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EP. 27 Fortaleza & Vancouver 2025 Recaps + Mail Bag & Might & Mastery Meta Tierlist!
117 Plays11 days ago
Hello, everyone! This is Episode 27 of "The Show 6 Podcast", where we bring you the highest quality coverage of the Play! Pokémon Championship Series for Pokémon GO! We explore the plays, the players, and everything else happening in the competitive scene.
Today, we're recapping Vancouver and Fortaleza, where 119 and 74 competitors competed respectively. Last weekend's meta was a shooting star, a once in a lifetime battlefield, as the Might and Mastery meta was still transitioning into the Play! Pokémon circuit. This was a true test of team building and adaptation, and 2 trainers flawlessly captured the magic of the moment! We'll discuss these two events, plus your social media posts, and our Might & Mastery meta tier list.
If you're ready... go ahead and lock In, and good luck, have fun!
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Transcript
Championship Series Highlights
00:00:01
William Dunphey
Welcome into the Show 6 Podcast, where we break down the championship series for Pokemon Go. Today, we're recapping Vancouver and Fortaleza, where 119 and 74 competitors competed respectively.
00:00:13
William Dunphey
Last weekend's meta was a shooting star, a once-in-a-lifetime battlefield as the might and mastery meta was still transitioning into the play Pokemon circuit. This was a true test of team building and adaptation, and two trainers flawlessly captured the magic of the moment.
00:00:29
William Dunphey
So if you're ready, let's lock in and good luck.
Trainer Strategies and Meta Developments
00:00:32
William Dunphey
Have fun.
00:00:56
William Dunphey
Hello, hello, trainers. Welcome into a brand new episode of the show six podcast. I am so excited to talk about a limited meta, some very incredible, very rare, very spectacular trainers that were able to capitalize on it.
00:01:08
zzweilous
Thank you.
00:01:09
William Dunphey
And so much more news. There's actually so many notes reading over your notes, wireless. I was actually stunned that there's so much to talk about, but I'm excited. Let's dive right in How are you feeling, my friend?
00:01:21
zzweilous
I'm feeling great. I'm feeling great because I am working like six day work weeks um for the month of March. And today is my day off. And I'm really celebrating that by um getting ready to record and talk about um something that is pretty unique, something that we won't see ever again.
00:01:40
zzweilous
And in the world of Pokemon, we know ah we know a meta pod. We know what a meta pod is.
00:01:47
William Dunphey
Oh.
00:01:47
zzweilous
Last weekend, we saw a pod meta. And that was really something that I did not quite foresee, but that that I thought was really interesting to watch and maybe foreshadowed something that we might see in the season of Might and Mastery.
00:01:50
William Dunphey
oh
00:02:01
William Dunphey
i think I think these two tournaments are arguably the most intertwined regional championships that we've ever had. I mean, even down to the base team building.
00:02:12
William Dunphey
Ryze actually shouted out to Brazil for a lot of the inspiration, a lot of the scrims, a lot of the strategy. And I feel like um we haven't ever had two metas that were this unique, um this rare and also this aligned.
00:02:25
William Dunphey
And having the same team win both events is is honestly, I mean, the proof is in the pudding. You look at the record books and that's what you're going to see.
00:02:31
zzweilous
Okay.
00:02:33
William Dunphey
But I agree with you. I did not see Golisopod coming. I did not ah think that it was going to be that strong. We talked about AquaJet users with Might Mastery. Some folks were talking about Dugong and ah giving up the the Icy Wind or the Drill Run just seems like too much of a sacrifice.
00:02:47
William Dunphey
So seeing an AquaJet user actually rip through the meta, Was really, really fascinating. And honestly, we can discuss this later, but I'm curious if Golisopod is still going to have a role once the full Might and Mastery Season meta takes takes effect.
00:03:03
zzweilous
Yeah, so Goliath support specifically, um i like looking at the teams, I see why they like why people opted for it.
00:03:13
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:03:13
zzweilous
Me, as somebody who did not attend any of these events and was not really and didn't really have to prepare for the meta, I did not have it on my bingo card just because I thought the Pokemon that we would maybe see the most of would be Sableye as a Pokemon that is another Shadowclaw user.
00:03:30
William Dunphey
yeah. Yeah.
00:03:32
zzweilous
um And now has access to fall play with reduced energy cost, which would then enable it to pace faster. And pacing is not everything, but it's very important to thrive in the current meta. I was like, okay, this might be a little bit of a Sableye tournament. Maybe we see like Azugable Ghost again.
00:03:52
zzweilous
And then I look at the top card and there's just no Sableye.
00:03:52
William Dunphey
yeah
00:03:56
zzweilous
Like if people opted for a Ghost, they went for Dusklobs, which benefits from the update to Hex.
00:04:00
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:04:03
zzweilous
But yeah, the main source of Ghost-type damage, those Shadow Claws from Goliath support, which now has the 5 fast attack pacing not only to its Exeter, which it had previously, but also to the super strong Water-type stab move of Aqua Jet.
00:04:19
zzweilous
And an adequance, Martijn, shouted out in his Dracovis blog post ahead of these tournaments that this event might be the swan song for Dugong. Martijn knows a lot about swan songs, especially when they are coming from a shadow swanner.
00:04:37
zzweilous
But...
00:04:39
zzweilous
But I think given that Dugong was so prevalent that it featured on all top four teams, Golisopod as one of only two fully evolved Pokemon that resist all of Dugong's damage um was so a pretty great meta call.
00:04:50
William Dunphey
Mm.
00:04:55
zzweilous
And um yeah, I am like looking at what people actually brought.
00:04:56
William Dunphey
Mm.
00:05:01
zzweilous
I see why it thrived.
00:05:03
William Dunphey
Yeah, I definitely think that once you look at the overall meta, ah it makes sense. But this is one of the one of the kind of amorphous things that I feel like a lot of trainers struggle with. If you're not at the top of your game, if you're not constantly doing scrims, if you're not really you know with your finger on the pulse of play Pokemon, competing this weekend would have been tough. So honestly, it was very surprising to me to see 120 trainers in Vancouver, which was a cap game.
00:05:29
William Dunphey
a tournament cap. And we're going to talk all about that.
Tournament Participation and Logistics
00:05:33
William Dunphey
And it was really surprising to see 74 trainers also in Fortaleza. That tells me that these players felt like they had a good read on the meta. And there's always an element of, of convenience. Maybe they live close to the event. Maybe they only competed at that regional and they were planning to go no matter what.
00:05:49
William Dunphey
But I think there was something more, something more to this meta because Vancouver ah basically doubled its numbers. If you look back at the previous years, 67, 57, you know, Around that range is what we've had ever since 2022.
00:06:02
William Dunphey
So to see it double and cap was astounding. um But I want to just mention just really briefly in 30 seconds or less, so I know we kind of take it for granted that a lot of people know what we mean when we talk about the Might and Mastery meta being in a transition period.
00:06:17
William Dunphey
But a lot of players that are probably listening to this for the first time are not aware. Essentially, Play Pokemon has a cool down period and the in-game seasons for Pokemon Go shift every three months, whereas the Play Pokemon season lasts the entire year from September to to the end of August, practically.
00:06:34
William Dunphey
So what happens is a new update will go through, but there is a, i believe it's a week long cooldown that play Pokemon allows for trainers to get these Pokemon to get these new move sets, give them time to build competitive teams.
00:06:46
William Dunphey
So what we had in Vancouver and Fortaleza was an instance where if a Pokemon can already learn a move, for example, ah Rock Tomb Cridily. But that move got buffed in the season update, you could use it.
00:06:58
William Dunphey
However, if a Pokemon didn't learn the move prior to the update, like Dazzling Gleam Sableye, you could not bring that Pokemon. So this was really a very unique in-between meta. It's happened once or twice in the past, but this one seemed like a huge, huge kind of, I don't want to say like a divot or a spike in the meta because this was really, really interesting the way everything played out given the changes for Might Mastery.
00:07:23
zzweilous
I do want to interject here just briefly um because Rock Tomb is actually the one rock move that Credidly didn't learn already. It had access Rock Slide and Stone Edge, and now it gets off Rock Tomb.
00:07:30
William Dunphey
Oh, I'm sorry.
00:07:35
zzweilous
And this is also why we did not yet see Credidly in Vancouver or Fortaleza.
Impact of Move Changes on Meta
00:07:40
zzweilous
But yeah, a bunch of like other Pokémon such as Discharge Acrobatics Imolga, Aqua Jet Golyzopod, Sludge Galarian Wheezing, or also Hex Dust Globs definitely benefited from the recent buffs um that were shared in the blog post for the Might and Mastery meta.
00:07:40
William Dunphey
ah
00:07:57
zzweilous
um And yeah, like those Pokémon already made an impact. And a bunch of other picks that might be even more meta-warping still had to wait for another week or two.
00:08:11
William Dunphey
Yeah, I'm just going to go back and edit the episode and just insert the word fortress instead of Gurdily. And that way I'll just save myself the embarrassment.
00:08:17
zzweilous
but
00:08:19
William Dunphey
But you're right. And in it's...
00:08:20
zzweilous
You will probably have like old recordings of yourself just talking about Fortress, so this should be very easy to do.
00:08:26
William Dunphey
Exactly. so So I'm just going to do that to save face and make it seem like I know what I'm talking about. But there was a reason I didn't compete this past weekend, because this meta, it's already tough enough to keep up with Play Pokemon, but this meta was was a brand new monster.
00:08:40
William Dunphey
um I would love to talk about the tournaments. Vancouver, I think we should talk about first. I see it's first in our notes here. Fortaleza technically did happen sooner because it is on the east ah coast of Brazil.
00:08:52
William Dunphey
And Vancouver, of course, is on the west coast of the US, which is actually a massive time difference. I don't think people appreciate how ah North America is actually pretty far west from the majority of South America.
00:08:59
zzweilous
Yes.
00:09:04
William Dunphey
But let's go and talk about Vancouver because we did get a stream for it. i will say that I did get some very special notes from our runner up and LAIC 2024. for champion, I believe, Har Jeff. So we are going to review that. But let's talk about Caps Wireless because this tournament actually sold out in Vancouver and people were shocked.
00:09:25
zzweilous
and will cut talk I will talk about caps also later in the episode. This is like very new, not even in the notes just dropped, but let's just talk about, let's recap the cap of 120 people that were eligible to sign up for the Vancouver Regional Championship, which is potentially um just what the cap always has been, right?
00:09:29
William Dunphey
Oh boy.
00:09:47
zzweilous
Because we've never even come close to um reaching it or like,
00:09:48
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:09:52
zzweilous
We've been like gradually improving from 62 to 67 to 72 competitors over the years, but we made a huge jump. And that led to a situation where FreakyBot, who is a well-known both competitor, Pokemon professor, just like a person that has been involved and involved with the community for a very long time, um very active um supporter and um figure within the community,
00:10:20
zzweilous
who's also a local to, if not Vancouver, then at least the Vancouver area, um who tried to register, um had already um organized some um spectator passes for friends, but just had to find that it was capped already because um I guess like 119 people ended up in the bracket. The cap was set at 120. And that was a little weird because um there's a little, like, there's a certain logic to these double elimination brackets where,
00:10:50
zzweilous
um if you hit a cap of 180 people, or not 180, 128 people or rather, so only eight more than we had ah in Vancouver, um you potentially unlock a new kicker, which means that um if, say, previously only the first 32 people would get um championship points or pricing, um now the next...
00:10:56
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:11:16
zzweilous
32 people so top 64 could also get it i don't know whether it's like the 64 32 divide or the 32 16 divide but you would essentially double the amount of people that would benefit from the tournament in terms of um obtaining championship points so it would have been a great thing for everybody involved if they managed to up the cap to at least eight more people
00:11:31
William Dunphey
Yeah.
International Tournament Challenges
00:11:38
zzweilous
And also just from from like a streamrunner's perspective, from the production side, um for the Vancouver tournament, the day two featured the group finals, um which is something that we don't typically see.
00:11:51
zzweilous
um Usually, we just get all the group battles on day one, and then we start day two with the top card and with the winner's side battles.
00:11:52
William Dunphey
yeah
00:12:00
zzweilous
um But yeah, this was like like... The same way the meta was a little bit of a transition one, um the... Day two also went through a little transition period before the action, the top cut action really kicked off. And at the end of the day, um not much was lost for the top competitors, but still, I feel like now that we can anticipate, and I love that we can now anticipate to at least see those North American regionals sell out. Like this is not something that happens typically, but we are there now.
00:12:33
zzweilous
Like we are growing at least on that continent.
00:12:34
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:12:37
zzweilous
um And I would hope that for next year's Vancouver, just assuming that we get the same event five times in a row, maybe the organizers could ah adjust it a little bit just because 128, it's not that many more people, but it would be so convenient.
00:12:55
William Dunphey
There are a few things I want to say. um The first is that I'm aware of FreakyBot. I think that a few people ah retweeted him. I think Lyle retweeted FreakyBot and tagged myself, PlayPokemon, Kevin Saladaris, and a few other people as well. I thought the tagging system was was very interesting. But yeah... um It's amazing to see that the tournaments are selling out. I agree with you that things are are growing, but this is also a surprise. And i don't want to sound like I'm i'm you know simping or defending, play Pokemon or whatever it is, but can you really blame them? Seriously, if if you're like an event organizer or if you're at work and suddenly you have twice as many orders as you did yesterday, Or or suddenly you have twice as many people show up that that you did last year and you didn't see it coming. There wasn't that much interest online.
00:13:46
William Dunphey
Things just kind of progress that way. And then it just pops right near the week of the event. I think anyone in any field would be pretty surprised. And ah there is one anecdote I want to offer as well.
00:13:54
zzweilous
you
00:13:56
William Dunphey
Yeah. um I know that in past years, especially for international competitions, and you and I have not talked about this yet, but for international competitions, Play Pokemon has to send these devices to the events, the Nintendo Switches and the iPhones for the tournaments.
00:14:13
William Dunphey
And when you're sending hundreds of thousands of dollars of tech equipment through international customs, there definitely can be holdups from time to time. And this was most evident in Brazil at LAIC, I think it was ah two years ago now, where ah the players were were playing on the old Android devices instead of the iPhones.
00:14:34
William Dunphey
And we later found out that that's because the iPhones were held up in customs and they couldn't clear customs in time to get to the tournament venue.
00:14:40
zzweilous
Currently, yes.
00:14:42
William Dunphey
Now you could argue, well, Canada and the U S have a much closer proximity and ah a, you know, much closer trade partnership and relationship, et cetera, et cetera. And I don't want to like get ahead of myself.
00:14:52
zzweilous
currently
00:14:53
William Dunphey
Yeah. Currently and until the invasion. Right. Um, but, ah But ah I don't want to get ahead of myself and say that this is the reason why this didn't happen. But I do think there is some some weight to the to the fact that Pokemon is not just going to send every single iPhone to every single event because then you risk them getting damaged. It's a lot more expensive to ship them. ah You risk losing devices, whatever might happen.
00:15:18
William Dunphey
So sending... Twice the number of phones to an event that historically, like you said, has maybe hit 72 players, I think felt pretty safe. But then having it double was really remarkable. And um I appreciate everyone like like Arrow.
00:15:33
William Dunphey
I think Telegraph Train as well. and The folks online that gave feedback to TPCI and raised support tickets, I saw Mel replying to a couple of those posts. ah Definitely voice your opinions. If you want a wait list, if you think that interest is going to be stronger for other tournaments, you know go ahead and and let Pokemon know so they can accommodate all the players. Because honestly, like everyone wins if more players can sign up. Pokemon wants to sell more tickets.
00:15:57
William Dunphey
They want Go to grow. It's not like this was intentional by any means. I don't know if you agree or disagree or think I'm just blowing smoke. what do What do you think, Sviles?
00:16:05
zzweilous
I like the idea of a waitlist system for sure. i feel like that um how that would exactly work um would remain to be seen. But just the idea of like, for example, I signed up for the um Atlanta Regional Championships because I was under the impression that I could make it. I traveled to the US a fair bit, but um now I know that it won't work out. I won't be in Atlanta that weekend, but I'm still signed up.
00:16:32
zzweilous
This will likely mean that I will be like, probably the head of a group, the number one seed, and also no-show, which means, okay, like, one bracket, like, the bracket will be less balanced than it probably should be, and should Atlanta hit the cap, which I don't really foresee, um then...
00:16:41
William Dunphey
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:16:52
zzweilous
it could mean that somebody who would want to go and who would be able to go would miss out. So in a situation like that, I think it would be really helpful to um like even have a way to opt out of your signup. like Even if you don't get refunded, like I already know that I won't be able to attend, unfortunately.
Registration and Tournament Growth
00:17:14
zzweilous
And if I could just remove myself from that list, um maybe even without having to contact... anyone at RK9 or TPCI. um I feel like that would be great for just like not only convenience, but also just to really allow as much opportunity for people as possible.
00:17:33
zzweilous
um And I feel like, so I also want to say that Freakbot himself was like very, very much not upset at anyone but himself. So he was not giving um the the organizers a hard time for it.
00:17:47
zzweilous
um But where I kind of stumble is if you are already at 120, just make it like just allow 10 more people to sign up because you have that magic number and it would have been nice to it.
00:17:58
William Dunphey
yeah
00:18:00
zzweilous
But again, like overall, the main takeaway should be that um in North America, this game is growing and it's like a great sign of things to come.
00:18:11
William Dunphey
I think that a lot of the um the tournament planning is done maybe one or two months out in advance. So once these signups go up, if so, I'll tell you this, if a signup is is made live, right? let's Like let's say Atlanta goes up and players are able to register.
