Hi guys today I am back to give out my monthly VGC report as
you guys may have guessed it we have just passed January by the time I post
this so I am super excited to discuss and post all of my experiences in this
fun month. Finally starting off well with the month 2017 hoping that the
upcoming year is going to bring only improvements and happiness to everyone,
with that lets get into this month’s report:
Teambuilding in late December/ the New Year Team:
So guys as December came off to a close and I finished up
doing my other blog works I decided to teambuild during the winter break we had
here, as teambuilding really is the most fun part for me in VGC, so I starting
coming up with some crazy ideas at first I thought it was again gonna be like
those times when I can’t come up with something actually useful and fun so I
was quite hopeless to build up a fun team then one day I my mind was gifted
outta nowhere the idea of making a team around an assault vest celesteela, it
is something people used extremely early meta and even call it the early meta
tests if you will, but it never got any time to shine brightly, so I decided oh
hey! Why not go for it to start of my team with (this is the same team you have
seen a glimpse of in my previous report’s end). So there I was with my paper
and my pen and started to teambuild:
Teambuilding Process:
So I wrote down celesteela and then what, ofcourse the four
moves I wanted to use with it, I really felt like pairing it up with the all
popular marowak which takes up its electric weakness as well as its fire
weakness but then I was more scared than anything to go against mirrors, so I
decided to pick up a different route, the side of seaking I mainly chose for
this team of mine, seaking added awhole new partner with celesteela to come,
with my mind with scalds I could ofcourse ohko those marowaks but upon seeing
the special attack stat happened to be a huge blow to my strategies’ confidence
but gave me a way of what to put next on the team.
When you think of celesteela generally the best pokemons
around it happen to be either tapu lele and krookodile or tapu koko and
garchomp a few people were using gastrodon + arcanine alongside it but I didn’t
took into consideration because I was not about going with a bulkier side to
this team, having seaking really made me decide quick that I wanted tapu koko
and garchomp around my celesteela and seaking, mainly as seaking can take
advantage of my out koko’s discharge and then I can go for scald on the side to
ko the marowaks with a boost and remove the threat this sounded really well to
me and I felt very much comfortable with it.
Now I really needed to centralize and seriously the word
‘centralize’ this team around the assault vest celesteela so I really wanted to
come up with some bright ideas on how can I keep it up on the field for longer
and THEN IT HAPPENS yes indeed the idea of alolan Persian coming to my mind was
the ‘it’ factor in my favor, since celesteela’s main job is staying on the
field and with assault vest it however does get bulkier but cannot get the
option of recovery on its own pairing it up with an alolan Persian might as
well be the factor this guy needs with fast z-parting shots, foul play and
snarl as well as fakeout in one pokemon can really bring out the potential in this
pokemon so Persian felt like the right call, then for the last slot I needed
something to be paired up with my celesteela to switch into, it came out to be
non other than a drampa as I also just realized that I had little to no
counters to trick room, on paper however theoretically drampa was the correct
option but I felt like I’ll ultimately end up changing it to either muk or a
alolan marowak for better of this team, but drampa turned out to d just the
trick I wanted it to pull off
Testing, Faults and Improvements:
So as soon as I build this team on paper I came to test it
as soon as possible, my general call for the team was ‘oh its gonna turn out
being bad like all the other ones that I make’ but soon after some tests I felt
like giving it the love it deserved I really was amazed to see that my ‘dumb’
as once stated by myself ideas were working out really well.
Ofcourse everyone knows this by now that no team is perfect
so wasn’t this one especially when you put up a theoretically new concept such
that wit the drampa + Persian + Celesteela, it won’t be perfect until done
properly and fixed according to needs. Everything on this team was fine only
problems I was facing were garchomp and alolan ninetales matchups, I soon
realized I needed to make some clear adjustments on this team of mine and what
I ended up changing just gave me the factor that I really wanted to achieve
with this team and made it better, they are discussed under with the individual
pokemons in the team:
The Team:
Celesteela @ Assault Vest
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 36 Atk / 4 Def / 116 SpA / 100 Spe
Sassy Nature
- Heavy Slam
- Flamethrower
- Giga Drain
- Air Slash
So first comes the base or call the celestial star of this
team, the assault vest celesteela, no matter how dumb this sounds I actually
made it work and I am super happy with it, without spoiling much I really need
to talk theory instead of bragging about it. Celesteela soon during the first
few tests became a huge pebble in the way of this teams’ success it wasn’t that
it never worked but just sometimes I felt like my celesteela got me walled up
against those few choices that really made me lose some games, another huge
problem was the inefficiency of my ev spread that greatly clashed with this
issue. Before this spread I wanted my celesteela to survive a modest life orb
tapu koko’s thunder which isn’t the most popular of things, also celesteela was
ko’ing a lot of pokemons during battle and getting the often useless special
defense boost especially as when I had to heal it I had to switch. I knew I
needed to change the spread to meet efficient cause.
