ORAS UU Zambie Threats, my go to oras squad (retired)

[jjoshcja]

Zambie Threats (Reload HO)

If you want a long drawn out intro detailing the intricacies of the metagame man are you in for a disappointment. I did build a team that exploited the crap out of common toppers teamstyles, it had cool sets, it had nifty synergy, it assumed people knew how to play this game, so I laddered with it... for about 20 minutes. Then I realized that the meta in UU is effectively "Be ignorant garbage" all the way from low ladder to the tippity top turned off my brain and slapped up a 5 minute team with some oldfag technology and laddered with it, got to 5th before the ladder completely liquefied my brain into a wonderful bendy straw drinkable slurry of hate. Came back to the team a few months later and I've been using it ever since, it's reliably peaked in the top 5 with stints in that swaggy #1 slot though as a rule it's nowhere near consistent enough to hold that slot. Retiring the team now so may as well give it a good and proper sendoff by updating this thingy. Also finally giving it a name.

The Team​

Shaymin @ Choice Specs
Ability: Natural Cure
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Healing Wish
- Seed Flare
- Earth Power
- Psychic

Good ole HW specsmin. Specs seed flare smashes through "resists" flat 2 hit koing everything bulky and not immune to grass or named roserade/crobat after a drop (ok blissy needs like 1 tick of prior damage, so sue me). You don't even need a drop to take out non fat resists. Healing wish lets min reload another poke on the team after it's blown all 8 sheer colds seed flares, Psychic kills crobat. Earth power smashes the obnoxious spam of AV/Spdef fires and steels on the ladder atm. Timid is because dragons.

Past that I just slapped specmin on the team because this is UU and starting off a team via scald switchin is generally a good plan. It also supports lucario, doublade, and tornadus as min is laughably good at smashing down birds/steels/fires, forcing switches, swapping in on the obvious waters, and luring in special walls on healing wish to force setup.

Lucario @ Life Orb
Ability: Justified
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Extreme Speed
- Stone Edge
- Close Combat
- Swords Dance

I have a shamin on the team so lets toss on a SD lucario! No really that was my thought process here. HW shamin both breaks down luke checks, offers setup, and lets me effectively run 2 lucarios with HW allowing good ole luke to break down his own checks and counters. As for the set itself, standard SD luke. I chose jolly to outrun base 80's, 86's, and entie. SD is SD if I need to explain why SD luke runs SD please go die. CC is stab and is the move that allows lucario to function as both a wallbreaker and a setup sweeper no reason not to run it here. Espeed allows luke to function as the teams main revenge killer hitting everything but ghosts, cobalion, and Maero for considerable damage. Stone edge is used as a nice neutral option, better power vs sabeley than crunch, similar MU vs colbur psychics, and it still smashes gyara, mence, and chandy. Sadly edge misses out on the nido's.

Tornadus @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 Spatk / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Hurricane
- Superpower
- Taunt
- Tailwind

This was originally Robin Williams tonadus but with the recent shifts in the metagame hurricane is for all intents and purposes a 70% acc ohko move, so yeah I'll spam it. Superpower hits the big 3 mons in UU not ohkoed/2 hit koed by hurricane after rocks while taunt shuts down shenanigans and preserves my bebbles. Tailwind is just a crisp "I win" button in the HO mirror with edge luke and HW shaymin can reload torn to send stall through rng hell. It's not perfect but very few mon's in UU have a solid MU vs stall and HO so that 70% is worth it.

Doublade @ Eviolite
Ability: No Guard
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spd
Adamant Nature
- Sacred Sword
- Shadow Sneak
- Iron Head
- Swords Dance

Meet lucario #3 doublade, at this point the team was safely in overload territory with lukemin and had an out to teams overpepared for that core via torn-I. So a bird switchin that also spinblocked, feeds on healing wishes, forces in more waters for shamin to feed on and helps luke overload cores is pretty damn nice. Doublade was originally a custom Spdef spread but with the number of obnoxious base 65 or slower mons in the tier it was worth going 252 speed for sanic iron head wins. Doublade is pretty great at working with min to overload luke counters and serve as a wincon in its own right with either SD or tailwind, also obligatory Maero check.