00:18:28
William Dunphey
If that first tier of of spots sells out, then they're going to add more spots, especially if it's you know from the initial release of the tickets. so So if players do sign up and in mass, they will raise the cap.
00:18:42
William Dunphey
and But there's like a cutoff, right? Where you logistically you have to plan to send the devices, to send all the equipment and to allocate the seats in in the venue. And Go is a strange so strange situation as well because for VG, if you have 400 tickets, you're going to sell 400 tickets. for For TCG, if you have 2,000 tickets...
00:19:00
William Dunphey
tickets You're going to sell 2000 tickets, but go is still in in the growth stages and we don't have this guarantee yet that we're going to sell at tournaments. But ah like you alluded to a couple of times, it is growing. It is a good sign that we are able to sell at Vancouver.
00:19:13
William Dunphey
I really hope the tournament goes back to Vancouver. I think having Toronto and Vancouver in the season schedule is really, really phenomenal because it gives Canadian players experience. And our trainers in the um the Northeast and Northwest in the US, s a chance to have a tournament close to them, which for a lot of folks is not the case, especially if you're ah if you're living on one of the coasts. So I think that's a really, really good thing.
00:19:36
William Dunphey
But yeah, I do appreciate FreakyBot blamed himself for not registering early. A lot of trainers have registered late. We saw this in San Antonio where a few trainers weren't able to play because they they registered like the day before or two days before.
00:19:49
William Dunphey
i know Mango always stresses people out because he registers super late. So it might just need to be a habit shift because if there aren't tickets, then you can't compete. But... Yeah, i'm I'm curious to know what people think about the registration cap and if Pokemon should just send all the phones to every event or or what you think. So let us know down below. But honestly, Swirless, this was a really interesting meta. I see in our notes we have Galarian Weezing, Emolga, and Glyzopod as three kind of spotlighted Pokemon.
00:20:17
William Dunphey
There was more Galarian Weezing than I expected in this tournament particular, given the the prominence of ground types. But I do think Galarian Weezing is here to stay, personally.
00:20:26
zzweilous
I think so too, and that is because of Sludge. We touched on it briefly when we um had our first look at the Might and Mastery meta last episode, but Sludge is a move that now does 70 damage for 40 energy, where previously it was at 50 damage for 40 energy.
00:20:30
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:20:44
zzweilous
So this is just a flat plus 20 increase to its damage output. And from a Pokemon as interesting as Galarian Wheezing with that unique poison and fairy typing, with that fairy wind, which is oh one of the best energy generating moves in the game, and with also like a pretty broad choice of coverage options, I feel like um in Vancouver, people were
00:21:08
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:21:11
zzweilous
um kind of caught between Brutal Swing for the pacing and maybe Ghost-type coverage, as well as Overheat as what we call a nuke move, something that just really hits the opponent for a lot of damage and also um provides coverage against Pokémon such as Charger Bug or Steel-types.
00:21:20
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:21:29
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:21:29
zzweilous
um I feel like with those options, Galarian Weezing is definitely not just Pokemon for this one of meta, but a Pokemon that we will see in future top cuts.
00:21:40
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:21:41
zzweilous
I'm really, like, because it is such a, like, like people call it two-move slot syndrome, where you want to run a third or fourth attack, but um you just cannot, because that's what Pokemon Go limits you to.
00:21:53
zzweilous
um And between that and the question of do you run the shadow or the non-shadow, feel like we will be seeing a lot of unique takes on Galarian Weezing. And in the um top 12 of the Vancouver regionals, we had, for example, Lyle Jeffs III opting for The Shadow, as well as Zimmykid, who made Top Guard, placed Shared for seventh, tied for seventh, as well as Dapper Disks and Xgerald X, um who both ran the regular.
00:22:13
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:22:24
zzweilous
um All sorts of wheezing had a place, and I'm excited to see more of it.
00:22:29
William Dunphey
A lot of folks are clamoring for a Mud Slap nerf. I think if you get a Mud Slap nerf in June, then Galarian Weezing is really going to go crazy. And I think ah we're going to have to find different ways around beating that Pokemon.
00:22:42
William Dunphey
um Surprisingly, that might mean that Steel comes back into the meta a little bit stronger than before.
Role of Pokemon in Evolving Meta
00:22:48
William Dunphey
But then again, you'll have Galarian Weezing pivoting to Overheat, which is going to be really tricky, especially if you're like Alolan Sandslash, for example.
00:22:55
William Dunphey
You're absolutely going to get...
00:22:55
zzweilous
Oh, yes.
00:22:57
William Dunphey
fried by an overheat or, or cooked, I should say.
00:22:58
zzweilous
Oh, yes.
00:23:00
William Dunphey
But yeah.
00:23:00
zzweilous
More fortress, such as the one that Dunbarg ran to third place.
00:23:02
William Dunphey
Ooh, exactly.
00:23:05
zzweilous
It's your boy, Fortress, not Dune necessarily.
00:23:06
William Dunphey
yeah It, No, no, I love Dune. Dune's a great guy. And and honestly, if Dune wasn't already well one of the people I look up to the most in terms of of battling, he brought Shadow Fortress and Guzzlord.
00:23:19
William Dunphey
And honestly, I know that core is is desperately weak to fighting types, but man, do I love those two Pokemon together. Two of my favorite picks, and they're just both gigantic beasts.
00:23:30
William Dunphey
But um yeah, I think there's there's so much to talk about with the meta. um and We see Emolga in 5th to 8th place, but no Emolga in the top 4. Instead, we've got all Shadow Drapion.
00:23:41
William Dunphey
um There are a lot of questions about where Azumarill is going to end up. In this particular tournament, it finished 2nd. ah Somehow Shadow Kanto Marowak is still viable. It it also finished 2nd. ah The swan song of dugong, as we have ah as we have coined it.
00:23:56
William Dunphey
Dugong was all over the place here. I think I see four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 out of 16 dugongs, maybe more. And um honestly, I know you have thoughts on those, but I wanted to pick your brain on dust clops as well.
00:24:10
William Dunphey
What were Heydonis and Elite Cooking and Lyle with with dust clops and Dapper too?
00:24:11
zzweilous
Thank you.
00:24:16
William Dunphey
There were four of them.
00:24:18
zzweilous
Yeah, so Dusclops is a very interesting Pokemon for two reasons. The first reason is its sheer bulk. This is like definitely one of the bulkier Pokemon on the circuit, um way past 2000 stat product.
00:24:35
zzweilous
Not quite Azumarill bulk, not quite Diggersby bulk, but not far behind. i feel like it's comparable to a Dugong that might be... like the charge attack priority might be decided by the attack IVs.
00:24:45
zzweilous
So it's a Pokémon that is very durable, has a lot lot of longevity for a Ghost-type.
00:24:46
William Dunphey
you
00:24:52
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:24:53
zzweilous
um And then now with the buffed Hex, that makes it a lot better in neutral situations as well. Hex got an adjustment so that it does one more damage and generates one more energy per use.
00:25:07
zzweilous
And what that allows you to do is um put out more fast attack damage where previously you were considered um like a purely energy generating move. But also what Hex could already do, but which it excels even more at now, is that you can just spam out those shadow punches.
00:25:27
zzweilous
Just like three Hexes into a shadow punch is...
00:25:27
William Dunphey
Yep.
00:25:31
zzweilous
like your your longer cycle after like i don't know like three or four shadow punches you'll even reach a two cycle where you just need two hexes to the next shadow punch and that is quite impressive so it is spammy it is bulky and with the ice punch coverage as well it gave a lot of flexibility into the flying emolga into the diggers b which typically you would consider
00:25:41
William Dunphey
ye
00:25:55
zzweilous
an answer to ghost types. Like back when Galarian Korsala was the ghost of choice, Digaspy was the hard answer on everybody's team. um That's not the case anymore now that the ice punching dust clubs entered the meta.
00:26:10
William Dunphey
Yeah, you're exactly right. It's 3-3-3-2. Shout out to Yanku Jean who always provides his move count cards. i always reference those quite a bit. Dusclops getting that upgrade is insane. The Ice Punch is also really fast. It's 4-3-3-3 for the Ice Punches.
00:26:26
William Dunphey
which means you're going 12 turns and then 999. um For the Shadow Punch, I mean, you're literally faster than Feraligatr. You're faster than Drapion is to the Crunch because both of those Pokemon are 10 turns, obviously. So getting a a charge attack in 9 turns is insane. And I feel like a lot of folks saw the nerf to Nightshade on Galarian Corsola and they said, i need a bulky Ghost-type in my life. What else can I do? And they went for the the literal Cyclops, Dusclops instead. So...
00:26:55
William Dunphey
um But it's definitely an interesting pick. ah Dugong as well, like you said, the swan song for this Pokemon, because there's so many others that are going to become viable once we get to Stockholm that I think Dugong is going to is' going to fall out of the the meta largely.
00:27:10
William Dunphey
Were there any surprises to you besides Golisopod? I mean, for instance, I thought that Shadow Drapion was going to stick around no matter what. I turned out to be right. It did stick around in a big way.
00:27:20
William Dunphey
but um Outside of that, I mean, it was it was hard to pin down this meta. We had two charge bugs, four Emogas. Electric might be back. I don't know.
00:27:30
zzweilous
So I'm pretty upset myself that I missed the opportunity to call Dusklobs a Pokemon to keep an eye on.
00:27:38
William Dunphey
Oh, God.
00:27:38
zzweilous
um But yeah, so I think um in terms of Spice, shout out to Zimikid who managed to top card with low kicks. He also brought it a lot on stream um and it felt like Shadow Parkier levels of viability, which is not a compliment.
00:27:58
zzweilous
um So yeah, like that was almost holding him back a little, but still a great showing. um What I personally thought was, even ahead of Goliath support, the pick of the tournament was the Shadow Steelix.
00:28:14
zzweilous
I think the Shadow Steelix gave people so much trouble, especially um if you recall the Losers' Finals, where Dunebug had to go up against Rice's Shadow Steelix.
00:28:18
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:28:27
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:28:27
zzweilous
If you look at Dune's team, Dugong does not want to see the Shadow Steelix. Fortress, maybe some counterplay if you land two earthquakes, but first you have to land two earthquakes.
00:28:37
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:28:40
zzweilous
um Jellicent, not great. Drapion, that is like a soft answer just because you spam out your Aqua Tail so fast, but also not really.
00:28:51
zzweilous
Then um the Shadow Jump Thuff, now it opts to run the buffed Acrobatics over Energy Balls, you don't even have a way of hitting Steelix for neutral damage. And then there is Guzzlord, which at least resists the Thunder Fang fast attack from the Steelix, but still takes super effective from the Breaking Swipe on the Steelix.
00:29:11
William Dunphey
Yep.
00:29:12
zzweilous
Honestly, the Steelix alone was a massive team comp advantage for RYS in that situation. And um not to take anything away from RYS's incredible accomplishment winning his ah fourth regional championship in his fourth season. But yeah, that losers and the grand finals were the easiest teams for his line of six to deal with out of the entire tournament, if I may say so myself.
00:29:40
William Dunphey
This is actually, i'm going to foreshadow a little bit to Fortaleza, but the Dunebug versus Ryze matchup is actually quite similar to what we got in terms of the Fortaleza Grand Finals, or I should say Winners Finals and Grand Finals, because Core Lash and Harjeff played twice.
00:29:57
William Dunphey
And um that combination of ah of the Dragon ah plus the um the Fortress... ah We're going to see that again. So definitely stay tuned for later on in the podcast.
00:30:09
William Dunphey
um Yeah, I thought Steelix was incredible. The trio to me was honestly the Glycipod, Gastrodon, and Shadow Steelix. That trio gave Dunebug and Donuts fits.
00:30:20
William Dunphey
It gave them absolute fits, and it felt like it was almost impossible to break. um But there's actually one other Pokemon on that team that Harjeff told me was even more successful. ah oppressive And i'm I'm going to, ah we're going to lead into that later again.
00:30:33
William Dunphey
So we'll talk more about Fortaleza, but back to Vancouver, those three Pokemon, whenever Rise put put together Glyceopod, Gasteron, Shadow Steelix, it seemed like it was game over for the opponent.
00:30:33
zzweilous
Okay.
00:30:43
William Dunphey
There was literally like no play.
00:30:47
zzweilous
Yeah, like, um especially if we move into Grand Finals, where Arise to Occasion faced off against Heydonis, who is another trainer that I really enjoyed, like, watching Get so far, because he's been on the scene for years as well.
00:30:50
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:31:01
William Dunphey
Me too. Mm-hmm.
00:31:03
zzweilous
um Started as, like, a really young competitor who had a bunch of um Go Battle League and Grassroots accolades, but... um He was always like getting closer and closer. he had... like multiple fifth place finishes, like a third place finish.
00:31:22
zzweilous
um And this was his first grand finals appearance. um And I especially like that because if you have somebody who maybe not hasn't been blessed with that one miracle run where, okay, now you have reached everything, but instead you have somebody who plays in the play Pokemon circuit for four years,
00:31:46
zzweilous
um And you've come so close so many times, but never quite reached like your your end goal, essentially.
00:31:54
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:31:54
zzweilous
um I love it when people still keep at it and just get back up every single time they get knocked down um and just improve their game and just make it further and further. And yeah, after this event, Haydannis only has one more step to go. And to finish second, he brought a team of Dugong, Shadowcanto Marowak, Azumarill, Shadowdropion, Chargerbug,
00:32:22
zzweilous
and the Shadow Dust Clops, which was a nice touch. feel like the Shadow Dust Clops actually did something for him, just because um with Dust Clops' bulk, occasionally there comes a lack of damage output, whereas the Shadow was a little more threatening.
00:32:37
zzweilous
But Now that you have that up against Ryze's team, um you see that... um So Ryze has Goliath Support, Dugong, Shadow Drapion, Shadow Jumpluff, Shadow Stelex, and Gastrodon.
00:32:52
zzweilous
And if you look at Gastrodon into Hydronis' team, it has two clear targets in Shadow Drapion and Chargerbug, and then four neutral matchups.
00:32:55
William Dunphey
Oh, yeah.
00:33:01
zzweilous
There's no Gastrodon punish. So...
00:33:03
William Dunphey
Yep.
00:33:04
zzweilous
Rhyse could essentially just always run Gastrodon and two other Pokémon, and he'd probably be fine because he could dictate either Switch or Shared Advantage through the Gastrodon.
00:33:15
William Dunphey
Yep. Mm-hmm.
00:33:17
zzweilous
And then especially the Golisopod also had great play into um supposedly safe picks such as Dusclops or Dugong, which again, ah against Dusclops you have the Shadow Claw damage, against Dugong you just wall the entire set.
00:33:33
zzweilous
um And there were multiple games where Rice just let Goliath apart into Dugong, and Haydannis could not do anything because he wasn't ABA weak to it, he was AAA weak to it.
00:33:38
William Dunphey
ye
00:33:45
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:33:45
zzweilous
ah If you start off with a lead that disadvantageous, um it's really tough to come back from it.
00:33:52
William Dunphey
Yeah, there were several times I wanted to type in the chat, like, if Hadonis can lead the Shadowcantum Marowak and have the Dugong in the back, and then I i look at the team again and I say, no, wait, if Ryze plays Glycopod, then that's ah a losing team.
Trainer Profiles and Rivalries
00:34:04
William Dunphey
Okay, he needs to pivot instead to Dusclops and to the Chargebug, and then he's got a chance. and then I look at the team and I say, oh, if he plays Gastrodon, then that's a losing team. It's not going to go well. And I'm like, crap, this is this feels impossible.
00:34:16
William Dunphey
especially from like a a a taking a step back and looking at at it from the outside, it looked really tough. So I can't imagine what Heydonis was feeling on the stage there. And I first met Heydonis through GBLA. Like you said, tons and tons of Go Battle League accolades for that trainer.
00:34:32
William Dunphey
I think he has done a few of his own streams. He has hosted some tournaments as well. Speaking of that, there is one coming up this weekend that we'll talk about a little bit later. But um what really strikes me about Heydonis is just how kind...
00:34:45
William Dunphey
easygoing and fun. He is. I mean, he's the kind of person that is, is going to make sure everyone in the group is having a good time. Uh, he makes everyone laugh. He's, he's that kind of person who, um, for example, I went to San Antonio to compete.
00:34:59
William Dunphey
Uh, think it was maybe a year ago now, a year and a half ago. And, uh,
00:35:04
zzweilous
I remember broad zone.
00:35:05
William Dunphey
Bronzong, yeah. we We remember. Hashtag, we remember Bronzong. um But I remember, HeyDonna sat down next to me, and I was expecting just some like light conversation. Like, oh, what do you think of the team? What do you think of the meta? What do you think of the season?
00:35:18
William Dunphey
But instead, he was asking me like personal questions. He was like, so what are your goals in life outside of Pokemon? And then i was like, whoa, um didn't expect that kind of question. and And he just really made a lot of effort to connect on like an emotional level to another person and not just a Pokemon trainer. So Haydannis is just that kind of person. When I brought him in for the Chili skit as well, ah back in um and the in the previous regional, I think it was in Texas again, in Arlington, I believe.
00:35:45
William Dunphey
um Hey, Donis was so much fun. He he like was really good in the group of three that I had, you know encouraging Pocket and Sceptile to make funny points and like kind of bouncing around ideas and just being very, very cool about everything.
00:35:58
William Dunphey
I know he's got high standards for himself, so to make it to the Grand Finals is huge. And i just if Hey, Donis is listening, I just want him to to understand that like this team he was going up against – if If I went into a lab and built the perfect team to beat him, this is probably what would come out.
