Ladder Smogon Triples

Is M-Lopunny that viable in triples though? I would imagine the opportunity cost of being your mega, and prevalence of talonflame and intimidate users as well as its frailty and inability to hold a focus sash would severely hold back it's potential?
I think trick room can be much more powerful than people give it credit and I think triples may be it's best format- for example using sableye with a mental herb/ aromatiss support, it is impossible to stop trick room being set up without a scrappy fake out from kanga or Lopunny, which can be easily quick guarded no? (Musketeers, talonflame which works well in tr because oF priority etc)

Ie a lead of Sableye/ any ghost with a focus sash, aromatisse and talonflame/ bulky truck room hitter, is extremely hard to stop

Edit: on Gengar, from memory (on phone so can't do calcs, doesn't it miss the ohko on most specially bulky setters? (When taunt isn't an option due to aroma veil)
 
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I agree that Trick Room is incredibly powerful in triples and it's most definitely the best format for Trick Room. With 2 other mons to help trick room get set up turn one, it makes it much more viable. Every possible way to stop trick room can be countered when you have two mons to help you out. Which is pretty annoying because playing against trick room turn 1 can just be annoying 50/50s on whether or not they'll use something like quick guard, snatch, etc. And once trick room is up it's a huge pain to play. You can protect to waste turns but they'll still have enough turns to deal good damage to your team. Since most trick room mons are powerful, it's hard to switch around without taking too much damage. And you can't really make any plays with shifting against trick room either since you're always going to be too slow to pull it off.

From my experience the most reliable ways to stop trick room are fake out + snatch leads, roar/whirlwind(quick guard helps this), and trick room itself.

Fake Out + Snatch is pretty good because you can snatch away any potential quick guards to gurantee that fake out the setter, not reliable against ghost setters though.
Roar/Whirlwind is probably my favorite way to stop trick room since no setter is immune to it, and of all the ways to stop trick room this has the least 50/50s. Quick Guard support with this is ideal and really helpful. These moves are still rather uncommon though so some people don't expect it and may not even try to fake them out.
Using trick room on one of your own mons is pretty reliable as well and you don't have to worry about any immunities that the setter has. Although, there's a lot of 50/50s with this. If you predict wrong you could end up setting up trick room for the opponent instead of reversing it.
 
Roar/ Whirlwind really intrigues me- I didn't know trick room had less priority.

Another idea that's popped into my head (although I'm sure I can't be the first) is an imprison user- Meowstic, sableye and Gardevoir seeming the most viable users of the combo (and maybe uxie and azelf if you're getting creative) although roar/ Whirlwind seems like the way to go. Roar Landorus for example can also serve as a check to terracotta should the opposing terrakion have wide guard support so you are unable to earthquake

Does snatch also steal tailwind?
 
Is M-Lopunny that viable in triples though? I would imagine the opportunity cost of being your mega, and prevalence of talonflame and intimidate users as well as its frailty and inability to hold a focus sash would severely hold back it's potential?
Quick Guard is everywhere in Triples and makes it extremely difficult to use Talonflame as a reliable attacker -the only team I've got Talonflame on I actually use it to set priority Tailwind and then ideally die ASAP- while Ghosts are also common because their immunity to Fake Out is invaluable. Mega Lopunny messes with that, which is priceless.

Intimidate isn't really that common in my experience, barring the odd all-Intimidate team. It's too easy to ignore it with Special attackers or punish it with Defiant/Competitive (And unlike in Singles or even Doubles it's essentially impossible to simply make a good choice in timing to avoid triggering Defiant), and regardless Ghosts are so Physically fragile that even at -1 Mega Lopunny can get in a lot of work against most Ghosts. Mega Lopunny's epic Speed is also useful for getting the edge without having to worry about Quick Guard, and in fact it's so fast that if if you're not looking at Prankster Quick Guard it can probably Fake Out the Quick Guarder, possibly even on the turn it Mega Evolves.

