Tournament SCL I OU Discussion Thread

[Ruft]

stole the thread OP from ausma who stole the format from emma, thank you!

The previous thread was being filled with prediction posts, so that one is made into the predictions tournament thread and this one will be used for actual discussion.

Welcome to the Smogon Champions League 1 Discussion Thread, dedicated to discussion on OU! This thread will be used to discuss OU in SCL I related topics, whether it’s about the players, general metagame trends, matches, or elaborate predictions.

Furthermore, Stone_Cold and Ox the Fox will be donating a total of $100 USD to the winner of the predictions tournament. Make sure to participate in the appropriate thread.

Predictions Tournament Thread
Commencement Thread
Schedule

Pricelist

OU Prices

Eo Ut Mortus - 39000
talah - 32500
Lord_Enz - 27000
Insult - 26500
TPP - 26500
Ajna - 25500
beatiful - 24000
Eternal Spirit - 23000
watashi - 22000
Ox the Fox - 20000
Gefährlicher Random - 20000
robjr - 19500
mncmt - 19500
Lusa - 19000
Storm Zone - 19000
lax - 19000
Finchinator - 19000
Raptor - 18000
Dragon Claw - 17000
Nat - 13000
Kushalos - 12500
MichaelderBeste2 - 12500
March Fires - 12500
LNumbers - 11500
Bushtush - 11500
dice - 10500
Skypenguin - 8500
Tace - 8500
Tamahome - 8000
64 Squares - 8000
Serene Grace - 7000
FALSE - 7000
Ruft - 7000
elodin - 6000
BIHI - 5500
teal6 - 5000
Confide - 5000
Sagiri - 5000
Raiza - 4500
Isza - 4500
z0mOG - 4500
Rubyblood - 4500
ez - 4500
Santu - 4000
Vaboh - 4000
Stareal - 4000
frisoeva - 3500
devin - 3500
HSA - 3000
dahli - 3000
London Beats - 3000
Chaitanya - 3000
BluBirD252 - 3000
mind gaming - 3000
Regnite - 3000

OU Player Cores
Disclaimer: due to the size and popularity of the OU tier, it is likely a solid majority of these players will not start with OU.

Orange Islanders: Ox the Fox, Eternal Spirit, devin, Rubyblood, mind gaming
Indigo Platoon: Storm Zone, Tamahome, MichaelderBeste2
Plant Dynamos: Insult, beatiful, Dragon Claw, BIHI
Uncharted Terrors: lax, March Fires, Gefährlicher Random, Raptor, Regnite
Technical Machines: Ajna, ez, Tace, Ruft, Confide, Sagiri
Arena Spartans: dice, talah, 64 Squares, MAD UND MAX, mncmt, Isza
Showdown Shoguns: TPP, Bushtush, FALSE, HSA, z0mOG, frisoeva, BluBirD252, Vaboh
Mt. Silver Foxes: Finchinator, watashi, Santu, elodin, Stareal
Circuit Breakers: Lord_Enz, Serene Grace, Lusa, LNumbers, dahli
Studio Gible: Eo Ut Mortus, robjr, Nat, teal6, Skypenguin, Raiza, London Beats, Chaitanya

~

Here's to a fun SCL!​

 

[Katy]

OU SCL Usage statistics and highlight games from Week 1 and 2!
​

Winners of Week 1 and Week 2:


this pokemon has the highest usage stats of this tournament so far, but this isn't a surprise at all because of its splashability, great tools in toxic and knock off, alongside (slo) u-turens and the welcoming stats and typing to always secure this pokemon as an all time glue on teams, be it specially defensive which got more and more common nowadays or still physically defensive oriented, being able to also pressure with swords dance sets is great alongside stone edge, which gives it the so called edgequake coverage. landorus-t will remain strong usagewise in scl, as this pokemon is the best glue to fit onto teams.


with assault vest + weather ball set this pokemon made a new name of itself, allthough unlike olt its more used as an offensive and defensive pivot in scl this pokemon still maintains as a great defogger with utility in knock and u-turn and i think this is not everything we saw from tornadus-t, it will maintain as one of the top pokes to handle the duo of kartana and rillaboom and with coverage options in heat wave and superpower no steel can call tiself safe from this genious bird.


great tool and used more and more as a way to handle hail teams since, it can very well stomach the one of the other hits from ninetaes and arctozolt together. still a great tool to check weavile and kyurem as well and with steel-types like it, melmetal, heatran, corviknight being more and more used as a way to stomach hits from tapu lele, the ice trio (zolt, tales, and kyurem) and also weavile it will find a way on teams with partners such as a heatran and the aforementioned landorus-t.


a bro yes, but slow, no. slowbro makes a great comeback at the moment as a way to handle urshifu, melmetal, garchomp, and landorus-t with scald, ice beam, and futureport. with colbur berry and body press it can even surprise weavile, which is at the moment very valuable, as weavile is one of the most threatening pokemon in the metagame. so surprise trades function well and slowbro ahs the bulk to withstand a knock off even when weavile is at +2 with help from colbur.


not used that much honestly like it was spammed during olt but still regardles a pokemon, which is on my perdonal radar for keeping up a decent usage in tours and for keeping up great usage on the ou ladder. never underestimate this dangerous wallbreaker with its choice specs boosted steam in ou.

