SM OU Zard X + Gyarados Fly Z HO, Need Some Help (Peak #287 Suspect ladder)

[M.r. Carp.]

Introduction​

Hey guys, this is my first post at RMT and I'd like to introduce a team that I'm using in OU(suspect). This team is built around the core of Charizard X and Gyarados Fly Z. After over 20 games, I find this two work extremely well. But I think it can be improved further since I can never enter Top 100 list. So I do need your kind advice to improve the team.

The Team​

Charizard @ Charizardite X
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Dragon Claw
- Flare Blitze
- Earthquake
​

Standrad three attack Zard-X. It is the core of this team. Charizard is a good mon to take the mega slot since both Zard-X and Zard-Y are powerful enough to threaten the opposite. After one DD, it can outspeed many mons like Pheromosa and some scarfers like Lele, Landorus-T. The combination of fire, dragon and ground moves make it unstoppable. It may need to switch into Magearna when in need since there is no other choices.

Gyarados @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Waterfall
- Bounce
- Taunt/Earthquake
​

I read the post named "Know Your Niche" and choose Fly Z Gyarados as the partner of Zard X. It can help Zard X break through Fini(Zard X doesn't want to carry T-punch), Hippowdon, Landorus-T. At +1, it can cause great damage to Fini, so when Fini is weakened before, it can knock down Fini or choose to use one more DD to gain more speed. I choose Moxie over Intimidate to tear down the opposite team. The last move is hard to choose. Taunt can help Gyara better cope with stall but EQ is just so so so so effecctive when facing Magnezone, Koko, Magearna and Mega Metagross. I'm using Taunt atm.

Skarmory @ Shed Shell Salac Berry
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 Spe 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Steal Rock
- Spikes
- Taunt
- Brave Bird
​

Both Zard X and Gyarados appreciate harzard support to weaken the foe's mons, so I choose skarmory to set up harzard. Stealth Rock for flying types and fire types and spikes especially for Metagross. Taunt to stop Defogers like Fini. Shed Shell is useful to play trick with Magnezone but I think Mental Herb may be better. 252Atk + Salac Berry enable Skarmory to set up as more harzards as possible and avoid them being cleaned up.

Pheromosa @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- High Miss Kick
- U-turn
- Poison Jab Ice Beam
- Rapid Spin
​

Since my team is a bit slow and have problems dealing with scarfers and DD users, I use Adamant Pheromosa. With Scarf, Pheromosa literally outspeed the whole tier and Adamant Nature makes it hit harder and harder thanks to Beast Boost. Poision Jab can beat faries but is too weak to ohko at +0. Rapid Spin sometimes helps since I have Donphan as my Spiner so few can predict that. Possibly I can change it to Ice Beam for better coverage?(Replacing Poison Jab with Ice Beam to better deal with DDer like Mence and Dragonite and Doble Dance Lando-T).

Lele used Baton Pass

Tapu Lele @ Twisted Spoon
Ability: Psychic Surge
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Psyshock
-Moonblast
- Taunt
- Thunderbolt/Psychic Hidden Power Fire

Importable

I need one to pressure Sableye and other stall, especially Unaware walls like Clef and Quagsire, so Lele becomes the fifth member. Since it is prepared for stall, it doesn't caarry scarf, but choose Spoon to boost its power. Taunt is good for a stall breaker. As for the last move, Psychic hits a harder that Psyshock, but T-bolt can deal with Skarmory and Celesteela. I'm using T-bolt atm. (The last move is changed to hp fire to hit siczor, ferro and Shedinja&M-Sable core, and can also do some damage to M-Metagross, Sakemory and Celesteela)

Greninja-Ash @ Choice Specs
Ability: Battle Bond
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Water Shuriken
- Dark Pulse
- Hydro Pump
- U-turn​

Thanks to the suggestion of bludz, Grenija-Ash join this team in the place of Lele. It has powerful STABs and has a powerful priority. It can check M-Metagross and post pressure on the opposite players thanks to its offensive ability. Standrad spec makes it hard to switch into.

Donphan @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 164 HP / 252 Atk / 92 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Ice Shard
- Rapid Spin
​

Both Charazard and Gyarados are weak to rocks, I have to prepare a spiner for them. Assault Vest Donphan is my choice since (it can offer a priority) it can spin off rocks and resist Rock tpye moves and server as an Electric immune. In an HO team, Donphan should also hit hard to fit into the team. 92 spe to outspeed uninvested ttar. AV improve its poor SpD.

