SP Shared Power

[finnaggann]

I would say that Latios is an A-, access to agility and recover and its higher speed tier give it significant advantages on balance teams (which feel viable again btw) over Giratina-O in the role of levitate donor. It doesn’t have the support moves of giratino, but most balance giratino are running more aggressive sets anyway and perform the role less effectively than Latios would in my experience.
Giratina-O feels somewhat held back by speed right now, and its lack of reliable recovery prevents it from being great in a tanky set up role, leaving it only superior to other options in the role of semi-offensive support, with will-o-wisp and/or dragon tail alongside shadowball/poltergeist/shadow sneak and Draco meteor. It’s still good, but I think it might deserve a drop to A because it isn’t the obvious all-purposes levitate Mon anymore, and levitate isn’t an obvious include on every team.

I will also briefly suggest that nosepass is C or C+ tier since carbink does similar things with a slightly different (I would argue more detrimental) set of fragilities/dependencies.

 

[Soiramio3000]

may I ask why is stench banned instead of restricted?
many of the stench pokemon are very slow and don't know any multystrike moves.

to avoid misunderstandings: I am just asking a genuine question, I am not asking for the rules to change. I just can't imagine how could someone possibly abuse this move.

 

[Bobsican]

may I ask why is stench banned instead of restricted?
many of the stench pokemon are very slow and don't know any multystrike moves.

to avoid misunderstandings: I am just asking a genuine question, I am not asking for the rules to change. I just can't imagine how could someone possibly abuse this move.

The Stench user can still combine it with Serene Grace and Skill Link for rather uncompetitive results, hence why.

For example, while this can struggle against offensive teams as it has a poor Speed tier, it can still matchup fish against slower / bulkier teams, especially when complemented by Scrappy to hit Ghost-types with Fury Swipes, with that overall having a net 90%ish chance to flinch alongside Serene Grace, which isn't very competitive to say the least, and thus adds nothing good for the metagame.

 

[vnmmv]

I will also briefly suggest that nosepass is C or C+ tier since carbink does similar things with a slightly different (I would argue more detrimental) set of fragilities/dependencies.

Totally agree. I blanked on it while voting, but Nosepass is just better than Carbink. Pain Split is a better tool for consistently staying at full HP than anything Carbink has. My Carbink teams were okay back in the day. They never came close to the success of your Nosepass team. The only thing Carbink has going for it is an immunity to Scale Shot and Dragon Darts. That's a pretty narrow distinction. We probably shouldn't have two Sturdy berry guys ranked, so I'd say we can swap Carbink out for Nosepass. Here's hoping that someone brings Nosepass in OMCL.

levitate isn’t an obvious include on every team.

This is a super interesting point to me because Levitate still does what it always did in dodging Spikes/TSpikes. The utility is still there and is still good, especially with Heatran. But more and more, I think stall is opting for boots spam over Levitate. In my opinion, stall can't afford to take rocks like it used to ever since Hustle began to rise in prominence. So we're left with a situation where you need to avoid chip but also can't remove hazards, because all of the removal stinks. Removal issues are widespread this gen, but unlike in other metas, Great Tusk, Iron Treads, and Corviknight are not good here and can't paper over the issues. Giratina-O can't afford Defog right now. Quaquaval and Glimmora are offense-exclusive and not that reliable as spinners to boot. Maushold only really runs Tidy Up on berry teams. Terapagos is a reliable spinner but has no recovery. Giratina is reliable but also has no recovery and is fringe. Maybe Lilligant is actually the best defogger. Am I missing anything? Anyways, my point is that I see Sticky Hold as Levitate's direct competition because it's functionally impossible to keep hazards off over the course of long games. InkyDarkBird's stall sample is the best example, but I have seen other teams taking this route, too.

 

[finnaggann]

Corviknight isn’t as bad as it usually performs. The problem I think is when you see it, it tends to run unnerve, which is basically shooting yourself in the foot in the team builder. It works pretty well on semi-stall though as a pressure donor and defogger, with the added potential to sweep physical-offense teams through bulk-up/iron defense. But then, it’s still just as niche/fringe as everything else you listed.
I feel like the lack of good anti-rocks is just another reason why balance has trouble.

 

[Levy'sChair]

Hey friends, first time posting here :)

I was wanting to build a steel spam team and found that both behemoth blade and tachyon cutter are both boosted by sharpness. Made this team and peaked at #4 on the ladder https://pokepast.es/b3b7d4c22de79e2d

A few thoughts on the current meta game.

I think eject button is a very slept on item. This meta feels like you need to get all of your abilities online as fast as you can. Many games start with me leading with my scarf Samurott-H, flip turn into eject button Perrserker while my opponent clicks u-turn and then I bring in something else. After turn 1 I already have 3 abilities online while eject button stops the pivot of my opponent's lead making them still stuck with 1. For how vital it is to have your synergistic abilities online, I think eject button should be used more on so-so pokemon with needed abilities.

There's been talks about the speed creep that is going on between Flutter Mane and Lycanroc. I want to add another pokemon which reaches crazy speed which is agility booster speed Iron Crown. After an agility boost, it reaches 972 speed, outspeeding scarf boosted Flutter. With tachyon cutter which destroys sash and sturdy, Iron Crown was the pokemon that usually won me my games.

I want to also put out that AV Dragalge is the best adaptability user. I feel when most people run adaptability pokemon as offensive mons they are just not good enough. AV Dragalge is a great special check when there are not many in the tier. It also has a lot of power and can easily KO a lot of pokemon with draco. With that it has incredible utility with phazing dragon tail and slow pivoting with flip turn. Put this mon in your teams, it's great.

Lastly, to no ones shock, Houndstone is still super strong. Almost no one is running Decidueye and the meta is very physical and since Zama's ban, fluffy is a great way to live those physical hits. I also think flash fire is a waste of an ability slot with Houndstone. There are almost no good fire type pokemon or even fire type moves right now and an easy fix is to just be tera water. I particularly like this set, will-o-wisp, shadow sneak, roar are all incredibly useful utility. Memento is a cool move that I've not seen anyone use before on Houndstone (It probably has been done, I've just not seen it). It can enable some set ups especially when I get to sweep before my opponent has enabled all of their abilities.

