Builder Background
So I've only started giving Smogon's competitive scene some focus and got interested in SV OU after watching a lot of Jimothy Cool and Pinkacross' videos. To preface, I'm aware of competitive 'mons but I can barely call myself a casual player cause I just come by Showdown once every blue moon to play the current gen's OU and, when SV first came out, BSS and RandBats. The most I've played OU was back when gen 7 was the current gen, never touched gen 8 my whole life, but I've already been aware of Showdown probably as far back as gen 5. This little teambuilding effort of mine just started on the 26th of May but if I'm honest my quick gaming-related obsession does come and go so I might not be active when new big changes to the meta comes. I still greatly appreciate any input on this team I made cause I feel proud of having done it, even if I can't prove its strength with a decent ELO rank (currently at 1348 as of writing this post). Also, since this is a team made by a relatively newbie player, I hope you don't mind me talking a lot.
The most I want to get from this post is insight to make better teams: Explanations for changing the supporting Pokemon, from their moves or even a complete change of species. Would also love if insights to adjustments to EVs or Teras to deal with high to top-level threats are provided as well. What I don't want is to change the core duo, however I would concede if insight as to why the core is unviable at high-level is provided. I might be too optimistic but if I or someone better at the game shows OU that this team can go toe-to-toe with teams at 1800-2000s, I'd be incredibly happy. Else, even just a quick view of my RMT post or a response would make my day bright.
Team Overview
I've wanted to make a workable balance team with Dragapult as the focus and made this with the help of Pinkacross' teambuilding and battling guides as well as trying out some sample teams.
By the end of the short sample team testing period, I decided to use hellom's Specs Crown team as a base. I liked that it had a good offense while also having some incredibly bulky mons to lean into, although admittedly I wasn't a capable pilot of the team.
I've adjusted this team multiple times, sometimes with actual ladder testing, other times with just theory. The initial team I created kept hellom's supporting pokemons, with Pult and Arcanine-H taking Crown and Weavile's place, before this was expeditiously scrapped and became a core of Specs Pult and SD Oger-C, with support from Alo, Tusk, Skarm, and Gambit. Finally, I've made what I think is a fairly decent team with Tusk, Hamurott, Skarm, and Glowking providing all the support the duo needs to hopefully fight the rest of OU.
The Team
Dragapult @ Choice Specs
Ability: Clear Body
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Shadow Ball
- Flamethrower / Thunderbolt
- U-turn
Reason for 'mon choice
Starting with the main 'mon I centered the build around on. Why Pult over other special attackers? Not much reason, I just wanted Pult to be the first one I have a serious build for. He's not the best, has a lot of weaknesses to the stronger specs users, and he's relatively restricted in terms of moves, but he's viable in the meta and that's good enough to start with. Can this be swapped with a Specs Contrary Enamorous? Absolutely! She might even do better with the strong Fairy type moves she has.
Reason for set choice
I picked the Specs set because of the immediate breaking power it has. The Band set makes Pult too Tera-reliant for my tastes while a Mixed Attacking set with Life Orb felt like it would make stall and hazard stack harder match-ups.
Standard EVs and Nature. I went for Clear Body to keep web teams in check. I stayed Tera Ghost because Shadow Ball is just that reliable of a move. I've entertained the idea of Thunderbolt for bulky Primarina and defensive Mandibuzz but generally I've just stayed with Flamethrower cause there's less 'mons immune to it.
Ogerpon-Cornerstone (F) @ Cornerstone Mask
Ability: Sturdy
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Ivy Cudgel
- Horn Leech
- Low Kick / U-turn
Reason for 'mon choice
Ogerpon-C is here to make a good breaking core with Pult. The reason I choose her over Woger is because of a dumb idea I had of using the showdown One vs All calculator to see which standard OU sets can avoid a guaranteed 2HKO from Dragapult, then using the All vs One calculator to find what commonly breaks each of the sets. The top three were Choice Band H-Arcanine (guaranteed 2HKO and up on 21 of the 22 'mons), Choice Band Weavile (19 out of 22), and a tied third spot with SD Blaziken, SD Ogerpon-C, and AV Slither Wing (18 out of 22). Having 2 Choice-locked mons was too much for me to handle and any team with Knock Off would cripple both of my breakers, AV Slither Wing is cool but I felt it doesn't fit outside the recommended sun team, and Blaziken was a little too frail for what I wanted the team to be, so I chose Ogerpon-C.
