XY RU Vivillon has potential

[Chapapa]

Hi everyone this is Chapapa. I decided my first post ever on the Smogon Forums to be a RMT. And the team I'm featuring is my signature team, the one I like using the most: a Vivillon-centered team.
Although it worked pretty well (for my standards) in the early RU beta days, it just can't cut it anymore in the current metagame. So I decided to ask the veterans of Smogon what could be improved.

HOW THE TEAM WAS ASSEMBLED

The idea of using Vivillon dates back to the early XY threads on this forum. Everyone was excited about this pokemon being a very strong and unique special attacker for lower tiers, but I just couldn't understand just how one of the many weak Bug/Flying butterfly Pokémon could actually be a threat. I mean, just everyone learned to hate Butterfree just a couple of levels after it learned Confusion back in the good ole RBY days!
Then I looked at stats, movepool and ability. It outclassed both Butterfree and Beautifly in term of potential and could be considered dangerous because of one little thing: quiver dance+compound eyes+hurricane.

I chose a life orb set with the sleep powder+quiver dance combo to hit hard quickly, sacrificing durability. The EVs are also customized to hit hard right off the bat.
With Compound Eyes, Vivillon gets an almost perfect accuracy for Sleep Powder and Hurricane. This set works in a very simple way. You look for a switch opportunity, put to sleep the enemy and use the free turn to quiver dance. After a quiver dance boost, you can OHKO many of the Pokémon you usually see in RU, after two boosts it can 2HKO a Calm Cresselia with full investment in Special Defense even after leftovers recovery! The only thing that hurts Vivi is its poor coverage. In fact I chose HP Fire to hit steel types, but its base power is really low, it doesn't get STAB and it doesn't help against rock types. I have thought about switching it with HP Fighting, but then I'd lose coverage against Doublade, which is not good news. Also, this Poke needs a lot of support, as it's weak to SR, priority and status, so I needed to build a team to cover its weaknesses well. NOTE: I gave it 2 IVs instead of the usual 30 to weaken Foul Play. It's a trick I learned to do back when Spiritomb was a prominent threat and I still use it nowadays.



Vivillon @ Life Orb
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature
IVs: 2 Atk / 30 SAtk / 30 Spd
- Sleep Powder
- Quiver Dance
- Hurricane
- Hidden Power [Fire]

First of all I tried to think of a Pokémon that could sponge all of the hits directed to Vivillon, especially priority, such as Ambipom's Technician-boosted Fake Out, and at the same time be useful. My choice was Ferroseed. With its typing and stats it could stomach any physical attack thrown at him and even some special ones. With its awesome ability Iron Barbs it can punish contact moves, and since most of priority attacks fall in this category, it is the perfect switching partner for Vivillon. The only bad thing about Ferroseed is its lack of recovery outside of Leech Seed/Protect, and it is just powerless against things like Amoongus or some setup sweepers.



Ferroseed @ Eviolite
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spd
- Leech Seed
- Protect
- Stealth Rock
- Gyro Ball

After adding Ferroseed, two bells rang: the Stealth Rock problem was still unsolved, and I needed a fire resist.
So I added Xatu. I'm not very fond of this choice actually, even if I must admit it could be very useful if only it lasted longer (I'm looking at you, Knock Off). Magic Bounce is such an awesome ability, protecting me against hazards and status. Also I use it to put up the screens and make my Pokémon harder to kill (and with a team full of glass cannons it's really welcomed). The only bad thing about it is the mind play it generates: since I don't have a spinner, if I can't predict every attempt of setting hazard or kill the hazard setter before it could lay them I have to play without a team member. So I think I ought to replace it with a spinner... I'll talk about this later. I gave it special bulk to counter things like Shadow Balls and Dark Pulses, but just... Knock Off.



Xatu @ Light Clay
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SDef
Careful Nature
- Light Screen
- Reflect
- Thunder Wave
- U-turn

Once solved (meh...) the hazards problem, I decided to think about how to counter fire types. Gatrodon was the perfect choice. Not only it could wall most of the fire-types completely, it could also hit back, aim for a burn with scald and worked well in synergy with Ferroseed. I use alternatively Earth Power and Earthquake as a Ground-Type STAB, depending on the mood.



Gastrodon @ Leftovers
Ability: Storm Drain
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SDef
Bold/Relaxed Nature
- Earth Power/Earthquake
- Scald
- Toxic
- Recover

Then here comes the other attackers. First a Physical one, Cinccino. Cinccino is just awesome. It's fast, it has good attack, Skill Link and a great movepool to go with that. My set is modeled after the BW standard life orb one, I just replaced Aqua Tail with Knock Off, which is just a great addition to its arsenal. Cinccino is great at countering things like Sub-Moltres, Delphox or Rock-Types, that would otherwise trouble my team, and has an almost perfect coverage. But then again it falls prey to priority and burns, so Ferrothorn and Xatu are perfect partners.



