VGC '17 RMT

[damaGrande]

Mary Poisons (Nihilego) @ Black Sludge
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 188 HP / 124 SpA / 196 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Dazzling Gleam
- Sludge Bomb
- Protect
- Power Gem

I really like Nihilego so I started with it and built out from there. It's a fast bulk variant that takes Sp. attacks well, making it a great matchup for all the tapus (bar a bulky z-set for Lele). Power gem helps with pesky fire mons and thus compliments Ninetails (below). Dgleam is filler. I used to run acid spray but never used it, and I use Dgleam occasionally just for the spread.

Ninetales-Alola @ Icium Z
Ability: Snow Warning
Level: 50
EVs: 148 SpA / 148 SpD / 212 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Disable
- Blizzard
- Protect
- Freeze-Dry

Starting with Nihilego meant I was vulnerable to ground attacks to I looked for good ice users. Ninetails covers that, plus its speed is so close to Nihilego's it makes it easy to stack moves consecutively. I opted for blizzard because it's strong and spread, Freeze Dry to help with gyarados, gastrodon and other water mons. Disable combined with protect helps with defending a lot, which is important as I opted for icium-z over a focus sash. Basically with this mon and Nihilego, I decided to abandon even caring about trying to take a physical hit and opt for a more offensive item. Hail also helps with pesky sashes, of course.

Celesteela @ Leftovers
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 244 HP / 12 Atk / 104 Def / 148 SpD
Sassy Nature
- Leech Seed
- Substitute
- Heavy Slam
- Flamethrower

The two mons above are weak against steel moves, so Celesteela helps check things like metagross and, with flamethrower, kartana and mirror matches as well. Not sure what else to say, it's a good mon for obvious reasons.

watchmeWhip (Xurkitree) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
Level: 50
EVs: 92 HP / 252 SpA / 164 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Energy Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Volt Switch
- Hidden Power [Fire]

I found myself in sticky situations when my opponents had mons faster than Nihilego and Ninetails (Kartana and Pheremosa namely), and with this set Xurkitree outspeeds non-scarf Kartana and any Pheremosa without a speed-boosting nature. If there is a scarfed Kartana this survives a leaf blade 94% of the time.

Gastrodon @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Storm Drain
Level: 50
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpA
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 27 Spe
- Scald
- Protect
- Recover
- Toxic

This team severely needed (probably still needs) defensive bulk so I went full in with this set. Protect is uncommon with recover but I found myself in no need for ice beam or muddy water. Rocky helmet was mainly to break sashes, but comes in handy other times as well. This is also my best check to trick room teams.

Bone Saw (Incineroar) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Blaze
Level: 50
EVs: 152 HP / 156 Atk / 96 Def / 4 SpD / 100 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fake Out
- Flare Blitz
- Darkest Lariat
- U-turn

I wanted a fake-out user on the team as well as some bulk. With AV and great base stats Incineroar was a great fit for my team, especially since its dark typing helps with Metagross and Marowak (helps with leading xurkitree), and flare blitz helps with magenezone and celesteela. These stats were put together haphazardly but can take a secret sword from kartana and honestly about any hit you can throw at it well. I chose this over arcanine mainly for fakeout and AV, even though arcanine would add a much needed intimidate to this team (can't WAIT for intimidate incineroar to become available). He also fares well against most TR teams.

How I mainly use the team:
If possible I open with Nihilego and Ninetails. Together they pose a large threat to most openings if the opponent doesn't have an answer, and with double protects I can scout as well while breaking potential focus sashes. If they have a strong steel mon I will instead often opt for Indineroar plus someone to set up (often Xurkitree or Celesteela). For late games Xurkitree and Celesteela often provide wincons.

Some strengths of the team:
I don't have to worry about any of the tapus most of the time
I have three different Ultra Beasts that can set up, and have a diverse set of options to choose from in going about a game
I can hit many mons for 4x damage

Some weaknesses I've noticed so far:
This team is primarily Special-based. It lacks much physical offense and defense.
I struggle against TR teams somewhat, especially gigalith teams
TOGEDEMARU x(
The stats I chose are mostly arbitrary with a few exceptions, because I still don't know stats running around in the meta right now
anything else you notice?


