Tournament Smogon Snake Draft IV: NU Discussion

Expulso

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Week 8 NU Snake

Code:
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Cramorant          |    9 |  90.00% |  44.44% |
| 2    | Rapidash           |    6 |  60.00% |  33.33% |
| 3    | Whimsicott         |    4 |  40.00% |  75.00% |
| 3    | Mudsdale           |    4 |  40.00% |  50.00% |
| 3    | Persian-Alola      |    4 |  40.00% |  25.00% |
| 6    | Duraludon          |    3 |  30.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Silvally           |    3 |  30.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Ninjask            |    3 |  30.00% |  66.67% |
| 6    | Stunfisk-Galar     |    3 |  30.00% |  33.33% |
| 10   | Rhydon             |    2 |  20.00% |  50.00% |
| 10   | Rotom-Frost        |    2 |  20.00% |  50.00% |
| 10   | Sandslash-Alola    |    2 |  20.00% |   0.00% |
| 10   | Thievul            |    2 |  20.00% |   0.00% |
| 14   | Kangaskhan         |    1 |  10.00% | 100.00% |
| 14   | Gallade            |    1 |  10.00% | 100.00% |
| 14   | Roselia            |    1 |  10.00% | 100.00% |
| 14   | Wishiwashi         |    1 |  10.00% | 100.00% |
| 14   | Garbodor           |    1 |  10.00% | 100.00% |
| 14   | Miltank            |    1 |  10.00% | 100.00% |
| 14   | Rotom              |    1 |  10.00% | 100.00% |
| 14   | Accelgor           |    1 |  10.00% |   0.00% |
| 14   | Alcremie           |    1 |  10.00% |   0.00% |
| 14   | Klinklang          |    1 |  10.00% |   0.00% |
| 14   | Weezing            |    1 |  10.00% |   0.00% |
| 14   | Cofagrigus         |    1 |  10.00% |   0.00% |
| 14   | Trevenant          |    1 |  10.00% |   0.00% |
Silvally breakdown:
- Ghost: 1 (aim), 1-0
- Normal: 1 (Kushalos), 1-0
- Steel: 1 (Sjneider), 1-0

Some very interesting trends from this week! Cramorant got an insane NINE uses despite being a PU Pokemon, absolutely flying up in popularity this week. Rapidash also saw a ton of use, appearing on 6 of 10 teams with variations such as KingKDot's Wild Charge and elodin's Toxic + Protect. Meanwhile, Escavalier got 0 uses, falling off the map due to the rise in checks like Rapidash and Cramorant (along with, perhaps, its lack of a Flying resistance).

Cumulative usage since Drampa ban is also updated; check it out here, very interesting stuff.
Cramorant rose all the way to 6th! Duraludon is approaching an 80% WR!

I'll try to do a more detailed analysis in the next day or two. Thanks to meri berry and poh for their contributions last week!
 

aim

pokeaimMD
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i'll record my last 2 games sometime this week. NU has been a blast and I'm glad that I was able to do so well. Could not have done it without the support of PinkDragonTamer Rabia Expulso who would chill in call with me and shoot the shit in NU, building some insanely bad squads like 0 dark resist that I would end up bringing cause it won a few test games. Or making our team 10 minutes before the game. NU is a hella fun tier. I do feel like Ninjask should have been banned/suspected a few weeks ago. super annoying on building. glad that Pokemon like Clawitzer picked up in popularity and that I finally used Rapidash in the last week as that is expulso's favorite Pokemon to suggest. sucks I don't have a chance to rematch Sneider or Bugzy but I am happy with my 7-2 finish. I'll definitely play more NU now that we have crazy tier shifts. appreciate the support of those who believed in me. and ty expulso for putting up interesting reads every week.

edit: the best part about playing NU was Expulso saying "this team is absolute garbage" and those key words would mean the team would perform.
 

