SM Doubles OU Hot Air Balloon

Level 51

the orchestra plays the prettiest themes
is a Site Content Manageris a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past SCL Champion

and then you yelled as we beheld / an old maroon hot air balloon


INTRODUCTION
Hi there. I'm Level 51, and in my four and a half years of playing Doubles I've only made two Doubles RMTs, one of which was an Electivire / Liepard team and the other of which was GeoPass. I'm here to either salvage my reputation or to sully it even further with my latest creation, a showcase designed specially for my 2500th post on Smogon but posted 8 posts earlier because I forgot.

As is often the case, the team's journey starts with an offhand remark by a friend. Some arbitrary amount of time ago, SamVGC talked about using Snorlax in one of his SPL games, and to the best of my knowledge he indeed used it and won that game. The replay, however, wasn't particularly impressive to me, so I didn't bother following up on it.

As is also often the case, the final trigger which caused me to start building around Snorlax can be traced back to the official Doubles format, VGC. As either a direct or indirect result of the rising popularity of Snorlax in VGC, I found myself fiddling around with Figy Belly Drum Snorlax + Z-Grudge Alolan Ninetales one night at 2 in the morning. Naturally, it was not a great team, but I realised that Gluttony Snorlax was no slouch, especially with the Recycle + Curse set that was going around the VGC scene at the time. In a moment of serendipity, I found myself lacking the Pokemon I wanted to pair Snorlax with due to the VGC format restrictions, and thus ported the team over to the Doubles OU format. The Recycle + Curse set also popped up in the Creative Sets thread around that time, which made me even more interested in trying it out.

The team has been nothing short of amazing in my experience playing it, bringing two of my alts to over 1700 on the Doubles ladder and qualifying me for the voting reqs on the Jirachi suspect test with a final record of 42-5. Then again, it may be that my standards are just incredibly low.

Nonetheless, I'm rather proud of the team. I think it encapsulates what I've been striving to achieve in my teambuilding for a while now—a team which somehow manages to use silly Pokemon not for the sake of novelty, but for their actual unique value in a niche which can't be filled by any other Pokemon. In this aspect comes the second main goal of this RMT—in writing this I hope to showcase some Pokemon which are severely underrated in the current format, and often just straight-up written off by players who haven't given them a shot. And now the timing is perfect too; with Jirachi leaving the format, I won't be able to use this team exactly as-is, so I may as well share the times I had with in so maybe you, dear reader, could pick something up from it—that's my hope.

TEAMBUILDING PROCESS


Snorlax was obviously the starting point for this team. I thought Recycle CurseLax had a ton of potential as a serious win condition, especially with the omnipresence of such threats as Tapu Lele and the newly-freed Mega Salamence scaring away many of the format's good Fighting-types like Pheromosa or Keldeo or Scrafty, which may otherwise pose some degree of threat to Snorlax.


I've never been a huge fan of actually using Jirachi, but it seemed like just the most natural thing to do here—next to a slow set-up user which gets even slower the further it sets up, having both Follow Me and Trick Room on the same Pokemon provides ridiculous levels of utility. Mid-speed Pokemon—the kind most likely to pose a sizeable threat to a boosting Snorlax—must also be wary of Jirachi's 60% flinch rate with Iron Head should they want to land meaningful hits on Snorlax before it's too late and they're staring down a +4/+4 Snorlax.


One of the worst things that can happen to a set-up attacker like non-Rest Snorlax is that it gets statused. Toxic is essentially a death sentence and puts it on a timer much shorter than the number of turns it needs to effectively perform its role; burns hamper its damage output tremendously and also add the burden of chip damage to the double targets it's probably already sustaining; and even paralysis can prevent Snorlax from moving during a critical turn, making it far less reliable than it needs to be. Tapu Fini was the easy way out for me; simply by its presence it can remove the threat of random 10% chances ruining my gameplan, which is extremely important in a strategy which runs dangerously close to having all its eggs in one basket. Tapu Fini also conveniently provided me with a secondary win condition, since it can stack Calm Minds alongside Snorlax's Curses, forcing the opponent to pick a threat to target down and allowing the other to boost up.