THANK YOU in advance :) Please don't hurry on this as I will be traveling for a few days and may not get back very soon.



​

 

[RebornFX]

Okay, some of these changes from the standard sets are quite interesting but I feel they lack justification in terms of how well they allow your members to function against threats to the rest of your team (mostly because you only provide one benchmark for one of your spreads and the rest for the most part seem random). 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' really seems to apply for some of the first few changes you've made to standard sets.

Firstly a small change I would recommend. Run max speed on Xurkitree. This may sound like an arbitrary speed stat but it's not. 252 speed EVs is the exact number or EVs you need to outspeed Modest Scarf Tapu Lele which while it may not be as popular as it was at the start of the format still is a reasonably common set that is worth investing to outspeed, as opposed to speed tieing with at best and getting outsped by at worst. I find the rather small additional bulk allowing you to take an attack from a very rare set that you survive 50% of the time anyway not worth getting outsped by a more common set.

The same goes with Ninetales and Nihilego. The speed benchmarks you currently hit are very arbitrary and for a relatively small additional investment you get so much in return. Currently Nihilego outspeeds max speed base 95s and neutral base 109s (of which nobody runs because it's not worth it), while with max speed you outspeed max speed Garchomp and Salamence, the only things you'd ever want to d gleam other than I guess Krook. The same is even more true with Ninetales where as opposed to hitting the arbitrary target of speedcreeping things that outspeed Garchomp, you can speed tie with opposing Ninetales and Kartana instead of being forced to take a hit. Considering you don't explain what the EV spread changes do I can't say this is a straight up improvement since the defence investment might let you live some important hits, all I'll say is that it's a pretty small EV investment to hit some rather important benchmarks.

So Black Sludge Nihilego is just a bad idea. With its poor defensive typing and piss poor physical bulk it's not going to stay around for long enough to make it worth while. Life Orb allows it to take KOs where it otherwise wouldn't, such as against 252,116 Marowaks, a set that I believe Wolfey came up with as well as 252HP Tapu Lele. I would also say that Dazzling Gleam is pretty useless considering the poor damage without STAB even on super effective targets (I mean your current set doesn't even 2HKO no bulk Garchomp). I would run HP Ice to further make outspeeding Mence and Garchomp worthwhile, as LO Nihilego always KOs no bulk Garchomp and Mence (try to get some chip damage on Garchomp in case they are AV however).

Icium Z Ninetales is a cool idea, I'm just not sure about the lack of special attack investment. You haven't provided any calcs for attacks it allows you to live or any KOs you no longer pick up due to the lower special attack. Disable seems like a fun move, but it's just inferior to Aurora Veil in pretty much every way.

I'm personally not a fan of Protect-less Celesteela, it's just much harder for it to act as a win condition with leech seed stall and to prevent it from taking damage in the first place.

I dislike Rocky Helmet Gastrodon. Firstly it lacks the passive recovery of Leftovers/Sitrus Berry and recovery and set up option that z-stockpile provides. It also just tends to do nothing in this format. Physical attacks aren't all that common in this format, and the most common ones either don't make contact (Garchomp's/Krook's EQ for example) or gastro can't take (Kartana/Bulu's moves), or just naturally don't want to stay in against Gastro (Marowak for example). As for breaking sashes, the only common physical sash users are Aerodactyl which doesn't use contact moves other than Sky Drop (which is usually used with something to KO the target), Kartana which blows Gastro back and I guess Weavile though its pretty rare now and I believe Icicle Crash doesn't make contact. Basically you'd be better off with pretty much any other defensive item imo.

I don't have enough experience using Incineroar to comment on your spread, but it does look like your speed investment is pretty much random. Like unless you're that scared of max speed Wishiwashi or Golisopod there's literally no reason for that much speed.

You haven't really provided me enough information to suggest any replacements to patch up any weaknesses so I won't bother.