First thing in my mind to improve this ev spread were that I
actually wanted my ev spread to allow me to survive up to a modest full spa
specs magnezone tbolt in my terrain but that wasn’t possible, so I toned it
down to a timid life orb koko’s t-bolt survival which was something that I was
gonna face most commonly and most often, I really feel weird about this spread
but then again I added a 100 evs which give me a total of 85 speed stat this I
really needed to speed creep opposing celesteelas especially against the
leftosub ones which proved troublesome in 1v1 mirrors, but now you probably
think how is this ev’ing efficient? Well it also got me another major benchmark
I wanted to hit with this team, then for the rest of spa I could invest into my
special attack and often on when celesteela got a ko it turned even stronger
due to its beast boost especially with more spa investment. This celesteela
worked just the best for what I wanted for this team of mine.
Now lets talk about this celesteela’s rest of the work, its
moveset, the moveset allows celesteela to cover a lot of things on the
offensive spectrum of this metagame as a mixed attack, that staple heavy slam
ko’s even the bulkier 252 hp 4 defense tapu lele and turns out to be a base 120
power on most of the pokemons in this format. Whereas moves like flamethrower
coverup against those mirror matches and work great against things like kartana
and tapu bulu, giga drain my main way of taking down a gastrodon was also a
mild form of recovery which never disappointed whenever used on a gastrodon.
Air slash is a general stab attack and I got to surprisingly use it against a
lot of haryamas and tapu bulus. Considered me facing a garchomp mirror being
scary as you read up there might make you think why didn’t I went with the
option of hp ice of something then? Well keep reading as I actually modified my
garchomp into a good garchomp counter then.
Seaking @ Focus Sash
Ability: Lightning Rod
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Ice Beam
- Soak
- Protect
Moving on with this report we have the partner of celesteela
my seaking, seaking surprisingly surprised me more than I expected it to
surprise me and it also gave me enough adrenaline to write up a smeargle used
spotlight about it on my blog as you would have read on my blog last month, the
more I look into this pokemon the more confident I feel about it becoming a
part of the metagame at some point in the season, upon use I even felt strange
how handn’t stumbled upon the idea of using a seaking with a celesteela.
The main point and reason of use about seaking is that it
can partner amazingly well with tapu koko especially in addition to suppoting
celesteela; I can recall many and many games I played with this team where I
had the on field stance of seaking + tapu koko on th field which with as turns
progress became into an even powerful and strong offensive option and covered
the field greatly mainly because if they brought in their garchomps of marowaks
seaking would be able to handle them while tapu koko further boosts seaking and
damages the other partner of garchomp and marowak. And calling it out here
might as well become a really strong combination in this format of discovered
by someone in it.
Seaking I brought to most games where I felt like I really
wanted to abuse tapu koko and it was a great wincon, seaking each time proved a
great backup support to tapu koko. The moveslot fo scald an ice beam is quite
self explanatory of a special attacker that the seaking is however the moveslot
of soak is interesting. Soak actually happens to be a move that I didn’t use a
whole lot of and it just sat duck there on its moveset, to be honest I felt
like there was nothing else better to go with seaking like maybe even one to
two battles I was able to change tapu koko and bulu’s typing to water so that
tapu koko can run through them just fine. For the evs I felt comfortable for
going into the modest nature as naturally with the speed it was already in that
tier to comfortably outspeed most and most common bulky tapu bulus.
The item choice of sash can be explained really by the fact
that since I didn’t had loads of bulk on my seaking, it became quite frail, so
to overcome that I gave it a focus sash which came in handy many times in
battle especially against a 1v1 versus a tapu bulu.
Tapu Koko @ Choice Specs
Ability: Electric Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Discharge
- Thunderbolt
- Dazzling Gleam
- Hidden Power [Ground]
I chosed to give my tapu koko choice specs as I mainly
plotted this pokemon around the seaking and wanted to go for discharge from the
very start of this team, I have used choice specs tapu koko before and i feel
like it gives me quite some comfortable options against some select options
such as in doing more damage to mirrors or doing more damage to celesteelas
also since discharge takes over a moveslot choice specs makes it much comfortable
for you to run your tapu koko with 4 offensive moves, so discharge fits in much
better with the item selection as well, I never had a complaint by being locked
up into a single move with this pokemon thanks to its trusty partners.
