Tournament SCL II PU Discussion Thread

gum

for the better
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PU Leader
SS PU: sensei axew vs Leru - has been on a roll and has been bringing better teams. i've liked leru's teams too but the one he brought last week looked kinda bad so um, don't know how confident i should be in the platoon's pu building
SS PU: S1nn0hC0nfirm3d vs EVIL z0mOG - dont know how motivated zomog will be after losing 3 weeks in a row, but he's still the better player and has better support so unless sinnoh comes up with smth broken, i think zomog takes it
SS PU: Lambovino vs reyscarface - umm idk mostly a gut feeling, rey's team last week had some issues but trick claydol was cool. lambo's teams have also been pretty underwhelming for the most part / he hasn't been able to fish effectively
SS PU: ProDigeZz vs jonfilch - he's been bringing brokens and winning, and the gibles's pu slot has been not very good so far. also i just rate him more highly as a player
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
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SS PU: gum vs jonfilch
SS PU: reyscarface vs ProDigeZz
SS PU: EVIL z0mOG vs Lambovino
SS PU: Leru vs S1nn0hC0nfirm3d
SS PU: Scottie vs sensei axew

SS PU: gum vs jonfilch - it seems as a spectator like jonfilch's stuff has been getting predictable but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it either so I guess it'll probably keep working out
SS PU: reyscarface vs ProDigeZz - not an impressive first week from ProDigeZz
SS PU: EVIL z0mOG vs Lambovino - I think he's gonna turn it around
SS PU: Leru vs S1nn0hC0nfirm3d - I think he's gonna come up with something that catches Leru off guard
SS PU: Scottie vs sensei axew - my "sensei loses to lambo week 1 and once again tops" prediction has been going pretty well so far
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
SS PU: soulgazer vs H.M.N.I.P
SS PU: sensei axew vs gum
SS PU: Lambovino vs Leru
SS PU: Xrn vs EVIL z0mOG
SS PU: jonfilch vs reyscarface

SS PU: soulgazer vs H.M.N.I.P - had some faith in Scottie, but I'd still be favoring sg even with the main starter in
SS PU: sensei axew vs gum - he be doing work
SS PU: Lambovino vs Leru - I've just got a feeling tbh
SS PU: Xrn vs EVIL z0mOG - free hariyana grande
SS PU: jonfilch vs reyscarface - he also be doing work
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
SS PU: Leru vs bb skarm
SS PU: EVIL z0mOG vs jonfilch
SS PU: avarice vs Raichy
SS PU: H.M.N.I.P vs Lambovino
SS PU: sensei axew vs sasha

SS PU: Leru vs bb skarm
SS PU: EVIL z0mOG vs jonfilch
SS PU: avarice vs Raichy
SS PU: H.M.N.I.P vs Lambovino
SS PU: sensei axew vs sasha

It really seems like managers have not figured out what to do with that PU slot, there can't be that many teams guaranteed in/out
 
SS PU: Leru vs bb skarm - feels like a no brainer
SS PU: EVIL z0mOG vs jonfilch - he's too evil with it to lose
SS PU: avarice vs Raichy - idk here but i'll go raichy cause i haven't seen avarice play
SS PU: H.M.N.I.P vs Lambovino - vroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom
SS PU: sensei axew vs sasha - sensei's one of the best players in the pool
 
Now that SCL is over, I wanted to post the teams we used this season. All imports are included except Weeks 3 and 7 because those aren't my teams.


Week 1 vs snaga (W):


First week of the tour and we face a non-mainer who we don't have any information on. Snaga's a very dangerous player to face because he's self-sufficient and is a really creative mind. In this case, we did 0 prep for snaga because it would have been a huge headache to try to get a mu advantage like that. I was high on HO at the time and felt like people were not yet respecting it, so I built one that I felt was very strong in the metagame at that time. Froslass was the main suicide spikes lead in general for its ability to lure in and cripple Gigalith with Will-O-Wisp and consistently get at least 1 layer up. Archeops was the rocker + Meteor Beam sweeper. Doublade provided essential defensive utility and sweeping potential with its SD 3 attacks set. And Shiftry's typing + ability to break more defensive teams reliant on Quagsire for beating HO was very important for this team. Shiftry was also a super underrated mon at this time. I finished the team off with Lycanroc for additional sweeping potential and a secondary Charizard check and Centiskorch to give a second Fairy resist + break GigaFerro teams well as well as provide another breaker for fatter Unaware-based cores. Centiskorch is especially good at forcing damage on Weezing which helps Doublade + Shiftry sweep.

