The Outsiders Challenge — Mk III

[Cabol]

Team is 11 w - 5 L. I've noticed I have a huge weakness to fighting teams (Hydreigon, Mageneton, and Abomasnow get killed). Might need to re-roll again because i'm at Glicko 1797 with 95 dev so I might be fighting a losing battle here.

Name: Cabol
Alt: polkiu
Ladder Standing: n/a

 

[Tyranitarphantom]

Finally made a decent team for this challenge, so I registered an alt

Name: tyranitarphantom
Alt: We Out
Ladder Standing: 1806 +/- 78

The hardest part about this challenge? Fighting rain teams that use Tornadus-T is pretty much an auto-loss. All of the viable checks are too high in usage to be usable with a 25% limit

Ladder reset :/

 

[Hugin]

The hardest part about this challenge? Fighting rain teams that use Tornadus-T is pretty much an auto-loss. All of the viable checks are too high in usage to be usable with a 25% limit

Weavile, maybe? You can outspeed and OHKO easily with Ice Punch. Pursuit doesn't quite trap, even after rocks Tornadus will live even if it switches, but you get it nearly dead.

 

[Tyranitarphantom]

Weavile, maybe? You can outspeed and OHKO easily with Ice Punch. Pursuit doesn't quite trap, even after rocks Tornadus will live even if it switches, but you get it nearly dead.

I did try Weavile, and while it's a superb revenge killer, it can't switch in at all

I really don't want to have to use Metagross to stop Tornadus, but it's looking like I'll have to. Alternatively, I could just hope to get lucky and not get matched up against rain teams

 

[Cabol]

I really don't want to have to use Metagross to stop Tornadus, but it's looking like I'll have to. Alternatively, I could just hope to get lucky and not get matched up against rain teams

Have you tried a scrafed Abomasnow? 100% accurate Blizzard would take care of that problem plus eliminate weather effects helping the other team.

 

[Bryce]

Finally made a decent team for this challenge, so I registered an alt

Name: tyranitarphantom
Alt: We Out
Ladder Standing: n/a

The hardest part about this challenge? Fighting rain teams that use Tornadus-T is pretty much an auto-loss. All of the viable checks are too high in usage to be usable with a 25% limit

What?!?Use Raikou :]

There are plenty of Tornadus-T checks imo.You can use Bronzong,You can use Zapdos,You can use Slowking with enough def to tank Torn-Ts piss weak U-Turns,You can use Rotom-H with Rapid spin support,You can use SpDef Milotic,You can use Scarf Gothitelle and revenge kill it with T-bolt after some prior damage,You can use SpDef Mew,You can use Jolteon if you have enough room,You can use Cresselia,Heck Use a swiftswimmer.Kingdra,Kabutops whatever you like.

 

[Phazon00]

Admittedly kinda forgot about the challenge. Gonns restart w/ new team.

New alt: till the end
Ladder Ranking: N/A

 

[Dark Nikuman]

Name: Dark Nikuman
Alt: Whistle baby
Ladder standing: 0

This time was quite hard building the team :P

 

[qpie]

Somehow I'm just now very good at this whole ladder thing. Got really close a few times, but in the end I always screwed up my most important matches.

Much more importantly, what happens when the usage stats for December are released? Do we use them to determine whether or not a team is eligible or do we stick with November's usage stats?

 

[Harsha]

Ouch, that's really tough. The challenge ends on January 1st, so I will take everyone's experiences into account when making the next version. It seems that the new combined usage of 25% rule made the challenge much more difficult, and next time we're going to try and ease it up so that we have more winners. In short, the answer is no. The challenge will end in two days, so if you plan on continuing, good luck!

 

[qpie]

Haha, okay. Sadly my alt probably is beyond saving and I won't have the time to start a new one. Maybe next time. Either way, doesn't matter, had fun. :3

For the record, I personally don't think the challenge itself or the 25% rule was too hard. Despite the limitations you can still build perfectly viable teams. Even some of the cores people have succeeded with in the past hardly take up 15% of your "budget". Prime example being Stoutland, Magnezone and Hippowdon which barely add up to 10%. What screwed me over was ̶P̶̶S̶̶'̶̶ ̶̶r̶̶a̶̶t̶̶i̶̶n̶̶g̶̶ ̶̶s̶̶y̶̶s̶̶t̶̶e̶̶m̶ my inability to play under pressure.

 

[MMII]

Hide

I was doing very well until 3-4 straight games of crit fest hax. I managed to climb back up to the minimum for Hall of Fame but I really hate this rating system and don't want to continue. I'll type up the answers later and will ladder higher next month. (since it is already last minute right now)

Edit for answers:

Team

Crustle (M) @ Custap Berry
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 Def
Adamant Nature
- Stone Edge
- Earthquake
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes

Empoleon (M) @ Petaya Berry
Trait: Torrent
EVs: 12 HP / 252 SAtk / 76 SDef / 168 Spd
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Agility
- Substitute

Kingdra (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Swift Swim
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 28 SAtk / 228 Spd
Lonely Nature
- Waterfall
- Outrage
- Rain Dance
- Hydro Pump

Espeon (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Magic Bounce
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
- Psyshock
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Substitute
- Baton Pass

Sableye (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SDef
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Will-O-Wisp
- Recover
- Calm Mind

Rotom-Heat @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature
- Volt Switch
- Overheat
- Discharge
- Hidden Power [Ice]

