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Heavy Offense

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I think Uxie/Magnezone is basically a tossup. Magnezone's steel-killing ability is significant, but with fully four Outragers, there's probably already a problem if you're not overloading Steels to the point that they fall. Uxie's better speed and greater bulk in combination with Memento is pretty tempting to me, although you're not going to go wrong by replacing it if you do.

Also, we've finally got someone in this thread who knows when it is acceptable to include a Scarf! Given that the team is focused on spamming Dragon, have you considered using Latias instead for more power? Or do you find yourself using Flygon enough midgame that the Pursuit weakness Latias carries would be a hindrance?
 
GoldDraconian said:
I think Uxie/Magnezone is basically a tossup. Magnezone's steel-killing ability is significant, but with fully four Outragers, there's probably already a problem if you're not overloading Steels to the point that they fall. Uxie's better speed and greater bulk in combination with Memento is pretty tempting to me, although you're not going to go wrong by replacing it if you do.

Also, we've finally got someone in this thread who knows when it is acceptable to include a Scarf! Given that the team is focused on spamming Dragon, have you considered using Latias instead for more power? Or do you find yourself using Flygon enough midgame that the Pursuit weakness Latias carries would be a hindrance?
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Flygon is actually significantly more powerful, as Outrage's higher base power more than makes up for Latias's higher special attack stat(assuming you want to "sweep" as Dragon Pulse would be the move of choice).
 
As shown in Stathakis' Greek RMT, a choice user is acceptable, but you don't want to reveal it late-game, lest something that resist move x sets up. For instance, a SD Scizor could set up on Flygon, so Magnezone would actually be a great choice in this type of team. I'd personally use that if I used a team like that.
 
Here's an odd team that I made recently. I intended it to be a standard bulky offense team, but it ended up being fairly reminiscent of HO teams, in fact it really reminds me of Anachronisms Uber HO team. Thanks to the increased bulk compared to normal HO teams, this team can tolerate a scarfer and some countering (i.e. countering threats rather than merely sacrificing a sweeper to weaken the threat). The team got me to the OU leaderboards and I think I could have gotten pretty high with it but I stopped laddering cause I've had a ton of work lately.

ShucaTran
CM Latias (with Life Orb! has grass knot to lure in and weaken ttar)
CM Jirachi (the bulky kind with mad defense evs, psychic and t-bolt for the attacking options, wish so it can set up on blissey)
CM Suicune (with ice beam over sleep talk, my other special attacker who can set up on blissey)
BU Machamp (specially defensive ev spread, my only physical attacker, but physical walls have a lot of trouble with machamp so I thought it would work even on a special team, ice punch over stone edge to lure in and kill gliscor, lum berry and payback to help me beat those nasty rotoms)
Scarf Rotom (for my CM latias and SD Lucario weaknesses and to make blissey easier to set up on thanks to trick)
 
blasphemy1 said:
Flygon is actually significantly more powerful, as Outrage's higher base power more than makes up for Latias's higher special attack stat(assuming you want to "sweep" as Dragon Pulse would be the move of choice).
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I was assuming Dragon Claw rather than Outrage since you're only guaranteed two hits with Outrage before you start flipping coins, although I suppose that could still qualify as sweeping. (Set being Outrage/Dragon Claw/Earthquake/Fire Blast or Stone Edge, since U-Turn spamming is a lot less useful on this team given the lack of resistances and very high level of redundancy.)
 
If you're running a scarf set, Outrage is obviously the superior choice, since you're going to be locked in anyway. Also, Dragon Claw doesn't even kill Salamence, Dragonite, or Kingdra. Outrage's base power over Dragon Claw clearly compensates for being locked in 2-3 turns, whereas you'd still be locked in with Dragon if you ran a Scarf.

Now Metagross66, if you're reading this, I encourage you to post your opinions of "bulky HO" in this thread. I'm not a mod, but I advise you to do so, because your thread is the same thing over and over with questions and comments. Stuff like, "Dual Screens aren't uncommon" is being said everywhere...
 
bulky HO? what´s that exactly. I have been using a HO team on shoddy and its been working out really well, the team is:
DS Azelf
Sub Kingdra
DD Salamance
Agiligross
SD Luke
SD Scizor
 
I understand. It's just that some think is comes far away from HO to be considered a form of bulky offense with a few elements of HO in it. People are supposed to discuss that, but some just post stuff like that instead.

Bulky HO is basically a group of bulky sweepers attacking from one side of the spectrum to overwhelm counters utilizing moves like substitute and DS to make up for the speed necessary to outspeed some threats and avoid status and trick. It's pretty effective.
 
Yeah, but HO teams are known for focusing on type coverages and make use of DS to prolong the lives of their frail sweepers, where as BO teams are known for focusing on enhancing the survivability of their sweepers and also make use of DS to further prolong their sweepers' lives in order to set up and heal.