In the game, we had pretty much an autowin matchup, as snaga didn't have a Doublade and his Ground-type was an offensive Sandslash which is OHKOd by Lycanroc's CC at +2. Froslass does its job and gets a layer up, procs Cursed Body on CB Scrafty, and burns Gigalith, which sets up perfectly for a Lycanroc sweep. Snaga mentioned after the game that he should have EQd the Lycanroc with Gigalith, and that was probably his best odds, but iirc he didn't know it would be Adamant LO which had the power to OHKO Eldegoss. Even if Lycanroc didn't win, I think snaga would have had a very difficult time winning this game overall, as Shiftry and Centiskorch were also very good in the matchup.

Week 2 vs Scottie (W):


After looking at the scout, I noticed Aurorus 6-0d pretty much all of Scottie's teams he had used in PUPL + the previous week of SCL, so I built a team entirely around it. This week was the first time suicide lead Qwilfish made an appearance in this tournament. Because it was new technology at the time, I was hoping it would be a decent bluff for SD Qwilfish and that it would catch Scottie off guard. I liked Qwilfish a lot as a suicide lead mainly for its Fairy resistance and Toxic Spikes absorption; the latter is something Scottie had a lot of in his scout. GigaSlash was super trendy at this time, so I decided to make the Aurorus Timid to outpace Adamant Sandslash and to make the team a fusion of Grassy Terrain and HO. Thwackey's terrain combines super well with Doublade and Aurorus, as it gives them a buffer against Ground-type attacks and in particular it lets Aurorus set up on stuff that it has no business setting up on. Comfey in terrain rounded out the team as a Scrafty check and a terrain abuser. The set was super bulky and it used Taunt, Calm Mind, Draining Kiss, and Stored Power. The team looks pretty weak to Doublade on the surface, but each Pokemon is teched to prevent opposing Doublade from setting up for free. This Comfey is even able to 1v1 Doublade in some scenarios which is pretty insane. Overall this team was super fun to use and I thought it was really against the grain at the time. In this form it has a few annoying weaknesses so it was probably a bigger "matchup fish" than some of the other stuff we used.

In the game itself, the matchup was once again extremely good for us. We ran into a GigaSlash + Toxic Spikes team like we had anticipated and had all the tools to win this game. Aurorus also nearly 6-0d on preview. It was especially nice because Scottie loaded Sneasel, which Aurorus checked really well once it used its Power Herb. Qwilfish gets a layer up which keeps Gigalith in Aurorus range after it takes a Meteor Beam from Archeops. Aurorus gets one free turn, sets up Rock Polish, and wins on the spot.

Week 3 vs sensei axew (L):


This week was really tough because although sensei had his tendencies, it was really difficult to prepare something specifically for his scout (basically impossible honestly LOL). In addition, I was super busy this week and barely had time to build. I liked Toxic Spikes against him because he used a lot of Pokemon weak to them and lacked grounded Poison-types. Since that was all I could come up with, I had jon reuse a Vulpix hazard stack team from PUPL. The team was solid enough, but it was admittedly a lazy choice, a reuse, and a dated team.

In the match, we got punished hard for this choice, as sensei loaded a terrain designed to beat GigaSlash and HO and our matchup was quite bad. Toxic Spikes looked good and in hindsight we needed to lead Weezing, wait for Taunt to wear off, and try to get a layer up. However, I think it was pretty dire anyway since the combination of GhostVally, Nasty Plot Mesprit, and Thievul was just way too much for this team to handle without playing absolutely perfect and even then it was dicey.

Week 4 vs watashi (W):


Finally I had a bit more time to build and I was so shook by that autoloss vs terrain that for the rest of the tournament I was extremely paranoid of it and kept trying to come up with new ways to adapt my teams to beat it. My idea for this week was to use Lycanroc paired with our own sand, as Sand Rush Lycanroc outspeeds the Unburden terrain abusers (Thievul and Hitmonlee). I struggled to make this idea work until last minute I realized Sand Spit Sandaconda was absolutely perfect for the role. I rounded out the team with the HO core 4 of Qwilfish, Archeops, Doublade, and Shiftry. Since Sandaconda had SR, I decided to go with an antistall Archeops set of Taunt, Meteor Beam, Earth Power, and Air Slash. Taunt is super good to deny rocks but also to mess with Audino, who was often used as an Archeops defensive check. Taunt was also used to keep Quagsire low. This team looks very weak to Quagsire on the surface, but in practice the Glare Sandaconda with a lot of Attack investment, Spikes, and Taunt Archeops do a good job at wearing it down for Lycanroc. I was comfortable bringing HO again because this was watashi's first PU game and being completely honest MANNAT did not draft PU support, so there wasn't any prep for their scout here.

