After a strange Dewgong and Gloom team went viral midway through Pokémon Scarlet and Violet Regulation G, the creator has finally come forward with full details on the six Pokémon and the reason behind their mysterious Gloom pick is not what we expected at all.
In a June 4 post on X (formerly Twitter), a Pokémon player who goes by “Biei” claimed ownership of the Dewgong and Gloom team defeating top players in the early Reg. G meta. The player shared the full spreads for the original team and revised team, as well as a YouTube video to demonstrate how to use it. In addition to Dewgong and Gloom, the competitive lineup consisted of Armarouge, Indeedee Female, Ting-Lu, and Lunala.
Back when the odd team first surprised players on the ladder, what initially stood out most was the one-hit knockout (OHKO) moves on Dewgong and Ting-Lu. Fissure wasn’t too surprising on Ting-Lu, a ‘mon that saw a lot of usage in previous Gen IX formats, but no one knew what to expect from Dewgong until they lost to its Quick Claw Horn Drill. As more players reported encountering this Dewgong, we had a better idea of what it was capable of with the moves Aqua Jet, Fake Out, Perish Song, and Horn Drill.
Unlike Dewgong though, we still didn’t know exactly what Gloom was doing there. Many players speculated it had something to do with Gloom’s ability, Stench. For whatever reason, Gloom is the only one in its evolution line to get access to Stench, which gives damaging attacks a chance to flinch the target. This ability naturally pairs well with the Loaded Dice item and multi-hit moves like Bullet Seed, a move Gloom can learn, to increase the odds of landing a flinch.
As it turns out, however, the Gloom on this Pokémon team did not have Bullet Seed or Loaded Dice. Instead, according to Biei’s builds, Gloom’s moveset included Pollen Puff, Sleep Powder, Teeter Dance, and Strength Sap, while holding the Eviolite to make it bulkier. Rather than going for flinches, all of these slsected moves are used as support to put foes to sleep, confuse them, lower their Attack, or heal an ally.
In fact, Gloom’s only offensive move is Pollen Puff, which is more commonly used to heal Pokémon allies than to damage opponents. In other words, the Stench ability isn’t as impactful as we originally thought with this specific Gloom.
That doesn’t take away from how fun the Grass/Poison ‘mon is, though. If anything, it’s just living up to the truly unpredictable nature of this creative team.
