Online Competition Ultra Final (Last PGL competition - get another Shiny Koko)

How often are you seeing Xerneas pop up?
I have a proven hard counter to it that wins the game when I switch it in, but I’m not sure how often it will be needed because it doesn’t achieve that much else...
It's definitely there. But since Arceus Fairy is one of the better Mega Rayquaza checks, it may not be used as much as it normally would.

Edit: Although I think it's nasty when paired with Ultra Necrozma.
 
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marilli

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With the event starting tonight, here is some preliminary "vr"

Tier 0: Not having these Pokemon is a big disadvantage on team preview.

:rayquaza-mega: Mega Rayquaza
:arceus: Arceus
Tier 1: Normal, Ground, Fairy
Tier 2: Dark, Steel
Tier 3: Water, Ghost
Fringe Viable: Grass, Poison, Rock, Flying, etc.
While each of the different Arceus formes could be tiered individually in the below tiers, having an Arceus forces the opponent to cover all options on preview, while not having one makes your gameplan a lot more visible.

Tier 1: Some of the best goodstuffs options available, with versatility. Relevant and useful in most matches.

:necrozma-dusk-mane: Dusk-Mane Necrozma / Ultra Necrozma
:groudon-primal: Primal Groudon
:yveltal: Yveltal

Tier 2: More situational goodstuffs. This drawback forces them to be irrelevant in some matches.

:xerneas: Xerneas
:kyogre-primal: Primal Kyogre
:necrozma-dawn-wings: Dawn Wings Necrozma / Ultra Necrozma
:gengar-mega: Mega Gengar

Tier 3: Situational Role-players. These are so dependent on the team it's very difficult to split hairs when things are already very situational.

:deoxys-attack: Deoxys-A
:deoxys-speed: Deoxys-S
:marshadow: Marshadow
:lunala: Lunala
:salamence-mega: Mega Salamence
:mimikyu: Mimikyu
:mewtwo-mega-y: Mega Mewtwo Y
:glalie: Glalie
... and more.

Dedicated Utility:

Smeargle
Shuckle
Klefki
Cloyster
Wobbuffet

Defensive Utility:
Celesteela
Magearna
Zygarde
Lugia

Offensive Utility:
Diancie-Mega
Ho-Oh
Giratina-O
Dialga
etc.


There's definitely a lot of niche stuff available, so check them out and post your own niche Pokemon you thought of! I think the key to doing well here is having some kind of anti-meta threat that is off the radar, then combining that with Arceus and Mega Rayquaza and other goodstuffs.

This VR is mainly for people who want to look at the biggest threats in the metagame, these are it. Pick your niche mons so you have good counterplay for these listed Pokemon above. Many goodstuffs teams will be exclusively built with Pokemon from Tier 0/1/2, and majority of teams will only deviate by 1 Pokemon.
 
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I would argue Ho-Oh is also an offensive utility.

I’ve seen some Scarf Kyogre and Mega Metagross being used
 

cant say

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This starts in just less than 9 hours from this post! (8pm EDT / 10am AEST / 1am BST)

For those who are having trouble getting their hands on Pokemon like Arceus and Marshadow, I will be giving away Pokemon at the start of my stream tomorrow to help you all play in the final online competition on the 3DS! So come hang out on my Twitch channel sometime between 7pm-8pm EDT for that, or anytime after to catch me playing in it (or still building a team that I'm happy with lol)
 
Came back from the dead for this last competition, unfortunately I didn't get to use a lot of my personal favorites due to needing to run some of the legendary heavy hitters to counter those using the same but I was able to use a few non legendary favorites and did decent.

