I really enjoyed reading breakdowns from last year's OLT qualifiers on their team choices/the metagame as a whole, so I thought I'd do the same here.
I only used two teams over the course of the cycle. The first is a balance featuring band pult that I used to climb from the bottom of the ladder to around 1900:
https://pokepast.es/dcaa8a98d52c4771
This team was pretty fun for me to use, as it's not something I would typically gravitate towards for a tournament. It was especially effective near mid ladder, where it seemed like I loaded into webs 15 games in a row. Clear body band pult + boots tusk + fat mons makes this mu nearly unloseable. However, once I got high up on the ladder, the flaws of this team became pretty apparent. Losing your only water resist when you tera pult is pretty unideal, and games where tusk has trouble getting off rapid spins are incredibly uphill as well. In all honestly I wouldn't suggest using this team if you're trying to qualify, but it was good enough to at least get me in position to make a run on the last day of the cycle.
After treading water for most of Friday around 1900s, I decided to make something more offensive that would help me gain points quickly on the last day of the cycle. It ended up having a lot of success on the last day of the cycle, carrying me from 1930ish to 2109 without dropping a game. This is what I came up with:
https://pokepast.es/404d7105ec4925d5
I'm hardly the first person to use the combination of gouging fire, kingambit, and roaring moon, but I think the way the sets synergize on this team is pretty cool. First off, I opted for tera dragon outrage on gouging fire. Tera dragon is able to pick up some impressive OHKOs at +1:
+1 252+ Atk Protosynthesis Tera Dragon Gouging Fire Outrage vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Great Tusk: 404-476 (108.8 - 128.3%) -- guaranteed OHKO
+1 252+ Atk Protosynthesis Tera Dragon Gouging Fire Outrage vs. 244 HP / 252+ Def Gliscor: 316-374 (89.7 - 106.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock
I figured this would be a great set to pair with moon and gambit because of this. Another cool synergy that this team has is that gouging and gambit's ability to force chip/kos on tusk, zamazenta, and gliscor allows you to drop acrobatics on moon in favor of a utility move. Here, I decided on sub so I can block status, sub on sucker punches from opposing gambit and samurott, and set up on rocks + protect garganacl with tera ground + sub. Tera ground letting you become immune to thunderclap gives you extra security vs raging bolt as well.
The additions of lando and iron moth are pretty self explanatory, the former being a great role compression mon for offense and the latter being great speed control, a potential wincon, and a tspike absorber. For my last slot, I decided av primarina would be a good choice because of its ability to help the matchups vs sun and dragapult. The sun mu is especially important as sun was being spammed frequently throughout the cycle. primarina is also very useful for pivoting out on gking with flip turn to give free setup to your physical attackers.
This was honestly a more fun experience than I expected it would be. There was a lot of team diversity among those competing, with cool builds like hydrapple bo/balance and diancie trick room making appearances in addition to the sun, stall, webs, and general offense that I expected. It's still pretty difficult to be consistent at this metagame with so many threats to account for, and overall I still enjoyed the OLT meta of last year more, but I still wouldn't say the current meta is terrible or anything. If I had to give any advice to those trying to qualify, I would definitely recommend sticking with one team at a time rather than switching every one or two games. I find that my play is much better when I'm able to stay in the headspace of piloting one team. To avoid getting sniped, simply be selective with when you load games. On that same topic, if you lose multiple games in a row, don't spam more games to try and regain your points. More than likely, you'll just tilt further.
I'm super happy and relieved to qualify after coming so close in cycles 3 and 4 last year. I'll definitely enjoy the time between now and the start of swiss, and I look forward to watching the remaining cycles. Good luck to all trying to qualify and ggs to the others who made it this cycle.
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