Gen 2 [GSC NU] The seemingly very simple but actually very complicated and restricting process of making Ninetales + Octillery work together on spikes

BeeOrSomething

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:gs/pineco: :gs/xatu: :gs/octillery: :gs/ninetales: :gs/chinchou: :gs/weezing:
https://pokepast.es/46a1abf0ce88ba65

I wanted to try out ninetales because I think it's cool and I haven't used it much and wanted to see what it could do, and in my usual gsc nu building process I threw on xatu, pineco, and octillery, because those 3 form a great basis for a large amount of teams and I thought it would be the same. Little did I know what was in store for me. I probably should've waited until ALTPL ended to make this but uhhhhhhh I'm impulsive and I let the urges win this time so uhhhhhhh
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yeah enjoy lol.

Building Process

:pineco: :xatu: :octillery: :ninetales:
As I said, I started with these four, pineco leading because persian is a pain in the ass and having spikes up early is nice. Xatu and octillery are generally great but are also important in handling dugtrio. Went with beam oct to help improve vs duggy and elec xatu as the natural partner to better pressure opposing octillery who want to come in on xatu. Used roar on ninetales to keep maximum pressure on octillery, even if i knew having roar on a sleep talk set of a mon this fast was suboptimal.

:pineco: :xatu: :octillery: :ninetales: :chinchou: :sudowoodo:
Next, I went with chinchou because it patched up the weakness to opposing octillery and other waters really well while sudowoodo would do great to beat normals. However, at this point I was really concerned about the dugtrio matchup mainly as well as fighters, because while beam oct can handle dugtrio decently well the rest of the team was not so good on it and overrelying on octillery to handle one mon that came close to demolishing the rest of the team was a recipe for disaster.

:pineco: :xatu: :octillery: :ninetales:
After this realization, I wasn’t really sold on my last two mons. I pondered weezing, chinchou, sudowoodo, pupitar, gloom, fearow, and even hitmonlee and magnemite. Weezing covered fighters and sorta normals while being able to threaten a lot of damage, but didn’t really help with dugtrio, fearow helped with dugtrio and fighters as well as general pressure which was really appealing to me, but I couldn’t really fit fearow and something that handled octillery because it would leave me shattered by normals. Pupitar was really just because it was much faster than sudoowodo, gloom helped with elec oct but still struggled with dugtrio, beam oct, and normals as well as making other areas worse, and hitmonlee and magnemite were desperation straws trying to find some way to answer dugtrio fighters waters and normals all at once.

:pineco: :xatu: :octillery: :ninetales: :chinchou: :weezing:
Then came the turning point in the process of the team. I had asked a couple of people for help on figuring out a good last two including Dawn and Innovamania, though unfortunately Dawn was busy and Inno couldn’t come up with anything better. Then came along freezingpop who I also decided to ask for help from since he was pretty knowledgeable about gsc nu and I was grasping for straws lol. He suggested I don’t use hp elec on xatu and instead used hp ice, which was made even more justifiable since I had decided I was likely going to use chinchou, and this drastically improved my opinion of the team’s dugtrio matchup, since I had made other teams work with less (albeit only 1 or 2 ground weaks). After this, I just needed to figure out a last, and it basically came down to either sudowoodo or weezing. Sudo handles normals much more comfortably while weezing is overall more threatening and is vastly superior into fighters, and I ended up choosing weezing since it can still hold its own decently vs normals and I valued not crumpling to fighters. Lastly, while weezing isn’t the worst into normals, I still had a strong feeling something was off with the team, and I realized it was the matchup vs normals. Then a lightbulb turned on in my head and I remembered that ninetales learned reflect, and so I slotted it on and finally felt satisfied.


The Mons

:gs/pineco:
Pineco @ Miracle Berry
Ability: No Ability
- Spikes
- Explosion
- Rapid Spin
- Reflect

Pineco is a decently common lead, and for good reason. Miracle berry, good phys def, enough sp def to not be ohko’d unless by a fire move, and spikes and boom all combine to make pineco excellent at the top of the lineup. Miracle berry allows pineco to guaranteed set up spikes in front of hypnosis persian, another very common lead. The rest of the moves do about what you would expect them to.

:gs/xatu:
Xatu @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
IVs: 26 Def
- Psychic
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

The king of gsc nu, xatu does pretty normal xatu things of both being an extremely important defensive presence and a powerful wallbreaker. Here, it namely helps to check fighters, stantler, weezing, and with hp ice, dugtrio. Honestly not really much productive I can say here, xatu is xatu.

:gs/octillery:
Octillery @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Just like xatu, another one of the most splashable and dominant pokemon in the tier but also the biggest source of headaches I had when trying to build this team around ninetales while keeping octillery lmao. Octillery functions as a solid answer to dugtrio, xatu, fire types, rock types, dewgong, and gloom. It also severely theatens pokemon like fearow and weezing, though you should also be wary of them. Getting worn down by spikes and maybe even catching a crit or boom can ruin octillery unfortunately, but usually it will do its job very well.