Garchomp @ Expert Belt
Ability: Rough Skin
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 244 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Poison Jab
- Dragon Claw
- Protect
Garchomp is a member of this team who I wasn’t giving much
attention to and thought it was only put there because of a tapu koko but I saw
it being very much a star of its own for the betterment of this team of mine,
garchomp being able to use that groundinium z which is ofcourse and as I
realize a staple for most garchomps was great however it didn’t suit me well, I
could just never feel comfortable using it I would always end up attacking in
their protect wasting it most of the times, also I often got the turn one
z-move fevers and felt like later n the same match ‘oh boy only if I could have
saved up my z-move for the persian’ so ended up changing my item to expert belt
because of the reason I just told and the following problem:
A great big problem
for this team was the all respected garchomp mirror threat, adding just four
evs in its hp, defense and special defense is very much efficient as in the
garchomp mirror matches. So what it basically allows me to do is live the
opposing archomp’s dragon claw + the rough skin damage that I take from
attacking it; since I saw most other people surviving my attack and I fell to
their, I felt like making this however seemingly small but huge change, now how
does that explain my item choice? The problem was the most opposing garchomps
ere now surviving my attacks and it was just
speed tie war also me not being abe to control my z-power concentrations
really well gave me issues, expert belt sure is a very much unexpected item for
a garchomp this season but really benefits me in the mirror match as it would
allow me to get the sure ko back on those garchomps which was really good
overall. Also my only thing to achieve with the z-move was to do more damage to
muk and marowak and expert belt lets me do the same, this also gets and breaks
ev specified variants like opposing garchomps as I just discussed up there as
well as tapu bulus and whatever goodra and drampa that this format may carry,
reason that I didn’t chose life orb was that drampa needed it and it would
damage me back in the mirror, that is why the ev spread and the item is such a
much better individual choice for this garchomp.
Also on the last bit of info on this ev spread, putting in
four sdef evs allows some rolls to lower by quite a significant amount
including mainly those porygon 2 ice beam rolls on garchomps.
Persian-Alola @ Darkinium Z
Ability: Fur Coat
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 100 SpD / 156 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Parting Shot
- Foul Play
- Snarl
Persian is more awesome than I thought it would be, I
thought Persian would just really turn out to be one of those side gimmicky
pokemons, but its truth is that you can’t throw a Persian of every team however
with this team it came with a clear and a big purpose that it simply performed
well. Persian has just an amazing on field stance to start of with discussing
this pokemon it totally does seem like the best pokemon as a support to be and
not exaggerating here, I was thinking Persian is like a really bad pokemon that
you use for some days select battles only but there is much more to it in
depth. Of its own self.
So to explain it,
Persian can sit on the field comfortably as if your opponents have a physical
attacker out you can mostly tanks its hits thanks to your trusty fur coat
ability that you get in addition to that you can use foul play on them so that
their own physical attack stat backfires at them. If they bring in their
special sweepers then you can simply use snarl on them, the supportive pokemons
can’t do loads of damage to Persian they might be able to get away bits of
damage on the bulky beast Persian becomes. Or if you feel like it just use
parting shot to be efficient and switch out into a bulky pokemon. Its on field
stance with celesteela was especially right like how I imagined it to be and it
proved even more useful.
Item choice is like duh as Persian was selected for the
z-parting shot role on this team and often if why it is used in the first place
as well, to talk more about this item there is a really fun fact to begin with
if you guys use darkinium z combined with the power of foul play it gives off
an amazing base 175 power which was both surprising and impressive to me
although you only use that move in those select few situations who knows it
might just end up paying of exactly as you wanted it to. To talk about my
spread selection go and feast upon the calculations below that explain all for
it:
Last but not least drampa became my final choice for the member
of this team and worked really well, to explain my experience with drampa is
like to explain it as of a camerupt you feel like it can be built to survive
attacks but really its most efficient and only job is to dish out loads of
damage on opposing pokemons, as you read up there drampa came on this team to
handle the trick room problems and the weather counters.
Drampa @ Life Orb
Ability: Cloud Nine
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpA
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast
- Hyper Voice
- Protect
Drampa became such an excellent source for my team to
threaten trick room teams it could provide loads of offense and especially
since it outspeeds the most traditional tr pokemon options and is defensively
really good against a alolan marowak made it fit this slot really well. Its
moveset doesn’t need much explanation other than why I chose to give it fire
blast over something like flamethrower, well initially it was flamthroer but as
I realized that I had that usual 1v1 problems against a celesteela, I moved to
give this pokemon the move fire blast it was much more effective in that 1v1
situation against a celesteela where I could do
ire damage to it and get it down before it took me out with its heavy
slams as well as those leech seed stalls. Hyper voice was really clutch in some
games where I was able to do some pokemons in just below that ko range, and
then drampa came in even if it was to give off one attack, it got me that
double ko in a single hit.
