OU making adv better, aka dealing with gengar and replacing restalk zap

[danilo]

with restalk gone people have whined about adv being lame. i was definitely in this camp for a little bit, but i think that if people are actually trying to do cool stuff instead of spamming current trends this metagame can be beautiful. let's talk about some pkmn

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Zapdos @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 228 SpD / 28 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Thunder Wave
- Toxic

ojama introduced me / us to this new variant of defensive zapdos and i like it a lot. for a while after the restalk nerf offensive tss teams were mad weak to swampert and gengar b/c they had no good switch-ins, relying on their own gars, offensive zapdos, and swamperts. i think this ojama set is a pretty suitable replacement to the restalk variant, and i've enjoyed using it.

Kingdra @ Lum Berry
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 88 HP / 252 SpA / 168 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SpA
- Hydro Pump
- Ice Beam
- Hidden Power [Grass]
- Rain Dance

kindgra, and i think offensive waters in general, are a great answer to these tss offensive squads. it's taken me a while to get around to thinking that kingdra and offensive starmie are good, but in this metagame where people are often relying on lax in the sand to check offensive threats, these mons are good. throwing lum on kingdra helps with gar. i've been throwing lums on random mons a lot lately to nerf gar

what ways are u guys addressing the current metagame when teambuilding?

 

[Oxypad]

I just threw a fun team together recently and played a bit...let me throw down my thoughts!

Zapdos is god. I really think it's second to Tar as most effective mon in gen3.
I always like Toxic on Zapdos.
But perhaps instead of double status, Baton Pass could be better. I am thinking the "Offensive w Status" from the link below (that is apparently popular) is probably a good set at the moment:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/zapdos-ou-revamp.3548418/

I agree that people could explore with more Lum berry usage. Kingdra's cool for your Gengar example.
Might as well throw Lum DDTar out there...cuz I think DD is the best Tar variant worth running.

Probably unrelated - but I think even the Endure + Salac strategy is worth trying out on random shit...but Endure is risky with non-sand immune shit...so maybe just Salac and pray you get to <25%.
Cool with Explosion mons. I do this with Cloyster -- more like a suicide lead since I don't feel it gains much with Leftovers anyway.

Other food for thought to answer OP:
Using Suicune with more sp. attack / more speed than usual...

Using 4 attacks (Guts) Heracross...@ leftovers with +Attack almost max attack , a good amount of HP, some Sp. Def, and enough speed to hit 221 or 222.
Megahorn / Focus Punch / Rock Slide / HP Ghost

• Doesn't care about status really. Stronger once statused. (Fuck sleep though.)
• Takes advantage of these attackless Skarm teams (Focus Punch) that are pretty much forced to run Gengar. HP Ghost!

More offensive Claydol with Explosion (to catch Starmie and/or Swampert), 4 attacks ... Psychic to address Gar...Split EVs in attack and sp. attack with some HP...

Generally I have always found physical attacking to be the best strategy in ADV. CB was a great item in this gen. At least one CBer on a team should be norm...I really think Salamence is the best one at the moment. Aerodactyl too - but that is a given as it always is CB. I never liked Duggy. But yeah it's everywhere - play smart!

 

[Typhlito]

While zapdos lost its st set, its offensive set is still great. A set of t bolt, hp ice/grass, toxic, metal sound works wonders on anything that tries to wall it. That makes it nice on spike teams since metal sound will force switches.

Even a more defensive set can work fairly well since its able to wall special attackers pretty well with light screen and rest.

To be honest though, I didn't think the change was that big of a deal personally. Maybe that's because I didn'tt use st very often outside of crocune, curselax, and sometimes Swampert. When you really think about it though, not much actually cared about the change that much outside of zapdos and snorlax. Pokemon like suicune and even articuno (since someone asked about it in the viability thread a while ago) don't really care much due to them being bulky enough to still pull it off.

I have been trying chesto berry on random rest pokemon just to see how effective it is now and it's not bad at all. it's not the greatest long term on pokemon you use to wall heavy attacks like swampert. The instant recovery is very handy though.

Finally, I said it before but pokemon with guts received a decent buff with this change. Status is more easily spammable and they can easily take advantage of that.

