I keep telling myself I'm done with RU, and every time a tour rolls around I can't help but get sucked back into it. I've not been involved with the community for a while now, but I have to say I really enjoyed this DLC1 metagame, and it was perhaps my most active tier throughout snake. I ended up making several of the teams we used, and I wanted to talk a bit about some of my most effective and memorable ideas.
Abusing the 'Brokens': CM Spam vs Ajna
This team had a whole array of interesting ideas, and it was really fun to make. I was convinced that Sigilyph was broken, and was telling roman that he should definitely use spikes + FOrb Sigi. At the same time, we were also very concerned of losing to sigi ourselves. This is where the GOAT, coalossal entered the picture.
Coalossal @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 224 HP / 252 Atk / 32 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Rock Blast
- Flare Blitz
- Rapid Spin
We actually used a fully physical set with max atk, in order to deal enough damage with rock blast/blitz to outdamage roost from Sigi. This ended up coming into play when Ajna, expecting an overheat, tried to set-up with CM Zong and got smacked by Flare Blitz instead. I'll be honest, coalossal isn't the greatest mon despite its pretty good stats, but it definitely did its job here, and was worth it solely for how much roman and I made
Sensei Axew mald by parading it as the next great thing.
One idea we were also experimenting in terms of sigilyph checks was gourgeist. Originally we were planning to use a small version which would be faster, but with the addition of coalossal this was no longer necessary, so we instead went for more bulk.
roman had the fantastic idea of running trick scarf to get past itemless poltergeist checks or generally cripple defensive mons, and this set ended up being really effective and fun to use. I won't spend too much time on the set, but I do think it deserves a lengthier showcase and as it was roman's idea I think he should be the one to post about it if he wants to.
Anyhow, speaking of itemless mons, one of the other big additions to this team was itemless NP G-Bro. This mon was truly incredible, and surprisingly underused this tour. Apart from great defensive utility came a great secondary wincon, honestly frequently better than sigilyph, but regardless great at working with it to weaken shared checks. Finally, Silvally-Dark was another great addition providing a fast & strong pivot and wincon that could slowly weaken all of its checks by itself.
Entering the Desert: Sun vs Pepeduce
Sun only made a couple appearances this tour, but held up a strong performance in the few games it featured. In fact, the team Nat used to
win vs odr was one of roman's earlier renditions of the team, with e-button spam and specs lazzle as the secondary wincon to charizard. As we were testing the team more it was struggling with certain cores, and this is when I came up with the idea of adding the desert lizard to the team:
Heliolisk @ Leftovers
Ability: Solar Power
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Weather Ball
- Grass Knot
In sun, weather ball fire is the strongest move heliolisk has, and is so strong that it doesn't need any boosting item at all to rip through the whole tier. It also provides basically perfect coverage with grass knot and electric, hitting steelix and grasses, making lisk an absolute monster to go up against. In the actual game roman went with AV on his lisk, but I think lefties is the better option to provide longevity through solar power.
This addition made the team very strong, but I think there will still yet some improvements over what roman brought vs pepe. For one, I think flamethrower is almost mandatory to run on charizard, for its consistent damage outside of sun. At the time Roman had overheat to pressure CM Glowbro apart from trick xatu, due to the liability we had with klefki, but I think there were better ways to account for this. Lacking flamethrower ended up being costly, as roman had to play a more awkward sequence to win due to the difficulty of using weather ball, and in the end missed overheat vs steelix on the final turn of the match. One of the other issues here was eject button on Torkoal - while this was a cute idea and very dangerous in the right moments, the consistency of heat rock is too much to give up imo, and eject button better placed on other members. Finally, one other idea I was playing with was Claydol & Whimsicott > Blastoise & Klefki. One of the key ideas of Dol, apart from spinning and checking things like rhyperior, glowbro, and dragalge, was the use of sunny day + teleport, and also being able to easily fit eject button on this set. Momentum and positioning is a big part of playing sun, and this provided a lot of the tools needed to accomplish that throughout the game. I believe llamas used a similar concept in P2 on his rendition of Sun. Finally, whimsicott could provide either utility or an offensive threat. I tried both a chlorophyll growth sweeper, which worked surprisingly well, and also a prankster support set, which was also effective.
