SM OU Quick Claw Machamp Trick Room

[Ronneberg]

I have heard/read multiple people that said the Trick Room archetype isn't in a good place right now. Is this true? It's possible that I have been operating under a false premise so please correct me if I'm wrong about that. When I researched it, these were my findings. So I decided to create a Trick Room team concept that was more adaptable to get around some of the perceived issues. That's why I added things that I felt could help with this. I don't believe by any stretch my team was perfect. I do believe it was a halfway decent start. I guess we'll see. It may be a fair point which a couple of you already sort of brought up that maybe I am not experienced enough in Trick Room to pull this sort of thing off yet. That could be the case. I still feel differently at this time.

Trick Room is a subgenre of the offense build style and the reason why most Trick Room teams look alike is that the pool of Pokemon that operate well on Trick Room teams to draw from is very limited. That is also why Trick Room is very susceptible to match ups and won't do much against some popular build styles, an offensive build that gets completely blanked sometimes is unfavorable.
Also, because most Trick Room teams look so alike, people know exactly what to do and how to act when facing Trick Room, which makes the general matchup even worse.

But shoving aside all that, some Pokemon are enormously difficult to handle under Trick Room and are the reason why Trick Room, despite all of its drawbacks, still stands strong claiming its nieche.

I'm going to drop Stakataka since its the worst performer on my team and my set is sort of suboptimal anyway.

Jazz music stops

Bronzong and Uxie, starting with Bronzong

In my opinion, Uxie is better, as Memento can be way more useful than Explosion.

 

[Ronneberg]

Magearna @ Electrium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Fleur Cannon
- Flash Cannon
- Thunderbolt
- Trick Room
I think the idea of Z heal bell is actually pretty cool, but IMO it just doesn't work on a trick room team. I know what your thinking, "why do you have like 5 suggestions for Magearna's item????" well its because Magearna is definitely your most customizable pokemon on the team. This pokemon can really do so much, hence why it is ranked S on the VR and is considered by some (including me) to be the best pokemon in OU right now. I use Electrium Z the most because it dicks on Celesteela, which can often times be a bitch to TR teams because of protect leech seed shenanigans. Although all the other items have their merits as well, like for example running leftiez if you choose to run a z move on Stakataka for example. If your team requires a different z move thats fine, but I probably would stray away from that as a whole. Although it is your team and I don't care a whole lot what you do with it, I'm just hear to give my assistance. Possible moves to go with Magearna are: Fleur, Flash cannon, Ice beam, thunder bolt, iron head, or even energy ball. The set I gave hear can easily be changed and I encourage you to try other options.

I agree with pretty much all of this except the lack of Calm Mind. Calm Mind is the key to augmenting Magearna's formidable natural bulk and helps it picking off kills for Soul Heart. Magearna's offensive prowess is good and all, but a non boosted even z-move set struggles to break juggernauts like Toxapex, potentially stalling out the game into a loss. As you said, Trick Room turns are highly crucial and must not be wasted at all times, but Magearna struggles to properly take advantage of said turns without a way to reliably boost its stats.

(although in reality this probably sucks ass lmao)

I've tried it and "sucking ass" is a tremendous understatement.

Rock slide is for zard y and volc.

Nice tag, might try that out myself

Stakataka @ Rockium Z/Life Orb
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
IVs: 15 Def / 0 Spe
Lonely Nature
- Trick Room
- Gyro Ball
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
Stakataka is great on TR, but your just using him in the wrong way IMO. Ditch stealth rock, it saps momentum and Uxie can set them up. Go max attack to... well take advantage of Stakatakas huge attack stat. 15 Defense IV's plus a lonely nature allow beast boost to boost Stak's attack stat rather than defense. I probably wouldn't use shuca berry because you want the highest attack as possible, but if you really want to go ahead. Life orb is for if you are using a z move on magearna. Stakataka's main purpose is to just truck whatever is in front of it.

My saying and this is pretty much the same suggestion I made outside of the item choice.

Bulky TR setter, can be a bit passive at times though.

