I think I might have been going for a bulky/balanced team here, if that's the right word to call it.
Diancie (Diancie-Mega) @ Diancite
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Moonblast
- Power Gem
- Earth Power
Role: Primary setup sweeper, secondary cleanerr
The first thing I wanted was a mega Diancie because this is my favorite mega pokemon. As a primary setup sweeper, this is one of the win cons of the team. Secondary cleaner is thanks to the natural speed at 350 and good attack/coverage. With Diancie before and after the mega evolution, she was built perfectly to act as a setup sweeper, with great bulk pre mega evolution, allowing your opponent to outspeed you and hit you with high defense while you calm mind up, and then clicking mega evolve to outspeed and boost your damage to start a sweep. Combined with magic bounce, this becomes hard to stop. Also, Diancie acts as a good dragon deterrent, easily breaking threats like Kommo-O and non scarfed Garchomp. EVs promote bulk for maximum value to calm mind and natural speed.
Araquanid (M) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Water Bubble
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Sticky Web
- Liquidation
- Leech Life
- Magic Coat
Role: Sticky webs lead, defensive pivot
I wasn't originally going for sticky webs in a team, but I decided to after seeing that Araquanid learned it alongside the fantastic benefits that I wanted to play him for. Fantastic bulk makes him able to be a hard switch in to counter Greninja and Heatran while threatening to OHKO both. The bulk serves against a variety of other mons and water bubble turns liquidation into a 2HKO for nearly everything that doesn't resist water or have high physical bulk. Magic coat allows him to work even better as a lead in practice, even being an anti-lead to bounce back taunts, toxic, and entry hazards. Since I decided to use sticky webs on the team, the team is supported even better by it. Diancie's already high natural speed with sticky webs is able to now outspeed the group of mons that have higher natural speed and a number of choice scarfers now. Breloom notably gets extremely dangerous with the ability to now outspeed a large group of mons and threaten spore or bullet seed. EVs promote bulk to act as a damage absorber and maximum damage for water bubble liquidation. The rocky helmet is the only thing I'm not 100% convinced to the value on.
Volcarona (F) @ Firium Z
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 248 HP / 204 Def / 56 Spe
Timid Nature
- Quiver Dance
- Flamethrower
- Bug Buzz
- Roost
Role: Secondary setup sweeper
As one of the later mons added to the team, I desperately needed a hard counter for Tapu Bulu, and something that could break things like magearna, scizor, ferrothorn, and a number of other mons that had fire weaknesses highlighted the value Volcarona gave to my team's matchups. I've been going for a more balanced/bulky team just out of enjoying the feeling of security I get from having even my win conditions able to take multiple hits, so I went with the standard fat moth set Volcarona. Heatran hard counters this set, but this weakness is handled by the previous two and next two mons on the team, so in practice Heatran is very rarely a problem to deal with. Volcarona acts as a secondary win condition being another setup sweeper, being able to pair nicely with Diancie by killing threats Diancie has trouble with like the aforementioned ferrothorn and scizor, with Diancie killing heatran and dragons that give Volcarona problems. Unfortunately, both of the primary win conditions are special attackers, giving a glaring Chansey weakness. Volcarona is the Z user on the team, and I chose Firium Z because I ran calculations vs bug buzz against the group of threats I currently think about with making the team, and flamethrower showed a much higher case of being able to OHKO threats than bug buzz.
