#14001500
Hello everyone, most know me for actually playing GSC but today I'll be showing a team that has been spread a lot without my consent by a user who doesn't have the ability to understand that sharing other person's team shouldn't be done without asking them.
I'll make this short since the team I'm presenting today was specifically built for a player I was facing in UUPL 4: reachzero.
Team building process
When looking at his available data, I saw he was fond of very fat teams with annoying setup sweepers, so my goal was to abuse that as much as possible. Thus, I decided to create a team with Calm Mind Roar Suicune since I could always go into a setup war with whatever booster he had, then phaze them out.
The next step was to have a method to not do literally nothing with Suicune the moment it had to Rest (thanks to BW sleep mechanics), so Umbreon was the next Pokemon to add. It provided Heal Bell as well as Wish support, making it an ideal partner for a variety of situations.
Now I needed entry hazards to abuse Suicune shuffling everything around. Here comes the difficult part. I had two options: Either go full spike stack with a spin blocker on top of it or decide to only run Stealth Rock and Toxic Spikes, with the latter making spinners' life awful by poisoning them. I preferred the latter over the former and started to look into the possible hazard setters.
The ideal case for these two slots would be to cover some threats I hadn't covered yet, e.g. a Shaymin switch in or a Fighting resistance that could hurt Heracross back. I decided upon Bronzong and Nidoqueen, both offering what I was looking for. It also freed Nidoqueen up to not have to run both hazards.
The next slot was essential, as I needed actual hazard removal to not be overwhelmed by opposing hazard stack. Hazard removal options in this tier are quite limited; not wanting to have two Electric weaknesses on my team I decided to go for Hitmontop in this slot. It does work quite nicely on this team, since not only is it here to be able to spin away any entry hazards on my side of the field, but it also offers a way to beat Curse Snorlax 1v1.
I needed to find the last member of the team, which needed to address the issue of of having absolutely nothing for Sableye or any kind of Taunt user, as well as Togekiss, the worst enemy of all existing stall teams. The only thing that made sense was to run Zapdos on the last slot; this wouldn't have solved my issue with Taunt users until I sifted through its movepool, where I found out it has access to a very specific move that can help me beat any Taunt user faster than it.
And thus the team was created.
The squad
Suicune @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 196 Def / 60 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Rest
- Roar
- Calm Mind
- Scald
This is the most basic existing Suicune set. There is not much to explain here, except for the EVs. I run 60 Speed EVs to be able to outspeed opposing Roar Suicunes as well as being able to outspeed a -1 non-Scarf Victini to pick up a suprise KO in case they stay in, believing they still outspeed me. There is not much else to say here.
Other options:
- More Speed: You could always run way more Speed on suicune if you feel that only outspeeding -1 non-Scarf Victini isn't enough. The next benchmark could be to outspeed minimum speed base 100s, e.g. bulky Mews.
Umbreon @ Leftovers
Ability: Synchronize
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD
Calm Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Wish
- Protect
- Heal Bell
- Foul Play
This is THE Umbreon set. There is not much to say here again, since all it does is act as a cleric and support the team by passing Wishes in case it is needed.
Bronzong @ Leftovers
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Protect
- Stealth Rock
- Toxic
- Earthquake
The Stealth Rocker of the team. Pretty standard set. It's the team's second special wall and helps me fend off some annoying Pokemon. Toxic allows me to cripple certain special attackers that would consider setting up on it like Togekiss or Cofagrigus, although Heal Bell variants of Togekiss can still beat it. It also helps me to cripple Blastoise that lack Refresh by letting me put a timer on them. Earthquake allows me to be able to keep Sub Calm Mind Raikou in check and overall allows me to chip certain stuff down (such as Fire-types that may try to come in on Bronzong), and with Protect I have a good method of scouting Choiced moves and responding accordingly.
Other options:
- Gyro Ball > Protect: Simple change: You hit flying types and ground immunities (Flygon, Crobat) with neutral damage now.
- Zen Headbutt > Protect: Still hits the same targets as above, with the bonus of being able to deal super effecitve damage against Crobat and Roserade.
- Skill Swap > Protect: You hate running into Xatu? Run Skill Swap, which grants you the ability to set Rocks up against it.
Nidoqueen @ Black Sludge
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 248 HP / 176 Def / 84 Spe
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic Spikes
- Earth Power
- Flamethrower
- Ice Beam
The primary Fighting resistance as well as Toxic Spike setter. I run Sheer Force over Poison Point simply due to the increased damage output I can achieve with it.
Now let's take a deeper look at the coverage move I chose. Flamethrower's main purpose is to fend off Heracross, but on top of that I also hit Bronzong, Ferroseeds and Magnet Rise Cobalions. Unfortunately, SD Earthquake Heracross will still come out on top in this exchange, but later we'll see the second check to that set.
