BH Balanced Hackmons

[MAMP]

some shit:


this mon slaps. being faster than eternatus is really good rn and with xern being the preeminent fairy type, a lot of teams aren't really prepped for strong physical fairy moves.

Zacian @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Spirit Break
- Parting Shot
- Will-O-Wisp
- Knock Off

ph zacian is good. it gets a bad rap as being just like a worse ph xern bc its stab and setup options are way weaker, but on utility sets like this without a setup move it can do some really cool stuff. the key advantage over xern is that this can check palkia and doesn't lose momentum against etern and zama-c bc you can parting shot out. wisp/sacred fire annoys the shit out of zama-c, and stuff like hazards, taunt, sap, fishious are all strong options in the last slots as well. spirit break is infinitely better than play rough imo, power doesn't matter and the utility against etern and ph xern is really good. spirit break lets you 1v1 ph xern in a lot of situations, especially if you run taunt or leech seed

puts in a ton of work in this game: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1433844532

Zacian @ Fairy Memory / Life Orb
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Multi-Attack / Play Rough
- Fishious Rend
- V-create
- Swords Dance / Strength Sap

tough claws zacian is a really nasty breaker/late-game cleaner that shines on more offensive spikes teams. nothing without fur coat really switches into this and a lot of common fur coaters can get beat down at +2 if they've been chipped a bit. the fairy move here is surprisingly strong, usually does around half to bulky neutral targets like gigas or fini and cleanly ohkos stuff like palkia. v-create hits steels, fish hits ho-oh, groudon and ff steels (love seeing primsea steels with this set, primsea gear takes 80 from fish). besides fc, main things you miss with this coverage are desoland ho-oh which takes 80-90 from +2 v-create and some random stuff like ff ferro which sucks anyway. this lacks the raw power to just ohko stuff so it really likes spikes support, status etc to chip stuff down just a little bit to get in range of its attacks.

i generally prefer fairy memory + multi-attack over life orb + play rough but life orb is perfectly reasonable. the fairy move is roughly the same strength, but multi-attack's accuracy and the lack of recoil makes zacian much more reliable in the late game. the benefit of life orb is extra strength on your coverage: v-create will ohko zama-c (or ohko fc zama-c at +2), and fishious will ohko groudon. multi-attack is obviously also a lot better against imposter. with life orb i would probably run strength sap > sd, to make up for the orb recoil and to be less annoying to imposter proof.

a couple of replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1426502559
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1427778953


Zamazenta-Crowned @ Rocky Helmet / whatever
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Nuzzle
- Spikes
- Thunderous Kick
- Fishious Rend

very fun spikes setter/para spreader that does a ton of work in every game. bulky teams without certain specific tina sets (bounce or ph defog mainly, neither of which is super popular and both of which are very exploitable) can't really beat this long term bc it can come in so safely and repeatedly against so many fat mons and then you can press whatever button you want and you'll probably make progress. pretty much every common hazard remover/bouncer loses to tkick + fish + nuzzle, and this spreads para so well bc grounds lose to tkick + fish, and most ph mons either also die to tkick + fish or they get spiked on. best way i could figure out to improof this is to just run bounce tina and cop the para, make sure you have stuff that really abuses paralysed imposter

replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1435720949
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1425947548
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1425869721


Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
- Anchor Shot
- Lava Plume
- Recover
- Entrainment

unaware is underrated but i think there's only a few mons that can run it effectively. heatran isn't the best unaware user but i have found myself a couple of times wanting a check to xern, gigas, triage, and etern in one slot and unaware tran covers that reasonably. the surprise factor of unaware is really valuable, as is not needing to waste a moveslot on haze or lose momentum by clicking it. can't rely on unaware as your main method of beating setup but you shouldn't be doing that with prankster anyway. this is way better with sleep banned


Zamazenta @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Low Kick
- Knock Off
- Purify
- Parting Shot

ph zama is kinda mid overall but knock + purify on it is a funny way to lure in and punish ph xern/fini/tina, and knock is really nice vs ho-oh. but there are far better ways to get momentum against zama-c than this


Groudon @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Thousand Waves
- Volt Switch
- Slack Off
- Stealth Rock

like this guy, for example. switch into zama-c's anchor/fighting move/spectral, chip it with helmet, then volt out as they switch and regen it all back. a lot of etern sets only need a bit of chip on zama-c to get through it and this can easily wear it down into range for that. doesn't do a huge amount defensively, but can get up hazards and get momentum reliably. last slot is very flexible, run arrows for a solid ho-oh check

Groudon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Thousand Arrows
- Precipice Blades
- U-turn
- Trick

this is good too, best scarfer in the tier imo. ladder kids love to lead with etern and click dragon energy t1 and u can lead with this guy and just kill them

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1419543567
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1419548809


Palkia @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Glare
- Dragon Energy / Core Enforcer
- Fishious Rend
- Volt Switch

same concept as the groudon set above. love volt switch on palk to chip down desland ho-oh and fini. helmet here puts a lot of pressure on spin ho-oh. here's a ladder replay where it puts in work in a slow matchup even against ph fini: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1414555178-qxow4u8s8ht9b8frnwlf694denby5oqpw


Regigigas @ Life Orb
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Wicked Blow
- V-create
- Multi-Attack
- Shift Gear

this has very very limited defensive counterplay but no longevity, especially with helmet being in vogue currently. i like to just get it in early, boost up, and punch a hole. works nicely as a lure for fc zama bc +1 v-create kills him, pair with things like palkia, kyu-b, kart to abuse that. imposter is waning and defensive cores with like ph tina + fc zama + ho-oh get completely eviscerated by this and often have to sack a couple of mons to this. good lunar dance target too if you're into that

replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1417014959 im losing this game bc my team is terrible but then on turn 34 gigas gets in and kills 4 mons
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1417161602-505n3we591y6gpmm36oijn56i08sc7upw funny replay


Regigigas @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Multi-Attack
- Sacred Fire
- Spectral Thief / Nuzzle

tried this as a spectrier improof. wasn't terrible, mainly on account of multi-attack being a fucked up move (does almost half to xern for no reason), but didn't do as much defensively as i hoped.

meta thoughts:
sticky web is strong now that court change is banned. zama-c and etern hate webs and there's a bunch of nasty breakers like palkia, blace, groudon, kyu-b, gear that are complete nightmares to deal with when webs are up. its like paraspam but easier

obviously spikes are way better now, keeping up spikes and being proactive is the best counterplay to most of the scary shit in the tier currently

people don't run imposter or strong priority as much anymore, teams are just relying on prankster + fc/scales to deal with setup. this makes priority setup really strong, stuff like triage or belly drum + espeed -ates will get you free wins on ladder

feels like people are just starting to realise that there is only like 1 good ghost resist in the tier, seeing a ton of spectrier and a bit of blacephalon around recently

metagame overall feels very balanced, especially with sleep gone. lots of room for creativity/expression and games are mostly fun, dynamic, varied, and competitive. keen for world cup

 

[a loser]

As a result of the suspect test, the Sleep Moves Clause is now implemented in BH!
24/30 (80%) voters chose to implement this so now all moves that induce sleep (except Rest) are banned.
Tagging Kris to implement this on the ladder please

With sleep inducing moves now banned, it looks like some attackers will have more room for coverage instead of taking a gamble on sleep rolls. Of all the mons that used sleep moves, I think Regigigas is one of the most impacted by this. Poison Heal variants using Knock Off and Spore helped Gigas become reasonably self-improof and deal with Imposter but now that it can't run Spore it really just frees up Gigas to run scary moves like V-create, Glacial Lance, and Precipice Blades. So guys like Zama-C and Giratina better watch out because PH Gigas might be coming at you full force now.

We'll have to see how this impacts other sleep users like Xerneas, Eternatus, and Triage mons but I have a feeling they are going to take this in stride.

 

[willdbeast]

Does this mean if Meloetta gets released we can't use relic song for it?

 

[Lunatic Hai]

BH low key feels fun again let's goooo


Palkia @ Lustrous Orb
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Rash Nature
- Dragon Energy
- Fishious Rend
- Strength Sap
- Rapid Spin


This is by no means an ideal set, but it's been able to do some pretty cool things and I've been enjoying using it. Spin support is all but mandatory now unless you're a sicko like Onyx Onix using prankster parting shot + magic guard spam, and defog is kinda lame because getting rid of your own hazards blows + you could get taunted.

It's no secret that the best spinner is far and away Xerneas thanks to the inherent power + spammability of Pix Boomburst, -ate spin stopping spinblocking attempts, lack of reliance on boots, and its general flexibility, but the main spinners seem to consist almost entirely of Aerilate Boots Ho-Oh and Pix Xern/Gear. There's not really any other semi relevant mon to run -ate spin on, aside from like Ray, I guess, so your only real choices are those 3, for the most part. If you're gonna try and use normal spin, though, it makes sense to use a mon that can sufficiently threaten ghosts and keep them from coming in. Enter Palkia (and tbh I'm probably gonna try spin on other mons to see how this concept goes).

