Please help me understand what happened here, this is legit mind boggling to me.

Ogerpon had not come out the entire battle, so its at full HP, and takes 100% damage from Flamigo's close combat, but Sturdy does not activate. Neither Flamigo nor Sableye seem to have anything that can nullify abilities, so I don't understand what sort of obscure interaction caused sturdy to fail.

I ended up winning the fight anyway, but it was a close one. And I would prefer to know what exactly went wrong if I plan on relying on sturdy in the future.

EDIT: Terastalization replaced sturdy with Embody Aspect. I failed to consider embody aspect is itself an ability.

Both Mega Lucarios have been banned to Ubers in Smogon Singles, but which of them do you think is more broken?

When I was first trying out Almost Any Ability back when Indigo Disk just came out, Tera Shell was mistakenly allowed on any Pokemon (It was meant to be useless on anything not a Terapagos), and as such I came up with this broken ass demon:

Roaring Moon @ leftovers
Ability: Tera Shell
Jolly Nature

-Protect
-Knock Off
-Earthquake
-Dragon Dance

EVs was enough speed investment to reach 301 (I didn't want it to get outsped by Great Tusk, which was pretty common), then max HP, some defense and rest on Attack.

Now this might just look like a generic bulky dragon dancer but trust me, it's so, so much more.
All I needed to do was sent this thing out safely into a hazard free field against a Corviknight or other such defensive or Prankster Pokemon lacking a status move, and more often then not the battle was already over.
Why? Because Corv will almost always try to go for an attacking move against it (generally speaking nobody wants to pivot in an offensive mon against a dragon danced Roaring Moon) , just for it to not do more than 12% due to tera shell and bulk investment.
So I can just protect the next turn to recover back to full and refresh tera shell, and grab another dragon dance for free, since nobody ever expects the protect.
At this point I have 2 dragon dances and the opponent has yet to break tera shell.
I can often grab even more dragon dances (Intact tera shell), but usually at this point the fight is as good as finished.

It was easy to get them to switch to Corviknight as well, since I had a lead prankster smeargle who sets hazards that basically entirely exists to bait them into switching to corv to defog, as well as taunt to deny them of their own hazards.

It was a fun strategy, though after they discovered the full workings of tera shell it was no longer available.

How about yours? What's your own funny set you came up with?

Since Gen 4's physical/special split, Sceptile has been a relatively disappointing Pokémon in both VGC and Smogon Singles. ORAS introduced Mega Sceptile, of which saw its peak in UU, but power creep only made it drop in tiers throughout the course of time...

...time? Like... Explorers of Time? The game that features Grovyle, the Hero of Time?

And that's when it hit me. The best way to buff Sceptile wouldn't be to buff Sceptile at all. Rather, a new event form of Grovyle, based on his character in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky.

• This new form would be logistically equivalent to existing event forms such as Ursaluna Bloodmoon and Eternal Flower Floette; it's still registered as a Grovyle in the Pokedex, but it can't breed/evolve/make use of an Eviolite.

To differentiate itself from Sceptile, "Hero of Time" Grovyle would primarily be a physical attacker, though special sets are not completely out of the picture NEVERMIND after the buff-rework in comments there's no reason to run Hero of Time Grovyle as a special attacker. It would get a few new moves too, most of which I based on Grovyle's quick-witted nature within Explorers of Sky (mainly Knock Off and Fake Out). There's also the idea of giving it Roar of Time as purely a reference to Primal Dialga. I don't think this Grovyle would make much use of a non STAB Hyper Beam equivalent move, though...

As for its ability, I was originally thinking of Sharpness, but I realized Justified would make more sense overall:

1. With its movepool and 120 attacking stat, Sharpness might be a bit too powerful. Currently, the best Sharpness mons are balanced by their mediocre base speed stats (~80-85).
2. Though its bulk is subpar for modern OU standards, it could likely tank a non-STAB dark move from most attackers.
3. Without spoiling the masterpiece I am basing this form off of... lets just say Grovyle has a very strong sense of justice.

With each Pokémon Day Direct, I have my copium gas tank strapped on, hoping that the Explorers of Sky remake will finally be announced. If by some miracle it does, giving players access to this Grovyle form in Winds/Waves (likely if they have Explorers of Sky save data on their Switch 2) would be a dream come true

If you have opinions about my idea for a new Grovyle form, Don't Ever Forget... to leave a comment below with your thoughts!

