Rutgers Fireside Open Tournament Team Analysis

By: Jonathan Lin

12/4/2016

Introduction

Hi everyone! My name is Jonathan Lin and I am a huge Pokémon fan just getting into the VGC scene of things. I played Pokémon from Generation 1 to 5, but didn’t play much of Generation 6 due to the lack of owning a 3DS until my freshman year of college started. I was very fascinated to find a Pokémon club at Rutgers and I did not hesitate to join it.

I saw that the club was mostly VGC-focused and I felt interested in being a part of that. It was vastly different compared to the singles format that I played in the past. It was entirely new for me so I felt obligated to try things out.

The Rutgers Fireside Open Tournament was held on December 4, 2017 and I was desperate to join it, regardless if I had a team ready or not. It was my first official tournament I ever went to. I could not participate in tournaments in the past due to conflicting schedules that my parents had, so I played rather casual and raised Pokémon on my own at that time. Now with more freedom and flexibility, participating in a tournament was something that was truly a dream come true. It was a true experience and I was able to make friends with even some of the most competent people.

Today, I would like to give my team analysis on the team I used to achieve Top 2. There were a lot of things I learned from this tournament and I am definitely happy with the team choices I made and how well they performed.

Team Analysis

Fireside Image 2

Marowak-A @ Thick Club
Ability: Lightning Rod
Adamant Nature / EVs: 252 HP, 180 Atk, 68 Sp. Def, 4 Speed

Also known to be a favorite of one of my good friends from the club, this thing was quite a monster. I catered towards a tanky build for Marowak, considering I wanted to get rid of one of the most important walling threats in the current metagame: Celesteela. I ran enough Attack EVs to KO certain Pokémon that were also potential threats in the metagame.

Having the ability to OHKO Celesteela is huge, especially since it prevents it from setting up a potential Leech Seed and from walling your team. Celesteela is practically a threat to almost any team that isn’t prepared for it. The Tapus also get OHKO’d by moves that they are respectively weak against. Marowak also serves as a nice check to Tapu Koko, Tapu Lele, and Tapu Bulu. Tapu Fini did not have much use in this tournament, which was quite relieving.

Mudsdale served as a huge threat in my team and while Flare Blitz can dish out a ton of damage against it, Mudsdale could always find a way in dealing back an OHKO to my Marowak. It was more of a high risk factor that needed to be taken into consideration.

Marowak was built with more bulk, helping it to survive certain lethal attacks. Here are some important damage calculations that were important for Marowak:

Marowak is able to live Scald from Milotic. I didn’t have to worry about any Sp. Atk boosts with its ability Competitive since I did not use any Pokémon with Intimidate. Living an Earthquake from Garchomp also helped in case my opponent went with the Celesteela + Garchomp combo.

Looking back, I actually did not use Marowak as much as I wanted to and I am absolutely disappointed in myself for not realizing a lot of its potential. There were some attacks that Marowak could have easily survived against and not using him for certain matches that mattered crippled my performance heavily.

Fireside Image 2

Pheromosa @ Focus Sash
Ability: Beast Boost
Naive Nature / EVs: 252 Atk, 4 Sp. Atk, 252 Speed

Pheromosa was absolutely bae throughout this tournament. I was really sad when I found out that this Pokémon wasn’t available in Sun, but fortunately, I had friends outside Rutgers who were willing to trade their Pheromosas for some of my Ultra Beasts. I have to give huge thanks to one of my friends who lives in Germany for trading me a Pheromosa he resetted for and captured for me.

Pheromosa was an interesting choice, as quite a number of people questioned my usage for it. Admittedly, Pheromosa is not a common Pokémon you would see in this meta, particularly due to its frail defenses. I saw a lot of potential into Pheromosa and I felt it worked very well with my team as long as I put some form of creativity into it. As most players say, “creativity comes with high risk,” and I was definitely willing to take that risk into coming up with a setup that worked with my team.

In compensation for Pheromosa’s terrible defenses, Pheromosa carries a ton of offensive pressure. Additionally, Pheromosa has the highest Speed stat out of all of the Pokémon viable in VGC 2017, topping one of the biggest threats: Tapu Koko. My team utilized quite a lot of spread moves, including those that hit your own allies. Playing some risky plays, I was able to utilize U-turn to swap Pheromosa out safely without much worry in taking out a fast and powerful Pokémon. However, this also meant that switching into Pheromosa was an incredibly risky play.