Swampert @ Swampertite
Ability: Damp
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Waterfall
- Power-Up Punch/Ice Punch
- Earthquake
- Rain Dance

I've been wanting to try out PuP Mpert for a while and the team badly needed both an electric immunity to completely dump on volturn alongside the multiple hard U-turn resists, a fire resist in general, and a good way to force in and wither floaty dragon things. Jolly allows pert to function decently outside of rain and outspeed those pesky 108 scarfs in rain. PuP boosts perts power to silly levels and allows pert to punish the unholy hell out of the free turns. Past that stabs are obvious and rain dance activates swim.

Aerodactyl @ Focus Sash
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Hasty Nature
- Taunt
- Stealth Rock
- Fire Blast
- Double-Edge/Stone edge

Standard lead aero, stops hazards with taunt, sets up bebbles, fire blasts physdef steels puttig them into a range where they are immediately unable to deal with shamin, luke, and torn. Double edge lets Aero kill itself to stop spins.

The team had no defog, no spin, no taunt. I wanted a lead that beat every other lead so the rest of the team could make my opponent spend the rest of the game asking "ok I can get rocks, spin, defog, etc....but at what cost?" Maero fit the bill. I generally do not sac this right off the bat unless I'm facing down galv webs or I see an opening where aero can fire blast to give the rest of the team free turns all day. Having death fodder or backup rocks/taunt is way too useful to pass up.

General threatlist:​

Shuckle: The mental herb webs lead is the friggin omega threat to this team. If you see this just go big from turn 1, it's not an unbeatable matchup thanks to torn-i + prio spam but it's pretty bad.

Floaty special dragons: The team aims to overload these hard but they're gonna dent you (unless your opponent is awful and feeds them to shaymin). Scarfdrie is a joke just hit it in the face, everything just lives from full. For LO variants force a draco or fodder aero and either RK or flat out set up on their faces. If you see both mence and hydra save aero for death fodder and set up a pup + RD on pert asap to wither them with waterfall.

Fire: Hit them hard, in the face. Is aero dead yet? No? Fodder it for the free switch. Do you need the mon to win the game? If not stay in and smash the hell out of that fire type. People also love to pretend fires threaten shamin, at all, ever. So spam flare they'll probably fodder it like an idiot.

Playing the team:
​

Fair warning: The team has strong points, namely that it's just plain fun to use, it has a lack of truly "unwinnable" match ups and can generate absolutely absurd amounts of offensive pressure, it was however not built for ease of use so buyer beware.

Unless you see a webs shuckle just lead aero, get rocks, stop hazards. Save Aero for fodder if you know you'll need it later. From there this team pivots around shamin and tornadus. Just double into min and nadus constantly until you run out of seed flares/nearly kill yourself with LO recoil, and then reload a threat to go for the win. Don't be afraid to go big for the mid to early game setup win, the team has enough redundancy that you can play completely balls to the wall in order to pressure out any and all free turns you're opponent offers up while flat out banking on rng by spamming 30% "I win" secondary effects.

It's worth noting that people just assume this squad runs lead aero so changing Dedge/stone edge and the Mpert/Maero swap is actually really useful in tournament/high ladder play strat as most teams that fare well against this setup are absolutely destroyed by 2 Hogg spread adamant hone claws Maeros.

Similarly NP celebi can be used over shaymin with the old spdef doublade and BU torn spreads spread for a better stall MU. While if zapdos ever drops down LO offensive zapdos with roost/volt/hp grass/heat wave is a very nice way of adding consistency to the team.

Importable (New version, recommended for ladder play)
Importable: (Old version)
Importable (Ruse M-Aero Version)
Importable (NP Celebi)
Importable (zapdos set)​

 

[nv]

I really like this team jjoshcja. Love the whole "5 minute" aspect of it while still building on an offensive backbone of SpecsMin and Lucario. Anyways, onto the rate!

• First off, I would suggest Dazzling Gleam / Earth Power > Hidden Power [Ice] / Psychic on Shaymin. You already have a solid Crobat check in Doublade so you don't really need to lure it out because so long as Stealth Rock is kept up, Crobat has a hard time Roosting as it gives a free +2 to Doublade. Dazzling Gleam also hits Hydreigon harder while also OHKOing Salamence after just the smallest bit of prior damage (one SR switchin or one round of Life Orb recoil).
• Second, I would suggest moving the 4 SpD EVs on Aerodactyl into Special Attack to allow Fire Blast hit a tad harder and you don't really need the bulk anyways since you are already running a Hasty nature.

