Ain't no rest for the wicked [First RMT!]

flareblade26 · Apr 30, 2013

|Ain't no rest for the wicked|

|Hydreigon|
Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 HP
Mild Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Super Power
- Fire Blast
- U-Turn

This thing is just a beast. It out-speeds all of the un-boosted and scarfed OU meta-game with a scarf allowing me to run a modest nature for a massive power boost. Draco Meteor is obligatory stab that annihilates everything that doesn't resist it, and does a pretty big chunk to those that do. Dark Pulse is for a more reliable stab move, but it honestly doesn't see too much use with all the fighting and steel types running around these days. Fireblast roasts Scizors and Ferrothorns alive in rain and punishes Volcarona's in the sun. Surf is here to nail heatran who dare's to think they can switch in and tank his other attacks. Thank you to brobat for this scarf set, with Super power hitting Heatran and T-Tar much harder than surf, and U-turn for taking advantage of all the switches Hydreigon causes.

|Sableye|
Sableye @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 216 SDef / 40 Def
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Recover
- Will-O-Wisp
- Taunt

Sableye is a very under-rated threat in my opinion. It wrecks unprepared teams. Confuse ray might seem odd with will o wisp as the burn attack drop lowers confusion damage, but confusion is mainly used to attempt free subs and recovers. Completely stalls out physical walls and life-orb users with Sub's and recover. Sableye is essential in crippling pretty much all the physical attackers in OU. Even Conkeldurr, thinking to take advantage of a guts boost, gets wrecked when it hits itself in the face from guts boosted confusion and can be stalled by substitute spam. Negative attacking nature and 0 attack Ivs to lower damage from confusion and foul play, just in case. Also thanks to Brobat, for putting taunt on Sableye. Taunt helps alleviate the weakness to set-up sweepers that my team has issues dealing with like Conkeldurr and Volcarona, a taunted and burned Skarmory is also completely useless and can't whirld-wind out my subs. Checks 2 major threats and counters another one all in one move.

|Tyranitar|
Tyranitar @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 HP / 252 SDef
Brave Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Stone Edge
- Pursuit
- Fireblast

The special wall of the team. Sand is just a nice little side bonus that boosts its Special Defense even higher. It's mainly here to bring in rocks and pain. Lots of pain. Stone edge for a massively high powered stab attack with a juicy critical hit rate. Crunch obliterates the psychic and ghost types with a great stab attack, and super power nails the steels that roam around. Despite Tyranitar being on the team, the team isn't centered around the sand. It just has a nice bonus of getting rid of unfavorable weather if it gives my opponent too much of an advantage.
Changed Crunch to Pursuit for trapping, Fire blast to help with Skarmory, and Brave nature to not lower the power of Fire blast.

|Scizor|
Scizor @ Occa Berry
Trait: Technician
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Atk / 216 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Swords Dance
- Roost

I honestly don't find myself using Scizor as much as I thought I would. Or so I thought. Scizor has won me many games where I thought for certain I would lose. It's completely incredible. It is extremely bulky too, able to set up on burned physical sweepers and Special Sweepers alike, roost of the damage, and wipe out the rest of the opposition. Iron plate allows it to potentially bluff a choice band, and most of the times the threat of a Bullet punch from Scizor scares the enemy away, allowing me to swords dance up for a potential sweep. Standard bulky SD Scizor evs allow it to act as a nice buffer special dragon attacks if Tyranitar is down or a draco meteor is incoming. If I absolutely have to change one member of the team, it would probably be Scizor. Occa berry over leftovers on Scizor seems really good. I can still fake a choice set, and risk staying in on Lat@s if I don't know they have HP Fire yet.

|Gliscor|
Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Ice Fang

Gliscor walls plenty of things, things that he can sub up and SD on. Gliscor makes an excellent partner with Hydreigon, absorbing those Fighting and Bug type moves nicely. Gliscor can effortlessly get to +4 when behind a sub, and many people don't realize just how scary that can be. Earthquake and Ice Fang provide a nice combination, as many pokemon with levitate are weak to Ice type attacks. He can also sub stall many more pokemon than his defensive set can, as most people don't run max speed on Gliscor, adding a nice surprise effect.