00:36:15
William Dunphey
And this is just very, very tough for him to find any leeway. And I know it was tough on stage, um but I don't want him to focus on on that. i don' want him to focus on you know the final moments of the tournament. Like you said, he just needs to be very proud of getting that second place and having only one more step towards a championship. I can't say enough kind things about Haydannis.
00:36:33
William Dunphey
Never had a bad experience with him or met anyone who's had a bad experience with him. And i think he should be very, very proud. but Speaking of proud, we also have a champion. And i think that Rise was incredibly humble. I think he was the person that we come to expect.
00:36:49
William Dunphey
And he kind of opened up on stage as well. ah The quote that he gave, I'll let you quote it because you are the the sports reporter. But the quote he gave gave me gave me chills. I was like, man, Rise thinks about this game and thinks about his life in a big way.
00:37:04
William Dunphey
And it's not even from an ego's perspective. He's just looking at it ah from the macro perspective. And he's saying like, what does this moment mean in the context of my life, regardless of everything else?
00:37:15
zzweilous
Yeah, so the the quote that Rice gave, and I love that he came prepared for this, is a quote by tennis icon Billie Jean King, pressure is a privilege and champions adjust.
00:37:28
zzweilous
And Rice kind of led us into his inner workings um going into these tournaments and going into the season because um he didn't pretend as if this was nothing and it was just like another day ah at the office for him, like,
00:37:44
zzweilous
He really cared about keeping his streak alive and um being this champion within the world of Pokemon Go. And like, it's it's not easy to go through like the...
00:37:59
zzweilous
like he he traveled from tournament to tournament before like before vancouver he just he doesn't just go there just like wins the tournament and goes home like there's so much failure between those victories but ryze is a trainer who just takes it one event at a time always looks to improve it's one of the best in terms of mental game i would say
00:38:05
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:38:13
William Dunphey
yeah
00:38:23
zzweilous
and Yeah, like he he managed to do his forpeed and he also um announced his ambitions to the world in that he he said like, okay, now I have this win, but I want more. I want to fight for the Travel Award for LAIC.
00:38:39
zzweilous
um
00:38:39
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:38:40
zzweilous
And yeah, I'm excited to see him at more events because we're definitely witnessing Rice at his best yet again. And yeah, those peaks, that longevity and also that reflection, like those, like really, it it's not, it it just, it doesn't just happen. There's like a lot going on behind the scenes and him letting us in on that.
00:39:05
zzweilous
That was a pretty cool moment. That was one of my favorite winners interviews of all time, honestly.
00:39:10
William Dunphey
Yeah. I feel like some trainers are kind of like a bright candle. You know, they burn really bright. They have a really impressive performance. And then they're not really able to replicate that kind of success again.
00:39:21
William Dunphey
And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, finding your moment and capitalizing on on a meta you understand, a game that you... you can comprehend and function in very well. I think there's, there's a lot of merit to that. And that's what most people do, right? Most champions might have one, might have one really special month, really special week or a special day.
00:39:41
William Dunphey
And they just hit a streak and they keep going. But some, something that is so unusual about rise is, um career has been his consistency, right? Through so many different metas. I would love to see a breakdown of how many different metas Ryze has won tournaments in.
00:39:55
William Dunphey
I mean, i posted about ah consistency in North America, and I really feel like it's it's like ah like a three-horse race between Ryze, Pocket, and Dunebug right now in terms of most consistent. You could argue last season was the season of Dunebug.
00:40:10
William Dunphey
I mean, three first-place finishes and a runner-up and an IC, That's ah astounding. That's astounding consistency.
00:40:17
zzweilous
That's insane. that's like
00:40:19
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:40:19
zzweilous
it's It's so difficult to ever replicate that. but yeah like Also, Rise vs. Dune, it's like probably the biggest rivalry in North America, maybe in the world.
00:40:30
zzweilous
and Now Arise is ahead again. He pulled ahead again by um utilizing his Steelix to ah make it, I think, 5-4 overall.
00:40:40
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:40:40
zzweilous
Like, those two titans, just like, it's really like, it's really like two Kaijus of the Pokemon Go scene, like, just going at it tournament after tournament.
00:40:53
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:40:54
William Dunphey
Yeah. It really is. It's like an event. Every time we see them in the bracket or or every time, ah let me back up, every time there's a chance that those two will meet in the bracket, everyone is is talking about it in the chat.
00:41:07
William Dunphey
They're looking at the losers and they're saying, my God, we might get Rise versus Dune. Oh my gosh, it might it might line up. The stars might actually align and we get another clash between those two players. um I don't know if if you have any ideas, but i've I've started to kind of dub their clashes with with with nicknames.
00:41:25
William Dunphey
ah So for example, the last, yes, yes.
00:41:26
zzweilous
Oh, it's like a Rumble in the Jungle kind of deal where every fight has a name now. Okay, I like that. I like that.
00:41:32
William Dunphey
Their, their last appearance in Texas, I called it the tangle in Texas ah between the two of them. So i I had a tough time finding words that rhymed with Vancouver or, or rhymed with van or Uber, but I feel like there's something there between those two, those two players, but.
00:41:48
William Dunphey
I don't know. we'll we'll We'll talk about it later. But yeah, seeing those two battle is always a showcase. And I agree with you. i think neck and neck, the best rivalry. I tried to do an interview with them. I think it did air back in Texas. I tried to do an interview and I tried to like get something out of them. Like, yeah, I feel like i have an edge over Dunebug here or Dunebug say, yeah, well, Rise doesn't have as many wins in a season as me or whatever.
00:42:12
William Dunphey
But they literally could not say a negative disparaging thing about each other. They're just so kind to each other and so understanding. um But yeah, I'll keep trying. I'll keep trying to get a storyline out of those two because their their rivalry is something we we won't witness that often.
00:42:28
William Dunphey
As the years go on, there might be more. But right now, we're living through one of the best.
00:42:34
zzweilous
I don't know how far we want to dive into Grand Finals gameplay just because it was pretty lopsided just by virtue of the team composition advantage that Ryze managed to leverage.
00:42:46
William Dunphey
Thank you.
00:42:46
zzweilous
But I do want to shout out um two moments where I thought, okay, IVs matter. um and one And one of those was um the dropion that Ryze brought to the tournament, which very comfortably...
00:43:01
zzweilous
tank to play around from an Azumarill without being in danger of getting bubbled down. So like if you have that bubble bulk point on your Shadow Dropion, you're definitely in good shape. And also Ryze's confidence um playing out the Zero Shield scenario against Hedonis' Azumarill.
00:43:17
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:43:18
zzweilous
where only the best of the best of Gusron IVs allow the Pokémon to lift two Ice Beams in the Zero Shield scenario. But Ryze knew his Pokémon and knew it could just easily tank the second Ice Beam on like one or two HP, but managed to take the Zero Shield scenario.
00:43:34
William Dunphey
hmm.
00:43:36
zzweilous
And yeah, that's just like really good knowledge of what your Pokémon can do. And also just like pretty good IVs on both of those picks for sure.
00:43:46
William Dunphey
I remember that matchup and I'm looking at Ryze's Gastrodon. I'm like, man, it's getting really low. It was almost like I was trying to trying to talk to him. I was like, Ryze, your Gastrodon is getting super low. I don't think you're going to win this matchup.
00:43:56
zzweilous
Mm-hmm.
00:43:57
William Dunphey
And then with just like two to three HP, it managed to win against Azumar. I know the exact moment you're talking about. And that also stood out to me. It just shows like the the amount of... of of not even preparation because Ryze is a trainer that doesn't scrim very much.
00:44:12
William Dunphey
The amount of retention that he has in terms of his scrims that he does do, the amount of information he takes away, and the amount of of studying probably on PvPoke and whatever other matchups that he does is just really staggering. And again, doing that for one tournament is special.
00:44:28
William Dunphey
Doing it for four seasons in a row is legendary. I mean, that's absolutely ah unparalleled right now in terms of ah in terms of competitive Pokemon.
00:44:38
William Dunphey
um There was one thing I wanted to mention. i agree with you. The grand finals. If you want to go back and watch the VOD, everybody, you can. i don't know if there's too much to be gleaned from it, um but there is some negative from the Vancouver tournament I want to talk about just briefly.
Technical Issues in Tournaments
00:44:54
William Dunphey
And that was the game reviews. I think we had 10 different game reviews through the weekend. I think six or seven of those were on day two, which is really, really tough. It's tough on the staff. It's tough on the ah the production. it's tough It's tough on the players as well.
00:45:10
William Dunphey
And I don't know because I wasn't at the event. I don't know who to blame. I don't know who to point the finger at. I don't know if it was the venue Wi-Fi, if it was Niantic, if it was whatever. i don't know. But I do think that regardless of who is ultimately responsible or what combination of things led to that,
00:45:26
William Dunphey
I think regardless, that kind of restarts, the the kind of um inconsistency with the game is unacceptable. And I feel like players deserve better. The judges deserve better. The audience deserves better.
00:45:39
William Dunphey
i don't know what needs to be done to fix it. But honestly, the number of restarts were pissing me off and I was not even playing.
00:45:45
zzweilous
yeah
00:45:46
William Dunphey
You know, I couldn't imagine being in the grand finals and
00:45:47
zzweilous
Yeah. Thank you. i
00:45:49
William Dunphey
And just, and being rise to occasion and denying a move to your opponent and then allowing them to throw a move so that you don't have to go to a rematch. That is embarrassing.
00:45:58
zzweilous
And also, like that's only the stream matches, right? That's the stream matches. We don't know what happened at the tables. like Occasionally, the Wi-Fi at the tables is a little bit better than the stream Wi-Fi. Sometimes it's ah the other way around.
00:46:13
zzweilous
But we have 120 people traveling to Vancouver to compete because apparently the the game is currently on the rise in terms of participants.
00:46:25
zzweilous
um And to retain those people, we need the game to function. We cannot have a performance like Vancouver again. And I always like hope, quote unquote, that it is ah more to do with the venue Wi-Fi than with the actual game state because That's probably more easily fixable the next time around.
00:46:46
William Dunphey
ye
00:46:46
zzweilous
um But yeah, it was definitely it was definitely painful to to watch through it, especially with how frequently it happened.
00:46:54
William Dunphey
Exactly. and And I don't mean this to like upset anyone, right especially anyone at at Pokemon or or in the production team who might be listening, but honestly, I just mean unacceptable in the fact that if it happens again, we can't just say, oh, well, this is how it is, and we'll just go with this.
00:47:10
William Dunphey
you know Just accept it. Just give in to it, because that's honestly ah Yeah, I don't know. I can't imagine how stressful it was for everyone at the at the venue who was competing, who spent money, who spent likely $1,000 over the weekend between flights, hotels, food, whatever else they they purchased there.
00:47:28
William Dunphey
I mean, that's a big investment. And to to go there and to have so many bugs and so many restarts is just painful. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if there's anything good to say about the restarts.
00:47:38
William Dunphey
and the And the fact as well that the players began compensating for the potential rematches in real time, that was it for me.
00:47:45
zzweilous
Yeah.
00:47:47
William Dunphey
That was it. when When the players ah literally change how they play the game and adjust in order to avoid ah sending the match to a a dispute was just unreal.
00:47:58
William Dunphey
I couldn't believe it was happening, and I was like, man... It's one thing to trust the game to function and to not have it function and not and not have it be the player's fault. But it's another thing for the players to take it into their own hands and say, let me bail out the game.
00:48:10
zzweilous
yeah
00:48:11
William Dunphey
Let me bail out the Wi-Fi. Let me make this less um catastrophic than it is, right? So it's just something I thought about over the weekend. um Just like all the players watching, all the viewers, I did not appreciate that either.
00:48:25
William Dunphey
And I really hope that we don't have that again. But... On that very, very sunny positive note, there is one more one more thing here, a bright light.
00:48:36
William Dunphey
And this trainer actually finished within the top eight in Vancouver. And I...
00:48:40
zzweilous
Would you consider the brightness of the light luminous?
00:48:44
William Dunphey
Ooh, yes. I think you're you're picking up what I'm putting down here. Nighttime Clasher, who finished in the fifth ah fifth place spot with the team of Shadow for Alligator, which, come on, Nighttime Clasher, people don't play that anymore.
00:48:59
William Dunphey
Diggersby, Azumarill, Shadow Drapion, Azumarill, Shadow Drapion core of user detected. Emoga and Shadow Annihilate. Nighttime Clasher, actually... I mean, what do you think this, Wylus?
00:49:14
William Dunphey
and maybe we'll get a chance to talk with with ntc soon but nighttime cla year signed a deal with luminosity gaming to become their first esports athlete for pokemon go i mean what do you think of this whyless
00:49:29
zzweilous
So I don't know a lot about the world of professional gaming. I've essentially been a casual my whole life, and therefore I'm not as well versed in that world as you might be, or others listening at home might be.
00:49:46
zzweilous
But I just like saw the social media response to it, And it really feels as if our little, like, not only little, it's like Pokemon Go is not little, but it's belittled.
00:50:00
zzweilous
I feel like if we look at, um like, people just calling it the Tap Tap game, um and, like, maybe also, well like, comparatively, there's a lack of interest when something like a Grand Finals Vought gets uploaded on YouTube compared to ah
00:50:07
William Dunphey
Yeah.
00:50:20
zzweilous
other titles, like not only like like if we compare it to the other Pokemon games, but especially if there's like other e-sports titles, like we still have a fairly small audience and um Luminosity Gaming, from what I have gathered, is apparently like a big, big player in the in the worlds of in the world of e-sports.
00:50:43
zzweilous
And to have a representative of our game in that world um i I think the implications could be big just because it feels weird we're no longer sitting at the kids' table as much.
00:50:58
William Dunphey
Agreed. Agreed. and I think, for example, if you look at Pokemon Unite, LG, right? Luminosity Gaming for short. LG is a major team for Pokemon Unite. They talk about them all the time on the broadcast. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to ICs and I hear the casters saying, you know, LG just goes up in the series or LG has a great team this year or whatever.
00:51:18
William Dunphey
This is a major, major deal. I mean, once you start looking at this in terms of of tier one um competitive teams, You think of of ah Team Liquid, right? You think of FaceClan. You think of Optic Gaming. These are massive esports organization yeah organizations that generate millions and millions of dollars every year and pay their players' salaries, right? So this is like everyone's dream of becoming a Pokemon master, right? you want to ah you You want to get paid to play Pokemon. And Nighttime Clasher, I don't know if it's like...
00:51:48
William Dunphey
ah partially due to his um his experience with other esports like Brawl Stars or other games that he's casted. But man, this is i think this this leads into ah into competitive Pokemon in a big way.
00:52:01
William Dunphey
For example, um I did talk with with TPCI i and LG is already mentioned on the Unite streams, obviously.
Esports Milestones and Community Engagement
00:52:08
William Dunphey
yeah I just said it. But I asked if we can now talk about LG on the Pokemon Go broadcast and they said yes.
00:52:15
zzweilous
Oh.
00:52:15
William Dunphey
Now we can talk about tier one e-sports teams on our official broadcast, which is insane. That's actually awesome. and And yeah, I mean, we're going to dive more into this later. I think it might even deserve its own kind of mini episode or interview or something like that.
00:52:30
William Dunphey
But yeah. Yeah, i can't I can't wait to talk about Luminosity Gaming and Nighttime Clasher. Congratulations to him. That's a huge, huge accomplishment. He's a very humble guy. He probably doesn't think it's that big of a deal, but it is not only in ah in symbolism in terms of what it means for our community, but also for him as a as a creator, as a competitor, as an individual.
00:52:51
William Dunphey
That's a massive accomplishment. He'll look back on that in five or 10 years and say, damn, I really did sign with an esports team. that's ah That's phenomenal.
00:52:58
zzweilous
Yeah, I think like like just just just beyond the implications for the game, um i think it's also like something that everybody can learn from a little bit, just because i feel like this has ah good bit to do with
00:52:58
William Dunphey
And I also want to go ahead.
00:53:14
zzweilous
how great of a networker NTC is just as a person.
00:53:19
zzweilous
Because, like, the first time I met him was during the Bochum regionals.
00:53:19
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:53:19
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
00:53:24
zzweilous
Bochum hasn't been a part of the circuit in, like, more than two years now. um But he arrived there... from the US as a caster, not having played all that much Pokemon Go before, like having a basic understanding, but like really with a goal of making this his own game and like putting himself into it, like as much as he possibly could.
00:53:51
zzweilous
and the way he The way you do that is by just like relentlessly asking people for opportunities and connecting and improving yourself.
00:54:02
William Dunphey
Yes.
00:54:02
zzweilous
And like NTC very much is a self-made man. And i feel like that's kind of something to admire, honestly.
00:54:07
William Dunphey
yes
00:54:10
zzweilous
know
00:54:11
William Dunphey
No, there's so much to admire. And um when you talk to him, you know, he's, he's so goofy. He's meaning all the time. He seems chronically, he seems chronically unserious.
00:54:18
zzweilous
yeah.
00:54:21
William Dunphey
If I'm, if I'm being honest, he does he does not seem like a serious person, but, ah but NTC, I don't know what he does. He just flips a switch and he gets signed by tier one e-sports organizations.
00:54:31
William Dunphey
I don't know. He's got some kind of secret that I don't know about. But, uh, but no nighttime clasher Eric has so much to be proud of. I also wanted to shout out just briefly to all the other organizations that have taken a chance on Pokemon go that have seen the competitive potential. i mean you could argue that even as far back as, as silver arena, you know, we owe them a great debt.
00:54:50
William Dunphey
Uh, I don't want to name ah too many names cause I'm going to forget. So please forgive me, but there have been teams that have taken a chance on Pokemon go like antimatter and asylum, uh, mazer gaming as well.
