Exeggutor made it to Worlds Finals. Here’s how.

real youtubers you stick a key tour  today i will talk about worlds 2012   hello my fellow gamers today i'm going  to be doing something a little different   some of you who watch my channel are probably  aware that i am the 2016 pokemon world champion   i almost never mentioned this anywhere  so if you didn't already know before this   don't feel too bad about it today however  we'll be talking about not when i won the   world championships but when i placed second all  the way back in 2012. for whatever reason i don't   often talk about the world championships i've  participated in aside from worlds 2016 despite   the fact that i've played in every one that's  happened since i started competing back in 2011.   funnily enough i started my channel in the  spring of 2016 a few months before i won the   world championships before worlds 2016 however  the tournament i was probably best known for is   the one we're talking about today and the pokemon  i was most commonly associated with was exeggutor   to the point where i even helped run a website  for a year with executor inspired branding because   of when i started my channel and how much my  channel has grown since sword and shield release   i thought this could be a good time to share one  of my favorite teams i've ever made with you all before we talk about the team we have to talk  about the format and the metagame for anyone   unaware the format refers to the pokemon that are  legal per the rules and the metagame refers to the   pokemon that people are actually using within  that rule set 2012 took place in pokemon black   and white and was our first national dex format  in generation 5 meaning nearly every pokemon was   legal aside from the restricted pokemon and  the mythical pokemon unlike every following   generation generation 5 was the last generation  to not have a core gimmick this was a time before   mega evolution z moves or dynamaxx what gen 5  did have however were gems gems back then were   like consumable choice band or choice specs they  had typings and when you used a move of that type   and it connected that move would become 1.5 times  as strong and the gem would disappear afterwards   missing a move or using a movement to protect  would not activate the gem you needed to actually   do damage for that reason 2012 was in large  part defined by a number of powerful gem boosted   moves one of the biggest defenders was lactios  who used dragon gem paired with draco meteor   latios was fast for the format and also had access  to good support moves like tailwind and substitute   when you were evie training your pokemon this  was almost always the first pokemon you would   consider lattias wasn't the only offender though  many players used fighting gem hitmontop to offer   the usual fake out and intimidate support  in addition to a very powerful close combat   not every pokemon needed a gem however pokemon  like tyranitar and garchomp were very popular due   to their excellent natural base stats to me 2012  was the last format before intimidate felt really   necessary the game was newer back then and players  were still figuring out what was really strong   and there was no landorus therian or incinerator  so the general power of intimidate pokemon was a   lot lower because of this physical attackers  were much more viable than they are nowadays   in addition to hitmontop there were two primary  support pokemon cresselia and thunderous bulky   thunderous had an enormous spike in popularity  after ray rizzo won the world championships   with it the previous year and to say it was a  menace would be an understatement thunderous had   access to 100 accurate priority thunder wave  that worked on both electric and dark types   90 accurate swagger with confusion that activated  50 of the time other good supporting moves like   taunt and substitute and one of the highest  natural special attack stats in the game   it could be used with defensive items or offensive  ones like gems it was one of the most dynamic and   frustrating pokemon to go up against we also  have cresselia while not quite as annoying as   thunderous cresselia was arguably the best pokemon  in the game it has incredible natural bulk and a   wide range of supporting moves like icy wind  helping hand trick room and many more here's   a list of every support move the cresselia i  played against in 2012 had at one point or another   chrysalia would sit on the field for ages and  generally be a nuisance disrupting your team   and to make matters even worse if you  underestimated it you might take heavy   damage from a choice spec set or even an expert  belt set that both aaron zhang and i used only   a month before the world championships to win  nationals in the senior and masters divisions   the last thing i'll say about 2012 is that for me  it was the perfect format for competitive pokemon   so many pokemon were viable but there was also a  healthy metagame that developed which made sure it   didn't become too decentralized this is the format  where i made so many weird ideas work for me like   where i got second at regionals with confuse ray  thunder wave wide guard rockslide ridge gigas   it's been fun for me to work on this  video as i've been able to dive back   into this format i love so much so  if you're watching this thank you now let's talk about the team we came here  to talk about even though this video is about   exeggutor i have to explain a bit about the  main strategy of the team before we get there   before nationals i stumbled upon something  interesting