|Toxicroak|
Toxicroak @ Black Sludge
Trait: Dry Skin
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Drain Punch
- Ice Punch
- Sucker Punch

Without Toxicroak this team would be destroyed by rain and keldeo. Toxicroak provides a very nice immunity to water and fighting type attacks. The nice thing about Toxicroak is that a specs politoed ice beam 3HOK's even without Dry Skin, allowing me to sub up and drain punch it for some nice recovery. Toxicroak is also a nice check for Jellicent lacking shadow ball, but it can't hit them very hard even if he does get a sucker punch up. Standard sweeping EV's. I use Drain Punch over cross chop just in case I need to send him out in the sandstorm and recover hp lost from subs. Toxicroak is also an excellent draw for psychic, flying, and ground moves allowing me a free switch into Hydreigon, Tyranitar, or Sableye.

Importable!

Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 4 HP / 252 SAtk / 252 Spd
Modest Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Dark Pulse
- Fire Blast
- Surf

Sableye @ Leftovers
Trait: Prankster
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Def / 216 SDef
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Substitute
- Recover
- Will-O-Wisp
- Confuse Ray

Tyranitar @ Leftovers
Trait: Sand Stream
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 SDef
Brave Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Stone Edge
- Pursuit
- Fire Blast

Scizor @ Iron Plate
Trait: Technician
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Atk / 216 SDef
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Bug Bite
- Swords Dance
- Roost

Gliscor @ Toxic Orb
Trait: Poison Heal
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Ice Fang

Toxicroak @ Black Sludge
Trait: Dry Skin
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spd
Jolly Nature
- Substitute
- Drain Punch
- Ice Punch
- Sucker Punch

Threat list

Skarmory: if Hydreigon is down, Skarmory will destroy the team. He can easily set up rocks and 3 layers of spikes and proceed to whirlwind out my subs to wear me down quickly.

Mamoswine: Priority ice shard is just a huge pain. Scizor can check him nicely, but the rest of the team takes heavy damage from any of the Frozen Mammoths attacks. Sableye can somewhat check him by burning with will o wisp, but Sableye needs to be at relatively high hp to not be KO'd by the faster Ice Shard priority.

Sableye: Oddly enough, Sableye is a huge pain to my team. Faster variants with Taunt prevent my Sableye from doing anything, and his priority Will o Wisp cripples a lot of my team, especially if Gliscor hasn't had the time to activate his toxic orb. Luckily Scizor out-speeds variants with no speed investment, but it definitely isn't an OHKO unless Scizor has already gotten some boosts up.

Heatran: Roar will phase out my subs, and offensive variants like to have Earthpower and hidden power ice which will mess up Gliscor Tyranitar and Toxicroak. Luckily Gliscor out-speeds non-scarfed versions with max speed investment for the OHKO with EQ.

Volcarona: No chance if it gets a boost. Especially if it's a bulky version with roost. I try to get hydreigon in on it before it's too late.

Conkeldurr: Guts boost from will o wisp, I mach punch destroys everything, oi. I have to hope it hits itself in the face from confusion to a point where a gliscor earthquake can take it out.

Replays

And lastly, thank you for taking the time to read my very first RMT! I'll try to update this to the best of my ability and work with you guys to make it a better team.

Note: all changes will be in this style red.

CoolStoryBrobat · Apr 30, 2013

Hey brah, congrats on making your first RMT. This is a pretty cool team, looks pretty solid and I can't think off the top of my head any HUGE threats who instantly scare this team, and I can't say I'm the ultimate OU player but I do have a couple suggestions.

