ORAS OU Steam Cleaned Radishes

[bobee42]

Hey all. I’ve been working on this team for a while now, and I’m really excited about it. I am really terrible at teambuilding, so this took me a long time to make and polish. The team single handedly brought me up to 1599 on the ladder, and before I was sitting in the 1200 – 1300’s. I know it’s a long way from perfect, but I am out of ideas for how to further improve it. Thanks in advance for the help!

THE TEAM:

At the time I started building this team, I had a weird obsession with trying to use Fire-Water-Grass cores. I don’t really know why, but I did. My first attempt was Physically Defensive Rotom-W, Specially Defensive Heatran, and Physically Defensive Mega Venusaur. After testing, I realized how much I wanted to use an offensive Mega on the team, and while Mega Venusaur was really cool, it didn’t pack the punch I wanted. I eventually replaced Mega Venusaur with Celebi and messed with the Heatran. What I have now isn’t really a defensive core, but it works well with the other three Pokémon and I like it.

Rotom-Wash @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Def / 8 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Spe
- Hydro Pump
- Volt Switch
- Will-O-Wisp
- Pain Split

As mentioned above, Rotom was part of my original trio. The set is very standard, so there’s not much to explain here, except that I lowered the speed IVs by 1 to “out-slow” opposing Rotom-A. This lets me get my Volt Switch off after theirs, and I can see what they bring in before choosing my mon. 0 Atk IVs are on all my Special attackers to reduce foul play and confusion damage.

Heatran @ Life Orb
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 30 Def

- Stealth Rock
- Lava Plume
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Taunt

This Heatran is fun. It has caused more rage quits than I care to count. With the given Evs and a life orb, HP Ice is a guaranteed OHKO on defensive Landorus-T and (depending on the spread) on defensive Garchomp, two common OU leads. Lava Plume is used over Fire Blast due to accuracy and PP concern. I do not find myself wanting the extra power often, and the chance to burn makes this set harder to switch into.

This used to be a SpDef Heatran, but I found that it was too hard to set up rocks early game. With HP ice, I can more comfortably lead Heatran and therefore get up rocks faster. Plus, since it checks defensive Lando, it helps clear one of my Celebi counters, letting me spam Thunder Wave more.

Celebi @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 240 HP / 252 SpA / 16 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk

- Giga Drain
- Earth Power
- Thunder Wave
- Recover

This celebi is really the glue of the team, checking the multiple Pokémon that would be troublesome otherwise. Celebi checks Choice scarf Excadrill, which otherwise eats my team alive (bar Garchomp and Scizor, but Scizor can’t hit back very well), as well as Mega Metagross, defensive Heatran, and opposing Rotom-W. The EVs outspeed neutral base 70’s, namely Bisharp, and give a good HP number of 401 (I believe this value reduces entry hazard damage). With max SpAtk, Celebi packs a solid punch. Thunder Wave is great in the third slot, slowing down key threats on my opponent’s team. This is most noticeable with my Mega (spoiler: it’s Gallade), who has only 80 speed before Mega Evolving and 110 after. The Thunder Waves allow for my mega to evolve safer, as well as eliminate 50/50 speed ties with other base 110s, such as the Lati’s and Gengar.

Scizor @ Leftovers
Ability: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 216 Def / 36 SpD
Impish Nature

- Bullet Punch
- U-turn
- Defog
- Roost

Oh man. I really love this Scizor. Like, a lot. It has won me so many games. The 8 Attack Evs guarantee a 2HKO on supportive Mega Gardevoir, and the HP EVs give a Stealth Rock number. The Def EVs extend past 188 (which I determined to be the minimum investment needed to adequately take Scarf Lando-T’s Earthquakes) to 216, in order to hit a jump point in Def values (meaning the stat difference between 212 and 216 is 2 instead of 1). The remaining is thrown into Special defense.

In this slot, I needed something to remove hazards. I tried a lot of different Pokémon, but none of them performed well enough. Eventually I started using Scizor, with an Ev spread of 248 hp, 252 atk, 8 SpDef and an Adamant Nature. I found I lacked the power I wanted without using the Choice Band and died too easily to reliably remove hazards. Then I changed the spread, and was blown away. The beauty of this set is that it bluffs so much power that it exerts tons of offensive presence without actually having it. Opponents will switch out fearing a super strong stab band bullet punch or U-turn, not realizing they are not in danger of losing a Pokémon. They start to play around something that doesn’t exist.

One final note: Yes, I realize Mega Scizor does this set better. However, this set doesn’t use my mega slot. This leaves it open for another Pokémon.

