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np: UU - Higher Ground

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The thing about Milotic is that although it can be annoyingly sturdy, it is so easily exploited or set up on by so many Pokemon that it will never qualify as broken, in my opinion at least, whilst LO versions are played completely differently and aren't walling anywhere near as much.
 
I think this metagame is getting more and more interesting...I think I'll try to build a team. Somebody knows the top 10 threats at the moment?

  • SpecsYanmega
  • SubCharge Rotom
  • Rock Polish Torterra
  • Defensive Milotic
  • Dugtrio
That's my top 5 currently and from my experience of playing. Yanmega is already broken. SubCharge Rotom is very difficult to take down and you practically need Rest on your Steel-types to keep battling with it or have some revenge it. Rock Polish Torterra is a forgotten monster in this metagame and very tough to handle - meaning it has one solid counter Weezing. With the amount of physical walls weak to Wood Hammer, it can force plenty of switch-outs. Milotic is a tough bugger to remove and I think its a top 5 threat. If you loose your strong Grass / Electric attacker its practically impossible to take down. Dugtrio is pretty good in this metagame and currently the best revenge killer.
 
  • SpecsYanmega
  • SubCharge Rotom
  • Rock Polish Torterra
  • Defensive Milotic
  • Dugtrio
That's my top 5 currently and from my experience of playing. Yanmega is already broken. SubCharge Rotom is very difficult to take down and you practically need Rest on your Steel-types to keep battling with it or have some revenge it. Rock Polish Torterra is a forgotten monster in this metagame and very tough to handle - meaning it has one solid counter Weezing. With the amount of physical walls weak to Wood Hammer, it can force plenty of switch-outs. Milotic is a tough bugger to remove and I think its a top 5 threat. If you loose your strong Grass / Electric attacker its practically impossible to take down. Dugtrio is pretty good in this metagame and currently the best revenge killer.

Thankies. I'll look up their counters...
 
i'd be more concerned about blaziken/toxicroak, feraligatr, mismagius and kangaskhan than milotic and dugtrio. in fact, uu is just filled with so many viable threats that its very hard to rank them.

however, do watch for yanmega, it is the biggest threat atm.
 
Its personal preference its not an official top 5 threat. I do agree that Kangaskan is a good threat in this tier, well all normal types are.
 
To the person who said RP Torterra is only countered by Weezing, this simply isn't true. Tangrowth and Leafeon will both bring it to a halt, and, interestingly enough, Torterra kind of walls itself.
 
I've been using Speed Boost Yanmega with far more success than with SpecsTinted Lens. I find that the speed boosts are very helpful for outrunning and KOing threats that normally would be an issue for him to deal with (although I can see the appeal of the SpecsTintedLens set). Both sets are very good, I just find the ability to outrun and KO the majority of the opponents pokemon more attractive than KOing almost anything, but having an issue with anything faster.

I have also been using a slightly differed ambipom set

Ambipom@Life Orb
252 Attack/252 Speed
Technician
Fire Punch
Fake Out
Double Hit
U Turn

The differences are the obvious double hit and fire punch. Double Hit breaks subsitutes as well as doing damage in one turn, and breaking sashs. Fire Punch is for registeels, Specs Yanmega (which it OHKOs) and Roserades.

So far, that set has been working extremely well. It works better than Pursuit due to the lack of good ghosts other than Rotom and Mismagius, which I see sparingly now.
 
Double Hit breaks subsitutes as well as doing damage in one turn, and breaking sashs.

I don't really see the use of Double Hit over Return at all. Double Hit's total base power is 105, and Return's is 102, so in basic damage / accuracy terms, Return is far preferable because of its guaranteed hit (think Flamethrower [95/100] and Heat Wave [100/90] - anything with access to the former wouldn't consider the latter). Secondly, you're using Double Hit to break Substitutes; I'd say the three most common users of Sub in UU are Mismagius, Rotom, and Hariyama. Double Hit doesn't affect the first two so being able to break subs is irrelevant. And against an 80/252 Hariyama, you do 22.3 - 26.3% with the first hit of a LO boosted Double Hit, which means you have only a 22.5% chance to actually break the sub. Your final point, that Double Hit breaks sashes - well isn't that the point of Fake Out?

