My journey to the top of national dex monotype ladder-smogon

Table of contents

Introduction

About the format

Verifications

The team I used

Notable replays

Conclusion

Introduction

Greetings readers . So this time , I am here to share a valueble experience of mine where i laddered all the way upto the top 5 of the national monotype tier . I have used two teams to ladder up this format [ one of which i will discuss on another other post that will be put up really soon ].

About the format

Now , for those of you who aren"t aware monotype is a tier where you are supposed to build a team where all the pokemon share one type [ either of the eighteen types we have presantly ]. Dual type pokemon [ those which have two types ] can be used in these sorts of teams , provided they have share a type with rest of the . The feature that sets national-dex monotype apart from the standard gen 8 monotype format is that it provides us with the pokemon that are not released in generation 8 yet .[ example breloom , gliscor etc ]. This provides us with an expaned pool of pokemon we can use . In addition to the expanded pokedex , we are also give access to various usefull battle mechanics such as mega-evolution and Z-moves , which just entirely diversifies the ways in which a game can be played and fluctuates the viability of  certain pokemon . Despite all these merits , this metagame seems to be  fairly unexplored and a bit under-developed compared to the other metagames . And I have also heard from people that team building in this tier is not fun due to the various restrictions that each type has . One factor that makes this format inconvinient to play is that the team match-up that vastly varies in every match as we come accross teams of different types , few may be highly beneficial type match-ups , whereas few could be detrimental . This does make it a bit more skill dependant , as much as it is luck dependant , and this is exactly why i really like this tier and chose to ladder all the way top .

Anyway , enough of my rambling about the format , lets take a look at the teams I used [ after the verification section ]

verification

Teams I made use of

So I had used two teams to while laddering because I got bored of spamming the same team for eternity , and wanted to make my experience all the more interesting .

Team-1

The first team specialises on fighting type pokemon . Its a more hyper-offensive team style that mostly depends on dishing out offensive pressure until the opponent either collapses due to not being able to handle it , or counters it with suiteble defensive or offensive approach .

So the pokemon I used are as follows. Also please feel free to use the link provided at the title if you want to try my team out .

1)  Terrakion

Firstly we have my terrakion with the item focus sash , an offenive EV spread with maximum attack and maximum speed investment [ furthur boosted by jolly nature ] , and moves stealth rock , stone edge , close combat  and taunt . Stone edge and close combat are just generally hard hitting STAB moves and the best of which terrakion has to offer . Stealth rocks are here for hazard as they play a key role in inflicting the opposition with ive damage which facilitates the offensive pressure and wall breaking spirit of the team . Lastly we have taunt to try and prevant opposing entry hazards from the likes of common pokemon such as shuckle and tyranitar which are commonly obligated to performing this role . It also may help prevant sticky web from galvantula if fortunate enough . Considering the fact that galvantula is one of the fastest sticky web s , prevanting it from setting those webs up is a trully significant trait . It also outspeeds every other sticky web pokemon [ besides ribombee , who i will deal with in nother way , mentioned down ]. After the hazard game I just spam my STAB moves , trying to inflict as much damage as I can before terrakion drops . Apart from hazard duty and securing the upperhand offensively , I have also used terrakion in different ways , especially against certain rain and sand teams , which are almost impossible for this team to out offense . Now rain for the most part don't use stealth rocks , and if they do then its probably on their mega-swampert , at times I have preserved terrakion and its focus sash just to take a hit from these weather sweepers and blow them up in return [ possibly even beating them 1v1 ], but mostly to bring them into the range of my priority s .

Yeah so all in all terrakion is a dedicated lead pokemon for the most part , to get up rocks , prevent oppositio from laying hazards , and doing as much damage as possible before dropping .

2) Keldeo

Now Keldeo is my only special attacking wall breaker in this team .The EV spread is max special attack , max speed  furthur boosted by the timid nature . And equipped with the fightium-Z crystal . Its honestly really hard to switch into and absolutely feasts on slower teams . And I have also equipped it with the Fightium-Z crystal as it is deals extremely nuclear damage with Z focus blast . I had initially considered using a choice specs set , as with that boost keldeo would become monsterously powerfull and thanks to generation 8 which gave it the move flip-turn , i would have also been able to maintain offensive momentum . but I sort of gave it up because i found the choice restriction a bit too limiting . Especially because Keldeo is my only special attacker , I need to to take atmost care in keeping it alive to help break physical walls that handle the offensive pressure exerted by the other more physically biased attackers . Secret sword is mostly just to break open special walls , but I like it as a fairly spammeble special move .Focus blast is mostly their to be abused with the Z-crystal , but I have also used it to break open physically defensive steel types like mega-aggron who actually sponges the various close-combats from the rest of my team without breaking a sweat . Apart from its offensive prowess , it also helps checking certain threats such as volcarona and scizor , defensively which adds to its defensive utility .

