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Awesome to still see plenty of big streaks even this close to SuMo's release. I haven't been Maisoning in a bit, but I have been prepping for whatever the new facility is by painstakingly SRing a Bold Suicune on my copy of Leaf Green. Saved right before giving Celio the Sapphire (the spawn triggering event) and then took about 20 repeats of finding Suicune in the wild and catching it with a Master Ball. Sure, a glitch in those games means that the IVs are unbelievably horrendous, but Mega Training can fix that. Now to round up all the old gen Ribbons I can without wasting too much time...
trying to keep up with Josh C. 's blistering pace is hard. D:
i need a team name. this is a trick room team featuring:
in this order. (it matters!) Blastoise is on the right because the opponents always send in backups from their left to their right, so when they send in their last mon, it'll be in range of water spout. center Aron should be particularly obvious - she's bait as usual.
heh. Claydol. actually it's the best setter i've tried. nothing wants to kill it and it breaks sashes all day. EVs are for taking less chip damage from surf and enticing more special based pokemon into aiming for Aron.
Aron
Gentle, Sturdy
???
no EVs
Protect
Endeavor
Dig
Iron Head
typical Aron, use protect and endeavor and don't even click the rest (except a couple circumstances).
(Mega) Blastoise
Quiet, Torrent / Mega Launcher
31/xx/31/31+/31/00-
252/0/0/252/4/0
Protect
Dark Pulse
Aura Sphere
Water Spout
a lot of Blastoise on the leaderboard carry ice beam, but i just didn't see the point when it doesn't get the mega launcher bonus, doesn't have reach, and Aron is there to endeavor whatever it's good against. straightforward EVs - damage, general bulk, and 4 to the weaker defense.
Clawitzer
Quiet, Mega Launcher
31/xx/31/31+/31/00-
252/0/0/252/4/0
Water Pulse
Dark Pulse
Aura Sphere
Heal Pulse
...same as Blastoise. i don't miss ice beam at all. this is a really solid pokemon and it hasn't changed at all since i started breeding for triples. EVs are damage, general bulk, and 4 to proc download as attack.
i thought wish was going to be better than it is, but didn't bother removing it because there's really no reason to have a 4th move and it's an egg move. EVs are damage, general bulk, and 4 to the weaker defense.
Brienne
Brave, Shell Armor
31/31+/31/xx/31/00-
252/252/0/0/4/0
Fell Stinger
Iron Head
Aerial Ace
Knock Off
fell stinger gets the ball rolling on something Aron endeavored and really builds the momentum this set needs to be a strong enough attacker to swing matches in my favor when they're otherwise going poorly. it isn't x-scissor, but it doesn't need to kill on its own and it has the support to get attack boosts off. iron head is STAB, and knock off is for slow psychic/ghosts. aerial ace has reach and hits grass, which can be a problem type. EVs are damage, general bulk, and 4 to proc download as attack.
so about a year ago i was a bit disappointed in how really long singles streaks just seem to be about setting up, since i'm much more into hyper offense type teams. i decided to try my hand at triples. having seen the beautiful Greninja-Blastoise-Talonflame tailwind teams do so well on the leaderboards, i gave a shot at finding them some worthy backups (instead of shamelessly ripping full teams straight off the leaderboard like i did with kangliscune), but could only get streaks of around 750ish since i'm not motivated to take my time and analyze often... and trick room really wrecks tailwind when you accidentally let something flip speed on you.
so i slowly decided i wanted to build a trick room team. because if trick room is dangerous to such a strong lead team, then it has to be even more abusable when used better than the ai, right?
and thats where this team began. only 2 of the current members are originals, at first it looked a lot more like ReptoAbysmal 's trick room Aron team, with the lineup:
Typhlosion
31/xx/31/31+/31/00-
252/0/4/252/0/0
Quiet, Blaze
Eruption
Lava Plume
Sunny Day
Solar Beam
it was a sunny day team, using Mega Slowbro, a moxie Scrafty, iron ball Typhlosion, and a harvest Trevenant that never had the opportunity to evolve. believe it or not, this team is capable of 200+ ish streaks, purely because Aron is that good at distraction. but when trying to get higher streaks than that, there are just too many threats. i started to notice a lot of things:
- Slowbro gets targeted by leaf storm and thunder wave.
- Scrafty dies to fairies real bad, and the whole point of moxie is more limited in scope than i first thought... Scrafty has to get the kill.
- sunny day on Aron... well, there's just not a good time to use it in my opinion. i had to have it on Typhlosion too, which slowed things down on occasion, and slowing things down means trick room runs out more often.
- having a backup trick room setter (Trevenant) just isn't necessary. additionally, Phantump is a liability. too weak lol (duh). he never got to see play because of this. i think wood hammer Trevenant with harvest in sun holding sitrus would be really strong, and horn leech as a backup... but i think he would need curse to set up and really be a powerhouse, but he's a ghost... there are so many cool things about this mon.
