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OU SPL XI - GSC Discussion Thread

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Apologies for the lateness.
[RAI] Earthworm vs sulcata [WOL]
[TYR] gorgie vs Mr.E [CRY]
[SHA] Conflict vs idiotfrommars [BIG]
[RUI] FriendOfMrGolem120 vs KratosMana [CLA]
[SCO] Fear vs McMeghan [TIG]

Week 4 matchups:
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sulcata vs KratosMana
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gorgie vs FriendOfMrGolem120
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Earthworm vs Fear
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idiotfrommars vs Zokuru
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Mr.E vs Conflict
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Some thoughts so far:

- We had a lot ot Rapid Spin enthusiasts this year (mainly because of Golem of course), but still, people are being more and more aware about the advantage which Rapid Spin provides in many mid- and late-games (we could even see a couple of Tenta builds here and there). Maybe we'll see in the future people running more dedicated coverage to prevent Golem from getting free opportunities? (see gorgie bringing HP Water Zapdos and HP Water Espeon vs FOMG).

- If Fear played in Goldenrod Game Corner, catch this dude farming some Thunder and Fire Blast TMs real quick, because goddamn. He's playing super well in this SPL, but he ALWAYS gets a key sequence of lucky breaks, which screws completely his opponents' momentum pretty much week after week.

Week 5 Predicts

GSC OU: Conflict vs. Zokuru | Johnflict has made some sick performances in these last two weeks. Zok definitely has some potential, but he's usually one-dimensional with his playstyle, and I think Conflict will take a solid advantage in this game.
GSC OU: KratosMannat vs. Fear | Very interesting match-up, especially considering Fear was (sort of) anti's tutor? Fear has the momentum, but anti is more than capable of beating him with the right mindset.
GSC OU: gorgie vs. Charmflash | I wasn't expecting to see Za Meowdo starting in GSC, but he showed a modest potential outside of modern tiers after his WC performances. I'll bold the player with the bigger amount of momentum, but I wouldn't be surprised if Za Meowdo ended up winning this one.
GSC OU: Earthworm vs. Mr.E | I'll predict Worms to bounce back from here as long as he stays away from cursed niche picks like Articuno and Shuckle...
GSC OU: FriendOfMrGolem120 vs. sulcata | This should be a interesting game, both used to ladder a fuckton of games, thus i'm expecting both players to have some trouble in the teambuilder, since they have a huge amount of information about each other (teambuilding and playing-wise), a crucial element in GSC. I'll give a tiny edge for FOMG overall.
 
Sub+Nightmare definitely was the "star" play this past week, punishing two features of the current metagame: leaning heavily on ST Snorlax to give you "safe" switch-ins, which is normally quite reliable; and depending on a Thunder Zapdos as one of your main answers to Waters, which you can often get away with. Granted, the latter is less common today than it was 5+ years ago (double electric builds and Thunderbolt are currently more popular than they were then), but the former is definitely a surging trend. And sulcata happened to employ both, poor fella.

There was also an awful lot of Moltres usage. Charcoal Moltres usage. And they both won! In one game (vs Conflict), it actually was probably the reason for the win! Against Charmflash, the Rhydon was definitely the standout Poke. Speaking of Rhydon, both Moltres teams featured it. I suppose the concept is that they both converge on bulky waters (e.g., Suicune), mutually softening them up until, in tandem with Spikes, one of them is able to kill? In the end, though, it seemed Rhydon + Spikes, sans Moltres, was enough to do the job in dice's case. Maybe there's some other idea behind it, e.g., portfolio-diversifying against teams that bring, say, Exeggutor.

Apart from that, Mr.E managed to win with some stall concept featuring Vaporeon and ML-pass Umbreon (sans any kind of cheese, e.g. Confuse Ray). Despite his opponent bringing Double Electrics and Double Phazers to shut it down. Something funny happened here, and it seems to have been kicked off by a combination of hubris and luck: FOMG switching Zapdos into a crit Ice Beam from Cloyster.

