#it could be possible with a dlc dex boost but like

[skvaderarts]

These builds use DLC items, so just a heads up! More details about each build are below if you are curious. Thanks for voting! And if you spread the poll, EXTRA THANK YOU! I appreciate it! A larger sample size makes this more fun!

Saint of the Bud: An Arcane/Faith/Dex Scarlet Rot build using the Antspur Rapier with the Poison Flower Blooms Twice Ash of War and the Poleblade of the Bud. The Ant Skull Plate shield is a great contender for this build. I'll also be using spells such as Pest Threads, Pest-Thread Spears, Scarlet Aeonia, and Rotten Butterflies. Will use the rotten stray summon and makes liberal use of crafted items such as rot pots and fly pots. Wears the Full Bloom Chest piece and the Mushroom Crown for a truly unhinged look. Utilizes Maleina's Great Rune/Rykard's Great Rune.

Finger Witch: A Strength/Intelligence build with a possible touch of Arcane. This build specializes in finger weapons and spells. Uses a dueling shield. Both the Gazing Finger and the Ringed Finger scale best with strength, and despite the scaling of the staff that boosts finger sorceries requiring arcane for a spell class that USES NO ARCANE (Fromsoft stop doing crap like this. I like arcane staffs, but this was a weird one to pick for that) I will be using it and possibly adding the oracle bubble spells so that I have something to do with the Arcane requirement late game. It utilizes all of the finger sorceries such as Glintstone Nail, Glintstone Nails, and Cherishing Fingers as well as both finger weapons. One hammer and one colossal weapon. An interesting combo, to be sure. It will also use the new finger summon and the finger robes which are VERY disturbing looking. Utilizes Morgott's Great Rune/ Radahn's Great Rune.

Blasphemous Knight: A Dexterity/Faith (optional intelligence) build that uses the Blasphemous Blade (Which, funny enough, I've actually never tried despite how popular it is!) and the Spear of the Impaler. It included the now-fixed Messmer's Flame Incantations which include Rain of Fire, Messmer's Orb, and Fire Serpent. It may optionally include Rykard's Rancor (which is where in intelligence requirement would come from since it needs a whopping 40 Intelligence!) and could possibly include the Blood Incantations but only if Arcane is added to the build, so that's not likely. The core build is just the Messmer fire incantations and the two remembrance weapons. Wears the Hoslow/Messmer Knight sets. Utilizes Rykard's Rune. Still seems like a fantastic build!

Putrescent Death Bird: A Strength/Intelligence/Faith/character with an optional touch of Arcane for status build-up. Themed after the Death Birds. Wears the Death Gravebird's Blackquill set. The set boosts jump attacks like the Raptor's Black Feathers set in the base game. They specialize in different types of death sorcery. They can cast spells such as Rykard's Rancor, Ancient Death Rancor, Spectrial Rings of Light, Explosive Ghostflame, and Vortex of Putrescence. Not Tibia's Summons, though. I have standards. Putrescence Cleaver, Helphen's Steeple, and the Spirit Glave. The Eclipse Great Shield would be a good pick. Essentially, It's a very fancy frost build. Utilizes Radahn's Great Rune.

Beastial Tree Sage: A Strength/Faith build focused on pure holy damage. (which is shockingly good in the DLC but more tricky in the late main game due to the number of bosses with extreme Holy resistance.) The weapons consist of two colossal weapons that both scale to Strength and Faith and an optional dagger for a faster option if needed. Those are the Great Club and the Shadow Sunflower Blossom. The dagger is the Cnquedea. The Erdtree Greatbow is also a great fit for this build and will be included as an additional ranged option. They would specialize in Beastial Incantations such as Stone of Gurranq and Gurranq's Beast Claw as well as Holy spells like Wrath of Gold, Elden Stars, Land of Shadow, and Crucible Incantations such as Thorns, Bloom, and Breath. Wears Freya's set and uses Radahn's Great Rune.

