New to the ORAS metagame but did fairly well in XY OU way back when, say, Aegislash was still a thing. I believe on the ladder I peaked somewhere in the teens, but that's in the past and now I'm looking to get into ORAS OU. Now, my approach is a little different from last time. Rather than simply get as high a ladder ranking as I can, this time I'm placing two constraints on myself:
1. No legendary Pokemon
2. No Hidden Powers.
As you can probably guess, this is because I want to create this team on my actual game, and I don't have the patience to reset for legendary IVs or breed for specific Hidden Powers. I accept that I probably won't be able to get as high as before with these restrictions, but given that legendary Pokemon are not considered overpowered for OU, I figure that surely there must be some configuration of non-legendaries that offers almost as much performance as a team of Landorus-T, Heatran, Keldeo, etc. I'm at rank 290 right now, and losing a lot of matches, many of which were not due to prediction or hax.
Oh, another stipulation is that I hate winning or losing based on a single dice roll, so when presented the option of using a 100% accurate move or a less than 100% accurate move, I'll almost always choose the 100%. I refuse to use Pokemon that require Focus Blast in order to be functional. Finally, it would be cool if my team complied with item clause but I don't really care too much about that.
Based on these criteria, I decided that a bulky offense team would be best for me, so here it is.
Catherine (Sylveon) (F) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
EVs: 244 HP / 252 SpA / 12 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Heal Bell
- Baton Pass
I have experience with Specs Sylveon from XY, and what still fascinates me is how hard it hits dents most switch-ins. A lot of times it even denies recovery, just by virtue of hitting for >50%. It almost plays like Victini, where you don't have to predict, it doesn't matter what your opponent does, because no matter what something is getting blown up. Unlike Victini, Sylveon has another common set, so I think it comes as more of a surprise, in exchange for less nuking power. The basic concept of punishing switches with sheer power is what I decided to base the rest of my team on, so in a way Specs Sylveon could be said to be this team's mascot.
That said, this set's sort of weird. Hyper Voice and Baton Pass are great, but the other two are just filler at the moment. It's pretty simple: if Heatran, Baton Pass, else Hyper Voice. Shadow Ball would hit Metagross and Jirachi in theory, but in practice I never used it because even with an accurate prediction, I didn't feel like it had enough benefit over just plain Hyper Voice. If I was really intent on predicting one of those two I'd just Baton Pass instead. Hidden Power Ground breaks one of my rules, so I don't use it. Psyshock is literally only there because I can't just very well go with 3 moves. Lastly, Specs Heal Bell sounds like a joke, but I put it on there after a battle where I had three Pokemon burned or paralyzed, and saving three of mine happened to be better than killing one of theirs. It's still not great, but I would rate Heal Bell as being very very slightly better than completely useless. Due to how bad these two slots are (Psyshock and Heal Bell), I've almost considered running cleric Sylveon instead, but I think that doing so will turn my entire team into a very different animal.
Henry (Slowbro) (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 172 Def / 60 SpA / 24 SpD
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Psychic
- Thunder Wave
- Slack Off
One of the first things I did was look up the top megas in the metagame, and both Mega Metagross and Mega Gallade scared me, so I grabbed Slowbro as a check to these threats. It also sort of handles Keldeo, as well as being my answer to birdspam. Thematically it's completely off from the nuking theme that I established with Sylveon, but it just does too many things at once for me to let go. The SpA EVs are there to have a chance of 2HKOing specially defensive Talonflame if it just tries to Roost all day.
Originally I had Flamethrower instead of Psychic, to serve as a Ferrothorn lure, but after a very scary incident with Sub Keldeo, I switched over. Also, this team has literally nothing that can beat Mega Venusaur one on one, and Psychic is my token attempt at pretending to counter Mega Venusaur. I haven't run into one on ladder yet, but somehow I expect this not to actually work, so I would be open to swapping out Psychic for something more actually useful. Slack Off is obvious and T-Wave is nice for supporting the slow-but-powerful Sylveon, and Scizor, who is discussed next.
Stalin (Scizor) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 212 Atk / 48 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- U-turn
- Knock Off
This is like a physical Sylveon, with how hard it hits switch-ins. Nailing a Heatran switch-in with Superpower is a good feeling. Plus, Scizor combines the functions of Hyper Voice and Baton Pass together in a neat little momentum-generating package called U-turn. It's also my only user of Knock Off, and my only spammable priority. Like Sylveon, Scizor is not actually meant to kill things, but rather to weaken counters enough for a sweep with something else.