Ice Beam offers me the option to deal damage to every Flying type roaming the tier, be it Zapdos, Xatu, Crobat or any other Flying type that could bother me, as well as hitting Flygon trying to be cheeky and pivoting in on an expected Earth Power.
To explain the EV spread a little bit: I wanted to maintain as much bulk as possible as well as still be able to outspeed minimum to 16 Speed EV Gligars so I can Ice Beam them before they can do anything. This also helps me outrun every single Pokemon sitting at base 85 Speed and running no to very little investment, especially in situations where I can trade Nidoqueen by getting either chip damage off or setting up Toxic Spikes.
Other options:
- Taunt > Ice Beam: Lets you shut down slow Pokemon like Umbreon and others.
- Dragon Tail > Ice Beam: A second phazer with the ability to also chip the target in front of it.
- 132 Speed EVs > 84: Lets you hit 221 speed, which ensures you outspeed -1 non-Scarf Victini.
Hitmontop @ Leftovers
Ability: Intimidate
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def
Careful Nature
- Toxic
- Bulk Up
- Low Kick
- Rapid Spin
Time to introduce the hazard removal of the team. This is a pretty uncommon set and I don't ever recall having seen it at all but it has good reasons to be used here. Before running Bulk Up and Low Kick, I used to have Close Combat and honestly, I don't remember the second move anymore, but it didn't help either in beating Curse lax, which I realised in the game against reachzero back then. Luckily he didn't have it and thus I was taking a look into Hitmontop's movepool and stumbled across Bulk Up and Low Kick. These two moves help a lot in beating a big threat to the team. Then, I had one more move to add to its set - Toxic, so I can get a Spin off against Ghost types that have a grounded Poison alongside them, a combination which would otherwise make it difficult to keep hazards off my side of the field.
Other options:
- Foresight > Toxic: Ensures you can get a guaranteed spin off against Ghosts. Can come handy in some games, can also end up being dead weight in others.
- Max Special Defense > physical Defense: It can be nice to tank some special hits better, especially in combination with Toxic. In my game against reachzero, I actually used max Special Defense by accident, resulting in the -1 Rhyperior dealing 40% with Earthquake.
Zapdos @ Leftovers
Ability: Pressure
EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 30 HP / 2 Atk / 30 Def / 30 SpA / 30 SpD
- Hidden Power [Flying]
- Charge Beam
- Thunderbolt
- Roost
Here is another big key to winning games against various teams, especially opposing stall or bulky squads. Thunderbolt and Roost are pretty self-explanatory, but alongside them we see two rare options on Zapdos. Let's start with the easier one: Hidden Power Flying. Since I only have two Fighting resistances, and one of them loses the moment Heracross has Earthquake, I needed a backup check to it. Zapdos does a perfect job in that role! It's fast enough to outspeed any non-Scarf Hera, and HP Flying is useful for also hitting other targets, such as Roserade.
Now we come to the real dealbreaker: Charge Beam. As mentioned in the introduction of this RMT, I needed a way to beat Togekiss as well as Taunt users (Sableye, Mew, etc...) and there I saw that Zapdos gets access to this wonderful move. It can't be Taunted or switched around, unlike Metal Sound. It is very reliable for getting a boost 70% of the time, and the moment your Zapdos is at +1, you start to scare the shit out of your opponent. It doesn't get walled by certain passive Pokemon you may find yourself otherwise unable to break with it, like Umbreon. Next to Suicune, this is our second setup sweeper, with the difference that it also deals damage with the move.
It's a pretty simple EV spread, max Speed and max HP to have the ability to speed tie opposing base 100s while being able to tank hits.
Other options:
- 252 HP / 80 XXX / 176 Spe > Max HP / Max Speed: If you don't consider speed tying opposing base 100s necessary, you can free some speed EVs to move them somewhere else. 176 speed EV's with timid as nature allows you to outspeed base 90s like Roserade and have 80 EVs left to reinvest into whatever stat you wish. Be it just 80 into Def or SpAtk, this can be toyed around a lot with.
Replays
Here are some replays of various people using it in tournament games, including the one game I had against reachzero.
Valentine vs. PDC - UUPL 4 - Stole it off a test game vs. Accelgor who used it. That way my team won twice in the same week.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5uu-164855
me vs. reachzero - UUPL 4 - The actual first time I used it and I believe also the last time.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5uu-164964
ChillShadow vs. r0ady - UU Snake
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-gen5uu-534119
DnB vs. martha - UUFPL
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen5uu-1313326751-tk5wv1gqymrnvextdt809yyodbf5qs1pw
Closing words
There is not much else to say about this team anymore, I used it only once since the day I built it and that's really about it. I'm glad having seen it be successful when used by others and am happy about having crafted this squad, which could be perhaps better but did its job when I needed it to do it the most.
Also thanks to all the guys (especially my guys from #14001500) I've used to play this tier with back in the day. I had a lot of fun laddering alongside you and toying around in this great tier.
Thanks for reading this! Thanks to my brother BKC for checking my spelling errors!
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