I'm glad people are still playing Shared Power and looking forward to how the meta game evolves,
Levy's Chair

 

[chronikler]

Hey friends, first time posting here :)

I was wanting to build a steel spam team and found that both behemoth blade and tachyon cutter are both boosted by sharpness. Made this team and peaked at #4 on the ladder https://pokepast.es/b3b7d4c22de79e2d

A few thoughts on the current meta game.

I think eject button is a very slept on item. This meta feels like you need to get all of your abilities online as fast as you can. Many games start with me leading with my scarf Samurott-H, flip turn into eject button Perrserker while my opponent clicks u-turn and then I bring in something else. After turn 1 I already have 3 abilities online while eject button stops the pivot of my opponent's lead making them still stuck with 1. For how vital it is to have your synergistic abilities online, I think eject button should be used more on so-so pokemon with needed abilities.

There's been talks about the speed creep that is going on between Flutter Mane and Lycanroc. I want to add another pokemon which reaches crazy speed which is agility booster speed Iron Crown. After an agility boost, it reaches 972 speed, outspeeding scarf boosted Flutter. With tachyon cutter which destroys sash and sturdy, Iron Crown was the pokemon that usually won me my games.

I want to also put out that AV Dragalge is the best adaptability user. I feel when most people run adaptability pokemon as offensive mons they are just not good enough. AV Dragalge is a great special check when there are not many in the tier. It also has a lot of power and can easily KO a lot of pokemon with draco. With that it has incredible utility with phazing dragon tail and slow pivoting with flip turn. Put this mon in your teams, it's great.

Lastly, to no ones shock, Houndstone is still super strong. Almost no one is running Decidueye and the meta is very physical and since Zama's ban, fluffy is a great way to live those physical hits. I also think flash fire is a waste of an ability slot with Houndstone. There are almost no good fire type pokemon or even fire type moves right now and an easy fix is to just be tera water. I particularly like this set, will-o-wisp, shadow sneak, roar are all incredibly useful utility. Memento is a cool move that I've not seen anyone use before on Houndstone (It probably has been done, I've just not seen it). It can enable some set ups especially when I get to sweep before my opponent has enabled all of their abilities.

I'm glad people are still playing Shared Power and looking forward to how the meta game evolves,
Levy's Chair
View attachment 777923

I remember losing to your team. I'll admit I'm still a little a salty over the loss because I made some really dumb decisions during that match, but your team is very good.

As for Eject Button, it certainly has its place in this meta, but there's just a lot of stiff competition for items here. Berry teams' item slots are locked down, stall teams prefer passive recovery, and hyper offense need Scarf and Sash to keep its sweepers alive. In my case, I only really need 2 abilities online before I can start sweeping (Adaptability + Download), so a Flip Turn into Porygon-Z covers most situations.

I'll have to hard disagree on Dragalge being the best Adaptability user. Granted, he seems a good fit for your team, but overall he is much worse than the likes of Crawdaunt or Basculegion. Adaptability is an offensive team ability, and unfortunately Dragalge just isn't that great offensively. He's definitely got utility with stuff like Flip Turn, being able to absorb Toxic Spikes, and be an absolute special defense beast with AV, but his low speed means it's gonna be difficult to do much more than get off one or two attacks with him. Even with Fluffy helping out his physical bulk, the high number of physical attackers means he'll struggle to survive for long. Meanwhile Crawdaunt and Basculegion have consistently proven to provide excellent utility throughout the entire meta. Their decent speeds mean they have a decent chance of attacking first, especially if you slap a scarf on them, their Attack is good enough to get good damage, they both have great utility moves in Knock off and Flip Turn, but the real thing that sets them apart is Aqua Jet. STAB Aqua Jet lets them function as very, VERY good revenge killers, and with help from things like Moxie and Hustle, they could legitimately sweep entire teams with it. Priority is an EXTREMELY valuable tool in this meta, and not worth trading for a slow bulky Adaptability user, in my opinion.

As for Houndstone, yeah, Fluffy is a good one. And not running Flash Fire can work, hopefully you don't run into any trainers who may or may not be running a sleeper Tera Fire just to catch you off guard...hehehe.

Great stuff here though, I enjoyed fighting your team and I look forward to seeing it develop as the meta evolves.

 

[Goldbanker27]

I have ridden the ladder to its depths and peaks to make this post trying every single thing I could think of that has physical defense since zama removal. I touched every ability that helps defensively verse physical damage in one form or another. So this is a bit a mega post to run though them all and put my thoughts down on how good they are. The following post is going to deal with abilities, items, and individual pokemon that specialize in physical defense. I did this so you don't have too. Below are my thoughts and a few teams I used testing stuff.

Marvel Scale

Lets start off with Marvel scale from Milotic. This is the most interesting option in my opinion because it enables the building of a balanced team. A good defensive core well also enabling offensive abilities. For those that are not aware marvel scale needs flame orb or toxic orb and gives you plus 1 defense after status. The best part is you can pair marvel scale with 3 great offensive abilities in guts, toxic boost, and flare boost.
Lets break each because they both play differently.

physical

Physical marvel scale teams are using it to beat out priority users instead of using fluffy that has notable downsides in being ignored by non contact moves like poltergeist, and petal blizzard. Drain Punch users like okidogi and kommo-o work very well with this combination, both dislike burn and are too slow generally to avoid it so guts and scale pair well. Now burn becomes an advantage well having longevity with drain punch healing. The biggest downside here is using milotic on a physical offense team which physical offense is the worst thing it does however it does provide a decent way to stall out psychic terrain special attackers paired with light screen, and recover/draining kiss, finishing out the move set with any of the following: scald/moon blast/haze/flip turn. Running flame/toxic orb is not advisable for milotic in this team structure preferably you want to run a defensive item: boots/leftovers/av/light clay. https://pokepast.es/b613b4dcc0c210b0