​

Importable

Charizard @ Charizardite X
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Flare Blitz
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake

Gyarados @ Flyinium Z
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Dragon Dance
- Waterfall
- Bounce
- Taunt

Skarmory @ Salac Berry
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
- Taunt
- Brave Bird

Pheromosa @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naughty Nature
- High Jump Kick
- U-turn
- Ice Beam
- Rapid Spin

Greninja-Ash @ Choice Specs
Ability: Battle Bond
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Water Shuriken
- Dark Pulse
- Hydro Pump
- U-turn​

Donphan @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 164 HP / 252 Atk / 92 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Ice Shard
- Rapid Spin

Replays:
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7oususpecttest-538192729
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7oususpecttest-538149908
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7oususpecttest-538146752
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7oususpecttest-537818306
http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen7oususpecttest-537818306

Problems:
1. It has a difficult time facing shedinja+M-Sableye, unless Lele runs hp fire.
2. M-Metagross can punch through this team once Skarmory is weakened or gone(and that is quite often the case).
3. It may need a ghost type mon to block spinner.

I really appreciate you opinion and advice to improve this team. Thank you all and sorry for my poor English (not my mother tongue).


Changes:

hp fire over t-bolt on Lele
ice beam over poison jab on Phero
252Atk + Salac Berry on Skarmory
Tapu Lele------> Greninja-Ash

 

[Le Val]

First, run roost over taunt on skarmory. I feel that this is pretty self explanatory. I notice that your team is quite weak to offensive lando t, especially double dance and rockium z sets. To help with this I would recommend running counter instead of brave bird on skarmory. This way skarm can check and kill 99% of offensive z move lando sets. If you have to sacrifice something in order to beat lando or other dd users such as salamence ice beam on ScarfMosa would help you a lot in this regard as it will outspeed +2 on both landorus and mence/dragonite. I also dont like this skarm set that much. I don't see the point in running max Spe with jolly. Skarm serves as a check and therefore you should make better use of its high Def stat by giving it 252 Def with impish. Lastly your tapu lele would benefit from HP fire for your last slot as you cant rely on zard x to kill ferrothorn and scizor.

 

[M.r. Carp.]

First, run roost over taunt on skarmory. I feel that this is pretty self explanatory. I notice that your team is quite weak to offensive lando t, especially double dance and rockium z sets. To help with this I would recommend running counter instead of brave bird on skarmory. This way skarm can check and kill 99% of offensive z move lando sets. If you have to sacrifice something in order to beat lando or other dd users such as salamence ice beam on ScarfMosa would help you a lot in this regard as it will outspeed +2 on both landorus and mence/dragonite. I also dont like this skarm set that much. I don't see the point in running max Spe with jolly. Skarm serves as a check and therefore you should make better use of its high Def stat by giving it 252 Def with impish. Lastly your tapu lele would benefit from HP fire for your last slot as you cant rely on zard x to kill ferrothorn and scizor.

Thank u! I think Ice Beam on Phero is good and I will replace Poison Jab. Skarmory in this team kinda serves as suicide lead, so I need max speed. I'm thinking whether to carry Custap Berry or not on Skarmory. I'll definitely try hp fire on Lele to see if ferro and scizor appear more frequently than skarmory and celesteela.

 

[Le Val]

keep in mind that without skarm you have no check for lando, chomp, ttar, zygarde, etc

 

[M.r. Carp.]

keep in mind that without skarm you have no check for lando, chomp, ttar, zygarde, etc

Among all these, I think zygrade is most dangerous to this team atm. Phero and Donphan help coping with the former ones, although not that reliable.

 

[bludz]

Yo! Cool team, I like the idea of double DDers to help wear down physical blanket checks. Let's start with a few things I notice and think could be improved and a couple weaknesses:

The main weaknesses I think are Mega Metagross and offensive Landorus-T. These are things I'll focus on improving the matchup with to a degree.

Bulky Skarmory really doesn't seem to fit on this team, imo. On an offensive team you should either run suicide lead Skarmory, or not run Skarmory since it's a momentum drain that doesn't fit on offense. Also, Donphan is not a particularly viable pokemon in OU and suffers from a lot of issues. It's really slow and I don't really think it fits all that well on a very offensive team either.