 

[damaGrande]

Hi, Thanks for writing so much :)

In summary, I'm sorry the stats seem so all over the place because they kind of are. I should've been clearer in stating I haven't found a good resource for common stat spreads to run damage calcs on (I usually use Showdown but they don't currently have many new sets updated). Is there a good resource you could recommend for common spreads/usage stats in the current meta? For example I couldn't find the spread for AV Chomp and I would like Ninetails to be able to OKHO that. Other things like Incineroar's speed were just overcompensating for my lack of knowledge on current meta spreads (in that case i was looking to creep Bulu and Metagross that had some speed investment).

As for the help with individual mons, I will certainly scrap Rocky Helmet on Gastro. For Xurkitree I'll try max speed for Lele (but I have found Kartana to be a large threat, and on Showdown at least they are often scarfed in my bracket, which is around 1500 for this team). Similar situation for Celesteela and flamethrower over protect, I think I may be overcompensating for Kartana so I'll run protect and see how that goes. You're also right about aurora veil over disable, especially in Bo3 matches where I lose the element of surprise. What do you think about HP ground on Xurk to cover Togedemaru? I would just be terrified of Kartana without flamethrower on Celesteela.

Nihilego and Ninetails are my core, and are a pretty fun combo to use against most match ups bar steels and Gigalith. Xurkitree helps cover Celesteela and to a lesser extent Gigalith. These three together provide great matchups against most Tapu sets and all the pairings I found on the "Complimentary Pairs" page (http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/vgc-17-complementary-pairs.3587286/). My mindset with the stats for Ninetails and Nihilego was to use combos for benchmark calcs. For example, not worry about OKHOing a Tapu Lele with sludge bomb, but rather KO with a sludge bomb+blizzard. Or for the Chomp Celesteela lead, OKHO Chomp with blizzard and KO Celesteela with blizzard+tbolt from Xurkitree. In anticipation of the inevitable meta trend towards bulk I was simply trying to scrap up as many extra EV's for bulk as possible, while finding more creative ways to account for physically offensive threats. For example with Nihilego's speed, I was simply banking on Ninetails to cover Chomp and Mence, but you're probably right that it's not worth the little speed divestment. However, muddy watter from max SpAtt Tapu Fini is a 3HKO on this Nihilego (I may have messed up some calcs but I will rerun them so don't worry too much about specifics).
Long story short, if I were hoping to use Nihilego as a SpDef tank/Tapu killer and use Ninetails/Xurkitree to cover her physical threats decently. Is there a more effective way of adding physical offense and/or defense this that meshes well with this team? Preferably a physically defensive mon with decent speed that's especially good at taking rock and steel moves... sorry if that's too specific. I was thinking changing Celesteela to a tanky Tapu Bulu for the Def and ability to remove psychic terrain (preventing scarf Lele from OKHOing Nihilego), and between Bulu and Gastrodon have a good answer to rock and steel types. Or perhaps there's a Def set for Celesteela? Like I said I'm lacking physical defense and offense and thus struggle against SpDef tanks like Porygon2 and Snorlax with the exception of using toxic. Maybe a fighting type might fit well? Perhaps scarf Buzzwole with thunder punch instead of Xurkitree...

 

[RebornFX]

No worries on the stats. If it's a calculator you need this is the VGC17 one. As for common spreads, here's a decent place to start, however obviously there are plenty of common sets that aren't there are you kind of have to know what to calc for from experience. It's updated regularly but some of the sets are still outdated. There are sets for AV Chomp there for you to run calcs on if you want. If you want to speed creep Tapu Bulu you'd want to go with 148 EVs to outspeed 20 speed Bulu (which is pretty much the minimum for Bulu nowadays). That's a lot of EVs though and that much investment really hits your defensive benchmarks hard. For things to EV against, on the trainertower site just yesterday a brilliant summary of the currennt metagame was posted. However it does miss out some of the Pokemon that had success in Dallas which will most likely cause their increase in popularity, such as Vikavolt, Metagross, Braviary (not quite sure what Andrew Smith ran but the ones I've seen/been testing run Flyinium Z Brave Bird + Defiant for TW and Intimidate deterrence in one), as well as other Pokemon that you can expect to see like Goodra (both Dragonium Z and AV variants), Mudsdale, Hariyama, Milotic etc (probably not useful listing off every viable Pokemon in the format lol).