special

Physical offense is the worse of the 2 options, on the other hand special offense with marvel scale is something to behold. Pairing with flare boost on a dedicated memento/defog in drifloom flare boost you actually enable milotic to be offensive draining kiss healing any burn damage and milotic being extremely tanky in both physical def and special defense after burn. The secret sauce to this side however is the addition of heatproof. Heatproof does 1 major thing it halves the damage from burn. You can get this ability from 2 pokemon bronzong a stored power monster or sinischta. Bronzong is on a timer with no recovery but it does offer iron defense and calm mind stored power on a really good typing. Sinischta is the better of the 2. Paired with motcha gotcha, calm mind, strength sap, and scald you have answers to both physical and special attackers. Strength sap is ridiculous right now with how popular hustle/moxie is, basically you 2-3 full heals against any pokemon. Flare boosts gets you more hp using matcha gotcha and marvel scale makes it last longer. The biggest downside here is sinischta is a tera hog avoiding dark/ghost moves. Another great part about heatproof it halves the damage from fire types as well and guess what that means fluffy is on the table which helps greatly against previously mentioned dark type moves not so much ghost(poltergeist). Comfey is a decent pairing with this strat, but turn one it is extremely frail and needs to be brought in with a slow pivot(Flip turn Milotic) or run protect. Comfey should be restricted to the roles of revenge killer or a late game cleaner, it is not your main sweeper. https://pokepast.es/de754c84db10b157

Fluffy

Lets make fluffy quick. It is good and fits on most teams. Currently every team is packing a way to deal with fluffy in some form using non contact moves to even running special moves on physical attackers. With long reach now being 11th most used ability this past month fluffy is a ability in a holding pattern. It is good but not great. A good way to build around fluffy is to use pokemon weak to types with very little in non contact move selection dark, flying, and fighting allowing you to be pseudo neutral. It still does cover priority extremely well and is in my opinion the main reason to use fluffy. A bit more team building advice about fluffy if you do not want to dedicate a slot to flash fire or some other fire type weakening abilities choose teammates with fire resistant typing.

Grass Pelt

Moving on to something that was extremely surprising grass pelt and seed items, they go hand in hand. Grass Pelt is the most interesting physical defense ability to me as with grassy seed your at +2 def and you have passive healing with terrain. At plus 2 with no investment ogerpon lives a hustle adapt first impression after stealth rock. Lokix can die in a nice grassy field. Lokix is the bane of grassy glide spammers and this is a way to deal with that threat in a very surprising way. Pelt does not just affect grass types either I have tried this with other potential setup sweepers like iron boulder or iron crown both were meh but there is potential here but I have yet to find a good way to make this crazy. I know your thoughts, "What about unburden?": hawlucha is bad not affected by terrain until tera and has contact moves losing hard to fluffy, sceptile has no way of taking advantage with setup(sd set is terrible need +4), hitmonlee is too slow for fluttermane, lycanroc, and dragapult, also 53 DEF/ 50 HP is really bad even at plus 2 def. TLDR grass pelt is a great way for grassy glide team to get some much needed bulk well adding another glide user and potential for enabling setup sweepers. https://pokepast.es/20cd9476f84430e4

Tablets of Ruin

Another grass type with defensive ability Wo-Chien. I love this pokemon but man running tablets of ruin solo on a team is a major major waste unlike vessel of ruin. With how strong physical attackers are tablets just does not make an impact. Any other physical defense ability gives you more. This ability should be strictly used to meet certain damage rolls like turning a 2 hit ko into a 3 hit ko that enables stall/setup. Not much to add here it is a secondary ability that pairs well with another stronger physical defensive ability.

Intimidate

Intimidate the goat of competitive pokemon abilities and boy oh boy am I about to slander it. Intimidate is bad in shared power and extremely unreliable. The reason is there are 5 fairly common abilities that make intimidate a waste: defiant, guard dog, clear body, hustle and moxie. 2 of these making it benefit the opponent making the match a 5v6 and clear body making the ability worthless. Hustle and Moxie are included here for one reason they force you 2 switch around taking hazard damage and you still take a decent hit even after 1 intimidate. Regenerator play is the only good option here and a good example is Inky's intimidate stall sample team that is now archived and is replaced intimidate with tablets of ruin.

Zamazenta 2.0

Welcome back Zamazenta 2.0, everyone say hello to Cobalion. It is a direct replacement to iron defense zamazenta and potentially better. Cobalion boasts 91 hp and 129 def and which is better than zamazenta's 92hp and 115 def. Well what about dauntless it does not have dauntless. Yes it does not have dauntless shield but it does have a substantially better typing in steel/fighting. Gaining a resist to common steel, rock, dragon, and grass and loses it's weaknesses to physic, fairy, and flying. It is worse to neutral hits like water. Cobalion also pairs well with the flash fire/levitate/fluffy core making it's only weakness fighting which are all contact moves now essentially neutral hits. Lets talk about moves and oh my goodness talk about utility that zama could dream of taunt. Taunt is the game changer forcing your opponent to attack well you iron defense in their face and it absolutely destroys stall teams and prevents major will o wisp users from burning you. Not mention roar, calm mind, stealth rock, and twave. Taunt is so massive it honestly destroys berry teams as they are generally slow and it out speeds most berry abusers with its 108 base. That 108 base is not great but it does beat out 1 major speed tier 105 with Lilligant-H which is a major deal, iron defense will allow you to live a cc and knock it out the following turn with body press without even having fluffy or using tera. Lets talk about its attacks other than body press, we got: sacred sword, cc, iron head, stone edge, quick attack, vacuum wave and volt switch. Yes it is a weaker physical attacker than zama was but with the ability to be either a special or physical threat equally is great. Justified is surprisingly good and activated more often than you think because of how heavily teams are invested in physical offense knock off becomes one of the main ways these teams deal with cobalion, knocking off leftovers and chipping it down. Justified also pairs well with common teammates houndstone(scarf poltergeist go BBBBRRRR), giratina-o, and stored power Lati twins all three forcing your opponent into giving you a free +1 atk. https://pokepast.es/7e3f6079634e5f2b https://pokepast.es/559961cf69990c76