Diana (Lopunny) (F) @ Lopunnite
Ability: Limber
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Return
- Drain Punch
- Fake Out
- Power-Up Punch
Speaking of which, here's the something else. I initially chose Mega Lopunny as my sweeper thanks to its unresisted STAB coverage, which I thought would mean that it had the best chance to sweep after Sylveon and Scizor did their work. Well, it turns out not quite. Due to the set I'm running, getting in Lopunny is more or less useless if Landorus-T or Slowbro are still around, and Lando-T is on practically every team so that's an issue. And Talonflame stops a sweep anyway, so I don't know what I was thinking. My Lopunny is also hindered by my desire to use a 100% accurate move instead of the 90% move that completely ruins you if you miss. I mean, Drain Punch isn't terrible in theory. Lopunny has low HP, actually reasonable defenses, and good attack, which you would think would make it a good user of a draining move, but in practice it's walled too hard by the aforementioned physical walls. Power-Up Punch is Lopunny's only boosting move, and it's also actually not that good. It can't be taunted and it can almost function like a Moxie boost, but there's just not enough power. Fake Out is there for emergency priority, but I wonder if Ice Punch might be better.
Now that Greninja's gone, I'm considering giving up the speed of Mega Lopunny for the sheer power of Mega Metagross or Mega Gallade, but the world of 110 base speed speed ties is a scary place. Slowbro's paralysis support is kind of wasted on Lopunny though, so maybe an Adamant Agility Metagross or SD Gallade could synergize better.
Victoria (Serperior) (F) @ Light Clay
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Leech Seed
- Light Screen
- Reflect
The last two are recent additions to the team, replacing a generic Garchomp and Rotom-W. Garchomp was supposed to be my electric immunity, but in practice I found that I was unable to actually switch Garchomp into Volt Switches because they were always from Pokemon that were faster, and carried HP Ice. Or they were Rotom and threatening a Will-O-Wisp. Then Contrary was released, and I decided to give Serperior a shot. Part of the reason Serperior is here is just because it's my favorite Pokemon and the thought of it being maybe potentially viable made me giddy. Without Hidden Power, Serperior would never be a sweeper, but that's okay, I actually think Serperior would have been a terrible sweeper anyway. Instead, I play it as a support mon that also happens to have some offensive presence. There are a lot of quad-grass resistances out there, but I find that that's actually what it takes to really put a stop to Serperior's Leaf Storm rampage. In particular, this puts even more pressure on Heatran, which is pressured by the powerful fighting attacks from this team.
The idea was to use the screens to allow Mega Lopunny to set up, but I find Mega Lopunny's setup too slow. Finally, Leech Seed is to pressure Steel switch-ins, especially Heatran, provide a bit of recovery, and take advantage of Chansey's fat HP stat. Back when I had Garchomp and Rotom-W, this team was really weak to full stall, and I think with the right Serperior set I can patch this up. Screens are ideal for a fast Pokemon with decent defenses, so it was the obvious first thing I thought of. If not dual screens, another set I considered running was something like Leaf Storm / Taunt / Synthesis / Glare as a better counter to full stall. I'm not worried about Mega Sableye's Magic Bounce reflecting Taunt, because it's a free switch in to Sylveon, and heck even Serperior can probably just beat it with Leaf Storms. Speaking of defensive teams, any Serperior set can counter Mega Slowbro, which I only had shaky answers to in the form of Sylveon's Hyper Voice and Scizor's U-turn. All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised with Serp's performance, considering its issues.
Mao (Infernape) (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Overheat
- Close Combat
- Stealth Rock
- Endeavor
I'm quite proud of this last slot. Even with 5 members, there were a lot of roles that still needed to be filled. I need Stealth Rock to punish birds and genies. I need to beat Ferrothorn, Heatran, Skarmory, and Mega Scizor. I need more offensive pressure in general. It seemed impossible to fulfill all of these demands with just one Pokemon, but I found it in the oft-forgotten monkey king. It plays sort of like my Garchomp did, setting rocks at the beginning of the match and usually being the first to die, but not before killing or crippling at least one threat. An opposing Landorus-T's health is usually the timer by which I judge Mega Lopunny's readiness to start her sweep, and Overheat, especially a Blaze-boosted one, brings that timer down in a hurry. I think the only other thing I might consider is swapping out Sash + Endeavor for Life Orb and some other move, like Taunt, or another coverage move.
