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np: UU - Can't Touch This

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@tophway: Yes, it has been mentioned a few times that Dugtrio is an excellent parter to Cresselia, as nearly all of Cress's checks are either Duggy bait or Pursuit bait.

This is in my opinion the best Dugtrio set to use with Cresselia:

Dugtrio @ Life Orb
Ability: Arena Trap
EVs: 252 Att / 40 SpD / 216 Spe
Jolly nature (+Spe, -SAtk)
- Earthquake
- Night Slash
- Substitute / Sucker Punch
- Stone Edge

Earthquake OHKO's Raikou, Houndoom and Drapion and 2HKO's Registeel. Earthquake has a 87% chance of OHKO'ing Absol after SR damage (100% after SR and Life Orb recoil) whilst Night Slash has a 66% chance to KO Mismagius after SR (and is also 100% after SR and LO). Earthquake 3HKO's Umbreon, taking in Leftovers recovery and SR damage. Substitute is to stop Sucker Punchers, such as Absol and Houndoom. Stone Edge is generally for fliers, such as Moltres, who can sometimes be a pain for Cress.

Speed EV's and Jolly Nature is to out-speed Timid Raikou and anything else below.
 
Ooh, my good old Armaldo lead... i missed you so much.
He's being great in the current mtagame, spinning rocks while getting it's own, hitting Uxie for SE and Rock Blast Froslass to death while resisting Fake Out and being neutral against Ambipom Low Kicks.

Anyone who dares to say Cloyster are going to be my enemy lol

Speaking serious now: The Entei i posted (CM/Roar/Flamethrower/Substitute) is working wonders once i get rid or Flash Fire pokes, Azumarill and some Feraligatr. Anyone who dares to set up is Roared away. Then i can just set up until i think it's enough. Substitute prevents Dugtrio revenges and status moves. 101 HP subs means no Seismic Toss breaking my subs.
Entei is also fast for UU.

Right now, i'm using a NU team in UU... almost all the pokes can do something to Cresselia.

Lead Armaldo

Encore CM Golduck(it can survive a priority or two, unlike Alakazam... it can also screw some Rain Dance teams over with Cloud Nine)

DD Crawdaunt(Cresselia takes huge amounts of damage from Crunch)

Scarf Primeape(good at revenging like always... Porygon Z is also on the list of Primeape's revenge list. It can use Punishment for a good amount of damage on CM Cresselias)

Subroost Articuno(annoying as always... Toxic screws Cresselia over(not the Sleep Talk one)

And the CM Entei i posted.



Teams aside: what are the thoughts of Scarf Porygon Z? It is difficult to wall, or is mostly dead meat?
 
(Note: All of this is assuming the same Cresselia set: 252/200 Bold, with 56 SATK, @ Leftovers, with: Ice Beam, Moonlight, Signal Beam/HP Fighting, Calm Mind. Ice and Fighting give great neutral coverage, only being walled by random shit like Qwilfish, while Signal Beam lets you hit hit your would-be checks a little harder)

If Absol switches into HP Fighting or Signal Beam, it's 2hko'd, and if it switches into Calm Mind it's possibly ohko'd at +1 after rocks, and pretty much always ohko'd with Signal Beam + LO. And, if Drapion switches into a Calm Mind, it's usually 2hko'd by Ice Beam after rocks while being unable to ohko back, even at +2. Essentially, they're shaky checks at best. Curse Umbreon can be a decent check, but you should watch your boosts very carefully. +3 is the time to attack, as Cress cannot 2hko back at +4 (well it can like 5% of the time) while you 2hko it around 60% of the time. If you wait until +4, you're fucked, as Cress will handily 2hko you at +5 while you can only pull a 2hko.
 
I would never lose Psychic on Cresselia; with that set you lose to a lot of Pokemon you should beat, even if you have a chance to beat Absol and Drapion if you predict right, roll max damage, etc.

Without Psychic, you are essentially set up bait for SD Blaziken or any other Fire-type. You are also unable to actually beat some Raikou, which you would with Psychic (SpD drops help too). You can't beat Thunder Wave Chansey without the SpD drops from Psychic. You can't beat Mismagius. There are probably others, but you get the point

I prefer Psychic / Signal Beam.
 
It depends on your team. If your team doesn't have decent switchins for Drapion or Absol (as stall generally does not, particularly not for Taunt/SD Drapion and Superpower LO Absol) then having a Cresselia that can beat them right then and there is invaluable. Same if you run something like Dugtrio, which can trapkill Raikou, SD Blaziken, and Chansey. On the other hand, if you're using your Cresselia as a stand-alone bulky sweeper, Psychic/Signal Beam would be best. Regardless, my example was meant to point out that the two most commonly touted checks to Cresselia lose to that single set.
 