Day 1) 12-3

The amount of focus sash has me a wee bit triggered but running SR's has soften the focus sash susery, for now. Anyone else run into a full Ditto squad yet? I've run into that and a full Blaziken team running sub and double team.
 
ultrafinal1700.png


It took 25 games to get 1700. Of those 25 games, Bibarel got brought 14 times (and lost twice). The highest-rated opponent beaten so far, early on day 2, was rated 1762, judging by which 1800 is not going to guarantee a top placing this time around. Interesting teams I've seen so far include two different 6x Greninja squads, Solagaleo + 5x Ditto, and that 6x Unown player a few others I've seen have hit also, and whose team spells out POKEMN in the team select screen, not to mention that sweet as heck shiny Unown-N.
 
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I just used three Mimikyus and a Marshadow ... all with focus sash and standard move set. This got me 10 Wins and 5 Loses.
On day 2 again 10:5 ... Mimikyu can do a lot, but I didn't know that there is so much stuff that just ignores Disguise (Moongeist Beam, Sunsteel Strike, Photon Geyser, Turboblaze, Teravolt, ...).
 

Eisenherz

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I wasn't planning on doing more than 3 throwaway battles for the shiny Koko, but I changed my mind last minute and quickly put together a team. Unfortunately didn't spend any time testing so I wasn't expecting much from it, but it did a lot better than I thought!

I stopped at 17xx (edit: W-L record is 20-5) now and won't have time to play more games tomorrow, so I might as well share right now:

Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 11.00.30 PM.png


I wanted to use Magearna since I also brought it to the very first Gen 7 competition, felt it was an occasion to wrap things nicely. It made for an excellent Yveltal check, which my team was pretty weak to otherwise, but the fact it was walled by PDon made me feel like that slot could have been better used by something else.
Otherwise, I was really satisfied with the synergy between my other 5. If I had some time to test I think the Normal Arceus set + EVs could have been made much better, I definitely should have had Recover on it, and better EVs could surely have gone a long way.

The MVP was by far AV M-Rayquaza, it kept tanking stuff it had no business surviving (seriously, wth: 252 SpA Kyogre-Primal Ice Beam vs. -2 68 HP / 108 SpD Assault Vest Rayquaza-Mega in Strong Winds: 158-186 (83.5 - 98.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO). I think Earth Power in particular took a lot of people by surprise and put in a ton of work.

A lot of people fell into TR Necrozma's trap too, definitely the second most valuable member of the team. I wish I had taken the time to optimize its EVs for the metagame since a few 50/50 rolls could have been avoided, but it had its fair share of full sweeps. At least, it was guaranteed to live a PDon PBlades, and +2 EQ always KOd back unless they had a lot of physical bulk (but I didn't meet a single PDon with enough Defense EVs for that, I'm pretty sure the bulky ones all invest in SpD instead).
The rest is very straightforward.

I ended up having a lot of fun with the competition, way more than I expected (I'm not a huge fan of the format really), so I'm happy with this result regardless of the team's shortcomings.

Good luck to everyone still competing!
 
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Well, that's all my battles done. I think I ended between 1680 and 1700.

The final team:

Screen Shot 2019-10-06 at 10.10.30 AM.png


I pretty much threw this team together at the last minute from things I already had (only taking the time to convert an Arceus-Dark to Water). I knew I wanted to use at least two Marshadow since I don't have high hopes for using it again in SwSh :psysad: . Instead of life orb Marshadow I decided to try choice band for the extra power and then z-move for the other as a wall-breaker. Yveltal was to help cover other Marshadow and ghosts + psychics, and Arceus-Water was to help deal with the weather trio, figuring it should be able to take their attacks and at least poison them to whittle them down. I opted for Mega-Diancie to help with dragon matchups and for keeping hazards off my side, and at the last minute I decided to run trick room Diancie + Dusk Mane, and that proved to be a great combination. Both could typically take a hit and get trick room up and do significant damage back (usually not mega-ing Diancie until after TR was up), often picking up KOs or at least taking another hit to get a 2HKO or at least chip for the next one to come in. Often these two were enough to win on their own, but I almost always had Marshadow in the back to come in when trick room wore off to clean up (or hope for shadow sneak KO if it hadn't). I almost always went with TR Diancie + DM with Marshadow in the back.

