XY Ubers Ubers Balance

[oryxslayer]

So, In light of Mega Rayquaza being banned, I decided to try out my original ubers team on the ladder. I decided to not use it before because it got ran through by sd mega rayquaza. Now that he is banned, the team is actually doing incredibly well so I decided to post an RMT for it.

The Team:
Primal Groudon

Groudon-Primal @ Red Orb
Ability: Desolate Land
EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Fire Punch
- Stone Edge
- Precipice Blades
- Rock Polish
The first member of my team is primal groudon. He is my main sweeper and can tear through teams with little to no effort. My set is the standard rock polish set, with stone edge over dragon claw to hit things like lugia and ho-oh. The ev spread is fairly standard, except for the max speed, which I use to speed creep other primal groudons and ohko them with precipice blade, as well as ohkoing primal kyogre after stealth rocks.

Zekrom

Zekrom @ Choice Scarf
Ability: Teravolt
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Bolt Strike
- Volt Switch
- Dragon Claw
- Sleep Talk
Next comes Zekrom. He is my main revenge killer, and is my backup scarf/primal kyogre counter. He is also used to check ho-oh and break lugias. Volt switch is used for momentum and dragon claw is chosen over outrage because xerneas. Sleep talk is used for my darkrai check. EVs are fairly straightforward.

Mega Mewtwo Y

Mewtwo @ Mewtwonite Y
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Psystrike
- Shadow Ball
- Ice Beam
- Aura Sphere
Mega Mewtwo Y is my go-to special attacker. On my team with a heavy physical bias and no way of healing burns, a special attacker was required, and once I learned you could run megas with primals, mewtwo fit the bill. His powerful attacks can do heavy damage, 2hko/ohkoing most of the ubers tier. He is also another check for darkrai and can outspeed and 2hko with aura sphere and is never koed by unboosted dark pulse.

Ferrothorn

Ferrothorn @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Iron Barbs
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 88 Def / 164 SpD
Relaxed Nature
IVs: 0 Spe
- Leech Seed
- Stealth Rock
- Protect
- Gyro Ball
Ferrothorn is so underrated in ubers in my opinion. He is an amazing hazard setter, and is a general pain for physical attackers like opposing zekrom, e killer arceus, and most importantly, m kangaskhan. It is so hilarious to watch a kangaskhan break itself on ferrothorn after going for fake out and taking about 57%. Gyro ball is used for his attacking move and leech seed/protect for heals.

Arceus-Ground

Arceus-Ground @ Earth Plate
Ability: Multitype
EVs: 252 HP / 132 Def / 108 SpA / 16 Spe
Timid Nature
- Judgment
- Will-O-Wisp
- Defog
- Roar
You may be wondering why I chose arceus ground over the better support arceus types like fairy or ghost. The biggest and maybe only reason is because of Primal Groudon. This arceus's spread has been specifically designed to beat primal groudon. He has enough speed with the timid nature to outspeed all nonboosted primal dons and has enough spatk to get a guaranteed ohko on groudon no matter what. The 252 hp evs are standard and the rest is dumped into defense to live groudon's precipice blades and fire punches better. Will-o-wisp is very nice against lugia and can cripple other physical attackers. Roar is for set up sweepers and defog is used because of my next guy.

Ho-Oh

Ho-Oh @ Life Orb
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 248 HP / 208 Atk / 52 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Fire
- Brave Bird
- Earthquake
- Roost
My last Poke is ho-oh. He is the reason i run defog on arceus. He is my geoxern check and does a good job of beating most special attackers. Ho-oh is also useful for bringing down opposing steel types if primal groudon goes down. The spread is fairly standard, with roost being chosen over sub for more immediate recovery.

Importable: http://pastebin.com/vBZM22Ln

Thanks for taking a glance at my team, please rate if you have any suggestions. Thanks. :D

 

[Lemonade]

Hey there, cool team. Don't have too much time for a rate but is there any reason for the 88 Defense on Ferro? From my calcs it doesn't save you from any 2HKOes or OHKOes (+2 LO EQ is still a 2hko because no Lefties, P-Don Prec Blades still 2hkoes though you wouldn't usually use Ferro vs it, Kanga with Low Kick still 2hkoes, etc.) Overall max SpDef is better especially because Ferro has good resists.

 

[CallMeSerious]

The spread on Primal Groudon is less than optimal. You don't need that much speed investment, cuz +2 Speed is actually a huge increase, and at +2 you are wasting the extra speed investment.

