-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
NP: UU - Silent Night
- Thread starter reachzero
- Start date
- Status
Encore + Seismic Toss + Toxic makes it quite fast for Clefable to win, genius.
Yuggles
hey that second guy isn't too bad
^ Replace with team building, I've been gone for 3 weeks and have no idea what's good or where to start.
Just use your good teams if you're not familiar. Hopefully, you'll get up to speed. This works because UU never really changes that much underneath the fads.
my thoughts on metagame
grass-types rule - venusaur has been the favorite for a while now because of his durability, sleep powder, and good offensive options - however, tangrowth, torterra, leafeon, and sceptile are all seeing more use and finding unique niches as special defensive pokemon or all out attackers. where are the fire-types to shut them down?? well, to be honest, they are really not the best checks for these grass-types. stealth rock weakness will continue to keep them at bay, while proper prediction and play can keep your grass-types safe. yet another reason jumpluff sees almost no usage is that it swaps those 25% sr drops with fire-types, making it much less feasible. the real best checks for grass-types continue to be weezing and registeel, as there unqiue immunities and ability to function under the pressure of grass-types make them a common switch-in and defense unit.
fire-types aren't bad though! - despite milotic ruling supreme as well as that bad sr weakness, fire-types continue to be the second most dominant type - fire blast from many of the top threats will ohko or 2hko the entier tier except for milotic, chansey, and slowking (possibly clefable). even resisted pokemon take a ton from these 120 stab attacks. all fire-types fill a different role or niche as well, meaning that sometimes you just can't properly prepare for them except by keeping milotic alive - houndoom plays fast sweeper with 2 excellent stabs and nasty plot - as well as a quick way to beat chansey or zam. arcanine plays the role of bulky fire who can dish out punishment but will continue to play check to many of your threats with intimidate, toxic, and morning sun. moltres is playing clean up with fire blast, air slash, hp grass, and roost and enough bulk to survive an attack. even more horrifying than the special attacking fire-types are the physical ones - houndoom and blaziken are the prime examples, particulary the latter, who can make quick work of many of his "checks" with superpower/swords dance/flare blitz/tpunch.
DEFENSE !! DEFENSE !! - if you don't know how to make an offensive team effectively, then you need to stick with solid defensive cores. they provide universal protection except against very hardcore offensive teams (which have tons of problems of their own, and are very rarely used). a well timed attack, can mean the end of many offensive teams if you can predict correctly, and so having that backbone of protection is very good. defense doesn't mean stall, but just defensive pokemon who provide protection against top threats, such as weezing, milotic, torterra, etc.
spiking / blocking - probably the best thing you can do in uu is getting turns to spikes. i lead with omastar and it works everytime, but it can be defensive oma, it can be roselia, it can be any spiker - you just need to plan your double switches effectively. a tier filled with slow pokemon like tangrowth, weezing, chansey, and registeel is just ripe for spikers to shine. to go with every spiker should be a ghost, ready to handle spin blockers - nasty plot mismagius is my personal favorite as it can still set up and sweep, even if they foresight the switch. specs rotom is really an underrated threat rising in popularity - its unique typing and excellent stabs makes everything weary of switching in.
august is da champ
grass-types rule - venusaur has been the favorite for a while now because of his durability, sleep powder, and good offensive options - however, tangrowth, torterra, leafeon, and sceptile are all seeing more use and finding unique niches as special defensive pokemon or all out attackers. where are the fire-types to shut them down?? well, to be honest, they are really not the best checks for these grass-types. stealth rock weakness will continue to keep them at bay, while proper prediction and play can keep your grass-types safe. yet another reason jumpluff sees almost no usage is that it swaps those 25% sr drops with fire-types, making it much less feasible. the real best checks for grass-types continue to be weezing and registeel, as there unqiue immunities and ability to function under the pressure of grass-types make them a common switch-in and defense unit.
fire-types aren't bad though! - despite milotic ruling supreme as well as that bad sr weakness, fire-types continue to be the second most dominant type - fire blast from many of the top threats will ohko or 2hko the entier tier except for milotic, chansey, and slowking (possibly clefable). even resisted pokemon take a ton from these 120 stab attacks. all fire-types fill a different role or niche as well, meaning that sometimes you just can't properly prepare for them except by keeping milotic alive - houndoom plays fast sweeper with 2 excellent stabs and nasty plot - as well as a quick way to beat chansey or zam. arcanine plays the role of bulky fire who can dish out punishment but will continue to play check to many of your threats with intimidate, toxic, and morning sun. moltres is playing clean up with fire blast, air slash, hp grass, and roost and enough bulk to survive an attack. even more horrifying than the special attacking fire-types are the physical ones - houndoom and blaziken are the prime examples, particulary the latter, who can make quick work of many of his "checks" with superpower/swords dance/flare blitz/tpunch.