At this point I had one extremely slow Pokemon (which makes itself even slower thanks to Curse), one Trick Room setter, and one Calm Mind user with below-average speed. I decided that I needed some form of naturally fast offense in order to not have the team fold in on itself when faced with fairly quick hyper-offense teams which outdamage Snorlax before it can set up completely. Nature Power Tapu Koko is a set I've been meaning to try for a while, so I decided that it would fit pretty well on the team here, allowing me to net some surprise KOs on opposing Tapu Koko, Zygarde or Fighting-types with a Moonblast or Twinkle Tackle.


I still wasn't satisfied with the amount of natural pressure the team could exert, and I didn't have a Mega, so I decided to add Mega Salamence as another check to potential Fighting-types that might try to mess with Snorlax. Salamence's base 120 Speed also puts it in good stead in clearing out threats for Snorlax outside of Trick Room, since it generally does good chunks of damage on neutral hits too.


With three physical threats, one of which was my team's main win condition, I decided that Intimidate was going to be a rather annoying presence on opposing teams. In particular, Intimidate from opposing Landorus-Therian worried me: Landorus-Therian exerts a lot of pressure on unboosted Snorlax with a potential 70% hit from Superpower and Jirachi / Tapu Koko with Earthquake or even a Tectonic Rage. Naturally, I defaulted to the best Intimidate deterrent I knew: Competitive Milotic. I used Adrenaline Orb Milotic, a set I enjoyed from early VGC 2017, which turns Milotic into a sizeable offensive threat as soon as an Intimidate happens to alight on it.


I soon realised that a double Water-type combination left my team rather open to Tapu Bulu. This is a rather humorous spot to be in, since Tapu Bulu is probably the worst Tapu but it's annoyingly common thanks to frania posting their Z-Trick Room team (sans EVs) and suggesting that people use it during the Doubles Ladder Tournament. Any attempts to reduce the usage of Tapu Bulu will probably merely activate the Streisand effect, a la Dragonite or Life Orb Skymin or 2014+ Hitmontop.

Anyway, I figured a Fire-type on the team wouldn't hurt, at least for the purposes of fighting against the aforementioned Z-TR team, and I knew that I needed a better Charizard switchin than Tapu Fini (which can't do anything back to Charizard and just gets Solar Beamed), so I sprung straight for my preferred Fire-type in the form of fat + fast Substitute Heatran.


Somehow, though, I found that it didn't really fit in very well with the team's overall playstyle, as it was much too defensive a set to help apply the kind of consistent offensive pressure that allows Snorlax and friends to set up. I wasn't comfortable with using a more offensive Heatran set and I realised that it wasn't the best idea to stack my Landorus-Therian weaknesses in this way, so I moved on from Heatran.

I gave Hitmonlee a try as an attempt to play around with the Unburden + Seed combination a bit, and also as a form of Fake Out support. Needless to say, Misty Seed Hitmonlee is not good no matter what speed it is moving at. In the only game I played with it, it did 50% damage to a Mega Gengar and was KOd the same turn.

Eventually, I gave in and decided that, although I had been avoiding it throughout the process of adding an Unburden user, Drifblim somehow put in some sort of work on this team. Shadow Ball allows Drifblim to put some offensive pressure on not only Mega Gengar—which I realised my team had a slight weakness to—but also pesky Tapu Lele + Deoxys-A / Mega Metagross teams; Tailwind provides my team with a secondary way to not get completely trampled by hard Rain teams; Will-O-Wisp can severely hamper Landorus-Therian if the opponent forgets about or is ignorant of Unburden and leaves it in on Drifblim. Drifblim somehow fit a niche on my team, and it's been a very notable presence in most of my battles, as I'll explain further later.

THE SIX
×

Snorlax @ Figy Berry *** miles of thread
Ability: Gluttony
EVs: 100 HP / 144 Atk / 204 Def / 60 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Curse
- Recycle
- Return
- High Horsepower

The great wall itself, standing not only in the ways of Route 12 and 16 but also blocking many an opponent's route to victory. I've noticed that one recurring trend throughout all my Doubles teams is the occurrence of stat stacking, where the team wins by boosting a single Pokemon to such ridiculous levels that it is effectively unstoppable. This is probably because I don't trust myself to play a purely reactive game and adjust to the opponent; on the contrary, I like to play with clear-cut win conditions, a trait reminiscent of my Perish Trap days. Therefore, given the opportunity to use a booster as ridiculous as Recycle Curselax, it was hard to say no.

