SS OU Gliding to Victory, a Post-Cinderace/Mag QB Team. Still noob so any help is appreciated! (Peak 1722)

Introduction
Hi, this is my first RMT. Before, I was hardstuck 1500, but I had to build a new team after quickban happened and it's doing insanely well. It was a pretty easy climb to 1700s. I can't climb any more with it today since I'm about to go to sleep, but does anyone see any improvements I can make? Here's the team.

Team Analysis

Garchomp @ Life Orb
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Scale Shot
The man, the myth, the legend. He gets a million opportunities to set up on swaps, and then he can defeat just about anything. I use him as a early game breaker to open up opportunities that my team can take advantage of. Opposing Heatran, Zapdos, and Kyurem especially are big problems that are solved by him. What he doesn't OHKO, Garchomp can deal huge damage to at +2, meaning that Rillaboom can revenge kill opponents with grassy glide, or scarf Kartana can revenge kill with whatever it needs to. Garchomp also functions better in the early game because Grassy Terrain lowers Earthquake's damage. If I get to bring him in before my/my opponent's Rillaboom comes out, he has a much easier time doing his job.


Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 252 HP / 128 SpD / 128 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Magma Storm
- Taunt
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic

This bad boy burns through fat teams like it's nobody's business. Magma Storm traps the slow, fat mons in with me. Taunt makes sure they can't do anything like spread status, set up, etc. Stealth Rock is usually used while I'm trapping a mon, but it's also used when it forces a swap or when I just need rocks up at any cost. Toxic is used for things that sometimes swap in, like garchomp. Toxic also breaks down trapped mons that don't take much from magma storm, like blissey. Not running earth power makes dealing with heatran harder, but I realized that I'd prefer to just swap out on heatran instead. A slightly non-conventional choice is the flame body on my Heatran. I don't know how optimal this is, if I'm honest. I chose it because it made swapping into rillaboom or a choice locked melmetal easier, and I didn't think that my team had too much of a problem dealing with fire attacks because of my swampert (discussed at the end).


Rillaboom @ Choice Band
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Grassy Glide
- Wood Hammer
- U-turn
- Knock Off
Definitely the king of the team. Puts in a huge amount of work as a revenge killer and wallbreaker. Grassy Glide is the ultimate revenge killing move, and Rillaboom's huge damage means that it's not very safe to swap into it with lots of mons, easing prediction. Wood Hammer is for when Grassy Glide's damage won't cut it. It changes Rillaboom from a great revenge killer to a great wallbreaker, obliterating foes with ease. U-turn is to preserve momentum when I had a good idea of what would be swapped in. I used it to pivot on mons like ferrothorn the most, since the other checks to Rilla (Zapdos, Heatran, bulky volcarona, Moltres) can easily mess him up with flame body/static. So far, it hasn't seemed too hard to avoid any of these mons, since teams normally only have one or two checks for Rillaboom, and it seems like they often need to swap them in ASAP or die. Knock off is a great coverage tool and can remove the heavy duty boots often run on any of these mons, but again, I don't like risking status on a mon as powerful as Rillaboom. Almost my whole team gets even better if I preserve Rillaboom because of Grassy terrain's recovery and powerup, the latter of which is a big help for the next mon, Kartana.


Kartana @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword
- Knock Off
- Smart Strike
This is just a standard scarf kart. I added it just to take advantage of grassy terrain, and it does exactly that, haha. With a little prediction, it puts in great work, and almost nothing outspeeds it in return. I think of it like a more versatile but less powerful rillaboom. With scarf, STAB Leaf Blade functions like grassy glide and puts in huge work lategame, especially in conjunction with grassy terrain. Sacred Sword deals with any steels that haven't been cleaned up with heatran, and also is a great neutral hit. Knock off is in the same way I'd use it on rillaboom, but used much more liberally on Kartana. Both Rilla and Kart are valuable, but if I had to choose one, it'd normally be the former. Thus, it's up to Kart to take off those pesky boots and other items. Smart Strike is just another STAB move that puts in decent work and hits more stuff neutrally than Leaf Blade. Once Heatran and Garchomp manage to make a good dent in the enemy team, it's up to Kartana and Rillaboom to finish them off.