Focus Sash is a must for Pheromosa. Pheromosa goes down if hit by a move that it doesn’t resist against. Unlike Singles where Life Orb would be most common on Pheromosa, Pheromosa cannot bare to take a single hit for whatever is heading toward it. I also had to keep in mind of Garchomp since Rough Skin breaks its Focus Sash upon contact. Thankfully, Pheromosa can OHKO Garchomp in return with an Ice Beam without any Sp. Atk investment.

In terms of EV spreads, I would highly recommend not using the EV spreads I used for Pheromosa. After the tournament, I realized that Pheromosa didn’t exactly need that extra Speed investment, especially considering it only needed to outspeed Tapu Koko. Lonely/Naughty Nature would have been better, especially considering Attack investment would have been able to exceed the Speed stat enough to receive the Attack boost after each KO thanks to Beast Boost. Throughout the tournament, it seemed as if Beast Boost was almost useless due to Pheromosa not needing the extra Speed to outspeed other Pokémon. If I had a Lonely/Naughty Nature Pheromosa, I would have went with 252 Attack, 20 Sp. Atk, and 236 Speed.

Fireside Image 2

Garchomp @ Lum Berry
Ability: Rough Skin
Jolly Nature / EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Sp. Def / 252 Speed

Garchomp has always been one of my favorite Pokémon and when I first saw a Pokémon Diamond playthrough about nine years ago, I was fascinated with Cynthia’s Garchomp. I was ecstatic to see him in the Alola Pokédex and it fit perfectly on my team

This set was quite odd, as I did not run Poison Jab on my Garchomp. I was originally going to run it in place of Dragon Claw since I wanted to counter against Tapus; however, I had other Pokémon that took care of them better than Garchomp could have. I did not run any bulky setups on my Garchomp, so running Garchomp and risking a potential Dazzling Gleam from other Tapu Koko wasn’t ideal for me. While Garchomp can live Dazzling Gleam from other Tapus, I did not want to risk losing a huge attacker on my team. Celesteela and Marowak did a great job in walling the Tapus very nicely.

The EV spread was rather a bit unoriginal, but I kept it that way considering I wanted to focus Garchomp to use more spread moves. Here are some important damage calculations I had to consider:

I did not have much to worry about other than Gyarados following the damage calculations. If Garchomp was to contest with Gyarados, I knew Garchomp would be at a vast disadvantage. Even if Garchomp had the opportunity to face against Gyarados without the Intimidate, I was still not guaranteed my 2HKO with Rock Slide. In situations where I was able to contest against Gyarados, I would be able to use Garchomp’s Rock Slide and follow up with Tapu Lele’s Psychic to finish the job.

Ironically, even though I had Marowak in my lineup, Marowak served as a huge threat to my team. Having Garchomp on the field with Marowak changed things around, considering Garchomp has a speed advantage and can 2HKO with Earthquake. This would mean that I had to double into Marowak, considering Marowak is able to OHKO Celesteela.

I’m very happy to see Garchomp’s performance in the tournament. It synergized very well with Celesteela and it allowed some nice switch-ins that opponents would not necessarily expect.

Celesteela @ Leftovers
Ability: Beast Boost
Brave Nature / EVs: 156 HP, 252 Atk, 100 Sp. Def

Celesteela is an Ultra Beast that has seen lots of use in the early stages of the metagame. While realizing the potential threats of the early metagame, I wanted to get my hands onto one. Huge thanks to one of my childhood friends who resetted for this Celesteela for me.

It was rather a rushed setup as I did not really have much time to think about a viable setup for Celesteela. Brave Nature was already an odd choice considering I am not using a Trick Room team whatsoever. The Brave Nature was really only meant for Air Slash to do a bit more damage, but even then, I rarely used Air Slash simply because Heavy Slam always outdamaged it. It seemed to work in my favor despite its weird EV spread, considering I was able to stall for a decent bit, despite not having Substitute.

It occurred to me that Celesteela is the second heaviest Pokémon in the game, only losing to Groudon who isn’t even legal to use in VGC 2017 (thank the lord). I knew from that point, Heavy Slam was a must for this Pokémon. Realizing its potential, it countered the Tapus extremely well with max Attack investment.

Celesteela put in quite the work, especially thanks to its Flying-typing, which allowed my Garchomp to use Earthquake in more ways that it previously couldn’t otherwise. There would be situations where I would have to switch in my Celesteela if I wanted to use Garchomp’s Earthquake if one of my Pokémon had no way around using Protect without risking myself with the horrid 33.33% chance of working.