A small rate, but nothing too glaring of a weakness that is "blatant and in your face" so congrats on a solid offensive team and hope my suggestions help! :)

 

[Kreme]

Hyper offense, my favorite. Anyhow, like NV I couldn't find too much of a glaring weakness as long as you played your cards right, as is the case with most, if not all hyper offense teams. Nevertheless onto the changes:

• First off, I highly recommend having Dazzling Gleam / Earth Power > Psychic / HP Ice for the reasons NV stated. A subjective change would be to try out Choice Scarf > Choice Specs on Shaymin to have a better matchup vs Heliolisk which can pretty much sweep through your team if it isn't weakened enough for Lucario and gains momentum etc aganist a good amount of the team, but then you lose your wallbreaking capabilities, so I suggest just trying it out for a bit and see how it goes. Scarf Shaymin also helps against Scarf Chandy which seems like a pretty big threat.
• Next, I recommend having Ice Punch > Power-Up Punch on Swampert, as the Dragons seem pretty annoying for this team and Salamence basically gets a free turn to smack something when up against Swampert, so it can be easily avoided this way. It also gives more immediate power against Hydreigon and I don't feel the boost is as needed considering you have Shaymin and Doublade which smack a lot of the walls.
• Lastly, I recommend having Brave > Adamant on Doublade, as it gives you minus Speed, which is better on Gyro Ball variants.

 

[jjoshcja]

Oh... doublade isn't brave, I should fix that.

Gleam/EP are bad on specsmin. In my experience they do not provide enough net gain to be worth clicking over flare or just doubling, ever.

Ice punch is certainly useable on mpert, this team generally prefers brute force but it's worth slashing it on.

 

[jjoshcja]

Figured I'd give an update on the team after over a year of use and 500ish games on the UU suspect ladder with this team (I'm lazy). Made a few changes to account for recent trends and drops but the squad composition is otherwise unchanged and consistently held down #2 with a reasonable stint at #1. It's retired now, mostly because I just want to use new things but overall I'm happy with the teams performance.

Updated OP with changes and importables, quick notes below.

Changes:

Lucario got swapped to jolly SD/CC/Stone Edge/Espeed
Shaymin picked up earth power over HP ice to better deal with random AV steels and fires
Pert tried out ice punch, it's booty do not use/10
Tornadus swapped to life orb 252 spatk/252 speed/4 atk superpower/hurricane/taunt/tailwind
Doublade is now 252 speed adamant iron head because death to base 65's and goign fast in tailwind is niiice

Conclusions: SD luke + HW is still absurd, LO torn eats the entire metagame, Pup pert has matchups where its either deadweight as a rain dance for torn, or it's just a 6-0 machine, ice punch just ruins its good MU's without actually breaking its checks and counters down.

Possible changes/tips for anyone brave enough to play the team:

NP celebi over min is usable and gives a better stall MU at a slight cost to your balance (lol)/HO MU, you can afford to run spdef doublade with celebi though, which is nice.
The team is known sadly and people will try to play around lead aero like it has no rock move, feel free to change dedge to stone edge on high ladder to better handle that sort of reckless play
Similarly you can juggle Npert and Maero to screw with people, both builds work nicely though I highly recommend lure Npert (hp elec/ice beam/eq) if you go with that setup to make lucario's life easier.
If zapdos ever drops again add 252 spatk/252+speed liforb zapdos @ heat wave/volt/hp grass/roost over torn its not as powerful but the consistency it brings is a godsend

If you see a magic bounce user on high ladder just politely trade rocks on turn one, the situation winds up neutral with good play on both sides regardless, dicking around just wastes turns you cannot afford to burn.
Hurricane spam is absurd in this meta and you can comfortable just spam it and win on averages, taunt and TW are both far more useful for this team than GK or heat wave, also GK just encourages bad play, do not add/10.
Do not run gleam min, it is absolute booty.
252 speed doublade outruns non scarf base 100's in tailwind
Set your gameplan from team preview, play as aggressively as you need to to get the wincons in place, big plays are fine but plan them out and do not predict, don't spare luke early game with the shaymin build cause healing wish and feel free to risk a scaldburn for a free +4 "I win". When you get a winning scenario stop, and lock in the win 100% and ride it out with no regard to mon count.
Alternately in a bad scenario/matchup, stop, good users know when you are on the ropes and play to suppress any win chance based on plays, just rely on flare drops, flinch, and hurricane confusion to save your ass, the chances of at least 2 of these 3 (or a relevant crit) happening is acceptable and will bring the game back to a neutral MU that you can actually play out of.