Other Tiers GSC BL Discussion

[BeeOrSomething]

PARALYSIS IN GSC UUBL

Paralysis is an incredibly prominent and oppressive force in the landscape of the GSC UUBL metagame. It shapes the tier both in the teambuilder and definitely in the game itself to a massive extent. I figured since it’s so important to the identity and functionality of the tier (and not many people probably know about it since, well, it’s GSC UUBL lol), I should pay my dues to the funny yellow magic.

Paralysis is so good primarily due to four reasons:
1. the wide array of spreaders
2. the reduced amount of usage of rest and sleep talk compared to the other GSC tiers due to the offensive nature of the tier and its pokemon
3. the amount of pokemon that are great at abusing your opponent’s pokemon being slower
4. and of course the general utility of speed control and being able to completely take away turns from your opponent.

How Paralysis is Spread:
(bolded pokemon are considered majors offenders and/or run the move very often)
Thunder Wave - Alakazam, Jolteon, Porygon2, Dragonite, Hypno, Ampharos, Electrode, Mr. Mime


Thunder - Jolteon, Dragonite, Ampharos, Porygon2, Muk, Magneton, Lapras, Lanturn, Mr. Mime, Electabuzz


Body Slam - Dragonite, Meganium, Kangaskhan


Dragon Breath - Kingdra, Dragonite


Stun Spore - Jumpluff


Applications for the speed control of Paralysis:
Offensive Facilitation - Pokemon that often take advantage of the opponent’s pokemon being paralyzed
(bolded pokemon are considered the most notable abusers of paralysis, italicized pokemon definitely appreciate paralysis but are not as dangerous or are less hampered by the lack of paralysis, and pokemon that are neither while they still like paralysis “need” it the least to be effective)

Charizard, Clefable, Kangaskhan, Muk, Porygon2, Scizor, Ursaring, Quagsire, Tentacruel, Espeon, Meganium, Sandslash, Victreebel, Poliwrath, Primeape, Dragonite, Donphan, Moltres, Typhlosion, Pikachu


Defensive Utility - Pokemon that are often the major targets for paralysis and that your team generally appreciates being slowed down and/or having turns taken away from them the most
(bolded pokemon are the pokemon most often targeted and/or most severely crippled by paralysis, italicized pokemon are helpful for your team to have paralyzed but in this case are not as important/dangerous or are severely ruined by paralysis but considered quite niche, and pokemon that are neither are good to have paralyzed but they won’t be much harder to handle without being paralyzed)

Alakazam, Jolteon, Porygon2, Charizard, Espeon, Tentacruel, Jumpluff, Tauros, Typhlosion, Dragonite, Moltres, Houndoom, Scyther, Victreebel, Poliwrath, Primeape, Pikachu, Entei, Lapras, Meganium, Muk, Scizor, Ursaring, Haunter, Mr. Mime


The Overall Effects of Paralysis on Gameplay
Oh my god paralysis is so annoying holy hell. Ok before I get to that I’ll talk about the positives of paralysis. When playing, paralysis is often a team’s number 1 tool in neutering stong offensive threats like alakazam, the eeveeons, belly drummers, and of course, porygon2. I will say it absolutely is a great thing for making teams more defensively capable including offense. Full paralysis often is a primary way in which teams can offensively beat mons like porygon2 and be able to come back from a deficit due to hax or some other thing. However, while these positives are quite nice as to reduce matchups against high octane offense teams from becoming a “who wins first” and of course keep porygon2 from bullshitting its way through the opposing team with curse recover and whatever auxilary move it may decide to pull out that is conveniently perfectly matched up to defeat the normal check(s) on your team, that’s about where the line is drawn. Now of course, I do believe the speed drop of paralysis tends to be a good thing for transforming less viable pokemon into better ones and making gameplay into offense more comfortable and even. Then comes the scenario where you’re playing a perfectly regular offense-on-offense or whatever game and then your opponent pulls out something like belly drum charizard and because your alakazam or jolteon or kingdra or whatever that would’ve been able to stop charizard from sweeping with paralysis or a kill were affected by the funny yellow magic, you just get absolutely mauled and have no shot whatsoever. I can personally attest to this phenomenon as I’ve been charizarded on several occasions, and furthermore charizard is just one of many dangerous setup sweepers that the opponent may have. Teams centered around an all in sweep by one mon like drum zard do exist and are good, but the majority tend to overload and run like growth espy + growth jolt or p2 + kang or even a higher quantity of abusers like what people such as Celebiii have done, with him specifically using a team that utilizes hypno, kang, p2, and charizard and just focuses on making the opponent cry if they don’t have the right pokemon. Anyways I could probably turn this into an entire conversation about why porygon2 is unfair and by far the strongest thing in the tier but I’ll save that for a different post lol. The gist of it is that while paralysis’s speed control offers many positives, it can also just lopsidedly favor one player who managed to face the right team and get in the right circumstances where the opponent can’t do anything but watch as a drummer or other setup sweeper gets brought out after a kill in front of a pokemon that can’t threaten it and just absolutely trounces the game, ending it basically instantly. That’s not even the worst part. Oh no no no no, no it is absolutely not the worst part by far. Full paralysis is absolutely fucking awful to play with in this tier and honestly my only serious complaint and marr on this otherwise immaculate and wonderful tier that I truly do love playing and interacting with and really do think more people should be enlightened about. SO many games have their pendulum swung so massively in one person’s favor by full paralysis. It doesn’t matter if the game is even or one player is far behind, full paralysis will show up and not just tip but dump a titanic cinderblock on the scales. Full paralysis can make a player who is so far behind it’s not even funny and should win in no circumstance just absolutely take over the game as they get an undeserved opportunity to break something, switch in, or use a setup move and cruise to victory. It doesn’t even have to be a large amount of full paralysis. Just one para is all it takes. I may be using a bit of hyperbole with my example being one player years behind in progress, but it is very very prominent in close games too. Mostly so close games actually. You would not believe how many games I’ve watched or played in myself where the game is going regularly and it’s not quite clear who will clutch out the dub and something takes a full paralysis or two and now the player who suffered it is just totally screwed. It is actually absurd. I’m being serious. You could look at almost any somewhat serious game of GSC UUBL and you will very likely see something getting full para’d leaving the situation fucked up and in a spot it really shouldn’t be in and the player who may not have even played better that game on top. Legit, “ban paralysis” has actually become a meme/inside joke in the GSC UUBL discord server (you should join that btw https://discord.gg/k527dqVk). This is all exacerbated by just how common paralysis is. Did you see the list of paralysis users above? I mean yeah I’m sure you did if you’re actually reading all the way down to here but that’s besides the point lol. Anywho, the point is that many many many of the most common and worst offending paralysis spreaders in this tier also happen to be some of the best and most dominant pokemon in the tier, such as p2, zam, jolt, kingdra, dragonite, etc. They fit on a majority of teams and are seen on the majority of teams, of course with paralysis being a large part of what makes them so good but just the nature of them having so many other amazing traits leading to said high usage. I’d say at least 2-3 pokemon on a large portion of good teams in this tier utilize a paralysis move. Just look at the prototypical strong spikes offense in this tier: Zam Jolt P2 Kang Qwilfish Kingdra. Zam packs twave, jolt can use thunder and/or thunder wave if you want, p2 can use thunder or thunder wave if you want, kang can use body slam if you want, and kingdra has dragon breath. That’s every single pokemon except goddamn qwilfish which is largely there just to spike up, make it so you don’t have to switch stuff like zam and jolt straight into sd tentacruel, maybe do something else, and die. These 6 pokemon are also the six best pokemon in the tier (tenta > qwil/kingdra is debatable but that’s for another day). They just happen to very often (or in the case of kingdra always) use a paralysis inducing move and thus bullshit through a lot of opposing teams and completely nullify any chances of a comeback with paralysis reducing speed and killing turns. For reference, donut used this team EVERY GAME in the october spotlight swiss and went 4-1, dominating the games he won in large part due to paralysis.

I could talk on and on. Trust me. I absolutely could. I just don’t necessarily know how to get every single thought in my head down and describe it accurately to the point where I feel satisifed, which is why I may have sounded extremely redundant and vague (I also can’t and cba to find replays rn lol) so I apologize for that. Reagrdless, thank you so much for reading this post, I appreciate that you took the time to read all the way down if you did or just check it out anyways (shoutouts to you skimmers I don’t blame you).

I want to give credit to Ibby for being so largely influential in the making of this post, with inspiring it in the first place, helping a lot with the section going over the pokemon themselves, the effects of paralysis and how infuriating its bullshittery is, making his video on paralysis (even if it was a bit of a late night ramble session lol), and always being there to play games and theorycraft and innovate. Truly, without you I don’t think I would be so invested in this tier as I would not have a person I could have talked to and still continue to talk to any time any day of the week for the past now almost 6 months (wow) about this goofy fun and amazing tier.

That’s about all I have left to say right now writing this. Peace out my fellow gsc uubl gamers.
- Bee

(oh trust me eventually I will get fed up enough and make a post on porygon2 lol I was not kidding abt that, and expect to see it either relatively soon or a long time from now because I’m both impatient and lazy [I love contradictions I think they’re pretty funny])

 

[BeeOrSomething]

THE SINGLE BEST POKEMON IN GSC UUBL:
Porygon2


Porygon2 is an incredibly dominant and hard to reliably defeat pokemon in gsc uubl. It is also nearly impossible to cover all of its options in the builder while remaining consistently offensively sound. And no, there has never been any dispute on p2 not being the top dog of the tier. Why?
- 32 PP Recover
- Lack of super relevant weaknesses
- Curse
- Stab double edge/return
- Great natural bulk
- Any coverage option you may want complimented by a good special attack for hitting normal resists
- Easy to fit on teams
- Access to thunder wave

32 PP Recover
Recover is incredibly broken in the first 3 generations of pokemon, where it has 32 pp rather than the 16 of gens 4 and on. It lets any pokemon with access to it relatively easily stall out almost any move that can hurt it somewhat. This is true for porygon2. Thanks to recover, curse, and its great natural bulk, p2 can sit in front of opposing pokemon that can damage it such as curse kangaskhan, curse ursaring, and alakazam. P2 will just proceed to click curse a whole bunch and recover off any damage, outlasting the lower pp counts of return, psychic, etc. It very consistently does this too. It will take advantage of basically anything that it can to setup, in large part thanks to recover. Recover also makes switching in much easier, as it instantly removes any damage taken from the two incoming attacks + maybe spikes that it has to withstand on the way in. It is really, really hard to accurately state just how absolutely amazing access to 32 pp recover is for porygon2.

