Metagame USUM Monotype Metagame Discussion

With the announcement of the next Pokemon games, and a release date planned for later this year, I believe it is only fitting to take a look at how the metagame of monotype has shifted for some types over the years.

I'll be doing a new weekly series here called: "The history of..." Where I look at one type in the metagame and how it has faired since the beginning of the generation up to now. I will be using stats from these tours: mpl3&4 and mwp1&2. Due to the lack of stats for MLT and SSNLS I decided to make it easier for everyone and just include the major team tournaments as they usually feature the biggest metagame trends. I will also be looking at general feedback the type has gotten from the casual community in our chatroom on Pokemon Showdown over time.
So without further ado, the first type I will be covering will be: Ground

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Ground.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/steelix-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/excadrill.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/hippowdon.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/nidoking.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/seismitoad.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/gastrodon.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/garchomp.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/dugtrio.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Ground.png


General Overview:
Ground was not considered to be the best with the release of SM, as new threats like Tapu Bulu and Azumarill gaining Z-Belly Drum did not help its case at all. However, as time went on, new strategies were used and metagame shifts started to make Ground look better as a type. A brief generalization isn't going to be enough to give you an idea of how ground was perceived, so lets get into the details shall we?

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - As a brief reminder, during this tournament mega-medicham was banned (mid-way) while Magearna and Shadow Tag were still allowed. Also this is SM and not USM which means Kommo-o didn't have a Z-move and Blacephelon didn't exist, among other things.

Ground produced inconsistent results in MPL3 due to sets like Scarf Tapu Bulu being common and dugtrio not performing as well as it was intended to. Some players were able to make the type look unbreakable while others easily lost with the type. It can be inferred from both its 45% winrate overall and the quality of the matches that ground was relatively underdeveloped at the time, and did not perform well as a result.

The banning of Medicham-mega did benefit ground slightly as it made it easier for its defensive Pokemon to get in more often. However it also slightly hurt its viability due to players like Eien (who used Ground twice during this tournament) using the type to beat the hyper offensive Psychic metagame at the time. That being said, its safe to say that ground had a relatively humble start at the beginning of the generation when it came to tournament play.


MWP - During this tour, USUM was just released and both Shadow Tag and Magearna were banned. However Nagandel was still allowed during the first 3 weeks, which definitely affected Ground's viability in the metagame.

Now that psychic was not as prominent and with steel no longer being as strong as it was, Ground theoretically should have suffered immensely during the tournament. However, due to the prominence of Naganadel during the first 3 weeks, Ground was looked at as an option to deal with Poison and Dragon teams that would try to use it, since Excadrill in sand threatened most variants even after a speed boost as well as Excarill in Sand just being very strong. Naganadel also made Fairy less prominent during the three weeks it was allowed, which meant that Tapu Bulu was not as prominent, theoretically allowing Ground to see some usage. However, from the replays found, this was not the case. Ground still ended up meeting Fairy teams and didn't perform well against other types either. It barely won any games during the three week period naganadel was allowed, but naganadel was also not used as often as anticipated which may have played a role in Ground's performance. The rest of the tournament saw Ground suffer the same fate it did in MPL3 only this time it had no niche and suffered immensely. There are no solid usage stats of each type for MWP, but after watching every SM replay I could find for all 7 weeks, it can be inferred that ground was not used due to the rise of water usage and popularity of fairy teams. Ground only won twice out of the five times it was used that tournament (this could be wrong, please correct me if I have made an error), both times was because it had a positive matchup against Steel or Poison.

The naganadel ban only affected ground theoretically as this tour shows that Ground was not dominant or prominant at top level play when naganadel was around. After Naga got banned, Ground still did not see much usage at all for the reasons previously explained. So after MWP, Ground was relatively uncommon as a type, but still not inherently bad.

MPL4 - This tour follows our normal banlist that we have today. Also Zeraora got released midway.

After a really shoddy performance in MWP, there was a huge period of time where the metagame changed and many new sets and strategies were created. These include sets like Taunt + CM Keldeo and using sets that generally broke apart balance teams more. So Toxic Spikes, stallbreaking, and niche wallbreakers started getting more usage around this time. Due to this sudden metagame shift, more offensive teams were getting usage. Theoretically ground could capitalize off of this, but due to water still being prominent and other offensive types like Dragon getting more popular, it was not used that much. However one honorable mention is the fact that Sandless ground was used in this tournament and won a match. Player Attribute beat MJ in Week 4 of MPL4 by using a niche Ground build that tackled the bulky meta and offensive meta with pokemon in Quagsire and Gliscor. With no sand needed, Attribute had more options for Pokemon he could use, allowing him to patch up his weaknesses. It performed exactly as planned by beating normal, notable for being a very bulky type that can be hard to break.

Despite a rough start, Ground did end up doing significantly better than it did previously in MWP. While sandless did not become meta-defining it was still something that kept top players on their toes. Ground was finally worth thinking about as well with the rise of electric after Zeraora got released. This was the biggest break that ground had gotten in Gen7 history, and many people thought it was definitely a threat.

MWP2 - This tournament has recently concluded and also uses the current banlist.

Now that Tapu Bulu had began to run slower sets that didn't use a Choice Scarf, Ground did not have to worry nearly as much about getting swept by Fairy, although Azumarill still needed to be accounted for. After being used 11 times in the tournament, it felt almost as if history repeated itself as the type performed rather poorly despite its high expectations. This time around, it got counter teamed by unfavorable MU's that not even the best of players could work around. On the bright side, sandless Ground was the main way Ground was represented in this tournament, and while it did not perform as well as many wished, it still showed how far Ground had come in the metagame.

Conclusion - Over the years Ground was considered a niche type that wasn't often thought about, but now it has slowly risen in usage and has adapted to metagame trends. While it may not still be as consistent or good as Fairy and Psychic, it has definitely shown that it can put in work at even top level play.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
Ground followed in the footsteps of its ORAS days and generally stayed as a weather based team. Hippowdon and Excadrill were essential and using Ground any other way was often seen as taboo. Landorus did not always run Gravity but eventually started to use it by the time USM came around. Dugtrio was also very important as people realized that it could check the ever so dominant Scarf Tapu Bulu with its access to Sludge Wave and ability in Arena Trap. While on paper this sounded great, but as time went on it would soon fall of as metagame trends progressed. Gastrodon was not seen as viable at all in the beginning of the generation, but thanks to later discoveries it soon found itself a spot as an important Pokemon for Ground teams. All in all, Ground was very basic and not as spread out in teambuilding as it would be in USUM. That being said it still had a solid archetype and a few options that were used here and there, such as Mamoswine, landorus-i or t, and Garchomp, although they varied in usability. This is what the viability rankings looked like by the end of SM: http://prntscr.com/msr8fd

USM - Ground would still follow the same trend it did in early SM until the metagame shift that happened after MWP1. The new wallbreaking metagame meant that Ground needed to catch up and use something new that would allow them to work well in this metagame. The answer would be found in MPL4, when Attribute and Charmflash used sandless Ground Stall teams that beat their respective opponents. While Ground stall didn't catch on, Sandless ground did, and many people started experimenting with new sets and teams with the many possibilities ground had to offer. Pokemon like Nidoking, Krookodile, Mega-Steelix, Gliscor, and Diggersby suddenly saw more usage on ground teams and different sets for Excadrill and Landorus were used to help them adapt as well. Dugtrio also heavily fell in usage, but is still represented as one of the best Pokemon the type has to offer. This major shift in the Ground metagame made people initially think it could be one of the best types in the game, up there with psychic and fairy. While it is still debated how good the type is (not as much anymore due to the conclusion of MWP2), Ground definitely saw one of the biggest teambuilding changes in the Gen 7 metagame.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on ground in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Attribute:

Q:
"What was your reasoning for using Stall Ground during MPL4?"

A: "After seeing the Charmflash vs Jase Duken game where Charmflash brought stall ground, I was inspired to build my own since the concept of stall ground seemed cool to me. I also noticed that my opponent, MJ, had a lot of replays using normal, so I thought this would be the opportunity to bring it."

Q: "What is your current opinion on Ground right now?"

A: "Average"

Q: "Any reasoning for that opinion?"

A: "Ground is generally weak to too many common types in the metagame"

Havens:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Ground right now?"

A: "I think it's underrated"

Q: "Any reasoning for that opinion?"

A: "The rise of mega steelix is actually very good for ground, it's not an autoloss for fairy anymore. Sandless Ground basically replaces Sand Ground as the best archetype and is pretty much better because of that."

Decem:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Ground right now?"

A: "I think it's underrated"

Q: "Any reasoning for that opinion?"

A: "I feel like Ground has even mus but that's just me."

General Opinion from others:

After talking to other members of the chat room as well as other staff members, it is evident that a large portion of the community thinks Ground is an underrated type, and most agree that its most troubling flaw is how it loses many common MU's to standard types like Water and Psychic.

My own thoughts on the matter:

After doing this research and looking at how metagame trends heavily affected Ground, I actually grew surprised at how Ground managed to appear a lot more at tournaments than other lesser used types (Fire, Fighting, Ice, etc.), especially during the early days of the generation. Despite not having the best tournament results to back up its defining qualities, I still think its definitely a type that should be thought about when teambuilding. I believe that Ground is a pretty alright type.

Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is underrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!


A big thank you to everyone who helped make this post, especially: Eien, Attribute, Havens, Chaitanya, and Decem.

There will be another type retrospective next week! Let me know if you want me to cover anything else that you feel is important in a retrospective like this.
I love this so much! I had no idea about Sandless Ground! I'm going to have to try that out soon! After all, Sand doesn't exactly do much for Ground besides Excadrill's Sand Rush ability.

You should do one on Ice! I think that'll be pretty cool! (Apologies for the low-hanging fruit)
 
I think Buzzwole is currently a must-have on mono-bug teams. It's one of the most reliable revenge killers with scarf, and with beast boost, Unless it is dealt with in 1-2 turns, there is no stopping it from sweeping major parts of most teams. Here's the current set I run:
Buzzwole @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Superpower
- Ice Punch

I used to run Poison Jab instead of Ice Punch for Fairy coverage, but I don't use it right now because I run poison jab on Aranquanid and run Mega Scizor. If you switch smartly into frail mons or unsuspecting users who don't expect Buzzwole to be scarfed, you can quickly set up attack with beast boost and sweep away most teams. I don't see it that frequently, but I've used it so effectively that I feel like more people should use it (or perhaps I want to keep it to myself ;) ).
Let me know your thoughts on it!
I would argue that as a general revenge killer, Heracross is a better choice.

Buzzwole falls in an unfortunate speed tier, falling just short of the likes of Zeraora and Mega Aerodactyl, as well as most common scarfers and speed boosting sweepers. While Heracross is not wildly faster, it does outspeed the aforementioned threats and more, which Buzzword fails to. In another thread, you claim that Buzzwole makes up for it's middling speed with superior bulk. While I do agree that Buzzword has tremendous physical bulk, I do not believe it is significant enough uninvested to be worth losing the crucial speed from using Heracross instead (though if you have some calcs, please do share them with me).
As far as damage goes, Buzzwole has higher attack but Heracross has better STAB moves in Close Combat and Megahorn.

Don't get me wrong, I do like Buzzwole. It can be great for easing the dragon matchup. However, Heracross fills the role of revenge killer better, and has the added benefit of trapping Victini, a massive threat to bug teams. Thus, I cannot agree that Buzzwole is a "must-have" on bug teams.
 

Namranan

:)))))))))))
For the second iteration of "A history of..." I decided to look at a type that can be polarizing at times in the metagame, that type would be none other then: Bug

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Bug.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/volcarona.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/armaldo.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/galvantula.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/araquanid.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/scizor-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/buzzwole.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/heracross.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pinsir-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Bug.png


General Overview:
Bug has always been a popular choice among casual players and can initially be seen as a strong type. However, competitively it has flaws that theoretically should hold it back, and yet it still remains popular. Lets take a deeper look into how Bug has done in the meta over the years.

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - As a brief reminder, during this tournament Mega Medicham was banned (mid-way) while Magearna and Shadow Tag were still allowed. Also this is SM and not USM which means Kommo-o didn't have a Z-move and Blacephelon didn't exist, among other things.

Bug was brought a total of 17 times during the tournament and ended up going positive with an over 50% winrate. Prior to the Week 5 Mega Medicham ban, Bug was brought 8 times and only won twice. Disregarding hax, the replays showed that bug often struggled to find openings for one of its sweepers to come in and often had to either sack something or make hard predictions. Even when it had the advantageous matchup, good players made it difficult for Bug to get an opportunity to safely attack the opponent. This and Bug's nearly nonexistent defensive core lead to it being easily pressured and forced out by good players making it inconsistent to effectively win with.

After the Mega Medicham ban, Bug did astronomically better than it did prior. It gained a 7-2 record for the remainder of the tournament and had the highest winrate of all the types after the ban of Megacham. It can be inferred that due to Mega-Medicham no longer threatening Steel or Water as much, the meta began to shift towards those types getting more attention. Due to Bug having a good matchup against these types (depending on the Mega Evolution you picked), Bug became a great anti-meta choice to use.

I interviewed Monotype extraordinaire 1 True Lycan about why he used Bug in this tournament, and his response was that not only was Bug a type that not many people were experienced with at the time, but it also beat a lot of the good types in the metagame. In his match vs Lax, 1 True Lycan almost won against Lax's Magearna fairy team but was unfortunately haxed. This does, however, show just how potent Bug could have been in this tournament, and its results after the Megacham ban display this very clearly.

Overall, Bug made a shockingly good splash in the beginning of the Metagame, outperforming a lot of other types.

Also just a quick note since this section is particularly long, Psychium Z and Firium Z Volcarona were both used in this tournament as well as Araquanid being used as a sponge for Fire-type attacks. Also, all the mega's received usage except for Mega-Beedrill. Heracross helped with the Water and Steel matchups while Pinsir helped against more frail offensive teams. Mega Scizor also showed up and helped against fairy teams, and was generally a force to be reckoned with.


MWP - During this tour, USUM was just released and both Shadow Tag and Magearna were banned. However, Nagandel was still allowed during the first 3 weeks.

Naganadel made Bug unusable during the first two weeks, which is reflected by the fact that no one used Bug until after Naganadel was banned. Once naganadel was banned, it still took bug a while to find some success and even then it suffered from a lot of the same problems it did in the MPL3. Due to the fragility of a lot of Bug's mons, and lack of defensive core synergy, Bug needed to be played almost perfectly if the user wanted the win, even in advantageous matchups. Bug did not do very well in this tour either, although it did end up winning the entire tournament in a match between Feliburn and Ima. This match highlighted how good offensively Bug can be if handled by a great player, even being able to beat a great offensive type in Dragon. Besides this, however, Bug was very underwhelming throughout the tournament, with other notable users being Leru and Ima (ironically).

MPL4 - This tour follows the normal banlist that we have today. Also, Zeraora got released midway.

This was a terrible tournament for Bug. Not only did the rise of Flying make it significantly harder for Bug teams to work, but now with more metagame shifts, specifically the rise of wallbreakers and hazard usage, making less of its mega evolutions usable. Mega Heracross did not receive usage and while the teams still did experiment with a few mons like vikavolt, in the end Bug struggled to keep up with the other types. This made bug become the only type in the tournament to go winless, as none of its users were able to get it to win a single match.

MWP2 - This tournament has recently concluded and also uses the current banlist.

After the shoddy performance in MPL4, it could be inferred that many people did not want to try their luck with such an inconsistant type that required near perfect play. Despite gaining a new tool in trapper araquanid to deal with balance teams, it was not used often and still often got pressured or taken down when it was. Bug was only brought a record low of 5 times in this tournament and only won twice. The three times it lost was due to the types it was going against utilizing hazards effectively, making it hard for armaldo to spin them away and to actually get any of their offensive pokemon in without taking lots of damage. Due to this, it got easily pressured by types like Poison. However, it also suffered from the rise of electric teams, as Tapu Koko served as a massive threat to the type on electric teams. It also doesn't help that both of its popular mega evolutions at the time (Scizor and Pinsir) both struggled to do well against the type, making it extremely difficult for bug to beat electric offensively. Fotunately, it was still able to win twice, but they had good matchups in those situations (Steel and Fairy to be exact). Sadly after all of the things bug has gone through, it still underperformed in this tournament and countinues the downward spiral the type is going through.

Conclusion - Despite being initially a great anti-meta type, bug has fallen off constantly tour after tour because of its inconsistancy and needing to be played very precisely. These qualities not only made it hard to win with the type, but also slightly hard to be creative with. Despite this, there was still many kinds of bug teams used throughout bug's lifetime in Gen 7, but in the end it still ended up being known as a poor type in tournament usage.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
Bug had a lot of variety at the beginning of the generation once all the quickbans were finished. This meant that most of its mega's were used (only Mega Beedrill remained the worst Mega to use). Mega Heracross teams were able to take on more fat types like Water and Steel due to its movepool and powerful STAB moves and attack stat. Mega Scizor teams tended to use Araquanid to sponge the fire attacks that were omnipresent in the metagame. That mon did a great job doing that, but didn't do a lot in return, which is why it was usually limited to being used only with Mega-scizor and not much else. Mega Scizor itself helped take on offensive types like Fairy, and could be a huge threat to any balance team during the lategame. Finally Mega Pinsir was considered at the time the best mega to use on Bug teams. Its good speed and great attack and STAB combonation allowed it to hit many types hard and also threatened a lot of offensive teams. The only thing that held this Pokemon back was its massive weakness to stealth rocks, and not being able to switch in easily into battle as a result, where the previous two had a slightly easier time. Beyond the mega evolutions, Pokemon like Yanmega and base scizor and heracross saw some usage as they still performed very well as revenge killers. Of course there is also volcarona, who is the main selling point of bug when it comes to deiciding whether or not its worth using. Its ability to completely shut down certain teams once it gets set up was an amazing thing that many looked at with awe. With the advent of Z-moves it also got a great nuke that allowed it to deal with mons it couldn't OHKO with a normal move, such as Mega-Venusaur (Firium Z) or Toxapex (Psychium Z). Webs + Volcarona was what made bug a force to be reckoned with. Bug also needed spinners to help its HO webs playstyle, and for a while armaldo and forretress were used interchangebly until it was discovered that Armaldo could help deal with certain threats (namely victini) using a certian defensive spread, making forretress fall to the wayside. This is what the viability rankings looked like by the end of SM: http://prntscr.com/mwhw1b

USM - Similar to Ground, Bug would see a few changes in this metagame due to some changes that it got. On the release of USUM, people tried to get ribombee to work as an alternative web setter for bug, but found that it was ultimately a little too niche and that Galvantula's STAB's were too valuable to pass up for Ribombee. On the other hand, Araquanid also got webs, so people tried to use it over Galvantula and while it initially did work, it eventually also fell to the wayside as a new trapper set would eventually take over. This trapper set helped Bug teams deal with the new annoying walls in Celesteela and Toxapex, as it would trap them with spider web, change their typing with soak, Poison them with Toxic, and recover its health with Rest. Thanks to its surprisingly decent defensive typing and bulk, it was able to pull this off against many walls. Some even called for Araquanid to become an S rank mon after this set was further used, but eventually araquanid just stagnated as a very good choice for bug teams. Bug eventually did become a lot more linear as the generation went on, as it couldn't afford to run the options it did before thanks to new threats in Blacephelon, Kommo-o (Z-move), and to an extent Stakataka. While these new threats made bug harder to be successful with, the type is still able to perform some of its niches, ableit in a more streamlined way. It is possible for there to be more sets eventually discovered near the tailend of this generation as well, so maybe it will recieve the major change that Ground did, only time will tell. For now though, Bug has become more restricted and only uses 2 mega evolutions in Scizor and Pinsir, and must always be wary of Flying due to its huge influence on the metagame.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on Bug in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Attribute:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Bug in the current metagame?"