so the first thing i changed was obviously Phantump. Sylveon replaced it, never looked back. specs pixilated hyper voice... @_@! that really gave me a good switch in for when Aron (inevitably) dies. the second thing... Scrafty had to go. her single target nature was limiting me. Slowbro had to change. the mega stone on Slowbro wasnt doing enough for me, so that changed to a rindo berry (didn't do enough) and later a focus sash (still thunder wave...). since i freed up my mega evolution, Blastoise took the place of Scrafty. Blastoise is barely slow enough for trick room at minimum 74 speed, but is such a hard hitter... i had qualms about the speed until i started using Blastoise, and quickly got used to what i do or don't outslow (plus, Sylveon makes a really good backup spread user for when i screw up and lose Blastoise). the third thing to change was sunny day. i switched over to rain dance instead and took weather off of Aron and put it on Slowbro, and obviously i needed to get rid of Typhlosion because eruption doesn't do much in rain... i liked the idea of iron ball to make a thing super slow, so i looked around for other possible hard hitting spread move users that don't mind being in rain and came up with none other than Aurorus, with the worst defensive typing in the game!
finally, after another ~250ish streak where Slowbro eventually ended up causing a loss, i looked for a replacement. i had the absolutely brilliant idea that a prankster mon would be able to push out a faster trick room without ever bothering to look at trick room's priority, which is -10, for the record. i settled on, theoried up, and bred Meowstic before ever realizing that -10.. and it actually worked out pretty ok in spite of it!
so at the beginning of my next streak attempt, my team looked like:
on my first battle, once again (previously with moxie) i was like... wtf why does it not work like that. so i just went with it for a while. breeding was too much effort to just waste it like that. well, focus sash really improved the reliability of getting trick room off (and i liked it on Slowbro too), but Meowstic is thunder wave bait... and is frail. the bigger issue seems to be taking 2 spread moves in 1 turn, which meant death for Meowstic and no trick room. the biggest offenders were teams with several earthquake users. while it's not necessarily streak ending, it's risky. and risk, in the maison, is the real enemy. so i took the streak to 250 and took a little break to decide what to do about my setter. i figured out 2 options: claydol or xatu. both are immune to thunder wave and earthquake, neither takes >50% damage from surf (or the occasional dazzling gleam, not as important as surf), and both have trick room/rain dance/dazzling gleam for setting and sash breaking. i settled on claydol because of explosion. explosion is fun! and actually does ok damage with full defensive investment. plus with its defensive EVs and base stats, Claydol is mostly harmless and only get targeted by wood hammer and megahorn. but the enemies are much more likely to target Aron with a single target or priority move than to accidentally hit Claydol (hard) enough to kill. extremely reliable, with the number of consistent threats less than the number of fingers on one hand. (lolvanilluxe4 has a chance to taunt about 1/20 or less, lolswampert1 will roar... idk how often, wtf is all this).
so i used that team until i hit 750, and at around 600+ i started being unhappy with Aurorus. he was good, and ice is a good complementary attacking type to water pokemon since it's super effective against one of the 2 water weaknesses... but i just wasn't having enough issues with grass teams. and electric/ice coverage was nice to have too, but again... i don't have issues with all-bulky-water teams (or all grass teams), despite their resistance to water spout (thanks Aron). this team just doesn't need "better" (semiconditional) boltbeam, cuz between Blastoise and Clawitzer, it already strikes everything except dry skin toxicroak for perfect neutral+ coverage, with Aron there to decimate the hp of anything that isn't a 1HKO.
i started pondering the trainers i was having trouble with. 3 immediately came to mind: hex maniac's trick room, the slow and sturdy rock teams, and the chefs with a mix of grass/water/ice(/earthquake). the rockish teams simply require slightly more careful play, such as assuming the rampardos that just came in has mold breaker and must immediately die, or using Blastoise's protect to minimize the number of earthquakes she takes. after playing against them frequently, i no longer consider them a huge threat when careful play is taken into consideration. however, Mara and Chef Cobb are huge issues. it was practically a gamble to fight Mara and use trick room, because so many of her roster are 2HKO's and outslow Blastoise. additionally, Claydol takes tons of chip damage from slowthing surfs, and expecting it to survive the match is silly, so i needed a backup who could come in and not only check but counter Mara's (entire) roster. that isn't Sylveon, and it isn't Clawitzer, cuz while they're ok options they just don't quite have the punch or slowness against Mara. so while looking around on this thread, i read that scizor is quite a good counter to Mara, as many of her mons are psychic, and priority gets revenge kills. with the bug/steel type in mind, i looked at scizor's info page, but just didn't like his base speed (or special def without mega)... but there's another bug/steel with stupidly low base speed that has stats practically tailor made for trick room... escavalier!!
...i can't believe no trick room team has seriously used escavalier yet. no wait, after looking at his move pool, i can. man, megahorn sucks. x-scissor is ok, but at only 80 base... it has to have super effective to kill. no earthquake, no rock slide... no spread moves at all. and boy is fell stinger weak.
..wait, omg, a free swords dance when fell stinger kills?
...THANKS ARON!
and bam right there i'm like yep i'm ok with this. because suddenly a +2 escavalier is a huge single target threat that has super effective moves against pretty much everything that gives me trouble.
so that streak went to 927 (team changes at 250 & 750)... up against Owner Cyril. and suddenly... ugh. i saved the vid: RS5G-WWWW-WW55-UVKD but didn't really want to post the streak since my team had gone through so many changes, and upon discovering how to replay the battle i was able to win handily with the same team. that loss was devastating. practically all i do on pokemon these days is wait for sun and moon and make the maison my punching bag. i wanted to get a 4 digit streak so bad, and i was so fucking close... but that... i didn't know about automatic centering. escavalier is a toss up between targeting Claydol or Aron. a crit on Clawitzer. god. i turned off my 3ds for a couple months. eventually i started another streak attempt, since i felt like the quality of this team is better than 3 digits. it took me a few months to even hit 400 again, but i didn't make any more changes cuz i was finally happy with how the team plays and deals with so many threats. and now finally, i have something i want to add to the board before sun and moon are out! so:
posting an ongoing streak of 1061 (up from 610 since starting to type this lol): B3UW-WWWW-WW55-UPDB
...heh that's not a great example of this team, i was more focused on writing this than playing and i allowed Blastoise to die. i usually don't. here's #1000 too, it's typical of maybe 1/2 of the matches. complete slaughter. UP4W-WWWW-WW55-UPZE
turn 1
trick room - protect - x
there is only 1 case where Claydol doesn't use trick room on turn 1: snow warning.