Other honorable mentions:

,
&

Highlight Replays:
​

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-579106 devin vs Finchinator
this replay i find remarkable, as the MU seems very tough for devin once he loses his heatran, as this is the only way to stomach hits and to check the dangerous combination of torkoal, venusaur, and finches hearan. devin played to its best odds to prevent that from happening. great game which shows even tho its a very rough mu in first glance when the tools are played right, there are still odds for you.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-579063 Lusa vs GefährlicherRandom
also an interesting replay showing the strength of protect melmetal as a function to scout around nidoking with 2 heavy hitters in specs tapu lele and volcanion in the back. i feel gefährlicherrandom played this game perfectly and pressured lusa well, allthough i think lusa had chances too with nidoking and dragapult, as both pressure a vast majority of gefährlicherrandoms team.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-580682 ox the fox vs insult
pretty standard approach by ox the fox with the usual cores and pokemon, but a moreso creative approach by insult with sub + idefense + body press. which shows melmetal can be played in other approaches too, the highlight here is how troublesome it was initially for ox the fox to get rid of melmetal in the process and there way no way for him to predict that as any other melmetal set could have fit too, like a protective pads version.

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen8ou-580339 tamahome vs lordenz
lordenz approach is very unique with bulk up + drain punch zeraora and the double galar bird team, but they were able to break pretty early in the game with galarian zapdos and zeraora doing a great effort in the early part of the game with a great backup from his own tapu fini, lordenz was capable of securing the W for his team here. as mentioned above, i think drain punch zeraora was definitely a highlight here.

thanks for reading and have a great day everyone! ​

 

[freezai]

Hi guys, as you may know, I post recaps of my SCL games, win or lose, and with neutral titles, so you (hopefully) don't get spoiled. Give it a watch!

Week 1:

Week 2:

Week 3:

 

[Finchinator]

Just was not my tour and that is alright. First time really putting up a dud ever and that happens given the nature of the game and how strong competition is, so kudos to all of my opponents and hope we can play again soon.

I had a lot of fun building and I enjoy sharing ideas, so here is (roughly -- I do not like providing specific EVs) what I used and some ideas that unfortunately got left behind as well. I am leaving out my w2 and w4 teams as I was not the original builder of them and, while I made edits, it is not my place to share them. Same goes for the team I used in LC, but pretty sure that's for another thread

-- W1 vs devin

This is a really strong Sun team I have enjoyed using in a couple of tournaments and on the ladder plenty. I got outmaneuvered a bit by devin early and then my last-ditch efforts were dashed along the way unfortunately -- well-played on his end, but this team is always 1-2 turns away from wrecking havoc and I quite like that. I think Sun is pretty underrated, but there is no hiding the fact that it can be inconsistent. I think that Specs Heatran is overkill on Sun and also makes building riddled with even more inconsistencies, so I opted to go with Choice Scarf here, which is still super strong. I also went with Eject Button Toxapex because it is really good glue on these builds and underrated on some bulky-offense builds, too. I would advise toying with Sun to people interested, even if it means an end result of a totally different team -- things like Victini and Chandelure deserve some usage here, too, probably.

-- W3 vs HSA

This was just a solid BO team I felt comfortable with against HSA. Preparation that week was painful because HSA and I have many years of history as friends/teammates even, so I just wanted to keep it simple rather than overthinking it. He got me on a few crucial turns with big risks such as keeping Weavile in on Zeraora, Corviknight in on Zeraora, and GKing in on Buzzwole, so props to him for taking the right risks and getting the better end of me there, but I really enjoy this one and have used it a decent amount on the ladder and in STour since then to good success. Probably one of my more consistent teams as of late and I really love how Future Sight enables most of these Pokemon well. In general, Slowbro I feel is one of the better Pokemon in the tier and I am glad people have capitalized on it more and more as the tour continued.

-- W7 vs Lord Enz

I was super paranoid about the uptick in Zapdos-Galar usage, so I wanted to use Slowbro/Toxapex + Tapu Koko in order to check it without going too far out of my way in terms of cores/Pokemon used. In addition, I noticed my opponent had no real switch-ins to the combination of Urshifu-Rapid and Future Sight, so I wanted to give this a try. The rest of the build is, more or less, auto-pilot to cover the checklist of offensive threats. Kartana is still a major issue, but otherwise I love this build and was glad it came through despite a shaky start to the game. Clefable and Slowbro being able to soak up status really opens up the door for Urshifu-Rapid-Strike and Tapu Koko to enter safely when given the chance a ton I notice, too, so I felt this was the optimal conditions for those two.

