BW - Yeah.... BW is an absolute horror show in terms of what people seem to think are good teams at the moment. Kebabe's 6-1 run consisted of facing anything from teams that blatantly disregarded CM Arceus-Ghost to teams without a normal resist/immunity. Or tspikes+Darkrai. People seem to use Espeon sun nowadays though? But the teams are just sub-optimal versions of 2013 teams? I guess it should be appreciated that people try to make their own teams, though. My top 4 BW shitlist follows:
1. Forretress. When I look at the usage stats, about 20% of teams used had this mon. It is not understandable to me. Forretress is decent, it has a usable, yet limited, role as a lead tspiker. It works well with a bulky arc forme that can "hold-up play" to effectuate the effect of tspikes (not with Darkrai which obviously prevents you from setting key targets to sleep). I see people use it a bulky rapid spinner which is even more limited. It cannot really check anything so you end up with an overall weak team. Using Ferrothorn will often simply improve these teams. Forretress is also one of the easiest mons to tech against.
2. Ekiller rain. It is a debate as old as time. Does Ekiller suck in BW? Of course not, but it seems with the passing of time that nuances have been lost. It was always the case that Ekiller was the most threating mon in BW, but not necessarily the most viable. Especially if you are interested in beating good players. Maybe Ekiller is just easier to use conceptually speaking but to truly gain consistent advantages sun is in most cases your only bet. Sun will synergize to pressure its checks better (even invalidate a few such as Kabutops) and allow for you to have enough momentum vs hazard setters. It even allows Ekiller to run a fire move to overcome some hard counters if your team needs it. A rain team on the other hand, especially without specs Kyogre, will let your opponent have multiple spike layers. Your team can probably use a more useful Arceus! Steel has useful resistances and poses a threat unconcerned about tspikes, Grass sets up on Ferro, Fight provides a direct threat to Dialga/Ferro (aka the biggest annoyances for rain to kill) etc.
3. Deoxys-S. Traditionally this mon gets SR extremely reliably. This is a good niche. However, I cannot really fathom the hype around non-sash spikes Deo-S. These teams are weak (more on this below). There are a multitude of techs people use on this mon. Most seem situational and I would advise to use lead TTar instead if your goal is to anti lead.
4. Lead spiker+sdef Groudon sun. Sorry but these teams absolutely blow. I get it. Back in the day, a common structure was to use a lead spiker like Deo-A and an offensive Groudon (think deo-a/latias/don/darkrai/gene/ghostceus). These teams had a distinct problem in that every time Groudon wanted to SR, it invited in a dragon (latis most commonly, but also mixed ray) and then you were losing. I see that people have finally seen the usefulness of sdef Groudon so now this problem is recitifed. But... that wasn't the only problem of these teams. It is problematic that these teams lack immediate fire power. This compounds a weakness to Ferrocruel rain, which still to this day is the best defensive playstyle in the tier. These teams will find an opportunity to get a tspikes layer up and proceed to win. It is also problematic that these teams lack a true cleaner. Usually, Ekiller is omitted on the teams (if it is used then Darkrai is omitted to fit Giratina-O which means Arceus-Ghost 6-0es) and the team relies on special sweepers (Darkrai+Arceus-Ghost). This doesn't look like a bad plan on paper but when you realize Genesect exists, well... Get pi faced? Finally, if you ever face a sand Excadrill you might as well just forfeit.
good to see you back man... wanted to comment on a few things you said:
1)
forre usage rising
definitely agree with you that defensive forre is bad, nothing to say about that. However i do think lead forre is quite good... mental herb tspikes is a great foil to many of the HOs running around at the moment (granted, many are poorly constructed). mental herb or payapa mcoat tenta is probably better as a pure tspiking lead, but on an offensively oriented or sun build, it's telegraphed from a mile away. forre is justifiably better as a tspiker on many sun structures (see: forre / SR darkceus / rp lum don / scarf terrak / mixed giraO / latios that i passed lasen) and the flexibility to choose tspikes or spikes depending on MU is nice as well. on the team above, it lets u use latios over latias given you can spike vs a scarfogre rain turn 1... that's nice. additionally, i've found the tech of voltswitch to be solid on forre builds packing breakers - free entry for a powerful threat like ho-oh, ray, or latios is quite nice and it turns forre into a serviceable pivot vs some key mons like ghostceus. does forre deserve its high usage? well, 20% seems excessive. but i regard this mon much more highly than i have in the past, and consider it in a better position than competing darkrai-weak spin/setters like cloyster at the moment
2)
ekiller rain
lol yeah this is just one of those trends I don't understand... it's not good unless you're stacking don + ogre. stop it.
