XY NU Don't worry, it's not Combusken-Pass (NU Squad - Needs Help)

[Scarf]

Introduction
So I was bored one day and decided I wanted to build an NU team. So this happened. I'm not too experienced with NU but I figured that wasn't a big deal, seeing as how I can just learn it whilst playing. I got tired of losing to low-ladder garbage like Quick Attack Electivire (.cri) so I decided to get assistance from the forums in not only ways to improve this team but also to hone my NU skills at the same time. Without further ado, let's begin.

The main man himself. I originally wanted to build around Shiftry because I figured that the best way for me to get good at this tier and to learn it is to use the best Pokemon in it. It's apparently S tier too which is cool. But the point is that I like it and it was the first Pokemon I added.

Good ol' Seismitoad. A solid Pokemon in all NU teams (From what I can tell). It's a very reliable Pokemon to use Stealth Rock and to just be a giant nuisance in general. The dynamic duo was fairly weak to the same types of Pokemon such as Vileplume (Pretty much any Grass type that beats Shiftry), Cryogonal, etc. I added Pyroar because it's a solid Pokemon and completed that Fire-Water-Grass combo I had going. Pyroar also beats the aforementioned Pokemon that beat Seismitoad and Shiftry.

Next, I wanted a Pokemon that could essentially clean up late-game, but also one that could take hits, seeing as how some members of my team really can't. I decided on Gurdurr and it stuck ever since.

At this point, I stopped for a second and looked over my half-built team. I immediately spotted that multiple types (EG. Flying / Dragon / Normal etc), when backed by strong offensive stats tear it apart easily. So I wanted a Steel type. After looking at the steel types available in the tier, I picked Klinklang because I don't need Probopass' Support moves and none of the others really fit on an offensive orientated NU team.

Lastly, I wanted a solid user of Choice Scarf to act as a glue and complete my team. After considering some options, I settled with Haunter because A) I needed a secondary Special Attacker, my team was heavily swayed towards Physical Attackers and B) Haunter can Destiny Bond and Trick to eliminate a Pokemon for another member to have an easier time / outright murder the opposition.

Replaced Seismitoad for Omastar because of the Hyper-Offensive nature of this team, it didn't fit in that well. Also, I tried out Vileplume instead of Seismitoad at one point before this, but I felt that it didn't also fit with the nature of the team and didn't play its role as a defensive pivot as well as I thought it would.

In-Depth

Shiftry @ Life Orb
Ability: Early Bird
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Knock Off
- Swords Dance
- Leaf Storm
- Sucker Punch

The star of the show. None other than Shiftry! The most overused Pokemon to have ever graced the NU tier. hue. Anyway, I looked over some NU threads and the Neverused chat over at Showdown and plucked out this set, which is the standard SD set. It used to be the defogging one but now that I have a lead Omastar, it would essentially neutralize it's work.

Omastar @ Focus Sash
Ability: Weak Armor
EVs: 252 SpA / 252 Spe / 8 Def
Timid Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
- Scald
- Icy Wind

RIP Seismitoad, you shall be missed. Move over and make room for Lord Helix himself. Omastar functions, obviously as a suicide lead, which aims to lay down as many entry hazards as possible to aid it's comrades. EV spread is to give it as much speed as possible to help Omastar do it's thing. Icy Wind is there primarily to catch switch-ins such as Xatu and Shiftry thinking they can block my hazards. After an Icy Wind, Offensive 0/0 Xatu is safely 2HKO'd and the same can be said about standard 0/4 Shiftry.
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Pyroar (F) @ Life Orb
Ability: Unnerve
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 SpA
Timid Nature
- Flamethrower
- Hyper Voice
- Will-O-Wisp
- Hidden Power [Grass]

For starters, female over male because male looks stupid. Alright, I gave this thing a Choice Specs because I heard that it was really good with it, so I decided to give it a shot. I switched up the spectacles for a Life Orb so it isn't screwed over by being locked into one move (EG. Will-O-Wisp vs Dragalge or Flamethrower vs Seismitoad) It's EVs are self-explanatory for a special attacker. Dual stab in the form of Flamethrower and Hyper Voice. Flamethrower because I'm the kind of guy who prefers accuracy over power. Dark Pulse is there because of the added coverage over some ghost types, but I've never actually used it in my test matches. Dark Pulse has been replaced by Will-O-Wisp to chip away at common switch-ins such as Dragalge. HP Grass hits the ever-so-common Seismitoad and some other x4 Grass weak such as Golem who think they're switch-ins.

Gurdurr @ Eviolite
Ability: Guts
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Bulk Up
- Drain Punch
- Knock Off
- Mach Punch

Here's Gurdurr. He's sure been pulling his weight on the team. I gave it optimal EVs for an odd HP number. Mach Punch replaces Ice Punch which I had originally, but I changed it based on some opinions in the NU chat and my distinct lack of priority on this offensive team. Yeah, nothing more to say, really.