HO teams will lean towards pure offensive strategies, while BO leans toward semi offence and stall strategies. HO teams are required to finish the match ASAP as their sweepers' energies are quickly drained by the Life Orb's recoil and residual damages, while BO teams can stay in the game much longer to find the time to force the opponent to make a mistake and ends up giving them the opening for a sweep.

I guess you might be thinking "Hey, then that mean BO teams are better than HO teams!"
No, that isn't exactly true, because HO teams are better equipped to take out Stall teams than the BO teams. Sometimes BO teams get stalled out b/c of the 4-slot syndrome which limits the effectiveness of their sweep, and Stall teams would come out on top.

Playing Pokemon is like playing Rock (Stall), Paper (HO), and Scissors (BO). *BO is Bulky Offence, not to be confused with body odor.

1. Bulky Offence Team (Specialize in set-ups & healing moves) will usually beat out: Balanced and Heavy Offensive teams.
2. Heavy Offence Team (Specialize in coverage & sacrificial tactics) will usually beat out: Balanced and Stall teams.
3. Stall Team (Specialize in healing, status moves & weakening tactics) will usually beat out: Balanced and Bulky Offensive teams.

*Balanced teams will sometimes beat either Stall, Heavy, or Bulky Offensive teams; but often times they lose out to other specialized teams because they tend to lack a true core of synergy.
 
It's much more than that. It's flexible as you can make it lean more toward bulky offense or HO depending on your pokemon and their movesets. By leaning more towards HO you can have an easier time against stall and by leaning more towards bulky offense you may have an easier time against HO teams, like Ronin has shown you, though it would depend on the opponent's team in some cases.
 
I think to label groups of playing styles so black and white is a bad idea. Stall is often played by better ladderers so some of my best HO matches are against stall. I find that bulky offense is really the best matchup for the dragon HO team because Scizor, scarf latias, scarf jirachi, Heatran Magnezone, and Rotom A are usually the only relevent members of the opposing team, which means that once they overtax their steels the sweep comes rather easily. Stall has much more durable steels at their disposal. Maybe my HO team is different...because I would say balanced and bulky offense teams are the easiest to beat.

Yeah bulky offense is basically a whole bunch of tanks, especially calm minders and bulk uppers, given screen /toxic spikes support.

@ GOTO: as much as I hate Gyarados these days, I think that that team could make good use of it. You already have Agiligross and Scizor, so it only makes sense to have the last member of the Rotom-walled trio. You should try that Wacan Berry Gyarados set that mtr posted. I want some feedback on that :)
 
azelf is by far the most common due to its ability to taunt+dualscreen, aerodactyl is also an option although you then lose the so valuable dual screens.
 
Anachronism said:
I find that bulky offense is really the best matchup for the dragon HO team because Scizor, scarf latias, scarf jirachi, Heatran Magnezone, and Rotom A are usually the only relevent members of the opposing team, which means that once they overtax their steels the sweep comes rather easily. Stall has much more durable steels at their disposal.
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Yeah, that team I'm running right now has an easy time with BO, but Skarmory can be a real pain to me. That is the primary reason why I have been thinking of putting Magnezone on my team.
 
@ GOTO: as much as I hate Gyarados these days, I think that that team could make good use of it. You already have Agiligross and Scizor, so it only makes sense to have the last member of the Rotom-walled trio. You should try that Wacan Berry Gyarados set that mtr posted. I want some feedback on that :)
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Thanks for the answer. Hmm gyarados, actually i waas considering him to be included in the team but i am fairly new to HO (three days) and since it said it was really hard to play i started doing shoddy to practice (before i only did wifi). My original team had three different members (always kept salamence and kingdra) but adding a gyarados will surely be good. What do you think i should take out?
 
Game Freak, that's curious because in my experience Skarmory isn't that big an issue. Assuming you successfully sacrifice Azelf, you've got 3/5 Pokemon who should be able to kill Skarmory after a Whirlwind, and Kingdra still threatens to set up if it goes into a Roost cycle, leaving Uxie as the only way you don't kill it (discounting Fire Blast misses). They can run and preserve Skarm, but one way or another t's typically not too hard to just overpower it. You are running fire moves on all three of Salamence, Flygon and Dragonite, aren't you?

GOTO, presumably the guy to replace would be Salamence, since he is not specifically walled by Rotom but your other guys more or less are. (Not so much Kingdra, but Rotom is still commonly used as an answer for it.) Actually, I think if you make that swap you're running the same team as Rey posted ~15 pages ago.
 
in my opinion using the same HO team as someone else hardly matters considering there are fewer than 20 viable sweepers for it. Items and EVs is really where you differentiate your members imo.

Ok, so I think that the Dragon HO team doesn't really need anymore help, but would someone be interested in brainstorming a Fighting HO team? There are a lot of options for fighting-type sweepers, Gallade, Breloom, Lucario, and Heracross being the most obvious. We would clearly need some non-fighters on there too to properly transition them in.

Please post your ideas!
 
I think that whatever pokemon are used to transition in fighting HO (aka the non fighting types) need to be able to boost speed, as most fighting types don't do this. The obvious choices for fighting are lucario and infernape. Gallade is a possibility, but breloom is too weak and machamp too slow to be truly effective.

