OU CCAT - Mark III (Laddering/Discussing - See Post #547)

Balance
Weather-Independant

Ok, I have a couple of announcements I'd like to share with you guys.

First off, the beloved Harsha will be co-leading with me from now on! Be sure to drop by and leave a congratulations! Harsha's and my thoughts willl be considered equal now- and if you have any questions, you can feel free to VM either one of us.

Second, I'm calling the 24 hour mark for this vote. In 24 hours, Harsha and I will decide our next step (most likely teammember #2 submissions) In the meantime, anyone who has not voted yet is encouraged to do so. Here are the current standings:

Bulky / Balanced Offense
Weather Independent
16.5 votes

Heavy / Hyper Offense
Weather Independent
7 votes

Bulky / Balanced Offense
Weather Centric
Hail
1 vote

Bulky / Balanced Offense
Weather Centric
Sand
1 vote


It seems as if it's pretty tough for any submission to outvote Balanced / Bulky Offense Independent; however I'm going to give this one more day to see if a more precise vote is necessary. If you haven't already, come vote! If you have, go tell all your friends to come vote! (Make sure they know pokemon though).

To recap, you guys have 24 hours to vote if you haven't and leave Harsha a good note on his page. Good luck! Congrats, Harsha!

Excellent, things are proceeding as planned. Glad the community shares my viewpoint that a weatherless balanced team is going to be our best bet for a quality CCAT experience.

Congratulations, Harsha! Big responsibility handling such a large project, but you're a more than competent user and I'm sure you'll be able to pull this one off with aplomb.

balance/ bulky offense
weather independent

Don't like the restrictions but oh well

OK, so we're going to be running a team that is independent of weather and using Pokemon that are commonly found on balanced or bulky offensive teams. The strategy won with 21.5 votes, but because we changed the way that the nominations were made, I don't believe anyone gets a bonus point (Electrolyte can correct me if I'm incorrect).

Now we're going to be taking submissions for the second teammate. We don't necessarily need to have a Gliscor sweep in mind—that's not the goal of our set. Nominate a teammate that pairs well with Gliscor on a bulky offensive / balanced team. It can be a sweper that Gliscor can Baton Pass to, a Pokemon that complements Gliscor's physical walling, or anything that fits the bill. Keep in mind we want to make this team as competitive as possible, so no gimmicks. Nominations will be up for 5 days from this post unless something unexpected happens.

Keldeo @ Leftovers
Trait: Justified
EVs: 252 SAtk / 4 SDef / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Hydro Pump
- Secret Sword
- Hidden Power Electric

Keldeo has already been mentioned to be a very good partner for Gliscor. He easily comes in against bulky waters such as Jellicent, Gyarados, Gastrodon, any choiced Politoed, and even Baloon Heatran and HP Ice Forretress that are looking to break Gliscor's Sub with HP Ice, and starts CMing up. Sub greatly helps Keldeo as it shields it from troublesome status, and the common Scald, while also letting it get one free hit in whatever revenge killer that may want to come in. HP Electric is chosen so that Keldeo will actually be able to beat the water types that he will be switching into. Not much else to say really, Keldeo is awesome in this meta!

edit: alexwolf is a massive dick

Nominating Rain Dance Kingdra


Kingdra @ Life Orb
Trait: Swift Swim
EVs: 24 HP / 4 Def / 252 SAtk / 228 Spd
Modest Nature
- Rain Dance
- Draco Meteor
- Hydro Pump
- Dragon Pulse / Surf / whatever

One of the best Rain checks in the game at the moment. A lot of Rain offense teams at the moment are skipping out Ferrothorn completely to ram their team full of ridiculously powerful rain sweepers (something like Politoed / Dugtrio / Torn-T / Genesect / Thund-T / Keldeo) meaning Kingdra really is the King. Unlike the Choice Specs set, however, RD Kingdra still matches up incredibly well against stuff that isn't Rain, for example turning the tides on Sun Offense if your opponent is foolish enough to sac their Ninetales early under the assumption they've already won the "weather war". Even if your opponent does still have their weather inducer around, Kingdra can still cause a ton of problems because Tyranitar, Hippowdon and Ninetales do not want to switch in on this thing.

