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Ransei i I hear you're saying that I'm spreading misinformation but you don't want to respond, so I would like to humbly request you point out which parts of my statements are misinformation. I am reaching out in good faith and trying to point out the issues I have, and you are simply going "nah I think some undefined parts of his statement are wrong" without actually coming out and saying what you think is incorrect.
I welcome you to tell me exactly which parts are wrong, what I missed, skipped over, or misunderstood. I am actively trying to start a dialogue in good faith about my issues with this, and you are not only repeatedly refusing to engage in good faith, you are spreading malicious rumors about me somewhere I cannot defend myself. I am trying to use this public forum for its intended purpose: to let people come together and discuss things fairly and in good faith in order to come to a decision that we can agree on, and you are responding to that by refusing to engage in discussions while slandering me. Mind you, you are a tier leader, RO, and GMod, so when you say something like that, it will often be picked up and repeated without second thought. You, intentionally or not, are spreading harmful rumors about me and using a position of power to disseminate them even further. I would like to request you stop spreading these malicious rumors at the very least, and ideally actually engage with me in an earnest discussion, because I still have faith in you.
on a more serious note i do think the submissions requirement is pretty strict, getting 12 solid replays of usumph in this modern era period is pretty difficult without ladder or hpl running, let alone for a sample submission; you would have to catch pretty much every usumph roomtour for a week or beg other people for friendlies at this point, which can lead to fighting the same people over and over (reducing quality of mus and leading battles against similar teamstyles) or opponents cteaming slowing down the process. to put this into perspective the most roomtours played by a single person this october (last 10 days) is 11. generously assuming half of all roomtours are usum and you get an average of 2 games per roomtour, a team created at the start of october still wouldn't have enough replays to reach sample status even for the most dedicated ph room players, and thats assuming you have 12 quality games in the first place. load into an extremely bad quality team/player, lose a game, or fight the same team over and over again? you need more games, back into the usumph meatgrinder you go. ild estimate through this method it would take a month of dedicated grinding at least to get this amount of replays for a reasonable player.
the other option is friendlies, which can provide good games but its somewhat hard to find willing 7ph players nowadays and playing against the same few people over and over is somewhat disingenuous for proving a samples worth. definitely better than roomtours, and if you combine both methods you can probably get a team 12 good replays in a couple weeks. yay! you got your 12 good replays, "just the minimum" for a good sample. now you just have to get it approved by the council, which is a whole different beast. i wont beat the dead horse that is arguing about the councils willingness/unwillingness to accept sample teams now tho
now you may ask, why am i describing the sample submission process from the perspective of building a new team in this current era and attempting to get it to make samples? that goes on to the main point of this post, that i believe that the current sample submission form is heavily skewed towards older teams that already have the replays to back them up from the usum ladder era. obviously its only been 6 months since usum ladder got replaced and all samples are from that era, but i feel like any new team submitted doesn't have a real shot at making samples with how few opportunities to play usum there are now. in tours such as hpl, it is often much more reliable to cteam your opponents than use an "old reliable" team people may expect you to bring just due to the cteamy nature of usum. this means that otherwise solid teams are discouraged from being loaded in tours and optimized, reducing their replay count and overall polish. with most potentially sample-worthy ladder-era usum teams already being submitted and either accepted/rejected (last sample submissions closed right before oras ladder began) it seems unlikely any new team will make samples will make this submission cycle-old teams will just be grandfathered in and nothing will change. in a way, this makes the sample submissions seem performative; the council can say that they are submitting samples without actually submitting any.
ransei can get his team in tho yeah ok
THE ZENITH MODE DISCUSSION yup were doing this shit again. this horse is more dead than sturdy doublade after trying to switch in on most good mmx. first things first i do think that zenith mode is a solid anti-offense team. prankhaze zyg+scarf imp+dual priority+fat spdef wg is pretty reliable, even if you are a bit unreliable into ice move pdon and some mmx sets with no innards and zyg and Mr. 4 Common Weaknesses with no defensive ability as your physical walls. those guys are usually handled pretty well by slak and imp tho, and zyg just blanket checks a lot of random nonsense which is nice. no dedicated special photon wall is kinda annoying but imp/rkillers/aud/zyg are good enough.
edit: ninjadude brought up how the team loses to special photon guys under psysurge/cfz spam. those are a notable weakness of the team, especially considering how the team lacks a dark to stomach ltbts. those are also valid concerns, even if special photon has somewhat fallen off nowadays it still is very good into zenith and stuff like harvest mmy can screw you over. reflect zyg does help a lot with the cfz weakness, though it still cant switch in vs pure power mmx/deoa ltbts/lsf and pure power kart sunraze. those two guys are going to be a pain for any defensive team lacking innards though, that is why innards is such a valuable tool for any defensive core what i have a problem with is how it loses to most modern stall teams yet got its sample status without any replays vs said teams. any decent stall/semistall team with at least one innards (so most decent stalls) will innards the mmx, use sunsteel walls/imp to take out slak, and then proceed to slowly win over time due to zenith lacking any sort of progressmaking on its defensive mons outside of audino rocks (which loses to bounce/opposing hazard pressure forcing defog) or imp pp stalling hindered by scarf. all the defensive mons on zenith play very reactively and lack any way to force progress, leaving mmx as the only progress in mus where just going for the double evoboost and shoving sunsteels down their throat with slak/pp stalling with innards is not an option. this worked fine in 2024, where mmx can actually function as a breaker vs older stall teams that mainly went innardsless, but in the modern era where 80% of stalls pack innards this is just not feasible. would any major tier have a sample that loses on preview to possibly the second strongest achetype in the format?
