Trick Room in Ubers

Back in Gen IV, TR was a decent option to consider. If pulled effectively, it could catch someone off guard. Moreover, given that many Uber pokes have high stats on both ends, the ability to save EVs on Spe open possibilities to go mix.

The question is, is it still viable in Gen V? We now have Ferrothorn who may outspeed your typical base 90 pokes. He also has Protect to stall some turns out. On top of that, priority is everywhere especially from that monster Arceus Normal that seems to be on everyone's team nowadays. Ironically, Arceus can learn TR.

Besides Trickroom, I remember Hugendugen using TR teams as well (he can correct me on this one) back in the day. Feel free to comment and post sets if you feel like to.

Here is a list of commonly seen pokes in Ubers that can use the move (bold those who seem like the better options):

- Dialga, Palkia, Deoxys formes (lol), Mewtwo, Arceus formes, Jirachi, Celebi, Espeon, Xatu.

Basically, a TR poke should be bulky enough to survive a hit and use TR. Both Jirachi and Celebi have ok bulk and access to U-Turn and some form of self-healing. Dialga not only is one tough mofo, it can very well act as a wallbreaker under TR with the right moves.

Honorable mention to pokes from lesser tiers that *could* also work as TR set uppers:
- Gallade: high SpDef, access to Taunt, Hypnosis and Memento. Has decent Atk stat and offensive movepool as well.
- Banette: Suicide lead is ok, is just that it has lost the surprise factor. It has access to Taunt, Magic Coat (preventing Taunt from faster leads) and status moves like T-Wave or WoW. Attack stat not so terrible either.
- Mew: Kinda fast but has a massive movepool. Has some bulk and could potentially set up TR more than once. Or could just explode (Azelf would do that better though).
 

ElectivireRocks

Banned deucer.
In early BW I thought Trick Room to be unviable because of Ferrothorn alone.
However, now that Genesect is released (which shares a 4x fire weakness with Ferrothorn, therefore it's unlikely to see both of them in the same team) Trick Room is an excellent way to keep it at bay, especially its damn Choice Scarf set.

You definitely need a way to deal with Ferrothorn, though. You obviously don't want to use Trick Room if you're running a rain team, else Ferrothorn can come in way too easily and lay entry hazards, which are very harmful when you need to use Trick Room each 5 turns.
Groudon can survive a Power Whip from Ferrothorn, is immune to Thunder Wave and scares it off with a sun-boosted Fire Punch, so Trick Room is best off used in sun teams.

As crazy as it sounds, Whimsicott is an excellent choice for a Trick Room user in ubers because of Prankster+Taunt/Encore, which allows you to stop Ferrothorn cold. It doesn't even take that much damage from Gyro Ball if you run min speed and max HP/defense.

Magnezone is a good TR abuser as it can get rid of things such as Kyogre, Ferrothorn, Genesect and Forretress under Trick Room.
 
hey there's cresselia and smeargle (lol) too
Arceus formes are too fast for tr imo, as are all deoxys formes except defense
dialga is the best trick roomer imo, with great defensive typing and coverage. also most ubers tend to get outsped by dialga under tr, bar ttar and support and niche mons
 
Trick Room is a great player and I personally believe he is still viable. He also makes some good forum posts.
 

Bryce

Lun
Trick Room is a great player and I personally believe he is still viable. He also makes some good forum posts.
trickroom* :p

Victini should get a mention here.I saw somebody using it on the PO ladder and it seems to work well in Ubers.With Sun boosted V-creates ,it not only hits extremely hard but also can utilize the speed drops to outspeed slower pokes under TR.Victini also has no problems taking care of Ferro and has Bolt Strike to scare away Kyogre,and if you predict the switch you can even use Sunny Day that turn and regain V-create's amazing power.
 
Trick Room is a great player and I personally believe he is still viable. He also makes some good forum posts.
Trickroom actually didn't choose that name. His friend suggested it when he signed him up and TR was like "whatevs". He actually thinks Trick Room is a bad strategy and wants to change his name. (or at least his was kinda aimlessly toying with the idea) It's true he is a good battler and makes good forum posts. He could easily troll the ladder with a play style as bad and gimmicky as Trick Room.
 
Trick Room is bad because defensive teams will destroy it. Yeah you have 4 turns but then some of them have Protect like those annoying Ferrothorn and Blissey. You will find it hard to break Lugia too or something like Ho-Oh + Groudon + Giratina. Kyogre can't KO them all at once, and unless you go with Calm Mind Life Orb set.

Worse thing is Dragon Tail goes before Trick Room so those Giratina-O will prevent you from setting up. Palkia and Dialga are the best user or Trick Room for me last time. In DPP I don't think people use Trick Room much lol, just a few users and The_Chaser :D

Bronzong is a good user because it can setup Stealth Rock and Explode next turn. Dual Screens if you want, best to use screens first, setup rocks then blow up if you have the chance.