It's probably pretty obvious what Snorlax does, but for the sake of absolute clarity I'll discuss it again here: Snorlax boosts itself to insane levels of impregnability with Curse, and then goes to town with its Normal/Ground coverage—which achieves perfect neutral coverage on every relevant Pokemon except Celesteela (and, as I might argue later, Drifblim?). While stacking Curse boosts isn't something new to Snorlax—it's done that since 1999—what is new is the existence of the newly-buffed pinch berries, of which the Figy Berry is (the best¹) one. Combined with Recycle, Snorlax gains access to something that looks kind of like reliable recovery, though with about the same degree of similarity as that between Pikachu and Mimikyu. What's further interesting about this form of "recovery" is that in its free turns, Snorlax can "store up" a use of the recovery to be activated the moment its HP falls below 50%; this eases prediction and, more importantly, makes playing Snorlax a lot safer. It was a combination of these factors that drove me to pick Snorlax to build around, and throughout the course of playing this team I didn't regret this starting point at all.

The offensive EVs on Snorlax guarantee the OHKO on 0/4 Tapu Lele at +1 Attack. The defensive EVs were arranged to allow Snorlax to survive a Tapu Lele's Shattered Psyche under Psychic Terrain, while also maximising Snorlax's Physical bulk. More details are available² if you're interested in how I did this.
  • 252+ SpA Tapu Lele Shattered Psyche (175 BP) vs. 100 HP / 60 SpD Snorlax in Psychic Terrain: 409-483 (84.1 - 99.3%)
¹ See Appendix I.
² See Appendix II.

×

Jirachi @ Sitrus Berry *** out of my mind
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 168 Def / 88 SpD
Careful Nature
- Iron Head
- Follow Me
- Stealth Rock
- Trick Room

There is, I suppose, a reason Jirachi was banned. Although Snorlax does not necessarily require Trick Room in order to function, it appreciates being able to get a boost in before it takes a hit, which is not possible without Trick Room. By moving before the opponents each turn, Snorlax takes less damage while getting its boosts up, and a healthy Snorlax is a happy Snorlax. Since Return is based off happiness level, I had better make sure Snorlax is happy. Trick Room also makes it easier for Snorlax to Recycle its berry, since I don't have to worry about predicting whether or not Snorlax will eat its berry this turn and thus whether it'll need to use Recycle by the time it moves.

While Jirachi was primarily meant to provide Trick Room support to allow Snorlax to more easily get boosts in, its function as a redirector was the icing on the cake, taking offensive pressure off Snorlax even outside of Trick Room. Iron Head also plays a similar role in that it causes less attacks to land on Snorlax; as obnoxious as this may seem, it's a very viable way to help Snorlax get more Curses off. Stealth Rock is hardest to explain on this set—it restricts the opponent's switches, psychologically if not through its actual damage output, and gets just enough chip damage off on most sets for Snorlax to feasibly attempt a sweep at +2 or +3 without having to spend two million turns getting up to +6/+6 and probably losing to a critical hit in the process. Should Jirachi manage to stick around until the late-game, of course, getting Trick Room up can easily turn a previously even game into a Snorlax sweep.

As is fairly obvious, this EV spread is copied wholesale from the Gen VI Jirachi analysis. While I realise that I could opt for another Figy Berry to increase Jirachi's effective total HP, I wasn't comfortable with only having a berry that activates at 25% HP, since it doesn't allow Jirachi to avoid the straight-up 2HKOs most teams had adapted to deliver to it.