1. Firstly, for Hydreigon, I honestly think you should try this scarf set for a couple reasons:

Hydreigon @ Choice Scarf
Trait: Levitate
EVs: 252 Spd / 252 SAtk / 4 Atk
Mild Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Fire Blast
- Superpower
- U-Turn

Scarf mixed Hydreigon, Surf really isn't employing much extra usage, and Superpower is guaranteeably hitting Heatran harder than Surf ever will, simply because most usually invest in special defense. Meaning a Heatran in the sun will actually be quite potent annoyance, according to this calc:

252+ SpA Hydreigon Draco Meteor vs. 248 HP / 252+ SpD Heatran: 84-99 (21.81 - 25.71%) -- possible 5HKO

and even a more offensive Heatran variant in Sun is laughing at Surf:

252+ SpA Hydreigon Draco Meteor vs. 4 HP / 0 SpD Heatran: 116-137 (35.8 - 42.28%) -- 93.29% chance to 3HKO

Superpower on the other hand, is going to be able to 2HKO specially Defensive Heatran after Rocks, so that should tell you the use in its power. Not to mention it also wrecks Blissey, a common special wall in OU. U-Turn also gives you momentum to bring in another Pokemon, as Hydreigon is very capable of forcing switches when played right. Mild nature you maintain all the power from your special attack investment, and your physical attacks aren't weakened. Hydreigon likes to switch in on special moves that it resists, so your Special Defense stat is also kept intact to make it a little easier to come in at times.

2. Minor change, I suggest Taunt > Confuse Ray or Substitute on Sableye. Simply because A) Sableye is Taunt bait itself not having any attacks, B) Having a priority Taunt is incredibly useful to stop setup sweepers, especially ones you can cripple with Will-O-Wisp immediately afterward for the sake of passive damage. I know that Sableye's incredibly annoying and sometimes hard to take down with a Sub on one hand, and that on the other the confusion can often throw a wrench in the foe's tactic to force a switch, but I think neither outweighs how useful Taunt is in the effort to stop foes from statusing/phazing/setting up on/Tricking your Sableye in the long run.

3. Change the 252 Atk on Tyranitar to 252 HP, and change to Sassy nature as opposed to Adamant nature. The reason for this is because as you said, Tyranitar's on your team to hinder your opponent's favorable weather, and you're going to want to keep it around for a bit in that case. Not only that, but having full special defense investment with minimal HP investment you won't really see much of a drastic effect without the HP, it's kind of the "sponge" that allows Tyranitar to take the special hits in sand. And with Sassy nature, it's a full-on special tank with sand up.

Also, put Pursuit > Superpower on that Tyranitar set. Even though I'm not a fan of having 2 moves of the same type most of the time, Crunch and Pursuit have enough difference in purpose to actually matter. Tyranitar shouldn't really be going after most Steels anyway as it's a special tank for the team, so unless you really want to hit Heatran hard and risk taking a Will-O-Wisp or Earth Power, it's preferred you had Pursuit, at least on a team such as this with enough partners to give you Steel coverage. Crunch is your go-to Dark STAB move, and Pursuit is mainly for trapping and inflicting a heavy chunk of damage to Lati@s trying to escape after you've switched in, and given the EVs, it shouldn't have much of a problem coming in on anything other than a Specs-boosted Surf.

Those are kind of the most major changes I can think of, lol. What I do know, is that Keldeo is still a relevant threat to this team, though I can't really think of what to replace Scizor with (As you said it was the most expendable) while not opening you up to other stuff. An idea I had was maybe a Heatran set of your own, since it can lure out Pokemon who thus get cripped by Sableye, as well as being able to handle Volcarona and take Draco Meteors for the team. Oh yeah and it also threatens Skarmory.

But either way, everything's up to you, but I do strongly recommend the changes I suggested in bold. Hopefully your mind is opened up to some more possibilities, and I wish you the best of luck with this team bro

flareblade26 · May 2, 2013

Thanks for the suggestions, brobat! I've updated the main thread with the changes that I made. The team's looking very solid at the moment. I also added a few more replays.

Ain't no rest for the wicked [First RMT!]

flareblade26

CoolStoryBrobat

The hero Smogon needs, but not the one it deserves

flareblade26