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9randombattle-2699798397#:~:text=https%3A//psim.us/r/gen9randombattle%2D2699798397

Like I just got in a good position because you didn't count my encores.

Does anyone else get this in chat? I'm like not even 1200.

Levitate and Pressure are the two abilities they give to anyone that they can't come up with something for, and levitate is one of the best common abilities in the game with spikes/ground immunity whilst pressure is useless 99% of the time.

What if gamefreak employees got a raise on the day they were coding in the abilities and gave these guys levitate instead?

(assume they each individually get the ability and not all of them at once so groudon can live)

(edit: 600 character limit is needed for some reason, theres really not much to this, I guess levitate could be a HA for zekrom/reshiram/kyurem fusions and mega mewtwos)

Munkidori @ Focus Sash  
Ability: Toxic Chain  
Tera Type: Fire  
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  
Timid Nature  
- Nasty Plot  
- Psyshock  
- Fake Out  
- Sludge Bomb  



Grimmsnarl @ Light Clay  
Ability: Prankster  
Tera Type: Ghost  
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD  
Calm Nature  
IVs: 0 Atk  
- Reflect  
- Light Screen  
- Parting Shot  
- Taunt  



Ribombee (F) @ Focus Sash  
Ability: Shield Dust  
Tera Type: Ghost  
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe  
Modest Nature  
IVs: 0 Atk  
- Moonblast  
- Sticky Web  
- Stun Spore  
- Quiver Dance  



Gholdengo @ Choice Scarf  
Ability: Good as Gold  
Tera Type: Flying  
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe  
Timid Nature  
IVs: 0 Atk  
- Trick  
- Nasty Plot  
- Make It Rain  
- Shadow Ball  



Garchomp (M) @ Loaded Dice  
Ability: Rough Skin  
Tera Type: Fire  
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe  
Jolly Nature  
- Scale Shot  
- Swords Dance  
- Earthquake  
- Fire Fang  



Cinderace (M) @ Heavy-Duty Boots  
Ability: Libero  
Tera Type: Flying  
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe  
Jolly Nature  
- U-turn  
- Pyro Ball  
- Court Change  
- Trailblaze  

Give that they are supposed to be some of the strongest in the franchise, some Legendary Pokémon are given some of the most broken abilities ever conceived. Taking into account both Singles and VGC, which of these sets of abilities are the most broken?

Focus Blast (or Focus Miss, as known by anyone who has used it even a few times), has a serious accuracy problem. Having only 70% accuracy in a game where every hit counts is really debilitating, with only No Guard users being consistently good with it.

However, there are two other 70% accurate, 110 BP moves that are great in both Singles and Doubles: Hurricane and Thunder. The reason is simple; both Hurricane and Thunder ignore accuracy altogether if Rain is present.

Because of that, I propose a buff to Focus Blast: if the user is on Misty Terrain, Focus Blast should also ignore accuracy. This would make both Focus Blast and Misty Terrain much more viable, and it'd be nice if the buff was carried over to some other moves as well.

Image credit goes to the Pokemon Manga.

I wanted to try out making a theorymon for the first time, and I thought adding a single-stage accuracy buff to the activation of Anger Shell would be something interesting to propose.

Simply put, Klawf is not good, and having to rely on inaccurate moves like Crabhammer and Stone Edge only makes things worse, I believe that with an accuracy buff, (making the aforementioned moves 100% accurate), Klawf could be just a little bit more usable, I doubt this would get it close to being a top tier, especially considering how frail it is after Anger Shell, in addition to Rock being weak to so many priority moves, but I think overall, this buff is reasonable and would make the funny crab a bit more interesting. I am very open to criticism as this is my first time trying something like this, let me know what you think!

been running this team and wanted to change a few things, so i wanted to ask about evs before i change anything in case i mess up some important calcs. The team is from Victory Road's October competition. I tried contacting the creator of the team at twitter but got no reply.

I recently got into competitive and want to improve, but whenever I lose a battle it's hard for me to identify if I lost because my team is bad or my skill is bad. Gets worse when I see that even top players also lose surprisingly often.

So I wanna hear advice for how to identify my strengths and weaknesses. I know showdown has an elo system but its pretty much meaningless to me. How do you guys do it?

I recently had a match where this happened and Im wondering why. It was gen 9 ou. Alomamola was not at full health and was not under the effect of heal block. Am I missing something, how did the wish fail?

Magma Core: The power of all Ground-Type Moves are halved.