Overall I think the Torkoal + Zard + Xatu are probably the most important members of Sun, and personally i feel heliolisk makes a top tier addition, but there are many ways to play the remaining team slots. We didn't see this archetype used too often as perhaps it was seen as cheesy, but I do think it deserves continuing experimentation if torkoal remains in the tier for DLC2.
A Torrential Downpour: Rain vs Feliburn
This was actually one of my favorite teams, and perhaps my most ambitious build this season. The idea of this team revolved around the gooey monster, goodra.
Goodra @ Leftovers
Ability: Hydration
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 100 Def / 156 SpD
Careful Nature
- Dragon Tail
- Earthquake
- Curse
- Rest
Goodra has incredible stats, and a very diverse and flexible movepool. I wanted to try set-up set, and hydration rest was the only way I could see it being effective. The crazy thing about goodra is its potential to win so many games on the spot, as it is super hard to take down. Believe it or not, this set is even capable of 1v1ing things like gardevoir, which is insane. EQ is your most consistent damage output and coverage, most importantly hitting steels and fairies and chunking poisons harder, while Dragon Tail is great for shuffling out pokemon trying to out-boost goodra and also racking up hazard damage. The perfect partner to this set is of course klefki, providing spikes and prankster rain dance, while also covering some of goodra's defensive weaknesses. I also used rocky helmet weezing to cover and chip down a few key physical threats, and also use neutralizing gas to get tspikes up past xatu to aid goodra's mission to sweep. I ended up going for a full utility set, with wisp, corrosive gas (mainly for HDB) and rain dance, as I found this is how I often ended up playing Weezing on that team. For an offensive core that works well standalone but also makes good use of rain, I also had swift swim LO special seismitoad, and HDB Lisk. In games where goodra would be too slow paced to win by itself, it could often be leaned on defensively and playing lisk and toad well with hazards could often be enough to overwhelm the opponent.
The other key idea that roman really wanted to use that week vs Feli was Anchor Shot Dhelmise:
Dhelmise @ Chesto Berry
Ability: Steelworker
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 48 Def / 204 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Anchor Shot
- Swords Dance
- Rest
Apart from the much needed utility of hazard removal, by trapping the right defensive mon, this guy can abuse such an opportunity very hard for setting up with SD and Spin to sweep or heavily damage a team. One of the biggest ideas behind this, apart from abusing something like a likely lix or bronzong, was actually that roman and I were predicting Feli to use an itemless GBro, which he did actually end up bringing. This set can lure in bro via the threat of poltergeist, trap it, and SD to 2hko it. This is really nice as GBro abuses klefki and is tough to counter otherwise, relying on Goodra dtailing it out which is often undesireable. RestoChesto is a cute little tech not only so that Dhel can burn its item relatively freely if it needs to check poltergeist, but also so that rest can be a more useful move even if Dhel doesn't get a good trap opportunity.
Sadly, in this week and for the rest of the season Roman was unable to play, and for this week it was unexpected so Sensei had to take up the mantle vs feli at the last moment. I actually wasn't online when this happened, and if I were I'd have suggested to him to use a different team, as I think this one is extremely difficult to play well without practice and knowledge of its intricacies. I say this is to Sensei's credit, as I think he put forth an admirable effort given the challenges of the situation, but there definitely were some misplays that I think prevented this team from really shining in that MU. Firstly, trapping the GBro as I described would have been a huge improvement. Secondly, the goodra set-up was a bit rash, as generally you should only start clicking curse once you have some form of hazards up and rain set first. The most important turns for rain are for when Goodra is most vulnerable clicking its first few curses, so setting up without rain is almost never a good idea. With bro gone, a layer of spikes up and a timing the set-up better, I think goodra definitely would have given Feli a lot of trouble as he had basically nothing to outdamage it at after a few boosts, the only real option being NP Decid during rest turns, but this would be difficult to manouver and opens him up to heliolisk if he even gets the opportunity. Regardless, I'm still glad this team had a chance to see a tournament game and props to Feli for his great prep and play that game as well.