Breloom (M) @ Black Belt
Ability: Technician
EVs: 40 HP / 252 Atk / 216 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Seed
- Mach Punch
- Spore
- Swords Dance
Role: Tertiary setup sweeper, revenge killer, cleaner
Breloom is another mon that I've always personally loved, and after testing, he's definitely still able to hold his own in OU. Technician mach punch makes him a great revenge killer and late game, cleaner for weakened mons. Spore is a soft-KO on many mons, and if Breloom gets up any number of SD's it becomes able to sweep teams, greatly aided by sticky webs. The EVs + black belt were my adjustment of the standard set. I dropped some speed because based on the current speed tiering list, the fastest relevant mon that breloom can invest for is max neutral speed scizor, so the rest of the speed didn't gain much besides 1 or 2 mons that I didn't consider worthwhile. This allows a bit more health, and black belt was chosen over life orb in combination to give Breloom longevity. The lack of LO recoil in the long run is something that is greatly underrated, and contributes a lot to Breloom's ability to support the team and act as a win condition that often times is my secondary win condition, beating out volcarona to third place. For some important threats to highlight, Breloom at +0 can OHKO every variant of Greninja that still retains a fighting weakness, while doing 70-80% to protean versions that take neutral damage. Ash-gren is the primary concern though, with protean variants not nearly as threatening to the team, and on that matchup, Breloom only takes 46-55% from a boosted water shuriken while guaranteeing a kill in return. Scizor is another possible threat to the team on my threat matrix, and breloom is respectively 3HKOd and 2HKOd by mega and non mega life orb variants. In return, Breloom can take one bullet punch, outspeed and use spore, get 1 SD boost, and then guaranteed 2HKO both mentioned variants with mach punch while taking no further damage. Being grass type is a nice bonus, giving the team a leech seed and *spore move immunity.
Another high value addition Breloom brings to the team is the much needed counter to the biggest threat to the setup sweepers, Chansey. Toxapex is another highlight that Breloom sleeps, sets up on, and destroys that is a huge problem for volcarona and can potentially be a problem for Diancie.
Gliscor (M) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 244 HP / 52 Def / 76 SpD / 136 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Roost
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Defog
Role: Defensive pivot, defogger
I was previously running a 50% berry bulky rotom here, but chose to switch to gliscor because I wanted to get an electric immunity to stop rampant abuse of volt switch against my team, and I really hate stall teams when I come up against them. Gliscor retains the devensive pivot value Rotom-W had, and is able to deal with problems to the rest of the team like Landorus-T (without HP Ice), Tapu Koko (without HP Ice), chansey, and stalemate toxapex (leading to PP stall without team support, but until then Toxapex will never be able to kill Gliscor). Due to Volcarona being on the team, and having two SR weak mons on the team (Araquanid and Volcarona), defog is essential. Standard defog toxic set IIRC.
Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 248 HP / 148 SpD / 112 Spe
Careful Nature
- Iron Head
- Wish
- U-turn
- Body Slam
Role: Defensive pivot, pivot, softener
The pattern now is that everything remaining is a defensive or supporting role on the team because Diancie, Volcarona, and Breloom already brought the muscle to the team. Jirachi is a very key defensive counter for two big defensive/offensive threats to the team, Tapu Bulu and Magearna. Also notably able to hard counter Tapu Lele (of which specs Lele has the potential to decimate the team). Jirachi is another useful teammate for stall matchups, with toxic immunity and paraflinching to break annoying mons. Standard set for the most part. Wish gives the team a cleric, which turned out great in practice to add back bulk to Diancie and Breloom for another chance to sweep, or just help other teammates in general. Jirachi also acts as a softener to pave the way for sweeps by paralyzing half a team with body slam. Diancie and Breloom massively benefit from this, and in some matches, Jirachi's body slam turns into a replacement for sticky webs.
Replays for evidence of the team:
I've been using the username testing78567 to test with this team, so there should be over a dozen replays if you search on showdown.
This is my first time laddering with a team since BW2, so I definitely made misplays or didn't know how to make the good play in a lot of situations from the replays, but I am currently at 1434 after a few dozen games with the test account. I'm looking for feedback on my playstyle, where I misplay, how to improve that sort of stuff. Also critiques or possible improvements on the team build. One thing I definitely would like to have on the team if I could find a way to fit it in is Knock Off, which would be a good utility move and help with the unfortunate times I play stall. Bisharp was a mon I considered early on due to priority sucker punch and great synergy with sticky webs. Having another pivot with volt switch or u-turn would be nice but isn't mandatory. Also, an ice attack would be nice because Landorus-T is one of the biggest threats for me. If you can identify any other mons that are a threat to the team besides what I've found, that would be a help so I can add them to my excel matrix.