3)
deoxys-S
the ONLY non-SR set anyone should be using is scarf DeoS - a mon reserved for opposing DeoS spammers. i think the default should look something like:
Deoxys-Speed @ Red Card / Lum Berry / Focus Sash / Rocky Helmet / Mental Herb (lol i guess)
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 248 HP / 124 Def / 120 SpA / 16 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dark Pulse
- Taunt
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
obviously stuff like max speed for deoS mirrors is viable too - but this gives pretty great MUs across the board, barring the mirror (who plays for DeoS mirror anyway?) item obviously u can choose based on ur team. but yeah - only spikes deoS is pretty bad and defeats the purpose to using a lead which has such great odds to guarantee SR vs the metagame at large
4.
Lead spiker+sdef Groudon sun
"lose to tspikes" is certainly popular. I want to add that dual primal + spikes HO is probably the exception to this rule - ofc there's the classic rp DON +choiced ogre, but i find structures that stack twave SpD don /some offensive twave ogre (custap, gem, lum) to be good. of course,there's like a whole two whopping teams in this archetype, but yeah
anyway i actually find BW to be in a good spot as a meta. i just think 50%+ of the teams i saw in upl are just... mediocre.
here's some stuff i was thinking about this year:
alternate SR dialga items
people always use the same 2 items on SR dialga: lefties and LO. lefties is pretty good - rain just can't effectively 1v1 this mon, and on balances i doubt there's a better option. LO is a breaker but it's generally bad and I definitely wouldnt use it for SR purposes. however - i've been looking a some new options on dialga, specifically for offenses, that add a bit more depth to the teamslot you've dedicated to it. primarily - shuca berry, rocky helmet, chople berry, and sitrus berry.
Shuca is neat - many Magic Sun structures aim to chip dialga into range of an offensive groudon using their magic bouncer. the plate/lum groudon then regains momentum and prevents SR by forcing dialga out after the magic bouncer dies... shuca twists this play pattern on its head. dialga can take an HP fighting from espeon, or night shade from xatu, and still comfortably live an EQ from jolly groudon afterwards to secure SR. fun. of course - steeljackal was using ground gem groudon prior to her disappearance, and hack linked a team above with it as well... that's less of a guarantee to come out on top with shuca. oh well. that's the thing with metas - they're constantly evolving.
Chople is a niche option. I like it on palkia / dialga / kyogre rain offenses that
generally can be softer to both fightceus and kabutops than other builds. having an emergency check that can phaze fightceus and doubles as a strong check to tops is great utility on these types of builds. additionally, insulation vs darkrai, cm ghosty is alway welcome.
Rocky Helmet is probably my favorite of the bunch so far. I can up with this idea to punish Genesect specifically - taking hazards + additional 17% when clicking uturn is a beating, and can open the door for mons like darkrai, mewtwo, and even cm ghostceus to take control of the game. putting gene in range of +2 ekiller is never a bad feeling either. outside of the gene use case, helm is just great for general chip - knocking 25% off tops by pivoting on LO waterfall is great, likewise for giraO sneak (dtail doesn't punish you as hard either)... it's fun, try it out
Last but certainly not least is Sitrus Berry. One of the things I've never liked about SR dialga is it really really sucks vs certain sets from mons you usually rely on it to cover during building, specifically specs kyogre and orb Palkia. this means you can very rarely rely on dialga as your primary water resist on HO - even if you got spikes down and chipped the specs ogre, your dialga is going to die to 2 hydro pumps. it's a terrible feeling. This is the allure of sitrus - it allows you to tank 2 hydros, 2 boosted spacial rends, a Latias draco meteor, etc etc and still actually check these mons. the extra 18.75% recovery vs leftovers is critical for living some of these attacks. yeah, it's worse in a long game, but hey - if your dialga wasn't on the field for 4 turns, it got more out of sitrus than it would have from lefties. this set ties together a whole host of new HO structures where dialga is the primary water resist, and they've performed amazingly in tests. definitely recommend exploring this item.
