, can be anger shell, berserk and weak armor and weakness policy so stored power instantly wins the game or defensive things like levitate, flash fire, fluffy so it can setup iron defense and stuff to win vs other kind of teams

lets talk about why i believe my team works: this is an hyper offensive team that synergize extremely well, it can lead klawf and setup rocks or trailblaze + stone edge to counter moon lycanrock and we already have a +1 on all stats for free, it has adaptability and sharpness which helps the entire team since all the mons have slicing moves aside klawf but thats whatever but the biggest reason this team can work so well is because focus sash and endure can guarantee we get all the boosts, u cant just " play around endure " because sash works and i can just attack if im predicting they are guessing endure, scarf kleavor is gonna guarantee we get the defog and after some abilities are setup we are definitenly not getting rocks setup on us again so its chill

overall thoughts: i believe either klawf or endure has to go, iron crown should atleast be kept an eye on
 
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neutral karma said:
1. klawf, u can argue that sheer force exists so klawf and goltres abilities are useless into it but nobody is using landorus sooo yes i believe klawf is a problematic mon into the format, giving all stats +1 is very scary into offensive mons or stored power mons and endure is an insane move every mon gets so its easy to abuse weak armor, anger shell and berserk. i believe some of these things should be discussed whether its anger shell or endure
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You sure? Landorus in #10 in November's unweighted stats and #13 in the 1760 weighted stats? Furthermore, Weak Armor Endure teams have been tested on ladder since at least April of this year (link), and (depending on the team) they can be beaten with simple predictions, priority spam, Sheer Force, Long Reach, and Opportunist.

neutral karma said:
2. iron crown, is this mon broken? the typing is good offensively and it has access to stored power, iron defense, agility, sub so it can basically fit any playstyle, im not so sure if this mon needs to go because to me this mon performs insanely well because of the supports it has, can be anger shell, berserk and weak armor and weakness policy so stored power instantly wins the game or defensive things like levitate, flash fire, fluffy so it can setup iron defense and stuff to win vs other kind of teams
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What makes the Iron Crown version of Weak Armor teams particularly broken compared to other Weak Armor teams?
 
No idea if the usage stats back this up, but it seems like raw Fluffy without Flash Fire is ticking up in usage. Some teams that I built recently were bothered by Houndstone + Zamazenta + Ting-Lu, so I started thinking about ways to punish Fluffy. The obvious answer is to use special Fire offense. It's surprisingly hard to fit Flamethrower et al as anything more than coverage, though, especially without folding to the teams that do bring Flash Fire. Special boosting with sun, Sheer Force, or Download leaves a team with speed control issues and no real priority presence. Sun in particular is in a rough spot, imo. Groudon is okay but not great as a wallbreaker with all the Levitate. I think it's better finishing games with bulky setup, but Sun needs Groudon to hit the field early. The other Drought mons just get BST checked. Sun also struggles to fit Adaptability, since Aqua Jet is weakened and Porygon-Z takes up another slot that needs protection from priority offense.

With those special difficulties in mind, I turned to a promising PS command: /ms physical, fire, !contact. Unfortunately, only three moves fit the bill: Pyro Ball, Raging Fury, and Sacred Fire. Libero Cinderace has potential and there may be something there, but I turned to Sacred Fire as I enjoy Ho-oh's bulk.