(there is this replay, but i wouldn't consider it high quality; the opponent made several major misplays most notably not scouting doublade in the beginning) https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7purehackmons-2271162649-655wdd25ywyt1qmllvxocviw595q8jtpw
i do think that zenith mode would do well in tours if you expect your opponent not to bring stall at all. however, i don't believe the team would have much consistency on ladder just due to how abyssmal the stall mu is.
however, to all the zenith mode haters out there (2024 me included), i have a challenge for yall. if zenith mode is so bad, then surely a balance can be built thats better than it, that can replace it. something that keeps the fakespeed slak-breaker-imp-uturn pivot-geist check-6th guy idea intact while building something new, something transformative. something completely fucking different. something that won't even replace zenith mode probably. and how about we make it a bulky offense while were at it cuz balance is fucking lame. ULTRA SUN MOON HACKMONS SAMPLE SUBMISSION SUBMISSION: BIG MEN BULKY OFFENSE https://pokepast.es/09c93588ccadb53e
yes thats right. i am submitting this team to be modified, improved, polished, and submitted as a sample by any worthy council-hater who is up for the challenge. maybe it could be ninjadude, this kinda fits with the whole revolutionairy leader persona hes forming. maybe it could be yourself, he can finally free himself from the crutches of big stall and big b*lance. maybe it can be ptoast they also exist. and maybe it can be YOU* *crank that soldier boy
this team has proven reliable in the battles so far. (the battles so far ↑) it features BIG MAN slaking to do slaking things such as click espeed and pursuit trap. also spikes over fake out because i couldnt find a way to fit them anywhere else. this sucks please fit spikes somewhere else. it features LESS BIG MAN wg mewtwo y to spam photon geist coverage and add some sleep/speed to the team. wg mmy underrated setting up on ng is awesome and dying to fakespeed sucks. it features BIGGEST MAN pure power pdon to break teams and cleave through offense with evoboost and bonemerang. it features BIG MAN WITH AURA pure power yveltal to fuck over lots of special attackers. yve+slak makes mmy and mgar regret living. also close combat is funny when it kills kart but less funny when you realize its to make up for the wg kart mu being shitty. it features BIG MAN RANSEI HATES wg scizor to proof the physical guys and check lots of opposing physical attackers with strength sap, while giving big momentum with meaty uturns that are annoying to block with defensive wg due to secret tech taunt that also fucks over ngs leppa recycle guys and harvest slak. it features NOT A MAN eviolite chansey to tie everything together, deal with sweepers, and help out vs physical attackers like mmx and evoboosters.
the big MEN, however, are not perfect, despite what their jawlines suggest. (have you seen pdons shit is CHISELED) the squad is still weak to kart sweeps, theyre too slow and cant really hit it too hard. mmx is mmx and does mmx things, always carrying potential to break any speed-lacking team without innards. having pdon as sole breaker kinda sucks, dual pursuit helps vs innards stall but megabro+dark seems stupid hard to break. however, this team has the potential. it has the sauce. it has BIG MEN. i want to see what yall do with it, turn it into. peace
i was originally replying to something wyrd said in phcord, but the message became far too big, so i'm posting it here instead.
you can't really make a team of this exact structure that isn't passive, and it being passive is completely fine considering the gameplan is generally speaking just switch innards into the breakers and switch your walls into everyone else. there isn't really a reason this team needs to be more active, and if i tried, the sets would end up being worse at their job of actually walling stuff.
i will explain all the flaws of mamo stall, and come to some form of conclusion at the end. text in bold means that the issue is specific to mamo stall itself, and not the actual playstyle.
1. if they have more breakers (or breakers + mons that force a trade with innards) than you have innards, obviously you will just lose if imp doesn't cheese. this is something that applies to all double innards stall, not just mamo stall. triple breaker is not very plausible or common at all tho outside of just straight up spam on great teams, bc you need mons that serve other roles to make a good team (especially in this current meta where fat is much less common and generally speaking fat is something that you don't need to go to such lengths to break ignoring innards), so the issue is far from a big deal imo unless we enter another spam meta (we probably won't).
2. the team is unable to make progress into defensive magic bouncers. it's an issue, but not one that i've ever felt is especially problematic. wg is an extremely important ability, and this alone makes these types of mons almost non existant on offense. balance also never really fits magic bounce as most of the time you need to use your non wg defensive slot for something that gives you more into huge power, e.g prankster. this basically means that in practice, defensive magic bouncers are basically exclusive to semistall and stall. opposing hard stall has the same issue of not being able to make any progress into your own magic bouncer, so games will generally speaking just tie unless one side can pp stall the other's magic bouncer. semistall on the other hand will have progress makers, that's like the entire point of the archetype, and these do flip the stall mu. semistall doesn't really recieve any usage tho. tbf, i think good semistall is possible, but i think it's something people haven't bothered with as the stall mu is generally not worth the worse walling potential. hard stall itself isn't really common either, infact it's only used by like 2 people, so again i don't think this is a paticularly huge flaw. a tie isn't necessarily a loss either :p
edit: this is assuming that mamoswine has spikes > rocks. the sample paste doesn't have this, but i made mamoswine spikes bc rocks by themselves aren't really something that'll win by themselves vs fat (before 1000 turns lol). spikes on the other hand do triple the amount of damage after you have drained their defog pp, and flying types aren't really especially great in this tier (+ multiple of them together on fat isn't something you're likely to see), so they're pretty reasonable as the main way of making progress alongside will-o innards and imp.