Fire Prelate: A build focusing on strength and Faith. Utalizes the Prelate's Inferno Crozier and the Cranial Vessel Candlestand. It also uses the Giant's Flame incantations, such as Giant's Flame Take Thee and Flame Fall Upon Them. Uses either the Hoslow Set or the Fire Prelate set for cosplay purposes. A very powerful and versatile fire build. Uses Radahn/Morgotts/Malenia' Great runes. BONK.

Spellblade Cannoneer: A Strength/Int Build using the Moonrithyll's Knight Sword, the Great Mace with Waves of Darkness, and Rabbath's Cannon. It also may use the Jellyfish Shield, Carian Dueling Shield, or the Cuckoo Great Shield. It utilizes Carian Sword Sorcery such as Magic Glintblade, Greatblade Phalanx, Carian Peircer, and Carian Greatsword. It also contains Glintstone Sorcery such as Gavel of Haima, Cannon of Haima, Spiral Shard, and Loretta's Greatbow, and Moon Sorceries such as Rellana's Twin Moons. It uses Relanna/Loretta's armor sets and Radahn's/Morgott's Great Rune.

SO! Thanks for reading! I appreciate your interest in my builds XD If you want the stat sheet for any of these, just let me know and I'll post them! And if you want to see these builds in action, I'll be streaming them on Twitch. I'm SkvaderStreams. Original, I know lol! But feel free to come and lurk. It's a good time! Thanks again! It's always fun having someone to share my build ideas with. If you ever want one, let me know!

Have a great day!

[oh-boy-me]

Very sad to announce that a grand total of zero pokemon teams I built for the boys are possible to build in the Scarlet and Violet base game :pensive:

[pokemon-strategy-dex]

Who needs banned?

Of the new and returning Pokemon to OU, here is who I think should be banned or kept in OU with a bit of reasoning for each. I’m obviously not going to talk about something like Altaria, that’s kind of obvious. I’m just going to cover the Pokemon who were unbanned and the returning Pokemon who were once Uber. since this is a pretty long post, I’m just going to put the names here and then put a read more with my reasoning for each.

Needs Banned Immediately:

Genesect

Melmetal

Naganadel

Zygarde

Will Need to be Banned:

Cinderace

Kyurem-Black

Magearna

Tornadus-T

Can Stay in OU:

Blaziken

Glastrier

Landorus-I

Pheromosa

Spectrier

Needs Banned Immediately:

Genesect:

Genesect gets released into OU every generation and then gets rebanned in like a week or two. This generation shouldn’t be any different. This bug boy is still insane and just rips through Pokemon it shoulldn’t be able to. It does everything, and then some more. It has few reliable answers, and absolutely no reliable ones which can handle all of its sets. Please get rid of this thing as soon as possible.

Melmetal

MY BOYS BACK...and should probably be banned. I love this thing so much. I put it on every team I can and it always puts in so much work. It knocks out everything and tanks every hit thrown at it. Literally nothing takes more than a couple of hits from Melmetal and he just eviscerates Pokemon who are normally quite bulky. It has its checks, but its just so overwhelming for most teams that those checks become mandatory and restrict building. No matter how much it pains me to say it, he needs to go.

Naganadel

Beast Boost is one hell of an ability and now Naganadel gets Spikes! As if that wasn’t broken enough on Ash-Greninja last generation. It sets up and just blows everything apart. Just like in gen 7, Tyranitar is like the only thing that can check it and now Tyranitar is kind of horrible. Even though I love this thing almost as much as Melmetal, Naganadel also needs to go.

Zygarde

Zygarde is one of the scariest Pokemon in the tier right now. It sets up on everything with the sub-coil set and it breaks through everything with the Choice Band set. Its nearly impossible to deal with since common checks last generation like Tangrowth and Landorus lost HP Ice. We also don’t have Gliscor who could kind of handle it. Zygarde is a menace who terrifies me in game and in the team builder.

