Hey all, I’m a bit late but I’d like to post some of the teams I made for Gsc zu. I want to start by saying I was honestly terrified of slotting into Gsc in my first team tour, because it’s really not a Gen that suits my playstyle, you need to be patient and wait for the best oppurtunity to get your breakers in to make progress, and I can definitely get impatient at times and screw myself over by pulling the trigger too early.
I still really wanted to play Gsc because I think playing this generation will help me grow as a player overall, and this seemed like the only oppurtunity I would have to convince a manager that I’m not terrible at it after I made finals of Gsc zu cup. Thank you so much
diegoyuhhi for putting your faith in me and giving me some flexibility to play SV after a tough week 1 while still letting me try Gsc again later in the season. More thanks to
Gallinova for being an absolute ROCK the entire season helping me prep, test, and having a rock solid understanding of Gsc mechanics so I didn’t completely screw myself over when putting together teams each week. Thanks
BloodAce and
Lyra for helping test and prep the slot as well, I would have completely flopped without all of your help.
Since I’m Gsc zu council now, I unfortunately have to do some actual work to keep my fake job, so let’s get to it.
Week 1 vs Alice Kazumi (L)
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I made a couple of team this week but they were major dogshit, mainly because I didn’t totally understand how to build gsc in general. Gallinova suggested boomspam against Alice, as it’s one of the easiest ways to get offense going, and he expected Alice to just accept the boom trades. Ended up with a very standard team except it’s super greedy because I don’t have wartortle. Wartortle not only prevents many of your opponents monsters from making progress, but it makes very safe progress of its own with zap cannon. I hoped to compensate by booming on the things wartortle is supposed to make progress vs like bayleef and opposing wartortle, and clear the way for an aipom win. Rock slide resttalk charm seemed borderline necessary as I don’t have wartortle to deal with charm, so I can’t allow my own charm to be fodder for the setup sets. I still like Mantine as a breaker because it does outstat the entire tier, which helps when facing an sd charm or belly drum poliwag as you’re never going to be ohko’d by them and you kill back. Protect seemed like the only reasonable way for Mantine to beat wartortle by stalling out zap cannons. I like thief Grimer a lot, it can 1.5 for 1 fairly easily by snatching lefties and on lead you can steal teddy’s lefties as they’re very inclined to stay in.
The actual game: I can honestly say I needed this. I got extremely humbled this week trying to stunt in the first few turns very early on in the game. Switching in onix on a wartortle JUST to burn a zap cannon pp… no prizes for guessing what happened next. The first few turns were pretty much exactly how I would’ve drawn it up, thief something with grimer, in this case onix, and then blow up on the opposing Grimer was great value. When you’re in this type of position early game, you really do not need to play like a madman. Gallinova said it best to me after the game which really helped me. “In zu, there aren’t any spikes on the field, so any change you make to a counter is free. You need to slowly stack up status effects like para and force your opponent to rest before going for the win. You don’t need to make big plays early in the game.”
Week 4 vs Aurist (W)
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This week vs Aurist I was going to whip out doduo baton pass, probably curse pass with quick attack doduo + hp grass aipom as the passer to allow me to snipe a low hp Voltorb or poliwag as aurist was spamming wag and had decent torb usage in the scout. Doduo didn’t look particularly good honestly but I was scared to go back to gsc after getting owned week 1 and wanted something cheesy. Gallinova suggested double fire with quilava and sd charm instead, which I thought was a really cool idea, lets you run resttalk “charm” while abusing opposing resttalk charm with SD. Since aurist used very solid speed control belly drum seemed worse than sd by a good margin. Originally I had teddi over Grimer in lead, and I’m honestly thinking tedi would’ve just been better on this team for the teddi lead mirror and to not stack another eq weakness with the other fires, but Grimer is stupid strong so this version can’t be that much worse. Originally tested Sub sd charm to annoy resting wartortle, but Hp grass also does this while completely flipping the Onix mu. Bee ended up using a double fire team in this same week before I played, so our swag kind of got stolen. It confirmed to me that the team style is solid though so I felt more confident going in.
The actual game: This one was pretty unplayable for aurist starting on turn 1, thunder miss let me keep Grimer at full for incoming onix, so I got to trade for about 70% of onix’s heal- oh it died and I’m back at 70%.
Poliwag +torb did end up coming here, and the next impactful sequence was Poliwag sleeping charm which I probably shouldn’t have let happen. I felt like staying in at least prevents a greedy belly drum, and I always have mons on aurist’s team I can wake vs. They belly drum as I go torb, and honestly I should’ve twaved here, there was no reason to risk thunder miss and potentially losing, but aurist switches anyway which kind of neutralizes wag as a threat if I don’t play stupid. The rest of the game is pretty much over, and I really should’ve let the booms fly once bayleef was in range of torb. Got extremely lucky this week but the team ended up working well.