Spin Palkia Kinda Heat Tho

Utterly decimating every ghost type (rend + 5/6 dragon energy [from helmet chip] is guaranteed to delete FC Lunala with minimal chip so no way that's switching in) and doing chunks to just about every other mon is really nice, but the main issue with Palkia outside of a certain fish fairy is speed. Base 100 is definitely nice for outrunning a good number of relevant offensive mons, but Palkia at +1 is frankly disgusting. QD and DD/Shift Gear come to mind, of course, but Rapid Spin has its merits. Shift Gear is nice for being able to bust through Fini, but Fini's like the #1 way of improofing this monster so I'd hesitate to do that. Quiver Dance is a nice option, but spin utility offers a lot of role compression and frees up your other slots quite a bit. (That's the entire reason I started experimenting with this set, after all.) Personally, as much as I enjoy Pix Xern, I like being able to run PH Xern without necessitating the use of other -ate users.

That being said, there's obviously flaws here. If we're being real this mon would be absolutely busted without the existence of Fini, whose mere farts are enough to make Palkia cry and sit in a corner. It also suffers a tad from prediction syndrome if the set is known, but hey, at least it isn't the god-awful 50/50 machine BAT was. This is often alleviated by the combination of hazard support + Rend being a stupid strong move. Additionally, the problem is all but eliminated if you already managed to get a spin off, because you just delete most faster mons. Naturally outspeeding non +speed nature Xern is incredibly powerful, too.

Basically the only non-Fini set that can stand up to you in any way is Extremespeed Xern, since it presents a troubling mixup scenario (Extremespeed loses to Palk's sap but beats rend, Boomburst loses to rend but beats sap, Xern's sap loses to Rend with minimal chip but beats Palkia's sap). Of course, you don't necessarily have to take the matchup anyway and can simply swap to your designated Xern check, and the possibility of them espeeding your switchin will give you valuable information for future use. Even the most popular Zam-C in Ice Scales needs to remain pretty healthy to stand a chance, since it can't swap into rend and even if Palkia doesn't have a spin up, takes mid 30s to 40% from Rend. This doesn't sound like much, but over the course of a game it can be worn down enough by status + hazards that this is a very feasible reality.

Here's a replay showing just that. The enemy's Zam didn't recover on turn 38, instead pivoting into spin Ho-Oh to get rid of hazards. As with all walls, you don't always recover to full at every chance you get because it's a huge momentum drain, but in this case it came back to bite him. Later down the line, I manage to get hazards back up again, pivot Palkia into a mon that doesn't really threaten it, and it was at this point that Nhelved resigned the game, as there is nothing more to be done here basically be unstoppable with rocks + spike + spin.


Again, not a game breaking mon or anything since Fini exists, but the role compression this provides and the fact that it actually lets Palkia handle a lot of its offensive checks very well are enough to convince me that this is a pretty cool set. You can use paraspam or webs as speed control, yes, but those are dealt with in the form of PH + swapping in already-paralyzed mons, and general hazard control, respectively. The counterplay to spin, though, is limited to guesswork with immunities and rocky helmet damage that can be dealt with through koff support and sap. Tldr cool mon me likey.

Here's the Lunala calc btw
252 Atk Lustrous Orb Adaptability Palkia Fishious Rend (170 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Fur Coat Lunala: 164-194 (34.3 - 40.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Lustrous Orb Adaptability Palkia Dragon Energy (125 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252 SpD Lunala: 274-324 (57.3 - 67.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
I'm too lazy to go layers deeper by doing exact calcs factoring various levels of hazards and chip, but suffice to say Lunala is by no means a safe switchin

some shit:


this mon slaps. being faster than eternatus is really good rn and with xern being the preeminent fairy type, a lot of teams aren't really prepped for strong physical fairy moves.

Zacian @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Spirit Break
- Parting Shot
- Will-O-Wisp
- Knock Off

ph zacian is good. it gets a bad rap as being just like a worse ph xern bc its stab and setup options are way weaker, but on utility sets like this without a setup move it can do some really cool stuff. the key advantage over xern is that this can check palkia and doesn't lose momentum against etern and zama-c bc you can parting shot out. wisp/sacred fire annoys the shit out of zama-c, and stuff like hazards, taunt, sap, fishious are all strong options in the last slots as well. spirit break is infinitely better than play rough imo, power doesn't matter and the utility against etern and ph xern is really good. spirit break lets you 1v1 ph xern in a lot of situations, especially if you run taunt or leech seed

puts in a ton of work in this game: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1433844532

Zacian @ Fairy Memory / Life Orb
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Multi-Attack / Play Rough
- Fishious Rend
- V-create
- Swords Dance / Strength Sap

tough claws zacian is a really nasty breaker/late-game cleaner that shines on more offensive spikes teams. nothing without fur coat really switches into this and a lot of common fur coaters can get beat down at +2 if they've been chipped a bit. the fairy move here is surprisingly strong, usually does around half to bulky neutral targets like gigas or fini and cleanly ohkos stuff like palkia. v-create hits steels, fish hits ho-oh, groudon and ff steels (love seeing primsea steels with this set, primsea gear takes 80 from fish). besides fc, main things you miss with this coverage are desoland ho-oh which takes 80-90 from +2 v-create and some random stuff like ff ferro which sucks anyway. this lacks the raw power to just ohko stuff so it really likes spikes support, status etc to chip stuff down just a little bit to get in range of its attacks.

i generally prefer fairy memory + multi-attack over life orb + play rough but life orb is perfectly reasonable. the fairy move is roughly the same strength, but multi-attack's accuracy and the lack of recoil makes zacian much more reliable in the late game. the benefit of life orb is extra strength on your coverage: v-create will ohko zama-c (or ohko fc zama-c at +2), and fishious will ohko groudon. multi-attack is obviously also a lot better against imposter. with life orb i would probably run strength sap > sd, to make up for the orb recoil and to be less annoying to imposter proof.

a couple of replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1426502559
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1427778953

:ss/zamazenta-c:
Zamazenta-Crowned @ Rocky Helmet / whatever
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Nuzzle
- Spikes
- Thunderous Kick
- Fishious Rend

very fun spikes setter/para spreader that does a ton of work in every game. bulky teams without certain specific tina sets (bounce or ph defog mainly, neither of which is super popular and both of which are very exploitable) can't really beat this long term bc it can come in so safely and repeatedly against so many fat mons and then you can press whatever button you want and you'll probably make progress. pretty much every common hazard remover/bouncer loses to tkick + fish + nuzzle, and this spreads para so well bc grounds lose to tkick + fish, and most ph mons either also die to tkick + fish or they get spiked on. best way i could figure out to improof this is to just run bounce tina and cop the para, make sure you have stuff that really abuses paralysed imposter

replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1435720949
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1425947548
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1425869721


Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Unaware
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Calm Nature
- Anchor Shot
- Lava Plume
- Recover
- Entrainment

unaware is underrated but i think there's only a few mons that can run it effectively. heatran isn't the best unaware user but i have found myself a couple of times wanting a check to xern, gigas, triage, and etern in one slot and unaware tran covers that reasonably. the surprise factor of unaware is really valuable, as is not needing to waste a moveslot on haze or lose momentum by clicking it. can't rely on unaware as your main method of beating setup but you shouldn't be doing that with prankster anyway. this is way better with sleep banned


Zamazenta @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Low Kick
- Knock Off
- Purify
- Parting Shot

ph zama is kinda mid overall but knock + purify on it is a funny way to lure in and punish ph xern/fini/tina, and knock is really nice vs ho-oh. but there are far better ways to get momentum against zama-c than this


Groudon @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Impish Nature
- Thousand Waves
- Volt Switch
- Slack Off
- Stealth Rock

like this guy, for example. switch into zama-c's anchor/fighting move/spectral, chip it with helmet, then volt out as they switch and regen it all back. a lot of etern sets only need a bit of chip on zama-c to get through it and this can easily wear it down into range for that. doesn't do a huge amount defensively, but can get up hazards and get momentum reliably. last slot is very flexible, run arrows for a solid ho-oh check

Groudon @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Thousand Arrows
- Precipice Blades
- U-turn
- Trick

this is good too, best scarfer in the tier imo. ladder kids love to lead with etern and click dragon energy t1 and u can lead with this guy and just kill them

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1419543567
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1419548809


Palkia @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Glare
- Dragon Energy / Core Enforcer
- Fishious Rend
- Volt Switch

same concept as the groudon set above. love volt switch on palk to chip down desland ho-oh and fini. helmet here puts a lot of pressure on spin ho-oh. here's a ladder replay where it puts in work in a slow matchup even against ph fini: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1414555178-qxow4u8s8ht9b8frnwlf694denby5oqpw


Regigigas @ Life Orb
Ability: Tough Claws
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Wicked Blow
- V-create
- Multi-Attack
- Shift Gear

this has very very limited defensive counterplay but no longevity, especially with helmet being in vogue currently. i like to just get it in early, boost up, and punch a hole. works nicely as a lure for fc zama bc +1 v-create kills him, pair with things like palkia, kyu-b, kart to abuse that. imposter is waning and defensive cores with like ph tina + fc zama + ho-oh get completely eviscerated by this and often have to sack a couple of mons to this. good lunar dance target too if you're into that

replays:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1417014959 im losing this game bc my team is terrible but then on turn 34 gigas gets in and kills 4 mons
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1417161602-505n3we591y6gpmm36oijn56i08sc7upw funny replay


