Discussion Sun teams in SS ZU

Tuthur · Nov 2, 2025

For the past years, concerns on sun teams in SS ZU have arised and many tournament players have loudly expressed their wish for some tiering actions to take place on sun. BaitWiz recently wrote a post detailing how the sun archetype functions in SS ZU, and I invite people to read it to get a good picture of sun's place in the SS ZU metagame.

A lot of the complains around sun revolve arround Ivysaur; this Pokémon's natural bulk with Eviolite and Toxic immunity allow it to find set-up opportunities on staples of the tier like Stunfisk, Miltank, and Rhydon; while threatening the whole tier with neutral coverage in STAB boosted Solar Beam and Sludge Bomb, and sun boosted Weather Ball. Choice Scarf users like Sawk and Rotom outspeed the bulkier variants of Ivysaur, but still struggle to take it if it hasn't been significantly weakened. However, Ivysaur's strength shouldn't be overstated as it lacks many OHKOes even at +2, making it possible to trade against it.

This leads many to believe that sun should be looked at as a whole archetype, rather than individual setters, as Ivysaur is only marginally stronger than Shiftry or other special Chlorophyll users like Lilligant and Exeggutor that are generally considered outclassed by Ivysaur in this role. A majority of the council members, therefore, would support taking actions on Heat Rock over Ivysaur.

Moreover, many aren't convinced that banning sun is required in SS ZU as there is still some counterplay with defensive Pokémon like Cramorant, Altaria, Silvally-Poison, and Coalossal that are very hard to navigate around for sun teams; or even strong priority moves like Pawniard's Sucker Punch and Piloswine's Ice Shard. Even some of the most common defensive Pokémon can put some work against sun, such as Articuno, Miltank, and Throh.

This thread goal is to determine whether actions should be taken on sun or not in SS ZU, and if yes, should they target Ivysaur or Heat Rock.

Here is the list of voters;

Voters list:
5gen
avarice
Beka
Beraldo
BloodAce
carlosrhv
clean
Corthius
Danny
dex
Drud
DurzaOffTopic
Elfuseon
Fogbound Lake
Greybaum
Indulge in dreams
Jojen
kay
Lizardu
Luck O' the Irish
LustfulLice
Medeia
Monai
neomon
Ninja
OranBerryBlissey10
PandaDoux
pannu
plznostep
Pokeslice
Quagg
RawMelon
seraphz
Shaneghoul
shiloh
Shiritu
sinnabyss
SOMALIA
terreitor
THE_CHUNGLER
TheFranklin
TJ
Toto
Tuthur
Yovan
zause

PandaDoux · Nov 2, 2025

This tier has a MU issue and sun is def contributing a lot to this, it is hard to cover this archetype without downgrading your team; i support tiering action on Sun, specifically Heat Rock since Ivysaur will likely get replaced by one of the many chlorophyll users anyway, idt it'll fix the tier but it will make it better for sure

BaitWiz · Nov 2, 2025

I’ll redirect most of the discussion I had about Sun for the post I already made that Tuthur linked and I don’t actually get a vote in this mess since I’ve never stuck around playing SS ZU long enough to meet criteria for this vote (1-1 SS in ZUPL and basically every other tour I’ve been support for SS rather than starter lol), so I’ll suffice it to say that I think while Ivysaur being banned could potentially be enough, I would much rather see Heat Rock banned to remove Sun altogether.

sinnabyss · Nov 2, 2025

Sun being so polarizing makes building in SS such a nighmare. Basically every team needs 2-3 checks to sun, lest they run into sun and get demolished on preview. Ivy is undeniably a factor, but the brokeness of sun comes more from the lack of solid splashable answers, as well as just how overwhelming the core of ivy/dash/shift is. Supposed defensice answers like Altaria, Coalossal and Silv-Poison usually trade at best, or are left with too little health to answer the next sun abuser. Priority that actually deals with these mons are rare, sucker punch doesnt threaten any of the abusers above 40% HP, mach punch only scares shiftry, ice shard users like pilo and band lass are much harder to fit onto teams, and also dont threaten dash. Banning Ivy doesn't solve the root of the problem, which is how unhealthy the combination of all the abusers are. Having checks to a sun team often leads to worse MUs into other team archetypes. I support banning heat rock, removing a mu fishy ho teamstyle will benefit the tier more in the long run.