Matchup was quite doable since although Quagsire looked like a threat, watashi was really weak to Archeops and that was his only answer. This played into our team quite well. Specs Ribombee was also a threat, but unfortunately he brought it in as Sandaconda used Glare because he was expecting jon to set up rocks in this position. I think it was kept in check enough by the inevitable SR that would have gone up + Lycanroc and Doublade. The sand increasing Archeops SpD is actually really cool too, as Quagsire's Scald doesn't put Archeops in Defeatist from full. After Archeops does its job at keeping Quagsire low, the game ends and Lycanroc cleans up.

Week 5 vs Lambovino (W):


Lambo is similar to sensei in that he's wild and can use pretty much anything, but I had a decent read on the kind of team he'd bring this week. We had a lot of games to work with since he played a full season of PUPL building all his own teams, which in this scenario was useful to notice certain threats he may have ignored in the building process. My gut was saying that they would prep hard for HO and that Lambo would bring a stall. In this tier, stall is really fucking hard to build properly and it usually has a few Pokemon it's consistently weak to. In Lambo's case, his stalls (and other teams he brought) were quite weak to Gallade, so that was the plan. And as it happens, the best fit I found for Gallade was on HO, so we brought it again. We used the same HO core 4 as the previous week, but finished the team with another piece of new technology: scarf Ribombee. Choice Scarf enables it to outspeed Thievul and Hitmonlee after the Unburden boost, which pairs very nicely with Gallade because they both target specific teamstyles. Gallade has good matchups into Ferroseed balance and stall while Scarf Ribombee can do nicely into HO and completely flips the terrain MU on its head. Jon and I decided to go full utility on the bee. Defog was actually a really cool move to incorporate as usually these HOs did not have removal and it could help to facilitate Gallade. Stun Spore also paired really well with Gallade since it could target opposing Charizard and Ribombee. One other twist we incorporated here was to use SD Qwilfish instead of the suicide Spikes lead set because we had fog bee and also I wanted to surprise Lambo and bluff the other set. The additional longevity SD Qwilfish provides compared to the other set also helped improve the Charizard matchup.

Lambo loads a weird stall in this game and it looks like our matchup is good. I understand some of the choices he made in the builder -- Hattrem looked pretty good into us because it messes with lead Qwilfish, Pyukumuku was annoying for some of my teams, and Tangela is a very good Pokemon that was nice into our Lycanrocs and potential GigaSlash teams. Gallade goes in as fuck this matchup pretty much, and since Tangela lacks Sludge Bomb, Shiftry is able to get a lot of mileage to support the Gallade endgame. Jon played this very well and did what he needed to do to maintain his advantage.

Week 6 vs ProDigeZz (W):


We were prepared to play termi and knew we wanted to stall this week since early on in the tournament. Jon and I were on the same wavelength about bringing stall at least once and the Gible were bringing teams that either lacked longevity or were offensive but pretty weak to Quagsire. It was also a natural bring because 4/5 of our teams at this point were HO and the only time we didn't bring it we lost. This is a gum 6 that I made my own version of. Stall needs Spikes imo but it's super hard to fit, so this Coalossal was my best attempt to role compress the hazards. Mental Herb Audino is quite good against cheese and also Taunt Archeops who I was very afraid of (basically owns stall on its own and I didn't want to have to use Quagsire against it because it's super risky). The Doublade set is made to be as annoying for Eldegoss as possible and basically spinblock it always. Fire Spin + Perish Song Altaria is very good into opposing stall and helps to trap Scrafty and other random Pokemon. Also, since we have Rock Blast + Rest Coalossal, I didn't feel the need for Hurricane. I finished off the Eldegoss set as just a standard with Grass Knot to more easily spin on Jellicent.