Regigigas @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Def / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Multi-Attack
- Sacred Fire
- Spectral Thief / Nuzzle

tried this as a spectrier improof. wasn't terrible, mainly on account of multi-attack being a fucked up move (does almost half to xern for no reason), but didn't do as much defensively as i hoped.

meta thoughts:
sticky web is strong now that court change is banned. zama-c and etern hate webs and there's a bunch of nasty breakers like palkia, blace, groudon, kyu-b, gear that are complete nightmares to deal with when webs are up. its like paraspam but easier

obviously spikes are way better now, keeping up spikes and being proactive is the best counterplay to most of the scary shit in the tier currently

people don't run imposter or strong priority as much anymore, teams are just relying on prankster + fc/scales to deal with setup. this makes priority setup really strong, stuff like triage or belly drum + espeed -ates will get you free wins on ladder

feels like people are just starting to realise that there is only like 1 good ghost resist in the tier, seeing a ton of spectrier and a bit of blacephalon around recently

metagame overall feels very balanced, especially with sleep gone. lots of room for creativity/expression and games are mostly fun, dynamic, varied, and competitive. keen for world cup

Seeing the creativity in sets more recently has had me actually wanting to play BH more again, and these sets are pretty cool. Props. Even if Imp is seeing less usage, though, I think it'd be worth going glare over nuzzle on the regen Zam set. Yes, you'd have to scout and be more careful of bounce sets, but since it beats most of them by attacking anyway, it's deterrent enough that they'd back off. And since bounce tina is nowhere near the best/most popular set for that mon, you turn your potentially unlucky improof into a complete reversal.

Edit: LMAO I forgot to put the replay in, it's there now

 

[Eusebio_77]

Fun glass cannon Keldeo

Keldeo @ Expert Belt
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Quiver Dance
- Focus Blast
- Zap Cannon
- Origin Pulse

Showcase: https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1445210933-gf577kfhagzcg5l6zeo90epjmcbumt1pw

 

[a loser]

BH Council update:
At the end of the year, I'm going to be stepping down as BH leader. After I'm gone, XxSevagxX, xavgb, and cityscapes will make up the BH Council and be responsible for all tiering decisions and resource building.

Reasoning

I’m preparing to step away from competitive pokemon, possibly for good. I love playing mons and have played mons in some fashion for most of my life. But at this point in my life, playing competitively and being heavily invested in meta development/leadership is not good for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing it. It just doesn’t pair well with real life responsibilities and other things that I care about, and for too long I’ve ignored how much time it steals from me each day. So I think that an indefinitely long break from this would be extremely beneficial to me.

I’d like to thank E4 Flint for letting me join the BH Council and eventually lead the tier when you stepped away. Thanks to the BH community for being patient with me and the other council members throughout all the metagame shifts we saw in this crazy generation of mons. It was an incredible honor to lead BH and I never thought I’d be the one doing it. Thanks to the OM leaders for recognizing my contributions and giving me these cool badges. It was nice to feel like even some of what I put on this site was helpful or useful to someone interested in mons.

My plan is to play out the end of the calendar year and play in the World Cup for the first time. This should allow some time to transition leadership and help finish up some tiering decisions and resource building.

I won’t just disappear though. I've met too many cool people and I don’t think I have enough willpower to just not check smogon and discord every now and then, so I’ll probably be around some. And maybe I’ll mess around on the ladder if I find the time, we’ll just have to see. I just know that leading and contributing to metagames is not what is best for me right now.

With that being said, in the next month or so we'll try to get the sample teams a much needed update and see about updating the VR too if we get some more nominations. Feel free to start submitting your teams for review and be sure to tune into the World Cup BH games in the meantime!

Sample Submission Guidelines

Click on this for a good example of a sample team submission post.

• Your name of the team
• A generic one-liner description of what the team does, which will be put with your name above the screenshot. If you don't provide a name, I am planning on just using this inside the screenshot too if it fits. If you don't provide either of these, we will make a description for you.
• Your team on pokepaste (try to include the above two points in pokepaste, but anything else is up to you).
• How to use your team: try to answer the following - what are the effective combo pieces, what should you open with, what are some popular threats or playstyles your team is able to answer. Don't worry too much about this being a whole RMT though!
• What sets or playstyles your team is weak to: maybe some quick changes that are suggested with a note about how it changes your matchup, but this is not required.
• How effective is your team: why should someone use it? here you can add an rmt if you've written one but definitely some ladder/tour experience, possibly with a replay or two.

 

[Ren]

Tried this metagame after a year and I wanted to talk about it!

I feel like the metagame is in a pretty awesome place in the moment! I really enjoyed my tournament games in the pools stage of World Cup, and I'm sure I'll enjoy playoffs games too ;) Having lph as a BH partner really helped keep me in check, and even though I blew through all my games in the first two days, we still talked quite a bit about the metagame.

There's four things that jump out to me as... not broken, necessarily? It'd be more accurate to say that they're just things I don't like in the metagame. I was hoping that people who reply to this post would be able to provide me with more insight about handling these elements, since I'm not exactly in prime form and it'd be helpful to get advice from people who have been playing the metagame actively. In addition, I wanted to talk about a possible suspect for the last three points.

1) Paralysis
Shocker that this would come up after I lose a game to two consecutive paralyzes, but I wanted to get a conversation started on this. Every other volatile status in the metagame either fulfills one purpose (Poison being damage over time, Burn being attack reduction in addition to reduced damage over time) or is so unreliable that you don't really consider it super hard when building, but can be game changing once it rears its ugly head (iykyk). Paralysis is nice in that it provides speed control, but it also turns every turn you click a move with the paralyzed Pokemon into a gamble. Part of playing the game when you're paralyzed is to minimize the amount of risks you need to take (which I definitely didn't do in my game lol), but it feels like a very low risk high reward status to be using. Not only is the speed control absolutely phenomenal in a metagame where status removal is difficult to fit, but it has a shot at providing you free turns to boot and it's no small percentage either. With all of that in mind, ways of dealing with this status seem fairly limited to me at first glance. I looked at Comatose and Poison Heal as surefire ways of countering Paralysis, but the issue with the status is that having one Pokemon that can absorb paralysis doesn't necessarily mean that I can check the opponent's way of spreading it. What do you guys do when playing against this, aside from what I've stated?

2) Glacial Lance
I heard this was suspected a while ago, but I'm really not sure how it survived. Glacial Lance has absolutely nuclear BP and is one of the best offensive types in the metagame. Ice resists aren't... limited, exactly, but either they're all steels or you're running Tapu Fini and Golisopod, which feels very easy to exploit. The nail in the coffin here for me is that it grants Kyurem-Black just enough power with Life Orb to do wallbreaky things and be super difficult to switch into, and we've seen this with not just the Teravolt Shift Gear set that stresh brought in that one OMPL game but also in other sets such as MGLO. Kyurem-Black aside, it's also just an immensely powerful coverage tool and there's no abilities that reduce or negate Ice-type damage, so it's not as if you can slap that onto your Zygarde-C to be a great check against something it'd normally want to come in on. Thick Fat does not count. What do more active players think about this move's place in the metagame, and if this were to be suspected again, what would you vote? To reiterate - I know that it's already been suspected, but if people want it gone, they want it gone. And if you don't want it gone, how do you account for Glacial Lance when building? How do you check that Kyurem-Black? Do you just play around it?

3) Thunder Cage
This isn't a case of one abuser as much as it is me thinking that Electric is a type that's very underprepared for. Thunder Cage feels like the perfect move to capitalize on that. It's good chip damage so even if your opponent resists it, it still deals damage per turn while it's active. It also keeps the opponent trapped, which generates momentum most of the time, and the power is respectable enough to where it's not as if you're losing a ton by running this. I'd also say that it probably enabled sleep, and that it's a culprit in how good Xerneas is right now as well, since Desolate Land Ho-Oh isn't exactly the best check to it now. The only reason this isn't a Xerneas talking point and is instead a Thunder Cage talking point is because I feel like without Thunder Cage, it's a lot easier to play the game since to me, it feels as if Thunder Cage just reduces your level of interaction with the game in general.

4) Ice Scales
If this thing went, Xerneas would probably have to go. That being said, it feels like Ice Scales is almost too good of an ability right now? The best Pokemon in the metagame is a special attacker, but after that, it feels like the next best offensive special Pokemon is Ice Scales Eternatus (which I'm not sure really counts when I'm bringing up Ice Scales), and then there's a huge drop into B- where you can see offensive special Pokemon (assuming you don't count Lunala, which I don't because I don't really rate it and it also doesn't really feel like a special attacker in the sense that I'm talking about). I feel like Ice Scales' existence has a very interesting effect on the metagame where the stuff that runs wild in the metagame doesn't really mind it, but it feels like a very stifling ability when building and I'm just wondering why it hasn't been talked about all generation. Does the active playerbase see something I don't when dealing with this ability, or is it actually this restrictive on the special side of the game? If so, then is the metagame truly ok with it allowed?