Zapdos @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Static
EVs: 248 HP / 220 Def / 40 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Discharge
- Volt Switch
- Roost
- Defog
Standard defog set. Generally, he's good defensive glue, and I chose him over Tornadus for defogging because of his respectable electric STAB (great against pex, torn, slowbro, decent against corv) and better matchup against Rillaboom. Zapdos is a great switch in on any Rillaboom, and even though knock off definitely does a good chunk of damage, Static is decent to cripple him in return. Discharge is reliable stab that can paralyze. Volt Switch preserves momentum, and once ground types are dealt with it lets me access my wallbreakers very easily. The smogon set and advice I heard from others was to run heat wave instead, but I didn't run it because it seemed too weak. It's not very powerful, which means it's generally used going to be used for coverage. For that role, yeah, sure, it hits steels, but they're not really a problem for me. It also doesn't hit arguably the most relevant steel right now, Heatran. Spdef heatran, especially, would swap in freely against a Heat Wave Zapdos. Heat wave isn't doing much to the most relevant ground types counter (Garchomp and Lando-T) either. If I get to the point where I'm fishing for burns on either of those last two, I've already lost. I do admit, though, I can see a reason to run Heat Wave if swords dance Kartana rises to prominence. In the meantime, I'm actually thinking of running U-Turn so I don't have to hard swap on either of those two while still pivoting slowly.


Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Damp
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Stealth Rock
- Flip Turn
- Earthquake
- Ice Beam

Standard Stealth Rock set. Great tank. His general bulk means it's often pretty safe to lead with him and rock up. Flip turn is another slow pivot to bring in my strong mons. Earthquake covers heatran, mostly, but it's also a good STAB move for general purposes. Ice Beam deals with dragons (and lando) nicely, which is necessary in a team without fairies. While toxic is cool and all, it felt like it was better for me to do as much damage as fast as possible to them, as they can quickly become out of hand. He needs to try his best to avoid Toxic, because that really limits his tanking ability given his lack of active recovery.

Honestly, even as a noob, this team feels like I've struck gold.It's simple and effective, and I look forward to trying to climb with it further.

Counters/Problem Pokemon(?)
I had an easy climb to the 1700s. Honestly, I think I was undefeated. Due to this, I was never able to identify problem pokemon. It was more or less cores that I struggled to break, and these fell apart with proper prediction. In my lack of experience, I can only theorize two monsters that might dumpster me. First up is lead kyurem, a mon I know well because I've struggled with it in the past.



If Kyurem is on the enemy team, I'm forced to lead Garchomp and hope Scale Shot kills.

252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Scale Shot (3 hits) vs. 56 HP / 0 Def Kyurem: 351-420 (86.6 - 103.7%) -- approx. 6.3% chance to OHKO

At least, they don't get a chance to sub up and sweep my whole team. Still, it does mean that I don't get a chance to put up stealth rocks early with swampert, nor does it allow me to use my Garchomp to take more than one kill. It's an important kill to get, though, and I don't really mind losing Garchomp early. His goal is to create openings anyways. If he prevents me from being swept by Kyurem, that's just a sacrifice I gotta take.

Next up, Kartana.



I mentioned it before in the Zapdos segment, but Kartana would really fuck my team up a bit. Scarf/ Band would be the easiest to deal with, all I have to deal with is my Zapdos getting knocked off. Could be worse. SD Kartana, though, can only be revenge killed with my own Kartana, and on the off chance it's the one that boosts speed instead of atk? If i don't want the coinflip speedtie because I need to preserve my Kartana, I better start fishing for paralysis with Zapdos again. The latter isn't very common, ofc but it's still something that fucks me up in theory?

Since I didn't encounter many problems on my rise up, I'd love to know what other counters exist. I can't patch holes if I don't know where they are, right? That's why I'm posting here, of course!

Conclusion
This was maybe the 2nd team I've built in my gen 8 OU career, and it's definitely my most successful team ever, haha. I don't know the reason for my success is because my team is strong, or if most other teams haven't adapted to the meta without Cinderace/Magearna. Either way, it completely surpassed my expectations, and I want to try to climb even further with it tomorrow. In the meantime, I'd love to hear how I could make the team better. Also, as I said, I'm still new, and it just hit 3 am in my time zone, so my thought processes and decision making may be flawed. Please let me know if I should explain anything further, or correct me if I'm wrong about anything! Thanks for reading, and have a good day :heart:
 
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Introduction
Hi, this is my first RMT. Before, I was hardstuck 1500, but I had to build a new team after quickban happened and it's doing insanely well. It was a pretty easy climb to 1700s. I can't climb any more with it today since I'm about to go to sleep, but does anyone see any improvements I can make? Here's the team.