The debate of me chosing over the ability of this pokemon
was quite a tough one. On one side I wasn’t sure of the late game celesteela
stalls as well as the threatening tapu bulu, whereas on the other I end I was
quite unsure of my weather matchups and would love to get that nice counter to
weather matchups with cloud nine. And then finally I happened to put on cloud
nine since after the change over on my team to fre blast on drampa I felt just
fine and cloud nine could provide me a huge boost especially against those rain
teams of double ducks. The only problems and cons of drampa were that since
this team didn’t carry the trick room itself and drampa was able to counter it
well and was o be brought against tr matchups
but whenever drampa needed that opportunity to come in and attack
without trick room around it gave me its own frail problems. Maybe a
alternative item choice would be something like a sitrus berry or who knows
even a aguav,iapapa or a figy berry on it.
Dallas Regionals:
So as soon as I ended up finishing writing up about my old
team, Dallas Regionals came by, so here I am to discuss it, following are my
observations on this tournament:
1.
Unusual Berries in Use: So guys I feel like this
was quite to my surprise that in dallas regionals we saw a lot of usage of
berries like Aguav berry, Figy berry as well as Iapapa berry which actually all
seem to have the same effect on a pokemon. They heal 50% health when the
pokemon drops down to 25% of its max health previously this item was seen only
to be used with pokemons like snorlax and muk which ghet the ability gluttony
which makes the effect of these berry as it recovers 50% health at 50%, but now
in dallas they were seen being used with pokemons like tapu fini as well as
trevenant and funnily enough with the substitutes on the same pokemon, this
might become a part of the metagame; from personal experience I have seen a few
berry arcanines while practice.
2.
Tapu Fini: I have no idea about overall
metagame but with all the matches that
we saw on stream we saw quite a significant number of tapu fini teams popping
up whether they were supported by eeveemany to were their own set up sweepers
like calm mind, we saw a slight boos in this pokemons usage; so now it will be
official to say that all four tapu pokemons are viable and to be very honest it
really excites me to use on efficiently on a team myself
3.
Kartana + Tapu Koko Teams: we also saw some
significant number of kartana + tapu koko teams instead of the usually seen
celesteela + tapu koko. If you are a fan of youtube and vgc, you might have
seen Cybertron’s update on his London’s team to the one he brought on san jose
where he replaced a couple f his team members with tapu koko and kartana, it
sure wasn’t supposed to be a team specific thing as now we are seeing a lot of
kartana + tapu koko teams popping up they might as well form a big part of the
metagame after this regionals.
January a Month of Tests and learning:
So guys I thought instead of this post being my own teams on
these monthly posts I feel like january would be the final month I would have
loads of fun because upcoming are tough exam study times once again in life so
I feel that this month I am going to try own the maximum number of fun
archetypes that interest me and carry out my favorite hobby I VGC teambuilding
so when I am done with those teams, I feel like I will write about the teams
that I have used give a small or who knows if I have enough time to write up a
detailed analyses on the individual archetypes or the teams that I have built
around them to give you guys an insight on how these work, so by now I have
used strategies like sand, sun and rain I most likely really want to do teams
that involve the ninetales + sandslash combination and some other pokemons that
pique my interest too so lets see what teams I can come up with in the month of
January, don’t know yet as I am writing this as we go along the month.
Hail Team:
Teambuilding Process:
Oh boy where do we start with here, idk what was wrong with
me when I started to build this team, I felt like I wanted to build a team in a
short time, so I started listing down how could I build around the duo of
ninetales + sandslash which is surprisingly now an ice type, I listed down some
pokemons, knowing about ninetales’ aurora veil I knew it could help some bulky
mons in the back and as I said it up there I also wanted to build around tapu
fini. So I added it in the back with a weird moveset, the tapu fini part of
this team was working out pretty well but it was bad for the overall health of
a ninetales + sandslash combination and the combination I wanted to build
around wasn’t working, so completely decided to scrap this team as I had absolutely
0 answers to arcanine.
So start of the second build, it didn’t work out well enough
with the two mons in the back being very defensive. So I started to build hyper
offense, as I feel quite comfortable with it. Also I throw this team quite
quickly and it turned up having the rain as well, I will explain. I realized
and important note of ninetales here is that it doesn’t work really well as a
much of an offensive unit but supports the ones in the back, so I dropped the
defensive sets and took out for all out offense I’ll explain my mon choices
down with the individual explanation of the team and will also tell you guys
about how rain got to be a part of it, to sum it up for the role of this team,
it ended up being a very hyper offensive team that takes little turns to rest,
switching is the only defensive option and it was well.
The Team:
Ninetales-Alola @ Choice Specs
Ability: Snow Warning
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Blizzard
- Freeze-Dry
- Moonblast
- Icy Wind
Ninetales to start of with it I said that its offense wasn’t
impressing me a lot too, and I needed to outspeed garchomp with the timid
nature, choice specs was the item choice to give it some more offense in its
nature that would really help me make the 9slash combination more of an overall
offensive unit and also it makes my ninetales efficient for the role that I
wanted to make it do for. For the rest of it upon losing the aurora veil which
I think suits with teams much better with teams that have bulky set up mons in
the back, was never felt required of this very much and extremely hyper
offensive team. For the rest of the moves I believe that freeze dry proved as a
great move especially piloting this ice duo combination that a lot of people
can tackle defensively with things like gastrodon or other bulky water types,
also it gives me that single target attack. Moonblast provides extra coverage
especially against things like a hariyama which does seem to be picking up a
lot of viability and helps out a lot in the cases that tapu fini is sent in to
disrupt and also helps milotic gain the misty surge boost that it sure does
then love.