1. No legendary Pokemon
2. No Hidden Powers.
As you can probably guess, this is because I want to create this team on my actual game, and I don't have the patience to reset for legendary IVs or breed for specific Hidden Powers. I accept that I probably won't be able to get as high as before with these restrictions, but given that legendary Pokemon are not considered overpowered for OU, I figure that surely there must be some configuration of non-legendaries that offers almost as much performance as a team of Landorus-T, Heatran, Keldeo, etc. I'm at rank 290 right now, and losing a lot of matches, many of which were not due to prediction or hax.
Oh, another stipulation is that I hate winning or losing based on a single dice roll, so when presented the option of using a 100% accurate move or a less than 100% accurate move, I'll almost always choose the 100%. I refuse to use Pokemon that require Focus Blast in order to be functional. Finally, it would be cool if my team complied with item clause but I don't really care too much about that.
Based on these criteria, I decided that a bulky offense team would be best for me, so here it is.
Catherine (Sylveon) (F) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Pixilate
EVs: 244 HP / 252 SpA / 12 Spe
Modest Nature
- Hyper Voice
- Psyshock
- Heal Bell
- Baton Pass
I have experience with Specs Sylveon from XY, and what still fascinates me is how hard it hits dents most switch-ins. A lot of times it even denies recovery, just by virtue of hitting for >50%. It almost plays like Victini, where you don't have to predict, it doesn't matter what your opponent does, because no matter what something is getting blown up. Unlike Victini, Sylveon has another common set, so I think it comes as more of a surprise, in exchange for less nuking power. The basic concept of punishing switches with sheer power is what I decided to base the rest of my team on, so in a way Specs Sylveon could be said to be this team's mascot.
That said, this set's sort of weird. Hyper Voice and Baton Pass are great, but the other two are just filler at the moment. It's pretty simple: if Heatran, Baton Pass, else Hyper Voice. Shadow Ball would hit Metagross and Jirachi in theory, but in practice I never used it because even with an accurate prediction, I didn't feel like it had enough benefit over just plain Hyper Voice. If I was really intent on predicting one of those two I'd just Baton Pass instead. Hidden Power Ground breaks one of my rules, so I don't use it. Psyshock is literally only there because I can't just very well go with 3 moves. Lastly, Specs Heal Bell sounds like a joke, but I put it on there after a battle where I had three Pokemon burned or paralyzed, and saving three of mine happened to be better than killing one of theirs. It's still not great, but I would rate Heal Bell as being very very slightly better than completely useless. Due to how bad these two slots are (Psyshock and Heal Bell), I've almost considered running cleric Sylveon instead, but I think that doing so will turn my entire team into a very different animal.
Henry (Slowbro) (M) @ Leftovers
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 172 Def / 60 SpA / 24 SpD
Bold Nature
- Scald
- Psychic
- Thunder Wave
- Slack Off
One of the first things I did was look up the top megas in the metagame, and both Mega Metagross and Mega Gallade scared me, so I grabbed Slowbro as a check to these threats. It also sort of handles Keldeo, as well as being my answer to birdspam. Thematically it's completely off from the nuking theme that I established with Sylveon, but it just does too many things at once for me to let go. The SpA EVs are there to have a chance of 2HKOing specially defensive Talonflame if it just tries to Roost all day.
Originally I had Flamethrower instead of Psychic, to serve as a Ferrothorn lure, but after a very scary incident with Sub Keldeo, I switched over. Also, this team has literally nothing that can beat Mega Venusaur one on one, and Psychic is my token attempt at pretending to counter Mega Venusaur. I haven't run into one on ladder yet, but somehow I expect this not to actually work, so I would be open to swapping out Psychic for something more actually useful. Slack Off is obvious and T-Wave is nice for supporting the slow-but-powerful Sylveon, and Scizor, who is discussed next.
Stalin (Scizor) (M) @ Choice Band
Ability: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 212 Atk / 48 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- U-turn
- Knock Off
This is like a physical Sylveon, with how hard it hits switch-ins. Nailing a Heatran switch-in with Superpower is a good feeling. Plus, Scizor combines the functions of Hyper Voice and Baton Pass together in a neat little momentum-generating package called U-turn. It's also my only user of Knock Off, and my only spammable priority. Like Sylveon, Scizor is not actually meant to kill things, but rather to weaken counters enough for a sweep with something else.
