The Team
Hello.
This is my second RMT on Smogon (thanks to the people who rated my first team, I apologize for not responding but all of your suggestions helped). This actually a sort of joint RMT made by me and Slowpokez. He had this idea of using a sort of balanced zapdos that can still be bulky enough to keep some threats countered and in check while simultaneously being able to to ditch out damage. After testing it, it worked well and so we decided to base a team around it. The team is rather simple. Using what we found to be decent synergy, use powerful attackers to wear down at the opponent and of course ridding of zapdos' counters while doing so. Zapdos' role is not necessarily to clean up late game, it's moreso to counter various threats and act as a support mon. A powerful offensive core with some wish support and decent synergy make this team bulky offense. We were not able to do extensive testing on this team, but it did win of the majority of the battles faced.
Also, the name is a quote from a Black Sabbath song, a good band we both like. All nicks for the pokes are names of songs. Changes will be made in bold. So without further waiting we present team...
In - Depth
Paranoid (Azelf) @ Focus Sash
Naive Nature
Ability: Levitate
EV's: 4 HP/252 Atk/252 Spd
-Fire Blast
-Taunt
-Stealth Rock
-Explosion
The #1 ranked OU lead is so for a reason. Azelf may not be able to do much beyond setting up the all important stealth rock and exploding but that's all it needs to do to help the team. Azelf really is the standard for leads nowadays but it is extremely reliable at setting up SR and it's always useful for taking a potential threat down later in the game thanks to explosion or simply go out with a boom when my health is low when leading. Probably the biggest selling point is taunt. Our team star is SR weak, and since we couldn't fit a RS'er in we had to use some sort of setup preventing lead. In the end it was down azelf and aerodactyl, and azelf was chosen for explosion. Thanks to huntofthelion for suggesting fire blast > psychic, which has proven much more useful.
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Rat Salad (Breloom) @ Toxic Orb
Adamant Nature
Ability: Poison Heal
EV's: 48 HP/252 Atk/208 Spd
-Swords Dance
-Mach Punch
-Seed Bomb
-Spore
The biggest problems that prevent zapdos from functioning well are snorlax and blissey. Although a recent flurry of sprouting offensive teams have slightly hindered their usage, but they are threats to it nonetheless. Breloom fits an interesting niche on the team for handling these pokes. No poke that doesn't resist it is going to like +2 STAB mach punches. A powerful priority core is created by scizor and breloom. STAB seed bombs are also useful for swampert who stops most of the team cold. Spore isn't really a crucial move but is very useful regardless. It pseudo phazes and instantly cripples one poke from the opposition, although I'm sure you already know that. TBH I personally hated breloom with a burning passion since all of my previous teams were significantly weak to it in some way. Slowpokez however has had experience with it, and although I was rather reluctant to use the mushroom, he isn't that bad to have on your side.
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Fairies Wear Boots (Vaporeon) @ Leftovers
Bold Nature
Ability: Water Absorb
EV's: 252 HP/252 Def/4 SpAtk
-Wish
-Protect
-Hidden Power [Electric]
-Surf
Wish support is needed on a team such as mine, when there is only 1 other poke on the entire team that can heal itself. Since using a suicide lead doesn't necessarily prevent setup since it can't really OHKO all of the other leads and not all leads carry SR (other teammates do), zapdos greatly appreciates some extra support on the switch. While mixape isn't too much of a theat thanks to zapdos it's always useful to have the (arguably) #1 counter in the game. HP electric helps it counter gyarados and lets the team handle it more effectively. The longevity of our priority core is greatly increased thanks to wish support, so they can continuously harass the opponent. A water typing is also beneficial for the useful resists, in particular those to water and fire. The EV's are a slight variant from the standard. We simply felt that outspeeding skarmory and metagross to never be useful, so we transferred the speed EV's to HP. The great part is that vappy still hits a leftovers recovery threshold.
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Embryo (Scizor) @ Choice Band
Careful Nature
Ability: Technician
EV's: 72 HP/252 Atk/8 Spd/176 SpDef
-Bullet Punch
-Pursuit
-SuperPower
-U-Turn
The beast that reigns over OU with by far the highest usage rightfully obatains the crown and role the king of OU. We all know how annoying scizor is and how it works. It does multiple jobs thanks to it's moveset, and also checks salamence. The famous CB STAB priority technician bullet punch revenge kills and simply deals heavy damage to anything that doesn't resist it. Pursuit is also a rather peculiar move, high attack really gets the physically frail, especially if they are switching out. Like many others, we like to spam u-turn during the early stages of the match. Scouting for potential counters and read info about the opponent's team is helpful, as we tried to keep most of the OU threats in at least some sort of check. Scizor does that role extremely well, whilst simultanously revenge killing like any other scizor and providing useful resists thanks to it's typing. It's typing is also extreme bait for fire attacks that heatran can absorb. Regarding the spread....
---slowpokez said:
Supernaut (Heatran) @ Choice Specs
Naive Nature
Ability: Flash Fire
EV's: 40 HP/252 SpAtk/216 Spd
-Fire Blast
-Explosion
-Hidden Power [Grass]
-Earth Power
If there's one thing scizor does very well besides revenge killing, it's lure in fire attacks. Specs, flash fire boosted STAB fire blast is truly something you must bow down upon, because even if you resist it you WILL take some damage. The need for a fire resist climaxed when this spot was originally a metagross, therefore bringing a huge fire weakness that is only resisted by vaporeon. Heatran is not only an offensive powerhouse but acts as a great safety net for the attacks our priority offense often bring to themselves. The moveset simply aims for the best coverage possible. Dragon pulse never actually proved useful, it gets dragons but heatrans' outsped by most of them so it doesn't really matter. EV's are the standard. Not too much to elaborate on here, pretty much the same specs tran we know of, but fills a useful role on the team. Explosion was the only real alternative to dragon pulse, and it's useful on any poke. Although specstran may not be able to use it as efficiently as scarftran since it's speed is now lowered significantly, it's hard to take the hits regardless.
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Electric Funeral (Zapdos)
Slowpokez said:
That's the analysis slowpokez provided on another site, so credit for this set goes to him. I think the quote explains the zapdos well enough so I can't add more beyond it. Originally, u-turn was used purely for scouting. However thanks to many suggestions and testing, roost proved to simply be much more useful.
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And so that is our team. We are open to pretty much all suggestions, but we advise you to keep in mind that using this zapdos is a large part of the team, so try to suggest things that help it out. Unfortunately we couldn't get together a threat list, but I will try to edit in a team building process in a little bit.
Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoyed our RMT.
Rock on...