Expulso

Morse code, if I'm talking I'm clicking
is a Community Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Social Media Contributor Alumnus

Week 9 Snake

Code:
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Mudsdale           |    5 |  62.50% |  40.00% |
| 2    | Cramorant          |    4 |  50.00% |  75.00% |
| 2    | Miltank            |    4 |  50.00% |  50.00% |
| 2    | Rapidash           |    4 |  50.00% |  50.00% |
| 2    | Silvally           |    4 |  50.00% |   0.00% |
| 6    | Clefairy           |    3 |  37.50% |  33.33% |
| 6    | Ninjask            |    3 |  37.50% |   0.00% |
| 8    | Rotom              |    2 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 8    | Gallade            |    2 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 8    | Weezing            |    2 |  25.00% |  50.00% |
| 8    | Clawitzer          |    2 |  25.00% |   0.00% |
| 12   | Ferroseed          |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Vanilluxe          |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Ribombee           |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Jolteon            |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Mawile             |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Rhydon             |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Stunfisk-Galar     |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Whimsicott         |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Roselia            |    1 |  12.50% | 100.00% |
| 12   | Duraludon          |    1 |  12.50% |   0.00% |
| 12   | Thievul            |    1 |  12.50% |   0.00% |
| 12   | Piloswine          |    1 |  12.50% |   0.00% |
| 12   | Jellicent          |    1 |  12.50% |   0.00% |
silv breakdown:
- steel 0-3 (bouff, kushalos, jrdn)
- ghost 0-1 (elodin)

yea
 

Expulso

Morse code, if I'm talking I'm clicking
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Semifinals

Code:
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| Rank | Pokemon            | Use  | Usage % |  Win %  |
+ ---- + ------------------ + ---- + ------- + ------- +
| 1    | Miltank            |    3 |  75.00% |  66.67% |
| 1    | Persian-Alola      |    3 |  75.00% |  33.33% |
| 1    | Silvally           |    3 |  75.00% |  33.33% |
| 4    | Stunfisk-Galar     |    2 |  50.00% |  50.00% |
| 4    | Rotom              |    2 |  50.00% |  50.00% |
| -    | Gourgeist-*        |    1 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Cramorant          |    1 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Duraludon          |    1 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Gourgeist-Small    |    1 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Mudsdale           |    1 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Escavalier         |    1 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Ribombee           |    1 |  25.00% | 100.00% |
| 6    | Ninjask            |    1 |  25.00% |   0.00% |
| 6    | Jellicent          |    1 |  25.00% |   0.00% |
| 6    | Heatmor            |    1 |  25.00% |   0.00% |
| 6    | Piloswine          |    1 |  25.00% |   0.00% |
| 6    | Wishiwashi         |    1 |  25.00% |   0.00% |
silvally breakdown:
- water: 1 (bugzinator) 1-0
- steel: 1 (sjneider) 0-1
- poison: 1 (rw) 0-1

yep
 
Yo, I don't think I've ever posted in NU before, but I put a ton of time into this season and I don't really know if I'll play NU much again, so I wanted to share some ideas I came up with here. Hopefully some of the concepts can be applicable to future iterations of NU & can inspire some others w/ building.

Wanted to shout out bugzinator while I'm here for being an inspiration and the best current NU player on this site. Definitely one of the best teammates I'll have the pleasure to team with. I highly doubt anyone will underrate you again. Meri Berry and TonyFlygon were also amazingly helpful. Y'all made it really fun to build in a pretty terrible metagame, which is definitely saying something because man, building good teams in this meta was extremely difficult to do. And ofc a s/o to MassiveDestruction and Sjneider for helping me get back into NU before Snake started, appreciate y'all a lot :)

I wish the NU council held at least one or two more slates after Escav somehow was let in the tier. Broken Pokemon like Escavalier, Gallade, and maybe even Ninjask & Duraludon should have and would have absolutely been banned by any competent NU player if there were a slate right before DLC came out. Hopefully y'all can improve on that tiering aspect if this kind of DLC situation were to come up again because it's definitely discouraging from a playing standpoint and it screwed over the NU players in snake. Anyway, that's rambly, so onto some of the teams/sets:

(I'll add imports later if I'm not lazy)


Idea behind this team was that grassy terrain was actually really useful in this meta and we wanted to build around ghostvally. Essentially, terrain let ghostvally passively recover while behind a sub and it also prevented Mudsdale from breaking a sub:

0 Atk Mudsdale Earthquake vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Silvally-Ghost in Grassy Terrain: 67-81 (20.2 - 24.4%)

Ultimately, this team had some issues; namely, its hazard control was quite poor and it was very grounded. I think going back the idea was really cool but it didn't quite pan out in practice/it could have definitely been optimized (ie. Gastro should have def held boots, and maybe I'd change the 6 a tiny bit). Thwackey + Hattrem was something I liked a lot bc you could make hat even better at preventing SR/hazards from Ground-types & ofc it completely owns Ferroseed (Giga Drain gets a powerup too and hat getting some health back is dope).