Also, gorgie ended up slowly decaying in the face of Thief usage (and a lucky freeze, but Raikou's erosion honestly seemed to be a bigger factor). To be fair, those slower Spikes-dependent teams with Missy spinblock that lean on offensive Snorlax and Roar Raikou seem to be particularly vulnerable to Thief + Spikes. I learned that against spies in my first full SPL season, that was a gut punch lol, and so I related to this loss probably more than I should have.

I also noticed, overall, a lot of Skarm usage this week. And no Golem! After a couple weeks where a lot of the teams had me thinking "boy, if somebody had brought ST Heracross or Marowak things sure would have gone sour", it seems the SPL field collectively had a similar revelation. Or maybe it was just chance / reversion to the mean / an attempt to gain an edge by throwing the opponent off one's typical teambuilding strategies. KratosMana even brought Curse Hera this week, in what ended up being a pretty solid matchup for it, and with CurseBoom Lax to support it in case of Skarm, to boot! Moltres just ended up stealing the show.
 
Just stall that Starmie if you can't kill it. It's offensively unthreatening and you can just switch out of Nightmare and back between your Lax and Electric (especially Zapdos who is Spikes-immune). Not using Sleep Talk and just Resting naturally to slough off Nightmare also makes Lax much tougher to break even on its own. Props to utilizing Nightmare better than randomly throwing it on my Gengar years ago nonetheless, but honestly I thought Nightmare faded when Sleep Talk rerolled Rest. So, uhh, yeah I'd probably have played with it more by now myself if I knew otherwise, considering how ubiquitous Rest is in GSC with or without ST. :blobshrug: Dunno if I was just unaware or if that was a PO bug (hell that might even be NetBattle days, I forget) that stuck in my mind as a valid mechanic.

I'm like 99% sure FOMG's Skarm didn't have Whirlwind. Mr.E's professional scouting determined that FOMG never uses multiple phazers, always resorting to alternative movesets on potential users if they're together on his teams. I'm betting Skarm was Sleep Talk, double so based on the fact he never once switched it in to phaze Umby/Missy just to mix up his plays periodically (and minimize Spikes damage on Raikou). I also noticed the previous week against sulcata that he switched Zapdos into Umbreon before the latter revealed its moveset, leading me to believe I could "cheese" his disrespect for the trapping set rather than needing to resort to actual cheese. Besides, you can always chip the phazers to sleep and go off then. Trap Umbreon may well be more abusable and underused than it deserves.

Anyway, I was hoping to see a physical phazer that could be taken advantage of with Charm, so Roar Raikou was kind of worst matchup in that regard. Vap was there to take advantage of potential trapping to set up for a sweep. I was going to do the same with Curselax but, among other minor reasons, I decided I needed at least one immediately threatening attacker to abuse being phazed in at an advantage so I went with three-attack DE. (Also would've loved to fit a Ground-type in for Raikou but shit I only got six slots, man.) I got timely crits for sure, but the early Thunder miss to cripple Cloyster almost came back to bite me later (it got Umby poisoned and risked Umbreon/Raikou getting Exploded) and Umbreon would've picked apart his team 80 turns sooner if I landed the T16 Hypnosis on Raikou. Well, unless Skarm actually was a second phazer in which case I guess I'm just a lucky jerk.

also moltres is bad stop
 
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Pre-empting any questions or other discussion on the matter: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2ou-477305

I Drill Pecked in the endgame because putting that potential 40% damage on Nidoking if Fear immediately goes Nido on Rest is a huge deal, severely boosting the odds of my sleeping Zapdos to finish it off or my Lax to wake up and possibly directly KO it instead of being Rest looped and waiting to be crit. I figured it's probably better to risk a this-exact-turn-only DE crit versus giving Nido multiple chances to crit EQ on Lax, rolling the dice with Zapdos at a disadvantage, or needing Blissey to wake up as immediately as his Raikou did. :blobglare:

If I make it past Nido, I always win the endgame because Skarm can abuse Miltank still being alive to boost up without letting Snorlax boost or finish Rollout. Even if Miltank thaws, I still win endgame because my Zapdos and Skarm are immune to Spikes (nevermind Lax and Blissey in my back pocket) while his Miltank and Snorlax are not, eventually forcing him to use PP and he never breaks Skarm unless he gets ungodly PAR luck. Rollout is cute tech but it wouldn't have worked in this scenario since I can't be forced to KO Miltank. Only through Spikes, which would also KO Lax if he's switching every turn to outpace Leftovers.

Earlier: I Punched to fish for Freeze on Raikou/Lax or hit a potential Ground-type (which he ended up having) but yeah I probably should've just Bolted Skarm. Fear made much more egregious errors in fishing for PAR on Cloyster instead of just going hard into his, after RNGing my Gengar down, and just allowing Raikou to lose to Zapdos for some reason.

On the bright side, Ice Beam Cloyster has done serious work two weeks running. :blobwizard:
 
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It's true, after sacrificing Raikou, it's unclear that Fear could have contained that Curse Skarm without that DE crit kill. But that all seems dependent on what Nidoking's 4th was and how you chose to handle it. Definitely a tricky endgame to navigate.

Fear seems to love making that play though. Specifically, the refuse-to-use-Rest play. It's sort of alien to see someone so readily trade long-term security for short-term bursts of control over the match, and I honestly kind of love it (even if it might make their teammates sweat bullets). One has to wonder how many of those "lucky bounces" that Fear's critics love to bring up can actually be attributed to this hyper-aggressive playstyle.

"Cute" is also how I'd describe that one moveset Fear always has on their team. It isn't clear if it actually helps in most matches. The corollary to that, of course, is that it's also unclear if it hurts. And as we saw vs. sulcata last week, there's the odd chance it just dominates the match. So it could very well be a low-risk high-reward play to regularly add a dash of "cute" to one's teams (albeit not indiscriminately; Fear's approach to "cute" is certainly a little smarter than "use arbitrary weird set on Pokemon X").
 
Thunder threatens, the odd Fire Blast threatens, Counter is the only reasonable move that Skarm beats there but that still gives Nidoking many opportunities to freeze. (Thankfully, Ice Beam is just weak enough that it'd take two consecutive crits to 3HKO Skarm. Drill Peck is only a coin flip OHKO even at max but I can just WW and use Spikes for the necessary chip without risking eating it.) It's a question of do I go to Lax and risk EQ crit, especially if he predicts the switch, or do I stay in and hope he overpredicts or even misses the special attack (unless it's Thunderbolt but lol). It's an interesting endgame in that it's still very much up in the air who wins at that point. Shame I got crit.

Fear seems to love making that play though. Specifically, the refuse-to-use-Rest play. It's sort of alien to see someone so readily trade long-term security for short-term bursts of control over the match, and I honestly kind of love it (even if it might make their teammates sweat bullets). One has to wonder how many of those "lucky bounces" that Fear's critics love to bring up can actually be attributed to this hyper-aggressive playstyle.
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Rest does make you quite vulnerable and I think sometimes players are too liberal with putting themselves to sleep with non-ST sets. You eat free Spikes from a couple double switches or bad phazes and suddenly you're no longer healthy enough to survive and it becomes a big defensive scramble to not end up dying without actually getting that one attack back you skipped on to Rest in the first place. Opponents are also prone to putting themselves in a vulnerable spot making would-be spotty switches because they assume you'll give them the free turns to do whatever it is they planned to do (Spike/Spin, get off their own low-HP Rest, etc.) and simply playing counter to the presumed safe play completely ruins them. But, obviously, the higher your reward for guessing right and the lower your risk for guessing wrong this can be very broadly applied to any situation.