i learned about a strategy that   was used in 2010 before he started playing with  venomoth and kyogre where venomoth would use skill   swap on kyogre to reset the drizzle ability and to  give tinted lens to kyogre making its water spout   even stronger this got me thinking about the  move skill swap in my two years playing vgc at   the time i hadn't run into the move skill swap a  single time skill swap is a move that switches the   abilities of the user and the target so it doesn't  offer any damage or speed support most of the time   i decided to look through the list of pokemon  that learned skill swap and i came across   something interesting kercelia got access  to skill swap we've already talked about why   precilia was good but levitate might not seem like  an especially interesting ability to switch around   in most cases immunity to the ground typing  isn't worth using a move slot just to pass around   however that's only in most cases i realized that  if you paired priscillia with heatran you would   form an incredibly potent combination cresselia  and heatran were the central duo of my team   the theory is pretty simple heatran has good  natural bulk and back in generation 5 steel   resisted ghost and dark giving it extremely good  defensive typing heatran had two major weaknesses   super effective moves and its middling speed stat  cristela solved both of these weaknesses like i   mentioned earlier crystalia is extraordinarily  bulky what this means is that it can sit in the   field for a long time without fearing much  i used the move icy wind on cresselia which   allowed me to lower both my opponent's speed stats  so that heatran and cresselia could out speed them   once i had the speed advantage i could attack to  do damage or use substitute with heatran safely   heatran's other weaknesses involved its typing  heatran has three weaknesses ground fighting and   water by using skill swap i can switch heatran's  flash fire ability with chrysalia's levitate   ability taking heatran from a four times weakness  to ground to an immunity additionally i ran the   move sunny day on my cresselia it not only helped  my rain match up which i was worried about it also   removed heat trans water weakness and boosted fire  type attacks heatran's final weakness was fighting   not only did chrysalia have a positive type match  up against most of the popular fighting types at   the time kitran also ran the chapel berry to  mitigate super effective damage from fighting   types with this level of support my heatran  could effectively eliminate all of its weaknesses   the reason this combination was so potent was  because many teams at the time relied on a   few specific tools to deal with heatran the best  example being garchomp at worlds 2012 there were   many games where the advantage i gained by giving  kitchen levitate or by setting up the sun for it   was so enormous that i was able to convert it into  a win it was incredibly satisfying to see how much   one unorthodox move could completely alter the  way games played out i learned throughout the   course of this tournament that skill swap was  a very powerful move even aside from heatran   many pokemon like thunderous relied on their  abilities and i was able to support the team by   passing around my own intimidate or by stealing  an opponent's intimidate to name a few examples   at this point you might be thinking that  hatred sounds like a pain to deal with   but believe it or not we aren't even done  talking about the support for it just yet   this is where we can finally talk about exeggutor executor caught my eye because it had access  to the ability harvest which we'll talk about   in a second but in looking at it i realize  it actually has perfect synergy with heatran   heatran is weak to fighting water and ground all  of which exeggutor resists and exeggutor is weak   to fire bug poison flying ice dark and ghost all  of which he shrunk resisted in generation five   so obviously executor had the typing it needed but  there was more to it than that executor had access   to the ability harvest what harvest does is at  the end of each turn if your pokemon had consumed   a very item during the battle it would have a  50 chance of getting that ferry back there's a   special condition as well that if sun is up that  50 chance increases to 100 percent i already had   some on my team and the perfect defensive solution  for exeggutor i trained my executor to survive the   strongest moves in the format that i could such  as lottie's dragon gem draco meteor i was amazed   in practice as my executor was able to completely  shut down teams that couldn't remove it thanks to   how powerful harvest was despite being trained  totally defensively executor still was able to   do damage thanks to it having a very high base  special attack stand of 125 the same as thunderous   i was on a bit of a weird move kick and so i  decided to run a very strange executor set protect   psi shock leaf storm and power swap power swap  switches changes to the offensive stats with   the target this meant that i could leave storm go  to -2 special attack then use power swap and give   that -2 to my opponent and be ready for another  leaf storm it also theoretically allowed me to   pass intimidates back to my opponents or swagger  to my teammates looking back on it i think a set   with [ __ ] drain and leech seed probably  would have been better but power swap leave   storm definitely had some moments i then added  hitmontop for intimidating support but i ran   a very strange set that was extremely defensive  and had the