Gallade-Mega @ Galladite
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature

- Swords Dance
- Close Combat
- Zen Headbutt
- Knock Off

Mega Gallade is not the most common Mega, but has definitely proven itself on this team. It reliably checks Ferrothorn and Mega Venusaur, who are otherwise problematic. It functions as a wall breaker or late game sweeper, depending on the team matchup and what it needs to accomplish. Most of the time, Mega Gallade will spend its playtime firing off a Close Combat or a Knock Off on a predicted switch, then retreating to safety. However, Swords Dance does sometimes open up games. It’s not used often, but when the time is right a single use of the move can seal the win condition.

Garchomp @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature

- Outrage
- Dragon Claw
- Earthquake
- Rock Slide


Garchomp is a freaking land shark. That should be enough justification as to why it is included in my team, but just in case the Admins decide that this description is inadequate, I will elaborate.

On this team, Garchomp is my cleaner. The choice scarf turns would-be checks, such as Latios, Latias, weakened Keldeo, weakened Starmie, and Mega Alakazam, into fish food. The surprise factor of ScarfChomp is definitely something to use to your advantage, as unaware opponents may try to revenge kill you with a naturally faster, non-choiced Mon. After Fairy types have been removed, and more bulky Pokémon removed or weakened, outrage wreaks havoc. Mid game, Garchomp can also be used to check other problematic Pokémon, such as the aforementioned Lati’s.

Rock slide is used over Stone edge because of accuracy concerns. The flinch factor can help in a pinch, too.



So thats the team. Thanks again for any help!

 

[Physical Tyranitar]

First of all I would like to say Nice Team. But the formatting of the RMT itself could need some work. A lack of images, good font, etc. this RMT could be pretty hard to read. At least half of your Pokemon do not have thorough descriptions, so you may want to change that or you risk your RMT being locked by a Mod.

One thing I would change is Physically Defensive Scizor. Scizor isn't a very good Physical Wall in the tier, and lacks a good movepool to do so. A better physical wall would be your Celebi, who has better typing.
You also said that Mega Scizor does this better. Yes, this is true, and it is intended for Mega Scizor only. Regular Scizor does a terrible job at being a physical wall and you should just make it Life Orb or Choice Band.
Mega Gallade doesn't need Close Combat or Knock Off, replace those with Drain Punch and Shadow Sneak.
I'd say get rid of HP Ice on Heatran for Earth Power, which is much better coverage.

Other than that, nice OU Team. If you need any help with Smogon or your team, feel free to PM me!

 

[bobee42]

But the formatting of the RMT itself could need some work. A lack of images, good font, etc. this RMT could be pretty hard to read.

Thanks for the tip. I added pictures and cleaned up the page.

I'd say get rid of HP Ice on Heatran for Earth Power, which is much better coverage.

Yeah, I considered that. Earth power would be nice, but I'd rather get the KO on landorus-T and garchomp. Landorus is really problematic to my mega and cleaner, so getting it out of the way early helps set up my win condition.

Mega Gallade doesn't need Close Combat or Knock Off, replace those with Drain Punch and Shadow Sneak.

Not sure about other Mega Gallade, but this Gallade lacks significant bulk. The EVs maximize speed and power. Close Combat has immediate strength, even without a Swords Dance boost. I really need that power right off the bat, since I often don't have time to Swords Dance.

Also, I defintely preffer Knock off over Shadow Sneak. Knock off gets a guarenteed OHKO on Latios, but Shadow Sneak has a 0.4% chance to 2HKO. The item removal is great too, and really helps further weaken switch ins.

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Albacore]

Yeah, don't get rid of Close Combat or Knock Off on Gallade, then it gets extremely easily walled which completely defeats the point of using a wallbreaker in the first place.

One of the biggest problems with the team is that you have no real way of stopping Ice Beam+Energy Ball Manaphy, especially if you haven't managed to evolve Gallade yet. There are 3 ways I can think of to reduce your Manaphy weakness. The first one would be running Ferrothorn over Scizor. Given that Ferrothorn checks pretty much the same range of Pokemon and can handle most Manaphy variants (it only really loses to HP Fire Manaphy which is unable to break past either Celebi or Rotom depending on what it runs). Although you do lose a hazard remover, which is a bit of a problem given how Spikes-weak your team is, you do gain your own Spikes. This means that you can force just as much pressure on Spikes teams as they can on you, unless they run Rapid Spin Starmie or Excadrill, both of which Ferrothorn checks. Besides, Scizor isn't exactly a grtea defogger in the first place. Having 2 Grass-types on one team may seem a bit iffy, but the only common weaknesses between Ferrothorn and Celebi is Fire, which Scizor is weak to anyway. The real problem with running Ferrothorn are losing a VoltTurn core (which I would argue isn't a massive deal, but it's stil there), and a huge weakness to MGardevoir (this is a legitimate problem, if you're concerned about this you can run Chople Berry on Ferrothorn to take a Focus Blast from it). It also makes you weaker to Weavile, a very common threat, so this maybe isn't the best option.

