Hi guys so today I am back to cover the month of December
for you guys, this will be very helpful like the last post I did too, you
should know the deal for these posts, here I cover up things that have happened
on the scene of vgc for this month as well as my own doings in the format, last
time I covered up for November, with a lot of things that were really going to
be important, however this time e grow more into the format, without further
ado, lets get into this post:
GUYS JUST BEFORE STARTING THE REPORT, READ THIS NOTE:
It was questioning my mind whether it was okay to write
pokemon blogs and use images, I am quoting this answer from support pokemon’s
site: I APPLY THIS TO ALL MY POSTS AS WELL, I DO NOT OWN THE NAMES OR IMAGES OF
ANY POKÉMONS USED IN THIS OR ANY OTHER BLOGPOST OF MINE.
“Unfortunately
we're not in a position to review requests to use the Pokémon intellectual
property (including its characters, names, and designs). As a result, we have
to ask that you not use it in or associate it with your project in any way.”
Starting of December:
Dropping the Anchor in a Garden
So we start of December and if you have been into my last
post I was working on a team composite of dhelmise, nihilego, tapu fini,
salamence, marowak and tapu koko, we what do you think was made of that? It
wasn’t so very successful though, why you ask? I think that the main reason
that team failed was not enough coverage between the core, the core in typing
was solid but didn’t cover a huge part of the metagame which made it into the
big issue; moreover adding marowak and then forcing a special tapu koko was not
the idea I was most comfortable with not because I like to use weird mons, but
I indeed added these for coverage, I soon figured it gave my team glaring
weaknesses to the all big ground typing on three of my pokemons, I needed a
physical a tapu koko to be able to hit oranguru for super effective damage and
marowak gave me issues so I soon switched to a pallosand, this made the team
even worse, and made me think that tapu koko + marowak were the better pokemon
in structure overall and I wasn’t even completely satisfied with them, so what
is our next step? Build a new team.
This lead me to think what should I build around next? Ting
ting ting! I begin looking into the new pokemons that have been revealed; and
then suddenly ‘it’ catches my eye, the it was non other than a beautiful
comfey. At first impression its ability stats and moves really impressed me,
this was what gave rise to my first ever installment of smeargle used
spotlight. Comfey was going to be centering my next team, so I start of
teambuilding, at this point I have decided that till the London internationals
I will be running this team after soon which I will be moving on to a new team
after the metagame is more firmly set and determined in such a major and big
tournament.
First thoughts on a comfey were the self staller set, even
though I was not convinced on the inside to make this set work, I started
building off of it heavily based on intimidate support first drafts were adding
a krookodile and and arcanine as well, this was going to work for a little bit
but the thing was that I soon felt being lazy on that build, this is why I
switched over to gyarados and arcanine a somewhat more common pairing, I
rounded out the team with tapu koko and celesteela as well as decidueye which I
thought will give me good cover for a faster alolan marowak counter (fun thing
I ran an electric seed on it) it also had haze for the ever notorious
eeveemancy for whenever I will face it and other annoying intimidaters as well;
but decidueye was the first pokemon that did not work properly ith the team so
I decided to look for a fast substitution. Switching over to alolan marwak or
garchomp was going to be surely an obvious pick, but then too many people are
aware and keep it on their priority to-counter list when building their teams.
