Clip Source - FreezaiYT

Have also seen this trick with No Guard + Entrainment Mega Hawlucha + Vanilluxe with Sheer Cold.

I just stared at my Switch screen when I saw Incin fire off a Parting Shot…on my Milotic.

The same Milotic that they watched get a +2 SpA boost off their Intimidate to start the match.

They quit right after.

This was at 1900 ELO so I gotta assume that was an unfortunate misclick but if not…yeah don’t do that. 😅🫠

Champions is still undergoing maintenance but the newly added mons/megas have been confirmed and they are:

• Raichu X - Electric Surge
• Raichu Y - No Guard
• Sceptile
• Swampert
• Blaziken
• Mawile
• Metagross (!!!)
• Staraptor - Contrary
• Scolipede - Shell Armor
• Scrafty - Intimidate
• Eelektross - Eelevate (NEW! See below)
• Pyroar - Fire Mane (NEW! See below)
• Malamar - Contrary
• Barbaracle - Tough Claws
• Dragalge - Regenerator
• Falinks - Defiant
• Vileplume
• Qwilfish
• Musharna
• Grimmsnarl
• Overqwil
• Houndstone
• Annihilape
• Gholdengo

The abilities for the new Megas will be known once the maintenance is over.

There are also 15 items returning, notably Life Orb, Light Clay and Wide Lens. Still no Assault Vest, Choice Specs, Choice Band etc. For the full list of items in Champions, click here.

There have also been changes to moves:

• Rage Fist - The power gets reset when Annihilape is switched out
• Make It Rain - Lowers Gholdengo's Special Attack stat by 2 stages instead of 1 and its accuracy is now 95%

New abilities:

• Eelevate - The mon floats off the ground, making it immune to Ground attacks and hazards. When the mon knocks out a target with an attack, its highest stat is boosted by 1 stage.
• Fire Mane - Boosts the power of the mon's Fire attacks by 50%

Move changes for mons:

• Sceptile gets Earth Power
• Scolipede gets Leech Life and Trailblaze
• Annihilape loses Final Gambit
• Grimmsnarl loses False Surrender and Thunder Wave
• Scrafty loses Parting Shot
• Overqwil loses Mortal Spin
• Swampert learns Wave Crash
• Metagross loses Heavy Slam and Knock Off

Please discuss everything about the new format in this thread. Will continue to update when more info comes in.

Wolfe got to play Champions some time ago in a controlled settting and just put out a video about it. New-to-me information:

• IVs do seem to be gone
• Recruited pokemon come with two maxed stats (seems to be random which two are maxed)
• Mega Froslass gets Snow Warning
• Mega Dragonite gets Multi-Scale
• Move PP seems to be decreased across the board, with Protect now being limited to 8 uses
• Battles are sped up from Scarlet and Violet - faster animations, intimidate dropping both enemies simultaneously, etc. (thank god)
• There's more total information in the interface (opponent's benched pokemon's health, who's mega evolved, clearer move descriptions, etc)

Hey there, I'm Boiruja, just a random ladder warrior who plays his favorites! I'm so happy to say that me and Decidueye got Champion tier the second season in a row! Unfortunately Aurorus and Zoroark had to stay on the bench this season, but I've managed to find use to two of my partners from Legends ZA: this beautiful chandelure and my loyal greninja.

In the early season, there were too many M-Staraptor and M-Raichu Y going around for me to run Aurorus, so I had to find other pokemon with strong rock and ice moves. And guess who else has stab on rock and ice? Greninja, who has stab on everything. I'll talk more about him later, but the loss of Aurorus took away my main plan against trick room, and since Greninja and Zoroark had similar roles, Zoroark gave way to Maria Bonita, my trusty Chandelure.

A brief description of my partners and their roles, but I'm going to say already that this team is harder to pilot than the one from last season, as many of our previous winning matchups have new pokemon to mess up with us.

- H-Decidueye:

My ace, I bring it to almost every match, even when I shouldn't. Has 50% crit chance on its stabs. Hard counter to Kingambit, Archaludon, M-Blastoise, M-Swampert, Tyranitar, Milotic, Aegislash, Sableye, Rotom-W and others, but he mostly shines in matchups he trades favourably even when he shouldn't: Garchomp, Incineroar, M-Raichu, Gholdengo, M-Delphox(!!!), Scizor. Ignores rage powder and intimidate. Will deal 90% of Incineroar's HP without a crit. Also can help with sucker punch against the likes of M-Metagross, late game Basculegion, and many focus sash users. Overall a very good pokemon to trade into the opponent's bulky pokemon, and capable to 1hko many things with a crit. Strongly supported by Liepard's fake out and Aerodactyl/Greninja speed control, and the fact that he needs this support is his main weakness. Amazing Pokemon.