3) Buzzwhole

Next we have buzzwhole , who is equipped with a rocky helmet . An maximum EV investment in the hp and defense stat [ which is furthur boosted by the impish nature ]. The moves I have on this thing are toxic , roost , drain punch and ice punch . Now it may seem counter intuitive to use a ive and defensive pokemon in a team style that mostly focusses on directing a battle in a break neck pace . And it is also said that scarf buzzwhole is the standard buzzwhole set and is great for cleaning up late-game . But the fact of the matter is , buzzwhole's defensive utility is just fantastic . It can check majority of physical threats despite them having a super effective move . It has saved me from getting swept in many many occassions . It getting access to roost and toxic helps in staying healthy for majority of the game and spreading residual damage , it also criples fast special sweepers like volcarona , who often switches into buzzwhole to set up . Drain punch is here because it does decent damage and gives buzzwhole some extra recovery , though the recovery is minor , it still helps , and the other prominantly used fighting type moves just hurt buzzwholes defensive utility . Ice punch is here just to threaten certain unsuspecting flying and dragon types who feast on buzzwholes presance for an opportunity to start setting up , just to get hit hard and possibly put get knocked out  , but mostly just to put them into the range of the team's scarfer or priority s , who i will be covering later . Buzzwholes biggest duty is to counter urshifu-S [ yeah its legal ] , because this mon actually entirely destroyes my team if not for buzzwhole . Apart from urshifu-S is also almost entirely stuffs grass type teams because most grass teams rely on rillaboom for physical offense , and that thing ofcoarse cannot scratch the big bug . Now this pokemon is basically dead weight against fairy-type teams for the most part ,[ well my whole team is in the same position ] but I have also used buzzwhole to take on mimikyu at times just to toxic it and possibly break the disguise . As you can see buzzwhole brings some key defensive utility to the team and hence earned its spot as a key presance .

4) Gallade

So now we have Mega-Gallade , who occupies the Mega slot of my team . It is ofcoarse equiped with a Mega stone . Has an offensive EV spread with maximum investment in both attack and speed [ furthur boosted by jolly nature ]. The moves i have on it are Zen-headbut , Close combat , poison jab and shadow sneak . Now before discussing gallade's role in the team , I would like to make it clear on why I chose Gallade as my mega for the team . Initially I considered Mega-medicham to the team as the mega , for its disgustingly high damage out-put , which was until I discovered that it was banned due to the same quality I mentioned above , as it is said to straight up destroy entire teams due to this . And hence I needed to find something really similar to it , and there came Mega-gallade who shared the same typing , had huge attack stat [ not as high as medicham but still really good ], an even higher speed stat of 110 , which is actually quite nice to have as it ties with many top tier pokemon like Mega-diancie and Mega-latias . Its main role here for the most part is to threaten most poison type teams with its devastating zen-headbutts and beat their poison-darks with lose combat . I also gave it poison type coverage to help deal with fairy types better . Shadow sneak is pretty good priority against opposing ghosts and weakened pokemon in general .

Overall , M-Gallade is just another overall solid offensive threat with a gifted speed stat , who i really just need to click buttons with .