00:55:01
William Dunphey
Um, So many organizations that have put up cash prize tournaments. I know PVPoke was our sponsor for um GBLA for a long time. And I just think that those early people that really believed in the game helped to keep it alive and to help it to grow to the point where it did ah get picked up by PlayPokemon. And now it's really growing because it has official backing. So I don't want to call it life support, but I do think there was like an intermediary period where we needed grassroots to really pick up the scene and i think that the burden is less on them now but we need to rebuild our grassroots as well um yeah huge huge props to ntc and luminosity gaming i would love to talk about that more later but uh we do have another tournament to cover as well i'm not sure if you had any final thoughts on vancouver or any of the stars but it's up to you
00:55:50
zzweilous
um yeah i think I think in terms of Vancouver, i' maybe briefly shouting out that um the the crowd got what it wanted in multiple Lyle Chefs versus SS Thorn matches.
00:56:01
William Dunphey
Oh, yeah.
00:56:02
zzweilous
um But other than that, I feel like we've touched on all the important points.
00:56:08
William Dunphey
I did see one really funny comment. Speaking of SS Thorn, um somebody commented. i Forgive me, I don't remember who it was. They commented in the stream chat that SS Thorn versus Hedonis would have been the Super Bowl of great hair.
00:56:21
William Dunphey
And I agree. They both have fantastic hair.
00:56:23
zzweilous
They're telling me a lot, Jeffs versus Essison wasn't the Super Bowl of great hair.
00:56:28
William Dunphey
Ooh, it might've been a little one-sided, you know, I think, I think Lyle wins that in a landslide personally, but, but yeah, no, no, no.
00:56:30
zzweilous
yes
00:56:36
William Dunphey
I agree. We, we got some really good showcases, some really good storylines, seeing our Canadian trainers face off was really fun. And um yeah, I'm excited to see what, what new rivalries and what new, new, new trainers rise up to the scene. But if we go kind of backward in time, but a little bit forward as well, Fortaleza,
00:56:54
William Dunphey
Corlash takes another championship trophy. I believe this is his second one this season, if I'm not mistaken.
00:56:59
zzweilous
back to back as well, back to back. This is very impressive. This is how you announce yourself on like on the scene.
00:57:04
William Dunphey
Back to back.
00:57:06
zzweilous
this is um Also, Kualash won the... Was it the Rio? I feel like it was the Rio de Janeiro event um under the name Kualash.
00:57:14
William Dunphey
Yes. Rio. Yep.
00:57:19
zzweilous
Now he is Lindos Kualash. He has the L and the S handle now. ah
00:57:23
William Dunphey
Oh, nice.
00:57:23
zzweilous
so Yeah, definitely definitely a part of the family. I don't know whether he was before, but now definitely also in name. And he beat the same opponent in the finals, both in Rio and in Fortaleza. And it was none other than Alan Diaz-Rajef, probably the Brazilian titan.
00:57:42
William Dunphey
Yes, I agree. I think that there's there's an argument for Harjeff and Steiner as well. I think they have a very much a Rise and Dunebug-esque rivalry. Those two trainers are always incredible to watch.
00:57:54
William Dunphey
But Coralash, I mean, this this reminds me of like, if you got to the end of of the Super Smash Brothers campaign, and then they were like, wait, one more enemy appears, and it's it's the hand, you know? It's like, wow, we have a brand new, not brand new, but we have a trainer that's really ascending to a different level.
00:58:11
William Dunphey
And um for everyone that doesn't speak Portuguese, I've been told that LNDS stands for Lindo, which basically means a beautiful. So they call themselves a lot of the time the Go Battle League Lindos or the beautiful Go Battle Leaguers.
00:58:25
William Dunphey
And that is ah the the kind of ah Genesis behind the the team name. But Coralash actually won back in Rio with Azumarill, Shadowcanto Marowak, Galarian Corsula, Shadowdrapion, Mandibuzz, and Dugong.
00:58:37
William Dunphey
This was a very similar team to what Harjeff was running. He had a lot of Pokemon in common, but he did have Annihilate, Gastrodon, Galarian Corsula, Zapdos, Mandibuzz, and Dugong.
00:58:48
zzweilous
right.
00:58:48
William Dunphey
And this was actually back in January. ah So only a couple months ago. And um yeah, Corlash was able to take home the trophy. In that situation, Corlash was coming from the winner's side.
00:59:00
William Dunphey
ah It looks like, or excuse me, I have the winner's finals record as well. Yeah, Corlash came in on the winner's side. He was able to to beat Harjeff 3-1.
00:59:11
William Dunphey
In this situation, we did come down to a bracket reset because Corlash did defeat Harjeff. Harjev in the winner's final sent him down to the loser side bracket. Harjev stormed back into the grand finals, won to reset the bracket.
00:59:25
William Dunphey
But then Corleish said, enough of this. I'm just going to sweep and won the grand finals reset 3-0. So I think there's a lot to be said about ah these teams. One thing I wanted to mention is that we alluded to this earlier.
00:59:39
William Dunphey
Corlash's team, or I should say LNDS Corlash's team, is the exact same as Rise to Occasion's team. Dugong, Gastrodon, Steelix, Shadow Drapion, Shadow Jump Bluff, and Golisopod.
00:59:51
William Dunphey
I think the only difference is that Rise was was running running a Shadow Steelix, if not mistaken.
00:59:57
zzweilous
Exactly.
00:59:58
William Dunphey
Exactly. That's the only difference.
00:59:59
zzweilous
So, yeah, 99% the exact same team.
01:00:00
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:00:02
zzweilous
And honestly, like Steelix, it doesn't need to be Shadow. It's so bulky. It appreciates keeping bulk.
01:00:09
William Dunphey
Yeah. ah You don't want to you know, give up a little bit of bulk. That's what you need to, to win those long matchups, the bulky matchups. But this was a really fascinating grand finals. I did so have a chance to speak with a hard Jeff.
01:00:21
William Dunphey
He did send me some notes. He's always so gracious about that. Shout out to our, our champ hard Jeff, our LAIC champion. Um, he's He's really been outstanding. The first note that he gave me was that he has a new nemesis, right?
01:00:35
William Dunphey
And this is not to mean that he doesn't have a new rival. I do think Steiner is still probably his number one rival and friend, but a nemesis is like someone that you have like an ax to grind against, right? This is like ah a foe, and not a rival. A rival can also be a friend. This is a foe.
01:00:52
William Dunphey
And I think that Harjeff is definitely looking at it that way. A few other notes that I have from him. um He says that, courtlash's team was very strong and wellassembed the combination of thunderfing steellix with jumploff was almost unbreakable it seemed like every single victory that i got was like climbing a mountain
01:01:09
zzweilous
Thank you.
01:01:12
William Dunphey
So when he has Thunderfang, Steelix, and Jumpluff core, actually i actually noted Glyzopod, Gastrodon, Steelix earlier, but this is the elusive Pokemon that I wanted to talk to you about.
01:01:23
William Dunphey
He said that the Jumpluff and Steelix, those two together, were the actual issue for his team. And I don't know, based on what you see from the notes, if you agree with that or if you think maybe it wasn't that big of a threat. Because granted, Harjiv did have Dugong, ah Fortress, and Imolga.
01:01:41
William Dunphey
Why was he so worried about the the jump bluff?
01:01:45
zzweilous
and So, I think it's just about having a Pokemon that is safe. Like, in that case, um like if you if you look back at this Delex, so Dugong, Imolga, Golisopod, and also Turodrigui Fortress don't really want to see that Pokemon.
01:02:04
zzweilous
So, the answers that Rajaf had at his disposal were Goudra, which is not that great of an answer. um and Gastron, which is a tremendous answer, but also just gets entirely shut down by Jumpluff.
01:02:19
zzweilous
So if you have like only one real answer to a Pokemon, and that answer also just has no like no chance in hell to get through that Jumpluff,
01:02:23
William Dunphey
Hmm. Hmm.
01:02:32
zzweilous
then going up against the combination, against the core, always makes it a guessing game, especially because on Rajaf's team, there's not really a Pokemon that um excels in the two shield matchups in a way that it just automatically flips switch. like It's very difficult. A lot of good lead calls need to be made.
01:02:53
zzweilous
maybe Maybe some ABA aba or risky strategies as well. So... Because of that lack of safety, I feel like especially somebody who... like I had the honor of going up against Rajiv at the North American Championships last year, um and he knocked me out cleanly.
01:03:12
zzweilous
um
01:03:13
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:03:13
zzweilous
And he really leaned on the Vigoroth in that matchup, which was one of the safest picks um in in that matchup.
01:03:17
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:03:21
zzweilous
So I know that he likes to play it neutral, play it safe, and just outplay his opponent. But if something um just gives you like presents you with such a polarizing environment that you have to make the risky calls, you can be out of your depth really quickly. And like kudos to Rajiv for resetting the bracket because um this team composition does look very tough for him.
01:03:49
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Looking back at the the records here, ah like I said, he did send me the teams that were used in the grand finals. It looks like Corlash brought that Steelix six out of seven games that they played, which is pretty remarkable ah usage.
01:04:03
William Dunphey
ah He did win one game without it. That was game two of the grand finals reset. Jump Bluff only came three times out seven games here for Coralash. But like you said, I think that having that safe pick, having that Pokemon that you have to guess if it's going to show up, and if you don't prepare for it, you're really, really outgunned. That's definitely something that Harjeff was worried about. And even just the presence of it on the roster was difficult for him to overcome.
01:04:26
William Dunphey
Now, earlier I talked about Dunebug and Ryze, and I talked about Dunebug's Fortress and Guzzlord combination going up against Ryze's Steelix, and how that was just really lopsided. It felt like Ryze could basically do whatever he wanted. The Breaking Swipe, Steelix versus the Guzzlord, is just abysmal for the Dark and and Dragon type. It's just so rough.
01:04:48
William Dunphey
Well, guess what? On Harjeff's team, he had Gudra and Foratress. So he had a so ah very similar situation of Dragon and Steelbug core ah running into this team, and he actually brought it ah quite often. It looks like he brought Gudra three times in the grand finals of you know so of the seven games he played. He brought it three times.
01:05:08
William Dunphey
um Those games did not go super well. He was able to win one of those those three attempts, but... Yeah, I think that but even though we didn't get a stream, what I'm trying to get across is that this matchup probably played very similarly to what we saw with Ryze and Dunebug, where Dunebug was able to get you know a win one time, and then he actually you know just got...
01:05:30
William Dunphey
Absolutely flushed after that. I think this is probably similar. Like you said, kudos to Hard Jeff for for resetting the bracket.
01:05:34
zzweilous
you
01:05:36
William Dunphey
That was absolutely phenomenal. ah One other note he had, he wanted to make an honorable mention to DeSync. He said that DeSync had one of the most unique teams. It was built around Jump Bluff and Electric. This time, the Electric type was Morpeko and had some unique choices.
01:05:52
William Dunphey
ah He said, in his opinion, DeSync's team was the best team at the event. So shout out to D-Sync. I know he's always trying to break the meta, trying to be inventive, trying to be creative.
01:06:03
William Dunphey
And it can be very difficult when the when the target is always moving per se. But his team was actually Alolan Sandslash, Shadow Quagsire, Annihilate, Morpeko, Shadow Jumpluff, and Golisopod.
01:06:13
William Dunphey
So he'd still had that Mudboy-Golisopod combination. And the Shadow Jumpluff, I think, is is pretty pretty meta at this point. We can thank Marto for that. But a few of these other picks, I mean, who thought of Sandslash and Morpeko at this point?
01:06:28
zzweilous
Yeah, like, I think MoPeko, like, it it's taken a couple of months for people to get used to it. But i know that it had a lot of Go Battle League success for people already. And I think this is the first MoPeko medal.
01:06:44
zzweilous
It's no surprise to me that it came from D-Sync, who is one of the most creative team builders in the scene. um But yeah, maybe with the Might and Mastery season bringing a couple more targets for Morpeko into the meta, maybe that's a Pokémon that could win a tournament one day.
01:07:01
zzweilous
it's definitely climbing up there.
01:07:01
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:07:02
zzweilous
And yeah, I was i was excited to see the little Hangry Mouse in top three.
01:07:10
William Dunphey
Me too. Morpeko has been an absolute menace in Go Battle League so far this season. ah Due to the the changes in the meta, we've seen dark types like Mandibuzz really rise up. I think Mandibuzz is number one on the PvPoke rankings currently, and Morpeko is just right there to answer. We've seen a lot of Morpeko in not only Open Great League, but also Scroll Cup.
01:07:29
William Dunphey
um I stopped by Dom's stream a few days ago, and he was playing Morpeko, and he was destroying people with Morpeko. Once you get a shield advantage and there's not a mud slapper, Morpeko is just an absolute little menace.
01:07:42
William Dunphey
So I...
01:07:43
zzweilous
I have a Scroll Cup Morpeco anecdote that I want to drop real quick because Morpeco, obviously you have the Aura Wheel move, which is its signature attack and you pace there so quickly, boosts your attack, it's great.
01:07:47
William Dunphey
Go ahead.
01:07:56
zzweilous
um But also you have the choice of a coverage move. Some people opt for Psychic Banks, it's the cheapest, it debuffs. Some people opt for Seed Bomb, it manages to surprise um Opposing Gastrodon, for example.
01:08:05
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:08:12
zzweilous
Now, in the scroll card, there's a bunch of Hakamo'o, a bunch of Gazlod, a bunch of Komuo around. And most of these don't know that Morpeko, being angry about not not getting enough food, also learns Outrage.
01:08:26
zzweilous
So I've been running Outrage Morpeko in the Go Battle League.
01:08:27
William Dunphey
No.
01:08:29
zzweilous
And while it might not be optimal always, it's really fun if you land the big move. And it's it's a lot of fun. I can just encourage everybody um you to, if you don't have a MoPeko already, just ask a PvP, you know, to trade one. Or if you have it, just like run it in Squirrel Cup, run it in Go Battle League. It's like, it's very squishy. It needs a lot of good resource resource management. But when it pops off, it's a great time.
01:08:57
William Dunphey
I almost thought you said squirrel cup instead of scroll cup.
01:09:00
zzweilous
Squirt.
01:09:01
William Dunphey
And I was like, Morpeko kind of is a squirrel. i see what you did there.
01:09:05
zzweilous
More Peko, Pachini, Sikor.
01:09:05
William Dunphey
but that
01:09:06
zzweilous
Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
01:09:08
William Dunphey
double squirrel.
01:09:09
zzweilous
Add a green on top.
01:09:11
William Dunphey
An ingredient.
01:09:11
zzweilous
Squirt. Squirt.
01:09:13
William Dunphey
Oh my God. Yeah. Triple squirrel team. Watch out. um I will say aswi as well, if you ever record some of your games and you don't pass it to that, ah that other creator Jonkis or whatever his name is, if you don't pass the battles over to him, you should send them over to me.
01:09:26
William Dunphey
Cause I would love to have a outrage, more peco video at some point, but no pressure, no pressure.
01:09:28
zzweilous
but
01:09:32
William Dunphey
um There's something I wanted to talk to you about in your notes. Coralash had the same team as Rise, but there's a question here. Where did it come from? Because this was really going back to my intro. This was really like a stars aligned moment where we had no idea what the meta was. It was a once in a lifetime meta that will never happen again.
01:09:50
William Dunphey
And if you did not have your finger on the pulse, if you were not flat body to the ground of the meta, you didn't know what was happening. So how did this team come to be? Do you have any insights for us?
01:10:03
zzweilous
So I know that um our good friend Tomahawk UK had been sharing a team that might or might not have been identical to that um a couple of days ahead of the event.
01:10:17
zzweilous
I don't know which like which routes this team took to get where it ended up, but I feel like there might be just like a little game of telephone where everybody just like maybe ah um talk to their their friends or teammates about like a team idea that might look really promising.
01:10:38
zzweilous
And then it's just like spreading across continents, maybe from the UK. We don't know whether that's the first recording of the team. Maybe two people came up with it separately. But it made its way to Brazil.
01:10:48
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:10:49
zzweilous
It made it made its way to Canada and... yeah it's ah It's a very fun coincidence that the exact same line of six managed to take home both titles in this one-off meta where you didn't really have practice tournaments, you didn't really have PvPoke ranking for it.
01:11:04
zzweilous
um So yeah, this is um quite the unlikely happening, but yeah, apparently it was the sauce for the weekend.
01:11:13
William Dunphey
I mean, do we do we know if Tomahawk is not just you know taking credit for this and it's actually not his? I mean, do we know that for sure? ah
01:11:21
zzweilous
thank Like, I know Fareed.
01:11:22
William Dunphey
ah Just...
01:11:23
zzweilous
He builds, like, 20 teams a weekend. It might just, like, eventually, like, if you give a monkey a typewriter, he'll eventually ah ah type Shakespeare. So um maybe just, like, enough attempts at doing a thing um might eventually lead to a real work of art.
01:11:35
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:11:43
zzweilous
But um no I'm just kidding.
01:11:44
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:11:45
zzweilous
I'm just kidding. Like, I i do believe that Fareed is probably... um at least a top three team builder in Europe um and internationally, and probably similarly as it accomplished, um especially with how he took his efforts to um North america America multiple times this season already.
01:11:53
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:12:05
zzweilous
um
01:12:05
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:12:06
zzweilous
So I would not be surprised if he had a little bit of influence um going going into that weekend.
01:12:13
William Dunphey
so So essentially we took away the drum from Rillaboom and we gave it a typewriter instead. And it actually ah cooked up a ah very, very good team. No, just all jokes aside, I do think he is a phenomenal team builder. I'm sure that he and Martyn probably go back and forth with their team builds as well.