Celesteela is definitely one of the biggest and probably the most used Pokémon on any VGC team. Seeing how it is so common, I had to find ways to counter it and find ways to save it from any potential threats to it, potentially Marowak. Speaking of threats, let’s cover some more damage calculations but more rather on the ones that Celesteela will have to worry about tanking.

There were a lot of threats to Celesteela I had to worry about despite its tanky role. Fortunately, I did not encounter anyone using Torkoal and Tapu Koko throughout the entire tournament, but worrying about Marowak was a huge concern, considering Celesteela had no reliable way in countering it back.

Looking back, I would have loved to use a differently constructed Celesteela rather than the one I am currently using. While it can still perform great, I definitely had regrets with running certain things on it, especially Air Slash and the Brave Nature.

Fireside Image 2

Tapu Lele @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Psychic Surge
Modest Nature / EVs: 252 HP, 124 Def, 132 Sp. Atk

Tapu Lele definitely put in some nasty work into this tournament. It paired extremely well with Pheromosa thanks to Psychic Surge preventing Pheromosa’s biggest weakness: priority moves. Definitely a lovable Pokémon as some of my friends referred to it as a pink dreidel. I decided to build my Tapu Lele more defensively, as Tapu Lele was able to deal massive loads of damage with a Psychic Surge-boosted Psychic. Losing out on some Sp. Atk EVs did not mean much considering Tapu Lele was bound to 2HKO most Pokémon in the metagame. Tapu Lele was also fun to use as a follow-up to most of the spread moves that I ran on my other Pokémon.

I knew that Tapu Lele would have a lot of use thanks to its overall usage in practically almost any team. A Psychic from this pink dreidel was not to be taken lightly, as it was able to 2HKO most Pokémon I faced throughout the tournament.

It probably would have been better to give Tapu Lele the Psychium Z, considering Mudsdale was a massive threat to my team. I did not enjoy seeing Mudsdale on my game screen at all and having to deal with it meant I either had to be lucky with crits and gambling on movesets run by Mudsdale or fall to one horse that is easily obtainable in the beginning part of the game.

Fireside Image 2

Tapu Koko @ Life Orb
Ability: Electric Surge
Timid Nature / EVs: 252 Sp. Atk, 4 Sp. Def, 252 Speed

Whoever thought of using Taunt on Tapu Koko either had to be insanely crazy or a risk-player. That’s right, I’m looking at myself through that mirror. Tapu Koko was the prime answer to a great deal of Trick Room teams that utilized heavy amounts of Instruct and teams that carried Smeargle. Tapu Koko is the second fastest Pokémon in the VGC 2017 metagame, only to be outsped by Pheromosa. This opened up the huge opportunity to use Taunt, which was a move that didn’t see much play in this metagame.

Tapu Koko put in some major work considering how well it synergized with Garchomp. Whenever I wanted to use Discharge, I could switch in Garchomp to not only nullify its damage onto my own Pokémon, but also to provide some serious damage and potential hax onto my opponents. I chose Discharge considering Marowak was a common counter to Tapu Koko thanks to its Lightning Rod ability. It was also one of the prime reasons why I did not run Thunderbolt. I did not exactly need Thunderbolt, despite its ability to OHKO Celesteela on most occasions under Electric Terrain, considering I had Marowak to counter it easily.

Here are some important damage calculations. Tapu Koko had full reliance on spread moves, which meant less damage for him overall.

There were a lot of Pokémon that I was able to OHKO with Tapu Koko thanks to the Electric Terrain-boosted Discharge. Notable mentions were Gyarados, Pelipper, and practically almost any frail Pokémon that was weak to Electric. Electric is an amazing coverage type and it definitely worked out for Tapu Koko. Utilizing double spread moves would probably be the most fun thing you could pull and still be successful over a great deal of teams.

Wide Guard did bring a huge concern for Tapu Koko, as it walls Tapu Koko completely with its unlimited uses without fail. Fortunately, Wide Guard is only available to select Pokémon, such as Celesteela, Pelipper, and Araquanid. Throughout the tournament, Celesteela was utilized as a stally tank with Protect rather than using Wide Guard, considering they conflict with each other. Pelipper was seen more as an offensive threat now that it has access to Drizzle.

Playing around with terrains was fun, especially considering the team had access to two terrains I could switch in freely. Tapu Koko was the answer to most sleep-inducing threats, like Smeargle and Shiinotic, thanks to Electric Terrain prevent all Pokémon from falling asleep.

