Sorry for the delay, but congratulations to Jaytop31 for winning this week's Research Week!
zizalith used Cobalion and seems to have found it a good sweeper with SD 3 attacks. He was able to catch a lot of people off guard with Stone Edge, as they haphazardly switched in with Chandelure, Alolan Marowak, or Noivern expecting a rocks set. It is useful for offense as it checks a lot of common mons while also, from ziza's experience, being a great breaker. Life Orb was the chosen item as it is able to boost Cobalion's relatively low attack in conjunction with SD to net some important KOs.
Both Jaytop31 and zizalith used Defog Volcanion, as, from ziza's experience the waters often used on RU ladder match up well against subtoxic Volcanion. Jaytop felt the same way, Suicune being able to take advantage of Volcanion often made offensive variants lackluster. This led both to try defog, and they both felt that this set was more useful, as it was able to perform multiple roles and also had a good matchup against the rockers in the tier.
There were no comments on Stakataka, but I assume that it does mostly what it did in gen 7, break under trick room.
Anyway, this week's selection will be:
Rain has seen no usage in tours to my recollection, even though we have Kingdra, Kabutops, Electrics, and Tornadus to abuse it. There are also mons like Toxicroak that appreciate rain to give it passive recovery. Recently we've also seen Slowking rise, which made rain much more viable in theory, as Slowking was one of the biggest counters for rain teams.
Similarly to rain, sun has also seen no usage in tours to my knowledge. We still have most of the abusers of sun we had pre-dlc2 as well as Shiftry being unbanned from RUBL. Very few teams have reliable answers to fire types like Darmanitan or Charizard under sun, and Chlorophyll mons like Shiftry and Vileplume are able to take advantage of the fastest common scarfers being base 105s.
Hail saw a resurgence with the release of the fossil's hidden abilities, Slush Rush, the drop of Alolan Ninetales was also big for hail as it gave it a viable setter, although usually, hail wasn't the main focus of the team, Aurora Veil was. In the weeks after the first drops, the number of broken sweepers in the tier could abuse the heightening of their defenses.
In order to participate you must do the following:
zizalith used Cobalion and seems to have found it a good sweeper with SD 3 attacks. He was able to catch a lot of people off guard with Stone Edge, as they haphazardly switched in with Chandelure, Alolan Marowak, or Noivern expecting a rocks set. It is useful for offense as it checks a lot of common mons while also, from ziza's experience, being a great breaker. Life Orb was the chosen item as it is able to boost Cobalion's relatively low attack in conjunction with SD to net some important KOs.
Both Jaytop31 and zizalith used Defog Volcanion, as, from ziza's experience the waters often used on RU ladder match up well against subtoxic Volcanion. Jaytop felt the same way, Suicune being able to take advantage of Volcanion often made offensive variants lackluster. This led both to try defog, and they both felt that this set was more useful, as it was able to perform multiple roles and also had a good matchup against the rockers in the tier.
There were no comments on Stakataka, but I assume that it does mostly what it did in gen 7, break under trick room.
Anyway, this week's selection will be:
Politoed @ Damp Rock
Ability: Drizzle
EVs: [insert]
[insert] Nature
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Ability: Drizzle
EVs: [insert]
[insert] Nature
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Rain has seen no usage in tours to my recollection, even though we have Kingdra, Kabutops, Electrics, and Tornadus to abuse it. There are also mons like Toxicroak that appreciate rain to give it passive recovery. Recently we've also seen Slowking rise, which made rain much more viable in theory, as Slowking was one of the biggest counters for rain teams.
[insert] @ Heat Rock
Ability: Drought
EVs: [insert]
[insert] Nature
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Ability: Drought
EVs: [insert]
[insert] Nature
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Similarly to rain, sun has also seen no usage in tours to my knowledge. We still have most of the abusers of sun we had pre-dlc2 as well as Shiftry being unbanned from RUBL. Very few teams have reliable answers to fire types like Darmanitan or Charizard under sun, and Chlorophyll mons like Shiftry and Vileplume are able to take advantage of the fastest common scarfers being base 105s.
[insert] @ Icy Rock
Ability: Snow Warning
EVs: [insert]
[insert] Nature
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Ability: Snow Warning
EVs: [insert]
[insert] Nature
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Hail saw a resurgence with the release of the fossil's hidden abilities, Slush Rush, the drop of Alolan Ninetales was also big for hail as it gave it a viable setter, although usually, hail wasn't the main focus of the team, Aurora Veil was. In the weeks after the first drops, the number of broken sweepers in the tier could abuse the heightening of their defenses.
In order to participate you must do the following:
- Post here with a fresh RW alt (such as RURW8 Mac3) and the name(s) of the Pokemon you will be using.
- Use at least one of the Pokemon being researched.
- Post your experiences with the Pokemon you're using, participate in the discussion!
- Post replays of this Pokemon in action against other teams - don't just tell us, show us
- The winner of the challenge will be the person who has the highest ladder ranking on the Pokemon Showdown RU ladder with their RW alt at the time the challenge ends. Winners will also receive a permanent spot in this thread's Hall of Fame.
- Ladder will be checked Sunday the 3rd, 9pm GMT +1
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-- Choice Scarf Mienshao was a real nuscense with it outspeeding everything without sun up. It easily abuses Torkoal/Xatu/P2 and eventually forces a Knock Off on Torkoal. Mienshao + an Electric was basically a death sentence.
-- Strong Knock Off users were able to easily take advantage of the team due to lack of any switch-ins.
-- Opposing Choice Scarf Darmanitan was a menace, as it abused the team's own sun and only Shiftry can revenge kill it.
-- Cloyster on Screen cheese doesn't outright win, but it can flinch Torkoal and thus leave you vulnerable later on without sun.
-- The team can stall out the Trick Room turns, but some of the abusers are so fat that they can win in the end.
as opposed to full hail cause the mon was a blast to use in sm and i hadnt seen a single one since i started playing.