The best speed booster is metagross who should be on every HO team anyway. Metagross also encourages ghosts to switch in which helps lucario sweep later. I would also put tyranitar on this team to handle transitions from scarf tran/strong fire types and to encourage scizor to come in and let metagross and lucario set up. That leaves the last slot to either gallade or another dragon dancer. The problems i see with this team are mostly the fact that mix mence walks on it so something that can set up on mix mence? There isn't really anything so you just have to hope you can break it before it sweeps you :(.
 
Isn't Infernape faster than MixMence?

Of course, if it gets a DD, then it's over, I guess... unless it's weak enough for Lucario's ES to kill it. Maybe thrown in another priority user? Like, instead of Gallade, using something with Sucker Punch and the like.

edit; Thinking about it, Toxicroak doesn't sound that bad, considering its' Water immunity and different resistances, plus priority and Swords Dance.
 
Toxicroak doesn't hit hard enough on either side of the attacking spectrum to be worth it, and it doesn't even have Close Combat, which is a true shame. Its pretty much an inferior Lucario on HO, and the Steel Jackal Pokemon is also faster.

SD Gliscor doesn't hit hard enough either, even with a Life Orb. I used it because I thought it would be nice to have an Electric-immunity to stop TWave spammers, but I ended up deciding that a Mamoswine would probably be better. As an added bonus, Mamoswine draws Bullet Punch from Scizor, which we all know is a very punishable move.

On a Fighting-type HO team, Infernape and Lucario are givens, and Azelf is the obligatory lead. Our primary job is to overload Gyarados and take advantage of it. To this end, Breloom with Stone Edge would work well. Maybe a Spore/Swords Dance/Mach Punch/Stone Edge set. With a Life Orb, we OHKO Heatran with Mach Punch. But should a Fighter-orientd team really be bothered by Heatran? This is why I would argue for a Toxic Orb.

I think we might need a DD-Gyara check just in case a player gets off a Dragon Dance, which unfortunately is a very real possibility against this kind of team.
 
Well is depends if you suggest to use a check in a stat boosting sweeper i guess it is ok but since HO is about gaining momentum and not losing it if you had to use a pokemon that can´t be used as a sweeper i think you can take the risk of the gyara setting up since it shouldn´t happen too often anyways
 
Latias and rotom both handle Gyarados well provided they hold a scarf, though you'd be breaking some rules of HO. Gliscor is another problem for this as well as Zapdos. Latias seems to handle them well and it attracts pursuit.
 
I agree that SD Lucario and Infernape are givens, and I suppose that we should lead with obligatory DS Azelf, but couldn't it be an option to use Encore Ape as the lead?

So, what gives the team Azelf, Lucario, Infernape problems?

I think the big problem with fighting HO would be fast stuff that resists the priorities or can heal. Scarfed Rotom H comes to mind.

It seems like it would never really be about beating up on fighting resists. It would just end up being faster stuff kicking our ass. So far Lucario and Infernape offer up Normal, Fighting, and Steel priorities. Gallade would give us a Ghost priority if we find a place to add him, and Scizor gives us a steel priority if we opt for espeed on Lucario (we probably will). Also, Scizor seems better than Gross because Gross yields a teamwide 4x Ground weakness. It feels like the team really wouldn't work at all. The fact is that most things fold to even x.5 Close Combats, so it would really end up being faster stuff that can OHKO. Meh

Azelf, Gallade, Lucario, Infernape, Ttar, Scizor seem to be the way to go at first glance, but I think that team seems really weak.
 
Overusing Fighting-type moves is rarely a good idea. Its just too easy for Rotom-A, Gyarados, and Salamence to come in after a death, threaten out our sweepers, and maybe even setup, which means that we're boned. In order to stop things like them from screwing us, we would need to use stuff like Stone Edge, which is 1)annoying because of miss chance and 2)means that we are forgoing something else. I mean, when you had a Mence/Nite team, those sweepers had movesets (aka Dragon/Fire/Ground) that could sweep anything without significantly hindering themselves. But priority is the biggest advantage a Fighter-oriented HO team has over ths Dragons, so it must be exploited.

The point is that while its not impossible to make a Fighter-oriented Hyperoffense team, its harder than Dragons or Zor/Gross/Gyara. I also think that Breloom is probably a solid sweeper that should at least merit consideration, especially for its unique resistances and access to Spore. But you MUST use Stone Edge on Breloom just for Gyarados and Salamence.

We've got the following to look at:
SD Lucario
SD Gallade
SD Infernape
SD Breloom

And after a Swords Dance and Stealth Rock and maybe Priority, Gyarados will fold to most of them. Skarmory can't really take the heat, so Rotom-A is the only concern. However, I think its kinda overrated: due to the secondary typing of our Fighters, we can beat the scarfer by sacrificing and sending in a resistance. Defensive Rotoms can't quite stand up to Lucario or Infernape.
 
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