01:12:29
William Dunphey
Martyn also prolific in terms of ah in terms of his insights. But the one piece of...
01:12:33
zzweilous
I think there's like actually a little bit of a rivalry because Tomahawk is very much aligned with tea and pizza, whereas Mattheim is more of a Legends United EU Emperor kind of guy.
01:12:36
William Dunphey
Yes.
01:12:46
William Dunphey
ah
01:12:46
zzweilous
um And so those are like kind of rivaling rivaling factions. and um Also with the practice tournaments, like there's there's like some voices that want the teams revealed in public and other voices that might want to see them private.
01:13:03
zzweilous
And yeah, I feel like those two guys have like a healthy rivalry going on. But yeah, there are definitely a bunch of amazing team builders out there.
01:13:08
William Dunphey
Yeah, there's
01:13:12
William Dunphey
There's a really good copy pasta about that. I won't reference the whole thing. I think i think we've talked about it before on the show, but yeah, that's ah that's a S tier copy pasta. um But speaking of tiers here, we have a few things that we can ah we can move on to. We've got ah a mailbag of sorts.
01:13:29
William Dunphey
We've been browsing the the interwebs, the socials, and we've got a couple of of opinions we're going to react to. And we also have a tier list from your very own Tomahawk as well that we are going to ah to shuffle into order.
01:13:42
William Dunphey
I know ah our co-host, Ziz Wireless, was maybe making a few tweaks to that as we were starting the show, but I'm confident in my list. I know exactly what's happening. And we also have mailbag in terms of upcoming events and ah the sale of Pokemon Go. So there's still a lot to get to, but let's go ahead and kick this off with one of the wildest takes.
01:14:02
William Dunphey
um Marcus, aka Arceus Aurelius, says that Azumarill will not win a tournament in the Might and Mastery meta. that That is a statement that, but like blood in the water, ah if Caleb was a shark, he found it.
01:14:17
William Dunphey
And he said, I am taking this bet. I smelled this from miles away, and I smelled an easy bet.
01:14:21
zzweilous
Oh yeah, he's the betting guy, right? Oh God.
01:14:24
William Dunphey
Yes.
01:14:24
zzweilous
No.
01:14:24
William Dunphey
Yeah, yeah. He said, I smelled this from a mile away, I'm taking the bet. Will Azumarill win ah to a tournament in Might and Mastery? Z's Wild is yes or no. Go.
01:14:33
zzweilous
no
01:14:34
William Dunphey
Whoa.
01:14:34
zzweilous
It's a very hot take.
01:14:35
William Dunphey
Okay. Okay. But why, but why?
01:14:36
zzweilous
It's very hot take. It's a very hot take.
Azu's Dominance in Might and Mastery Season
01:14:38
zzweilous
But this is what Markus essentially presented to us um on social media. here um yeah he he He says, Azu is washed.
01:14:47
zzweilous
There will not be any Azu taking home gold medals during the Might and Mastery season. Mind you, that is the season with probably the highest density of Play Pokemon tournaments. So, like eventually, if you give enough people an Azumarill, it will eventually win a championship, no?
01:14:57
William Dunphey
Yes.
01:15:03
zzweilous
But... Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe Azu's days are over. And the reason for why I think that is a pretty good take is that, okay, Azu had two opportunities to win a championship this weekend.
01:15:17
zzweilous
It didn't do that.
01:15:17
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:15:19
zzweilous
So that's already like, okay, this is almost the old meta still where Azu won everything and it still couldn't cut it. Why Azu even worse position going into the proper Might and Mastery meta?
01:15:31
zzweilous
I think that is because of how... we like how spread out the usage is going to be. Because I think this meta is interesting in that it didn't um take out 10 things and put 10 new things in, but it just left the 30 things that were already viable in the meta and added 20 new things.
01:15:53
zzweilous
So... Or Azu's role as the bulky water type that holds the team together. now it has to contest with Lapras that now gets Cywave, beats it in the head-to-head.
01:16:05
zzweilous
Now it has to contest with Blastoise, which also beats it in the head-to-head. um So yeah, that's just like... Azu still has its role compression going for it, but it's pretty slow compared to the others.
01:16:17
zzweilous
It might struggle in certain neutral matchups a little more now.
01:16:17
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:16:20
zzweilous
And yeah, it might just be left in the dust. And if Very few people bring it. like It's a lot easier for Azu to win a tournament if it's at 65% usage rate rather than when it's at 16% usage rate.
01:16:33
zzweilous
And I think that might just be Azu's destiny for the season. And while I think it's possible for it to win, i like just making that bold claim and saying that it doesn't.
01:16:47
William Dunphey
There's one point you made that I really wanted to, uh, to hinge onto, and that is the, the role compression point, right? Role compression for Azumarill has always been one of its best, uh, its best utilities, its best, abilities is, is,
01:17:02
William Dunphey
how it's able to defeat ah with ice type coverage, ferry type coverage, water type coverage. It's able to defeat such a broad swath of meta picks from your fighters to your flyers, to your ground and fire types. I mean, there's massive, massive ah diversity in it's, it's ah basically its ability to, to attack.
01:17:21
William Dunphey
And then you couple that with incredible bulk and um you know, way above average HP stats. And it's just insane. Yeah. The argument that I don't like is when people are saying, oh, it's because of other water types.
01:17:33
William Dunphey
Azumarill will fall out because of Lapras, or Azumarill will fall out because of Lastoist. I think that the point you made is actually much, much more in tune with reality, because you said that there's such such a variety of picks, so many more options.
01:17:46
William Dunphey
And I think that, for lack of a um not using a pun here... the meta is going to be very much watered down based on what it has been. And Azumarill might find a tougher spot executing.
01:17:58
William Dunphey
But if we look at something like the Inadequance practice tournaments, it did win two events already. And basically those practice tournaments ah had anywhere from 20 to 43 different unique players.
01:18:10
William Dunphey
And that's the full Might and Mastery meta. And you had two Azumarill's win. So... Like you said, there are so many events in in season three of Pokemon Go for this year of the championship series. I think I sent you a little note. Season one of Pokemon Go, which are the in-game seasons, the three-month seasons, only had 11 tournaments.
01:18:29
William Dunphey
Season two, which we just exited, had nine tournaments. Season three has 21 events and six qualifiers for a total of 27 events, which is more than, than double a season one. And then season four is super short. We only have any IC, the PJCS and worlds.
01:18:48
William Dunphey
So yeah, Yeah, I think this is another reason why a lot of folks saw that post and
Meta Dynamics and Team Strategies
01:18:53
William Dunphey
they dialed in, they swam over to it like Caleb did, and they said, okay, just by the rule of numbers and and taking history into account, a Zoomeroll has to win something here.
01:18:53
zzweilous
Okay.
01:19:04
zzweilous
Yeah, we like, Marcus and I will have a lot of rooting against Azu to do this season, but this like it wouldn't it wouldn't be fun if it was likely, right? It needs to be a hot take to be interesting.
01:19:17
zzweilous
So, like if if like, if money was on the line, I might not bet against Azu, but because it's just, like, about the honour, about being correct in your take, um i think I think it's a fun bet to take.
01:19:17
William Dunphey
True.
01:19:31
William Dunphey
Agreed. Agreed. Speaking of fun bits, how Stark offered his opinion. Not only does he have a smoldering new profile picture on, on X, um, very handsome guy, but he actually made the post. He said, this is the widest and most fun meta of all time.
01:19:47
William Dunphey
And this goes all the way back to the inception of PVP back in, in late 2018, early 2019, back when people were just, you know, getting a feel for it. Altaria, uh, Toxicroak, Registeel, you know, back in that era, he says, this is,
01:20:00
zzweilous
like This man played during the Walrein Trevenant meta, which um like is held up as the universally beloved one from back in the day.
01:20:04
William Dunphey
True.
01:20:08
zzweilous
And he still thinks this is a better one. So I also like this take. It's it's going out there. It's making a strong claim.
01:20:15
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:20:15
zzweilous
um And like do you agree with that, Speedy? Do you agree with the claim that this is the best meta that we've ever seen?
01:20:23
William Dunphey
I'm going to say that in terms of, so I'm goingnna i'm going to frame this in two contexts. The first is in Go Battle League. Do I think this is the best one? Honestly, yeah, this one's really fun. It feels like there are comeback conditions, there are win conditions in almost every situation.
01:20:40
William Dunphey
As long as you play, you know, a neutral enough team, it feels really fun. I think Open Great League felt very, very good, very flexible. I'm able to use a lot of Pokemon I really love, like Guzzlord and Fortress, as we talked about before. Those are perfectly viable and fun now.
01:20:55
William Dunphey
I really, really enjoy it. Not to mention Blastoise, of course. In terms of play Pokemon, I think there's a bit of a dark cloud here. And the reason i say that is because last season there were some sure things. We had Azumarill, Shadow Drapion, Diggersby, Galarian Corsula, Annihilate.
01:21:12
William Dunphey
These were sure things that we could count on most of the time. And granted, they didn't solidify in the meta until maybe the last three or four events, but we knew what we were getting. The problem that I i saw in Fortaleza and Vancouver, and I hope is not the problem going forward, is how RPS and how unforgiving some of these matchups can be. Because when you change a meta in a big way, it's nearly impossible to tell exactly where the dominoes are going to fall a week, two weeks, two months down the road.
01:21:41
William Dunphey
And when I so when i saw Ryze absolutely dismantle Dunebug, dismantle Hedonis, both with very different teams, I was like, man, if we have a Pokemon like Shadow Steelix that is rising up the ranks and is going to be a a top meta pick, does this make this meta RPS and unfun?
01:21:59
William Dunphey
And i'm I honestly, after seeing how Ryze just crushed everything in his way and that in those those two sets, I'm concerned. I'm concerned we're accidentally walking into an RPS trap.
01:22:10
William Dunphey
I don't know if you agree or not.
01:22:11
zzweilous
um So I have to say that I don't necessarily agree with taking Vancouver as evidence for that, just because it was a half meta and a bunch of picks that will be very much omnipresent during the Might and Mastery season were not yet eligible to be brought to that tournament.
01:22:20
William Dunphey
hmm
01:22:31
zzweilous
However, um I share a similar concern in terms of um how, like for how many Pokemon players Will you realistically be able to prepare on a team of six?
01:22:46
zzweilous
um Especially with how, unlike VGC, Pokemon Go is not the most complex game where you can just like um make sure you have an out, you have a game plan.
01:22:58
zzweilous
ah You only get two moves here. um you like Type effectiveness is pretty important in Pokemon Go. and you can only ever do so much. And if there's like 30 viable Pokémon in the meta, you will probably be able to um construct a team that is pretty decent into like 28 of those, and then you pick your two Dark Horses, which you don't really want to go up against, where you maybe just have like an emergency plan, maybe just one counter.
01:23:21
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:23:29
zzweilous
But if you just add, like, if you just increase the number 30 to 50, And all of these Pokemon that are viable in their own right have very different profiles. It's not just like 10 Mud Slappers, but it's like, oh, Skeletor is good now because it gets Torch Song. Oh, Cradily is top meta now because of Rock Tomb.
01:23:48
zzweilous
Oh, Golisopod is like with its unique typing, all of a sudden like winning tournaments. You have a lot to prepare for. ah lot. Yeah. And it's going to be the challenge to a read the meta in a way that you can foresee what Pokemon people will bring and what Pokemon they will leave on the bench.
01:24:09
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:24:10
zzweilous
And also um come up with a team of six that is both neutrally strong and dominant enough, but also flexible enough to prevent RPS scenarios. Because if you encounter, like how many Pokemon did I encounter during my EUIC run where I actually played a lot of different opponents?
01:24:33
zzweilous
Probably not that many more than like 15 or something.
01:24:37
William Dunphey
yeah
01:24:37
zzweilous
For a similar run, you might well face like 25 this time. If we look at the first six winning teams um of the Candle Cult and Adequence practice tournaments of the season, out of 36 possible unique picks, there was actually 26 unique species.
01:24:42
William Dunphey
Yes. oo
01:24:56
zzweilous
So, so much variety.
01:24:57
William Dunphey
yes
01:25:00
zzweilous
And you can't realistically be prepared for each and every one of those picks. So I think it's going to be pretty great for the viewer, actually, because there will be a lot of personality on those teams, like a lot of unique picks, not too many cookie cutter teams, which is also part of what makes me excited about playing Great League in GPL again.
01:25:23
zzweilous
um But I think it's... um more possible than before to just break a tournament by bringing one pick that nobody was prepared for.
01:25:35
zzweilous
I feel like we might be able to see surprise runs again of maybe people we wouldn't necessarily have expected to take home a medal or even a championship, which honestly is great television, but some top competitors might be left frustrated if they have to go up against a team that they just can't beat.
01:25:36
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:25:55
William Dunphey
There's one person I feel really bad for. We've already talked to them or talked about them earlier on in the episode. I feel bad for D-Synced because if he was frustrated before, i can't imagine, like you said, when you were going up against 20 to 25 unique picks instead of 15,
01:26:12
William Dunphey
In a tournament run, it's got to be super, super frustrating. So role compression, finding best in class picks like best in class flyer, um getting enough overlapping coverage, um really not being double weak to any particular group of attackers. And I don't even mean like not being double weak to Drapion. I mean, not being double weak to dark types, you know, period.
01:26:34
William Dunphey
is going to be really tough to do. I mean, if you look at the the Candle Cult practice tournament teams, there was a team on March 8th and a team on March 10th that I want to compare. The team that won on March 8th had Gudra, Togetic, Malamar, Greninja, as well as Fortress and Talonflame.
01:26:51
William Dunphey
The team that won two days later had a Carbink. And I'm looking at this team, I'm like, hmm, Carbink, Fairy Rock versus a Dragon, a Flying Fairy, a Dark-type, another Dark-type, a Steel Bug, and a Fire-Flying?
01:27:08
William Dunphey
Carbink would wreck this team. This would be super, super difficult. I think that would lock our March 8th champion into running Greninja Fortress every single game. And then what do you do? you have to deal with a meta-cham and a Golisopod on the opposing side.
01:27:25
William Dunphey
Like, man, that's rough. So I agree with you.
01:27:27
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:27:28
William Dunphey
I think that the pop-off potential has never been higher for pit for people making the right picks.
01:27:34
zzweilous
So if I can um like give one piece of advice to the people that may be preparing for a tournament that they want to attend, have at least two and a half checks for those big, beefy rock types in Bastiodon and Karbing because there
Pokemon Choices and Predictions
01:27:52
zzweilous
are sleeper picks. They haven't been around for a while, but in a Lapras meta where rock type damage is potentially like hitting multiple big players in Lapras, in Jumpluff, in Talonflame, in Golai support for super effective damage, those picks might be on the rise again, so you don't want to be caught off guard.
01:28:14
William Dunphey
Agreed. Looking at these teams, if if I had to distill them down into some kind of, you know, some kind of sensical order, I looked for Pokemon that were in common. You mentioned 36 total Pokemon, 26 unique species.
01:28:27
William Dunphey
We had two Diggersby, two Lapras, two Azumarill, two Cridilly, two Swampert, and I believe two Talonflame. The Pokemon that was the most in common across six teams.
01:28:39
William Dunphey
Are you ready for this? A potential 36 Pokemon. The most common pick was Shadow Drapion and there were three.
01:28:48
zzweilous
Yep.
01:28:49
William Dunphey
Three out of 36.
01:28:49
zzweilous
Shadow Drapion is just like the one thing that everybody plays because it's safe.
01:28:49
William Dunphey
Yes. Yes. yes
01:28:55
zzweilous
And I think that's like also, it remains its unique selling point that, okay, it's so difficult to be prepared for everything.
01:28:59
William Dunphey
yes
01:29:02
zzweilous
just Just keep bringing the one pick that kind of has play into most picks. Like even, like now we have Claydol as another Mudstlepper. Like finally, Season of Claydol.
01:29:13
zzweilous
um And yes, another one where um you you do hit it back with your Drapion charge attacks. So I see the value.
01:29:22
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:29:23
zzweilous
But other than that, it's really the Wild West. And I'm so glad that I got my competing out of the way. But I also, don't want to compete. Like i I love that I don't have to, but I also kind of want to because it looks so fun, but it also looks like such a mess. And I'm here for it.
01:29:40
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be really fun. I honestly, I have a Stockholm circle on my calendar. I cannot wait to watch that stream. I might stay up late for it and watch, watch it real time. Cause I'm so curious about how this is all going to shake out.
01:29:54
William Dunphey
But um there were multiple updates in the might mastery season. ah This segues perfectly into our next talking point. We promised you a tier list. We're not going to disappoint. This is going to be the Tomahawk tier list.
01:30:04
zzweilous
you
01:30:06
William Dunphey
Where would you rank the 15 new picks? Now, these are Pokemon that got substantial updates. Some of them got a newly buffed move like Golisopod with Aqua Jet. Some of them learned brand new moves, basically a brand new kit.
01:30:19
William Dunphey
For example, Furret with a Sucker Punch, Swift, and Trailblaze. We've got 15 Pokemon here. ah We have three tiers. We have our Azu tier, which is like our top tier.
01:30:30
William Dunphey
Goaded pick is going to be a perennial contender. We've got our Mandibus tier, which is very, very strong, flexible. We'll probably see it in multiple championships. Very reliable. Then we have our Ariados tier, which is more like our bronze tier, which is core breaker, flash in the pan, really fun, but might just be a hero of the moment.
01:30:50
William Dunphey
So I have five Pokemon in each slot. I did not intend for it to be this way, but I have five Pokemon in each slot ranked from strongest to weakest within their own category. How do you want to start this off?
