Show ya moves! Peaked #15 on the ladder

[Mew2]

Hey Smogon! With the recent Mega Lop ban, I noticed that HO became much more viable in the tier and with amazing HO mons like Mega Sharpedo and Accelgor I thought about making a HO team focusing on hazard pressure to allow Mega Sharpedo an easy late game sweep. To my surprise, the team did better than I expected and after laddering for a couple of days I got decently high on the ladder:

Teambuilding process

With Mega Sharpedo being the new top threat, I decided to build a team around him abusing his amazing STAB coverage, Speed Boost and Strong Jaw. Thanks to his amazing ability before Mega Evolving, he can revenge kill a huge number of pokes in the tier thanks to Protect + Speed boost combo.

However, Mega Sharpedo lacks firepower in anything not named Cruch, as a result, I put Accelgor to set up early game Spikes that allow Sharpedo to score important kills which makes him an even more dangerous late game sweeper.

Even with Spikes support, Mega Sharpedo has trouble breaking through bulky grass types and physically defensive Alomomola and Aromatisse so I put another newcomer on the team: Dragalge. With Choice Specs, Dragalge can easily break through most physical walls with STAB Draco Meteors and Sludge Bombs. He also offers a nice Fighting, Grass and Electric resistance which Sharpedo can't simply take.

While Protect + Speed Boost is a way to revenge kill various threats it isn't a very reliable method and can be easily predicted by any skilled player, as a result, revenge killing was a difficult task so Choice Scarf Moltres was assigned this new task. With 120 BP STAB moves Moltres can revenge kill a lot of top threats like Hitmonlee, Mega Pidgeot, Mega Sceptile and +1 Adamant Sharpedo. Moltres also brought a way of dealing with Escavalier because it resists his main STABS.

With Moltres on the team, a way to get rid of hazards was obviously needed. Defog was a terrible idea because I didn't want to lost my own hazards and most Defoggers don't fit into HO teams. The only spinners that I thought would fit in HO were Kabutops and Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan while Hitmonlee is considered a better poke in most cases, I choose Kabutops because it gives me two vital things over Hitmonlee; a resistance to flying and Stealth Rocks. With Kabutops, I acquire a Scarftres check as well as decent counter to Fletchinder.

As any HO team, keeping hazards on the field is a vital part of my game plan and this is what Spiritomb is designed for; thanks to his Ghost typing, no spinner is capable of getting rid of my hazards and can burn any bold spinner trying to stay in. Spiritomb also brings Pursuit support which is very useful when dealing with Meloetta and Slowking.

Team preview:

Team in detail:

Accelgor @ Focus Sash
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Encore
- Bug Buzz
- Final Gambit

My usual lead and the fastest mon on my team if we aren't considering items. His main role is to set up as many layers of spikes as possible and with Focus Sash and his insane speed stat I almost always set up at least two layers of spikes. Encore is an amazing move that disrupts other hazard leads like Omastar and Bronzong locking them into Stealth Rocks and forcing a switch allowing me to get another layer. Bug Buzz always kills Sharpedo, hits Cresselia even behind a Sub and prevents Accelgor for becoming a Taunt bait. Final Gambit prevents defoggers like Gligar and Golbat for defogging away Spikes and with a decent 85 base HP and max investment it can actually do some serious damage.

Possible changes: None lol

Dragalge @ Choice Specs
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 200 HP / 252 SpA / 56 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Sludge Bomb
- Dragon Pulse
- Focus Blast

Dragalge is generally my wallbreaker, while 97 special attack doesn't seem like much, Dragalge has Adaptability which boosts the power of all of his STAB moves making Draco Meteor an incredible powerhouse. Dragalge generally switches in after a U-Turn from Moltres or a Final Gambit from Accelgor. Max Special attack with Modest nature maximizes Dragalge's damage output, some speed evs to outspeed things like Doublade, Rhyperior and Abomasnow before mega evolving and the rest is dumped to HP making Dragalge a really bulky mon being capable of taking a Mega Sharpedo's Ice Fang and killing back with Draco Meteor.