Klinklang @ Leftovers
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 80 HP / 252 Atk / 176 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Shift Gear
- Substitute
- Wild Charge
- Gear Grind

Klinklang. What can I say about a couple of gears, apart from the fact that it's pretty good. Again, standard sets, but I threw in Substitute because I reckoned it can withstand many hits and set up safely. Obvious Gear Grind and Shift Gear for obvious reasons and Wild Charge over Return as coverage to hit steels for neutral damage. Switched up the EVs to outpace Shiftry :].

Haunter @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Destiny Bond
- Sludge Bomb
- Trick
- Shadow Ball

The glue to the team. A personal favourite of mine, Haunter. I chose this as my scarfer instead of Rotom because I prefer Haunter's superior offensive stats (Higher Speed and Sp.Atk), it's secondary type in Poison and it's access to Destiny Bond. With Destiny Bond, I usually bait out a Pokemon that threatens another member of my team (EG. Dragalge). I use Destiny Bond on it and get hit with it's Draco for example. Haunter has disgusting bulk as you all know so it won't be living ANYTHING. Now, Dragalge is dead which means Pyroar is free to spam Specs Flamethrowers. Happy days. Sludge Bomb > Wave because poison chance and the miniature damage output difference between the moves.
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Conclusion

There ya have it. My squad. Please make sure to leave constructive criticism so I can help make this team better. I may be new to the NU tier but I'm definitely not new to Pokemon so don't worry about dumbing down your advice. I'm perfectly capable of understanding key terminology.
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[Scotti]

Sup scarfnaut, you have a pretty solid af team, but I feel like a few slight improvements could help. Firstly your team is really weak to offensive water type and offensive fighting types. The best way to fix that would be to run vileplume over Seismitoad. Plume fixes a lot of the weaknesses to your team, and should help overall. Now you have no rocker, so you should replace klingklang with probopass. Probopass gives you rocks, and it also helps with slurpuff. You vileplume for puff, but if it is the special set you will take a lot or might even lose your plume. Probopass hard counters both sets, gives you rocks, and keeps momentum with volt switch.

sets

Vileplume @ Black Sludge
Ability: Effect Spore
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 Spe
Modest Nature
- Sludge Bomb
- Giga Drain
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Moonlight

Probopass @ Leftovers
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Volt Switch
- Stealth Rock
- Power Gem
- Flash Cannon

:]

 

[Scarf]

thanks, will try them out later

 

[Blast]

I'm not really a huge fan of the above suggestions since they don't really respect the offensive nature of this team--special Water-types are honestly a lot less threatening in practice than they sound on paper since there really isn't anything they can take advantage of. Looking over your team, as I said it looks primarily hyper offense based, so I don't think Seismitoad is a very good fit because of its tendency to lose momentum. I would try Focus Sash lead Omastar over it because its ability to stack Spikes along with SR greatly aids your sweepers in netting key KOs and applying more pressure in general. This also gives your Shiftry more leeway to run a Swords Dance set over its current one, since Defog is counter-intuitive with Omastar and it can abuse the additional pressure from Spikes to set up.

Also Dark Pulse is mostly useless on Pyroar because it hardly gets coverage on anything barring the extremely rare Lampent. I would use Fire Blast in that slot since it provides a much stronger STAB to spam when needed, and Flamethrower can be used when you can't afford to miss. And Klinklang kind of wants at least some Speed to beat out certain threats pre-boost and Scarfers after--for example 176 Speed gets the jump on Shiftry, though feel free to experiment with other stuff and see what fits.

Suggested changes

Sash Omastar > Seismitoad
SD Shiftry > Defog
Fire Blast > Dark Pulse on Pyroar
Speed EVs on Klinklang

Sets

Omastar @ Focus Sash
Ability: Weak Armor
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 HP
Timid Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
- Scald
- Ice Beam / Stone Edge

(Ice Beam hits Grasses while Stone Edge OHKOes Cryogonal)

Shiftry should run SD | Knock Off | Sucker Punch | Seed Bomb @ Life Orb with Adamant or Jolly depending on preference

 

[ium]

i actually don't think the team is that bad. the main issue i find is that your team seems to lose momentum pretty easily against bulkier teams because gurdurr and klinklang are your only source of setup and they're stopped by too many common pokemon. i agree with the other rate that being able to stack hazards by using an omastar would be helpful here; i personally like icy wind in the last slot since it allows you to play around xatu and shiftry pretty easily so that you can beat them and get hazards up. of course that also means switching your shiftry to a swords dance set which is helpful to break through problematic pokemon easily anyway; you can try using lum berry instead of life orb on this shiftry set because it really helps for setting up on pokemon like seismitoad, lanturn, and spiritomb which all try to carry some status move

i also feel that choice specs pyroar really holds your team back because it becomes really hard to play around certain pokemon like dragalge and feraligatr during late-game where your switchins are very limited, and mainly just a lot of the bulky water-types that you may have trouble breaking through outside of shiftry. using expert belt or life orb and having will-o-wisp over dark pulse on pyroar reduces the risk of having to play around and guessing correctly against teams with such pokemon

as a minor adjustment, i would also use sludge bomb over sludge wave on haunter because the significantly higher poison chance is better than the small increase in base power