That is why I did a different ground type that I haven’t used or tested before
but I have seen people test this pokemon out for themselves too, non other than
a pallosand. Now testing the team further I noticed big problems and then
replaced torcoal for my arcanine for quite a lot of reasons which made my team
much better. Following is the team in detail:
The Team:
So the complete team looks something like this:
First of all the supportive star of this team, the comfey;
as you know before that its ability and movesets really compelled me to use it,
its actual self during the evolution of this team up to the final product
struggled a lot in terms of the moveset, like it freakin changed a whole lot,
from self staller to trick room setter to healing supporter; and then all into
one, I will explain the role of each move, firstly draining kiss, it really
does not need much big of an introduction to itself, priority move that heals
too but as you can guess it wasn’t strong enough also I had problems using any
offense from confey inside a psychic terrain, which blocks priority although
good to note that synthesis and floral healing work. Draining kiss 3hkos the
dragons in this format and then also provides a chip damage thing to break
significant sashes on things such as kartana or ninetales which would then be
able to connect an attack , up next I will explain trick room, trick room is
very much simple, notes I took while playing this set is that comfey often did
set up two trick rooms in one game this was indeed because of its ability to
heal up the taken damage and also my opponents not taking comfey as a threat on
the field which made them pay for it bad. synthesis and floral healing are
really really important to this teams trick room side of the strategy.
Synthesis is great for comfey to preserve itself and floral healing for
supportive up its partners. The comfey + torcoal combination is something that
I can explain from the following: this spread is build to be perfect partners
with torcoal, the strategy and thought behind this comfey spread as a trick
room setter is that comfey can use trick room to make slower mons go fast, then
the main focus becomes the setters side which is usually a sweeper, however
with floral healing you can always cover up the taken damage making your trick
room stance stronger, also if your opponents figure out your strategy that
comfey can use to heal its partner, then comfey becomes the target comfey,
therefore I gave it the move called synthesis which now recovers up comfey
itself, which keeps up you trick room stance for even more longer. This
situation is great with a torcoal as a partner, in sun the healing power of
synthesis is boosted as well as the eruption abuser torcoal needs maximum hp to
do max damage, floral healing helps it out giving out more powerful eruptions.
Also not only for torcoal but in some games it was also useful alongside
celesteela to help it keep itself up and keep getting the all important beast
boosts.
Upnest has to be torcoal the solution I have for problems
more than one, intentionally when building this team I wanted to be keeping
away from the torcoal even knowing their synergy but then I decided to put it
on for good, I was mainly using arcanine for its burn up potential to ohko a
celesteela but that was bad as it wasn’t staying around for a long time, also I
needed something that could go well with my pallosand and potentially support
it more, with the addition of the floral healing on my team. Torcoal’s
supportive aspect counts with setting up the drought for both comfey and
pallosand comfey can get stronger synthesis heals with the help of the sunshine
whereas it solves my problems with keeping up a pallosand on the field, my main
issue with pallosand was that it could not survive much attacks and therefore
was able to give out less offensive potential, torcoal’s drought cuts the power
of the water type moves in half/reduces them by 50% which makes pallosand worth
a go in this format too. On torcoal’s offensive side it was very much useful
and provided me with the same role I was mainly requiring from my arcanine it
does handle celesteela but better with more bulk and stronger coverage. Torcoal
was one of my main trick room attackers and I was quite glad on the decision of
keeping solar beam to combat with the higher chances of us facing a gastrodon
in this format.
Gyarados is going to become a weird one in this team
especially due to the presence of drought but that wasn’t just it, although
this gyarados is quite standard I will explain the basics for it in the sake of
this format. The spread allows it to outspeed garchomp at a + 1. Gyarados can
even do more than 90% from its hydro vortex in sun to a opposing torcoal,
mainly when playing my gyarados I have gyarados finish up the water type
offensive work again the fire types and if they reveal their fire types late/in
trick room pallosand is up for taking the win for me especially noticeably
being slower than alolan marowak. Overall gyarados was a useful pokemon forming
my common leads with comfey.
Pallosand is the palace of sand pokemon, to make sure it
doesn’t become being called a pile of sand I felt good after putting good
support around it, as you could have seen pallosand has a weakness policy this
is my item choice due to pallosand having a whole lot of weaknesses, a lot of
the times pallosand was hit by a super effective attack, that activates it
weakness policy; then the pallosand can do huge amounts of damage to any
opponents especially with the ground coverage it is quite strong.i switched
over to the more offensive option of giga drain as I was having problems
against a gastrodon and who knows about when a milotic will pop up in this
format, this is why I liked my pallosand even more, giga drain also allowed my
pokemon to get its hp back and solve any further issues.
