Introduction:
So this is a UU balance team based around Vivillon. This has currently been my most successful UU team to date. After being swept by a random Vivillon user in OU, I decided to exploit some of that Pokedex #666 power for myself in a tier that I always wanted to play that importantly lacked Talonflame. I’ve found that with the right support, Vivillon can really pull through and work wonders with Quiver Dance. Keep in mind that a lot of this team was shaped by my lack of knowledge of the UU tier; having come from OU, I was extremely scared of flying spam and strong priority and a lot of this team was based around that fear.
EDIT: I realized that I actually changed Aerodactyl's set substantially since writing this RMT
At A Glance:
Vivillon/Chandelure/Empoleon/Toxicroak/Aerodactyl/Rotom-Mow
Teambuilding Process:
I knew I was going to use Vivillon so I started out with him.
Vivillon clearly needs a lot of support, given that it’s 4x stealth rock weak and it’s frail so it can be ruined
by priority users who don’t care how many quiver dances you set up. Most priority attacks are fighting or normal, especially Lucario’s Extremespeed. I thus added scarf Chandelure to absorb Extremespeed /Fire Spam and also serve as a fairly good revenge killer.
With both Vivillion and Chandelure, my team desperately needed defog or spinner support. Physically defensive support Empoleon can both defog and set up rocks to break sashes for Vivillion to sweep. It also has the potential to spread burns, which, although it may seem conflict with Vivillion’s sleep powder, greatly help the survivability of most pokemon on my team.
From an offensive point of view, Vivillion needed support to get through defensive walls. Toxicroak can easily OHKO both Blissey and Florges and more importantly, can provide a water immunity that can synergize with Chandelure and take down CroCune (who can be a threat to Vivillion thanks to Sleep Talk)
Given that Vivillion was the main win condition, I wanted a secondary win condition with different checks and counters to Vivillion itself. Those checks are clearly rock/steel types, flying types and anything that was too fast. Enter Mega-Aerodactyl which can threaten most of those types with EdgeQuake coverage, is quite fast and attacks physically rather than specially.
After picking the other five members, the sixth was somewhat up in the air. After playing around with AV Slowbro, I found that my team had an electricity problem and could use a special wall. I initially tried AV Raikou but switched to Rotom-Mow.
Team In Detail:
Vivillion (Vivillon) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Quiver Dance
- Sleep Powder
- Hurricane
Vivillion is the star of this team. The basic strategy is try to get a free quiver dance up and then sweep. That usually involves coming in on something slower than Vivillion, which with base 89 speed is not too hard. Theoretically, one should sleep powder and then start to set up, but I find in practice that Vivillion tends to force a lot of switches due to the threat of sleep powder itself and depending on whether you predict your opponent to switch or how threatening his current mon is to the rest of your team, it’s sometimes helpful to quiver dance on the predicted switch. Good rules of thumb: If your opponent has a sleep powder absorber, doesn’t have any fast priority or scarf users, or has out a pokemon that gets ohko’d by Vivillion, it’s a good idea to quiver dance. If the opponent has out a pokemon that can literally sweep my entire team or a pokemon with priority, I prefer not to take chances and just go for sleep powder. Depending on the situation, it’s sometimes a valid option to just go for the attack to ko a mon if you’re afraid of activating sleep clause. Focus Sash guarantees one quiver dance if you can keep rocks off the field and usually two if you’re good at predicting. Also, if you can manage to quiver dance on the switch, you have one free priority move you can take.
Everything else should be fairly self explanatory, Bug Buzz and Hurricane give you dual stab, with Hurricane’s confusion chance being quite helpful. Thanks to Compoundeyes, Hurricane actually hits. Modest nature because it helps you land KOs more easily on some specially defensive Pokemon after rocks. When it’s not outright sweeping, Vivillion can give some good support to the rest of my team, hurting quite a few physically bulky Pokemon in their weaker special stat as well as being able to put something to sleep which is almost always useful, even with Crocune.
