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Battle Tree Discussion and Records
- Thread starter Eisenherz
- Start date
Hi everyone, I've been using a new Super Singles team that's doing pretty well so far. It's based off of AnneAnne's team consisting of Tapu Koko, Golisopod, and Landorus-Therian. Funnily, the latest version of the team isn't very similar. Here is the team-
Nihilego @ Air Balloon
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Substitute
- Grass Knot
Nihilego is a good lead because it beats both charizards, houndoom, and volcarona, all of which are major threats to the team. Air balloon allows bro to set up on landorus-2 because it'll lock itself into extrasensory. It also allows nihilego to beat palossand and landorus-1, in theory, and avoid fissure from walrein. Sub is good for t-wave and ohko moves.
Slowbro @ Slowbronite
Ability: Regenerator
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 92 Def / 164 SpD
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Calm Mind
- Iron Defense
- Slack Off
The evs are to guarantee that bro can tank a giga drain and a +1 giga drain from mega venusaur, allowing it to win 1v1. It also lives a two sheer force landorus earth powers after the first calm mind and two +2 wood hammers from mimikyu after the first iron defense. Slowbro can directly switch in on mimikyu-3 and beat it 1v1 thanks to iron defense, which NoCheese didn't seem to notice in his Gliscor/Slowbro/Chansey analysis. Slowbro is a monster and wins a lot of games by setting up to +6 defense, spatk, and spdef. Regenerator is useful for pivoting, like when stalling mega zam out of focus blasts. It can set up on physical or weak grass types like leafeon, lurantis, tangrowth-4, and alolan-exeggutor-2, despite the type disadvantage.
Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 28 Def / 228 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Power Whip
- Gyro Ball
- Leech Seed
- Protect
Ferro is a great mon to be combined with slowbro because they each cover most of each other's weaknesses. It's the main resource to deal with bulky things or stallers like porygon2, stockpile weezing, and blissey. Most evs are put into spdef to handle water types better. Protect is great for lefties recovery, like when stalling p2 or mega zam.
AnneAnne's team was a good place to start from due to solid type combinations and fun pokemon that aren't seen in the highest super singles streaks. However, it soon become clear to me that Golisopod wasn't a viable member of the team because it leaves the team very weak to Typhlosion, Darmanitan, Venusaur, freezes, and certain other threats. I needed a better bulky water type with scald to handle these, and Slowbro was a solid choice.
Unfortunately the team didn't work out as I intended because it was too weak to grass types and strong special attackers, namely lilligant, rotom-mow, volcarona, palossand, and tangrowth. I decided to replace landorus-t with ferrothorn to handle these threats better.
Then I realized that the team was still really weak to volcarona, and koko wasn't cutting it anymore because it wasn't very useful defensively. Nihilego seems to be working better so far in its place
I guess I also should mention that I lost my Super Doubles streak at 1448 wins, thanks to walrein-4 and it's 80% chance to hit sheer cold. I'm disappointed to not get to 1500 wins, but at least I didn't lose due to misplay.
Any thoughts?
Nihilego @ Air Balloon
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Power Gem
- Sludge Wave
- Substitute
- Grass Knot
Nihilego is a good lead because it beats both charizards, houndoom, and volcarona, all of which are major threats to the team. Air balloon allows bro to set up on landorus-2 because it'll lock itself into extrasensory. It also allows nihilego to beat palossand and landorus-1, in theory, and avoid fissure from walrein. Sub is good for t-wave and ohko moves.
Slowbro @ Slowbronite
Ability: Regenerator
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 92 Def / 164 SpD
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Calm Mind
- Iron Defense
- Slack Off
The evs are to guarantee that bro can tank a giga drain and a +1 giga drain from mega venusaur, allowing it to win 1v1. It also lives a two sheer force landorus earth powers after the first calm mind and two +2 wood hammers from mimikyu after the first iron defense. Slowbro can directly switch in on mimikyu-3 and beat it 1v1 thanks to iron defense, which NoCheese didn't seem to notice in his Gliscor/Slowbro/Chansey analysis. Slowbro is a monster and wins a lot of games by setting up to +6 defense, spatk, and spdef. Regenerator is useful for pivoting, like when stalling mega zam out of focus blasts. It can set up on physical or weak grass types like leafeon, lurantis, tangrowth-4, and alolan-exeggutor-2, despite the type disadvantage.
Ferrothorn @ Leftovers
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 28 Def / 228 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Power Whip
- Gyro Ball
- Leech Seed
- Protect
Ferro is a great mon to be combined with slowbro because they each cover most of each other's weaknesses. It's the main resource to deal with bulky things or stallers like porygon2, stockpile weezing, and blissey. Most evs are put into spdef to handle water types better. Protect is great for lefties recovery, like when stalling p2 or mega zam.
AnneAnne's team was a good place to start from due to solid type combinations and fun pokemon that aren't seen in the highest super singles streaks. However, it soon become clear to me that Golisopod wasn't a viable member of the team because it leaves the team very weak to Typhlosion, Darmanitan, Venusaur, freezes, and certain other threats. I needed a better bulky water type with scald to handle these, and Slowbro was a solid choice.
Unfortunately the team didn't work out as I intended because it was too weak to grass types and strong special attackers, namely lilligant, rotom-mow, volcarona, palossand, and tangrowth. I decided to replace landorus-t with ferrothorn to handle these threats better.
Then I realized that the team was still really weak to volcarona, and koko wasn't cutting it anymore because it wasn't very useful defensively. Nihilego seems to be working better so far in its place
I guess I also should mention that I lost my Super Doubles streak at 1448 wins, thanks to walrein-4 and it's 80% chance to hit sheer cold. I'm disappointed to not get to 1500 wins, but at least I didn't lose due to misplay.
Any thoughts?
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Really a nice team, which seems to be very solid. Once I played a team with Ultra Beast, which was Focus Slash Pheromosa and to defensive pokemon with boost possibilities, Mega Slowbro and Porygon2 with Eviolite. The Slowbro in my case was using Curse and Amnesia. With some team adaptions maybe something like a physical Slowbro might be here an option as well. Then, the coverage argument together with Ferrothorn could still be applied. If needed, by one Amnesia, it could increase its lower defensive value and afterwards there are already not to many pokemon dealing much damage to it without boosting, since its defensive boosts are save due to Shell Armor. Therefore, itself could boost against a lot of physical and potentially more special attackers. The realtively weak physical attack could be compensated by the use of curse.
Hello,
here I want to present a team based on an idea I tried in the subway. While it breezed through the majority of battles, it had huge troubles in certain common situations. However looking some gens further ahead seems to solve all problems by the unique qualities of Kartana (and other improvements)!
(Feel free to try it!)
here I want to present a team based on an idea I tried in the subway. While it breezed through the majority of battles, it had huge troubles in certain common situations. However looking some gens further ahead seems to solve all problems by the unique qualities of Kartana (and other improvements)!
The basic idea was to make Hail work, which I am sure some of you tried. From another team (Ursaring, Whimsicott, Hydreigon/Nidoking, Metagross, 174 wins) I found that Prankster-Tailwind + turn 1 Protect worked well. In that team I had Nidoking in the back, which is super strong (slightly better even than LO-Landorus). In Hail of course it gets access to Blizzard, and it did a fantastic job in my hail team. This team lead with Abomasnow + Whimsi. The fourth slot however needed to cover a variety of things. It should be rather bulky, be not too bad against waters, and on the other hand good against ice. But foremost, it needs 100% accuracy against snow veil mons – every Froslass brings you to the brink of losing. And in black/white I could not come up with such a mon. The only thing that has the accuracy AND hits ice mons hard I came up with is Machamp with no guard. I tried it and it did a good job hitting evasive ice-mons, but was too fragile. That is, especially in comparison to Metagross which occupied that spot and had everything one could desire, for the exception of missing ice mons in hail. I gave up and I don’t think the problem can be solved in this generation. But two gens ahead it’s a completely different story!
Vanilluxe @ Focus Sash
Ability: Snow Warning
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Blizzard
- Freeze Dry
- Hail
- Protect
Tornadus @ Flynium-Z
Ability: Prankster
EVs: * HP / 252 SpA / * Spe
Modest Nature
- Tailwind
- Hurricane
- Taunt
- Protect
Nidoking @ Life-Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 36 HP / 252 SpA / 20SDef / 196 Spe
Modest Nature
- Earthpower
- Blizzard
- Thunderbolt
- Protect (Flamethrower)
Kartana @ Expertbelt / Assault Vest
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword
- Smart Strike
- Protect (Knock Off)
Ability: Snow Warning
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Blizzard
- Freeze Dry
- Hail
- Protect
Tornadus @ Flynium-Z
Ability: Prankster
EVs: * HP / 252 SpA / * Spe
Modest Nature
- Tailwind
- Hurricane
- Taunt
- Protect
Nidoking @ Life-Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 36 HP / 252 SpA / 20SDef / 196 Spe
Modest Nature
- Earthpower
- Blizzard
- Thunderbolt
- Protect (Flamethrower)
Kartana @ Expertbelt / Assault Vest
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword
- Smart Strike
- Protect (Knock Off)
The BW-version with Machamp made it to 88. Which is not very good, but with the huge weaknesses covered by Kartana in the SM-version I think it can go way higher. Also Vanilluxe gets Snow Warning, which may be better than Abomasnow, and Tornadus which I do not have access to, should work better.
Hailwind and the benefits from both BW and SM-version:
The general play is to Protect with the hail-bringer and set up Tailwind. By doing it this way, once I attack with Blizzards, the enemy row already got a round of hail, meaning sashes/sturdy is removed, which is very nice. In fact, if not both mons resist ice, the battle goes quickly in my favor from here. Due to the sash, often more than one Blizzard can be launched, and in the back Nidoking is just waiting. (Double) Blizzard and hail are wearing enemies down rapidly. Steel and fire types are almost all OHKOed by Nidoking, and Meta was responsible for ice types. This team is so good in cleaning up.
However as soon as there are enemy ice-teams with snow veil, the team starts stumbling.
Improvements in SM:
First of all, there is Kartana. It fits just too well to the idea and team. The main point being Smart Strike, which removes all evasive ice-types and therefore solving the biggest problem easily. The type synergy is superb, offensively as well as defensively. The stuff that resists ice – namely water, ice and steel (Nidoking deals with fire) – is hit very hard by it and is walled to some degree by it (especially if you play it with assault vest). Coming from the backrow it should easily snack Beast Boosts against Blizzard/Hail-weakened enemies. Also Kartana can do well against Sand-teams.
Aside from missing ice-types, Metagross was huge in the BW-version. Kartana seems to be able to roughly keep up with that, while fulfilling the crucial role of hitting ice-types and having some other bonuses. (I am not sure about the set though, I think Expert Belt + max SDef might be good. I will not figure it out, since I will never play it.)
However this is not the only advantage over the BW-version. Vanilluxe should be much better than Abomasnow, because: It is faster, outspeeding everything in Tailwind with modest nature. Also it has freeze dry and way better stats. Giga Drain, which restored the sash, and made Abomasnow being able to stay around against water/ice mons for long, was quite nice though. And Focus Sash in general is a perfect item for a blizzarding ice mon in hail.
Additionally, there is Tornadus, which at least for me is not available in BW and which should do a better job than Whimsi.
This somehow was an anticlimactic writeup. To sum this up: This version solves a frequently occurring problem of an otherwise well functioning team while bringing some other advantages on top!
Hailwind and the benefits from both BW and SM-version:
The general play is to Protect with the hail-bringer and set up Tailwind. By doing it this way, once I attack with Blizzards, the enemy row already got a round of hail, meaning sashes/sturdy is removed, which is very nice. In fact, if not both mons resist ice, the battle goes quickly in my favor from here. Due to the sash, often more than one Blizzard can be launched, and in the back Nidoking is just waiting. (Double) Blizzard and hail are wearing enemies down rapidly. Steel and fire types are almost all OHKOed by Nidoking, and Meta was responsible for ice types. This team is so good in cleaning up.
However as soon as there are enemy ice-teams with snow veil, the team starts stumbling.
Improvements in SM:
First of all, there is Kartana. It fits just too well to the idea and team. The main point being Smart Strike, which removes all evasive ice-types and therefore solving the biggest problem easily. The type synergy is superb, offensively as well as defensively. The stuff that resists ice – namely water, ice and steel (Nidoking deals with fire) – is hit very hard by it and is walled to some degree by it (especially if you play it with assault vest). Coming from the backrow it should easily snack Beast Boosts against Blizzard/Hail-weakened enemies. Also Kartana can do well against Sand-teams.
Aside from missing ice-types, Metagross was huge in the BW-version. Kartana seems to be able to roughly keep up with that, while fulfilling the crucial role of hitting ice-types and having some other bonuses. (I am not sure about the set though, I think Expert Belt + max SDef might be good. I will not figure it out, since I will never play it.)
However this is not the only advantage over the BW-version. Vanilluxe should be much better than Abomasnow, because: It is faster, outspeeding everything in Tailwind with modest nature. Also it has freeze dry and way better stats. Giga Drain, which restored the sash, and made Abomasnow being able to stay around against water/ice mons for long, was quite nice though. And Focus Sash in general is a perfect item for a blizzarding ice mon in hail.
Additionally, there is Tornadus, which at least for me is not available in BW and which should do a better job than Whimsi.
This somehow was an anticlimactic writeup. To sum this up: This version solves a frequently occurring problem of an otherwise well functioning team while bringing some other advantages on top!
I consider this team to be an antihax-team. In Hail, every single team-member has a strong, 100% accurate move. Sashes/Stury get removed by Hail, also the team has 2 spread moves. There is so much glue in this team. In the BW-version sometimes protecting for Hail damage to overcome ranges proved handy. And where Blizzard does not get through, there is the sheer power of Nidoking and Kartana with SE attacks.
I think this team could easily make over 100 wins, because (strange sounding reasoning incoming): The BW Metagross version only made it hardly to 50 wins, because always activated Snow Veil is too bad. But the BW Machamp version got to 88, and it felt completely shaky and way worse than the Metagross version. Kartana fulfilling the role of a not missing Metagross may multiply the chances of coming farer.
I think this team could easily make over 100 wins, because (strange sounding reasoning incoming): The BW Metagross version only made it hardly to 50 wins, because always activated Snow Veil is too bad. But the BW Machamp version got to 88, and it felt completely shaky and way worse than the Metagross version. Kartana fulfilling the role of a not missing Metagross may multiply the chances of coming farer.
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I've played a hyperaggressive hail team some time ago to try stuff in tree and basically you'll have 3 enormous problems more or less that were not in the gen 5 facilities.
- Sand specialists
- Rain specialists
- Trick room specialists (which overlap)
- Speedy trainers
Bonus: opposing ice specialists, notably Sina who will just turn the weather against you.
Sand specialists all have slower weather setters and if you're spending a turn to set hail it means you're very likely eating a rock slide or stone edge (or both). Most of their pokes also resist Hurricane and have the bonus spdef from sand so nuking one is out of the equation most of the time, too! (and even then good chance you trade 1 for 1)
Rain specialists are one lucky lead away from rolling you over, in similar fashion, though at least you have the fact you can turn hurricane against them.
Trick room specialists can be very tricky (for any team reliant on squishy speedy pokes) if they roll a double setter lead, or a setter that has Oblivious, Aromatisse or Mental Herb. Trick Room going up can spell disaster pretty quickly, and it doesnt help many of them also have Gigalith on their roster which may replace your weather and break your own sash. Your lead is also awfully walled by steel types meaning you're unlike to actually trade favorably, and notably Mega Mawile exists.
Speedy trainers are the opposite, several of their pokes will outspeed your tailwind and tailwind is your only speed control option. Aerodactyl 3-4 notably can be a HUGE pain, you get to roll between 150 base speed or banded attacks
Bonus: Cloud Nine. You'd be surprised of how much panic having Drampa34 roll Cloud Nine can be when you're running weather based and suddently you're relying on 70% attacks on your lead.
Personal opinion: tailwind + hail isnt really viable as strat for tree. It's fun, you can easily get to 50 (i've done that myself) but for longer streaks it's unlikely to happen without extreme luck. Mega abomasnow has been used in multiple streaks but that was on trick room teams where he just happened to fit in, and Alolan Ninetales also in similar fashion just happens to provide a unique Aurora Veil thanks to its hail.
If you want some fun with hail, try gen 8: sadly the Tower isnt really as challenging but the new Slush Rushers as well as the new tailwind mechanics actually make the strat viable and fun.
Sand, TR and Speedy Trainers all were in the Gen 5 facilities.
Against Sand, I manually set Hail, which worked okay, although Whimsi probably did a better job than my suggested Tornadus. It's bad of course when you reset Hail, defeat a foe and in comes the next setter. This is how I lost the mentioned streak. But Machamp is bad as I mentioned. If I reset Hail turn one and something from me gets KOed my backrow can OHKO almost anything a hiker can have. Especially Kartana may start rolling then against hail-broken-sturdies, and living some hits on its own.
Against TR there is Taunt, and if I double on something (Z-Hurricane) quite a few setters can be OHKOed. But of course TR can always be troublesome.
Speedy trainers are eaten alive with this team once tailwind is up. And when I get that correctly, Manectric is the fastest mon, like in the subway, therefore all 4 mons outspeed everything in the tree under Tailwind.
For rain, to me it seems it is not too threatening on its own. I guess often I can manually set Hail and Tailwind.
Ice is definitely troublesome, but as I mentioned this was mainly with Metagross missing, or with Machamp being too frail, while Abomasnow lives too long. Kartana and Nidoking really can hurt ice-mons and OHKO most of them. But if one keeps momentum I think they can be handled quite well.
I have not thought about cloud nine, and for sure there are other threats we did not think of. Based on my experience in the subway with the in-many-situations-inadequate Machamp I think this can be a viable concept. Also with a glance on Nidoking - which is a great user of Blizzard, while providing a completely different offensive and defensive synergy than other Blizzard users one might think of. I mean, this somehow is the problem with Hail: You want to set it, and you want to abuse it with another mon as well, but with 2 ice mons in the same team you are stacking weaknesses like crazy and often do not add much to the offensive variety. Nidoking makes a very strong Blizzard user (his Blizzard is almost as strong as from modest Vanilluxe) that suffers none of these issues.
Against Sand, I manually set Hail, which worked okay, although Whimsi probably did a better job than my suggested Tornadus. It's bad of course when you reset Hail, defeat a foe and in comes the next setter. This is how I lost the mentioned streak. But Machamp is bad as I mentioned. If I reset Hail turn one and something from me gets KOed my backrow can OHKO almost anything a hiker can have. Especially Kartana may start rolling then against hail-broken-sturdies, and living some hits on its own.
Against TR there is Taunt, and if I double on something (Z-Hurricane) quite a few setters can be OHKOed. But of course TR can always be troublesome.
Speedy trainers are eaten alive with this team once tailwind is up. And when I get that correctly, Manectric is the fastest mon, like in the subway, therefore all 4 mons outspeed everything in the tree under Tailwind.
For rain, to me it seems it is not too threatening on its own. I guess often I can manually set Hail and Tailwind.
Ice is definitely troublesome, but as I mentioned this was mainly with Metagross missing, or with Machamp being too frail, while Abomasnow lives too long. Kartana and Nidoking really can hurt ice-mons and OHKO most of them. But if one keeps momentum I think they can be handled quite well.
I have not thought about cloud nine, and for sure there are other threats we did not think of. Based on my experience in the subway with the in-many-situations-inadequate Machamp I think this can be a viable concept. Also with a glance on Nidoking - which is a great user of Blizzard, while providing a completely different offensive and defensive synergy than other Blizzard users one might think of. I mean, this somehow is the problem with Hail: You want to set it, and you want to abuse it with another mon as well, but with 2 ice mons in the same team you are stacking weaknesses like crazy and often do not add much to the offensive variety. Nidoking makes a very strong Blizzard user (his Blizzard is almost as strong as from modest Vanilluxe) that suffers none of these issues.