The Thug Life: A Closer Look at Scrafty
Scrafty @ Leftovers
Ability: Shed Skin
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 16 HP / 240 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Close Combat
- Knock Off
- Protect
- Dragon Dance
or
Scrafty @ Leftovers
Ability: Shed Skin
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 72 HP / 184 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Drain Punch
- Knock Off
- Bulk Up
- Dragon Dance
For my last few teams, I want to talk about them more in the angle of specific pokemon they feature that I think are really great. The first pokemon is DD Scrafty. One of the biggest boons to Scrafty this gen is that pure Fairies are very uncommon in RU, and the ones most frequently in klefki and gardevoir used have a secondary typing that gives Scrafty a strong neutral hit. This allows Scrafty an extra moveslot that it doesn't really need for coverage, giving it the freedom to pick from a wide variety of great moves to beat various things. The first time I started using Scrafty was on a sticky webs HO team, and Golisopod was one of the biggest nuisances as it could revenge kill a lot of my main sweepers. Furthermore, I needed something that could come in on scalds and toxic's from things like defensive waters and shrug it off. This gave me the idea of using Lefties Shed Skin Scrafty with Protect. Tect allows Scrafty to block first impression and scout out moves from faster choice scarf users like passimian and gardevoir, and also adding additional lefties recovery and more chances to fish for a shed skin cure. While I think DD is optimal on Scrafty, its hard to deny there is some nice utility to bulkier BU sets, and I think this tech does a great job of providing overall utility while also augmenting Scrafty's natural bulk and great ability to aid its sweeps. Speaking of Bulk Up, another set I have been playing with that is also fantastic is a dual-booster. The key idea here is that drain makes scrafty much more durable, and also pairs great with BU which is much more consistent at breaking past body press Steelix and other defensive Pokemon. Furthermore, it is possible to circumvent the lower damage output of Drain Punch vs CC vs offensive mons like passimian (which ordinarily knock followed by +1 CC would KO, but not drain), by going for a DD then BU (generally you would want to knock off the scarf/band the first time if possible), tanking the CC and then healing it back with a knockout drain punch.
There are a lot of other great options, like Sub DD on Pepe's screens team, and there is also Taunt which iirc Expulso made good use of, but these are the two sets that I've been enjoying the most.
importable
I will probably gush about this team for a while, as it has a ton of sets that I love. I actually made it back around week 3 or 4, when I think Vikavolt was perhaps at its prime that time. I wanted Ramo to bring this vs eifo, but eventually that game never happened and sadly this squad never got a game in the limelight. Even so, I really enjoy it, and I'll actually include a paste to this one since I love every single set here. Vika has great defensive typing with levitate and its good bulk, and with just Buzz and Volt Switch is extremely difficult to switch into without Steelix, or something like P2. I call this team a webs team but webs is honestly just the extra icing on the cake, its frequently unneeded and the raw presence of Vika is what counts. I don't think I saw anyone else make much use of this monster, but it is seriously underrated and you should give it a spin. At the time of this team Inteleon was also a big threat and one of my favorite mons, and here I have the snipe shot focus energy set paired with another one of my favorite mons (perhaps top 5 in RU, honestly) in CM Gardevoir. The two can often break shared checks for each other, intel breaking stuff like keys for gard, and gard things like p2/fat waters for intel (gard is pretty much unwallable honestly). Both are also fantastic wincons on their own, Gardevoir just has amazing stats and moves and trace is super nice, + intel had speed and immediate power with crit snipe shot, + a decent sigi check which was a concern at the time. After GBro rose and sigi got banned, I added air slash > dark pulse to check virizion, and its also useful to hit toxi which is a big threat. Toad provided rocks and utility vs opposing intel/skewda and toxicroak. Furthermore tangela was really popular at this time, so I've got knock off + sludge bomb to cleanly knock it out. Incindentally, this is also the best defensive set for pressuring things like xatu and mantine trying to block hazards. SD Steelvally provides important defensive utility, a pivot to create set-up opportunities, and is a wincon in itself. Finally, as it usually does, Scrafty is here to steal the show every other game, providing a ton of utility and a sweeper like no other.