Aron always protects. the other 2 build momentum while Aron distracts.
Blastoise doesn't always water spout, but it's often the best option. a far mold breaker rampardos and bastiodon anywhere get aura sphere. latios (sometimes), slowbro, and exeggutor get dark pulse. protect keeps Blastoise healthy from fast earthquakes (which Aron draws) and dodges serperior's leaf storm and chesnaught's wood hammer. the first water spout can also be used to test water absorb / dry skin.
turn 2
rain dance - endeavor - water spout
the trick to this turn is making sure Aron takes 2 or less hits. i can always get at least 1 KO thanks to endeavor (unless 3 ghosts LOL), but the AI is extremely predictable because of Blastoise's good defensive typing and hp EVs and Claydol's mostly harmless image -- everything goes for Aron. it's extremely rare that Aron dies on turn 2, and by extremely i mean 3-5 battles in this streak so far.
Claydol can either rain dance or dazzling gleam (turn 2 trick room if snow warning opener). which to do highly depends on several things. will Blastoise get an unendeavored KO? where are priority spammers positioned? does Blastoise need rain to get a KO?
Aron almost always uses endeavor. very, very few things don't get finished off (such as far aggron, endeavor + dazzling gleam). occasionally i want iron head to finish a slow sturdymon to help keep Blastoise healthy or to sashbreak a froslass when facing triple ghosts, but it's rare.
Blastoise really wants to be spamming water spout, and if for some reason she cant then that's a tough battle.
if Aron dies this turn, Sylveon generally enters center and spams hyper voice.
turn 3
explosion - protect - water spout
so explosion. it's not always optimal to do it, but unless the right and center are being destroyed over and over by water spout, there just isn't time to endeavor the left mon, and by now Claydol has built so much momentum with speed and rain that the battle is usually already won, but its lack of any offensive pressure hurts. get out, and make way for Clawitzer.
protect saves Aron from the explosion, but endeavor is valid to speed up slower battles, and especially if not exploding.
Blastoise just keeps spamming damage.
turn 4
this is where the match generally starts being a lot more variable, but very few battles last longer than 4 turns (which is great for trick room). Clawitzer prolly wants to be in by now to either clean up the last 2 enemies or heal Blastoise. (never heal Aron. ever.)
you might ask: where does Escavalier fit into this?
well, Escavalier is there for when this outline goes wrong. she's a really good switch for when Aron dies on turn 2, which is usually against slow things like Mara's roster or snorlax or ... anything touched by Aron really. if Claydol is targeted for some reason (or dies to surfs), thats another situation where it can be a toss up between Escavalier and Clawitzer and i'll frequently go to Escavalier if an enemy is in kill range of fell stinger.
i hope i can't finish this streak before sun & moon =)
This may be a little early, but can we talk about how Tower's equivalent in SunMoon be? I'm worried that many of our usual teams won't make it well in SunMoon.
My team alone, Kapu Tetefu/Tapu Lele and her Psychic Surge and other psychic field setter will be massive threat when brought first before we can even set Tailwinds or Trick Room. I wonder how to take on some potential threats to the team....
Other than that, yeah... I haven't done anything much. I only recall weeks ago I reached +400 streaks in Triples, now with Torneros replacing my Heatnix (especially that soon, RIP Smogonbird lol).
EDIT: Thanks for confirming. Then again... Triples... why....
At least great job, keep this up. I just hope I can find suitable teams later. Will be looking forward to the new thread... maybe.
I'll call the "Impenetrable Fortress" disbanded once I get Nina transferred to my future Moon....
I got scolded for bringing up SM stuff earlier so I won't bother going into much detail.
But I will say how unbelievably dismayed I was to learn that Triples has been removed as a playable format. I did play the hell out of doubles for Gen V and earlier, but Triples made all my breeding worth it.
I don't see myself continuing with my preferred format anymore for a couple of significant reasons, but goodstuffs will last me at least a little while before I get bored as fuck.
I don't really mind discussion of the extremely limited info we have about the battle tree here, especially because we really don't have enough info to support a new full thread yet. But I'm going to double check with the other mods, so stay tuned.
Edit: It appears the general feeling is to keep Battle Tree speculation and discussion out of this thread. So we'll stick with that. See below.
Not in this thread. We don't speak about the Maison in the Battle Subway thread, after all.
For now, we know too little about Gen VII's Battle Whatever to have a meaningless thread for it, but when we know, a thread will be made. Until then, I guess you can use the general, spoiler-y Sun&Moon threads for this kind of hypothesizing.
Well, actually, we did for quite a while, including some early testing and experimentation in the Maison after the release of XY. But I certainly don't need to rock the boat on things, especially since there's so little hard data, meaning any discussion now, wherever it is, will be pretty thin. I'll just have to move extra quickly on getting a Battle Tree thread together once we know more.