Deoxys forms suck at using TR, and I never seen any Jirachi or Celebi use Trick Room because they have cannot sacrifice for the team like Cresselia or hit hard. Using Trick Room Arceus is just a waste, Arceus has better things to do.

Porygon2 sucks, Reuniclus is bad as well. They say Solosis works but I never liked it. I don't think Gallade works lol, that high Special Defense is still bad with such bad typing. Trick Room is just unreliable although you can use Kyurem-B and Zekrom to take advantage of it by spamming Outrage, things like Ferrothorn now outruns you lol and blobs, including Wobbuffet. Lunar Dance Cresselia is a decent option because after Trick Room, Mewtwo can smash you up. Calm Mind Arceus will just setup on you and sweep, because most TR mons can't beat a boosted Arceus. ExtremeSpeed still goes first and you die, Giratina-O can't OHKO Arceus, and you need LO Dialga to smash Arceus with Draco Meteor.

Agree with what Donkey said, Trick Room still viable but sucks most of the time because of how unreliable it is.
 
I've been experimenting with it recently. I'd say that it's a viable thing still. I haven't been using a team that's 100% reliant on Trick Room though. I've just been using Cress and Banded Zekrom for my Trick Room core. I try to wear them down with the rest of my team and clean up with Bolt Strike/Outrage because they hit ridiculously hard. I beat Shrang when he was using his horse team with it a few days ago (It was because Kingdra couldn't 2 hit Cress with Surf).

It's biggest problem is that it's too unreliable. It can be hard to set up because Another problem is that Extremespeed still goes first under Trick Room (since everything is reversed it should always go last >:( )so Extremekiller can cause you to have a bad time. Ferrothorn is quite annoying too because if he's not dead he can just Protect and waste your Trick Room.

I've tried pretty much every user of Trick Room and I think that Cresselia is the best one. She seems to be able to set it up more easily than everyone else. I tried Bronzong, Dialga, and Jirachi and I was only usually able to use Trick Room once with each of them. With Cress I can usually do it twice because she dies. Lunar Dance is also incredibly useful.

So yeah, I think it's still viable and if you're creative with Trick Room it can pay off. It does also tend to catch people by surprise.
 
Hey, it's great that this thread popped up right now because I have actually been experimenting with this strategy for a bit. I personally like using an offensive core of groudon+ ho-oh since both can demolish ferrothorn (as someone earlier pointed out is a huge threat) and ho-oh appreciates the sun boost to sacred fire. Throw in a xatu to set up trick room and keep away hazards and you've got the beginnings of a team.

I think bronzong and jirachi are two of the best trick room setters out there because they have the valuable ability to switch in on monsters like kyurem-w (assuming it uses a STAB move). Earlier, I tried to use heatran for this purpose, using it as sort of a cross between a sweeper and a special tank, but it was a complete failure lol, getting eaten alive by kyogre and being generally weaker than most sweepers. Cresselia is also a pretty good setter with its massive bulk and access to a sun-boosted moonlight and lunar dance to further support itself and its team.

The main issue with trick room is that teams based on it tend to fall apart to fast once it wears off. They have such low speed that it's pretty easy for something like specs dialga or kyogre to sweep them. Kyogre in general is another issue, as the majority of its counters are fast and don't work in trick room. For this reason, I think most trick room teams should dedicate a teamslot to a scarfer (particularly palkia) that functions outside of trick room. Also, teams often have a hard time finding the right combination of defensive synergy and trick room setters. The users of trick room tend to type stack with one another, creating large exploitable weaknesses, meaning that the sweepers sometimes have to be relied on to tank hits and check offensive threats. Trick room users also have a hard time using a -7 priority move before being phazed, taunted, or obliterated by super effectives and/or obscenely powerful moves.

Another large weakness is that rain-based teams struggle with stall (ahem ferrothorn) and sun-based or multiweather teams struggle to take on offensive teams since without rain their steels will be killed quickly by fire moves. This is pretty hard to work around, but not impossible.

All in all, trick room is fun to play around with, but isn't really that reliable against well-built teams.
 