Overall, pretty happy with my results 31W, 14L; this is probably the best I've done in one of these competitions. There were several meme teams in there, but at least a couple of them were not pushovers. I ran into a 6x Sturdy+Cutsap+Endeavor+Ice shard Donphan team that nearly beat me; fortunately that was one of the matches I brought both Marshadow + Yveltal, so my priority edged it out.

I made it over 1700 twice, but immediately lost a match to lower ranked opponents both times after :P

The 2nd time was the penultimate match: EEDW-WWWW-WWXB-9AZL

I think I could have won one that one if either Dusk Mane hadn't gotten burned or if I had a little bit more time to calculate the last matchup and noticed that I could probably have not mega'd and used moonblast to take out Arceus-Fairy instead of banking on surviving an Earth power and hitting with Diamond storm. The Arceus turned out to have Hydro Cannon, which it looks like regular Diancie could have survived and then hit twice with moonblast to seal the game. :(

My final battle, however, ended exactly as I would have hoped: SBJW-WWWW-WWXB-9AZV

I'll spoil it since who's actually gonna plug in the battle code ;)? As usual DM + Diancie were a strong start, and the endgame came down to Mega Diancie on a sliver of health + Marshadow in the back against Xerneas, with trick room having just run out. I got the prediction right that the opponent would Geomancy, so I set trick room back up and managed to get a Diamond storm hit off next turn before Diancie went down, which was more than enough chip for Marshadow to come in and outspeed +2 Xern in trick room and seal the game up with Soul-Stealing-Seven-Star-Strike. I couldn't have asked for a better ending to the final match of the final USUM competition. :)
 
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Ultra true
I ultra agree, wholeheartedly.
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Anyways as for my results for this final competition..

Day 1: 12-3

Day 2: 10-5

Day 3: 9-6

Final Record: 31-14

20191006_141829.jpg

I thoroughly got my cheeks clapped on the last day of the competition for running a rather predictable but hyper offensive team, the overwhelming majority of my losses coming to Japanese players yet again, surprise. I had a lot of sus going against me, like numerous P-Blades misses that would have been definite ohko's or ice beam freezing Rayquaza before I could pick off my opponents Pokemon with Extreme speed, it was extremely frustrating but at the same time, I low-key feel it was the will of Arceus that dictated said sus because if I'm being honest, I had a hell of a lot of matches with people who clearly had no idea what they were doing. Pokemon without items or under evolved, Arceus must have wanted to balance out my luck I guess while also SD and Extreme speeding me to death. Overall I had fun, however if I had to switch out any Pokemon from my team it would be that electric punching wolverine, even with SR up and running life orb, it honestly didn't hit as hard as I expected it to besides from anything that was weak to it's signature stab move, rather disappointed with that mystical.
 
Ended around 1775-1780 pts, lost the w/l count
https://pokepast.es/71e8407e2a49cbec
The strat was pretty straightforward, setup rocks + kill/heavily damage a foe with suicide lead Deoxys-A (I think I should've played him Modest because his speed was overkill & his firepower wasn't that great, but he still did good), then launch Trick Room Necrozma-DM which was pretty much unstoppable once boosted. Most people fell for the Weakness Policy trap.
Eruption spam P-Groudon could be in the back in case Necrozma died to priority or something. I decided to play him fully special with Earth Power so he could OHKO opposing Groudons. Dragon Pulse was mandatory to hit Rayquaza.
Arceus-Fairy helped to deal with stuff like Marshadow, Yveltal or more defensive mons (and beats Rayquaza), although a lot of the time bringing him was a mistake as he did his job well but I could get swept afterwards, while bringing something more offensive instead could've secured the victory.
The other 2 aren't anything special, I brought M-Gengar mainly because I was scared of weird shenanigans involving Smeargle or stalls, but I ended up never encountering that.

