Hey, with BDSPPL coming to a close and me having enjoyed the tier more than I thought I would, I figured I would make a small post featuring my thoughts on a few specific aspects of the metagame, my teams and some suggestions for the next VR update.
Truth be told, I didn't build my own teams until week 4 and TyCarter just handed me cheese for the first 3 weeks, so I won't really be talking about those. (I'd like to take a moment to thank
TyCarter for those teams and his support though) I'm also not
too fond of my week 4 and week 5 (the Xatu was Synchronize in the actual week 5 battle instead of Magic Bounce which was pretty unfortunate since I don't really have to allow hazards ever in the given matchup with the right ability) teams, so I won't talk about them but I'll share them nevertheless.
4 5
(click for import)
The finals team is, in my opinion, a lot better than the others, and I couldn't really figure out anything that straight up beats it while testing. Nasty Plot Rotom is probably annoying to face if used right, though, but I think that's about it. The point of the team is to be a bulky offense that punishes any breaking attempts by forcing breakers to trade hits on my terms, especially with Miltank/Venusaur, and also punish every misprediction on the opposing end with the offensive threat they pose, hence the high speed invest on both. I think that this is especially potent in a meta like BDSP RU, because all breakers people tend to run in this tier are incredibly frail.
Miltank especially does a good job at punishing this, since it can outspeed most heavy hitters through its incredible base speed (it was the fastest mon on both teams in my finals game lol), can scout choice-users (applies to any CB/Specs breaker but also really damn annoying for Scarf Primeape) (and perhaps get some chip on Guts Swellow/Machamp) through Protect and can punish any attempts at breaking through it with some good chip damage and a potential Paralysis from Body Slam. While it is not quite as fat as Chansey, I think it's a better fit for the team because unlike Chansey, Miltank actually poses a threat to whatever pokemon attempts to break it. Please rank Miltank in the next VR update. Perhaps like
B+?
Another thing I discovered to be really good in this season is Timid Chlorophyll
Venusaur. Not sure if anyone else tried that yet outside of sun. Timid Venusaur in general is really nice to outspeed Nidoqueen and Absol and simply force Absol to play Sucker mindgames and enforce chip on Nidoqueen, as well as a whole lot of things. While you're at it with running 252+ speed you might as well use Chlorophyll to patch up the sun matchup since Venusaur is usually the fastest abuser on sun. (unless they run Leafeon, but you beat that anyway) Venusaur has access to Growth which allows it to break through a lot of teams (especially since this tier has some steel types that don't beat it, such as Steelix and Aggron, Registeel is a bit iffy for sets without Leech Seed though) and Leech Seed, which, especially in combination with Sludge Bomb, makes it incredibly hard for fatter teams to beat. Venusaur has excellent stats, is hard to switch in to and forces progress like no other. In my opinion it is probably the best Pokemon in the tier, so I'd very much support moving it up to
S on the next VR update (and also, please move Nidoqueen down from S, by using Nidoqueen you put the onus to outplay for any progress at all on yourself and theres a couple pokemon it can't really do anything against, such as Slowking and Gastrodon. While it is pretty good, I think it doesn't quite warrant the current ranking on the VR.)
The rest of the team outside of Miltank/Venusaur is fairly standard so I won't go in-depth on that, I do however still want to share my opinion on
Absol since that has been a topic of interest in BDSP RU lately. I personally think that Absol is not broken and shouldn't be banned. There is plenty of counterplay you can put on a team to deal with it. Steels such as Aggron and Steelix do a good job at holding it off temporarily because it doesn't have access to Close Combat, it's often not strong enough to break through without SD, which means it has to find a setup opportunity which often costs you a big chunk of your HP bar because of Absol's abysmal bulk, Colbur Slowking can live a hit and threaten Paralysis/Burn, it has to play mindgames against Substitute Rotom (Rotom can also decide to run Will-o-Wisp and Absol can't really do anything about that), it's not quite strong enough to break through defensive assets such as Venusaur and Gastrodon (I'm intentionally not mentioning Granbull because I think it sucks because it doesn't really do anything outside of beating Absol, if you need to resort to Granbull so your team doesn't lose to Absol then that's a bad team) without outside help, and it's speed tier puts it below a lot of stuff, which forces it to get turns right with Sucker Punch.
In short:
Don't ban Absol, theres a lot of potential counterplay to it, Absol is one of those pokemon that are easy to force to get turns right through making your structure sound in the builder, hence making losing to Absol kind of a skill issue, in my opinion. If anything it functions as a solid cheese deterrent, with its strong sucker punches keeping sun and rain in check.
That's it for the strong opinions I've formed while playing BDSP RU for a season, I'd really enjoy reading if the other BDSP RU players for this season would also post their teams/technological advances in the teambuilder/opinions
gorex Mihowk outbackrabbit Ampha Raahel Piyush25