About this, I was thinking we should let it develop much as this thread initially, having one of the more casual facility players start it, and letting it go for a few pages. It's true, you creating it right off the bat would keep things organized and allow for a thread free of useless whining or hax accusations...but I also felt the first 10-12 pages of this thread were informative, interesting, & amusing in their own right (I know I used it as a way to see how those not in the regular Maisoning community reacting to facing said Maison, like a case study of sorts). I say, let it start off Wild-West style (like this thread did), and the only difference is that the mods and Tree-hopping regulars step in much sooner (like, 5-6 pages in this time around) to formalize the leaderboard, rules, and such.
About this, I was thinking we should let it develop much as this thread initially, having one of the more casual facility players start it, and letting it go for a few pages. It's true, you creating it right off the bat would keep things organized and allow for a thread free of useless whining or hax accusations...but I also felt the first 10-12 pages of this thread were informative, interesting, & amusing in their own right (I know I used it as a way to see how those not in the regular Maisoning community reacting to facing said Maison, like a case study of sorts). I say, let it start off Wild-West style (like this thread did), and the only difference is that the mods and Tree-hopping regulars step in much sooner (like, 5-6 pages in this time around) to formalize the leaderboard, rules, and such.
My plan is to start it myself, but handle things in a similar manner to what you suggest. I'll reserve some posts at the top, and lay down some basic rules, but will let it go fairly freeform at first, with the big exception of cracking down on hax whines / unsubstantiated claims of a cheating AI. Then once we've had some time to get a feel for the facility, see what reasonable leaderboard minimums will be, etc., I can use the reserved posts to get the actual leaderboard up and running.
My plan is to start it myself, but handle things in a similar manner to what you suggest. I'll reserve some posts at the top, and lay down some basic rules, but will let it go fairly freeform at first, with the big exception of cracking down on hax whines / unsubstantiated claims of a cheating AI. Then once we've had some time to get a feel for the facility, see what reasonable leaderboard minimums will be, etc., I can use the reserved posts to get the actual leaderboard up and running.
This sounds great. I look forward to seeing it next weekend. (even though where i live in europe, it doesn't come out until the week after :/)
I already have a doubles team in the works for sun and moon using Pelipper which is gonna be awesome! but singles might be tougher.
Sadly for singles there will be no Durant cheese methods until Pokebank releases. we will have to wait until January. :(
But Hey! Prankster users Whimsicott and Sableye are both catchable in game so that's awesome!
Before I leave this post I just want to say thanks for updating my win streak. Strangely though iv'e been having a lot of bad luck this past week, barely making it past 100 wins before loosing and a couple of bad decisions. Really wanted to reach 300 before Sun and Moon came out :(
Hit 100 in singles. I almost lost to Garchomp4 which was in the 2nd spot. First mon was a sylveon which I toxic stalled with Chansey. I switch to ferrothorn and Garchomp used SD. After two hits, my ferrothorn is gone. I switch in my salamence, who had not mega evolved yet and I was pretty worried as I wasn't sure I would survive Garchomp's hit at +1. Garchomp used Stone Edge tho instead of dragon claw and I survived with 26 health. Steel types have been really annoying as expected if I haven't had the opportunity to set up with salamence. If I can set up, I can 3ko even steelix at +3 with return even with it using curse, but most times, it's been a stall war trying to chip away with leech seed and seismic toss. Most of the rock types I've seen haven't given me too much issue, except for barbacle4, which has stone edge and cross chop. Electric types that resist flying haven't been too big an issue either. Most are fragile enough to be 1-2koed after a couple of boosts and if they are specially based, I can stall out with Chansey. Does anyone know if they balance out which pokemon appear after a while? it feels like I keep seeing the same ones all the time. I've already seen froslass4 5x already.
My first and last 'big' singles run for ORAS finished with 146 wins. I started off with a copy of The Dutch Plumberjack's team (albeit with simple stat spreads) of M-Gyarados, Aegislash, and Gliscor just to get to 100 but swapped Gliscor out for a Garchomp with a Lum Berry after a close call with confusion hax and impatience for Toxic stall just before the 50th battle. I made a few other minor changes as I went. Final team was:
You know what this does. Usually ran through whole teams after one DD. Ran Earthquake to get by Flame Body without any trouble plus I don't have the patience for subbing up every other turn to get to +6. Quite a few times I hoped to have a bit more bulk to survive physical super effective hits or tank special better but it also got some clutch KOs from the extra power.
Garchomp @ Lum Berry
Ability: Rough Skin
Nature: Jolly
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spd
- Earthquake
- Dragon Claw
- Swords Dance
- Iron Head
In 147 I could probably count the number of times I used this on my hands. Usually just picked off the third Pokemon or was used to switch into Electric attacks. Earthquake and Dragon Claw did most of the work, Swords Dance was used a couple of times on Pokemon with Specs + Electric move, and Iron Head was used once against a Togekiss (best of the 100% accuracy coverage moves)
Aegislash @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Stance Change
Nature: Brave
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
IVs: 0 Speed
- King's Shield
- Iron Head
- Shadow Sneak
- Sacred Sword
Could take most hits easily especially after Intimidate and King's Shield and could KO back most things if Weakness Policy weakened. This coupled with switching back and forth with regular or mega Gyarados to PP stall got through just about anything that M-Gyara couldn't.