Strengths

This team played very well with the fact that the Pokémon used synergized extremely well. There were various switch-ins and neat tactics I was able to pull thanks to switching in with the right partners. I was also able to play in some very risky plays without knocking out my Pokémon, which could contribute to my somewhat reckless way of playing this game. Utilizing U-turn with a Garchomp lead would probably be one of my favorite tactics, as I was able to switch in Celesteela to wall most of what my opponent would have planned.

There were also many weaknesses that were covered. Originally, this was going to be a team centralizing on Electric Terrain with a Raichu partner, but there was a common weakness of Ground, which mean a lot had to be changed. There were Pokémon with some terrible weaknesses, but other Pokémon seemed to have answers to those weaknesses upon bringing them out. Simply put, the Pokémon on the team worked very well with the kits they had in coordinating with each other.

Counters and Weaknesses

Mudsdale was the bane of this team’s existence. Mudsdale is super bulky and more commonly seen with Assault Vest. Perhaps, Psychium Z would have been a lot better for Tapu Lele to deal with Mudsdale a lot better. Gyarados would have been a much better option over Pheromosa considering a +1 Waterfall is enough to OHKO Mudsdale with full HP investment and no Defense investment. Additionally, having an Intimidater would have been extremely helpful. Pheromosa had Ice Beam but it did not deal as much damage as I would have liked. While I could have reallocated the EVs to give Pheromosa more Sp. Atk by giving up unneeded Speed, the difference would not have matter too much. It would still be a guaranteed 3HKO against Mudsdale.

Taunt was very situational. It was not commonly seen throughout the tournament, if any, at all. After watching some VGC 2016 battles before I got back to Pokémon, I noticed a lot of Taunt flying around. Regrettably handing myself over to the dreaded metagame VGC 2016 had to offer, I was grateful to see VGC 2017 shed some light. The problem with Taunt in VGC 2017 is that there was not necessarily much to use it on. There are Trick Room teams to counter with Taunt, but for the most part, Pokémon like Oranguru carry Mental Herb and because Pokémon like Oranguru and Porygon2 are known to be extremely tanky, a wasted turn from using Trick Room is almost like a rare occurrence. Even if Tapu Koko is the second fastest Pokémon in the metagame in terms of raw stats, there are still other Pokémon that can outspeed through other means, such as Chlorophyll Lilligant, Choice Scarf Xurkitree, etc. The common burst metagame was enough to suppress Taunt’s use to a very small use. From what I’ve seen in recent matches in my experience, Gyarados seems to be a common candidate for Taunt. This does not mean that Taunt is absolutely useless, as there are extreme stall threats, such as Celesteela, which may cause a problem, especially when it’s under a Substitute already.

Team Building

It was early within the metagame and the games were only two-weeks old by the time the tournament started. Knowing that the Ultra Beasts and Tapus were highly-hyped Pokémon that were allowed in VGC 2017, I wanted to start my team off with those Pokémon. At first glance, I thought that the Ultra Beasts were insanely powerful, but after some testing, they were really just overhyped. They have a lot of weaknesses in the current metagame and you have to play around them in order to make them effective. One thing I was dead certain about was to not use a full team of Ultra Beasts in hopes of winning.

The first online Pokémon I’ve ever had was against a team that centralized around Electric Terrain, containing Tapu Koko and Alolan Raichu. Originally, I started with just these two Pokémon on my planning list and I wanted to build my team around that. After searching for Pokémon that seemed intriguing in my eyes, I scrapped that idea considering I did not have many answers to other Pokémon that might seem viable, particularly Ground-type Pokémon like Mudsdale, Garchomp, and even Alolan Dugtrio. Thankfully, a Sun/Moon damage calculator was released so I based my team off of running lots of damage calculations for certain Pokémon.

After scrapping Alolan Raichu off of my team, I had to think of a better substitute. I thought of using Pheromosa because I was fascinated by its amazing offenses and incredible Speed stat, replicating Deoxys-Attack. Its frail defenses brought a huge concern and because of my experience with priority moves in VGC 2016, I had to find a way to block against priority moves or find a way to live them using a Focus Sash. Thankfully, Tapu Lele came into my mind to provide the amazing Psychic Terrain with its ability to prevent priority attacks from working for five turns. Tapu Lele and Pheromosa worked out to become really good partners because of this. As the metagame developed, I did not seem to see much of priority moves because of how common Tapu Lele is.