What did you think was the biggest challenge when not being allowed to use any of the restricted Pokemon? Was it overcomeable? There is an amazing amount of underrated mons and some that gained a lot from the recent release of Custap Berry that to talk about the biggest challenge may mislead others into thinking it was actually a difficult challenge. The hardest part, though, is figuring out how to handle the support necessary to make some of the lesser used mons viable. Again, Pokemon like SubPetaya Empoleon and CM Sableye are very strong choices that require little to no support and should really get some more usage. These few hidden nuggets (and the release of Custap Berry) helped a lot in forming a solid team that could go toe to toe with OU's best. Personally, I didn't have much trouble with the 25% rule and never felt like I needed a Pokemon I couldn't use. (Although I did consider at times some weird stuff like DD Latios to replace my Tailwind Hydreigon. In the end, I found Mixed RD Kingdra who fixed the troubles I was having while not bringing up any significant new ones)

How did you feel the challenge tested your metagame skill? Did it make playing much harder, or were you still able to leaderboard with relative ease. Most of the popular Pokemon tend to check a lot of things, sometimes even more than you were hoping it would. On the other hand, a lot of the choices in this challenge have a more limited range and thus required careful thought when playing as you wouldn't normally have a plan B or C to nearly everything. This challenge pretty much forced me away from Stall so adapting to an HO style was a personal challenge. Regularly, I would have to pull Honko's calc to figure out a safe way to pull off my sweep whereas I have a tendency to go auto-pilot with my Stall teams. (Yeah, I know this isn't a good thing. It's a bad habit from laddering)

What is your opinion on how overpowered the Pokemon that you were not allowed to use, but were required to face? Were they too strong to deal with, are there metagame shifts you would consider to correct this? Please don't derail the thread with a constant debate over this point, only reply once you've won! It's kind of hard for me to say much here as my team didn't go through very many changes (Just minor moveset edits and Hydreigon to Kingdra) so I can only really talk about what bothered my team in particular.

What team style did you use, and how did it fare against the metagame? Were there team styles you couldn't beat? (As an aside, please share your team with an importable! It'll be fun to disect those, and you may even be featured in a Smog article!) Stall has a hard enough time in the metagame as is that not being able to use stuff like Gliscor or Forretress pushed me to HO. Plus, I wanted to try to expand my capabilities with other play styles and HO was one I had been having particular trouble in building at this time. There wasn't really a team type I couldn't beat but I did end up making an EV spread change on my Empoleon early on when I realized that Growth Venusaur could easily sweep through my team. Rain was obviously my strong point thanks to Kingdra who also made fighting Sun easier with Rain Dance. The main troubles I had were Cube leads that could stop Crustle from getting up hazards with its stupid ability as well as being a pain for Empoleon sweeps and general revenge killing with his typing and bulk. Mach Punch was also very annoying as it would cut off Emp sweeps as well as annoy the team in general with Conk's bulk and status immunity along with Breloom's Technician Bullet Seed and Spore. Vaporeon and Gastrodon could get annoying as they were either immune to Emp's Surfs while Toxic and occasional status immunity would make it hard for Sableye to end the game. Heatran could get also get annoying as it often could counter Sableye as well as absorb Overheat/WoW to become a really scary offensive force.

What is your personal opinion on this challenge? I really enjoyed it as it helped me to discover a lot of really cool sets. It helped to break away from the norm and provided a very interesting team building challenge. The fact that a majority of my opponents' had absolutely no clue what to do about these threats or what to expect from them was a very satisfying bonus.

 

[ginganinja]

The December stats are out, so the OU mods will discuss what will become of this challenge.

Clearly the ladder issues upset many peoples attempts to win this challenge, but for those of you that took part, how did you find it. Was it too hard or was it too easy? Is there anything that could be changed or tried that we could look at in the future? Would you like to see it again this month?

 

[MMII]

I'd like to see it again to try and climb higher than I did this time. It's true though that the ladder is pretty aggravating so I'm not sure I will do it right away.

Edit: Actually, I still have to go make Reqs. Would it be a problem if I went ahead and start now? I strongly doubt that any new rules would make my team illegal and it's already January.

Edit2: I made some team changes and I'm getting some more consistent results.
Having SpecsGoth makes it a lot easier to pull of a sweep as he takes out those pesky Ferrothorns without the need to lure them out and soften them up with CMSab or Empoleon. Latios is a much better revenge killer and a pain for HO so these two changes gives me a better match up all around. (Deo-D is a annoying though as the best I can do is 2HKO non-Lefties variants with Crustle's X-Scissor)

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Crustle (M) @ Custap Berry
Trait: Sturdy
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 Def
Adamant Nature
- X-Scissor
- Stone Edge
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes

Empoleon (M) @ Petaya Berry
Trait: Torrent
EVs: 12 HP / 252 SAtk / 76 SDef / 168 Spd
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Surf
- Ice Beam
- Agility
- Substitute

Kingdra (M) @ Life Orb
Trait: Swift Swim
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 28 SAtk / 228 Spd
Lonely Nature
- Waterfall
- Outrage
- Rain Dance
- Hydro Pump

Gothitelle (M) @ Choice Specs
Trait: Shadow Tag
EVs: 160 HP / 252 SAtk / 96 Spd
Modest Nature
- Psyshock
- Thunderbolt
- Trick
- Hidden Power [Fire]

Sableye (M) @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Def / 252 SDef
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Will-O-Wisp
- Recover
- Calm Mind

Latios (M) @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Psyshock
- Surf
- Dragon Pulse