Shrang's UPL team dump
It's not much since most teams are pretty similar but hey I'm a mostly an HO player and Deo-S is the most OP fucking lead in DPP by a long mile that it's hard to build in any other way. That, plus how restrictive Draco spam makes the game kind of just build them teams by themselves.
To be honest I was a bit more restricted in my ability to build this tour because I had 2 top managers breathing down my neck making sure I didn't become too adventurous - trust me, if left to my own devices you'd be seeing Electivire on teams and I wouldn't be winning 8-0 lmao... maybe 7-1 :P
The teams I have here kind of have 3 origins: 1) an old Farceus team that I repurposed for non-Farc DPP, 2) a teammate's team that I've made an adjustment to so I was more comfortable with playing it, or 3) a team freshly made for this tour. (1) and (2) are much more common and I did (3) a bit more as I became a bit more confident again.
An important thing about all these teams are they are a player-matchup dependent. There are things in these teams that aren't entirely optimised and no other reason than it does well against the player I was up against at the time. The best example being running a Groudon lead against eden because looking on his history he never ran Deo-S. If there's any additional optimisation for general use I'll point them out with the team.
I think the biggest lesson everyone should be taking from this is RESPECT THE FUCKING DEO-S LEAD. All you motherfuckers who still think Ogre leads are top tier leads even though you get a free 2 layers in your face deserve every loss against a well-played Deo-S lead. Sash Deo-S is the king, the only reason Colbur/Scarf/Lum/others are even good are because they take advantage of anti-Sash anti-leads which in turn make them more lax in checking Sash which makes Sash dump on whatever lead they run again. It all revolves around Sash lead Deo-S.
On that topic I think items are interchangeable on Deo-S anyway. Depends on the player you're facing one item might be better than the other. Every Sash Deo-S team on here can use Colbur and vice-versa. Scarf plays a little differently but if you know they're trying to matchup fish you with like Scarf Darkrai, Lum could even work too.
VS TSR:
Team 1:
So I was super rusty in week 1... I literally had not played in 2 years. This team was borrowed from Alex Walls who was super helpful in testing most of the teams I used. Alex's team had fast Gira-O and Darkrai in the last slot. Palkia was very annoying to play against because it had no good switch-ins at all, and with Ogre using Water Spout and Palkia using Hydro Pump and getting locked into them it was super easy for Palk to just come in and get a free kill. Darkrai and Ogre were not strong enough to scare Palkia out without sleep and everything else either just died (Gira/Scizor) or had to tie at best (Palk). That's why I changed Darkrai to Kingdra as it at the very least gave me something I could use against Palkia.
This team is super offensive - it's literally click and die, rinse and repeat. There's really not much in terms of subtlety to playing this - although getting a few double switches and a well-predicted U-turn goes a long way.
There is a couple of variations you can have in the last slot - Darkrai like Alex used, Kingdra that I have now, or any other Swift Swimmer in the last slot. Another interesting mon you can use is CM Lugia in the last slot as a Ray check.
Team 2:
You can imagine I got a bit panicky when I tied game 1 vs TSR since I didn't really have a 2nd team ready. This team was basically pulled straight from the finals game vs Tomahawk in UPL 8, except that one had an Ekiller on it. I kind of switched out Ekiller and just slapped on a bog standard Scarf Dialga and worked pretty damn well.
Again, not a subtle team at all, although for this one since I'm using a Bronzong with SR, Deo-S was free to run an extra attack, which is nice. Psycho Boost kills Tentacruel leads and Signal Beam is nice since it hits both Darkrai and opposing Deo-S while Shadow Ball only does one. Custap Bronzong is really one of my favourite Bronzong sets, since I absolutely despise how Bronzong normally saps your momentum. With Custap, you can freely let it take a few hits and when it's time for it die click Explosion and make Bronzong's existence meaningful - which is what happened in the game vs TSR since I took out his Groudon with it and Dialga pretty much had free rein to just Outrage and go ape. HP Fire makes sure Bronzong is not Forre Spike fodder.