move rest with the item chesterberry   in hindsight i think this was suboptimal  but 2012 wolf was not going to be deterred   a fun fact about the team is that at the time  between heatre and exeggutor and hitmontop   i resisted every single type at least one time  with hip on top providing intimidate and fake out   support exeggutor's literally unlimited recovery  chrysalia's phenomenal natural bulk and heatran's   insane defensive typing and support the defensive  backboard of my team was extraordinarily strong   i added thunderous for thunderweave support and  made it faster and less bulky than most other   thunderists so i could taunt them before they  paralyzed my whole team unfortunately other people   at worlds 2012 had the same idea so my thundurus  ended up slower than most opposing ones i played   i gave thunderous the electric gems that i could  do a bit more damage i closed out my team with   choice band adamant tarakion this pokemon  provided some much needed damage on a team   that was severely lacking offensively and because  intimidate was much less common and pokemon were   slower overall back in 2012 this drakkien was  effectively just a delete button most of the time   i think a strength of this team was that it really  took advantage of the timer rules back in 2012   each turn you had 45 seconds to make your move and  the battle would end after 15 minutes to pass from   the start of the battle there was so much hp to  chew through and so many passive effects on this   team that if i wanted i could take most battles to  timer my memory is a bit hazy but i believe in my   top eight set against sajin i won the first game  with three pokemon left on his side and four on my   side and the second game with four pokemon left  on each side meaning there was only one pokemon   kayode across both games i mentioned earlier  that this team is one of my favorite teams that   i've ever built but it's also really interesting  to look back on because i think that this team   was where i started building a lot of really bad  habits that would take me years to undo this team   has an absurd focus on defensive synergy and bulk  and is really lacking in offense across the board   it's a good reminder that a team can do well and  have good ideas but still be fundamentally flawed i arrived at worlds 2012 determined to  do better than i had the previous year   when i played six with a trickroom team featuring  emboar world was an amazing experience it was in   kona hawaii and i've been lucky enough to win a  trip thanks to winning nationals this was also the   trip where i met marcus and villa two of my best  friends from pokemon to this day they actually   helped me prepare for my top eight match the night  before despite us not knowing each other very well   the tournament had two phases six rounds of swiss  followed by a top eight cut i went four wins and   two losses losing to south korea's station park  and spain's abel sands and entered top eight   as the sixth seed the funny thing was my first  opponent in the top eight was sagen and my second   was able the match of a concession was difficult  for me he had focus besharp which applied a lot   of pressure to microcelia and tarakion as well  as hitmontop this lead was stronger to my team   because only exeggutor and heatran had protect  making the combination of fake out and besharp   very potent in game one i was able to get around  this by leading my executor and with the knowledge   that i could take a night slash without fainting  i used leaf storm to break bishar's focus ash   to set myself up for success in the rest of  the game thankfully with game one we actually   have footage of and as i mentioned earlier it  ends with a 4-3 win in my favor on the timer   the last turn actually took a full five minutes on  its own unfortunately no record of game two exists   i moved on to top four and was up against my  other loss from the swiss rounds able sans   this is probably a good time to talk about the  stream itself when i started in 2011 my entire   first year there was no stream of the events  community members would take it upon themselves   to bring their own recording equipment in the  hopes of preserving some of the games starting   with worlds 2012 pokemon decided to try streaming  their world championships they brought in gamespot   and although it was good to have some recording  there were a number of problems the commentators   unfortunately didn't understand how pokemon  worked and provided a lot of incorrect information   there was also this fun quirk where they cut mid  game to the other game during top four here's some   footage to give you an idea seems to be working  well all right so now we're going to take a look   at guillermo and ray rizzo oh no sorry that's wolf  wolf glick they're deep in the action right now   now we're taking a look at the gameplay  from uh wolf click and guillermo   castillo diaz i believe wolf is uh on top   with crystalline thundurus what's going on in this  game how many pokemon are left i have absolutely   no clue and i was the one playing as you'll see  they also tended to cut away from the game to   show the players not during the time when players  were thinking but when they were actually playing   here you can see me throwing my hands up because  something happened but unfortunately i have no   idea what it is before we can see what's  happening they cut back to the other game   i hope you enjoyed that 30 seconds of gameplay by  the time they return to my match it's basically   the end of game one nobody has any idea what's  happening but