×

Tapu Fini @ Leftovers *** cold lemonade
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 96 SpA / 12 SpD / 20 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Scald
- Calm Mind
- Protect

Tapu Fini's original function on the team was just to prevent Snorlax from being burned, and while that is an admirable role in itself, it kind of understates Fini's importance to the team. Tapu Fini is, for better or for worse, the best pivot this team has, since thanks to its rather heavy defensive investment it's able to switch in and out without taking much damage from most attacks. If at the mid-game Tapu Fini is still relatively untouched, it can also function as a secondary win condition, boosting alongside Snorlax to split the opponent's focus and overwhelm their team with stat boosts. Tapu Fini also just forms a nice core with Jirachi, where Tapu Fini takes care of most Fire-types not named Mega Charizard Y (Stealth Rocks do that) while Jirachi aids in Tapu Fini's set-up by diverting pressure away from it in a similar manner to Snorlax.

The set itself is rather standard, with the only notable move being Scald over the generally preferred Muddy Water. Generally I don't enjoy Muddy Water because of its propensity to miss at the worst possible times; I also didn't think that Tapu Fini would have much opportunity to set up many Calm Minds with the team's support mainly being directed towards Snorlax, so I wanted a move that could get (Water-type) damage output going straight from the get-go, and Muddy Water's spread damage reduction just hampers its usefulness way too much.

The EV spread is mainly tailored towards the physically defensive side of Tapu Fini's bulk, since I noticed I had a pretty big Zygarde weakness opening up and I wanted to be able to react to opposing Zygarde. Below are the calculations the spread was built around; Tapu Fini has 20 Speed EVs for purposes of speed creep, and the 12 EVs dumped into Special Defense coincidentally let Tapu Fini take a Tapu Koko Thunderbolt in Electric Terrain. A disclaimer: I'm not sure how common 44/0 Landorus-Therian is anymore, but I figured I'd better be safe than sorry. Turns out I look like an idiot anyway.

  • +1 252+ Atk Zygarde Tectonic Rage (180 BP) vs. 252 HP / 128+ Def Tapu Fini: 291-343 (84.5 - 99.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
  • +1 96 SpA Tapu Fini Scald vs. 44 HP / 0 SpD Landorus-T: 330-390 (100 - 118.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
  • 252 SpA Tapu Koko Thunderbolt vs. 252 HP / 12 SpD Tapu Fini in Electric Terrain: 284-336 (82.5 - 97.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

×

Tapu Koko @ Normalium Z *** our own fairytale
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Nature Power
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Protect

When looking at speedy attackers to select for the team, I realised that the only (VR-ranked) Pokemon Snorlax couldn't hit for at least neutral damage was Celesteela. In light of this, I chose to use a Z-move Tapu Koko in order to be able to nab easy OHKOs on most Celesteela builds, save some wild exception like Wacan Berry Celesteela, probably. Since I already had a Tapu Fini on the team, I thought it would be interesting to test out a tech I'd seen come into play in VGC 2017: Nature Power Tapu Koko. With Nature Power, Tapu Koko can finally get around Dazzling Gleam's ridiculously underwhelming damage output to actually feel like you're hitting opposing Dragon-types for super-effective damage. Coupled with the Normalium Z, this was one of the few ways I had to curb the presence of opposing Zygarde—by bringing in Tapu Fini alongside my own Tapu Koko, I had the option to launch a Twinkle Tackle onto an unsuspecting Zygarde. Most Jirachi didn't even try to redirect since they would assume a Dazzling Gleam would be coming from Tapu Koko instead.

Another huge benefit that Nature Power brings is the flexibility in one moveslot, usually allowing me to call it as an Electric-type or Fairy-type move as I see fit, though opposing weathers and Terrain expiration can be a bit of a pain in the long run. This essentially saves one moveslot, letting me run both Volt Switch for further maneuverability as well as an extra coverage move. This coverage move turned out to be the rather more uncommon Hidden Power Fire, which isn't often seen on Tapu Koko; however, in this specific team it helps to patch up a general weakness to Ferrothorn—none of the previous three members are able to touch Ferrothorn unboosted, while Snorlax can Leech Seed Snorlax for huge recovery and threaten Tapu Fini with a Power Whip. The EV spread on Tapu Koko is about as standard as one can get; I didn't know of any reasonable or relevant benchmarks to EV Tapu Koko for, so I just flat out didn't bother.