Now time for the legends to be discussed sure does my tapu
koko look very interesting from its base but I have a good reason for it when
firstly building this team I was palnning to do a bulkier offensive team; so I
had a assault vest on my tapu koko to survive for longer in the final versions
of this team tapu koko was still pretty good. If someone is wondering then this
spread is the same that wolfe glick featured in one of his videos and I
straight up copied it from there, two biggest traits of this spread are that it
gives my tapu koko enough speed to outspeed a garchomp and then it also gives
my pokemon enough special defense to take tapu koko mirror matches better in
terms of throwing the annoying dazzling gleam at each other. Tapu koko’s bulk
was much I loved and liked for this team, especially when combined with the
intimidate support from my gyarados tapu koko was both able to a big amount of
damage and also made it do a big amount of switching in and out with such bulk
other than being a glass cannon that it is.
Last up on my tea is the celesteela, I chose this mon
because I knew it would make good partners with a tapu koko. Celesteela was
somewhat going to be specially offensive, to be honest I have tested both
physically and specially offensive celesteelas and then I have much liked the
specially offensive celesteelas in my play, also I knew that I really wanted to
make my celesteela into a specially offensive one with 2 attacks and a
supporting move. Which is exactly what became of this pokemon. I gave my
celesteela just enough speed to 2hko a maximum bulk tapu lele as well as 2hko a
max sdef and hp non positive natured celesteela with my stronger fire move
other than the usual flamethrower, fire blast this will help me loads to
overcome opposing celesteela stalls. I really didn’t know what I really needed
to do with the bulk investment so I kinda just evened out the investment in
both defenses, celesteela never let me down, it was a good pokemon to have for
sure in my battles and I liked it a lot.
With this team I concluded my pre-London internationals time,
now we were to head into the London internationals, following were some of the
expectations:
Expected Londons
metagame:
Gastrodon:
Apart from the previous ones used before, gastrodon a few
days before the internats was picking up a lot of popularity, this surely made
it quite worth a choice for the internationals.
Tapu koko + Bulu:
These were the two tapu pokemons that I have to say we were
seeing quite a lot in the metagame results from different tourneys around the
world I thought these two would make quite a good combination that could be
possibly popular for the internats.
Pelliper:
Just like tapu koko + tapu bulu, pelliper was also seeing
quite some usage in the top cut results from the tourneys politoed has cut on
quite some usage due to the ability of not being able to use helping hand as
well as icy wind which would have made it quite viable but right now pelliper
happens to be the best thing in the format for the rain setting comprising of
strategies as thunder electric type in the back.
Londons Begins:
So here we are as the dates close in to December 9th
fun fact is that I actually thought that internats will start off on the
December 11th but it was starting off 2 days earlier than what I had
expected, I was as hyped as everyone and ready to see what comes out on the
top. As for Internats my favorites were going to be Cybertron, Wolfe Glick and
Ashton Cox as always. To my surprise champs like Arash Ommati and Ray Rizzo
also competed at this year’s Londons internationals.
Day 1 Notes:
Even though I got in on the stream when something around
round 7 was being streamed, I was able to get loads of cool new info in what
was going on with the top tier metagame choices, Londons was sure a big whirl
on what we actually think of as the metagame and will change it quite more than
our expectations, most of them are regarding what was being mainly used in the
londons’ metagame:
·
Gastrodon
and Porygon 2 in big usage: Biggest surprise in the changing metagame was
the hug inflow of gastrodon and porygon 2, this was probably done due to
everyone expecting more rain and strong oranguru counters. Porygon 2 especially
saw way more usage than oranguru
·
Tapu
Usage: Jumping into the stream I clearly saw more tapu koko and tapu bulu
being used than tapu lele according to day 1 which was quite a surprise to me
as I have seen many people state tapu lele as the best pokemon in this format,
but I think for some it doesn’t work that way.