Team Analysis

Garchomp @ Life Orb
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- Scale Shot
The man, the myth, the legend. He gets a million opportunities to set up on swaps, and then he can defeat just about anything. I use him as a early game breaker to open up opportunities that my team can take advantage of. Opposing Heatran, Zapdos, and Kyurem especially are big problems that are solved by him. What he doesn't OHKO, Garchomp can deal huge damage to at +2, meaning that Rillaboom can revenge kill opponents with grassy glide, or scarf Kartana can revenge kill with whatever it needs to. Garchomp also functions better in the early game because Grassy Terrain lowers Earthquake's damage. If I get to bring him in before my/my opponent's Rillaboom comes out, he has a much easier time doing his job.


Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 252 HP / 128 SpD / 128 Spe
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Magma Storm
- Taunt
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic

This bad boy burns through fat teams like it's nobody's business. Magma Storm traps the slow, fat mons in with me. Taunt makes sure they can't do anything like spread status, set up, etc. Stealth Rock is usually used while I'm trapping a mon, but it's also used when it forces a swap or when I just need rocks up at any cost. Toxic is used for things that sometimes swap in, like garchomp. Toxic also breaks down trapped mons that don't take much from magma storm, like blissey. Not running earth power makes dealing with heatran harder, but I realized that I'd prefer to just swap out on heatran instead. A slightly non-conventional choice is the flame body on my Heatran. I don't know how optimal this is, if I'm honest. I chose it because it made swapping into rillaboom or a choice locked melmetal easier, and I didn't think that my team had too much of a problem dealing with fire attacks because of my swampert (discussed at the end).


Rillaboom @ Choice Band
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Grassy Glide
- Wood Hammer
- U-turn
- Knock Off
Definitely the king of the team. Puts in a huge amount of work as a revenge killer and wallbreaker. Grassy Glide is the ultimate revenge killing move, and Rillaboom's huge damage means that it's not very safe to swap into it with lots of mons, easing prediction. Wood Hammer is for when Grassy Glide's damage won't cut it. It changes Rillaboom from a great revenge killer to a great wallbreaker, obliterating foes with ease. U-turn is to preserve momentum when I had a good idea of what would be swapped in. I used it to pivot on mons like ferrothorn the most, since the other checks to Rilla (Zapdos, Heatran, bulky volcarona, Moltres) can easily mess him up with flame body/static. So far, it hasn't seemed too hard to avoid any of these mons, since teams normally only have one or two checks for Rillaboom, and it seems like they often need to swap them in ASAP or die. Knock off is a great coverage tool and can remove the heavy duty boots often run on any of these mons, but again, I don't like risking status on a mon as powerful as Rillaboom. Almost my whole team gets even better if I preserve Rillaboom because of Grassy terrain's recovery and powerup, the latter of which is a big help for the next mon, Kartana.


Kartana @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Beast Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Leaf Blade
- Sacred Sword
- Knock Off
- Smart Strike
This is just a standard scarf kart. I added it just to take advantage of grassy terrain, and it does exactly that, haha. With a little prediction, it puts in great work, and almost nothing outspeeds it in return. I think of it like a more versatile but less powerful rillaboom. With scarf, STAB Leaf Blade functions like grassy glide and puts in huge work lategame, especially in conjunction with grassy terrain. Sacred Sword deals with any steels that haven't been cleaned up with heatran, and also is a great neutral hit. Knock off is in the same way I'd use it on rillaboom, but used much more liberally on Kartana. Both Rilla and Kart are valuable, but if I had to choose one, it'd normally be the former. Thus, it's up to Kart to take off those pesky boots and other items. Smart Strike is just another STAB move that puts in decent work and hits more stuff neutrally than Leaf Blade. Once Heatran and Garchomp manage to make a good dent in the enemy team, it's up to Kartana and Rillaboom to finish them off.


