Innovative Concepts

What are some of the most innovative movesets or strategies you've seen while battling? Did they work out for your opponent, or did you shut them down?

It's hard to remember any specific sets as a whole but I am often times thrown off when opponents use more typically defensive oriented Pokemon as offensive threats. I've run into a few things like Choice Specs Tapu Fini, offensive Ferrothorn, Life Orb Clefable, etc and they can be a bit tricky to deal with if you've sent something in that can't actually outright wall them. I don't mind seeing this though, it makes the game much more fun.

in oras i saw (got decked by) & then copied moonblast/flamethrower/thunder wave/softboiled clefable, just standard clef but removing calm mind for the ability to threaten basically everything in some way or another. definitely has its drawbacks compared to the standard, but by the end of oras it felt like flamethrower was so uncommon that you could seriously wound their ferrothorn/scizor/excadrill basically at will so long as they weren't paired with heatran.

in general i think surprise factor can be a bit underrated by many competitive battlers.

I came across a hilarious Snorlax set once that trapped with Waterfall then lowered accuracy with Mudslap and added chip damage with Toxic. It wasn't necessarily good, but it caught me by such surprise that it killed like 4/6 of my team or something and it was certainly creative.

5qwerty once showed me a surprisingly effective Calm Mind Kartana which I'd say is pretty innovative.

Most innovative thing I've ever done myself was use Lanturn as a check to Koko/Zapdos. It's very situational but totally walls them. I can't say it's a particular impressive thing though.

Yes, CM Kart is a stupid janky Pokémon but you can just set up on Ferrothorn/Chansey/other walls and then just 6-0. The pros it has over Physical Kart is that you can stay in vs a lot of fats more (since you heal with Giga Drain), you aren't scared of burns as much or intimidate at all, and also because you get Vacuum Wave.

As for actual jank I've ran into, some dumb stuff like scarf Weavile (why? didn't work well for them) and also Jolteon (which worked pretty well, since it was a Koko check or something). I am probably less prone to noticing innovative stuff since I use really dumb stuff so the threshold for "new" is different for me.

TBH im usually the one utilizing innovative stuff haha.

Spikes Pain Split defensive Quilfish (i innovated this set in gen 4 and the set is still on the smogon analysis with my evs haha), Rest Spikes defensive Roserade (and this too), Spikes Defensive Cacturne/Maractus (and this in gen 4 NU lol!) Curse <insert Obnoxious stall ghost here> in gen 4, sub wisp pain split rotom-a + toxic spikes in gen 4, rest talk whirlwind body slam lax and rest talk roar shuffle raikou in gen 4, Wish Mence in gen 4 and 5, Wish Latias in gen 4, using 2 ghosts on the same team to stop foresight rapid spinners in gen 4 uu, Mirror Coat Suicune in gens 2-4, Mirror Coat Alomomola in gens 5 and 6, Agility Lucario to crush HO teams in gen 4, Tickle Wobbuffet + Pursuit user in gens 5 and 6, Wish defensive wisp Delphox last gen, putting random status moves on random scarfers in gen 4 to cripple counters and checks (hi scarf wisp/hypnosis gengar), future sight/<trapping move> abusing semi stall as an entry hazard last gen and i could continue for hours about the things ive either popularized, innovated, pioneered and messed around with and got high on the ladder with over the past couple of gens lol.

edit:

oh and me popularizing whole teams around volt switch and U-Turn you're welcome! LOL!

https://www.smogon.com/rmt/archive/bw
https://www.smogon.com/rmt/archive/volt_turning_my_way_to_the_top

This team defines Excadrill/Thundurus-era bulky sand offense and made the Volt-Turn strategy popular in BW OU. This team was so influential on the metagame that nowadays when a player uses this team with an Excadrill replacement, which is pretty common, they is said to be using "standard Volt-Turn". Besides popularizing an entire playstyle that was so dominant it even inspired teams in other tiers, Sir Azelf also reached the first spot on the ladder and held it for three weeks. While Volt-turn teams tend to have trouble dealing wit multiple Entry Hazards, Sir Azelf smartly paired his pokemon with the best offensive spinner the OU tier has ever seen, Excadrill. This team was notorious for putting immense offensive pressure on opposing teams due to how powerful Volt-turn was while paired with Sir Azelf's Sand sweepers.

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