Other XY PU: Those Left Behind

[QR7]

So, before PU became an "unofficial" [at the least, playable] tier on the main server, I'd have to go on to other servers and whatnot to find myself battles. And let me tell you. I played a lot of PU. I was the peer-proclaimed King of PU. And it stayed this way for a while. However, with the dawn of many unthinkable occurences such as Granbull rising to NU, former teams were shattered. Now PU is left with truly the worst of the worst, players unable to abuse threats such as Golbat and Shiftry. PU only has one hope:

Those Left Behind

​

Before I get in to the rate, keep in mind I've used this team for ages and don't really want to switch out any mons. But still feel free to say I should swap someone out if you really think so.

@ Silk Scarf
Ability: Technician
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Return
- Taunt
- U-turn

Persian is my dedicated lead. STAB Silk Scarf Technician Fake Out is more powerful than most people think, even coming off a measly 70 base attack. This thing is great for shutting down dedicated leads such as Garbodor, Ariados, and Sticky Web Swadloon. Also great for U-turning out in to a check or hard counter to their lead/predicted switch. After I get rocks up with Torterra, this thing can come in on a lot of mons and get a KO with the combination of Fake Out + Return.

@ Life Orb
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Crunch
- Play Rough
- Fire Fang

This thing is the star of the show. I generally don't throw him in until the opposing team is weakened by Stealth Rocks or Fake Outs from Persian, among other things. Once the opposing team has been weakened down to around 75%, if he can get a kill, it's normally all over. Simply put he's my setup sweeper that doesn't need to set up. Sucker Punch and Crunch are obvious choices for priority and smashing holes in weakened mons. Play rough is for good coverage cause he doesn't get much and Fire Fang takes out bulky steels with a resist to dark and most bug types. Surprisingly enough, he's my main answer to all things named Throh simply because Play Rough does big damage and if he's weakened down a bit I can KO and start to set up.

@ Life Orb
Ability: Lightningrod
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Volt Switch
- Thunderbolt
- Overheat
- Hidden Power [Grass]

This guy is on the other end of my VoltTurn core, keeping momentum for the team and chipping away so that Mightyena can come in and sweep. He's got insane synergy with Mantine, coming in on Thunderbolts and Volt Switches and getting the +1 boost. Volt Switch is for momentum and Thunderbolt is an obvious pick and STAB move of choice. Overheat can do nice damage to opposing Electric types, and after a +1 boost straight up KOs stuff like Emolga:

+1 252 SpA Life Orb Zebstrika Overheat vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Emolga: 299-352 (119.1 - 140.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO

HP Grass is great for setup sweepers weak to it and stuff like Golem that think they're safe coming in on an expected Thunderbolt:

+1 252 SpA Life Orb Zebstrika Hidden Power Grass vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Golem: 348-411 (95.6 - 112.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Stealth Rock

[like anybody runs max SpDef Golem anyways]

@ Leftovers
Ability: Analytic
EVs: 248 HP / 208 SpD / 52 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psychic
- Recover
- Signal Beam
- Toxic

Beheeyem is my specially tank and special powerhouse. Basically I run enough speed EVs to outspeed uninvested Base 45s and do big damage with a Psychic or Signal Beam. 0 Atk IVs to better take Foul Plays and stuff, with Psychic being STAB of choice. Recover is to stall out a lot of things that can't quite pull of the 2HKO, and Signal Beam is coverage against opposing Psychics and also my main answer to Tangela. Toxic, as mentioned before, serves as my main answer to the plethora of mons who can't quite pull off the 2HKO, and I can just stall them out with Toxic + Recover.

@ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Tailwind
- Scald
- Defog

Mantine is the special half of my wall core along with my Defogger. This thing is a electric move magnet and Zebstrika loves that. Plus, he covers Tort's weaknesses and vice versa. Toxic is to get chip damage for Mightyena to come in and also to take out things I can't damage much with Scald. Tailwind helps me tremendmously when I'm sacking it and need something useful to do, plus it's great at helping Mightyena come in and revenge kill faster threats resisting Sucker Punch. Scald is for when I get taunted and, you guessed it, chip damage. Defog because 2 Toxic Spikes, 3 Spikes, and Rocks isn't fun for anyone on the team so I can get rid of that if need be.

@ Leftovers
Ability: Shell Armor
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Synthesis
- Earthquake
- Wood Hammer

Tort is the final member of my team and the Physically Defensive part of my wall core. He covers Mantine's weaknesses nicely and gets Stealth Rocks up for things my team doesn't like and also hurting birdies and bugs. EVs are self explanatory to maximize physical bulk. Rocks because Rocks and then Synthesis to stall out Toxicked [?] stuff and make things like Head Charge Bouffalant kill itself. Earthquake and Wood Hammer are solid dual stabs and base 109 Attack catches people off guard, even uninvested.