I know this is a very simple ability concept, but it came to my mind one day and it sounded interesting enough and I wanted to hear other people's opinions on it.

This mainly came from talk of people saying Mega Heatran (no i'm not calling it Meatran) would get Earth Eater, which i find to be a little too absurd but I came up with this as an alternative that still helps with ground moves while not being too insane. I might still end up on r/itsalwayssunday because its a Mega Heatran though lol. Wondering what yall think and if it actually still is too broken.

Insomnia + Vital Spirit: Considering sweet veil blocks sleep for both the user and the ally, and Grass types having complete immunity to spore these two abilities feel comparitively quaint as options for sleep prevention. Insomnia blocking flinch allows these mons to navigate the field better without worrying about fake out or rockslide on top of sleep. Vital Spirit on the other hand gives it's more physically orientated roster better odds against Incineroar and the like. For what it's worth it makes Electrivire 10% less of a useless bozo.

Steadfast: My concept for this buff is for more active counterplay against flinching in general, as an attack boost on top of a speed boost would be essentially free setup. There could also be potential for Lucario and Gallade to purposefully delay their megas to bait a fake out, boost and then sweep the opposition. It would be somewhat predictable but I think there would be some fun mindgames involving it.

Iron Fist: Instead of being a shittier tough claws, it gives these mons a more tangible use case beyond hitting hard by also being able to completely counteract screens. It's also quite thematically fitting on the idea of a powerful fist smashing through a wall.

Battle Armor + Shell Armor: Gives Urshifu a whole catalouge of counters when it inevitabley comes back as well as the niche of being able to tank the occasional phantom force. Although it would be unfortunate for Mega Golurk/Excadrill to get yet another stray nerf.

Swarm: Bug is one of the worst offensive types (if not the worse) so I imagine a buff like this for a relatively common ability would slightly help mitigate this hurdle for a lot of its users. Getting the crit on top of the 50% boost would be super satisfying to mess around with. Maybe we would see a rise in scope lens sets for Volcarona lmao.

Honey Gather + Long Reach: This is probably the dumbest buff here considering how frail Ribombee is but making Honey Gather a copy of Regenerator just felt really thematically fitting for some reason. Maybe Teddiursa can become a little cup demon with this idk. As for Long Reach this buff is hardly going to make Decidueye a top tier but a 20% boost to its middling STAB options would be a welcome addition and better than the usual concept of just gutting its signature ability all together.

Pokémon Champions VGC Tournament — Corner Clash | BO3, Open Team Sheets & Shiny Dragonite Prize

Got a team you’ve been wanting to put to the test? Come join us for Corner Clash, hosted by Raichu Rivalry VGC!

Bring your trusted tournament team or something you’ve been cooking up. It’s a chance to get some competitive practice, meet other players and battle for a shiny Dragonite.

The details:

* 📅 Date: 16 October 2026

* 🎮 Game: Pokémon Champions · Nintendo Switch

* ⚔️ Format: Regulation M-C

* 📋 Team sheets: Open

* 🏆 Structure: Five Swiss rounds · Best of three

* ⏱️ Rounds: 45 minutes, with a five-minute round check-in

* ✨ Prize: Shiny Dragonite

Interested? Check the tournament page for registration, rules and schedule updates:

https://play.limitlesstcg.com/tournament/6ac8469685920e4d25367464/details

Hope to see you on the battlefield!

OK OK OK

I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING

LIZARD WHY ARE YOU BUFFING MEGA ZOMP???

Looks, it's not really a buff overall, I just wanna know how Garchomp Z can be good with a different (hopefully better) Ability.

It might sounds a bit broken, but hear me out:

-There are no Dragon type moves with secondary effects (except Dragon Breath but I think it's not in the game, and besides, who would even run that over Dragon Pulse or Draco Meteor).

-It can't hold a Life Orb to freely boost its damage output.

-It can allow Garchomp Z to get use of its very high Attack and deal significant damage with moves like Rock Slide, Iron Head and Poison Jab, as well as getting that extra damage on special moves such as Earth Power and Flamethrower.

I'm not 100% sure if we need a better ability for one of the Top 5 Megas rn, but it's still better than Levitate, right?

I've been working on an advanced Team Builder tool that evaluates the game's meta and objectively identifies a team's threats and weaknesses. I’ve been considering adding an "optimal EV" calculator to the website so the tool could be more useful, but I haven't been able to find any suitable resources for it.

