OU BW OU Team Building Competition mk.2

[Zer0]

After almost a 3 month absent from us doing this, me and triple axel blaze decided to reopen the BW OU Teambuilding competition again. We felt like taking a break from this would've been reasonable since we were really burnt out from this.

Anyways without further ado, this week theme will be based around Salamence:

Despite competiting with Dragonite, Salamence is a dangerous albeit underrated Pokemon in Gen5 OU due to traits it can boast having over Dragonite. With Moxie it can become one of the best and scariest Choice Scarfer's in the tier, being able to snowball with ease once its checks are gone while also doubling as an excellent revenge killer due to its good natural bulk, typing, and speed. However, it can also run other sets outside of its Choice Scarf set, such as Dragon Dance or Mixed due to its great offenses, making it potentially more viscous to face while also being able to flip match-ups on its head. These sets can also utilize Salamence's other ability, Intimidate, to superb results. But how will you build Salamence?

Voting ends in 2 weeks!

 

[tahatahat]

Magneton Hippo DragMag Beatdown (pokepast.es)

- This team is VERY Terrakion weak and the extra speed control on top of scarfrachi and espeed dnite warrants magneton here. In the rain matchup, this team is so aggressive that it should beat down either poli or ferro very quickly, allowing either mag or the dragons to do their thing

- More longevity than tar, and our plan is to just out-offense psychics with hard hitters and scarfers, so hippo makes sense here especially to outlive the annoying politoed MU

- Mence justifies its slot by being the team challenge feature mon (just kidding!). Haban mence is able to live a draco meteor from scarf latios and, with this ev spread, live at least 2 more sandstorm ticks (assuming 1 was accrued on the dd turn) with a fresh moxie boost! So essentially, you can punch a free hole in scarf lati teams - if they go for pulse, even better

- Rachi is of course very common on dragmag, but hippowdon supplanting its role as our rocker and the need for more hyperaggressive play means scarfrachi to come in and cheese through sweepers like sd terrakion and fast mons like alakazam and latios makes more sense than a more passive variety

- CB Kyurem-Black truly justifies the "beatdown" in the title, as even if you aren't able to get mag off against rain, you can still put so much pressure on ferro with this that it's possible for it to not matter

Given the matchup Haban Mence has against certain scarfers (primarily the latis), I wanted an alternate game winner, and Dragonite seemed to fit the bill, so once you get off a beatdown sequence on the opponents physical wall or trade down into opposing offense dragonite and mence together should be able to win the game!

 

[mixnite]

Salamence x Cresselia is an idea that I stole from triple axel blaze but I decided to add my own spin to it. As much as I would like to claim the Salamence set, I have to admit that it is not mine, rather it was 'invented' by my buddy Rewer.


The team is centred around the core of Salamence and Terrakion as sweepers and breakers for each other with Cresselia supporting them with Lunar Dance and Thunder Wave.
Cresselia's is ev'd to outspeed Adamant Dragonite (and Adamant Mamoswine) before a boost and thus is able to either paralyse the Dragonite (assuming no Lum Berry) or drop it with Ice Beam after Stealth Rock.


Excadrill is the team's hazard control as the team's hazard setter hazard removal.


Latios is here to provide a water resistance as well as breaking power from the sheer strength of Choice Specs Draco Meteor. It also serves as a form of psuedo speed control through the use of Thunder Wave. à la ORAS Thunder Wave Thundurus-I.


Magnezone rounds out the team as a second steel type as well as a sure-fire way of eliminating the steel types that would annoy Salamence and Latios.

-

One problem area to look out for with this team is the questionable speed control, hence the name; >350 = x. Pokemon such as boost sweepers like Volcarona and Dragonite can be a major problem once set up however there is counterplay in the form of specially defensive Salamence to deal with Volcarona as well as Ice Beam and Thunder Wave Cresselia to deal with Dragonite.
I hope you have as much fun playing with the team as I did building it!