Z-Conversion with Trick Room is legit good under bolt-beam

Porygon2 @ Normalium Z
Ability: Download
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Thunderbolt
- Ice Beam
- Trick Room
- Conversion

 

[Bold School]

Hi Bold School , I like playing TR a lot, and I think your off to a decent start so I'll give you a couple suggestions.
To comment on if TR is a good playstyle, it has not been good for most of Gen 7. The fact that you have so little TR turns, and its best setters are often mediocre pokemon otherwise (think cress, uxie) it can be pretty matchup based. So TR is not necessarily terrible, its just really hard to justify using the archetype when stuff like Mega Latias+Clef+4 other fat pokemon exist, those type of teams are much more consistent and less matchup based than TR. Don't get me wrong, sometimes you can just run through people with TR, but its not quite that simple.

Thank you for the advice. This seems to affirm at least some of what I was trying to do with improving bad matchups. Of course, doing that at the cost of the benefits of TR in the first place is counterproductive. So it's important for me to strike the right balance.

I think you should check out Shadow Boning Patlop's Mom, it was a very notable TR RMT, and in my opinion does a lot of things right. The team is vey old but its concept is still really good IMO. The team was spammed for number of months and proved to be very good.

It's an interesting team. The Crawdaunt build looks promising since I already plan to try it. I noticed the Mega Mawhile set had no Swords Dance. Would this still be recommended today?

For me, keeping up momentum is KEY in winning with trick room. That is why nearly every single TR team does not run any cleric moves/defog or spin. You are super limited in your TR turns, and why would you want to waste your time using defog or heal bell when you could just hit the target with a huge attack. On paper it may seem great to defog or heal bell to help your team out, but what your really doing is just sapping up all the momentum your team had. The only cleric type move that you should really be using is lunar dance on cresselia, or memento on Uxie which both create momentum. Speaking of Uxie...

The irony here is my Magearna set specifically is designed to tackle this issue and keep momentum with things like Volt Switch. I wanted to create a team which can sustain Trick Room for longer than the average team seem to aim for. Most people seem to be convinced that I went about it the wrong way. I still feel like it has consistently been my best setter.

When I have play it so far, I was able to fit in the occasional Heal Bell and it did work pretty well for me. I would mostly use it 0-2 times a game, depending on opponent status and who they hit with it. Sometimes the only time I would use it is on the Z move Heal itself, which often let my Magearna set up Trick Room quite a few extra times a game. The thing is burns crippled my physical attackers so I felt I needed this.

Unfortunately Golisopod just doesn't cut it in OU, people have tried to make this thing work since day 1 of SM, but its really just not that amazing. You can't say that you tested it and that it works in OU when you have low ladder replays with opponents using non-viable mons.

I don't want to argue about this anymore, but I do feel I need to clarify that it's not just replays. I listed calcs of priority 1HKOs in OU. The replays were mostly just to give people a feel for how the team might play. I was hoping that would save me some explanations. But all it did was turn people against me because they were low ladder. I'm guessing most people didn't even bother to watch most of them. In hindsight, I probably expected too much from people. I rushed this post out in general because Sword and Shield is coming out and my two week check point was coming up. I made several mistakes in the posting process that I think helped set the stage to be more volatile out of the gate than it needed to be.

Now I have used Golisopod on other teams outside of Trick Room and it was good, provided it had proper support like hazard removal and such. The caveat was it had to be on the right kind of team and the playstyle with it took a bit to get used to. The very reason why I put it on this team is because it worked outside of Trick Room for me on other teams. It's priority checks a good deal of the OU meta as is. Under Trick Room, it can use it's slower moves like Leech Life to much greater effect and so is not as hurt by Stealth Rock.

I'm not above replacing it if I can get better damage on a pokemon that has some way to perform outside of Trick Room better than the average abuser. I have to see how potential replacements perform.

->

Your Uxie set is interesting. I sort of like the idea of Magic Coat for a lead. I don't think I would replace Golisopod for it for a number of reasons. The main one is the construction of my team. I have it so I want half of them to be setters and half of them to be abusers. Having 4 setters seems a bit imbalanced, even if one or two of them also appear to be abusers. I would be worried about damage potential if I swapped a primary TR abuser for a passive setter.

Uxie is something I'm already considering to replace Stakataka. That would probably be what I would replace it for.

-> ////a different z move of your choice

I have already stated what I plan to do with Magearna in my last comment. Thank you for the suggestion anyway.