A: "Average"

Q: "What do you think holds Bug back?"

A: "It has generally weak Pokemon and its weakness to stealth rock hurts it a ton. It also doesn't have very good removal"

Q: "What do you think bug needs in Gen 8?"

A: "a good offensive mon with mega lopunny speed or something that uses magic guard . "

Decem:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Bug right now?"

A: "its a decent offensive type and the best form of webs offense with powerful setup sweepers like mega pinsir, scizor, and volcarona to take advantage of them."

Q: "What do you think holds bug back?"

A: "rocks weakness kinda sucks "

Q: "What do you think bug needs in gen 8?"

A: "they're probably not gonna change the rocks weakness too much so more offensive threats "

Eien:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Bug in the current metagame?"

A: "It's always been in the anti-meta category, and the meta right now is the best it's ever been for Bug with Flying dropping in usage. Bug's problem is always it lacks the ability to fight everything; where some types would have matchups they struggle in, Bug would just lose to some matchups, which is why it's never been anywhere near the top. However, it can beat every type that is good with the right tech and can choose specific sets and Pokemon to beat what you expect your opponent to use. It's a solid cteam option that doesn't have the reliability to be good on its own"

MetaRiolu7:

Q: "What is your current opinion on Bug right now?"

A: "I feel as in right now bug has kinda lost it's edge and is not really as strong as it used to be"

General Opinion from others:

It is very apparent that many people in the Monotype chatroom of PS! think that Bug is a very good type, but its tournament results and weaknesses pointed out in this post say otherwise. By no means am I saying that these people are wrong, but I do think reading this post will help them understand why some people don't think Bug is all that.

My own thoughts on the matter:

Going into doing the research for this post, I expected bug to do a lot differently than what I got. Unlike some types, it has gotten tournament usage in all 4 major monotype team tournaments. Its teambuilding progress is kind of cool to look at, I was shocked to learn that there was a time where using mega-heracross was actually somewhat effective. However as time went on the type shows that its dragging its feet when it comes to results. I personally think that Bug could do better, but right now I think its pretty subpar.

Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is underrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!


A big thank you to everyone who helped make this post, especially: Feitan the Steam, Attribute, Eien, 1 True Lycan, Metariolu7, and Decem.

There will be another type retrospective next week! Let me know if you want me to cover anything else that you feel is important in a retrospective like this.
 
Last edited:
For the second iteration of "A history of..." I decided to look at a type that can be polarizing at times in the metagame, that type would be none other then: Bug

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Bug.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/volcarona.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/armaldo.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/galvantula.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/araquanid.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/scizor-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/buzzwole.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/heracross.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pinsir-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Bug.png


General Overview:
Bug has always been a popular choice among casual players and can initially be seen as a strong type. However, competitively it has flaws that theoretically should hold it back, and yet it still remains popular. Lets take a deeper look into how Bug has done in the meta over the years.

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - As a brief reminder, during this tournament Mega Medicham was banned (mid-way) while Magearna and Shadow Tag were still allowed. Also this is SM and not USM which means Kommo-o didn't have a Z-move and Blacephelon didn't exist, among other things.

Bug was brought a total of 17 times during the tournament and ended up going positive with an over 50% winrate. Prior to the Week 5 Mega Medicham ban, Bug was brought 8 times and only won twice. Disregarding hax, the replays showed that bug often struggled to find openings for one of its sweepers to come in and often had to either sack something or make hard predictions. Even when it had the advantageous matchup, good players made it difficult for Bug to get an opportunity to safely attack the opponent. This and Bug's nearly nonexistent defensive core lead to it being easily pressured and forced out by good players making it inconsistent to effectively win with.

After the Mega Medicham ban, Bug did astronomically better than it did prior. It gained a 7-2 record for the remainder of the tournament and had the highest winrate of all the types after the ban of Megacham. It can be inferred that due to Mega-Medicham no longer threatening Steel or Water as much, the meta began to shift towards those types getting more attention. Due to Bug having a good matchup against these types (depending on the Mega Evolution you picked), Bug became a great anti-meta choice to use.

I interviewed Monotype extraordinaire 1 True Lycan about why he used Bug in this tournament, and his response was that not only was Bug a type that not many people were experienced with at the time, but it also beat a lot of the good types in the metagame. In his match vs Lax, 1 True Lycan almost won against Lax's Magearna fairy team but was unfortunately haxed. This does, however, show just how potent Bug could have been in this tournament, and its results after the Megacham ban display this very clearly.

Overall, Bug made a shockingly good splash in the beginning of the Metagame, outperforming a lot of other types.

Also just a quick note since this section is particularly long, Psychium Z and Firium Z Volcarona were both used in this tournament as well as Araquanid being used as a sponge for Fire-type attacks. Also, all the mega's received usage except for Mega-Beedrill. Heracross helped with the Water and Steel matchups while Pinsir helped against more frail offensive teams. Mega Scizor also showed up and helped against fairy teams, and was generally a force to be reckoned with.


MWP - During this tour, USUM was just released and both Shadow Tag and Magearna were banned. However, Nagandel was still allowed during the first 3 weeks.

Naganadel made Bug unusable during the first two weeks, which is reflected by the fact that no one used Bug until after Naganadel was banned. Once naganadel was banned, it still took bug a while to find some success and even then it suffered from a lot of the same problems it did in the MPL3. Due to the fragility of a lot of Bug's mons, and lack of defensive core synergy, Bug needed to be played almost perfectly if the user wanted the win, even in advantageous matchups. Bug did not do very well in this tour either, although it did end up winning the entire tournament in a match between Feliburn and Ima. This match highlighted how good offensively Bug can be if handled by a great player, even being able to beat a great offensive type in Dragon. Besides this, however, Bug was very underwhelming throughout the tournament, with other notable users being Leru and Ima (ironically).

MPL4 - This tour follows the normal banlist that we have today. Also, Zeraora got released midway.

This was a terrible tournament for Bug. Not only did the rise of Flying make it significantly harder for Bug teams to work, but now with more metagame shifts, specifically the rise of wallbreakers and hazard usage, making less of its mega evolutions usable. Mega Heracross did not receive usage and while the teams still did experiment with a few mons like vikavolt, in the end Bug struggled to keep up with the other types. This made bug become the only type in the tournament to go winless, as none of its users were able to get it to win a single match.

MWP2 - This tournament has recently concluded and also uses the current banlist.

After the shoddy performance in MPL4, it could be inferred that many people did not want to try their luck with such an inconsistant type that required near perfect play. Despite gaining a new tool in trapper araquanid to deal with balance teams, it was not used often and still often got pressured or taken down when it was. Bug was only brought a record low of 5 times in this tournament and only won twice. The three times it lost was due to the types it was going against utilizing hazards effectively, making it hard for armaldo to spin them away and to actually get any of their offensive pokemon in without taking lots of damage. Due to this, it got easily pressured by types like Poison. However, it also suffered from the rise of electric teams, as Tapu Koko served as a massive threat to the type on electric teams. It also doesn't help that both of its popular mega evolutions at the time (Scizor and Pinsir) both struggled to do well against the type, making it extremely difficult for bug to beat electric offensively. Fotunately, it was still able to win twice, but they had good matchups in those situations (Steel and Fairy to be exact). Sadly after all of the things bug has gone through, it still underperformed in this tournament and countinues the downward spiral the type is going through.

Conclusion - Despite being initially a great anti-meta type, bug has fallen off constantly tour after tour because of its inconsistancy and needing to be played very precisely. These qualities not only made it hard to win with the type, but also slightly hard to be creative with. Despite this, there was still many kinds of bug teams used throughout bug's lifetime in Gen 7, but in the end it still ended up being known as a poor type in tournament usage.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
Bug had a lot of variety at the beginning of the generation once all the quickbans were finished. This meant that most of its mega's were used (only Mega Beedrill remained the worst Mega to use). Mega Heracross teams were able to take on more fat types like Water and Steel due to its movepool and powerful STAB moves and attack stat. Mega Scizor teams tended to use Araquanid to sponge the fire attacks that were omnipresent in the metagame. That mon did a great job doing that, but didn't do a lot in return, which is why it was usually limited to being used only with Mega-scizor and not much else. Mega Scizor itself helped take on offensive types like Fairy, and could be a huge threat to any balance team during the lategame. Finally Mega Pinsir was considered at the time the best mega to use on Bug teams. Its good speed and great attack and STAB combonation allowed it to hit many types hard and also threatened a lot of offensive teams. The only thing that held this Pokemon back was its massive weakness to stealth rocks, and not being able to switch in easily into battle as a result, where the previous two had a slightly easier time. Beyond the mega evolutions, Pokemon like Yanmega and base scizor and heracross saw some usage as they still performed very well as revenge killers. Of course there is also volcarona, who is the main selling point of bug when it comes to deiciding whether or not its worth using. Its ability to completely shut down certain teams once it gets set up was an amazing thing that many looked at with awe. With the advent of Z-moves it also got a great nuke that allowed it to deal with mons it couldn't OHKO with a normal move, such as Mega-Venusaur (Firium Z) or Toxapex (Psychium Z). Webs + Volcarona was what made bug a force to be reckoned with. Bug also needed spinners to help its HO webs playstyle, and for a while armaldo and forretress were used interchangebly until it was discovered that Armaldo could help deal with certain threats (namely victini) using a certian defensive spread, making forretress fall to the wayside. This is what the viability rankings looked like by the end of SM: http://prntscr.com/mvyr2g

USM - Similar to Ground, Bug would see a few changes in this metagame due to some changes that it got. On the release of USUM, people tried to get ribombee to work as an alternative web setter for bug, but found that it was ultimately a little too niche and that Galvantula's STAB's were too valuable to pass up for Ribombee. On the other hand, Araquanid also got webs, so people tried to use it over Galvantula and while it initially did work, it eventually also fell to the wayside as a new trapper set would eventually take over. This trapper set helped Bug teams deal with the new annoying walls in Celesteela and Toxapex, as it would trap them with spider web, change their typing with soak, Poison them with Toxic, and recover its health with Rest. Thanks to its surprisingly decent defensive typing and bulk, it was able to pull this off against many walls. Some even called for Araquanid to become an S rank mon after this set was further used, but eventually araquanid just stagnated as a very good choice for bug teams. Bug eventually did become a lot more linear as the generation went on, as it couldn't afford to run the options it did before thanks to new threats in Blacephelon, Kommo-o (Z-move), and to an extent Stakataka. While these new threats made bug harder to be successful with, the type is still able to perform some of its niches, ableit in a more streamlined way. It is possible for there to be more sets eventually discovered near the tailend of this generation as well, so maybe it will recieve the major change that Ground did, only time will tell. For now though, Bug has become more restricted and only uses 2 mega evolutions in Scizor and Pinsir, and must always be wary of Flying due to its huge influence on the metagame.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on ground in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Attribute:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Bug in the current metagame?"

A: "Average"

Q: "What do you think holds Bug back?"

A: "It has generally weak Pokemon and its weakness to stealth rock hurts it a ton. It also doesn't have very good removal"

Q: "What do you think bug needs in Gen 8?"

A: "Probably a bulkier mon with Mega Lopunny Speed with magic guard or something. "

Decem:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Bug right now?"

A: "its a decent offensive type and the best form of webs offense with powerful setup sweepers like mega pinsir, scizor, and volcarona to take advantage of them."

Q: "What do you think holds bug back?"

A: "rocks weakness kinda sucks "

Q: "What do you think bug needs in gen 8?"

A: "they're probably not gonna change the rocks weakness too much so more offensive threats "

Eien:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Bug in the current metagame?"

A: "It's always been in the anti-meta category, and the meta right now is the best it's ever been for Bug with Flying dropping in usage. Bug's problem is always it lacks the ability to fight everything; where some types would have matchups they struggle in, Bug would just lose to some matchups, which is why it's never been anywhere near the top. However, it can beat every type that is good with the right tech and can choose specific sets and Pokemon to beat what you expect your opponent to use. It's a solid cteam option that doesn't have the reliability to be good on its own"

MetaRiolu7:

Q: "What is your current opinion on Bug right now?"

A: "I feel as in right now bug has kinda lost it's edge and is not really as strong as it used to be"

General Opinion from others:

It is very apparent that many people in the Monotype chatroom of PS! think that Bug is a very good type, but its tournament results and weaknesses pointed out in this post say otherwise. By no means am I saying that these people are wrong, but I do think reading this post will help them understand why some people don't think Bug is all that.

My own thoughts on the matter:

Going into doing the research for this post, I expected bug to do a lot differently than what I got. Unlike some types, it has gotten tournament usage in all 4 major monotype team tournaments. Its teambuilding progress is kind of cool to look at, I was shocked to learn that there was a time where using mega-heracross was actually somewhat effective. However as time went on the type shows that its dragging its feet when it comes to results. I personally think that Bug could do better, but right now I think its pretty subpar.

Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is underrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!


A big thank you to everyone who helped make this post, especially: Feitan the Steam, Attribute, Eien, 1 True Lycan, Metariolu7, and Decem.

There will be another type retrospective next week! Let me know if you want me to cover anything else that you feel is important in a retrospective like this.
Good job Nam, As a bug player from Gen 5 and 6, I couldn't convert over to 7 easily. Bug has always been easy to play since it covers two more popular types easily (Psychic and dark) and its not really hard to figure out hyper offensive

The only thing i can see fixing bug is to get a mon like Celesteela or Skarmory, aka one that can defog/rapid spin rocks away, ACTUALLY tank hits, and can cause its own form of disruption (like Celesteela and its leech seed)

Id prefer this theoretical bug mon to be bug steel, that way it only fears fire... and has a nice switch in buddy with Araquanid who tanks fire (but not flying)

Another mon that would be good is one that can take out electric types easily.., Specifically Zapdos whos bulk is so good that it can beat most of Bug type by itself except for Heracross. As the meta currently is I have loads of trouble facing types like Electric, Fairy (if it uses BD Azumarill and kills my Scizor) and Dragon, while fearing its usual mons of Steel, Flying, Fire and Water.

Lastly I know people are gonna say "What about a Flygon mega that's Bug/Dragon" and im gonna say that wont help much unless it gets buffed like to the point of being Lopunny mega or Pidgeot mega (Aka really strong and fast or specially strong and fast) Bug/Dragon isn't a decent type on paper... it loses one weakness (fire) and exchanges it for 3 (Fairy, Ice and Dragon)
 
As always, thank you very much for writing this post!

I don't know why, but to me Bug has always been a fun type to use. Maybe, it's because it has access to some very cool, strong Pkm, such as Volcarona, Heracross, or Scizor. Or maybe, it's because people like me view it as a "underdog" with great potential.
Either way, I agree with it being a decent type. Ever since gen 5 (or maybe even back to gen 4), it got slowly better and better. I feel like GF generally did a good job at giving monotype many interesting tools in gen 7 even if it wasn't their intention. With Araquanid, we finally have a Bug Pkm that actually "resists" Fire due to its Water Bubble ability and which can hit back quite hard (it also has a pretty cool design!). I only wish it had a more reliable recovery move such as Recover or something like Strengh Sap to better function as a switch-in for Fire or strong special moves or to have some momentum because while it heals itself, an opposing physical attacker becomes weaker and weaker, thus whoever you want to send in likely won't be that much hurt. Other than that, Araquanid suffers under the moveslot syndrom. Whoever invented the trapper set, chapeau, it's quite good at it, but wished it had a free slot for using Liquidation.
Anyway, you then have Pheromosa (which would likely be a good Spinner and sweeper in an hyper offensive team, though, you can't use it in monotype anymore) and Buzzwole, which can deal with Dragon and can tank some Stone Edge from Terrakion. While I'm at it, Buzzwole has an amazing bulk, which might be useful if someone wants to build a defensive core. If it were able to learn Defog, that would be amazing as you no longer have to rely on Scizor if you don't want to use a Spinner.
As for Golisopod, its bulk is quite similar to Mega Scizor and it would be decent if it had another ability... Giving it Tough Claws would turn him into a pretty terrifying (priority) sweeper (especially after Swords Dance and Life Orb) and design wise, it would make sense, so... one can hope GF will give it a try.
Vikavolt is another interesting addition to Bug, in my opinion. It might form a decent defensive core with Araquanid and Mega Scizor/Buzzwole as it resists Electric and has access to Roost. With a Calm nature, it's able to tank most attacks from Electric, such as Choice Spec Dazzling Gleam from Tapu Koko or Psychic from a Modest + Life Orb Alola Raichu. Without Stealth Rock, it also doesn't have much problems with uninvested Heat Wave from Zapdos or invested Hurricane Tornadus-T. Besides, it can spread para with Discharge or gain momentum with Volt Switch and has decent coverage options with Energy Ball and Hidden Power Ice. Giving up one of its move for Toxic is also an option to punish Pkm such as Zapdos.
As for Ribombee, it's not bad as it can deal with most Dragon Pkm and it's quite fast, which allows you to use Sticky Web, but you likely have to ask yourself if the opportunity cost is enough for you to use it.

For gen 8, I hope we get a Bug Pkm able to use Trick Room or Fake Out (though, this is more for monotype doubles)!
Ideally, Bug would want to have a Pkm that can reliably get rid of Stealth Rock and doesn't loose much momentum. I once created a custom ability for an Ice/Poison snail that is immune to all kind of Rock damage such as Sandstorm, Stone Edge, or Stealth Rock, and even get rid of the latter due to its special acid. Something like that would be pretty cool for Bug, but it's likely too good of an ability and I don't see GF doing that.
Anyway, I would like to see another Bug/Rock or Bug/Ground with reliable recovery option, one that wouldn't rely on Shell Smash to threaten Fire or Flying teams effectively because it can outspeed most Pkm. If a Bug/Rock Pkm could resist Fire or be even immune to it, that would be pretty good as you don't have to fear Charizard, Volcarona, or Victini that much, even if they've already set up.
A Bug Pkm that is able to summon Rain or Sand would be quite interesting as the former can support Swift Swim Armaldo and Araquanid while the latter can cancel out the sun. Bug/Rock would benefit from Sand due to increased Special Defense and a good recovery option in Palossand's healing signature move. If Bug were also to get something like a Sand Rush user, that would be good as it could function as an effective revenger or wall breaker.

Either way, if Bug wants to have more consistent results, it needs a good way to deal with Stealth Rock and have reliable recovery options. It also wants to have a reliable sponge for types it is weak to, in my opinion. Regenerator + U-Turn + useful defensive typing would be a good start. On the offensive side, it's pretty strong already, so I don't know what another Bug Pkm could do Volcarona, etc. couldn't do already. Maybe, a sweeper with Magic Guard? Bug/Dark or Bug/Ghost would combine well with this ability, as the secondary type can hit most types at least neutrally.
 
For the second iteration of "A history of..." I decided to look at a type that can be polarizing at times in the metagame, that type would be none other then: Bug

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Bug.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/volcarona.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/armaldo.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/galvantula.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/araquanid.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/scizor-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/buzzwole.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/heracross.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pinsir-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Bug.png


General Overview:
Bug has always been a popular choice among casual players and can initially be seen as a strong type. However, competitively it has flaws that theoretically should hold it back, and yet it still remains popular. Lets take a deeper look into how Bug has done in the meta over the years.