Curse
Curse allows porygon2 to take advantage of its good bulk and recover to boost attack and defense in front of almost anything. It can and will do this on a game to game basis and threaten to destroy your team. Curse boosts porygon2's attacking levels to astronomical levels, while making it impenetrable on the physically defensive side. The only ways to stop porygon2 are with a curser of your own that doesn't directly lose to p2, such as kangaskhan and scizor, haze, such as on omastar and dragonite, and roar, such as on aerodactyl and donphan. Without a solid form of "counterplay," you will likely lose to porygon2 if you're not lucky enough (more on that later). Even then, these pokemon face challenges.

The Coverage Movepool of Porygon2
Porygon2 has an amazing movepool. Whether it be thunder/thunderbolt, ice beam, thunder wave, or even hidden power fire, of course complimented by the crucial curse and recover, it can emerge victorious over any counterplay the opponent may have. Electric moves beat haze omastar and roar aerodactyl and do a large amount to lapras and qwilfish, ice beam does massive damage to haze/twave dragonite, roar donphan/aerodactyl, and leech seed/reflect meganium, thunder wave prevents faster pokemon from outrunning it and hitting it hard, which not only lets p2 go for a sweep easier later on in the game but is also just nice for supporting teammates and harassing the opponent. Hidden power fire is much more gimmicky, but it beats p2's best answer, curse rest scizor, as well as magneton, who can annoy p2 with paralysis and strong thunders. Moreover, much of these pokemon cannot actually "beat" porygon2, usually restricted to being a temporary progress stopper or pp stalling so that if p2 tries to come in again it has to eat more spikes and attacks on the switch. Some pokemon I've mentioned here that check porygon2 are just short term anyways and it doesn't even matter if you have the "right" coverage move to beat them, such as dragonite, donphan, and haze qwilfish. Suffice it to say, p2 can pretty easily beat any counterplay it has. Of course, due to curse, recover, and normal stab being basically mandatory, it can only choose one in the builder. However, the opponent does not know which one you have until you reveal it in battle, and in the builder usually has to choose to only account for one or two of these options because otherwise they would be extremely constricted in their team choices.

The Normal Typing
The normal type is arguably the best type in gsc uubl. There are so many amazing pokemon with the typing, including p2 itself, kangaskhan, ursaring, tauros, and more. It grants the user a very hard to resist stab double edge/return and lack of weaknesses outsides the fighting type, which is usually insufficient. The reason for this is that the best user of stab fighting moves in this tier is primeape, which is very niche (only being around D tier or so) and almost requires paralysis to function, which not only makes it hard to fit for needing so much support but also means it has strong competition in the form of other paralysis abusers such as tentacruel and sandslash. As for fighting coverage moves, the best one is dynamic punch dragonite, which is 50% accurate and consumes one of dragonite's very valuable moveslots. Asides from that, the best thing is probably hidden power fighting scizor, which is specifically used for porygon2. Even then, when both scizor and porygon2 have accumulated a large amount of boosts, hidden power fighting will still do not enough damage. While the normal type does not grant porygon2 any resistances, I believe the lack of weaknesses is more important when porygon2 has recover and solid defenses to shrug the many neutral hits it takes off. Usually, the best way to beat porygon2 is by exploding on it, of which the only users are muk and haunter, overwhelming it by setting up (usually with special attackers) before it even enters the battle, or lucking through it with crits and full paralysis.

The Effects of Paralysis on Porygon2
Paralysis is both a benefit and a detriment to p2, usually depending on whether you are the one dishing it out or the one having your p2 eat para. The way p2 benefits from paralysis is pretty rudimentary. It is relatively slow and of course appreciates the opponent being slowed down so that it can outspeed them even after a curse or two and hit them hard. It also really likes being able to cheese past walls like opposing porygon2 or muk with full paralysis. Speaking of, p2, really, really, really hates being paralyzed. It becomes slower than basically everything else in the tier, and more importantly, gets turns taken away from it by full paras. 100% serious, paralysis is the primary form of p2 counterplay on a LOT of teams. Paralysis makes p2 so much easier to handle when its not outspeeding your paralyzed pokemon and has a far harder time trying to curse up and spam recover. P2 might actually be banworthy (you could still argue it is) without [full] paralysis. I am dead serious. It is that important to stopping p2.

Why Porygon2 is not "mandatory"
I'm sure a thought creeping through your head while reading this post is something similar to "hey this thing seems very similar to snorlax in OU and sounds absurdly busted, it has to be on the majority of teams right?" Yes, it is amazing, and in my opinion by far the strongest thing in the tier. However, it is plenty possible to succeed without it. Primarily, what p2 contributes defensively is largely replicable by other pokemon, namely curse rest sleep talk Kangaskhan for the role of blanket checking like everything and by other miscellaneous pokemon for more specialized roles. P2 is first and foremost an offensive powerhouse, not really meant to be a defensive piece but moreso just having the capability to be one. This is a really major reason why (at least personally) porygon2 isn't used more often than it already is. However, it is still very splashable and easy to use and does provide a lot to the teams it features on.

Issues Porygon2 can have
Taking paralysis is the major one. But I've already talked about that one. Same thing for coverage moves. For example, p2 not having thunder when you load into omastar can be a major pain. This is again, not exactly hard to discern. Asides from these two, the major pain in porygon2's sides is when it tries to handle strong special attackers like jolteon and espeon with spikes up. Mainly these two actually. Jolteon and espeon can boost up with growth as p2 comes in, do it again if p2 revealed a different fourth move than twave, and then just attack p2 directly for large damage or pass the boost out to a pokemon like moltres and kingdra that can, thanks to the growth boost, be able to actually break through p2 consistently. Of course, paralysis often contributes to this scenario in making p2 easier to handle, but that's just the nail in the coffin. I know, I already talked about how p2 can feel defensively lacking at times, but this is usually how it takes form. Oh, also spikes. Spikes are a pain. Switching into zam psychic with spikes digging into it and then being hit by thunder wave or another psychic after is a big deal.

That's about all I have to say regarding the duck. I'm sure there's more, but I can't be bothered lol. Btw I know I've double posted a lot, but this thread is, well, kind of dead asides from me and Ibby because like nobody actually plays this tier lol. Thanks for reading anyways. Have a good day.

 

[BeeOrSomething]

FIRE TYPES 101: GSC UUBL EDITION

Fire types are quite strong and appear often on teams in GSC UUBL, which may seem strange as on the surface UUBL is not that different from UU, a tier whose fire types are known for being notoriously bad in the water infested environment, said environment which also applies to GSC UUBL, especially as seen with Kingdra. However, fire types in GSC UUBL are able to carve out strong niches for themselves with their generally high BST and good offensive and defensive traits alike and good synergy with pokemon like Jolteon. Now, let's get to these fire types, shall we?

(Ordered by general viability)
Houndoom

Houndoom makes its name as the premier fire type of the tier. With its high special attack of 110, good speed stat at 95, and secondary dark typing that grants it STAB on crunch and pursuit in addition to a psychic immunity, Houndoom has plenty of valuable traits that justify it on many teams. Primarily, Houndoom is used for its psychic immunity, allowing it to stonewall Alakazam (with the exception of the rare hidden power water) and force Espeon to run hidden power water in order to break through Houndoom. Psychic resistances are in high demand in this tier with the dominance of Alakazam and Espeon, arguably forcing one on every team, which means Houndoom is eating good.

Sample Set: Pursuit

Houndoom @ Leftovers / Miracle Berry
Ability: No Ability
- Fire Blast
- Crunch
- Pursuit
- Hidden Power [Rock] / Hidden Power [Ice]

The most common Houndoom, this set allows Houndoom to consistently be defensively capable and offensively threatening in pretty much any game. Unlike certain other psychic resistances such as Slowking, Houndoom can actually threaten Alakazam and Espeon with STAB crunch and pursuit. Crunch is a great, spammable move due to a respectable 80 base power and 20% chance to drop special defense. Pursuit meanwhile allows houndoom to trap Haunter and potentially Alakazam (more later), freeing up teammates such as mono-normal Porygon2 and Kangaskhan. As for fire stab, Houndoom tends to use Fire Blast as it does significantly more damage to Porygon2, Kangaskhan, and more, as Flamethrower can be lacking at times. In the final slot, Houndoom has plenty of options. Hidden power ice smacks Dragonite, hidden power rock smacks other fire types, hidden power grass smacks Omastar and Quagsire, roar stacks spikes chip and prevents setup, and thief steals leftovers from the opponent if Houndoom's miracle berry is burned or it opts to use no item. You could probably even use rest with miracle berry. As for items, Houndoom tends to use leftovers as even with miracle berry, Houndoom usually gets paralyzed by pokemon such as Alakazam regardless, and leftovers is nice for keeping Houndoom healthy so it does not die to switching into spikes or fire type moves too many times, allowing it to remain defensively useful throughout a game. However, miracle berry is still a fine option for a one time stop to paralysis if you really need your Houndoom to be fast, and it also stops any stray sleep moves or toxic.

Sample Set: Sunny Day

Houndoom @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Sunny Day
- Fire Blast
- Crunch
- Hidden Power [Rock] / Hidden Power [Ice] / Solar Beam

This Houndoom set chooses to drop pursuit to make room for sunny day, jacking up the offensive output on Fire Blast to perform feats such as easily 2hko'ing Porygon2 and Kangaskhan. It can also make for a dangerous combination front with other sunny day fire types like Moltres and Entei. Solar beam may seem appealing in the fourth slot, however the things that solar beam hit tend to be much less common than what hidden power ice and rock can hit. The rest is the same.

Sample Set: Rest Talk

Houndoom @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Fire Blast
- Crunch
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

I haven't faced this Houndoom myself, however Juoean advocates for its viability and has used it on the spotlight ladder back in October, so I'll give it a mention. This set sacrifices pursuit utility and sunny day power to increase the longevity drastically. Rest also heals off any paralysis or poison, and unlike miracle berry works more than once. There's also the added benefit of making Houndoom a sleep absorber, albeit sleep is a bit rarer. Nothing too special here, rest talk is rest talk.


Charizard

Charizard makes for an incredibly dangerous setup sweeper with either swords dance or belly drum backed up by perfect coverage for when the opponent's pokemon are paralyzed and weakened, leaving Charizard faster than all of them and threatening to sweep. The fire flying type is quite nice for Charizard, as it grants it opportunities to setup on other fire types and Meganium. Additionally, while not the main focus, Charizard still has a high special attack stat of 109 allowing it to remain potent with STAB fire blast even if not set up yet.