3. magic guard mons kill innards without the trade happening. i think this is mostly a playstyle issue. innards can get around mg pursuit to some extent, via scarf baton and defense evs, so only specific mg pursuit sets can actually pose a threat to innards (jolly mg kart that can do reasonable damage to the defense ev innards before imp kills it, which is made harder when they run will-o and baton, aswell as like mg pursuit deoa and mmx). there are also mg breakers, however ho-oh (and maud to some extent) can serve as walls to these. i believe this is where this kind of becomes issue with mamo stall itself, as it doesn't have magic bounce zyg and you are thus technically more vunerable to sunsteel mg breakers (like volt tackle pdon or some bs). ho-oh / pogre + zyg + imp is basically perfect counterplay to those guys bc you can't have coverage for both pogre and zyg without getting farmed by imp at the same time, and mamo stall lacks this. all of the sets i've spoke about are not very common at all, maybe you could argue that if the team recieved more usage and was more of a threat then you would see those sets more, but w/e that applies to every team (even if it's to a lesser extent). you can't just throw an mg on every team anyways.
4. mamoswine (and by extension ho-oh) are, to put it bluntly, fishes. obviously, ho-oh crumbles when rocks go up, so the idea on this team is to completely shut down the most common rock setters that deal with typical magical bouncers (no guards) with mamoswine. mamoswine worked wonders when i used it, but this is largely a skill issue from the playerbase. mamoswine beats the most common moves on no guard (sheer cold, fissure, and zap cannon) and maud deals with zapferno mmy as it has 3 attacks, but if people actually varied their no guards, mamo cannot really be effective. you don't actualy lose too much by going horn drill, even on zap cannon sets honestly. additionally, inferno is a valid option on 2 attack no guard sets with its own positives, even if zap cannon is more useful generally speaking. balloon is also exploitable. tbf, fissure and defensive mons that force mamo's balloon to be popped together are actually not really something you see, but it leaves you vunerable to pursuit + fissure and stag. huge power pursuit is also something that you struggle with regardless of whether or not they have fissure. they're definitely not as common as no guard, but mold breakers are also rock setters that mamoswine cannot stop. again, the team still worked wonders when i used it, but that was largely a skill issue from the player base. the council also seems to hold the view that only preformance matters, and not an explanation on as to why a set is hypothetically kinda bad, so i don't really think you could go down the route of using this to claim that it's a bad sample. and tbf, other double innards stalls do kinda struggle with ng too in theory. it's just that people in game never send them out enough bc they don't realise that they're potent ways of winning by forcing sleep, hazards, and generating free switches.
that all probably sounds bad, but something to keep in mind is that most games with this team are incredibly black and white, and you will generally speaking win most games by auto piloting if one of the mentioned issues does not come up. that + the fact that this is still a better mu spread than most other teams / other teams are also flawed means that mamo stall is a great sample anyways (if we ignore point 4 due to the samples being largely based on preformance). i'm gonna be bias ofc bc i made the team, but i do think it's like probably the best sample we have honestly. i would rather have submitted another double innards stall, but it would have looked too similar to con stall to be added, which is why i submitted mamo stall instead. so there you go, here's an entire smogon post in response to wyrd for genuinely 0 reason <3
you can't really make a team of this exact structure that isn't passive, and it being passive is completely fine considering the gameplan is generally speaking just switch innards into the breakers and switch your walls into everyone else. there isn't really a reason this team needs to be more active, and if i tried, the sets would end up being worse at their job of actually walling stuff.
i will explain all the flaws of mamo stall, and come to some form of conclusion at the end. text in bold means that the issue is specific to mamo stall itself, and not the actual playstyle.
1. if they have more breakers (or breakers + mons that force a trade with innards) than you have innards, obviously you will just lose if imp doesn't cheese. this is something that applies to all double innards stall, not just mamo stall. triple breaker is not very plausible or common at all tho outside of just straight up spam on great teams, bc you need mons that serve other roles to make a good team (especially in this current meta where fat is much less common and generally speaking fat is something that you don't need to go to such lengths to break ignoring innards), so the issue is far from a big deal imo unless we enter another spam meta (we probably won't).
2. the team is unable to make progress into defensive magic bouncers. it's an issue, but not one that i've ever felt is especially problematic. wg is an extremely important ability, and this alone makes these types of mons almost non existant on offense. balance also never really fits magic bounce as most of the time you need to use your non wg defensive slot for something that gives you more into huge power, e.g prankster. this basically means that in practice, defensive magic bouncers are basically exclusive to semistall and stall. opposing hard stall has the same issue of not being able to make any progress into your own magic bouncer, so games will generally speaking just tie unless one side can pp stall the other's magic bouncer. semistall on the other hand will have progress makers, that's like the entire point of the archetype, and these do flip the stall mu. semistall doesn't really recieve any usage tho. tbf, i think good semistall is possible, but i think it's something people haven't bothered with as the stall mu is generally not worth the worse walling potential. hard stall itself isn't really common either, infact it's only used by like 2 people, so again i don't think this is a paticularly huge flaw. a tie isn't necessarily a loss either :p
edit: this is assuming that mamoswine has spikes > rocks. the sample paste doesn't have this, but i made mamoswine spikes bc rocks by themselves aren't really something that'll win by themselves vs fat (before 1000 turns lol). spikes on the other hand do triple the amount of damage after you have drained their defog pp, and flying types aren't really especially great in this tier (+ multiple of them together on fat isn't something you're likely to see), so they're pretty reasonable as the main way of making progress alongside will-o innards and imp.
3. magic guard mons kill innards without the trade happening. i think this is mostly a playstyle issue. innards can get around mg pursuit to some extent, via scarf baton and defense evs, so only specific mg pursuit sets can actually pose a threat to innards (jolly mg kart that can do reasonable damage to the defense ev innards before imp kills it, which is made harder when they run will-o and baton, aswell as like mg pursuit deoa and mmx). there are also mg breakers, however ho-oh (and maud to some extent) can serve as walls to these. i believe this is where this kind of becomes issue with mamo stall itself, as it doesn't have magic bounce zyg and you are thus technically more vunerable to sunsteel mg breakers (like volt tackle pdon or some bs). ho-oh / pogre + zyg + imp is basically perfect counterplay to those guys bc you can't have coverage for both pogre and zyg without getting farmed by imp at the same time, and mamo stall lacks this. all of the sets i've spoke about are not very common at all, maybe you could argue that if the team recieved more usage and was more of a threat then you would see those sets more, but w/e that applies to every team (even if it's to a lesser extent). you can't just throw an mg on every team anyways.
