Resource Simple Questions, Simple Answers Thread (read the op before posting a thread)

Can someone help me with the EVs and Nature to my Magearna set? I'm relatively new to competitive battling and am not very confident in my ability to dictate where EVs go in every pokemon. Any form of advice would be greatly appreciated! But please keep in mind I asked for EVs and Nature help, not a moveset change:)

Magearna @ Fairium Z
Ability: Soul Heart
Evs:
Nature:
-Calm Mind
-Thunder Bolt
-Pain Split
-Fleur Cannon

Thank you for the help!!:)
The set looks a bit confused in the direction it wants to go, if you want an offensive magearna replace pain split with Shift Gear and put evs in SpA and Spe. If you want a defensive set with Z, I'd recommend running Eo's Z Heal Bell variant:
Magearna @ Normalium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 240 HP / 16 SpA / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Volt Switch
- Flash Cannon
- Heart Swap
- Heal Bell
 

GMars

It's ya boy GEEEEEEEEMARS
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Can someone help me with the EVs and Nature to my Magearna set? I'm relatively new to competitive battling and am not very confident in my ability to dictate where EVs go in every pokemon. Any form of advice would be greatly appreciated! But please keep in mind I asked for EVs and Nature help, not a moveset change:)

Magearna @ Fairium Z
Ability: Soul Heart
Evs:
Nature:
-Calm Mind
-Thunder Bolt
-Pain Split
-Fleur Cannon

Thank you for the help!!:)
After a few battles you might find that Pain Split isn't reliable enough to make this set consistent, but I'm happy to help with EVs. Given that you're not running Shift Gear, you probably want to prioritize bulk investment over Speed or offense. The standard spread for sets like this is 252 HP / 252+ Def / 4 SpD (maxing out the stat you can't boost). This is the spread I'd recommend if you're using this as an Anti-Stall set with some Heatran support, since it can't be 2HKO'd by Gliscor, letting you hit it with a Twinkle Tackle as it uses Taunt or Swords Dance. If you are trying to use this as an Anti-Stall set though, I'd recommend a small change of swapping Fleur Cannon for Ice Beam and adding in Electrium Z so you can beat Pex more easily, with a spread like 252 HP / 52+ Def / 200 SpD so you can use Calm Mind on TDK Stall's Heatran even if you get burned by Lava Plume.

Here's the importable for the more standard spread:

Magearna @ Fairium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Pain Split
- Fleur Cannon

And here's the importable for the anti-stall alteration:

Magearna @ Electrium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 56 Def / 200 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Pain Split
- Ice Beam

Looking at some general benchmarks with the set you have though, if you're feeling truly wild you can roll with:

Magearna @ Fairium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 52 Def / 56 SpA / 148 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Pain Split
- Fleur Cannon

It bops defensive Landorus-T with Twinkle Tackle, Speed creeps standard Choice Band Tyranitar, and outspeeds Adamant Mega Mawile. I've included a stream-of-thought process for coming up with this in the hide tag below.

Hope that helped! In general when coming up with EVs, think about what you want the set to do. If you want to be able to set up on a certain set of Pokemon, head to https://pokemonshowdown.com/damagecalc/ and check how much investment you need for each one. Then check how much offense you need to KO the Pokemon you want to, while making sure you outspeed any dangerous threats you'd otherwise be able to take care of, using the Speed Tiers as a guide: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sm-ou-speed-tiers.3587531/

We also have a bunch of premade sets on the dex. https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/
You'll see that offensive Pokemon tend to maximize out their attack and speed with a speed boosting nature that takes away from the stat they're not using (Timid for special attackers and Jolly for physical attackers), while defensive Pokemon tend to maximize their HP and one defensive stat, using their nature to boost that stat while taking away from the attack type they won't be using (usually Bold or Calm). HP EVs may be 248 instead of 252 to minimize damage Pokemon take from entry hazards. Exceptions to these trends are usually specialized sweepers, such as Hawlucha.

Offensive Example: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/alakazam/
Defensive Example: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/toxapex/
Specialized Sweeper Example: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/hawlucha/

Cheers!