Sample Set: Physical Sweeper

Charizard @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Belly Drum / Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- Fire Blast

Belly drum and swords dance let Charizard boost its physical attack stat by a lot, giving it a chance to break holes or outright sweep in the right conditions. Belly drum has a much higher reward, boosting all the way to +6 instead of giving a flat +2 boost, however it requires Charizard to cut its own health by 50%. Swords dance, while it boosts considerably less, comes without the 50% hp cost and +2 boosted attacks are still quite strong. Earthquake is the primary physical attack, as it has a high neutral base power of 100, hits many pokemon for super effective damage, and is backed up by perfect coverage to hit its resists. Rock slide hits flying types such as Articuno and Moltres, complimenting earthquake. Fire blast is a strong stab move for hitting pokemon such as Meganium and revenge killing lower health targets such as curse-boosted Kangaskhan where either of its physical moves would be unable to due to not being set up yet. Charizard adores paralysis with every fiber of its being, as it allows it to bypass counterplay usually in the form of faster pokemon that can threaten it such as Jolteon and thunder wave Alakazam. This pokemon is insanely bullshit. Your opponent can just pull it out of nowhere late into the game when your team is weakened and status and just clean effortlessly. I think I might actually hate it lol.

Moltres

Moltres is a giant ball of stats. With an incredibly high special attack stat of 125, a respectable base 90 speed, solid defenses of 90/90/85, and the fire flying typing, Moltres can fulfill a variety of roles on a team, though unfortunately it can feel quite matchup-y at times.

Sample Set: Rest Talk

Moltres @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Flamethrower
- Double-Edge / Sunny Day / Roar / Hidden Power [Grass]
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

This set is mostly to fulfill a defensive role that can deal good damage late in the game when its walls are gone. Flamethrower is the choice of STAB on the rest talk set for its perfect accuracy and much higher pp count compared to fire blast, and it is still quite strong because of Moltres' 125 special attack. Rest and sleep talk grant a lot of longevity throughout the game and make Moltres a good wall to other Moltres, some Houndooms, ground types (bar rock moves), Meganium, and more. The final slot is largely filler, but it can still prove useful. Double edge is a relatively strong neutral move for chipping fire resists. Sunny day increases the power of flamethrower for when waters types are eliminated or out of commission. Roar stacks spikes chip and prevents setup. Hidden power grass hits Omastar and Quagsire.

Sample Set: Sunny Day All-Out Attacker

Moltres @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Sunny Day
- Fire Blast / Flamethrower
- Double Edge
- Hidden Power [Grass]

This set focuses less on defensive utility to maximize offensive potential, especially with a growth pass. Fire blast is generally better here for the much higher power, though flamethrower is still fine. Being honest, the last slot is mostly filler, you could even argue double edge is mostly filler too. Moltres is a bit of a weird pokemon. Hidden power grass and roar do the same thing as on the rest talk set. Hidden power dragon allows Moltres to 2hko Kingdra if passed a growth boost from Jolteon or Espeon, though it fails to even 3hko without the boost. Agility increases the speed of Moltres in order to outspeed faster threats and clean late game. Rest gives longevity, compressing the defensive usefulness of the rest talk set with the offensive potential of this set, however it also renders Moltres out of commission for 2 turns. Hidden power rock can allow Moltres to bypass fire types who would otherwise have a much easier type against this set, primarily other rest talk Moltres.

Entei

There is a significant drop off in viability after Moltres, though do not count Entei out yet. Entei is quite bulky thanks to a massive 115 hp stat in addition to 85 defense and 75 special defense. 90 special attack is also not as bad as it sounds when compared to other fire types, and 100 speed is quite nice. Entei works great as a compliment to teammates rather than the star player itself, specifically with water types or other fires. However, it still suffers from the heavy competition with other fires.

Sample Set: Sunny Day

Entei @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Sunny Day
- Fire Blast
- Solar Beam
- Hidden Power [Rock] / Hidden Power [Ice]

This Entei is pretty similar to sunny day Houndoom, though with lower special attack and lack of a dark typing, meaning it has room for both solar beam and a hidden power. I don't really have much creative to say about the individual moves this time. This set works best as a compliment to other sunny day fire types, as individually it's not really worth using over sunny day Houndoom. Still alright.

Sample Set: Rest Talk

Entei @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Flamethrower
- Hidden Power [Rock] / Toxic
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

This set deviates from the role you might expect Entei to take, being a defensive piece. The goal of this set is to basically be a water type in the way it shuts down other fire types, but instead of being a water type it's a fire type (go figure). Flamethrower is chosen for the same reasons as with rest talk Moltres. Hidden power rock is the primary option for the second damaging move, as coming off Entei's large 115 attack stat it does a lot of damage to other fire types. Toxic is much weaker into other rest talk fires, but more generally useful spreading chip on pokemon like Porygon2. Normally, just use a water type, but if you cannot fit another water type without compounding too much on your team's weaknesses, mainly electric, then this Entei set might be alright for you.

Typhlosion

Typhlosion is generally regarded as a meme within the GSC UUBL discord server, and unfortunately for good reason. While Typy on paper has good traits, in particular a 100 base speed and 109 base special attack, it has ungodly competition with the other fire types, is incredibly inconsistent, and generally just feels lackluster when used. However, it still can do things I guess.

Sample Set: Mixed Attacker

Typhlosion @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Hidden Power [Ice] / Hidden Power [Rock]
- Sunny Day / Thunder Punch

Fire blast is the choice of STAB, as flamethrower is too weak. Earthquake hits other grounded fire types, Muk, Tentacruel, Qwilfish, and Lanturn. Ice and rock do the same thing as always. Sunny day boosts the power of fire blast so that Typy can actually kill things. Thunder punch can be used over sunny day to hit Qwilfish harder in addition to Omastar, Moltres, and Charizard, though it should not be used in conjunction with hidden power rock. Roar can be used to shuffle spikes chip and prevent setup, while dynamic punch can smack chansey and deal decent damage to other normal types, even confusing them, though it only has 50% accuracy. You can also use not Typhlosion. That's about it really.

Problems with Fire Types in GSC UUBL
Water Types, most notably Kingdra
Most fire types have a really tough time against water types, as in GSC everything has maxed out bulk so even super effective coverage options like hidden power grass don't do that much damage. Kingdra especially, as with the secondary dragon type it is 4x resistant to fire moves and not weak to any coverage option besides hp dragon, which is both very difficult to fit and can still only break Kingdra if boosted by a growth pass. Kingdra also happens to be one of the best pokemon in the tier, meaning it is very common, and it always uses rest + sleep talk, compounding on its threat level and longevity. Additionally, Tentacruel, while it does not pack any recovery moves unlike Kingdra meaning it is much more liable to getting chipped down, is much more offensively dangerous due to its access to swords dance, stab sludge bomb, higher special attack and usage of hydro pump rather than surf, and higher speed, combined with of course the ability to use the fire types to setup.

Ground and Rock moves
As I'm sure I've mentioned a lot already, rock moves are very good against the fire types. Of course, there's aerodactyl, who has stab on hidden power rock, resists fire, and is faster than every fire type, but there's also some of the fire types themselves that use hidden power rock to hit other fire types. Meanwhile, earthquake, although it cannot touch Moltres or Charizard, it smacks the grounded fires and is usually backed up by something to hit the flying ones hard, whether it be double edge + earthquake Kangaskhan, hidden power rock + earthquake donphan, rock slide + earthquake charizard, or other.

Other Fire Types
Fire resists fire. That's about it really. When the rest talk fire faces the non-rest fire that lacks hidden power rock, the rest talk fire will pretty much always win. Not much more too it.



Thanks for the read. I know I had continually less and less to say as the post went on, but tbh the less viable a pokemon is the less there will be to say about it, and a lot of the traits from each fire type carries over to the next. There's also so many words I can use. That's really all I have to say. Have a nice day.

 

[BeeOrSomething]

Hello, it's me again. Over the past 5+ months in the GSC UUBL discord server (join that btw), I have been taking the sets from the set compendium and putting them in the #set-compendium channel along with a short-ish description of usually 1-4 sentences to describe what they do (mostly just the pokemon actually in UUBL and the decently viable UU pokemon though). I just wanted to put the ones I personally wrote here so more people can see them. Obviously, fair warning some of these are up to 5 months old, so some of the information/sets may be slightly incorrect (and no I have not bothered to fix them), and most of these were written very casually. Starts from the second donphan set because Celebiii wrote all the pokemon before it (in alphabetical order), and there are some gaps where Ibby made some others (huge shoutouts to them by the way, without Celebiii and Ibby around in the discord server I really doubt I would have kept playing this meta simply because my interest would slowly die out). Putting them in a pastebin because having them all in one post would probably be way too bloated. Fair warning though, all of this combined is over like six thousand words, so tread at your own risk :P

https://pastebin.com/A2Dhwpvd

I hope you enjoy the read and this information provides some use to you :)

 

[Celebiii]

Well, I'm out of the current UUBL tourney now, so I feel I can share the teams I made for it. We definitely saw serious developments in this meta through this tourney, most notably the proliferation of GrowthPass, but it has been fun to watch the meta evolve with more robust strategies being developed all the time. Here's the teams I made just for this tourney:

Double Drum


This team plays off the offensive synergy between Jolteon + Tentacruel + Houndoom to remove threats to the two Drummers, Quagsire and Clefable. Jolteon starts the game off strong on offense, threatening paralysis on leads like opposing Jolteon, Alakazam, and Kangakhan, and an immediate KO on Qwilfish. Baton Pass allows Jolteon to scout switches and safey pivot into Houndoom to remove Alakazam, and can also make Tentacruel even more dangerous with a +1 boost to its Hydro Pumps. Scizor is used as the Normal resist and to pass Agility to the Drummers to allow them to sweep. This team plays very fast and needs to constantly be dishing out offense, so it's a little shaky on the defensive side, but poses an immense threat to defensive styles and can play against offense as well.

Lead Twave Hypno Special Offense


I played around with several versions of this team and ended up liking this one the best for Hypno's great mixed bulk and ability to deal with opposing Special attackers even while asleep. The idea is that depending on the matchup, some combination of Growth passing between Jolteon, Espeon, and Alakazam will provide immense Special offense given the chance, and can facilitate a sweep. The thing I like most with this team is Miracle Berry + Encore on Alakazam, which can allow it to win late-game matchups it would otherwise lose, such as against Twave P2. Zam is able to safely lock Twave users into Twave with Encore and then pound away at them until they are KO'd with Psychic, since Miracle Berry guarantees it will get the Encore off. Muk and Kangaskhan provide emergency checking and defensive backbone capabilities against a variety of threats. Kangaskhan can help break through specially-bulky Pokemon that would otherwise slow this team down, while Muk can remove Curse and Swords Dance users.

Espeon Growthpass


This team forms a more balanced approach to GrowthPass, having Espeon either boost for its own sake to sweep, or pass to Moltres/Magneton as the situation demands. P2 takes a more defensive role on this team, paralyzing threats to Espeon like Alakazam and Houndoom, while Moltres and Qwilfish help to rack up residual damage. Muk is again on emergency checking duty here. This team has some tougher matchups and might be something I look at improving more in the future, as P2 can get overwhelmed here. This team and the above one have really illustrated for me the additional support Espeon requires in order to play successfully, namely removing other Psychics and Houndoom, and I think both teams exemplify the difficulties in using it despite the possible reward for getting it to work.

