ORAS UU Cress & the Goons UU balance

[notewire]

Cress & the Goons​

Whats up party people, welcome to my first RMT. I've been building and messing around with this team for a few weeks and its become one of the more solid teams I've used.

The team is a fairly standard balance, primarily focusing on weakening my opponents team for either an Entei or Snorlax sweep, with a fun amount of hax from Cress Entei and Empoleon thrown in for good measure.

It plays fairly slowly but I like that it has checks for much of the metagame, and that I can win most matchups if I play correctly, and patiently. The patient part is hard sometimes.

Funnily enough this team was originally Icey Tea's sample balance team which I liked quite a bit and then proceeded to tweak to hell and back until the only mon remaining was Entei.

As much as I'd like to go through the incredibly long team building process that took me here from an entirely different team, I think I'll spare you all the pain of reading it and go straight to the team.

The team​

Cresselia @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Wave
- Moonlight
- Psychic
- Moonblast/Toxic
Cresselia walls a lot of things with its massive bulk, and I chose full phys def to take advantage of things like Conkeldurr and Mamoswine and providing a backup check to mons like 3 attacks Gyarados. The set is somewhat standard and T-wave is Cress's main draw allowing me to neuter fast attackers like M-Aerodactyl and Infernape. This is also one of my only forms of speed control which helps the somewhat slow team. I've been running moonblast as of recent for dark switch ins but toxic is another option I've run in the past for fat walls and rockers like Swampert that like to come in on Cresselia.

Entei @ Choice Band
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Stone Edge
- Flare Blitz
- Extreme Speed
Entei's set is the standard Band set as it does its job so well, letting me click sacred fire. This thing puts immense amounts of pressure on any team without one of the few counters, and its one of my solid win cons for late game. This thing checks all sorts of problematic mons with its decent speed tier, while being my best offensive check to mons like Sylveon and Escavalier, and breaking all of the steels that try to come in on Snorlax like M-Aggron. Entei also provides much needed priority to deal with things like M-Beedrill easier.

Snorlax @ Leftovers
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 188 HP / 144 Def / 176 SpD
Careful Nature
- Return
- Curse
- Sleep Talk
- Rest
Snorlax is my primary win condition on the team and basically auto wins against any team that doesn't have any ghost types or hazers. Once I pursuit trap the opponents Chandelure or Doublade with Krookodile and weaken any bulky Pokemon with roar Snorlax just sets up and wins. Lax also provides a much needed fire check on the team as Empoleon doesn't take a sacred fire too well.

Empoleon @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Roar
- Scald
- Stealth Rock
Empoleon is essentially the glue for my team as it helps immensely with necessary
hazard removal and the checking of certain threats. It outright walls most weaker special attackers and even walls powerful resisted special attackers like Sylveon and Kyurem that would otherwise destroy my team. It also provides a check to mons like sub dragon dance Gyarados and calm mind Suicune, and just lets you to click scald for free on certain switches.

Chesnaught @ Leftovers
Ability: Bulletproof
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Spiky Shield
- Spikes
- Wood Hammer
- Leech Seed
Chesnaught is my main counter to water types and dark types, as Krookodile blows my team away without him, and its helpful because I live in fear of Gyarados. I picked leech seed-spiky shield to get free wittle damage on the team and to help scout sets for my other counters, and I like spikes on it to apply huge amounts of pressure once my opponents' hazard removal is either KOd by krook or Entei or significantly weakened to the point that they can't switch in on anything.

Krookodile @ Choice Scarf/Choice Band
Ability: Moxie/Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Pursuit
- Earthquake
- Superpower​

Krookodile is here mostly as an electric immunity, a form of offensive speed and a pursuit trapper for troublesome ghosts like Chandelure. I recently switched running the Banded set to deal with bulkier mons that can be hard to break like leftovers Empoleon but the Scarf set is also a viable option for this team to add speed and more reliably trap Scarf Chandelure that I used previously.

Threats​

This team obviously isn't perfect and it has threats thankfully most of these threats I can deal with decently if I play well (lol) and don't get haxed too much (double lol). There might be a few other threats that I've overlooked but these are all the ones I can think of for now.

Suicune
Even with Chesnaught to counter it Suicune is a pain and eventually Chesnaught gets scald burnt and it can no longer check Suicune very well. I usually use Chesnaught Empoleon to check it early game and then eventually curse up alongside Suicune with Snorlax since lax beats it 1v1 but cm roar is really annoying.

Milotic
Same thing as Suicune but not as big of a deal its just really annoying for my team and after Chesnaught gets burnt it gets really annoying to deal with since it just hazes Snorlax.

M-Beedrill
Beedrill is scary for me to deal with since the only good check to it that I have is Empoleon and that gets Shrek'd by drill run and just U-turns around the rest of my team. Its usually just best to play aggressively with Entei and not allow it to come out but when its paired with Cune or Milo it gets all sorts of frustrating.