My apologies, I can hyper-focus on weird details sometimes, so I'm going to put analysis of the team aside and focus on one thing. I'm going to be blunt about this, but try to approach this from a standpoint of constructive criticism: These EVs are an absolute mess.
I'm not saying this for the sake of being rude or anything, but I want to try to help you learn why they're a mess.
* First, Tornadus. If its HP and Speed are * because you don't remember what its EVs are, it's easy enough to plug a Modest Tornadus into a damage calculator and trial-and-error those EVs until the resulting stats match what you have in-game.
* Next, when EVing for Level 50, EVs will always be wasted if an even number of stats are invested into. So your Nidoking for example, it invests in 4 stats (HP, SpA, SpD, and Spe), but it's optimal to invest in either 3 or 5 stats. Usually a 4 stat investment like this indicates that there are 4 extra EVs in a stat but they're not affecting that stat. Instead, your EVs total to 504, so you're missing out on one point in Def. A single stat point is no big deal (except in Speed), but it's something to think about.
* Finally, you list your Kartana as having only 252 EVs, all invested in SpD. I imagine you just forgot to list the 252 Attack EVs it should have?
Anyways, for some actual team analysis, it takes a different approach to make Kartana work here. A typical Kartana wants to run Focus Sash since it's so fragile on the Special side. This means it often baits the AI to attack it, which allows it to Protect both incoming attacks and give its teammate a free turn. However, Hail makes Sash unusable.
So, the natural thought is to instead gravitate towards a version that maximizes Kartana's high killing capabilities. I get running Adamant over Jolly since you're also running Tailwind, but the choice to invest in SpD seems pointless. Kartana's SpD is so awful that trying to patch it up doesn't really do much, even when you're suggesting running Assault Vest on it. Unless you've ran calcs and determined that this Kartana will survive specific Special attacks from specific opponents that it wouldn't otherwise live, I'd suggest investing in Speed instead. Its base 109 Speed is good, but Kartana is already out-sped by a decent chunk of the Tree even when it's Jolly with maximum Speed EVs. This is coming from someone who's been playing a lot of Kartana and looked into its Speed tier. And you won't have Tailwind up all the time. I shudder to think of how slow an uninvested Kartana is outside of Tailwind (Hint: it's really slow. It's as slow as a base 77 Speed Modest/Adamant mon with 252 Speed EVs. Heatran has base 77 Speed.)
I'm struggling to think of an item for Kartana to use here. Sash is out. Z crystals are pretty nice on Kartana, but Tornadus already has one. Your Expert Belt seems okay, but doesn't do anything if there's no super-effective hit. I don't know, maybe it works in practice since it's supposed to hit things that the other team members can't hit and vice-versa.Life Orb might make a lot of sense here, and should let Kartana grab KO's that it can't otherwise hit, especially on a Jolly one. Oops, I didn't notice that King already holds Lorb.
I'm not saying this for the sake of being rude or anything, but I want to try to help you learn why they're a mess.
* First, Tornadus. If its HP and Speed are * because you don't remember what its EVs are, it's easy enough to plug a Modest Tornadus into a damage calculator and trial-and-error those EVs until the resulting stats match what you have in-game.
* Next, when EVing for Level 50, EVs will always be wasted if an even number of stats are invested into. So your Nidoking for example, it invests in 4 stats (HP, SpA, SpD, and Spe), but it's optimal to invest in either 3 or 5 stats. Usually a 4 stat investment like this indicates that there are 4 extra EVs in a stat but they're not affecting that stat. Instead, your EVs total to 504, so you're missing out on one point in Def. A single stat point is no big deal (except in Speed), but it's something to think about.
* Finally, you list your Kartana as having only 252 EVs, all invested in SpD. I imagine you just forgot to list the 252 Attack EVs it should have?
Anyways, for some actual team analysis, it takes a different approach to make Kartana work here. A typical Kartana wants to run Focus Sash since it's so fragile on the Special side. This means it often baits the AI to attack it, which allows it to Protect both incoming attacks and give its teammate a free turn. However, Hail makes Sash unusable.
So, the natural thought is to instead gravitate towards a version that maximizes Kartana's high killing capabilities. I get running Adamant over Jolly since you're also running Tailwind, but the choice to invest in SpD seems pointless. Kartana's SpD is so awful that trying to patch it up doesn't really do much, even when you're suggesting running Assault Vest on it. Unless you've ran calcs and determined that this Kartana will survive specific Special attacks from specific opponents that it wouldn't otherwise live, I'd suggest investing in Speed instead. Its base 109 Speed is good, but Kartana is already out-sped by a decent chunk of the Tree even when it's Jolly with maximum Speed EVs. This is coming from someone who's been playing a lot of Kartana and looked into its Speed tier. And you won't have Tailwind up all the time. I shudder to think of how slow an uninvested Kartana is outside of Tailwind (Hint: it's really slow. It's as slow as a base 77 Speed Modest/Adamant mon with 252 Speed EVs. Heatran has base 77 Speed.)
I'm struggling to think of an item for Kartana to use here. Sash is out. Z crystals are pretty nice on Kartana, but Tornadus already has one. Your Expert Belt seems okay, but doesn't do anything if there's no super-effective hit. I don't know, maybe it works in practice since it's supposed to hit things that the other team members can't hit and vice-versa.
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(EDIT: I am not sure if you read everything I wrote, but I do not have Sun/Moon. So this is just an idea, that came from the subway and should work way better in Sun/Moon due to Kartana solving crucial problems.)
No apologies needed.
I remember I did not give Nidoking 4 Def IVs because then Def is lower than SDef against Download. I think that was the whole point: Speed until 130, max SAtk, SDef up over Def, rest HP. But reconsidering, I would invest those 4EVs in Def now.
For Tornadus, it is not me not remembering what the EVs are, I never had a Tornadus and am not sure, what the EVs should be, whether or how much it should be speed invested or rather defensive. The same goes for the spread for Kartana.
The SDef investment is supposed to make it live Ice attacks (yeah, never rely too much on it, since freezes. Anways living ice attacks is way better than not to). And when carrying an assault vest, together with its typing it will be quite okay I think. There are quite good streaks on the leaderboard with exactly that: SDef Assault Vest Kartana in the back of a Tailwind team. As I mentioned, it should serve the role of Metagross but not missing stuff, especially Ice types. I am not sure if a single ice type is not hit SE by Kartanas attacks. Much other stuff probably is dented by prior Blizzard/Hail damage, so EVs can be invested IMO in speed or SDef.
No apologies needed.
I remember I did not give Nidoking 4 Def IVs because then Def is lower than SDef against Download. I think that was the whole point: Speed until 130, max SAtk, SDef up over Def, rest HP. But reconsidering, I would invest those 4EVs in Def now.
For Tornadus, it is not me not remembering what the EVs are, I never had a Tornadus and am not sure, what the EVs should be, whether or how much it should be speed invested or rather defensive. The same goes for the spread for Kartana.
The SDef investment is supposed to make it live Ice attacks (yeah, never rely too much on it, since freezes. Anways living ice attacks is way better than not to). And when carrying an assault vest, together with its typing it will be quite okay I think. There are quite good streaks on the leaderboard with exactly that: SDef Assault Vest Kartana in the back of a Tailwind team. As I mentioned, it should serve the role of Metagross but not missing stuff, especially Ice types. I am not sure if a single ice type is not hit SE by Kartanas attacks. Much other stuff probably is dented by prior Blizzard/Hail damage, so EVs can be invested IMO in speed or SDef.
If you want an Ice-type switch-in, the best option is a backup with Scald or Flare Blitz to thaw freezes - which basically forces you to run a Fire- or Water-type.
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Not just that. I need to be able to hit ice types with snow veil. That's why I considered a strong steel with Smart Strike
Here to report a 101 streak in multi, lost a lot later than I should have honestly, got really lucky. Team was Jolly Mega Salamence with 252 speed 252 attack and a fairly standard curselax, I don't remember the EVs. Colress led with Jolly Mega Metagross 252 att/spe and had an Eviolite Porygon2 in the back
N5CW-WWWW-WWXE-SEC5
Fighting types in the backline are the obvious weakness to this team, especially pokemon like Cobalion/Terrakion that resist Normal. Usually Salamence and Metagross can power through at least one trainer's pokemon, but Metagross died to choice scarf eruption. Not much to do about that except maybe a prankster rain dance? Really tough to get Colress to brick break typhlosion, so Fake Out would just be delaying the inevitable. Alternatively, if I bring snorlax out first then I get mushed by frontline fighting and backline ice types become the problem. Here is an example of a match I should have lost:
L3NG-WWWW-WWXE-SEC9
Ice Beam > Blizzard, lol
Snorlax has wild charge for tanky water or flying types, such as pelipper or jellicent. It makes me weaker to steel and ground types, but I just can't stand pelipper. Also lets me smack Gyarados before he can reliably set up.
Colress having Mega Metagross out first is a big advantage, as we can usually double into any pokemon and make them faint, while also dealing with ice types. He plays really predictably, usually just selecting the move/pokemon that will do the most damage. Sometimes with Porygon2 he could win if he simply attacked twice but he goes for a thunder wave and misses!! Then he goes for it again! The biggest benefit by far is his lack of team-hitting moves, because other teammates I have tried will just kill me pointlessly.
N5CW-WWWW-WWXE-SEC5
Fighting types in the backline are the obvious weakness to this team, especially pokemon like Cobalion/Terrakion that resist Normal. Usually Salamence and Metagross can power through at least one trainer's pokemon, but Metagross died to choice scarf eruption. Not much to do about that except maybe a prankster rain dance? Really tough to get Colress to brick break typhlosion, so Fake Out would just be delaying the inevitable. Alternatively, if I bring snorlax out first then I get mushed by frontline fighting and backline ice types become the problem. Here is an example of a match I should have lost:
L3NG-WWWW-WWXE-SEC9
Ice Beam > Blizzard, lol
Snorlax has wild charge for tanky water or flying types, such as pelipper or jellicent. It makes me weaker to steel and ground types, but I just can't stand pelipper. Also lets me smack Gyarados before he can reliably set up.
Colress having Mega Metagross out first is a big advantage, as we can usually double into any pokemon and make them faint, while also dealing with ice types. He plays really predictably, usually just selecting the move/pokemon that will do the most damage. Sometimes with Porygon2 he could win if he simply attacked twice but he goes for a thunder wave and misses!! Then he goes for it again! The biggest benefit by far is his lack of team-hitting moves, because other teammates I have tried will just kill me pointlessly.
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I'm reporting a completed streak of 698 wins for Super Doubles in Ultra Sun using the one, the only, the infamous, Team 4K (Tapu Koko / Kartana / Mega Kangaskhan / Kommo-o).
I should mention that for battles 1-370, Kartana ran Sacred Sword over Knock Off. The change to Knock Off is explained below in the "Making Changes" section.
The Team
Tapu Koko @ Choice Specs
Timid Nature
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Thunderbolt
- Dazzling Gleam
- Electroweb
- Volt Switch
Kartana @ Focus Sash
Jolly Nature
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Leaf Blade
- Knock Off
- Tailwind
- Protect
"JEJUNUM"
Kangaskhan @ JEJUNUMite
Adamant Nature
Base Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 244 HP / 44 Atk / 28 Def / 52 SpD / 140 Spe
- Fake Out
- Double-Edge
- Sucker Punch
- Seismic Toss
Kommo-o @ Kommonium Z
Modest Nature
Ability: Bulletproof
EVs: 20 Atk / 236 SpA / 252 Spe
- Clanging Scales
- Superpower
- Flamethrower
- Protect
Credit for the original team goes to Coeur7. Also credit to the gamers Level 51 (L51) and Eisenherz and others for tweaks. It's fun chatting with you guys.
I want to keep my personal comments brief, but I'd like to mention that this streak's success is owed to the above people for making this team as good as it is. I'll still argue that I'm not great at doubles. I've certainly improved as a pilot since my other streak, but it really comes down to the team being solid and fun to play that I was able to do well with it.
Please see L51's submission for full team and EV reasoning in an excellent write up. Like with my previous 4K streak, this write up will include a general team overview for the purposes of condensing information and having substance for this write up. I can't imagine that I'm writing anything novel here; again this is my rehash of L51's write up.
Team Details
Making Changes
Battle Replays
Some More Thoughts
Thank you for reading. I'm pretty happy to put up another streak on here.
I should mention that for battles 1-370, Kartana ran Sacred Sword over Knock Off. The change to Knock Off is explained below in the "Making Changes" section.
The Team
Tapu Koko @ Choice Specs
Timid Nature
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
- Thunderbolt
- Dazzling Gleam
- Electroweb
- Volt Switch
Kartana @ Focus Sash
Jolly Nature
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Leaf Blade
- Knock Off
- Tailwind
- Protect
"JEJUNUM"
Kangaskhan @ JEJUNUMite
Adamant Nature
Base Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 244 HP / 44 Atk / 28 Def / 52 SpD / 140 Spe
- Fake Out
- Double-Edge
- Sucker Punch
- Seismic Toss
Kommo-o @ Kommonium Z
Modest Nature
Ability: Bulletproof
EVs: 20 Atk / 236 SpA / 252 Spe
- Clanging Scales
- Superpower
- Flamethrower
- Protect
Tapu Koko
Level 50: 146 / X / 105 / 147 / 95 / 200
Level 100: 282 / X / 206 / 289 / 186 / 394
Kartana
Level 50: 135 / 233 / 151 / X / 51 / 177
Level 100: 260 / 461 / 298 / X / 98 / 348
JEJUNUM (non-Mega)
Level 50: 211 / 133 / 104 / X / 107 / 128
Level 100: 412 / 260 / 203 / X / 209 / 251
Kommo-o
Level 50: 150 / 119 / 145 / 165 / 125 / 137
Level 50: 146 / X / 105 / 147 / 95 / 200
Level 100: 282 / X / 206 / 289 / 186 / 394
Kartana
Level 50: 135 / 233 / 151 / X / 51 / 177
Level 100: 260 / 461 / 298 / X / 98 / 348
JEJUNUM (non-Mega)
Level 50: 211 / 133 / 104 / X / 107 / 128
Level 100: 412 / 260 / 203 / X / 209 / 251
Kommo-o
Level 50: 150 / 119 / 145 / 165 / 125 / 137
Credit for the original team goes to Coeur7. Also credit to the gamers Level 51 (L51) and Eisenherz and others for tweaks. It's fun chatting with you guys.
I want to keep my personal comments brief, but I'd like to mention that this streak's success is owed to the above people for making this team as good as it is. I'll still argue that I'm not great at doubles. I've certainly improved as a pilot since my other streak, but it really comes down to the team being solid and fun to play that I was able to do well with it.
Please see L51's submission for full team and EV reasoning in an excellent write up. Like with my previous 4K streak, this write up will include a general team overview for the purposes of condensing information and having substance for this write up. I can't imagine that I'm writing anything novel here; again this is my rehash of L51's write up.
Team Details
The Leads
Koko and Kartana form a flexible launching point for the rest of the team. Really these leads boil down into two modes: removing the opponent's Pokemon or Tailwind setup for friends.
VTuber JEJUNUM
Her best tool is Fake Out disruption, especially to safely enable Kartana's Tailwind or Kommo-o's Soulblaze. But she's no slouch when it comes to damage, either. Double Edge as STAB hits quite hard, Seismic Toss deals decent damage without recoil, and Sucker Punch hits Ghosts and is all-around nice priority. Just don't expect her to OHKO much; she's usually relegated to finishing off what her teammates can't.
Scrappy is fairly important here, mostly for hitting Ghosts with Fake Out. It doesn't come up all that often but it's significant when it does.
Now to talk about Seismic Toss. In a way, the change to Seismic Toss slightly changes Kangaskhan's approach to the Tree. Repeating L51's comment, it's a consistent way to deal decent damage without recoil and threaten 2HKOs on almost every single Pokemon. So it tends to be JEJUNUM's most clicked move after Fake Out. Something I noticed during play was that this set is far less scared of burns now, and will always just deal its damage even when its Atk is lowered or the opponent has Def. Neat little perk for this set.
Kommo-o
Kommo-o works as this weird in-between of a spread nuke from Soulblaze, a tank with its base stats and omniboost, and a win condition once Soulblaze is used. But it also doesn't fit any of these roles too well, either. Soulblaze is a nice Z-move but it's not so strong, it's HP leaves something to be desired so it can't just soak up damage, and for both of these reasons it's not a perfect win con. Regardless, Soulblaze getting used almost guarantees a win by itself. It's great at spamming Clanging Scales to finish battles with the help of its teammate. And it can take the hits when they come to outlive anything that survives its attacks.
Koko and Kartana form a flexible launching point for the rest of the team. Really these leads boil down into two modes: removing the opponent's Pokemon or Tailwind setup for friends.
VTuber JEJUNUM
Her best tool is Fake Out disruption, especially to safely enable Kartana's Tailwind or Kommo-o's Soulblaze. But she's no slouch when it comes to damage, either. Double Edge as STAB hits quite hard, Seismic Toss deals decent damage without recoil, and Sucker Punch hits Ghosts and is all-around nice priority. Just don't expect her to OHKO much; she's usually relegated to finishing off what her teammates can't.
Scrappy is fairly important here, mostly for hitting Ghosts with Fake Out. It doesn't come up all that often but it's significant when it does.
Now to talk about Seismic Toss. In a way, the change to Seismic Toss slightly changes Kangaskhan's approach to the Tree. Repeating L51's comment, it's a consistent way to deal decent damage without recoil and threaten 2HKOs on almost every single Pokemon. So it tends to be JEJUNUM's most clicked move after Fake Out. Something I noticed during play was that this set is far less scared of burns now, and will always just deal its damage even when its Atk is lowered or the opponent has Def. Neat little perk for this set.
Kommo-o
Kommo-o works as this weird in-between of a spread nuke from Soulblaze, a tank with its base stats and omniboost, and a win condition once Soulblaze is used. But it also doesn't fit any of these roles too well, either. Soulblaze is a nice Z-move but it's not so strong, it's HP leaves something to be desired so it can't just soak up damage, and for both of these reasons it's not a perfect win con. Regardless, Soulblaze getting used almost guarantees a win by itself. It's great at spamming Clanging Scales to finish battles with the help of its teammate. And it can take the hits when they come to outlive anything that survives its attacks.
Massive, massive thank you and shoutouts to Jellal for giving me JEJUNUM. However, there was one little condition* for me receiving this Kangaskhan. *ahem*
A new talent debuts from the islands of Alola...
Born from the wishes and effort of those who sought out triumph in the facilities of battle, the supreme deity JEJUNUM descended upon the earth to aid those determined souls. Over time her feats further enshrined her divine status to a new mythical level. Nowadays, JEJUNUM's power lives on through avatars imbued with the goddess's power. One such avatar has come to vanquish more foes, but in her own unique way: as a Singing superstar VTuber idol! With both her Singing and battle prowess, she reminds onlookers of the heavenly grace and strength of the original JEJUNUM.
Again, huge thank you to Jellal.
*here are the stupid conversations I had that forced me to write this:
Notice the use of the Ezra emote here, first used by Jellal. I can't help but wonder if he jinxed my streak with this action, dooming it to die to her.
A new talent debuts from the islands of Alola...
Born from the wishes and effort of those who sought out triumph in the facilities of battle, the supreme deity JEJUNUM descended upon the earth to aid those determined souls. Over time her feats further enshrined her divine status to a new mythical level. Nowadays, JEJUNUM's power lives on through avatars imbued with the goddess's power. One such avatar has come to vanquish more foes, but in her own unique way: as a Singing superstar VTuber idol! With both her Singing and battle prowess, she reminds onlookers of the heavenly grace and strength of the original JEJUNUM.
Again, huge thank you to Jellal.
*here are the stupid conversations I had that forced me to write this:
Notice the use of the Ezra emote here, first used by Jellal. I can't help but wonder if he jinxed my streak with this action, dooming it to die to her.