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - As a brief reminder, during this tournament Mega Medicham was banned (mid-way) while Magearna and Shadow Tag were still allowed. Also this is SM and not USM which means Kommo-o didn't have a Z-move and Blacephelon didn't exist, among other things.

Bug was brought a total of 17 times during the tournament and ended up going positive with an over 50% winrate. Prior to the Week 5 Mega Medicham ban, Bug was brought 8 times and only won twice. Disregarding hax, the replays showed that bug often struggled to find openings for one of its sweepers to come in and often had to either sack something or make hard predictions. Even when it had the advantageous matchup, good players made it difficult for Bug to get an opportunity to safely attack the opponent. This and Bug's nearly nonexistent defensive core lead to it being easily pressured and forced out by good players making it inconsistent to effectively win with.

After the Mega Medicham ban, Bug did astronomically better than it did prior. It gained a 7-2 record for the remainder of the tournament and had the highest winrate of all the types after the ban of Megacham. It can be inferred that due to Mega-Medicham no longer threatening Steel or Water as much, the meta began to shift towards those types getting more attention. Due to Bug having a good matchup against these types (depending on the Mega Evolution you picked), Bug became a great anti-meta choice to use.

I interviewed Monotype extraordinaire 1 True Lycan about why he used Bug in this tournament, and his response was that not only was Bug a type that not many people were experienced with at the time, but it also beat a lot of the good types in the metagame. In his match vs Lax, 1 True Lycan almost won against Lax's Magearna fairy team but was unfortunately haxed. This does, however, show just how potent Bug could have been in this tournament, and its results after the Megacham ban display this very clearly.

Overall, Bug made a shockingly good splash in the beginning of the Metagame, outperforming a lot of other types.

Also just a quick note since this section is particularly long, Psychium Z and Firium Z Volcarona were both used in this tournament as well as Araquanid being used as a sponge for Fire-type attacks. Also, all the mega's received usage except for Mega-Beedrill. Heracross helped with the Water and Steel matchups while Pinsir helped against more frail offensive teams. Mega Scizor also showed up and helped against fairy teams, and was generally a force to be reckoned with.


MWP - During this tour, USUM was just released and both Shadow Tag and Magearna were banned. However, Nagandel was still allowed during the first 3 weeks.

Naganadel made Bug unusable during the first two weeks, which is reflected by the fact that no one used Bug until after Naganadel was banned. Once naganadel was banned, it still took bug a while to find some success and even then it suffered from a lot of the same problems it did in the MPL3. Due to the fragility of a lot of Bug's mons, and lack of defensive core synergy, Bug needed to be played almost perfectly if the user wanted the win, even in advantageous matchups. Bug did not do very well in this tour either, although it did end up winning the entire tournament in a match between Feliburn and Ima. This match highlighted how good offensively Bug can be if handled by a great player, even being able to beat a great offensive type in Dragon. Besides this, however, Bug was very underwhelming throughout the tournament, with other notable users being Leru and Ima (ironically).

MPL4 - This tour follows the normal banlist that we have today. Also, Zeraora got released midway.

This was a terrible tournament for Bug. Not only did the rise of Flying make it significantly harder for Bug teams to work, but now with more metagame shifts, specifically the rise of wallbreakers and hazard usage, making less of its mega evolutions usable. Mega Heracross did not receive usage and while the teams still did experiment with a few mons like vikavolt, in the end Bug struggled to keep up with the other types. This made bug become the only type in the tournament to go winless, as none of its users were able to get it to win a single match.

MWP2 - This tournament has recently concluded and also uses the current banlist.

After the shoddy performance in MPL4, it could be inferred that many people did not want to try their luck with such an inconsistant type that required near perfect play. Despite gaining a new tool in trapper araquanid to deal with balance teams, it was not used often and still often got pressured or taken down when it was. Bug was only brought a record low of 5 times in this tournament and only won twice. The three times it lost was due to the types it was going against utilizing hazards effectively, making it hard for armaldo to spin them away and to actually get any of their offensive pokemon in without taking lots of damage. Due to this, it got easily pressured by types like Poison. However, it also suffered from the rise of electric teams, as Tapu Koko served as a massive threat to the type on electric teams. It also doesn't help that both of its popular mega evolutions at the time (Scizor and Pinsir) both struggled to do well against the type, making it extremely difficult for bug to beat electric offensively. Fotunately, it was still able to win twice, but they had good matchups in those situations (Steel and Fairy to be exact). Sadly after all of the things bug has gone through, it still underperformed in this tournament and countinues the downward spiral the type is going through.

Conclusion - Despite being initially a great anti-meta type, bug has fallen off constantly tour after tour because of its inconsistancy and needing to be played very precisely. These qualities not only made it hard to win with the type, but also slightly hard to be creative with. Despite this, there was still many kinds of bug teams used throughout bug's lifetime in Gen 7, but in the end it still ended up being known as a poor type in tournament usage.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
Bug had a lot of variety at the beginning of the generation once all the quickbans were finished. This meant that most of its mega's were used (only Mega Beedrill remained the worst Mega to use). Mega Heracross teams were able to take on more fat types like Water and Steel due to its movepool and powerful STAB moves and attack stat. Mega Scizor teams tended to use Araquanid to sponge the fire attacks that were omnipresent in the metagame. That mon did a great job doing that, but didn't do a lot in return, which is why it was usually limited to being used only with Mega-scizor and not much else. Mega Scizor itself helped take on offensive types like Fairy, and could be a huge threat to any balance team during the lategame. Finally Mega Pinsir was considered at the time the best mega to use on Bug teams. Its good speed and great attack and STAB combonation allowed it to hit many types hard and also threatened a lot of offensive teams. The only thing that held this Pokemon back was its massive weakness to stealth rocks, and not being able to switch in easily into battle as a result, where the previous two had a slightly easier time. Beyond the mega evolutions, Pokemon like Yanmega and base scizor and heracross saw some usage as they still performed very well as revenge killers. Of course there is also volcarona, who is the main selling point of bug when it comes to deiciding whether or not its worth using. Its ability to completely shut down certain teams once it gets set up was an amazing thing that many looked at with awe. With the advent of Z-moves it also got a great nuke that allowed it to deal with mons it couldn't OHKO with a normal move, such as Mega-Venusaur (Firium Z) or Toxapex (Psychium Z). Webs + Volcarona was what made bug a force to be reckoned with. Bug also needed spinners to help its HO webs playstyle, and for a while armaldo and forretress were used interchangebly until it was discovered that Armaldo could help deal with certain threats (namely victini) using a certian defensive spread, making forretress fall to the wayside. This is what the viability rankings looked like by the end of SM: http://prntscr.com/mwhw1b

USM - Similar to Ground, Bug would see a few changes in this metagame due to some changes that it got. On the release of USUM, people tried to get ribombee to work as an alternative web setter for bug, but found that it was ultimately a little too niche and that Galvantula's STAB's were too valuable to pass up for Ribombee. On the other hand, Araquanid also got webs, so people tried to use it over Galvantula and while it initially did work, it eventually also fell to the wayside as a new trapper set would eventually take over. This trapper set helped Bug teams deal with the new annoying walls in Celesteela and Toxapex, as it would trap them with spider web, change their typing with soak, Poison them with Toxic, and recover its health with Rest. Thanks to its surprisingly decent defensive typing and bulk, it was able to pull this off against many walls. Some even called for Araquanid to become an S rank mon after this set was further used, but eventually araquanid just stagnated as a very good choice for bug teams. Bug eventually did become a lot more linear as the generation went on, as it couldn't afford to run the options it did before thanks to new threats in Blacephelon, Kommo-o (Z-move), and to an extent Stakataka. While these new threats made bug harder to be successful with, the type is still able to perform some of its niches, ableit in a more streamlined way. It is possible for there to be more sets eventually discovered near the tailend of this generation as well, so maybe it will recieve the major change that Ground did, only time will tell. For now though, Bug has become more restricted and only uses 2 mega evolutions in Scizor and Pinsir, and must always be wary of Flying due to its huge influence on the metagame.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on ground in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Attribute:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Bug in the current metagame?"

A: "Average"

Q: "What do you think holds Bug back?"

A: "It has generally weak Pokemon and its weakness to stealth rock hurts it a ton. It also doesn't have very good removal"

Q: "What do you think bug needs in Gen 8?"

A: "a good offensive mon with mega lopunny speed or something that uses magic guard . "

Decem:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Bug right now?"

A: "its a decent offensive type and the best form of webs offense with powerful setup sweepers like mega pinsir, scizor, and volcarona to take advantage of them."

Q: "What do you think holds bug back?"

A: "rocks weakness kinda sucks "

Q: "What do you think bug needs in gen 8?"

A: "they're probably not gonna change the rocks weakness too much so more offensive threats "

Eien:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Bug in the current metagame?"

A: "It's always been in the anti-meta category, and the meta right now is the best it's ever been for Bug with Flying dropping in usage. Bug's problem is always it lacks the ability to fight everything; where some types would have matchups they struggle in, Bug would just lose to some matchups, which is why it's never been anywhere near the top. However, it can beat every type that is good with the right tech and can choose specific sets and Pokemon to beat what you expect your opponent to use. It's a solid cteam option that doesn't have the reliability to be good on its own"

MetaRiolu7:

Q: "What is your current opinion on Bug right now?"

A: "I feel as in right now bug has kinda lost it's edge and is not really as strong as it used to be"

General Opinion from others:

It is very apparent that many people in the Monotype chatroom of PS! think that Bug is a very good type, but its tournament results and weaknesses pointed out in this post say otherwise. By no means am I saying that these people are wrong, but I do think reading this post will help them understand why some people don't think Bug is all that.

My own thoughts on the matter:

Going into doing the research for this post, I expected bug to do a lot differently than what I got. Unlike some types, it has gotten tournament usage in all 4 major monotype team tournaments. Its teambuilding progress is kind of cool to look at, I was shocked to learn that there was a time where using mega-heracross was actually somewhat effective. However as time went on the type shows that its dragging its feet when it comes to results. I personally think that Bug could do better, but right now I think its pretty subpar.

Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is underrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!


A big thank you to everyone who helped make this post, especially: Feitan the Steam, Attribute, Eien, 1 True Lycan, Metariolu7, and Decem.

There will be another type retrospective next week! Let me know if you want me to cover anything else that you feel is important in a retrospective like this.
Thats a shame. Bug is actually probably my best team. I love playing it and I always do well with it.
 
Bug in gen 7 is really hurt by Koko and Celesteela, mons that are widely used and found in popular types (electric, fairy, steel and flying).
Zapdos is the main killer on Electric, a bulky Zapdos beats all mons except Heracross/Buzzwole (Stone edge) and Armaldo… other than those two mons he can wall your entire team

Steela also sucks unless you got some moxies off with Heracross, the main threat on Steel though is Heatran+ Celesteela (or Skarmory) core. This core counters 90% of bug mons.... The flying variant is much easier to handle cause you can see most checkdowns to volcarona switching in (such as the opponents Charizard for example)
 
Zapdos is the main killer on Electric, a bulky Zapdos beats all mons except Heracross/Buzzwole (Stone edge) and Armaldo… other than those two mons he can wall your entire team

Steela also sucks unless you got some moxies off with Heracross, the main threat on Steel though is Heatran+ Celesteela (or Skarmory) core. This core counters 90% of bug mons.... The flying variant is much easier to handle cause you can see most checkdowns to volcarona switching in (such as the opponents Charizard for example)
Zapdos was present in gen 6 as well and while I don't disagree with your statement, it could be worked around. Additionally, last gen it was run bulkier than it is this gen (sub toxic runs speed). The only thing bug has against Koko against either matchup is scarf Hera or manage to keep webs up which is hard against Rotom or Klefki. On the other hand, Koko has no switches on typical bug teams
 

Namranan

:)))))))))))
For the third iteration of "A history of..." I decided to look at a type that was once considered good and then went through a huge decline. This type is no other than: Normal

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Normal.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/chansey.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/porygon2.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/staraptor.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/porygonz.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/diggersby.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/lopunny-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pidgeot-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Normal.png


General Overview:
Normal was considered one of the best types early on in the generation, but as time progressed it began to fall out of favor, and the reasons for this are not what you would normally expect. So let us take a deeper look into how Normal has done in the meta over the years, and what caused its popularity and effectiveness to decline.

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - As a brief reminder, during this tournament Mega Medicham was banned (mid-way) while Magearna and Shadow Tag were still allowed. Also this is SM and not USM which means Kommo-o didn't have a Z-move and Blacephelon didn't exist, among other things. Specific to normal, Mega-Lopunny was not allowed due to it not being released yet.

Normal boasts the highest winrate in the entire tournament, however it was rarely used. Due to the fact that Mega-Pidgeot was the only mega normal could use, some of its MU's were harder than they normally are. This is notable against steel teams and dark teams, which Normal usually has an easier time with when they have Mega-lopunny. However, as this was the beginning of the metagame, PorygonZ saw a lot of usage and performed very well in this tour. rnbs vs Pak is a good example of how this pokemon was able to turn the tides of a match quickly. PorygonZ also had a lot more going on about it but that will be covered later in the teambuilding section.

Overall normal, depsite missing Mega-lopunny, performed very well in its first debut in the generation.


MWP - During this tour, USUM was just released and both Shadow Tag and Magearna were banned. However, Nagandel was still allowed during the first 3 weeks. Specific to normal, Mega-lopunny was released prior to this tour.

Naganadel didn't heavily affect normal's viability due to ditto being one of its few reliable checks. The type also generally did not mind poison at all, and nagandel made it easier for normal to beat it if anything. A perfect example of this is the battle between Arifeen and Tsunami, which pretty much proves all the statements said before. If anything, the Sharpedo + Keldeo core that was beginning to get popular showed a more prevelant threat to the type, but even then some players managed to deal with it. Normal was brought 15 times during the tournament, and lost 7 times. While still showing itself as a consistent type, Normal was noticably doing much worse after nagnadel got banned. Disregarding hax, the threat that was Sharpedo + keldeo was most likely the main contributor to Normal's lack of reliance as Keldeo posed a huge threat to the team, and sharpedo gave Mega-lopunny a hard time. However, this was nothing compared to what would eventually happen in the metashift between MWP and MPL4.

But overall, normal still did okay in this tournamnet, but it was evident that something was not right.

MPL4 - This tour follows the normal banlist that we have today. Also, Zeraora got released midway.

Normal was used a record total of 29 times during this tournament, which was so common that there were normal mirror battles that occured a few times during the tournament. Despite the release of Zeraora midway spelling potential doom for normal, it managed to still do relatively well in the tournament. Nothing terribly interesting happened and not too many new strats were discovered, normal just did what it did best and did it very effectively. I believe the most remarkable thing about normal during this tour was that it got the treatment of a top tier type, because many people tried to prep for it (hence the sharpedo + keldeo core that was used a lot).

Overall, normal was arguably at its best at this tournament maybe MWP was a false alarm for the type.

MWP2 - This tournament has recently concluded and also uses the current banlist.

Between MPL4 and MWP2, there was a metagame shift that heavily affected normal's viability. This shift was geared towards getting more wallbreakers and Z-move users as well as pokemon that destroyed defensive cores such as Stallbreaker Hydreigon and Stallbreaker Keldeo. When this shift finally reached full tilt, normal's viability dropped significantly, as it could not deal with some of these new strategies. It finally began to show cracks in its once solid team composition.

In the actual tournament, Normal was only used 6 times, a huge drop in usage compared to the prevoius tournament. While its record was a perfect 3-3 split, its losing replays really showed why people did not just frequently use the type. Wincon vs Balto and Wincon vs Kiyo are great examples of how the type lost its luster defensively with the new metagame trends, and Eien vs kiyo shows how Zeraora and electric being a better type made normal a far more risky choice. Words cannot really do what made the type fall in viability justice, so watching those replays will give you a much better understanding of why.

Overall the metagame shifted in a way that normal did not like, and because of it Normal suffered a great deal of viability.

Conclusion - I was always an advocate for normal back when it was considered one of the best types, and now after looking back at its history I can see why the type has fallen. There are talks of it potentially coming back in Monotype Wcop but until that tournament ends Normal will be considered a fallen titan.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
Due to the weird way GameFreak handed out mega stones at the beginning of the generation, Mega Pidgeot was the only usable mega for a while on Normal. In tournament it did very well, but many still thought that once they got Mega-Lopunny that everything would be much better, and they were half right. Before we get into that though we should talk about one of the most hyped up pokemon Normal had, PorygonZ. People found out in the early days of SM that conversion was one of the first of many omniboosting Z-moves that gave you a +1 in every stat bar evasion and accuracy. This was huge for PorygonZ as it could finally have essentially both a choice scarf and choice specs at the same time, and deal incredible amounts of damage with its great movepool. That wasn't all however, because it was conversion that the move was based off of, PorygonZ would be able to change its type depending on the typing of the first move it has. I made a post a while ago about this but as a tldr Electric and Ghost were the best typings to use with PorygonZ. Electric allowed you to blow past water and Flying really well while Ghost allowed you to hit a huge portion of the metagame extremely hard while also having two other supporting coverage moves, which most likely ended up being bolt beam. This pokemon was very feared in the beginning of the generation, and players had to be careful about not letting it set up for free, otherwise their entire team could be swept away. Once its hype died down a little, some other Pokemon took PorygonZ's place. Diggersby was usually the main choice due to its great wallbreaking power and very powerful STAB moves, before USUM released tho it primarily used a Choice Band and not Swords Dance. Defensive Staraptor was also a big thing that eventually got found when normal was being used, and eventually became a huge part of Normal's ever pominant defensive core. Porygon2 + Chansey was hard enough to break for some teams, but now Starptor was another physical wall with an immunity to Ground moves and could defog hazards away with ease. Speaking of the eviolite duo, those two pokemon were essential to the success of normal teams. Their sheer bulk boosted by Eviolite allowed them to wall a massive portion of the metagame on their own. Along with ditto, a way to check nearly every setup sweeper in the game, this type looked on paper to be unstoppable. Once Mega-lopunny was released, normal gained another powerful wallbreaker with a new set compared to its ORAS days. Its new Encore and Power Up Punch Set allowed it to take on the new walls in the metagame. Snorlax was also another pokemon that recieved usage but was not talked about or seen that much. It's niche was definately something worth noting as it was yet another fat mon that helped normal get through some usually tough MUs. Thanks to its solid pokemon and team composition, it can easily be seen why it was a popular type with newcomers and professionals alike. This is what the viability rankings looked like by the end of SM: http://prntscr.com/mzhvy8

USM - Once all the megas were released and USUM dropped, Normal still had many of the same tools it had before and it dealt with a large majority of the new threats naturally, even the soon to be banned naganadel. The eviolite core, as well as the breakers and sweepers normal had were still unchanged. However as the generation carried on and the fall of normal began, more people started to lean towards using Mega-Pidgeot over Mega-lopunny in order to deal with the changing metagame, and success varied. Besides this though a lot of mons stayed the same besides the obvious elephant in the room that I have to address now: Hyper Offensive Normal. This archetype, while nowhere near as relevant as its balance counterpart, is used casually quite a bit and is somewhat worth mentioning in a retrospecitive like this. HO normal typically uses Smeargle as its lead along with 5 other offensive pokemon. Most common pokemon that end up on this archetype are usually: Meloetta, Bewear, either mega Lopunny or mega Pidgeot, Snorlax, Diggersby and Staraptor. While going into detail for why these mons are usable would probably take all day I'll just simplify it with the fact that they all are either powerful sweepers or are great wallbreakers that take advantage of webs to completely manhandle teams that aren't prepared for it. That being said, this archetype is not the best due to it not being able to win very well against popular types like Fairy and Flying, as well as its reliance on webs leaving it extremely open to reverse sweeping. With that aside, normal was otherwise still relatively the same throughout the generation wih a few minor optimizations over time not worth mentioning.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on Normal in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Maroon:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Normal?"

