Heya, it's drphdbj here. There has been some talk about nu resources and teams being outdated in the discord (example above), which is a fair criticism. However, with dlc, tier shifts, and bans that have been occurring, it is really hard to keep these resources updated. I figured I would try and help contribute some teams I used during nucl, overall meta thoughts, and maybe add some insight from my pov. I am not one to hide my teams or my thought process, so I thought sharing would be beneficial. This will be a lengthy post, but all the pastes will be attached to the sprites. I will try to explain notable ev spreads, set explanations and some teras, cause some are definitely weird to look at.
w1 vs zeeLitium (w)
Before week 1 dropped, we had dlc and tier shifts really shake up the meta. I knew I was 100% bringing ho, as it is hard to build consistent balances when such drastic change happens in a meta. This structure was one I built for scl finals as a way of testing with etern, the only major difference is that I used hazard stacking iron thorns as opposed to froslass/lycan. The main idea was that the tier finally regained good priority, and prio is particularly good into opposing offenses and notably weather. There were a couple minor changes such as crunch arcanine for chandelure, and psychic noise toxtricity for terrakion/preventing fat stuff from recovering. I didn't drop a game in tests nor ladder, and when I tested other stuff I found myself going back to this base. I had no knowledge of my opponent, so I just played my game and things unfolded really nicely. There isn't a single complex ev spread on here, super simple team that is unfortunately outdated with sleep ban + thorn bans respectively.
w2 vs Phantomistix (w)
For week 2, I wanted to load some scrafty fat. Tera poison bulk up scrafty was the best progress maker in the tier imo, as there isn't really a way to safely midground knock off + bulk up + [dark/fight + poison] synergy. It is also an extremely dangerous wincon (hence why it is now banned!). Registeel has enough speed for paralyzed chandelure, which is useful because you have eq to actually hit it. Scrafty has a ton of speed for opposing scrafty to win bulk up wars, para'd mismagius, scyther, and delphox. Avalugg has enough speed to outspeed vileplume with some cushion after a spin so you can icicle crash the next turn. Delphox is sub + encore to avoid sucker, get into blaze, and act as a last resort against fat setup. The mu was decent, I played like shit, and got fortunate. The team is really nice, just a little slow off rip.
w3 vs zS (w)
This was the first week I felt the meta was starting to stabilize. This was also the first week I took scouting somewhat serious, as zS is very good but also very unorthodox. I loved subcm meloetta into his builds, and I originally wanted to build around np glowbro + subcm melo to dismantle fat. From testing this concept, it made me realize that glowbro was not in fact broken (at this time). So, I decided to go a different route. The team is really cool, tr diancie helped a ton against offense and provides makeshift speed control for another relatively slow team. The core of tr diancie for offense + subcm meloetta for fat was put into place. Copperajah has rock slide for oricorio, and it has 16 attack evs as that was just a nice number in the calc for general damage (attack damage outweighed the defensive evs). Tsareena had enough bulk to live +1 booster energy ice punch from iron thorns, and enough speed to outspeed bonnet/altaria creeping bonnet + base 95s after a rapid spin. Melo had enough speed for jolly overqwil. Pauros has scarf aqua jet for the following interaction: hard switch it in on iron thorns dd -> wave crash as thorns probably pops tera and dds again -> switch out and come back in and kill with aqua jet. Gligar has some spdef for pivoting around chandelure shadow ball. I played really well. While I wished that melo put in more work, pauros went ham this game.
w4 vs outbackrabbit (w)
Outbackrabbit is currently in circuit finals for the nu circuit, and I remember competing against him for a spot during the last cycle of nult. I really wanted to win this, cause I wanted to qualify for both and qualified for neither. Originally, I was gonna load up some
hail. Upon testing, I realized that it was far too inconsistent, especially with where our team was in the standings. I ultimately decided to intentionally load up the most boring spike stack balance I could, as I felt as if that gave me the best odds to win. Registeel has enough attack evs to 4hko glowbro with eq, as I felt as if that outweighed having ~430 spdef as opposed to ~400. Tsareena has bulk for dd flygon now instead of iron thorns. Diancie has enough speed to encore sylveon. Glowbro had enough speed for para'd bonnet and enough spdef to eat a hit from meteor beam diancie at full. Oricorio has enough speed for scarf 100s (flygon/staraptor) after two quiver dances. I felt decent about my play, thundurus could've popped me if it was double dance or tera'd at the correct turn. I also roosted with oricorio for no reason. Thankfully tho, I pulled out the win.