My favorite team I built all season. Strong defensive core + a busted breaker in Expert Belt Clawitzer. Ferroseed was one of the top pokemon in dlc1 and this team abused Spikes super well. Got two pretty cool sets to spotlight here:

Clawitzer @ Expert Belt
Ability: Mega Launcher
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Water Pulse
- Aura Sphere
- Dark Pulse
- Sludge Wave

I don't think Sludge Wave had been seen prior to this team, and it enabled Clawitzer to overcome Clefairy, which was usually considered a defensive check. I made the call that Kushalos would likely use Jelli + Clef vs us, so this set ended up putting in tremendous work. Not much else to say here.

Silvally-Poison @ Poison Memory
Ability: RKS System
EVs: 252 HP / 236 Def / 20 Spe
Impish Nature
- Defog
- Multi-Attack
- Flamethrower
- Parting Shot

Super fat Impish pvally is one of the best answers to Escav & it functioned as quite decent removal with Wish support from Clef. It's also the best Knock Off absorber since it sponges it vs Escav and comes in v freely vs Clef. There was definitely doubt about this set at first but it fit wonderfully on this team and pretty much always put in a ton of work in tests/other games.



Bugz made the call for Sub + ID Dura (stolen from aim's team) except I made a new EV spread for it. Cramorant surged in usage around this time so we definitely wanted to be well-equipped for the Cram + Persian style team that we expected. I really liked the idea of a Defog + Pain Split Rotom-Frost because Muds was ubiquitous and you could pretty much get free volt switches and get insane momentum w/ Ninjask and Spikes. U-turn wishi & Spikes Roselia were great complements to a nasty VoltTurn core & setting Spikes to facilitate the breakers. Both these pokemon also enabled Duraludon to function as the only Steel on the team. Roselia was a great Pokemon that Bugz & I really liked, so much so that we used it again the following week since it was amazing vs Bouff's scout too. I don't remember it putting too much work in this game but in the Bouff game it definitely did.

Some other cool sets:


Ribombee @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Shield Dust
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Sticky Web
- Aromatherapy
- Moonblast
- U-turn

I first suggested the idea of Aromatherapy on Ribombee quite early on, but we didn't really start using it until much later. Clerics were insanely good in this meta and Ribombee had tons of flexibility for its moves (only really requiring Moonblast and maybe U-turn on all non-QD sets). The combination of Defog Rotom (best removal in the tier by far) and cleric bee was insanely strong.


Mudsdale @ Leftovers
Ability: Stamina
EVs: 252 HP / 16 Atk / 224 Def / 16 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Protect
- Earthquake
- Payback

Around the end of this meta, Mudsdale was definitely the most viable Pokemon in the entire metagame. Since we spammed it to check all the broken Pokemon in the tier, we expected (and definitely encountered) a lot of weird setup pkmn and other methods of abusing this tendency. So by changing Mudsdale's moves up constantly, we were able to make counterstyling a lot more difficult. When facing neider in semis, we knew he'd use Rotom since, as I mentioned before, it was insanely good. I wanted to find a way to lure it in and punish it and this is what I ended up trying out. It didn't really do much and tbh I think Lash Out would have been even stronger to do tons of damage as Rotom uses Defog, but it at least prevented Rotom from setting up and wore it down. This was particularly decent vs neider bc he was using boots Rotom a lot instead of lefties, which made its chip more effective.


Stunfisk-Galar @ Leftovers
Ability: Mimicry
EVs: 228 HP / 56 Def / 224 SpD
Careful Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Lash Out
- Thunder Wave

Cool move that doubles if a stat is dropped, like I mentioned in the Payback muds set, so when Rotom uses Defog this does a ton of damage even if it's burned.


Appletun @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 32 HP / 196 Def / 240 SpA / 28 SpD / 12 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Iron Defense
- Body Press
- Apple Acid
- Recover

Before Escav came into the meta, this set was very strong. It set up alongside most SD silvallies and honestly just ran through tons of teams around this time without too much effort. Ninetales was one of those Pokemon that was honestly garbage but it constrained the builder (worst type of Pokemon, imaging using this LOL) so having Apple available at this point was nice. We used a more standard one in week 5 I think.


