While I may be new to the gen 9 UBERS tier, some things have remained constant for years. The more powerful the offensive threats in a metagame, the more powerful ditto becomes.
Paste: https://pokepast.es/576039f72ccf45bd
Introduction/Teambuilding Process: Being new to the tier, I decided to take a standard approach to building a team, being to grab an interesting team from the RMT and modify it as I gained more knowledge of the metagame. I started by using ox04's spdef Koraidon and Reshiram balance, and as I laddered, there were some things I noticed by the time I reached the 1400s-1500s. Here is the process:
Starting with the balance team with pokepaste here: https://pokepast.es/d395a672f8af55b6
Some elements of this team worked amazing for me, others were more changeable and left room for replacements. I started with the strong core from this team, being physdef Ho-oh, physdef Arceus-fairy and max speed taunt gliscor. These three have great splashable matchups that worked amazing for me. Balance seems to be the most consistent playstyle for laddering in this tier, with stall struggling against all the powerful offensive pokemon with taunt. I decided to take the original team's approach to making all matchups as consistent as possible, a difficult task in a tier where every offensive pokemon has a thousand different breaking sets. The three pokemon I deemed weak on the original team were treads, reshiram and spdef koraidon. Treads is great in theory, but it's main goal is to counter Miraidon, and most miraidon sets run overheat now as an adaptation. Too much pressure was placed on treads to control hazards and check Miraidon at the same time, when a well timed overheat could ohko it. Reshiram is obviously not a very good pokemon. It struggles into stall, ho-oh can pivot around it and it isn't fast enough to be justified even with a scarf. Spdef koraidon was a surprisingly good set, but I found it fell short into a lot of offense teams where it couldn't stick around for a while and wasn't immediately powerful enough to to much. It's main purpose being to check kyogre also didn't work out great, as ice beam often overpowered Koraidon really quickly.
So here is the new and improved (in my opinion) team:
This pokemon is amazing, really underrated. Lunala acts as a powerful spinblocker against the only common spinner in the tier, being treads. This lets the team become a more consistent hazard stack build. It walls treads forever unless it is running the rare but very annoying knock off. On top of that, Lunala's broken ability shadow shield acts as a great check to offensive setup pokemon, allowing you to almost always live a boosted hit and fire off a strong stab attack. The lack of common dark types in the tier allow Lunala to be a great win condition, with modest max special attack allowing it to ohko most of the tier after a single boost. Psyshock allows it to break stall in longer games, beating ho-oh long term whether it is spdef or physdef, and destroying clodsire and blissey. This worked so much better than I expected.
Another very underrated pokemon that helps glue some of the team's weaknesses. With spdef Koraidon gone, I needed a better Kyogre check that was also able to set up rocks and assist the team with the Miraidon matchup. Clodsire is the perfect (and probably only) pick that is capable of this. Water absorb lets it check any non-specs kyogre very efficiently, getting off the toxic and only taking 40 from ice beam. Unaware is not usable in this tier, as it can't switch into draco meteors from miraidon or water spouts from ogre. It can also easily get rocks up which helps the team greatly. Not much to say about it, it's a niche pick but fits its role very well on this team.
While it may be up for debate, Ho-oh honestly feels like the best mon in the tier. Sacred fire is just such a good move, forcing in fire types or tera fires to stop you from getting that powerful burn off. Even when uninvested, its spdef is crazy. It can check koraidon, whirlwind out setup mons and switch into most opposing ho-ohs very consistently. While many threats have adapted to ho-oh by running stone edge, scouting for that is very easy with gliscor. This is the most splashable pokemon in the ubers tier, it honestly fits perfectly into every playstyle and is a staple for balance and stall. It has some extra speed to guarantee the opposing defensive ho-oh is slower, which is crucial for that matchup.
This is a set I stole entirely from the orginal team, and while seeming a bit strange, it is perfect. Protect taunt gliscor stops pretty much every choiced and slower setup mon like choiced Miraidon, bulky setup NDM, slower ddance/sd arceus formes and many more, all while setting up spikes. It also acts as a stallbreaker, stalling opposing gliscor by taunting them into knock off and forcing a knock on a different pokemon. Taunt can also block hazards from opposing setters which assists 2 members of the team in particular who are weaker to hazards. Gliscor's role compression is great. Into hyper offence, just sack it to get spikes and some knocks off. It's uninvested bulk is surprisingly amazing. I was contemplating making it max defence and max speed instead of max hp since it rarely ever takes special attacks anyway, but the difference between the physical damage it takes with max defence and max hp is only like .5% anyway due to its low hp and high base defence, so just go max hp.
One more set I stole completely from the original rmt, with a few small changes. This set is absolutely disgusting into hyper offence, with idef + cm instantly sweeping many of these teams. I added a few speed evs to this to make it outspeed max speed lunala, as it didn't need much more investment to get there anyway and I faced it at least once. This is the teams best answer to calyrex ice, and checks it a thousand times better than you might expect. It takes 40% from neutral glacial lance and can idef in front of caly and recover off the damage to stall out glacial lances. If the caly doesn't crit you in the 8 glacial lances and maybe 1-2 high horsepowers before it dies, you will pretty much just sweep from there, leveraging the boosts you already racked up. It can also check a lot of other arceus sets, especially physical ones by clicking iron defence then spamming judgement if they taunt. Being a fairy type with a powerful offensive fairy move in a tier dominated by dragons is also useful, and it helps the ground types check miraidon by discouraging them from clicking draco, or countering choiced miraidon after you scouted a dragon move with gliscor. This pokemon is dead weight into stall and some balance teams, but the other pokemon are so good into those that it doesn't matter.