Multiscale

Multiscale, this is going to be quick. This ability is stuck on bad pokemon for shared power both Dragonite and Lugia need multiple turns of setup to be threatening. Dragonite does not have the speed needed to be a threat with 80 base which requires 2 agilities or 3 dragon dances to match top tier speed threats which it is deathly weak to the big 3 lycanroc, dragapult, and fluttermane. It heavily requires tera. Lugia on the other hand eats hits for breakfest even after multiscale is broken. The problem here however is can Lugia knock out the oppenent. Base 90 in both attacking stats is pretty bad and requires multiple turns of curse or calm mind setup. Calm mind is much better. Lugia does have a decent speed tier but for how many atk boosts you need more defensive investment is needed. There are some ways to play around both of these pokemons downsides for example dnite and lugia benefit greatly from anger shell/weak armor strats. Lugia for example can easily stack 2 anger shell stat changes using recover and still has good stats even at minus 1 defenses. Dnite on the other hand should run either agility if running anger shell, and dragon dance if running weak armor to get a plus 3 speed. In relation to multiscale terapagos with tera shell is really good and even tanks multi hit moves. Also has great utility, all you have to do is read any of Vnmmv posts or use any of their teams and it becomes pretty apparent.
https://pokepast.es/0409bfc7b7584a16

Pecharunt

Pecharunt is one of my favorite pokemon added in gen 9 and ghost poison typing is great. It matches up extremely well against quaqauval and lilligant walling both. It is much closer to zamazentas ability to immediately check physical attackers and with recover does it very well. Spreads toxic/confusion like no bodies business with malignant chain, confusion stocks are up with hustle/moxie as well causing more damage if you get a proc. Something people do not realize is that pecharunt is a perfect mixed attacking pokemon with 88 in both attacking stats and decent moves in both. On the physical side you have gunk shot and poltergeist to avoid fluffy and very underrated foul play. On the special side it has chain and shadow ball not much type variety but it can hit everything at least neutral and has nasty plot. It has great utility in parting shot, recover, curse, and destiny bond. Pecharunt does take a bit of team building support however to make it work and does not just slot in on most teams. Levitate/Purifying Salt both help immensly to deal with giratina/hounstone and earthquake/earth power https://pokepast.es/b444b5ea7e2d4011

Stamina

The ability Stamina is very boom or bust. It has one great pokemon with it in Archaludon. Arch is a true mixed attacker being able to run body press alongside a strong special line up with electro shot. Iron Defense and stamina can get you to a turn 1 plus 3 which is incredibly powerful but arch still often takes a massive hit that first turn and with no recovery chip damage sticks. Arch is fairly slow so your generally going to take big damage on turn 1 of being in. The best play is hopefully switching into a resist to get plus 1. Arch fits on a ton of teams with benefiting from rain, dragons maw, scrappy, moxie, steely spirit, and hustle. It also does great with other defensive abilities like fluffy to cover its biggest weakness in fighting, or levitate removing ground weakness. Item wise it can run almost anything but I have seen av used a ton in the past. This is a trap almost any other item is going to provide more value as your spdef is just too low with out major investment. https://pokepast.es/4bfe5b546ed4c4ac

Elephant Gang

Iron Treads and Great Tusk both do the same thing with different typing. Both provide a rapid spinner but no good way to deal with common ghost types in houndstone, giratina, and basculegion. They both also lose to quaquaval and lilligant badly. These 2 would love to check physical attackers but they just have an extremely poor typing for shared power and often require tera. Treads is slightly better with its steel typing providing better resists and it has a more balance stat spread. Booster energy is a bit of trap on both these guys as I have found more value in leftovers, boots, and rocky helmet. Tusk is pretty decent on berry teams where gourdon enables protosynthesis and can act similarly to how zamazenta did previously on those teams with bulk up, taunt is very good here as well. Treads on the other hand a decent abuser of terrain seeds particularly grassy seed and electric seed. Electric seed will force a quark drive boost of defense no matter what so you can spend evs else where but body press hits very hard with investment. Both also have ice spinner for removing terrain, treads is a decent option for this resisting expanding force in psychic terrain and removing terrain. I had a really hard time making either of these two work in any capacity. Tusk preformed the best paired berries but treads was more consistent. Testing these two was my hardest struggle on the ladder.

Dozo

Dondozo is an enigma. One game this guy dominates and nothing can stop it. The next does nothing and you wish you had any other pokemon. It counters moxie great and can check physical attackers with curse, sleep talk sets. However water absorb and dryskin although uncommon can make dozo a waste of a team slot. Drought is also a problem and majority of berry teams have plenty of grass types. Fluffy nullifies damage quite a bit from majority of moves but aqua tail is the answer and works well with hustle+no guard. Taunt/encore users ruin dondozo. With the right support dozo can be great but he is really hard to build around and can be a wasted team slot at times. Dozo really falls in the need a 5th move slot category.

Groudon

Groudon is not the physical check you think it is. The main problem with Groudon really wants to use fire and ground moves, but both types are pretty low on the totem pole in viability. This forces you to use non stab which feels very mid. Groudon does do a decent job at being a physical check on berry teams but in any other context not a great option. Bulk up is the only reliable way to improve your bulk but groudon is slow, and gets smacked around by waters/grass. Ice beam is also common enough coming from basculegion-f and proygon. Groudon is strictly a berry team pokemon or a stop gap in flutter mane sun teams that sets rocks. Berry teams also lack hazard removal maushold being the only option and a hard pokemon to get in and not lose immediately. Spikes/T spikes cripple groudon. No reliable recovery either on non berry teams. I almost rather have torkoal sometimes on berry teams for the simple reason of having rapid spin because of how much t spike or spikes can ruin a berry team putting you in range on switch in. Torkoal does alot of things you want on a berry team rapid spinner, clear smogger, iron defense/body press champ(just as good as groudon), stealth rocker, and sun setter.

Summary

Cobalion is the new iron defense body press monster that everyone tried to avoid with banning zamazenta and is even scarier for some teams. Grass Pelt/Grassy seed is a decent option for grassy glide spam teams to get some defense and offers great setup opportunities. Marvel scale/Flare boost is actually really good and has a place in the meta. Fluffy is fluffy and still a staple of the meta. Tablets of Ruin is a meh ability on it's own. Intimidate is trash tier. The Elephant gang(Tusk/Treads) is extremely hard to use. Multiscale wishes it was on better pokemon. Stamina is a roller coaster ride. Pecharunt is picky but a terror on the right team. Groudon is just a sun setter no much beyond. Dondozo hates water absorb/dryskin/encore/taunt. I would love to hear your thoughts on any of the following or any questions you have.