 

[gabraltar]

I overall think this tier is decently fun and here are my current thoughts on the tier. I've played a decent bit over the past couple of months although do take what I say with a grain of salt as I don't think I'm a super good player

I lowkey think Kangaskhan is broken. Specifically Curse Roar Kang. This thing takes advantage of passive pokemon a bit too well. It's really not a stretch to say that it takes advantage of Scizor of all things. You know..... the poke that's supposed to be the best normal resist in the tier. The other two normal resists, Magneton and Omastar (Haunter sucks) are great at beating it but they have their own fairly significant flaws: Omastar gets taken advantage of by Kingdra all day long while Magneton is less reliable vs Porygon2. Beyond that, your best options are haze users and overwhelming it with strong special attackers and both have their own issues. Haze users other than Dragonite (and the aforementioned Omastar) are quite physically frail vs Kang (Muk is also slower btw), while Dragonite doesn't do much back to it w/o the risky Dynamic Punch. As for special attackers, while overwhelming it can be a fine strategy since this Kang set doesn't run Sleep Talk, you almost always are going to lose a poke doing so. With the exception of like.... Moltres (still kind of a stretch, it still takes a lot), the strong special attacks in the tier are quite frail, meaning that you are basically sacraficing a poke to stop this set. I overall think Curse Roar Kang is a bit too threatening to slower paced teams and too easily forces one KO (and sometimes, that + serious damage on another poke). It feels somewhat similar to the similarily absurd Curse Light Screen Stantler in NU, although I think it's more overpowered than that deer is in NU, since its special bulk means it far less vulnerable to being revenge killed by special attackers. Everything i'm saying could honestly be a skill issue but I think it's teetering on the edge of being banworthy.

Although I don't think it's broken (or anywhere close to it), Kingdra is still quite absurd. Kingdra's Dragon Breath might just be the most overpowered move in the tier, with how prominent paralysis is. With Dragon Breath alone, alongside its bulk, the amount of pokemon in the tier that can switch into it and scare it out without risking being irrevokably crippled or worn down in the process is very limited. It's very annoying to switch into and it's by far the most absurd recipient of Growth Pass as well, thanks to its speed and lack of an electric weakness. It can take advantage of a fairly decent amount of pokemon as well. It's def not flawless tho: it's somewhat vulnerable to giving opportunities to Growth pass Jolteon, Curse Muk, and Curse p2 while resting and even when awake, it can give Jolteon opportunities to growth pass since Dragon Breath isn't exactly guaranteed to para, and Jolteon also commonly runs Miracle Berry. Beyond that, however, Kingdra is absurd.

I really, really like Muk in the tier. It's decently similar to Weezing in NU, although unlike Weezing, I do not think it's the best mon in the tier. Just like Weezing in NU, its Explosion is such a wonderful progress maker and an emergency stop to so many threats in the tier. The way it can so easily swing momentum into your favor and set up senarios where your teammates can secure the win is just amazing. It can lure in and explode on Nidoqueen, which lets Jolteon go beserk, and it exploding on Alakazam can let Tentacruel and even your own Alakazam go beserk. Its meaty special bulk with Curse lets it take advantage of many special attacks in the tier, with a big one being a resting Kingdra. It also goes hard when combined with paralysis support; it's one of the best pokemon at taking advantage of a paralyzed Alakazam and Jolteon. Pursuit support also lets it accomplish even more on a game to game basis, by making it ten times harder to revenge kill. It really does feel like Weezing in NU where a well piloted Muk is almost guaranteed to accomplish something in a game. Even if it faces a really hard wall, like Nidoqueen, Quagsire, and Donphan, it exploding on them alone opens to door for Jolteon, and it's entirely in its favor to get the boom on them, since switching anything else in is very risky (In a similar dynamic to Weezing vs Ninetales in NU!). Curse letting it stomach their hits makes it even easier and even if it doesn't boom on them, Belly Drum Quagsire and Donphan don't appreciate eating a Sludge Bomb poison since (I think) they don't commonly run Rest (and BD Quag sure as hell doesn't like being forced to Rest). Plus, these grounds can't exactly prevent Muk from emergency stopping something like a Growth Jolteon. Muk can really just do all of early game wallbreaking, securing wins late game, emergency stopping sweepers, and halting momentum from your opponent all very well. It's obviously not flawless (namely 4MSS issues), but it's really, really reliable and good at what it does.

P.S: Plz do NOT free Muk in UU. A strong Explosion user prolly breaks the tier ngl.

I honestly didn't think very highly of Houndoom when I started the tier. I felt like trapping Alakazam wasn't enough to use a pokemon that is very mediocre outside of that. Yes, it has a strong Fire Blast to limit Curse Roar Kang, and it can check Scizor and Moltres with hp rock, but beyond that, it doesn't have a lot of use. It's not a great Growth Pass recipient imo cause it gets crushed by Kingdra. It can even be a burden at times since p2 can get up curses vs it; it can use Roar or maybe Toxic to stop it but that means it can no longer check Moltres.

However, after playing around with it, I have warmed up to it, as I have come to realize the power of certain pokes when zam is not in the picture. One big beneficiary of pursuit is the poison types of the tier (and I'm not just talking about Qwilfish, although zam being gone does make it easier for it to get up spikes). Muk is an obvious beneficiary but Tentacruel and Nidoqueen really love pursuit. Nidoqueen alongside Houndoom in particular is amazing because the two combined wall the two most threatening special attackers in the tier, Alakazam and Jolteon, in just two team slots. With Tentacruel, Swords Dances sweeps become so much easier when Alakazam is out of the picture, esp since its next biggest revenge killer, Jolteon, does not run recovery, meaning it's much easier to wear down. Ironically, what is probably the biggest beneficiary of Houndoom removing Alakazam is...... Alakazam itself. With the opposing Alakazam out of the picture, Alakazam's own Psychic becomes much more clickable, and you can more easily afford to use up your Miracle Berry to paralyze the opposing Jolteon. You can even afford to drop Thunder Wave, as you no longer need to worry about your own Alakazam having a bad matchup into opposing Alakazam, and run an Encore set. Another beneficiary of Houndoom's Pursuit, although definetly more niche, is Agility + Belly Drum Quagsire. Since Alakazam outspeeds a +2 Quag (by 2 points), Houndoom removing Alakazam is great for Agility pass teams.

Overall, Houndoom still have issues with being useful outside of Pursuiting but it's far from worthless and pursuiting is still big in many senarios.

Nidoqueen is a poke that I think is heavily underrated in the current meta. It is probably the best Jolteon check in the tier, probably even better than Quagsire since it isn't vulnerable to resting and giving Jolt opportunities while asleep (ig Quag can use stalk haze but that's quite a commitment in moveslots). A +1 hp ice isn't even close to guaranteed 2hko on Nidoqueen, to say nothing of how most Jolteon don't fit Growth and HP ice on the same set. Beyond that, with roar, it's a physical attacker that Kang can't setup on (and takes its hits well and can recover vs it), it can roar out p2 without being scared of Thunder Wave, and it completely owns Muk and Curse Scizor. It has flaws obv (Kingdra as well as needing to choose Thunder for Moltres and Ice Beam for Dragonite) and it sometimes feels like it needs to pair with Houndoom for maximum effectiveness, but beyond that, it's a really good poke, both offensively and defensively.

 

[cherryb0ng]

Trading is better than passively walling in GSC UUBL (potentially)
I remember perusing through some old-ass GSC UU replays of the pirate99 and I was intrigued by a specific moveset of Omastar.
I thought I'd venture into the unexplored territory of Normal resists in UUBL and got okay-ish results. But I'd like an opinion since my meta knowledge is sort of but not super up to date.


Before I begin, why would I want to do this?
The metagame of GSC UUBL has rapidly developed and while not all of the Normal offensive threats are made equal, there is a lingering problem with finding durable non-hyper-offensive ways to beat them. One of the problems lies in the overall lack of effectiveness of the typical Sleep Talk move combinations of GSC and the RNG making you subject to high volatility of the insane aggression and pace of all the offensive pokemon like P2, Ursaring and Kangaskhan. It's not so much that pokemon like Omastar and Magneton lack the power to act as good checks, but they are slow and usually only have one good move with which to hit them while asleep and the pokemon they are meant to wall have recovery in Recover and Rest. So essentially as things stand they need a crit or something.

Bring the opposing threat to as low a percentage as possible. Never stop attacking.

Surf (Could consider Hydro Pump here too)
Ice Beam
Seismic Toss
Protect

I know the initial reactions. What the hell? But this was legitimately interesting because it helps circumvent a common problem with your standard Omastar sleep talk set: the lack of control and abuse from other threats.

This is not intended to be an alternative to having a sleep talker altogether on your team, it's just to demonstrate how certain problems can be circumvented with creativity and well... being a bit less passive in the typical sleep talking fashion.
I mainly wanted a pokemon that could do a better job at checking certain threats like Curse Eq kahnga or Curse Roar Kanga. The fact that it matches up relatively well vs non Tbolt Porygon 2 was an added benefit.

How does it work?
The idea behind this set is trading more consistently rather than sitting in front of a wall and hoping not to get crit. Often times you will be able to deal one or two attacks with STAB Surf to Kangaskhan before it can strike you with a +1 Earthquake. If the Kangaskhan uses Curse, it is also slower, and unless you got crit, you will most likely land another move with which to trade the kanga and successfully put it in range of a powerful special move (there is also a 0.3% chance you 3HKO Kangha with Surf).
If the Kangaskhan instead of setting up decides to click Earthquake first, it is now committed and has to be weary of being put in 2 or 3HKO range. Since it's still technically faster and has way more than a 0.3% chance of 3HKOing Omastar, this is where Protect comes in extremely handy.
After a max roll of Earthquake, one Protect does not have the potential to put you out of range, but two Protect attempts do.
It's pretty simple to see how a sequence of Protect, Attack, Protect, could really be beneficial in putting the scary threat in range of a revenge KO for a partner.
Bear in mind that the move Protect has a lot of potential of putting Omastar out of danger in a pinch because in GSC the double protect actually has 50% odds of occurring!

Should your opponent for any reason use Rest, that simply means more turns for you to regain HP while fishing for a much needed crit and upon it waking up, you get the bonus of 6% hp from Leftovers+ Protect. Should the opponent have Roar instead, your Omastar can chip at it with a lot more freedom and even block Roar using Protect.

Last mon curse sleep talk Kangaskhan isn't amazing to face with this set because you are forced to stall it but they have to reach +4 before they can confidently 3HKO you (also they are once again, slower).