Diana (Lopunny) (F) @ Lopunnite
Ability: Limber
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Return
- Drain Punch
- Fake Out
- Power-Up Punch
Speaking of which, here's the something else. I initially chose Mega Lopunny as my sweeper thanks to its unresisted STAB coverage, which I thought would mean that it had the best chance to sweep after Sylveon and Scizor did their work. Well, it turns out not quite. Due to the set I'm running, getting in Lopunny is more or less useless if Landorus-T or Slowbro are still around, and Lando-T is on practically every team so that's an issue. And Talonflame stops a sweep anyway, so I don't know what I was thinking. My Lopunny is also hindered by my desire to use a 100% accurate move instead of the 90% move that completely ruins you if you miss. I mean, Drain Punch isn't terrible in theory. Lopunny has low HP, actually reasonable defenses, and good attack, which you would think would make it a good user of a draining move, but in practice it's walled too hard by the aforementioned physical walls. Power-Up Punch is Lopunny's only boosting move, and it's also actually not that good. It can't be taunted and it can almost function like a Moxie boost, but there's just not enough power. Fake Out is there for emergency priority, but I wonder if Ice Punch might be better.
Now that Greninja's gone, I'm considering giving up the speed of Mega Lopunny for the sheer power of Mega Metagross or Mega Gallade, but the world of 110 base speed speed ties is a scary place. Slowbro's paralysis support is kind of wasted on Lopunny though, so maybe an Adamant Agility Metagross or SD Gallade could synergize better.
Victoria (Serperior) (F) @ Light Clay
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Leech Seed
- Light Screen
- Reflect
The last two are recent additions to the team, replacing a generic Garchomp and Rotom-W. Garchomp was supposed to be my electric immunity, but in practice I found that I was unable to actually switch Garchomp into Volt Switches because they were always from Pokemon that were faster, and carried HP Ice. Or they were Rotom and threatening a Will-O-Wisp. Then Contrary was released, and I decided to give Serperior a shot. Part of the reason Serperior is here is just because it's my favorite Pokemon and the thought of it being maybe potentially viable made me giddy. Without Hidden Power, Serperior would never be a sweeper, but that's okay, I actually think Serperior would have been a terrible sweeper anyway. Instead, I play it as a support mon that also happens to have some offensive presence. There are a lot of quad-grass resistances out there, but I find that that's actually what it takes to really put a stop to Serperior's Leaf Storm rampage. In particular, this puts even more pressure on Heatran, which is pressured by the powerful fighting attacks from this team.
The idea was to use the screens to allow Mega Lopunny to set up, but I find Mega Lopunny's setup too slow. Finally, Leech Seed is to pressure Steel switch-ins, especially Heatran, provide a bit of recovery, and take advantage of Chansey's fat HP stat. Back when I had Garchomp and Rotom-W, this team was really weak to full stall, and I think with the right Serperior set I can patch this up. Screens are ideal for a fast Pokemon with decent defenses, so it was the obvious first thing I thought of. If not dual screens, another set I considered running was something like Leaf Storm / Taunt / Synthesis / Glare as a better counter to full stall. I'm not worried about Mega Sableye's Magic Bounce reflecting Taunt, because it's a free switch in to Sylveon, and heck even Serperior can probably just beat it with Leaf Storms. Speaking of defensive teams, any Serperior set can counter Mega Slowbro, which I only had shaky answers to in the form of Sylveon's Hyper Voice and Scizor's U-turn. All in all, I'm pleasantly surprised with Serp's performance, considering its issues.
Mao (Infernape) (M) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Blaze
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Overheat
- Close Combat
- Stealth Rock
- Endeavor
I'm quite proud of this last slot. Even with 5 members, there were a lot of roles that still needed to be filled. I need Stealth Rock to punish birds and genies. I need to beat Ferrothorn, Heatran, Skarmory, and Mega Scizor. I need more offensive pressure in general. It seemed impossible to fulfill all of these demands with just one Pokemon, but I found it in the oft-forgotten monkey king. It plays sort of like my Garchomp did, setting rocks at the beginning of the match and usually being the first to die, but not before killing or crippling at least one threat. An opposing Landorus-T's health is usually the timer by which I judge Mega Lopunny's readiness to start her sweep, and Overheat, especially a Blaze-boosted one, brings that timer down in a hurry. I think the only other thing I might consider is swapping out Sash + Endeavor for Life Orb and some other move, like Taunt, or another coverage move.