(Edit: If you're curious, the Attack IVs automatically set to 0 for Pokemon that don't use physical moves to minimize damage you'd take from hitting yourself in Confusion or being hit by the attack Foul Play, which is based on the target's Attack stat rather than the user's).

I ran calcs uninvested Magearna and 252 HP Magearna vs every OU set, just to scope out what messing with the defense investment can let the set do (some calcs in the set are a bit off because of lack of auto-weather):
1524076003487.png

The 1st green bar is where investment helps you avoid an OHKO, and the second is where investment lets you avoid a 2HKO.
1524076048220.png

and
1524076089243.png


Things that stand out: Lando's EQ, Tran's Magma Storm (not so much since you can't do much to it in return), Ash-Gren's Hydro, Specs Koko's tbolt, and Gengar's Shadow Ball. Specifically for this set, you seem like you want to be sent in, survive a hit while you're setting up a Calm Mind, then survive another hit while you pain split. If an attack does under 59.9%, we can eat at +0 and recover at +1. That range is:
1524076576712.png

Orange represents physical moves, which don't get affected by Calm Mind. So bulk only relevantly helps with this scenario versus Tapu Lele and Scarf Keldeo. Looking at how Special Defense EVs play into it, now calc'ing for 252 HP / 252+ SpD:
1524076890630.png

By tuning the special defense, we have the opportunity to add in LOrb Greninja, SpDef Tran, and Utility Tran into this. Tran is tough to beat around though, due to most of its sets running Taunt. Most grens won't bother staying in on a Magearna, so honestly not much worth investing in here.

Scoping out physical defense:
1524077383311.png

1524077285309.png

Taking Band Zygarde's Thousand Arrows is cool, as is messing with some Gliscor variants.

Fine tuning defense at this level can come down to preference, so let's work on baselines for offense and speed and see what we have left to work with for bulk. Offensively, it'd be nice to beat Pex with a +1 Thunderbolt into a +0 Thunderbolt. To do this, you need ~42.5% damage at +0 to get past black sludge recovery. Unfortunately, we can't hit this without going Modest or Electrium Z, so you'll have to hope you can play around with a well-timed Pain Split. 56 SpA gives you a great chance to OHKO defensive lando after rocks with Fairium Z, so we can roll with that.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sm-ou-speed-tiers.3587531/
Magearna can be tuned between 121 and 251 Speed, meaning we could have the set outspeed the following:
Adamant Tapu Bulu, Jolly Ttar, Timid Magnezone (Either Scarf or Sub so nothin much we can do here) | (no longer requires Timid) 16 Spe Lando, Adamant Ttar, Uninvested Fini (Though roughly half run heavy speed investment according to the usage statistics), Adamant Mega Mawile

Looking at these, we could run 228 Speed EVs for 16 Spe Lando, 224 for Adamant TTar, 148 to creep the Band TTar set on the smogdex, 136 for Mega Mawile, or 100 to speed creep smogex Mega Mawile.

Doing 148 in speed gives you 52+ def leftover, enough to take 1 thousand arrows from band zygarde and taking an eq from Max Attack Lando, and jolly after rocks. Can't stunt on Gliscor, but most run Taunt or Swords Dance.
 
Last edited:
After a few battles you might find that Pain Split isn't reliable enough to make this set consistent, but I'm happy to help with EVs. Given that you're not running Shift Gear, you probably want to prioritize bulk investment over Speed or offense. The standard spread for sets like this is 252 HP / 252+ Def / 4 SpD (maxing out the stat you can't boost). This is the spread I'd recommend if you're using this as an Anti-Stall set with some Heatran support, since it can't be 2HKO'd by Gliscor, letting you hit it with a Twinkle Tackle as it uses Taunt or Swords Dance. If you are trying to use this as an Anti-Stall set though, I'd recommend a small change of swapping Fleur Cannon for Ice Beam and adding in Electrium Z so you can beat Pex more easily, with a spread like 252 HP / 52+ Def / 200 SpD so you can use Calm Mind on TDK Stall's Heatran even if you get burned by Lava Plume.

