SV OU IT JUST WORKS [Peaked #7, 1945 Elo]

[Cape Canaveral]

"It just works, it just works
Little lies, stunning shows
People buy, money flows
It just works"
- The Chalkeaters, It Just Works

(click for the importable)

​

proof of peak

I'm CONNORE INDUSTRIES.

Hello again, Smogon!
My name is Cape Canaveral (or Connore Industries on ladder) and I'm here with another team report for a para spam team built around Temper Flare .

This is the second team I've been able to get any kind of noteworthy result with. Be warned: it's not an honest team, and it's far from perfect. I'm not making any pretenses about this. However, I was happy with it because it felt like the decisions I made were good reads on the metagame and bode well for me as a builder going forward. Furthermore, I'm sure a better player than myself could go even further with this team, or some variant if they are so inclined.

I'd love any feedback on my teambuilding process or sets, even my play, if there's something you notice in the replays. I love Gen 9 OU and am excited to keep improving.

And you know what? If even one person takes this team and ruins others' laddering experiences, that's enough for me. I hope you'll look out for more teams from me in the future! (I'll try to make them more skillful.)

teambuilding process

I was playing around with some other people's teams (A's BO, some stall, some hazard stack) and working on a definitely very powerful and good semistall team that for some reason wasn't peaking the ladder. In this time, I slowly picked up on a few things I was interested in. If something is wrong, feel free to correct me.



Everyone has seen around. I think the advantage of using Rapid Spin is to keep your hazards up while spinning away your opponent's. This is great but of course suceptible to blocks. Webs hyper offense teams that have been picking up in usage use as their spin block. Most of the time is too slow to fight them after webs without trading a lot of HP, making it impossible for it to spin. Stack teams and other similar structures use and -adjacents to block spins indefinitely. Other teams use contact punishers like or to disincentivize the spin even though they can't stop it outright. I thought that Temper Flare could be an interesting way to get the jump on these and some walls that often stuff Tusk pretty hard like .



Next, fast , which A's BO featured, was naturally a great switch into almost all of these hazard removal methods. It has the additional benefit of making it very difficult for the opposing team to spin, because of its fast Hurricanes into and its Static ability. It isn't easy to exploit either; if something like tries to switch in on this it risks taking two Hurricanes before it can even fire off an attack. There's of course the threat of Volt Switch as well which can capitalize on safer switchins like . This makes play against this variant more predictable. It can afford to play a little more fast and loose than bulkier because it can Roost or Hurricane faster than a lot of stuff can hit it.



The initial version of this team had Knock Off , which flips the matchup against . The basic idea was that these three pokemon would fight to exploit common removal denial methods.



I added Thunder Wave Pivot , , and a specially defensive Thunder Wave to round out the team with basic stuff it was missing like speed control, rocks, and resistances. I had noticed spdef could be an interesting check to several threats like , , and . It can sit in front of and throw up Rocks and Thunder Wave fairly freely. Plus, it was the only rocker whose defensive profile fit on the team.

Playing the team, as , , and spread a shitton of para, everything on my team felt like it suddenly hit absurd speed tiers (go figure). would be outspeeding , would be outspeeding and , stuff like that. benefited from this as well. was suddenly able to Hex everything, so I changed it to a Substitute Leftovers set.

However, felt like it wasn't doing so well. This was mainly because sometimes threats like I couldn't quite pin down with a Para. I decided to try out, and it worked pretty well as a faster threat that also helped with a problem.



With that I had the finished team. It kind of transformed into a Para spam type of structure, and it felt really strong so I decided to roll with it.

Some of the explanation for the mons' roles is in the teambuilding process section, so if you want a more complete picture of how the pieces fit, read that as well as the individual sections.

tusk

“We bring the BOOM!
That’s what we do
We bring the BOOM!
We bring the boom to you”
- AJ and Big Justice, We Bring the Boom

bring the boom! (Great Tusk) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Fire
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Headlong Rush
- Ice Spinner
- Temper Flare / Knock Off
- Rapid Spin​

• is able to be offensive on this team. Temper Flare circumvents a lot of its common checks and is able to capitalize on the remaining ones.
• It also spins consistently, due to its undroppable speed and resistance to hazards with Heavy-Duty Boots.
• Temper Flare will double in power if your last move failed. This includes whiffing Rapid Spin or Headlong Rush into immunities. Boosted Temper Flare will do good damage to and .
• The Fire Tera is not really for offense. It's often not required to OHKO the switch in, especially because Temper Flare often comes as a surprise. Buying your or a free turn is normally good enough. The Fire Tera is more to give more opportunities to spin or attack against offensive teams.

