OU CCAT- 3rd Edition VOTING DISCUSSION SEE #157

[Electrolyte]

Approved by NixHex, Pocket, and Ginganinja

OU CCAT- Edition 3, Electrolyte style


Hello everybody! It's that time of year again- where we crank up our teambuilding skills and, as a community, create a team to help us gain more understanding of our new BW2 metagame. Hence, the name Community Create A Team! For those of you who have no idea how this works, please check out Edition 1 and 2, led by the best of Pocket and Ginganinja.

Now that a ton of fresh, new, pokemon, abilities, and movesets have been allowed, it's time we make a fresh, new team as well. In the last CCAT, a couple new changes were implemented- including the vote for a checklist of teams. This time, I'm adding two more changes- a bonus voting point system, and a retake of the basic stages.

BONUS VOTING POINT SYSTEM- many different voting systems have been used on Smogon in the past. Everything from holding a council to a public vote to even a plain dictated vote has been used. This time, our voting system will be a different form of a public vote, what I call a bonus voting point system. This is basically just a public vote- but with a little reward added into it. There will be a total of at least 6 public votes throughout this project. Everyone that submits a winning idea (1st come, 1st serve) will get +0.5 voting points. Keep in mind, voters recieve no change- only the submitters. From the start, everyone has 1 voting point- which basically means that your vote counts as 1. Once you win a round, however, your vote rises and suddenly counts as 1.5 votes. Although this might not seem like much in the beginning, it quickly racks up, and can be the major deciding point of some close cut votes. People that win multiple votes will continue to gain +0.5 voting points.

BASIC STAGE CHANGE- Previous CCATs have always been centered around a single, underused pokemon. This time, we're going to try something different. Instead of basing it around one pokemon, our main focus will be one strategy. In the first vote, we'll decide the team's strategy- be it Volt-Turn, Weather Stall, Balanced, Baton Pass, Field Effect abuse, or anything in between. I will specify this more in the next post.

Here's a list of the basic stages we will check off during our project.

1. Pre-Team voting. A total of one vote will be made during this stage. This is the most important stage of this project, as it dictates the direction we will go, and what we'll base our team off of. Team Strategy will be voted here.
2. Team voting. A total of 6 votes will be made during this stage. Remember, this is 6 votes, unlike previous CCATs where this took only 5 votes. Here, we will choose what 6 pokemon we will use to best represent the strategy we decided.
3. Perfection. In this step, we'll fine tune the team. Fine tuning won't have any votes, just the community agreeing together as to what changes should be made. Depending on activity, a tourney may also be held. If so, a vote will be carried out, and we will go from there. An RMT could also be written.

Right now, we're at Step 1: Strategy Vote! Let's get started!

Users with bonus points:
none

[Electrolyte]

Strategy Vote- SUBMISSIONS

It's time to kick off our first vote- and our most important one. Remember, we are looking for strategies here, not single pokemon. If you think that our team should be based off of a single pokemon, then work backwards and find a strategy that that pokemon works well with and maybe it'll be brought up again in the future. Please be extremely specific; here are some things to include in your post (if you don't have these already please edit it in; it really is very necessary for the community to understand clearly what you are trying to say)

~Strategy Name (specify- weather? field effects? Offense? Stall? Balanced? abuse of certain moves?)

~Why you think we should build a team around this strategy (2-3 sentences, be general with this one, as you don't want to be rejected just because you think Hail HAS to use Kyurem)

~Pokemon to consider for this strategy (Ex, Volt-Turn --> Rotom-W, Offensive Rain --> Tornadus-T, etc etc)

Try to be creative! Just because it's a strategy doesn't mean it can't be wacky! Also, don't overlap ideas- if two people post 'rain offense', only the first person's submission will count. ONLY ONE SUBMISSION PER PERSON

Get submitting!

[Ithilanor]

I vote for some strategy that's a bit off-the-wall, though not too much so. I'd suggest hail, but that's been fairly worked out already, and there's not all that many options. Trick Room could be pretty interesting, especially if it wasn't completely TR centric - just using a couple of abusers, like OTR Reuniclus or the Trick Room Victini set that recently went up on-site. Alternatively, I'd like to see an attempt at stall; as many have noted, this isn't a metagame very friendly to stall, and it'd be interesting to see the whole community going to work on figuring out how to deal with the huge diversity of threats.