×

Salamence-Mega @ Salamencite *** the day above l.a.
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 104 HP / 4 Atk / 188 SpD / 212 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Return
- Roost
- Protect

When I first added Salamence to the team, it was the standard MixMence that I always run, with Hyper Voice / Double-Edge / Tailwind in its first three slots. Later I realised that Tailwind is pretty non-essential to the team, and it's especially a waste of a turn if it's a Mega Salamence doing the Tailwind setting instead of going ahead and actually dealing damage to the opposing team.

After ditching the idea of MixMence, I realised that the amount of pressure Salamence can exert with a single Dragon Dance is ridiculous, especially with the opponent already tied down trying to deal with a Snorlax or Tapu Fini boosting out of control. I decided to use Dragon Dance + Return / Earthquake Salamence to somewhat remedy a startling weakness to Nihilego that had somehow crept up upon the team. The original EV spread, for reference, was 116 HP / 184 Atk / 208 Spe with a Jolly Nature to outrun Modest Kingdra in Rain at +1 while surviving Life Orb Tapu Koko's HP Ice 100% of the time. While the set worked out fine, I often found myself wishing I had Roost instead of Earthquake, so I decided to make an even bulkier spread. This spread survives Modest Tapu Lele's Moonblast 15 times out of 16 while still outrunning positive base 100s before a Dragon Dance (mainly so I could hit Mega Charizard Y with a Return without having to set up first). I haven't played as many games with this new set as with the old one, but I have a feeling that Earthquake was probably a better choice on this set. Any feedback regarding this would be much appreciated! (... then again, it's not like the team is playable anymore.)

×

Drifblim @ Misty Seed *** hot air balloon
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 4 HP / 148 Def / 156 SpD / 200 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Tailwind
- Will-O-Wisp
- Baton Pass

Finally we get to the namesake of this RMT, which was in fact the last Pokemon to be added to this team! For those not familiar with Drifblim, its main purpose is to consume its held Seed of choice, activating Unburden and therefore making it the fastest Pokemon on most fields (just shy of Sand Rush Excadrill). While I originally added it for fun just to make use of Unburden, its specific utility to this team was truly surprising. With Shadow Ball alone, Drifblim is able to exert (some amount of) pressure on Lele / Deo-A and Lele / Metagross leads, in particular doing a surprising amount to opposing Tapu Lele. It also helps to deal with Mega Gengar, which could otherwise give this team a lot of trouble with the right choice of third move: Will-O-Wisp and Taunt both spell trouble for Snorlax, while Perish Song just tears down my team, seeing as it's built around the offensive pressure provided by three set-up Pokemon.

Then we get to the support part of Drifblim's moveset! While Drifblim's most obvious method of support is Tailwind, I find that setting up a Tailwind early game isn't really a great move, since nothing on my team has the immediate power to fully take advantage of Tailwind—save Tapu Koko, which doesn't really need the Tailwind anyway. The only reason I'd want to play an early-game Tailwind is to allow Tapu Fini to set up more easily, which isn't generally applicable for most solid teams with present Tapu Fini checks. Will-O-Wisp, instead, is the move I was more apt to click on Turn 1 with Drifblim, despite the fact that by definition Drifblim's Unburden being active implies that Misty Terrain is up. However, Drifblim was often able to get a surprise Will-O-Wisp burn onto opposing Mega Salamence or Landorus-Therian which didn't expect to be outrun by a fat blimp; furthermore, I always had the option to switch Tapu Fini straight into Tapu Koko if I really wanted to burn a key threat such as opposing Tapu Bulu or Zygarde.

While the first three moves are standard on Drifblim—or about as standard as a Drifblim set can get, anyway—I was somewhat at a loss for my fourth move on Drifblim when I was building this team. Scrolling through the list of moves, I bypassed options such as Memento, Thunder Wave, or weather-setting moves—and then I saw Baton Pass. I felt that Baton Pass had lots of potential on this team—after all, if Snorlax is going to be setting up Defense boosts, we may as well help its Special Defense out a bit. Baton Pass also gives a lot of flexibility in one moveslot; whereas weather-setting moves, for example, are really only used to cancel out opposing weather or to neuter the damage output of opposing Fire- or Water-types, Baton Pass can easily be used almost every game to give a boost to either Snorlax, Tapu Fini, or Salamence to make it easier for them to set up and thus for the team to wind up in a favourable position a few turns down the road.