I got caught offguard by the amount of people that played sash Ray, Marshadow + Ray both with sash were an annoying duo to defeat. Mimikyu was also kinda scary (honestly glad that I didn't face that x5 Mimikyu team lol)
Overall not very happy with the result, I think the team, while pretty risky to play, was good enough to break the 1800+ pts but I didn't play as well as I wished especially on team preview & got haxxed a few times the first day (also sometimes faced the same people twice, breaking the surprise factor which I heavily relied on)
I had fun though so it was a nice conclusion to the game! Goodbye Ultra Sun&Moon, I had a great time!
 
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I had to mostly play during day 3, but I fit in 30 something games before I decided to call it at 1712. I was thrown into the lions den since I was mainly fighting legit Japanese players and got 2 freebies at most. I did beat an 1800s Japanese player in my final match; his team of Mega Rayquaza, Primal Groudon, Marshadow, Yveltal, and two Arceus forms was probably one of the best teams I saw consistent variations of. I was content with my performance , although I had to adapt my playstyle as I played.

I'll edit this post later with my team since the mobile global link website won't let me log in. If I could have made any changes, I would have added a lead Deoxys and made a few modifications but I had some limited resources (my only Deoxys is a bold nature).
 

Attachments

Team ONe.png


Team Two.png


Team two was meant to not really be serious lol. Surprisingly after day two it was 21-9, it did go back down to earth on day 3 xD.

WGBG-WWWW-WWXB-9J9T : Groudon's bulk investment proves useful
GV6G-WWWW-WWXB-9JB8 : Perfect prediction wins the game easily lol
32EW-WWWW-WWXB-9JJ9 : The amount of luck in this battle lmao
GAZG-WWWW-WWXB-9JL3 : Fun battle vs Moody Glalie
4CJG-WWWW-WWXB-9JPS : BP gets clobbered lmao

E69W-WWWW-WWXB-9K73 : Swords Dance wins me the battle
Boosting moves on Team one ended up being the deciding factor in all of my wins. I only used them at the right moments, which helped. 31-14 overall
 

Theorymon

Have a wonderful day, wahoo!
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Here's the team I used for Ultra Final. Despite it being thrown together at the last minute... I ended up getting a pretty high score of 1891! I think this means I'll probably make the top 10!

Screen Shot 2019-10-06 at 9.01.12 PM.png


Here's a Pokepaste for the exact EVs and stuff: https://pokepast.es/2b2cbae095077ae0

So since this team was rushed, I sorta just slapped a bunch of mons that seemed good together. Yveltal ended up being what made the team really work, this thing was a monster and absoloutly the best preforming Pokemon on the team! Because it was so pumped up on bulk, it'd survive a ton of stupid stuff, but still dish out plenty of damage thanks to Dark Aura. Most bulky Yveltals I saw used Rocky Helmet, but Im glad I went with a super sitrus berry here, because it let Yveltal pull off a lot of cool stunts such as baiting Rayquazas into using Extreme Speed to restore my health!

The Groudon's EVs may seem strange... and that's because I messed them up! It was supposed to have 70 HP and 188 Speed, but I forgot to give it vitamins while EV training, and accidently gave it a brain dead 252 252 spread! Turns out, this worked out though, because the speed won me a LOT of games. It seems like people really used slow ass Primals this time, and this team really preyed on that.

The 3rd best here was probably Fairy Arceus, that thing blasted a TON of Rayquaza! The EVs let it OHKO offensive Mega Rayquaza after SR. Calm Mind + Toxic may seem strange, but it was done to win mirror matches vs opposing CM Arceus, and because I prefered to Toxic stall Primal Groudon switch ins so I could get an extra Calm Mind. Seemed to work pretty well!

Dusk Mane Necrozma exceeded my expectations too, despite me using it less. It was a great role condenser and was something I almost always picked when I saw Xerneas, while Ultra Necrozma's speed proved to be pretty handy. Pretty simple mon, but the role compression was very useful.

Mega Rayquaza believe it or not, was not a mon I picked often. Don't get me wrong, it was good and did plenty of damage, but the teams I faced on the higher end seemed pretty prepared for it. In retrospect, I think I should have used a bulkier Mega Rayquaza set to surprise those kinds of teams.