Well thanks for reading my RMT and hopefully you can leave some tips below! I'd prefer to keep the members I have now but any suggestions are greatly appreciated :)

Mightyena sweep replay: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/pu-163555253

 

[SOMALIA]

First off, I'd use relaxed nature on persian, anyone whos watched enough tomy and jerry know how lazy that motherfucker is like...nawmsayin

Torterra is a starter mon.....are you serious? You have Meganium to choose which has less weaknesses and and resistances to water and grass unlike reta

you have two mammals on one team, someone needs to go back to school and learn all the different species on earth that god almighty created. No lunchbreak for you sunshine once i tell ur teacher

Adamant nature on the wolf, wolves are very aggressive creatures and adamant nature allows you to ohko focus sash endeavour rattata that marriland populzaired



I'd appreciate if you make the chances i outlined, gl with your team

 

[QR7]

Is that a joke? I'm being serious.

First off, I'd use relaxed nature on persian, anyone whos watched enough tomy and jerry know how lazy that motherfucker is like...nawmsayin:

do you know what relaxed nature even does dude

Torterra is a starter mon.....are you serious? You have Meganium to choose which has less weaknesses and and resistances to water and grass unlike reta:

if I did that poison type shit would shrek me

you have two mammals on one team, someone needs to go back to school and learn all the different species on earth that god almighty created. No lunchbreak for you sunshine once i tell ur teacher:

mammals are good

Adamant nature on the wolf, wolves are very aggressive creatures and adamant nature allows you to ohko focus sash endeavour rattata that marriland populzaired:

I still can't OHKO something with a sash and also it'd be way too slow to kill stuff not dying from sucker punch

I'd appreciate if you make the chances i outlined, gl with your team:

no

 

[Magnemite]

While somalia's rate was amazing, I'm bored so I might as well give you an actual rate. Your team seems decent but it's incredibly weak to a few threats. First of all, Sneasel, the biggest offensive threat in PU, absolutely demolishes you. Literally every single Pokemon on your entire team except Mightyena has a chance to be OHKOed by standard LO Sneasel with just Stealth Rock up, and mightyena shouldn't be taking hits and just dies to Ice Shard anyway. While very few answers to Sneasel exist, it's an incredibly important threat and being demolished by it this badly is a really big deal. I know you don't want to change any mons, but it's basically the only way for you to not just autolose to any well-played Sneasel. Physically defensive Garbodor handles it decently well while also handling threats such as Scyther which you are also weak to, and helping Mightyena sweep thanks to Spikes and Toxic Spikes. other options would be Poliwrath or Throh. As for what to replace, this is a bit tricky, but I would probably replace Beheeyem because not only is it the least useful member of your team from what I can tell, but both that set and Beheeyem in general are pretty mediocre honestly.

Persian isn't really that great in PU; it's rather weak and quite outclassed. I would reccomend replacing it with Purugly, which is a lot better thanks to its higher attack, access to Sucker Punch, and great ability in Defiant, which lets it perform admirably against Sticky Web teams. Besides, it learns every move on the set you currently have, so there's not much of a reason not to use it instead.

Anyway, I hope I helped, and I also hope that you will consider these changes even though they make you change your pokemon, as autolosing to arguably the most important threat in the metagame is a pretty big deal lol.

 

[trc]

this team is based around the goal of a mightyena sweep yet it appears that the team was not built around it and rather, mightyena was added on as an afterthought later in in the teambuilding process. in order for the team to be functionally successful it needs to actually have the ability to support mightyena while also covering a wide range of threats in the process. i acknowledge that you said you didn’t want many changes to the team but the idea of posting it is for it to be improved and thus i’d like to recommend a number of changes which should make the team far better in practice.

for starters, there are a number of threats to this team currently which aren’t accounted for in the teambuilding process. mainly, physical shell smash carracosta, sneasel with stealth rock support, mixed tauros, sub taunt wow haunter (and to a lesser extent, misdreavus), sticky web when paired with strong physical attackers to prevent mantine from defogging, sd scyther, especially subsd scyther, subcm serperior, and rotom-f.