Zapdos @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Static
EVs: 248 HP / 220 Def / 40 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Discharge
- Volt Switch
- Roost
- Defog
Standard defog set. Generally, he's good defensive glue, and I chose him over Tornadus for defogging because of his respectable electric STAB (great against pex, torn, slowbro, decent against corv) and better matchup against Rillaboom. Zapdos is a great switch in on any Rillaboom, and even though knock off definitely does a good chunk of damage, Static is decent to cripple him in return. Discharge is reliable stab that can paralyze. Volt Switch preserves momentum, and once ground types are dealt with it lets me access my wallbreakers very easily. The smogon set and advice I heard from others was to run heat wave instead, but I didn't run it because it seemed too weak. It's not very powerful, which means it's generally used going to be used for coverage. For that role, yeah, sure, it hits steels, but they're not really a problem for me. It also doesn't hit arguably the most relevant steel right now, Heatran. Spdef heatran, especially, would swap in freely against a Heat Wave Zapdos. Heat wave isn't doing much to the most relevant ground types counter (Garchomp and Lando-T) either. If I get to the point where I'm fishing for burns on either of those last two, I've already lost. I do admit, though, I can see a reason to run Heat Wave if swords dance Kartana rises to prominence. In the meantime, I'm actually thinking of running U-Turn so I don't have to hard swap on either of those two while still pivoting slowly.


Swampert @ Leftovers
Ability: Damp
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Stealth Rock
- Flip Turn
- Earthquake
- Ice Beam

Standard Stealth Rock set. Great tank. His general bulk means it's often pretty safe to lead with him and rock up. Flip turn is another slow pivot to bring in my strong mons. Earthquake covers heatran, mostly, but it's also a good STAB move for general purposes. Ice Beam deals with dragons (and lando) nicely, which is necessary in a team without fairies. While toxic is cool and all, it felt like it was better for me to do as much damage as fast as possible to them, as they can quickly become out of hand. He needs to try his best to avoid Toxic, because that really limits his tanking ability given his lack of active recovery.

Honestly, even as a noob, this team feels like I've struck gold.It's simple and effective, and I look forward to trying to climb with it further.

Counters/Problem Pokemon(?)
I had an easy climb to the 1700s. Honestly, I think I was undefeated. Due to this, I was never able to identify problem pokemon. It was more or less cores that I struggled to break, and these fell apart with proper prediction. In my lack of experience, I can only theorize two monsters that might dumpster me. First up is lead kyurem, a mon I know well because I've struggled with it in the past.



If Kyurem is on the enemy team, I'm forced to lead Garchomp and hope Scale Shot kills.

252 Atk Life Orb Garchomp Scale Shot (3 hits) vs. 56 HP / 0 Def Kyurem: 351-420 (86.6 - 103.7%) -- approx. 6.3% chance to OHKO

At least, they don't get a chance to sub up and sweep my whole team. Still, it does mean that I don't get a chance to put up stealth rocks early with swampert, nor does it allow me to use my Garchomp to take more than one kill. It's an important kill to get, though, and I don't really mind losing Garchomp early. His goal is to create openings anyways. If he prevents me from being swept by Kyurem, that's just a sacrifice I gotta take.

Next up, Kartana.



I mentioned it before in the Zapdos segment, but Kartana would really fuck my team up a bit. Scarf/ Band would be the easiest to deal with, all I have to deal with is my Zapdos getting knocked off. Could be worse. SD Kartana, though, can only be revenge killed with my own Kartana, and on the off chance it's the one that boosts speed instead of atk? If i don't want the coinflip speedtie because I need to preserve my Kartana, I better start fishing for paralysis with Zapdos again. The latter isn't very common, ofc but it's still something that fucks me up in theory?

Since I didn't encounter many problems on my rise up, I'd love to know what other counters exist. I can't patch holes if I don't know where they are, right? That's why I'm posting here, of course!

Conclusion
This was maybe the 2nd team I've built in my gen 8 OU career, and it's definitely my most successful team ever, haha. I don't know the reason for my success is because my team is strong, or if most other teams haven't adapted to the meta without Cinderace/Magearna. Either way, it completely surpassed my expectations, and I want to try to climb even further with it tomorrow. In the meantime, I'd love to hear how I could make the team better. Also, as I said, I'm still new, and it just hit 3 am in my time zone, so my thought processes and decision making may be flawed. Please let me know if I should explain anything further, or correct me if I'm wrong about anything! Thanks for reading, and have a good day :heart:
I have a team similar to yours so I have some idea for additional threats. Sub Kyurem, Sub Hydreigon could give you trouble as well as DD Dragapult if it got out of hand. Like +2 should decimate this team. Since you have Garchomp, in theory, it should be able to handle those 2 threats. Tapu Lele can also give you trouble if you dont predict correctly. While mandibuzz can be dealt with easily, it's just an annoying pain in the ass. I prefer heat wave over volt switch on Zapdos just because of the amount of grounds that can come in on it. Also Ferrothorn.
 