Here's the importable for the more standard spread:

Magearna @ Fairium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Pain Split
- Fleur Cannon

And here's the importable for the anti-stall alteration:

Magearna @ Electrium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 56 Def / 200 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Pain Split
- Ice Beam

Looking at some general benchmarks with the set you have though, if you're feeling truly wild you can roll with:

Magearna @ Fairium Z
Ability: Soul-Heart
EVs: 252 HP / 52 Def / 56 SpA / 148 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Calm Mind
- Thunderbolt
- Pain Split
- Fleur Cannon

It bops defensive Landorus-T with Twinkle Tackle, Speed creeps standard Choice Band Tyranitar, and outspeeds Adamant Mega Mawile. I've included a stream-of-thought process for coming up with this in the hide tag below.

Hope that helped! In general when coming up with EVs, think about what you want the set to do. If you want to be able to set up on a certain set of Pokemon, head to https://pokemonshowdown.com/damagecalc/ and check how much investment you need for each one. Then check how much offense you need to KO the Pokemon you want to, while making sure you outspeed any dangerous threats you'd otherwise be able to take care of, using the Speed Tiers as a guide: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sm-ou-speed-tiers.3587531/

We also have a bunch of premade sets on the dex. https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/
You'll see that offensive Pokemon tend to maximize out their attack and speed with a speed boosting nature that takes away from the stat they're not using (Timid for special attackers and Jolly for physical attackers), while defensive Pokemon tend to maximize their HP and one defensive stat, using their nature to boost that stat while taking away from the attack type they won't be using (usually Bold or Calm). HP EVs may be 248 instead of 252 to minimize damage Pokemon take from entry hazards. Exceptions to these trends are usually specialized sweepers, such as Hawlucha.

Offensive Example: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/alakazam/
Defensive Example: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/toxapex/
Specialized Sweeper Example: https://www.smogon.com/dex/sm/pokemon/hawlucha/

Cheers!

(Edit: If you're curious, the Attack IVs automatically set to 0 for Pokemon that don't use physical moves to minimize damage you'd take from hitting yourself in Confusion or being hit by the attack Foul Play, which is based on the target's Attack stat rather than the user's).

I ran calcs uninvested Magearna and 252 HP Magearna vs every OU set, just to scope out what messing with the defense investment can let the set do (some calcs in the set are a bit off because of lack of auto-weather):
View attachment 111623
The 1st green bar is where investment helps you avoid an OHKO, and the second is where investment lets you avoid a 2HKO.
View attachment 111624
and
View attachment 111625

Things that stand out: Lando's EQ, Tran's Magma Storm (not so much since you can't do much to it in return), Ash-Gren's Hydro, Specs Koko's tbolt, and Gengar's Shadow Ball. Specifically for this set, you seem like you want to be sent in, survive a hit while you're setting up a Calm Mind, then survive another hit while you pain split. If an attack does under 59.9%, we can eat at +0 and recover at +1. That range is:
View attachment 111626
Orange represents physical moves, which don't get affected by Calm Mind. So bulk only relevantly helps with this scenario versus Tapu Lele and Scarf Keldeo. Looking at how Special Defense EVs play into it, now calc'ing for 252 HP / 252+ SpD:
View attachment 111627
By tuning the special defense, we have the opportunity to add in LOrb Greninja, SpDef Tran, and Utility Tran into this. Tran is tough to beat around though, due to most of its sets running Taunt. Most grens won't bother staying in on a Magearna, so honestly not much worth investing in here.

Scoping out physical defense:
View attachment 111630
View attachment 111629
Taking Band Zygarde's Thousand Arrows is cool, as is messing with some Gliscor variants.

Fine tuning defense at this level can come down to preference, so let's work on baselines for offense and speed and see what we have left to work with for bulk. Offensively, it'd be nice to beat Pex with a +1 Thunderbolt into a +0 Thunderbolt. To do this, you need ~42.5% damage at +0 to get past black sludge recovery. Unfortunately, we can't hit this without going Modest or Electrium Z, so you'll have to hope you can play around with a well-timed Pain Split. 56 SpA gives you a great chance to OHKO defensive lando after rocks with Fairium Z, so we can roll with that.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sm-ou-speed-tiers.3587531/
Magearna can be tuned between 121 and 251 Speed, meaning we could have the set outspeed the following:
Adamant Tapu Bulu, Jolly Ttar, Timid Magnezone (Either Scarf or Sub so nothin much we can do here) | (no longer requires Timid) 16 Spe Lando, Adamant Ttar, Uninvested Fini (Though roughly half run heavy speed investment according to the usage statistics), Adamant Mega Mawile

Looking at these, we could run 228 Speed EVs for 16 Spe Lando, 224 for Adamant TTar, 148 to creep the Band TTar set on the smogdex, 136 for Mega Mawile, or 100 to speed creep smogex Mega Mawile.