-

FUNNY CALCS
- 252 SpA Alakazam Hidden Power Ice vs. 252 HP / 196 SpD Salamence: 304-360 (77.1 - 91.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
- 0 SpA Landorus-Therian Hidden Power Ice vs. 252 HP / 196 SpD Salamence: 204-244 (51.7 - 61.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

- 252 SpA Choice Specs Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Cradily in Sand: 157-186 (41.7 - 49.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

 

[Cow]

Salamence x Cresselia is an idea that I stole from triple axel blaze but I decided to add my own spin to it. As much as I would like to claim the Salamence set, I have to admit that it is not mine, rather it was 'invented' by my buddy Rewer.


The team is centred around the core of Salamence and Terrakion as sweepers and breakers for each other with Cresselia supporting them with Lunar Dance and Thunder Wave.
Cresselia's is ev'd to outspeed Adamant Dragonite (and Adamant Mamoswine) before a boost and thus is able to either paralyse the Dragonite (assuming no Lum Berry) or drop it with Ice Beam after Stealth Rock.


Excadrill is the team's hazard control as the team's hazard setter hazard removal.


Latios is here to provide a water resistance as well as breaking power from the sheer strength of Choice Specs Draco Meteor. It also serves as a form of psuedo speed control through the use of Thunder Wave. à la ORAS Thunder Wave Thundurus-I.


Magnezone rounds out the team as a second steel type as well as a sure-fire way of eliminating the steel types that would annoy Salamence and Latios.

-

One problem area to look out for with this team is the questionable speed control, hence the name; >350 = x. Pokemon such as boost sweepers like Volcarona and Dragonite can be a major problem once set up however there is counterplay in the form of specially defensive Salamence to deal with Volcarona as well as Ice Beam and Thunder Wave Cresselia to deal with Dragonite.
I hope you have as much fun playing with the team as I did building it!

-

FUNNY CALCS
- 252 SpA Alakazam Hidden Power Ice vs. 252 HP / 196 SpD Salamence: 304-360 (77.1 - 91.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
- 0 SpA Landorus-Therian Hidden Power Ice vs. 252 HP / 196 SpD Salamence: 204-244 (51.7 - 61.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

- 252 SpA Choice Specs Latios Draco Meteor vs. 252 HP / 252+ SpD Cradily in Sand: 157-186 (41.7 - 49.4%) -- guaranteed 3HKO after Leftovers recovery

woah helmet cress, now this is fire

 

[Cow]

If im being honest, this team is probably garbage. but in testing on the ladder and in friendlys it was fun so i thought that i should submit it anyways.

When starting with mence you got to think about how you can differentiate it from dragonite. So I started with that. Mence can use fire move + eq which dragonite cannot afford due to usually requiring espeed so I went with that. I also considered running ice but since im running yache berry since no multiscale I can just hit lando twice and be done with it.Mence also has moxie which is cool for spiralling out of control and also picking up a late game sweep. I used dragon claw as another way of making it different from dragonite as mence wont have to lock into to anything. This goes nicely with cress too.

The second mon I added to the team after mence was abomasnow. The reasoned answer as to why it's here, hits very hard, hard to switch into and can also wood hammer rotom to put it in mence range. The real answer to why its here is cause abomasnow is cool and I like experimenting with it.

Then, I wanted to be a bit quirky? So I put a scarf cresselia on the team to form the 3 pokemon shell of what the team would look like. Scarf Cresselia has very good speed tier allowing it to outspeed dragonite at +1 and ice beam it. It also acts as a buffer to keldeo which offence usually struggles with quite a lot. Shock over psychic because sub cm or just cm keldeo is annoying. Lunar Dance support with a focus sash abomasnow and yache mence is also really cool since if one of them takes a burn of gets low I can get them back to full and go from there. This also gives me trick which is good for breaking walls like chansey and also beating boosted reuniclus.

Almost required on all offence especially something like this. Honestly this set is kind of garbage and someone could probably find something better to do here but I was running out of ideas. Double healing wish is cool and also lets you play a little bit more agressive in the early game with mence and abomasnow since you have the backbone of 2 full restores in the back. Jirachi's no speed invest lets it outspeed scizor and fire punch it which is good since scizor usually destroys hail teams like this. Rocky helmet punishes uturns but this could easily be another item such as eject button, shucca,sitrus or lefties.