zapdos

“At the beginning it sucked
But little by little you start to find your sound.”
- Carpenter Brut

roller mobster (Zapdos) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Static
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 40 Def / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Hurricane
- Heat Wave
- Roost

Alternate set suggested by RaikouLover, which interacts a bit better with Ogerpon-Wellspring
roller mobster (Zapdos) @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Static
Tera Type: Water/Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 24 Def / 16 SpA / 216 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Hurricane
- Heat Wave
- Roost​

• A strong offensive presence with its solid speed tier and undroppable speed.
• At the same time, it can blanket check a lot of stuff, switching in easily on stray hits or slow turns from mons like . It needs Heat Wave to deal with and .
• Fantastic contact punisher into mons like or .
• Switches in on a lot of removal blocking, like or , and threatens them.
• Water Tera is because the team has shaky Fire resistances and sometimes needs the help. It can be used in a pinch against if you're fairly sure the Ivy Cudgel is coming, but it's dangerous to do this depending on how healthy the is. You could always miss a cane.

meowscarada

“Cross the street
Can you stay a little
Bite your tongue
Right in the middle”
- Junior Varsity, Cross the Street

cross the street (Meowscarada) (F) @ Choice Band
Ability: Protean
Tera Type: Electric
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Knock Off
- Flower Trick
- Triple Axel / Trick​

• Catches up to threats you can't really para easily like , unboosted , and
• Electric Tera is to make progress without getting Static paralyzed. Otherwise, opposing can be quite difficult depending on its supporting cast. I believe this removes Protean's boost of Triple Axel.
• You can run Trick if you anticipate running into stuff like Tera Fairy Curse , which kind of 6-0es the team. In nearly every other case, Triple Axel is better, and Tera Fairy Curse isn't that common in a metagame where you'll see and nearly every game.
• Benefits a lot from your hitting a big Temper Flare on and -adjacents.
• Likes it when stuff like is paralyzed; the more paras land on faster stuff the more it can pick up momentum with U-turn.

dragapult

"You only played yourself, got no game
Serving you right
Say your prayers now"
- Lyn and Shoji Meguro, Take Over

take over (Dragapult) (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Infiltrator
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Substitute
- Dragon Darts
- Hex
- Thunder Wave ​

• comes in well on weak special hits. It can catch up to fast threats and slow them down for everything else. Obviously Hex becomes very strong as more para is spread.
• Substitute is to exploit more passive mons and end some interactions with a full substitute by fishing for full para.
• Tera Ghost Hex is to exploit and after status.
• Leftovers is surprisingly reliable. It enables the substitute stuff, and Boots are unneeded as the rest of the team matches up great into sticky webs. It's also pretty rare that max hazards get stacked on your side, given the way this team fights for spin.
• The team can get a little weak to depending on the amount of damage that , , and have taken. You may need to keep it as a sack against Rapid Spin.

kingambit

“face down in the dirt
she says this doesn’t hurt”
- red jumpsuit apparatus, face down

face down (Kingambit) (F) @ Air Balloon
Ability: Supreme Overlord
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 32 HP / 252 Atk / 224 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Kowtow Cleave
- Low Kick
- Sucker Punch
- Swords Dance​

• Tera Ghost is to give setup opportunities against Pokemon like . Being immune to certain moves synergizes well with Balloon, whereas this is not as doable with Fire or Fairy teras.
• A large part of how the metagame beats is by exploiting its below average speed. is an offensive presence that becomes stronger and stronger as paras land on its checks. It allows it to reach a disgusting effective speed tier and circumvents a lot of common counterplay. The great thing is you can tailor your set to deal with the remaining counterplay, making it unbelievably dangerous.
• On this team, can run any set, as long as you’re confident in its ability to check dragon dancers like or . Because para spam makes the efficacy of so many answers questionable, with the right set you can index into whatever matchups you like.
• However, this is not fixed. You could run Fire if you expect to play plus . If you want to be really greedy, you can run Dark Tera Glasses. You can run SD Tera Blast Fairy. You can throw a Lum in there somewhere. Basically, this set can be anything as long as you feel good about handling Dragon Dance threats. I would highly recommend changing things up if you try this team out so it’s not too obvious what is happening.

clefable

“why don’t you draw the eyebrows, eyes, and lips
as you like?”
- noa, any angle

(this is a cover but I prefer this version over the original)



zenhoukou bishoujo (Clefable) (F) @ Leftovers
Ability: Magic Guard
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Moonblast
- Thunder Wave
- Moonlight ​