I think trick room can be much more powerful than people give it credit and I think triples may be it's best format- for example using sableye with a mental herb/ aromatiss support, it is impossible to stop trick room being set up without a scrappy fake out from kanga or Lopunny, which can be easily quick guarded no? (Musketeers, talonflame which works well in tr because oF priority etc)
Quick Guard is +3 priority. Fake Out is +3 priority. If your Quick Guarder is Hitmontop, which is by far the most popular choice in Triples, then both of those Pokemon absolutely can Fake Out right through your pathetic attempt at a Quick Guard. Furthermore, in a Trick Room team your Pokemon are probably all going to be as slow as possible (Special exception: Talonflame is popular in Trick Room because of its reliance on priority, though even then it usually runs bulky) so if for some bizarre reason you brought Keldeo into Trick Room (??) odds are that you've done everything you can to drag down its Speed, in which case it can still be Fake Out-ed through in spite of having higher base Speed than Kangaskhan and Lopunny.

I don't think people underestimate Trick Room at all. It's very popular on the ladder, much more popular than the even more obnoxious Terracott.

Ie a lead of Sableye/ any ghost with a focus sash, aromatisse and talonflame/ bulky truck room hitter, is extremely hard to stop
Those three in specific as a lead cannot be Taunted and can be tricky to Fake Out -but they're a lot easier to simply rip up with basic offensive pressure.

Edit: on Gengar, from memory (on phone so can't do calcs, doesn't it miss the ohko on most specially bulky setters? (When taunt isn't an option due to aroma veil)
This is Triples, you shouldn't be assuming it's operating alone. Furthermore, barring what I personally call "stealth Trick Room" it's usually obvious that A: it's Trick Room and B: which Pokemon they lead with is the setter. Ganging up is absolutely viable. Not only that, but Trick Room teams rarely carry Wide Guard, or carry it but don't use it first turn because they're expecting Fake Out and want to block it, so spread moves can really, really mess up an attempt to set Trick Room, possibly costing them half their team to no benefit.
 
Roar/ Whirlwind really intrigues me- I didn't know trick room had less priority.

Another idea that's popped into my head (although I'm sure I can't be the first) is an imprison user- Meowstic, sableye and Gardevoir seeming the most viable users of the combo (and maybe uxie and azelf if you're getting creative) although roar/ Whirlwind seems like the way to go. Roar Landorus for example can also serve as a check to terracotta should the opposing terrakion have wide guard support so you are unable to earthquake

Does snatch also steal tailwind?
Imprison tr is very effective. That's been a really popular set on Gardevoir.

But yeah snatch steals tailwind. Almost all the most important moves in triples snatch can take. Tailwind, guard moves, screens, and other random shenanagins.
 
I'm curious to hear what pokemon and sets you guys have found effective from the unrestricted mons- how have you guys shaped your teams with the more open ruleset?

For example I've been using Taunt/ Skill Swap Deoxys attack to mixed success. A blisteringly fast taunt that can't be blocked by quick guard is often useful, as well as a fast skill swap to mess with terracotta shenanigans. I've found often though when it puts in work it puts in work, but often becomes dead weight when its fragility means its brought down to its sash easily. Not a meta defining set but a fun set nonetheless. Curious to hear what you guys have been using and hopefully develop a little more meta discussion (and maybe provide more of a threatlist/ meta discussion for new players)
 
I far prefer Deoxys Speed to Deoxys Attack in Triples, as it is considerably less fragile, even faster, and hits hard enough in a meta where almost nothing runs bulky. Psycho Boost off Deoxys Speed is a OHKO on Terrakion, for instance, and Ice Beam is a OHKO on Landorus-Therian. (Or Incarnate, for that matter)

I ran Mega Lucario on a Gravity team pre-ORAS, so that was cool. Very fragile and I had a very difficult time deciding on a fourth move, but it was nice to actually use Mega Lucario.

I haven't used anything else banned from OU in Triples, actually. Most of the things that get banned from OU are really, really powerful in a one-on-one context and perform much worse in Doubles/Triples. (Mega Kangaskhan remains powerful and relevant, but even it suffers) Shaymin-Sky's flinch-locking, for instance, is really pretty mediocre in Triples -the nicest thing I can say about it is that most Trick Room teams aren't prepared to handle being repeatedly flinch-locked, and even then a 60% flinch rate is not nearly reliable enough for such a crucial consideration.
 