4. mamoswine (and by extension ho-oh) are, to put it bluntly, fishes. obviously, ho-oh crumbles when rocks go up, so the idea on this team is to completely shut down the most common rock setters that deal with typical magical bouncers (no guards) with mamoswine. mamoswine worked wonders when i used it, but this is largely a skill issue from the playerbase. mamoswine beats the most common moves on no guard (sheer cold, fissure, and zap cannon) and maud deals with zapferno mmy as it has 3 attacks, but if people actually varied their no guards, mamo cannot really be effective. you don't actualy lose too much by going horn drill, even on zap cannon sets honestly. additionally, inferno is a valid option on 2 attack no guard sets with its own positives, even if zap cannon is more useful generally speaking. balloon is also exploitable. tbf, fissure and defensive mons that force mamo's balloon to be popped together are actually not really something you see, but it leaves you vunerable to pursuit + fissure and stag. huge power pursuit is also something that you struggle with regardless of whether or not they have fissure. they're definitely not as common as no guard, but mold breakers are also rock setters that mamoswine cannot stop. again, the team still worked wonders when i used it, but that was largely a skill issue from the player base. the council also seems to hold the view that only preformance matters, and not an explanation on as to why a set is hypothetically kinda bad, so i don't really think you could go down the route of using this to claim that it's a bad sample. and tbf, other double innards stalls do kinda struggle with ng too in theory. it's just that people in game never send them out enough bc they don't realise that they're potent ways of winning by forcing sleep, hazards, and generating free switches.
that all probably sounds bad, but something to keep in mind is that most games with this team are incredibly black and white, and you will generally speaking win most games by auto piloting if one of the mentioned issues does not come up. that + the fact that this is still a better mu spread than most other teams / other teams are also flawed means that mamo stall is a great sample anyways (if we ignore point 4 due to the samples being largely based on preformance). i'm gonna be bias ofc bc i made the team, but i do think it's like probably the best sample we have honestly. i would rather have submitted another double innards stall, but it would have looked too similar to con stall to be added, which is why i submitted mamo stall instead. so there you go, here's an entire smogon post in response to wyrd for genuinely 0 reason <3
you can't really make a team of this exact structure that isn't passive, and it being passive is completely fine considering the gameplan is generally speaking just switch innards into the breakers and switch your walls into everyone else. there isn't really a reason this team needs to be more active, and if i tried, the sets would end up being worse at their job of actually walling stuff.
Hello players. It's been over 7 months since USUM Pure Hackmons sample submissions last opened. We've been missing a ladder but this format has still been active nevertheless. With it has came further explorations and the opportunity for it to partake in another Hackmons Premier League Tournament. We've heard your requests for samples to be replaced. Given the length of time it's been, the continuous activity of the format, ongoing demands, and the most recent Hackmons Premier League having ended days ago, the USUM Pure Hackmons council has considered now to be a good time to re-open up sample submissions.
Read below before making a sample submission:
1) We want sample teams that have strongly demonstrated consistency in the overall metagame, even despite its flaws.
When it comes to looking into teams for Gen 7 Pure Hackmons, the very most important thing to understand is that 100% of teams in this metagame have major flaws that can be spotted and pointed out. How severe those flaws are is something that can only be found through extensive practice with the team against a strong variety of players and the teams they use. The teams we want are ones that have been able to properly demonstrate and have clear evidence for their success in a large number of games. This doesn't mean the team has to be good in all cases. A team being good in all cases is simply not possible in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Pure Hackmons. We just need teams players can keep using over time and find those teams still being able to help them in many circumstances.
2) We want sample teams that serve as accurate reflections of the overall metagame.
Sample teams are designed to serve as introductions to the metagame for newer players who may want to pick it up. It is better to have teams that provide a good indication behind what types of Pokémon and strategies represent the metagame very well than to have teams that are filled with obscure Pokémon and strategies that are overly difficult to replicate the effectiveness of in an average team a new player would like to build later on.
3) Although we don't want teams to be overloaded with obscure Pokémon and strategies, having a few gimmicks on these teams is perfectly fine and even encouraged.
Innovation is a core part of teambuilding philosophy in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Pure Hackmons. This is a metagame where long-term success almost requires a player to come up with strategies on their own that other players may not be able to pick up on right away. Try your hand at having some unique things involved. This isn't a requirement for teams to become sample teams, but is a way to make sample teams look more interesting and compelling, especially to new players who want to jump into the metagame.
4) We want teams other players have been able to have success with.
There's no better way to prove a team would be great as a sample other than to succeed with your own team and then witness evidence of other players being able to have great success with your team as well. It's even better if the users of your team are relatively new or newish to the metagame. This shows that other players can successfully make your team work and that it'll be able to help serve as a good introduction to the metagame. These teams have the greatest potential to genuinely help the people sample teams are designed for.
Additional Note: It's perfectly fine if a player has to make adjustments to the team in order to help against a specific threat they're encountering. Ultra Sun Ultra Moon Pure Hackmons is a metagame where 0% of teams are able to prepare for anywhere near 100% of the overall threats in the metagame, no matter what moves, items, abilities, or Pokémon the team consists of. If someone plays long enough, there will be circumstances where a player has to change a Pokémon, a move, an item, or an ability in order to help them against a threat they are dealing with more frequently as of late. This will always be the case. Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Pure Hackmons is a metagame that has players often modifying teams and/or rotating between multiple different teams in order for them to be most successful. Sample teams are meant to form a good base, an inherently great structure. Them being easily adjustable is also perfectly fine. If a player does not modify these teams, they should still be fine in many circumstances, but if they make small, periodic adjustments over time, the base of the team should still be able to carry them forward.