A: "In Early SM, much like the previous generation of ORAS, Normal was extremely strong. With a solid defensive core of Chansey + Porygon2 + Staraptor, many teams have a hard time breaking past the core without setting up. In response to setup Normal has the perfect answer, Ditto. This heavily discouraged setup against the type, which helped the defensive core stay strong. On top of that Normal had a very solid offensive options in Mega Lopunny, Diggersby, Meloetta, and Mega Pidgeot, generally the former two were the most common. With the combination of a fantastic offensive and defensive core, its easy to see why Normal was so dominant. However, as more bulky teams such as Vincune Water and Bulky Flying started to arise the metagame shifted and started leaning towards a more fat breaking metagame. Many new sets started to pop up such as Swords Dance Tapu Bulu, CM + Refresh Mega Latias, Z Draco + Taunt Hydreigon, and many more became common place in the metagame. This was the beginning of the fall for the once former top tier type. On top of this trend of more pokemon using sets to break fat cores, Normals previously good matchups were tainted in USM with the release of Zeraora and Kommomium Z, which made Normals previously fantastic matchups less than ideal. Electric and Dragon were no longer heavily sided towards Normals favor as Dragon began even running Z Kommo as a fat breaker with Taunt + Drain Punch which fairly easily breaks Normals defensive core and can beat Ditto one v one. Overall, all of these factors lead to the decrease in viability of Normal teams in the current Generation."

MetaRiolu7:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Normal right now?"

A: "Normal teams have stayed pretty much the same as ORAS teams and normal was quite good in ORAS. However in USM normal is not as strong now with new types conquering over it."

Q: "Any reasoning behind that?"

A: "Certain new sets such as Z Move Kommoo, Sub SD Bulu, and Curse Recycle Muk kinda made Normal lose it's edge. "


General Opinion from the chat room:

It is very apparent that many people in the Monotype chatroom of PS! are annoyed by normal because of its fat archetype. So many people usually have a disdain for the type, even going out as to calling any team using the eviolite duo "stall." With that aside though it is respected as a good type, although not as many people know why the type has fallen, and hopefully this post will make that more clear.

My own thoughts on the matter:

I believe that normal is pretty ok. I think it can make a comeback if it gets explored further by using more options to replace previous staples, as other types have done the same and have seen some success with it. Only time will tell but my opinion stays the same even after all of this research.

Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is overrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!

A big thank you to everyone who helped make this post, especially: Maroon, Attribute, Metariolu7, and Decem.

There will be another type retrospective next week! Let me know if you want me to cover anything else that you feel is important in a retrospective like this.​
 
For the third iteration of "A history of..." I decided to look at a type that was once considered good and then went through a huge decline. This type is no other than: Normal

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Normal.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/chansey.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/porygon2.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/staraptor.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/porygonz.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/diggersby.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/lopunny-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pidgeot-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Normal.png


General Overview:
Normal was considered one of the best types early on in the generation, but as time progressed it began to fall out of favor, and the reasons for this are not what you would normally expect. So let us take a deeper look into how Normal has done in the meta over the years, and what caused its popularity and effectiveness to decline.

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - As a brief reminder, during this tournament Mega Medicham was banned (mid-way) while Magearna and Shadow Tag were still allowed. Also this is SM and not USM which means Kommo-o didn't have a Z-move and Blacephelon didn't exist, among other things. Specific to normal, Mega-Lopunny was not allowed due to it not being released yet.

Normal boasts the highest winrate in the entire tournament, however it was rarely used. Due to the fact that Mega-Pidgeot was the only mega normal could use, some of its MU's were harder than they normally are. This is notable against steel teams and dark teams, which Normal usually has an easier time with when they have Mega-lopunny. However, as this was the beginning of the metagame, PorygonZ saw a lot of usage and performed very well in this tour. rnbs vs Pak is a good example of how this pokemon was able to turn the tides of a match quickly. PorygonZ also had a lot more going on about it but that will be covered later in the teambuilding section.

Overall normal, depsite missing Mega-lopunny, performed very well in its first debut in the generation.


MWP - During this tour, USUM was just released and both Shadow Tag and Magearna were banned. However, Nagandel was still allowed during the first 3 weeks. Specific to normal, Mega-lopunny was released prior to this tour.

Naganadel didn't heavily affect normal's viability due to ditto being one of its few reliable checks. The type also generally did not mind poison at all, and nagandel made it easier for normal to beat it if anything. A perfect example of this is the battle between Arifeen and Tsunami, which pretty much proves all the statements said before. If anything, the Sharpedo + Keldeo core that was beginning to get popular showed a more prevelant threat to the type, but even then some players managed to deal with it. Normal was brought 15 times during the tournament, and lost 7 times. While still showing itself as a consistent type, Normal was noticably doing much worse after nagnadel got banned. Disregarding hax, the threat that was Sharpedo + keldeo was most likely the main contributor to Normal's lack of reliance as Keldeo posed a huge threat to the team, and sharpedo gave Mega-lopunny a hard time. However, this was nothing compared to what would eventually happen in the metashift between MWP and MPL4.

But overall, normal still did okay in this tournamnet, but it was evident that something was not right.

MPL4 - This tour follows the normal banlist that we have today. Also, Zeraora got released midway.

Normal was used a record total of 29 times during this tournament, which was so common that there were normal mirror battles that occured a few times during the tournament. Despite the release of Zeraora midway spelling potential doom for normal, it managed to still do relatively well in the tournament. Nothing terribly interesting happened and not too many new strats were discovered, normal just did what it did best and did it very effectively. I believe the most remarkable thing about normal during this tour was that it got the treatment of a top tier type, because many people tried to prep for it (hence the sharpedo + keldeo core that was used a lot).

Overall, normal was arguably at its best at this tournament maybe MWP was a false alarm for the type.

MWP2 - This tournament has recently concluded and also uses the current banlist.

Between MPL4 and MWP2, there was a metagame shift that heavily affected normal's viability. This shift was geared towards getting more wallbreakers and Z-move users as well as pokemon that destroyed defensive cores such as Stallbreaker Hydreigon and Stallbreaker Keldeo. When this shift finally reached full tilt, normal's viability dropped significantly, as it could not deal with some of these new strategies. It finally began to show cracks in its once solid team composition.

In the actual tournament, Normal was only used 6 times, a huge drop in usage compared to the prevoius tournament. While its record was a perfect 3-3 split, its losing replays really showed why people did not just frequently use the type. Wincon vs Balto and Wincon vs Kiyo are great examples of how the type lost its luster defensively with the new metagame trends, and Eien vs kiyo shows how Zeraora and electric being a better type made normal a far more risky choice. Words cannot really do what made the type fall in viability justice, so watching those replays will give you a much better understanding of why.

Overall the metagame shifted in a way that normal did not like, and because of it Normal suffered a great deal of viability.

Conclusion - I was always an advocate for normal back when it was considered one of the best types, and now after looking back at its history I can see why the type has fallen. There are talks of it potentially coming back in Monotype Wcop but until that tournament ends Normal will be considered a fallen titan.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
Due to the weird way GameFreak handed out mega stones at the beginning of the generation, Mega Pidgeot was the only usable mega for a while on Normal. In tournament it did very well, but many still thought that once they got Mega-Lopunny that everything would be much better, and they were half right. Before we get into that though we should talk about one of the most hyped up pokemon Normal had, PorygonZ. People found out in the early days of SM that conversion was one of the first of many omniboosting Z-moves that gave you a +1 in every stat bar evasion and accuracy. This was huge for PorygonZ as it could finally have essentially both a choice scarf and choice specs at the same time, and deal incredible amounts of damage with its great movepool. That wasn't all however, because it was conversion that the move was based off of, PorygonZ would be able to change its type depending on the typing of the first move it has. I made a post a while ago about this but as a tldr Electric and Ghost were the best typings to use with PorygonZ. Electric allowed you to blow past water and Flying really well while Ghost allowed you to hit a huge portion of the metagame extremely hard while also having two other supporting coverage moves, which most likely ended up being bolt beam. This pokemon was very feared in the beginning of the generation, and players had to be careful about not letting it set up for free, otherwise their entire team could be swept away. Once its hype died down a little, some other Pokemon took PorygonZ's place. Diggersby was usually the main choice due to its great wallbreaking power and very powerful STAB moves, before USUM released tho it primarily used a Choice Band and not Swords Dance. Defensive Staraptor was also a big thing that eventually got found when normal was being used, and eventually became a huge part of Normal's ever pominant defensive core. Porygon2 + Chansey was hard enough to break for some teams, but now Starptor was another physical wall with an immunity to Ground moves and could defog hazards away with ease. Speaking of the eviolite duo, those two pokemon were essential to the success of normal teams. Their sheer bulk boosted by Eviolite allowed them to wall a massive portion of the metagame on their own. Along with ditto, a way to check nearly every setup sweeper in the game, this type looked on paper to be unstoppable. Once Mega-lopunny was released, normal gained another powerful wallbreaker with a new set compared to its ORAS days. Its new Encore and Power Up Punch Set allowed it to take on the new walls in the metagame. Snorlax was also another pokemon that recieved usage but was not talked about or seen that much. It's niche was definately something worth noting as it was yet another fat mon that helped normal get through some usually tough MUs. Thanks to its solid pokemon and team composition, it can easily be seen why it was a popular type with newcomers and professionals alike. This is what the viability rankings looked like by the end of SM: http://prntscr.com/mzhvy8

USM - Once all the megas were released and USUM dropped, Normal still had many of the same tools it had before and it dealt with a large majority of the new threats naturally, even the soon to be banned naganadel. The eviolite core, as well as the breakers and sweepers normal had were still unchanged. However as the generation carried on and the fall of normal began, more people started to lean towards using Mega-Pidgeot over Mega-lopunny in order to deal with the changing metagame, and success varied. Besides this though a lot of mons stayed the same besides the obvious elephant in the room that I have to address now: Hyper Offensive Normal. This archetype, while nowhere near as relevant as its balance counterpart, is used casually quite a bit and is somewhat worth mentioning in a retrospecitive like this. HO normal typically uses Smeargle as its lead along with 5 other offensive pokemon. Most common pokemon that end up on this archetype are usually: Meloetta, Bewear, either mega Lopunny or mega Pidgeot, Snorlax, Diggersby and Staraptor. While going into detail for why these mons are usable would probably take all day I'll just simplify it with the fact that they all are either powerful sweepers or are great wallbreakers that take advantage of webs to completely manhandle teams that aren't prepared for it. That being said, this archetype is not the best due to it not being able to win very well against popular types like Fairy and Flying, as well as its reliance on webs leaving it extremely open to reverse sweeping. With that aside, normal was otherwise still relatively the same throughout the generation wih a few minor optimizations over time not worth mentioning.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on Normal in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Maroon:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Normal?"

A: "In Early SM, much like the previous generation of ORAS, Normal was extremely strong. With a solid defensive core of Chansey + Porygon2 + Staraptor, many teams have a hard time breaking past the core without setting up. In response to setup Normal has the perfect answer, Ditto. This heavily discouraged setup against the type, which helped the defensive core stay strong. On top of that Normal had a very solid offensive options in Mega Lopunny, Diggersby, Meloetta, and Mega Pidgeot, generally the former two were the most common. With the combination of a fantastic offensive and defensive core, its easy to see why Normal was so dominant. However, as more bulky teams such as Vincune Water and Bulky Flying started to arise the metagame shifted and started leaning towards a more fat breaking metagame. Many new sets started to pop up such as Swords Dance Tapu Bulu, CM + Refresh Mega Latias, Z Draco + Taunt Hydreigon, and many more became common place in the metagame. This was the beginning of the fall for the once former top tier type. On top of this trend of more pokemon using sets to break fat cores, Normals previously good matchups were tainted in USM with the release of Zeraora and Kommomium Z, which made Normals previously fantastic matchups less than ideal. Electric and Dragon were no longer heavily sided towards Normals favor as Dragon began even running Z Kommo as a fat breaker with Taunt + Drain Punch which fairly easily breaks Normals defensive core and can beat Ditto one v one. Overall, all of these factors lead to the decrease in viability of Normal teams in the current Generation."

MetaRiolu7:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Normal right now?"

A: "Normal teams have stayed pretty much the same as ORAS teams and normal was quite good in ORAS. However in USM normal is not as strong now with new types conquering over it."

Q: "Any reasoning behind that?"

A: "Certain new sets such as Z Move Kommoo, Sub SD Bulu, and Curse Recycle Muk kinda made Normal lose it's edge. "


General Opinion from the chat room:

It is very apparent that many people in the Monotype chatroom of PS! are annoyed by normal because of its fat archetype. So many people usually have a disdain for the type, even going out as to calling any team using the eviolite duo "stall." With that aside though it is respected as a good type, although not as many people know why the type has fallen, and hopefully this post will make that more clear.

My own thoughts on the matter:

I believe that normal is pretty ok. I think it can make a comeback if it gets explored further by using more options to replace previous staples, as other types have done the same and have seen some success with it. Only time will tell but my opinion stays the same even after all of this research.

Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is overrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!

A big thank you to everyone who helped make this post, especially: Maroon, Attribute, Metariolu7, and Decem.

There will be another type retrospective next week! Let me know if you want me to cover anything else that you feel is important in a retrospective like this.​
This is really cool! Quite a shame that Normal kind of lost its edge as the meta changed. It's kind of crazy how much a meta can change and effect a type over time
 
Last edited:
For the third iteration of "A history of..." I decided to look at a type that was once considered good and then went through a huge decline. This type is no other than: Normal

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Normal.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/chansey.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/porygon2.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/staraptor.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/porygonz.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/diggersby.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/lopunny-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pidgeot-mega.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Normal.png


General Overview:
Normal was considered one of the best types early on in the generation, but as time progressed it began to fall out of favor, and the reasons for this are not what you would normally expect. So let us take a deeper look into how Normal has done in the meta over the years, and what caused its popularity and effectiveness to decline.

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - As a brief reminder, during this tournament Mega Medicham was banned (mid-way) while Magearna and Shadow Tag were still allowed. Also this is SM and not USM which means Kommo-o didn't have a Z-move and Blacephelon didn't exist, among other things. Specific to normal, Mega-Lopunny was not allowed due to it not being released yet.

Normal boasts the highest winrate in the entire tournament, however it was rarely used. Due to the fact that Mega-Pidgeot was the only mega normal could use, some of its MU's were harder than they normally are. This is notable against steel teams and dark teams, which Normal usually has an easier time with when they have Mega-lopunny. However, as this was the beginning of the metagame, PorygonZ saw a lot of usage and performed very well in this tour. rnbs vs Pak is a good example of how this pokemon was able to turn the tides of a match quickly. PorygonZ also had a lot more going on about it but that will be covered later in the teambuilding section.

Overall normal, depsite missing Mega-lopunny, performed very well in its first debut in the generation.


MWP - During this tour, USUM was just released and both Shadow Tag and Magearna were banned. However, Nagandel was still allowed during the first 3 weeks. Specific to normal, Mega-lopunny was released prior to this tour.

Naganadel didn't heavily affect normal's viability due to ditto being one of its few reliable checks. The type also generally did not mind poison at all, and nagandel made it easier for normal to beat it if anything. A perfect example of this is the battle between Arifeen and Tsunami, which pretty much proves all the statements said before. If anything, the Sharpedo + Keldeo core that was beginning to get popular showed a more prevelant threat to the type, but even then some players managed to deal with it. Normal was brought 15 times during the tournament, and lost 7 times. While still showing itself as a consistent type, Normal was noticably doing much worse after nagnadel got banned. Disregarding hax, the threat that was Sharpedo + keldeo was most likely the main contributor to Normal's lack of reliance as Keldeo posed a huge threat to the team, and sharpedo gave Mega-lopunny a hard time. However, this was nothing compared to what would eventually happen in the metashift between MWP and MPL4.

But overall, normal still did okay in this tournamnet, but it was evident that something was not right.

MPL4 - This tour follows the normal banlist that we have today. Also, Zeraora got released midway.

Normal was used a record total of 29 times during this tournament, which was so common that there were normal mirror battles that occured a few times during the tournament. Despite the release of Zeraora midway spelling potential doom for normal, it managed to still do relatively well in the tournament. Nothing terribly interesting happened and not too many new strats were discovered, normal just did what it did best and did it very effectively. I believe the most remarkable thing about normal during this tour was that it got the treatment of a top tier type, because many people tried to prep for it (hence the sharpedo + keldeo core that was used a lot).

Overall, normal was arguably at its best at this tournament maybe MWP was a false alarm for the type.

MWP2 - This tournament has recently concluded and also uses the current banlist.

Between MPL4 and MWP2, there was a metagame shift that heavily affected normal's viability. This shift was geared towards getting more wallbreakers and Z-move users as well as pokemon that destroyed defensive cores such as Stallbreaker Hydreigon and Stallbreaker Keldeo. When this shift finally reached full tilt, normal's viability dropped significantly, as it could not deal with some of these new strategies. It finally began to show cracks in its once solid team composition.

In the actual tournament, Normal was only used 6 times, a huge drop in usage compared to the prevoius tournament. While its record was a perfect 3-3 split, its losing replays really showed why people did not just frequently use the type. Wincon vs Balto and Wincon vs Kiyo are great examples of how the type lost its luster defensively with the new metagame trends, and Eien vs kiyo shows how Zeraora and electric being a better type made normal a far more risky choice. Words cannot really do what made the type fall in viability justice, so watching those replays will give you a much better understanding of why.

Overall the metagame shifted in a way that normal did not like, and because of it Normal suffered a great deal of viability.