Second option is Serperior over Celebi. It doesn't benefit from surprise effect that much, but it's way more threatening offenisvely, actually checks Manaphy, and can, much like Celebi, support Gallade via Glare. Unfortunately, this change makes you a lot weaker to Keldeo and Lopunny. Keldeo can be played around through the combination of Rotom-W, Gallade and Garchomp but the fact that Heatran and Scizor a free switch in for it is annoying. Lopunny is even more of a pain since you completely rely on Chomp to kill it.

A final option would be Raikou over Rotom. Doing this means that you pretty much need to run Landorus-T over Garchomp in order to not completely lose to Sand (this also helps vs Lopunny a bit). This also creates even more VoltTurn for you to abuse. However, this makes you even weaker to Bisharp, you can make yourself less weak to it by running a Sub CM set if you want, but you do lose Volt Switch.

But generally speaking, you are very weak to Bisharp even if you don't go through with any of these changes. A simple way to fix this would be running Superpower on Scizor : not only does this enable it to check Bisharp, it also gives it a way of KOing Excadrill and hitting Keldeo, reducing your weaknesses to these two (this is mainly relevant if you use Serperior). The obvious problem here is that you lose a lot of utility in either U-Turn or Defog, so this isn't exactly ideal. There are some minor changes you can do to reduce your Bisharp weakness such as running 108 Speed on Celebi to outspeed Jolly Bisharp variants (in fact, you might as well run 172 Speed for Timid Heatran). Also, you could run an Expert Belt on it so that you can guarantee the OHKO on Bisharp, but you do lose that passive recovery.

But ultimately, you probably need a Dark resist somewhere on this team, so as to not get completely crushed by Dark-types like Weavile and Hoopa-U in general. Keldeo seems like the most obvious pick especially if you're replacing Rotom for Raikou. Honestly I can't think of anything it really fits over besides Gallade, it fills the same role as a wallbreaking Fighting-type, and though this change makes you weaker to Venusaur, it can still be pressured by Scald burns and Heatran pretty much stops it cold (and if it doesn't, Scizor will)

If you do this, you now have a Mega Slot open. And while just running Mega Scizor seems like an obvious and solid option, and it is, you can also use Mega Metagross over Scizor. It performs a lot more similarly to Mega Gallade than Mega Scizor does, what with being a fast hard-hitting physical Psychic-type, and it's even better than Gallade when it comes to murdering Mega Venusaur, which is something you seem concerned about. It also has excellent synergy with Keldeo, makes you less weak to Manaphy and Keldeo, and Grass Knot gives you the option to lure Hippowdon for Garchomp and, if you decide to use it, Raikou. However, losing Defog makes you way weaker to Spikes, and Mega Scizor gives you a secondary check to Weavile which is something you probably want, in fact, Mega Metagross's Dark weakness is defenitely a problem when facing Dark-types, since Keldeo has no recovery and can easily be worn down by those Pokemon. It really depends on whether you want your team to be more offensive or defensive.

There are other things you can try out like a bulky Ground>scarf Garchomp to set up SR and then Earth Power on Heatran to make better use of its Life Orb (can even go Scarf) but those require moving a even more stuff around.

sets

Ferrothorn @ Leftovers / Chople Berry
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 44 Def / 212 SpD (feel free to play around with this spread)
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Spikes
- Leech Seed
- Power Whip
- Gyro Ball

Serperior @ Life Orb / Meadow Plate
Ability: Contrary
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Leaf Storm
- Dragon Pulse
- Hidden Power [Fire]
- Glare

Raikou @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Volt Switch / Substitute
- Calm Mind

Raikou @ Choice Specs / Assault Vest
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Thunderbolt
- Hidden Power [Ice]
- Volt Switch
- Shadow Ball

Scizor @ Leftovers
Ability: Technician
EVs: 248 HP / 8 Atk / 216 Def / 36 SpD
Impish Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Superpower
- Defog / U-Turn
- Roost