This game was a grindfest and we faced a Choice Specs Rest Magneton which was super annoying. Jon honestly played this super well and we got a pretty decent matchup. It was really hard for ProDigeZz to break this team and he probably could have fished for hax a bit better with Magneton but not really sure. I'm hella not watching this 270 turn game back to find out LOL

Week 7 vs gum [Steel] (W):


Vulpix is a good friend of mine and I had been bouncing ideas off him the entire tournament, so I really didn't want to get into prep mindgames and try too hard to focus on their scout. The one thing I did want to capitalize on though is that they consistently brought teams with no Steel-types/resists. I had preached a lot about how bad I think Silvally-Steel is and would never use it, and after having faced this stresh team in a test I figured this would be the perfect time to unleash it. So I asked stresh for this team and tweaked the EVs a bit. This team had some really interesting sets like Audino with no Wish (Knock / Tox / Encore / Heal Bell). It was also super fast so it could Encore Doublade after an SD, but I wanted it to be slower than DD Scrafty as well, so I found a Speed that I liked and left it at that. I made some unholy steelvally spread that was made to 1v1 a Ditto that copied it at +6 Attack lol. This team also used a really interesting Ribombee set in Toxic + Defog which I thought was really clever to hit Gigalith and make Ribombee a bit more consistent at long-term removal, which supports Tangela well. This team had some Pokemon we hadn't used yet/much of (Gigalith, Audino, Silvally-Steel, and Tangela) which I was a big fan of overall.

Matchup here seems kind of even to me. Tangela is really annoying for gum's team, and funnily enough steelvally was basically useless LOL this was their first Doublade of the tournament, which is fair game I guess. This game was kind of a clusterfuck honestly. Jon got crit twice which set us back in this matchup a decent amount, especially the crit on Tangela, and gum got themselves in a position to win but didn't click SD at the right time. Was happy jon's experience came in handy here, as gum's quite a capable player but this was their second official teamtour game.

Week 8 vs reyscarface (W):


At this point in our season after tying the Gible and Islanders after having 5-2 leads against both teams and getting haxed pretty badly in the last two Islanders games, I was feeling pretty dejected and assumed our season was 99% over. I kind of ran out of new ideas, but was able to cleverly reuse the team from week 4 except with one change: Taunt > SD on Lycanroc, which further improved the Quagsire/Stall matchup. Rey had used the same team twice and won both times with it; even if he didn't use the exact same team, I was expecting some of the same Pokemon/weaknesses to come up. I wanted a HO with Shiftry (who 6-0d rey's team) that was as decent vs Scarf Magneton as possible, and this 6 was the result.

Of course we end up facing that exact same team, and luckily our matchup was very good -- Shiftry 6-0d on preview basically. However, in the game, jon let it take a Trick turn 1 which made things a bit more dicey. Luckily, jon played pretty well after that and managed to take it in a tight game, with Taunt Lycanroc sealing the deal at the end.

Week 9 vs z0mOG (L):


Same story as above, I was just kind of burned out and ran out of ideas here, and decided to just reuse lazily except I made a few changes to the stall. I put EQ > Scald on Quagsire because I already felt fine vs Archeops and wanted to maximize Quagsire's effectiveness vs Scrafty. I changed the Altaria set to Hurricane + Toxic to improve the Centiskorch matchup and more importantly outspeed and punish Adamant Qwilfish lead, which I had been using on all the HOs I made and I figured z0m would use the same if we faced it. Finally, to avoid being 6-0d by Shiftry, I made Eldegoss super fat and used Pollen Puff > Grass Knot. I think this was a pretty decent change in general because the Pollen Puff Eldegoss has really good synergy with Quagsire.

Funnily enough though, I gave this team to Leru to use against the Gible since we had used a different version of it against them successfully in Week 6 and it got the exact matchup I had looked for here, against my own team as well. This ended up being pretty much an autowin for Leru, as I essentially counterteamed my own team lol.

Our matchup, however, was playable but definitely not great, maybe 45-55 or 40-60 for us, and jon played a pretty decent game overall but it was super close and z0mog took it in the end. Don't really wanna analyze this one too much but it was actually a good game of pokemon and z0mog played quite decently to get a deserved win. I felt bad about jon's loss because he had been carrying us all season with a 7-1 record prior and I felt like this could have potentially been the nail on the coffin for our season.