Making Changes
Compared to my last 4K team, this team has a bit of a different flavor since it's now featuring Seismic Toss Mega Kangaskhan, so that makes this team exactly L51's version of the team.
However there are a few minor changes from that team:
* Why use Superpower over Close Combat on Kommo-o?
Superpower is exactly Close Combat but it lowers Atk instead of Sp. Def. For most attackers, this means they use Close Combat since it needs to be spammable. But Kommo-o really only ever needs to use Close Combat once, maybe rarely twice in a game. For Kommo-o, it's better to stay bulky on the Special side. So this move better fits Kommo-o's role as a bulky attacker, as illustrated in L51's write up. Here's the conversation that turned me onto the move.
*Why use Knock Off over Sacred Sword on Kartana?
Cresselia, basically. I had started noticing that most of the time when the Moon Duck led I was left scrambling, regardless of set. Tbolt + Leaf Blade isn't a KO on any set, and if left alone it can set up Trick Room or Double Teams. Those aren't fun situations to deal with. When I asked about this in the Discord, ReptoAbyssmal mentioned Knock Off as an option after previously asking Coeur about the same Cresselia problem. Unfortunately Tbolt + Knock Off is merely an unfavorable range to KO sets 2 and 3, but it IS a guaranteed KO on the Trick Room set 4. L51 agreed with this, mentioning that it covered Ghosts and Psychics in general, and those types are the ones that carry Trick Room. But it's not like Sacred Sword doesn't have its advantages, either. Sacred Sword is useful for covering Steels, Normals, and Darks well, but in a perfect world this isn't an issue since Kommo-o or two neutral hits can cover them fine. It's also sometimes convenient to ignore Def and Evasion boosts. So like anything, changing this move is a trade-off, but Knock Off should be better overall.
Also I changed around Koko to the first slot, to the left. I just find it easier to do Koko's move first. I'm truly on the pinnacle of 4K innovation here.
These are the only changes to L51's team, just a couple of moves. Not even an EV change.
However there are a few minor changes from that team:
* Why use Superpower over Close Combat on Kommo-o?
Superpower is exactly Close Combat but it lowers Atk instead of Sp. Def. For most attackers, this means they use Close Combat since it needs to be spammable. But Kommo-o really only ever needs to use Close Combat once, maybe rarely twice in a game. For Kommo-o, it's better to stay bulky on the Special side. So this move better fits Kommo-o's role as a bulky attacker, as illustrated in L51's write up. Here's the conversation that turned me onto the move.
*Why use Knock Off over Sacred Sword on Kartana?
Cresselia, basically. I had started noticing that most of the time when the Moon Duck led I was left scrambling, regardless of set. Tbolt + Leaf Blade isn't a KO on any set, and if left alone it can set up Trick Room or Double Teams. Those aren't fun situations to deal with. When I asked about this in the Discord, ReptoAbyssmal mentioned Knock Off as an option after previously asking Coeur about the same Cresselia problem. Unfortunately Tbolt + Knock Off is merely an unfavorable range to KO sets 2 and 3, but it IS a guaranteed KO on the Trick Room set 4. L51 agreed with this, mentioning that it covered Ghosts and Psychics in general, and those types are the ones that carry Trick Room. But it's not like Sacred Sword doesn't have its advantages, either. Sacred Sword is useful for covering Steels, Normals, and Darks well, but in a perfect world this isn't an issue since Kommo-o or two neutral hits can cover them fine. It's also sometimes convenient to ignore Def and Evasion boosts. So like anything, changing this move is a trade-off, but Knock Off should be better overall.
Also I changed around Koko to the first slot, to the left. I just find it easier to do Koko's move first. I'm truly on the pinnacle of 4K innovation here.
These are the only changes to L51's team, just a couple of moves. Not even an EV change.
Battle Replays
(Most of these milestones aren't uploaded due to the 10 upload limit)
Battle 100: Plumeria - Salazzle, Gengar, Crobat, Toxapex [VUEG-WWWW-WWXE-SL5S]
Battle 200: Sina - Glaceon, Lilligant, Oranguru, Mandibuzz
Battle 300: Plumeria - Gengar, Toxapex, Lurantis, Crobat
Battle 360: Anabel - Raikou, Alakazam, Entei, Lucario [C66W-WWWW-WWXE-SL5Y]
Battle 400: Kukui - Incineroar, Decidueye, Braviary, Snorlax
Battle 500: Plumeria - Lurantis, Gengar, Salazzle, Toxapex
Battle 600: Cynthia - Lucario, Garchomp, Spiritomb, Milotic
Battle 620: Anabel - Lucario, Alakazam, Raikou, Latios [U3ZW-WWWW-WWXE-SL5Z]
Battle 100: Plumeria - Salazzle, Gengar, Crobat, Toxapex [VUEG-WWWW-WWXE-SL5S]
Battle 200: Sina - Glaceon, Lilligant, Oranguru, Mandibuzz
Battle 300: Plumeria - Gengar, Toxapex, Lurantis, Crobat
Battle 360: Anabel - Raikou, Alakazam, Entei, Lucario [C66W-WWWW-WWXE-SL5Y]
Battle 400: Kukui - Incineroar, Decidueye, Braviary, Snorlax
Battle 500: Plumeria - Lurantis, Gengar, Salazzle, Toxapex
Battle 600: Cynthia - Lucario, Garchomp, Spiritomb, Milotic
Battle 620: Anabel - Lucario, Alakazam, Raikou, Latios [U3ZW-WWWW-WWXE-SL5Z]
Battle 183: Savir - A-Raichu, Magnezone, Vikavolt, Manectric [9M7G-WWWW-WWXE-SL5E]
Raichu is bad news, I've been bamboozled by it before by forgetting about its Surge Surfer ability. This time I knew to play around it. Unfortunately, it still outspeeds Kartana in Tailwind. Otherwise the plan was to remove it quickly and allow Kommo-o to set up safely, which worked nicely.
Battle 330: Kukui - Decidueye, Magnezone, Primarina, Braviary [TZLW-WWWW-WWXE-SL5G]
I thought D Gleam would not KO Decidueye on the second turn, so Soulblaze didn't do anything. Against the backrow of Braviary and Primarina, I decided that using Kommo-o as bait would let the other members clean up, but he didn't bait Braviary's Brave Bird like I wanted it to, instead KO'ing Kanga with Superpower. I ended up getting lucky with Koko's Electroweb not missing at all to finish them off.
Battle 369: Raz - Electrode, Jolteon, Weavile, Alakazam [4PFG-WWWW-WWXE-SL5J]
I remember this being a misclick, I fully intended to hit Tailwind first turn and got mixed up for the next turn where I would Leaf Blade Jolteon for the KO once Kartana is faster. The rest of the battle is me scrambling to figure out how to beat a speed trainer where I don't have access to Tailwind.
Battle 376: Victor - Cresselia, Latias, Latios, Kommo-o [S53G-WWWW-WWXE-SL5K]
First time using Knock Off against Cresselia. Just because I dealt with a problematic Cresselia nicely here (it was the TR set too!), it didn't mean the rest of the battle was easy. Both Latis showed up and demonstrated their usual shenanigans. A Kommo-o also showed up right at the end to try to foil me too. I had to play around the fact that it could have Soundproof, which would have ended me with a bad crit. A shame, too. I think it really would have enjoyed hearing my Kommo-o's soul-shattering beats.
Battle 584: Buddy - Jolteon, Electrode, Greninja, Accelgor [DRGG-WWWW-WWXE-SL5M]
Unfortunately I misplay this and Koko can't switch out when I need him to so Kartana gets taken out without setting up Tailwind. Luckily I am able to bring in Kommo-o and JEJUNUM at the same time to Soulblaze, but the speed difference means things could go wrong with a Paralysis. Thankfully Soulblaze gets used and this puts me in a position to win after getting lucky from a Jolteon Thunder miss and a non-Soundproof Electrode.
Battle 586: Harvey - Sableye, Lickilicky, Exploud, Rhyperior [54PW-WWWW-WWXE-SL5N]
The lead Lickilicky and Sableye absolutely ream Koko and Kartana, leaving Kartana with a burn and Kokodead without using any moves (not dead, just KO'd, this is a children's game geez). Kommo-o is able to come in and use Soulblaze but Sableye counters with Metal Burst, leaving me with a burned Kartana and a JEJUNUM to finish the battle. Luckily Kartana had a few Beast Boosts so they counteracted the burn. I clearly should have damaged the Sableye with Kartana instead going for the Lickilicky KO. Kartana and JEJUNUM are able to cleanly finish the game out.
Raichu is bad news, I've been bamboozled by it before by forgetting about its Surge Surfer ability. This time I knew to play around it. Unfortunately, it still outspeeds Kartana in Tailwind. Otherwise the plan was to remove it quickly and allow Kommo-o to set up safely, which worked nicely.
Battle 330: Kukui - Decidueye, Magnezone, Primarina, Braviary [TZLW-WWWW-WWXE-SL5G]
I thought D Gleam would not KO Decidueye on the second turn, so Soulblaze didn't do anything. Against the backrow of Braviary and Primarina, I decided that using Kommo-o as bait would let the other members clean up, but he didn't bait Braviary's Brave Bird like I wanted it to, instead KO'ing Kanga with Superpower. I ended up getting lucky with Koko's Electroweb not missing at all to finish them off.
Battle 369: Raz - Electrode, Jolteon, Weavile, Alakazam [4PFG-WWWW-WWXE-SL5J]
I remember this being a misclick, I fully intended to hit Tailwind first turn and got mixed up for the next turn where I would Leaf Blade Jolteon for the KO once Kartana is faster. The rest of the battle is me scrambling to figure out how to beat a speed trainer where I don't have access to Tailwind.
Battle 376: Victor - Cresselia, Latias, Latios, Kommo-o [S53G-WWWW-WWXE-SL5K]
First time using Knock Off against Cresselia. Just because I dealt with a problematic Cresselia nicely here (it was the TR set too!), it didn't mean the rest of the battle was easy. Both Latis showed up and demonstrated their usual shenanigans. A Kommo-o also showed up right at the end to try to foil me too. I had to play around the fact that it could have Soundproof, which would have ended me with a bad crit. A shame, too. I think it really would have enjoyed hearing my Kommo-o's soul-shattering beats.
Battle 584: Buddy - Jolteon, Electrode, Greninja, Accelgor [DRGG-WWWW-WWXE-SL5M]
Unfortunately I misplay this and Koko can't switch out when I need him to so Kartana gets taken out without setting up Tailwind. Luckily I am able to bring in Kommo-o and JEJUNUM at the same time to Soulblaze, but the speed difference means things could go wrong with a Paralysis. Thankfully Soulblaze gets used and this puts me in a position to win after getting lucky from a Jolteon Thunder miss and a non-Soundproof Electrode.
Battle 586: Harvey - Sableye, Lickilicky, Exploud, Rhyperior [54PW-WWWW-WWXE-SL5N]
The lead Lickilicky and Sableye absolutely ream Koko and Kartana, leaving Kartana with a burn and Koko
Battle 699: Ezra - Latios, Vikavolt, Heatran, Drampa [FTBW-WWWW-WWXE-SL5Q]
Battle Summary: Kartana uses Protect since I think at least one opponent will target it. Koko uses D Gleam, Latios Megas and uses D Dance, and Vikavolt Mud Shots Koko. Latios uses EQ and KOs Koko, Kartana uses Tailwind, and is KO'd by Vikavolt. Kommo-o and Kanga come in and take out Latios and Vikavolt without using Soulblaze. Drampa and Heatran come in, and Drampa activates its Quick Claw and KOs Kommo-o with Dragon Pulse to seal the game. JEJUNUM just can't take down Heatran and Drampa by herself, not to mention Heatran's Flame Body inflicting burn (not like it mattered, it just rubbed the loss in my face).
Reflection: Given a lead Latios and Vikavolt, I thought at least one attack would go into Kartana, but that didn't happen. I think Protecting was a misplay and I got punished for it, but it's also a little difficult to perceive it as a misplay because of set variance. Since Tailwind was active, I decide to delay the Soulblaze so it has max damage against Ezra's backrow, and just move into the last two mons Heatran and Drampa. Using Soulblaze in that turn would have allowed Kommo-o to live the Pulse, barring a crit. I could have staggered the KOs and left Vikavolt alive an extra turn, but in this specific case I don't think that would have mattered. That strategy is something that could be worked into my playstyle since I don't think about that option often enough.
I get to join the Ezra hater bandwagon now I guess.
Battle Summary: Kartana uses Protect since I think at least one opponent will target it. Koko uses D Gleam, Latios Megas and uses D Dance, and Vikavolt Mud Shots Koko. Latios uses EQ and KOs Koko, Kartana uses Tailwind, and is KO'd by Vikavolt. Kommo-o and Kanga come in and take out Latios and Vikavolt without using Soulblaze. Drampa and Heatran come in, and Drampa activates its Quick Claw and KOs Kommo-o with Dragon Pulse to seal the game. JEJUNUM just can't take down Heatran and Drampa by herself, not to mention Heatran's Flame Body inflicting burn (not like it mattered, it just rubbed the loss in my face).
Reflection: Given a lead Latios and Vikavolt, I thought at least one attack would go into Kartana, but that didn't happen. I think Protecting was a misplay and I got punished for it, but it's also a little difficult to perceive it as a misplay because of set variance. Since Tailwind was active, I decide to delay the Soulblaze so it has max damage against Ezra's backrow, and just move into the last two mons Heatran and Drampa. Using Soulblaze in that turn would have allowed Kommo-o to live the Pulse, barring a crit. I could have staggered the KOs and left Vikavolt alive an extra turn, but in this specific case I don't think that would have mattered. That strategy is something that could be worked into my playstyle since I don't think about that option often enough.
I get to join the Ezra hater bandwagon now I guess.
Some More Thoughts
There's a few options that I've incorporated into my playstyle with this team.
First, I've started using Electroweb a little bit more, that's a good sign.
Second, since I played in the International Challenges the last few months, I got more comfortable with switching that wasn't Volt Switch in certain situations. I'd say the situations where this is a good strategy are a bit rare. Also switching is hard to really use well since the AI has its moments of unpredictability, and the team's average HP is low so they can't take hits well. But timing these well to bring in someone at the right time can help guarantee a win. Traditionally I've played this team in a no-switch style, going by the mantra that switching in Doubles is a loss in momentum, and that usually works well for this offensive team. Switching is now just another option that I see more often.
Third, (this goes along with switching) I've taken to switching JEJUNUM out to reset Fake Out from time to time. These situations are really rare, since there's not really a team member that's easy to switch into unless the field is being cleared by Kommo-o or something. Again, it's part of recognizing the field and sacrificing a bit of momentum to guarantee a win for a battle that is probably already won.
First, I've started using Electroweb a little bit more, that's a good sign.
Second, since I played in the International Challenges the last few months, I got more comfortable with switching that wasn't Volt Switch in certain situations. I'd say the situations where this is a good strategy are a bit rare. Also switching is hard to really use well since the AI has its moments of unpredictability, and the team's average HP is low so they can't take hits well. But timing these well to bring in someone at the right time can help guarantee a win. Traditionally I've played this team in a no-switch style, going by the mantra that switching in Doubles is a loss in momentum, and that usually works well for this offensive team. Switching is now just another option that I see more often.
Third, (this goes along with switching) I've taken to switching JEJUNUM out to reset Fake Out from time to time. These situations are really rare, since there's not really a team member that's easy to switch into unless the field is being cleared by Kommo-o or something. Again, it's part of recognizing the field and sacrificing a bit of momentum to guarantee a win for a battle that is probably already won.
Thank you for reading. I'm pretty happy to put up another streak on here.
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Has anyone ever considered using electro ball over electroweb on tapu koko for team 4K? I have used it a lot recently and it has several advantages over electroweb. It ohko's conkeldurr, non-sturdy carbink, escavalier, musharna (93.8% chance for set 4), reuniclus, cofagrigus, wishiwashi through wacan berry, and does a lot more to dusknoir, aromatisse, cress-4, ferrothorn, trevenant-4, and mega abomasnow. For example, electro ball + leaf blade always ko's cress-4 and trev-4, allowing room for sacred sword over knock off. EB's power can also be increased after a tailwind.
Bit of a micro-optimization, but having a lead steel-type in the left slot lets you check for magnet pull without committing to a switch, which is handy because both magpullers can have Sturdy as their other ability.
My comment was absolutely a throwaway stupid joke, but I'm glad I included it since I got to learn about this. Thanks.
Actually it's funny, I thought about this type of interaction with Magnet Pull like a month ago, with how it can be scouted like this in doubles and not in singles. I just never made the connection to using it with 4K.
Reporting in a new entry for the leaderboard: 96 wins in Super Doubles with Mega-Medicham! (Proof below)
I decided recently that I missed mega-pokemon and battle facilties so I decided to see if I could get 50 wins with each mega. I wanted to start out with some I didn't see on the leaderboard, and after piloting Mega-Beedrill to 55 wins, I moved on to Mega-Medicham and much to my surprise got my deepest run ever, capping out at 96 wins and a loss to an unfortunate flinch. I'm still delighted, and think if I wanted to try it again the team could probably break triple figures.
THE TEAM:
Medicham-Mega @ Medichamite
Ability: Pure Power
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Bullet Punch
- Facade
- Protect
This is a super strange moveset on paper, but it turned out to be really sound in practice. Looking at Medicham's stats, it's too frail to bother investing EVs anywhere else, and since it's not in a blisteringly fast speed-tier, I decided that the best way to use Medicham was with Tailwind support. The TW boost meant that Adamant would be a better nature than Jolly because the extra power was preferrable to the extra speed points.
HJK is Mega-Medicham's best offensive attack, but at 90% accuracy I knew runs would be straight up lost because of it, so it was never an option. Drain Punch and Force Palm are Medicham's best 100% accurate fighting attacks, and of the two I felt Drain Punch worked better despite having lower Base Power. Since Medicham hits like a train, healing back 50% of the damage dealt was almost like a free recover every turn, and kept it around a lot longer than its paper-thin defenses would suggest. If Medicham didn't die in one hit, it was usually strong enough to take out one or two of the opposing pokemon by itself, which was amazing. A neutral hit from this thing takes about 80% off most opponents, so consistent neutral-damage was a lot more attractive than more powerful risky attacks.
Bullet Punch was for priority only, and it was sometimes useful for tearing chunks out of Fairy types like Togekiss who would otherwise completely ruin Medicham's day. With Tailwind support, Iron Head may have been just as good or better, but the ability to chip opponents with priority was too useful to leave off the team.
So, why Facade in the last moveslot? Honestly, I went back and forth on this a lot. I used Fake out for a while, but I found that usually when the opponent had something with Fake Out, it outsped Medicham anyway. What's more, when I was up against Fighting-resists, like Psychic types, I desperately needed a way to hit them for damage, which Fake Out couldn't do after turn one. Facade simply provided the best neutral coverage, but also helped recover from any unfortunate Static or Flame Body activations so that Medicham wasn't complete dead weight. Ice Punch would be a reasonable alternative, but honestly, if Medicham learned any Dark move that wasn't Fling, I'd have used that instead.
The Psychic coverage and power offered by Psycho-cut might have been useful to have, but honestly, it never came up.
Aerodactyl @ Focus Sash
Ability: Unnerve
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Sky Drop
- Rock Slide
- Tailwind
- Wide Guard
This thing was probably the reason the team was able to make such a deep run. I realized in a few test games that Medicham could out-power anything in singles with enough speed control, but in doubles it was overwhelmed by simply having to face down two pokemon at once. A fake-out partner helped sometimes, but only on turn one. Sky-Drop solved a ton of problems at once, and Medicham had astonishing synergy with it, because it turns out most pokemon too heavy to be lifted by Sky Drop are both weak to Fighting and slower than Medicham. By being able to cycle between sky drop and protect, Medicham didn't have to take any hits it didn't want to, and Bullet punch helped chip down pokemon even more, to the point that sometimes you'd hit an oposing pokemon 3 times before it got a move off. It was amazing, and honestly this move alone could carry a lot of teams into high win streaks.