01:31:02
zzweilous
um I think I'll just scroll up to where I sent you the list of 15. um So we can just like go from the 1st to the 15th and see where we place them. um Also, to to just clarify, this isn't like the Tomahawk tier list, but it's like inspired by the tier list that Tomahawk made about lot more picks in the meta.
01:31:13
William Dunphey
OK. Oh, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.
01:31:24
zzweilous
He streamed it on Twitch and YouTube. He has the vault up, and he does have um the picture of the tier list posted on his ex Twitter profile. So there's like a bunch of interesting takes, a lot of good ones, a lot of um more ambitious ones.
01:31:41
zzweilous
um But I thought it would be fun to do like a miniature version of that with fewer tiers, with tiers, with fewer Pokemon, but especially with those that are new to the meta. And Speedy, I would um just like start with a big gun. um Where would you place Lopress?
01:31:59
William Dunphey
That's a very, very good point. Yes, this is the show six tier list for Might and Mastery. So maybe maybe i'll I'll publish our our charts and we'll compare and let people ah let people weigh in. To answer your question, where do we put the big one? Lapras, Sidewave, Lapras.
01:32:15
William Dunphey
Honestly, Lapras is the number one pick in my Azu tier, the top tier. I think this is the biggest winner of the season update and I think it's not even close.
01:32:25
zzweilous
I will have to agree. Like, it's... Like, i don't I actually don't have it number one, but I definitely have it in the Azutea because I think Lapras is a Pokemon that is...
01:32:39
zzweilous
um not only good, but it's also going to be very commonly used. I think it will feature on a lot of teams, not only because it's like kind of new toy syndrome and you do want to try it out, but also just because it has the tools to provide that neutral play with that side wave coverage, with that sparkling area, which is an excellent snap move.
01:32:46
William Dunphey
Yeah. Hmm.
01:32:59
zzweilous
And also with the customizable choice of a third charge attack, I think it's going to be interesting whether people will opt for Ice Beam or Skull Bash. I thought that for many Skull Bash was an early favorite, but I have seen people pick up Ice Beam again. So a bunch of interesting Lapras scenarios. It's going to be pain if you're in that mirror, but you only have Ice Beam and they have Skull Bash.
01:33:21
zzweilous
um So yeah, it remains to be seen how exactly the Lapras is going to play out. um But I think it is almost for sure that it's going to play a very prominent role.
01:33:32
zzweilous
So Azutu is Azutu for me as well.
01:33:32
William Dunphey
Again, I want,
01:33:35
William Dunphey
ah Perfect. I want to emphasize as well, this does not mean that I or or you believe that Lapras is just going to replace Azumarill. It's going to be the new best water type. I just think that it brings such a unique toolkit to the meta that it will actually like carve out a massive role for itself in its own way.
01:33:53
William Dunphey
So again, it's not the new Azu, but it's a Pokemon that's so powerful, kind of like Clodsire.
01:33:55
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:33:58
William Dunphey
A lot of teams will need to prepare for this or risk the consequences.
01:34:03
zzweilous
I think you um ah put it pretty well when you said, oh it's like a bronze tier, silver tier, gold tier situation. We just gave them names because it maybe like gives you an idea of what to expect based on the last meta where Azu was always everywhere.
01:34:19
zzweilous
Mendebus was in a lot of places a lot of the time and Ariados was a Pokemon that had its tournaments without really dominating the meta for a longer period.
01:34:19
William Dunphey
yeah Agreed.
01:34:30
William Dunphey
Agreed. Our next pick is going to be another Cywave user. Where in the world do you have Grumpy?
01:34:35
zzweilous
Oh, yes.
01:34:37
William Dunphey
Because I think we're going to disagree on this one.
01:34:41
zzweilous
That's an interesting one, because I am actually a big fan of Grumpig. I think it's very goofy. um I think its coverage is excellent, and I have been and enjoying it in the Go Battle League.
01:34:53
zzweilous
However, I think with the context of Show 6 and the Pokemon that it has to go up against, um for like a spot on a team.
01:35:06
zzweilous
I think Grumpick is going to be Ariadna's tier. I don't think Grumpick is going to really be that dominant pick.
01:35:10
William Dunphey
Ooh.
01:35:12
zzweilous
It's going to have its top cards. It's going to have its medals. I don't even know whether it's going to have a win. i think it's definitely possible, but I think the Grumpicks will actually be few and far between, even though it's ranked really highly on PvP in the Go Battle League.
01:35:29
William Dunphey
It's just not a good time to be a pure psychic. It's not a good time to be Cresselia. It's not a good time um to be Defense Worm Deoxys. It's just not a good time. There's too many darks, too many threats.
01:35:41
William Dunphey
I think you outlined it perfectly. Grumpick is actually the last Pokemon on my list. It is at the bottom of the Ariados tier ah because I looked at all this and in the context of show six.
01:35:46
zzweilous
Oh.
01:35:51
William Dunphey
And I'm very sorry to to our friend T Steiner. He believes in Grumpig. He thinks Grumpig will be a big player. he and I were talking about that. I just don't believe in it. And I hope Steiner can turn me into a believer.
01:36:02
William Dunphey
But right now, it's it's also that tier.
01:36:03
zzweilous
Yeah, I think you can make it work.
01:36:05
William Dunphey
Yeah, I think he could. I couldn't. But he's good enough to make it work.
01:36:11
William Dunphey
All right.
01:36:11
zzweilous
All right.
01:36:12
William Dunphey
So number three, we talked about this earlier. What do you think?
01:36:15
zzweilous
Oh yes, that's a fun one. That's a fun one. The Galarian Wheezing, the chimney person. um I think it's really, really good. How good do I think it's going to be?
01:36:30
zzweilous
i think the Galarian Wheezing...
01:36:35
zzweilous
I think it sits atop my Ariadus tier. I think it's like ah Pokemon that won't necessarily be
01:36:39
William Dunphey
Ooh.
01:36:44
zzweilous
everywhere all the time, also in part because the shadow seems preferred and not everybody has it, um even though the regular is perfectly viable. um I think it's going to win a tournament, but there's also be events where you won't have a Galarian Riesing in top 8 whatsoever.
01:37:01
William Dunphey
yeah I disagree. i think Galarian Weezing is my number two in my Azu tier.
01:37:04
zzweilous
Oh.
01:37:08
William Dunphey
I think it's right behind Lapras.
01:37:08
zzweilous
In your Azu tier! Oh, we are not only one tier, we are two tiers apart on this.
01:37:10
William Dunphey
Yeah. Yeah.
01:37:14
William Dunphey
Yes, this this pokemon this Pokemon is a spammy menace.
01:37:14
zzweilous
I like that. That's fun.
01:37:20
William Dunphey
This thing is so disruptive. When you land neutral Sludges, you can two-shot Talonflame with Sludge, and it only takes 10 turns to get there. This Pokemon is an absolute menace.
01:37:31
William Dunphey
In Go Battle League, I think it's a menace in Show 6 as well. The only thing that is preventing it from from really just rolling through teams is honestly the fact that Mudslap is still strong.
01:37:42
William Dunphey
I don't know what the season updates will hold, but if June 3rd, if we nerf Mudslap, this Pokemon is going to go berserk.
01:37:42
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:37:49
William Dunphey
It's going to be just top tier.
01:37:51
zzweilous
i I agree. it's it It would be higher if it wasn't for, you have to pick and choose your Mutslap weakness for a team.
01:37:53
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:37:58
zzweilous
That and fewer Azus to target made me not put it into Mendebust tier, which is the second highest, um but it was very close.
01:37:58
William Dunphey
Yes.
01:38:06
zzweilous
I think it's a great Pokemon for sure.
01:38:08
William Dunphey
It is, yeah. Even against like the the fighters, for example, if you encounter Prime Ape or Annihilate, you can hit back really, really hard. And not only are you single resisting, but you are double resisting every fighting type attack because you're a Poison and Fairy. It's such a unique typing. Very, very strong.
01:38:24
William Dunphey
If you go up against a Wigglytuff, you have to have the edge in that matchup too. I mean, it's just such, such a menace.
01:38:29
zzweilous
Yeah.
01:38:30
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:38:30
zzweilous
I love myself a good Wiggly Punish. um Speaking of Wiggly Punishes, our next Pokemon is not that. Our next Pokemon is Sableye.
01:38:39
William Dunphey
Yes.
01:38:40
zzweilous
Sableye. This is an interesting one. Where would you place Sableye? I feel like there might be room for disagreement, but maybe we're just completely completely aligned here.
01:38:50
William Dunphey
um I think that the foul play upgrade was tremendous. i I didn't realize how big of a difference it would make going from 12 turns to your foul plays to 10 turns.
01:39:00
William Dunphey
And plus the Dazzling Gleam is absolutely insane. I think Sableye finally has an ability to really fight back against the Drapions, the Guzz Lords, the Mandibuzz of the world.
01:39:12
William Dunphey
I really think Power Jam in return could kind of get the job done in the past, but now you can run a fully rank one regular Sableye with max stat product with Dazzling Gleam, which is just never, never heard of.
01:39:25
William Dunphey
um We're going to in the Azu tier here. i put Sableye as my number three in the Azu tier. So Lapras, G-Weezing, and Sableye in that order.
01:39:34
zzweilous
So I was actually considering putting Sableye into the Azuteer, but I also only have three Pokemon in the Azuteer. um And I like very recently switched around the the order there so that Sableye actually dropped one and another pick that might be a little more controversial ah got bumped up.
01:39:56
zzweilous
But Sableye is still top of my Mandibus tier. I think it's going to have... like some tournaments where it's not really seen within the medal ranks. I feel like the Azutea... Maybe I should only put two. I'll only put two Pokemon in the Azutea, actually.
01:40:14
William Dunphey
Ooh.
01:40:14
zzweilous
Let me let me like change this right now on the podcast. But I think Sableye, it's very good.
01:40:18
William Dunphey
Sure.
01:40:21
zzweilous
um It also is the ghost that beats ghosts with its dark subtyping.
01:40:27
William Dunphey
Yep.
01:40:27
zzweilous
um But what I think... will hold Sableye back is that in show six for a lot of people, bulk is still king.
01:40:38
zzweilous
And Sableye, especially the shadow one that is like for the most part preferred as far as I'm aware, does not bring that bulk to the table the same way a lot of the other picks are.
01:40:50
zzweilous
So I think it's a very strong contender. um It's going to win tournaments. It's going to take home a lot of medals, but it will also have tournaments where it just like doesn't deliver where it might get outshined by by other picks. So um it's it's top of Mandibust tier for me.
01:41:09
William Dunphey
Top of Mana Bust here. Okay, I'm actually writing these down in real time so we can get our our graphic done. um Yeah, honestly, you know, Zywilus, I respect you tremendously, but I just disagree.
01:41:21
William Dunphey
I think that when you have a Pokemon like Sableye, it's going to push Psychics further out of the meta. It's going to push Annihilate out of the meta. It's going to push ah Poison users out of the meta. If Claude Sire wasn't already far enough out, this Pokemon just pushes it even further because you're going to be resisting all that Poison-type damage.
01:41:38
William Dunphey
I think it's incredibly flexible and it is a level 50 XL. So I'm not entirely sure where the bulk argument comes from there, if I'm being candid with you, but I do think Sableye is going to be really impressive.
01:41:49
William Dunphey
and And I want to know everyone's opinions as well.
01:41:50
zzweilous
That's good.
01:41:52
William Dunphey
Zorla and I are talking about this, having having some friendly discussion, but I want to know what other people think as well. So if you're listening to the episode, let us know with a review or down in the comments below. But top of ManaBuzz tier is still good.
01:42:03
William Dunphey
I'll take it.
01:42:05
zzweilous
Like, it's an, like, 1800 stat product Pokemon that is preferred as a shadow, right? But, like, if you are if you're interested in bulkier ghosts, where would you rank Dusklobs? Do you believe in Dusklobs after it took home the silver medal in in Vancouver recently?
01:42:22
William Dunphey
I want to believe in Duskclops. I was actually using Dusknoir in Ultra League last night, and that was ah not a good idea because there were so many dark types. But Duskclops is actually ah third to last on my list. It's actually the number three spot on the Ariados tier.
01:42:39
William Dunphey
I think it had a moment ah this past weekend in Vancouver and Fortaleza, but I do not see Duskclops being incredibly viable going forward.
01:42:48
zzweilous
No notes, nothing to add. Dusklobs is exactly there for me as well. um It is good. It will pop up here and there. um But I like generally don't believe that we will see a Dusklobs in top 8 in Stockholm. It's... It just lacks... like Especially if it has to go up against, say, rely again the ghost that beats the other ghosts.
01:43:12
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:43:12
zzweilous
um like It can tank a foul play, sure. But I just always feel as if it like lacks the punch to really make an impact. And you could run Poltergeist, but then you're ah like vulnerable to a good shielding decision by your opponent, and it just makes the Pokémon a lot less reliable.
01:43:22
William Dunphey
Agreed.
01:43:29
zzweilous
And I feel like...
01:43:31
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:43:32
zzweilous
Dusclubs needs like one more thing to become top meta, but it does not have that.
01:43:37
William Dunphey
Yeah, agreed. And you can see it coming too. If you have open team sheets, you know when the poltergeist is coming. So...
01:43:43
zzweilous
Exactly.
01:43:44
William Dunphey
Can't even surprise your opponents. um The next one, my my favorite Pokemon, next right next to Foratress. Let's talk about Blastoise, because a lot of players have been looking at this Pokemon. Bulky water type rollout has rock type damage. You get to a Hydro Cannon very, very quickly now. You also have the Skull Bash tech, or you can run Ice Beam.
01:44:04
William Dunphey
Where do you have Blastoise? Because I have it, how do I say, very centered on my list?
01:44:11
zzweilous
I think I have a pretty center too. I think it's ah the third in my Mendebust tier. So second highest again. And I think Blastoise is going to be pretty good.
01:44:23
zzweilous
um Rollout got a little bit of a nerf, but it's not that impactful. um I think it's like obviously going to struggle hard against grass types with um how it usually runs Skull Bash rather than Ice Beam as its second move next to Hydro Cannon.
01:44:40
zzweilous
But like one thing that I like about Lastoist is that it... It can tank a move, occasionally two moves. And it also has ah the ability to beat Chargerbug, which used to be the electric of choice.
01:44:53
William Dunphey
Mm.
01:44:55
zzweilous
It probably can beat Emolga too, but I... Maybe this is also like a little bit of a giveaway, but I don't really believe in Emolga. So...
01:45:02
William Dunphey
Ooh, okay.
01:45:03
zzweilous
so like it Like the rollouts do super effective against the most popular electrics, making electric a pretty luster typing to counter what Blastoise is doing.
01:45:15
zzweilous
um So yeah, I think it's going to be fairly strong. um I think last podcast I might have said that it isn't winning a regional. um I think it could win a regional.
01:45:28
zzweilous
I think it's going to be like a consistent top card presence with a few ups and downs over the season.
01:45:33
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:45:36
zzweilous
i think it's a solid ManaBus tier Pokemon.
01:45:39
William Dunphey
That's fascinating. You have it third on your Mandibuzz tier. It's exactly there for me as well. And I promise we did not coordinate this. We didn't set this up in advance. These are our our authentic choices.
01:45:51
William Dunphey
So yeah, Blastoise, for all the same reasons you outlined, bulkier than average, has you know pretty good pacing. It's got enough kind of coverage here and there to kind of be a neutral option in most situations.
01:46:03
William Dunphey
ah Winning things like Chargebug is insane. I did not know that, but that's honestly pretty staggering. But yeah, I don't i don't know exactly ah how prominent it will be because it can feel really defenseless at some points.
01:46:15
William Dunphey
If you're up against Annihilate, ah resisting the rollouts is really, really nice for that to Pokemon. ah If you're up against something like a Superior, it can also be very abysmal in terms of matchups.
01:46:27
William Dunphey
It's got a lot of of weaknesses and kind of um blind spots, I would say. But I would love to see it succeed. I want to see a Blastoise champion. So somebody please make it happen. But um yeah, I have it exactly where you have it.
01:46:40
William Dunphey
I don't know if we're going to agree on this next one, though.
01:46:42
zzweilous
oh okay okay okay let let me let me check okay what's the next one oh golyce pod golyce pod yeah this is like it was the um the revelation in fortaleza um actually being on seven out of the top eight teams and it also won vancouver so it comes off a pretty strong showing in this hybrid meta but
01:46:48
William Dunphey
Yes.
01:47:06
zzweilous
Because it's a hybrid meta and not the meta that we're actually going to see, i have golyce support at the very bottom of my Meta Bust here. So it's going to be strong, but it's not going to be as strong as we just saw it be.
01:47:15
William Dunphey
Ooh.
01:47:22
William Dunphey
Interesting. um I think that Bug is seriously in underrated typing. I think from ah from some of the best trainers I've watched use Pokemon like Charjabug.
01:47:33
William Dunphey
I think that um bug Bug type coverage is really unique. It helps you against Psychics and Dark types as well as Grass. I think Golisopod is still going to have a place in the meta.
01:47:44
William Dunphey
It's also in my Mandibuzz tier, but it's actually at the top of my Mandibuzz tier.
01:47:48
zzweilous
Okay, okay, okay.
01:47:49
William Dunphey
um In the same spot you have Stableye, I have Golisopod.
01:47:54
zzweilous
All right. Yeah, I think one thing that ah makes me a little bit skeptical is also that the Rock Tumbas are unleashed now, not only Fortress, but also Pokemon such as Cradily, where um this is um actually going to be our next pick.
01:48:05
William Dunphey
yeah
01:48:10
zzweilous
And so um I will have to say, i started this list off with saying that Lapras is actually not at the top of my Azumaral tier. um That is because of Cradily.