Normal Arceus was probably my biggest mistake, I almost never used it (though it certainly wasn't bad or anything when I did). This format was bulky offense to the maximum on the higher ladder, and this Arceus didn't do too hot against those kinds of teams. Especially since I went with Chople Berry because of Marshadow. That was a mistake, because this team was literaly preying on Marshadow with my other mons (I basically won any time people picked it lol). I probably either should have used Normalium Z like Jibaku thought about for his team as well, or I should have just used a different Arceus.

All in All though, this is the best I've done in a tournament in a LOOOONG time! Which feels especually surprising since this team basically came together last Saturday, and I finished the EV training about 7 hours before the competition even ended rofl. Special thanks to the Battle Spot discord with people like marilli and greilmercenary9 and cant say helping get this team together and figuring out sets so soon!

I'll probably be posting an RMT / Team Report once the results come out too. This is the last time the whole "gang" will be here due to dexit, and it goes back to my Uber roots, so I feel like I gotta do a tribute! (Also because I did pretty damn good this time lol).
 
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Jibaku

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Ultra Final started off as a passing thought for me, but I realized that I wanted to play in it after noticing that my Online Competition record for Gen 7 was practically nonexistent (outside of an International Challenge in Sun/Moon). That and I got to use all my favorite mons. Most importantly though, my last few VGC events haven’t gone well so I really wanted to score something big Pokemon-wise to help me feel a bit better about myself. Later I realized that it may be the last time I get to play with the whole gang for many years, and I was really glad that I entered.

This team got 34 Wins and 7 losses with a rating of 1854, hopefully putting me within the Top 5. While I could have pushed myself more with my remaining 4 matches, ladder anxiety unfortunately got the best of me and I wasn’t able to shake it off before the event ended. Nevertheless, I am satisfied with my score.

https://puu.sh/EqaCz/8cb2bcda3b.png


https://pokepast.es/c1a87df7368b255e

I came in this tournament with a relatively blank state. I did not read up on the potential metagame trends and I had no AG experience. What I did have experience in, however, is playing a lot of Battle Spot Free in my spare time using a similar squad (Life Orb Ray, Scarf Xerneas, Marshadow over some of these mons), so this team was very largely based off that. There are definitely a number of things I would fix if I were to re-enter the tour, but for the most part the team’s backbone is solid.

***

:arceus:

アルセウス (Arceus-Fairy) @ Pixie Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 196 HP / 248 Def / 64 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Judgment
- Toxic
- Will-O-Wisp
- Recover

MVP. Or at least, I was too reliant on it. Arceus-Fairy got brought the most, dealing with Yveltal, Ray, other support Arceus, Marshadow, and crippling Necrozma-DMs. I’m not sure if Bold or Timid would have been best here, but Bold’s extra defense was incredibly clutch for taking boosted Dragon Ascents and Photon Geysers. The EVs allow it to survive +1 Life Orb Jolly Rayquaza Dragon Ascent / +2 Ray DA, both after SR. The speed enables it to outrun Adamant Mimikyu.


:arceus:

アルセウス (Arceus) @ Life Orb
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 2 SpA
- Extreme Speed
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Shadow Claw

In contrast with the other Arceus, this one is definitely my LVP and would see the most changes. Normalium Z would have been nice to give the team a stronger wallbreaker. But it could have also just been another Arceus forme that could set up Stealth Rock more reliably than Groudon would. Or it could have been Steel Arceus to break the combination of Yveltal/Necrozma/Arceus-Fairy which was fairly rampant throughout the competition. It could've also been a Mega Gengar, which I felt was very underrated coming into this tournament.