Reason for set choice
Set choice was the standard SD set as it's the one that won my stupid excel game. No EV changes. For moves, I went for Horn Leech 100% to abuse Sturdy whenever possible. I was considering U-turn to make both my breakers great at pivoting but I've started to value killing Gambit and Tera Normal ESpeed Dnite more and to mitigate putting too much of the pressure on the rest of my team, especially Skarm.
Great Tusk @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Headlong Rush
- Ice Spinner
- Rapid Spin
- Knock Off
Reason for 'mon choice
Having made this team off the back of hellom's Specs Crown + AV Alo team, I naturally wanted to keep some of the 'mons that were there, especially that devious AV Alo build with Mirror Coat. Sadly, Tusk was the only survivor from that team and for good reason, my breaking core doesn't like hazards being set up on my side of the field. While I could've gone for Defog Corviknight cause I don't mind having minimal hazards either, Corv doesn't have a good way to threaten hazard setters outside of Brave Bird-ing a Great Tusk. I also considered Magic Bounce Hatterene and Cinderace but that isn't addressing the actual problem of taking away hazards when I inevitably get matched up with hazard stacking teams. So Rapid Spin Tusk it was for me.
Reason for set choice
I deviated from hellom's Great Tusk set cause while I like the more offensive variant that really hones in on killing most of the common hazard setters, I realized that more often than not, my amateur game sense leads me to losing Tusk and that leads to a huge disadvantage. I picked the standard defensive set, with no change to the EV spreads. I did opt for Knock Off over Stealth Rock cause I would like to preserve his health early on by not having him needlessly be out the field to set Rocks. Boots over Helmet for the same reason, Skarm just takes both those roles. I'll probably change to a more offensive utility set when I get better at the game, but for now, I'm enjoying that my Tusk has decent bulk and it gives him some leeway to just click Knock Off after spinning and leave hazard setting for Skarm and Hamurott.
Samurott-Hisui @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sharpness
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 172 HP / 252 Atk / 84 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Ceaseless Edge
- Razor Shell
- Sucker Punch
- Flip Turn
Reason for 'mon choice
The idea of Hamurott came from me previously having Tusk + AV Alo + Skarm + Kingambit as support mons and absolutely hating how my two physically bulky mons just crumple to sun offense and Cinderace. This isn't a physically bulky 'mon like gambit but since I had to adjust the aforementioned team and lose the bulkiest special wall I had, I've had to have each of my supporting 'mons share the burden somehow. My previous team relied on AV Alo providing special bulk and a nice pivot for me to use and I had my own Gambit because I appreciated it being the speed control my team was sorely lacking from all the booster energy speed or scarf mons that scared away my breakers, basically I'm saying Hamurrot is their child and I'm not sorry for this mental flashbang.
While I did say I don't mind setting minimal hazards, having Hamurott made it so that I can still opt in to stacking hazards while having a strong priority and a decent pivot, helping me somewhat check stall and also getting back against HO.
Reason for set choice
Much like Tusk, I opted for the more defensive AV set. I'm just copying the Smogon spread cause I don't have a good idea what to do with it, the page says the speed investment is to outspeed Gliscor but sadly this is where my inexperience cripples me. Move choices are Sucker Punch over Aqua Jet for the harder hitting priority, Flip Turn over a second Knock Off cause I like having two pivots (either way I'm not doing anything impactful to Woger), and Razor Shell over Aqua Cutter in case I can leave Hamurott in for offensive pressure.
Skarmory @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Sturdy
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- Brave Bird
- Whirlwind
- Roost
- Stealth Rock
Reason for 'mon choice
Skarm is here for his much needed physical bulk on my balance team and ability to just shoo away set-up sweepers, especially the dragon dancers that will run around my team once I lose speed control. The reason I run him over Gliscor or Ting-Lu is to avoid stacking an Ice weakness, sadly Skarm isn't an ice resist nor is his Tera helping but that's better than having four ice weak mons at team preview on a meta where Weavile, Kyurem, or another fast mon holding ice coverage can sometimes pop up on the ladder. He's admittedly a little more passive than the rest of the team but he makes up for it by being my main check to HO teams.