FlareBlitz said:
It depends on your team. If your team doesn't have decent switchins for Drapion or Absol (as stall generally does not, particularly not for Taunt/SD Drapion and Superpower LO Absol) then having a Cresselia that can beat them right then and there is invaluable. Same if you run something like Dugtrio, which can trapkill Raikou, SD Blaziken, and Chansey. On the other hand, if you're using your Cresselia as a stand-alone bulky sweeper, Psychic/Signal Beam would be best. Regardless, my example was meant to point out that the two most commonly touted checks to Cresselia lose to that single set.
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I guess. Though, you merely proved that they were no longer "counters" to the set. They are still checks, especially since absol has 25% (right?) to OHKO Cresselia off the bat due to Super Luck + Night Slash.
 
Absol with his Night Slash for Cress and Sucker Punch for P-Z
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Actually, Absol gains perfect coverage with SuperPower + his dark moves. So I see no prob with that particular set.

Specs HyperBeam P-Z
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I would never ever not run Hyperbeam on Specs P-Z it nails so many solid OHKO's.
 
Heysup said:
Reflect doesn't do anything, to be honest. It takes a turn, instead of attacking or something, to "negate" a Swords Dance. This means Absol can simply just Swords Dance again, since you gave it this free turn, while you can't use Reflect again.
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This is a misconception of Reflect.

Because Relect cuts in half a pokemon's attack stat, and Swords dance simply adds a pokemon's original attack stat with each use, under reflect your attack progresses thusly:

+0 = 1/2
+2 = 1
+4 = 3/2
+6 = 2

Reflect does in fact "buy you turns", against a sword dancing enemy. A +4 Absol kills Max HP 174 ev'd Def Cress 2.56% of the time. It does kill even Max/Max cress 46% of the time with rocks up though. This is all assuming Sucker Punch, you wouldn't want to use Night Slash (if you had rocks up). It does make sense to Reflect if you are a cress fearing an Absol switch in.

The same Cress 2hko's with Hp Fighting or Signal Beam back assuming the rest of the evs are placed into Satk. Hp Fighting or Signal Beam are probably bad choices on a double screen cress, but still reflect is not a "wasted turn". This is also true because after the Cress-Absol conflict you'll have reflect up for a couple to several turns.
 
Twin_Scimitar said:
This is a misconception of Reflect.

Because Relect cuts in half a pokemon's attack stat, and Swords dance simply adds a pokemon's original attack stat with each use, under reflect your attack progresses thusly:

+0 = 1/2
+2 = 1
+4 = 3/2
+6 = 2

Reflect does in fact "buy you turns", against a sword dancing enemy.
Click to expand...

It was not a misconception; a Swords Dance is still "negated" by Reflect, and Absol can still set up more Swords Dances after (depending on whether Cresselia is switching out or not or its moveset). If Cresselia has HP Fighting / Signal Beam, Absol should flat out attack with Sucker Punch / Night Slash, but without those attacks Absol is free to Swords Dance.
 
I don't post here often, but I lurk frequently.

Some of you may have battled me on the ladder either as Acid_Muffin or Special_Brownies, I use both interchangeably although the former is the one I use for serious laddering. Since break started back in early December, I decided to jump back into play, so therefor I caught the tail end of the previous meta and have been playing the current meta since day one.

The first day or so of the new meta, I ran a few different joke teams consisting of 6 pokemon mashed together with little rhyme or reason, mainly to see if any one pokemon stood out as particularly effective on its own during the early shit-storm. A special-defensive utility Drapion stood out, utilizing Restalk with Whirlwind and Crunch (copypasta from the analysis folks). It could Whirlwind away CM Cress with little harm to itself, and Crunch also did a fair amount of damage. It also fared decently against most Spiritomb and a poorly handled Absol. TrickBand Spiritomb was also capable of pulling its own weight, causing damage to the various Psychics roaming around and crippling annoying support pokemon with Trick. I decided to take both pokemon and build a plainjane stall team around them. Jamashawalker, that Hitmontop with intimidate and mach punch may have been my own, it was a test to see how such a set would fare (not well, mind you). The team was passable at best, I won a fair bit, but lost more than I would have liked to, each loss's effect amplified due to how drawn out and tedious the matches would become (losing a half hour battle is aggravating, I'm sure we all know this). And so, I decided to speed up the tempo, focusing on quick, brutal offense as opposed to slow, steady stall.