->

This is an interesting set. Only thing I would be worried about is the accuracy on Fire Blast and Rock Slide. But I'll definitely try it. Mega Camerupt was already suggested as a replacement for Mega Ampharos and I believe it is a good idea. I'll have to see if that or Mega Mawhile is better on my team (albeit in different slots) and then go from there.

The mega pokemon I would consider for TR are: Mega Mawile, Mega Heracross, Mega Camerupt, and Mega Bannete (although in reality this probably sucks ass lmao). Their are other slow megas like abomasnow, aggron, or steelix, but they all suck for TR and are not worth considering at all IMO.

Mawhile and Camerupt are definitely my front runners for Mega slots. I don't think I would like Mega Heracross as much. IMO, the rest seem you mentioned pretty bad for this. But I do like the idea of the first two.

-> / and also EV spread change+move change

This is good advice. I've already decided to drop him since I feel he won't fit as well into my team as a lead type Trick Room setter. If I were to use him, I've now been told repeatedly that the Stealth Rock set I used was bad. I can definitely see that since it was my teams worst performer.

Now to talk about our star player...
-> probably any other item haha
Machamp @ Life Orb
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Atk / 4 SpD
Brave Nature
- Dynamic Punch
- Knock Off/Stone Edge
- Ice Punch
- Bullet Punch

I know Machamp was important for your concept of the team, so I am not going to take him off. But quick claw is just so bad man please take it off. Sure, Quick claw may work every once and a while and work. But why use something that works at a very low rate, when you can run an item that makes a pokemon better basically all the time? With quick claw your just banking on luck and hax, that aint it man. I actually super like the idea of Machamp on TR teams so I think I'm gonna build a couple teams around him later on. Life orb seems like a suitable item for more damage, assault vest wouldn't be a bad item either. Knock off is great for getting rid of items lmao, stone edge is to hit stuff like volcarona or pelipper(although a good volc player would never switch into dynamic punch). Ice Punch is their to wack Lando or Gliscor who currently are a problem for the team. Bullet Punch rounds off the moves to hit fairies like clef, and diancie for good damage AND it gives your team priority. Priority is usually important on TR because sometimes its not possible to always be in TR, and that priority helps remedy your low speed.

It's good to hear that someone else actually agrees with me that Machamp could work on a Trick Room team. The thing I like most about Quick Claw on this set is the mind games you can play with it, particularly on a Trick Room team. If you play it properly, it's more about the ability to hedge your bets than overly relying on hax all game. It seems to me that the playstyle surrounding Quick Claw Machamp is far too nuanced and detail oriented for nearly anyone else to accept. They just see an item that is normally nonviable and shut down their brains about it. To be fair, I probably could have explained it somewhat better.

This does not mean I'm totally against changing out the item. It should be noted that I already decided to try Life Orb due to another's suggestion. I had Poison Jab and no Ice Punch on my old spread because Bullet Punch didn't do enough damage on it. I'm not sure if that would change with Life Orb or not. Earthquake did let me hit several things harder than I otherwise could. I'll have to figure out what move spreads work best with the extra damage of Life Orb.

Psychic -> Moonlight
It fixes your issue of staying healthy and you keep mental herb.

This is a good suggestion. I was on the fence about whether to include Moonlight on it. I think you're ultimately right.

Hits hard, has prankster destiny bond and also has TR. Bulky TR setter, can be a bit passive at times though. / Both can be used as suicide leads over uxie, but are usually worse. Hits hard and can synergize well with camerupt if using nature power (allows camerupt to have energy ball in terrain). / Both hit ridiculously hard and have priority, DEFINITELY try these out.

Thank you for the extra suggestions.

Based on the advice of others, I am already putting Bronzong, Crawdaunt, and Azumarill in trial. Tapu Bulu was also already suggested to me, but I felt it was not the best choice out of Trick Room. Mega Bannette is still something I don't think would fit great.

Carbink and Porygon 2 are actually really interesting suggestions that I didn't think of. I don't know if they will fit on my team. They might be interesting choices if I need to prevent stacking type weaknesses on my setters. Since this is one of the issues I found with Trick Room, I'm excited to have these two in my back pocket in case I need them.