TLDR

Best abilities: Fluffy & Marvel Scale Worst Abilities: Intimidate & Multiscale Best Pokemon: Cobalion & Pecharunt

 

[jl36808]

I have ridden the ladder to its depths and peaks to make this post trying every single thing I could think of that has physical defense since zama removal. I touched every ability that helps defensively verse physical damage in one form or another. So this is a bit a mega post to run though them all and put my thoughts down on how good they are. The following post is going to deal with abilities, items, and individual pokemon that specialize in physical defense. I did this so you don't have too. Below are my thoughts and a few teams I used testing stuff.

Marvel Scale

Lets start off with Marvel scale from Milotic. This is the most interesting option in my opinion because it enables the building of a balanced team. A good defensive core well also enabling offensive abilities. For those that are not aware marvel scale needs flame orb or toxic orb and gives you plus 1 defense after status. The best part is you can pair marvel scale with 3 great offensive abilities in guts, toxic boost, and flare boost.
Lets break each because they both play differently.

physical

Physical marvel scale teams are using it to beat out priority users instead of using fluffy that has notable downsides in being ignored by non contact moves like poltergeist, and petal blizzard. Drain Punch users like okidogi and kommo-o work very well with this combination, both dislike burn and are too slow generally to avoid it so guts and scale pair well. Now burn becomes an advantage well having longevity with drain punch healing. The biggest downside here is using milotic on a physical offense team which physical offense is the worst thing it does however it does provide a decent way to stall out psychic terrain special attackers paired with light screen, and recover/draining kiss, finishing out the move set with any of the following: scald/moon blast/haze/flip turn. Running flame/toxic orb is not advisable for milotic in this team structure preferably you want to run a defensive item: boots/leftovers/av/light clay. https://pokepast.es/b613b4dcc0c210b0

special

Physical offense is the worse of the 2 options, on the other hand special offense with marvel scale is something to behold. Pairing with flare boost on a dedicated memento/defog in drifloom flare boost you actually enable milotic to be offensive draining kiss healing any burn damage and milotic being extremely tanky in both physical def and special defense after burn. The secret sauce to this side however is the addition of heatproof. Heatproof does 1 major thing it halves the damage from burn. You can get this ability from 2 pokemon bronzong a stored power monster or sinischta. Bronzong is on a timer with no recovery but it does offer iron defense and calm mind stored power on a really good typing. Sinischta is the better of the 2. Paired with motcha gotcha, calm mind, strength sap, and scald you have answers to both physical and special attackers. Strength sap is ridiculous right now with how popular hustle/moxie is, basically you 2-3 full heals against any pokemon. Flare boosts gets you more hp using matcha gotcha and marvel scale makes it last longer. The biggest downside here is sinischta is a tera hog avoiding dark/ghost moves. Another great part about heatproof it halves the damage from fire types as well and guess what that means fluffy is on the table which helps greatly against previously mentioned dark type moves not so much ghost(poltergeist). Comfey is a decent pairing with this strat, but turn one it is extremely frail and needs to be brought in with a slow pivot(Flip turn Milotic) or run protect. Comfey should be restricted to the roles of revenge killer or a late game cleaner, it is not your main sweeper. https://pokepast.es/de754c84db10b157

Fluffy

Lets make fluffy quick. It is good and fits on most teams. Currently every team is packing a way to deal with fluffy in some form using non contact moves to even running special moves on physical attackers. With long reach now being 11th most used ability this past month fluffy is a ability in a holding pattern. It is good but not great. A good way to build around fluffy is to use pokemon weak to types with very little in non contact move selection dark, flying, and fighting allowing you to be pseudo neutral. It still does cover priority extremely well and is in my opinion the main reason to use fluffy. A bit more team building advice about fluffy if you do not want to dedicate a slot to flash fire or some other fire type weakening abilities choose teammates with fire resistant typing.

Grass Pelt

Moving on to something that was extremely surprising grass pelt and seed items, they go hand in hand. Grass Pelt is the most interesting physical defense ability to me as with grassy seed your at +2 def and you have passive healing with terrain. At plus 2 with no investment ogerpon lives a hustle adapt first impression after stealth rock. Lokix can die in a nice grassy field. Lokix is the bane of grassy glide spammers and this is a way to deal with that threat in a very surprising way. Pelt does not just affect grass types either I have tried this with other potential setup sweepers like iron boulder or iron crown both were meh but there is potential here but I have yet to find a good way to make this crazy. I know your thoughts, "What about unburden?": hawlucha is bad not affected by terrain until tera and has contact moves losing hard to fluffy, sceptile has no way of taking advantage with setup(sd set is terrible need +4), hitmonlee is too slow for fluttermane, lycanroc, and dragapult, also 53 DEF/ 50 HP is really bad even at plus 2 def. TLDR grass pelt is a great way for grassy glide team to get some much needed bulk well adding another glide user and potential for enabling setup sweepers. https://pokepast.es/20cd9476f84430e4

Tablets of Ruin

Another grass type with defensive ability Wo-Chien. I love this pokemon but man running tablets of ruin solo on a team is a major major waste unlike vessel of ruin. With how strong physical attackers are tablets just does not make an impact. Any other physical defense ability gives you more. This ability should be strictly used to meet certain damage rolls like turning a 2 hit ko into a 3 hit ko that enables stall/setup. Not much to add here it is a secondary ability that pairs well with another stronger physical defensive ability.

Intimidate

Intimidate the goat of competitive pokemon abilities and boy oh boy am I about to slander it. Intimidate is bad in shared power and extremely unreliable. The reason is there are 5 fairly common abilities that make intimidate a waste: defiant, guard dog, clear body, hustle and moxie. 2 of these making it benefit the opponent making the match a 5v6 and clear body making the ability worthless. Hustle and Moxie are included here for one reason they force you 2 switch around taking hazard damage and you still take a decent hit even after 1 intimidate. Regenerator play is the only good option here and a good example is Inky's intimidate stall sample team that is now archived and is replaced intimidate with tablets of ruin.

