ORAS OU Mega-Sceptile Balance team

[CJorex]

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Introduction
Sceptile has long been my favourite Pokemon. My first game was Pokemon Ruby; My first pokemon a Treecko. Since then I have always used Sceptile and its evolution family wherever I can, and now with his Mega form he has the tools to be viable in OU. I created this team purely because I wanted to use Sceptile to his maximum potential in the OU metagame. As such, I invite you to rate away and suggest whatever changes you think, however Sceptile will be staying on this team no matter what. Anyways, on to the team!

Changelog

None yet!

Sceptile-Mega @ Sceptilite
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
IVs: 30 Def / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Leaf Storm
- Dragon Pulse
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Earthquake

This set is exactly as found in the Smogon Analysis for Sceptile, and so there is really nothing to say that isn't already covered there. Basically Leaf Storm to get rid of bulky waters, Dragon Pulse for reliable STAB, HP Fire to catch Ferrothorn, Scizor and Skarmory on the switch, and Earthquake for Heatran as well as whatever else may be weak to it. I had tried Rock Slide over HP Fire in the third slot to try and catch Talonflame on the switch, however my team has better ways of dealing with him so I switched to the far more useful Hidden Power. Sceptile is mainly used as a late-game cleaner, however his high speed means he can also revenge kill Dragons and frailer threats without priority if he has to.

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split

Specially Defensive Rotom-W was chosen because of its ability to sponge Ice-type attacks which can otherwise cause a lot of trouble for my team, while also helping against Ground- and Flying-types. Volt Switch to hit waters and fliers and escape a poor matchup, Hydro Pump for Water STAB, Will-O-Wisp to cripple physical attackers and Pain Split for some form of recovery as well as to wear down bulky targets.

Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Lava Plume
- Flash Cannon
- Taunt
- Toxic

Heatran has excellent type synergy with Mega Sceptile and Rotom-W, sponging Ice-, Fairy-, Dragon-, Poison-, Flying- Bug- and Grass-type moves that otherwise give them grief, while also eliminating bulky grass-types such as Amoonguss and Mega Venusaur, and steel-types such as Skarmory and Ferrothorn. Max speed allows Heatran to Taunt the likes of Skarmory before they move. Lava Plume is there for STAB and the good burn chance. Flash Cannon allows Heatran to hit rock- and fairy-types super-effectively, and is mainly useful for switch-ins like Tyranitar and Gardevoir. Toxic helps against walls.

Staraptor @ Choice Band
Ability: Reckless
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Brave Bird
- Double-Edge
- Final Gambit
- U-turn

Staraptor is used in the role of a wallbreaker to help set up a sweep for Sceptile. He also forms a sort of Bird Spam core with Talonflame. Brave Bird and Double-Edge are hard-hitting STAB, U-turn allows Staraptor to pivot out of a bad matchup and Final Gambit is for when Staraptor is otherwise not useful so it can often take down one opposing pokemon. At the moment I am not quite happy with Staraptor, since Talonflame is just better overall at most of what Staraptor is good at; I am currently considering switching to a Scarf set or rotating him out for a different Pokemon all together- I just don't know what I'd replace him with.

Talonflame @ Sharp Beak
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Brave Bird
- Flare Blitz
- Roost

Talonflame acts as a secondary check to bulky grass-types in case Heatran is incapacitated, and also checks Scizor better than Heatran due to his Superpower resistance. He also acts as a revenge killer when needed. swords Dance is there to boost and break through bulky walls, however it is rarely used. Brave Bird is obligatory 120BP Priority STAB to decimate Grass-, Bug- and Fighting- types, Flare Blitz hurts Scizor, Ferrothorn, Skarmory and other Steel-types, and Roost heals off recoil damage.

Landorus-Therian @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 240 Def / 8 SpD / 8 Spe
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Stone Edge
- Stealth Rock

Landorus really has no set role in the team- sometimes he sets up Stealth Rock, sometimes he grabs a kill against an otherwise troublesome opponent, sometimes he scouts with U-turn, and sometimes he just gives useful intimidate support. Landorus is my lead in most matches- Intimidate, Stealth Rock and U-turn allow him to be reasonably effective at grabbing momentum early-game. Earthquake and Stone Edge give obligatory near-perfect offensive coverage.
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Notable Threats

Excadrill: Mold Breaker sets can be stopped easily by Landorus or revenge killed by Sceptile, however the Sand Rush sets can outspeed everything and can only be stopped by Landorus or by Rotom, and even than the flinch chance from Rock Slide is extremely disruptive.