I've used Trick Room in Ubers to great success. The common base 90 speed in the tier allows Kyogre to take advantage of it firing off specs Water Spouts with a -speed nature. Bronzong is a great set up pokemon, it can set up Rocks, Trick Room and deal major damage to the majority of the tier with Gyro Ball. Rayquaza is another good user thanks to its access to V-Create. Ubers trick room is very good and should be used more
 
The best trick roomer in Ubers is Dialga. The old 4th gen set works fine, with outrage being replaced with stone edge or thunder to deal with hooh. This set poses a royal pain in the ass for every offensive team in today's metagame.(this is not an overstatement)
 

mkizzy

formerly kenny
Deoxys-D can always run Trick Room, and it's slow itself so it can abuse it too, although spikes may prove to be more important. You could also use Specs Kyogre, the only thing under/over speeding it is Blaziken (with no boosts) and Excadrill (outside sand), neither of which are huge threats to Kyogre, especially if you aren't investing in Speed since it is Trick Room. Groudon is also a very slow (in Ubers standards) and could abuse a boosting move such as Swords Dance (doesn't need Rock Polish due to the speed boost) and be a speed demon under Trick Room. The only flaw with Trick Room is the fact that it only lasts 5 turns, which sometimes isn't enough to get a strong sweep going if you're opponent is prepared.
 
The best Offensive Trick room users core, IMO:
Dialga
-TR
-Draco Meteor
-Outrage
-Fire Blast

Palkia
-TR
-Thunder
-Spacial Rend
-Fire blast

Victini
-TR
-V-create
-Bolt Strike
-Brick break

This core can handle Kyogre and Mewtwo, two of the biggest threat in Uber. You still need something to take on Ekiller and other threats. Groudon should be added since you are using Victini (and it is also why I have fire blast on both Palkia and Dialga) and can handle Ekiller to an extent. The rest of the team is up to the user
 
Just a note, Trick Room teams usually need a cleric so Cresselia makes sense, can wall, set up TR and then Lunar Dance to a Dialga to start again :)
 

Theorymon

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Wow, I really should have posted in this thread a while ago considering how much fun I've had with Trick Room teams :P.

In case you couldn't tell, I disagree with user trick room (how ironic) about Trick Room's viability in Ubers. Now, it certainly IS a niche and risky strategy that isn't very fond of defensive teams, but it can be a really nasty surprise vs some offensive teams if you know what you're doing! I think part of this is because Ubers has a really great offensive Trick Roomers in Dialga. Dialga is honestly such a god tier Trick Roomer that in a few cases, I've actually gotten away with using it on teams that WEREN'T entirely based on Trick Room!

When I used Trick Room though, I tended to avoid the more supportish mons like Cresselia and Deoxys-D. While they can be helpful, I felt like more than often, they would actually kill my team's momentum. The only hazard layers I ever particuarly felt comfortable with using on Trick Room were bulky offensive Landorus, Groudon, Excadrill, Offensive Ferrothorn, and Life Orb Bronzong (yeah that may seem silly, but you'd be surprised how powerful Life Orb Gyro Ball is, plus it also learned Trick Room itself).

As for Trick Roomers themselves, I only used them on Pokémon that could threaten to dish out some serious damage. The other big example besides Dialga was actually Palkia. Palkia may seem a bit fast for the job, but the Water Spout resistance is very helpful, and you'd be surprised at Palkia's bulk with max HP! And of course, if you use it on the rain, Quiet Surfs (or Hydro Pumps if you wanna get risky) are pretty much as strong as Kyogres, but you can also still do a nice amount of damage to Ferrothorn switch-ins with Fire Blast. The big problem with Palkia however, is that you can't have it almost all like you can with Dialga, you have to make some seriously annoying choices. For example, Palkia doesn't have as many godly resists as Dialga, so setting it up can get rather tough if you plan on going mixed for any reason (doing this allows you to 2HKO Arceus through Calm Minds in the rain, which is pretty cool). And of course, that Dragon weakness sucks. If you want to, you CAN use Haban Berry, which has saved me in several emergencies vs opposing Dragons when I used max HP Palkia. Sadly though, this results in a rather noticable power downgrade with your water moves :(.

I've also used Solosis. That thing is... a pretty weird little Pokémon. Vs defensive teams, Solosis has a LOT of trouble. A bunch of mons with recovery plus ghosts give it a really hard time vs these kinds of teams. HOWEVER, vs offensive teams, this thing has saved my life a stupid amount of times. Solosis is pretty much a death sentence to anything with a Life Orb, and it's not hard to pair this thing with Normal Arceus or Rayquaza to screw with a couple more mons. It's not a Pokémon I'd reccomend for the light hearted, since it's easy to screw up with it... but boy, it sure can have a hell of a pay off! Speaking of priority, I found myself sticking Rayquaza and Arceus on most of the Trick Room teams I used this gen. Sometimes, they really helped me out of some tough spots where I screwed up my momentum vs offensive teams! Also, Rayquaza in particular can at least be SOMEWHAT of a help vs defensive teams without Lugia. Of course, you have to watch out for the low speed outside of Trick Room, getting outsped by Dialga is pretty annoying!