Zamazenta 2.0

Welcome back Zamazenta 2.0, everyone say hello to Cobalion. It is a direct replacement to iron defense zamazenta and potentially better. Cobalion boasts 91 hp and 129 def and which is better than zamazenta's 92hp and 115 def. Well what about dauntless it does not have dauntless. Yes it does not have dauntless shield but it does have a substantially better typing in steel/fighting. Gaining a resist to common steel, rock, dragon, and grass and loses it's weaknesses to physic, fairy, and flying. It is worse to neutral hits like water. Cobalion also pairs well with the flash fire/levitate/fluffy core making it's only weakness fighting which are all contact moves now essentially neutral hits. Lets talk about moves and oh my goodness talk about utility that zama could dream of taunt. Taunt is the game changer forcing your opponent to attack well you iron defense in their face and it absolutely destroys stall teams and prevents major will o wisp users from burning you. Not mention roar, calm mind, stealth rock, and twave. Taunt is so massive it honestly destroys berry teams as they are generally slow and it out speeds most berry abusers with its 108 base. That 108 base is not great but it does beat out 1 major speed tier 105 with Lilligant-H which is a major deal, iron defense will allow you to live a cc and knock it out the following turn with body press without even having fluffy or using tera. Lets talk about its attacks other than body press, we got: sacred sword, cc, iron head, stone edge, quick attack, vacuum wave and volt switch. Yes it is a weaker physical attacker than zama was but with the ability to be either a special or physical threat equally is great. Justified is surprisingly good and activated more often than you think because of how heavily teams are invested in physical offense knock off becomes one of the main ways these teams deal with cobalion, knocking off leftovers and chipping it down. Justified also pairs well with common teammates houndstone(scarf poltergeist go BBBBRRRR), giratina-o, and stored power Lati twins all three forcing your opponent into giving you a free +1 atk. https://pokepast.es/7e3f6079634e5f2b https://pokepast.es/559961cf69990c76

Multiscale

Multiscale, this is going to be quick. This ability is stuck on bad pokemon for shared power both Dragonite and Lugia need multiple turns of setup to be threatening. Dragonite does not have the speed needed to be a threat with 80 base which requires 2 agilities or 3 dragon dances to match top tier speed threats which it is deathly weak to the big 3 lycanroc, dragapult, and fluttermane. It heavily requires tera. Lugia on the other hand eats hits for breakfest even after multiscale is broken. The problem here however is can Lugia knock out the oppenent. Base 90 in both attacking stats is pretty bad and requires multiple turns of curse or calm mind setup. Calm mind is much better. Lugia does have a decent speed tier but for how many atk boosts you need more defensive investment is needed. There are some ways to play around both of these pokemons downsides for example dnite and lugia benefit greatly from anger shell/weak armor strats. Lugia for example can easily stack 2 anger shell stat changes using recover and still has good stats even at minus 1 defenses. Dnite on the other hand should run either agility if running anger shell, and dragon dance if running weak armor to get a plus 3 speed. In relation to multiscale terapagos with tera shell is really good and even tanks multi hit moves. Also has great utility, all you have to do is read any of Vnmmv posts or use any of their teams and it becomes pretty apparent.
https://pokepast.es/0409bfc7b7584a16

Pecharunt

Pecharunt is one of my favorite pokemon added in gen 9 and ghost poison typing is great. It matches up extremely well against quaqauval and lilligant walling both. It is much closer to zamazentas ability to immediately check physical attackers and with recover does it very well. Spreads toxic/confusion like no bodies business with malignant chain, confusion stocks are up with hustle/moxie as well causing more damage if you get a proc. Something people do not realize is that pecharunt is a perfect mixed attacking pokemon with 88 in both attacking stats and decent moves in both. On the physical side you have gunk shot and poltergeist to avoid fluffy and very underrated foul play. On the special side it has chain and shadow ball not much type variety but it can hit everything at least neutral and has nasty plot. It has great utility in parting shot, recover, curse, and destiny bond. Pecharunt does take a bit of team building support however to make it work and does not just slot in on most teams. Levitate/Purifying Salt both help immensly to deal with giratina/hounstone and earthquake/earth power https://pokepast.es/b444b5ea7e2d4011

Stamina

The ability Stamina is very boom or bust. It has one great pokemon with it in Archaludon. Arch is a true mixed attacker being able to run body press alongside a strong special line up with electro shot. Iron Defense and stamina can get you to a turn 1 plus 3 which is incredibly powerful but arch still often takes a massive hit that first turn and with no recovery chip damage sticks. Arch is fairly slow so your generally going to take big damage on turn 1 of being in. The best play is hopefully switching into a resist to get plus 1. Arch fits on a ton of teams with benefiting from rain, dragons maw, scrappy, moxie, steely spirit, and hustle. It also does great with other defensive abilities like fluffy to cover its biggest weakness in fighting, or levitate removing ground weakness. Item wise it can run almost anything but I have seen av used a ton in the past. This is a trap almost any other item is going to provide more value as your spdef is just too low with out major investment. https://pokepast.es/4bfe5b546ed4c4ac

Elephant Gang

Iron Treads and Great Tusk both do the same thing with different typing. Both provide a rapid spinner but no good way to deal with common ghost types in houndstone, giratina, and basculegion. They both also lose to quaquaval and lilligant badly. These 2 would love to check physical attackers but they just have an extremely poor typing for shared power and often require tera. Treads is slightly better with its steel typing providing better resists and it has a more balance stat spread. Booster energy is a bit of trap on both these guys as I have found more value in leftovers, boots, and rocky helmet. Tusk is pretty decent on berry teams where gourdon enables protosynthesis and can act similarly to how zamazenta did previously on those teams with bulk up, taunt is very good here as well. Treads on the other hand a decent abuser of terrain seeds particularly grassy seed and electric seed. Electric seed will force a quark drive boost of defense no matter what so you can spend evs else where but body press hits very hard with investment. Both also have ice spinner for removing terrain, treads is a decent option for this resisting expanding force in psychic terrain and removing terrain. I had a really hard time making either of these two work in any capacity. Tusk preformed the best paired berries but treads was more consistent. Testing these two was my hardest struggle on the ladder.

Dozo

Dondozo is an enigma. One game this guy dominates and nothing can stop it. The next does nothing and you wish you had any other pokemon. It counters moxie great and can check physical attackers with curse, sleep talk sets. However water absorb and dryskin although uncommon can make dozo a waste of a team slot. Drought is also a problem and majority of berry teams have plenty of grass types. Fluffy nullifies damage quite a bit from majority of moves but aqua tail is the answer and works well with hustle+no guard. Taunt/encore users ruin dondozo. With the right support dozo can be great but he is really hard to build around and can be a wasted team slot at times. Dozo really falls in the need a 5th move slot category.

