Tales from Battle Spot Singles blog — Simple Symphony 2019 (Special Edition)
January 2019 brought with it another weekend-long singles online competition on the PGL. So laddering will have to wait, I thought, and decided to spend some time figuring out a team to run in this event. As a result, this post ended up being more of a report that documents the thinking that went into the team I ended up playing on my main cart than an attempt at an actual team analysis as per usual.
Official Link: Pokémon Global Link
Thread & Format info: Online Competition - Simple Symphony ("Monotype"...but entirely different) | Smogon Forums
Japanese friendly tournament: https://3ds.pokemon-gl.com/friendlycompetitions/usum/internet/FI-K3581-B231
Pokepaste: https://pokepast.es/68fa229782d0dfdd
1) Team overview:
(Please see the pokepaste above for build)
First, let's talk about goals: in the past, I've tended to place okayish in these (global ranks #68, #17, #131 in Ultra No Holds Barred, Ultra Kalos Classic and 2017 No Holds Barred, respectively), so the idea was to finish in the 1740s or so in points at the minimum for a comparable result.
In preparation for this tournament, I experimented on showdown with 5-6 different teams, at the end of which I concluded, with the full knowledge of past experience that cart ladder would be, as always, wildly different than a mostly uncompetitive showdown, that speed control aggro was an easy and relatively consistent playstyle.
With this in mind, I ended up with two teams that I found both interesting and fun enough to play with in a format that, but for this one long weekend in late January 2019, has never been played competitively before, and likely never will again. The first team, a quadrudple rain synergy setup with Specs Hurricane Tornadus, Scarf Thunder Xurkitree & Toxic Perish Song Eject Button Politoed with Z-Superpower Bearctic with a Taunt / Rest stalling Gothitelle and SubSeed Serperior in the back for stally archetypes; and, the second team, well, what you are about to read—starting right now.
Like most, I first played Specs Sleep Talk Sylveon + Lunar Dance / Trick Room Cresselia in gen6 Battle Spot. For this competition, it seemed like a natural starting point in the first few days of ladder where people were highrolling with Z-Hypnosis Xurkitree openers, fully offensive Serperior leads, dedicated Glalie and Eeveepass teams, not to mention the Screens + Z-Conversion PorygonZ stuff.
Another rationale was the apparent lack offensively threatening Poison and Steel types, which would mean Sylveon could stay in on a Weezing or Garbodor, for example, and bruise them into later sweeping range. Things like Conkeldurr and Haxorus would of course carry Poison Jab, or, in Haxorus' case, even Iron Tail, to destroy Clefable, a potent defensive pokemon that threatens Minimize / Calm Mind set-up or Minimize / Cosmic Power Toxic stall. Still, leading Specs Sylveon would often be a good idea against most line-ups because of the complementary defensive pairing with phys def Cresselia even against the few atrociously bad lead matchups such as Choice Band Arcanine or the aforementioned Z-Poison Jab / Iron Tail Haxorus.
Where Sylveon / Cresselia falls short, then, is against specially defensive powerhouses such as Chansey, or pokemon setting up behind screens set by suicide lead Taunt Electrode, bulky Serperior and the like. To ameliorate this, I opted for the physically offensive sand pairing of Gigalith + Stoutland, with a Ditto to shut down opponents' expected hyper aggro cheeses and Xurkitree to both threaten the Z-Hypnosis sweep and to have a consistent wallbreaking option.
Gigalith:
Against teams that appeared unable wall the Retaliate+Z-Giga Impact follow-up of Sand Rush Stoutland, suicide leading Gigalith into Stoutland was intended to—if not win outright—trade 2-for-2+ at a minimum, letting Ditto, Sylveon or Xurkitree bring up the rear.
Focus Sash also lets Gigalith do an okay job outside the sand core in the non-lead role for revenge killing an offensive threat without having to rely on Ditto while still having an out in Rock Blast against Glalie, Toxic stall Prankster Tornadus, Pressure stall Entei and Heavy Slam against Minimize Clefable/Chansey. Sleep Talk lets Gigalith lead against Xurkitree and Spore Smeargle, which I deemed more necessary than running, say, Stealth Rock or even Protect for Fake Out Mienshao. The speed EVs were for outspeeding pre-Curse Snorlax.
Stoutland:
Psychic Fangs was chosen to have an option to break screens in order not to get out-sustained or out-muscled by things like Screens + PorygonZ or Eeveepass, which are the two things you don't want to have happen to you when running an offensively orientated team with only 5 turns of sand at a time.