01:48:22
zzweilous
I think Cradily is actually going to be the Pokemon to beat, at least for the first few weeks of um the Might Mastery season. think, like, next to a Shadow Drapion, it's going to be probably the face of the new meta.
01:48:38
William Dunphey
Really? i mean, i mean, wish might need to, uh, to sound clip that because the face of the new meta being cradily is not something I expected to hear at all.
01:48:40
zzweilous
Yes.
01:48:51
zzweilous
That's why why we have those takes. But it has performed so well in practice for so many people.
01:48:51
William Dunphey
i I'm honestly stunned.
01:48:57
William Dunphey
That's true.
01:48:57
zzweilous
um So yeah, I think it might be a little bit underrated. and One, two of the like the two practices on March 10th. So like we can say ah um out of the chemical practice data that we do have, maybe the first few days were like getting to know the meta, but I think it has settled into a spot where credibly is really something that a lot of trainers believe in.
01:49:21
William Dunphey
Interesting. That's your number one Azu tier pick?
01:49:24
zzweilous
It is.
01:49:26
William Dunphey
My gosh, I'm just processing. um Cradilly, rock and grass. Actually very, very useful typing coverage. Grass is, um canonically, it's been something that is ah very useful, but also very polarizing. If you ever encounter a flying type or an ice type or a fire type, it can be very abysmal. But that rock type coverage and the rock typing gives it much, much more fight in those negative matchups. so I understand why you'd rank it so high.
01:49:52
William Dunphey
For me, Cradle has improved itself yet. I have it second to last in my Mandibuzz tier, right behind Blastoise.
01:49:59
zzweilous
Okay. Well, it's not too far down.
01:50:02
William Dunphey
Yeah.
01:50:04
zzweilous
I was about to shout at you if you had it in Ariadna's tier, but I can live with the Mandibus tier.
01:50:08
William Dunphey
No.
01:50:09
zzweilous
I still think it's going to really surprise people, and I think it's like... going to be the Rock Tomb user going forward. I think like it's it's essentially one-man grass hole, right? like You have the grass, you have the rock, you have the bulk too, the good neutral matchups.
01:50:24
zzweilous
The one aspect of Cradily that I think is exploitable is how bad of a fast attack bullet scene is. It does generate energy quickly, but it also does pitiful damage.
01:50:32
William Dunphey
Yes.
01:50:36
zzweilous
So I think that could be something that people use to their advantage. um But yeah, I think out of the gate Cradle is going to be great, actually. um And I guess I've already given away where my next Pokemon ranks, which would be Emolga, the Flying Squirrel.
01:50:46
William Dunphey
Interesting.
01:50:54
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:50:55
zzweilous
It's an Ariadne's tier Pokemon for me. i think the Discharge just does so little.
01:50:58
William Dunphey
Ooh.
01:51:01
zzweilous
And while Acrobatics is great... um I just don't really see it like as a Pokemon that will thrive in a meta with Rock Tomb Muses and a meta with Bulk.
01:51:15
zzweilous
And especially just because I think that having the electric damage output is really what makes those Pokemon tick, what makes them shine.
01:51:27
zzweilous
um And I think Charterbug just does it better.
01:51:32
William Dunphey
So let me get this straight. You have a flying and electro type Pokemon that beats all the other flyers.
01:51:37
zzweilous
yes
01:51:39
William Dunphey
It beats most of the other waters. It beats the bugs like Glysepod. And you still think that this Pokemon is Ariadus tier, flash in the pan, might be fun, but is not going to stick around for very long.
01:51:53
zzweilous
Yes, I don't see Emolga dominate the meta.
01:51:53
William Dunphey
Really.
01:51:56
William Dunphey
Wow. Okay. Emolga is number four in my Azulist.
01:52:00
zzweilous
Oh, okay, okay, okay.
01:52:00
William Dunphey
right My Azu tier.
01:52:02
zzweilous
That's another strong disagreement. That is a fun one.
01:52:06
William Dunphey
Yeah, I think acrobatics is just so devastating.
01:52:06
zzweilous
um
01:52:08
William Dunphey
it commands shields. I mean, Emoga can even can pressure mud boys or pressure Gastragon mud slappers like Shadow Keds and Marowak and Gastron. I mean, it is so versatile and it hits so hard. I mean, when you when you acrobatics a Claude Sire, it's insane how much damage it does.
01:52:25
William Dunphey
And that's a matchup you shouldn't be able to even you know inflict much pain in.
01:52:30
zzweilous
Yeah, that that is true. That is true. But you saw what Emolga did it in the the in-between meta, right? Where like a lot of people trusted it, but it didn't get a medal. And if Emolga didn't get a medal without the meta being at its full power level, how is it going to fare when everybody is allowed? When everything, all the Rocktumbas are just coming out to play?
01:52:53
zzweilous
um think it's going to be a difficult time. I think it's going to be a difficult time.
01:52:57
William Dunphey
Yeah, yeah, it might depend. I mean, i don't think that Cordelia or Fortress really appreciate um acrobatics either. But ah I don't know. I mean, this this is a healthy disagreement.
01:53:10
William Dunphey
bottom Bottom of Ariadus versus top five Azu tier.
01:53:10
zzweilous
Yeah, yeah, yeah. think it's a fun one.
01:53:16
William Dunphey
Interesting, interesting. um Let's talk about something I think we will be more closely aligned on. Let's talk about Claydol. I don't know how you feel about this.
01:53:22
zzweilous
Oh, I don't even know whether we'll be so closely aligned on that one because... Okay, my my there is no more Azuteer, but I think Claydol is a strong Mandabus.
01:53:35
zzweilous
I think Claydol is probably going to be the Mud Slipper of choice for um three reasons.
01:53:36
William Dunphey
Whoa. whoa
01:53:44
zzweilous
Those reasons being Bulk, it is... significantly bulkier than um canton marowak especially because canton marowak likes to be a shadow um uh because your secondary move actually doesn't need to be scorching sands you can opt for something like ice beam and even have solid play into pokemon such as jumple for cradley which otherwise would really give you trouble or also guzzlord which also is a pokemon that i think we'll see more often
01:54:17
zzweilous
um And the last reason is obviously Rock Tomb. It's such a strong debuffing move. It's so efficient to just get to exactly 50 energy and throw that Rock Tomb.
01:54:28
zzweilous
I think Claydol is going to win championships, and more than one, and I think it's um up there with Sableye at the top of my my Mendebust tier.
01:54:39
William Dunphey
Wow. Wow. um Yeah, I mean, you you have a ah whole new meta that's introducing ah brand new viable water types in Lapras and Blastoise, as well as Cradilly.
01:54:51
William Dunphey
And then you have ah Dark types being even more prominent than ever with ah with Guzzlord, Crunchstrapion, and Sableye. And... the The one, the Z's wireless himself says that, does that ah excuse me, not Dusclops, but Claydol is going to be a top player.
01:55:10
William Dunphey
um I just don't see it. I just disagree wholeheartedly. i don't think Claydol is anywhere near that good. I have it at second place in my Ariados tier. I think some people will be able to make it work, but it's just so ah betrayed by its typing combination. I think it's weak to too many things being weak to to ah to water, ice, and ghost are all in dark are all very, very bad things in the current meta.
01:55:36
zzweilous
So my theory is actually that Kledal kind of suffers from having been a meme for so long, and therefore we are currently underrating it. But I think it's going to take home a medal Stockholm already. I think it's actually going to surprise you.
01:55:52
zzweilous
um But I think it's a fun disagreement.
01:55:53
William Dunphey
In Stockholm.
01:55:55
zzweilous
I think it's it's a disagreement.
01:55:55
William Dunphey
Wow. Yeah.
01:55:57
zzweilous
I think, like, I know of top players who really believe in it. I saw, like, out-of-pocket make the case for Kledal, think, during the Tomahawk tier list. And, like, if if people of that caliber are believing in Kledal, I feel like maybe I'm onto something here.
01:56:13
zzweilous
um
01:56:14
William Dunphey
yeah
01:56:14
zzweilous
But yeah, I can definitely agree to disagree on that one.
01:56:15
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
01:56:18
zzweilous
um another one Another rock tumor that saw some initial hype is Spiritomb. Speedy, how do you feel about Spiritomb? It's like a Sableye at home kind of.
01:56:29
William Dunphey
Yeah, yeah, it is. um You know, I don't feel very, very confident about our Ariados picks. These are Pokemon that I think will pop off in the right environment. But Spiritomb leads the pack for me.
01:56:40
William Dunphey
I think Sucker Punch applies a lot of neutral pressure. I like the Rock Tomb ah charge attack to slow things down.
01:56:45
zzweilous
Thank
01:56:46
William Dunphey
It's deceptively bulky. It's a little bit harder to get rid of than a lot of people suspect. um Yeah, I think Spiritomb is going to lead my Ariados tier, and it won't go any higher than that.
01:56:58
zzweilous
Yeah, I think we're actually perfectly aligned here. It's pretty pretty high up my Ariadus tier as well. I think what lets Spiritomb down is especially its pacing, because um while Sableye gets to spam Foul Place every five seconds, Spiritomb needs to um do eight Sucker Punches to even get to its first attack.
01:57:21
zzweilous
And that is like a long time.
01:57:21
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:57:23
zzweilous
That's like three more faster attacks than Sableye needs. And like in Pokemon Go PvP, that can make the difference between winning or losing more often than not.
01:57:35
zzweilous
So even though i think the extra Sucker Punch damage is useful, ah think Rock Tomb is useful. um It is too slow to be ah staple, but it's still it has still so many tools that are interesting.
01:57:50
zzweilous
that i I definitely like. Even if you're like down in the Ariadne's tier, it still means you're a good Pokemon. All of these have been pre-selected to be good. So I think Spiritomb will have a run, but it will not like we will not see Spiritomb on a top 12 graphic. I can guarantee you that.
01:58:06
William Dunphey
Top 12. Oh my gosh. Okay. Spiritomb to me is, it almost plays like a, um, a, a, a, uh, Glaring Moltres or a Bombardier with legs, right?
01:58:19
William Dunphey
Cause you sucker punch, you sucker punch until you get to the rock tomb and then maybe you, you can land a shadow ball nuke occasionally.
01:58:19
zzweilous
Does it have that? I don't even know.
01:58:24
zzweilous
I like
01:58:28
William Dunphey
Right. So, Yeah. i don't know if it has legs. It's just kind of like a potted ghost kind of.
01:58:34
zzweilous
that.
01:58:34
William Dunphey
So I don't know.
01:58:36
zzweilous
ah did goes so I like that. i like that
01:58:39
William Dunphey
There is one Pokemon that I think is is a big sleeper pick. I i see this Pokemon um being within the top meta. I think it'll be easily within top eights, maybe even top fours coming up this season.
01:58:50
William Dunphey
That is the pure normal type for it.
01:58:50
zzweilous
uh,
01:58:53
William Dunphey
I actually have it second overall in my Mandibuzz tier right behind Glycipod. I think Sucker Punch is too consistent. It's Swift is is just the right pacing and Trailblaze ah can really make the Sucker Punches even more intense and This Pokemon is going to be the normal Pokemon that folks will default to.
01:59:11
zzweilous
I actually also have Furret solidly in my Mandibus tier, but I was like, kind of debating with myself, is that the right placement? Because I know that um like this tier list that we are doing ah was inspired by Tomahawk, and he is a big Furret believer.
01:59:29
zzweilous
He actually thought that it was like... um like He had more tiers than we do. like we had He had like five or six, and Ferret was like up there in the second of those five or six.
01:59:41
zzweilous
um So like as one of the few Pokemon released something that he thought will be meta-defining in a way, um And I was like, okay, do I believe in Furrid because Farid influenced me with his Furrid propaganda?
01:59:56
zzweilous
Or do i not believe in Furrid enough because I want to lean on the side of caution after hearing that much ah praise for the Pokemon?
02:00:06
William Dunphey
Aha.
02:00:06
zzweilous
But I think like Mandibust tier, like middle to top Mandibust tier is exactly where it belongs. um So if you look at Furrid, It has the qualities of two of the greatest normal-type Pokémon in Pokémon GO PvP history.
02:00:24
zzweilous
It has um essentially... Vigoroth pacing and damage output, with Sucker Punch being a clone of the old counter, with ah Stab Swift almost mimicking old body slam, and with Trailblaze coming after 7 and 6 Sucker Punches respectively um as the coverage move, similarly to how Vigoroth utilized Rock Slide for a while.
02:00:49
zzweilous
um So that is like the one half of Furret. And then the other half is just it's anti-ghost and anti-water utility. And I think in that sense, it's very much similar to Lickitung back in the olden days where you had um the lick damage and the power whip for for coverage. I think Furret kind of falls in between those two Pokemon.
02:01:12
zzweilous
um It's Lycoroth in a way. um and Especially with Pokemon like Claydol, I think, being pretty popular, but also weak to Sucker Punch, with Pokemon like Sableye doing double resisted Shadow Claws, with Blastoise and Lapras being in there, and also with Cradily actually not having the cleanest matchup against Verred.
02:01:38
William Dunphey
Mm-hmm.
02:01:38
zzweilous
um I kind of believe in it. I think it can do something. It might not be neutrally dominant enough to really be 5 usage.
02:01:52
zzweilous
But everything outside of top five, i think, is doable for Firit just in terms of how often it is used. And I think the peak for for it is certainly a tournament win.
02:02:02
zzweilous
I think it's like as soon as people figure out how to build a team around it, because I think team building is going to be a lot more difficult this season, um I think it's going to thrive and it's going to take home victories.
02:02:16
William Dunphey
Wow. Honestly, the way that you distilled it and put it into context of Vigoroth and Lickitung, the normal types of old, was honestly ideal. I agree with you in every single facet.
02:02:27
William Dunphey
um One of the matchups I think we need to pay special attention to is the Furet versus Sableye matchup. Furret destroys Sableye. I mean, completely annihilates it.
02:02:39
William Dunphey
Straight Trailblaze, I believe it wins every shielding scenario. It's a complete disaster for Sableye. And it's because that Sucker Punch just chews right through it. So it does remind me a little bit of how Lickitung used to have a pretty good matchup against that Pokemon as well.
02:02:53
William Dunphey
I think we can agree Furret belongs in the Mandibuzz tier, ah strictly a Pokemon that is going to be present. You're going to prepare for it, and it will likely win an event. But will it be a perennial contender?
02:03:04
William Dunphey
I don't think so. But as much as there is a role for normal types on upcoming teams, I think Furret is probably first in line to fill that spot, personally. um Let's talk about a new Pokémon that just got a community day. Let's talk about Torch Song Skeledurge.
02:03:20
William Dunphey
I played this Pokémon a little bit in Go Battle League. actually really enjoyed it. I was running Incinerate, Torch Song, and Disarming Voice instead of the recommended Shadow Ball and PvPoke. And I was having really fun really a lot of fun because you can spam those moves so quickly.
02:03:34
William Dunphey
I think that Torch Song Skeledurge definitely was an upgrade. I like the pacing. I like the damage. I like the stab. And the animation is really sick as well. It's actually at the bottom of my Mandibuzz tier.
02:03:45
William Dunphey
I think it'll be good, but this is kind of like a pick we talked about earlier. I think it's going to depend a lot on Mudslap and how the future develops. But I think that Skeletor has a place in the meta and is probably the second best fire type behind Talonflame right now.
02:04:00
zzweilous
um I tend to agree, but I was a little more conservative. um And my Skeletrge ranks at the top of the Ariados tier, essentially. um i used it in Gobath League as well, and that essentially inspired me to even put it on the list, because technically Skeletrge is not a Pokemon that received an update for the Might and Mastery season.
02:04:11
William Dunphey
Oh, okay.
02:04:23
zzweilous
It's just a Pokemon that happened to have a community day right after. but With a team of Greninja, Torchsongs, Skeledurge, and Clothire, I managed to achieve 22-game win streak in the Go Battle League.
02:04:39
zzweilous
And after that, I was sold.
02:04:39
William Dunphey
Wow. Mm-hmm.
02:04:41
zzweilous
This is a Pokemon that can actually do something. And then I looked at, okay, how well does that translate from blind battles to a proper tournament environment? um But what I found was a pretty...
02:04:56
zzweilous
significant presence of water types, of dark types, of like normal types such as furred, of sableye, of mudslappers. So there's a lot of threats for Skeletorge.
02:05:09
zzweilous
um If you pair it with the right Pokemon that cover its weaknesses, I think it can find an opening. And there's also always the odd team that entirely disrespects it where you can almost safe swap it.
02:05:23
zzweilous
um So it's like very matchup dependent. Sometimes you can sweep a team with it. Sometimes you can't even really bring it. um So I don't think it's going to be something people will gravitate towards um the same way they gravitate towards Talonflame just because Talonflame has that anti-Mudslab utility.
02:05:40
William Dunphey
Yep. Mm-hmm.
02:05:43
zzweilous
um But I think it is very fun to play, and it can spiral out of control, and somebody will pick this up and make it work. I don't know whether it will be me. I don't know how many tournaments I will be playing this season. and um But I think Skeletorge is a great Pokemon, like an excellent Pokemon, a Pokemon that could be even high Mandibus tier, but it finds itself in an environment that kind of demotes it to Ariadus tier for me.
02:06:10
William Dunphey
that You know, our rankings are actually very similar. i had bottom of Band Buzz and you had it top of Ariados. So honestly, you proximity wise, very, very close. Yeah, I agree with everything you said. I think there's too many typing threats right now. Ground, water, ghost, dark, lots and lots of obstacles for Skellendurge in show six.