[SlimMan]

Sand Offense is my nomination, but I would like to qualify it. I would only like to see a Sand Offense team if it utilized Sandslash. This most likely invalidates the nomination, as I would be pigeon-holing us into using a single Pokemon already. CAP calls this "poll-jumping". However, Sand Offense has the potential to be so cookie-cutter and bog-standard that I feel a Sandslash team would be the most fresh take on it for us. Sandslash is a very effective Pokemon that really doesn't see the usage it should, and that's the principle that the first few OU CCAT's were based on. So my nomination, once more, is Sand Offense, with the qualification of Sandslash.

will edit this post with a "legal" nom later

[alexwolf]

Ok here i go... What do you guys say we go with Sand Balance? Hippowdon is an excellent poke, that is quite underused (not in the suspect ladder). He is one of the best pokes to win weather wars right now, because as long as you give him a solid defensive core to take on the other weathers, he will almost always win the weather war, due to good defenses and Slack Off. And he is also undeniably the best defensive poke out of all the weather inducers.

Then we have quite a lot of routes to take, as Sand is the least restricting out of all the weathers, even moreso balance, which means that we have the option of choosing rare forgotten mons with hidden potential (which was the goal of the previous CCAT projects) such as Rapid Spin Sandslash, Mixed Attacker Cobalion and Offensive Spikes Roserade.

In a few words my nomination is Sand Balance!

[ginganinja]

just posting to say that if you want a general list of team styles / strat the following list is a good indicator

Teamstyles, thanks to Antar for this list

---

weatherless
offense
balance
rain
sand
hyperoffense
sun
voltturn
semistall
hail
stall
sunoffense
choice
batonpass
rainoffense
dragmag
sandoffense
multiweather
sandstall
rainstall
trickroom
hailstall
trapper
hailoffense
allweather
tricksand
gravity
sunstall
trickrain
tricksun
trickhail
fear
sandfear

Personally, I would rather we use a teamstyle thats "non standard". For example, I don't really want us using sun offence for example, and end up with a copycat GeneSun team. Personally, something such as Hail / Gravity / Dual Weather / Sun Stall / Trapper style teams are all rather neat, Volt Turn could be cool as well I guess although thats slightly common.

[Scarfwynaut]

I think we should do stall because its a playstyle having issues in this meta, and with our minds together we can create an ultra stall team to wall everyone out. It makes for an interesting challenge and might give more long-term productive activity, because unlike offensive teams, stall teams to have the weaknesses hammered out. There is also the fact that CCAT tends to be offensive, so having it be stall could get different people and ideas involved.

It could be interesting if we could make a stall team that doesn't rely on stereotypes aswell, like Heatran for genesect in this meta.

[Harsha]

I'm agreeing with alexwolf, I think sand balance is the way to go this time around. Hippowdon is an underrated and amazing Pokemon to win weather wars. If you go the specially defensive route, it can take on a lot of powerful threats on rain teams, and if you go the physically defensive route, you sponge a ton of hits from opposing sand. It provides hazards, recovery, or offensive coverage—basically whatever your team needs. Additionally, you can fit virtually any Pokemon that is viable in OU on a sand team; Stoutland, Landorus, Terrakion, Keldeo, Heatran, Starmie, Rotom-W, Forretress, Skarmory, Genesect, Scizor, heck, you can fit any Pokemon that you need on a sand balance team. I think they're currently the best in this metagame because if you apply pressure on rain teams by killing off Ferrothorn, you can win the match pretty easily once Politoed goes down, and sun teams are hardly a match if you play correctly against Dugtrio. Against sand teams, you never have to win a weather war, and against weatherless, you pretty much have an inherent advantage.

[Ithilanor]

Gravity's also an interesting idea; I've seen Landorus Gravity sets tossed around a few times, but I haven't seen a really good team with it.