Sandslash-Alola @ Life Orb
Ability: Slush Rush
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Iron Head
- Earthquake
- Protect
Sandslash is the partner in crime surely with ninetales,
ninetales’ ability to use the snow warning ability activating the hail weather
allowing sand slash to double its speed despite its terrible defensive typing
and somewhat a very good offensive typing can cover a lot of important pokemons
in this format, all I needed was a little bit of more offense and called for
the most important item and probably the most sufficient item for a sandslash,
a life orb, it really helped it boost its speed and also might allow it to do
significantly more damage as it doesn’t get the offense boost from the
disruptive weather that it is put around in, iron head and icicle crash are
quite explainable, however earthquake needs to be; I mainly chose it for
sandslash to cover a lot of pokemons like tapu koko, and other fire types that
threaten it a lot.
Mudsdale @ Assault Vest
Ability: Stamina
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- High Horsepower
- Earthquake
- Close Combat
- Heavy Slam
I needed some more
options to cover things defensively especially against faster pokemons like
tapu koko and give me better coverage options against those fire types even
more, so i added a favorite of mine, mudsdale. Mudsdale became a lot of
goodstuff especially in the cases of those grassy terrains, having a ground
move that is single target as well as works especially well against those trick
room pokemons like marowak and well as alolan muk that are popular in those
teams, moreover to full trick room mode teams, mudsdale does exceptionally well
(shhh! Araquanid) against pokemons like magnezone, drampa and also gives me the
steel coverage against the fairies and rock types in this format.
Tapu Koko @ Electrium Z
Ability: Electric Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Thunder
- Protect
- Dazzling Gleam
Next up is tapu koko, tapu koko was just put on the team, I
needed to use a physical tapu koko, but then surely changed over to a special
set for reasons coming up ahead. Tapu koko again became a pokemon that could
give me a lot of offense in this format, but this time I gave this pokemon a
bit of a different item, yes it is a electrium z move. Combine that with the
power of stab, electric terrain boost with the already b.p of base 185 can do a
lot of damage. It ohko’d some pokemons like tapu fini and even arcanine in one
shot. That power really made it seem much impressive to me, on the on paper
build I kept my tapu koko with taunt instead of dazzling gleam but then when I
figured this team can OHKO those trick room setter from a double up target. I felt
more comfortable with using the move dazzling gleam as it also happened to
cover pokemons like garhomp and krookodile to which tapu koko seems helpless
against, also so that I wasn’t running wide guard I was not very confident to
use this pokemon without the fairy move. since I soon felt that koko didn’t
need much speed nor did I required to do koko mirrors and as it didn’t have the
life orb, I decided to give it a modest nature that can really help boost its
offensive potential also to make my scarf peliper outspeed and soak things
before koko attacks
Pelipper @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Drizzle
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Hurricane
- Soak
- Blizzard
Ok now is when things really do get a lot more interesting.
So I knew you were wondering from when you read it was a weird double weather
team right? I choose pelipper because simply I didn’t have enough time to think
of some other pokemon for this team as I felt like I had a short time to build
it, also it seemed strange as well as interesting, I was really looking for a
wide guard user to over which I gave priority to using a choice scarf peliper,
the reason I did this instead of the normal sashing it was that I needed it to
be fast and be able to use a lot of offensive moves, so I dropped the idea of
wide guard pelipper as I did realize that this team had so little defense on it
as well. Scarf pelipper with timid nature was a good choice because I made it
outspeed my ninetales and koko and used soak before they moved turning their
attacks of freeze dry and thunder or thunderbolt into sure super effective hits
on their target. This rain mode is here because of me oer worrying about a
pokemon such as arcanine. Although choosing timid peliper cutout of its offense
by somewhat a lot, I think that it was worth it for somewhat utility providing
role of this pokemon. The rain mode also helps out my ice duo defensively and
makes tapu koko’s thunder a 100% accurate move. For the last moveslot I chose
to give it the move, blizzard because I could think of potential situations
where I would need my peliper to use a spread attack upon switching in the
ninetales from the other side I could use blizzard and spam it all around,
although didn’t use it much I never felt the need for a better alternative.