Spin bot. People usually go fire on hail over ice beam but this team has abomanow, fire move on mence, jirachi and chomp so i didn't really think there was much of a need. another option which I think is interesting is either twave or psychic over ice beam to hit tenta and keldeo harder as well as rotom or twave just to cripple stuff.

Chain chomp on this team to slam lando and skarm to make breaking through them easier for mence. You could also put rocks on rachi and have this as a normal set like sd fire fang but this set is fun to lure mence checks in and blow them up.

~overall this team is far from optimized but from testing was very fun to use. If anyone does in fact use it let me know if you made any changes to the team and if it had any results. hope you enjoy! (also if you get the nicknaming theme i then good job)

paste

https://pokepast.es/c63fa9f9c0a7327c

 

[Quarante8]

Salamence is a mon I had fun building around bit more than a year ago. It essentially doesnt do much compared to real dragons (aka latios), but you can utilize its strengths to make it somewhat viable. Here are two squads that worked back then that I edited a bit for today's meta :

I tried like a lot of stuff w jelliskarm ho, this is what worked best with mence outside of just scarf (boring).
Scarf tar rly works wonder in jelliskarm overall. Getting rid of very easily, pressuring and , decent into a plethora of mons. Leaves you open to though, which is patched by !
Very standard skarm lead that just gets the hazards down and away it goes.
Jelli is crept to outspeed zor cuz its cringe and will wreck you (though you might just miss wow, business as usual with jelli).
Can setup on a lot of stuff, mostly physical attackers that cannot really threaten it reliably ( ) due to intimidate and the decent bulk mence got. Others include , which is what I built the set around. With refresh, you can just get rid of any status, giving you a lot of room to setup against toxic . The yache berry allows you to stay in and dd twice against stuff like and overall gives you a really great matchup chart. If you can dd twice you are nearly guaranteed a win, or at least some big holes in the opponent's team which will enable and
Latios is a standard cm setup, with colbur to get rid of tar for zam. White herb is a decent option that can also give you a big lead in some games.
Very classic set with grass knot to pressure . Good ol' zam always be reliable (less it misses the focus move).

Pretty straightforward team, gets the job done against most stuff. Fast scarfers can be an issue, but it's not that hard to play around them, with for and for . HO can be an issue, especially the terrak/chomp/aero based teams, but it can always be played around since mence has a good matchup into most of the ho mons ( ) and you still got your trusty to trade with if needed. Would the team be better with another mon on ? Maybe, but it works fine w in it :D


Second team managed to do something into. Solid rain base with and (always gets the job done).
I used to have in this spot but switched it to to have a faster answer to threats like (which this team really struggle to beat) and //. Downside is spinning can be tricky, but trading to spin can be fine in most situations (after you got the opponent's knock'd and chipped with your own). It somewhat gives a better chance into jelliskarm teams as well (as tent is usually just deadweight in the matchup, doesnt change its a tough matchup though).
Standard mixed w superpower for and . Can give the tailwind later on for it to sweep.
Pretty lil mence. Its goal is utter wreckage of whatever is in front of it. Speed crept to lando, nuke everything with the moves. Hydro for grounds, eq for and (outside of rain), and , dm for burst damage and dpulse for solid neutral damage. You need to knock and chip enemy beforehand for to get going, but when it gets going it'll leave many holes in the opponent's team.
For closure. Classic scarf going to remove the quite annoying and outspeed the samely annoying . Its no secret most rains suck against those two, this one is no exception, but with you can more or less mitigate the damage.
Another pretty straightforward team (guess I rly like those). Hazards down with your ferro and get going. Mence can be an immediate early threat against most sands and will apply a lot of pressure to lando/tom lando/bi structures once you get a few hazards down. Rain mu is tough esp against , gotta play around starmie to never let the thundurus in, and play with your torn to not allow room for the opponent to get their thing going. VS HO utilize tw torn for mence to outspeed and ko the ho mons. Tough against though since getting the rocks down vs HO is a challenge. But well can't have everything!