i win the lattice versus heatran   and thunderous end game narrowly a cut back to  the other game follows and once that wraps up we   jump into game two which is about halfway done  i'm able to use tarakion to take out the on top   then position my exeggutor with some icy wind and  sun supports to finish off the tyranitar leaving   only metagross locked into bullet punch when the  battle ends i had managed to beat both my losses   from the day before without losing a game and i  was into the finals of the world championships   side note i actually won every individual game  i brought exeggutor to this entire tournament   the biggest difference between the games i lost  the prior day and the games i won in top 8 was   the fact that i decided to bring exeggutor and it  had really pulled it to wait even though exeggutor   wasn't the main strategy of my team initially the  role it felt was incredibly crucial to my victory   i was in the finals against ray rizzo the  then two-time world champion and the same   person who had eliminated me from top 8  the prior year i was convinced i would   win it would make such a nice story after all  and so i rolled up and promptly got decimated   i had some bad information going in and my game  plan was not as good as i thought it was i think   i also folded a bit under the pressure i wish  i'd been able to give ray a better performance   as this was the last world championships where  he was anywhere near full strength in my opinion   i don't really want to go into detail on the  match here because this video is already a   bit longer than i intended and i didn't  even use exactly to run the finals anyway   but if you'd be interested in watching a  breakdown of how i lost in the world finals   let me know in the comments down below and  thus my world championship run was over   at the time i was really upset having come so  close to winning and getting destroyed but in   hindsight i think i wasn't mature enough to handle  the title back in 2012 and i think if i'd won then   i'd probably have solidified my bad habits and  stagnated really hard looking back i wouldn't   change how i played even though it was a major  failure for me at the time and that's the whole   story it was fun for me to go back through this  bit of my own vgc history so i hope you enjoyed it   if you have any feedback or suggestions for more  videos like this leave me a comment down below um it's me world chip difference baby metagross is one of the few high-end pokemon  that is a strong pick against garchomp and   part of this is 15 minutes uh for play instead  of some of the earlier events which had seven or   eight minute timers yeah and it's a sad thing  to do all right look what's happening here all right that's it we got now it's just one is dragon type so metagross is  you know a good straw a good strong choice against   a garchomp attack at home just looking at the  text on the screen there don't be mistaken this   truly is the world championships i mean there's  uh what appears to be japanese on the screen   and english up top yeah each other is  not super great against metagross because   a lot of his heavy hitting moves are  going to deal less damage to metatron   looks like they may have been a critical hit  it was it was definitely critical heard of uh   they're not quite as sturdy she's kind of  support pokemon design tube not nearly what yeah he's part of the team's swag right is  that i i have heard team swag going about   team swag has been kind of uh you know  slouched i was corrected it's ray rizzo   versus joe wikowski the wolf seriously  looks like rey is uh subbing in uh oh no   what kind of attack was that that looks like well  it was definitely super effective um and i've   seen some some latios being paired up with that  kind of earthquake overall ground attack attacks   uh thundurus also has a hits everybody on the  field attack and who's that other pokemon right   there is that uh and two so he's really focused on  he trans sticking around for the long thunderous   just got dealt a critical hit and guillermo's  got roton and exit drill accidental drill is i   believe ground type yes and as uh you know as  the fighting he's gonna be strong against uh i'm sorry avalanche is one of those you know  moves we're seeing a lot of this weekend yep those   bubbles going up and those bubbles going down are  you know stat pumps or stat debuffs um avalanche   is an ice type mode which you know is a decision  as to what pokemon we're gonna see what types so   you know it's it's a gamble as to what you're  going to see but it's good against fire type   both of ash's pokemon are water types and they're  totally weak against go ahead and hashtag pokey   worlds we'll be checking all of the social media  feeds to take your comments questions concerns   it looks like uh tyranitar just just got  fainted he's done sit down tyranitar so   that's that's the drain that's him healing  himself while attacking um which is

Channel: WolfeyVGC

Views: 176,196

Keywords: Wolfey, Pokemon, VGC, Wolfe Glick, Competitive Pokemon, Pokemon VGC, Pokemon Sword and Shield, twitch, twitch streams, pokemon nuzlocke, nuzlocke, pro gamer, gaming, gamer, hardcore nuzlocke, smallant, ludwig, pokemon challenge, pokemon challenges, alpharad, Exeggutor, VGC 2012, Exeggutor world championships, wolfe glick, wolfe glick exeggutor, wolfeyvgc exeggutor, wolfeyvgc world championships, pokemon world championships, legends arceus, brilliant diamond, shining pearl, BDSP

Id: bwvxotCXJ_Q

Length: 20min 11sec (1211 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021