That's all I really wanted to talk about. Looking forward to seeing more World Cup games!

 

[Lunatic Hai]

Tried this metagame after a year and I wanted to talk about it!

I feel like the metagame is in a pretty awesome place in the moment! I really enjoyed my tournament games in the pools stage of World Cup, and I'm sure I'll enjoy playoffs games too ;) Having lph as a BH partner really helped keep me in check, and even though I blew through all my games in the first two days, we still talked quite a bit about the metagame.

There's four things that jump out to me as... not broken, necessarily? It'd be more accurate to say that they're just things I don't like in the metagame. I was hoping that people who reply to this post would be able to provide me with more insight about handling these elements, since I'm not exactly in prime form and it'd be helpful to get advice from people who have been playing the metagame actively. In addition, I wanted to talk about a possible suspect for the last three points.

1) Paralysis
Shocker that this would come up after I lose a game to two consecutive paralyzes, but I wanted to get a conversation started on this. Every other volatile status in the metagame either fulfills one purpose (Poison being damage over time, Burn being attack reduction in addition to reduced damage over time) or is so unreliable that you don't really consider it super hard when building, but can be game changing once it rears its ugly head (iykyk). Paralysis is nice in that it provides speed control, but it also turns every turn you click a move with the paralyzed Pokemon into a gamble. Part of playing the game when you're paralyzed is to minimize the amount of risks you need to take (which I definitely didn't do in my game lol), but it feels like a very low risk high reward status to be using. Not only is the speed control absolutely phenomenal in a metagame where status removal is difficult to fit, but it has a shot at providing you free turns to boot and it's no small percentage either. With all of that in mind, ways of dealing with this status seem fairly limited to me at first glance. I looked at Comatose and Poison Heal as surefire ways of countering Paralysis, but the issue with the status is that having one Pokemon that can absorb paralysis doesn't necessarily mean that I can check the opponent's way of spreading it. What do you guys do when playing against this, aside from what I've stated?

2) Glacial Lance
I heard this was suspected a while ago, but I'm really not sure how it survived. Glacial Lance has absolutely nuclear BP and is one of the best offensive types in the metagame. Ice resists aren't... limited, exactly, but either they're all steels or you're running Tapu Fini and Golisopod, which feels very easy to exploit. The nail in the coffin here for me is that it grants Kyurem-Black just enough power with Life Orb to do wallbreaky things and be super difficult to switch into, and we've seen this with not just the Teravolt Shift Gear set that stresh brought in that one OMPL game but also in other sets such as MGLO. Kyurem-Black aside, it's also just an immensely powerful coverage tool and there's no abilities that reduce or negate Ice-type damage, so it's not as if you can slap that onto your Zygarde-C to be a great check against something it'd normally want to come in on. Thick Fat does not count. What do more active players think about this move's place in the metagame, and if this were to be suspected again, what would you vote? To reiterate - I know that it's already been suspected, but if people want it gone, they want it gone. And if you don't want it gone, how do you account for Glacial Lance when building? How do you check that Kyurem-Black? Do you just play around it?

3) Thunder Cage
This isn't a case of one abuser as much as it is me thinking that Electric is a type that's very underprepared for. Thunder Cage feels like the perfect move to capitalize on that. It's good chip damage so even if your opponent resists it, it still deals damage per turn while it's active. It also keeps the opponent trapped, which generates momentum most of the time, and the power is respectable enough to where it's not as if you're losing a ton by running this. I'd also say that it probably enabled sleep, and that it's a culprit in how good Xerneas is right now as well, since Desolate Land Ho-Oh isn't exactly the best check to it now. The only reason this isn't a Xerneas talking point and is instead a Thunder Cage talking point is because I feel like without Thunder Cage, it's a lot easier to play the game since to me, it feels as if Thunder Cage just reduces your level of interaction with the game in general.

4) Ice Scales
If this thing went, Xerneas would probably have to go. That being said, it feels like Ice Scales is almost too good of an ability right now? The best Pokemon in the metagame is a special attacker, but after that, it feels like the next best offensive special Pokemon is Ice Scales Eternatus (which I'm not sure really counts when I'm bringing up Ice Scales), and then there's a huge drop into B- where you can see offensive special Pokemon (assuming you don't count Lunala, which I don't because I don't really rate it and it also doesn't really feel like a special attacker in the sense that I'm talking about). I feel like Ice Scales' existence has a very interesting effect on the metagame where the stuff that runs wild in the metagame doesn't really mind it, but it feels like a very stifling ability when building and I'm just wondering why it hasn't been talked about all generation. Does the active playerbase see something I don't when dealing with this ability, or is it actually this restrictive on the special side of the game? If so, then is the metagame truly ok with it allowed?

That's all I really wanted to talk about. Looking forward to seeing more World Cup games!

In hindsight I rambled a lot here but did put some of my personal counterplay options for all these so I'm leaving it as is. Here you go.

1) Paralysis

Electric and ground types aren't overly common given that mons like Zekrom and Don aren't super-tippy-top-of-the-meta and aren't as immediately horrifying as others like Blace, but really the main ways of dealing with this are poison heal, bounce for glare, typing, sacrificing a mon to it, and to a more nebulous extent simply putting on the pressure. One of the really annoying asshats in the para department is no guard mons, especially since they can pick and choose to instead burn or confuse on top of regular status. Koff/purify is especially annoying for enabling paraspam, since pheal as the biggest answer is invalidated by it. It's usually more defensive oriented pokemon that will be running para-inducing moves, ie Zam, Tina, defensive Palk/Lunala variants, etc, though, so scouting is important. Para sucks and I really wish it only had the half-speed status since that utility alone is why I like to have it, but eh. Sometimes you just gotta cop that L the same way that we used to sack a mon to sleep and then use that as a means to stop future spread. All these mons are pretty exploitable in one way or another, and there's usually the classic answer of poison heal to fall back on if you need.

2) Glacial Lance

Fuck this move, fr. I've been of the opinion since before the suspect that, of the nuclear physical moves that were seen as problematic at the time, (VC, Lance, Rend, and Beak), the one that should be removed was Glance. I'm gonna end up ranting about Zygarde later anyway, but the issue with Glance in particular wasn't the move's stats or effects, since Beak and Rend are both much better moves outright, and VC's greater power offsets its disadvantages. The fact is that almost all the passable defensive mons of BH iterations fall into one of these categories: Water, Fat Dragon, or( unviable) Steel. Waterceus and Fini, Tina and Zygarde, Zam and several other funny steels like registeel/celesteela come to mind. Even Etern was a commonly defensive mon back in early gen 8 thanks to its bulk and dragon/poison typing. Between fire, electric, ice, and water, it's clear that bolt beam coverage is the strongest, of course. Glacial Lance singlehandedly wiped Zygarde off the face of the meta, but if Beak was kept and Glance was banned, it would be far more able to stand up to offensive threats. This is turning into a rant but Zygarde is cool af, and Beak was cool for turning Zekrom into an actual viable attacker while Glance is lame and just gets slapped on as coverage to screw dragons over.
Anyway, that Kyu-B set low key sucks because it just loses to imp and there's basically no way for you to improof it yourself. Not only that, but cityscapes put it succinctly, it "gets worn down within SECONDS, immediately dies to hazards, and can only set up on weekends". It also sucks because niche stuff like psea zam (kinda lame but also doubles as one of the few answers to fire coverage Etern like SBEVE) hard walls it, and if you run precipice blades for that you just miss out on the ohko and lose to Zam anyway. I even had it get walled by psea Magearna, it's that bad. Why run that when you can just use one of the best offensive mons in Xern and do similarly stupid damage off the bat with stab Boomburst, while also being able to run espeed, sap, spin, coverage, setup, etc, all while being better at taking hits AND faster, to boot. That Kyu-B set is a one dimensional mon that seems horrifying in theory but kinda just loses to any sort of pressure to the point where even super passive defensive mons can click a single move and end its career outright.

3) Thunder Cage

Thunder Cage is ass, yep. This is another thing I would have liked to have seen banned over something else that was stronger overall. Like Glance pushing Beak over the edge, sleep was made even more insufferable by cage trapping. Stuff like infestation and snap trap that provided partial trapping + passive damage already existed and weren't enough to push sleep too far back in gen 7, but now we have a move that not only does all those things while having a crazy strong offensive type, but ALSO being a special move that's only made worse because setup + sleep + trapping is often done by the likes of PH Xern (Old school boys like Triage Ray and PH Gigas only had setup + sleep). I'd low key be fine seeing sleep come back if it meant we could get rid of this move. It's just objectively better than all the other trapping moves and is a pain to deal with.
How do you deal with this? I kinda just go with offensive pressure again. Xern and Regieleki with a tiny smattering of weirdos using Dragapult are the only times I see this used, and all can be dealt with in different ways. You don't want PH Xern setting up and usually the best way of doing that is by threatening it with an ohko from etern, kart, etc. or something like spectral anchor zam (Xern usually doesn't run strength sap if it's using thunder cage, so you can probably beat it.) Regieleki sucks and I hate that mon but if you get caged it kinda depends because it has different annoying ass sets. If it's cheesy electrify you can run setup to eventually outspeed and murder it provided you don't die, for example. Dragapult is just bad don't use that mon lul. But if you really wanna slap it just do espeed xern or smth so you don't get normalized or electrified idk. Cage is stupid and I'm just personally biased by how annoying ladder kids are but at least we don't have to deal with cage + spore anymore.[

4) Ice Scales

Ice scales is definitely nice to have, and the special mons we have now would be even more devastating without it, but something we've seen a lot of in gen 8 is the benefit of mixed attackers. Blace eats psea mons with its ghost stab and doesn't care if you have scales, since it'll just hit you with moongeist or v-create depending on what it's up against. Between dragon energy and fishious rend, Palkia is an insane offensive mon, thanks to the combination of stab offensive typing that's just a discount boltbeam and hitting both special and physical walls. If it wasn't for Fini singlehandedly keeping it in check, I'd say Palkia would be on level ground with even Xerneas. There's also moldy mons with setup that will just blow past you if you give them the chance.