I decided early that Tailwind was essential for Medicham support, and Aerodactyls' speed and Sash just about always ensured it went off. Rock Slide provided great spread damage, and was surprisingly powerful thanks to Aerodactyl's STAB and full ATK investment. Wide Guard was probably the most-cuttable move, there were definitely times I wished I had Aerial Ace or Protect over it, but there are some opponents who are completely locked out of the game by Wide Guard spam, and Medicham given free turns will tear apart just about everything.
Unnerve was a surprisingly awesome bonus ability too, preventing Chople and Babiri Berry activations which would have prevented some KOs from Medicham. I'm not sure really how often it came up, but I appreciated the passive damage boost all the same.
Aerodactyl might be one of the best supporting tailwind setters I've ever used, and I'd highly recommend it.
Hydreigon @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Draco Meteor
- Earth Power
- Protect
I love this thing and I'm glad it was able to take the team so far. The front two had some awesome synergy, but also significant weaknesses, especially with Medicham's complete inability to touch Psychic/Ghost types. Enter Hydreigon, an almost-total counter to every Ghost in the game, and a threat to every Psychic Type not named Mega-Gallade (which is weak to Sky-drop btw). Backed up by Aerodactyl's Tailwind and the power of a Life Orb, this thing was a menace, and the ability to switch in on Psychic attacks aimed at Medicham was stellar. I wondered sometimes if there were better Dark-Types to run in this spot, but Hydreigon's natural bulk and fantastic coverage were just too good to pass up.
It always felt bad to click Draco Meteor and risk the miss, but the rest of the moveset was non-negotiable. The power and consistency of Dark Pulse was 9 times out of 10 all that was needed, but Earth Power was a really good way to hit Dark Resists and Mawile for decent damage. I ran flamethrower for a few tests but once I settled on the final pokemon of the team I found that Earth Power did everything Flamethrower did while also providing some extra type-coverage for the team.
Arcanine @ Firium Z
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 228 HP / 4 Def / 156 SpA / 12 SpD / 108 Spe
Modest Nature
- Burn Up (Inferno Overdrive)
- Snarl
- Protect
- Helping Hand
This Arcanine set was blatantly stolen from Josh C.'s set at the top of the leaderboard, and it's amazing. I found the team was heavily threatened by Mega-Mawile, and though I tried an Incineroar in a few test runs I found that a special attacker was more valuable than Fake-Out (especially since Incineroar shares a Fighting weakness with Hydreigon). I decided to give this Arcanine moveset a try since I had no Z-move user on the team, and it's rapidly become my favourite Fire-Type for the battle tree. I'm not going to pretend I know what the EVs do, but it's bulky enough to survive a lot of moves thrown at Medicham/ Aerodactyl, and Intimidate/ Helping Hand Support was fantastic with these hyper offensive partners. The Z-Move followed by Burn Up was more than enough to clean up anything dented by the rest of the team.
The team is incredibly fun, and though it looks terrible on paper there was surprisingly solid synergy between the different team members. Despite being a hyper-offense team I found that playing safe payed off much better than being aggressive. Timing Protects and switches around Sky Drop turns was critical tot he Team's success.
THE LOSS: An unfortunate flinch stopped Medicham in its tracks. I forget the trainer, but it was a veteran with an all legendary team. I had taken out their first two pokemon thanks to them leading Suicune3, which was completely locked out of the game by Wide Guard Aerodactyl. I forget what the first two pokemon were, but they were thoroughly demolished by Medicham under Tailwind. I was on the last turn of Tailwind, and Aero's sash was broken. Suicune couldn't attack as long as I used Wide Guard, but it had already set up 2 calm minds, and I realised that nothing on the team could break a boosted Suicune except Medicham. The final pokemon came in, and it was Latias, which I knew Medicham couldn't kill in one hit, and would certainly kill Aerodactyl to stop the wide-guard spam. I didn't know the moveset, but ran some calcs, and knew Medicham would outspeed Suicune even without Tailwind and survive any attack from Latias 3 or 4 (those were the only Latias this trainer could have).
Since Aerodactyl was going down either way, I decided to stop using wide-guard spam and use protect/rock-slide instead so that Aero would go down and let me bring in Arcanine safely. Rock-slide connected on both opponents, Latias flinched, Suicune used Surf, Aero went down, Tailwind ended. I still had no idea which Lati it was, but felt safe enough attacking into Suicune with Medicham to let Hydreigon finish off Lati. Arcanine used Helping Hand to power up a Drain Punch, but Latias used Zen Headbutt on Medicham, and it flinched :(
Suicune used Surf and took out both my pokemon, leaving Hydreigon to pick up the pieces. Hydreigon took out Latias with one dark pulse, then dodged a blizzard from Suicune. I got off one Dark Pulse on Suicune before Hydreigon went down, and combined with the rock-slide damage above, Suicune was sitting at 50% remaining health. The damage calc on the Helping-Hand boosted Drain Punch from Mega-Medicham into Suicune 3? 55-65%. Painful, but that's how it goes.
THREATS:
Hariyama is too heavy to be picked up by Sky Drop, and can have Thick Fat to take essentially nothing from Arcanine's attacks, while also threatening SE damage on Hydreigon. It's crazy, but this thing threatened the team more than every other fighting-type, and demanded Medicham's full attention to take out early.
Talonflame's Gale-Wings completely invalidates Aerodactyl's Tailwind and will take out Medicham for free. Talonflame forces you to protect and hope rock-slide connects. If you miss or the opponent threatens Aerodactyl too much to risk a rock-slide, you may just be playing without Medicham that game, and that sucks.
I faced a Hariyama/Talonflame lead more than once, so that's... worth mentioning.
Intimidate was annoying, but Medicham simply cannot be stopped, and even at -1 will chunk a lot of opponents for 60-70%. Gyarados was the scariest intimidator, but between rock-slide and facade/drain punch (if it choses to mega), it would usually go down pretty quick. Mega-Salamence was also really scary, but Tailwind, a weakness to Rock Slide and a lurking Hydreigon meant it was usually went down without much trouble. These two did make me think Thunder/Ice Punch would be nice on Medicham tho...
Is stall a threat? Possibly. Weirdly I kept expecting to die a slow and weird death to a Double-Team Registeel or Stockpile Toxapex or something like that, but it turns out Sky-Drop Aero disrupted these things enough for Medicham to do an unbelievably good job as a wall-breaker. I'm sure if anyone else tries out this team they may have stranger encounters than I did, but it's weird how a hyper-offensive team like this was able to breeze through stall so consistently.
A note on Trick Room: The threat of Trick Room is probably incredibly obvious to anyone looking at the team, but surprisingly, between Sky Drop and Hydreigon being a huge threat to almost every TR setter, I found it was only an issue if the opponent brought in two TR-setters at once (and in those cases Medicham + Aerodactyl could usually knock out one setter before Trick Room went up). Between Protect, Sky Drop, and the bulk of the back row, Trick Room was surprisingly easy to either stall out or break entirely. I Know, I was surprised too.
This was a super fun run. I'm going to try Mega Altaria next and I doubt it will do so well, but I hope I can break the triple digits one day. Medicham really over-performed, and I'd recomend giving it a try.
I decided recently that I missed mega-pokemon and battle facilties so I decided to see if I could get 50 wins with each mega. I wanted to start out with some I didn't see on the leaderboard, and after piloting Mega-Beedrill to 55 wins, I moved on to Mega-Medicham and much to my surprise got my deepest run ever, capping out at 96 wins and a loss to an unfortunate flinch. I'm still delighted, and think if I wanted to try it again the team could probably break triple figures.
THE TEAM:
Medicham-Mega @ Medichamite
Ability: Pure Power
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Bullet Punch
- Facade
- Protect
This is a super strange moveset on paper, but it turned out to be really sound in practice. Looking at Medicham's stats, it's too frail to bother investing EVs anywhere else, and since it's not in a blisteringly fast speed-tier, I decided that the best way to use Medicham was with Tailwind support. The TW boost meant that Adamant would be a better nature than Jolly because the extra power was preferrable to the extra speed points.
HJK is Mega-Medicham's best offensive attack, but at 90% accuracy I knew runs would be straight up lost because of it, so it was never an option. Drain Punch and Force Palm are Medicham's best 100% accurate fighting attacks, and of the two I felt Drain Punch worked better despite having lower Base Power. Since Medicham hits like a train, healing back 50% of the damage dealt was almost like a free recover every turn, and kept it around a lot longer than its paper-thin defenses would suggest. If Medicham didn't die in one hit, it was usually strong enough to take out one or two of the opposing pokemon by itself, which was amazing. A neutral hit from this thing takes about 80% off most opponents, so consistent neutral-damage was a lot more attractive than more powerful risky attacks.
Bullet Punch was for priority only, and it was sometimes useful for tearing chunks out of Fairy types like Togekiss who would otherwise completely ruin Medicham's day. With Tailwind support, Iron Head may have been just as good or better, but the ability to chip opponents with priority was too useful to leave off the team.
So, why Facade in the last moveslot? Honestly, I went back and forth on this a lot. I used Fake out for a while, but I found that usually when the opponent had something with Fake Out, it outsped Medicham anyway. What's more, when I was up against Fighting-resists, like Psychic types, I desperately needed a way to hit them for damage, which Fake Out couldn't do after turn one. Facade simply provided the best neutral coverage, but also helped recover from any unfortunate Static or Flame Body activations so that Medicham wasn't complete dead weight. Ice Punch would be a reasonable alternative, but honestly, if Medicham learned any Dark move that wasn't Fling, I'd have used that instead.
The Psychic coverage and power offered by Psycho-cut might have been useful to have, but honestly, it never came up.
Aerodactyl @ Focus Sash
Ability: Unnerve
Level: 50
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Sky Drop
- Rock Slide
- Tailwind
- Wide Guard
This thing was probably the reason the team was able to make such a deep run. I realized in a few test games that Medicham could out-power anything in singles with enough speed control, but in doubles it was overwhelmed by simply having to face down two pokemon at once. A fake-out partner helped sometimes, but only on turn one. Sky-Drop solved a ton of problems at once, and Medicham had astonishing synergy with it, because it turns out most pokemon too heavy to be lifted by Sky Drop are both weak to Fighting and slower than Medicham. By being able to cycle between sky drop and protect, Medicham didn't have to take any hits it didn't want to, and Bullet punch helped chip down pokemon even more, to the point that sometimes you'd hit an oposing pokemon 3 times before it got a move off. It was amazing, and honestly this move alone could carry a lot of teams into high win streaks.
I decided early that Tailwind was essential for Medicham support, and Aerodactyls' speed and Sash just about always ensured it went off. Rock Slide provided great spread damage, and was surprisingly powerful thanks to Aerodactyl's STAB and full ATK investment. Wide Guard was probably the most-cuttable move, there were definitely times I wished I had Aerial Ace or Protect over it, but there are some opponents who are completely locked out of the game by Wide Guard spam, and Medicham given free turns will tear apart just about everything.
Unnerve was a surprisingly awesome bonus ability too, preventing Chople and Babiri Berry activations which would have prevented some KOs from Medicham. I'm not sure really how often it came up, but I appreciated the passive damage boost all the same.
Aerodactyl might be one of the best supporting tailwind setters I've ever used, and I'd highly recommend it.
Hydreigon @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Dark Pulse
- Draco Meteor
- Earth Power
- Protect
I love this thing and I'm glad it was able to take the team so far. The front two had some awesome synergy, but also significant weaknesses, especially with Medicham's complete inability to touch Psychic/Ghost types. Enter Hydreigon, an almost-total counter to every Ghost in the game, and a threat to every Psychic Type not named Mega-Gallade (which is weak to Sky-drop btw). Backed up by Aerodactyl's Tailwind and the power of a Life Orb, this thing was a menace, and the ability to switch in on Psychic attacks aimed at Medicham was stellar. I wondered sometimes if there were better Dark-Types to run in this spot, but Hydreigon's natural bulk and fantastic coverage were just too good to pass up.
It always felt bad to click Draco Meteor and risk the miss, but the rest of the moveset was non-negotiable. The power and consistency of Dark Pulse was 9 times out of 10 all that was needed, but Earth Power was a really good way to hit Dark Resists and Mawile for decent damage. I ran flamethrower for a few tests but once I settled on the final pokemon of the team I found that Earth Power did everything Flamethrower did while also providing some extra type-coverage for the team.
Arcanine @ Firium Z
Ability: Intimidate
Level: 50
EVs: 228 HP / 4 Def / 156 SpA / 12 SpD / 108 Spe
Modest Nature
- Burn Up (Inferno Overdrive)
- Snarl
- Protect
- Helping Hand
This Arcanine set was blatantly stolen from Josh C.'s set at the top of the leaderboard, and it's amazing. I found the team was heavily threatened by Mega-Mawile, and though I tried an Incineroar in a few test runs I found that a special attacker was more valuable than Fake-Out (especially since Incineroar shares a Fighting weakness with Hydreigon). I decided to give this Arcanine moveset a try since I had no Z-move user on the team, and it's rapidly become my favourite Fire-Type for the battle tree. I'm not going to pretend I know what the EVs do, but it's bulky enough to survive a lot of moves thrown at Medicham/ Aerodactyl, and Intimidate/ Helping Hand Support was fantastic with these hyper offensive partners. The Z-Move followed by Burn Up was more than enough to clean up anything dented by the rest of the team.
The team is incredibly fun, and though it looks terrible on paper there was surprisingly solid synergy between the different team members. Despite being a hyper-offense team I found that playing safe payed off much better than being aggressive. Timing Protects and switches around Sky Drop turns was critical tot he Team's success.
THE LOSS: An unfortunate flinch stopped Medicham in its tracks. I forget the trainer, but it was a veteran with an all legendary team. I had taken out their first two pokemon thanks to them leading Suicune3, which was completely locked out of the game by Wide Guard Aerodactyl. I forget what the first two pokemon were, but they were thoroughly demolished by Medicham under Tailwind. I was on the last turn of Tailwind, and Aero's sash was broken. Suicune couldn't attack as long as I used Wide Guard, but it had already set up 2 calm minds, and I realised that nothing on the team could break a boosted Suicune except Medicham. The final pokemon came in, and it was Latias, which I knew Medicham couldn't kill in one hit, and would certainly kill Aerodactyl to stop the wide-guard spam. I didn't know the moveset, but ran some calcs, and knew Medicham would outspeed Suicune even without Tailwind and survive any attack from Latias 3 or 4 (those were the only Latias this trainer could have).
Since Aerodactyl was going down either way, I decided to stop using wide-guard spam and use protect/rock-slide instead so that Aero would go down and let me bring in Arcanine safely. Rock-slide connected on both opponents, Latias flinched, Suicune used Surf, Aero went down, Tailwind ended. I still had no idea which Lati it was, but felt safe enough attacking into Suicune with Medicham to let Hydreigon finish off Lati. Arcanine used Helping Hand to power up a Drain Punch, but Latias used Zen Headbutt on Medicham, and it flinched :(
Suicune used Surf and took out both my pokemon, leaving Hydreigon to pick up the pieces. Hydreigon took out Latias with one dark pulse, then dodged a blizzard from Suicune. I got off one Dark Pulse on Suicune before Hydreigon went down, and combined with the rock-slide damage above, Suicune was sitting at 50% remaining health. The damage calc on the Helping-Hand boosted Drain Punch from Mega-Medicham into Suicune 3? 55-65%. Painful, but that's how it goes.
THREATS:
Hariyama is too heavy to be picked up by Sky Drop, and can have Thick Fat to take essentially nothing from Arcanine's attacks, while also threatening SE damage on Hydreigon. It's crazy, but this thing threatened the team more than every other fighting-type, and demanded Medicham's full attention to take out early.
Talonflame's Gale-Wings completely invalidates Aerodactyl's Tailwind and will take out Medicham for free. Talonflame forces you to protect and hope rock-slide connects. If you miss or the opponent threatens Aerodactyl too much to risk a rock-slide, you may just be playing without Medicham that game, and that sucks.
I faced a Hariyama/Talonflame lead more than once, so that's... worth mentioning.
Intimidate was annoying, but Medicham simply cannot be stopped, and even at -1 will chunk a lot of opponents for 60-70%. Gyarados was the scariest intimidator, but between rock-slide and facade/drain punch (if it choses to mega), it would usually go down pretty quick. Mega-Salamence was also really scary, but Tailwind, a weakness to Rock Slide and a lurking Hydreigon meant it was usually went down without much trouble. These two did make me think Thunder/Ice Punch would be nice on Medicham tho...
Is stall a threat? Possibly. Weirdly I kept expecting to die a slow and weird death to a Double-Team Registeel or Stockpile Toxapex or something like that, but it turns out Sky-Drop Aero disrupted these things enough for Medicham to do an unbelievably good job as a wall-breaker. I'm sure if anyone else tries out this team they may have stranger encounters than I did, but it's weird how a hyper-offensive team like this was able to breeze through stall so consistently.
A note on Trick Room: The threat of Trick Room is probably incredibly obvious to anyone looking at the team, but surprisingly, between Sky Drop and Hydreigon being a huge threat to almost every TR setter, I found it was only an issue if the opponent brought in two TR-setters at once (and in those cases Medicham + Aerodactyl could usually knock out one setter before Trick Room went up). Between Protect, Sky Drop, and the bulk of the back row, Trick Room was surprisingly easy to either stall out or break entirely. I Know, I was surprised too.
This was a super fun run. I'm going to try Mega Altaria next and I doubt it will do so well, but I hope I can break the triple digits one day. Medicham really over-performed, and I'd recomend giving it a try.
Attachments
sigh
Posting a (leaderboard!) streak of 142 wins in Super Multis. That's right, 1 short of #1. I misplayed the loss, too.
Tapu Lele @ Psychium Z
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -Atk)
Psychic Surge
- Psychic
- Moonblast
- Substitute
- Protect
Salamence @ Salamencite
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 12 SpD / 236 Spe
Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SpA)
Intimidate
- Return
- Earthquake
- Substitute
- Protect
co-starring Colress:
Metagross-4 @ Metagrossite
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SpA)
Clear Body
- Meteor Mash
- Zen Headbutt
- Brick Break
- Bullet Punch
Porygon2-4 @ Eviolite
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA
Modest Nature (+SpA, -Atk)
Trace
- Tri Attack
- Thunder Wave
- Ice Beam
- Shadow Ball
Strategy is to hit them with Psychic moves until they die or the frontline does, in which case we Sub/Protect as T-Wave works its magic. I had hoped to demonstrate the effectiveness of Sub/Protect in Multis and am still convinced that my sets are better than what the current #1 has, because I would have lost long before that point with the same ones. Maybe Bruxish is the secret sauce, though.
Watch the incredibly shaky videos:
#50: Aero4 / CharY leads, Metagross goes down without doing a thing (besides missing MM). Fortunately Aerodactyl4 locks EQ against my leads and stays on the field unnecessarily instead of switching to the dangerous Alakazam4.
#52: Metagross4 is difficult to handle. A taste of what's to come.
#67: Gyarados4 makes Metagross waste a turn when it appears. In addition, Meta misses twice against dangerous opposition.
#105: Metagross misses Shiinotic T1, leading to !FUN! with Spore. Starmie3 shows up, not a good sign. But P2 is on the ball.
#106: Raikou2 gets the 2HKO on Meta due to a SpD drop. Then we stare down an endgame against Suicune2 / Tsareena4, but never fear, Sub/Protect is here.
#127: Delphox4 lead, against which all my attacks are ineffective and which kills Meta with Overheat, then dodges two Thunder Waves. On the other hand, Overheat cripples it and lastmon Skarmory4 is as docile as ever.
#128 (not included): Mega Mawile lead went for Fire Fang into Metagross, burning, instead of killing Lele or anything. It turns out to be no big deal, and I play correctly against the Machamp4 / Mamoswine4 backline, anticipating Protect. I opted not to show this battle because the video is long enough already.
