XY OU Dual Core RMT

[Abrams]

Team Dual Core

Hey folks, Abrams here and bringing you my very first RMT on Smogon. I´ve been into competitive battling for some years and recently had a break for about one year. Thrown into a totally new metagame, I decided to build a team myself and I hope you guys can help me to improve it. At the moment this team has an ELO-rating of ~1650 but struggles to get past this rating.

The team is centered about two cores, mainly the well-known Scizor/Rotom-Wash combo as well as the Bisharp/Gardevoir-M/Heatran core. They work pretty well together, but they do have their weaks. So I present you my Dual Core Team:

The Mindgame

Bisharp (M) @ Life-Orb
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head
- Swords Dance

Bisharp is giving my opponents a headache everytime he enters the battlefield. He can remove the Lati-twins as well as those annoying Fairy-types. I usually spam Knock Offs in the early game to weaken the likes of Skarmory or Ferrothorn. I used to run Pursuit over Swords Dance, but I didn´t use it that much so I opted for a move to boost his attack to sky-high levels. For this reason, I simply went for max. attack and speed. Defiant is one of my new favorite abilities and helps a lot against one of the most common switch-ins: Landorus-T.

The Powerhouse

Gardevoir (F) @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Will-O-Wisp
- Focus Blast

The mega on my team is just absurdly powerful. Anything that doesn´t resist its STAB-moves loses a big chunk of its health. The most common switch-ins Heatran and Ferrothorn can be 2HKOed by Focus Blast and a bit prediction. I used to run a spread of 16 HP / 252 SpA / 240 Spe with a modest nature, but this didn´t allow me to outspeed and smash Excadrill (which is a big threat to this team). Psyshock helps against all those Assault Vest users and works well against Venusaur. Hyper Voice destroys with STAB Pixilate 90 BP everything in its way and spamming it is a great way to soften up my opponent´s defense.

The Do-It-All-Mon

Heatran (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 216 Def / 40 Spe
Bold Nature
- Lava Plume
- Stealth Rock
- Taunt
- Will-O-Wisp

Heatran is probably the most important mon on this team. It´s not only my best answer to stall, it also counters the likes of Aegislash and Talonflame, and it is also adept at taking all those Draco Meteors from Lati@s. When Tran dies and Talonflame is still alive, I´m usually in big trouble. I would like to split up its tasks so that I don´t lose games anymore just because I ran into a random Earthquake. Unfortunately, I always miss the burn when I really need the burn on something. But that´s not just my problem I guess ;D

The Damage Platform

Latios (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 29 HP
- Draco Meteor
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Roost

Latios is really a beast. Not only it forces my opponents Charizard-X out with its sheer presence, but it hits nearly every switch-in like a truck. It also provides some useful resistances against water and fighting and therefore stops Keldeo, which would otherwise rip through my team. Psyshock is great against Venusaur and Conkeldurr, as is Surf against Ttar (LO-Latios can 2HKO Ttars without SpD investment). With the spread I get the maximum power and minimum LO recoil per turn. And Roost is just a great option for free turns or Protects.

The Backbone

Rotom-Wash @ Chesto Berry
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 216 SpD / 44 Spe
Calm Nature
- Hydro Pump
- Volt Switch
- Will-O-Wisp
- Rest

As the title says, Rotom is some kind of backbone for my team. When I don´t know what to do I just switch to Rotom. With its incredible Dual-STABs it can do serious damage as well as retaining momentum with Volt Switch. I ran the Pain Split-version earlier, but this way I had nothing to absorb status. So I switched to the Chesto-Resto-Rotom. It´s usually my lead and it does its job very well so far. The only problem is the one-time-use of Rest. Once used, I´m lacking a reliable recovery because I dont want to give my opponent a set-up opportunity. The speed investment is to outrun Adamant Azumarill and burn it before it can do serious damage to my team.

The Revengekiller

Landorus-Therian (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 24 HP / 252 Atk / 232 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide
- U-turn
- Knock Off

Landorus-T serves as my revenge-killer and my best answer to Excadrill and Charizard-X as it is able to KO both of them with STAB Earthquake coming from an impressive 145-Base-Atk. It also helps me to create momentum with U-Turn and works quite well with Rotom-W. I prefer to use Rock Slide over Stone Edge because of the shaky accuracy (Rock Slide still gets the OHKOs on Talonflame and Pinsir-Mega). The filler move is Knock Off, mainly to hit Eviolite users unexpctedly or to finish off the Lati-twins.

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So that is my first attempt to create a team. At the end of this RMT I want to give a quick threat overview. The most difficult ones were:
​

• Talonflame: With Heatran gone, it can basically outspeed everything and hit me hard with its STABs. Is now handled by Heatran and Landorus-T.
  
• Excadrill: The Mold Breaker sets can seriously damage my team and take out at least 2 of my mons. Is now handled by Gardevoir and Landorus-T.
  
• Charizard-X: After a Dragon Dance, it´s the same problem as with Talonflame. I can´t burn it, I can´t outspeed it, I die. Is now handled by Landorus-T.

I think it´s a solid team, but I hope you guys can help me to improve its performance. Any constructive criticism is highly appreciated. Thank you for reading.