Mega Altaria: Fairy Stab resisted only by Heatran, who can not take an Earthquake, while Mega Sceptile can not revenge kill it due due its Dragon immunity. Fortunately it doesn't seem too common but it is very dangerous to me.

Thundurus-T: Steamrolls me. Hits everything on my team suopereffectively except Rotom, who can't really do much to it.

Conclusion

Although far from perfect, I am still incredibly happy with this team, and consider it one of the better ones I have made. I simply hope that you can all help me improve it to be as good as possible.

Importable

Sceptile-Mega @ Sceptilite
Ability: Overgrow
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
IVs: 30 Def / 30 SpA / 30 Spe
- Leaf Storm
- Dragon Pulse
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Earthquake

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 Spe
Bold Nature
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split

Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Lava Plume
- Flash Cannon
- Taunt
- Toxic

Staraptor @ Choice Band
Ability: Reckless
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Brave Bird
- Double-Edge
- Final Gambit
- U-turn

Talonflame @ Sharp Beak
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Brave Bird
- Flare Blitz
- Roost

Landorus-Therian @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 240 Def / 8 SpD / 8 Spe
Impish Nature
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Stone Edge
- Stealth Rock

 

[zbr]

interesting team you've got here bro. i'm a huge fan of mscept (if you look at my team builder you'd be surprised by the variants of mscept teams that i have. i even have mscept stalls xd) and i think i may have just the medicine to help your team improve a slight bit and give it a bigger edge in the competitive scene. right off the bat i just want to mention that you are trying to do too much with too little. we need to decide right here if you want to build a mscept team or a burdspam team. mscept can work with HO teams that support around it but when you are running a team not only has only a meagre volt turn core as your defensive backbone as well as being excruciatingly weak to rocks, i don't think you'll see much of mscept shining since this often ends out in a do or die scenario where games end in 10 turns either from you dying to hazards or you overwhelming your opponent with their huge weakness to burdspam.

commendably, the idea of the team is extremely sound. good mscept teams often go with a strong fwg core to strengthen the little defensive utility that mscept brings about to the table as OU's fastest offensive grass type mon. looking at your team, you notice that in actuality, the burdspam core is extremely redundant. they don't do much to break mscept's switch ins (mainly fairies, poison and offensive steel types) as heatran rotom-w already is capable of breaking apart those combinations and you might as well use the remainder of the slots to solidify your mscept team and hence i will tailor the suggestions to opt out on the burdspam and strengthen the mscept styled offense.

first off all, we need something that can tactically help mscept set up as wells as prevent hazards from going ham on your side of the field. considering that you are relying on a more volt-turn style of play, i think we should first use spikes rocky helm pdef skarm over lando. why this change is because setting hazards for mscept to do crazy damage is important as well being able to maintain control over the field so that mscept has more opportunities to come in and have fun without worrying about losing health over hazards since we are using a AOA mscept to dish out as much pain as possible to opposing teams. also, my suggestion is also to swap toxic out for stealth rock on heatran. simply because as much as taunt toxic helps break stall, if you play well with mscept and lefties taunt tran, you have a lot lesser issue with stall than you think you do because taunt tran is insane against stall.

keeping in mind that azu (either bjet / cb or avest) all run a certain amount of speed, my suggestion is your run 48 spe on your rotom-w so that you don't get rolled over by either cb or avest variants of azu.

now we need something to generally weaken our threats and force out mons that you don't want them to be in. choice banded azu over staraptor seems to be a good choice here since it helps to break past certain balance teams as well as help provide powerful aquajets so that the team doesn't auto lose to offensive with strong priorities.

the final change is going to be a simple change. we are going to use the best defogger in the game. latios. dual stab latios with recover and defog helps give more defensive back bone to the team as well provide this team with something powerful that continuously nuke the opponent. but keep in mind that with this change you are using two nuking moves which are generally avoided on most teams. this means you can either 1. opt to use giga drain on mscept (which i don't really advise but is still an option) or 2. run dragon pulse over dmeteor. this way you can weaken opposing threats while being able to put out large amount of consistent damage against opposing mons.

i hope my suggestions have helped you in your team and competitive playing of the game. good luck and have fun in competitive pokemon /cheers/

 

[Rampecker]

Hi! You have a nice team there, personally I don't think M-Sceptile is that good in this meta since from my experience it looks good on paper but in battle doesn't do a lot, but we are going to try to fix that here.