#131: After P2 fatefully misses Thunder Wave, it all comes down to this calc (single-target):
252 SpA Choice Specs Alakazam Dazzling Gleam vs. 4 HP / 12 SpD Salamence-Mega: 152-180 (88.8 - 105.2%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
which Zam fails to get. Streak lives on. I could have played better by Moonblasting Zam first and Subbing on the turn that it would switch/Struggle, but I'd still be at the mercy of the unknown lastmon to not break the sub, which Noivern would have.
#143: I misplay by Protecting Lele T1 against Klinklang3, which did not go for the Z-move (possibly due to Shift Gear operating on the Dragon Dance routine) and had to have Clear Body to thwart Intimidate and OHKO Mence next turn. In my defense, I feared Metagross would go for Spiritomb, but even then S-Psyche deals 94% min against Klinklang3 and I should just have attempted that, or switched to Salamence directly, or thrown up a Sub, anything else. After Klinklang falls to the Meta 2HKO, out comes the worst possible mon in the form of opposing Metagross4, which needed this roll
252 Atk Tough Claws Metagross-Mega Brick Break vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Porygon2: 90-106 (46.8 - 55.2%) -- 67.2% chance to 2HKO
and P2 not to have Download to win, but yeah, it does.
P2 was pretty useful, although it would have been much better with Download instead of the completely useless Trace. But it eked out wins that Scarf Typhlosion, the main alternative I had to it, would not have gotten, particularly against Mega Slowbro, which I met a few times.
Posting a (leaderboard!) streak of 142 wins in Super Multis. That's right, 1 short of #1. I misplayed the loss, too.
Tapu Lele @ Psychium Z
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spe, -Atk)
Psychic Surge
- Psychic
- Moonblast
- Substitute
- Protect
Salamence @ Salamencite
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 12 SpD / 236 Spe
Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SpA)
Intimidate
- Return
- Earthquake
- Substitute
- Protect
co-starring Colress:
Metagross-4 @ Metagrossite
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature (+Spe, -SpA)
Clear Body
- Meteor Mash
- Zen Headbutt
- Brick Break
- Bullet Punch
Porygon2-4 @ Eviolite
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA
Modest Nature (+SpA, -Atk)
Trace
- Tri Attack
- Thunder Wave
- Ice Beam
- Shadow Ball
Strategy is to hit them with Psychic moves until they die or the frontline does, in which case we Sub/Protect as T-Wave works its magic. I had hoped to demonstrate the effectiveness of Sub/Protect in Multis and am still convinced that my sets are better than what the current #1 has, because I would have lost long before that point with the same ones. Maybe Bruxish is the secret sauce, though.
Watch the incredibly shaky videos:
#50: Aero4 / CharY leads, Metagross goes down without doing a thing (besides missing MM). Fortunately Aerodactyl4 locks EQ against my leads and stays on the field unnecessarily instead of switching to the dangerous Alakazam4.
#52: Metagross4 is difficult to handle. A taste of what's to come.
#67: Gyarados4 makes Metagross waste a turn when it appears. In addition, Meta misses twice against dangerous opposition.
#105: Metagross misses Shiinotic T1, leading to !FUN! with Spore. Starmie3 shows up, not a good sign. But P2 is on the ball.
#106: Raikou2 gets the 2HKO on Meta due to a SpD drop. Then we stare down an endgame against Suicune2 / Tsareena4, but never fear, Sub/Protect is here.
#127: Delphox4 lead, against which all my attacks are ineffective and which kills Meta with Overheat, then dodges two Thunder Waves. On the other hand, Overheat cripples it and lastmon Skarmory4 is as docile as ever.
#128 (not included): Mega Mawile lead went for Fire Fang into Metagross, burning, instead of killing Lele or anything. It turns out to be no big deal, and I play correctly against the Machamp4 / Mamoswine4 backline, anticipating Protect. I opted not to show this battle because the video is long enough already.
#131: After P2 fatefully misses Thunder Wave, it all comes down to this calc (single-target):
252 SpA Choice Specs Alakazam Dazzling Gleam vs. 4 HP / 12 SpD Salamence-Mega: 152-180 (88.8 - 105.2%) -- 31.3% chance to OHKO
which Zam fails to get. Streak lives on. I could have played better by Moonblasting Zam first and Subbing on the turn that it would switch/Struggle, but I'd still be at the mercy of the unknown lastmon to not break the sub, which Noivern would have.
#143: I misplay by Protecting Lele T1 against Klinklang3, which did not go for the Z-move (possibly due to Shift Gear operating on the Dragon Dance routine) and had to have Clear Body to thwart Intimidate and OHKO Mence next turn. In my defense, I feared Metagross would go for Spiritomb, but even then S-Psyche deals 94% min against Klinklang3 and I should just have attempted that, or switched to Salamence directly, or thrown up a Sub, anything else. After Klinklang falls to the Meta 2HKO, out comes the worst possible mon in the form of opposing Metagross4, which needed this roll
252 Atk Tough Claws Metagross-Mega Brick Break vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Porygon2: 90-106 (46.8 - 55.2%) -- 67.2% chance to 2HKO
and P2 not to have Download to win, but yeah, it does.
P2 was pretty useful, although it would have been much better with Download instead of the completely useless Trace. But it eked out wins that Scarf Typhlosion, the main alternative I had to it, would not have gotten, particularly against Mega Slowbro, which I met a few times.
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Time for the biannual update - streak is currently sitting at 2580 wins. Had one or two scares, for anyone who's been reading on the discord, but the past 200 has almost entirely been routine battles. Honestly, I'm more invested in discord updates than updates on this thread, since it's nearly dead. I'm tempted to just kill the streak off, but that really wouldn't be doing it justice at all. Maybe sooner or later I'll do a marathon session where I aim to get 75 wins in a day or lose in the process, as a way to either accelerate the progress or have the streak come to a natural end - neither of which I'd be mad at. If I do decide to do such a session, I'll notify this thread and the discord a few days or hours before it happens.
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Hi all
I had a strange double battle today using the team Tapu lele / Hawlucha / Metagross / Hydreigon. This is how it went-
Turn 1- Tapu lele and lucha vs. leads Slaking and Blissey. Hawlucha tailwinds, Tapu lele ohkos Slaking with shattered psyche, Blissey ice beams Tapu lele. Swampert replaces Slaking.
Turn 2- Swampert does not mega evolve. Hawlucha acrobatics Swampert, Tapu lele psychics Swampert. Swampert barely survives and waterfalls Hawlucha for about 51% damage. It was not a critical hit.
Because pert didn't mega evolve, it must have been Swampert-4, which has no attack investment. Further mock battles confirmed this when it used curse. The Hawlucha I was using has max hp evs and 4 defense evs. It's hp and defense stats at level 50 are 185 and 96 and its hp and defense ivs are 31 each.
0 Atk Swampert Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Hawlucha: 61-73 (32.9 - 39.4%) -- 100% chance to 3HKO
When I did more mock battles, every time that lucha attacked Swampert and it retaliated with waterfall, it did about 50%. When lucha did not attack Swampert before it used waterfall, it did a damage amount within the range of the calculator. I'm wondering if there's some weird unknown mechanic of the move waterfall.
Here is the evidence of the battle- Q9EG-WWWW-WWXE-U4T6
I had a strange double battle today using the team Tapu lele / Hawlucha / Metagross / Hydreigon. This is how it went-
Turn 1- Tapu lele and lucha vs. leads Slaking and Blissey. Hawlucha tailwinds, Tapu lele ohkos Slaking with shattered psyche, Blissey ice beams Tapu lele. Swampert replaces Slaking.
Turn 2- Swampert does not mega evolve. Hawlucha acrobatics Swampert, Tapu lele psychics Swampert. Swampert barely survives and waterfalls Hawlucha for about 51% damage. It was not a critical hit.
Because pert didn't mega evolve, it must have been Swampert-4, which has no attack investment. Further mock battles confirmed this when it used curse. The Hawlucha I was using has max hp evs and 4 defense evs. It's hp and defense stats at level 50 are 185 and 96 and its hp and defense ivs are 31 each.
0 Atk Swampert Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Hawlucha: 61-73 (32.9 - 39.4%) -- 100% chance to 3HKO
When I did more mock battles, every time that lucha attacked Swampert and it retaliated with waterfall, it did about 50%. When lucha did not attack Swampert before it used waterfall, it did a damage amount within the range of the calculator. I'm wondering if there's some weird unknown mechanic of the move waterfall.
Here is the evidence of the battle- Q9EG-WWWW-WWXE-U4T6
This must have been because Torrent activated. As you say, the Swampert was at very low HP after your attacks, which means it must have been in Torrent range.
0 Atk Torrent Swampert Waterfall vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Hawlucha: 93-109 (50.2 - 58.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Oh you're right, thank you
I'm reporting a completed streak of 1064 consecutive wins for Super Singles in Ultra Sun with Garchomp / Mega Scizor / Tapu Fini.
Of all the possible numbers this streak could have ended on, it ended up a tie for 3rd with NoCheese.
Aside from that, my motivation came from me legitimately enjoying playing this team. Even though losing with it over and over was frustrating and demoralizing, I always enjoyed playing the battles in the process. So there were aspects of fun in attempting this. And now that this streak is finished, I have a massive accomplishment too.
DISCLAIMER:
This is a good Tree team. However, this large streak is not the best indicator of the strength of this team. Other Singles teams are better. This team just plays individual battles faster and got this streak by sheer number of attempts.
I cannot recommend enough AGAINST aiming this high with this team. This single successful streak took years of experience with the team and Tree, many losses, and a ton of luck to pull off. And a whole bunch of stupid, stubborn determination to accomplish this.
Garchomp @ Dragonium Z
Jolly Nature
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Swords Dance
- Substitute
Scizor @ Scizorite
Adamant Nature
Ability: Technician
EVs: 244 HP / 4 Atk / 4 Def / 252 SpD / 4 Spe
- Bullet Punch
- Brutal Swing
- Roost
- Swords Dance
Tapu Fini @ Sitrus Berry
Modest Nature
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 252 HP / 172 SpA / 84 Spe
- Moonblast
- Surf
- Grass Knot
- Calm Mind
The original idea of the Garchomp Scizor Fini core came from iVolke. It was taken and changed by Lassi, then Lassi's version changed by Hamber, and Hamber's team is the one I used.
This team structure is reminiscent of the successful Dragon / Water / Scizor archetype present on earlier facility leaderboards, though iVolke attributes the structure to the common Dragon-Steel-Fairy core.
The Garchomp set came from iVolke, the Scizor set from Hamber, and the Fini set from me.
"THE BERSERKER"
Like a berserker, Garchomp leads to rip through the opponent's team. She can set up on weak or predictable foes with some Subs or Swords Dance (SD). Otherwise, she baits Ice, Dragon, and Fairy moves to allow easy pivoting into her teammates.
Moves
Substitute and Swords Dance are the classic moves on Facility Singles Dragons. Substitute is used to gain an advantage when the opponent tries to use Status, or sometimes to scout the opponent. It's also the mandatory Walrein-4 answer. Garchomp uses Outrage as her Dragon move for maximum physical Drake damage and a powerful option when she has to resort to it. Its downsides are pretty terrible but 100 accuracy, 120 BP, and Dragonium Z all make up for it.
Stat Investment
Max Attack and Speed EVs, no question. Even without bulk investment, Garchomp's naturally good HP and bulk lets her survive many opponents. Jolly Nature for max speed lets her outspeed as many foes as possible, and it happens to speed tie Salazzle-4. That tie is dreadful, but it's better than being outright slower. Garchomp avoids putting the last 4 EVs in HP to let her use 4 Subs when needed. There are some rare scenarios where the 4th Sub is helpful. Since Garchomp's moves usually don't make contact, 3 HP behind Sub is safer than it otherwise would be. The 4 Def EVs happen to guarantee Mega Lucario-3's Close Combat cannot OHKO Garchomp without a crit.
Held Item
Dragonium Z lets Garchomp pick up OHKOs on a significant portion of the Tree. The Z move also lets Garchomp put off committing to Outrage; if she already used Drake and still has to use Outrage then the opponent's team should be weakened enough where the Outrage commit is fine.
Ability
Rough Skin is mandatory. Sand Veil is useless, and Rough Skin is vital for breaking Sashes and Sturdy, or dealing just enough damage to something to finish something off, or put things in range of Scizor's Bullet Punch. There are some strategies that rely on Rough Skin too, like breaking Sashes on Infernape-4, Salazzle-3, and Rhyperior-3.
"THE ANCHOR"
Scizor anchors the team because of that invaluable Steel typing and ability to set up. His only condition is to keep him away from Fire? Sign me up, but I might break that sometimes, sorry. His Mega form's monstrous bulk and multitude of resists paired with Roost give Scizor many opportunities to safely and fully set up. Mega Scizor's big Attack and Technician allow for full investment into HP and Sp. Def while still OHKOing most everything at +6. Bullet Punch lets Scizor work as a functional sweeper since it alleviates his concern for Speed.
Moves
Roost and Swords Dance are fairly automatic choices and define Scizor's role. Scizor doesn't use a Bug move due to the coverage overlap with Bullet Punch, namely Steel. The power from STAB Bug doesn't offer enough to offset this. This is why Brutal Swing is used, and it hits Ghosts super-effectively. I just wish Scizor learned Feint Attack so he had Dark coverage and a move with perfect accuracy.
Stat Investment
It's a little weird having an Adamant nature but full EV investment into HP and Sp. Def. Yet I can't imagine using a different spread. The Attack is just high enough to only be roadblocked by not-paper-thin Fire-types, and the bulk lets him set up on so many Pokemon. 244 HP EVs yields a 176 stat, which maximizes his Roost recovery. 252 Sp. Def EVs for max Sp. Def apart from Nature. It's funny looking back to iVolke's, Lassi's, and Hamber's Scizor sets because iVolke started with high 180 Sp. Def EVs and every iteration increased that number.
The last 12 EVs are split between Atk, Def, and Speed. The important one here is Speed since it bumps him out of the very populated 95 Speed tier to the less-populated 96 tier. The reason I put it to 96 was for Scizor-4 and Florges-3 so that Roosts can be used without awkward coin-flips during setup. This also means he changes from slower than Turtonator-4 to tying it. Turtonator, a *TURTLE* of all things, can be faster than uninvested Mega Scizor.
Held Item
Scizor is run as Mega Scizor to become as bulky as possible with a dominating 150 base Atk stat while keeping Technician. This strengthens his role as bulky set up and no other item provides the utility to rival the stat gains.
"THE WELL"
Like a well, Tapu Fini provides a place for her teammates to be refreshed and can draw deep to endure attacks. Fini is peerless as status protection and has the typing to answer opponents that Garchomp and Scizor can't. This team wouldn't function without her. Her ability to take hits, even super-effective ones, is so impressive and saves battles.
Moves
Fini runs Grass Knot to beat Waters, and it's especially good for dealing with Gastrodon and Swampert. Calm Mind (CM) lets Fini be flexible in how she takes down her matchups. It's used to change non-risky applicable 3HKOs to 2HKOs and 2HKOs to OHKOs, and then the boosts are taken into the next Pokemon.
I don't run Ice Beam on Fini. CM eats up a slot so there's only one slot left after STABs. On paper, Ice Beam is nice for Flying, Grass, and 4x weaks, but there are so many Flying and Grass types that can survive a +1 Ice Beam. The 4x weaks are weak to Fairy or Water, so Ice Beam fails to fill any role on this set.
Stat Investment
Fini is invested to hit a 116 Speed stat, which lets her outspeed some fairly notable foes. All Uxie sets, Incineroar-3, both 40+ Excadrills, all 40+ Rotoms, and Mega Garchomp-4. It's a comfortable speed to be at. Max HP lets Fini be bulky and maximize recovery from Sitrus Berry. The rest of the EVs are in Sp. Atk with a Modest nature so she can pick up as many OHKOs and 2HKOs as possible since her damage output is generally left wanting. I made some notes below about an alternative EV spread that should be better.
Held Item
Sitrus Berry is used to complement Fini's bulk since she doesn't have access to recovery. Compared to other Singles Fini sets, this one doesn't run a Choice item. I believe that the tradeoff of not getting locked into a move is better than the instant boost from the Choice items. However, I think the Choice sets could still be better than I know. I just ran this Sitrus set for a while, got acclimated, and developed strategies around it. So Choice builds could be worth exploring further. Anyways, the Sitrus Berry synergizes with CM since it gives breathing room for CM to be used safely, which in turn grants Sp. Def stages to make Sitrus more effective. And CM is used to replicate the +1 power of the Specs set this set is based on.
I discuss the reasoning for the Sitrus Berry set in greater detail in my previous write-up.
Extra Note
Something to be mindful about: Misty Terrain halves Dragon-type move damage on grounded targets. This property typically hampers Garchomp and is rarely ever useful.
The only change to this team compared to my last streak is a slight adjustment of Scizor's EVs for the extra Speed point.
Set lookup and damage calcs are important for this team so that team members aren't KO'd or status'd by surprise and advantage is maintained.
Knowledge of the AI's tendencies also is useful, some of which are covered in the Mastering the Maison guide (in the AI Tendencies section).
Otherwise, like I've mentioned, the biggest threat to this team is bad luck. My strats might be reliable, but any strat that relies on a specific team member or not getting crit is only good most of the time, after all.
These replays don't cover every lucky situation that kept this streak alive. Maybe the AI failed to score a crit at a crucial time, or the backline was generous, or a threatening Pokemon came out but it was the set that didn't give me trouble. I didn't save most of these types of battles because nothing interesting happens. I couldn't have played any better, I just happened to come out alive.
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIsZrGrpggjTq0p2aNUFCXA3zs-fNECsM
"No matter how fun the battle is, it will always end sometime..." - Cynthia
Shoutouts to the folks in the Battle Facilities Discord. I love the culture that has been built there and that I found people with the same idiosyncrasies within Pokemon that I have. I'm glad I decided to join. You gamers are cool, don't forget it.
Thank you for reading.
Of all the possible numbers this streak could have ended on, it ended up a tie for 3rd with NoCheese.
Introduction
This streak happened because I wanted to see this team break 1000 on the Tree leaderboard. But why would I want to pursue that goal?This little comment from my previous Garchomp Scizor Fini streak stuck with me pretty well. The reason I thought 1K wins was possible was because I saw a massive improvement in my consistency playing the team throughout 2021.
Aside from that, my motivation came from me legitimately enjoying playing this team. Even though losing with it over and over was frustrating and demoralizing, I always enjoyed playing the battles in the process. So there were aspects of fun in attempting this. And now that this streak is finished, I have a massive accomplishment too.
DISCLAIMER:
This is a good Tree team. However, this large streak is not the best indicator of the strength of this team. Other Singles teams are better. This team just plays individual battles faster and got this streak by sheer number of attempts.
I cannot recommend enough AGAINST aiming this high with this team. This single successful streak took years of experience with the team and Tree, many losses, and a ton of luck to pull off. And a whole bunch of stupid, stubborn determination to accomplish this.
The Team
Garchomp @ Dragonium Z
Jolly Nature
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
- Earthquake
- Outrage
- Swords Dance
- Substitute
Scizor @ Scizorite
Adamant Nature
Ability: Technician
EVs: 244 HP / 4 Atk / 4 Def / 252 SpD / 4 Spe
- Bullet Punch
- Brutal Swing
- Roost
- Swords Dance
Tapu Fini @ Sitrus Berry
Modest Nature
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 252 HP / 172 SpA / 84 Spe
- Moonblast
- Surf
- Grass Knot
- Calm Mind
Garchomp
Level 50: 183 / 182 / 116 / X / 105 / 169
Scizor (non-Mega)
Level 50: 176 / 166 / 121 / X / 132 / 86
Tapu Fini
Level 50: 177 / X / 135 / 150 / 150 / 116
Level 100: 344 / X / 266 / 295 / 296 / 227
Level 50: 183 / 182 / 116 / X / 105 / 169
Scizor (non-Mega)
Level 50: 176 / 166 / 121 / X / 132 / 86
Tapu Fini
Level 50: 177 / X / 135 / 150 / 150 / 116
Level 100: 344 / X / 266 / 295 / 296 / 227
The original idea of the Garchomp Scizor Fini core came from iVolke. It was taken and changed by Lassi, then Lassi's version changed by Hamber, and Hamber's team is the one I used.