First off I would make Skarmory a Suicide Lead with Salac Berry over Shed Shell, and run 252 Atk instead of HP. This powers up Brave Bird allowing you to KO yourself from recoil in certain situations to keep hazards on the field and provide a free switch.

Now I think that the sets of Charizard + Gyarados + Pheromosa all make sense and fit well for an offensive build, so I would keep those all the same. Before I talk about replacing Donphan, I wanna talk about Tapu Lele on this team. Now don't get me wrong - I don't think it's a bad fit. It has great synergy with Pheromosa and is generally a difficult mon for fat builds to deal with, although most will carry Dugtrio or Alolan Muk or something along those lines and trap it. The problem with Tapu Lele is that it opens the build to Mega Metagross big time and does not help with Lando-T. The other thing is that offensive teams with Tapu Lele rely on the terrain being up and can't build with much priority on the team, so you can get stuck in bad matchups sometimes. This is why I think it might be a good idea to swap out Tapu Lele as well, and then you can use some priority on your team which can be great in certain matchups. If the opponent uses Lele preventing your priority, you can use that to your advantage with DDers + Scarf Mosa.

So I would recommend swapping both Donphan and Tapu Lele. The suggested members I have are Mamoswine and Ash-Greninja. Both of these pokemon can revenge kill offensive Landorus variants, and Ash Greninja is extremely good at checking Mega Metagross. Furthermore, these 'mons both help to overwhelm Tapu Fini, which is something the team needs to overwhelm quickly. Mamoswine provides a ground-type so that Tapu Koko can't just spam Thunderbolt mindlessly, and is also a dangerous breaker for many common stall builds whose primary answer would be Skarmory, which can lose if it flinches to an Icicle Crash. For this reason I would recommend a moveset of Knock Off / Icicle Crash / Ice Shard / Earthquake. Knock Off ensures that Icicle Crash is a 3HKO on Skarm when Leftovers are removed, and it can also help to cripple or wear down other defensive threats like Ferrothorn etc. Ash Greninja prevents Scarf Tapu Lele from spamming Psychic too freely, as it is definitely a threat to your team. It also completes a Volt-Turn core with Pheromosa to help get switch advantages, and Dark STAB is very difficult to switch into.

new sets

Skarmory @ Salac Berry
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
- Brave Bird
- Taunt

Mamoswine @ Life Orb
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Knock Off

Greninja-Ash @ Choice Specs
Ability: Battle Bond
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Water Shuriken
- Dark Pulse
- Hydro Pump
- U-turn

An alternative idea I had was Scarf Garchomp > Mamoswine and making Pheromosa Life Orb, but I think this makes you weaker to some defensive teams (and also Scarf Keldeo, just seeing that now x_x). Still might be worth looking into.

I hope reading my thought process, even if you don't end up going with these changes, can be helpful to you!

 

[M.r. Carp.]

Yo! Cool team, I like the idea of double DDers to help wear down physical blanket checks. Let's start with a few things I notice and think could be improved and a couple weaknesses:

The main weaknesses I think are Mega Metagross and offensive Landorus-T. These are things I'll focus on improving the matchup with to a degree.

Bulky Skarmory really doesn't seem to fit on this team, imo. On an offensive team you should either run suicide lead Skarmory, or not run Skarmory since it's a momentum drain that doesn't fit on offense. Also, Donphan is not a particularly viable pokemon in OU and suffers from a lot of issues. It's really slow and I don't really think it fits all that well on a very offensive team either.

First off I would make Skarmory a Suicide Lead with Salac Berry over Shed Shell, and run 252 Atk instead of HP. This powers up Brave Bird allowing you to KO yourself from recoil in certain situations to keep hazards on the field and provide a free switch.

Now I think that the sets of Charizard + Gyarados + Pheromosa all make sense and fit well for an offensive build, so I would keep those all the same. Before I talk about replacing Donphan, I wanna talk about Tapu Lele on this team. Now don't get me wrong - I don't think it's a bad fit. It has great synergy with Pheromosa and is generally a difficult mon for fat builds to deal with, although most will carry Dugtrio or Alolan Muk or something along those lines and trap it. The problem with Tapu Lele is that it opens the build to Mega Metagross big time and does not help with Lando-T. The other thing is that offensive teams with Tapu Lele rely on the terrain being up and can't build with much priority on the team, so you can get stuck in bad matchups sometimes. This is why I think it might be a good idea to swap out Tapu Lele as well, and then you can use some priority on your team which can be great in certain matchups. If the opponent uses Lele preventing your priority, you can use that to your advantage with DDers + Scarf Mosa.