Reason for set choice
As per usual, it's the standard smogon set. Brave Bird and Whirlwind over the IronPress set because I can trust my more offensive leaning 'mons to deal with normally fighting weak 'mons and have Skarm be able to handle opposing Tusks and phaze set-up sweepers. I picked Stealth Rock over its old Spikes set from my previous setup cause I saw someone on Smogon Discord talk about how Skarm really likes SR more cause it frees his turn for Roost or Iron Defense, which I honestly agreed after giving Spikes Skarm a go and this ultimately gave me a chance to get Hamurott into the team.
Slowking-Galar @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 16 Def / 240 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Future Sight
- Chilly Reception
- Sludge Bomb
- Toxic
Reason for 'mon choice
Glowking is what Alo was for hellom's team but a little less passive against stall, which to be granted wasn't Alo's exact role in the Crown team. The role of HO check has been relegated to Skarm and spread around the other supports, so Glowking is added to soften walls for the core wallbreakers. That doesn't mean to say that Glowking can't slow down a potential sweep though.
Reason for set choice
The Defensive Pivot set was utilized with no changes to EVs. Future Sight is used over Psychic Noise because of the amount of damage my breakers can deal would help more than Slowking slowly chipping away by himself. I've opted for Toxic over Thunder Wave to give special attacking setup sweepers a timer and hopefully stop them from damaging the team further after they're done with Glowking.
Team Threats
Sadly, this is another reason why I wanted to create this post. I have troubles identifying big, specific threats to the team.
Generally speaking, I've outlined what my 'mons can have troubles with such as:
1. The core's weakness to hazard stacking,
2. Three 'mons having a shared Ice weakness (2 from the core, only 1 resist)
3. There's also a shared Fairy weakness
4. having only Pult and Hamurott as speed control means that any decent HO team can possibly rip through Skarm or Glowking and set up unimpeded.
I tried keeping the core guidelines from Pinkacross' teambuilding guides in mind, but threat detection is hard without more experience, which If I hadn't said enough, I'm sorely lacking. I also didn't want to wait to send this post because I want to learn a bit more while I'm still playing the same meta.
Here's the pokepaste link in case someone wants to try the team out: https://pokepast.es/7f18aadfceea63b8
If you've read everything, thank you. I spent my Sunday creating this post but it feels good to gush a bit. Thanks in advance for the feedback and I hope whoever's reading this has a good day/night ahead.
So I've only started giving Smogon's competitive scene some focus and got interested in SV OU after watching a lot of Jimothy Cool and Pinkacross' videos. To preface, I'm aware of competitive 'mons but I can barely call myself a casual player cause I just come by Showdown once every blue moon to play the current gen's OU and, when SV first came out, BSS and RandBats. The most I've played OU was back when gen 7 was the current gen, never touched gen 8 my whole life, but I've already been aware of Showdown probably as far back as gen 5. This little teambuilding effort of mine just started on the 26th of May but if I'm honest my quick gaming-related obsession does come and go so I might not be active when new big changes to the meta comes. I still greatly appreciate any input on this team I made cause I feel proud of having done it, even if I can't prove its strength with a decent ELO rank (currently at 1348 as of writing this post). Also, since this is a team made by a relatively newbie player, I hope you don't mind me talking a lot.
The most I want to get from this post is insight to make better teams: Explanations for changing the supporting Pokemon, from their moves or even a complete change of species. Would also love if insights to adjustments to EVs or Teras to deal with high to top-level threats are provided as well. What I don't want is to change the core duo, however I would concede if insight as to why the core is unviable at high-level is provided. I might be too optimistic but if I or someone better at the game shows OU that this team can go toe-to-toe with teams at 1800-2000s, I'd be incredibly happy. Else, even just a quick view of my RMT post or a response would make my day bright.
Team Overview
I've wanted to make a workable balance team with Dragapult as the focus and made this with the help of Pinkacross' teambuilding and battling guides as well as trying out some sample teams.
By the end of the short sample team testing period, I decided to use hellom's Specs Crown team as a base. I liked that it had a good offense while also having some incredibly bulky mons to lean into, although admittedly I wasn't a capable pilot of the team.
I've adjusted this team multiple times, sometimes with actual ladder testing, other times with just theory. The initial team I created kept hellom's supporting pokemons, with Pult and Arcanine-H taking Crown and Weavile's place, before this was expeditiously scrapped and became a core of Specs Pult and SD Oger-C, with support from Alo, Tusk, Skarm, and Gambit. Finally, I've made what I think is a fairly decent team with Tusk, Hamurott, Skarm, and Glowking providing all the support the duo needs to hopefully fight the rest of OU.