Will Need to be Banned:

Cinderace:

Cinderace is still an absolute menace in the tier. With the release of the 2nd DLC, a lot of offensive Pokemon were added, but not too many defensive ones. The only real major defensive threats are Landorus-T, Heatran, and Tapu Fini. Cinderace rips all three of these to shreds just like it did all of the other defensive walls the tier had before. The only way Cinderace got worse was the speed creep which came with the dlc, and Cinderace no longer outspeeds the entire meta-game. Even so, I still think that Cinderace has no hard counters and its checks are very limited. As such, it restricts team-building and should return to Ubers.

Kyurem-Black

Kyurem-Black is pretty much the same as Cinderace. It eviscerated the tier’s defensive checks and that hasn’t changed. Kyurem-B is worse at sweeping thanks to things like Melmetal, but it needs banned too. Kyurem-B is still incredibly good and needs banned. I would probably focus on some of the more broken Pokemon first, though.

Magearna

Again the same as Cinderace and Kyurem-B. Magearna was banned because there weren’t any defensive answers to it and nothing has changed. Sure Heatran is pretty great, but Magearna runs Focus Blast. It still sets up and still blows everything apart. The only reason Magearna doesn’t seem completely broken is because of broken Pokemon like Melmetal.

Tornadus-Therian

Tornadus is probably the most unassuming Pokemon on this list. Well Tornadus got a few new tools that make it absolutely broken. Tornadus has Heavy Duty Boots now, which makes the bulkier sets even better than they were last generation. That’s saying something because Tornadus was ridiculous. It also gets Nasty Plot now, making the offensive sets better than they ever have before. Tornadus hasn’t been popping up too much because everyone’s playing with the new toys, but I promise that once the dust settles and a few of the most broken Pokemon get banned, Tornadus will become overcentralizing. For context: it was banned in the national dex meta which is way more ridiculous than the normal meta because it has everything we have plus megas and z-moves.

Those that should stay in OU:

Blaziken

This might be the first generation since it got Speed Boost that Blaziken can stay in OU. Blaziken has one of the worst cases of four-moveslot-syndrome. It needs both of its stabs for obvious reasons, it needs Earthquake for Toxapex, it needs Knock Off for things like Latios, it needs Protect to get the Speed Boost against offense, and it needs Swords Dance to break against bulky teams. If you run the protect set, then you’re going to struggle against bulky teams and probably can’t break Toxapex. If you run the SD set, you’re near useless against offense due to Blaziken’s fragility. You’re also walled by the Lati twins who are really good this generation. I could see Blaziken needing banned in the future, but it certainly doesn’t need to be banned right now.

Glastrier

I’m only including Glastrier because its new. It has a good movepool and a solid attacking stat. But its so incredibly slow and has a terrible defensive typing. It’s insane on Trick Room teams, but its not great otherwise. Its no better than Stakataka.

Landorus-I

Landorus-I isn’t broken yet. And I mean yet because it will be. Losing HP Ice hurt, but I don’t think its enough to make it not broken. It will do what it does every generation. It’ll start off slow and then absolutely destroy the metagame once it settles down. It thrives in a metagame that is fairly uniform and consistent, but struggles in the early stages when it doesn’t know what to run. Give it like three months and this will need banned, but for now it can stay.

Pheromosa

I don’t think Pheromosa is all that good. It’s decent, but without Z-moves, it’s nowhere near what it once was. Close Combat was nice, but it certainly doesn’t make up for its faults. It just doesn’t hit hard enough without a Beast Boost in an attacking stat, and then its kind of slow with how insane the speed creep is. I could see it being broken in the future when a lot of the more broken stuff is gone, but for now it’s just kind-of average.

Spectrier

Spectrier is pretty cool. Pure ghost is always great and its got a pretty great stat spread....but that movepool is atrocious. I know we joke that ghost types only need to click Shadow Ball, but we didn’t mean it literally. The thing runs Mud Shot for gods sake. Its pretty strong and ghost is ridiculous, but it just can’t do enough on its own.

Things like the Tapus and the new galarian birds are good, but they aren’t near ban worthy. Tapu Lele may become suspect in like a year, though.