Poliwrath @ Fightinium Z
Ability: Swift Swim
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dynamic Punch
- Waterfall
- Encore
- Protect
Poliwrath came from the random, I was all looking for a
pokemon that could benefit from rain so that peliper’s ability just doesn’t
clash in this team, most likely was looking for a ground resist and then tapu
bulu came to my mind, at first I thought it was an excellent choice but then my
senses came to make me realize that I needed a kartana counter much better, the
only pokemon fitting this role was poliwrath, something that can take advantage
of rain as well as a pokemon that can handle kartana, although my persona; urge
to use a wide guard pokemon was never fulfilled my ice duo and partners ko’d
those pokemons and prevented most situations from happening where I would need
it. Poliwrath did its job much fine, it used the strong fighting z move with
double the speed to take down kartanas heavily invested in special defense as
well as did loads to porygon 2, waterfall was good with the rain boost whereas
encore was a little bit of a general disruptor with this team, overall that I
think of this team I think its bits of
disruptive traits like the duo weathers and the electrium z koko are most
unexpected even count up peliper here, made it into a effective offensive one,
don’t think there is much need for me to explain my choice of protect.
So guys that is pretty much how I came up with this team and
I know and do realize that it is extremely strange, this leaves me to next work
on a eeveemancy team or a tapu fini team, most likely I will include them in
one, so lets see what I come up with next for January. This team like the one I
built up there wasn’t that much complex or well defined, instead I will say it
that I am trying to test out these archetypes for myself, so it couldn’t be
much detailed.
Snorlax BD Team:
So then come up with the idea of using snorlax + belly drum
strategy that I saw little of but then I was like, lets make a team. Originally
this was my last idea to build the team around however when having failed
builds of eeveemancy which I thought on paper was extremely good, I was
shattered and came back to my idea of using snorlax. So to begin with my team I
thought I really wanted to start with the combination of snorlax + speed swap
pheromosa and then gave the team and go, be sure to hang on around the
teambuilding process cuz its quite a big one.
Teambuilding Process:
First of all I was and idk really why really lazy in the
past fe days when this idea came to me, so in order to get this team together
all I wrote up to build I this team was
actually pheromosa and snorlax and their roles on paper and then really don’t
know how to build around from there. So the next day I come up with the idea of
putting a core around both snorlax and pheromosa and then connect them with a
link that acts as glue and binds the team together. And then the next moment
idk where that thing went I had the threats listed down and clefairy was the
best idea to start of building from pheromosa and snorlax but I gave it a
different twist and went with the team of a partial trick room set up.
When I started doing the team with trick room setup with
this snorlax then I would most likely want to partner it up with a second
method of speed control as snorlax itself does seem pretty slow and can take
great advantage of a partial trick room
mode, so it really did seem the best option to go for there. Then I just wanted
something to distract opponents from targeting the snorlax as it becomes such a
big threat that it needs something around it, so I go for the somewhat
interesting duo of surf slowking and a gastrodon, the I just round out this
team by kartana for coverage and arcanine for the further intimidate support.after
testing I dropped this team and wanted to build around something new for the
next archetype that I test, that came to be a big fail, but then I came around
the idea of using clefairy taking this team somewhat seriously this time I
started off with what I liked from my few previous tests.
What I put together was a team of pheromosa and snorlax as
the starting points and then putting around clefairy as originally thought of,
rounding out the team with tapu fini and an arcanine with a mimikyu, mimikyu
was a pokemon I did use on the last team and I was quite happy with it to be
very honest. Testing this archetype made me realize real quick that clefairy
was no good. It soon became a target and got took down before snorlax started
doing some real damage also pheromosa was used for much more offense and didn’t
had any time to use speed swap, I also struggled with not having any ground
immunities, what I thought of was testing some more redirection users, then
came to my mind butterfree and it really one up the team as explained ahead,
also I had problems with the weird moveset I was using with tapu fini and
mimikyu, and ended up making them even more strange but through testing a lot I
did realize what I needed for this team and changed it exactly, from this point
the pokemons didn’t change but their variants did by a big measure.
From what ended up the final product of what was supposed to
be speed swap pheromosa and snorlax really gave me a good insight as well as
got me to use tapu fini, in addition to the offensive arcanines and mimikyu; some
options I really was trying to use, in addition to that I also got to put
butterfree on the team which gave it a total different direction and I do took
some notes on its potential. This team report will be a bit different as I do
know most sets apart from pheromosa and snorlax are pretty weird so I will also
give some individual potential write up on each of the pokemons that have weird
sets as how they work as individual mons in this format.
The Team:
Snorlax @ Iapapa Berry
Ability: Gluttony
Level: 50
EVs: 244 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 4 Spe
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Return
- Recycle
- Belly Drum
- High Horsepower
First up is the idea and the original base of this team, to
be honest wasn’t using snorlax in like every battle, because most times I felt
starting off disruptive or offensive, however in the games I brought it totally
dominated the field, and won me the game in a sec, the main problem around
snorlax is putting it in the good speed control as well as a offensive
position. The offensive moves that I chose for this snorlax are return, which
is just a basic good move for stab damage and high horsepower, a move of great
importance in this format in my opinion, since mudsdale’s usage has gone even
less, more people use wide guard, high horsepower is a move that can cover a
big part of this format in many ways especially those electric and fire types.