STAB Z-Giga Impact from 110 base attack was chosen over Life Orb Return / Frustration or Z-Superpower for better immediate impact against a broad range of things: 252 HP Assault Vest Conkeldurr needs to have not taken too much chip to live a hit, and variants that speed creep for Clefable can be in the 30-40% range to get OHKO'd from a hit without any chip at all; Choice Band Arcanine takes a minimum of 80% damage even after Intimidate, only OHKOing with Close Combat some 40%+ of the time or dying to Flare Blitz recoil, for example.
Crunch was intended to hit something like Mismagius as much as it was for the defense drops against the Chanseys of the world, since the other two main ghosts (Cofagrigus and Dusknoir) are too bulky to justify bringing an Explosion + Normal STAB gameplan to begin with. This slot could just as easily have been for Toxic, Superpower, Roar or even Howl.
Ditto:
Scarf Ditto only really works as revenge killer and reverse sweeper against boosted stuff such as Porygon Z, Xurkitree, Haxorus or most things at the end of a Baton Pass chain. And I expected just such stuff to be in ample enough supply to justify a team slot for it. In testing I also found it neat as a switch-in to 252 SpAtt Serperior leads after Sylveon whiffs the 60% Hyper Voice roll to OHKO or its Sash is triggered (Sylveon lives two hits from 4 SpAtt ones barring two outrageous highrolls).
Hidden Power didn't seem to be much of a thing in this format, with Xurkitree and the occasional Serperior as the prominent exceptions, so I went with HP Ice IVs on Ditto to have coverage options when transformed into said two pokemon.
Cresselia:
Cresselia, while providing a defensive anchor and second life for Sylveon, is highly susceptible to abuse by defensive play and represents a substantial momentum loss, as practically everything switches in on Cresselia for free once it is made as running a bulky Rocky Helmet set instead of something like Substitute + Calm Mind or Toxic. This puts pressure on the team to pull the trigger on Trick Room + Lunar Dance relatively quickly, if not immediately, in most cases to avoid getting set-up on.
Sylveon:
Knowing the lead matchups is the bread and butter of Specs Sylveon: Sylveon clicks Hyper Voice, survives a hit, and kills. Sylveon clicks Hyper Voice, survives a hit, and switches out. Sylveon switches out. These are realistically the only three outcomes that should result from and in leading Sylveon. The first is obviously the preferred one, and is also the basis for the Trick Room gameplan—only ideally without the getting hit part while under its effect (Quiet 0 IV underspeeds things like Adamant Conkeldurr, -Spd Tangrowth with 21 or above IV in Speed, for example); the second, against things that don't threaten Sylveon with an OHKO right off the bat, but also have enough bulk or resistance (or Assault Vest) to live a sweep attempt, necessitating getting them chipped; and, the third, against losing the lead matchup against Choice Band Arcanine (62.5% to Flare Blitz OHKO), lead Gigalith or something physically threatening.
A major selling point is Hyper Voice's ability to hit through Substitute, which is normally found on things like Substitute+Protect Pressure stall Suicune and Entei, SubSeed Serperior, anything else that wants to avoid losing to Toxic stall from Clefable and Chansey, and, most famously, Glalie.
The EVs give just enough special bulk to live Z-Thunderbolt from 252 Xurkitree while having a 60%+ chance to live the +252 ones, as well. On the physical side, unboosted Haxorus is forced to click Z-Iron Tail or Z-Poison Jab to OHKO, Choice Band Entei needs a 12.5% roll to OHKO with Iron Head, as does 252 suicide lead Azelf Explosion, while having a 20%+ chance to live even up to opposing Stoutland's Life Orb Retaliate on a 140 BP turn, while Life Orb Return / Frustration and sandstorm damage from the aforementioned are comfortably survivable. Likewise, Choice Band Arcanine can't nail the 62.5% Flare Blitz OHKO without killing itself and Choice Band Extremespeed fails to even 2HKO.
An unfortunate downside to cutting so much HP is that Accelgor's Final Gambit OHKOs in the lead matchup, which it wouldn't against 252 HP Sylveon, meaning it still has to think twice before clicking it when it could just as easily get down both layers of Toxic Spikes or play towards Encore or even Yawn. Obviously, you'd ideally never take most of these hits detailed above in the first place, but the EVs are such a departure from the clean 252 HP / SpAtt spread, they need a justification here in writing for posterity, if for nothing else.
Sylveon carries Sleep Talk for the menace that is Z-Hypnosis Xurkitree, as well as for the occasional Spore Geomancy Smeargle and various Liepard Assist + Spore gimmicks. Hidden Power Fire / Ground, which would likely be run in BSS were Sylveon still viable there, fails to find a home here with the lack of steels aside from Klinklang. (The only set I saw in practice and replays was Electrium Z Magnet Rise & Wild Charge + Shift Gear & Gear Grind, which, as an offensive stat booster, is susceptible to Ditto.) Other options for the 4th move slot would have to include Echoed Voice for a way of justifying the Sylveon pick against hard stall and the priority provided by Quick Attack.