Conclusion - I was always an advocate for normal back when it was considered one of the best types, and now after looking back at its history I can see why the type has fallen. There are talks of it potentially coming back in Monotype Wcop but until that tournament ends Normal will be considered a fallen titan.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
Due to the weird way GameFreak handed out mega stones at the beginning of the generation, Mega Pidgeot was the only usable mega for a while on Normal. In tournament it did very well, but many still thought that once they got Mega-Lopunny that everything would be much better, and they were half right. Before we get into that though we should talk about one of the most hyped up pokemon Normal had, PorygonZ. People found out in the early days of SM that conversion was one of the first of many omniboosting Z-moves that gave you a +1 in every stat bar evasion and accuracy. This was huge for PorygonZ as it could finally have essentially both a choice scarf and choice specs at the same time, and deal incredible amounts of damage with its great movepool. That wasn't all however, because it was conversion that the move was based off of, PorygonZ would be able to change its type depending on the typing of the first move it has. I made a post a while ago about this but as a tldr Electric and Ghost were the best typings to use with PorygonZ. Electric allowed you to blow past water and Flying really well while Ghost allowed you to hit a huge portion of the metagame extremely hard while also having two other supporting coverage moves, which most likely ended up being bolt beam. This pokemon was very feared in the beginning of the generation, and players had to be careful about not letting it set up for free, otherwise their entire team could be swept away. Once its hype died down a little, some other Pokemon took PorygonZ's place. Diggersby was usually the main choice due to its great wallbreaking power and very powerful STAB moves, before USUM released tho it primarily used a Choice Band and not Swords Dance. Defensive Staraptor was also a big thing that eventually got found when normal was being used, and eventually became a huge part of Normal's ever pominant defensive core. Porygon2 + Chansey was hard enough to break for some teams, but now Starptor was another physical wall with an immunity to Ground moves and could defog hazards away with ease. Speaking of the eviolite duo, those two pokemon were essential to the success of normal teams. Their sheer bulk boosted by Eviolite allowed them to wall a massive portion of the metagame on their own. Along with ditto, a way to check nearly every setup sweeper in the game, this type looked on paper to be unstoppable. Once Mega-lopunny was released, normal gained another powerful wallbreaker with a new set compared to its ORAS days. Its new Encore and Power Up Punch Set allowed it to take on the new walls in the metagame. Snorlax was also another pokemon that recieved usage but was not talked about or seen that much. It's niche was definately something worth noting as it was yet another fat mon that helped normal get through some usually tough MUs. Thanks to its solid pokemon and team composition, it can easily be seen why it was a popular type with newcomers and professionals alike. This is what the viability rankings looked like by the end of SM: http://prntscr.com/mzhvy8

USM - Once all the megas were released and USUM dropped, Normal still had many of the same tools it had before and it dealt with a large majority of the new threats naturally, even the soon to be banned naganadel. The eviolite core, as well as the breakers and sweepers normal had were still unchanged. However as the generation carried on and the fall of normal began, more people started to lean towards using Mega-Pidgeot over Mega-lopunny in order to deal with the changing metagame, and success varied. Besides this though a lot of mons stayed the same besides the obvious elephant in the room that I have to address now: Hyper Offensive Normal. This archetype, while nowhere near as relevant as its balance counterpart, is used casually quite a bit and is somewhat worth mentioning in a retrospecitive like this. HO normal typically uses Smeargle as its lead along with 5 other offensive pokemon. Most common pokemon that end up on this archetype are usually: Meloetta, Bewear, either mega Lopunny or mega Pidgeot, Snorlax, Diggersby and Staraptor. While going into detail for why these mons are usable would probably take all day I'll just simplify it with the fact that they all are either powerful sweepers or are great wallbreakers that take advantage of webs to completely manhandle teams that aren't prepared for it. That being said, this archetype is not the best due to it not being able to win very well against popular types like Fairy and Flying, as well as its reliance on webs leaving it extremely open to reverse sweeping. With that aside, normal was otherwise still relatively the same throughout the generation wih a few minor optimizations over time not worth mentioning.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on Normal in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Maroon:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Normal?"

A: "In Early SM, much like the previous generation of ORAS, Normal was extremely strong. With a solid defensive core of Chansey + Porygon2 + Staraptor, many teams have a hard time breaking past the core without setting up. In response to setup Normal has the perfect answer, Ditto. This heavily discouraged setup against the type, which helped the defensive core stay strong. On top of that Normal had a very solid offensive options in Mega Lopunny, Diggersby, Meloetta, and Mega Pidgeot, generally the former two were the most common. With the combination of a fantastic offensive and defensive core, its easy to see why Normal was so dominant. However, as more bulky teams such as Vincune Water and Bulky Flying started to arise the metagame shifted and started leaning towards a more fat breaking metagame. Many new sets started to pop up such as Swords Dance Tapu Bulu, CM + Refresh Mega Latias, Z Draco + Taunt Hydreigon, and many more became common place in the metagame. This was the beginning of the fall for the once former top tier type. On top of this trend of more pokemon using sets to break fat cores, Normals previously good matchups were tainted in USM with the release of Zeraora and Kommomium Z, which made Normals previously fantastic matchups less than ideal. Electric and Dragon were no longer heavily sided towards Normals favor as Dragon began even running Z Kommo as a fat breaker with Taunt + Drain Punch which fairly easily breaks Normals defensive core and can beat Ditto one v one. Overall, all of these factors lead to the decrease in viability of Normal teams in the current Generation."

MetaRiolu7:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Normal right now?"

A: "Normal teams have stayed pretty much the same as ORAS teams and normal was quite good in ORAS. However in USM normal is not as strong now with new types conquering over it."

Q: "Any reasoning behind that?"

A: "Certain new sets such as Z Move Kommoo, Sub SD Bulu, and Curse Recycle Muk kinda made Normal lose it's edge. "


General Opinion from the chat room:

It is very apparent that many people in the Monotype chatroom of PS! are annoyed by normal because of its fat archetype. So many people usually have a disdain for the type, even going out as to calling any team using the eviolite duo "stall." With that aside though it is respected as a good type, although not as many people know why the type has fallen, and hopefully this post will make that more clear.

My own thoughts on the matter:

I believe that normal is pretty ok. I think it can make a comeback if it gets explored further by using more options to replace previous staples, as other types have done the same and have seen some success with it. Only time will tell but my opinion stays the same even after all of this research.

Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is overrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!

A big thank you to everyone who helped make this post, especially: Maroon, Attribute, Metariolu7, and Decem.

There will be another type retrospective next week! Let me know if you want me to cover anything else that you feel is important in a retrospective like this.​
imo the balance archetype relying on eviolite bros -which to be fair used to be very effective- has lead the type to become stagnant. Even when balance water is arguably its best archetype, it hasn't stopped players from experimenting with offense (both rain and rainless) and even stall. I feel that, as your post elaborated, many types have adapted to beat the classic normal balance team (dragon and electric matchups were almost a guaranteed win early SM/ORAS). So in order to "make a comeback" I think experimenting with Normal on the team building phase is a good step. Some people have used HO with Smeargle lead since gen 6 with some success, I would like to see different type of balance teams that stray from the classic eviolite bros + raptor with banded diggersby mega and a scarfer formula
 
imo the balance archetype relying on eviolite bros -which to be fair used to be very effective- has lead the type to become stagnant. Even when balance water is arguably its best archetype, it hasn't stopped players from experimenting with offense (both rain and rainless) and even stall. I feel that, as your post elaborated, many types have adapted to beat the classic normal balance team (dragon and electric matchups were almost a guaranteed win early SM/ORAS). So in order to "make a comeback" I think experimenting with Normal on the team building phase is a good step. Some people have used HO with Smeargle lead since gen 6 with some success, I would like to see different type of balance teams that stray from the classic eviolite bros + raptor with banded diggersby mega and a scarfer formula
This is a good observation. Comparing to Water is a bit unfair to Normal when Water is the versatile type. Many lesser types in the middle of the pack tend to have very cookie cutter builds because there just aren’t many options. Normal has a similar problem in that it has a core set of very good Pokémon. However, I think we’ve been seeing a lot of more interesting Normal teams lately. Porygon-Z is making a comeback after being gone since early SM, Snorlax took off last year, and some people are even trying to bring back Meloetta. Offensive Normal is ultimately too inconsistent but I think balance Normal is a lot more interesting than it was in most of gen 7. Normal has to overcome some of the most annoying threats in the tier, so it’s not anywhere near its old peak in mid SM, but it’s still a fairly usable tournament type pick for countering users with certain favorites.
 
Ditto is frankly amazing.

We all know Ditto is there to discourage your opponent from setting up, lest you reverse sweep them. But from my time playing balance a whole lot, there's this thing I've noticed that cracks me up for whatever reason whenever it happens: when Ditto transforms into your Celesteela and you realise you can't break your own mon. Of course, it doesn't have to be Celesteela. I don't know if this is a well known (or even good) strat, but from the analyses I've read, there's nothing about transforming into fat mons against balance. It could be Sableye vs dark, Mantine vs water, even if the opponent can deal with it, it is still quite annoying especially when a low health Ditto gets to roost while your Mantine watches and clicks scald without thinking. Even if it still has the Choice Scarf, it can still wall you for 5 turns.

166522

Idk why this is a post, just thought I'd share if someone like me never thought about using Ditto that way :P
 

Namranan

:)))))))))))
For the final iteration of "A history of..." I decided to look at a type that indisputably is the best type in the metagame. This can be no other than: Fighting.

http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Fighting.png
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/infernape.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/cobalion.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/pangoro.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/mienshao.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/primeape.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/buzzwole.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/hitmonlee.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/xyani/passimian.gif
http://play.pokemonshowdown.com/sprites/types/Fighting.png


General Overview:
Fighting has no weaknesses and a plethora of strengths, not only does it have no issues with entry hazards, but it also has an amazing offensive presence that threatens every single type in the metagame. Lets take a closer look at just why this type is so busted.

Tournament performance:

MPL3 - Fighting had no usage in this tournamnet, but that was only because everyone agreed to not using it due to how boring and unfun the metagame would be if they did use it. This was probably because of the fact that not only was mega medicham being suspected, but fighting also had crazy options in Choice Scarf Keldeo for insane speed control, and Double Dance Terrakion who could set up on everything and KO any mon in the metagame with a +2 Continental Crush. None of the other types stood a chance against fighting, and that is why all the managers of MPL3 agreed to never let any of their players use it.


MWP - Shadow Tag being banned and Magearna getting the boot as well only helped Fighting get rid of some of the most annoying things that tried to stop it. When USM dropped, fighting seemingly did not get any buffs, however this is far from the truth. Fighting secretly got immense buffs from the fact that Fairy, one of Fighting's worst MU's, became irrelevant as time went on. This helped fighting surge in viability, but like MPL3 the managers agreed to not let anyone bring fighting to a single game. New threat Naganadel before its ban meant nothing to the sheer power that was fighting's offensive presene. It quivered in fear as Kommo-o setup its Z-move against it for free, or if Terrakion got a free Rock Polish or Swords Dance off of it. However, Dodmen broke this rule in his match vs Leru, and was punished by our glorious Tier Leader Eien severely for it. It was because of this that he lost his match, despite having the superior type. Never again did anyone dare to think about using fighting in a serious tournament.

MPL4 - Fighting users collectively cried as Zeraora was released and was not an electric fighting type. Although fighting was already dominating the metagame, another cool Pokemon to change things up would've been really awesome. The frustration that came from this agony lead to people using fighting in MPL4 4 times. Eien was furious with these people and tried to rig every single game so that fighting lost, but he couldn't stop them all. Unfortunately for Havens, our grand tier leader could not stop him from losing his match, and flcl took their dirty victory with pride. After this outbreak of usage, Eien promised that he would permanently tournament ban anyone who brought Fighting to a Monotype team tournament. This just shows how oppressive Fighting was in the metagame.

MWP2 - This time supreme leader Eien along with his lackey Vid stopped any usage of Fighting from happening in the tournament. This time they succeeded. The biased Steel council is still trying to figure out what Pokemon on Fighting they need to ban in order to balance the type without outraging the community. Marshadow and Pheromosa were not enough, what else will it take for this type to become balanced????

Conclusion - Fighting is really good, in fact it was so good that no one used it.



The Progression of Teambuilding:

SM -
When you have a type like fighting, you really don't need to consider team composition due to how good all of its Pokemon are naturally. Generally though you will like to have a lead like Cobalion or Infernape to make sure you get those important Stealth Rocks down. On the other hand, you have a wide range of attackers to use that is in no way limited whatsoever. Feel free to run you team of hitmons or a team with Mienshao and Pangoro on it, anything is viable! You don't need those nasty legends in Keldeo and Terrakion like you did last gen, nowadays any mon on fighting is completely usable and doesn't have to fret about its moveset. You don't even need to have speed control on fighting, that's just how good it is. I would normally show the viability rankings here, but its pretty obvious that only Cobalion and Infernape were S tier and all the other Pokemon on fighting were A tier. Except Mega Gallade, that mon sucks.

USM - Due to the immense shock that everyone got when zeraora was released and not a fighting type, everyone immediately decided that they would try to recreate zeraora. This did not go over well as you can see, but this idea of teambuilding did lead to the almighty Stall fighting archetype being formed. This just goes to show how diverse and flexible fighting is as a type. With Chesnaught, Conkeldurr, and Breloom all on the same team, nothing could get past it. Flying types? No problem, just throw a Terrakion on there and you are good to go. Psychic types? No problem, just use amnesia rest scrafty and you will have no issues. Fairy types? Just hit them really hard, it works every time. Overall, Fighting is the most diverse and flexibile type that monotype has ever seen.

Community Opinion:

I have contacted top players and regular casual players over the course of the week and asked them what their thoughts on Fighting in general have been as well as asking a few players a few specific questions about the type. Here is what I got:
Attribute:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Fighting in the current metagame?"

A: "Absolutely Amazing"

Q: "Do you think fighting needs to be nerfed?"

A: "No way man, fighting is a totally fair and balanced type, nothing needs to be changed."

Decem:

Q:
"What is your current opinion on Fighting right now?"

A: "Its good."

Q: "Do you think fighting needs to be nerfed?"

A: "Yes."

Eien:

Q:
"What are your thoughts on Fighting in the current metagame?"

A: "I just want to make it clear that we as a staff are not biased, and we are trying our hardest to make Fighting not broken. I know Gen 8 is coming out soon, but rest assured that we will find a solution to this ever gowing problem with the metagame. Otherwise I think its broken and it needs to be contained."

MetaRiolu7:

Q: "What is your current opinion on Fighting right now?"

A: "Delete it from the game"

General Opinion from others:

This section cannot be typed out due to Eien not allowing me to let the commoners voice their opinions on Fighting.

My own thoughts on the matter:

After the weeks of research that went into this, I have finally come up with a way to actually balance this busted type:

Happy April Fools Day!


Now with that out of the way, what are your thoughts on the type? Do you think it is underrated or do you think its nothing special? What do you think it may need in Gen 8? I would love to read everyone's thoughts!


There will not be another type retrospective next week! I will actually be continuing this series as an article for the Flying Press Smogon newsletter, so watch out for when that comes out!
 
That was quite a nice and surprising post, so obviously you would have to read between the lines and decide how to build an effective figthing team or what makes this type rather unviable.
Anyway, I'm not sure what GF could do for Fighting. I mean they did give us some very good Fighting Pkm; it's just that Pkm such as Pheromosa or Marshadow are simply too good in monotype as they're quite fast and put immense stress on the opponent with their power and moves. Other than that, you have interesting options in Buzzwole or Kommo-o, the latter likely being the most viable Fighting Pkm from gen 7 in monotype, unless you count Marshadow and Pheromosa who are banned.
Now, what I would like to see is some diversity when it comes to this type as it seems to be only viable in a hyper offensive team. So something like a bulky Pkm able to shrug of some Fairy or Flying moves and having access to good recovery moves would be a cool addition for a balanced team. Generally, some good support Pkm would be nice (maybe, something like CAP Tomohawk). Other than that, GF can keep producing fast and strong Fighting Pkm as they did with Marshadow and Pheromosa. I'm quite curious what GF has in store for us. Maybe, we might finally see other strong type combinations, such as Fighting/Ground or Fighting/Electric, the latter being very useful at dealing with Pkm such as Celesteela. I just hope GF keeps introducing new tools for us. Though, I don't think they will focus on many new legendary Fighting Pkm as it would just be repeating gen 5. As they like to focus on a trio or a quartet, maybe this time we might see a trio or quartet of ghost Pkm, after all we already have gen 4 Psychic, gen 5 Fighting and gen 7 Fairy.
 

OTeleftaiosAngelos

Banned deucer.
In Response to Namranan's overview of normal, i wanted to give out a few sets that could definitely help shape or give more vareity and option to normal teams, Btw i will be doing this and be continuing this as a series in response to Namranans
1556518546139.pngevery team should contain lopunny, reason being is because it carry's more offensive pressure being able to severly damage ghost types, dark types, steel, poison, whatever the typing she is always a very big threat to look out with her versatile sets that she can carry being...
Lopunny-Mega (F) @ Lopunnite
Ability: Limber
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- High Jump Kick
- Return
- Encore/fake out
- Power-Up Punch

1556518578633.pngwith the major defensive threat, and tbh all around defensive threat being porygon2 some would argue that no other pokemon could take his place with his amazing base stats, decent coverage and hes able to take just about anything, toxic and recover from it. the common sets being
Porygon2 @ Eviolite
Ability: Download
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Discharge
- Recover
- Foul Play
- Toxic

1556514256591.pngHowever some other options to consider for defensive tanks or all around is type:null being granted battle armor hes immune to crits, and can carry eviolite just like porygon, however his role is more to cripple the opponent and go from there, with a good partner for him being wish chansey since he has no recovery move, and replacing thunderwave on chansey for wish. however with his set is quite able to take down some rather bulky mons before he goes down, or switches to heal up, his set being..
Type: Null @ Eviolite
Ability: Battle Armor
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Relaxed Nature
- Swords Dance
- Last Resort
- Thunder Wave


1556514468814.pngAnother amazing option is bewear, with the ability fluffy he is able to handle some incredible offensive attacks, and although his special defence is weak he makes up for it with just the amount of psychical bulk he has, he can actually even set up on terrakion and go for the reverse ko! and although he doesnt get access to recover, he has drain punch which can help extremely, his coverage actually hits a pretty wide range of pokemon thanks to his normal and fighting type stab, and whatever return and drain punch doesnt hit earthquake hits harder. bewear the bear, a common set being...
Bewear @ Leftovers
Ability: Fluffy
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Drain Punch
- Bulk Up
- Earthquake
- Return

1556514684620.png Of course we have our classic special tank, which tbh there is no replacement for, chanseys spot remains the same, however mattering on the supporting mons she can run different sets to help her fellow pokemon out, and engage in a rather amazing battle of wits, thanks to chansey your able to easily cripple or help recover your other pokemon, not to mention set up stealth rocks and put on some damage with seismic toss. chansey is irreplacable as a supportive pokemon. a common chansey set being
Chansey @ Eviolite
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 HP / 200 Def / 56 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Thunder Wave/wish
- Stealth Rock
- Seismic Toss
- Soft-Boiled

1556514924683.pngOf course we had to bring over our irreplacable defog user, thats right hes irraplacable, the reason for that is because not only does his typing allow him to take nuetral damage from fighting type moves but he is also able to intimidate them, put some pressure on them to force out thanks to rocky helmet and roost, not to mention he is able to cripple supportive bulky mons with toxic, beating out common mons from more common normal teams like porygon, or even force chansey out sometime later. a common set for staraptor is...
Staraptor @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Roost
- Defog
- Brave Bird
- Toxic


1556515146863.pngNow of course your all to normal special offensive threat is porygonZ which can help quite a bit thanks to its typing change after using z conversion which can screw some opponents over due to its resistence and weakness changing, and possibly getting the upper hand afterwords thanks to its overall boost of every stat afterwords, however this mon does come with drawbacks which is sometimes it isnt always able to get that late game sweep or even get any momentum due to its fraility and most scarfed mons outspeeding it. a common set for this mon is...
Porygon-Z @ Normalium Z
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Discharge/shadow ball
- Conversion
- Ice Beam
- Tri-Attack

1556515134352.pngA better replacement for porygonZ is meloetta thanks to her resistence of fighting, she can revenge after a dead mon, or if your not facing fighting and your against water stall, even better! because meloetta gets access to both thunderbolt, energy ball and serene grace. even after all that if your still not hooked meloetta can still help with psychic for poison mono's and shadow ball for a 40% chance of a special defense drop thanks to serene grace, overall this mon is pretty solid, has amazing special bulk, and even better special offensively. a common set would be...
Meloetta @ Assault Vest
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 80 Def / 176 SpA
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Psychic
- Shadow Ball/focus blast
- Energy Ball

1556515643206.pngLastly as another special defensive option we have snorlax, however he can work both ways thanks to curse, and recycle hes able to ward of some more bulky and dangerous threats to the normal monotype, however with immunity he can not only ward of other mons but completely block all dangerous status moves to him. the all to common set is....
Snorlax @ Aguav Berry
Ability: Immunity
EVs: 252 HP / 80 Def / 176 SpD
Impish Nature
- Recycle
- Curse
- Body Slam
- Earthquake

