WolfeyVGC
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Magmar Rental + Stream Vod + Explanation
🕑 Added 2024-02-04 17:29:00 +0000 UTCHey all! Here's everything you need to know about the Magmar team I used to place 5th in the 150+ person online tournament this weekend.
EV spreads + Export: https://pokepast.es/ccd10167ba23e99c
Stream Vod: https://youtube.com/live/Yfi3IDaBWH8
I started with Magmar because that was the Pokemon I wanted to build around. I knew I wanted Protect, Follow Me, Helping Hand, and a Fire move - Follow Me is Magmars main selling point, Helping Hand is amazing on a bulky support Pokemon, Protect makes dealing with Magmar much more threatening, and a fire move so it couldnt be ignored. I went back and forth between overheat and Flamethrower - but in practice flamethrower kept getting random burns so I decided to keep it - I also liked that it couldn't miss. I spent most of my testing with specially bulky Magmar, but I kept running into a Roaring Moon team in practice that was giving me trouble, so I switched to a super physically bulky Magmar that could survive +1 Booster attack tera flying acrobatics from roaring moon. I was worried about Amoonguss so I went with Tera Grass to be able to follow me away spores from my partner. This had the added benefit of making Magmar REALLY annoying for Ogerpon-Wellspring (and non-tera Magmar is really annoying for Ogerpon-Hearthflame).
Flutter Mane pairs really well with Magmar as it benefits a lot from both Follow me and Helping Hand. I just took an old EV spread I had that I believe aims to survive certain moves from Chien-Pao while maxing out speed and getting a special attack boost. I tested fairy feather but flutter really needs to be booster and modest to pick up crucial KOs with Helping Hand tera fairy moonblast.
Zapdos ended up being really good. Without Zapdos my other Pokemon were really slow and I didn't have speed control to help solve the issue. I knew I wanted a scarf Pokemon but Urshifu didn't feel right, and I wanted something that could threaten a KO on Amoonguss. I maxed out speed to be above Glimmora if my scarf got knocked off, and maxed attack to get the most damage possible. I went with tera flying because the idea was that Galarian Zapdos could be protected by follow me and rage powder, and so instead of a defensive tera you prefer an offensive one. Moves are standard, knock off is the one that could change but I found it useful especially against scarf Urshifu.
Amoonguss is another standard set, nothing too fancy here. I went with no speed investment because I wanted a Pokemon that was slower than Ursaluna-Bloodmoon in trick room. I added Amoonguss because I was having trouble with Dondozo and Porygon2 and I wanted at least one grass type - I had Ogerpon-Teal for awhile but in the end dropped it because of Porygon2. Tera Water was my choice here because I had Magmar to help with Urshifu-Dark. Sitrus berry is IMO Amoonguss' most consistent item.
Glimmora was really cool - I wanted a Pokemon that could take advantage of Magmars support, and I needed something to hit Volcarona and Entei as I didn't have a water type. With Helping Hand Meteor Beam KOs Amoonguss, and it's really difficult to get around both Magmar and Glimmora when they can both terastalize. Also attacking either Magmar or Glimmora with a physical attack is super risky. The moves are standard - because I didn't have any explicit speed control, I went with max speed timid Glimmora. This was 100% the correct call as I outsped some Adamant Urshifu and opposing Glimmora. Being able to supplement the damage with Helping Hand was a big plus. Initially I had no bulk on Glimmora but it kept dying to stupid stuff so I took enough special attack out that I was confident I could still KO Amoonguss and put it in HP, and it ended up saving me a few times throughout the tournament. Tera Grass was good because it resisted the water and ground moves that Glimmora is weak to, plus Glimmora naturally beats the fire flying ice poison and bug types that hit grass for super effective.
I needed another physical attacker and I was worried about Ursaluna Bloodmoon, so I added Kingambit. It's incredibly tanky with the assault vest, it means that none of my Pokemon can be intimidated, it's extremely good against tornadus who my other Pokemon don't love (other than Glimmora), it pairs really well with Magmar, it has a priority move to help get around my speed issues, and it's strong against opposing Glimmora who was somewhat problematic. I kept the EV spread simple because I was already surviving life orb earth power from bloodmoon and landorus-incarnate, so I figured there was no need to overcomplicate things. I went with Low Kick instead of tera blast because I wanted to do a lot of damage to bloodmoon, and because tera blast is really best with tera fairy. Tera Dragon was used because of the positive matchup against Ogerpon, and because I felt like my team was strong against flutter mane and chien-pao who are two of the more dangerous Pokemon against tera-dragon.
Overall the team was pretty solid and fun to play, I can't remember the last time I had two Pokemon with redirection on a team and that made it a fun positioning challenge a lot of the time - plus Magmar held its own against a ton of the meta threats. I hope you enjoy using it!
Comments
Hots Hartley
Okay, I get that. Once you get above 1700 in the GC, though, the battles ramp up in difficulty, and I think there's something to be said about crafting gameplans, playing carefully, guessing tera types & items, and such in a high stakes game. Most newer players, even those in Master Ball Ranked, don't realize just how intense and competitive it gets, and you could put that in perspective for people. Maybe consider it for GC 2 or 3.
Wolfe Glick
Sorry for the delay, had a busy weekend - I thought about doing the GC but my primary purpose was to use this team to make a video, and a tournament is a much easier structure to understand as a viewer than something like the GC (IE if I placed like 20th in the GC as a VGC player you'd understand this to be very good, but if you're a newer viewer this is much harder to parse without proper context)
Hots Hartley
Any reason you chose to enter the 150+ person tournament instead of the more hotly contested 24000+ Global Challenge I? It would have been great to see how high this could go in high-stakes 45 games, against some of the top Japanese trainers, before it becomes common knowledge.