I'm gonna copy a spread that Steeljackal<3 came up with:

Groudon-Primal @ Red Orb
Ability: Desolate Land
EVs: 244 Atk / 200 SpD / 64 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Rock Polish
- Precipice Blades
- Dragon Claw
- Stone Edge / Overheat

"The EV spread might seem a little strange but bear with me while I explain it. Outspeeding Scarf Terrakion at +2 Speed is a bad benchmark since it hasn't been used on a real team since BW2. Scarf Palkia is a bad benchmark for the same reason; the base 99 scarfer Speed tier with Genesect, Yveltal, and Xerneas in it is also bad since Genesect and Scarf Yveltal are incredibly uncommon while Xerneas is never max speed (and can't touch you anyway). But the base 90 Speed tier is home to Zekrom and Kyogre, and Scarf Xerneas still creeps to be just a little faster than these. 56 Speed is what Groudon needs to be faster than 252 Speed neutral-natured (good) scarfers at +2 Speed, 60 is to be faster than Xerneas, and 64 is just creep for if Xerneas tries to be faster than you. It can get away with this because it only needs 244 Attack Adamant max to always KO 4 HP / 0 Def Kyogre with Precipice Blades after Stealth Rock. The remaining EVs are put in Special Defense as opposed to HP so as to check Geomancy Xerneas better. Because I like to live on the edge, I made a Groudon set that has a massive 6.3% chance to get OHKO'd by Geomancy Xerneas' 70% accurate +2 Focus Blast after Stealth Rock. I have Dragon Claw as a main slash because I feel like Latis and Giratina-O are too common not to run it. Stone Edge and Overheat can hit different stuff depending on a team's needs even though I really feel that Stone Edge is more useful overall. Overheat's targets (Skarmory, Ferrothorn, etc) shouldn't be staying in on Primal Groudon they don't know anyway and are much less common than Stone Edge's targets (Ho-Oh, Yveltal, etc).

"If you want to run Earthquake like a pansy and possibly lose to Geomancy Xerneas when your Extreme Killer or Rayquaza doesn't KO it after an Earthquake, simply remove the speedcreep and put it back in Attack."

Speed creeping other Primal Groudon probably isn't a good benchmark because you really aren't supposed to switch in your own PDon on an opposing Pdon anyway. If he switches in on you, you'll most likely end up gaining the upper hand by landing a Precipice Blades first or getting to set up with Rock Polish (which means you'll outspeed him anyway, regardless of the EV investment).


Your Mewtwo set is also less than optimal, Aura Sphere is a weak choice (in case you didn't know, its base power got reduced to 80 in Gen VI). If you want to run Fighting type coverage you should probably stick with Focus Blast. Speaking of coverage, I'm not a big fan of four attack Special Mewtwo, because its coverage gets redundant. You should probably go with either Focus Blast + Shadow Ball or Fire Blast + Ice Beam. The fourth moveslot can go to either Taunt or Calm Mind. If you think Mega Mewtwo Y hits hard now, imagine how it would do with +1; on the other hand, Taunt is such an incredible support tool on a Pokemon as fast as Mewtwo: one of the few Taunt users that actually outspeeds support Arceus forms, stopping Recover or Will-O-Wisp/Toxic or Defog right in their tracks. With Taunt, Mewtwo can also beat Lugia very easily, so you don't have to rely on Zekrom to beat it.


Regarding Arceus Ground: it is your only safe switch in to Primal Groudon right now. I mean Ho-Oh will wall PDon that lacks Rock type coverage, but most PDons do and it's not safe for Ho-Oh to stay in or switch in on an unknown Pdon set. Same goes with Ferrothorn, which must fear Fire type STAB under the Sun, something that Pdon likes to run as well. Now regarding Arceus Ground, how reliable is it as a switch-in?

Primal Groudon 252+ Precipice Blades vs. 252/108 Arceus Ground: 274-324 (61.7 - 72.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

This is a huge chunk. Which means if you switch in Groundceus once into PDon's Precipice Blades, and then PDon switches out, then the next time his offensive Primal Groudon comes in, you will have no safe switch in, period.

Now the band-aid solution is to run Recover over Roar on it, to allow Groundceus to repeatedly switch into PDon. In fact, I think it's absolutely critical that you make this change. There are other options however, if you want to explore them:

Giratina-Origin is a Defogger, a reliable Ekiller check and a decent PYogre switch in if running mixed bulk, it also checks Primal Groudon very well, resisting / is immune to both of PDon's STABs and takes neutral from Rock type coverage, so that can replace Ferrothorn. You can then run a support Arceus form with Recover and Judgment, but replace Defog with Stealth Rock. I think Ground might still be okay here to further threaten PDon. You should probably run Will-O-Wisp as well, or if you feel is redundant with Giratina's W-o-W then Toxic or T-Wave are both acceptable.

Or: the Lati@s are also very capable Defoggers. They can also check PYogre much better than Giratina-Origin, thank to Soul Dew giving them ridiculous Special bulk. Against Primal Groudon, again, Levitating Dragons, you get the idea. Lati@s also hit PDon and PYogre much harder than Giratina-O can, easily 2HKOing (at least) Primal Groudon with Soul Dew Draco Meteor, and 2HKOing offensive variants of Pyogre with Psyshock. They also have reliable recovery in Roost, compared to Gira, and Healing Wish / Memento utility when they are low, compared to Gira. But if you replace Ferrothorn with them, you do open a hole to Ekiller. So you need to run something like support Arceus-Ghost, Arceus-Rock or Arceus-Steel with Judgment, Recover, Will-O-Wisp and SR over Defog to check Ekiller and provide hazard support.