:gs/ninetales:
Ninetales @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Flamethrower
- Reflect
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

With a surprisingly great speed tier of base 100 coupled with great natural bulk and a decently strong flamethrower, ninetales makes for a great answer to pokemon like xatu, magnemite, flareon, gloom, and magmar. With the power of reflect and said aforementioned great speed tier ninetales can also act as a buffer for pokemon like primeape, fearow, and kingler, keeping their damage output lower and even threatening them directly with its flamethrowers. Main things ninetales has issues with are giving up the absolute freest entry to octillery and chinchou and also being quite bad into dugtrio and the rocks.

:gs/chinchou:
Chinchou @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Surf
- Thunder
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Primarily here to be a wall to octillery who otherwise really bullies this team, chinchou synergizes excellently with xatu and ninetales. Chinchou is also a pain for a lot of offensive teams to switch into due to stab thunder hitting pretty much everything hard and a stab surf to go along with it for safety and to make sure dugtrio will pay if it tries to come in on chinchou every time. Chinchou is extremely frail outside of its resistances though, and in conjunction with the accuracy of thunder, prediction, and sleep talk rolls this thing can be really hit or miss.

:gs/weezing:
Weezing @ Leftovers
Ability: No Ability
- Sludge Bomb
- Thunder
- Explosion
- Fire Blast

Absolute truck of an offensive force with those stats and its movepool, killing pretty much everything besides the rocks which can be worn down by spikes and aren’t great into octillery or chinchou. Massive physical defense stat and poison typing also allow it to be a premier answer to primeape and hitmonlee, the fighters I may or may not have been rambling indirectly about throughout the duration of this post (lol). The whopping physical bulk lets it not crumple to persian, fearow, or stantler and even threaten them back hard with its strong stab sludge bomb, thunder for fearow, and explosion. Thunder also allows weezing to be really potentially dangerous to opposing xatu trying to come in and scare weezing out, as well as massively damaging octillery and dewgong. In the last slot, I have fire blast here to make sure magnemite or pineco can’t do anything funny and make gloom cry more than it already does, though realistically it can definitely be hp grass or haze if you want.

Threatlist
:dugtrio: As I'm sure is very apparent by how much I've mentioned dugtrio's antics and the presence of 3 ground weak pokemon on the team + xatu and pineco who are weak to rock slide, dugtrio can wipe this team if positioned really well later in the game and you don't or can't play well enough to stop it.
:pupitar: Same reasons as dugtrio pretty much, rock + ground is bad news for this team, but pupitar now has stab on its rock moves. At least chinchou outspeeds it unlike dugtrio.
:fearow: This thing is absurdly scary for teams that lack normal resists such as this one, even if weezing can pull a few punches. The rest of the team is 2 or 3hkod by fearow, potentially leaving the game up to if fearow will die fast enough. Probably the main reason for not using this team and instead just using a balance team with an actual normal resist kek.
:stantler: This mon is busted anyways but fwiw I think fearow is scarier than this since deer doesn't usually pack recovery moves and it lacks double edge.
:persian: If it hits both hypnoses vs pineco then you're gonna be in a pretty sketch position trying to switch into a fully healthy double edge spamming persian, but thankfully the odds to hit two 60% moves in a row isn't that high
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:primeape: Often in games weezing ends up taking a lot of chip trying to switch into hits with its enormous bulk when there are spikes up on your side and late in the game primeape can just bust past weezing, and while xatu can take on primeape there's a lot of variance involved with speed ties and rock slide hits/flinches or thunder hits/paras, and if there's a houndour then primeape can really only be stopped by ninetales who isn't a particularly good stop to the monke.



That's about it really, again shoutouts to Freezingpop for reigniting the flame under this team, Innovamania for giving some ideas and support even if they didn't end up working, and Dawn for always being a great gsc nu support and checking my teams to make sure they're good.
 
I don't know much about GSC NU, but might it be possible to abandon either Octillery or Chinchou to get the normal and/or rock resist that would help with most of your threatlist? It seems that their roles overlap a lot.

Another thing is running reflect on a resttalker. 1/3 of the time, Ninetales' sleep talk will just reset the screen when its already up, which could be annoying in my opinion. Could you replace it with a coverage move? Maybe HP Electric, though I don't know what the calcs are like?
 

BeeOrSomething

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I don't know much about GSC NU, but might it be possible to abandon either Octillery or Chinchou to get the normal and/or rock resist that would help with most of your threatlist? It seems that their roles overlap a lot.

Another thing is running reflect on a resttalker. 1/3 of the time, Ninetales' sleep talk will just reset the screen when its already up, which could be annoying in my opinion. Could you replace it with a coverage move? Maybe HP Electric, though I don't know what the calcs are like?
Replacing octillery - I guess with dewgong but the point of the team was to use octillery and also octillery is plenty fine anyways, it’s one of the absolute best mons in the tier, and replacing it with a rock weakens the team a whole lot and especially makes the Duggy matchup unplayable

Replacing chinchou - if I did this I would have to use Hp elec octillery in which case the team becomes even worse into dugtrio than it is already especially since I’m just removing chinchou for another duggy weak pokemon, also the team struggles mightily against dewgong without chinch

Regarding reflect talk ninetales - hp grass/electric still can’t 3hko octillery anyways and when I have chinchou already it’s fine. Ninetales is bulky enough for xatu and stuff. Meanwhile I really want reflect to help with the normals and if ninetales can get away with toxic + rest talk being the standard set when its number 1 answer (oct) is on a large amount of teams and always uses rest talk then I think it can get away with reflect + rest talk.
 