In this case, I don't think it made much sense to give Raikou up but Fear seemed to be operating under the assumption lastmon Lax would cheese me with Rollout without realizing that he can't also sac Miltank because it's not actually a threat to me. I operated under the assumption that the odds were 15/16 in my Skarmory's favor... :facepalm:

"Cute" is also how I'd describe that one moveset Fear always has on their team. It isn't clear if it actually helps in most matches. The corollary to that, of course, is that it's also unclear if it hurts. And as we saw vs. sulcata last week, there's the odd chance it just dominates the match. So it could very well be a low-risk high-reward play to regularly add a dash of "cute" to one's teams (albeit not indiscriminately; Fear's approach to "cute" is certainly a little smarter than "use arbitrary weird set on Pokemon X").
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The Starmie is weird but kinda genius, although I'm pretty sure I'd have abused Nightmare plenty by now if I knew the proper mechanics before. (I have used it before, mostly as a filler move on Gengar.) Rollout Lax is kinda whack since it only beats Curseskarm as lastmon Lax and if Skarm isn't lastmon itself the opponent can also credibly revenge kill Lax after 5x Drill Pecks (pending what the opponent has left, Lax should be ~29% which is in range of Zapdos/Raikou Thunder plus the chance of 1/6 attacks critting is about 1-in-3). I see no other use for it, because you will just die if you start Rollout up any other time in the match, so there's no reason to use it over Thunder or FB/FT since those always beat Skarm regardless of game state in addition to covering other things.

A lot of random moveset choices don't always end up mattering, though. Or they do but you don't see it as a spectator, like anytime Lax's fourth move isn't revealed because it's a coverage move not favored against the opponent's main Normal resist. Or the fact I was running Icy Wind + Ice Beam against Fear and itching for a Zapdos to cheese *ahem* so I had no response to Cloyster just hard switching into mine and taking my Spikes down. Which ended up not mattering because I froze Miltank and he walked Cloyster into Explosion for some reason but eh. Or bad luck happens and a mon dies unexpectedly blah blah.

Time to bring back Dream Eater Jynx. I used Dream Eater Eggy two or three times in SPL9 and unluckily got a Ttar matchup every single time... :pikuh:
 
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also it dawned on me how much less dangerous Raikou is offensively with Tbolt when it can't even 3HKO Zapdos :bloblul:
 
it's not with tbolt but without thunder that makes raikou less dangerous. tbolt+thunder may make sense
 
someone used that last week? on a Sleep Talk set and I was like :smogthink:

It's pretty interesting but I think you give up too much on Raikou making it so vulnerable to Ground-types. Tbolt's utility is pretty limited when you're using it in conjunction with Thunder, since at that point one is no longer your primary attack and you're only using it for the relatively minute differences (accuracy vs power where one is paramount, slightly better Sleep Talk rolls against nonresistant things) compared to a wider range of benefits from carrying Hidden Power. More than 2/3 of teams feature a Ground-type, not to mention Eggy is common although it can only tank Electric moves for so long.
 
i think you can skimp on hidden power with raikou if you have a strong ground punish like suicune. i used tox/thund/roar/rest this week in conjunction with a resttalk cune e.g. a lot of the slower, stally builds tend to fold to vaporeon long term because they hinge on roarkou. no resttalk makes it dicey. not the best set for sure. not even a great set. definitely a viable one though.

cool observation to play around fomg's insistence on one phaze, mr.e. sometimes that redundancy is important to avoid getting cheesed. fear owned you though
 
FOMG used two phazers this past week and I outplayed Fear overall tbh :blobnom: Win or loss, I think I've been on point since the disastrous week 1. :blobshrug:

Double STAB Raikou def needs insurance and Suicune is very much the classic combo anyway, but Eggy is probably the only Ground counter I could consider punishing. Maybe Heracross. It's tougher to flip the script and apply counterpressure on Ground-types with the same ease as it is, say, running Machamp into a Ttar. They're much more universally threatening and tend to require a dedicated defensive response.
 
