Tournament UU Rating Competition III - Semifinals

[Indigo Plateau]

approved by rmt overlords eheh
op stolen from Sun and the rest of the og squadron

Hosts: vivalospride Twilight Indigo Plateau​

Welcome to the latest edition of the Team Rater Competition! The tier this time around will be SS UU. For each round we'll post a team, and participants will have one week to complete a rate of said team. When the round is over, the participants who submitted the best rates will move onto the next round. If you are eliminated and want to receive feedback on your rate, the hosts will be more than happy to provide that upon request. Each round will last one week. Failure to rate the team within the one week time period will result in disqualification unless you're able to give us a valid reason. Please only sign up if you can commit to rating one team every week for the next month. If you're currently involved in or are looking to start rating UU teams, I highly encourage you to participate as this promises to be a great learning experience. Here's to a fun and competitive tournament!


Important notes:

• All passing rates will count towards the Team Rater badge, and rates in the final 2 rounds will count twice as much towards the badge.
  
• Each round will last one week. Failure to rate the team within the one week time period will result in disqualification unless you're able to give us a valid reason. Please only sign up if you can commit to rating one team every week for the next month.
• If you are eliminated and would like some feedback on your rate and how you can improve going forward, feel free to ask us.
• At the end of each round, we will announce the best rate from that round and a quick overview of what we liked in the rates submitted.

PLEASE SMOGON DM THE HOSTS YOUR RATE

The deadline for this round is Sunday, January 10th @ 11:59 PM -8!

 

[Indigo Plateau]

We'll start off by highlighting the two best rates for last round:

esche

alrighty

team looks cool, spikestack + pivots into special tini sounds deadly

threats etc

re: &

unfortunately skarm alone doesn't cut it here as the steel type. special dragons such as latias and salamence with fire coverage are quite the nuisance. while they are pressured by glaciate victini the threat of a draco meteor to the face is definitely an issue. rotom-w handles draco-less mence just fine and swords dance rak takes advantage of -2 fat mence nicely but its very awkward switching into 3 attacks latias with this team. the "easiest" fix for this is to opt for celesteela > skarmory but i dont wanna go that way here bc it defeats the original intention of the team. instead ill try work around the special dragon issue.

-->

Slowking @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 212 Def / 44 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Teleport
- Slack Off
- Scald
- Psyshock

it hurts me a bit to replace rotom-wash bc it cycles in victini nicely while mantaining offensive presence on the many grass type pivots that roam the tier. slowking isnt as good at keeping up offensive momentum but instead offers guaranteed slow pivoting while checking the aforementioned special dragon types better. granted this change worsens the gyara matchup on paper but most variants forgo bounce for power whip these days anyway. most importantly however slowking retains the ability to pivot into celesteela and cycle in victini without letting it get chipped by leech seed. slowking also has the added benefit of checking nidoqueen - a popular pick with deadly coverage. no need to go with future sight here imo psyshock lets it not be walled by sub keldeo and immediately threatens nihilego. spread almost always avoids the 2hko from cb victini vcreate and takes two life orb draco meteor from latias.

re: &

team is fine offensively and defensively vs most hit and run threats at this point but fat setup sweepers like those two shown above constitute a serious problem. darkest lariat barely scratches reuniclus and amoonguss is a poor poor suicune answer. clear smog for rest variants and seed bomb for sub variants are okay fixes but ive never been a fan of either on amoongus bc of the little damage output and its propensity to get burned when pivoting into water types.

-->

Tapu Bulu @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 248 HP / 4 Atk / 200 SpD / 56 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Horn Leech
- Darkest Lariat
- Bulk Up
- Synthesis

easily 1v1s reuniclus and most cheesy stored power sweepers bc lariat ignores defense boosts. this also 1v1s steela which is sort of important bc blue flare pp can run out between protect and switching. this win against cune too despite burn just be smart around vincune variants and stall out scalds between this and king. more speed on this is definitely possible. benchmarks include 210 for adamant crawdaunt, 220 for modest prima and jolly azu, or 230 even for jolly crawdaunt. wouldnt go further than that bc you seriously miss out on bulk then. i hate the move but with grassy terrain likely going up every game you prob wanna go high horsepower>eq on krook now.