Long story short, don't be tempted by Double Hit. It sounds good on paper only, and its 90% accuracy will let you do far far more than its sub breaking ability will make up for.

Fire Punch is for registeels, Specs Yanmega (which it OHKOs) and Roserades.

STAB neutral Return: 102 x 1.5 = 153 base power
super effective Fire Punch: 75 x 2 = 150 base power

So against Yanmega and Roserade, Return actually does more. Also, your claim of OHKOing Yanmega:

LO Fire Punch vs 0/0 Yanmega: 64.5 - 76.0%

Not really an OHKO by any means. Personally, I'd much rather have Brick Break as the super effective move for hitting Registeel, since it also hits Regirock and Omastar super effectively too, something that Fire Punch doesn't help with at all. The only other reason you might want Fire Punch would be if you wanted a move that would cover both Registeel and Ghosts to an extent, in which case Fire Punch could be used as a sort of compromise between Brick Break and Pursuit / Payback.
 
On Ambipom, there's really no reason not to use Pursuit over Payback. You get the clean OHKOs on ghost switch ins, but Pursuit nails the fragile lead they switched out and the ghost switch in (2HKOs even defensive versions).

Interestingly enough, 60BP HP Rock (with no investment) actually OHKOs Yanmega and does (79.75% - 94.70%) to min/min Moltres. Although that's really a gimmick and U-Turn or Taunt would work better in that slot anyway.
 
Does anyone run Odor Sleuth on Donphan? It works like Foresight for Hitmontop...

Why would they? It doesn't give Donphan any other advantage except spinning on Ghosts, and it doesn't have the defenses to brave 2-3 turns against Missy and Rotom. It is better off just predicting the switch-in and attacking accordingly.
 
As Lemmiwinks said, Donphan is better off using Assurance on the switch, rather than wasting a moveslot on Odor Sleuth. Hitmontop can actually beat the spin blockers after Foresight, something that Donphan fails at quite miserably.

On another note, Regibroltres(Registeel, Slowbro, Moltres) is an amazing defensive core.
 
Meh, I find that Moltres is a beast offensively. If you're not running stall, then don't use SubRoost Moltres, when you've got a much scarier LOtres.

I find that Regirock-Roserade is still beastly in this metagame - I stole the pair from one of Heysup's old RMTs (where is he now, anyways?) and added a bunch of other Pokémon (including LOtres, lol) and it became a beast pair.

If it weren't for my crap team-building skills, I'd say that it could have been on the leaderboard now.
 
heysup sighting in RMT forums

what's kind of funny is that I've overprepared for specs tinted lens Yanmega and now my offensive teams are weak to regular leftovers or life orb speed boost Yanmega. >_>
 
With all this choiced normal craze going about, why is no one using Zangoose? He has more speed and attack then Kanga, and Close Combat is more powerful and accurate then Hammer Arm. Elemental punches are also useful. I guess the fact Kanga can atleast take one strong hit and has Scrappy means he's better?
 
zangoose isnt faster, they're both base 90. kanga's much better defenses + scrappy is better than cc and 20 more base attack.
 
Oh. For some reason I thought Zangoose was faster. :/

But doesn't the base attack make some difference on a few walls? Like Slowbro for example?
 
It does actually. Sorta.

Adamant CB Return from Zangoose vs Max HP/Def Bold Slowbro:
541 Atk vs 350 Def & 394 HP (102 Base Power): 169 - 201 (42.89% - 51.02%)

Thats a 46% chance to 2HKO w/SR.

Adamant CB Return from Kangaskhan vs Max HP/Def Bold Slowbro:
475 Atk vs 350 Def & 394 HP (102 Base Power): 150 - 177 (38.07% - 44.92%)

0% chance to 2HKO.