From what I know the opposing Pokemon will pick a move that can KO you over anything else and in the case of there being two moves it will randomly pick one. In the end Veteran Catherine's Thundurus2 (with Choice Specs) chose to pick off Aegislash with a Thunderbolt over Dark Pulse. It would've lived a Thunderbolt with it's health where it was but it got a SpD drop from Raikou2's Shadow Ball. With Thundurus2 locked into Thunderbolt it easily picked off M-Gyarados. Could've saved Garchomp earlier but I stupidly lost it instead of switching before figuring out what the third Pokemon was.
Final battle: ARCG-WWWW-WW56-7HT9
Hopefully Sun and Moon has something similar if not better than the Maison
Khangeskhan @ Mega Stone
Adamant
252 Att/ 252 Spe/ 4 def
~Fake Out
~Drain Punch
~Double Edge
~Sucker Punch
Was using Steven with Metagross first for the whole run and took a break at 96, then when I comeback on battle 97, freaking aerodactyle goes first. Lost my only battle with him going first. Oh well. Now that that's out of the way, I can enjoy Singles for a bit longer.
Does anyone know if they balance out which pokemon appear after a while? it feels like I keep seeing the same ones all the time. I've already seen froslass4 5x already.
While I've never jumped into the game's code to confirm this, I've long suspected that, every time you turn your DS on, the game seems to pick certain sets from the Maison roster to have a sort of 'priority' and be selected with higher frequency if it is available for a particular trainer. I also suspect that the game pre-selects certain trainer classes to appear more often during every streak. I don't think these 'decisions' are made with your specific team in mind--I'm sure the algorithms used for this are more 'random' in nature. Example: My team isn't quite built to deal with Gyarados4, and he was a frequent opponent of mine a couple of days ago during my current streak. The game is balancing against me, right? On the other hand, Medicham4, whom I have next to no trouble dealing with, was a frequent opponent of mine on my morning commute today.
So this is the end of Gen VI, and my Super Singles streak (98) isn't that great, but I've been lurking here a long time and decided I might as well post it. After I finished the streak, I looked through the leaderboard and noticed my team setup, by coincidence, is the same ViolentPumpkin's team (Greninja/Mega-Scizor/Dragonite), albeit with different sets, and I've found it to be pretty solid. I lost at battle 99 because I forgot Trick Room was up (don't work on your streak unless you're fully awake), but overall, I'm happy with how this run went.
Anyways, here's the team:
Greninja @ Life Orb
Ability: Protean
Nature: Timid
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe / 4 Def
-Surf
-Grass Knot
-Extrasensory
-Ice Beam
Nothing too unusual here, Surf is a solid, spammable move, Grass Knot is great for catching opposing Water-types off guard, Ice Beam gets great coverage, and Extrasensory is mostly to deal with Fighting-types that try to come in after Ice Beam is used or Poison-types switched after a Grass Knot KO. Greninja is a great lead, and it was able to solo about half the battles in the streak.
Dragonite Lum Berry
Ability: Multiscale
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
- Dragon Dance
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Extreme Speed
This set is the same as the one suggested on the official Battle Maison article published here on Smogon a while back. It was a fantastic sweeper that was able to set up a Dragon Dance or two on whatever Greninja weakened if it fainted, then plow through whatever was left.
Scizor @ Scizorite
Ability: Technician
Nature: Adamant
EVs: 204 HP / 252 Atk / 4 Def / 4 SpD / 44 Spe
- Swords Dance
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Roost
Standard set, also from the article. I mainly used it as a last resort if both Greninja and Dragonite went down and it was very reliable as a cleaner. I added it after my first streak ended at around thirty battles to deal with Aerodactyl-I had M-Khan before it, and while it was good, Scizor works better with this team thanks to its Steel-typing.
Very late here, but finally earned all trophies in ORAS today. Really wanted to accomplish this before Sun and Moon came out, and am very happy :D I Consider myself truly ready for Gen 7 now. Multi-Battle was by far the most annoying to accomplish. The fear of connection loss outdid any fear the trainers could bring.
This is the first time I've really had a serious tackle at this generation's 'Battle Tower' equivalent and it was immensely fun, opening up a whole new side of Pokemon to me. This forum played a massive role in getting me to jump in and have a go at it. So I just wanna thank all the Admin's, creator(s), Mods and anyone else who helped with this Thread for the constant great work and consistent quality these last 5ish years.
And of course congratulations to everyone for their achievements in XY and ORAS and any contributions they've made to these forums, this side of the Pokemon community is fantastic and really pushes the game past its childhood audience to a more serious base with timeless fun. It's been awesome to see record after record broken and team after team perfected and fine-tuned. Thank you everyone! See you all in Alola!
If the Iron Ball controversy remains intact for this upcoming pair of games, the resulting meltdown will, in and of itself, make up for the apparent lack of Triples.
Eh I think that went largely unnoticed aside from this topic. For that matter, it went unnoticed here for quite a while until turskain mentioned it, I believe. So I strongly doubt it'll see the light of day.
