Hi, I built a lot for tko this season. I think he did great, sad we couldn't close it out in finals. My own record was atrocious, but thats a combination of me being bad, me being bad at the old meta and me being unlucky. My losses dont count and im the goat, actually. Here's the teams and the thought behind them if I remember it.
Now, on Deerling:
slugma balls with a badminton racket
So snow and chinchou left to OU and I thought well lets bring out old reliable sand. I love giving hippo yawn as a pseudo pivot move into shrew. I put choice band larvesta on it because it eats grass and ice attacks for you, baits switches to waters, which then take way more than expected on uturn and no longer check sand. Bulky waters ended up falling out of favor, so maybe this isn't that good anymore, but hey. Croagunk was given tera rock to maybe take advantage of the sand spdef boost.
The aim of the game here was toxic spikes + a pinch to trap grounded poisons trying to absorb those. Poison jab drilbur happened to look good into vooper, who did bring another cottonee we got to snipe. Wisp sinistea also is pretty hard to safely play around, I like what it did. A bit more of a fishier team and pinch doesn't trap as much as you'd like when the best grounded poison has flip turn, but hey.
Slowly started realizing numel is big danger here so torb has tera water instead of ice, and the start of my buizel obsession. Originally brought because the hackers were lacking in water resists. Having 19 speed and a stab pivot move is really good, especially when paired with tera psychic for the one mon immune to it. Scarf boomburst pikipek als imo is seriously underrated as it can very easily clean even through resists when paired with knock users (although it hates the uptick in tera ghost).
Torb has taunt this week because we saw wattrel spam, and hey, if wattrel can't roost it doesn't beat torb. Nymble + Meowth g were supposed to handle deerling, and the rest is standard. Unfortunately my realization about numel last week went out the window here and this team lost to it pretty hard. With a couple different teras it could be alright still though, even if nymble is not him.
We were already in so I brought wattrel just to put it into our scout. I went back to the tried and untrue toxic spikes + trap combo, and somehow decided that the thing to add to tspikes is paraflinch? Anyway my doduo has tera ghost just in case deerling tries something funny, but it wins the speedtie and crits me before I get to use it. More on that later.
Quinn said he liked Driftings week 7 build, so I adapted it by adding buizel my beloved over doduo in order to amend the numel weakness. Koffing has a tera to fight numel after it teras out of buizel optionally. There's not much extra thought into this. Work smarter not harder.
Drilbur is back because mold breaker eq looked strong into drifting. Dewpider is this weeks numel check. Koffing was given a ground move to hit tentacool better so it cant be worn down by knock into gunk as hard, and meowth is chosen as a mon that resists headbutt and can then outspeed and hit deerling. It doesn't work out, meowth gets paralyzed and croagunks lack of fighting stab stronger than vacuum wave costs us for the first time this season. Still think the team is solid.
We went through a lot of teams and versions here, so I don't know if this is the exact one we ended up bringing. There was also our own deerling numel team at some point, but it wasnt clicking with tko so it was cast aside. Rhyhorn can deal with wattrel comfortably and still threatens the deer. Pikipek is physical this time but still just a scarfer that hits deerling super effectively both before and after tera. Greavard spinblocks forever and should only take 2 hp of damage from deerling zhb so it can sit on it provided it's not bullet seed. The rest of the mons are relatively standard. It again doesn't work out. I haven't seen the game and I'm not gonna look at it. ggs deerlings.
Now, on Deerling:
It's completely true that deerling needs to get overly lucky to get the results it wants. However, I still don't like what it does to the current meta both when playing and building vs it. None of the mons faster than deerling beat it well, let alone switch in. The best answer imo is voltorb, as deerling risks getting static para'd if it headbutts it, and then you can't really hit it without teraing to ice. There are a bunch of mons that speedtie deerling and in theory force it out, but then you are once again still hoping you don't get unlucky and lose the tie. Even if the deerling player shouldn't go for this, If they do their odds of coming out on top are annoyingly real. Then there's scarfers, but they really struggle getting in because of thunder wave. Lastly, there's normal resists or immunes, but they all still need to not get flinch chained, and like torb, some of them can be surprised if deerling slots bullet seed over zhb and suddenly hits them way harder than expected. Like I said, there are answers, and it isnt obviously ultra turbo broken as some are saying, but I still would like to see it banned, and we can look at it again once snover returns.
slugma balls with a badminton racket
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thankfully did less damage than initially thought, screens never really took off as a playstyle in these 3 months
this was the most expected one, after the sun meta inflated this guy's usage so much, and it already hovered around the cutoff in normal months. Once again, good tools, fun potential, not nearly a metagame staple
i talked shit about this mon every time it came up as a terrible wannabe physical wall and now it goes crying in ou, where im sure the fairy type + intimidate is much more useful, to deal with demon mienfoo.
after dominating ladder when sun took over, it comes back to its rightful place. Maybe there's room for heat rock-less sun teams here?
its always been mid here, but tbf it dropped when Magby, Elekid and A-shrew were legal, so the potential to make everyone cry with tidy up and tail slap is definitely there, we'll keep an eye on this one