[alexwolf]

A note to Ginjaninja and Scarfwynaut. Some team types are indeed interesting to use and to build a team around, but let's not forget that this is a community project. We can't expect from the community to create a Sun Stall team for example, when even the best players have problems doing so, because if this happens, this CCAT is going to fail, just like the previous one. The team type we will chose needs to be user friendly. And sadly stall will almost never be picked, because it is a common fact that most players either don't know how to play it, or dislike it.

[ThisMysteriousGuy]

I'm going to be that weirdo who suggests Offensive Gravity. I'm by no means a great OU player, but I have tried using Offensive Gravity team and it was INSANELY fun since no one is prepared for it and your opponent will be left in awe at what your team is doing. Spamming inaccurate and insanely powerful moves from Pokemon such as Victini and Starmie, racking up a good deal of hazard damage as the opponent switches around their Pokemon, and having Earthquakes being nearly unavoidable from Landorus, it's just so great. Plus, you can utilize all kinds of otherwise rare Pokemon in OU to amazing effects, such as Durant who can deal massive damage thanks to Hustle's power boost and the accuracy boost of Gravity cancelling out Hustle's Accuracy nerf.

...Unfortunately, it's rather tricky to make one work just right. Granted, I'm not a good OU player by any means as I said before, but it is kinda hard trying to find just the right Pokemon to make the team since the set you'll be using tend to be a little obscure. Regardless, there are a bunch of possibilities of Pokemon to toy with that I see this as being a rather interesting concept for a CCAT and a quality team can actually be made possible when a bunch of people all work together.

[Metroid78]

Rain Offense is my nomination.I wanna see a rain team cause with BW2 rain offense has become one of the best and my favorite strategy.Some new pokemon like Keldeo(The Strongest Rain Sweeper),Tornadus-T and Thundurus-T seem to work very good in rain teams,we can use them in the team.So my nomination is Rain Offense

[Superpowerdude]

I am nominating Hail Stall!

The reason i am suggesting this is because a common remark from b/w OU players is that "Stall is impossible" This remark is most probally said because of all the offensive pokemon in b/w. Now it is even MORE interasting to make stall with B/w2 introducing the therains, Keldeo, salac berry and my lord Genesect onto the ou scene. This makes stall much more intimidating to make. Hail is also probally the most underated weather effect making the combination of the two great for our daring community to try and create!

Abomasnow obviously must be considered for this play style and with Kyuerem getting Roost he looks very enticing. With Stealth Rock and i believe even Knock Off being teachable from the B/w2 move tutors we have the weapons we need for stall. Also lets not forget Amoongus and his prized Regenarator

[DrunkDemon]

Hm, quite a few good options to choose from. I think that a Trapper team might be interesting to try out. With the trapping options that existed in BW1, such as Wobbu and Magnezone, in addition to the Gothitelle, there are several options we have to work with, each of which can support a different playstyle. Despite the relative amount of versatility that this provides, I think it's important to note that certain standard strategies such as Genesect + Dugtrio and DragMag rely on this technique, so it may be difficult to come up with something particularly creative. I'd also be really happy if we ended up with something like Sand Balance or Hail, as they're both effective and fun to play with.

[Electrolyte]

Remember guys, you're not restricted to plain weather. You can just say a strategy such as Trick Room, and we'll implement sand later if necessary. Although this is the most important vote, it is in general the most flexible one, because we want as many ideas as possible.

Keep submitting!

[Temp V1]

I agree with Ginga in that I'd like to see a less common teamstyle being used, something that really lets the community be creative subliminally without being creative for the sake of the project. That said I'd like to nominate a Phazing Team.

Basic premise of the team; set up as many entry hazards as possible, then utilize moves such as Roar, Whirwind and Dragon Tail to continually shuffle your opponent around causing them to take serious damage from hazards, and eventually faint. While it may be similar to stall in that regard, passive damage, it is quite a lot different. The principles behind the teamstyle aren't to be defensive as such, but they aren't overly concerned with going full out offensive either. This means that the community can come together quite well as both offensively and defensively minded players can find a mid-ground that isn't the overly common Balance.