Cinccino @ Life Orb
Ability: Skill Link
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Knock Off
- Bullet Seed
- Rock Blast
- Tail Slap

Last but not least Electivire. Electivire is a great pokemon that can take hits quite well and dish them out in return. It can be very dangerous after a Motor Drive boost as it has a great coverage, hitting right in the spot where it hurts most. The set is the standard mixed set from 5th gen, that still remains a very solid choice in XY.



Electivire @ Expert Belt
Ability: Motor Drive
EVs: 248 Atk / 36 SAtk / 224 Spd
Naive Nature
- Wild Charge
- Earthquake
- Flamethrower
- Ice Punch

POKÉMON THAT THREATEN MY TEAM

Hitmonlee
The Unburden variant is a death sentence to my team. It could be stopped by Xatu but... Knock Off! It could be countered by Gastrodon, but experienced players can still nullify my defensive strategy and usually kill it before using Hitmonlee. I just don't have a solid counter for the kicking monster.

Delphox
If it runs Choice Scarf and Grass Knot, it can easily corner my team, as again the only Poke that can reliabily wall it is Gastrodon.

Yanmega
Well, that monster is probably getting banned to UU soon, so who cares?

Cresselia
It can wall, wall, wall, wall and wall again my whole team. Outside of Knock Off and Vivillon with at least 2 QD under its belt, there's nothing that can kill that fat purple banana-moon thing.

CHANGES I WOULD MAKE
If someone brought me this team asking for advice, I'd tell him to get rid of Xatu and get a good rapid spinner, like for example Kabutops or the Hitmon-trio. But I'm not quite sure of the choice, maybe just investing in Physical bulk instead would make Xatu a better teammate, but then I'd have to lower Gastrodon's Defense and invest in Special Bulk. Another option would be switching Gatrodon with a specially defensive Cresselia and Xatu with Kabutops to keep the screens and not being weak on the special side. I'm really not sure about this, what should I do?

 

[Magnemite]

Hi Chapapa, you have a nice looking team here built around a solid and underrated threat, but there are a few things you could do to improve it.

First, as you said, your team indeed has a huge weakness to Hitmonlee, as well as Virizion, the former of which you possess no switch-ins to and can easily spin away Ferroseed's hazards, and the latter of which can easily sweep you with Swords Dance. To fix this, I would reccomend replacing Electivire with Doublade. Electivire is a rather flawed Pokemon in RU due to its mediocre damage output, low bulk, and mediocre Speed. However, Doublade would bring several things to this team. First, it would help tremendously against the common Fighting-types in the RU tier that currently steamroll you thanks to its amazing physical bulk and typing. It would also provide a spinblocker to keep Ferroseed's hazards up, a good answer to Cresselia, and would act as a secondary win condition with Swords Dance in case Vivillon is unable to sweep.

This would make your team's current Fire weakness a bit worse, especially since two of the most common Fire-types in the tier in Moltres and Delphox commonly run Grass-type moves which hit your only Fire resist for 4x super effective damage, which means that you have no switch-in to them at all. For this reason, I would reccomend replacing your Gastrodon with Assault Vest Slowking. AV Slowking is generally seen as the best response to Moltres and Delphox in the tier thanks to great Special bulk, its typing, and Regenerator. This would also help you deal with most Meloetta sets a bit better, as it is currently a bit troubling to your team.

Finally, as you said, Vivillon really needs Stealth Rock to be off the field, and Xatu is a rather inconsistent way of ensuring this, especially since your current set does little in the way of defeating common Stealth Rock setters such as Rhyperior. I would recommend replacing it with a Rapid Spinner, as Defog would be counterproductive as your team stacks hazards itself. The good spinners in RU are Hitmonlee, Hitmontop, Kabutops, and Sandslash (Hitmonchan and Claydol are terrible spinners for several reasons, mainly their inability to get past spinblockers, which is beside the point of using a spinner in the first place). All four of these fit your team decently well, but Kabutops would be the best choice in my opinion, as the other good spinners in RU don't provide all that much synergy to your current team, while Kabutops provides a backup check to Fire-types and also help tremendously against Flying-types, especially Fletchinder, which has little trouble sweeping through your current team.

Also, one minor change that you should definitely make is moving the 4 HP EVs on Vivillon to Defense, as 4 HP EVs give you an even numbered HP stat, which means that it can only switch into Stealth Rock once, while moving them to Defense would let you do so twice if need be.

Hope I helped, and good luck with the team!

