ORAS OU Mega Sceptile Balance Team

[oryxslayer]

This is My first RMT as well as my first post, so please give advice
When the first ORAS mega evolutions were announced, I immediately decided that I wanted to use Sceptile because everyone I knew was choosing swampert as their starter, and because it was basically designed to crap on rotom wash. I wanted to use it even more after I saw its impressive offensive and speed stats and decided to make this team around it.

My team:

not a dragon (Sceptile-Mega) @ Sceptilite
Ability: Lightning Rod
EVs: 78 Atk / 252 SpA / 178 Spe
Naive Nature
- Earthquake
- Giga Drain
- Dragon Pulse
- Hidden Power [Fire]
The pokemon I based my team around. As the image shows, it is my hard counter to rotom wash, being able to switch in on any attack and retaliate hard. Sceptile also works as a greninja check after mega evolving as well as being a check to the non scarfed lati twins. I decided to run earthquake after seeing someone with the same set on a different RMT and thinking, "that's a great way to destroy heatran." I find it useful for demolishing heatrans that switch in, and occasionally punishing a bisharp on the switch in. EQ also works against magnezones and other electric types that stay thinking they can hp ice me after living a hit. Giga drain and dragon pulse are obvious stabs, giga drain being used over leaf storm for more ability to stay in as a late-game cleaner. I chose hp fire over focus blast for my last move to deal with scizor and ferrothorn easier, as well as hurting any other grass type bar mega venusaur. My ev's are fairly straight foward, max spatk, enough speed to outspeed timid max speed mega manectric, and the rest in atk for EQ

Carl (Heatran) @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic
- Protect
- Lava Plume

Carl the heatran is the standard spdef tran set that works as my stealth rocker and general special tank. I chose heatran because of his and mega sceptile's typing synergy together as well as his overall usefulness on my team. He can take any hit from the lati's except earthquake, but that is usually easy to see coming. He also can beat most sylveon, as well as beating scizor, ferrothorn, and magnezone easily. Evs are for standard spdef tran.

F U salamence (Skarmory) @ Shed Shell
Ability: Sturdy
EVs: 252 HP / 232 Def / 24 Spe
Impish Nature
- Roost
- Defog
- Whirlwind
- Counter

Skarmory serves as my mandatory salamence stopping poke. Unfortunately, the uncommon fire blast can beat him, but he generally can either whirlwind or counter a mega-mence. He is also my defogger and shed shell is of course for not getting trapped by magnezone. Skarmory also stops scarfed landorus and garchomp who were both problems for my first two pokes, sceptile and heatran. Skarmory also works with sceptile by luring in rotom wash so sceptile can either mega evolve, or try to get a spatk boost with lightningrod. Ev's are fairly straight forward.

amazing frog (Greninja) @ Life Orb
Ability: Protean
EVs: 40 Atk / 216 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Scald
- Dark Pulse
- Ice Beam
- Gunk Shot

Ah greninja. One of the most useful pokemon in Oras. Greninja is my second special attacker and destroyer of many things. There isn't much to say about greninja seeing as that it beats almost everything barring chansey and certain steel types. There are a few other checks, but generally, greninja just destroys. Ev's are to usually get an ohko on azumarill with gunk shot.

robert (Landorus-Therian) (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 24 Def / 232 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Earthquake
- Knock Off
- Stone Edge

Scarfed landorus-t is used as my revenge killer and pivot. He can revenge kill many things that give my team grief such as non-scarfed keldeo, and greninja, and beats spdef heatran, which my team couldn't do before i added him. Knock off and stone edge are my preferred coverage moves, doing heavy damage to gengar, psychic types, and flying types. The ev spread is just a standard scarf landorus t spread.


Conkeldurr @ Assault Vest
Ability: Guts
EVs: 108 HP / 152 Atk / 104 Def / 144 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Drain Punch
- Mach Punch
- Knock Off
- Ice Punch

Ah, the 6th spot on my team. I have had difficulty deciding on what to put there. First I had thundurus-i, but when it wasn't pulling its weight, I switched it for Kyurem-B, to help beat greninja. Afterwards, I realized that conkeldurr checked greninja as well, also beating weavile, mamoswine, chansey, and other kyurem b, pokes that gave me lots of trouble before. Ev spread is just the smogon AV set.

THREATLIST:
Greninja: This thing threatens every team. If it has hp fire, my greninja can beat it, but if sceptile isn't mega evolved, and conkeldurr is down, its a speed tie, or sack something for lando-t to switch in.

Mega Salamence: This poke threatens every team. If it has fire blast, it can murder skarmory, and if skarm is down, it can sub dd up and annihilate everything

Mega Venusaur: Mega venusaur is very difficult for me to deal with. I have to play around it and fish for burns with lava plume. However, I don't see much of it on the ORAS ladder.

Empoleon: This is a wierd one, but with the right moves, empoleon scares my entire team. Lando-t doesn't want to switch in fearing scald or ice beam, and if conkeldurr is dead, i have extreme trouble dealing with it.

Thanks for reading, Pls Rate :)

 

[Jellal Fernandes]

6.3/10. Your team has a huge ice weakness. I understand you have Heatran, but Mamoswine and Greninja exist, and both use ice moves, and can hit Heatran SE. Conkeldurr, is easily defeated by Mega Salamence, and Mega Slowbro. It's a good thing you have acknowleged these weaknesses. I'd recommend taking away Sceptile and , and adding Mega Metagross as well as Kyurem Black(choice scarf). Mega Metagross hits hard, especially on Salamence and Venusaur. Kyurem Black is just a beast, and can ohko Greninja easily, as well as take on Empoleon considerably well, leaving it renderless. Sceptile is nice, but it doesnt fit on ur specific team. Its great when surrounded by walls and stallers, so it can dish out attacks quickly and effectively

 

[Wargreymon]

Hey there! Thanks for allowing us to rate, you have a really fundamentally solid team so there's not much I would change, however...