Groudon

Groudon is not the physical check you think it is. The main problem with Groudon really wants to use fire and ground moves, but both types are pretty low on the totem pole in viability. This forces you to use non stab which feels very mid. Groudon does do a decent job at being a physical check on berry teams but in any other context not a great option. Bulk up is the only reliable way to improve your bulk but groudon is slow, and gets smacked around by waters/grass. Ice beam is also common enough coming from basculegion-f and proygon. Groudon is strictly a berry team pokemon or a stop gap in flutter mane sun teams that sets rocks. Berry teams also lack hazard removal maushold being the only option and a hard pokemon to get in and not lose immediately. Spikes/T spikes cripple groudon. No reliable recovery either on non berry teams. I almost rather have torkoal sometimes on berry teams for the simple reason of having rapid spin because of how much t spike or spikes can ruin a berry team putting you in range on switch in. Torkoal does alot of things you want on a berry team rapid spinner, clear smogger, iron defense/body press champ(just as good as groudon), stealth rocker, and sun setter.

Summary

Cobalion is the new iron defense body press monster that everyone tried to avoid with banning zamazenta and is even scarier for some teams. Grass Pelt/Grassy seed is a decent option for grassy glide spam teams to get some defense and offers great setup opportunities. Marvel scale/Flare boost is actually really good and has a place in the meta. Fluffy is fluffy and still a staple of the meta. Tablets of Ruin is a meh ability on it's own. Intimidate is trash tier. The Elephant gang(Tusk/Treads) is extremely hard to use. Multiscale wishes it was on better pokemon. Stamina is a roller coaster ride. Pecharunt is picky but a terror on the right team. Groudon is just a sun setter no much beyond. Dondozo hates water absorb/dryskin/encore/taunt. I would love to hear your thoughts on any of the following or any questions you have.

TLDR

Best abilities: Fluffy & Marvel Scale Worst Abilities: Intimidate & Multiscale Best Pokemon: Cobalion & Pecharunt

bit surprised to see no gliscor mention in physical marvel scale teams, since imo its genuinely very solid with either speedy agility or bulky sd

 

[Goldbanker27]

bit surprised to see no gliscor mention in physical marvel scale teams, since imo its genuinely very solid with either speedy agility or bulky sd

Gliscor really needs tera to be good. Also being water/ice weak right now is extremely painful with the big 4 adaptability users running around. I did use gliscor, I want to say in march, I know a lot has changed since then but it kind of ruined my appetite for gliscor. A big thing for me missing in gliscor's kit was the ability to increase defense with bulk up/iron defense which it lacks or its ability to instantly check on switch needing to be pre poisoned. Also its move pool is lacking you often do not run ground attacks, facade is your best attack and requires scrappy to hit common ghosts. Not having good stab really sucks with your best option being dual wing beat. Stab is honestly so important. It is one thing I found when doing this, if a pokemon does not have good stab options, it is generally pretty poor at being offensive threat. As mention in the fluffy section flying is really bad against fluffy and ground is lack luster because of how popular levitate is. Gliscor is kind of bad in my eyes. Breloom in my opinion is the better option as it has good stab (seed bomb) and priority mach punch even though it is less defensive having good stab and a massive base 130 atk makes up for it. Fighting is better because of how popular steel types even though it is also weak to fluffy.

 

[Soiramio3000]

The Stench user can still combine it with Serene Grace and Skill Link for rather uncompetitive results, hence why.

View attachment 777543


For example, while this can struggle against offensive teams as it has a poor Speed tier, it can still matchup fish against slower / bulkier teams, especially when complemented by Scrappy to hit Ghost-types with Fury Swipes, with that overall having a net 90%ish chance to flinch alongside Serene Grace, which isn't very competitive to say the least, and thus adds nothing good for the metagame.

serene grace synergizes with stench?
that's weird, I thought that there was zero synergy just like sheer force does not synergize with poison touch.

why does serene grace synergize with stench but sheer force does not synergize with poison touch?

is the poison touch's phrasing of "have" a 30% chance all that different with stench's "gain" a 10% chance?

 

[Bobsican]

serene grace synergizes with stench?
that's weird, I thought that there was zero synergy just like sheer force does not synergize with poison touch.

why does serene grace synergize with stench but sheer force does not synergize with poison touch?

is the poison touch's phrasing of "have" a 30% chance all that different with stench's "gain" a 10% chance?

Probably some weird code semantics in terms of how ability stacking is implemented in PS, really. Whether Poison Touch interacts with other abilities besides Sheer Force in a SP context is still something to be tested.

 

[Levy'sChair]

I have a mon with pressure on my team and I just had a game where when I brought in one of my mons, it said it was exerting pressure but then the opponent's pp went down normally, not twice as fast. Has this happened to other people?

 

[finnaggann]

I have a mon with pressure on my team and I just had a game where when I brought in one of my mons, it said it was exerting pressure but then the opponent's pp went down normally, not twice as fast. Has this happened to other people?

It works properly, the pp indicators for the opponent on showdown are just wrong sometimes, especially when the opponent’s move hits a protect or substitute. I believe there is also a shared power specific situation where if a mon’s ability activates, and then you switch out to something that shares pressure, then switch back, that the enemy pp drop is displayed incorrectly then too, but I haven’t tested it to confirm that.

Having played with pressure a lot, however, I can pretty much guarantee you it’s just a visual error and not pressure not functioning. Best practice is to count enemy pp yourself in stall games.

 

[Goldbanker27]

Lets talk about slush rush

. I got a bit inspired by Bobsican's updated ability overview where it mentioned slush rush being unexplored and unranked in viability tiers. So I have been messing with this for the last week.