DEFENSE !! DEFENSE !! - if you don't know how to make an offensive team effectively, then you need to stick with solid defensive cores. they provide universal protection except against very hardcore offensive teams (which have tons of problems of their own, and are very rarely used). a well timed attack, can mean the end of many offensive teams if you can predict correctly, and so having that backbone of protection is very good. defense doesn't mean stall, but just defensive pokemon who provide protection against top threats, such as weezing, milotic, torterra, etc.
spiking / blocking - probably the best thing you can do in uu is getting turns to spikes. i lead with omastar and it works everytime, but it can be defensive oma, it can be roselia, it can be any spiker - you just need to plan your double switches effectively. a tier filled with slow pokemon like tangrowth, weezing, chansey, and registeel is just ripe for spikers to shine. to go with every spiker should be a ghost, ready to handle spin blockers - nasty plot mismagius is my personal favorite as it can still set up and sweep, even if they foresight the switch. specs rotom is really an underrated threat rising in popularity - its unique typing and excellent stabs makes everything weary of switching in.
august is da champ
I've gotta say that Sceptile is one of the most dangerous pokemon in the meta. It's pretty versatile and has the ability to hit from both of his decent attacking stats. The Specs set is always good, the SD set works well, and the SubSeed set is annoying as hell, but in my opinion his best set is the MixTile set.
Sceptile @ Life Orb
Hasty/Naive
Overgrow
EVs: 216 speed, the attacking EVs can be spread according to what you want to KO
- Leaf Storm
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake
- HP Ice/Leaf Blade
This set is really only stopped cold by Weezing and defensive Venu with Synthesis. Aside from those two, nothing can reliably keep on switching in to Mixtile, not even Registeel, who takes a cool 41.2% - 48.9% from EQ if you max out Attack. Sceptile gets outstanding coverage both physically and specially, hitting a crapload of stuff for SE damage. While Sceptile would normally be walled by certain pokes depending on what set it runs (Tangrowth + Leafeon for SD, Moltres + Registeel for Specs, for example), the mixed set can lure most of these 'counters' in and then break them. Judging from June stats, MixTile was almost never used. I suggest you try this set out for yourself. I guarentee you won't be disappointed, just find a way to work around Venu and the now popular Weezing and you'll do fine. Double switches may help you scout in this capacity.
PS: rain dance has basically disappeared. also every other lead is either trickscarf Uxie -.-
Sceptile @ Life Orb
Hasty/Naive
Overgrow
EVs: 216 speed, the attacking EVs can be spread according to what you want to KO
- Leaf Storm
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake
- HP Ice/Leaf Blade
This set is really only stopped cold by Weezing and defensive Venu with Synthesis. Aside from those two, nothing can reliably keep on switching in to Mixtile, not even Registeel, who takes a cool 41.2% - 48.9% from EQ if you max out Attack. Sceptile gets outstanding coverage both physically and specially, hitting a crapload of stuff for SE damage. While Sceptile would normally be walled by certain pokes depending on what set it runs (Tangrowth + Leafeon for SD, Moltres + Registeel for Specs, for example), the mixed set can lure most of these 'counters' in and then break them. Judging from June stats, MixTile was almost never used. I suggest you try this set out for yourself. I guarentee you won't be disappointed, just find a way to work around Venu and the now popular Weezing and you'll do fine. Double switches may help you scout in this capacity.
PS: rain dance has basically disappeared. also every other lead is either trickscarf Uxie -.-
I'm going to have to agree with this. Grass types are really a dominant force in the metagame for good reason. For example I run a simple duo of Swords Dance Leafeon and CB Rhyperior. Rhyperior switches into Registeel and can either scare it away or obviously ko when they stay in for whatever reason. Alot of the time i can predict a weezing switch and get a huge dent with stone edge. Then that allows SD Leafeon to sweep away.
Fire types aren't bad, but their SR weakness really turns me off to them when building teams. Theres no doubt that when you're looking for a strong stall breaker in the UU metagame a Fire type is the best way to go. Blaziken, Arcanine, Magmortar are all three great choices for a stall breaker on any team since they all hit hard with the STAB 120 base power like you said.
Having played with Offense, Balance and Stall in this metagame I will have to say that a more defensive outlook when building teams is the best way to play. Like you said though pokemon that are able to tank hits and deal back like Milotic, Torterra, Venusaur, Weezing, Rhyperior and Clefable are the pokemon we see being used the most simply because they give people things from both ends of the spectrum. Offense and Stall both have their advantages over Balance, but they also have their disadvantages.