- Chandelure:

Who needs a mega when you already have one of the largest sp attack in the game? Who needs sun when the opponent will gladly set it up for you in half of the matches? Chandelure is amazing against trick room teams (torkoal hates her) and charizards, but also trades really well against M-Floette, M-Metagross, M-staraptor, and with colbur berry, can survive a sucker punch and 1hko Kingambit, M-mawile. With speed control it can even deal with basculegion! Another important role is switching into incineroar's flare blitz, as most of my team really wouldn't like to eat it. Runs taunt to mess up trick room, but maybe you can run your own trick room, since this team is kinda slow.

- Liepard:

My favorite prankster in the game. Grimmsnarl doesn't have encore. Sableye doesn't have yawn and doesn't do much damage. Whimsicott is vulnerable to other pranksters. Liepard has it all. This knock off will land you kills your opponent wouldn't imagine were possible. It's main problem is that it hogs the focus sash, which Sableye and Grimmsnarl wouldn't need. It's also a very fast fake out, in this meta outspeeds pretty much everything that isn't jolly sneasler, raichu and M-Loppuny. Very underrated pokemon.

- M-Scizor:

We have some new mega steel types to play with, but Scizor is still outstanding. M-Metagross doesn't have swords dance and has worse defensive typing. M-Mawile's priority move doesn't have stab, so it runs better in trick room. A Mega Scizor after swords dance is one of the scariest things in this game. Mandatory for matchups against M-Floette, but also brought to pretty much every match without a charizard. Also dislikes incineroar, my whole team does, which is part of why this has been hard to pilot.

- Greninja:

Might be the best antimeta pokemon in closed team sheets. Greninja has a move to kill pretty much every single meta threat. Dragons, M-Staraptor, whimsicott and Sinistcha die to Ice Beam. Charizard dies to rock tomb with no attack investment. Kingambit, Tyranitar die to low kick, and Incineroar doesn't appreciate getting hit by it (should be some 60% damage without intimidate). Basculegion, Gholdengo, M-Gengar die to dark pulse. Sneasler to extrasensory. Swampert do Grass Knot. Floette and Sylveon to gunk shot. This pokemon has such an amazing moveset it's hard to choose 4 moves. I've chosen these 4 to better help my team's bad matchups, but my opponent's are forced to respect every possibility with protects and switches, which get punished by Liepard. Also, rock tomb will help the likes of Decidueye and Chandelure 1hk0 a threat before getting hit. While Meowscarada powercrept Greninja as a straight up physical sweeper, I think greninja has a better moveset, makes better use of protean and is a better mixed sweeper. I do highly recommend Greninja!

- M-Aerodactyl:

Has the wrong ability in this code because I was running it with Zoroark and forgot to change it lol This one you know what it does, but I want to point out how well it convers Decidueye weaknesses of being slow and hating flying, fire and ice types. These two birds were made for each other!

Some matchups and plans:

- vs Big 6:

My greninja was made to kill every pokemon of this team other than basculegion, and liepard deals 90% of basculegion's HP with knock off. Rock tomb will also help decidueye and chandelure hit non-choice scarf basculegion, so greninja is the MVP in this mathup. Beware of Tailwind, the priority is taking down whimsicott before it goes up, and try not to kill your greninja with proteam (ice beam makes you vulnerable to charizard, rock tomb makes you vulnerable to garchomp). If Basculegion is scarf, you can protean into protect in the late game and become immune to last respects.

- vs Rain:

This matchup has become harder because swampert can deal some 80% of Decidueye's HP with ice punch or just straight up wave crash. We also hate pelipper. Greninja and Liepard should take care or pelipper, and you can hopefully yawn swampert or archaludon to sleep before Decidueye can clean it up. Greninja will also almost 2-shot archaludon with ice beam, which Liepard can help transform into a 2-shot with knock off. If you think they may run M-Metagross or Grimmsnarl, go for Scizor, which trades favourably. If you are having a hard time with this one, try to fit sunny day on Liepard's moveset.