That's it, hope you have fun with the teams! I prolly could have polished stuff here and there but Im not feeling like playing mons much atm. Still wanted to add some stuff cuz salamence is cool.
Cheers :D

 

[evakiyama!]

scarf mence skarmjelli (pokepast.es)

I'm very new to BW but triple axel blaze (he told me to call him goated in this post so I'm going to NOT do that) said it'd be a good tutoring exercise to get me to build a team (WHILE his teambuilding contest is going on? convenient timing..) so that's why this is here.

This team takes pretty heavy inspiration from the dice SkarmJelli team which is probably one of my favorite teams I've been using to learn the tier with.
- Initial idea was to build a Moxie Scarf Mence team that didn't need Magnezone support because like blehhh yknow I don't just wanna build DragMag with Mence. acts as a blanket check to , , , & alongside its teammates to prevent them from being overwhelmed as sole checks. It also revenge kills Rapid Spinners that are annoying for such as , , and .

- I loved the way that the Dice team used 4A Mixrachi to both be a and psychic check but also a terrifying midgame Spikes abuser with its great coverage. Shuca + Icy Wind helps to pick off problematic scarfers (or put them into & range) such as , , and . Jirachi also is EV'd to outspeed all non-Scarf and Icy Wind them. Energy Ball puts into range of and and is also amazing at hitting into to open up non-choiced . HP Fire rounds out the coverage and threatens massive damage on , , and who wall my dragons.

- LO Scizor is probably one of the best Pokemon at picking up what Spikes + MixRachi puts down. +2 LO QA/BP picks off problematic mons such as , , and after a layer of Spikes/Rocks. Also great at landing huge damage on for and a secondary Steel type to back up with no bulk.

- Standard hazard stack lead.

- EV'd to outspeed to wisp it since otherwise it poses a huge threat to and . Standard spinblocker.

- I wanted a & check, something to help my Rain matchup, and another something to put fast pressure on midgame. joins in on the Dragon + Spikes onslaught vs , , and . Lum Berry + Recover guarentees that we can safely come in on 's Thunder, 's Wisp, and 's Wisp without fearing status and threaten huge damage in return. I thought Thunder was a very cool option as a third attack here, because I wanted my Latios to slam hard into , , & .

With no Dual Chop Scarf , this team is pretty spooked by Sash , but one of or can sacrifice themselves in order for the other to win later on, with Moxie Salamence in particular being a much more potent wincon in comparison to .

I think this team is fun if nothing else, always love anything MixRachi + SkarmJelli. Hopefully this is a pretty decent first team LOL

 

[phosphor]

This is a pretty boring team. I wanted to make something that was straight-up-and-down, no special effects. ScarfMence seemed to me a good choice as if I was using DD, why not use Dragonite? But then I had to deal with Salamence's inability to use Yache or Lum Berry, and Latios was a natural fit.

Magnezone and Starmie fell naturally into place, and I decided that a team of attackers slower than Scarf Latios is threatened by it, so I added Scizor. Garchomp rounds out the team by acting as my lead and, hopefully with Magnezone's support, would let me chunk the Ground-types to open up for ScarfMence.

The older style of DragMag structures fell out of fashion for a reason, but I tried quite a few variations on ScarfMence and this is where I ended up.

 

[LonelyZard]

Salamence is a decent Pokémon. I've used Meteor/Fblast/EQ/Roost sparingly in the past, in fact due to its useful resistances Mence has been one of the first mons I've ever paired with Excadrill.
Currently things do not look very bright for this set in particular. Hydro Pump>EQ seems appealing for blasting Hippowdon but if you run into Magic Guard semistalls you'd still need another breaker + heavy Clefable punish. If you need all this support then you are not doing your job well as a wallbreaker. Thus I deviated from Salamence-centered balance structures (because they wouldn't break anything) and using Salamence just to complement the offensive and defensive aspects of a sand bulky offense without Magnezone.