1556516012474.pngWith the main reverse comeback pokemon being ditto, it would be hard to imagine there being other option besides him, however there is, dittos main and only goal is to use your opponents own pokemon against him in an effort to reverse sweep him, or simply to keep stalling him, which there are some other mons that can always help with that...the common and only ditto set being
Ditto @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Imposter
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Transform

1556516140748.pngOne of the most questionable mons of the normal monotype team, swellow having everything that pidgeot has and more, its questionable as to why theres any coversation however there is some difference, pidgeot has no guard, swellow doesnt, however it gets something better, scrappy, and slightly higher speed and with specs the same special attack. with access to boomburst, it can deal some major blows and threaten many common threats, and even be another mon to threaten all to common fighting threats like keldeo who are faster than any of your other mons, aside of ditto and lopunny which dont ohko it, but do put pressure on it, however if not lowered to 80 percent, lopunny has no way of killing it, and ditto requires lower hp levels to revenge. however swellow while not being able to per se switch in on it, can defintely threaten anything quite easily that switches into it thanks to hurricane which sadly can sometimes miss. the common set looking like...
Swellow @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Scrappy
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Boomburst
- Heat Wave
- Hurricane
- U-turn

1556520212110.pngDiggersby a very reliable psychically offensive threat to a majority of pokemon between scarf and swords dance its hard to tell whether to stay in or switch out, which can often lead to the loss of the game, diggersby carrys some major damage with it thanks to its ability huge power not to mention its decent speed, and good coverage. a common set for this mon being
Diggersby @ Life Orb/Choice Scarf
Ability: Huge Power
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance/Fire Punch
- Quick Attack
- Earthquake
- Return



Special mentions and ideas to inconsistent pokemon that can possibly be made consistent
1556517689045.pngLinoone, on paper godly, in actuality quite hard to set up with him, with his low hp and defences he usually gets ohko'd, however with smeagle next to him to set up with sticky webs followed by a memento, linoone could possibly set up and sweep the entire team thanks to his amazing psychical prowess. the common set for linoone is
Linoone @ Aguav Berry
Ability: Gluttony
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Belly Drum
- Stomping Tantrum
- Last Resort/Seed Bomb/Shadow Claw

1556517859698.pngAn extremely gimpy mon that revolves around flinches, might be put to better use with all of the pokemon being paralyzed or having them all be weak to the move it is using increasing your chance of winning the entire team over, honestly this is just a fun mon to play with but in all ways too inconsistent. a common set is
Cinccino @ King's Rock
Ability: Skill Link
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Bullet Seed
- Rock Blast
- Tail Slap
- Encore/Substitute

1556518019793.pngBibarel a pretty cool mon, very very similar to linoone, however instead of gluttony belly drum, this pokemon gets access to simple, and with leichi berry it can increase its stats to +6, being able to do some major damage to anything thanks to its extraordinary coverage, however different from linoone, bibarel has less speed. in all this mon just needs smeargle memento to start it off, a common set being
Bibarel @ Liechi Berry
Ability: Simple
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- Aqua Jet/Waterfall
- Quick Attack/Return
- Swords Dance
- Stomping Tantrum

1556518219255.pngLastly we have drampa which can be incredible thanks to him being able to cripple any pokemon (excluding electric) thanks to glare, and with his ability berserk and move roost he can repeatedly stack up his special stat boost allowing for some amazing damage, and behind a substitute, its even harder to beat. overall this mon just needs smeargles memento to start it off, a common set being...
Drampa @ Leftovers
Ability: Berserk
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Roost
- Glare
- Substitute
- Draco Meteor/filler

Replays=https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-285549
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-285523https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-285502 (was suppost to be specs)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-285158https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-285066https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-285046https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-284933https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-284906https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-284928https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-284578https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-284086https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-283709https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-284053https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-283394https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-283408https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-283382https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-283078https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7monotype-897028272https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-283014https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-283007https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-282999https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/azure-gen7monotype-282955
 
Last edited:

NuttyRabbit

Banned deucer.
Just wanted to say that ghost is a team thats viability isnt seen as to high in the meta, and i wish to change that, so i wanted to suggest a few sets, interesting ideas, so that the community could test these out and possibly raise the usage and tier of ghost.

Cofagrigus @ Red Card
Ability: Mummy
EVs: 252 Def / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Nasty Plot
- Pain Split
- Trick Room
- Shadow Ball

first lets start with this cofagrigus set, its defences are max out due to it having pain split and being able to take hp and recover more from that thanks to its lower hp stats, which initially helps it to start its turn with trick room, usually having very little hp afterword which if the case you can use pain split to bring your opponents pokemon to around 50% health and help you recover to usually around 80% health (matters on the pokemon's hp level) nasty plot is always there to help you bring down a more tanky pokemon, as well as if you have more hp to spare, cofagrigus is a definite pick, and helps take down 2-3 pokemon almost always. beware taunt and normal type pokemon though.
P.s. toxic spikes can be very useful against certain teams, however due to all stall teams revolving around at least 1 poison/flying defog pokemon whether it be toxapex, flying mono as a whole, venusaur, steel mono as a whole, etc. which is why i wouldnt recommend having it on cofagrigus


Doublade @ Eviolite
Ability: No Guard
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Adamant Nature
- Magnet Rise
- Iron Head
- Swords Dance
- Sacred Sword /shadow sneak

doublade has a more interesting set because it allows for him to almost single-handed defeat any fairy team whenever tapu koko is taken out, the reason for this is because in fact most teams only way of dealing with this mon is through more common coverage which is ground moves, however dont be dumb, fire and dark monotypes make this pokemon almost useless with the only help him being is able to add some chip damage. yet this pokemon provides great defensive stats, and should be considered highly if your team struggles with any fairy team, or lacks defensive pressure

Drifblim @ Aguav Berry
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Recycle
- Amnesia
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hex

this set has saved me more times than i can count with driftblim being able to outspeed a lot of mons after the use of his aguav berry able to cripple the opposing mon offensive pressure with the use of both amnesia for special, and will-o-wisp for psychical he is something to be considered. he can help out his team by coming in on a mon and crippling it next turn, or coming in after a death and setting up for a bulky suprise, making it much harder to kill him with any offensive moves, status is something you should look out for when using this mon and can be used for bait to bring out sableye, doublade, or gengar. whatever the case its surely something to try

Sableye (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- recover
- Snarl/special filler
- Will-O-Wisp
- Calm Mind

While Mega-Sableye is amazing by all means, sableye by itself is something you should never underestimate with the ability prankster he is able to cripple any psychical offensive pokemon with his priority will-o-wisp, and set up on any special offensive mon with calm mind recover, and snarl/filler he becomes a threat to most other mons being able to cripple lopunny, excadrill, and many others

Banette-Mega (F) @ Banettite
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- destiny bond/attract
- Substitute/magic coat/taunt/snatch
- Knock Off/thunder wave/will-o-wisp
- Shadow Claw

now this is rather common however i dont think banette should be overlooked, she can carry a great deal of sets to counter a variety of things. she can be a support, helping to cripple off mons that cause ghost mono's trouble in general whether its a scarfed mon or a banded one. being able to do some good damage, help by using destiny bond. helping by being able to taunt other mons and preventing them from healing, setting up, or throwing out hazards, or a crippling status effect. not to mention with snatch/magic coat banette can reverse these moves on the other pokemon (with snatch banette can use roost, swords dance, recover, quite better than magic coat in some ways). with attract banette can severly cripple any pokemon of the opposite gender, with trick room banette can keep destiny bond on longer, not to mention help support other mons to get marowak in play(can switch, or stay in and use destiny) with imprison she can get block certain mons entirely, however not on the switch. banette can do so much, but is very inconsistent when it comes to results which is why she is left unranked, giving this mon an entire review and second look would be extremely beneficial, no matter what your team struggles with, she can help.

Mimikyu @ Mimikium Z
Ability: Disguise
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 1 HP
- Substitute
- Pain Split
- Swords Dance
- Play Rough

quite honestly this set resembles cofagrigus and carry its own benefits being able to do a lot more damage then you would think when setting up on a status mon, being able to stall with sub until your left at 1 hp, and then pain split to bring yourself back up to 80% health and use mimikium Z, easily beating any mon, suprisingly even tankier ones such as ferrothorn, given a swords dance on the switch or a status move to help carry yourself more than only 1 mon, or simply beat the tankier mon your having problems with ((+2 252 Atk Disguise Mimikyu Twinkle Tackle (175 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Ferrothorn: 175-207 (49.7 - 58.8%) -- 71.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery)) adament for a guaranteed kill.

Mismagius @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Perish Song
- Heal Bell
- Mean Look
- Protect

now mismagius takes the role that helps not only your defensive core, but counters the opponents defensive core as a whole, with the only other ghost pokemon that gets perish song and mean look being gengar, you can tell why the better of the two is mismagius, she has more special defense while not being able to be affected by something like spikes or toxic spikes thanks to levitate, while only being 5 base points slower than gengar. overall she can help the team by putting pressure on the opposing mon which honestly even if mismagius ends up dying that same pressure to switch could cost them the game, because you can bait them by throwing out blacephalon, which can only be stopped by the mon thats currently out, however because they switch you win thanks to your set which is the next thing

Blacephalon @ Ghostium Z
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Fire Blast
- Shadow Ball
- Flame Charge

with this blacephalon set, not only does blacephalon get the speed of his scarfed counterpart after one use of flame charge, but he can also beat toxapex thanks to calm mind, which after one calm mind (+1 252 SpA Beast Boost Blacephalon Never-Ending Nightmare (160 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Toxapex: 246-289 (80.9 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery) its a guarenteed by by. this set is a little more versatile and allows for better coverage and options, so while scarf has its advantages, I will always find this one better.

Decidueye @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Overgrow
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 116 HP / 224 Atk / 168 Spe
Careful Nature
- Swords Dance
- tailwind
- shadow claw
- leaf blade

This set is rather interesting but allows for some amazing damage, good speed, and can help even if decidueye dies early after thanks to tailwind still raising all pokemon on your sides speed by 2. overall this set is pretty interesting (+2 252 Atk Overgrow Decidueye Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 205-243 (67.4 - 79.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) and thats without a crit, which btw is guarenteed.

Marowak-Alola @ Thick Club
Ability: Lightning Rod / Rock Head
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk or 252 Atk/ 252 Spe
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Flare Blitz/Fire punch
- Shadow Bone
- Stealth Rock
- Low Kick

Mattering on what your going for, trick room or simply a offensive sr setter this mon has amazing coverage and damage output being able to ohko most threats to ghost with ease, overall this mon is pretty solid, dont think i need to explain much

Dusclops @ Eviolite
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Seismic Toss
- Mean Look
- Rest

This dusclops set is rather odd but helps tons against chansey, skarmory, celesteela, venusaur and many tanky mons across the board thanks to mean look keeping the opponent in, and pressure being able to lower the foes pp by a lot, paired with dusclops tank creates a perfect addition to your team. with the only mons that are harder to entrap being anything with knock off, or your weakness.

Hoopa @ Life Orb
Ability: Magician
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast

A interesting set, that defintely beats out scarfed hoopa which by all means is the only viable set he has, with trick room not only can he set himself up to take down a decent amount of pokemon but he also has the special tank and coverage needed to take down extreme threats such as skarmory, mantine, landerous, toxapex, sharpedo, tyranitar, mandibuzz, etc. something definitely worth trying, however do be wary he is 4x weak to dark/ghost type moves and because of that should really be used on mons that dont carry that coverage or have coverage, but only specially so you might be able to tank through.

some quick mentions
shedninja and mega-sableye make a good team because whatever hits sableye to strong, shedinja can take for free, and whatever shedinja cant take(status wise) mega-sableye can bounce to them
I'm going to be honest with you. A lot of these sets (and Pokemon) are horribly unviable, especially Drifblim, Mismagius, and Mega Banette. You say you want to help raise the viability and usage of Ghost, but none of these sets actually alleviate the problems Ghost faces in the current metagame, such as the meteoric rise of Dark as a type. I would highly suggest looking at the Sample Teams thread or watching some tournament games, such as those from Monotype World Cup, to get a better understanding of the metagame. Now if you want me to go into more detail about why certain sets/Pokemon are unviable, I can certainly do that, but I'll leave it at this for now.
 
dont quite get what you mean when you said ''A lot of these sets (and Pokemon) are horribly unviable'' which i disagree strongly with, i do understand that mismaguis isnt the best. however all of the others have incredible use. if you could please explain what you mean or how their not viable please do. also dont be quick to judge til youve tried it for yourself. also dont rely to much on tournament results, those are quite trippy because if we were to go off of those a lot of sets for many teams wouldnt be there at all, its good to explore and find different sets and what actually works versus what smogon says, because smogon is from the people, thus it can be changed if it gets used, and explored more.
I wasn't going to particularly comment on this threat, but this is horribly wrong. If sets are bad, then we will be quick to point that out, and quite frankly, a lot of those sets are unviable. It has nothing to do with being quick to judge, even if we haven't tried it. It is simply because it is rather obvious when a set won't work that we can simply skip that step. Oftentimes, it also has to do with Pokemon and sets being outclassed but other Pokemon who to the job better, for whatever reason. Also, tournaments are one of the best sources of data that we have. Generally, if something is seen in tournament play, then there is a reason for it. Take Bug for example. It doesn't see tournament play at all because it has bad match ups the majority of the time to the meta types. That is indicative of Bug as a type. On the other hand, Dark has seen a rise in tournament play, despite its match up into fairy, but that is also indicative of its strengths as a type. Dark is a good type, and tournament play demonstrates this. Telling us to not rely so heavily on tournament data and to not judge sets before we have tried them is indicative of a major fundamental flaw in your understanding of how Metagames in general work, and this shows in some of the sets that you gave us too. Thus, I will do my best to explain why these sets are/aren't viable, in order to try and fix this misunderstanding.


Cofagrigus @ Red Card
Ability: Mummy
EVs: 252 Def / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Nasty Plot
- Pain Split
- Trick Room
- Shadow Ball

first lets start with this cofagrigus set, its defences are max out due to it having pain split and being able to take hp and recover more from that thanks to its lower hp stats, which initially helps it to start its turn with trick room, usually having very little hp afterword which if the case you can use pain split to bring your opponents pokemon to around 50% health and help you recover to usually around 80% health (matters on the pokemon's hp level) nasty plot is always there to help you bring down a more tanky pokemon, as well as if you have more hp to spare, cofagrigus is a definite pick, and helps take down 2-3 pokemon almost always. beware taunt and normal type pokemon though.
P.s. toxic spikes can be very useful against certain teams, however due to all stall teams revolving around at least 1 poison/flying defog pokemon whether it be toxapex, flying mono as a whole, venusaur, steel mono as a whole, etc. which is why i wouldnt recommend having it on cofagrigus
Let's start here. This is actually somewhat decent. You are correct in identifying that Cofagrigus does have a niche in being able to generally set Trick Room, which can be very helpful for Ghost teams built around that. However, Cofagrigus is certainly not a sweeper under Trick Room. It is a utility pokemon that runs things like Will-o-wisp instead of Nasty Plot. Also, Red Card is generally not a great item. It can be useful in Niche situations, but it is exactly that -- niche.


Doublade @ Eviolite
Ability: No Guard
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Adamant Nature
- Magnet Rise
- Iron Head
- Swords Dance
- Sacred Sword /shadow sneak

doublade has a more interesting set because it allows for him to almost single-handed defeat any fairy team whenever tapu koko is taken out, the reason for this is because in fact most teams only way of dealing with this mon is through more common coverage which is ground moves, however dont be dumb, fire and dark monotypes make this pokemon almost useless with the only help him being is able to add some chip damage. yet this pokemon provides great defensive stats, and should be considered highly if your team struggles with any fairy team, or lacks defensive pressure
In terms of a Physical Wall, there are better options in Mega Sableye, and Gourgeist. This is primarily because they have recovery, and they also have other utility moves in their movepools. Also, Magnet Rise is totally unnecessary as Doublade. First, Doublade cannot do much back to those Ground Pokemon that it could wall with Magnet Rise, and Second, Doublade will be living at least one SE Earthquake because of its bulk.


Drifblim @ Aguav Berry
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Recycle
- Amnesia
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hex

this set has saved me more times than i can count with driftblim being able to outspeed a lot of mons after the use of his aguav berry able to cripple the opposing mon offensive pressure with the use of both amnesia for special, and will-o-wisp for psychical he is something to be considered. he can help out his team by coming in on a mon and crippling it next turn, or coming in after a death and setting up for a bulky suprise, making it much harder to kill him with any offensive moves, status is something you should look out for when using this mon and can be used for bait to bring out sableye, doublade, or gengar. whatever the case its surely something to try
This set seems interesting, but then I look at Driflblim's defenses, and I know immediately why this set will not work. I think of Nihilego with a similar Defense Stat, and a large HP Stat (albeit, not as large as Driblim), and consider how quickly that dies to anything Physical, and Drifblim would do the same. Let alone if the attack was Super Effective. This is a perfect example of something that we don't need to test to know it won't work.

To address the argument I immediately see coming, it may work on the low ladder, but to anyone who knows at all what they are doing, this set will fail.


Sableye (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- recover
- Snarl/special filler
- Will-O-Wisp
- Calm Mind

While Mega-Sableye is amazing by all means, sableye by itself is something you should never underestimate with the ability prankster he is able to cripple any psychical offensive pokemon with his priority will-o-wisp, and set up on any special offensive mon with calm mind recover, and snarl/filler he becomes a threat to most other mons being able to cripple lopunny, excadrill, and many others
Similarly to Drifblim, Sableye's defenses are horrid, and should not be relied on consistently. It is one thing to use Prankster as a pre-mega ability to occasionally fire off a Prankster Will-o-Wisp, and then switching mega evolving, but it entirely another to forego the mega stone altogether. Let alone on the Calm Mind set. And, to be totally honest, the Calm Mind set isn't even worth running on Mega Sableye, let alone regular Sableye, the clear inferior of the two.


Banette-Mega (F) @ Banettite
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk
Adamant Nature
- destiny bond/attract
- Substitute/magic coat/taunt/snatch
- Knock Off/thunder wave/will-o-wisp
- Shadow Claw

now this is rather common however i dont think banette should be overlooked, she can carry a great deal of sets to counter a variety of things. she can be a support, helping to cripple off mons that cause ghost mono's trouble in general whether its a scarfed mon or a banded one. being able to do some good damage, help by using destiny bond. helping by being able to taunt other mons and preventing them from healing, setting up, or throwing out hazards, or a crippling status effect. not to mention with snatch/magic coat banette can reverse these moves on the other pokemon (with snatch banette can use roost, swords dance, recover, quite better than magic coat in some ways). with attract banette can severly cripple any pokemon of the opposite gender, with trick room banette can keep destiny bond on longer, not to mention help support other mons to get marowak in play(can switch, or stay in and use destiny) with imprison she can get block certain mons entirely, however not on the switch. banette can do so much, but is very inconsistent when it comes to results which is why she is left unranked, giving this mon an entire review and second look would be extremely beneficial, no matter what your team struggles with, she can help.
Banette's real niche is in Prankster Destiny Bond. However, again, anyone experienced in Pokemon will totally see this coming, and play around it. Also, if you want a utility mega evolution for Ghost, you just want Sableye. Yes, Banette has things like Taunt or Thunder Wave, but that is literally it. It lacks recovery, it lacks defenses, and it lacks Magic Bounce. All three of these things make Sableye are far better utility pokemon than Banette. Also, a specific note about attract: with all of the legendary/mythical Pokemon running around, this move will be useless most of the time. In the few instances where you could use it, even then, you have a 50% chance of even being able to use it, and then there is only a % chance of it actually making the Pokemon infatuted. Those odds are way too small, and the payout is not large enough to warrant all the effort that goes into it. The fact that you even mentioned attract is a true indication of a lack of experience.