This team structure is reminiscent of the successful Dragon / Water / Scizor archetype present on earlier facility leaderboards, though iVolke attributes the structure to the common Dragon-Steel-Fairy core.
The Garchomp set came from iVolke, the Scizor set from Hamber, and the Fini set from me.
"THE BERSERKER"
Like a berserker, Garchomp leads to rip through the opponent's team. She can set up on weak or predictable foes with some Subs or Swords Dance (SD). Otherwise, she baits Ice, Dragon, and Fairy moves to allow easy pivoting into her teammates.
Moves
Substitute and Swords Dance are the classic moves on Facility Singles Dragons. Substitute is used to gain an advantage when the opponent tries to use Status, or sometimes to scout the opponent. It's also the mandatory Walrein-4 answer. Garchomp uses Outrage as her Dragon move for maximum physical Drake damage and a powerful option when she has to resort to it. Its downsides are pretty terrible but 100 accuracy, 120 BP, and Dragonium Z all make up for it.
Stat Investment
Max Attack and Speed EVs, no question. Even without bulk investment, Garchomp's naturally good HP and bulk lets her survive many opponents. Jolly Nature for max speed lets her outspeed as many foes as possible, and it happens to speed tie Salazzle-4. That tie is dreadful, but it's better than being outright slower. Garchomp avoids putting the last 4 EVs in HP to let her use 4 Subs when needed. There are some rare scenarios where the 4th Sub is helpful. Since Garchomp's moves usually don't make contact, 3 HP behind Sub is safer than it otherwise would be. The 4 Def EVs happen to guarantee Mega Lucario-3's Close Combat cannot OHKO Garchomp without a crit.
Held Item
Dragonium Z lets Garchomp pick up OHKOs on a significant portion of the Tree. The Z move also lets Garchomp put off committing to Outrage; if she already used Drake and still has to use Outrage then the opponent's team should be weakened enough where the Outrage commit is fine.
Ability
Rough Skin is mandatory. Sand Veil is useless, and Rough Skin is vital for breaking Sashes and Sturdy, or dealing just enough damage to something to finish something off, or put things in range of Scizor's Bullet Punch. There are some strategies that rely on Rough Skin too, like breaking Sashes on Infernape-4, Salazzle-3, and Rhyperior-3.
"THE ANCHOR"
Scizor anchors the team because of that invaluable Steel typing and ability to set up. His only condition is to keep him away from Fire? Sign me up, but I might break that sometimes, sorry. His Mega form's monstrous bulk and multitude of resists paired with Roost give Scizor many opportunities to safely and fully set up. Mega Scizor's big Attack and Technician allow for full investment into HP and Sp. Def while still OHKOing most everything at +6. Bullet Punch lets Scizor work as a functional sweeper since it alleviates his concern for Speed.
Moves
Roost and Swords Dance are fairly automatic choices and define Scizor's role. Scizor doesn't use a Bug move due to the coverage overlap with Bullet Punch, namely Steel. The power from STAB Bug doesn't offer enough to offset this. This is why Brutal Swing is used, and it hits Ghosts super-effectively. I just wish Scizor learned Feint Attack so he had Dark coverage and a move with perfect accuracy.
Stat Investment
It's a little weird having an Adamant nature but full EV investment into HP and Sp. Def. Yet I can't imagine using a different spread. The Attack is just high enough to only be roadblocked by not-paper-thin Fire-types, and the bulk lets him set up on so many Pokemon. 244 HP EVs yields a 176 stat, which maximizes his Roost recovery. 252 Sp. Def EVs for max Sp. Def apart from Nature. It's funny looking back to iVolke's, Lassi's, and Hamber's Scizor sets because iVolke started with high 180 Sp. Def EVs and every iteration increased that number.
The last 12 EVs are split between Atk, Def, and Speed. The important one here is Speed since it bumps him out of the very populated 95 Speed tier to the less-populated 96 tier. The reason I put it to 96 was for Scizor-4 and Florges-3 so that Roosts can be used without awkward coin-flips during setup. This also means he changes from slower than Turtonator-4 to tying it. Turtonator, a *TURTLE* of all things, can be faster than uninvested Mega Scizor.
Held Item
Scizor is run as Mega Scizor to become as bulky as possible with a dominating 150 base Atk stat while keeping Technician. This strengthens his role as bulky set up and no other item provides the utility to rival the stat gains.
"THE WELL"
Like a well, Tapu Fini provides a place for her teammates to be refreshed and can draw deep to endure attacks. Fini is peerless as status protection and has the typing to answer opponents that Garchomp and Scizor can't. This team wouldn't function without her. Her ability to take hits, even super-effective ones, is so impressive and saves battles.
Moves
Fini runs Grass Knot to beat Waters, and it's especially good for dealing with Gastrodon and Swampert. Calm Mind (CM) lets Fini be flexible in how she takes down her matchups. It's used to change non-risky applicable 3HKOs to 2HKOs and 2HKOs to OHKOs, and then the boosts are taken into the next Pokemon.
I don't run Ice Beam on Fini. CM eats up a slot so there's only one slot left after STABs. On paper, Ice Beam is nice for Flying, Grass, and 4x weaks, but there are so many Flying and Grass types that can survive a +1 Ice Beam. The 4x weaks are weak to Fairy or Water, so Ice Beam fails to fill any role on this set.
Stat Investment
Fini is invested to hit a 116 Speed stat, which lets her outspeed some fairly notable foes. All Uxie sets, Incineroar-3, both 40+ Excadrills, all 40+ Rotoms, and Mega Garchomp-4. It's a comfortable speed to be at. Max HP lets Fini be bulky and maximize recovery from Sitrus Berry. The rest of the EVs are in Sp. Atk with a Modest nature so she can pick up as many OHKOs and 2HKOs as possible since her damage output is generally left wanting. I made some notes below about an alternative EV spread that should be better.
Held Item
Sitrus Berry is used to complement Fini's bulk since she doesn't have access to recovery. Compared to other Singles Fini sets, this one doesn't run a Choice item. I believe that the tradeoff of not getting locked into a move is better than the instant boost from the Choice items. However, I think the Choice sets could still be better than I know. I just ran this Sitrus set for a while, got acclimated, and developed strategies around it. So Choice builds could be worth exploring further. Anyways, the Sitrus Berry synergizes with CM since it gives breathing room for CM to be used safely, which in turn grants Sp. Def stages to make Sitrus more effective. And CM is used to replicate the +1 power of the Specs set this set is based on.
I discuss the reasoning for the Sitrus Berry set in greater detail in my previous write-up.
Extra Note
Something to be mindful about: Misty Terrain halves Dragon-type move damage on grounded targets. This property typically hampers Garchomp and is rarely ever useful.
While playing this team I've pondered about changing Fini's EVs a little to give her more Sp. Atk. The reason that readily comes to mind is securing a +1 Moonblast KO on Mega Garchomp-4; it currently has a 15/16 to OHKO.
Now that I'm going through the process of writing up a streak, I'll perform the exercise of examining how this set with shifted EVs would work.
I would run a 244 HP / 196 SpA / 68 Spe spread. This is the minimum to guarantee that Garchomp KO and happens to be a jump point too. This puts Fini at 176 HP and drops her speed to 114, an empty speed tier. 1 fewer HP means that Sitrus still has maximum recovery yet activates more often, in theory. The notable 115 sets she is now slower than are the 4 Uxies, both Leafeons, and Gliscor-3. Everyone else at 115 is usually handled by Garchomp or Scizor, and the same is true for Uxie and Leafeon. Going into them with a CM or two AND being faster than them is just an occasional nicety. Fini doesn't usually square up against Uxie but she sometimes has to. Going slower than Gliscor-3 is a bit of a concern since it means she has to now take an extra hit to remove it. However, that set is setup fodder for Scizor only if Fini faints to bring him in. So I think this hypothetical spread would work better overall. Latios-1 and Primarina-3&4 are sets I see where the extra Sp. Atk is useful, and I'm sure this helps her 2HKO ranges by a decent margin.
I wish I had looked into this sooner so I could have tried it out. I just never tried looking into it until now because I always assumed that the 116 Speed was too important to change. 116 comes from Hamber's Timid set with 4 EVs from a 252/252/4 spread, so I don't think it had much intentionality behind it aside from Timid making her faster.
These are fairly small changes, just a few points. The differences here just aren't going to be noticeable, but regardless this spread should be better in the long run.
Now that I'm going through the process of writing up a streak, I'll perform the exercise of examining how this set with shifted EVs would work.
I would run a 244 HP / 196 SpA / 68 Spe spread. This is the minimum to guarantee that Garchomp KO and happens to be a jump point too. This puts Fini at 176 HP and drops her speed to 114, an empty speed tier. 1 fewer HP means that Sitrus still has maximum recovery yet activates more often, in theory. The notable 115 sets she is now slower than are the 4 Uxies, both Leafeons, and Gliscor-3. Everyone else at 115 is usually handled by Garchomp or Scizor, and the same is true for Uxie and Leafeon. Going into them with a CM or two AND being faster than them is just an occasional nicety. Fini doesn't usually square up against Uxie but she sometimes has to. Going slower than Gliscor-3 is a bit of a concern since it means she has to now take an extra hit to remove it. However, that set is setup fodder for Scizor only if Fini faints to bring him in. So I think this hypothetical spread would work better overall. Latios-1 and Primarina-3&4 are sets I see where the extra Sp. Atk is useful, and I'm sure this helps her 2HKO ranges by a decent margin.
I wish I had looked into this sooner so I could have tried it out. I just never tried looking into it until now because I always assumed that the 116 Speed was too important to change. 116 comes from Hamber's Timid set with 4 EVs from a 252/252/4 spread, so I don't think it had much intentionality behind it aside from Timid making her faster.
These are fairly small changes, just a few points. The differences here just aren't going to be noticeable, but regardless this spread should be better in the long run.
The only change to this team compared to my last streak is a slight adjustment of Scizor's EVs for the extra Speed point.
Piloting the Team
This team's win condition is built on the synergy between Garchomp, Scizor, and Fini. By leveraging type advantage, this team tries to position itself for a member to set up and sweep, or to just remove the opponent's current Pokemon if that is not feasible.Set lookup and damage calcs are important for this team so that team members aren't KO'd or status'd by surprise and advantage is maintained.
Knowledge of the AI's tendencies also is useful, some of which are covered in the Mastering the Maison guide (in the AI Tendencies section).
Because I've played this team consistently for years, I've had the chance to develop strategies for opponent Pokemon and saw what worked and what didn't. As I used them, I got familiar with what response should be used against each Pokemon. However, it was a lot of information to keep straight in my head. So I committed to gradually writing everything down. The result was a modified version of Team Rocket Elite's "USUM full trainer and moveset data" spreadsheet. It lists my response for every single Pokemon used in battles 40 and up, at least when they lead or I don't have to improvise.
For more in-depth strategies that require more explanation and cases to account for, I also made a separate document to detail those.
Here are both of those resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ge5SsTYSe7MCjCJTgAIpUIFPBYaX4ouu
I don't think this spreadsheet approach to the team is what most people will gravitate towards. I certainly wouldn't. I just progressively learned to play this team as a giant lookup table.
Here's a more general, approachable overview to playing this team, with some best-practices I've figured out.
There is some overlap with the general tips provided in the Mastering the Maison guide.
For more in-depth strategies that require more explanation and cases to account for, I also made a separate document to detail those.
Here are both of those resources: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ge5SsTYSe7MCjCJTgAIpUIFPBYaX4ouu
I don't think this spreadsheet approach to the team is what most people will gravitate towards. I certainly wouldn't. I just progressively learned to play this team as a giant lookup table.
Here's a more general, approachable overview to playing this team, with some best-practices I've figured out.
There is some overlap with the general tips provided in the Mastering the Maison guide.
- Always prevent status whenever possible, and don't play risky with these. Freeze, Sleep, Paralysis, and Burn can easily spell a loss. Misty Terrain and Substitute are the tools to stop these.
- When possible, the goal is to find a way to set up Garchomp or Scizor. Scizor can usually do this freely against most Grass and Fairy-types, and some Ice-types under Misty Terrain. Garchomp is a bit more case-by-case because it depends on the opponent's moveset. The spreadsheet above has everything I found to have a setup opportunity.
- Fini has some setup opportunities with Calm Mind, but she usually doesn't fill that role. Due to her average speed and the risk of crits, she's much more comfortable using CM conservatively for ensuring an OHKO or 2HKO as efficiently as possible and coasting on her remaining HP.
- If setup is available, take advantage of it. For Garchomp and Fini, they tend to like minimal-turn setup to preserve HP and take whatever boosts or Sub they have into the next Pokemon. On the other hand, if Scizor is able to safely set up two SDs, then he can almost always get the third. Full Scizor setup is worth going for and can save streaks.
- In that vein, know when going for setup is risky or it's an overextending setup in improv situations. The game can punish this. The goal is to safely win the battle, not over-win it.
- If Garchomp has a Sub up, it might be tempting to have the Sub fade and use SD before KOing. Avoid this. The Sub is safer and can always be converted into a SD if needed once the next mon is known, but not the other way around.
- Sacrificing plays are difficult for this team but can also make or break a streak. It's a tough judgment call based on which members are the most useful for the opposing trainer and each team members' remaining HP. No real advice I can offer here, simply "consider what could happen and make the best decision".
- Garchomp is usually an ace-in-the-hole backup once switched out. Avoid sac'ing her unless forced to, Scizor and Fini will be able to handle the backline, or the advantage gained from doing so will win the battle.
- The same can almost be said for Garchomp's HP. The more HP she has the more hits she can take and thus score second or return attacks to beat foes, especially backed by that massive attack stat and Drake.
- It might be tempting to go out-of-the-way to save Garchomp's Drake for some hypothetical backline threat, but every battle that goes by where Garchomp doesn't use it, it's like she's not using an item. Additionally, using Drake to make the game a 3v2 is a fantastic position to be in with this team.
- Always try to play around crits when it's safe to do so. What this means is always think about how much damage a Pokemon can deal if it happens to crit, because they will crit. This most importantly applies to Scizor, since he has to use Roosts to stay alive. This means that staying at or above 106 HP is Scizor's magic number, keeping in mind damage ranges. If an attack brings Scizor from full health to 106 HP, then that same attack will deal 105 HP if it crits, leaving Scizor at 1 HP. I didn't figure this crit stuff out until way later than I should have, and had to learn this from Nuzlocking content on YouTube.
- Mitigate risk as much as possible. In addition to thinking about crits, think about what happens if Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Flare Blitz, or Shadow Ball get their secondary effect. Can a team member handle it, and what can be done to prevent or respond to those effects? This princliple applies to more aspects of battles, too.
- This is a micro-optimization that usually only applies to Fini, but if a KO can be secured with a different attack than was just used, use that other attack. The AI will sometimes switch out for an immunity ability or a resist switch, and the different attack usually hits harder. This is almost never necessary to win but it feels great to pull off.
Threat List
There are two primary types of threats: threats that usually require a sacrifice, and threats that are fast and hit hard. The threats listed are just taken from the sets that can only show up in battle 40 and up.Otherwise, like I've mentioned, the biggest threat to this team is bad luck. My strats might be reliable, but any strat that relies on a specific team member or not getting crit is only good most of the time, after all.
- Tornadus-1
This Tornadus outspeeds and has an 81.3% chance to OHKO Garchomp with Skystrike. So if the opposing trainer can carry Tornadus-1, I think it's best to swap in Fini and let it tank the hit. From there, Tornadus will follow up with a Hurricane, and Fini should use Moonblast. Fini will probably get KO'd by the Hurricane if it hits, so back to Garchomp to use Drake. Sometimes Hurricane will miss or Skystrike and Hurricane both low roll and Fini will live, in this case Moonblast again. Either Fini will KO Tornadus, or Scizor gets a free switch. For the other sets, Garchomp can just use Drake, or use the above strategy and have Fini deal with Tornadus; she matches up a little better when she's not taking a Z move.
- Tyranitar-3&4 (Mega)
Tyranitar is too bulky. Garchomp only has a range to OHKO set 3 and is far from OHKOing Mega set 4. And these sets carry moves to punish this. Dragon Dance on set 3 and Ice Fang on set 4. Set 3 should take an EQ and if it lives, swap to Scizor to Bullet Punch. For set 4, it's basically a sacrifice situation for Garchomp. She should EQ and then has a roughly 6% chance to either crit the EQ or dodge the Ice Fang. This doesn't include the rare but possible chance for the AI to choose a different move. Scizor or Fini can finish it off.
Why does it have to be a sacrifice situation though? For one, set ambiguity forces Garchomp to EQ since set 3 can't be left alone. Now, what happens if Fini is swapped in instead? If it's set 3, it 2HKOs her if it's Unnerve and can get Rock Slide flinches. Against set 4, Fini does not have a 2HKO, which means even if Stone Edge doesn't crit she's still dead. So either sac Garchomp or Fini. I choose to sac Garchomp because Tyranitar is usually on Sand teams and losing Garchomp against them is typically less devastating.
- Articuno-2
Unfortunately with how it threatens this team, the best strategy to deal with it relies on the 8% chance that Ice Beam doesn't stick a Freeze. My strategy doc has details on how to deal with it.edit: I just now realized how to deal with Articuno-2. It can be dealt with by swapping to Fini to set up Terrain and take the Ice Beam. Swap back to Garchomp and Articuno uses Mind Reader. Garchomp uses Sub to take the Sheer Cold. Swap to Scizor then SD Bullet Punch to remove Articuno. I really should have figured this out by now.
- Staraptor
If it has Intimidate, Garchomp can't OHKO it with Drake. It's so powerful that something has to be sacrificed, or Garchomp has to risk a crit. My strategy doc elaborates more on Staraptor.
- Bewear
Bewear deals massive neutral hits and can force a KO depending on the moves it has. Set 3 has Quick Claw Ice Punch so it necessitates a switch. Also, Fini only has a range to OHKO it with Moonblast. My strategy doc elaborates more on Bewear.
- Mawile
Mawile has a high chance to force a sacrifice. Both sets are Mega and with little move variation they function about the same. It threatens a Play Rough OHKO on Garchomp and a Play Rough crit OHKO on Fini. Assuming it doesn't have Intimidate, Garchomp has a 50/50 to OHKO with EQ. I choose to bank on this and at least if it doesn't KO, there's the 10% for Play Rough to miss, or in the worst case it double-KOs with Garchomp thanks to Rough Skin. With Intimidate, swap to Fini so she can do some damage before fainting and Garchomp can finish Mawile off. Those are pretty much the plays, either sac Garchomp or Fini, down to personal preference.
- Metagross-4 (Mega)
It outspeeds everything, hits very hard, and lives Garchomp's EQ. There are a couple of options to deal with it. One is to have Garchomp eat the first-turn Meteor Mash and use EQ, leaving both Metagross and Garchomp at low health. If Garchomp stays in it's a double-KO because of Rough Skin. Alternatively, swap to Scizor after Garchomp's EQ. Unfortunately it usually uses Meteor Mash here since it usually doesn't roll high enough to prefer Bullet Punch. If Metagross didn't get an Attack boost, congrats, it's setup fodder.
Against Scizor, Metagross will always spam Brick Breaks, and Scizor can then very safely use Roosts and work its way towards Swords Dances and a Bullet Punch, even if Brick Break crits. Even if Garchomp faints to a crit, Scizor can set up just the same. In the worst cases, any given Meteor Mash has an 18% chance of getting an Attack boost on the turn Garchomp uses EQ or when Scizor has to switch into a Meteor Mash. Scizor can still set up since +1 Brick Breaks do less than half HP damage, but the potential for crits make this situation scary. Any +2 or better Bullet Punch will KO after EQ.
