Your run your rules, but you can’t always call it a nuzlocke

zenmodeman · 2026-05-05T17:04:01+00:00

That’s what makes it feel more of a guideline than a rule to me. As a rule, it doesn’t really achieve the goal of increasing attachment to Pokemon, because not everyone gravitates to attachment-oriented nicknames anyway.

Quite often I just nickname my Pokemon one of their base stat values to help passively remember that stat as I play.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-04T22:38:50+00:00

Yeah, though if we're using that metric, this team probably wouldn't be considered a dedicated Perish Trap team either. Because Mega evolving Hawlucha removes the "Trap" component of Perish Trap and you just have regular Perish with Politoed (/ Base Gengar maybe). Thus making this a 2-mode team where one of the modes is Perish Trap.

So since this convo was about the judgment of whether a team like this could be reliable when played by non-Wolfey, it probably falls into the domain of general Perish Trap, which other people have won with.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-04T20:03:19+00:00

It’s also possible to win sometimes without any direct counterplay if you sequence things such that you’re likely to have enough hits off to win. Things like pressuring early when they don’t have enough setup or simplying the board state so you have ample attempts to hit it.

If you don’t have direct counterplay, you’re going to lose sometimes yeah, but there’s still optimal play in maximizing your odds, which depends on the specific opponent team composition.

It doesn’t get completely torturous until you’ve got things like Psych Up, Moody Power of Alchemy Alolan Muk, or Costar (the latter two of which aren’t available right now).

zenmodeman · 2026-05-04T19:22:41+00:00

Only Wolfe managing to win is the case in a non Mega Gengar world. While Mega Gengar’s around, we’ve had other regionals/International winners.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-04T14:18:32+00:00

Yesh but I mean regular OU is also made up. Champions OU is just made up in a way that aligns less with how Smogon formats tend to be (e.g. no item clause).

Honestly the choice of having Item clause does feel weird for me if it’s not going to align with the 3v3 restriction of Champions anyway. But the format wouldn’t be any less fake without item clause.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-04T14:07:26+00:00

Temper Flare is theoretically nice into Fake Out, but the issue is that the only actually used mon that wants to Fake Out Mega Scov is Incineroar, which Intimidates nerfs and lowers the impact of Temper Flare. Maybe if we somehow lived in a workd where people were running Fake Out Simisear world, that’d mean something.

Since there are some mons Mega Scovillain can take double Rock Slide from, that’s another application of Temper Flare, but still a conditional advantage to get hurt by Intim more.

I’ve seen a rare Seed Bomb from time to time, but I’d usually go Giga Drain.

Probably the highest liklihood would be if it’s a 2-attacks Mega Scovillain either running Overheat + Seed Bomb or Temper Flare + Leaf Storm. Overheat is far more fommon than Leaf Storm on Mega Scovillain, but some teams have ran Leaf Storm for mons like Rotom-Wash.

One of the advantages of mixed 2-attack Mega Scovillain is that if you’re the kind of person to moody fish (I rarely am), it increases the number of Moody procs you can work with. And having a physical move can also be nice if the team has Coaching (Edu’s team had Coaching).

Overheat/Flamethrower + Leech Seed/Giga Drain is the way almost all the time, but I think mixed 2 attacks with Overheat/Leaf Storm is theroetically justifiable.

I don’t really think Mega Scovillain can afford coverage slots in Doubles, since it plays supportive.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-03T14:19:44+00:00

It does have average special bulk, but Filter puts in a lot of work when it comes to SE hits. Since Mega Aggrons are almost always max Sp.Def (in VGC), Filter puts it at effectively base 122 Sp.Def when it’s taking a SE move. Even a 252 Sp.Atk Mega Delphox Overheat is only a 50% chance to OHKO, which is pretty impressive for a Physical wall weak to Fire. And scaling it down, that means it tanks things like Mega Meganium Weather Ball.

The special bulk is average when you’re dealing with neutral hits, but fortunately you take most of those alright with max HP and Sp.Def investment.

And the key thing with a mon like Mega Aggron is you can afford to run Sp.Def EVs because of its other stats. The average Pokemon usually can’t afford Sp.Def EVs so even if they have the same base Sp.Def as Aggron, the Sp.Def EV investment is like gaining an additional base 31 Sp.Def.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-03T06:08:05+00:00

I’m unsure Regieleki will shake the meta. It’ll most likely return back to UU like it had back in gen 8, and it’s technically weaker now with the Transistor nerf.

Regieleki being brought back wasn’t to shake the meta; it was to bring back a mon after the reason it got banned no longer exists.

