I don´t play competitive too often, so please take my contribution with a grain of salt. I usually play just to have some fun. That said, here are some sets I like that are a lot of fun to use.
Lampent @ Eviolite
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hex
- Flamethrower
- Pain Split/haze
I think that lampent is very underrated. It´s one of the very few viable fire types in the tier, and the only one that can do an effective defensive set. The great thing about Lampent is that it's not as passive as many other defensive Pokemon, which let it scare out mons like ninjask, first impression fraxure and gourgeist, as well as other defensive pokemon like vespiquen or solrock. It doesn't fear getting trapped by trapinch, unlike other fire types, which is nice. In fact, offensive sets with energy ball can directly threaten non-sucker punch trapinch sets.
Speaking of offensive sets, lampent can also run scarf or specs sets with trick. It plays very similar to rotom, actually.
Noctowl @ Blunder Policy
Ability: Tinted Lens
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hypnosis
- Hurricane
- Heat Wave/roost
- Nasty Plot
A different take on double dance noctowl. Hypnosis can possibly remove the opponents best noctowl switch in, which can be huge. Obviously, it's not reliable at all, but it can be extremely deadly if it works. If you miss a hypnosis or hurricane, you get a free agility boost, which allows noctowl to sweep. Compared to the normal double dance noctowl set, this set has the advantage of better setup upportunity thanks to hypnosis. The downside is that it's much less reliable, obviously. Still, it's a nice set if you want to test your luck.
now we are really delving into meme territory
Machoke @ Choice Specs
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 208 HP / 252 SpA / 48 Spe (speed is to outrun mawile)
Rash Nature
- Fire Blast
- Focus Blast
- Vacuum Wave
- Bullet punch/Knock Off/whatever
Since mawile is everywhere, I wanted a good way to bait it out reliably. Specs no guard machoke is the best thing I could come up with, since it's the only thing with fire blast that draws mawile in like every single time. I don't know what spread mawile usually runs, but specs fire blast OHKO's max HP mawile reliably. fully specially defensive careful varients are still 2HKO'd. specs vacuum wave is a guaranteed OHKO on max HP Stonjourner and pawniard, and it 2HKO's frail fighting-weak Pokemon like Liepard and Persian. The problem with this set is that it relies heavily on surprise factor, It's easily walled by fairies and ghosts. Still, successfully luring in mawile or ninjask can be gamechanging.
Lampent @ Eviolite
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hex
- Flamethrower
- Pain Split/haze
I think that lampent is very underrated. It´s one of the very few viable fire types in the tier, and the only one that can do an effective defensive set. The great thing about Lampent is that it's not as passive as many other defensive Pokemon, which let it scare out mons like ninjask, first impression fraxure and gourgeist, as well as other defensive pokemon like vespiquen or solrock. It doesn't fear getting trapped by trapinch, unlike other fire types, which is nice. In fact, offensive sets with energy ball can directly threaten non-sucker punch trapinch sets.
Speaking of offensive sets, lampent can also run scarf or specs sets with trick. It plays very similar to rotom, actually.
Noctowl @ Blunder Policy
Ability: Tinted Lens
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hypnosis
- Hurricane
- Heat Wave/roost
- Nasty Plot
A different take on double dance noctowl. Hypnosis can possibly remove the opponents best noctowl switch in, which can be huge. Obviously, it's not reliable at all, but it can be extremely deadly if it works. If you miss a hypnosis or hurricane, you get a free agility boost, which allows noctowl to sweep. Compared to the normal double dance noctowl set, this set has the advantage of better setup upportunity thanks to hypnosis. The downside is that it's much less reliable, obviously. Still, it's a nice set if you want to test your luck.