Sets

Slowking @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpA / 8 Spe
Modest Nature
- Scald
- Psyshock
- Fire Blast
- Dragon Tail

Doublade @ Eviolite
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Atk / 44 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Swords Dance
- Shadow Sneak
- Iron Head
- Shadow Claw

Kabutops @ Life Orb
Ability: Weak Armor
EVs: 252 Atk / 252 Spd / 4 HP
Adamant Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Stone Edge
- Aqua Jet
- Waterfall / Knock Off

 

[Molk]

Hey chapapa! interesting team here, although there are a few ways to make it better.

First off, i wholeheartedly agree with everything Magnemite suggested, you need a Rapid Spin user over Xatu, and Doublade>Electivire and AV Slowking>Gastrodon patch up your general team quite nicely. However, as for the spinner, there's a different way of going about it that i think would be helpful.

Something you could try is using a Sandslash over Xatu. Sandslash has some pretty decent synergy with Vivillon all around, taking the Rock- and Electric-type moves aimed at it. It can beat every single common spinblocker in the tier (this includes Doublade, who seems like an annoyance to your team with Magnemite's changes), beats many of the common hazard setters 1v1, and it can even use Stealth Rock and Rapid Spin on the same set without hampering itself. Making it a solid fit for this team imo.

Sandslash

Sandslash @ Leftovers
Ability: Sand Rush
EVs: 252 HP / 192 Atk / 60 Def / 4 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Rapid Spin

The EV spread lets you always live Reckless Life Orb High Jump Kick from hitmonlee, you can tack on more power or bulk if you want.

From here, since Sandslash has Stealth Rock, you can add Spikes on Ferroseed. Ferroseed's great bulk and resistances make it a natural at setting up multiple layers of Spikes throughout the game, and because of Doublade you should be able to block most attempts to remove them via Rapid Spin. The extra layers of hazards make it that much easier for Vivillon to sweep too. Alternatively, you could replace Ferroseed entirely if you feel all you need it for is Stealth Rock.

[ALTERNATIVE RATE]

There's also another way to fix up this team, and that's using Gligar over Xatu. Gligar gives you a way of removing entry hazards that can't be blocked at all, a solid U-turn pivot to help get Vivillon safely, and gives you an excellent switch in to Hitmonlee that has reliable recovery and everything.

Gligar

Gligar @ Eviolite
Ability: Hyper Cutter
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- U-Turn
- Defog
- Roost

Just like Magnemite's previous rate, i'd still use Assault Vest Slowking over Gastrodon, Slowking pairs up very well with Gligar imo, and considering this and the fact that you struggle with Moltres and Delphox without Slowking on your side, and it'd be a shame not to add it here.

Lastly, i'd still go about removing Electivire. Electivire is actually a very mediocre Pokemon in the current metagame despite its coverage. Its main issue is the fact that it sorta relies on low BP moves to deal damage, and because Super-effective =/= a KO, it often ends up barely missing out on KOs in the most embarrassing of ways (or just gets flat out walled by something thats neutral to all its coverage, they aren't really rare in RU), combine this with a decent but not great Speed tier, and the fact that Wild Charge deals recoil without being exceptionally powerful like Flare Blitz, and you have a subpar Pokemon.

This is why i suggest using Jolteon over Electivire. Jolteon's fast and powerful, and thanks to its ability to outrun pretty much the entirety of the unboosted tier forces switches quite easily, making Volt Switch exceptionally spammable, forming a nice voltturn core with Gligar. Outside of simply pivoting around with Volt Switch, Jolteon can use its excellent Speed stat to serve as a revenge killer, and makes a nice cleanup crew if Vivillon fails too. I'd definitely give Jolteon a try.

Jolteon

Jolteon @ Life Orb
Ability: Volt Absorb
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Water]
- Signal Beam
- Volt Switch

If you feel Doublade weak with these changes, another option is to use Heliolisk in this teamslot, but i *think* you should be fine.

[JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT]

If you're finding Vivillon's Hidden Powers to be too weak, why not try using Substitute over Hidden Power? Substitute gives you a niche cushion against Sucker Punch and priority in general if you can set it up and lets Vivillon take full advantage of forced switches (for example, if you force out a Hitmonlee with Vivillon, you can set up a Substitute on the switch, then depending on what comes in you can choose to either put the next opponent to sleep or set up a Quiver Dance that turn). Mono Flying is actually pretty solid coverage regardless, especially when you can just put anything that resists it to sleep, then get the hell out of there. This applies to both rates

Substitute Vivillon

Vivillon @ Leftovers
Ability: Compound Eyes
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Sleep Powder
- Substitute
- Quiver Dance
- Hurricane

Hope i helped!

 

[Chapapa]

Thank you a lot guys for the help :) I've tried to make changes and now my team works a lot better!