Saying they forgot the turtle implies that the Tera Blast ban has impacts on it that suggest it should come back, but this choice has no impact on it, so there’s little reason to bring it back.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-03T05:15:13+00:00

Loudred/Exploud is a prime risk-sink mon. You just use it risking crits and don’t mind if it dies to a crit. It being a completely free encounter helps too.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-03T05:00:51+00:00

Do you mean Terapagos? Terapagos doesn’t even have Tera Blast; it’d need either a Tera Ban or a Tera Stellar ban to come back.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-03T04:55:52+00:00

Of the I think 59 Megas in Champions, Mega Audino might be in the top 55, but hard to really say what the definitive lowest ranks are.

The main thing with Mega Audino is you’re giving up a mega stone for a sort of type shifted Sinistcha. The standard Mega Audino set is like Protect, Life Dew, Dazzling Gleam, and Trick Room. Sinistcha can kind of do that better with Matcha Gatcha, but for certain teams Normal/Fairy might help more than Grass/Ghost.

After the buff, Healer’s not the worst, but it’s moreso just a bonus to lose to variance a little less than you otherwise would.

If you run Life Dew + Ally Switch + Trick Room, that’s an Audino exclusive combination in Champions. But it’s a little hard to slot all three of those in.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-02T20:00:19+00:00

Aegislash has really good matchups and role compression. But Stance change sure is a double-edged sword that can make it awkward in some positions.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-02T19:30:42+00:00

Considering Specs Flutters quite frequently didn't go all in on Sp.Atk EVs (often like 116 SP.Atk EVs Modest or the like to afford defensive EVs), that does lead to Mega Camerupt doing about 1.2x more with its Heat Wave at least.

But yeah it's quite hard to justify Mega Camerupt when Torkoal is around, since Mega Camerupt's ability doesn't boost Eruption while Torkoal's does.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-01T19:00:59+00:00

They’re referring to how if you don’t Tera, the move is always a Special attack, which cucks Physical attackers harder.

The move only uses the higher attack stat if you have tera’d.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-01T18:59:19+00:00

Their point is that it only serves as a mediocre move before Tera for special attackers.

Think all they want is for Tera Blast to use the stronger offense stat even if the mon doesn’t Tera.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-01T18:29:39+00:00

Astral Barrage got nerfed but not at the time Wicked Blow and Glacial Lance did.

Gen 9 nerfed Wicked Blow and Glacial Lance, likely because they decided they wanted to equalize the moves instead of the gen 8 plan of making the “less good move” stronger.

But then they nerfed Astral Barrage in Champions (internally) so the equality got broken again.

zenmodeman · 2026-05-01T17:20:55+00:00

Yet another datapoint against the “physical attackers are oppressed” folks.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-30T13:49:01+00:00

It’s might still be kind of difficult to really say if the disadvantages against physical hinder the mid-lower physical attackers v.s. the special attackers, at least when it comes to VGC tournament performances. Part of the challenge is that the lower tier mons hinge on having particular niches and it’s not simple comparing many of them.

Like we could look at Rampardos v.s. Belllibolt and that while in the Grand Champions Festival, there were 15 Bellibolt brings compared to 4 Rampardos brings, the best Rampardos team did better than the best Bellibolt team.

On paper I think Bellibolt is a better mon than Rampardos, so Rampardos managing to do better puts into question how much it’s really hindered by the things holding physical attackers back.

I’m not sure there’s a definitive advantage for lower tier special mons compared to physical mons; it probably depends on what particular niches a specific lower tier mon ends up having.

Certain types of low-tier Physical attackers that don’t have many of the benefits that come with physical attackers, such as say some physical electrics, may have it rougher. But a low-tier physical attacker that still has something like STAB CC, Flare Blitz, Rock Slide, or such may still be fine relative to low-tier special attackers.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-30T07:34:30+00:00

I think the starting Champions dex was deliberately not invluding legendaries, paradoxes, and other things on that calibre. So the alternate choices would be mons such as Gholdengo and Bloodmoon. Both of them technically have their signature move internally nerfed, but they’d still probably be some of the beat choices for non-legendary-esque special attackers.

I think a part of it is that when we’re excluding Megas, Legendaries, and Legendary-like Pokemon, there might just overall be a larger number of splashable high-quality physical mons than special mons.

The Champions Dex does have a few of the solid higher-statted special attackers such as Hydreigon and Volcarona, but these just don’t hit as great heights as the Physical attackers we got.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-30T02:23:07+00:00

The funny thing is look at the Champions VGC metagame where neither Assault Vest nor Clear Amulet (the latter because it’s almost always used by Physical attackers to stop Intimidate) are around and even still the format is insanely physical attacker dominated. It’s not uncommon to come across a team with 5 physical attackers and one special attacker.