Both of these options give you additional vulnerability to Yveltal and Darkrai. Also, it'll take away your Dragon type sponge. So I'm gonna suggest, if you decide to go with either of the two options above, to run Scarf Xerneas with Moonblast, Megahorn, Focus Blast and Sleep Talk over Scarf Zekrom. Zekrom's niche is getting squeezed quite a bit with the ubiquity of PDon. Xerneas absorbs Dragon (further limits opposing Zekrom along with your own PDon), is a good switch in to Yveltal, especially physically defensive ones (with Foul Play, defensive Yveltal actually has a chance of beating 208 Atk Ho-Oh), and checks Darkrai even better than Zekrom. Although Moonblast is resisted by PDon, it deals okay damage on PDon's weaker special side, so if it's weakened enough, Scarf Xerneas can actually power through it.

 

[oryxslayer]

Hi guys, thanks for the rates.

Lemonade, I don't really know, I kinda just took the sety from smogon lol, so I don't really know why the defense is there.

Callmeserious, I might try out the primal groudon spread, however, if that spread is common, I lose the speed creep my groudon has allowing it to ko opposing groudons and kyogre. I might try the moveset, but, I don't really like not having a secondary stab, which actually does more than precipice blades most of the time. I don't really see a need for a special attack on primal groudon when ubers is not a very wall filled/overly physically defensive tier. You have lugia, giratina, deoxys-d, ferrothorn, the rare chansey, and a few support arceus/strange sets. None of those pokemon show me a reason to run overheat over fire punch, except maybe ferrothorn to avoid iron barbs. Personally, I think that overheat kinda would work better on a non rock polish set, due to the lack of reusability. Also, what you said about speed creeping groudon being a bad benchmark, I don't directly switch primal groudon in, that's arceus-ground's job first. If primal groudon gets a ko, my own groudon can revenge it easier than the rest of my team. With mewtwo, I am really opposed to running focus blast, and I am aware of the nerf it got. For me, focus blast's horrid acccuracy is a clincher and I will always choose aura sphere over it. I will however, try switching out aura sphere and trying the fireblast/ice beam combo you suggested, while running taunt (preferred since I have no other taunt users). The reason why I will switch aura sphere out is that those secondary moves do get the 2hko on most darkrai, which is what aura sphere was doing. With Arceus-groudon, I probably will switch out roar for recover, as the only setup sweeper that I see besides rock polish pgroudon which gets killed by arceus, is xerneas, who never geomancy's on arceus ground for fear of phazing. I am also very opposed to removing ferrothorn, because of his ability to damage extremekiller and that he is the one thing stopping a m kangaskhan running sucker punch from running through my team. I am also opposed to getting rid of zekrom for xerneas, as xerneas is not a suitable way to beat kyogre's if primal groudon goes down, and without zekrom, I get destroyed by them after losing primal groudon (ferrothorn can't take water spouts/origin pulses and stall it out). Giratina-O is a check to e killer, but not as good as ferro in my opinion for that, as if it switches in after arceus has an sd up, giratina gets murdered by shadow force. Thanks for all the suggestions, and while I may put in some of them, others just don't suit me that much.

Thanks again guys for the rates!

 

[oryxslayer]

Thank you for the rates, sorry for being rude to the others. I will try out you version of the team as it is radically different from my team and I will see how it works. If it is better, I will replace my team. If it is worse, I won't. Sorry once again for being rude, and thanks for the suggestions.

EDIT: So, I was testing your suggested team in the 1400-1500 rank area on the ubers ladder, and, while the team looked good, I found it was incredibly slow stat wise, and basically auto lost against well played rayquazas and mega kangaskhans. The team also has no real switch ins to an offensive primal groudon packing stone edge, as everything is either ohkoed or 2hokes by one. That said, I went about 1-10 w/l with the team. The team you suggested was just unfortunately not that great, and while your suggestions did have merit, and your team ideas seemed sound, I think I will be staying with my old team. Thanks for the suggestions either way :)

 

[PISTOLERO]

Steel keeps hijacking me, this is the third rate he has gotten to before me :(

I agree with the changes already suggested, Scarf Zekrom is absolutely awful this generation (it was kindof bad in XY too but noone wanted to admit it). Scarf Xerneas works nicely, but you must run Recover on Arceus-Ground so that it can switch into Primal Groudon better. Defog + Wisp is also huge Ho-Oh bait so i would recommend you look into Earthquake + Stone Edge + Defog + recover

 

[oryxslayer]

Hey Pistolero, thanks for the suggestions. I will try the team out with scarfed xerneas and see how it does. I will also try the arceus ground set you recommended. Thanks for the rate.