DIRTY LEGEND SPAMMER OFFENSE
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I built this team originally back in late February around an offensive core of
Raikou and
Volcanion. I thought these two would do very well together, as I felt that many players were having to overprepare for the deluge of mainly physical hyper offense teams plaguing the RULT meta. To do so, teams were limited to using AV
Cyclizar as their only dedicated special check, with some generally bulky mons sprinkled in their like
Moltres as maybe a fairy and fighting resist, but not investing in SpD themselves. Bike has a lot of great qualities that let it check special attackers like its speed and typing, but it's easy to overwhelm and target.
When I finished building this team, I realized that every mon was a legendary or mythical Pokemon by complete accident, but I wear the title of DIRTY LEGEND SPAMMER with pride. I don't actually know what the hell Cyclizar is since I didn't play those games, but its got something to do with those big motorcycles you ride, on top of being an RU legend in its short stay. Without furthur ado, here's our team of all legitimately obtained, perfect IV legendary Pokemon.
Volcanion @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Water Absorb
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 196 HP / 252 SpA / 60 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Flamethrower
- Steam Eruption
- Haze / Taunt
- Body Press
Body press is great for KOing Cyclizar after it switches in on steam eruption, max special attack because we want to break holes, and your choice of a utility move in the last slot. Haze for bulky calm minders, taunt to stop defensive pokemon from healing or statusing you. I like to run my volcanion pretty bulky, I think it helps with its ability to trade vs offense, which is useful for this team. Still, we'd like to get the jump on slow Bisharps and Conkeldurr. I wish I had a more interesting set here, but its certainly not broke, so there's nothing to fix. Tera ground is so we can maybe catch a Thundurus or Oven
trying to volt out on us. As you'll see, this team does not have a ground immune, so a ground tera should be on the team somewhere. I usually never make a team with no volt switch blocker, but I still think the team performs well without one. With no volt switch immune, the next two pokemon are here to deal with those annoying electric types instead:
Raikou @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Inner Focus
Tera Type: Fighting
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Thunderbolt
- Calm Mind
- Aura Sphere
- Scald
Raikou didn't get a whole lot of shine when it first dropped to RU in January, and understandably so. It's a bit awkward to fit on a team as pure electric doesn't provide many resistances. Raikou does have a great speed stat, but is still slower than #1 usage cyclizar.
Thankfully, CM Raikou is fairly safe against AV Bike. It doesnt love losing its boots, but if Raikou CMs on the switch, draco meteor from Bike is doing less than 30%. Aura sphere at +1 is doing around 2/3s of Bike's health in return. Even without being faster than Cyclizar, being faster than most everything else unboosted means raikou threatens the rest of Cyclizar's teammates when its u-turning out. Raikou's coverage also does a great job of threatening the rest of the metagame even without a boost. Scald is great coverage with electric, and aura sphere outspeeds and hits the most common grass type
hard. Another plus for this set is that you can actually switch in on Thundurus-T one time and beat it 1v1 if it wants to dare to stay in.
One thing that's different from February when I made this team that I should note specifically: Amoongus strolling into the tier is huge annoyance for this set, as Amoongus sits on you all day and then some.
If you wanted to be super lame and swap out Raikou here for a
, that would solve the problem of lacking a volt immune, but the team becomes much weaker to zarude and cobalion by virtue of having fewer pokemon to revenge them. It would also not be as cool. If you did want to make that change, here's what I would run:
Thundurus-Therian @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Volt Absorb
Tera Type: Fairy
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Volt Switch
- Knock Off
- Psychic
- Grass Knot
Cyclizar @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 128 HP / 168 SpD / 212 Spe
Jolly Nature
- U-turn
- Knock Off
- Rapid Spin
- Dragon Tail
The special check for this team (Listen, do as I say, not as I do) because it also provides spin, really not much to it. Evs are to give us a good chance of surviving modest +2 ice beam from Blastoise after rocks and letting us dragon tail it out (and without its white herb for the next time it comes in.) Dragon tail is my favorite option here just to stop revavroom and other scary setup from taking advntage of it. Tera fairy setup sweepers like Mew and Azelf will still be a major pain. You'll need bike to answer opposing volcanion on this team, and as you can guess, that's not always a great spot to be in, but its a necessity sometimes.
Azelf @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Levitate
Shiny: Yes
Tera Type: Steel
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Flamethrower
- Psychic
- U-turn
- Trick
Azelf is, in my opinion, a criminally underused scarfer right now. It has a lot of great qualities we look for in other scarfers, but doesn't get used nearly as much. It has one of the best scarf speed tiers in the meta, allowing it to revenge +2 modest blastoise (something gengar and the base 108 crowd can boast as well) so what does it do better than the other scarfers in its speed tier? Well, its psychic is plenty strong off of 125 base, but unfortunately it doesn't rock dual stab like most scarfers it competes with.
In exchange, it acts as an additional ground immunity, has better bulk than Zoro-H/Gengar, and has a stronger u-turn than zoroark and munkidori, which is nice when you really want to sting Iron Leaves.
My favorite overlooked benefit though, is Levitate's ability to complement tera. Tera steel allows you to always work as a get-out-of-
-free card by retaining the ground immunity. Instead of needing to tera ghost with cobalion and wear yourself down to beat the Car, azelf does it at the cost of some HP it really isn't going to miss. This is great for a scarfer, as revavroom is one of the few speed boosting sweepers that outspeeds you with 1 turn of setup.
Cobalion @ Leftovers
Ability: Justified
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 72 HP / 184 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Body Press
- Heavy Slam
- Stealth Rock
- Iron Defense
Cobalion acts as the rocker for this team, and blanket physical check to a large portion of physical attackers. This is just a very standard set with ironpress along with rocks. I felt that this team still needed a way to really make HO sweat. HO teams can prep for the
goat all they want, but as soon as you pop that red card and the tera is exhausted, any free entry point for Cobalion is potentially lethal. In some matchups, it will just check some phsyical attackers and get up rocks, but that's all we need.
Enamorus-Therian @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Overcoat
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 248 HP / 44 Def / 176 SpA / 40 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Earth Power
- Draining Kiss
- Calm Mind
I've already said what I really wanted to say about Enamorus in an earlier post. Still broken, coverage has very few switch ins, and if you don't calm mind right away and pick your spots carefully instead, its very easy for the opponent to make a wrong move and take a moonblast to the dome when they thought you would setup. Oh, and its bulky and strong enough to trade with most of the tier, giving it good defensive utility on top of its great resistances.
I hope you give this team a try, its one of the most fun teams I've made recently, and it even got some play in RU Seasonal by
TyCarter! The team went 1-1, so in the interest of posterity, here's the good and the ugly
vs
ConfidentOyster
vs
MachJacob