Mega Salamence is actually really good I think. Does exactly what it did in doubles, it's DD set is pretty threatening and even when you're not at +1 Double Edge does a nice amount of damage to most things. Intimidate pre-mega is really great too, and can help set up DD's if you wanted to. Triples is probably mence's worst format(being the only one it didnt get banned in) but that definitely doesn't mean it's bad. It's most certainly one of the best megas.

And I actually think Shaymin-S is very viable. You don't just have to focus on the flinching aspect of it. It has great Special Attack, Speed, and grass typing can be useful for certain teams especially with a move as powerful as Seed Flare with life orb. It pairs greatly with things like Lando, keldeo and many others. And it obviously has STAB flying attacks which is always great to be able to hit any side of the field you want. With shaymins speed and seed flare, the 80% chance to lower SpDef is really good when you're double targeting something. Almost every team has a bulky water as well so shaymin is great at dealing with those. It also has Earth Power to aid the Flying/Grass coverage so not even steels can switch into shaymin without fear.
 
With the exception of a few transform Mews and the aforementioned Deoxys Speed and Shaymin Sky, are there any mons banned from battle spot triples that you guys would deem as top tier threats? Any creative or underrated sets you guys have come across?

I far prefer Deoxys Speed to Deoxys Attack in Triples, as it is considerably less fragile, even faster, and hits hard enough in a meta where almost nothing runs bulky. Psycho Boost off Deoxys Speed is a OHKO on Terrakion, for instance, and Ice Beam is a OHKO on Landorus-Therian. (Or Incarnate, for that matter)
Interesting to note, one of the mons i think who really benefits from his extra bulk in this relatively frail metagame is Mega- Swampert- many teams are totally unprepared for its blistering combination of speed (in rain), power and bulk, and due to the fragility of the meta game, with the exception of the occasional bulky grass (cough mega venasaur cough) can often if not one shot, severely weaken most mons to be cleaned up with spread moves or priority later. Bulky waters tend to be a bit of a problem though as spread earthquake doesn't quite do enough, but incredibly common mons such as landorus, terrakion, bisharp, chary (and charx), Salamence, garchomp (fast ice punch), aerodactyl, etc etc are easily taken care of. Swampert due to its bulk and excellent typing also shrugs off most spread moves, resisting heatwave and rock slide, immune to discharge and shrugs off most non stab earthquakes (he doesnt like taking rain boosted muddy waters or specs hypervoices however). Speed control is also difficult as prankster thunderwave users such as thundurus and meowstic cannot rely on their electric status to slow it down. A good partner for M-Swampert, (other than the obvious politoed) is Zapdos, as it can threaten other rain and sun, swamperts most threatening opposing weathers, can provide extra tailwind support for teams that try to outspeed rain boosted swampert, is immune to earthquake (and swampert is immune to its discharge) and hits with an extremely strong stab thunder under rain.
 
are there any mons banned from battle spot triples that you guys would deem as top tier threats?
Mega Diancie and Keldeo are both really good in triples. Diancie's good cause Diamond Storm is actually just amazing. And Keldeo is because a fast special attacking fighting type is super nice, it also has a pretty fast Quick Guard.
 
And I actually think Shaymin-S is very viable. You don't just have to focus on the flinching aspect of it. It has great Special Attack, Speed, and grass typing can be useful for certain teams especially with a move as powerful as Seed Flare with life orb. It pairs greatly with things like Lando, keldeo and many others. And it obviously has STAB flying attacks which is always great to be able to hit any side of the field you want. With shaymins speed and seed flare, the 80% chance to lower SpDef is really good when you're double targeting something. Almost every team has a bulky water as well so shaymin is great at dealing with those. It also has Earth Power to aid the Flying/Grass coverage so not even steels can switch into shaymin without fear.
Oh Shaymin-Sky is plenty nice, my point is that Triples takes the thing that made it broken -flinchlock- and makes that thing kinda meh. Hence why it's not banned and nobody is calling for it to be banned. Shaymin-Sky itself is absolutely good just for the fact that it's a lightning fast, hard hitting Grass attacker that doesn't demand weather support, which is legitimately useful for, among other things, doing Very Mean Things to Rain teams.