Kingdra loves being passed a Substitute because it prevents it from being Scald burnt or Toxiced on the switch-in. It also prevents it from being revenge-killed as easily by priority like Mach Punch Breloom or ExtremeSpeed Dragonite, meaning offense is even weaker to it than it normally is. Its 4x water resistance means its Substitutes can tank even Rain-boosted water attacks pretty easily, with the exception of Specs Keldeo and Specs Politoed Hydro Pumps.

Again, this still keeps us pretty open regarding weather for later in the process. Politoed is obviously completely out of the picture because of the Drizzle + Swift Swim ban; however theres no reason why we can't use Rain Dance Kingdra alongside Tyranitar, Ninetales or even Abomasnow as a rain check. Weatherless teams love Rain Dance Kingdra as it gives them a way of applying pressure to Rain and Sun offense, which normally have excellent match-ups against weatherless offense.

Nominating SubRoost Kyurem


Kyurem @ Leftovers
56 HP / 216 SpA / 236 Spe
Modest Nature
- Ice Beam
- Earth Power
- Substitute /
- Roost

Absolute beast here. Kyurem has near perfect synergy with Gliscor, easily keeping a Sub intact against the Water, Grass and Ground-immune Electric types which Gliscor lures in. Everyone who's used this knows how devastating it is from behind a Sub. There are two main reasons I think Kyu deserves special consideration; number one, it's almost impossible to wall or even check adequately in this metagame. Most times we pass it a Sub it will be getting a kill. Second, it performs well in all weathers, which is invaluable for a Substitute abuser.

Bubbly you are making Kyurem to be more good than he is. It is a good poke no doubt, but in no way he gets a kill every time we pass him an intact Sub. For example Perish Song Politoed, Scizor, SpD Jirachi from the top 20 wall you and threaten you back with one way or another. Then there are also more checks such as CM Keldeo and Volcarona, which use you as set-up bait.

Not saying that your nomination is bad, as it is very good, just saying that claiming that every time Kyurem gets a free sub results to a kill is a hyperbole.

Okay. I tested a bit Gliscor in the past few days, and while searching for nice things to pass the Sub on, I found out that most of them are weak to hazards somewhat. Voclarona was my first thought (and it's indeed awesome behind a Sub), but the same apply to Cloyster, many Flying types (Nite, Mence above everything else), and even stuff like the previously listed Kyurem will benefit a lot from Rapid Spin (I settled for Volcarona in the end, but we can take different paths easily). I just added a Starmie without thinking too much since it's the standard spinner in about 99% of my teams that need Spin support; however I noticed that it was doing much more work than simply spinning. I'll explain this better later; let me present my suggestion:


Starmie @ Leftovers | Natural Cure
Timid | 252 HP / 24 Def / 8 SpA / 224 Spe
- Scald
- Psyshock
- Rapid Spin
- Recover

Bulky Starmie, despite the apparences, is, well, bulky. It resists everything that hits Gliscor for super effective damage, namely Water and Ice, while Gliscor can take most attacks that trouble Starmie with ease (see U-Turn, Crunch, and the likes). It also provides Rapid Spin support, and status absorbing prowess thanks to its awesome ability. Apart from these obvious things, Starmie synergizes with Gliscor in other ways; first of all, Scald's burn chance means that things like physically attacking walls (Ferrothorn in particolar, that loves to switch in on Starmie) will have a hard time breaking Gliscor's Sub, especially if it passes to a resistance, which is indeed awesome (it gives a free turn on top on a free switch for our threat); furthermore, the duo forms an incredibly flexible defensive-supportive core that enables us to pick basically whatever we like, since hazards are already handled, status can be absorbed by both with ease, there is no glaring type weakness whatsoever, and many otherwise dangerous threats are already checked (see Keldeo, Terrakion, Breloom (OHKO'd by Psyshock after very residual damage), Scizor, Gengar and so on. As a bonus, they're both quite fast, which doesn't hurt either. So, while it may not seem obvious, Starmie makes an excellent partner for Gliscor, giving valuable support and enabling us maximun freedom for the remaining picks, so it's my suggestion for our second pick of this CCAT.

