ORAS UU Journey on a ricehopping cloud

cappino · Oct 8, 2016

Introduction

Hello everyone, I am a relatively new user on Smogon and wanted to share one of my very first UU teams alongside the various changes I made to it ever since I started actually playing UU (A few days after the Mence ban). At first it was a pretty normal offensive team, however as time passed and I got better and started developing my playstyle a bit more the general idea became that of a team that could benefit from Tailwind without being completely dead weight without it.

Teambuilding Process

Because I like the idea of dual type spam and these two look good.

Celebi paired really well with Sharpedro and Crawdaunt, being able to reliably switch into most waters to pressure them; it also covered fighting types with Psychic.

Hydreigon is fair and balanced, and I needed some extra speed and wanted an extra fire switch-in, and one that didn't hate burns; also more Dark spam.

Sylveon was kinda running through the team at this point, and I still needed rocks, and appreciated a way to dent steels.

Crobat was mostly my first switch-in on fighting types, as wel as an extra 'mon that could take one HVoice from Sylveon.

As you can see, this first version of the team is quite different from the final product. While it worked pretty well, using techs like NP+Protect Celebi (Later changed to the 101 HP Sub one, because it still put in work against SubDDos while making playing against stall easier), Sash SD Crawdaunt, TBolt Nidoqueen to furtherly dent waters and Haze AcroBat I had a pretty decent answer to most threats and playstyles; the lack of a dragon immunity was annoying, but manageable. However, I wasn't really feeling too comfortable with it, so I started fooling around a bit.

As much as I loved Celebi (suspect when), the lack of a Dragon immunity was starting to piss me off quite a bit, and at times I wished I had a bit more disruption to make things funnier. So what I did was just switching the onion out for Whimsicott; I tested a bunch of sets, but I settled with Encore+Stun Spore because the idea of having a "oh shoot" button that worked 75% of the time that could also cripple stuff coming in predicting a Encore was nice.
Even though I was pretty happy with the change, I still felt the team lacked a bit of power, with Crawdaunt being the only serious powerful threat in there, and due to my personal misplays with Hydreigon I often ended up losing my main way of immediate speed control.

*THIS ALL HAPPENED BEFORE THE HYDRA SUSPECT TEST*

Once I was done with the suspect ladder and ended my tutee stuff (s/o to Eyan for being an awesome tutor), I went back to this team and gave it another try. While I still liked it, I thought it could be adjusted to better suit me, and took a handful of ideas from what I used (and encountered) during the suspect.

Tailwind has always been one of my favourite moves, in part due to my VGC experience; in this case, it allowed me to pull off some cheeky plays (Like sacking Whimsi to get 3 turns of mayhem with Nidoqueen, which is quite scary) that were really fun. And since I liked the idea, I went all-in and replaced Crobat with Tornadus. That change allowed me to sort of make up for the loss of offensive presence that Whimsicott brought, and gave me more room for complaining about misses.

The Team

Nidoqueen does a lot of things for the team, being my Stealth Rock setter as well as the only thing that doesn't get outright slaughtered by Sylveon. Moreover, with Tailwind support, it can do some pretty huge damage against offensive teams and pave the way for Sharpedro with little effort. The EVs in Speed allow me to hit 230 to smack opposing Crawdaunts, which I would rather not play around.

The choice of Thunderbolt is to mess with bwaters while still hitting Crobat/Mandibuzz, and pure personal preference; Taunt is obviously a great alternative for more general disruption.

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I must say this thing is really fun to use; it should clean up once opposing waters and Dark resists are gone, but most of the time it does pretty much nothing because my other 'mons have cleaned up.
I decided to go with Jolly just because Hydra hasn't been banned yet, and being forced to risk a double Protect in a potential win/lose situation is not something I appreciate.

As far as other options are concerned, Ice Beam is a tool to dent Chesnaught, but honestly with 4/6 things in the team capable of outright KO'ing it or making him pretty much useless I can hardly justify including it.

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I experimented with this a bit; I tried Sash SD, CB Daunt and even a LO 4 Atks set with Sludge Wave (I really don't like Chesnaught). In the end I settled for this because it's the set that has the highest potential of getting out of hand if given an opportunity.

Sash SD is still a very good option against offense, even though the loss in power is noticeable; Mystic Water is a pretty idea in theory, since it still allows Daunt to get a KO on MAero after rocks while bluffing another item.

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Whimsicott glues things together, being able to check water and fighting types decently while providing general support and being the first member of the Tailwind duo. Encore was chosen to have a way to punish greedy setups and get free turns, however due to the lack of U-Turn it's a bit harder to abuse properly.

I have used Pixie Plate for a while to make up a bit for Whimsi's pitiful Moonblast, but I went back to Leftovers to get a bit extra survivability. Encore can be adjusted to personal preference; some options include the previously mentioned U-Turn, Memento, Stun Spore and even Taunt and Leech Seed.

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I like 70%s haha xd. Seriously though, Tornadus gives the team a lot more extra offensive pressure than Crobat does, and one extra Prankster Tailwind. I was using a fully special set with Heat Wave > Iron Tail at first, but decided to change it to gain one extra way to hit Sylveon and Florges without having to rely on Nidoqueen too much, and has the benefit of hitting MAero as well.
The 4 extra EVs in SDef are because as far as I know putting them into Atk wouldn't change any damage calc, but that way I can go with Naive while not giving P-Z a boost in SAtk with Download.