All this more or less applies with Ursaring with the difference being that it's more powerful and can 2HKO but is terribly slow and frailer. So you can use a single protect and escape the 2HKO range. The speedtie with Omastar does not help it, nor does the fact that it can be easily revenge killed.

Porygon 2 is and always will be a nightmarish threat. But at the very least Omastar will have plenty of opportunities to chip at the Porygon using Surf and can fish for freezes with Ice Beam.


What about Seismic Toss?
*flips notes hurriedly*

You can do whatever you want but I find Seismic toss good for every Water type coming in, like Qwilfish or Tentacruel, especially the latter.
I thought I'd have more to say about this move but I have brain fog. I guess it's good against anything else Omastar might have a hard time hurting.

 

[LilTic]

Since I'm out of the tournament finally, I will add something to the discussion too: Stall!
I don't think you can build an outright hard stall team in such an offensive tier, but I got a couple of teams that definitely want to stall the main threats out and win the game slowly (100 turns+-).
So, let's have a look at some premier defensive pokemon in the tier:

Of course, P2 has earned it's place on most of my teams, because you would be a fool not at least considering it on most playstyles. 32 PP recover, lategame sweeping potential, access to good coverage moves and annoying moves (Twave / Thief / Nightmare) help P2 fill a jack of all trades role on stall. In a pinch, you can use it as a blanket check for most unboosted mons, you can cripple opposing normals with thief and spread paralysis to play for the long game.

One of my late-found favorites, Omastar can do a lot, especially if your opponents don't see it coming. My go-to set after multiple trials is:
Surf
Haze
Thief
Rest
This set is definitely greedy and I wouldn't blame you for swapping thief to sleep talk, sandstorm or ice beam, but I really like freely coming in on most normal pokemon sets and thieving whatever the opponent switches out to after a while. If you thief the normal sweeper, even better. I wouldn't use thief without using spikes on the team, though. The main issue of Omastar is earthquake kang (exactly which I lost to today) and thunder/tbolt P2. But lately, vast majority of P2's I see are running Twave, which is a set that Oma counters perfectly. Curse having 16 pp is noteworthy for using stall, as Oma can quickly wear this pp down with hazing. Also, this thing hits HARD, when it crits a neutral target it's often bye-bye for the opponent.

I haven't ran Muk as often lately, but that's just because I opted to just run Qwil for spikes to win long switching games and I didn't want two poison types. But as a general blanket check to special mons, it's still great and has earned it's place among the goats. Set I like to use most is pretty basic:
Sludge Bomb
Curse / Haze
Explosion
Fire Blast
Muk isn't going to stick around forever, usually I want to check something and blow up, but Fire Blast can fry unsuspecting Scizors (but Scizor will survive from full hp, keep that in mind). The real hardcore slow teams do need spikes, however, and that's why I prefer to use it on balanced teams with growth pass Jolteon and Kingdra.

It doesn't look like a defensive pokemon, but the way you play with it in stall it is. You use this mofo to sweep, of course, but the way it compresses fast, hard hits with roar (last resort roar solution too) and longevity with rest is great and I also use it on slow teams, sometimes even with P2. The usual set I use is:
Return / Double Edge
Curse
Roar
Rest
One of the most basic sets, but the trick is, you ALWAYS run Chansey on my teams (because they are mine and I can't let go of it), so you can wake yourself up without wasting turns with Heal Bell from Chansey!

And here it is, the blob of joy! I probably have the most experience using Chansey, because it's not very popular (and for reasonable reasons). And what I have come to is: Don't try to make it be something it's not. Don't slap these special attacks on it! It will still do nothing most of the time. The only exception I will allow is ice beam, if you feel like you're going to hack the freezes. But the goated set imho is:
Heal Bell
Softboiled
Present
Sing
This thing carried my bottom so much in the tournament... Present is a bugged move in Gen 2, for those who don't know yet, it basically hits all the special types extremely hard (depending on the pokemon's last type, aka secondary type if it has 2 types), being able to ohko Zam, Houndoom, Kingdra and others. Veteran players know this, of course, but it also makes them switch out fast, which you can use to your advantage with smart double switches. Heal bell, I won't even ramble about, that's the main selling point, since very few pokemon get it. It's amazing, you can't run stall without it, don't try to. And then sing... I always wondered how to deal with having to waste tempo with running chansey. Turns out lots of pokemon that want to switch in really don't appreciate being put to sleep. P2, talk-less Kangs, Ursarings and Scizors will absolutely hate it and it can singlehandedly swing the game in your favor... if you can land it. But if you can't, you always have an Omastar or Shuckle to wall and usually can survive missing one or two sings. So I came to a conclusion, that this bad move is in fact decent and my experience with it was great.

My dearest boy. I love him, he does one thing, and that's rollout. No, ok, he mostly walls normals, but do not be fooled. This little guy will sweep your team and everybody that it's happened to sure remembers till this day. My go-to set is:
Rest
Defense Curl
Mud Slap
Rollout
Mud slap is the odd one out here, but it really makes the opponent think about switching out, when their curse sweeper misses everything. It has 16 PP, same like curse, which makes Shuckle be able to check almost any curse sweeper one on one. If they click curse, click slap. Defense Curl has amazing 61 PP, and you can boost yourself to about 850 defense with just one, BUT!!! The main thing is, it doubles rollout's damage until you switch out, if you press it once. This makes the final rollout do base 960 (!!!!!!) damage, PLUS stab, since Shuckie is a rock type. No matter if the opponent has boosted defense, this thing will take it out eventually. Crit rollouts are crazy too, and the birds are 4x weak to it. It doesn't happen every game, but there are games where you sacrifice everything so that your opponent can't roar shuckle out and just go ham. For the beauty, I dare you to try at least once ;)

Blastoise... do not have too big expectations, it's only here to spin. And crit some surfs, perhaps. The main niche is using it on qwil-less teams, where you don't have your own spikes to match the opponent's.
Surf
Rapid Spin
Earthquake
Rest
Earthquake is what I ultimately settled for as the optional move, to at least threaten tenta and win qwilfish 1v1. You can run ice beam, sleep talk, haze, or zap cannon if you dare, but they didn't do the thing for me. Sleep talk especially makes Blastoise free tenta setup fodder, and again, you can always wake it up "manually" with Heal Bell.

It spikes.

Last but not least, another hugely popular member of UUBL metagame. You'd think Alakazam is too frail for stall, but every slow team needs speed checks, and coincidentally, it's one of the best paralysis spreaders in the tier. I don't have a preferred set here, because every team needs a slightly different one, but Recover and Psychic are of course a must on slow teams, and Thunder Wave will be used 90% of the cases too. My other favorites are Fire Punch (because screw Scizors), Thief, Encore. Light screen can also be considered for sure, even dynamic punch. I simply came to the conclusions that for checking psychics, you can always use Zam alongside Chansey, Houndoom is not good on stall, being far too frail without recovery.

These are the three who I don't use, but I think there's good potential to include in some kind of a stall team. I have an issue with Synthesis having only 8 PP, so even though you have access to leech seed and reflect, you might have your Meg worn down easily. Aero is too frail for my liking, but after losing to that earthquake kang, I might think again about it! And Scizor, I think fits better on more offensive teams, being able to pass and hit hard. Here, his recovery option is sleeptalk or just Rest, which is very valid for the pokemon, but it really dies to random coverage on multiple things. 4x weakness to a common attacking type is simply not great, plus it's not very beefy on the special side. But out of the 3, I'd probably be most willing to give it a try sooner or later.

As for how to play stall, that's not what the post is about, but play it as in any metagame: Wall what you can, check what you must, make openings to take out key threats, think for the long game. And in this tier especially, be sure to play around tentacruels!

Congrats if you survived all that old man talk, you can try out my pastes in the future if you're stall-curious. The first one is older and will be revisited one day, but the second one had really amazing results for me.

https://pokepast.es/e09c630d96dd3f90
https://pokepast.es/cb43504d21986915

 

[melancholy0]

vr posting bc it seemed like fun, has been a while since I built alot, so may have some weird rankings.

S Tier

S Tier - Uncounterable, your opponent can bring the counter and the mons can get through them with the right set

Zam - you have to pack a resist or blob or it will run over your team, has dpunch, twave, encore, screens, elemental punches to get around any counters, ranked first as can para and attack down the other two S tiers to some extent, and neither have the versatility or are the immediate threat that zam is.

P2 - the best curse normal by far, twave/ice beam/hp fire/tbolt/conversion2 can all put it over the edge in certain mus, not even mentioning recover

Jolt - best growther, best growth passer, if it runs the right hp it can't be phased in the long run, spreads para, fastest mon worth using

A Tier

A Tier - these ones are worse if your opponent knows their coming, but still worth running

Kanga - the roar set is great, has trouble breaking through shuckle though as near impossible to keep spikes up in this tier

Tenta - when the best counter (crobat) needs to dodge a hydro, you know its good, instantly threatening and nigh unwallable with hp ground, relies on removal of zam and jolt, if people trend to keeping them unpara'd would be worse but not the case currently. Also spintenta invalidates qwilfish, outspeeds and 2hkos haunter trying to spinblock, qwil needs hp ground to have a shot

Muk - best utility mon, has boom

Kingdra - this walls so many things in the tier its not funny, while offensively 0 outside of dbreath, it is annoying enough to be this high up

Qwilfish - the fact that haunter is not used now means that you will almost never keep spikes vs any blastoise team, much less spin tenta (please use this over blastoise) without hp ground (any getting the turns right) or teching into buzz to pursuit tenta. that said spikes are good, and spinners arent usually worth fitting so can keep spikes in most games

Ursaring - normals are good, high attack

Dragonite - versatile and can be very threatening vs certain teams, but struggles vs kingdra to break, consistent as a para spreader, best safeguard user which can be useful

Clefable - normals are good, use drum encore (or twave)

Quag + granbull - you know what they do, good offensively and defensively (rtalk haze and heal bell)

Omastar + Donphan - the only normal counters that dont get blown out by coverage (not many ice beam p2s anymore). if you run 7 speed ivs on phan, you can underspeed -1 kanga and roar it out

B Tier

B Tier - if your opponent knows that they are coming, they are much worse

Scizor + Mag - beaten by fire and ground coverage respectively

Doom - Zam can tech to beat it, and haunter isn't around, but good when it works. hp rock is a neat move on it

Shuckle - walls all normals, can flash kanga if it doesn't have sub, lets qwil in for free though

Chansey - like shuckle, but worse at checking the main special threats, zam and jolt as they dpunch and bp respectively

Bro + King - both are probably the best zam counters, hard to pursuit, can spread para with twave. they can drum as well for offense on stall and growl is usable on slowbro to check normals