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2ou-477912

Good show. gorgie bringing as many Toxic mons as they did to fight famously Rest-averse Fear seems like a good idea. As silly as it sounds, Toxic from the likes of Skarm has always been a big reason I've personally been wary of ditching Rest on Zapdos.

That said, I think the events surrounding the ST Curselax-vs-Gengar matchup (including, yes, some thaw luck) ultimately did the most to swing the outcome of this match. That head-to-head and the plays that led up to it are definitely worth some study, as that's honestly a complex situation where there are almost certainly 10 different opinions regarding how to play it.
 
that skarm moveset as a whole is totally not legit but lol

Considering Fear also had Steelix, I just go to it during sleep and Roar Lax out, as a double ST DE roll is low odds and worst-case still doesn't actually KO anyway. Since Lax basically needs to full boost to meaningfully threaten Steelix, it's difficult to re-enter this scenario. If nothing else, knowing you ultimately won't win a straight PP stall and then attempting to employ that strategy anyway is clearly a mistake. I phaze on the freeze, Gengar's net damage through Leftovers is so low that losing one turn to remove Lax's boosts and forcing it back in later against literally anything else will threaten to KO it faster. That or going Steelix and starting to Curse up is probably the right call actually, since even if Lax thaws you'll now have the boosts to both minimize damage and threaten after Roaring it out... though not in this matchup because literally HP Fire Skarm.

If this is some weird 2v1 endgame scenario, without Spikes I am probably at least more liberal at switching back and forth between Gengar and Steelix to conserve PP, especially during Rest because the 2/3 chance of not getting hit makes it difficult to break through Steelix's Leftovers. Steelix will be risking death around the same time Lax is running out of ST PP, on average, so if you get a little lucky on the front end you can keep doing it and run Lax out of ST PP, which means you win because you can now out-conserve Rest sleep via switching. Get unlucky and eat a couple DE early, you retreat back to Gengar and conservatively fish for status/freeze and get Steelix back in on Rest turns to safely regain health.

If Steelix has Explosion, even if Lax is fully boosted you live long enough to Curse up to (+3)-(+5) and chain EQs into Explosion which, pending damage rolls, either trades or gets close enough that any special attacker can cleanly revenge kill. :blobshrug:
 
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen2ou-478345

Given the amount of Tbolt Zapdos I've seen this SPL, this match reminds us of Thunder's sheer power and why we bother to roll the... dice... by using it. dice probably just withers and dies if lightning can't strike... uh, many of time. The most notable moments Thunder enabled:
  • Thunder guarantees a kill against Raikou in that situation (crit didn't matter).
  • Thunder threatens a 4HKO on Lax, punishing the attempt to switch that sleeping Lax directly into Thunder.
  • Thunder obviously enables the crit-kill against Lax later on in the match.
Funnily enough, though, if Zokuru had hit their *one* Thunder on turn 11, this game probably ends there & then. Sometimes life ain't fair.

EDIT: That said, though, this is like the 5th time this SPL that the stall team that probably *should* have won ended up losing in the end. My question: is this bad luck, suboptimal play, or, perhaps, fate?
 
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ya i lucked the shit out of that game all bc of thunder. i blundered early by assuming his last was cloyster instead of forre which wasted a crucial turn and got my own cloy toxiced. breaking his team was kinda difficult but pretty doable if i didn’t fuck up. the kou+cune (and to a lesser extent, lax) sets made zard setup pretty fuckin hard but i had decent options to pressure with spikes with aggro play. but instead, rng baby
 
Zokuru screwed the pooch. Spikes advantage versus literally Tentacruel (Curse at that) and Charizard? "This is why we use Thunder" with regard to Zapper was one of two thoughts I also had, but the other was "this is why you can't afford to run double STAB on Raikou." It's just too abusable by especially Rhydon and Marowak, two of the least counterable threats in the game. I know Suicune's there as insurance vs Rhydon but the Lax set also being susceptible to it didn't help matters.
 
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