Toxicroak @ Life Orb
Ability: Dry Skin
EVs: 132 HP / 252 Atk / 124 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Sucker Punch
- Drain Punch
- Gunk Shot
I need this guy to take out special walls (mostly Florges and Blissey) to clear the way for Vivillon to sweep. He also does a pretty good job of killing scarf Victini with sucker punch. Most of the time, you can bring him in on standard cm resttalk Suicune or a Blissey and proceed to set up an SD, then wreck your opponent’s team. Although he’s not meant to be a sweeper, he has pulled through to sweep in some tight games when my main sweepers were down for the count. Speed is to outspeed 0 investment Mew and base 100s in general and the rest goes into HP to take Moonblasts and Dark Pulses better. Adamant because this is not meant to be a sweeper but rather a wallbreaker.
Chandelure @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Shadow Ball
- Energy Ball
- Trick
An excellent revenge killer and useful to absorb fire moves as well as normal and fighting moves. Oftentimes, the threat of having Chandelure in the back that can come in and absorb a Flare Blitz/Overheat or block a High Jump Kick is enough to dissuade opponents into choosing weaker options instead letting my other Pokemon set up. The move that Chandy ends up absorbing most often is Will-O-Wisp which otherwise gives Aerodactyl and Toxicroak some problems. With a Flash Fire boost, Chandelure’s Fire Blast does obscene amounts of damage to most Pokemon that are neutral especially with scarf to make up for its lackluster speed. Trick is a last-ditch filler move that helps to cripple Suicune and other bulky Pokemon, especially Blissey. With Trick, Chandelure can beat Blissey 1v1, no joke. If Toxicroak is alive however, it’s usually much better to send it in to grab a free setup turn at the expense of either Pokemon. A lot of times, I’ve found Chandelure tends to lure in special walls allowing me to pull a double switch into Toxicroak securing a setup turn. At the same time, Toxicroak attracts Will-o-Wisp and Fire moves in general thanks to Dry Skin that can give Chandelure a Flash Fire boost to help it break holes in the opponent’s team. Chandelure can also greatly threaten psychics that have weaker special defenses to further help out Toxicroak.
Empoleon @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 236 HP / 252 Def / 20 SpA
Bold Nature
- Defog
- Scald
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
Since three out of the six Pokemon on my team are weak to Stealth Rock, I needed a reliable defogger. Empoleon is that defogger. The HP is the highest magic leftovers number. The build is defensive to synergize with the burns given by Scald and to be able to survive a Bolt Strike from Victini while doing significant damage in return with Scald (this is especially true since Victini usually knocks me down to Torrent range). It also can deal with some weaker unSTAB’d earthquakes or more relevantly, Donphan’s Earthquake (which bring Empoleon down to torrent range where it can OHKO Donphan). If you’re more adventurous, 108 HP Empoleon with 148 SpA can survive Victini V-create with high probability and is guaranteed to survive Bolt Strike while having a good 68.8% chance to OHKO back from Torrent range. Victini from a practical perspective will never lock itself into V-create on this team as long as Chandelure is alive as it would give Chandelure a free switch-in at best, free Flash Fire boost at worst. Thus, the player loses very little from giving Empoleon some more SpA if the player can keep hazards off the field and can keep Empoleon healthy. The reason I don't is that I don't want to risk Empoleon fainting on me since then I don't have a way to reliably defog.
Ridley (Aerodactyl) @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Ice Fang
- Earthquake
- Taunt
Ridley a.k.a. Shiny Mega-Aerodactyl is my secondary win condition and is mainly there to provide a reliable backup if Vivillion is unable to sweep for whatever reason. Usually I use one of Vivillion or Aerodactyl to weaken the opponent’s team before going for a sweep with the other one. Unlike Vivillion, Aerodactyl needs no setup and thus can’t be stopped with a mere Taunt. Aerodactyl is the stereotypical physical sweeper. EdgeQuake is amazing coverage with Ice Fang for Hydreigon, Nidoking, and predicted switches. Taunt is in order to prevent stall, setup and Will-O-Wisp except against Aromatisse. Aerodactyl is also an excellent revenge killer as in Mega form, he naturally outspeeds quite a few scarfed or +1 pokemon (scarfed base 96 and lower if neutral natured, base 83 and lower if positive natured). Aerodactyl is far from dead weight in most games thanks to both its physical sweeping stats and its ability to shut down setup sweepers with Taunt. Mega-Aerodactyl with his new set is one of my few checks to Nidoking who otherwise wrecks my team with his god-level coverage (Arecus-level?).