Blastoise - probably a worse spinner than tenta, though with hp ground may no longer be the case

Meg - reflect + leech or spreading para with bslam are good, sd can be scary

Molt - spike immune sun

Pluff - best utility mon after zam, encore/sleep/para are all good

Ampharos - good stats (basically slow raikou), but doesn't stop jolteon from using bp so rough, grounds being rare helps though

Zard - game ending once set up, if not for zam/jolt/kingdra

Espeon - the worse psychic and growther, teams are already prepped for zam so hard to take advantage of

Lanturn - para machine

Venu - similar to meg, but the poison type really hurts here

Nido + Pilo - ground stab is really underrated in uubl, but both have kingdra issues

Lapras/// - could alternate order of these, but lapras is first for winning me a game by hitting 7 thunders in a row vs tenta

C Tier

C tier - Niche but viable

- Haze/Wing Attack/Rtalk is the best tenta counter (tenta needs to hit 5 hydros and need to have bad restalk rolls), as well as general check to set up mons in the tier, only fits on some stalls though

- could be very good to enable spikes strategies by pursuiting qwil/tenta/toise to ensure spikes stay up, bit too frail otherwise

// - bp mons, hypnosis and barrier can make mime good

- too frail to see much use unfortunately, and cannot spinblock tenta, but normal immunity is big

/ - sunny day mons hampered by water types on nearly every team

- bad as a wall, not enough offense as a attacker

// - normal spam is good, are not fast enough relative to other mons, or hit hard enough to justify on most teams

/// - these UU guys could be good on the right team

D Tier

D Tier - Niche but bad

+ - best used on the ladder cheese team with screens boom trode, drum sub bp smeargle, then sweep with dug - unfortunately dug is reliably the fastest mon like it is in ou

- thief, screech, eq could make it good, understatted and doesn't really check anything like it does in UU or OU though

- baton pass stuff, see UU

- if espeon isnt worth using, kadabra isn't either in all likelihood

UR - Unviable

 

[Lizzie]

Having played and enjoyed this tier in a couple of tours recently I figured I may as well post something about it. It's honestly kinda weird because I feel like I barely understand this tier at all, but I also had pretty decent success in the most recent tour, losing in pretty competitive sets to the eventual finalists while only using teams I built myself. I'm not really qualified to make like a vr or anything cos frankly I've never seen or used half the pokemon that would be on there, but I figured I'd talk a bit about the teams I used but also the ones I didn't use, only because BeeOrSomething told me they didn't suck lol.


This team basically carried me through most of the tour. I had ice beam over lovely kiss on nidoqueen for a long time but I changed it at some point because ice beam hits nothing and sleep is broken. The main idea of this team to try and make something similar to stuff I'd tried in my brief gsc ou ladder experience. I felt that spikes phasing with a mon like moltres could never be bad, and surely roar nidoqueen would be basically the same thing as roar nidoking in ou (it isn't). Nidoqueen also had the benefit of shutting down any jolt bp shenanigans, which hadn't fully taken off yet when I built it (during the tour towards the end of last year) but were definitely something I was concerned about. The main problem with this team is that it really struggles to break kingdra. I think like 5 times during the most recent tour I thought damn I should change hp ice on molt to something else (double edge and hp dragon probably both have merit) and then I never did. p2 also probably shouldn't be ice beam here. Overall this team has pretty cool offensive pressure and feels pretty unique compared to what other people were using, it definitely has flaws but I feel like there's a lot of potential to play around stuff with it.


I brought this vs mrsoup and I honestly think in hindsight it's just not a very good team. The idea behind it was basically paralyze everything and sweep with quag, in practise it's just so passive and you can't really force progress vs anything. I think lapras is really cool and underutilized though, unfortunately I ran into magneton which might be the worst mon ever to run into with this set. I def think there's potential here, maybe replace houndoom for something, but it's really tough to play a long game with spikes on your side and not the other side, shocking I know.


This was the other team I brought vs mrsoup, I kind of like this one, qwiilfish dying to crit just felt like it really killed my chances that game because I feel this team really needs spikes. I think I lost to this espeon set like three times going into that series so I basically just wanted to build with it, pairing it with zam to draw out psychic checks early just seemed like the obvious thing to do. and everything else felt like fairly obvious picks. As a sidenote I was really liking light screen zam during this time to help support sweeps while also having good utility on zam itself. It also kinda helps vs growth pass.


Didn't end up bringing the rest of these so I won't go too in depth here.


This sounds like a meme but I was intrigued by the idea of lanturn cos stab thunder is really good and it deals with zam pretty well, and then I wanted a jolt check and pilo was basically exactly what I wanted here. The main idea with this team was to wear down the other team and then get zard a free turn and sweep.



These are pretty similar ideas, I think sandslash is just a cool mon and I wanted to play around with it a bit. I'm much more confident in the lapras version.


This team is a meme, someone told me to build with belly drum clef so I did but I have no faith in this.

That's basically everything, I had another team at some point that I was using for a lot of the tour but I deleted it because it was really bad lol. I feel like I really stick to a fairly small pool of mons in this tier and find it hard to branch out but that's kind of how it goes given I'm not the most engaged/active. Hopefully whenever the next tour happens I can try more stuff like muk and dnite which are obviously good mons that I haven't use but this is all I've got for now.

 

[BeeOrSomething]

Ultra mega posting now that the third GSC UUBL tournament is over (which I even won), really really happy seeing so many people post about their experiences especially since nobody bothered to post after the first one, second one, or even the October spotlight (besides cherryb0ng, Ibby, and I), great to see more people wanting to engage. Shoutouts to Celebiii for always hosting all these tournaments.

Viability Rankings (I also submitted this for the official one Celebiii is putting together)

S+ Tier

Porygon2 is busted.

S Tier

Growth pass is absurdly good and prominent, and Jolteon as a pokemon itself is amazing and likely mandates an electric resistance on teams.
Incredibly strong STAB move, plenty of utility, great survivability with recover and miracle berry, and mandates a psychic resistance on teams.

A+ Tier

I considered ranking this in S along with Jolt and Zam, but I think what Jolt and Zam offer are thoroughly unique so they don't really have competition, meanwhile Kang has P2 and ursaring for competition. Still incredible and the only real factor preventing it from being S.
Kingdra can do no wrong. Everything about it is above average. Amazing defensive profile, dragon breath is great at spreading paralysis, quite fast, and the best candidate for recieving a growth pass. Just has ever so slight competition with other waters and at times can feel lackluster offensively (asides from paralyzing stuff) without a pass.
Spikes are great, checking tentacruel is great. Honestly it's quite weird how spikes work in this tier, normally offense is just made better while super fat teams with a good win condition can drop them (see: GSC UU, GSC NU), but for UUBL super offensive teams actually like dropping qwilfish because they have so much offense (growth pass, sd pass, or turbo paraspam usually) that they prefer to drop it for better synergy, while more defensive and bulky offense-type teams like qwilfish a lot more because they enjoy spikes's ability to keep them from falling behind in progress. Anyways, rant over, spikes are amazing but qwilfish doesn't do too much else.
One of the best late game cleaners. It's so fast and unlike all the curse users it doesn't have to make itself slower. Growth + Psychic + HP Water covers basically everything, and in the last slot you can use something like reflect, morning sun, baton pass, or my preferred option, Bite. Bite at +1 2HKOes Zam and 3HKOes Slowking and even has a 20% chance to flinch which when backed up by paralysis support for Zam and other bulky pokemon can just be nasty. Both miracle and lefties are fine, miracle helps a lot when espy would otherwise miss out on KOes into Zam and P2 but lefties is nice for stuff like slowking and jolteon and for more midgame use with spikes up.
The stall destroyer is as good as ever. HP ground is really good, destroys qwilfish and muk, but sub is still fine. Appreciates Zam and Jolt often paralyzing each other but doesn't like Chansey heal belling them and stuff like Articuno being less common.

A TIer

tbh I would've had Dragonite in A+ but I feel like it's just very good at most things, not excellent at any particular facet. Still very good. Shining defensive piece.
The best fire type. Great defensive abilities, pursuit is nice, STAB fire blast + crunch is a great combo. Thief + Miracle/No Item is fine, but I prefer using HP Rock or HP Ice to make Doom able to handle RTalk Moltres or Dnite, respectively.
The best normal resist, great answer to Porygon2 and a psychic resist + poison immune (though Zam and Muk like using fire moves so watch out). Curse + Rest + Double-Edge is the way to go. Not the best at answering Roar Kangaskhan and Ursaring but it's fine.
Incredibly dangerous setup sweeper, asshole pokemon. Next.
Solid combo of offensive and defensive traits complimented by Explosion to cap it off. Psychic and Ground weak sucks though and major 4mss.
130 attack and access to eq is very scary. Also has roar for bullying p2 kang and scizor, amazing beneficiary of paralysis support. Questionable longevity though.

A- Tier

Moltres is quite nice defensively but it flops a lot offensively with Kingdra around. Pretty good though.
Resists water, ground, and electric, super fast, reliable healing, and good utility with leech + reflect/light screen or sd + body slam. Definitely think it should almost always have eq, Meg needs to be able to answer Jolteon.
Super fat, good coverage, solid growth pass recipient, but Kingdra tends to be better since it isn't weak to electric and dragon breath is like the greatest thing ever (that isn't thunder wave).

B+ Tier

Best all-around Jolteon answer, very deadly win con with agility pass or a lot of paralysis. Defensive sets are also cool. Resisting fire is never bad.
Great defensive piece, can use broken thunder wave if you want, decent growth pass recipient. However, very very very slow, Kingdra is better all-purpose, and Kangaskhan and P2 can abuse it.
Normal resist is very valuable, resists psychic and electric as a bonus, strongest thunder in the tier (which can also paralyze).
Twave 3 attacks (thunder, hp ice, and fire punch or dpunch depending on what you want) is good all-around offensive utility, while toxic talk is an asshole if you don't have the right pokemon. Jolteon gives it major competition however.
Best Zam answer. Probably the best Dnite answer too. Generally quite bulky, solid team supporter. Twave Stoss Rtalk is the best set, sorry Celebiii, I don't respect dropping stoss :P

B Tier

Great defensively (yet again), but imo lackluster offensively. Also needs to use roar to not be fodder for BP Jolt and normals lol.
Same as always, fat af and heal bell is great, but gives entry to physical pieces and does like no damage without present.
Very short-term pokemon. Nice qualities but I think it just dies too fast most of the time, which is unfortunate.
I like haze the most, no sleep talk though because I don't think it's needed. I prefer thief or sandstorm for the offensive support it offers.
Ultimate disruptor, sleep and encore are super valuable and its very fast, but it does literally no damage without leech seed lol. Best as an early game pokemon to enable setup or a defensive piece probably.
Ngl I don't know why people didn't use cuno very much in the most recent tournament, it's pretty decent. Sure it struggles a little offensively and has major 4mss, but ice beam can freeze (broken) and it has amazing special bulk. I guess it is weak to electric but eh.
Sd pass has a very high ceiling, but being OHKOed by Jolteon thunder is pretty bad. At least it has a 30% to miss :P

B- Tier

Belly drum is pretty good. Moonlight makes it unique. Bit of 4mss though if you're worried about normal resists. Also competition with Charizard and other normal types.
The best SD pass recipient. Competition is really harsh though. Also can't afford to use curse really so it struggles with other curse normals.
Heal bell and lovely kiss are great tools, and almost as high an attack as Ursaring, but it can only use one due to incompatibilities and also Ursaring is better in every way asides from those utility moves.
No stab. Also despite having boom, said boom is weak af. Zam also walls. Boom and normal immunity is still incredible though.