Estarossa

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Replacing octillery - I guess with dewgong but the point of the team was to use octillery and also octillery is plenty fine anyways, it’s one of the absolute best mons in the tier, and replacing it with a rock weakens the team a whole lot and especially makes the Duggy matchup unplayable

Replacing chinchou - if I did this I would have to use Hp elec octillery in which case the team becomes even worse into dugtrio than it is already especially since I’m just removing chinchou for another duggy weak pokemon, also the team struggles mightily against dewgong without chinch

Regarding reflect talk ninetales - hp grass/electric still can’t 3hko octillery anyways and when I have chinchou already it’s fine. Ninetales is bulky enough for xatu and stuff. Meanwhile I really want reflect to help with the normals and if ninetales can get away with toxic + rest talk being the standard set when its number 1 answer (oct) is on a large amount of teams and always uses rest talk then I think it can get away with reflect + rest talk.
Dewgong is honestly fine in terms of Duggy matchup from my own experience, one of my favourite teams from the last year or so in this tier has been dewgong + ninetales + magnetite and functions fine in reality as RestTalk Dewgong is still about the 2nd most reliable thing into Dugtrio in this tier besides Ice Beam Octillery itself, much better than HP Elec Octillery is still especially and carries certain advantages r.e special bulk that Octillery doesn't get to take advantage of.

Dugtrio Rock Slide vs. Dewgong: 110-130 (28.7 - 33.9%) -- 0.9% chance to 3HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery
Dugtrio Earthquake vs. Dewgong: 109-129 (28.4 - 33.6%) -- 0.2% chance to 3HKO after Spikes and Leftovers recovery

Given these attacks damage ranges + the safe sleep talk rolls you end up with the only possible dire situation being being flinched after being screeched, something you can pivot around to avoid anyway or just go for the 70% safety, noting that if it goes for this it can't be behind a substitute if you always are harding in dewgong on it to contest it.

Saying all of that I would argue this team has no need to make that change with the presence of a ninetales and chinchou alongside unless you did decide to explore said magnetite > chinchou routes. In general I would argue the Duggy and Persian matchups don't really warrant a threatlist placement more than them just being very strong Pokemon that can do said stuff into basically any team in general tbh.

My Main thoughts reading this were more along the lines of swapping ice to elec on xatu, feel like the kingler matchup benefits from this and it puts less general pressure on chinchou into opposing waters too. Idt you really need Ice for the duggy matchup with an ice beam octillery present here anyway and reflect on ninetales should limit the opportunities more again than if it was running anything else like toxic / roar instead. Ice does have better bulk DVs for fearow but i think its entry points are limited enough that you have a decent bit of room for outs especially earlier game with your weezing presence, although fearow + curse ls stantler alongside can be a bit of a threat. Dewgong in theory does loosen your load vs fearow compared to octillery as you brought up but its not the biggest difference in practice to necessarily go for it, the more appealing advantage there is more that your ice beam is quite a bit stronger back into it. Another thing you'd have to rightly consider is the weaker sudoo matchup you end up with on dewgong on these sort of builds.

Fearow Double-Edge vs. Dewgong: 138-163 (36 - 42.5%) -- 96.4% chance to 3HKO after Leftovers recovery
Fearow Double-Edge vs. Octillery: 142-168 (40.2 - 47.5%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

This is a pretty neat team all in all, I do think it has some shaky-ish matchups into Curse LS Stantler and CurseTalk Wigglytuff due to some overreliance on weezing's presence for them (or the need to fish for hax into wiggly in general) but nothing thats not outplayable at all and pretty standard for gsc nu teams a lot of the time. HP Elec Xatu so you are less pressured into using your Weezing vs Kingler would be useful for helping deal with multiple of those threats stacked together imo though. Another change I could feasible imagine is Pain Split > Fire Blast on Weezing to make it a bit more long term usable although its not the most reliable thing in the world in practice.

Chinchou is probably the biggest threat and a bit annoying for this to handle since you dont have anything that punishes Thunder in the slightest from it, best you've got is contesting it with your own Chinchou tbh. Its kinda a natural side effect of running octillery + ninetales + xatu structures but if you keep up the offensive presence you can sorta limit it tbh alright, but its partially why i think these sort of team structures benefit from things like dugtrio and stantler to help contest it more.

I think a major option worth exploring for the Chinchou matchup would be running Wigglytuff over your Chinchou to give you both a win-con but also a decent enough Chinchou check that still handles octillery alright in that slot. Its also more room to contest fearow and removes one of dugtrios entry points in general, and can use the ninetales reflect support p nice to get set up chance stoo.
 
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