Possible changes: Bit more speed to outspeed Alomomola or bit less for general bulk, will have to see.

Kabutops @ Life Orb
Ability: Weak Armor
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Aqua Jet
- Stealth Rock
- Stone Edge

Kabutops is the spinner of my team and it generally get the job done unless my opponent packs Doublade or I miss Stone Edge. With Adamant nature and max attack, Kabutops hits hard and will usually deal at least 40% to anything that doesn't resist rock. Aqua Jet brings some priority to my team and can stop the sweep of things like Agility Moltres and low HP Tyrantum. Stealth Rocks is a really unorthodox choice because Kabutops is generally too frail to consistently set them throughout the match but since he forces so many switches, he usually gets a chance to set them up and my opponents never expect it.

Possible changes: Pair of new eyes so he can stop missing.

Moltres @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hurricane
- Fire Blast
- U-turn
- Flamethrower

Fried chicken has always been one of the top threats in the RU metagame, in ORAS his main role is to revenge kill all of the new fast threats and with a choice scarf equipped Moltres generally fulfills the role. Everything is pretty self explanatory; max speed and special attack to maximize his damage output while putting 4 in SpD for magic SR number, Hurricane and Fire Blast are main stabs while U-Turn gives switch initiative and keeps momentum. Overall a pretty common threat but useful at what it does.

Possible changes: Air Slash instead of Hurricane... I miss a lot.

Spiritomb @ Black Glasses
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Atk / 44 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit
- Will-O-Wisp
- Taunt

Spiritomb has two roles on the team: spinblock and Pursuit trap. The first one is pretty self explanatory and Tomb rarely fails but the second one is a bit more tricky; Spiritomb can't normally switch into most of the things he wants to trap for example, switching directly into Slowking means that I'm risking the chance of getting burned by a Scald so what I usually do is to lure most of these pokes with Moltres and U-Turn into Spiritomb. Taunt is there to force an attacking move and hit with a really strong Sucker Punch.

Sharpedo @ Sharpedonite
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Protect
- Crunch
- Waterfall
- Aqua Jet
​

The sweeper, the threat, the powerhouse Mega Sharpedo with an insane 140 attack boosted by an Adamant nature and 252 attack evs. With Strong Jaw and STAB Crunch Sharpedo can 2HKO anything that doesn't resist it after 3 layers of Spikes and with Speed Boost he can clean my opponent's team with little effort. With Sharpedo's amazing STAB combination he doesn't really need much coverage so I decided to put Aqua Jet to pass Hitmonlee's Mach Punch and other Sharpedos. In conclusion, with his great stats, abilities and moves he will usually sweep through my opponent's team with a couple of layers of spikes (seriously Molk test this thing).

Possible changes: Ice Fang instead of Aqua Jet to hit bulky grass types like Amoonguss and Tangrowth.

Shoutouts

Arikado My best friend here, cool guy, plays Smash 4 like a God and we can talk about everything, thanks for your advice and for the Smash battles.

HypnoEmpire Another good friend although we haven't talk in a while tho :/

Wait were you expecting to have a shoutout? Too bad because those two are the only ones.

Any because 90% came here to steal the team:
​

For you to steal

I stole this team (Dragalge) @ Choice Specs
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 200 HP / 252 SpA / 56 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Sludge Bomb
- Dragon Pulse
- Focus Blast

I stole this team (Sharpedo) @ Sharpedonite
Ability: Speed Boost
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Protect
- Crunch
- Waterfall
- Aqua Jet

I stole this team (Kabutops) @ Life Orb
Ability: Weak Armor
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rapid Spin
- Aqua Jet
- Stealth Rock
- Stone Edge

I stole this team (Accelgor) @ Focus Sash
Ability: Unburden
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Spikes
- Encore
- Bug Buzz
- Final Gambit

I stole this team (Spiritomb) @ Black Glasses
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 212 HP / 252 Atk / 44 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Sucker Punch
- Pursuit
- Will-O-Wisp
- Taunt

I stole this team (Moltres) @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hurricane
- Fire Blast
- U-turn
- Flamethrower

I think that's it for now, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy abusing Mega Sharpedo using my team and remember to show ya moves with this team!