02:06:29
William Dunphey
But in GBL, oh man, it's hella fun. um There's one meme on this list remaining and then one very viable pick that I do not have a personal ah investment in or favoritism towards whatsoever.
02:06:43
William Dunphey
So let's talk about the first one, Togetic. This Pokemon is near the bottom of the Ariados tier, just barely beating Grumpig. ah to be second to last for Ariados tier for me.
02:06:56
William Dunphey
Because, heck, it doesn't even use Psy Shock. I mean, you're basically going to look at Aerial Ace or Ancient Power plus Dazzling Gleam, and it that's not even that big of a buff.
02:07:00
zzweilous
okay
02:07:05
zzweilous
Yeah, I also have it like essentially ah ah around where I have Emolga. I think it's... Togetic does interesting things, um but Psychic-type damage just isn't that valuable, in my opinion.
02:07:22
zzweilous
And everything else, like Dazzling Gleam is cheaper now. Okay, you have that going for you. um But I don't know whether that will make Togetic... so good that people are going to run it instead of flyers like Jumpluff, flyers like Talonflame. There's not that many but ah viable flying types currently.
02:07:22
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:07:42
zzweilous
like Even Mandabus is probably going to see more usage than Togetic. um And if you want to run fairy type, um then you are probably better off going for Galarian Weezing.
02:07:55
zzweilous
Or if you don't want to be weak to Mutslab, just stick with Azu.
02:07:55
William Dunphey
yeah
02:07:58
zzweilous
Like, don't win a tournament with it, but just stick with Azu. I don't think Togetic is up there in terms of the very best fairies and therefore also solidly an Ariadne Steel for me.
02:08:09
William Dunphey
Agreed. So there is consensus there. Now, this is a real test of our friendship. I need to know how high you ranked our last pick for a Tris.
02:08:19
zzweilous
of Okay, okay. how How do I break this to you? oh
02:08:25
William Dunphey
Hey, this is not just professional. This is our friendship, right? We're not even going to talk at events if we see each other if you ah put it too low. No pressure.
02:08:33
zzweilous
Okay, so I will preface that by saying that I did bring Fortress to a tournament before it got buffed. People might not remember because I actually had to drop out early of the Shotgun Regional, um but I did believe in Fortress.
02:08:42
William Dunphey
Yes.
02:08:50
zzweilous
I thought it was Fortin Time, but yeah... I don't think I can put it like, especially because I was fairly concerned conservative with my ranking, i don't I don't see myself putting it any higher than high Ariadus tier.
02:09:09
zzweilous
I think Fortress doing the clunky non-stab vault switch, it's just coming back to bite it too many times.
02:09:10
William Dunphey
Uuuuhhh
02:09:18
zzweilous
Yeah. It's still kind of... like It appreciates that Rock Tomb is cheaper, but it's still an awkward pacing to it. um It's still sort of exploitable typing with how Mutt Slappers are everywhere, with how Talonflame is actually on more teams than I thought it would be, so Fire types are not out of it just yet.
02:09:42
zzweilous
um And I think it's actually going to face competition from other Steel types. I think Shadow Claw alone and Sandslash is actually like kind of strong right now I think a lot of teams have been disrespecting steals such as like a Reggie steal or even Melmetal that is maybe more on the meme side but some people believe in it I think there's actually going to be competition for that steal slot and I think Fortress is probably going to win a medal but it's not going to win a tournament
02:10:13
William Dunphey
Wow. All right. Well, everyone, I guess the podcast is done. i guess this is a ah good run we had. No, I'm just kidding. It's not that serious, but I do have a fortress near the bottom of my Azu tier.
02:10:27
William Dunphey
It's the last in the Azu tier right above Glycipod. Um, Is it that good? if I'm being honest and talking with my brain, I'll probably say no. Is it that fun? And is it that rewarding when you actually can vault switch something down, even though it's quote unquote clunky, like some people would allege?
02:10:45
William Dunphey
ah Yeah, it's really fun.
02:10:45
zzweilous
Thank you.
02:10:46
William Dunphey
When you land an earthquake against Steelix or a Poison type, is it fun? Yeah, it's f freaking sick. So I think that a Fortress definitely belongs in the Azur tier. Gonna disagree here with my my co-host, but maybe we can still be friends.
02:11:00
William Dunphey
I'll think about it.
02:11:00
zzweilous
If it restores our friendship, I actually ah utilize the new feature for the Pokémon Go Pokédex and um set an alert for nearby Pineco spawns so I can actually catch one that allows me to build a better IV fortress for the Open Great League.
02:11:17
William Dunphey
Friendship restored. I think that was all I needed to hear.
02:11:19
zzweilous
Oh, I like that.
02:11:20
William Dunphey
ah Case closed. And speaking of closed, that is going to be the conclusion of our tier list. Like you said, not nearly as complex as some of the other tier lists we've seen online, but I think very fun and very good to talk through. i hope that everyone, um you know,
02:11:35
William Dunphey
either disagreed or agree with our points or maybe has a unique point or at least gave it some thought because a lot of thought is going to go into the upcoming metas as we move through this this ah part of the season.
02:11:45
William Dunphey
Again, 27 events, including six qualifiers within this ah de facto season three of this 2025 play Pokemon season. So a lot, a lot of picks, a lot of meta and a lot of practice tournaments to be held and a lot of exciting events coming up. yeah,
02:12:03
William Dunphey
We were in agreement in a few things, but not everything, but I think that's fine. It's it's always fascinating because i'm ah I'm on the outside looking in, kind of taking more of a macro view, but you're much more the competitor. You're much more team building, actively competing.
02:12:16
William Dunphey
So I think we both have different, but ah but valuable ah viewpoints.
02:12:20
zzweilous
I also think it's much more fun that we have some disagreements here and there because then we can look at it like look back at it at the end of the season and see who was more correct because there's like definitely a chance that I'm off on some of these.
02:12:34
William Dunphey
Yeah, I'm i'm just going be honest. i I'm not going to like message you and say, I told you so. But when the season ends and Claydol has not won anything, I might message you and be like, yo, that's why I told you so.
02:12:46
zzweilous
Yeah, we'll talk again after Stockholm.
02:12:46
William Dunphey
I told you so.
02:12:48
zzweilous
We'll talk again after Stockholm.
02:12:50
William Dunphey
Okay, we'll see. We'll see.
Grassroots Initiatives and Community Events
02:12:52
William Dunphey
Well, the last thing on our on our list for today before we recap events and close out the show is a small ah community shout out. We wanted to talk about Zygarden. I'm not sure if you are ah super familiar with this project. I do know there are some really talented people behind it. It's kind of gone into hibernation once self-closed down.
02:13:10
William Dunphey
But having more grassroots opportunities to play, I think is super important for the community. And I really hope that people receive this well and tune in because there's going to be a stream, right?
02:13:21
zzweilous
Yeah, exactly. So the Zygarden.gg platform aims to bring essentially another way of hosting tournaments to the Pokemon Go grassroots community.
02:13:33
zzweilous
um and essentially is like... in a way, in addition to what Dracovus offers currently. But from what I've heard, they actually have a pretty sleek interface when it comes to like the their user experience on the site.
02:13:50
zzweilous
All is apparently pretty polished, pretty neat, pretty um like fun to to use and utilize. And maybe it can... like um inject some new life into the pogo Pokemon Go grassroots scene.
02:14:03
zzweilous
And they are definitely celebrating the launch this Saturday. um the stream we will feature a couple of battlers from the community duking it out in the Open Great League meta.
02:14:13
zzweilous
And it's scheduled to start at 12 p.m. Pacific time. um So unfortunately, i cannot convert that into every listener's local time zone. and um So um I guess 12 p.m. Pacific is what you guys will have to work with.
02:14:30
William Dunphey
Fair. i think I think that's very fair. if If you went all the way around, starting with the Greenwich Standard Time and gave everyone a time zone, that would be ah pretty special and probably add an extra 20 minutes to the podcast. So I think that's fine.
02:14:43
William Dunphey
There are also a couple of prize tournaments coming up this weekend. Again, we are in the full swing of the Might and Mastery meta. There are no ah north america North American events for the next couple of weekends.
02:14:54
William Dunphey
There is one coming up in Stockholm, as we've alluded to a few times. this is a really good chance to get some practice. The first one is on Saturday, hosted by Heydonis. And then the second one is um is on Sunday, hosted by Dez is the Best. And if you recall, the last time Dez is the Best did a cash prize tournament, we had Emmy Weedle and Dunebug in the grand finals.
02:15:14
William Dunphey
And it was an ESPN instant classic. Some of the best grand finals gameplay I've ever seen, official broadcast or not. So I'm really, really excited. And I don't want to set the bar too high, but I think there are some big, big expectations for this weekend.
02:15:28
William Dunphey
I'll be commentating both of them because I wanted to get as much possible exposure to the new meta as I could ah so that I can get a leg up in in future casts as we move through the season. Because I'm really excited about this and I want to dive in and see exactly how bad Claydol is.
Impact of Pokemon Go Acquisition
02:15:43
zzweilous
okay I actually signed up to compete and both ah both of them, so maybe I'll have to build around ah our little um psychic ground-type friend to actually show you the strength of Claydol.
02:15:48
William Dunphey
Okay.
02:15:56
William Dunphey
We'll see.
02:15:56
zzweilous
But yeah, let's see.
02:15:57
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:15:58
zzweilous
Let's see whether that will be a handicap for me or not. um But I guess that just about wraps it up for today's episode.
02:16:02
William Dunphey
we'll see
02:16:05
zzweilous
It is a long one yet again. And we even skipped over the acquisition of Pokemon Go by Scopely. But I feel like that would actually, like the the scope of this podcast is not made to discuss this topic after two hours and a bit.
02:16:14
William Dunphey
yeah
02:16:23
zzweilous
So maybe we'll get back to that when we know a little bit more about the takeover.
02:16:23
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:16:27
zzweilous
But right now, it sounded a little bit like more of the same, but better funded. And if that's what we get, that's at least not a step back. We obviously can't be certain about that just yet.
02:16:41
zzweilous
But um yeah, things are happening in the world of Pokemon Go.
02:16:42
William Dunphey
Yeah.
02:16:45
William Dunphey
Yeah, huge things. I saw somebody ah quote tweeted and the the news, ah's some random person not involved in the Pokemon community. And ah the the tweet basically said, ah Pokemon Go acquired by the Saudi Arabian government.
02:16:58
William Dunphey
And the quote tweet was, this is the most 2025 headline that I've read so far. So there there's a lot going on.
02:17:06
zzweilous
I got it.
02:17:07
William Dunphey
Yeah, I did. Actually, I didn't tell you this. I did a bunch of research yesterday. i looked at the company that bought it, the holding companies behind it, ah basically the broader ambitions ah for what this is likely going to mean. I've got a lot to say about this when we do discuss it.
02:17:22
William Dunphey
And um I can't wait to provide some insights because it could be Honestly, I don't want to call it too soon, but there is the potential for this to be a competitive revolution for the game.
02:17:34
William Dunphey
um However, there is a chance, of course, with all things that they choose to go a different route. So that's definitely something we should discuss.
Upcoming Events and Reflections
02:17:42
William Dunphey
I want to run through our our events, our upcoming stuff, just so we can get a little bit of an orientation about what trainers should focus on for the next a few weeks.
02:17:52
William Dunphey
In terms of Play Pokemon, in March, we still the India Qualifiers, which is the first of six in the the tpc tcp TPC region, excuse me the Pokemon company.
02:18:02
William Dunphey
ah That is March 15th through 16th, which is this this weekend. Good luck to all of our competitors in India. There's already a very diverse meta ah that's been established, I believe, and I hope that...
02:18:11
zzweilous
Thank
02:18:12
William Dunphey
um um They have a really fun competition. Stockholm is March 22nd through the 23rd, where Claydol will allegedly win a trophy. And then Brisbane close out closes out the month in Australia on March 29th and 30th. Shout out to PVP Steve and our entire Aussie crew, who's definitely going to put on a great tournament.
02:18:30
William Dunphey
I hope that we get a community stream for that, but that is to be determined. In-game events, ah two questions for you, Zorilis. I don't know if you want to answer these in one sentence or one to three sentences.
02:18:41
William Dunphey
How good was your cub-fu, and are you enjoying the scroll cup?
02:18:46
zzweilous
um My Kapfu was a 14-15-14, so I'm very glad that this turned out that way.
02:18:54
William Dunphey
Nice.
02:18:54
zzweilous
um Scroll Cup, one week is enough for for that one. I don't particularly enjoy it, but it's fun when the outrage lands on the dragon from Yomapeko.
02:19:05
zzweilous
um
02:19:05
William Dunphey
Nice.
02:19:06
zzweilous
Actually, like one recently, this is like a The Pokemon Group exclusive from ah the the recent tweet update about potentially um stuff that could come to the game in the future.
02:19:20
zzweilous
Apparently, they have datamine items that will allow us to change the individual stats of our Pokemon. They will allow it to increase by one or by three, depending on what item you use. So bottle caps might be coming to Pokemon Go, which could mean mean a great deal for pvp accessibility.
02:19:42
William Dunphey
Oh my goodness. I'm going to personally refrain from commenting on anything that's data mined because I know that there's still a lot of question marks about it, but that is interesting. I will be very excited to see if new changes come to the game eventually. um Yeah, that actually could be pretty pretty meaningful down the stretch if it if it does happen because it's something that people have talked about for years.
02:20:02
William Dunphey
ah Countdown to Worlds in Anaheim. You now have just over three months. You have 92 days until June 13th, which is the kickoff for the North America internationals.
02:20:13
William Dunphey
That's the last chance to get championship points to qualify for the World Championships in Anaheim. So if you are racing within your region, make sure to get your local cups and challenges done and to get your best finishes in as soon as you can, because obviously you don't want to wait until the last minute because that's just some added pressure.
02:20:31
William Dunphey
Upcoming in-game events, we've got four that I wanted to mention real briefly. The first is that March 18th spotlight hour is Shelder spotlight hour with two times catch Stardust. You know, it took a few years, but I think Niantic is catching on to the idea.
02:20:44
William Dunphey
And now Scopely is catching on to the idea that we like Paris. We like Trubbish. We like... um
02:20:50
zzweilous
Thank you.
02:20:51
William Dunphey
Sheldr as our Stardust bonus Pokemon, and they're stacking that. So make sure to pick up Sheldr with two times catch Stardust. Cloyster, not viable really in Great League or Ultra League, but the Stardust rewards are undeniable.
02:21:03
William Dunphey
Also on the 19th, Deep Depths is a new event that's kicking off the debut of Nickit and its evolution Thievul. Nickit looks a lot like Vulpix. It's a fox style Pokemon.
02:21:15
William Dunphey
And it's evolution. Thievul is a pure dark type. However, with the currently expected moveset, it only goes 12 and 26. That's 12 wins, 26 losses in the open great league meta in the one shields. So is it that viable? Is it going to be competitive?
02:21:30
William Dunphey
Right now, the answer is no. If you shake the eight ball later, it might give you a different response. On March 19th, we have Tapu Coco Raid Hour, which I think is viable for Master League trainers. And then on March 22nd, we have ah the Return of the Gator, Totodial Community Day Classic.
02:21:47
William Dunphey
Question is, is it still the best Hydro Cannoner around, especially when you've got Blastoise, Swampbird, and a myriad of others?
02:21:55
zzweilous
So according to a Twitter poll that I conducted, Gator is very much on like it's on par with Blastoise in terms of what the 330 people that voted in that poll believe will be viable for the next season.
02:22:13
zzweilous
ah Those believe to 38.5% that the best Pokémon. gaiter is going to be the best pokemon 40% believe in Blastoise, and then just under 11% believe in Swampert and Greninja.
02:22:26
zzweilous
So I think that's, like, just just in case, pick up a good Feraligatr, a non-Shadow one. um Maybe that's even the play now against the Lapras in this meta.
02:22:36
zzweilous
um And yeah, just keep it around. It's still a strong Pokémon, even though it might not be as dominant as it previously was.
02:22:43
William Dunphey
Agreed. It's a good opportunity to get Hydro Cannon and not spend any more TMs. I actually have zero charged TMs right now. I spent all of them ah building for Might Mastery. I made a ah whole video where I tried 99 unique Pokemon that got buffs. So everything from Air Cutter, Golbat to Emolga and beyond. I mean, I can't even remember the the crazy picks that I ran.
02:23:09
William Dunphey
Shadow Pidgeot with Air Cutter as well. Speaking of Air Cutter users. ah That video should go up, I think, when Great League returns, just to give everyone kind of a rundown. But yeah, I desperately need TMs. And if you don't want to use a TM on your Feraligatr to give it Hydro Cannon in June when it suddenly becomes viable again, then go ahead and play this event.
02:23:27
William Dunphey
Make sure to evolve some and and have a really fun time. but So whileless this has been a long one, but I think a really good one. I would argue this is one of our best ah episodes that we've done so far. So I want to thank everyone who has come out and listened and enjoyed the entire show. We appreciate you so much, Twastel.
02:23:43
William Dunphey
And um we hope that you are looking forward to more episodes down the stretch. So I'm not sure if you have any closing words.
02:23:51
zzweilous
um I can only agree that this was one of the most fun episodes that I've ever done, and all of them have been fun. So, um yeah, I can't wait to continue where we left off after Stockholm and celebrate Kledo's first championship victory.
02:24:05
William Dunphey
Perfect. Couldn't have said it better. Even though we disagreed on Fortress, I think we can still be friends and still make the podcast. But regardless, Zoyalus, thank you, my friend. Always a pleasure and hope to talk to you again soon.
02:24:16
William Dunphey
And for everyone else listening, thank you so much. And we'll see you in the next one.