Additional Note 2: The above also means that these teams don't necessarily have to be fully optimal. If anything I'd prefer if some teams have things that can be pointed out for newer players to fix, because tampering with the teambuilder is a must for one to truly advance in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon Pure Hackmons. Noticing things that can be changed in the teambuilder and making those changes will help newer players grow. This is a point more unique to Ultra Sun Ultra Moon Pure Hackmons. If these teams can still follow everything that makes them great, them being fully optimal is really not so important. Teams do not need to be fully optimal in order to perform great in this metagame. They can still perform great. They can still help newer players. They can still provide powerful demonstrations of how this metagame works at its core. They can still do everything right. Please do not expect teams should be perfect in a metagame where no team is ever going to be perfect even if EVs, IVs, abilities, moves, Pokémon, and natures are fully optimized. It should only matter if the lack of optimization makes a very clear and significant impact on the overall performance of the team. To put it bluntly, "If it works, it works."
Additional Note 3: Still make your teams fully optimal if you want, but please don't come barking at us to fix what isn't really brokenin practice. The lack of optimization should only ever be a concern if the differences are proven to be so greatly detrimental to the team that its success is noticeably hampered.
5) We want teams people actually want to use.
It does not matter how good a team is if nobody actually wants to use it. It's been one of the biggest problems we've had with sample teams over the past couple of years but isn't something that's understood enough. A sample team cannot help someone if they decide they don't want to use it. The teams new players do pick up are more likely to help them learn and advance in the metagame even if they are fundamentally mid or poor teams. If possible, have the teams consist of Pokémon and strategies that are more interesting for players to use. If your team looks like something that would bore newer players to death or scare them away from the metagame, it does not make for a good example of what a sample team should be.
In order to properly address the concerns made about sample teams, here are the policies that are to be enforced.
We want sample teams that have strongly demonstrated consistency in the overall metagame, even despite its flaws.
Ladder was a great method we previously used in order to test how good sample submissions were against other players, because if a team struggled more against average players, it did not matter if they were able to have great matchups against some more notable players. The fact was, the team still struggled against average players, the majority, meaning the team was not actually effective in the overall metagame. Not only this, the best of players tend to easily be able to adapt around a particular team fishing for them in order to be able to beat the team. What you end up having through this is a team that's not good against average players or even newer players AND a team that's not great against notable players, thus a bad team. Not only that, almost anyone new to the metagame who picked up a sample team was using it primarily for the ladder, so if it was bad against average players on ladder, it would be bad for every new player who picked it up, even if it could beat the very best of players in the metagame once or twice. (Also to be real with you, due to the nature of this metagame, you can easily beat the best of players in this metagame in a few games with absolute complete slop, please do not mistaken this as the team being good. If it struggles against the average playerbase overall, it is slop. Not actually good.)
Unfortunately, we no longer have the ladder, so demonstrating consistent effectiveness in a team has been made more difficult. These current rules are made to reflect the lack of a ladder.
1) DO NOT submit a sample team in this metagame without you having at least a dozen (12+) replays of your own games with compelling evidence supporting the effectiveness of your team. These replays should be of you using the team against a variety of different teams and different players in order to show that your team works very well against the overall metagame. If you avoid this your sample submission will be completely ignored.
2) Your team needs to have several replays of other players making it work as well. Have other players try out your sample team submission against other players in the metagame in order to see if they can make it work. Save replays for them, and then share them off as well. Like with rule 1, there needs to be a good variety of players and teams the sample submission faces itself against.
3) The replays should be of at least overall decent quality. Do not intentionally fish for overwhelmingly positive matchups, teams you know are weaker, or entry level players of the metagame in an attempt to farm them for replays of your team's success. We aren't strictly looking for every replay to be against a high level player, but if there's a clear pattern of these replays having overwhelmingly positive matchups or being against entry level players of the metagame, your submission may be dismissed.
4) Provide an explanation for how your team works, what makes it work, and why it would make a great sample. Use the above hidetag explaining what we want for a sample team as a guideline. This is pretty straightforward.
Here's an example of what a sample team submission should look like:
Hello! I would like to propose for Zenith Mode to be made a sample. There's a pokepaste link on the Pokémon icons. Zenith Mode(a.k.a. Z-Mode) (PS Database Link) (RMT)
While Zenith Mode demonstrates consistency in the metagame, please don't expect it to win nearly every single game. No team in this metagame can accomplish this.
The combination of Pokémon in Zenith Mode itself also makes for an accurate reflection of the USUM Pure Hackmons metagame and what it's about. It features some of the most premier defensive Pokémon of the metagame (Mega Audino and Zygarde-Complete) as well as some of the most premier offensive Pokémon in the metagame (Mega Mewtwo X and Slaking). These Pokémon and their sets help to give newer players an understanding of both offensive Pokémon and defensive Pokémon in the USUM Pure Hackmons metagame. Additionally, Zenith Mode having Imposter Blissey is a huge bonus, since not only is Blissey a definitive top rank Pokémon in the USUM Pure Hackmons metagame, its Imposter ability allows for newer players to see and observe many sets other people use in the metagame, allowing them to learn more about what types of sets are effective as they keep using the team. The combination of Mega Audino, Doublade, and Zygarde-Complete can also help players scout opposing moves, since they can each switch into a lot of attacks.