Mimikyu @ Mimikium Z
Ability: Disguise
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
IVs: 1 HP
- Substitute
- Pain Split
- Swords Dance
- Play Rough

quite honestly this set resembles cofagrigus and carry its own benefits being able to do a lot more damage then you would think when setting up on a status mon, being able to stall with sub until your left at 1 hp, and then pain split to bring yourself back up to 80% health and use mimikium Z, easily beating any mon, suprisingly even tankier ones such as ferrothorn, given a swords dance on the switch or a status move to help carry yourself more than only 1 mon, or simply beat the tankier mon your having problems with ((+2 252 Atk Disguise Mimikyu Twinkle Tackle (175 BP) vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Ferrothorn: 175-207 (49.7 - 58.8%) -- 71.1% chance to 2HKO after Leftovers recovery)) adament for a guaranteed kill.
This set is just straight up inferior to the traditional set. Mimikyu does not require another Substitute as the pseudo-one from its ability is good enough. Mimikyu is also not bulky enough to warrant using Pain Split, ignoring the fact that it isn't even a great healing move as it is.


Mismagius @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Perish Song
- Heal Bell
- Mean Look
- Protect

now mismagius takes the role that helps not only your defensive core, but counters the opponents defensive core as a whole, with the only other ghost pokemon that gets perish song and mean look being gengar, you can tell why the better of the two is mismagius, she has more special defense while not being able to be affected by something like spikes or toxic spikes thanks to levitate, while only being 5 base points slower than gengar. overall she can help the team by putting pressure on the opposing mon which honestly even if mismagius ends up dying that same pressure to switch could cost them the game, because you can bait them by throwing out blacephalon, which can only be stopped by the mon thats currently out, however because they switch you win thanks to your set which is the next thing
This is a similar situation to Drifblim. Its defenses are not good enough to pull this off. One of the only trappers in the metagame is Azumarill, and speaking from experience, even when invested in defenses, it often feels frail. Then, considering the fact that Mismagius is far worse than Azumarill in terms of defenses, its a clear indication that this will not work. Two additional oversights specific to this analysis that particularly hurt this analysis that I want to mention. 1. Gengar is also unaffected by Toxic Spikes due to its Poison Typing. Thus Mismagius' ability is not anything unique in this situation. 2. Mismagius' ability can force switches when your opponent clicks a ground type move, which can help gain you the momentum to actually trap and remove a Pokemon. This is something unique to Mismagius that was completely overlooked. Now, this does not make up for Mismagius' defenses which really hurt the viability of this set, but, in theory, the momentum could be helpful, and that was not mentioned at all.


Blacephalon @ Ghostium Z
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Fire Blast
- Shadow Ball
- Flame Charge

with this blacephalon set, not only does blacephalon get the speed of his scarfed counterpart after one use of flame charge, but he can also beat toxapex thanks to calm mind, which after one calm mind (+1 252 SpA Beast Boost Blacephalon Never-Ending Nightmare (160 BP) vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Toxapex: 246-289 (80.9 - 95%) -- guaranteed 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery) its a guarenteed by by. this set is a little more versatile and allows for better coverage and options, so while scarf has its advantages, I will always find this one better.
This is one of the first sets here that I have seen that might actually be usable. I'm not sure it will work, because of Blacephalon's defenses (noticing a trend here?), but Calm Mind Blacephalon is a set. Thus, the real difference is in Flame Change, and that could be useful.


Decidueye @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Overgrow
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 116 HP / 224 Atk / 168 Spe
Careful Nature
- Swords Dance
- tailwind
- shadow claw
- leaf blade

This set is rather interesting but allows for some amazing damage, good speed, and can help even if decidueye dies early after thanks to tailwind still raising all pokemon on your sides speed by 2. overall this set is pretty interesting (+2 252 Atk Overgrow Decidueye Leaf Blade vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 205-243 (67.4 - 79.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) and thats without a crit, which btw is guarenteed.
This set seems exactly like the Kartana variant, which makes me think that this could be usable. Two notes though: 1. the EVs seem arbitrary. I'm not sure what it outspeeds, lives, or ko's with that spread. 2. If a crit is guarenteed, then calculate for a crit. Otherwise, the calc is inaccurate anyway. These are just technicalities though.


Marowak-Alola @ Thick Club
Ability: Lightning Rod / Rock Head
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk or 252 Atk/ 252 Spe
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Flare Blitz/Fire punch
- Shadow Bone
- Stealth Rock
- Low Kick

Mattering on what your going for, trick room or simply a offensive sr setter this mon has amazing coverage and damage output being able to ohko most threats to ghost with ease, overall this mon is pretty solid, dont think i need to explain much
Trade Low Kick for Earthquake, but otherwise it looks rather standard. Nothing to mention here.


Dusclops @ Eviolite
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpD
Relaxed Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Seismic Toss
- Mean Look
- Rest

This dusclops set is rather odd but helps tons against chansey, skarmory, celesteela, venusaur and many tanky mons across the board thanks to mean look keeping the opponent in, and pressure being able to lower the foes pp by a lot, paired with dusclops tank creates a perfect addition to your team. with the only mons that are harder to entrap being anything with knock off, or your weakness.
If, in some odd world, you did want to run a trapper on ghost, this would be the Pokemon to do it on. This does not mean, however, that is is necessarily optimal. Also, Curse would be better because it allows Dusclops to take care of all types, and not be hardwalled by Ghost types who can't be Will-O'd. I would like to reiterate though that this wouldn't be optimal because Ghost does not have the space to afford this.


Hoopa @ Life Orb
Ability: Magician
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Trick Room
- Psychic
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast

A interesting set, that defintely beats out scarfed hoopa which by all means is the only viable set he has, with trick room not only can he set himself up to take down a decent amount of pokemon but he also has the special tank and coverage needed to take down extreme threats such as skarmory, mantine, landerous, toxapex, sharpedo, tyranitar, mandibuzz, etc. something definitely worth trying, however do be wary he is 4x weak to dark/ghost type moves and because of that should really be used on mons that dont carry that coverage or have coverage, but only specially so you might be able to tank through.
I have a soft spot for Hoopa, but I am missing Shadow Ball. Ghost + Fighting is perfect coverage. Also, the offensive threats can only be beaten while under Trick Room, which Hoopa isn't even guaranteed to set up. Also, there is little reason (at least, none articulated here), for running the EVs in SpD over HP. That being said though, Hoopa does have its niche, just not with this exact set.


Now, looking back, I only see 4 sets out of 12 that might actually be viable (but then again, they were the closest to the normal sets anyway). Then, of the rest, only 3 of other Pokemon listed are actually viable, but your sets are so off. Then 5 are just entirely off the mark. A lot of the things your post are either incorrect or misguided, but I hope that now you at least understand why that is the case.
 

Perish Song

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First i would like to point out that cofagrigus isnt per se a sweeper but can do some decent damage when it has a boost of shadow ball, not to mention a previous pain split which helps lower the pokemon to around 55%hp, besides will-o-wisp is better used on mega-sableye, or another mon like shedinja, or even mega-banette, and lastly niches can be quite useful, you would be surprised, however the item can be swapped for another of choice, whatever the case the set works well against anything that takes ghost nuetrally. which needless to say is useless against dark and normal so i can understand where your coming from. in terms of psychical walls there is none better than doublade, the stats alone are better, so why you say gourgiest and mega-sableye are better leaves me dumbfounded, and the reason for magnet rise is because it helps block out pokemon such as diancie and leaves fairy defeneless, not to mention swords dance and iron head is an incredible combo, not to mention the lack of other moves to cover doublade aside of ground on those typical teams. sacred sword for dark teams obv. quite honestly you agreed that when you look at driftblims set that its interesting however you might doubt that it works, which to guarentee this you can use memento to help get it started so it can carry momentum. also on the fact of sableye im very aware that mega-sableye is the better of the two, however prankster is still something interesting to use, however i would agree it lacks a strong special offensive move to carry it which it clearly doesnt affect dark since the prankster nerf which is ridiculous. now as for mega-banette im not saying that attract was the most useful of them, simply mentioning it can have a lot of roles on a team, and the vareity is quite nice and can easily set off your opponent, now as for you saying mega-banette doesnt have magic bounce, well it gets access to snatch, and magic coat which is exactly what magic bounce is. while it might not get access to a real recovery move it does get access to snatch which once again can steal moves like swords dance, roost, recover, etc, whatever that doesnt cover magic coat does. also as for mimikyu you would be suprised to what it can do and its tank, however i can see your point. moving on to mismagius i did mention trapping your opponent in to get rid of one briefly, which the set isnt probably the best, however it is nice for its ability among a few other things that you mentioned, sadly i agree it seems to frail. as for blacephalon calm mind isnt to be used on psychical threats, but walls that carry specially offensive moves but have no real base stats to do real damage, which normally blacephalon wouldnt be able to kill, but with this it is able. as for decidueye's set, try it out, if a mon isnt explored see what it can do, get it a real good clean unbiased look. nothing to mention about marowak either, except that low kick helps beat out heatran with its balloon still activated, tyranitar, among many others, which if that doesnt kill it flare blitz/shadow bone will. nothing to mention about dusclops, and as for hoopa psychic can be traded out for shadow ball, and hoopa has quite some bulk, so given you set up on a tank, or specially offensive mon that doesnt have dark pulse, shadow ball, etc. trick room is easily guarenteed, and its bound to take some mons with it. overall i understand your points and agree that 4 sets arent good, however the rest are to be considered
Hello, being open to new ideas and experimenting new things is something monotype appreciates as it makes a positive impact on the metagame that is only taking us further, making the metagame more interesting. However, suggesting a few random sets based on personal experience is hardly something we do or accept, the suggested sets are generally tested by a bunch of tour players and sees tournament usage before it becomes a trend ( Just like Substitute + Swords Dance Tapu Bulu now is its best set) That being said, I'll also try to talk why these sets won't work from a larger perspective.


Starting things off with Dusclops and Cofagrigus, I'll just quote this post here which I think effectively reflects the value of these 2 Pokemon. In that post, it's stated that Cofagrigus can run a Toxic Spikes and Pain Split set for supporting purposes, or a Trick Room set with Nasty Plot and 2 attacks. Why this set won't work is simply you tried to mix the 2 sets here, putting Cofagrigus in a tight spot. Naturally, you would expect a different attack along with Shadow Ball so that Cofagrigus isn't automatically walled by any part-Normal and Dark-type Pokemon, and its supportive pain split set doesn't require Nasty Plot or Trick Room, its meant to set Toxic Spikes to help with certain matchups that Ghost cannot normally handle, such as Normal. Your argument that is you use a Pain Split if you have a Trick Room in effect or/and if you used Nasty Plot, and I'll be honest that is a lot of ifs. Cofagrigus doesn't have the best offenses that it relies on setup, its lack of speed is easily punished and this particular set just invites plenty of Pokemon in the field.


Moving on with Doublade, the reason why you shouldn't be running Magnet Rise is kind of similar to Cofag's case, its slow. In order to secure a safe Magnet Rise, you need to do it on a predict which is something hard to do even while facing fairy because Diancie generally outspeeds and even if you secured a Magnet Rise, Koko will come in and kill you anyway. Also please note that Earth Power into Moonblast kills Doublade so getting a Magnet Rise hardly matters in this case. Having Gourgeist gives you a better chance to handle Ground-type Pokemon with the provided resistance, the capability of hitting super effectively back and having a reliable recovery (Synthesis) or a form of recovery that annoys the enemy (Leech Seed)


Next up we have Drifblim, which objectively does nothing. This simple set just loses to any Substitute user, any Taunt user that outspeeds it, hard-walled by every Normal-type Pokemon, most Fire-type Pokemon, any special set up sweeper with Knock Off support and most Electric-type Pokemon. It is simply an inferior set that nearly doesn't offer anything for Ghost-type teams except for Ground-type immunity which you are not really taking good advantage of.


You have no reason to use a regular Sableye over its Mega. The defense boost and Magic Bounce is simply too good to discard, however, I've seen some similar sets like that one during ORAS Monotype. With the abundance of Fairy-types, this set simply won't work against a good majority of the metagame.


For Banette, I'll just quote Consort
Banette's real niche is in Prankster Destiny Bond. However, again, anyone experienced in Pokemon will totally see this coming, and play around it. Also, if you want a utility mega evolution for Ghost, you just want Sableye. Yes, Banette has things like Taunt or Thunder Wave, but that is literally it. It lacks recovery, it lacks defenses, and it lacks Magic Bounce. All three of these things make Sableye are far better utility pokemon than Banette. Also, a specific note about attract: with all of the legendary/mythical Pokemon running around, this move will be useless most of the time. In the few instances where you could use it, even then, you have a 50% chance of even being able to use it, and then there is only a % chance of it actually making the Pokemon infatuted. Those odds are way too small, and the payout is not large enough to warrant all the effort that goes into it. The fact that you even mentioned attract is a true indication of a lack of experience.
This is a fairly accurate description and doesn't need any additions. Sableye is definitely better mega to have, thus making Banette unnecessary.


As for Mimikyu, that is a terrible way to use one of Ghost's must have and most influential Pokemon. The ability Disguise is a god sent, allowing Mimikyu to check many Pokemon safely without a major worry. It's also the only Ghost-type Pokemon that comes with part-Fairy typing, acts as a win condition while facing Dark- and Dragon-type teams. Substitute and Pain Split are really incompatible with an offensive Mimikyu variant, and discarding priority is a huge mistake. The standard set of it works well, I'd suggest you take a look at it / use it.


Mismagius might work as a trapper, but not in the long term. Normally you would expect your trappers to be more bulky, especially in a type where you don't have many defensive options. Setting up Mean Look and Perish Song takes 2 turns, that is plenty of time for your opponent to deal some heavy damage with pretty much anything. And we stated above how influential Dusclops and Cofagrigus can get with trapping so having Mismagius with a trapper set seems like a mistake. ( Note that you don't need to have Perish Song in order to trap something effectively. PP stall or Curse stall are both valid options, just takes longer time yet still effective. )


That Blacephalon set isn't entirely bad. There are some variants of CM Blacephalon which puts a better effort against bulkier teams. However, Blacephalon's base Speed is more than enough, and you would rather coverage over Flame Charge.


I won't say anything about Decidueye unless you tell what is this spread for and what does it do. However, I'll make one comment that this Decidueye could be effective if it sets Swords Dance and Tailwind. Yet again, that is too many ifs and Ghost-type teams don't get the best opportunity to set up, thus making this whole thing very hard to accomplish. (Also please note that Decidueye is one of few Pokemon that can remove hazards for Ghost-type teams)


Alolan Marowak certainly doesn't need Low Kick, mainly because both Pokemon you mentioned that Low Kick beats actually outspeeds Marowak Alola and reliable OHKO it / deal significant damage. That is another case where you need to make a prediction on the switch, but that's highly unnecessary as you only hit to like Heatran additionally. ( Earthquake / Bonemerang also hits to Tyranitar for a good amount. )


That Hoopa set is interesting, but regarding the Ghost-type team structure, that kind of set will only work inside of a Trick Room team itself, and not really fitting to balance archetype. Besides, I'd say you would prefer other Pokemon to set up Trick Room for you and switch out Trick Room with Nasty Plot for maximum damage potential. You would also want Shadow Ball here as Consort mentioned because Ghost + Fighting has an unresisted perfect coverage which can be further abused inside Trick Room with the Nasty Plot. Also, make those SpD stats HP instead as it increases bulk more.

Overall conclusion

This post gives me vibes that all those sets were designed for 1 on 1 situation, without factoring the stance of Ghost-type teams amongst the other types. Looking at the Ghost teams, amount of viable Pokemon it has access to is very limited, so that forces a role compression for many Pokemon. An example would be the number of hazard removers. Your only spinner is Dhelmise (which is unviable) while rest of defoggers are either unviable or are in Ubers. The omnipresence of hazards in any competitive matchup forces you to have removers or/and forms of hazard control, that is why Sableye Mega is a must have Pokemon in Ghost teams because it can bounce hazards and Decidueye mostly runs a Defog set to remove hazards. My suggestion would be looking at the interaction between the Pokemon and the types, (Which Pokemon achieves what for the given type? For example, Alolan Marowak is a free Electric immunity and Gourgeist performs as a solid ground check, same as Decidueye.) that will give you more ideas on how to come up with creative sets without hindering the viability too much.
 
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first of all, i start sub swords dance bulu before it was even actually considered good, so your welcome..
second toxic spikes handles literally nothing that ghost cannot handle, which is exactly what he was stating, however my sets take advantage of the fact that pain split takes away from the opponents health and gains to yours, so while it cant do literally no damage to normal, it can still do some good damage to dark teams, minimum clearly being 50%.
third, doublade actually helps with the entire fairy mono in general among some other things, which clearly the only mon it needs down to sweep it is none other than tapu koko, which clearly you didnt read well, but let me help you out here okay, gourgiest gets COMPLETELY walled by diance, or the standard set that is, not to mention sub tapu bulu, klefki, and overall really doesnt quite help in general without changing from your typical set.
fourth, for driftblim i see your point, very nicely made, however taunt isnt too common, and mega-sableye can come in to magic bounce that. and hex does some good damage and can break sub, however i see your point, ill think of something different set wise. also i agree with you on sableye.
fifth, did you not read my counter statement to that? nothing much to say here to you address the things i said in that. banette is still good and has its advantages as the fairy rise has made the standard ghost team instantly lose to any fairy team
sixth check the mimikyu set again, said nothing to counter my statements or anything
seventh perish song can force pokemon out effecting for a perfect opportunity for another ghost mon to set up, especially if they dont expect the set, or even if they do the mon is to important to sack. so really it doesnt need to be godly, simply just able to die before the last turn to put pressure on the opposing mon, etc.
eighth if blacephalons base speed is enough why do we even use scarfed blacephalon? your arguement there is stupid and carrys no validity, as flame charge blacephalon has more coverage(also you said you would run more coverage over flame charge but what is there that is so much better than a boosted fire blast/shadow ball?) answer=nothing
decidueye carrys another role so setting up isnt something someone would expect, rather this helps him to, not to mention that he carrys a good typing and memento/perish song can pressure the opponent to switch out obviously, please test it out so you can realize how good he is
ninth, understandable, but people switch especially when the see marowak, so use whatever you want
tenth, every turn of trick room is essential, and needed to kill the opposing pokemon (4 at max) which thanks to life orb and his coverage you already ohko everything, so as to why i would need nasty plot, idk. and shadow ball and the hp stats, ill use that instead.
thanks for the critism, if you would show replays of what im talking about, and show that it wont work, that would convince me for the others.
Nice Joke about Sub SD Bulu:blobshrug:. But for real lemme explain why your sets are rather unviable/not useful

173277

First of all I don't really see the point of red card on this. It doesn't really accomplish or help you it. Second, your evs are kinda whack. Not running hp evs on a poke with 58 hp means that it will die easier even if u have pain split. Third, your set pratically just loses to dark or normal mons and also mons like mantine or pex can just haze ur boost away and even burn you back. The only good niche cofag has is t spikes but your not even utilizing it well since your running a TR pain split set for some reason.