It's probably best to sac Garchomp and remove Metagross if it gets the turn 1 Attack boost, unfortunately. For other options, Scizor can just switch into a Metagross blindly but things can go bad if it's the Mega set and it gets the Attack boost since it can't be quickly Bullet Punched.
Leading with Garchomp's EQ is also ideal because it's the preferred option for Metagross-3
- Gyarados
Dragon Dance and coverage make these pretty scary to face. If they don't have Intimidate, Drake has an OHKO against set 3 and a 5/16 to OHKO Mega set 4, which is great damage even if it doesn't KO. But it will have Intimidate most of the time. Fini should come in and go for a Moonblast 2HKO, which she needs one CM to accomplish against set 3. The Mega set has a decent chance of KOing Fini here with a Stone Edge crit, but 3 tends to be cleaned up easily enough. If Fini doesn't win, Garchomp lives a +1 Waterfall from 4 and KOs with EQ if she doesn't flinch.
- Salamence-4 (Mega)
Salamence is usually dealt with by full HP Fini. However, if Salamence crits Fini or comes in later in a battle, it can spell trouble as a ringer because it's fast and hits incredibly hard.
In scenarios where Fini isn't an option, Scizor can use one Swords Dance to have a guaranteed Bullet Punch KO after both instances of recoil. Alternatively, if Misty Terrain is up Garchomp won't get OHKO'd by Dragon Rush. The AI accounts for this though, and will use Double Edge against a Garchomp in Misty Terrain, which Garchomp can live at full health and use Drake to KO Salamence, but will leave Garchomp at low HP. In other weird situations, Scizor can spam Roost to whittle down Mence with recoil.
- Pinsir-3 (Mega)
This thing's Thrash hits way too hard, and puts all members of the team in immediate danger since it outspeeds everything. Thankfully it can't OHKO anything, but crits will. It does more than half HP damage on Scizor, so it's not a good idea to try to stall to get Pinsir to hit itself in confusion. Fini can live one Thrash, but it definitely can't switch in on it. It basically comes down to using Drake as soon as any Pinsir comes out.
- Magnezone-3
Magnezone usually doesn't do anything as it is outsped and OHKO'd by Garchomp's EQ. However, 1 out of 10 times this won't happen against set 3, and it likely goes for a Magnet Rise. Now Magnezone can start to pressure the team with big damage and no ways to deal with it. Scizor has to come in for a bit to wait out the Magnet Rise turns for Garchomp. He can also break a potential Sturdy in the process. I like to have Scizor come in to take a Flash Cannon, hit it with a Bullet Punch, Roost once, swap back to Garchomp to blank Thunder, and Sub to wait out the last turn. However if it has Magnet Pull, Scizor has to kind of awkwardly set up a SD and die because Magnezone outpaces its damage. Finally, hope again for the 90% that EQ connects.
I'm just realizing this as I'm writing this, but Drake does decent damage to Zone-3. So a +2 Drake has a 15/16 chance to OHKO, assuming Sturdy isn't in play. 100% guaranteed OHKO after Scizor's Bullet Punch. This is a risky option after the first EQ miss, but seems like a nice insurance once Garchomp comes back in. No Drake but +2 Atk is perfectly fine against Wally, Colress, and Kukui.
Battle Videos
To avoid having camera recordings for this submission, the battle videos were dumped using a 3DS homebrew app then recorded from the Citra emulator.These replays don't cover every lucky situation that kept this streak alive. Maybe the AI failed to score a crit at a crucial time, or the backline was generous, or a threatening Pokemon came out but it was the set that didn't give me trouble. I didn't save most of these types of battles because nothing interesting happens. I couldn't have played any better, I just happened to come out alive.
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIsZrGrpggjTq0p2aNUFCXA3zs-fNECsM
In line with what seems to be tradition of most Tree milestone battles, they weren't interesting. I'm omitting my comments on these.
Battle 100: Wally - Altaria, Gallade, Garchomp [YouTube]
Battle 200: Kukui - A-Ninetales, Primarina, Decidueye [YouTube]
Battle 300: Wally - Gallade, Magnezone, Altaria [YouTube]
Battle 400: Kiawe - A-Marowak, Talonflame, Kangaskhan [YouTube]
Battle 500: Sina - Drampa, Abomasnow, Mandibuzz [YouTube]
Battle 600: Kiawe - Kangaskhan, A-Marowak, Talonflame [YouTube]
Battle 700: Colress - Electrode, Porygon-Z, Klinklang [YouTube]
Battle 800: Plumeria - Salazzle, Crobat, Lurantis [YouTube]
Battle 900: Cynthia - Togekiss, Lucario, Milotic [YouTube]
Battle 1000: Sina - Mandibuzz, Drampa, Glaceon [YouTube]
I saw Anabel just one time during this streak at battle 970. Unfortunately I missed saving the replay.
Battle 100: Wally - Altaria, Gallade, Garchomp [YouTube]
Battle 200: Kukui - A-Ninetales, Primarina, Decidueye [YouTube]
Battle 300: Wally - Gallade, Magnezone, Altaria [YouTube]
Battle 400: Kiawe - A-Marowak, Talonflame, Kangaskhan [YouTube]
Battle 500: Sina - Drampa, Abomasnow, Mandibuzz [YouTube]
Battle 600: Kiawe - Kangaskhan, A-Marowak, Talonflame [YouTube]
Battle 700: Colress - Electrode, Porygon-Z, Klinklang [YouTube]
Battle 800: Plumeria - Salazzle, Crobat, Lurantis [YouTube]
Battle 900: Cynthia - Togekiss, Lucario, Milotic [YouTube]
Battle 1000: Sina - Mandibuzz, Drampa, Glaceon [YouTube]
I saw Anabel just one time during this streak at battle 970. Unfortunately I missed saving the replay.
The commentary for the following videos is more meant to explain my thought process with what happens in the video than to be a standalone play-by-play. However, I did attempt to write the commentary in a roughly turn-by-turn overview format with abridged sections. I guess it's natural to explain a turn-based game turn-by-turn, after all.
Battle 261: Demiathena - Cresselia, Raikou, Azelf
Cress leads so it should be a setup from either Chomp or Scizor. It's set 3 so Chomp it is. Because of when Cress uses its Future Sight, I decide to preserve the Sub by wasting a few turns and getting another Sub up before KO'ing Cress. Next is Azelf. I decide to commit to Outrage because +6 Chomp is a win condition. Unfortunately it's Azelf-3 with Sash, so not only does Chomp lose her Sub, but she also gets knocked down to 20 HP. The follow-up Air Balloon Raikou means that Chomp has to faint and Fini and Scizor have to try to faint it. Thankfully it wasn't an Electrium Z set. Fini is able to get off one Moonblast before fainting, and Scizor uses a SD on the predicted Reflect turn to guarantee a Brutal Swing into Bullet Punch KO.
Battle 317: Reina - Greninja, Charizard, Blaziken
The lead Greninja is easy enough for Fini to deal with. No Protean so a clean OHKO from Moonblast. Blaziken comes in with a crit EQ and Fini KOs it. Finally, Charizard. The difficulty of set ambiguity is compounded by Zard's Mega ambiguity here. Chomp will clean up Y nicely because she outspeeds, but X is a concern if it uses Dragon Dance. I leave Fini in to use a Surf and see which set it is; it's too dangerous to switch in anything. It's X and it uses Dragon Dance, the worst outcome here. On the upside, Fini got in solid uncontested damage from Surf, over 50%. I decide the best way to end this fight is for this Zard to faint from recoil. I know from experience that this Charizard uses Flare Blitz against Fini, not Rock Slide. So I swap Scizor in. He takes the Flare Blitz and faints to inflict maximum recoil to Zard. Misty Terrain wears off too, so Chomp will take full Dragon Rush damage. Looking at Zard's HP bar, I estimated that it might live one Rough Skin, so I have Fini come in. I then immediately swap to Garchomp to guarantee Zard takes enough recoil.
Battle 472: Jo - Primarina, Articuno, Salamence
Look at those three Pokemon; what a diabolically stacked team.
Lead Primarina, so Fini comes in. Unfortunately it's the worst outcome, the Moonblast set with a Sp. Atk drop. Fini manages to win with a CM. Next is Salamence. I have to sac Fini here regardless of set; her HP is too low. It's the Mega set unfortunately, things are looking bad. I have to send in Scizor now because Misty Terrain is gone so Chomp can't live a Dragon Rush outside of a miss. Scizor starts the process of Roosting to accumulate recoil, SD once in range, then Bullet Punch. But he gets crit. This is the end of the streak. Garchomp comes out and Salamence does the only thing to keep this battle going: it misses Dragon Rush. It dies to Drake. Maybe the battle can still be won? Never mind, it's an Articuno. The only way to not lose is if it is set 1 and misses Blizzard. Garchomp has to use Outrage for a 2HKO. First hit does around 50%. I know that 50% damage means it's set 2. It's over. And then Articuno uses a raw Sheer Cold that misses.
By the most unbelievable of miracles, Garchomp beat Mega Salamence and Articuno by herself. This was by far the luckiest battle this streak, and one of my luckiest wins ever playing this team. I can't believe that the AI chose Sheer Cold over the easy Ice Beam OHKO.
Battle 578: Horace - Regice, Registeel, Regirock
Normally the Regis never give me trouble, furthermore a team with all 3 should be the freest win ever. A Regice lead so Scizor comes in for some setup. Unfortunately it's the Focus Blast set 4, and it does a number on Scizor with a Sp. Def drop. Scizor hangs on to deliver a +2 Bullet Punch KO from red health. Registeel comes in next. I decide I have to sac Scizor for momentum. Scizor outspeeds all Registeel except set 2, so I go for Brutal Swing for more damage because Garchomp won't be able to follow up a +2 Bullet Punch on Registeel with a KO. It is unfortunately set 2 and Scizor is outsped. Thankfully Scizor baited the Z-move, but this still wasn't great. Scizor is supposed to handle Registeel-2. I know that it should go Rock Polish so I use Sub. This was a questionable decision since this didn't change turn economy; the economy is exactly the same as before since Registeel now outspeeds and I blocked one attack. Except Chomp took 45 HP for this nothing exchange. I thought it would use Superpower and start to weaken itself, but it doesn't have to do that when it has Iron Head. I'm partially punished for this since Registeel gets two Iron Head flinches on Garchomp, blocking the +2 EQ OHKO. Thankfully I wasn't punished with a crit or Chomp fainting. The only chance to save this battle is for Fini to somehow beat Registeel. But I decide to save Garchomp and have Fini take the switch-in hit to try this. She manages to not be flinched and hold on with 3 HP and remove Registeel. The last Pokemon is Regirock, thankfully something Fini and Chomp together can barely KO from their paltry remaining HP.
This was so close, and came down to Fini living on 3 HP without flinching. That Registeel is terrifying to face without Scizor.
Battle 601: Tasanee - Metagross, Primarina, Magnezone
Easy Metagross-3, 2HKO'd by Garchomp. Primarina comes in so Fini swaps to take its Moonblast. Which was a crit. Which lowered Fini's Sp. Atk. Awesome. Literal worst outcome. Fini has to CM once then start using Moonblasts to whittle down Primarina as much as possible before she's gone. Thankfully she puts Primarina low enough for Chomp to very comfortably KO with EQ. Last is a Magnezone. Easy enough to EQ and move on to the next battle... oh no, Bright Powder... oh no, it went for Magnet Rise. I have to do my typical method to play around this. Scizor comes in to waste a few turns and break its potential Sturdy. Unfortunately Scizor took a Thunder paralysis during this and the timing for bringing Chomp back in for the EQ was awkward. I knew this Zone was less bulky than set 4, so I checked the calc and noticed that it takes 49.6 - 58.6% from Drake. So I actually try to push for a Drake KO here instead of an EQ KO to avoid another Bright Power incident. Scizor hangs on to put Zone in that range and Chomp finishes with Drake.
Battle 884: Demiathena - Raikou, Thundurus, Zapdos
Lead Raikou-4 with the Air Balloon. I go for my strat to get a +2 Garchomp and minimize lingering Reflect turns. Raikou gets an Extrasensory crit but no flinches, which is alright. Garchomp still beats it. Thundurus comes in. Both sets outspeed Chomp. Even though Thundurus sets 3 and 4 threaten Fini, I send her in to scout since Garchomp is a bit battered. It won't be using an Electric move on the swap turn anyways. I want this to be set 3 since it can't do as much damage as 4 can. It uses Sky Drop so it's 3. I eventually pivot to Scizor and abuse Sky Drop for the switch-in. Wild Charge doesn't come close to threatening Scizor and he freely sets up on it. It eventually U-Turns into Zapdos and Scizor beats it easily enough, and then finishes off the liability Thundurus.
Battle 962: Tasanee - Mesprit, Salamence, Arcanine
Sub to scout the Mesprit lead. It's set 4 with Blizzard and it connects, so Fini comes in. Fini goes for a basic CM into two Moonblasts to KO it, but gets crit and faints, really unfortunate. I send in Scizor for some light set up and clean up. However, on this very first turn for Scizor, Tasanee bizarrely swaps out Mesprit for Arcanine. Of course, this is a resist switch, just not a typical one because my current Pokemon only half-caused it. Arcanine in the back resists my last-used attack (Moonblast) and has a super-effective move against Scizor, so the AI switched in Arcanine. Scizor must swap out, and Garchomp should be able to handle Arcanine. Overheat does a good chunk to Garchomp on the switch but otherwise Chomp clears Arcanine fine. Mesprit will come in next due to Blizzard, and thanks to the +1 Moonblast from earlier it's easily in range of Drake. Salamence is last and it should be a win regardless of set, barring crazy stuff from 4. It's the slower set 3 which Garchomp cleanly Outrages from -1.
Battle 977: Rendor - Skarmory, Salamence, Hawlucha
Boring hazards Skarmory-4 lead. I do my usual safe strat to get rid of it, but unfortunately Whirlwind went back and forth between Garchomp and Scizor and they took some damage while I had to waste turns. Eventually Fini comes back in to land the final Surf. Next is Hawlucha, which Fini can survive its Sky Attack and beat with Moonblast. Finally the dreaded Mega Mence-4. Fini has to be sac'd here. She can't touch Mence and Garchomp is too hurt to take advantage of a second Misty Terrain. I might as well send in Chomp next because I want Mence to take Rough Skin chip and at least have a chance to dodge Dragon Rush. Chomp faints to Double Edge. Finally, Scizor comes in. I'm so glad he returned to full health during the Skarm shenanigans earlier because he barely survives the Spikes, Rocks, and Double Edge. Just 20 HP left to use SD for the KO.
Battle 1048: Kikujiro - Ampharos, Raichu, Togedemaru
I'm including this because I had to deal with Mega Ampharos and Kikujiro without Garchomp which is pretty uncomfortable.
An Ampharos lead, so Fini swaps in to scout the set. Alright, it's Mega Ampharos-4, Garchomp should be able to KO it and get away with a SD. Ampharos unfortunately doesn't go for Confuse Ray and instead gets the Dragon Pulse crit, KOing Garchomp even through Misty Terrain. It's a 25% chance for this crit to OHKO, so that's pretty unlucky. Calcs show a guaranteed 2HKO from +2 Brutal Swings, so I go for that. It works out perfectly with the remaining Misty Terrain turns, since the SD and first Brutal Swing will occur under Terrain, and the last Brutal Swing will go first outside of Terrain. Luckily the Ampharos just goes for Confuse Ray instead of Thunder here, so Scizor doesn't lose any HP. Classic Raichu comes in, which is a big relief. If Kikujiro had them, he would have sent in Rotom-Heat or Manectric. Scizor straight loses to Mega Manectric-3 and the situation of being forced to send in Fini to beat Rotom-Heat would have been bad even with a full-health Scizor. STAB Electric moves tend to do enough neutral damage to Scizor to be scary, and there's paralysis, and Scizor has to use the slower Brutal Swing to damage them neutrally. Back to Raichu, Volt Tackle can only deal 72 damage at most, so Scizor will be able to safely get more SDs. Finally Togedemaru, easy enough to remove.
Battle 261: Demiathena - Cresselia, Raikou, Azelf
Battle 317: Reina - Greninja, Charizard, Blaziken
Battle 472: Jo - Primarina, Articuno, Salamence
Lead Primarina, so Fini comes in. Unfortunately it's the worst outcome, the Moonblast set with a Sp. Atk drop. Fini manages to win with a CM. Next is Salamence. I have to sac Fini here regardless of set; her HP is too low. It's the Mega set unfortunately, things are looking bad. I have to send in Scizor now because Misty Terrain is gone so Chomp can't live a Dragon Rush outside of a miss. Scizor starts the process of Roosting to accumulate recoil, SD once in range, then Bullet Punch. But he gets crit. This is the end of the streak. Garchomp comes out and Salamence does the only thing to keep this battle going: it misses Dragon Rush. It dies to Drake. Maybe the battle can still be won? Never mind, it's an Articuno. The only way to not lose is if it is set 1 and misses Blizzard. Garchomp has to use Outrage for a 2HKO. First hit does around 50%. I know that 50% damage means it's set 2. It's over. And then Articuno uses a raw Sheer Cold that misses.
By the most unbelievable of miracles, Garchomp beat Mega Salamence and Articuno by herself. This was by far the luckiest battle this streak, and one of my luckiest wins ever playing this team. I can't believe that the AI chose Sheer Cold over the easy Ice Beam OHKO.
Battle 578: Horace - Regice, Registeel, Regirock
This was so close, and came down to Fini living on 3 HP without flinching. That Registeel is terrifying to face without Scizor.
Battle 601: Tasanee - Metagross, Primarina, Magnezone
Battle 884: Demiathena - Raikou, Thundurus, Zapdos
Battle 962: Tasanee - Mesprit, Salamence, Arcanine
Battle 977: Rendor - Skarmory, Salamence, Hawlucha
Battle 1048: Kikujiro - Ampharos, Raichu, Togedemaru
An Ampharos lead, so Fini swaps in to scout the set. Alright, it's Mega Ampharos-4, Garchomp should be able to KO it and get away with a SD. Ampharos unfortunately doesn't go for Confuse Ray and instead gets the Dragon Pulse crit, KOing Garchomp even through Misty Terrain. It's a 25% chance for this crit to OHKO, so that's pretty unlucky. Calcs show a guaranteed 2HKO from +2 Brutal Swings, so I go for that. It works out perfectly with the remaining Misty Terrain turns, since the SD and first Brutal Swing will occur under Terrain, and the last Brutal Swing will go first outside of Terrain. Luckily the Ampharos just goes for Confuse Ray instead of Thunder here, so Scizor doesn't lose any HP. Classic Raichu comes in, which is a big relief. If Kikujiro had them, he would have sent in Rotom-Heat or Manectric. Scizor straight loses to Mega Manectric-3 and the situation of being forced to send in Fini to beat Rotom-Heat would have been bad even with a full-health Scizor. STAB Electric moves tend to do enough neutral damage to Scizor to be scary, and there's paralysis, and Scizor has to use the slower Brutal Swing to damage them neutrally. Back to Raichu, Volt Tackle can only deal 72 damage at most, so Scizor will be able to safely get more SDs. Finally Togedemaru, easy enough to remove.
Battle 1065: Thamina - Starmie, Greninja, Raikou
Battle Summary:
Thamina leads with Starmie.
I swap to Fini. Starmie uses Ice Beam.
Starmie uses Thunderbolt and activates Fini's Sitrus, so she sits around 75% HP. Fini uses Moonblast to deal over 50% to Starmie.
Same as before, Thunderbolt and Moonblast. Starmie is fainted and Fini is left with 51 HP. Thamina sends in Raikou without Air Balloon.
Garchomp switches in, and Raikou uses Calm Mind.
Raikou uses Shadow Ball and Garchomp uses EQ for the KO. Garchomp is left with 121 HP. Greninja is sent in.
Greninja KOs Garchomp with Blizzard. I send in Fini.
Greninja KOs Fini with a Hydro Pump crit. I send in Scizor.