Celebi @ Leftovers / Expert Belt
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 88 HP / 252 SpA / 172 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Giga Drain
- Earth Power
- Thunder Wave
- Recover

Landorus-Therian @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Earthquake
- Stone Edge
- U-turn
- Knock Off

Keldeo @ Leftovers
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Scald
- Secret Sword
- Substitute
- Calm Mind

Keldeo @ Leftovers
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Scald
- Secret Sword
- Hydro Pump
- Icy Wind / Hidden Power [Electric]

Scizor @ Scizorite
Ability: Light Metal
EVs: 248 HP / 60 Def / 200 SpD
Impish Nature
- Bullet Punch
- Roost
- Defog
- U-turn

Metagross @ Metagrossite
Ability: Clear Body
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature / Naive Nature
- Meteor Mash
- Zen Headbutt
- Hammer Arm
- Bullet Punch / Grass Knot / Pursuit

 

[celes]

Hey bobee42, your team is relatively solid, so I only have a few suggestions to try to help it synergize a bit better offensively and defensively.

Your M-Gallade alone isn't really capable of breaking through Skarmory, defensive Landorus-T, Hippowdon, etc. on its own, which makes it hard for your cleaner to end games, and for your M-Gallade to even sweep for that matter, especially considering your defensive Scizor is the only other physical attacker on your team, and it doesn't pressure any of the aforementioned Pokemon at all.

So to add more wallbreaking power to your team, I think you should run Life Orb Swords Dance Garchomp > Choice Scarf Garchomp. The Life Orb allows Garchomp to 2HKO the Unaware users in Quagsire and Clefable, which both wall your M-Gallade. Alongside dual STAB, you can run Fire Fang in the last slot to hit Skarmory hard, or Stealth Rock depending on whether you opt to run Nasty Pass Celebi or just support Celebi (i'll get to that later).

For a new Scarfer, I think you should run Scarf Heatran > Life Orb Heatran. This grants you a new revenge killer with great resistances that can take on / revenge threats to your team such as both Zard formes, Weavile, Serperior, Tornadus-T, M-Pinsir, and more.

Your team is very weak to Bisharp, which can OHKO your entire team at +2 once Stealth Rock are up due to your lack of a Dark resist. Seeing as though Scarf Heatran + Celebi check virtually everything Rotom-W does, I think you should run RestTalk + Life Orb Keldeo > Rotom-Wash. Rest grants you more longevity for checking M-Gyarados, Feraligatr, Bisharp, and Weavile, all of which are very threatening to your team once they start setting up.

Lastly, I think you should run defensive Celebi > offensive Celebi since an offensive variant doesn't benefit your team much, and defensive investment helps you take on M-Medicham, Azumarill, and M-Lopunny better, all of which are very annoying for your team to play against. You can either just run Stealth Rock > Earth Power on your current set, or run Nasty Plot + Baton Pass which helps in a few different ways. NastyPass Celebi has great synergy with this team due to a lot of Celebi switch-ins such as Bisharp, Scizor, Tornadus-T, etc are all weak to both Heatran and Keldeo, granting you a hard hit on something once you pass the +2 SpA boost. Nasty Plot in general in pretty good on this team to allow you to take on Calm Mind users such as Manaphy, Suicune, and Slowbro, but by running Nasty Pass on Celebi, you have to forgo Fire Fang on Garchomp, making it harder for your offensive core to take on Skarmory.

You can try out both and see which one you prefer.

In short:

Life Orb Swords Dance Garchomp > Choice Scarf Garchomp

Choice Scarf Heatran > Life Orb Heatran

RestTalk Keldeo > Rotom-W

Nasty Pass / Support Celebi > Offensive Celebi

Sets

Celebi @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 156 Def / 84 SpD / 20 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Giga Drain
- Thunder Wave
- Stealth Rock
- Recover

Celebi @ Leftovers
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 248 HP / 152 Def / 108 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Nasty Plot
- Giga Drain
- Baton Pass
- Recover

Keldeo-Resolute @ Life Orb
Ability: Justified
EVs: 16 HP / 240 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Rest
- Sleep Talk
- Secret Sword
- Scald

Heatran @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Flash Fire
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Fire Blast
- Earth Power
- Flash Cannon
- Stone Edge

Garchomp @ Life Orb
Ability: Rough Skin
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Outrage
- Earthquake
- Swords Dance
- Fire Fang / Stealth Rock

Hope i was able to help!

 

[bobee42]

Oh man. Thanks Albacore and celes! Your suggestions are great. I'm testing them out, along with some of my own ideas they triggered.

You guys rock!