Heres a paste of the team, hopefully this team can serve you well, of course it has weaknesses, plus I did this at 1 am so my brain is fried to all hell.
If you have any questions feel free to ask!!

Thank you for the hard work and advice. I will definitely test at least some of this.

 

[Bold School]

Trick Room is a subgenre of the offense build style and the reason why most Trick Room teams look alike is that the pool of Pokemon that operate well on Trick Room teams to draw from is very limited. That is also why Trick Room is very susceptible to match ups and won't do much against some popular build styles, an offensive build that gets completely blanked sometimes is unfavorable.
Also, because most Trick Room teams look so alike, people know exactly what to do and how to act when facing Trick Room, which makes the general matchup even worse.

See this is good information to have, or at least affirm. Now multiple people have told me that, yes, Trick Room teams do struggle from bad matchups. So my premise about trying to improve bad matchups wasn't entirely wrong. Of course, I need to be careful to keep enough of the strengths of Trick Room while doing that. I may have been too far the other way.

But shoving aside all that, some Pokemon are enormously difficult to handle under Trick Room and are the reason why Trick Room, despite all of its drawbacks, still stands strong claiming its nieche.

I think the key now is putting together the right complimentary attackers and setters while also keeping the team a bit more balanced.

Jazz music stops

Lol. I'm sorry. I do love jazz music. Guess we'll have to settle for the blues.

In my opinion, Uxie is better, as Memento can be way more useful than Explosion.

This might be true. I'm also a bit wary of stacking two pure psychic types. I know TR teams have a bit of a limited selection for viable setters and this is one of the limitations. I'll be keeping an eye out on how the setters work together. My goal is to keep the team more type balanced than normal Trick Room teams if I can do it without sacrificing the integrity of it. Not sure how all that would play out. In general, it does feel like a suicide lead type setter would be better for the team.

 

[Icemann]

I don't want to argue about this anymore, but I do feel I need to clarify that it's not just replays. I listed calcs of priority 1HKOs in OU. The replays were mostly just to give people a feel for how the team might play. I was hoping that would save me some explanations. But all it did was turn people against me because they were low ladder. I'm guessing most people didn't even bother to watch most of them. In hindsight, I probably expected too much from people. I rushed this post out in general because Sword and Shield is coming out and my two week check point was coming up. I made several mistakes in the posting process that I think helped set the stage to be more volatile out of the gate than it needed to be.

Now I have used Golisopod on other teams outside of Trick Room and it was good, provided it had proper support like hazard removal and such. The caveat was it had to be on the right kind of team and the playstyle with it took a bit to get used to. The very reason why I put it on this team is because it worked outside of Trick Room for me on other teams. It's priority checks a good deal of the OU meta as is. Under Trick Room, it can use it's slower moves like Leech Life to much greater effect and so is not as hurt by Stealth Rock.

I'm not above replacing it if I can get better damage on a pokemon that has some way to perform outside of Trick Room better than the average abuser. I have to see how potential replacements perform.

You did basically everything right for proving a pokemon's worth which is super awesome because I can tell your very adamant (hehe) about golisopod. And what I said was really harsh for no reason and I apologize for that (it was 1am cut me some slack lol). However your replays are easily discreditable because of the low ladder (which I know sucks because low ladder doesn't ALWAYS mean that the replays arent valid, but 98% of the time they arent) which I know can make a person feel bad because I have been their. I think if you are truly adamant on showing why a pokemon is used, you should explain what makes it better than other pokemon used more commonly. Also, theoretically I could name all of the amazing calcs for Regice because of its huge base 200 SpDf, or calcs for Slakings huge attack, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. I'm not saying your calcs are bad because they are not, but I've seen people try to justify pokemon just through calcs and it never works. I really like that you put time into this RMT and I hope you gain some helpful knowledge from this, and please ignore the people being rude for no reason, thats just how it is sometimes unfortunately .

When it comes to using a pokemon that outperforms golisopod, I'd say crawdaunt is just a better pokemon. Crawdaunt hits harder than golisopod because of adaptibility, is not weak to rocks, and most importantly doesn't have to deal with the super annoying ability that golisopod has. Yes it technically has its uses, but it can really get in the way of things especially on a pokemon weak to rocks.

My saying and this is pretty much the same suggestion I made outside of the item choice.