The Team
Dragapult @ Choice Specs
Ability: Clear Body
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Shadow Ball
- Flamethrower / Thunderbolt
- U-turn
Reason for 'mon choice
Starting with the main 'mon I centered the build around on. Why Pult over other special attackers? Not much reason, I just wanted Pult to be the first one I have a serious build for. He's not the best, has a lot of weaknesses to the stronger specs users, and he's relatively restricted in terms of moves, but he's viable in the meta and that's good enough to start with. Can this be swapped with a Specs Contrary Enamorous? Absolutely! She might even do better with the strong Fairy type moves she has.
Reason for set choice
I picked the Specs set because of the immediate breaking power it has. The Band set makes Pult too Tera-reliant for my tastes while a Mixed Attacking set with Life Orb felt like it would make stall and hazard stack harder match-ups.
Standard EVs and Nature. I went for Clear Body to keep web teams in check. I stayed Tera Ghost because Shadow Ball is just that reliable of a move. I've entertained the idea of Thunderbolt for bulky Primarina and defensive Mandibuzz but generally I've just stayed with Flamethrower cause there's less 'mons immune to it.
Ogerpon-Cornerstone (F) @ Cornerstone Mask
Ability: Sturdy
Tera Type: Rock
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Ivy Cudgel
- Horn Leech
- Low Kick / U-turn
Reason for 'mon choice
Ogerpon-C is here to make a good breaking core with Pult. The reason I choose her over Woger is because of a dumb idea I had of using the showdown One vs All calculator to see which standard OU sets can avoid a guaranteed 2HKO from Dragapult, then using the All vs One calculator to find what commonly breaks each of the sets. The top three were Choice Band H-Arcanine (guaranteed 2HKO and up on 21 of the 22 'mons), Choice Band Weavile (19 out of 22), and a tied third spot with SD Blaziken, SD Ogerpon-C, and AV Slither Wing (18 out of 22). Having 2 Choice-locked mons was too much for me to handle and any team with Knock Off would cripple both of my breakers, AV Slither Wing is cool but I felt it doesn't fit outside the recommended sun team, and Blaziken was a little too frail for what I wanted the team to be, so I chose Ogerpon-C.
Reason for set choice
Set choice was the standard SD set as it's the one that won my stupid excel game. No EV changes. For moves, I went for Horn Leech 100% to abuse Sturdy whenever possible. I was considering U-turn to make both my breakers great at pivoting but I've started to value killing Gambit and Tera Normal ESpeed Dnite more and to mitigate putting too much of the pressure on the rest of my team, especially Skarm.
Great Tusk @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Protosynthesis
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Headlong Rush
- Ice Spinner
- Rapid Spin
- Knock Off
Reason for 'mon choice
Having made this team off the back of hellom's Specs Crown + AV Alo team, I naturally wanted to keep some of the 'mons that were there, especially that devious AV Alo build with Mirror Coat. Sadly, Tusk was the only survivor from that team and for good reason, my breaking core doesn't like hazards being set up on my side of the field. While I could've gone for Defog Corviknight cause I don't mind having minimal hazards either, Corv doesn't have a good way to threaten hazard setters outside of Brave Bird-ing a Great Tusk. I also considered Magic Bounce Hatterene and Cinderace but that isn't addressing the actual problem of taking away hazards when I inevitably get matched up with hazard stacking teams. So Rapid Spin Tusk it was for me.
Reason for set choice
I deviated from hellom's Great Tusk set cause while I like the more offensive variant that really hones in on killing most of the common hazard setters, I realized that more often than not, my amateur game sense leads me to losing Tusk and that leads to a huge disadvantage. I picked the standard defensive set, with no change to the EV spreads. I did opt for Knock Off over Stealth Rock cause I would like to preserve his health early on by not having him needlessly be out the field to set Rocks. Boots over Helmet for the same reason, Skarm just takes both those roles. I'll probably change to a more offensive utility set when I get better at the game, but for now, I'm enjoying that my Tusk has decent bulk and it gives him some leeway to just click Knock Off after spinning and leave hazard setting for Skarm and Hamurott.