The team I am running now exemplifies that idea rather well. I run Explosion on half the team; it's quite the game-changer and always keeps a strong offensive momentum on my side (at least I believe so). 2 pokemon run scarf, 3 run Life Orb, y'all get the idea. I think my favorite members right now would be Mixed Attacker Blaziken and TrickScarf lead Drifblim with Shadow Ball, HP Fight, and Explosion. The former is practically guaranteed at least 1 kill per game, if not several crippled opposing pokemon. Priority with Vaccuum Wave is a decent check against boosting Pory-Z. Drifblim does well against all leads, especially Froslass (most opt for Taunt/Spikes instead of instant Shadow Ball, allowing you to lock them in with trick and OHKO with Shadow Ball), Uxie (can either be instantly boomed on or tricked and hit with Shadow Ball. Trick is especially funny against Damp Rock Uxie),and Ambipom (w/o a dark attack). If you're having trouble with those pokemon, I highly suggest TrickScarf Drifblim as a lead.

That's really all I came to say... back to lurking for me.
 
So, I was using a weird gimmick team with all sorts of NFEs and other weird shit today, just because that's really the only enjoyment I can derive out of this metagame, and I ended up making some interesting observations.

First off...Murkrow is an absolute monster. Yeah I know what you're thinking, but seriously, try it out. Murkrow has a very respectable base 85 ATK (only a bit lower than Drapion's and Skunktank's, for reference), a workable base 85 SATK and (this is the weird part) a base 91 SPE. It was absolutely hilarious watching Porygon-Z attempt to revenge kill me and then see a bewildered "wtf" from my opponent as it was outsped and ohko'd by Brave Bird.
The set I ran was:

Murkrow @ Life Orb
Naive Nature
252 ATK, 252 SPE, 4 SATK
Brave Bird
Sucker Punch
HP Grass
Night Slash

It doesn't do nearly as well against stall as Honch did, due to the annoying lack of Superpower and lower overall offenses, but it does almost as good a job against offensive teams, because not a lot can take an LO-boosted base 120 STAB attack off even base 85 ATK, and its base 91 SPE outruns much of the tier. In short, try it out. It won't set the tier on fire any time soon, but it can fill a niche in your team.

And the other Pokemon that worked well for me was NP Monferno. I was surprised at how absurdly powerful it was. I used it as a late game cleaner, with this set:

Monferno @ Life Orb
-Fire Blast
-Grass Knot
-Vaccuum Wave
-Nasty Plot

Monferno makes up for its substantially lower offenses and defenses (compared to Blaziken) in three ways: access to Nasty Plot, which allows it to boost its SATK to very high levels, aiding in its sweep; access to Grass Knot, which turns quite a few 2hkos attained with HP Grass against bulky waters into ohkos. For instance, Milotic is probably the most specially-defensive bulky water you're liable to run into, and it is ohko'd almost all the time by +2 Grass Knot (84.3% - 99.5%); and finally, Monferno has a crucial base 81 SPE, allowing it to outspeed all the ever-common base 80s. Of course, Fire/Grass don't give the best coverage, so this set should only be used when things like Moltres and Arcanine are already down or weak enough to be killed by Vaccuum Wave.

And finally, we have DD Dragonair:

Dragonair @ Life Orb
Adamant nature, funky EVs that I don't remember (enough to outrun +natured base 95 after 1 DD, rest into HP, max ATK)
-Dragon Dance
-Outrage
-Extremespeed
-Waterfall

Dragonair is another potent attacker. +1 LO Extremespeed is comparable in power to CB Scizor's bullet punch, so it hurts frail revenge killers quite a bit, and STAB Outrage massively hurts anything that doesn't resist it. To put this into perspective, even Cresselia is 2hko'd most of the time with Stealth Rock (47.3% - 55.6%), while being unable to ohko back with Ice Beam (48.6% - 57.5%)
 
been running a kangaskhan anti-lead with fake out, return, sucker punch and focus punch, with scrappy to hit any ghosts (mostly froslass but i've seen some rotoms, spiritombs and banettes). and it's been working pretty well, I have to switch out on ambipom leads, but it rarely sets anything up, so i don't mind (switch to a ghost/normal resist on the fake out and play it out from there). I mean maybe a rain dance ambipom could do something, but those are really rare

oh, also, I've been running a team with specs pory, and then spiritomb and dugtrio to get rid of ghosts/chansey/anything else that can take a tri attack or revenge kill, and it's been working pretty well. most matches involve me being down to porygon and a wall, and having pory sweep
 
Cresselia is becoming more and more of a problem everyday as people come up with more ways to use it. At the moment I've been seeing CM variants most often, and while those have been manageable, they're still really hard to take down. If it gets a few CMs up, then it's completely inpenetrable from the special side, and chances are unboosted or neutral physical attacks aren't going to do much to it, so it can easily recover away the damage with Moonlight.

Porygon-Z has been fun to play against, it's absolutely deadly with Nasty Plot but it's easily dispatched with priority. For now I think Cresselia is definitely BL but Porygon-Z can and should stay in UU.