Another thing is that defensive moves and abilities don't create much pressure when compared to offensive ones (duh). It seems obvious, but that's actually why most defensive stuff can be strong and still not brutalize the meta. Defensive mons are by their nature more likely to be passive than offensive ones, and one of the best examples of that is Zam-C. It's got good stats and would be a decent attacker in its own right, but since it's so often relegated to fur/scales duty, those sets can't put much pressure on enemies aside from trapping, getting a koff, etc.

Mamp posted that more proactive regen zam set that managed to give it hazards, paraspam, and damage all at once, but that set isn't going to be stopping any special or physical nukes any time soon. If you make defensive mons less passive, they're more likely to crumble because they don't have the ability/moveslots to have the high survivability of a more passive set while still making progress in their own way. (As another example, prank and fur/scales tina are more able to survive boosted hits than PH tina, but often don't threaten burns and spikes like PH tina can). Scales Type Null can wall a good bit, I guess, but it just gets hit by status and dies a slow, painful death anyway, which is a common fate for passive defensive mons.

I wholeheartedly, unironically believe the BH metagame would be much more fun if we had a mon like Zygarde actually able to be used (tbf it's definitely more fun now than it used to be, but I want m o r e). It was by no means busted in gen 7 but was easily one of the best defensive options, and if glance was unbanned it would be in a similar spot now. If anything, the addition of ice scales is mitigated by stab dragon energy from the likes of Palkia/Etern and Pix Boombursts from Xerneas. Prank, poison heal, regenvest, etc. Zygarde would all be really nice defensive options, and you can still run bolt beam coverage to a slightly less effective extent so it's not like the mon would be an unbreakable brick shithouse.

There's teams that run it now, especially since it's one of the only things in existence that can brush off Blacephalon, but overall the prevalence of a move like glance just makes Zygarde a gamble to even have on your team. Fr though Zygarde is cool and I can't shill for freeing M-Ray since Megas don't even exist here and we aren't getting NatDex BH back, so please free my boy and get rid of glance :weary:

 

[Doduodrio]

Is there a specific reason that people use Nuzzle over Glare? I'm guessing it's to break potential sashes(?), but then again Electrics and Grounds are immune which is usually problematic (for me at least). Not really sure, since I run into Electrics and Grounds fairly often.

 

[Doduodrio]

have you ever heard of magic bounce

lmao thanks i guess im just dumb

 

[okgoogle4]

Is there a specific reason that people use Nuzzle over Glare? I'm guessing it's to break potential sashes(?), but then again Electrics and Grounds are immune which is usually problematic (for me at least). Not really sure, since I run into Electrics and Grounds fairly often.

yeah as dinodude said magic bounce also on Assault vest mons nuzzle cause glare ain't work

 

[cityscapes]

hey im tired and bored so here's some omwc game analysis w/ teams included (more in-depth team post coming later)

game 1

vs. ren (team: robins in the autumn palace)

TURN 7 - no poison on gira here is pretty big. i don't think i auto lose if it does poison, regi is still very strong and i have a key breaking idea with future sight + xern boomburst. however, this game was a lot more comfortable without the poison; i felt a lot better using the team at that slower pace. lugia is a bit annoying to use here as the opposing team is generally hostile to it, it gets chipped down by burn, and zekrom coming in is super bad news. zek can even just take the burn to deny lugia from recovering or making any progress though that's a silly line. the best move here was probably just hard zamac, though i was scared of some offensive etern at this point.

TURN 14 - drum zamac isn't doing anything here cause i'm not risking lugia to unrevealed zamac and gira is the only other switchin that makes any sense (and seeing abilities on lugia/zamac you can tell it's prank gira). it would be a pretty big threat if gira did get poisoned, though.

TURN 27 - position turns from even to moderately better for me. poisoning zekrom is crucial to ensure it doesn't get out of hand. ren needed to play very precisely with multi-attack on the switch and maybe even going for the tie afterward, but hard xern from imposter also works due to espeed. after +1 zekrom got forced out, the entire mon was never doing anything ever again due to both xern and imposter posing issues for it.

TURN 32 - fearlessly boombursting as xern in front of etern. foreshadowing.

TURN 51 - i'm not exactly sure why i was allowed to burn this. it got really weird here as not much on ren's team could take core + wisp, but i still can't help but wonder if there were lines involving letting gira or zamac take the burn instead. positions where imposter can recover for free can be super complex and hard to calculate.

TURN 63 - ren maneuvers around psycho shift regi a bit. (i can't stay in vs gira cause i get wisped on the same turn so the orb doesn't activate.) i was actually more reluctant to click it than i should've been. i was scared of the hard imposter play even though it did nothing-- even assuming he comes in on shift, he's still chilling at a cool 18%, can't get uturned in, can't come in on anything else on my team, and needs to switch in on a non-attack like 3 more times before it poses a legitimate threat to regi. i doubt this play ever crossed ren's mind

TURN 66 - i click wisp as imposter in front of gira. this is a subtle nod to the fact that i am stupid. fortunately i get zamac putting me at a pretty sizable advantage.

TURN 89 - i wisp gira for no reason and the game goes back to almost even. the problem here is that i can't toxic gira now which was my original plan. there's still play with the aforementioned future sight lugia and stuff but i need to play precisely with it, so i kinda just put that aside for later and hope i can create weaknesses in ren's team in the meantime.

TURN 92 - hard gira there was kind of weird. my logic was i was pretty much willing to lose it against a zamac that'll stay burned for the rest of the game, and i thought i had compensation with imposter coming in to revenge kill (entrain removes his unaware). unfortunately fc giratina takes 55 at +6 and there's hard gira hard zamac so i don't really accomplish anything besides giving lugia an easier time to come in later on.

TURN 99 - one misplay seals the game. brutal. unfortunate cause i think ren played very accurately otherwise, he did allow psycho shift on zek but did a great job holding things together after that and not giving me an attack.

game 2

vs tttech (team: all i need)

TURN 21 - gira gets baited and dies, but this didn't really feel much like a "fish" for me. gira doesn't exactly make an impression in this game, and having it dead doesn't really solve my main issues (kyub winning, lunala not doing anything, xern not doing anything). sacking it almost felt like the best move, expediting the process of kyub clearing thru the team.

TURN 22 - i figured sacking lunala would be best, null is regen and tttech will never let it die due to both lunala existing and webs being vital for the kyub breaking operation.

TURN 29 - volt switch is a nice play by tttech. i undervalued toxic orb imposter as regi counterplay, so i should've been more willing to take a boomburst especially with a potential opportunity to toxic xern and block the ensuing heal bell by aggressively kicking the dog until it dies.

TURN 30 - pblades actually just kills me from this range which is crazy. would have been a very different (likely worse) endgame with wild stuff like snorlax being the xern check, toxic orb imposter seeing entirely too much use copying non-ph mons, and zamac being the primary breaker with xern chilling in the back as always. instead resh lives to throw out a crucial core. this convinced me kyub was scarf and just doing moldy kyub things with scarf.

TURN 31 - zamac dies to vcreate on the switch. good play. i honestly should have seen expert belt considering the webs, but it was a pretty new set to me. usually i'd think either choiced or setup. this is neither. (for the record, it can't set up because there's no good imposter proofer.)

TURN 33 - catching the resh prediction

TURN 38 - weird stuff here. facade is probably objective best move here, i wanted to go for the ohko threat/blunder which didn't happen. if something besides lax comes in i can probably sack lax then get imposter back in.

TURN 41 - it never feels good to make a pretty unambitious and innocuous play and then miss, but this isn't that bad for me from an objective standpoint. i looked at lax and it was just doing nothing here, so i didn't lose much by throwing it out. at worst i get 1 less sack for kyub.

TURN 46 - actually insanely important to get imposter healed here. my strategy doesn't work if i can't consistently take on tttech's very healthy ph regi. luckily thanks to prank parting shot none of the scary guys can come in on me.

TURN 50 - see turn 33, but much more risky from tttech's side. regi is the only really volatile mon in the position cause of orb imposter being a bit unreliable as an answer, so it being out of commission is pretty big news. i think from this point forward i'm winning.