Rotom-Mow @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Volt Switch
- Leaf Storm
- Pain Split
- Will-O-Wisp
This is almost exactly the set for Rotom-W in OU and for good reason. Rotom’s base stats really do let it put in work as a special tank. Rotom’s main job is to handle electric attacks which it handles phenomenally well given the 4x resistance. It also serves to check bulky waters, cripple enemy sweepers with Will-O-Wisp (which meshes surprisingly well with Vivillion’s sleep powder by giving the opponent a “safe switch in” to absorb sleep; even when that doesn’t work, it’s not nearly as devastating as one would imagine) Pain Splitting to annoy stall Pokemon (here’s looking at you Blissey) and just generally wreaking havoc. Rotom has really good synergy with physically defensive Empoleon, shrugging off electric attacks aimed at Empoleon, adding to Empoleon’s bulk with Will-O-Wisp. It can also double switch to put Empoleon in against a fire type or a -2 Hydreigon who just used a Draco Meteor. This can let Empoleon wreck my opponent with Scald or mess with my opponent with Roar on a predicted switch.
Importable:
Feedback on both my first RMT post and my team itself would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy!
So this is a UU balance team based around Vivillon. This has currently been my most successful UU team to date. After being swept by a random Vivillon user in OU, I decided to exploit some of that Pokedex #666 power for myself in a tier that I always wanted to play that importantly lacked Talonflame. I’ve found that with the right support, Vivillon can really pull through and work wonders with Quiver Dance. Keep in mind that a lot of this team was shaped by my lack of knowledge of the UU tier; having come from OU, I was extremely scared of flying spam and strong priority and a lot of this team was based around that fear.
EDIT: I realized that I actually changed Aerodactyl's set substantially since writing this RMT
At A Glance:
Vivillon/Chandelure/Empoleon/Toxicroak/Aerodactyl/Rotom-Mow
Teambuilding Process:
I knew I was going to use Vivillon so I started out with him.
Vivillon clearly needs a lot of support, given that it’s 4x stealth rock weak and it’s frail so it can be ruined
by priority users who don’t care how many quiver dances you set up. Most priority attacks are fighting or normal, especially Lucario’s Extremespeed. I thus added scarf Chandelure to absorb Extremespeed /Fire Spam and also serve as a fairly good revenge killer.
With both Vivillion and Chandelure, my team desperately needed defog or spinner support. Physically defensive support Empoleon can both defog and set up rocks to break sashes for Vivillion to sweep. It also has the potential to spread burns, which, although it may seem conflict with Vivillion’s sleep powder, greatly help the survivability of most pokemon on my team.
From an offensive point of view, Vivillion needed support to get through defensive walls. Toxicroak can easily OHKO both Blissey and Florges and more importantly, can provide a water immunity that can synergize with Chandelure and take down CroCune (who can be a threat to Vivillion thanks to Sleep Talk)
Given that Vivillion was the main win condition, I wanted a secondary win condition with different checks and counters to Vivillion itself. Those checks are clearly rock/steel types, flying types and anything that was too fast. Enter Mega-Aerodactyl which can threaten most of those types with EdgeQuake coverage, is quite fast and attacks physically rather than specially.
After picking the other five members, the sixth was somewhat up in the air. After playing around with AV Slowbro, I found that my team had an electricity problem and could use a special wall. I initially tried AV Raikou but switched to Rotom-Mow.