I'd rather use Zangoose as a Swords Dancer anyways, It seems like it would have a really easy time braking through walls, as long as Ghosts/Priority users are gone. I think I'll go make a team with a SD/Return/CC/Quick Attack Zangoose. :o
 
Choice Banded Return from max attack Adamant Zangoose has a 46% chance of 2HKOing max defense HP Slowbro with Stealth Rock and Lefties, while Adamant Kanga has no chance at all. However, what makes Kangaskhan such an effective Choice Bander is Scrappy, so it doesn't have to predict as much when the opposing team has a ghost. Kangaskhan can still 2HKO nearly everything that doesn't resist but Slowbro, Tangrowth, and Weezing. I think the extra 20 base attack points don't make up for the benefits of Scrappy because of the way Choice attackers are played. Immunity is pretty cool I guess.

Zangoose has the always dangerous Swords Dance and amazing coverage over Kangaskhan. Return, Close Combat, and Shadow Claw can be a great sweeper, or it can go with Quick Attack to deal with a lot of the sweepers that hang around the 279-308 speed range in UU.

While we're on the subject of trying out NU stuff in UU, I used this Gardevoir for a bit, and although it may be obvious and plain, it's damn fun:

Gardevoir (M) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Trace
EVs: 8 HP/248 Spd/252 SAtk
Timid nature (+Spd, -Atk)
- Psychic
- Shadow Ball
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast / Trick

Pretty standard Choice Scarfer that outruns Rock Polish Torterra and Modest Scarf Rotom. What makes this set so fun is Trace. People have seen that Trace in UU isn't as useful, evident by the usage of Porygon2 in UU, but that is not the case in Gardevoir's case. Amazing check to rain dance teams, ruining most sweepers with Thunderbolt. Can take Flash Fire boosts from Ninetales and Houndoom. Switch it in on a Speed Boost Yanmega's Air Slash / Hidden Power and outrun. There was also one case where I switched in to revenge a Kangaskhan, the opponent switched to Spiritomb and was promptly 2HKO'd by Focus Blast. And overall just being a great check to many sweepers with good type coverage and amazing special attack. The massive amount of priority in UU works against it, but overall this Gardevoir has been serving me very well in taking on this faster paced metagame.

EDIT: Leman read my mind, or is much faster at doing calcs.
 
I've been using that Gardevoir since Shoddy started, even in OU, fitting it to deal with what needs to be countered. A fun move on that one is Destiny Bond, getting a quick cheap KO which they didnt see coming anymore.
 
I've been toying with SD Blaziken. Superpower has caught me too many Milotic's blowing an open hole for my others sweepers to destroy teams.
 
I've been using a Rain Dance team for a bit, and have been satisfied with the results. Rain is deadly in the tier, even with Sucker Punch Honchkrow and Scarf everything. Yanmega is taken care off by Registeel and Uxie(who have been slightly adapted to fit my team).

Anyway, as nomination time comes closer and closer, Yanmega looks like the only suspect. Has anyone else begun formulating their formal arguments for nomination?
 
I've been toying with SD Blaziken. Superpower has caught me too many Milotic's blowing an open hole for my others sweepers to destroy teams.
SD Blaziken is awesome.

I put together a hail team in 5 minutes and was really impressed at how well it did. Houndoom still 6-0's it, but eh, I figure I can work on it a bit later.

Snover Sub/Protect/Leech Seed/Grass Knot outstalling Milotic is hilarious.
 
SD Blaziken is awesome.

I put together a hail team in 5 minutes and was really impressed at how well it did. Houndoom still 6-0's it, but eh, I figure I can work on it a bit later.

Snover Sub/Protect/Leech Seed/Grass Knot outstalling Milotic is hilarious.

You need to be using Hariyama on the team, with max special defense. Pretty much any UU Hail team needs a Hariyama.
 
You need to be using Hariyama on the team, with max special defense. Pretty much any UU Hail team needs a Hariyama.
Problem being I either lose coverage on Moltres or STAAAAAAAAALLLLLREEEEEINNNNN.

I'm sorry, he just inspires so much hate I'm obliged to give him a dramatic intro.
 
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