This team is probably my best in our most recent meta, before DLC2 took over. Roman for a long time was wanting to use something cool with Steelix + Mantine, and while we both weren't super high on mantine I ended up making it finally happen, though completely by accident. Actually, the origin of this team actually began with Lapras. Kingdra had just dropped, and I was toying with the idea of a shell armor lapras to hard counter it, as it has good stats and it is also actually very difficult to switch into surf + freeze dry. Eventually though, the fighting weakness proved to be too large a liability especially vs things like steelix, so I ended up going for Mantine instead. The tech I chose here was Calm + Mirror Coat, which could cover some of the things I intended for Lapras like TBolt goodra (Soulgazer actually ended up facing thunder, which it can also tank, but got the knockout on draco), Dragalge, and Focus Energy Kingdra if you get the sub turns correct. I ended up settling on Dragalge + Lix to round out my defensive core, with CM Espeon as a final utility piece for hazards and to check fighters / sigi, which was still legal that week (though we ended up gentlemanning it, so I changed the set to Psychic > Stored for immediate power). Scrafty was the main wincon of the team, early on with the protect set to make use of tspikes in addition to the normal benefits, but later DD + BU to better handle Steelix, though both are good. Ninjask finally also makes great use of tspikes, and provides a more sturdy fighter check + general revenge killer and cleaner. I think later we saw another team used a few times which was similar, using an Indeedee iirc, and it was really cool to see a similar team structure also succeed.
One of my newest fave mons and a huge reason for that team's success is this poisonous little seahorse right here:
Dragalge @ Black Sludge
Ability: Adaptability
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 Spd
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Sludge Bomb
- Focus Blast / Surf
- Toxic Spikes
Dragalge is SO. GOOD. Its defensive typing is really fantastic, and further augmented by its really good bulk which can allow it to trade with a lot of mons, and hard wall many more. After rhyperior left for OU I actually really prefer to run max HP to maximize what Dragalge can tank, and max Spa as this is huge to pick up OHKOs vs some neutral targets with Adaptability Draco. I prefer Sludge Bomb for the poison fish chance vs things like P2, Milo, etc. and we all already know how good TSpikes is. I think the other main important thing here is I actually strongly dislike Flip Turn, and found much better use for Surf or Focus Blast. Focus Blast is extremely hard hitting, does a lot more to steelix and breaks Copperjah, and can even check things like Scrafty in a pinch. The downside is the miss chance, so I also flirted with Surf which can cleanly 2hko 252/252 Impish Lix (Scald misses this, and can also get bad burns when you want poisons). I think perhaps one of the big reasons I didn't like Flip Turn was that I strongly valued breaking past Lix, as it is so common and oftentimes teams lack a good answer to Dragalge outside of it. Furthermore, I find that I'd rather be going for more damaging attacks, and if I really need to swap it would be on a defensive mon where I can just set-up TSpikes then manually switch. Furthermore I had Espeon so I didn't really want to click Flip Turn vs Klefki anyway, which imo is one of the selling points. This set is seriously the bomb, but even if you like to run flip turn / faster I think the mon itself is fantastic and so good in the meta rn. I'll close this post out with one more team with it, which also never got to see the limelight:
I really wanted to try out Spikes Goli + Viri. Dragalge is just fantastic for checking Lazzle and abusing other defensive mons like Vileplume which might try to come in on Virizion, since mine is opting for Edge to hit the fliers and centiskorch. I'm not the biggest Sneasel fan this gen but this was giving me throwback vibes to one of my favorite ORAS RU teams, and it ends up working really well here. Lix as usual, and it wouldn't be one of my teams without a magical psychic. I made this team for SG to use but it also never got played, however I think its really fun and also makes great use of Dragalge's utility and breaking prowess. Originally I was trying to make goodra work here, but eventually I gave up and decided to succumb to the fact that I would be throwing Dragalge onto a lot of my teams. This team sort of looks like a typical balance but it can be played pretty aggro, even moreso than the jask scrafty one, which is something I really enjoy. Virizion is also quite good!
That's pretty much all I've got. Before I close this, I want to say that I really enjoyed the growth of the playerbase that I saw this tour.
Pepeduce I remember playing you from many years ago, facing off against your Ursaring and Hariyama or what have you on ladder and in seasonals, and you showed tremendous improvement this tour.
Expulso you got thrown into the deep end very early as a new player, but I think you did a fantastic job of rising to the level of this competition.
Feliburn you have improved so much since the last time we played together in SPL, your overall approach to the game has really matured and your play was oh so solid. Fantastic post btw, you and Evi came up with some really great stuff. I could go on and on about everyone in this tour, but all I'm really trying to say is that I'm really happy to see the level of RU competition consistently getting better and better. Y'all rock. I think many of the ideas developing in these 9+2 weeks will probably carry over to the new metagame, so I would love to read more posts, if I can encourage anyone else to add to the discussion. I'll prompt
atomicllamas to post about P2, since I never used it myself but it performed really well and I would love to hear about it from someone more knowledgeable.
Thanks for reading!