 

[Cowboy Dan]

These are the main things I was using to take on gar recently:
Jolteon is a pokemon that benefited immensely from the new ST mechanics particularly the loss of ST zap. It makes a pretty good answer to gar on offensive teams due to its ability to outspeed and 2hko it as well as potentially recover health on predicted tbolts. It doesn't love status and can get worn down if you aren't careful but it can keep gengar in check pretty decently. It's also a pretty fun poke to use with baton pass/roar predictions and whatnot.

Lum psychic metagross can act as a decent short term gengar answer. It is pretty easily worn down by spikes however since it doesn't have lefties and doesn't exactly take gengar's tbolts amazingly but it can surprise a gengar attempting to status it, and is actually pretty strong offensively.

Lum pursuit tar is a pretty great answer on teams that need it, particularly with crunch. A lot of people use hypnosis to try and get around pursuit tar but not with this set.

Aerodactyl while not an answer to gar can be used to give gar teams a lot of trouble. It can come in on revenge kills or double switches and force it out. Getting this thing in on gar with a couple double switches in the late game can spell real trouble for the gar player. Aero isn't a poke you want to give free turns to.

Another more unconventional one is alakazam, it's faster and can either ohko it or use it to set up CMs, it's extremely dangerous with the right support and even though it's frail it has enough spDef to take one or two tbolts on the switch depending on if spikes are down or not. Furthermore with synchronize it can burn an opposing gar trying to wisp on the switch which is pretty fun. It can't be relied on defensively for much else but it's a pretty cool cleaner for offensive tss teams with a very interesting movepool.


As a sidenote that offensive zap set oxypad mentioned is pretty great, i like to run modest with HP grass. Teams lacking in celebi or blissey have a really hard time coming in on it, especially with sand up. It just hits so hard.

 

[eden]

I've been having fun with:

Tyranitar @ Lum Berry
EVs: 188 HP / 240 SpA / 80 Spe
Naughty Nature
- Pursuit
- Hidden Power Grass
- Fire Blast
- Rock Slide/Crunch

I definitely agree with the throwing Lum Berry on some more stuff to help out with Gengar more; I've also experimented with Psychic Lum Metagross, but I feel Crunch+Pursuit Tyranitar with Lum, can legitimately be really useful on a team for a variety of things. Pressuring Lax under sand with Crunch is definitely one of them, being able to pressure Swampert with Hidden Power Grass to open up a sweep for something like DD Mence/CB Aero/Gross is also really fun. Another thing you might consider is running stuff like Jolteon/Raikou more(which is an acceptable Gengar check on offense I feel), or using Lum Snorlax...there's a lot of cool unexplored stuff that definitely can be used.

Bulky Heracross is also something cool that I've been toying with, that can definitely answer non-Hypnosis Gengar to a decent extent.

 

[Lord Ninjax]

I'm really glad to see this thread up - I was always in the 'Zapdos nerf isn't the end of the world' camp, and feel like people just want excuses as to why they run boring stall, and that said boring stall isn't 'unbreakable' like everyone says it is (and its prominence isn't just from ResTalk Zap being nerfed, but from Spikes and Gengar just being as effective as they are - they're easy to set-up, abuse, and counterplay is hard to pull off).

That said what I've been running is a bunch of stuff. CBTar + Offensive Water is a pretty good core any metagame where you can use it, and it tends to punish a lot of the common teams being used (mainly because they struggle vs CBTar - you can't say Pert is a check when it loses 2/3s of its health to Focus Punch and nothing else on the team wants to switch in to it either - people also over-rely on Bliss / Lax to sponge Hydro Pumps and CBTar turns them into cannon fodder which is nice while the water can stave off attempts at RKing it - not to mention you can throw on a Gengar of your own to lure certain stuff and hammer other stuff).

Lum berry on Gengar checks is also really nice to bring seeing as how he can screw with anything, the top candidates being Heracross and Metagross. I've also been itching to bust out Bulky Starmie seeing as how it can spin away Spikes and keep Gengar down - the problem is that it is a bit of a glue mon that gets hammered by a lot of other stuff, so making it work vs like Physical Offense can be hard (unless you're being cool and running TWave or Reflect in the last slot - IB works too). On a mixture of the last two paras Offensive Starmie w Psychic over Recover is nice because it runs down Hera and Gar, pressures Lax a lot more (Psychic is a stab that doesn't miss every other turn and if it gets a SpDef drop on Snorlax then your opp's in for a world of hurt), and thereby pressures a lot more. Lack of Recover can suck in the long game but you can adapt to it (or run Wish on something).