-- W8 vs Skypenguin

At this point, my team was out, but over the last few weeks I have been feeling in better form and laddering a ton every day, so I definitely wanted to get a second straight win here. Think I had really good odds to take it, too, but 20% flinch on the final turn was a bummer. With this said, really cool team and ideas from Skypenguin there, so glad he got something out of it at least. With regards to the team, I wanted to try to use something that still was solid to help win, but also less seen in order to showcase it when I had the chance still. Skarmory was that because I find it to be pretty underrated. A lot of the time people stack physical attackers, especially on hyper offensive teams, and Skarmory is absolutely ridiculous in those match-ups. I farmed my way up to the top of the ladder with it earlier this week before tilting in classic Finch fashion as well, but obviously that metagame has a bit more hyper offense than tournament right now. Still, I really like it and I tried to pair it with things that have grounded checks like Dragapult and Tapu Lele. The rest of the team fit together nicely and I feel CM Clefable is sometimes neglected in preparation, so I was happy to include it as well. This team gets trounced by Rain, but otherwise I enjoy it quite a bit.

Finally, here are some fun, creative sets I have theorized in recent weeks, but did not get the chance to use for one reason or another. I will try my hardest to play my last game next week, but I am on a trip from Friday through Monday, so I will probably be at the mercy of their schedule during the earlier week because of that, so we'll see. Good luck to everyone still in and hopefully next time I can bounce back. Thanks to my teammates for all of the tests, too. I really hope everyone else posts when they can, too!

 

[Skypenguin]

I'm not usually one to post in discussion threads, but I ended up enjoying this tier a lot towards the end of the tour and it doesn't seem like I'm making stour poffs, so I'll just talk a bit about some mons I think are underrated. Not gonna bother mentioning stuff like band gapdos that've been picking up.


Sets

One of my gripes with ss ou is that there's a pretty big lack of actual progress makers. While scouting Sagiri, this led me to try out modest Rotom-Heat as it looked good vs him (won off preview in the game) and I found that it actually won games while testing. Max spatk lets you 2hko Heatran and ohko spdef lando, as well as just nuking every mon in the tier bar gastro and bliss. I found this way more appealing than running max hp to eat tran magma behind a sub or timid to outspeed pult. Overall, heatom is a crazy strong mon and I really recommend trying it out.

Rotom-Wash is a mon I somehow ended up using 3 times, but it can be very hit-or-miss. Defensive rotom is mid, but running spatk investment can allow you to shred some common cores, with wisp helping vs ferro and co. Don't rely on this mon too much though lol.


Offensive pex

I originally made this double LO dragon team for a PSPL tiebreak, but it carried me a fair bit in OLT and a few other players used the same core (minus offensive pex) during scl. Offensive pex is definitely not a meme at all and is the star of this team. You 1v1 every tapu, notably specs lele, boots koko, and cm taunt fini, not to mention the pressure you generate vs threats like glowking/heatran/torn/lando/clef/blissey/etc.


LO Clef

Offensive clef is another mon that can be great vs common BO cores. Carrying an elec move is usually super important, but don't be afraid to try building around knock + flame to force progress vs glowking/tran/bliss.


Sets

Just a nice wincon. It's super annoying to play unaware clef but otherwise it's not hard to build around the Hurricane set. Resto Chesto is something I lost to a bunch on ladder and it catches lots of people off guard while still being relatively consistent vs both offense and certain fats. I made this double scarf team in olt to hit koko and it did well on the sun team below.


Some funny sets that can win games on this team

 

[remetagross]

This SubNP Rotom-Heat set is sick as hell. What are the EVs for on the Wash sets?

 

[Skypenguin]

This SubNP Rotom-Heat set is sick as hell. What are the EVs for on the Wash sets?

The wisp set just has speed for tran + 1 more point, with the rest dumped into spatk to hit harder. The thunder set is just from an SM sample team lol, similar idea but hits a jump point in spatk for Z-Thunder I'm guessing

 

[Finchinator]

beatiful Gefährlicher Random HSA Ox the Fox Lusa Raptor MichaelderBeste2 Insult BIHI Eo Ut Mortus MAX UND MAX TPP Eternal Spirit March Fires Skypenguin Tamahome watashi ez Lord_Enz Malekith mind gaming devin Ruft Stareal Finchinator dice Sagiri Chaitanya talah Luthier M Dragon Rubyblood frisoeva London Beats Ajna freezai Vaboh Punny robjr Storm Zone TDK mncmt false z0mOG BluBirD252 Roseybear elodin Isza Regnite dahli Santu Tace

Hi everyone, hope you are all well.

It would be very helpful if you all could take 2 minutes out of your days to respond to the SS OU tiering survey (link in this post) so we can determine if me getting 6-0d at lead is enough to ban Kyurem You all qualify due to playing an SS OU game in SCL. In addition, if you have thoughts on the metagame throughout SCL, you can post anything you would like here or in the metagame discussion thread of course. Dw, I won't be tagging y'all again.

Thanks, have a nice day.

 

[ausma]

SCL has now ended; I'll give anybody who'd like to give any finishing thoughts on the tournaments' turnout 24 hours before I lock the thread

edit: it has been well over 24 hours; thanks for the great stuff everyone and here's to another great year!