One of the best things about Phazing Teams is the degree to which you can be creative with them. Obviously there are certain mons that will seem almost mandatory on a Phazing Team such as Skarmory, however there are so many other mons that can be utilized effectivley to do the same thing. Another thing which I love about Phazing is being able to use unique and different sets on mons that usually carry either one of two incredibly common sets. This can give certain things in the metagame a new lease on life, and value. A well known example of this would be the ParaShuffling Dragonite, which is now considered one of Dragonite's viable sets.

In summation; I think a Phazing Team would be great for this project as it would be able to bring both offensively and defensively minded players together, whilst allowing the community to be very creative with both the mons and movesets suggested, which I believe suits this project to its very core.

EDIT: After reading what The Reptile posted, and some of the other comments, it seems to me that you could sort of combine Gravity with this Phazing idea. That would allow everything to be hit by spikes which means that everything is losing 25% + Stealth Rocks damage each time they get shuffled. It also means that the whole team would be that much more creative. Thoughts?

[ginganinja]

A note to Ginjaninja and Scarfwynaut. Some team types are indeed interesting to use and to build a team around, but let's not forget that this is a community project. We can't expect from the community to create a Sun Stall team for example, when even the best players have problems doing so, because if this happens, this CCAT is going to fail, just like the previous one. The team type we will chose needs to be user friendly. And sadly stall will almost never be picked, because it is a common fact that most players either don't know how to play it, or dislike it.

Sure, I understand this, but what I don't want is us ending up with some copycat weather team that we could have all made in 20 seconds. I really just want to avoid something so goddam common that takes little imagination to build. A Standard Offensive Sun team for example, is going to look pretty much the same (seriously, look at archived sun teams and note down similarities), Rain is in a similar boat. A Sand team with Hippowdon I have no objection towards, as at least its not cookie cutter (Unless we follow the standard Hippowdon / Grass Type / Rotom W / Stoutland / Forretress / Fillar thing) which encourages actual discussion and shit.

EDIT

just had a thought here. Ubers has a team style called "Quick Stall" which involves using faster annoying pokemon to quickly harass the opponent. They play as fast as offence, but try to be as reliable as stall. I have no idea if this style of play is limited to just Ubers however.

[LucaroarkZ]

let's make a baton pass team herp derp

On a serious note, I think we should give a Gravity team a shot. I see a lot of people suggesting Sand Balanced, but the truth is, I just think Sand isn't really "creative" by any means. On the other hand, a Gravity team allows us to utilize an underrated threat in the form of Gravity Landorus. You also get 100% accurate Stone Edge and other things with similar accuracy, while moves like Focus Blast have much less accuracy problems. You can also wear things down with Spikes that are normally Flying or Levitating. Overall, I think a Gravity team would be an effective and creative team for this CCAT.

[bubbly]

Just saying, Hail definitely isn't the way to go, as much as I love it. There's very little scope for community involvement because once the first three pokemon are decided, there are only a few possible combinations which actually cover remaining weaknesses. Personally I don't think we'd get anything out of a Hail CCAT, especially not with Genesect + Dugtrio everywhere which makes conventional Hail near impossible. This goes for other very narrow playstyles as well.

I'd actually kinda like to see us having a go at Quickstall, which unlike pure stall definitely has the potential to be effective in this meta. For those who don't know, quickstall is generally made up of a defensive core which aims to set entry hazards quickly and keep them up, a "transition" pokemon like Wobbuffet which aids set up (bulky VoltTurn cores also work), and annoyers such as Torment Heatran, SubToxic Gliscor, SubDisable Gar and so on which are capable of abusing the hazards while maintaining momentum. Think of it as a stall team which plays like an offensive team; compared to conventional stall, there's more risk and prediction involved, but you spend a lot less time taking hits, reducing the chance of hax which commonly ends stall teams; you have some offensive momentum; and you're much less vulnerable to typical stallbreaking strategies like Deo-D + spinblocker and powerful Choiced attackers.

I just want to highlight for everyone that this actually plays very little like "boring stall". If it does, you're doing it wrong. The playstyle would also allow us to experiment with a lot of unorthodox mons and strategies which can only be a good thing.

Edit: ginganinja'd.

Originally Posted by Fat ginganinja

just had a thought here. Ubers has a team style called "Quick Stall" which involves using faster annoying pokemon to quickly harass the opponent. They play as fast as offence, but try to be as reliable as stall. I have no idea if this style of play is limited to just Ubers however.