While Zenith Mode has multiple staple Pokémon, it also brings in innovation. Sturdy Doublade is a set that to my knowledge hasn't been effectively used prior to this team's existence and the effectiveness of it is something Zenith Mode has shown better than possibly any other team could. This Doublade was added because it was necessary for the team to remain in good structure. It's a Pokémon who helps show that you sometimes do need to innovate in order for a team you're using to be at its most effective. As far as I'm aware, Zenith Mode was also the debut of Huge PowerLeppa Berry Extreme Evoboost FakeSpeed Slaking, a set that became more prominent and even used to help with major forum team tournament games later on. Slaking was given Huge Power Leppa Berry Extreme Evoboost with Fake Out and Extreme Speed because Zenith Mode otherwise lacked a useful sweeper and strongly reliable revenge killer. I also just thought of Huge Power Extreme Evoboost to be fun and overpowered in general.
With all the aforementioned factors in mind, Zenith Mode is a perfect example of a team that should be sample because it completely follows all 5 points a sample team should ideally follow.
I accidentally left Mega Mewtwo X as Naughty Nature midway through my ladder run upon changing its set from Spooky Plate Judgment to Choice Band First Impression. This makes the Mega Mewtwo X not at its absolute most optimal but still incredibly great. It's not a big deal due to its ability to still handle nearly any special attacker in the metagame under the right circumstance and the special attackers it does struggle against being possibly handled by Mega Audino, Zygarde-Complete, or Imposter Blissey. This Mega Mewtwo X being Adamant instead of Naughty Nature also doesn't make much of a difference against special attackers it does struggle against when it does not want to switch out. I've never witnessed it make serious dent to the effectiveness of the team and I'd rather just leave the team as it is to capture the moment where it topped the ladder with the highest GXE in the metagame, as well as find something sticking out for newer players to adjust and change, since being able to adjust teams is highly important to learning this metagame. Helping players engage with the teambuilder in some way gives the team some additional benefit.
Happy New Year folks! Today I've decided to provide replays of additional games I've played with Zenith Mode since the making of this RMT. I will also express my takeaway on the overall quality of the team and some updates regarding its checks, countermeasures, and changes a player could make with the team.
Replays
These are replays of games I've played all throughout from late 2024 to late 2025. The replays shown are wins against players and/or teams I've personally found noteworthy for the time of the respective game. I've used a lot of teams...
There's also additional replays in the post above the link above.
How does the team work? Why does it work?
Zenith Mode is a balance team designed to carry Pokémon who serve as the biggest blanket answers to as much of the USUM Pure Hackmons metagame as possible. Lemme explain in some more detail: Mega Audino, who is arguably the most definitive Wonder Guard in the metagame, helps to fend off No Guard + OHKO moves while significantly filtering out the moves that could easily trample this team over, while the moves it is weak to can be fought off by it teammates without too much of a hassle oftentimes. Blissey, being one of the best Pokémon in the metagame, can transform into anything, which helps with scouting sets and helping the team benefit from support moves opponents carry, or even punishing opponents when they have offensive Pokémon active during a moment where their team cannot handle fighting their own Pokémon. Doublade serves as a secondary answer to opposing No Guard + OHKO move Pokémon, since 1 Wonder Guard usually is not enough for most teams unless they are paired with an Innards Out user. It also imposterproofs both of this team's physical giants, Mega Mewtwo X and Slaking, while serving as an overall extreme physical wall that gives any physical attacker without proper coverage a hard time. Mega Mewtwo X is the biggest nuke of the metagame and can massively threaten almost anything through sheer power alone when given a Choice Band. Choice Band is also more useful in this team specifically since the defensive Pokémon may support it when it's vulnerable and the lack of offensive Pokémon puts more pressure on this Mega Mewtwo X to do catastrophic amounts of damage in order for Zenith Mode to be more successful. Slaking is arguably the best revenge-killer in the metagame and can just wipe the floor through most offense-oriented strategies. Fake Out + Extreme Speed solos most of the very premier offensive threats in the metagame and Extreme Evoboost helps completely sweep through these sorts of teams when applicable. Zygarde-Complete is the biggest wall in the game and can will easily give most offense Pokémon without proper coverage or extreme measures in their offensive strategies a terrible time compared to... anything other wall in the game really. It also provides the team great support with Reflect and can win a 1v1 against surprisingly high amount of offensive sets.
Zenith Mode is also heavilysynergetic. All 6 of these Pokémon work amazingly with each other in order to cover up for each other's flaws and weaknesses. For example, Mega Audino is paired with multiple switch-ins to Sunsteel Strike and Poison-type moves, Blissey can cover up for what Mega Audino, Doublade, or Zygarde-Complete can't do with their support or Mega Mewtwo X and Slaking can't do with their offenses, Doublade has Zygarde-Complete and potentially Mega Audino to help cover up for its weaknesses, both Slaking and Mega Mewtwo X have Doublade and potentially Zygarde-Complete to help imposterproof them so their potential to do catastrophic damage isn't hampered by an opposing Pokémon being able to transform into them, Slaking can revenge-kill and sweep what Mega Mewtwo X cannot, Mega Mewtwo X with its coverage can break most of what Slaking cannot, and Zygarde-Complete's weaknesses, can often be potentially handled by any of its teammates since preparing against Zygarde-Complete is more demanding than preparing for almost any other Pokémon in the metagame.
Your sample submission doesn't have to be formatted like the example nor does it have to be written on the level of explanation or feats shown in it. Just don't be lazy with your post. Explain how your team works, why it works, and why it would make a great sample. Show at least a dozen replays of you succeeding with it and add in replays of other people succeeding with your team as well. The example above goes above and beyond what I'm expecting but you still need to put in the work to earn a chance of your team being represented. I'd advise to not worry so much about how old the replays are, especially if they're from late 2025 or later, since the metagame hasn't changed so dramatically that teams which were effective back then are for the most part ineffective now. I'm also not asking that you go on a 12-0 or some type of massive streak. These things help to give your team a higher chance of becoming a sample, but all I'm asking is for you to provide evidence that your team works and can keep working. There's no guarantee that your sample team will be approved upon following the requirements. This is just the minimum.