I'm just saying, that even as a guy who doesn't shy away from guides, and shamelessly hacked for perfect IVs in the past, that looking up the moveset of each Pokemon you bump into just takes the fun out of it by making the only moderately challenging part of the game too easy.
i passed a few things on the leaderboard, so here's XW6W-WWWW-WW56-R8BE battle #1359 in my ongoing streak (oh btw it's ORAS, NoCheese) featuring none other than "quick claw walrein"
in this battle i did not bother to look up any movesets. i mean i could've, and i would've found out that it can't possibly be quick claw walrein, but maybe it was quick claw glaceon, or it could've been focus sash glaceon (i couldn't tell the difference). but it was DEFINITELY quick claw walrein, cuz he was DEFINITELY faster than Claydol on turn 1 (good thing fissure missed, idk i'd actually have to watch the replay myself cuz walrein was so irrelevant when next to a gastrodon that i don't care if sheer cold hits twice in a row).
i passed a few things on the leaderboard, so here's XW6W-WWWW-WW56-R8BE battle #1359 in my ongoing streak (oh btw it's ORAS, NoCheese) featuring none other than "quick claw walrein"
This is an old streak, but as we're about to move on to a new facility, I at least want to get it on the board. After I cracked 1000 with Dragonite / Mega Slowbro / Chansey, I started doing some theorymoning on possible ways to improve the team. While Mega Slowbro and Chansey made such a nice core that I had no intention of breaking them up, lead Dragonite, though strong, felt a bit generic, and I thought there might be better options out there.
Serendipitously, around this time I realized that I had never actually purchased the Pokemon Dream Radar, and so was missing out on hidden ability Landorus, Tornadus, and Thundurus. After fixing this omission and reading up on the details of Dream Radar RNG, I began to realize that Sheer Force Landorus was a real beast that could play pretty well with the Slowbro / Chansey core. A team was born. I should also give a big shoutout to VaporeonIce, since we had a lengthy theorymoning discussion which proved helpful in refining this squad.
Posting 462 wins in ORAS Super Singles with Landorus / Mega Slowbro / Chansey.
Landorus @_Life Orb
Trait: Sheer Force
Nature: Naive (-Spe, -SpD)
-Earth Power
-Sludge Wave
-Psychic
-Rock Slide
As you might expect, this team plays pretty similarly to Dragonite / Mega Slowbro / Chansey. The big difference is that you forfeit the set up power of Dragonite for the incredible immediate power and coverage of Sheer Force Landorus. You lose some of the "Set up on an easy first Pokemon" free wins, but in return, with your better initial speed and coverage, you can handle certain leads that are much more irksome for Dragonite, or that Chansey and Slowbro can't safely switch directly into. It's important to remember, however, that you really lean heavily on the core with this squad. Landorus is there to take out things that Chansey and Slowbro can't set up on, and should not usually try to sweep itself. Once there's an opportunity to get your defensive core in and set up, take advantage!
Discussion of the Chansey / Slowbro core can be found in my previous writeup here, so I focus this mainly on Landorus.
Landorus is pretty impressive. With just enough Speed to outrun Base 100s, it can solve a number of problems by outrunning them. And STAB + Sheer Force + Life Orb Earth Power is awfully similar to Choice Band Garchomp's Earthquake, without the nasty side effect of being locked into a move. Sludge Wave doesn't have the best coverage, but it provides a lot of neutral coverage 2HKOs and beats up on Faeries and big physical Grass-types like Tangrowth. Psychic was originally Hidden Power Ice, but I quickly realized that Hidden Power just didn't pack enough pop. 60 Base Power is super low, and worse, with no side effect, it triggers Life Orb Recoil and doesn't even get the Sheer Force boost. Realizing that neutral Sludge Wave outdamaged 2x super effective Hidden Power Ice was the final nail in the coffin. Psychic sadly has overlapping Poison-type coverage with Earth Power, but it's still a better option, and makes otherwise irritating foes like Water Absorb Poliwrath much less of an issue. While I hate having to run Rock Slide, a 90% accurate move, it really is irreplaceable here. The OHKO on lead Volcarona4 is really important, and since I can safely survive one hit from it, the chance of the accuracy costing me a battle in this situation is just one percent. Not ideal, but sometimes you have to accept certain weaknesses.
As with the Dragonite of the team, switch stalling remains really important against certain foes. Froslass4, for example, is best handled with Chansey and Slowbro switch stalling, which is happily simplified by non-Mega Slowbro's Regenerator. More interestingly, Landorus opens up the option of switch stalling Thundurus1, too. Natural Cure plus the occasional Softboiled beats Toxic, while Landorus's typing beats Thunderbolt. Just be sure to wait until Chansey is poisoned before switching to Landorus, since the AI won't use Toxic on an already poisoned Pokemon and you don't want to get Landorus poisoned during this process. While Rock Slide is another option, the switch stall is safer, and it also means I can just automatically switch to Chansey again Thundurus on any set 1 and 2 legendary trainer, without having to worry about which specific set I'm facing.
Cyogonal3 is uncommon, but a big issue, since it outspeeds my whole team, can hit Landous's Ice-type weakness, and can then potentially land a Sheer Cold on Chansey before it gets a Substitute up. Walrein4 requires semi-sacrificing Landorus. Earth Power twice. If you eat a Sheer Cold, Chansey gets a free set up. If you don't, congratulations, you've gotten a free KO of the opposing lead. Latios4 scares me a bunch because Landorus can't OHKO it, so a first turn Dragon Dance can open me up to getting swept by its mixed attacks. But this did not happen during my streak.
Sadly, perhaps the biggest weakness of the team is one I didn't think about until it beat me: Unaware Quagsire. Landorus is vulnerable to Waterfall, and a first turn Amnesia can leave my whole team in a bad spot. I probably should have either started attacking sooner with Slowbro, or even seen if I could have squeaked out a 2HKO with immediate Seismic Tosses from Chansey, but I honestly didn't think through the possibilities, and as is typical in the Maison, carelessness gets punished.