Heat Wave is still great, since it can 2HKO MAggron and do decent damage to Bronzong; I just went for GKnot to hit waters hard without having to risk Hurricane misses, and MAggron is pressured quite hard by the whole team.

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#banhydra
The reason I went with Choice Specs Hydra over a Roost or 4 Atks variant is because it's a nuke that does borderline stupid damage. I chose it over Kyurem because it's not weak to rocks and doesn't get outright destroyed by Sacred Fire. I didn't go with U-Turn because on a Specs set I prefer having extra coverage.

That being said, U-Turn is still viable as an alternative to Fire Blast; a LO Roost set w/Iron Tail can also put in work, checking Entei better while still not giving fairies a free switch-in.

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Conclusion

First of all, thanks a lot if you survived through the huge amount of things I wrote, and I apologize for anything I might have written in broken english since it's not my first language.

So, what if Hydra gets banned? Well, I'll have to look for a different nuke over Hydreigon that can still do something about Entei; Chandelure obviously comes to mind, and it would be an ok fit. At that point I might put Crobat back over Tornadus though, to make hazards less troublesome (and take some pressure off Whimsi from fighting types).
Of course, even though it wasn't directly mentioned, dropping Tailwind altogether is an option; going with Scarf Hydra and like 4 Atks Tornadus wouldn't hurt, maybe it could even work better for some people.

Right now, the team has trouble mostly with some fighting types (Conkeldurr / SD Luke in particular) because, well, Whimsi gets pressured really easily and Tornadus doesn't appreciate coming in on anything. Entei is also really threatening, because on top of Sacred Fire it can pretty much rkill a good bunch of my 'mons with Banded ESpeed. In a similar fashion, Sylveon can get a kill pretty much every time it switches in, but hey you kinda have to sack things against threats like that on a HO team.
Mega Aggron is pretty painful to handle, since it pressures basically everything and has access to potentially TWave to screw with me; it can be pressured, sure, but with Wish support it's quite a pain to deal with.

yes i more or less completely stole Pearl's formatting because it's nice :c
and no i don't do drugs to come up with those names
most of the time

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Nidoqueen @ Life Orb
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 88 HP / 252 SpA / 168 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Stealth Rock
- Sludge Wave
- Earth Power
- Thunderbolt

Sharpedo-Mega @ Sharpedonite
Ability: Speed Boost
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Protect
- Waterfall
- Crunch
- Ice Fang

Crawdaunt @ Life Orb
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Swords Dance
- Crabhammer
- Knock Off
- Aqua Jet

Whimsicott @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
Shiny: Yes
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Moonblast
- Giga Drain
- Encore
- Tailwind

Tornadus @ Life Orb
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Tailwind
- Hurricane
- Iron Tail
- Grass Knot

Hydreigon @ Choice Specs
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Draco Meteor
- Dark Pulse
- Flash Cannon
- Fire Blast

Sacri' · Oct 9, 2016

"That change allowed me to sort of make up for the loss of offensive presence that Whimsicott brought, and gave me more room for complaining about misses."
That was funny, not gonna lie. Moving on to the rate.

• As you mentioned, this team struggles quite a bit versus Aggron, Entei and I also find Aerodactyl-Mega tough to deal with. Using Rain Dance Mega-Swampert over Sharpedo would help your team in that regard. While it's still annoyed by Entei you can at least put Entei in the range of rocks and it also forces it to think twice before clicking Extreme Speed which is much appreciated as well. Rain Dance retains Sharpedos ability to clean late game, Swamperts natural bulk improve s the Lucario match up a little, while it doesn't take Close Combat at +2 it can live +2 Espeed without much problems if tailwind is up.

• While I get the appeal behind the use of Choice Specs Hydreigon I also feel like you don't need the extra power that much. As you mentioned, Roost + Life Orb Hydreigon would give you more room to breath vs Entei, it also allows you to switch moves which allows Hydreigon to abuse Tailwind without having to lock itself into a particular move, that also means you don't have to predict right every single time either.

• I feel like the team overall applies enough pressure on water types to allow you to use U-Turn over Giga-Drain on Whimsicott which is quite important to gain momentum. Whimsicott isn't that powerful so being able to U-Turn to keep the momentum up seems essential to me, especially considering the number of wallbreakers that would appreciate being given free switch ins.

• Considering the pressure applied by Sceptile Mega I'd consider using Mamoswine over Nidoqueen & SR over Rain Dance on Mega Swampert. This is more an optional change but still I feel like it could work pretty well to fix this sceptile problem.

Whimsicott @ Leftovers
Ability: Prankster
EVs: 4 Def / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Timid Nature
- Moonblast
- U-turn
- Encore
- Tailwind

Swampert-Mega @ Swampertite
Ability: Swift Swim
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant/Jolly Nature
- Rain Dance/Stealth Rocks
- Earthquake
- Ice Punch
- Waterfall

Hydreigon @ Life Orb
Ability: Levitate
EVs: 4 Atk / 252 SpA / 252 Spe
Naive Nature
- Draco Meteor
- Roost
- Dark Pulse
- Iron Tail

Mamoswine @ Life Orb
Ability: Thick Fat
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Earthquake
- Icicle Crash
- Knock Off
- Ice Shard

Hope I helped!

ORAS UU Journey on a ricehopping cloud

cappino

Sacri'

the end is here

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