C+ Tier

Shuckle is a nice wall but it kinda loses to roar kang. Fodder for tentacruel too. Rollout is cool I guess but you basically never get to use it cause it locks you in for like 5 turns.
Underrated paralysis abuser. STAB eq and 100 attack with swords dance and perfect coverage is nice. Electric immunity is never bad either. Weak to water though and other paralysis abusers are usually better.
Spin good. Answering fires is good. Eq is good for qwilfish, tentacruel, and jolteon. Kingdra exists though. Jolteon is still a problem.
Can be an ok defensive piece or an ok offensive piece. Not very special and outclassed by houndoom, but it can do neat stuff.
Baton pass shenanigans for escaping pursuit and maybe passing a sub or a meditate or a barrier are nice. Usually just use Zam. Probably ok alongside Zam though.
Swords dance is a good move. Sleep powder is a good move. Needs paralysis.
Let down a lot by its low special attack. Cool typing.

C Tier

Second best Jolteon answer. Toxic + Roar + Rock slide gives it the ability to annoy almost everything with spikes up. Means no recovery though, water weak sucks, tends to be outclassed, etc.
A normal resist that doesn't answer any of the normal types kinda blows. P2 often has electric or ice coverage, kang often uses roar, and ursaring often uses roar. 130 speed and rock + ground coverage is cool, ignoring that fitting eq is really difficult.
Use meganium. Toxic immunity, roar, and sleep powder are nice though I guess.
Absolute truck. Funny growth pass recipient if you can pull it off. Obviously really really frail, but it can do a shit ton of damage. Very humorous pokemon.
Screens + boom are neat.
The most outclassed thing to ever exist. Also very inconsistent. It's like functional as a pokemon itself though I guess.
The only pokemon on stall that doesn't directly lose to tentacruel.... assuming tenta actually misses a hydro or doesn't just decide to use surf. Haze with 130 speed is pretty good.

I have more pokemon ranked below but I didn't decide to submit them for the official vr so I'll leave them out.

Team Dump (only the ones I used in the tournament, I still have some left over, names included btw)

DragMag

https://pokepast.es/070cead6e5a312e5
The first imo actually good team I ever built. My proudest creation in this tier to this day. I was trying to find a use for Magneton, and I just thought "hey wouldn't it be funny if I made DragMag in GSC UUBL" and here we have it. Solid bulky offense team with a good defensive core and a decent amount of paralysis, and of course broken porygon2.

HP Ground Tentacruel

https://pokepast.es/839abee167ece5a4
My second proudest team. I had never actually really used Tentacruel before this, and I wanted to try and make a good team with it. Houndoom is the natural partner for Tenta, shutting down Zam. Jolt is BP-less because the team is largely physical-based offense and I like having both twave and ice so I can use it as a para-spreader and a late game cleaner. Kang used to be sleep talk but roar is kinda busted and it's not the most needed.

Tauros SD Pass

https://pokepast.es/71602cf6cfa24d6e
Shoutouts to Ibby. The idea of the team is to just start the game off with Jumpluff and be extremely annoying, mainly going for sleep but maybe paralyzing something or using encore too, all to let Scyther get in for free and execute a swords dance and then pass it to Tauros. +2 Tauros actually OHKOes a lot of crap, and 2HKOes everything else while having just barely enough bulk (as well as miracle berry) to get at least one KO (as long as you can make any Roar Kang go to sleep or get encored into a non-roar move first, or it's chipped enough to die to +2 dedge). Tentacruel and Jolteon are largely here to just clean up the scraps. Fun team, used it against Surfy in round 3 and won in like 14 turns lol.

Wave Pass Jolt + Bite Espeon ParaSpam

https://pokepast.es/f4da3853b4cd64f7
Insert growth pass is busted comment here. Mono Jolt makes for quite a nice lead against most teams, blocking status with miracle and boosting up or twaving back and executing an early pass to Kingdra. Espeon tends to shine against the teams that have a roar/haze ground for Jolteon, which is quite nice for covering matchups. Espeon is just incredibly dangerous in general. Houndoom is here for stopping Zam from doing anything and because it's just a pretty good pokemon.

Charizard ParaSpam

https://pokepast.es/63bf93da1ae5d76b
5 paralysis users and a Charizard. Fun! ParaSpam is balanced! Tl;dr goal is pretty simple, use paralysis and weaken the opposing team as much as possible to set up for a Zard sweep when it can get easy entry and go from there. Sometimes you don't even need Zard though lol, P2 and Kang can win games pretty easily. Eq Kang tends to be able to handle what Twave P2 can't (Magneton, Omastar, Haunter). You can use Dynamic Punch over Fire Punch on Ampharos if you want, MrSoup did that when he brought this team against Lil Tic in semifinals.

"Gimmicky" Special Offense

https://pokepast.es/6a736b5bb4cf56bc
This team is so busted lmaooooooo I love growth pass it is very fair. Why is the team named "gimmicky" special offense? Hp water Zam is uncommon, Bite Espeon, HP Fire Porygon2, and Mono Jolt (the jolt even originally had like rest over bp for beating Kingdra but then I realized that dropping leftovers for miracle berry means Kingdra surf can 3HKO, so I dropped it). It's not really like that quirky but there are enough out-there move choices that it struck me as potentially off-putting when making the team. You can run Twave over HP fire on P2, if you want, I did that when I brought this team against Corporate N in winners finals because I didn't think he would use Scizor.

Ursaring ParaSpam by corvere

https://pokepast.es/b076c56f01f11ae7
Pretty regular ParaSpam team. Ursaring is very good. Curse Eq Roar is I believe the best set, Eq is coverage for basically every normal resist and Roar covers Aerodactyl, Scizor, P2, and Kangaskhan. It can be hard to get onto the field but if something dies and there's good opportunity to bring it in then go for it, Ursaring is very dangerous. P2 and Meg are nice for spreading paralysis and being separate ways to win the game that have more longevity than the very burst-style nature of Ursaring.

That's about it for now. Hope you enjoyed. I loved playing in (and winning) the most recent tournament and just generally interacting with this tier over the months, hope to see more people engaging and tournaments going up!

 

[Ibby]

Right, I did not play in the tournament; however, I don't care, ratio even. Unlike the other noobs above me, I will, in fact, be gatekeeping my teams because if I were to dump one Politoed HO team, I would be considered insane and sent to the asylum.

God Tier
Any way to spread Paralysis
Paralysis highlights

S+
Porygon2
Porygon2 is busted don't get it twisted.

Politoed
Contrary to popular belief, this Pokémon is, in fact, not the best mon in the tier but rather a gimmick. This is due to Pokémon's cruelty against frogs.

S
Jolteon
A Pokémon with 130 Speed, 110 Special Attack, good bulk thanks to maxed out bulk in GSC, near-perfect coverage with BoltBeam (Thunder/Thunderbolt + HP Ice), and the ability to Baton Pass a Special Attack boost to your teammates via Growth or Substitute, along with the ability to control speed through Thunder Wave. What more needs to be said?

Alakazam
A moustache on par with my dads, an blazing speed tier, terrifying offensive power and a boat load of tricks, this mon arguably (in my humble opinion) could be considered the 2nd best mon in the tier. Late game Alakazam is by far one of the worst matchups for your opponents if your not a peanut.

Kangaskhan
Image if there was a Porygon2 with a higher attack stat, near similar bulk and the ability to phaze out other Pokémon with the only drawback being a semi worse recovery option in Rest. Wait what its real *insert soywojack emoji here*

A+
Kingdra
Amazing defensive profile with a typing that only Dragon-type moves can truly damage (If your opponent isnt like +3 in Attack or Special Attack). The only Dragon moves to watch out for are Kingdra's own Dragon Breath, the rare Outrage from Dragonite, and HP Dragon from Moltres. Combine that with Dragon Breath's seemingly 99% chance to cause paralysis, and you have one formidable Pokémon. (P.S. Offensive Kingdra is also highly effective.)

Tentacruel
If you hate playing against any form of stall team, load this thing up and auto win with Substitute + SD. Hidden Power Ground can be slotted over Sub if you wanna hit Qwilfish. Other than its ability to single handedly invalidate an entire playstyle, its a very good Pokemon.

Houndoom
Oh I do love STAB Pursuit. A type combo where nothing in the tier resists expect itself and Houndour if your willing to use it. Can be customizable. Good doggo. Reminds me of my dog Choopa 2.

Espeon
Arguably one of the best late game cleaners and a underrated threat. Psychic + HP Water is already good coverage. Pair that with Growth + a filler such as Morning Sun, Reflect, Bite or even Baton pass, and you have a Great Pokemon.

A
Charizard
Am I glazing Kanto's overrated starter? Yes, indeed I am, and for good reason. Charizard is an asshole to play against if your best check is
paralyzed or on the verge of a +2 Earthquake or Rock Slide. A lot of teams are Charizard weak and way too many people just ignore it as a threat. I don't blame people because of the shit that runs this tier but do we really want a certified Volcarona moment in this tier? Charizards checks in the tier are either tasked with checking other things (Dragonite and Kingdra) or just handled by Paralysis (Jolteon, Alakazam, and other things faster than Charizard).

Dragonite
Dragonite does everything you need it to do. Nothing flashy or anything. It's like your typical Junior Chicken Sandwich from McDonalds. You don't expect much but when it's 2am and you're hungry, it comes in clutch. Doubles as a SD recipient.

Muk
A good Pokémon with good offensive/defensive utility. It's real claim to fame is it's funny name.

Scizor
Scizor was so bad at being a SD/Agility passer on HO teams that it was forced into being a Normal wall. To give it credit, it does that role amazingly while also looking like a badass.

Ursaring
Ursaring is so good they literally made a movie about it. 130 attack is fucking scary paired with good coverage. Like any GSC UUBL Pokemon, pair it with Para support or even given it a SD/Agility pass and this bear will clean the house.