As far as weather in Trick Room is concerned, I actually wasn't super fond of Sun based Trick Room. It's certainly not bad, as Victini, Reshiram, and Ho-Oh can be pretty scary under Trickroom (ESPECIALLY if you find a way to get SR off the field for Ho-Oh). Part of it is probably because when I used this in dreamworld, I really loved using Chandelure on these kind of teams, and part of it is also because I am not really fond of making other Pokémon on my Trick Room team REALLY rely on weather, since Trick Room itself is risky enough on its own. I don't think its bad though.

What I really preferred weather wise was Rain. Yes, I know this meant that Ferrothorn was a total bitch you had to play around... but good lord, Specs Kyogre is some seriously scary stuff under Trick Room o_O. Also, it helps that the only other rain mons I used on Trick Room (Palkia and Excadrill sorta) weren't totally screwed when the sun came up. Also, as freaking convoluted as it sounds, I've also used multiweather Trick Room... I actually liked it better than sun tbh. It was pretty much an excuse to use Groudon on the same team as Specsogre though, and I have to admit, juggling two weathers AND Trick Room can get overwhelming if you aren't careful. I've also done a similar thing with Tyranitar + Kyogre for when I got annoyed at Latias.

A word of warning though, user trick room is right about defensive teams being a problem. NOW, I don't think they are impossible to beat, because the base 90 terrors can still deal quite a lot of damage with prediction. However, because of Trick Room's limited time, opening up sweeps is a lot harder vs defensive teams than it is against offensive teams. There are also some other annoying quirks, like having your Dialga always running away from Groudon after TR is up, or Protect being rather nasty. CM Arceus can also get annoying, even though Trick Room CAN have the team members to hurt it badly, its still powerful enough to hurt you back pretty hard after a Calm Mind. And of course, there is the other elephant in the room... Trick Room's timing based mechanics MUST be planned around carefully. While Trick Room can really screw with some offensive teams, you have to plan more ahead than most offensive teams, because Trick Room ending at a bad time CAN be fatal if you lose your back up plans.

I could go more into detail about other stuff about Trick Room things if you guys want, but I think it's best to conclude this post before it becomes even more of a wall of text. While I do agree that Trick Room is a fairly niche and risky strategy, mainly due to it's reliance on "timed" momentum and issues with defensive teams, I certainly wouldn't say that it "sucks" either. A lot of Ubers really love Trick Room's effects, and the extra bulk on what is basically an unorthodox hyper offensive team can be nice! So while Trick Room isn't what I'd call a top tier strategy in Ubers, it's certainly the kind of strategy that can cause some really big upsets in my experience!
 
Actually it ultimately depends on predictability (and actually I go with a Suicide Lead Reuniclus with a Focus Sash because it isn't effected by Status Effects or Entry Hazards)
If you ahead of time know your opponent is going with a lot of offensive speedy Pokémon (like I did in the Spring 2013, though I had to learn from experience) without a priority move or Protect like Kyruem-W, Reshiram, Lati@s, Mewtwo, Darkrai, Kyogre, Genesect, Excadrill, Dialga, Shaymin, etc. You can actually attempt to use a suicide lead Reuniclus to use Trick Room 1 turn, faint the next turn from your foe's attack, and then unleash 1 Slower Uber Pokémon to KO stronger Pokemon for 3 turns on your opponent's team. I have done so with Tyranitar and Metagross, and managed to KO threats like Genesect and Kyruem W in the process, so it does work, but it requires strategic planning, because it is really that hard to plan out and does NOT always work.
 
Actually it ultimately depends on predictability (and actually I go with a Suicide Lead Reuniclus with a Focus Sash because it isn't effected by Status Effects or Entry Hazards)
If you ahead of time know your opponent is going with a lot of offensive speedy Pokémon (like I did in the Spring 2013, though I had to learn from experience) without a priority move or Protect like Kyruem-W, Reshiram, Lati@s, Mewtwo, Darkrai, Kyogre, Genesect, Excadrill, Dialga, Shaymin, etc. You can actually attempt to use a suicide lead Reuniclus to use Trick Room 1 turn, faint the next turn from your foe's attack, and then unleash 1 Slower Uber Pokémon to KO stronger Pokemon for 3 turns on your opponent's team. I have done so with Tyranitar and Metagross, and managed to KO threats like Genesect and Kyruem W in the process, so it does work, but it requires strategic planning, because it is really that hard to plan out and does NOT always work.
why not cresselia with lunar dance
 
why not cresselia with lunar dance

Because if Cresselia gets hit with Thunder Wave, Toxic, or is Whirlwinded away right at the start (Skarmory) or Flinches, even if the Focus Sash saves you, you're screwed.
With Magic Guard you're safe from all stat effects, weather, and entry hazards(except Sleep unfortunately)
I haven't tried using Duosion yet as a Suicide lead, and too bad it can't learn Destiny Bond or Memento or something (maybe next generation)
 

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