i wanted to make a post about the samples to lay out my issues with them, as generally people still don't like samples and i think people stopped talking about them bc they don't think it's worth fighting over them rather than bc people are happy with them. i have nothing better to do on the other hand and i would genuinely like to see better resources, so there you go. of course i've seen the council say stuff like "what are we supposed to replace them with? submissions were hypocritical and a joke." in which they have a point to an extent, but i'll go more into that later. that also doesn't eliminate the fact that current samples have serious issues anyways. I'm not the best at articulating my thoughts, but i tried my best. made this post whilst listening to nier replicant's and nier automata's goated osts.
the team was made in 2024, and i think it's outdated. this team really struggles into faster leads. something like a deos is easily clicking sleep and rocks, and it very easily could sweep if it wasn't for innards who isn't even stopping it from clicking said sleep and hazards and switching out anyways. there's other questionable elements too, for example the ridiculous amount of sleep which is far from necessary on about half of these mons and thus hinders the team's consistency. keep in mind that the team was also made by the rng god gold0987, if you where around when gold played you absolutely know what i'm talking about.. also surge mmy and shard kart is a bit counter intuitive, gold used prank > mg on his kart too so imagine if this sample was faithful lol. imp is shaky too, mg kart helps a bit in the event of hazards going up until the imposter copies said mg kart, but tbf the team isn't entirely at fault here and rather just this type of ho. team isn't horrible anyways, just definitely not sample worthy atp. team hasn't done stuff outside of gold using it, that was also a whileeeee ago and the metagame looks very different now.
i'm not very educated on smogon rules, but it doesn't really sit right with me that a team made by a guy that got banned for You Know What is a sample. outside of that, the team is like fine i guess.. this mgar gimmick feels pretty reliant on suprise factor when the team is a sample. some of the improofing is shaky, mmx is lorb with 3 prio moves for some reason. the issues aren't as huge as other samples, but i still see fail to see what makes the team so great. i don't recall playing against it ever, ask other active high level players and they will prob tell you the same thing. it didn't even get any grand ladder results. so like again, it's not a bad team, but it's not really sample worthy either, and there's also the first thing i said.
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everyone is a shell smash special attacker, 2 of these guys being wg sweepers who improof the rest. i find this to be quite dubious. this means you generally just lack burst damage and are quite reliant on clicking smash, and special walls can just show up and often hinder huge chunks of your team. having 2 wg smash sweepers is also just unfortunate in its own right bc wg smash sweepers just aren't great, being slightly above mid at best. arc works best with tspikes, which isn't present. hoopa is honestly just close to bad, and idk if improofing a singular mmy justifies its inclusion, especially with there already being an arc. mold hazard setting lead + an mg defog kart is counter intuitive. my last issue is less a fault of this team, and more so just blobless sash spam ho teams, but we're really really weak to setup multihitters. they just kill everything after setting up, with the counter play post setup essentially just being triage mray, but if they have evoboost you're just fucked bc they set up easily on your guys who lack burst damage and then you can't rkill it. all teams have issues, and idt that multihitter issue is detrimental by itself, but this adds up along with the other issues which are the team's fault and actually affects the team's overall quality. im yapping but anyways idt it's sample worthy.
this one was made by the absolute goat, aerobee, so you can't expect me to say too much bad about it. this is not glaze btw, he really is the goat. anyways, the team is solid, you can definitely load it and win games. i do think there's a couple issues tho. this team generally lacks power output which is a bit unfortunate. our hazard game is very good and this helps fix the issue, but kyuw still has it quite bad regardless. me and other people have also often found that coma mmy often just ends up being nothing more than a guy who clicks a couple cfzs. also, the meta respects ng and tauntceus a lot more than when the team was made, but ofc the sets are still good. anyways, i think this explains why the team doesn't dominate like it once did, but it's still solid and top 2 samples at worst. i think this should defo be kept, at least for the time being.
oh hey it's my team. i'm prob gonna be bias here, and feel free to call me out on it if you want, but i think it's fine. the only thing this team does "wrong" in the sense of the flaws of the other samples i've pointed out is mamoswine. in an ideal world where people were good at the game, it's true that ngs could prep for mamo and the team would suffer. there's also just other stuff that whilst rare, is disliked by mamo, like hp pursuit and stag. this is all on paper anyways. any time i use this team, it works wonders, tho i suppose another double innards stall is still better. i never submited the other one i used at the time (pogre/sableye/zyg) tho bc it was too similar to con's stall. anyways, i think this is at worst top 2 samples, even with mamo on it. this is just bc double innards stall is wonderful. it can be cteamed easier than the average team, but i've found it to have a similar level of consistency to offense against the overall metagame. i also like don't think i could make a stall with more obvious plays, and for a sample that is nice. a new player that isn't bad should be able to pick this up fairly easily, and at least it should be easier than any other stall or whatever. funny mamoswine also attractive or something. imo it should stay, unless con stall goes, in which case replace it with the pogre/sableye/zyg double innards stall (which got 93.8 gxe btw!!!!!)