Aromatisse @ Terrain Extender
Ability: Aroma Veil
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Trick Room
- Moonblast
- Misty Terrain
- Misty Explosion

Kind of a meme set but I think it had the potential to set up for some v powerful stuff on a hyperoffense. It'd be 100% unexpected, set up 8 turns of complete status immunity in a terrain-uncontested meta, and misty explosion is pretty powerful, letting some slow breaker like Perrserker Marowak or whomever have 3 turns of Trick Room and status immunity. This was never on the table to use, but it's kinda dope...my teammates all roasted me for this shit tho LMAO

If y'all got this far, ty for reading! :)
 

Expulso

Morse code, if I'm talking I'm clicking
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Awesome post god mami chan tysm for sharing!! Your NU core was excellent this season and I hope you guys keep playing the tier in the future '-'

Looking back, I think Escavalier, Gallade, Duraludon, and Ninjask should all have been regularly monitored/voted on; Duraludon in particular is a mon that evolved more and more as the meta went on, where sets like Sub+IDef existing alongside standard fare like Specs made it unpredictable, leaving you initially unsure of what checks to preserve. For Escav/Gallade, I honestly stopped thinking of the latter 2 as actively broken just because I tried to pressure them as much as I could with speed control, immunities that make choiced gallade 50-50, and so on, but they were probably overcentralizing (particularly Gallade). Ninjask was an incredible pain to prep for in the builder and could still be extremely effective when you do prep for it. Voting more during Snake would have been very nice and is something to consider for future tiering policy here.

Anyways, Excal's post inspired me to dump some of my cool ideas as well.

:ss/clefairy:
Clefairy @ Eviolite
Ability: Magic Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 208 Def / 48 Spe <- creep as much as u want
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Flamethrower
- Moonblast
- Soft-Boiled

Kushalos brought this against me in a test game one week, wk5/6?, so all credit to him for the idea. Due to the late metagame being very reliant on Toxic/passive damage, I think CM Clef could have been very dangerous ... if it's faster than your Escavalier, but it never ended up being used. When I tested vs Kushalos, we both had arbitrary speed creep on Escav / Clefairy; my Escav at 120 Speed outsped his 118 Speed Clefairy, otherwise it would have 6-0d. In the end of the meta, when Clef KOd common steels like Ferro/slow Escav + was able to boost out of range of the most common Poison type, Weezing, this would have been awesome.


:ss/bouffalant:
Bouffalant @ Lum Berry / Chople Berry
Ability: Sap Sipper / Reckless
EVs: 48 HP / 252 Atk / 208 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Head Charge
- Throat Chop
- Close Combat

A week or two after the Trev craze started I really wanted us to use Bouffalant, either CB or SD like the above set. I thought it would be very effective at facilitating sweeps from something like Ninjask, because it is able to force in physical walls like Mudsdale/Weezing and absolutely fuck them up. There were not many normal resists in this tier, something Sjneider (I think you invented this?) took advantage of with Choice Scarf Silvally-Normal. This would really enable something like Ninjask, I think, which gets very scary when those physical walls are gone.


Electric-Types:
:ss/Raichu: :ss/Silvally:
Raichu @ Life Orb
Ability: Lightning Rod
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Thunderbolt
- Grass Knot
- Focus Blast

Silvally-Electric @ Electric Memory
Ability: RKS System
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam / Surf
- Flamethrower
- Parting Shot

There are very few Grass-types in NU (unless you're bugzinator, in which case you use some random af mon like roselia / appletun / silvally-grass on every team and successfully prove that they are good). I thought that Electric-types with coverage for Mudsdale would be able to effectively take advantage of this. I used the Raichu on webs, letting you outspeed Specs Whimsi (boots is annoying tho); however, it was really hard to get it into battle due to its fragility. This meant i didn't bring it, though if i found a good pshotter/slow pivot it could have been great.

The Silvally-Electric was intended for the middle of the meta, when Miltank wasn't that common, but still put in some work once it was a common mon. Basically, you'd be able to break through anything besides very fat special walls (Miltank / Clef) with your excellent coverage, and then Parting Shot out to Escavalier (CB or SD) to fire off strong attacks at them. The core worked very well, we never ended up using Elecvally though :/


:ss/liepard:
Liepard @ Expert Belt
Ability: Limber
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Knock Off
- Grass Knot
- Gunk Shot / Psycho Cut
- U-turn / Sucker Punch

Flames. Budget Absol. I told aim "yo you have no dark resist" like 5-10 separate times this season, so at one point I thought that it would be cool to take advantage of other teams' lack of dark resists (especially with Gallade > Sawk as the Fighting-type). You can tear through a lot of walls with this, particularly since Grass Knot takes out Mudsdale after a little chip. Although Miltank isn't 2HKOd, you can Knock its Boots/Lefties, pivot out, then frustrate it with hazard stack. Gunk Shot can eliminate fairies for the team, though often Knocking a Clef would be enough, so you could run Psycho Cut for Weezing.

