SS OU New poster! Team : scarf dragapult,set up gyarados and G-darmanitan

[ilieksobbels]

Hi, new poster here. I've been trying to make a competitive team for OU for some time now. I don't know if some of these picks may be weird, but i'd like to know someone else's opinion. Here's the team:

Darmanitan-Galar @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Gorilla Tactics
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Icicle Crash
- Flare Blitz
- Earthquake
- U-turn

The icicle crash pick is obvious. Ice is strong to a lot of intimidating types, like dragon and ground and we also get a STAB bonus. Flare blitz - to deal with a lot of really used steel types, like corviknight, excadrill, ferrothorn, etc... Earthquake - useful for poison types(toxtricity, toxapex), steel types(aegislash, excadrill) and is just overall a good move for coverage. U-turn can be used as a switch-out with extra damage, specially as a lead. The scarf gorilla tactics darm is becoming a necessity for lots of teams, not only for its sheer power but also because of its coverage. Pretty standard darmanitan-g.

Dragapult @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
- Shadow Ball
- Draco Meteor
- U-turn (edit)
- Fire Blast

Choice specs/life orb dragapult is also a standard in ou battles, so it's really rare to see a scarf like mine. Two of the most used pokemon in this tier (dragapult and g-darmanitan) are one shot by this lighting fast mon. Its move pool is effective against a lot of threats. I gave him modest, because otherwise the damage roll would possibly not kill darmanitan-g. It will outspeed most pokemon, Just be careful about abilities,set ups and priority. The infiltrator ability will catch some off-guard like dual screen teams and substitute hydreigon/gyarados. A great lead to beat glass canons. The u-turn is useful when using pult as a lead, to preddict switch-ins.

Excadrill @ Focus Sash
Ability: Mold Breaker
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Stealth rock
- Iron Head
- Rapid spin (edit)

Focus sash excadrill is also self-explanatory. Stealth rock is really useful, excadrill's specially, since it ignores hatterene's magic bounce. earthquake is supereffective against steel/electric types and steel is good for anoying faries like sylveon, clefable, togekiss and grimmsnarl. It also can be used to beat darmanitan-g. Rock tomb is really useful, since it slows down enemies for other mons like gyarados. I didn't include rapid spin,as hatterne's ability is already filling this role on the team. Rapid spin is good for hazard removal as a plan B often used in case of excadrill or if we can't predict hazards. Mold breaker is also really useful against levitate rotom-wash and rotom-heat and allows us to one shot mimikyu trying to set up.

Toxapex @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Scald
- Recover
- Haze
- Toxic

I originally had a ditto instead of a toxapex on this team, but haze functions kinda like imposter ditto, as it doesn't allow for mons to set up. toxic/scald paired with recover AND regenerator is a really stally and powerful combination. You just toxic your opponent and recover until it dies. Eventhough toxic is a lot more powerful , a burn from scald can also work in the right conditions. The most annoying aspect for our toxapex is when he has to beat steel or poison pokemon. In this case i tend to switch off, but if this mon is a physical attacker or is trying to set up, like corviknight, just try to weaken him out with a burn and with hazes. Guts pokemon, Haterenne and specially clefable are really difficult mons toxapex has to deal with often.

Gyarados @ Lum Berry
Ability: Moxie
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
IVs: 0 SpA
- Power Whip
- Waterfall
- Earthquake
- Dragon Dance

The moveset: dragon dance, an awesome setup move 1 dd can outspeed a lot of stuff but be sure to get 2 dds to outspeed scarfed darmanitan-g and non-scarfed dragapult;Waterfall , a STAB move with a 20% flinch chance which is sometimes crutcial for some victories. Earthquake to hit steel, poison and electric types. Power whip: for the water/ground types and rotom-wash. Be really careful about dittos. Scarf dragapult will outspeed imposter when when the speed is *1,5 (plus scarf) . The lum berry's useful against status inflict users and scalders. A great berry to get free turns for dds

Hatterene (Hatterene) (F) @ Assault Vest
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 252 HP / 252 SpA / 4 SpD
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Shadow Ball
- Psychic
- Draining kiss (edit)
- Mystical Fire

In this team, magic bounce is used as the hazard control. Be sure to switch into him when you see a hazard setters ,status inflct users, leech seed and strength sap. Shadow ball hits hard hatterene ,corsola-g, aegislash and busted mimikyu; psychic is good against toxapex, and fighting types and is the strongest STAB hatterene has. Dazzling gleam is a STAB that will hurt dark and dragon types Draining kiss is a great stab that allows us to not only get rid of fairy weaknesses but also recover a bit of hp, often needed for this set and mystical fire is great against steel types or threatening special attackers Draining kiss is a great stab that allows us to not only get rid of fairy weaknesses but also recover a bit of hp, often needed for this set.Its assault vest will make him really bulky against special attackers. Be aware about excaddrill's mold breaker which will ruin hatterene's plan, as it ignores magic bounce.


This team allowed me to get into ~1400, 1500 at max, here are some replays:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1032899191 (vs monotype fairy)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1032922612 (gyarados sweep)
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ou-1032927376 (toxapex stall)

I just started saving replays a little time ago so these don't really show what the team can do.