Doing 148 in speed gives you 52+ def leftover, enough to take 1 thousand arrows from band zygarde and taking an eq from Max Attack Lando, and jolly after rocks. Can't stunt on Gliscor, but most run Taunt or Swords Dance.
Are these excel sheets you setup yourself or is this a public tool somewhere?
 

GMars

It's ya boy GEEEEEEEEMARS
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Are these excel sheets you setup yourself or is this a public tool somewhere?
The excel sheets make comparisons between spreads easier, but all the data comes from the All vs One mode of the damagecalc:
1524091218384.png

As a heads up, this method doesn't auto-add weather and might not take some stat-changing abilities like Intimidate into account (though it may have been updated, not totally sure). You also have to be mindful of different forms (Charizard OU vs Mega-Charizard-X OU)
 
The excel sheets make comparisons between spreads easier, but all the data comes from the All vs One mode of the damagecalc:
View attachment 111663
As a heads up, this method doesn't auto-add weather and might not take some stat-changing abilities like Intimidate into account (though it may have been updated, not totally sure). You also have to be mindful of different forms (Charizard OU vs Mega-Charizard-X OU)
sorry for one liner but holy shit haha in 4 years on smogon how have i never looked there. this is really cool thanks.
 
What's the strongest OU Z-move? Z-Wood Hammer Bulu for raw power or Icium Kyurem for lack of resists?
This sort of thing mostly depends around your team and what you need to hit. In terms of base power Wood Hammer is 190 and Freeze Shock gives 200. Ice in my opinion is a better offensive type in a general sense, but obviously you have to think about after the Z Move when Freeze Shock is almost useless, whereas Wood Hammer is still good. Kyurem has a much higher base attack stat of 170 compared with Bulu's 130.

Edit: Yeah I did forget that, so in short Bulu hits neutral targets harder, but Ice is a bit better offensively, also Kyurem also has a pretty significant speed advantage.
 
Last edited:

earl

(EVIOLITE COMPATIBLE)
is a Community Contributor
This sort of thing mostly depends around your team and what you need to hit. In terms of base power Wood Hammer is 190 and Freeze Shock gives 200. Ice in my opinion is a better offensive type in a general sense, but obviously you have to think about after the Z Move when Freeze Shock is almost useless, whereas Wood Hammer is still good. Kyurem has a much higher base attack stat of 170 compared with Bulu's 130.
You're forgetting the fact that grassy terrain also boosts wood hammer's power, so Bulu does hit harder.

252 Atk Teravolt Kyurem-Black Subzero Slammer (200 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 399-471 (117 - 138.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Tapu Bulu Bloom Doom (190 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew in Grassy Terrain: 466-549 (136.6 - 160.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Grassy Terrain recovery
 
You're forgetting the fact that grassy terrain also boosts wood hammer's power, so Bulu does hit harder.

252 Atk Teravolt Kyurem-Black Subzero Slammer (200 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew: 399-471 (117 - 138.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252 Atk Tapu Bulu Bloom Doom (190 BP) vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Mew in Grassy Terrain: 466-549 (136.6 - 160.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO after Grassy Terrain recovery
hits harder however there are more grass resists than ice resists in ou
 
Is Adrenaline Orb Kartana more of a tournement focused niche pick to catch an opponent off guard or is it actually consistently decent?
honestly I only thought this set exists in doubles. I personally have never ever seen it on ladder. It's sits at 1.2% usage as Kartanas item on ladder (more than I thought that)
 
Is there a particular reason why the QC team stated Bulky Scarf Lando won't get an own set on the smogdex? Considering it's ranked as its second best set on the set viability rankings right now, and explicitly set apart from regular Scarf it seems kind of weird
 

Leo

after hours
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
MPL Champion
Is there a particular reason why the QC team stated Bulky Scarf Lando won't get an own set on the smogdex? Considering it's ranked as its second best set on the set viability rankings right now, and explicitly set apart from regular Scarf it seems kind of weird
They're not different enough to warrant separate analyses despite them being considered 2 different sets, we've done this before with mons like ash gren (the zmove is slashed with specs) and that's what we're doing with Lando.
 