To be fair I feel this team is a bit suboptimal since it was built with Ekiller in mind and it really shows. Apart from Groudon the sweeping potential doesn't seem to be there.
Things to optimise: Run Scarf Deo-S since there's another mon covering SR already (Bronzong); run SpD instead of Def on Donner since you can actually tank a Draco Meteor that way; run CM on Latios since you're probably only switching into Ogre once anyway. Physical Gira-O with Sub and Shadow Force can potentially be cool too since it hits super hard.
VS Eden
R2:
This isn't exactly the same configuration as in the tour game, but this is the preferred configuration. The only reason I led Groudon vs eden is because after Nora did some scouting, I noticed that he has never used Deo-S (LOL). Leading Groudon seemed safe. Normally Skymin should be lead at least to attempt to stop Deo-S setting up rocks. Ho-oh also seemed to do well against eden's favourite playstyle which appears to fat sun teams, and Ho-oh just sits on those with Sub and Roost all day long and absolutely not care. Even Heatran has trouble since all it can do is Roar me out and not actually have a good long term solution vs Ho-oh.
Anyway this team has its roots from all the way back in like 2010 when I first started playing Ubers before even HGSS came out and Ho-oh had Brave Bird lol. It was like the 2nd relatively successful Ubers team I've ever built. Back then, it had both Scarf Palkia and Latios, which was kind of redundant, and it also had Giratina-O which was okay at the time... but if you've seen me ranting in Discord lately, you have an absolute irrational hatred for Gira-O at the moment. Palkia and Gira-O kind of morphed into Skymin since it can Scarf and be a secondary ground switch-in, which let me have a secondary Kyogre check in Dialga.
Things to consider - given how prevalent Heatran is on sun at the moment, consider running EQ > Brave Bird on Ho-oh so you're not just playing 5-6. Kyogre can be worn down with hazards, Lati@s can be stalled out, Heatran is just annoying.
SF:
I actually built this team around the same week Dave graced me with his Demon Don team (will get into that later), but it had SD Groudon and Lucario on it. This kind of came off the team that I built vs CMx which I had a blast using so was thinking of using something similar, but at the danger of being counterteamed I abandoned it.
Anyway, I brought this team back after Dave advised that I just go with something comfortable since I was having trouble making a SpecsOgre lead team (you heard that right), seeing as again, eden never uses Deo-S leads. I brought this team back since it was something I was comfortable with. With Highlord's help, Lucario was changed to SubNP Darkrai (which really pressures those fat sun teams of eden's), and since eden had some history of using Deo-A leads, Dave suggested I give Deo-S Extreme Speed.
The Mewtwo set was kind of tailor-made for the matchup with eden - if you're using this for a standard game Grass Knot is probably better, but since eden loved using Heatran and switching into Heatran is a pain for most of my team, I decided to just give M2 Earthquake. Even with 4 Atk and LO, it clean OHKOs standard Heatran, and came in handy in the game since I could KO his 29% Jirachi without having to risk a Fire Blast miss. The rest is pretty standard.
IMO this is like the classic anti-Kyogre lead team. Setup 2 layers for free, go to Groudon, then to Wobb and then either kill the Ogre with Wobb or if they decide to save it with Thunder Wave then just Safeguard up and start setting up with something.
Things to optimise for general use - Mewtwo set; Grass Knot is in general a better coverage move over EQ. Espeed Deo-S kind of sucks IMO since its only purpose is vs Deo-A. Deo-S should use something like Thunder Wave as a general move or Signal Beam to hit both Darkrai and opposing Deo-S.