From there, I was left with three more Pokémon to put onto my team. I wanted a Ground-type Pokémon to pair up with Tapu Koko so it can use Discharge more freely rather than have to use Protect on one Pokémon if I wanted to play offensively for a certain turn. I would have thought to use Mudsdale, but it did not occur much to me to use him because of how slow he was. I regretted underestimating it so I went in with Garchomp. Garchomp was a widely-used Pokémon in battles I’ve seen in VGC 2014 and I’m very glad to see one of my favorite Pokémon shine once again in VGC 2017.

Because Rain teams were relatively common, Electric-type attacks are quite common due to their amazing coverage overall. So, Alolan Marowak came into mind. After watching Wolfe Glick’s competitive analysis on Marowak, I was convinced with its amazing synergy and offense. If I could cover as many weaknesses my team had as possible, I would be safe in almost any sitaution. Lightning Rod helped to counter Tapu Koko, shutting down incoming Thunderbolts that may strike on another of one the most viable Pokémon in this metagame: Celesteela.

Celesteela made its way to my team after asking myself which Pokémon would make the perfect tank. Celesteela is the only Pokémon on this team that does not benefit from any terrain effects. The interesting catch was that it did not need to utilize terrains much at all. The only benefit that Celesteela is losing is Sleep immunity from Electric Terrain and most of the time, I usually don’t partner Celesteela with Tapu Koko due to Discharge leaving quite an effect on Celesteela. I had to be careful with other Tapu Kokos considering Thunderbolt is enough to OHKO Celesteela under Electric Terrain. While Celesteela was tanky, I had to be careful with the Pokémon I was facing to swap it in for potential stalls. Nonetheless, Celesteela paired extremely well with Garchomp thanks to Celesteela’s Ground-type immunity, making it perfect to Earthquake the entire field.

The Adventure

Pokémon Sun was a game that I have had the most hype for out of any game I ever played in the past. Hearing about a tournament that was local, I had to get my hands on a competitive team. Despite the long grind, I was actually quite used to it, as I played endless hours in various game titles in the past.

Marowak was the easiest to grind, mainly because I got a 6 IV Cubone just from one single box worth of breeding I had to do. I did not need to level it to Lv100 since I did not intend on Hyper Training it. The Tapus and the Ultra Beasts were a different concern. Deciding on what I wanted to run was probably one of the most mind-boggling experiences I have ever had considering you can only get one copy of the Tapus and the Ultra Beasts I used were Moon-exclusive. I did regret asking my friend to catch me a Brave Nature Celesteela. Mistakes were made, but I cannot stress my thanks enough to two friends who helped me with trading Pheromosa and Celesteela to me.

Pokémon Sun provided you with four Kartanas to catch. That was more than enough to trade them for Moon-exclusive Ultra Beasts that my friends had. I got Pheromosa from a friend in Germany who was very nice enough to reset for a Naive Nature Pheromosa. Huge thanks to him, despite Europe getting a late release of Pokémon Sun and Moon. I got Celesteela from my childhood friend, a long-time friend since the day we met in 2nd Grade. We threw jokes at each other, even during the tournament when he told me to win the final match using Celesteela. Celesteela was a bit rushed, as I did not have much of a plan at the time. I am truly grateful to my friends who helped to capture these Moon-exclusive Ultra Beasts.

Garchomp was rather a pain to get, despite it being on my top list of favorite Pokémon. Here’s the catch. You have to encounter Gabite by SOS chaining with a Sandile in the Haina Desert. It took not just one day, but three days to look for a Gabite with Rough Skin! These were not easy to find on my end, especially considering the games were only a week-old and there were barely any quick trades that I could grasp on to receive one. The even worse catch is that there is no way to find out what Gabite’s ability was without using Role Play or another Pokémon that had a physical means of damaging it. Furthermore, Gabite knows Take Down, which meant suicide. Marowak was the perfect answer to this dilemma, as he is currently the only Ghost-type Pokémon that knows False Swipe before Pokémon Bank becomes released. It was a grind worth taking, considering Rough Skin got me a few wins from here and there.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading my Pokémon team analysis and my experience in the Rutgers Fireside Open Tournament! It was a bonding experience with some of the top players in the world and it definitely shed some light in terms of understanding how the VGC 2017 metagame worked. I am certainly impressed with how my team played out and I am very honored to earn Top 2 in my first ever tournament. I will look forward to future tournaments that I may have access to attending. Huge congratulations to Chris Semp who won the tournament. I definitely had my fun in having the most exhilarating battles I have ever had in my Pokémon experience.