SHOUTOUTS
I reference the same people every time I make a shoutouts section—call it laziness or sentimentality, but the same names just keep popping up as those who have truly influenced the course of my journey here on Smogon, whether it be Pocket and Smogon Doubles (welcome back, by the way!) or the incessant ridicule of Stratos to help me to stop using Perish Trap; whether it be Dawg for being perhaps the closest friend I've never met in real life or SamVGC for being one of the coolest Smogoners I have. Here's a few more for you this time around:
  • rozes and The Wifi Wolfpack for giving me a team to ride along with this SPL, even if I haven't been a great help to you guys :S
  • Memoric and kamikaze for being absolutely phenomenal Tier Leaders who put up with shitty council members like me!
  • Double Team Zapdos for ending my streak in the Battle Tree so I had time to write this RMT.
It's a short list, but this is just a 2.5k post (more like 2.492k tbh). Maybe if I have more time leading up to my 3k post I'll drop like 80 names so that everyone gets a chance of gratification. You can quote me on that.

CONCLUSION
I hope you enjoyed reading this RMT, and maybe I've changed your mind about a certain couple of fat Pokemon. It's been fun to use this team while it was legal, but without Jirachi in the tier anymore—and no replacements that even come close to its ridiculous levels of utility—I can't really ask anyone else to give it a try. Nonetheless, there's an importable below³ if you'd like to take another look at the team as a whole.

³ See Appendix III.

APPENDICES
Appendix I: 50% Pinch Berry Viability Rankings
Tier 1: Metagame-defining berries. If you're not using these berries on your team you had better have a good reason for it.
  • Figy Berry - Wonderful hourglass shape, coupled with a stunning colour palette that screams sophistication (or whispers it, because screaming is most definitely unsophisticated in more than one way). May be setting unrealistic standards for berry dimensions, but if it's in the metagame we may as well use it.
Tier 2: Berries that are generally strong, but can be dead weight in some jams, don't have great matchups vs many Tier 1 berries, or are only particularly useful in a certain type of fruit salad.
  • Iapapa Berry - This is a good berry because when you talk about it you can repeat the last two syllables over and over again and Iapapapapapapapapapapa. While its form is not as refined as that of the Figy Berry, it still has a nice wholesome shape which nets it a well-deserved spot in Tier 2.
Tier 3: Berries which have broad applications on a variety of pastries but are simply less effective than the berries in the higher tiers. This also includes berries which, while tasting good, only fit on a specific type of cake or require heavy glazing but are still tastier than berries in the tiers below.
  • Aguav Berry - This name just sounds horrendous. It rolls off your tongue so awkwardly and ends haphazardly in a rough "v" sound as if it's trying to be Russian but failing. Its green-and-yellow palette isn't doing it any favours, but it's fortunately saved from Tier 4 by merit of its fairly regular size.
  • Mago Berry - Reveals that you're not a -Spe nature, which is important information about your Tapu Fini that you're just giving away for free. I mean, come on, man.
Tier 4: Berries that can only serve a specific role not needed by most bakeries, but still taste excellent.
  • Wiki Berry - Reminds everyone of the times they spent in their youth searching up information from Wikipedia and the subsequent times spent attempting to pretend that they didn't just reference Wikipedia for information for their college thesis. Also not aesthetically pleasing, looks like it's covered in tumours. Easily the worst 50% pinch berry in the format.
Appendix II: On Non-linear Optimisation
The typical guideline for optimising a Pokemon's EVs to hit benchmarks in both defenses is to modify the HP first to hit the easier benchmark, then apply EVs to the other defense stat to reach the other benchmark. Minor tweaks can then done to save EVs. However, Snorlax is a special case; due to its naturally high base HP stat, EVs added to its HP causes a relatively smaller marginal increase in bulk as compared to those added to its defenses. On the other hand, its Special Defense stat is also relatively high, making it a difficult Pokemon to EV.