at this point ill stop with the first version and address some more stuff below with a more heavily edited version


https://pokepast.es/f4d206eab1189619

notily

week 2
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trying to stick with the idea of victini + spikes, i think there's some things that this team needs to address:

• we lose to latias again
• bulky waters are difficult to play around as the main breaker is walled by them and the rest of the team doesnt really punish them
• nothing takes direct advantage of the stuff that victini lures (mainly salamence / kommo) being dead
• slow balance breakers like crawdaunt, ice punch azu, and nidoqueen have the potential to blow up the defensive core if they have pivot support

with that in mind the two major changes i would make are slowking > rotom-w and bulu > amoonguss

sets

Slowking @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Regenerator
EVs: 252 HP / 112 Def / 144 SpD
Sassy Nature
IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe
- Scald
- Thunder Wave
- Slack Off
- Teleport

Tapu Bulu @ Leftovers
Ability: Grassy Surge
EVs: 88 HP / 216 Atk / 60 Def / 144 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Horn Leech
- Close Combat
- Megahorn
- Swords Dance

ev spread stuff

slowking evs live +1 lo draco from lati after chip (rocks + burn damage or 2 rounds of toxic), min speed sassy for slower teleport vs other slowking, + the set doesnt have psychic stab so it doesnt need to creep amoong. bulu evs creep up to max speed modest celesteela, hp + defense lets it live cb azu play rough after rocks

these two changes should fix the issues i listed above. slowking isnt the best means of lati counterplay but it has the bulk to pivot into something that can threaten it out. i dont think future sight is necessary here because it allows hazard removal in, and sd bulu + sd terrak should be able to overwhelm their checks without future sight support if hazards are up anyways. the team has other means of checking fighting types through skarm + tini + bulu (to an extent) so i think dropping psychic stab is fine, especially because getting status on kyurem / lati enables some other form of counterplay if you need slowking to eat a lot of damage.

re: bulu
the main reason i think megahorn is better than zen headbutt on this team is because it means you arent walled by lati, and because tangrowth is much more annoying for this team to handle than amoong is (also theres less pressure on it being able to beat kommo because of the victini set / slowking). +2 megahorn hits amoong harder than +2 cc hits tangrowth so megahorn does a better job at covering both, especially with hazards up.

minor changes:

• high horsepower > eq on krook - theres a bulu now lol
• faster skarm - cb azu is a big enough threat to this that you want skarm to be able to force damage on it
• whirlwind > body press on skarm - personal preference again, but bulkier sd scizor sets can be an issue without a way to phaze it out. also helps vs screens

importable with changes: https://pokepast.es/fee0c0c69727a306

We felt these two rates were the best because they identified several key problems with the team, primarily the huge Latias and special attacker weakness as well as bulky setup sweepers. They fixed these issues nicely by adding Pokemon like Slowking & Tapu Bulu while keeping the original core of Victini + Spikes in-tact. They also added appropriate coverage on Tapu Bulu, such as Megahorn for Latias/Tangrowth and Darkest Lariat for Latias/setup Psychics, to help alleviate the previously mentioned problems. Great job to both and keep it up!

The team for this round can be found below:

Paste: https://pokepast.es/66364c648a86a2cd

Description:


I wanted to build the team around Crawdaunt, which I think is not prepped for whatsoever and can tear through teams due to Adaptability.


The best way I wanted to support Crawdaunt was through Teleport, giving it a lot of opportunities to come in for free. Slowking also patches up a lot of defensive issues offensive teams have.


I then added Jirachi for Stealth Rock + Healing Wish support. Healing Wish makes Crawdaunt much harder to wall long term. Jirachi has enough to creep things like Kyurem.


Next up was Salamence, which I added to provide valuable Intimidate + Defog support, and help check things like Scizor that could be problematic for the team.


I felt the team was weak to things like Terrakion so I added Amoonguss for extra defensive utility and because Spore is a broken move.


The team felt like it needed some more speed and additional breaking power besides Crawdaunt, so I added Terrakion last. It's also nice to have a Knock resist.

tags

esche
KSt3ve
Monky25
Notily

Please also note that if you want feedback on your rate (regardless of whether you moved on or not), feel free to PM us! Good luck to all participants!