w5 vs Kiyo (w)
Kiyo was 4-0 just like me, so I wanted to bring something standard. I noticed some cheese, so to be proactive in prep I wanted to avoid losing to terrain and glowbro because that mon is super good rn. I thought overqwil would be perfect to build around. It had haze for sceptile/graf/uxie, matches up well into glowbro, and has spikes. I had a build with hisui-qwilfish during nult that I piloted super nicely once I tweaked sets, so I wanted something similar in gameplay if possible. Tsareena spread is same as above, copper is same but without the 16 attack. Overqwil has enough defense to live +0 flygon eq after rocks, +1 sceptile eq after rocks, and enough speed for max speed neutral abomasnow, fat tsareena, some gligar & qwilfish (clusterfuck speed tier lmao), rest is dumped into spdef for melo + gbro. Pauros is tera electric for insurance against thundy/oricorio, also immune to twave and just eliminates weaknesses for bulk up since you roll grounds anyways. Oricorio is offensive water as opposed to defensive fairy last week mainly to snipe diancie, but it also puts in work against rain and is nice general type synergy (rotom-wash type beat). I played solid and pulled through in the spikes war.
Overall really happy with my performance this tour. I do not want to say I solved the meta, but I felt as if I had more depth into my decisions this tour than the vast majority of the playerbase. I have some
quick takes before the meta changes with recent shifts:
- Fat tsareena is the best tsareena rn. Do not run jolly, do not run max attack. Run some pdef for dd flygon and pauros. The moveset is pretty splashable depending on the team.
- My top 5 mons in the meta (in no particular order): flygon, glowbro, diancie, tauros-aqua, oricorio-pom-pom.
- Breakers people are sleeping on: emboar and hisui-braviary. Emboar has knock, and prio in the form of sucker. Slow, but immediately threatens steels to the point that it is worth. Braviary has great bulk and mus well into most of the tier's rockers (not diancie but I don't like sr diancie much fwiw). You can hard switch it into most rockers not named diancie and threaten to 2hko 90% of the tier. While the rocks weakness does admittedly suck, you can hard switch into those rockers and make progress anyways. Be proactive, claim your kills folks.
- While oricorio doesn't have amazing bst and shares the same typing as thundurus, this mon is insanely stupid. Its functionality is completely different to thundy thanks to quiver dance, rev dance, roost, and actual flying stab in hurricane. You have to fear both offensive and pdef sets, and some spdef walls like registeel and toxic umbreon can get shut down pretty easily thanks to roost and taunt respectively. I found myself using this often times as a defensive check to stuff, not just exclusively to bring in after a sac and try to sweep.
- Watch glowbro, this was kept in check a bit when scrafty was in the tier. The tools are super good, but it also provides some valuable defensive counterplay to a lot of the tiers physical attackers.
- Cheese is pretty good. I respect a good cheese team such as the one slice has been spamming for the past month or so. At what point does it become uncompetitve? I think terrain stuff is fine in the tier right now, but something to look out for. Sun has potential too
- The tier does not have a lot of "viable" removal options right now. I think spike stack is easily the most consistent play style rn. My teams in the last 3 weeks are fairly similar in structure, and quite frankly I find it hard to face those archetypes even when you know it is coming. The general structure for those who are curious is:
sr setter + spike setter + spinner (usually tsareena, can be avalugg) + speed control (scarf flygon is usually best because it has coverage, immune to opposing spikes + resists rocks, gets u-turn, respectable speed tier) + wincon + filler/glue mon.
Hope this was worth the read n_n