TURN 51 - precise sequence of plays. plume vs registeel doesn't allow the demon play hard regigigas/kyub, rocks the next turn work vs a very obvious uturn, xern must spin and allow me to heal. the fortress is now fully in place.

TURN 64 - disaster strikes. tttech finds a good opportunity to bring in kyub, resh is now in range of everything (including null uturn im pretty sure). quite simply if resh can recover i win, if it dies then i lose.

TURN 65 - i didn't like tttech's choice of going regigigas instead of xern, as it simply lets imposter in to wreak havoc and create opportunities for resh. there is the headache of xern not being able to boomburst while staying in as resh exists as a play, but i think it's overall the more challenging line. there is simply no good boomburst switchin and even just spin puts you in a very good spot, likely killing either xern or imposter. i think the line goes spin on xern - boomburst on sap - boomburst on qd and then go from there?? very scary stuff

TURN 69 - dd anticipates uturn, which anticipates resh, which anticipates sap

TURN 70 - resh comes in, which means i have a winning position now. if tttech anticipates this, see turn 65 except with slightly healthier imposter (can you hard switch it in on xern?)

TURN 71 - lava plume tricks don't work because of hard xern. i need to recover.

TURN 89 - the idea with topsy is very interesting. resh has 10 lava plumes remaining, so if i get complacent and just keep attacking xern, it'll use the boosted attack against me and get more hp back from sap. it doesn't work for a few reasons including what i played in the game (hard imposter) but i thought it was a very creative play.

game 3

vs. ivar57 (team: annihilation)

TURN 1 - so there are two ways i can play this: risking his weird desolate heatran counterplay, and risking his weird triage gear counterplay. i decide to go with the latter because 1) gear has a very easy setup opportunity vs the drizzle setter (rain is incredibly obvious here) 2) i want to start off aggressive because weather typically isn't equipped to deal with that 3) i don't like the chances of gear counters being reliably removed in a post-heatran endgame 4) gear might not get good setup opportunities later on and palk is never getting into +0 draining kiss range. np is obviously the best move setting up for draining kiss on the waters if he teleports.

TURN 6 - doom desire here is extremely flexible (teleport from ivar is pretty funny). i have a lot of opportunities to go hard heatran in this game, just taking the kill, running, and not risking crits killing me, but again i didn't like gear's chances at setting up again especially vs some weird mystery xern set or prospects of giving ivar weird plays like trick band, toxic, flip turn to xern on gira, etc.

TURN 12 - once gira dies i can risk all the crits i want, because regigigas breaks through afterward, desolate land heatran is unrevealed and healthy, and fc giratina will do a fine job shutting down the fish.

game 4

vs. leonxu (team: robins in the autumn palace)

TURN 4 - teleporting to etern on zamac is very fishy, i wasn't sure what he was trying to do, especially considering the gira chilling in the back.

TURN 7 - gambit. the game unfolds into a really weird position here. on the one hand zamac was pretty bad cause it just lets xern in and makes no progress, and specs etern could very easily rip through my team if it was preserved. on the other hand zamac is absolutely necessary to contain band adapt kyub (which i didn't know about), and you can flip turn on xern for some kinda decent chip, plus it annoys hooh. i think letting zamac die was a good move overall. the "best" move was hard gira but that annoyingly can't get gambited, the idea with that play is just scouting the set and hopefully getting a few turns to plan for gambit if/when he goes for it. i guess hard lugia was also a play, but 1) lugia is like the mascot of the team 2) it didn't actually look all that bad here

TURN 10 - regi takes 95. this is apparently a low roll. honestly, props to leonxu for creating such a crazy position and going for aggressive kills at good times. if i died, the plan would probably look something like imposter, hard lugia on zamac (which i know is ff from kyub set) or attack and switch on anchor/sap, np, try to trade it off for damage on kyub, continue as before

TURN 11 - i thought for like 90 seconds here, so long that my opponent double-checked if he disconnected lol. i was evaluating whether it was worth keeping regi alive or whether i should sack something else. ultimately i decided to sacrifice regigigas which i think was the only good move-- regigigas won't get to heal. yes, there is slow teleport giratina, but kyub is too fast of a breaker for me to go for strategies like that, and due to the nature of regi as a pure normal type there aren't any mons it easily comes in on in the same way as xern vs gira.

TURN 15 - i run into ff. in my defense this team could very easily be run without ff on zamac: i was thinking stabs/trick etern, hooh + zamac not making any sense because impostered hooh can just teleport out, even something like gambit bolt strike kyub imposter proofed by any zamac. in retrospect this is a pretty weird team style even if it isn't bad, though. needed to look at metagame, not just feasibility.

TURN 52 - was pretty scared of xern getting pp stalled out of boomburst around this point. zamac kept getting annoying opportunities to heal. my plan of pp stalling sacred fires so xern could remain in indefinitely and not give zamac room to breathe looked a bit shaky, but i was pretty sure hooh could get feasibly stalled out of recovery pp by spin, and it also let lugia in for free who could maybe do things? kinda?

TURN 69 - this is the point in the game where i'm pretty sure i win. zamac doesn't do anything major by itself, but it kinda holds together the structure and prevents me from getting away with any silly plays. even after it took a boomburst on turn 68, if leonxu switched out the position was still unclear: hooh can teleport it in for leftovers, i'm forced to once again confront the idea of using boombursts when i don't want to, my breaking plan is like forcing hooh recover and bringing in lugia to np.

TURN 79 - very bad play from me. if i get crit i die, if i go imposter i'm always fine. no reason to risk that. got impatient here.

ggs everyone, go west

 

[PeepeePoopooChamp]

Has anyone had success running weather teams? Seems pretty tough to keep momentum when primordial sea and desolate land can ruin your day without even clicking a move

 

[Redchimp]

Has anyone had success running weather teams? Seems pretty tough to keep momentum when primordial sea and desolate land can ruin your day without even clicking a move

Yeah i've used a few rain teams, which seems to be the only viable one as there isn't enough strong ground's to work with how much fishous rend and tapu fini is everywhere, hail is just generally shit, and sun is walled by tapu fini and flash fire users. It's always key to have some counter to the "super weathers" personally I just use final gambit zygarde-complete with trick and poison heal to switch it up. Helps staying unpredictable but requires a goodbit of prediction skills. Entry hazards are also somewhat viable just wearing down those "super weathers" as time goes on making them less reluctant to switch in.

the nice thing about weather in BH is that not many run it so if you have weather, it's generally not super hard to get up. Palkia in rain is very good btw

 

[Doduodrio]

Has anyone had success running weather teams? Seems pretty tough to keep momentum when primordial sea and desolate land can ruin your day without even clicking a move

i've seen a player running sand in combination with shore up; it seemed pretty successful to me, but that's coming from the guy who forgot about magic bounce so...

 

[XxLazzerpenguinxX]

Hey guys! So, council has been chatting a bit recently, and overall we're really happy with where the metagame is at right now. To us, there isn't anything clear cut that might be ban / suspect worthy. But, we wanted to hear your thoughts as well! I've prepared this quick questionnaire / google survey, so if you guys wanna check that out so we can get a sense of what ya'll think that would be great! (we'll keep this survey open until next Sunday or have gotten a satisfactory number of responses back, where I can discuss the results after.)
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1...rPdhPl2Qpgawn78TdTiwOLVQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

And just as a reminder, sample submissions are currently open, so if you have a sample team you'd like to submit now would be a great time to do so!

Sample Submission Guidlines

Click on this for a good example of a sample team submission post.

• Your name of the team
• A generic one-liner description of what the team does, which will be put with your name above the screenshot. If you don't provide a name, I am planning on just using this inside the screenshot too if it fits. If you don't provide either of these, we will make a description for you.
• Your team on pokepaste (try to include the above two points in pokepaste, but anything else is up to you).
• How to use your team: try to answer the following - what are the effective combo pieces, what should you open with, what are some popular threats or playstyles your team is able to answer. Don't worry too much about this being a whole RMT though!
• What sets or playstyles your team is weak to: maybe some quick changes that are suggested with a note about how it changes your matchup, but this is not required.
• How effective is your team: why should someone use it? here you can add an rmt if you've written one but definitely some ladder/tour experience, possibly with a replay or two.

 

[XxLazzerpenguinxX]

Alright guys, results are in! I'm really happy to see the community engage here. We got a total of 28 valuable responses from mainers to non-mainers which is nice to see! I'll just dump some of the data here and do some v little analysis and let ya'll know the next steps from this.

So I think this survey is very indicative of how good the current state of the meta is. A very large majority of people voted above 6, that they enjoyed to play bh, watch bh, and thought it was in a good competitive state. This is great to see, and I think just goes to show that the recent slate of bans, stemming from darmanitan-galar-zen, have over all been pretty good.

However, when asked whether people thought they think council should take a look at only 5 / 28 people said there was nothing that should be addressed. This makes sense, as paralysis and glacial lance have been a topic of debate for the metagame. Although, not outright broken they can be restrictive in the builder sometimes, and hurt gameplay / competitiveness. The results are as follows.