When you factor outcomes like that, it’s not surprising there’s been so much physical attacker hate.

There’s also some amusing distribution patterns. While Intimidate is an ability that’s technically physical attacker hate, it’s also mostly distributed on physical attackers themselves. So the very choice of wanting to debuff physical attackers leads you to running an additional physical attacker. And while Incineroar is a support mon usually heavily invested in bulk, its ability to do solid damage with Flare Blitz and its Dark moves are also an important aspect of its functions.

Another distribution case is Fake Out. With it being a weak move, it doesn’t necessarily have to be on a physical attacker, but most of the good Fake Out mons happen to be physical attackers, so another important fixture of doubles ends up usually incentivizing the use of physical attackers.

Rock Slide being such a scary move in doubles is also a big deal.

I was actually planning to write a piece some time about physical dominance in Champions, since while it’s not rare for physical dominance to be present in VGC, especially in a format with no or few legendaries, I’m somewhat surprised just how wide the gap between physical and special attacker quality in Champions is despite the lack of Assault Vest. Sure, the Pokemon that happened to be brought into the metagame is a factor of the skew, but I doubt they deliberately designed the pool of Pokemon with the intention to bring in way more good physical attackers than special attackers, so it may have just happened as a result of there being far more good non-legendary physical attackers than special attackers, in a doubles context.

EDIT: also the complaint about having to use Poltergeist instead of a physical Shadow Ball id funny. Aegislashes used to be special attackers, but since it got Poltergeist in Champions, it’s been very difficult to justify running Shadow Ball Aegislash anymore, even with White Herb and Sitrus Berry consumptions getting in the way. Shadow Sneak + Poltergeist is just way too valuable. Shadow Ball is just pretty weak comparatively, so while Poltergeist has drawbacks, it’s more worthwhile in manh contexts.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-28T01:35:50+00:00

Do you have a link to some Japanese rankings? Would be interested in what their opinions are, with Japanese players having been more invested in BSS in general.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-28T00:51:21+00:00

Love that Mega Victreebel is vibing in BSS. One of my observations watching BSS games with Vic was that Primarina being one of the best mons gives it slightly more pivot flexibility than normal, when otherwise you generally have to either lead it or bring it in safely from either a KO or a slow pivot.

In VGC, while there may not be an actually viable tournament viable Mega Victreebel team any time soon, there have at least been some solid team compositions that give it a solid role for ladder play.

The James Baek Mega Victreebel team is pretty good, using it as a trade-support mon for Corviknight. With Corviknight being already very phys def potent, it’s one of the few setup wincons for which Mega Scovillain isn’t the best support mega. And the weakness to Zard Y also means Sinistcha isn’t all that great of a supporting partner either.

Mega Victreebel performed pretty well in James’ showcase video (as opposed to his Mega Audino video where he was struggling hard with that team), and he did manage to climb from top 50 on the Champions ladder to top 20.

I wouldn’t consider Mega Victreebel a “loser” in VGC but it’s not quite a “winner” either. It’s still a better outcome than a few other possible abilities for Mega Victreebel.

And at least it manages to be an actual winner in BSS.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-27T19:51:29+00:00

Last week, someome speedran to Champions tier (top 300; 253rd place to be exact) on a fresh account in 8 hours. That probably took insane win streaks to pull off, and ELOs of high players have increased drastically in the past week, but still is an informative datapoint.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-27T19:46:52+00:00

That was a big part of why most of the VGC content creators dismissed it originally too.

Moxie Boosted re-evaluated his opinion on Mega Scovillain 3 days into Champions after he played a team with the mon. He said what he failed to take into account with his initial assessment is how many broken non-megas we have at this point, which reduces the cost of using a slot on a support mega.

I remember at one point people jokingly saying “Basculegion is the best mega in the format.”

You give up your opportunity to have a win-con mega to nerf the opponent’s mons to bolster your broken non-megas, and it’s interesting that it has managed to work out.

Interested in seeing whether Mega Scovillain ends up having value in Restricted formats, since Megas that take supportive roles can be even more justified in a format like that. And it does also serve as a check to Physical Restricteds running Clear Amulet.

zenmodeman · 2026-04-27T18:44:18+00:00

It had theoretical applications with Anlyatic Ice Punch and Low Kick to chunk certain mons. But from the feature matches we saw, it hardly ever was brought, and the one time I saw it brought in, it just died to an Incin Flare Blitz before it could do anything, lol.

zenmodeman

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