I think you should run Hydro pump on Greninja instead of Scald. The burn chance is undeniably nice, but the power difference between the two is very noticeable. An important example would be that without Hydro pump Mega Sableye uses Greninja as set up fodder.

252 SpA Life Orb Greninja Scald vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Sableye: 130-153 (42.7 - 50.3%) -- 1.6% chance to 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Greninja Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Sableye: 175-208 (57.5 - 68.4%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

Even with rocks up, Sableye can take a scald and get a calm mind off and then just recover. You're basically relying on a burn otherwise you're in trouble. That's just one example of course, as there are very few (if any) situations were scald would be a better choice on Greninja. The accuracy usually isn't a big deal considering 80% isn't terrible, and the sheer power you get from Hydro pump more than makes up for it.

Another suggestion I have is changing Conkeldurr to AV Azumarill. With azumarill in place of conkeldurr you still have a great special sponge who hits hard on the physical side with priority, but with azumarill you form a great FWG core with Heatran and Sceptile, as well as being able to do conks job of beating Mamo, Chansey, and Weavile. You also now fair much better against Mega Latias (who otherwise could be a giant problem is skarmory is gone as Ninja and Sceptile can't break it after a CM) and the up and coming scarfed keldeo (who spells big trouble for most of your team). Finally, AV Azu also helps with the pretty big 4x ice weakness you have. You could even use Azumarill's typing to your advantage thanks to Mega Sceptile's Lightning rod.
Here's the set I'm talking about;

Hide

Azumarill @ Assault vest
Ability: Huge power
Adamant nature
EVs: 252 Atk / 240 Spdef / 16 HP
- Waterfall
- Play rough
- Aqua jet
- Knock off/superpower

Knock off for general utility or you can use Superpower for Ferrothorn. I would go with superpower here as outside of heatran and with conkeldurr replaced you don't really have a great answer to ferro.

Hope I helped. Let me know how things go and happy laddering! :)

 

[oryxslayer]

Wargreymon, and Jellal the Mage, thanks for rates. Jellal, I will try the team with mega metagross and black kyurem, but I would prefer to keep the team with mega sceptile. Depending on how well megagross does, I might change it

Wargreymon, Thanks for suggestions. I think I will put hydro pump on greninja as I was already considering it anyway. I will also try out the team with azumarill to see how it does. TY both for the rates.

 

[Albacore]

Hey there! Decent team, but I do have a few suggestions :

- Mega-Sableye is a massive problem for you. Does whatever the hell it wants against Skarmory, Conk, and Heatran, sets up on Sceptile, burs and Greninja can't beat it once it's at +1. Replacing Conkeldurr by Azumarill is an okay option, but I don't think it's really enough since it's can't switch in due to WoW. Instead, I would replace Conkeldurr by Clefable. It deals with Mega-Sableye very well, while also beating most of the things you said you were using Conkeldurr for (besides Greninja, but honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about Greninja given that you have 2 solid checks in Lando-T and Sceptile). It also gives you a win condition which is pretty nice.

- You're also quite weak to Keldeo, particularly the Choice Scarf variants, who are able to outspeed and Icy Wind Sceptile and Lando-T. Once again, AV Azumarill fixes this up a bit, though it does hate Scald Burns. There are a few good ways of dealing with Keldeo though. Latios and Latias is a pretty good answers to it They also cover Mega-Venusaur Charizard-Y which, though quite rare, can come in on EQ-locked Landorus-T or Skarmory very easily and put you in a really bad position.

- Mega-Gardervoir can be a problem for your team : it switches in on MSceptile very easily and your only switchin to Hyper Voice, Heatran, is Focus Blasted the following turn. Running Jirachi over Heatran could work, since Jirachi is a very good Mega-Gardevoir counter, who also deals with Clefable, MVenu, and non-Dark Pulse Greninja, who can be pretty threatening to your team

- This sounds really vague, but you're kinda missing a dedicated wallbreaker or hard-hitter. Most members of your team are either bulky or fast, so most of your team is pretty weak offensively. As a result, you don't really have much that can break past bulkier teams. Clefable is an okay stallbreaker, but most defensive teams have ways of stopping it. Ultimately, I don't think you need Greninja all that much. I would replace it with a hard-hitting wallbreaker like Specs Keldeo, or something else which suits your team's needs.

 

[oryxslayer]

Thanks for the rate Albacore. I was feeling like it might be a good idea to change greninja to keldeo seeing as that i was having chansey problems before. I considered running rachi, but then i don't really have a good talonflame check (landorus-t can't have prolonged life against t-flame and gets 2hkoed at about 70% life). Also I don't have much trouble with non dark pulse greninja's due to the fact that one of their moves is usually either hp fire the rare low kick. While low kick does kinda hurt my team, hp fire is easily stopped by my own greninja due to the natural speed loss from hp fire ivs. Running a lati twin did occur to me, but I'm not sure which poke i would switch for it. I will also try running a clefable instead of azumarill on my team. That 6th spot is never truly decided, wow.

 

[Jellal Fernandes]

Thanks for hearing us out :) And Good Luck with Laddering :)