Sample submissions will be open for a while. The time period is currently indefinite. Teams we decide to make as samples will be made sample before the submissions process ends.
With all that being said, we're making a few changes to our current samples as of this post. The changes go as follows:
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Zenith Mode (a.k.a. Z-Mode) (PS Database Link) (RMT) by Ransei has been added.
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Lopunny + Psychic Terrain Hyper Offense by gold0987 has been removed.
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White Kyurem Hyper Offense by aerobee has been re-classified as Hyper Offense.
Additionally, there's been quite a number of problems with the way these demands have been approached as of recent and even throughout the seasons of our previous sample submissions. It has kept derailing this thread. In order to fix this up, I'll be laying down new rules for posts on concerns about sample teams that they must follow or they'd be otherwise at risk for deletion. It won't be this post, since it's already big enough. It'll be in the future.
Lastly, the council is currently working on updating the Viability Rankings. Expect changes to the Viability Rankings within the next couple of weeks or sooner.
Let me know if there are any questions or concerns about this. Alright everyone, let's get rolling!
Making a follow-up post to address various concerns that were made with my previous one. These concerns were mainly about the requirements.
1) DO NOT submit a sample team in this metagame without you having at least a dozen (12+) replays of your own games with compelling evidence supporting the effectiveness of your team. These replays should be of you using the team against a variety of different teams and different players in order to show that your team works very well against the overall metagame. If you avoid this your sample submission will be completely ignored.
Firstly, USUM Pure Hackmons is certainly not inactive enough to where winning at least 12 decent games is too demanding. Otherwise there wouldn't have been an outcry for samples to be re-opened nor would they have been re-opened.
If you want to find games, your main options are:
1) Challenging other players to Gen 7 Pure Hackmons on Pokémon Showdown.
2) Participating in Gen 7 Pure Hackmons roomtours in the Pure Hackmons room, which can and does spam room tournaments. It has always been an environment where asking for roomtours is encouraged and to this day there has never been a limit to how many roomtours the room can have or to what Pure Hackmons format they have to be.
3) Using the teams in forum tournaments is fine too.
Using these methods, it could take someone a few days or less if they're tryharding this, but if it takes them a couple of weeks or a few months to gather these games periodically that's fine. Sample Submissions isn't intended to close any time soon and the metagame is bound to change much more slowly than when it had a ladder.
2) Your team needs to have several replays of other players making it work as well. Have other players try out your sample team submission against other players in the metagame in order to see if they can make it work. Save replays for them, and then share them off as well. Like with rule 1, there needs to be a good variety of players and teams the sample submission faces itself against.
By several, even just three is fine. Maybe I'll let two pass. This one doesn't have to be a high number. This can be achievable by asking people around to use your team or by sharing around in spaces such as the Discord Server, this thread or the Pure Hackmons room. You can even ask the Council to test out your team and whatever is pulled from there will count.
3) The replays should be of at least overall decent quality. Do not intentionally fish for overwhelmingly positive matchups, teams you know are weaker, or entry level players of the metagame in an attempt to farm them for replays of your team's success. We aren't strictly looking for every replay to be against a high level player, but if there's a clear pattern of these replays having overwhelmingly positive matchups or being against entry level players of the metagame, your submission may be dismissed.
I'm not asking for every single team you face to be absolutely perfect with no flaws whatsoever, especially when the post in other parts also straight up said this was not possible. What I'm asking are replays against teams that are remotely comprehensible. If it can pass as something being made as a serious team, it should be fine. In a metagame such as this, that could mean a lot of things. I'm not going to shut down a submission because its replays have teams that carry niche elements like Trick Room, weather, or Assist. A wildly high amount of strategies can pass off as legitimate. What I'm saying though is to not show replays of you fighting a Cynthia team or a Champion Red team, a team with 3 unranked Pokemon, some Monotype team with mostly bad Pokemon, etc. It is also saying to not deliberately seek out matches against players you know are running teams your team has a super great matchup against or deliberately seek out blatantly poor players (my bar would be like for example someone who would obviously be unable to reach mid 1500s had we still had a ladder. I wouldn't worry too much about gauging those players if you can't.) Note the wording of this rule also suggests that any amount of exception to this may not result in immediate disqualification. It's intended to be case-by-case. I wrote it this way to leave room for discernment. Players can use the replays in the Zenith Mode example as a reference point. If you feel the quality of the replays in that example are too low, then this should be easier for you . The quality is not meant to be super strict.
Additionally, not every single replay has to be against an entirely unique player, just don't go overboard and have all or almost all your replays be the exact same player lol. There are definitely enough players for you to have variety when it comes down to this.
The other player(s) trying out your team can be the exact same player for every example of this however.
To add further clarification to
5) We want teams people actually want to use.
It does not matter how good a team is if nobody actually wants to use it. It's been one of the biggest problems we've had with sample teams over the past couple of years but isn't something that's understood enough. A sample team cannot help someone if they decide they don't want to use it. The teams new players do pick up are more likely to help them learn and advance in the metagame even if they are fundamentally mid or poor teams. If possible, have the teams consist of Pokémon and strategies that are more interesting for players to use. If your team looks like something that would bore newer players to death or scare them away from the metagame, it does not make for a good example of what a sample team should be.
What determines a team pretty want to use takes a lot of discernment. I often pay attention to games of this format, allowing me to be able to notice when other people are running a particular team. If other people are going around running a specific team, it marks a good impression of being a team people want to use. Other than that, if you were able to get replays of other people using the team and succeeding with it, this would also mark as an impression that people may want to use your team. This part of my post was intended to shut down unappealing strategies like Shadow Tag Spam while encouraging players to build sample teams that do end up making real impact when they do become a sample. While we have the right to have reasons to shut down a sample submission due to factors outside anything in this post, this part of the post is not to be intended to shut down teams "just because we don't feel like people would want to use it." If it's a relatively standard team or a team with some gimmick that could be fun, it should be fine in this regard. Very few types of teams should ever be turned down strictly due to this alone.