Anyways, you can also swing the Gengar prevalence in your favour if you play smartly - especially seeing as how a lot of the aforementioned stalls rely on it as the equivalent of a choice scarfer in later gens (ie its job becomes RKing the danger mon on the opposing team) - with Gar trapped and removed by Meta / Tar or lured by Hera, stuff like MixMence can toxic the Bulky water and go to town from there (this is also helped by Meta and Tar cause them being Special allows them to put a lot more pressure on Pert).

I took a bit of initiative with my own lead Hera set - SD / Focus Punch / Megahorn / HP Ghost with Lum, speed to hit a certain thing and rest in Atk / HP. Basically it's a fusion of two McM sets - the 4 Atks one and the SD+FP set, designed to demolish Skarm and Gengar back to back for essentially no loss. It is helpless vs Mence / Gyara / Aero but you weren't gonna hit them anyway unless you have a Jesus level prediction game so w/e. It's a one-mon stallbreaker, especially with P2 in the back to handle a potential Dugtrio. Speaking of which, P2 is also nice vs Spikes Offense because it can sort-of handle Aero and eats Jolt alive while also threatening Toxic vs a lot of annoying mons.

Lastly, DaniloRachi is really good - Status shenanigans are ridiculous while Wish is great against Spikes or just for the long game. Some teams just can't handle it. Gengar is annoying if you don't have Psychic but a Burn annoys it and you can maybe bait a TBolt for Jolt / Kou's entry. To sum up, I guess I'd say there's plenty of room for at least going against the flow (or in this case building a dam in its way and getting free wins from it), and that people should look for them instead of just whining and being lazy (this kind of applies to all generations (cough cough DPP) indeed probably all competitive and semi-competitive games in general, and I hope this post+thread gives some people ideas and inspiration to get out there, build new shit and play it).

Edit: Alternative Zap sets are great too, they don't do everything that ResTalk did but they do enough while status and whatnot have their own appeal. Zap also gets Protect btw (shout outs to Mael for discovering it and Triangles for telling everyone) which is a really nice option vs CBers (also if you can run it on Mag which loves Skarm, Gar and Aero being everywhere) and for stalling in general. Jolt does a ton of similar shit except it's faster which can be huge, also it can run all sorts of weird mixtures (Sub / Wish Passing, Roar, Toxic Protect which is insane).

Also amg Camel! Can't believe I forgot it, it has issues but if you play it right it will shred. I said this a while ago in the viability rankings thread but Mixed attacking with those STABs and Toxic are a nightmare to deal with. Explosion is also nice to open a big hole in a stall team (as Skarm wants nothing to do with this monster), and overall it's ability to check a sizeable amount of Special Offense is pretty sick.

 

[dekzeh]

My favorite way since SPL to deal with Gengar (and electrics, but Zapdos never did that) while not being spikes bait and/or just bad in general is SDEF CAMEL

Camel (Camerupt) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magma Armor
EVs: 252 HP / 20 Atk / 124 SpA / 112 SpD
Quiet Nature
- Fire Blast
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Protect

I forgot what those EVs do but they do something, and they're probably really good. It's an amazing mon, USE IT MORE.

And yeah, offensive Waters rule in this metagame, Kingdra is honestly my least favorite. But yeah, Offensive Cune, Starmie, Whiskers and swift swimmers (Ludicolo, Omastar, Kingdra, in that order) are all pretty good.

 

[Awoken]

Sceptile's a cool mon to use in sandstorm spikes teams now that SpDef RestTalk Zapdos has all but disappeared. Can't really take hits at all but it's easy to double switch in against Tyranitar and Swampert which are on every team and go to town. Fast SubSeed is really hard for a lot of teams to deal with; Salamence, Gengar, and Restless Zapdos get worn down really quickly by Seed+Sand and even 252/252+ Skarmory takes 35.9 - 42.5% from HP Fire while only being able to blow the giant gecko away. Leaf Blade's high crit chance helps a surprising amount in breaking through other tanky mons. Outspeeding +1 DDTar and offensive Starmies is also very handy.

Sceptile (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hidden Power [Fire] / Hidden Power [Ice]
- Leaf Blade
- Leech Seed
- Substitute

HP Fire unfortunately makes you slower than max speed Jolly Dugtrio so if your opponent catches on they can get it in when your sub is down and demolish you with HP Bug. If you're using HP Fire you can cut the speed down to 362 to outspeed Timid Starmie/Raikou.