·
Z-Move
Garchomp: Another noticeable thing I saw was the use of the poison jab as
well as the important tectonic rage on garchomp, this is not what is the
thought of a standard garchomp but if the top tier ones in the format say so
then garchomp’s new potential has to lie within the groundinium-z power to use
the drastically offensive move. This I think mainly was brought in due to
intimidates as well as bulky arcanines being a big thing. Poison jab was sure
to be a big thing against tapu bulu.
·
Substitute
Celesteela: London also clearly had a big number of substitute celesteela,
celesteela is being counted in as a win con role in this format at londons,
celesteela stalls in the game are a big part of a person’s team. The substitute
tou on the given celesteela mostly does
replace the traditional flamethrower or wide guard.
·
Toxic
usage in big numbers: A lot of people were also using the move called
toxic, we saw it on teams of top players like Till Bomer, Markus Stadter, Billa
and Chuppa Cross, in the form of gastrodon, 2 arcanines and a porygon 2
respectively. Most of these toxic users also had a form of recovery and were
being used alongside a celesteela team. This toxic stall made the celesteela
win con stronger too. This was also done to somewhat counter the teams that
take advantage of tapu bulu’s grassy terrain recovery and nerf them.
·
A New
Weather, Sand: this was indeed very surprising for many people seeing big
numbers of gigallith flow into this tournament, this was explained by chuppa
cross in his interview, where I think he explained it as his trick room alolan
marowak counter, It also could have been seen taking up the role of the wide
guard usage on teams with celesteela that were running substitute.
·
Z-move Raichu:
we also saw majority of people using z-crystal raichu with shattered
psyche, also we saw more raichu’s usage with tapu lele than with tapu koko as
we would have expected to see more.
·
Rain: we
did saw a lot of rain too in the metagame of the internats, this wouldn’t be
unecessary to saw that all four weathers were seen in terms of good action, hail,
sand and sun were their own wonders but most surprisingly we saw weird rain
teams, especially we saw a lot of rain teams with golduck and even politoed
instead of the traditional as seen before pelliper but it is not correct that
pelliper wasn’t among these, now being called as the double duck combination. Politoed
was mainly comprising of sets with encore and perish song to stall out
opponents mainly with the celesteela stall in a 2 v 3 or 2v 4 situation. Golduck
was also being used in teams with electric types in the back, it also does get
a fast encore, most likely it was being used with soak in the back wth electric
types to pick up kos on many opponents.
·
Magnezone,
the new Celesteela counter: until now we have been seeing fire types like
torcoal, marowak, arcanine as well as strong electric types like tapu koko and
xurkitree being the only celesteela counters, but some people acknowledged the
correct roles of the celesteela and realized that it would be always preserved,
they formulated magnezone as the perfect counter; magnezone gets the magnet
pull ability which does not allow celesteela to switch out of battles and then
magnezone can use electric type attacks on it. Most magnezone that we saw as in
clear terms three on top tier players’ teams were three of them ran a set of
substitute with leftovers ad two stab moves with the partners comprising of
mostly of tapu bulu and politoed.
·
Bulky
format: most important of all the notes In my opinion is that we got to see
a very much bulky format from the very start of this season. We have seen this
happen in the past, but not like this, moreover as we move over to the world
championships we start seeing very bulky pokemons in the later terms of format
but in this season it has been seen as a trend from the start.
Day 2 Notes:
·
Araquanid:
and see now who we have araquanid is actually becoming a serious thing in the
metagame, big things to note about this pokemon are that it gets that most of
the time hydro vortex z move which allows it to do big damage to any pokemons. Araquanid
really seemed the second option for a water type in the same tier that gyarados
lies but with a different supportive move, wide guard. Seeing two top players
like pokealex and Arash Ommati using araquanid really do make it seem worth
something to try out.