 

[col49]

yo.

this is a cool, albeit somewhat straightforward spike-stack offense build, which as a spike-stack fetishist myself (ask anybody, it's all i play!), i can appreciate that. however, something that i consider holds this particular build back are largely issues of non-conjoining indirect synergy. what i mean by this is that, while the team does institute reasonable overall synergy, their are certain 'compromises made that are made far more evident in application than they are in the team-building facet.

one flaw that i can note from this is the use of spiritomb here. on a spike-stack build such as this, i find pursuit support to be fundamentally non-cohesive; pursuit is a move that inherently is used to punish switches on the opponent's part (at the cost of a significant drop in momentum afterwards), but given that this too is the function of spikes support in the first place, i have always considered it to be fairly inefficient to utilize the two in tandem. this, of course, holds untrue for more defensively-oriented spike-stack, who would utilize such pokemon as a means with which to isolate problem areas that threaten a defensive core (see: scarftar stall), and in certain instances of egregiously threatening defensive pokemon, this can be slotted, but i feel no singular pokemon threatens this team to an extent that such a utility is needed. furthermore, the compression yielded from sr kabutops looks largely negative to me, as it isn't a pokemon that would generally find room to set up sr comfortably, and especially with doublade gaining a moderate resurgence in usage (brought on by the fact that m-loppuny is no longer the premier fighting-type of the tier), i find it to be a rather inconsistent spinner as well.

what i would suggest to remedy these issues are fairly basic. first and fore-most, i would consider the use of a fast golurk over spiritomb. i feel this is a more optimal compression, as it provides both a capable sr setter, short-term spin-blocker (since it does lack the ability to pressure the spinner in the long-term, though that matters very little for offense of this nature), and a more effectual means of pressuring defog users, mostly gligar. this can also provide a moderate hitmonlee bait, which can in turn facilitate a better sharpedo clean at times. with this change, it opens up the option of hitmonlee > kabutops, which i feel holds much more value in the developing meta as a spinner, and significantly improves your chances against opposing sharpedo teams. given the current state of the metagame, a decline in scarf moltres does seem highly likely, which makes me feel that having only entry hazards and dragalgae to respond to it is fairly sufficient here.

moving on to minor nitpicks, i feel as though focus blast lacks value on dragalgae for the time being; most relevant steel-types are fighting-neutral, making it little more than a compromising lock-in most of the time. consider sleep talk here; having the option to minimize momentum lost in the face of a sleep inducer is rather nice for an offensive build like this, and it allows the team to better maneuver around balance teams (since this team has a distinctly favorable match-up vs.offense moreso than any other playstyle). in going with these sorts of changes, i would consider the use of poison fang over aqua jet on sharpedo. i feel that, with the exception of dragalgae, this team is largely devoid of reasonable breakers, relying very heavily on spikes support to break down defensive cores, meaning that it likely struggles with full stall. having poison fang with which to more adequately apply pressure to stall facets like phys.def aromatisse, alomomola, and so forth would at least somewhat mitigate this issue, and as i stated earlier, the threat of scarf moltres (outpaces +1, adamant pedo assuming it has yet to / just m-evo'ed, which is typically the case there) is substantially lower. the main issue to be had of this is opposing hitmonlee, which will put somewhat heavy strain on the remainder of the team, but with motlres / dragalgae checking it, golurk baiting it, and even your own lee to speed tie, i don't consider it to be a significant issue.

best of luck in the future g, hope some of my comments were of value.

Golurk @ Colbur Berry | Iron Fist
Adamant | 12 HP / 252 Atk / 244 Spe
Stealth Rock | Earthquake | Ice Punch | Shadow Punch / Toxic