VS Jabba:
So yeah, these teams are going to get super old. This team at least has the variation that it has Deo-A instead of Deo-S. This team was mainly Dave's idea, IIRC he literally went "Use Deo-A/Groudon/Rayquaza/Wobbuffet/Dialga/Garchomp" in chat I just built it with whatever sets I saw fit. This team still kind of goes with fat Dialga since it's a bit of a blanket check to a lot of things. Otherwise this team works just as you would expect a team like this to work lol.
VS CMx:
Out of all the Deo-S sun HOs in this dump this is easily my favourite one to play. Originally this was a Dual Screens + Magnezone + Ekiller team back in Farceus meta. I was really determined to make Magnezone work, but after using Specs Dialga and seeing how it frequently just broke Steel-types just spamming Dragon Pulse, Magnezone kind of just became redundant and ended up getting relegated to eating Dracos and dying most of the time. It was better with just more sweepers.
Anyway, this team is super simple to use. Set up 1-2 layers of hazards with Deo-S and then bring in Dialga to start spamming Dragon Pulse. You don't need to click any other move most of the time when you're doing like 40% to most Steels that's not SpD Jirachi. Don't be dishearted when you see you've only done like 30 to Bronzong - just keep clicking Dragon Pulse because unless they've got recovery (Jirachi), you're outdamaging them most of the time and you'll just take out their Steel, then Ray/Groudon/Mewtwo just go to town straight after. Even if Bronzong has EQ, chances are that it's setting up SR before attacking, so you get 2 free hits in on it, and at worst you're leaving it at like 20% as it kills you and by that stage Ray/Don/M2 will kill it with pretty much anything. Ray can KO Bronz at like about 50% with +1 Outrage easily.
This team is a bit less safe than the Wobbuffet teams since Wobb is an amazing safety net, especially when taking out opposing Scarfers. However, if you've played this right, you should be able to take advantage of whatever opposing Scarfers with another sweeper in typical HO fashion. Mewtwo is nice kind of cleaner that doesn't easily die to anything and the coverage of Ice Beam/Thunder/Aura Sphere hits most things hard, and Lum Berry lets you switch into Dark Void once.
VS robjr:
This team IIRC was another Dave suggestion. "Use TTar/Kabu/Ogre/Wobb" and then I kind of just filled in the blanks. Twave Tar was definitely a Dave staple. I think when we first built the team it had ScarfOgre and the team always felt unstable, but simple change to Twave/CM made it super stable afterward since Kabu could revenge Darkrai. This is also the team where I really started using Twave/CM Kyogre because of how damn broken it is. Again, this team spams the shit out of Specs Dialga to break things for Ray to attempt to sweep later.
VS Stallion:
So this team is the final Dave team, and holy shit I did not to expect to love using this team this much. I actually felt like I wouldn't be able to get used to this team at all, but jeez did playtesting it change my mind. The Groudon is like what happens if we got Bully Maguire and turned it into a Pokemon lol. So Dave's team was basically this team but with SubSalac Chomp at the end. I thought it was a bit CM Lugia and Ogre weak so the broken shit Twave/CM Ogre went into its slot.
So Sub+3 attacks Groudon is an absolute demon (hence the name Demon Don). With hazards up and a Sub up it pretty much 2HKOs everything that's not Cresselia or Lugia. Cresselia just loses to the other Sub mon on this team (Dialga) and Lugia doesn't like Ogre at all. You fish for burns on Bronz and it can't really hurt you unless it has Grass Knot so keeping a Sub up is easy. Tbh the game vs Stallion doesn't do this set justice IMO, it was a lot more OP in the playtests I did.
VS Inspirited:
So last team on the showcase. This is the only team that was made fresh for this tour and not derived from Dave/Alex or a previous Farceus team refit. I got the idea from Dave's Healing Wish Bliss team. Like I said Twave/CM Ogre is broken as shit so what better way to abuse it than to paralyse shit then bring it back to destroy shit with Hwish. What's even better? Doing it twice. The idea is to send on Ogre, Twave its checks and maybe even weak it with CM + attacks, save it after its health gets low and then Healing Wish/Lunar Dance to bring it back later. The main drawback is if Ogre dies to hax this team kind of just falls apart lol.