Danny · Nov 2, 2025

ban nothing, get good, you youngins and your complaining.

Pokeslice · Nov 2, 2025

My fellow ditto manager Danny is wrong here and I apologize for that. BaitWiz I'll make sure to talk him down don't worry.

As far it relates to Sun discussion, I'll be voting ban on it no matter what and I hope others join me. I think SS ZU is an awesome tier and some of my more fun Smogon moments have come from playing it in ZU tours, but the entire time I've built this tier or looked at scouts, the idea of Sun has been a constant annoyance. It's not a very skillful playstyle, is entirely a fish, and is a pretty large strain on the builder. Nerfing Sun feels like a no brainer quality of life move to make this 9/10 tier a 10/10.

I'd say to move on Heat Rock. Ivysaur is definitely the most common Sun abuser, but I hesitate to say it's the reason Sun is tough to deal with. There are countless of other mons that work extremely well on Sun to overwhelm teams/checks, especially in tandem with each other, and Ivysaur is just one part of that.

Greybaum · Nov 9, 2025

people talk like sun across all tiers and all gens is a stagnant archetype and it's either awful or it's broken and needs to be "nerfed" until it's awful again with no middleground. it's just another flavour of ho that happens to have more obvious synergistic qualities because it's grass and fire types every time. it's screens, it's webs, it's set-up spam, it's hazard stack.

people also talk about how sun causes stress in the builder but this isn't true. people aren't making their teams worse by bringing dogshit like hakamo-o or cloud nine golduck and if they did people wouldn't say "wow sun makes building so hard" they'd say "wow whoever built this team sucks" and rightfully so. if you want to make this claim please provide examples of how you've made your team worse to account for sun so people can see your perspective.

beating sun doesnt require you to have a hard answer to every (or any pokemon) on the team - like screens it just needs you to be able to stall out turns. with sun down ivysaur is abysmally bad and ivysaur is the only good pokemon sun has to begin with.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8zu-867430 ninja vs seraphz

ninja has a bad sun matchup on paper here. kadabra is life orb, not sash. lurantis and palossand both give free entry points to ivysaur, and even if it's not the good set (heavy hp investment) ivysaur needs to be below 40% and knocked before pawniard can get above a 0% roll to kill with sucker punch. coal is the only saving grace, but it's still taking 50% from +2 solar beam and when nothing else can take attacks from ivysaur on the team that's not great. it is good but it's not great. there's also other factors like knock off, uxie getting rocks up etc. to consider but you get the jist.

anyway, ninja still wins. he is able to cripple both sun setters early and after that he positions himself with midgrounds that prevents seraphz from getting any momentum. it looks close but it isn't; ninja secures the endgame very well.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8zu-860994 oranberryblissey10 vs avarice
on the other hand this game between obb and avarice demonstrates what i was saying earlier about sun just being glorified set-up spam. obb tricks his rotom's scarf and subsequently gets 6-0d by carracosta, who unironically is the second best sweeper on a team centered around sun. read kay's post (it's below the baitwiz post linked in the op) for more information on this. the second best sweeper on seraphz's team was lunatone btw.

to focus in on ivysaur a bit more - shiftry has a terrible defensive typing, poor bulk, and is 4x weak to u-turn which makes it extremely easy to chip into range of life orb, helmet, or priority.
rapidash is even worse - it kills itself with flare blitz, doesn't have chlorophyll, and it doesn't even share the same answers the other sun pokemon do. getting palossand or qwilfish to 10% isn't useful to the team. so why use them? positioning. you use rapidash because you can force scarf sawk to kill you with cc, for example, and give your ivysaur free setup.