• runs the unconventional max spdef on this team. you might be wondering what the point is; Essentially, this is able to check a lot of threatening attackers like , , , and , dishing out paras that threaten to immediately put anything offensive out of commission, or chipping it in range of a revenge kill.
• This set is able to handle a lot that you probably wouldn’t expect it to, like Slowking-Galar, which it can easily throw Rocks and Thunder Waves at. The only thing that can really threaten it is Future Sight.
• If you want to allow to make more progress it should drop Thunder Wave for Knock Off for .
• An idea I had is that could be made into a standard CM set with more points in defense. Probably you’d need to drop Temper Flare on Tusk for Rocks. This is a modification to the team that gives it one more big threat as status is spread, but it can be difficult to land the paras you need without doing it herself. Many special threats also become way more threatening.
• actually benefits a lot from Para on opposing Pokemon. Once it's recovering faster than attacks, Taunts, or Psychic Noises, it becomes much harder to deal with.

weaknesses

: These two are unique fire types with utility that makes them difficult to deal with. There's no general rule about how to deal with them, it depends on situation. Be mentally prepared to trade a mon or tera to neutralize them.

: Stall. I never ran into stall with this team, but I always kind of knew in the back of my mind that it would not be a good matchup. I think that against stall variants without Ting-Lu or Clod Dragapult might be able to carry with Tera Ghost, but it might straight up not have enough PP for the job. I wasn't sure how to fix this without blowing the team up.

: Dragon dancers that can hit Kingambit very powerfully with a neutral or super effective move (Tera Fairy sets, for instance) through Air Balloon tend to be problematic, at least for this version of the team. I found they weren't impossible to play around and were pretty uncommon.

: Tera Fairy 6-0es this team so easily if is not Trick. Again, I don't think this is a very common set, and Triple Axel is way better in every other case except maybe stall.

Tera Ground, Lum Berry, Substitute: For para spam, this should be self explanatory. You rely on para to control a lot of big threats so it can be difficult to stop some things if you get surprised by one of these conditions and waste a turn.

gameplay and replays

Replays are in approximate chronological order.

vs.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2260726721-rywvz7dlv5yia83g5bwi0rl2zda85ejpw
Got my clip.

vs.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2260626978-fyssk1ku1iv0l73nqnqm7d2rylbu3yepw
On turn 34 I choked by using U-turn over Flower Trick. Say what you will about my play, but I hope you'll ignore the miss when it comes to assessing the strength of the team.
Also, to be frank, I'm 1-2 against this team, but the losses were mainly due to taking risks with Meow for no reason. I'll drop the loss replays if anyone wants to see them.

vs.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2261293500-lavwxk779vg5widzx9q5zx0xhai4edspw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2261784650-7czpry8s5p6d9uni207p5t3oe0e7lanpw
A fairly easy matchup into BO.

vs.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2261377746-r9zv6k3vrajgtusqlroiohyr3i7suurpw
My opponent definitely shouldn't have sacked all his Ting-Lu HP for two spikes, but I assume they were playing under the assumption my Tusk wouldn't be Temper Flare or Boots.

vs. (peak game)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2261725554-ja775sjx9wzqc1jcffz3ql0d9nobweepw
Good show of how Webs games normally go.

vs.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2261891421-4o5jro3jxk7qx11we8mojrau6hnjlhnpw
"keep a lookout for the rmt"

Wait a sec. If you think about it, aren't the full paras really just compensating for the miss chance of Triple Axel and Hurricane...?

Anyway, that's it for me. Personally, I'm happy to move on from playing this team myself and keep working on some other ideas.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Maybe I'll see you sometime on ladder!

 

[Conflux123]

So this was an RMT lol I played against someone using this team on low ladder.

 

[RaikouLover]

FYI Dragon is a good Tera option for Zapdos if Ogerpon-W gets out of hand. Maintains the Grass resist. Also, Zapdos needs 16 SPA to OHKO with Hurricane:

0 SpA Zapdos Hurricane vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Ogerpon-Wellspring: 296-350 (98.3 - 116.2%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO

16 SpA Zapdos Hurricane vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Ogerpon-Wellspring: 302-356 (100.3 - 118.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO

 

[Cape Canaveral]

FYI Dragon is a good Tera option for Zapdos if Ogerpon-W gets out of hand. Maintains the Grass resist. Also, Zapdos needs 16 SPA to OHKO with Hurricane:

0 SpA Zapdos Hurricane vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Ogerpon-Wellspring: 296-350 (98.3 - 116.2%) -- 87.5% chance to OHKO

16 SpA Zapdos Hurricane vs. 0 HP / 4 SpD Ogerpon-Wellspring: 302-356 (100.3 - 118.2%) -- guaranteed OHKO

that's a good point, i'll add an alternate spread to the section about zapdos later. i think water is still better to maintain my steel resist, though.