Diancie (Diancie-Mega) @ Diancite
Ability: Magic Bounce
EVs: 248 HP / 8 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Calm Mind
- Moonblast
- Power Gem
- Earth Power
Role: Primary setup sweeper, secondary cleanerr
The first thing I wanted was a mega Diancie because this is my favorite mega pokemon. As a primary setup sweeper, this is one of the win cons of the team. Secondary cleaner is thanks to the natural speed at 350 and good attack/coverage. With Diancie before and after the mega evolution, she was built perfectly to act as a setup sweeper, with great bulk pre mega evolution, allowing your opponent to outspeed you and hit you with high defense while you calm mind up, and then clicking mega evolve to outspeed and boost your damage to start a sweep. Combined with magic bounce, this becomes hard to stop. Also, Diancie acts as a good dragon deterrent, easily breaking threats like Kommo-O and non scarfed Garchomp. EVs promote bulk for maximum value to calm mind and natural speed.
Araquanid (M) @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Water Bubble
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Atk / 8 SpD
Adamant Nature
- Sticky Web
- Liquidation
- Leech Life
- Magic Coat
Role: Sticky webs lead, defensive pivot
I wasn't originally going for sticky webs in a team, but I decided to after seeing that Araquanid learned it alongside the fantastic benefits that I wanted to play him for. Fantastic bulk makes him able to be a hard switch in to counter Greninja and Heatran while threatening to OHKO both. The bulk serves against a variety of other mons and water bubble turns liquidation into a 2HKO for nearly everything that doesn't resist water or have high physical bulk. Magic coat allows him to work even better as a lead in practice, even being an anti-lead to bounce back taunts, toxic, and entry hazards. Since I decided to use sticky webs on the team, the team is supported even better by it. Diancie's already high natural speed with sticky webs is able to now outspeed the group of mons that have higher natural speed and a number of choice scarfers now. Breloom notably gets extremely dangerous with the ability to now outspeed a large group of mons and threaten spore or bullet seed. EVs promote bulk to act as a damage absorber and maximum damage for water bubble liquidation. The rocky helmet is the only thing I'm not 100% convinced to the value on.
Volcarona (F) @ Firium Z
Ability: Flame Body
EVs: 248 HP / 204 Def / 56 Spe
Timid Nature
- Quiver Dance
- Flamethrower
- Bug Buzz
- Roost
Role: Secondary setup sweeper
As one of the later mons added to the team, I desperately needed a hard counter for Tapu Bulu, and something that could break things like magearna, scizor, ferrothorn, and a number of other mons that had fire weaknesses highlighted the value Volcarona gave to my team's matchups. I've been going for a more balanced/bulky team just out of enjoying the feeling of security I get from having even my win conditions able to take multiple hits, so I went with the standard fat moth set Volcarona. Heatran hard counters this set, but this weakness is handled by the previous two and next two mons on the team, so in practice Heatran is very rarely a problem to deal with. Volcarona acts as a secondary win condition being another setup sweeper, being able to pair nicely with Diancie by killing threats Diancie has trouble with like the aforementioned ferrothorn and scizor, with Diancie killing heatran and dragons that give Volcarona problems. Unfortunately, both of the primary win conditions are special attackers, giving a glaring Chansey weakness. Volcarona is the Z user on the team, and I chose Firium Z because I ran calculations vs bug buzz against the group of threats I currently think about with making the team, and flamethrower showed a much higher case of being able to OHKO threats than bug buzz.