:ho-oh: - : lilligant-hisui: - :lycanroc-midnight: - :crawdaunt: - :ogerpon-wellspring: - :mandibuzz:
The result was this team. I think that a lot of Ubers like Ho-oh, Giratina, and Dialga are balanced in this mode by the fact that they can't boost. Lately I've been building teams meant to shovel free boosts towards these big stacks of BST. This team has Sacred Fire Ho-oh backed up by Hustle and Weak Armor. I'm not the first to discover this, but Weak Armor is quite good now. Speed control is unrecognizable after the Technician and Quark Drive restrictions, so the nearly-free +2 makes a serious difference. The Eject Button Crawdaunt here makes the team tick, letting us ideally get rocks up and have Hustle/No Guard/Adaptability set up by turn 3. (Edit: I have been informed that the Crawdaunt does not have Eject Button, oof.) When I'm building I tend to ask myself, "What can we do on turn 1? Is our engine running by turn 3?". Defensive and Toxic Boost/Guts teams in particular are prone to builds that need a lot of initial switching. In past metas, Groudon was a fun lead because you could just SD and click buttons as the opponent switched around four times. Back to the team, Mandibuzz is probably not the best Weak Armor mon in the game. However, this bulky bird lends some pivoting to an otherwise fragile six. Foul Play is boosted by Hustle and takes advantage of lots of physically-biased offenses. Finally, Ogerpon is here as a soft check against priority spam. Crawdaunt and Quaquaval are much less scary when you take away Aqua Jet. Ho-oh in particular appreciates this protection for the endgame.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9sharedpower-2271495293-d8nu9oc4s0he8v89flh7h7rnfpuzuk1pw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9sharedpower-2273512379-lolc5yb6dm1zlltn9woudyvr8tgm6sapw

As far as Weak Armor/Klawf/Endure go, I don't think any of them are broken. That strategy requires strong hazard control, good Endure calls, and enough offensive pressure to force the opponent to actually hit you. To me, that gaudy record sounds like a good player using a good team that takes advantage of meta conditions. Weak Armor is good speed control now. In the past it wasn't good, and people are still catching on.

:volcarona: - :heatran: - :ogerpon-wellspring: - :ting-lu: - :houndstone: - :bronzong:
Next up in the quest for Fire offense, I dusted off and revamped this team from a post I made six months ago. Not much new with it except that Quiver Dance is better than ever. Speed boosts can get out of hand quickly with Aqua Jet off the table. Volcarona was also pretty good. Being able to raise Speed without dropping defense let Volcarona stand up in front of Zamazenta and Ceruledge in a way that Ho-oh couldn't. All in all, I think Fire is passable STAB, but you really need to build around it like these two teams do to mitigate the problems.

:regidrago: - :clawitzer: - :archaludon: - :houndstone: - :wo-chien: - :dialga-origin:
Last team I want to share is this fun little Dialga-O team. Stacking two 1.5x boosts is a potent strategy, as seen with Toxic + Guts, Sharpness + Steely Spirit Iron Crown, and here Mega Launcher + Dragon's Maw Dragon Pulse. Dialga-O has such a high SpA that you don't really need any stat boosts or Adaptability. Of the pure ability donor mons like Perserkerr and Kleavor, Regidrago might be the best. It doesn't set hazards but at least it can dish some damage. This team leans on lots of Scarves and Trick Room Dialga as the speed control. It's kind of funny to me that what I think of as these innovative and new speed control methods for Shared Power are just the regular tools from OU. I'm trying paralysis spam next, we'll see how it goes.
 
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The suspect test begins now!
KaenSoul

Suspect Thread 'Shared Power Suspect 6 - A Fantasy Harvest Moon'

:sv/trevenant:
Shared Power Council has decided to suspect test Harvest​

Since the ban of the strongest Unnerve user in Calyrex-Ice, Harvest has become a lot more popular once again, being used to give Pokémon reliable recovery when combined with Cheek Pouch, which allows these berry based teams to have endless recovery and become impossible to outgrind preventing other defensive and some balanced builds from breaking them. They also make use of stat boosting berries to turn unexpected Pokémon into set up sweepers preventing the team from becoming too passive...
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Alright this team peaked the ladder around 1400. https://pokepast.es/f112f84ac76f3c06