sun requires smart positioning from both sides like any other ho archetype and people who claim it's linear or lacks skill expression are wrong. if you're going to "nerf" sun please at least show you understand how the teams work and ban ivysaur instead of heat rock, it's all the same end result of killing the playstyle anyway. DNB.

diegoyuhhi · Wednesday at 6:25 PM

ivysaur is unbeatable for balance, and other 100 "lies" you can tell yourself
:ivysaur:

the biggest issue with ss sun, and for how i see it one of the main reasons why it's often considered banworthy, is ivysaur. without this mon, the archetype wouldn't be seen as so controversial and "fishy" (i'll explain later why i'm putting that in quotes) as it is rn, and for this reason, even tho i’m leaning no action, i think that if action were to be taken on sun, i would vote to ban ivysaur. now that i got that out of the way, let's see why i think this is the case:

1. is sun a match-up fish?
short answer: ehhh not really. it has some good matchups, especially into more offensive builds like various ho's or, as i like to call them, "hopes and dreams defensive core" balances, which have been becoming more and more popular (examples from the most recent zupl and oly: me slice ninja1 ninja2 seraphz1 seraphz2); and it also has some very real bad matchups, especially into balances that specifically prep for it (mons like alt, dash, coal, golduck, ditto, pilo, cb lass, aboma, and more have all seen recent tournament play and they all meaningfully improve the sun mu). in between these two extremes, there's a wide range of matchups where skill (or hax lol) is what actually determines who comes out on top: a lot of teams without specific tools to deal with sun can still put up a real fight if played well. despite this, these middle of the road matchups are sometimes seen as "losing" or "sun hitting the match-up", because of what i'm gonna state in my second point:

2. how does balance deal with ivy?
short answer: by not giving it free turns. the main reason why ivy is the sun demon and why so many people think a lot of teams just cannot deal with sun is because ivy matches up really well into a lot of balance staples, and it can often get free setup turns in front of them. mons like cow, fire-less alc, both fisks, defensive qwil, palo, tang, sawk, kabu, apers, thwack, and even stuff like rotom, rhydon, cuno, and duggy can struggle to meaningfully threatening it and thus give it free turns (some of these are worse than others). the art of dealing with sun is a dance of handling dash, shiftry, and 6th while preserving the mons you need to beat ivy. this isn’t too different from a line you'd take against any other hyper offense, except for the fact that instead of 5/6 abusers you only face 4 and one of them is particularly hard to deal with. in a lot of cases, when sun beats a standard balance without particular tools for sun, it’s because the former managed to position ivy against one of the aforementioned mons and as such found setup turns and was able to sweep, especially if the correct pieces had been chipped beforehand by teammates (replays: 1. ivy cleans vs ho after minimal breaking; 2. luna dash and shiftry break balance, leaving nothing to deal with ivy), or break for other sun sweepers to clean (replays: 3. ivy comes in on scarf sawk locked on cc and claims 3 for lilli to sweep; 4. ivy switches in safely on fisk via uturn and gets rid of 2 defensive pieces for dash and shiftry). of course other times it was a different abuser who swept but again, that’s not much different from any other hyper offense. it's also to note that even the looming thought of having to never be passive vs ivy to not give it free turns can lead to uncomfortable situations when dealing with the other sweepers. some people tho like to play sun, and a reasonable question would be:

3. what happens for sun if we ban ivy?
short answer: it’s not dead, but it becomes significantly weaker. mons like eggy, maractus, and leafeon can be replacements, even if not as good as ivy, but i think the best approach for sun going forward would be to run “half sun” of sorts, with like setter + shiftry + dash + 3 other setup sweepers (or 2 sweepers + a lead or smth). it would still be a viable option, since shiftry and dash have proven their worth, but it wouldn’t be too different from any other ho. meanwhile, full sun would be more akin to something like eterrain: a more cheesy strat that is less overbearing on playing millimetrically perfectly against it. i still think that no action would be my vote (even tho i’m still kinda undecided), banning ivy would significantly improve the general experience of playing the tier for a lot of people, so it could very well just be the correct choice. ivy is not a real mon outside of specifically sun anyway, so it would only be a loss for this one team style.

tldr: sun is not a mu fish, a lot of teams can deal with it pretty easily, but the hard part of playing vs it is to position perfectly to never be passive in front of ivy, since the mon is very good at getting free turns and making a lot out of them, which makes it the main reason sun is often seen as fishy.

(no zuwc replays cause there's no thread for it and i cba to scroll through the entire pools & playoffs threads, there probably are more replays that demonstrate my points)

Tuthur · 2025-11-20T17:05:44-0500

Following the discussion here, the SS ZU council has opted to vote on Heat Rock. The vote will be open for 2 weeks, so until December 4th 11pm GMT.
https://www.smogon.com/tools/suspects/view/170

5gen · 2025-11-20T20:59:39-0500

Hello all. I have a vote and feel I should explain why I'm voting ban on Heat Rock. Sun is the outlying problem in SS ZU for me and I think the meta would be better off without Ivysaur. However, Heat Rock is on the table so I may as well vote ban.

The biggest complaint I saw with teammates and other SS players/builders (specifically my teammates across team tours and when I joined teams as a helper) is how tough SS is to build in. To paraphrase what pro-action users have said in this thread, sun puts a lot of pressure on teambuilding and Ivysaur has plenty of opportunities to set up and break. Shiftry is absolutely a threat teams need to prep for. Unlike Timid Ivy, Shiftry has immediate breaking power and options like Heat Wave, Sucker Punch, and Explosion for specific matchups such as Tangela, Golduck/Ditto/faster threats after sun is stalled, and Silv-Poison/Alt/Cuno. Similarly, the 6th slot on sun is flexible and adds more layers when prepping for sun (i.e., Carracosta in the OBB/avarice game, RP Lunatone, DD Alcremie, Lass or Qwil for Spikes, Leafeon to overload Grass checks).

As I said at the start, the biggest complaint I see about SS is how tough it is to build in. SS is a unique ZU old gen in that the meta has a wide range of threats to account for, and sun comes off as an outlier because it is a consistent weather HO. Prepping in SS ZU as of now comes down to not losing to sun, setup HO, and single or double setup teams, as well as being able to beat Toxic spam, Heal Bell/Aromatherapy spam, and strong defensive cores. You must cover both ends of the spectrum, different kinds of HO to different kinds of fat, to have reliable teams in SS. I recognize mons is mons, but to ignore the complaints about how it is to build in SS is wack. A player base survey post-ZUPL would've been nice to have to gauge the meta (I wish I had thought of it then rip).

Setup spam and offense in general trended up in the past year or two. Sun vs opposing offense to me is like know your lines x20. The primary way to deal with sun is to target setters off the lead. Stalling sun is tough because checking the sweepers is difficult for standard defensive cores. People have adapted by using stuff like Alt, Coal, Silv-Poison, Ditto, Golduck, Ninetales, etc. I find that leaning into the sun matchup beyond like two dedicated checks and some techs leaves you too open to other threats like LO Sawk, SD Silvs, SD Rap/Rap-G, etc.

Discussion Sun teams in SS ZU

Tuthur

gnawtier than ever

PandaDoux

PD

BaitWiz

ZU Ladder Achievement Hunter

sinnabyss

Viva Misery

Danny

MSGA

Pokeslice

Thanks for the Dance

Greybaum

GENTLEMEN, THIS IS DEMOCRACY MANIFEST

diegoyuhhi

our shared past and our lost future

Tuthur

gnawtier than ever

5gen

jumper