Team In Detail:
Vivillion (Vivillon) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Quiver Dance
- Sleep Powder
- Hurricane
Vivillion is the star of this team. The basic strategy is try to get a free quiver dance up and then sweep. That usually involves coming in on something slower than Vivillion, which with base 89 speed is not too hard. Theoretically, one should sleep powder and then start to set up, but I find in practice that Vivillion tends to force a lot of switches due to the threat of sleep powder itself and depending on whether you predict your opponent to switch or how threatening his current mon is to the rest of your team, it’s sometimes helpful to quiver dance on the predicted switch. Good rules of thumb: If your opponent has a sleep powder absorber, doesn’t have any fast priority or scarf users, or has out a pokemon that gets ohko’d by Vivillion, it’s a good idea to quiver dance. If the opponent has out a pokemon that can literally sweep my entire team or a pokemon with priority, I prefer not to take chances and just go for sleep powder. Depending on the situation, it’s sometimes a valid option to just go for the attack to ko a mon if you’re afraid of activating sleep clause. Focus Sash guarantees one quiver dance if you can keep rocks off the field and usually two if you’re good at predicting. Also, if you can manage to quiver dance on the switch, you have one free priority move you can take.
Everything else should be fairly self explanatory, Bug Buzz and Hurricane give you dual stab, with Hurricane’s confusion chance being quite helpful. Thanks to Compoundeyes, Hurricane actually hits. Modest nature because it helps you land KOs more easily on some specially defensive Pokemon after rocks. When it’s not outright sweeping, Vivillion can give some good support to the rest of my team, hurting quite a few physically bulky Pokemon in their weaker special stat as well as being able to put something to sleep which is almost always useful, even with Crocune.
Toxicroak @ Life Orb
Ability: Dry Skin
EVs: 132 HP / 252 Atk / 124 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Sucker Punch
- Drain Punch
- Gunk Shot
I need this guy to take out special walls (mostly Florges and Blissey) to clear the way for Vivillon to sweep. He also does a pretty good job of killing scarf Victini with sucker punch. Most of the time, you can bring him in on standard cm resttalk Suicune or a Blissey and proceed to set up an SD, then wreck your opponent’s team. Although he’s not meant to be a sweeper, he has pulled through to sweep in some tight games when my main sweepers were down for the count. Speed is to outspeed 0 investment Mew and base 100s in general and the rest goes into HP to take Moonblasts and Dark Pulses better. Adamant because this is not meant to be a sweeper but rather a wallbreaker.
Chandelure @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Shadow Ball
- Energy Ball
- Trick
An excellent revenge killer and useful to absorb fire moves as well as normal and fighting moves. Oftentimes, the threat of having Chandelure in the back that can come in and absorb a Flare Blitz/Overheat or block a High Jump Kick is enough to dissuade opponents into choosing weaker options instead letting my other Pokemon set up. The move that Chandy ends up absorbing most often is Will-O-Wisp which otherwise gives Aerodactyl and Toxicroak some problems. With a Flash Fire boost, Chandelure’s Fire Blast does obscene amounts of damage to most Pokemon that are neutral especially with scarf to make up for its lackluster speed. Trick is a last-ditch filler move that helps to cripple Suicune and other bulky Pokemon, especially Blissey. With Trick, Chandelure can beat Blissey 1v1, no joke. If Toxicroak is alive however, it’s usually much better to send it in to grab a free setup turn at the expense of either Pokemon. A lot of times, I’ve found Chandelure tends to lure in special walls allowing me to pull a double switch into Toxicroak securing a setup turn. At the same time, Toxicroak attracts Will-o-Wisp and Fire moves in general thanks to Dry Skin that can give Chandelure a Flash Fire boost to help it break holes in the opponent’s team. Chandelure can also greatly threaten psychics that have weaker special defenses to further help out Toxicroak.
Empoleon @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 236 HP / 252 Def / 20 SpA
Bold Nature
- Defog
- Scald
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
Since three out of the six Pokemon on my team are weak to Stealth Rock, I needed a reliable defogger. Empoleon is that defogger. The HP is the highest magic leftovers number. The build is defensive to synergize with the burns given by Scald and to be able to survive a Bolt Strike from Victini while doing significant damage in return with Scald (this is especially true since Victini usually knocks me down to Torrent range). It also can deal with some weaker unSTAB’d earthquakes or more relevantly, Donphan’s Earthquake (which bring Empoleon down to torrent range where it can OHKO Donphan). If you’re more adventurous, 108 HP Empoleon with 148 SpA can survive Victini V-create with high probability and is guaranteed to survive Bolt Strike while having a good 68.8% chance to OHKO back from Torrent range. Victini from a practical perspective will never lock itself into V-create on this team as long as Chandelure is alive as it would give Chandelure a free switch-in at best, free Flash Fire boost at worst. Thus, the player loses very little from giving Empoleon some more SpA if the player can keep hazards off the field and can keep Empoleon healthy. The reason I don't is that I don't want to risk Empoleon fainting on me since then I don't have a way to reliably defog.