Have a basic combination of golurk and lilligant-hisui. Golurk baits taunt very often and can prevent hazards from lycanroc's using dynamic punch. Getting up rocks if taunt is not a threat. Lilligant is extremely strong into fluffy teams with petal blizzard not making contact. Sash allows for a turn of setup if rocks or spikes is denied. Tera ice helps beat things like Giratina with triple axle. Generally save tera for pult. Basc is there for spin denial from quackavel and threatens defog mons with blizzard. Hydro pump can be switched for shadow ball. Hustle allows for more chip damage with aqua jet and flip turn. UrsaLuna can break with sd on strong walls and generally takes a few hits to bring down. Zangoose is the bread and butter here 1.5x on all physical attacks. Quick attack/Facade are free clicks and knock into ghosts max hp/def houndstone takes about 1/3 from knock. Speed ties with giratina. Dragpult is the closer here. Dragon darts beats down fluffy teams and tera normal stops the shadow sneaks from giratina, houndstone, and ceruledge. Quick attack snags kos and facade with tera normal smacks everything for crazy damage. Protect is optional on both zangoose and pult but I would not remove it from both just for consistency and threat of scarf knock or lack of damage on the first hit.
 
hello everyone im here to help the ppl trying to get reqs for the harvest suspect, here is a team i recently made and got to 1400 with a 17-0 record, im pretty confident its a good team + a good meta call since everyone is using weak armor now

1736290093672.png

team: https://pokepast.es/a679ba3cb0f312dc

team explaination: i built around scrappy which makes tera ghost and spin blocking useless, speed control is 2 scarfs + priorities, maushold can go bonkers in a weak armor meta with scrappy support
 
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Pretty much everyone who has touched this OM, especially when Technician was legal, has built a team with Adaptability + Tough Claws + Moxie and loaded up on priority. This team in the same formula is extremely simple but somehow caught lightning in a bottle, as I was able to climb to 1685. Apparently priority HO is still quite good. The team is so basic that it's funny, but I think that it points out some interesting meta developments.

:lycanroc-dusk:-:crawdaunt:-:quaquaval:-:houndstone:-:giratina-origin:-:ditto:
  • :protective-pads: Protective Pads are a pretty great item now. Pads feels especially worth running since a wide spread of teams will have Houndstone. Ever since the Calyrex-Ice ban, Houndstone has been the top dog defensively. It shows up on a lot of offensive teams to neuter the priority weakness. A lot of the top mons have ways around Fluffy, but Quaquaval in particular doesn't have the movepool to get around it. Pads are so nice compared to Long Reach because 1) you don't have to run Decidueye and 2) Pads don't reveal themselves. That trait goes well with Moxie, as you can snag a surprise kill and be off to the races. Zamazenta is another good user, in my experience, especially with Scrappy. I think the main ways to stop Zama are immunities and Fluffy, and being able to take one of those away with just an item slot is pretty good. Pads does seem like a luxury item to me, though. The mons that use it have to be good already without a boosting item or boots or lefties. But really, what are you running on Quaquaval anyway? It resists rocks already so it doesn't need boots, and it's not getting out of any 2HKO ranges with lefties. Dang. I guess Tough Claws + Adapt did enough damage that I was fooled into thinking Fluffy was negated.
  • :ditto: Ditto is... kind of okay? The gooey guy is famously subpar because it doesn't copy the full list of the opponent's abilities. I've been kicking around this idea of Moxie Ditto, though, and it worked out well on this team. Ditto is already a superb revenge killer, and adding Moxie raises its threat level. Adaptability and Tough Claws are very general boosts too, so Ditto usually can benefit. The above team is pretty slow outside of priority, so Ditto came in handy against faster priority like Zangoose, Lycanroc, or Cinderace. Ditto also protects against the ultra priority HOs with Lokix, Comfey, or Feint spam. Technician was Ditto's biggest obstacle before now. The copied moves would all be so weak. So many teams had multi-hit moves, too, which were inconsistent without the Skill Link donor. Ditto is a luxury slot, too, though. You need a front five that can handle games against pretty much everything except opposing HO. I'd have it at C on a VR.
  • :indeedee: :wo-chien: Indeedee is back, and so is Wo-Chien. On a related note, the above team gets bodied by these two. Weak Armor teams are playing more Indeedee and tbh it looks pretty good. The sash/Endure strat that neutral karma loves/hates is tough to answer without priority. With Iron Crown back, it seems possible to trade mons back and forth until the game is short enough to finish within Psychic Terrain's turns. I've seen Scarf and Terrain Extender; Terrain Extender looks better to me but maybe that's just because that item is better into my team. Wo-Chien seems to be having a moment, too. The meta seems to have gravitated towards mons with ways around Fluffy: Giratina-O, Lilligant-H, and Ceruledge are all on the rise. So many teams (like the ones I've built recently) try to get away with just ability-based breaking, foregoing Swords Dance and relying on Fluffy-ignoring moves. Wo-Chien answers the trend well and can sit on teams that rely on Moxie boosts. It's hard to fit on anything but stall, but at this point I'd include it on any stall build.
  • :lilligant-hisui: I swear that everyone was running Leaf Blade on this thing for months. I picked a random month from last year, and yep: 50% of Lilligants were running Leaf Blade in August, and Petal Blizzard was nowhere to be seen. Now Petal Blizzard is at 17%, and it should be higher because Petal Blizzard is non-contact. That's the most precious resource in the game right now, physical non-contact STAB. Shoutout to Wingullspammer69, who was the first person I saw using it and spread the word in the OM room. That move choice has completely transformed Lilligant from an okay ability donor mon into a real threat against fat. It has transformed Hustle from a highly committal "waste" of two slots into a low-cost breaking option. I expect to see Petal Blizzard and Lilligant to have much higher usage when this month's stats come out.
 
