Lock n' Load

[forthwright]

This is my first RMT thread, so please cut me a little slack if it's not completely perfect :D

I start most of builds off with with one key goal: What are OU's current threats and how do I effectively shut them down. Sounds difficult? It is. It's darn near impossible to counter every OU Pokemon. I would always try making a team with limited success. But then I read an article in the recent issue of The Smog that talked about Weather. I enjoyed it because it was particularly helpful to me. I like building teams based around OU, OU is pretty much just weather, therefore I should build an anti-weather team. The final product ended up not being pure anti-weather, but it does threaten a few weather abusers, namely Excadrill.

Team Summary

The Core

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Normally Excadrill is a terror to play against. It was the main thing holding me back from winning 20-30 percent of my matches. Then I decided not to be stupid, and to have counters for the mole on my team. In my opinion, these two are quite possibly the greatest counters to it. Conkeldurr hits hard with SE priority and Gliscor can take Rock Slides as if they were pebbles being hurled at a tank. They aren't just for the Sandman; they're so great for blasting through teams when their counters are taken care of.

Team Analysis

Conkeldurr @Flame Orb

Guts

4 HP / 252 Attack / 252 Special Defense

Adamant

~Bulk Up
~Drain Punch
~Mach Punch
~Payback

I usually send in Conkeldurr out against a wall or something using Scald that isn't a threat so that I can get the Flame Orb to activate for free essentially. After he's burned, he hits a a massive 624 Attack. I'm usually able to even get a Bulk Up in. Mach Punch becomes a OHKO against Excadrill even without the Bulk Up. Drain Punch is there for survivability and because it's more powerful than Mach Punch. If I can predict a switch correctly I can get a free Drain Punch healing turn. Payback is useful for Reuniclus and Slowbro and hits quite a bit for neutral damage. Paired with its Fighting STABs, it gets near-perfect coverage. As for the 252 Special Defense EV's, I realized that he needs them to survive against certain Shadow Balls/Scalds and the occasional non-boosted Psychic move aimed at me that I don't feel like switching out of. With Bulk Up I don't even need Defense EV's.

Gliscor @Toxic Orb

Poison Heal

252 HP / 252 Attack / 4 Defense

Impish

~Swords Dance
~Earthquake
~Ice Fang
~Fire Fang

Woah! A Gliscor set without Protect or Substitute?! Not even Taunt?! Yeah, I freaking hate stall in any shape, way, or form. Protecting for 2-3 turns in a row is stupid. SubStalling is stupid. Fight me, don't drain me~. Anyway, this is my own set that has proven to work well for me. All it needs is one Swords Dance and it'll start its sweep. EQ is obligatory STAB, et cetera. Ice Fang is for Dragons, mostly ones that are 4x weak to it. Fire Fang should be fairly obvious because Ferrothorn would wall Gliscor otherwise. As for Gliscor's main purpose, it can switch into Excadrill's EQ (or even Rock Slide, but EQ is the preferred move to switch into, of course) and threaten it even without a Swords Dance.

Ferrothorn @Rocky Helmet

128 HP / 252 Defense / 128 Special Defense 0 Speed IV

Sassy

~Stealth Rock
~Spikes
~Gyro Ball
~Power Whip

I know I needed a Water-resist and I also know that Ferrothorn has always been such an amazingly bulky Pokemon with all the right resists. She can even fight back with STAB Gyro Ball and 40 Speed (with a 0 Speed IV and a hindering nature anyway). I have Power Whip as well because of Quagsire and Gastrodon (mostly Gastrodon). Of course, this set set gets all messed up by Heatran, but I don't plan on keeping her in against Heatran, so that threat is irrelevant. I'll just switch Slowbro into the usual Lava Plume.

Haxorus @Choice Scarf

Mold Breaker

4 HP / 252 Attack / 252 Speed

Adamant

~Outrage
~Dual Chop
~Earthquake
~Brick Break

Haxorus acts as both a sweeper and revenge killer. In order to set up a Haxorus sweep all I have to for the most part is take out the Steel-types and highly defensive Pokemon on the opponent's team. Once there aren't any Steels/walls left I simply smash through as many Pokemon as I can with non-resisted Outrage. Basically, this is my mid-to-late-game sweeper that acts as a revenge killer during the early turns. What's really fun is when the other team doesn't have any Steel types. That makes Haxorus' life a lot easier.

Gengar @Life Orb

4 HP / 252 Special Attack / 252 Speed

Timid

~Shadow Ball
~Focus Blast
~Thunderbolt
~Hidden Power [Fire]

I will only use offensive Gengar. SubSplit sets or whatever else are really irritating to me. This thing has Base 130 Special Attack; USE IT. DON'T WASTE IT. Gengar is an excellent counter to Tyranitar, Heatran, and Ferrothorn. However, Tyranitar will Crunch/Pursuit to OHKO Gengar if Focus Blast misses or doesn't KO it and Ferrothorn has Gyro Ball. The other thing this set has going for it is that Gengar isn't seen with Life Orb as often as it used to be. The opponent might predict Substitute or Will-o-Wisp or some other support move, but would end up getting blasted in the face and dying because they stayed in or switched to the wrong Pokemon.