Ridley (Aerodactyl) @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Ice Fang
- Earthquake
- Taunt
Ridley a.k.a. Shiny Mega-Aerodactyl is my secondary win condition and is mainly there to provide a reliable backup if Vivillion is unable to sweep for whatever reason. Usually I use one of Vivillion or Aerodactyl to weaken the opponent’s team before going for a sweep with the other one. Unlike Vivillion, Aerodactyl needs no setup and thus can’t be stopped with a mere Taunt. Aerodactyl is the stereotypical physical sweeper. EdgeQuake is amazing coverage with Ice Fang for Hydreigon, Nidoking, and predicted switches. Taunt is in order to prevent stall, setup and Will-O-Wisp except against Aromatisse. Aerodactyl is also an excellent revenge killer as in Mega form, he naturally outspeeds quite a few scarfed or +1 pokemon (scarfed base 96 and lower if neutral natured, base 83 and lower if positive natured). Aerodactyl is far from dead weight in most games thanks to both its physical sweeping stats and its ability to shut down setup sweepers with Taunt. Mega-Aerodactyl with his new set is one of my few checks to Nidoking who otherwise wrecks my team with his god-level coverage (Arecus-level?).
Rotom-Mow @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Volt Switch
- Leaf Storm
- Pain Split
- Will-O-Wisp
This is almost exactly the set for Rotom-W in OU and for good reason. Rotom’s base stats really do let it put in work as a special tank. Rotom’s main job is to handle electric attacks which it handles phenomenally well given the 4x resistance. It also serves to check bulky waters, cripple enemy sweepers with Will-O-Wisp (which meshes surprisingly well with Vivillion’s sleep powder by giving the opponent a “safe switch in” to absorb sleep; even when that doesn’t work, it’s not nearly as devastating as one would imagine) Pain Splitting to annoy stall Pokemon (here’s looking at you Blissey) and just generally wreaking havoc. Rotom has really good synergy with physically defensive Empoleon, shrugging off electric attacks aimed at Empoleon, adding to Empoleon’s bulk with Will-O-Wisp. It can also double switch to put Empoleon in against a fire type or a -2 Hydreigon who just used a Draco Meteor. This can let Empoleon wreck my opponent with Scald or mess with my opponent with Roar on a predicted switch.
Importable:
Vivillion (Vivillon) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Quiver Dance
- Sleep Powder
- Hurricane
- Bug Buzz
Toxicroak @ Life Orb
Ability: Dry Skin
EVs: 132 HP / 252 Atk / 124 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Sucker Punch
- Drain Punch
- Gunk Shot
Chandelure @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Shadow Ball
- Energy Ball
- Trick
Empoleon @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 236 HP / 252 Def / 20 SpA
Bold Nature
- Defog
- Scald
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
Ridley (Aerodactyl) @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Ice Fang
- Earthquake
- Taunt
Rotom-Mow @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Volt Switch
- Leaf Storm
- Pain Split
- Will-O-Wisp
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Quiver Dance
- Sleep Powder
- Hurricane
- Bug Buzz
Toxicroak @ Life Orb
Ability: Dry Skin
EVs: 132 HP / 252 Atk / 124 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Sucker Punch
- Drain Punch
- Gunk Shot
Chandelure @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Shadow Ball
- Energy Ball
- Trick
Empoleon @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 236 HP / 252 Def / 20 SpA
Bold Nature
- Defog
- Scald
- Stealth Rock
- Roar
Ridley (Aerodactyl) @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stone Edge
- Ice Fang
- Earthquake
- Taunt
Rotom-Mow @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Volt Switch
- Leaf Storm
- Pain Split
- Will-O-Wisp
Feedback on both my first RMT post and my team itself would be greatly appreciated. Enjoy!
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