Video Proof: AE5G - WWWW - WW56 - SMQQ
Pardon the limited nature of this writeup. Though I just uploaded the video today, the streak is nearly a year old now, and accordingly, the details are much less fresh in my mind than they should be. Hopefully I'll get the chance to play around with Landorus more in the Battle Tree, as it really does have some promise!
This is an old streak, but as we're about to move on to a new facility, I at least want to get it on the board. After I cracked 1000 with Dragonite / Mega Slowbro / Chansey, I started doing some theorymoning on possible ways to improve the team. While Mega Slowbro and Chansey made such a nice core that I had no intention of breaking them up, lead Dragonite, though strong, felt a bit generic, and I thought there might be better options out there.
Serendipitously, around this time I realized that I had never actually purchased the Pokemon Dream Radar, and so was missing out on hidden ability Landorus, Tornadus, and Thundurus. After fixing this omission and reading up on the details of Dream Radar RNG, I began to realize that Sheer Force Landorus was a real beast that could play pretty well with the Slowbro / Chansey core. A team was born. I should also give a big shoutout to VaporeonIce, since we had a lengthy theorymoning discussion which proved helpful in refining this squad.
Posting 462 wins in ORAS Super Singles with Landorus / Mega Slowbro / Chansey.
Landorus @_Life Orb
Trait: Sheer Force
Nature: Naive
-Earth Power
-Sludge Wave
-Psychic
-Rock Slide
As you might expect, this team plays pretty similarly to Dragonite / Mega Slowbro / Chansey. The big difference is that you forfeit the set up power of Dragonite for the incredible immediate power and coverage of Sheer Force Landorus. You lose some of the "Set up on an easy first Pokemon" free wins, but in return, with your better initial speed and coverage, you can handle certain leads that are much more irksome for Dragonite, or that Chansey and Slowbro can't safely switch directly into. It's important to remember, however, that you really lean heavily on the core with this squad. Landorus is there to take out things that Chansey and Slowbro can't set up on, and should not usually try to sweep itself. Once there's an opportunity to get your defensive core in and set up, take advantage!
Discussion of the Chansey / Slowbro core can be found in my previous writeup here, so I focus this mainly on Landorus.
Landorus is pretty impressive. With just enough Speed to outrun Base 100s, it can solve a number of problems by outrunning them. And STAB + Sheer Force + Life Orb Earth Power is awfully similar to Choice Band Garchomp's Earthquake, without the nasty side effect of being locked into a move. Sludge Wave doesn't have the best coverage, but it provides a lot of neutral coverage 2HKOs and beats up on Faeries and big physical Grass-types like Tangrowth. Psychic was originally Hidden Power Ice, but I quickly realized that Hidden Power just didn't pack enough pop. 60 Base Power is super low, and worse, with no side effect, it triggers Life Orb Recoil and doesn't even get the Sheer Force boost. Realizing that neutral Sludge Wave outdamaged 2x super effective Hidden Power Ice was the final nail in the coffin. Psychic sadly has overlapping Poison-type coverage with Earth Power, but it's still a better option, and makes otherwise irritating foes like Water Absorb Poliwrath much less of an issue. While I hate having to run Rock Slide, a 90% accurate move, it really is irreplaceable here. The OHKO on lead Volcarona4 is really important, and since I can safely survive one hit from it, the chance of the accuracy costing me a battle in this situation is just one percent. Not ideal, but sometimes you have to accept certain weaknesses.
As with the Dragonite of the team, switch stalling remains really important against certain foes. Froslass4, for example, is best handled with Chansey and Slowbro switch stalling, which is happily simplified by non-Mega Slowbro's Regenerator. More interestingly, Landorus opens up the option of switch stalling Thundurus1, too. Natural Cure plus the occasional Softboiled beats Toxic, while Landorus's typing beats Thunderbolt. Just be sure to wait until Chansey is poisoned before switching to Landorus, since the AI won't use Toxic on an already poisoned Pokemon and you don't want to get Landorus poisoned during this process. While Rock Slide is another option, the switch stall is safer, and it also means I can just automatically switch to Chansey again Thundurus on any set 1 and 2 legendary trainer, without having to worry about which specific set I'm facing.
Cyogonal3 is uncommon, but a big issue, since it outspeeds my whole team, can hit Landous's Ice-type weakness, and can then potentially land a Sheer Cold on Chansey before it gets a Substitute up. Walrein4 requires semi-sacrificing Landorus. Earth Power twice. If you eat a Sheer Cold, Chansey gets a free set up. If you don't, congratulations, you've gotten a free KO of the opposing lead. Latios4 scares me a bunch because Landorus can't OHKO it, so a first turn Dragon Dance can open me up to getting swept by its mixed attacks. But this did not happen during my streak.
Sadly, perhaps the biggest weakness of the team is one I didn't think about until it beat me: Unaware Quagsire. Landorus is vulnerable to Waterfall, and a first turn Amnesia can leave my whole team in a bad spot. I probably should have either started attacking sooner with Slowbro, or even seen if I could have squeaked out a 2HKO with immediate Seismic Tosses from Chansey, but I honestly didn't think through the possibilities, and as is typical in the Maison, carelessness gets punished.
Video Proof: AE5G - WWWW - WW56 - SMQQ
Pardon the limited nature of this writeup. Though I just uploaded the video today, the streak is nearly a year old now, and accordingly, the details are much less fresh in my mind than they should be. Hopefully I'll get the chance to play around with Landorus more in the Battle Tree, as it really does have some promise!