Semifinals vs sensei axew (W):


By some miracle, we barely made playoffs and my inspiration came back. Unfortunately, however, we had to face probably the most annoying-to-prep-for opponent in the entire pool who had an 8-1 regular season. I can't stress this enough, sensei was a nightmare to build against LOL. He used so much random shit in his scouts that it was really hard to predict exactly what he was going to bring, although I had my hunches. I anticipated we'd face Scrafty, as we hadn't used a Fairy every week and probably disrespected it a bit in the builder. I also knew he liked Encore Whimsicott a lot and because we used none of it, I thought he might try to HO us himself. I knew he wouldn't terrain us because he did it week 3 and I was accounting for it like a maniac, but because it was playoffs I really didn't want to take a risk and fish hard against it nonetheless.

I had two team ideas for him: the first one played a bit more into his scout and my instinct that he would use Scrafty; the second was the one we ended up bringing. Funnily enough, the first team we considered would have had an insanely good matchup in this game, as it had Encore + Will-O-Wisp + Dazzling Gleam Sableye on the stresh 6 (Giga/Slash/Guno/Ferro/Ribombee/Sableye). This would have spinblocked sensei's Sandslash and lured his DD Scrafty, which would have given us a big advantage.

The other team featured some Pokemon we hadn't used yet, which I thought might throw sensei off in prep. I wanted to use Encore Whimsicott for the reasons I stated above, and I thought DD Scrafty was so fucking broken and we hadn't even used one Scrafty the entire tournament, so it would be a good bring here. Scrafty is also a great Thievul check (which 6-0d us last time we played). I decided to pair Whimsicott with Jolteon for a unique VoltTurn core. Jolteon's Wish and Heal Bell support was essential to compensate for the lack of Ribombee, who usually was the cleric. It also provided a nice Magneton switchin. The EVs allowed it to eat two Analytic Choice Specs Magneton Flash Cannons from full and more interestingly always eat a +1 Meteor Beam from Archeops. I had it built so that you could use Jolteon as the Archeops switchin instead of Gigalith to gain more momentum against HO and also to conserve Gigalith's health for other special attackers like Aurorus/Vikavolt/etc. Jolteon and Weezing have very nice defensive synergy because Jolteon's Electric-immunity and Weezing's ability to deal with strong Ground-type physical attackers like physical Archeops, Sandslash, etc meant that I didn't need to run a Ground-type myself. Jolteon also lured Gigalith or Sandslash in, which enables it to Wish as they switch in and heal Weezing easily. I also fit this team with Superpower Gigalith to lure Scrafty and do a ton of damage to Thievul in an emergency, as well as SD + Toxic Doublade to put status on Quagsire so that DD Scrafty was more threatening.

The match itself was crazy, and it was against sensei's most standard-looking team. I think our matchup was a bit unfavored, as sensei had a bit better longevity and good answers to most of our Pokemon. This game was going to be about who could win with Scrafty first, and as jon put it afterwards, both of them were using Doublade as their DD Scrafty check lol. Sensei was able to trade well by keeping his Scrafty alive and getting rid of Weezing, who was super annoying for him to deal with otherwise. Jon played this match incredibly well and made every play he had to in order to win from a disadvantaged position. I'm really happy jon won because I felt like this was one of the worst teams I made during the season, which is a testament to how difficult an opponent sensei was to face. It's the only one that had no Spikes just because I was like, "DD Scrafty breaks everything so it doesn't matter". This was my favorite game of the tournament, and jon's best game of the season imo.

Finals vs Leru (W):


I couldn't believe we beat the Terrors in semis and was ecstatic to make finals, so I was super motivated to build the best team I possibly could. At this point I had also invited Vulpix and stresh to the chat so I was spam pinging them nonstop to bounce ideas lol. Leru is a very solid player, but his PU support was a bit behind in the metagame, which made sense because they didn't have any "PU mainers" in their server. They were doing quite well though, as they had built well enough to gain an advantage against the lower half of the pool but also dodged both jon and sensei in the regular season. With the stakes at their highest, I dug really deep and tried a lot of different ideas to take advantage of their scout's weaknesses. In the end, I'm happy to say I came up with something I really loved. In previous teamtour finals I was in, I was burned out at this point in the tournament, failed to come up with new/good ideas, and for myself in SPL 11 I brought a team that I really regret in hindsight. It makes me really thrilled that I finally got prep in a finals setting right.