Anyway, I used Latios in last slot because I knew Wreck never stalls, but this team is otherwise really stall weak since Blissey just walls everything. Consider changing Latios to SubCM Giratina-O (would be good vs spinners), or a physical mon like Ray or something. Either that or run a lure like Exiline's CB Dialga.
Metagame observations:
1) I feel this metagame is pretty stall weak atm. Most people are running offense (myself included obviously), and it's mostly bulky offense with lots of Dialga and slower set up mons like CM Lugia, CM Recover M2, Bulk Up Dialga and CM Giratina-A.
Stuff like these would never fly in a stall meta. There are lots of Blissey weak teams. I had a bunch of teams that I got handed by my team that I rejected simply because they can't break Bliss, or the only thing that can is super telegraphed so the Bliss can player would never realistically put it in danger. Key case in point was the eden vs TSR game which should have been a total Blissey 6-0 from eden if he wasn't unlucky as shit and burned Latias, which literally was the only way TSR could have that game at all.
Phazing is also not very common these days and I don't know why. Again, shit like the above sets would never fly if phazing was common. Shrug
Similarly Toxic is almost non-existant at the moment outside the rare Toxic Heatran. This totally allows the above sets to exist.
I'd have taken advantage of this fact more in UPL and used stall if i) I could build stall and ii) I was good at playing it, but since I have neither of these qualities all I could do is just out-offense people as much as possible.
I'm not sure I like bulky offense that much tbh. It's really easy to build HO teams that just overwhelm what people think are "defensive cores" because they kind of run a few attackers + a couple of mons that glue the team together. Once even one of those mons go your attackers just have free rein. On the other side, once stall gets more common again they don't have the firepower to break it easily. Personally I'd rather just run HO. I'd run stall too, but like I said I suck at it.
2) Draco spam is fucking annoying. I mean, I do it too but it's almost a necessity to i) do it yourself and ii) run a Steel-type that would slow your momentum down to a crawl to not automatically lose to it. So your options for not losing to Draco spam are:
i) Run a Blissey - momentum sink
ii) Run a fat Steel - Jirachi, Bronzong, Heatran -> again, momentum sink. There are ways to mitigate this (eg U-turn on Rachi, Hypnosis/Custap/Boom Zong, Taunt/Roar on Heatran) but altogether the more you try to mitigate this the less sturdy your Draco switch-in becomes. Eg If you want Jirachi to not straight up lose to something Specs Dialga you'll need to run 1 para move, Wish and Protect otherwise it'll end up losing anyway. Skarm kind of sucks in this meta atm too.
iii) Run an offensive Steel - most of these absolutely suck and can never be used to switch into Draco more than once. The stuff we have are:
- Scarf Rachi - takes 45-50 from any good strong Draco
- Lucario - needs Draco to have already been fired to even have a chance to not straight up die and set up
- Heatran - okay, but does not fit on every team. Standard Tran is pretty good at denying momentum, but it's neutral at best. If you run the kind of teams I run it's still a relative momentum sink if you think of it from that POV.
- Metagross - dogshit
- Scizor - dogshit
As an HO player, I absolutely hate the above dilemma. There's a way I think we can mitigate this, but you'd have to wait for my doorstopper post on Farceus to find out more, unfortunately.
3) Ogre leads - you've heard me trash this plenty in this very post already and everywhere else so I'll keep it brief. Currently sash Deo-S is rare so it's kind of acceptable. However, if Sash Deo-S becomes more common again (it will eventually, DPP comes in cycles), then be prepared to see it less. At least, check out your opponent and see what they like running, if they run love running Deo-S (like me), you're just disadvantaging yourself by using an Ogre lead.