:rayquaza-mega:

Rayquaza @ Focus Sash
Ability: Air Lock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Ascent
- Extreme Speed
- Dragon Dance
- Earthquake

Ray was very....okay. SR Arceus leads were common so Focus Sash wasn’t as helpful as I would like it to be. What should have probably been in this slot is a very bulky Berry Dragon Dance Ray instead of a fragile one. Still took over games with its insane stats but expected a bit more from the 780 BST monster.

:groudon-primal:

Groudon @ Red Orb
Ability: Drought
EVs: 252 HP / 216 SpD / 40 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 26 SpA
- Stealth Rock
- Precipice Blades
- Roar
- Fire Punch

Groudon’s mostly here to keep random jank out. Since Groudon is much harder to cheese in Singles, it could fully use its oppressive defensive typing and very high stats to keep many threats away. When I could see potential cheese coming (Moody, some Baton Pass stuff, other strats involving non-Ubers), Groudon would come in. I probably should have used it more against more standard teams due to its Fairy resistance and the fact that it’s my Stealth Rock setter, but Groudon did what it needed to nevertheless. I don’t actually know what the EVs do. The Speed was pretty much only there to Speed creep other slow Groudons lol.

:yveltal:

Yveltal @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Dark Aura
EVs: 20 Def / 236 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Oblivion Wing
- U-turn
- Foul Play

Yveltal was extremely good in this competition. Most opted to run a bulky set with Foul Play, Toxic, and Roost, often holding a Rocky Helmet. It may or may not be better than Choice Scarf, but Scarf allowed me to more reliably check Normalium Z Arceus and Stone Edge Necrozma, and kept the team safe from Psychic spam shenanigans.

This slot was initially Marshadow, and I was close to locking in Marsh for the competition due to my familiarity with it. However, I remembered that every team will likely have a bulky Arceus and/or bulky Yveltal based off my limited actual team encounters in BSS Free and I can’t see Marshadow actually doing much. Also Marshadow is not very good at revenge killing Necrozma. I am very glad to have switched over to Yveltal at the last minute.

:necrozma-dusk-mane:

Necrozma-Dusk-Mane @ Ultranecrozium Z
Ability: Prism Armor
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Photon Geyser
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Sunsteel Strike

Necrozma was brought often frequently due to its role compression as a Fairy check and as a revenge killer. While Stone Edge over Sunsteel Strike would have made it a stronger wallbreaker by blasting apart all those pesky tank Yveltals, Sunsteel ensured that the team doesn’t fall flat to Xerneas, and enabled me to combat Arceus-Fairy when threatened with a burn or a super effective coverage like Fire Blast or Earth Power. Light that Burns the Sky, however, didn’t get much use, and made me wish I had another Z move somewhere, but I did not regret running Ultranecrozium because the forme change itself had a lot of value.

***

While the team wasn’t as polished as I would like it to be, my regrets are minimal. My only regret is not starting late enough (I started on Friday night, one day earlier than when I’d normally start International Challenges) to take advantage of inflated ratings to cruise my way to the top. Regardless, I hope I was able to give the squad a good final showing before Dexit. Until next time!
 
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Here's my team for the Ultra Final. Ended up going 33-12 with a rating around 1730. I peaked around 1790 and almost made it to the 1800's but I ran into some tough match-ups and some really bad luck and ended up falling back down to 1730.

Ultra final (2).png


I usually just brought some combination of Xerneas, Yveltal, Groudon, and Necrozma and occasionally brought Arceus depending on the match-up. I barely brought Mega Rayquaza but it still did pretty well the games I did bring it, and it was nice to have for team preview.

Defensive Xerneas was easily the MVP of this team. It could take a +1 max attack adamant life orb dragon ascent from Mega Rayquaza, two dragon ascents from non-boosted Mega Rayquaza, a max attack Z-move from Ultra Necrozma, and even a max attack adamant sunsteel strike from Dusk-Mane Necrozma. With rest and sleep talk it could easily take a hit, set up geomancy, and heal off all the damage later. It definitely won we a lot of games.