So I would recommend swapping both Donphan and Tapu Lele. The suggested members I have are Mamoswine and Ash-Greninja. Both of these pokemon can revenge kill offensive Landorus variants, and Ash Greninja is extremely good at checking Mega Metagross. Furthermore, these 'mons both help to overwhelm Tapu Fini, which is something the team needs to overwhelm quickly. Mamoswine provides a ground-type so that Tapu Koko can't just spam Thunderbolt mindlessly, and is also a dangerous breaker for many common stall builds whose primary answer would be Skarmory, which can lose if it flinches to an Icicle Crash. For this reason I would recommend a moveset of Knock Off / Icicle Crash / Ice Shard / Earthquake. Knock Off ensures that Icicle Crash is a 3HKO on Skarm when Leftovers are removed, and it can also help to cripple or wear down other defensive threats like Ferrothorn etc. Ash Greninja prevents Scarf Tapu Lele from spamming Psychic too freely, as it is definitely a threat to your team. It also completes a Volt-Turn core with Pheromosa to help get switch advantages, and Dark STAB is very difficult to switch into.

new sets

Skarmory @ Salac Berry
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Spikes
- Brave Bird
- Taunt

Mamoswine @ Life Orb
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Ice Shard
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Knock Off

Greninja-Ash @ Choice Specs
Ability: Battle Bond
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Water Shuriken
- Dark Pulse
- Hydro Pump
- U-turn

An alternative idea I had was Scarf Garchomp > Mamoswine and making Pheromosa Life Orb, but I think this makes you weaker to some defensive teams (and also Scarf Keldeo, just seeing that now x_x). Still might be worth looking into.

I hope reading my thought process, even if you don't end up going with these changes, can be helpful to you!

Thank u very much. I really like your analysis. The advice and detailed analisis just helps open up my mind.
Salac Berry is better than shell on Skarmory(I just forgot that Custap Berry is not availale in SM) and 252 Atk makes Skarmory fit better into an HO team, I'll change it.
Seeing the drawback of Lele in this , I believe Greninja-Ash is a better partner for the two DDers since it is a counter of M-Metagross(Lele on the contrary give a free boost to the foe's M-Metagross) and can provide powerful prority. That's very useful to improve this team.
As for Donphan, I'm still on the fence. The main role of Donphan in this team is spinner. With AV, it can better play his role. Both DDers are weak to rocks and Rock type moves, and a ground type can meet this need. I've thought of Excadrill before, but it's weakness to ground and the fact that it lacks bulk discouraged me. That set of Momo is very good. But when Donphan is changed, this team may find a difficult time coping with rocks.(Rapid Spin in Pheromosa serves as an irreliable hazard control just in case I need that badly.)


@bludz
I've tried your set (Mamoswine and Ash-Greninja) on OU ladder, and the result is quite out of my expectation. Although without a liable spinner, memberes of this team can in fact keep the momentum to prevent the foe from setting up harzard. At present, this team get a GXE of 79.6% and glicko of 1760(Elo 1437 isn't that high). It is more offensively effective and at the same time needs more prediction(since Donphan is gone). Spec Ash-Greninja is very powerful, but I think I need more time to get used to it.

 

[Le Val]

I still think that you need a better removal, as donphan is easy to counter and you dont really have many reliable switches. This is why i preferred defog skarm over suicide lead so that you can run mamoswine > donphan, still get rocks up, and mamo supplies even more support when dealing with the likes of tapu koko, and sash can also revenge kill most of your main threats. One idea though, charizard and gyarados have trouble with quagsire stall. Just as an idea, you can try running hidden power grass on gren.

 

[M.r. Carp.]

I still think that you need a better removal, as donphan is easy to counter and you dont really have many reliable switches. This is why i preferred defog skarm over suicide lead so that you can run mamoswine > donphan, still get rocks up, and mamo supplies even more support when dealing with the likes of tapu koko, and sash can also revenge kill most of your main threats. One idea though, charizard and gyarados have trouble with quagsire stall. Just as an idea, you can try running hidden power grass on gren.

I thought about that after testing. I'll try defog Skarm and Mamo set, using the two different team builds to see which one works better. Thanks for your advice. As for Unware wall, hazrads + taunt + z move will bring it down, unless there are two or more Unaware mons. Regenerator Alomo running protect is very annoying.