Week 5 vs. LustfulLice (W)
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Ooooo boy. This game ended up not mattering as we were already out of contention, but I still wanted to play because I literally trapped
Lyra in the gsc dungeon the entire week to prep a good team. At this point, Lice and I were on the same pubd team and I tested with him a lot in gsc pu. Suffice to say Lice is miles better than me at gsc, so I needed something a bit weird that exploited some of his tendencies. At first I was trying to use this frankly awful sub screech diglett set with no spikes, but the rest of the team was looking ok. I really liked how sub omanyte was doing in tests. The wartortle matchup is pretty bad, but Oma also has the strongest hidden power vs Wartortle and it absolutely trucks through bayleef once it’s paralyzed. Sub also walls almost all Grimer sets, and lice uses a lot of resttalk. In hindsight, pump over surf was a bit greedy when surf is doing the job vs Grimer and everything else, but I was still in the mindset that lice is the better player and I need all of the power I can get. If I miss hydro just insult in the chat and move on (thanks bloodace for doing it for me). Omanyte is honestly not that amazing bc of the bad wartortle matchup and being slower than base 40s, but it is a strong 3 attacks water that compresses the normal resist so you don’t have to fit something else for Grimer.
I wanted to try weepinbell this week since bee was cooking everyone with it and sleep+sludge is really fantastic for forcing fires to rest. I used sub instead of synthesis to abuse the sleeping fires that need to pull fire blast and hit it to break as well as keep the sub vs wartortle, but it’s honestly not that great since your grass type is going to get paralyzed eventually and wartortle is naturally faster. I think you could experiment with other moves on weepinbell in that slot like sd, maybe stun spore over sleep with sub would be cool to keep the fire paralyzed and sub on it, but synth is the most consistent we’ve seen so far.
I did want a thief user in case I had to play a longer game, and thieving grimer’s lefties means omanyte can come in to wall it while keeping it low, and I can save grimer’s boom for something else. Just a great set overall but it does sacrifice the insane game stealing potential of curse sets. Cursetalk pom can benefit from Grimer weakening onix and gives me some speed, no surprise there.
The actual game: another absolute masterclass where I skillfully hax the living shit out of my opponent. I steal onix’s lefties which is great for pom, and then I click the funny ice move with omanyte to ohko bayleef with freeze. I didn’t need to worry about paralyzing it first with wartortle to beat it with omanyte which set me so many turns ahead. At some point my weepinbell is supposed to get paralyzed but lice can’t hit a zap cannon to save his life while my well trained wartortle powered by friendship is just firing the gyatt off every turn. Eventually onix is in range of Grimer giga drain so I go ahead and do that and take wartortle down with a boom. Once Grimer is the last threat, we get a funny sequence with 4 hydro misses in a row and the game somehow becomes winnable for broken ass Grimer. Overall despite getting insane luck I think the team did quite well into lice, and I’d definitely try this again, though probably changing the weepinbell set.
Meta thoughts:
Overall I have been loving this tier, and build a lot for gsc slam so expect another team dump once that is over! I don’t think anything is outright broken right now, but there are some mons we could look at like Grimer, teddi, and maybe Poliwag just because fast sleep+belly drum can bullshit it’s way through some wins that feels a bit cheap if you don’t have Voltorb. Charmeleon is fine and has a useful defensive profile while being a good but not too good offensive threat. Setup move+hpgrass seems like the most potentially broken set, but we haven’t seen it look broken in practice. I also think nobody running phasers has to mean that baton pass must be broken in some way, it just hasn’t been fully optimized yet.
Depending on when the pu vr update happens, the tier could change pretty significantly if any of bayleef, wartortle, and voltorb leave and murkrow or ariados drop down (probably missing something in this list). I would be interested in playing a staryu meta since I didn’t have the chance when it was around, and it might not be broken. No matter what it would be hella annoying and probably not worth looking at any time soon since it doesn’t outright solve any of the problems people have with the tier and maybe makes them worse? I would like to see what it’s like with no growth pass and If anyone ever wants to try a zu game with staryu allowed please let me know because it looks so fun to use.
Thank you for reading!
subtox numel wishpassing fat
lead poliwag spatker spam
toxtect natu + cb kabuto balance
masquerain berry spam ho
sd nuzleaf + lure taillow bo
- I'm fond of Dragon Dancers and Dratini is fairly unique when it comes to that. It has around the same overall bulk as Bagon or Larvitar, however its typing and Shed Skin ability allow it to more easily set up vs passive Pokemon like Lileep and Koffing. Rest further enhances this role, allowing for multiple boosts over a long period of time, creating a potentially devastating sweeper after enough boosts. That said, it requires significant investment into bulk which cuts off a ton of power when initially setting up, making it more of a fish-attempt than something reliable. This spread belows notably allows Dratini to survive three attacks from Pokemon like Koffing and Delcatty, allowing it to Rest before it can be KO'd. In addition, Shed Skin may allow for Dratini to acquire more boosts before it needs to Rest. The speed is for outpacing Elekid after 2 speed boosts, although this is more preference for me. Hidden Power Steel may seem odd, but it hits both Rock-types and Shuppet for super effective and neutral damage respectively whereas Fighting would not. While this means Steel-types can pose an issue, they are far sparser and can be dealt with via Nosepass's Magnet Pull, which makes it a good partner for this particular set.
bossaru 6 but with skun (w)
koffing + cb sawk semistall (w)
subplot rotom + ditto balance (w)
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