It can be seen, that 10 voters wanted paralysis to be addressed. 10 wanted to address Glance, and 11 wanted to address imprisonform. I was surprised that less than half the votes wanted to address paralysis since many people have been complaining about it. However, this can be understood by the fact that more of the complaints have come from non-mainers and not mainers. Glance and Impform numbers make sense as well, since among a good portion of the people i have chatted with, many believe that impform is inherently uncompetitive and Glance is broken. Belly drum has also measeled its way in, since belly drum pokemon like triage Kartana, or bellyburden guys can put a serious damper on teams. As a result of this council has decided to hold a vote on nuzzle, Belly Drum, Glacial Lance, and Imprison + Transform. If a majority votes dnb / ban, then that course of action will be taken, and if a tie occurs, then we might discuss suspect testing said move. As a note: Nuzzle will be voted on instead of paralysis as a whole, since it is the most splashable move, and other moves like glare have draw backs vs. magic bounce.

Now, looking at things people might want to be unbanned a majority of people believed that nothing should be unbanned.

This makes sense, as many of the banned aspects of the metagame were inherently unhealthy, however contrary did get a surprising number of votes in 8. This can make sense, because when looking at current abusers of contrary there aren't many. The most immediete may be Zama-C, Regigigas, Ho-oh, and Kyurem-Black. Zama-C, Ho-oh, and Regigigas would often have difficulty getting momentum on Giratina and Kyurem-Black will always have difficulty coming in. However, the presence of V-create + Draco Meteor may be too much to handle with the metagame, and sets like V-create / Super Power / Fishious Rend / Draco Meteor seem extremely powerful vs. every wall there is. If introduces, team building might get very constricted. I am still not sure the impact it might have on the metagame however so I urge you all to discuss this below as council will be voting on whether to free contrary or not.

As far as anything else, someone recommended we organize a community create a team in the OM room at some point so council may look to organize that. Darmanitan-Galar-Zen was also mentioned a couple times, and currently council believes that with Glance present it would still be too meta constricting, but this may change if Glance is banned. I was also called handsome, and smelly, so I appreciate that. There were a few comments about paralysis being uncompetitive, but then another comment called you all losers for complaining about paralysis.

Anywhase, so I hope council was able to address many of the community's concerns. If anybody would like to push in the direction of any of these votes, I highly recommend you discuss this in the forum here and in the BH channel in the OM discord. We will be voting in about a week or two weeks time on these issues. I look forward to reading what you all have to say.

 

[Ivar57]

Submitting a sample team as they are requested by the council atm

Team Name: Double PH Hazard Stack (WIP for a real name)
Description: Defensive Hazard stacking team featuring 2 Poison Heal Pokemon
Pokepaste: https://pokepast.es/9154de74eb14bf4f
How to Use: Leading with Fini and clicking Spiky Shield is pretty much always the first play of the game. After that it is usually good to use the slow pivoting that Fini provides to also get Regigigas' Toxic Orb activated. From there you try to keep the opposing pokemon in check with your defensive core. Once you have scouted out enough of your opponets team you can start finding opportunities to sneak in hazards and pressure the team with Knock Off and status.
Weaknesses:
- Strong Hazard control can be problematic sometimes, especially Magic Bounce
- Ho-Oh being your only Hazard removal can be exploited by some teams
- Regenvest Zygarde can obstruct a lot of progress from being made
Effectiveness: The team has been good for me and other users on ladder and has seen use in om swiss and om circuit championship even though it lost both matches it was in and city called it a poor team lol

 

[Lunatic Hai]

Bolt beak with glance gone is something I've been advocating for for months, get em outta here. Free Zekrom, make him viable again. Free our boy
my enemy when (Zygarde-Complete) @ Icicle Plate Ability: Speed Boost EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 252 SpA / 252 SpD / 252 Spe Modest Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Tail Glow - Earth Power - Judgment - Thunder

Spectrier? Checked. Blace? Checked. Kyu-B? Actually might be a viable mon because it has Zyg-C as a target. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Absolutely, immeasurably based.

 

[Doduodrio]

am i the only one who's noticed a bunch of focus energy + scope lens eterns on the ladder lately?

oh and while i'm at it, is there some kind of checklist someone has to help me build a proper team?

 

[a loser]

am i the only one who's noticed a bunch of focus energy + scope lens eterns on the ladder lately?

oh and while i'm at it, is there some kind of checklist someone has to help me build a proper team?

Eternatus has been popping up recently after some people discussed it in the OM discord but it has been fairly common on the ladder for a while now.

Here's something I posted a while back to a similar question. Some things like Zacian-C and Court Change are out-dated but the rest of it generally still applies to teambuilding in this metagame.

But here's a barebones summary of what you need in BH teambuilding right now:

• A win condition. This could be offensive presence with a breaker like Zacian-C, Xerneas, Eternatus, etc, or tons of chip with hazard stack, Rocky Helmet, and pivoting. You need something that ultimately can win you the game.
• A setup sweeper check. There is no ultimate stop to setup sweepers available, but Prankster Haze / Topsy-Turvy / Encore, Unaware, Imposter, Spectral Thief, and others are tried and true methods. You can get by with limited checks to setup sweepers for a while, like just running a Fur Coat and Ice Scales core, but you're bound to run into Belly Drum or random setup like Stored Power Trip shenanigans that will just win if you aren't ready for it.
• An Imposter-proof team. Here's a guide on improofing I posted a while back. It isn't exhaustive, but covers a lot of common improofing methods. If you don't improof, you are likely to lose to Imposter users in one way or another.
• Entry hazard control. I've built teams without entry hazard control, both accidentally and on purpose, and I usually end up wishing I had it. This can be done in many ways and varies based on the team structure. Rapid Spin, Court Change, Defog, Heavy-Duty Boots, and Magic Bounce can all be used and are useful for not being overwhelmed by hazard stack or stray Sticky Web.

The rest is all up to you. Each of these above aspects can be achieved in several ways with different combinations of team members, moves, and abilities and this is what makes teambuilding fun.

 

[PeepeePoopooChamp]

I barely remember playing when contrary was legal; how do you even play against contrary other than using unaware? It provides boosting on both defenses and attacking stats, high BP, and coverage before even considering the item slot.

Shedninja on the other hand I remember having no problems with on account of the fact that anything that kills it, kills it instantly. You have:
- mold breaker + variants
- mold breaking moves
- poison/burn
- stealth rocks/spikes/toxic spikes
- sand
- rocky helmet/rough skin/iron barbs/spiky shield
- partial trapping

All of these except sand are perfectly usable even without shedninja to worry about. The shedninja user can potentially ignore some of them depending on what item they choose, but even then they have to worry about knock off or core enforcer, which again are super useful already.

edit: sorry for dissing sand idk what came over me

 

[XxLazzerpenguinxX]

I barely remember playing when contrary was legal; how do you even play against contrary other than using unaware? It provides boosting on both defenses and attacking stats, high BP, and coverage before even considering the item slot.

Shedninja on the other hand I remember having no problems with on account of the fact that anything that kills it, kills it instantly. You have:
- mold breaker + variants
- mold breaking moves
- poison/burn
- stealth rocks/spikes/toxic spikes
- sand
- rocky helmet/rough skin/iron barbs/spiky shield
- partial trapping

All of these except sand are perfectly usable even without shedninja to worry about. The shedninja user can potentially ignore some of them depending on what item they choose, but even then they have to worry about knock off or core enforcer, which again are super useful already.

edit: sorry for dissing sand idk what came over me

Some of the best ways to beat contrary at the time were unaware and prankster. These ideas worked mainly when things got slightly out of hand, i.e. multiple turns of boosting. Imposter would also often times be a strong switch in for contrary boosting users since many of the physical moves would also boost defensive stats (superpower, v-create, dragon ascent). Contrary is extremely powerful, but from the survey it seemed like a solid number of people would potentially welcome tiering action. In the current metagame, Contrary from physical users didn't seem too overbearing since they already have a hard time coming in and getting into a position where a set up can be snowballed. Similarly, for special contrary users (Eternatus) Contrary initially might've not seemed to overbearing since Ice Scales is prevalent in the current metagame. However, upon some discussion I've come to the consensus that contrary would not be healthy in the current metagame, mainly due to eternatus. I came to this conclussion because even though Ice Scales is really strong, scales Zama-C still cannot tank two overheats, and in a best case scenario, would be left with around 10% hp after the second overheat. Similarly, Primordial Sea Celesteela gets hammered down by two draco meteors. Eternatus would be a snowball machine, and such an impact would not be healthy in the metagame. Similarly, mixed sweepers such as Reshiram would be able to perform a similar role.

When it comes to shedinja, only 4 people would consider tiering action, so no tiering action will be made in the near future (as representative of the current community viewpoint). To get to your point however, what you did mention are all mostly ways of beating shedinja. Hazards would not beat it thought because of heavy duty boots, limiting it to just status, helmet, weather, and ability ignoring moves. This would really constrict what moves offensive pokemon run, and would make shedinja extremely powerful to fully counter many threats such as Xerneas. Not only this, but shedinja can always use teleport to gain a bunch of momentum, rendering rocky helmet useless. Thus, to counter shedinja many balance teams would have to seriously constrict their option. There is no clear way to punish shedinja, and a surprise lure doesn't really make sense in balanced hackmons since imposter is a thing. Shedinja would not be healthy in the current metagame, and as such no tiering action should be expected in the near future. If the metagame does change, then I'd welcome this discussion again.