Breloom (M) @ Black Belt
Ability: Technician
EVs: 40 HP / 252 Atk / 216 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Bullet Seed
- Mach Punch
- Spore
- Swords Dance
Role: Tertiary setup sweeper, revenge killer, cleaner
Breloom is another mon that I've always personally loved, and after testing, he's definitely still able to hold his own in OU. Technician mach punch makes him a great revenge killer and late game, cleaner for weakened mons. Spore is a soft-KO on many mons, and if Breloom gets up any number of SD's it becomes able to sweep teams, greatly aided by sticky webs. The EVs + black belt were my adjustment of the standard set. I dropped some speed because based on the current speed tiering list, the fastest relevant mon that breloom can invest for is max neutral speed scizor, so the rest of the speed didn't gain much besides 1 or 2 mons that I didn't consider worthwhile. This allows a bit more health, and black belt was chosen over life orb in combination to give Breloom longevity. The lack of LO recoil in the long run is something that is greatly underrated, and contributes a lot to Breloom's ability to support the team and act as a win condition that often times is my secondary win condition, beating out volcarona to third place. For some important threats to highlight, Breloom at +0 can OHKO every variant of Greninja that still retains a fighting weakness, while doing 70-80% to protean versions that take neutral damage. Ash-gren is the primary concern though, with protean variants not nearly as threatening to the team, and on that matchup, Breloom only takes 46-55% from a boosted water shuriken while guaranteeing a kill in return. Scizor is another possible threat to the team on my threat matrix, and breloom is respectively 3HKOd and 2HKOd by mega and non mega life orb variants. In return, Breloom can take one bullet punch, outspeed and use spore, get 1 SD boost, and then guaranteed 2HKO both mentioned variants with mach punch while taking no further damage. Being grass type is a nice bonus, giving the team a leech seed and *spore move immunity.
Another high value addition Breloom brings to the team is the much needed counter to the biggest threat to the setup sweepers, Chansey. Toxapex is another highlight that Breloom sleeps, sets up on, and destroys that is a huge problem for volcarona and can potentially be a problem for Diancie.
Gliscor (M) @ Toxic Orb
Ability: Poison Heal
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 244 HP / 52 Def / 76 SpD / 136 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Roost
- Earthquake
- Toxic
- Defog
Role: Defensive pivot, defogger
I was previously running a 50% berry bulky rotom here, but chose to switch to gliscor because I wanted to get an electric immunity to stop rampant abuse of volt switch against my team, and I really hate stall teams when I come up against them. Gliscor retains the devensive pivot value Rotom-W had, and is able to deal with problems to the rest of the team like Landorus-T (without HP Ice), Tapu Koko (without HP Ice), chansey, and stalemate toxapex (leading to PP stall without team support, but until then Toxapex will never be able to kill Gliscor). Due to Volcarona being on the team, and having two SR weak mons on the team (Araquanid and Volcarona), defog is essential. Standard defog toxic set IIRC.
Jirachi @ Leftovers
Ability: Serene Grace
EVs: 248 HP / 148 SpD / 112 Spe
Careful Nature
- Iron Head
- Wish
- U-turn
- Body Slam
Role: Defensive pivot, pivot, softener
The pattern now is that everything remaining is a defensive or supporting role on the team because Diancie, Volcarona, and Breloom already brought the muscle to the team. Jirachi is a very key defensive counter for two big defensive/offensive threats to the team, Tapu Bulu and Magearna. Also notably able to hard counter Tapu Lele (of which specs Lele has the potential to decimate the team). Jirachi is another useful teammate for stall matchups, with toxic immunity and paraflinching to break annoying mons. Standard set for the most part. Wish gives the team a cleric, which turned out great in practice to add back bulk to Diancie and Breloom for another chance to sweep, or just help other teammates in general. Jirachi also acts as a softener to pave the way for sweeps by paralyzing half a team with body slam. Diancie and Breloom massively benefit from this, and in some matches, Jirachi's body slam turns into a replacement for sticky webs.
Replays for evidence of the team:
I've been using the username testing78567 to test with this team, so there should be over a dozen replays if you search on showdown.
This is my first time laddering with a team since BW2, so I definitely made misplays or didn't know how to make the good play in a lot of situations from the replays, but I am currently at 1434 after a few dozen games with the test account. I'm looking for feedback on my playstyle, where I misplay, how to improve that sort of stuff. Also critiques or possible improvements on the team build. One thing I definitely would like to have on the team if I could find a way to fit it in is Knock Off, which would be a good utility move and help with the unfortunate times I play stall. Bisharp was a mon I considered early on due to priority sucker punch and great synergy with sticky webs. Having another pivot with volt switch or u-turn would be nice but isn't mandatory. Also, an ice attack would be nice because Landorus-T is one of the biggest threats for me. If you can identify any other mons that are a threat to the team besides what I've found, that would be a help so I can add them to my excel matrix.
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