EDIT: Here some replays on PS:

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-148107749
Great Battle, was a pretty close game in the end.

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ou-154298005
Battle with some risky plays against a nice guy with his Medicham.​

 

[etw44]

I would use specially defensive heatran to take scalds and such better and physically defensive rotom-wash to better handle talonflame, mamoswine, and mega pinsir. A poke that's annoying is max speed aegislash, which is actually not that bad or rare i believe, as it can rip your team apart with sacred sword, shadow ball, and shadow sneak. You can fix the aegislash weakness by simply making bisharp jolly and swords dance makes up for the power loss. To fix the Charizard X weakness, give heatran an air balloon and use earth power over taunt or toxic. To fix the Excadrill weakness, Skarmory can be used over Latios as a defoger. Knock Off over Pursuit on Scizor is what it usually uses. Nobody uses Dugtrio in Ou anymore lol so heatran has little to fear from it. Another threat is Mega gyarados. After a DD or 2, it can easily sweep your team. Thundurus is able to use priority Thunder Waves it so its easier for a teammate to kill it. If you want, I suggest replacing Scizor for Thundurus. If there's anything else, just ask a question :]

 

[Unbirthday]

I disagree with the notion of physically defensive Rotom and Skarmory over Latios. You're already rather weak to Greninja and at least Rotom offers temporary protection against it, which it can't do anymore with a physically defensive spread. Specially defensive Heatran is still an option, but you already have plenty of Pokemon to tank Draco Meteor with and the added bulk looks useful on this team as it's pretty much your only answer to Talonflame. Replacing Latios also opens him up to a pretty glaring Keldeo weakness, so I would suggest against it, as Keldeo finds plenty of switchin opportunities between Bisharp and Heatran.

As for changes of my own, I would suggest replacing Scizor. Yes, Scizor and Rotom-W used to be a cool combination but regular Scizor really has trouble keeping up with this metagame as a lot more common Pokemon resist Bullet Punch nowadays and Pokemon such as Pinsir/Talonflame circumvent it completely. For that reason, and because of the weaknesses you outlined yourself, I would suggest switching out Scizor for Choice Scarf Landorus-T. While you lose a priority move you gain an extremely fast physical attacker that checks not only Talonflame/Excadrill/Charizard X but also gives you secondary checks to Pokemon such as Mega Pinsir and Mega Gyarados. It also helps your Mawile weakness a bit by lowering its attack with Intimidate and threatening the OHKO with Earthquake. On top of that it, like Scizor, learns U-turn so you can still perform your VolTurn strategy effectively. Smaller changes I would suggest are Focus Blast over Hidden Power Ground on Gardevoir as Ferrothorn looks rather annoying to your team now while Aegislash and Heatran look a lot less annoying with Landorus-T. Furthermore, I would look into Life Orb Bisharp again as it helps a lot with its Iron Head damage output (which is really useful as you lose a bit of fairy coverage with Scizor gone) and consider Will-O-Wisp over Toxic on Heatran to completely shut down most Swords Dance Mawile and to completely cripple Azumarill instead of just setting it on a timer like Toxic does. You got most of the Pokemon that would switch into Toxic, such as Latios and Rotom-W, covered rather well already so the only Pokemon you're really missing out on is Charizard X. I'd at least think about it.

Summary

Bisharp (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature (+Atk, -SAtk)
- Knock Off
- Sucker Punch
- Iron Head
- Swords Dance

Gardevoir (F) @ Gardevoirite
Ability: Trace
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Will-O-Wisp
- Focus Blast

Landorus-T (M) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Intimidate
EVs: 24 HP / 252 Atk / 236 Spe
Jolly Nature (+Spd, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- U-turn
- Superpower / Knock Off
​

 

[Abrams]

First of all, thank you for your suggestions. After a few days of testing (and I tested every single combination), I figured out the best combination.

I started with the replacement of Latios with Skarmory, but as Unbirthday predicted, I became very weak to Keldeo. Choice Specs variants just ripped through the hole team.

Nevertheless, I played around with the splits of Heatran and Rotom-W and finally made Rotom-W specially defensive and Heatran physically defensive. CB-Talonflame can´t do much to Tran this way.

A very good suggestion was the replacement of Scizor with Landorus-T. It helped against most problematic threats and has surprised many opponents (it seems most opponents think that Landorus-T is a SR/EQ/SE/U-Turn monster and Greninja dies to U-Turn most of the time). The only problem is the shaky 80 % accuracy of Stone Edge. The one or another game was lost due to a SE-miss -.-

Some minor changes included the return to LO-Bisharp (still adamant, cause Aegislash never posed that much of a problem because of Tran+Bisharp) as well as the Focus Blast on Gardevoir which helped a lot against those common Ferrothorn switch ins. And last but not least the WoW on Heatran worked out pretty well, even though I have 3 WoWs on my team now.

Changes are editied in red.

 

[Abrams]

Using my bump.

Meanwhile, this team peaked 1814 on the ladder. But I´ve discovered problems with rain teams because all special attacks go to Rotom-W which lacks a reliable recovery. Any suggestions?