Now come to the rest of the moveset, the obvious slot is the belly drum one,
from which I will explain the item and bd choice, however the move recycle is
quite interesting, I saw some people who used snorlax also use recycle. This
gives great backup to snorlax, especially when you are not in the most
comfortable position to attack you can use recycle to get your fifty percent
recovery back at an instance and helps you out loads, it even becomes a
recovery move when you use it under 50% of health.
Now for the explanation of ability, item and ev spread. This
is a gluttony snorlax which is the all common one and the item that I use it
with is a figy berry. What gluttony does is allow this pokemon to recover 50%
of its health when it drops down to a 50% so that basically means when you use
belly drum and cut your hp to a half, you regain full health through the figy
berry. Now for the ev spread, I choose to give it max attack and such an hp
number (even) that allows it to procks into its figy berry when it uses belly
drum, if the number of hp I not even then the pokemon will not get the gluttony
recovery and is in great threat of getting ko’ed. I am not providing an
individual potential on this pokemon as this snorlax is pretty standard and by
going through the above you guys will get a thorough idea of how a normal
snorlax works.
Pheromosa @ Life Orb
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Poison Jab
- Protect
- Ice Beam
Pheromosa is the partner in crime with this pokemon, or say
was supposed to be, this ended up being the most standard of pheromosa around.
The reason that I dropped out my original idea of using a speed swap pheromosa
is that also felt the need for ice beam essentially, that is why I had to drop
the use of protect on this set, then again I needed something with protect as
this team didn’t have a lot of protect. Speed swap was not used once in any
battle that I played with this team and the protect from was very much common.
That is why I chose this pheromosa for my team and had to drop the idea of
using speed swap tactics.
Pheromosa’s main idea of use is it being able to cover a
large part of this format that allows it to be really effective, and it is
valued for its high speed that even allows it to outspeed a tapu koko and ohko
it for guarantee with its poison jab attack. High jump kick allows it to ohko
even the bulkiest pokemon in this format that is porygon 2, ice beam gets them
dragons. Hence it covers a lot of pokemons and then a lot of the most commonly
used pokemon, that is why it is used a lot. This ev spread allows this mon to
get an attack boost after it gets an ohko which makes it even more offensive in
combination with this life orb. The cons of pheromosa are that it is extremely
frail and will probably be ko’d by one single hit. Therefore using pheromosa
can be a bit difficult however worth when used correctly. I am not providing an
individual potential on this pokemon as this pheromosa is pretty standard and
by going through the above you guys will get a thorough idea of how a normal
pheromosa works.
Mimikyu @ Ghostium Z
Ability: Disguise
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Shadow Claw
- Play Rough
- Trick Room
- Wood Hammer
Upnext happens to be a mimikyu I really wanted to use this
pokemon on a separate team as soon as I testing out with gavin micheals’ regionals
winning team and now was the best time to use it. I ran it with some moves that
all had their own importance, and the max speed I gave it allows it to outspeed
pokemons up to like tapu lele. Mimikyu is a very diverse pokemon in this
format. That is why it was very flexible, on some previous tests there was some
factor that mimikyu had thatmade it work with snorlax well. Previous to adding
the all weird wood hammer which is my only offensive answer to the annoying
gastrodon as you could guess I was using destiny bond which could also give me
z-destiny bond, a partial redirection attack, I used it once in a battle and
destiny bond on the note that how unexpected it was did really well, but I
eneded up messing up its use and snorlax still had all its problems, so I
dropped it for wood hammer and much better choice for this team. Play rough is
basic stab that allows it to cover dragons and in combination with that misty
terrain it can do boosted damage, the z-crystal allows it to dish out some more
damage as well as provide my team with a z-move user. The speed control form of
trick room is extremely useful for snrolax and tapu fini too.
Now to discuss mimikyu as an individual pokemon in this
format as said before it is extremely diverse and can be done a lot of things
with it can outspeed and ohko tapu lele, on the other end it also has great
distractive importance, upon using it I felt that in battles where opponents
ignore mimikyu too much with the help of its disguise ability it can become a
threat real quick. On the offensive end it get some variety whereas on the
supportive end learns all important moves in this format like taunt as well as
trick room.