·
Taunting
Tapus: during the course of day two we saw quite some usage for taunt tapu
koko as well as taunt tapu lele being a common thing, after the international
championships, it is still going to be a big thing!
·
Muk’s
offensive usage: we all expected to see the notorious muk being used as an
annoying minimize setter which made it itself a staller aspect of the metagame,
however at londons all muks we saw did not have the move minimize but instead
were running more offensive sets on them.
·
Celesteela’s
defensive aspects: We saw more celesteela that were specially defensive,
this was confirmed due to beast boost raising the special defense stat of
celesteela often on when it got a knock out.
·
Goodra: we
did saw some goodra throughout this tournament and it was really interesting and
seemed quite a viable option from this point on in this format. Goodra getting
loads of special defense to survive attacks from the specially offensive tapus
and then also getting loads of coverage including sludge bomb with the sap
sipper ability makes it into quite a worthy tapu counter to use in this format,
it also gets coverage like fire type and electric type which also seems of
great importance in this format.
Top cut teams:
·
Tapu koko, Celesteela, Arcanine, Garchomp,
Gastrodon, Gigalith.
·
Tapu lele, Xurkitree, Gyarados, Alolan marowak,
Araquanid, porygon 2.
·
Tapu lele, Celesteela, Arcanine, Krookodile,
Gastrodon, Porygon 2.
·
Tapu Koko, Kartana, Gyarados, Alolan Raichu, Gigalith,
Porygon 2.
·
Kartana, Alolan Ninetales, Milotic, Alolan
Marowak, Hariyama, Oranguru.
·
Tapu Bulu, Salamence, Politoed, Magnezone, Hariyama,
Porygon 2.
·
Tapu Koko, Tapu Bulu, Pelliper, Golduck, Alolan
Muk, Porygon 2.
·
Tapy Lele, Kartana, Alolan Raichu, Alolan Muk,
Peliper, Alolan Marowak
Overall Favorite teams:
Wolfe glick: wolfe had a really interesting team to start with not
only did he brought a magnezone and politoed to surprise all he also had some
every other interesting things in his team like having substitute on three of
his pokemons and then the most interesting of all, the figy berry gluttony muk
which is surely seeking a lot of discussion in the chatrooms right now.
Billa’s team: the most interesting one in my opinion was this very
team, it included a lot of aspects to aid celesteela in becoming a wonderful
win-condition pokemon, some things we got to see are the toxic and morning sun
arcanine, gigalith and the added staller aspect of a tapu bulu running nature’s
madness as well as the move snarl we sure to make celesteela into a monster of
a pokemon to stall.
Till bomer’s Gastrodon: like other people till was using his own
strategy to aid the celesteela, we saw things like toxic and sandstream to help
cover up for celesteela but till took it serious with his stockpile recover and
toxic combination of gastrodon. Especially using the move z-stockpile to
everyone’s surprise (which recovers you to full health and then goes for
stockpile) sure was tough for some people to get through the day.
Ashton cox’s Togedemaru: when he was on stream a big part of his
team got to showcase the togedemaru which was sure to be an interesting disruptor
in the form of fakeout + nuzzle + zing zap + spikey shield which greatly
supported his gyarados and interesting swords dance tapu bulu.
Future Inspirations
and team plans?
So from seeing all this tournament a pokemon that caught my
eye quite much was gigalith outta nowhere! That inspired me to do a team around
abusing its weather initial thoughts were stoutland + gigalith but then I found
an alolan dugtrio especially after seeing the calculations of the following
that it can ohko a tapu lele and mostly a marowak, I have come up with the
following set with ofcourse the partner as gigalith:
Dugtrio-Alola @ Life Orb
Ability: Sand Force
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Iron Head
- Earthquake
- Protect
- Toxic
Conclusion:
This was the first part of my december report, I did this
into two parts as I really wanted to cover up the London internationals, I’ll
post the second part of December report in the end of this month, hope you
enjoyed and learned from this post, bye for now
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