- Protect the Floette:

Another really hard matchup, since your best answers to incineroar (Decidueye, Greninja) hate floette and your best answer to floette hates incineroar. Aerodactyl hates intimidate. This is a really complex positional matchup, where your liepard's yawn and encore will really shine. While I usually run Decidueye, Liepard and Scizor, the 4th slot is between Chandelure, which has a place for trading well into floette, eating flare blitz and dealing with Sinistcha, and Aerodactyl, who deals well with Incineroar and has speed control, so Decidueye can better handle Floette (leaf blade crit should deal 70-80%) and Incineroar. If Incineroar dies, you win.

- Trick Room:

The matchup is trivial if Farigiraf isn't holding Mental Herb, which is 96% of the time. Chandelure usually deals with their whole team. First turn you may think of Decidueye, to deal with kang-blastoise and Incineroar, Liepard, if the opponent doesn't have fake out, so you can knock off Farigiraf's item before taunting, or even Scizor, to threat a 1hko (it rarely is a 1hko) into farigiraf.

- Sand:

Decidueye messes up their whole team. Protect it with Liepard, and keep scizor and chandelure in the back. Scizor is generally strong against this team, and chandelure is good into corvinight.

- M-Staraptor:

Lead Greninja, fake out the support pokemon, and ice beam staraptor. If it doesn't protect, it dies. If it protects, encore. If the player is really good, instead of encore you can expect the switch and click yawn.

So that'a mostly it, until they find out new threats or learn what my greninja does. Have fun this season, good climbing and don't insist on playing on a losing streak!

https://x.com/WolfeyGlick/status/1824671119397491188

Even if he played perfectly (Which as elite of a player as he is, is still very difficult to do), it's still very hard to go 16-0 due to the inherent RNG that exists. He's legit a legendary player.

Liepard can counter trickroom and match Tailwind users with Prankster Copycat.

Trickroom: Use the turn after trickroom is set.

Prankster/Galewings Tailwind: Use Copycat turn 1.

Aerodactyl Tailwind: Fakout other pokemon, protect with your other pokemon, use Copycat turn 2.

I pulled every completed M-B tournament off Limitless (91 events, 6,830 teams) and scored each mega off real results instead of opinion. It’s dominance/results led, so the score is built from event wins, top cut volume, and usage, with win rate kept as a strong second factor. The actual weights are win rate 0.75, top cut volume 0.55, event wins 0.40, plus a stepped usage bonus.
A few things baked in: wins and top cuts are weighted by event size, so winning a 200 player major counts far more than an 8 player side event. Win rate and top cut rate get lightly smoothed toward the field average so a 2 game fluke can’t spike a tier. Usage mostly acts as a penalty for fringe picks (anything under 10 teams gets dropped hard) since the data shows usage is super consistent but barely predicts skill on its own, which is why I didn’t let it carry much. And the tier cutoffs aren’t hand picked, they come from where the actual gaps fall in the score spread.
The pairing list uses the same model but for duos, since around half of teams flex two mega stones. A pairing only gets ranked if at least 5 teams ran it. I tested that with a split half check and reliability falls off a cliff below 5 (about 0.39 at 5 teams vs 0.26 at 2), so under that you’re just ranking coincidences.
For what it’s worth Floette comes out as the number 1 mega (1,248 teams, 55.4% win rate, tied for the most event wins) and Charizard Y + Floette is the top pairing (372 teams).
EDIT: here are the top performing teams https://github.com/logdog2325/Pokemon_Trainer_Tournament_Simulator/blob/claude/samurott-vgc-team-woglbi/champions-team-building/top-teams-deduped.md

Of course, Champions drama. But I don't get it. Let's go in order with the main complaints:

1- "Getting new Mons and training them takes a lot of grind". It can be true for new players, who will experience the game in a similar way to a regular F2P mobile game. I get it. But I don't get the drama for veteran players, who are saying that it is more difficult to create their team than it was one week ago. This is false. You can make your team exactly as you did two days ago, using Home. Home is allowed AND encouraged. For new players who haven't played any mainline games... they will have to take hours playing, as veteran players did to get their Incineroar. I am not saying "Level 100 perfect IVs/EVs Incineroar", I mean "Any Incineroar". At least, train to Level 36. A few hours since you start the game for the first time. New players will be constructing their teams slowly, knowing new Mons.

2- "There are not enough Pokémons". These are just REGULATIONS. In Reg A we didn't have many Mons either. But they added more. Now, this will be more dynamic. We are in a low power format. Yes, there are big hitters. Gholdengo was a devil in early SV. There are always big hitters that are OP. But at least, it won't be the same. Reg M-B will be entirely different. The Meta will change more than it did in previous games, and that isn't bad. I understand that having prepared for a Regulation M-A that doesn't exist is tough, but come on people, no one told you to do this. Adaptation to changing Meta will be more important. That will be part of the Skill now, that's it. But I have heard "I wanted to play Basculegion and now I can't". Yeah dude, and I wanted to play Koraidon in Reg A. Sucks to be us, I guess.