Nominating Volcarona


Volcarona @ Life Orb
Timid Nature
Trait: Flame Body
252 Spa / 252 Spd / 4 Hp
~ Fire Blast
~ Bug Buzz
~ Quiver Dance
~ Hidden Power Ground / Giga Drain

We all know what happens when Volcarona gets a QD up, and our Gliscor can create great opportunities for it to come in behind a sub on a favorable matchup.

Volc resists the Ice-type attacks that Gliscor is a freaking magnet for, and it has great special defense, so its substitute should never fade from such an attack. They do share a water weakness, which may be troublesome. And Volc also needs RS support, which is a pain.

FB / Bug Buzz are STAB and deal truckloads of damage. HP Ground is to eliminate opposing Heatran, but Giga Drain can be used to hit bulky waters and heal off Life Orb damage if the rest of our team can reliably eliminate him (read - if we pack Dugtrio). Hurricane could be used if we go with Politoed (but that is unlikely so I'm leaving that out).

Hi, I trying to join you guys !
I hope this wont be a massiv fail though :D

So, hmm the basic idea would be to get an ice resistance as it's probably the stuff that will be lauch toward Gliscor with water.
That's why I see water types there... Keldeo was my first thought aswell by the way :p

Anyway I nominate Empoleon !

His three weaknesses are totally covered by Gliscor (Electric immunity, Ground immunity and great ability to sponge Fighting hits), and Gliscor's weaknesses (the one I told, being Water and Ice) aswell ! This caught my eyes so here is the set trying to make a good use of a potential substitute, but I think we could use also a more generic build :


Empoleon @ Life Orb
Modest Nature
Trait : Torrent
40 HP / 24 Def /252 SpA / 192 Spe
- Agility
- Ice Beam
- Surf
- Grass Knot

The idea is simple, thanks to the great synergy they share, the substitute will be still up. This allows us to set-up Agility. This being done Empoleon can proceed to sweep.
I copied the smogon spread and set, I didn't see much to change as anyway even after an agility Empoleon can't outspeed some EQ threats like Garchomp or Landorus if they are scarfed. But maybe it's possible to adapt it to OU tier.
(I was also thinking about a set with substitute and petaya berry, Empoleon is one of the few pokemon that both resist the damaging weathers, Sand and Hail; furthermore he wouldn't be bothered so much by priorities as Gliscor takes care of Mach Punches and Ice Shards/Extreme Speed/Aqua Jet/Bullet are soaked up easily by the Penguin :naughty: ... but it's maybe too random :\)

I hope this doesn't look too retarded, I'm loving the idea of getting a team done by the community by the way!

Dragonite@Leftovers
Adamant Nature
Trait:Multiscale
252 Atk/4 SpD/252 Spe
~Dragon Dance
~Dragon Claw
~Fire Punch/Aqua Tail (Weather Dependent Sun/Weatherless-Fire Punch, Rain-Aqua Tail)
~ Extremespeed

While this may not have great synergy with Gliscor, the substitutes that are passed allow the ability for Dragonite to setup Dragon Dance to +1 or +2 in combination with Multiscale. When Dragonite is able to setup to that extent it can take out a lot of pokemon and it can tank hits with Multiscale. If there is a Mamoswine/faster scarfer, you have Extremespeed, which will do a lot of damage when you are setup. It will probably need a bulky ice resist along with a spinner to be used to it's maximum capacity, but the ceiling is very high for Dragonite on this team.

The Substitute passed helps aid setup and ensure Dragonite doesn't get hurt by status. Dragonite also leaves rain and sun as good options to use. Sand and hail's residual damage isn't the best thing, but this has leftovers to negate the residual damage.