The star of the team, an underrated gem. This pokemon offensively checks so many metagame threats and perfectly complements arceus. Arceus forces pokemon to set up alongside it to be able to break it, which ditto punishes by threatening a reverse sweep in response. Its mere presence is enough to support the team, as it lets gliscor protect safely without fear of getting set up on by stuff like zacian and koraidon. It punishes zacian especially by getting the intepid sword boost on top of copying the opposing zacian's +1 attack, meaning copying opposing zacian instantly gives you a +2 scarfed zacian which will sweep a lot of offence teams if they aren't careful. It completely stops the team from ever getting fully swept by the wide array of pokemon in this tier designed to do exactly that. It can even take pressure off from your own ho-oh switching into your opponents ho-oh, as it can come in and recover or regen out, which is especially useful in stall games. One thing to note for stall games is that since this team is pretty weak to gliscor hazardstack stall in the long game, you can actually get this poisoned and knocked off then permanently switch into your opponent's gliscor to punish them for sending it out by taking advantage of ditto's infinite pp capabilities. Note that ditto takes hazards before it transforms, so if there are tspikes up you can safely switch into the opposing gliscor, and you will get poisoned and healed up. This sounds like a rare scenario but it is crucial for the stall matchup. Tera ghost is for ekiller, and being a very consistent offensive type if you copy a mon with tera blast, but is subject to change. A very crucial idea with ditto is leading it into sticky webs teams and setting webs on your opponents team using their ribombee, usually taking the stun spore paralysis as a trade. This can make your boots lunala become far stronger. Definitely scout the matchup first because ditto is very good into sticky web as it takes the speed drop before it transforms, so getting paralysed is not always worth setting webs up on your opponent.
Threats to the team: A problem when trying to blanket cover every standard set in the metagame arrives when you run into more niche sets. Ditto usually lets you scout or respond to these, but there are some specific pokemon and sets that are a huge problem for this team in longer games.
The four main threats are Necrozma Dawn Wings / Lunala, some Necrozma dusk mane sets, certain arceus sets and substitute pokemon.
Against NDW/Lunala, this team lacks a real ghost resist, with clodsire generally being unable to switch in on them either. When they set up trick room which stops ditto from revenge killing them and start using meteor beam, they become a serious problem. The best bet is to tera clod to get a toxic off, then protect stall around with gliscor, or try and set up early with arceus fairy, but these methods are inconsistent and often lead to the loss of 1-2 mons on your team.
Against NDM, you usually have an answer between Ho-oh, taunt gliscor and ditto, but the sets can sometimes catch you off guard. Knock off sunsteel strike sets are very threatening in the long game, but you can position gliscor to always be able to taunt it, and tera steel to resist sunsteel strike. Try not to knock it off with gliscor, because it will either get a weakness policy boost in the worst case, or take less damage from the ditto copying it and using knock off in the best case. Photon geyser eq sunsteel sets are very problematic but ho-oh can go for the burn or whirlwind, then ditto can revenge if they set up too much or take enough chip.
The main arceus set that is problematic is fast groundceus with taunt, dd, eq and stone edge. Against this, ditto becomes very valuable if it gets out of hand, but you will often have to tera ho-oh to take a stone edge and go for a burn. Gliscor can taunt it and is usually faster, but things get problematic if they run a set faster than 317 speed and taunt you first. Arceus can also randomly do unexpected things like ice beam your gliscor turn 1, but there isnt much you can do about that, its such an unpredictable mon. Ekiller sets usually struggle to break ho-oh. The best bet is to lead ditto or send it out very early to scout for sets to not get surprised too hard.
Sub pokemon, usually Zacian and koraidon, can block ditto from copying them and threaten to break through your team. You often have to sack a bulky mon to get off enough damage to break the sub so you can copy it after, or tera ho-oh and whirlwind. These are pretty rare but this metagame is constantly evolving, and since the ladder is reasonably inactive, I keep fighting the same people who have changed their sets in response to losing to me. I played a guy recently who changed his zacian to sub immediately after battling me once, so stay on the lookout.
Final thoughts/conclusion: the UBERs tier is honestly so much more fun than ou for me right now. While there is less diversity, there is a lot more consistency in teambuilding, which I love. This team is the epitome of consistency, evident by my climb to the 1700s and top 30 in my first 2-3 days of giving the tier a try, and clean 10-0 sweep from 1600 to 1700 at the end. Some sets may not be perfect, and the team can suffer from a dependance on ditto for speed control, but there is so much anti-setup on this team that it rarely matters. My peak right now isn't super impressive but the immediate success the team had warranted me to make this rmt, I'm enjoying it a lot and will to continue to ladder and hopefully reach a better peak.
Note that I did a lot of yapping here and gave a lot of in depth descriptions, but this team is pretty complicated to pilot and while it is more intuitive for me being the creator of the team and planning out each matchup in depth, so you might need to pay a lot of attention to the tips I gave under each pokemon and the threat list to have any immediate success. Simply copying this into the teambuilder might not work out for you, just a disclaimer.
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