It's just that flinchlocking is meh in Triples.

Interesting to note, one of the mons i think who really benefits from his extra bulk in this relatively frail metagame is Mega- Swampert- many teams are totally unprepared for its blistering combination of speed (in rain), power and bulk, and due to the fragility of the meta game, with the exception of the occasional bulky grass (cough mega venasaur cough) can often if not one shot, severely weaken most mons to be cleaned up with spread moves or priority later. Bulky waters tend to be a bit of a problem though as spread earthquake doesn't quite do enough, but incredibly common mons such as landorus, terrakion, bisharp, chary (and charx), Salamence, garchomp (fast ice punch), aerodactyl, etc etc are easily taken care of. Swampert due to its bulk and excellent typing also shrugs off most spread moves, resisting heatwave and rock slide, immune to discharge and shrugs off most non stab earthquakes (he doesnt like taking rain boosted muddy waters or specs hypervoices however). Speed control is also difficult as prankster thunderwave users such as thundurus and meowstic cannot rely on their electric status to slow it down. A good partner for M-Swampert, (other than the obvious politoed) is Zapdos, as it can threaten other rain and sun, swamperts most threatening opposing weathers, can provide extra tailwind support for teams that try to outspeed rain boosted swampert, is immune to earthquake (and swampert is immune to its discharge) and hits with an extremely strong stab thunder under rain.
I personally haven't struggled much with Mega Swampert (In part because it has the unfortunate quality of being very, very predictable -they will lead with it and Politoed, and they will Protect first turn), but yeah it's nice just for being reasonably bulky and quite fast with weather support.

Even bringing in Zapdos to support can be tricky -my Gravity team just Fake Outs both Politoed and Zapdos while Talonflame sets Tailwind, and then next turn I outspeed everything and kill Zapdos before it can set its own Tailwind, at which point Mega Swampert is just not as relevant. But it's definitely a good thought.
 
where's rotation

Anywho, subbing on here, since I clamored for Triples for the longest time, so seeing it up is nice.

I've run my Sun team for the longest time (and yet it only has one fire mon, what is this madness). People need to stop underestimating Vivillon; she is the goddess of Triples.
 
where's rotation

Anywho, subbing on here, since I clamored for Triples for the longest time, so seeing it up is nice.

I've run my Sun team for the longest time (and yet it only has one fire mon, what is this madness). People need to stop underestimating Vivillon; she is the goddess of Triples.
Goddess is a huge overstatment. And i'm not underestimating it. It has it's niches but it's not great.
 
What does Vivillon actually do? I've rarely seen anyone actually use it.
Fairly accurate sleep powder with a better speed tier than amoonguss, rage powder, quiver dance, STAB fairly accurate hurricane(that hits any side of the field ofc). It could also use struggle bug, electroweb & tailwind as well.
 
Actually, what's more important is Vivillon's hidden ability Friend Guard, which makes its teammates take only 3/4 damage. This is essentially a 1.33x boost to both of the partners' Defense and Special Defense. However, it's stats are pretty bad, it's 4x weak to rock, and having Friend Guard takes away Compoundeyes so it can't have a 97.5% accurate Sleep Powder.

It does have a signature move called Powder though. It's a status priority move that targets an opponent. When the opponent uses a Fire type move after being hit by Powder, the attack completely fails and the Pokemon takes damage.
 
Friend Guard is kind of the whole reason to run Vivillon.

I run her on my sun team, sitting next to Megazard Y. Thanks to her presence, Megazard (and his usual partner in crime Heliolisk, or whoever else is to his left) soaks up damage like a sponge (he's survived rock attacks before, it's ridiculous). And if Cherrim's also on the field, good luck doing any special damage, like, ever.

And yeah, oftentimes opponents will go "ha ha! I shall use your sun against you with a fire move of my own!". And then they get Powdered on and the move blows up in their face. It's basically a selective Fake-Out that you need to read well, only works some of the time, but can be used past the first turn. She also runs Sleep Powder, Tailwind and Protect, meaning I can put troublesome targets to sleep on the first turn, or if there's no immediate thread (since most people don't bother double-tapping her after her Sash is used up) she lets out her massive farts via Tailwind and at that point unless the opponent goes "surprise Trick Room", that's practically game, alternating between Sleep Powdering troublesome opponents and Protecting should she near death so that her allies stick around even longer.
 