Xurkitree:
When the showdown ladder first came up, the top spots during first three days or so, however uncompetitive the ladder may be said to have been, were dominated by a core of Tornadus / Serperior / Arcanine / Xurkitree. Since then, only Serperior and Arcanine seemed to retain anything close to the kind of ubiquity of those first few days, while Xurkitree sets branched off from Z-Hypnosis cheeses into Choice Scarf and even the occasional Grassium sets, presumably seeking to beat Assault Vest Gigalith and Mudsdale. I personally started off with a BSS Assault Vest 244HP / 228SpDef Calm Xurkitree, reverting to wallbreaking once walls that needed breaking started to show up in numbers. And since the rest of this team lacks the punching power to consistently break defensive bulk, Tail Glow Xurkitree seemed like a natural fit.
Bulky wallbreaker Xurkitree usually run max or near max SpAtt investment Electrium in BSS, but here, as neither the speed or the damage creep is as outrageous, I sought a middle ground between bulk and damage that still—albeit barely—performs the Chansey, Porygon2 and Snorlax busting tasks assigned to it, while retaining the potential of forcing an underserved win from behind using the Z-Hypnosis gambit.
The spread I arrived at has enough bulk to live from full HP, for example:
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+252 Snorlax's Earthquake;
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Stoutland's +252 Life Orb Return / Frustration in sand;
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+2 Leaf Storm from 4 SpAtt Serperior (anything below 100 SpAtt is a 50% roll to OHKO);
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Thunderbolt from +3 +252 Xurkitree (Grass Knot / Energy Ball OHKOs easily, though); and
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Scarf +252 Porygon Z's Uproar;
The speed EVs hit 183 at +1, enough to outspeed Serperior, one of the fastest non-scarfed threats around.
2) Post-tournament thoughts & conclusion:
Final result: 1633 (global rank 280/5996 with a score of 29-16), my worst result to date, disappointing, even for a team as gimmicky as this. The highest person I beat was only rated 1686 and the lowest person I lost to 1486, though I did get spanked by a 178x Z-Hypnosis Xurkitree due to a two turn sleep. Regardless, this clearly falls well short of my stated goal of 1730-40.
My disappointment would be worse were it not for the fact that, of course, I have no one else to blame for such a poor showing other than myself. Now, part of this is down to one-dimensional team design and stubbornness, especially when it came to Ditto: an over-reliance on Ditto as opposed to the greatly more self-sufficient Xurkitree was especially evident during the final day's dip from the 1640s all the way down to the mid-1500s.
As for the individual members of the team, Sash Gigalith performed spectacularly, although there were two games where Earthquake was sorely missed in a lead matchup against Klinklang. For the record: Sleep Talk was not clicked once, outclassed by Explosion even when presented with the opportunity to stay in on a Yawn, for instance.
Likewise, Stoutland delivered when called upon. Superpower was not missed as Z-Giga Impact OHKO'd things that would come in to live a hit after a 140BP Retaliate turn. Psychic Fangs won three games against screens leads that tried to follow up with a set up mon like Eevee or Porygon Z.
My greatest failing was instead, as alluded to above, the Ditto addiction. And Cresselia falls into kind of the same basket as Ditto: hyper aggro was not nearly as common as I had hoped. Sure enough, Haxorus and Serperior were in ample supply, but, shockingly, Porygon Z was not.
Sylveon's physical bulk didn't excactly pay dividends as it was constantly having to trade with opposing Sylveon and Serperior, with a total absence of Entei and Arcanine to tank—in fact, the only Flare Blitzes it ever had to take were from Ninetales of all things (more due to the low quality of opponent I got after dumpstering myself than anything else, I'm sure). As such, the Trick Room reverse sweep was not realistic to go for more than a handful of times, opting instead either to suicide lead for Gigalith + Stoutland / Xurkitree / Ditto or to provide a special nuke for the sand plan.
Xurkitree had the tools to close out many a game, but I simply either did not bring it, or did not try to highroll with its Z-move: both catastrophic mistakes in hindsight.
Overall, fitting 90 games across three days for a total of 12 hours of ladder is not something I'm exactly looking forward to doing again (lord knows how people like Azelfhoon enter these events with up to 5 roms at a time). Still, getting to use questionable pokemon like Stoutland and Ditto to the extent that I did was a thrill not likely to be repeated in a tournament setting ever again.
- Tox
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/tox.146/