https://pokepast.es/b52fe3919447f2b5

I've picked Tar to get rid asap of Latios and his annoying pillaring around my breakers, Scarf because things immediately looked grim vs Garchomp, Terrakion and Keldeo.
Offensive lando because Skarmory isn't going to sit on Salamence. It benefits a lot from Pursuit.
Seismitoad was the only possible choice for a SR water that compresses the roles of checking rotom, keldeo, thunt check, status absorb etc...
Scizor improves the matchup vs Mamoswine and adds speed control (something jirachi couldn't do) and complements ttar vs kazam and reuni. it's also a wincon vs offensive teams and alakazam sands.
Air Balloon Exca patches up the Mamoswine weakness and gets more opportunities to Spin. The games aren't going to last much so I don't miss Lefties.

Salamence is justified here because it softchecks excadrill (Lando has no bulk); lures and pressures hippowdon (latios can't do this); checks breloom (latios can do it but it is pursuit weak); benefits more from spin; doesn't allow scizor to setup; has strong fire coverage to keep the pressure even vs spdef skarm.
But most importantly latios wouldn't be very good here because it would lure ttar, weaken it a bit, and get trapkilled without accomplishing anything (no member of the team would benefit from this sacrifice).
Garchomp can't check Loom and is not EQ immune, and Dragonite would make the team too slow.
Speaking of slowness Excadrill should probably be Jolly, Adamant is pretty greedy here.

The biggest issue of the team is HP Fire Alakazam and Alakazam in general.
ScarfScizor could help but I'm in no position to run slow TTar. ScarfTar + Scarfscizor could work, but then the team would have more issues vs reuniclus, dragonite and other threats.
Keldeo is also problematic but as long as it doesn't have leftovers or you damage it enough CBZor and Scarftar should manage it.
Gyarados is a big threat. Volcarona too but to a lesser extent.
Lastly I'm not 100% convinced on running a passive mon like Seismi here so another alternative could be running ScarfRachi + Phy def rotom in place of Scizor + Seismi, but the team would become too exploitable by ThunT.
Refinements could definitely be made especially in the EVs department but I'm rusty from multiple years break.

Ultimately the team works but I am disappointed by the fact of not being able to manage all top threats well.

 

[Zer0]

Very cool teams presented for this week so thanks to everyone who participated and submitted, Its now time to vote!

Team 1: by tahatahat
Team 2: by puck.42
Team 3: by triple axel blaze
Team 4/4.5:/ by Quarante8
Team 5:by evakiyama!
Team 6:by phosphor
Team 7:by LonelyZard

Voting ends in a week!

 

[Cow]

team 5 by evakiyama!

 

[Jeong]

Team 7.

 

[phosphor]

Team 3 by triple axel blaze

 

[LonelyZard]

Team 5

 

[evakiyama!]

team 3

 

[tahatahat]

team 2 by my goat and the worst player ever puck.42

 

[aminita]

team 4.5

 

[mixnite]

team 1 by my goat and the worst player ever tahatahat

 

[badabing]

team 1. haban mence is my signature set

 

[Finchinator]

3

 

[Sergio Aguero]

3

 

[harshest]

4.5 very cool

 

[mad dawg]

Yea 4.5 i would use.

6 is good just boring.

 

[Zer0]

Sorry for the wait but thank you to everyone who voted for last weeks competition, the winner of this week goes to:
Team 3: by triple axel blaze
Congratuations to triple axel blaze for winning last weeks teambuilding competition.

this weeks theme will be based around Kyurem-Black:

KyuB is arguably the most devastating wallbreakers in the tier, as it boasts the strongest Outrage in OU and has a great movepool it can take advantage of thanks to its good coverage options such as Fusion Bolt and Earth Power alongside STAB Ice Beam, in addition to sometimes even Roost for great surprise factor. All of these strengths allow KyuB to effectively run many effective sets as a result, such as: Choice Band, Choice Scarf, Mixed, Sub Sets, and more! But how will you build Kyurem-Black?

Voting ends in 1 week!

 

[Cow]

Thank you for all the submissions last week guys. This is probably going to be one of the final weeks so I hope to see lots of contribution and I hope you enjoy the theme!