Samurott-Hisui @ Assault Vest
Ability: Sharpness
Tera Type: Poison
EVs: 172 HP / 252 Atk / 84 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Ceaseless Edge
- Razor Shell
- Sucker Punch
- Flip Turn
Reason for 'mon choice
The idea of Hamurott came from me previously having Tusk + AV Alo + Skarm + Kingambit as support mons and absolutely hating how my two physically bulky mons just crumple to sun offense and Cinderace. This isn't a physically bulky 'mon like gambit but since I had to adjust the aforementioned team and lose the bulkiest special wall I had, I've had to have each of my supporting 'mons share the burden somehow. My previous team relied on AV Alo providing special bulk and a nice pivot for me to use and I had my own Gambit because I appreciated it being the speed control my team was sorely lacking from all the booster energy speed or scarf mons that scared away my breakers, basically I'm saying Hamurrot is their child and I'm not sorry for this mental flashbang.
While I did say I don't mind setting minimal hazards, having Hamurott made it so that I can still opt in to stacking hazards while having a strong priority and a decent pivot, helping me somewhat check stall and also getting back against HO.
Reason for set choice
Much like Tusk, I opted for the more defensive AV set. I'm just copying the Smogon spread cause I don't have a good idea what to do with it, the page says the speed investment is to outspeed Gliscor but sadly this is where my inexperience cripples me. Move choices are Sucker Punch over Aqua Jet for the harder hitting priority, Flip Turn over a second Knock Off cause I like having two pivots (either way I'm not doing anything impactful to Woger), and Razor Shell over Aqua Cutter in case I can leave Hamurott in for offensive pressure.
Skarmory @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Sturdy
Tera Type: Dragon
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Impish Nature
- Brave Bird
- Whirlwind
- Roost
- Stealth Rock
Reason for 'mon choice
Skarm is here for his much needed physical bulk on my balance team and ability to just shoo away set-up sweepers, especially the dragon dancers that will run around my team once I lose speed control. The reason I run him over Gliscor or Ting-Lu is to avoid stacking an Ice weakness, sadly Skarm isn't an ice resist nor is his Tera helping but that's better than having four ice weak mons at team preview on a meta where Weavile, Kyurem, or another fast mon holding ice coverage can sometimes pop up on the ladder. He's admittedly a little more passive than the rest of the team but he makes up for it by being my main check to HO teams.
Reason for set choice
As per usual, it's the standard smogon set. Brave Bird and Whirlwind over the IronPress set because I can trust my more offensive leaning 'mons to deal with normally fighting weak 'mons and have Skarm be able to handle opposing Tusks and phaze set-up sweepers. I picked Stealth Rock over its old Spikes set from my previous setup cause I saw someone on Smogon Discord talk about how Skarm really likes SR more cause it frees his turn for Roost or Iron Defense, which I honestly agreed after giving Spikes Skarm a go and this ultimately gave me a chance to get Hamurott into the team.
Slowking-Galar @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 16 Def / 240 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Future Sight
- Chilly Reception
- Sludge Bomb
- Toxic
Reason for 'mon choice
Glowking is what Alo was for hellom's team but a little less passive against stall, which to be granted wasn't Alo's exact role in the Crown team. The role of HO check has been relegated to Skarm and spread around the other supports, so Glowking is added to soften walls for the core wallbreakers. That doesn't mean to say that Glowking can't slow down a potential sweep though.
Reason for set choice
The Defensive Pivot set was utilized with no changes to EVs. Future Sight is used over Psychic Noise because of the amount of damage my breakers can deal would help more than Slowking slowly chipping away by himself. I've opted for Toxic over Thunder Wave to give special attacking setup sweepers a timer and hopefully stop them from damaging the team further after they're done with Glowking.
Team Threats
Sadly, this is another reason why I wanted to create this post. I have troubles identifying big, specific threats to the team.
Generally speaking, I've outlined what my 'mons can have troubles with such as:
1. The core's weakness to hazard stacking,
2. Three 'mons having a shared Ice weakness (2 from the core, only 1 resist)
3. There's also a shared Fairy weakness
4. having only Pult and Hamurott as speed control means that any decent HO team can possibly rip through Skarm or Glowking and set up unimpeded.
I tried keeping the core guidelines from Pinkacross' teambuilding guides in mind, but threat detection is hard without more experience, which If I hadn't said enough, I'm sorely lacking. I also didn't want to wait to send this post because I want to learn a bit more while I'm still playing the same meta.
Here's the pokepaste link in case someone wants to try the team out: https://pokepast.es/7f18aadfceea63b8
If you've read everything, thank you. I spent my Sunday creating this post but it feels good to gush a bit. Thanks in advance for the feedback and I hope whoever's reading this has a good day/night ahead.