I have a team similar to yours so I have some idea for additional threats. Sub Kyurem, Sub Hydreigon could give you trouble as well as DD Dragapult if it got out of hand. Like +2 should decimate this team. Since you have Garchomp, in theory, it should be able to handle those 2 threats. Tapu Lele can also give you trouble if you dont predict correctly. While mandibuzz can be dealt with easily, it's just an annoying pain in the ass. I prefer heat wave over volt switch on Zapdos just because of the amount of grounds that can come in on it. Also Ferrothorn.
Mhm, I played some more today and I agree with all of these. Ferrothorn is a bigger problem than I thought, and I think I'm gonna run Heat Wave on Zap for it. Tapu Lele is also such a huge pain. It feels like I just end up sacrificing a mon to it until I can pivot into Rillaboom/Kartana, but they just swap it out and get another free kill later. Considering running Slowking for it, in all honesty. That thing is a menace.
 
I have been running this team with some adjustments.
Lead Kyurem 6-0s the team, so I tried replacing Zapdos with:

Rotom-Heat @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 144 Def / 112 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Volt Switch
- Pain Split
- Overheat

Then again trading Zapdos for Rotom leaves holes against enemy Kartana, but I think it is better than Kyurem 6-0 since there is some room to outplay Kart once it's locked into a move as LO is pretty rare.

Two stealth rockers feel unnecessary so I have replaced SR on Heatran with Toxic/Protect/Magma Storm/Taunt and team is coming together pretty well.
Also, I think High Horsepower works better on Swampert since Grassy Terrain weakens EQ.
Since Ferrothorn exists, I have changed Rillaboom from U-Turn to Superpower. It also checks other mons that the team could struggle with.

Really good job otherwise, solid team.

This is what I have been running:

BO Chomp-Rilla-Kart (pokepast.es)
 
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I have been running this team with some adjustments.
Lead Kyurem 6-0s the team, so I tried replacing Zapdos with:

Rotom-Heat @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 144 Def / 112 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Defog
- Volt Switch
- Pain Split
- Overheat

Then again trading Zapdos for Rotom leaves holes against enemy Kartana, but I think it is better than Kyurem 6-0 since there is some room to outplay Kart once it's locked into a move as LO is pretty rare.

Two stealth rockers feel unnecessary so I have replaced SR on Heatran with Toxic/Protect/Magma Storm/Taunt and team is coming together pretty well.
Also, I think High Horsepower works better on Swampert since Grassy Terrain weakens EQ.
Since Ferrothorn exists, I have changed Rillaboom from U-Turn to Superpower. It also checks other mons that the team could struggle with.

Really good job otherwise, solid team.

This is what I have been running:

BO Chomp-Rilla-Kart (pokepast.es)
You've been a huge help!
Defensive rotom heat was an amazing change. Covers kyurem and is just as safe as Zapdos, for the most part. High Horsepower was also another great shout, especially since Swampert often comes in after Rillaboom to take advantage of grassy terrain. Heatran with toxic cleans up the trapped mons really well too. Can't wait to test out Superpower Rillaboom as well.
 
I just ran this team and Quagsire can be a pain for lead garchomp. I had set Up SD 3x and even then it didn't do a lot except for EQ which 3HKO's but it has enough time to recover.
That's because quagsire usually runs an ability Unaware. The description for unaware states, "This Pokemon ignores other Pokemon's stat stages when taking or doing damage. " It's used to counter setup mons like Garchomp, because it ignores the foe's stat changes. Ideally, you should swap out into something else rather than go for 6x Atk against a team with Quagsire.

Quag shouldn't be a pain when you have two grass types that can hit it for 4x damage without using buffs. If you manage to land a toxic on Quagsire, that should also help wear him down!
 
You could try Superpower > Wood hammer on Rilla, could help catch and deal with greedy ferro's and heatrans. I prefer it, and I'd rather knock or u-turn on a switch out most times over wood hammer anyway. Good team btw!
 

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