In the past it's mainly seen use in Ubers, I made an old (and kinda bad) Forretress + Jumpluff team for DPP OU. In 5th gen I actually think it's a lot more viable in OU because of weather related effects and other abilities (Dry Skin, Chlorophyll, Hydration, Prankster, Rain Dish, and Poison Heal come to mind) which make for extremely effective stallers.

[alexwolf]

Originally Posted by Fat LucaroarkZ

let's make a baton pass team herp derp

On a serious note, I think we should give a Gravity team a shot. I see a lot of people suggesting Sand Balanced, but the truth is, I just think Sand isn't really "creative" by any means. On the other hand, a Gravity team allows us to utilize an underrated threat in the form of Gravity Landorus. You also get 100% accurate Stone Edge and other things with similar accuracy, while moves like Focus Blast have much less accuracy problems. You can also wear things down with Spikes that are normally Flying or Levitating. Overall, I think a Gravity team would be an effective and creative team for this CCAT.

What do you mean Sand isn't creative? After Hippo or Ttar is chosen, you can chose more than half of OU to put in your team, and many UU/RU pokes too. There is a reason that Sand is called the anti-weather weather. Because its main purpose is to counter opposing weathers. And every type of team does this (trying to combat weather), because weather IS the meta. So by using Hippowdon we are trying to check/counter Sun/Rain teams, in the same way that when a stall team choses Heatran, 50% of the reason to pick him is to combat sun teams.

tl;dr Sand balance is one of the most teambulidng free type of teams out there (if not the most), in the sense that it doesn't limit your teambuilding options. Whether or not the team that, we, as a community will make will be creative is up to us, not to Hippo or Ttar...

[Absolete]

TRICK ROOM will of course be nominated by myself. With all the fun I've had making and using Trick Room teams, I'd love to see what we could do as an entire community.

[bubbly]

Weellll...I've been experimenting recently with Sand builds like Tyranitar / Gothitelle / PH Breloom / Sandslash, which are pretty fun and effective. Gothitelle and Pursuit Tar together take out pretty much all of Breloom and Sandslash's counters, so the last two mons are usually Scizor (slow U-turn, lures out Skarm / Gliscor etc) and something like Phys Def Gastrodon or Keldeo to beat Rain and Gene. Then again, that might be a more creative take on Sand, but it definitely doesn't leave much room for creativity in the actual process.

[The Reptile]

I'm going to nominate Spike Stack Offense. While Spikes do not hurt Tornadus-T, DNite, and Thundurus-T, it will heavily hurt Genesect, who absolutely HATES passive damage. It also hurts big threats that resist Stealth Rock such as Terrakion. It also applies pressure on U-Turners not named Landorous, as switching has a much more punishing side-effect due to the Spikes Damage. Plus, anything Spikes doesn't hit gets hit decently hard by Stealth Rocks. I feel that we as a community can make an effective Spike Stacking Offense team.
Potential pokemon for Spike Stack are Deoxys-D and Landorous. Deoxys-D can easily set up Spikes and Stealth Rocks, much like his brother Deo-S. Meanwhile, Gravity Landorous is probably the first competitive use of Gravity outside of the gimmicky Gravity Team. He is an interesting choice due to allowing everything to be hit by Spikes for 5 turns.

[alkinesthetase]

if we can make an established definition of quick stall, i definitely want to see it happen; i have a personally strong lean towards defensive play and it sounds like an interesting concept. the fact that it's so loosely defined means we can really start exploring the concept of the playstyle, figure out what it means as a part of the ccat process.

it's also a bit fluffy though so i'm not sure if we can rigorously capture it in such a way that would make teambuilding possible, in which case i would go all the way and nominate the impossible: weatherless stall, because it's basically the ultimate challenge to build right now. if that's too hard/hardcore i guess we can say stall and decide later if we want weather to be in it.

[doublenikesocks]

I am also nominating quickstall, that seems like a fun, creative playstyle that will be sure for people to think outside the box. We can put Prankster Pokemon such as Tornadus, Sableye and whimmiscott to use.