Overall the team did really well, but if I had to make any changes, I would probably give Groudon stealth rocks over bulk up. Bulk up was good in certain situations but I didn't end up using it very often and stealth rocks would have helped a lot for breaking sashes and giving me a better match-up vs. Ho-oh teams.

It's crazy to think that this will be the last Global Link competition. Definitely looking forward to seeing what kind of competitions they have in the next generation though.
 
I wanted to play Ultra Final since it seemed like fun and I wanted to be involved in the last competition held by the Global Link, especially given how good USM has been to me competitively. However, I didn't really have a lot of time to prepare with a bunch of other stuff going on, so it mostly came down to me cobbling together a team on Friday night with what I could find on my cartridge.

Given that I didn't come in as the most prepared person ever, I was quite happy with peaking at 1819 before settling down with a 33-9 record and 1806 finish. While I am disappointed that a couple of hax-filled games blocked any further ascent up the rankings, I had a really fun time playing, watching cant say and 11oyd stream, and talking to Marilli and Theorymon on Discord about this.

My team was as follows:

Ultra Final Team.PNG


While the team is fairly standard I did make a couple of non-standard calls, and in retrospect I don't think they were very good. Yveltal was a great mon to have in this competition, but I confess that my set, which was essentially an anti-lead, was probably way less effective overall than just a bulky Toxic set. That said, Taunt was great to stop shenanigans, as it was the main reason I emerged victorious against someone using speed control into Spore + Smash + Sub + Power Trip Smeargle, and Darkinium Z caught a couple of opponents off guard as well. I also used a full special Ultra Necrozma from Dusk Mane, but I ended up not bringing it a ton. Physical was surely the better call for this competition if for no other reason than Sunsteel Strike to hit Fairyceus, so I probably ended up bringing Necrozma less than most other players.

Primal Groudon and Fairyceus were my two MVPs, and they combined to make a great generalist core against most teams. I was extremely happy with how the Groudon set turned out: Rocks + 3 attacks with high speed helped ensure Rocks were on the field, which was more important here than in normal BSS due to the insane bulk and high usage of Focus Sash, and Groudon's speed helped it take on other Primals in particular (though it probably worsened the matchup versus Xerneas a bit, which was one of the more dangerous threats for my team). Fairyceus was also amazing, comfortably tanking hits, setting up, and cleaning.

Mega Rayquaza was probably my third most used mon, but I found it tough to set up and DDs during this competition with all of the insanely powerful threats running around. But just LO + attacks did massive damage and won several games on its own, and Extreme Speed was a nice way to check some dangerous sweepers. For its part, while Marshadow was left on the bench for most of my early battles, I did use it more later on, and the Swagger set mostly acquitted itself well, winning several 1v1s that would otherwise have been difficult for it such as against Fairyceus.

Overall I had a lot of fun in this competition and am mostly happy with how I did as well. I'm hoping for a Top 50 placing with 1800+ but it seems like a lot more people were hitting higher benchmarks then in some of the previous competitions so we'll see what happens. Hopefully I gave these mons a good sendoff just in case I'm not able to use some of them in Sword & Shield!
 

Theorymon

Have a wonderful day, wahoo!
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The results are now out for the competition! You can find them by going under online competitions.

And guess what I saw my discord alerts right before going to bed...



OH MY GOD, I WON THE COMPETITION!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so happy right now! After winning the first Battle Spot Special (and also the XY version of the VGC 16 ladder, thats a long and weird story lol), I never figued I'd actually win one of the tournament ladders, much less the final one with all my favorite Ubers! I'm also really glad I settledl, I was damn tempted to go for 1900, but decided against it because I remembered that bad turn of luck losing to a Calm Mind crit war with Fairy Arceus lol.

Also, shout out to Jibaku for getting 7th. We got two Smogoners in the top 10, and both are old Uber players too!

I'm still working on a full team report that will also have a lot of smogon shoutouts (it's also my 10th aniversery thread). Probably won't be up until this weekend since I got yet another calc II exam to deal with. It's... gonna be a large thread to say the least!
 

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