This post explains it a bit more as to why shed was banned:

Shed got banned because of the power of Timbs. Hazards were a major source of counterplay for shed, and shed teams had to work to fit in defog or rapid spin while some other teams were less heavily impacted by them. That's far less important now thanks to HDB. Protective Pads as an alternative item was great for Shed before thanks to Baneful/Spiky, but now you don't even need to do that because you can just run funny Pain Split over Endeavor. In that scenario, the only way you'd be able to get rid of shed is with a surprise burn/toxic, which is unlikely, moldy moves, which aren't quite that common nowadays (why bypass Fur Coat when you can click 170BP funny move twice and kill anyway), managing to koff it (but Shed teams piloted well will scout that + have a koff absorber), and hail/sand. I've seen zero hail teams in the year+ that we've had this meta, and between Natdex and Gen 8, I've only seen Onyx Onix and myself build a sand team, much less one that's actually done well on ladder. Shed was already in a spot where even top players saw it as suspect worthy back in Gen 7, and Uggs were just the straw to break the camel's back.

Also, Dynamax went through a suspect a good bit of time before it was banned. It wasn't banned the first time around, but as the meta evolved and DLC mons + moves came in, it became too much even for BH. Shed itself was suspected in Gen 7 and wasn't banned.

Either way, the complaint about BH banning things in most of its suspects doesn't really make much sense, because not only do other metas' suspect tests often result in bans, BH has a far higher and varied offensive power ceiling than the rest of the game, with a defensive one that is proportionately less extreme or varied. On top of that, this post details just how much more offensive capability got added to the game as opposed to defensive, and I've missed some things such as Regieleki and Ice Rider as offensive additions. When you have like 15+ crazy offensive mons, attacks and abilities added to the game, of course it's going to make things rather unbalanced. Fur Coat on the fattest mons around meant nothing in the face of Mold Breaker + funny busted coverage + Choice Band, or Gorilla Tactics banded Zacian. People don't want the ability to have matchups completely out of the meta, or for a set few mons to counter everything. But when the fattest walls around can't even wall some random set that decides to slap on V-Create 2.0, then there's clearly an imbalance. Matchups are always going to be a thing in pokemon, but the degree to which this meta has become matchup-dependent is ridiculous compared not only to other metas, but even to past generations of BH.

 

[MAMP]

some thoughts on some stuff in the current meta now that omwc is finished (my teamdump/post tour writeup is here).


regenvest dialga is super good rn. it's flexible and can serve as an etern check, gigas check, triage check, para spreader, spinner, and pivot. doom desire is effective support for some of the scariest breakers in the meta, like groudon and kart, and helps limit xern a lot. the role compression you get from core/doom/nuzzle/uturn is insane, and its got a bunch of good options besides those. i think almost nothing in bh is as good as dialga at luring in and paralysing zama-c, which is a huge benefit for a lot of teams. found myself just slapping this guy onto all sorts of builds recently. this match against andyboy in om swiss playoffs demonstrates how effective doom desire can be: his team had 3 bulky steel resists and dialga+kartana was still able to force kills.


dragapult is far less gimmicky than i previously thought. i've come to the conclusion that pult should always run taunt, and the 4th move should be a utility move or a means of making progress against stuff that pult struggles to break: bouncers, non-ph normals, physically bulky mons with helmet, and multiple physically bulky mons with recovery. good options are hazards, nuzzle, volt switch (run this over uturn to not hit helmets), swords dance, knock off, fishious rend. taunt stops stuff from pp stalling you by switching around and recovering, prevents teleport > priority, stops strength sap, stops stuff from glaring/spiking on you, and generally offers utility in a lot of situations. it's important to keep in mind that pult's job isn't always to 6-0 from preview (although you do get to do this sometimes, it's unpopular enough atm that people are skimping on counterplay). pult's a utility mon: it checks most offensive threats (crucially including etern), easily forces switches, and limits your opponents options. pult exerts pressure from the back like almost nothing else and very effectively discourages people from playing aggressively with a bouncer. this makes getting hazards a lot safer, and pult LOVES having hazards up. in my game against ivar, he had the tools to pp stall my pult out of multi attacks and could force me to play some awkward 50/50s. once i got a spike up, pult won instantly. keep in mind that the opponent having a bouncer doesn't really stop pult from doing its thing. some common bouncers, like tina and ho-oh, take enough from multi-attack that they don't want to switch into pult that often. fatter ones like zama-c can be taken advantage of by volt switching into guys like groudon.


ice rider kicks ass. this guy was custom made to be a mid-game breaker with shift gear: slow enough to underspeed all spectrals and cores, but fast enough to run adamant and outspeed etern at +2, and bulky enough to take a hit from just about anything. live a +4 etern core or a cb adapt groudon pblades, shift up, and just start lancing shit. the basic set is shift/lance/coverage for steels/coverage for waters or photon or sap, but theres so many variations of the set to beat specific defensive mons or set up in different situations. i've tried mglo, mold breaker, adapt, simple, and fur coat and they're all baller. ur strong enough to just bust through a lot of common pranksters too

unaware is good. with unaware + imposter + some combination of very bulky mons/guys that are hard to set up on/imposter/fast stuff, you can get away without running prankster. you have to be willing to sometimes cop an L against unburden drum (like i should have in this game against loser), but that's ok. my philosophy in teambuilding for bh is that covering everything is impossible, and that attempting to will often make teams worse. unburden drum with a moldy move is basically the only form of setup that reliably beats unaware + imposter, and it's rare enough that i'm ok with being weak to it. the benefit of unaware > prankster is mainly that haze fucking blows and a lot of teams have really strong tools to take advantage of it. tcage xern loves it when pranksters have to haze on it, as does core enforcer etern. the moveslot and the free turns that haze costs are awful, and if i can get away with not paying those costs i will.


nuzzle + spikes gigas is really good. dont have much more to say about it, it's been the main gigas set i've ran lately and it makes progress against all teams in all situations, unless there's a bounce tina or something. make sure your team can abuse paralysed zama-c obv, pair with palk or dstorm xern or something.


speaking of palk, i only run sets on it that get progress on ph fini nowadays. that mon is pretty common, bricks palk completely, and palk doesn't have the easiest time coming in, so it feels like such a liability to not have spikes or volt switch or something.

paralysis is cool (not a joke). any tiering action against paralysis is weenie shit

got some sauce cooking for bh open. hope to see you all there.

 

[Onyx Onix 7]

Since the BH council requested sample teams, I thought I'd offer one of my creations:
Lycanroc-Midnight Semi-Stall: https://pokepast.es/1822de333e4d928a.

Synopsis:
The premise of the team is to primarily defend while spreading Paralysis around to slow and cripple opposing teams and then take over in the late game. The team has a variety of ways to force Paralysis even through common Paralysis counterplay between Mold Breaker Glare Giratina, Nuzzle and Core Enforcer Registeel, and Prankster Glare Dusclops. As for the late-game Tough Claws Zekrom and Hex Giratina offer inevitability as many teams can't effectively stomach Zekroms Band boosted attacks and struggle to fend off the combination of Hex and Glare on Mold Breaker Giratina.

How to Play:
With regards to playing the team generally the best way to lead is with Tapu Fini and Spiky Shield to crack the Toxic Orb. Once Tapu Fini is online the team's focus will normally shift to spreading Paralysis around. At this stage in the game, it is typically optimal to keep Registeel, Dusclops, and Giratina on the battlefield as much as is possible to maximize opportunities to spread around Paralysis. Once your opponent's team has been scouted and faster pokemon Paralyzed, it's time to abuse Zekrom's powerful attacks and Giratina's Hexes to close out the game.

Specifics:
* Lycanrock Dusk is selected for its ability to OHKO Ho-Oh with Rock Slide: ( 252+ Atk Lycanroc-Midnight Rock Slide vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Ho-Oh: 384-456 (92.3 - 109.6%) -- 50% chance to OHKO)
* Registeel has 204 Speed EV's so Lvl 99 Tapu Fini underspeeds it
* Against threats such as Kyreum of Groudon use Dusclops to stop them
* Sometimes it's worth it to trade a pokemon for a Paralysis on a specific threat to neutralize it

Strengths:
*Team's lacking Poison Heal
*Team's that rely on their threats being faster
* Teams that rely on Magic Bounce to keep hazards away

Weaknesses:
* Poison Heal Regigigas variants with ground coverage
* V-Create + Pixilate Xerneas
* Blacephelon
* Comatose

Effectiveness:
Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to ladder with the team so I can't show definitive ladder placement. However, I did play the team in few room tours and it consistently succeeded there. Beyond just room tours, however, I was able to beat Quojova and a Losr with the team :

Here's are two replays of the team in action:

Vs a Losr:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1418683908

Vs a Ladder Player:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1418706661

Unfortunately, I don't have any other replays on the teams, and that includes the game against Quojova.

Edit: Proof, the team can consistently win room tours:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8balancedhackmons-1490563144