now we are really delving into meme territory
Machoke @ Choice Specs
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 208 HP / 252 SpA / 48 Spe (speed is to outrun mawile)
Rash Nature
- Fire Blast
- Focus Blast
- Vacuum Wave
- Bullet punch/Knock Off/whatever
Since mawile is everywhere, I wanted a good way to bait it out reliably. Specs no guard machoke is the best thing I could come up with, since it's the only thing with fire blast that draws mawile in like every single time. I don't know what spread mawile usually runs, but specs fire blast OHKO's max HP mawile reliably. fully specially defensive careful varients are still 2HKO'd. specs vacuum wave is a guaranteed OHKO on max HP Stonjourner and pawniard, and it 2HKO's frail fighting-weak Pokemon like Liepard and Persian. The problem with this set is that it relies heavily on surprise factor, It's easily walled by fairies and ghosts. Still, successfully luring in mawile or ninjask can be gamechanging.
i dont rly have to go into this because everybody kinda knows by now, but arena trap is extremely stupid and trapinch just perfectly abuses it in this meta. having a thing that can consistently remove stuff like mawile, carkol, stonjourner etc is crazy in a meta in which u need mons like that to keep stuff like ninjask, persian etc real. i assume the ou arena trap ban will happena dnw ill be transitive so i guess no action has to be taken but yeah arena trap dumb
i mercifully havent ran into many of these but this thing is 101% broken, specs simply has nothing in the way of switchins bar like, type null and sdef clef (and even that i think has a chance of dying to 2 specs hurricanes). base 70 speed is really solid for a breaker this powerful in this meta, there's plenty of teams where noctowl can come in on several things and just claim a mon, it's broken beyond question and i dont see anything changing that
i disagree with tlenit's post here, i think throh is absolutely broken. the problem with throh is not that it has no counterplay, but that it a: can circumvent most counterplay because of how many sets it can viably run and b: it is usually just not possible to know what your opponent's throh is running from team preview, so it becomes a game of guessing and pure chance. does my shiinotic counter that throh or does it run pjab? can i safely click synthesis with my gourgeist or will they taunt it? can my defensive mawile pivot in or do they chunk me with storm throw? can my specs noctowl kill it from full or is it av? the problem is that there is not a defined set of throh sets and spreads that are "better" than the rest, so you often can't make a reliable assumption with regard to what it is running and it just comes down to guessing and hoping that your opponent isn't running the throh set that beats your throh answer(s). while it is possible that no one throh set is broken in a vacuum, the sheer versatility of this thing just puts it way over the top for me
fishious rends hits so hard that i often feel like running arctovish or lapras is the only thing u can do to keep this thing real, everything else that can potentially check it either gets worn down too easily (silv-water) or only wins vs specific sets (palpitoad can check choiced sets but hbd/av can freeze-dry it for free). tlenit seems to think it's healthy but he also seems to think the choiced sets are the only good sets, but hbd is probably the best one in the sense that it a: requires zero team support to function and b: is actually very hard to kill because without hazards chip, its great natural bulk really shines. hbd and av sets also don't suffer from the need to predict very much, if your opponent isn't running lapras or an arcto of their own there isn't much reason not to click fishious and chunk something hard. i dont see this thing ever being healthy in this meta, it will always be an overcentralizing threat that can easily adapt to metagame trends (if u guys start running mareanie and pyuku catch me running sub metronome)
this thing is a really weird one. its power level is simply way above most other things in the meta to the point where even if u ban the more immediately problematic forms, different forms that currently see little usage will simply rise to the top and take the place of the previously dominant forms. with this in mind, i think going thru individual vally forms to see which ones are broken will simply take way too much time and effort, so i think an initial blanket ban on all forms is preferred, even if it might cause some "collateral." this does mean that the meta would be reshaped entirely, however, since rn it's silvally: the meta, but i think until pu experiences a power creep post-dlc there is no hope for the vast majority of vally forms to be anywhere near manageable relative to other pokemon in the tier, so it's better to deal with the problem at once so we don't have to deal with continuous instability. if we do want to keep certain vally forms around, i think it's a better approach to "retest" them after a month or two, once the most immediately problematic stuff is gone and the meta has settled a bit
specs glaceon is a lot like noctowl in that its raw power + lack of stab resists makes it nigh impossible to check defensively without resorting to type null, although it does have more niche checks that could potentially keep it real (carkol and klang in particular). currently i like to run av vish + something that can tank 2 specs freeze-dries, which is really less than ideal but i guess it's better than nothing. not the most immediate problem but i think after a few bans this thing becomes unsustainable
i absolutely dont want this thing to get banned but i think depending on what we do and don't get from nu this thing could be too much. lo sheer force, u may have noticed, has almost nothing in the way of switchins. defensive mawile loses to lo because it cant do enough in return and gets sd'd on (also iirc iron head comes close to 2hkoing, never mind the possibility of fire blast), meanwhile other steel types just hate switching into knock variants, mareanie also absolutely cant afford to come in on a knock, fire types not named silvally-fire also hate taking knocks and are often too frail (im experimenting with bulky torracat for a reason). the main things keeping this thing real are its lacking speed and frailty, plus the fact that it has to predict sometimes but there is a strange lack of good steel resists in this meta so it often ends up being able to freely click iron head vs a number of teams. 