Tapu Fini @ Assault Vest
Ability: Misty Surge
Level: 50
EVs: 244 HP / 20 Def / 68 SpA / 156 SpD / 20 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Hidden Power [Ground]
- Moonblast
- Muddy Water
Tapu fini comes with a random point raised in my head that I
needed some good offensive cover against the ground and fire types in this
format that is why tapu fini was one of the first things that came to my minds
as well as one mon on the priority list of what I wanted to use, especially
after seeing a huge inflow of tapu fini with its common partners being the core
of kartana and arcanine one of the few really effective type cores around
it , I actually planned on building a
separate team around it however getting the opportunity to put effectively in
this team pleased me much. This started off as a weird tapu fini where I
forcefully put the move grass knot on it to counter gastrodon, however it did
not got me the kos that I needed with this pokemon, then changing the slot to
wood hammer on mimikyu and taking some real useful notes made me realize the
following things: 1 being that tapu fini needed muddy water in battles for more
situations it was put in. 2 being that I saw it really having its special
defense bulk but not mattering much in the spa boost also clam mind made it
much passive in a battle. That is why I came up with the current set of assault
vest that I have, scald, muddy water and moonblast are quite explainable,
however hidden power ice I chose for it as it allowed me to hit nihilego as
well as magnezone, both which were big threats for super effective damage, the
bulk on this spread allows it to have a almost guaranteed 3hko from the most
common, lo timid koko around in misty terrain.
Now to discuss tapu fini on the competitive aspect, I feel
like it getting a lot of use in the defensive side of this format is mainly
because of it having the moves that can be much useful as well as it now valued
much good terrain which prevents any status conditions or any confusion from
coming into effect. Tapu fini can have a lot of colours in its usage some on
the least expected side can have a self swaggering tactic, or carry taunt on
the more popular side caries up to choice specs set or the calm mind substitute
ones and the ones carrying protect and
calm mind.
Arcanine @ Aguav Berry
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 28 HP / 252 Atk / 20 Def / 44 SpD / 164 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Flare Blitz
- Wild Charge
- Extreme Speed
- Protect
Arcanine had to naturally come with tapu fini as I knew this
pokemon had great synergy with tapu fini, I also did need intimidate for some
tapu fini calcs and from observing snorlax’s weak physical defense I thought
that intimidate would help, I also was very much interested in using these new
arcanine offensive sets that have recently started popping up into this format.
This is one of those standard ones in them. it allows arcanine to use strong
attacks as well as provide some coverage while using its tactics of intimidate,
however this cuts out the bulk somewhat effectively on this arcanine from the
bulky ones around.
Now to explain the strange item choice, the thing with using
aguav berry on this arcanine set is that it has such bulk which allows this pokemon
to live strong attacks by about 25% of health which then activates its 50%
berry and makes it much healthly also this goes well with its moves of flare
blitz and wild charge as if you’d ko yourself from the recoils, you drop to the
25% and use your berry to recover yourself allowing arcanine a few more turns
to move and really making it much more of a threat, I can’t really tell that
how many times this berry came into good effect, to recall I feel almost in
every match its item came to a great effect. This is the new arcanien that I
would have discussed therefore not providing an individual mon potential.
Butterfree @ Focus Sash
Ability: Compound Eyes
Level: 50
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Rage Powder
- Sleep Powder
- Tailwind
- Air Slash
Last but not the least is the pokemon that saved the entire
concept of this team from dropped to bits, non other than our little and
beloved butterfree. To throw back some love of butterfree it was the first
pokemon that I fully evolved in a game and now to my surprise it helps me out
in the competitive format a lot. Especially when this pokemon gets the
disruptive combination of the ability compound eyes as well as sleep powder
which makes its sleep powders more accurate (not 100%) can make it a great
boost for itself also it being a relatively fast pokemon in this format being
able to reach speeds up to 134 can completely shut down some pokemons in many
games. In combination to it having moves like rage powder as a form of
redirection and the move tailwind gave great rise to this pokemon and
especially its much loved by me combination of double bugs, pheromosa +
butterfree which came into a lot of effect in tons of matches that I played it
in butterfree protects pheromosa where pheromosa gets its attacks off further
it can match opposing tailwinds and use sleep powder to shut down opponents
further. I lead it in many games where it was completely able to dominate. The
move air slash hits things like arauqanid and hariyama for super effective
damage. I chose the item focus sash taking in consideration this pokemons’ low
defenses.
Now time for the cons of this pokemon, obviously the
terrains like misty terrain as well as electric terrain take away this
pokemons’ ability to put things to sleep and especially on my own team whenever
bringing tapu fini I had to be careful. However there do exist teams with
either tapu lele or bulu and some even don’t have any tapu pokemon, so you can
take great advantage of butterfree in those games where your opponents does not
have the disruptive terrain or taunt.
Conclusion:
With that I conclude this team and the first part of my
January report. I will be bringing more teams that I test in the next half of
this month expected things like buzzwole which I already happen to have an on
paper build on and my own eeveemancy team. The thing is that i felt like
posting this early in the month is that I felt this was a lot of writeup so I’ll
fit the newer teams into the upcoming posts of mine. Hope you enjoyed, Bye for
now!
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