FlareBlitz said:
So, I was using a weird gimmick team with all sorts of NFEs and other weird shit today, just because that's really the only enjoyment I can derive out of this metagame, and I ended up making some interesting observations.
Click to expand...
I faced that team of yours today, and it was interesting to say the least. Murkrow having a higher base speed than Honchkrow will certainly be a nice surprise for many people.
 
I'm surprised by Murkrow's stats. I mean, offensively it's got better stats than stuff like Blastiose, but defensively it's pretty dire.
 
FlareBlitz said:
(Note: All of this is assuming the same Cresselia set: 252/200 Bold, with 56 SATK, @ Leftovers, with: Ice Beam, Moonlight, Signal Beam/HP Fighting, Calm Mind. Ice and Fighting give great neutral coverage, only being walled by random shit like Qwilfish, while Signal Beam lets you hit hit your would-be checks a little harder)

If Absol switches into HP Fighting or Signal Beam, it's 2hko'd, and if it switches into Calm Mind it's possibly ohko'd at +1 after rocks, and pretty much always ohko'd with Signal Beam + LO. And, if Drapion switches into a Calm Mind, it's usually 2hko'd by Ice Beam after rocks while being unable to ohko back, even at +2. Essentially, they're shaky checks at best. Curse Umbreon can be a decent check, but you should watch your boosts very carefully. +3 is the time to attack, as Cress cannot 2hko back at +4 (well it can like 5% of the time) while you 2hko it around 60% of the time. If you wait until +4, you're fucked, as Cress will handily 2hko you at +5 while you can only pull a 2hko.
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You're assuming Drapion is running a sweeper set, which it doesn't have to at all. There are many people using Rest/Sleep Talk/Crunch/Whirlwind, or something more similar to the Special Defensive Tank set found in the analysis, of which a +1 Ice Beam from that Cresselia does 22.1% - 26.2%. Even HP Ground doesn't phaze that Drapion, doing 32.6% - 39% at +1.

Umbreon also receives Taunt, don't forget. There is no reason to let Cresselia have more than +2 (assuming it Calm Minds on the switch in, and before you Taunt next turn). You can then Curse up and Recover using the same Moon Light.

Absol and Houndoom are definitely shakey Counters are best, better left to Revenging a weakened one.

Interestingly enough, Skunktank is the same good typing as Drapion giving it STAB Dark, but also the useful moves Haze, Roar and Punishment. Punishment, hilariously enough though, needs at least three boost to come within KO range with Life Orb. (considering SR)

Cresselia is quite the beast though. Maybe people will start spinning more, and use Shedinja. Haha..
 
did some testing today and clefable is seriously the mvp on this metagame. encore is the crux obviously since it can shut down this set-up oriented metagame and it could open up some openings for your team mates. encore in general is such a convinient move.
 
Sonneh said:
did some testing today and clefable is seriously the mvp on this metagame. encore is the crux obviously since it can shut down this set-up oriented metagame and it could open up some openings for your team mates. encore in general is such a convinient move.
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Unfortunately it's largely a surprise-oriented move, and the more people discuss it the less of a surprise it's going to be, haha. I mean, if you start CMing up with Spiritomb and a Clefable comes in, you know what it's going to do obviously. And the real bad thing about Encore is that it gives an absolutely free switch in.

Anyway, what EVs spreads are people using for Cress? I've never used anything but 216 Speed/rest in HP and SpA
 
Encore gives a free switch if you used it correctly on your opponent, too. Clefable has a lot of other tricks, such as Trick, Wish, Aromatherapy, T-Wave, etc. I used Clefable a lot in old UU, before the BL merger. I'm curious to see if, with the new found power of UU, Clefable can reliable switch in on its bulk alone.
 
Lopunny is an excellent Encoring Pokemon for this metagame. It's faster than Z and Cresselia, and it's never OHKO by Specs Tri Attack as long as it has 252 HP / 80 SpDef (not taking into account entry hazards). Being able to switch into either, and Encore either their stat up move, or Switcheroo a Choice item (hello, Klutz) is just amazing. If either of them attempts to Trick you, they'll be stuck using Trick, and you'll be free to wreck havoc thanks to Klutz.

It's main fault will be lack of damage output, but being able to Baton Pass Agilities/Charge Beams, Toxic/Thunder-Wave, Switcheroo, Encore.. you should find a place.
 
@Evil Mario If Drapion is running a defensive set, the only thing it can do to Cress is phaze it out and then die later when Dugtrio traps and kills it. Since Cress isn't SR weak and since it commonly carries lefties and instant recovery, this isn't nearly as useful as when, say, Skarm phazes Gyarados. @GodBlessAtheism -____- Really? I was actually using Roost in place of Night Slash, but I was going to replace it today and test it. Bah, I guess you could use Faint Attack or something.
 
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