4) Urshifu-S

Yes people , the time has come , this thing is actually legal in this format and boy is it better then ever . I have equiped it with a life orb [ sure the choice band set is the real standard , but don't like the choice restriction , and life orb's damage output is suffice for what the team needs ]. An offensive EV spread as usual with maximum attack and maximum speed investment[ furthur boosted by the jolly nature ]. A moveset with Wicked blow , close combat , poison jab and sucker punch . CLose combat is ofcoarse it fighting STAB and wicked blow is its dark STAB . These two moves together make it extremely hard to switch into Urshifu as it ohko's most offensive pokemon tht are neutral either of its STABs [ atleast after rocks ] , 2 hit KO's most walls such as Toxapex and defensive Pelliper .  I also have a priority move in sucker punch which is a STAB priority move at 70 base power and actually does disguting amounts of damage to faster pokemon . Since in this format , most offensive threats faster then urshifu are frail , and the most fierce sweepers in this tier are either speed boosting set-up sweepers like Mega-zard-X and salamence , or weather sweepers like barraskewda and excadrill . I now these speed boosting sweepers are not the hardest to deal with as I have pokemon that force that can use that turn to hurt them pretty hard , or a pokemon [ namely buzzwhole ] who can act as a suicide bag and force them to take risidual damage that along side factors like stealth rocks , put them into the range of urshifu's sucker punch . And for the weather weepers , barraskewda straight up gets knocked out by sucker punch after stealth rocks , and excadrill  gets cock blocked by buzzwhole , and even if buzzwhole is'nt their , sucker punch does about 63-73% damage . And poison jab is here to sting fairy types really hard . And also , this thing entirely dismantles psychic type teams . Most common psychic archetypes function by the principle of overwhelming the opponent with psychic terrain offense in addition to future sight . Urshifu certainly is going to have none of that and out-right destroy's these teams , or breaks open wholes to the extent where my follow-up scarfer [ the one i will discuss next ]will have an easy time cleaning up . But for the most part , Urshifu alone has ransacked entire psychic teams with the help of wicked blow and sucker punch , as with the slight chip on latias [ almost omnipresant in psychic type teams ], urshifu for the most part should just ohko all faster pokemon with sucker punch and slower pokemon with wicked blow . So from all this you can see that urshifu is obligated to wall breaking and checking fast-frail sweepers .

6) Zapdos-Galar

Now to round out the team I have Zapdos-G . It is equiped with a choice scarf , and has an offensive EV spread of maximum investment in the attack and speed stat [ furthur boosted by the jolly nature ]. In its moveset , we have Close-combat , brave bird , U-turn and dual wing beat . Close combat is ofcoarse an strong STAB move to throw out , and so is brave bird which provides the team with flying coverage . U-turn is in here to retain offensive momentum in the faces of fat switch-ins . Now lastly we have dual wing beat who I really only put in here to beat one pokemon , that is Focus sash lead Ribombee . It may seem silly to dedicate a whole moveslot just to beat a singular pokemon , but the reason I did this is because my team has no hazard removal , and My Terrakion , who is supposed to deny hazards via taunt is unfortunately slower then Ribombee , And not denying sticky webs from these bug-type hyper offensive archetypes has been totally game ending for me in many occasions . Now this is where my Zapdos comes in to out-speed the Ribombee [ thanks to choice scarf ] and beating it with dual wing beat [ since its a 2 hit move , the focus sash is broken ] and this one hit KO cannot be preveted even with meximum EV investment in the hp stat . Apart from this surgical snipe , zapdos is also one of my only checks to certain other devastating pokemon such as Mega-swampert [ under rain ] , Mega-aerodactyle , Mega-Alakazam [ Both in and out of psychic terrrain ] and opposing scarf-buzzwhole , as these are incredibly dangerous pokemon that can out-right beat the entire team . It is also what i rely on as my win condition to beat opposing fairy type teams , which are otherwise nigh unbeateble for this team . I try my best and keep spamming by moves right of the start like terrakion stone edge , hydro-pump from keldeo , poison jab from both urshifu and gallade , and toxic from buzzwhole just to dwindle all their down to the range of zapdos brave bird and get rid of the flying resist from the opposing team [ Not much i can really do here to be honest ]. You could also try and take the risk of switching into a defog to trigger your defiant agility and gain a +2 attack boost [ doubling of the attack stat ] which you may abuse to out-right sweep , or break huge wholes in the opposition . Zapdos-G is an extremely potent and reliable scarfer who really makes revenge killing big threats and cleaning up late game easy , and is one of the integral factors for making this team as effective as it is .

Notable replays

Lets Go "Buzzwall"

The Value of Sacrifice

The Broken bear

Cliff Hanger

Conclusion

Well , at this point I cannot really say much besides thank you , for bearing with me for all this time . Hope you found this interesting and please do feel free to let me know off anything that I should try o this ladder . Also there will be a part two where I will complete the Journey by explaining another team of mine and , share more replays and reveal a secret .

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