4) Wobb is fucking broken and I love it
5) Back Ho-oh is fucking underrated and should be used more. I always reckon people who lead Ho-oh are kind of cheating a bit but it's fine. Back Ho-oh is really where its potential really comes out... if you can use it properly.
6) Lots of Sleep Talking scarfers - this wasn't around the last time I played non-Farceus DPP seriously. I think it's not a bad way to deal with Darkrai, but as soon as I started using these I really felt the limitation of them straight away. You get 1 pop with Sleep Talk attack, so the best case scenario is that you scored a big hit on either Darkrai or whatever they switch in, then you are totally helpless. Your opponent doesn't even need to predict what comes in, you lose a turn absolutely immediately.
Outside of the very obvious free turn you give, I reckon there are some other unique ways Darkrai users can really take advantage of this. First being using Thunder Wave on Darkrai with Dark Void, and instead of eagerly clicking Void straight away, click Thunder Wave first to catch their Sleep Talking Scarfer which makes it even more useless. Second is just use Sub and watch them cry like a bitch. Third is use Protect and Protect on their Sleep Talk and just smack whatever comes in.
7) Healing Wish is awesome... just be careful how you use it. Especially with all the slow sweepers these days, you are allowed to fail once but cripple some shit then bring them back. Fast Healing Wishers have it tough because your recipient can still take a hit, so you can have some hilarious situations where you Hwish your recipient only for it to eat a Draco and die LOL.
Vishes shoutouts:
Stone_Cold - Thanks for putting your faith in me again - and see how your faith has been rewarded! You did a great job keeping my tendency to run stupid shit under control, and without that I probably wouldn't have done anywhere near as well. Also Demon Don was a fucking menace I'll never doubt you again.
TrueNora - The true MVP of the Vishes IMO - you put in so much work with your scouts every week. I don't think we could have gotten as far without the intel. Also thanks for all the DPP test games - you were like the only person available most of the time since everyone else lives halfway across the world, and even though DPP isn't your home meta you still stuck around to test games with me, especially after people figured out that I was testing on roomtours under alts.
SparksBlade - had a great time playing with you and you had a knack of seeing weaknesses in my teams that nobody else could which was always helpful.
Icemaster - you played really well and carried a lot, even though you were quite unlucky
Inder - Fun player to be around, will miss you calling out GOAT when I won a game :) - don't forget to :thumbsdown: Dave next time
King Billu - Didn't talk much, unlucky run, better luck next time
Leru - Unfortunate run, but that Flame Charge Ho-oh sweep vs Lasen definitely made my day
skimmythegod - Didn't get to talk much unfortunately, nice to be around
Alex Walls - Unfortunate run, you were unlucky with the matchups and some hax. Thanks for the early DPP help and letting me borrow your teams to get back on my feet. Your suggestion of LO Groudon absolutely crushed CMx's Bronzong so it was great :)
SuperEpicAmpharos - man why does Dave let you run fun stuff and not me :( Oh well you carried our team hard and did it in style. Bringing Gyarados against Heysup (even though all it did was get blewed up on) was fucking badass, trickroom would be proud.
vani - Another carrier for our team, shame we didn't get to talk much
Goat Heart ♥ - Damn putting the GOAT in Goat Heart. That 1000 turn match in semis was fucking ballin - even though I was unable to watch it it still hyped me so much that I was just seeing updates at work and couldn't concentrate in seeing patients lmao. Probably the best game in the tour even though you came out on the wrong side :(
shieldpoke - Fun guy to be around, it was nice of you to step up to test DPP when it was not your meta, thanks for your help
Vulpix03 - didn't get to talk much but a value pick
WSun1 - didn't get to talk much either, sorry
lotiasite - you'll notice that I didn't hang out much with the SS players much. I'm sorry that we didn't get to talk much :(
Xrn - you played well as a sub, shame we didn't get to talk much. That last minute sub-in vs 0kay was absolutely dog and we should totally have called act but thanks for stepping up anyway