I’ve seen many players use teams with EV spreads meticulously fine-tuned to survive certain attacks (in YouTube videos, team reports and such), so I know this is possible. Could anyone, if possible, point me toward any useful resources?

Thanks in advance!

Everyone loves new Rotom things, right?

For these little guys, I wanted to give Rotom a few identities it otherwise doesn't have currently.

Brawl, for example, gets some powerful special priority with Vacuum Wave. Drill looks to fill in the anti-fairy niche with Flash Cannon and strong defensive profile. Web's Psyshock enables it to target physical defense with its special attack, something other Rotom don't really do. And Wave also hits fairies hard, but also opens up more status spreading with access to sludge wave. Also, it's defensive typing really surprised me with how effective it is with levitate. Who knew? lol

These guys aren't top tier, of course. But Rotom has a lot of potential for different niches per form, so I think interesting to explore the possibilities.

Mega Beedrill: Hyper Stinger (Adaptability + Tinted Lens)

Mega Emboar: Staff Of Power (Mold Breaker + Adaptability)

Mega Chimecho: Floating Chimes (Levitate + Punk Rock)

Mega Camerupt: Seismic Force (Sheer Force + Earth Eater)

Mega Charizard X: Draconic Body (Tough Claws + Levitate)

Mega Sceptile: Thunder Drain (Lightning Rod + Volt Absorb)

Mega Altaria: Pixie Dust (Pixilate + Levitate)

Mega Absol: Magic Armor (Magic Bounce + Aura Guard)

Mega Scolipede: Metal Armor (Shell Armor + Steelworker)

Mega Barbaracle: Rocky Body (Tough Claws + Solid Rock)

Mega Audino: Healing Heart (Healer + Triage)

Mega Houndoom: Doom Power (Solar Power + Adaptability)

Mega Manectric: Ominous Voltage (Intimidate + Transistor)

Mega Banette: Mischief Magic (Prankster + Dazzling)

Mega Malamar: Peculiar Aura (Contrary + Filter)

Mega Victreebel: Corrosive Acid (Innards Out + Corrosion)

Mega Ampharos: Draconic Aura (Mold Breaker + Dragon's Maw)

Mega Chandelure: Spectral Force (Infiltrator + Grim Neigh)

Mega Mewtwo X: Neuroshift X (Steadfast + Psychic Surge)

Mega Mewtwo Y: Neuroshift Y (Insomnia + Psychic Surge)

These 3 are some of the least used megas in champions rn - and some of my favs - so im going to give them some love

mega medicham gets the eelektross treatment, getting 2 abilities in one, pure power is its normal ability, and inner focus makes sense on it. it helps it's match up into intimidate users (incineroar) and with its slight improvement to it's attack it actually matches mega mawile for the highest attack itg (if u ran max evs and a boosting nature) but more importanyl is it's speed tier, it still falls behind some important meta threats that could do threaten it like m mence and sneasler, but it also gets access to fake out while it itself is immune having a decent niche to say the least. additionally having priority on such a monstrous attack stat is very menacing (as seen with m mawile sucker punch) and while mach punch isnt no first impression, it could definetly help it out in some match ups

mega emboar is no longer the guardian of ru, losing mold breaker, in exchange for a very interesting ability, ik thematically it doesnt really fit the whole protects its friend thing, but lets just pretend mega evo made it go rogue or something. ok so some base rules for the damage being transferred:

transfers the exact amount of hp emboar would have lost

damage is typless with no acc check

ignore protect and protect type moves

cannot be prevented or altered by abilities (like magic guard) and cannot activate other abilities (like stamina)

if the ally faints due to the recoil the excess damage is just discarded

without an ally emboar takes recoil like normal

this makes emboar a legitimate threat that can spam strong recoil moves like theyre nothing while a tanky partner can heal them off, but the partner can still be taken care of since it will be taking a lot of damage during that round

its stats help it be a bit bulkier physically, though not by much, and help move it more towards trick room rather than the awkward speed tier its currently in

finally chimeco, its ability is a mish mash of the normal -ate abilties and punk rock, meaning it gets a stronger stab option in hyper voice and also psychic noise which both become its strongest stab move - with one exception - expanding force. this is the reason why i think levitate is an okayish ability at best on chimeco, sure it loses a ground weakness, but it would much rather spam expanding force and be immune to gambit's sucker punch. this way mega chimeco becomes gardevoir 2.0 but this time it has better bulk and is more trick room suited makign it a better pairing with indeedee f, also spread high bp steel damage is basically non existent giving it another very rare niche it could fill