After I had placed the 144 EVs into Attack to hit my offensive benchmark, I had 364 EVs left, and since I had an Attack-boosting nature, every 4 EVs placed in HP or a defensive stat would lead to a stat increase of exactly one, so I essentially had 91 stat points to allocate. The problem here, therefore, was how to maximise Snorlax's physical bulk while allowing it to survive Tapu Lele's Terrain-boosted Shattered Psyche.

Obviously, to try each individual EV allocation would not be optimal; with the 364 EVs I had left, there are 4278 different ways to allocate them (verification of this statement is left as an exercise for the reader). Rather, this is essentially a problem in non-linear optimisation.



Here's the damage formula in Pokemon, courtesy of Bulbapedia. We can see that the damage done by an attack is approximately proportionate to the ratio of the attacking Pokemon's Attack stat to the defending Pokemon's Defense stat, and thus the damage dealt to a Pokemon as a percentage of their HP is roughly inversely proportional to the product of their HP stat and their relevant defense stat.

Formally, let H, D, and S be the number of stat points added to HP, Defense and Special Defense respectively. To borrow X-Act's Tankiness metrics, we have Snorlax's Physical Tankiness defined as (461+H)(166+D) and its Special Tankiness defined as (461+H)(256+S). I knew I could survive Tapu Lele's Terrain-boosted Shattered Psyche with an investment of 212/0, which gives a Special Tankiness of 512 × 256 = 131584.

Then our problem is defined as the following, for integers H, D and S:



Since I didn't want to mess around with the KKT conditions and whatever and do this manually, I used Excel's Solver function, which uses an optimised guess-and-check method to iteratively move towards the correct answer. Here's a screenshot of the Excel file after it was done solving my optimisation problem:

Appendix III: Importable
Code:
miles of thread (Snorlax) @ Figy Berry
Ability: Gluttony
EVs: 100 HP / 144 Atk / 204 Def / 60 SpD
Brave Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Curse
- Recycle
- Return
- High Horsepower

cold lemonade (Tapu Fini) @ Leftovers
Ability: Misty Surge
EVs: 252 HP / 128 Def / 96 SpA / 12 SpD / 20 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Scald
- Calm Mind
- Protect

out of my mind (Jirachi) @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 252 HP / 168 Def / 88 SpD
Careful Nature
- Iron Head
- Follow Me
- Stealth Rock
- Trick Room

the day above l.a. (Salamence-Mega) @ Salamencite
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 104 HP / 4 Atk / 188 SpD / 212 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Return
- Roost
- Protect

our own fairytale (Tapu Koko) @ Normalium Z
Ability: Electric Surge
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Nature Power
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Protect

hot air balloon (Drifblim) @ Misty Seed
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 4 HP / 148 Def / 156 SpD / 200 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Tailwind
- Will-O-Wisp
- Baton Pass
 
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Pocket

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Innovative team as usual, Level 51! VGC Z-Nature Madness Koko is a nice addition to remove annoying Steels for Curselax / CM Fini / DD Mence. Those 4 would still be potent imo. You may need to adjust the last two slots to deal with Metagross and Charizard Y. Heatran doesn't sound bad, and it can set up Rocks if you still want that. Drifblim is still a nice touch to the team, offering the team guaranteed support thanks to its blitzing Speed. Even after revealing the set I think it doesn't affect Drifblim's effectiveness, as aside from Prankster Taunt there's no way to prevent Drifblim from passing that SpD boost, etc. Plus Drifblim's set is modifiable - you can have Swagger to accelerate Curselax set-up. Disable may also come in handy. It can pass Stockpile defense boosts.

One thing you can try over Drifblim is Inner Focus Oranguru. Gives you the TR support that Jirachi provided, and can half the set up time for your sweepers with Instruct.

Tapu Fini can also play a supportive role by having moves like Swagger / Heal Pulse / Soak over Protect. I didn't know this until recently, but Salamence can receive Swagger boosts without confusion on the turn it uses Roost, so that's neat :d

This RMT was a nice read; Thanks for sharing your team and insight with us, Level 51!
 
Goddang marvellous team you have here, BUT...
" Its green-and-yellow palette isn't doing it any favours"
The aguav berry is THE best berry in terms of looks. I would take it over a mottled-brown lumpy-garlic-bulb any day of the week.
still, very good RMT level 51!
 

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