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Something I feel like I need to add here:
vnmmv said:
:protective-pads: Protective Pads are a pretty great item now. Pads feels especially worth running since a wide spread of teams will have Houndstone. Ever since the Calyrex-Ice ban, Houndstone has been the top dog defensively. It shows up on a lot of offensive teams to neuter the priority weakness. A lot of the top mons have ways around Fluffy, but Quaquaval in particular doesn't have the movepool to get around it. Pads are so nice compared to Long Reach because 1) you don't have to run Decidueye and 2) Pads don't reveal themselves. That trait goes well with Moxie, as you can snag a surprise kill and be off to the races. Zamazenta is another good user, in my experience, especially with Scrappy. I think the main ways to stop Zama are immunities and Fluffy, and being able to take one of those away with just an item slot is pretty good. Pads does seem like a luxury item to me, though. The mons that use it have to be good already without a boosting item or boots or lefties. But really, what are you running on Quaquaval anyway? It resists rocks already so it doesn't need boots, and it's not getting out of any 2HKO ranges with lefties.
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Yeah, having your moves bypass Fluffy sounds really great...but the problem is that Protective Pads don't (or shouldn't) work that way. The item simply prevents on-contact effects like Rocky Helmet and Flame Body, but it doesn't remove the contact property. The damage calculator supports this, since setting the attacker's item to pads doesn't change the damage done against a mon with Fluffy.
Punching Gloves do remove the contact property though, but since those are limited to punching moves, there isn't much that can make use of them either. The only time I used Punching Gloves was on Metagross with a team built around Iron Crown, where it could prevent Crown from getting screwed by Sticky Webs while also making use of Steely Spirit.
(The team in question is this one: https://pokepast.es/f9d764f732883dc1. I'm still using it from time to time, and it got me the Harvest suspect reqs)
 
Could we get purifying salt unbanned it hasn't done anything bad to anybody its not necessarily broken. To use it on a stall team you would have to sacrifice some bulk for just psalt
 
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InfernapeBud said:
Could we get purifying salt unbanned it hasn't done anything bad to anybody its not necessarily broken. To use it on a stall team you would have to sacrifice some bulk for just psalt
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Free ghost resistance and immunity to status? Sounds too good, even if the ability is only good against corrosion merciless teams I don't think it should be unrestricted. Stall teams wouldn't use it either as the ones that use natural cure wouldn't be able to rest since purifying salt stops that.
 
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