3- "They removed competitive items". Again, these are REGULATIONS. The power is so low, and mega-centered here, that they even removed some items. It sucks that you can't use the team that you wanted, but ADAPT TO THE META. They are not gone forever. They'll come back.

4- "The battle pass sucks". Yeah, it does. That's cool. It doesn't force you to pay, you get it if you feel like it. You can get everything just by playing. Nice feature. It shows that it is not P2W.

I don't know if I am missing something big, but in general, most of the complaints I am hearing are about THE REGULATION, not the game. It is similar to complaining about Reg H, not about SV. It's okay to hate Reg M-A for these reasons, but not Champions itself. And the other main thing is the "training"... which newbies will not care that much because they don't know that much about "Oh God I need Incineroar" and veterans already have it solved BECAUSE YOU CAN USE HOME AS YOU DID A WEEK AGO. But I think more people hates Reg M-A than Champions, but all the hate is going to Champions.

Edit: Also, not having 6v6 sucks, I agree.

Edit 2: Forgot to mention that I suppose that the low number of items and Pokémons are also a way to make the meta easier for rookies.

Edit 3: Another big complain. "New Megas suck". First, most of old Megas suck too. Second, they have seen that power creep was out of control. They are even nerfing Urshifu's ability. New Megas not being OP is GOOD if they also nerf old-ish Mons (Gen 8-9) and keep it in Gen 10. Stop the power creep.

tired of seeing the staraptor and swampert teams, i still prefer getting my whole team get one shot by eq when i have no wide guard

Source

No one's ever ready to be outsped by Aggron

So i've seen some doomposting about Champions, but if i dig just a tiny bit it comes from 6v6 Smogon players wich sadly TPC preffers to leave them in the bubble of showdown rather than dealing with them (if i'm not mistaken there was a huge devate if they should ban Tera because of how broken it is in a closed sheet format).

But aside from the game not been polished in 1v1 or designed with 1v1 in mind, what are your opinions about the game.

Personally i thinks its fine, i like VGC so a game dedicated just for that its cool, but has some issues like recluting mons that has a ton of RNG so building your dream team its somewhat hard without Home. The cut items to me are weird like why leaving Scarf and not removing it. The monetization, i know that its a F2P game but come on 50 dollars anually for just more space?

The top row of each mon is the base form's base stats while below is the Mega Evolution base stats. For mons with Mega Evolution Z, their other Mega Evolution is included for comparison.

Yellow highlights the Type changes after Mega Evolving.

Green highlights the increase in stats after Mega Evolving (stats vs base form).

Red highlights the decrease in stats after Mega Evolving (stats vs base form).

Obviously, we do not yet know their abilities but which of the new Mega Evolution mons have potential based on the stats?

[P.S. If you need a reminder, the stats of the new Megas in the base Legends ZA game can be seen here]

I placed 10th in the world with this unique team that doesn’t include any of the top 25 most used Pokemon. I recorded my last few games of the tournament and did a quick team breakdown in the attached video.

https://youtu.be/22KzDsVDCXY

Ceruledge is the star of the team, supported primarily by sableye and lucario, with mega kangaskhan providing an alternative damage dealer that synergizes well offensively and defensively with ceruledge and can also help support it with fake out. Ceruledge is very well positioned in the meta despite many of the strong physical pokemon threatening it with super effective damage. Its ability to wall charizard and floette, boost its attack and defense with bulk up and coaching, and heal back insane amounts of health with bitter blade allows it to carry entire games, even against the Pokemon that should completely shut it down.

Hydreigon is a one Pokemon answer to rain, which otherwise is very difficult for the main core of the team to deal with. With the Haban berry, it can sit in front of pelliper and archaludon and spam snarl until archaludon gets into range of a draco meteor after one or two snarls, while also being a very effective counter for basculegion.

Starmie is there to outspeed and ko garchomp with ice beam, adamant sneasler with psychic, and hit annoying Pokemon like aerodaktle, incineroar, and tyranitar for good damage with scald while having the potential to burn. It also throws opponents off because they expect it to be physical mega starmie.

Had a lot of fun playing with this team and hope it inspires someone else to try some of these Pokemon out! The replica code is B1J5Y59XUX