Shouldn't Landorus just beat Quagsire? It survives one Waterfall, Earth Power 2HKOes, and if Quagsire uses Amnesia on turn 1 then you're effectively in the same situation, Earth Power still 2HKOes +2 45-ish % Quagsire and Landorus still survives one Waterfall. The situation should be stickier if it comes out against Slowbro, so Grass Knot over Psychic could be an option too. Or Toxic Chansey, but that's probably too radical of a change regardless of which variant is better haha.
Speaking of, does Psychic have any real targets aside from Poliwrath? Since Fighting-types should crumble to Slowbro and Poison-types (and Sawk) should crumble to Earth Power, the only one that really comes to mind right now is Crobat, which should still be manageable between Rock Slide / spamming attacks with Chansey and Slowbro. In theory, Poliwrath should lose to Slowbro (with Iron Defense + Calm Mind + Rest + sleep turns having more PP than Poliwrath's 55 and Regenerator making phazing little more than an annoyance), so you might consider forgoing Psychic for Knock Off to help with the Latios4 problem. It usually does not OHKO, but it does put it into KO range for one round of Life Orb damage, so it should be enough to safely get it off the field, and if Latios23 or high roll Latios4 OHKOes Landorus with Draco Meteor then it should be setup bait for Slowbro or Chansey anyways. The downside is that because of Life Orb Landorus probably won't survive that matchup either, so you're simplifying the battle to 2v2, but it still sounds better than risking getting swept by +1 Latios4...
Either way, congrats on the streak, and glad to see this one finally getting written :)
Shouldn't Landorus just beat Quagsire? It survives one Waterfall, Earth Power 2HKOes, and if Quagsire uses Amnesia on turn 1 then you're effectively in the same situation, Earth Power still 2HKOes +2 45-ish % Quagsire and Landorus still survives one Waterfall. The situation should be stickier if it comes out against Slowbro, so Grass Knot over Psychic could be an option too. Or Toxic Chansey, but that's probably too radical of a change regardless of which variant is better haha.
Speaking of, does Psychic have any real targets aside from Poliwrath? Since Fighting-types should crumble to Slowbro and Poison-types (and Sawk) should crumble to Earth Power, the only one that really comes to mind right now is Crobat, which should still be manageable between Rock Slide / spamming attacks with Chansey and Slowbro. In theory, Poliwrath should lose to Slowbro (with Iron Defense + Calm Mind + Rest + sleep turns having more PP than Poliwrath's 55 and Regenerator making phazing little more than an annoyance), so you might consider forgoing Psychic for Knock Off to help with the Latios4 problem. It usually does not OHKO, but it does put it into KO range for one round of Life Orb damage, so it should be enough to safely get it off the field, and if Latios23 or high roll Latios4 OHKOes Landorus with Draco Meteor then it should be setup bait for Slowbro or Chansey anyways. The downside is that because of Life Orb Landorus probably won't survive that matchup either, so you're simplifying the battle to 2v2, but it still sounds better than risking getting swept by +1 Latios4...
Either way, congrats on the streak, and glad to see this one finally getting written :)
Wow. Looks like I should have just kept attacking. While Quagsire's Leftovers complicates things, so long as I don't get very poor damage rolls multiple turns in a row, it does look like I win. Oof on my play, but nice catch!
As to your other points, Psychic also helps with Gengar, which otherwise loves to force me to waste a ton of Chansey's PP. I suspect it helps on certain other things too, as I ran a bunch of calcs back when I decided to switch from HP Ice, most of which I've now forgotten. But I did not think of Knock Off at all, and it conveniently plays well against both Ghost-types (a similar clean OHKO of Gengar, though with Life Orb Recoil) and Latios4. The one problem, of course, is that putting Latios in range of Life Orb recoil is less important when it won't be taking any more after you Knock Off its Life Orb. So a low roll on the Knock Off damage against a first turn Dragon Dance is still unpleasant, since +1 Outrage still has a very good chance to OHKO (7/8, given Landorus taking Life Orb recoil but Latios attacking with its Life Orb removed), but even if that happens Slowbro will at least get a free switch in to Mega Evolve and finish it off with Scald.
But perhaps I'm overthinking things. First turn, Draco Meteor has a 25% chance to OHKO Landorus too (with the Life Orb boost, that is), so if the AI skews towards going for the possible OHKO, it doesn't really matter if I have Knock Off, since Sludge Wave is also a guaranteed 2HKO, so I either 2HKO Latios with a tiny bit of health remaining (75% of the time), or lose Landorus and drop Latios to just under 40% health (Sludge Wave + Recoil) and can safely set up Slowbro thanks to the -2 to SpA from the Meteor. Good stuff to think about. Note that without a crit, Latios4 can't OHKO through Dragonite's Multiscale, which explains why it likes to Dragon Dance there.
Edit: Though then again, if we assume Latios will use Draco Meteor turn 1, a low damage roll Knock Off may still be better than the Sludge Wave plan because Slowbro can then fully set up on Latios without it killing itself with recoil partway into the process. Though the problem is that in this situation, Landorus still either KOs Latios on the second turn or has to switch into non-Mega Slowbro, leaving it vulnerable to a crit on the switch. These Life Orb + Knock off decision trees are rather interesting!
In any case, thanks a bunch for your suggestions. Thinking through these things makes me eager to get battling again!