A couple days ago I made an announcement in the Pure Hackmons Discord Server
I don't know why I have to make this post but as a disclaimer, the standards for submitting a sample team are set to be for this time and forward. We are not applying these standards retroactively to current sample teams, as those sample teams have earned their spot being there, can still be used to help newer players, and we do not have replacements for them as of current. USUM Pure Hackmons could be promoted with additional teams being represented instead of having so few sample teams in a metagame where every single team is going to fall to terrible matchups on a regular basis. This is a time to make productive efforts to shine and contribute to the development of the metagame, not to go actively trying as hard as possible to tear it down without good reason or a solid solution.
The approach of viciously attacking current sample teams while there not being efforts for a feasible replacement that calms the community down is entirely unproductive. Especially when it's being done with there being absolutely no evidence presented at all of a team that has achieved better than the teams being criticized and people keep ignoring this mightily critical point:
100% of teams in this metagame have major flaws that can be spotted and pointed out. How severe those flaws are is something that can only be found through extensive practice with the team against a strong variety of players and the teams they use.
Please just follow the requirements, suggest teams in good faith, and possibly the old samples may be replaced. It helps no one if there's a very few sample teams able to help players out right now, especially in a metagame where you can't overly rely on a specific team for too long. Honestly it would be better to expand the amount of teams represented as sample than to reduce the number or leave it at the number we have right now.
Speaking of such:
Additionally, there's been quite a number of problems with the way these demands have been approached as of recent and even throughout the seasons of our previous sample submissions. It has kept derailing this thread. In order to fix this up, I'll be laying down new rules for posts on concerns about sample teams that they must follow or they'd be otherwise at risk for deletion. It won't be this post, since it's already big enough. It'll be in the future.
Now, the offensive core consists of MMX and MMY, both built to chew through defensive cores with ease. Protean MMY with the expert belt let's it always have stab with whatever attack it's using and the expert belt allows it to deal an Immense amount of damage to anything weak to it's moves, the MMX is a Leppa Evoboost set designed to be able to set up and clean up late game battles especially as it doesn't always have to set up turn 1 on everything to do damage this set let's it chew through many of its usual walls with plasma fists especially water darks which resist it's two moldy moves, this team can struggle into a few things like leppa cfz spam HP MMX or coverage kartana if Pogre / Blissey are taken out earlier on.
The support core consists of a prank haze Zygod, which lets it shut down many players attempt of setting up their wincons which is always the difference between winning and losing the battle, and of course we also have Innards out Blissey, which is such a good way to remove a threat in a pinch now because much of this team does somewhat suffer from 4MSS (four move slot syndrome, the attached link explains how 4mss affects swsh uu mons, but the basic idea still applies) this is why you notice my Blissey is the one I was able to slot rocks onto.
Lastly the defesnsive / wonder guard core consists of Maudino and Pogre two amazing wonder guards that when paired together complement each other perfectly, Pogre is able to eat the Sunsteel Strikes and even the Searing Sunraze Smashes that Maudino cannot take, and Maudino covers the moves likes Moongiest Beam / Coverage moves nicely making for an excellent defensive core that can handle many of the offensive threats while maudino can always easily switch into mmy, zygod and sometimes blissy is your impostered MMX switch In, you can very well make Zygod Mlix if you really wanna.
Now, the offensive core consists of MMX and MMY, both built to chew through defensive cores with ease. Protean MMY with the expert belt let's it always have stab with whatever attack it's using and the expert belt allows it to deal an Immense amount of damage to anything weak to it's moves, the MMX is a Leppa Evoboost set designed to be able to set up and clean up late game battles especially as it doesn't always have to set up turn 1 on everything to do damage this set let's it chew through many of its usual walls with plasma fists especially water darks which resist it's two moldy moves, this team can struggle into a few things like leppa cfz spam HP MMX or coverage kartana if Pogre / Blissey are taken out earlier on.
The support core consists of a prank haze Zygod, which lets it shut down many players attempt of setting up their wincons which is always the difference between winning and losing the battle, and of course we also have Innards out Blissey, which is such a good way to remove a threat in a pinch now because much of this team does somewhat suffer from 4MSS (four move slot syndrome, the attached link explains how 4mss affects swsh uu mons, but the basic idea still applies) this is why you notice my Blissey is the one I was able to slot rocks onto.
Lastly the defesnsive / wonder guard core consists of Maudino and Pogre two amazing wonder guards that when paired together complement each other perfectly, Pogre is able to eat the Sunsteel Strikes and even the Searing Sunraze Smashes that Maudino cannot take, and Maudino covers the moves likes Moongiest Beam / Coverage moves nicely making for an excellent defensive core that can handle many of the offensive threats while maudino can always easily switch into mmy, zygod and sometimes blissy is your impostered MMX switch In, you can very well make Zygod Mlix if you really wanna.
Mmy set is very interesting but how does it do into dark wgs? It might have a lot of counters imo also isn't mmy quite frail for expert belt ? Ik that you want to lead mmx if ur against dark wgs but if they sack innards you can't really use mmy right?
Mmy set is very interesting but how does it do into dark wgs? It might have a lot of counters imo also isn't mmy quite frail for expert belt ? Ik that you want to lead mmx if ur against dark wgs but if they sack innards you can't really use mmy right?
1) You don't just lead MMX to beat Dark WGs.
2) MMY needs to be more afraid of Normal WGs than Dark WGs.
3) The MMY counters are basically: Yveltal, Arceus, MAud, and Melo.
. The quality is not meant to be super strict.
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