major changes: beeheyem isn’t doing much for your team and only compounds your weaknesses to various threats while being slow and not covering many bases that you need covered. as magnemite has mentioned, poliwrath would be amazing to go in this slot as one of the best choices for balance in the tier. it allows you to beat physical carracosta, sneasel which is incredibly important, mixed tauros, and helps somewhat against the physical threats on sticky web teams by soft checking nearly all of them. zebstrika wants to revenge kill carracosta but it finds itself way too frail to do so, it also can’t revenge kill anything with priority due to its frailty. i think replacing it with a choice scarf rotom-f will be incredibly beneficial as it allows you to revenge kill aqua jet-less carracosta, sd scyther, and serperior with with either no boosts (blizzard) or some (trick). notably, with poliwrath and rotom-f you can revenge kill a combination of physical carracosta with aqua jet (poliwrath) and special carracosta with hp flying (rotom-f). rotom-f also has levitate which helps amazingly against sticky web teams since it ohkoes marowak which can be troublesome. persian is completely outclassed by purugly and you should definitely swap it over, since with defiant it helps a ton against sticky web teams while also providing more priority for the miscellany of setup sweepers which previously plagued this team, as well as opposing rotom-f. finally, i don’t like your torterra set very much, it compounds weaknesses to virtually all of your threatlist while being a poor sr setter due to its common weaknesses. i’d replace that with standard piloswine since it retains the ability to setup stealth rock while having much more general bulk to check rotom-f, cm serperior with ice shard, and sd scyther. it also helps the matchup against rock-types like golem.

minor changes: tailwind on mantine isn’t as useful now thanks to the higher speed of the offensive members. i’d replace it with air slash to at least break serperior’s substitutes. you could also consider running a bit more defense in order to soft chck some of the things you’d like to defog on, but i’ll leave that up to you.

finally, it may look like this team has some glaring weaknesses now, most notably four members weak to fighting types and a stealth rock weak hazard remover and revenge killer, but they actually shouldn’t be that problematic in practice because there are very little fighting-types in the tier and those that are relevant are checked / countered by poliwrath / mantine and outspeed by a large amount of your team. furthermore, mantine is an efficient defogger on a large amount of things that sr shouldn’t be too big of an issue, and it isn’t vulnerable to spikes and toxic spikes which is huge. finally, strong electric-types seem like a bother since they break your defensive core, but piloswine can hard switch into them early-game and purugly / mightyena can deal with themn late-game with their priority (and larger speed in purugly’s case).

good luck with your team.

 

[QR7]

Thanks for your rates Magnemite and TRC. I didn't mean to make it seem like I was totally against swapping out some mons and you guys made some great suggestions. Changes I made and some questions:

I decided to swap out Beheeyem with Poliwrath, what set do you guys think I should use? I've been using a standard mixed RestTalk to decent success but find it a bit underwhelming:

Poliwrath
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Impish Nature
- Circle Throw
- Scald
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Any ideas for him? I'm liking it but just seems like I'm not using it to it's full potential.

I swapped out Persian like you both recommended and am using this set. It's working great but would love to hear any nitpicks you have for me:

Purugly @ Silk Scarf
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Return
- Sucker Punch
- U-turn

Like you recommended I put Air Slash on to Mantine. Next, I swapped Tort for Piloswine per your recommendations. Here's the set I'm using but again if there's something better you can think of let me know:

Piloswine @ Eviolite
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard

Also anything else you guys thought of would be great. I know I just booted half the team for some new mons but it's looking better!

 

[trc]

i like the poliwrath set, give it leftovers though. what you could do is make it a subpunch set that still checks the required pokemon once or twice while having more offensive presence, but it loses its utility against sticky web teams and i would honestly just keep it how it is. something to try as knock off > u-turn on purugly. piloswine set looks good too. forgot to mention that piloswine revenge kills altaria which is nice since zebstrika doesn't have hidden power ice, however if you have rotom-f it won't be as much as a problem. nice job

 

[Gengarbuster]

Ok so i'm a BIG noob when it comes to the vgc but why scald over waterfall when your impish? Never mind coverage my bad :p Very Nice Team Btw

 

[Magnemite]

yeah poliwrath should be relaxed lol

 

[QR7]

For anyone who is curious or just wants to plain copy the team, here it is in it's current state:

Purugly @ Silk Scarf
Ability: Defiant
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Fake Out
- Return
- Sucker Punch
- U-turn

Mightyena @ Life Orb
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Crunch
- Play Rough
- Fire Fang

Zebstrika @ Life Orb
Ability: Lightningrod
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Volt Switch
- Thunderbolt
- Overheat
- Hidden Power [Grass]

Poliwrath @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpA
Relaxed Nature
- Circle Throw
- Scald
- Rest
- Sleep Talk

Mantine @ Leftovers
Ability: Water Absorb
EVs: 248 HP / 252 SpD / 8 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Air Slash
- Scald
- Defog

Piloswine @ Eviolite
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Impish Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Ice Shard