173255

This might look solid on paper for beating fairy due to it's steel type but if i'm gonna be honest, the only thing it helps vs is tapu bulu lol. Like perish said, m diancie can earth power before u get magnet rise up and moonblast from there kills, koko just laughs at this, clefable can use knock off to remove doublade's evolite or even fire blast it to do massive dmg, klefki literally can just click foul play, and mimikyu can kill this thanks to it's stab and disguise. Also gourgeist is completely fine as a wall against fairy. It beats diancie with seed bomb and klefki with leech and willo so only thing it rly loses to is sub bulu.

173256

This set doesn't seem too bad at first sight but it requires way too much setup to actually be efficient. One big factor that shuts this thing down is knock off. Once your berry is knocked off you have no ways of recovery while driftblim isn't even that strong so an opponent can just heal on you quite easily. Another big factor can be status/taunt. Status, especially toxic, puts you on a timer while taunt just renders you useless. Also even if your defense is high this pokemon has 5 weaknesses so any stab can be threatening.

173261

Idk why people still think this is a good mon:facepalm:. One big drawback of using this is you can't have m sableye, which is very crucial and helpful for ghost as it's one of your only ways to bounce back hazards. Even then M banette is still quite a bad mon. It has a huge atk stat, sure, but it's coverage is SO POOR so it can't even make use of it. It might have neat utility moves but note that it doesn't have amazing defense and it also lacks reliable recovery. I think u expect this mon to do too many things at once when it actually can't. M sableye is way more useful and helpful then this piece of junk.

173263

This is such a bad way to use mimikyu:psygrump:. Only having play rough as stab is not ideal since steel and poison types just wall you. Also not having priority means it can be wayyy easier to revenge kill mimikyu from mons such as latios. While ur set looks cool running a simple sd, play rough, shadow claw, and shadow sneak is much more helpful and effective then running sub split.

173264

Perish song mean looks is always a nice way to trap and kill fat pokemon like pex and cele but mismagius is not a good mon at all to pull this off. It's defense is quite lackuster for once and it also has no recovery. Also the opponent can simple switch out before you trap them hence why it is not as useful. If u want a better ghost trapper use dusclops for sure. It has pressure and rest to stall out fat mons.

173275

Your Decidueye set seems kinda wack if you ask me. Usually decidueye is used on ghost as a semi reliable defogger while also being able to trap and setup on some bulky mons respectively with SD, Roost, and Spirit Shackle. Decidueye isn't too fond of an sweeper overall since ghost prefers to have a defogger while also being a nice ground switchin and being able to pressure fat mons. Not running roost means that you will get worn out quite easily. I like the z tailwind creativity but I don't find it effective enough because even at +2 decidueye isn't that threatening.

173265

Your idea for Blacephalon to be able to boost it's speed and switch between moves is cool but there is a much better set for this
Blacephalon @ Firium Z
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 232 HP / 20 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Shadow Ball
- Fire Blast
- Substitute
The evs allow you to get a speed boost instead of a sp atk boost every time you kill a mon instead and you have cm to boost ur sp atk respectively. Sub is also nice to have as it allows you to wall chansey, prevents ditto from reverse sweeping, and even beat normal. This set can also murder steel.

173270

TR Hoopa is not super useful since u need TR in order to do your job properly. If you really want to use hoopa it's better off as a nasty plot attacker so you can walls like m scizor, celesteela, gastrodon and muk easier, which you kinda fail to do without a boost. TBH if you want a good a reliable semi hard hitting sp attacker blacephalon or gengar suite it better since they have reliable speed.

Overall, while I'm glad that your are trying to make the meta interesting by showing off some heat techniques that you prolly used on ladder and won with but for the most part, these cheese sets will not rly do well vs a good player and most of these sets are rather useless or require too much to be efficient. Since you wanted some replays here you go. I can definitely get more if u need.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7monotype-901822299
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7monotype-901827396
(SO to K3ppr for the replays)
 

Perish Song

flaunt
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Alright, perhaps I wasn't entirely clear so let's try this again.

however my sets take advantage of the fact that pain split takes away from the opponents health and gains to yours, so while it cant do literally no damage to normal, it can still do some good damage to dark teams, minimum clearly being 50%.
That is only for 1 Pokemon. The fact that HP you gain goes down each time you are hurting the opposing Pokemon with it puts a limit to the damage you can deal. An optimistic approach would be you dealing above 50%, which could be considered great. However, you are not really killing the Pokemon and if the Pokemon has a recovery, Cofagrigus just becomes a deadweight. Let's say you are facing a stallbreaker Hydreigon with that set. The expected outcome is Hydreigon beating Cofagrigus with full HP, thanks to its Taunt and Roost. Any reasonable player will go Hydreigon and Cofag will be useless.

third, doublade actually helps with the entire fairy mono in general among some other things, which clearly the only mon it needs down to sweep it is none other than tapu koko, which clearly you didnt read well, but let me help you out here okay, gourgiest gets COMPLETELY walled by diance,
Doublade only helps with Tapu Bulu. Tapu Koko still manhandles Doublade easily, Azumarill removes Eviolite and set Belly Drum free against that set, Diancie actually kills Doublade with conjunction of Earth Power and Moonblast. Also, Gourgeist isn't completely walled by Diancie, Seed Bomb into Shadow Sneak kills it from full but the fact that Gourgeist isn't that viable makes this an inferior way to check it. Klefki just Foul Plays on you till you die, or chip you long enough to let someone else revenge kill it.

fifth, did you not read my counter statement to that? nothing much to say here to you address the things i said in that. banette is still good and has its advantages as the fairy rise has made the standard ghost team instantly lose to any fairy team
We could agree on that Banette has its benefits. However, the benefits that Sableye provides is undeniably better. This is basically an argument where you are a kid that loves candy, so you would obviously pick 10 candies (Sableye) over one candy (Banette). I probably wouldn't discard Sableye just for some Destiny Bond shenanigans.

sixth check the mimikyu set again, said nothing to counter my statements or anything
Status Pokemon are not sitting ducks, the fact that they are slower than you doesn't change the fact they can break the Disguise. Ferrothorn is one of Pokemon it could possibly beat, but other things like Toxapex have more spammable attacks (Scald) which kinda doesn't allow Mimikyu to beat "any Pokemon".

seventh perish song can force pokemon out effecting for a perfect opportunity for another ghost mon to set up, especially if they dont expect the set, or even if they do the mon is to important to sack. so really it doesnt need to be godly, simply just able to die before the last turn to put pressure on the opposing mon, etc.
Ghost is a type that lacks proper defensive answers, using an offensive for sacrifice just to Perish Song is not something most Ghost-type teams will appreciate. Besides, out of all Pokemon you listed only Doublade can effectively somehow set up.

eighth if blacephalons base speed is enough why do we even use scarfed blacephalon? your arguement there is stupid and carrys no validity, as flame charge blacephalon has more coverage(also you said you would run more coverage over flame charge but what is there that is so much better than a boosted fire blast/shadow ball?) answer=nothing
This is pretty misguided. It is a well-known fact that some fast Pokemon can effectively use Choice Scarf if the role we choose for our Pokemon is different than standard, despite being fast. Greninja runs Choice Scarf most of the time despite being one of the fastest Pokemon in the tier. Does this imply Greninja is slow? No, of course, Choice Scarf just lets Greninja be the best revenge killer in the game, outspeed nearly entire metagame with its excellent coverage. Applying same logic here, Choice Scarf Blacephalon effectively outspeeds any base 100-speed Scarfers, and it's Beast Boost lets him sweep late-game. I'd like you to explain how my "arguement there" is stupid and why it doesnt carry any validity since Scarf is one of best sets that Blacephalon can possibly run. I'd also like you to explain why Flame Charge gives better coverage while you run a max Special Attack spread and Flame Charge is just another Fire-type STAB. As for "What is there that is so much better than a boosted Fire Blast" question, running Psychic/Psyshock lets you chip certain stuff namely Mega Venusaur and Nihilego.

decidueye carrys another role so setting up isnt something someone would expect, rather this helps him to, not to mention that he carrys a good typing and memento/perish song can pressure the opponent to switch out obviously, please test it out so you can realize how good he is
Like I said won't comment until I see some high ladder elo replays that can effectively use this set, so I'm still waiting for replays to see its viability.

thanks for the critism, if you would show replays of what im talking about, and show that it wont work, that would convince me for the others.
It is your job to provide replays since the claim is yours. Don't ask me to disprove things when you didn't really prove anything, so I'll be waiting on those.
 
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NuttyRabbit

Banned deucer.
Okay, let's pick this argument apart piece by piece shall we?

first taunt recover sets are very rare, second hydreigon with taunt recover is a headlight in itself since it isn't a viable set to begin with, scarf is clearly better. furthermore even a Pokemon with a recovery cant do nothing to cofagrigus since cofagrigus will also recover if not set up on them.
Stallbreaker Hydreigon (Taunt+ Roost) is not only its most common set at the moment, but arguably its best set on Dark, letting it beat pokemon like Chansey, Mega Venusaur, Toxapex, and others that it could come nowhere close to beating with the scarf set. The fact that you claimed otherwise shows a severe lack of metagame knowledge, just like everything else you have posted. That set will always beat Cofagrigus by the way, since it cannot pain split on it and its sole attacking move does absolutely nothing to it.

(0 SpA Toxapex Scald vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Mimikyu: 51-60 (20.3 - 23.9%) -- guaranteed 5HKO) it takes toxapex two turns to beat one substitute,(+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Mimikyu Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 4 Def Toxapex: 113-133 (37.1 - 43.7%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery) and that's with life orb obviously however you could definitely beat out toxapex.
Except Toxapex can easily outstall you with Haze, Recover, and Scald. Also Toxapex never runs that few defense EVs. Here's that calc against an actual Toxapex spread on Poison, using your set instead of Life Orb

+2 252+ Atk Mimikyu Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 112+ Def Toxapex: 73-87 (24 - 28.6%) -- possible 5HKO after Black Sludge recovery

And that isn't even a max defense Pex spread. Against Max defense Toxapex, which the likes of Balance Water run
.
+2 252+ Atk Mimikyu Play Rough vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 67-79 (22 - 25.9%) -- possible 5HKO after Black Sludge recovery

+2 252+ Atk Mimikyu Let's Snuggle Forever vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Toxapex: 141-166 (46.3 - 54.6%) -- 8.2% chance to 2HKO after Black Sludge recovery


Pain Split will only result in you getting diminishing returns in the long run, meaning that you will eventually lose to Toxapex, which can Haze, Scald, and Recover on you forever. Hell, it can even T-spike on you for free.

As for doublade i literally said tapu koko manhandles it, did you not read? every mon has its counter, however its very false if you think azu can set up much less survive it, (+2 0+ Atk Doublade Iron Head vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Azumarill: 246-291 (71.9 - 85%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) (252+ Atk Huge Power Azumarill Knock Off (97.5 BP) vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Doublade: 122-144 (37.8 - 44.7%) -- guaranteed 3HKO) assuming you use belly drum, that's a guaranteed ohko, so back up your shit with calc's please (really getting tired of all this one sided argument where your not even reading nor considering my point, not to mention your saying stuff that is false) also diancie doesn't kill doublade with earth power since guess what? magnet rise...check your facts (252 SpA Diancie-Mega Moonblast vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Eviolite Doublade: 106-126 (32.9 - 39.1%) -- 99.8% chance to 3HKO) and obviously doublade ohko's it. as for gourgeist having shadow sneak and seed bomb is kinda a waste of space since where will you put will-o-wisp, synthesis, leech seed. one of these will have to be taken out. (0 Atk Gourgeist-Super Seed Bomb vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Diancie-Mega: 176-210 (73 - 87.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) (0 Atk Gourgeist-Super Shadow Sneak vs. 0 HP / 0- Def Diancie-Mega: 45-54 (18.6 - 22.4%) -- possible 5HKO) and thats assuming there isnt screens of course
anyways banette is still useful since as i said rise of fairy, did you read my last statement? besides banette helps overall against any monotype thanks to will-o-wisp, thunder wave, destiny bond and a few other moves it can choose from.
Okay, let's start with the fact that the only pokemon that you even have a chance of setting up on on your average fairy team is Sub SD Bulu. Everything else either cripples you, kills you, or puts you in range of something else. And guess what? In that calc, that Azu is knocking your ass off first, so even if you SD on that turn, congratulations you now lost your item, and in the time it takes you to kill Azumarill, anything else can come in and pick your ass off for free, such as Diancie, whose Moonblast you are now always in range of because you lost over half your HP to Azu's Knock Off into Aqua Jet, which it will always do. Oh, and this is assuming screens aren't up. In that case, here's the calc for Doublade

+2 0+ Atk Doublade Iron Head vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Azumarill through Reflect: 123-145 (35.9 - 42.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

+2 0+ Atk Doublade Shadow Sneak vs. 4 HP / 0 Def Azumarill through Reflect: 62-73 (18.1 - 21.3%) -- possible 5HKO

So now Azumarill has a chance to kill you with Jet after it Knocks your ass twice. Meanwhile, you have a legitimate chance to not kill Azumarill with two +2 Iron Heads into Shadow Sneak. And even if Azu doesn't kill you, guess what does? Everything else on the team because Doublade is not only slow as balls, but it's not even remotely as strong as you think it is. And no, nobody is going to BD in front of a +2 Doublade. Hell, they probably aren't bringing Azu into it but probably something like Klefki on the switch, which will get screens up or even just punish you with Foul Play while you do jack shit to it once it gets screens up.

0- Atk Klefki Foul Play vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Eviolite Doublade: 152-180 (47.2 - 55.9%) -- 79.3% chance to 2HKO

+2 0+ Atk Doublade Iron Head vs. 252 HP / 252+ Def Klefki through Reflect: 78-93 (24.5 - 29.2%) -- 99.8% chance to 4HKO

Even ignoring all of this, Diancie is not hard switching into Doublade, but coming in after it gets a kill (assuming it does at all even), and by that point Doublade is likely so weakened that it can just destroy it with Moonblast or Earth powering (Because Doublade has to waste a turn Magnet Rising against someting else because it is not doing that vs Diancie.)

Also you are never doubling down on attacking moves for Gourgeist, since you have to fit those other three moves like you said. But what makes Gourgeist better than say, Doublade against Fairy is that it can actually come in on pokemon like Klefki, Koko, and Azu relatively safely, something Doublade absolutely cannot do. Even if Gourgeist is bad, in the Fairy matchup is is a hell of a lot more useful because it can actually do something to the likes of Klefki, Azu, and Koko without being reduced to below half health.

As for Banette, any help it could possibly provide against any and all types is heavily overshadowed by Mega Sableye's sheer utility. Mega Sableye is not only bulkier, but is also neutral against Dark, which is a godsend in a metagame where Dark is better than it has ever been. In addition, it is immune to Psychic, again helping it against a top tier type, and is immune to moves like Toxic, Thunder Wave, Will'o Wisp, Taunt, making it so that it can do its job extremely reliably, and with Recover, it can stick around for a long, long time. Also the ability to deter hazards on a type with 2 removers at absolute most is a godsend for the type. In general, it provides an extreme amount of role compression on a type that absolutely needs it.

Meanwhile, Mega Banette is objectively worthless against Dark because of the Prankster nerf, gets absolutely annihilated by the likes of Knock off, provides no defensive utility whatsoever, is extremely suspectible to moves like Taunt, Toxic, Will'O, etc and being worn down in general thanks to a lack of reliable recovery. It has severe 4MSS since it wants to run Shadow Claw/Will'O, Taunt, Toxic, T-wave, Sucker Punch, Gunk Shot, and Destiny Bond but can't run all of those at the same time, forcing it to lose utility in a way that Mega Sableye doesn't have to worry about. Because of the Destiny Bond nerf, you can't simply spam the move, making it easy to play around, especially since Mega Banette is well known for doing that. And even if you pull it off, congrats you literally had to trade your Mega for one of your opponent's pokemon, which likely opens a hole for something else to come in and destroy your team.
kay well you say that psyshock is better for coverage as it allows for you to chip stuff like mega venusaur, however with my set you can easily kill them, thats right you can even beat him after using a flame charge (0 Atk Blacephalon Flame Charge vs. 248 HP / 88 Def Venusaur-Mega: 104-126 (28.6 - 34.7%) -- 3.5% chance to 3HKO) (252 SpA Blacephalon Fire Blast vs. 248 HP / 156+ SpD Venusaur-Mega: 276-326 (76 - 89.8%) -- guaranteed 2HKO) so quite honestly no idea why this is a question. now as for pokemon like nihilgo this is one of the things that can actually counter blacephalon, however given a previous flame charge and boost because people think that some pokemon can survive this monsterous special sweeper, blacephalon can easily beat nihilgo however it isnt completely guaranteed
(+1 252 SpA Blacephalon Never-Ending Nightmare (160 BP) vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Nihilego: 346-408 (96.3 - 113.6%) -- 75% chance to OHKO)
Psyshock lets you not only chip Mega Venusaur, but have an even better chance of OHKOing Nihilego, and without wasting your Z-move, but also chip the likes of Pex much more easily again, without wasting your Z move.

252 SpA Blacephalon Psyshock vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Nihilego: 354-418 (98.6 - 116.4%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO


252 SpA Blacephalon Psyshock vs. 252 HP / 112 Def Toxapex: 126-150 (41.4 - 49.3%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Black Sludge recovery

not gonna really say anything for mismagius, nothing was said for me to counter, however i will agree sacrificing mons isnt something ghosts wants especially since all of the good sets i gave (a few are bad, which i agreed upon in previous statements) dont need sacrificing rather there tanky enough to set up a huge majority of the time, however just like azu some pokemon just beat it out. does it make it bad? no, otherwise azu is bad, last time i checked it was what tier?
Most of the Pokemon and sets you have provided only give the illusion of being tanky, while in reality they go down rather quickly and easily. You compare it to Azu, but with Azumarill, if you manage to make the set do its intended job, it does so excellently and reliably, more than making up for whatever flaws it may have. The sets you've provided are not reliable, rarely do their job, and if they do manage to somehow pull it off, it is something that the normal sets could have done as well and far more reliably at that. In Monotype, every single team slot counts, and every Pokemon needs to be able to reliably do its job against opposing teams. Pokemon like Mega Banette or that terrible Drifblim set, which are objectively dead weight against good types, simply cannot be afford to be fit onto teams.



as for the replays sure id love to give them to you, funny thing though your already denying literally everything i say not to mention spouting off shit that isnt even true, which if you want a list, look at all the calc's i gave you, so sure ill give you the replays when your not biased and actually consider my idea. let me know when that is (lmao)
People are denying everything you are saying because you are failing to provide reasonable support to the arguments you are putting forth. Mot of the people arguing against you are those who have no only played the tier for a significantly longer time than you clearly have, but have also managed to provide actual evidence to support their claims. You have failed to do any of this. The burden of proof is and always will be on you in this argument because you made the claim that these sets work. It's not "biased" to call out someone for posting what is very clearly conjecture born of no actual metagame experience from someone who is claiming that these sets work solely based off of that conjecture.
your point? i play ladder and never see it on top level plays, and if i do its easily beaten. so once again your point
And here is more of that conjecture. You haven't posted proof of this set supposedly being bad or "being beaten easily". What top level plays are you even talking about? Tournaments? Because it has gotten plenty of mileage in those. What point on the ladder are you at. Actually provide evidence for what you're saying or screw off and stop wasting my time and everyone else's time. And for god's sake learn how to use capitalization and how to space out your paragraphs.
 
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This may or may not be reflective of what you see on higher levels of monotype ladder. (Admittedly, monotype ladder isn't very good in the first place but I digress). I would suggest perhaps trying sets in order to get a winrate that's a little better if you wish to suggest that they're good. You may even want to use them in a tournament like seasonals if you wish to demonstrate that they're good!
 

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