tbf it's not bad given it was made in 2024, but still idt it should be a sample. the counterplay to perfect coverage, especially huge power, isn't the best. ofc with good play, idt it's unreasonable. imp is there, certain mons should deny offensive mons from coming in which is nice if you position well, and you might win first with hazards, status, and stag mgyara, but surely this is a lot to ask from a newer player? especially considering the fact that this team needs to manage burns and poison. i think this kind of outplaying was easier back when balance was dominant too. also, idt the amount of overlapping weaknesses is helping here. melo and mgyara are both aiming to be similar kinds of special walls, except they're both weak to bug. mbro and steela both want to check physical photon and sunsteel, yet they share an electric weakness. there's also just a plethera of other shared weaknesses which aren't a huge deal by themselves, but can add up to be quite annoying, e.g fairy with zyg and mgyara and the multiple weaknesses that mbro and mgyara share. all in all, i don't think the team itself does too much wrong, but the fact there are problems as well as this type of stall's age + difficulty for newer players makes me not really want to see it as a sample. i also forgot to mention that the team hasn't really done anything in a while. bobsican had some success with it towards the end of ladder, but like wowwwww competent stall piloted by a good player does well on ladder???? mind blowing. eyeos hasn't ran it in ages to my knowledge.
i'm not much of a fan tbh. the sets are sooo unoptimised leading to worse match ups that are completely avoidable. for example, pogre lacks circle throw and zygarde is toxic/rapid spin/anchor shot. this means that the wg kart answer is either innards or speed tying with imp. circle throw pogre or topsy turvy zyg fixes this. also, the arceus counterplay is going zyg and clicking toxic, which can lead to bounce really fucking you over. again, circle throw pogre and topsy turvy zyg fix the issue. the sableye set also makes me sad. it's the mcoat guy, but it has no attacks and no defog, leaving the team vunerable to taunt ngs. also, a lot of sableye's appeal to me is the stab pursuit and ability to freely run lum berry thanks to its ghost typing (and just being a hard wall kinda mon), and these 2 things provide more room to outplay ng. con stall lacks both. steela also really annoys me here. i get why it's here, with sableye you have some sort of capacity to play around ltbts mmx beyond just innards, and it can serve as an extra special photon answer. i have 2 problems with it however. the first is that we're triple wg, and the second is that one of the wgs is pogre. as it's the third wg, you really have to ask yourself whether it justifies itself over a second innards. the answer i've came to is no. yes, steela + sableye sometimes beats some mmx, but so would a second innards. i've also found the team to be just fine into special photon with a second innards, so the defense to it i've seen is just "oh but it's better into mmx spam." fair enough? idk if one uncommon playstyle is worth it when double innards is generally better everywhere else, but sure. the triple wg vs second innards debate is more subjective, but with my other issue i find it harder to see the defense there. a big aspect of steela's purpose is the fact it's a sunsteel wall, but here it shares an electric weakness with pogre, so it's checking the same sunsteel guys. this makes it even less justifiable over a second innards, and also we could also just be a scizor who does the exact same thing you want it to do here without the elec weakness. i do feel like this is especially harmful when you only have 1 innards, but i'm struggling to articulate my point. again anyways, my point about about making steela a second innards can be ignored if you want as that's more subjective, but if the team is to stay a sample i think the sets absolutely need optimising and steela should probably become scizor. also please don't use the ladder defense, it's a competent stall ran by a good pilot so ofc it will do well on ladder.
the other issues with the samples
the samples are made up of 5 hyper offenses and 3 stalls. there should be a lot more variety here. not including semistall is fair enough bc it doesn't see usage anymore, but where are balances and offense teams? balance is viable, and offense is the best playstyle in the game. this defo needs fixing.
"oh but people submitted bad teams"
you're not wrong, but at the same time the submissions are closed for months and months at a time with them opening for like a month and everyone only getting one submission. this just lowers the opportunities to recieve good submissions significantly imo, and even if you disagree i really think we should leave them permanently open anyways. i'm guessing they're closed bc the council doesn't have the time to test? just don't test everything then. there's no reason to test a team that clearly won't make it onto samples. if people spam submissions too much, add back the once a month limit. this is also weird bc i've never heard of another format having them closed permanently.
another point i want to make is that i think we're too strict on replacing teams. for example, lag=bad submitted going positive. eyeos pointed out valid flaws with the team, but at the same time, surely it's still better than like gold's team in modern day? and in that case, i don't see why going positive wouldn't replace gold's team. the samples get better this way, and hopefully over time you'd recieve better and better submissions until you're not replacing teams for having genuinely serious flaws. that's just my thought process anyways.
conclusion
if council read this, i hope you see that i'm making this bc i genuinely care rather than just for the sake of hating like past immature me used to do. i hope you atleast consider what i've said too. thanks for reading if you got this far, this took a while to write bc im on xbox. bye bye <3
(by now u know im putting random guys here)
Scizor-Mega
Muk-Alola
Swampert-Mega
Heatran
Ferrothorn
Greninja-Ash
Oranguru
Regigigas
Groudon-Primal
Necrozma-Dawn-Wings
Houndoom-Mega
Gyarados @ Gyaradosite
Yveltal
Darkrai
Solgaleo
Umbreon
Charjabug
Dialga
Darmanitan-Zen
Volcanion
Cresselia
Bisharp
Type: Null
Raticate-Alola
in only 1 turn!!! With: 
What a bad day to post :V