A-

Qwilfish
'OMG IBBY YOU FUCKING LOSER. HOW THE FUCK CAN YOU HAVE QWILFISH SO LOW. IT HAS SPIKES AND IS THE BEST USER OF IT YOU MORON. GOD YOU ARE SUCH A IDIOT". Yes, I am a idiot. However, unlike GSC OU, spikes are not mandatory on offensive teams. Yes I will credit it for being the best spiker in this tier (its competition is Smeargle [ass], Delibird [ass], and Pineco [ass]). However, a lot of more offensive teams would rather have carry more fire power than Qwilfish. Thus justifying its low placement. Still a good Pokémon but not the messiah it once was.

Meganium
Grass typing in the tier is actually not bad. Meganium resists some common attack typings such as Electric, Water and Ground while also having the ability to take Super Effective hits thanks to its great bulk, access to Light Screen and Reflect and also recovery in Synthesis and Leech Seed.

Ampharos
Imagine if Jolteon was bulkier, had a higher Special Attack stat, a wider move pool and a really stupid set that can only be checked by Nidoqueen. Well look no further than Ampharos. Unfortunately, Jolteon exists thus putting Amphy low.

Omastar
Respectable Normal resist. Comes with a good move pool consisting of Thief, Haze, Sandstorm, and Toxic. Would put it higher if it posed as an offensive threat like Scizor, however A- isn't bad.

Moltres
God this Pokémon fell off the face of the earth. With the emergence of Charizard in the tier, this Pokemon went from a respectable threat to just really underwhelming. Walled by too many common threats and is easily a liability. If you want to use this, load it up with a Growth spam team.

Hypno
Holy fuck I hate this Pokemon. For a pure Psychic type is an amazing defensive wall and the sole Alakazam check. If you're looking for just a good disruptor Pokemon or super weak to Alakazam , load this up. Thunder Wave + Seismic Toss already sounds like a nightmare combo, add on good bulk, and decent recovery and you got yourself an annoying Pokemon.

Lapras
Good Growth Pass recipient thanks to its good bulk and good offensive options in Hydro Pump, Ice Beam, Surf, Thunder, and Thunderbolt. Rain Dance is also seen on this Pokémon to boost its Water moves. However, Kingdra exists so yeah GGWP.

B+

Nidoqueen
Solid Jolteon check, however terrible offensively. Please run roar or else your a ground that Jolteon can abuse.

Quagsire
Best Jolteon answer. Ability to sweep with Belly Drum. Needs a lot of support however and also kind of bad.

Donphan
God I used to fucking talk about how this thing is a top 3 Pokémon of the tier. Now its middling due to better competition. Spinning isn't that important due to spikes being mid and also it dies way too quickly.

Slowking
Good Pokémon, can help vs Special Attackers that don't have STAB Electric moves. However better Water types exist.

Magneton
Normal resist that relies on a 70% move to threaten Normals. Need I say more.

B

Articuno
Ice types moves are stupid in this tier. Articuno should be used more but I understand why it isnt. Slow, weak to a lot of common moves, Tentacruel, Slowking and Scizor all switch in for free. Also suffers a lot of 4MSS,

Scyther
Stole Scizors passing ability. Only seen on dedicated SD/Agility pass teams only.

Jumpluff
Solid lead thanks to speed and good support move pool, however ass in literally everything else.

Tauros
Normal competition is fucking rough, and you really need a good reason to use this. Good SD recipient but that's just it.

B-

Granbull
Ass

Chansey
Only seen on stall. Good special wall though

Clefable
Normal competition is so tough and also outclassed as a BD sweeper by Quagsire and Charizard.

Yeah there are too many Pokémon to rate so I did it up to B- because those are Pokémon I think that are fine in the meta. Once again my opinion is right so listen and follow my tier list. Thank you for reading this and I look forward (not really cuz Charizard is about to be F-) for the official VR.

 

[Ibby]

Also here are the usage stats of the tour. (A lot of games werent played so yeah)

Usage stats

Moves & Teammates

Combos

Leads

 

[Ibby]

Hello GSC UUBLers! After a long drought of nothing happening, we finally had something impact the tier in a big way. Both Alakazam and Jolten have now left the tier. This is a drastic shake up for a tier that hasn't seen that much activity in a year. Losing arguably two top 5 Pokémon as well as our best Special Attackers.

A quick summary about both Pokémon leaving the tier:

Alakazam's high Special Attack stat, blazing fast Speed tier, and a bevy of useful moves landed it on many teams. It could feast on teams that lacked a Psychic resist (e.g., running Scizor or banking on Porygon 2’s bulk) while also checking many dangerous threats such as Swords Dance Tentacruel and Charizard (when the latter has been chipped).

Jolteon is the gold standard for offensive and even balanced teams. Its speed leaves even Alakazam in the dust, alongside a perfect attack combo of Thunder/Thunderbolt and Hidden Power Ice with an option to boost thanks to Growth. Jolteon is arguably the second-best Pokémon in the tier, not only for its offensive prowess but also for its surprising bundle of support moves such as the aforementioned Growth, Baton Pass, Thunder Wave, and Substitute.
These two Pokémon found themselves on every type of team style, from fast-paced offensive teams to bulkier builds, and even some Growth Pass teams.

With these two Pokemon leaving the tier, a lot of Pokemon have either gained a significant buff or have been nerfed. This post is going over Pokemon I think have benefited or suffered from these changes. (We will be getting drops so I will update this post based on what drops)

Benefitted

Qwilfish
Qwilfish had been a quintessential part of GSC UUBL, thanks to it being the best spiker in the tier. However, teams have recently gone spike-less, forgoing the 1/8th chip on non-flying Pokémon for more offensive power. With the rise of lead Jolteon alongside the fantastic lead Alakazam, Qwilfish often faced a horrible matchup, forcing it to retreat and come out another time. But with these two Pokémon gone, lead Qwilfish might see a resurgence. The lack of firepower from Jolteon can be replaced with the Spikes Qwilfish lays. It may not be as prominent, but it's something.

Charizard and Tentacruel
I'm grouping these two Pokémon together because they fulfill the same role: powerful late-game cleaners who can easily sweep weakened teams. Charizard has excellent boosting options in Swords Dance and Belly Drum, along with a fast base 100 Speed stat. Tentacruel shares Charizard's Speed and has Swords Dance but lacks Belly Drum. However, Tentacruel compensates with high-powered STAB moves, Hydro Pump and Sludge Bomb. Hydro Pump hits those resistant or immune to Sludge Bomb, while Sludge Bomb targets Kingdra and Meganium and has a 30% poison rate. These Pokémon thrived with Para support teammates like the now OU Alakazam and Jolteon, as well as Thunder Wave Porygon2 and Dragon Breath Kingdra. With Alakazam and Jolteon gone, the top two Pokémon to revenge kill Charizard and Tentacruel are no longer a threat, making them more dangerous.

The Psychic Trio
Once again bunching these guys up as they all will probably spike in usage now that Alakazam isn’t the most used Psychic. Up first is Espeon, who will most likely replace Jolteon in the offensive department. Espeon and Jolteon’s Special Attack and Speed stat are flipped, making Espeon not as fast as Jolteon but compensating with a huge 130 Special Attack stat. Though also having Jolteon’s great support movepool, it rather focus on sweeping than helping it’s teammates, but Growth passing is an option. Slowking is our next at the stage. Unlike our other Pokemon, this one is more defensive. It’s bulk and typing help ward off some scary attacks in the tier, ranging from Alakazam and Espeons Psychic, to Kingdra’s Surf, to even helping check Tentacruel in a pinch. It has a respectable Special Attack stat so it’s no slouch in dealing damage. Finally is Hypno, who is purely a tank. It’s high Special Defense and annoying moveset let’s it come in and just troll your opponent, taking on all of the best Special attacks. With Zam now gone, these Psychics (mostly Espeon) will finally see a ton of usage.

Omastar
Omastar and Scizor are two of the best Normal resists in the tier. Omastar's Rock typing resists Double Edges/Returns from Porygon2, Kangaskhan, and Ursaring, while Scizor's Steel typing also resists Normal STAB and poses a sweeping threat with Curse. Omastar was in Scizor’s shadow due to the high usage of Electric moves from Jolteon and even Porygon2, which it was expected to check, often running Thunder/Thunderbolt. With Jolteon now gone, Omastar can breathe a sigh of relief, knowing it won’t be scared off or used as offensive momentum.

The Electric V
This one is a bit tricky. Jolteon was the best Electric type, making every other Electric practically useless. Now with it gone, we’re left with mediocre options such as Ampharos (probably the best of the bunch), Magneton, Electabuzz, Lanturn, Electrode, and even Pikachu. All of these suffer from being either too weak, too slow, or too one-dimensional. Only time will tell if any of them will see decent usage, but I doubt it.

Suffered

Nidoqueen
Nidoqueen rose in the tier due to being one of the better Jolteon checks. It has immunity to Jolteon's STAB, the bulk to withstand Hidden Power Ice, and can threaten it with Earthquake. With Jolteon gone, Muk is likely the better option, thanks to its higher Attack stat and access to Explosion. Nidoqueen could still check other Electric types, especially countering Thunderbolt/Toxic/RestTalk Ampharos, but its usage is expected to decline soon.

Growth Pass / Psychic or Electric spam Teams (I am not adding a group of image)
These teams have lost two of their best Pokémon. Sure, Pokémon like Espeon, Moltres, and an Electric type could work for their respective roles, but those two were the main reasons to use these teams. Without them, you're missing both the speed and firepower they provided.

Conclusion
Yeah, not many things suffered from this, but it still represents a huge shift for the meta, which I'm quite happy to see after a long period of dormancy. With some drops coming soon (I’m hoping for Rhydon and Misdreavus), I can’t wait to see what changes in the tier and hopefully see more play.

 

[gabraltar]

Tentacruel in particular is very absurd now that jolteon and alakazam are gone. Only one revenge killer in Espeon (two if we count the mediocre Tauros) and not a whole lot in the way of defensive answers.

Answers include:
-Curse Porygon2 and Kangaskhan: Pory gets ruined by a sludge bomb poison while kang is fairly easy to force a rest from with status-inducing pokes. it's often the only RestTalker on teams (for those that even run RestTalk Kang in the first place) meaning it's often forced to switch in and absorb status
-Omastar: Weak to HP Ground, can't hit Tenta back, is food for various pokes (Kingdra most notably and to a lesser degree, Magneton), and can fairly easily be lured by electric P2
-Slowbro and Slowking: Both are complete food when resttalking by sub tenta.
-Quagsire: Honestly fairly mediocre in general, especially with Jolteon gone. Super exploitable, not very fittable on offensive teams that comprise the meta

I'm not gonna go so far to say it's banworthy immediately and yes it does have flaws, but it is a poke worth keeping an eye on imo