Like every team, your team has some weaknesses that you didn't mention. First of all, having no hazard removal is a big problem for your team because you have Staraptor + Talonflame, both don't appreciate rocks weaknesses and have limited switchins due to no hazard removal. Fairy types like M-Diancie and M-Gardevoir put a lot of pressure on your team since you don't have a lot of options to revenge kill them (M-Sceptile is your only way of revenge killing M-Diancie). Your Stall Matchup isn't that great either, your main wallbreaker is Staraptor which is easily walled by Skarmory so you can't really break stall and its walls. I noticed that you don't have a reliable Keldeo switchin, yes, you have ways to revenge it with M-Sceptile and Talonflame but with no hazard removal they can only come in limited times.

Latios >

Staraptor: Like I said before, no hazard removal when you have Talonflame on your team isn't a good idea, Staraptor doesn't provide a lot to your team since you already have Talonflame, it just stacks weaknesses. With that said, Latios does a lot for your team, it provides hazard removal which is something that you needed 100%, it gives you a reliable check to Keldeo and a secondary electric check so you don't always have to rely on M-Sceptile. You can choose between Roost or Surf, I don't think you need Roost because you have other checks for Keldeo and electric types and Surf lures Heatran and it OHKOs M-Diancie (most of them run HP Fire now, so you can outspeed it), but it's personal preference.

Scarf Landorus > Defensive: I think that Landorus is a good option on your team, but you aren't using the right set. Defensive Lando is redundant when you have Rotom-W + Heatran, I think that Scarf is a much better way to use Lando on your team, it gives you a scarfer, something that you didn't have before and it works as a check to Scarf Excadrill, M-Lopunny, M-Zard X and other faster threats in the tier while keeping a nice Volt Turn core with Rotom-W.

Stealth Rocks > Flash Cannon: With Lando as your scarfer you're missing Stealth Rocks support on your team, which is something that Heatran can provide. The same spread is kept since there is nothing wrong with it. It gives you a reliable M-Zor answer, Taunt helps beating clefable and Toxic can be used to wear down bulky water types like Slowbro and Suicune.

Bulk Up > Fast SD: Something that I mentioned was that your stall matchup wasn't that great. Bulk Up Talonflame pretty much 6-0s standard stall builds if it's played right. The Bulk Up set lets you beat M-Sableye since thanks to the Defense boost it can't beat you with Foul Play, it uses Taunt which prevents stall from using Toxic on Talonflame and it has SpDef investment so it can't get 2HKO'd by Quagsire's Scald. With this you still have a reliable win condition + a better answer to stall + one of the best counters to M-Altaria and is a good check to M-Gardevoir.

That's it for my rate, as you can see your team didn't need a lot of mon changes, it just needed more optimal sets to have good synergy. With this team you can pressure M-Sceptile's main counters such as M-Venusaur and Talonflame. However, M-Diancie is still a threat since you don't have reliable switchins to it, but it can be pressured between Scarf Landorus, Surf Latios, Rotom and M-Sceptile, you don't auto-lose to it, you just need to play around it. Something that you can consider is 44 Speed on Rotom-Wash to outspeed Jolly BD Azumarill, this isn't 100% necessary since you have M-Sceptile, Latios and Talonflame to revenge kill it and it doesn't get a free BD on anything in your team anyways, but you can use it if you really want.

Sets

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 216 Def / 44 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Hydro Pump
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split

Heatran @ Leftovers
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Lava Plume
- Stealth Rock
- Taunt
- Toxic

Talonflame
Ability: Gale Wings
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Bulk Up
- Acrobatics
- Taunt
- Roost

Landorus-Therian @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- U-turn
- Stone Edge
- Knock Off

Latios (M) @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Psyshock
- Surf / Roost
- Defog