They're not different enough to warrant separate analyses despite them being considered 2 different sets, we've done this before with mons like ash gren (the zmove is slashed with specs) and that's what we're doing with Lando.
Makes sense, thanks for the insight! :) Was just wondering since in the QC subforum there was no explanation to it. Would you mind telling me the spread for it though if you got it off the top of your head?
 
After browsing the SPL team dump I have been using z0mOG's Mega Latios set quite a bit

Latios-Mega @ Latiosite
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 84 Atk / 174 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Psychic
- Earthquake
- Roost
- Defog

I think the lack of Draco isn't really that big of a deal considering how much role compression this set packs. Do you all think no dragon stab is a big deal? I just find that half the time I click draco to secure a kill I'm going to counterswept or punished heavily for it.
 
how do i utilize cb ttar effectively & what r some of it's best teammates?

i find that vs. certain teams (mostly clef+ferro+tran+pex etc. types of teams) it's very difficult to get it to do actual dmg coz u need to predict right. then vs. offensive teams it also struggles to do stuff since almost everything outspeeds it. i know ttar is rly good but i just can't seem to use it to it's full potential.

would really appreciate a response from someone who has used ttar effectively before & if it's not too much to ask for, replays as well.
 
how do i utilize cb ttar effectively & what r some of it's best teammates?

i find that vs. certain teams (mostly clef+ferro+tran+pex etc. types of teams) it's very difficult to get it to do actual dmg coz u need to predict right. then vs. offensive teams it also struggles to do stuff since almost everything outspeeds it. i know ttar is rly good but i just can't seem to use it to it's full potential.

would really appreciate a response from someone who has used ttar effectively before & if it's not too much to ask for, replays as well.
Outspeeding shouldn't be of your concern. CB Ttar is a Wallbreaker, it's supposed to take out, or heavily dent the defensive backbone of the enemy team, because there are no real switchins to it (except for some memes like Cartoon's defensive Keldeo). Bringing it in via slow Volt Switch/U-Turn is the easiest way, but predictions and double switches work just as well.

About which move to use... there's no real answer, you just need to look at your opponent's team and think about what he will most likely switch into your Ttar, and then you click the move that will dent that mon the most. If there are no moves with which you can really hurt it, or if you are in vs a mon you already threaten out, then click Pursuit.
 
how do i utilize cb ttar effectively & what r some of it's best teammates?

i find that vs. certain teams (mostly clef+ferro+tran+pex etc. types of teams) it's very difficult to get it to do actual dmg coz u need to predict right. then vs. offensive teams it also struggles to do stuff since almost everything outspeeds it. i know ttar is rly good but i just can't seem to use it to it's full potential.

would really appreciate a response from someone who has used ttar effectively before & if it's not too much to ask for, replays as well.
You can see movesets and most common teammates used by the top players here: https://www.smogon.com/stats/2018-03/moveset/gen7ou-1825.txt
 
What pokemon would even benefit from the removal of the species clause?

Would teambuilders even benefit from it? I guess maybe two Garchomps or something?
I'm going to try and not theorymon here. Species clause reduces matchup dependancy. Is your team prepared to deal with 4 Zygardes with different sets? How about two Pexs? I think there are some notable casualties of this clause like running multiple rotoms and silvallys or arceus or hoopas but for the most part species clause prevents many cheese strategies. Perhaps one day there could be more nuance at how it treats obviously different forms like Hoopa (ie Hoopa-C is 720-A and Hoopa-U is 720-B from the perspective of the team checker and therefore different) but it's definitely one of the most important clauses after sleep clause.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 2)

Top