Mixed Gira-O is good again
i always saw this set in the analysis as a carryover from BW1, and always thought it sucked when BW was main gen... however these days, i think this might be the best GiraO on offense. draco is strong, hits everything hard with minimal investment, and actually covers offensive SR groudon. i ve always hated that physical giraO struggles so immensely vs faster dtail groudon - that's supposed to be a positive matchup for it! yeah, wisp is nice but lum is the standard that i use on these physical don anyway... whatever. anywho - this set breaks so much harder than dtail sneak eq wisp giraO and i'm in love with it. you still check everything u want to btw. the only real loss is earthquake vs non-ballon exca and the nonexistent heatran... hp fire has the juiciest targets... ferro, genesect... and draco just hurts man. it hits so hard. try this mon out (spread is adjustable - u can make it faster ofc but really all you need to do is outspeed SpD ogre and support 90s)
Giratina-Origin @ Griseous Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 60 Atk / 252 Def / 140 SpA / 56 Spe
Rash Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Shadow Sneak
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Dragon Tail
CM Fightceus structures
CM ghostceus usage is way way down, and I think this is arguably the mon that holds CM fightceus back the most, other than the obvious HoOh and Tenta... that said, getting SR vs magic sun is easier than ever, and with most magic suns leaning heavily on ekiller these days, fightceus will have use in these matchups. i ve had a lot of fun pairing this mon with lati lures like offensive ogre, twave SpD don, and pursuiters like ttar and LO darkrai... use this set more.
TTar & Exca
these mons are good again, paired together or apart. as hack mentioned, most deoS leads are not going to live a ttar payback at the moment, and the current trend to drop darkrai on these builds. additionally lead forre usage is up. this puts ttar in a great spot as an anti-lead. with cm ghosty falling off hard, i also enjoy lum and custap ttar a lot more than previous years. twave is also a great option, especially to catch greedy arc formes. and lastly, recover and sub ekiller showing up from time to time gives ttar lowkick some additional utility. sand as a playstyle benefits from the fall-off of rest ogre - it's much easier to guarantee sandstream for exca then 5 years ago. i really liked the ancient dual weather Tape ripped out in bwpl - sashtar + breaker exca + ogre + tops, retro and solid. of course, the swedish 6 sand has been around forever at this point and always performs, as does some variant of ttar / exca / ferro / lati / arc / scarfer (usually terrak or lando-i). sand still does what sand does. scarf mold breaker exca is also an interesting pick as a standalone mon - nice darkrai/bouncer sun you got there, don't mind clicking SR turn 1! (SR is great filler, although I don't recommend it as your sole rocker). having a mon on rain that can threaten opposing dialga is never bad, and scarf exca clicks eq with impunity. only ray, hooh, and the rare skarm/skymin are natural resists in the tier. it resists ekiller and genesect too. unique matchup spread, for sure.
Chople Ekiller
soooo... it reverses some "surefire" ekiller matchups, namely fightceus, terrak, and kabutops (depending on %), while making ekiller more susceptible to status. just another option you can run on it, and one that has performed well for me. just like any ekiller tech, make sure you're covering the poor matchups with the rest of your team. it's ekiller, it's tough to fuck up with this mon...
Bulky Grounds on Rain
rain has always struggled vs dialga, and to a lesser extent, groudon. running fightceus is the most clear-cut way to mitigate this weakness, but this year i ve experimented a bit more with ground types. specifically SpD invested lefties LandoT, and subpass glisc (vs the standard tox sub). subpass glisc in particular fits on much more offensive structures than the typical ferrocruel arc ghost SpD ogre scarfDialga its typically found on, but performs a very similar role in forcing out groudon and abusing slower, fatter structures. LandoT on the other hand, is just an excellent utility check to groudon, but also mons like GiraO, Dialga, and to a lesser extent, special attackers like darkrai and some arceus sets. you check the physicalmons by virtue of intimidate alone, so SpD invest wasnt a big ask. neither mon will become the new standard, but certainly techs i found fun and useful during tests. ofc exca is still good - although I generally lean scarf or occasionally sash lead vs lefties SpD of yesteryear
Scarf Ho-oh
i like this mon a lot. band is good, of course, but leaves a lot to be desired once SR go up. with all the support SR arc floating around, we've seen magic sun concentrate more on sweepers (ekiller + blaze for example) to take advantage of the SR turn by boosting, or go even deeper into hazard prevention with darkrai (Band Thy Turkey spin-offs)... these are certainly fine structures, but I've enjoying tinkering with scarf hooh instead - after all, you get to click a lot more attacks after sr wielding a scarf. not to mention better matchups vs darkrai, cm arc formes. it's just got a lot of defensive utility while still being a challenging mon to swap in against. sun sacred fire hurts, man.
Mewtwo
i think arc-fight has taken over as the top arc-forme in my eyes... yeah, ghosty is still good, but sr support is the best it can do right now... and it doesn't boost. so we're seeing an increase in fightceus and decrease in ghostceus - mewtwo benefits from this trend. LO is better than usual right now - i prefer psy ice aura taunt personally. i've also been testing out a variety of CM sets - fat cm a la DPP (psy aura cm recover @ lefties) has been neat. although certainly annoyed by genesect. gene is easy to wear down with hazard stack + rocky helmet, however...
might post some team/sets later... and comment on oras/dpp. haven't watched any of those games yet.