Slowbro @Leftovers

Regenerator

252 HP / 252 Defense / 4 Special Attack

Bold

~Calm Mind
~Surf
~Ice Beam
~Flamethrower

I needed something that resisted Fire/Water/Fighting/Ice, and Slowbro was my choice. I didn't want to play this Pokemon like it normally would be used, but I still wanted to retain some elements of the bulkier sets. This is what I came up with. After Calm Mind, Slowbro reaches 356 Special Attack, which is fairly respectable, and it also reaches 294 Special Defense which allows for some mixed walling capabilities. Surf is a great STAB and is chosen over Scald for the little extra *umph* that Surf has. Ice Beam is for Dragons mostly (again, mainly for 4x weak ones) and for general coverage. Flamethrower is for Ferrothorn, although I might change it to Fire Blast seeing as it's bulky enough to handle missing once or twice.



Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated. This is my first meaty posting on Smogon, so I hope I did it right~ Thank you very much for reading this and possibly helping me out.
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[New World Order]

I agree with you, Protect on Gliscor is gay unless you run Toxic alongside it. But why would you not run Taunt on SD Gliscor? Its the move that allows Gliscor to beat Conkeldurr, who would otherwise Bulk Up in your face and proceed to maul you. I don't know what you mean by Taunt being a stalling move. If anything, its strictly a wallbreaking move, as it prevents opposing walls from recovering/ statusing/ phazing you. The fact that Taunt is predominantly carried by offensive pokemon is a testament to that.

Your team also appears to have difficulty against the grass/ fire dominated sun teams, who hit everyone on your team hard bar Haxorus, who loses because of its frailness anyways. I suggest replacing Haxorus with a CB Dragonite, who can not only act as a sun check, but also fares decently against rain and can act as a revenge killer with Extremespeed. This is especially useful since you appear to have no answer for Thundurus.

Dragonite @ Choice Band
Multi Scale
Adamant
252 Atk/ 252 Spe/ 4 SpD
Outrage
Extremespeed
Fire Punch
Waterfall

 

[Lamppost]

Hey zekuhryuh, nice team you have here, but i have a few changes that should make it a lot better.

First off, i have a few small changes that should give the team a little bit more of an edge. On gliscor, i know you said you don't really like stall at all, but having taunt or protect on gliscor doesn't really fall into that category. For that reason i'm going to suggest switching protect over fire fang on gliscor. This helps you scout what move the opponent is going to make, as well as healing you thanks to poison heal. I would also change the EVs to 252hp/172def/84spe so you can set up and beat things like conkeldurr.

Another moveset change i think you should make is on your slowbro. A calm mind slowbro is not being used to its full potential without slack off, so i'm suggesting you change the moveset to calm mind/scald/psychic/slack off on slowbro. Use psychic and scald to abuse slowbro's dual stabs. If you use scald it can burn physical attacking threats making you pretty much invincible after a few calm minds.

The other thing i noticed was your latios/latias cm/specs weakness. Sure, you have haxorus to revenge kill them but all they have to do is switch out, then come back in to take out another one of your pokemon or set up. Since latios/latias aren't weak to stealth rocks and immune to spikes they can both come in a bunch of times, and if they're running a cm set they can just recover the damage off anyway. Because of this i'm suggesting scarf tyranitar over scarf haxorus. Ttar can obviously trap them so gliscor and conkeldurr can sweep easier. scarf tar also doesn't leave you open to tornadus / thundurus after taking out scarf haxorus. Here's the set:

Tyranitar @ Choice scarf | Sand Stream
Jolly | 4HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe
-Stone Edge
-Crunch
-Pursuit
-Superpower

Hope i helped!

 

[Jirachee]

Hey there,

Offensive Volcarona will be very difficult for your team to deal with. At +1, it outspeeds and OHKO your whole team, while it can set up on all your team members bar Gengar and Haxorus, which are easily forced out anyway. This problem gets further : Sun teams in general will be extremely difficult to deal with. Venusaur is also able to wreck your team, but not as much as Volcarona if you're able to play intelligently around Sleep Powder. For these reasons I think that Heatran can be an ideal pokemon for your team. It's pretty much the best answer to Volcarona and Venusaur in the metagame, and it will be able to take these annoying Fire attacks aimed at Ferrothorn (watch out for Fighting moves though!). I think that Specially Defensive Heatran is the best set you could use. (It also helps you against HP Fire Latios, which is kinda annoying) :

Heatran

Heatran @ Leftovers
Calm
Flash Fire
EVs : 252 HP / 252 SpD / 4 Spe
-Lava Plume
-Toxic
-Roar
-Dragon Pulse

Another suggestion here : Since you don't carry Leech Seed on Ferrothorn, I suggest you change it's held item to Leftovers. In order to check powerful rain attackers like Rotom-W who will hurt you a lot with their boosted Hydro Pumps, it's always better to have extra recovery. That's my 10 cents.

Good luck!

 

[forthwright]

Thank you all for your suggestions. Since two of those suggestions say to replace Haxorus for 'X', I'll have to try them out seperately and see who works better for me. I brought my team here because I put a lot of thought into it but needed some fresh 'eyes', so to speak. Thank you all for the help! One thing of note: I'm keeping Fire Fang on Gliscor ;-) It works for me. I appreciate the thought, however! I'm going on PO now to test these new ideas, and will report the results.


edit: Well, I have some results from a week of testing. I have decided to keep Scarf T-Tar and Heatran, meaning Slowbro and Haxorus are out for now. I may fit in Dragonite in place of Gengar, but I'm not sure yet. All-in-all I had a fun time re-working the team and found all of your guys' advice quite helpful! Thanks a bunch for the help!