On scarftana, it's honestly very powerful in Bo1 but is very easy to play around in Bo3 where it misses the bulk from AV or the utility from sash quite a bit. That being said, I feel getting outsped by ScarfLele isn't worth living a hit from it. If necessary you can take out some EVs from sp.atk, but you'd need to run calcs to see what KOs you miss out on. I definitely don't hate HP Ground Xurkitree, as it also nails Magnezone which gives Celesteela troubles. Here's a calc on Wolfey's Magnezone, which is the bulkiest I've seen so far. Of course if you removed some sp.atk EVs that chance isn't looking so great anymore. As for Protect on Celesteela, if you really want Flamethrower on Celesteela you could just replace Sub with Protect.

252 SpA Xurkitree Hidden Power Ground vs. 252 HP / 44 SpD Magnezone: 180-212 (101.6 - 119.7%) -- guaranteed OHKO

On to the core, I don't think it's a bad core but I just feel that you lose more than you gain by reallocating those EVs from your offensive stats. So far the only calc you've provided me with to justify Nihilego's HP investment is that it doesn't get 2HKO'd by Tapu Fini's Muddy Water (which btw isn't true from the standard set right now). You haven't ran the calcs for the KOs that you miss out on or ran the calcs on what you can now survive, which basically just means the HP value is arbitrary. That's why I'm saying if it's not broken don't fix it. It's not that a bulkier spread is better or worse, it's that there's no way of knowing other than running the calcs or doing a lot of testing with both sets. Just to point out from the situations you've stated Blizzard doesn't OHKO no bulk AV Garchomp (so never OHKOs standard Chomp), and obviously sash chomp can take a Blizzard and EQ your Nihilego before dieing to hail (not saying you will commonly see this, it's just something to consider), in both cases Nihilego would at least be able to get off an attack before being KO'd if Garchomp survives (or say your opponent switches in a weather setter and you miss Blizzard, or there's an unexpected Wide Guard, or they Fake Out Ninetales, or they lead Tapu Koko and outspeed and KO you with a Tbolt crit). There's plenty of situations where Ninetales doesn't get its Blizzard off in which Nihilego is forced to take an EQ against Garchomp if it doesn't outspeed it. But then again there will be plenty of other situations where having extra bulk would have been huge and probably won you the game.

The calcs I was talking about:
164+ SpA Choice Specs Tapu Fini Muddy Water vs. 188 HP / 0 SpD Nihilego: 114-134 (54.8 - 64.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

252 SpA Ninetales-Alola Blizzard vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Assault Vest Garchomp: 156-184 (85.2 - 100.5%) -- 6.3% chance to OHKO

As for a Celesteela replacement, it sounds like AV Kartana fits in perfectly. Its physical defence is is comparable to that of Ferrothorn's (with the same typing to boot) and is incredibly fast for the meta. It's almost the best of both worlds between Bulu and Celesteela while actually being fast unlike Bulu. Ray's Kartana set is definitely the best place to start and adjust toy our liking from there. If you want the raw power of Bulu as well as its defensive utility then that would work too. Of course if you use AV Kartana you would need to swap items on Inceroar or replace him with something else (that takes on steels since your Ninetales + Nihilego core hates them and you can't rely on just Xurkitree for Celesteela since it's often paired with Marowak).

I'm more trying to give you food for though at this point rather than actual suggestions since I don't have enough (or any) experience using Nihilego to say whether or not extra bulk would be helpful or hurtful. Ninetales definitely has been known to drop its sp.atk investment (thoough never speed to my knowledge), though never to this extent so I can't really say whether or not it's strong.

 

[damaGrande]

It's funny, I've spent so much time trying to counter Kartana I never thought of using my own! You're right, I think it's a perfect fit for what I'm looking for. Also, thanks for the links to spreads! That's exactly what I need right now.

So far you were right about all the suggestions: I was underestimating Lele, the speed drops (or raises for Incineroar) were pointless, Aurora Veil is such a strong move, and Z-Stock Pile Gastrodon is REALLY fun. I haven't had a chance to try Kartana out yet but I have high hopes. Thanks so much for all the help!