I changed something about every pokemon on his team, I'm not going to just say "read the above posts", I'm going to explain why I chose to changed that set. All you did was be over the top saying "what did you do to my boy" or "what in jesus christ's name did you think about..." that is so toxic. This person is asking for our help, their not asking for you to make them feel bad about their team. Put yourself in their shoes and read your post out loud please.

But shoving aside all that, some Pokemon are enormously difficult to handle under Trick Room and are the reason why Trick Room, despite all of its drawbacks, still stands strong claiming its nieche.

No, TR does not stand strong, it is almost never used in tournament for a reason. It's wayyyyyy to matchup based to be used often (or at all in tournaments basically). Its fun on ladder because if you know what you are doing you can climb ladder in like 5 seconds.

 

[Icemann]

I probably expected too much from people. I rushed this post out in general because Sword and Shield is coming out and my two week check point was coming up. I made several mistakes in the posting process that I think helped set the stage to be more volatile out of the gate than it needed to be.

I don't think you made any mistakes in your post at all. The people who were trying to "help you" made everything so rude for absolutely no reason at all. Your post is great, you explain what each pokemon does, you have other move options, a fuck ton of calcs, a bunch of replays. You put a lot of thought into this and it shows, although the replays are low ladder, you chose ones that tried to show what the team did which shows that you played a lot with the team.

 

[Ronneberg]

All you did was be over the top saying "what did you do to my boy" or "what in jesus christ's name did you think about..." that is so toxic.

That were jokes

This person is asking for our help, their not asking for you to make them feel bad about their team. Put yourself in their shoes and read your post out loud please.

This person came to the forums to submit the team they've built in order to accumulate criticism and advice to improve not only their team, but upon their team as well. I came to the forums to help people who maybe haven't already made the experience in building that I have and give some advice on what to look out for and maybe some useful tips as well. If I come along as "rude", I don't care, I won't not say something because it could offend anybody, it's just not who I am. So if I think a decision someone has made is "shit" I'm going to exactly say that, if I have the time and nerve for it, I'm going to cement my arguments properly.

No, TR does not stand strong, it is almost never used in tournament for a reason. It's wayyyyyy to matchup based to be used often (or at all in tournaments basically). Its fun on ladder because if you know what you are doing you can climb ladder in like 5 seconds.

The reality is that not everybody will play tournaments and the reality is that Trick Room does claim a nieche in the offense genre in teambuilding.
I do admit my poor choice of words here, I meant that Trick Room isn't unviable. It does have many poor matchups, but so does Sableye stall, so does webs offense, so does fire/water/grass balance, all to a varying degree.

 

[Ronneberg]

I think the key now is putting together the right complimentary attackers and setters while also keeping the team a bit more balanced.

Yes, exactly.

Lol. I'm sorry. I do love jazz music. Guess we'll have to settle for the blues.

So you're really up against Stakataka? Well, it's your team, can't force you to use it.

This might be true. I'm also a bit wary of stacking two pure psychic types. I know TR teams have a bit of a limited selection for viable setters and this is one of the limitations. I'll be keeping an eye out on how the setters work together. My goal is to keep the team more type balanced than normal Trick Room teams if I can do it without sacrificing the integrity of it. Not sure how all that would play out. In general, it does feel like a suicide lead type setter would be better for the team.

The thing about suicide leads is that they fill two (to three) important roles for hyper offensive teams, they get out Stealth Rock/+Spikes, they keep hazards off your side of the field (Taunt, Magic Coat, Magic Bounce, Rapid Spin, etc.) and then they do something else (get up weather, Trick Room, Memento, supporting moves, etc.) after which they die and clear the field for the first big gun to exert enough offensive pressure to keep hazards up. This is why suicide leads are so important for hyper offensive builds, because they fill in important momentum sapping roles without actually sapping momentum. And that's where Trick Room's weaknesses come through the most, it relies on the condition that Trick Room is up in order to work, that is where offensive Trick Roomers like Stakataka and Magearna come in, because they are able to punish the opponent for clearing hazards, the one with attacking, triggering a potentially game ending Beast Boost and the other by Calm Minding up, sweeping clean. So your idea by "building a Trick Room team that also works outside of Trick Room" isn't actually that far away from the concept actually good Trick Room go by.