I'm a recent player so i would like to know in what ways i could improve my team and my strategy, i've been thinking about switching hatterene for an offensive prankster taunt thunder wave grimmsnarl, but i'm not sure. Sorry if my descriptions of the teams are too long. Thanks in advance for the help.​

 

[chimp]

Seems like a fairly standard, well-structured build. A couple of things:

I would consider dropping Dazzling Gleam for Draining Kiss. The biggest downside is that it misses out on a OHKO against Dragapult, but I think the longevity it would provide would end up being more useful, especially since it seems that Hatterene is mostly built for tanking hits from special attackers and hazard setters.

Though, by the way, this set has a 31% chance of being OHKO'd by Lead Excadrill's Iron Head. You can turn this to a 12.5% chance by swapping the HP evs to Def, though Hatterene can't really do much to Excadrill so that match-up will always result in a loss for Hatterne, barring crits. So I would still consider some other form of hazard removal by putting Rapid Spin over Rock Tomb on Excadrill. I know you said you like Rock Tomb for helping lower speed for Gyarados, but I can't particularly think of any scenarios where that might be useful given the things that generally switch in on Excadrill (Corviknight, Mandibuzz) typically being slower than Gyarados anyway.

Hope this is helpful!

 

[HyperFlux]

Solid looking team, the only change I could see you making is dropping tbolt on pult in favor of u-turn, you already have coverage for pex in the form of hat and exca so its kind of unncessary, doing so you form a pretty cool u-turn combo with Garm

 

[ilieksobbels]

Solid looking team, the only change I could see you making is dropping tbolt on pult in favor of u-turn, you already have coverage for pex in the form of hat and exca so its kind of unncessary, doing so you form a pretty cool u-turn combo with Garm

I still like to use it against substitute/non substitute gyarados trying to get speedier, lead pelippers and substitute toge

 

[ilieksobbels]

Seems like a fairly standard, well-structured build. A couple of things:

I would consider dropping Dazzling Gleam for Draining Kiss. The biggest downside is that it misses out on a OHKO against Dragapult, but I think the longevity it would provide would end up being more useful, especially since it seems that Hatterene is mostly built for tanking hits from special attackers and hazard setters.

Though, by the way, this set has a 31% chance of being OHKO'd by Lead Excadrill's Iron Head. You can turn this to a 12.5% chance by swapping the HP evs to Def, though Hatterene can't really do much to Excadrill so that match-up will always result in a loss for Hatterne, barring crits. So I would still consider some other form of hazard removal by putting Rapid Spin over Rock Tomb on Excadrill. I know you said you like Rock Tomb for helping lower speed for Gyarados, but I can't particularly think of any scenarios where that might be useful given the things that generally switch in on Excadrill (Corviknight, Mandibuzz) typically being slower than Gyarados anyway.

Hope this is helpful!

Thank you! Draining kiss hatterene seems like a great idea. I also agree with the exca suggestion, sometimes rock tomb is pretty useless , so Rapid spin works as a plan B for darm and gyarados. But if i replaced one of hatt's most important functions should i replace her by someone else, like rotom-w or rotom-h? Also how do we use the 8-bit icons ?

 

[chimp]

Thank you! Draining kiss hatterene seems like a great idea. I also agree with the exca suggestion, sometimes rock tomb is pretty useless , so Rapid spin works as a plan B for darm and gyarados. But if i replaced one of hatt's most important functions should i replace her by someone else, like rotom-w or rotom-h? Also how do we use the 8-bit icons ?

I think Hatterene still maintains its original function even if you put Draining Kiss. I don't know if Rotom-Wash would be a good idea since Hatterene is currently your best option versus Ferrothorn, and you already have 2 Water-types. Rotom-Heat could be better if you are looking for more of a pivot role, though.

Also for the sprites, put the Pokemon's names in between two colons, : . So it would look like: :Pokemon:

 

[ilieksobbels]

I think Hatterene still maintains its original function even if you put Draining Kiss. I don't know if Rotom-Wash would be a good idea since Hatterene is currently your best option versus Ferrothorn, and you already have 2 Water-types. Rotom-Heat could be better if you are looking for more of a pivot role, though.

Also for the sprites, put the Pokemon's names in between two colons, : . So it would look like: :Pokemon:

Ok thanks
I think i might try a rotom-heat set like this:

Rotom-heat (Rotom-Heat) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Overheat
- Volt Switch
- Will-O-Wisp
- Trick

Overheat for darmantitan-g and corviknight, volt switch for switch-ins and for electric damage with gyarados, pelipper, flying types,etc... (maybe i might switch pult's thunderboolt for u-turn now that i have electric coverage.

Solid looking team, the only change I could see you making is dropping tbolt on pult in favor of u-turn, you already have coverage for pex in the form of hat and exca so its kind of unncessary, doing so you form a pretty cool u-turn combo with Garm

will-o-wisp to cripple attackers and trick to make status move useres/set uppers not function well. Just still have to be careful about mold breaker exca.

Just afraid about ghost type switch ins