Friend Guard is kind of the whole reason to run Vivillon.

I run her on my sun team, sitting next to Megazard Y. Thanks to her presence, Megazard (and his usual partner in crime Heliolisk, or whoever else is to his left) soaks up damage like a sponge (he's survived rock attacks before, it's ridiculous). And if Cherrim's also on the field, good luck doing any special damage, like, ever.

And yeah, oftentimes opponents will go "ha ha! I shall use your sun against you with a fire move of my own!". And then they get Powdered on and the move blows up in their face. It's basically a selective Fake-Out that you need to read well, only works some of the time, but can be used past the first turn. She also runs Sleep Powder, Tailwind and Protect, meaning I can put troublesome targets to sleep on the first turn, or if there's no immediate thread (since most people don't bother double-tapping her after her Sash is used up) she lets out her massive farts via Tailwind and at that point unless the opponent goes "surprise Trick Room", that's practically game, alternating between Sleep Powdering troublesome opponents and Protecting should she near death so that her allies stick around even longer.
I love looking for niches for underrated mons, but I feel vivillion may not be as good in practice as you make it out to be- I'd love to see some replays if you have any, but particularly when you pair it with charizard as you said, having 2 relatively frail mons 4x weak to the super common rock slide just doesn't seem that alluring to me. Plus having to choose between tailwind and sleep powder, I feel that with charizard as your only offensive presence on the field, especially with its relatively slow speed tier, your putting him under a lot of pressure early. a combination of two of either Heatran, Garchomp, terrakion, scarf Landorus, Aerodactyl or Salamence completely dominates this pairing
 

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Here's a few replays.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogontriples-218496256
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogontriples-218497757
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogontriples-218499428

Also, any chance we can write up Triples guides onto the Smogon pages for Pokemon to go with VGC guides?
Smogon Triples is not yet an official metagame, either in terms of Nintendo or Smogon. We are, however, pushing for Battle Spot Triples analyses together with other Battle Spot metagames. You can find out more in this link below:

PSA: Interested in a Triples metagame with Perish Trap and Dark Void? Find out more about it here!
 
Just curious if the tier leaders have considered suspecting or even just adding more Uber mons to the tier to see how they fair, shake up the meta and further differentiate smogon from the battlespot? I'd be interested to see how non mega Rayquaza, non mega Groudon, ho-oh and non mega Mewtwo would fair for starters. Due to their speed tiers, typing or frailty, I think they would be interesting additions to the game that would be top tier threats without unbalancing. I could be completely wrong, but triples is a different meta to singles and and even doubles, and I for one would be very interested to see how they fit
 
Ho-oh effectively loses one of its biggest disadvantages (Almost nobody uses Stealth Rock in Triples), and meanwhile it's monstrously bulky and plenty hard hitting with, of course, Sacred Fire access. I'm not seeing it unbanned anytime soon.

Mewtwo is absurdly flexible, lightning fast, and very powerful. While I'd love to run it so I could have another Hurricane user in Rain (And Gravity), it's completely bonkers to unban it in Smogon Triples.

Groudon is also plenty powerful.

Regular Rayquaza is... not overly powerful? Maybe? It's Speed tier is painful...

.... honestly, looking over the list of bans (It's small), regular Rayquaza is the only one I'm spacing on a good argument against unbanning it, which isn't the same thing as saying it's a good idea. It still offers a crazy powerful Draco Meteor, it has access to V-Create, it's the superior weather-block choice by far, and 95 Speed is still outrunning a lot of things -and there's tons of things you can do to support it, like setting Tailwind.
 
Keep in mind, Rayquaza can still use Dragon Ascent in its regular form. So that's a base 120 flying move(hitting anywhere) with STAB coming off 150 base attack. And it has access to Extreme Speed and a variety of other options.

Yeah, DA will lower your defenses and make you a bigger target but it's still absurdly powerful. I don't think i'd agree with it being allowed.
 

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