ORAS Doubles OU ARTICUNO Lord Squad

[Flame Road]

All Hail Articuno​

I took a break from Showdown and since I’ve been back all I’ve been able to build is crappy teams. The teams have been getting worse and worse so I decided to come to the RMT section for some help :) I took Articuno and built a team cuz Articuno is kewl. Like really, really kewl. Even though the team started as something I screwed around with, it ended up being kinda decent.

The Team

Articuno @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 16 HP / 12 Def / 252 SpA / 228 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hurricane
- Freeze-Dry
- Protect
- Substitute

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Articuno has some good bulk in the special defense department, but sorta falls short in defense. It’s special attack is also kinda meh, but the moveset makes up for it. I first went for Freeze-Dry because why else would one run something like Articuno/Lapras for that special ice type attack that hits water nicely. Freeze-Dry OHKO’s rips through most rainmons because it hits 4x effective against pokemon like gyarados, ludicolo, and kingdra. Also, it’s nice to have a decent power ice STAB attack. I needed another attacking move but Articuno’s moveset is pretty limited so I went for Hurricane. Hurricane has a pretty high base power with 100% accuracy in rain and hit hard. It dealt with a good amount of stuff, but it could only OHKO amoonguss if it had a helping hand boost. Next was either Substitute or Tailwind, I went for the sub/lefties combo because it had some bulk but a bad typing. Otherwise it was hard to deal with stuff like rock slides that wreck Articuno.

Politoed @ Sitrus Berry
Ability: Drizzle
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Icy Wind
- Helping Hand
- Protect
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Can't have a rain team without politoed. Politoed has a pretty standard moveset with scald for the STAB, icy wind for speed control, and helping hand. I chose helping hand over something like encore because it helped members like Articuno secure the OHKO over amoong and Kingdra do some muddy water spam. Also, I went with sitrus because the regen did help with some pretty important survives and I felt like I was able to switch it back in when I needed rain, but Damp Rock was also pretty nice. Overall pretty standard stuff.

Kingdra @ Life Orb
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 112 HP / 252 SpA / 8 SpD / 136 Spe
Modest Nature
- Muddy Water
- Draco Meteor
- Protect
- Ice Beam
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Standard set. All I can say is I chose kingdra because kyube is always super annoying plus muddy water is fun. I needed someone to take advantage of the rain and kingdra gets good coverage. Ice beam was for lando and whatever else was ice weak that Articuno was too slow to kill.

Diancie @ Diancite
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 208 Atk / 48 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Diamond Storm
- Moonblast
- Earth Power
- Protect
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Standard rain stuff, just needed a fast attacker. Diancie gets good coverage but the first turn protect is usually predicted. I used Diancie mostly for dealing with Charizard Y, Kyurem-Black, other dragons, and Heatran. Also was a decent switch in to take some damage from Talonflame

Aegislash @ Weakness Policy
Ability: Stance Change
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Quiet Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Shadow Ball
- Flash Cannon
- Wide Guard
- King's Shield
​

At this point I needed a tanky switch in and since steel works pretty well with rain I went for Aegislash. The other choice could be Ferrothorn but Aegislash could be pretty offensive against bulky stuff like Cresselia and still be tanky. I honestly couldn't decide between Safety Goggles or Weakness Policy, ultimately I went with Weakness Policy but no grass switch ins for spore was a bit iffy. Wide guard was pretty vital because there were always rock slides aimed at Articuno, Earthquakes at Diancie, or Hyper Voice spam at Blaziken and Kingdra. The spread is standard, I went for lowest speed just in case of TR.

Blaziken @ Life Orb
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 84 Atk / 172 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Overheat
- Superpower
- Stone Edge
- Protect
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Kind of a weird choice for a Char Y counter but Blaziken covers a lot of weaknesses on the team. At first I ran LO Raikou which performed really well, but then I found out that the team basically couldn't do anything against Ferrothorn. I switched it to Rotom-Heat but with only icy wind for speed control, it was useful only some of the time. Blaziken was suggested to me by Nido and it worked well. The speed+moveset allowed Blaziken to help the rest of the team deal with what they were having trouble with. Overheat was another option for killing Amoongus, Superpower for Kang, Stone Edge for multiple mons. However, the problem with Blaziken was the fact that most of its moves force it to switch out from stat drops, which isn't good since it loses the speed it accumulated. I felt like that was fine because it gave me more opportunities to switch in politoed for more rain if needed.

Overall Concerns:
-Most of the team is hard to switch in, and I have to be careful with Blaziken and Diancie since they cover lots of main meta threats but die so easily
-Aegislash is so damn slow
-Articuno without sub set up is kinda fragile

Probably the first thing that's gonna be said is to stop using Articuno but lol, I tried to make it work ;~;

S/o

Nido-Rus for being a fren
Yellow Paint for letting me test all kinds of shet and not complaining
All u fucbois that keep the dubs room alive and fun :)

 

[Checkmater]

1) keep protect in the 4th slot. Proper set convention is important ngl
2) consider using maxspeed kingdra, extra speed is nice for higher speed tiers and also out of rain. Also Hydro>Ice Beam tends to be more popular
3) consider using specs toed. Does lots of damage
4) Team seems incredibly weak to char y + venu... maybe that's just all rain teams but something that could help that would be talonflame. I love blaze but I really think tflame fits better here

 

[THATSAplusONE]

Protect and Sub on Articuno? I get what you are going for, but id love to see you try to work Tailwind on that set ;)

 

[Yellow Paint]

He should've been clearer, but this was built for a tour where tailwind and zard, among other things, were banned.

 

[THATSAplusONE]

He should've been clearer, but this was built for a tour where tailwind and zard, among other things, were banned.

ahhhhhhhhh. Makes sense then lol