Spikes are a driving force in the metagame, because of the constant switching and defensive play. Considering the most commonly used pokemon include ones like Milotic, Venusaur, Rhyperior, Registeel, etc spikes is definitley going to be causing alot of problems for people who rely on those pokemon.
On the other hand though using spikes is very risky for you because it may allow turns for your opponent to set up, or hurt your spiker. Then they can easily use a foresight + rapid spin tactic to get rid of all that you sacrificed to get those spikes up. Its all relative though.
I basically agree with most of things stated by kd24.
KD64 hit the nail on the bat. Grass types in UU... can't get enough of them! I particularly love SD Leafeon. That nice speed numbers mean's that it doesn't quite care about Moltres at all and it can nail it with a powerful double edge. (standard return has a chance of not OHKOing Moltres. That annoying defensive Venusaur gets taken down by 2+ Double Edge too. Many teams are weak to Leafeon, and it's not gimmicky in the slightest. I totally recommend that people try it out.
Everybody and their mother is running Weezing -_-. Further incentive to run Magmortar who takes out the Weezylotic core with ease.
Everybody and their mother is running Weezing -_-. Further incentive to run Magmortar who takes out the Weezylotic core with ease.
Amen to Leafeon. I've been running a SD Cleric set of SD/Leaf Blade/Wish/Heal Bell and it works wonders. Even a resisted hit on most(NOT moltres, though) deals good damage.
I have to agree with kd64 on the defense. My double core team won almost every battle with a combination of psychic, dark, and fighting (I'm not exagerating I can only say almost because of hax). Then I ran into the first Weezylotic combination, since then I've lost nearly half my matches (including every match that used that combo). That Milotic made Weezing invinsible because it walled my 2 psychics and Houndoom. I think it's time I try to make an antimeta game for this current fad.
This seems like a good idea. I use Weezlotic, and know that Exeggutor beats Weezlotic hands down. However, it is beaten by Scyther and Spiritomb. I also use a CM Uxie that could concievably defeat it.
Uxie @ Leftovers
Timid
32HP/252SpA/224Spe
-CM
-Psychic
-Energy Ball
-Substitute
This sometimes works really well, but easily dies to Mismagius, especially CM or NP ones.
I was thinking of trying a mix Magmortar with the moveset Fire Blast, Thunderbolt, Sub, Focus Punch/Cross Chop with a Life Orb. 0HKO and 2HKO Weezing and Milotic combo. My problem is that it doesn't live for long. That Uxie looks promising though. Having recovery would be a nice wish though (no pun intended).
Zam can break through WeezLotic, as can Mismagius.
Timid LO Psychic vs Bold Milotic = 41.2% - 48.9% Guaranteed 2HKO with Rocks + one layer of Spikes
If you have balls like me and use Modest Zam....
Modest LO Psychic vs Bold Milotic = 45.3% - 53.7%
So yeah, WeezLotic has trouble with strong Psychic- and Ghost-types (but pair it with Tomb and you're fucked), and SubSeeders, because Sceptile/Venusaur/Jumpluff can just stall out Weezing.
Also, an alternative special attacker that can handle WeezLotic paired with Spiritomb is Calm Mind + Encore Golduck. It kicks ass.
Timid LO Psychic vs Bold Milotic = 41.2% - 48.9% Guaranteed 2HKO with Rocks + one layer of Spikes
If you have balls like me and use Modest Zam....
Modest LO Psychic vs Bold Milotic = 45.3% - 53.7%
So yeah, WeezLotic has trouble with strong Psychic- and Ghost-types (but pair it with Tomb and you're fucked), and SubSeeders, because Sceptile/Venusaur/Jumpluff can just stall out Weezing.
Also, an alternative special attacker that can handle WeezLotic paired with Spiritomb is Calm Mind + Encore Golduck. It kicks ass.
This set was suggested by bad ass a couple pages back, and yeah it pretty much tears apart stall teams with the Weezlotic core. I wouldn't recommend using Life Orb as the item since Sub and SR already wear it down enough. Expert Belt is enough to secure the 2HKO on Milotic as you Sub on the switch. Unless you're Thund and run like freaking max/max+ special defense. And when Tbolt paralyzes, Milo never gets parahaxed. That Magmortar still dies really quickly, but it's probably torn some new ones in stall by the time it goes out, which is its job after all.
i wouldn't call it overrated just because one pokemon dismantles it. it is an efficient core for laddering and will help you check nearly all pokemon in top 20. pair it with a simple tomb or registeel, this core becomes extremely difficult to budge. you still have space for 3 pokemon to easen off the pain from weezlotic.
Well round just ended let me talk with reachzero to see what the next move is from here. Let's hope that next tier change something drops down and shakes things up!
- Status