Speed tiers

Slush rush is the least popular options for weather based speed abilities and for good reason as slush rush users can still not out speed common scarf users like dragapult, meowscarada, or flutter mane. It also causes a weather war with the previously mention flutter sun teams or lycanroc sand rush where conserving pokemon becomes the main fight to ensure your weather in the end game. With your top speed threat being Cetitan with a speed nature at 538 in snow or 269 without snow. This a huge difference and when snow is not up makes you much less threatening compared to other weathers where you still can out pace base 90 or 100 pokemon like giratina. A big piece about the weather war is your majority ice type team making you weak to 3 types boosted by sand and sun in fire, rock, and steel. With speed being such a factor the best options for slush rush are Cetitan and Sandslash-A both have just enough speed in snow to outpace some scarf pokemon or common plus 1 like quaquaval, lilligant, or porygon. Beartic is just too slow being out sped by any base 85 plus 1 mon, even though it has the best attack stat. Beartic a forced to run choice scarf and slush rush to be effective which does put you in the top tier speed threat levels at 654. Agility users are also extremely scary for slush rush pokemon with all common agility users out pacing them even with attack natures: crown, porygon, lati twins, and arceus.

Anti Fluffy

The saving grace of slush rush teams is having strong attacks verse fluffy. Ice shard is the game changer for slush rush teams it is the only non contact physical priority move and helps make up for slush rushes lack luster speed. It is the main tool of beating sun or sand teams that allows you still threaten in opposing weather. A decent number of common scarf pokemon are weak or neutral to ice shard: dragapult, flutter mane, meowscarada, maushold, and lilligant. On the non priority front slush rush pokemon have access to 2 good stab non contact physical moves in icicle crash and spear. Crash is much better verse the berry match up and is not as ability or item reliant as spear. Spear however can be devastating and just demolishes some teams like sash spam. I much preferred crash well playing with its flinch chance at 30% and working very well with hustle/no guard combo. In regards to moves the main challenge for slush rush teams is dealing with steel types.

Steel Sadness

Steel types are the bane of slush rush between bullet punch, sunsteel strike and taychon cutter you get demolished majority of games. This forces your team to heavily rely on tera for coverage and a resistance. Knock off is the first choice to deal with this and is a must take majority of the time for both cetitan and sandslash-a as it threatens the big 3 offensive steels solegelao, metagross, and iron crown. Tera fire can be good but is inconsistent with heatran being common on steel spam and an absolute wall of slush rush teams. Earthquake can be another option but if you see levitate and multiple steel types that is a loss. Tera fighting is also a decent option but majority of the time you are neutral hitting verse the aforementioned big 3 but is a great option against heatran. Heatran and Metagross are the worst pokemon you can face by a mile. Heatran is the near impenetrable wall that will easily ohko half your team and metagross is the worst offensive threat you can face with priority bullet punch it just eats through your team and shrugs off any priority you fire back. On top of that steel is one of the most popular tera types. This is such a downside I almost want to say we need a new generation where current slush rush pokemon gain better coverage/stats (close combat) or a new slush rush threat becomes available.

Water Surprising

Water types you would think would be an issue but end up being a fairly equal fight apart from quaquaval and iron bundle. Ninetales-a is your main check to quaquaval. Quaquaval can knock out ninetales in 2 turns with cc+aqua step and it is not safe for quaquaval to setup more aqua steps in front of ninetales as it can ohko with moonblast and almost ohko it with freeze dry most of the time. Cetitan also gets play rough which can ohko with hustle boost and will outspeed a plus 1 speed quaquaval. Do not allow quaquaval to be at or near full health and plus 2 speed. At that point ice shard, and aqua jets will not be able to get the knock out and it will spiral out of control. Bundle is another story where it has a double resist to ice and snow benefits bundles very good defense stat. Against bundle it is advised to try and avoid activating snow and instead draw out bundle so you can use priority and neutral attacks to remove it, not much available to be super effective. If you do have to activate snow you need veil up asap to prevent hydro pump from sweeping your team. Other common waters like basculegions both get ohko by knock off and well spring is neutral to icicle crash and can get nuked by freeze dry ninetales if veil is up. Cetitan or Ninetales can easily deal with crawdaunt.

Defensive?

An underrated aspect of slush rush and snow is the benefit of a defense boost in snow. This helps a lot verse grassy terrain teams were ice shard spam can beat out grass glide particularly sandslash-a being an mvp in this match up resisting and preventing ogrepon-grass from spamming ivy cudgel with the threat of ice shard. Not to mention the teams decent match up into physical dragon maw spam, again sandslash-a excelling in this match up with it's steel typing and ninetales-a with an immunity. The defense boost from snow and aurora veil from ninetales-a or abomasnow also provides a potential way to deal with toxic boost priority spam enabling toxic damage to stack and reduce the crazy amount of damage these teams can output. Veil also enables setup for swords dance sandslash-a or beartic.

Berry Fishing

The berry match up is pretty in your favor with slush pokemon being extremely threatening to harvest and ripen donors generally being able to eliminate half the opponents team very quickly. Freeze dry from ninetales is particularly effective against the top 2 sticky holders in hydrapple and gastrodon forcing a switch or taking a ko. Check pouch maushold is also not a major issue with needing to be plus 2 speed to out pace cetitan and sandslash being able to with stand a population bomb in snow, also a major lack in priority. Your biggest struggle in this match up are tauros-blaze or aqua resisting and hitting ice types for super effective damage. Salac berry tauros is the most threatening variant with the potential to quickly outpace slush rush and bulk up checking your physical sweepers. Encore ninetales and swords dance sandslash are the best options against tauros but you often need to tera. Out of gluttony users muk-a is the most threatening with curse/drain punch/haze. The best way to deal with muk is swords dance sandslash with earthquake or ninetales locking muk into curse/haze. Beartic is good against berry squads with taunt and swords dance but is very poor against other archetypes. You do have a good match up against the common groudon and ursaluna-blood moon found on berry teams, forcing tera on ursaluna in particular.

Summary/Paste

Overall slush rush is fun to use but is far from being a top tier strategy. Being strong verse fluffy is the main selling point here with a decent move selection to avoid contact and barely enough speed to be considered a viable offensive archetype. The worst part is the match up against steel type pokemon with slush rush pokemon having poor options for coverage and being tera reliant. This match up alone makes slush rush a below average archetype. Using snow/slush rush I hovered in the 1300s for majority of games. I was able to break through into the 1400s a handful of times but it just can not compete consistently with top tier teams. Below is the team I came up with that had the most success. Viability wise sandslash-a is the most viable slush rush user with multiple different move choices, setup, and part steel typing, C- or lower if I was to put it on the rankings at all. Cetitan is a tier below and beartic is just an F.

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https://pokepast.es/3298d2a665412040