im more open to the idea that this thing is broken now that ive been playing around with it more, but i def think it's way lower on the priority list than some ppl appear to believe. think it mostly just benefits a lot from the instability of the meta atm, altho i do think with the right support it can do a lot of chipping with u-turn that could be a bit unhealthy. definitely one we should hold off on looking into until the meta is sorted out a bit more tho, especially since its offensive utility allows it to keep a lot of things in check that would otherwise be a lot more problematic (see: rain dance ludicolo, dual dance noctowl, unburden thievul)
this is rly more about the specific combination of pincurchin + electric seed swoobat than anything else, because without electric seed it's simply too easy to rk swoobat for it to be an issue. with electric seed tho, it can definitely tear thru teams if it has the right moves, defensive counterplay is limited to stuff that can tank a +2 140 bp stored power and can status it in return, which is not a lot. i have also seen electric seed thievul like every other game on the ladder and it functions similarly, with the main difference being that it does not hit as hard immediately, but is even harder to revenge unless u run jask. the lack of viable dark types outside of pawniard and silvally-dark makes this thing kinda annoying to deal with. if either of these mons turn out to be an issue, i think it would be better to look into pincurchin/electric surge/electric seed since they only function this well with specific team support
been seeing ppl saying this is likely broken and like, i can kinda see it but it doesn't feel like an issue atm. there's not a lot that can outright kill it but i think there are plenty of ways to prep for it in building, whether it is thru normal resists with taunt (mawile, onix (run body press!), dusknoir except it sucks do not run dusknoir), setup sweepers (mawile, pawniard, honedge, klang) or simply raw breaking power (cb stonjourner, grapploct, and the broken arcto & throh). feel like this thing will end up being balanced and mostly just catches flak because its amazing bulk seems overwhelming at a glance and the sheer amount of threats to prep for atm can leave ppl unguarded against it, but i think it'll be fine long term. still worth keeping an eye on tho
this thing isn't rly broken it's just supremely annoying to play against and i hate it. dpunch gives u a 1/3 chance to screw whatever ur opponent's machoke check is out of being able to retaliate/heal up/get hazards up/set up/etc and that just kinda sucks, doesn't rly feel competitive. whenever i face a machoke and im not running a colbur geist i dont rly feel like i am "in control" vs this mon so i just wanna mention that i hate this thing and if ur not a coward u should not ever be running no guard dynamicpunch nonsense. if throh does one good thing for this meta it is that its popularity means less machoke and less machoke means less sad termi
is also viable down here. 230 Base Attack off of 1 move is epic.
: I've tried to build a stall team based around cm zee which has more hp than clef and is a bit bulkier so I went with it. 2 wish passers in Glaceon and Spritzee and also 2 heal bell/aromatherapy users in Glaceon and Hattrem. Hattrem helps against teams that would like to hazard stack so it's pretty cool. Pyuku's there for some annoying setup Sweepers and that's almost all about the team. it's biggest weakness might be mold breaker sub throh because it doesn't have any phazer but i think you can still manage to win the 1v1 with cm zee.