We didn't use this but, again, I think it was a cool mon. Like Persian-Alola except doesn't switch into things but puts far more chip damage on the opponent.


:ss/malamar:
Malamar @ Leftovers
Ability: Suction Cups
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- Block
- Rest
- Acupressure
- Knock Off

LMFAOOOOO man this wouldve been fuckin hilarious. Ok so we played RW who brought close to the same Stunfisk-Galar defensive cores every week and thought 'yo, what wins against all of these' and decided we really wanted to try to lure it in, trap it with something, and just win.

Sadly this doesn't trap Stunfisk-Galar. It traps Mudsdale, though, so we wanted to save it to use against a Mudsdale spammer. The opportunity never arose :'(


==========

Finally, the squad aim used against Kushalos looked very out of place in the NU meta so I figured I'd explain that a bit.

:ss/Jolteon: :ss/mawile: :ss/cramorant: :ss/weezing: :ss/rhydon: :ss/rapidash:

Ok so, quick story time. Joey was begging us to use jolteon all week LOL we tried to make Trick Ring Target work for like 4 days and it didn't because it's extremely gimmicky.

pokeaimMD11/01/2020
PDt REVISE JOLT PLS

pdt11/01/2020
UH OH
Expulso WE HAVE A MISSION

Expulso11/01/2020
Oh god oh fuck
Ok so what are the scenarios where youd rather use jolteon than rotom


^^ there were no good answers to this question LOL we thought abt trying specs with Rising Voltage alongside Pincurchin but then realized that, too, sucked. (I wanted to use solo Pincurchin because electric + water... but forgot it had 15 base speed, tragic).


Then we realized that Specs is actually acceptably strong, and that it isn't totally invalidated by Mudsdale if we have Pokemon in the back that mke the opponent need to keep health on Mudsdale. Thus, we tried to overload Mudsdale with Jolteon + Rhydon + Mawile; the Rhydon + Mawile core was one I remembered seeing on Ho3nConfirm3d's HO week 3/4 vs neider, and I also liked it due to the ability to take advantage of Ninjask, one of the tier's biggest threats.

With the Mudsdale overload core in place, we wanted to be able to switch into and wall it after something like Jolteon chips it; Helmet Pain Split Weezing + Cramorant gave us enough insurance against Mudsdale. Finally, I felt like we were weak to fairies with only answers being Mawile (horrendous spdef) and Weezing (they get Psychic), so i slapped on utility Rapidash.

Then we added Magnet Rise over Iron Head on SD Mawile just to have another way to chip Mudsdale, wouldve been hilarious if that scenario worked out but alas.

Toxic Spikes on Weezing wouldve been awesome, I chose just Toxic though bc otherwise Cram comes in and freely Defogs them away unless u get a sludge bomb poison (and even then it still defogs on you pretty decently).
As a side note, Neutralizing Gas Weezing is a good tech now to get em up on Xatu, someone should try that ;o

============

I had a lot of fun following the NU meta over this time, despite a few overly centralizing Pokemon I thought it was very interesting to see the meta evolve so much over time. For instance, RU looked a lot more similar from beginning to end than this tier did.

I hope the NU community continues to grow and becomes more active, the tier itself was enjoyable (again, despite not voting on some questionable things near the end) and I loved the evolution. Seeing some newer faces getting into the tour scene this NU Snake (such as your____bro Meri Berry) is really great, I hope they keep at it.

I encourage everyone reading this (even older players, ppl not in NU, etc) to pull up to the NU discord and start some discussion about the tier, it's a little less active than other Discords but I know I really enjoy talking about the meta so let's get it poppin :afrostar:


Once again shoutout to aim for the great season and PinkDragonTamer Rabia (yes despite some horrid hot takes) for being awesome building support, glad we got to use a lot of creative ideas, bummer that the ones above didn't hit the field lol.

Thanks guys, was fun, Expulso out '-'
 

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