Hydreigon
Hydreigon is pretty scary for any team to deal with though Empoleon walls all but superpower sets. If it is superpower I can usually just go into lax on the Empoleon death and curse up or beat it down but if played well I dont have a real counter for it, though I suppose those don't really exist for Hydrei.

Chandelure
Chandelure is somewhat annoying because it forces alot of 50/50s with Krookodile and if I get it wrong and it scarf energy balls me then i suddenly have nothing to deal with it. Generally I play safe and only go Krook on the locked in shadow ball but it can still be a real nuisance.

Celebi
Celebi is also just a big pain. I have several checks to it in Entei, Snorlax, and Cresselia but its really dangerous to play against and if it sets up before I get any damage for Extreme Speed I lose.​

Conclusion
In total this is probably the most solid team that I've built so far, though I am open to suggestions on changes to the build to help eliminate some of the threats. Hopefully you enjoyed the read and it wasn't too boring, though for my next RMT I would like to add better images lol.
Thank you to all the lovely people in the uu room on showdown and thank you for the read!
Notewire
P.S. I don't know how to convert downloaded replays to ones I can post here.

importable

Entei @ Choice Band
Ability: Pressure
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Stone Edge
- Flare Blitz
- Extreme Speed

Cresselia @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunder Wave
- Moonlight
- Psychic
- Moonblast

Empoleon @ Leftovers
Ability: Torrent
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Roar
- Scald
- Stealth Rock

Snorlax @ Leftovers
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 188 HP / 144 Def / 176 SpD
Careful Nature
- Return
- Curse
- Sleep Talk
- Rest

Chesnaught @ Leftovers
Ability: Bulletproof
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Impish Nature
- Spiky Shield
- Spikes
- Wood Hammer
- Leech Seed

Krookodile @ Choice Band
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Pursuit
- Earthquake
- Superpower

​

 

[Killintime]

Sup sup, came on by and noticed your team man. It looks pretty solid so I only really have 1 problem with it, and in trying to fix it I kind of end up making another problem which ill go over. I had two ideas that we could try here and its really up to you if you take my advice or not.

-So you say you have a celebi/drill/chande problem right now since a lot of how you deal with those is either a well played pursuit trap or just holding on to dear god. So I thought:

------>

aero

Aerodactyl @ Aerodactylite
Ability: Rock Head
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Pursuit
- Earthquake
- Aerial Ace
- Roost

• See the thing is double band core is strong, but it lacks some practicality as your two main physical wall breakers dont appreciate mons with protect and it can get in the way of your play style. By running aero you can trap celebi, chande, and beedrill as well as get some nice speed presence on your team overall. Now the issue with this is obviously the fact we have lost a volt switch immunity, but I still feel like with the core you have you could probably still deal with it as long as you pursuit trap the u-turner thats usually coupled with the volt switch user.

If you decide to go this route I would also recommend that you go toxic>thunderwave on

since it will allow you to get past bulky water like milo a lot easier with the residual damage and you have aero to deal with speed control. Now on to the second way you can try taking this team in my opinion:

-In this route we aim to keep the krook, however we change the set up a bit:

krook

Krookodile @ Dread Plate
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Pursuit

• Now you still carry the volt switch immunity however we have allocated the rocks away from empoleon to in order to switch it to a different mon.

-With rocks being dealt with yet still having some passive mons on board your team we still want hazard control as well as a way of dealing with drill a lot easier so we can do this:

---------->

bat

Crobat @ Sky Plate
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 112 HP / 252 Atk / 144 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Brave Bird
- U-turn
- Defog
- Roost

• Now we still carry defog, a secondary fairy switch in, and we have a way of pressuring celebi a lot easier especially since this spread can switch into an unboosted psychic if you need to. Now this route still also carries a problem since it means we are putting some pressure on snorlax to counter both entei and hydreigon, but I think you should still be fine since your teams offensive core is still quite strong.

Cool team notewire and I am glad to see you involved with the UU room as well as UU related topics on the forums. Good luck and have fun n_n/

 

[notewire]

Thanks for the rate killin!

I really like the first suggestion and its actually funny you mention Aero, as the last slot in my team when I was building was kindof a tossup between Aero and Krook.

I definitely can see toxic on cress helping out, though I unfortunately don't get to click t-wave and brainlessly win anymore :[.

My only fear with getting rid of Krook is that without it calm mind focus blast reuniclus absolutely bodies my team, since my only way to play around it is either come in on it early with Entei to 2hko it and get wrecked by psyshock, or come in with Empoleon and pray he misses blast on the roar.

I'll definitely try this out though and I think Aero + toxic should patch up most of the holes in the team.

Thanks again