Over the next few turns, Scizor uses some Roosts and 1 SD. Greninja uses Hydro Pump during these turns until its PP is depleted.
Greninja then switches to Dark Pulses and Scizor gets some turns to Roost. Greninja gets flinches at the right time and KOs Scizor.
Reflection:
There's nothing to comment on the Starmie and Raikou; I played them well. No further optimizations or things to account for there. Greninja was where things went wrong. Garchomp and Fini went down to a string of bad luck, whatever. It happens, I just had to play out of it. Here's what my thought process was for Scizor vs Greninja, starting from Scizor's first turn:
I looked at the damage calc and saw 22.4 - 26.5% for Bullet Punch. This was bad. I couldn't go for a SD Bullet Punch 2HKO. I also saw that Hydro Pump did 46 - 54.5%, and Dark Pulse was its next-strongest move at 32.9 - 39.7%. Seeing these numbers, I decided that I had to bank on PP stalling the Hydro Pump then hope that Dark Pulse wouldn't flinch. This was looking very unfavorable. After taking the first Hydro Pump as a crit, I noticed it did far less than a crit should have. I double checked the calc and noticed that Scizor wasn't Mega, because I had to do the rare calc for the non-Mega state for the previous battle.
I became more optimistic for the new numbers Scizor would be taking: 39.7 - 47.7% for Pump and 28.9 - 34.6% for Pulse. Dark Pulse flinches were actually the greatest danger so I would still PP stall the Pumps, but squeeze in 1 SD for the 3HKO during that. I needed to take as few Dark Pulses as possible. I made a small calc mistake during the Pumps and nearly lost Scizor due to not healing enough before the SD turn. It had a 5/16 to live the Pump hit and it did. However, once the Pumps were gone, Greninja got the flinches it needed to win.
After the battle, I realized I made one more mistake: Scizor wouldn't do 43.5 - 51.7% for +2 Bullet Punches. It would do 49.6 - 59.1% instead. A 99.6% chance to 2HKO. I had forgotten to look at my own damage ranges after noticing the lack of Mega. I never looked back to the left side of the screen for my calcs after changing to Mega; I had only paid attention to what Greninja would do to Scizor. Not having to 3HKO Greninja should have made this a win. This was a tough loss, it doesn't feel good to lose like this.
Here's the sequence of stupid luck this Greninja had that contributed to the loss, all before Scizor hit the field:
It had to hit Blizzard, otherwise Garchomp would have won (0.77).
It had to not have Protean, otherwise Scizor would have OHKO'd it (2/3).
It had to hit Hydro Pump and crit, otherwise Fini would have won (0.88 / 24).
It was forced to be the Wide Lens set because Starmie already held King's Rock, so no 50/50 there.
So 0.77 * 2/3 * 0.88 / 24 is a 1.9% chance for Greninja to even force Scizor into this situation. Unfortunate.
Of course there was some good luck here too, with Starmie going down without flinches or crits on Fini. (0.9 * 23/24)^2 is a 74.4% chance of no hax. Decently lucky. Also Scizor was very lucky to live the Pump on 1 HP after the calc mistake.
Then again, if it had just been the Sash Starmie, Scizor would have freely set up.
As strange as it might seem, this loss does have a silver lining for me because luck was a large component of the loss. These strings of bad luck always happen after enough battles. I've certainly seen far more unlikely stuff happen. Of course my loss was really due to using the calc incorrectly, but having non-Mega Scizor still loaded could be seen as another unlucky event.
Thamina leads with Starmie.
I swap to Fini. Starmie uses Ice Beam.
Starmie uses Thunderbolt and activates Fini's Sitrus, so she sits around 75% HP. Fini uses Moonblast to deal over 50% to Starmie.
Same as before, Thunderbolt and Moonblast. Starmie is fainted and Fini is left with 51 HP. Thamina sends in Raikou without Air Balloon.
Garchomp switches in, and Raikou uses Calm Mind.
Raikou uses Shadow Ball and Garchomp uses EQ for the KO. Garchomp is left with 121 HP. Greninja is sent in.
Greninja KOs Garchomp with Blizzard. I send in Fini.
Greninja KOs Fini with a Hydro Pump crit. I send in Scizor.
Over the next few turns, Scizor uses some Roosts and 1 SD. Greninja uses Hydro Pump during these turns until its PP is depleted.
Greninja then switches to Dark Pulses and Scizor gets some turns to Roost. Greninja gets flinches at the right time and KOs Scizor.
Reflection:
There's nothing to comment on the Starmie and Raikou; I played them well. No further optimizations or things to account for there. Greninja was where things went wrong. Garchomp and Fini went down to a string of bad luck, whatever. It happens, I just had to play out of it. Here's what my thought process was for Scizor vs Greninja, starting from Scizor's first turn:
I looked at the damage calc and saw 22.4 - 26.5% for Bullet Punch. This was bad. I couldn't go for a SD Bullet Punch 2HKO. I also saw that Hydro Pump did 46 - 54.5%, and Dark Pulse was its next-strongest move at 32.9 - 39.7%. Seeing these numbers, I decided that I had to bank on PP stalling the Hydro Pump then hope that Dark Pulse wouldn't flinch. This was looking very unfavorable. After taking the first Hydro Pump as a crit, I noticed it did far less than a crit should have. I double checked the calc and noticed that Scizor wasn't Mega, because I had to do the rare calc for the non-Mega state for the previous battle.
I became more optimistic for the new numbers Scizor would be taking: 39.7 - 47.7% for Pump and 28.9 - 34.6% for Pulse. Dark Pulse flinches were actually the greatest danger so I would still PP stall the Pumps, but squeeze in 1 SD for the 3HKO during that. I needed to take as few Dark Pulses as possible. I made a small calc mistake during the Pumps and nearly lost Scizor due to not healing enough before the SD turn. It had a 5/16 to live the Pump hit and it did. However, once the Pumps were gone, Greninja got the flinches it needed to win.
After the battle, I realized I made one more mistake: Scizor wouldn't do 43.5 - 51.7% for +2 Bullet Punches. It would do 49.6 - 59.1% instead. A 99.6% chance to 2HKO. I had forgotten to look at my own damage ranges after noticing the lack of Mega. I never looked back to the left side of the screen for my calcs after changing to Mega; I had only paid attention to what Greninja would do to Scizor. Not having to 3HKO Greninja should have made this a win. This was a tough loss, it doesn't feel good to lose like this.
Here's the sequence of stupid luck this Greninja had that contributed to the loss, all before Scizor hit the field:
It had to hit Blizzard, otherwise Garchomp would have won (0.77).
It had to not have Protean, otherwise Scizor would have OHKO'd it (2/3).
It had to hit Hydro Pump and crit, otherwise Fini would have won (0.88 / 24).
It was forced to be the Wide Lens set because Starmie already held King's Rock, so no 50/50 there.
So 0.77 * 2/3 * 0.88 / 24 is a 1.9% chance for Greninja to even force Scizor into this situation. Unfortunate.
Of course there was some good luck here too, with Starmie going down without flinches or crits on Fini. (0.9 * 23/24)^2 is a 74.4% chance of no hax. Decently lucky. Also Scizor was very lucky to live the Pump on 1 HP after the calc mistake.
Then again, if it had just been the Sash Starmie, Scizor would have freely set up.
As strange as it might seem, this loss does have a silver lining for me because luck was a large component of the loss. These strings of bad luck always happen after enough battles. I've certainly seen far more unlikely stuff happen. Of course my loss was really due to using the calc incorrectly, but having non-Mega Scizor still loaded could be seen as another unlucky event.
Summary
The fact that this team made it to 1000 and even tied 3rd is, in short, incredible. I'm actually relieved that it didn't lose before 3rd place. I'm relieved it didn't PB without breaking 1000. I'm satisfied with where this insane goal for 1K with this team ended up. There are a few small ideas I might dabble with and report on in the future, otherwise I expect that this is my last streak for the Tree."No matter how fun the battle is, it will always end sometime..." - Cynthia
Shoutouts to the folks in the Battle Facilities Discord. I love the culture that has been built there and that I found people with the same idiosyncrasies within Pokemon that I have. I'm glad I decided to join. You gamers are cool, don't forget it.
Thank you for reading.
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As I've never really done a writeup on my team I thought I'd do one now.
I started playing again to get more of a feel for the team and got to 70, note that I've not been looking up the sets so far.
The team is a fast based tailwind team trying to fake out+tailwind on turn 1 mostly and try to 2v1 a mon while having the opponent move after due to speed control, some issues with that are of course TR teams/setters, things I would be unable to 2v1 or that are on their own a threat.
The backline is Kommo-o and Sylveon which preferably come in with a/some turns of tailwind left as they aren't the fastest on their own outside of tailwind, Kommo-o can use it's Z move to set up but it can have issues with that if tailwind is gone, and Sylveon just isn't fast enough on it's own.
The idea behind them was for double spread moves for in the end, while covering different stuff.
Sylveon is just not that good compared to Kommo-o though.
I'd like to note that I usually just go with what I feel is best rather then think it out and go with the optimal play, which might just be impatience on my part.
That does lead to some sticky situations as in the battle video I posted from the loss, where as I can't really harm Rrevenant(which might have TR) I could Leaf Blade+Seismic Toss Gigalith for free which would lead to a 2v4 while under TR.
At that point I could either Sacred Sword+SToss Steelix or SToss+Protect as they are faster under TR, another potential option is to switch to Kommo-o on Kartana which is immune to Trevenant's moves and could SToss+Z Scales next turn.
On that note I just noticed that I put Dragonium Z instead of Kommonium Z on Kommo-o, that's a mistake on my part.
Another thing that might be useful to mentions is what I prioritize, first I look at what can have OHKO moves and try to target them, in other situations the TR setter/the mon I can KO by double targeting.
I do notice that I should prioritize cripplers higher, as I sometimes target the other mon I can KO/consider an attacking threat which let's my team be crippled by thunder wave/confuse ray, stuff like Magnezone2/3 for example and the Rotom variants.
Overall, I think the team could be optimized a bit with another mon instead of Sylveon, Sylveon can work but while playing I feel it could be better with it being specs and having be locked in a resisted move against the last opponent and it being slow outside of tailwind.
I am happy that I got so far, the streak could probably have gone on a bit longer if I still was more into tree when playing and of course, playing calmly.
I do think I've covered most of what I wanted to talk about, if anything comes to mind I'll add it, let me know if anyone has any questions.
Anyway, here's the team again.
I started playing again to get more of a feel for the team and got to 70, note that I've not been looking up the sets so far.
The team is a fast based tailwind team trying to fake out+tailwind on turn 1 mostly and try to 2v1 a mon while having the opponent move after due to speed control, some issues with that are of course TR teams/setters, things I would be unable to 2v1 or that are on their own a threat.
The backline is Kommo-o and Sylveon which preferably come in with a/some turns of tailwind left as they aren't the fastest on their own outside of tailwind, Kommo-o can use it's Z move to set up but it can have issues with that if tailwind is gone, and Sylveon just isn't fast enough on it's own.
The idea behind them was for double spread moves for in the end, while covering different stuff.
Sylveon is just not that good compared to Kommo-o though.
I'd like to note that I usually just go with what I feel is best rather then think it out and go with the optimal play, which might just be impatience on my part.
That does lead to some sticky situations as in the battle video I posted from the loss, where as I can't really harm Rrevenant(which might have TR) I could Leaf Blade+Seismic Toss Gigalith for free which would lead to a 2v4 while under TR.
At that point I could either Sacred Sword+SToss Steelix or SToss+Protect as they are faster under TR, another potential option is to switch to Kommo-o on Kartana which is immune to Trevenant's moves and could SToss+Z Scales next turn.
On that note I just noticed that I put Dragonium Z instead of Kommonium Z on Kommo-o, that's a mistake on my part.
Another thing that might be useful to mentions is what I prioritize, first I look at what can have OHKO moves and try to target them, in other situations the TR setter/the mon I can KO by double targeting.
I do notice that I should prioritize cripplers higher, as I sometimes target the other mon I can KO/consider an attacking threat which let's my team be crippled by thunder wave/confuse ray, stuff like Magnezone2/3 for example and the Rotom variants.
Overall, I think the team could be optimized a bit with another mon instead of Sylveon, Sylveon can work but while playing I feel it could be better with it being specs and having be locked in a resisted move against the last opponent and it being slow outside of tailwind.
I am happy that I got so far, the streak could probably have gone on a bit longer if I still was more into tree when playing and of course, playing calmly.
I do think I've covered most of what I wanted to talk about, if anything comes to mind I'll add it, let me know if anyone has any questions.
Anyway, here's the team again.
Kangaskhan-Mega @ Kangaskhanite
Ability: Parental Bond/Scrappy
Level: 50
EVs: 244 HP / 164 Atk / 56 SpD / 44 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Double-Edge
- Fake Out
- Seismic Toss
- Sucker Punch
One thing worth noting is that this set is slightly suboptimal, as the adamant version has a few more EVs to throw around, when getting it in gen 3 I already used my Seismic Toss on my Jolly Kanga and trained it so I was left with it.
My gameplan with it is mostly Fake out on turn 1 (if needed it can stay non mega on ghost types, Cofagrigus as an example for a TR setter, with that+2 Leaf Blade being a 98% to 2HKO.
Other then that the prefered moves are Seismic Toss and Double-Edge to double target the mon I can either guaranteed kill or is the biggest threat.
I was thinking about Crunch on Kanga instead of Sucker Punch to deal with the more bulky Ghosts/Psychics as my leads don't have a good way to deal with them, and locking in shadow ball on Sylveon is not preferable.
With the idea of Tapu Lele instead of Sylveon Crunch would also be needed over Sucker Punch with it being an useless slot if Lele comes in.
Kartana @ Focus Sash
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Tailwind
- Protect
- Sacred Sword
Kartana is the Tailwind setter and depending if he can get KOs a sweeper, with Kartana being frail he dies to most double attacks, if there are 2 threats on Kartana I usually just Fake Out+Tailwind then try to get an attack off on either with Kanga targeting it too, with usually Kommo-o coming in, provided there are no fairy types.
I do tend to just attack +Fake Out sometimes if one/both of the opponents leads are OHKOers, other big threats or just slower in general.
Tailwind might be better in some cases for the rest of the team but like I said before, I generally just click what comes to mind.
I should note that I underuse protect on Kartana and probably on Kommo-o, it's something that I don't tend to click often even when it might be useful.
Sylveon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Shadow Ball
- Swift
Sylveon is a mon that I feel could be replaced as it's the mon that comes out the least and usually as 4th when Tailwind is gone, which it isn't very good in.
Usually I click Hyper Voice, Swift is used in few battles against evasion(like Alolan-Muk-1 in the 70 I recently played), Psyshock and Shadow ball are the same in versus a last mon, with it's specs it doesn't work that well as initially thought as it happens sometimes to be locked into a move the last mon resists.
I picked it initially for the double spread moves, but I noticed when playing that it isn't very good as 4th, as a mon that resists it can be last.
The main idea was Tapu Lele, not exactly sure on the set but as its naturally higher power/faster outside from pixiliate single hyper voice, initial thought was life orb.
Do note I haven't tried it yet but I do feel it could be better then Sylveon.
Kommo-o @ Kommonium Z (was always Kommonium Z, just put it wrong the time I posted the team)
Ability: Bulletproof
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Close Combat
- Clanging Scales
- Flamethrower
- Protect
Kommo-o is the mon that usually comes in third to clean up with it's Z move and the omniboost giving it extra stats+speed so it's faster in/outside of tailwind, the EVs are just basic 252/252/4.
I don't have that much to say about it further, Sylveon+Kommo-o on their own isn't that good though(especially without tailwind), another reason I'm thinking about a replacement, as stuff like Alolan Ninetales is an issue with just these 2 left.
Ability: Parental Bond/Scrappy
Level: 50
EVs: 244 HP / 164 Atk / 56 SpD / 44 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Double-Edge
- Fake Out
- Seismic Toss
- Sucker Punch
One thing worth noting is that this set is slightly suboptimal, as the adamant version has a few more EVs to throw around, when getting it in gen 3 I already used my Seismic Toss on my Jolly Kanga and trained it so I was left with it.
My gameplan with it is mostly Fake out on turn 1 (if needed it can stay non mega on ghost types, Cofagrigus as an example for a TR setter, with that+2 Leaf Blade being a 98% to 2HKO.
Other then that the prefered moves are Seismic Toss and Double-Edge to double target the mon I can either guaranteed kill or is the biggest threat.
I was thinking about Crunch on Kanga instead of Sucker Punch to deal with the more bulky Ghosts/Psychics as my leads don't have a good way to deal with them, and locking in shadow ball on Sylveon is not preferable.
With the idea of Tapu Lele instead of Sylveon Crunch would also be needed over Sucker Punch with it being an useless slot if Lele comes in.
Kartana @ Focus Sash
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Tailwind
- Protect
- Sacred Sword
Kartana is the Tailwind setter and depending if he can get KOs a sweeper, with Kartana being frail he dies to most double attacks, if there are 2 threats on Kartana I usually just Fake Out+Tailwind then try to get an attack off on either with Kanga targeting it too, with usually Kommo-o coming in, provided there are no fairy types.
I do tend to just attack +Fake Out sometimes if one/both of the opponents leads are OHKOers, other big threats or just slower in general.
Tailwind might be better in some cases for the rest of the team but like I said before, I generally just click what comes to mind.
I should note that I underuse protect on Kartana and probably on Kommo-o, it's something that I don't tend to click often even when it might be useful.
Sylveon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Shadow Ball
- Swift
Sylveon is a mon that I feel could be replaced as it's the mon that comes out the least and usually as 4th when Tailwind is gone, which it isn't very good in.
Usually I click Hyper Voice, Swift is used in few battles against evasion(like Alolan-Muk-1 in the 70 I recently played), Psyshock and Shadow ball are the same in versus a last mon, with it's specs it doesn't work that well as initially thought as it happens sometimes to be locked into a move the last mon resists.
I picked it initially for the double spread moves, but I noticed when playing that it isn't very good as 4th, as a mon that resists it can be last.
The main idea was Tapu Lele, not exactly sure on the set but as its naturally higher power/faster outside from pixiliate single hyper voice, initial thought was life orb.
Do note I haven't tried it yet but I do feel it could be better then Sylveon.
Kommo-o @ Kommonium Z (was always Kommonium Z, just put it wrong the time I posted the team)
Ability: Bulletproof
Level: 50
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Close Combat
- Clanging Scales
- Flamethrower
- Protect
Kommo-o is the mon that usually comes in third to clean up with it's Z move and the omniboost giving it extra stats+speed so it's faster in/outside of tailwind, the EVs are just basic 252/252/4.
I don't have that much to say about it further, Sylveon+Kommo-o on their own isn't that good though(especially without tailwind), another reason I'm thinking about a replacement, as stuff like Alolan Ninetales is an issue with just these 2 left.
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Cool writeup! 'Auditing' already-successful teams can seem like relatively thankless work since even if you get the highest streak with a team, it's most likely past the generation where it's most relevant and you don't get to claim 'first*' , but at the higher levels it does a great job of showing how much of a factor luck plays and how even for the most detailed write-ups there are always new scenarios to explore. Over enough attempts those can allow you to extract more blood from the metaphorical turnip. Like it seems to be pretty well-established that using the right* team is the majority of the battle, but whether it's a 55% majority or a 95% majority obviously makes a huge difference.
How comprehensive did you get with your streak data in terms of knowing the length at which your other attempts ended? To me, the data (average, standard deviation) is almost more interesting than the specifics of a particular battle, and a team like that that goes through battles relatively quickly and can be combined with others' use of the same or similar teams seems especially well-suited for it.
*even when something like 'use 3 high-level OU Pokemon who resist each other's weaknesses and are EVed to outspeed some relevant threats in the Battle Tree speed tiers' seems be self-explanatory enough to consider it more on the side of 'something several people could've independently come to' than like breaking in and stealing the Coca-Cola formula