DD Scrafty showed how insane it was in the jon sensei game, so I wanted to make sure we accounted for it super well. Our plan was to use the combination of Clear Smog Weezing and phys def Ribombee to deal with it. You switch Weezing in, remove its stat boosts, then at the right time you pivot into Ribombee. It had EVs to eat a +1 Poison Jab after sand from full, which is pretty crazy. The Defense also helped Ribombee against some other fighters like Gallade since this team lacked a third Fighting resist. Ferroseed was quite good against the Platoon's teams because they used an Eldegoss with Sleep Powder and no Aromatherapy, meaning you didn't need a spinblock to keep a layer of Spikes. I also assumed because of our Doublade spam and RestTalk Doublade on the stall (they had the import), they would not be inclined to use Eldegoss as their removal. Leru's teams had often been weak to Sandslash, and I didn't think the Platoon would come up with a good enough response to DD Scrafty, so I decided to bring both of them on this team. They synergize super well with one another, as DD Scrafty forces Weezing and other Sandslash checks in and wears them down to set up well for a Sandslash sweep. Toxic Spikes fit really well with both the sweepers as well, as Scrafty has odds to 1v1 Quagsire if it's poisoned, and each time Quagsire switched in, it likely would be. Interestingly, this team had two forms of removal: Spin Sandslash and Defog Bee. This setup made the team tick for me, as it gives huge flexibility for when you want to and don't need to leverage hazards and it compensates well for matchups where Sandslash has a harder time removing hazards. For example, an opposing Ferroseed matchup with Jellicent/Sableye spinblock completely turns on its head when you're able to remove with bee and leverage DD Scrafty with no hazards on your side. Since the bee had Defense investment, it was also quite good at removing Sandslash's Spikes. For GigaSlash teams, you'd have Sandslash to remove the SR and then Ribombee to remove Spikes from opposing Sandslash.

This team just ticked for me in the end and had everything I wanted and more for this matchup. And in the game, we faced something similar to what we anticipated (basically either Quagsire or Future Sight + Scrafty). Our matchup was very good because Ferroseed was a pain in the ass for Leru's team to deal with, Scrafty and Sandslash were both huge threats, our Ribombee was nice for his jabless Scrafty, and Toxic Spikes + Weezing looked quite nice defensively. I won't comment more on this game because unfortunately imo it was a bad one LOL, not in the sense of hax but I think the stakes were very high and neither player played their best at all. If this game were to have happened in regular season, it probably would have been better, but that's just speculation on my end. Clear Smog Weezing came in clutch at the end because it was Taunt + DD Scrafty, which imo is just a much worse version of DD 3 Attacks with Poison Jab. Despite the chaotic game, I was super happy that jon pulled through once again and finished the season 9-2, which is an incredible record and probably the best performance in the entire tournament since he won both his playoffs games.

---

I'll probably dump some more teams for fun after PUWC, but just wanted to quickly mention my thoughts on this metagame. To make it short, I love it. SS PU has enough centralization where you aren't facing random bullshit, but a lot of different styles are viable (HO, balance, stall, terrain, etc) and you really don't need to bend your back to account for most things. Terrain got adapted to super quickly and I think as this metagame settles more it will be really wonderful to play in the future. There's also a ton of room for exploration of underrated Pokemon; we've only scratched the surface here. The only Pokemon I'm a bit iffy about is Scrafty. It would suck to lose it and I think it's slightly kneejerk to assume it's broken at this point in time, but DD is very forcing and there are probably a lot of ways to abuse this set to its full potential. I tried hard to make a Future Sight + DD Scrafty team but found it was quite difficult to build, so I just used DD Scrafty as a defensive piece/wincon with little to no support going its way apart from the finals team. It might be too much for this metagame and if SS PU weren't winding down it'd probably be worth a suspect but the metagame is good as is and probably wouldn't change a ton without Scrafty in it. Drampa is an interesting pokemon who might be decent to free but I'm pretty indifferent on it.

Just wanna end this here to say thanks to the PU community. I already personally shouted out a lot of you guys in the SCL thread, but wanna highlight y'all again and a few other people who made my experience playing this tier in SS a great time jonfilch Vulpix03 xavgb termi Lambovino Shaneghoul EVIL z0mOG Sjneider TJ sensei axew gum Chloe. I know I acted badly at times here and I feel I've since corrected that behavior but wanted to apologize to anyone who I rubbed the wrong way with my antics. I'm not 100% sure if I'll play/build PU again in gen 9 but I like a lot of y'all and will probably stick around because of that. Thanks again for everything, was a pleasure to play this tier for the past year!
 
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